Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

So many bastards, so little time.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

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

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

I really should read my own blog.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Santa Brandon Came Early

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Santa Brandon Came Early

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Yet lo! There are people yet dissastisfied with the price of door-delivered lobster…

Megan McArgleBargle, quick to jump on the trend (and land on her head):

SCOOP: PitchBot beaten to front page!

Reader Interactions

521Comments

  3. 3.

    RepubAnon

    Republicans impeaching Biden for failing to commit crimes. “Biden willfully failed to commit any crimes, making Republicans look bad. Reason enough for impeachment!”

    Congressman Boris Badanov (R), Frostbite Falls.

  4. 4.

    satby

    So the “ingredients to make chicken soup from scratch” would include chicken, onion, celery, maybe other vegetables, possibly noodles or potatoes, stock (because McArdle)… and all of a sudden $50 is perfectly reasonable as a price for those groceries. So she has to lie.

    And I had two teenage boys and never once considered buying them lobster and steak with a double appetizer for a regular take out dinner. These people are insane.

  6. 6.

    Keith P.

    A container of lettuce

    There’s part of the issue right there – she’s paying for someone else to rinse the lettuce and put it in a plastic container. If she was concerned about the money, she’d have just bought regular lettuce.

    And the ingredients to make chicken soup from scratch.

    She’s being a bit vague here. I hope she didn’t pull a Chaffee and use some kind of heirloom chicken and a few loose truffles to juice the cost.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    Snippet of dialogue in a pre-code B flick from 1929 watched the other day which brought a transitory chuckle.

    Newspaper building elevator operator: I’m paid to go up and down, not to run your errands.

    Wisecracking reporter: Didn’t I give you two free passes to Her First Sin?

    Elevator operator: Yeah. It was a rotten show.

    Reporter: That’s why I gave you the passes.

  11. 11.

    Kay

    It’s such a giveaway that she’s so specific about the bread and lettuce but then lumps what could be 10 other items into chicken soup. Deceptive! In neon lights.

    Didn’t the morons learn from David Brooks that this lazy, sloppy garbage they churn out doesn’t end well for them?  Also- no one wants to hear what they eat. They’re not that fascinating.

  12. 12.

    satby

    @Baud: Brings back a memory from 40+ years ago. My friends and I liked to eat at a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place in my neighborhood in Chicago. Great food cooked in a tiny kitchen overseen by a real Italian nonna. Soup came with the meal, but if you asked what kind nonna would yell from the kitchen “GOOD SOUP!”.

    We always got the soup, and it was always good no matter what kind it was 😂

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: ​ I fed mine crawdads* from time to time. Does that count?

    * of course, they had to catch them first.

  14. 14.

    Yarrow

    @sab:  It’s crazy. Maybe as a once-a-year special birthday dinner if they really, really love lobster. But delivered via Door Dash like it’s just another Wednesday night dinner? WTF? Who has that kind of money?

  16. 16.

    satby

    @sab: Thing is, I bet he didn’t get those kids lobster at all; he or his partner had that. Throwing the “teenage kids” crack in there was a red herring.

    At least these idiots are getting dragged all over Xitter.

  17. 17.

    EarthWindFire

    Like Megan McArdle, I shop at Giant. I’m putting together my Christmas dinner order (entree, sides, dessert) and it’s about $70 with two one-pound filet mignon roasts. Maybe McArdle just doesn’t know how to shop economically.

  19. 19.

    Yarrow

    @satby:  I read the thread. He says he has a 16 year old autistic son so doesn’t like to traumatize him by having him sit through a meal in a loud restaurant. I can understand that part of it.

  20. 20.

    EarthWindFire

    @Yarrow: IKR? You also have the option of saving money by going to Outback and <gasp> picking up your takeout. If you’re so concerned about crazy DoorDash prices.

    Edited to add: I’m sympathetic about the son but he doesn’t have to go in to get the takeout.

    Also, too, Outback lobster is a travesty. There, I said it.

  21. 21.

    Yarrow

    @satby: The other thing is, if she’s making soup she should get a lot of meals out of that. So the $50 isn’t for one meal; it’s for many meals.

  23. 23.

    mrmoshpotato

    Two bloomin’ onions, a steak salad, lobster tails, a filet, a chicken sandwich and a sirloin + tip + tax = $125 on Doordash right now. It’s crazy.

    They all must be miniatures!  The horror!

  24. 24.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Kay: I don’t know where she lives or shops, except Giant. So i found chicken at a Giant in Arlington VA.  I can get a plain old whole chicken for $6, or I can go fancy schmancy free range organic la-dee-da chicken for $25……..wonder which she bought.

    ( its early, I haven’t much to do, so I “researched.)

  26. 26.

    Kay

    Did they all start reciting what they eat and how much it (supposedly) cost as a response to the stock market high?

    lol

    TERRIFIED anyone might think the economy is good. Have to immediately shut that “good economy ” talk down. They should stop buying lobster tails and put some money in the market. They’d be happy at the good news, like normal people.

  28. 28.

    billcoop4

    Reserved the standing rib roast for Christmas the other day at same market (Healthy Living in Saratoga Springs (well, actually Wilton, which is Saratoga-adjacent)) as last year.

     

    Same price per pound (a bit high since it’s from a localish farm not from the industrial food chain) as last year. Feeding six including two 19-yo twin Y chromosome possessors, but will also provide for dinner on the 26th in a lovely Jhal fireez.

     

    Thanksgiving turkey was only $0.10 more per pound this year.

     

    BC

  29. 29.

    mrmoshpotato

    Joe Biden Fails To Deliver Recession

    Well, he’s lost my vote because, I’ll think of a pissy, childish, whiny ass reason later, Mom!

  32. 32.

    Marmot

    so many people on here who haven’t owned up to: a) how wrong they were, and b) how sneeringly dismissive they were of those who ended up being right

    I seem to remember this also happening after the 2018 election. Oh, and 2020.

    You know what? I think I’m looking forward to it happening again next year!

  34. 34.

    Kay

    @MagdaInBlack:

    I think she lives in DC or environs. I remember reading one of her essays where she was pretending she rides a bus. The most boring “journalism” is when journalists talk about 1. themselves 2. their industry and they do so, so much of it. I think Twitter has made that much worse. They all think they’re celebrities now and we’re their “fans”.

    No one should know who “Sean from RCP” is.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    @billcoop4:

    I’m making a turkey for Christmas because we skipped Thanksgiving. I personally think “a turkey” is cheap for what you’re getting, if you use all of it (which I do). I also think that about buying a chicken.

  38. 38.

    Matt McIrvin

    I still see the unemployment rate, while very low, creeping up in a manner that it historically does maybe a year before a recession. That’s just eyeballing charts so it might not mean much. But it gives me pause.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    Outspoken podcaster Megyn Kelly called for a boycott of Taylor Swift after the pop superstar attended a fundraiser that provided “humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza.”

    Megyn Kelly is one of the loudest “anti cancel culture” people out there. Raise your hand if you knew it was never about “free speech” but instead was about who gets to talk. They’re the only people who can talk. Everyone else has to shut up and listen.

    Good luck getting Swift’s fans to boycott – not that they’re even be aware of the “Megyn Kelly Show” call to boycott :)

  40. 40.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    ArgleBargle is lucky I’m not king.  I’d put her and Yglesias on a tiny ice floe and push them far out to sea.

  41. 41.

    satby

    Political science writer Brian Klass is celebrating his substack first anniversary. He’s pretty sharp for a youngun of 37:

    I did that because so much of social media, newsletters, and the “attention economy” is derived from chasing clicks, which, by definition, means pandering to a crowd of people who already see the world the way you do. Some of it is built on outrage. Some is built on confirmation bias—telling people what they want to hear. Either way, it’s not only bad for society, it’s also profoundly boring.

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: ​ They are good eating tho a little rich for my tastes. One very important thing to remember about mudbugs is they absorb everything in the water, so you want to get them from a good “wild” creek. And by wild I mean rural yes, but minimal farms along it too.

  43. 43.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Well, an actual recession shouldn’t matter because we have been told the economy is horrible since Biden was elected. JUST since Biden. The economy was fabulous until that day.

    “Horrible economy” is baked in to Biden – it no longer has any connection to reality anyway. Have you seen the price of lobster tails!?!

    Whoever wins in 2024 will determine if the economy is described as “good” or “bad”. If it’s Trump it’s good and if it’s Biden it’s bad.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    The lack of a recession has caused a slight rift in the Fro household, as Mrs. Fro has been predicting one for quite some time now and I have been oh-so-helpfully pointing out that it ain’t happening.

    I tried pointing out that I am usually wrong on most things…hopefully she’ll let me have just this one little tremendous win.  “For America”, I’ll tell her.  Wish me luck!  =)

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’ll be interested to see what they do with an actual bad economy. They have to make it absolutely terrible, right? To jusify their ridiculously negative coverage of a good economy? I shudder to think what they’ll be telling people when unemployment ticks up and demand drops – “give up! all is lost! you’re all destitute!”

  48. 48.

    New Deal democrat

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I still see the unemployment rate, while very low, creeping up in a manner that it historically does maybe a year before a recession. That’s just eyeballing charts so it might not mean much. But it gives me pause.

    This whole thread gives me the willies. Like I should bookmark it for 6 months from now.

    How many times over the years have I read “the stock market is not the economy”? Usually by the time political blogs take note of a financial market move, it’s over.

  51. 51.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: omg she called for a boycott…of Taylor Swift?  Really??

    I cannot imagine being so deep in the RWNJ bubble (or any bubble) that I’d think a Tay-Tay boycott has the remotest chance of success.  Hell, the Swifties (half of whom are red state teen girls, I’m sure) will just buy everything twice in response.

    Also, isn’t a boycott “cancel culture”?  I thought that was bad?

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    @satby:

    So the “ingredients to make chicken soup from scratch” would include chicken, onion, celery, maybe other vegetables, possibly noodles or potatoes, stock (because McArdle)… and all of a sudden $50 is perfectly reasonable as a price for those groceries. So she has to lie.

    Word.
    Also, I feel like she must not be trying that hard. I get organic chicken stock in a six-pack at Costco, and one container of it plus those other groceries would be nowhere near $50. $10 for a package of chicken, maaaaaaaybe $10 for all those other veggies combined, depending on quantity. I get that she’s living in a higher COL area, but I bet if she was a smarter shopper, she could save some damn dollars.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Kay:

    Didn’t the morons learn from David Brooks that this lazy, sloppy garbage they churn out doesn’t end well for them?  Also- no one wants to hear what they eat. They’re not that fascinating.

    Remember Dr. Oz and the crudités? Equally unfascinating.

    ETA: Grrrrrrr. Should have known that NotMax would get there first 😡

  55. 55.

    Ejoiner

    That steak and lobster X post has to be satire, right? Right??

    (Also, if real, steak, lobster, tax, tip, and delivery for three for around $100 is an astoundingly low price from what I’ve been paying in restaurants in the past year – shouldn’t this be a post praising the economy?)

  56. 56.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin: oh I know, but that’s not what I would call an analysis.  “Predicting” something that will eventually happen, sometime, is not really predicting much of anything.

    “There will be a plane crash somewhere, soon” – okay.

    Anyway, lots of reasons to celebrate…out of Mrs. Fro’s earshot, anyway.  =)

  57. 57.

    Kay

    Breaking news: The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it will decide this term whether to limit access to a key abortion drug, returning the polarizing issue of reproductive rights to the high court for the first time since the conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

    Conservative lawyers genuinely believe they are more qualified to practice medicine than doctors are. They butted into womens health issues and now they are just going further and further afield from what they know – they don’t seem to be able to stop themselves. Completely out of control, and the arrogance and level of self delusion!
    The Texas Supreme Court now issues specific orders for individual women on what health care they may have and the medical condition of their pregnancy. No exam, no medical training, but they’re jumping right in there, completely confident! I can’t imagine being that arrogant.

  61. 61.

    Kay

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I like Doctor Oz for one reason – he disappeared. He knows he has a great and lucrative grift with woo wo medicine and he wants to keep it. If only Donald Trump were that smart. These conmen and grifters should be grateful they still have marks and lay low. Stay in your lane. I think Oz learned that.

  64. 64.

    Another Scott

    @MagdaInBlack: We get pre-made salads once a week from the local Balducci’s.  Good salads, good ingredients, convenient, and we don’t have to worry about the ingredients going bad or taking over the refrigerator (as happened when I bought the bulk ingredients myself and would make a week’s worth at a time).  And the prices have gone up about 40% in the last 3 years (about $15 for the salmon salad now).

    These writers could talk about real things like that now, and real people would say – yeah, it sucks, we adjust by getting salads at TJ’s and ALDI’s now, that’s the way things go when inflation is too low for decades – there are step changes in prices when there’s a shock – or they could talk about their need to buy hand-fed birds and how quasi-living wages are now paid to delivery people who make their “drop everything, shop for me, and deliver stuff to me now at my convenience” service stories with deceptive “OMG!  My rock soup dinner now costs $756.23!!111” commentary.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  66. 66.

    Scout211

    I am not tired of the Dark Brandon meme at all.  It has worked well to bring some “cool” to Biden and especially worked well to own the “Let’s go Brandon” smear.  But did you know that the MAGAs are trying to push a similar meme for Trump?

    I see one periodically on a new electronic billboard in a tiny town that we drive through on the way to a larger town where we shop, etc.  It’s similar to  this.  [A graphic of Trump in shadow wearing dark glasses and the words “I’ll be back”].

    I don’t think it has taken off as a widespread meme.  But it sure irritates me when I drive through that tiny town.  Grrrr.

  67. 67.

    jonas

    @sab: Yeah, like unless it was a birthday or graduation or something and my teen wanted a steak, a filet, and lobster, I’d be like “Let me think….No.” Plus Door Dash easily added 25% to that tab. Before tip.

    So what the guy is saying is that he got a full surf-and-turf dinner for a family including two hungry teenagers for about $100. That’s actually a pretty sweet deal. What restaurant was running that special?

  68. 68.

    sab

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well that wouldn’t have worked in the day because of the Metropark outhouse nearby, but last year a falling tree squashed the outhouse and Metroparks removed it, so maybe okay now.

  69. 69.

    Ksmiami

    @Jeffro: lol, in my household I’ve been the contrarian but my SO followed my advice and we just ignored the doomsayers and took note of: most people employed, trades so busy that they don’t have time for our multiple house  projects, travel bookings like full planes, busy af restaurants etc. And now APR rates will head lower so housing activity will pick up in the new year. Never get your economic information from innumerate pundits- they are worthless.

  70. 70.

    Sis

    But Politico just had to add “for now” in the headline, because good results from Democrats should always be viewed as conditional and temporary. Imagine if a Republican were delivering these results.

  74. 74.

    Matt McIrvin

    @New Deal democrat: Sister Golden Bear has been talking about the weakness in the California tech sector. I see a bit of that too though it’s not as bad as it was a year ago, when there was kind of a tech mini-recession. Things are still a little tight. Fed rate cuts might help.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    Pot legalization in Ohio has this town in a tizzy in a very amusing way. OK, it’s a 75% Trump county but the pot legalization measure passed (barely) even here. So the city council has taken it up and a majority are pro dispensary. This has enraged the anti weed Republicans on council and elsewhere. There’s a local Republican who owns a Valero franchise who wants a dispensary badly and my sense (and the gossip) is he’s “pulling strings” to get the first (and he hopes) only retail outlet. It’s getting ugly! :)

  78. 78.

    Betty Cracker

    Trump is really insecure about his mental and physical fitness, y’all. I know this from remarks he made at an Iowa rally last night, including an outlandish “sir story.” (Daily Beast)

    “I just took a physical, you’ll be happy to hear… I passed with flying colors. And I took a cognitive exam. I said, ‘Doctor, give me anything you want. I want to take it,’” Trump said…

    Trump went on to praise his former White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, who is now a Texas congressman not shy about speaking out negatively about Biden’s acuity.

    “He was Obama’s doctor, too, by the way. I said, ‘Who’s healthier?’ He said, ‘Sir, there’s no contest,’” Trump asserted. “I won’t tell you the answer, but you know the answer, OK? It was me.”

    So we’re supposed to believe 77-year-old Trump, whose only form of exercise is waddling back and forth to a golf cart, is healthier than trim, fit Obama? So pathetic and delusional.

  79. 79.

    Scout211

    @Kay: The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it will decide this term whether to limit access to a key abortion drug

    I saw that yesterday and I was surprised because I thought they had already decided to hear that case. I guess that may be because most legal experts assumed that they would hear it.  The fact that the pharmaceutical industry is joining the Biden administration is a good sign I think.  I hope.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: ​ It should be fine, animals pee and poop in creeks all the time anyway. I worry about pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer runoff, other possible chemical contaminants as well as runoff from roads and machinery.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Sis:

    They think Trump is going to win. You can tell from the change in coverage.

    Oh, well. Just remember they thought women wouldn’t notice a loss of rights (busy choosing nail polish colors) and there would be a “red wave” too. They’re often wrong, because being a sort of B list Twitter celebrity is not actually having your finger on the pulse of the nation :)

  82. 82.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay: Wah wah wah, Megyn!  Give me that $69 million that NBC started on fire, and I’ll gladly shut up and go away!

  87. 87.

    JMG

    @Kay: When Massachusetts legalized pot, the first thing my Cape Cod town government did (name withheld to protect my neighbors from ridicule) was to declare it’d never allow a dispensary license. Provincetown immediately asked “can we have yours, too?” In the event, dispensary just opened in the next town over, five miles away.,

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @Scout211:

    The overreach is stunning to me. In my wildest dreams I didn’t think they’d intrude this far and I knew they would ban abortion! They’re really going to delve into drug prescribing.

    Roe was a fence. It kept them OUT of a whole area of womens health. It protected us ot by doing anything but by not allowing them in and near us. They ddn’t have to to do anything – just stay out.

    I knew they wanted to tear down the fence and crowd into our examining rooms to supervise but I did not anticipate they would come to actually believe they are physicians. I can’t wait to see what pretend Dr. Alito says about proper prescribing of this drug.

  91. 91.

    Suzanne

    @Ejoiner:

    (Also, if real, steak, lobster, tax, tip, and delivery for three for around $100 is an astoundingly low price from what I’ve been paying in restaurants in the past year – shouldn’t this be a post praising the economy?)

    I counted five entrees and two appetizers. $100 seems highly reasonable?

  92. 92.

    jonas

    Re: McArglebargle’s Lament: yes, one bag of groceries at a conventional supermarket these days, particularly in an expensive coastal metro area, is going to run about $50. It wasn’t *that* much less prior to the pandemic, either. I know. I’ve been doing all the meal planning and grocery shopping for our family since forever.  Everyone has been gaslit into believing that just 3 years ago, you were earning twice as much as you are now, but a cup of coffee was a nickel, gas was $1 a gallon and a generous breakfast at the local diner was $1.99, D rides at Disney were 75 cents, and Leave it to Beaver had just gone off the air.

  93. 93.

    stacib

    @satby: Funny – I also just bought the ingredients to make chicken noodle soup, and added in a few extra items at the register.  I spent just over $25 at Jewel’s, ANDI have soup to last for several meals.  Doing some simple math, I have four meals divided by maybe $18, so just over $4 per meal.  I ain’t complaining.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Well, unless my practice is an outlier plenty of hard Right Repubicans in their 50s and 60s are pot smokers. I don’t deal with it any legal way – whether they smoke or not has nothing to do with why they would hire me – but they tell me they use, like “ha ha wink wink”. It’s not just the money. They’re pot smokers, or, I should say, gummy users.

  96. 96.

    p.a.

    Forget Biden; I just went online and saw that steaks were once 55¢ and coffee 3¢.  America is obviously a failed society!!!!!!!!😉

  98. 98.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kay:   We’ve got people on this blog complaining that there are people in southern California making 100K who can’t find houses.  Meanwhile, I’ve seen a lot of my lower income clients have their incomes rise by 1/3 or more over past three years.  I know which thing I think is better for the country as a whole.

  100. 100.

    Suzanne

    @jonas: I also feel like these people are fucken bougie and maybe never took Home Ec?

    One of the funnier stories of my life is that, when I was in seventh grade, I was going to school in heavily Mormon-and-Mexican Mesa, AZ, where most of the girls were raised to be homemakers. My good friend and I, neither of us either of those things…. ended up sharing the Home Ec award that year. We’re still friends and we still laugh about that. She’s a fabulous science teacher and she started an agriculture program at the high school she teaches at. Neither of us are homemakers. LOL.

    Seriously, though…. did no one ever teach these people how to make good food on a budget? Probably the most important life skill I’ve ever learned.

  101. 101.

    TS

    @Kay:

    Conservative lawyers genuinely believe they are more qualified to practice medicine than doctors are.

    Women had major & such positive developments in reproductive health care in the 20th century,  and conservatives are now determined to put them back into the 19th century “where they belong.” One of my gg grandmothers died having her 14th child and at the inquest a neighbor stated it was quite unbelievable, she had the other 13 with no trouble whatsoever.

  103. 103.

    jonas

    @JMG: Same here in upstate NY —  a bunch of towns rushed to ban dispensaries because, you know, they didn’t want to suddenly be overrun by a bunch of DFH’s with their “munchies” and “White Rabbit” blaring out the door at all hours. Of course the main customers are mostly boomers looking for some help sleeping or with back pain or whatever. I’m sure in a few years, the local dispensary will be operating peacefully right next to the dry cleaners and coffee shop in most places.

  104. 104.

    topclimber

    @Suzanne: Did she post the grocery receipt (I hear it is easy to take a pix with your cell phone and upload it)?

    Just black out the items and the DoorDash charge and let America decide whether a): she is full of crap, b): she is a lousy shopper, or c:)both.

  106. 106.

    Marmot

    @Kay:

    Just remember they thought women wouldn’t notice a loss of rights (busy choosing nail polish colors) and there would be a “red wave” too. They’re often wrong, because being a sort of B list Twitter celebrity is not actually having your finger on the pulse of the nation :)

    Man, NPR this morning appended a “Democratic voters are energized by abortion rights … for the moment” -type of description in some horseracey bit. WTF FTW!

  108. 108.

    Suzanne

    @topclimber: I don’t know how you get to $50 with what she described, unless she’s just buying the most ludicrously priced version of each item.

    Like, lady, buy a salad spinner and wash your own fucken lettuce.

  109. 109.

    Ken

    @Kay: [Journalists] all think they’re celebrities now and we’re their “fans”.

    They aspire to rise to the level of social media influencers.

    Dave Barry’s latest, Swamp Story, has some good (and funny) observations of social media, including the phrase “sucked into the incomprehensively complex context-creation vortex that is Tik-Tok”.

  110. 110.

    Soprano2

    @Yarrow: Heck, I go pick up our pizza because I refuse to pay $4 for delivery. These people want to live expensive lives but not pay anything for it.

  111. 111.

    Ken

    @sab: Blooming onions usually come from Outback.

    They’re really the only reason to go there. Like Arby’s and curly fries.

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    True. They tell me. I’ve heard lots of stories about getting off of anti depressants too – replaced with half a gummy daily. I’m not pro legalization – I’m pro decriminalization – but I think there should be a social stigma for being high all the time, however one gets high. I also talk to a lot of at risk teenagers and they truly believe there is absolutely no possible harm from smoking pot every day, which is just bullshit and lies this industry has sold them for profit. It will harm a lot of them and Good God, they start with fucked up families and poverty and every challenge as it is – they really don’t need bong hits. Just the hacking cough upsets me, ringing thru the juvenile court halls. This isn’t good. We’ll regret it.

  113. 113.

    catclub

    @OzarkHillbilly: One very important thing to remember about mudbugs is they absorb everything in the water, so you want to get them from a good “wild” creek.

     

    So if the crawfish farm is in cancer alley in Louisiana I should maybe skip it?  You do know that a cajun will eat anything?

  114. 114.

    Marcopolo

    In other good news (not economic), former Republican Stuart Stevens looked at the Seltzer Iowa poll for the upcoming R presidential caucus & said the top line number that jumped out to him was that the IA R party was now 65% male (https://nitter.net/stuartpstevens/status/1735152958474703330#m).  Haven’t seen this noted by anyone else (and I would like a better description of how Seltzer arrived at that result—tho Seltzer is the gold standard IA poll), but as he says, “Good luck with that in November.”

  116. 116.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think the stock market jump will juice Christmas sales – it makes people feel more prosperous. What will they do if the reporting is that it was the best Christmas season ever for retailers? Just like how the price of gas is falling right now – someone got it for $2.34 at our new Bucees. Makes me wonder about all those Biden “I did that” stickers that used to be on the gas pumps. Are they peeling them all off now? LOL

  117. 117.

    catclub

    @schrodingers_cat: blame Biden for everything from local zoning laws to Republican actions (or inaction) on Ukraine.

     

    Also when his student loan plan was broken by the Supreme Court

  118. 118.

    Ken

    @topclimber: Did she post the grocery receipt (I hear it is easy to take a pix with your cell phone and upload it)?

    “What’s this $40 non-food item?”

    “That’s what my personal shopper charges for 30 minutes of work. Normally she bills by the hour, but we have a good relationship since I use her four or five times a week.”

  120. 120.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Oh Lord, when my husband did the turkey we ate that stuff for WEEKS. I started to appreciate the Pizza Hut “12 days of turkey” commercial, because it’s how I felt some days.

  122. 122.

    jimmiraybob

    After listening to the hearings yesterday afternoon this seems important.

    I’m just on the edge of being persuaded.

    The other day I was talking to my friend whose second cousin’s babysitter’s hair stylist was talking to relatives in Texas whose gardener revealed some very illuminating news.  The gardener has family in DC and their oldest son has a friend that is a bartender working near the Capital building.  One of the waitresses passed on that she’d overheard two Republican interns last night bragging about toppling the Biden crime family and that the first three articles of impeachment will be: 1) Smoke, 2) Mirrors, and 3) dick pics.

    Possible additional articles may include irrefutable cevidence based on night shadows, demonic principalities, Scapulimancy and spectral evidence.

    Sounds tight.

  126. 126.

    RSA

    @satby:  So the “ingredients to make chicken soup from scratch” would include chicken, onion, celery, maybe other vegetables, possibly noodles or potatoes, stock (because McArdle)…

    The price of pink Himalayan salt must have gone through the roof.

  131. 131.

    narya

    @Kay: IMHO, this is another stab at the “administrative state”; that it happens to affect women is a bonus. They are determined to hollow out the government for their rich friends.

  133. 133.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: I would love to see the actual results of any memory test he took. It might not be in the dementia range, but is probably in the “mild memory loss” category at least. No way he’s healthier than Obama, it’s just a lie.

  135. 135.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think it was predictable, because they hate medication abortions – they’re almost impossible for the government to control compared to surgical abortions. I’ve always thought medication abortions were their Achilles heel because they’re easy to do and can actually be done at home. They want to completely ban them.

  137. 137.

    catclub

    @Betty Cracker: , is healthier than trim, fit Obama? So pathetic and delusional.

     

    John Kennedy pretended to be fit and athletic.  He was a basket case. I am not saying Obama is not fit, but looks are not always accurate.

  140. 140.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: I’m trying that bagged lettuce in my lettuce keeper because I got tired of throwing out half a head of lettuce because there are only two of us and we can’t eat enough of it to eat it all before it goes bad. We’ll see how it goes – that lettuce keeper can make lettuce last for a week or more.

  142. 142.

    Kathleen

    @satby: One of the few things I “cook” is chicken noodle soup in the crock pot and I use carrots/celery ($5.00), broth ($5.00), frozen noodles (about 3.99) and Simple Truth organic skinless/boneless thighs ($8 to $10). Feeds me 5-6 days. This is Kroger, not some “twee” grocery.

  145. 145.

    Soprano2

    @NotMax: I’m sorry, that sucks. I’m not sure Hawaii is typical of most of the U.S., though. Here it will go up whenever OPEC tries to juice oil prices, then it will start going down.

  148. 148.

    CindyH

    @Kay: I think part of the “no harm” stems from our reaction to the ridiculous reefer madness propaganda that I saw in the 60s and 70s.  That made some not trust the info showing the real dangers of marajuana when more research was done.

  149. 149.

    Marmot

    @narya:

    IMHO, this is another stab at the “administrative state”; that it happens to affect women is a bonus. They are determined to hollow out the government for their rich friends.

    I was just reading about the birth of Public Choice theory in economics; how it was economist James Buchanan’s oligarch-sponsored response to civil rights.

    Basically, Public Choice (still) hinges on the idea that civil rights legislation interferes in The Market; that “special interests” have captured government in a rent-seeking ploy; that those poor (and let’s not forget, Black) people deserve the bottom of the barrel because they’re unable to compete.

    The author, Marshall Steinbaum, draws a parallel to the similar economic ideas that disguised the racist motives uniting Northern and Southern elites in ending Reconstruction.

    Fascinating. I also did not appreciate the racist motives behind the school voucher movement from the very beginning.

    Edit: I’m not a pedant because I edit. I edit because I’m pedantic.

  152. 152.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jeffro:

    The lack of a recession has caused a slight rift in the Fro household, as Mrs. Fro has been predicting one for quite some time now and I have been oh-so-helpfully pointing out that it ain’t happening.

    I just never understood how we were going to get to a recession without going through a bunch of intermediate stages.

    When we were not only at full employment, but employers everywhere were complaining that they couldn’t fill the openings they had, the first step would have been to get back to regular full employment, without a huge excess of unfilled job openings.

    We’ve finally gotten to that stage.  But obviously lots of people have money to spend and are spending it, which is going to employ the people producing and selling the things they’re spending it on.  So the next step is that spending has to cool off.

    I don’t know when that step will happen, but it sure ain’t happening during this Christmas season.

  153. 153.

    NotMax

    @Soprano2

    It is what it is. Get somewhere slightly north of 500 miles from a tank in my nifty hybrid trucklet. As 500 miles is about what i drive in a year these days, don’t pay the pump price much mind.

  158. 158.

    dmsilev

    @danielx: On the other hand, Ronny Jackson is such a loony-tunes nutcase himself that it’s actually possible that Jackson did say that to Trump to suck up to him.

  160. 160.

    prostratedragon

    At the extremely twee (if one insists) Fairway on Broadway one can get a whole fryer, bunch of celery, few onions, # of garlic, can of chopped tomatoes, box of elbows, bunch of kale, bag of barley, 2# bag of brown rice (I like a little of this and that in my soups), and  fresh baguette for about $50. Obviously some of these things will carry over to later soups.

    Oh, and also a can of white beans.

  161. 161.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Soprano2:

    that lettuce keeper can make lettuce last for a week or more.

    Liz Truss is sick with envy.

    ETA: Dammit dammit dammit! That’s twice in one thread NotMax has leapt in! You are too fast for me, NM.

  162. 162.

    narya

    @Marmot: the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast has been all over this–especially the follow-on BS from Dobbs and the invented-out-of-whole-cloth “major questions doctrine.” The podcast gets seriously deep in the weeds–all three hosts are or have been professors, SCOTUS clerks, and/or admitted to the SCOTUS bar–and I feel like I”m getting a mini law school education, plus snark. They’ve had their eye on the hollowing-out for several years now.

  163. 163.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: I’m pro legalization in part because I know someone with massive pain issues who is basically only functional because of cannabis and legalization makes this way easier for him. If he had to go through doctors they’d probably get him on opioids instead, which is way worse and a way bigger social problem around here too.

  165. 165.

    catclub

    @lowtechcyclist: I just never understood how we were going to get to a recession without going through a bunch of intermediate stages.

     

    I am actually concerned that if the Fed Lowers interest rates rapidly it will only be because they see real signs of recession.

  166. 166.

    Suzanne

    @Soprano2:

    Heck, I go pick up our pizza because I refuse to pay $4 for delivery. 

    You sound like Mr. Suzanne. Last year, when we had that “arctic blast” and we got down to -15 degrees or whatever…. he ordered the kids a pizza from the local place and then walked over there to pick it up. LMAO.

  167. 167.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: ​ As 500 miles is about what i drive in a year these days, don’t pay the pump price much mind.

    Heh, I last had the oil changed (synthetic) in my truck last February. I just now turned over 5500 miles. I have to take it in for a safety inspection before the end of the month and I’ll get it changed again then.

  168. 168.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Layer8Problem: Too much work right? These whiners want to be spoonfed but don’t want to pay for those services.

    Groceries are a very small percentage of monthly expenses if you cook most of your food compared to most of the world. These fuckers complain about everything. When I came to the US I could barely boil water, I am pretty much a self taught cook. I ate pretty well even on a student’s budget because I cooked. Terribly at first but it didn’t long to get good at it.

  169. 169.

    catclub

    @Soprano2: because I got tired of throwing out half a head of lettuce because there are only two of us and we can’t eat enough of it to eat it all before it goes bad.

     

    We don’t have that problem.

    When we go to a dinner party and there is salad, both of us know that salad is the same size, or smaller, than the salad we two eat three + days a week. Always have to seriously portion control at the dinner with friends.

  170. 170.

    Marcopolo

    In other other news Rudy G, who claimed, loudly & repeatedly, he was going to upend his defamation trial today by laying out all the ways Ruby & Shae frauded the vote in GA announced just before activities kicked off today that he would NOT be testifying.

    I truly hope the judgement against him (cause this trial is only about the size of damages) leaves him a pauper.

  171. 171.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Suzanne: That one day of -15F temperature fascinated me as an experiment on my hybrid car. The gas mileage it gets depends on temperature more than anything else– for hybrids, instead of city/highway the EPA should list winter/summer. Turned out the car ran fine at -15 but its fuel efficiency just went all the way down to parity with the non-hybrid version of the same car.

  174. 174.

    Marmot

    @narya: Thanks! I’ll give it a listen! Hope there’s a solid focus on legal events that’ve already happened.

    I’m wary of law commentary generally — so much of it is “time will tell!” or “seems to be operating under the theory of” or other obvious speculation.

  175. 175.

    Gretchen

    @satby: What do you bet Megan’s chicken was an organic, free-range, heritage breed chicken like that dude complaining about his $125 turkey when everybody else bought the 99 cents/pound? And a few containers of organic fresh herbs?

  177. 177.

    catclub

    @Suzanne: he ordered the kids a pizza from the local place and then walked over there to pick it up. LMAO.

     

    We lived in Montreal a few winters… but the pizza place was right at the end of our block! and good!

  178. 178.

    frosty

    @OzarkHillbilly: We used to catch crawdads in the creek that ran next to our house. Never even considered eating them, which was good, because it was the farthest thing from a wild creek. One neighbor’s laundry discharged into it and another’s septic system leaked. Ah, the 50s! And 60s!

  179. 179.

    Kathleen

    @Kay: Cincinnati Enquirer had article about grocery store prices and they interviewed a student at Miami University who either lived off campus or in the dorm and her complaints were she was forced to use digital coupons, buy cheaper store brands, and cook more instead of eat out. That describes the first 10 years of my married life in the 70’s/early 80’s. Oh, the humanity!

  180. 180.

    Suzanne

    @RevRick: He ran back, so it was still pretty warm! LOL!

    I told him he was batshit crazy. I was perfectly willing to just cook them some spaghetti!

  181. 181.

    Bupalos

    @Yarrow: lots of people have that kind of money. The question is how long a society that enables and encourages them to spend it on this kind of environment-destroying luxury (while yawning and complaining) can stick to  drowning others in it’s own shit, and avoid drowning itself.

  182. 182.

    Suzanne

    @Kathleen: These people have never had their bank card declined for a can of Spaghetti-Os, and it shows.

    (The checkout dude gave me the can anyway,)

  183. 183.

    Marcopolo

    @catclub: Austin Goolsby (sp) who gained public exposure as an Obama economy surrogate & who is now on the Fed was asked around thanksgiving  if perhaps the Fed would be slowing/ending rate cuts too soon.  His reply was that (and I’m of course paraphrasing) what the Fed does is a little like cooking a Turkey and as all cooks know, the bird will keep cooking a bit longer after it’s taken out of the oven. If you (or the Fed) doesn’t take that into account the bird/economy will be overcooked & dry.  Anyhow, after the meeting/associated Fedspeak yesterday it’s now apparent rates will no longer be going up.  Thus what is happening in the markets.

  184. 184.

    coin operated

    @Kay:

    Good luck getting Swift’s fans to boycott – not that they’re even be aware of the “Megyn Kelly Show” call to boycott :)  Megyn Kelly

    FIFY

  185. 185.

    artem1s

    And the ingredients to make chicken soup from scratch.

    Just saying, $57 is the standard Hello Fresh price for a 2 person meal. You can buy crappy Tyson factory farm raised chickens for pretty cheap. So I doubt that’s what she did here. Probably bought a pre-baked non-GMO, non-hormone roasting hen out of the deli. Otherwise she wouldn’t have needed to buy stock.

  186. 186.

    Suzanne

    @coin operated: I showed Mr. Suzanne that video of the dudes calling Taylor Swift “ugly” and saying “she doesn’t have any eggs!”. Lord.

    There’s a cohort of men who cannot slide into irrelevance fast enough.

  187. 187.

    montanareddog

    @Kay:

    They think Trump is going to win. You can tell from the change in coverage.

    Channelling (I think it was) Pauline Kael. “I don’t understand how Trump lost? Nobody who follows me on Twitter voted for Biden!”

  188. 188.

    narya

    @Marmot: When the court is in session, they do a lot of recapping the arguments, including relevant commentary about what this or that means, references to previous cases, etc. That is part of why I like it so much–it’s not just, oh, they took this case or wrote that decision, it’s really recapping the arguments, and educating listeners on what things mean.

  189. 189.

    cmorenc

    @Kay:

    Good luck getting Swift’s fans to boycott – not that they’re even be aware of the “Megyn Kelly Show” call to boycott :)

    I suspect the demographic overlap between Taylor Swift fans and Megan Kelly program viewers is rather small.

  190. 190.

    Layer8Problem

    @catclub:
    For a period in the previous decade I was ordering the Pizzeria Uno personal pan pizza once or even twice a week for work lunch (the Uno Due Go on Summer Street in Boston, if you’re doing the walking tour of my life), because I liked the things. One day, being a little concerned about looking more full-figured than I wanted, I consulted the helpful screen-based calorie list in the place to find out what that weighed in at, if you will. As I recall it came to like 1,960 calories. Like a day’s worth of food. This along with the Chipotle barbacoa burritos explained the waistline enough that I went on salad lunches for the next two years.

  191. 191.

    Marmot

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Turned out the car ran fine at -15 but its fuel efficiency just went all the way down to parity with the non-hybrid version of the same car.

    I find it goes up after the car warms. So, short trips are low-efficiency.

  194. 194.

    Tom Levenson

    @Suzanne: I usually make (the world’s best) chicken stock from bones collected over however many chicken dinners but occasionally a I poach a whole chicken, partly for the bird itself, partly for the glorious broth that gets used again.

    I love chicken, so it’s one of my designated luxuries: I buy giannone birds from our local check-with-your-banker butcher, Savenor’s. They’re expensive–about $16 for a 3.5-4 lb whole one.  Shopping for the rest of the ingredients at the same overpriced market (which I wouldn’t do in practice) and at their online prices (higher than in-store), an onion would be $2, depending on size. A couple of carrots, maybe another buck. $5 for a package of cremini mushrooms. Head of garlic for $1.20. $4 for a bunch of thyme. Savenor’s doesn’t list celery (or carrots for that matter) in their online order page, so as a guess, maybe one stalk for a net price of a quarter. Put that together and I get less than $30–for at least four meals off the chicken itself and a likely a little broth left over.

    And again: this is the most expensive possible way to go about it.

    TL:DR McArdle is lying. As usual.

  195. 195.

    montanareddog

    @EarthWindFire:

    At this rate, maybe Biden-Trump 24 should be determined by a bike race or a 5k. I think I know who’d win. :-)

    Assumes that the corpulent sack of skunk faeces can even ride a bike; I bet he never learnt. I mean why would he?

  196. 196.

    catclub

    @schrodingers_cat: also important! hatchbacks  with terribly small back windows, grrr

     

    They said the Scion was designed for the youths, but ours has great height for entry and great visibility. Too bad it is now 18 years old.

    Still good, but more and more outdated features-wise.

  197. 197.

    MomSense

    @sab:

    I did.  Sometimes I bought it off the boat which is cheaper.  There have also been times when lobster couldn’t be shipped because the shells were soft.  That was a warming oceans/climate change problem that worked out well for locals but was a disaster for the industry.

  198. 198.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kathleen: What is wrong with buying store brands I usually buy store brands or what’s on sale. I buy spices from my Indian grocery store by the pound or half pound not those dainty and expensive McCormick bottles.

    My splurge is fresh seafood. Shrimp, salmon, tilapia, cod, haddock, clams, mussels etc. Good to eat, fast to cook.

  200. 200.

    Ken

    @Marcopolo: Maybe it’s just me, but there seem to be a lot of these trials where the judge has said “After looking at the case, the defendant is guilty, guilty, guilty — the only reason we need a trial is to set the penalty.”

    It may be a sampling bias, the only trials I really hear about are for Trump and his circle.

  202. 202.

    catclub

    @schrodingers_cat: I buy spices from my Indian grocery store by the pound or half pound not those dainty and expensive McCormick bottles.

     

    Three tiny bottles of spices for McArdles soup and thats $25 right there.

  204. 204.

    Ben Cisco

    @NotMax: I believe some of this is regional as well.

    Mama Cisco lives in a VERY rural county (oddly enough, a source of oil) – she’s paying .30 MORE per gallon than I am – there is NO valid reason for this. Noticed the same trend in grocery prices. Those who can are going 45 miles across the border to MISSISSIPPI for lower grocery prices – ridiculous!

    My personal, absolutely non-scientific theory on this is that the powers that be want to keep the locals immiserated and fired up to vote for whatever the GQP horks up for candidates. (Wasted effort really – the area has been solid GQP since Brown vs Board of Ed.)

  205. 205.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @frosty: ​ My (deceased) brother and his wife have a house near Coldwater Creek in N STL County. There is a landfill within CC’s watershed holding nuclear waste from WWII. The creek is radioactive now, so is the groundwater. This is the place that has Hawley’s panties in a bunch. Justifiably this time anyway.

  206. 206.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    He could get it easily as a pain med. Ohio had medical up until this last election and everyone was getting a card with a 50 dollar telemed visit, so much so that it became a joke among judges.

    I know this is unpopular but I think MOST health care people genuinely go into it to help people and try to give you what you need and they would be thrilled with a new and effective pain med that doesn’t have a lot of side issues.

    I just think we shouldn’t be telling 17 year olds that they can use this drug frequently with no ill effects, because that’s a lie. You really can’t spend your teenage and young adult years fucked up and not miss things – including emotional experiences you need to have. To go thru. Not float above. The vast majority of lower income kids won’t make it out of poverty anyway – it’s too hard, you have to be extraordinary to overcome poverty, most of them don’t make it. Add weed? Good God. We’ll lose a whole group.

    But. my side lost in Ohio and I believe in the validity of elections PLUS I am enjoying this wingnut v wingnut battle in the city council :)

  209. 209.

    Marcopolo

    @Ken: There was a default guilty ruling in this trial because Rudy G refused to provide any evidence at all.  He delayed & delayed & delayed & the judge finally said fuk it I’m finding you guilty, let’s move to figuring out damages.  A little dif from the Trump civil trial where the default guilty ruling was based on an overwhelming preponderance of evidence showing bad faith actions on the part of Trump Org.

  210. 210.

    wjca

    @Matt McIrvin: Sister Golden Bear has been talking about the weakness in the California tech sector. I see a bit of that too though it’s not as bad as it was a year ago, when there was kind of a tech mini-recession.

    Riiiight.  We just brought on two new Silicon Valley engineers — and they came from existing jobs, not being out of work and looking.  Things are so tight in their lives that they’re willing to work for nothing but sweat equity for the next 4 years.  Must be terrible to endure such poverty.

  213. 213.

    artem1s

    @Scout211: ​ 

    [A graphic of Trump in shadow wearing dark glasses and the words “I’ll be back”].

    Please let The Governator get wind of this. Would love to see the people who paid for that billboard get sued for copyright infringement.

  215. 215.

    Kathleen

    @schrodingers_cat: I hear you. I guess this student felt she was too good to have to buy store brands which in most cases are every bit as good as name brands. Miami University has a lot of snowflakes I guess!

  216. 216.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kathleen: Isn’t living on a tight budget and finding crazy ways to stretch your food purchases one of the quintessential aspects of college?  When I was in college (92-96) we were constantly getting multi-pizza deals, going to discount wing nights, going to various buffets (and sneaking a bunch out) etc. as part of our regular dietary planning.

  217. 217.

    lowtechcyclist

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Tonight’s forecast: dark”.

    I wore out that album growing up.

    I still have “Class Clown” and “Occupation: Foole” that I bought back in the 1970s.  I can’t remember which album has what, but one of them has the 7 words you can’t say on TV or radio, and one of them has the bit about heaven, hell, purgatory, and limbo.  Great stuff!

  218. 218.

    Old Man Shadow

    Food delivery fees are almost as bad as Ticketmaster fees. Order in advance, pick it up on the way home and that price tag would drop by at least $40.

  222. 222.

    Soprano2

    @Marcopolo: Me too, his lies destroyed those women’s lives. These people think they can cavalierly do this stuff and never pay a price for it. That needs to stop.

  224. 224.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kathleen: ​
      From what I know from my 15 years in Columbus, Miami of Ohio is a public school that acts as though it is private. A good sized proportion of privileged kids.

  225. 225.

    Ken

    @Kay: Illinois has had recreational dispensaries since January 2020, and I still hear radio ads for services that will hook you up with a doctor who will get you the medical card. Those always sounded dubious to me, and I’m more puzzled now that it’s not needed. The only thing I can guess is that there’s a significant cohort who don’t want to think of themselves as recreational users — “No, with me it’s medicine.”

  226. 226.

    artem1s

    @Kay: ​

    This has enraged the anti weed Republicans on council and elsewhere.

    Gotta love rural Ohio – sounds a lot like my hometown that was dryer than dry up until the early 2000’s? When council finally started to consider letting restaurants apply for liquor licenses, the ‘competition’ was pretty fierce and the establishments that were camped out just across the township line were really pissed about losing their business to the in-town stores. As were the local militia’s that were going to see their moonshine revenue drop. Local Sheriffs also had a big sad with all the protection money drying up. 😫
    The dispensary situation is likely to result in a lot of violent crime out in those those god fearing white flight enclaves. Too many guns, nothing to do but get drunk or high, and militia monopolies on the pot supply getting broken up is not a good combo.

  227. 227.

    Soprano2

    @Kathleen: Good Lord, that’s most people’s lives! It’s like the people who complain about needing to have roommates in order to have a decent lifestyle. I never lived on my own when I was single – it was normal for people to have roommates. It made life livable. You aren’t entitled to be able to live on your own no matter what.

  229. 229.

    Nettoyeur

    @New Deal democrat: The long term wisdom is that the economy lags the stock market by ~ 6 months….and this is true both for ups and downs. If that holds in 2024, things should get interesting. The other long term finding is that Dem admins produce higher growth and lower unemployment. Right Wing Oligarchs hate this because Those People do better and are less likely to work as servants to the Oligarchs  who basically like the Putin Model.

  230. 230.

    sdhays

    @Betty Cracker: LOL. Obama played basketball with professionals. I mean, he couldn’t beat them, but he would play pickup games with them.

    Trump couldn’t walk a mile like all the other national leaders at the G-whatever. He needed a golf cart because he was a partial invalid, even then.

  231. 231.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Ken: The taxes on recreational make cannabis here in Illinois cost more than “on the street. With  medical card, no taxes. That’s the trick.

    Weird thing is the folks selling it on the street have the same stuff as the dispensaries. By that I mean…….someone is supplying them back door with the dispensary stuff.

  234. 234.

    New Deal democrat

    @catclub: My two cents, having just finished buying a new car…

    The acceleration issue with hybrids has been *solved.* Between better gearing and “sport” mode, many have even better acceleration than internal combustion engines.

    Both plug-ins and EV’s cost considerably more than regular hybrids. Plug-ins have fewer issues about range or how long is needed to charge (so long as the hotel you are staying in overnight on a trip has charging stations). Tesla’s price cuts are killing all the legacy manufacturers’ attempts to enter the EV market. The only close competitors I saw were the Hyundai Ioniqs.

  235. 235.

    Soprano2

    @Kathleen: Most of the time you can’t tell the difference between store brand and name brand. I make an exception for cleaning products because I’ve had bad experiences with generic ones – they seem to be watered down versions of the real stuff. But geez, the Baker’s Choice sugar at Aldi’s is the same sugar as the C&H sugar! No difference except price.

  236. 236.

    Suzanne

    @Soprano2: To be fair, there’s a bunch of research that the country is seriously under-built on studio apartments and condos for the population that we have today. There’s demographic and lifestyle changes that mean we have a lot more single adults than we used to…. older age of first marriage, a greater number of people never marrying at all, etc. Thee’s even been some experiments in “micro-apartments”, which are more like dorms for adults…. private bed and bath (small), common living and cooking space. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for adults to hate roommate living. The built environment needs to meet people’s needs.

  237. 237.

    Barbara

    @Suzanne:

    I don’t know how you get to $50 with what she described, unless she’s just buying the most ludicrously priced version of each item.

    Let’s say that she bought a little jar of concentrated chicken stock, celery, carrots, onions, noodles, chicken, poultry seasoning, bay leaves, and olive oil.  Depending on quantities and brands, that will easily add up to $50.  Of course, many of the ingredients will still be on hand to make soup every week for the next few months, and it’s my guess that she cooks so infrequently that her pantry isn’t stocked with even the most basic ingredients necessary to make just about anything, not just chicken soup, which most people buy in a can rather than make from scratch.  And if they do make it from scratch, it’s only after they have already made one or two meals from the whole chicken.​
    ​
    ​

  238. 238.

    Gretchen

    @eclare: that was a bone of contention in my house. My husband insisted on putting the milk in because that’s what the directions said. My kids hated it – they thought milk made it too runny.

  239. 239.

    Barbara

    @Gretchen: We never add milk, or maybe just a splash — a little of the leftover boiling water gives it sufficient creaminess if desired.  I think they tell you to add milk to make you feel like it’s more nutritious than it actually is.

  242. 242.

    StringOnAStick

    @Suzanne: Our town is putting in two 5 story buildings that will be predominantly studio apartments, about 196 units, to address affordable housing needs here.  It is in an area of town needing redevelopment (meaning where the homeless hang out in semi abandoned industrial lots) and the incentive to get a builder to do it is the part of the project being exempted from taxes for 10 years.

  244. 244.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: I don’t necessarily disagree, I guess I just hate the whining when I know that I always had to have a roommate in the 1980’s, when supposedly these things were better, and in a town where the price of apartments and rental houses was lower than the national average. Maybe it wasn’t reasonable to have to have a roommate, but it was the reality so I just did it and didn’t whine about it. I guess what I hate is the entitlement attitude, like people think they are entitled to have their dream house and a perfect high-paying job at the age of 25. They don’t want to start low and work their way up, they want everything all at once. That’s not how life works for most people.

    My friend’s son and his family, who were happy to bankrupt his mother in order to live in an apartment without having to have a job (partly her fault for enabling it in the first place) is now living with dad because she could no longer pay their rent. She told me last night that he had a job interview and will hopefully start a new job soon. I think dad laid down the law about how they can only live there for so long. I understand people having hard times, but she said he would start a job and only last a week or two before quitting. I think he wanted the “perfect” job rather than finding a job that supported his family, and as long as mom would pay for everything he could do that. I listen to Michelle Singletary, she tells people with student loan debt that they should get roommates or live with parents if they want to work on paying it down. Sometimes you have to buy store brand in order to make it!

  245. 245.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Soprano2: I wish I and my closest four friends combined could afford an apartment. I think people underestimate how bad it is out there.

  246. 246.

    Barbara

    @Tom Levenson: Au contraire, this is not the most expensive way to go about it.  Let me introduce you to artisanal chicken glace:  Link.

    $32.95 for a little jar.  Well, of course, it will make gallons and gallons of stock, but it’s definitely an investment.  There are supermarket brands, but they are still pricey, say, $10.  A teaspoon of a good glace enhances whatever kind of soup you make.

  247. 247.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kathleen: They want all these choices while they keep bleating about late stage capitalism non-stop and have hammer and sickle in their Twitter nyms.. I guess they have never actually lived in an economy which had limited consumer choices.

    It is the capitalism that gives you those choices. Sometimes it feels choice for the sake of it, who needs 20 varieties of strawberry jam. But their idealized communist economy had breadlines and empty store shelves

  248. 248.

    Paul in KY

    @Kay: Next time I head up to Cincy, I’ll be shopping!  I think the stores around Findlay Market would be great for a dispensary.

  250. 250.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kay: I’m convinced now that there will be a national push by the Jesus Nazis to ban epidurals because the Bible specifically says women should bring forth children in pain. I have seen a clip of a lunatic fundy minister arguing that, but I think it will go mainstream now.

  254. 254.

    Paul in KY

    @Betty Cracker: They (the crowd) just has to know he’s lying his ass off. Maybe sometime they will wonder why he thinks he can throw out such whoppers to them. What does he think of their credulity?

  257. 257.

    Juju

    @Betty Cracker: Trump reminds me of my mother when she started to show signs of her dementia. One of the MSNBC nightly shows showed a clip of Trump talking about the Supreme Court and how they would find something about his cases not guilty. It truly did not make sense. If Biden said anything remotely similar Fox would still be talking about it. The fact that Trump’s mind seems to jump back and forth in time and that he conflates things that Obama did with things that Biden has done and does not seem to realize it, should raise some warning flags.

  258. 258.

    eclare

    @Soprano2:

    I had a roommate til I was about 31, I really enjoyed it.  We had an apt with a nice little balcony.  If you wanted to grab a drink with a friend, no need to go out, and it was a perfect setting.  Plus the friendship was nice.

  259. 259.

    Suzanne

    @Soprano2:

    I guess what I hate is the entitlement attitude, like people think they are entitled to have their dream house and a perfect high-paying job at the age of 25. They don’t want to start low and work their way up, they want everything all at once. That’s not how life works for most people. 

    I hate that, too…. but that’s not what I see most of the people I know struggling with. I see a lot more of my friends — with degrees and often with kids — still living with parents or in really tight situations. I’m younger than many commenters here, and I think there’s a lot of underestimation about the financial reality that lots of younger people face. (And I’m not even that young.) The cost of housing, education, and transportation have gone up much faster than inflation for decades and eat up a lot more earnings than they used to (Elizabeth Warren and her daughter cover this extensively in their book).

    And the country needs people to be able to live where they work. The economy as a whole is smaller and less productive than it should be.

  260. 260.

    StringOnAStick

    @Beatrice Blacklow: In Colorado, a medical card is relatively easy to get and the last time I got one it was $120 and if you brought your receipt to the big chain shop, they’d refund that cost by giving you store credit once you had your card.  Being a medical buyer means much cheaper and also higher strength if you want.  The difference in price is/was substantial there.

    Here in Oregon it is much more difficult to get a medical card and there’s really no need since it’s much more a system that looks and feels like a nice liquor store.  In both states there is currently some consolidation happening because there’s too many stores and so the easy money has been made and now the chains are fighting to become the Wal-Marts of pot.  I think that the novelty has worn off and the initial frenzy of buyers peaked and declined now that it’s just ordinary shopping, like buying your weekend six pack of beer.

    There’s still fun to had though.  I love it when a nice young budtender asks me what I’m looking for and my Medicare aged self says “something fun for having sex, a good body high”.  They always know exactly what that means and have yet to steer us wrong!

  261. 261.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay: I do absolutely agree with you about young people – there appears to be ample evidence that pot is bad for developing brains.

    @CindyH: I agree with you. It’s how to get the information across without either pandering or exaggerating that would be the challenge for youth drug education, imho.

  262. 262.

    Soprano2

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I agree, that’s pretty bad. For me it wasn’t that I couldn’t afford an apartment, it was that there was no money left over after I paid my bills and bought food. If I wanted to have any kind of social life roommates were a necessity.

  263. 263.

    eclare

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    What part of the country do you live in?  I started out in ATL after college, and I don’t even recognize photos of it now.  And I am guessing all those new high-rises are not full of affordable apartments, most likely high priced condos.

  264. 264.

    Nelle

    @Kay: I agree with you.  I’m observing people who escaped the hard experiences,  though it could have been through gaming or other addictions, too.  There are just maturity gaps there.

  265. 265.

    Sure Lurkalot

     

    @Matt McIrvin:

    If he had to go through doctors they’d probably get him on opioids instead, which is way worse and a way bigger social problem around here too.

    Alcohol too. Humans suffer pain, part of life and there’s no pain reliever without side effect, usually deleterious to the sufferer or I guess “society”.

    What’s more dangerous…a teen smoking pot or being homeschooled and secluded by an abusive parent?

  266. 266.

    RaflW

    I wish John Harwood would get on Bsky. Even if it was just some sort of automated reposting of his xits. Maybe eventually. Now that I’ve deactivated, I really don’t even want to go look at xits. It’s okay that they’re in these BJ posts. I still want to know what’s up. But his feed is a quality one that I miss. C’est la guerre.

  267. 267.

    Suzanne

    @schrodingers_cat:

    It is the capitalism that gives you those choices. Sometimes it feels choice for the sake of it, who needs 20 varieties of strawberry jam. But their idealized communist economy had breadlines and empty store shelves 

    This is LMAO not true. The young Left mostly idealizes contemporary Denmark, which, last I heard, is not beset with breadlines and empty shelves.

    But, you know, don’t let that get in the way of a good lefty-punching session.

  268. 268.

    opiejeanne

    @schrodingers_cat: My DH backed our new (July) car into a retaining wall last week and damaged more than just the paint, (the next day Star Link sent me an email telling me that the Blind Spot Detection Light was on).

    The loaner car that the dealership gave me was a Cross-Trek Sport, and I could barely see over the steering wheel. It was like sitting at the bottom of a well.

  269. 269.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Both those bits are on Class Clown.  “I was an Irish Catholic, now I’m an American, you know, you grow.”

    The Al Sleet bit is on Occupation: Foole.

    Per Ozark Hillbilly, I’m guessing anybody who had those on vinyl dates themselves. ;P

  270. 270.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Soprano2: The only times I succesfully managed to be living away from my parents’ home, I had a partner with a high paying job and knew a honeowner about to sell their home willing to rent for less-than-market rates.

    One of my friends is a trucker, two others are working two jobs. I just left a second job and am looking again. I’m 40, they range from 23 to 35.  Finding a new second job is going to be necessary, I can just barely pay my bills on just the one

    @eclare: I live in Massachusetts.

  271. 271.

    Marmot

    @schrodingers_cat: Not to mention a hilariously corrupt ruling class, and a government that citizens had no hope of influencing. Oh, and a scary secret police force and a 100% “imperialist” foreign policy.

    It burns me up when some jerk flies the hammer n’ sickle.

  273. 273.

    Central Planning

    @jonas: ​
      Same with my suburb of Rochester. They also didn’t want a tattoo joint in town. Fucking wankers (the politicians, not tattoo artists)

  276. 276.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @opiejeanne: WRT seeing over the steering wheel, see if you can raise the seat and/or adjust the steering wheel.  My 82 y/o mom just complained to my dad the she had trouble seeing over the wheel in their CR-V.  She had raised the seat but didn’t know that the steering wheel was adjustable.  She is now comfortable behind the wheel again.

  277. 277.

    Scout211

    This  is a another case that SCOTUS agreed to review.  It could have far-reaching implications for the J6 convictions and impending trials, including charges against Trump.

    The Supreme Court said Wednesday that it will consider whether part of a federal obstruction law can be used to prosecute some of the rioters involved in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    How the Supreme Court defines how the obstruction law can be used related to the Capitol attack could impact hundreds of criminal cases, even the pending case against former President Donald Trump, who is also charged with obstructing an official proceeding.

    The Supreme Court said Wednesday that it will consider whether part of a federal obstruction law can be used to prosecute some of the rioters involved in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    How the Supreme Court defines how the obstruction law can be used related to the Capitol attack could impact hundreds of criminal cases, even the pending case against former President Donald Trump, who is also charged with obstructing an official proceeding.
    . . .
    Within a few hours of the Supreme Court taking the case, the move was having a ripple effect across ongoing January 6 criminal cases.

    At least one defendant, Ethan Seitz, asked his trial-level judge to cancel his sentencing hearing set for January because of the Supreme Court case that’s now pending. His lawyers asked for his not to be sentenced yet “in the interests of judicial economy.”

  279. 279.

    Barbara

    @Suzanne: ​Sometimes it’s all of the above. My daughter has a friend who grew up in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia where his parents have a pretty big yard, and he absolutely wants the outdoor space (even more so than the indoor space) for hobbies, gardening, and so on. He is constantly complaining about not being able to buy into that kind of lifestyle right now. He is 27 years old, and he is not married and who knows what’s in the cards there. He can afford his own apartment but he has been pushed into roommate situations because he wants a yard so badly. I point out that he is seeking the same kind square footage that his parents had for five people (couple plus three kids), and that is probably going to be unrealistic in just about any significant metropolitan area.

    He is looking at cheap real estate in rural locations that already have WiFi and the idea is that he and a few roommates will fix it up.

    He’s a great kid, I love that he likes doing stuff, and I don’t think he is typical, but it grates on my nerves that this is what he views as generational deprivation. Of course, he and I both know people whose lives are far more precarious. We all want what we want.

  280. 280.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Central Planning:

    Where? I have friends in/around Rochester.  Now I want a Garbage Plate.

    The no-tattoo-parlor thing dates waaaay back.  I remember in godforsaken Martinsburg WV in the 70s, downtown (such that it is) was dump but they made it very public about no tattoo parlors b/c that might “bring down” the area.  JFC.

    When we lived outside equally godforsaken Jeff City MO, they had the same ordinance on the books until sometime in the late aughts.  Since then, the most lasting bidness there has been the tattoo place.

  282. 282.

    Barbara

    @Suzanne: I had a Danish au pair who now has a partner and two kids, in a two bedroom house.  They make do even though the kids are one of each gender.  Their house is incredibly small, not much bigger than a double wide — and maybe not even — but it’s in a park like setting, so the kids play outside.  Also, it’s a 30 minute train ride from downtown.  Many people would indeed be happy with this standard of living, but many people in the US would consider it to be living cheek by jowl without enough elbow room. I do think people often talk about other places without quite understanding what trade offs people are making there, as opposed to her.

  283. 283.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ken: Your pot-smoker status – medicinal or recreational –  can make a difference with employer-mandated drug testing, I believe.

    Here in CO you can’t get a concealed carry permit if you’re a registered medical user. But you can be a recreational user with no official record of usage and voila…

  287. 287.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Barbara: ​
     

    He is constantly complaining about not being able to buy into that kind of lifestyle right now…but it grates on my nerves that this is what he views as generational deprivation.

    That is something we can agree on. The mindset is baffling. Sure, I would have loved to live in Georgetown at 27 back in the day. Funny how nobody expected to be able to do that at that point in their lives short of inherited wealth.

  288. 288.

    Bupalos

    @catclub: Chevy bolt sits surprisingly high and has great visibility, I guess because you’re on top of the battery. My friend who bought a subaru crosstrek? largely for these factors and had not really considered EV’s, just assuming they wouldn’t fit the bill, got in it and was like “whaaaat?!”

  289. 289.

    Scout211

    @Miss Bianca: Your pot-smoker status – medicinal or recreational –  can make a difference with employer-mandated drug testing, I believe.

    California has made improvement to that starting on January 1, 2024.

    A new law will prevent California employers from punishing employees for recreational use of cannabis outside of work hours starting January 1. While current and prospective workers can still be tested, they cannot be disciplined unless they are high at the time of the test.

    For years, people could fail a drug test if they had ingested marijuana two to six weeks prior. But Assembly Bill 2188 protects workers if they use marijuana recreationally and it shows up on a test.

    . . .
    The new law does not cover construction or building industry workers, federal workers, or those that require federal background and clearance checks. But for everyone else, the HR experts says it’s time to update their workplace policies.

  290. 290.

    Suzanne

    @Barbara: Entitlement is definitely a thing that exists, but, like I said, I also know a lot more young people who are living in crappy apartments with a bunch of sketchy roommates they met on Craigslist because they work in architecture or engineering or development, and they get paid shit, but they need to live close to where they work. Some of them grew up in small towns and cities and those places don’t have jobs for them. I have multiple people on my project team, in their late 30s and older, who cannot afford to live where they work, and who have either left the project or are working remotely.

    Honestly, just about the only young people I know who are doing well financially are those who are not American and their parents paid for them to go to school in the US and then support them in part afterward.

    The entitlement you describe is definitely an exception to the rule, at least among the people I know.

  291. 291.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’d be elated if I could have a humble little living space for me and my bros.  Yes, some people have unrealiatic expectations. Still, the younger generations have disproportionately little wealth.

    I know too many people with advanced degrees or otherwise nice jobs who just can’t make it on their own.

  292. 292.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Bupalos:

    What year Bolt?  We have a 2023 1LT EV since September.  Best car ever and I never thought I’d ever say that about a GM product.

  293. 293.

    schrodingers_cat

    On a national basis, however, it suggests that for the median renter, rent has either been flat or has fallen as a percentage of income over the past 20 years, and over the past 60 years it’s fallen considerably.

    This is from Mother Jones not WSJ. I am pretty sure that there are certain cities that are exceptions to the national trend. But that is not the whole story.

  294. 294.

    geg6

    @Kay: ​ I’m 65 and have smoked pot almost every single day of my life since the age of 15. I have a BA and an MEd and have a long career at two institutions of higher ed, including one that is a major R-1 university. I have stable relationships and have never been arrested.
    I do not agree that it will hurt them if they do it like I have and, after a certain age, kept it to one bowl/joint after work in the evening, much like some people have a glass of wine or scotch. Almost nothing is all that bad for you if you do it in moderation.​

  295. 295.

    Barbara

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: What I think has changed in many places is that (as my parents did) it used to be possible to buy a small house with a decent, not huge yard.  The value of land underneath houses is so high in some places that it is impossible for that to happen.  I know that I live in one of the most inflated value places in America and it’s NEVER going to be like that here, ever, again, absent economic catastrophe.  The fight is over the alternatives when those houses come up for sale.  Where I grew up, people are still mostly able to buy the kind of small house my parents did, with a smallish but nice yard, although prices have gone up. My daughter calculated that if the value of my parents house had kept up with inflation I would have been able to sell it for $280,000, instead of 1/3 of that, which is what it fetched, and that was substantially more than it would have even two years prior to that.​

  296. 296.

    frosty

    @eclare: ​I flipped back and forth between roommates (housemates) and an apartment on my own when I was in my 20s. Both were good, although the apartments tended to be dirt-cheap dumps. One was a block from the Pacific in Huntington Beach (converted garage) so that wasn’t bad. I had good roommates and enjoyed the company.​

  298. 298.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @geg6: If you’re going to pick a drug for daily recreational use, you could do a lot worse than weed.

    The alcohol people, in particular, seem to be able to go through life blind to how it’s affecting them.

  300. 300.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    Income/wealth disparity.  40 years of Reagonomics has brought us to this point.

    One fundamental difference between people with advanced degrees now and people like me back in the day was the amount of student debt.  I got out with an MA and little debt.  It’s far different now, again, another consequence of Phucking Reagan.  I’ve been a big supporter of cancelling student debt and changing how we fund higher edumacation.

  301. 301.

    OGLiberal

    @Gretchen: Not that she cares or that this matters but I actually did put a fully organic – except for bread and soda – cart of the ingredients she ordered into the Stop & Shop app – basically the same store at Giant. (same company, not just similar…it’s the same store with a different name)  I replied to her with this…again, not that she fucking cares:

    “I just put those items-and I did all organic except the bread and soda-in my cart on the Stop & Shop app and got to $39.65. I added a gallon of spring water and got to $41.14 I live in NJ, not exactly a cheap place. I’d get 2-3 meals out of that soup, family of 4. Good deal.”

    Does it matter that my chicken was organic chicken thighs? Because that’s all you need for soup.

  302. 302.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Bringing down cost and other access barriers to education is one of society’s biggest needs that gets too little attention.

    Too much of the conversation is eaten up by university too. Yes, we need affordable university. Still, we can do a lot with trade schools, internships, encouraging on the job training, and other such methods.

  303. 303.

    Suzanne

    Here’s some information about rent-burden.

    Since 2000, the share of renters who are rent burdened nationwide has increased from 40 percent to 50 percent in 2020. The share of renters who are severely burdened increased from one in five to one in four over the same period.
    At least half of renters are currently rent burdened in 57 of the 100 largest cities in the US.

    I see varying stats in different places (ranging from 40% to 50% of renting households estimated to be rent-burdened). Still a record.

  304. 304.

    RaflW

    @Kay: I just heard about a psilocybin-based treatment for chronic depression. Definitely not for everyone to attempt, but my friend (who traveled outside the US to do this at a specific facility, with aftercare and follow up) reports excellent results. And he’d tried a variety of well known prescription medications + years of talk therapy.

    I feel like there can be a bias against natural pharmacologically active agents in research. One wonders if the (psycho)active ingredient(s) could be isolated and used. Maybe even profitably, since that is king in our complicated health care matrix here.

  305. 305.

    frosty

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​ @opiejeanne: ​ Or get a seat cushion. That’s what I needed in my Triumph TR-3. It had a huge steering wheel and I was looking through it until I got the cushion and could see over it the way it was intended.​

  306. 306.

    opiejeanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: D’oh! There was no way to raise the seat, I tried. I didn’t think about adjusting the steering wheel though. That would have helped a little, but that car sat in the garage all weekend until I took it back to the dealership to take mine to a body shop. This was recommended by the dealer in case there is more damage that would prevent the radar sensor thingie from initializing after the wiring harness is replaced.  The body shop guy thinks the estimate from the dealer is outrageous and is going to look for a less expensive repair shop. Insurance company is now involved because this is a considerable chunk of change for us.

    My car is drivable, not dangerous, and a possible indication of the peppy economy is that these guys are booked until mid-January just to look at my car. After they determine the damage, then I get to make another appointment for them to do the repairs.

  308. 308.

    rikyrah

    @satby:

    So the “ingredients to make chicken soup from scratch” would include

    chicken,- Drumsticks, got a bag of them for $5

    onion- 3lb bag, $2.25

    celery,- 1 lb bag, $1.25

    maybe other vegetables- frozen bag of mixed vegetables, generic, $1

    possibly noodles- egg noodles, $1. 50

    or potatoes, 5 lb bag, $3

    stock (because McArdle)- 32 oz of chicken BROTH for $1 (just bought that yesterday)

    I bought two 32 ounces of BROTH, so $15

    If you want to add tomatoes – 4 large roma tomatoes – $1

     

    So, $16

    Yeah, Megan’s a liar.

    … and all of a sudden $50 is perfectly reasonable as a price for those groceries. So she has to lie.

  309. 309.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @opiejeanne: ​
      I like cars and enjoy driving. One of the first things I do when behind the wheel of an unfamiliar car is to set the driving position to be comfortable for me. It makes a huge difference in how it feels to drive car.

  310. 310.

    frosty

    @opiejeanne: ​Ms F was in an accident this summer (get a dash cam – it shut up the other driver who claimed she was the one who ran the red light!). Body shop said that since it was undriveable it went to the top of the waiting list – six weeks. As it turned out, it was two months before we had it back.​​

  311. 311.

    Suzanne

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Agreed.

    The overall trend, too, is that urbanization is ongoing worldwide. Certainly in this country. The places that need lots of workers are running out of places for them to live. Remote work loosens this up a little, but not a lot. So some places have roughly as much housing stock as they need, but other places are seriously short. There’s no reason at this point to think that this trend isn’t going to continue, and we’re not doing a great job planning for it.

  312. 312.

    opiejeanne

    @frosty: I joked that I needed a phone book to sit on when I returned the car, and I suspect that the very young woman had no idea what I was talking about.

  313. 313.

    Paul in KY

    @Suzanne: The ‘idealized’ one would be a worker’s paradise! Soviet Russia was definitely not idealized…except for the despotic leaders and their henchmen.

  315. 315.

    opiejeanne

    @Omnes Omnibus:  I usually do that too. I was sitting in the parking lot after they handed me the keys, thinking that I should walk back in and take the other car they offered me, an Outback, but pride prevailed and common sense lost.  I like a vehicle that is a little higher than a sedan, but thought I’d try out the Cross-Trek because it was cute. Our new car is a Forester, but it’s a couple of inches wider than the old one; probably just from the mirrors which makes it a little tighter to put into the garage, and it’s so comfortable it feels like riding in a bed.

  316. 316.

    Miss Bianca

    @geg6: I think Kay might be referring to chronic habitual use among young folks – bong hits for breakfast and going on from there. Moderate use is one thing, heavy use another. I’ll agree that the occasional toke isn’t likely to do much harm.

    Fortunately for me, I didn’t develop any taste for pot or anything stronger till later in life. I was a pretty straight arrow in high school. :)

  318. 318.

    OGLiberal

    @rikyrah: She “explained” that she tries to go as low sodium as possible, and that gets expensive.  We shop organic as much as possible, so I get that it’s more expensive to shop healthy, but as I noted above, I did an almost fully organic cart at almost the exact same grocery chain and got to a bit under 40 bucks.  Added a gallon of spring water – because why use tap if you’re spending all that money on organic? – and got to a bit over 40 bucks.  I will admit, I only had organic chicken thighs in my cart.  If you’re smart, when you cook/buy a whole chicken you will keep the bones/carcass in the freezer for future stock making.

  319. 319.

    opiejeanne

    @OGLiberal: Why not use tap unless you live in a place that has lousy water?

    We have the turkey wings and drumsticks and part of the carcass in the freezer, waiting for me to make stock.

  320. 320.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: It’s also colored by the context of: 1) Frequent complaining about young lefties and 2) Discussion in this thread about the entitlement/overinflated expectations of some young people.

    McMegan is absolutely middle-age, and I will note that pampered entitlement is certainly not confined to the younger set.

  322. 322.

    OGLiberal

    @opiejeanne: Lead levels high here but, agree, not always needed.

    I don’t think there’s a time that I can remember in the last 15+ years where there wasn’t some sort of huge bag of bones in the freezer, usually more than one.  Always come in handy.  Note that I’m a vegetarian but I live with a bunch of carnivores.

  323. 323.

    Brachiator

    @Kay:

    Coming late to the thread, but wanted to note this excellent point.

    “Horrible economy” is baked in to Biden – it no longer has any connection to reality anyway. Have you seen the price of lobster tails!?!

    The extreme version of this happens on Fox News, where reporters bend over backwards to deny Biden credit for a good economy. But this bias is sadly standard operating procedure for much of mainstream media.

  324. 324.

    MagdaInBlack

    @frosty: I have worked in the body shop industry for 20+ years and I have never seen a year like the past one. To your repair time, I was scheduling drive-able repairs 3 months out, and non-dives took 2 weeks to get to because we had so many coming in. All our shops in the Chicago market were over capacity by 20-30 cars, from Jan 23 til just recently.

    Some weird stuff going on out there with driving skills or lack of.

  325. 325.

    Suzanne

    @OGLiberal:

    She “explained” that she tries to go as low sodium as possible, and that gets expensive. 

    Ummmm, does it? I try to do a lot of low sodium, and I don’t know that it adds cost?

  326. 326.

    OGLiberal

    @Brachiator: Even though they are terrible at all of these things you have to just come to terms with the fact that Republicans are just worlds better when it comes to the economy, immigration and crime.  Because they just are.  Because daddy always keeps the scary monsters away.

  327. 327.

    Suzanne

    @MagdaInBlack:

    Some weird stuff going on out there with driving skills or lack of.

    There’s a lot of data about increased collisions with pedestrians, I wonder if it’s related?

  328. 328.

    OGLiberal

    @Suzanne: Yeah, it’s BS.  Low sodium adds cents, if that.  Organic, I get – but I couldn’t come close to 50 bucks with an almost fully organic cart at a store called Stop & Shop – which is the same freaking store as Giant, with a different logo.  They even have the same creepy robot – Marty – rolling around the aisles.

    She’s just trying to argue, “but, health reasons!”  But it’s still BS.  I think she’s mostly trying to rebut the “just buy a can of soup!” arguments.  Whatever…she’s still full of shit.

  329. 329.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Wow, that’s bleak (in a good way) (in the way we like.) Don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.

    (note to self for ’24: make sure to always click on O2’s song selections. Pretty much guaranteed to be often unfamiliar, but always tasty.)

  330. 330.

    Burnspbesq

    @Jeffro:

    I tried pointing out that I am usually wrong on most things…hopefully she’ll let me have just this one little tremendous win.  “For America”, I’ll tell her.  Wish me luck!  =)

    Been nice known’ ya.

  331. 331.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Suzanne: If you are driving something the size of a small house among other small moving houses, shit will tend to happen.  Especially if an area the size of a small city lot immediately surrounding your small house is utterly invisible to you.  And don’t get me started on lane discipline.

  332. 332.

    Suzanne

    @OGLiberal: LMAO INORITE?! When you do low-sodium, generally the best way to compensate is with aromatics. Onions and garlic and peppers and stuff are not expensive! She probably bought those anyway!

  335. 335.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @opiejeanne: Hey, that there’s my nemesis

    @Omnes Omnibus: Maybe I’m too triggered by memories of fights long past. I’ve been working on it, but my urgw to make cheap quips generated contructive interference and next I knew, I was hitting the post button.

  336. 336.

    Ken

    @Suzanne: If making soup from scratch it should be relatively easy to control the sodium, even if you’re buying the stock.

    One place where there might be unexpected sodium is in the chicken. Watch for labels about “flavor solution”, which means they’ve injected salt water into the meat to increase the weight — er, I mean improve the taste.

  337. 337.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Agreed.

    I have noted before that I have a boundless loathing for the Ford F-series of trucks. I don’t feel much more positively about any other large vehicle.

  338. 338.

    Ben Cisco

    @Omnes Omnibus: A LOT of what’s on the streets here look like they’d hardly FIT in a single lane anymore. My commute involves an on ramp – to – exit path of less than one mile across 4 lanes*. I’ve started making this trip earlier just to avoid the F-850s/aircraft carriers weaving in and out of lanes during rush hour.

    *Which is weapons-grade STOOPID, BTW

  339. 339.

    opiejeanne

    @MagdaInBlack: I think people are getting cars repaired who might have not bothered in the past. I’m looking at my damaged car and wondering why my DH didn’t hear the warnings that this thingie made, but he was focused on a big truck crowding him in a tight parking lot and not paying attention to any of the collision avoidance features, like the big damned backup screen showing the wall was right there.

  340. 340.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m actually making my way through “Catisfaction” right now, which I believe was another of your recommendations a few days back. Me likey!

    ETA:I remember Blood and Chocolate coming out, but you’re right – I don’t remember it getting much airplay relative to some of his other albums.

  341. 341.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    On a national basis, however, it suggests that for the median renter, rent has either been flat or has fallen as a percentage of income over the past 20 years, and over the past 60 years it’s fallen considerably.

    A very interesting article, which tries to sort through lots of mixed data, but stumbles in a number of areas. Rents on a national basis doesn’t tell you much, and I don’t even know what a “median renter” might be.

    One chart uses 1960 as a base year for rents and income, but when it zooms in to recent years, it switches to 2000 as the base year, which immediately distorts the value of any comparison.

    I like some of the Federal Reserve analyses, which focus on a specific region. But even this stuff has to be read carefully.

  342. 342.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Suzanne: I think its a combo of some ptsd from covid shutdown and all the distractions in vehicle today. Don’t get me started on what I think of putting touchscreen on the dash.We can’t use cell phones while driving, but those things, yup. thats fine.

  344. 344.

    OGLiberal

    @Suzanne: She did…onions, poultry mix, parsley.  I put all of those – organic – in my cart, along with the carrots, mushrooms and celery she listed.  All organic, except for the store baked French bread and impulse buy 20 oz. Diet Coke…..still couldn’t come close to 50 bucks.

  345. 345.

    opiejeanne

    @Suzanne: I’m not sure if salt-free stock costs more but it might be just because.

    Her explanation of trying to eat sodium-free strikes me as a little funny, after her bragging about pink Himalayan salt.

  347. 347.

    MagdaInBlack

    @opiejeanne: That has not been my experience here, but I cannot speak to elsewhere. These were definitely vehicles that needed repairs, not scuffs or dings.

    I dunno, except its been nuts in the industry this last year.

  348. 348.

    Suzanne

    @Ben Cisco:

    I’ve started making this trip earlier just to avoid the F-850s/schooners/aircraft carriers weaving in and out of lanes during rush hour. 

    I used to work in a building with a garage that had mostly compact car spots on the most convenient levels. So someone who drove a F-250 with an extended cab would routinely park across FOUR compact car spots. (Meanwhile, those of us who actually do drive compact cars were considerate about leaving the full-size spots to others.) LORD, I hope that person got smote. (Smited?)

  350. 350.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @OGLiberal: ​
      She forgot to mention the bottle of wine that, of course, one must have with the soup? I mean de rigeuer, n’est-ce pas?

  353. 353.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: That nym sounds familiar…

    btw, in the spirit of sharing, I went down a Youtube Pogues-streamin’ rabbit hole the other day and stumbled on this gem, Sinead O’Connor with the Chieftains doing The Foggy Dew – have you heard it?

    It’s been haunting me as a mindworm for days now…

    ETA: Damn, Sinead and Shane in the same year, I haven’t felt this low about any artists’ deaths since Prince’s death back in ’16, which should have told me what kind of crappy year it was going to be.

  354. 354.

    Ben Cisco

    @Suzanne: Yeah, crap like that, a guy deserves to get smacked in the head with a large mackerel.

    Or boxed in by vehicles on either side of said 4 spaces. The VA will GLEEFULLY have a vehicle towed for that.

  355. 355.

    catclub

    @Juju: I appreciate that you have the patience to listen to Trump’s word salad.  If more of us (or the media) actually did, it might not be skimmed over like all his other stuff.

  356. 356.

    opiejeanne

    @MagdaInBlack: I haven’t visited the body shop yet because our first appointment is more than 3 weeks away so I don’t know if it’s just scuffs or real damage, or real damage that isn’t visible until you take off the rear bumper. In the past we’ve been rear-ended a couple of times while sitting at a red light, and they’ve always taken us in right away, and never seemed this busy.

  357. 357.

    Brachiator

    @OGLiberal:

    Even though they are terrible at all of these things you have to just come to terms with the fact that Republicans are just worlds better when it comes to the economy, immigration and crime.

    I’ve been trying to follow more British news since BREXIT, and see that in both the US and the UK, Republicans and the Tories are seen as being better on the economy (but not necessarily on immigration or crime).

    This seems to come down to the fallacy that tax cuts and spending limits are always to be desired, no matter what. People think that they understand comparing a national economy to a family budget, even though this is useless.

  359. 359.

    OGLiberal

    @opiejeanne: I just read a few more of her replies and she did say she has hypertension – could be a new development.  But, yes, in my experience, most low sodium items don’t cost more.  But think she’s trying to argue against those saying she should just buy a few cans of Campbell’s.  It also sounds like she bought way more chicken than she needed.  That said, she didn’t say it was organic and a shitload of non-organic chicken thighs doesn’t cost that much….4 lbs Perdue will cost you about 11 bucks….3 lbs organic about 15.

  360. 360.

    Scout211

    Cause of death announced today:

    “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” actor Andre Braugher died from lung cancer a few months after he was diagnosed with the disease, his representative said Thursday.
    The 61-year-old died Monday. At the time his representative Jennifer Allen had released a short statement saying that Braugher had died from a brief illness.

  361. 361.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​IMHO fresh mozzarella has no taste and is the consistency of an eraser.

    You’re welcome to your HO, DAW. **IMO mozzarella is the perfect foil to all those hyperactive seasonings dumped by the truckload into Italian cuisine, Toss a few shreds or slices atop a pasta dish, dust with ground parmigiana &/or romano, nuke or broil for a minute or two, delish!
    (FTR Mom was a self-taught cook – her responsibilities in the 15-person household growing up were cleaning & laundry. But she did damn well. One of her signature dishes, which she cooked in a Westinghouse electric skillet & then cut into squares, was Lasagna al Neutronio: Instead of layering ricotta and mozzarella with the sauce, crushed meatballs and seasonings between the pasta sheets, she deepsixed the ricotta & doubled down on the mozz.)

    Freshman year at The Hop, living at home, my parents told me to invite a few of my Hoppie buddies over for a home-cooked meal.*** 5-6 weeks of MysteryMeat at the dorm caf, they jumped at the chance. As I drove the guys (2 Jews & a deutschamerikaner) home, I warned them to be wary of seconds: This stuff turns into neutron-star material on the way into the stomach.

    Yeah, right. None of them had ever had lasagna (8^O), and they fell on it like Byron’s Assyrian (as Mom said to herself Mangia, Mangia!).

    So after seconds (& thirds) I suggested we repair to the room I shared with my brother & listen to records. They all stood up – and the contents of their stomachs did their damnedst to fall through to the center of the earth. They threw themselves onto the twin beds moaning in postprandial pain, and were still moaning when I drove them back to the dorms…but it tasted great!!

    **Didja know there was once a line of SF called DAW Books> Short for Donald A. Wollheim, fan and editor…
    ***They wanted to scope out who I was hanging with. Needn’t have bothered – I graduated cum laude & most all my friends wound up with higher GPAs.​​

  365. 365.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: Yeah, I’ve been on a Shane-related music jag since I saw the new about his death.*’  Sinead’s Foggy Dew is haunting.

    *Which hit me harder than I expected for something that wasn’t surprising.  Like I said at the time there was a shirt period when Kissinger was gone, but McGowan wasn’t.  The world was better then.

  367. 367.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @eclare: ​IT’S NOT THAT HARD, PEOPLE!!!! I’ve had to drive to a few places for work this week. The number of people doing 58 in the left lane on the freeway was staggering. And when you pass them and take a look at their faces, they almost all have the same expression of sullen stubbornness. Fuckers.​

  368. 368.

    OGLiberal

    @schrodingers_cat: There’s always, “he’s old”.  And that’s a great argument against him, especially when the other guy would have been in high school at the same time and speaks in nonsense.

  369. 369.

    Nelle

    @MagdaInBlack: We haven’t been on the road that much, but drove six hours to my sister’s the weekend after Thanksgiving.  We saw more aggressive risky driving than I ever remember seeing… lane switching,  cutting in abruptly, without warning.  I thought are people learning to drive via video games?

  370. 370.

    Miss Bianca

    @Scout211: I am going to have to seek out Homicide and Brooklyn 9-9 to watch him in action. There was a nice write-up in WaPo about him.

  371. 371.

    opiejeanne

    @OGLiberal: You could be right. She’s middle-aged and possibly doesn’t have the genes to avoid it until she’s a bit older. I have those genes, never had a BP issue until I was past 65.

    I’m not sure if the unsalted stock is more expensive but like someone upstream said, it would only be 25 cents at the most.

  372. 372.

    Brachiator

    @Ben Cisco:

    A LOT of what’s on the streets here look like they’d hardly FIT in a single lane anymore.

    I mainly work from home and use more public transportation, and when I look out of the train window at street and freeway traffic, I am so glad that I don’t have to compete with these over sized vehicles.

  373. 373.

    MagdaInBlack

    @opiejeanne: I dont recall where you live, but its been this way all over the country. My company has over 700 shops in the U.S, and I can look at their capacity. Granted I did not check all stores, just a handful of markets. The insurance adjusters I talk with have been telling me the same.

  377. 377.

    Scout211

    @Miss Bianca: I loved him in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.  He was essentially playing the same type of role that he played in his Homicide role, but the show was a comedy and his serious demeanor as a gay Police Chief was often really funny.  His comic timing was really great.

  379. 379.

    Another Scott

    @Kathleen: +1

    I remember grad school in Cincinnati, having a $70/mo grocery budget, literally counting every single penny, walking home with my monthly grocery bags in a red Radio Flyer wagon, etc., etc.

    Ah, the good old days…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  381. 381.

    Scout211

    WaterGirl will likely cover this in her regular legal updates, but Trump and his lawyer minions lost again at the Appellate Court.

    And again, because his attorneys are listening to him, or just incompetent.  Choose either.

    A New York appeals court has again upheld a gag order that bars Donald Trump from commenting about court personnel in his civil fraud trial, ruling Thursday that the former president’s lawyers used the wrong legal mechanism to fight the restriction.
    A four-judge panel in the state’s mid-level appellate court ruled Thursday that Trump’s lawyers erred by suing trial Judge Arthur Engoron, who imposed the gag order in October after Trump disparaged his law clerk.

    Instead, the appellate judges wrote, Trump’s lawyers should’ve followed the normal appeals process by asking Engoron to reverse the gag order and then, if denied, fighting that decision in a higher court.

  382. 382.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Screw the album – I saw him do the whole radio-announcer shtick live (in short hair!) on Ed Frackin’ Sullivan!

    “FLASH! Russian missiles have been sighted coming over the North Pole headed for the US! Details in 20 minutes!!”

    W – I – N – O! Wonderful WINO!​​ :^D

  383. 383.

    eclare

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’m talking more about drivers drifting into your lane.  And I am sure this is not a popular opinion, but the addition of bike lanes has made some roads here have very narrow lanes, which does not help.

    Sometimes as I drive, I can feel a car drifting, like an approaching iceberg.

    Don’t worry, you will never catch me in the left lane, I am way too much a wus to drive fast.  Just don’t drift into my goddamn right lane.

  384. 384.

    opiejeanne

    @MagdaInBlack: I understand, and I’m probably wrong. I’m just outside Seattle, the bodyshop is in a sprawling bit of Seattle’s suburbs called Kirkland.

    Maybe it’s an aging population (we qualify, in our 70s) with too many new-fangled gadgets on these new-fangled cars. I still dig out the car’s book and look up stuff because our last new car was 10 years ago, and this one is not intuitive about a lot of stuff.  I haven’t figured out how to change the compass heading red light to green on the rearview mirror, and I’m sure that there’s a way.  Maybe I’ll look online for it.  Heck, the loaner car had the emergency flashers on and it took me a full 4 minutes to remember where that button is, even though it’s in exactly the same spot it was on the 10-yo Forester because we’ve never needed to use it.

  385. 385.

    OGLiberal

    @Brachiator: KITCHEN TABLE ISSUES!  KITCHEN TABLE ISSUES!

    I would like to take that phrase, douse it in bacon fat, light it on fire and toss it into a septic tank.

    Anyway, Fed said they’ll probably have three interest rate decreases next year.  Let’s see if people still feel this way in 6-9 months.  If they do, then they truly are lost.  Like my former high school classmate who, after Trump won in 2016 and I explained the impact getting rid of Obamacare would have on my sick kid, said, “I’m sorry about your babies but I just needed a change”. (she subsequently apologized but years later, well after the damage of Trump was done)

  386. 386.

    Suzanne

    @schrodingers_cat: That link indicates that the median asking rent is now just shy $2K. Up from just over $1600 in 2019.

    The median household income in the US in 2022 (the last full year we have data) is just shy $75K. In 2019, it was roughly $69K.

    So, that means that, in 2022, the median household was paying $24K in rent with $75K in income. Almost 1/3 of their income. In 2019, they paid approx. $19,000 in rent, with $69K, so about 29% of their income. Obvs these are back-of-the-napkin calculations, but it indicates that the hypothetical median renter is officially rent-burdened (spending 30% or more of income on rent). Also somewhat distorted by the fact that renters are overrepresented in the below-the-median income earners.

  387. 387.

    Scout211

    @Another Scott:I remember grad school in Cincinnati, having a $70/mo grocery budget, literally counting every single penny, walking home with my monthly grocery bags in a red Radio Flyer wagon, etc., etc.

    I was able to get food stamps when I was in grad school in New Orleans in my first year.  That helped a lot to stretch my school loan dollars.  The second year I was able to get an NIMH grant. That made things much easier.

  391. 391.

    New Deal democrat

    @opiejeanne:

    In the past we’ve been rear-ended a couple of times while sitting at a red light, and they’ve always taken us in right away, and never seemed this busy.

    This is most likely a result of the shortage of new cars sold during the pandemic, and the resulting surge in prices. More people kept their older cars on the road, and those older cars need ever more repairs.

    as a further result, repair costs have also skyrocketed.

  392. 392.

    Janee

    I bought the ingredients for soup, stew, pot roast, and chili, enough to feed us for about 2 weeks with the leftovers, for the cost of that doordash meal and McArdle’s soup.  Bought the meats at Costco, so I can make 5 more pots of chicken soup (or something), another pot roast, and two more pots of stew. And I still have enough vegetables to do part of that, but they will probably be used for something else before I run out of leftovers from my first cooking binge.  I only buy fancy breads I can’t make myself.   You can make a decent French bread just mixing flour, yeast, salt, and water.  Not terribly expensive ingredients.

    The cost of food is one thing, the cost of delivery is a luxury.  You don’t get to complain about the cost of a luxury item you choose to buy.

  393. 393.

    Peale

    @OGLiberal: In terms of the cost of making chicken soup, the only think that you can buy to make it that would have an impact on the outcome is no sodium or reduced sodium chicken stock. But that costs the same as regular chicken stock. Same with no-sodium bullion if you’re going that route. Same price as regular bullion cubes. The other ingredients don’t come in low sodium variants – celery? onion? chicken? Good luck finding no sodium chicken in the meat section, unless you were limited yourself to shopping for birds that died young from hyponatremia.

  394. 394.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Fine, but the picture is more complicated than rents are too damn high everywhere and that’s why the economy sucks.

    Totally agree. Also, rents and housing are more local issues than anything that Biden is directly responsible for.

    In Southern California, high rents and a housing shortage has been pushing some people out of the state, and some into homelessness.

    Also in Southern California there are a cohort of people with high incomes and a large cohort of people who, relatively speaking have been left behind and are priced out of housing. Looking at the median income of renters hides the scope of the income disparity.

    In an area of Texas where my sister lives, they are building like crazy. Maybe even over building. Ironically, new arrivals are driving up housing prices.

    Also, I note again that the article you linked to had value even though, as I noted, it had a number of flaws. It was an interesting read.

  395. 395.

    Steeplejack

    @catclub:

    I’m still mad that Honda killed the Element. I wanted one of those.

    But I love the K-Whip, a 2009 Kia Rondo LX with great visibility and perfect get-in/get-out elevation. It’s small on the outside but big on the inside. I got it in late 2011 and have put only about 45,000 miles on it.

  396. 396.

    trollhattan

    @Suzanne: We had a Truck Dude who managed to take five regular spaces in the (outdoor) lot daily. The nastygrams would stack up under his wiper but it never had any impact. Eventually learned he was part of a field crew that gathered at stupid o’clock and left from the office before anybody else arrived, which is why I never witnessed the parking feat performed.

    My current office lot features a combo of jacked trucks, most new and pristine, what do they haul, exactly? and Teslas. My brain hurts from the dissonance.

  397. 397.

    MagdaInBlack

    @opiejeanne:  I once took an Audi A8 to the dealership for work related to the accident. 30 minute drive and I never figured out any of the controls beyond the ones I needed to drive it there.
    My manager and I also think that with all the sensors and cameras people pay less attention to the road than to the gadgets.

    It all keeps me living indoors, but its nuts out there.

  398. 398.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Kay: “I personally think “a turkey” is cheap for what you’re getting, if you use all of it (which I do)”

    we did make turkey for T’giving and after we’d eaten it down pretty well over five or six days I put the carcass in a big pot and boiled the heck out of it. Then I separated the bones and skin from the meat and it’s amazing how much meat there was left. Add some veggies and boil it some more and—tada! turkey soup.

    I make chicken soup the same way—after eating roast chicken for two or three meals (maybe eight servings). That makes it a cheap meal, not an expensive one, unless you’ve got column inches to fill with bad political propaganda.

  400. 400.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Matt McIrvin: “I still see the unemployment rate, while very low, creeping up in a manner that it historically does maybe a year before a recession.”

    I’m no fan of recessions at any time but from my point of view there’s a huge difference between a recession starting a year from now and one starting nine or ten months from now. I’m really hoping it’s at least a year before there’s anything like a recession. Otherwise the consequences might make short-term economic pain look like small potatoes.

  402. 402.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MagdaInBlack:

    Some weird stuff going on out there with driving skills or lack of.

    On NPR last night they were talking about the increase in car insurance rates, and they said the biggest cause was people got used to driving a lot faster and didn’t re-calibrate.

    Which makes me think of the Uber driver in suburban Chicago who told me cops have stopped pulling people over for ‘minor’ traffic violations. That is my Friedmanesque contribution, but it rings true to me.

  403. 403.

    Harrison Wesley

    No wonder this thread is up to 400 comments; it’s got some variety.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can add since (a) I don’t drive, (b) I do my own cooking and I suck, and (c) I live in Florida on a very restricted income, which is a big, big problem in terms of rental costs (not that it was cheap living in CC Philadelphia).  I may have missed a topic or two, but that doesn’t matter since I don’t have anything worthwhile to add.

    So why comment?  I’m bored stiff (as opposed to board stiff, which, given my age will probably not be that far off in the future).

  405. 405.

    trollhattan

    @New Deal democrat:

    We have far fewer body shops, as most of the indys seem gone. (My favorite German closed his {sadface}. Was 100% family owned and operated.)

    Guessing the ones left are Very Corporate and adroit at keeping staffing “lean” while maximizing profits. The consumer? Haha, screw them!

  410. 410.

    Alison Rose

    @Harrison Wesley: Just to see if we can hit a Tbogg unit, I’ll add my own 1) I don’t drive or get driven; 2) I neither cook at all nor eat meat; 3) do not talk to me about rents falling or whatever when I just got a $130 a month increase on this dump while I’m waiting to see if the government will deign to give me SSDI that will end up barely covering my rent.

    Also too I have an electric menorah and the cat keeps trying to pull it down from the coffee table so I’m glad it’s the last night.

  412. 412.

    RevRick

    @OGLiberal: The Republicans are terrible at the economy. But people think they’re great.
    So why the yawning gap between what people think is true and reality?
    I believe it all stems from the fact that most of the successful local Chamber of Commerce types are Republicans. They know how to run a business, so by a sort of economic transitive property, the average person concludes that they must be good at running the economy. But consider the GOP’s three major economic goals.

    First, they are opposed to taxes for any but military/police services, and will fight vociferously against raising them to provide services for the general welfare. Remember Grover Norquist’s desire to starve the government of revenue.

    Second, they are opposed to regulation of businesses, unless it gives them a monopolistic advantage. They believe business should be given free rein to do whatever is necessary to make a profit.

    Third, they are opposed to any government program that redistributes income downward. Everything from food stamps to Social Security.

    The thing is rich people can only spend so much, while income in the hands of the majority of Americans gets spent. And one person’s spending is another person’s income. So, these redistributions actually stimulate the economy and make all of us richer.
    The very things Republicans want to benefit businesses actually harm the economy as a whole. But most people don’t understand the paradox.

  413. 413.

    geg6

    @Miss Bianca: ​
     
    Well, as I mention in my comment, I cut back from my younger days when I was hitting it before high school started in the AM, going into the woods outside the school at lunch to toke and then hanging with my friends in the evening. I often went through an ounce a week. I cut back a bit in college, but not that much. I kept up a pretty high intake still, though, because I found that I was better able to study and take tests while high (maybe some kind of anxiety or something…no idea really). It’s only as a real adult that I really cut back to the moderation model. And when I’m on a long break from work, like I will be after tomorrow (2 whole weeks! Yay!), I am back to that high school freak that I used to be. :-)

  414. 414.

    MagdaInBlack

    @trollhattan: Consolidators ( the big companies like mine whose name is same as the baby food starts with a G) have been buying up the independents like crazy since covid. All the big multishop operators are doing the same. And yes, lean staff, much hype about the customer service…all hype.

  416. 416.

    Suzanne

    @Brachiator:

    Also, rents and housing are more local issues than anything that Biden is directly responsible for.

    This is true. But I do think that people are having an increasingly difficult time (and have been for a while). And there’s a tendency to look at the jobs numbers and think that that tells the whole story. It doesn’t. It’s not good news for the economy if you’re working and still struggling to pay for something as basic as a place to live.

    And again, there’s every reason to think that people are going to continue to urbanize. Even if population growth was net zero in this country, we are going to collect in fewer, bigger cities. So we need to manage that. Sustainably.

  417. 417.

    trollhattan

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I don’t see city traffic cops, ever. Sample bias? Things got weird after the George Floyd protests, defund the police, etc.

    County contracts with CHP, and they occasionally show themselves on county roads, if rarely, but do not have jurisdiction in the city, except by State property where they can and will pull your ass over.

  425. 425.

    Harrison Wesley

    @Alison Rose: Much luck with the gummint.  I live off my Railroad Retirement, which is sorta-kinda OK.   I would be a whole lot better off if I hadn’t urinated away my severance money from Conrail, but I was even stupider and more alcoholic then than I am now.

    And here I thought ‘electric menorah’ was the name of a klezmer band.  Oh, well.

  426. 426.

    trollhattan

    @Suzanne:

    I really, really question the long-term viability and desirability of megacities. We emptied our ag areas decades ago, a process still ongoing in Asia and Africa. If covid taught us nothing else, we learned it’s not necessary for sizeable  employee cohorts to present themselves in a giant central office, to get the work done. Let’s retain that concept, embrace it, and step back from the trend towards fewer, ever-larger cities.

    Related: I shall throttle the next person who lectures me on how rapturing the NIMBYs will make San Francisco affordable.

  427. 427.

    Kathleen

    @Citizen Alan: I still maintain they will prosecute women who die while giving birth. I’m not being snarky here. I believe it’s possible. Either that or jail all pregnant women so they can monitor their behaviors.

  429. 429.

    Captain C

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Well, he’s lost my vote because, I’ll think of a pissy, childish, whiny ass reason later, Mom

    I’m surprised you don’t have at least 18 lined up, each to be discarded in turn as they prove wrong or irrelevant.  Most good cosplay revolutionaries living off their parents are prepared like this.

  430. 430.

    Brachiator

    @OGLiberal:

    KITCHEN TABLE ISSUES!  KITCHEN TABLE ISSUES!

    I would like to take that phrase, douse it in bacon fat, light it on fire and toss it into a septic tank.

    Ha! I know what you mean.

    Anyway, Fed said they’ll probably have three interest rate decreases next year.  Let’s see if people still feel this way in 6-9 months.  If they do, then they truly are lost.

    When I taught a tax class, I would note that most people didn’t care about what the Fed did, and that most people understood their “personal economy,” how much money they had in their own pockets.

    But still the problem is extrapolating personal economy to the national economy.

  431. 431.

    Alison Rose

    @Harrison Wesley:

    And here I thought ‘electric menorah’ was the name of a klezmer band.

    It could be! It is also what you use when you have a cat who is overly curious and also a little dumb. I got it years ago because my previous cat singed off her eyebrow whiskers too many times and also knocked the whole ass lit-up candle menorah over once. Current cat is equally impetuous, so the electric one continues to serve its purpose.

  432. 432.

    AM in NC

    @sab: Crawfish etouffé is my kids’ favorite meal that I make.  Kid the younger is home for holiday break from school and is doing a pot-luck with all his high school buddies, and he asked if we could make the etouffé together so he can bring it and learn how to do it.

    One proud mom right here, I tell ya.

  433. 433.

    Brachiator

    @Old Man Shadow:

    Food delivery fees are almost as bad as Ticketmaster fees. Order in advance, pick it up on the way home and that price tag would drop by at least $40.

    Many of us got used to delivery during the pandemic.

    Contactless delivery helped keep me safe.

    And because I worked from home, I didn’t need to pick up food after leaving work.

  434. 434.

    Suzanne

    @trollhattan:

    I really, really question the long-term viability and desirability of megacities. We emptied our ag areas decades ago, a process still ongoing in Asia and Africa. If covid taught us nothing else, we learned it’s not necessary for sizeable  employee cohorts to present themselves in a giant central office, to get the work done. Let’s retain that concept, embrace it, and step back from the trend towards fewer, ever-larger cities. 

    As someone who is almost-full-time remote, I agree with you on a personal level. But if I’m genuinely trying to make predictions, especially about the next 50 years…. we’re going to continue to urbanize. Remote work seems to be shaking out in most companies to something more like “come into the office three days a week instead of five”, which doesn’t allow workers to get much further out. All the data indicates that the economic pull of cities is just too strong and that rural areas can’t support a large percentage of people. That doesn’t mean we’re all going to end up in the NYC suburbs or the Bay Area…. but it does mean that we’ve got to plan for this reality. That means housing, in metros.

  436. 436.

    Captain C

    @p.a.:

    Forget Biden; I just went online and saw that steaks were once 55¢ and coffee 3¢.  America is obviously a failed society!!!!!!!!😉

    I think that anyone who says that unironically should feel free to abandon all technological (especially medical) advances that have happened since that date.

  437. 437.

    Kathleen

    @Omnes Omnibus: I call them “Lane Lurkers”. Then there are The “Darters” who shoot out of one lane with no signal and cut across three more. I have lists these things.

  439. 439.

    Captain C

    @jonas:

     I’m sure in a few years, the local dispensary will be operating peacefully right next to the dry cleaners and coffee shop in most places.

    Or the next town over will be happily raking in the tax bucks that could have gone to the town that banned dispensaries.

  440. 440.

    trollhattan

    @Brachiator:

    Credit card rates are unaffected by whatever the Fed does, remaining jammed up there circa 20% for common ones. If folks think of interest rates at all, that’s where they probably begin.

    Until buying a car, or a house, then Powell’s One Weird Trick becomes very evident. My last car loan was 0.9%, our current mortgage is 2.8%. Can’t touch that now.

    And passbook savings accounts might climb above 1% if you’ve been very nice this year.

  441. 441.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: You’re probably right, a lot of us are older so we face different problems now. I think it depends on where you live, too – in my city there seem to be a huge amount of apartments being built, although I doubt many of them are “affordable” apartments. I also know it costs a lot more to be considered middle class than it used to. I guess I hear interviews like that girl in Miami complaining about having to save money by buying store brand groceries and it sends me over the edge. Or I hear my friend talk about how she is now almost bankrupt, with all of her credit cards shut off and her retirement savings completely gone because for over two years she’s been paying her son’s bills because she was terrified if she didn’t they and her 6-year-old granddaughter would become homeless (they can’t live with her because she lives in an over-55 community). It seems to me that her son ruthlessly took advantage of his mother’s inability to see that her son wasn’t the scared 6-year-old who had to have 5 surgeries anymore, and instead is a 33-year-old man with a wife and a 6 year old who need to be supported, and it makes me furious. I could NEVER have taken advantage of my parents in that way. With the job market the way it is now I cannot believe he couldn’t find some kind of job to at least make some money, even if it wasn’t his perfect, ideal job. My poor friend is now facing an involuntary layoff from her job in May, she’s only 62 so cannot be on Medicare yet, and she’s broke because she spent all of her retirement savings keeping a roof over her granddaughter’s head. In my mind he’s a selfish asshole. I know he’s not typical, but I hear stuff like this and it makes me mad.

  442. 442.

    Brachiator

    @Suzanne:

    But I do think that people are having an increasingly difficult time (and have been for a while). And there’s a tendency to look at the jobs numbers and think that that tells the whole story. It doesn’t. It’s not good news for the economy if you’re working and still struggling to pay for something as basic as a place to live.

    Totally agree. Here in California, Governor Newsom had been trying to help deal with the housing issue, but there is a lot of local opposition to some practical solutions.

    And again, there’s every reason to think that people are going to continue to urbanize. Even if population growth was net zero in this country, we are going to collect in fewer, bigger cities. So we need to manage that. Sustainably.

    In Southern California, there is still a lot of room for expansion into the Inland Empire of San Bernardino and Riverside County. Even some room in San Diego.

  443. 443.

    trollhattan

    @Suzanne: I don’t have anything against urbanization, but am very pained to see a handful of “winner” megacities while others are moribund or even depopulated, e.g., Detroit.

  445. 445.

    Suzanne

    @trollhattan: Agreed. Just because it’s what I think is going to happen (and if we are responsible, we will start planning for it now)….. doesn’t mean that I especially like it.

    Though Detroit seems to be on a bit of an upswing.

  447. 447.

    Suzanne

    @Brachiator: I am never going to advocate for Sun-Belt-esque suburban sprawl, but some amount of greenfield development is going to have to happen in lots of places. I hope we can be smart about it.

  449. 449.

    Brachiator

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Isn’t living on a tight budget and finding crazy ways to stretch your food purchases one of the quintessential aspects of college?

    When I was in college I was on the meal plan, which included breakfast, lunch and dinner at campus dining halls.

    It was the best time in my life. And on top of this we had pizza runs and other indulgences.

  453. 453.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Suzanne: I don’t know what they teach in schools now, but when I took Home Ec (c. 1964), I found it to be very useful. The cooking semester taught me how to make white sauce, while my non-cooking oriented mother used canned Aunt Penny’s white sauce, a gelatinous goop. I used to make creamed tuna as an afterschool snack during my junior high school years.

    I thought it was great when they let both girls and boys take Home Ec or Shop, during the 70s. I could have used Shop education. I suppose none of those practical skills are taught any more (sigh).

  456. 456.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Kathleen: wow, learn something every day. I had never heard of frozen noodles. Just fresh (expensive) or regular dried in the box or bag.

  458. 458.

    Miss Bianca

    @OGLiberal: Wow. Holy shit. Someone would have to do a *lot* of apologizing to get back into my good graces after saying something like that to me.

  459. 459.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @OGLiberal: The greatest weapon the fascists have is the notion that it doesn’t ultimately matter whom we put in chargethat theu’re interchangeable.

  460. 460.

    Another Scott

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I know where they’re coming from.

    When I was in grad school, the profs were often telling us that the world was our oyster and big companies would be making us offers that were outstanding when we graduated.

    And then, a while later, we’d see recent graduates from the program who were working nights delivering pizza to make ends meet while waiting for their great job to appear…

    One of my first temp jobs after graduating was working for a company that owned a bunch of Domino’s pizza stores.  A young woman there had a fresh MBA.  She was basically a clerk, paying her dues and working her way up and wondering, more than a little, why she bothered.

    It’s a shock when you spend years and a small fortune getting an education, hearing these stories about new graduates getting a bazillion dollars from some bankster organization, and when you actually get out there in the real world it’s nothing like that for most of us.

    It sucks.  But it sucks for many, many more people who don’t have a clear path to move up.

    Dean Baker often makes the point that humans make the economy – it’s not some natural thing that obeys some universal rules like gravity.  We can change those rules and the laws and the incentives so that all of the benefits don’t go to the rentiers and patent owners.

    But we have to vote for people who are willing to listen to us to make those changes…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  464. 464.

    geg6

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): ​
     
    We have an Italian shop/deli just up the road from us and they have a whole array of frozen pastas, including plain old egg noodles. I love it. Better than dried pasta (usually) and less expensive than the fresh you get at a grocery store. Also frozen homemade gnocchi, which is just heaven.

  467. 467.

    Marc

    @trollhattan:  I don’t see city traffic cops, ever. Sample bias? Things got weird after the George Floyd protests, defund the police, etc.

    Exactly what I see here in Oakland.  We live near two shopping areas and the lake, and pre-BLM days there were cops visible in their cars, walking beats, riding bicycles, etc.  Now, they are invisible, despite an increase in OPD officers.  I start my morning commute with a walk to the bus stop at 6am, crossing major streets is risky as stopping at red lights is now considered optional. Everyone knows there is now zero traffic enforcement.  That’s not to say the OPD is out looking for more serious crime, as they don’t bother with that either.  They are basically on a never-ending strike.

  468. 468.

    Alison Rose

    With this many comments, we gotta have one or two BJ lawyers, yeah? Did you have assigned seats in law school classes? I’m reading a legal thriller where the main character is at Harvard Law and mentioned slipping into her “assigned seat” in a class. That seems weird to me.

  469. 469.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Alison Rose: When a class at university falls into a pattern of everyone sitting in a consistent place, you can look at the seats as self-assigned.

  478. 478.

    Kathleen

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I’m a lazy and terrible cook. The brand I use is Reames for either noodles or dumplings. The recipe I use for the crock pot calls for dumping them in the last half hour and put crock pot on high. I’ve been doing it for years and they work well. Again, I am lazy and terrible!

  479. 479.

    TerryC

    @Kay: Thank you for toning it down a bit. I am 76 and when I retired ten years ago I allowed myself to indulge in as much cannabis as I wish. You could say that I am high all day, so I found your earlier assertion a but offensive. Despite “being high” all day I have a productive, socially active, life that is really close to heavenly. I wish you the equivalent some day, not necessarily with cannabis.

  480. 480.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Kathleen: I never heard of frozen noodles before your post. Learn something every day (yes, I should get out more). Just fresh (expensive), and regular dried in the box or bag.

  503. 503.

    eclare

    I just got my flu shot.  The paperwork says my insurance saved me 313.59.  So if I didn’t have insurance, is that what I would be charged?  Can people without health insurance go to a health dept to get a free shot?

    Whee!  Still curious, but the heavy lifting is done.

  505. 505.

    StringOnAStick

    @Another Scott: I got my first degree in environmental geology, and got a masters in hydrogeology.  My original goal in going to graduate school was to get a PhD and become a professor at a smaller college; once I saw just how boom and bust geology was as a career, there was no way I was going to spend to get that final necessary degree, or be in the position of encouraging younger people to go down the same very bumpy road I did.

    I’m retired, and when people ask me what I did previously I always say that I identify as a environmental geologist but I retired from a very different field.

  506. 506.

    Layer8Problem

    Is there a traditional dance for reaching the Tbogg?  I feel that there should be a dance.

  508. 508.

    Paul in KY

    @MagdaInBlack: All those electronic gadgets mean a giant $300 battery, that if you don’t drive the thing alot, loses charge & then the effing car won’t start, etc. etc.

  511. 511.

    Brachiator

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    A very enjoyable article. Sadly, it seems to me that more media companies are not using copy editors. I notice more spelling and grammar errors all over the place.

  512. 512.

    catclub

    @Scout211: My last year in college, We enjoyed going grocery shopping and then weighing our take, to see how low the price/pound was.   Dried or canned beans are pretty cheap.

  516. 516.

    laura

     

    @Layer8Problem: Roadie Brother the Younger has been on the Trailer Park Boys movies and will finish filming the current one at the end of January. He plays himself- though he is mostly much nicer than his character.

  517. 517.

    The Lodger

    @Kay: Isn’t 21 the legal age to buy cannabis in Ohio? They check ID in Oregon, and won’t even let underage people in.

  518. 518.

    JAFD

    @OzarkHillbilly: At some point you may want to check out MoreKeyboard.com – They make keyboards about 20% larger than standard – keys about 9/10″ apart on center vs the standard .75″

    For those of us like me with Big Hands and Big Fingers it’s very non-frustrating,

    (There oughta be a better word than ‘non-frustrating’, can’t think of it offhand…)

  520. 520.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Brit in Chicago: …I put the [turkey] carcass in a big pot and boiled the heck out of it. Then I separated the bones and skin from the meat and it’s amazing how much meat there was left. Add some veggies and boil it some more and—tada! turkey soup.

    After the veggies are cooked by this guy named Al Dente, add a few tablespoons of flour or cornstarch or other thickener plus a little butter or marg, boil a few more minutes while stirring, and – wallah! Creamed turkey! Serve over toast points. That’s how Mom got everything but the gobble out of the Thx bird – and we kids took care of the gobbling because we liked the dish almost as much as the leftover slices of turkey breast, which we of course saved for sammiches.

  521. 521.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Beatrice Blacklow: ​In Maryland, medical users can buy more dope than recreational users. That may be a reason.

    And always remember those timeless whirreds of whizzdumb from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope! (I think that was Phineas, but it coulda been Franklin. Def not Fat Freddy…)

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