Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Books are my comfort food!

This blog will pay for itself.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You are here: Home / Elections / 2022 Elections / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Voting Warnock for Georgia

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Voting Warnock for Georgia

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196Comments

  4. 4.

    evap

    I voted on Wednesday, with my daughter and brother.   There was quite a line, but it moved quickly.  Go Warnock!​
    ​
    ​

  8. 8.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I wonder if Kari Lake has had anything to say about the voter suppression in Georgia since voter suppression has all of a sudden become her big thing.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A Mississippi-based furniture company abruptly fired nearly 2,700 workers in the US just days before Thanksgiving, according to multiple reports.

    Right before midnight on 21 November, thousands of workers – many of whom were asleep – received a text message from United Furniture Industries (UFI) saying that they were terminated effectively and were no longer allowed to return to work.

    “At the instruction of the board of directors … we regret to inform you that due to unforeseen business circumstances, the company has been forced to make the difficult decision to terminate the employment of all its employees, effective immediately,” the message, which the New York Post reviewed, said.

    “Your layoff from the company is expected to be permanent and all benefits will be terminated immediately without provision of Cobra,” a follow-up email from the company read, referring to a federal law that gives employees who lose their jobs the option to keep their employer-sponsored health insurance under certain circumstances.
    …………………………….
    One employee told FreightWaves: “It’s not fair to the laborers who seriously worked so hard to be blindsided like this. It’s not fair to the mom who just had a baby to wonder if she even has health insurance to cover it. It’s not fair to the cancer patient in the midst of chemo about how to pay for her treatments.”

    Why do I get the feeling there is some kind of malfeasance behind this?

  16. 16.

    Geminid

    @OzarkHillbilly:

     

    @eclare: This story likely is not related to the collapse of FTX, but it made me wonder if there will be a wave of company and individual bankruptcies caused by people “betting the store” on cryptocurrency and having their “investments” zeroed out.

  18. 18.

    Eolirin

    @Geminid: There’s definitely some level of contagion inside the crypto market at least. FTX going down is putting a lot of pressure on other key players in crypto, and has already buried a few smaller ones.

  21. 21.

    eclare

    @Geminid:   Yes I saw that about the pension.  But it was a tiny part, something like .0001%, and within the plan’s limitations of how much can be invested in high risk assets.

    I just hope all defined benefit plans have such limitations.

    Along with kickbacks, fun weekends in Bahamas!  Here are your drugs and a comfy bean bag!

  23. 23.

    Kay

    I feel good about Georgia because I think Warnock is a great candidate. IMO he’s something special- really talented person.

    But obviously people still have to vote for him- he’s not a…wizard :)

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: After the crash of 2008, the carpenter’s pension fund became underfunded due to losses in the stock market and the fact that a whole lot of carpenters were suddenly not working. I got a letter informing me of the legal situation and telling me I would be contributing an extra dollar per hour to the fund until it was back to lawful compliance. I didn’t mind that at all and I never heard anyone complain about it, because those of us who were still working knew how lucky we were. We got monthly reminders of that at every local meeting when half or better of the guys in attendance were jobless.

    I don’t think I am being delusional by expecting the same thing would happen should that situation ever reoccur.

  26. 26.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Our carpenters local has an annuity in addition to the pension. A lot of them don’t really understand the annuity – which is well managed and will be a very nice monthly bump for them – so if they bring it to me and ask it’s fun to show them what they have. A happy surprise! For once. I am so often the bearer of bad news.

  36. 36.

    Nelle

    @OzarkHillbilly: I research myself but every time you mention the carpenter’s union, I’m reminded of my dad’s gratitude for them and his loyalty.  The Mennonite church we were part of disapproved.  He had me ask the union steward to be one of his pallbearers and to mention it in his eulogy just so the congregation knew he thought they were misguided on that point.

  37. 37.

    eclare

    @satby:   I agree.  Nothing can beat it.  The best ending ever.

    Second best:  Some Like It Hot.

    ETA I expect Baud to weigh in at any moment: “nobody’s perfect.”

  40. 40.

    Geminid

    @eclare: The result will be in part determined by how many Kemp/Walker voters stay home. I understand the Kemp is putting his weight behind Walker through TV ads at least. Kemp himself proved to be a formidable candidate in both the primary and general elections, but I have doubts as to whether he can effectively harness Walker to his “Kemp Machine.”

    More generally, the election will be decided by the relative dropoff in the Republican vote compared to the Democratic. In the January 5, 2021 runoffs, Ossoff’s vote dropped ~104,000 from November. Perdue’s vote dropped by ~247,000, and Ossoff scored a come-from-behind win.

    The comparison cannot be easily made in Reverend Warnock’s case because he was in a jungle primary that November, but in January, 2021 Warnock ran 20,000 votes ahead of Ossoff. And unlike Ossoff, this year he starts out ahead of Walker as per the vote election totals earlier this month.

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: ​Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

    I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.

    I’m shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here. Croupier : Your winnings, sir.
    Captain Renault : Oh, thank you very much.

    So many great lines that have become a part of everyday life.

  42. 42.

    satby

    @Baud: 😘

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: @eclare:  I’ve seen it probably 100 in my life, and still will stop whatever I’m doing to watch it again.  So much detail, so many little stories going on behind the main one. And an ending that reinforces the idea that sometimes it’s more important to put your own interests and happiness aside for the greater good.

  46. 46.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Nelle: I actually get 2 pension checks. My first few years was as a cabinet maker (an “Inside carpenter”) then I switched to Outside, 2 different pension funds. When I made the switch my Inside years disappeared from my pension statements and I thought those years were gone. I was making more money as Outside so I just shrugged and accepted it as the cost of a better life. I was somewhat cornfused when I got the forms for the Inside pension. At first I didn’t know what to make of them and went down to the STL hall to find out what was what. I walked out with a big old grin on my face.

  48. 48.

    Geminid

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I always thought Billy Wilder’s film The Apartment would be good New Year’s fare. Jack Lemon and Shirley McClain are great, and Fred Macmurray is a convincing heel.

    The  Apartment is also an interesting waypoint in Ray Walston’s progression(?) from South Pacific to My Favorite Martian.

  51. 51.

    eclare

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:   Maybe so, I watched it before streaming.  To me NYE is a night for classics, and what is more classic than Casablanca and champagne?

    I think I should do that this NYE.

  57. 57.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    We always watched ‘Casablanca’ for NYE.  Then stopped for a long while, now are back to doing it.  Still one of the best movies ever made.  Claude Rains should have won for best Supporting Actor.

    ‘The Apartment’ is another great, timeless film.

  62. 62.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Nasa’s Orion capsule has entered an orbit stretching tens of thousands of miles around the moon, as it neared the halfway mark of its test flight.

    The capsule and its three test dummies entered lunar orbit more than a week after launching on the $4bn demo that’s meant to pave the way for astronauts. It will remain in this broad but stable orbit for nearly a week, completing just half a lap before heading home.

    As of an engine firing on Friday, the capsule was 238,000 miles (380,000km) from Earth. It’s expected to reach a maximum distance of almost 270,000 miles (432,000km) in a few days. That will set a new distance record for a capsule designed to carry people one day.

    “It is a statistic, but it’s symbolic for what it represents,” Jim Geffre, an Orion manager, said in a Nasa interview earlier in the week. “It’s about challenging ourselves to go farther, stay longer and push beyond the limits of what we’ve previously explored.”

    Nasa considers this a dress rehearsal for the next moon flyby in 2024, with astronauts. A lunar landing by astronauts could follow as soon as 2025. Astronauts last visited the moon 50 years ago during Apollo 17.

    I’m as much of a space nerd as the next guy but this all strikes me as little more than a PR stunt. A very expensive stunt at that. I just don’t see enough of a return on investment to justify all this expense in going to Mars at this time. We can get a hell of a lot more bang for our bucks with robotic missions. Sending landers to each of the Galilean moons comes to mind.

  63. 63.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby:

    I LOVE that movie. Haven’t seen it 100 times, but definitely more than 10. The only part that makes me cringe is when Ilsa tells Rick “You have to think for both of us.” Everything else—magnificent.

  64. 64.

    Steeplejack

    Schedule check: Casablanca is coming up (yet again) on TCM at 10:15 p.m. EST on Tuesday, December 6.

    ETA: Huh. And I see that it is available anytime on HBO Max.

  69. 69.

    Chris T.

    @trnc: That’s not quite right. SS doesn’t pay out what you paid in except by chance. Instead, well, let’s look at an example. For simplicity, suppose you start collecting $1k/mo at age 65.

    If you die at age 66 (after 12 months), you collect $12000. (Your surviving spouse, if you have one, might get some of the rest. If not, that’s it.)

    If you live to age 105, for 40 years, and assuming no COLA increases, you collect $480,000.

    You probably put in roughly $200k, give or take a bit. The SS actuaries’ job is to figure out how much to pay out such that on average the fund more or less breaks even.

    In other words, SS acts like homeowner’s or auto insurance: everyone puts in, and the lucky few whose houses (or cars) explode into flames collect, while the average schlub whose house (or car) behaves well lose. Die early, and you lose two ways—but you can’t outlive the money, even if you live to age 125.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    And now they have a crazy-rich cheerleader who owns the space and hopes to pack it with people who will kiss his ass and not ask any questions about his unsafe cars!

  73. 73.

    RaflW

    Ewik Ewikson, Mdiv., is just such a pathetic dweeb. I know he went to some winger, hard hearted seminary, but “Christ, what an asshole” was made for him.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    All the antiwoke grifters are rushing to Musk for validation. I don’t think it will work- I think they have played that particular panic out and no one will pay for yet another another paywalled anti-woke essay.

    Wokedy-woke woke. Same old, same old.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    So is DeSantis the official candidate of the antiwoke elite now?

    They chose the only US governor who actually put laws in limiting political speech?

    Great, rigorous work – as usual. I can see now why they call themselves “public intellectuals”. It’s all the thought they put into this nonsensical garbage they churn out.

  76. 76.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Phylllis: I love Stalag 17, even if it did terrify me when I was child. There is something very dark at the heart of that movie. Especially when they finally figure out who the informer is.

  77. 77.

    Geminid

    @Kay: And these sycophants will not ask any questions about whether Tesla stock is overpriced, and if its recent fall is the beginning of a long slide. Musk is putting a whole new meaning into the phrase, “Buy the Dip!”

  78. 78.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Chris T.: ​but you can’t outlive the money, even if you live to age 125.

    You just might if you live to see Republicans in the house, senate, and WH all at the same time.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Of course it’s overpriced. He’s a ridiculous person. They actually bought his claim that his cars would appreciate?

    The real car makers are going to kill him. They’re already beating him on quality and they were always going to beat him on mass production. Quality was the only place he could have competed with them and he blew it. The only way this would have worked was as a niche rich persons car with impeccable quality. He didn’t succeed at that.

  80. 80.

    Phylllis

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think I may have watched it once or twice when I was younger, but my husband actually brought me around to really appreciating it. And seeing it as a ‘Christmas’ movie.

  82. 82.

    gwangung

    @RaflW: It’s “funny” how so many white “Christians” don’t recognize or respect the spirituality of black pastors and preachers……

    Also,  a little trivia concerning The Apartment, it was made into a decent little Broadway musical, with a Neil Simon book and a  Burt Bacharach score and got Jerry Orbach his first Tony….

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    I don’t even have any problem with salespeople. But people need to realize salespeople are not reliable evaluators of products. There’s nothing at all unique about a billionaire hating labor unions and taxes and regulation and whining about “woke” and “being cancelled” and being an utter hypocrite about government subsidies. It’s the most boring, conventional thing in the world.

  84. 84.

    Geminid

    @gwangung: I find it fascinating how Billy Wilder, a guy who’d grown up poor in 1920s Vienna, could make a movie like The Apartment. As a Jewish immigrant, Wilder had the viewpoint of a double outsider, and I think that helped make his portrayal of circa 1960 America all the more poignant.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Shocking to me that this lucky heir has joined the ranks of the anti-woke warriors and opposes any effort towards equity:

    SAN FRANCISCO, June 30 (Reuters) – Fifteen Black former or current employees at Tesla (TSLA.O) filed a lawsuit against the electric car maker on Thursday, alleging they were subjected to racial abuse and harassment at its factories. The workers said they were subjected to offensive racist comments and behavior by colleagues, managers and human resources employees on a regular basis, according to the lawsuit filed in a California state court.

    They’re right. DeSantis is their candidate. They should stop calling themselves “liberals” though. It’s a lie.

  86. 86.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    Woke is the new thug. Senator Pretender Kennedy likes to complain about Wokers with a hard R.  You know that asshole wishes he could say another word with a hard R.

  87. 87.

    Sturgeonmouth

    We had a great turnout yesterday. Let’s double it on the final Saturday before the 12/6 election, and force the media to cover us. Remember, Georgia voters, no matter what your mother has told you, if you haven’t had a paternity test proving otherwise, Herschel Walker could very well be your father too. – Walkers For Warnock

    Walkers For Warnock Announce Atlanta Events

    Walkers For Warnock, a newly formed organization of potential step brothers and sisters who know or suspect that Herschel Walker is their biological father, has announced plans to support Raphael Warnock in the runoff election for the Georgia Senate seat. The Atlanta based group announced it will hold “Walks For Warnock” each Saturday until the election.
    The rapidly expanding group plans to walk 2.4 miles from the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both MLK and Warnock preached, to Planned Parenthood’s East Atlanta Health Center, one of several locations patronized by women impregnated by Walker, the former football star and GOP candidate.

    A spokesperson for Walkers For Warnock says their goal is to rally support for Warnock and abortion rights, but at the same time, “it’s an opportunity to celebrate our lives, bond with our newly discovered step siblings, and pay tribute to those that might have been.”

    Walkers For Warnock has step brother/sister affiliates in Dallas, Minneapolis, New York, and Philadelphia, cities where Walker lived during his football career. Each has plans to announce their own Walk For Warnock event. The sheer number of members in those areas exceeds those in Georgia, but they cannot vote in the election. However, they are eager to raise funds for the reelection  of the Democratic candidate, Raphael Warnock.

    Facing accusations from the Walker campaign that Walkers For Warnock members are simply angling to reclaim unpaid child support, a Dallas-based member shrugged it off.

    “That’s ridiculous. He don’t have enough money. There are too many of us. Like I’m gonna spend my weekends walking across town for what, like $8? He run off on us. Now, we’re gonna run off on him.”

  88. 88.

    WaterGirl

    @Geminid:

    Musk rearranged the spokes and decided that he had invented the wheel.

    That is rotating tag worthy, but I am so fucking sick of Musk that I don’t want him in the rotating tags.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    Oh, EVERY DAY with the woke monster under the bed. They just had an election where the woke panic flopped and it flopped not in liberal enclaves but in MI, WI and PA. They only won on it in places where they would have won with any R. I hope they keep flogging it.

    The punching down nature of this just infuriates me. Really? We need the entire NY Times editorial team and a majority of the US Senate and ALL of our billionaire class to beat 50,000 22 year old social workers and public school teachers? That these powerful middle aged people with huge platforms have somehow convinced themselves the are the victims of Lefty college students is some kind of mass delusion and a REALLY unattractive and whiny delusion to boot.

  91. 91.

    Geminid

    @O. Felix Culpa: Someone ought to put out a new version of Casablanca. In this one, Rick’s would be a brewpub on the Saint Louis waterfront. Ilsa and Victor would be hiding from the Missouri Abortion Police, trying to arrange a boat ride across the Mississippi to Illinois.

  92. 92.

    PaulB

    @eclare: I agree.  Nothing can beat it.  The best ending ever.

    Second best:  Some Like It Hot.

    Honorable Mention to “The Princess Bride.”

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    Pardon me for even raising it too but I can’t help but notice a lot of the “wokeness” derision and jeering is directed at young women.

    Young women who make maybe 45k a year in “helping professions” that none of the anti-woke intellectuals would last 15 minutes in. Teaching is hard. Being a social worker is hard.  That’s who I’m supposed to make fun of because they have..blue hair. Not only join in making fun of them but PAY for the privilege of reading the 50 thousandth essay whining about woke.

    I’d value a public school teacher over ANY of America’s overcrowded, overpaid “societal observer” ranks any day and I dont care at all if she has purple hair.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    My granddaughter in Denmark said her first word and it is “green” in Danish, the only color she knew in a picture book about colors. Grøn.

    I’m glad she’ll know Danish but I hope she knows English too.

  95. 95.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: For a rotating tag, how about the first line in your new Congresswoman’s victory speech:

    “Thank you, and then let’s get to work.”

     

    Nikki Budzinski, November 8, 2022.

  96. 96.

    Anyway

    Re Tesla stock being “overpriced”  — it’s not if you expect some established carmaker to buy the company. Stockholders will make out like bandits in that case. Tesla is sitting on some good patents I think. P/E is not the only determinant of stock price.

  97. 97.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WaterGirl: Say, “He rearranged the spokes and decided that he had invented the wheel.” It will apply to any number of the uber rich assholes who think being lucky is the same as being a genius.

  99. 99.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    It is absolutely directed at young women and the LGBTQ+ community.

    I’ve been following it on social media in the UK and here and now it’s really taking off on Twitter now that they have a larger voice.
    In the UK they built up a following being anti Meghan and over time they increased the percentage of content that was about cancel culture, anti woke, bizarre food theories, anti-vaxx and anti LGBTQ with most of the emphasis on their bullshit ideas about gender roles, sex, and anti transgender bigotry.  I’ve even seen them make a connection between feminine men and socialism.  It’s batshit crazy content.  It’s similar in the US but it started more with anti BLM and follows a similar path.

  101. 101.

    Anyway

    @Kay:

    My granddaughter in Denmark said her first word and it is “green” in Danish, the only color she knew in a picture book about colors. Grøn.

    Congratulations. That’s a nice first word.

    I’m glad she’ll know Danish but I hope she knows English too.

    She will, I’m sure. Scandinavians, northern Europeans generally, have great English fluency.

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    @Anyway: If Ford were to offer to buy out Tesla at $180 a share, stockholders would make out OK. If Ford waits a year, though, they might be able to buy Tesla for one half that price if not less. It could be that patent rights help hold up Tesla’s stock price, but I think that Musk’s personal prestige accounts for a lot of the gas in the Tesla bubble.

  105. 105.

    Burnspbesq

    @trnc:

    As I read it, he wants SS to be a defined contribution plan, from which he gets a lump-sum distribution. Unless there are major changes to the Internal Revenue Code, he’s in for a really unpleasant surprise.

  107. 107.

    MomSense

    Has anyone else noticed that since David Corn published his book American Psychosis he has had far fewer TV gigs?  The preferred media narrative, including MSNBC, has been that Trumpism is some kind of aberration and that the Republican Party was better before Trump.

  108. 108.

    Kay

    @Anyway:

    Her dad, my son, speaks English of course and her mother speaks both Danish and English – although even my son uses a lot of Danish words now. I’m not sure he’s even aware of it. We Zoomed this AM and I noticed it. The Danish words are better – more specific- for Danish institutions and customs – her daycare for example. They have a different concept of “daycare”, it’s all but universal for most kids so more like our “public school”.

    We have two grandchildren, one in NY and one in Denmark and I get to see the NY grandchild a lot more which feels “unfair” to me, that she gets so much grandparent attention, so I wish they would move back to the US.

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    @MomSense: The late M.D. Russ made perhaps the most cogent analysis I’ve read of Trump’s relation to the modern Republican party. Russ’s punchline:

       “Trump did not hijack the Republican Party…he just answered the casting call.”

    From M.D. Russ, “Trump is the Republican President” Bearing Drift June 22, 2020.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    @Anyway:

    She’s really cute and I’m glad we got to see her gravely pronounce grøn while pointing at green but I got a little pang – like “she’s Danish“.

    It’s so far away.

  112. 112.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: ​We have two grandchildren, one in NY and one in Denmark and I get to see the NY grandchild a lot more which feels “unfair” to me, that she gets so much grandparent attention, so I wish they would move back to the US.

    I was thinking the exact same thing the other day. We get our 2 youngest STL GDs every Monday and I see my eldest STL GD every time she performs (wrestling now, she should have a Xmas concert coming up too and there are always her horse shows) but my Nola girls will never get the same from us.

  113. 113.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Right? It’s uneven. They have to move back.

    My US grandchild also gets my sisters – ‘the witches”, my daughter calls us, but she means it in a nice way- we’re powerful :)

  114. 114.

    Geminid

    @MomSense: Russ really hit it in that essay. M.D. Russ was a retired Army Colonel and self-described “independent conservative.” He wrote a few pieces for Bearing Drift, which is a Virginia-based news magazine put out by contrarian Republicans. This Spring Bearing Drift informed its readers that Colonel Russ had passed away.

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @Kay: My Atlanta friend and his wife Claire have a ball with their grandkids. Their three oldest children all live within two miles of Warren’s northwest Atlanta home and have eight children between them, aged 2 to 17. The parents all work, and Warren and Claire operate an informal day care center and preschool.. They are a lot of fun to visit.

  123. 123.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Geminid: @MomSense:

    Also Driftglass, who might overpound the point (that no, this shit didn’t begin with Trump’s escalator ride in 2015), but fuck if it doesn’t bear repeating. His partner, BlueGal, was out in front with a Crooks and Liars article in August, 2016 entitled “Don’t You Dare Call it Trumpism”. (Tried to link…failed).

  124. 124.

    sab

    @Kay: My mother announced when we were in college that she had no intention of helping with grandchildren. And then she wondered why three of us never had kids.

    My oldest sister didn’t get the memo. Mom used to drive down to Columbus every day after breakfast to watch those grandkids, and then back north in time to feed Dad dinner. Four hours on the road five days a week.

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    I don’t think I would want to do the daycare. A big part of the fun of it is I’m not responsible for the majority of their care. It’s all the “extras” you wanted to give your own kids but didn’t have time or money for. Time. That’s the thing that was always in short supply.

    So when I talk with my NY grandchild about her daycare I can just gossip about the other kids in the class rather than be checking to make sure it’s certified, safe, blah, blah, which is her parents job.

    “Why DON’T you like Liam?” :)

  130. 130.

    Bill Arnold

    @Geminid:

    I suspect that in this case there may have kickbacks to pension fund officers.

    If so, justice should be strongly pursued. (By whatever means.)

  132. 132.

    Another Scott

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    CrooksandLiars.com: Don’t you dare call it Trump-ism (from 2016).

    It isn’t Trumpism. It’s the Republican Party. And it has been for far longer than Donald Trump has been running for President.

    The video above is from a year ago (July 2015). Alisyn Camerota asks a focus group of Trump and leaning toward Trump voters why they like him. Those of you who have watched any of these “average Trump voter” interviews know their trademarks:

    “He speaks his mind, and says what I am already thinking.”

    “Illegal immigration is the number one issue on my mind.”

    “He’ll make America great again.”

    The reason the news media interviewed these particular people is, they are registered Republican Primary voters.

    […]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  133. 133.

    Starfish

    Okay, can we go back to Anne Laurie’s original topic.

    What are you hearing about mail-in ballots in Georgia right now? My in-laws said they plan to go in to vote on Tuesday because their mail-in ballots never arrived. They are in a retirement community with folks who cannot drive any longer. I think something is being arranged for some folks, but I am worried that turn out will not be the same when some of these folks do not have access.

  134. 134.

    James E Powell

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    So many great lines that have become a part of everyday life.

    So true. I used the “Shocked, Shocked!” line about 20 minutes ago in commenting on claims that Disney might be doing creative accounting to hide the true cost of its movies.

    I’ve always told my students that Casablanca is one of the must-see truly great films. Surprising that many of them watch it & agree. Surprising because most of them wouldn’t watch a black & white film for love or money. They pick up the most famous lines & usually some of the less often repeated ones “I found myself much more reasonable.”

  135. 135.

    Steeplejack

    Interesting thread on the right-wing freakout.

    A big part of the freakout you’re seeing from Elon and the rest of the rightwing crowd is that they just ran a whole campaign against the “woke mind virus” and LGBTQ people in an electoral environment that should have favored them heavily—and they lost. /1

    — David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) November 26, 2022

    ThreadReader version here.

  136. 136.

    sab

    Husband is downstairs watching American football. He just got up and went out to feed raw peanuts to the squirrels. Next thing I heard was “Nice tackle!” I had to ask kf it was intra-squirrel or football. He said football, disgusted with me.  Those squirrels aren’t little saints while feeding in the yard.

    ETA We feed them raw peanuts in hopes of a couple of peanut plants in the tomato pots next year.

  138. 138.

    trollhattan

    Sanity prevailed this election. Luckily.

    Energized by activism against COVID-19 education mandates, conservative parents all over California put their names on the ballot this fall aiming to claim seats on local school boards. Some saw the makings of a GOP wave in a blue state, and the Republican Party recruited and trained candidates. It didn’t work.

    The so-called parent revolt didn’t materialize as conservatives hoped in Sacramento County school board races or in neighboring communities. Instead, Democrats won elections in Democratic neighborhoods and moderate Republicans with traditional resumes tended to have more success than candidates from the far right, leaving local school boards with roughly the same political dynamic that characterized their decision-making prior to the pandemic. “The school boards may have seemed like a soft target, but they’re some of the most contested races,” said Micah Grant, a Republican who was elected to the Natomas Unified school board in 2016. “Conservatives were shocked.”

    That trend played out in the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, where union-supported former educator Kara Lofthouse defeated Jen Tarbox, a right-leaning parent and social media marketer who became active at school board meetings during the pandemic.

    In some ways, the results are a mirror image to the midterm national outcome in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. Democrats beat expectations and far-right Republicans tended to lose contested seats in high-profile races. “I thought there would be more turnover in the state and country,” said GOP political consultant and former Yolo County Supervisor Matt Rexroad, “because families were upset (about COVID policies).”

    Let’s take a moment to think of this poor guy, who does not understand how “name recognition” works.

    The most extreme example in the Sacramento region of a far-right candidate seeing an opportunity on a school board took place in San Juan Unified, where Jeffrey Perrine ran for office. A self-identified member of the Proud Boys group, Perrine had already been expelled from the Sacramento County Republican Central Committee over his political views by the time he began running for elected office this year. He lost his bid for an Assembly seat in California’s June primary, and then turned his attention to San Juan Unified. He told The Sacramento Bee he was running to bring conservative values to the board and “fight cultural Marxism.”

    Perrine was confident that he’d have a decent shot. “I figured I could utilize the name recognition” from his Assembly campaign, Perrine said, “and the same people will vote for me.”

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article269125612.html#storylink=cpy

  139. 139.

    Steeplejack

    @James E Powell:

    I really don’t get the bias against black-and-white movies among young people, especially ones who consider themselves cinema buffs. I saw it all the time when I worked at Barnes & Noble. Heck, a lot of them wouldn’t watch anything from before about 1980, with a few exceptions for blockbusters like The Godfather, Star Wars, etc.

    B&W cinematography is just a different style of beauty. I mean, people can like abstract paintings and the Old Masters at the same time, right?

  141. 141.

    Starfish

    @Steeplejack: The pacing of movies has changed a lot, so a lot of older stuff seems extremely slow. Even stuff from the 1980s looks slow to brains that have lived entirely with CGI nonsense and cut scenes being relatively inexpensive to do.

    In the most recent Halloween movie, one of the critiques was that stylized cinematic lighting is now gone.

  142. 142.

    trucmat

     

    @Kay: ​

    Well you must have an amazing immune system. Our age 5 and 9 year old grandkids always pass me some germ. Kids visited for two full days last week and by Friday I was a mess. Did a covid test which was neg but still miserable. Love them but they get me sick as often as not. So that’s the downside for me.

  143. 143.

    satby

    @James E Powell: @Steeplejack: I made my exchange daughters watch Casablanca when they were here (in 2016), and had to stop it a few times to orient them a bit on the context of WW2, which might as well be the Peloponnesian War as far as they were concerned.  But they got hooked by it quickly, and loved it by the end. 

    That lack of historical understanding is screwing up the country today.

  145. 145.

    trollhattan

    @satby: Messing with exchange student minds via vintage TV and movies is one of life’s true pleasures.
    ETA “Monte Python and the Holy Grail” for the French girl, “Young Frankenstein” for the German girl, whose town is near an actual town of Frankenstein, “Monte Python’s Flying Circus” for the English girl, who had never heard of them.

  146. 146.

    Steeplejack

    @Starfish:

    That’s a good point. But ugh. I wonder if there will be a backlash at some point. The “new leisurely” movement in cinema.

  147. 147.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, a good reminder in a (short!) thread from Galeev:

    Well, most of modern Ukraine was either conquered or incorporated to Russia under Catherine II. She was probably the most aggressive ruler of the Russian Empire, not counting Peter I, and spent most of her reign in ambitious wars of expansion in the West and in the South https://t.co/T4oO4OfB0H pic.twitter.com/oWNY5ntmfL

    — Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) November 27, 2022

    I’m reminded of a small story in a book – Catherine – Empress of All the Russias. As a young woman she had a miserable toothache and the only treatment was extraction. The dentist who pulled her tooth apparently also pulled out part of her jawbone and left her in pain for the rest of her life.

    Dentists have a lot to answer for!!11

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  150. 150.

    James E Powell

    @trnc:

    Why would he get his employer’s contributions? Is he under the impression that, but for Social Security requiring it, his employer would have given him that money in wages?

  151. 151.

    Kay

    @trucmat:

    True, and I forgot about that. I have a cold right now after a visit with her. Parents of babies and toddlers are all talking about RSV now, rather than covid- I guess very young kids are really getting hit with it.

  152. 152.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @trollhattan:

    “Monte Python’s Flying Circus” for the English girl, who had never heard of them.

    My god. My god.

    Of course, what do the names Gilda Radner and John Belushi mean to people under fifty?

    Kara Swisher had Eric Idle on her podcast last week. He said about all the comedians whining about woke culture: If the audience doesn’t find you funny, that’s your fault. A nice antidote to my other favorite Python John Cleese having become a bitter old man because no one laughs about funny Indian accents anymore.

  153. 153.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    I’d value a public school teacher over ANY of America’s overcrowded, overpaid “societal observer” ranks any day and I dont care at all if she has purple hair.

    Thank you, Kay!

  155. 155.

    FelonyGovt

    @trollhattan: Same thing happened in my little town, Manhattan Beach in LA County. Our awful Republican city councilwoman pushed three awful unqualified candidates for school board because they were anti-“woke”, wanted to ban books, etc. All of them (including the R councilwoman) got tossed out.

  156. 156.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I listened to Maher’s first show after the election yesterday. He admits he was wrong about the Democrats getting wiped out, but thinks DeSantis did well because he says Florida is where “woke goes to die”. So, zero admission he was wrong about that issue. He said he’s happy about Musk running Twitter because he left because anything he wanted to say would get him canceled.

  157. 157.

    Anotherlurker

    One thing that really bugs me about campaign fundraising is the sheer volume of begging emails and their passive aggressive language.   These messages can be contradictory to other messages I receive from the various funding organizations.

    For example, this morning, I received 2 messages that told me that the on the ground organization is “packing their tents” (their words) and leaving Georgia.  The next email informed me that they are “crying tears of joy! Hershel Walker is tanking!” Again, their words.

    This is identical to gop fundraising letters. An insult to my intelligence.

    I vote Democratic exclusively but this kind of fundraising is very annoying.

  158. 158.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    He said he’s happy about Musk running Twitter because he left because anything he wanted to say would get him canceled.

    Yeah right. Like anyone would bother “cancelling” this boring, cranky old man who has been relying on opposing “political correctness” as a career for 30 years. He should be thanking the purple haired 22 year olds- without them he wouldn’t have anything at all to say.

    Can they find a new topic? Christ. Drum up a satanic panic or something. I’m bored with this one. Gangs! Gangs are always good for a panic. Shoplifting gangs!

  159. 159.

    Kathleen

    @MomSense: “Trump Is Bad” is now the new script for most media outlets. It feeds the narratives that “Trump was the only problem” and “if Trump is not frog marched tomorrow the spineless Merrick Garland has doomed democracy”. So while we’re all frenzied about Trump the fascists will continue to destroy democracy with new players and they’re betting we won’t notice.

    I didn’t know Corn wrote a new book. It sounds interesting. Have you read it?

  160. 160.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    They should all move to Florida, all the antiwokes. They all sound like stereotypical cranky, selfish retirees anyway, no matter if they’re 38 years old or 70 years old. They belong in Florida.

    The reason Musk sounds just like them is not because Musk is right- it’s because Musk is an asshole and so are they.

  162. 162.

    Geminid

    @James E Powell: Rep.-elect Nikki Budzinski’s Wikipedia biography is quite interesting. The Illinois 13th CD seat is the first public office Budzinski ever ran for,  but she has ample political and governmental experience.

    Among other jobs, she worked for J.B. Pritzgers campaign and was transition director when he won the Illinois governorship. Budzinski worked in the Biden administration as OMB chief of staff until she left to start her congressional campaign. I believe Ms. Budzinski is 45 years old.

  163. 163.

    Nelle

    @Anotherlurker: Here, here.  I just zero out the promotion section of gmail every few days and don’t look at it at all.  But the wheedling and melodrama is embarrassing.

  164. 164.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    I really don’t get the bias against black-and-white movies among young people, especially ones who consider themselves cinema buffs. I saw it all the time when I worked at Barnes & Noble. Heck, a lot of them wouldn’t watch anything from before about 1980, with a few exceptions for blockbusters like The Godfather, Star Wars, etc.

    When I was in college, there were film fans who simply could not watch silent films.

    Later, I would run across people who had never watched a movie that came out earlier than Star Wars, or maybe Jaws. Black and white films were as intolerable as silent films were to my peers.

    I have watched a few movie reaction videos on YouTube, where 20 somethings watch “classic films.” These are generally films from the 80s or late 70s.

    These folks had never seen a black and white film or even an old black and white TV series episode. Often Casablanca or It’s A Wonderful Life is the first black and white film they have ever seen. It is hard for some of them to appreciate black and white cinematography.

    ETA. Although a movie like The Godfather holds up well, it’s hard sometimes for me to see it as a classic. My friends and I were simply going out to see the latest works of talented filmmakers like Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas and DePalma and Scorsese. They were out contemporaries, not Old Masters.

  166. 166.

    Starfish

    @Anotherlurker: The quality of fundraising emails was very bad this season. I was constantly unsubscribing from things attempting emotionally manipulative nonsense. A lot of people have noticed this.

  168. 168.

    Leto

    @Brachiator: It’s a generational issue. Every generation thinks theirs is the best, and are always dismayed when the next doesn’t agree. The older generation will always ask the younger, “Why don’t you appreciate this?” And then become dismayed when the youth answer honestly.

    This is an issue that’s come back into sharp relief as I’ve gone back to school, and all my classmates are in the 18-21 range. I make references to “classics” and they’re all like… who? What? For example: they don’t know Zorro. Not just a movie, but the entire character. My reaction was: wtf do you mean, who’s Zorro? Then I had to stop and think about it, and I think the last Zorro material made was the Antonio Banderas flicks… which was 1998? Before any of them were born…

    Anyways, whenever these conversation pop up here my brain always defaults to: Old people yell at clouds, news at 11.

  171. 171.

    Jackie

    @Brachiator: When my kids were little our color TV died, leaving us with a black and white TV for about five years until I could afford a color TV – a Christmas gift from Santa. About a month after Christmas we went to a friends house so my 7 yr old could watch the NFL Pro Bowl (we didn’t have cable.) Following the game, something came on in black and white. My son shouted out “Your TV broke!” in a very upset voice. Because we didn’t have a color TV for years, he just assumed every show was in color and didn’t realize old shows were in black and white because color TV wasn’t available for most people “back in the day.”

  172. 172.

    WaterGirl

    @Anotherlurker:

    This is identical to gop fundraising letters. An insult to my intelligence.

    Yep.  When I get those messages with tons of RED! and YELLOW!, I hit unsubscribe and for the reason i tell them that their messages are like Republican messages so I assume they are hacks, too.

  173. 173.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kay: The most ridiculous thing about Bill Maher is that the show that made him a star — Politically Incorrect — wasn’t brought down by leftist “wokeism” but by rightwing jingoism. He made a single passing remark that, when taken wildly out of context, made it sound like he was praising the 9/11 hijackers and, boom, he was off the air.

  174. 174.

    Citizen Alan

    @Leto:

    My pet theory is that the proliferation of an infinite number of cable channels has undermined our group pop culture consciousness. When I was a kid and there were only 3 channels, the only things on between 3 and 5 (from when school got out to when my parents got home) were syndicated runs of shows that went off the air before I was born. Which meant that I could appreciate things like I Love Lucy or the Adam West Batman or Bewitched. Kids today are totally unfamiliar with culture from before they were born because they can go their whole childhoods without ever seeing anything that was produced more than ten years ago. I wonder how long it will be before teenagers will have never heard of Friends or Cheers. (Hell, we’re probably already there for Cheers.)

  175. 175.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Citizen Alan: I can remember watching old reruns after school of the original Mickey Mouse Club show (Spin and Marty, etc.) when I was in 6th grade (c. 1962).

  176. 176.

    Cowgirl in the Sandi

    I loved Spin and Marty – I’d love to see it again!  I wanted a horse just like Skyrocket!

  177. 177.

    Brachiator

    @Leto:

    It’s a generational issue. Every generation thinks theirs is the best, and are always dismayed when the next doesn’t agree. The older generation will always ask the younger, “Why don’t you appreciate this?” And then become dismayed when the youth answer honestly.

    True to some extent. I have heard people dismiss older movies as “grandad movies,” and presume that none of this could ever interest them. On a movie podcast, one host admitted that he got creeper out watching movies where none of the actors in the film were currently alive.

    However, when I was a teen, Bogart, Monroe, Brando and Dean were big movie icons, and older teens and hip college kids loved older movies as much as they loved cutting edge cinema. Also, a lot of old films showed regularly on TV. We didn’t have video rental stores yet.

    And my college contemporaries and I had campus film societies which played a huge variety of domestic and foreign films, going back to the silent era.

    But the biggest thing is that the people I hung out with who were film buffs always appreciated the craftsmanship of movie making. I see self-described film buffs on YouTube and elsewhere who are shocked, shocked to see that early films were well made.

    This is an issue that’s come back into sharp relief as I’ve gone back to school, and all my classmates are in the 18-21 range. I make references to “classics” and they’re all like… who? What? For example: they don’t know Zorro. Not just a movie, but the entire character. My reaction was: wtf do you mean, who’s Zorro? Then I had to stop and think about it, and I think the last Zorro material made was the Antonio Banderas flicks… which was 1998? Before any of them were born…

    Very true. Movies are now more than a century old, and many young people have seen very few movies made before 1990. Which is understandable for casual film viewers. But when I was a kid I used to watch The Adventures of Zorro TV series with Guy Williams as the dashing hero. And I have also seen the 1940 The Mark of Zorro a number of times, as well as a good bit of the 1920 Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks. And I have seen the Banderas Zorro, and also Zorro, the Gay Blade, with George Hamilton. Funny stuff.

    But I guess on average the casual film viewer might have only a vague knowledge of movies made, say 10 to 15 years before they were born, with the exception of some blockbusters like Jaws, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

    But again, I have never believed that the films I grew up with were the only good films. And I hate the phony nostalgia of stuff like “they don’t make ’em like that, anymore. “

  179. 179.

    Brachiator

    @Jackie:

    My son shouted out “Your TV broke!” in a very upset voice. Because we didn’t have a color TV for years, he just assumed every show was in color and didn’t realize old shows were in black and white because color TV wasn’t available for most people “back in the day.”

    That’s funny. I grew up with black and white TV, but my younger siblings only knew color TV.

  180. 180.

    Baud

    Young people don’t appreciate how Revenge of the Nerds opened the door to making computer nerds cool today.

  182. 182.

    Hamlet of Melnibone

    @Brachiator: One of the best jokes in Marvel’s Civil War is when Spiderman suggests wrapping webbing around Ant man’s legs like in “that really old movie Empire Strikes Back”

    It really highlighted how young he was.

  183. 183.

    Kay

    @Citizen Alan:

    It’s fine to admire and support DeSantis. They’re older and richer now, they want the youngins off their lawns and they don’t want to pay income taxes.
    But just say that instead of dragging us thru this elaborate “wokeness” bullshit.
    DeSantis is the worst “free speech” governor in the country and it’s not close. This was never about free speech if DeSantis is the anti-woke candidate, and he is.

  187. 187.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It’s never funny either:

    The Babylon Bee
    @TheBabylonBee Stephen King Estate Reveals He Died Years Ago And His Twitter Account Is Being Run By A Mentally Ill, Glue-Sniffing Parrot With Tourette’s

    This is the genuis comedy the woke mob was suppressing.

  188. 188.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Citizen Alan:

    The most ridiculous thing about Bill Maher

    I haven’t watched him in years so this may no longer be true, but as I recall the most ridiculous thing about Bill Maher is/was that in his sixties he is/was always ready to show you (metaphorically) his forty-plus  year-old acceptance letter from Cornell.

  191. 191.

    Brachiator

    @Hamlet of Melnibone:

    One of the best jokes in Marvel’s Civil War is when Spiderman suggests wrapping webbing around Ant man’s legs like in “that really old movie Empire Strikes Back”

    It really highlighted how young he was.

    I saw Star Wars when it premiered at The Chinese Theater in Hollywood. I later introduced my younger siblings to the original trilogy. I explained to my sister that George Lucas intended to make a total of 9 Star Wars films. When my sister said she wanted me to take her to see these films, I told her she might be grown up with her own kids before the remaining movies were made.

    Sure enough, her son, now in his 20s, became a big Star Wars fan, thanks to the early films and Star Wars video games.

    ETA. I loved the original trilogy, but was not an obsessive fan or consumer of later Star Wars stuff. That said, I have greatly enjoyed the recent Star Wars related series Andor. Great stuff.

  193. 193.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Kay: Because its always juvenile, mean spirited humor, which isn’t funny unless you’re equally mean spirited. As they all seem to be and we are not. At least the mean spirited part ;-)

  194. 194.

    kalakal

    @Anotherlurker:

    For example, this morning, I received 2 messages that told me that the on the ground organization is “packing their tents” (their words) and leaving Georgia.  The next email informed me that they are “crying tears of joy! Hershel Walker is tanking!” Again, their words.

    It annoyed the hell out of me. I’d get emails from the same organizations hours apart. One would be “Abandon all hope” the other would be “Happy days are here again”. They really need to look at their own output, blatantly lying bullshit is not an effective fund raiser as far as I’m concerned

  195. 195.

    Steeplejack

    @Leto:

    “Old man yells at cloud,” singular, which is somehow funnier and more poignant, but which nobody gets right.

  196. 196.

    JPL

    @Kay: btw My DIL thanks you because the first time that I heard about Hanna Anderson was from year, probably three years ago now.

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