Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Not all heroes wear capes.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

We still have time to mess this up!

No one could have predicted…

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Halfway Through the Week

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Halfway Through the Week

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Short weeks, in my experience, are usually the longest — you try to do five days’ work in four…



Murdoch (Daily Mail) reporter:

Michelle Obama’s actual words, per the Washington Post:

… “The people, they make their voices heard with their vote,” she said. “We hold an inauguration to ensure a peaceful transition of power. Those of us lucky enough to serve work, as Barack said, as hard as we can for as long as we can, as long as the people choose to keep us here and once our time is up, we move on. And all that remains in this hallowed place are our good efforts.”…

“For me, this day is not just about what has happened,” she said. “It’s also about what could happen because a girl like me, she was never supposed to be up there next to Jacqueline Kennedy and Dolley Madison. She was never supposed to live in this house. And she definitely wasn’t supposed to serve as first lady.”

“But what we’re looking at today — a portrait of a biracial kid with an unusual name and the daughter of a water pump operator and a stay-at-home mom — what we are seeing is a reminder that there’s a place for everyone in this country,” Obama added. “Because as Barack said, if the two of us can end up on the walls of the most famous address in the world, then again, it is so important for every young kid who is doubting themselves to believe that they can, too.”

Obama shared her hope and confidence in America’s ability to continue to be the home of possibility despite the ever-present cultural battles about the future direction of the country.

“As much as some folks might want us to believe that that story has lost some of its shine, that vision and discrimination and everything else might have dimmed its light, I still know deep in my heart that what we share, as my husband continues to say, is so much bigger than what we don’t,” she said…

Also making me proud to be a Democrat:

Especially for Kay:

Reader Interactions

196Comments

  2. 2.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     [DOJ] officials are expected to oppose the judge’s call
    for the arbiter, known as a special master,

    Watching Morning Joe and they quoted this from FTFNYT. So I pulled up the article and they literally bury the lede to the SIXTH paragraph. 😲 It’s such horrible writing.

    In 1928 Ben Hecht wrote the seminal play “The Front Page”. In it wrote:

    Who the hell’s gonna read the second paragraph?
    For 15 years I’ve been trying to teach you how to write a lead.

    In 1978 David Lloyd writing for the acclaimed news drama “Lou Grant” wrote:

    “the lead should…grab the readers’ attention. Writing a lead should be more than reciting all the facts. It should involve the reader, make him want more.”

    Leave to the fucking Times to mangle a dynamite story.​

  5. 5.

    evodevo

    “Five days work in four” – welcome to the Post Office…us carriers hate Monday holidays…Tuesday is a hell-run…

  6. 6.

    Kay

    Thanks AL.

    I talk up apprenticeships to the youngs here all the time. If it’s a good apprenticeship (there are some faux ones that the Trump Administration launched which are a rip off) it’s a good deal for them.

  8. 8.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud: I didn’t know the SecDef wasn’t supposed to salute troops. What about POTUS?

    Technically, no; civilians don’t salute, because it’s not our job.  As Ozark points out, Reagan started saluting anyways — IIRC, his excuse was being a retired military guy (he’d made ‘patriotic’ movies during WWII, and the older he got, the more actual military service he ‘remembered’ putting in).   GHWB and then Dubya kept up the practice, for reasons, and Trump obviously figured saluting made him look hella manly and presidential… even when he was (almost?) saluting Kim Jong Un.

    The current right-wing argument is that the President is “our” Commander-in-Chief, so he *ought* to salute.   George Washington, who had considerable standing, absolutely refused to be called ‘General Washington’ when he was in the White House, because he thought it would set a bad precedent for the civilian president to kowtow (note spelling, everybody!) to a ‘Caesar’.

    Me, I think it’s like being an Alpha — if you have to announce your status (by saluting), you’re just proving you haven’t really earned it.  Thus, SecDef Austin not saluting, because the guys in green already know his rank and history.  He’s treating them like adults, not demanding they be props for his lookame, big name general!  bullsh*t.

  12. 12.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: Yeah, but I think POTUSes should continue the (non)tradition so that when AOC becomes President, a huge percentage of RWNJ heads will explode the first time she returns a Marine’s salute as she boards the chopper. That will be a New (and Good) Day in America!

  14. 14.

    Jay

    @Kay:

    a limiting factor here, is very few Companies or Unions want to pay for a 1st year Apprentice.

    So you get out of Trade School and can’t find a job.

    There are no shortage of Companies willing to poach 2nd, 3rd year Apprentices from other Companies, but few that want to “grow their own”.

  17. 17.

    Kay

    @Jay:

    Agreed. When Caterpillar spent months whining about they couldn’t “find” welders (while basically campaigning for Right wing politicians) all I thought was “why don’t you train some?”

    It isn’t the public’s job to provide them with off the shelf, work ready employees to plug in specific holes. They shoudl pay for it.

    They do with most federal registered apprenticeships though- they get federal and state money on top of employer industry group contributions.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jay: a limiting factor here, is very few Companies or Unions want to pay for a 1st year Apprentice.

    All the construction trade unions in STL area have apprenticeships from 1st year to journeymen. I would be very surprised if that wasn’t universal.

  21. 21.

    Kevin

    @Jay: same experience in my field of accounting. Firms always look for 3-5 years experience. It’s getting harder to do that. Seems like if you had a good training program and limited scope of work that could be a good niche.

  22. 22.

    Tony Jay

    Reports out of Balmoral suggest that the Queen of Cracker Island might be edging closer to a date with her one acknowledged social superior. Hushed voices and doleful expressions on the BBC, even though we all know that just out of shot News execs are shotgunning bottles of premier bubbly at the heady prospect of all that wonderful worldwide coverage they’re going to be churning out for the next seeming forever.

    Still, wait until she learns that God likes appearing as a ‘fellow of a darker hue’. She’ll be out of there faster than you can say “Not on one’s nelly”.

    And there’s me trying to imagine what could possibly distract the nation from the instant faceplanting that is the other Lizzie’s premiership. Should have known.

  23. 23.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Our local community college just opened this amazing facility, the Center for Advanced Manufacturing. It’s just down the street from where I live.  The community college is really popular with people here – it has branches in several outlying towns as well as the main campus here in Springfield. People fought for years to start this community college; it’s been successful beyond their wildest dreams. Lots of kids go here for two years, then transfer to a 4-year college, which saves them a lot of money. We have the A+ program that allows local kids to go here tuition-free for two years if they achieve a certain grade point average in high school. Lots of kids couldn’t further their education without that program. They even have a school choir!!

  25. 25.

    Anne Laurie

    @Tony Jay: I’m just glad to see you posting — was half afraid the latest round of Tory unpleasantness might’ve caused you to suffer a fatal aneurysm!

  27. 27.

    Geminid

    @rikyrah: Lauren Underwood (IL) stands out for her successful legislative work. Joe Neguse (CO), is another member of tge House Class of 2018 who has written a number of bills that have become law.

    I was interested to see that while most House Democrats join either the Progressive, New Democrat, or Blue Dog Caucuses, Underwood has not affiliated with any of these “ideological” caucuses. I believe that Joyce Beatty (OH) also is an “independent.” That may have helped Beatty last November when she negotiated a compromise with the Progressive Caucus that resulted in ~88 of them voting for the Infrastructure bill.

  28. 28.

    oldgold

    NUT” [DOJ] officials are expected to oppose the judge’s call
    for the arbiter, known as a special master.”

    I hope the DOJ’s response is multi-layered. Simply appealing, with a stay on the criminal investigation, is unacceptable. Time when dealing with Trump is ultra critical.

  30. 30.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Kay: Airlines have been doing the same: whining that they have to complete for pilots.  The rise of private jets and the increase of air cargo over ground shipping means pilots have more employment alternatives.  Coupled with the reduction in the size of the military after the cold war and the retirements of Boomers there has been a predictable decline in the supply of pilots.  Instead of investing in their own farm system to develope a work force they criticize the government.

  31. 31.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: It’s a shame that at many places there is no more training. They changed our phone system to these fancy phones a few years ago, but did we get any training on them? Nope, it was “you can watch some YouTube videos” and an almost incomprehensible manual (and I have a college degree!!). That was it, not even an hour class showing us how to use the features on this fancy phone. What I’ve learned I’ve learned from watching other employees.

  34. 34.

    eclare

    In the late 90’s I worked for a huge public utility.  The starting salary for an apprenticeship lineman was $60k.  All you needed was a high school diploma.  You could not pay me enough to work with electricity, plus heights!, but if you could it was a good deal.

  35. 35.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Soprano2: A friend of mine was once involved in developing a manual for employees to use a new computer system. Her part was observing employees work with a draft of the manual available. If they couldn’t make something work, the first thing they did was repeat what they’d just tried. Then they asked another employee. In all the time she observed, she never once saw anyone use the manual. As someone who taught tech writing, I found that sobering.

  37. 37.

    sab

    @Jay: In a lot of American companies make the kids fresh out of trade school sign non-competes so that they can’t be poached. It also makes them completely unemployable in that trade in their home town if thimgs don’t work out with the first employer.

  38. 38.

    PST

    @rikyrah: Lauren Underwood a marvel. She is solidly entrenched in a district that votes Republican for president, and she does it without compromising her solid Democratic principles.

  39. 39.

    Emmyelle

    It’s amazing that stating basic facts and articulating centuries-old norms now counts as “political”.

    A couple of years ago, I sitting in my pretty centrist liberal Congregational church listening to my pretty centrist liberal pastor give a sermon related to the gospel reading of the day and as usual dive deep into Christian theology and early Christianity and bring in a reference to some old white American 19the century reformer and then touch on how the latest Trump abomination (can’t effin even remember what it was, cuz there are so many) ran counter to our Christian obligations, etc. etc, without even mentioning TGF or his god-forsaken party, and a week later I hear that one of the, like, 5 living Republicans in our congregation, was bitching that the pastor is getting “too political” and I thought, well, we can’t even discuss basic Christian morality and gospel interpretation without being “political” and then I prayed for the polar cap to melt quickly and finish this shit off now.

  41. 41.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Tony Jay: For a geriatric she looked great in the Monday photos, but I noticed the top of her hand was black and blue which means she’s either on blood thinners or had a recent catheter inserted.

  42. 42.

    Tony Jay

    @Anne Laurie:

    I’ve just been a bit snowed under with holidays and birthdays and general fiff-faffery to get much ranting done. The Tory leadership non-event went exactly as predicted so it was hard to vroom up much energy for insulting them.

    It’s a whole new world now, though. So once I’ve caught up on sleep I’ll be venting my fiery-red spleen all over the keyboard.

  45. 45.

    JML

    A consultant I work with said the biggest scam that’s been perpetrated on higher education is that they’re now supposed to be responsible for corporate job training as well. He has a point. Companies used to hire someone and put them in a lengthy job training program designed to teach them how to do the actual day to day work. Now, every company wants people to emerge from college ready to work from day one, and the universities are supposed to twist themselves around every few years to make sure they’re on top of what companies want on day 1, instead of being able to focus on critical thinking and more broad-based skill growth, along with simply helping students mature as people.

  46. 46.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It has been a real boon to the whole area. I’m amazed when I think about how hard it was for people to get it started. I can’t even remember what the problem was other than people thinking there wasn’t any need for it because we have a state university here, but community college is a completely different niche. It has grown so much, and it changed my neighborhood for the better since it’s more desirable to live here now because it’s close to three universities and the community college.  Their biggest problem is the wide variability in the cost of different programs; they still charge the same amount per credit hour no matter what the class is, but it costs them a lot more to train dental hygienists than to teach an English class. They could probably expand the dental hygienist program by 3 or 4 x if they could charge more for those classes.

  50. 50.

    oldgold

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The possibilities are one or a mix of the following:

    1/ Request a clarification/ modification of the original ruling based on objectives errors in ruling;

    2/ Attempt to move the jurisdiction of the matter to DC;

    3/Appeal to 11th Circuit.

  53. 53.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: When I wanted a manual, I bought one of those “for Dummies” books, because they are written in language anyone can understand. I think way too many manuals are written too technically, as if an engineer wrote them. I tried to use that manual for the phone system but gave up because it was incomprehensible to me. I know this system can do a lot of cool things; we have a piece of software on our computer that’s connected to the phone. You can put people on the software, which enables you to click on the icon and call or message them. I learned about that from seeing it on another employee’s computer and asking her how she did that. I think many employers believe training is a waste of time; they think we can just train ourselves.

  54. 54.

    Tony Jay

    @Fair Economist:

    I’m going with the theory that Liz Truss actually straight up poisoned her. The Humanoid Photo-Op desperately needs something else in the news to distract from how blandly crap she is, and a post-animate monarch is just the ticket.

  57. 57.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: White people make up 87.65% of our population; that’s down from 90% about 10 years ago. I figure it’ll be another 20 years until that figure is under 80%, unless something changes drastically. It’s why TFG got around 65% of the vote here.

  58. 58.

    Betty Cracker

    @Tony Jay: Easy for me to say since my ancestors fled the island centuries ago and my tax dollars don’t support the associated nonsense, but I am fond of the old lady and will be sad when she passes from the scene.

    We were discussing the issue in a thread yesterday, and some folks predicted Commonwealth countries might take the opportunity of the Queen’s passing to cut ties. When the dust settles, do you think Brits might rethink the whole monarchy thing too?

  60. 60.

    Geminid

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I think we’ll find out tomorrow. That is the date set by Judge Cannon for filing responses to her special master order.

    Yesterday the DOJ filed a motion to release more material from the search warrant affidavits. This was done in Judge Beryl Howell’s DC District Court. Judge Howell oversees the grand jury that has issued at least two subpoenas for materials in trump’s possession. Observers think that prosecutors want more of the search warrant affidavits unsealed in order to better support their response to Judge Cannon’s rotten ruling.

    This material will be damaging to trump. He’s the one who first called for the latest warrant affidavit to be released, though, so prosecutors can say (at least to themselves), “Hey buddy, you asked for it!”.

  61. 61.

    lowtechcyclist

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    All the construction trade unions in STL area have apprenticeships from 1st year to journeymen. I would be very surprised if that wasn’t universal.

    With the key word being ‘unions.’  The vast majority of jobs should be union. Unfortunately, we’re a long way from that.  Hopefully our (fortunately very pro-union) Administration can figure out some things to do about that.

    @sab:

    In a lot of American companies make the kids fresh out of trade school sign non-competes so that they can’t be poached. It also makes them completely unemployable in that trade in their home town if thimgs don’t work out with the first employer.

    That’s ridiculous. Non-competes need to be limited to high-level people with inside knowledge that would be genuinely damaging if a competitor learned it.  Joe and Jane Sixpack should never have a noncompete waved at them, let alone some kid who’s been on the job for all of twenty minutes.

    Michelle Obama sounds political in her remarks: “You see the people that make their voices heard with their vote. We hold an inauguration to ensure a peaceful transition of power. … Once our time is up we move on.”

    If that’s ‘political,’ Lord help us.

  62. 62.

    Jay

    @Baud:

    buying them from the few Companies willing to train,

    here in BC we need 1500 new Doctors( GP’s), every year.

    We only “grow” 750 due to the BC College Of Physicians limiting class sizes to keep incomes high for their members.

    So we import doctors, which is it’s own problem.

    When I was a contractor, I always had a first year apprentice on the crew. Technically, they are cheap, and it’s a good way for them to figure out if they want to do the job and a good way to teach fundamentals.

    It cost me about $20k “extra”, when they were in school, and not on the job site, but you can see why an MBA would “nursh” the whole idea.

  65. 65.

    narya

    My rants about training only grow over time. We’re switching to a new EMR, and a lot of the training is essentially a zoom call of someone saying “and then you click here.” Luckily our in-house teams are prepared for go-live, but damn. And people don’t use manuals because manuals have been absolute shit for years. I have a good idea of what this [thing, piece of software, application] should be able to do; the index should have keywords that tell me where to find instruction on that. But so much of the “training” and “manuals” and YouTube videos are linear do-this-then-that, which provides absolutely no context for the steps being implemented, and no sense of what the overall purposes and abilities are.

    My dad was a union sheet metal worker, and his union absolutely had apprenticeship programs. I’ll be interested to see if this next wave of unionization does anything like that; since a lot of the effort appears to be in service industries, it’s not clear to me, but it would be useful to have a sense of what shared knowledge folks should possess.

  66. 66.

    geg6

    @Jay:

    The apprenticeships here that I know of (my ex was a high school vo-tech welding instructor before becoming the coop coordinator at his school) are almost exclusively through trade unions.  He worked extensively with the iron workers and the local National Welding Society as a teacher and as coop coordinator, he had to work with all the trade unions to get students on-the-job training and apprenticeships either during high school or after graduation.  Most companies here don’t have apprenticeships as much as on-the-job training.  The difference in pay for those who complete union apprenticeships and those who don’t is vast.

  68. 68.

    narya

    @Jay: The guy who re-did my kitchen employed folks who immigrated here (including, decades ago, some folks from VietNam, I think)–he’d start them as laborers, but encourage them to essentially follow the skilled craftspeople, and, if interested, learn that craft. Not surprisingly, he had folks who had worked for him for decades–and others who figured out that it wasn’t the kind of work they wanted to do.

  69. 69.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Uh-oh

    LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II has been placed under medical supervision because doctors are “concerned for Her Majesty’s health,” Buckingham Palace said Thursday, as members of the royal family traveled to Scotland to be with the 96-year-old monarch.

    The announcement comes a day after the queen canceled a virtual meeting of her Privy Council when doctors advised her to rest following a full day of events on Tuesday, when she formally asked Liz Truss to become prime minister.
    ***

    Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, and his wife, Camilla, are with the queen after traveling to Balmoral Castle, the queen’s summer vacation home, to be with her. Prince William, Charles’ eldest son, is en route.​​

  70. 70.

    geg6

    @Tony Jay: ​
     

    Still, wait until she learns that God likes appearing as a ‘fellow of a darker hue’. She’ll be out of there faster than you can say “Not on one’s nelly”.

    Heh. I do not understand all the love and respect this woman gets here in the US (and for Balloon Juice, for that matter). Horrible woman, horrible family. I have no idea why you Brits hold onto this awful institution.

  72. 72.

    zhena gogolia

    The magical power of great actresses. I now have this ineradicable good feeling about QEII because I love Claire Foy, Olivia Colman, and Helen Mirren.

  73. 73.

    lowtechcyclist

    @eclare:

    In the late 90’s I worked for a huge public utility.  The starting salary for an apprenticeship lineman was $60k.  All you needed was a high school diploma.  You could not pay me enough to work with electricity, plus heights!, but if you could it was a good deal.

    Damn, if that had been available to me when I graduated from HS (for the 1972 equivalent of that late-90s $60K, of course), I’d have probably said, “screw college, I’ll do this.”

    When I was 18, I was climbing tall trees for fun, so heights wouldn’t have been an issue.  And while I had no experience working with electricity, I knew to be careful around it, and I’m sure I could have picked up safety procedures quickly.

  75. 75.

    lowtechcyclist

    @geg6:

    I do not understand all the love and respect this woman gets here in the US

    I have it on good authority that Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl.

  76. 76.

    SFAW

    @Kay: ​
     

    When Caterpillar spent months whining about they couldn’t “find” welders (while basically campaigning for Right wing politicians) all I thought was “why don’t you train some?”

    Back when it was “an employer’s market” — meaning many more job seekers than openings, which seems to happen about every eight to ten years — it was not uncommon for a job posting to ask for qualifications A through Z, and if you only had A through X or Y, you had no chance of getting an interview. So I’m A-OK with employers feeling some pain. And in a couple of years, when it goes back to an employer’s market again, they’ll have no problem treating the applicants (and employees, of course) like shit. It would be nice if they had better long-term memory than a goldfish, but it would also be nice if I won PowerBall.

  78. 78.

    Ken

    @Baud: The software field’s version of that is companies that want people with five years experience in language X, which was only created three years ago.

  79. 79.

    oatler

    @Soprano2:

    Labor Day has crashed the phone system at Walgreen’s and it’s been a mess, with housebound relics like me scrambling to replace prescriptions that make me unwell if they are not replenished. I would politely suggest that operating a business with minimal staff becomes impractical in a disintegrating society.

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    Speaking of labor, …DW – Germany to introduce ‘green card’ to bolster workforce

    This is a little surprising to me, but only a little. Recall that Merkel let in 1M refugees come in a relatively short period of time. Lots of those people could have gone through training for those open jobs by now, but, of course, even in Germany, companies want someone else to pay to create the skilled workers they need…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  83. 83.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I got a bad feeling this weekend’s match btwn Arsenal and Manchester City is going to be postponed

  84. 84.

    geg6

    @lowtechcyclist: ​ And I have it on even better authority that she’s not. Just ask Diana…oops. Or how about Harry? Oops again. What about the victims of her younger son, the one who she protected and coddled until he couldn’t be protected or coddled any more? Hmmm…let me try this again later.​

  87. 87.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Watching BBC and there’s a really pretty police woman patrolling Buckingham Palace with a machine gun

  88. 88.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anne Laurie:

    Reagan started saluting anyways — IIRC, his excuse was being a retired military guy (he’d made ‘patriotic’ movies during WWII, and the older he got, the more actual military service he ‘remembered’ putting in).

    Wish I could remember who said, back in the 80s, that Bette Davis did more to fight WWII than Ronald Reagan (she was one of the main organizers of the Hollywood Canteen)

    @zhena gogolia: first time I saw The Queen, I thought, huh, Helen Mirren just saved the monarchy. Not least by reminding everyone about old Betty’s military service (IANA Brit, so FWIW). Mirren’s father was the son of minor White Russian nobility, he became a leftist cab driver in London, and she was a republican for most of her life. I believe she said that role made her more sympathetic to the role of the royals.

  90. 90.

    Splitting Image

    I don’t have much ill will towards the British royal family. The worst thing about the institution isn’t the people living in the palaces; it’s the lumpenproletariat who defend it because they need something to read about in the tabloids. It’s not Princess Anne’s fault that yobs and their wives are mean as snakes.

    Best wishes to Lizzie, if this is the end of the journey. Too bad she couldn’t break Pepi’s record.

  92. 92.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    I don’t know how much of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Windsor’s failings and malfeasances are attributed to Elizabeth II personally, but I guess the old sign saying “the buck stops here” works as well for Buckingham Palace as the White House (though over there I’d suppose it’d be the pound instead of the buck).

    I will say that she struck me as a better person than either of her last two Prime Ministers, and a damn sight better than America’s own Orange Man Who Would Be King. I will grant, that’s not a high bar to clear.

  93. 93.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:

    Truth. Son #1 is considering training to become a pilot. It’s expensive! And no student loans for the process, as far as I’m aware. The airlines are desperate for pilots, and there’s a wave of mandatory age-based retirements coming underway. You’d think the Invisible Hand would come up with a way for these companies to ensure adequate, trained staffing.

  94. 94.

    Elizabelle

    I am hoping that QE2 will recover her health, and live long enough to see FPOTUS indicted on numerous charges.  Too numerous to escape, no matter how long he attempts to draw the legalities out.

    In yesterday’s photos, QE2 was still carrying her black handbag, with the cane, with her skirt and sweater.

  95. 95.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bette Davis did more to fight WWII than Ronald Reagan

    Oh yeah??? Did she help liberate Dachau?

    (remembering when Reagan claimed to have been at some Nazi concentration camp when it was liberated)

  96. 96.

    Soprano2

    @SFAW: I remember hearing a story on NPR several years ago about a company trying to hire an entry-level engineer. They were using resume-screening software; it determined that not one of over 200 applicants was qualified for the position! Obviously the people who programmed the job requirements into the software were asking for the moon, sun and stars from an entry level position.

  97. 97.

    Betty Cracker

    @oatler: I hope you’re able to get your meds — that’s a scary situation.

    I’ve been involved in a couple of customer service Catch-22s recently. They weren’t nearly as consequential as yours, but one involved the transfer of a sum of money.

    After jumping through numerous hoops and confronting endless dead-ends before ultimately resolving the issues, it occurred to me that a company that really invested in good customer service could blow competitors out of the water.

    I’d be willing to pay extra, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Thanks to MBAs, it seems like we keep having to reinvent the wheel every few years after they wring every penny out of a process and it collapses.

  98. 98.

    Gin & Tonic

    I don’t much give a shit about the British monarchy, but I’d love to see a photo of Chuckie trying so damn hard to suppress saying “just hurry it up, bitch.”

  99. 99.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: You’d think the Invisible Hand would come up with a way for these companies to ensure adequate, trained staffing.

    They did, it’s called “the military.”

  100. 100.

    Tony Jay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I saw that thread and stayed well away. My motto has always been that if you can’t say something nice, it’s probably because ‘bag of shit racist twatcumber’ is a more honest appraisal, but you were all having such a good time speaking fondly of the verminous old racist I didn’t want to harsh the mellow.

    Anyhoo, it’s been memory-holed now, but there was a time in the mid-90s when the societal reputation of Lizzie Wizzy and her wombclutch of pampered chin-donors was lower than a sumo wrestler’s nappy grapes and you could almost taste the zeitgeist’s general distain for the whole Clan McFusty.

    A lot of it was down to how the Royal’s mishandled the MASSIVE MANDATED MOURNING that followed Saint Diana of Tabloidia’s ever so epochally tragic road-traffic accident, but it was more than that. It was a period when working-class accents, fashions and attitudes were very much on trend and the culture of deference to 20th century Establishment bullshit was looking very, very old fashioned.

    If that had continued, I could have seen calls for a referendum on the maintenance of the Monarchy getting louder and more mainstream by the turn of the millennium, but apparently so did the people who like all of that feudal knobpolishing, because the concerted PR effort that hit as we went into the 2000s turned all of that on its head. A deliberate, pre-planned and ultimately successful multi-media campaign to convince the nation that Posh = Cool and the lower classes were a smelly, criminal bunch of benefit cheats and dusky thugs fit only to be laughed at at blamed for all of British societies’ ills.

    Love you, Stephen Fry, but you helped this happen with your omnipresent, pleasant poshness.

    One thing is certain, however. The Family Firm isn’t going to survive in its present form. Charlie Big-Ears is too old and crabby to be sold to the Yoot, while the highly polished sheen around the Will & Kate Experience has been dented by the exile of Harry & Meghan and Andy’s Paedophile Adventures on Epstein Island. I expect the oncoming superstorm of compulsory grieving at the loss of The Nation’s Favourite Grandmother will put off another few million non-peons through overkill.

    Never know, though. It could all happen much faster if the Tories succeed in totally dismantling society. Lots of good eating on the average Windsor, and a diet of white meat isn’t even that fattening.

  102. 102.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Betty Cracker:

    it occurred to me that a company that really invested in good customer service could blow competitors out of the water.

    Who’s old enough to remember WordPerfect, a really good “word processing” program and a company that provided free, unlimited (and very good) technical support. Sure did them a lot of good.

  104. 104.

    Elizabelle

    @OzarkHillbilly:  And, in Europe, they train pilots from the ground up.  Lufthansa is famous for that.

    We could do that here.  State of the art.  We may end up doing so.

  108. 108.

    Elizabelle

    Perhaps we will see a skimmed down royals for the UK.  More in line with the northern European monarchies.

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Shamir said Reagan had told him that he had served as a photographer in a U.S. Army unit assigned to film Nazi death camps.

    Shamir said Reagan also informed him that he had saved a copy of the film because he believed that, in time, people would question what had happened. Many years later, as Shamir recalled being told, Reagan was asked by a member of his family whether the Holocaust occurred.

    “That moment I thought,” Shamir quoted Reagan as saying, “this is the time for which I saved the film, and I showed it to a group of people who couldn’t believe their eyes. From then on, I was concerned for the Jewish people.” […]

    But it is equally indisputable that Reagan never filmed a Nazi death camp. Reagan, who had a commission in the cavalry reserve, was called to active duty in April, 1942. After brief service at Fort Mason in San Francisco, he spent the war with the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps, making training films in Hollywood and living at home.

    and that was in the first term.

  111. 111.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Eunicecycle: That might have something to do with the fact that he never left the US during WWII. I think he said it after his Alzheimers had begun to assert itself. Iirc, somebody said he had done a propo film on the liberation and in his later years that had morphed into his actually having been there.

  116. 116.

    Scout211

    I posted a link and a few excerpts from this  Rolling Stone article from yesterday.  If you have a few minutes, it is well worth a read.

    Entitled, “Trump Told White House Team He Needed to Protect ‘Russiagate’ Documents”

    Quick summary (my version): The Russia collusion documents were at the core of Trump’s motivation for stealing the government’s classified documents.

    He wanted to declassify them during his term to “prove” that the “deep state” was trying to frame him. The IC community resisted because assets and methods would be compromised.  He left office with the documents to keep them from the Biden administration, fearing persecution prosecution.

    Most of us assume that those documents don’t prove that he was railroaded but the opposite, that he and his Russian handlers were guilty of collusion to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.  Trump kept those documents to keep the evidence away from the current President and DOJ.

    Read the whole thing.  It’s full of interesting details. Maybe your take will differ from mine.

  119. 119.

    Betty Cracker

    @Tony Jay:

    lower than a sumo wrestler’s nappy grapes

    Okay, that’s a keeper! :) Best of luck with the approaching maelstrom of the maudlin.

    To consider a potential silver lining for a sec, Princess Diana’s death inspired some of the most hilariously bad poetry ever publicly shared. Two decades later, I still remember this couplet:

    My mum called and said, quick, turn on the telly

    I saw that Princess Di was dead, and my legs just turned to jelly

  120. 120.

    sab

    @Gin & Tonic: I loved WordPerfect. I typed my grad school papers on it. Footnotes were so easy.

    I work seasonally, amd every spring I have to relearn MS Excel and Word because they shift all the functions around with every new version.  Fifteen minutes wasted looking how to undo the copyright symbol that comes up instead of “(c)” when I am trying to cite a tax code paragraph. Sheesh.  In forty years of typing I have not once needed to type the copyright symbol.

  121. 121.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Gin & Tonic: Huh. DougJ, of course, faster and better than my feeble efforts.

    Opinion | To insure its longterm success, England’s National Health Service must stop spending so many resources on nonagenarians and must shift towards targeted interventions to improve the health of young Britons

    by Charles, Prince of Wales
    — New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) September 8, 2022

  122. 122.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: I know they depended on them, especially post Vietnam. A whole lot of Navy and Air Force trained pilots hit the job market real quick after 1972. They all needed training for the transition to commercial air fleets, but the hard part was already done.

  123. 123.

    narya

    @Gin & Tonic: @Soprano2: @SiubhanDuinne: I’m with all of you. I LOVED it. I loathe Word. Every so often they “update” it, and all of my toolbars need to be recreated. I’m good at it, but they just make it harder and harder to do the COMMON THINGS THAT PEOPLE WANT TO DO IN A DOCUMENT.

  124. 124.

    WereBear

    @Betty Cracker:

    After jumping through numerous hoops and confronting endless dead-ends before ultimately resolving the issues, it occurred to me that a company that really invested in good customer service could blow competitors out of the water.

     

    Every time I call corporate customer service it takes me huge gobs of my own time to figure it out and tell them how to fix it.

    Not only aren’t they trained, they don’t even pretend to give anyone authority to fix anything.

  125. 125.

    Eunicecycle

    @sab: I worked at nonprofits for years and that copyright symbol used to drive me batty, too. Why was that the default?? Then digging around to find how to change it-ugh

    ETA: I was always typing 501(c)3.

  127. 127.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: True, the commercial airlines depended on the military-to-airline pipeline. Still do, to their–and our–detriment because the military isn’t producing enough to meet the need these days.

    ETA: My business school training indoctrination told me that a virtue of private business is “nimbleness,” adjusting tactics to meet emerging needs and developments. Hah. The airlines NEED pilots in a big way, but no major change in their training approach, except maybe to whine about government “failures.”

  131. 131.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    David Lammy @DavidLammy

     Incredibly concerned to hear reports from Buckingham Palace. I am praying for the Queen’s health along with the rest of the country and and millions around the world. Wishing her a full and speedy recovery.

    Lammy is a Labour MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary (I don’t know how official that is?) and unofficial UK ambassador to the O’Bros podcasts.

  132. 132.

    Layer8Problem

    @Splitting Image:  Having some Irish background and strong democratic inclination I am not predisposed toward favorable opinion of British royalty, but I can’t help but think of Noël Coward’s incarcerated crime boss in The Italian Job, with pictures of her all over the wall of his well-appointed prison cell.  And Claire Foy (no, not in The Italian Job).

  133. 133.

    Soprano2

    *sigh* Not all of the kids are alright, exhibit # 255:

    When the students of Charles Page High School returned for the school year, they were greeted by a number of other students handing out “white privilege cards” in the hallways. According to Fox23 News, the BIPOC students who were fed up with the nonsense hosted a walk out in protest of the racism.

    The report says these cards, sold on Amazon, were seen nationally but this is the first time they were spotted locally in Oklahoma. The cards read, “White Privilege Trumps Everything. Member since birth. Good thru death. Card holder, Scott Free.” One student, Fabian Gaytan, said he was handed a card and called a racial slur in the same moment. Previously, a picture of a Black student circulated Snapchat, offering a cash reward “if caught.”

  135. 135.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: A longtime carpenter buddy of mine reinvented himself as a pilot after retirement. He flew cargo. IIRC he didn’t make a whole lot of money doing it but it kept him off the couch.

  136. 136.

    Nelle

    @O. Felix Culpa: Have him move to corrupt Iowa and join the corrupt Iowa wing of the Civil Air Patrol.  They ran my husband, with over 7700 hours flying time, much of it in rough terrain in Alaska, out of CAP, because he wasn’t going along with their scheme to use govt money to train young guys with barely any flying time, even if they were lousy in the air.  They didn’t want people with experience to challenge anything.  Meanwhile, they lose people experienced in flying grid patterns in search and rescue.

  137. 137.

    Betty Cracker

    @Scout211: I read that this morning and may do a post on it later, if time permits. The thing with Trump and his sycophants is that so far, it hasn’t really mattered what the documents say. The Mueller report was damning. The Senate Intel report was damning. But Trump and his gang spun the material to their own ends.

    I remember slimy shitweasel Marco Rubio making a statement after the release of the Senate report that was just as misleading as Bill Barr’s massive pre-release lies about the Mueller report. AFAIK, there was zero media pushback.

    Maybe you’re right (if I’m interpreting you correctly) and the material Trump concealed at his Florida dump was squirreled away in the Third Lady’s panty closet because it’s so radioactive it can’t be spun. Nothing would surprise me at this point, and that would explain the obstinance.

  138. 138.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Gin & Tonic: I better one: “Queen Elizabeth’s health failing at age 96 is an indictment against national health care.”

  141. 141.

    JPL

    @Tony Jay: The one thing about the Queen is that she defended Michelle Obama and admitted that she liked her.

    Of course, Michelle is such a warm inviting person, what’s not to like.

  143. 143.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Gin & Tonic: I am that old. And I also remember the announcement that our company’s central purchasing department would henceforth for inexplicable reasons only be buying and supporting MS Word, leaving the huge number of WordPerfect users out in the breeze.

    I’ve long suspected Bill Gates genius was in how to co-opt purchasing managers.

  144. 144.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Ken: LOL. That might work as well as Tesla self-driving cars.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Flying cargo is an option under consideration. Whatever he ends up with, he wants a union job.

    @Nelle: Alas, my well brought-up offspring are not keen on Iowa or corruption. :)

  145. 145.

    sab

    @Betty Cracker: A girl can dream…so my dream is that they can implicate Melania in all this and revoke her citizenship and send her back to Slovenia.

    We had folks around here who got deported for saying rude things about the President online ( I think it was W) or for having a business card from a fellow Arab ( also during W’s term.)

  146. 146.

    Amir Khalid

    Britain has but one royal family, a smallish group that, for better or worse, gets all the public attention, all the scrutiny, all the fawning adoration, all the resentment, and all the grief that comes with it. In Malaysia, we have nine royal families, and a shitload of royals. The average Malaysian doesn’t know how many children their state’s sultan has, and the tabloid media doesn’t cover their comings and goings.

    Maybe that’s what Britain should try — having so many royals that the general public doesn’t care that much about them.

  147. 147.

    zhena gogolia

    @Layer8Problem: I seem to remember Superintendent Strange on Inspector Morse had the dashing portrait of her in a cape on his wall.
    This one. But I can’t find a picture of it on Strange’s wall. Pretty sure, though.
    https://www.rct.uk/pietro-annigoni-1910-8

    Well, that link is deceiving me. But the portrait is there, the one where she’s standing in profile in a blue cloak.
    It’s in this Wikipedia article:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Annigoni%27s_portraits_of_Elizabeth_II

  148. 148.

    Betty Cracker

    @WereBear: Yes! That is exactly what occurred in both of my situations — out of desperation, I figured out the problems myself, and then the task was to walk the chat agents through the necessary blah blah blah to effect the solutions.

    I’m always cheerful with the agents because they are human beings in most cases, and it’s not their fault the company fails to train them or give them any power to solve problems. But goddamn, it’s irritating!

  149. 149.

    J R in WV

    @Soprano2: ​
     

    With that big a crowd, and with White population at 87% I would think it would be easy to get a couple of token black citizens for the big photo op.

    Guess you have to have someone in power who will give a shit for that to happen, tho.

  151. 151.

    Geminid

    Today there is a story in Politico titled, “GOP donor pool unexpectedly shrinks as midterms near.”

    The skinny: the number of people donating through Democratic platform ActBlue rose from 2 million in the latter half of 2021 to 2.5 million the first half of this year. Republican donors giving through Win Red declined from 956,000 to 913,000

  154. 154.

    Kay

    Pregnant women should get out of Texas and get to a state that offers modern standard of care maternal medicine. It’s probably too late to transfer to a state that still allows pregnant women life saving treatment for medical emergencies once one arises. 

    Can you imagine? Houston-  a huge city with a huge and profitable medical services industry and she would be better off in a developing county.

    “In the past, Kristina’s situation would have been dealt with much earlier in pregnancy,” the doctor said. “What we’re going to see as a result of these laws is abnormal pregnancies going much beyond what used to be the standard of care.”

  155. 155.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
      Right. Especially since he insists he declassified them.

    But the story doesn’t add up, what would secrets on a countries nuclear program have to do with election interference, especially if the the country in question isn’t russia.

  156. 156.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m always cheerful with the agents because they are human beings in most cases, and it’s not their fault the company fails to train them or give them any power to solve problems.

    A Comcast agent told my sister a few weeks ago, “Thank you for being the only nice person I’ve talked to all day”. My sister said she sounded pretty sad when she said it.

  159. 159.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: I used to retweet academic job announcements because I knew grad students were looking. But I’ve stopped doing it for jobs in states that restrict abortion access. I would feel guilty sending someone there.

  160. 160.

    catclub

    @O. Felix Culpa: ​
     

    You’d think the Invisible Hand would come up with a way for these companies to ensure adequate, trained staffing.

    Patented, expensive, AI pilot helper. Terms of use say no responsibility for crashes, other sundry mistakes.

  161. 161.

    Eunicecycle

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: I imagine he had more than one motive for the things he kept.

    I was wondering, too, are the docs he had the only copies that exist? I thought these secrets were kept electronically and only printed off for him. If so, his stealing of these documents didn’t make the information go away.

  162. 162.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Paul in KY:

    Richard M. Nixon @dick_nixon22m

    Andrew will never be seen again.

    I don’t know if the real Nixon had as deep an interest in the royal family as Justin Sherin, the Bernie-supporting playwright and part-time London resident who plays the part on twitter, but it often makes me chuckle.

  163. 163.

    Geminid

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: One of the substories around the Mar-a-Loco search is that just before it, trump DOD official Kash Patel bragged that he and journalist John Solomon had been authorized to access trump’s document stash to the end of establishing the corrupt origins of the “Russiagate Hoax.” Patel and his partner backed off, though.

  165. 165.

    Layer8Problem

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  My desk was once right next to Customer Service in an insurance company call center and I got an up-close view of people whose whole job was to help people through stuff, while being monitored and evaluated for efficiency.  They were nice as hell and frankly were candidates for sainthood in my book, given some of the characters they had to deal with, people with legitimately awful problems due to disaster or company screw-up, or people who were damned well going to scream over the phone until they got what they wanted.  Pro-tip:  threatening Customer Service doesn’t get you the result you want and when you hang up the phone, you haven’t won a thing.

  167. 167.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Paul in KY: Mummy’s donkey gets the crown and boots Mummy’s favorite up to the northernmost Orkney…. Only only children get past sibling rivalries…

  168. 168.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Betty Cracker:

    We just moved. A month or so before our move, I called our internet provider (rhymes with CenturyLink) to schedule cancellation of our service as of the move date. Got a confirmation number and everything. On the day after our move, I called again to confirm cancellation, just to make sure. Good thing I did because, lo and behold, it hadn’t been done! Got another confirmation number.

    I was on autopay, and they extracted payment early this week, which was MORE for a partial period than the previous full month’s billing. Curious, no? So I called them and after negotiating their hellish call-tree system (deliberately off-putting, ya think?) and working politely with the nice, but hapless rep in an unnamed foreign country for the better part of an hour, we determined that (1) although the cancellation was on record and I was liable for only one week’s service, they had billed me for the full period; and (2) although they had on record that they had received my modem which I had mailed back, they had billed me for the modem anyway.

    Resolution: they’re snail-mailing a refund check–remember that they extracted money electronically!–which will take 30-45 days to arrive. Better than nothing, but sheesh. I do not believe that any of this is accidental. I suspect that these companies rely on people not paying attention and/or not being willing to take the time and energy to call them out on their shady practices.

    That said, I believe in being polite with the hapless reps who have to handle the results of company bullshit. It’s the right thing to do, and they’ll be more inclined to work with you.

  169. 169.

    Barbara

    @Tony Jay: That seems a bit unfair.  No fan of royalty, but the queen seems to have tried to be inclusive when given the chance, and seems unlikely to be worried that her “maker’s” skin might be darker than hers. Maybe that’s not what you meant.

  170. 170.

    Barbara

    @oldgold: Is there an appealable order?  She did issue an injunction, but was it final or “interim”?  She seems to be playing cat and mouse procedurally to avoid review.  That’s what makes me conclude that she is corrupt, through and through.

  171. 171.

    JPL

    BBC online is covering the Queen’s health situation, and the announcers’ black suits and ties, look ghoulish.   Since they haven’t moved the Queen to the hospital, I wonder if they are waiting for all the family to arrive before announcing her death.

  172. 172.

    PaulWartenberg

    As an Anglophile who grew up to the Beatles, Monty Python, Masterpiece Theater – my mum’s habit – and Shakespeare, and tons of Dr. Who, I am emotionally bereft this morning as the Queen (Whovian Number One Fan) is on her deathbed.

    Yes, I know monarchism is an outdated and racist political system, but the Queen behaved better than all that and wasn’t that bad compared to half the Prime Ministers she had to put up with (oh dear, Churchill will chew me out for ending a sentence with a preposition). The greatest regret is that the BBC had five or six solid opportunities to get her to guest-star on Dr. Who and they failed, the sodding bastards.

    /cries

  173. 173.

    PaulWartenberg

    @JPL:
    the British reporters are EXPECTED to wear black. When the Queen Mother died in 2002, there was a bloke who wore a red tie during the coverage and he was SHREDDED for “being disrespectful”.

  174. 174.

    Another Scott

    @Tony Jay: I assume that Beth is trying to hold on as long as possible, but not so long that she sees the actual crackup of the UK.  England being all by itself again, and no longer Great, would seem to be the ultimate slap at a UK monarch.

    “Here lies the last Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Norther Ireland…”

    Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  175. 175.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Geminid: ​  That statement is so dumb. It’s nothing more than evidence that Dump knew he possessed classified material and obstructed justice with false statements and defied a grand jury subpoena.
    Only the best people!​

  176. 176.

    Raoul Paste

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:   I was at the airport waiting for a scheduled 6 am flight, when the flight was cancelled.   Angry passengers lined up to talk to the agent, and when it was my turn I told her that I knew this had nothing to do with her, and was pleasant about it.

    She  gave me a free upgrade to 1st class, and access to their special lounge.  There you go

  179. 179.

    kalakal

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Mirren’s father was the son of minor White Russian nobility, he became a leftist cab driver in London

    Rather strangely Prince Phillip used to moonlight driving a cab in London. I know someone who getting a cab around 2am one night was chatting away for about 5 minutes before he realised he was talking to HRH Prind Phillip etc etc.

    Apparently Phil found it a great relief to escape from all the rigid formality and just be anonymous

  180. 180.

    Betty Cracker

    @O. Felix Culpa: How maddening! I agree 100% that it is deliberate. There are probably charts from a presentation somewhere that show how much profits go up if the company makes it so hard to recover your money that you just say fuck it…

  182. 182.

    Feathers

    @Barbara: Her husband said racist insults to the relevant people’s faces. She appears to have been too polite to ever be caught out being less than utterly gracious to anyone. However, someone raised from birth to believe than she was ordained by God to rule and that it was also God’s will that she rule over the Commonwealth (formerly the Empire) surely believes in the superiority of the white race. One thing about upper class Brits, they may know not to says nasty things about the darker races, but turn the conversation towards the Irish, and you find out the truth.

  183. 183.

    Feathers

    @Tony Jay: I’m going with Boris. If he couldn’t be her PM, no one could.

    Of course he botched it and she survived to shake the lesser Liz’s hand.

  184. 184.

    Ken

    @kalakal: Rather strangely Prince Phillip used to moonlight driving a cab in London.

    Getting a “black cab licence” requires memorizing all the streets and points of interest within six miles of the center of London. I wonder if he took the exams for that, or got a special exemption? He might also have had a different class of licence.

    EDIT: I see Jim, Foolish Literalist got there first.

  185. 185.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Feathers:

    Richard M. Nixon @dick_nixon 3h

    I hope the Queen lives another hundred years. I’m also sure she was determined not to die with Boris Johnson standing next to the casket.

  187. 187.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    The president is their commanding officer, at least in effect. He’s the one that signs the orders sending them to war, sends them to protect something. Yes he is a civilian in the regard that he is not a uniformed member of the military. But the president is in charge of the military. The SecDef reports to the president, runs the civilian side of the government/military, coordinating, passing on commands of the president. The SecDef is not in command of the military.

  188. 188.

    Tony Jay

    @Barbara:

    Nope. The heavily shielded old racist has been running a Schwarterfrei Royal Household for decades, with documents released last year exposing how people of dusky hues were specifically banned from all but the most menial backstairs posts in Windsor World. Not accidentally, either. They specifically – and secretly- had to demand exemption from Equalities and Diversity legislation to pull it off.

    Sorry. They are what they do.

  189. 189.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I actually had a MAGA say that he was waiting for the most opportune time, like right before the 2024 election. There is no way TFG would wait even one second to post documents online that proved he didn’t conspire with Russia to get elected in 2016. I figure they probably show the opposite, which is why he was so desperate to hide them from the Biden administration.

  192. 192.

    StringOnAStick

    @Soprano2: Speaking as a retired dental hygienist, my second career after geology had too many ups and downs, mostly downs, I can say that the cost of the education and the stress of the job just isn’t worth it.  Sure, it pays well for a 2 year degree but most program are now requiring a 2 year associates degree to even apply to a hygiene program, and my program in 2008 was about $5k/year for 2 years.

    The problem is the difficulty of the work and the high incidence of career-ending carpal tunnel syndrome, neck dysfunction, shoulder pain, lower back pain, etc., on top of a good number of offices being pressure cookers.  If you are doing the job up to the standards you are taught in school, you are very likely to not be able to physically do the job for a full career length.  If you are willing to be a slacker and just do the minimum, then you’ll last a lot longer being a “pick and flicker”.  I temped for a number of years and I would often ask the other RDH’s at lunch if they had to do it over again, if they would.  The vast majority said they wouldn’t, for all the reasons I mentioned.  There’s not much else you can do with the degree either, you might be able to get into sales if you have some prior experience, but that avenue is being squeezed out by on-line dental products supply companies.  I managed to do it for 11 years and have some permanent hand damage; I couldn’t have done it for much longer even if Covid hadn’t sent me running for the exits.

    Bottom line: be nice to your dental hygienist; they are doing a hard job that is physically demanding, under intense time pressure that they must do everything they can to hide, and at least a time or two a week they get a total jerk patient that makes them want to quit or a boss that looks at them as a programmable meat sack that costs too much but is a necessary part of the practice.

  193. 193.

    Ruckus

    @Anne Laurie:

    I answered a question up thread earlier this morning then was out for 3 or 400 hrs (maybe it just seems like it was that long – the dealer did cut the bill in half because of the wait) and my remembering is that the president is commander in chief, he actually does give orders to the mucky mucks. Broad strokes to be sure but still he is the person in overall charge. (Also I avoided saluting as often as possible, which is not all that difficult on a medium sized ship, and even the captain is not all that high ranked. Sure he’s an officer but some of them are in fact actually human. Some of them I’m pretty sure are not… The biggest thing is that even on a medium sized surface ship there isn’t a lot of room for 300+ humans and swinging arms.)

    My take on it is that the president really does not need to salute, to me it is a rather useless waste of time. Pomp and bullshit as I say it. Others see it as a point of respect. I always used to ask, where is my respect, there was important equipment that I was responsible for that no one else on that ship knew how to fix that was part of the navigation and armament aiming systems. Without that piece the ship was much less effective. There are always pinch points in any system, the military has a lot of them just because of the nature of the job.

  194. 194.

    dnfree

    @rikyrah: Lauren is one of my monthly donations.  She’s doing a terrific job.  I donate to her, Sean Casten, and Raja Krishnamoorthi.  I  am currently in Sean’s district, but coming into Raja’s.  I didn’t move, I got redistricted.

  195. 195.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    You can’t. You want someone properly trained, you have to start at the beginning. Not the middle, not 3/4 of the way through. You have to do the whole job. Not half ass.

    Take it from someone who has been an apprentice, hired apprentices and trained them. You start from the bottom, they have to have some level of the basics, like math if that’s needed but other than that you teach them a skill. How to do whatever, why you do whatever, why you don’t do whatever and you expect each one of them to go at their own speed. The really good one’s will likely not be the one you expect, but can be. The thing is you will always find someone who wants to do whatever but just seems to not be able to get it no matter what.

  196. 196.

    Barney

    For the record, the Daily Mail isn’t owned by Murdoch; it’s owned by Lord Rothermere, whose family has owned it for over a century (one of them wrote an article literally titled “Hurrah for the blackshirts” in the 1930s). The point being that it’s not only the Murdoch family you have to watch out for in British media.

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