UAW’s Fain comes pretty damn close to endorsing Biden’s re-election here https://t.co/yCWY5xXpvp
— Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) November 10, 2023
BREAKING: Hyundai is raising factory worker pay 25% by 2028.
By winning at the Big 3, @UAW caused a domino effect that has forced non-union companies like Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai to deliver raises as well.
As Shawn Fain put it, "UAW stands for 'You Are Welcome.'"
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) November 13, 2023
Folks, yet another automaker has announced a wage increase for their workers following historic UAW agreements.
More evidence of the power of collective bargaining and that when unions do well, everyone does well. https://t.co/orf6Cag6Ad
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 13, 2023
Stepping up:
I believe in the people of New Jersey, and they deserve a choice in their democracy.
Together we will stand up for the change we want to see. The change you deserve. And together we will make it happen.
Join me at https://t.co/mbqIV474Ql pic.twitter.com/7Nxg7n4Lhr
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) November 13, 2023
This is an excellent ad. One of the reasons I’m optimistic (but not complacent) about our electoral prospects is that in the end an election is about winning the argument. And comparing the Biden four years with the Trump four years is going to work very well for our side. https://t.co/TB56tu5lg9
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) November 11, 2023
The Washington Post is the paper of record for the town where the monopoly industry is national politics… and TFG is officially bad for their business:
She continues: "this is going to be legitimately so the question that every Republican is going to have to answer for if Donald Trump still is — he is the frontrunner, but if he actually becomes the nominee."
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) November 13, 2023
Meanwhile:
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel refuses to denounce Trump calling Americans he disagrees with “vermin” pic.twitter.com/Ce4OgiRGiX
— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) November 12, 2023
On The Road – UncleEbeneezer – Golden Sierra 2023- Convict Lake (Part 1 of 4)
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
artem1s
next up “butherdeplorables”
lowtechcyclist
Good that they’re asking, though. At least people will be reminded of what TFG stands for, and that most Rethug pols are all in with him.
Baud
Republicans: I thought he was criticizing Vernon.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Geez, Ronna. Low bar.
Lapassionara
Trump is a threat to our national security. That is so clear to me, and the fact that the Republican Party — who used to tell voters that Republicans were the strong party — wants to elect someone who gave away national security secrets early in his administration just completely baffles me. That they want to elect someone who will sell out Ukraine, undermine NATO, and make common cause with autocrats all over the world. And who ran his first campaign on the supposed threat to national security posed by Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server. Make it make sense!
OzarkHillbilly
I was today years old when I learned I was a contumacious individual.
Nora
This is a serious question: is there ANYTHING TFG could say that the Republican party would officially disapprove? He calls his opponents vermin, he talks about setting up camps for immigrants, and they’re still all in. I’m trying to imagine how far he could go before anyone in a position of authority in the Republican party would say, “Whoa, that’s too far.” Gas chambers? Firing squads? Nuclear bombs on blue cities? What would it take? Is there anything that would be a bridge too far?
Ken
Unions getting involved in politics? How horrible. That should be left to preachers in their tax-exempt pulpits.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, we knew that.
kalakal
Meanwhile in the UK the fall out from
The Night of the Long Knives,The Night of the Revolving Doors, Cabinet reshuffle continues. Overshadowed by uneducated tosser “call me Dave” Cameron’s return was this gemThis is the equivalent of creatinh a Secretary of State for made up right wing grievances and appointing Casey DeSantis.
schrodingers_cat
@Nora: R party would abandon him if he gave up his bigotries. And that is unlikely, so the answer is never.
artem1s
@Lapassionara:
the GOP (and big oil and the industrial military complex) hates NATO. they only know one way and that’s bombing their enemies back to the stone age. strong man crap. remember, these are the people who have repeatedly stabbed their own party members in the back just so they could stand a little higher on the pile of rotting corpses that the GOP has become.
John S.
@Nora: No bridge is too far in a cult. Anything
Jim JonesTrump does can be rationalized by his cultists because he is never wrong.Even when he tells them the funny tasting Kool-Aid is ok to drink.
Viva BrisVegas
@lowtechcyclist: That wasn’t an interview, that was obsequious chitchat. The questioning was about as pointed as a watermelon. There was no follow up and the interviewer allowed McDaniel to determine the question she would prefer to answer rather than the one that was asked. The whole thing was about as far from journalism as it’s possible to get. Truly pathetic.
Danielx
@Nora:
No.
artem1s
@kalakal: Esther McVey has been appointed “Common Sense
does she have a bigger office than the Minister of Silly Walks?
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin, y’all!
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: :-) My reputation precedes me.
eclare
@kalakal:
https://x.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1724094813379707298?s=20
RaflW
@Lapassionara: They won’t even do anything about Tuberville, who is hollowing out the leadership of every branch of the military. You’ll see 4 or 5 R senators – often unnamed – bellyache to beltway scribblers, but they refuse to whip 9 votes to join the Dems in moving these promotions.
Its f**ing disgusting. We have significant geopolitical instability, and Tuberville and his 48 craven, cowardly friends are messing with our security and global power.
WaterGirl
And then the “journalist” goes on to slobber all over McDaniels with grateful thanks for allowing them to “moderate” the shit show that was the Republican debate Am I the only one who finds it offensive that McDaniels wants a pat on the back, and big one, for making history (!) by having the first Jewish person to moderate a Republican debate?
See, I have a black friend! I’m not racists!
catclub
Ask her if she thinks it is ok to refer to the GOP as vermin that should be exterminated.
Honus
Meanwhile, I’m sure this will be widely reported and and Biden will get full credit:
https://dailyprogress.com/news/nation-world/business/economy/us-consumer-inflation-eased-in-october-as-cheaper-gas-slowed-overall-price-increases/article_c96c1a32-28cc-5cd1-9b4a-6fed08c09337.html?utm_source=dailyprogress.com&utm_campaign=breaking-news&utm_medium=cio&lctg=c0f3070095389638&tn_email_eh1=da6f6cb4c8bc3f2d0353241780807a8298243dede7da8ff75372b6767a28abb7
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: I have also seen you traducing Republicans. And not to get personal, but I suspect you are bipedal, perhaps even a pedestrian.
RaflW
Seems like there’s a strong argument to be made re: auto wages. Biden kind of shocked the political press by choosing to go all-in on the UAW strikes. Well, TFG countered by going to a non-union site and being his usual asshole self. And Sen. Tim Scott said “fire them all.”
Meanwhile the workers at both union and non-union plants are getting significant wage bumps, and it’s clear that the UAW strategy — and Biden’s assist — worked. LFG!
Jeffro
Ronna = Exhibit A in the Museum of Their Enabling Knows NO Bounds.
(It’s a big museum, too)
p.a.
Aaaaannnddd on constant rotation: the rolling shutdown threat.
Is our (normie) electorate learning?
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
Voltaire
SteveinPHX
@OzarkHillbilly: Gonna be tough to work that into my everyday conversation w/o getting bopped with a pool cue!
Soprano2
@Honus: The press never talks obsessively about gas prices going down, but let them go up $0.10 and it’s all over the news.
Tony Jay
@kalakal:
Yeah… Liverpool has never been guilty of sending the Tory Party our very best people.
Looking at McVey, Currie, Dorries, et al, we’ve barely sent them people.
RobertS
I mean, really, WTF? Ronna gets a pass with “I’m not going to comment?”. No follow-up question?
Do either of those people know their history?
Honus
@Lapassionara: It’s no mystery. They’re republicans. You know, the same people that have called me a commie pinko draft dodging hippie for the past 50 years.
dmsilev
@Nora:
Proposing to raise taxes on rich people?
Purely hypothetical of course, there’s no way he’d say that.
Honus
@Geminid: it’s worse than that. I suspect he is a homo sapien and has engaged in thespian activities
Manyakitty
@Nora: nope. This is who they are and he made it comfortable for them.
Frankensteinbeck
@Lapassionara:
They are bullies and chickenshits. Their idea of strength is never admitting you’re wrong, yelling threats, bragging, and bombing brown people. They see kindness of any kind as weakness. Trump fits their definition of strength very well, although his sucking up to Putin disturbs a few of them.
@Nora:
Sure, but nothing he would say. All that shit about white supremacy and genocide, about murdering political opponents, they already believed. It is why the base picked him. They were utterly enraged that Democrats elected a black man president. They want us dead. The best you get is a significant portion wishes Trump would say it in a more dignified way.
@John S.:
Trump has been booed by his hardest core base when he told them things they didn’t like. Trump is not the cult focus, he’s just the figurehead for their hate. He is very very good at telling them what they want to hear, though.
RaflW
@RobertS: They both know fascism can be profitable, so why ruffle too many feathers. The corporate/VC/billionaire-owned press will not save us.
Which is why “putting in the work” is such a key part of this thread’s title.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@p.a.:
Yeah, the problem with that is that ridiculous enemies can still be cataclysmically dangerous (Exhibit A: Guy, The Former).
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: Sheeeit… There is no falsehood I could tell about a Republican that would not sound false unless it was complimentary, and there is nothing pedestrian about me. As far as being bipedal, I have spent enough time on all 4s that some might question that.
Honus
@catclub: at least he didn’t call us something really awful, like “deplorable”
OzarkHillbilly
@RaflW: Nonunion carpenters have long known they benefit from the existence of a strong union.
OzarkHillbilly
@SteveinPHX: I love the sound of it.
Soprano2
@Frankensteinbeck: My husband says TFG is good at figuring out what the applause lines are. He said you could see in 2015 how he was saying things in his speeches and watching to see what the reaction was. If he got cheering, he said it more. He has few actual beliefs.
OzarkHillbilly
@Honus: deleted, joke in bad taste.
Soprano2
@Honus: It is noticeable that the press isn’t hyperventilating over TFG calling his opponents “vermin” the way they did over Hillary calling some of his supporters “deplorable”. I guess that’s because she said it about white people, he said it about people who mostly aren’t white. Again, her sin wasn’t “insulting voters”, it was insulting the “average, regular white male” voter.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: My mother’s GE plant here was not union, but they got most of what the union plants got.
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
And crawling on your belly too, I’m sure!
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
You deleted a joke here because it was in bad taste? What got into you? :-D
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: Agreed he was booed when he told them to get vaccinated for one.
He is just the vessel for their various bigotries.
Kathleen
@Viva BrisVegas: In other words, business as usual for the sycophantic GOP stenographers in the Mainslime Media.
Matt McIrvin
@artem1s:
I’m old enough to remember when that was kind of what we thought NATO was about.
OzarkHillbilly
@lowtechcyclist: For a certainty.
I’m trying to be a better person?
Stop laughing, and no, I’m not paying for your new keyboard.
Kathleen
@Soprano2: Yes. The greatest sin of all is hurting white people’s feelings.
sdhays
@schrodingers_cat: I was thinking about it from the direction of the previous commenter, but yeah, can you imagine the reaction if Trump started campaigning hard for, say, reparations for slavery?
I wish we could peek into that universe just to see Ronna deal with that question on the spot.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kathleen: Good thing I had all my feelings surgically removed. All except for that one in my right pinky toe. The Quack missed that one. I think I’ll sue.
Soprano2
@Kathleen: I think there are some in the press who secretly think about some Democratic coalition members in that way, thus they aren’t too awfully shocked at what TFG said. If we had a decent press it would be all over the front page of all the papers and news sites that TFG called people who don’t support him “vermin”, just like Hitler did! ETA – I think reporters were honestly appalled that Hillary would call any of TFG’s mostly white supporters something like deplorable, while they aren’t surprised TFG called Democrats vermin.
Matt McIrvin
@Nora: The push to nullify the birthright citizenship guarantee in the 14th Amendment is a mainstream Republican position. Most of the major candidates in 2016 were endorsing that. Trump liked to tweet about needing to revoke the citizenship of this or that person, too (usually some kind of protester), and that didn’t get a lot of pushback.
And if citizenship is something that requires having the right parentage or the right behavior, nobody is safe. You could be converted into a non-American at any moment, and then you’re an “illegal”, and then into the concentration camps you go.
Baud
@sdhays:
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump throw out a few sops (not on race) to liberal interests. Remember the whole “he’s running to Hillary’s left” in 2016. It’s a viable strategy.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Yes, a lot of the media is culturally in the Republican camp.
opiejeanne
@Soprano2: It wasn’t ladylike. /s
OzarkHillbilly
For those of us with little people in our lives:
US health officials warn of fruit pouches tainted with lead after 22 toddlers fall ill
SFAW
@Geminid:
I would wager a goodly sum that he also sometimes masticates while posting here. Ewww.
Dickeylee
@John S.: We could call it the Kool-Aide rapture!
bbleh
@Soprano2: that’s exactly what he does. And when he stumbles on a line that gets response, he repeats it, and riffs on it, and repeats it again. And if a line doesn’t — he drops it like it never existed. Pay enough attention to his remarks, and you’ll get whiplash.
He craves approval — pathologically so. The root of narcissism is lack of self-esteem, and that guy has got it in spades.
bbleh
@RaflW: They both know fascism can be profitable, so why ruffle too many feathers. The corporate/VC/billionaire-owned press will not save us.
This. Oh my yes, this.
Which is why “putting in the work” is such a key part of this thread’s title.
And this also, too! Very much this!
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: If they could make being conservative a condition of citizenship, they would do it.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Isolationism may be ascendent within the Republican base, but Mitch McConnell and most of his caucus supports funding Ukraine in particular and supporting Nato in general.
In the House, Foreign Relations Chair Michael McCaul leads at least a large minority of “Internationalists.” There will be a vote on Ukraine aid that will require Republicans who have been straddling the fence to decide which side to come down on. But that vote might not tell us much if it is on a larger package that includes aid for Israel, disaster relief, and additional border funding.
Marcopolo
@Honus: so for folks who don’t want to click…inflation (CPI) was at 0% for October. I dunno, probably bad for Biden 🙃
SFAW
@Marcopolo:
Sleepy Joe Brandon will just claim credit for the booming economy, which is 1200 percent due to TIFG’s policies. But the 300 percent annual inflation rate is all/only due to Biden’s woke policies.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
They’ll probably be accused any day now of being at the beck and call of ‘rootless cosmopolitans.’
Uncle Cosmo
Very Catholic word, i.e., not something you’d run across outside of a catechism, like simony. I learned it sometime between ages 9 and 13 in Saturday School classes of the CCD (Contemptible Catholic Dogma) en route to Initial Theophagy bka First Holy Communion, Goyishe Bar Mitzvah bka Confirmation, and 60 subsequent years of apostasy beginning about 6 weeks later.
Kay
@SFAW:
No, the new media line is voters believe the economy is bad – it isn’t and people aren’t behaving like it is, so on some level they know they’ve been fed a line of bullshit- so Biden citing actual facts about the economy is disrespectful to them.
Again- I’m looking forward to an actual bad economy (which will happen again, at some point) so I can see how the NYTimes and all the other media outlets who follow the NYTimes cover it. They’ve lost all capacity for rational comparisons.
They’re predicting the biggest airline travel day in twenty years this Thanksgiving break. If the middle and upper middle were actually operating in a bad economy they wouldn’t be spending like maniacs. They wouldn’t have the money.
Betty Cracker
I think part of the problem with inflation is that people expect prices to go back to where they were in early 2020, and that’s not how it works. If the rate of inflation reverts back to where it is under normal conditions, that’s great, but people don’t recognize it as great because they’re still paying more for stuff than they were three years ago. I’m not sure this is a fixable perception problem.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: I often eat hard sourdough pretzels at my computer. The crumbs on the keyboard drive my wife nuts. Which I also eat at my computer.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Some probably will be accused of this in next year’s Republican primaries. Foreign policy issues are usually is not that big a deal in American politics but next year could be different for both parties.
Marcopolo
@Betty Cracker: 🎯 totally backing up your post, it doesn’t help when the lede for the WP is written like this:
catclub
it also includes cuts to the IRS to pay for it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Uncle Cosmo: I had 6 years of indoctrination into Catholicism but missed it, probably because I was the very definition of contumacious.
Soprano2
@Marcopolo: That’s why the market is happy today, that probably means no more rate increases for awhile.
catclub
Australia went at least 40 years without a recession. Still counting? I don’t know.
So a recession is not some certain backlash to a good economy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: It isn’t.
Geminid
@catclub: That is the proposal the Republicans passed last month. It’s not certain it will still be in the bill the House will vote on later this month or in December, which is the one I was talking about.
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: I have been guilty of that a lot on this blog since the Orange Ogre was elected.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
They’re just not going to be able to have zero interest rates and (IMO, ridiculously cheap food) PLUS full employment, rising wages and better savings rates.
Soprano2
I heard one of those “voter on the street” things on NPR this morning where a woman said “The economy is terrible, everything is so high”. I wish the press could be clear that when people say “the economy is bad”, what they actually mean is “prices are a lot higher than they were in 2020, I’m mad about that even though gas prices are going down. What I want is to keep the good raises I got the past two years but for prices to go back to what they were in 2020 before Covid happened”. Because somehow some people believe electing TFG again would give them that.
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly: If one is puffed up on their own hot air are they contumescent?
Brit in Chicago
@Baud: I think he has said that he’s against cuts to Medicare and SS (though he may also have said the opposite). Cuts to programs for the poor he’d probably be ok with. But of course he’s also in favor of lower taxes on the rich. (Worth noting that much of the 2017 bill expires in 2025.) The Republican rhetoric is of course always in favor of lower deficits, even a balanced budget, but in practice the Democrats are more likely to reduce the deficit because they may be willing to raise taxes on the rich. (But that assumes a working—non-Manchin/Sinema—majority in both houses, as well as the Presidency: unlikely, I think, though I hope I’m wrong.)
Ken
@Betty Cracker: Possibly they’re remembering how when Trump, and Bush II before him, crashed the economy, gas prices went way down. You know, and I know, that’s because demand had fallen off a cliff, but clearly it’s beyond some people — unfortunately including politicians and pundits.
Marcopolo
@Soprano2: A finance twitter guy whose opinion I respect said he’s now putting the odds for a March ‘’24 rate cute @ between 25-30%. He’s also looking at the job #s btw.
schrodingers_cat
OT: I am looking for recommendations on books on Art History. A college textbook for an undergrad course would also be a good option.
Thanks.
ETA: I am wondering where all the names of the pigments come from among other things. What is the origin of Crimson lake and Rose Madder?
Soprano2
@Marcopolo: Is there any mention at all that lots of people are making a lot more money than they did before the pandemic too?
OzarkHillbilly
@catclub: Hmmmmm, maybe a Latin scholar could answer that question.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: The perception of inflation did eventually abate when inflation went down in the 1980s, and that contributed to the longtime mythology of “Republicans are better for the economy”. I think there’s a large age effect–if you’re old you never really get used to the higher prices; if you’re young you probably do. It helped that the prices of a lot of “luxury” gadgets and other goods came way down because of technological progress and the globalization of manufacturing.
catclub
CNN:
I am old enough to remember ZOG – Zionist Occupation Government, and they did not mean the government of Israel. I think Timothy McVey may have used that expression.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: Republicans during Obama’s first term were trying to get people nostalgic for the extremely low price of gasoline in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crash, as an indication that Obama had ruined everything. It was particularly ridiculous in that there had been a massive spike in the price of gas in the period just before the crash. It’d only work if you either had no memory of the previous few years or were deliberately constructing your worldview in bad faith.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I’ve sort of had it with them. They deserve 15% unemployment. If they prefer 9 dollar meals at McDonalds over full employment and rising wages at the bottom and lower middle then they SHOULD vote for Trump. They deserve him.
They apparently liked that flimsy finance and real estate based economy that was tottering atop a pile of sand as long as they could buy garbage at the grocery store cheap. Biden is building a resilient economy that is based on real things– real value, real wages, producing something other than flipping real estate and lending money.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think you’ll get that information in a college art-history textbook. A quick look at Wikipedia suggests they have tons of this information.
catclub
@Marcopolo: he’s now putting the odds for a March ‘’24 rate cute @ between 25-30%.
I am glad to see that is that low a probability. I only expect a rate cut if the FED is terrified of a serious recession. Rates got raised in 2016 and that did enough bad to the economy to elect some asshole.
Not having a FED run by Powell, who is a Republican, not raise in 2024 would be a win.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: I wish you were in charge of all media messaging. Seriously.
Betty Cracker
@Marcopolo: Right. Reporters who take their jobs seriously could explain the basics of how it works, but I almost never see that context in the coverage. It’s not all that complicated or I wouldn’t understand it — I’m an idiot about math and economics.
Kristine
@OzarkHillbilly: I bought a thin flexible keyboard cover for my laptop for just that reason–it doesn’t take much to mess up those keys. Not sure if they make one for a desktop keyboard, but it might be worth looking into.
catclub
Why not both?
That spike in gas prices while economies were rapidly crumbling was one of the only cases I have seen where it appeared that the oil futures market went crazy and controlled the price, — highly contrary to fundamentals.
Old Man Shadow
Re: WaPo,
It would be nice if the Press did finally stop laughing when Republicans scream, “We hate you and want to kill you” and start taking it seriously.
Uncle Cosmo
@artem1s: What most folks don’t understand is that we’re knee deep in World War III but it’s really World War O, for Oligarchs. The descendants of the “malefactors of great wealth” who 90 years back tried to snooker Marine Corps General Smedley Butler into heading a coup to remove FDR from office are at it
againstill. No compunction about using a vicious bastard like Putin to advance their goal of destroying liberal democracy and bending every nation to their corrupt, grasping rule.(Y’know, for a good long while I asked myself the question, Didn’t those arrogant mofos learn anything from putting the Nazis into power and then “reaping the whirlwind” 12 years later? And recently I realized, Yeah, they did: They learned that they could do that and effectively suffer no consequences for it. Think about it – can you name a single industrialist/financier/plutocrat in Germany, Italy or Japan – – not Krupp, not IG Farben, not Fiat, not the Zaibatsu – who paid any price greater than minor inconvenience for their complicity with the warmongers?
(Srsly, if anyone knows of some I’d love to hear about it. The only name I could come up with was Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics in the Third Reich – and no charges were ever made to stick against him.)
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Sure. I do google things all the time but an art history overview would be nice. I have never taken an art history class. I thought it might be a fun read.
Brit in Chicago
@Ken: If unemployment rose by 5%, from 3.x% to 8.x%, that would be a terrible thing for that 5% of the working population and their families, so maybe 20-40 million people. On the other hand, inflation would probably go way down, and interest rates too, leaving a lot of people feeling better off. I don’t have a job that I’m in danger of losing, and have income that is only very weakly linked to inflation. So if narrowly self-interested economic grounds were all that mattered to me, I’d have to favor higher unemployment. They’re not, and I don’t; I care about the well-being of my fellow-citizens and my fellow-humans more generally as well as my own. But I’m well-off enough to be able to afford that; some people may have different views.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: It is fun. Janson’s History of Art is the one I read when I had to miss my first term of college and I wanted to educate myself.
ETA: Looks really expensive — I had my older brother’s copy.
ETA: Wow, the serious art-history textbooks are all pricey. I’ll ask my husband and try to catch you on another thread. He’s not here right now.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I think a lot of the American middle class really want there to be a miserable underclass they can lord over to provide them with cheap goods and services. And even if they say they don’t want that, they still want the cheap goods and services and maybe don’t make the connection.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Some of the food prices were insanely low. A “dollar menu”? I mean, come on. One dollar? How do they think this works? They’re raising all that food, trucking it all over hell, processing it and serving it for a dollar? The powers that be were basically keeping them stuffed and (un)happy rather than offering them any kind of way to build financial stability and savings. Real gains.
They finally have better rates for savings. That might be a good idea, since they’re all employed and wages are rising.
JMG
@Kay: While we here justifiably bitch about how the news media covers the economy, we perhaps ignore another, even more pervasive form of media — commercials. TV programs and the Internet are swarming with ads that tell the audience times are touch and inflation is out of control, except of course for whatever good, service, or scam they happen to be pitching. That message has to take a toll on people who might not be following the news at all except for the weather.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Thanks! I will check it out from the library and then buy a slightly older edition if I like it.
Soprano2
@Kay: I agree, I’ve had it with them too. The economy is not bad. I graduated from college in 1983, when unemployment was 8.3% (it was 10.8% in 1982). Inflation in 1980 was near 14.5%! These people have no idea what a “bad economy” really is. When the price of eggs was temporarily high, it was all over the news, but when they came back to normal it was crickets. Same way with the baby formula shortage – it’s gone, but the press never mentioned that. People want something that has never existed – high wages with low, low prices. There are alternatives, too – I bought a gift bag at Dollar Tree last weekend for $1.25 because WalMart wanted $5.00 for one! I thought that was ridiculous – that much money for a bag to put a present in. You can save money, but you have to work at it a little bit.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I think they forgot a lot of things because we had all those years of a cheap, flimsy economy built on easy debt and FIRE. A house – real estate – isn’t the only or even often the best way to build wealth. If savings rates go up and you’re young and lower middle or middle you want to spend less and save more. You can’t buy giant piles of processed food boxes at the supermarket and eat cheaply and well.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Phrasing?
Kristine
@schrodingers_cat:
Books and articles by Sr. Virginia Mary Orna could prove useful. She’s an expert in the study of pigments. I attended one of her ACS talks way back in the mid-80s. The stories of how she duplicated the manufacture of some of the pigments used by Renaissance painters were eye-opening.
Kay
@Soprano2:
It would really be a shame if lower income and working class fell for this bullshit because Biden is the best President for them in my lifetime, and it’s not close. They gotta give up cheap food as a measure of the economy. It’s killing them. It’s a bad deal.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: About a year ago we took out a CD at our credit union. I think the last time I did that was in the 1980s or 1990s.
I’ve seen some analyses of the 1970s stagflation that say that a major reason it was so intractable was that until regulations changed in the late 70s (both in the US and in other countries), it was often impossible for ordinary people to get a savings account at the bank that actually reflected the increased interest rates. And then it took a few years for banks to actually offer those products. Money was tight, but you couldn’t put yourself on the other side of that equation. So there was no way to use interest rates as a hedge against inflation. People spent money they couldn’t afford to lose because they were effectively going to lose it anyway.
But in the early 80s, you could suddenly get amazing rates on insured savings accounts and CDs. I remember it well.
JaneE
Ask your friends how many people they want to send to death camps. When they say you are overreacting, remind them of the history of dehumanizing and what that resulted in.
Kay
What we will find if Biden loses is his support of labor was much, much more than walking a picket line. He has the best Department of Labor ever in my lifetime. Labor gains have been due to labor organizing and work and leadership, that is true, but it is ALSO true that Biden created the best regulatory and legal environment for them in 50 years. That all goes away with a Republican. We get Justice Scalia’s son back in charge of labor rules.
One of my many complaints about the Left under Biden is how they have basically ignored Biden’s labor RECORD. Real gains. Rule changes. They suck at politics. Instead of promoting and celebrating Biden’s efforts on lower and middle class WAGES they ignored it. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Baud
@Kay:
2024 will decide the future of labor for the next 20-30 years.
OzarkHillbilly
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
5.25 isn’t bad.
Soprano2
@Kay: There was a big article in the WSJ a few years back (before Covid happened) where a bunch of the Steak & Shake franchises were complaining about the $3.99 menu. They said they couldn’t make any money from it but were stuck with it because corporate insisted they keep it, even though it was something they implemented in 2009! They still have a variation on it, but it’s not as much food as it was then. I can understand from their viewpoint why they were so mad. When our new menu comes out in a few days, some items will be going up $4! I’ve said for years that our menu was underpriced; I finally have a manager who agrees with me. We’re going to be priced competitively with other establishments that are similar to us.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: In the 2000s and 2010s it seemed like there were a lot of self-identified capital-L Leftists who mostly just cared about foreign and military policy. They were against the American Empire, and that was it.
A bunch of them ended up going full MAGA in the 2016 cycle, because Trump seemed to be sort of an isolationist. Regardless, they’re never going to be fans of a Democratic Party that isn’t bent on destroying the empire.
And if they’re Marxists, well, the Democrats aren’t going to destroy capitalism either, sorry.
Kay
@Baud:
It will. I know Fain can’t endorse and it might not matter – fully half of UAW here are Republicans and that started well before Trump- many of them backed Bush because of The Terror. But Fain is no dummy and he knows damn well how good the Biden Administration has been for labor. He’ll do everything BUT endorse.
I think one of the reasons media hate Biden is he’s genuinely good for the working class. They hate him because they think he’s a Lefty. They prefer Jamie Dimon running the economy.
I had a funny convo with a labor person during Issue 1 campaign. I said I was suprised media were so anti labor because so many of them belong to labor unions. Labor guy said “GUILDS. They’re nose up in the air about it. They don’t belong to UNIONS, they belong to GUILDS”.
Lol. Clowns.
gene108
@Nora:
1. Saying Democrats were right about about something; and/or
2. Admitting Republicans were wrong about something.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Yeah, it’s really worth it again. For decades it wasn’t.
Baud
@Kay:
Agree. Biden delivering is frightening to the stability of their world view.
If Bloomberg had won in 2020 (thank you, Elizabeth Warren), he would not be too old to seek a second term.
catclub
@SFAW: phrasing was fine. Now if it was ‘whom I eat at my computer’ the grammar pedants would be ok, but the anti-cannibalism party would be upset.
H.E.Wolf
It’s OK. Which is for things, who is for people. :)
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
I saw that earlier. Horrific. Just pure mob violence.
catclub
@gene108: Curiously, when Trump said out loud that sluts should be punished – like with jail time – for getting an abortion, the rest of the GOP went all quiet.
schrodingers_cat
@Kristine: Very interesting. Thanks I will check her out.
I am also always fascinated by dyes used in traditional weaving in India especially silks and cottons I wonder what their techniques are. Those colors are so vibran
OT: Has anyone use Strathmore’s heavyweight drawing paper? How does it handle wet media? Thanks
I am not going to drench it in water, it should just be able to handle some wet media.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think they haven’t yet absorbed the message that labor and unions are popular again. They’re still operating under the Reagan-era idea that labor unions are unpopular so you shouldn’t mention them unless you absolutely have to. Sadly, I think they’re afraid to draw too much attention to it even though it would help Democrats to know just how much better then NLRB is now.
Talked to the owner at a Chinese restaurant we go do regularly last night. He was complaining about how much it costs to hire people right now, then later he told us he bought a new Tesla – to replace the Mercedes SUV he has now. I think he’s doing alright.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay:
Twitter (and social media) leftists are really just privileged mostly white, grievance mongers. They hate Biden. Nothing he ever does will be enough for them.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Yet conservatives want to stop schools from implementing Social and Emotional Learning, where kids learn not to be jerks. What a horrific event.
gvg
@Kay: There is a science fiction series that has been educating me about the difference between labor unions and guilds. There is a BIG difference. The guilds sounded as stupid and petty as the little robber barons that prevented trade from growing. Inherited small wealth with no newcomers or talent.
eclare
@Soprano2:
Wow, talk about cognitive disconnect. Maybe buy a Honda or a Kia instead?
Nah, that’s crazy talk.
sixthdoctor
Oh God I hope there’s video, PLEEEEEEZE let there be video…
Ramalama
@Baud: Almost injured a rib, laughing. thanks for that, Mr Pants Optional Man.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: For a lot of kids, particularly, radicalism is a kind of cosplay, and the separation from any position that actually has some buy-in from people in power is a feature, not a bug. You can say your hands are clean.
Jeffro
(deleted)
teezyskeezy
@catclub: Well, it wouldn’t necessarily be ‘cannibalism,’ you know? Just a little TMI.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, nailed it. BTW its not just kids, some chronologically older people also have extremely chilidish beliefs about politics.
eclare
@sixthdoctor:
Wow. He says Claudia from NPR was interviewing him at the time and has tweeted about it. So there is at least one witness.
What a craven bully. Tim says he’s the type of kid to throw a rock and then hide behind his mama’s skirt. That would sting if Qevin were capable of shame.
Matt McIrvin
I’m happy to see Hyundai raising wages–their cars are terrific now; I drive one, but their labor practices are not good and every bit helps.
But! The li’l electric Chevy Bolt I rented on my recent trip to Rochester is the most impressed I’ve been with an American car in a long time. It sounds like they’re discontinuing it, but they’re not giving up on EVs, so it’ll be interesting to see what they have down the line.
sixthdoctor
@eclare: Claudia’s thread is here: https://twitter.com/cgrisales/status/1724452392811286565
And unless he’s method-acting for an upcoming Shoresy audition, hip-checking your coworker is something that usually gets you fired/arrested. It’s crazy. If that’s going to be the allowed behavior then Tim should get a free shot…
zhena gogolia
@sixthdoctor: So he’s one of the anti-McCarthy Eight. Therefore an extreme wingnut? Should we believe him?
Bill Arnold
@catclub:
Oil futures went really crazy, as in negative prices. Some models broke, I have been told. (PDF)
On April 20, 2020, the futures contract price for the immediate month (May) of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the U.S. benchmark crude, went negative.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
I bought a 2023 Bolt EV in August. Fantastic car, not just because it’s an EV but it took GM 5 years to work the bugs out and continually tweak the design and the result is great.So of course GM’s axing it. I could write a front page post on the odyssey that is GM’s dumbassery at the macro level with their EV plan. But in terms of vehicles and engineering, they’re top notch.
Sure Lurkalot
@schrodingers_cat: Wondrium has a 14 day free trial and (for example) a History of European Art course (series of half hour video lectures). I listen to a lot of courses set up in segments like this and it’s easy to fit them into one’s schedule. You can also pick and choose which lecture you’re particularly interested in.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@schrodingers_cat:
Don’t forget their insecurities!
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: The reporter interviewing Burchett at the time said he jerked forward as McCarthy walked past, but she could not see a blow because she was in front of Burchett. Then Burchette chased after McCarthy and she followed him. When he caught up with McCarthy Burchett accused McCarthy of elbowing him and McCarthy denied it.
Kay
I’m kind of waiting for people to figure out that “health of the mother” exceptions are actually the most important part of abortion laws. Conservatives think they’re very clever with these “15 week bans” or whatever but what I learned from women during Issue 1 in Ohio is women are taking a very practical, real world approach to this and what scares them most is not being denied an abortion but instead being denied medical care to “save the baby”. Decriminalizing abortion in Ireland and Mexico didn’t happen because of “abortion”- it happened because women were denied medical care by religious nuts to “save the baby” and the women died.
6 weeks or 15 weeks wouldn’t have made a bit of difference to the women in Texas who were denied modern, standard of care health interventions during pregnancy due to abortion laws. You gotta keep health of the mother. It’s the whole ball game.
Media still haven’t figured out the difference between Roe and Casey and Dobbs so I don’t think they’ll catch on, but I think women might. When you hear people dismiss “health of the mother” as unimportant (as conservatives and media are doing now) just know that we are going to beat them politically on that. Most normal people don’t want to sacrifice women for other peoples fundamentalist religious beliefs. That’s fringe. They’re denying women cancer care or telling them to go bleed out in the hospital parking lot. That’s what resonates with women – ALL women.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The reasoning was always “but ‘health of the mother’ just means we can’t outlaw abortion at all!”
Well, YEAH, No shit, Sherlock. That’s the point.
Kay
“Health of the mother” is where the real medical professional discretion comes in – it’s the absolute worst place to insert a politician or religious nut. It’s where women really need someone with expertise and experience. They will kill us because they think that gets them into heaven. No thanks. I don’t want Nickki Haley or Ron DeSantis deciding when I get medical intervention- I want a trained physician.
I think it’s hysterical that people give womens lives and health so little thought that this didn’t occur to anyone in the “pro life” movement, or media, or Right wing politics. The health of the mother is important to women! It’s not a fucking loophole, you dopes.
eclare
@sixthdoctor:
Thanks!
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The “replacement” looks like a small crossover SUV–no surprise there; I guess crossover SUVs are what Americans have instead of cars now. I don’t care for them. I love that high-visibility cab-forward sort of design on subcompacts like the old Honda Fit or the Bolt; I kind of miss it on my Sonata–but I think Americans think of that as unmasculine or something. Got to have a big tall grill that looks like a battering ram.
That said, they’ve made teasing noises about maybe introducing a new Bolt or something like it as the lower-tier design.
geg6
@sixthdoctor:
And right in front of the press! Hilarious!
Manyakitty
@OzarkHillbilly: for some reason, my mind went to an extremely ‘Balloon Juice after dark’ situation when I first read this comment. 🤭
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, it’s very sad. They’re going to have to trust women with.. their own pregnancy. Because womens heath care is unworkable without “health of the mother” and since none of these people have the training to determine that they need to back off and get out of our hospital rooms. No one wants them in there. I personally find them creepy and repulsive with how they so enjoy womens pain. Sacrifice your own mothers and sisters and daughters for your religion. Leave me and mine out of it. I want modern, best practices medical care.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat:
Maybe not quite what you’re looking for, but The Art Museum is quite good. (The copy I bought for 2x the price about 12 years ago is big and heavy.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
I see the mail-in ballots for the Virginia 82nd House District have been counted. Totals are Republican Dawn Taylor 14,280, Democrat and Balloon Juice favorite Dawn Adams 14,206- a difference of 74 votes. There will be a recount.
The 82nd District includes a part of southern Petersburg as well as Surry, Prince George and (most of) Dinwiddie Counties.
snoey
@Matt McIrvin: There is a new generation Fit, but Honda isn’t selling it here. Nothing nefarious, Americans just weren’t buying them.
craigie
One of the things I take for granted about living in Los Angeles is that, if we did get nuked, the rest of the country would probably go “meh”
Citizen Dave
@schrodingers_cat: I know this is a simple answer, but I googled “the history of color” and choices come up. Mostly wanted to remind myself that I have one of the books somewhere, The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair. Have not read it though…
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: LOL! You know I always agree with you though I don’t have the guts to speak up!
Manyakitty
@schrodingers_cat: check your local art museum. Bet someone there knows a good place to start.
sixthdoctor
And in more Congressional fake tough guy posturing (Senate edition)…
Matt McIrvin
@craigie: Until they realize that’s where their movies and TV are coming from. The strikes eventually ended, but this…
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I hope yours doesn’t start burning oil, because if it does the company won’t do anything about it. I loved my Sonata until I started having to add oil every 500 miles of so.
Kathleen
@Kay: They not only ignore it. Bernie and his acolytes keep attacking Democrats for ignoring working people (subtext “white”).
smith
Fascism may be profitable, for those who are willing to cede their freedom of action to the dictator, but civil war is pretty much always a loss. They assume, as most of the RW does, that the people on the other side are cowards who will not fight back. The whole history of liberal social movements notwithstanding.
RaflW
I’m girding to head off to get my ‘Real ID’ drivers license this afternoon (I have an appointment time, we’ll see how that works. MN is a decent-government state, but I am not sure how well the county service center appt system really works).
I failed to get a Real ID four years ago. It was way easier to renew my more than 5 years expired passport than it was to get a Real ID (I also paid extra for a wallet passport card in case today’s adventure is another security-state “papers not in order” fail).
I cannot imagine what immigrants and refugees go through to get documented here.
Manyakitty
@Kay: FWIW, I went to the grocery store on Sunday (Giant Eagle) and was shocked by the lower prices. Eggs were all the way back to before times pricing, etc. Brought home a dozen bags, including kosher meat for around $300.00
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: It’s great so far, did have to get reconstructed after a monstro F-150 smashed in the whole rear of it. It’s a hybrid so there is an internal combustion engine in there. Maybe it’ll get less wear and tear if it’s only running half the time.
Soprano2
@Kay: When I tell people I see a lot of “price drop” signs at Walmart they laugh, but it’s true. I think people don’t notice because they’re convinced all the prices are high now.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Keep an eye on it. I never had that problem with my 2012 hybrid, but my regular 2019 Sonata started doing it after 4 years. Kind of wish I still had the hybrid.
RaflW
@smith: Hardly anyone in business thinks past the next dividend payment or quarterly earnings report (despite wasting money on strategic planning consultants and reports), so I highly doubt they’re thinking “What if the Trump dictatorship leads to a destabilizing world war or internal revolt some day?”
It was grimly educational to visit Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg some years ago and see that Bayer and other companies still in business today used the camps for profitable exploitation.
Sister Golden Bear
@schrodingers_cat:
Trump is both a vessel and a catalyst. If Trump were to drop dead today, the MAGAts obviously won’t disappear. But I don’t see any other presidential contenders who would be nearly as effective in both channeling and amplifying what the base wants. Others have tried, but they don’t resonate in the same way.
dnfree
@Matt McIrvin: My husband has been waiting to see the electric Chevy Equinox. It was supposed to be out by now, apparently, but isn’t.
catclub
I always saw Mike Pompeo as that guy. Smart and evil. Luckily the GOP base does not agree with me.
dnfree
@Sister Golden Bear: That is a good way to express it—vessel plus catalyst. In the past seven years I’ve found out that I’m living in a country I had no idea I was living in. All that progress from the sixties on wasn’t an illusion, but the backlash was hidden for a long time.
Matt McIrvin
@smith: We’re not cowards but we tend not to be terrorists either–our resistance is less destructive than that. So they don’t worry about it too much.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: Ron DeSantis wanted so badly to be Trump 2.0, but he just doesn’t have whatever “it” factor Trump has that makes him every asshole’s favorite alpha asshole.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: There’s a good chance this is going to be my last car that burns gasoline. It depends mostly on how easy it is to get some decent charging infrastructure in here (we don’t have a garage and our electric feed is kind of crap).
Chief Oshkosh
@Geminid: There for a minute I almost cared, but then I saw that Burchett is a Republican. So, one shitstain kidney punching another shitstain. Here’s hoping for more.
smith
@Matt McIrvin: We’re not terrorists, but we’re perfectly capable of flooding the streets and staying there, in numbers that the police are pretty much unable to suppress. We’ve done it any number of times, and at times it has made a difference.
Chief Oshkosh
@sixthdoctor:
Godamnit Bernie, mind your own fucking business!
Matt McIrvin
@smith: The police, no, but the military could reduce any crowd of protesters of any size to hamburger if they got the order and had the will to comply. In 2020, they didn’t have the will to comply. But I’m going to be watching what Trump does to the leadership if he gets back in.
We talk about how we don’t recognize this country, but remember that two weeks after the Kent State killings, a substantial majority of Americans thought the victims had it coming. A bunch of those people are still alive and are part of Trump’s base.
Kay
@Kathleen:
Partly it’s ideological. They prefer redistribution policy to high(er) wage policy which I think is a mistake because in my experience it’s not how working class people see themselves – essentially it tells them “none of the work you do is valuable so here’s a food voucher”. They don’t want the food voucher. They want the work that they do to be recognized and rewarded. Sherrod Brown has an entire speech built around this – to me it’s why he’s a liberal not a Leftist. I think it’s how they are supposedly the voice of the working man yet end up with such weirdly upper middle class causes, like student loan forgiveness. Wage increases, union membership and full employment are much, much more important to low and middle income than student loan forgiveness is but student loan is redistribution so they fall in love with it.
I guess I can’t take a “Leftist” seriously if he or she has no interest in labor unions or wages. WTF. Way to make yourselves irrelevant.
Ruckus
@Lapassionara:
Make it make sense!
Impossible.
They are not searching to be leaders, they are searching to be successful. And like SFB they think that money is what makes one successful. And yes, there is some amount of money that everyone needs to live a reasonable life. That amount is a lot smaller than some think/desire/demand. And for some, one of which we have as an example NOT to follow (SFB), that amount is a lot larger than some think/desire/demand. And don’t get me wrong, money is nice and makes life easier, but excess money does not equal life. It is as old a story as humanity and a goal for many, who can’t see past their bank(s) statement(s).
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
Too easy. :-D
@H.E.Wolf:
Who’s on first; I think which is long relief.
sixthdoctor
@Chief Oshkosh: I did not know that Senator Mullin was a former MMA fighter, but of course he was.
Evergreen comment: https://tenor.com/view/letter-kenny-coach-embarrassing-gif-15066608
Ruckus
@Nora:
When power is the only goal, to answer your question, for many, the answer is NO.
Splitting Image
@Manyakitty:
I noticed the same thing at the grocery store this morning and at my other store on the weekend. Bananas, noodles and potatoes were back to 2020 prices. Cheese, meat and desserts were still very high, but there is definitely some price-cutting going on.
This is local anecdata, of course, but if it’s the start of a trend it will start to show up in year-over-year figures.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Believe it or not, Erik Loomis is pretty good on this subject (I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since this is the area where he is actually an academic expert). He’s very skeptical of the kind of leftism that goes on about “bullshit jobs” and wants to shift to most people living on a post-scarcity dole of universal basic income, in part because he regards it as techbro bullshit, in part because he thinks a lot of people get some kind of meaning to their lives from the work they do. His commenters often vocally disagree.
Bill Arnold
@smith:
There are other non-violent methods, too. Some countries do general strikes, for example. There’s strong academic literature arguing that history shows that non-violent methods are more effective than violent methods at generating changes in their favor.
Also, directed sabotage of various sorts is non-violent in the normal sense. Some is even legal; boycotts, market manipulation, influence operations of various sorts, and the like.
Eunicecycle
@Kay: I’ve had anti-abortion people tell me that doctors will abort for the MENTAL health of the mother, so doctors will destroy a healthy baby at 8 months of pregnancy if the mother wants it. Of course that’s nonsense; the very most they might do is deliver the baby early but I am not sure that’s even standard of care for a very mentally ill mother.
Manyakitty
@Splitting Image: oh yeah, and I got 2 liters of pop for $1.00 each.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
That has a strong whiff of “how hard it is to get good servants these days.”
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
There are eight billion people in this world that we and the ‘pro-lifers’ at least theoretically agree are people whose lives matter. And then there’s maybe a million abortions in the U.S. each year, where we don’t agree on the personhood of the embryo or fetus being aborted.
The “pro-lifers” have demonstrated over and over again that they don’t give a damn about the lives of the eight billion, but only the ~1M fetuses and embryos. So it’s no surprise that the health of the mother is of zero importance to them. Nobody else’s is either.
schrodingers_cat
@Sister Golden Bear: I agree. He can say and do what would get them in trouble that’s why they like him. He makes its okay to show your bigotries out in the open.
JMG
@lowtechcyclist: Restauranteurs are almost uniformly conservative politically (Jose Andres a big exception of course) and the higher end their joint, the more pronounced that tendency is. Comes with the territory of living off the disposable income of others, I guess. It’s all kind of in the word “catering.”
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: Mom and pop service industry is ground zero of “no one wants to work any more!”
Citizen Alan
@Ken: One of the most enraging things in the world to me is half-literate cretins (and sometimes fully literate cretins who don’t understand what they read) who constantly praise “the genius of capitalism” and condemn “the evils of socialism” and then scream like banshees when they get hurt because capitalism worked exactly the way it’s supposed to and they’re angry that the government isn’t making things better when the only thing they could possibly do would be to enact socialist policies.
You think the cost of gas and food is too high? Do you want Biden to set price caps to bring them down like they would in a socialist country? Do you want Biden to nationalize the oil sector so that you only pay the real price of gas with no profits tacked on? No? Then shut the fuck up!
Kathleen
@Kay: I agree. The other area where they’ve shown their glutes is health care. You’ve commented eloquently here before how their ignoring of Medicaid Expansion which was designed to help working people was a clue about their motivations.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: So true! And “Health of the mother” needs to be kept purposefully vague so that doctors always have a defensible position
Let doctors do the doctoring. Not Nikki Haley or whatever retrograde justice Trump nominates.
MisterForkbeard
@Sister Golden Bear: None of the other contenders have that same unearned wealth, sliminess, the particular combination of racism and sexism, and a complete and utter lack of morals. Trump resonates because he’s ALL of their worst impulses combined.
The other candidates all have pieces of this, but not much. If Trump goes, they’ll find another strongman but he’ll be someone pathetic like DeSantis, McCarthy, or Scott who flames out on the slightest actual competition.
cain
@OzarkHillbilly: Everyone of them should be booked for murder.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: What they believe is that liberal policies somehow made this happen. Gas is too expensive because environmentalist treehuggers wouldn’t let us DRILL BABY DRILL, and food is too expensive because all the workers are on welfare gettin’ obese eatin’ fudge rounds. It sounds at least superficially plausible so it’s difficult to educate them about cause and effect.
cain
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Didn’t they come up with the first electric car the Ev1? As you said, it takes about 5 years to work out all the software bugs. Hopefully, they’ll still keep the software platform for other EV cars.
It’s why I still bought a Tesla even though there were other options. Elon Musk aside, they worked out the bugs over the past 10 years or so. EV is all about software so I picked the most mature platform for that.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not sure this is a fixable perception problem.
It mostly is not, for the simple reason that most people, while they can view things right in front of them, have very limited vision. The big picture, nope. Hell the medium picture, nope. They aren’t necessarily shallow, they just have little actual need to see more than a quick glance while spinning in place. IOW their world is absolutely no bigger than it absolutely needs to be. Also absolutely no more complicated than it absolutely needs to be. IOW what is right in front of their faces, screaming. It isn’t that they can’t see more, it’s that they don’t want to. They want to drive their $50K (or more) pickup truck to the store for a six pack and they want the gas to cost less than the beer. They want to be like everyone else, by thinking that everyone else should be like them. It is of course not actual life but it is the one they want.
Origuy
@schrodingers_cat: There was a nun named Sister Wendy who had a show on PBS about art history. She wrote a number of books about it. The first one I found was Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting. Her full name was Wendy Beckett. I’m sure her books would be a fun read, the shows were very entertaining.
laura
@schrodingers_cat: this book is fascinating: https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/fabric-civilization and this book is unforgettable: https://archive.org/details/preraphaelitesin00daly
I’m joining the chorus for Janson’s art history- it’s the go to for a reason. My color theory teacher (Gioia Fonda😍) assigned each of us a color to research and share at an ersatz classroom cocktail and dinner party. I had azurite and made a fez. It was hard coming up with an azurite food item though.
Helen
@Kay: You are so right about working class people. Most take pride in their work and feel that they deserve their pay. They don’t want handouts, it makes them feel less than other adults.
Subsole
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s also not helped by the fact they know plenty of folks in their communities who are doing that shit, milking the system, and being generally corrupt.
I think it’s why a lot of them fall for conspiracy garbage.
If you are ruled in all matters, from business to church to school, by shadowy Good Ole Boy networks, then the idea of the Illuminati, the Good Ole Boy Network to Rule them All, becomes a lot more plausible.