On Tuesday, voters in at least 37 states are heading to the polls to vote in the biggest election day until the hotly anticipated 2024 presidential election.
Here are the issues to pay attention to: https://t.co/5JFNNrltJe pic.twitter.com/ZNvFmL3ylD
— ABC News (@ABC) November 7, 2023
So we can predict what the evening postss will (probably) be consumed by.
In other news…
'Amtrak Joe' Biden visits Delaware to promote $16 billion for passenger rail projects https://t.co/cukMd6bepA pic.twitter.com/lATqEIy9PJ
— ?? R Saddler (@Politics_PR) November 7, 2023
White House sent NEC’s Lael Brainard out to do TV this morning. “We are seeing data that are causing most forecasters to take recession calls off the table,” she said on CNBC.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) November 6, 2023
This might be the best explanation I’ve seen for the divergence between consumer sentiment and economic data @idobadtakes pic.twitter.com/oI2zMTzPvd
— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) November 6, 2023
Speaking of ‘vibes’, I endorse the following statement (because that is my nature):
A generic Democrat who instantly unified the Democratic Party and did not face an onslaught from the right, shit-tests from the left, and a mainstream press that pretended to believe what Republicans said about them could do very well in a presidential election but… bad news.
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 6, 2023
Yall listen to my man @JoeTrippi. As he said, he’s been there and done that. Quit wringing your damn hands over a poll a full year from the election and lets just keep working! https://t.co/wm4gc2ec0N
— Doug Jones (@DougJones) November 7, 2023
What the media won’t tell you: Joe Biden already BEAT Donald Trump in 2020 with the youngest, most diverse coalition of voters ever. Mark my words: Joe Biden & Kamala Harris will do it again—& even better in 2024.
I joined MSNBC to talk about why polls are wrong. Watch & share?? pic.twitter.com/9eoPwzphN2
— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) November 7, 2023
On The Road – Winter Wren – Seasons at Minuteman National Park
Baud
We are now on our third consecutive Democratic president who has inherited a crappy economy from a Republican and turned it around. I’m quite finished with beating my head against the wall about it. I’ll be fine no matter what happens. Others can make their own adult decisions about what’s best for themselves.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Tell that truth 👏🏾
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: Blech.
John S.
So basically we are surrounded by a bunch of Craig T. Nelsons who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps without any help from the evil government:
The economy is so bad, I could barely afford my recent trip to Europe and the new boat that I just bought!
Ocotillo
Those tweets from “George” really hit the spot. The polls say the economy is terrible and bad news for Biden and the Dems but when I drive around my city, the eating places are packed, my Trump supporting B-I-L is having difficulty with keeping up with work at this business. I see on the news Taylor Swift is making gaziillions of dollars and it comes from parents spending hundreds, nay, thousands of dollars so their kids can get seats.
The economy is roaring.
They should ask people what the economy is, in their view. The answers will range from gas prices to the stock market to God knows what.
Oh, good morning to rikyrah and Baud and the rest of you jackals.
eclare
I’m with Doug Jones, hate that he is no longer a senator.
eclare
@John S.:
And Taylor Swift and Beyonce tickets! You don’t sell out arena after arena (Swift played LA for six nights) if the economy sucks.
The average Swiftie paid $1300 to see her, including tickets, food, merch, transportation, etc.
citizen dave
This odd year means municipal elections across Indiana. My growing town of Fishers became it city in 2015 (100K population), and has had one mayor so far, the Town Manager turned Republican. He’s fairly non-political as far as it goes, but I did read on twitter how, since he was unopposed by the Dems this year, he threw $100K into anti-Dem City Council postcards spreading bogus crap. That alone is a reason for the Dems to always run someone–make the R spend money on their own campaign.
We elect 3 at large City Council reps, and have had one D on it the last 4 years. Hopefuly she wins re-election and we add another D as well. IN 2020 Fishers and my neighboring city of Carmel both went for Biden, barely. Today will be a good check-in. Carmel has a contested mayoral race.
p.a.
Who you gonna believe, Fox news or your paycheck? What a country…
ETA: yesterday heard a tRump radio commercial attacking Biden. “Hurricane of fucking lies” is the best description. Didn’t hear the “authorized by” ending.
Gregory
The only polls that matter are the ones on Election Day. Democratic turnout has routinely been underestimated by the so-called “liberal media” and yet the Democrats have consistently overperformed. Abortion remains a millstone around the Republicans’ necks for good reason. I predict today’s election results will be broadly favorable to the Democrats going into next year’s critical elections.
Edited to add: That includes the Democrats holding the mayor’s office in Indianapolis, turning back a Republican challenger who has tried to hide his pro-abortion stance.
H.E.Wolf
Feeling doomed is an emotion, and one way to combat that emotion is to do something concrete.
Taking one small, concrete action won’t fix the whole situation – but it will help fix some of it; and small actions by lots of people add up to a huge total.
As a bonus, doing a small, positive act has a tendency to lift one’s spirits.
Whatever the outcome of today’s elections, we can take pride in what we contributed – and we can start taking action to make a difference in the next election. Bring a friend. :-)
Betty Cracker
@eclare: It sucks that Jones is no longer a senator, and it doubly sucks that he was replaced by the drooling, malevolent moron Coach Tatertown. That election showed how heavy the lift is for Dems in Alabama. Jones, a good man, won only because Repubs nominated a sexual predator.
Yarrow
@Baud:
I wish Democrats could find a way to campaign on this. Democrats make your lives better.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … What happened to the Red Wave? (from November 9, 2022):
But, but,
butter emailshe’s oooooollllldddd!!11ONEEyes on the prizes.
Fingers crossed for excellent results today!!
Cheers,
Scott.
New Deal democrat
The local news media ended their coverage of the Virginia races with puff pieces about how Gov. Youngkin hopes to get a legislative majority in both Houses of the VA Legislature.
There have been no leaks from either side of any internal polling, which tells me that the races are going to be very close. The only exception was several anonymous quotes by GOP insiders that they were expecting a “massacre,” which may be true, but I read as more likely reflecting that Democrats have a slight edge, and hoping that the leak causes some Democrats to stay home for the same reason that some did in 2016 because “Hillary is a lock.”
We’ll see tonight. I really do think VA’s results tonight are going to set the tone for next year’s races.
indycat32
@Gregory: The republican (Shreve) is saying he’s going to ban assault weapons and repeal permitless carry. I guess he plans on going to the Indiana legislature and say please.
hrprogressive
On the economic news item; I am the most financially “sound” I’ve been theoretically in my entire life in terms of having a decent-paying position, and having reasonably decent savings to draw on when I need it. I have been fortunate enough to have a WFH job for 3.5 years, so, some of my “costs of living” have gone down a lot as I no longer commute to an office space for work, and, well, since I’m keeping my COVID Punch Card at #0 to the best of my ability, I don’t spend on activities and things like I used to.
However, I need to make “Major Life Changes” which involve the sourcing of different housing, and honestly I feel trapped in my current scenario because the domicile that was purchased was done so in 2016 at a price that zero homes are going for these days…and the rental market is not any better. I am “lucky” in that I have what most would consider “a ridiculously small housing payment” with two income-earning adults and no children in the mix. But the economy is such that…neither of us can really “afford” to Make Said Changes without incurring substantial struggle, if not necessarily hardship.
So yeah. There’s absolutely a disconnect, and I definitely Get It.
On the flip side, I did my Virginia Voter Duty this morning and inked my choices for the two state-level Democrats. I honestly would be surprised if either won my specific precinct, but I am hopeful the rest of the district can carry them.
If not my district, I am at least hopeful that other areas will rebuke Fascist Glenn Youngkin and his band of transphobic troglodytes.
eversor
For the first time in my life, I voted straight GOP.
I didn’t want to. At first it felt bad. But then I remembered people here defending going to a restaurant that pays a fucking rapist and acting high and mighty of it. And then I really though and remembered others defending Christianity. And I figured, I’m not helping that. And if that’s how they truly are, we all should get it. Good hard and proper.
It felt, good. Great even. If I am never going to get what I want out of the system, than what’s the point? But rather than not voting, I can sure as fuck make the people who keep telling me I can’t and then demanding my vote get screwed completely on everything they care about. A vote can be a weapon. A good one.
See that’s the catch. I can’t save myself or those I care about but I can fucking get killed and drag your rapist, fascists, evil asses down with me. Even better I can get at Christians. And as we all go down and you all scream, I will smile, and say “you said, don’t get mad, vote. and so I did, and I voted for THIS”.
Citizen_X
And the righteousness of that sentiment went up with the proportion of their paycheck that was paid by taxes.
MagdaInBlack
@eversor: Bye Bye.
SiubhanDuinne
@eclare:
Especially considering Tatertown, the waste of oxygen that replaced him.
Freemark
@Yarrow: The DNC should be running generic ads on YouTube and streaming services that just the economy over the last 100 years during Democratic administrations vs Republican ones. They should be run on a low volume but constant basis. Democratic pols should carry the charts around and show them every chance they get.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: For a long time I thought it was mostly our dumb luck that big recessions always seem to hit when Republican administrations are in office. And I do still think there’s a random element there. But it’s interesting that the recession people have been predicting ever since the recovery from the COVID one has just not come.
People still associate Democrats with “worse on the economy”, but the last recession to hit during a Democratic White House was Jimmy Carter’s back in 1980 (which was pretty mild as they come, but exacerbated by bad inflation–itself a holdover from Nixon and Ford, though somehow it always gets pinned on Carter)… and the last one before that was, I think, Harry Truman’s.
satby
@MagdaInBlack: Phaser set to ignore too.
Yarrow
@Freemark: Yep. It’s a real thing. Democrats should be talking about it all the time. Democrats make the economy better.
Nelle
@H.E.Wolf: My 79 year old husband was up at 5:15 to be a poll worker from 6 am to 9 pm. I hauled myself around the neighborhood yesterday to remind people to vote today – got to about 20 houses. I was in sort of a snit all weekend about it; why do I have to beg comfortable people in comfortable houses with enough to eat to get out and vote? People died for this opportunity and you just want to find something on Netflix?
But the weather was lovely and those I talked to are lovely. Did have some sense of doomerism when talking to my Palestinian neighbor – I keep telling him, have your parents come for an extended visit (they are on the West Bank). He’s never heard them so discouraged and all his Palestinian friends here are firmly setting themselves against Biden. I tell myself, steady on. Put ripples of goodness in action and let them go. I’m not in control of outcomes, just my own actions.
Now, off to a regular coffee I’ve set up among Democratic women…
marklar
@eversor: Dude, your level of satire is getting so good that it is getting tougher to tell when you are doing it.
May Yeshua bless your heart!
Lacuna Synecdoche
Joe Trippi via Anne Laurie & Doug Jones @ Top:
That’s what I keep saying, so let me make it concrete with a measurable, testable, prediction: Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020; if Trump is the nominee again in 2024, Biden will win by at least 10 million votes, minimum.
The 2024 electorate will be younger and more diverse than 2020’s, while Trump will be more tarnished and more deranged. And President Biden will have strong achievements and a strong economy to run on.
The Thin Black Duke
@eversor: See a therapist. Please. No joke.
HeleninEire
Good morning, morning crew. Greetings from my 2nd home; Dublin. 🇮🇪 The weather is gorgeous as are all my Irish friends. Back in NY on Thursday.
suzanne
@hrprogressive: I totally get it. Everyone I know who rents has their housing costs are going up much raster than their wages. The people who own (like me) feel locked in and that moving is impossible.
As I have repeatedly provided data, we have a significant housing shortage of every type in this country. Small, large, affordable, luxury, single-family, apartments. I read one estimate that we are 75 million housing units short of where we would be ideally, which would be housing that is plentiful and diverse enough that people would have more options for where to live and to form households, and that there would be enough slack in the system to replace older buildings.
I posted yesterday that the median house is currently seven times the median household income. Historically, it’s been five times. Over 1/3 of renters in this country are “rent-burdened”.
I get that going to see Taylor Swift is a luxury, but it’s also not enough money to make an impact on this issue.
I think people are ignoring this issue at their peril. It’s not especially partisan, but it is a huge issue.
Marmot
@eversor: Instead, you could have done something constructive. Help campaign, donate, register voters, spread the word.
schrodingers_cat
Tune out the polls and get to work. Join your local Democratic party. And above all vote. I am sick and tired of these supposed progressives who emotionally blackmail you, do this or else, I won’t vote D. Fuck you
Voting for the party that cares about the 0.1% and tried to invalidate the Green Cards of people from Muslim countries in the first week of their rule is going to provide everyone housing and a two state solution
Brilliant thinking by our socialist/leftist/tankie betters.
montanareddog
@satby: that is one strange dude. IIUC his rant, he voted straight GOP because some jackals disagreed with him (most jackals probably when it comes to his Christianity derangement syndrome). It seems we have our very own flaming narcissist. Well, that’ll learn us!
Marmot
@Matt McIrvin: When did Fed Chair Volker trigger a recession to bring down inflation? Like ‘82?
Baud
@suzanne:
It is a huge economic issue. But there will always be a huge economic issue. People will respond as they will.
Percysowner
@eversor: remembering why I pied you on my computer. Now I need to do it on my phone
Lacuna Synecdoche
@eversor:
So you voted for a party whose leading nominee for president is a rapist, insurrectionist, traitor, who stole classified documents, shared national defense information with foreign nationals, and led the country into a global pandemic with such incompetence that we suffered the greatest percentage of deaths in the first world?
Okay, sure, you do you.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: How is voting R or staying home going to solve this or any other huge issue? If you want any political party to highlight your concerns the least one can do is vote.
How is not voting going to achieve your stated goal? I mean what is thinking behind this toddler tantrum.
Or perhaps this is just a cover to let the Repulicans win. I am judging people by the consequences of their actions more than what they say.
Ocotillo
I admit, the NYT/Sienna poll has me nervous. I know, I know, it’s a year out, the polls have been wrong more than right lately, etc… I just can’t fathom how someone in the year of our lord, 2023 can support Donald Trump. And it’s not an abstract, I know real living, breathing people that support this monster.
My job takes me around mostly conservative people he still has support. Since I am selling a product to these people, I do not engage politically with them but walk away thinking WTF?
Yarrow
@montanareddog: It’s very strange to base one’s vote on what random commenters on a blog say just to theoretically piss them off. Kind of sad to be that suggestible.
montanareddog
Let’s not feed the troll and enable him to derail the thread. That is the last comment I will make about him.
citizen dave
@indycat32: (Indianapois R mayoral candidate) There is nothing about Shreve (that haircut!) that says “sharp businessman”, or even “sharp citizen”. So I was astounded when I googled him one day and learned he had made a fortune (a few hundred million) on storage businesses. His ads have been terrible; Hogsett’s not much better.
BethanyAnne
I am so irritated this morning. My boss has asked me 4 times how to get a link to our store on our TikTok videos. I have told hiim 4 times – pay TikTok for an ad. That’s what an ad *is*. A video with a link.
Today, he asked a 5th time.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Yarrow:
And yet also very Republican.
Percysowner
My daughter voted today before work, we’re in Ohio. Even at 7:30 it took her almost an hour. So turnout is good, at least in Columbus.
The rest of the family early voted.
Princess
So, I take NYT polls seriously. Nate Cohn is not a hack and in fact his late polls in 2022 rejected the Red Wave theory that was being pushed so hard by his own paper. But when I read that this latest poll shows Biden losing but generic Dem winning handily, I relaxed. Biden is generic Dem. We can bring these voters home.
Marmot
@Yarrow: I was thinking that too. Sadly, it looks like you can’t trust a single word out of that nym. Not one.
artem1s
Yea, but not for the ‘right’ people. the serfs are getting health care and decent pay and are able to work from home. They are having way to much fun. Beatings must commence until moral improves.
Eyeroller
@Yarrow: I don’t even know what he’s talking about. What restaurant? What alleged rapist? But from his posts it is clear that if he isn’t just a troll, or perhaps even if he is, he is a disturbed individual. Voting to spite a handful of commentators on a blog is bizarrely irrational.
SiubhanDuinne
I step away for a few minutes, come back, and it looks like I wandered into a patisserie.
Yarrow
@Eyeroller: Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about either. Also, I don’t really care. It’s just weird.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: What a lovely thing to do at breakfast time.
Layer8Problem
Now now, we’re supposed to be immobilized by that poll and all the assurances that the far right has the momentum of a runaway freight train. If you’re not cringing under the bed in terror begging the Repubs not to eat you, you might find yourself actually putting up a fight. And Biden is an old, unlike high-energy youthful TFG.
Oh, you mean seriously? Go vote. Over the next year work to get out the vote, write postcards, canvass if you’re a people person. Steel your nerves and get ready for the full-court press of the coming year. Expect disinformation and pundit concern trolling. Take sanity breaks from the shouting and tumult when your anxiety rises. Much money will be dropped by Koch, Harlan Crow, et. al. to demoralize via astroturfing. Much effort will be expended by the media to convince people that it’s anybody’s guess who will win and that Biden’s latest stammer recoveries, along with these clouds and shadows they just found, are (as always) good news for John McCain. As far as the NYT and their cohort think that stuff never gets stale.
montanareddog
@SiubhanDuinne: Since NotMax is likely still abed, I will assume his burden and ask if your patisserie remark is referring to an individual who is being a pain and if you have any tips on how we can choux him away?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
For those who’d vote GOP in the 21st century because Democratic candidates don’t meet their lofty expectations, I can only offer the words of A.R. Moxon:
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@schrodingers_cat:
If there was ever a person planted to heighten divisions on this blog, they would say the kind of stuff that dude says.
Eyeroller
@Princess: That was also reassuring to me. I am not going to “unskew” that poll; although it sounded like there were some methodological problems, it does indicate some concerns that will have to be addressed over the next 6 months or so.
suzanne
@Baud: Okay, but saying “the economy is great, everyone went to see Taylor Swift/eat avocado toast/on vacation!” when there is a problem that people are clearly communicating…… it doesn’t inspire confidence that you have any intention to attempt to fix it. It has more than a whiff of OKAY BOOMER to it.
The WaPo yesterday published a staggering chart about how it used to be, in the post-war and midcentury period that most people did economically better than their parents (and they didn’t need to go to college or live in an expensive city to do so). For those born in 1980, that was essentially down to 50%. And it has continued to drop. It is not getting better. I just don’t get why our side is insisting that the economy is booming and that people are in some sort of mass delusion.
sab
Just got back from voting and then breakfast at an Ohio diner. Both were really crowded.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
The big question is, do I toggle to see what the hell he said this time? Or leave all the little tarts and cupcakes in their glass cases, undisturbed?
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: Nah. Just enjoy the pastries. It’s not worth looking.
BethanyAnne
That poll sounds like we are in for a Red Wave! Too soon?
H.E.Wolf
Rather than waste any of your time responding to sad little men on their sad little hills, I recommend re-reading the comment by Nelle – one of the people on this blog who most inspires me.
Excerpt:
Thank you to Nelle and her husband for strengthening the bulwarks of freedom and democracy!
H.E.Wolf
It is definitely an individual who is very fond of nailing himself to his own croissant.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@suzanne:
Because in the last 15 years we’ve lived through 2 really awful recessions and the media has been saying for the last year that another awful recession will start any minute. The country has a lot of problems, like the terrible housing crunch.. like the still painful after effects of surging inflation.. like the opioid epidemic that is still with us.. like persistently high energy costs (Thanks, Putin). However, unemployment is low. For the first time in a long time, wages for the bottom half are not stagnant. Our crumbling infrastructure is finally being addressed. We do need to take a breath and be grateful for what is working while acknowledging there is more to do.
SiubhanDuinne
@montanareddog:
Je gémis!
Baud
@suzanne:
We can look at data that shows how well the economy is doing. We should have plans to deal with problems that exist, but I don’t want us to ever again refuse to sell our achievements because it’ll make other people unhappy.
sab
@MagdaInBlack: Inquiring minds want to know: // or troll?
Princess
@montanareddog: Except the jackals didn’t even disagree with him that restaurant rapists were bad. Jackals noted said rapist hasn’t been involved with said restaurant since 2010 and asked why he believed said rapist was still involved with said restaurant, a question he never answered. It’s bullshit all the way down with this guy. I’ve had him pied for months and just unpied briefly to see what the fuss was about this morning.
montanareddog
@SiubhanDuinne: Moi aussi, chaque fois que NotMax sorte une de ces bétises!
H.E.Wolf
Thank you!
Electoral-Vote.com is in your camp, with this write-up in today’s blog post: “The Sky is Usually Falling, Rinse and Repeat”.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Nov07-3.html
Layer8Problem
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Almost like there’s some basic motivation, y’know, like an assigned task for which money might be paid. And funny how when our curt reactions and pieing happen there’s a backoff with less inflammatory comments and engagement returns.
I pied that clown ages ago. No value was lost.
Yarrow
@Baud: Democrats make things better. Is everything perfect? No. Are things better. Yes. Yes, they are. Democrats can (and should, imho) be talking about that. If this is a choice election the other choice offers a worse quality of life.
Kelly
Obligatory Blaze Foley “Election Day”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u34QtftJtRg&ab_channel=BlazeFoley-Topic
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: Let’s be fair: with you that would be an absolutely lovely proposition. But yes, someone decided to either be a troll or burned his last bridge on this blog. As all I really have is school board elections locally I’m mostly a spectator today. But I’m choosing to think positive thoughts for Virginia and Ohio.
There go two miscreants
Just back from voting – municipal elections here in Wilmington, NC. Mostly geezers (like me) at this hour. Probably a low-turnout election anyway. Nominally nonpartisan, but it’s easy enough to find the info. We had three reasonable Dem condidates (can vote for three).
H.E.Wolf
Pfff. Je m’en fiche. C’est un imbécil, enfin.
TS
@suzanne:
Housing was affordable until it wasn’t & we keep getting multiple theories as to why. I’ve always blamed Thatcher for what she did to council/welfare housing in the UK – she made ONE part generation wealthy by selling them their council houses & thus the councils lost the homes they used to rent. Similar happened to social housing in Australia which was run by the states with Federal aid & they all decided to get out & leave the housing market to private industry. People started looking at housing as an investment, rather than as a place for someone to live – no-one built low cost housing, few built housing for rent – it all became a money maker.
The short term rentals them jumped in & removed more stock from the rental market & here we are – with massive homelessness & those with a mortgage at crisis point.
No government has addressed this in any serious way.
montanareddog
@H.E.Wolf: C’est sûr – un abruti total
sab
@suzanne: I think they think that they can afford Taylor Swift tickets because there is no point in saving for a downpayment.
I bought my 1960s era house for 95,000 in 2000 and everyone told me I overpaid (I wanted that creek in back.) Last year houses in the neighbohood with the exact same floor plan and no creek went for well over 200,000.
Suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I am fine with a message of that tenor. Today we celebrate, tomorrow we work, etc.
I am not okay with “You say you’re struggling?! But you went to see Taylor Swift! AHA, GOTCHA.”
indycat32
@citizen dave: The first time I saw him, I thought good grief man, you’re worth $500 million. Get a decent haircut. Took me a while to figure out why he gave me the creeps, then a few days ago I saw a picture of him and it hit me: he has the same grin as Tony Perkins at the end of Psycho.
Matt McIrvin
@Marmot: Yeah, that was in Reagan’s first term and he was really unpopular for a short while. But by ’84 things had recovered enough that they could do the Morning Again in America bit.
eclare
@Percysowner:
Wow, I hope that means good news tonight! Thanks to all for doing your part.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Layer8Problem:
Same. Once in a while I toggle to see what the latest nonsense is, but that is about it. I didn’t bother this morning.
Eolirin
@suzanne: The economy is booming, unemployment is low, spending is high, wage growth is happening at the bottom half of the income distribution in a way that it hasn’t in over 40 years, but also the housing market is broken and is a massive drag on individual finances and the cost of goods has gone up, though those increases are stabilizing.
But people don’t do nuance.
eclare
@montanareddog:
Hahaha…clever!
montanareddog
@indycat32: I had to do an online search to see what this guy looks like. Seems to me more like Martin Short (who I suppose specialises in portraying a different kind of creep than Tony Perkins played in Psycho). He has probably had his teeth done.
Matt McIrvin
@Layer8Problem: I don’t want to be the total Debbie Downer in this thread (too), but I do think that a second Trump administration poses threats of physical danger to many people that even a regular Republican administration wouldn’t, and that could warrant paying attention to signs of impending disaster even if it turns out there isn’t anything we can do to stop it.
As in: take steps to protect yourself as necessary; prepare to flee the country or go to a place in the US where you’re less exposed, if it’s at all possible, or do whatever you can.
I know the danger of being anywhere in Red America, and the possibility of needing to be out of the US entirely, is affecting my kid’s college search, in a way it wouldn’t have even for me in the 1980s.
Hope for the best, work for the best, prepare for the worst.
H.E.Wolf
OOOOkay. Let’s grab the steering wheel back from the pastry shell, and pat our jackal selves on the back for what we’ve done this summer and autumn to affect the outcome of the elections and effect positive change.
Nelle can’t be our only community member who’s out there in person on Election Day. Much appreciation to you all!
Huge thanks to everyone who donated to our Virginia candidate adoptees, Kimberly and Michael – and to the angels for their matching funds, and to WaterGirl our gifted ringmaster of fundraising!
Thank you to the commenters (Omnes Omnibus, schrodingers_cat) who have no patience with us when we get doom-y.
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who wrote a postcard (or posted music to write by). Rep. John Lewis would be proud of that kind of getting in good trouble.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@sab:
Yeah, but most of the people at the diner were NYT reporters.
BellyCat
@eversor: So you know, I’ve defended you to others. But, if you voted straight GOP for the reasons stated, you’ve lost me and future religious attacks by you should result in the ban hammer.
Get help.
MagdaInBlack
@sab: I have no more patience for “look what you made me do” screeching and that’s what was posted in this mornings screed.
Lovely patisserie selection tho. =-)
montanareddog
@eclare: I demur. Pretty obvious ones really. I have no gift for puns while some of NotMax’s are brilliant – not funny, because they are puns, but very clever.
H.E.Wolf
@montanareddog:
That is a new and welcome vocabulary word. :) Mille fois merci!
Eyeroller
@TS:
We don’t have council houses in the same way in the US (housing projects are notoriously bad here) but there were similar forces at work. The expectation here that one’s dwelling must be a significant store of wealth and not just a place to live is, along with our car obsessions, a major factor in making it difficult to get more/more affordable/higher density housing constructed. Current homeowners fight tooth and nail against anything perceived to possibly reduce property values, especially including high-density developments and even more so if it might bring “undesirables” even a little more into their proximity.
Also, I am not an economist but Paul Krugman is, and he has come to the conclusion that the postwar decades, roughly 1945-1975, when everybody was doing so much better than their parents did, there was much greater income equality, etc. was actually an aberration and not normal. It was due to a confluence of a number of factors. Destruction of industrial capacity in much of Europe and Asia was part of it but may not have been as big a deal as the mythology believes. Other factors were the GI Bill in the US, probably comparable things in other countries, and so on.
indycat32
@montanareddog: I can see the resemblance to Martin Short, but Short doesn’t have the Tony Perkins evil grin.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: The housing market issues also disproportionately hit young people and less-well-off people. It is critical to hear them.
Citizen_X
Here’s a thought: remember when we got out of Afghanistan, and it was the worse debacle in the history of military debacles (//), and the media permanently soured on Biden for it? Well now I say it’s a positive, when Biden’s getting hit from the left on I/P and war on terror stuff. WHO GOT US OUT OF AFGHANISTAN? After nearly twenty years, our longest war. Who got us out? Not Trump, that coward had four years and didn’t do shit. (And if Trumpers point out that Trump signed the withdrawal agreement, thank them for admitting that he set up the whole fuckup.)
No, that won’t help Nelle’s Palestinian neighbors right now. But come on: Biden’s getting shit for not having solved Israel/Palestine. Which nobody has! BUT: I remember when the other intractable, they’ve-been-fighting-for-centuries problem was Northern Ireland. And who had a major hand in settling that peacefully? Joe Biden. Let’s use his record.
sab
Off to the vet: my dog got downwind from the new leafblower and got something in her ear. After that it’s six hours handing out sample ballots at my local polling place.
For many years we could walk to the polling place. Nowadays it’s a mile and a half away, and if I needed to take a bus I would have to take one all the way downtown, then transer twice. And reverse the whole process to get back home. And we wonder why the kids don’t vote. 20 years of mostly Republican legislatures and Secretaries of State.
One heartening thing is around here Democratic volunteers (sample ballots) distributors) had full coverage at the polling places and the Republicans have been very spotty. I wonder if Issue 1 is keeping a lot of Republican women volunteers at home.
And the polling place was packed even after the usual before work morning rush.
Steeplejack
@suzanne:
How did we end up with such a large housing shortage?
oldgold
Biden has a good economy, popular legislative wins and is running against a criminal miscreant. Yet, his polling makes you want to take three tablets of Pepto Bismol. These polls, while perhaps to some degree skewed, are consistently telling us something is seriously amiss. I think it is clear what that is. We dismiss or downplay this old
elephantdonkey in the room at our peril.SiubhanDuinne
@H.E.Wolf:
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat:
In a democracy, the main lever an individual really has is their vote. If the person in office isn’t doing what you want on the issues you care about, you punish them by withholding your vote–that’s the fundamental idea. Maybe in the immediate term it actually makes things worse, but maybe later someone will pay attention.
I spent a long time trying to figure out what the deal was with Nader and Green voters in previous cycles. I finally decided they knew their vote stood a good chance of making things worse, but they had a moral framework in which that wasn’t supposed to be what you cared about. What you were supposed to care about was voting for the candidate you thought was best, and not voting for the “lesser evil” who was still evil, and if that had some perverse outcome that hurt everyone, that was the system’s fault, not yours. They were reasoning by their moral absolutes, rather than consequentially. Talking consequentially to them was like talking to a wall. It just made them madder.
These are people who care about one big thing, and the world can go burn otherwise. There are always going to be people like that. Fact of life.
Starfish
@Ocotillo: Grocery prices and all the things that consumer package good retailers are doing to make containers that are empty look more full. The most recent example of this was a soy sauce bottle that was painted brown to make it look like it had more soy sauce than it actually did.
gene108
Republican voters assume the economy has gone to hell, when a Democrat is President.
This skews the whole polling of what people think of the economy.
Consumer sentiment about the economy improved drastically after Trump was sworn in, in 2017, despite no change to the economy.
A lot of potential Democratic voters have their jitters about the economy which should be addressed, but the current state of negative Republican partisanship means sentiment will skew negative more than expected when a Democrat is President.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: The Democrats are the only people proposing solutions to housing at all. Biden has even mentioned it as a problem, I believe, not that reporting focuses on this stuff. But while this is an issue that would benefit from federal money and some regulatory changes, it’s also fundamentally something that needs to be primarily addressed at the local level. And most people don’t pay as much attention to what their local politicians are saying.
There’s also tremendous resistance from too many voters to the things that would actually make things better. This is going to be a hard one.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s an anti-solidarity mindset by people who are supposed to believe in the power of collective action.
You are correct that they will always be with us.
sab
@Steeplejack: REITs and Airbnbs: decent housing being sucked up by bad landlords. Also, has there been any public housing built since Reagan was elected?
Starfish
@Lacuna Synecdoche: He trolls every election year. Please feel free to serve him a piece of pie (filter).
206inKY
Just voted! Andy is going to completely crush it here.
Suzanne
@Eyeroller:
Sure. But it creates a sense of expectation, a narrative arc for your life, and a deep sense of dissatisfaction if you don’t achieve it.
It also leads to the kind of cultural hyper-competitiveness that we see today with parents trying to get their five-year-olds on competitive soccer teams so they can get a scholarship to an Ivy League college, and all that other bullshit. Because you are trying desperately to use your resources to buy that position for your kids insofar as one can. And this often works. So it stratifies social classes.
Shared prosperity was, in many ways, a choice. And America has chosen otherwise.
Eyeroller
@Starfish: In Virginia every year is an election year :-( I am really sick of it.
Matt McIrvin
@oldgold: I ask again: then who? Kamala Harris? She polls bad too (for stupid racist sexist reasons)–a lot of the “Biden is old” fear is really people upset about Kamala Harris possibly getting in. If you’re driven by polls you shouldn’t want her.
Someone else? Then who? Is this about Dean Phillips’ content-free conserva-Dem campaign? I’ve had this conversation IRL with people who want Pete Buttigieg. He shows no signs of wanting to step up and the left seems to hate him more than they do Biden. So here we are.
eclare
@206inKY:
Fingers and paws crossed here for him!
Eolirin
@Suzanne: My only real hope for that is that younger people are far more predisposed to viewing social justice and economic equality as important and good and far less concerned about governmental intervention to make those things happen.
If we can survive climate change I think the pendulum may swing back as they become politically dominant.
Eyeroller
@Suzanne:
There are definite policy decisions we have made that have exacerbated the situation, but we aren’t unique–income inequality has increased considerably in Europe as well, though nowhere near to the degree it has here. But if people are basing their expectations on an economy that was apparently the consequence of a cataclysmic war and its aftermath, then I guess they will continue to be disappointed for another 50 years or so.
kindness
Average Joe/Jane Q Americans seem to have incredibly short memories regarding what life was like under a previous Republican when ever a Democrat is President. The MSM is why that is the case. I only wish the MSM did the same thing when a Republican was president, but they don’t. It’s a one way street with the media. They love them some Republican daddies.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The thing that struck me talking to them was that they seemed to feel like strategic voting was like cheating or telling a lie, that there was actually something dirty about it. Like they would be lying about their preferences on the ballot and that was wrong, even if it had a better outcome.
rikyrah
@eclare:
Not counting the Beyhive who went to Europe to see her because ‘tickets were cheaper’.
Explain how airfare, lodging, food in an European city is cheaper, but, I digress.
Baud
@Eyeroller:
The post-war boom was built upon the oppression of the labor of women and minorities, and environmental degradation, along with the destruction of Europe.
catclub
They should ask them how THEY are doing, and how they are doing relative to three years ago.
p.a.
Who knew Susan Sarandon posted here as eversor!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s how many evangelicals viewed politics before the Moral Majority organized them in the late 70s.
matt
I switched jobs in 2021 and got an 80% pay increase. I cannot imagine being dumb enough to think that government handling of the economy during the Covid years, especially the Biden years, played no part in my being able to do that.
Suzanne
@Steeplejack: A few factors…. there’s a real reticence to build in some of the country’s most desirable areas (New York, San Francisco) and existing homeowners have been really successful in defeating new housing development. (Part aesthetics, part racism/classism, etc etc etc,) Zoning codes, which often include a lot of requirements that add cost and complexity, have made it less profitable to build small and inexpensive buildings…. or to replace low-density with higher density. And new housing starts absolutely went off a goddamn cliff during the 2008 recession and just now got back to somewhere in the neighborhood where they should be, but that’s basically fifteen lost years of development.
The US population in 1970 was somewhere around 200 million people. That is at 330 million in just 53 years. Our building should have been increasing just to’ keep pace with growth.
eclare
@rikyrah:
I never saw a figure for how much the average member of the Beyhive spent. That would be interesting. Me: so far I’ve spent around $20 to get a ticket to her movie in December.
eclare
@p.a.:
Hehehe…good one.
H.E.Wolf
Word-usage ninja, at your service! [Shinnies back up rope and disappears into the fog]
schrodingers_cat
Matt McIrvin: The left end of the horseshoe is as nihislistic as the right end. I think some of them are still pissed with Biden for beating their patron saint. Who they have now turned against BTW.
catclub
@Steeplejack:
Boom and bust homebuilders? Emphasis on mcMansions rather than multifamily dwellings? NIMBY Zoning? AirBnB?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne: At at the same time, you have crumbling vacant housing in urban cores. Its crazy.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@catclub:
All of it.
catclub
@oldgold: I think a part of bad polling is the much larger fraction of GOP voters who now view the economy through the lens of ‘who is president?’. They do that much more than Democrats did under Trump. Once you have 95% of the GOP voters saying ‘Biden is president, the economy is terrible’, it is very hard for Biden to get to plus in the polls.
Ask them how they are doing.
Layer8Problem
@Matt McIrvin: “I don’t want to be the total Debbie Downer in this thread . . . ”
Nah, not total, maybe sometimes partial. ☺
I have an allergic reaction to dooming. I have a partner I care dearly for who seesaws between fighting and despair. I’ve got relatives terrified about potential pogroms. I’ve got other relatives in interracial relationships worried about what could happen to those they love. For my part I wonder if it might just take one broken nose to wreck a gorgeous profile and cause me to pack our bags and live out my days somewhere where the bars have ceiling fans and I can wear a double-breasted white dinner jacket and drink too much and ask “If it’s December 1941 in Casablanca what time is it in New York?”
Yeah, think about the worst and prepare, just like having an emergency fund for major car and house work. But good people have to try not to let the worries overwhelm them and immobilize them; that’s what the bad guys want.
catclub
Think about how stupid the average American is. Now realize that half are even stupider. Your problem is a lack of imagination.
eclare
@catclub:
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
One of my favorite quotes.
HinTN
@MagdaInBlack: Me, too, and it felt great!
catclub
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-11-07/why-biden-doesnt-get-credit-for-an-improved-economy-is-a-continuing-riddle?utm_id=117950&sfmc_id=5740255&skey_id=c275f03d2ba07bd3440aaaa16c4176708129c070370c887f370f2cfccdbdd4ff
Extremely relevant!
Miss Bianca
@eversor: WTF are you even doing here, you tiresome tool.
Eyeroller
@Baud:
But women and minorities were repressed before the War. Wartime was when women and minorities were able to get well-paying jobs. (There was a classic Onion headline for a fake WWII story: “Women, Negroes Temporarily Useful.”) And environmental destruction was ongoing from well before WWII, we just achieved greater capacity to do more damage more quickly. Something similar happened in WWI but not to the same degree, and like the post-WWII era led to increasing demands for rights by women and minorities. And the “Roaring 20s” may have been similar to 1945-1975; a rebound from austerity during wartime. Lesser war, smaller rebound, but similar economic forces at work.
So just imagine the economic boom among the survivors of WWIII! Assuming there remains any infrastructure to rebuild then.
HinTN
@Eyeroller: That was truly an insane thread. Be glad you missed it!
Suzanne
@catclub:
Yes this. But note that this is also a zoning code thing. There’s usually street-side and adjacency setbacks and a maximum ratio of lot coverage allowed in modern single-family development. So, to cover the relatively high cost of the land that cannot be built on, the developer has to make the house cost more. So it incentivizes big expensive houses, not small starter homes. And existing homeowners don’t like small narrow lots near them because it leads to street parking.
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: and now I’m not sure that would be enough to disqualify him. 🤮
Doug Jones is so much better. Hope he’s living his best life.
lowtechcyclist
@eversor:
You never did produce any receipts, did you? Sorry if we weren’t eager to just believe. (Since “just believe” is what you’re normally dead set against, I sure can’t see why you’re mad at us about not believing.)
Anyway, it’s time to pie your sorry ass. Your rants are getting totally unhinged, and I don’t need to see them.
JMG
Miss Bianca
@suzanne: My God, the housing crisis. how the fuck did it get so out of hand so quickly? Or does it just seem like it got out of hand really really quickly?
MisterForkbeard
@MagdaInBlack: Does anyone even know what this guy is talking about?
frosty
@Suzanne: I’ve had to park on the street at every house I’ve owned, even though two of them had garages (detached). Of course, I’ve never bought a house built after WWII.
geg6
I am (probably fruitlessly) rooting heavily for several Dem victories in my county and municipal elections (municipal will go Dem, not confident of county). This used to be a solidly Dem county but the Reagan years killed that. I feel some momentum back to the Dem side but not sure if it’s real or ready yet.
The big statewide race is for the PA Supreme Court and I do hope that lying, scheming Carluccio witch loses. She’s very anti-choice and spent the summer scrubbing her social media and website of her forced birtherism. And the big regional race is for Allegheny County Executive (Pittsburgh and immediate environs) where Sarah Inamorato (sp?), a very liberal and young woman, is running against your typical Republican middle aged white man who is very concerned about taxes. Since county executive is in charge of elections, Sarah must win this one.
catclub
@gene108: Beat me to it. I should have read through and seen your post.
Baud
@Eyeroller:
The anti-war folks are the greatest oppressors of all.
Omnes Omnibus
@MisterForkbeard:
Unfortunately, yes. If you want to read it, it’s here.
Suzanne
Also, R-1 zoning usually prohibits anything other than single-family homes in most municipalities. Some places are experimenting with allowing ADUs on those lots, to much consternation.
HinTN
@206inKY: 🤞 That would be wonderful “north of the border” news.
UncleEbeneezer
THANK YOU!!! The whole “I’m so Progressive I’ll even help elect a Fascist” pose has always been such bullshit. We would never respect that shit from White Men/Women and frankly it looks just as silly coming from PoC. There’s nothing brave or virtuous about being willing to throw the rest of your coalition under the bus.
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: The opposition to a lot of terrible “urban renewal” and highway projects in the late 20th century gave a lot of people the erroneous idea that reactive NIMBYism is progressive. When it’s the side their bread is buttered on too, well, the case is easier to make.
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: I forget who it was the other day who pointed that voting for the “lesser evil” meant that you were taking a stand for less evil, period. But I guess that’s too nuanced for some people.
Frankensteinbeck
@Eyeroller:
Yeah, seriously. I don’t think America ever saw more human-caused environmental destruction than the first half of the 20th century. Farming is a strain on the environment at the best of times. With DDT, millennia of farming practices got thrown out the window and permanently forgotten because who needed them?
tl;dr The Dust Bowl didn’t cause itself.
Steeplejack
@Suzanne:
Thanks.
eclare
@Miss Bianca:
I feel very fortunate that I bought my house when I did, in 2005. I have seen what houses in my neighborhood are selling for now, two to three times what I paid. And I’m in Memphis, not hip and trendy San Francisco or Austin.
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: That whole business is just completely fucking insane. What does A have to do with B? Not worth paying attention to.
catclub
@Miss Bianca: My God, the housing crisis. how the fuck did it get so out of hand so quickly?
In the 1980’s there was a LOT of news and concern about the nuclear weapons ‘crisis’ and that we would all blow ourselves up.
I think the main elements of that crisis – lots and lots of nuclear weapons – all still exist. But there is no longer a crisis because people have absorbed that and just moved on. I feel much the same way about the housing crisis. It is getting noticed, but on the other hand, most [95%+ ?] people _are_ housed. Similar to an unemployment crisis.
Suppose that number is 2,M today, which would be a gigantic jump. that is less than 1%
eclare
@Suzanne:
ADU?
...now I try to be amused
@Citizen_X:
That is to say, Biden is a closer. I can see a new Dark Brandon mug slogan: “Coffee is for closers.”
Suzanne
@frosty: When I was a kid, I lived with my grandparents. They got sick of Long Island and traffic and taxes and shoveling snow and home maintenance on the 1940s house we had (and minorities, TBF). So we moved to Arizona when I was in the third grade. They were so excited to have a new house in a HOA. We literally were not allowed to park on the street or in our driveways.
Redshift
@JMG:
This really is a lot of it. Paul Krugman had a column not too long ago about how for both the economy and crime, people’s answers to how they are doing (how is your financial situation/how safe is your neighborhood) are generally positive, but their answers to how people in general are doing (“the economy”/”crime”) are more negative. And this isn’t new, but the divergence on both is worse now than it has been in the past. And as others have noted, people aren’t acting/spending like they’re worried about the economy
I seem to recall that for the economy, at least, people seem to vote based on their personal situation, not their assessment of the economy overall, so it may be less of an issue than the horse race press likes to believe.
piratedan
@Suzanne: I guess that cycles back to civil engineering, we claim we want to be less dependent on cars, but no one wants to accommodate single people or young folks to abandon them with affordable living in the big city. It also means taking into consideration providing power, waste treatment, water and garbage pickup. It starts off as a simple question with a seemingly simple answer but its like turning over a rock. Yet we see in many urban areas, houses abandoned, old workplaces empty and the effort to convert these spaces is huge, costly and runs into their own zoning issues.
Suzanne
@eclare: ADU is an accessory dwelling unit. Think:backyard guest house, or attached casita, or “granny flat”. They are not permitted in most single-family-zoned neighborhoods.
MisterForkbeard
@Matt McIrvin:
I knew people like this in 2016, too. They thought Trump was a giant disaster but didn’t like Hillary for amorphous, never defined reasons. And they got really angry when they were told that voting for Jill Stein was going to make Trump’s win more likely.
Lots of “you can’t force me to vote for evil!” and so on. They puffed themselves up on being the one true moral group and if you popped that balloon for them they just hated you with a fiery passion.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: Helping put the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bigot in the 2024 election is not only stupid but self defeating if you are either an immigrant or a Muslim. Basically if you are not a white Christian male ( or a psychopathic nutjob like Ramaswamy) who is wealthy voting for Rs is crazy.
coin operated
@eversor: I see you went full retard…
Never go full retard, man.
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: Part of what’s going on, I think, is that technological advances and globalized industry made the prices of a lot of manufactured goods crater, including ones that seemed like luxuries or did not even exist in previous eras.
But what that does is make anything that does not get cheaper in that way relatively more expensive. Professional services that require skilled human input, like healthcare and education. And real estate, because they’re not making any more land (and not making any more land in desirable places).
One aspect of it is what economists call Baumol’s cost disease: when sectors like tech get more efficient and can get more value out of people, they can afford to pay more to the people they do employ, so other sectors are competing with them for people and their prices have to go up. But I think that affects services more than land.
eclare
@Suzanne:
Ah, carriage houses. My neighborhood has some, but it was built mid-1920’s.
Thanks!
zhena gogolia
These tweets are just what I needed this morning, AL! Thanks! I should never peek into the NYT op-ed section.
catclub
OTOH. My understanding is the the 1920’s were MUCH wetter than the 1930’s dust bowl era. The change is not considered to be human caused.
Soil destructive farming practices did not help.
HinTN
@Omnes Omnibus: Ever since that rhubarb pie prattled on about multi-thousand dollar dinners it’s been clear that it would come to this.
MisterForkbeard
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah. “You went to a restaurant that will offer some tangential benefits to a bad actor and therefore you’re all awful”, got it.
kalakal
@Eyeroller: I neither know nor care.
Soprano2
@suzanne: It is a huge issue, but I’m not sure what can be done about it on the macro level because it’s very much a local issue. I don’t know if you saw I posted yesterday that right now there’s a huge fight going on here between a developer who wants to put upscale apartments and ground level businesses at one of the busiest corners in the city and the homeowners who live behind that corner who want that whole strip to remain zoned single family only. They seem to think if this development happens someone is going to raze their whole neighborhood and build apartment buildings. It’s pretty crazy to me, but trying to build anything but single family homes almost anywhere runs into resistance from established homeowners. It’s a big problem.
eclare
@MisterForkbeard:
Yep. My one friend who turned into a superior moral voter in 2016 is no longer a friend. And he got angrier and angrier about everything, especially about changing the names of things named after southern traitor generals.
His personal situation: very upper middle class, nice condo in a high rise in the Brickell area of Miami.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: I wish I could, but because I work for city government I’m limited in what I can do. I’m hoping to be able to be involved in the drive to amend our constitution to make abortion legal in MO again, if they can ever get around the Republican roadblocks to putting it on the ballot. Republicans are playing a game here trying to keep it off the ballot by filing multiple lawsuits one after another about the same issue.
Matt McIrvin
@eclare: I knew some people who went from “both parties are evil neocon warmongers” to “yes, Trump is an idiot but he is the crisis that will break the corrupt duopoly” to full “MAGA 2016” with special racist ranting. It was a whole pipeline.
Citizen Alan
@Lacuna Synecdoche: Somebody help me out here. If I’m reading the crazy guy’s post correctly, he was bragging about the fact that he decided to punish Christians by giving them greater power to harm and eventually kill him. Do I have that right?
catclub
How do they think Trump will be better? Do they remember Trump and the GOP were best buddies with Netanyahu? … and still are.
somebody else mentioned ‘lesser evil’ being too subtle by half.
Suzanne
@piratedan:
The project I’m working on now is part of a larger mixed-use development. The site was previously a shopping mall, one of many that died around the country. The site has good connectivity to highways and infrastructure. The mall building had no architectural significance at all and no serious prospect for reuse (and, like, negative aesthetic value). Yet the goddamn regulatory processes to replace it are Kafka-esque. The City and County comments have been things like, “Ooooh, that precast panel isn’t pretty enough,” and “We want it to be more curvy because right now it looks too much like an office”.
Eyeroller
@catclub: Part of the “water problem” in the West is the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which was based on river levels after an unusually wet decade or so and therefore was doomed from the start. Climate change and persistent drought has made that much worse, but governments and populations there still largely refuse to recognize reality.
Soprano2
@BethanyAnne: He wants to know how to do it for free. Either that, or he’s not asking the question he actually wants an answer to.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Shnikeys! Glad I missed that thread.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: We are working on that out here in rural CO. But my God – the old entrenched interests that are fighting against it! The only argument they got that makes any sense to me is a concern about water – which is scarce out here, as you know. And our water district has stopped selling water/sewer taps until they can get the new wastewater treatment plant built, which has also brought development, affordable or otherwise, to a screeching halt within its limits, which includes our two towns.
But I think that concern over water gets exaggerated in order to stymie certain types of affordable developments – like allowing ADUs as a “use by right” in the county. It’s a huge fucking problem.
cain
This past weekend, we took Amtrak from Portland to Seattle and back. On the way back, the train from Seattle to Portland was 100% full. That’s pretty awesome. Given what a shit show it is to drive to Seattle especially when it is raining.
I must admit that it’s fun to sneak your own liquor into the train. :) But it’s beautiful scenery and fun to watch the piled up traffic as you zoom by.
Super happy to see that we are continuing to invest in trains. All the stations could use some upgrade. I’ve seen better stations in villages in India.
catclub
@HinTN: Pie is wonderful.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub:
There was actually significant nuclear disarmament during the glasnost and Yeltsin eras–the arsenals are smaller than they were and some things that would have been especially worrying triggers for nuclear war got suppressed for a while.
But a lot of that is being undone now, and it actually really worries me. I think people are less concerned about it than they should be–hard to deal with, though, because Putin also likes to wave the nukes around as a threat to get whatever he wants and the solution isn’t just to capitulate to that.
EarthWindFire
@eversor: Look what we made you do. Oh, you’ll fit in just fine with the party of personal responsibility. At this rate, maybe you’ll convert to evangelical Christianity the next time a Dem pisses you off. Have a nice life.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen Alan: Yep. Unless he was just lying his ass off, which is also possible because who the fuck knows with that idiot.
catclub
@Eyeroller: Yep. I resisted mentioning that in my little post. It is the Compact that made people realize ‘the climate was different then.’
Geminid
@MisterForkbeard: Libertarian Gary Johnson probably diverted mor Hilary Clinton votes in 2016 than did Jill Stein. He got two million more votes that year than in 2012. Votes for the 2020 Liberatarian candidate, Jo Jorgenson, reverted to 2012 levels. I think Johnsons showing in 2016 was boosted by a wodespread belief that Clinton would win, so people had a “free” protest vote.
206inKY
@HinTN: Thanks! Hopefully TN can get to purple status soon if Nashville keeps growing the way it’s growing.
Soprano2
@Princess: Oh, must be Subway. I wondered what the hell he was talking about. It’s not Subway’s fault that a spokesperson they hired later turned out to be a sexual predator. I’m sure there was no information available about that when he was hired.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Elizabeth Warren wrote about this in her book….. the price of food and consumer goods has dropped significantly but the cost of housing and education has gone up, a lot. In the span of even just thirty years. Younger people are living in a significantly different financial reality than their parents.
This is why I like her.
lowtechcyclist
@H.E.Wolf:
:applause:
Well played!
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: He’s talking about a restaurant in DC that is owned by José Andrés but once employed a person accused of rape. Since people were planning to have a meetup in that restaurant, we are all rape supporters.
I am a Christian and was not bothered at all by this commenter’s anti-Christian rants, but he has gone too far now. Time to ban.
Uncle Cosmo
FTR, “nothing new under the sun” – as far back as 1960** MAD magazine satirized packaging that when unwrapped revealed an item less than half the size of what the wrapping promised. And since then it’s only gotten worse – e.g., the promotion of “whipped” foods half the weight their volume would suggest, the rest replaced by air, which is still free.***
** From memory; likely even earlier.
***Though it’s not like airlines wouldn’t fill their cabins with pure nitrogen and then charge premium prices for oxygen bottles if they thought they could get away with it.
kalakal
I’m actually feeling pretty optimistic about todays results. A major reason is our beloved MSM and polling organizations just seem unable to recognize Dobbs as a factor. Women are furious about that and no who to blame. And everyday some knuckledragger from the party of small government keeps that fury to a high heat by announcing some Handmaid’s Tale inspired plan. Remember the Red Dribble? Same blind spot by MSM & the pollsters.
As for purity ponies I tell them to look up
Ernst Thalmann
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: And food less so than manufactured appliances and gadgets, which is a problem now.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin:
You are correct. I oversimplified.
My understanding is that if either side has … say, 300 nuclear weapons, that is still a terrifying amount if they got used.
I suspect it is more like we are down from 10,000 weapons for each side to 3000 for each side. Significant reduction! But still a lot.
smith
@catclub: There was a Xitter thread posted here a day or so back that made the point that a protest vote for someone who is 100% your enemy to punish someone who is 90% your friend pretty much ensures you will never have a seat at the table anywhere, any time. It’s a way of voluntarily surrendering your place in a democracy. It’s also pretty egotistical to think that losing your one vote will really sting for the person you want to punish.
That said, my take on the oh-so-very-pure protest voters of 2016 was that their motivations stemmed from equal parts misogyny and a secret admiration for authoritarian politics. It’s no surprise that a number of them have since become full metal MAGA or nearly adjacent to it.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin:
When I voted for nader, this was my calculus: I was living in mississippi, where there was absolutely no possibility of gore winning the state. And by that point I was visually angry by some of the actions and beliefs of gore which I thought were contrary to my values. So while a vote for gore would have achieved nothing except make me feel disgusted, A vote for ralph nader would have potentially allowed the greens to get federal matching funding in the future, and this would motivate the democrats to move closer to their position, at least on some issues.
Eyeroller
@Soprano2:
No, it was related to the DC Meetup and is about some upscale Jose Andres restaurant there. I did not initially read that thread because I don’t feel like I can drive safely in DC-type traffic anymore, so I missed it (fortunately, as it turned out).
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: Wow, that’s deranged.
Redshift
I dragged myself out of bed at 5am to set up outside my polling place. I am so not a morning person, and my joke is this is the one day a year I see the sunrise.
We seem to be having pretty good turnout at my precinct for an off-off-year election (no president or governor or congress on the ballot, just state and local), especially considering that early voting is now well established. Keeping my fingers crossed for good results in the less solidly blue parts of the state!
H.E.Wolf
@lowtechcyclist:
Thank you! :)
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: …Also, of course, this is why every “you say you’re poor but you have a smartphone/flatscreen TV” type argument is invalid. The visible markers of who is poor changed a lot as “luxury” goods became cheap while other things didn’t. You can still spend a lot on a smartphone or a TV, but there are cheap-ass ones that superficially look almost the same. And a low-end TV today has a better picture than the most expensive one of 40 years ago.
Miss Bianca
@kalakal: Yep. Somewhere during my doctoral research, I came across something that Bertolt Brecht wrote, about how the Communists and the Socialists were still fighting and blaming each other even in the concentration camps.
That’s what I always think about when I hear the purity ponies meeping on the subject of their own righteousness in rejecting “two-party politics”.
EarthWindFire
@Eyeroller: Another Virginia voter sick of yearly elections here. My participation this year was much more limited than the last three years. I tried to get excited to do more but I just couldn’t. I did vote early though. :-)
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Same thing here with new housing. I can tell that by the miles of sewer we add to our system every year. For several years after 2008 that number was basically unchanged. It only started to increase by 2-3 miles a year a couple of years ago. I think last year’s increase was almost 5 miles! That’s a lot of development.
Redshift
@Eyeroller: If you wanted to go, the restaurant is like a block from a Metro station. (Sadly, I already have other plans.)
Geminid
@Geminid: I never saw any polling data, but I suspect the 2016 voters for Gary Johnson were disproportionately male.
I don’t know if the Libertarians will be much of a factor next year. Last I saw their leading candidates were unknown nationally. I guess that could change.
Soprano2
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I can tell you that in my neighborhood the booming housing market of the past 3 years has been good for the more rundown and abandoned houses. There have been several that have been bought and repaired and then sold. Even if they’re rentals, it’s better than a crumbling, vacant house.
Kay
@Redshift:
I personally think they credit themselves for higher wages/better job, not “the government” so they end up giving Biden no credit for full employment/higher wages and all blame for inflation.
I just can’t help but wonder what they’re going to do in a genuinely bad economy, because this isn’t going to last forever. We get 8% unemployment or something and they’re going to be jumping out of windows. Media trashing THIS economy as a “bad” economy has completely ruined any rational comparisons. If (when) there’s a genuine downturn the NYTimes is going to have to scream “Great Depression!”
cain
lol @eversor – that’s some interesting leaps of intuition there on who you’re sticking to. Voting for the party of toxic Christianity is really sticking it to the system! This must be satire. But hey, I don’t expect others to listen to you.
This reminds me of a popular meme comic strip where a man gets angry and starts yelling at ‘liberal’s and then ends up shaving his head and going full nazi while complaining the whole time that he’s a victim.
Alison Rose
@Geminid:
I would imagine so, especially after he gleefully compared his climbing Everest to committing sexual assault. Of course, plenty of women voted for TIFG, so who knows…
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Absolutely. Electronics, hell, even designer clothes are much cheaper than they used to be.
I will note that “you’re poor but you have a smartphone” sounds a lot like “you’re broke but you went to see Taylor Swift this summer” in hectoring tone.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: There were several renovated houses in my neighborhood that were for sale the past couple of years at more reasonable prices, but I guarantee you not one young couple even looked at them because they don’t have 2-3 bathrooms and 2 or 3 car garages. They might have 1 or 1 1/2 baths and a 1 car garage. Most people won’t even think about buying a home like that nowdays. I think they don’t realize that those extra bathrooms and the extra garages make the houses bigger and need a bigger lot, which means the houses are more expensive. If people want to know why newer houses are more expensive than they used to be they can come and look at the houses in my neighborhood that are smaller and closer together, although built on longer lots. Our house is 1,400 sq ft. It’s small.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I’ll give you the ‘destruction of Europe’ part. American industry having so little competition for the first couple of postwar decades was a BFD economically.
But “the oppression of the labor of women and minorities, and environmental degradation” – I can’t see that that distinguishes the post-WWII era from any earlier time in our history. (There’s still a fair amount of all that in our society, but less than there was in the immediate postwar era.)
Kay
Best President for lower middle/low income people in my lifetime. It’s not close. If these fucking dopes don’t support him, I give up. They absolutely deserve what they get.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I do think Teri Kanefield’s observations about authoritarian tendencies existing on the left are valid here. Nihilism, the valuing of dramatic action and strong emotion over reflection, the rejection of complexity and embrace of conspiracy theories, these are tendencies that can exist in anyone and they definitely show up in left social media and blog comments. She was particularly thinking of the types who thought that Merrick Garland was in cahoots with Trump.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: There’s been a lot of fix-ups and flips in my neighborhood, too. It’s good.
Eyeroller
@Redshift:I would have to drive up from central Virginia so would have to navigate 66 (or maybe I could find some surface streets the whole way which would still be difficult for me since they’d be unfamiliar). I have limited vision to one side.
Sure Lurkalot
@suzanne: How long has it been since one high school educated MAN earned a living that afforded a spouse, kids, house, car, vacations? An employer that didn’t lay off half its staff at any hint of a downturn or anyone approaching 55?
What you describe was my father’s America and he’s been dead almost 40 years.
This world created by our MBA betters has been cranking out recessions since the 70’s and shitting on “little people “ is just part and parcel. My wealthy employers LOVED recessions and the opportunities they brought were epic.
Adequate or even a surfeit of housing would certainly be prudent but is not a panacea. We are seeing what happens when workers get a scintilla of bargaining power. Raised interest rates to squash employment. Raised prices on food and goods because “we can”, got to erase those wage gains. Make people anxious and compete for jobs where we can treat them like the cogs on a wheel we want them to be.
Lots of things sucked in the 60’s but for more than a few, a job meant security, sometimes lifelong, unless you really fucked up. That’s not the world today’s betters want.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: Oh good grief…….what a moron. That’s so super stupid.
Geminid
@Alison Rose: Libertarians tend to be seen as to the “right” of Republicans, and I think a lot of their core voters could be. But my guess is that exra 2 million voters Johnson attracted in 2016 were more ideologically diverse, with a mish-mash of fuzzy political positions. Misogyny was probably their most common trait.
mali muso
Another Virginia voter here! I early voted on Saturday and am sending my hubby to the polls today. Also have forwarded our local Democratic group’s suggested list of candidates to my friends to help them out. We have several “non partisan” local positions up for grabs which include the school board and it’s important to know who is who.
Kay
I’m a wreck about Issue 1. I think we will win but I always think we will win :)
I just texted my son who is workijng as a pollworker in Lucas (Toledo) to tell me about turnout. I think he’s deliberately ignoring me.
Alison Rose
@Kay: I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed for it. I feel optimistic but damn, this should not be something we have to fret about! These fucking creeps need to keep their noses out of people’s bodies.
Jinchi
“What the media won’t tell you” Tweeted together with a clip showing yourself in an invited interview on a major cable network making that exact point is how you know you’ve made it to the big leagues.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
Honestly, this is why we need to have more of a market to replace houses in place. (Or, again…. have more units in aggregate so people can easily upsize and downsize as their life circumstances change,) Houses need to meet people’s needs. If you WFH or have a two-car two-income family, or an older parent living with you, etc etc etc…. that house isn’t going to meet your needs. But a single person with a dog might think it’s great.
The older homes of the 50s and 60s often got additions. It’s really normal. Fun fact: lots of modern zoning codes prevent additions! It’s such bullshit!
Redshift
@Kay:
It makes me want to tear my hair out when I hear news reports about “high” interest rates of 4% or “high” inflation of 5%. I can only assume no on over the age of 40 is on the editorial team producing those.
Kay
@Alison Rose:
Everyone thinks 2 will pass (weed) but they’re not as sure about 1. I think there may be overlap because two “yes on legal weed” voters told me they also voted “yes on my basic human rights” so that’s good.
I feel kind of bad because I early voted and did “no” on legal weed so I did not reciprocate with the potheads! If I had known they would vote for 1 I would have voted for 2.
Hoodie
@Suzanne: They’ve done that here, along with relaxing set back and other requirements for R-6 and R-10. It has led to some increase in zero lot line infill houses and townhomes, but these all tend to be high end. That does take some pressure off the market, but the only “affordable” single family housing continues to be on the outskirts of the city, where large builders can get big parcels of land to put in lots of houses in a single development. Condos in the city do not seem to be happening. Instead, builders are going with large “luxury” apartment complexes, which tend to have high rents. Changing zoning helps but there also seem to be problems with financing and structure of the development market.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
Yes, but note that zoning codes often dictate the width of the lot and the size of the setbacks. What you just described is the building pattern typical for lower-cost single-family housing. In many parts of the country, this is literally not permitted. So we end up pushing developers to expensive projects because they’re not going to build what isn’t profitable.
Baud
@Kay:
🤞
Sister Golden Bear
Ill that while tech workers are a small sliver of the overall population, we’re still facing a horribly back job market. I just saw a job that was posted yesterday and already had >260 applicants. It’s pretty routine to see hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand applicants.
Since my current contract potentially ends at the end of the year, it’s needless to say depressing and frustration — and I’m worried I’ll never work again in my field again. I’m really fortunate that I’ve got a high salary when working, and savings, but it’s a bit scary to think about a forced early retirement.
So while the vast majority of economic discontent is vibes, there are areas where the economy really does suck for people.
Kay
@Redshift:
I’m an “employment over low prices/low rates” person. I will never, ever forget 16% unemployment in the 09 crash. It destroyed people. We had people who had worked for 30 years and couldn’t get a job at McDonalds.
THATS a bad economy.
My first house the interest rate was 12. Low rates are nice but they’re not guaranteed.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t get it either.
First thing he did was the MUSLIM BAN.
And, he spent 4 years, trying to STRIP NATURALIZED CITIZENS OF THEIR AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP.
And, has said that he would do it again, if re-elected.
Jinchi
@Alison Rose: We’ll have to keep worrying about it until the Republican party collapses and vanishes into obscurity.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
Garages do take up a lot of room. But there are a fair number of houses in our neighborhood that don’t have garages, period. They still seem to sell OK. (We’re a Maryland exurb of DC.)
Bathrooms don’t take up much room, or at least they don’t have to. Your basic tub-toilet-sink full bathroom? Ours are 5′ by 8′ so that’s 40 square feet. You hardly need a bigger lot for a second bathroom. And yeah, I’d expect young couples to want a second bathroom, especially if they have kids or want them.
Alison Rose
@Jinchi: One can dream…
Tony Jay
If that little flash of the old gash didn’t convince everybody here that our resident Jeebus-Stalker is nothing more than a particularly performative shit-stirrer I don’t know what will.
As if the nym wasn’t a clue.
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
This. Best economy in my lifetime, at least in my area in the northeast.
There are a few sectors suffering, but they are higher-income. Parts of high-tech, for instance. Mostly driven by an uncritical fad for layoffs (starting a couple of years ago) in high-tech management circles. (Lots of fads in those circles, often somewhat disconnected from reality.)
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: The house in which I spent my early life on Long Island had a one-car garage. So my mom parked outside. Her car got damaged because of the snow, and it was stripped for parts twice overnight. It’s entirely reasonable for two-car-owning families to want a two-car garage. Families have two or more cars because there isn’t a tradwife situation and because people have to drive long distances to get to work. I don’t love the insinuation that people are being decadent. Housing has to adapt to modern life. It’s like saying you’re wasteful because you’re not using a Commodore 64. It’s not unreasonable that something built in 1940 doesn’t meet current needs.
Again, this is why we need to make it a priority to have a housing market that is more fluid and cost-effective.
Elizabelle
@Tony Jay: He is a pastry. I would not sic a haunted dachshund upon him. Have respect for the hounds!
Another Scott
@suzanne: As we know, housing supply is a local zoning issue, affected by things like interest rates, cost of lumber, labor supply, and similar thing. But lots of it is zoning.
And it takes forever for zoning to change.
Punishing Biden and House and Senate Democrats isn’t going to fix local zoning.
But, yes, Democrats do need to find a way to talk about it in a way that doesn’t scare people who have paid off their mortgages, and doesn’t condemn people who haven’t to living in their parents basement until they’re 55.
The biggest problems are – 1) inflation and interest rates were too low for too long. 2% is too low. 2) taxes on the top 1-5% were too low for too long. 3) local zoning boards are far too willing to try to keep everything the same rather than looking ahead. Life is change, and zoning has to change with it. 4) the idea that absentee landlords have no cost to a community is toxic. If speculators are buying up housing, making everything into an Air BnB, etc., then tax the hell out of it.
Yes, I’d like a pony, too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
The median income here is 34k and only 25% have college degrees. Biden has been really, really good for them. But they’re white working class so only 25% will support him – I just no longer have sympathy for them. After Obama (some) and Biden (even more) I don’t think they can honestly claim that they are “ignored” or “abandoned” – it’s just not true.
If you’re a 19 year old non college man who wants a job with a living wage come talk to me. I’ll have you working in a week. Factory work, which kind of sucks, but it always sucked. It didn’t suck less in 1967. But I can do better than even that! I can get you into one of probably twelve skilled trades programs. But you have to have passed algebra 1 and have to be willing to work for lower wages for 5 years – that’s the apprenticeship.
I had huge sympathy for people in 2009. Now? I have very little. They should make hay while the sun shines because this aint gonna last forever.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
Democrats have traditionally handled parts of the economy that arent working by what I call “I know some people are hurting”. And it’s fine. But it really doesn’t work. People just consider it a concession or an apology and bash the economy even more. So now I think they should just brag like Republicans do.
Baud
@Kay:
I blame Biden.
Kay
OK – text from Lucas on turnout!
“It’s ok idk the numbers”
This is the quiet son, so really this is a lot for him.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Twitter/Social media is not life. And those who loudly claim to represent a particular group very often don’t. And most immigrants vote pretty pragmatically and overwhelmingly for Ds
As for the self proclaimed progressives they flit from issue to issue kneecapping the Dems from the left. Throwing rhetorical grenades.
It was Medicare for All in 2016, then it was Defund the Police in 2020 and now it is adopting maximalist Hamas slogans.
Kay
Oh, no. He followed with “which one turnouts good for 2”
The legal weed one. I knew it. Maybe he’s just fucking with me.
suzanne
@Another Scott: I cosign everything you said, but I do take exception to this:
No one is punishing anybody. Fuck, even voting someone out of office isn’t punishment. They’re not entitled to hold any office. They are privileged to hold the office. My role as a citizen is to study the issues around me and make careful electoral choices, and then to be in communication with the people who supposedly represent my interests and concerns. So I object to this idea of withholding a vote, or even voicing a concern, as punishment. I’m doing my job.
I think that an essential part of good governance is hearing people when they tell you that they have a problem. Everywhere around me, I am hearing people struggling with affording a place to live and building a stable living situation so they aren’t living paycheck to paycheck forever. I think it’s kind of gross to basically brush off their concerns as some sort of media-created bad juju.I get that this isn’t really the area of policy in which the federal government has the biggest role, but we do have to hear what is affecting people’s lives!
laura
@eclare: I never saw a figure for how much the average member of the Beyhive spent.
Here’s a breakdown of costs I incurred to see Beyonce’s Renassaince Tour at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara: ticket- $200., Amtrak round trip to Sacramento- $60, a single beer- $13, concert poster-$20. Grand total- $300. For me, that was a lot of entertainment dollars. What I got was possibly the most amazing live show I’ve ever seen, she built a better world full of joy and inclusive af. The crowd was ebullient starting on the train trip and lasting all night, an artist at the top of her game- singing, dancing and loving on everyone present. It was spendy and it was worth it- zero regrets.
rikyrah
@MisterForkbeard:
Hate them the most. Will never get past their selfishness in 2016
Alison Rose
@schrodingers_cat: Hey SC, I got an art supply question for you :) Friend’s kid’s birthday is coming up, and when I asked Friend about gift ideas, she suggested a new set of colored pencils, because Kid has gotten super into drawing and coloring books but, and a quote from Kid, “The Crayola pencils are disappointing”. Is there a brand you recommend that is better quality but ideally not super pricey? I poked around and saw some nice sets from Faber-Castell and Prismacolor and one other that I can’t remember, but I wondered if you (or any other artist jackals) have one you’d recommend over others?
Eyeroller
@Suzanne:
Most of the houses where I live either do not have a garage or if they do, they are used for storage for junk and not cars. And in many parts of town that results in on-street parking. Of course we get little snow here, especially in recent years, and many houses in more suburban-ish areas (like mine) are set back and have car parking off the driveway.
And in that postwar epoch we were discussing earlier, people raised families of 4-6 kids in 3-bed 1-bath houses. My late father was a real-estate appraiser and called them “864s” for the square footage of a typical plan of that era. I understand that people don’t want to do that anymore, but not being willing to buy such houses as starters contributes to perceived shortages.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Don’t they have to actually act like adults to make those best decisions, rather than spoiled brats that actually don’t think in any way like actual adults, you know, not think with the brain in their ass, but use the tiny one inside their heads?
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Exactly. I knew (and unfriended) a couple people who absolutely hated Trump but also planned to vote for Johnson because they couldn’t stand Hillary. None of them were Republican voters. More like Independents with a Libertarian fetish who think they are politically astute but are actually pretty clueless. They knew 2016 was a huge election so they wanted to be a part of it, but thought voting for Johnson would show everyone how much smarter they were than the rest of us. I tried to talk sense into them but Clinton-Derangement-Syndrome and Misogyny are hella drugs…
Obvious Russian Troll
@cain: If it was satire, it just didn’t work–it reads entirely like someone lashing out at their perceived enemies. As an atheist myself, shit like this is counterproductive at best, and generally annoys the hell out of me.
Back to the topic, there’s no point in panicking at this point. Keep in mind that Trump has to campaign, he’s deteriorating and he seeks out the spotlight. I don’t think that’s going to help him.
I’m also keeping in mind what Matt McIrvin said. I live in Toronto so my risks are lower than many of yours, but I do cross the border several times a year. If Trump wins that’s going to be potentially dangerous for us.
suzanne
@Eyeroller:
In many areas of the country, they’re highly desirable. SuzMom grew up in one in Seattle, and Zillow tells me it’s now worth over $700K. Families might have less interest in them, but couples and singles often do.
schrodingers_cat
@Alison Rose:
I actually like Crayola and started with them.
You can’t go wrong with FaberCastell and PrismaColor but they can get pricy.
I would at least get a set of 72.
Staedtler is a good mid-tier brand. Their watercolor pencils (Karat Aquarell) are very good.
Other good brands are Derwent, Caran d’ache which are even more pricy than Prismacolor.
Out of the budget Chinese knock offs I have these Shuttle Art pencils which I like. I have the set of 134 pencils.
Eyeroller
Oh hey, I just got my Youngkin Bucks (TM)! I’ll deposit them when I go out to vote against his party in a little bit. I was feeling left out that I hadn’t gotten them. The accompanying text does make a point of emphasizing that Governor Glenn Youngkin signed the bill for the rebates.
eclare
@laura:
Thanks! I can’t wait to see the movie, and I’m so glad she did it. My city doesn’t have an arena big enough for her show, but it has movie theaters!
Alison Rose
@schrodingers_cat: I use Crayola ones too and think they’re pretty good, but sometimes they can be a bit crumbly. Thanks, I will check those others out!
UncleEbeneezer
@rikyrah: And even if one foolishly doesn’t get it from this perspective (Trump’s policies), just look at how his base feels about Muslims (spoiler: they still have their 2001-era, Islamophobic pitchforks at the ready). Regardless of criticisms of Biden’s handling of the current mess, it’s really freakin’ obvious which Party/Candidate actually cares about Muslims. Like, this ain’t complicated.
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle:
@Tony Jay: Now you’ve got me thinking that “The Haunted Dachshunds” ought to be my new band name…
Ruckus
@Ocotillo:
Now gas prices do seem to vary a lot. Here in the rather democratic state of CA, around my neighborhood, gas is $4.65-$4.75/gal. At the cheap places. Some stations are over $5/gal. I’ve seen reports that gas is quite a bit cheaper in a number of states. I wonder if the gas prices are being set by the companies based upon politics? Would not amaze me in the least.
smith
@UncleEbeneezer: I guess if you unfriended them you can’t say how they feel about it now. I wonder if they think it was worth it after 7 years of the TFG nightmare.
schrodingers_cat
@Alison Rose: The 72 set of Prismas is going for a good price on Amazon.
I have 72, 132 and 150 sets of Prismas. I started with the 72 set. I got the other two on sale. I love them
BTW Shuttle Art’s sketchbook and sharpeners are good quality too. So that bundle will make a good gift.
Its about the same price at Amazon.
Another Scott
@Baud: I think many people have made the case that the post-war boom was mostly about cheap energy. Really cheap oil, cheaper coal, subsidized nuclear and hydro.
It’s no accident that things started getting wonky economically in the US in the 1970s when oil started getting “expensive”. Inefficient industries, cheap housing in the suburbs, and all the rest, didn’t work well at all when energy was no longer cheap.
Cheap wind and solar is going to be similarly disruptive – but in a good way. Lots of good things are possible when energy is cheap. (Things like resilient distributed power; things like not dumping so much CO2 and lead and arsenic and all the rest in the atmosphere; etc.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
Think in contrast. Many of the people on the conservative side making claims of a better economy under rethuglicans are people with more than average money and they don’t make as much under a democratic government because a democratic government wants to grow the ENTIRE economy, not just the rich end. They really don’t care about THE economy, they care about THEIR economy. And it actually shows.
laura
@eclare: I’ve seen hundreds of shows- including backstage several times with the Rolling Stones, G n R, and Santana. I’ve never seen a show like the Renassaince. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. How Beyonce envisioned it and made it real- I’m in awe. Jaw dropping, sonically solid and powerful. The clothes! The crowd was in her hands. You’ll love the movie.
wjca
Why am I having trouble believing that a guy who routinely goes on rants against Christianity would go all in on a party which wants to establish Christianity as the state religion? I get that you want to troll everybody here. But come on! Strive for at least a tiny bit of plausibility!
cain
@Obvious Russian Troll:
No it isn’t – but it’s hard to imagine that someone would vote all GOP of which he is completely opposed to ostensibly because they support Christianity but votes for them because of some thread about a restaurant. His convictions are somewhat weak if that’s all it takes to vote GOP.
Back to topic – I am hoping for great news everywhere because not only that it will fuck over the media’s general anti-Dem storyline but it’s actually good for us.
Paul in KY
@eversor: If that is true, you are a stupid clown.
wjca
How can you doubt that it’s a runaway freight train? Of course, there’s a bit of a curve or two (Dobbs, etc.) up ahead. And derailing is not helpful for finishing at all, let alone winning. But hey, “runaway freight train” must be cause for hysteria.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: That’s true too–in the booming postwar economy of the 1950s, the wealthy folk of the time were fretting about the Servant Problem. “You can’t get good help any more.”
People with money tend to kind of like recessions, because they might lose a lot on paper but their existing holdings allow them to buy labor on the cheap. Over a year ago now, when the “looming Biden recession” talk began, my wife found an op-ed by a call-center CEO who was practically salivating about it–looking forward to a recession knocking some sense into the entitled kids who didn’t want to work any more.
MisterForkbeard
@Sister Golden Bear: My current economic plan is to figure on not getting high-paying jobs after I turn 50 (in the tech market).
After that point, I’m relying on savings, living somewhere a lot cheaper, and old stock grants. If I can hold onto a good job then great, but… who knows, right?
smith
And how surprised — and outraged — they were when they got a labor shortage instead, and had to pay those slackers more! My daughter pointed out to me that we are seeing a reprise of the Peasants’ Revolt that occurred after the Black Death abated, when the peasants demanded better pay and working conditions once there were fewer of them to do the necessary work. Kind of like the resurgence in the union movement we’re seeing now.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: This is one area where I’m actually way more optimistic than a lot of people who talk about politics online–I think they are greatly underestimating the positive future effects of exploding renewable energy generation. But I avoid fighting with Erik Loomis about it.
Ruckus
@Ocotillo:
I believe that they see SFB as a wealthy person who became president. They don’t look beyond that. They don’t listen to the rants, see the concepts of what he’s actually done in his life – He Is A Billionaire! If they knew that he stole his slumlord fathers money from his siblings to start his disaster of a life, culminating in being elected to office higher than dog catcher (lucky dogs!), which he did such a great job – not, and now he’s in the finding out stage as his entire prior life has been the fucking around stage. And of course he thinks he’s hot shit, when he’s actually just a plan moldy turd.
Tony Jay
@Elizabelle:
Randy the Singing Palomino knows how to deal with that kind of fool, and once he’s in power he’ll be sure to keep the dachshunds out of it while he shows them no pity and even less mercy.
Vote Randy – Spare the Hounds
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
It’s also a pretty solid name for a country inn where there’s always room around the fire for a ghost story or two.
Elizabelle
@Miss Bianca: Love the concept.
Matt McIrvin
Anyway, Election Day: I went and voted about an hour ago, no trouble at all. I’d seen sample ballots listing the candidates but was surprised at the inclusion of a couple of city ballot questions–about forbidding people from running for multiple city offices at once (which someone was actually doing elsewhere on the ballot) and from simultaneously being mayor and holding some other office. I voted Yes on both but I guess my feelings on the first one are not that strong.
Elizabelle
@Tony Jay: Use those hooves of power, Randy!
wjca
Because of California’s air pollution laws, gas formulation here is different from other states. Lower volume production leading to higher prices. (Has done so for decades, including under Republican governors.) So, not necessarily a political decision by gas companies.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: Tell them to visit Arlington, VA. 20 story high-rises right next to single family homes on 1/4 acre lots.
It can work.
Cheers,
Scott.
Subsole
@eversor:
I am sorry to hear that.
@montanareddog: I am begging you. Please. No more.
Ruckus
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
THIS.
No country, no government is going to be perfect for every single person.
Even as our needs are not all that different, our desires are. And we range from those starting out, less than 2 decades old to those that have worked 6 decades and are finally doing squat – and actually enjoying it, and every one inbetween. We have people doing physical work and we have shitforbrains. And every level inbetween. We are humanity, and while that is a very big club, there are really few differences between the members. Most of us work for a living and after a few decades of that we retire, having earned that. Some have life and a not insignificant bank account handed to them, most have to earn their way. Some do well, some do not. So what has changed in the last millennium? Mostly that the mass of us has had life get a touch better, a touch easier. I’m just shy of 3/4 of a century and life is not bad. Could it be better? Well not reading about SFB any more would be better. But seriously, sure life could be better. It could be a lot better for many members of humanity. Many minorities are still working at catch up, and shouldn’t have to. Many citizens are far more wealthy than they deserve – I can think of one in particular. But then he seems to be getting his comeuppance for being a shit stain on humanity.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: My neighborhood is very much mixed, with houses built over several decades and on different sized lots. We have two lots and are on the corner. There is one large lot where they tore the existing house down about 15 years ago. It has sat vacant this whole time. You could probably build two or three houses on it. Of course, I’m also in the part of town where they used to let you access the sewer by putting your service line across another person’s lot. We don’t allow that anymore for obvious reasons.
Fair Economist
@Princess:
Biden isn’t a generic Democrat. He’s an excellent Democrat!
Subsole
@Eyeroller:
No no. If they keep being stupid, they’ll likely be dead before that.
Soprano2
@Kay: I graduated from college in 1983 into around 8% unemployment. It was bad – I took the first full-time job I was offered, because there was no telling how long it would be until I was offered another one. There were only 4 employers who came to our campus to recruit employees for the whole year! These younger people have NO IDEA how bad the economy can be. Try living through the late ’70’s – early 80’s when inflation was 8-10%, interest rates were 18%, and unemployment in many sectors was 10%. I will never, ever, ever forget that.
ETA – my first car loan on a one-year old car was at 16%! That was from a regular car lot with a loan from a regular bank, not one of those “buy here pay here” places.
Subsole
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep. All that shit just to have his fanclub turn on him in the end when, lo and behold, he didn’t measure up either.
Fucking asshole…
Fair Economist
@smith:
I think this is the reason we are seeing the propaganda engines fire up against the possibility of a shinking population, with all the “demographic crisis” nonsense. Fewer people means workers will get paid more, and will have to pay less for limited resources like land and housing. The ultra-rich hate that, because it means they will end up *slightly* less ultra-rich.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: Sure, but I lived in a house when I was growing up that only had one bathroom and we did fine. My point is, they won’t even look at them as starter homes because they have high expectations for their first house. Mostly they are purchased by companies that turn them into rentals, and then I have to listen to young people whine about how they can’t find any houses to buy.
columbusqueen
@Percysowner: Voted! Yes on both Issues 1 & 2, woot!!
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Sure, it’s reasonable, but then don’t whine about how houses today cost so much more than houses used to. One reason they cost more is because they’re bigger and built on bigger lots.
Fair Economist
Nationwide, it’s been out of hand for over 20 years, since the late 90’s. But the increase in remote work since COVID has pushed the shortage into a lot of smaller cities and towns that earlier hadn’t been affected because they couldn’t offer enough good jobs.
Soprano2
@Eyeroller: I can’t believe how many houses I see in the neighborhoods where the garages are all two or three car where people’s cars are parked outside in the driveway. I think many, many people use their garages for storage, not parking cars.
Soprano2
@Ruckus: I saw $2.72/gal when I was out yesterday.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: You cannot overestimate how big of a shock the Arab oil embargo was to the U.S. economy. After being relatively stable for over a decade, the price of a gallon of gasoline doubled in less than a year! I think that’s mainly what caused all the problems with the economy the last half of the 1970’s. We went from paying around $0.20/gal in 1973 to $1.00/gal in 1980. It took the economy a long time to adjust to that.
Another Scott
@suzanne: Sorry I wasn’t clear.
I get where you’re coming from, and agree that politicians have to be responsive (to everyone, not just the noisy cranks).
But one has to direct one’s anger and petitions to the right place.
“Sir, this is an Arby’s” is funny because it’s true.
;-)
Biden and House and Senate Democrats aren’t going to fix local zoning. Maybe they can send some “revenue sharing” dollars to localities to help encourage them, but local people have to take the initiative to change local zoning.
(I know I’m lecturing the professor here. ;-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
catclub
Self employed plumber, today?
gvg
@Suzanne: You are correct, although I will counter with crime rates are MUCH lower now than they were when I was a kid and the car stripping is not so much a thing anymore. My neighborhood is modest lower middle class built in the 80’s and a mix of 1 and 2 car garages. A lot of people park outside. People tend to fill their garages up. I am careful not to because hurricanes. But that is once in awhile, up north with snow and other weather for months, parking inside seems to me to be even more important.
I am also a woman who lives alone. I have had a house with no garage and lived in Apartments. I REALLY prefer coming home after dark to a garage with an automatic garage door opener even though its a low crime area. And I am getting older planning to retire soon, so I don’t want to hear about being alert. Give me safe.
Why shouldn’t other people want garages? Well if I am slightly poorer, I would have settled for less no doubt, so I think people will look at the older houses, but they won’t be first choice.
Older houses tend to have lousy insulation, need new wiring for safety, sometimes have asbestos, and be expensive to heat and cool. They aren’t such bargins if you check the monthly utility bills which by law here you can request. Add hundreds a month onto what the newer house costs to run. then compare insurance costs too. I looked at some and stayed away.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
(Bolding mine.)
Wow. So if a family had four cars, they had to have a four-car garage? That’s crazy stuff.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: If VP Harris unfortunately passed away or something happened that precluded her running as veep, would like Sen. Fetterman to take that slot.
kalakal
@Soprano2:
The Florida basement/cellar
Soprano2
@catclub: A self-employed electrician would make even more.
Ruckus
@wjca:
Sorry, that is a ridiculous line. CA has a very large population, with not enough reasonable mass transit (getting better for sure – I use it a lot). The amount of gas we use is more than large enough, the monetary differences between the actual pumped product is not all that much and we have 5 refineries in SoCal that make our special gas. A lot of the price difference is that many of us have to drive, to get to work, to get to the store, etc. Hell I’m thinking of selling my car and no longer driving, I’ve been driving for nearly 60 yrs now and I use the car to go to the grocery store because I’ve got one that’s paid for. Everything else is rapid transit bus/train.
And gas prices around me vary by as much as a dollar a gallon.
VFX Lurker
I just donated $20 to Pizza to the Polls. They delivered 12 pizzas to a line in Virginia this morning, and they may need to deliver more before the end of day.
Hoping for high turnout and the best possible outcome.
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: It’s that consequentialist thinking, though. I think these are people who are very big on always having clean hands, and they define that very narrowly as not expressing support for the thing that is bad (even if you made it worse).
Manyakitty
@Tony Jay: I always think of them as ‘Reverso’ No idea why. Also, too, I think it’s more than one person — differences in voice, tone, and content. Nevertheless, so not worth the effort.
Manyakitty
@Kay: ALL. OF. THIS.
dnfree
@eversor: It won’t be “we all” who get it. It most likely won’t be me, and apparently you don’t think it will be you either.
Subsole
@Paul in KY:
I dunno. I kind of like him in the Senate. I think he brings a certain energy to that bench that profits the whole team.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: If you look at gasbuddy.com, gas prices are WAY more expensive all up the West Coast than they are elsewhere. And generally a lot cheaper in the South. The Northeast is close to the national average.
wjca
My town (in California) is built out to the edge of its city limits. Building beyond that is restricted by county open space regulations. Still, we looking to add a couple of hundred housing units. Which essentially means tearing down existing single family housing (although in a couple of cases, commercial buildings might be targeted) and replacing them with more apartments.
But the challenge is that we have a state mandate to add a couple of thousand more units in the next few years. With both enormous fiscal penalties for failure to comply and the threat of a flat state government takeover of the town government besides. I’m guessing that this is a statewide phenomena, but perhaps other Californians here can comment.
Tony Jay
@Manyakitty:
Agreed. Plenty of hands puppeting that sock.
Manyakitty
@Tony Jay: that’s part of why I never pied them. That tiny bit of curiosity about which personality would pop up.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
My apologies if I gave the wrong impression, but I think you’re reading a lot into my comment that wasn’t there.
If people want two-car garages, I’m totally fine with that. But I can understand why you can’t squeeze a 2-car garage onto a lot that doesn’t have room for it – Soprano2 was talking about these houses being on small lots – but the lot size wouldn’t prevent you from squeezing in a 40 square foot bathroom. That was my point, that small lot size may prevent you from adding this amenity but not that one.
And I can understand why a lot of people wouldn’t take a look at a house that doesn’t have a garage, I just am surprised that hardly anyone would be interested in such a house. I’ve never had a garage to park in in my life, and that included two winters in Hartford in the mid to late 1970s, and five winters in Bristol, VA later on which were just as bad. (The latter of which my Florida-raised very non-tradwife managed to deal with too.) So I would figure that there would be people out there for whom the absence of a garage wouldn’t be a deal-breaker, that’s all.
evap
Just back from voting. Just school board elections and a SPLOST (special purpose local option sales tax). I am normally against such things, but this one will fund important and needed things, including funding to do something about our overcrowded, horrific (for the animals) animal shelter. It is officially a “no kill” shelter, but because of extreme overcrowding, it looks like they are going to have to start euthanizing.
Will there be an election thread tonight?
Manyakitty
@evap: probably. I guess it’s still a little early for returns
Roberto el oso
@Fair Economist: very interesting analogy, in a general sense. The initial targets of the Peasants Revolt were a) tax collectors, b) government officials and clergy, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, whom they beheaded, and c) Flemish merchants, because, well, why not?