Lately the USA resembles a flaming dumpster rolling swiftly downhill toward a chlorine trifluoride tank farm. It’s hard to keep up! Here are a couple of random items for your consideration this afternoon.
Sounds like Pete Hegseth should update his CV so he can shoot for a stretch assignment, like celebrity bingo caller at the VFW post in Radishbreth, Idaho. NPR:
The White House has begun the process of looking for a new secretary of defense, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
This comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continues to find himself mired in controversy. NPR has also confirmed with the same official that Hegseth shared details ahead of last month’s Yemen strikes with his wife and brother in a Signal chat on his personal phone, minutes after being updated by a senior U.S. military official.
We discussed Hegseth’s disastrous tenure this morning, and one of y’all sent chills down my spine by speculating that if Hegseth does go down, Trump might appoint someone even worse, like Q-anon loon Gen. Mike Flynn. That’s entirely plausible, and yikes!
***
The DOW is down 1200-ish as I write this, more than 3%, as are S&P 500 and NASDAQ. Trump is pouring fuel on the fire by SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS at Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump appointed in his first term because Janet Yellen is short (and lacks a penis).
Disappointingly, T$LA’s share price hasn’t dropped below $220. It was hovering around $223 last I looked, having lost more than 7% of value in today’s trading. Burn, baby burn! (The stock price, I mean, in case any of Bondi’s DOJ goons are monitoring this obscure blog.)
Political and financial analysts seem to think Musk will leave the government soon. Here’s a sample of the thinking from a recent WaPo story:
The billionaire is ready to exit because he is tired of fielding what he views as a slew of nasty and unethical attacks from the political left, according to a person familiar with his thinking. He believes his departure will not diminish the power or work of DOGE, his brainchild, the person said, noting that DOGE team members are already established across scores of federal agencies.
Boo-fucking-hoo, but he’s probably right about the “power” and “work” of DOGE since his kinderchuds have exfiltrated our personal data, installed choke-points in the Treasury payment system and Musk has corruptly funneled billions in new government contracts to himself.
Some market commentators seem to believe Musk needs to head back to Tesla to fix what ails the company. In my view, Musk is the problem, not the solution. I don’t know markets, but I do know marketing, and I think the brand joined the choir invisible thanks to its owner’s deeply unpopular antics. They just don’t fully realize that yet.
***
A culinary question as a cleanser following the dumpster-fire discussion: After eating loads of traditional Easter fare yesterday, we decided we’ll have homemade pizza for dinner tonight. Specifically, a grandma-style pie.
I’ve made it a time or two but haven’t settled on a particular recipe. My dough is already prepared. Any tips on toppings, specifically, the order?
Last time I made it, I blind-baked the crust a little, paved it with slices of provolone, added sauce, basil and Pecorino-Romano on top of that and drizzled it with minced garlic-infused olive oil. Suggestions welcome!
Aside from that, open thread!
Dorothy A. Winsor
My favorite pizza is dried cherries and blue cheese.
Your insults cannot hurt me. :-)
Old School
@Dorothy A. Winsor: How did you stumble across that combination?
piratedan
just a semi-casual observation is that Musk may be willing to leave the Government only because its likely that his minions have already placed their siphons onto the government revenue stream and covered it up with the administrative carnage, for whatever number of masters that they serve. If us normies ever wrest control of the government back, there are going to have to be audits or even a reimagining of government services because of this debacle.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Old School: I don’t remember. I’ve made it for years.
Eunicecycle
Mmmm now I want a pizza! It sounds delicious, just the way you made it before!
Baud
I’m so proud of us.
DK
Blue cheese on a pizza sounds great.
prostratedragon
Rep. Don (Donald John) Bacon, Nebraska Gop,
Retired AF Brigadier General, wing commander postings.
Ohio Mom
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Our neighborhood food-fired pizza joint offers cherry and hot honey pizza with some sort of forgettable cheese. Blue cheese would definitely be a good addition.
prostratedragon
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Fruit and cheese do go well together. I like apples and havarti, cheddar, or plain jack. Not so far on pizza, though.
mali muso
I like to make a copycat version of our local wood-fired pizza place’s “Triple B”. Bacon, blue cheese and balsamic glaze. It also has sauteed/browned onions and is finished with a sprinkling of fresh thyme. Nom!
Josie
@prostratedragon:
Fruit and cheese – grapes and brie, yum.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Where’s the earth-shattering kaboom? There’s supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
rikyrah
The Dow is down 971 points.
Fun times.
StringOnAStick
Roast a head of garlic and smear that about your pizza; it’s sublime.
Glad I’m not in any stocks at this point in time.
Josie
@StringOnAStick:
Right? When I got the extra Social Security money I passed on stocks, bonds, and even money market accounts. I was happy to park it in a savings account and wait to see how things would play out. I don’t trust anything at this point.
Brent
@Dorothy A. Winsor: any particular sauce or none at all?
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: So it recovered some before the close. It was down 1200 earlier.
There’s that number again.
SiubhanDuinne
@prostratedragon:
I don’t know what this says about me, but “Air Force” was not the first thing I thought of when I read this.
JWR
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Shh! The truly bad guys wanting to launch another 9/11 might be listening! (And I so wish I were joking.)
frosty
Obscure blog? Obscure blog!!??!! You know as well as I do that it’s an Almost Top 10,000 Blog, the very definition of not obscure!
Loved the dumpster fire imagery BTW.
Betty Cracker
Looks like Mrs. Gold Bar Bob is going to the big house: (NYT gift link)
The article says Gold Bar Bob appealed his 11-year sentence but is expected to start serving time in June. Good.
prostratedragon
@SiubhanDuinne: That crossed my mind when I was typing, but I dood it anyway.
Melancholy Jaques
The asshole is a reckless fuck-up, but all they can say is that he continues to find himself mired in controversy. Fucking media.
Bupalos
I don’t think Trump is yapping about Powell because he has a particularly firm opinion about the Fed interest rate, but rather because he’s gradually becoming aware that he’s actually being linked to the state of the economy in a durable way, and that this is a current liability and future risk. Screeching about Powel is a way to introduce some confusion and give his base something to hang their dumb red hats on.
Almost Retired
@SiubhanDuinne: Retired AF is my aspirational nym.
gene108
@prostratedragon:
Hegseth resigning is okay. Minimal consequences, at best. He’ll slide into a job on the wingnut welfare circuit.
He should be prosecuted for any violations of security processes, but I doubt it’ll happen for a variety of reasons.
Gary K
Once again I learn the lesson: do not read a Betty Cracker post when your mouth is full of food.
Booger
Every time I hear ‘pecorino’ this comes to mind. Enjoy.
geg6
I much prefer Sicilian because I like the thicker crunchy crust and my area of the world has some of the best Sicilian pizzerias anywhere. But Grandma pizza is pretty good, too. I get my Sicilian with extra cheese, roasted red peppers and mushrooms. And now you’ve made me hungry for pizza when I already cut up a sweet potato to make fries, put together some coleslaw and ordered chicken tenders from a local place that makes them with a buttermilk batter and manage to fry them while keeping them juicy and tender, a real feat.
Maybe pizza on the menu for tomorrow though.
New Deal democrat
The three main stock indices were all down about 2.5% today, certainly not good, but not catastrophic either.
But attacks on Fed independence aren’t going to exactly inspire investor confidence.
This is from Harvard econ Prof. Jason Furman:
“ To state the obvious, the President’s Fed bashing is raising long-term interest rates (operating through the risk premium). This will raise mortgage and other borrowing rates and be contractionary. The wealth effect from a falling stock market also contractionary.”
https://bsky.app/profile/jasonfurman.bsky.social/post/3lndur44bg62b
The irony being that the only reason to be panicked about an oncoming recession is the result of T—-p’s own economic “policies” themselves.
And very unfortunately, we are *all* going to suffer, whether by higher costs, higher mortgage and other interest rates, big job losses, and/or decreased value of retirement accounts.
The only silver lining, as I’ve said before, is that for the moment, Wall Street and Big Business have become our allies.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brent: Traditional tomato pizza sauce
rikyrah
They forgot who the actual customer base for Tesla was.
His political activities have repulsed and repelled that customer base.
And, they’re not coming back.
rikyrah
Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) posted at 4:28 AM on Sun, Apr 20, 2025:
President Trump is preparing an executive order to end ALL African activity and diplomacy in the State Department, and close ALL embassies on the continent. In addition, the department will end its contract with Howard University, a historically Black institution, to recruit candidates for fellowships, which are to be terminated. The goal of those fellowships has been to help students from underrepresented groups get a chance at entering the Foreign Service soon after graduation.
(https://x.com/WendellPierce/status/1913887563930018055?t=v12yXISLjIFdSV2dbbs3Kg&s=03)
Betty Cracker
@StringOnAStick: We’ve been spreading roasted garlic on our regular pizza crusts prior to ladling the sauce on for years, and you’re right — it’s outrageously good. I haven’t tried it on a grandma pizza so far because we like to infuse olive oil with minced garlic and then drizzle that all over it after adding the other toppings. We both love garlic, but it might be too much to do both. Maybe. I’m not sure “too much garlic” is a thing!
gene108
@Bupalos:
When the economy struggles the Fed cuts rates, and the economy improves. I doubt Trump’s thoughts on interest rates are deeper than that. Plus he’s surrounded by a bunch of nut jobs regarding how the economy works.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: His son, also Robert, is the current Rep (D) for NJ-8. I wonder how crooked he is. He previously worked as a Commissioner of the Port Authority of NY/NJ, where he chaired the Governance and Ethics Committee – the irony of this is delicious.
MattF
Yes, Flynn would be a real disaster— and Trump might do it specifically because Obama warned him not to. The alternative is someone like Ron Johnson, who is on the Kremlin payroll.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
To understand just how shallow, I could even say dumb, Hegseth is, just read the annotated transcript CNN did of the SignalGate call.
JD Vance, no font of brilliance by any stretch, came across as a font of brilliance in that…by comparison…leaping over a bar set so low, snakes couldn’t slither under it.
However, his resignation means nothing really. Given the entire cabinet was just one major effort to troll the federal government and by extension the USofA, whoever the Orange Fart Cloud nominates next will simply be a different kind of bad.
rikyrah
Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) posted at 7:58 PM on Sat, Apr 19, 2025:
Important note: By disappearing people to El Salvadorian prisons, Trump is explicitly trying to thwart a 2008 Supreme Court case that ruled the Constitution applied to non-citizens on Guantanamo, since the US maintained “jurisdiction & control” over the base there.
(https://x.com/ScottHech/status/1913759067182358978?t=Bs4ensWZdkb3DxijptfFEg&s=03)
Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) posted at 7:58 PM on Sat, Apr 19, 2025:
In Boumediene v. Bush, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those detained on Guantanamo could not be detained indefinitely & had the Constitutional right to challenge their detention.
All still-serving Justices—Roberts, Thomas, Alito—DISSENTED. https://t.co/azQlNKF2Rq https://t.co/aLFLPfUCOe
(https://x.com/ScottHech/status/1913759074031710649?t=gmWk_MsekwkT0SVff2PNCw&s=03)
NeenerNeener
For what it’s worth, my favorite pizza is olive oil, garlic and cheese. Although dried cherries and blue cheese sounds awesome; I love both.
prostratedragon
@Booger: Fun!
prostratedragon
@geg6: Y’all are no good!
HinTN
I had never heard of grandma pizza until I walked past a pizzaria in a California food mall complex. They had a sign and it pulled me in to ask what sort of thing it was. Sounded good but I had already eaten kabobs. Enjoy your pizza, grandma 🤶 Betty (ducks 🙃).
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Some years ago I was in a small ‘garlic is good for you’ cooking and eating group. About once a month we’d gather at someone’s home for a communal garlic-infused meal.
Josie
@rikyrah:
OMFG! Could he be more patently obvious?
Tehanu
@Melancholy Jaques: Yep. Hey, Hogsbreath has tattoos, maybe he can be renditioned to El Salvador?
@rikyrah: How is that even possible?
HinTN
@Betty Cracker: There’s no such thing as too much garlic.
Hoodie
Musk is to blame for many of Tesla’s problems, so I fail to see how his return would help. His political antics have a lot to do with it, but he’s also behind a lot of the company’s missteps. Cybertruck is his baby, years of development wasted on a juvenile vehicle based on zero market research. I was about 50 yards behind one in traffic the other day and it really resembles a stainless steel dumpster from behind.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: George Santos’s sentencing is scheduled for April 25. Prosecutors filed a request Friday that he be given a 7 year prison term, telling the judge that Santos’s social media posts show a lack of remorse. Santos says he’s being persecuted, but that “the Justice Department will NEVER break my spirit.”
Martin
@piratedan: Yeah, they discovered Starlink terminals on the roof of the GSA, apparently to exfiltrate government data. Question is to who?
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t know if the son is also a crook and in fact know absolutely nothing about Menendez the younger, but I do wish some other Dem would bounce him via primary. Maybe that’s not fair because for all we know, he’s honest despite being raised by a crook. But he wouldn’t have that seat if not for his corrupt father’s sleazy machinations, so I’d rather see it go to someone else. I hate corruption, and especially among Dems because it gives fake credibility to the “both sides” lie.
The Audacity of Krope
The Dow is on the way to looking like my bank account, thanks to the Donald. True American greatness.
On accident so he gets no credit.
Martin
BTW, this is an excellent French bread pizza recipe. Staple in our house. Note, only works with what Americans think of as French bread, not what the french do.
Also amenable to an assembly line for group events. We’ve fed it to 50ish people.
prostratedragon
Katie Phang:
Comment below:
Belafon
@rikyrah: There were two types of people buying Teslas. The first group bought them to avoid paying gas taxes. The second bought them to help the environment.
The first group will switch to another model because it’ll be better or cheaper. The second will switch because he’s literally destroying the part of the government that they care about.
Betty Cracker
@Hoodie: Good points. Also, if Musk is so essential to the sound operation of his companies, how does he have so much time to corruptly interfere with elections, lead the destruction of the federal government, post dozens of times a day on Twitter and play video games for hours? Of course, the same could be said of Trump, whose much smaller and cheesier companies seemed to keep right on grifting without him at the helm.
There’s an incredibly unhealthy CEO cult in this country. Maybe one potential upside of the current crop’s massive fuckups in Trump 2 will be puncturing that myth, even just a little. (Eh, probably not.)
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: Xi Jinping has to be ecstatic at this.
Racism makes people extremely stupid.
RandomMonster
Our rule of thumb is to double the amount of garlic called for in the recipe, and that’s just as a starting point.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: That looks excellent; bookmarked — thanks!
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
As leases terminate I wonder how many Tesla driver will re-up vs. those who flee?
It will be noticeable in California before elsewhere. What could prop up used prices is a big leap in new car prices, because tariffs. As things stand, used Teslas are relative bargains.
catclub
So I guess anthrax and tire rims aren’t good enough suggestions?
Elizabelle
This NY Post headline made me laugh yesterday.
Trump trolls Dems in Easter message, slams Biden as ‘highly destructive moron’
Because: every accusation a confession. The Felon knows he himself is regarded as a “highly destructive moron”, and it bothers him.
Little man with little tiny hands. Stay classy, Donald.
VeniceRiley
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The best pizza I ever EVER had was this one with figs ….
https://qrco.de/bbWo2X
Pesto bacon figs etc absolutely delish. In Utah if all the places!
catclub
No, I am sorry. The question is to whom!
what a fat one.
JoyceH
@prostratedragon: Noem claims the cash was because family was in town and she wanted to treat everyone to dinner and Easter gifts. Sorry but I call BS. I doubt if I so much as touch cash from one month to the next. Everything these days goes on debit or credit cards. Cash is for buying something you don’t want a record of.
Martin
@Belafon: No, the first group bought them for status. That’s my community – and owning a Model S was a flex. EVs were a novelty and there were next to no public chargers. They had the status of an S-class but also signaled you had the means to operate it despite the lack of infrastructure. I’m sure there were some avoiding the gas tax, but the car was targeted at affluent Northern and Southern California tech-friendly cities (so the environmental angle was part of the status). It’s why the baseline range needed to be 300 miles, because that’s LA to San Jose with an optional stop in either SLO if you were taking the scenic route or at Harris Ranch on the 5 if you were taking the direct route to charge.
These were sufficiently expensive that gas tax avoidance was negligible, though I’m sure some people rationalized them that way. My city was flooded with them the moment they hit the market. There are pictures on social media of parents lining up to pick up their kids at the private school and it’s just a line of Model Ss with no other cars in the mix.
JML
The reason DOGE has been so good at breaking shit so far is they have a godfather with white house access backing their plays. When Musk goes, the odds of the next person having the same access goes down drastically. especially since we know the Current Occupant has the attention span of a small child. get him gone fast, leave the Idiot Engineer Brigade without a protector and things will start going sideways, because the DOGE fools are good at generating headlines, not solving problems. Even the morons in this cabinet of grifters and clowns won’t be into having people are around in their departments that think they don’t answer to them and only make their lives worse.
getting rid of Heggie the Nazi would be a fine scalp to collect. he’s stupid and loud and dangerous. But he’ll go because he makes the Current Occupant look weak and take up air time. Fine, let’s manipulate the idiot media that way to take down some additional fuckups.
Serial Killer ICE Barbie is a fine next target: she’s media hungry, stupid AF, incompetent, and will steal attention from the boss. She’s also probably screwing the Current Occupant’s former campaign manager.
Bupalos
That’s the “He’s a straight shooter that says what he thinks!” take, which I think is too broadly accepted on the right and left.
I don’t think he’s really capable of having very strong feelings about what the interest rate should be. Anyway, nothing like his knowledge that whatever happens that hurts him or makes him look bad is someone else’s fault. I don’t think he actually gives 2 shits what happens to the economy or the United States except insofar as it endangers his narcissistic supply.
In the real world, the bond market’s decoupling kind of suggests that the overnight rate probably isn’t going to be as potent a tool going forward as we’ve come to expect.
Martin
@JoyceH: Noem is part of the Q-anon fringe that has come to view connected systems not too dissimilarly than the Amish have. I know a few people who only do cash because they don’t want the deep state to get them.
Belafon
@Martin: You are probably more correct, but you should see the complaints here in Texas now that there’s a tax on vehicle registration for EVs to cover road taxes.
catclub
also, take more than one bite to eat the butter lamb.
Melancholy Jaques
I’m an American, can you explain the difference to me, or do I need to go to France?
catclub
@Martin:
Deep state indeed.
Didn’t squeaker Johnson have no bank account? I think he was paid by his church slush fund.
Brent
@Dorothy A. Winsor: thanks. sounds good. I’ll try it soon.
WTFGhost
@Betty Cracker: If you eat enough garlic, the smell will come out your very pores, though you’ll notice it far more in the bathroom.
I realized, after a garlic heavy meal, a nurse giggled, at my smell of garlic, and a bit later, I realized it was because she’d thought I’d farted. I hadn’t – it really does start to waft out of you, sans flatus from either end.
Have you ever eaten beets, and noticed your urine is immediately just a *tiny* bit darker? It will be later, when the beets come out (as all food does), when you won’t know if there’s blood. (The beet-redness doesn’t look like blood, but you wouldn’t see blood mixed with it.) But you might see it immediately in your urine.
It’s the same sort of thing – the red in beets and the garlic smell of garlic gets into your blood stream, and goes out the kidneys, but, garlic can creep to the surface. Maybe beet smell does, too, but we don’t notice it.
So: too much garlic, and your friends might notice, but it’s not unpleasant, sans flatus. No guarantees, otherwise.
This is your 12-year-old’s thirst for science, today, quenched – and garlic is good, healthy food, so, parents, if you can grow it yourself, or buy it cheap, just think of the thrills, plus the safety from vampires!
ewrunning
Happy “Feed TSLA stock into the Woodchipper Day” to all who celebrate it!
Gretchen
@prostratedragon: my son-in-law is a fan of gouda cheese with dates as a snack. He’s right.
catclub
Bridge club table fees. So, yes.
Ruckus
@Almost Retired:
I’m wondering if that AF stands for what most people would think it does……
Or what I almost always do…..
Either way it’s appropriate.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: It is very good. The read explains the process. Basically you make a kind of weak cheesy garlic bread to harden the bread from getting soggy and to provide adhesion for the toppings. You can throw the whole thing together in half an hour.
For proper pizza we alternate between making our own dough and just grabbing Trader Joe’s, which is pretty good. That either needs half a day of prep or an hour.
We find that the barbecue is the best for the proper pizzas because you can get it much hotter than the oven, but you need to avoid the direct heat on the bottom. A top rotisserie burner if you have a fancy grill really does wonders.
Gretchen
@mali muso: Is there also mozzarella on these blue cheese pizzas or just blue?
AM in NC
@Martin: Thank you. Bookmarked for future dinner!
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
Just giving up the entire continent.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: (per Brian Tyler Cohen): Since Trump took office: Dow: DOWN 13.8% Nasdaq: DOWN 20.5% S&P: DOWN 15.5%
Gretchen
Josh Marshall at TPM has pointed out that the people that are really getting their hands dirty hacking into government computers and so on are very young, not very educated (Peter Thiel encourages young men to drop out of college and come work for him) and probably don’t realize what serious crimes they are committing. If we ever get the DOJ back, they’ll be easy to go after. It’s the higher ups that are thinking this stuff up that are keeping their names out of it.
He thinks that somebody should organize a shadow DOJ to keep track of laws broken, evidence found, etc. There are a lot of fired DOJ lawyers who are probably available.
hells littlest angel
@Betty Cracker: I wonder how those two crooks raised such a nice daughter.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Especially as there are more and more electric cars being made/introduced by other auto makers, which do not have the stench of the owner of the company in, on and around every vehicle they have made or will make.
trollhattan
@catclub:
I’m…impressed? by how many places no longer accept cash. Especially evident at events–concerts, sports, festivals, etc. Portland, OR has a lot of small bidnezes that are cash-free.
catclub
@JML: from CNN:
… and we have no intention of changing that.
Martin
@Melancholy Jaques: A French baguette is fairly small diameter and crustier and not designed to be sliced to make sandwiches, where American French bread is soft and is much larger diameter to be cut up for sandwiches.
French baguettes work because you buy it daily. It does not keep, not really even a day. You buy it an hour after it’s made and you eat it within 8 hours. US grocery stores don’t work like that so you have softer, larger loaves that are designed to not go stale for upwards of a week.
Turning a baguette into pizza would make it too hard to eat because of its high surface area and relative density. But an American grocery store French bread loaf works pretty well being softer to start and having less surface area to lose moisture through.
That said, in all other contexts proper French baguettes >> American French bread.
Princess
@JoyceH: If I had $3000 in cash in my purse, I’d keep a closer eye on it.
Hoe is she supposed to keep the Homeland secure if she can’t even keep her own purse safe?
trollhattan
@Jeffro: La-la-la I can’t hear you. My Q1 retirement statements were just an amuse bouche for the Q2 carnage to come.
Jeffro
@VeniceRiley: fig + prosciutto + good cheese = heavenly on a pizza
Gin & Tonic
@JoyceH: Exactly. I’ve had a $20 bill sitting on my night table for probably 2-3 months, untouched. Don’t even remember why it’s there.
Jeffro
@trollhattan: sorry (seriously!)
My armchair investor advice? Next time there is any sort of uptick whatsoever, move all of your retirement funds into annuities.
This market is going to continue its slow downward ratchet until at least the midterms, if not 2028.
WTFGhost
@Melancholy Jaques: My exploration of baking says:
1) white bread, with bread flour (though I’ve heard “all purpose” but never lower than AP in protein)
2) sourdough
3) with a slow two rises, and final proofing, to let the flavor develop
4) twisted into a baguette, and
5) baked with steam, to get a crispy crust (take a misting bottle – you can spray your loaves, and this will be enough steam, or, you can use the pan+boiling water.
If you’ve had that, you probably don’t need to go to France to know, but you might still be put in awe by how good the best French bakers are. And, of course, the French do a lot more than baguettes, but, that’s the traditional “French bread” that nearly everyone speaks about, and the most recognizable.
I wonder if the alcohol, caused by the yeast fermentation (that’s right, folks, you is drinking yeast poop when you raise that wrist!) changes how the baking occurs – whether the higher percentage of alcohol changes when the water starts to steam (I mean, it must, simple chemistry, but, enough to *matter*)…
Never mind. Good, crispy crust, some body/chew to the bread, and a rich flavor from the fermentation, and… damn. I have no idea what the holes should look like, but longer rise usually means “at least some bigger holes”.
Jackie
@Betty Cracker:
These are crimes FFOTUS approves of. Hopefully these are state and not federal convictions.
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
it really resembles a stainless steel dumpster from behind.
Every other angle as well.
It’s like a rich boy didn’t want to play with model cars so built one out of stainless steel boxes. It is, if you’ll pardon the expression, One Ugly Piece of Shit. And yes I’ve seen a couple up close, one yesterday on the road and one a while back getting my car serviced, at a tesla dealer next door to the different brand dealer I use. It looks like a five year old rich kid designed it while smoking pot. After the sixth hour straight.
M31
saw a bumpersticker on a Tesla today that said
Tesla
Owners
Anti
Elon
Club
today
rikyrah
@Gretchen:
I don’t disagree with this.
Gretchen
@JoyceH: Cash is also the medium for bribes, either giving or receiving.
NotMax
@Jeffro
Poor is the new standard.
//
Martin
Regarding the economic carnage. I’m increasingly of the view, learning more and more surrounding this, that if Democrats want a good long-term economic strategy (note, not what they’ve been doing and nothing like what Trump is doing) then it’s going to be kind of painful. A weaker dollar to drive certain kinds of foreign investments from the US (real estate, etc.) and to raise the cost of imports (without imposing tariffs) and make US exports more attractive, a relatively high fed rate (5%-7%) with labor policies designed to keep wages growing faster than that rate, higher marginal tax rates, ideally with a moderate wealth tax, and a stock market that sees zero growth for long periods of time, and budget surpluses designed to pay down debt service (which is now more expensive than DOD), with a more interventionist government in strategic industries, etc. and less free market reliance.
Basically, take the mechanism that the public was sold on (401Ks) and kill them in favor of on the ground investments in labor and infrastructure, improved savings rates over market returns, etc. Basically take all things the public was conditioned to do over the last 40 years and flip them. Mostly a return to the 1960s in terms of how to grow wealth, and commitment to stick to that plan for extended periods of time.
I don’t think it’s possible, and it’s the kind of thing that doing a little bit of it but not all of it is likely to make things worse not better.
Gin & Tonic
@hells littlest angel: Nadine Menendez, the convicted second wife of Gold Bar Bob, is not the mother of Alicia Menendez. Jane Menendez, Bob’s first wife (divorced ~2005) is.
Chetan Murthy
@Dorothy A. Winsor: figs, ham, arugula, goat cheese. Sometimes with balsamic onions.
Danielx
Read someplace else that Felonious Orange has expressed complete confidence in his Secretary of Defense, or words to that effect. If my memory serves, in politispeak that means ‘start boxing up your I-love-me wall decorations, you’re embarrassing the boss’.
Martin
@WTFGhost: Even just your standard neighborhood baker in France is pretty fucking good. And I think that’s part of their secret – they have laws designed to keep small businesses working so there’s a lot of people who know how to do this stuff, and a culture of supporting them. One of my pet peeves is that most cities won’t allow a bakery to serve a neighborhood because they won’t zone for a bakery (cafe, pub, restaurant, etc.) to be inside a residential area to be convenient, so they all get driven out of business in favor of the big chains that you drive across town to.
Gretchen
@Gin & Tonic: Jane is probably not unhappy about Nadine going to prison.
Chetan Murthy
@StringOnAStick: IKR? I still have a massive tax bill to pay (but I set that money aside, it’s just a matter of executing the payment), but i can look at the markets with equanimity (though not at the dollar exchange rate, ugh ugh ugh).
Steve LaBonne
@Martin: They HAD a good fucking economic strategy. The Biden economy was the strongest in the world and heading in the right direction even on problems like inequality. That’s one of the infinite number of things that are completely maddening right now.
Martin
@Ruckus: So, I’ve seen a few arguments that Trump is appealing to a lot of voters because his obscenity is taken as a feature of his willingness to break form status quo institutions. If you are looking for the status quo to change, obscenity of any form become a desirable quality. I wonder if many Cybertruck buyers view it the same way.
trollhattan
Counter-battery fire from Haavaahd. Rooting for the Crimson.
Steve LaBonne
@Martin: Until you lose your job and then your house.
Gin & Tonic
@Gretchen: Reading the Menendez Wikipedia page is just a garden of delights. For instance, I learned there about this guy, whom I now love unreservedly:
Elizabelle
@Martin: I used to wonder why you saw so many French and Italian recipes calling for stale bread.
No longer.
hells littlest angel
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks for the correction!
HopefullyNotcassandra
@piratedan: and contracts cancelled
Messieurs Musk, Trump and Vance have set up grifts against our treasury to last long into our future.
Here is but one example
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-peter-thiel-ramp-gsa-smartpay-expense-payment-system
trollhattan
@Danielx: Donny today, with the cameras rolling.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@prostratedragon: in cauliflower rice pizza, apples, havarti, garlic and a touch of jalapeño are very tasty.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan:
Uh, why?
Baud
Has this been posted?
Doc Sardonic
@trollhattan: Ran into that at a concert right after the Pandemic. I never carry cash and was getting a drink and the person ahead of me orders theirs and goes to pay cash. When the bartender tells them they don’t take cash there was a minor panic. I told the person not to worry I accept cash and bought their drink for them, then pointed them to the cash conversion machine Live Nation had where you could convert your cash to a venue card.
I also think not taking cash helps with security, removing robbery as a hazard.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Bupalos:
You are likely right.
I have long suspected that this president’s debt load obsesses him. The tariffs, then, were meant to drive down the dollar and interest rates. Ergo, this president’s debt load decreases.
Of course, the alternative notion that this president’s economic moves are simply the direct result of his being a know nothing silly person on economic issues does have substantially more proof behind it at this point.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Betty Cracker: too much garlic is never a thing
in my humble very garlicky opinion
Maybe we should consult my neighbors though?
Geminid
@trollhattan: That “personal lawyer” Tim Parlatore is a very sketchy actor.
Chetan Murthy
@Doc Sardonic: I read once that for many retail businesses, the credit card fees are lower than the losses due to robbery and …. (uh) “shrinkage” (employees stealing).
i used to be a obstinate cash user until the pandemic. Then, well, switched to CC, and really haven’t looked back. I still carry a few twenties, but it takes months to go thru what I used to use up in a week.
cain
@rikyrah:
He’s coming after the non-profits as well. I think he thinks he has the power to remove their tax status. The mailing list i’m with global non-profits are talking about it.
bbleh
@Bupalos: but mostly cuz NOTHING IS EVER HIS FAULT, UNDERSTAND?!?
HopefullyNotcassandra
@prostratedragon: do you think that amount of cash was truly in her purse? Since this Secretary has already proven herself to be a prolific liar, I am unprepared to take her at her word on any matter.
If her claim is true, Mrs Noem’s operational security is extraordinarily poor.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
That’s hilarious lol
bbleh
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I did wonder about that. “Oh and my grandmother’s legacy diamond earrings worth at LEAST $25,000!” Insurance claim follows.
And “operational security”? In the TRUMP administration? The one that includes Hegseth and Waltz and Trump himself? Ahahahaha!
HopefullyNotcassandra
@JoyceH: I agree with you usually.
I also think Mrs Noem may be lying here because lying is what she does.
Nonetheless, I will say we tend to use cash for restaurant bills and tips to save the restaurant the credit card fees.
cain
@Martin: In that way, Oregon is doing pretty good because we design neighborhoods to be walkable and easily be able to walk to shops.
The Audacity of Krope
Don’t see why. Debt, like wealth, you can’t take with you.
Steve LaBonne
@cain: I fully expect them to come after liberal religious bodies like the Unitarian Universalist Association. (Probably also coming after 1000 individual congregations is more work than they’re prepared to put in, but who knows.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Martin:
“They don’t zone” isn’t true, that’s just the standard white urbanist bullet point talking and doesn’t reflect reality.
The entire “street activation” statement is yet another market urbanist turd of a concept. Why? In practice, what you’re thinking will happen never happens. Why again? Developers scrape buildings that supported such businesses to put in X-Over-1 “mixed use” shitboxes. In many cases now, cities mandate that, thus the “they don’t zone” comment isn’t even close to being true.
New X-Over-1 shitbox goes in and all that so-called ground level retail *never* gets rented. Why again? Rents are now too high and the developer won’t lower them, typically because their loan covenants prevent that. A twee bakery can’t afford the rent. The other thing we see are landlords of the older buildings now jack the rents so high, said bakery has to close up and the space sits vacant. Tax code helps make that “sensible” for many property owners who want the loss.
Developers here call these X-Over-1 shitboxes “Mixed Vacancy” buildings. They hate the fact they’re now mandated to do that and know they’ll never rent the ground floor. The end result half the time is the ground floors now remain vacant for years or the owner converts them into gyms and dog-washing stations for the incoming white professional singles and their obligatory dog.
I work 3 neighborhoods on issues pertaining exactly to this. We have parcels with space, old space, that’s perfect for all this mythicized small business stuff, hell, I was active earlier this year when neighbors were trying to preserve a building exactly for those uses. Instead, the milker landlord thinks he’s hit the developer lottery, sells out and what had been affordable retail space goes away and nothing replaces it.
Denver is an example of many cities nationwide who’ve gone down this path, found it wanting, and now not knowing wtf to do.
Martin
@Steve LaBonne: Eh. I’ve argued here a lot that the traditional economic measures showed a strong economy. But there are a LOT of signs it wasn’t strong that the government doesn’t measure.
Some notes about institutional data collection:
I’ll note a few things:
Democrats have been crowing about the ‘strongest in the world’ but people on the ground don’t agree with that. Not because GDP hasn’t been going up, but because the benefits of that GDP growth aren’t well distributed. Lots of averages going up, with only a handful really benefitting, and everyone else being flat or worse off. The top 1% have seen wealth accumulation of over 7% for the last 4 decades. That’s double the average rate of inflation. The bottom 50% of the country hold 2.4% of the nations wealth. Half the country is fucking poor. Median household wealth in the US is $200K – this includes retirement and home equity. Mean is $1.1M.
In a country where pensions were still regularly a thing, $200K wealth would be fine. But if that’s designed to generate passive income for you to retire off of, you’re fucked. Median home price in the US is $400K, suggesting that the median American is in debt to their future self, possibly to a large degree. We owe $1.6T in student debt, $1.6T in car debt. That’s over $5K per person in this country for each of those and most of that is concentrated in that bottom half.
Like, these are SERIOUS problems that simply aren’t captured in strong GDP, strong employment numbers.
Jackie
@hells littlest angel:
The mom is stepmother to Alicia. Maybe daddy was corrupted by her?
Pappenheimer
@Betty Cracker: there’s this guy calling himself Alucard who says too much garlic is absolutely a thing
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Martin: I think bringing back well regulated by each state savings & loans would achieve much of what you suggest with less pain.
Bill Arnold
A classic:
IN THE PIPELINE – THINGS I WON’T WORK WITH – Sand Won’t Save You This Time (26 FEB 2008, DEREK LOWE)
Doc Sardonic
@Chetan Murthy: if you figure in that credit and debit card fees run from 0 to around 4% and some processors charging a percentage + say 15¢ per swipe (as I remember that pays your machine rental fee), a little jiggery pokery with your pricing and going no cash makes perfect sense, also too, minimal worries about getting robbed when making your after hours trip to the bank to make the night drop.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Martin: there is something incredibly special about waking up to the smell of bread baking before dawn.
Martin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Explain how a small business functions inside of a gated community. As soon as you commit that to be gated, all ideas of commerce within the community are off the table. That’s the whole goddamn point of the gate.
We have gated communities that are MILES across. I have friends where the closest retail anything is 3 miles away, and they are not in a rural area. It’s pretty dense. My HOA has 30,000 people in it. These communities are effectively medium sized cities with only single family homes in them.
sab
@trollhattan: Ohio is the opposite: a lot of small busimesses give you a discount on cash purchases.
And I have had fraudulent purchases on my debit and credit card at least three times. I caught it fast and my bank was good about it, but I never spend anything but cash anymore except to well known to me vendors.
Doc Sardonic
Used periodically drive through an area with a, if I am remembering correctly, it’s been awhile, Merita Bread factory. Mass produced bread, not artisanal at all, but the smell of the bread baking
mali muso
@Gretchen: Yes, at least when I make them, I start with a regular thin layer of tomato sauce plus a thin layer of mozzarella before loading on the toppings which include blue cheese distributed randomly. Otherwise I think it would be a wee bit too overpowering.
Steve LaBonne
@Martin: No capitalist economy has ever worked for everyone. That’s a ridiculous standard. But Biden’s was the first US economy in a very long time that was making measurable inroads on inequality. Eight more years of Democratic governance in a similar vein would have produced significant, widespread progress. Instead we threw ourselves into the abyss.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Okay, but I ask the same thing I ask whenever this comes up: why did so many of these people think the economy WAS great during the first Trump administration? All these same things were true then, too.
Politically, the problem is the Hack Gap. Our side will be bothered by these long-term structural inequalities of capitalism. Their side just wants a big strong daddy in charge and the elimination of the income tax to the greatest extent possible.
Martin
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I think that’s a component of it, but that’s not going to change consumer interest rates given the scale of the financialization of home and personal debt. And that doesn’t solve the need for surplus foreign held dollars to find a place to go due to the strong dollar, which is competing against US citizen investment. And that doesn’t address the wealth gap.
Note, Elon Musk and some of these others have enough wealth to be economies of their own. They have as much monetary influence as some of our smaller states do. Again, 25% of home sales last year were bought by investors, not homeowners. There is not a market on earth that you can remove 25% of the supply of and not have affordability go down, especially a fairly inelastic one like housing. Regional banks don’t help solve that problem. You have to redistribute that wealth. And if you want wages to counter it, you need to increase wages ahead of inflation + the rate of wealth growth. In times of 3% inflation, that’s like 10% wage growth.
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, I think this is the right question to ask. @Martin: is surely right that the economy isn’t work for lots of people. So what? So the hell what? It’s been that way for -decades-, and pretending that somehow Biden is supposed to wave a magic wand and fix it, or else we need to give control back to the Republicans, is ….. idiocy. And yet that is what Trump voters (who -ostensibly- voted on economic reasons) did, right?
I’m unconvinced. I think they were all getting hard-ons thinking about all the immigrants who would be deported, all the Black people, all the gender minorities who would get hurt, and that’s why vote for him.
Blinded by their fascist dicks.
Jim Appleton
@Martin: Preheated pizza stone in the BBQ is the way to go. For many things as well as pizza.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: Martin, your last paragraph, it’s all true. But I ask you: and so what? What’s a Dem supposed to do about about, b/c I can’t see anything a Dem can do in the short-term that won’t get them turfed-out of office, and haha, the Republican who’ll replace ’em will undo it all.
I mean -seriously-, you talk about house prices being sky-high, and part of the reason being private equity coming in and buying up tracts of houses. Well, what are you gonna do? Stop that? B/c -incumbent- homeowners are gonna -scream- if you do it. Hell, they scream already at modest upzoning in heavy transit corridors, why would they not scream at this?
I sure don’t know what the solution is for all this, but I know one thing for sure: it doesn’t go thru things like lowering house prices — b/c that’ll make people -scream-.
[ok, I actually do know what the solution is: steeply progressive and confiscatory taxation. B/c there just aren’t many really rich folks — by construction.]
Bill Arnold
@Martin:
Well, it was connected to “The Administrator’s” office. A silicon valley exec whose wife worked for X.
Elon Musk installed his top lieutenants at a federal agency you probably haven’t heard of (BYRON TAU, JOSHUA GOODMAN, GARANCE BURKE AND BRIAN SLODYSKO, April 17, 2025)
prostratedragon
@Gretchen: Gouda, especially smoked, works well with apples too.
Martin
@Steve LaBonne: It was not. It slowed the rate of inequality, but inequality kept growing. In the US non-college heads of household have 30% the wealth of college heads of households. What does it say, politically, when you have policy of debt relief for the college head of households arguing that they will struggle to build wealth. What does that say to the non-college folks? It says ‘you guys are totally fucked’. 8 more years wouldn’t have changed this dynamic for the better. It would have kept inequality growing slower, but I didn’t see any policy it would have reversed. The Democrats marginal tax rates weren’t going to change that. There were no real policies to increase opportunities to grow wealth. The investments in industries were going to benefit the professional and investor classes, not the working class. There’s a reason that California’s housing market has not completely collapsed despite a median home price of $900K – the folks who can afford a million dollar house are doing just fine, and there’s enough of them to keep this market going.
@Matt McIrvin: Nobody was arguing that Trumps first term policies were better. I think the correct read on the electorate is that we tried the conventional GOP Bush policy and that failed us, and we tried the conventional Dem Obama/Biden policy and that failed us, and given a choice of ‘I wouldn’t change any of Biden’s policies’ and an unconventional GOP Trump policy, voters were desperate enough to try the unconventional GOP Trump policy. It’s predictably disastrous, but there was no unconventional Dem policy being offered up. Note who is getting the big rally audiences right now – Bernie and AOC – the unconventional Dem economic policy people. I’m not convinced their policy ideas will work but I think they are at least speaking to the correct goal in a genuine way. Trump also spoke to the correct goal ‘you are being ripped off’ but in an ungenuine way because he wants to be the one ripping you off. AOC and Bernie don’t want to be.
I’m not saying you need to turn the economy over to working class sensibilities, but you need to not build an economy that caters to the professional and investor class exclusively. In fact, I don’t think you can right the ship without asking those classes to make some sacrifices, and Dems are not yet on board with throwing their source of political donations overboard.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Martin: We could ban investment housing purchases. Anymore there are way too many vacant houses that never seem to see humans inside near me. It is maddening.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Martin:
This.
It’s never discussed enough in here but so much of what we discuss always goes back to income inequality and how 40+ years of supply-side economics has brought us to this point. Biden’s actions would help but they were first steps…that 77 million people tossed out the window last November.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: That’s why I ended #104 with this:
I have no idea how you convince people like me to make the needed sacrifice. I mean, I’m willing to do it as is my dad, but not my mom. It’s a really fucking hard sell. And I wonder if it’s the kind of thing that can’t be done politically, only externally. It might require a war or overwhelming natural disaster, etc. to force those conditions. This is why some people are accelerationists. They see a system that is incapable of solving its own problems and seeks a catalyst to change that, with the byproduct that a LOT of people die.
Chetan Murthy
@HopefullyNotcassandra: relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis
But this sort of thing has to be -incremental- and -sustained-. Impossible to do when one party -will- reverse everything and make things worse, and they get power every few cycles (at best).
Bill Arnold
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
Vacancy taxes are legal. Some jurisdictions in the USA have them. (Not many.)
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Chetan Murthy: Covid reaction I think. The sheer number of people who believe we over-reacted to COVID (despite losing more people than any other of our economic peers) still stuns me. These folks are believe we “shut down” wholly, which is also demonstrably false. Folks forget the Spaniard who went to jail for pretending to walk his dog. Folks forget so much and our MSM helps them with the amnesia.
I have met few actual racists in my life. Most have anxieties and fears that can be stoked or soothed. The GOP has chosen to stoke the fears and drive all divisions for most of my life.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: Are your parents -that- wealthy? Wow. [ok, I’m guessing not, just b/c the odds are in favor of that] So your mom doesn’t want the rich to get taxed …. why?
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t think vacant housing benefits homeowners.
Chetan Murthy
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I don’t think homeowners care until/unless that vacant housing attracts squatters. Until then, if the price of private equity bidding up prices is vacant housing, why would an incumbent homeowner care? Their main investment is rising in value! I mean, sure they -talk- about all sort of amenities and “qualities” of their neighborhoods, but they don’t actually -mean- any of it. What they -mean- is “the number on zillow for my house is going up!”
Martin
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Yeah, that would go a long way. Remove all tax benefits for owning more than one home. Treat residential converted rental properties as undesirable social policy and tax them so aggressively that they become unviable (AirBNB, etc.) But these are state and local policies, not federal, at least that could survive this USSC.
Note, policies to encourage public housing help here. Here in CA a major problem is that you have virtually no individual land sales to the public where people have agency how to build on it – they tend to be large developer projects with healthy profit margins built in and no means for the public to bypass that system, so you get housing maximized for profit rather than maximized for social benefit.
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne:
Brandi Buchman:
It is downright evil.
NotMax
How long before Orangemandias signs an Executive Order naming Vance as Acting Pope?
//
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Chetan Murthy: Agree
This is why we need to return to the days when the democrats controlled the house and the senate. This is the one thing we did before that worked that we have not tried again.
This is also why we need to embrace everybody who turns to us from the maga lunacy
imho
Elizabelle
@prostratedragon: The Felon has been a plague, for sure. And yes, look at the opportunity cost.
prostratedragon
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
Sounds pretty good. I had to look up riced cauliflower pizza crust, but seems easy. Should work in a large cast iron skillet.
prostratedragon
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Could have been, though it sounds like a lot for just around town, even for entertaining maybe 5-6 people. I’ve carried a thou, spent nearly half treating dinner. Brother, not an affair. Thing with KN to me is partly the hypocrisy; one of Those People having more than a small sum of cash neans they must be a gangster.
BellaPea
@Ruckus: I’m not usually a vulgar person, but coming out of the grocery last week the traffic lane beside me had two young guys in a Cybertruck. It was YUGELY ugly and I shot them a nice fast bird when the light changed.
Fair Economist
@Martin:
That is not what the data from the Federal Reserve says. The lowest number is in 2013, and it’s been up a bit since. It’s true that the numbers under Biden were slightly worse than under Trump1, and were roughly flat, but I wouldn’t say it went down. 2020 was higher, but that was a quirk of the pandemic.
Fair Economist
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Building housing has worked in Denver, just as it’s worked in the few places that built enough (Austin and Minneapolis OTTOMH). Prices are indeed coming down. The needed amount is in the neighborhood of a 2% increase in supply per year, which is really not all that much. It says something about how Americans have become used to having no new construction that such levels generate complaints.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: We’re not top 1% rich, but we’re all top 5% rich. I have several million on my multi millionaire dad, and my mom has several million on me.
We are the exceptions that prove the rule. Grew up poor but both my mom and dad worked in financial services and we all have a small-c conservative viewpoint toward money. My dad has only ever had one loan in his life – his mortgage. My mom is the same. I’ve had two – my mortgage and a small emergency college loan. We all buy cars with cash, we never pay credit card interest, etc. I worked mostly full time in college. We save and we thrift. Almost all of my clothes are still from the thrift store. I have nice things but they are VERY selective. Same with my parents. My millionaire dad lives in a double wide so he can spend all his discretionary money on travel, which he does very frugally. We all have substantial investment portfolios. I have a lot of home equity.
But we all invested in the 80s and 90s and we’re all reaping those benefits. We disagree on details but not on fundamentals for how to build wealth. And yeah, the Biden economy was fantastic for us. But my kids are struggling to do this on their own. Even my son who is an engineer in a tech firm making 6 figures is not really getting ahead. He doesn’t own a car, he rents a 1BR apt, he lives like his parents do – debt free. But he’s 20 years from home ownership without help from us. His access to wealth opportunities are a lot more limited than they were to us, which is why things like crypto are appealing – if you lock out real-estate and other conventional investments (even savings rates) you’re going to get weird shit filling the void. My daughter’s interests aren’t in high earning careers and she’s demoralized. She can see what rent costs. She can do the math.
I traded higher earnings for a pension and better benefits, which paid off. We could easily have been bankrupted by medical debt with some of the problems around my kids, but we avoided that entirely. I don’t need my savings to carry me through retirement because I have a proper pension.
But almost everything has gone our way – much due to good decisions on our part. But not everyone has those opportunities and not everyone has a few generations of wisdom in how to invest, how to avoid expenses, etc. I can walk into a room in my 2nd hand shit and as a white man still get listened to and respected. I don’t need to dump money into clothing and so on in order to overcome negative biases. That shit adds up a LOT.
But my mom is a republican. She did it, why can’t everyone – all while telling me of all the hurdles she legitimately did face, and overlooking that because of those, she was never valued by an employer. My stepfather, despite being less qualified, was the one that was valued. So no, she didn’t do it, she just happened to marry the guy who did, and together they did the right stuff in terms of saving, investing, being frugal, etc. If it wasn’t for him, she never would have had a dollar to invest after my parents divorced.
This is a system if you get underwater, the system keeps you more and more underwater. If you get above water, the system pushes you more and more above water. I have banks offering me thousands of dollars up front to move my money there (that is almost certainly paid for by overdraft fees and the like). I pay no fees for anything. When we moved to a financial advisor, at the end of the first phone call he asked ‘is there anything else you need’ and my wife jokingly said an iPad, and we laughed, and a week later an iPad showed up in the mail. We were floored. Oh, this is what being rich is like – it’s a self-perpetuating system – you have to actively fail at being rich.
Since I retired our net worth has gone up no less than half a million per year (we’ll see what happens this year) while our household income has been in the $40K per year range. Not only do we pay next to no taxes, the ACA subsidies are larger than our tax liability. So long as we don’t realize those gains, or so long as we realize them in very specific ways, tax policy by either party is largely immaterial to us until someone puts forward a wealth tax, a tax on stock transactions – anything like that will help.
People do not understand the specifics of just how badly this system is rigged in favor of rich people. But I think they can sense it. I think they know it’s rigged, they just don’t know how to change it or to take advantage of it when they have an opportunity.
cain
@Martin:
It’s defintely rigged. Everything these days seems to be wired for the rich. Your evangelist preacher is talking about prosperity gospel. Seems like you are god blessed.
This country appalls me regularly these days. Shining city on a hill? lol, more like a wasteland of consumerism.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: I think the really telling thing is what happened when Trump came into office in 2017. To hear Republicans talk about it, Trump fixed the terrible Obama economy we had been suffering under. We went from Great Recession to a boom, overnight!
In reality, of course, essentially nothing changed at that moment. It was just that the numbers they’d been told to see as fake could now be believed in. I remember a Trump rally at which Trump openly told them that. “We used to say those numbers were fake, but now they’re real, right?” And the crowd roared.
I don’t know how you accomplish anything with an electorate that in thrall to lies.
MagdaInBlack
@Martin: Thank you, Martin, for being able to see how it is.
different-church-lady
“I can’t understand it. We hired a guy we knew to be an unqualified, incompetent drunkard as secretary of defense and and it turns out he’s not up to the job!”
Melancholy Jaques
@WTFGhost:
A major bread surprise for me was how good the bread was back in the USSR. Two kinds, white & black, both vended off the back of these little trucks on the street. Given the exchange rate, the bread was essentially free as far as I was concerned. Same thing with the ice cream.
Gretchen
The Georgia citizen whom ICE is trying to deport as a noncitizen was on his way to a flooring job. Garcia’s only arrest was for loitering outside a Home Depot trying to get day labor. Deporting all the people who build houses isn’t going to help housing prices.
Melancholy Jaques
@Martin:
People talk as if that wasn’t an extremely short period in American history, much shorter than the 401K era.
Bill Arnold
@Gin & Tonic:
I try to keep at least 10 percent of my spend in cash. Just as ambiguity for anyone watching for whatever reason.
We live in a surveillance society, and it is increasingly complete.
This is one of the only good reasons for cryptocurrencies; to remotely buy goods or services that local jurisdictions forbid for reasons that one does not agree with.
Credit cards bought/filled with cash can work for that too, but there is generally a video recording of the purchase.
Lyrebird
What the everloving…?
And pooty poot.
But I am crying. I hope it’s not carried through…
catclub
@trollhattan: I am in favor of the suit.
But I think this is a made-up harm: ” illegally imperiling its academic independence,”
Bill Arnold
@M31:
A friend completed their Tesla -> Audi conversion over last weekend. Audi emblems back and front.
mrmoshpotato
For Mars?
The South African apartheid-humping Nazi bitchass and their vehicles being shit are what ails the company.
Martin
@Melancholy Jaques: True, but it was the period of time when both Democrats and Republicans can agree things were economically good (not the rich, though). Mind you, some of that was because half the planet had been destroyed and the US was the beneficiary of exporting for that rebuilding, but you can at least get consensus that it was a pretty good time to be working class.
How that manifests can of course be different. Instead of employer pensions, make the government one better, etc. Note, SS got in trouble because increasing shares of GDP were being generated by automation – and robots and computers don’t pay payroll taxes (but they should, through VAT, which is a proxy for payroll taxes for workers)
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
In a statement to the newspaper, the White House said no classified information was shared.
The messages in the second chat, sent on 15 March, included flight schedules for American F/A-18 Hornets carrying out strikes on Houthi targets.
If anyone on either chat had leaked it before the strikes, or if one or more phones was compromised by e.g. Russians, and that party had leaked the strike timings to the Houthis, potential-strike-specific layered air defenses could have been set up by the Houthis, and one or more American planes shot down.
Definitely classified, at the time.
rekoob
@Martin: With your permission, I’d like to share your observations at #138 and #177 with some of my classmates from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. With attribution as “Martin on Balloon Juice”, but if you’d rather not, I’ll understand and not do so.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@catclub: That is actually a significant harm for any institution of higher learning. What is left of such an institution if it is forced by government fiat to teach falsity? Nothing is left. The whole ancient university project is rendered pointless.
Kayla Rudbek
@rikyrah: so we’re going to leave Africa to China and Russia?!
Kayla Rudbek
@trollhattan: The only way I would buy a Tesla now is if I plastered it with bumper stickers saying “I bought this used so the Nazi didn’t get any of my money” and even then I would have to check the insurance rates, because I don’t want to buy a car that is going to be a target for vandalism.
Kayla Rudbek
@JoyceH: “you spent HOW MUCH money at the yarn store/festival?”
Which seriously does create a problem for the seller if they have a lot of cash on hand and they are out of town so not able to get to their bank/credit union. Fiber festivals have problems with cash boxes being stolen from vehicles.
RaflW
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: “Where’s the earth-shattering kaboom? There’s supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!”
I ask this question of the gods (or just the ceiling or the air) pretty much every day now. I keep thinking that Trump will finally fall like Wile E. Coyote after dangling in air. He is sinking, but I want that whistling wind sound!
Kayla Rudbek
@Gretchen: hell, my dad’s retired JAG and would be happy to get his Class A uniform out and head into court to prosecute people (although he would go to Ukraine first to try the Russians for war crimes).
I’d be happy to help out as well (various theft of some types of intellectual property does open up criminal penalties as a punishment).
Kayla Rudbek
@trollhattan: I think that the sewing/fabric store in Old Town Alexandria is also cash-free (which makes it harder to hide purchases when the spouse has login access to credit card and bank account)
prostratedragon
@Kayla Rudbek: That would be the result.
Kayla Rudbek
@Chetan Murthy: I prefer paying cash for gas at my local stations because they have problems with skimmers in the gas pumps. I don’t like having to cancel my credit card because my information was compromised at the gas station pump.
Martin
@rekoob: Of course. No attribution necessary.
Kayla Rudbek
@Bill Arnold: I’m surprised that the other automakers aren’t suing people for using their trademarks like that.
Timill
@Kayla Rudbek: Generally, the fix for that is to pay by card in-store. Or pay cash…
Betty
Just popping in on a dead thread to express my deep admiration for our wordsmith. Just deliciously good stuff in our era of dystopia. Something make us smile.
Paul L.
“Kerners Are Go!”