Together, for three years, our Administration has worked hard to deliver for communities across our nation.
But for all we’ve done, the real heroes of this story are you, the American people. pic.twitter.com/LNBI6qJzq0
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 20, 2024
President Joe Biden signs bill to avoid a partial government shutdown https://t.co/gC3KevHkyt
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 19, 2024
Watch here. President Biden has been at this for long enough to know exactly what "Speaker" Johnson & House Republicans are doing it. Glad he is taking aim at them & acting like the only real leader & adult in the room. Joe Biden is ready. Now up to them.https://t.co/qg0wEzqbWz
— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) January 19, 2024
Elsewhere…
"I’ll let you know when I go bad, I really think I’ll be able to tell you. Because someday we go bad," Trump said tonight in Manchester. "I feel my mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago. Is that possible? I really do."
— Kate Sullivan (@KateSullivanDC) January 21, 2024
Trump is notoriously ‘disengaged‘ from the scutwork of governing, but he’s always been laser-focused on the dog & pony show of campaigning. ‘Disengaged’ was also the word Ronald Reagan’s kitchen cabinet used, as it became ever more obvious that he was slipping deep into Alzheimers. Trump has a family history of early dementia, and it wouldn’t surprise me if future historians establish that his advisors steered him bodily across the last year or more of his time in the White House — or that they’re hoping they can prop him up, now, just long enough to drag him past November 5th.
Thing is, though: The Very Serious Media was blatantly complicit in supporting Reagan’s second-term run. Our modern media has been happy to look the other way at Trump’s ‘gaffes’ and ‘misstatements’… but it’s a far more cutthroat market than it was forty years ago, and there just *might* be a clickbait advantage to crawling down the ratlines early.
It’s been easy money playing ‘Some people say… ‘ when furious right-wing outlets yowl about ‘Dementia Joe’, but no dedicated horserace reporter will want to be the last to Just Raise Questions about TFG’s increasingly muddled rallies and social media posts…
Imagine if the media gave as much attention to Trump’s 77 year old brain turning to literal pudding as much as they talk about Biden’s age. https://t.co/XYprEtmV80
— Adam James (@adamj_griff) January 21, 2024
This is all true, & it’s an example of how the press holds Repubs to lower standards. But I also suspect a bit of it is people avoiding thinking about it bc they haven’t accepted that Trump is likely to be the Repub nominee. https://t.co/WXQOZRrwbv
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 21, 2024
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 21, 2024
Nope
But it’s a twofer: she said it so it’s covered and now she’s never going to be VP— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) January 21, 2024
Baud
Good on Pelosi for calling out Trump’s mental state.
Baud
I feel like they whitened up Haley in that cartoon. Not a good look.
NotMax
Music moments. Disparate styles which manage to meld.
1) Fred & Ethel.
2) with Frank.
3) with Bert.
.
Baud
Reddit
Baud
Reddit reminded me that yesterday was the 15 year anniversary of Obama’s inauguration.
mrmoshpotato
Well, Dump. Given what a POS your father was, and what a POS he raised you to be, and what a POS your fat, orange, fascist ass is, I think we knew – decades ago.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Like the tub of cottage cheese skulking in the rear of the fridge.
Betty Cracker
He talks about his malfunctioning brain like it’s a browning avocado. And it is!
It’s good that Haley summoned the nerve to call out Trump for accusing her of being in charge of Capitol security on 1/6. The media coverage would have been negligible if she hadn’t done that.
I’m cautiously optimistic that at least some normies will be shocked at Trump’s state when he secures the nomination and gets more coverage. He has deteriorated, and he won’t get better.
Princess
Just heard the Trump/Pelosi/Haley story on Canadian radio. What struck me in their clip of Trump was not only the misidentification but also how weak and feeble Trump sounded. This is not 2016 Trump.
Gin & Tonic
Do people still play Wordle? Today, for the first time ever, I got five yellow letters. Solved it in the next turn, of course, but that round was unexpected.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
So 2023, man.
OzarkHillbilly
I applaud this fleecing of fragile far right, gun toting, snowflake rubes:
Revealed: far-right figures try to create Christian nationalist ‘haven’ in Kentucky
Gee, really? Hoocudanode?
Heh, $88,500 an acre for an unimproved lot? Just so they don’t have to rub elbows with people like me?
My wife and I bought our 12.5 acres of hill and holler for $87,500 back in 2010. It had a house (that needed quite a bit of work), a garage, well, and septic. AFAIK, I am the only Lefty for miles in any direction. They could just move out here for a whole lot less money, but they’d have to tolerate seeing my rolling liberal billboard of a p/u every now and again and I guess that might be just too much for their precious little hearts to handle.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Hahahahaha
Yarrow
@Baud: Only 15 years? It feels like a century ago.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
That should be dumped in the toilet.
zhena gogolia
I was glad to see Haley calling that out. But of course she had to liken it to Biden.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Or as the rest of us call it, Kentucky.
eclare
The tiny fingers holding the Pictionary for Trump book are an excellent touch.
Yarrow
@Princess:
Completely agree. For people who haven’t seen or heard him for awhile his deterioration is shocking. Also, his skin looks bad. I know he uses orange face paint but even so his skin looks blotchy and just bad. It adds to the overall impression of him deteriorating.
trnc
Should Biden debate DT if they’re the nominees? If you aren’t sure, what would be the determining factor? I’m a bit torn, although it’s obviously early.
Chris T.
Someone should ask Trump one of the standard orientation-and-cognition tests: “Who’s the president of the United States?”
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: Nope. Stopped when the NYT bought it.
Suzanne
I still play Wordle! I also do Sedecordle and Worldle.
Anyone else think Haley really hates TIFG, like on a personal level?
NotMax
@Baud
Didn’t essentially the same thing fizzle in Idaho?
Gin & Tonic
Yesterday I learned that David Mills had died. He was the author/developer/despot of NTP, the Internet’s time-keeping protocol. I know this is of interest to almost nobody, but his work was, and remains, of critical importance. There was a very good New Yorker article about him and this work a year or two ago.
OzarkHillbilly
@trnc: Sure he should. I certainly don’t see a downside to a side by side comparison of him and trump. I rather suspect the trump campaign will refuse to because they will see a downside. More like a cliff they don’t want to fall off of.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: I’ve been playing Waffle since someone here suggests it a few days ago. Just solved this morning’s with two swaps left.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
I play every day. Have a friendly competition going with two former colleagues. Haven’t done today’s yet, but congratulations to you on getting it in 2.
Suzanne
@Chris T.:
A few years ago, SuzMom was experiencing confusion due to a UTI. We didn’t know the cause at the moment, and she had had encephalitis about ten years previously, so we took her straight to the ED. Anyway, they asked her the whole battery of questions, and she was getting about 50% right. Then they asked her who the president was, and she absolutely snarled “TRUMP” with every bit of hatred she had. The doctor was like, “Oh, wellllllll, okaaaaaaaay…. she got that one……”. LOL.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: And eastern Washington/Oregon.
“NO DARKIES ALLOWED!”
@Suzanne: HA!
Gin & Tonic
@mrmoshpotato: I’ve been enjoying Knotwords. I do Wordle just to warm up my brain.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: The bigliest, most tremendlious, malfunctioning brain!
SNL opened with a Dump skit last night. I fast forwarded through most of it. He’s so disgusting that mocking him is still disgusting.
RandomMonster
She wasn’t going to be VP anyway.
eclare
@Baud:
Hahaha…perfect.
Princess
@trnc: There’s no way Trump will participate in a debate. A man who is too scared to debate de Santis ffs is not going to debate Biden.
catclub
@Baud: I figured the same people who wanted to build the genesis museum with dinosaurs were doing the land development to harvest the money from the richer rubes now.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
I had something similar happen on Thursday: my starter word got four greens and a blank! Solved it on the second row. (There was more than one possibility.)
Marmot
It’s quite a bit late in his life for early onset Alzheimer’s. And having seen standard Alzheimer’s up close, I doubt that one too. He’s still a fluid talker, and that goes away very quickly.
But there are plenty more forms of dementia, and the mistakes he’s made lately are simply baffling. And I’m always skeptical about these kinds of claims because they’re propaganda mainstays.
Anyway, last night WG was asking how we can use the typical features of fascism against MAGA, and this is a big one. Show how feeble the Strongman is.
The veneration of “manliness” runs deep in these movements. Joking about his mind, his balance, his physical fitness, his age—we find that unfair and off-putting, but it works.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: Hopefully bears find this Trump trash utopia as well.
Geminid
@Princess: I may watch a more extended video of a Trump speech once my phone plan renews and I’ve got another chunk of high-speed data to burn. I want to see how these weird excerpts that are popping up now compare to the rest of the speeches.
My Atlanta friend used to do this for me. He’s somewhat obsessed with Trump and followed him really closely. Warren still stays on top of the court cases, but has stepped back a little, dropping Trump rallies and outlets like Meidas Touch, and putting the time into calculus classes and hanging with the grandkids.
We’ll be yakking on the phone later this morning and I may try to persuade him to watch a speech and appraise for me; take one for the team, so to speak.
Yarrow
@mrmoshpotato: Same. I have completely avoided watching or listening to him for the last several years. That includes comedians imitating him. Fucking comedians just can’t quit him. It’s so boring.
I guess that’s why for me it’s been a shock to see and hear him now. I decided I should probably look at him a bit since he’s going to be the R nominee. Wow, has he deteriorated since he left office. It’s really noticeable. I think it may hit normies that way too.
trnc
True dat.
I think we thought the same thing in 2016, and it’s not like he doesn’t get coverage. OTOH, it seems potentially more dramatic to the point where it’s impossible for the media to ignore.
If he really said “Cognitively, you know, I don’t know if you saw, but a few months ago I took a cognitive test my doctor gave me… And I aced it,” my hat’s off to the writers of this timeline.
catclub
Only if they first convince Trump they are ducking it for some other reason. If they told Trump that he would insist on going against his advisers. There is some reporting that his present campaign manager is very good becuase they have been able to tailor his schedule to ‘no debates with people more eloquent than a three year old’
ETA: I want a lot of reporting along just these lines “The campaign manager is smart because she is limiting Trump’s appearances to the easy ones.” I hope it would get her fired.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@mrmoshpotato: SNL trump skits just make me think about Alec Baldwin, which then makes me sad.
@Yarrow: I watch a lot of Meidas Touch but it drives me crazy that they keep trying to make me watch that guy, especially Ben Meiselas. I know he’s trying to illustrate just how much The Former Guy has deteriorated, but they’ll show literal minutes of him at a time.
“He’s really gone downhill, show the clip (I leap for the mute button and watch what must be at least 2 minutes)… and he also said this, show the clip (mute, 2 minutes). And this… (mute, 2 minutes).”
After a couple of those when I realize that this 10-minute video is going to be 9 minutes of TFG, I generally bail.
So I haven’t actually experienced any of his brain-turning-to-applesauce moments, and I’m not going to.
New Deal democrat
In re Biden: if the economy continues to improve, in particular if gas prices and inflation stay tame, and if the Fed does go ahead with several interest rate cuts, his approval rating will improve as well and his chances of re-election will improve considerably also. Similar arcs happened with Reagan in 1983-84 and Obama in 2011-12. The one area where I still think he still needs to take, or at least propose action, is housing costs.
In re Trump: anyone who has had a close relation fade to Alzheimer’s can immediately see that his mixing up of Pelosi and Haley – not just their identities, but their actual lives – is a legitimate Alzheimer’s moment. There is no getting around it. The only question is how far along is he, and how quickly does he fade?
As a side note, it’s a shame that EV’s are now politicized, meaning that the GOP will do anything they can to impede their adoption, with enthusiastic support from MAGAts. The benefit of being able to tell the Saudis to go back to riding camels is alone worth it.
Suzanne
@Marmot:
Agreed.
If there ever is a video of him showing some degree of dependency on someone (LMAO certainly won’t be Melania, maybe Ivanka), that would be a harmful thing.
Steeplejack
@mrmoshpotato:
Don’t forget your Royal Waffle every day and the Deluxe Waffle on Sunday (from the menu)
Also, you can go through the archive.
mrmoshpotato
@Princess: Haha! Too scared to debate a meatball. SAD!
catclub
The economy does not need to improve! It is great! record low unemployment for a record long time! What needs to improve in the perception of how good it is.
JPL
@Geminid: Ask him what he thinks about Fani? It’s unfortunate because she did nothing wrong, but it is getting a lot of publicity.
Splitting Image
@Gin & Tonic:
I play Waffle every day and usually one or more of Wordle, Quordle or Octordle. I don’t do those as regularly as I used to though.
The trouble with word games is that eventually you just run out of eligible words.
Steeplejack
@mrmoshpotato:
That open was not funny, and the entire episode was the worst I have seen in a long time.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@OzarkHillbilly:
Puts a whole new meaning to the words “Rim job”…lol!
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: from your link: “The mere existence of people not like them counts as an insult.”
As you and I and countless others know IRL every day. Though, as the
SaturdayFriday dumpster fire here shows, not entirely a right wing thing.Suzanne
@catclub: Housing prices need to come down a lot.
H.E.Wolf
Aretha Franklin, in good voice and resplendent in a winter hat, singing “My Country ’tis of Thee” at the ceremony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aBVV0QUtZo&t=18s
[ETA: fixed my verb tenses]
sab
@Marmot: It might just be a narcissist melting down as his failure looms.
mrmoshpotato
@Yarrow: I can’t stand comedians’ impressions, so listening to his disgusting voice directly – no.
I have no need to see how he’s deteriorating. I regret paying him any attention in 2016, because I always knew I wasn’t going to vote for that pile of shit, or any other pile that may have been the Rethuglican nominee.
Steeplejack
@Princess:
I don’t think Trump is scared to debate DeSantis. He’s so far ahead he doesn’t need to. He probably will have to debate Biden—or come up with a convoluted excuse not to..
Geminid
@JPL: I will. Warren has been following the Georgia case closely from the beginning. He’s a Fulton County resident who’s voted for Ms. Willis.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@mrmoshpotato: I always enjoyed Trevor Noah’s impression, and I would imagine it would give TFG extra apoplexy to be mocked by a black guy. From Africa yet.
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack: I’m not a Bezos Prime member, so I don’t have the Royale with cheese.
I play everything else. I think I’m fifteen deep into the archive.
Layer8Problem
@Gin & Tonic: I’m interested. Stupid accurate timekeeping was one of those basic plumbing/infrastructure things in computer networks that keep stuff like the time of error messages in logs across different pieces of equipment relatable, which is really important to diagnosing seemingly unrelated “issues”. And exchanging cryptographic keys. It’s generally invisible to folks staring at their Facebook. And you’ve reminded me that I need to read that article.
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack: Yeah. Last night’s SNL was pretty damn weak. I watched Svengoolie (tape) after football, so I taped SNL too. Really only watched Weekend Update in its entirety.
Chris T.
@Suzanne:
Worth mention: they are already drifting down in a somewhat unusual pattern. It looks like “seller exhaustion”, where people who were holding out for higher prices are no longer holding out so much. Normally a lot of properties would have gone off-market during winter, but this year they didn’t.
Whether this will keep up is another question entirely, of course.
Marmot
@catclub:
Oh hey, hivemind, does public perception of the state of the economy typically lag actual stats? Been wondering.
Yesterday I heard that the survey of consumer confidence (the Minnesota one) jumped 13 percentage points. That’s great!
JPL
@Geminid: Same. She is excellent and has been instrumental in attacking the gang problem in Atlanta.
Eunicecycle
@mrmoshpotato: I was thinking of that, too! Wasn’t it in NH or Vt?
kalakal
Trump to me seems as though he has vascular dementia
On a different note
Happy Penguin Awareness Day!
and because every penguin is a good penguin here’s Maggie
First story down
Marmot
@Suzanne: For sure. Especially if he’s leaning on someone female for balance.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
Hope all are well and warm.
mrmoshpotato
@Eunicecycle: NH. Just searched for “bears libertarians” 🤣
Steeplejack
@mrmoshpotato:
Jeez, I didn’t even realize the Royale was tied to Prime. Tentacles everywhere!
Marmot
@sab: I’ll take it!
OzarkHillbilly
Hmmm, what did I miss?
sdhays
@trnc: Oh, definitely. Biden beat Trump like a drum last time, and if Trump dares to debate Biden in 2024 (I’m doubtful), the contrast with sharp Joe Biden is going to be stark to the point of Republicans losing their shit in panic.
mrmoshpotato
@Nukular Biskits: Same to you. Sleep pants kinda day. Fleecy.
Suzanne
@Chris T.: One thing that is really interesting in the housing market is that it was expected by demographers and market researchers that Boomers would downsize en masse. And they largely are not. It’s an interesting issue. In many cases, people are expressing that they would like to downsize, but that they don’t really want to move out of their area.
I have read so many varying stats on the housing shortage in this country. The overall consensus estimate seems to be that we’re about 4 million units behind where we should be for our population. But I saw another number that I found fascinating (and terrifying). And that was…. If we wanted to have a housing market that worked well, meaning with plenty of slack so that people could quickly and easily trade up and down within their own neighborhoods, smooth out the urban/rural highs and lows, make it easier for first-timers, etc….. that we would need 75 million more units in the country. Thats a staggering number.
Eunicecycle
@mrmoshpotato: that was just so hilarious, and illustrated the point that most of the rules society has are for a reason!
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack: Tentacles? Tentacles (1977)?
mrmoshpotato
@sdhays:
Or they’ll continue whining about how OOOOLLLLLLDDDD Biden is.
opiejeanne
@Chris T.: The house across the street has sat empty for five years while the owners waited for someone to pony up the $10 million they wanted for it. 17,000 sq feet (not a typo), complete with an indoor pool and spa, indoor basketball court, a full, finished basement, 5 bedrooms, and a guest house bigger than my house. It sits on 7 acres, some of which could be subdivided into at least 3 lots and everyone was worried that a developer would buy it for that purpose. it sits back from the road and is situated so that from the street it looks like a much smaller house, maybe 3500 sf.
The owners are moving back in soon, figuring that it’s easier to sell the 8,000 sq foot house they were living in than this huge place. I can’t wrap my head around a couple in their mid-70s “downsizing” to an 8k sf house.
JPL
@kalakal: hmm
Can last several years or be lifelong
Common for ages 60 and older
More common in males
Family history may increase likelihood
Do we know what type of dementis his father had?
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
Thanks for those “music moments”.
I’m old enough to remember Ethel Merman and this brought back a couple of memories of movies I saw when I was a yoot.
Marmot
@mrmoshpotato: The most gripping suspense you will ever experience!
mrmoshpotato
@opiejeanne: Holy buckets! I don’t know what I’d do with that much space even if I had 10 mil to burn.
Nukular Biskits
@mrmoshpotato:
Slow day here as well.
Still recovering from the lingering crud I caught whilst on business travel in San Diego. Wound up going to the doctor Friday, diagnosed with probable secondary infection in left lung. Explains why I couldn’t seem to get over it.
On meds now. Grrrrr.
mrmoshpotato
@Marmot: Rated PG. I love the ridiculous over the topness of 70’s movie trailers.
JMG
Republican party officials, although I don’t think Trump himself (could be wrong) have already stated there won’t be any Presidential debates unless they completely control format and choice of moderators. That is, no site outside of Alabama or Mississippi and moderators to the right of Sean Hannity.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Yarrow:
Not when you count it in dog years.
Eunicecycle
@Suzanne: I am a retired Boomer and we’re keeping our house we raised our family in. It’s paid for and we have plenty of room for family to visit and stay. As long as we can keep up with it we’ll stay here. Most of our friends are doing the same.
mrmoshpotato
@Nukular Biskits: Hope the meds kick its ass.
Torrey
@Gin & Tonic:
I’ve occasionally been playing a knock-off called “Hello Wordl.” You can change the number of letters in the word from 4 to 11.
Congratulations on your rapid solve.
New Deal democrat
@Marmot:
Consumer sentiment about the present state of the economy, and especially consumer expectations about inflation, lag the actual hard data on how the economy is doing. And there are huge partisan differences, especially pronounced on the GOP side.
On the other hand, consumer *expectations* about the future State of the economy – the trend, not the level – have been recognized as one of the 10 “official” leading indicators for decades. On that score, the trend has been higher for almost 18 months.
OzarkHillbilly
@JMG: How to say “I am an absolute coward.” without saying “I am an absolute coward.”
sdhays
@mrmoshpotato: The thing with whining about how old Biden is is that unless he breaks his hip or something (please, FSM, no), it’s just something baked in. They’ve been going to that well already so much, we’re already past the saturation point. But if Trump shows looking feeble and confused while Biden is every bit as sharp as he was in 2020, people are going to notice, and all of a sudden “everybody knows” Trump is weak and losing it. And pretty much done.
And no one wants to back a loser like that.
Chris T.
@Marmot:
Yes … and no. (“Go not to the Elves for answers, for they will say both no and yes.”)
There are a number of factors here, such as bubble isolationism, political affiliation (in the US), and of course the one you’ve asked about, time.
Reality always wins in the end: the question is how long, and whether the people involved have to die off first.
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: It’s a nice house and the family who built it had a bunch of kids. The basement had a pool table in a large enough space for it, and the rest is mostly bookcases.
There’s a backstop at one side of the front yard that you don’t even notice unless you’re looking for it, a tennis court at the side of the house, a small playground at the other side. There’s room at the back of the lot for a horse, if they wanted. The current owners had two sons, only one now, and I think he lives on the far side of the country.
We were really hoping a family with a bunch of kids would buy it.
lowtechcyclist
@Gin & Tonic:
I play daily, haven’t missed a day in about a year and a half.
I’m pretty sure I know what your first word was.
I got my usual 3.
Nukular Biskits
@OzarkHillbilly:
WRT “our 12.5 acres of hill and holler”, if I may be so bold as to ask, how old are you?
Part of the reason I ask is that until about a year ago, I had about 6 acres and maintained roughly about half (large fenced-in area for dogs, garden, blueberries, small vineyard, fruit trees and a 1/4 acre pond).
When the sons still lived at home and were old enough, they would help. Eventually, they both grew up and had their own lives to live, leaving me to do all the yardwork myself. When I was younger, I could. Thirty years later, however, I found trying to keep things up was quite literally sucking the life out of me … LOL!
Chris T.
@Suzanne: I’m not sure “75 million” is the right number, but certainly another 30 million would help out a whole lot.
trnc
He wasn’t scared to debate his rivals. It’s a power move showing that they don’t even rate.
TBone
@NotMax: thanks for that smile to go with my coffee. Feeling better today and that helps ❤️
Suzanne
@Eunicecycle: Yeah, that’s definitely proving to be more typical than expected.
My uncle and aunt just “downsized” from a 3600 sf home to one that’s about 2400 sf. Still huge for two people.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Nukular Biskits:
Back in Misery, we were responsible for three buildings, two dating to the 1870s, the other having parts dating back to the 1840s, *plus* doing the upkeep for a small, rural cemetary.
As we approached our 60s, yeah, the “sucking the life outta us” was a very real thing.
Of course when we moved, we bought another old (for Denver mostly) place to restore and rehab and start pushing back on the onslaught of development here that seeks to scrape places like ours.
Downsized in one way, upsized in another.
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
Man, I gotta come up with some good ideas like this. These marks are out there, just waiting to be fleeced, I’ve spent enough of my life around these people to have a good sense of how to take advantage of their gullibility, and I’m not doing it.
Damn scruples keep getting in the way.
Chris T.
@Eunicecycle:
There are a lot of local and personal issues here, such as:
so there’s no one answer here.
trnc
That assumes logic and clarity that I have yet to see from magas. If they can’t see the difference now, they never will.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: Of course! A drunk person is totally the best judge of whether they are able to drive!
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: lessons never learned, there’s one born every minute.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling
apocalipstick
@Baud: Ah, ah, ah. Lexington, Louisville, Bowling Green, Frankfort… far too threatening.
Geminid
@sdhays: I think one of reasons Republican elites tried to make DeSantis happen was that he was so much younger than President Biden. Some of them are pushing Haley for the same reason. With inflation down and the economy doing well, Republicans have few good lines of attack and age would probably be their best. But nominating the 77 year-old Trump neutralizes the age issue, and now it looks like they’re stuck with him.
Scout211
There was a whole opinion piece on CNN blaming Boomers for the lack of larger family homes available to buy. The author cited several reasons that Boomers are staying in their homes, including the fact they don’t want to leave their neighborhoods.
I almost posted that article several times but decided not to because it really seemed to be provoking a generational conflict and blaming Boomers. But what it was lacking was an economic reason why we don’t leave our family homes and sell to young families.
Like most of my peers, we started in a tiny starter home. We had 5 in a 1100 sq ft 3 bdrm/1 bath home for 8 years before we could move up to a larger 3 bdrm/2 bath home. We sold that and moved rural for our retirement home. I actually looked at downsizing and moving back to town because of my husband’s health and realized that we could barely afford a smaller home in the area where we wanted to live. If we can’t afford that kind of home after selling our current home with a big chunk of equity, what makes this author and young families think they could afford it if only the Boomers would sell?
Houses are too expensive for most people but stop blaming the Boomers for staying in their homes with lower mortgage payments, media.
/Boomer rant.
ETA: many typos fixed
Nukular Biskits
@mrmoshpotato:
I’ve Seen Enough Hentai To Know Where This Is Going
Suzanne
@Chris T.: Yeah, 75 million is a staggering number, in a country of about 330 million people.
But the point is, if we wanted to have housing choice and availability like we do in consumer goods….. that’s what it would take. And that would be a huge range of types, everything from studios and micro-apartments in stacked towers to big single-family homes on larger plots. The fact that we accept such limitation in this arena of our lives means we make a lot of compromises about where to live, who we live with, what jobs we take, etc.
WaterGirl
@RandomMonster: Is Haley smart enough to have already realized she was never going to be VP? I think surely yes. So finally she has nothing to lose by going after him.
This way when she doesn’t get chosen as VP she has a narrative as a truth-teller: Trump is petty and vindictive, and I knew when I told the truth about him that he would never choose me as VP, but it was my obligation to tell the truth.
Eunicecycle
@Chris T.: oh sure, I was just recounting my own experience. We do have children with families that visit quite often, we don’t need the cash (very fortunate), we live in Ohio, but even here we would pay a lot for a smaller house, and it is a 2 story. So if the situation changes we may have to sell but it is not part of our plan as of now.
Delk
Meanwhile, Stefanik crawls deeper into trump’s ass claiming that he did not confuse Haley with Pelosi.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
I’d like to see where they show their work on this. There’s an average of 2.5 people per housing unit in this country, which includes apartment units and the like, not just single-family homes. 75 million more HUs would house ~188 million people, IOW, more than half the population of the United States.
SFAW
@trnc:
As others have said, highly unlikely TFG debates Biden. If, for some bizarre reason, he does, he’ll Gish gallop through so many lies that the WaPo lie-counter will look like the Air Speed meter in the Bugs Bunny “Falling Hare” cartoon. [Starting around 7:35.]
TBone
@mrmoshpotato: you beat me to it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Scout211:
Thank you for replying to this line of attack. Homeowners, particularly POC in formerly “undesirable” urban hoods, are often the target of this highly coordinated type of attack (it’s highly generational when you look at the actors involved) in order to squeeze them out of now-desirable places so that the gentrification tidal wave can come in and create a new White, Exclusive, Urban Living Theme Park.
Funny how such activities aren’t aimed at ‘burbs.
JPL
@trnc: No way will he debate President Biden. He isn’t mentally fit and will flub his answers for all to see. The media won’t be able to excuse or hide his decline.
IMO
trnc
@SFAW: Agreed.
Suzanne
@Scout211:
Agreed. I understand that most homeowners are just making rational choices for their situations, given the economic environment. Blame isn’t useful.
The thing that I do get pissy about, tho, is that many people would like to downsize, if they could stay in their neighborhood and have it be a profitable move. For that to occur, we needed to allow a mix of housing types and sizes in neighborhoods. And many zoning codes don’t allow that.
Scout211
@Chris T.:
Very helpful list.
yes
no
yes
yes, current home is universal design (age in place designed )
Steeplejack
@opiejeanne:
It is a recurring theme on my HGTV “shelter shows” how resistant people are to actually downsizing. Host shows them a very nice place sometimes only marginally smaller than their current house.
“There’s no room for all of our stuff!”
“Why isn’t this in our beloved, familiar neighborhood?” (With all of the other gigantic McMansions.)
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@trnc: It can be two things.
Suzanne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The suburbs are where more density needs to happen. Allow that ADU in the backyard or apartment over the detached garage. But that’s where single-family zoning is most entrenched.
But blah blah blah parking, blah blah blah character.
Steeplejack
@mrmoshpotato:
Wait till you see the actual movies!
OzarkHillbilly
@Nukular Biskits: I’m 65. Most of our property is wooded, we have maybe an acre of lawn that I have a riding mower for, and since buying this place I have added a chicken coop and run plus a green house. Our veggie garden is fairly large (30’x75′) and I have a # of flower beds I keep up. I only mow the power line cuts once a year and the same for some trails I maintain thru our woods. We have 100′ of relief on the property and 60% or so of it is hollers (the house is built on a nose of ridgeline.
Brit in Chicago
@mrmoshpotato: The Dunning-Kruger effect applies: the less you know about a subject the less aware you are of your own ignorance.
OzarkHillbilly
@trnc: And they didn’t have the balls to call him out for the coward he is,
TBone
@JPL: Jane Mayer weighed in on that on xitter yesterday. Roman was the head of oppo research for Koch. As always, consider the source.
Kristine
@Gin & Tonic: I dropped the NYT version last year and play this one. I like it because I can play multiple games daily and level up. A few quick rounds with the first cup of coffee wakes up my brain.
Geminid
@trnc: The magas don’t matter so much. There are not enough of them to win the purple states and and districts that will determine who wins Congress and the Presidency. It’s the people who aren’t MAGA and aren’t consistent Democratic voters, and their reactions to the contrast between Trump and Biden that matter.
If they see what we see, this will not be a good year for Republicans up and down the ticket. Then the question might become, how many Senate and House races can they salvage?
Nukular Biskits
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sounds like you have enough to keep you busy so what the hell are you doing wasting your time on the internet? 🤣
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: The point of the argument was that there would be a whole bunch of extra housing capacity, basically sitting vacant, in every area so that people could easily move whenever they wanted. That seems to me like a huge waste of resources. But I also understand the economic argument.
OzarkHillbilly
@lowtechcyclist: I had all my scruples surgically removed. It was a little pricey but life has gotten so much easier without them.
Brit in Chicago
@Betty Cracker: “I’m cautiously optimistic that at least some normies will be shocked at Trump’s state when he secures the nomination and gets more coverage. He has deteriorated, and he won’t get better.”
If (if) we can succeed in getting out the message the Trump has really deteriorated then the majority of the electorate is going to think that the election is between two candidates each of whom is too old and feeble minded to be President. So we must also get out the message that no, Joe Biden in spite of being old (had you heard) is still an astonishingly effective President. (Not to mention having far better policies and people, and being able to focus on things other than the 2020 election and the size of his crowds.)
JPL
@Suzanne: NAMBY I admit that a large apartment building would be out of place in my neighborhood, but I agree with you about duplexes, etc.
We have another issue shich is we are on septic. The lot behind me was a little less than 3 acres but because of septic requirements, only two lots were sold. Of course now each one has a 5,000 sq ft house with multiple bathrooms, so something doesn’t make sense.
Kristine
@OzarkHillbilly:
It always cracks me up that they’re the snowflakes.
opiejeanne
@Scout211: Thank you! I’ve been looking at what a smaller one-story house or a nice condo would cost in this area, and I don’t think we can afford either even with all of the equity we have in this place. I mean, it’s tripled in value in the past 13 years we’ve owned it but we did a lot to it, and spent a lot to improve it. It was the worst house in the neighborhood when we bought it, and had sat empty for nearly 2 years.
TBone
Never mind, sold out?!
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Me too, but one unfortunate result was my voice changing from baritone to soprano.Oh, wait – you said “scruples”? Not … well, never you mind.
Delk
@Gin & Tonic: I like Knotwords.
WaterGirl
@Marmot: I may start adding “Trump is feeble” at the end of all my comments!
Who was the guy TBogg brought down that way? Not the Santorum thing, but some guy from some particular state
It’s also true that Google offers suggestions when you start typing, apparently partially based on common recent searches. How awesome would it be if Google started suggesting Trump is feeble when anyone types in Trump is?
Suzanne
@JPL: Yeah, density doesn’t have to be big towering things. Duplexes and triplexes, garden apartments, row houses, etc. There’s lots of ways to use area more efficiently.
OzarkHillbilly
@Nukular Biskits: Keeping myself warm right now.
Soprano2
TFG won’t know when he “goes bad”, because most of the time people don’t realize it. They don’t think anything is wrong or different. It’s probably already happening, but no matter how much people try to tell him he won’t believe it.
UncleEbeneezer
I’m glad the media is finally starting to highlight this. Every time some Dem-hating asshole mentions Biden’s mental faculties (which as far as I’ve seen are extraordinarily sharp for an 80+ year old) my response as always been “dude, the alternative is a guy who can’t even speak in coherent sentences and doesn’t even understand the very basics of of how our government works.” Even if you magically removed all of Trump’s bigotry, I still would never trust him to manage even the most simple tasks. The dude is an absolute fool and always has been. There was a Twitter thread the other day that showed the cognitive test that Trump is so proud of passing and I swear my toddler students could pass it easily, it’s that basic and simple.
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The Meidas Touch guys remind me of Rush Limbaugh. Except with different political beliefs. I just can’t watch them anymore.
Plus they are always plugging their stupid products.
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
Urotsukidoji?
(Suggest the easily shocked refrain from Googling.)
azlib
@Gin & Tonic: Yes, NTP was one of those essential protocols. I have a server acting as an NTP chimer through the ntppool project. ((https://www.ntppool.org/en/). I f you have a server with a public IP address, it is a great way to share resources with the rest of the Internet ocmmunity.
Kristine
@Suzanne:
When my Mom was being assessed back in mid-2007, they asked her who was president, and she answered “Bush” in much the same way. It drew some smiles.
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: In order to make their premise work a not insignificant part of the housing stock would need to be effectively empty at any given time.
kalakal
@Kristine:
@Suzanne:
Years ago Thatcher evoked the same kind of response with my then MIL
Gvg
@Suzanne: I don’t accept that number, and we could never afford so many unoccupied units, plus they wouldn’t be maintained when I unoccupied. 75 mill divided by 330 mil equals 22%. That means another house for every 4th person in the country but a house contains a family. Anywhere from 1 to well a lot, average 3 or 4 maybe. That means a lot of houses. We aren’t that short of houses. The homeless problem would be much bigger and more people would be living 2 families per house. That happens, but not a huge percent of the population.
I think more people are renting that would prefer to buy. A problem I see is that we have not figured out how to deal with the fact that jobs are pretty much in cities and not ever going back to rural. We haven’t figured out ownership in dense cities nor transportation. I looked at condos and have known people who bought them. They don’t hold value as well as single family. And townhomes have stairs which are not good for the elderly. Condos can be worse than HOAs but if you don’t do maintenance the building can collapse on you.
We also need to manipulate the culture to make dense living seem normal and desirable to compete with own your own land etc. Lots of good TV shows are needed over time in our culture. Like making drunk driving or smoking not cool, we also need to change perceptions to like being closer. More to do etc. And I am antisocial in person, but I see this.
My mother has become frail and infirm rather suddenly and even dad is overwhelmed by the house. Retirement communities are very expensive and they would have to get rid of so much stuff and not have things they are used to. Moms piano, dads tools….it’s going to drain the bank account too.
Salty Sam .
My younger son worked in improv in Chicago (2nd City alum), and now counts several friends from those years in the SNL writer’s room. He told me recently that their running joke is that SNL’s target audience has always been 12 year old boys. Lorne Michaels wants it that way.
Nukular Biskits
@OzarkHillbilly:
Touche’!
Same here. It’s 33 outside but should get to the upper 40s later today. The threat of freezing temps is gone for the next week or so, according to the long-range forecast so I’ll be lugging plants out of the garage.
At the old place, I had a greenhouse. Sure do miss having that. I may need to build a small one here.
opiejeanne
@Suzanne: Parking is a very real issue in older areas of Seattle that are being torn down to put up modern buildings of similar size that are double or triple units, and that issue tends to destroy the ambience of a neighborhood, aside from the fact that the extremely modern buildings clash with the look of the rest of the neighborhood. That kind of hodgepodge can also drive down the value of the houses around it, and yes, the continuing value of our houses is kind of a big deal to homeowners
ETA: People need cars inside the city limits of Seattle in much of the city, because there desperately needs to be an expansion of public transportation that isn’t happening.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
The Japanese really are … interesting. LOL!
Brit in Chicago
@catclub: Right! We need another eight months of unemployment under 4% and inflation continuing to drop. Then maybe people will realize just how good we’ve had it? (I must admit, my faith in the Great American Electorate is not so strong, ,but maybe.)
Suzanne
@Gvg:
Agreed. Urbanization is a worldwide pattern and it will not be reversed any time soon. In the late 2000s, the world — for the first time — had more people living in cities than in rural areas. It is due to economic specialization being more efficient, and cities promote economic specialization. Remote office work isn’t going to be the remedy.
Steeplejack
It’s 26° outside here in my corner of NoVA—but sunny, at least—and I’m about to venture out to take my Trader Joe’s friend to PetSmart to get provisions for her cat. A worthy cause, at least. Then it’s back to the bunker for football and some sort of comfort food as yet undetermined.
We’ve got one more night of lows in the mid-teens, and then we start heading up into the 40s and maybe even the 50s. Hallelujah!
Brit in Chicago
@Suzanne: How many people are there who don’t own a home, want to, and would be in a position to buy if prices came down? And how many do own a home and are happy that it’s worth a lot? My guess is that the second group is larger than the first. That’s not to say we don’t need cheaper housing (start with changing zoning laws to make it easier to build), but it is to say that if house prices came down a lot it’s by no means clear that it would be political win.
Kristine
@Suzanne:
When friends had their dream home designed/built in WA State, the architect told them that 2400 sq ft was standard for two people. Is that true? It does seem like a lot.
Scout211
And while we are on the topic of affordable housing . .
California offers additional $250 million in down payment assistance
Ksmiami
@UncleEbeneezer: he went bankrupt owning a Casino… idiot.
opiejeanne
@JPL: We’re on a septic system and the county health department limits how many bedrooms (not baths, for some weird reason) that can occupy a lot. We are just short of an acre, and because it wouldn’t “perc” for a below-ground system to work, we have a raised septic mound at one end of the yard. The house is 3 bedrooms, 2500 sf, and we could have one more bedroom according to them but as many baths as we want.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Rush was very effective.
What do they sell?
TriassicSands
@Baud:
Don’t forget, poor Nancy has had to sit in the same room with Trump and listen to his inane utterances. I could imagine it if all Pelosi could think about during those torture sessions was duct tape, ball gags, or superglue. She’s a nice “lady,” but it wouldn’t surprise me if the image of a sledgehammer occasionally appeared in her mind.
Suzanne
@opiejeanne: I am fully aware that it is individually rational for homeowners to oppose development in their single-family neighborhoods. I still think it’s sad and a large-scale failure. The US population has grown and is continuing to grow, and people have to live somewhere. We can expand the area upon which we build and use up natural land, but that brings other problems like building more highways and having to drive everywhere, which is contributing to increased carbon footprint. Or we can fit more people into land we already developed, which we currently do relatively infrequently and therefore largely to neighborhoods where people of color live.
JAFD
@OzarkHillbilly:
Can you put a septic system on those lots? Done the ‘perc tests’?
Water? Wells or system, private or public ?
Who owns the mineral rights? (In Kentucky, if there’s coal underneath, whatever’s on the surface had better get outta the way.)
Who’s responsible for road building and upkeep?
I can see enuf ‘red flags’ here for a May Day parade…
Suzanne
@Kristine:
In the US, for the class of people who can afford a custom home? That’s typical. In the world? Absolutely not. There’s a good deal of research on how much space people need to live to support physical health, mental health, hygiene, privacy, etc. The average needed per person is somewhere around 500 SF. There are obviously variations in that….. someone in a wheelchair probably needs more, others obviously need less. And it’s not fully additive…. it’s not like a couple that has a baby suddenly needs 500 more square feet. My current house is about 2400 square feet, plus two small attic rooms, and five people live here comfortably.
opiejeanne
@Soprano2: My mom was so indignant when her driver’s license was revoked. She was in a little fender-bender that she insisted was the other guy’s fault (it wasn’t), and the DMV offered to let her take a driving test behind the wheel. The test ended abruptly when she was asked to make a Y-turn using a driveway, and she plowed into the garage door of a stranger’s house. She blamed the car, she blamed the DMV evaluator, and I think she blamed the garage for being so close to the road.
Not long after, it was apparent that she was suffering from dementia and after the neurologist examined her over several appointments and tests, he was pretty sure she had Alzheimers, as well as the dementia associated with Parkinson’s, and that was on top of the old-age dementia. She never got over losing her Driver’s License, though. That she remembered.
Nukular Biskits
@opiejeanne:
When the the field line for the septic system at my old place failed, I installed a “spray” system.
Basically, there is a second 1000-gallon chambered tank downstream from the original 1500-gallon (non-chambered). An air pump ensures the … uh, … “mix” is well-aerated to help break down material. This flows into the 300-gallon final chamber where it is treated with chlorine. When that chamber is full, another pump kicks on to empty the chamber into a 1″ line with regular irrigation sprinklers out into the backyard.
Here on the MS Gulf Coast, the water table is very high, making it difficult to find a spot of land where you can get good “perc” results. The sprayer system seemed to work very well, but you had to keep it maintained.
Suzanne
@Brit in Chicago:
I 100% agree with you.
Which is why we are where we are. Someone benefits from the status quo.
Soprano2
@Yarrow: Watch a video from 30 years ago and now, and it’s exetemely apparent how much he’s deteriorated. People without cognitive problems don’t change that much. At most, they speak slower or sometimes grope for a word. You saw the same thing with George W.
NotMax
@TriassicSands
One can but imagine.
:)
Soprano2
@trnc: My husband is taking one of those tests on February 1st. Once you’re diagnosed with cognitive problems, they give it to you every 6 months to see if/how much you’ve declined. I think it should be part of every physical once a person reaches 60, because it might catch signs of decline early.
JPL
@opiejeanne: They must assume the number of people living in the house then. In your case it’s two and I have a 3 bedroom and it’s one.
prostratedragon
@Suzanne: Yep. Along with nearly every other such.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@WaterGirl: You mean doing spots for their sponsors? I’m used to that, seen it on many other channels. And it kind of fascinates me in a sociological way how it imitates the early days of TV. We’re watching media be reinvented.
I get annoyed / amused when the sponsored spot being read by the host is immediately interrupted by a YouTube ad. Can’t fast forward through those.
But the legal commentators on Meidas Touch really do know their stuff, and have personal acquaintance with many of the players. That’s who I listen to.
Bill Arnold
DougJ’s turf. (Good comic. )
Diner Journalism (Tom the Dancing Bug, Ruben Bolling, January 19.2024)
WaterGirl
@Baud:
Okay, I’ll give you that!
I do not know what they cell because I instantly jump forward past what seems to be a several minute ad. Someone pushes cold-brew coffee, but I think that might be the Josh Marshall podcast. I jump forward on that, too. But at least it seems to be a normal-length ad, not several minutes.
opiejeanne
@Suzanne: In my current neighborhood, at the height of the price of houses, a lot of people felt that equity burning a hole in their pockets and sold their houses for $2-3 million dollars (mine’s not worth that much but I felt it burning a hole in my pocket too), and moved to Montana or somewhere else not near Seattle. We’re in a semi-rural area, and what was interesting was that all of these houses bought at the absolute peak of their value were bought by corporations; nearly 3 years later most of those houses are still empty or short term rentals. We had daily calls from “investors” wanting to buy our house, but it always felt like a scam and reminded us too much of the run-up to the crash in 2007-8, plus where would we go if we did sell? Montana’s pretty but our doctors are right down the hill, and the hospital is only 4 miles away.
There are very nice new condos being built next to the hospital we use, and they’re adjacent to a new shopping district that has everything within easy walking distance and all of this would be ideal, but a basic unit costs almost as much as our house would sell for, the units are tiny and without even a balcony, and there are the HOA fees on top.
karen marie
@Gin & Tonic: I quit Wordle because FYFNYT. Instead I play Squareword and Squardle.
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I agree with you that they know their stuff. But they also present in such a way that they are presenting some things as fact when in fact it’s their speculation.
That totally turns me off.
I find that people like Andy McCabe or Mary McC make it clear when they are speculation.
Soprano2
@Steeplejack: One of the fastest-growing sectors in the U.S. is self-storage. It boggles my mind how many people have these units because they don’t have enough room for all their stuff. I know there are many legitimate reasons to use self-storage, but I suspect one reason it’s growing so much is that too many people have too much stuff they can’t bear to part with.
Salty Sam .
As Boomers ourselves, Salty Spouse and I have been in a long term process of downsizing since 2012. As caregivers to a couple of older folks, I can foresee that “downsizing en masse” eventually happening, due to aging and all the indignities associated with it. We are dealing with the question of “when is the appropriate time for professional geriatric care?” for our charges, and in doing so, see the writing on the wall for our future selves.
It’ll happen eventually- I’m just glad to see the decision matrix up close and personal right now, and be able to plan appropriately.
Suzanne
@opiejeanne: Yeah, that’s pretty much the same situation in every large city in the US. There’s so little new housing being built that it’s almost all aimed at the high-end market. In the absence of a really significant financial incentive from a city, it takes a large volume of new building before a new-build developer will target the “affordable” market.
Shit, even my very working-class neighborhood has this same dynamic going on. There’s a new development being built a couple of blocks away, where there used to be a school, and some of the units are designated as “affordable”, and the neighbors are fucken freaking out.
smith
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I also watch selected videos at Midas Touch for the legal expertise. You can learn a lot about what’s happening in the TFG trials from following along, and they update much more frequently than other legal sites I’ve tried.
However, I never watch the ones that are solely political — I can get that in a lot of other places, and without the clips of TFG dribbling on. It doesn’t bother me to scroll past the commercials, in fact, I still have no idea what they are flogging. I do dislike the click-baity headlines, and I wish they’d cut those out, but on the whole I find it a valuable source of information if you’re picky about what you watch.
Soprano2
@UncleEbeneezer: Yes, that’s the point of it. Anyone with normal mental functioning can pass it easily. If you can’t pass it, there’s definitely something wrong. TFG may have passed it; my husband did the first time he took it. I knew there was something wrong, though. The first time the doctor said it only indicated mild decline that is typical with age. I knew that wasn’t right, but couldn’t do anything about it. 😡
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: Moron neighbors don’t realize “affordable” might mean their own kids?
Suzanne
@Elizabelle:
No, of course they don’t. If you believe the neighborhood page, everyone who lives in affordable housing is a drug addict and a thief.
opiejeanne
@Suzanne: I agree. I see it forcing people with less money, especially POC out of their homes. Urban redevelopment used to be a bit of a dirty word, but in some areas closer to existing transportation, it makes a lot of sense, if the owners were correctly compensated for their homes because it’s not just the value of their property, it’s also the disruption of their lives, the cost of moving, the loss of community. There are a number of redevelopment projects here that take an existing small business district with older buildings and rebuild it with businesses on the ground floor, housing on the one or two floors above. The design is a nice improvement on the tired old brick buildings that are mostly empty now, and it doesn’t disrupt the nice neighborhood on the side streets behind it. One such has guaranteed a spot for a beloved neighborhood bakery to return once the project is finished, but I don’t know how the business is expected to survive the 18-24 months in the meantime, maybe in a temporary rental in the next block. I hope it works. Most of the ones I’ve seen tend to only have phone shops and nail salons move into the mostly empty commercial spaces on the ground floor. There is hope, though: the one in my little town has restaurants now, a nice hair salon or two, a little dress shop, and other little businesses are starting to move in.
Scout211
@Suzanne: A judge in SoCal just Issued a ruling to force new housing construction. IANAL, but I would be surprised if this ruling stands on appeal. But it’s an interesting approach.
Soprano2
@opiejeanne: They don’t have to build in such a way that it clashes with the rest of the neighborhood – that’s a choice.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Gvg:
“Data” cited from people pitching the Reaganomics-For-Housing con is typically traced to places massively funded by libertarian or tech money. Good examples are the Lewis Center at UCLA, Mercatus Inst at George Mason, the cultists at Strong Towns, the Furnam Center (one of NYC’s biggest landlords), etc.
Tobacco was the first to develop a set of strategies to silence critics, use professionals & researchers to create ignorance & division in the public, & provide cover for politicians.
https://www.bmj.com/content/321/7257/313
We’re seeing simply another manifestation of that only this time for capitol parking in real estate with the resultant displacement/gentrification/no-real-effect-on-home-affordability outcomes.
frosty
@Eunicecycle: I wouldn’t mind staying in this house except we don’t have a full bath on the first floor so if one of us can’t manage the stairs we’re stuck. So far so good but it’s time to look at alternatives while we can.
UncleEbeneezer
@Soprano2: Yeah my late FIL probably took it and passed it when we were dealing with him towards the end of his life, but he was light-years from being “all there” mentally and all of us who dealt with him on a regular basis, knew it. It was actually quite frustrating for my wife because his psychiatrist was insisting that he cognitively fine, but her experience dealing with him was nothing but evidence of the opposite. She felt like she was essentially taking care of a toddler, as far as his mental acuity, inability to focus, forgetfulness etc. And she was trying to get more help, assistance and get him qualified for govt programs/housing/care etc. and the psychiatrist’s position was actively making that harder to do.
Salty Sam .
City of Austin just changed their zoning laws to allow up to 2 ADUs per (appropriate sized) lot. This is huge.
But yeah, parking is an issue.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: Meh, I don’t really find “architectural style” arguments persuasive. There are legitimate questions of scale and building height and ratio of open space to built area and how those can impact your neighbors…. but, like, it’s completely unreasonable to expect to have a stylistic conformity on land you don’t own. It’s like expecting to approve your neighbor’s outfit.
This is why there are HOAs that limit the color you can paint your house.
Sure Lurkalot
@Suzanne:
Slot home developments are efficient but IMHO, undesirable. Denver banned them years ago. I’m all for ending exclusionary zoning but in some neighborhoods, that will mean two million dollar plus townhomes instead of one $800,000 singfamdwell. Creating more affordable housing takes a ton of fucking will on the part of communities as well as local and federal government buy ins.
Soprano2
@opiejeanne: Hubby’s driver’s license is due for renewal in February. The state has already revoked it, and he failed every segment of the driving skills test he took in October. He still thinks he’s competent to drive. I don’t know what his reaction will be when we go to renew it and he gets a State of MO ID. I’m dreading it. He’s accepted everything else that’s changed, but not that.
ETA that’s how my mother would have been.
Suzanne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Au contraire, there’s been a huge effect on home affordability: homes have gotten much less affordable.
Again, we can continue to develop land for housing. That can be infill, like replacing low-rise retail with big parking lots into denser housing. Or it can be greenfield development. It doesn’t have to be displacement. We chose displacement.
artem1s
@Suzanne:
lots of people want to move/change properties for various reasons. but they can’t afford to dump all the equity they have in their current homes to buy a house that’s going to be underwater for the next twenty years. boomer owners on the verge of retirement especially aren’t jumping into the market right now. and banks aren’t lending sight unseen the way they did before 2008. appraisals aren’t keeping pace with the inflated listing prices. so the buyers that are still in the market are the ones who have cash on hand. and they aren’t looking to buy more right now unless it’s beachfront high tourist properties that aren’t as likely to lose value. they are dumping their least desirable inventory because of the interest rates on the mortgages they took out to fix up and flip or rent. no one wants to get stuck with a house that’s underwater at these rates. I think a lot buyers are waiting for the inevitable housing bubble to bust. these consortium buyers have been buying into a slow burning Ponzi scheme since 2008 and have way to much inventory sitting in AirBnB’s to sustain as rentals and the fix and flip market doesn’t work if no one is buying. The banks and smaller cities and burbs are going to get slammed with a bunch of consortium properties where the owners will just stop paying property taxes and will default on the loans when they start to get cash strapped. same as in 2008 – instead of banks the LLC’s will declare bankruptcy and walk away with all the mortgage cash they’ve amassed.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Salty Sam .:
Two good examples are in Berkeley CA and Auckland NZ. The latter upzoned to oblivion 8 years ago so now has a decent time-frame to see if that had any effect on build rates. It hasn’t. Developers and home owners, despite the regulatory capture there, don’t see doing such things as benefiting them financially.
Berkeley did a blanket ADU upzone several years back, same miniscule results. Minneapolis did an upzone similar to CA’s SB9 even prior to that, again, very little impact because the people in tune with the market dynamics, ie., developers, look at this and don’t see any money to be made.
The same happened here in Denver when the “let’s get rid of parking” fad started to take hold. Market urbanists sell the idea that if you make it hard to own a car, people will abandon their cars. Well, the market is speaking loads here in that developers voluntarily put parking into their projects now b/c they’ve learned nobody will buy or rent their shitty builds unless there’s associated parking. The Market!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Sure Lurkalot:
Denver technically got rid of slot homes. But the replacement design is simply a difference of where the front door sits.
They’re still slot homes in look and reaction by neighbors who have those things shat upon them in the name of Reaganomic-For-Housing!
Suzanne
@Sure Lurkalot:
They’re desirable for some. Long, narrow houses can be everything from high-end brownstones to shotgun shacks.
MinuteMan
@Marmot:
@Marmot:
It can’t hurt but the true-believers fly those banners with Felonius tRump’s head on a rambo-like body so they’ll never let reality intrude on their delusions.
opiejeanne
@Suzanne: We had a darling 1600 sf house in Anaheim, and it was exactly enough for us. One story, 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, a dining room and a breakfast room, and a nice garden and patio. The kitchen was small but conveniently laid out, a narrow U-shape that worked very well.
Moving here we couldn’t find a single-story house we could afford that didn’t need to be torn down and rebuilt; most were being consumed by black mold as were many 2-story houses in our price range because of the mortgage crash. I mean, we moved from freaking Orange County, CA to semi-rural King County. We looked at houses all over the county as well as inside Seattle, and felt poor.
Suzanne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I think more market urbanists would say that if you make it easy to not own a car, that more people would voluntarily do it.
Again, there’s so little new building happening that developers are only targeting high-end customers.
Brachiator
OT. A nice visual chart of electric vehicles qualifying for a tax credit for 2024.
Harrison Wesley
Compare Biden to Trump? One guy’s succeeding in plugging holes in the US economy. The other guy needs a diaper to plug the hole in his ass.
I guess that’s not really suitable for TV, though.
opiejeanne
@Nukular Biskits: Our water table is high here too, even though we’re on a hill. It rains a lot here, and one year recently we didn’t have moles or voles in the front yard because it rained so much they either moved out or drowned. The front yard was a maze of holes that you could sprain an ankle in, and it’s a big yard.
We have an alarm in the garage for the septic system and it has gone off twice in the past 13 years, both times during a torrential downpour. We get it pumped pretty regularly, every 2-3 years, and we rarely add food waste to it.
eclare
@Soprano2:
I’m so sorry, that sounds so hard. My aunt got my uncle to give up driving by agreeing to drive him anywhere he wanted to go, anytime. Which meant she would go out, and after a couple of hours at the most, say that she had better get back in case Jim wanted to go somewhere.
It’s hard on everybody. Hugs to you.
Suzanne
@opiejeanne:
Yeah, this is another related issue….. our housing stock is old and it’s often cost-prohibitive to replace (again, except at the high end of the market). It’s a bad dynamic.
prostratedragon
@WaterGirl:
The miracle of unreliable narrartion (when the qualuuds kick in).
eclare
@Suzanne:
I was going to ask, is a slot home like a shotgun home?
UncleEbeneezer
@smith: Me too. The short legal clips (15-20 minutes) are great and so are the Legal AF, longer episodes, but I skip everything else. I personally think they are pretty good about clarifying when they are speculating and I don’t feel like they misrepresent opinions as facts, I just feel like they are confident enough in the law, the way courts, lawyers, judges operate etc., to be bold in their predictions and analysis. But they pretty regularly throw in caveats like “look, who knows how this judge (especially when Cannon or SCOTUS is involved) will rule, but the law and all existing precedent is really quite clear…” And they are pretty clear in differentiating between things that have been established as facts in court and things that are just assertions/claims.
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
<g>
MomSense
The Israel Palestine nightmare is horrific and I think it will cost us the election. I can’t help but feel that this is exactly what Netanyahu, Hamas and Russia want.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@eclare:
Google:
Denver Slot Homes
and you’ll see some articles and a slew of photos.
I belong to a 10K Facebook group called Denver FUGLY that’s been lowlighting crap builds like them here since 2015. This is a recent “Don’t Call Me A Slot Home Even Though Functionally That’s What I Am” complex in my neighborhood:
https://flic.kr/p/2pstu8D
And some of the originals that are so despised:
https://flic.kr/p/2oeqqKb
https://flic.kr/p/2okSp4t
https://flic.kr/p/2nviU8f
frosty
@Suzanne: Hi there – I have a sort of on-topic question for you. One of our alternative living arrangements would be to expand our first floor half bath to add a shower. I started looking for an architect to help and the AIA site was useless for a small residential remodel. We had a local guy (walking distance) design our addition but he’s retired and dropped his license.
I’m going to ask WG to forward an email to you with more detail so we don’t have to clog up the comments with off-topic posts (Hah, as if any jackals would notice!). Hope that’s OK.
Baud
@MomSense:
I’m not making predictions but
Definitely.
eclare
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
OMG that is horrible. I’ve never seen anything like it. Wow.
Yarrow
@Soprano2: Just fyi, I recently helped an elderly person change from a driver’s license to a state ID. Doing so meant starting completely over. None of the drivers license info carried across.
Due to Real ID requirements we had to provide multiple forms of ID and proof of residence. And no, the driver’s license that the person was giving up did not count as a form of ID. Birth certificate did. Had to have proof of social security number (like the card, but I think a tax form from the IRS also counted).
It may be different in every state but in my state basically the two sections of the same office – Driver’s License section and ID section – were effectively in separate silos. Despite having done the Real ID stuff for the driver’s license a few years ago, so the state had all the info already, none of it counted. We had to start over. It was a pain.
TBone
Oldspeak
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/01/republicans-have-backroom-scheme-cut
JaneE
@Chris T.: Part of that is people with super low interest rate mortgages who are disinclined to pay double their current rates, or just can’t afford to. It has seriously disrupted the resale market, because those nice homes that were purchased at 2.5% cost less per month than a smaller home at 6%. It has impacted the new housing around me (high desert SoCal) as well. The huge new tract that was built and started selling before the rates went up had people moving in before the paint was dry (almost literally). One that started just a couple of months later and didn’t have completions until after the rates went up sold a couple and then 1 the next month. The original prices were the same as the earlier phases of that development (some 3 or 4 miles down the street) and all the people who had wanted them at the old monthly payments didn’t or couldn’t take the new ones. The prices dropped $50-70K, and they started selling again, but normally, not quickly. The first tract is still building out, but its sales are much slower now and they are advertising available homes.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
A friend’s mother gave up her driver’s license with little fuss. She has even had eye surgery and wears glasses with thick lenses.
But she hates having to use a hearing aid.
It’s odd where loved ones choose to stand their ground.
smith
@MomSense: People who refuse to sully the purity of their vote because Biden is not tough enough on Israel are in Underpants Gnome territory. You withhold your vote, TFG wins, then what? Are the Palestinians any better off? TFG will do anything Netanyahu wants, if the price is right.
Yes, I know there are people who feel they can’t ever compromise if they will get less than everything they want, but I think they need to recognize that in voting you almost always are forced to choose the less bad option.
TBone
He’s just so…eloquent!
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/fascist-fuckfaces-shocked-to-discover
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
I don’t know about types, but I’ve never lived in a neighborhood that didn’t have a range of housing sizes. There’s usually at least one basic model of house that really is pretty basic, and of course many people tend to add on to their houses over time. As a result, there are a wide variety of sizes of homes in our neighborhood.
We’ve only got 1440 square feet of finished space, according to the Maryland real property site, so it’s the size that other people would downsize to, but since it’s got two above-ground floors and a (unfinished) basement, people downsizing would prefer something else. But there are houses in the neighborhood that are just one floor plus basement. And going the other way, there are a good many houses that have a lot more square footage than ours. (Our neighborhood was built starting in the mid-1980s and finishing up in the early 1990s.)
StringOnAStick
@Suzanne: We downsized from 2,400 plus a full basement to 1,700 and no basement, so we cut our living space in half. It was a great reason to get rid of excess stuff, and it felt so freeing to get rid of it, pack up the rest and move to an area several states away that we absolutely love. We’ve made more friends than we’ve ever had before with lots of variety in those different groups and different interests; we’ve even formed a quartet and will have a few paying gigs at fancy retirement facilities, doing love songs for Valentine’s day. It was so worth the disruption to move and I really appreciate our one story, smaller and better space. What I appreciate the most though is all these wonderful new friends.
John S.
@opiejeanne: And Seattle with all its shortcomings was recently ranked in the top 5 most walkable cities in America!
Of course outside of the US, most cities put ours to shame.
I just spent some time in Seoul, and their public transit is amazing. The city is huge, but you can get anywhere pretty easily and affordably by train. And of course, their trains are spotless and the stations don’t smell like urinals.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@MomSense:
It’s a nightmare, for sure. And I definitely agree with you that Biden losing reelection is absolutely what these villains want.
I don’t think they’ll succeed.
That said, no one can predict the future.
But we have goodness and competence on our side, and they are worth a lot.
Baud
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
And me!
TBone
Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania (facepalm)
https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/notes-conspiracy-appalachian-parks-cereal-reddit-20240121.html
Kay
The ad is great and I’m genuinely thrilled the Biden Admin (now) “gets it” on access to life saving medical care for women – media and the Right still haven’t figured out that the issue is and always was much bigger than “abortion”- but boy I am scared for her. They are going to come after her. I hope she has home and office security and a bodyguard and also protection for her children. I think we may have to be careful putting ordinary people out there like this. I’m not sure I’m 100% comfortable with it.
Sure Lurkalot
@Soprano2:
Probably 20 self storage facilities within a 3 mile radius of my home. Climate controlled! 24 hour access! We house our unused crap far better than people.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud:
We’ll settle for 2 out of 3. [musical accompaniment]
TBone
@Kay: I am, if she is. She testified at the recent briefing with Valenti.
Yarrow
@smith: I don’t get it either. TFG isn’t going to make things better for Palestine and likely will make things worse. He might also do things that harm people who are Muslim in other parts of the world and in the US. Like the Muslim ban but make it stick this time. It just seems insane to me that anyone who cares about Palestine or who is Muslim thinks doing anything that might help elect TFG would be better in any way.
There’s still a bit of time before the election. I have heard various rumblings that Biden is getting tired of Netanyahu’s actions. I even heard something on NPR yesterday along those lines, so that’s mainstream-y. I expect (or maybe just hope) that things may shift a bit. Biden seems good at doing things behind the scenes and then things get announced. Maybe something more positive will happen soon.
Kay
@TBone:
Brave. The gig should come with personal security funding.
suzanne
@frosty: That’s fine, I’ll look out for an email!
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I’m with you on this part:
But not the first part. There’s a non-zero chance that Trump could win, but we are along way from it looking like he will. Just my opinion.
Princess
@Geminid: I’d be very interested to hear what he thinks!
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
My neighborhood has a wide variety of home sizes, but it was built in the 1920’s, I assume before zoning laws were enacted.
Every home on my street and the neighboring streets is one story. Two streets over all of the houses are two story and huge. I followed the advice to buy the cheapest house in the best neighborhood you could afford. It’s in a National Historic District, so far it has worked out.
JMG
@MomSense: The Israel-Palestine situation is indeed horrific, but it won’t cost Biden the election (something else might). It takes US wars for Americans to vote on foreign policy issues.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
I agree with you.
suzanne
@eclare: “Slot home” is a regional nickname for what we used to call a townhouse or a row house. But they’re usually built in multiples by one developer. I will fully assert that lots of them are ugly, but honestly, many houses of the past are also ugly. I am less concerned with the aesthetics than I am with the function.
It’s a weird nostalgia to say that modern homes are ugly but not throw that same accusation at the zillions of ranch houses with tiny windows that we built. Who fucken cares.
Baud
@Yarrow:
People who vote like this don’t think with their brains.
suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
LAWL, much housing construction in the US in the last 50 years or so is in suburban subdivisions where additions are not allowed and the sizes of plans available are within 500 SF of one another.
I am firmly on the side of #fuckthat.
Salty Sam .
Yeah- when the Austin zoning change passed a few months ago, there was a lot of discussion of the ramifications. One study showed that similar zoning changes produced MORE McMansions, as a result of market forces.
OTOH, our kids are already started planning for ADUs to supplement their income stream.
Soprano2
@Yarrow: Thanks, that’s helpful information. In our state it doesn’t have to be a Real ID, but I’ll take the birth certificate and SS card in case.
Baud
@Kay:
People like this volunteer. We’re not doing anything to them. They are heroes.
Reminds me of that young woman who appeared in the Bashear campaign ad. Another hero.
opiejeanne
@eclare: Come to the suburbs around Seattle.
Kay
@TBone:
I don’t think testimony or appearing before a committee is the same. In the ad, she goes straight at Trump. The cult will protect the leader. She’s more akin to one of the prosecutors or judges, IMO, in terms of risk but they have security and she might not.
schrodingers_cat
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I agree with you. Normies are not paying much attention to the Presidential race. Most Americans don’t care that much about foreign policy especially when we don’t have our own troops there. So I don’t think that the war in Gaza is going to sway that many votes.
And 6 months is an eternity in politics
Also if those shouting the loudest had the sway in electoral politics that they claim they do, BS of Vt would have won the D nomination in 2016 and 2020.
lowtechcyclist
@suzanne:
Holy shit, most HOAs around here that just made adding on extremely difficult, let alone didn’t allow it, would have a riot on their hands. More square footage = higher property value.
And here I thought the whole system we’ve got in the ‘burbs was about preserving and increasing property values for the existing owners. Hence my incomprehension.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
Your last paragraph times 1000.
Yarrow
@Soprano2: If he wants to get on a plane in about a year he’ll need a Real ID. Who knows what else he’ll need it for. Better to get it now while he still can provide some of the items, like utility bills for proof of residence. In case in future those things are in your name given his issues. It’s such a pain. Especially for elderly people who might not have utility bills if they live in a retirement community but their kids still want them to get on a plane for a family trip.
rikyrah
Good Afternoon Everyone 😊😊😊
Kelly
Same. I lived in inner SE Portland in the 1980’s. Homes and small apartment buildings that had been built from 1900 to current day. The mix of styles is the neighborhood character.
Ruckus
@mrmoshpotato:
We know.
We always knew.
But it seems there is a part of humanity that likes their “leader” to be a POS, they think it lends stature, strength to their position, their lives, their existence. They think it’s normal.
And I do not see how that can be changed all that much because that seems to be part of humanity. Many people seem to have been told, or at least decided, that life is a shitshow, that you survive, not actually live. And that it will never be better.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good afternoon.
rikyrah
@Kay:
But, we need regular people to tell their stories.
Baud
@Ruckus:
Agreed on all points.
The last few years have really brought home to me how much cynicism and hopelessness are tools of the fascists and oligarchs. Once you successfully embed these things among your likely opponents, they take over the host culture like a virus.
rikyrah
@trnc:
Dolt45 will never show up to debate Dark Brandon
wjca
This.
EDT Bonus: it would be bad for Putin, too.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
About our troops not being there….
Absolutely on point
Which is why we need to get the funds and equipment to Ukraine. They are fighting for themselves.
catclub
@Suzanne: If housing prices came down a lot that would only mean we are in a recession. Housing prices are high because there are lots of people, with lots of money, who want to buy housing.
Kay
@rikyrah:
We do. I watched the ABC special (impact of state abortion bans on women) and that was a larger group of women and the focus was on state abortion bans – the governors of Texas and Florida were mentioned but they’re not cult leaders – shit, no one even likes DeSantis let alone him having cult-like followers. I don’t think they mentioned Trump. There’s also a threat of political prosecution. They sent the cult member AG out after that physician in Indiana who spoke up.
Brachiator
@smith:
Of course , here the crazy thing is that the people who cannot compromise will get nothing if the Republicans win.
suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
The concern with additions is that the house will look weirdly bigger than its neighbors, or disrupt an established architectural setback line, or that the additional square footage will be for an apartment for “those people”. There’s lots of neighborhoods that won’t even allow a homeowner to enclose a carport or covered patio. So there’s lots of HOAs and municipalities that don’t allow them, or make them incredibly onerous.
Geminid
@Princess: It turns out my friend does not watch Trump’s speeches anymore, just sees the selected clips like we see. I guess if I’m interested I’ll have to suck it up and watch one myself.
MomSense
@JMG:
I’m seeing so many young people who are politically active and have been voters in the last 3 elections turn so sour on Biden because of this issue. The margins are so narrow. We only won in 2020 by fewer than 45,000 votes.
TBone
@Kay: grrrrrrrr I fukkn despise stochastic terrorists and I too hope she has security. I don’t think the admin. would leave her twisting in the wind after that (always I have hope).
rikyrah
@New Deal democrat:
You are correct, which cracks me up that Apartheid Clyde didn’t grasp who the actual base for his phucking car is.
Another reason why I don’t care how far Tesla falls.
Baud
@MomSense:
There are always inflows and outflows of voters.
These people are going to betray their own generation, but it may be something young people need to work out for themselves.
evodevo
@Suzanne: Yeah..been that way for 30 years at least…I was on the local planning commission from 1991-5 and even though we had a state-mandated Comprehensive Development Plan, every time a subdivision section that was slated for smaller houses/duplexes/apts came up for approval, the locals went nuts, especially the ones who had purchased lots/large single family homes in the same planned development, and were JUST NOW figuring out what was going in next to them. I quickly became aware of the basic dishonesty of real estate agents, because NONE of them had informed these people that ALL this stuff was on the original development plat, available for inspection to the public at the planning commission office or the local county clerk. All they had to do was request a look..but that is apparently a bridge too far for buyers LOL. They ALL treated it as a total surprise that that former cow pasture across their street was slated to be developed in the near future, and was not going to remain a bucolic view for their pleasure for the next 40 years…(Oh, and if it was a working farm that had the temerity to spread cow manure on the corn fields, they complained about THAT, too.)
rikyrah
@MomSense:
The arrogance and short sightedness of youth.
Their pony and unicorn fantasies just don’t make it.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Yes, it’s a key component of their strategy. Alas, [pandering to it is] also highly remunerative.
TBone
@rikyrah: Someone said “The cybertruck looks like it would be really uncomfortable to have sex in the back of, but like with the Popemobile, it’s not a problem for the target market.”
Ruckus
@catclub:
If he is decompensating – and he is, soon he won’t notice. That is part of the problem, your world gets smaller and smaller – right up to when either you no longer can tell anything past this moment and you lose the ability to really do more than exist – and that’s not living, it’s just being still alive. I am an old, I’ve seen this with almost the entirety of the previous generation of my extended family. Those are the ones that didn’t just have a medical issue or accident and die earlier. We all get there, if we live long enough. The brain may be the first or last thing to go, if you are here long enough, it goes. SFB is such an intellectual waste of everything he will show us all what that looks like. Oh wait – he already is….
Some never make it out of infancy and most make it to old, a few make it past the century mark. We seem to often have wars so many don’t make it even to the middle.
eclare
@TBone:
Hahaha…omg, that’s perfect.
TBone
Wondering why I hear an owl vocalizing in the midday sun. Hmmm. Look out squirrels!
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
Totally agree. We got a Real ID for our mother. It would be harder to get this done later on.
ETA. I think the Real ID is a stupid idea. The info you provide for a regular driver’s license or ID should be sufficient.
TBone
@Brachiator: I got ours when they first came out, grumbling all the way about Stasi.
brantl
@Betty Cracker:
His brain was never any better than a fresh avocado.
Another Scott
@MomSense:
We won’t know the big picture with any accuracy until long afterwards. But good things are happening with the yoots, too. (Hogg was one of the famous “March for Our Lives” organizers.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Quinerly
@MomSense: my biggest fear.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
The MAGA crowd wants Trump to be cruel to others. They are convinced that he loves “real patriotic Americans.”
Kay
@rikyrah:
I think there’s a genuine issue in Michigan, with the Arab-American vote there. I follow Elissa Slotkin on social media (US House, running for Senate) and she is doing tons of outreach there to Arab Americans. If Michigan Arab Americans voted in a bloc (they voted for Biden at 68%) specifically against Biden they could cost him the state but I think the group is much more diverse than they are being depicted (it’s not all Muslim, for example, and it ranges from brand new immigrants to people who have had family in Michigan for 100 years).
I think they have a genuine beef with Biden. He hasn’t been addressing civilian casualties enough, especially for a President who I think has a kind of humanitarian persona or expectation. I hope he’s doing outreach and offering explanations and not just blowing them off or “trolling them” – Dear God, grow up – like Fetterman is.
He’ll take a hit in MI but I don’t think it’ll be fatal.
Suzanne
@evodevo: So I have dealt with so much homeowner bullshit in the course of my career, even though I don’t design houses. There was one municipality’s design review board that gave us three choices of architectural style for one project (a senior living facility): “Mission”, “Spanish”, or “Mediterranean”. (Can you tell me the difference? Pro tip: they wanted a red tile roof but wouldn’t just say that.) Another City Council put six months of hurdles in the way of a hospital expansion project I led a couple of years ago…. hospital had been there since 1978, but a homeowner who bought down the street 18 months prior was “concerned about traffic”. Another city planner made one of my clients do a three-month neighborhood notification process when they needed to replace a tree on their property that had a blight and was dying. There was a project I did in John’s new neck of the woods, where the City Council Design Review process had to approve the paint color. It’s fucken ludicrous.
Here in Pittsburgh, one neighborhood just defeated a proposed project that would have replaced a one-story retail building with a big parking lot around it with mid-rise housing, and the grocery store was gonna be accommodated on the first level. You guessed it: “character”.
wjca
Our high end suburb (~25 miles east of SF) has been building apartments and affordable houses. The locals are definitely not enthused. But the town council calmly points out that a) state law requires it, and b) the financial penalties if the town fails to comply are substantial. So it’s happening.
And, surprise, the character of the town is not changing noticable. Of course, part of that may be that there are still some subdivisions here dating to the 1950s. Which are the size which was common then: maybe 2 bedrooms (3 at the outside), living room but not a family room in addition, washer and dryer in the garage, and on a small lot. Rather like the new “affordable” houses in fact.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I have to say it is a little worrying. I spend a lot of time in Michigan and I just love Arab/Middle Eastern food. We go to small family-run Arab restaurants a lot in MI (and Cleveland!). I was in one Friday in Kalamazoo and there was a piece of cardboard taped to the door with “ceasefire now in Gaza” written in pencil. Democrats are going to have to engage on this. Approach it head on and respectfully.
Geminid
@Baud: I think a lot of the impact of this war on the Democratic vote will be conditioned by the course of the war going forward. Aside from our political considerations, the first 3 months of the war were terrible. That might not change over the next three months, but I think it will. This may not change the minds of some disaffected Democrats, but for many others this conflict will be less salient an issue.
In a way, I wish this wasn’t so, and that people paid attention to the larger Israel/Palestinian problem even when there is not intense fighting. But that has not been the case for this and most other conflicts overseas where the US isn’t losing troops or civilians. The war in Ukraine is an exception, but even here most people don’t think about the conflict day to day.
TBone
@Ruckus: this woman did not decide that.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tim-scott-quoted-fannie-lou-hamer
Sister Golden Bear
@Suzanne: Also, in CA there’s the Prop 13 property tax issue. Because the property tax rates are tied to when you bought your home and the increases are kept artificially low, you can face a huge tax increase when you move.
There was a one-time exception for seniors — but that was only if you moved somewhere in the same county. Thankfully, voters passed an amendment in recent years to allow the exception statewide.
@Suzanne: Also ADUs (granny flats). Thankfully, at least in my part of the SF Bay Area, zoning has been changed to allow them in a number of places, and I’m seeing more and more of them.
As an aside, it’s interesting that the more blue collar cities on the SF Peninsula have been far more open to new development. E.g. Redwood City has leaned hard into high-density near transport center concept. Lots of new apartment/condo mid-rise buildings have gone up near downtown with more on the way. Saw a similar thing decades ago in OC where one city poorer than it’s neighbors aggressively pursue redevelopment, with denser downtown housing being part of it.
Baud
@Geminid:
Hope so. The real tragedy will be that a Trump win will give Bibi a reset IMHO. But many people don’t vote strategically.
Geminid
@Baud: I think people will be vote on the basis of how things are September and October. Hopefully the Gaza war will be 7 months into ceasefire by then, and Netanyahu will be watching our election as a private citizen. That outcome is by no means certain, though.
Soprano2
@Yarrow: That’s a thought, although I don’t anticipate us flying anywhere again. Our passports are up for renewal next year, I will probably renew them. ETA I actually called the utility company on Friday to get my name added to the bill. I’ll probably keep both of our names on it.
Soprano2
@MomSense: I honestly don’t know what they expect Biden to do. I guess they think he can cut off all the money we send Israel – then what? It’s not just the youth, either. Duncan Black at Eschaton seems to believe in Green Lanternism when it comes to Israel and Biden. He’s removed TPM from his blogroll; I guess Jewish Josh Marshall isn’t anti-Biden enough on this issue. 🙄
Soprano2
@evodevo: I have been told that when Realtors sold houses close to our larger sewage treatment plant they’d tell people that occasional odor came from the horse farm. 🤣🤣
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
You have to take into the numbers that a percentage of existing homes often get destroyed (sometimes because they also have a lifetime) in order to build more homes. Right now in SoCal around me they are building homes more like condos – 6 units per building, 3 stories tall and the bottom floor has a garage in the back. There is an alleyway between rows of home buildings. Sort of looks like some areas of the east – my sister’s place in Boston was 2 homes in one building, side by side, 3 stories, on a small footprint. Believe they are called row homes. There are several sites near me that have very similar layouts. There’s just not as much land left to build on in many parts of the country. Especially to have a lot of grass area around each home.
frosty
@Ruckus: Two houses in one building is a duplex. Row houses (not homes!!!) are either a whole block of houses with party walls or a group of 3, 4, or more. I’ve lived in both.
When I pass by new developments and see no windows on either side of the house it just kills me. “You spent HOW MUCH for a freestanding row house???”
The Lodger
@New Deal democrat: Maybe Boston Dynamics should really stick it to the Saudis and develop an electric camel.
The Lodger
@lowtechcyclist: Yeah, those scruples can cost you… I wonder where the closest Superfund site is to this right-wing paradise.
Geminid
@Ruckus: That process hasn’t occurred much yet in the Mid-Atlantic. In most cities here still have plenty of open land past the outermost suburbs. Charlotte, Atlanta and other cities in the Southeast are like that. This may not be a very efficient way to grow, but a lot of people want detached housing and they can get it.
brantl
That cartoon should have shown Stumpy drooling, but then, so should the picture,
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Well it really takes having a large population in a relatively small area. Like say Los Angeles County. The population of LA County is said to be 9.83 million as of July 1, 2023.
By the census bureau stats that means LA County would be the 11th most populated state.
@frosty: A home is where you live, and you may want to call it by a different name, here they call them homes. And Yes I know the terms row houses, apartments, condominiums, duplexes. This is CA, we sometimes do not use the same terms as other parts of the country. Rebels you know.
The Lodger
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Remember what happened the last time TIFG was mocked by a black guy (he claimed was) from Africa.