Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

This fight is for everything.

We still have time to mess this up!

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

The words do not have to be perfect.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

He really is that stupid.

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

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: Incorrigible

Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: Incorrigible

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There are some immigrants who just can’t adjust to American society… they’re incapable of following our laws, no matter how carefully they’re instructed…

Maybe they were poorly raised — or perhaps their genes are bad!

Whatever the reason, they’re incorrigible.

Reader Interactions

156Comments

  1. 1.

    Scout211

    Cards Against Humanity takes on Elon Musk using his own playbook.

    Cards Against Humanity is taking on Elon Musk — again.
    The self-described “party game for horrible people” has launched an anti-Donald Trump super political action committee that’s squaring off against Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC while taking a page from its playbook. Both aim to incentivize swing-state voters with cash without breaking strict campaign finance rules that ban paying for votes.

    Cards Against Humanity PAC will pay as much as $100 for previous non-voters to “care” about the election, but it requires a public apology true to form for the card game known for its irreverent and crude humor. To receive the cash, the non-voters have to apologize for not voting, make a voting plan and publicly post “Donald Trump is a human toilet” on social media.

    The super PAC will receive a donation of $100,000 from Cards Against Humanity and will also be funded by sales of a $7.99 special 2024 election pack of cards.

    . . .

    America PAC, which has spent nearly $80 million to date on pro-Trump canvassing and ads, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    The data it collects could be muddied by Cards Against Humanity’s efforts. The game’s website encourages registered voters to sign the America PAC petition and list Cards Against Humanity PAC’s email as the referrer so that it receives the $47. If Musk doesn’t pay, Cards Against Humanity will sue him, according to the website.

  5. 5.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Scout211: LOL. I’m starting to think Musk is even stupider than Trump. Even Trump has enough low cunning to work out how someone might scam him in return before embarking on a scam.

    Just watched Joe Biden’s presser on hurricane Milton and boy howdy does the press come off bad…do they even hear themselves when they ask those questions? I think spending so much time covering Trump has made them morons.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    I wonder if Aussie Sheila is around. Just saw a Reddit thread that looks like a Putin special, trashing how things are run in Australia.

  15. 15.

    K-Mo

    I’m glad someone is taking this stuff on.  My brain is filled up at this point.

    It takes a village.

  17. 17.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @K-Mo: Like the saying about how a chorus can hold a long high note because individual singers can catch their breath while the rest of the chorus sings on.

  20. 20.

    MagdaInBlack

    Reddit is showing me trump in Detroit, yammering about “cylinders with no wings, landing in circles, which remind him of Biden, and oh btw we won.” all somehow tied to the genius that is Elon.  No, I ain’t linking, I’m not gonna scramble all your brains like mines just been.

    FFS

  21. 21.

    Paul Wartenberg

    My home in Mulberry is still without power, but my workplace Bartow Library is, so I’m at work now.

    Internet connectivity is fuzzy. the wi-fi is working but the LAN direct ports aren’t.

    Library won’t open this morning, as we’re gonna be busy unwrapping all the tarp off the shelves. Did I need to share our photos of our cover-up/cover-off operations?

    P.S. Milton killed the Trop?! Look at how they massacred my boy…

  25. 25.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ken:

    If Elon stopped lying, Tesla’s stock would nosedive to its actual value.  The company is chained to this idiocy because the shareholders would be wiped out if his gullible fanboys stopped believing.

    @MagdaInBlack:

    They both live in 80s movies, so it makes sense.

  31. 31.

    Betty Cracker

    Still no power at Chez Cracker. It’s 63 F, so I’m sitting around in my PJs wearing a parka. Here’s the source of the problem from my investigation yesterday. I’m starting a rumor: DeSantis evaluated voter rolls and diverted crews to 100% Republican enclaves first.

    Big tree on power line

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @Soprano2: Even if it’s not true, no less a moral authority* than J. D. Vance says it’s OK to tell lies in order to make a point.

    * And I can think of no lesser moral authority. — Groucho, probably

  40. 40.

    JML

    Is anyone surprised that a billionaire flipped over to the GOP because they didn’t feel properly catered to? The billionaire class is the modern shitty nobility: overrated, fragile, tantrum prone, and massively self-absorbed.

    Eat the goddamn rich.

  41. 41.

    TBone

    @JML: blech

    I am planning ahead in both directions – today I’m gonna make a list of all the fun things we’ll do with nest egg instead of worrying about paying for long term care.

    (Tomorrow, I’ll think about where to find and how to start training with a local militia, maybe. I’m a good shot but need practice to keep skills current.)

  42. 42.

    Gloria DryGarden

    63 is kind of chilly without central heat, if there’s some humidity.

    elon musk is actually doing bait and switch on the “free” starling he’s supplying for WNC residents. It turns out, one has to spend $400 on the hardware equipment. So it’s really not free. And after 30 days, it goes to $120/ month. Residents are not pleased. News article seen today on my google news feed.

  43. 43.

    Jay

    @TBone:

    John Brown Shooting Club.

    Then some tactical combat courses

    Stay far away from the militias.

    Meal Team Six has no clue.

  45. 45.

    gene108

    A comment to one of those X’s:

    Brooke Harrington
    @EBHarrington

    Professor of Sociology, Dartmouth; views my own. Author, ‘Offshore’
    https://shorturl.at/GEsnM; words
    @washingtonpost, @nytimes, @TheAtlantic
    & @Guardian

    When I tell ppl the super-rich are as exquisitely sensitive to social status as the avg middle schooler, this is the kind of thing I mean.

    Instead of laughing all the way to the bank, they stew over perceived slights.

    It’s been the biggest surprise in 17 yrs of research.

    9:21 PM · Oct 10, 2024 273 Views

    https://x.com/EBHarrington/status/1844548843091718632

  48. 48.

    Chris

    @Ken:

    @Soprano2: Even if it’s not true, no less a moral authority* than J. D. Vance says it’s OK to tell lies in order to make a point.

    “It wasn’t a statistic, it was a hypothetical.”

  49. 49.

    TBone

    @Jay: oh I know who to stay away from here in my “Second Amendment Sanctuary” municipality!  They wear the same “uniforms” so you can easily avoid the neckbeards.  Usually, there is a convenient red target they wear on their heads; otherwise, dental habits are also a dead giveaway.

  51. 51.

    Chris

    @JML:

    Is anyone surprised that a billionaire flipped over to the GOP because they didn’t feel properly catered to? The billionaire class is the modern shitty nobility: overrated, fragile, tantrum prone, and massively self-absorbed.

    I don’t believe for a second that Musk flipped over to the GOP because they didn’t feel properly catered to.

    His life story makes it pretty clear that the “trigger” that made him into a rabid GOP partisan was one of his kids turning out to be transgender and then cutting all ties with him.

    But that tells a story in and of itself: if their own kid felt the need to go to these lengths after they turned out to be transgender, that’s a pretty good sign that Musk has always been a dumpster fire of a human being, not just in the generic “I wish the peons showed me more respect” sense that almost all rich people are, but in a much more identity-driven and fascist vein.  At best, his kid’s decision turned him from a passive supporter to an activist, but he was always like this.

    Which is, I know, a shocking thing to find out about a white South African whose parents owned a diamond mine in the apartheid era.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    Did anyone else se/hear that Dolt 45 came out with a proposal to ban autonomous driving cars? Simultaneous (nor nearly so) with Musk’s unveiling of the cybercab and cybervan (both half-baked concept vehicles, AFAIK).

  55. 55.

    TBone

    “Somehow” hubby got hold of a dark blue LEO ball cap with the word CAPTAIN emblazoned in yellow embroidery.  Beats the (fun and intriguing Black) guy with the HNIC ball cap I met at The Flying Pig tavern in Malvern.

    I told hubby for the umpteenth time this morning that he needs a haircut. He is so stubborn! 😂

  59. 59.

    TBone

    @AWOL: I like his commenters.

    He was a very early adopter of “Elon Musk is bullshit” which is why I mentioned him today in this topic.

  60. 60.

    sdhays

    @Betty Cracker: So you Democrats are the reason the people in your neighborhood don’t have power!

    I guess your neighbors didn’t have to come hat in hand to weather the storm as their trailer blew/floated away?

  63. 63.

    lowtechcyclist

    @TBone: ​

    Atrios gonna have a field day with fElon’s same old schtick, I bet.

    One thing Atrios was pointing out a decade ago was that robotaxis were really the most challenging sort of use of self-driving technology, assuming it could work at all, because a robotaxi would have to be able to handle any possible combination of starting points and destinations, and be able to handle the quickest or a nearly quickest route between the two safely.

    OTOH, there are regular routes that truckers drive on good roads, and if you were going to do self-driving, that’s where you’d start. If you can’t tell your truck how to safely and efficiently handle one route on good roads over and over again, you can’t do self-driving, period.

    For example, when I order stuff from Amazon or whoever, the last step is that it’s out for delivery from Upper Marlboro. So there’s a warehouse or shipping facility in Upper Marlboro from which deliveries go out to a fair chunk of southern Maryland. The route from either an airport or some other larger facility to Upper Marlboro would be your routine route over good roads that could be handled by self-driving if anything could.
    Driving is just a very complex task, but a lot of its complexity is stuff that our brains learn to handle early on, by learning to not bump into other people when walking down the hall at school, and so forth. But it’s a lot to teach to a machine.​

  64. 64.

    Yarrow

    @Betty Cracker: With the obvious caveat that hurricanes are not good to have to deal with, a hurricane in October has the advantage of cooler weather after. Hurricanes in July and August are really le suck. Weeks without power in 100 degree plus temps and high humidity. So not fun.

  65. 65.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @AWOL:

    @TBone: Atrios? Tankie. Worst “liberal” blog on the web.

    I beg to differ, LGM is the worst “liberal” blog on the web.  Atrios is definitely in the Top 5 tho if not a close second.

  66. 66.

    sdhays

    @AWOL: He’s not a tankie. He doesn’t trust the American foreign policy consensus at all, though. His position on Ukraine is supportive, but skeptical of the people in foreign policy circles since basically they’re always game to light the world up with some explosions. Ukraine is one time when they seem to be doing the right thing.

    I don’t agree with everything he says, but he’s not some Putin lover.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    A certain percentage of well off, middle aged white people went completely insane with the combination of covid, BLM and Me Too. Musk is one of that group.

    Not resilient people with a strong sense of themselves or good values. They were weak and they crumpled under that slight bit of stress.

    It’s probably better. We have challenging times ahead with a lot of changes. These people aren’t the sort one can rely on in challenging times. They simply cannot deal with change.

  68. 68.

    TBone

    @TBone: holy crap. Out of nostalgia, I just looked at The Flying Pig Saloon Facebook page (their only official business website). 😳🤭

    Memories…do not recommend! 😆

  69. 69.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Baud: it’s being offered as ”free” disaster relief for people in devastated areas. The article implied residents around Asheville didn’t feel like this was so helpful.

    i probably needed to link the article.

  71. 71.

    Soprano2

    @Kay:  These people aren’t the sort one can rely on in challenging times. They simply cannot deal with change.

    My life would probably kill them then. Life is nothing but change, haven’t they figured that out?

  72. 72.

    Geminid

    Maryland Senate candidates Angela Alsbrooks and Larry Hogan debated yesterday and WTOP radio has been featuring soundbites from their remarks.

    This was a crucial debate for Alsobrooks. She’s the chief execitive of a suburban county with over 900,000 residents, and before that served two terms as county prosecutor. Going into the campaign, Alsobrooks’ name recognition lagged far behind that of the two-term Governor’s but she seems to have overcome this deficit and leads in the polls now. From the reporting and soundbites I heard on WTOP radio it sounds like Alsobrooks did fine in a debate Hogan needed to “win.”

  73. 73.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Ken:

    * And I can think of no lesser moral authority. — Groucho, probably

    At least when Groucho sang, “if you think your country’s bad off now, just wait ’til I get through with it,” it was a fictional country in a comedy. Trump/Vance and Project 2025 would be the real thing.

  74. 74.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m starting a rumor: DeSantis evaluated voter rolls and diverted crews to 100% Republican enclaves first.

    I’m late to the party as usual, but it would be irresponsible not to speculate.

  75. 75.

    artem1s

    @lowtechcyclist: 

    If you can’t tell your truck how to safely and efficiently handle one route on good roads over and over again, you can’t do self-driving, period.

    Where I come from we call that rail. Same route over and over. We need more money put into rail and less into trying to recreate the fantasy promises of the 1964 Worlds Fair.

  76. 76.

    Betty Cracker

    @sdhays: They chickened out at the last minute and fled! Still not back! 😂 Their place is okay for now, but the river is rising.

    @Yarrow: Amen to that! I’ll take a SLIGHT chill over the sweltering heat any day.

  78. 78.

    frosty

    @Betty Cracker: ​ A parka at 63 degrees! Tell me you’re a Floridian without saying you’re a Floridian.

    We were camping a few winters ago with our Florida friends. We got up and went outside in T-shirts. They were sitting with hats, gloves, and fleece, LOL. And they were both from Buffalo originally!!!

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    They’re (rightfully) scared by climate change so their response is to lash out at others, freak out about a perceived scarcity of resources and invent conspiracy theories.

    These people were never strong or grounded. They were always weak. It’s just that they were never stressed or challenged before. They’ll be useless going forward.

    Going without power for 2 weeks is just not the end of the world. It doesn’t justify losing their fucking minds and turning on others.

  80. 80.

    Yarrow

    @gene108:

    When I tell ppl the super-rich are as exquisitely sensitive to social status as the avg middle schooler, this is the kind of thing I mean.

    Instead of laughing all the way to the bank, they stew over perceived slights.

    It’s been the biggest surprise in 17 yrs of research.

    How is this a surprise? SNL had this covered back in 1989.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B81U7Vunhuc

  81. 81.

    schrodingers_cat

    @frosty: Forget 63, 36 is barely parka weather. I am in Mumbai and I almost keeled over this morning after my morning walk in the hot sun. I should just stick to evenings for any physical activity

    Have you been checking out my Inktober entries

    Yesterday’s prompt was Nomadi

    A light sweater is enough at 63.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    Imagine an alternate Elon Musk who was raised better and was a more resilient person.

    He has tons of money and a social media company. He could actually help people in a disaster.

    Instead we get this low quality, whiny weakling who crumples under the slightest stress. Rip off.

  86. 86.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: The same type flipped the fuck out after 9/11 a generation ago. Maybe the government should fund research into their genetic makeup — they lack resiliency.

  87. 87.

    Ken

    @lowtechcyclist: a robotaxi would have to be able to handle any possible combination of starting points and destinations

    Also people vomiting and pissing in the seats, or vandalizing the vehicle, or any number of other horrors that taxi drivers — and now Waymo in San Francisco — routinely report. Plus the people who think it’s hilarious to block the sensors so the car can’t move.

  88. 88.

    TBone

    @frosty: 👍 I like your perspective on this subject.  He is usually a tad vain about his hair and beard, but lately has taken a more lax attitude (I must be rubbing off on him, I got stubborn this summer and decided on a pony tail instead of a haircut).

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    So true. Remember how we had a whole new batch of terrified “neocons” on 9/12?

    Same dynamic. They’re a drag on the rest of us. Poor decision makers – panicky.

  90. 90.

    Another Scott

    @gene108: I’m surprised that he they find it surprising.

    Human relations are (almost) always tied up with relative status, not absolute status.

    The MotUs probably would check their Forbes 400 ranking every day if it were updated daily.

    “Jensen, darling, you’re still below Bloomberg. When are we going to pass him? Aren’t you better and smarter than him?  The girls at the spa are laughing at me!!”

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  92. 92.

    frosty

    @Soprano2: Jefferson Airplane, Crown of Creation:

    Life is change
    How it differs from the rocks
    I’ve seen their ways too often for my liking
    New worlds to gain
    My life is to survive
    And be alive for you

    Soon you’ll attain the stability you strive for
    In the only way that it’s granted
    In a place among the fossils of our time

  93. 93.

    narya

    @Soprano2: My life would probably kill them then. Life is nothing but change, haven’t they figured that out?

    I think about this a lot. I think what it comes down to is that they’re used to being able to throw their money at anything–and there IS a substantial set of problems where money makes a huge difference. Sometimes it’s even a relatively small amount of money! But money does not fix everything. I’m thinking of someone I sort of know whose kid had a life-threatening condition. Money was able to help the kid hang on a long time and have a good-ish life, but, ultimately, money could not save him.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    This is familiar to BJ’ers, Moreno’s insulting depiction of women voters, but Sherrod is using the audio in ads and I think it’s really effective. Just the sneering tone when Moreno says “it’s a little crazy” – it has to be heard. Brown’s campaign is basically blanketing the state with this clip so they must agree it’s an effective attack.

    The Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio says he doesn’t think abortion is “an issue” for women who are “past 50,” while suggesting that many suburban women are single-issue voters on abortion, according to video footage obtained by local station WCMH-TV from a town hall Friday.

    Trump-endorsed Republican businessman Bernie Moreno is running to unseat incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat in a red-leaning state.

    “You know, the left has a lot of single issue voters,” Moreno says in the video. “Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ OK. It’s a little crazy, by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.'”

  98. 98.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Chris: Any half-assed research of Musk’s life history reveals that he was a shitty kid raised by shitty parents, that he’s never grown out of being a manipulative sociopath that has done great harm to most people that he’s lived or worked closely with (usually stealing their ideas, labor, and work product), and that he amplifies it all with drugs.

    He has way, way too much influence on our national interests. He should be isolated from those levers of power. If this means invoking various laws that Shrub signed into being after 911, well, goose, meet gander. I suspect that almost anyone who actually works at Space X would welcome this.

  99. 99.

    Yarrow

    @Betty Cracker: @Kay:
    @Kay:
    Is this panicking after some disaster or shock just part of the human condition? Or is it uniquely American? (Or at least worse in the US?) Is it worse now than in previous generations? It’s not something I’ve studied so I have no idea about it.

  100. 100.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: “Buy on the rumor, sell on the news.”  It’s such a universal aphorism that I assume it’s programmed into the automated trading algorithms.

    :-/

    Plus, given how long as it took him to get the Model 3 out the door in numbers, and the CT out the door in numbers, and the semi-truck, and …, one would have to have a very optimistic outlook to think that these things announced yesterday are going to contribute any significant revenue to the company anytime soon.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  101. 101.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m enjoying mugs of HOT coffee at the diner in my town that is favored by local farmers. I’ve overheard some hair-raising tales about the hurricane! Apparently many cows are up to their armpits (legpits?) in mud.

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @artem1s: The Infrastructure bill allocated $66 billion to Amtrak. According to Amtrak’s chief this was more than total capital investment since the systerm wss founded in the 1970s. The money is now being spent on enhancing service on existing routes and expanding a service map that has been static as the nation added 130 million residents.

    Private companies control freight service, and the Infrastructure bill had no direct subsidies for them. But it included many billions for projects like building another cross-Hudson rail tunnel and other improvements to the rail system that will enable it to carry more traffic.

    Hopefully Congress will pass an Inrastructure 2.0 bill before too long. The bill could build on these investments and the ones the first Inrastructure bill made in mass transit.

  104. 104.

    RevRick

    @Lapassionara: Fragile ego, indeed! Abusers always tell their victims that they made the abuser abuse them. Which makes the victim feel like they are walking on eggshells. But what’s really driving the abuser’s behavior is not what the victim is doing, but the brokenness, the fragility inside the abuser.
    They are triggered by their fears of seeming less, of being less.
    Elon’s excuse for going full-on fascist is because the Democrats didn’t placate his sense of entitlement?
    That’s garbage. And he’s living proof that being wealthy only multiplies what Lord Acton said: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think having lots of troubles when I was young made me more resilient – that’s not just a trope. My mother didn’t have anything really bad happen to her until my father cheated on her, and she completely fell apart. She was in her early 40’s. I think she didn’t have the template I have now, which is that yes it sucks but it doesn’t stay that way forever. Or maybe it’s just the kind of person I am, I don’t know. I only know that if I crumpled the first time there was a major challenge or change in my life, I would have been completely nuts by the time I was 25!

  108. 108.

    Yarrow

    @schrodingers_cat:  Yes, this is very normal. It’s hardly been any time at all since she died and you had the added complication of not being with her or even in the same country. And, you said you carry some feelings of guilt for not visiting her as often as you wanted to/thought you should. Your sense of unreality of the whole thing will take time to process.

    I’ll say what others have said to me – be kind to yourself. It’s a cliche but also true. And don’t let anyone else tell you how to grieve. Everyone’s journey is different.

    Grief is a complicated beast. Everyone processes it differently. It’s also kind of a roller coaster – hang on when the ups and downs hit. Do what you think you can do. Don’t do what you are not able to do. It’s okay to say no if you just can’t handle something at that moment.

  109. 109.

    narya

    @Geminid: This makes me so very happy (I hate to fly, so am a long-time Amtrak-long-distance lover). They recently added a route that goes from Chicago to Florida, and they’re expanding some midwest routes, too. Now, if they can figure out how to deal with the track issue . . .

  110. 110.

    lowtechcyclist

    @artem1s:

    Where I come from we call that rail. Same route over and over. We need more money put into rail and less into trying to recreate the fantasy promises of the 1964 Worlds Fair.

    I totally agree with you.

    But we’re so far from even doing the basics with rail, that having freight lines to places like Upper Marlboro seem almost utopian.  When I used to drive I-81 through Virginia regularly, there was a metric ton of truck traffic on it. By any measure, there should be a freight line paralleling I-81, which after all is an Interstate highway.  And if that ain’t happening, a line to Upper Marlboro is beyond hope.

    For whatever reason, GOPers are adamantly against rail expansion.  (Probably because Dems are for it.) Remember when Obama proposed high-speed rail lines between the Eastern Corridor and the Midwest, and between Tampa and Orlando, as part of his 2009 stimulus package? GOP governors all over the place said, ‘not in my state.’  Still pissed about that – HSR would be such a boon, and we’ve wasted the past 15 years with respect to it.  Japan has it, Europe has it, but the great U.S. of A? Nope.

    Dems are for it, but it’s not been close enough to the top of our priority list to really push for it against GOP opposition.  It’s a cost of having one of our two major parties being totally irrational: there’s so much stuff that really needs doing that we have to fight a battle to accomplish any of it, and as a result, so many things that should be done never get done.

  111. 111.

    Soprano2

    @narya: That’s how dementia is. Money can buy caregivers and other stuff like that, but it can’t fix the condition no matter how much you spend. People die, money can’t fix that either.

  112. 112.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: They are so horrendously condescending about anything they believe is a “woman’s issue”, it’s gross when you hear it. I agree it’s probably effective messaging to women.

  113. 113.

    huzzawhat

    @Baud:

    Why do I suspect they’re more upset about the health care system and the gun policy than the NRPC or whatever nationalistic bullshit is coming out of Queensland at any given moment?

  117. 117.

    narya

    @Soprano2: And that’s the part that super-rich people really do NOT get: many folks can’t afford caregivers, or any of the other supports, which makes the whole experience so much worse. My parents were able to afford caregivers for Dad, but (a) it wasn’t cheap and (b) we all knew it wasn’t an infinite expense, as he was in hospice, and (c) his care wasn’t all that complicated, and (d) he didn’t have dementia. But without those caregivers? Ooof; would have killed my mom, too.

  119. 119.

    TBone

    @Soprano2: 👍 my brother had never had a serious illness or dealt with any close personal experiences with death before dad died, which is why he came away so very broken from it.

    I worked in law offices so dealt with a lot of horrors on the daily in addition to my life experience from a young age.  I was broken for a few years by mom’s death circumstances but recovered because of my experience.

  120. 120.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid:

    Warning – TheHill.com (from 10/9):

    Democratic candidate Angela Alsobrooks is leading Republican former Gov. Larry Hogan by 9 percentage points in a poll of the Maryland Senate race released Wednesday, less than a month before the election.

    Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive, is backed by 48 percent of likely voters in the poll from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Institute of Politics. Hogan had support from 39 percent of voters.

    MarylandMatters.com has a long report on the debate.

    But Alsobrooks frequently asserted that in a narrowly divided Senate, with most Republicans in thrall to former President Donald Trump, party labels should matter to Maryland voters, regardless of what they might think about Hogan and his time as governor.

    Alsobrooks regularly name-checked Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and other Republican senators like Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rick Scott (Fla.). She said that if Hogan was so intent on distancing himself from the GOP, he should have run for Senate as an independent.

    “He gladly put on the [Republican] jersey,” she said. “When Mitch McConnell called him [to run for Senate], he gladly got into the game.”

    Alsobrooks also faulted Hogan for writing in candidates in the past two White House elections and saying he planned to again this year.

    That seems like a smart line of attack to me, especially against him in MD. The GQP is an insane party. No matter how “independent” and “moderate” he might think or claim he is, he’s still on their team as an enabler (voting for their leadership). That means he’s a clear danger.

    Plus, Hogan did things as governor that stick in my craw, like his trying to break the Purple Line:

    In the case of the Purple Line, however, a series of decisions by the Hogan administration compounded the problem. Early in his tenure as governor, Hogan, a Republican who had opposed the Purple Line as a candidate in 2014, demanded that the project be redesigned and its costs cut to free up money for road construction. Some of that road building would benefit real estate ventures in which Hogan, a developer, had invested, as the Washington Monthly has previously reported. The redesign delayed the start of the light rail line’s construction by almost two years.

    He’s a hack like Christie (breaking the ARC Tunnel) and the GQP governors that killed efforts at high speed rail. He’s got no business being back in power.

    Plus, Alsobrooks is much, much better!

    Go Alsobrooks!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  121. 121.

    artem1s

    no way I’d give those assholes my contact info or way to pay me anything. I don’t trust that they wouldn’t immediately send it to Russian hackers who would use it to steal my identity or worse.

  125. 125.

    Geminid

    @narya: I saw a story a few weeks ago about Justice Department lawsuit against a freight rail line for improperly delaying passenger trains running Amtrak’s Southern Crescent route.

    Amtrak wants authority to sue freight lines on its own but for now it relies on the Justice Department to enforce laws and regulations intended to give passengers priority over freight.

    One problem here is physical: many freight trains are now so long they cannot fit in the old sidings to let passenger trains by.

  126. 126.

    Soprano2

    @narya: There are people in my FB dementia support group doing it almost by themselves without being able to afford any help. It’s crushing.

  127. 127.

    narya

    @Geminid: I want Mayor Pete to have some more time and opportunity to solve the many problems that plague Amtrak . . . I am NOT an expert, but ISTM that there are three problems: creating and maintaining passenger rail–even expanding it!; facilitating using rail for transport of goods; and working out how to do those two things so they don’t inhibit each other.

  128. 128.

    Eunicecycle

    @schrodingers_cat: my mother passed away 10 years ago and I still think of things I should tell her. And I often dream she’s still alive and is surprised I thought she was gone. It has become less frequent over time though. Be easy on yourself.

  130. 130.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: Angela Alsobrooks is 52 years old, which strikes me as a good age to enter the Senate. She will replace 80 year old Ben Cardin. This 28 year differential will the largest between incoming and outgoing Democratic Senators. I think Rep. Elissa Slotkin at age 48 is 16 years younger than Debbie Stabenow while 62 year old Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester is around 14 years younger than Delaware SenatorTom Carper..

  132. 132.

    Another Scott

    @narya: Google pointed me to this:

    National Rail Plan
    Overview of the National Rail Plan

    On October 16, 2008, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA) was enacted. Section 307(b)(j)(2) of the Act directed the Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to “develop a long-range national rail plan consistent with approved State Rail Plans and the rail needs of the Nation as determined by the Secretary to promote an integrated, cohesive, efficient, and optimized national rail system for the movement of goods and people[.]” Subsection (j) also directed the Administrator to develop a Preliminary National Rail Plan (PNRP).

    […]

    Progress report (27 page .pdf) from September 2010.

    I’d hate to think that that plan hasn’t been updated in the 14+ years since then, but it won’t happen unless they’re tasked with doing it.

    I’m not optimistic that we’ll be able to find a way to have a sensible passenger rail system share tracks with freight. Passenger rail needs dedicated lines for efficiency (speed, safety, reliability). Freight needs big yards for sorting cars, loading and unloading freight, etc., and lots of stops along the way to deliver to factories and warehouses. They’re different things.

    It’s going to take time and money and long-term commitment. It’s not going to get cheaper, and opportunity costs are increasing all the time. It’s long past time that we got started in a serious way.

    Every US critic of passenger rail should be required to spend a week in Japan or Europe riding the high-speed trains. The Shinkhansen is amazing, even before one considers the Nozomi.

    Someday!! [ sigh! ]

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  133. 133.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I think having lots of troubles when I was young made me more resilient

     

    Me too. Not true for everyone though – I have two siblings who didn’t bear up well at all. I don’t know what the difference is.

  134. 134.

    Geminid

    @narya: Amtrak seems to be doing a good job so far with the $66 billion alloted to it by Congress in the Infrasgructure bill.. I’m not sure Pete Buttigieg could do much better if he was put in charge of this independent agency. People would pay more a lot more attention to Amtrak though!

  135. 135.

    Dave

    @Yarrow: No idea but I’d suspect ubiquitous widespread active disinformation (being easily worked into a killing mood in a mob definitely is a flaw in the old social primate brain) and a cultivated immature selfishness pushed by crass and ubiquitous consumerism probably play a role if there has been a major change.

  137. 137.

    Dave

    @Soprano2: I’ve become convinced there is a balance that suffering generally does not build resilience or character but a fair amount of adversity does.

    People who have very rigid a d narrow experiences and roles often do not handle adverse changes well at all.

    Similarly most people who constantly endure suffering and challenge after challenge don’t do well either.

    Of course there are those who have faced very little adversity that handle it with grace and fortitude when they encounter it those that have been through things that would have worn down most people who do become tempered from it as well.

    In my own life when I’ve encountered stressors that might be fairly intense they were times they weighed heavily and times they as light as a feather and it had a lot to do with if I was already worn down dealing with repeated stressors or not.

    So yeah cosseted and excessively privileged seems about as likely to produce a barely functional person as extreme deprivation though it’s not always obvious in the first case until they encounter actual adversity.

  138. 138.

    Dave

    @Soprano2: Not new but quite convinced this is part of the particular deranged nihilism of some of the billionaire set heightened by the fact that we understand just enough that we can see how extended life might be possible but even then it is not happening anytime soon drives some of these dudes absolutely around the bend that there are things they can’t buy.

  139. 139.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: Besides California’s high speed rail project, the two high speed rail routes most likely to start this decade are the one between Dallas and Houston and the one between Charlotte and Atlanta. The Atlanta terminus will be Jackson-Hartsfield Airport where passengers will be able to connect to Atlanta’s extensive MARTA transit system.

    Most of the new Amtrak funding will go to improvements in conventional passenger rail. including routes with top speeds of 120 to 150 mph.

    I think a second batch of funding will be neccesary in order to build much capacity for faster trains than this. High speed rail has a lot of proponents so maybe enough support can be gathered for more federal funding in this area.

  140. 140.

    Chris

    @Yarrow:

    I believe there’ve been studies that show that panics and reversion to mob frenzies as a response to a disaster are a lot less common than are usually thought – in the wake of an event like a massive hurricane, especially, the first response of most people in the affected area, other than shell shock, is usually to band together.

    There’s a difference between punched in the face by an actual disaster, though, and a long-cultivated moral panic over something that isn’t actually endangering you, but that a bunch of people keep telling you is a threat.

    Which is in fact something you see come out whenever disaster hits.  The people “panicking” over looters during Hurricane Katrina weren’t people in New Orleans.  They were Fox News anchors and the occasional glory hound like Chris Kyle who lived hundreds of miles away.  The places where anti-immigration politics polls the best and most urgently, famously, are people who live far from the border in blindingly white communities.  Japanese internment came mostly not out of Hawaii but out of California where white farmers had been wanting the steal their Japanese neighbors’ goods for years.  And so forth.

  141. 141.

    AWOL

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: He doesn’t write anything. He just links and cusses Biden and Harris. The commentary consists of music uploads and Little Pig telling us when Little Pig is going to eat or defecate. Yes, it’s a wonderful, insightful blog. I do give him credit for knowing Musk was a human termite years ago.

  142. 142.

    AWOL

    @sdhays: If you’re working against the Democrats in 2024, you’re a tankie. He’s no better than the tankies in my hood who have signs up saying “Think higher than a black woman president killing Palestinians.” I’ve seen/heard this shit on Pacifica/Amy Goodman and fell for it when I was a young sap.

    His blog is an empty vessel that pisses on Biden and Harris and has such insightful commentary as “eat.” Now “eat” is very profound for a dog, but I crave a tad more. He himself has admitted he keeps his shit blog going just to give his old timer’s a place to hang out.

    We can do better.

  143. 143.

    Chris

    @Dave:

    @Soprano2: Not new but quite convinced this is part of the particular deranged nihilism of some of the billionaire set heightened by the fact that we understand just enough that we can see how extended life might be possible but even then it is not happening anytime soon drives some of these dudes absolutely around the bend that there are things they can’t buy.

    One of the better historical analogies I’ve seen is that the very rich of today are increasingly falling into exactly the same kind of obsessions with supernatural and pseudoscientific concepts as the upper classes of a hundred years ago.

    It’s just that the pop cultural background has changed a lot since then.  So while the old aristocrats and industrialists were fixated on the occult, ours have instead taken a deep dive into more science-fiction inspired concepts, like machine sentience, colonies on Mars, and yes, dramatically extended lifespans.

    When you think about it, makes perfect sense.  They have all the money they need to buy anything they could possibly want on Earth.  They’re bored with that, so they look around for other things, things they can’t currently get their hands on.  (Because they don’t exist).  And naturally, being who they are, they get it into their heads that they could get their hands on it, they just have to throw enough money at it.

  144. 144.

    Another Scott

    @AWOL: I haven’t read Atrios in ages.

    The fact that the site hasn’t been updated in a few decades, his usual blogs are “I got nothing, talk amongst yourselves.”, etc., shows that the rumor that he just keeps the place running for the commenters seems accurate.

    He is (or was)  correct about self-driving cars being a hugely difficult problem (especially in real cities, especially with real people as passengers) that Melon had no secret sauce to solve.  He is (or was) correct that efficiency demands making benefits universal and taxing the wealthy to pay for it (e.g. who cares if Bloomberg’s kids get free tuition if they pay higher taxes to make up for it).  He is (or was) right that Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid need to be expanded, not cut.

    He was too whin[g]y about Obama back when I read him.  He seemed to have no understanding that getting things enacted into law in the real world means incremental progress and things that we don’t like along with the good stuff.  It sounds like he’s that same way with Biden.  That’s fine.  Idealists need to push the realists to do better, but that doesn’t mean they should be heading in-the-trenches campaigns.

    tl;dr – Atrios is right about several things.  But he’s not a campaign or real-world legislative strategist.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  145. 145.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kay:

    A certain percentage of well off, middle aged white people went completely insane with the combination of covid, BLM and Me Too.

    I would actually say that they all went completely  insane when obama was elected. Their pathology simply worsened due to COVID, BLM, and Me Too because they were primed to see all of those as hostile cultural forces that obama set in motion during his eight years in office.

  146. 146.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid:

    The Atlanta terminus will be Jackson-Hartsfield Airport where passengers will be able to connect to Atlanta’s extensive MARTA transit system.

    I lived in the Atlanta suburbs as a kid in the mid-late ’60s, early ’70s. I remember when MARTA was just getting off the ground and the absolute refusal of Cobb County to have anything to do with it for reasons that boiled down to blatant racism.

    The Braves moving their stadium out of Atlanta to Cobb County illustrated to me that that thinking is still far too prevalent there.

    :-(

    Here’s hoping that Georgia continues moving bluer and that progress in the region accelerates. Having MARTA expand into the suburbs to enable easier use of HSR would be a great thing for lots and lots of reasons.

    Here’s hoping!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  147. 147.

    wjca

    @Geminid: Besides California’s high speed rail project, the two high speed rail routes most likely to start this decade are the one between Dallas and Houston and the one between Charlotte and Atlanta.

    I hope the others are better designed.  But California’s basically goes from LA to nowhere.  OK  to the state capital — not a major destination.

    And there’s the detail that, they aren’t starting at the LA end, which might at least generate a little suburbs to downtown traffic.  Instead, they’re starting at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, and going north.  Bakersfield to Fresno just isn’t going to produce much ridership at all.

  148. 148.

    Another Scott

    @wjca: Gotta start somewhere. Once they start building it, they’ll learn how to build subsequent sections better, cheaper, faster (all relative terms, of course).

    Three states claim the first interstate highway:

    Where is the first interstate highway? This seemingly simple question is actually quite complicated, as Missouri, Kansas, and Pennsylvania have staked their claims to the first interstate. The answer depends on how the term “first” is defined.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  149. 149.

    Marc

    @wjca:  I hope the others are better designed.  But California’s basically goes from LA to nowhere.  OK  to the state capital — not a major destination.

    The CAHSR project has always been planned to go from SF to LA, Sacramento isn’t anything more than aspirational at this point (although it’s an obvious next phase).  The reason it’s only under construction in the Central Valley now is that is a little matter of 10s of Billions of dollars needed to construct long (in some cases upwards of 10 mile) tunnels between LA and Bakersfield and SF/SJ to Modesto.  This the same reason why existing LA to SF trains go via Sacramento to Bakersfield, with a 4 hour Amtrak bus ride the rest of the way to/from LA.  Or, you can take the once per day Coast Starlight which (obviously) winds its way along the rickity coastal tracks for 12 long hours.

    The newer Shinkansen lines require a huge number of tunnels (much of Japan is mountain terrain, like California).  The ride from Hiroshima to Fukuoka (roughly 200 miles), for instance, is mostly through tunnels.  They just don’t stress about the cost so much, as the trains are mostly at/near capacity for much of the day.

  150. 150.

    Geminid

    @wjca:  It seems like Charlotte/Atlanta and Dallas/Houston lines would be easier to build than California’s because they’ll run across flat or rolling land. California’s Coast Range makes it tougher to connect L.A. and San Francisco.

    But both routes are still in the planning phase and are unlikely to be operating before the end of this decade at the earliest. There probably needs to be a second Infrastructure bill to provide money for construction. In the meantime, I think we’ll see more tracks upgraded to allow trains to run at 150 mph..

  151. 151.

    wjca

    @Marc: The CAHSR project has always been planned to go from SF to LA, Sacramento isn’t anything more than aspirational at this point (although it’s an obvious next phase).

    If you’re going to San Francisco, you go up US 101 thru San Jose, and then up the Peninsula.  You don’t go up the east side of the Central Valley.

  152. 152.

    Marc

    @wjca: HSR requires broader curves than any highway, so you can’t just run it in the median, then you need to go through the Grapevine which is too steep for any train on the surface. The alternative is a 20 mile tunnel through an active fault line.  In 150 years, we managed to get two train lines through that area, along the coast (very slow) and through Tehachapi, which is literally filled with slow moving freight trains 24/7 and has no room for additional tracks.

  153. 153.

    wjca

    @Marc: Sorry to have been unclear.  I didn’t mean following the exact path of US 101, for all the reasons you cite. Just along that general path from the south.

    But if you are going to San Francisco, you can’t just go up to Stockton (or Tracy) and turn west.  There’s this body of water in the way.  That’s why freight goes into the Port of Oakland, not the Port of San Francisco, to get loaded on trains heading east to the rest of the country.

  155. 155.

    Marc

    @wjca:  But if you are going to San Francisco, you can’t just go up to Stockton (or Tracy) and turn west.  There’s this body of water in the way.  That’s why freight goes into the Port of Oakland, not the Port of San Francisco, to get loaded on trains heading east to the rest of the country.

    I specialize in commenting on long dead threads.

    Going direct to Tracy or Stockton is not the plan.  The plan is SF (#4 largest city in CA) -> SJ (#3) -> Merced (I always confuse it with Modesto) -> Fresno (#5) -> Bakersfield (#9)  -> Palmdale -> Anaheim (#10) -> LA (#1).  there will be a wye at Merced which will make it easy to go the short distance north to Modesto (#19, already included as the conventional rail transfer point in the initial segment) -> Stockton (#11) -> Sacramento (#6).  Not an ideal route, but it hits a good portion of the largest cities in the state, with Oakland (#8) and Fremont (#16) short BART rides to SF and SJ respectively.

  156. 156.

    Chris T.

    @wjca:

    That’s why freight goes into the Port of Oakland, not the Port of San Francisco …

    Well, I have to say both no and yes. The Bay in between is an obstacle but the big switchover in freight happened when Oakland bet big on containerized cargo and SF … didn’t. Containerized cargo was such a huge win for shippers that virtually all freight is now containerized, and since Oakland invested heavily in the new crane systems (and SF didn’t), all the cargo goes to Oakland.

    In the intervening decades, of course, other developments have happened as well.

    In any case, I’ll note here that I had a Chinese co-worker (at a several layers back previous job) who could take the train from Shanghai to Beijing—an over-800 mile trip—in under six hours (it’s now 4 hrs 18 minutes). Meanwhile I could take a train trip from Salt Lake City to San Jose, roughly a 700 mile trip, and it would take 23 and a half hours!  Four times slower to go not-as-far, in the “greatest country on earth”?  He was stunned at how bad our transportation system was.

    (He was also stunned, later, at how much food the Mexican place in a nearby strip mall called a single person serving.)

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