Seriously, too many of our fellow Americans think they’re living in a video game where you can always hit the ‘reboot’ button and start over…
median voters! pic.twitter.com/JPvVzO3zDs
— umichvoter ?????? (@umichvoter) October 19, 2022
Thank Murphy the Trickster God for President Biden:
Doocy: What’s your top domestic issue? Inflation or abortion?
Biden: All important. Unlike you, there’s no one thing. There’s multiple issues and they’re all important. pic.twitter.com/Fvh8fhWiqT— Acyn (@Acyn) October 19, 2022
There are positive signs!
it might be that 'nothing matters' is bullshit https://t.co/py6ks8YM1v
— a spooky archaeologist and enthusiast of The Queue (@merovingians) October 18, 2022
Oklahoma native, now living in Oregon:
oklahoma has always, as long as i can remember, been a pretty rough state, and it’s amazing that this is the first time i have ever seen it come up in an oklahoma political debate.
— ??GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE?? (@golikehellmachi) October 20, 2022
"The fact that Governor Stitt thinks he can command tribal leaders to his office by simply declaring on live television speaks volumes of why he has been a failure at state, tribal relations." 2/2
— Kaelan Deese (@KaelanDC) October 20, 2022
holy fucking shit, the people who told us not to worry about Roe are now telling us not to worry about Social Security and Medicare. excuse me but I'm going to fucking worry. worry and vote
— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) October 18, 2022
This project seems a little… elementary… but it’s not intended for high-info news consumers:
Is it legit? Five steps for vetting a news source https://t.co/AXliSGXbi4 @NewsLitProject
— Indira Lakshmanan (@Indira_L) October 18, 2022
Baud
I’m already pretty normie these days, but I might have to avoid all news media until after the election. It’s all free ads for the GOP now.
danielx
@Baud:
That makes you someone with normal concern for your mental health.
Baud
@danielx:
Seriously, I would like to be well informed, but who has such low self esteem that they are willing to sit through propaganda directed against us to get news?
I still find it astonishing that there are so few media investors who view mainstream Dems as a potential market.
Princess
I’m worried about democracy. But from what I can see about Americans, there’s going to be no way of persuading them we have a problem if they don’t already think so.
we’re better off focusing on the economy. What’s the GOP plan? Means testing Social Security. That should hit a nerve with all those latter-day Gen X Alex Keatons. We’ll be the gang who paid in the most and got out the least. Etc etc.
Baud
Rotating tag nominee.
p.a.
Normies will trust the plans* of a political party with more than half of its supporters thinking the earth is 6,000 years old?!?! That depth of ignorance can’t be localized to one topic, it has to pervade everything they think.
*making the over-generous assumption they have plans beside: NO!
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Are you more of a normie now than you were two years ago? I don’t feel like I’ve made as much progress as I’d like since I wrote this post about it after the 2020 election.
What’s your secret? In retrospect, I think I got this wrong in that post:
For me, at least, it’s been impossible to focus on it less unless I can also find a way to care less. The two are too interrelated for that to make sense. I mean, I can shut up about issues and let things pass, which I try to do more often, but I’m no less depressed and angry about what’s happening.
OzarkHillbilly
As the immortal Tom Lehrer said, “Don’t drink the water and don’t breath the air.”
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Bupalos
I’m not sure I’d call that “is it legit” thing “elementary” as much as just seeming almost worthlessly reflexive.
“How do you check if a source you searched up online is legit? Step 1: do an online search to see if it’s legit…”
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@rikyrah: Good morning!
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Baud: It’s the presumption that Repubs and wealthy contrarians are where the money is to be made (either by getting it from them directly OR by influencing them to continue voting for a party that will NEVER require them to pay their fair share).
Given trends over the course of my lifetime (and especially the grifting that TRE45ON has gotten/continues to get away with)…
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly:
Tom Lehrer is still alive, so yes.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
More than in 2000, but I’ve fallen off the wagon a little over the last few months.
I still let things emotionally affect me, which makes me mad because I’m in a pretty privileged position when it comes to being affected by politics compared to most people. Me getting upset and angry helps no one who will actually be harmed by election outcomes, and at a macro level, I often find that our side is hamstrung by our emotional response to adversities. But it’s tough to change.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️:
I get that’s why the right has a lot of media that serves them. But there’s a lot of collective wealth on the liberal side too. You would think some savvy capitalist could figure out how to tap that market.
OzarkHillbilly
@catclub: I know. Kinda hard to believe isn’t it?
Tdjr
@Betty Cracker: It’s hard not to care when so much of it affects our lives. That’s why I can’t understand how people can not pay attention.
Baud
@Baud: 2000 = 2020
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Baud: Yeah, that’s a mystery. I mean, why wouldn’t at least ONE of them take a run at this? I don’t really get it either.
Fair Economist
Democracy is important for EVERY problem because without it the people in power have no reason to fix anything.
Pass it on.
mozzerb
News from the UK: Liz Truss resigns as Prime Minister …
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/oct/20/uk-politics-live-liz-truss-tories-turmoil-suella-braverman-resigns-fracking
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
I don’t know that I can say I’m MORE engaged – I’m ALWAYS engaged, because I feel like I’m in the crosshairs EVERY election. May because I’ve lived my LIFE in those crosshairs. For those of you who are feeling it now, welcome to the club, I guess. It sucks, and it’s a club no one WANTS to join exactly, but here we are.
Baud
@mozzerb: Oh wow.
Scout211
Reposting from last night.
This court case is crucial for saving our democracy. This is good news, I hope:
An interesting new development in Moore v Harper, due to be argued at SCOTUS on December 7th. newyorker.com
JPL
Who wants to be Prime Minister?
Quinerly
PM Liz Truss resigns
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@mozzerb: Wow. Not even a whole Friedman unit.
Four Scaramuccis though.
Can’t wait for Tony Jay to weigh in on this.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The broadcast news media at this point are mostly aimed at old people. Despite what this blog’s commentariat might seem to imply, most seniors are right-wingers.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: I’ve spent less time reading politics online in the last month. I do what I can and then go do something else because, otherwise, I get too upset.
When TFG was in office, I had to quit watching msnbc in the evenings or I couldn’t sleep
WereBear
@Baud: To them, it’s all lifestyle.
OzarkHillbilly
RIP, Eclipse.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Bless Liz Truss’s heart
Baud
Did Truss say yesterday that she was a fighter, not a quitter?
Another flipflop.
WereBear
We all know people who made all their major decisions that way. Got a job, got married, had children… all without thinking much about it.
It’s just what you did. Voting wasn’t something they did…
They don’t see cause and effect with fully developed minds when it comes to politics. Unless it’s so big and ugly it constantly appears and they have to confront it.
It seems to me that they react properly, then. Which is why I am somewhat calm with the trends of the last few months.
Denali
I guess the lettuce won.
Baud
@Denali:
The lettuce always wins.
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: Public transport helps everyone!
kalakal
Baud – there’s a job opening for you!
Trans Atlantic travel required
Lapassionara
@Matt McIrvin: have the old people noticed the Republican plan to ax Social Security and Medicare? That would be a complete nightmare scenario.
Brachiator
@mozzerb:
I am just waking up to this news. I thought she was a fighter, not a quitter.
How many prime ministers does it make this week?
Also, I think the news is just in time for some of the UK satirical shows that tape their episodes on Thursday evening.
Baud
@kalakal:
I’ll change my nym to Baudy McBaudface! I’ll be a shoe in!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I just flipped on BBC to check if my TV was bugged, and saw the report. Then I saw that she’d said some nonsense about a “low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantages of the freedoms of Brexit.”
How can they not get it at this point? I know that you can’t get someone to understand something if their paycheck (or power, in this case) depends on not understanding it, but I’m more and more convinced that the end result of the Brexit vote was that everybody lost, but not everybody understood it at the time. How much longer will it take them to realize that if they want to get out of the hole they’ve dug themselves, first they’ve got to stop digging?
Well, in the words of the immortal Canadian-Angeleno philosopher Francis Drebin, the cows have come home to roost
(Edited to add: at the rate we’re going, King Charles is going to have more Prime Ministers than his mother did.)
Lapassionara
@Lapassionara: PS. Yesterday, somehow, I found myself in a thread from 2021, one of Steve from Mendocino (sp?) photography threads. In it, he answered a question I had asked, then asked me to let him know that I had read his answer. So Steve, if you are out there, I read your answer. Many thanks.
Matt McIrvin
@Lapassionara: Bite your tongue! Why, the Washington Post said that was four Pinocchios just a couple of weeks ago!
Other MJS
Are the social media buttons new? Very helpful!
Doug R
“golikehellmachi” blocked me for some reason. Must have heard I lived in Eugene and Corvallis as a baby.
sdhays
@Quinerly: Bye, Felicia.
OzarkHillbilly
No, you won’t see any of these pictures on anti abortion placards.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL:
Baud! (of course)
Good grief. What a tire, sorry, tyre fire on the other side of the pond.
Xantar
@mozzerb: she lasted five Scaramuccis!
Baud
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Is it common in Greece for the government to bug TVs?
Elizabelle
@Denali: LOL. That was my first thought, too.
The lettuce lasted longer.
The lettuce abided.
mrmoshpotato
@Xantar: Had she even finished unpacking?
Geminid
(Repeating from yesterday’s “Walk and chew gum” post):
In an election discussion on Twitter, a person asked about the prospects of Democrats retaining control of the House. Someone from the progressive organizing site Way to Win answered:
That made me think of the good work Watergirl is doing here. She credited everyone here who has helped.
Leto
I doubt Lettuce Liz unpacked everything, so it should make her removal that much quicker. What a shitshow all conservatives are putting on.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Baud:
Not since the junta was thrown out in ’73. This was less a surveillance bug than a computer bug. Smart TVs, feh. Like Mr. Scott once said, the more complicated they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.
Baud
@Geminid: Yes! To all of that, especially WaterGirl. But watching the media (and probably parts of social media) will just bring people down IMHO. You are made of sterner stuff, which I admire.
mrmoshpotato
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️:
Give it a few days for his laughter to subside.
Baud
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Oh, man. I have only older TVs. I’m dreading having to buy a smart TV one day. They seem … not ideal.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle:
Who’s up for tacos?
Lapassionara
So, I just checked Ian Dunt’s Twitter feed, and it’s a thing of beauty. Have you seen the lectern they bring out in front of 10 Downing? It looks like it was assembled by participants in a Jenga contest.
mrmoshpotato
Fixed.
Brachiator
Wow. So Truss is saying that the Tories will have another leadership election. So 172,000 members of the Conservative Party will get to select another right wing nut job for prime minister.
The UK is going through more prime ministers than King Charles goes through ink pens.
Ken
Wikipedia informs me that the previous record holder was George Canning, who served as Prime Minister for only 119 days back in 1827. However Truss may be robbed of her title by quibblers, as Arthur Wellesley served as a caretaker PM for about 3 weeks in 1834, while waiting for Robert Peel to return from Italy. (This was before a PM could holiday in the Mediterranean for a month without consequences.)
Truss does hold one undisputed record; she is the first PM since 1963 to not have a new Doctor Who episode or movie air during her tenure.
mozzerb
@Leto: The plan is to get the whole leader-choosing process over in one week, and keep it within the MPs (i.e. not going off for the views of the batshit Conservative party members who voted for Truss in the first place).
Whether the various factions can agree on who to replace her with is another matter, of course.
MattF
Got an email from the Maryland Board of Elections saying my mail-in ballot has been received. So, I’ve voted! Counting ballots is up to the county, and should take place within the next month.
mozzerb
@Ken: There’s a new Who episode on Sunday, so she’ll just scrape in on that one while waiting for the leadership election.
Amir Khalid
What kind of moron votes for Mehmet Oz?
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: What a great dog. I am sobbing.
Brachiator
@Baud:
I don’t watch much regular TV or listen to standard radio, so I miss a lot of the ads.
YY_Sima Qian
Any guess if the next Tory PM will be even worse than Liz Truss?
If you think that is hard to imagine, you are limited in imagination.
WaterGirl
@Lapassionara:
Your whole comment is SO Balloon Juice! If Steve doesn’t reply here, maybe post that in an OTR thread.
Baud
@mozzerb:
Don’t they pretty much have to? What’s the alternative? I can’t imagine they want to call an election right now.
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: She probably watches trash TV all day and brainlessly believes celebrity equals merit. Same advantage Trump had with an unfortunately not-insignificant portion of voters.
Nononan
@Amir Khalid: Sadly, a Pennsylvania moron.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: And yet, she served through more monarchs than any UK PM since Churchill.
Ken
@mozzerb: How sad, that she will be robbed of her one true accomplishment. Perhaps it can still stand on a technicality, since she has resigned?
sdhays
@Baud: BoJo is rested and ready to come back. They only need to give him a call.
Jonas
@Amir Khalid: someone who hates Democrats more than they love America
sdhays
@Ken: I think her one true accomplishment is ridding the UK of its Queen.
MattF
@Brachiator: I’m a cable-cutter and don’t watch sports, so I miss all the ads. I guess. Seen a few on Twitter, but would not deliberately watch an R ad. I do wonder now exactly how political messages get to people like me… supposing, for the sake of argument, that there’s more than one.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@YY_Sima Qian: My dad had a secretary from Russia who had a saying: “never celebrate the death of the Tsar.” Like we’ve seen in the United States with the Republican Party, there is no floor to awfulness, in much the same way there is no peak wingnut.
sab
Jeez. I just got a call from Jeff Crossman himself, D candidate for Ohio AG. I was an early but tiny contributor, so in the scheme of things I am a nobody, unlike Kay. He is having a fundraiser thing in my city so I got a personal call. Maybe I’ll risk Covid and turn out.
Lapassionara
@WaterGirl: thanks, WaterGirl, you are the best.
Ken
@Matt McIrvin: I saw a tweet by someone saying their son had now seen four chancellors, three home secretaries, two PMs, and two monarchs — and the kid was only four months old.
Baud
@Brachiator:
@MattF:
The actual ads suck, even those on our side. But I was talking about the media talking heads effectively doing ads for the GOP.
TS
@Baud:
Their alternative appears to be a series of short term PM appointments. The UK has walked a path to insanity since Cameron held the referendum on brexit. Everyone in the country is probably regretting that one at this point in time.
Westminster Government would suggest that an election is the only course (should have been called by Boris) but it seems the current Conservative Party contains too many trump style members and they refuse to let go of the political power.
If ex PMs get similar benefits to ex Presidents, the UK is going to be supporting many of them for many many years.
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Looking quite likely at the minute.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
That young woman in the vid is a prime candidate for Golgafrincham Ark B.
In other news, for those suburban folks who wondered why Louisville’s West End residents (historically a black area of town) were on a hair trigger and ready to riot in the wake of the Breonna Taylor killing, this offers a tantalizing clue:
Ninth Mobile Bucket Only Contains a Few Bad Apples
Ninth Mobile is a poisoned apple, as is the Criminal Interdiction Unit, itself an outgrowth of the fatally flawed VIPER unit.
SFAW
@Baud:
That’ll be quite the feat.
But, in case that wasn’t an intended pun: it’s “shoo-in.”
Princess Leia
Can I get some wisdom from the BJ hive mind? I just passed the date to receive “full” Soc Sec retirement. Given all the weirdness from the GOP, should I start getting it now or wait? I can wait, but I am worried that I should get started ASAP. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Ken
@Baud: Pity the poor Tory PMs, given a choice between calling a general election that is likely to kick them out of office, or gritting their teeth and getting behind some “unity” PM that they utterly despise.
In the end, I suppose they’ll look at the polls showing upwards of 80% of the UK public want the general election, and not hold one.
mrmoshpotato
MattF
@Baud: I stopped watching talking heads long ago, since they started yelling at each other instead of talking. It’s also true that my immediate family is pretty lefty, so not much actual political discussion around the dinner table.
Baud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
That’s why conservatives hate the federal government.
WaterGirl
Thanks, everybody. No I am going to have to google “lettuce” and “Truss” to find out what you are all talking about.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Ah. I read stories at various news sites. I try to avoid media talking heads, especially the Sunday news shows.
Baud
@MattF: Yeah, even “friendly” talking heads involve a lot of yelling, and also a lot of speculation. I’ve outgrown a lot of liberal political culture, even as I’ve grown more dedicated to the cause.
Ken
@WaterGirl: A couple weeks ago, someone remarked that Truss looked likely to have the shelf life of a lettuce. One of the UK papers set up a webcam with a lettuce next to Truss’ picture. They’ve been decorating the lettuce, and adding props for topical news events.
Brachiator
@Princess Leia:
I would say, don’t worry about the GOP and do what is best for you.
MattF
@Princess Leia: My own take was that the difference in monthly payments is scaled to life expectancy, so there are no first-order effects. Whatever you decide is a gamble.
sab
@Ken: I am an old. I had a junior year abroad in college to England in 1975-76. The Brits had the same economic issues then that they are starting to have now. That was their main reason or wanting to get into the EU. So now a generation later they voted themselves out of EU and they are back to the same sucky economy. But with no way out this time.
Maybe don’t let Australian oligarchs living in the US set your political agenda?
ETA Last time DeGaulle had just died so France would finally let them in. This time Europeans are frankly tired of them and don’t want them back.
Also, the non-white hordes they wanted to keep out weren’t in the EU anyway. They were eslewhere, often in the Commonwealth.
Their real problem is Tories only support their own counties in a very centrally located government. And they keep electing Tories or lite tories.
What a clusterphuck.
mali muso
@WaterGirl: IIRC, some news organization had a lettuce sitting in front of a camera and the idea was to see if it would wilt and die before or after Liz Truss’s term of office. Sounds like the lettuce outlived her reign.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: We buy their product anyhow. They don’t have to.
The Nazi/Nazi-adjacent have shown repeatedly that they’ll simply look elsewhere if they don’t get the news they want. Normies and those of the left won’t do that.
If we did, the media would look a lot different.
Jackie
@sdhays: LOL! Bringing BoJo back was just mentioned on MJ!
Spanky
@Amir Khalid:
You’ve never been to rural Pennsylvania, I see.
mozzerb
@Baud: They can have a bitterly contested internal election process among MPs at the end of which the survivor will become PM, to the horror of large chunks of the party?
What they’ll want to do is find some way to agree to hand the poisoned chalice to someone relatively uncontroversial, if they can find such a person and persuade the other contestants to take a dive.
catclub
The olds will believe the GOP when they say, “These cuts are only for the young who aren’t on SS and medicare already.”
Of course they are lying when they say that.
Ohio Mom
@mozzerb: Truss really didn’t last longer than that head of iceberg lettuce!
Talking about being a normie, I let most news about the U. K. wash over me. I can’t care about everything. But the recent hubbub has been impossible to ignore.
BC in Illinois
George Takei :
Also, it is noted that the Liz Truss said that best thing to do about Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, is to ignore her.
Yes, she is.
Sturgeon has been Scotland’s First Minister through four [set to be five] UK Prime Ministers.
Brachiator
@YY_Sima Qian:
Some in the British media are saying that Penny Mordaunt is one of the top candidates. Unlike Truss, she is a mean piece of work.
sab
@Spanky: We should at least be grateful that he is out of cardiology. Announcing a death sentence or lifetime disability to people with very treatable conditions. What a putz.
Kent
This is how I troll my GOP relatives, honestly.
I could be interested in the GOP if they didn’t insist on blatant stupidity and ignorance in EVERY area of life and policy. To be a good GOP-er you have to insist that:
etc. etc.
zhena gogolia
@Spanky: She seemed to be a Pittsburgher.
sab
@Brachiator: One thing I hate in our current world of grudging feminism is that whenever the guys really fuck things up they can trot out a subpar woman to take over and get the blame. Liz Truss. Theresa May. Carly Fiorina. Corporate as well as political.
I despise Margaret Thatcher, but at least she was herself and not someone else’s tool.
Brachiator
@mozzerb:
Conservative MPs thought that Liz Truss would be uncontroversial.
Tories are looking for someone who can dupe swing voters into believing that Conservatives care about them. Then they will continue to wreck the British economy.
Kent
@Spanky: That woman is a dipshit who thinks that voting a split ticket makes her look edgy and smart.
I guess if you are going to have to pick the least-bad GOPer in PA it is a tough call, but Oz is probably less completely insane and authoritarian than Mastriano.
But of course control over the Senate is more important than control over the PA governorship.
sab
@Ohio Mom: I have a stale lettuce in my yard under the bird feeder, waiting for our deer. So far, no chomps.
The much younger wife of a friend of ours always had an actual manger in the yard to keep the deer out of her flowers. It worked. But that was her backyard. In the front yard our neighbors might riot.
Brachiator
@sab:
Hmm. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are both subpar. Johnson was just better at bullshit.
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie:
What idiot suggested that? Morning Blows himself?
The Moar You Know
@Jackie: not their idea. His idea. He’s rested, tanned and ready and is going to stand in the next Choosing Of The Idiots.
Said some arglebargle about “national security” when asked why.
Leto
@WaterGirl: the Economist published an article Oct 11 with a scathing review, featuring this future meme:
https://mothership.sg/2022/10/liz-truss-lettuce/
sab
@Kent: I used to vote split ticket. No more. Nowadays even reasonable Republicans lose their minds when they aspire to higher office.
mozzerb
And the clusterfuck is about to get … clusterfuckier?
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1583091554574831617
“EXCLUSIVE: I’m told that Boris Johnson is expected to stand in the Tory leadership contest He’s taking soundings but is said to believe it is a matter of national interest”
“National” interest. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *sobs
Kent
I would wait if you can afford it. You get something like an 8% lifetime increase for every year you wait. I view it as insurance against the rest of retirement savings going belly-up which is more likely.
Mathematically speaking if you are healthy and likely to live past the median American lifespan then you gain by waiting. If you are likely to die younger than the average American than you gain more by taking it early. So women who live longer than men usually gain more by waiting.
The calculation is supposed to be actuarially neutral for the population but that only works for an individual if you die at the median age.
MisterDancer
What’s sad is that all this happened because the Party was more interested in power, back in the early parts of the 20th Century, than it’s principals.
The GOP was shut out of the South. The only way, many of them thought, to gain “real” power there was to fully embrace the illogic of White Supremacy. And that was a death spiral.
It’s always grimly hilarious when you see Conservatives try to claim the mantle of the OG Republicans (“‘we’ freed the slaves!”) , while dismantling everything they openly and publicly stood for, back then, as Justice Jackson noted in Court recently.
So yeah, you get me some real old school Radical Republicans, GOP, and maybe we can talk.
Otherwise, y’all been playing with trash for too damn long, now.
Kent
Last time I split the ticket was when I lived in Alaska and voted for Ted Stevens for Senate over a completely batshit crazy fringe Dem opponent who managed to squeak through a large primary slate on basis of name recognition in the Anchorage area. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for the Green candidate who was an equal dipshit.
sab
@Brachiator: He is vile and selfish but he is not subpar. He’s just all about him, and he is pretty good at that.
Central Planning
@catclub:
Because he’s immortal!
Kent
@MisterDancer: My mom was an Eisenhower Republican. The current GOP is completely alien to her.
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: You are not alone. No radio, no TV, no ads on my computer because of my ad blocker, which every time I am asked to disable it, I realize I don’t really need to read that piece anyway.
sab
@sab: Our backyard is fenced for the dog. We try to keep the deer out. They have ticks and sharp hooves.
OzarkHillbilly
I don’t watch them either.
sab
@Kent: My mom also was an Eisenhower Republican. She was not a racist dixiecrat. She hated Nixon and Goldwater. She disliked W Bush. She loved Obama.
Ohio Mom
@Princess Leia: That’s more of a math problem that has to do with your personal finances. They aren’t going to be able to end Social Security like it’s light switch, now it’s on, now it’s off. It will be a process even IF they succeed.
There is some weird Social Security catch that if you apply within a few months of your full retirement date, they give you a lump sum for the months between your application and your full retirement date. Wait too long and that disappears, you just get your monthly amount starting when you apply. It’s something of a grace period.
Sorry I don’t remember the time span, I just know that when I applied, it was a few months after my full retirement point had passed and I got a check for $6,000 and change. Then Ohio Dad retired a few months later and I went on his since half of his was a larger sum than all of mine.
Finally, as my sister is fond of pointing out “Their (for various “they’s”) actuaries are better than yours (i.e., you and your calculator).”
Princess Leia
@Brachiator: I love ignoring the GOP! @Kent: Mom just passed at 89, and Dad is still kicking at 88, so I do have to take this into account- thanks!
Princess Leia
@MattF:
Isn’t it though? Old age is the ultimate risk taking!
NorthLeft
Just wanted to clarify something. That “median voter” that shared her wisdom with us can be more accurately described as the median Steeler fan voter.
What the hell do you expect from NFL fans?
Princess Leia
@Ohio Mom:
Oh, I will have to look into that!! Thanks!
Jackie
“Even though her short, six-week stint as the UK’s prime minister came crashing down on Thursday, Liz Truss will still get to claim a yearly £115,000 allowance reserved for former prime ministers,” Insider reports.
sab
@Princess Leia: If you are willing to spend hours on Social Security website they have a lot of info.
Brachiator
@sab:
Johnson had a reputation for being lazy and inattentive going back to his days as a school boy at Eton. Didn’t he get fired from a newspaper job for making shit up. He skipped essential meetings as prime minister and continually tried to bluff his way through his job.
Like Truss, he largely surrounded himself with stooges that made him shine by comparison.
mozzerb
@Brachiator: IIRC he got fired from two separate jobs for making shit up (one newspaper and one magazine). That’s because making shit up is his basic MO. I’m not sure he knows how not to.
sab
@Brachiator: Men can be lazy. It looks content or comfortable. Women looking like that are lazy or clueless and uninfomed and not up to politics.
Uncle Cosmo
@Baud: Liz Truss: Lettuce prey?
Sure Lurkalot
@Betty Cracker:
bonus-dr-oz
“So, what we find out from the discovery files, once everything goes public, this guy Lindsey Duncan, he’s not a medical doctor. He has a naturopathic degree from the Clayton College of Natural Health, which is a school that the state of Texas has said confers fraudulent and substandard degrees. He seems like he’s just a doctor on this, right? I’m just somebody who cares about your health. He’s actually a marketing executive for a company that makes supplements.
Aubrey: Yeah, that is right.
Mike: About a month before he comes on Dr. Oz, he gets an email that eventually ends up in the Federal Trade Commission lawsuit from the Dr. Oz show. They say, we’re hearing about this green coffee bean extract. Do you know anything, have you heard anything about this? There’s this study that’s coming out showing weight loss. Have you heard anything about this? He at this point has never heard of this thing. He immediately writes back and says, “Yes, I’ve heard of it. I’m really excited about it.” And then that same day starts calling manufacturers to start producing green coffee bean extract.
Aubrey: Oh, God.
Mike: It’s dark. So, over the next month, he calls up Walgreens and Amazon, all these other retailers and says, look, I’m going to be on the Dr. Oz show. You guys need to have this on your shelves and ready.
Another really important thing. Remember in the clip how he said, ‘you need to take 800 milligrams of it twice a day, and you need to look for the pure version of it.’ These are search terms that he bought on Google.
Aubrey: What! So, he’s done SEO to make sure that when people search those terms, they will get his version and not anybody else’s version.
Mike: Exactly.
Aubrey: Fuck off.”
phdesmond
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️:
how many Scaramuccis in a Friedman unit?
WaterGirl
@Ken: @mali muso: That’s funny!
I had googled and discovered the general lettuce idea, but hearing your more detailed description is 10x better.
WaterGirl
@Leto: LOL.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@phdesmond: Well, Let’s see…
1 Scaramucci = 11 days
1 Friedman = 180 days
so
180 ÷ 11 = 16.36
16.36 Scaramuccis in a Friedman.
The Lodger
@Elizabelle: Congratulations to all those who voted Romaine.
Chris
@sab:
The first election I was old enough to vote in was 2008. I knew full well how much George W. had fucked the country, but I was still one of those dumbasses at the time who believed that 1) there was such a thing as “moderate Republican,” 2) John McCain was a “moderate Republican,” therefore 3) should I vote for a moderate Republican who might be able to put the party back on a non-crazy track, even if I agree with the Democrat more?
And then he selected Sarah Palin. That was one of the big moments of clarity in my political education: it doesn’t even matter if John McCain is a moderate, because even if he was, he’d have to throw so many bones to the psychopaths in his party just to keep them satisfied that he might as well be a psychopath himself.
My political analysis has gotten a lot more sophisticated since then, but I still think that part was dead-on. Look at every county in the nation and it doesn’t matter what the partisan or economic or religious or ethnic makeup of the overall population is, the local Republican Party is exactly the same troop of howler monkeys screaming exactly the same Fox News talking points. Whether you’re in San Francisco or in rural Mississippi, if you’re a Republican, that’s what you have to please before you get anywhere at all in politics. Kind of limits your options.