A model for us all!
"Before we get going, are there any Moms for Liberty in the house? No? Good. then hands will not need to be thrown tonight."
Host LeVar Burton kicks off this year's National Book Awards ceremony. #NBAwards pic.twitter.com/tQtLj8azGS
— Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) November 16, 2023
President Joe delivers:
Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled late Wednesday that China will send new pandas to the United States, calling them “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.” https://t.co/cvM6NfNWiQ
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) November 16, 2023
Biden at last night's presser:
1) He looks, sounds, "reads as," and is … old.
2) He also walked across an absolute minefield of issues and Qs — PRC/Taiwan, detente-but-diff w Xi, Gaza, Ukr, etc—without any missteps.
#2 is much harder than it seem. He is still doing the job.
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) November 16, 2023
??NEW VIDEO??
On Nov. 5, 2024, American democracy will be in imminent danger if we don't unite.
Democracy needs you ????#TomorrowIsTooLate pic.twitter.com/r8Bt4bXUBZ
— Eleven Films (@ElevenFilms) November 16, 2023
Dangerman
OK, it’s early and caffeine levels are … at ZERO? Shit, gotta do something about that immediately …
… but that statement makes no sense to me. What am I missing?
And, sure, maybe Biden got us some new Pandas, but has anyone thought about all that Panda Poo? Terrible. Baud 2024.
Dagaetch
@Dangerman: ’throwing hands’ is slang for fight. But frankly, if LeVar says it, you can just assume it’s cool and nod along like you understand.
Frankensteinbeck
@Dangerman:
He means that Moms For Censorship are not welcome at the book awards and if they were there, he would be tempted to punch them, also known as ‘throwing hands’.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
HinTN
Glad to see Fallows’ summary of the presser. Did not watch and had not heard. Good on the Prez!
ETA: Good morning @rikyrah:
Scout211
Thanks, AL. That Eleven Films video is awesome. Challenging people to get involved using their social media platforms to inform others and become active to save democracy is a good move.
But the voter who wasn’t aware that the end of Roe v Wade was a SCOTUS decision and assumed it was BIDEN’s decision? Yikes, we’ve got a lot of work to do in the next 11 months.
Dangerman
Cool. Now it’s Levar 2024. Sorry Baud.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Dog Mom
@AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team: I’ve got to say thanks for the link to this absurd Irish artist’s video – It gave me a much needed laugh. I’ve had a rough week and insomnia hasn’t helped – it wasn’t Bezos, but some other Vulture Capitalists that took over my company last week and by now have riffed a significant portion of the employees including my whole team. Coldly got the news with 100+ others via a ‘Zoom’ meeting. Company was financially doing well with great potential for growth – I was with a great team and feeling good. Actually, I think I’m will be glad to be gone if this is the new management.
rikyrah
@Dangerman:
Levar Burton is Reading Rainbow.
The Hoes for Hitler and their book bans are against everything he stands for
Baud
I don’t think any Republican voters are dumb enough to blame Republican presidents for everything bad that happens in their watch.
Sorry, but that’s solely a problem for Team Blue. We have to deal with it, but we should be honest about it.
Suzanne
I got back home last night after four long and unpleasant days of on-site client meetings/work dinners. All I have mental space for right now are the pandas.
The Oracle of Solace
The Eleven Films short speaks to me. I’ve been making that content since the Mueller Report four years ago. Zero budget and only a few hundred viewers, but damn, it is nice to vent when all this gets to be too much, and I suppose every little bit helps.
Matt McIrvin
That abortion-rights response reminds me very much of the students who stopped supporting Biden when the Supreme Court killed his first student-loan-forgiveness plan–they assumed he’d somehow killed it, or that he could have prevented that from happening.
Many Americans really do not have enough basic civics understanding to know how the government works and they think the President is a kind of King whose word is law. Trump actively encouraged that attitude, of course. But democracy doesn’t work that well unless there’s some understanding of cause and effect on the part of the voters.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Ugh. I’m exhausted just reading that. Hate meetings and clients.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Again, not Americans. Some liberals. Do you think any MAGA would blame Trump for something someone else did?
Eunicecycle
@Scout211: isn’t it incredible, that people still don’t know how government works? I thought news reports were clear that it was the states enacting abortion bans, after the SC said there was no federal right. I remember a co-worker years ago blaming our state government for problems with Social Security.
H.E.Wolf
Excerpts from last night’s Four Directions Zoom chat with OJ Semans (co-founder, and a member of the justly famous Rosebud Sioux tribe) and Bret Healy:
FYI: Matching-funds drive in progress! https://balloon-juice.com/2023/11/16/fundraising-for-four-direction-in-montana-a-match-and-an-angel-match-with-new-rules/
Four Directions is prioritizing 5 states for GOTV in 2024: NV, AZ, GA, WI, and MT. They use relational organizing, they pay their organizers, and their organizers are tribal members.
https://www.impactive.io/blog/relational-organizing-faqs
NV, AZ, GA, and WI are states where the Native American population is large enough to make a difference (and has!) – and Four Directions has prior experience in all 5 of those states. A few of MT’s election officials were very contentious the last time Four Directions was there (2012); Four Directions is eager to return.
2024 will mark 100 yrs since the passage of the Indian [sic] Citizenship Act in 1924, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the USA. Per OJ: “tribes are going to want to get in on the voting action to celebrate that anniversary”.
Per Bret, re: the GOTV prospects in MT: Blackfeet Nation is the largest Native tribe in MT (and is in Republican US Rep. Zinke’s district in Western MT). Butte is an historic labor town; there are college towns; “and then there are all those CA residents moving to MT”. :)
ETA:
2nd3rd try w/ linksThere go two miscreants
@Baud: It’s not that the MAGAs have a better understanding of how the government works, it’s that tribalism is much stronger on that side than on most of ours.
Matt McIrvin
@Eunicecycle: I think most people only pay even the barest amount of attention even to news reports–they might hear headline summaries but nothing else. They’re too busy just surviving.
Matt McIrvin
(There has also been some speculation from liberals about Biden softpedaling his support for abortion rights out of a personal moral objection to abortion. It’s true that he hasn’t been the most vehement advocate on the issue.)
Baud
@There go two miscreants:
Whatever the reason, the net result is that it is solely a Team Blue problem.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Those are liberals who would prefer abortion remain an unresolved issue that they can pontificate about.
OzarkHillbilly
‘Astounding’: Alabama woman with two uteruses is pregnant in both wombs
Ugh.
Double Ugh.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Eunicecycle:
Alas, all too predictable and part of the plan. At least 2 generations of GOP efforts to strangle public education are in full display here with lack of basic civics understanding, aka, an ignorant citizenry is easier to control. What we’re seeing is 2-3 generations of people who lack critical thinking skills and basic understandings of how things work. These people are easy to sway when it comes to voting and in the case of the GOP, such morans run for office and win.
Or as Garrison Keillor (I know, I know) said years ago:
“If you attack public schools, you are attacking the mortar that holds western civilization together. This means you are not a conservative, you are a vandal”.
eclare
@Dog Mom:
I am sorry to hear that, it is so disappointing when the company culture around a job you like changes for the worse. Believe me I know. Best wishes. Only advice: I waited too long to get out.
H.E.Wolf
@H.E.Wolf:
Personal win! I went 3 rounds with the Comments software, and successfully posted notes from last night’s Zoom with Four Directions. See my prior comment for details….
Eunicecycle
@Matt McIrvin: that’s true. I know my adult kids run things by me, because they know I pay attention. My son-in-law even called me while standing in line to vote last week, to make sure he was supposed to vote Yes on Issue 1 (Ohio’s Reproductive Freedom Issue). (We had to vote No on an Issue 1 just a few months ago.)
eclare
@Eunicecycle:
Wow. I know I should not be surprised after the whole “keep the gov’t out of my Medicare!” screechfest, but wow. It’s sad. You wonder who people would vote for if they had some basic understanding of gov’t. Schoolhouse Rock needs to come back with a SCOTUS song ASAP.
eclare
@H.E.Wolf:
Thank you for reporting back!
Chris
The Chinese are just trying to panda to us.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Remember the people pushing this were educated in the Christian equivalent of a madras, think The West means “white” and the Flintstones is an a historical documentary. Probably less they want dumb voters, more they resent those kids being right all the time.
Ken
“Naughty Nasty Mean Old Number Nine” doesn’t count?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks for doing that.
eclare
@Eunicecycle:
I will give him that. The voting was confusing between the August and November votes due to GQP ratfuckery. I’m glad he had you as a lifeline.
Jeffro
I’m trying to think how the RW noise machine will spin that Levar Burton quote…hmm…
“NOTED GROOMING ENABLER THREATENS VIOLENCE AGAINST SUBURBAN WOMEN”, something like that? * yawn * (during a segment featuring Scott Baio’s or Kid Rock’s take on it) * double yawn *
ANYway…I had dinner with some colleagues last night and it was a surprise to almost all of them that state support for higher ed has mostly evaporated over the past 25-30 years. And these are people who work in higher ed. Different version of the low/no-info voter issue Bouie is describing, but I was shocked. These are educated people, people! Ah well…
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Dog Mom: That sounds super stressful. Take care of yourself.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris: Ouch.
Scout211
Maybe that’s true for him personally but I also think that his campaign strategy is following more traditional line of waiting until next year to go “big and loud” with his political agenda. That worked for him in 2020 and being an old school politician, it will (hopefully) work again for him.
His surrogates are not holding back, though. VP Harris is clear, big and loud about restoring abortion rights, for one example.
I have to admit I thought Biden ran a really lazy, quiet campaign in 2020 and had little chance to beat the loud mouth who was out there screaming all the time, but he and his team totally surprised me. The closer it came to the election, the bigger and louder he became, even with the social distance required at the time due to COVID.
What I want for Biden to do or say is probably not the right way for him to win re-election. LOL I will try to trust the campaign to advise him on what to say and when to say it.
Just my two cents, worth much less than that, I am aware.
eclare
@Ken:
Hahaha…needs an update.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I wonder about that as the cause, though. The people most likely to support Trump are people old enough that they DID have civics in high school or junior high. Hell, I did. They got the beyond-Schoolhouse-Rock explanation of how all this is supposed to work. But did they retain the information?
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Hell, they don’t even blame him for things he clearly and provably did.
lowtechcyclist
@H.E.Wolf:
Hoping to be dental floss tycoons? ;-)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Anyone can be ignorant. But if they cling to their ignorance after being shown that Biden isn’t responsible for the Supreme Court, they’re not different than anti-vaxxers.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I think you’re mostly right that it’s a Team Blue problem, and that’s because Red is an identity marker in a way Blue never will be because we’re not a homogenous bunch.
That said, I am aware of a MAGA blaming Trump for something Trump didn’t do. It was a pandemic support thing that the state fucked up, not Trump. Anyhoo, when I heard the complaint, I just nodded and said, “Right? That BASTARD!!!” ;-)
OzarkHillbilly
Yeah but kids these days, wanting their onerous school loans forgiven like a bunch of lazy moochers.
skerry
Eleven films non-Xtwitter link for those who are avoiding X
Matt McIrvin
@Scout211: The scariest thing in 2020 was that, pre-COVID-vaccine, the Democrats basically abandoned on-the-ground retail campaigning, whereas the Republicans were willing to ignore that COVID existed and just go out and do it. That lopsided advantage won’t be there any more in 2024 as long as we don’t let it exist.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Haha.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Some Democratic state organizations and independent groups did door to door campaigning throughout the summer. The DNC finally relented on door to door campaigning in October of 2020, after getting yelled at for months..
The Georgia Democratic Party was very active door to door for the Senate runoffs. A friend told me how he would ring a doorbell, leave literature on the porch, and step back. If someone answered he would talk briefly from 8 feet away
I thought party volunteers could have done this the preceding months, and should have. The single most important way of mitigating the Covid crisis was bearting Trump, and we almost did not pull that off.
Brit in Chicago
@OzarkHillbilly: I suspect that this kind of thing is why someone on the doorstep, preferably a neighbor or someone else you know, is so much more effective than TV ads. But it may also give a clue as to what kinds of ads would work.
Spanky
Actual headline of the latest Dana Milbank column. I suspect Dana wrote that headline himself.
Quote is a gift link, btw.
SteveinPHX
@Suzanne: Only meetings I like anymore are where all seating has been removed from the room and there is a big timer on the wall!
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
Milbank used to be pretty much the same as any other Villager, but he’s been off the reservation for awhile now, thank goodness.
narya
@Matt McIrvin: @Geminid: What I thought was surprisingly effective, though, was the virtual convention. I absolutely loved the video voting, with folks showing up from around the country with a huge variety of backgrounds. It was WAY more interesting than any Dem convention I’ve seen–I usually don’t bother, because they’re so tedious (to me). I also thought it was a great highlight of the diversity within the party.
That said, I’m otherwise completely ignorant about what works to inform people and get people out to vote–I do postcards, because it doesn’t involve actually talking to people in person (or on the phone).
Nelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Totally unlike MTG and Chuck Grassley who had their PPE loans (high amounts) totally forgiven for…reasons. I mean, didn’t they know that they were taking loans, not grants. Oh, well, a hundred thou here, a million there. It’s not like is was serious money, like $10,000 to someone starting out.
H.E.Wolf
Cute song lyric reference! Good ol’ Frank Zappa. :-)
That said, the Four Directions folks have great senses of humor, AND they are super-serious about ensuring that Native American tribal members – a strongly Democratic voting bloc – can exercise their right to vote.
As Bret Healy said, in a more serious moment last night: “Reservation populations are under-counted and under-registered – obstacles still include ‘border town’ racism circa 1865”.
Another Scott
@narya: Agreed – that was very well done.
Some sort of hybrid approach would be good – letting viewers see people and voters from all across the country (and the world) while letting people interact and get ideas and inspiration in person, is important. It’s really hard to do good video meeting, though. But, of course, it’s really hard to do productive meetings with thousands of people in person, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@OzarkHillbilly: Hatcher?!! She gets my sincerest condolences. Too bad that name didn’t register on either of them sooner.
H.E.Wolf
Yes! I thought it was wonderful, for the same reasons. Thanks for the reminder of a memorable event!
zhena gogolia
In case of further controversy, I have to do some work now so won’t be commenting for a while.
ETA: Oops, wrong thread.
eclare
@narya:
I loved those videos from across the country. They were a great showcase of America.
IIRC Rhode Island had a weirdly funny video.
Jeffro
I don’t have a subscription, electronic or otherwise, but just saw this via Twitter: the Economist calls Donald trumpov the “greatest single danger to the world in 2024”
(anyone have a gift link?)
holy cow
Well, we did ask for them to report on the stakes and not the odds(!)
frosty
@Suzanne: Work dinners? No, just no. They don’t* pay me to put up with clients after eight hours. Still better than work breakfasts (shudder).
* didn’t
Jeffro
also via Twitter (some FP-er will have to post the link): Randy Rainbow’s latest on “Georgy Gurl” George Santos is MAG-NI-FIQUE!!!
side-splitting
satby
Had to come back and share this article on what years of gerrymandering plus term limits have done to Ohio. Pure Kay bait 😉
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: I don’t trust him–he claimed that a level 2 diagnostic on the warp core, EPS conduits and matter-antimatter intermix chamber would take 3 hours, and I know he’s not capable of that level of incompetence.
frosty
@lowtechcyclist: Frank Zappa, you have a legacy!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
And how exactly did he regain his sight? Suspicious.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Wow. That goes against everything Balloon Juice stands for.
Eunicecycle
@satby: my brother accepted a job with DP&L back in the late 70s, to work down in Adams County, where Manchester is. He and his wife went down there to look at houses, and were so discouraged by what they saw even then that he turned down the job. That area has been neglected for a very long time, yet consistently votes Republican.
sab
@satby: Yep. I live in Ohio and I have seen it close up.
BellyCat
Brilliant. Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.
Since Garrison Keillor’s homespun schtick appeals to so many “Traditional Moderate Conservatives”, this should be shouted from the rooftops.
Quinerly
@frosty:
Totally unrelated to anything . ….I’m planning a trip over to NV and CA after 3/14. Valley of Fire SP, Hoover Dam on the way out. Then several days in and around Death Valley and 4 nights in a cabin at King’s Canyon NP and as a base for Sequoia NP and Sequoia National Monument. After that, nights in Bakersfield and Needles on the way back. Any tips/suggestions?
No Yosemite on this trip. Plus, I went years ago. What destinations for you for your upcoming travels?
Steeplejack
@Chris:
I can’t bear to hear this.
(Okay, that’s my NotMax contribution in for the year. The deadline was starting to weigh on me.)
danielx
@Scout211:
If this is a typical voter, we are doomed.
MomSense
WTF how did that voter not know that state abortion bans are decided at the state level? Apparently didn’t know that they were given the green light by SCOTUS thanks to decades of Republican packing the courts. Trump even bragged about getting it done.
And another WTF about the economy. Why do so many people think the economy is on the wrong track?!?!
RaflW
@Matt McIrvin: “Democracy doesn’t work that well unless there’s some understanding of cause and effect on the part of the voters.”
You’re laying out the exact, if unspoken, case for why GOPs are forever wanting to cut education funding, push vouchers for unregulated parochial schools, etc.
RaflW
@Baud: They definitely gave him credit for things he didn’t do.
Citizen Alan
@Spanky: While that was delicious to read and i’m happy to see dana millbank inside the tent pissing out for a change, the whole time I was reading that article,I could still hear the words “mad bitch beer” echoing in the back of my head, I will never have the slightest respect for millbank or any of his ilk until he publicly apologizes for being part of the deranged hate campaign against Hillary Clinton that dominated our worthless whore media for the last 30 years.
geg6
@eclare:
This is where I am. I have lost all confidence in the new president of the university and her hand picked minions. Our new campus’ acting chancellor is better than her predecessor, but that’s very, very, very faint praise. My new supervisor is in over his head and it’s showing.
I was planning on retiring in about 2-3 (maybe even 4) years. I have great affection for most of my co-worker and students, I have loved this job in the 25 years I’ve been here and I feel pretty young and healthy for 65. I am seriously reconsidering because the entire university and campus culture has become something I’m not very comfortable with at this point.
But I still want to work. So I am thinking very much about what I might do if I retired. I don’t want the level of responsibility that I have now but I certainly don’t want to do anything that isn’t somewhat of a challenge. I just started looking at possibilities and, if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I really want out.
Suzanne
@frosty: Work dinners can be okay. Sometimes you have a social breakthrough that carries over to work and makes the team stronger. Sometimes shit gets weird. One of these….. shit got weird. (Coworker announced to the team that his girlfriend was pregnant…. despite them using two forms of protection.)
Subcommandante Yakbreath
This may already have been addressed here , but today is the last day for comments on the Office of Personnel Management proposed rule to pull the teeth of TFG’s Schedule F, and prevent him from replacing public service jobs with political patronage appointments. I just put in my $.02 here.
teezyskeezy
@Matt McIrvin: Whelp, at least the Trump/Heritage plan will make them correct in their understanding. They don’t want to learn, so they’ll collapse all that civic stuff into how they think it works.
Geminid
@narya: I am glad the virtual convention was very effective. I was one of the 90-plus percent of potential Democratic voters who did not watch it.
In-person campaigning is designed to reach as many of those voters as possible. If Joe Biden had not won- and he almost didn’t- Democrats would have been up in arms about the the Party ceding this important playing field to Republicans.
teezyskeezy
@Suzanne: Was inebriation involved in that announcement? An uncomfortable discussion of Michaelango’s “artistic choices” for his David sculpture started a work dinner I attended (due to people having too much wine), and it got weird.
sab
@Eunicecycle: DP&L?? Dayton Power and Light?
Miss Bianca
@Dog Mom: So sorry to hear this.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: Obviously, his sight was cured by George Santos!
RaflW
@Jeffro: This is both terrifying, and a blanket indictment of basically the entire press-media system in the United States: “Several polls have him ahead of President Biden … in one, for the New York Times, 59% of voters trusted him on the economy, compared with just 37% for Mr Biden.”
The economy was in utter tatters when Orangemandias was crowbarred out of office. Yeah, we’ve had some inflation the last few years, but goddamit the economic recovery has been impressive, and we didn’t veer into the predicted recession.
I know the whole “Repubs are good for business” LIE has been propagated for a century, but ffs we cannot have meaningful elections if people are so willfully misinformed on how the GOP f*cks up the economy every time they have the White House, and Democrats fix it.
Every. Damn. Time.
Gaaahhhh! I’m choking on my apoplexy.
Layer8Problem
@Steeplejack: I’m gonna say it, you used the diaeresis twice in today’s dank grey pre-dawn thread, you magnificent bahstid. Stuff like this is why I keep coming back here. Oh yeah, and honourable mention for Anne Laurie’s spelling of gray as “grey”.
frosty
@Quinerly: Thanks for asking! We’ve got our (counts fingers) 10th Annual Snowbird Road Trip reservations done for February. We’re thinking this might be our last Florida trip until the politics turn around (keep fighting, Betty!). Summer plans aren’t set – I’d like to do one more cross-continent trip through the Canadian Rockies and see the Washington National Parks, but I haven’t gotten off my butt to start looking at reservations yet.
Last year we skipped the long trip and did short ones to Key West via AutoTrain, Hawaii (my 50th state!), and Maine. We’ll probably fit in a couple shorter ones in 2024, but I don’t know where yet.
Be sure to take the walk out to see The Wave at Valley of Fire. It’s accessible unlike the one in Escalante NM.
If you can add a couple of days to your trip, swing by Anza-Borrego State Park SW of Palm Springs. There are a couple of good hikes and 4WD drives. Plus the Sky Sculptures in Borrego Springs:https://www.springsatborrego.com/metal-sculptures-in-borrego-springs/
Miss Bianca
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks for the update! Four Directions sounds amazing, hope I can join the next Zoom!
Suzanne
@teezyskeezy: Like, I think he had had a cocktail…. but he want wasted. He’s just kind of a weird guy.
Baud
@MomSense:
The wrong people are benefitting from it.
Eunicecycle
@sab: well whatever the power company was back then. The article mentioned them leaving and taking jobs so I made the assumption that’s who it was. Hey it was 40 years ago!
eclare
@geg6:
I am sorry for you too. I started a great job in 2004, and I thought I would retire from there. Around 2012, the leadership of my dept changed along with the culture. Cost-cutting became focus number one. There was a voluntary buy out, and I was an idiot and did not take it. I finally left in 2015.
It really sucked. If there is any whiff of a voluntary buy out at your university, hang on and take it.
Geminid
@Quinerly: If you did not catch the Lowell Observatory last time you were in “Flag,” it’s worth a stop. Even an hour walking the grounds would be worthwhile, and a good break from driving. I bet it’s nice this time of year.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense:
There’s been a huge amount of speculation about that. I think it’s a few things:
1. The spike of inflation really freaked people out, and inflation perception is sticky because people define “inflation” as “prices are higher than I expect”–even when it’s over, the prices haven’t gone back down so people think inflation is still terrible.
2. Same but with gasoline prices specifically. In most of the country, they’re off their max of a little while ago but still higher than people expect. And all these people who bought monstro SUVs that get 15 mpg when gas was cheap are now upset about it.
3. Really low unemployment actually bothers a lot of middle-class people and especially small-business owners; it means there’s not a big enough pool of desperate people to exploit.
4. A large fraction of the population simply define “bad economy” as “a Democrat is President”. They will selectively believe that economic statistics are fake or real depending on who the President is.
Frankensteinbeck
@RaflW:
I can’t give you this one. It has nothing to do with understanding of civics. It’s about ownership of their children, and restricting their children’s access to outside influences. The more inclusive education gets, the more conservatives work to sabotage it. In the 80s the evangelicals noticed their children leaving the cult in droves and got really hardcore.
Kay
It was different because we were working off good lists – voters who actually vote instead of these weirdos media finds- and it was a referendum on reproductive rights but people knew the GOP opposed repoductive rights and Democrats supported it. I talked to several hundred people and not a one was confused about that.
What I heard was kind of amazing really – I heard stories. Lots and lots and lots of stories, about miscarriages or miracle births or custody battles or infertility (an underappreciated concern of people with these bans) or abortions. This is really personal to people in a way nothing I have ever worked on before was. I have never had so many people (well, 90% women) just open a vein and tell me really personal things like this before in the context of canvassing. Just a wild experience.
eclare
@teezyskeezy:
Holy shit! The worst case of inebriation at a work dinner that I attended was this guy going off on how Paul Walker was a terrible actor. And he would not let it go, even though no one was arguing with him. Pretty funny, actually.
Your discussion sounds like a possible call to HR.
Baud
@Kay: Good to hear. We should be cautious to imbibing what the media feeds us. Social media isn’t reality, and traditional media also isn’t reality.
Suzanne
@Baud: People think the economy is on the wrong track largely because their housing is ludicrously expensive. Over a third of renters are officially rent-burdened, which is a record high. And people who have good mortgage rates often feel like they’re stuck and can’t move.
kindness
re- that NY Times tweet about a person who thought Biden was responsible for Roe v Wade being tossed… With all due respect, that NY Times reporter would have to scour 100 midwestern diners to find a person so ignorant that they thought abortion being yanked was a Biden thing. Especially since Trump & Republicans have bragged about it ever since the decision plopped out of the Supreme Courts stinky asshole.
Really I suspect the reporter made the whole thing up. It is the NYT after all.
RevRick
@There go two miscreants: Tribalism? Isn’t that just a fancy term for white supremacy? The modern GOP is the white peoples party, full stop. White people have the luxury of choice regarding party affiliation, and whites who choose to become Democrats are consciously rejecting the default option, because they reject all the ugliness the GOP stands for. Minorities must seek refuge in the Democratic party, which is amenable to their concerns. But interests in the Democratic party don’t always align. Doing justice is the right thing, but discerning what is best in any situation is hard.
Chief Oshkosh
@Dog Mom: I am sorry to hear that that happened to you and your team.
Baud
@Suzanne: That seems to be turning around slowly.
U.S. housing starts rise for the second straight month – MarketWatch
Anyway, maybe a shady real estate developer will build some housing for them. I don’t care anymore. I’m done seeing good, hardworking people being taken for granted.
Paul in KY
@Dangerman: Hands would be used to toss them out of the event?
eclare
@Suzanne:
Very good and overlooked point. I bought my house in Memphis in 2005, there is no way I could afford it now based on neighborhood sales.
I moved to ATL after college in 1990 and had a nice apt with a decent commute (twenty minutes). I suspect that does not exist anymore unless you are in the top 10%, especially with college debt.
MattF
@Spanky: Milbank used to be buddies with Chris Cillizza, but apparently no longer— I think his current writings underline that. I agree that he should directly address his Hillary Problem, though.
sdhays
@rikyrah: Levar Burton is a national treasure. I’ve loved him since I was a child watching Reading Rainbow (and then later when I started watching ST:TNG). His podcast is fantastic; I regret that I’m not able to listen to it like I used to. He’s such a good narrator and picks such fantastic books.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: I didn’t even know (till today) that women could have 2 uteruses and 2 cervixes! Wow!
Paul in KY
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I wonder if the person in question had ‘personal ratfuckers’ feeding her incorrect info? People who knew it was a state thing, yet go on about how it’s all Pres Biden’s fault, etc. etc.
Edit: Personal Ratfuckers would be a good band name.
Hoodie
@lowtechcyclist: We recently had a waitress at a local restaurant in NC who hailed from Bozeman. She called it “Bozefornia.”
sdhays
@Baud: It wasn’t always so. Republican voters punished Republicans for the 2008 financial crisis and Iraq. Of course, that was before the cultification of the Republican Party.
Kay
I think almost everyone has a “birth or pregnancy story” even if you’re a man with no children you were, in fact, born so you can come at it from that. I think what I saw happening is what I have wanted for a long time – for abortion to be put in context – in the context of healthcare, in the context of pregnancy, in the context of infertility and custody and families because it is now and has always been much bigger than “abortion”. And people (thank God) seem to get that in a way that lawyers (both those on the Right who write the bans and those on the Left who think they can silo this into a narrow focus on “abortions”, don’t.)
They’re telling me about family problems and infertility and how people in their family always give birth in the car because they deliver in 10 minutes because they recognize the broader context. They recognize that these laws reach all of that. You cannot rationally discuss best practices treatment for miscarriage without talking about the health of the mother! You can’t write that out of a law and announce it no longer exists. It still exists. She’s still there and she still needs proper healthcare that will preserve her health.
I read that the anti abortion “movement” marginalized their grass roots crazies and turned management over to fancy lawyers. You can tell. They’re fucking narrow and basically idiots outside their specific field os study, which is not “womens health care” but is “Right wing laws”.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: How about: ‘Radical Black LGBTQQ Man Threatens to Pummel God Fearing White Mothers’
OzarkHillbilly
@Paul in KY: Yeah, neither did I. Over at OTB commenter Scott did the math and found that, “At .3% that would be about 500,000 women in the US alone that would have that condition.”, which is rather astounding to me. Maybe he misplaced the decimal. If so, 50,000 is still astounding.
Hoodie
@eclare: You would be correct. A one-bedroom place near downtown can run 1800-2500, towards the upper end if it’s in midtown or near The Beltline.
Lyrebird
Wish I had more suggestions. My job is being phased out at my school, I’m a tad younger than the Blogfather, and there is no way I could retire early and feed the fam. Been considering K-12 jobs, training for a new credential… Anyhow, if you see this, would you be interested in talking (emailing) directly to brainstorm? If so, please reply and tell Anne Laurie you want to exchange email addresses. Totes fine if not.
Baud
@sdhays: I guess there is a level of severity that even Republicans won’t tolerate.
I fear we’re going learn next year that the American people prefer Reaganomics over liberal economic policies.
OzarkHillbilly
Hidden landlords: renters’ woes soar as property owners hide their identities
Worth a read.
frosty
@Hoodie: “Bozefornia”. I remember the bumper stickers that said Don’t Californicate Colorado. 1970s maybe?
Lyrebird
Yeah, I still hate the fact that we have to fight back the Handmaid’s Tale enactors, but I hugely appreciate what you’re saying and how thoughtfully you said it. I remain grateful to the right-wing loon with a conscience in SC or somewhere like that who was willing to share his, “ohhhh duhhh I get it now” moment on TV, after learning about the young woman who was at risk of never being able to bear a child bc of the outlawing of abortion care.
I also hate the people who have roped ectopic “pregnancies” into all this, which are not viable and yes fatal.
Hoodie
@Kay: The whole right wing legal project is reminiscence of Scholasticism, i.e., they’re obsessed with semantics and theories of tradition, not the practical effects of laws. Right wing politics as a whole has become a very abstract endeavor, which is particularly ironic when they at the same time rail against elites. They don’t even consider practical consequences when they say they want to do things like immediately zap 70% of social welfare spending or enact severe restrictions on abortion, not even getting to how cruel – and impractical – those policies are in effect. When you marry that to a religious zeal among the followers, it’s very dangerous because they can find a way to justify anything while pretending they’re objective.
frosty
@Kay: Yes, everyone has a birth or pregnancy story. Here’s mine: If these right-wing abortion restrictions were in place 40 years ago my brother and I would both be widowers. These assholes have no idea.
Steeplejack
@Layer8Problem:
Thank you! As with so many other things, computers and the Internet have made a typographer’s dreams come true. We have full access to all the tools of high-end publishing—and we don’t have to go through the tedium of getting the results down in ink on paper. I observe the proprieties with joy!
Baud
@Steeplejack: As they say, porn and typography are the best things about the Internet.
Chris
@Steeplejack:
Tough crowd.
I thought I was pretty good at making puns, but this really gives me paws.
Kay
@Hoodie:
Agree completely. I have been trying to say what you said for a year and failing. I keep seeing it “on the ground” – how the people I’m talking to seem so much more normal than the freaks on the Right.
Sometimes it’s really amusing- the kind of thing I find funny. They had a far Right billboard during Obama that said “where’s the birth certificate?” and when asked people thought it was a PSA – like, locate it, you might need it.
During the 2020 campaign I was spending a lot of time in Michigan and their anti -abortion signs were impossible to decipher. I’m an obsessive and I had to LOOK UP whether they were about abortion. Also? Like a LOT of words for a yard sign! OMG, edit.
marklar
@geg6: ” just started looking at possibilities and, if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I really want out.”
I’m about 5 years behind you (in what I’m guessing is a smaller school….SLAC in PA). My plan is that when I hit 68/69 or so, I’ll make the administration an offer of teaching a 2/0 load for twice typical adjunct pay. That would clear time to travel one semester, still teach a second semester, and have some ‘fun money’ to pay for cameras and lenses (for the travel).
CaseyL
@Subcommandante Yakbreath: Thank you! I put in my comment as well. Among the things I said was that reducing the Federal Government to the instrumentality of an individual would destroy everything from public health to national parks.
(SFB will either sell our national parks off to whoever’s willing to pay him, personally, a couple billion; or take ownership himself to build high-end condos and golf courses in them.)
Jeffro
This.
We know for a fact that GOP voters poll respondents will never, ever respond that they feel the economy is good under a Democratic President.
Hoodie
@Kay: The other thing is that they’ve become very legalistic in their implementation of their agenda. This was somewhat of a fault of the left and center-left in the pre-Dobbs years; because Roe was assumed to provide protection, we kind of gave up on the politics that was needed to keep that compromise in effect. It depended on a particular form of legal thought that originated in the Warren court and, as we found out, was vulnerable to political tactics that allowed the right to capture the Court. Now, the right relies a lot on a particularly perverse and ahistorical form of Constitutional interpretation. Originalism is abject scholastic nonsense to begin with, but it’s absurdity really stands out when taken to the extremes we’ve seen recently in cases like Rahimi. That won’t be sustainable without a political project to back it up, which is why they’re trying to max out the anti-democratic aspects of the structures of American governance.
Jeffro
@Paul in KY: I think that’s the Newsmax chyron, maybe?
Scout211
FYI, the Texas Supreme Court has scheduled arguments in Zurawski v State of Texas for November 28. This is big and we need to watch how the case is argued. From reproductive rights.org
ETA: typos
Jeffro
@geg6:
@Lyrebird:
could I gently suggest that if either of you are interested in working in K-12 education in almost any capacity, there’s never been a better time? PT, FT, teaching, aide, tutor, on and on and on. In almost every school division in the country.
Suzanne
@Baud: It’s good that housing starts are up, but an important thing to keep in mind is that, after 2008, hosing starts dropped off n absolute cliff and took a very long time to even climb back to something resembling normal. And since houses are durable goods, that has decades of downstream effect. We have at least a decade of inventory that is essentially missing.
Add NIMBY shit to that, and we are just…. not adding enough units of any type (expensive or affordable, single-family or apartments, etc) to keep pace with the population. This is a slow-moving disaster.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: “This job would be great if it wasn’t for the fucking customers.”
Geminid
@sdhays: When Albemarle County, Virginia voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2004, it was the first time since the party realignment of the 1970s. I saw that as a sign that Republicans were bleeding supporter from moderate voters. Bush’s stupid and destructive Iraq war had a lot to with starting that process.
That trend continued in Albemarle and suburban counties like it and could be said to have culminated in 2018, when Democrats flipped 40 seats. These were mostly suburban districts, from New Jersey and Virginia to Texas and California and states in between.
The Iraq war did not just discredit the Republican Party among pragmatic moderates; it also discredited the Republican establishment among conservatives. In the war’s aftermath, the populist “Tea Party” movement was a reaction not just to Obama, but to the party establishment. The populists (in alliance with bible thumpers) took over the party in many places before Trump came along, and that repelled even more moderate voters.
Now, Republicans have a real numbers problem, and its leaders know it. I think this is a reason they don’t try to gang up on Trump now; they need his voters to win down-ballot races.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
That was almost painful to read. But necessary. Thanks for sharing.
Suzanne
@eclare: It drives me crazy that people keep forgetting about it. Renters are disproportionately young and in lower income brackets. I guess that’s why people forget about it.
Baud
@Suzanne: With Dems in control of Congress, we passed a massive infrastructure bill that was long overdue. No reason we can’t do the same for housing to help increase supply. It would be a good jobs program too.
Hoodie
@Suzanne: I’d say that’s one of the biggest drags on economic performance now. Interest rates are really not that high in historical terms, it’s just that they’re just high enough to combine with inventory-driven inflation to make real estate investment more difficult. My son, who works in financing real estate developments, told me a year ago that a potential problem with Fed policy was that driving up interest rates might exacerbate some of the inventory problems we’ve had stemming from the 2008 crash and the pandemic. Looks like that might be stabilizing some now, but it might be a good idea for Dems to develop some sort of comprehensive plan to increase housing starts, even if they have to deal with the devil of the real estate development industry and piss off some other constituencies.
Suzanne
@Baud: Agreed, but it’s hard. This is one area that isn’t really clearly ideological and lots of people have lots of feelings about it.
EXAMPLE: I live a blue city now. Summer Lee is my Congresscritter. On the edge of my neighborhood, there’s a multi-family apartment complex under construction. Some percentage of the apartments are supposed to be rented for below-market-rate. A huge cohort of my neighbors don’t want poor people nearby. In another neighborhood, Squirrel Hill (more upscale), they just got the City Council to vote down a proposed eight-story market-rate building because it will affect views of the park and the existing residents don’t think it’s appropriate for a large city park to have high-rises nearby (This would be news to New Yorkers around Central Park). In another neighborhood, those residents got the City Council to defeat a proposed project to replace a shitty old grocery store building surrounded by parking lot with a multi-level apartment building with a grocery store on the ground floor (probably a 5-over-1), citing traffic concerns. These are all urban neighborhoods. This is absolute bullshit. No housing for poor people, no housing for rich people, no housing for middle class people.
lowtechcyclist
@Subcommandante Yakbreath:
Thanks for the reminder! It was definitely worth taking five minutes to submit a comment in favor of the proposed rule.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I’m curious: I know she’s been in Congress for less than a year, but how would you rate Representative Lee?
Baud
@Suzanne: Yeah, lots of hurdles. I don’t think there’s any quick fix.
On topic, but different topic, I saw this in the news a little while ago, and I thought of you.
FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Takes Action to Create More Affordable Housing by Converting Commercial Properties to Residential Use | The White House
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: And what makes that particularly insidious is that rising property values are usually taken as a sign of a “good economy”.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, that’s increasingly going to be a problem with polling in general; there’s a solid two-fifths of the country that simply will not respond “the economy is doing badly” no matter what as long as a Republican is in office, nor “the economy is doing well” no matter what as long as a Democrat is in office.
(You see a similar thing with movies, TV shows, and other cultural events, of all things. It’s increasingly hard to get any functioning reviews of any product that’s tripped the right wing’s wokeness alarm on mainstream websites, because they simply end up drowned in a swarm of “get woke go broke” crap from people who as often as not haven’t even seen the product and aren’t even fans of the franchise/genre/wev).
narya
@Kay: I really appreciate your on-the-ground reporting on this. It has been my suspicion since Dobbs was leaked that that opinion would create a fundamental change in the electorate, and everything you say, plus various elections results, confirm my suspicion. The assholes writing these laws know absolutely nothing about how female anatomy works, all they know is that “but the baybeeez!!11!” screeching got them into office. In addition, so much of the commentariat is male that they have no clue how much RAGE there is out here. And fear–for ourselves, and for others.
Kay
@satby:
Thanks! I’ll read it. David Pepper came out to our Dem group last month. Kind of a big “get” for us- we only have max 8000 D votes in the county and I could only rustle up about 20 people.
He’s really smart and is as insistent and obsessive as I am, so I warmed up to him. As much as I warm up to anyone :)
I think he leans a little too much on gerrymandering to explain the radicalism in the GOP though. There are plenty of non competitive seats on the D side- hell, Pelosis seat was never competitive, and we haven’t turned against democracy.
The two Dem congressional leaders right now are in safe D seats. They’re not nuts. So it isn’t only a lack of competition that is driving this on the Right or we would see it on the Left too.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie: I remember back in the 2000s seeing some fretting about how liberals didn’t connect with the intellectual foundations of their ideology to the extent that conservatives did (“conservatives” here meaning not your lumpen Republican voter, but bowtie-wearing dweebs like George Will, or the kind of guy who constantly quoted Rothbard on the gold standard). The worry was that this was some kind of problem with liberalism. But I think it’s more that liberals judge these things by results rather than by whether the right axiomatic foundation can be found in a 200-year-old book.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie: We had a long period especially after the 2008 crash in which the main problem with interest rates was that they couldn’t go lower than zero, and it caused expectations to get out of whack.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro:
Though in large chunks of the country, there’s also a movement for the organized harassment and persecution of teachers, so it’s a difficult pitch.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree. We have a general sense of what a better society looks like, but are not unified in how to get there either theoretically or practically.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Wow. Liberals not in touch with their own elites, as opposed to liberals being too elite.
It’s always something.
narya
@geg6: @Lyrebird: @Jeffro: A good friend from grad school couldn’t find a Ph.D. academic position–so he got certified for teaching grade school in NY, and has been a much-loved middle-school teacher for 15 years or more. Another friend teaches in the Chicago Community Colleges; she teaches art history, and loves challenging her students.
Baud
@Brachiator: Liberals being too elite is a right wing canard. We have our share of elitists, but not more so than the right or any other sizeable group.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne: Agree. When you look at it overall, the stuff that most people have to pay for:
All of those things have skyrocketed, along with homelessness. Sure, wages have finally gone up for lower wage groups, but they haven’t kept pace for a lot of people in the middle. The increases have stabilized for groceries and gasoline, but we are still at the point that people are shocked to discover the prices of things they hadn’t had to purchase for a while. We need two years for people to mentally adjust, and we don’t have that.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Not unexpected.
I’ll be moving back to Firefox it seems, uBlock Origin is essential for me.
Cheers,
Scott.
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: (1) and (2) are likely correct. I doubt (3) is accurate; it’s more likely that high employment doesn’t tend to bother people as much as inflation because most people are employed. Low inflation and high unemployment are not necessarily bad if you have a job that seems secure. The employment issue that bothers most people is the prospect of employment insecurity, which can occur when you have things like mass layoffs and whole industries being offshored. I don’t think you get a lot of political bang for the buck for 3% vs 5% unemployment otherwise.
Chris
@sdhays:
I would say moderates punished Republicans for Iraq, and Katrina, and the attempt at Social Security privatization, and it slowly trickled from there into the Republican Party. By the time of the 2008 crisis, his ratings were already underwater enough that it wasn’t a huge leap.
But really, I think 2008 was the last call for Republicans who weren’t raving loons or psychopaths, especially the people who were still sentimentally attached to the old school, technocratic, Eisenhower/Rockefeller form of the party. What eight years of Dubya didn’t do, Sarah Palin’s selection for VP did. I know a lot of people who finally realized at that point that it really wasn’t their party anymore and jumped ship.
Baud
@Hoodie:
We might not. But this is an area where a Republican president would get a ton of bang for the buck IMHO.
Hoodie
@Baud: That plays into a Republican narrative that unleashing business resulted in low unemployment. For Dems, it may be viewed as creating phony make work jobs for “those people” and that people don’t provide good service when it’s too easy to get a job.
Jeffro
That’s a pretty media-driven perception, and one that is abating from what my local school contacts tell me. They still have the one-off nutcase RWNJ parents at every school (always did, to tell the truth) but the wingers know that they’re losing the “anti-woke” culture war argument.
I think some of the less insane ones among them must sense just how badly the schools are hurting for teachers, admins, bus drivers, etc, but that’s probably too generous of me – they’re only backing off because it isn’t working.
Anyway, difficult pitch or not, it’s one that must be made. The current recruit/retain numbers are not sustainable. For folks who already have a degree of any kind, there are low- or no-cost pathways to licensure available everywhere. And while the job itself is tough, it’s very rewarding, the benefits are excellent, and the school calendar itself makes for a pretty good quality of life. =)
Jeffro
@narya: that’s fantastic! Please share those experiences far and wide…you never know who might be the next great classroom teacher (and love it!). =)
Ruckus
@Scout211:
A lot of citizens have zero idea how this country works. They get told that the president is responsible for every damn thing that happens on this planet, and that is why one should vote for a conservative president, to conserve our way of life. It is of course 100000% pure bull and shit, but then we have freedom of speech in this country and that means one has the right to speak in bull and shit. It is up to all of us to recognize bull and shit, especially when the person delivering it is trying to get people scared and therefore to vote for the worst of the worst, people who want to conserve the 14th century, who wouldn’t do that if they knew how shitty life was for most everyone back then and which would have included them.
Subsole
@Paul in KY:
“Your own, Personal, Ratfuckers…
Someone to read your polls, someone who knows.”
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: Even without the parents’ rights and other nonsense, teachers get treated like shit in a lot of places, and a lot of young people are reluctant to go into the profession. A friend who works at our local state university says that all of the academic departments are growing except the college of education.
Scout211
Take two has begun:
House Ethics chairman introduces resolution to expel George Santos from Congress
But first, Thanksgiving!
Bill Arnold
@Jeffro:
No gift link, but if you’re willing to ignore their (The Economist’s) paywall, web.archive.org has it.
Quinerly
@frosty: thanks for the suggestions!
What did you think of Death Valley?
Steeplejack
@Chris:
Maybe that’s ursine that you should stop.
Bill Arnold
@satby:
Excellent piece, thanks!
Nelle
@Kay: I refuse to discuss “abortion.” I always use the phrase, reproductive heathcare. Partly because even I was woefully unaware of how intertwined all reproductive healthcare is in terms of medicines and procedures until seeing the fallout of the Texas legislation. No room for politicians or preachers in this.
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
Considering that both the employed and unemployed are humans and have all the peculiarities of the breed, 3-5% unemployment is unlikely to get much lower unless we hire people to be employed, by raising unemployment compensation to a reasonable living wage and pay it in perpetuity. Which seems to be an unreasonable concept to most everyone. Now if there were jobs that paid a living wage for doing nothing, and required no thought, nor effort, nor time, I’d bet we could lower unemployment to very close to zero. But I don’t see that happening without actual magic printing some magic money.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie: When I got my PhD, our department secretary, who had a background in K-12 education, made a pitch that he said he gave to every new doctor to consider going into it.
I thought about it. I think one of my ideal jobs would actually be “high-school science teacher in a world where they treat high-school science teachers better than this one”. But, man, the grief you get.
eclare
@Steeplejack:
Oh gawd!
artem1s
@Scout211:
THIS! right here is the reason so many White women voted for TFG. They live in a Faux News bubble and are told who is to blame and never learn to question anything they hear. Three/four decades of blaming Killary and Clenus or that Blah guy for everything on the planet primed them to pull the lever for the grifter in 2016. Four years of TIFG telling them how YOOOGE and PERFECT and GREAT everything he did (all by himself) primed them to rinse and repeat in 2020. Some of them figured it out and voted for Joe, some of them just stayed home in confusion because TIFG told them mail in ballots were rigged.
I’m so over the moon happy that Dems and Biden’s staff in particular have learned the lesson about those still operating in that bubble. It will still take 4/5 decades of constant work to get to rest though or pull their kids away from the Darkside.
Ken
It’s OK as long as you avoid controversial subjects like evolution, climatology, reproductive biology, thermodynamics, geological ages, astronomy, the metric system, …
artem1s
@Eunicecycle:
you mean like when the Tea Party goobers kept shouting ‘keep the government’s hands off my Medicare?’
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I mean, the entire theory of conservatism is that if what you do keeps faith with the right system of tradition, you will do well. So naturally a conservative intellectual is going to stress going back to the right primary sources, which might even be thousands of years old, and basing everything on the correct axioms.
You see this in the way they attack the liberal program as well: they’ll point out that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, or that the Democratic Party used to be the party of Southern white supremacists seventy years ago, or claim Darwin recanted on his deathbed or whatever, and to liberals, these things just don’t matter a lot–it’s not primarily how we judge ideas.
Chris
@Steeplejack:
I don’t think the issue’s that black and white.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: The other critical part of this is that homeownership is a critically important way of saving money over a lifetime in this country. Buy a house when you’re young, maybe trade up once or twice, maybe downsize, but have it paid off when you’re older. And now we’re making it so difficult to even start that process for an entire generation of young people and that means that they will be fucked over decades from now.
I read a piece lately that quoted an export who said that, if we genuinely wanted to have a well-functioning housing market, one that allowed people to trade up and down, start with something modest because one is young or has not-great credit, move out of town for a job, sand off the dramatic disparities in cost between cities, or downsize but stay in one’s current neighborhood….. we would need 75 MILLION more housing units. That is…. bonkers.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed. Our approach is closer to the scientific method than an appeal to tradition.
Sometimes that ends up being counterproductive, when people go overboard and think old truths are inherently bad.
ETA: To use an imperfect analogy, we would never reject general relativity because it proved Newton’s laws incorrect.
Bill Arnold
@Subcommandante Yakbreath:
Done; thanks for the nudge.
Kay
@Nelle:
The upcoming Texas case is so, so important. I think they are up to 22 women who have joined- they were harmed not because they were seeking an abortion but because they had a complex pregnancy.
The Heritage Foundation are telling GOP politicians they have to come out against medication abortions. I spoke to some of those women too. Ok, the sort of person who uses a medication abortion is 1. very attentive/aware of health (medication abortions are early abortions) 2. predisposed to self help (rather than asking for help) and 3. PRIVATE. They’re also young and not ashamed or burdened with a lot of the bullshit baggage women have where we apologize constantly. Not the kind of women you want to mess with, in other words. I don’t even think we’ve poked that bear yet.
Suzanne
@Geminid: I’m very happy with Summer Lee so far. Every time I see her speak from the House, she’s on point.
Apparently AIPAC wants to spend a bunch of money to defeat her in the next primary. Get fucked, AIPAC.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: The incentives around real-estate prices directly pit older people against younger ones. The moment you own a house you absolutely want its value to become astronomical.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
There’s an entire genre in right-wing commentary in trying to identify The Left Wing “Religion.”
It used to be that Communism was the thing on the left that they identified as being like a religion, which was an idea that at least had something to it, given how totalitarian societies operate. Then the wall came down and, much like Hollywood writers scrambling to find a new stock villain for their action movies, they started looking for all kinds of new concepts that they identified as The Left’s Religion: Environmentalism, Political Correctness, Darwinism, and (of course) Islam.
It just simply does not compute in their heads that there could be entire hordes of human beings out there who don’t relate to their worldview that way.
Baud
@Chris:
Consistent with the theme of it’s always projection.*
*It’s of course always possible to find outliers, since liberals are human and therefore imperfect.
cain
@Dog Mom:
That happened me – during the buying period they had all these positive messages as soon as they gained control – it went south fast. We were immediately all laid off and we were profitable! They didn’t buy the business for that.
The entire management team also left. They thought they got a decent buyer but they were themselves super pissed. It was CEO’s father’s company that was sold to a vulture capitalist who then decided to sell the comapny that the father’s son ran who turned it from a 100 million dollar business to an 800 million dollar business.
Soprano2
After having had actual experience with this, I would rephrase it as “It makes it fucking hard to hire good people who would actually show up, do the job and not steal from you even if you’re paying market wages”. My new manager hired one server who was good but who actually said to him a few days after he hired her “When I’m done with this job I’ll just ghost you”, and she did exactly that! (I think he learned from this, he should have been looking for her replacement the next day and as soon as he hired that person he should have let her go, what an idiotic thing to say to your boss.) This is the labor pool we’re hiring from now, people who think it’s ok to just quit showing up to work without notice when they’re tired of their job. It’s pretty frustrating for employers to have to put up with this kind of crap.
Chris
@Suzanne:
I got a text from AIPAC or something similar in last year’s elections warning me that X local candidate was anti-BDS, and I should vote for Y candidate instead.
I rarely bother to respond, but I actually texted back “thanks, now I know to vote for X and against Y.”
(At least for a Representative like Summer Lee I can sort of understand the logic, but I’m sorry, this shit has absolutely no business coming up in local elections for offices with no foreign policy duties whatsoever).
H.E.Wolf
Many thanks for both reminders! I submitted a favorable comment also. Easy and quick.
Baud
@Chris:
Did X beat Y?
Steeplejack
@geg6:
I have only the vaguest notion of what you do in your job—helping college students with their loans?—but one thought that occurred to me is a sort of parallel move into a nonprofit or NGO where you could help them navigate the murky waters of funding, grants, etc. For themselves, I mean, not giving them out to recipients. Although maybe that, too.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: There are way too many people who are left/liberal who oppose housing development, too, as if it’s a triumph against The Man.
We cannot have any sort of equitable society when housing — a basic requirement for life — is such a burden for people.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne: Housing is such a tricky issue. We definitely need more of it, but that isn’t sufficient. Take St. Louis. We have a lot of vacant property in undesirable neighborhoods. The city owns some of it and will sell it for next to nothing if you intend to stay there. Getting that property up to the point a person can live in it is expensive, but often not as expensive as buying existing livable housing. Younger people with SOME disposable income can tackle that challenge. That’s typically how gentrification starts. I’m not seeing a lot of that.
While owing your own home is an excellent way to build wealth, it also can lock you in to one location. When your job changes, your commute can get so much longer. If the main local industry dies, you can’t sell your home. This economy requires that people be willing and able to move to where there are better opportunities. Its a big decision that doesn’t always work out in a person’s favor.
Chris
@Baud:
… ya know, not actually sure, not least because I can’t remember either of their names. I seem to recall they did, but going back through my messages I can’t find the exchange. I probably deleted it after texting back.
Suzanne
@Chris: Summer Lee’s district includes Squirrel Hill, which is a historically Jewish neighborhood, and is the location for the synagogue where that terrible shooting occurred. When I drove around there in the months coming up to the election…. I saw a lot of signs for her! I think she is respected in that community.
Anoniminous
@MomSense:
The tl;dr answer: in the short term Macroeconomic statistics have little to do with Microeconomic reality. Since the mid-70s workers haven’t been getting the economic benefits of their work. So while overall more wealth is being produced it’s captured by the 1%.
Geminid
@Suzanne: AIPAC used to endorse candidates but stayed away from donating. They changed this a couple years ago, and I think that was a mistake.
Tbat said, I don’t think AIPAC has nearly enough money to unseat a Democratic incumbent who has worked hard and represented their district well..
Eolirin
@Kay: The primary reason why we have such extreme candidates winning is because of the gerrymandering. The asymmetry of extremism between parties is down to cultural differences between the primary voting electorates, driven in large part by the differences in information ecosystems.
Brachiator
@geg6:
I appreciate your dilemma. I get the strong impression that you really know your stuff and know how to help the families you deal with.
Are their other institutions that have openings related to your current job?
Also, do your friends and social network know that you might be looking for something.
My cousin left a job as a budget director some years ago. She wanted short term assignments. Got a few good ones based on tips from friends.
I am sorry that I don’t have better solid recommendations.
Think about what your skills are. Maybe this will be helpful. Some years ago I took a financial planning course from a guy in the insurance business. Great instructor. He had been an Air Traffic Controller, fired by Reagan. But he became an insurance salesman. He was focused, able to do accurate analysis of needs quickly and knew how to communicate complex information to his clients. It was wild to see how he had applied his talents to an entirely different field.
Anyway, sorry for the ramble.
I really hope you find something good. Also I really understand how it feels when your company or institution starts to decline and is not where you want to be anymore.
Suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Agreed. To note: an important aspect of “more housing” is also “replacing housing stock” that has gotten as deteriorated as you describe. It’s one important component of the issue.
I understand that homeownership is not for everyone and it does have risk. But there’s plenty of risk involved in renting, too. And right now, lots of people think the economy sucks because they are getting all of the risk and not so much of the gains.
frosty
Eolirin
@Anoniminous: I don’t think that’s genuinely what’s going on though. There’s quite a bit of data that a solid majority of people view their personal economic situation as being pretty good right now, though they’re not happy with prices having gone up.
But they’ve been hearing a lot of news about how awful things are. Especially if they’re tuned into right wing news sources.
There’s a constant disconnect between questions about the economy and one’s individual financial situation in polling. How groups of people tend to think the overall economy is doing usually has more to do with whether their party’s in control of the white house, absent crisis conditions.
There’s a similar disconnect about crime too, between questions about how things are globally and in one’s own neighborhood.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne:
Very true.
Glidwrith
@Hoodie: As far as they are concerned, if you say the magic words, nothing else matters. Not meaning, not results, just that they mouthed the phrases to show tribal membership.
Bill Arnold
@Hoodie:
Might be a good time for an ARM (Adjustable-Rate Mortgage). My first mortgage was an ARM, 10.5 percent.. Over several years it dropped to about 6 percent. Around that point, refinanced with a fixed rate.
Anoniminous
@Eolirin:
There’s a reason anecdotal evidence isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
Source: CNBC
Baud
@Anoniminous:
How have those numbers changed with time?
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Those are Sept 2023 numbers
Baud
@Anoniminous:
Are they worse than in the past?
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” — Emerson
:-)
Generally speaking anyone under the age of 30 is fucked. Generally speaking anyone over the age of 60 is sitting pretty good. The 30 – 60 range is too mixed to generalized.
Brachiator
@Baud:
“Liberals being too elite” is just right wing bullshit, like pretty much everything the right wing says.
But I don’t pay attention to this. America has always had its share of elitists. Some are interesting, others are idiots.
America also has always had a strong tradition of anti-intellectualism. Often it’s hard to tell where good old common sense stops and rancid stupidity begins.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: In the last Maher podcast I listened to, he was railing about the regulations that keep things like houses from being built (he’s not always wrong about things), but the problem was he was blaming all of that on Democrats! He doesn’t seem to realize that a) most of that stuff is local and b) a lot of it is done by conservatives to keep the “riff-raff” out of their neighborhoods by preventing anything except big single family houses from being built. He was also talking about how hard it is for any federal project to get done now because of the regulations, but he neglected to mention all the lawsuits people file when things don’t go their way. It is maddening to people how long things take now.
Ruckus
@Kay:
For most humans this is a very personal area. About as personal as it gets. Sure some will discuss it with anyone, that is the case for most any issue. But many will not, because it is very personal, it can get right down to why and how we exist. And if there is a battle, because of desires (especially unannounced desires) that can easily wreck a relationship. And I believe it is much harder on the female half of the relationship, they are far more physically, and mentally involved in so much of the process. It is an amazing thing when it goes well, it can be terrifying when it doesn’t.
cain
@Suzanne:
AIPAC is an evil lobbying firm and should be toxic to any Democratic politician if seen even remotely taking their money. Let them go and shove their dollars into the asshole of every diminishing Republican whose influence is on a descendant path.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Yep, even in “liberal” areas middle and upper class people are afraid to let poor people live anywhere near them.
Brachiator
@Anoniminous:
A savings fund of $5,000 ain’t chicken feed. And way back in August 2023, the danger zone was a meager $400. And even reports about this were largely inaccurate.
It’s hard to get a good read of voter sentiment with respect to the economy. And part of the problem is that some voters seem determined to punish Biden and the Democrats for not being miracle workers.
Soprano2
@Kay: I’ve always thought the medication abortion was the GOP’s Achilles heel in their fight against it. There’s no drama to it – they can’t claim the fetus is being “ripped apart” or anything like that. You just take a couple of pills and basically have a heavy period. Most people aren’t appalled or shocked by that. I had one extreme right-winger tell me online that they should start showing films of abortions in schools, that would make people be against it. I said “OK, how do you film a medication abortion, because that’s what over half of them are now. Plus, sure let’s show people what a 6-week or 10-week pregnancy looks like – it’s mostly a clump of cells”. I never got a response. These people are either huge liars or honestly believe most abortions are performed on almost full-term fetuses that look like babies.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
As always , Maher is full of shit.
The problem is largely local, but it’s not “conservative.” In California, the middle class and upper class do not want lower income people living near them. And they don’t want apartment buildings or other high density housing anywhere near them.
And in California, the Democrats are in control. Recently, the state and Governor Newsom had got through some helpful legislation, but it is still a struggle to get the housing issue addressed.
Soprano2
@Brachiator: Yeah, you’re right about that, it’s not necessarily a conservative issue. He didn’t touch on any of that, though – for him it’s all because those liberal Democrats want millions of regulations and don’t have any common sense. He cited a wind farm in Wyoming that is finally starting construction after 18 years of studies and lawsuits. I have to say that to me that seems crazy.
Fixed that for you. LOL It’s like the homeless “problem” – people don’t care what happens to homeless people as long as they don’t have to see them anywhere. They don’t want to help them, they just want them to go away.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: The disconnect on crime is old and famous: the massive rise in crime that lasted from about 1970 to 1995 was so traumatic that most of the US population doesn’t believe it ever ended, and even if they do, any hint of a return is cause for extreme alarm.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
What a dumb ass example. There are six people in Wyoming, the state is controlled by Republicans and wind farms ain’t housing. Also, environmental regulation is not the same thing as housing codes.
RE: In every state in the nation the middle class and upper class do not want lower income people living near them.
Yeah. I just mentioned California because I think I understand how this happens in Southern California.
It has been insane to watch the homeless problem accelerate out here. And in some ways, those who opposed more housing got slapped in the face. Homeless tents and other ramshackle temporary structures started overrunning parks, sidewalks in front of businesses and even spilling over into some residential neighborhoods in the form of parked cars and parked or broken down RVs. Housing codes don’t work against people who don’t have housing codes in the first place.
The housing problem has also pushed people out of California, and this will hurt us in the future.
dirge
I think a big but subtle problem is the degree to which you can’t just find a place to live then live there, you have to actively participate in the real estate business, with all the attendant risks and frequently in adversarial relation to aggressive and well resourced professionals.
Renting, I became an expert in local tenant law, and was still screwed out of a lot of money, and forced into several unwanted moves.
As an owner, I’ve been exposed to agency conflicts, price risk, interest rate risk, arcane zoning restrictions, boundary disputes, and on and on.
I think it’s reasonable to expect people to put some effort into finding a place to live, but our real estate industry is both unavoidable and hostile. If you don’t treat it like a second job, you’re quite likely to get massively and repeatedly ripped off.
Of course, that’s on top of your third job as a pension fund manager, and your fourth as a medical billing analyst, plus your side hustles as insurance actuary, tax accountant, and labor lawyer. It’s bonkers what we expect people to handle.
There’s a lot that could be done to sand down those sharp corners, and I think we’d be surprised how big a difference it’d make in the economy as a whole, and how people feel about it.
Dog Mom
@eclare @Dorothy A. Winsor @Miss Bianca @Chief Oshkosh @cain – I appreciate the concern – I will survive all this – just so tired of corporate America. I’ve been through this before with underperforming companies, but this was just greed.
Suzanne
@Anoniminous: The WaPo had a great chart last week about how many Americans will do as well as their parents financially. Something like 75% of Boomers exceeded their parents’ wealth, easily. By the time you get those those born in 1980 (uh, me), that was down to 50%. And by the time you get to those who were born around 2000, that’s down significantly from that.
This is why people don’t have confidence in the economy.
dirge
Yeah, if anyone mentions our local building regulations, I instantly transform into an interminable deregulation crank, ranting about unaccountable petty bureaucrats and the whole Department of Buildings is unconstitutional, and what about my property rights and the Takings Clause, and it’s all a damned conspiracy between crooked politicians and bankers and real estate developers…
Of course, that’s basically all true, but it’s really weird to hear myself sounding like a republican.
Baud
@Suzanne: Why would younger people ever be more likely to exceed their parent’s wealth?
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
It’s not just California. Plenty of Philly suburbs, Phoenix suburbs, DC suburbs, etc etc etc etc deal with this same attitude.
And you are 100% correct that conservatives also participate in throwing up regulatory barriers to development. I have dealt with many zoning codes in my professional life, and there is bullshit everywhere.
My favorite was how Scottsdale, AZ, required notification and a community comment period for my client to cut down a blighted and dying tree on their property and replant a new one.
Suzanne
@Baud: Up through almost all of American history — until, like, my generation — every generation did better than the previous one (in aggregate). Increasing productivity in the economy, specialization, healthcare improvements leading to longer lifespan, education, etc. accrued to people.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: I copied it off it about an hour ago. Good catch…
Baud
@Suzanne: Did better at what age though? A 20-year old isn’t going to immediately do better than his or her parents.
Suzanne
@Baud: By any equivalent age. A 40-year-old in 1980 vs a 40-year-old born in 1950.
Baud
@Suzanne: Ok, thanks.
Ruckus
@Anoniminous:
Take a look at Russia’s economy.
The average wage is crap but the people at the top are billionaires, in a country with a population less than half of ours.
This is not actually a lot different than our economy, except that most of us can earn more and have better lives, if we have the education/skills/experience for a reasonable paying job. But that also leaves those that don’t get the breaks an even crappier life.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
There is a limit to progression and those that don’t fit in well or have the time/ability to find a place to fit in to have a far harder time and the poor get even poorer – in relation to the norm.
evodevo
@Eunicecycle:
Yes…Maysville resident here…it WAS DP&L, dayton power and light…the plant was a huge 3 stack coal burning power plant on the north bank of the Ohio R. A LOT of people worked there, until it was finally decommissioned in 2018. I lived there in the Seventies, before moving out to better educ and job opportunities later. The whole area was covered in coal soot, despite the huge limestone scrubbers they put in. I am still cleaning it up in the corners and cracks of my in-laws antique store years later..
evodevo
@Lyrebird: Public school can be a real PITA, but they pay WAY better than Universities…Mr. Evodevo is a case in point. He pissed off his doctoral thesis committee head when he said he was making way more than the prof as a public school teacher, and had better bennies. The Mister is STILL ABD after all these years, but we are surviving just fine on a KY public school pension..and most public schools nowadays are hurting for teachers. It takes different skills than Uni teaching, however…
Lyrebird
@Jeffro: @narya: @evodevo:
Probably too late to the game for this to get seen, but THANKS i did read and appreciate your comments and suggestions!