Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

đŸŽ¶ Those boots were made for mockin’ đŸŽ”

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

This blog will pay for itself.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

It’s a doggy dog world.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

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

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

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Republicans don’t trust women.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Come on, man.

Consistently wrong since 2002

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Some Things Change, Some Things Don’t

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Some Things Change, Some Things Don’t

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170Comments

  5. 5.

    H.E.Wolf

    GOTV is crucial for 2024. I’m glad that the jackals are supporting GOTV organizations like Four Directions. (See the thermometer in the sidebar – the first $30K was matched by a non-Balloon Juice donor.)

    PostcardsToVoters.org is helping to flip state legislature seats to blue this month and next… and they’re also doing GOTV for the US House special election in NY-03 (Long Island/Queens).

  6. 6.

    Elizabelle

    @H.E.Wolf:  You remind me: since stamp prices are about to increase on January 21 (?, Sunday), need to get out and buy some more postcard stamps today.

    It seems postcards are very effective.

    @Baud:  Tipping a coffee to you, bud.

  8. 8.

    satby

    @Elizabelle: Thanks for that link!

    Good morning 🌄. Slept 8 hours and woke up to 2 more inches of snow. With 4-6 more predicted by Saturday morning. Glad I got out yesterday, may do a run to the bank early today and call it a week. Snow was more fun when I was younger.

  9. 9.

    Jeffro

    Morning!

    Here’s the hack’s hack of hacks, Marc Thiessen, frantically wishcasting his brains out:

    (interesting points of note bolded by yours truly)

    …Haley is a much stronger general election candidate than Trump. In a new CBS News poll, Haley leads Biden by eight percentage points in a head-to-head matchup — the only GOP candidate outside the margin of error. The reason she outperforms Trump and DeSantis is that she wins more moderates, independents and voters with college degrees, erases Biden’s edge with women, and peels off more 2020 Biden supporters.

    Her GOP critics have pointed to an NBC News-Des Moines Register survey that found that a 43% plurality of Haley voters would vote for Biden in the general election, while just 23 percent would vote for Trump. Far from a negative, that means she has crossover appeal and can win over disaffected Biden 2020 voters that Trump cannot. How did Ronald Reagan beat President Jimmy Carter in 1980? He won over the “Reagan Democrats” — many of whom went on to become Republicans. The key to victory in 2024 could be “Haley Democrats.”

    And what if she somehow did pull it off? How great would it be for the GOP if, instead of Vice President Harris, the first female president were an unapologetic conservative, the child of immigrants who came to this country to pursue the American Dream — and raised a daughter who went on to assume the highest office in the land? Haley is the candidate best positioned to do what Biden promised but failed to do — unite the country at a moment when the country desperately needs uniting. There is a hunger for this in America. They desperately don’t want a rematch between our two deeply flawed geriatric front-runners. The first party to figure this out — and nominate a young rising star with crossover appeal — would win the 2024 election in a landslide. But to do that, Haley first needs to win the New Hampshire primary.

    If she doesn’t win, that opens a narrow path forward for DeSantis. Let’s say Haley falls well short of Trump in New Hampshire and then loses in South Carolina, too. At that point, she’s finished — leaving DeSantis the only challenger left heading into Super Tuesday. Republicans who want someone other than Trump would rally around him — much as they rallied around Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) at the end in 2016. It didn’t work for Cruz, but maybe DeSantis can complete the Hail Mary pass. And he’d be positioned to inherit the nomination if there was a legal development that made a Trump candidacy unviable.

    Right now, Trump is the favorite to win the GOP primaries, and Iowa had tightened his grip on the nomination. But it’s not over. In a country of 332 million, just 110,000 people have voted. Calls from Trump supporters to declare the race done are offensive and premature. Let voters have their say.

    Some pundit’s going to have to write it soon: “For The GOP, There Is No “Plan B

    And how many “Haley Democrats” will our beloved snooze media find in the next couple of weeks?  (hint: take the over)

  11. 11.

    Ken

    Aww. Peter Schickele, the discoverer of the deservedly-lost music of P.D.Q. Bach, has died at the age of 88. Let us all play a mournful chorus of “Angus Dei” on our kazoos.

  12. 12.

    Ken

    @Jeffro:

    Marc Thiessen: If she doesn’t win, that opens a narrow path forward for DeSantis.

    Stay away from the brown acid, Marc.

  13. 13.

    Trivia Man

    The Baby Boomers did indeed revolutionize the country. The 60s were transformative and changed society. More (somewhat) equality and opportunity for people of color and women. A golden age of music and the arts. Huge increase in prosperity – mostly in the sense of “the whole economy” but also a lifting of the floor fir the very bottom tier.

    Then reagan fucked it up. He egged in greed and those idealistic “kids” sold out for money and power. FYIGM was the national mantra and it led to slashing taxes, gutting of financial guardrails, neglect of infrastructure upkeep, and hobbling a fair media.

    I believe the equivalent “kids” today are more compassionate, more equitable to others, and just as passionate.

    Boomers had the advantage because their numbers were overwhelming, the target (“conservative” society was in a rut), the end if the war was a boon for economic growth, and transformative technology seemed to happen every day.

    I have confidence in the generation of my children. They just need to get past the (intentionally inflicted) despair and carpe the fuck out of this diem.

  14. 14.

    Jeffro

    Also good (but this was from 2 days ago, someone else might have already posted excerpts): The Reckoning for Ron DeSantis is Here

    …faced with inflection points in his career, DeSantis has always chosen poorly. He values loyalty over competence. He does what’s easy over what’s hard but right; during the pandemic, contrary to the mythology peddled by his campaign, DeSantis merely outsourced the hard decision-making about school closures and mask mandates and business closures to city and county officials, who made brave calls with virtually no guidance from their state leadership. DeSantis always chooses cruelty over kindness, dog whistles over empathy, divisiveness over grace.

    These moral compromises have turned him into a husk. Last summer, when Jacksonville needed a leader in the wake of a series of racist murders at a Dollar General, it only got this listless vessel of a man. It was “unacceptable,” he said of this shocking act of violence. DeSantis had nothing left for his own people. So he decamped to Iowa, eventually taking a large portion of the leadership of Florida’s government with him. His campaign, under the badly mistaken impression that exposing its icy leader to as many people as possible would increase his odds, visited all of Iowa’s 99 counties.

    It, of course, made no difference. This prince of the modern conservative movement had turned into a pumpkin long ago. All that money, his reputation, all that time he could have been making a difference in Florida — to lower its debilitating cost of living, to extend health care to millions who are without it, to fight for consumer protections and against overdevelopment and algal blooms — gone forever. Sure, he can continue to soldier on, as he pledged to Monday night, while his broke campaign shrivels in front of us all. But this goose is cooked right and good.

    This tragedy is not DeSantis’s to claim. The tragedy is what Floridians had to lose just so this man could get trounced by a scofflaw.

  15. 15.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Elizabelle: ​@H.E.Wolf: You remind me: since stamp prices are about to increase on January 21 (?, Sunday), need to get out and buy some more postcard stamps today.

    It seems postcards are very effective.

     Thank you for the reminder about stamp prices! Buy today or tomorrow, if possible – there’ll be a rush on Saturday.

    If you buy stamps from USPS online, the website may be down on Saturday the 20th. So again, today and tomorrow are advisable. Note: there’s a small fee for ordering online (less than $2, unless your order is gigantic).

    https://store.usps.com/store/results/stamps/_/N-9y93lv

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    From downstairs.

    In the mood for something along the lines of intense that doesn’t require a commitment to a whole string of episodes? Could do worse than the (English language) Falcón on Freevee via Prime.

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    @H.E.Wolf

    GOTV is crucial for 2024.

    While I get your point I at the same time cannot come up with an election when GOTV wasn’t crucial.

  21. 21.

    prostratedragon

    Something good: Biden administration is moving toward a rule to cap bank overdraft fees at $3. Hopefully they’ll also look at various overdraft.manipulations that banks have used.

  24. 24.

    mrmoshpotato

    It’s always helpful in understanding the racist backlash to Obama’s re-election when you remember that literally a fourth of the country’s white population (and even more of its white voters) disapproved of interracial marriage at the time of his first election.

    Wow.  2007.  Just wow.

  25. 25.

    Trivia Man

    @NotMax: 2010 strikes as a particular GOTV tragedy. Obama had won so too many people relaxed and stayed home. Redistricting enabled by that republican bounce back hobbled his second term and directly brought us here.

  26. 26.

    Matt McIrvin

    The most surprising thing about that interracial-marriage poll trend is that the numbers weren’t lower in 2021.

  27. 27.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ken: We were amused to learn that he got his music degree at nearby Swarthmore College (about 5 minutes from us).

    Swarthmore did not offer music degrees at the time.

    So much great PDQ Bach music. Guess we’re going to be listening to a lot of it the next few days.

  28. 28.

    Dave

    @Jeffro: Ridiculous wish casting but lets grant this somehow comes to pass either Haley or Desantis manages to eek out the nomination.  How does DJT and his ride or die 30-40% of GOP voters respond?  I can’t imagine that it would be maturely and with stoic acceptance of the usurping nominee.

  29. 29.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    Howdy. Would prefer to be snoozing but for the left knee deciding to metaphorically scream bloody murder when I go horizontal. Artifact of protracted damp chilly weather.

  30. 30.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @satby: I’m not yet grown up, well into my 60s. So it’s still fun.

    Ice is not fun however. Especially walking the dog on it.

    Also shoveling it this week was harder than it’s been in the past. But it was heavy wet stuff, so that’s my excuse.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    All that money, his reputation, all that time he could have been making a difference in Florida — to lower its debilitating cost of living, to extend health care to millions who are without it, to fight for consumer protections and against overdevelopment and algal blooms — gone forever.

    I think it’s really encouraging that property insurance was a big issue in the FL special a coupla days ago.
    Maybe they’re finally realizing Christopher Rufo’s national anti woke campaign doesn’t offer any practical benefits for normal people.

  33. 33.

    Another Scott

    Nikki is learning the old saw, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.” I expect a few more anvils will be coming her way in coming weeks.

    Meanwhile, Guttmacher.org (from yesterday):

    The Guttmacher Institute has released new data from the Monthly Abortion Provision Study, an initiative launched in 2023 to provide monthly estimates of the number of abortions within the formal US health care system. The latest estimates cover the period January–October 2023, and reflect the number of facility-based procedural and medications abortions, as well as medication abortions provided via telehealth and virtual providers.

    National Increase in Abortion

    In the first 10 months of 2023, there were an estimated 878,000 abortions in the formal US health care system, 94% as many abortions as were provided in 2020 (930,000). Approximately 88,000 abortions have been provided in the formal health care system per month so far in 2023, so with two months of data yet to be published, it is very likely that the total number of abortions provided in 2023 will substantially exceed 2020 numbers. The actual increase in abortions is likely even larger than these numbers suggest because these counts do not include abortions occurring outside the formal health care system, which are likely to have increased substantially following the implementation of state bans and restrictions.

    Many factors have contributed to more abortions in 2023, including the following:

    * Abortions were already increasing in many US states prior to the Dobbs decision, as reported in Guttmacher’s 2020 Abortion Provider Census: Abortions increased by 8% from 2017 to 2020, reversing 30 years of a declining abortion rate.

    * Interstate travel for abortion care has increased, largely facilitated by practical support networks (like abortion funds) that have helped patients navigate financial and logistical barriers.

    * Access to abortion has increased in states that passed protective abortion policies following the fall of Roe v. Wade.

    * Abortion provided via telehealth has become increasingly available.

    […]

    (Of course, all else being equal, one would expect the number of abortions to increase with population growth.)

    Dobbs and all the rest are horrible. Women are dying. Full stop.

    But even measured by their own baseline goals, they’re failing. People are finding ways to work around it until the day that it is reversed.

    We have to fight them every single day, and vote the monsters out.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    RevRick

    We watched the extensive coverage of President Biden’s visit to Emmaus and Allentown on WFMZ. The fire academy he touted being funded by his administration is located a half mile down the road from us.

  39. 39.

    jonas

    A whole video of Biden’s cabinet talking about their policy achievements and not once devolving into a rambling word salad of greasy, obsequious praise for the Glorious Leader. Imagine that.

  40. 40.

    Soprano2

    Listened to Steve Inskeep interview Rep. Robert Garcia about the Democratic outreach to voters of color. He asked him a question that was approximately “What do you say to people who tell you they are more conservative, they’re Catholic and  don’t support abortion, they’re small business owners?”. They ALWAYS ask Democrats a question like this whenever they talk about outreach to immigrants. They NEVER ask Republicans who talk about the same thing “What do you say to people who say TFG seems to hate us, he did a ban on Muslims and tried to suppress legal immigration, as well as trying to commit a coup?”.  It drives me crazy that they think all immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America are Catholics and small business owners who will only vote on those issues. Plus, Democrats are good for the economy so they’re good for small business in a lot of ways, there’s the implication that only Republicans are good for small business.

  41. 41.

    Nukular Biskits

    Good morning, y’all.

    Posting mobile, flying home from SAN today so I’ll be mostly in lurk mode.

    Be sweet!

  42. 42.

    Scout211

    Finally some good news out of the 5th circuit yesterday.

    U.S. appeals court blocks Texas law that could ban or restrict library books

    Those who sued to block the Texas law, which include bookstores and associations representing authors and publishers, said that the appeals court decision was historic and that it protects authors and lets parents make decisions about their children without government interference.

    “This is a good day for bookstores, readers, and free expression,” the plaintiffs said in a joint statement.

    The law, passed last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature, would have forced any bookseller to public schools to rate books for sexual content.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @jonas:

    “Biden’s cabinet evinces little support for president in public meeting.” /NYT

    In honor of DougJ s big interview.

  44. 44.

    jonas

    @Scout211: Yeah, here in Upstate NY, where it was in the single digits this morning, it’s a thing. I have a couple of friends with EVs and hybrids and they’ve told me that the range decreases quite a bit in cold temperatures. Not sure why that is — maybe some engineering jackals here can explain the physics/chemistry behind that. But it does have me leaning towards a hybrid/electric for my next vehicle, as opposed to pure electric.

    ETA, on the other hand, virtually all new cars sold in Norway, for example, are EVs, due to the tax advantage on them, and they seem pretty happy with them in their subzero winters.

  48. 48.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Scout211: I have seen a *lot* of people tossing this around as “the ugly truth they won’t tell you about EVs” etc. etc. Yes, a technology has a drawback.

    (My hybrid’s fuel efficiency definitely goes down in the winter, probably from the same mechanism. When we had an extremely rare arctic cold snap with -15F weather here a while back, I was interested to see if it’d run at all–it did, with absolutely no trouble, but its gas mileage essentially converged to that of a conventional car. It was a nice case of graceful degradation.)

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It seems like every time we have a new technology, savvy people always come out of the woodwork to spread the assumption that the tech will never get better.

  51. 51.

    BC in Illinois

    @Ken:

    Aww. Peter Schickele, the discoverer of the deservedly-lost music of P.D.Q. Bach, has died at the age of 88. Let us all play a mournful chorus of “Angus Dei” on our kazoos.

    Sorry to hear this. A long-ago P.D.Q. Bach concert featured the only ocarina solo at the Kennedy Center that I ever heard — or heard of.

  52. 52.

    Chris T.

    @Scout211:

    … today I learned that temperatures under 20 degrees cause EV batteries to lose an average of 41% of their range.

    There’s a key phrase in there: “and the heat’s cranked on … depending on how a car’s HVAC system is designed“. If you need more range, you have to leave the heat low or off (but you can and should use the heated steering wheel and/or heated seats that most EVs include).

    In a conventional (internal combustion engine or “ICE”) car, most of your fuel goes to generating “waste heat”. But in the winter, that “waste” heat isn’t exactly waste after all; they run a fluid loop through the heater core block that provides warm air into the cabin. Since the heat is actually wanted, the overall efficiency of the ICE vehicle goes up: the fuel’s driving range remains the same (modulo some minor drops due to other effects) but instead of throwing out 65-or-more % of the fuel energy, you use a bunch of that 65% for your cabin heat.

    EVs generate a lot less waste heat, and if you want to heat the cabin, there’s not enough “lost” efficiency for that, so you need some sort of auxiliary heat. The quick, cheap and dirty way to re-use all your old ICE-manufacturing parts is to put electric resistance heating into the heater core block, and that’s what some do. But now you’re using your battery power not just to achieve driving range, but also to get electric heating in the cabin.

    Given my EV’s nominal range of >200 miles and the fact that my trip to the grocery store or whatever is under 30 miles round trip, “losing” half the energy if I want the cabin all nice and toasty is not a problem for me, but one should be aware of the various tradeoffs.

  53. 53.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Baud: I must admit that when I read literature from the 19th century and before, I’m jealous that you could fall asleep at the wheel and your transportation would bring you home.

    This “automobile” technology hasn’t caught up with that yet.

  54. 54.

    jonas

    @Ken: Oh no! My parents were huge classical music fans and *loved* the whole P.D.Q. Bach thing when I was growing up. Schickele’s “definitive biography” is one of the greatest works of satire ever written. It’s even better if you know some German and can appreciate all the silly puns.

    RIP.

  55. 55.

    Scout211

    @jonas: @Matt McIrvin:

    From the NBC article:

    The way engines work plays a big part in how a car is heated, said Scott Case, the CEO of Recurrent, a company that measures EV battery performance. Around 10% of a gas engine vehicle’s energy is used for forward momentum, compared to 90% in EVs, he said. With all-electric models, “there’s not a lot of waste heat that you can just use to warm up the cabin,” Case said, which puts more onus on the battery to do so.

    Auto industry experts said EVs built with heat pumps for warming their interiors will undergo less battery strain in cold weather. Most newer models have them, but less efficient “resistive” heaters are more common in older vehicles. Case estimated that EVs with heat pumps lose an average 20% of their range in extreme weather, compared with up to 40% in those without heat pumps

    So it sounds like EVs with heat pumps are the way to go in areas of the country that often get below 20 degrees.

    Recommended workaround:

    In the meantime, for prospective and current EV drivers looking to maximize their range in cold weather, “it all comes down to trying to maintain the temperature of the battery and the interior of the car,” Knizek said.

    One common approach is called pre-conditioning. Turning on the heat while an EV is still plugged in — which can often be done through a smartphone app connected to the vehicle — will use energy from the charging station, rather than the battery, to heat the cabin. “The benefit to you is not only extra range, but you also show up to a nice, toasty, comfortable car,” Knizek said.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    Both publicly and privately, U.S. executives said at Davos they weren’t concerned if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.
    Banking leaders, in particular, expressed confidence that America will be OK if Trump returns to the White House

    Lol. That’s how we know Trump is a renegade populist who will break up the Deep State. All US corporate executives are backing him. Of course they are- he promised them another massive tax cut.

    He’s the choice of the bankers. Good God. Just shameful people.

  60. 60.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Scout211: It does sound like they’re still working out some of the kinks in EV design. Reminiscent of when some communities switched their traffic lights from incandescent to LED bulbs, only to discover that in snowy/icy weather, LED bulbs didn’t provide enough excess heat to keep the traffic signals free of snow or ice, the way the old incandescent bulbs had, so they had to do some redesigning and retrofitting of defrosters and such…

  67. 67.

    eclare

    @jonas:

    I learned yesterday that the latest trend among the yoots is to make a video that has various iterations of “‘of course.”

  68. 68.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Scout211: Yeah, my hybrid (like all hybrids I know of) notably does NOT have a heat pump for the passenger cabin, but relies on waste heat from the engine like any regular car–which means that it’s super chilly in there when you start moving in the morning, since often it just hasn’t started to run the engine yet. Creates some problems with window defrosting too.

    It does have electric butt warmers in the front seats.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    They’re all joyfully predicting a Trump victory at Davos. More tax cuts! 

    All of these people predicted a massive recession this year too, though, because they were pissed off wages went up so they took their personal peevishness and pretended it was “ecoomics”. They’re probably as wrong about Trump winning as they were about that.

    They’ll be working as hard as they can to drag him over the finish line though. This is what we’re up against.

  71. 71.

    Eduardo

    @Another Scott: It is fantastic that a lot of women have been able to get abortions despite their best efforts.  Paradoxically, I am sure than 90%+ Republican politicians are happy all those escape valves exist.  Otherwise, they will be totally annihilated at the polls.

  72. 72.

    jonas

    @Kay: He’s the choice of the bankers. Good God. Just shameful people.

    A federal government that has become a complete clusterfuck of dysfunction and corruption is a government too weak to tax and regulate. Ka-ching!

  74. 74.

    H.E.Wolf

    @NotMax: ​
     Yes! That is absolutely true. Any chance you’re up for GOTV postcard writing? Speaking as a mainlander, it would be so exciting to get a postcard from your locale….

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Eduardo: Things are going to change fast when the federal hammer comes down on chemically induced abortion, which is probably going to happen soon, with that case to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. Access to abortion is going to dramatically shrink across the board in blue states and red.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    @jonas:

    They’re such absolutely privileged, complacent people. They have once again convinced themselves that nothing bad can happen as long as rich people are taken care of. They take everything for granted.

    I’m marking their prediction. When we win- and we are going to win- they’ll al be as wrong about this as they were about the economy.

  79. 79.

    Scout211

    @eclare: I learned yesterday that the latest trend among the yoots is to make a video that has various iterations of “‘of course.”

    Oh, thank you.  Being a not-yoot, I wondered why that video repeatedly used that phrase. It seemed a little distracting to me but now I know why it was used.

    Full service blog here, translating yoot-speak for the olds.

  80. 80.

    RevRick

    @Trivia Man: The Democrats got clobbered in 2010 because the unemployment rate peaked at 10% in October. At the same time, the Tea Party was screaming bloody murder about the ACA. It wasn’t complacency. It was demoralization.

  81. 81.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: There’s a big round of layoffs going on in the tech sector again, though it’s not as bad as last year when it felt like a localized recession.

  82. 82.

    jonas

    @Scout211: Thanks for this. I know from EV owners in places like AZ and CA that blasting the AC a lot in the summer also noticeably reduces range, so it makes total sense that using battery power for heat in the winter would have a similar effect.

  83. 83.

    eclare

    @Kay:

    Yep.  He has secretly floated the idea of taking the corporate rate down to 15%.  I worked in corporate tax for decades, this is a horrible, horrible idea, no corporation needs a rate reduction, and Joe should pound on it.  “They want to cut your earned benefits to give tax breaks to banks!”

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It’ll be another political earthquake too. The women who use medication abortion are the best educated, most politically active and most privacy-valuing group of women within the pro choice group. Poke that bear, Alito. Please proceed.

  86. 86.

    Baud

    @eclare:

    While I don’t disagree, I just don’t believe that many voters care about corporate tax cuts.  I wish they did, but I don’t see it.

  88. 88.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: It concerns me that this doesn’t seem to even be on the radar of many people who are interested in abortion access. They don’t know it’s happening. Well, they will.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Oh, it’s more than the tech sector though. They keened and moaned about the economy because they don’t like Joe Biden’s LIBERAL economic policy. They did their absolute best to cause a recession by driving down demand. They failed.

    It was never “economics” or fact based. It was ideological. Joe Biden’s economy HAD to fail because Joe Biden’s economic policy is a repudiation – a reversal- of Reaganomics. THATS what they are pissed about and that’s why they’re all trying to put Trump back in. Because if Biden gets a second term he will have reversed a good chunk of Right wing economic policy.

  91. 91.

    RevRick

    @topclimber: Actually, it my increase them! By melting the Arctic sea ice pack global warming degrades the polar vortex, which thus causes the jet scream to behave weirdly. Instead of remaining in Northern Canada and Alaska, arctic air masses can spill down into the lower 48.

  92. 92.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: Pitchbot was playing your tune.  From January 4:

    In this Ohio diner, it was a tradition: big plate of pancakes, hot mug of Folgers, then onto the New York Times website to read 20 or 30 articles about the president of Harvard.  But now the woke mob wants to take all of that away.

  93. 93.

    Jeffro

    @Dave: Ridiculous wish casting but lets grant this somehow comes to pass either Haley or Desantis manages to eek out the nomination.  How does DJT and his ride or die 30-40% of GOP voters respond?  I can’t imagine that it would be maturely and with stoic acceptance of the usurping nominee.

    How would they respond AND how would His Orangeness respond?

    “Ok…you win, Nikki…Republican voters have spoken, and I’ll respect their wishes and just shuffle off to prison now”

    -DJT, never

  94. 94.

    eclare

    @Baud:

    It baffles me.  But I guess to a lot of people it’s abstract and doesn’t impact them directly, yet, but it will if the rate goes to 15%.  If they had seen some of the returns I had…

  95. 95.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It never made fucking sense. If people are spending a ton and starting new small businesses at a record rate then people don’t really believe the economy is bad.

    Ignore what they say. Watch what they do. If you watched what people DID over the last 4 years you knew the Biden economy was both strong and resilient. It’s all a version of my anecdotal experience where I live, in ou small “economy”. It’s my client telling me “no one” can afford anything and in the next breath telling me she’s going on a Christmas cruise with her entire extended family. Okey doke. They never behaved like it was a bad economy, and they have to! They ARE “the economy”.

  96. 96.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Though another thing that’s apparently going to happen is the overturning of the Chevron doctrine, which I only vaguely understand but will apparently make nearly all federal regulation of business impossible as long as there are right-wing crank judges about.

  99. 99.

    frosty

    @NotMax: I prefer the football chant:

    Fight, fight, for  the inner light, kill, Little Quakers, kill!

    The Swarthmore administration did not approve.

  101. 101.

    Eduardo

    @Kay: Probably a bigger political earthquake than Dobbs.  My understanding is that most abortions are done chemically and that if you are middle/high middle class no matter in which state you are, you will find a way to get the pills.  These are the people than vote and organize the most.  That is as far as women.  Now you are a man and your partner can’t get the pill if an “accident” happens …

    Except for Roberts, the conservative wing of the SC is pretty ideological-consequences-be-damned but I would not be surprised if they stop short of making that kind of decision.

  102. 102.

    TriassicSands

    WOW. President Biden just announced that his campaign raised more than $1.6 MILLION from grassroots donors…

    That is good news, but it should have been 1.6 BILLION dollars. No, not realistic, but I write that as a reflection of just how bad the Trumplicans are.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    DougJ is early and right a lot. He was the first person to start a “wokeness” theme – he was right about that, and he also predicted Dobbs would be a political earthquake. Early and right.

    We are continually lectured about how we have to “understand” voters but we’re not the people who are always wrong about voters. I think we understand voters just fine. The NYTimes thinks the biggest issue facing America today is the leadership at Harvard.

  104. 104.

    snoey

    @RevRick: More precisely, the arctic is warming faster than the equatorial regions. This decreases the energy differential driving the jet stream and thus increases it’s meanders. What the British are calling an omega block is what we call an ox-bow. Pools of hot or cold air trapped out of place.

    The next phase is when all the melting ice sticks the arctic at freezing and the equatorial regions keep warming. Then the big storms start.

  105. 105.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: I think a short, clear statement that “Republicans increased your taxes so that they could lower taxes on their fatcat friends” might help.

    Of course there will be whining about how that’s not strictly true, but 1) fuck ’em, just ignore that mewling, and 2) it’s true.

  106. 106.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The current tech layoffs seem to be the result of investors believing the done thing is to lay off your current staff and hire a couple of guys to replace your whole code base with “AI”. From their perspective it’s not a contraction, it’s riding the wave of the future (e.g. a bubble).

    I’m not entirely convinced there isn’t some reasonable use of this technology. I do think people haven’t really found it yet.

  108. 108.

    frosty

    @Scout211: ​ Charging a lithium battery below freezing can permanently damage it due to a chemical reaction called lithium plating. I would assume that EV manufacturers know this and are providing some kind of internal heating system in the batteries.

    We put a lithium battery into our trailer so this is something I have to be careful about when we head south in a week or so. I’ll probably disconnect it so the Jeep doesn’t charge it until we get to warmer weather.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @Eduardo:

    It’s about half. The thing to understand about medication abortions is they are early abortions – they have to be. These are women who are carefully monitoring and who value the independence and privacy of handling it themselves. In other words “likely voters”.

  110. 110.

    eclare

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Seeing as how AI and ChatGPT like to make stuff up, I don’t see the benefit yet.  Attorneys have gotten into trouble trusting ChatGPT to write documents to submit to a court.  The program literally made up cases to cite.  Oops!

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    They’re all such lemmings. It’salways been a contradiction to me, how they sell themselves (and are sold to the public) as visionaries and free thinkers yet they follow every fucking fad blindly and always oversell. They’re not free thinkers at all. They’re like a high school clique.

    If AI is world changing and inevitable then why are all these people selling it so hard? Why the oversell?

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @frosty

    Yeah, they still had a football program when attended (too) many moons ago. Also the gorgeous polished brass Sproul telescope, now also gone.

    The telescope was built in 1911 by the John A. Brashear Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When the telescope was installed at the observatory in 1913, it was the largest on the East Coast of the United States and one of the largest in the world. Source

  114. 114.

    Eolirin

    @Matt McIrvin: I think there was a degree of rapid hiring/over investment in tech on the back of pandemic dislocation based changes in spending patterns and now that the economy is reverting to something more resembling prepandemic normal there’s a course correction going on.

    I don’t think the current tech layoffs have much to do with AI. That’s mostly going to be hitting service sector workers right now. Customer service in particular.

  115. 115.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:  Blog favorite David Hiltzik (Pulitzer Prize winning) LA Times business columnist yesterday — and they sent this email out to subscribers with the title:  In Davos, Jamie Dimon gives a dumb interview

    Column: Davos, where the rich and powerful go to show off their ignorance

    Following a tradition of know-nothing pronouncements at the World Economic Forum, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon declares Trump right about immigration, tax cuts, NATO and the economy.

  116. 116.

    Nukular Biskits

    PSA for flyers:

    If the following sequence occurs:

    • You check in online twenty four hours ahead of your flight and pay for your baggage;
    • Your flight is canceled and then you are automatically rebooked on another flight with the same airline that day;
    • Your flight is AGAIN canceled and then you are automatically rebooked on another flight with the same airline for the following day;

    You may need assistance because their  (United) system may not  show you had already paid for your luggage.

    😡

  119. 119.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Yeah, this is all part of the great squeeze that is the main tactic to ban abortion completely–you put in regulatory and practical obstacles to force abortions to happen later and later, in the hope that that pushes them into the zone where more people are uncomfortable with them happening at all.

    Medication abortion makes the squeeze nearly impossible, so they attack that directly. But anyone directly affected by this can see what is happening.

  120. 120.

    frosty

    @Matt McIrvin: Defrosters are nice but I found a workaround. Way back in my 20s I drove my TR-3 with no heat through freezing rain on the way south to Atlanta. Putting my hand on the windshield warmed it enough to melt a hole that I could see through for a few miles. Then the ice gradually blocked it and I had to do it again. 100 miles of this!

    It was a California car. I threw out the heater when it started to leak onto the floorboards. Then I drove it across the country in the summer and back in the winter. Oops.

  121. 121.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: Like David Brent on the UK “Office” randomly throwing half the resumes into the trash because that way you don’t hire unlucky people.

  122. 122.

    eclare

    @Elizabelle:

    Stunning ignorance.  SMDH.

    Or he is a cynical fuck and figures flattery of TIFG will get him what he wants.  Unfortunately he is not wrong.

  125. 125.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Kay: Because a lot of “tech” is actually substance-free woo. So many sales people. So much hype.

    I work in tech HW (not SW). We’re pretty boring when we’re doing it right. Sometimes there’s something legitimately exciting or game changing. But so much of the tech industry is just empty bullshit.

    That bullshit used to be able to attract plenty of investment $$ in a super-low interest rate economy. Getting harder these days, which may actually be a good thing for society?

  127. 127.

    Kay

    Interesting article you will never, ever read in the NYTimes:

    CAMPBELL COUNTY, Ky. — Mike Combs, a Kentucky native, considers himself a Republican, at least on paper. But these days, he isn’t often voting like one.The owner of a self-storage company, Combs told ABC News he’s conservative, especially around fiscal issues, and would consider voting for GOP. But he said he’s been turned off by the increasingly hard-line culture war message of the national party — leading him to mostly cast ballots for Democrats, including newly reelected Gov. Andy Beshear, while still supporting some Republicans in 2022 at the state level. “The noise that’s argued about today, overall, is divisive rather than solution-finding. And am I still a Republican? By registration, certainly. But by actions of late, I’m probably not on the graph chart, especially on social issues,” Combs said. “I just believe that if you believe the mantra of the Christian faith, or whatever, you care about people. People deal with people; you care about them.”

    Anti wokeness is only a winner for middle aged, white male media people and celebrities and base Repubicans. No one else gets why it’s all they talk about.

    Good for ABC for getting out of the elite bubble.

  128. 128.

    frosty

    @jonas: ​Similar effect if there’s a heat pump for both AC and heat. Much worse if the heat is from resistive heating (like the glowing wires in your toaster).

  133. 133.

    Ken

    @Eduardo: Except for Roberts, the conservative wing of the SC is pretty ideological-consequences-be-damned but I would not be surprised if they stop short of making that kind of decision.

    My karma-is-never-that-adept fantasy would be that the court says the FDA can’t approve mifepristone, and the next time Alito tries to refill his heart medication prescription he’s told “Sorry, that drug’s been yanked because we’re not sure if the FDA approval is valid.”

  137. 137.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: wait, is that even possible?  “The War on Wokeness” is…is turning some voters off ??!?

    The whole world has gone mad, mad I tell you!!  =)

  140. 140.

    Jeffro

    WaPo up with a piece about DeSantis “facing a bleak path” and “shifting resources to SC”…

    …Betty, stay with us, don’t break out the hard stuff, it’s not even lunchtime yet!

    DOWN, DOWN he goes!!!

  142. 142.

    geg6

    @Scout211: ​
     
    The road I pull out onto from campus is a pretty steep hill. When I was going home yesterday after work, a Tesla was in front of me and could.not.make.it.up.the.hill. It was 10F with a wind chill of -2, according to my phone. Which I had time to check because it took so long to get up the hill with the Tesla chugging along at 15 mph.

    You couldn’t pay me to have one of those garbage vehicles.

  143. 143.

    Geminid

    From Raleigh-Durham TV station WTVD (@abc11.com):

       President Biden is set to visit North Carolina today.

    Biden is scheduled to land at Raleigh-Durham International Airport at 1 p.m. He will then make his way to Abbotts Creek Community Center in Raleigh.

    The President plans to speak at the Community Center about Bidenomics and investing in America. His team said he would be talking about how his policies are repairing and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, lowering costs, supporting the growth of small business [link] and creating good-paying jobs.

    The Biden administration said, “businesses in North Carolina have created 441,200 jobs and reduced the state’s unemployment rate from 5.6% at the start of 2021 to 3.5%.”

    WTVD noted that:

       Vice President Kamala Harris has made multiple trips to North Carolina over the last couple of years. Her most recent happened earlier this month in Charlotte [link].

    In other North Carolina news, veteran Republican Representative Jeff Duncan announced he would retire after his current term, per Axios.

  144. 144.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Kay: I’m sure there’s an optimal balance to be struck.

    High interest rates AND low unemployment were hard for me to imagine in the austere 90s and 00s. I think we’ve seen (again) that it takes significant demand-side stimulus to pull off the balance.

    Sure helps to have unapologetic Keynes-ians back in charge of the Democratic Party!

  146. 146.

    NotMax

    @eclare

    Excerpt from the linked article.

    Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant as it prepares to launch a new paid subscription plan this year, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter. But the change is causing internal conflict and may lead to further delay.

    Tentatively named “Alexa Plus,” the paid version of Alexa is intended to offer more conversational and personalized artificial-intelligence technology, one of the documents obtained by Business Insider says. The people said the team was working toward a June 30 launch deadline and had been testing the underlying voice technology, dubbed “Remarkable Alexa,” with 15,000 external customers.

    But the quality of the new Alexa’s answers is still falling short of expectations, often sharing inaccurate information, external tests have found.…

  147. 147.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Ken: ​
     

    Aww. Peter Schickele, the discoverer of the deservedly-lost music of P.D.Q. Bach, has died at the age of 88. Let us all play a mournful chorus of “Angus Dei” on our kazoos.

    A sad day in the world of classical music parodies!

    Fortunately, Beethoven’s Wig lives on.

  149. 149.

    Ken

    @NotMax: [Alexa] often sharing inaccurate information

    “We trained this AI to answer questions, but it’s giving out wrong answers!”

    “What did you use to train it?”

    “The internet.”

    “…. OK, here’s something you might not realize…”

  152. 152.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: People often wonder, “How can the Biden campaign break through the media’s narrative?” This WTVD story illustrates one answer: “Send them a good press release.”

  154. 154.

    Ksmiami

    @Kay: they will sell the country out for coin. Fuck them all let’s make sure Biden gets 60 percent. I want. To wipe the smirk off Ackman’s dweebish face.

  156. 156.

    eclare

    @NotMax:

    Remarkable Alexa?  That’s a cumbersome name.

    Oh that’s the technology, the unit will be Alexa Plus.  So, the “Plus” is that supposedly it works.

  157. 157.

    wjca

    @Eduardo: Except for Roberts, the conservative wing of the SC is pretty ideological-consequences-be-damned but I would not be surprised if they stop short of making that kind of decision.

    It very much depends on which consequences.  The 3 political hacks have, apparently, been shocked at the political impact of Dobbs.

    They may not care about the impact on women per se.  But they definitely care about the impact on Republican electoral prospects.  So I expect they will do the right thing on chemical abortion, for the wrong reasons, but at least the right thing.

  160. 160.

    Paul in KY

    @Baud: It has to be simply explained that the gross amount of taxes coming in stays the same. The Corp amount goes down and has to be made up somewhere else. Where is that ‘else’?

  161. 161.

    cain

    @Trivia Man:

    The Baby Boomers did indeed revolutionize the country. The 60s were transformative and changed society. More (somewhat) equality and opportunity for people of color and women. A golden age of music and the arts. Huge increase in prosperity – mostly in the sense of “the whole economy” but also a lifting of the floor fir the very bottom tier.

    And a lot of drugs. :)

  162. 162.

    cain

    @Another Scott:

    Looks like SCOTUS is seriously thinking of turning another precedent in regards to regulation agencies. They want to break govt.

    If they do it, it will drive even more people into the Biden camp – especially the young.

  166. 166.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: They know they’ll be fine no matter what he does

    Just jaw-droppingly unaware of what TFG is actually planning for a second term. There’s absolutely no acknowledgement at all that now he has the Supreme Court pretty much in his pocket, so that some rulings that went against him the first time won’t if the issues come up again. No acknowledgement of Project 2025 and what it’ll mean for the U.S. Talk about a stark illustration of IGMFY. It’s interesting that foreign business leaders understand what another TFG presidency will mean for the world:

    One prominent U.S. business executive, who asked not to be named because his discussions with foreign leaders were private, said some of the fear may be due to a lack of understanding of the checks and balances built into the U.S. government.

    “I’m not sure Europeans understand how weak executive orders are,” that person said. “We have a justice system. Congress will probably be divided. It’s right to be cautious, but it won’t be the end of the world.”

    Another U.S. bank CEO privately expressed annoyance with media exaggeration of the threat of a Trump presidency, stressing he’s “all bark and no bite.” The bank chief also dismissed Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election as bloviation.

    “He’s going to win the presidency,” the CEO predicted. “Many of his policies were right.”

    While JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon wouldn’t predict a Trump victory, he echoed his fellow bank CEO’s comments in an interview Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

    “Just take a step back, and be honest. He was kind of right about NATO. He was kind of right about immigration, he grew the economy quite well. Trade. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China,” said Dimon. “I don’t like how he said things about Mexico, but he wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues. And that’s why they’re voting for him.”

  167. 167.

    Soprano2

    @eclare: I think the 2010 election was probably one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history. It made so many bad things possible that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

  168. 168.

    Soprano2

    @Eolirin: I dread when a lot of customer service becomes AI driven. If you think you’re yelling at the phone now, just wait until you have something unusual that it can’t understand at all. Will there even be a person to back it up?

  170. 170.

    Quadrillipede

    @Kay: Ignore what they say. Watch what they do.

    This is an idea which can be very useful an extremely large number of situations and contexts.

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