spooked pic.twitter.com/s2g91FE6lg
— Dont Show Your Cat (@DontShowYourCat) October 15, 2022
Sunday night lights:
Herschel Walker backed out of tonight’s #GASenateDebate, so Raphael Warnock had to debate an empty podium.pic.twitter.com/M3ScBc4bnY
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 17, 2022
Georgia Senate debate happening now in Atlanta.
Herschel Walker's (R) podium is empty; it's just Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Chase Oliver (L).
Warnock: "It's important to point out that my opponent Herschel Walker is not here—and I think half of being a senator is showing up." pic.twitter.com/0xsAuAGsQD
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 16, 2022
You can’t believe what Herschel Walker says about himself, so you certainly can’t believe what he says about me.
— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) October 14, 2022
I’m sure that one of Warnock’s advisers has considered if the senator should file a bill that would authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to investigate whether football leads to long term cognitive impairment
— Spooky Musgrave ?? ?? ?? (@profmusgrave) October 16, 2022
“Warnock said a lot tonight but it’s more about what Walker didn’t say”
— Lyndon Tucker (@LyndonTucker) October 16, 2022
Reminder:
You have to remember that political reporters are temperamentally closer to someone like Ben Shapiro than to the median undecided voter. https://t.co/2gHw2mFWCA
— Fred from Oleksandrivka (@LesserFrederick) October 15, 2022
Beyond the politics of "he'll vote with the GOP," Walker's campaign is more evidence that too many Americans think politics is a TV show and that there are no actual consequences to joke candidacies. Walker will be assigned to committees. I mean, hell, why not Foreign Affairs! https://t.co/9Dv5NiP6Ea
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 15, 2022
The news likes Republicans because newscasters and journalists are often awful people and feel a resonating kinship with other awful people, who they find exciting and fun.
— cai (@AnneNotation) October 12, 2022
[racing away like the cat in the top video]
Touch grass, reply guy pic.twitter.com/Sxrs54ikpf
— Spooky Musgrave 🪦 🎃 👻 (@profmusgrave) October 16, 2022
narya
Good morning, all. Waiting until it gets a little bit lighter out before I head out for my run . . .
NotMax
“I’m a Walker, not a talker.”
//
Baud
The media’s first job is to normalize the GOP.
I also wonder how bad the GOP has to get before “I need something to vote for” is banished from liberal discourse.
Spanky
I am sure Mitch would put Walker on the Intelligence Committee.
Soprano2
I know some here don’t like Tom Nichols, but that tweet hits the nail on the head. Too many people are so contemptuous of the government and what it does that they treat it less seriously than a program like “The Voice”. It’s a bad trend.
Nelle
@narya: Days get shorter. Women wait inside until it is safe to run.
NotMax
Apologies for linking to something lengthy two days in a row.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. “We’re doomed,” 1958 style.
Purely coincidental the chorus in the regular theme music sound as if they’re muttering “doom, doom, doom.”
NotMax
But- but- his experience lies in Domestic Affairs.
//
narya
@Nelle: Mostly I don’t want to trip on something–there are a couple of places where the sidewalk is super uneven. I still need to get some reflective gear and lights, though.
Baud
Part of the problem is that Dems win just enough at the national level to protect people from the worst of the GOP.
suzanne
And let’s be really clear: the “agenda”, such as it is, involves nothing more than lib-owning. The cruelty is the point, and is the agenda.
NotMax
@Baud
Remember when “I am not a witch” was the zenith of crazitude? Good times.
//
Baud
@Baud:
The last two times the GOP controlled the federal government for more than two years ended on the Great Depression and the Great Recession.
Baud
@NotMax:
We lament how bad the red states have gotten, but I don’t think we appreciate how good the blue states have gotten.
We do a bad job selling our story to people.
brantl
This was probably a better debate performance for Walker than if he had actually appeared.
eclare
@Soprano2: When do you go to Hawaii? I think it’s soon.
OzarkHillbilly
The people in Walker’s campaign should be brought up on charges of abuse of the mentally impaired.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@narya: It’s really dark in the mornings now. It feels like that happened suddenly, even though I know how it works.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
When you lose mama —
Herschel Walker’s Mother Combats Senate Candidate’s Recent Claims His Grandmother Was ‘Full-Blood Cherokee’
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
IIRC, the rate of change isn’t uniform. It speeds up as you get closer to the equinox.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Tories in Disarray
Liz Truss is getting pummeled in today’s papers (photo). Even the papers that supporter hate her. Sitting MP Tories are on every telly screaming Liz must go.
And itt was all caused by …. [checks notes] … cutting taxes on the super rich which triggered a selloff in the stock market, triggered a spike in interest rates, and triggered a currency collapse, forcing her to grudgingly flip-flop on every campaign promise.
lowtechcyclist
Since nobody’s posted it yet:
Tom Lehrer: Be Prepared (studio solo) (1953) – YouTube
Matt McIrvin
As we know from recent experience, “impeached” and “removed from office” are quite different things. I do think it’s remarkable that they never impeached Obama for anything, around 2011 say–it’s more restraint than I would have expected.
(They played silly games with the debt ceiling instead, which is actually more dangerous. That’s the thing to really worry about going forward; with the House, the Republicans will have the power to wreck the country, with the probable aim of destroying Biden’s presidency and winning in 2024, by forcing a debt default.)
lowtechcyclist
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
If even the financial markets are going, “Run away! Run awaaaay!!” at the thought of a tax cut for the rich, you know the whole notion is way past its sell-by date.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax:I didn’t think it possible, but he just might be an even worse liar than my ex.
gene108
@Baud:
That’s very profound and insightful.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Baud:
gotta admire consistency
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@NotMax:
This never made any sense. If he was 40% Indian then how in good conscience could he play for the Cowboys?
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
I think part of it is that the culture of grievance and payback didn’t quite dominate the GOP then the way it does now. There were still things they were about (like tax cuts and deregulation) besides lashing out at everyone they didn’t like.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
DrDaveChemist
@Baud: Derivatives of sinusoidal functions for the win.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@DrDaveChemist:
Probably explains why my sinuses act up this time of year.
brendancalling
I’m too tired for the roller coaster, but I guess we’re back to “oh my god how can we be losing to these schmucks?” Or am I reading this post incorrectly?
Suzanne
My coffeemaker broke yesterday and I had to get my ass to the train station by 7AM without coffee. DAFUQ.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@lowtechcyclist:
Shocker! Tom Lehrer and Mark Russell are both still alive and in their 90s.
Seein he was a Marine, Russell must have been the original Private Joker.
Suzanne
Oh BTW can we do a PGH or Philly meetup soon? Y’all must want to experience my bad looks and terrible personality in meatspace.
Baud
@Suzanne: I blame Biden.
There go two miscreants
@Baud: For your amusement, look at someplace like Fairbanks, where they are losing almost 7 minutes a day of daylight right now!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Suzanne:
you mean, in real life you’re Gritty (photo) Wow – I love your work.
lowtechcyclist
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
I knew Tom Lehrer was still with us. Mark Russell dropped off my radar decades ago; his brand of topical humor had less staying power, IMHO, than Lehrer’s did.
ETA: Lehrer would have to be in his 90s. That clip of “Be Prepared” is from 1953; I didn’t realize until I pulled it up that that song is even older than I am!
Baud
@There go two miscreants: If those trends continue, Fairbanks will never see daylight again. #InternetAnalysis
Ned F,
@Baud: And at the “elite liberal” NY TImes this morning, we have,
Republicans Gain Edge as Voters Worry About Economy, Times/Siena Poll Finds
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/17/us/politics/republicans-economy-nyt-siena-poll.html
NotMax
@Suzanne
Couple of quick swigs of Kahlua to prime the engine.
;)
Do peak hours commuter trains no longer have club cars? Asking for a friend.
Suzanne
@NotMax: I’m on Amtrak, not a commuter train.
Apparently Amtrak is doubling the train service between Pittsburgh and Philly because of the infrastructure bill. #thanksbiden
Now if they could just make it FASTER.
ETA AND I WILL NOTE that the cafe car is not yet open and so I haven’t even had terrible train coffee yet.
Baud
@Ned F,:
Fixed.
Geminid
Anybody who relies on coffee and an electric maker should keep a small box of those one-cup instant coffee tubes. As one jackal commented earlier this year, machine failure can be catastrophic, or at least seem so.
This is easy for meet to say. Ever since I broke two French press devices within days I’ve relied on instant. It’s easy and very inexpensive, maybe cheap. I’ll get an eight packet box of Cafe Bustelo as a treat.
lowtechcyclist
@Ned F,:
How is it that, after the past >40 years, anyone still believes the GQP might handle the economy halfway well?
Not to mention, they’ll probably try to wreck the whole thing via debt default if they win control of the House. Mint the goddamn coin!
Suzanne
@Geminid: We have an AeroPress as backup but I didn’t have time to do it before getting to the train station. New coffeemaker arrives on Wednesday. I have given Mr. Suzanne all of the deets so he can unbox while I am away.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Oooo, Cafe Bustelo! I am also fond of Café du Monde. Ever tried it?
Baud
@lowtechcyclist: I believe Treasury already said minting a coin will not work.
I’m sure I’m in the minority, but I find these Internet quick fixes, while fun, help prevent Republicans from being held accountable for their actions. YMMV.
Spanky
@Suzanne: Thank the sucky airlines for the uptick in rail interest. And they could, of course, make it a high-speed line. Just takes money. And a sure customer base, which isn’t there now, but could certainly grow once the trip to Philly became fast and easy.
And at the least, you and geg6 should get together. Wouldn’t want to be a maga within mocking range though.
Ken
I like the candidate whose picture is next to the Times’ “Tories hold secret talks on crowning new leader” headline, but I worry that he won’t get along with Larry the Number 10 cat.
MC
If no backlash to the overturning of Roe shows up in the midterms, I swear to gosh I’m done with politics.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@There go two miscreants: Does that go on all the way to the solstice? I thought the change was slower then.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: That Cafe du Monde chicory coffee is delicious with a beignet. CARBS.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
I’ve got backups of backups; coffee is critical. When my previous Cuisinart grind-and-brew coffeemaker started showing its age last year, I ordered a replacement, but didn’t take it out of the box until this summer when I decided the old one was getting a bit too grouchy. The old one was still working, just less than ideally, and I cleaned it out and it’s sitting in the box that the new one came in, out of the way on a shelf in the basement.
Also, when I was still working in an office, back in the Before Times, I had a small electric coffeemaker there. Now it’s sitting in a box of all the stuff I had to bring home. But I’d have to go out and buy ground coffee for that one.
Ken
@Baud: There is (of course) an XKCD for that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid: Yes, but it’s disgusting.
My building has free coffee outside the cafe, but it’s so bad, we only drink it when, like Suzanne, our own machine breaks. There’s a bag of syrup (I think) the hot water goes through to make the coffee.
Baud
@MC: Welcome, fellow normie!
JML
@lowtechcyclist: No, the reason Biden gets impeached if the GOP takes control of the House is because TFG got impeached (x2) and the current GOP move is “anything you do to my guy we do to yours, period”. Obama didn’t get nailed by this because they didn’t have the revenge dynamic in place yet.
Republican Derangement Syndrome is at an epic high again: it’s all about grievance and vengeance, entitlement and rage. Policy? there is no GOP policy (other than banning abortion and pwning the libs, apparently). Actually grounds for impeachment? They don’t need any, just screaming “Hunter Biden” 27 thousand times while the bobos at Politico nod sagely and suggest that an impeachment might be the way to get a bi-partisan solution to the idea of democrats having power.
It’s psychotic, and the only way it’s been sustainable is through trash like FauxNews, which spins the lies in ways that make the ill-informed think there’s something bad out there that needs to be stopped or someone is going to ruin their life.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Oh heck yeah!
NotMax
@Geminid
Have an all metal (who wants to fiddle with fragile glass before coffee?) French press unit in reserve just in case should ever need to Stanley Tweedle it but have never yet had to put it into service.
Geminid
@Suzanne: The Infrastructure Bill included $60 billion for AMTRAK. According to AMTRAK’s chief, this will exceed total investment in the system since its founding, and help expand a service map that has remained static even as the nation added 130 million residents. This is an underrated piece of legislation, and the money for AMTRAK is only one of many progressive features.
I think the circumstances of the Infrastructure bill’s passage created unwarranted animus towards it. At the time, its “decoupling” from the BBB bill was very controversial among Democrats.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: Reminiscent of Carlin’s Hippy Dippy Weatherman.
“Tonight’s forecast: Dark. With widely scattered light by morning.”
narya
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Right there with you. I try to time the runs so I’m catching the sunrise along the lake when I am on the way back (it’s light before the actual sunrise, of course). For the walks, I don’t mind leaving earlier and walking more in the dark. There are always a ton of dog walkers out, too.
@Suzanne: Doubling the service! That will be nice.
Speaking of Tom Lehrer, two of my professors from grad school helped him package his album back in the day.
Steve in the ATL
@Nelle: sage advice, especially if you live in Memphis
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Mark Russell was the dollar-store imitation Lehrer. He always seemed to be pulling his punches, taking a PBS-safe “oh those darn politicians; it’s all a silly game” stance. Lehrer was fundamentally angry.
Ken
@Suzanne: Hmm… I wonder if Amtrak has any policy against plugging a coffee maker into your seat outlet? Or an electric skillet and toaster, so you could make a nice BLT for your lunch….
(For those who haven’t taken a rail trip recently, the coach cars all have 110V outlets, and about three times as much leg room as airplane seats.)
rikyrah
@Baud:
You tell the truth
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
Don’t get it twisted. Only one political party is doing this. There is no both sides to this
Geoduck
This is why I never started drinking coffee. I didn’t want to turn into a freaking addict.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Coffee + a treat (usually biscotti) in the afternoon is my one real indulgence. Right now, I’m all about those pumpkin spice biscotti.
rikyrah
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
So not sorry for her. 😒
Would love a TonyJay commentary about this
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Soprano2: yup too many people are contemptuous of “the government “ right up until they need something (unemployment, Medicare, CHIP/SCHIP, SS Disability) then suddenly they are demanding someone save/fix whatever program they are in need of. Because their need is “legitimate “. Amazing /s
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Always brings a smile imagining a TV weatherquin announcing the forecast thusly:
“Tomorrow will be mostly brillig.”
Suzanne
@Geoduck: I didn’t want to turn into a freaking addict, either, but here we are.
I don’t smoke (literally not ever, not even once), rarely if ever drink, watch my macros and all that shit, don’t use drugs, STAY HYDRATED!!!, follow a skincare regimen, blah blah blah. Let me have this one thing.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid:
Yes. I think it’s far more important than it got credit for being. One problem with actually funding infrastructure improvements is that the changes happen over a long period of time, so you don’t get political credit for them over the long run either–your successors who might have pushed to kill the whole thing get to cut the ribbon, while you got stuck with the “delays and overruns/waste, fraud and abuse/beleaguered project” stories that accumulate around anything big.
Baud
@rikyrah:
I agree with you when it comes to “party.” However, I do think a lot of liberal/progressive/lefty voices have contributed to the cynical attitude about government over the years.
IMHO, when people are told they can’t trust anything, they will default to trusting their tribe.
Eyeroller
@lowtechcyclist: As I’ve said before, most people are unable to think abstractly. They don’t understand policy to the extent they even know it exists. They don’t connect it with outcomes. And if they are worried or afraid the reaction is to punish whoever is in power, whether it does any good or not. It’s not just the USA where this happens.
Geminid
@Geoduck: You are fortunate. I’ve got a bean on my back.
Time to boil more water!
NotMax
@Ken
It ain’t the volts, it’s the amps the circuit and outlet is rated for. Coffeemaker would almost certainly draw beyond capacity and frizzle the framistan, as it were.
Tony G
@lowtechcyclist:
Tom Lehrer’s songs are still very funny. I never did become familiar with Mark Russell.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Does anything result in Republicans being held accountable for their actions? TFG and crew racked up a body count in the hundreds of thousands by politicizing the pandemic, and while it’s true voters kicked dickwidget out of office, it was fairly close, and the GOP overperformed expectations in 2020.
Then, they attempted a fucking coup, yet the GOP is expected to at least take back the House in 2022 and possibly the Senate too. If that doesn’t happen, there’s reason to hope.
If it does, I think I’ll have to reluctantly conclude the majority of Americans are right-wing assholes (or else so indifferent to the fate of their fellow citizens that they might as well be), and we’ll eventually get the right-wing asshole fascist leader a majority of our fellow citizens yearn for.
Tony G
@Geoduck: I can quit coffee any time I want to! (Right after my fifth cup this morning.)
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Hadn’t heard about that; I’ll take your word for it. But if push comes to shove, I’d say: try it, and put the onus on them to go to court and make the argument that the coin shouldn’t be honored.
Well, I suppose we could let them crash the economy, but somehow I’d rather let them escape accountability by preventing that.
I don’t know if you’d consider it a quick fix, but there’s also Section 4 of the 14th Amendment which starts off, “The validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned.” ISTM that the President could simply say, “I am Constitutionally required to do nothing that would undermine the validity of the public debt, and that trumps any statute. I have directed the Treasury to continue paying interest on all U.S. debt; there will be no default.”
And on this one, if the GQP takes him to court, and the Bogus Scotus ultimately rules against Biden, it’s time for Biden to simply say, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact. The Supreme Court has joined the anti-American Republican Party in demanding that we default on the debt and destroy our economy. I have directed the Department of the Treasury to continue to honor our debt obligations.”
(The Supreme Court has ruled, now let them enforce it.)
I’m sure there’s plenty of disagreement about how serious an issue would have to be for the President to tell the Supreme Court to go fuck itself. I wouldn’t suggest doing it for anything less than this, but this is the point at which I’d say it must be done.
Quiltingfool
New Cat update: Yesterday morning New Kitty wasn’t in her corner in the living room…nope, she was behind the toilet in the bathroom! She did enjoy pets, though.
I went in the sewing room, left the door open, and she managed to sneak in and hide under one of the tables. She stayed there all day. When I called it quits for the day, I carefully got her out of her hiding place and she booked it to her safe corner. Where we visited her to give her pets and attention.
Lo and behold, she ventured out! She ate and drank (thank goodness!) used the scratching post and occasionally wandered around the room. She went from defensive low-to-the-ground walking to a more confident stroll. She positioned herself so she could watch me and Mr Q. And I think she really wanted to get close enough for pets.
We’ll see what happens today. Mr. Q works out of town all week so she may wonder where the nice man who chats with her went!
NotMax
@Suzanne
In the quest for symmetry, if the trains from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia have been doubled, have trains running the other way been halved?
:)
Tony G
@Matt McIrvin: Many voters have the memory and cognitive skills of fruit flies. “Get your government hands off my Medicare!”
Steeplejack
@Geminid:
I like the Trader Joe’s instant coffee that comes in a jar. That’s my go-to after exhaustive testing. Starbucks Via packets were a distant second. I’ll have to check out the Café Bustelo.
Spanky
@NotMax: Well, that’s silly. Brillig is a time of day, the time you start broiling your dinner. Everyone knows this.
Soprano2
@eclare: Yes, we leave tomorrow morning and come back on Saturday, airlines willing! I’m looking forward to seeing stepson’s friends again – they knew him better than we did.
Matt McIrvin
You may have noticed I’ve been relatively quiet aside from the COVID threads lately. It’s because my thoughts about politics right now are so dark and despairing that anything I try to write ends up being really dumb, too low-quality to post.
I am a crap activist because I get sent into this mental place by any prospect of loss (which is something any activist has to be able to take) and it’s just paralyzing. I know people post a lot about how action fends off despair but it really doesn’t seem to work that way for me–trying to do something just underscores what a pointless, chickenshit thing my feeble actions are. It’s not the fantasy hero chopping off the head of the evil King with his mighty broadsword, right?
I think the fact that every election cycle feels like Armageddon these days is part of the problem–you can’t ever lose if it’s always Armageddon; you have to win 100% or all is lost, and that’s an unrealistic demand you will never meet.
Another big, big problem is that election season in America coincides with the time of waning sunlight, which for me is emotionally like wading through peanut butter. I think I deal better with the absolute dark dead of winter than when the days are getting noticeably shorter. (Maybe in part because this is also the rainy season around here.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid: I had to switch to one daily cup of half-caff because caffeine raises my blood pressure. But I can feel it hitting my system first thing in the morning. It does make me understand addiction a little better.
I’ve been in a funk lately, maybe because a back injury and the eye surgery made it hard for me to exercise. Or maybe it’s the half-caff!
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
It’s trips in this range that make me wish we had high-speed rail in the U.S. A close friend of mine lives in Pittsburgh, but it’s a pain-in-the-neck drive from the DC area, and it’s just short enough of a trip that you don’t gain much by flying, not to mention flying costs a bit more. So we don’t see each other very often. Decent rail service between here and there would be huge.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: The economy was in pretty good shape in 2018, yet we took back the House in a wave election. We also took back Congress in 2006 before the severity of the financial meltdown hit most people. So political accountability has happened in the past.
Covid is tough because it would have been bad even with good management, so you’re talking about degree of harm. And the measured needed to prevent Covid put a burden on people, even if decent people did it for the greater good.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
In my darker moments (increasingly common) I wonder whether calling the GQP’s bluff on the debt ceiling and letting them trigger a default could be (a) definitively pinned on them and (b) unwound without fatal damage. Probably not, and probably dangerous to explore.
lowtechcyclist
@JML:
Yeah, that was what I was saying. Now they’re gonna do payback, even if their excuses are transparently absurd.
Steeplejack
@MC:
Unfortunately, politics won’t be done with you.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: Makes me think again about claiming my dual Canadian/US citizenship. My brother and sister have both done it already. I’m holding back because my son asked me not to. He’s interviewed for security clearance every 6 months, and they always ask if any close family member is a dual citizen. It’s hard for me to believe this one would matter. It’s Canada, for god’s sake.
Btw, my son is outraged over TFG’s handling of classified information. Like many here, he says he’d be in jail if he did that. He went into work every day of the pandemic because he had to work on a secure computer.
Tony G
@Eyeroller: Yup; and for many people politics is an identity that they adopt when they are very young, and then never change. My mother (long since deceased) was a wonderful person who always voted for Democratic Party candidates — largely because her father had supported FDR in the thirties and forties.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@lowtechcyclist: Exactly, Clinton was payback for Nixon.
lowtechcyclist
@Geoduck:
For me, it was when I had my first office job, and had to be functional in the mornings, like it or not. There were plenty of times I couldn’t have done that without caffeine.
Soprano2
@Baud: Boy that’s the truth, especially when it comes to NPR. If it’s a day ending in “y”, they’re doing a story about how people are being hurt by inflation.
OzarkHillbilly
They’ve been called on their bluff in the past and they blinked. Past performance is no guarantee of future results tho.
Tazj
@lowtechcyclist: They are going to do that, take a hostage to demand cuts to Medicare and Social Security if they gain control of Congress. It has been publicized in a few places but I haven’t seen wide coverage of this in the media. The Republicans haven’t had to answer for what they’ll do to combat inflation.All they do is blame Biden for putting too much money in circulation but they have no good answers themselves.
I’ve also had enough of the whining about inflation from people who are doing relatively well. Sorry it was better that people were able to get some relief, go back to work and get paid more.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Today show too. It’s a constant drumbeat, beyond what it deserves as a legitimate issue.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: At home when we make coffee we use French Market coffee and chicory. We’ve been drinking it for years because it doesn’t get bitter even after hours of being in the coffeepot. Plus, less caffeine if you care about that kind of thing.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
Agreed. In the west, everything is too far apart. But there’s so much opportunity in the eastern part of the country for great connectivity. And Amtrak is much better than flying!
Baud
@Tazj:
I actually think they’ll try to attach an anti-trans rider. Something that seems minor to most voters who would be harmed by default.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
That’s what the Metaverse is for, silly.
// :)
@Steeplejack/a>
Picture the Law of Unintended Consequences, with an infinite number of clauses.
Spanky
@lowtechcyclist: There’s a rails-to-trails bike trail up the C&O canal and on to Pittsburgh. I wonder if the infrastructure package has a plan for trails-to-rails?
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Several years ago I got a Keurig for the office, because they could make pots of coffee; the reason I was struggling for years to get people to pay for cups of coffee was that my boss wanted us to have pots of coffee for meetings. Now, I don’t have to worry about it at all!! Ironically a couple of years after I did that we got a new boss, and he let the guys spend city money on a coffeemaker and coffee, which my old boss would never allow. I was so mad…..
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
One will come bubbling out eventually, but they keep on doing more crazy shit whenever I look away or pop the loo.
Very briefly –
The plan appears to be to maintain Truss as a figurehead/scapegoat so the Basic Evil Tory Bastard wings of the Party can cockblock the Hard Right Tory neo-Fascist wing and pull the Party back from the edge of implosion – without – needing another leadership election.
That suits Truss (who couldn’t stand in it) and the bulk of the Party’s MPs (who clearly don’t trust the membership not to fuck it up again) but it’s a very risky tightrope walk that relies heavily on no one (be it the Media or other Tories) pointing out how anti-democratic and arrogant a strategy that is, and it’s obvious that certain factions (looking at you Flobalobites) aren’t going to play ball.
If it – does – get to the point where this weird ‘constitutional monarch’ version of leadership they’ve forced on Truss collapses from its own inadequacies, then they’ll have to have a leadership election, which means a change in Party rules, which once again hits all the anti-democratic buffers.
Then, unless they want to see some total bampot like Braverman or Badenoch get through to the final two and sail in on membership votes, the other factions will have to find a way to ensure that the final two candidates are people they can live with. How they do that is a mystery to me.
In fact, the only person who could garner enough support from enough factions and the membership to win a leadership contest… well, he’s the disgraced sickbag who they only just forced out of office because he was dragging their electoral chances down just by virtue of being exactly who he was when they first elected him.
The only thing you can be sure of is that the vast majority of Tory MPs will do whatever is necessary to avoid a General Election, convinced as they are that they’d lose it and a ton of them would be punished for their many and multifold sins.
They need at least a year of boring, non-chaotic nothingness to put clear blue water between them and the view the electorate currently holds of their Party… but how they get that is another mystery that I’m glad I don’t have to solve.
All in all it’s an ouroboros of disaster, with the Tory Party eating itself while simultaneously choking the life out of the country.
Plus l’change, etc.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist:
Oh, I think it totally did. What stopped them was more that somewhere beneath the myths and conspiracy bullshit they told themselves, they knew that impeaching the astonishingly scandal-free first Black President over nothing more substantial than “we don’t like you” actually would politically backfire on them. They’d taken heat even for impeaching Bill Clinton, who had actually handed them some grounds to do it.
Steeplejack
@Quiltingfool:
Good progress! You must be relieved.
Spanky
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Exactly. It will impact his clearance not one whit. Now if it was Chinese or Russian or Iraqi … (And lots of folks with those entanglements are cleared anyway.)
Go forth and apply.
Soprano2
I think you’re right about this, because it seems to me that few Democrats are running on the benefits of this bill, which are huge for the average person. They know the mention of it makes a certain part of the base angry, so they just avoid mentioning it at all.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Man, if true, talk about why we can’t have nice things.
NotMax
@Suzanne
People forget how wide open those storied wide open spaces are. Even unto today, some 80% of the population of the U.S. resides east of the 98th west meridian. And that’s with including populous California.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: I didn’t mean to say there is, I only mentioned that I know some people here don’t like Nichols because he used to be a Republican. I’m not so sure there aren’t people on the far left who do the same thing, too. Regardless, it’s a bad trend for people to see the government as a reality show.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: You’re right about COVID being unique and complex, but it seems like the very worst actors get rewarded, even when there’s hard data that proves their massive fuck-ups cost lives. Thinking of DeSantis here — the post-vaccine rollout death rate is stratospheric here compared to blue states, and yet, there’s a persistent belief that he “won” the fucking pandemic.
As for political accountability, yeah, we get some occasionally as you noted, but it seems so feeble in comparison to what the Orcs gain. I mean, Obama got “a shellacking” as he called for trying to fix the fucked-up healthcare system — far worse than the payback Bush and Trump got for actions that were actively harmful to the country. WTF?
It’s just maddening. Someone here, maybe you, said we’d have to win three elections in a row to force the GOP to rethink its strategy. That rings true to me, but I feel Matt at #93’s Armageddon fatigue. Jesus Christ, I’m sick of holding the wolf off my neck. I get that there’s no choice in the matter — the stakes are perfectly clear to me — but it is a miserable way to live.
catclub
@lowtechcyclist: I guess they will impeach Biden for Supporting Ukraine against Russia.
Steeplejack
@lowtechcyclist:
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Soprano2: If you expect fellow office workers to pay for coffee from a communal pot, you’ve got trouble
Soprano2
@Baud: I think they’ve been told that this is one way to reach the average viewer who is struggling right now, but they overdo it.
catclub
@Tony Jay:
The competing theory is lose right now and have Labour in power during the worst of the coming recession and inflation and energy shortages.
If the Tories stay in power through 2024 they could get booted out for a generation. So the question is tactics ( Individuals don’t want to be booted out) versus strategy.
NotMax
@Baud
Given pride of place mention (although always couched as “the bipartisan infrastructure bill”) in ads for Brian Schatz. Who is in no peril of losing re-election in any case.
MC
@Steeplejack: don’t worry I know, I’m transgender
Soprano2
I think it’s because for too many in the press “won” means “decided to make things seem normal for people as soon as he could”, and lots of people wrongly interpreted that as “covid is OK now, see everything it back to normal!” even when things weren’t anywhere near normal. I submit that if people had been falling down dead on the sidewalk rather than dying out of sight in hospitals people’s reaction would have been much different.
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Tell me about it, I charged $0.25 for coffee and still couldn’t get them to pay! I put hundreds of dollars out of my own pocket into that fund to pay for coffee, all so my boss could have pots of coffee for meetings.
Steeplejack
@Tony Jay:
Boris Johnson seems to have vanished. Have there been any sightings lately?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know how this November will turn out, much less after that. The one thing that gives me hope is that, IMHO, the current Dem party is the most focused, and most morally righteous, it has ever been. I see and hear more voices out there that sound more like BJ voices than I have in the past. In some sense, I think we are still in the process of paying for past sins where we took each other for granted. Will it last, and will it be enough, who knows? But so many societies, today and in the past, have had it so much worse that I feel like I owe it to people doing the work in this country to not indulge in despair.
MC
@Matt McIrvin: I feel you. Every single word.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Deep into prep for a searing, in depth sit down dissecting his term in office conducted by Piers Morgan?
//
suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed, with both of you.
The thing is…..even a victory is usually just holding ground. It’s not usually a significant advance. And throwing this much emotional (and temporal, financial, physical, etc.) energy at just surviving is very draining.
TS
@lowtechcyclist:
Wish someone would explain that to the current Australian Government – supposedly on the side of the workers & still talking about tax cuts for the wealthy. They really want to be a single term government.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Yesterday, we hung out with our building’s group of secret Democrats. One person keeps a list of Ds she’s discovered and said we are now up to 31. About 300 people live in this building, so I don’t know how hopeful that is, but it’s higher than I realized. They come out if you give them half a chance because they’re so appalled. They can no longer live and let live
Baud
@catclub:
That strategy actually makes a lot of sense. The only risk is that, I believe, Labour would probably have a full five years to set things right before having to face the voters again.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The problem with “lose now and let the other side take the hit for the SUCK” is that I can’t think of a single time in political history when someone wasn’t saying it was a clever strategy. I think actually benefiting from it over the long haul would require omniscience.
Betty
@NotMax: Thank you for sharing that. Huxley really understood the danger while Wallace seemed genuinely skeptical. We seniors have watched it all unfold just as Huxley feared.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Because the media tells them the GOP will handle the economy well!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: While I don’t actually think the GOP has actually adopted a strategy of trying to lose, it has benefited from our every-two-year election cycle, which usually isn’t enough time for Dems to clean up their messes.
In alternative history speculation, I wonder how much FDR benefited from the fact that the Great Depression happened early in Hoover’s term. The country had three years to internalize how bad the GOP was at running the economy.
cmorenc
@brantl:
Because the media standard for Walker’s performance is: he did well because he was only merely terrible, but not as really, quite sincerely terrible as we thought he possibly might have been.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: The situation in New York City in spring 2020 was as close to “piles of bodies in the street” as COVID got. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the people I know who personally decided on “permanent house arrest, forever if necessary” live there.
But that’s one of the most liberal Democratic places in America, and that contingent fact conditioned everyone’s responses.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: All true, and thanks for the reminder. :
@suzanne: YES!
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I sometimes need to remind myself too. :-)
jonas
@MC:
“Sure, my right to bodily autonomy has been stripped away by a radical court appointed by Republicans, but have you seen the price of milk lately?”
Tony Jay
@catclub:
That’s the rub. The Tory Party itself could do with being out of the firing line so the News Media can turn all of their guns on Starmer’s mid-1990s tribute act, but that would mean hurling hundreds of Tory MPs onto the reject pile and each one of them has a veto on that.
These are all problems without any easy solution, except that somehow, in some as yet unclear way, the Left were definitely to blame. That’s something both Party establishments can agree on.
@Steeplejack:
Last I heard he was over your side of the Pond being paid a cool £300,000 for two flobalobbing speeches to Insurance firms. Never let it be said that crime doesn’t pay.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Back during the Bush years I recall some economists putting out a paper saying that Republican economic policies were optimized for getting the President reelected because they’d goose the economy by reelection time but the big catastrophe always took slightly more than four years to happen.
I don’t know if it’s that predictable, but there certainly seemed to be enough resilience in the US economy that the crisis that took down Trump was something else.
But the thing is, a similar pattern has applied to Democratic Presidents for the past couple of cycles. They come in as Mr. Fixit during a crisis, which isn’t close to cleaned up by midterm time, so their party loses big in the first midterm, but even with an obstructive Congress, things are just good enough by reelection time that they actually pull through. And then the voters sort of get bored or distracted by scare stories four years later and vote the clowns back in to wreck everything. (Temperamentally, the median-weighted-for-constitutional-inequities voter* seems to really want Republicans in charge–they just don’t like any of the consequences of Republicans being in charge.)
* OK, let’s just say “median white voter” for short
kalakal
@Baud: It won’t happen because a couple of 100 Tory MPs aren’t going to vote to put themselves out of a job. As it is they get another 2 years salary, pension contributions ( they get a very good pension) and a lot of attendant perks eg heavily subsidised mortgages etc. At worst ( from the Tory POV) they get another 2 years at the trough and time to line up directorships & ‘consultancy’ jobs, at best the horse may learn to talk
jonas
@Baud:
I think that’s exactly right. Every damn time Democrats have to come in to clean up a GOP mess, 2 years is never enough and then we’re back where we started.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Honestly, this is why I can scrape together a modicum of sympathy for those who just end up on #teamnothingmattersanymore and opt out of participation in civic/political life. I don’t agree with that choice, but I understand that it is not wholly irrational. This shit is grueling.
Steeplejack
@Tony Jay:
Jaysus.
zhena gogolia
Talking to a Russian friend yesterday, she was shocked that we have an election this fall and that it might mean the end of support for Ukraine.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: The other possible reaction to long-term political frustration is to start advocating violence. There’s much less of this on our side than on the other side, but we do have a small left fringe that thinks we should be more violent than we are, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t see the emotional appeal. Often we frame these stories personally, not as matters of huge impersonal forces but in terms of villains who get named and shamed. It’s so easy to think this is all about individual villains. It can seem like it’d fix everything to just put a bullet in that one guy’s head… Of course, ethical considerations aside, it’s more than just the one guy and the system behind him will bite back. (And maybe then you start thinking about killing a whole lot of people.)
I try to back off from that kind of thought by thinking about systems. But the down side is that systems can just seem impossible to beat.
Geminid
@Soprano2: After the bill was passed there was a lot of credit taken by Democrats for projects in their districts. I remember Tim Ryan and Val Demings doing this, and when President Biden flew to Kansas City to talk up mass transit enhancements the bill would fund, Sharice Davids greeted him and local media reported on the improvements they announced.
I checked out the Twitter timelines of Progressive Caucus members Raskin (MD), Escobar (TX), Neguse (CO), and Porter (CA) the day after the bill was passed. They all touted projects in their districts that the bill would fund. Mr. Neguse described investments to be made in Colorado’s firefighting assets.
I think candidates still talk up the Infrastructure bill, but other issues may overshadow it. I know that Senator Warnock highlights the benefits of the CHIPS+ Bill, another large infrastructure investment program.
Booger
@Geminid: How do you break a French press? They have like ONE moving part.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Fiscally responsible! Unlike those tax and spend DEMs…
zhena gogolia
Marcus Flowers is fine.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. The less-nasty-but-still-nasty version of that rhetoric is “let the red states secede”, which I also sometimes think will end up being the least-bad of only a few really bad options.
Since the pandemic started, I have started considering leaving the country (with varying degrees of seriousness depending on the day), and fantasizing about buying a chunk of land somewhere fairly far out and away from others. It is all about fatigue with my fellow Americans.
frosty
@Suzanne: I’ve been a Luzianne drinker since forever. Condolences for your coffee maker and an awful morning racing for the train.
A meetup in PGH would be fun. I could piggyback it on a visit to Spawn the Elder (to steal a phrase).
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: “Let the red states secede” is smarty-pants white liberal for “deciding to care about the rights of Black people around about 1964 was a big mistake, fuck ’em”.
Geminid
@Booger: These had glass bodies. They’re fairly strong, but I didn’t let that stop me!
Baud
@Suzanne:
Dropping out of politics is fine. People who constantly talk about how politics and voting are useless are helping the GOP.
hueyplong
@Matt McIrvin: You could see it that way or you could see it as nostalgia for “how it all worked out” in 1877. Six one, half dozen the other….
Tazj
@MC: There is a NY Times poll out this morning showing a huge shift among young women to Republicans because of the economy. I think there must be problems with this poll but if there aren’t what the hell can I do? They are idiots if they vote for Republicans and/or our media has failed them.
I only have one vote and a small amount of money that can be devoted to politics. As much as I resent the hell out of these people and feel like saying “well good luck with that,” I won’t give anyone the satisfaction of giving up.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: Republicans did the same, even if they did vote against it.
Tony G
@Suzanne: The whole problem with the “let the red states secede” rhetoric is that every “red state” has significant “blue” (often majority non-white) areas, and vice-versa. (Plenty of largely white right-wing portions of New Jersey, for example.) The separation would not be clean or peaceful. To use a nineties analogy (appropriate or not) it would be more like Bosnia than Slovenia. Unfortunately, the fascists and non-fascists in the United States are stuck with each other for the foreseeable future.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t see the point of advocating violence, especially with just the prospect of electoral failure. The lefties doing this may have an intellectual and emotional need to root for Democratic failure. A lot of people on the Left do, although the more responsible ones do not.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t think it’s that, at least in intent if not in effect. I think “let the red states secede” is more like when people finally go no-contact with an abusive family member.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Lots of people live in those states who are innocent of any abuse.
Baud
@Tazj:
Hard to imagine gun humpers voting Dem because of the economy.
We’ll see.
Suzanne
@Tony G: I agree with you. I am also scared of what happens if/when we stay together. I am almost always afraid in public spaces that I’m going to get shot. And the GOP/MAGA party would love that.
Thats why I don’t really think we have any “good” plausible options. Even the best-case plausible future I envision for this country is pretty bad.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: Yes, absolutely. That’s 100% true.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Some Republicans who did not vote for the bill have claimed credit for projects in their districts. I think Democrats have been diligent in pointing out the lies.
Republican Don Bacon (NE) did vote for the bill. Trump castigated him for this, but Bacon’s primary opponent got little traction with the issue. People like these projects, and local media gives them good coverage.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Really. If you draw a line from Minneapolis down to KC and then down to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, really everything from that line on east should be honeycombed with passenger rail routes.
I don’t think we should totally give up on the west, though: with genuine high-speed rail (200 mph away from the cities), many routes would be way faster than driving, and competitive with flying. Take the LA-Phoenix-Las Vegas triangle. The LA-Phoenix side of the triangle is ~360 miles, but the other two sides are under 300. Allowing for slower speeds through the ‘burbs, maybe 2 hours between Las Vegas and each of the other two cities, maybe closer to 3 between LA and Phoenix.
Beats driving or flying, and if you’re somewhere around Barstow when the drugs begin to take hold, at least you’re not driving.
Layer8Problem
Fair warning: this is a screed.
A half-hour ago my partner took one look at that NY Times poll article, went off into full despair “there’s no hope”-ville, and is now watching TV in the bedroom. The partner’s always had that streak, but this is as bad as I’ve seen it, in a person who is politically on the side of the good guys. I don’t know how to help; everything comes out of my mouth sounding like it only adds up to “there there.”
I’ve always been on the upbeat side, tending towards anger and a strong desire to make a Three Stoogesesque eyepoke to MAGAts and Republicans that would probably get me painfully damaged, and I lean towards stand and fight, but this is affecting someone I love. I don’t necessarily believe in the polls, or the Times’ framing of everything as Advantage: Republicans.
We have to wade for two more weeks of this shit, toward an indefinite result that could go painfully bad (I believe we’ll hold the Senate and hope to god the House goes our way), with polls that for even the trustworthy ones I wonder if they got it right, and media never coming out and saying This One Party Right Here is the cause of your rage and fear, actively putting a stick in the spokes.
I’d characterize myself as along @Matt McIrvin‘s lines these days, a crappy activist. I expect if we lose the House debt ceiling crap will happen; I don’t think giving anything to hostage takers is useful and I would totally support Biden doing @lowtechcyclist‘s constitutional play of “can’t undermine the public debt, sorry.” “Hey, at least the contradictions will be heightened!” doesn’t give me hope. @Baud‘s statement is solid, sets right with me, and does gives me hope.
Anybody got an Al-Anon for the despair-adjacent?
ETA: Damn all auto-fill text editors and too-clever-by-half formatting.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I don’t fantasize about leaving the country, even though I’m in the fraction of Americans who likely really could manage it. I certainly tried to entertain the thought, would be fine with my kid leaving the country, but there’s something about that fantasy that doesn’t appeal at all. It’s weird because I’ve visited plenty of other countries and they’re nice places, often nicer than here in many ways. They’re just not my country. I would always in some sense be the foreigner who ran away there, even in Canada.
I think part of it is just that the idea seems indulgent, when I live in a deep blue Northeastern state that is about as safe from reactionary politics as we get around here (by no means 100%, but these things are relative). An affectation where I’d try to wash my hands of gross Americanism, and ignore the consequences back home of my choosing to duck out.
I keep thinking back to a couple of things. One is the way that, during the Bush years, I’d occasionally hear people in other countries complaining that they didn’t get a vote in US elections even though the consequences of those elections certainly DID affect them. There’s a sense of responsibility I get from that.
The other was a thing that happened on my very first trip overseas, which was unusual. It was this international youth science conference in London in 1986, and one of the burning political issues of the time was over relations with South Africa’s apartheid government. There was actually a South African contingent at this conference… and it was mixed-race.
A bunch of us were having a conversation with one of the black South African kids on a Tube train, deep under the earth. I remember how carefully he looked around to his right and left before saying anything. At one point somebody, either a British or an American white kid, asked the “why don’t you just leave?” question. I wouldn’t have asked that, because I knew how practically hard it would have been for anyone in his situation to do that. But that wasn’t his reply–what he said was something along the lines of: “It’s home. You don’t just leave your home because you’re oppressed. You fight to make things better.”
Of course, leaving is always an option in extremis. Often, people leave because they’re in physical danger and I’d never blame them for that. But it’s not something one chooses lightly. And his inclinations were apparently correct–the apartheid state went down just a few years later, far far earlier than any one of us at that conference would have predicted
Anyway, I think that if that kid wasn’t entertaining the thought of getting the hell out of South Africa in 1986, I hardly have the right.
Steeplejack
Oddly enough, this thread has made me slightly more optimistic. I’ve been in a pessimistic mood about the election and the daily news of GQP malfeasance, and last night I talked to an acquaintance who faults the Democrats for “not getting their message out.” (He is a well-intentioned but semi-uninformed normie.) He was specifically mad at Katie Hobbs, who is running for governor in Arizona against Kari Lake, because she “didn’t show up for a debate.” I said that I didn’t think it was a debate, it was a campaign appearance, and it was delayed because Lake planted herself in the audience to cause a scene. And I added that Hobbs is getting death threats on a daily basis from Lake’s crazy supporters. Sorry if she’s not out there shmoozing the public all day every day. 🙄
Anyway, it’s slightly heartening to be reminded that it’s not just me feeling the dark cloud—and to be reminded that we have to keep on keeping on and not give in to the darkness.
ETA: My hope for the election is that there is an underrated tsunami of rage about Dobbs and abortion restrictions that will maim the Republicans. But I am nervous about that.
jonas
@Tazj: If it’s the same poll I saw, the shift is really among middle-aged men and women — i.e. people who work and pay rent/mortgages and have kids. Higher prices are killing those people and they’re pissed. I get that. Handing power back to a bunch of crazed fascists who have absolutely no idea what to do about the problem other than shit on immigrants and wave guns around might not be the best solution, however.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: GOP Bad Actions: Decency, trying to act reasonably, working with the opposition.
Exhibits in favor of my argument: George W. Bush. Passed the bank bailout in order to save Republican from immediate economic collapse. Reward: unpersonned by the GOP.
Willard “Mittens” Romney: Conceded election as normal. Unpersonned by the GOP. Then voted for impeachment of DJT. Reward: Essentially locked out of national party.
Republican voters absolutely hold their politicians accountable for their actions…just not in the way we’d think.
trollhattan
Don’t see how this turns out well, but you go, First Lady Jill. Just remember they have an agenda and audience of Cro-Magnons (who, themselves were arguably more talented).
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
I have no idea, but that trail is on my bucket list for after I retire. (Fourteen more months!)
One year I biked the C&O from Georgetown out to Leesburg one day, taking White’s Ferry across the Potomac, then the next day I biked back via the W&OD trail. Saw an old friend in Leesburg, stopped in Shirlington for lunch on the way back. That was a lot of fun.
zhena gogolia
@jonas: There seems to be mass amnesia about what the state of the economy was in 2020.
Tazj
@Tazj: Sorry I have a correction. The shift was among independent women voters not young women voters, that’s quite different. I still think the shift is too large not to be suspect but who knows.
There go two miscreants
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It does not. The change is most rapid at the equinoxes, going to zero and then reversing direction at the solstices.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: I remember at the MO state fair, a rogues gallery of GOPs lined up to take credit for the rural broadband initiative. Everyone from the Gov, to all the GOP US reps and IIrc Blunt (but not Hawley), not that any of them had anything to do with it. Folks pointed and laughed for about a week and then forgot about it. I’d bet donuts to dollars all of their websites still claim credit for it and their constituents buy it because “DEMs don’t care about us country folk.”
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Mr. Suzanne’s best friend and his wife and kids left the US last year. They went to Ireland for what was supposed to be a year-long writing program for his wife, and they decided not to come back. Why not? Because even with him having a law degree and working full-time, they’re living in a trailer. It’s just not worth it.
Thats what I mean when I say that even the best-case scenario is fairly grim. Again, even the wins — which are important and yes, we should absolutely be shrieking about them — are just tinkering around the edges of a really significant decline in quality of life in this country.
Geminid
@Layer8Problem: It can be hard to shake off pessimism. But I think that while people can justifiably see these midterms as critical, I am consoled a longer term view: the 2024 election will be critical!!!
Seriously, if the Republicans take one or both houses next month (and I don’t think they’ll take either, although the House majority will be on a knife edge), Democrats will just have to limit damage as they work towards 2024. Harry Truman campaigned against a “do nothing Congress” in 1948 and won, and Joe Biden can do the same in 2024.
cain
@JML:
Please.. they would have impeached him regardless. Their entire schtick is that Democratic politicians are all crooks while they are sooooo patriotic and sooooo about freedom.
They’ll impeach and if they could convict they would.
Matt McIrvin
@Layer8Problem: One thing about Biden–at this stage in his career, I think he has zero chance of taking a debt-ceiling crisis as an opportunity to meet the Republicans halfway for some messed-up grand bargain. He’s been in the room before.
I think the way he’s handled the Ukraine crisis is actually amazing–a refusal to escalate beyond strict limits combined with a refusal to cave under literally apocalyptic threat. You’re giving up apparent strategic advantage by being that predictable, but when it comes to nuclear brinksmanship where your top goal is to not make the world blow up, being predictable is actually what you want. It takes nerves of steel.
Bring the same energy to a debt-ceiling fight with House yahoos and, well, you might not win but it’s about as well as you can do. Stand firm, make it clear that you don’t think the people threatening to blow it all up if they don’t get their demands are being serious. With the understanding that you could still lose, but it won’t be on you.
cain
@Baud:
They are worthless. They whine all the time, borderline racist, and they don’t show up for vote. They rather burn it all down and give rise to some fantasy land govt.
Baud
@cain:
Congrats on # 193.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Another global crash and Great Recession will bring prices down in a hurry. For a couple of months, at least.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: The debt ceiling might be raised substantially and with no drama in December, during the “lame duck” session.
These sessions sometimes produce significant legislation. The repeal of the military’s prohibition on service by openly gay people was done in the 2010 lame duck session.
schrodingers_cat
@Booger: Some are made of glass and glass can break.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin: Defaulting on the national debt will take care of that.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I broke a plastic one by dropping it. Cheap plastic and it just shattered.
jonas
@zhena gogolia: It was fantastic! I was getting all these government checks while working from home! Sure, toilet paper supplies were a little tight. And something about a pandemic. But man was gas cheap!
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: You need a back-up drip cone and box of filters. You can find them in the supermarket’s coffe aisle. Ask me how I know.
zhena gogolia
@jonas: Businesses were failing, people had to apply for loans to meet their payrolls, people were losing their jobs, others had to work in dangerous conditions . . . But things were fabulous under TFG!
zhena gogolia
The Moar You Know
@Booger: too fine a grind, too much grounds. I’ve had one shatter in my hand.
The key is it requires any force at all, you screwed up and need to start over.
Matt McIrvin
I suppose another category of reaction is what you might call the LGM Front-Pager track: transition from trying to make anything better to just displaying how smart you are by insisting on the hopelessness of everything (and occasionally railing about how much you hate the commenters). But that’s not useful either.
Nelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: i get lists of registered D’s in my neighborhood and the next one over in order to distribute info and absentee ballot requests. On one street, out of 13 houses, only two are not registered D. Average age of people (age is on the info sheet) is 75. It is my favorite street, but on mine, we have 5 D’s across the street from 5 D’s. It is nice to know that there are sympatico people around.
This is the reddist, whitest place I’ve ever lived. And even in the whiteness, we have a lot of immigrants (formerly Bosnian refugees), at least 10 % of the neighborhood.
I take a very long view, though at my age, the long view is, in all reality, getting shorter all the time. But I like to build dialog and community.i realized that neighbors gave gifts of food four times in 10 days (an apple pie, cookies, quiche!) so I made an apple cake with caramel sauce and trotted it to neighbors, R and D alike. Trying to heal the nation one plate at a time.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Technically I could leave if I want. I have deep roots in India and belong to the WASP equivalent demographic there. I also have close relatives in anglophone countries like Canada and even some other western and Scandinavian countries. I have the skills that are transferable.
I uprooted myself entirely when I was a young student and I know how much one gives up doing that. Besides why should I leave I belong here. And citizenship is a privilege I have earned.
I gave this a lot of thought in 2016 when the Orange Error was running. I was distraught and bereft when he was elected and did consider moving to Canada for good quite seriously but in the end decided to apply for citizenship in Jan 2017.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Cole is a front pager at LGM?
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: A more cynical person would say that Democrats fucked up bigtime by allowing those aid checks to go out with Trump’s signature–we should have let the suffering get much, much worse and our electoral gains would have been far more substantial.
But this isn’t how liberals can or should think. It’s a political problem.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I have to admit watching you become a citizen and having thoughts ranging from “My God, why?” to “well, that’s going all-in”. Took some courage.
schrodingers_cat
Hopelessness and whining at the slightest inconvenience is a mark of privilege. That’s why I find white people whining the most over here and upper caste Indians doing so in India.
Those to whom much is given always expect even more. And whine if they are not the center of the universe.
Matt McIrvin
(…many, many recipients thought the government aid checks were coming out of Donald Trump’s personal bank account!!)
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom: The technology part of the coffeemaker is what broke. The backup in the AeroPress. No technology in an AeroPress!
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Issues of undue credit aside, rural broadband is widely popular. When Virginia 7th CD Representative Abigail Spanberger debated her Republican opponent in 2020, they disagreed about every issue except expanding rural broadband service.
The only people I’ve seen talk against the rural broadband funding in the Infrastructure bill were some Democrats (but not office holders). They made a resentful “do not cast pearls before swine” argument.
This view is based on stereotyping of country folk, and it overlooks all the Black people who live in rural areas from Delaware to east Texas who vote for Democrats. Not to mention the underserved urban housing projects and working class apartment complexes whose residents will benefit from expanded broadband.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks! Some of it was also inertia, after having moved elebenty (9 times) in my life I hate moving. Moving to another country requires a special brand of crazy.
jonas
Most aren’t. But what they are are navel-gazers who don’t know anything about history, politics, or current events, are cynical about “government” (in a “what have the Romans ever done for us!?” kind of way) and live paycheck-to-paycheck and so really only care about their financial precariousness in any given month. The effect is largely the same, however, because demagogues feed on that shit and liberal democrats are just starting to tie their shoes by the time the fascists have lapped them four times with lies and propaganda.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: A thing that was really not clear to me, say, 30 years ago, and is now, is how little functional difference there is between being flatly cynical about “government” and blindly trusting it to do the right thing.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Good point.
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat:
And I find this a lazy line of argument, for two reasons:
1) So what if it is? I don’t believe that anyone is required to be self-sacrificing. It is reasonable to have some expectations for one’s quality of life.
2) “The slightest inconvenience” is a funny way to refer to some pretty bad shit. As someone who has actually gotten an abortion in this country, and wants to protect that right for others, I would call it more than “the slightest inconvenience”. I would call years of debt slavery more than a slight inconvenience. I would consider fear of violence against you for being gay/trans in public space more than a slight inconvenience. I consider fear of gun violence and fear of intentionally-spread potentially deadly illness to be more than a slight inconvenience.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: He ‘won’ in the instance of killing alot of people and still being in office and a viable (ick) Pres contender.
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: I think most of the “things were fabulous under Trump” nostalgia is about the time just before COVID hit. They don’t blame Trump for COVID because they just see it as an externally imposed crisis that could have happened to anybody–and there’s a good chance they blame anything they didn’t like about the response on Anthony Fauci, who refused to follow the Leader.
Also, there’s the key fact that during Trump’s last year in office, the COVID pandemic was mostly a blue-state problem–Red America was chugging along as normal like nothing was happening. By the time it hit the red states really hard, Biden was in office.
Layer8Problem
@Geminid: “and I don’t think they’ll take either, although the House majority will be on a knife edge”
Thanks for that useful ray of hope, and let me take the opportunity to thank you for your commentary in this here blog. You do the homework, so that’s as good an assessment as I’ve seen. And agreed, in 2024 the stakes are for the Republic.
@Matt McIrvin:
Biden won’t treat with hostage-takers, Republican or Russian (a distinction without a difference?) I don’t know how he keeps his cool. May he never crack.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I think the commenter was not referring to the issues you raise, and is as aware of them as anyone else here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne:
Is hopelessness going to make anything better?
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: I have had plastic shatter on me too. It was a Glad ware container that I had kept in the freezer.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: The thing is, most of the people who even have a serious option of leaving the US are relatively privileged. Your friend is, however, a clear exception.
sdhays
@cain: There’s no point in predicting (if I’m going to predict, I say they won’t impeach President Biden because they won’t control Congress), but IF they do take the House, I don’t think it’s a forgone conclusion that they will impeach him. I’m skeptical that there’s enough of a work ethic in the Republican caucus to support actually going through with it.
Sure, it takes up time from all of the non-legislating they would do, but it’s much easier to just go on Fox Snooze and “prosecute” him there.
cain
@Baud: thankyou — I didn’t realize it was 193! :D
Matt McIrvin
@sdhays: I think that unless the Republicans can get enough of a Senate supermajority to convict Biden (and/or Harris) in an impeachment trial–which they will not–there’s no point in being afraid of whether they will impeach him, or even caring much. It would be a completely empty media circus.
schrodingers_cat
Rise of RWNJs is a global phenomena, the tide is turning slowly against that though.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Hopelessness doesn’t improve the situation, but I can consider it with some fucking sympathy, and extend that person some grace, instead of assuming the worst about them. Geez.
leeleeFL
@Baud: Tom Lehrer was the Saviour of my teen-age anti-establishment years! Vatican Rag was hummed through many church services, and Alma Mahler and her husband’s made me soooo happy.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, it took several months for Covid to get bad here, and by then there were already rebellions against Covid measures. I was impressed by our city council, health department and school board because they were firm in their insistence on good Covid measures even when the crazies were screaming “open up”. It would have been easy for them to cave.
I think there were two reasons for so much resistance to Covid measures; 1) the early reports that mostly black and brown people were dying from it; of course that was because it hit large cities worse early, but it still made conservative white people resentful that they were cancelling everything to protect “those people” from serious illness and death and 2) most of the death happened out of sight in hospitals, where even loved ones couldn’t be at the bedside to see how truly horrific the deaths were. Testimonies of nurses and doctors just weren’t enough to move people to understand how truly awful the covid deaths were; too many people were complacent before vaccines that it was “just a cold” because that’s mostly what they actually saw.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: Hopelessness helps nothing, but not everyone has the strength or the mental wiring. We can’t just jettison them.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: No, my friend isn’t really an exception. He would tell you (accurately) that he’s pretty privileged, and that he still doesn’t have great prospects for success/financial stability in the US. That’s the thing that scares me about the future for this country. Even the best realistic outcome is not what I would consider good for most. We do not have rising prosperity.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid:
Where my thoughts go is more the fear that a civil war, which would be a war of extermination in every town and village, is coming one way or another–that one of these days some of my neighbors are going to be coming to kill me and my family–and maybe we need to be stockpiling weapons and preparing for it.
(And when I express this publicly, the response is often: “Welcome to being Black.” They’ve had to live and go about their business under that kind of threat since the beginning of America and I’m not sure entirely how.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sdhays: I think hearings on Hunter Biden are more likely
ETA: Well crap. A person I sat next to for about an hour yesterday has tested positive. She was sniffly but tested negative yesterday. I guess I have to wait for a few days to see if Mr DAW or I develop symptoms
Soprano2
@Geminid: That’s good to know; since I don’t have any Democratic representation here except my state rep I don’t get much exposure to what they’re actually saying, so I mostly go on what I hear reported on the news. I rarely hear anything on the news about the infrastructure bill anymore; it’s as if it never happened as far as the press is concerned.
Soprano2
Deleted strange duplicate comment
MC
I already cast my midterm ballot. As long as I am able to vote, I will.
I’m transgender and disabled. If the GOP completely take over and I can’t get out, I may be toast. This thought looms over me constantly.
Geminid
@Ohio Mom: Paper towels can fill in for filters, in a pinch. They’re sloppy, though.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Word.
What’s that canard? “The pessimists fled Poland for other countries, the optimists went to Auschwitz”? Clarity is valuable.
Suzanne
@MC: My eldest Spawn is trans. I think about it, too, all the time.
Baud
NYT link.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Yeah but. It expresses itself in my head as “maybe I need to get a gun.” And what the hell would I do with a gun? I know the statistics, those things are more likely to kill me or mine than anyone else. It’s just the mirror image of the right-wing gun nut’s fantasy of shooting down some home invaders.
It seems like we need organization more than we need guns. But the organizations maybe should think about this possibility out on the margins.
Ksmiami
@Suzanne: Omnes is high on his own supply
patrick II
The polls must have been pretty bad for Herschel after the first debate. Either that or Herschel had used up all of his memorized answers by the end of the first debate and would had to actually think of something in the second — and we can’t have that.
Ksmiami
@Matt McIrvin: We’re smarter than the meal team 6 guys. drones, household chemicals and bombs will make short work of these idiots if it comes to that. I’m not going to start anything, but if someone comes after us, I’ll finish them.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: The two friends I have who own firearms-and more than one- have defence against political and cultural enemies in mind. They both are lesbians and have raised Black children. Stephanie and Debbie come from working class backgrounds, and they have pick up trucks, so maybe they fit another stereotype.
I guess civil violence is a possibility for the future, but I think we are not near that point. I live in a 60-40 Republican, rural and exurban county. There are plenty of guys with firearms, but right now I just don’t see them raiding liberal neighborhoods. At least not during huntin’ season!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: US has come out better than most major world economies post-COVID. $ is stronger than ever. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades. Joe Biden is getting stuff done with the slimmest of Congressional majorities. But you wouldn’t know it watching our news media or reading the BJ comment section for that matter.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Again, agree. I have more the Atticus Finch gun fantasy, but I can fully recognize it as fantasy and not an ordering principle of my life.
Honestly, organization is great, but, like, what does that look like? That’s where my skills are just not helpful. I mean, apart from my awesome check-writing skills. (I have lovely penmanship.) I am glad I no longer live in what is about to become Kari Lake-land, and my neighborhood and city are very blue, but there are crazy people not far away!
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, man, are these names bringing back memories! Cafe Bustelo was my go-to coffee when I lived in Chicago and was so broke I shouldn’t even have been thinking about buying coffee. Cafe du Monde was a taste I acquired later. I’d still be up for both of these if I hadn’t got so spoiled by the fact that we have a local coffee roastery to hand…
catclub
@Baud:
 
Exactly! Obama lost his House majority in 2010. He had much less than 2 years with a 60 vote senate majority. Because he was in charge when the stock market and economy hit bottom.
catclub
@schrodingers_cat:
I think this is mostly a function of war in Ukraine and super high energy prices killing the European economies.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: There’s mass amnesia about why gas prices were so low then, too.
Soprano2
You should hear my DIL talk about how white people are so discriminated against in Hawaii by the native people, as if white people have an absolute right not to be discriminated against anywhere. This is the woman who totally screwed us on our trip to Hawaii. I can’t wait to talk to the airlines about how those credits are actually mine even though her name was on the tickets because she never paid me for them.
topclimber
@Geminid: Dead thread question: Do the Dems still have one shotg left at reconciliation? I remember reading that Schumer had timed things so they had 3 shots and think they have used two.
If so, a lame ducks solution would be feasible. We still have the House and 50 Senate votes. (I assume Manchema would not risk hurting their billionaire backers with a debt default).
NotMax
@Soprano2
Do be sure to bring a working pen on board the plane with you in order to fill out the state mandated form that will be handed out. Flight crew will NOT lend you one (well, maybe in 1st class).
grubert
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: comparing Lehrer to Mark Russell is like comparing the voice of a Pavarotti to Peewee Herman’s.
They inhabit the same universe, that’s about it.
To get some sense of my disdain, I call Stephanie Miller’s “Rocky Mountain Mike” a “Mark Russell with karoke tracks.” Both have all the wit of a raw potato.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: My stepkids have good jobs with good pay for the first time in their working lives. Amd they thank Biden.
Origuy
I go to Daiso, the Japanese dollar store that has expanded into the US, and get packets of coffee with individual filters that fold out. You hook them onto the side of the mug and pour hot water through them. You get 5 packets for under $2. I keep a kettle in my bathroom so I don’t have to go downstairs.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: Good because lefties on blogs and Twitter never do. RWNJs don’t either but then I have zero expectations of them.
Geminid
@topclimber: I don’t know about reconciliation. Maybe Democrats held one inteserve for this purpose. And I think 50 Senators plus the VP can make a filibuster carveout for this purpose. But it’s also possible Schimer can find 10 Republicans who’ll vote for a debt ceiling raise if they think a radical House majority will force default in the next Congress.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: The first time I ever heard anyone complaining about “reverse racism” it was a college student’s lament about the troubles of a haole in Hawaii. I recall the same person was really bothered by how black students got a free ride from affirmative action.
2liberal
for those who must have a caffeine jolt you can get caffeine pills for that for emergencies. my experience is that they stick in the wrong passage if swallowed whole so i let them disintegrate in the mouth.