Ironic in a good way! https://t.co/tlTzgbbGWm
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 12, 2023
NEW: Vice President @KamalaHarris is on the road this summer.https://t.co/5bZZiYJk3X
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) July 13, 2023
We have a duty to make sure that all Native people have the opportunity to thrive. pic.twitter.com/ERRfKmfYMz
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 11, 2023
“With half of Americans living in childcare deserts and the cost of childcare continuing to increase, the Biden administration has made affordable, accessible childcare a critical part of the “Bidenomics” plan.”https://t.co/55xx6ZnhND
— Kirsten Allen (@KirstenAllen46) July 12, 2023
The fight for disability rights is a fight for dignity, opportunity, and self-determination.
I convened disability rights leaders with @SecretaryPete to address the work ahead, including our Administration's efforts to increase transportation accessibility. pic.twitter.com/FSp2tTP1ef
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 11, 2023
America's small business boom means jobs, opportunity, and innovation.
When we invest in small businesses, we invest in America. pic.twitter.com/4KgS8zSulw
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 10, 2023
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer bestowed upon the Vice President the respect she deserves with a very nice speech following her history making tie breaking vote.
It’s nice to get to see her held in such high esteem by her Washington colleagues.
— Owning My Space? (@JuneSummer1) July 12, 2023
Get excited! VP @KamalaHarris is coming to the 114th #NAACPConvention.
"We look forward to hearing from the @VP on how the administration is enacting its commitment to addressing the issues that are top-of-mind for Black America. —@DerrickNAACP
??: https://t.co/4g19pJsFsh pic.twitter.com/dCUOxpljgH
— NAACP (@NAACP) July 13, 2023
We’re thrilled to be joined by @VP at our Annual Conference, and look forward to hearing from her about the Biden-Harris administration’s policies to achieve greater equity. #UnidosUS23 pic.twitter.com/FPrCHgA0yq
— UnidosUS (@WeAreUnidosUS) July 13, 2023
Smart investors get in on the ground floor!
Big Democratic donor Charles Myers, hosting VP Kamala Harris on the Upper East Side this afternoon, per pool: "I also will say I will be very proud to be the first one to sign up for Harris for President 2028."
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) July 13, 2023
OzarkHillbilly
Finally got the electricity back up late last night, so not so Blech this AM.
Baud
History’s Newest Greatest Monster.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yay water!
Baud
I want a want president, just not that woman, Part Deux.
OzarkHillbilly
The 2023 Comedy Pet Photography awards – in pictures
It was hard picking, so many too too funny pics, but I settled on this as my favorite: When digging gets serious
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: How is that possible?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Awesome.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Hooray! Celebratory flushing of the toilets commencing!
satby
https://gofund.me/1257b847
heck yeah I donated.
OzarkHillbilly
@HinTN: I don’t know of course, but the first thing to come to my mind is s/he was digging for something (crab?) saw it and did the head first dive into the hole in an attempt to catch it (like a fox hunting mice in deep snow).
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: They’re all brilliant! I like the one with the Malamute in the pot plants.
Jeffro
I like her, I like that she’s such a visible part of this administration, and it’s still kind of ‘wow’ (in a great way) to have her as our VP.
This is a great way to lead off Friday morning, AL – thanks!
lee
I’ve seen comments from RWNJs that VP Harris is not doing her job and is an overall embarrassment to the country. They are terrified of her and are trying to ‘Hillary’ her.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: That one had the best caption: “So this is the source of happiness.”
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I celebrated by cleaning up everything in the kitchen at 3 AM.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I know that was a real pain point for you!
mrmoshpotato
@lee:
You see a pair of eyes go rolling past?
Exactamundo.
Matt McIrvin
@lee: The first version of the “senile Biden” attack from 2020 claimed that Biden was a puppet and Harris was the evil harpy holding his strings. Fear of Kamala Harris was the central emotion there.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Good!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I saw a reference to a T-shirt that urged getting rid of “Joe and the Hoe.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, but I was genuinely shocked.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
NotMax
@rikyrah
2:40 a.m. here. Suppose should get my act together and rustle up something for dinner.
Josie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The mask is completely off. No surprise, just disgust.
Ken
She’s doing the one job the Constitution gives the VP, casting tie-breaking votes in the Senate.
But maybe they want her to do more trips to South Korea to stare with clenched jaw across the border? Or maybe they want her to… to…
Hmm. I can’t remember anything else that Pence did in his four years as VP.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yup. I’ve seen the bumpersticker. There’s a lot of passionate, inexplicable hatred toward Harris that is unusual for a VP. Ordinarily people go after the President. Wonder what that’s about?
BellyCat
A certain type of white male fears nothing more than a TOTALLY HAWT woman who is bright, accomplished, confident, unavailable, and disinterested in placating idiots or tolerating sexual advances.
GO KAMALA!!!
NotMax
@Ken
He can spell potato.
At least I think so.
//
BellyCat
@NotMax: What, you’re living in Hawaii while pretending it’s New Zealand? ;-)
Night Owls Unite! 👊
OzarkHillbilly
We went thru this just the other day. I remembered that he also unloaded empty boxes from an aid truck. Others remembered other things that I have now already forgotten again.
Rob in CT
@lee:
Their version of “her job” is to keep out immigrants. Why isn’t she at the Border?! they shriek, as if her steely gaze is going to deter poor/desperate people from seeking entry into this country.
Literally any lady Democrat is going to be “Hillaried” because that’s the character they created and it works pretty well. Pelosi has been a hate object for a long time. AOC, Senator Professor Warren… *any* liberal lady will come in for this shit, and our garbage media will play along.
Our first woman President will either be a reactionary asshole or the result of some wave election following the GOP (again) fucking up everything they touched (ala 2008). A Dem woman running in a “normal” election would have to do the proverbial dancing backwards in high heels to win.
prostratedragon
@OzarkHillbilly: That one’s great, but my favorite is “Bark.” The expression of the woman on the left says it all.
Chris
@Rob in CT:
I knew this before, but it really came out after 2016 when Hillary Clinton had lost, they were without a Liberal Lady Macbeth figure for the first time in a quarter century, and they cast about desperately to try and find one.
Some of them simply went into denial and for years you had hot take articles going “is Hillary Clinton planning to run again?” Immediately after the election you had attempts to make Kirsten Gillibrand into the new hate-object, which went nowhere because even half the politics junkies don’t know who the fuck she is. And most nastily of all, there were the attempts to make Chelsea Clinton the new hate-object, because the fact that she’d written a children’s book was a clear sign that she was getting ready to run for office.
NotMax
Timorous media mention.
Documentary far, far from everyone’s cup of bratwurst, Fascism on a Thread: The Strange Story of Nazisploitation Cinema on Prime/Freevee.
Fair warning: contains short clips from the movies discussed some of which do depict gory details.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Warning TheHill:
Good, good.
More, please.
Cheers,
Scott.
daveNYC
@lee: Rather hilarious considering that the VP doesn’t really have a job. Keep breathing, show up at the Senate every so often, STFU and do whatever the President gives you. That’s it. Whatever she’s doing now is her job.
Sanjeevs
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tucker-carlson-is-creating-a-new-media-company-8e21b909?mod=hp_lead_pos4
Kay
@Chris:
Remember Trump tried to do it to Gretchen Whitmer – governor of Michigan? Big flop :)
Also- she won her re-elect unlike a certain NYC “real estate developer”.
Kay
@Sanjeevs:
I knew Musk woud be bad but I have to admit I’m suprised at how blatant he has been at taking Twitter far Right. It’s a Right wing media company at this point. I think at some point mainstream media people have to get off it – it’ll just be too slanted for them to stay and keep up some pretext of objectivity.
Chris
@Kay:
Nope, I don’t remember that at all. Which just goes to show how much of a flop it was.
Of course, there were at least a dozen WTF moments coming from Trump on any given week throughout his presidency, so there’s a lot that’s gotten memoryholed.
gene108
@Sanjeevs:
I wonder if they’ll raise money? Seems weird to base a program on Twitter as the medium.
A bunch of billionaires with political axes to grind seem to be willing to fund anything to further their cause, but given that Twitter’s failing, I wonder if it might cause them to pull back funding on this venture.
Or Musk just funds them until Twitter crashes beyond repair.
Sanjeevs
@Kay: i remember there was some talk of some people in Silicon Valley feeling Fox was ripe for disruption and that seems to be the way Musk is going.
Rob in CT
@Chris:
Same. I really underestimated it as a factor, which is how I got the ’16 election so wrong.
Kay
@Chris:
“That woman from Michigan”
It worked to a certain extent with his cultists- they stormed the MI statehouse and some of them tried to kidnap and kill her, but failed with the general public.
Kay
@Sanjeevs:
That was my fear- that we had a new Rupert Murdoch – but then it seemed that Musk was too dumb and lazy to be Rupert Murdoch. Fox functions, after all.
Tucker’s Twitter show is bombing. He’s been reduced to trotting out sex traffickers to spike views so maybe his business venture will bomb too. His is, after all, a career based solely on privilege he was born with. Fingers crossed!
MazeDancer
Happy Bastille Day!
Perhaps, today, the noble studios and producers should consider picketing to be a mild response to their greed.
Though, uh, heads up if anyone brings out their knitting.
Saw a T-Shirt on Twitter that read:
“WGA -SGA-Orcas-Otters”
Kay
@Sanjeevs:
I do think regular reporters and media people have to get off it at some point. They can’t be promoting their books and substacks and careers on a far Right media site while proclaiming objectivity. They’re not on Truth Social, right? Same thing.
Ken
On an online show? He must be targeting the incredibly tiny demographic of people who can use a browser but aren’t aware there’s free porn on the internet.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: I think I was shocked by the sexualized nature of the insult. “Hoe” usually carries overtones of slut or promiscuity. I get that it rhymes with “Joe” but really? Kamala Harris?
Omnes Omnibus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
She is a successful black woman. What did you expect from the racist right?
Matt McIrvin
@Rob in CT:
Or a VP like Harris who succeeds to the office when something happens to the President–I think this is the most likely path.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Oh yeah. It’s bad. I think sexualized attacks on minority women are the norm, though. That context.
Rob in CT
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The claim is she slept her way into high-level CA politics. She had a relationship with Willie Brown, then speaker of the CA assembly.
From wikipedia:
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I think we’ll see a media, brand and government account migration off of Twitter. Some have already decamped, and others may be waiting for the successors to sort themselves out. I’ve seen media types at both Bluesky and Threads.
My guess is Musk’s epic self-immolation will be a business school topic for years. Has anyone ever pissed away so much money and influence in such a stupid way? The mind reels.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I expect they’ll begin by cross-posting. Probably won’t leave twitter for a while, unless the site collapses.
Kay
I love Bidenomics :)
Baud
@Kay:
And that’s why he must go!
Chris
@Kay:
I think over the last half century or so, most Important People have just completely internalized the notion that pushing to the right is always okay and pushing to the left never is. Right wingers who can chew with their mouths closed are “the mainstream,” the far right are “boys will be boys,” and anything to the left of whatever currently seems to be the center-right is unacceptable for a whole host of vague and contradictory but very emphatically important reasons.
And of course a Gen Xer like Musk is exactly the demographic to have drunk that kool aid.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Lurking on threads has been interesting to me because I didn’t participate in Facebook and I only lurk on Instagram- I ruthlessly weed Instagram so I get only gardening related content so I haven’t really been a social media person.
But Threads has a lot of sort of newbies to politics – you can tell they migrated over from Instagram- and that seems like an opportunity to reach normies to me. I think it explains the less heated, less nasty vibe too. They’re just not as invested.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I don’t spend much time on Twitter now, but it seems more shitty each time I visit. The functionality is degraded and the content is worse. There’s been an influx of crypto scammers lately.
Chris
@Rob in CT:
I take some small comfort in the fact that at least a majority of voters preferred her, even after a massive concerted effort by the media, the FBI, and Russia to push them in the other direction.
Pretty small, though.
p.a.
@Kay:
Who thought Joe could reverse the “socialize the cost/privatize the benefit” economy?!
And I admit to calling him “Joe Biden (D-MBNA)” back in the day. Which maybe was accurate then.
Chris
@Sanjeevs:
Huh. Fox calls Arizona for Joe Biden and becomes Trump’s latest bogeyman, and just like that, Silicon Valley starts thinking that maybe Fox should be “disrupted.”
Chris
@MazeDancer:
Thank you, thank you.
“The great appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.”
rikyrah
@lee:
Indeed they are. Which is why I am glad that there are so many of us pushing back in real time, against the bullshyt towards the Vice President. They’ve been scared of her ever since Karl Rove got personally involved in her first race for Attorney General.
Steve in the ATL
Questions for the hive mind:
TIA!
lee
@Betty Cracker:
Functionality has dropped precipitously. Sometimes my feed will take a minute or more to refresh.
Once a competitor gets enough traction to bring over a critical mass of journalists and elected officials Twitter is toast.
I have not tried any of the competitors (I don’t do beta testing for other companies) so I have no opinion on them.
Kay
@p.a.:
Well, Goldman made some bad investments and commercial real estate slump is hurting them but I thought it was funny. Not directly connected though, I think.
I DO think a reduction in income inequality would solve a lot of other problems though. I think massive income inequality creates a “low quality elite class” like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson. You need a scrappy group beneath them pushing them out of their slots. They’re like languishing up there for generations. We need more competition.
stinger
@prostratedragon: That photo should be in the dictionary next to the word “photobomb”.
p.a.
@Steve in the ATL: #2 Professional pest remover. They can do serious damage. Elec wiring🫨🤬🫨
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Operation Barbarossa?
Mark Twain’s financing venture into automated typesetting machines?
The U. S. military’s program to ‘smart bomb’ targets by tossing explosive-equipped cats out of planes? Or Stalin’s to use bomber dogs to take out tanks? Or Churchill’s mile long pykrete aircraft carrier boondoggle?
The Edsel?
// (All not adjusted for inflation ’cause yours truly is too lazy to do the math.)
lee
@Steve in the ATL:
#1 I’m interesting in this answer as well. Chile is on my bucketlist. It was having some internal turmoil recently but I think it has calmed down a bit
#2: My neighbors dealt with this at the start of the pandemic. I recommend hiring professionals. They will find all the access points but one, then put repellent in the attic until they find no more traces of squirrels. You can probably DYI. I don’t think the repellent is a restricted chemical.
The second phase of the solution: Buy a pellet gun and cull the squirrel population. With the agreement of my neighbors I’ve been keeping the local squirrel population down. This keeps them from looking for attics as a place to nest.
NotMax
@Chris
The Overton window is a harsh
mistressdominatrix.//
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: I had squirrels in the attic in the previous house, and you have to find the point of entry and patch it. It cost a few thousand dollars before the problem was solved
what Lee said
Kay
@Steve in the ATL:
Hire a professional for squirrels but a good one is hard to find. It took me three tries to get a good one and he insisted on payment in cash. I had no choice but I was mad “oh, so you don’t pay taxes?”
He got rid of the squirrels though. The tax cheat.
rikyrah
@Chris:
I will fully admit that I completely underestimated the misogyny against Hillary. I knew that it existed. But, the DEPTH of it?
I didn’t see it until post -2016.
Which is why I won’t make the same mistake with the Vice President.
They will not gaslight us that we are being ‘ too sensitive’ when it comes to the Vice President.
Nope. We see exactly what those muthaphuckas are trying to do against her.
Kay
@Steve in the ATL:
Costs were all over the place too- one gave me an estimate for almost 10k. It ended up costing about 3.
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
#1: Like beef? Go for it.
#2: Tried mothballs/camphor flakes?
sdhays
This is an awful story out of Italy, but I think people should read about it: Man acquitted of assault as grope lasted less than 10 seconds.
I suppose murder is legal in Italy as well if the person dies within 10 seconds. I wonder what would happen if random people started sticking their hands down the judges’ pants – as a joke, of course! – without warning for 5 seconds.
Despicable.
stinger
@Rob in CT:
Iowa’s first female Senator: Joni Ernst (R-Bread Bags)
Iowa’s first female governor: “Covid Kim” Reynolds (R-No Choice For You)
The idea that only Republicans can break new ground goes back at least to “only Nixon could go to China”. And when they deign finally to put up women, it’s always someone like Sarah Palin.
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
I hope that if you get someone complaining about student loan forgiveness, that folks will bring up the complete transformation of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
Created in 2007, before the Biden Administration, there were a total of 7,000 people who had their loans forgiven.
7,000
7,000
Biden went in, and ordered a revamping of the rules, and cleaning up of the program to make it more accessible to those that have done the requirements.
Now?
OVER SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND APPLICANTS have seen their loans forgiven.
600,000 since Biden became President.
Don’t tell me that good government isn’t possible.
NotMax
@sdhays
One way to end up the recipient of scads of Christmas cards.
//
Kay
@rikyrah:
There is some recognition of that among normies. Several people have told me about it at the law practice – both the loan forgiveness and that the system works much better. Biden seems to be doing some sort of auto-enroll in new programs (because the old one no longer exists) – like a refi, but pain free for the debtor- no paperwork or decisions. You’re just IN the plan with the more favorable terms.
They’re all looking at their loans right now because payments start back up soon. I think this is why I’m hearing about it.
BellyCat
@Steve in the ATL: Burning the house down is: quicker, easier, cheaper, and guaranteed to work. How often do you really stay there anyway?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sdhays: Are you kidding me? You can tell these people have never been groped. A two-second grope from a stranger on the street can be traumatic. I speak from experience.
Steve in the ATL
@lee: @JPL: @Kay: @NotMax: have tried ammonia, moth balls, and OTC squirrel repellent up there and it didn’t keep them out for long.
Have patched the entry points twice and they just chew new ones, the little bastards.
$10k for a professional? Yikes. That would cut into my doing-cocaine-in-the-White-House budget.
@JPL: did you just patch the entry points or did you hire a professional squirrel wrangler as well? Would love to know of a competent one in our area.
Taken4Granite
@Steve in the ATL: If your house is wood frame construction with wood siding, the rodents will always find a way in.
I used to have squirrels in my attic, but not since I replaced my siding with Hardieplank. The ventilated soffits are also made of some wood substitute, the name of which I have long since forgotten. That was back in 2007.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL: I would try snakes.
Steve in the ATL
@Chris:
Can we phrase this as:
sdhays
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s difficult to comprehend how fucked up someone (multiple judges!) have to be to come to this conclusion.
It’s a deeply misogynist decision. I don’t believe the result would have been the same if the victim was male. If you’re gay and looking to assault some school children (this was a teacher assaulting a high school student), I wouldn’t take this ruling as a green light for you.
FastEdD
Cool little portable VP shield thingie that you can set up on a conference table. Never seen that.
OTOH, one of the earliest criticisms of MVP is that she was a “cop” because she went after truant kids. After they and their parents had ignored every request to get the kid to attend school. In my 34 year career as a public school teacher we met with business and community leaders who told us their number one issue was getting kids to show up on time and be responsible. The police told us the number one source of petty crime in the community was truant kids. If you are a DA or AG and your job is to reduce crime that is exactly the way you do it.
KH did a damn good job.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I also see a certain amount of people who insist that they’re liberals but they think all this loan forgiveness is too great a moral hazard. There’s a Puritan streak to it (but one that doesn’t frown on usury, I guess).
rikyrah
Renee (@PettyLupone) tweeted at 9:30 PM on Thu, Jul 13, 2023:
Somewhere along this timeline, trump and a few rogue SCOTUS rulings got y’all thinking we’re just gonna let your minority take this entire country back to 1945.
Please, chile.
You’re not even tall enough for this ride.
Hope Restored In DFW (@Kennymack1971) tweeted at 9:41 PM on Thu, Jul 13, 2023:
That’s the part people keep missing. Do they REALLY think Black people are going to just accept the return of Jim Crow? That the LGBTQ community is going to go back into the closet? That we’re going back to pre industrial America with no fuss?
The regressives are going to lose.
(https://twitter.com/Kennymack1971/status/1679682562820562944?t=zZ1OzRJw2HHb3Vsg6bqCNw&s=03)
Steve in the ATL
@BellyCat: fair point. And I know a guy who will handle the arson for well under $10k.
@Taken4Granite: house is stucco over wood frame, but soffits and such are wood. Good idea about replacing the with something stronger. Maybe titanium.
@Baud: I have a call into Betty Cracker to send a few up here.
Also thinking about inviting some people from Alabama or Louisiana to stay here for a while. And they will leave voluntarily as soon as they have killed and eaten all the squirrels in the area. Maybe a neighborhood potluck with Brunswick stew….
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Interesting! I had an Instagram account under my fake name that I used only to follow a handful of chefs and then some people from Twitter who quit that platform early on, so I went ahead and downloaded Threads to mostly lurk for now.
I agree the vibe is different. I hadn’t considered the possibility that it’s an opportunity to reach normies, but maybe it is! A lot will depend on their moderation policies as the user base grows, I think. Hopefully the nasty far-right people will stick with Musker, but as the place empties out, they’ll probably follow since bullying and harassing people is their jam.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: We were able to get them out, and hired a contractor for the rest. As you know areas around here can be hilly and the back side of the house was 3 stories high and then the attic, but since it was on a hill, it was a tad more than we could do. It was 2500 but that was fifteen years ago.
lee
@Steve in the ATL:
This is why step 2 is important. They will populate the area at the level the food will support. They will all look to nest somewhere. They started stripping bark off of one my trees (the population briefly exceeded the easy food supply). That in conjunction with my neighbor problem, got me to purchase a pellet gun.
Another neighbor across the street who had squirrels in their attic a few years prior looked me in the eye and said ‘How about you being a Marine solve this squirrel problem for us?’
Betty Cracker
@Steve in the ATL: You’re in luck!
NPR: A record-breaking Burmese python — as long as a giraffe is tall — caught in Florida
JML
@Rob in CT:
You know, we thought that about the first black president in the 80’s and 90’s…and Obama won anyways. It doesn’t have to be that way, even with Hillary’s loss in 2016. I believe a Democratic woman can be the first female president of this country. It won’t be easy, and we know the media will be unfair and the GOP will go after them with everything they have…but FFS that’s gonna happen with any Democratic candidate today!
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: Son had work done on his stucco to remove the critters, and I just texted him to see if he would recommend that contractor. I’ll let you know.
JPL
@lee: yup caging and removal doesn’t work. They’ll find their way back.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@sdhays: Hey, watch it.
Gay people aren’t the potential child gropers that you just implied they are. You may not have meant it this way, you’re spreading slanderous homophobia. Might want to edit…
ETA – I don’t mean to be a tone-policing jerk (I just come off that way sometimes). This just hit me the wrong way when I read it.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: My son said that they were fine, but not great and because of that, he wouldn’t be comfortable recommending them.
Anyway
@Steve in the ATL:
Highly recommend hiking in Chilean Patagonia. Torres del Paine W trek is challenging and exciting and … We didn’t camp stayed in refugios that were serviceable and well-maintained. Great adventure.
Only other thing I remember from the trip is BEEF – lots of it.
I am sure Kent will have more thoughts..
PS remembering the flight from Santiago to Punta Arenas goes on and on and on …
Betty Cracker
@lee: I wonder if there’s a way to attract hawks? The Red-Shouldered Hawks in our neighborhood keep the squirrel population to a minimum.
Matt McIrvin
@JML: Yeah, even the “first Black President” stories in entertainment were either absurd comedy scenarios, or they imagined this conservative gray eminence vaguely based on Colin Powell. Obama didn’t actually fit the script.
Old School
Saw my first “Biden Harris 2024” lawn sign last night.
Ken
I have a minor dislike of these sorts of comparisons. I think I picked it up from Steven Jay Gould’s “Case of the Creeping Fox Terrier Clone”, where he tried to track down who first compared Eohippus to a fox terrier. He also had some musings on why it kept being used, long after the point where few people would know the size of a fox terrier.
There are of course some XKCDs, this being my favorite (but this is also good).
gvg
@rikyrah: It used to be quite common. Way back in the 90’s. Presumably it got ended after Bill Clinton and he did not create it, public service forgiveness had been around a long time when I was in school and then first a financial aid counselor. It used to be routine for teachers to have loans forgiven for years of teaching. Schools would help them apply at the end of each fiscal year. Then it got harder to qualify. My cousin had some loans forgiven that way.
Other professions like police and firefighter and social worker did too. I think the military got it as well. It was there and was taken away. 2007 was trying to get it back. I suspect Biden having been around a long time knows this.
I’d like to see subsidized loans for grad students brought back. There was no reason to end that and force them to go to all interest bearing loans while still in school, a few years ago.
JPL
What the heck
from mastodon
schrodingers_cat
Guess who is the guest of honor for Bastille Day?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I admit I haven’t even thought about donating to the top of the ticket. I have to check my CC bills and figure out which recurring donations I’ve already set up.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s funny because IMO the “moral hazard” runs the other way- colleges and lenders know the loans are guaranteed by the government and can’t be discharged in bankruptcy so do no due diligence. The risks would definitely shift if we allowed student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy (my preferred approach) but I think it’s just as likely they shift in a good way as in a bad way. I like the bankruptcy solution because I’m very familiar with bk courts and system and it runs well – we have an expert, specialized court and a really high quality system already in place to evaluate debors and debt- use it!
The truth is you shouldn’t be borrowing more than 1:1 – what you will earn in one year with the added degree or credential. Now that doesn’t apply for some professions – it won’t work at all for physicians- but it’s a good rough estimate for most people. If colleges started getting debt discharged after a bankruptcy I think there would be a lot less “oh, just keep borrowing… forever for this degree where you’ll earn 45k” It’s a racket.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: There’s plenty of hawks in the area. Where I live now, I haven’t put out any type of feeder and that helps.
Betty Cracker
@Ken: It’s NPR’s comparison — I copied their headline.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: I put my bird feeders under the porch roof so my poor little chickadees, titmice, cardinals, etc., won’t become lunch at the raptor buffet. ;-)
sdhays
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: My intention was to point out the misogyny, not at all to imply that gay people are all potential gropers! Just that a homosexual male groper wouldn’t have been acquitted.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
The vast majority of student loan debt is btwn 10k and 40k. So most people should be w/in my 1:1 scenario but the other factor is where they take on debt and don’t graduate, and that hits the lowest income “first generation” college students the hardest. They need relief. They could do a Ch 7 bankruptcy and move on with their lives. It doesn’t ding credit as much as it used to because lender evals have gotten so much more sophisticated and granular. Even covering the fees for the bk would be fine with me. You could move the bulk of it off the books with one change to the bankruptcy code.
Ken
@Betty Cracker: Yes, sorry I wasn’t clear on the source.
rikyrah
@gvg:
I did not know that.
I know about the Medical forgiveness, which is one of the reasons why I don’t give two shyts about Medical folks whining about how much debt they have.
I have two cousins – one a doctor, the other a dentist.
Both had loans.
Both chose to enter into the ‘ underserved community’ program.
One spent 5 years at a Texas border town. The other in rural Alabama.
Both had their loans completely forgiven once they gave their 5 years.
You don’t want a lot of medical school debt – get yourself to an underserved community for 5 years.
gvg
@Kay: NO NO NO. Student loans have no credit score. They don’t work that way and aren’t supposed to. You are being loaned money so that you can become someone else than who you are now creditwise. there is no credit check. The whole student loan system was set up because students inately did not qualify for regular loans. They don’t have an income yet. The government is investing in you because it profits the government to have a larger mass of citizens moving our economy which makes us more powerful AND raises our incomes so that our lifetime taxes are more than the investment costs.
Now the lenders are actually sloppy because they have no risk for a guaranteed profit. What that means is that they should have to pass audits including how well they service the customers (both government and loanees) in order to continue and get paid…if we continue allowing private lenders to service the loans which I am not convinced we need to do. I would be fine if we went back to the government doing it all themselves. Seemed to work fine that way.
What happens is if someone after school has an issue, the lenders are quick to say default and turn it over to the government for payoff instead of handling it which the government then has to do. Often its just paperwork being late, or former student not getting clear advice and instructions and the bank could have fixed it but didn’t want to bother.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: My brother went into the army to finance his med school.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Matt McIrvin: “24” had a cool-headed Black President.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: That’s a path to get a GC as well. One of my mother’s friends who is a radiologist did that. He practiced in WV. His wife was an EPA admin. Both came to this country in the 70s after a stint in Britain’s NHS and India’s public health sector. They have some stories!
Both are staunch Ds BTW, and have been since they became citizens in the late 80s.
I guess when you are a minority and/or an immigrant you don’t expect stuff to just fall in your lap by whining about it. Whether it is student loans or voting. Where the hurdles are higher for the groups I have mentioned than your dude bros and writers with fancy studies in their NYC apartments.
Kay
@gvg:
I absolutely see your point and agree- this was not how it was supposed to work and the concept is good. I think everyone should be able to study what they want, which is why I’m not crazy about loan forgiveness for “noble” careers. I don’t think people have to be noble to have a reasonable amount of debt.
We already use a process that is LIKE a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The income-based payments and forgiveness after 20 years is like a (bad terms) Ch 13. In a Ch 13 the debtor makes payments based on income and assets for a period of years and then the remaining unsecured debt is forgiven. They’d be betteroff with an actual Ch 13 because it ends in 3 to 5 years instead of 20.
We need to get them discharged and on with their lives. That’s the point of bankruptcy. The idea is we want people to take risks without getting hit so hard with downside that they give up. We want them to try things.
UncleEbeneezer
@Chris: I think that campaign was actually coming from sexists on our side because they needed someone to blame for Al Franken’s sins. Republicans were happy to join in because they wanted to spread the myth of Me Too being out of control. But most of the real animus towards Gillibrand has always, sadly, come from angry Franken-stans on our side.
rikyrah
Herbie Ziskend (@HerbieZiskend46) tweeted at 7:53 PM on Thu, Jul 13, 2023:
“Leaning into Bidenomics – a label first used pejoratively by the President’s adversaries – was a deft move by the White House communications team.” -@danpfeiffer https://t.co/bR4KYZgiRx
(https://twitter.com/HerbieZiskend46/status/1679655300410777600?t=WwzzmVjDR3lBMrTWblNxOw&s=03)
schrodingers_cat
deleted.
rikyrah
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
David Palmer, Baby…
DAVID Palmer :)
Matt McIrvin
@Chris:
There’s always been an element of corruption of blood there. All factions do this to some degree to the spawn of their political enemies, but I wouldn’t have given two shits about the Trump kids if they hadn’t had actual roles in the administration! But I remember one right-winger yelling, when Chelsea was still quite young, about how it was right and proper to despise her because she “bears the taint!!”
smith
@rikyrah: They didn’t learn anything from “Obamacare,” did they?
rikyrah
@Kay:
I absolutely believe that people should be able to discharge their student loans if they go through bankruptcy and choose to do so.
Kay
@gvg:
I feel like student loan forgiveness doesn’t solve the problem and it uses so much political capital. The truth is most people have a sort of “morality” approach to debt – I no longer do, to me it’s just numbers now and I think it will be fine if we discharge them and send them on their way- we’ve had bankrupcy in this country for 200 years and I don’t think it’s led to crazy irresponsibility – but MOST people do. What bothers me is not “moral hazard”, it’s that it doesn’t solve the problem.
Mike in NC
Republicans long for the good old days of the likes of Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun.
rikyrah
Those in the Congress who whine about Student Loan Forgiveness, need to fix the problem – which is INTEREST.
INTEREST on Student Loans should be 2% – period
Eliminate the INTEREST problem
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Agree with the points you make about student loans.
BellyCat
@Steve in the ATL: I’d be a little suspicious if the arsonist is a tax cheat and only accepts cash for performing effective squirrel removal.
In the alternative, if you know the entry points that’s half the battle. A carpenter or roofer can temporarily cover these entry points and all areas that provide footing for squirrels to chew through wood in sheet metal (or fancier material, such as Hardie-Board) until the squirrels vacate or are exterminated — per Baud’s very good suggestion, by snakes. Then a more durable cosmetic repair can proceed leisurely.
If an entry point is near or involves an overhead electric feed, there are thingie-jiggies (an overly broad term of art in the construction industry) that prevent squirrels from walking down overhead wires to access the house. This is also essential to stop the bastids from finding new points of entry, which they will because you just locked them out of their pantry!
Jeffro
@rikyrah:
*Dan means a Democratic president touting good news (especially economic good news) will not break through…we sure heard (and are still hearing!) about the blessed “trump economy”, though! By which they mean, ‘the stock market’, of course – not full employment, wage gains, etc etc.
But it’s a great point. Keep using the term, make the Rs try to find some sort of argument that things are bad when they’re actually great for almost everyone (except Goldman Sachs – whoops!), help the snooze media focus, and remind normie voters that Dems are actually doing things to help the country instead of wacko RWNJ shit.
Ken
@rikyrah: @smith: It does help that Bidenomics has advocates such as billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon, who says that it focuses on benefits for the middle class and rejects the “trickle-down” economics that we’ve tried since the 1980s.
(I do realize when he gave that interview he didn’t think of it as advocacy.)
Ken
I see no reason why it shouldn’t be 0%, once the bank passes a loan off to the feds. Or -5%….
Kay
@rikyrah:
And they used to be able to! Just for private student loans so people exaggerate how important it was, but since we used to allow it and the higher ed system didn’t fall apart and we still retained the sort of public interest ethos of colleges I think we could do it again.
It bothers me that we’re pushing first gen college students into nursing and engineering and other “practical” degrees. I think they should be allowed to major in French if they want. One of my older sisters is really smart. She had a baby at 18 – he’s a giant wise cracking young man now- and then went to college. She loved science and was good at it in high school. My teachers used to tell me about her “oh, I wish you were as smart as her”, in that horrible way teachers compare sibs. They pushed her into accounting because she was not allowed to pursue what she really wanted because she needed to earn a living! Now, she did well as an accountant! She’s a CPA and she is my highest earning sister BUT she still gets all teary eyed talking about how she loved the botany class she took. It’s sad.
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: Not that they’d answer, but I did ask IBM when they shoved out a promoted tweet the other day if they liked associating their brand with Musk tweeting “How about a litteral dick measuring contest?” about his attempted throwdown with Zuckerberg.
So, in addition to the right wing Nazi shit, there’s the incredibly tacky, gross middle school boy crap.
Geminid
From Minority Leader Jeffries, at the Democratic House leader’s presser this morning:
Jeffries and other House Democratic leaders know the midterm war is already underway, and they are fighting it. New York will be a major battleground.
StringOnAStick
@Steve in the ATL: Before I could get a guy to block off their access point, every time I heard them up there I would reach into the access portal and blast a compressed air horn (while wearing ear plugs). They found that unpleasant and would scramble for the exit. It was a small attic though, and judging from what I see on House Hunters, every house in the South is enormous so who knows if it will work.
Jeffro
This might not be high on the list of campaign topics, but something like “Rs need to quit trashing law enforcement” might be a good thing for normies to hear from Biden frequently next year:
Republicans Are Celebrating That Their Lies Are Working (well, with their own voters, at least)
The ‘Party of Law and Order’ sez WHUT now?
So the GOP is basically trashing the FBI to its own voters, then telling the FBI (just like their TV-addled boss): “Nyah Nyah, low ratings, losers!”
Not a good look.
bluefoot
@sdhays:
Duration is what decides what’s actually assault? That’s an impressive bit of rationalization. Getting stabbed or shot only takes a second or two, is that not assault? Just, wow.
Geminid
@Steve in the ATL: Old fasioned Brunswick stew is fine. But if they try to get you to sample a squirrel brain, DON’T! People in eastern Kentucky have gotten a prion disease from eating squirrel brains.
BellyCat
The student loan crisis in this country ends when either (1) university administrators and tenured professors agree to cutting their wages in half, or (2) higher education becomes damn near or entirely free.
Which is to say, never.
Everything else is just gnawing around the edges of the rib bone, while overlooking the meat of the problem that in the past 40 years, universities have modeled themselves as educational country clubs with higher and higher salaries (often for more and more administrators) and epic building campaigns not possible were it not for unlimited student loans funding usurious tuition increases.
So says a former academic who watched this shit play out in real time.
As an aside, I taught a very talented undergraduate out-of-state student at a state university. Got into Harvard for graduate school. Couldn’t go because he had $150k in student loan debt FOR AN UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE and this talented young black man was not offered enough grant money from Harvard… This from the university with the largest endowment in the US (world?).
Nora
@Geminid: Good for Jeffries! He’s right, too, at least as far as Lawler (my rep) is concerned. Oh, he talks the talk in public, but he votes in lockstep with the crazies.
StringOnAStick
@Anyway: All those things about Chile. A lovely gentleman gave me his window seat so I could see all the glaciers along the western coast; it was fabulous. The W trek is worth every second. I wish we’d gotten to Valparaiso but we didn’t make it that far north. The tour of the oldest winery in Santiago was great and it was the thing I was barely interested in doing, but the history shared with visitors was wonderful, as was riding bikes through their vineyards.
There go two miscreants
@Ken: That reminds me, in a tangential way, of the “rhymes-with man” invented by Calvin Trillin. Said to be kept in a padded room and brought out when readers needed the pronunciation of an unusual word.
Kathleen
@satby: Thanks, satby! I did also.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I’d like to see Modi try walking up to that gathering in street clothes. He’d likely be clubbed by a riot policeman.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think almost all of the “concern” on our side about Biden’s age is actually fear that Harris will become president. The people who talk about this act like Trump or some other Republican would become president if Joe Biden died in office! It’s a panicked “what would we do if something happened to him?” kind of vibe. They’re terrified that the younger black woman might actually become president.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I also just can’t get behind judging people for their parents’ politics, even if they got there in ways that are clearly nepotistic as would be the case if Chelsea ever went into politics.
Jack, Bobby, and Teddy Kennedy all had their issues, some of them hideous, but all of them were a phenomenal improvement over their piece-of-shit father Joe. Conversely, George Romney was by all accounts a fairly decent politician that most people here wouldn’t have minded voting for; same can’t be said for his dickbag son.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay: Joe Rogan’s is filling the Fox for the youngs void.
Geminid
@Nora: Lawler and his staffers should polish up their resumes. They’ll be needing jobs come January, 2025.
Chris
@Jeffro:
As phenomenal a scumbag as J. Edgar Hoover was, as far as I know even he was never megalomaniacal enough to fuck around in the outcome of a presidential election the way James Comey did, let alone fuck around on behalf of Moscow’s preferred candidate. So… yeah, I think I literally did prefer it when Hoover was running the place, and I say this as someone who thinks Hoover’s legacy has tainted the FBI so badly that we’d all be better off if it were torn down brick by brick and a new agency built in its place.
Soprano2
No, not really. We had that problem, we had to get all metal soffits on our house to keep them out. Before that, my husband resorted to electric wiring the spot on the roof where they hung down and chewed on the siding to try to chew a hole into our attic!
Kay
@gvg:
I see a risk of exactly what you fear with blanket forgiveness. I think if you do that you get into whether or not people or areas of study are “worthy” or “worthwhile” and you get a situation where people are insisting other people have to be engineers or nurses or business majors, you know, the lower classes who need a steady income :)
I would make community college and trade school free – 14 years of free universal public ed rather than 12 and not expand it at the preschool end but instead at the other end – and just modify the bankruptcy code for the rest. We know no one really objects to free community college and trade school because like 17 states already have it. The blue states will expand on both ends- preschool and 2 years of higher ed.
lee
@Ken:
Correct. Currently there is almost no risk to lenders for student loans. The interest rate should reflect that: 0%
Chris
@Jeffro:
Also:
I think the security state has been in a bit of a pickle since 2016, in that they’ve gotten very used to having an extraordinary amount of influence in and leeway from Washington politics… but a stupendous amount of that influence comes simply from their having hitched their cart to the right wing’s horse a long time ago. And when the right wing decides to pull the rug out from under them, all of a sudden all that political leeway they’re used to is gone.
It’s easy to investigate someone like Hillary Clinton. You’ve got forty percent of voters screaming “YEAH!!! Hang that bitch from the nearest lamppost!” and another twenty percent wringing their hands and going “oh my, with all that smoke there must be fire,” and even in the last forty percent there’s a fair amount of people who default to “trust the police” or “well I’m not sure this is fair but we can’t do anything that might look like we’re trying to unduly influence the police.”
When you’re investigating someone like Trump… The original forty percent are now screaming “fuck YOU!!! We’ll hang YOU from the nearest lamppost if you fuck with our Dear Leader!” The middle twenty percent might still be favorably inclined towards you, but no longer has that pathological urge to give you leeway because the right wing is pushing your line. And while the remaining forty percent has lots of “trust the police” people, it also has lots of people who have been persecuted by you for your entire existence, so it’s going to be a heavy lift getting enough support from there, if you could even bring yourself to ask for it.
Agencies like the FBI badly need to start mending fences with the people they’ve been fucking over for decades if they want to retain any independence as any agency at all as opposed to just being the GOP’s private army. But then a lot of them seem perfectly happy with the latter, anyways. (See the New York office).
UncleEbeneezer
JustSecurity has released a model Prosecution Memo for January 6th:
Trump on Trial: A Model Prosecution Memo for Federal Election Interference Crimes
It’s a little over 200 pages and painstakingly lays out all the facts, lists the statues that could be charged, what is required to prove them, likely defenses etc. Like the January 6th Committee report, it’s almost astounding how much evidence of crimes we have…and that’s just the stuff we know about!! Anyways it’s a very good read.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I have absolutely no problem with this.
If it’s a program that’s in conjunction with a community college – no matter what- it should be free. And, no matter the age of the student. People going back to start a new career shouldn’t be saddled with debt.
Kay
@gvg:
I think about this a lot. The SCOTUS might have saved Biden from terrible public policy by scuttling forgiveness. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s unfair as between sets of students. Why do current debtors get forgiven but future debtors not? I can no longer defend it after thinking it thru. It’s just sloppy and since it doesn’t solve the problem I suspect it is more about the “Overton window” than good policy and that’s manipulative of students, I think. They’re not tools to effect the revolution.
What if we went the other way and colleges adopted a sort of loose 1:1 cost approach? A teaching degree can’t cost more than a 1st year teacher makes in a year. They have a fixed 32k per student to play with and get them a degree under that amount. Use the Bureau of Labor stats to get an estimate. Maybe they already do this?
Kay
@rikyrah:
I have a technical degree from a community college and it was my single student loan for undergrad. 1500 big ones! Good deal because the cert would have put me at 25 an hour except I instead went to the postal service.
But just clear those people out of the loan system. They don’t belong in there.
Chris
@Kay:
I don’t think anybody’s suggesting that student loan reform, or even forgiveness, should stop with a one-time forgiveness of ten or twenty thousand dollars.
Soprano2
@Kay: They do this here, except that your grades have to be at a certain level – they call it the A+ program. For the kids that qualify it’s a great deal – two years free at the local community college. Of course, it’s the kids with the lower GPA’s who really need the help and can’t get it.
Kay
@Chris:
But why start with blanket forgiveness for a certain class then? The most unpopular part and the biggest political lift and it’s hugely expensive. It’s just a waste in my view.
I credit Lefties with moving the Overton Window on health care and wages. I think they did do that so that approach is not completely w/out merit. But this seems so nonsensical I can’t even back it as “moving toward something else”.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Betty Cracker: You can always build owl houses and such. https://theraptortrust.org/bird-resources/bird-facts/nest-boxes/
Chris
@Kay:
Probably because it’s something the administration thinks it’s able to do without requiring as many hoops as an act of Congress that’s vanishingly unlikely to pass in this climate, so that’s where they started. It also probably doesn’t hurt that the average college grad is both more likely to be a Democrat and more likely to be a voter than the average citizen, and like all parts of the coalition doing things that help them every now and then keeps them on board.
You help who you can, when you can.
Tom Q
@Matt McIrvin:
Getting to this pretty late, but i wanted to say I agree completely. I think it accounts for some of the outlandish attacks on Harris — some, sadly, from the Dem side.
These people claim to “worry” Harris is a weak candidate on her own. I think their real fear is that, were she to succeed to the highest office, people would judge her by who she is/how she performs, not what anonymous folk say about her on Twitter; that people might like her and be inclined to vote for her in 2028. Which foils the plans of not just GOPers, but a number of ambitious Dems.
Gravenstone
@sdhays: I vote we line up a group of angry parents and let them each take a single kick at the offender’s balls. As each kick would certainly last less than 10 seconds, they should be able to get through quite a few of them before the fella can no longer stand to present a target.
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: I had one of those in my yard the other day. They’re substantial.