I am wondering if we are doing everything we can to fight the bullshit narratives about President Biden.
No, that’s not really true. I am thinking that we are not doing everything we can to fight the bullshit narratives about someone who has been a most excellent president. Every minute that we are lamenting all the ways they are bashing the president and chewing at his ankles, we are not talking about all the things he is doing right.
When someone googles “S*l*e*e*p*y J*o*e”, do we really want half of the million google hits to be our complaints about what he is saying? Something to think about, maybe?
I totally dropped Join the Fight and our social media initiative after the fire. Between losing Tucker and then the blog, it pretty much sucked all the wind right out of my sails.
Now that I can breathe again – not to say that there’s not a ton of work to still be done to get things all the way back – it’s time to get back to the fight.
It seems like these two comments from a thread today might make a good conversation starter.
From commenter Wanderer
President Biden has done a remarkable job IMHO. He was handed the a$$ end of a feces sandwich on attaining office. The worst president ever left office involuntarily after installing a supreme court which functions like an inquisition, a senate which functions as obstructionist and a portion of the population who don’t seem to look to a better future but ache for a troglodyte past. Despite this President Biden has managed to restart the economy, unemployment is low, vaccines are available to those who understand their use and importance and he has walked a tightrope providing support to Ukraine while not escalating the scope of the war. I shudder to think what Ukraine and a large part of Europe would look like today had tfg remained in office.
All of this plus getting us out of the farce that was Afghanistan – relatively unscathed. For that alone, I adore Joe Biden.
🐠
Update: So glad that the awful giant images above the posts are now gone and featured images can go back to behaving as they did before.
‘Cats & Sunflowers’ Ukraine Quilt – Raffle Tickets Available for 2 Extra Days
H.E.Wolf
Very timely comment on this topic, from the sagacious writers at http://electoral-vote.com this morning. They are my first internet destination every weekday.
Lapassionara
@H.E.Wolf: thank you, and thanks Watergirl for posting on this topic. Biden’s numbers went down with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and have really not recovered. Even my friends who like him still consider the withdrawal a “debacle,” when, except for the first day’s confusion, it was remarkable logistical display of competency.
Voters appear to measure a president against a non existent “ideal” president, instead of against the other option. This is frustrating to me, as I think he saved the country, at least temporarily, from the horrors of fascist rule.
zhena gogolia
Thank you, WaterGirl. I have seen no evidence of cognitive decline in Biden (as opposed to his predecessor, witness the “outtakes” the Jan 6 committee gave us). Why ageism and ableism (regarding his stutter) are okay among supposedly enlightened Democrats mystifies me.
zhena gogolia
@Lapassionara: He had the guts and the balls to get out of Afghanistan, and NOBODY has thanked him for it. As schrodinger’s cat constantly points out, the peaceniks on our side have never given him one ounce of credit for it.
sab
Somehow doing everything mostly right isn’t enough.
Also too, believe Black women. They said he would be this good and he has been this good.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: The media has a lot to answer for about the way our getting out of a fucking 20-year war in Afghanistan is viewed
That should be viewed as a great accomplishment, and a feather in Biden’s cap, and instead the media fed the public lies. It’s all a game to most of them.
Fair Economist
Whenever I see a comment about Biden doing nothing, I post a partial list of major legislation:
American Relief Act
Infrastructure Act
Postal Reform
Antilynching Act (we were waiting a CENTURY for this one, folks!)
VAWA
Forced Arbitration Ban
Ukraine Aid
Ocean Shipping Reform
PACT Act for Burn Pit Victims
Bipartisan Gun Safety
Really, it’s an amazing accomplishment. This is the most major legislation of any Congress I’ve ever seen, with the tightest margin ever to boot. Plus most judges since Kennedy, most African-American women judges ever, and a huge list of great executive actions.
Incidentally, this is also a reflection on the tremendous political skills of Pelosi and, yes, Schumer. Next time somebody whines about Schumer needing to be more like McConnell, post this lists of Schumer’s accomplishments with a 50-50 Senate vs McConnell’s accomplishments in 2017-18 with a 52-48 Senate, which was: a non-filibusterable tax cut bill – and that’s it. Schumer is a way more effective Majority Leader than McConnell, and we should be thankful for it.
Scout211
Something to think about. It often feels like this is a comfortable club house with only members present, but in reality the doors of this clubhouse are completely open to the world.
Highlighting all the Biden criticism is still highlighting the criticism, unfortunately.
And it’s not done just for Biden criticism. In just this mornings posts, both Harris and Newsom had criticism about them highlighted.
I do want a unity pony. I’m just hopeful like that, but I may be puking out sparkles, sunshine and rainbows here. But maybe there could be a way to talk about the media and right wing criticisms of the Dems in general terms rather than specifics? Then follow up with the positives?
But I do accept that trolls gotta troll and doom-posters gotta doom-post, so it’s all good here, really. ❤️
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia: For reasons known only to them the Tories remain furious at Biden for losing their war for them.
sab
@WaterGirl: I live in a not so rich area. Kids around here join the Army to get veteran benefits. Not a single person I know in the Army for the last fifteen years was sorry to see us get out of Afghanistan.
Horrible for the Afghans, but that is their culture and their people doing it.
Our people were taking a terrible toll imposing something most of the locals didn’t want.
Raoul Paste
WG , you have said what needed to be said, and your focus is an example for us all. I have told my friends that I am donating to every viable Democratic Senate candidate. Yes it’s expensive, but it’s cheaper than an A.R-15. (of course, I’m joking , but it’s also true.)
I have a friend who honestly expects a Ted Rall-style generalissimo Trump in the future, replete with a chest full of ridiculous medals. The hell with that— between the January 6 hearings, the Supreme Court outrage, the insane hot temperatures, and the school shootings, It is time to throw the bums out.
oatler
I’m ready to hear Biden say “Shut up, rugrats, we have work to do. Fetch me Coal-Boy!”
West of the Rockies
For what it’s worth, I fairly often go to Google and type variations of Mike Piggy Pompeo, DumbSantis, DuhSantis, etc.
Ruckus
@Lapassionara:
“Voters appear to measure a president against a non existent “ideal” president, instead of against the other option.”
Well democrats have actual ideas about how to move forward, how to govern, how to be better for the entire country. Rethuglicans think about themselves first and everyone else 27th. Their ideal president manufactures a society that can not exist except at the despair of everyone not on the take or screwing others. They are not looking for a government as much as they are looking for a free ride, easy street and the ability to be openly racist. They are looking for a future that matches the past that they imagine in their tiny, tiny minds. A democratic future is one that requires work, effort, doesn’t allow one to get ahead based upon skin color or birthright or bullshit. It requires realistic humanity, something they have zero ideas about or any desire to live within. They do not want shared power, they want it all. They don’t think screwing anyone and everyone for their advancement is wrong. And they think that is the way the world used to be. They are wrong.
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: That’s because the peaceniks you refer to are not actually on our side. They are nominally so, if you think of people as distributed on a left/right political axis. But for some people on the “left,” the Center-Left coalition that is the Democratic Party is the single largest obstacle to the creation of a powerful Left Party, so we are in their way. They try to get their followers to conflate “liberal” with “centrist” in order to stigmatize everyone who backs Democratic leadership. They’ve made us their enemy and as far as I’m concerned they are ours.
There are a lot of pragmatic people on the left who push back hard against the soreheads and don’t concede the “progressive” space to them. Two good examples are former Black Panther Denise Oliver-Velez and self-described “democratic socialist, leans anarchist” Michael Paulauski.
different-church-lady
I am wondering if the Biden administration itself is doing everything it can to fight he bullshit narratives about President Biden. I said this in an earlier thread: Biden’s most significant “failure” is the failure to control, or even influence the narrative. They just don’t seem to have any idea of how necessary it is to cut through the noise, never mind how to do it effectively.
Yes the deck is stacked against them. But you gotta do a better job of fighting back. Tweets about gas prices ain’t gonna get it done.
Wanderer
@WaterGirl: Exactly! I was remiss in not including Afghanistan as one of his most singular accomplishments. I am not sure the population at large has any deep understanding of the basic logistics required to complete such a mission successfully and the Biden Administration performed this very impressively. Thank you to everyone who listed this.
West of the Rockies
@Raoul Paste:
Well said.
My daughter is 20. She is Queer and tall. She has lived through the Paradise Camp Fire (next to our university town), four years of Trump (been called names at the last Trump truck rally), climate change, Covid, a BPD mother (my ex), Ukraine…
Not surprisingly, she suffers from anxiety and depression.
Enough hoisting these brutalities on our children and grandchildren.
Wanderer
@Fair Economist: Thank you for a much more inclusive list.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia:
Can’t divide by zero.
patrick II
Average American deaths in Afghanistan for the previous five years (2017 -2021) — 15, including 13 lost in bombing during withdrawal. Number of deaths in 1922 — 0.
Headlines are not generally about something that isn’t happening.
Kropacetic
Unless you count those who did. Probably the bulk of commenters here, for example. Or should he have gotten a hand delivered letter?
Removing us from Afghanistan was one of the greatest things a President has done in my adult lifetime. I’ve said so many times and will continue to.
Geminid
@Wanderer: One cannot
underestimateOVERESTIMATE the havoc Russia would have unleashed upon our troops in Afghanistan if they had still been there when Russia invaded Ukraine and we supported that country. President Biden had other good reasons to leave Afghanistan but now his decision looks especially prescient.edited for overestimate vs. underestimate
Nicole
I have taken to responding to any criticism of him with, “Eh, I think that’s media spin. His health is fine and he’s doing a good job.” It’s funny how fast it shuts down the other side, because, as most of them aren’t arguing in good faith, they don’t have anything to back it up with.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: Division by zero is undefined.
Gas prices have been falling so the news media has lost interest in it.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Told Biden “Fix it.” He did. MSM forgot.
WaterGirl
@Wanderer: It is a more inclusive list, and someone in the past month posted a REALLY inclusive list.
What I loved so much about yours is that it also painted the full picture in context.
pajaro
Biden ran a great election campaign and defeated the would-be autocrat when it’s not clear that our other candidates would have been able to do so.
People have jobs, it’s the lowest unemployment I can remember. The economy didn’t collapse.
People are in their apartments; the mass evictions that might have occurred didn’t, thanks to the government.
The largest vaccination program in our history was scaled up in record time. The vaccines are available for free. Treatments are widely available. Those of us who want to keep ourselves alive have the means to do so.
We have recovered some of our international legitimacy. Biden restored NATO and put together a united response to the invasion of Ukraine that was both strong and careful.
There’s more, of course, including the nomination of the most diverse set of judges in the country’s history.
All this has happened in the face of unprecedented obstruction by opposition politicians, hostile activist judges, and a press incredibly tilted against him (with Afghanistan the most disgraceful example).
Biden was nowhere near the top of the candidates I favored in the 2020 primary, so I had low expectations when he came in. To say that he has exceeded them is an incredible understatement. I became conscious of politics in 1960. As far as I am concerned, so far, he’s the best President in my lifetime. He’s accomplished a ton, under incredibly difficult circumstances. We’re lucky to have him.
Hoodie
@Geminid: IIRC, a lot of our logistics for Afghanistan depended on Russia, so it could have been a disaster if we were still there and might have influenced our decision to back the Ukrainians. Not to mention all the logistics capabilities that were freed up for use in supplying Ukraine.
Scout211
This is exactly what Newsom is doing and doing it quite effectively.
IMO, if Biden is more comfortable with old school presidential politicking (staying above the fray) it is fine with me as long as he has Dems out there politicking for him.
Newsom is getting media attention now and more Dems are actually being interviewed now on the news programs. Hopefully, more Dems will step up in the future.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
I always come back to this one question.
Who owns the media?
Is it poor working schlubs just trying to make ends meet?
Or is it mostly wealthy, greedy people who want to be wealthier and think greed is their birthright?
Our current tax laws all favor getting, being and increasing wealth, not the overwhelming majority of citizens.
Buying people that make wealthy people more secure in getting and holding onto that wealth is actually very cheap for the truly wealthy. None of this is to say that all wealthy are bad but money corrupts and big money corrupts far easier. It’s akin to a heroin addiction, a little is very rarely enough and too much is a disaster.
sab
I posted above: I know a lot of career soldiers from my neighborhood. None of them were sorry to get out of Afghanistan. I don’t know who the press very talking to, probably the Richard Engels of the world ( career war correspondents always looking for a safe for them war to cover.) I do not know a single actual US soldier who was not extremely relieved to get out of Afghanistan.
UncleEbeneezer
@WaterGirl: You mean this? WhatBidenHasDone (Year one).
different-church-lady
@Scout211: Right now Biden isn’t so much staying above the fray as acting like he doesn’t know there’s a fray.
Kropacetic
@sab: No one thinks our withdrawal from Afghanistan was good or went well as long as you ignore the people who thought it was good and see that it went well.
WaterGirl
@UncleEbeneezer: Yes, thank you!
Maybe I’ll throw the text of that up in a thread this week – that should give everyone easy access to that list.
Captain C
@WaterGirl:
I feel like some of these media members would be well-served by some pointed questions on how they would have done things better, or even, “OK, if you know so much, why don’t you go over there now and fix things. What resources do you need?”
Given the huge garbage pile that was the Afghanistan situation that Biden inherited, I think he did a fine job cleaning it up (or at least extricating us from further feeding the mess) with minimal fuss and casualties, given the circumstances.
Wanderer
@WaterGirl: Thank you yet again.
Sister Golden Bear
@West of the Rockies:
Most treatments for anxiety and depression assume that both are irrational responses. But for us LGBTQ+ folks things are legitimately anxiety-triggering and depressing. I’m still trying figure how to navigate this myself. It’s been a real struggle and shit keeps getting worse.
I really don’t want to leave my country — and I’m fighting like hell to avoid having to do so — but with the GQP being emboldened by the Calvinball Court, some days it feels like I need to leave while it’s still possible to do so. At this rate I can definitely see them passing laws invaliding trans people’s passports. (Enabling trans people to get passports with their current name has always been a matter of departmental policy — not law — that’s been subject to shifting medical criteria.)
sab
@Kropacetic: ?? Don’t understand what you said
ETA Crypti
Reread your comment. Clear to me but I misread. Boy I got that wrong.
UncleEbeneezer
@WaterGirl: Might even be worth a side-bar link in the Join The Fight section on the right of the screen.
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies:
My 20YO became aware of things political while we had the cool guy as president. Although I assured her we would transition from the first Black president to the first Woman president (how could we not?) Trump happened and it’s been thin ice since.
Have tried to convince her Biden has done many good things but she simply doesn’t see it. It’s her journey now, so my input doesn’t have much impact.
JoyceH
@Kropacetic:
I think one of the problems is that a much smaller percentage of our population has military experience or friends or family members who have. A while ago I tried to convince a liberal friend with no military knowledge that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was probably the best we’ve ever done, and perhaps the best we could have done, but it was futile – that media narrative that the whole thing was a Fiasco is just too deeply ingrained. All withdrawals are chaotic, things get missed, people get left behind. The difference with Afghanistan was the presence of news media. Imagine how D-Day would have been covered if not for wartime media censorship! The war would have been declared lost on day one.
Mike in NC
“Ache for a troglodyte past” needs to be a rotating tag.
Kropacetic
@JoyceH: I don’t have any military experience, but I have enough experience with our media to ignore their narratives and see what the professionals are saying on page C13.
Let’s spread the good word. Sure beats lamenting that not enough people have heard.
Ruckus
@Wanderer:
For President Biden the effort to leave Afghanistan was the command to make it happen, the concept that leaving would not hurt us as a world power and would in the end not change anything that 20 yrs of war hadn’t fixed. The logistics for him was looking at the costs to be there, the gains to be made and the lives not to be lost for zero gain. It’s a big government, lots of moving pieces, lots of people doing lots of stuff, his job is to make the big, the difficult decisions, to lead, it’s the people that work for him who make it happen. I’d bet that he had input, knowledge of the big moving pieces of the puzzle but it’s the people up and down the food chain that do their jobs that makes government work. It’s the job of the leaders to lead, and Joe Biden understands that and does that. And does it well.
West of the Rockies
@Sister Golden Bear:
It’s terrifying, I’m sure! My daughter’s partner is a trans boy in NY (so they’re also dealing with a long-distance relationship). Oregon and NY have relatively solid LGBTQ+ protection, but things are sooo uncertain.
pluky
@Geminid: Prof. Oliver-Velez was a Young Lord, not a Black Panther, but your point is still worth an upvote if only the site allowed such.
West of the Rockies
@trollhattan:
Seems to be a bit of a developmental stage thing… 20-somethings are newly-minted adults and often are sure they know more than their elders (they often do!) and that no one else has seen the troubles they’ve seen. At least I was that way… by my late twenties, I’d gained some humility and perspective.
West of the Rockies
@West of the Rockies:
I was 18 when MTV launched, their ideal consumer. By 25, I had the distinct sense that MTV no longer was aimed at me. It was a bit jarring.
Geminid
@Geminid: That is, “overestimate” not “underestimate.” Hopefully my meaning was clear, or at least not too much murkier. I cannot overestimate the value of saying things more simply.
zhena gogolia
This is a great thread
Sister Golden Bear
@West of the Rockies: I’m in California, so I’m relatively safer.
But since the GQP is now clamoring for a national forced birth law, I fully expect them go for laws criminalizing gay sex, as well legalizing — and mandating — LGB, and particularly T, discrimination. How long until any trans healthcare, including adults, gets criminalized. Because Jebus, and the Calvinball Court will nod approvingly because trans people weren’t mentioned in the Constitution.
Sorry to be in a doomer mood, but this is far too plausible. Even if the GQP doesn’t win the trifecta, state-level Republicans are pushing literally hundreds of anti-trans bills, any one of which could be used by the SCOTUS to strip my rights.
Geminid
@pluky: Denise Oliver-Velez was a Black Panther also. At least she says so on her Twitter bio, and I believe this is well documented.
Sister Golden Bear
As far surviving mentally/emotionally, For inspiration I do look to the way Black folks have survived centuries of oppression. But as an atheist, I don’t have the equivalent of the church to act as a support system, plus the trans community is both tiny and internally fragmented. So it can be tough.
Ruckus
@JoyceH:
As a person with military experience, in which everyone has to do their job and work towards a goal, in which there are leaders at most every level of command, and at which no one has the ability to do it all. I was an electrical/electronics technician (not the job title, the function), I was a department head on a 450 ft warship. Yes the work starts at the top. But no one above me was trained to do the work I did and I wasn’t trained to do the work they did. Everyone has a part to play and has to do that reasonably well or it all falls apart. And even in non technical jobs in all branches of the military that holds. Government works along the same lines, as does most occupations and human endeavors. If all we do is fight each other, nothing else gets done. Our country right now is seeing this in politics. The right wants to go backwards in time at least a century, or more like 2 centuries. But time doesn’t go backwards. Humanity has often tried going backwards but in the end it never works out as envisioned.
azlib
It is curious all the anti-Biden or Biden should step down punditry always starts with the Afghan withdrawal and how bad it was. The logistics of that effort was magnificent in my opinion. Any withdrawal under fire is going to be at times chaotic. One thing our military knows how to do is logistics.
Citizen Alan
@sab: Believe most black women. Nina Turner and Brie Whatsername still think Biden is “a shit sandwich.
MagdaInBlack
@azlib: It’s also “curious” they fail to mention that it was TFG who made the deal and then made NO plans to follow through. That mess was another left for Biden to clean up.
Mart
Twenty million people have their jobs back and against the wishes of the all powerful media and military warmongers the forever war was very successfully ended. That’s pretty good Presidenting in my book. The media has been non-stop pounding on the guy since the exit. If you never got hung up on a fucking toe clip you don’t use them. I am waiting on the breathless reporting after I paid $3.67 for gas yesterday.
StringOnAStick
I’m sending money to Jamie McLeod Skinner today and setting up a monthly donation; the district has been redrawn and she won over blue dog Schrader and I want her to win. Oregon should be all blue except for one House district that includes all the “join Idaho” ungovernable regions.
I also think I’ve got covid, though the test I just did days negative. I bet by tomorrow it will be positive.
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies: Seems on point–all the slots that form one’s world view do not fill at once and because the sequence appears different for everybody, it’s an…interesting time.
Since she’s a psych major she gets to evaluate herself. That’s always interesting. :-)
raven
@zhena gogolia: They don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. It took a full year for us to get back the bodies of the last two Marines killed in Vietnam.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: Since that was originally the exact opposite of what you were trying to say – to avoid confusion I edited your comment. I an undo the edit if you prefer.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Thank you for that!
J R in WV
I want to second (or third, or fifty-ninth) my support for Joe Biden’s work as President. Brave internationally, to end the farcical money pit of Afghanistan, to fight the pandemic, still burning through our nation, etc, etc. He and VP Harris have done more in the past few months than The Former Guy SFB did in his whole 4 year term.
I need to make a correction to my short piece yesterday evening about loosing our pooch Aiice, who was eleven years old, I fat fingered away the other digit. She had 10 solid years of joy in the wooded hillsides around our place in WV. She was so outgoing and friendly. Our Vet helped found a local ER Vet clinic that operates all night and weekends for those cases that can’t wait until 9 am, or next Monday. He’s a great guy and was gentle and caring with Alice and me.
SARDS blindness is difficult to diagnose as it involves changes to the retina, and there is not a known cause, nor any treatment or preventative. It is frequently accompanied by other serious health issues, which she had some of also, no one knows if there is a real causative relationship between the physical symptoms and the onset of blindness.
Thanks again for everyone’s sympathy.
ETA: The blindness is easy to diagnose, she bumped into things all the time, and moved hesitantly — and didn’t blink when you wave a hand in front of her eyes… it is the cause that is hard to diagnose SARDS for sure.
StringOnAStick
@trollhattan: At her age I was as obnoxious as a in your face Bernie lefty, full of criticism for our country’s failings. I’ve since grown up and discovered pragmatism. I always voted D though since it was obvious to me that I had to vote and the R’s weren’t going the direction I wanted to go. This whole “why bother voting” stuff seems very calculated in its aim at people at the age where lifetime voting habits are made it not made, plus it hurts D’s in the short term as well. That’s another Putin project no doubt.
zhena gogolia
@J R in WV: thanks for that correction—good to know she had a more normal doggie lifespan. I’m sure you made it a good one
MagdaInBlack
@J R in WV: I did not see your post yesterday, but its normal to fumble finger when one cant see past the tears.
I’m so very sorry for your loss.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: It’s still a terrible loss, but I am relieved to hear that Alice wasn’t a young pup.
I took the liberty of editing your comment to correct her age, but I can un-do that if you like.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
A friend and I recently had a conversation about Biden. We both admire him and think that he is doing a great job. But early on, the media picked up on a false conventional wisdom about Biden pushed by Fox News and lazy pundits, and they have been running with it since an early, brief honeymoon period.
Even though Biden has a great economics team headed by Treasury Secretary Yellen, I find it annoying that the media will run to goofballs like Larry Summers to critique administration policy. The media also routinely ignore a wealth of information published by the Federal Reserve about the state of the economy, and instead recycle stale op-ed pieces and GOP criticisms.
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to this. Some major news outlets are biased against Biden and the Democrats, and that is not going to change anytime soon.
I don’t know if it would be tremendously effective, but I still think that the Democrats do not use alternatives well. I think they need to push out shorter, more dramatic, easily digested and easily repeated bits of information. Use charts and animation. This has been an ongoing issue going back to the Clinton Administration. The Democrats love to talk to people and to give them long pages of material to read. This doesn’t work in the age of TikTok.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has a fun YouTube channel that presents short, punchy, illustrated pieces on economic issues.
BTW, there is a lot of material at the official White House site that notes Biden’s achievements. But again, this information is a long read.
End
StringOnAStick
@J R in WV: No matter her age, it’s so hard to make the choice you had to make. I’m glad to hear she had a great 10 years though instead of just one.
kindness
Changing the narrative…we can’t do anything about the right wing media (Fox, WSJ,..) and we can hardly move the MSM off it’s ‘Both Sides’ narrative let alone get them to call Republican lying lies. What I would like to be able to do is do something about our side’s talking about it. I have a bunch of friends who still have the BernieBro attitude about the Democratic Party. They voted for Joe. Wish they would have voted for Hillary but that’s water under the bridge. My problem is they repeat the MSM bad story memes about Biden and really want to talk up replacing him in ’24 because in there eyes if the party doesn’t do it, we’re back to square Hillary. I’m saddened that these well meaning people are such idiots that they don’t understand strategy. Their ‘purity’ is hurting us again
And the thing is, it only takes one of them repeating the bullshit for the MSM to say ‘Look!!! Both sides agree!’.
HinTN
@StringOnAStick: I felt like I had COVID beginning late on 4 July. Two people with whom I was in extended meetings the previous week reported testing positive on 5 July. I tested negative with at home tests on 5 and 7 July and with a PCR test on 12 July. None of those convinced me I hadn’t had it, even though I felt better by 7 July. It’s a sneaky critter.
StringOnAStick
@HinTN: Thanks, I was hoping to get some comments about other’s experiences. I feel like gravity is at least twice the normal amount, a cough and a gradually increasing sore throat. Transmission is rampant around here right now.
WaterGirl
@StringOnAStick: Very sorry to hear that you think you’ve got Covid.
We have to fight everywhere, even Oregon!
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Hey, thank you! The comment is still somewhat convoluted, but every little bit helps.
raven
@StringOnAStick: The anti-viral knocked my sore throat out in a day. Of course now I have to worry if the gabapentin or long covid that’s giving me the fog!
raven
@J R in WV: Our Cocker, Lil Bit, had her tear glands removed before we got her so I did 7 eye meds three times a day for 11 years. Poor little critter had a rough go but we were lucky on that one.
Geminid
@pluky: Have you read Michael Paulauski? He has a very interesting twitter feed. He self describes as “dem socialist lean anarchist.” The anarchist part isn’t that he likes to lurk around with bombs but rather that he thinks that democratic socialism is better built from the ground up than by a powerful government. Paulauski’s forceful pushback on what he calls the “dirtbag left” has earned him notoriety among those folks on a par with the infamous K-Hive.
raven
@pluky:
Oliver-Velez photographed in Tallahassee, Florida, November 26, 1971.
Born
Denise Oliver
August 1, 1947 (age 74)
Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States of America
Political party
Young Lords
Black Panther Party
Movement
Black Power Movement
Baud
@raven:
Splitter.
Geminid
@raven: Now Oliver-Velez is an anthropology professor at SUNY-New Paultz. She’s still very fierce. She recently told off a Biden critic on Twitter and finished by telling her:
jonas
@WaterGirl:
It’s important to remember that the decision to leave Afghanistan w/o any power-sharing or peace agreement with the Taliban was Trump’s. Biden was left with no good options and played the hand he was dealt as well as he possibly could. Leaving was going to suck, but staying was not an option at that point, either. It was infuriating to watch the media and political pundits dogpile on the withdrawal without (or scarcely) mentioning that the whole shitstorm was Trump’s idea to begin with.
brantl
@patrick II: I am assuming that you mean 2022, not 1922.
Baud
@kindness:
It always makes me sad to hear about online behavior manifested in real life.
Geminid
@Geminid: Denise Oliver-Velez is also a contributing editor to the Daily Kos and often comments there.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I get the same thing from my 60+ friends. The MSM narrative is powerful for those who pay attention to it.
different-church-lady
@kindness:
I was working a Democratic focus group in NH during the 2016 primaries, and the takeaway for me was that Democrats can be parrots just as badly as Republicans.
brantl
@MagdaInBlack: Yeah, Stumpy signed a non-aggression pact with the Taliban, and somehow wasn’t tarred with it, like Stalin and Hitler?
Geminid
@StringOnAStick: I think Jaime McLeod Skinner is a great candidate. I like most of the current Blue Dogs but I thought Schrader was no loss to that caucus or to Oregon Democrats either.
I noticed that when he called the race for McLeod Skinner Dave Wasserman of Cook’s Political Reports changed the race from “Lean D” to “Toss up.” He seemed to be pushing a political narrative without supporting data and that makes me question his objectivity.
Redshift
@jonas:
Hear, hear! And too much of the media criticism came from war correspondents who (in the most charitable interpretation) were thinking in terms of the people they’d met and worked with there, and unwilling to consider that if we’d been there twenty years and couldn’t leave behind a good situation for them, there wasn’t any way to do it.
I lost a lot of respect for Richard Engel when he was reporting about the Afghan forces collapsing and said (as a criticism of the withdrawal) that they weren’t trained to operate without American support. WTF? After twenty years, they still weren’t?
WaterGirl
@raven: Henry had to take gabapentin after his ACL surgery and it definitely left him in a fog.
You probably don’t have to take it as a disgusting pink liquid in a syringe that goes into your mouth! Henry HATED that so much that he fought with me twice a day when I had to give it to him.
Finally, in tears, I took him to the vet 3 times to make them give it to him. He fought so hard the 3rd time at the vet that I told the vet we weren’t taking that anymore and asked him to give us some other medication.
Turns out, when the vet x-rayed the leg 12 weeks out to make sure everything had healed right, Henry had broken his ankle (!) fighting the gabapentin.
Same ankle as I had broken that year, same bone and everything.
Captain C
From Twitter
Captain C
@Captain C: As y’all can see I can’t remember (or figure the new) way to embed a tweet.
WaterGirl
Captain C
@Captain C: I think at this point even MSNBC (or at least its accountants and shareholders) regard it as an entertainment-for-profit center, with “news” just a marketing label. The rest of the so-called MSM news media even more so.
WaterGirl
@Captain C: You were really close!
You just had to click the Text tab before you pasted in the embed code.
Another Scott
Open thread?
Well, my 2004 VW Jetta Wagon TDI seems to be trying to tell me that it’s time to start seriously looking for something new(er). I can’t unlock the ignition – key won’t turn. Comments on the Google tell me that dealers will want around $1000 to fix it. Hard to justify for a car that’s maybe worth $2000. Maybe. :-/ I’ve ordered some parts that may fix it if I’m lucky – should have them the middle of next week.
So, I’ve been looking around at new(er) things, thinking about options. It looks like many electrics and hybrids are going for 5-15% above list (according to TrueCar). The Kia EV6 looks appealing, but it’s much bigger than my Jetta and I’m not sure I want something bigger. It probably has the best EV charging system right now (800V) but in the real world doesn’t seem to charge as fast as advertised (maybe max 220 kW rather than 350 kW, but still better than many, many other EVs that top out at 150 kW on a DC fast charger). Of course, the standard charger is 11kW (home grade 2) which is limited by the standard home 240V AC available.
There are some potentially interesting 2023 models coming (new Kia Niro, new Chevy Blazer) that appear interesting, but it doesn’t look like substantial advancements are coming in the next 1-2 model years. But things are changing rapidly for the conservative auto industry.
We don’t have a garage and batteries don’t like excessive heat or excessive cold, so it’s not ideal for an EV to be sitting out in the sun on 100+F degree days, but they sell them in Texas so it’s not a deal breaker, just not ideal.
It looks like about 3/4 of Virginia’s electricity is from natural gas, maybe 20% nuclear, some hydro. Almost no wind or solar, but there’s work underway on off-shore wind. So CO2 for power should drop over time. Depending on when the gas plants spin up (nuclear likes to run all the time), there might be times of day when CO2 per kWh might be lower, and depending on miles driven, there are apparently cases when plugin hybrids have lower CO2 emissions than full electric. But the idea of having to charge a PHEV every day or two is not appealing (most only PHEVs only have 25-40 miles of full electric range).
Electrics beat hybrids on fuel costs per mile (around here anyway, with electricity about $0.11/kWh), and CO2 per mile by roughly a factor of 2. Even using an ungodly expensive DC fast charger (3-4x the cost of home) is still not more than a Prius hybrid.
Still just looking around, pondering.
And then I see this – Wonkette – Alabama Hyundai-owned metal stamping supplier is using child labor. (Hyundai and Kia are part of the same corporate parent.)
Grrr…,
Scott.
raven
@WaterGirl: I wouldn’t take it because, when Bohdi fell at the beach, we gave it to him and it knocked him out for 2 days! We adjusted the dosage and it helped him for a while. I started on it about a month ago and it has helped my sleep so I guess I’ll keep at it unless something else comes along. We may to a laser ablation of my lateral femoral cutaneous next since the nerve block worked for a while.
Redshift
@Brachiator:
Oliver Willis had a great observation about driving media narratives. He pointed out that mainstream media picking up BS Republican points is not just the media being wired for Republicans or because they have a propaganda network, it’s that Republicans repeat things ad nauseum. Democrats make a speech, or put out a social media response and then they’ve “addressed the issue,” and they and we get frustrated that the media don’t pick it up.
Republican “ideas” may all be bullshit, but it’s not just that they all follow the memo for what to talk about on a given day, it’s that they keep saying it over and over. If it’s completely debunked, they keep saying it. If nobody but their hardcore base cares, they keep saying it. And it hacks normal media via “if a lot of people are talking about it, we have an obligation to cover it” and “this may be influencing how people think and vote” (not to mention “presenting all sides.”)
The idea Willis presents is for big-name Dems, but it seems like there should be something the rest of us can make use of there.
raven
@WaterGirl: Ugh, the last two days with Lil But we tired the syringe with cough medicine and it was awful. Poor little thing, I wish we hadn’t done that.
Baud
@Redshift:
This is the thing missing in his analysis. The GOP has a cult audience that is willing to hear the same talking points over and over again.
Which group of Dems do you think would do that without becoming increasingly agitated and frustrated?
Do you think if BJ had three days of front page posts on the same topic, we wouldn’t revolt.
Dems have to deal with people with (over) active minds.
Redshift
@Brachiator:
COS Ron Klain and the White House twitter account put out a lot of good stuff in a short format about what’s being accomplished. I try to retweet whenever I see it.
zhena gogolia
@raven: It’s okay, we do our best. I keep kicking myself about things I’ve done in a pet’s last days. I did my best.
raven
@Another Scott: We have a 2018 KIA Niro and get about 50 mpg.
raven
@zhena gogolia: Yea, I always tell other people that!
Baud
If I could draw, I’d draw a cartoon of a group of Dems drinking coffee at an outdoor cafe watching Trump and DeSantis beating up a trans person on the street.
The caption would be “Why can’t the Democrats do something about that?”
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
👍
WaterGirl
@jonas: I agree with all of that. I do think, though, that Biden would have gotten us out of there anyway, just with an actual, you know, negotiation for when and how.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Don’t give up on that ignition lock yet. Try letting the car roll in neutral a couple feet and then try the ignition. My Honda’s ignition won’t turn sometimes if the steering wheel has tension. Maybe smack the ignition or near it with a rubber mallet or piece of wood (not too hard). There might even be a whole web forum out there about balky Jetta ignitions.
Of course, if you do get it to unstick there’s always the worry that it will stick again at an awkward place and time. Good luck with your new vehicle!
WaterGirl
@raven: Yeah, I won’t be doing that again, either! Henry wouldn’t take the pills for his allergies and the vet suggested liquid in a syringe. um, big nope on that one.
Live and learn. All we can do is use it as a data point for future decisions.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@Baud:
But John does that to us all the time because he doesn’t read his own blog. And usually we just make fun of him.
Of course, that’s usually only TWO posts on the same topic. If a third came up, you’re right, we’d probably all permanently decamp to LGM.
Captain C
@WaterGirl: Thanks!
Baud
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:
Jesus. You’re saying our sanity depends on the ability of front pagers to coordinate?
different-church-lady
Yikes, just upgraded to Firefox 102.something.something on Mac, and for the first time in ages I can use the visual editor! (However, I still can’t pay my cell bill on line…)
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Email WaterGirl.
Redshift
@Baud:
I think it’s a matter of context. I think this is our image of ourselves, but it’s overstated. For example, “Dems are telling us the answer is to vote, but I did that already and it didn’t fix everything” has been circulating for weeks, and plenty of Dems aren’t tiring of it.
It’s not a matter of “you will hear this every day and nothing else” even when Republicans do it. Rather, when there’s something important that might motivate our voters, even when you’re mostly talking about something else, be sure to mention it, especially if there’s a good line about it. Bring it up if you have a 2-minute TV hits. Put important stuff out on social media regularly, because not everyone will see it every time. Make it so it’s “out there.”
This isn’t about people who are deep into politics, like BJ readers and people all over political Twitter. No one has to stop doing long-form ideas and wonky stuff for our crowd. It’s about influencing what points and ideas are “out there in the ether” so they don’t fade from mass coverage.
Wanderer
@Ruckus: I agree with you. There is the military tasks occurring with any movement of personnel and/or equipment, crowd control etc. I am sure President Biden was very well informed all through the process. When you have people who are skilled at their jobs amazing things can be accomplished.
raven
@Geminid: The rubber mallet world on a Dodge van!
Elizabelle
@J R in WV: My condolences on the loss of your pupper. Would suspect Alice enjoyed just about every single day with you.
raven
@raven: Worked
Wanderer
@J R in WV: I am sorry for your loss. It’s so hard to lose them.
Geminid
@raven: A rubber mallet can come in handy. So can a dead blow hammer but I don’t know if I’d hit a steering column with one. They’re good for assembling furniture though.
raven
@Geminid: We had a stuck key in a Dodge van and the google came up with this and it worked!
WaterGirl
@Baud: hahahahaha
Another Scott
@Geminid: I’ve tried rocking the wheel and the column, while jiggling the key, silicone spray in the keyway, tapping on the key, etc. Unfortunately, I rocked the wheel back and forth enough to engage the column lock, but that seems to mean that that part of the mechanism is working correctly. Yay? So, it kinda points to the lock cylinder which seems to be a less common failure. But it’s hard to say. Sometimes the key can be prevented from turning when other parts seem to be working (e.g. broken piece of aluminum blocking some critical part).
In order to take the lock cylinder out, one has to have the key in the ON position. Of course, it won’t turn. :-(
In order to take the aluminum housing that holds the lock and switch and column lock off the column one has to take off the steering wheel, which requires rotating the wheel 90 degrees to get access to the clips holding the air bag in place. Which requires unlocking the column. Which requires rotating the key.
(sigh)
If I can get the aluminum housing out, then I know I can fix it (eventually). The question is whether I can do so without destroying too much other stuff.
We’ll see if I can get it to unlock one last time or not – I’ll keep trying gentle persuasion…
At least it happened at home, and when I didn’t have to get somewhere in a hurry!!
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Nancy
@Fair Economist:
I’m borrowing your list.
thanks
Jay
@Another Scott:
keys are brass. You own a car long enough, the keys wear out, the ignition lock is usually fine.
You can get a new key for about $10.
Try that first.
Ignition locks are about $50 with two keys, but needs to be serialized to match so your keys work in the door locks.
It takes about an hour with basic hand tools to pull the old ignition lock and install the new one.
lefthanded compliment
@raven: OT from an earlier thread. I saw that you talked about John Belushi and the fact that he grew up in Wheaton. I was a year behind him there; his future wife Judy was a classmate. I recall him mentioning Bob Bucklin (a football teammate) in a skit.
raven
@lefthanded compliment: I went to Willowbrook and Silvio Insana and Steve Beshekus were friends and pall bearers
So you were class of 67? I was but went in the Army in 66. We used to hang at Big Boy on Roosevelt Road.
cain
The irony being that we are pushing liberalism on them – while at the same time the GOP would have enjoyed having a society that puts men at the top of the ladder.
Kropacetic
The unfortunate thing is you often have to follow through on voting across multiple elections. Plenty of Dem affiliated voters struggle with that.
They just have a new bullshit narrative every day. Few catch fire but the ones that do will get some daily play until the end of time.
Suzanne
@trollhattan:
My Elder Spawn fully concedes that Biden has done good things and yet he thinks that much more remains undone and he is simultaneously correct, bitter about it, and increasingly convinced that no one can fix it and that political activity/power isn’t worth pursuing if one can’t use it to unfuck things. Even winning elections might be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
That’s where I am sliding, too. The world is getting hotter, still. The country is getting more unequal, still. Democracy is in growing danger, still. I am increasingly convinced that American institutions of government — even in our hands, even with a solid presidential performance — are not up to the monumental tasks before them. This is a terrifying prospect.
raven
@lefthanded compliment:
I think Subaru’s knew, or at least knew of, Silvio’s father who was a classical music conductor.
lefthanded compliment
@raven: I don’t know those names. I was class of ’69, so he may have been farther ahead of me than I recall. We lived just a half-block off Roosevelt, and I do remember the Big Boy. I didn’t know that the dine skits were inspired by the Billy Goat Tavern, which I knew from Mike Royko columns.
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: I sent Jamie a donation this week. I’ll be nervous until the votes are counted but I like our chances. Jamie won Bend when it was part of the “join Idaho ungovernable regions”. Jamie’s slightly ahead in money but way ahead in number of donors. Her opponent Lori Chavez-Deremer hailed the end of Roe v Wade which is very unlikely to broaden her appeal to most Oregonians.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Well, that sure sounds frustrating. One more thought occurred to me: try the key at 5am when everything has cooled off. I know I’m not functioning so well myself in this heat.
But now I see that a more knowledgeable commenter is in the mix.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I honestly have difficulty having respect for people who can spend 30 minutes every two years to vote for the non-fascist party candidates.
That said, I have infinity more respect for people who drop out of politics and become nonvoting normies because they are frustrating and disappointed than for people who continue to express unsolicited opinions about how voting is useless.
I get really angry at people who try to bring down others who are still in the fight.
That really isn’t directed at you because I don’t think you’re someone who throws in the towel (or Spawn since I don’t know what he does with his life). But your comment reminds me of online conversations I’ve seen in the past that have rubbed me the wrong way.
jnfr
@Nicole:
I llke this as a response. Fighting about it only amplifies things.
jonas
@WaterGirl: The problem was the Afghan government, and by extension, the military. It was so riddled with corruption and incompetence, that the second we began a withdrawal, with or without some deal with the Taliban, it was all going to unravel within days. Which it did. So it was heads, the Taliban win, tails, we lose.
The only way to have avoided the panic and chaos that ensued would have been to somehow publicly announce that we were staying forever and had the back of the Afghan government, and would fight the Taliban until the end of time, then quickly sneak all our troops and equipment out one night while no-one was looking.
eachother
Too much loss.
A halting condition of living.
It hurts me to know it hurts you J R in WV.
Glidwrith
@Ruckus: You asked a significant question: who owns the media?
I think it’s the same people (or kind of people) who always benefit from the reporting. Carnegie owned newspapers. Rockefeller owned newspapers. We know Kushner bought a magazine and drove it into the ground because it wasn’t about making money, but an image.
We know about the Powell memo: create a whole ecosystem to allow their bullshit to flourish. We know Tucker Carlson is an heir, any number of the fucking pundits are extremely wealthy.
We have such a hard time gaining traction because a huge chunk of the press is dominated by rich owners that use that power to shape the whole system to keep themselves rich and powerful and everyone one else can fuck off.
Subsole
@Ruckus:
You can’t walk backwards into the future…
I think an awful lot of these folks don’t actually want to go back to the 50s. They want to go back to being 19 again. They just don’t realize the 50s sucked because they weren’t at the age that society expects you to shoulder the suck. (Or the suck wasn’t aimed at them in the first place.)
Childhood hits very, very different when you ain’t a child anymore.
Like, I remember the 80s with a bit of a rosy glow because I was a child, and thus didn’t have to worry about feeding my family while Reagan and the party of Anglo-Saxon, freemarket, red-(very, very)white-and-blue, open-carry Je$u$ M&A’d my job out from under me while my union hooted and clapped like circus seals because they thought it would keep the outsiders in their place.
Same deal. They get in the van thinking they’re gonna go live with Dobie Gillis or something – and end up sitting in the middle of a hockey rink, scratching their ass in superlative befuddlement when they end up as a contestant on The Running Man.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: This!
raven
@lefthanded compliment: I didn’t figure you would, I’m pretty sure he was 66. They met at Second City and went from there.
Dan B
@Redshift: Communication 101: The bigger the audience you want to reach the shorter, and simpler, the message and the more it must be repeated to reach that audience. That’s why Repubs take note of the messages from the leadership and the “Think” Tanks* and repeat them with slight variations.
*Nearly all right wing Think Tanks are just Comm’s outfits. They produce very little policy while spending much time training people to be good on TV or radio. They grew out of the Powell Doctrine.
Dan B
@Baud: BJ is a small audience. Reaching a bigger or more politically varied audience requires a different approach.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, but that’s why all the ankle biting on Biden from the MSM, as Adam explained at the time the whole blob was making a career out of the Forever War and Biden ruined their grift.
Suzanne
@Baud:
I am the furthest thing from a towel-thrower. I got home late last night and put up my new Shapiro yard sign this morning. And I’ve scheduled my first volunteer shift for his campaign.
But I used to be someone who thought that good governance would be convincing and unifying because Americans were engaged in a common project. I don’t believe that anymore.
Geminid
@Suzanne: All power to Mr. Shapiro and his supporters. There are a lot of bad Republican politicians but Mastriano is one of the worst.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
No, that’s fine. Thank you. I feel V stupid for messing it up. I’ve been talking to the other dogs, trying to help them understand what has happened. They are subdued and I only hope they understand We’re also subdued…..
BooBoo just came to me… they tried to help Alice, were with her when she went outside. now I’m crying again. She was such a sweet puppy — and so brave
Our power have been down, thunderstorms, and while the house has a generator, the internet connection is more frail, and just came back. Hurray!!!
J R in WV
@raven:
Yeah… it’s so hard to know when to just stop.
We’re lucky to have a Vet we’ve known for years who is willing to talk about it with us until we all agree about it. Until we understand the issues and the state of Vet knowledge about the issues.
it’s so hard, tho
Suzanne
@Geminid: If Mastriano wins, it will be an utter catastrophe.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
I’ve started putting the meds in a spoonful of peanut butter, all the dogs love peanut butter, it’s gone in a flash!!
KSinMA
@J R in WV: Oh, J R, I’m so sorry. Big hugs to you.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV:
And now we’re all crying again.
jnfr
@J R in WV:
So sorry for this pain. Thanks for sharing her with us.
I plan to fight hard in the mid-terms this fall, and I hope everyone will.
evodevo
@Redshift: Eggzackly…we (the West) have been involved in training the Ukrainians for what…8 years or so? And they have single-handedly taken on the biggest military in the east, barring China, and are handing them their ass. I’m sorry, but the situation in Afghanistan wasn’t EVER going to get better, unless you completely depopulated the entire Afghan-Pakistan border and put up The Wall, and replaced the entire Afghan army with NATO troops (and then you would still have to deal with internal political unrest). I argue this with my career AF son till I am blue in the face, but it’s true.
Fair Economist
@Nancy: It is made to be shared!
Bonnie
I’m glad you did this because I keep wondering who the press is talking about. I like Joe Biden and his family. He has had a hard life but just keeps on keeping on. He gives me hope; not many people do. The people who write these articles must not be paying attention to what he is doing. They seem to only want to pick on him. I have been so relaxed since he became President. I was on the verge of daily heart attacks for the four years TFG was in office. Now, I enjoy life and hope that trump NEVER holds public office, again–especially Dog Catcher (it would be so awful for the dogs). He is a poor excuse to a human being.
2liberal
according to her wikipedia page she was a member of both.
Ramalama
I dropped the ball too, if that’s any help. I got slammed with the hurricane, derecho, microblast, in Quebec. We were out of power for almost 2 weeks. No internet for almost one month.
I lost my mojo.
Death of a really close relative happened a few days ago. And I just helped deposit my sister-in-law into hospice today.
Was thinking I could start clearing things out to get back to my scheduled social media support of Joe Biden and the Dems. And had another bad storm a few hours ago. Power is out yet again.
We have a backup. But it’s not the best for connecting via internet.
I might have to bite the bullet and get a gas-powered monster, after all. Sheesh.
J R in WV
@eachother:
Thanks!
She was a sweet person, wagging all the way.
Ramalama
@J R in WV: So sorry for your loss. Did you have a vet say something annoying like, “If your dog could read, the blindness would be a complete tragedy, but since she couldn’t, it’s easier?” Had a vet like that.
Anyway, blind or no, it’s just shittty.
My mother truly believed that dogs were God made manifest in various hundreds of breeds. I don’t know about that, but I do love them.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Yep, they’re down here at least 0.70¢ in the last 3 weeks. It goes down 0.10¢ at a time, which I’ve never seen happen here before. I don’t know if the local news talks about it, but NPR still talks about the high price of gas and high inflation every day. They don’t want to let go of it.
stinger
There’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court.
Another Scott
@Jay: Sorry I missed this earlier.
I’ve got nearly unused spare keys – it makes no difference. Still no turn. These are the rectangular folding blade keys with the curved raceway cut in the side, so they keys don’t really fail the way the old toothy brass ones do. (I remember a 1960s Chevy that had a key and lock so worn that just about anything inserted in the slot would start it.) I’ve never seen such a rectangular key fail, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the “tumblers” inside the cylinder eventually do. But it seems strange.
I don’t want to spend hours fighting with it, but I’m curious to see what went wrong. And I really don’t want to spend $1000 at the dealer to get it working again…
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@pluky: I was so busy “correcting” you on Denise Oliver-Velez’s history that I did not thank you for your commendation, which was in effect an “upvote.” So, thank you!
Geminid
@Another Scott: If you would like your Jetta to live out it’s natural life on the highways, advertise it. There are people who prize diesel Volkswagons and would jump on a well-maintained Jetta even if it had this problem.