Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

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

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Books are my comfort food!

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

No one could have predicted…

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

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

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

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

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Life Goes On

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Life Goes On

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… And it can be GOOD!


… Every day in every way, I thank Murphy that I am not a Republican...

An intriguing thought, from an unlikely source:

Reader Interactions

274Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Biden is directly taking on Reaganomics and the silence of people who claim to hate neoliberalism is deafening.

  2. 2.

    Mousebumples

    I recall Suzanne mentioning in another thread, probably long ago, that rezoning office space to residential space is challenging. If I remember right, the bathroom/sewage setups were a big part of that.

    But we do have a affordable housing problem in this country, so I appreciate the Biden administration at least trying to move in that direction.

    We definitely don’t need that much office space. Yay, WFH!

  3. 3.

    Kristine

    @Baud: I’m reading about the Fitch downgrade and other wails about the deficit and funding SS/Medicare and wondering if the money folks are more than a little concerned that this taking money from them and using it to boost the working & middle classes works and may be a sign of bigger things to come. Because unless I missed something I didn’t see these concerns expressed about the GOP tax cuts.

  9. 9.

    gene108

    @Kristine:

    Maybe they want to push U.S. government bonds to payout higher interest rates, so they make it seem a riskier investment?

  11. 11.

    p.a.

    @Baud: As a college student in ’79-’80, ’80-’81 taking some econ courses (not as an econ major) the econ dept profs were the only obvious Reagan supporters at the school, and several of us pointed out to a small coffee clatch of profs that they knew as well as us that Laffer Curve, supply side was a crock of shit.

    I’ll never forget the response of one of them, “well if they say we’re going to bring on a recession who would vote for them?”🤬
    Memory fades, but one of them may have been Wm Poole, later appointed to St. Louis Fed by GHWB.

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    @Kristine:

    They were not concerned about those phucking tax cuts , which provide one out of every four dollars in the deficit.

    And, they seem to be resentful of full employment 😡

  14. 14.

    WereBear

    When the press is corporate, they’re going to favor their masters. That’s why I support Independent journalism like ProPublica, Mother Jones, and Media Matters.

    And right now on YouTube, I am binging on the reaction of the MAGA to this latest news, I guess this is the indictment they can’t shrug off

    And maybe… this series has legs.

  15. 15.

    mrmoshpotato

    I’d forgotten about Pelosi saying she would punch Dump in his resting butthole face.

  17. 17.

    lowtechcyclist

    The Biden Admin announces its “bottom up not trickle down” multi billion housing plan that rewards cities for upzoning, creates more HUD funding for subsidized housing, pushes for office and retail conversions to housing and a “renter bill of rights.”

    I look forward to reading more about this.  I’ve been saying for a while that we need a national housing policy, and it looks like this may be a major step in the right direction.

    Joe Biden continues to be the best President of my lifetime.

  21. 21.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: Yeah.

    We went to a dinner party last night and the host announced, “I don’t like Joe Biden” at the outset. It was hard.

  22. 22.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    It is complete chaos in Brisbane right now.  South Korea is on the verge of 1 the biggest upsets in soccer history – knocking Germany out of the World Cup during the group stage😥.  In 40 years they’ve never been dispatched at this stage of the tourney.

  23. 23.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Mousebumples:

    I recall Suzanne mentioning in another thread, probably long ago, that rezoning office space to residential space is challenging. If I remember right, the bathroom/sewage setups were a big part of that.

    Getting the rezoning taken care of is also complicated, but Suzanne was talking about the difficulties of the physical conversions of office buildings to residential.

  26. 26.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    Biden is directly taking on Reaganomics and the silence of people who claim to hate neoliberalism is deafening.

    Seems like ‘inside baseball’ stuff to me.  Do more than three people out of 100 have any idea what ‘neoliberalism’ is?

    Hell, I’ve never really gotten a handle on what the term means, and I’m a political junkie.

  27. 27.

    Kristine

    @rikyrah: We’re numbers to be adjusted when necessary to maximize earnings.

    What I would really love to see is the end of stock buybacks. It’s nothing but legalized market manipulation that makes a few people very wealthy. Stock price should depend on the value the company provides–improved products or services–not on gaming the numbers.

    Also, no more private equity companies.

    And a pony.

    Actually, a full-sized horse. I’m a little too big for a pony.

  28. 28.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Holy shit.  💀  They’ve out.  South Korea fans are going berzerk – ousted #2 team in world! 😛

  32. 32.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kristine: An optimistic take on Fitch downgrading the US from AAA to AA status is to note their justification, which included (among the normal BS economic concerns that these morans regularly misinterpret) a mention of US governance not having their act together when it comes to raising the debt limit and funding regular government activity. Unfortunately, they phrased the concern such that it’s nearly impossible to know if they’re correctly calling out Republican malfeasance in the House (which if such message were amplified might actually help the situation) or instead just their normal wailings when a Democratic president is in office

    ETA: I haven’t seen any stories in the financial news that are picking up on my optimistic take…(but I don’t read a lot in that area)

    ETA: p.a. beat me to it and with many fewer words.

  35. 35.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Meanwhile in Perth, Morocco and Colombia  watch Germany’s elimination on the scoreboard and for the 1st time in their respective historys, they’re going to the playoffs.  Tears are streaming down their faces.😭.  Three African nation (Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa) move forward.

    Goosebumps!

    What a night(?)

  36. 36.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I don’t know how the fuck this happened so fast, but…

    Now We Are 81

    When I was nine, I was quite benign.
    When but eighteen, I was most serene.

    Once twenty-seven, my life was heaven.
    And thirty-six was all laughs and kicks.

    At forty-five, things took a dive.
    Bleak fifty-four, life was just a bore.

    At sixty-three, I discovered me.
    At seventy-two, life began anew.

    And today I am three to the power of four,
    So I think I’ll stay nine-squared, no less and no more!

    — with apologies to A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six

    And Happy Birthday to Omnes! He and I share our August 3rd birthday with Martha Stewart and the late Tony Bennett.

  37. 37.

    Kristine

    @Chief Oshkosh: I did catch hints of that in their reasoning (the instability caused by GOP ratfuckery) but they need to include Dems too b/c Both Sides and Entitlement Reform.

    Like I said earlier, to them we’re just numbers to be manipulated to maximize profit.

  38. 38.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: All “neoliberalism” really means is right-wing economic policy–low tax, low regulation. But because of the coincidence of the US meaning of “liberalism”, it mostly gets used against Democrats here, as a way of attacking them ostensibly from the left. The rightward economic turn of the Democrats in the 1990s helped anti-Democratic leftists here, but they keep using the same line decades after when that is not really what the party is about.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    “::yawn:: Just five more minutes.” (WaPo link.)

    A female microscopic roundworm that spent the last 46,000 years in suspended animation deep in the Siberian permafrost was revived and started having babies in a laboratory dish.
    [snip]
    Scientists have long known that some microscopic critters are able to hit pause on life to survive harsh environments, slipping into the deepest of sleeps by slowing their metabolism to undetectable levels in a process called cryptobiosis.

    As far back as 1936, a viable several-thousand-year-old crustacean was discovered buried in the permafrost east of Russia’s Lake Baikal. In 2021, researchers announced they had resurrected ancient bdelloid rotifers, microscopic multicellular animals, after 24,000 years in the Siberian permafrost.

    The previous resuscitation record for a nematode was set by an Antarctic species that started wriggling around again after just a few dozen years.

    This new species of nematode, dubbed Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, breaks that dormancy record by tens of thousands of years. The frozen soil the nematode was embedded in came from an ancient gopher hole, excavated from about 130 feet below the surface. Scientists used radiocarbon dating to determine that the soil was 46,000 years old, give or take a thousand years. Source

  41. 41.

    mrmoshpotato

    @zhena gogolia:

    We went to a dinner party last night and the host announced, “I don’t like Joe Biden” at the outset. It was hard. 

    Mentioned just out of the blue?

    “Welcome everyone.  I don’t like Joe Biden.”

  44. 44.

    MomSense

    @Mousebumples: It’s also a pet peeve of mine how much space we use for car storage in cities.  Two parking spaces is a home for one person.  Public transportation and fewer cars in our cities would improve air quality, congestion and lack of housing.  The fucking cars are killing us.

  46. 46.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    Their holy supply side economic theories (previously known as horse and sparrow) have once again been proven to be dangerously wrong. These people have devoted their lives to this economic theory as justification for their greed.

  47. 47.

    Kristine

    @NotMax: I’m reminded of that Pterry passage:

    “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.”

    ― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

  48. 48.

    Patricia Kayden

    Frum’s tweet perfectly sums up why Conservatives are rooting for Russia against Ukraine. Zelenskyy didn’t bend the knee to Dear Leader and Republicans will never forgive him for that transgression.

  49. 49.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud:

    We were AAA when Dems controlled the government.

    That’s all that needs to be said.

     

    That is a good point. So is it that your take on Fitch’s downgrading is they actually are basing their decision on House Republican activity?

    I genuinely need these things spelled out for me as I’ve had one econ class, and that one was sadly taught by one of the original supply-siders (were they called “monetarists” back then?)

    Separately, if you could explain what you mean by “neoliberalism” that would be useful. I’m not saying that you somehow are responsible for having THE definition, but I, like others here, don’t have a firm grasp of the concept and consequences. Understood if it’s just not worth the bother.

  54. 54.

    MomSense

    @zhena gogolia:

    I’ve been told I have too short a space between my ears and my mouth because I’m likely to blurt out a response before I’ve had time to consider the result.  I would have been really tempted to respond by saying it’s ok that you don’t like Biden, but I hope you do like our democracy and will defend it by voting for him.

  55. 55.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Like I said in the overnight thread, I think there are financial people who want a recession, and will do everything they can to cause one. There was no incident to cause the Fitch downgrade; all the reasons they give for it are things that have been ongoing for several years.

  56. 56.

    lowtechcyclist

    @MomSense:

    It’s also a pet peeve of mine how much space we use for car storage in cities.  Two parking spaces is a home for one person.  Public transportation and fewer cars in our cities would improve air quality, congestion and lack of housing.  The fucking cars are killing us.

    Around every subway or similar rail stop, there should be a half-mile (at least) radius where there are no parking requirements, and no height or use limitations on buildings.  Let each subway stop be the center of a mini-city where as many people as possible either live or work within an easy walk of the station.

  57. 57.

    Ken

    @zhena gogolia: FRUM IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS

    Normally I’d suggest examining the life choices that led you to the point of agreeing with Frum, but… yeah.

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I look forward to reading more about this.  I’ve been saying for a while that we need a national housing policy, and it looks like this may be a major step in the right direction.

    The federal government can provide money, as with infrastructure, but they cannot know state and local issues. State and local governments must direct the efforts and be responsible implementing housing policy.

    Here in Los Angeles county, there are massive differences between the Westside and the San Gabriel Valley. The federal government wouldn’t have a clue as to mandating a solution.

  60. 60.

    Soprano2

    @p.a.: That’s funny, because my econ professors in ’81 and ’82 kept saying “These times are not normal, here’s how it usually works”. I don’t remember them talking much about politics at all.

  61. 61.

    p.a.

    @MomSense: It’s also a pet peeve of mine how much space we use for car storage in cities.  Two parking spaces is a home for one person.  Public transportation and fewer cars in our cities would improve air quality, congestion and lack of housing.  The fucking cars are killing us.

     

    Check out CityNerd on utube

  63. 63.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    All “neoliberalism” really means is right-wing economic policy–low tax, low regulation.

    OK, but that’s just plain conservatism.

    But because of the coincidence of the US meaning of “liberalism”, it mostly gets used against Democrats here, as a way of attacking them ostensibly from the left.

    And elsewhere? I assume it must have a meaning that applies outside the lefty parts of social media, and that it doesn’t exist solely as a pejorative.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    (as FLOTUS continued reading Demon Copperhead)

    I’m reading Demon Copperhead too for book club and it’s good- I think it’s difficult to write in an authentic child’s voice and she pulls it off. Usually I’m “yeah, that’s not how they talk or think” but not here.
    However. I listened to part of an interview with the author on Ezra Klein’s (great) podcast and she’s doing that now-familiar “I am Appalachian so therefore discriminated against” thing that I find annoying.
    I don’t find some of her claims credible. I just don’t believe the daughter of a physician was treated like a hillbilly freak at Indiana University. I don’t think IU Bloomington is a bastion of the liberal elites. It’s not at all unusual for the child of a physician to go to college no matter where they grew up- it would be unusual if she didn’t.
    Also- ugh- she says at one point “deplorables” while putting forth this “liberal elites hate the hill people” theory and it just seemed contrived, like it’s fashionable to scold us on that.

  66. 66.

    Scout211

    @BR: Thanks for that link.

    And that post from Popehat included this zinger:

    Mike Pence referring to a “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” is rude, unprofessional, dehumanizing, and unbecoming a presidential candidate.

    The preferred terminology is “The Federalist Society.”

  67. 67.

    Soprano2

    @SiubhanDuinne: Happy birthday SiubhanDuinne! Do I remember correctly, that you are a fellow SAI member? If so, love and roses to you on your birthday, sister.

  68. 68.

    p.a.

    @Soprano2: They didn’t really talk politics, but it was the only dept with actual Reagan posters, signs etc.  Also at the time, monetarist & Milton fucking Friedman Chicago school really ruled the econ establishment in the US, so…

    And in truth stagflation was a real problem, but, and again I wasn’t an econ major, perhaps selling the country out to the Walton family-types and crushing what was left of the union movement wasn’t the optimal way to fix the problem.

  69. 69.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: I’m sorry to hear Kingsolver was going on like that. Demon Copperhead is the best book I’ve read recently. It really does get at how hard it is to break the cycle of poverty.

  71. 71.

    Soprano2

    @MomSense: I look at the huge parking lot at our mall and think what a shame that is. The old timers say some of the best farmland in our county is under that mall. The only time all those spaces were ever full was around Christmas, and I guarantee you the mall hasn’t been that busy for over 10 years. If not for zoning requirements, they could probably sell off half that land for other kinds of development.

  72. 72.

    Chief Oshkosh

    The piece at the Daily Mail about the President napping on the beach is great. I can’t tell if they’re trying to make him out to be Sleepy Joe or not, since everything they report on is more like “normal couple with busy lives take a short beach vacay – news at 11!”

  73. 73.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Darrell Owens is one of the bigger yimby douchebags (that’s redundant) on twitter.

    Upzoning is trickle down.  Reaganomics For Housing is alive and well in the Biden Administration.

  74. 74.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @BR:

    Controversial Opinion:

    Only the worst charlatans describe themselves as “Constitutional Lawyer”.

    it is a crappy, vague term; it immediately implies to me that they don’t understand how to run a case by the procedural and evidentiary rules and are simply out there to stir up shit, usually on behalf of reprehensible right wing authoritarian causes designed to punch down on the marginalized using religion and ethnonationalism as a cudgel.

  75. 75.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Chief Oshkosh: At some point in the past, Republicans wanted lower taxes for their country club friends and were willing to cut spending to achieve that aim without too large a budget deficit, and Democrats wanted more spending and were willing to raise taxes for the same reason.

    Then Reagan came along and Republicans were in practice not willing to cut spending (see Bush the younger, turning Clinton’s surplus into a deficit). But when not in office they talked about cutting spending, and insisted that Democrats do it (and get blamed for it). Now, because of the influence of TFG, some of them are queasy about even talking about cutting spending except on pretty minor stuff. (See their confusion at the time of the debt ceiling issue. Did they want to cut Social Security and Medicare or not?)

    But Democrats are still willing to raise taxes (on those making over $400K, says Biden, though I suspect you might need to go a bit lower), and might have done so in the last Congress if Manchin and Sinema had been willing to fall in line.

    So the rising deficit really is the Republican’s fault.

    That’s the way I see it; other views welcome!

  76. 76.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Agree on the white rural poverty. It’s accurate. I smiled when I read that Demon couldn’t go to a (neighbors) relative’s care out of state because “too much paperwork”. They have to do something called an “interstate transfer” which they don’t like to do. That is real life in foster care. She nails it.

    But I had to turn the interview off. I am just tired of being scolded on this. It isn’t true that “no one” has helped that region of the country. We help them. It’s just that they keep shooting themselves in the fucking foot. You get tired of the excuses.

  77. 77.

    Tim Curtin

    The Portland Moms saved a lot of lives by showing up.  Trump’s angry little green men wanted to kill people.

  78. 78.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @MomSense:

    Not to mention the effect of devouring collar areas which previously had agricultural use in order to make exurban housing for people who are scared of scaredy blackity black people sharing their neighborhoods, shops and schools.

    There’d be a lot more fresh meat, vegetables, herbs, etc if we didn’t do that. Plus, life would be a lot cheaper without long commutes or the extension of urban infrastructure.

  79. 79.

    Soprano2

    @p.a.: I had one Keynesian and one monetarist, so I got both ideas, which actually was good. The Keynesian wrote his own textbook, which we used; they were ring-bound and printed by the print shop. Eventually he got it published; when my sister was getting her MBA I found out her econ class was using his textbook! She was raving about how interesting it was, how easy to read and how clear the ideas were. I asked her who wrote it, and when she told me I said ” of course, Dr. Rohlf was great about explaining those concepts and making them easy to understand.” He said that every time he asked the students to critique the book, they would say “Make it easier and more straightforward”, but his publisher kept saying “Make it harder”. LOL To this day I can still remember that supply and demand are schedules! His class was hard – you didn’t get to keep your tests, because he said he wanted to be able to use the same questions again. On those tests I would try to figure out the answer to the question before I looked at the choices, that made it easier!

  80. 80.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: It’s hard to help people if they don’t want to help themselves. That’s how it seems to me with rural poverty; they need the help, but are too proud and don’t want to take it. Then they turn around and whine that everyone is ignoring them!

  83. 83.

    artem1s

    @lowtechcyclist: ​
     
    twitter rose and bernie bros love to use it to describe older Dems and the Clinton administration specifically. you know Big business Corporate shills. it’s been completely misused lately. In America, in practice neoliberalism actually looks a lot more like libertarian fascists than anyone who is actually a Democrat.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I don’t see it as “too proud”. I think they take the help and then resent the persons or entities who give it, thereby trapping themselves in this awful repeating cycle of “take help, pissed that they need it” for generations. This “culture” is killing them. I mean, I guess they can stubbornly hang onto it as some kind of negative birthright- far be it from me to question- but at some point you have to look at whether it works for them or not.

  87. 87.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    if you could explain what you mean by “neoliberalism” that would be useful.

    Neoliberalism is the political and economic philosophy that big business is good, the invisible hand of the market is good, and basically you should give the rich whatever they want because they are Job Creators.  Low taxes and low regulations.

    Confusion only happens because the word ‘neoliberal’ sounds like it means ‘Democrats.’  Leftists arguing in bad faith frequently use the word exactly for that reason.

  88. 88.

    Geminid

    @Patricia Kayden: Russia’s war on Ukraine has polarized elected Republicans somewhat, but there hasn’t been a strong push to sell Ukraine out. The Senate caucus has its dissenters, but a majority seem to be firmly on the “NATO side.” McConnell and company helped push through the $44 billion for military aid that was included in December’s Omnibus* bill. Those Senators still appear back Ukraine.

    The most vocal critics of Ukraine aid are on the House side. They are balanced by Ukraine hawks led by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman McCaul (TX). I think a lot of House members are on the fence, but they may pay attention to polls showing a clear majority of Americans take Ukraine’s side, including a smaller majority of Republican voters.

    Right now, a new round of Congressional funding for Ukraine seems more likely than not- certainly a lot more likely than many thought in January. The whole budget process is problematic; House Republicans seem intent on “making a stand” but unsure of where exactly to make it. Aid to Ukraine doesn’t seem like a sticking point now, and Ukraine critics like Gaetz and Greene seem wrapped up in other issues.

    The war could be a salient issue in next year’s Republican primaries. There seems to be a strong strain of isolationismand pro-Putinism on the on-line right. But typically, foreign events are a secondary concern for most Americans so long as Americans are not being killed.

    *Happy Birthday Omnibus! May you see many more bills named after you.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    An example. Kingsolver claims that people who went to her high school rarely attended college and this was somehow ascertained at IU leading to people jeering at her. Okay, I’ll buy “people” but not her, children of professionals almost always go to college and half of Indiana has a southern/country accent so I find it difficut to believe they were pointing and laughing at hers. But what about bringing up the rate of college attendance instead of whining about liberal elites? Is there some born-in-the-blood reason people from Appalachia should not go to college? What culture, exactly, is she defending? How’s that working out for them? Not the famous authors- the ordinary people.

  90. 90.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Soprano2:

    To me, Keynesian spending keeps monetary velocity going and is far less wasteful than the monetarist approach. Monetarism requires growth in population and activity, lest the bust occur along with following recessions a making the population that isn’t already wealthy suffer.

  94. 94.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The amount of dysfunction and bad behavior that is blamed on some portion of liberals being assholes is pretty staggering.

    Yes, liberals are a large group of people, and like every large group, some percentage of them are assholes. That’s not a valid excuse for every awful thing everyone else experiences or perpetuates.

  96. 96.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Kay:

    I quit caring about the plight of the poor choices of Appalachians decades ago.

  97. 97.

    Suzanne

    @Mousebumples:

    I recall Suzanne mentioning in another thread, probably long ago, that rezoning office space to residential space is challenging. If I remember right, the bathroom/sewage setups were a big part of that.

    But we do have a affordable housing problem in this country, so I appreciate the Biden administration at least trying to move in that direction.

    We definitely don’t need that much office space. Yay, WFH!

     

    I want to be clear: converting many existing office and retail buildings to residential is indeed challenging (financially), for a host of technical reasons….plumbing, electrical metering, window access. But the other thing to remember is that the majority of office space in this country isn’t in dense downtown high-rise buildings (a high-rise is defined as having an occupied level at 75’ above the street or higher, and fires are not fought from exterior truck-mounted ladders in high-rises). It’s in low-rise buildings (usually three stories or less), lots of which are in suburban office parks with surface parking. These buildings are of lower value and aren’t worth converting. But the land these buildings are on can be redeveloped really successfully.

    I also want to note that, even pre-pandemic, many professional offices were trending smaller. Getting rid of paper has a lot to do with that…. less space required for printers, file cabinets and archives, high-density paper storage, cabinets for new paper, large workstations for binders and physical documents, etc. Also, the trend away from dedicated private offices was going on long before the pandemic. This is a longtime cultural change in workplaces, and it’s in almost every type of workplace….. healthcare, corporate interior, law enforcement, etc.

    I’d love to see more research into the effect AirBNB/ VRBO has had on housing prices. I am increasingly of the opinion that we need to heavily tax properties with some sort of graduated system. Regular property taxes on your primary home, maybe a small increase in the tax rate on your second property….. and then sharp increases from there. We really need to discourage speculating and consolidation in residential real estate.

  98. 98.

    CliosFanBoy

    @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: ​
      A lot of it is housing costs. Move further out and you get more house and more yard for the same amount of money. And a lot of businesses have moved further out as well. The workers are there and land prices are lower. You leave DC and drive west towards Dulles and it’s one very long string of beltway bandits, IT firms, government contractors, and government offices (usually military/intelligence community).

  99. 99.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Just realized that A.L.’s title may be referencing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, which perfectly fits that Biden vacay. :)

  100. 100.

    lowtechcyclist

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Happy birthday!

    And I like that poem, I’m gonna have to stash it away so I have it handy in 2035.  Being a math geek, the last verse is the clincher for me.

  101. 101.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    People who don’t like Joe Biden suffer from social maladjustment.

    Truth – seriously, whatever one thinks of his politics, how can one not like Joe Biden?

  102. 102.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think it’s both depending on the person, because you’re right that some of them take the help and then resent that they had to have it; they know that many middle-class people look down their noses at people who need help and they don’t like that. I had a woman at a domestic violence shelter tell me that one of the times she went back to her abusive husband was after she had to stand in line at Toys for Tots to get a free toy for her child. She felt humiliated by the experience, and said she’d rather get hit every now and then and have enough money to buy what she needed rather than have to take charity. She did eventually leave again, but that anecdote helped me understand why they did what they do.

    I hope Quilting Fool and her house are OK, there was a hellacious storm up around Lake of the Ozarks last night.

  103. 103.

    CliosFanBoy

    @Kay:

      Somewhere, I still have a copy of an essay I read in college circa 1980 (!) by a young woman at my little SLAC in Indiana (Go Panthers!) about her high school in Appalachia. Her teachers actively discouraged students from going to college, one claiming that “smart people have a lot more problems.” Her town sounded like one big crab bucket. Going to college was getting “above yourself.” So, of course, most of the really smart, creative kids left. What’s the line from the remake of “Footloose”? “Every kid in town has memorized the bus schedule” (to flee the town when they turn 18).

  104. 104.

    Jeffro

    @Kristine:What I would really love to see is the end of stock buybacks. It’s nothing but legalized market manipulation that makes a few people very wealthy. Stock price should depend on the value the company provides–improved products or services–not on gaming the numbers.

    110% this.

  105. 105.

    Suzanne

    @MomSense:

    It’s also a pet peeve of mine how much space we use for car storage in cities.  Two parking spaces is a home for one person.  Public transportation and fewer cars in our cities would improve air quality, congestion and lack of housing.  The fucking cars are killing us. 

    100%.
    There’s so much discourse about converting office buildings to residential…. but we could just build on stupid parking lots!

  106. 106.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @zhena gogolia: Ugh, that is such a nightmare scenario because it would make my blood boil and I’d be really tempted to end up in a very heated exchange

    I had a hard enough time keeping my cool when an old, white lady friend (former art historian) in Malibu suddenly declared she opposes Reparations, out of the blue.  Like, where do you even start?…

  107. 107.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Brachiator:

    The federal government can provide money, as with infrastructure, but they cannot know state and local issues. State and local governments must direct the efforts and be responsible implementing housing policy.

    Here in Los Angeles county, there are massive differences between the Westside and the San Gabriel Valley. The federal government wouldn’t have a clue as to mandating a solution.

    Agreed.  But the Federal government must create rules and incentives that are sufficiently strong to overcome the barriers to more housing availability in center cities and inner suburbs.  We can’t just keep on pushing exurbs further out.

  108. 108.

    eclare

    @Soprano2:

    Holy shit, that anecdote is depressing as hell.  She would rather her child see her get hit by her husband than get a free toy from some nice people.  And the cycle continues.

  111. 111.

    Ken

    @UncleEbeneezer: an old, white lady friend (former art historian) in Malibu suddenly declared she opposes Reparations, out of the blue.  Like, where do you even start?…

    “Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s”?

    If it was truly out of the blue, you might suggest a screening for risk of TIAs.

  112. 112.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Great thread by David Roberts (Link is to ThreadReader):

    A core feature of reactionary (I’ll use that term rather than “fascist” because people love to pointlessly debate semantics) movements is an *inversion of power*. They cast the weak as looming threats & status-quo powers as the trembling victims.

    This is a familiar move, in macro & micro terms, in every reactionary movement. You see it in the US when they talk about gay or trans people imposing themselves on everyone, “forcing their lifestyle down our throats.” Or when they talk about how white people face more racism.

    Or, on a grander scale, when they talk about how social justice warriors have taken over *every institution in the the US*, ruthlessly imposing their woke worldview. It’s self-evidently ridiculous, but why do they do it so consistently?

    The point is to justify their own escalating violence & lawlessness. They hate difference, they hate the status quo being challenged, they hate the *existence* of Others in their midst, so they need to convince one another that it’s ok to cast off norms & let the violence out.

    This is why the only mode of moral argumentation you ever see from a reactionary is whataboutism. The point of “they did it first” (for whatever “it,” censorship or voter fraud or whatever) is not that “it” is bad & no one should do it, but that *it’s ok for us to do it too*.

    It’s not even really a moral argument. It’s just a permission structure — they did it, so we can’t be held accountable for doing it too. So when they create this mythology about Dem voter fraud, the point is not “voter fraud is bad,” the point is, “it’s ok for us to do it too.”

    The long-running narrative about left bias in the media is not about “bias is bad,” it’s about, “it’s ok for us to make full-on propaganda.” The point about violent rioting urban lefties is not “violence is bad,” it’s, “it’s ok for us to be violent.”

    …

  113. 113.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    they know that many middle-class people look down their noses at people who need help

    But why so much focus on how others perceive them? Say people didn’t look down their noses at them (if indeed people are doing this – in my experience people are pretty self centered and don’t ruminate on the plight of hill people at all)? All better? Now that everyone has changed their opinion of them their material circumstances will magically change?

  114. 114.

    Lapassionara

    @Kay: My daughter and SIL lived in McDowell County, WVA, for a year or so. Most of the people there lived on Social Security Disability or pensions. Many were using some sort of illegal drug. She saw drug transactions almost daily. There were few children, and they would move away when old enough. The mines needed fewer workers, and the hills were bare, the creeks polluted. The wealth had been extracted and the wealth extractors had moved on.

    The movie “October Sky” was about that area, in the late 1950’s, when the mines needed workers and people could make a good if difficult living. All that is gone.

  116. 116.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @mrmoshpotato: ​Too bad the response wasn’t something on the order of

    Well, I like him a lot. He’s the best President of our lifetime, and it’s too goddamned bad you’re too stupid or dishonest to realize it.

    & then see if the host had the nerve to pitch you out. But hey, that’s just me…

  117. 117.

    Jeffro

    I’m sure this has been mentioned, but beyond the surface impression of a GOP billionaire giving RFK Jr $5M…what does it say about the race that the billionaire feels his best use of that $5M is not in boosting trump, but in trying to sandbag President Biden?

    It’s like we have said here many times (and Josh Marshall was saying earlier this week, too): their only hope is to split the Dems.  trump is a stone-cold loser any other way.

    In 2019 and 2020, Mr. Mellon gave $70 million combined to super PACs pushing for Republican control of the House and Senate and to one supporting Mr. Trump, records show.
     
    The support from Republicans is likely to heighten suspicions about Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy among Democrats who see him as a pawn in an effort to undermine President Biden. Dozens of venture capitalists, tech executives, real-estate builders and investors with varying political alliances also contributed to the Kennedy-aligned PACs.

  119. 119.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    See if it were me, if these were my people, and Hillary Clinton made the deplorables comment but also plowed as much development money into our white, rural lower class as Obama and Biden have I’d get over myself and ignore the comment and get on with it and build. Or they can just stay fucking offended forever but “offended” is often not a positive- not “pride” – but is instead EGO. I think most undergrads at IU weren’t paying attention to her accent at all.

  121. 121.

    Jeffro

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    when they create this mythology about Dem voter fraud, the point is not “voter fraud is bad,” the point is, “it’s ok for us to do it too.”

    The long-running narrative about left bias in the media is not about “bias is bad,” it’s about, “it’s ok for us to make full-on propaganda.”

    The point about violent rioting urban lefties is not “violence is bad,” it’s, “it’s ok for us to be violent.”

    All of this.

    It’s why they had to pretend so. hard. that BLM protests were violent…so they could use violence against the protestors.

    (And that’s what many RWNJs use to keep their heads in the sand about J6, too: “it wasn’t any more violent than a BLM protest”)

  122. 122.

    Suzanne

    @Lapassionara: One important point in October Sky is that the dad does not want his son to leave the area and follow a life in science. There’s a really fucked-up dynamic in which people want their children to make the same choices they did, because it validates those choices and it flatters their ego. The father wasn’t afraid that his son would fail and be unsuccessful…. he was afraid that his son would succeed and be successful.

    This is a really toxic attitude.

  123. 123.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: But why so much focus on how others perceive them?

    I think it’s a pride thing. It’s like my story about the woman who went back to her abuser because she was humiliated about having to get a free toy for her kid – they know they need the help, and want it, but they wish no one had to know about it. As I’ve gotten older I care less what other people think about me, and I understand more and more that we’re all too worried about ourselves to care about what other people are doing, but when I was young I cared a lot about what other people thought about me. I read a book Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about middle and higher class people who fell on hard times; she said they would drive to the next town to grocery shop because they didn’t want anyone they knew to know they were using food stamps.

  124. 124.

    narya

    @Baud: Lately I’ve been thinking that Joe had a list in his pocket, from all of his time in the Senate and as a VP, of the multitude of ways he wanted to help people when he was in a position to do it. At this point, he’s on page 3, at least (very small print).

  127. 127.

    Salty Sam .

    @p.a.: perhaps selling the country out to the Walton family-types and crushing what was left of the union movement wasn’t the optimal way to fix the problem

    It worked out extremely well for the Walton family types…

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @Lapassionara:

    We have them here- people from that region who moved to the more industrial parts of OH and MI and IN in the 1940s and 1950s to work. It was a kind of diaspora – they ended up in Chicago and Detroit and Gary – better paying jobs.  They’re identifiable in my county by the last names -they’re different than the primarily German or Scandinavian names of the people who have been here a long time. I’m really familiar with the culture.

  130. 130.

    Roger Moore

    @Kristine:

    Stock price should depend on the value the company provides–improved products or services–not on gaming the numbers.

    That stock buybacks affect the share price at all is a sign the market makes no sense.  If the market price accurately reflects the value of the company, it shouldn’t affect the price at all.  The company is decreasing its value by the amount of money spent purchasing shares, so the net effect should be a wash.  If enough people see the stock buyback and decide it makes them want to own the company more, it’s a sign the market is irrational.

  131. 131.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think most undergrads at IU weren’t paying attention to her accent at all.

    Oh I completely agree with this; I’m sure it was all in her mind, that she felt that way and projected it onto other students. Most of the kids I went to college with came from towns around here; as far as I could tell no one was “looking down” on them.

  133. 133.

    Kay

    @Lapassionara:

    They can identify the migration politically. They can pinpoint counties in WI or MI or OH that swung Right due to the migration.

    BAZZI: That’s right. So that’s really key. And then in the other is the fact that these migrants, in many ways, really did bring new or at least intensified forms of religious conservatism to new parts of the country. They brought evangelical Protestantism from the American South and brought that with them to many places across America. And evangelical Christianity becomes much more politically engaged as a voting bloc and really mobilized in the 1970s. That’s certainly one really important feature. And then the other is racial conservatism. And so if you look at survey data from the 1950s, 1960s, you can see that the Southern white diaspora looks much more similar, in terms of their racial attitudes, to the white populations living in the South as compared to those living in the rest of the country.

  135. 135.

    EarthWindFire

    @MomSense: My temptation would have been to ask the host WTAF was wrong with him that he’d kick off a party with that kick of statement, but I can also understand being shocked speechless. Trump really brought out the stupid loudmouth in too many people.

  137. 137.

    thalarctosMaritimus

    @Mousebumples: I tried Googling that comment, and to search for it here, but had no luck in finding it.

    If you or @Suzanne or anyone else happens to remember where that comment was, I’d appreciate it. I’m really interested in learning what the challenges and possibilities are. Thanks!

  140. 140.

    Salty Sam .

    @CliosFanBoy: actively discouraged students from going to college, one claiming that “smart people have a lot more problems.” Her town sounded like one big crab bucket. Going to college was getting “above yourself.”

    There’s a similar culture attitude among many of the poorest S. Texas Mexican Americans.  To show any kind of ambition for a better life is discouraged- “What!? You trying to be better than the rest of us here?!”

    Crab bucket is the perfect metaphor…

  142. 142.

    EarthWindFire

    @Kay: I just don’t believe the daughter of a physician was treated like a hillbilly freak at Indiana University. I don’t think IU Bloomington is a bastion of the liberal elites

    As the daughter of a Wyoming lawyer who went to Syracuse, I can tell you she wasn’t. She got a few stupid WV jokes, just like I got the occasional “question” about whether I rode a horse to high school. There are thoughtless people everywhere. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re persecuted.

  143. 143.

    Kay

    @EarthWindFire:

    The flagship state school would have all the super smart lower class strivers too -that’s almost the specialty of those schools. So there would be a whole cohort of people socioeconmically “below” her.

  147. 147.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    That is a good point. So is it that your take on Fitch’s downgrading is they actually are basing their decision on House Republican activity?

    I saw that apparently “governance issues” of the last 20 years in the US as well as the events of 1/6/21 played a role in their credit downgrade decision

  148. 148.

    Roger Moore

    @Soprano2:

    That’s how it seems to me with rural poverty; they need the help, but are too proud and don’t want to take it.

    My impression is that a lot of the problem with rural poverty is that people want to keep living the way their parents and grandparents did.  They don’t want a handout; they want to wind the clock back to the good old days.  Of course in a lot of cases those good old days weren’t as good as they think; rural poverty has been a problem basically since the invention of agriculture.

  150. 150.

    Princess

    @Baud: They thought the defeat of neoliberalism would put them in charge and they’re not in charge and that was the whole point. For them.

  151. 151.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Kay:

    Wife went to IU, and it was VERY egalitarian. In fact, at places like IU and Purdue, the predominant status symbol was “whose dad has at least a section (640 acres) under productive tillage”. Now, admittedly, if you came from a shack in a holler where daddy was a no-count poacher and lumber thief and was straight-piping the gray water into the creek under the porch while momma tended the weed patch on state land 50 feet away, it might not compare, but it really wasn’t a place where “urban sophistication” overwhelmed social and classroom interactions.

  152. 152.

    Yarrow

    @Kay:

    she’s doing that now-familiar “I am Appalachian so therefore discriminated against” thing that I find annoying.
    I don’t find some of her claims credible. I just don’t believe the daughter of a physician was treated like a hillbilly freak at Indiana University.

    Of course I can’t say what her personal experience was but I absolutely 100% can believe this. I had a somewhat similar experience. People can be shockingly provincial and treat those who are not “from around here” like they’re freaks. The “jokes” were incredibly tiresome.

  153. 153.

    EarthWindFire

    @Kay: Good point. The fact that she came from somewhere else meant her family could afford to send her.

  156. 156.

    schrodingers_cat

    There are two macroeconomic tools that a government has

    i) fiscal policy

    ii) monetary policy.

    The Chicago school economists led my Milton Friedman argued that the fiscal policy initiatives like deficit spending are inflationary and that the government should not use them and use only monetary policy instead.

    That is it, that is what  neoliberalism means. But it is one of those words that has completely lost its original meaning and has become a shorthand for whatever the leftier-than-thou do not like.

    This was a reaction against prevailing economic thought of the day put forth by Keynes who argued for the use of both.

    Also the Fed actually has 2 mandates, keeping inflation in check and reducing the unemployment rate. TPTB who live on rent (interest) want the Fed to focus on inflation alone.

  157. 157.

    zhena gogolia

    @Kay: Thank you for letting me know I don’t have to read it. Somebody was just urging it on me. I looked at the first page on Amazon (my fool-proof method) and I didn’t like it at all.

  158. 158.

    Suzanne

    @thalarctosMaritimus: Challenges in office-to-residential conversion include but are not limited to:

    1) Window access. Many modern and contemporary office buildings are designed with a high percentage of square footage relatively far away from windows, because it is advantageous for efficient cubicle/workstation layout to have a big open space. This is how you can maximize workstations relative to area. It’s disadvantageous for residences. Codes vary between places but almost all require windows in bedrooms and usually they are also desired in living rooms. This is for access to natural light, which is vital to health. Some jurisdictions’ codes also require operable windows to allow air to circulate.

    2) Plumbing. Residences have lots of toilets and sinks and bathtubs and kitchen sinks and laundry machines that need supply and connection to sewer. Many more than offices. So there’s the addition of a lot (a lot) of piping, pumps, and space to run all this stuff. Remember that we are now lifting lots of water up.

    3) Electrical metering. All these new separate residences need to be metered separately, which means a lot of new electrical panels and re-running wiring. Electrical loads in residential are different than office.

    4) HVAC. All these new separate spaces require separate zoning than open offices, and separate thermostats. Lots of new ductwork and controls. (HVAC is often the most expensive part of big buildings, so don’t sleep on this cost.)

    5) Elevator. High-rise buildings often have a lot of elevators because people are coming and going all the time, but residences don’t need so many. So now you have space being devoted to elevators that isn’t returning value.

    So, the reality is, it usually just isn’t financially worth it to do the conversion. (Residential rent is less than office, per square foot, in most places.)  It costs a lot, and so the only way to make it pencil out is to create “luxury” apartments. It’s difficult construction and demolition, nothing is standard. So most developers are not going to do it in the absence of significant incentives.

    It’s cheaper to tear down shitty low-rise office buildings in suburbs, replace them with apartments or condos or townhomes, and leave high-rise office buildings as offices.

  159. 159.

    Kay

    @Roger Moore:

    I run into it with young men and manufacturing jobs. It’s hard, dirty work and it always has been. There was no period where people were joyfully going off to make spark plugs. Wages didn’t keep up (although that’s narrowing in a really positive direction) but it was never “rewarding” on an assembly line. They romanticize the whole post war period.

  160. 160.

    Ken

    @Jeffro: I thought the “fraud” part was firmly established when they released that electoral-vote map showing how they’d get 280+ electoral votes, which included taking both Texas and New York.

  163. 163.

    Roger Moore

    @CliosFanBoy:

    A lot of it is housing costs. Move further out and you get more house and more yard for the same amount of money.

    The problem is that a lot of the savings gets spent on commuting.  People who drive a hour each way spend a lot of money on their car, both for gas and for replacing it every few years, and they don’t get to enjoy their big house as much as they want because they’re always in their car.  Not to mention the added stress of dealing with traffic that much.

  164. 164.

    Kay

    @zhena gogolia:

    We have a West Virginian in our book club (Demon is VA, not WV) and she will love it. But she does the same thing Kingsolver is doing. She went to college like her parents and her husband is the US CEO of a German fastener maker yet she claims this sort of shat upon identity – bitter. There is no one looking down on this person and I have no idea why anyone would choose to live like that,with a chip on her shoulder.

  165. 165.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne: ​
     
    Happy Birthday, young lady, and many more! Are you taking the day off from your Mob Enforcer duties?

    And, of course, Happy Birthday to Omnes!

  169. 169.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I read that the most conservative counties of inland Southern and Central California have the state’s largest concentrations of people descended from the “Okies.”

    The diaspora you speak of figures in John Grisham’s novel The Painted House. The 11 year old boy who narrates it lives with his parents and grandparents on a small, marginal cotton farm. When a second cousin (a factory worker) visits from Detroit, the boy is not impressed by the man’s nice car and unfamiliar ways, and he and his grandfather agree that theirs is the better life.

    The father and mother have started thinking though, and the book ends with the boy, his sister and parents driving away from the old homestead, headed for Tupelo and Detroit beyond.

  171. 171.

    WereBear

    Anyone who claims there’s a liberal elite cabal in Indiana, where a health food store is often regarded as a sign of socialism, is delusional.

  175. 175.

    Suzanne

    @Kay:

    Wages didn’t keep up (although that’s narrowing in a really positive direction) but it was never “rewarding” on an assembly line. They romanticize the whole post war period.
     

    The part of it that was arguably most attractive is that the social structure of the time allowed men to financially control women. They’re not romanticizing the work, they’re romanticizing the structured family life it allowed them to build.

  178. 178.

    Mousebumples

    @Suzanne: Thanks for the clarification. 😊

    @thalarctosMaritimus: It was probably multiple comments across multiple threads – likely started peak Covid when all non essential workers were home and not in the office. Suzanne is an architect, I believe (*apologies if I’m wrong!), and I feel like this was a regular topic for awhile.

    @Suzanne: And thank you for this too!

  179. 179.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @WereBear: ​
      I am as fond of Mike Royko’s Indiana jokes as anyone, but I think you off base here. Any town with a university is going to have a “liberal elite” contingent. It may not be the Upper East Side or Cambridge, MA, but it is still there. Also, any city with more than 25,000 is going to have a small core of highly educated people who support the local art museum and community symphony. It will a have a few really good restaurants and a couple of good cafes. You are buying into the flyover country myth.

  182. 182.

    smith

    OK, since we’re dealing with anecdata, I’ll add mine. I’m a native of WV and went to college in MI. I never experienced any snootiness from my classmates because of where I came from. Of course, like Kingsolver’s, my family were professionals, and I actually came to college better prepared academically than many of the kids from the Detroit suburbs.

    One further story: In HS, my sophomore English teacher was an elderly woman originally from the hollers who started teaching straight after she left HS. She told the story of being asked out by a student of hers who was the same age, to go to a basketball game over in the next holler. Their transportation for their date was his mule.

    She was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, the only one who could make Shakespeare intelligible to a kid, and probably a big reason I could write a coherent essay when I reached college and many other kids couldn’t.

    The point is, if you’re a poor put-upon hillbilly, it may be because you choose to be.

  184. 184.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Suzanne:

    I have no doubt that there are guys out there like that, but for me looking back on the past, it was nice to know that one could have something decent (in a union shop) to fall back on, as opposed to having put yourself tens of thousands of dollars in debt to maybe have a chance at employment

  185. 185.

    StringOnAStick

    @Matt McIrvin: I guess I was lucky to have a liberal economics professor for two semesters; I didn’t realize they were so rare.  We even spent a week comparing the capitalism vs. Socialist systems, which sent the business majors into an angry frenzy.

  186. 186.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay: As the David Roberts thread I posted above notes, it’s a permission structure/excuse for them to be shitty.  Men have played the victim card to justify their Misogyny and support of Patriarchy from time immemorial.  Likewise, White People have (and still do) use it to justify their racism and support for racial hierarchies/Systemic Racism going back to Slavery.  As Ibram Kendi details in Stamped From the Beginning, the oppression always comes first, and then the reasoning is concocted to justify it.  My guess is this German, WV woman knows deep down that her politics are shitty, oppresses minorities and harms the planet etc., so she uses a woe-is-me, everyone-looks-down-on-me bullshit to give herself a moral pass.  It’s a move you see from guilty toddlers or any other child when you catch them doing something bad.  It’s the knee-jerk defense that sadly continues well into adulthood.

  187. 187.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Geminid: That’s interesting.  Do you know where you read that?  I have a friend from OK who lives in Pasadena.  I’ll have to ask her if she knew about that.

  188. 188.

    Hoodie

    @Kay: My MIL (southern Louisiana Cajun) is kind of like that, even though her husband (also Cajun) retired as a colonel stationed at the Pentagon and she lived the bulk of her life extremely comfortably in NoVa.  In her case, a lot of that it is just childhood insecurities and resentments (e.g., she felt her sisters got treated better than she did) that got channeled into a general resentment that she was looked down on because she’s Cajun.  That was generally true when she was a kid, but  the funny thing is that Cajun is now cool.

  191. 191.

    Soprano2

    @Salty Sam .: I just listened to a “Hidden Brain” podcast about this, called “When to Eat the Marshmallow”. She talked about the “crab bucket” effect, and how it influences the decisions poor people make. It was an interesting interview.

    I listened to “On Point” this morning. They had on Richard Kahlenberg , who writes about housing, race and class. He’s a liberal who joined with the anti-affirmative action people in the Supreme Court case because he believes that it should all be based on class – the Bernie argument. Interestingly, for the first time in a long time there was no Facebook topic for the show, and they didn’t read one listener comment at all, which is extremely unusual (I can only imagine the comments they were getting by e-mail!). It was as if they were actively discouraging listener feedback. I am sympathetic to his argument in some ways, but then he went and cited Hillary’s “deplorable” comment in the same way conservatives do, and completely ignored everything else she said when she made that comment! It was infuriating, and the host gave zero pushback on it when he said it.

  192. 192.

    Betty Cracker

    Communities of all types naturally form social hierarchies. Maybe it’s part of the human condition. In The Grapes of Wrath, there’s a passage where some of the first migrant farmworkers to arrive in an area were able to live in abandoned boxcars rather than tents, which made them the aristocracy of the encampment.

  194. 194.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’m just briefly between classes, so no time for individual responses, but I want to thank everyone for the birthday wishes. And thanks also to those who enjoyed the poem (yes, @Water Girl: a poor thing, but mine own).

  195. 195.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @mrmoshpotato: Minor edit in the interest of accuracy – that comeback ought to read

    Well, I like him a lot. He’s the best President of our lifetime, and it’s too goddamned bad you’re too stupid to realize it or too dishonest to admit it. Well, which is it? Stupid, dishonest or both?

    Yeah, life of the party I am… ;^p

    (In fact I would hope to be a tad more restrained – to reply with something like, What don’t you like about President Biden? – and then keep asking innocent-sounding questions til it became obvious the host didn’t know his arse from second base. Unfortunately I rarely get very far with that approach before wrecking it all by blurting out something on the order of Well then you’re a fucking idiot/bigot/Nazi!)​

  197. 197.

    Soprano2

    @Yarrow: My econ professor said when he went to the University of Kansas, he had to endure a lot of jokes about how surprised they were he actually wore shoes and knew how to use the indoor bathrooms! So yeah, that can be a thing depending on where you go. If he had gone to Mizzou he probably wouldn’t have had as much of that.

  198. 198.

    geg6

    @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:

    Same, as long as you correct that to the white poors of Appalachia.  I was born and live among them and they are almost always the most contemptible assholes who blame everyone else for their troubles but themselves.  I am eternally grateful to have had parents who encouraged me and my siblings to strive for more.

  200. 200.

    Geminid

    @UncleEbeneezer: I can’t remember the source; it was in some analysis of California demographics and voting patterns. I’ll probably dig it up again and let you know.

  203. 203.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: They did this here with a building downtown that used to be a department store, but it was an old-style building on the square, and they made it into luxury lofts. They had to build a parking garage onto it in order to make it practical. The building was old and needed a lot of work already; I think they basically gutted the whole building down to the studs and completely rebuilt the insides. They also did it with an old industrial building near my house; again, it’s higher-priced loft apartments. It’s like those warehouse conversions that were done in cities. In fact, now that I think about it I can think of three other buildings downtown they did this with, but they were all old (probably 100 years old) buildings. So it seems that it’s more practical with older buildings that didn’t already have central air and that had lots of windows that could be opened. One of those builds is all apartments that were specifically built to be handicap-accessible.

  204. 204.

    Geminid

    @SiubhanDuinne: Happy Birthday!

    There is a fine muse from Stone Mountain,

    Whose verses will flow like a fountain.

    Mob enforcer at times,

    She mainly just rhymes,

    And brings us delights beyond countin’.

  206. 206.

    Suzanne

    @Soprano2: If you read that graphic story I linked to, they discuss why prewar buildings are better for conversion than modern. So cities that have more of those will see more conversion projects. Newer cities will see very few. But again, redevelopment doesn’t have to mean reuse of the building itself.

  208. 208.

    lowtechcyclist

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Ha! I’m sorry I didn’t know you (or, at least, your birthday and age) back in 2018. I have a pretty good one for people turning 64.

    Some guy named McCartney wrote a pretty good song for being that age. :-)

  211. 211.

    Lyrebird

    Oh cool!

    Another great explainer from @Suzanne: ​
      …thanks!

    Many modern and contemporary office buildings are designed with a high percentage of square footage relatively far away from windows, because it is advantageous for efficient cubicle/workstation layout to have a big open space.

    When I worked for a multinational company, I found out that in several countries in Europe, labor laws include things like, every worker must have natural light! I was so jealous.

  212. 212.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay:

    We have them here- people from that region who moved to the more industrial parts of OH and MI and IN in the 1940s and 1950s to work. It was a kind of diaspora – they ended up in Chicago and Detroit and Gary – better paying jobs.

    In Cincinnati, Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit,
    you can find us by the thousands, with our husbands and our wives,
    and if you wonder what we’re doing here, so far from the mountain home,
    we’re just Blue Ridge mountain refugees, and we’re fighting for our lives.
    -Si Kahn, “Blue Ridge Mountain Refugee”

  213. 213.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @CliosFanBoy: That was my experience.  My Southern rural grandparents told my mother it was a waste to send me to college as a girl and that I would get above myself.  My mother made sure I never saw them again.  The only discrimination I faced as a child of Appalachia was that my Minnesotan roommate thought I talked funny and kept trying to make me talk like her.  She didn’t last long as a roommate.  Kingsolver has drawn the wrong conclusions from her early life, which parallels mine.

  214. 214.

    Geminid

    @schrodingers_cat: The second Fed mandate- to promote full employment- was added in the late 1970s. I think the “Watergate Class” of more liberal Democrats made it possible.

    It’s a good thing they did; I’m not sure so important a check on the Fed could have been passed after 1980.

  215. 215.

    OverTwistWillie

    Something like 20% of the US female population of the late 19th century worked in manufacturing.

    The 1950s leisure class marketing fairy tales are just that.

  216. 216.

    RaflW

    In re: the volume of lies from GOP congresscritters, most of them should be disbarred. They’ve shown utter contempt for the rule of law and, while they can exercise their 1A right to fabulizing horrendously, it ought to get them removed from ever lawyering again.

    I’m just gobsmacked at how many ethical trash heaps Harvard churns out.

  217. 217.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Suzanne:

    That’s more or less what I was talking about. It’s all being placed on the shoulders of students. And what happens when AI/machine learning eliminates many jobs, including ones that require college educations like radiologists for example? What will people retrain to when programs can basically code themselves?

  218. 218.

    Anotherlurker

    @zhena gogolia: I did the same thing. I looked at the first page of “Demon Copperhead”  on Amazon and it didn’t catch my attention.

    I’ll give it a pass.

  219. 219.

    Yarrow

    @Soprano2:  Yep. Each person seems to think they’re so clever with their comments and “jokes”, but it’s the same stuff over and over again from person after person. It’s just so dumb and boring after awhile. But it also seems designed to make sure you know you’re not one of them, not from there.

    It’s not like you can’t fit in, make friends, learn, have fun, and so forth. You can and do. But you’re still different and the “jokes” never stop.

  223. 223.

    Soprano2

    @Yarrow: I grew up in a small town (pop 965); my parents moved there when I was 2, but I was still kind of an outsider because my parents didn’t come from there. So I know how that can go. Kids sometimes commented about how my mother went to Springfield to shop for groceries rather than paying the high dollar prices at the MFA grocery store.

  224. 224.

    lowtechcyclist

    @zhena gogolia:

    Neoliberalism used to mean public-private cooperation on large societal initiatives.

    Thanks – at least that description fits with the name, and makes sense as an ‘ism’ that people would have been proponents of.

    Another great theory ruined by the facts, as my grandfather would have said.

  225. 225.

    sab

    @Kay: My husband (age 71) still has PTSD from the first half of his working life when he was a rubber worker. Astoundingly dangerous jobs where people lost hands or whole arms in the machinery.

  226. 226.

    lowtechcyclist

    @schrodingers_cat:

    By today’s standards even Nixon was Keynesian.

    Nixon being Keynesian was nothing. People forget that he instituted wide-ranging wage and price controls in 1971.  Real command-economy stuff.

  227. 227.

    Kristine

    @Roger Moore:

    If enough people see the stock buyback and decide it makes them want to own the company more, it’s a sign the market is irrational.

    I think the fact that we still have the equivalent of Tulip Mania supports the irrationality premise. And the number of folks who feel that they’re smart enough to beat the market.

  229. 229.

    lowtechcyclist

    @WaterGirl:

    Share it with her when she turns 80, because you know she is going to be bummed about that.  Maybe it will change her whole mindset of being 80!

    The only birthday that bummed me at the time was turning 50, because it was no longer possible to think that most of my life was still ahead.  Getting used to that was a real shift of perspective. Now it’s no big deal, I’ve still got decades ahead, and just over four months left of my working life. :-)

  230. 230.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    We have a West Virginian in our book club (Demon is VA, not WV) and she will love it. But she does the same thing Kingsolver is doing. She went to college like her parents and her husband is the US CEO of a German fastener maker yet she claims this sort of shat upon identity – bitter. There is no one looking down on this person and I have no idea why anyone would choose to live like that,with a chip on her shoulder.

    The term “flyover country” is still my favorite example of this.  In a lifetime of living mostly in big blue cities, I have literally never heard anyone use it unironically.  Nobody has.  It’s always somebody else citing it as an example of the way they claim liberals talk about the heartland.  Supposedly, the first recorded use of the term was in some article from the eighties where it was, also, being used in that way rather than in earnest.  And yet the term is absolutely everywhere in discussions of the supposed elitism towards rural folk, one of these things that Everybody Knows liberals say.

    Rural white people, or people who claim some sort of rural-white-adjacent identity (most of them are middle-class-or-above exurbanites, suburbanites, or even just urbanites who happen to live in some place like Cleveland or Colorado Springs instead of Los Angeles or New York), are so desperate to feel oppressed by coastal liberals (and so completely disconnected from anything a coastal liberal has actually said) that they literally tried to go out and invent an N-word for themselves, just so they could have that dose of righteous victimhood.

    I should be grateful when they use the word “deplorable;” at least that’s something a liberal has actually said, even if it was never the ethnic or class slur they want it to be.

  235. 235.

    Subsole

    @rikyrah:

    They have spent so long being petty tyrants, they don’t know how to be merchants anymore.

    They aren’t used to workers they can’t threaten, people who aren’t desperate.

  237. 237.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    Right.  They immediately tried to claim that it was a slur against people of a certain class or a certain education or a certain ethnic or geographic origin, which, of course, it never was.  (Technically, it wasn’t even referring to all Trump voters, which it absolutely should have been).

  238. 238.

    suzanne

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    And what happens when AI/machine learning eliminates many jobs, including ones that require college educations like radiologists for example? What will people retrain to when programs can basically code themselves? 

    Good Lord. AI isn’t going to replace a radiologist any time in your lifetime. First of all, there are not enough radiologists for all the incoming old Boomers who are getting into their prime healthcare-consuming years. Second of all, they do a lot more than read images. Third of all, people will transfer to something related. Literally what you are describing is what has happened in the market forever.

    In my own profession, the old guys still talk about hand drafting. There’s still a lot of people who used to be draftsmen (drafting is not really its own thing any more, it’s what junior staff on the path to being architects and engineers do). They either learned to use Revit, or they became specification writers, or they went to work for a client or contractor. And then they retire. But there’s no existence in which you get to stop learning stuff. Every profession is going to change. The more educated people will always be the winners when that happens, because they tend to be more successful at constantly pushing on themselves.

    I know you are stuck in a period of stasis right now, career-wise, and you seem to be frozen by this idea that you’re going to find this mythical career path that requires minimal input and result in career security, which is defined as not having to get any further education or skills. That doesn’t exist.

  240. 240.

    Geminid

    @Baud: The “basket of deplorables” comment was made at a private gathering of donors, and was released by someone who attended. I don’t think Ms. Clinton would have made them in a speech to the public.

    This, like Romney’s “makers/takers” remarks and Obama’s “cling to their bibles and guns” statement, was made before a select group of partisans. It goes to show that candidates need to be as circumspect before small, “private” gatherings as they are in public. They can almost count on their remarks being leaked without context.

  241. 241.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Geminid: ​
      I take a bit different view of it. The right is going to go out of their way to take any Democrat’s statements out of context, so stop worrying about it. Don’t say racist or sexist shit and then let the chips fall where they may.

  242. 242.

    Almost Retired

    @Suzanne:   This is great – thanks for this.

    I’ve wondered why so many old buildings in the historic core of downtown Los Angeles have been successfully converted into condos and hotels (and, probably Air B&Bs), while more modern (but obsolete) office towers nearby are empty or converted to server farms.  It seems like the window access component explains much of that.

    Not to mention the utter absence of charm of most mid-century DTLA office buildings.

  243. 243.

    J R in WV

    I was born and raised in a small town in Southern WV coal country, went to Marshall University on the GI Bill, majored in computer science,  had a successful career working for state government.

    When I retired I was managing a large group of people from all over the world building software to track very complicated environmental data. My wife is from an even smaller coal camp, and also had a successful career..

    I have no respect for J D  Vance and his schitch, and am disappointed to learn that Ms Kingsolver shares it!

  248. 248.

    cain

    @suzanne: All AI can do is provide enhancement to the role you are already doing. Only a fool would replace a human with an AI in roles that require cognitive thinking. AI works great if all your customers are also AI as it is all deterministic. But as we all know from human behavior – humans do not have deterministic behavior. (see MAGA) and frequently do things that do not follow any set behavior.

  249. 249.

    suzanne

    @Almost Retired: Hotels are easier conversions than residences, a lot of the time, because most hotels don’t have kitchens in each room and they don’t need separate metering.

    Office buildings have trended increasingly “horizontal”, meaning toward bigger floor plates (with a greater percentage of floor area far away from windows) as we have gotten away from private offices and as companies have gotten larger, because it is highly desirable and more efficient to have your company on fewer floors.

    So conversions are going to be highly dependent on the age of the building stock. A firm I used to work for in Phoenix did a conversion project of the Westward Ho hotel (a lovely historic hotel, visible at the beginning of Psycho) into senior living apartments. Easier than office-to-residential. But Phoenix has so few buildings of that era. Same thing for most of the sunny cities.

    Every one of these conversion projects will be a calculation of cost vs. return. So the answer will be different in each city and for each building. But if they happen, they will almost certainly be high-end (and there will not be very many). Conversion of office buildings is not the solution to housing cost issues that we have.

  251. 251.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @UncleEbeneezer: That thread is extremely on point. It’s also applicable to the trans genocide Republicans are engaging in (as well as TERFs rolling back trans rights in the UK.

    Also too, they’re not spouting conspiracy theories, they’re justifying violence against those they’re targeting (whether trans people, libs, etc.).

  253. 253.

    cain

    @Jeffro: The dude does not have mainstream thinking about anything – let them waste their money. One mistake they make is thinking Democrats are like Republicans that wallow in conspiracy theories and other reactive things to the point that they’ll vote like Republicans do.

  254. 254.

    suzanne

    @cain: Agreed. AI will take the rote-work part out of many jobs and thus make workers more productive. It’s not replacing highly trained workers wholesale.

    If a job is all rote work, then it’s probably already been turned into a robot.

  255. 255.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Omnes Omnibus: Even if taken in context, the Obama and Clinton remarks I refer to were impolitic, and I don’t think either one would have made them in an address to the public.

  256. 256.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Geminid:

    I read that the most conservative counties of inland Southern and Central California have the state’s largest concentrations of people descended from the “Okies.”

    Absolutely true. Bakersfield, for one, is as conservative as the Deep South, albeit the racial dynamics are different. Ask me how I know.

    @UncleEbeneezer: The Pasadena area was heavily populated by immigrants from the Midwest. In fact one the major streets in the area, Michilinda is an abbreviation of Michigan, Illinois and Indiana — named at the Time for the people who moved from there.

  257. 257.

    smith

    @suzanne: This really is similar to the angst expressed when computers and robotics first became common in the workplace. They did displace some jobs, but also opened up many more. How many IT jobs are there now?

  258. 258.

    Ruckus

    @Mousebumples:

    It isn’t enough but Los Angeles has a few places that they have built housing, that sort of look like apartments, low income housing. The train I take goes by them and they seem to be a hell of a lot better than living on the street, which I used to see a lot in South Central LA, where dad’s and then my business was. Building is still there, built in the 1930s. Dad did his apprenticeship there with the guy he bought the place from. His parents moved from Kansas when he was a year old, in a horse drawn wagon. My mom’s parents lived in South Central LA. I am second generation Los Angeleno and I’m in my mid 70s. This world has changed a lot in that 3/4 of a century, this country has grown and prospered a lot in that time as well. And while we still have a ways to go, we have, at least in many places gotten better in this all citizens are equal concept, that a not insignificant percentage of the people seem to still not accept.

  260. 260.

    The Lodger

    @Kay: That’s my brother, who nearly died of heart disease 15 years ago and still can’t stand it that Obamacare kept him alive.

  267. 267.

    Kay

    This is the Kingsolver interview Iistened to (half of). It’s NYTimes so paywalled but since I’m trashing her I feel like others should read it – I might be extremely cranky on this subject :)

    I do like the book though- just not the author. It’s also irritating how this “challenge” is always only issued to liberals or Democrats. Why are Republicans never challenged on helping low income white people? They don’t even vote for us.

  270. 270.

    Anastasio Beaverhausen

    Just a quick note on Rehoboth Beach, DE.  Until Joseph Robinette Biden became president I don’t think many outside of the mid-Atlantic knew of this little coastal town.  I remember my first visit in the mid 80s when it was a place where you and a couple of friends could drive three hours from DC and plop yourself down in a little vintage coastal home with other young men of a certain persuasion and……relax.  We went to the last bit of public beach and called it Poodle Beach.  The locals were a little concerned and I think a little jealous.  People with no regrets, enjoying themselves?!  It was Reaganland at home back then and it was pre internet, pre cell phone and pre everything else.  Back then, you met in person, not online.  My first visit was $25/night for a single bed in a large house.  We think we discovered Rehoboth, tamed Rehoboth, and glamorized Rehoboth, eventually to our dismay. Now? Biden’s $2M home referenced in the article is almost a starter home.  If you have something a block or two from the beach and a block or two from the fabulous gay bars/restaurants like The Blue Moon or Aqua you’re going to pay $4M.

  272. 272.

    Miss Bianca

    @suzanne: The Westward Ho in Phoenix! Two of my friends from Paonia used to go back and forth to Texas a lot and would stay there. In fact, it was while they were staying there that they formed the idea that The Westwards Hos would be a great name for a girl group, recruited me as the third member, and the rest was…glorious herstory, for a little while, anyway. ; )

    Did they keep the name when they converted it to senior living?

  273. 273.

    Ruckus

    @Mousebumples:

    A lot of office work today can be done at home, because of computers. I remember long ago my father built and I worked on, a mold to make a hand held calculator case. Sort of what an early Texas Instrument one looked like. By the time the mold was done the electronics had improved that a much smaller, thinner case would work. Electronics changed a lot of businesses. When I started in mold making for plastic products, there were no computer run machines for sale. A decade later my dad bought his first one and I learned to operate it – and taught him. The last machine I bought, in the early 90s, would run on it’s own, once programed, machined with electricity, worked 2-3 times as fast as the previous generation, do things in ways and speed the last generation could not dream of, and completely changed the way the work was accomplished and all of that was because of computers getting better. Today cellphones that fit in a pocket can/are faster, better computers than that machine had.

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