See how First Cat Willow Biden is settling into life at the White House with her new mom, @FLOTUS ?? #NationalPetDay pic.twitter.com/LDGH9EjLGW
— The Dodo (@dodo) April 11, 2022
Or not, if Gov. Abbott has a primary to win…
Anger mounts along Texas-Mexico border over long delays to commercial crossings https://t.co/k4eZKTtuFV pic.twitter.com/QDC5FzUNwM
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 12, 2022
Save the date! This coming Saturday, in celebration of National Park Week, the @NatlParkService will offer free admission so everyone can explore our country's vast history and beauty.
There is a national park closer than you think — find yours today: https://t.co/6BhTiUSukf pic.twitter.com/oi5UCltuhS
— US Department of the Interior (@Interior) April 11, 2022
U.S. House Democrats introduce bill requiring time off for voting https://t.co/dpRmXQPw9b pic.twitter.com/ObNDrW3Vt3
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 11, 2022
“President Biden can enter history as the person who stood shoulder to shoulder with the Ukrainian people who won and chose the right to have their own country.”
President Zelenskyy says he “can only be grateful” for the support of the United States. https://t.co/pjgM0b3Icy pic.twitter.com/oJRsU9LU0z
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 10, 2022
Baud
Maybe it’s time for Operation Jade Helm II.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
rikyrah
Uh huh ?
Tim (@trouble_man90) tweeted at 8:47 PM on Mon, Apr 11, 2022:
Leftists are pushing Fetterman so hard because they secretly want to tank our chances of holding the senate. They know he can’t win.
(https://twitter.com/trouble_man90/status/1513695312212283400?t=daybPSPKN9qqCT1SXFDDCA&s=03)
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Maybe it’s time for the FEMA reeducation camps.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Best idea Obama never had.
SiubhanDuinne
Willow is a lovely cat. What a sweet video that is!
On this date in history: On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter and began the U.S. Civil War. Arguably, they are still fighting it 161 years later.
ETA: I was born in 1942, halfway between the Civil War and now. I’m definitely old enough to have childhood memories of a few very aged veterans riding in Memorial Day parades. (I think I’ve previously related here that my own great-grandfather, whom I slightly remember, volunteered to fight in both the CW and the Spanish-American War. In order to be accepted, he lied about his age — both times!)
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Glad he survived to create you!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Have we heard an update from Imm about his son?
Nicole
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s a fascinating tidbit about your great-grandfather. And very cool that you have memories of seeing some Civil War veterans in Memorial Day parades.
You’re right; we are still fighting that war, over a century and a half later.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Thanks! I’m lucky enough to have known two sets of great-grandparents, one on my mom’s side and one on my dad’s. In both cases the women outlived the men by several years, so I have much more rounded and detailed memories of them. The great-grandfathers are what I think of as “snapshot” recollections.
NotMax
Media note.
In the mood to escape for 100 minutes with a dyed in the wool fictional disaster flick (with a minimal dosage of schlock)? Still opportunity to catch The Quake (original Norwegian title Skjelvet) before it jumps ship from Hulu on April 18th. Slow-building immersive drama, sticking with it far from a disappointment.
Starfish
@rikyrah: The leftists were for Kenyatta. When Kenyatta’s chance to win closed, they are switching to a candidate whose reputation is not “I won a Democratic seat in a district that Trump won.”
Lamb also chose to go negative against Fetterman, and I think that there are areas where people will punish you for going negative against your opponent. I am not sure if Philly is one of those places or not.
Blaming Fetterman on “leftist plot” is not a serious take.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: What have I missed?
Starfish
The above was interesting to me because Nusbaum is a financial advisor. He does not tend to be political on Twitter. I have followed his comments for years, and if I had to guess where he is politically, I would guess he is middle of the road to a little conservative.
Anyway, he is being critical of Jen Psaki for falling in with the Republican framing around inflation. (Did anyone hear what she said about inflation? I missed it.) Basically, he is saying that inflation is where we expected it to be, and that is not “alarmingly high.”
Nicole
@SiubhanDuinne: Good genes in your family; what with you having memories of great-grandparents on both sides!
My paternal great-grandfather died of a heart attack at 59 in 1936, and my grandfather got it in his head that he, too, would die of a heart attack at 59. Sure enough, he did have a heart attack at 59, but health care by the late 1960s had taken some giant strides and he lived another 30 years. After he turned 80, he let my aunt know that he had taken out massive life insurance on himself in anticipation of a young passing, and if he had in fact died at 59, his kids would have been “set for life.” Ha! Everyone was happier to have him around instead, needless to say.
Geminid
@SiubhanDuinne: When the Confederate batteries were about to open fire on Fort Sumter, commanders offered Virginia Congressman Roger Pryor the honor of firing the first shot. Pryor was in Charleston urging the Confederates to “strike a blow” in order to get his own state to secede.
Pryor got cold feet and shrank from the task. Then fellow Virginian Edmund Ruffin stepped up and triggered the shot that started the the Civil War.
Ruffin was well known in the South as an agronomist who published a magazine on progressive agriculture. After Lee surrendered, Ruffin shot himself.
opiejeanne
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s kind of amazing. I didn’t know any of my greats, just missed “meeting” one of them by a few years, one who worked as a photographer during the Civil War. By the time I knew what questions I should have asked my grandparents, they were all gone.
NotMax
@Starfish
Worked for the odious Frank Rizzo.
Not the same Philly today it was then, but still such a blink of time that the glue has not had time to cure on the subsequent layered veneers of change.
NotMax
FYI.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s so cool! It must be something special to have even snapshot memories of two sets of great-grandparents.
I only knew one great-grandparent, my mom’s mother’s mother. She was quite a presence and lived until I was 18, so I got to know her as a real person. A real SCARY person in her case! ;-)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: A few days ago, Imm posted that his son was in the hospital. He’d had emergency surgery.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Shit.
Ohio Mom
@Dorothy A. Winsor:Maybe a front-pager should email him? Just to let him know we are thinking of them — or would that be an intrusion? I’ll leave that up to wiser jackals.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
He knows. The outpouring of responses on the days when he posted about what’s going on were self-evident.
Figure he’s got more immediate matters to attend to than checking e-mail.
Uncle Cosmo
Lucky indeed. Effectively I grew up without grandparents. Both of my biological grandfathers were gone before I was 2. My grandmothers (who survived into the 1960s) and my father’s stepfather (who lasted a bit longer until succumbing like Vito Corleone to a stroke in the tomato patch behind his tiny NJ house) lived hours away, and we saw them only on our yearly vacations. None could speak more than a dozen words of English, and I didn’t learn any Italian until much later (and never any of their Sicilian or Molisano dialects).
SiubhanDuinne
@Nicole: Those family health traditions, if I may so call them, are fascinating. My maternal grandfather died in 1947 of a heart attack at age 58. His daughter (my mother) died in 1975 of a cerebral haemorrhage at age 58. Needless to say, with all this cardiovascular history, I approached turning 58 with some trepidation. I had already had one heart attack eight years earlier, but lo and behold a few months after my birthday I had a quadruple bypass. That was a technique sadly not available to my grandfather.
I’d rather have the people than the insurance benefits too!
narya
@Betty Cracker: I also only knew one great-grandparent–my maternal grandfather’s mother, who died when I was 17 (she was in her 90s). She never spoke much english, and I never spoke any Italian, so I really didn’t know her at all, unfortunately. She emigrated when she was in her late teens, I think, so it would have been fascinating to hear those stories.
Nicole
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh no. Imm’s been through so much the past few years.
Another Scott
Yet another reminder to beware of Twitter charts…
(A comment argues that the chart is probably of people who have any student loan debt, not all adults who went to college (or similar larger universe). So, probably a tiny number of people in their 90s have student loan debt. Silver should know better.)
Cheers,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@Geminid:
I never knew that! Every individual story, no matter how sordid or deplorable, is intriguing.
Baud
@Another Scott:
My hunch is that Silver knows better but doesn’t care.
Starfish
@Starfish:
We are not feeling the gas one as much because we are still mostly working from home, but we definitely felt the hotel one while trying to book summer travels.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: oh no! I hope that he’s okay.
Betty Cracker
@narya: Those stories would have been fascinating for sure. I’ve always been interested in family histories, not just mine but other people’s too. You learn things from their stories that you’ll never get from a proper history book!
Betty Cracker
@Starfish: It’s hard to miss the sticker shock at the grocery store and gas pump. It’s real.
Geminid
@Starfish: Yesterday I bought gasoline for $3.99. This was the first time in a while the price hasn’t been over $4. The radio news told me that May crude oil futures are down. This is despite the new JCPOA being stalled over unresolved issues between Iran and the U.S.
OzarkHillbilly
The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again: Sunscreen chemicals accumulating in Mediterranean seagrass, finds study
Who’da thunk it?
Xentik
@Starfish: The White House doesn’t have the luxury of being seen as dismissive about inflation. Just imagine the media feeding frenzy if Psaki came out and said “This isn’t bad inflation, it’s just about where we should be”. This is the same media that dug up a ‘family’ of 12 and presented them as being crushed under the overwhelming burdens of increasing milk costs, didn’t discuss how absurdly far from average that family was, and didn’t even bother to mention that over half of the 12 were grown adults with their own jobs.
SiubhanDuinne
@Geminid:
I haven’t filled up for a couple of weeks, but I saw a few places yesterday where it’s down to around $3.50. Will remember them when I top off the tank later today.
NotMax
And then there were three. Anyone wanna buy a blue light?
Well remember the opening day for the one on Maui. First store of its type on the island. Beaming crowds shoulder to shoulder. Only paces anywhere close at the time were the local chain Liberty House (since gobbled up by Macy’s, which was primarily for clothing and jewelry, and an outlet of the Japanese chain Shirokiya (since closed), which had such an eclectic selection of goods (including a yummy fried chicken take-out plate) that one couldn’t be sure what they might be selling the next time one visited.
Betty Cracker
@Xentik: I wonder if it would make sense for Biden to address inflation head on, perhaps via an Oval Office speech? I have no idea if it would help or not, but it is a complex subject, and, judging from the letters to the editors in the papers I read, there are tons of misconceptions about the causes that have taken root. Maybe some myth-busting plus an overview of measures they’re taking to ease the pain would be helpful. I have no idea.
Ohio Mom
@Another Scott: I bet those 90 year olds with student debt include a good number of doting grandparents who co-signed loans.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: $3.79 in Sullivan MO.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: We’re having to raise prices at the pub again, especially on chicken items. It’s not just food, either – supplies like gloves are still a lot higher than they were pre-pandemic.
O. Felix Culpa
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, followed by infection post-surgery. All digits crossed for Immp’s quick and complete recovery.
NotMax
@Geminid
Heh. Dealership filled up the tank on the new vehicle late in March, after I’d completed paperwork and arranged payment. And didn’t charge me for the gas. Prices that day were at or very near their peak (hovering under $6/gallon) although I’m sure they have an arrangement for better pricing with one of the commercial-only outlets rather than the branded service stations we peons patronize.
As people are reporting over 500 miles per tankful and even up to 600 depending on driving patterns for this same hybrid model, with the limited amount of driving doing now I’m anticipating not needing to fill up again for around six months.
Starfish
@Betty Cracker: My mom has been complaining about the grocery one. I have just let my husband go to the store and lived in ignorant bliss on that one.
Matt McIrvin
@SiubhanDuinne: A couple of my great-grandparents saw me when I was a baby, but I don’t remember them. I knew all of my grandparents pretty well–my maternal grandmother passed in 2015 at the age of 96 (still sharp and capable of making her own end-of-life choices–we should all be so lucky), and my daughter did get to know her, which was wonderful.
topclimber
@Another Scott: Is he counting PLUS loans that parents got for their kids? Then pre-boomer in their 50s could have been racking up loans in the 1990s.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s $3.49 here in Springfield, MO. I would expect it to go down some more in the next week since the price of oil is under $100/barrel again
So, inflation is high – and the Dow is up over 300 points this morning. I’ve quit trying to figure out how the market makers think.
Tony Jay
In barely interesting news, the London Metropolitan Police have announced that they intend to issue Fixed Penalty Notices (fines for crimes) to Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (AKA Sasha Flobalobalov) and his ever-so-loyal Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (AKA Mahogany Moneybags) for repeatedly breaking Covid-guidelines and other offences loosely characterised over here as ‘Partygate’.
What this means is that Flobalobalov is now completely shorn of excuses. He held and attended boozy parties during the 2020 Lockdowns while presiding over a Government that instituted strict criminal penalties for doing exactly that, lied about it repeatedly, and has now been found criminally liable. Resignation is the only option remaining to him… in a functioning democracy.
But this is Lesser Brexitannia, where democracy and the rule of law went out of the window along with Press neutrality and basic journalistic honesty when the possibility of a left-of-centre Government hove into view. Johnson will only resign if his MPs tell him he has to, and they won’t do that unless they absolutely, positively, have to.
there’s a much more likely scenario, IMHO. Chancellor Sunak (who is just coming off the worst week of his own brief political career after someone (rhymes with Doris Bonson) approved the leak of damaging details about Sunak’s billionaire wife avoiding UK tax by claiming non-domiciled status (even while living at Number 11 Downing St) and the pair of them still holding US Green Card status even while he was serving as a Tory MP and Chancellor and pushing forward tax and benefit policies that have made the very rich (including his wife) even richer while immiserating tens of millions of Britain’s poorest, will choose to resign over his receipt of a police fine for Partygate, leaving Flobalobalov absolutely nowhere to go excusewise.
What’s he going to say? My Chancellor has resigned for no reason? He’s actually resigning because he’s a terrible tax-fraud? Sunak already blames the flatulent shit for leaking the stories about his tax-dodging ways (though in this case, as so often, ‘leak’ actually translates to “gave the journalists who were already sitting on the information licence to publish” rather than telling them anything they didn’t already know) in order to destroy Sunak’s chances of succeeding Flobby as PM, he’s got nothing at all to lose by turning around and stabbing the Flaccid One in his pale, acne-scarred back.
I mean, granted, removing the Leader of the Free West and Commander in Chief of the Global Response to Russian Aggression might doom Ukraine to defeat (according to Flobby’s defenders in the Wingnut Press) but that’s not likely to impinge on Sunak’s decision making processes. He’s shown himself to be extremely thin-skinned when judged by normal human standards of behaviour, I really can’t see him drifting off into the blissful balmy seas of Superrich Heaven without sticking a varnished wooden finger into Flobby’s watery eye.
We’ll see. There’s always the chance they find even more bedrock beneath the barrel to grind through.
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Somewhere, Disraeli snorts in derision.
;)
Xentik
@Betty Cracker: It probably wouldn’t hurt, but as far as I can tell the WH has been pretty aggressive about having Biden give talks on important topics. I don’t know how much media coverage they get beyond what we see here, and I’m not sure if interrupting prime-time to tell people about it would be a net win or not.
Perhaps as part of a discussion on the situation in Ukraine and why it’s so important to keep fighting for Democracy? Polling seems to show that people generally support paying higher costs to help Ukraine, so making it into a ‘tighten our belts for freedom’ thing might play well. Of course my expertise in this sort of thing earns me exactly $0 and is not exactly sought after, so who knows.
The one thing we can be certain of is that the media will immediately adopt the Republican framing of the issue and start asking tough questions like “Why don’t you just do everything Republicans say you should do? Are you bad or just stupid?”
scav
@Tony Jay: But if Flobalobalov and Czarrina abandon n° 10, who will cherish the wall-paper correctly!? Rees-Moggie will be in floods.
kalakal
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh hell. Hoping for a speedy recovery
geg6
@rikyrah:
I’m not gonna argue about this silly take, but I’ll just say that’s not the view on the actual ground.
MisterDancer
There’s a shooter/bomb situation in Brooklyn:
geg6
@Starfish:
Lamb’s ad is terrible and an absolute lie. I have no idea who is advising him, but it’s a big mistake. Fetterman’s ads have been relentlessly positive.
Tony Jay
@scav:
Oh, whoever succeeds in bringing the collective testicles of the Tory Party membership to the brightest cherry-red glow will enter Downing Street trailed by a full entourage of interior designers and image gurus.
Wiping the slate clean of Carrie Antoinette’s abominable gauchery will be presented as ‘turning the page’, regardless of how much it costs. There’s an Election coming, the British Media know that whoever succeeds Johnson needs to be buffed and polished into a gleaming, impervious monolith of patriotic inevitability if they’re going to con the electorate again. Unpersoning Flobalob and all of his works will happen overnight.
geg6
@Another Scott:
It’s probably because the grandparents co-signed a private educational loan for a student who could not make the payments.
Say what you will about the federal loan system, but private educational loans are evil.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: There is little difference between the Red Hats and the Red Roses except for the rhetoric.
kalakal
@Tony Jay: Right now the bastards will be adding a new line to their expenses claims
no comment
@Betty Cracker:
If you’re into podcasts, I recommend “Family Ghosts.” The stories range from serious to lighthearted. Some of the episodes are told by the family member themselves, & others involve the podcaster interviewing members of a family & researching that family’s history.
Librarian
@Tony Jay: I guess you’re not impressed with Boris’s visit to Kyiv, then. :^)
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: What part is a lie? The police report contradicts Fetterman’s recent statements about the incident.
Here are the receipts along with the original police report of the incident
Here is Kenyatta’s take
scav
@kalakal: David Warburton already has, hasn’t he? Conservatives hold the line.
Betty
@geg6: Conor hired some bad consultants who are doing him no favors. He is embarrassing himself. They seem to forget that Fetterman has visited every nook and cranny in PA and been a regular presence on tv and social media. Voters know who he is, like him or hate him. He has defined himself. Speaking of voting, my ballot application which I expected yesterday hasn’t arrived. I sent a reminder.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Xentik: Not being a TV watcher it really feels like the MSM has gone full fantasyland and that happens to favor the Republicans because they live there.
I mean look at inflation, part of is we have near total employment, so does everyone want Biden to deliberately crash the economy to get gas prices down? Wishing the other guy would lose his job so one could still drive keep driving their F-150 is pretty much how most Republican voters think.
Omnes Omnibus
@opiejeanne:
I knew two of my greats. One lived until I was eight and the other until I was 22. My grandparent’s death happened when I was 26, and I lost the last when I was 48. I feel very lucky to have known them as an adult.
Sanjeevs
@Tony Jay: Sunak moved out of the Number 11 flat yesterday.
Looking very possible he resigns today.
Miss Bianca
@geg6: I am disappointed to hear that Conor Lamb has gone this route. My take, as a complete assclown from another part of the country, is that he’s probably most valuable where he is right now – we need to keep red-district Democrats in the House, damn it! – so maybe if he gets his ass handed to him in the primary as a result of these tactics it’s one of those “blessings disguised as a curse,” actually. (Or “blurse”, as one of my friends calls them.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Tony Jay: I would think the War would be a good time for the Tories to air all their dirty laundry between most people not paying attention to politics and rally round the flag. Boris sounds positively Churchill right now, as in “let’s set aside Churchill was responsible for Gallipoli, turning Ireland into a full blown race war and crashed the economy because Hitler is attacking.”
Betty Cracker
@Xentik: One thing I hear repeated by GOP pols and in wingnut media and then regurgitated by consumers of that media is that energy prices are up because the Biden admin killed the KS pipeline and rescinded permits to drill on public lands. This is absolutely not true, as we know, but people believe it. Exploding myths like that forcefully might be helpful. Not to change the mind of the GOP base but to ameliorate the misinfo’s effect on low info / unaffiliated voters who hear the lie but not the truth.
Edmund Dantes
@Another Scott: grandparents have been roped into taking out student loans for kids, grandkids, etc.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Milk prices have actually dropped $0.20 a gallon here and they never really increased during the “supply chain disruptions.”
-In BJ-Join-the-fight news I have been adding PA organizations to the list this morning (Tues) and via twitter I came across the New Pennsylvania Project modeled after Stacey Abrams New Georgia Project. They are hiring people right now! This has cheered me up enormously! I want to help them!
Matt McIrvin
@Xentik: One of Biden’s greatest moments as VP was when he lectured Congress on how tax brackets work, in case you were pretending not to understand. It’s stuck in my mind.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: If he does, hope he skips the WIN buttons (even if there’s a warehouse filled with them somewhere).
Betty Cracker
@no comment: Oooo, that sounds right up my alley — thanks for the tip!
Baud
@trollhattan:
Agreed. It’s 2022. He should go with WIN NFTs.
kalakal
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Weirdly I’d actually give Churchill a pass on that one. He knew sod all about economics but unlike far too many politicians since he admitted it and took expert advice. Almost to a man they said “put Britain on the Gold Standard”. So, cheered on by all the clever people and the entire Tory party, he did so. It was a disaster.
He actually did listen to the experts, on this occasion at least
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Magdi Semrau, who lives in what she calls rural PA, I have no idea where she is, had an interesting take on Fetterman, which sort of confirms my theory that lots of people vote on affect, not policy
personally, the whole racist vigilante episode throws up all kinds of red flags, but I’m not a PA voter
O. Felix Culpa
Hoocoodanode? Truckers getting screwed by…wait for it…Republicans! Governor Abbott of R-Meaner than a Junkyard Dog (apologies to all canines) in particular:
International trade halted at Texas border crossings as truckers protest Greg Abbott’s new inspections
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know jack about PA but it seems like it would not be possible for Fetterman to win the primary without a substantial amount of black voter support.
I guess the question will be whether actual black voters care that much about that incident or whether it’ll be like Eric Adams in NYC or Ralph Northam’s blackface incident, where black voters took a different tack from internet commentators.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: When is the primary?
OzarkHillbilly
Jeebus:
Where did they get the gun? That’s the person who should be charged with murder.
Martin
Let’s see. Prius needs gas about once a year apart from drives to see my son (8 gal up, 8 back) – still cheaper than flying. Sold my car last month for half of what I paid for it 16 years ago, so the used car inflation benefitted me to the tune of a few thousand dollars. I sleep on the floor of my son’s apartment instead of a hotel. Our gas bills are down 80% since we replaced our gas water heater with an electric heat pump one to benefit from the solar. We’re trying to reduce our meat consumption for climate reasons.
The items at the top of the list are all climate damaging. Any efforts you do to mitigate climate change are likely to pay off faster than you expect because those costs are going to go up faster. Conservation pays off in multiple ways.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Don’t know.
Tony Jay
@Librarian:
“British Gasbag flatulates for the cameras in Kyiv while Russian oligarchs enjoy London nightlife.”
What a hero. ?
Xentik
I cleaned up the question a bit so I could give a definitive answer: Yes.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: Every chance I get I post that if people would only read the open articles in the business press they would see that energy companies are deliberately restricting supply in order to drive up prices in order to attract back investors, because this is what investors have told them to do! They’re open about it! This is not a secret! Yet for some reason regular reporters seem to have no clue at all that it’s happening. They’d rather repeat the Republican talking points because those are easier to explain.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Next month, I think.
Martin
They’re in FLORIDA.
Tony Jay
@Sanjeevs:
Politically it would be the cynical thing to do. He gets to run away from his tax problems and all the cameras swing right towards Flobby.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
They are genuinely trying to play that card. Removing Flobalobalov dying ‘a time of war’ would somehow be a win for Putin.
It’s not selling very well.
OzarkHillbilly
@Martin: And I live in Misery. No matter where it is, the question needs answering.
Another Scott
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The reporting on inflation in the US has been absolutely horrible. Inflation is up world-wide (after being far too low for far too long) because of the pandemic, Putin’s buildup and the war, and similar things. It has almost nothing to do with Biden’s policies.
CalculatedRiskBlog.com:
(Quoting the BLS)
(Emphasis added.)
We’re probably over the hump in the outside fuel-and-energy category. But housing is still constrained by far too little supply, and the Fed crashing the housing market further isn’t going to help. (Housing leads most recoveries.)
Yes, people are being hurt by higher prices. But it’s temporary. We’ve known for 2+ years that the path of the economy depends on the path of the pandemic. Things are getting better, but it’s not over.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@OzarkHillbilly: Same thing happened here, except the very first shot was fatal so no taking turns. They did it in a public park, just to add to the fail level. Maybe label it “bullet-resistant” with a three-paragraph disclaimer.
trollhattan
@Martin: Where gun find you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You know how that works in politics; “Yes, I know I told you to do that very stupid thing but you did it so it’s your’ fault for listing to me” lol
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You forgot the over 2 million Indians he starved in India on purpose during the mid 40s.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, but parents are almost never charged when their kids kill or wound people with guns in Florida. There was a case near me a few years back where some teens took AR-15s into the woods and randomly fired shots. A woman standing in her yard a quarter of a mile away was killed. The teens were charged but eventually acquitted because the cops never found the fatal bullet and couldn’t definitively prove it wasn’t some other random yahoo who fired the shot. The parents were never charged even though they left deadly weapons lying around unsecured, which is not illegal.
Karen S.
@Betty Cracker: One of my mom’s caregivers went through hundreds of old family photos last year, identifying many of the people in them as Mom was probably the last person alive who could identify people in those photos, some of which dated back to the turn of the 20th century. On my mother’s side of the family, there was always someone with a camera taking pictures and lots of family members and friends went to photo studios to have formal portraits done, so we have a lot of beautiful black and white pix of family members, most of whom were gone before my time. The caregiver does scrapbooking so she has put a lot of the photos into albums along with tidbits of information about the various relatives and friends that my mom told her. I’d heard many stories about Mom’s family over the years, but it’s wonderful to have the photos along with some of the anecdotes in one place.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: Jesus
Giving teenagers guns seems to be a thing in a lot of gun-humper households. Hand guns, or AKs, not for hunting.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Were I a Pennsylvanian, I would be in the Lamb camp. But I think Fetterman would have chased Mr. Miyares even if he’d been white. I have problems with the way Fetterman spun the story afterwards, and then declared the matter closed as far as he is concerned. But I don’t consider the incident evidence of racism.
Now, if I were Black I might reflect on the heavy toll vigilantes have taken on Black people and consider such action in effect racist. And the district attorney’s decision not to prosecute Fetterman on a clear firearms violation- carrying a loaded shotgun in a vehicle- is a good example of white privilege. Fetterman hasn’t said that he lobbied the DA for that result, and neither has the Republican DA.
Betty Cracker
@Karen S.: What a wonderful gift from that caregiver!
Brachiator
@Sanjeevs:
And with that, Boris Johnson gets rid of another possible rival.
Liz Truss must be feeling very happy right now.
Domnic Raab is also smiling, but that’s just because he’s an idiot.
Joe Falco
From the Reuters article about the Texas-Mexico truck “enhanced
interrogationinvestigation” order from Abbott:If Abbott was smarter about this, he could have just framed his order as being about traffic safety and not alleged smuggling with a wide and a nod to his base. And if evidence of smuggling and human trafficking was found along the way, Abbott could use it as a springboard to excuse tighter inspections. Now it’s obvious he overreached and made a bigger racist buffoon of himself. Not like that makes a difference in the eyes of the MAGAt base.
Geminid
@Baud: Back voters swing a lot of weight in Virginia politics and they made the difference when Ralph Northam beat Tom Perriolo in the 2017 Governor primary. Black people are 20% of Virginia’s population, while Black people account for 9.6% of Pennsylvania’s. So I guess a Democrat could win a Pennsylvania primary without substantial support from Black voters.
The general election is a different proposition. A Democratic candidate needs good turnout in Black precincts to win the state.The fear that some of Fetterman’s detractors express is that in November Republicans will undermine support for Fetterman with negative advertising targeting Black voters
This can be countered some if Democrats in Pennsylvania unite behind Fetterman (if he is nominated next month). Hopefully Mayor Gainey of Pittsburgh will campaign with him. Maybe Senator Cory Booker will campaign for Fetterman among his Philadelphi neighbors. I’m confident the President Biden and Vice President Harris will be there for Fetterman, or Lamb too.
James E Powell
@Joe Falco:
Isn’t being a racist buffoon the key to winning statewide elections in Texas? And I think it goes well beyond the MAGAt base.
Ogliberal
@MisterDancer: Sounds like no deaths so far, so that’s good. Looks like a number of people with leg wounds and that has to hurt…a lot. The constructio-like garb appeared to work – had people fooled.
I used to go through that station on my way to work in Manhattan from Bay Ridge but that was many, many years ago. Sunset Park is the neighborhood and it is very Latino and Chinese. Working/Middle Class and quite safe. Obviously, an incident like this really has no reflection on the neighborhood itself…it’s a transfer station so good opportunity to fire off a bunch of rounds, jump of the train and get away.
I suppose we’ll need to bomb some country in the Middle East because of this…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid:
that’s where we part, I have a hard time imagining Fetterman would’ve pointed his shotgun (IIRC) in the face of a jogger with long blond hair
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodingers_cat: That was after 1940 or I would added “Ganking our allies navy just so Churchill could be just like his dear ancestor” to the list.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: “You fucked up! You trusted us!”
Baud
@Geminid:
Thanks. I didn’t realize the differences were so vast.
Matt McIrvin
@Ogliberal: We’ll have to build some pipelines that have nothing to do with our gasoline prices.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Or a female.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Geminid: As a Pennsylvanian I think thats true, but a Dem cant win a statewide election without Black enthusiasm in Philly and Pgh..
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
This is true, but voters generally hold the person in charge responsible and expect their president or prime minister to solve the problem.
It also doesn’t matter that the problem might be temporary.
Inflation usually creates problems for any administration. Biden has a good economic policy team. Hope they are up to this challenge.
jonas
@NotMax: Perhaps the demise of Kmart was inevitable in today’s brutal retail market, but Sears could have continued to be a major player if Eddie Lampert hadn’t royally fucked it up and destroyed everything. I hope every B-school in America has a required course called “On Not Being Eddie Lampert”…but who am I kidding? Thousands of long-time employees and millions of consumers got screwed, but he’s still got his billions and I’m sure could not care less about the destruction he left in his wake.
Fair Economist
We have an electric car and a ICE car, and I no longer care about the price of gas. I’m a househusband and I drive the ICE car; groceries about 3 times a week, about 2 miles round trip, plus a few errands a month. A number of trips I can manage on foot or bike (drugstore, coffee shop; even mall shopping for something light). It needs to be filled up about once every 2 months. I’d spend more for a coffee a day (which I can make at home on our espresso machine.) When this car dies, I’ll probably get an electric, although if I continue with this minimal driving, maybe I’ll get an old ICE beater and let somebody with more driving needs have the electric I’d otherwise buy.
Frankensteinbeck
@Xentik:
I think there is great truth in this, but not in the oligarch sense. The national media, economically upper class, love to talk about how entitlements should be cut. There’s a whole lot of ‘cruel to be kind’ subtext in the national news in general. Inflation affects them personally, so it’s Important. High employment (with people getting better jobs, even!) makes the lower classes suffer less, which can only lead to laziness and weakened moral fiber. There is nothing good about this situation as far as pundits are concerned!
Oh, and if they don’t constantly bludgeon Biden, how can they prove they’re non-partisan? They have to equal out Trump’s scandals!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@jonas: Yes, that’s really inexcusable that Sears couldn’t adjust to the Internet considering a big part of Sears’ business was mail order.
Kelly
Railway bridge inside Russia near Belgorod sabotaged
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1513790391082008580
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax: amazing to me the old line companies thought no one would want a smaller hybrid pick-up. I’ve been clicking around looking and those that did make a hybrid pick-up made them the big ones:: The F-150, not the Ranger, the Tundra, not the Tacoma. I think the same holds true for GM and Dodge.
Baud
Inflation is the birth pang of a glorious new worker-centered economy.
#SpreadTheWord
frosty
@jonas: Sears had a lock on mail order retail with their catalog. Letting that slip away to Amazon in the internet era was a huge mistake. There’s your good B-school class!
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well, Miyares said Fetterman pointed the gun at his midsection. But I get your point. Fetterman lived in majority Black community, though, and I don’t think he is consciously more racist than you or I. He might have even driven faster were it a white jogger because that would be more “out of place.”
But Fetterman should not have done this and I wish Miyares had gone to a good civil rights lawyer. The case would probably not have gone to trial; Fetterman’s father would have paid a hefty settlement to help his son keep his political ambitions intact.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Dominic Raab, the tight suited avocado stone so uncomprehendingly dim that he remains the only person who still thinks Johnson chose him to be deputy PM on merit.
Truss will be hiding somewhere with the phone off the hook, just like all of the other Tory ministers and MPs who have told their Spads they are under no circumstances available for comment until – after – Sunak has revealed his plans for revenge.
Christ sake, the only idiot they can find willing to defend Flobby is Michael Fabricant, and he’s not even credible enough to explain his own hair.
NeenerNeener
@NotMax: I’ve still got almost half a tank in my Niro, and the last time I put gas in the car was July. It helps that I can go most places on just battery power these days.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Frankensteinbeck: It does seem like a lot people up and down the economic spectrum who are big into “He’s the greedy gas guzzling pig with his Nissan Titan, that’s why the prices are high. I, however need my Ford F-150 to commute to work” or “we need to ban all the electric cars because according the Internet fascist hippies use windmills to turn gas into electrons”
Fair Economist
@Soprano2:
The media wants you to think inflation is high, so you’ll vote against Biden and Republicans will be able to resume lowering their owners’ taxes by raising yours.
The truth is that core inflation was a surprise to the low side – by a substantial amount, 0.3% instead of 0.5% – and so the real inflation rate is much less of a problem than had been thought. The current headline inflation spike is solely because of temporary increases in the price of Putinroleum, which won’t continue. So the market is happy.
Current bond rates are an almost ironclad guarantee that inflation is not going to be a big problem. 5 and 10 year bonds couldn’t sell at 2.79% if it were.
Geminid
@Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!): I agree. In the second part of the comment, in fact.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
They also give you cancer.
Baud
@Fair Economist:
The inflation rate was high in 1950 but then went down and the entire decade was one of the best ever economically.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I have seen tankie takes that want to ban all cars because public transport is where it is at. Which makes me wonder whether most of these American Twitter Tankies live in NYC.
James E Powell
I want to weigh in on the Fetterman shotgun incident, but have to admit that I don’t know enough about how much that matters to voters in Pennsylvania, African-American especially but not exclusively. Is there anyone there who doesn’t already know about it? Hasn’t everyone already made up their minds what it means?
I recall Lamb’s opposition to Speaker Pelosi. That’s just not right. People will say that it’s what it takes to win in a red district. Fine, then, win in a red district and be the best we can do in a red district, but stay there.
And I know about Connor Lamb’s attack ad on Fetterman. It’s despicable. Lamb is polling barely above single digits. He needs to pack it in and run for re-election or he will be handing his red district to a Republican.
Pennsylvania is not West Virginia; we do not need another Manchin or another “but some” Democrat in the senate.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: There’s a budding anti-car culture, which is somewhat understandable. But it should be obvious that bans are not a good way to reduce dependence on cars, much less ICE cars.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The pent up demand of the last 2 years is causing inflation IMHO, too many $$ chasing too few goods. It will settle down.
Also we are in a full employment economy which the newsrooms of America seem loath to pointing out.
Ogliberal
@jonas: I loved Kmart when I was a kid in the 70s/80s…the one by us had a great cafeteria. This wasn’t just dogs and burgers – you could get full meals.
But my favorite – and this really will only mean something to NY Metro area folks – was Two Guys. Our local had a great snack bar/grill, pinball, arcade games and skee ball! Great toy section. Early on they purchased the Vornado fan company so they could sell their fans, etc. In the late 70s they realized their real estate was worth more than the stores. Some big investors realized this as well, Two Guys went bye-bye and Vornado Realty Trust was born, which is a pretty big real estate holdings co. these days. They owned a big stake in the mall near us until they sold it to Jared.
Sears had some great, trusted brands like Kenmore and Craftsman but Lampert just sold them off. Oh, and I loved the catalog around Christmas time – with marker in hand I would circle everything I wanted, which was about 5 times more than my parents could afford.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It is not practical in this continent sized country with a few exceptions like NYC or Boston.
Fair Economist
@Baud: I am expecting a really good economy for the next 2 decades* because we’re finally starting to let housing demand be filled, and because the shift to renewables and batteries will bring down the cost of energy and cars. 1950 might be a very good analogy.
* Assuming COVID doesn’t **** us all over.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: There are a lot of reason for inflation right now, none of which has to do with policy, but I agree generally with everything you said.
Baud
@Fair Economist:
The bigger threat IMHO.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Mahatma Baud is right as always.
germy
Lt Gov Benjamin arrested in campaign donation scheme
ian
@James E Powell:
Are we going to throw Tim Ryan under the bus too? Do we want to win or do we want party purity?
This whole PA mess is turning into a circular firing squad. I’m not a PA voter, so it isn’t up to me, but Fetterman or Lamb would be better than Toomey or Oz. Between this and our best candidate getting kicked off the Iowa ballot, I is getting a sadz :(…
Baud
@ian:
What happened in Iowa?
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
Since the mid-70s, the political media have not regarded full employment as a worthy policy goal. Or even a good thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
trollhattan
@germy: He’s too fond of the Benjamins?
ian
@Baud:
https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-abby-finkenauer-kim-reynolds-congress-state-courts-a26d3d94937bb878827788956a6ece52
Former rep Finkenauer did not collect enough valid signatures
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
Excellent point, but it’s not just GOP talking points that get repeated.
Reporters and even economists like to spout conventional wisdom and standard economic explanations even when they do not apply.
So, for example, you have talk about supply chain issues and inflation and, for example, rise in restaurant prices. But common sense and basic observation indicates that many restaurants are increasing prices to make up for lost revenues during the pandemic and also to deal with increased wages and increased costs.
And you are absolutely right to note that stories in the business media and also the business section of CNN and MSNBC are often more detailed and nuanced. But people insist on depending on the headline stories and the nonsense of business pundits.
It should go without saying, but sadly needs repeating that business “stories” on Fox News are typically lies and right wing fables.
Republicans are going to harp on inflation because it helps them oppose government spending. But they push for more corporate tax cuts, even though this can be inflationary as well.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@ian:
Don’t they usually try to get more than the bare minimum of signatures?
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: Perhaps, but low inflation and full employment are still the two fed mandates.
Geminid
@James E Powell: You are more zealous on Speaker Pelosi’s behalf than she is herself. When she met met with Mikey Sherril during the 2018 midterms and Sherrill started to explain why she promised voters she would not vote for Pelosi as Speaker, Pelosi shut her up: “Don’t worry about that. Just win, baby.” If Sherrill happened to run for statewide office in New Jersey she would have the unstinting support of a Speaker who cares about the questions that matter.
Just One More Canuck
@schrodingers_cat: I live in suburban Toronto. To get to my old office by public transit, it would take at least 2 1/2 hours, including a 20 minute walk to the nearest bus stop, and that’s assuming that I would make all the connections. My drive generally took about 30 to 45 minutes and I never had to be coughed or sneezed on while in my car
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: Click on the link I gave. It is a thread by a Lamb supporter but she has links to the original police report of the incident so you can judge for yourself.
James E Powell
@ian:
Your comparison is not apt.
Tim Ryan is leading in the primary polls by 20 points or more. If instead he were 20 points behind a mainstream Democrat who had already won a statewide election, I would say the same thing about Tim Ryan.
There is no bus. Nobody is throwing Lamb under anything. His campaign was not successful. The primary is May 17. He is losing badly and should withdraw & endorse Fetterman.
The only impact of his attack on Fetterman will have will be to make it harder for Fetterman to win in November. I am against that kind of thing.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: No car is also pretty practical in Seattle, San Fran, Chicago, and in many central business districts even in cities where it’s not generally possible (like LA).
But more to the point, any growing city in the US could *become* car-friendly in 10 years or so just by allowing extensive apartment construction and mixed-use districts. I’m seeing one pop up at the end of the bike trail near my house. Old low-rise commercial and office space has been replaced by 5 over 1 apartments and townhouses; over a 1000 units. The shopping mall across the stroad from there (but accessible by bike path) is planning to develop another 1,900. There’s already onsite commercial towers, and a hospital complex a few blocks away. You could easily live there one car to a household already, and no car would be doable. It’s going to get substantially better as more gets built.
ian
@Baud:
They sure are supposed too. I have no idea how difficult it is to get the required number in all of Iowa’s counties.
trollhattan
@Baud:
I took econ during stagflation, which made the professor give us a lot of “now this it the theory, but what’s happening now is not following the theory” preambles. Stagflation occurred under Nixon, Ford and Carter and had a role in torpedoing both Ford and Carter. If you’re president during a difficult economy, then you’re going to be blamed.
Add two oil crises to that timespan, which weren’t unrelated to stagflation.
Baud
@trollhattan:
I get that. But the economy actually shrunk a lot under Carter. The economy is growing now. We’ll never have an economy where everything is perfect.
Martin
@Baud: Most cities aren’t doing bans, rather major curtailments. Paris driving speed limit is now 25kph (16 MPH). Converting some lanes to dedicated bus or bike.
Basically, make other forms of transport more attractive. Curtailing car speed/access also makes things like bus rapid transit much easier to implement.
The underlying dynamic though is that car traffic has gotten too expensive to sustain. Taxes for road infrastructure haven’t kept up with costs, and cities are pretty much going bankrupt now over those costs. Bike/bus infrastructure is vastly cheaper than car infrastructure, and you get better land utilization as well. Parking lots don’t generate tax revenue.
James E Powell
@ian:
The incompetence of highly paid professionals is appalling. I guess it just wasn’t an important enough job.
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: The poll that shows Fetterman winning is an internal poll. The kind that had Nina Turner winning by 30 points, we know how that turned out.
Baud
@Martin:
Yeah, I would like to see us move in that direction too. I like walkable cities.
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
Prior to (and into) the pandemic, we were seeing that “full employment” is good, but not sufficient. Too many people are working jobs that do not provide a living wage.
Idiots like Trump and his fellow GOP vultures would gloat about full employment even though millions were barely scraping by.
There are also some academic questions about whether employment numbers adequately account for unemployed people who have given up looking for work and people age 62 and older who have taken early retirement but who would also still like to have jobs.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
I’m not at all zealous. I just don’t like it.
Fair Economist
@Baud: I think the Fed did make a policy error by doing QE during the COVID depression. QE is basically a system to prop up the financial system, which needed it for about a month at the start but was solid once the panic passed. That QE added a lot of cash to the system, which hasn’t been an issue for years but now that we’re pushing real limits, it *is* a problem. Plus, QE drove down long-term rates and created a housing bubble.
But the Fed has ended it – far too late, but it’s done. Now we have to ride out the effects, and then it’s over.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Surprised there are no actual polls out of PA.
Geminid
@Baud: If Finkenaur whiffs there is still at least one strong Democratic candidate. I forget his name, but he ran a strong second to Ms. Greenfield for the nomination to face Joni Ernst in 2020. The man is a retired Navy officer and a couple Iowa jackals spoke highly of him. They were somewhat chafed by the DSCC’s endorsement of Greenfield.
The Senate Democratic Campaign Committee got a lot of people mad that cycle and they are more reticent about picking winners this year.
Baud
@Fair Economist:
And then we party.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: State level polls haven’t been accurate. Last election they showed Susan Collins and Lindsay Graham losing.
Baud
@Geminid:
Hate to say it, but a military man might do better in a place like Iowa (which I know nothing about other than they vote the wrong way a lot).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ian: methinks fuckery is afoot!
adding that last paragraph to show the partisanship, and also the somewhat surprising (to me) news that Dems hold a couple of fairly significant statewide offices in IA
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Congestion charges, central pedestrian zones or areas with extremely low speed limits and no traffic lights where the streets are understood not to belong to motor vehicles, and just making it harder/more expensive to park–all these things are sensible ways to limit car use in cities. Of course if you won’t also build good transit it doesn’t work, but the cities that do these things tend to have that.
Ogliberal
@schrodingers_cat: What used to drive me nuts is when I would take the bus into my office in NYC and seeing car after car in the car lanes (bus was speeding along, they were crawling) at the Lincoln tunnel with a driver-only. There are exceptions, of course, but pretty much anywhere somebody who works in NYC could live in the NYC metro area is 20 minutes or less away from a train station and/or a park and ride. My bus was coming in from the Poconos, for crying out loud. Why you want to pay all that money on gas, tolls and parking (in Manhattan, no less!) and deal with the frustration of traffic rather than having somebody do the driving for you (train or bus) so you can have your privacy away from the great unwashed masses is beyond me.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: ABC also has Fetterman ahead by 23%.
JMS
@Baud: I see some Pennsylvanians have commented already and their take seems pretty close to mine so I wish people from outside pa would *listen*. The primary is Fetterman’s to lose. Lamb is throwing stuff out there because he’s running out of time. Fetterman would be an entirely mainstream Dem—I imagine his votes would be much like Casey’s except maybe if legal weed comes up. Is Fetterman in trouble with rank and file Black voters? I don’t know for sure but he’s running 20 points ahead everyone else in the primary so it can’t be hurting that badly. And I still haven’t forgiven Lamb for not voting for Nancy Pelosi for leader.
I also find it bizarre that people think the gun waving thing would hurt in a general election. If anything you might pick up some undecided white voters. This is pa after all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: Mike Franken. He’s mentioned in that AP article, along with Glenn Hurst. Now I know why I’m getting so many emails from someone named Glenn Hurst. None from Franken or Finkenauer, even though I contributed to her previous campaigns. I’m always wondering how those lists are shared.
I get a lot of spam texts (which are a very bad idea in general, I think) telling me that so-and-so has the support of Bernie Sanders! (a very bad idea if trying to get money out of me, specifically)
ETA: be interesting to see a retired admiral, in a time of war, going up against a 90YO whose main interest seems to be dying in office so Kim Reynolds can name his grandson to his seat, as rumor has it is the IA GOP plan
Matt McIrvin
@Ogliberal: Can’t speak for NYC, but in Boston part of the problem is that the transit can be so slow, unreliable and inconveniently situated that even crawling through I-93 rush-hour traffic gets you there much faster. It’s been starved of decent funding for decades, and there are weird design constraints like the lack of a direct link between the north and south halves of the commuter rail network.
Joe Falco
@frosty:
That sounds like a more interesting Alternate History story than the tired “What If The Nazi’s Won?”
Ruckus
@Nicole:
My maternal grandfather died of heart failure in 1936. He was 46 yrs old. One of his daughters died of heart failure at the same age.
UncleEbeneezer
Since today is the day racist, white Southerners decided to attack the United States rather than accept the possibility of losing their freedom™ (to own and brutalize Black people), it’s a good day to share and re-read the classic blog post “Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party“. Here’s an excerpt but if you’ve never read it I highly recommend reading it in full. It’s superb and just as relevant now as when it was written:
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
PA Dem primary is on May 17.
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
I was looking at a poll from Emerson/Hill. Showed Fetterman at 33, Lamb at 10. From April 3rd.
I do not know about the reliability of that poll, but Lamb’s attack ad shows his desperation.
The responses I’m getting reflect a misunderstanding of my point, which is my fault because I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. If Lamb was leading Fetterman 33 to 10 I would say the same thing about Fetterman. It’s over. You lost. Get on board for a team win.
The wounds from 2000 & 2016 are never going to heal.
Another Scott
@Kelly: Reminds me of one of Galeev’s threads…
Cheers,
Scott.
Pennsylvanian
@JMS: Totally agree. Fetterman was the mayor of his very high percentage black community for like 10 or 15 years. I think the people trying to make this a racist thing don’t know anything about him.
Also, why not talk about his record? Beating the dead horse of this single incident from 8 years ago reeks of desperation. There’s not going to be anything new about it.
Fetterman is the Lt. Governor, so he has already won a state wide race. He is the better candidate, even with this badly handled incident. The fact that this is the only thing his opponents talk about is going to be a mistake for them.
Conner Lamb can go fuck himself. He’s running because he got a less friendly district this time around. He knows he can’t win there, so he’s throwing a hail mary to try to stay in politics. He looks increasingly desperate.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t see the too few goods. There have been some disruptions, but people were getting stuff both before and after the pandemic. Amazon and Walmart are shipping stuff like crazy.
This seems to be in part a conventional wisdom about inflation that is not fully supported by the facts.
Also, it makes me crazy that economists talk about how we are a consumer driven economy and then blame people for consuming.
And they blame people big time when they appear to have money to buy things.
It’s almost as though the ideal economy would be one in which profits are high, but companies don’t actually have to produce goods or pay workers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell: as a (usually) stone-cold pragmatist, I agree with you and hope those hand-waving away the racist vigilante incident are right.
Geminid
@JMS: This Fetterman/Lamb contest has been a hot topic for months on the Twitter accounts I follow. It could be that out-of-staters are much more riled up than Pennsylvanians.
I also think that Fetterman would vote like Casey, and I think that Lamb would too. However, early on the narrative of this race settled on the “moderate” versus “progressive” fight that riles up the voluble advocates for either side. So in ways there is a proxy war going on that creates bias in peoples’ attitudes towards the two ambitious Democrats. I think this may aggravate feelings on questions like Letterman’s jogger incident and Lamb’s posture towards Speaker Pelosi.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
At the Union gas station next to my complex regular is $5.79. Cash
The cheapest gas around me is $5.49. Cash
Credit is $.05/gal higher.
Jacked up pickups abound around here. I imagine milage in the 10-15 mpg range. At best.
Another Scott
@James E Powell: This is pretty-much where I am.
Fetterman’s Lt. Gov. primary was in 2018. He won comfortably (by over 100,000 votes) in a 5 way race, but didn’t get a majority.
Presumably Pennsylvania voters know all about this and have made up their minds about him.
Primaries should be at least a little rough-and-tumble (because the General will be), but …
Cheers,
Scott.
JML
@ian: having to gather signatures from 19 counties while standing up a state-wide campaign is a huge pain in the butt and not always that easy when you have to grab them in hostile territory. The rule of thumb I was always taught was you needed to get 50% more than the minimum to ensure that you wouldn’t get nailed with any last-minute BS with people challenging your signatures (or a volunteer/rookie organizer making a mistake and screwing up a requirement). But that’s even harder to match when you have to go into areas where you: might not have an active local party, probably don’t have a campaign office, and the PVI might be strongly tilted against you. Add in the pandemic and the problems it creates in 1v1 organizing…
It’s still a big miss, but there’s a reason you skip signature gathering and pay a fee any time it’s an option…
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
It’s almost as though the ideal economy would be one in which profits are high, but companies don’t actually have to produce goods or pay workers.
If I didn’t know better I’d say you were a conservative economist.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Pennsylvania Democrats certainly can make up their minds now about this 8 year-old in incident.. But while it was covered by local media the day it happened, the Fetterman/Miyares incident received very little attention afterwards until last year.
dnfree
@SiubhanDuinne: my father, born in 1920, spent time in his childhood with an uncle who had fought in the Civil War. It amazes me to realize that not only am I only one degree of separation from a Civil War veteran, but so are my grandchildren born in the 2000s, who will remember my dad.
Pennsylvanian
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Racist vigilante incident? He was the mayor of the town, so the top law enforcement officer. I’d like people to explain why they keep calling this racist when a LARGE percentage of the town is black. He handled it badly and everyone acknowledges that. But he’s no fucking racist or rapist or charlatan or wife beater or Turkish carpetbagger. He’s a solid democrat who has already won a state wide contest. There is more to him than the 5 minutes in 2013 that everyone wants to use to define him.
Another Scott
@Fair Economist:
I’m pretty sure this is only the second time I’ve seen that term in my entire life. The first time was yesterday (in a tweet somewhere).
Words are weird.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott:
one of teh things that continues to surprise me after nearly thirty years of political junkiedom is how many typical voters don’t know about things that are well-known to even casual readers of political blogs (if there are such things)
I remember when the blogosphere (as we said at the time) was abuzz and ablaze about huge amounts of shrink-wrapped cash that was stolen from an army base in Iraq. Al Franken, then still a lefty radio host, asked Susan Page and her journalist husband about it at one of those big beltway media parties. They didn’t know anything about it and he had to go get IIRC the Very Respectable Norm Ornstein to tell them it was true.
(googling to look for confirmation of that story, which was a very long time ago, I find a headline that Joe Lieberman campaigned for Norm Coleman in ’08. That I had forgotten)
Calouste
@Ruckus: One of my uncles by marriage was the 6th of 7 brothers. The youngest was still alive when I went to my uncle’s funeral, but the other brothers, including my uncle, had all died in their late 50s.
Another Scott
@Geminid: Kinda-sorta.
Google Trends shows about the same interest in 2018 as now, except for a couple of blips in February and August 2021. It was out there and has been percolating. The biggest peak was February 2021 (when he launched his Senate campaign).
We’ll see.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
RE: It’s almost as though the ideal economy would be one in which profits are high, but companies don’t actually have to produce goods or pay workers.
Ha! Good one.
I hate lazy reporting about the economy and since the pandemic I have watched Republicans and their lapdog conservative reporters condemn everything Biden did to put more money into the pockets of ordinary people.
I’ve seen Republicans cut back unemployment benefits and force people back into crappy jobs. And of course they fight wage increases and increased minimum wage.
I hate these people. And before I used to just oppose them because I thought that they were wrong. But now I hate them for their open disdain for people just trying to live their lives the best they can.
Soprano2
We took advantage of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, so we don’t have to try to make back money we lost in 2020, but it’s probably right that some are doing that. But from my personal experience I can tell you it’s much more about rising prices of everything from beef, chicken, veggies, cooking oil, and supplies like gloves. You can only absorb the price increases for so long (gloves have more than doubled from their pre-Covid price!) until you’ll go broke if you don’t increase prices.
Ogliberal
@Geminid: I though Letterman lived in Connecticut? :-)
Soprano2
@trollhattan: Same here. Lots of “this has never happened before, it’s not typical” like interest rates of 21%!
kalakal
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: yep, as these posts prove. On that occasion Churchill got the blame for doing what everyone told him to do.
In 1940 he became PM when Chamberlain resigned over the disastrous Norwegian campaign. Person responsible for screwing up said campaign? W. Churchill.
Miss Bianca
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Sears had its own online sales platform, that was also open to other vendors, that was a rival, if not to Amazon, at least to Shopify or Rakuten. That’s gone now too, I guess.
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: I looked at that poll. 37.3% are undecided, so your characterization that Cosplay Hobo has the race in the bag is an exaggeration.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay:
Every time I think, “Oh man, Tony Jay has surpassed himself THIS time – he can’t possibly top the latest invective du jour” – you outdo yourself again. You join Betty Cracker and Anne Laurie in my personal pantheon of Tangy Balloon Juice Insult Clinicians. Well done, you!
schrodingers_cat
@kalakal: He is a great example of mediocrity with the right privilege being kicked upwards.
(Not actually a) Dr. Thoth Evans
@SiubhanDuinne: So your GGpa was born in the 1850s, I conclude. As a child he might very well have met someone who fought in the Revolution. US history is short!
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat: Yep, there’s far, far too many of them
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@kalakal: the BBC History Extra podcast did an interview recently with Geoffrey Wheatcroft, about his recent bio that seeks to puncture some of the myths around Churchill. He sounded especially baffled about the power of the Churchill myth in the US
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Wheatcroft seemed both bemused and amused that couple of American reviewers, even while praising his book as well-researched and persuasive, seemed somewhat personally offended.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
Totally agree with you. But I wonder if some of these increases in the price of meat and supplies also reflect these producers making up for past pandemic related slow downs and disruptions.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: I had a great hybrid car that got upwards of 500 miles on a tank, but it’s still in the shop being slowly reconstructed–one of the other things the pandemic has done is create a huge upsurge in car accidents, and I’m afraid I got bit.
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
You’re killing me, Smalls!
Read what you want into those numbers, but what I’m seeing is that Conor Lamb’s campaign is not catching on. This isn’t 33 to 28 or even 33 to 20. It’s 33 to name ID.