Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Hot air and ill-informed banter

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Ah, the different things are different argument.

No one could have predicted…

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

This fight is for everything.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Bidenomics Whining – Boxing Day Edition

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Bidenomics Whining – Boxing Day Edition

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Bidenomics Whining - Boxing Day Edition


It’s not clear to me whether the offended consumer actually *bought* sixteen pounds of prime rib, or if he just objects to the concept of that much expensive meat being on offer at an ‘ordinary’ supermarket…

Perhaps coincidentally, the NYTimes had a big illustrated feature on “The Rise and Fall of Prime-Rib Nation“.

Reader Interactions

163Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose

    LOLOL I’d heard about McArdle’s bullshit about the chicken soup but I hadn’t seen her response. “FINE do you want me to concede that my WHOLE ARGUMENT is total CRAP and based on LIES and WHINING and BULLSHIT? Well FINE THEN.” Christ, what a child.

  2. 2.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    We had a nice chunk of prime rib for Christmas dinner and my wife paid less than $100 for it and a bunch of groceries. It seems that she had coupons…lol!

    Fuckin’ idjit…

  3. 3.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    One can sure see why these so called pundits are so terrified of AI with the useless, lazy drek they produce.

  5. 5.

    Pete Mack

    I just checked my local supermarket. Ribeye is on sale at $9.99 (down from $16.99.) So even the price is dubious.

  8. 8.

    Alison Rose

    Also, forgive me if this has already been discussed in an earlier thread, but like…the fuck?

    First there were Ron DeSantis’ alleged heeled boots, now there are Donald Trump’s “toe pads.”

    Social media has not taken kindly to the discovery of the two black rectangular pads spotted under the former president’s feet while he was speaking at Mar-a-Lago.

    “What is Trump standing on here? How often does he use these?” one account asked in an X post, which included a photo of Mr Trump’s shiny black shoes leaning on the pads.

    “Counter balances the 3-inch lifts in his shoes since he can no longer hold his own weight,” someone commented.

    Another brutally remarked, “Trump needs toe pads to stand up without falling over. What an aLpHa MaLe!”

    Yet another wrote, “me leveling my uneven furniture.”

    Others posted photos of him leaning forward at press conferences, and is now using toe pads to prevent leaning too far.

    There are photos and they do look…strange. In the article, a few people posit that he has Frontotemporal Dementia, although I’m not clear what leaning forward has to do with dementia. But whatever the reason is, someone said “He now uses foot pads to prevent himself from tipping over. If Joe Biden did this, Fox News would talk about nothing else.” which is 1000% true. At this point, I feel like Trump could be in a coma and people would still say they want him reelected.

  9. 9.

    waspuppet

    I think it was Digby who said if someone starts complaining about the terrible Biden economy, ask them how it’s affected them. What have you had to go without? What life decisions have you had to put off?

  10. 10.

    Old School

    I shop at the wrong grocery stores.  The ones I go to do not stock 16 1/2 pound ribeye roasts.

  11. 11.

    bbleh

    First, I’m more than 95% confident that “Jason” did NOT buy 16+ pounds of prime rib — he just saw the number and thought “wow, I can post that!”

    And second, the substance of it doesn’t matter to him or to the large majority of his audience.  They’re simply aping the noises they hear on Fox, which makes the other apes hoot and hurl feces, and they all have a grand old time.  Remember egg prices (not to mention gas prices)?  It’s just the Word Of The Day to get them all excited.

    I generally compare these folks to 10-year-olds.  But occasionally that’s way too generous, and apes screeching and hurling poop is closer to the mark.

  13. 13.

    Scout211

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA: I was $250, eight years ago.  

    Sorry, I deleted that part of my comment because I think I might have misremembered the price of that whole prime rib. I was shocked about how much it cost back then, though.

  14. 14.

    bbleh

    @waspuppet: Then they just get angry and start sputtering about food prices and gas prices and … other prices, and how everything is terrible and what about the BORDER?!?

    They do not engage on substance because they do not care about substance.  They care about emoting, in a way that demonstrates and affirms their tribal affiliation.

  15. 15.

    Old School

    @Pete Mack:

    I just checked my local supermarket. Ribeye is on sale at $9.99 (down from $16.99.) So even the price is dubious.

    The price seems accurate.

    Here’s the H-E-B website, you can get regular ribeye for $14.55/lb and the Prime 1 Bone-In Ribeye (the one in the tweet) is $20.79/lb.

    They should have opted for the American Style Wagyu Ribeye.  That’s $41.59/lb.

  16. 16.

    azlib

    Anecdotal food pricing is ridiculous and I am glad these folks are being called out for it. Grocery stores mostly run on very low margins and they need to move perishable products quickly. Yes, some prices are higher than they were 3 years ago, but it is pretty easy to find bargains and reduced pricing on slightly older items because otherwise the grocery store has to throw away stuff. It happens all the time. To cite the price of prime rib (which is expensive) as a benchmark to prove how rotten the economy is shows these folks have no clue about economics.

  17. 17.

    Dangerman

    @Alison Rose: Trump could be planted next to Ivana and he might still score significant numbers of votes.

    I’m convinced the semi-sane Powers That Be want Trump gone. Hell, the PTB thought he was dog food after Impeachment 2. I wouldn’t be surprised if the USSC, in the inevitable challenge, vote 8 to 1 to tell Trump to eat shit and go back to MAL (saying he is ineligible period).

    The MAGAS go crazy, of course.

  18. 18.

    FelonyGovt

    @Alison Rose: Another example of his increasing physical deficiencies to go along with his mental deterioration (see his “Rot in Hell” Christmas greeting).

    But if Biden looks a little frail… crank up the “he’s old” apparatus

  19. 19.

    Alison Rose

    Here’s another brilliant observation from Jason “Fancy meat should cost a nickel” Nelson:

    It’s weird that the flu returned, right?
    Basically eradicated it during Covid, yet suddenly it’s back to pre-Covid levels. 🤔
    — Jason “Storm Chaser” Nelson (@RealJasonNelson) December 26, 2023

    Someone responded “Probably had to do with increased social distancing and other precautions people were taking during COVID. That probably attenuated the transmission of flu and other diseases as well.” And he said:

    And here I thought half of us were “ignoring the rules” so that Covid killed half of everyone who caught it. Or was that another media narrative? Either way- we can’t both spread one virus but not the other. More likely most flu cases were misdiagnosed. I wonder how many people that killed?

    That prime rib is smarter than him.

  22. 22.

    dr. bloor

    A down home, no-nonsense Stetson wearing guy with “real” cattle would be rubbing one out if beef prices were through the ceiling, not complaining about it.

    All hat, no cattle.  Ignore him, whoever the hell he is.

  23. 23.

    West of the Rockies

    I really do not spend time wishing anyone would just FO and croak…

    But Trump and Putin… yeah.

  26. 26.

    Ruckus

    @bbleh:

    But occasionally that’s way too generous, and apes screeching and hurling poop is closer to the mark.

    That occasionally is doing way too much work. They always sound like apes screeching and hurling poop.

  27. 27.

    dr. bloor

    @bbleh: When Jason isn’t busy whining about the price of top shelf beef, he’s probably running around the country scraping Biden “I did that” stickers off gas pumps.

  28. 28.

    twbrandt

    The Michigan Advance did a deep dive on progressive legislation passed by Dem majorities in the state legislature and signed by Governor Whitmer. tl;dr: good things happen when Democrats are in charge.

  31. 31.

    Jay

    We had Prime Rib for Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, and will have one for New Years.

    2 3″ thick steaks for $35, about a pound of meat each, bone in. Add in the sides, (Alton Browned Baked Potato, carrots, roasted beets) and we could only eat half of one between the two of us. Had to save room for the pie.

    Total bill for 4 days of food, snacks, the good TP, $56.87.

    Curse You Damn Trudeaunomics.

  32. 32.

    Another Scott

    Parking lots are full at food places, malls, hotels are crowded.

    Nuh-uh.

    Nobody goes there anymore – it’s too crowded. [/Yogi]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  35. 35.

    Alison Rose

    @Steeplejack: I don’t know. The drawing shows someone with their back slightly hunched, shoulders slumped, and head tipped a bit downward. When Trump does his lean, as shown in that pic, his back is usually slightly concave and his shoulders and head are fairly upright. Honestly, it could just be that he carries his weight in his gut and also that he’s losing his sense of balance as he ages.

    I mean…I’d believe he has dementia for a hundred other reasons, but this particular one seems like a stretch.

  36. 36.

    M31

    Got a nice rib roast at Wegman’s for $8.99 a pound.  Normal ‘choice’ quality which is what supermarkets have.

    18.99 for prime is a very good price, the dipshit.

    OMG can you believe the caviar prices? I blame Bidenomics

    (edited to add, for 250grams of beluga caviar Biden is making me pay $9510, what’s the world coming to?)

  37. 37.

    smith

    @dr. bloor: he’s probably running around the country scraping Biden “I did that” stickers off gas pumps.

    In his $80,000 mega-truck, which was all he could afford in this punishing economy. Thanks, Biden!

  38. 38.

    Victor Matheson

    I had prime rib for Christmas dinner. It was such an obscenely good deal that I bought twice as much as I needed. $6.99/lb. About $130 for a roast roughly the same size as the one pictured. (To be fair, it was on sale down from a usual $18.99/lb. Of course, I wouldn’t have bought 17 pounds of it at that price.)

    Why advertise your shopping stupidity by posting this?

  40. 40.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose: With you on that: the pics of him golfing and standing at the breakfast bar (sans makeup ;-) at MaL don’t show him leaning in that “front half of a centaur” way we see in the pics where he’s suited-up and typically taking questions, ranting, etc.

    I lean to the conjecture (others have advanced) that he leans forward to cover up his belly.  Combine that with his lifts, and advancing age, and it’s just harder to balance, and so, when he’s got a lectern to provide a little cover, why wouldn’t he have pads (to make it easier) ?

  41. 41.

    M31

    I’ve noticed that beef prices have come down lately; they were very high for a long time.

    I wonder if the beef council greedy gouger cartel realized that people were getting used to eating chicken and enjoying it.

    I read a statistic recently that was something like ‘50% of the beef is eaten by 16% of the population, 45-65 year old men’. I don’t think that that particular population is going to live that long, not with all that beef anyway.

  43. 43.

    wmd

    Edit function is not displaying old text…

    I bought a 6.79 pound USDA Choice rib roast at Safeway using loyalty card – $5.97 per pound.

    Prime isn’t available at Costco, and choice there is about $12.99 per pound. In the past USDA Prime was about $6.00 per pound more than choice, and Wagyu was ridiculous.

  44. 44.

    Dangerman

    I am also guessing if Trump checks out or otherwise is ineligible, tje MAGAs stay home. They sure as shit aren’t voting for Haley.

  45. 45.

    Barbara

    I would bet the massive roast was a specific customer order. It’s pretty odd to see something that large just sitting in the meat display to buy as is. I’ve ordered things through the on-site butcher and they cut and package it the same way.​

  46. 46.

    Alison Rose

    I’m gonna throw a bunch of stuff in my cart at Sephora and then complain about Biden making it cost so much to be pretty. “OMG all I wanted to buy was a 2 oz jar of La Mer moisturizing cream, a 3.5 oz bottle of Tom Ford Jasmin Rouge, and a Dior 10-pan eyeshadow palette, and it was almost a thousand bucks!!! I HATE THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!!”

  50. 50.

    Jay

    @M31:

    Beef prices went up for quite a few years because inexpensive beef is mostly oil.

    “Finish cattle” get shipped, $$$ to Feed lots $$$$ where they are finished on corn and antibiotic feeds $$$$.

    The Rancher get’s paid when the cattle are sold, as trucking and feed lots are “services”.

    Where we were, Ranchers were losing $250 a head.

    So they cut down the size of their herds and tried to keep them on grass longer.

    Takes a while to build herds back up.

    Same thing happened with Christmas trees.

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    It looks like HEB #583 is in Woodway, TX (just outside of Waco).

    It looks like Woodway, TX has:

    9585 people.
    88% white.
    $111,000 median household income.

    What a world, what a world… [/WWotWest]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    Nukular Biskits

    The economy must be bad. My evidence?

    The Passive Anti-Theft System (PATS) is acting up on my 2002 F150 again, randomly keeping me from starting it.  I managed to get it started and drove it straight to my nearest Ford dealer where I was told it would be a minimum three week wait because they were left shorthanded when a number of their technicians left for better jobs.

    DAMN THAT BIDEN!!!!!

  53. 53.

    dmsilev

    @trollhattan:

    Now do seven Prime-grade tomahawk steaks

    Overcook them, add a bottle of ketchup and seven Diet Cokes, and that’s Trump’s menu for a typical week.

  54. 54.

    JPL

    So I decided that it was time, to have a nice prime rib for xmas eve and bought all the fixins, but on a smaller scale.  Anyway woke up with my flu/cold symptoms ablazing and had to pack everything up and send it home with my son.  He prepared it similar to Adam’s and said it was awesome.

    Thanks Biden

  55. 55.

    eclare

    @Jay:

    I also read that the drought in the US had an impact on beef prices as feed was suddenly much more expensive.

    Growing up, the only beef I ever saw was in meatloaf shape.  Somehow I survived.

  57. 57.

    dmsilev

    @M31:

    edited to add, for 250grams of beluga caviar Biden is making me pay $9510, what’s the world coming to?)

    Could be worse, you could be buying inkjet printer ink by the liter…

  58. 58.

    Geminid

    @geg6: Vice President Harris tweeted out a Holiday greeting yesterday with a picture of her and hisband Doug Emhoff happily at work in their kitchen. They were preparing Beef Wellington for dinner.

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Alison Rose: I used to like looking at astronomy and space pictures on social media but I’m starting to dread them because the comments are entirely filled with conspiracy theorists claiming everything is fake (either because the earth is flat and space doesn’t exist, or because there’s aliens or other awesome stuff NASA is hiding from us), and people arguing with them.

    The conspiracy theorists love these “hmmm… something doesn’t add up” arguments from ignorance that sound just like that guy’s. I just saw one that was a picture of Saturn’s moon Titan by the James Webb Space Telescope, and people were deducing all kinds of coverups from the fact that it was blurry. People, we have close-up photos of Titan. We have a photo of Titan from *inches* away, taken by the spacecraft that landed on it! But they think it’s a conspiracy because the JWST can only get blurry pictures from Earth-Sun L2.

  60. 60.

    Jay

    @eclare:

    Yeah, the droughts didn’t help.

    Up here, most Ranchers don’t buy winter feed, they cut and bale their own, because bought bales are too expensive.

    Grass fed, free range is what most Ranchers here do.

    Funny thing, a side deal is to now pair up with a Lower Rainland dairy farm. When the milker’s are “off”, they get an Interior Vacay on “free range”. No more Barns and milking machines, just rich grass, open starry skies and warm weather. When it is time to get bred again, they go back “home”.

  61. 61.

    Alison Rose

    @Matt McIrvin: Oh man, you and my mom should meet. She HATES those people and is always bemoaning how the comments on NASA and JWST posts on FB are filled with flat-earthers and such.

    I often wonder why people cling on to conspiracy theories that are so obviously ridiculous, and one reason is that most of them tend to be, you know, fucking stupid. Just not smart, they don’t brain good. And deep down inside they know they aren’t smart and they feel bad about it, and rather than do boring stuff like read books and learn, they feel like not “buying” this or that story makes them smarter than those of us who do. “You think we went to the moon? That’s because you’re too dumb to see all the signs of the pictures being from a soundstage, but I can see them because I’m clever and sharp.” Etc etc. I’m sure there are myriad other reasons, but since most of them make it pretty obvious that their brainpower wouldn’t be enough to run a wind-up toy, to me it seems like “I wanna pretend to be smart and this is the only way I know how” is a key factor.

  62. 62.

    Captain C

    @Matt McIrvin: My favorite way to deal with Moon landing conspiracists is to say, “Well, you’re absolutely correct, the landing was faked.  They even got Kubrick to do it.  But you know, he’s such a stickler for detail that he insisted on an on-location shoot…”

    Another way I’ve seen recently is to one-up them.  “Wait, you actually believe there’s a moon?”

  63. 63.

    Jay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    We, us rational people, know that the earth cannot be flat, because cat’s would have pushed everything off it.

    I have had fun “conversing” with wingnuts, by being wingnuttier.

    One of the best ones was “blah, blah, blah, Globalist Plot!!!!!!!”,

    My response was “it can’t be a Globalist plot because everyone knows the Earth is flat, not a Globe”.

  66. 66.

    laura

    Tangentially related- spouse recently started getting an alert from Wells Fargo Visa the day after he’s made a purchase that includes a tip and the alert asks him if he would like to reduce the amount of the tip. It makes him furious and he imagines this is a whole new way to screw over the service workers, food and hospitality workers and all the gig workers. Anyone else aware of this? I don’t get them, though I bank with 2 credit unions and believe Wells Fargo is of the devil.

  69. 69.

    RevRick

    @bbleh: Every single complaint which emanates from the right is all about feelings. It’s never substance, it’s always just feelings.
    Abortion? The feeling a fetus is a person. CRT/DEI? White supremacists butthurt feelings. Feminism? Butthurt male feelings. The border? Fear, disgust, loathing… IOW, feelings.
    Scratch the surface of any argument they make and you will find feelings at its core.

    It’s like the right lacks cerebral cortexes; they only possess the limbic and amygdala parts.

  73. 73.

    eclare

    @Geminid:

    I just googled, Kamala and Doug look so happy.  I don’t get the hate (well I do, I’m not an idjit) for joyful people and the worship of people who tweet that we can all go to hell.

  80. 80.

    Spanky

    Last time I bought saffron at the grocery store the unit price was $32,000.00/lb. Freaked the cashier out.

  81. 81.

    dmsilev

    @laura: Seems like a weird thing for a credit card company to do. Don’t they want you to spend spend spend, more more more, and hopefully (for them) run a balance and pay lots of interest?

  83. 83.

    frosty

    @Alison Rose: No no no, the Earth is actually a donut, and everything you lose and never find again fell through the hole in the middle.

    Under an enormous pile of mismatched socks, no doubt.

  85. 85.

    Jay

    @laura:

    I would guess, and this is just a guess, that this is in response to some places adding tipping options to their Point Of Sale software for Debit and Credit, and some automatically adding a tip to the over all bill.

  87. 87.

    Chetan Murthy

    @raven: When I was a kid, my parents opened and investment account with a local brokerage.  In the fullness of time, they got bought by another, that got bought by Wachovia, that got bought by Wells Fargo.  I was a satisfied Wells customer (they never did anything shitty to me) but after a few too many shenanigans [perpetrated on other customers en masse], I went in and closed my account: told the staff at my local branch how sad I was to be doing it, b/c I really liked having a local bank branch, etc etc.

    But FFS, what a buncha crooks, Wells Fargo.  Send all the C-suite to the slammer.  For starters.

  89. 89.

    laura

    @dmsilev: i have been informed that it’s not Wells Fargo, but Capital One. I regret the error, but it’s still an awful practice. Imaging getting a $20 tip last night and finding out its $5 this morning. And it’s not fancy point of sale. Spouse is a simple creature of habit and it’s due to his generous tipping at his 2 favorite restaurants and our local tavern. We tip heavy for service and tipped workers.

  90. 90.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Matt McIrvin: We had a regular commenter here a few years ago who had some hobby horse about the NASA photos being fake because they used false color. Who remembers that? What was his/her nym?

  91. 91.

    Chetan Murthy

    @laura: i can imagine allowing a customer to have that sort of option: but only if it goes along with an allegation of fraud.  I mean buyer’s remorse isn’t a legitimate reason to clawback money when you’ve already consumed the product.  And I’m guessing that capital one isn’t claiming that the tip was fraudulent.

  92. 92.

    Jay

    More Muskrat,

    Christian Christensen
    @ChrChristensen
    Dec 24
    1) A little Christmas story from Sweden about free speech and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Musk’s Tesla and X/Twitter. Striking Tesla worker Janis in Sweden gets a phone call from boss asking how he’s doing. Boss then brings up Janis’ wife. aftonbladet.se/minekonomi/a/…

    https://nitter.net/ChrChristensen/status/1738872147479568482#m

  94. 94.

    Alison Rose

    @laura: The only time I could see this being okay is with something like Instacart. You have to add the tip when you place the order, and so if your shopper sucks and gives you wrong items, expired food, leaves your bags in the mud, etc, I could see someone wanting to ability to reduce the tip. But I’m not sure if the credit card can determine that a transaction like that included a tip, since it goes through as one single charge.

  97. 97.

    Jay

    @laura:

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I have encountered a few times here, where a tip is automatically added to the bill.

    If you don’t review the bill before you pay, well.

    I always tip in cash, as I don’t trust that debit or credit tips arn’t part of the billions of dollars of “wage theft” by employers.

  98. 98.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: I  like ChrChristiansen’s tweet at the end of the thread.  [welll, *after* the end of the thread]  ROFL!

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gin & Tonic: I don’t remember the nym but I vaguely remember the whole fuss. That strikes me as more an overblown peeve than a conspiracy theory, and it’s one I’ve seen before. The thing is, with a lot of astronomical pictures, the realistic image you’d see is basically nothing.

    I think there’s a place for both naturalistic and non-naturalistic images, especially for things like Martian landscapes where a natural “you are there” view is possible but not necessarily the most scientifically useful–they just need to be clear about which is which.

  100. 100.

    different-church-lady

    @laura: Unfortunately this is probably a reaction to rare but real instances of unscrupulous waitstaff adding excessive tips behind the customer’s back. It was in the news here in Boston when it happened at a holiday fair.

  101. 101.

    JaneE

    Well prime grade beef is always more expensive.  A couple of weeks ago, a local chain was advertising choice bone in rib roast for $7.99.  The following week it was $10.99.

    Other places were higher for the same cut and grade, but they are known for having good meat.

    Not to mention that every good  place around me has a weekend prime rib special for under $30.

  102. 102.

    NotMax

    One of those roller coaster days.

    Monday is a trash collection day in this neighborhood, regardless of whether it is a holiday. Generally done very early in the morning.

    However the truck did not come by at all yesterday; finally did the pickup at noon today, Tuesday. I did check on Monday if the bin had been emptied. When rolled down to the street on Sunday night it was maybe one-sixth filled. Upon checking it in the evening, was stuffed chock full with bags put in there by other people. Could tell in the moonlight the one on top held primarily wrapping paper and cartons. What’s up with that?

    Also, internet connection just returned after going bye-bye for a couple of hours.

  103. 103.

    hrprogressive

    Prime Rib is and always will be expensive because it’s a luxurious cut of beef that you only buy for special occasions like Christmas or whatever.

    Pre pandemic we had a couple of prime rib Christmases and…those cuts of beef were well above $150 each. We didn’t buy almost 20 pounds of the stuff, either. So.

    These people are fucking morons.

  104. 104.

    Chetan Murthy

    @NotMax: Heh.  A few years back, some asshole put an HP printer into our shared recycle bin *after* the trash truck came around.  They don’t take electronic equipment except by appointment, so double asshole.  Crrrrikey, and this is a pretty quiet neighborhood, WTF were they thinking?  Don’t they have their own trash bins?

  105. 105.

    wjca

    @M31: for 250grams of beluga caviar Biden is making me pay $9510, what’s the world coming to?

    But you have to remember this: that caviar is helping finance Putin’s attack on the [imaginary] Nazis in Ukraine, to make the world safe for religious fanatics and bigots.

  106. 106.

    Jay

    @NotMax:

    In Maple Ridge, one paid for garbage pick up. You could opt out.

    My Dad did it by getting rid of a small bag of garbage at our house, or a gas station, or a bus stop, almost daily.

    When we bought his house and moved there to care for him, I did similar. A 45 gallon garbage can, and every few weeks I would haul the bag out and take it to the transfer station. $5 to drop off, $10 a month on average, vs $748 a year in a pick up garbage tax.

  107. 107.

    different-church-lady

    @NotMax: I have learned that if I don’t pull in my recycling tote right after they collect, I will find a bag of dog poop in the empty tote.

    Some people need to be punched and they’re not being punched.

  110. 110.

    Splitting Image

    @Alison Rose:

    I often wonder why people cling on to conspiracy theories that are so obviously ridiculous, and one reason is that most of them tend to be, you know, fucking stupid. Just not smart, they don’t brain good. And deep down inside they know they aren’t smart and they feel bad about it, and rather than do boring stuff like read books and learn, they feel like not “buying” this or that story makes them smarter than those of us who do. “You think we went to the moon? That’s because you’re too dumb to see all the signs of the pictures being from a soundstage, but I can see them because I’m clever and sharp.” Etc etc. I’m sure there are myriad other reasons, but since most of them make it pretty obvious that their brainpower wouldn’t be enough to run a wind-up toy, to me it seems like “I wanna pretend to be smart and this is the only way I know how” is a key factor.

    Pretty much on the money, I think. Every conspiracy theory is built around some kind of knowledge that takes a lot of time and effort to learn, and tries to pivot the discussion to obscure details that most people don’t bother learning unless they’ve studied the conspiracy.

    Just about anything you could possibly read about aliens, for example, ignores the mounting evidence of how hard it would be for aliens to get here. Even if our galaxy contains an interstellar civilization, we are in the middle of nowhere and it is unlikely to be anywhere near us. Occam’s Razor says that anything on earth that could be evidence of aliens is therefore more likely to be terrestrial in origin. Nonetheless: UFOs? Aliens. Crop circles? Aliens. The Pyramids? Aliens. Stonehenge? Aliens. The legend of Atlantis? Aliens.

  114. 114.

    wjca

    @Spanky: Last time I bought saffron at the grocery store the unit price was $32,000.00/lb. Freaked the cashier out.

    I’m trying to figure out how long an entire pound of saffron would last.

    Saffron is a great argument for the metric system: milligrams are an appropriate unit of measure.

  120. 120.

    Alison Rose

    @Splitting Image: They always want to believe things are massively more complex than they are. So many of the hoaxes they believe in would require the buy-in of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of people all over the country or the world, with none of them ever admitting the “truth” and no reputable news organizations ever uncovering it.

  121. 121.

    wjca

    @Alison Rose: In California it’s 100% because we are all required to be gay.

    But, but….  Wouldn’t that mean the boxes should be lavender?  (Not being gay, I’m guessing from a distance. :-)

  122. 122.

    Jay

    @Anoniminous:

    White or Black?

    Given the drought, (olive crops) and the truffle prices, how are we ever going to afford truffle oil drizzled over our avocado toast???????

    Curse you Biden!!!!!!

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @M31: (edited to add, for 250grams of beluga caviar Biden is making me pay $9510, what’s the world coming to?)

    Pro tip: Save the tins. You can re-fill them with fish-egg bait and black food coloring, and most people can’t tell the difference.

  124. 124.

    eclare

    @NotMax:

    Hahaha…the crudites, which pair so perfectly with tequila.

    I will give Dr. Oz credit for slinking off after the election.  I haven’t heard any noise from him.

  126. 126.

    JohnC

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: My partner got our glorious prime rib roast for 50% off, a week ago, because he knows that our supermarket DOES THAT EVERY YEAR. Unlike McCardle, he is neither disingenuous nor an idiot.

  127. 127.

    J. Arthur Crank

    @Gin & Tonic:   I think that was Ted & Hellen originally.  They might have changed their nym when the nonsense about colored astronomical images was being discussed, but life is too short to check the archives.

  128. 128.

    Jay

    @Ken:

    Here, fish egg bait is salmon, already dyed, but also salt cured. It comes in skeins so it stays on the hook.

    You need fresh (ish) herring roe or trout roe.

    Recently they have finally figured out how to “milk” the  sturgon eggs, so the fish can still live.

  130. 130.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Woah, I don’t recall the nym at all, but I surely do remember those weird rants. Were they directed, possibly, at Tom Levenson? He, or another of our FPs, was regularly posting some pretty damned spectacular pictures from Hubble and/or Webb, and the commenter simply couldn’t handle the fact that the data from deep space actually had to be processed to create readable images.

  131. 131.

    Mike in NC

    We’ll be eating prime rib all week because my wife cooked a giant roast last night and our guests barely touched it. Like Trump, they prefer their meat well done (and maybe smothered in ketchup).

  132. 132.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Steeplejack: Behavioral symptoms, per the NIH:

    • Problems planning and sequencing (thinking through which steps come first, second, and so on)
    • Difficulty prioritizing tasks or activities
    • Repeating the same activity or saying the same word over and over
    • Acting impulsively or saying or doing inappropriate things without considering how others perceive the behavior
    • Becoming disinterested in family or activities they used to care about.

    I think he has them all,  except for the “used to care about” bit.

  135. 135.

    Brachiator

    It’s been a busy day and I have just been skimming through the threads to catch up. Just wanted to note that it is enjoyable to read people being reasonable about the economy.

    $300 plus for a hunk of meat to “prove” the economy is bad? Bunch of dopes.

  141. 141.

    Jackie

    @NotMax: Consider your nearly empty can a Christmas gift for a family with kids! My neighbors and I always share empty can space as needed, if available.

  142. 142.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Scout211: Whatever the cost was 8 years ago, it was a lot. A.LOT. I don’t recall the exact number, but I recall buying one for the last time my wife hosted all of her family for Christmas dinner, and that was 10 years ago, and I was …whaaaaaa??????

  143. 143.

    David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch

    We bought  prime rib (bone in) before the pandemic at Whole Foods and it was $20 a pound.  Funny how nobody was bitching on social media, then.

  144. 144.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Alison Rose:

    No no no, the Earth is actually a donut, and everything you lose and never find again fell through the hole in the middle.

    I donut believe you.

  145. 145.

    Bill Arnold

    @eclare:

    the worship of people who tweet that we can all go to hell.

    The “THUGS” who Trump wishes to “ROT IN HELL” include those who surrendered to the Taliban in Afghanistan. That means him (CHIEF THUG); he and his team, literally negotiated the surrender to the Taliban in early 2020, in return for no attacks on American forces in the leadup to the 2020 POTUS election.
    Also, there is no significant INFLATION at the moment. The borders are not “Open”. (Have Federal taxes been raised during Biden’s presidency?) US oil production is up. The US Military is not “Woke”. Russia/Ukraine — Israel/Iran conflates Russian behavior with Israeli behavior (hmm), and so much more.

    but none of which are as evil and “sick” as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
    Dec 25, 2023, 2:38 PM

  148. 148.

    Suzanne

    @David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch: I just paid like $15/pound for prime rib at Whole Foods on Saturday. List price was like $20/pound, but was on sale, plus the Amazon Prime discount. I decided to splurge a little this year (because I don’t like Thanksgiving turkey). I did this fancy-pants prep from Williams Sonoma and it was awesome.

    I feel like these people have never made an enchilada from the leftover shreds of a Costco $5 rotisserie chicken and it shows.

  149. 149.

    jonas

    Mother of God — this fucking asshole is whining about what he pays for a 16 pound rib roast?? I could help him fit his $300 half-steer in a certain orifice if he would like. I bet the fois gras and caviar set him back a few bills as well.

    Also, beef prices are a lot higher this year, not because of Bidenomics, but because of the massive, climate-change enhanced drought in the midwest this past year. So unless you’re willing to discuss serious climate-change mitigation efforts, or go vegetarian, anyone complaining about high meat prices can sit down and enjoy a nice, big mug of STFU.

  150. 150.

    Honus

    @Pete Mack: 18/lb isn’t that unusual for a prime rib roast, especially at a more upscale supermarket.  At a boutique butcher shop you can pay $28/lb or more.  You can also shop around a bit and find them for $9.99/lb, but the important point is that this has been the price for at least the last 8-10 years.  There has been no huge inflation in prime rib prices during the Biden administration.
    Also pertinent is that he’s buying a 16.51lb prime rib.  That’s easily enough to feed thirty people, even with the bone weight.  So $10 each to feed the best available cut of steak to  thirty guests during the busiest shopping holiday of the year isn’t particularly shocking.

  151. 151.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Alison Rose: This isn’t all on the bad-guy side, either. When the news grinds you down, you get frustrated, sometimes it can make people receptive to conspiracy thinking. A chunk of the LGM commentariat still thinks Merrick Garland is working for Trump. I have friends who are really into posting alarming news about COVID and I’ve noticed some of their sources seem to be peeling loose from reality, claiming there’s some kind of looming COVID apocalypse that the powers that be don’t want you to know about. I think the extent to which smart people can get stupid in these ways is generally underestimated.

  152. 152.

    Ken

    @Bill Arnold: Have Federal taxes been raised during Biden’s presidency?

    I don’t think so, but it occurs to me — weren’t the Trump tax cuts passed with the usual 10-year expiration, so the Republicans could juggle the books and claim they wouldn’t increase the deficit? (At least, Republicans not named Nikki Haley.)

    If so, I think their expiration or renewal would be in 2028 election season. My gut reaction is that it won’t be a good issue for Republicans to run on.

  154. 154.

    Brachiator

    @Ken:

    @Bill Arnold:

    RE: Have Federal taxes been raised during Biden’s presidency?

    I don’t think so, but it occurs to me — weren’t the Trump tax cuts passed with the usual 10-year expiration, so the Republicans could juggle the books and claim they wouldn’t increase the deficit? (At least, Republicans not named Nikki Haley.)

    Most of the 2017 law’s corporate tax provisions are permanent, but nearly all of its other changes — including changes to the individual income tax and the estate tax — are set to expire after 2025. One analysis makes the following observation:

    Extending all of these provisions would be an expensive policy mistake, costing around $300 billion per year.

    However, it would be difficult for the Democrats to let individual tax rates rise if they take power in 2024. And some of the changes, like an increased Standard Deduction, makes sense and simplifies taxes for a lot of people.

  156. 156.

    Victor Matheson

    @Spanky: a couple years ago for Thanksgiving I had a cranberry recipe that required a whole vanilla bean. The single vanilla bean cost more than my entire 18lb turkey.

  157. 157.

    sdhays

    @laura: I have Capital One, and I have seen that. It’s an anti-fraud feature, e.g. making sure someone didn’t add a 1 in front of your tip or something. I trigger it when we use gift cards for most of a meal and then the rest goes on the credit card – since I’m tipping for the whole meal, it looks suspicious.

  160. 160.

    Citizen Alan

    @Alison Rose: I think it’s worse than stupidity. I think it is an actual mental illness. They choose to believe conspiracy theories, the more ridiculous the better, because by doing so, they can claim to have special wisdom that only the treally brilliant and insightful can claim to possess. It’s all about people who in their middle age are forced to confront their own lack of value to the human race, and so they seek out delusional belief systems that will prove them to be smarter than everyone else.

  163. 163.

    Chris T.

    @Chetan Murthy:

    But FFS, what a buncha crooks, Wells Fargo. Send all the C-suite to the slammer. For starters.

    WF got noticeably worse after their “merger” with Norwest in 1998-ish. Norwest was actually a bit bigger at that point, if I recall correctly, and although it was labeled a “merger of equals” it was really more of a takeover by Norwest. They did a big marketing survey and found that Wells Fargo was a “more trusted name” so they dropped the Norwest name entirely.

    Elizabeth Warren has been taking on the big banks and is (slowly, as such things always are) forcing them to improve.

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