Wednesday, October 03, 2018
They Mean It
You can have some respect (some) for the game, even when played by vicious evil liars. But what's happened with Trump (it started with Bush) is that you've basically put the dumbass people who were right wing bloggers in charge of everything. And they're so dumb they believe the stupid shit they say and write.
How About A Thicker Phone?
One mystery to me is that phone (funny that within about 20 years the word "phone" will have completely lost its original meaning) producers don't produce a "here's a thicker one with 3x the battery life" option. Especially when people buy that sexy Jobs-inspired paper thin phone and then put a brick case around it to keep it from breaking. Annoyingly, there are fewer and fewer options with swappable batteries too, but at least there's a (not justified, to me) non-aesthetic argument for that.
Extremists
On one side we have people who want everyone to have health care, on the other side we have people who cheer on putting toddlers in cages.
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Vote Bloomberg.
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Vote Bloomberg.
Morning Thread
I'm going to repeat Atrios' link to the NY Times article detailing how the Tax Cheat in Chief acquired his fortune.
Important to remember that only the little people pay taxes.
Important to remember that only the little people pay taxes.
Tuesday, October 02, 2018
The Real American Dream
Trump's father:
Major Major's father:
Much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal. Although Fred Trump became wealthy with help from federal housing subsidies, he insisted that it was manifestly unfair for the government to tax his fortune as it passed to his children. When he was in his 80s and beginning to slide into dementia, evading gift and estate taxes became a family affair, with Donald Trump playing a crucial role, interviews and newly obtained documents show.
Major Major's father:
Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a longlimbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen.”
Major Major’s father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all. He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle and extort for as much as he could get from whomever he could.
Trump Cash
I've long said that whatever legal issues Trump should be worried about, he isn't really worried about legal issues, and he certainly isn't worried about "Russian collusion" (I think he means this!). He isn't even worried about being found out to be a crook. He knows he's a crook, but to him that just means he's a good businessman. He's worried about being found out as a fraud. Not as a man who commits fraud - he's proud of that! - but as a fraud of a person. He's not the man whose Daddy "only" lent him a million bucks, or the man who got rich being Mr. Deals. He's not the man with the Midas Touch, aside from his toilet, but actually a man who was given all his money illegally and lit most of it on fire, turning everything around him to shit.
I don't have time to go through this in detail right now, but have fun!
I don't have time to go through this in detail right now, but have fun!
Real Men Get In Lots Of Bar Fights
I was "bar fight" adjacent a couple of times, which meant one of my few assholes friends who liked to get in bar fights had, indeed, gotten into a barfight.
"Hey, J, why are you mad at that guy?"
"He looked at me funny."
That's a verbatim conversation, at least to the extent that memory can provide, that I had while trying to diffuse one of those fights.
Not sure if it was generation lead, or too many movies with cool guys getting into bar fights, or both, but while bar fights were once a thing (and rampant fighting at sporting events especially in certain cities), they don't seem to be anymore.
"Hey, J, why are you mad at that guy?"
"He looked at me funny."
That's a verbatim conversation, at least to the extent that memory can provide, that I had while trying to diffuse one of those fights.
Not sure if it was generation lead, or too many movies with cool guys getting into bar fights, or both, but while bar fights were once a thing (and rampant fighting at sporting events especially in certain cities), they don't seem to be anymore.
Just On Twitter For The Quality Dunks
Thank you for the retweet but you're still complicit in mass murder. https://t.co/U2GaDh849B
— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) October 2, 2018
MMT
TL;DR: The way "we" talk about what the government or the taxpayers can "afford" and how we really do pay for things is wrong, government debt and deficit are neither intrinsically good or bad (though likely, to some degree, generally good!), inflation is the only real constraint on increasing government expenditure, the threat of inflation is exaggerated as it is actually easy to stop, mainstream beliefs about the level of the "natural" or minimum non-inflation causing level of unemployment are made up and almost certainly empirically wrong (too high), and all these things are essentially true if you are the United States of America in 2018, control the dollar printing machine, and all your debt is denominated in dollars.
I sort of ranked these in order of things that are close to being objectively true to things that liberals believe (which are probably also true!). The explicitly political element is that conservatives and the mainstream media which incorporates basically incorrect beliefs use deficit and inflation fears to implement their agendas. It is true that they hate inflation but they exaggerate these fears to make sure they win on the issue, and as we know, nobody really cares about the deficit.
I sort of ranked these in order of things that are close to being objectively true to things that liberals believe (which are probably also true!). The explicitly political element is that conservatives and the mainstream media which incorporates basically incorrect beliefs use deficit and inflation fears to implement their agendas. It is true that they hate inflation but they exaggerate these fears to make sure they win on the issue, and as we know, nobody really cares about the deficit.
Billionaires for the Same Old Bullshit
I know "democrats" on Mike Allen's contact list aren't representative, but neither the Starbucks guy nor Bloomberg are gonna go anywhere in a Democratic primary.
Still I will happily work for either of their campaigns for the traditional 8 figure salary campaign workers receive.
The buzz: Democrats doubt there's room in the party's presidential race for two corporate celebrities to the right of Bernie.
So watch whether Michael Bloomberg beats Schultz into the race.
Still I will happily work for either of their campaigns for the traditional 8 figure salary campaign workers receive.
Monday, October 01, 2018
Never Go The Full Asshole
Not the entire issue in this post (read it for the other reasons, too!) but I haven't seen anyone suggest my particular theory about why Kavanaugh did, in fact, go the full asshole. One reason is that he is one! That's obvious. It was an "act" he could manage. But I don't think it was for red meat for the base purposes. Even he has to realize that such a performance would follow him around for the rest of his career, and not really in a good way. Sure it's the fault of the libs that he was such an asshole - it always is the fault of the libs when we force conservatives to be assholes (back in the day we had a word for this I think involving something instapundit wrote along the lines of "it sure will be a shame when the liberals force us to kill them all.") But I'm not entirely sure being the Morton Downey Jr. of the Supreme Court is really the best thing for your lifelong reputation.
No I think he was told he had to impress one man or his nomination would be in jeopardy. That man was not Jeff Flake, but a man who understands the world through the logic (or illogic) of professional wrestling and who happens to be the president of the United States. He did it to impress Trump.
No I think he was told he had to impress one man or his nomination would be in jeopardy. That man was not Jeff Flake, but a man who understands the world through the logic (or illogic) of professional wrestling and who happens to be the president of the United States. He did it to impress Trump.
Maybe Own Up To It
Political reporters really should own up to the fact that they were harder on Obama than Trump during their presidencies. I know the basic reporter belief is that if the other party raises a shitstorm about something they're obligated to cover it, and some will suggest that, well, Republicans are just better than Democrats at raising shitstorms so whatchagonnado.
But really guys... tan suit? You let that be a thing. Come on.
But really guys... tan suit? You let that be a thing. Come on.
Imagine How Bad Everyone Else Must Be!
The other point I meant to make here is that of course people who go to elite schools (prep or even just the best rich public schools, college, grad school, etc.) are aware that some of their classmates are, well, less than perfect human beings in many ways. But these are the best people! So imagine just how horrible people at lesser schools must be!
I saw this growing up with kids in private high schools who had never been to public school. They really thought public school kids spent their days drinking paint before inevitably heading off to juvenile hall for an extended stay. This is a slight exaggeration, of course, but if the base assumption is that your private school is better, and some of your classmates aren't exactly perfect, then Those Other Kids must be soooooo bad.
I saw this growing up with kids in private high schools who had never been to public school. They really thought public school kids spent their days drinking paint before inevitably heading off to juvenile hall for an extended stay. This is a slight exaggeration, of course, but if the base assumption is that your private school is better, and some of your classmates aren't exactly perfect, then Those Other Kids must be soooooo bad.
Smelling Their Own Farts
In some ways it isn't the most important thing in this situation, but in others it's representative of the entitlement that certain elites feel by virtue of their backgrounds and institutional affiliations. Sure attending an elite school represents genuine achievement for some and confers genuine benefits to most, though more of the networking and credentialing kind than the education kind, but the belief by some (many? most?) of the people who attended college in "Boston" that their classmates are truly the cream of the crop, and not just in average sense but in an almost universal sense, as if the worst Harvard grad is superior to the top grad of the next best school, would be hilarious if it wasn't so damning of the whole lot of them.
I doubt anyone actually quite would say they believe that, if pressed, but the way that academic hierarchies are so ingrained in the people who benefit from them, there's a tendency to act as if they do. You know, the Harvard job/grad school applications go to the top of the pile. And whatever relative "quality" of the median Harvard grad in certain ways (recognizing how we think about this stuff is very limited in scope), or the top quintile, or whatever, there are a hell of a lot of lazy dumbasses running around Harvard (and every university). One way to understand this is knowing that at elite private schools the gentleman's C (which is really a gentlemen's B- at most these days) is the gentleman's F at a typical state university. There might be some majors where this is not quite true - you can probably only get so far behind as a math major without at least being encouraged to pursue other interests - but in general if you at least show some modest interest in fixing your failures, that semester you blew off will turn into an incomplete which will turn into that gentleman's C. At my state school, people just failed out.
Anyway, the idea that attending any of these schools is proof of much of anything other than doing the right thing (often with significant help from your prep school) at one particular moment in your life (ages 15-16) is ridiculous, and that's before we get to legacy bonus points.
I doubt anyone actually quite would say they believe that, if pressed, but the way that academic hierarchies are so ingrained in the people who benefit from them, there's a tendency to act as if they do. You know, the Harvard job/grad school applications go to the top of the pile. And whatever relative "quality" of the median Harvard grad in certain ways (recognizing how we think about this stuff is very limited in scope), or the top quintile, or whatever, there are a hell of a lot of lazy dumbasses running around Harvard (and every university). One way to understand this is knowing that at elite private schools the gentleman's C (which is really a gentlemen's B- at most these days) is the gentleman's F at a typical state university. There might be some majors where this is not quite true - you can probably only get so far behind as a math major without at least being encouraged to pursue other interests - but in general if you at least show some modest interest in fixing your failures, that semester you blew off will turn into an incomplete which will turn into that gentleman's C. At my state school, people just failed out.
Anyway, the idea that attending any of these schools is proof of much of anything other than doing the right thing (often with significant help from your prep school) at one particular moment in your life (ages 15-16) is ridiculous, and that's before we get to legacy bonus points.
Jeff Flake, American Hero
Of course.
Every Republican senator is bad. Once upon a time the liberal fantasy was that maybe they'd occasionally do something kinda sorta liberal, to earn that "moderate" badge the press was too willing to bestow on them. Now it's just that maybe they'll occasionally do something kinda sorta not entirely evil. It isn't going to happen.
A Yale classmate attempting to corroborate Deborah Ramirez’s account that, during her freshman year at Yale, Kavanaugh thrust his penis in her face at a drunken party, said that he, too, has struggled unsuccessfully to reach the F.B.I. The classmate, who asked to remain anonymous, recalled hearing about Ramirez’s allegation either the night it happened or during the following two days. The classmate said that he was “one-hundred-per-cent certain” that he had heard an account that was practically identical to Ramirez’s, thirty-five years ago, but the two had never spoken about it. He had hoped to convey this to the F.B.I., but, when he reached out to a Bureau official in Washington, D.C., he was told to contact the F.B.I. field office nearest his home. When he tried that, he was referred to a recording. After several attempts to reach a live person at the field office, he finally reached an official who he said had no idea what he was talking about. At this point, he went back to the official at the F.B.I.’s D.C. headquarters, who then referred him, too, to an 800-number tip line. (He eventually left a tip through an online portal.)
“I thought it was going to be an investigation,” the Yale classmate said, “but instead it seems it’s just an alibi for Republicans to vote for Kavanaugh.” He said that he had been in touch with other classmates who also wanted to provide information corroborating Ramirez’s account, but that they had not done so.
Every Republican senator is bad. Once upon a time the liberal fantasy was that maybe they'd occasionally do something kinda sorta liberal, to earn that "moderate" badge the press was too willing to bestow on them. Now it's just that maybe they'll occasionally do something kinda sorta not entirely evil. It isn't going to happen.
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