Looks like we could use a new debate thread. Since we’re only about five minutes or so from the end of this thing. let this also serve as a post debate open thread as well.
I’m just now watching it on the DVR as I had something to do earlier. But feel free to spoiler away. For instance, do they all stop answering each question with “Let’s be clear…”? Also, did someone get Bernie a lozenge?
Open thread!
?BillinGlendaleCA
He did seem a bit better after the break. So, yes.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Ricola!
Another Scott
So, what are the odds that the national story by noon tomorrow will be how mean Castro was to Uncle Joe?
It was a good debate, given what we’ve ended up calling “debates” these days. The lack of commercials was good. The GOP framing of the early questions (healthcare, taxes, taking away weapons of war) was to be expected, but the candidates handled them well.
Dunno if any minds were changed tonight. Beto and Castro showed that they’re not giving up quite yet.
Dunno if anyone is going to get any more news coverage as a result of tonight. Donnie’s probably going to do something stupid tomorrow to grab the headlines…
Cheers,
Scott.
feebog
Anyone but Yang. Geez, I can’t believe i’m Saying this, but I would vote for Bernie over Yang.
BR
Man, Biden is sounding kind of old and sort of barely stumbling on a lot of things…
lamh36
I like Liz Warren and if she’s the nominee, I’d be ok with. But I do have one issue with the debates so far. At some point, someone has to at least challenge Warrenon something.
If one point of the debates is to “toughen” or up or prepare the eventual nominee to attack from their opponents. Approaching Warren with child’s glove accomplishes NOTHING.
It’s easier to stay unflustered when NO ONE attacks you…someone needs to at least soft challenge her on something in one of these debates…cause sitting back and not striking won’t work with Chump.
Cause you can bet that Chump will and as much as I hope it would backfire on him to do so, nothing he did in the debates with HRC appears to have backfired much on it’s own.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@feebog: It’s the first time I’ve seen Yang, he did not impress.
Major Major Major Major
One of the stranger debates I’ve seen.
lamh36
new fav GIF
“And now Mr. President, you can go back to watching Fox News
–Kamala Harris”
https://twitter.com/VoteKamala/status/1172322598845157377
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott:
I’d say it’s a certainty.
Old Dan and Little Ann
The wiife loves Biden. She is not a fan of me or anyone else saying anything negative against him. Sigh. I’ve thought for two years I would rather have Warren in the Senate. I no longer think that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@?BillinGlendaleCA: it was all over MSNBC in the four minutes I watched
Mary G
Kamala has one of the worst cases of “Let’s be clear…”itis. I’ve even tweeted at her to stop saying it. One of her few faults. I thought Biden’s closing statement was very powerful, but he didn’t do well before that.
lamh36
@Another Scott: I see some pundits already trying to say Castro was mean to Joe.
Castro, IMHO, was harder on Biden than Kamala was in the first debate, but I already know…the usual suspects will save their heat from Castro…even though, they felt the need to rain fire down on Kamala for the first debte…smh
CHETAN R MURTHY
@lamh36:
Two ways of interpreting your comment:
(1) damn, Warren’s so good, they can’t lay a glove on her!
(2) Ugh. The “we’re all in this together” thing the Dems have going, while good in some ways (it prevents internecine bloodshed) is bad in that it also prevents candidates from getting the sort of toughening they need, in order to take on the real opponent.
Obvs. I think it’s #2 you mean, and you’re probably right. But it’s a tough balance. So many soundbites for the GrOPers to use ……
Mike in DC
@Another Scott: Castro doing the Lord’s work going after Biden’s fragility. Rank and file Democrats may rush to Biden’s defense, but this won’t be the last time someone questions his fitness to serve, and those questions will filter down to primary voters eventually. He was a little old in 2008, but he’s very old now.
Yarrow
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I always feel like Biden is annoyed that he has to be on that stage doing this dumb debate. They should just give him the nomination already. I find it off-putting.
Mary G
donnah
I remember senior George Bush’s gaffe about grocery price scanners, which may or may not have been true, but stuck to him. And I wonder if enough people heard Joe Biden explaining that children need families to support their education, saying they need to turn off the record player…yikes. I’m sixty-one and that really stood out to me as a red flag.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@donnah: oh my god, is he gonna come out for V-chips and school uniforms, too?
Another Scott
@lamh36: One of the moderators tried to go after her about taxes for her health car[e] plan, but she has a famous video clip of Chris Matthews trying to do the same thing a few months ago and her schooling him on it, so of course it didn’t work.
She, like any Democratic politician who is trying to advance to the big chair and who actually has done things and staked out positions, has some mis-steps (“rigged”, maybe on TPP and tariffs, etc.). I agree that she needs to expect tougher questions, but she has had some already. And the debates should be a little rough-and-tumble because we know the general election will be…
Cheers,
Scott.
oldgold
Castro stuck a fork in himself tonight.
Baud
@donnah:
You’re so out of touch. Vinyl is in with young hipsters. Joe knows that.
lamh36
Kamala Harris’ best answers, aside from taking on Trump…(which not many other on the stage did…someone has been reading polls about Dem voters wanting a nom who’ll take it to Chump directly) was on education.
As the first of the big candidates to roll out a plan to address Teacher pay disparity (alot of teacher friend I know were and are really happy about such a plan), education is a good wheelhouse for her to expand on.
Representation matters. For some minority kids, the schoolteacher one of the first non-parental adults they learn from and look up to, and shape their “vision” of what’s possible.
Not saying a non-Black teacher lessens anything, but if you can see someone looking like you doing something, as a kid, you’re more likely to feel like you could do it too.
That line really hit home for my teacher friends.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
How come the ABC correspondent has only interviewed the male candidates so far?
Mike J
Politico didn’t like Harris, so you know she knocked it out of the park.
donnah
@Baud. hee hee, yeah, those preschoolers do dig the vinyl.
Another Scott
@Baud: Yup. He knows that the hot Christmas gift this year is the Show’N Tell!!
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
For me, everyone was decent except the two old guys, so no one really stood out. I thought Yang and Pete underperformed, and Beto overperformed. Everyone else was about as expected.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
It’s tricky, because the Democrats don’t want to open the door for Trump to attack Warren on economics using the old classic Even her fellow Democrats think Liz Warren is a socialist!. Plus I think the Democrats want to stay pretty far to the left on economics this time around. Maybe there’s something else they can disagree with her on?
MisterForkbeard
@Mary G: I’ve noticed that too. She says it a lot. I think it started as a deliberate Obama-ism, but now she just does it by reflex.
@lamh36: I think it was a really good line, but that because her answer was explicitly about minority children it’ll be ignored… except by minorities. Maybe that’s what she’s going for.
Adam L Silverman
@donnah: And the 8 tracks!
Mary G
Kamala’s in the spin room and has already talked about being clear twice.
MisterForkbeard
@Mike J: This makes me sad. She had a good debate with several good lines and points. I guess the new standard is “If she doesn’t make a breakout performance like the first debate then she sucks” >_<
Warren appears to have gotten past that kind of commentary, where she's actually judged on her merits. That's actually kind of huge, and a very good point for her campaign.
Jeffro
I don’t get all this “Castro was so mean” stuff – he did what the Democratic party, collectively needed to do: tell Joe Biden he’s old/out of touch/past his prime. For that alone, he should be thanked.
Bernie and Joe both looked and sounded just way, way old and out of gas.
Everyone else, well, I guess they had their moments but not a whole lot will move after this. I’m trying to picture the path that leads Amy Klobuchar past the rest of the field and to the nomination? Castro? Yang? Booker? I think not. We have a top 4-5 and barring something crazy, that’s our top 4-5 candidates.
I will say, I’d LOVE for the networks (or the candidates themselves) to challenge the current president* to just answer – never mind actually ‘debate’ his 3 current challengers – the questions that the Dems had to answer tonight, and do it on live TV. Please oh please FSM, someone bring it up.
And then also bring up exactly why such a manly man super duper prez with such an AMAZING economy and SO many achievements even has three primary challengers a year out from the election. I mean, why is that?
Cacti
I’m glad the field got over its temporary insanity that running against the Obama years is a good strategy.
That was the biggest WTF to me from the previous debate.
PJ
@Baud: @donnah: @Another Scott: The fact that you’re making light of it shows just how out of touch you are – vinyl sales have grown a lot in the last decade, and most of it is due to younger people. Go to any punk or indie show – only the olds are interested in CDs, and if the kids want any physical product, it’s either vinyl or cassette.
scott (the other one)
@lamh36: I agree with you in theory. But when it comes to Warren specifically (and Harris), she gets challenged with tough (often unfair, loaded) questions nearly every time she does an interview. So you’re right that learning how to deal with things getting dirty is an essential skill for a candidate and one they have to keep sharp, but she’s the candidate who needs the least practice on that, because she’s already the best, and she gets plenty of practice every single day.
Jeffro
@PJ: Correction: vinyl sales did grow…and now all the ‘record’ stores are closing up shop again. Total fad.
Also, what is “spotify”? My kids keep telling me about it.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Who don’t mind playing an arm and a leg for LPs — which are no longer mass-produced and are not always easy to come by.
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
I hear about it from time to time, too. Some kind of skin condition like acne, maybe?
Cacti
@Jeffro:
Castro is done.
Stick a fork in his campaign. Not that it seemed to be going anywhere anyway.
TS (the original)
@Yarrow:
For all the talk about Hillary being the annointed nominee – Biden is sure acting as if it is his for the asking. I will always fail to see what he has done other than be a sidekick to President Obama. This is where 99% of his support is coming from.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It’s a radio station on those music-playing rectangles
lamh36
@MisterForkbeard: Harris is the candidate most likely to be able to chip away at Biden’s support among African Americans. The most loyal AA voting block is AA women. If she can make any inroad in that support, then she has a real chance of winning the nom.
Biden’s strength is that AA loyalty to PBO. If Biden somehow implodes or starts leaking that support like a sieve…no other candidate is likely to pick up those voters like Kamala Harris has the potential to.
So yep…speaking on minorty issues, even if the white punditry or white voter ears don’t hear it…might just be a winning strategy to make the inroads she needs.
Jeffro
@scott (the other one): Warren keeps getting asked hard questions and pinned down on the cost, the blessed COST, of whatever it is she’s proposing because a) she’s the smartest candidate b) she actually can answer the questions c) she actually does/will answer the questions and d) in some cases, it serves the reporter’s/media organization’s agenda to have her on record.
She should get cheerier and shorter in her responses as time goes on. Will she? Now that, I dunno.
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid: Seems to be more appealing but I dunno. YMMV
Anne Laurie
@lamh36:
The counter-argument (from a Warren stan, obvs) is that the other candidates are correctly wary about attacking her because they don’t wanna be stomped!
But seriously, I think it points to an impression among the other candidates that it’s… if not her race to lose, than at least her “lane” to lose. They don’t attack Warren because they want her to bump Sanders out of the race, preferably in NH, but certainly by SC / NV. Knocking Warren down the charts right now only gives Sanders more room in the ‘progressive’ lane, and I’m sure Bernie is every bit as popular among his peers as he is on Balloon Juice!
Jeffro
@Cacti: He can be done as a presidential candidate and still a) have done the Dems a great service tonight and b) be quite viable as a VP choice.
I’m going with A and B.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Another Scott
@PJ: Yeah, Joe is out clubbing with the 20-somethings, scratching vinyl with the DJs. Come on…
I guess we should be happy he didn’t call it the Victrola. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Cacti
Warren played it particularly smart not attacking the ACA, and letting Bernie take most of the fire on Medicare for All.
Yarrow
@Jeffro:
He sort of questioned Joe’s short term memory. That’s not telling Joe he’s out of touch or past his prime; that’s more suggesting Joe’s got old person memory issues. I thought it was kind of dickish of Castro. Did not like. Joe may be old and out of touch. He may even have memory issues. But saying it that way on a debate stage wasn’t a good look.
donnah
@PJ:
Well, Biden was talking about young children and how parents should provide support and a good learning environment for them, by turning off the record player. Not the same thing as young hipster music collectors.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I tried talking with my kids about how Spotify was basically a smarter version of radio…well, a version of radio that allowed the listener to be dumber…same thing.
They also didn’t really get my explanation of how a cassette Walkman worked back in the 80s. And these two have seen me ‘burn’ mix CDs and pop them into my car’s CD player for years. Not all that different
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne: Would *you* want to have an argument with Liz Warren on national TV? I sure wouldn’t. I think the other candidates are afraid to tell her she’s wrong because she can back up her claims so well.
Cacti
@Jeffro:
Disagree on VP candidate. His behavior tonight will be poison among the olds…
The group most likely to vote in primary or general elections.
Preview of oppo ad: “Liberal snob Julian Castro thinks that senior citizens are stupid.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Yarrow: I kind of get that impression too.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Yarrow: It’s an odd thing, these responses to Castro knocking Biden.
I think we all know he’s not the strongest of candidates.
Debates are about…debating. Raising issues. All kinds of issues.
I’m not sure how Castro questioning Biden’s with-it-edness is out of bounds. We’re months and months away from the primaries. I don’t want our candidate fogging up in the clutch. This election is easily the most important one of our lifetime. Go big, come out strong, respond to an out-of-line youngster like Castro right there on stage…or pack it in. Way too much is at stake.
Cacti
@Jeffro:
You’re about to learn in the coming days.
Jeffro
@Cacti: Pro tip: VP candidates usually move the needle about jack/squat in the end, either way, both parties, every election. Not always but usually. I’m kind of having a hard time picturing someone saying “Well you know, I’d LIKE to vote for this here Liz Warren, but she went and picked this Castro guy who pointed out that Joe Biden was a bit foggy at times. trumpov it is!”
At best, the VP choice might serve as a signal to the party establishment about the candidate, party unity, blah blah. Not much more than that.
Cacti
@Jeffro:
See above.
oldgold
@Yarrow:
Worse, Castro was factually wrong.
Castro sin was not being mean, but being wrong.
Jeffro
@Cacti: Oh, scary stuff there. What will the Biden campaign do, drive Castro’s numbers down from 2% to 1%? Castro said what needed to be said. Let’s find a stronger candidate and win next year.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeffro: as somebody who genuinely worries about Biden’s mental acuity, I thought Castro looked like an asshole. And I thought he kind of looked like an asshole in that first debate when he tangled with O’Rourke over immigration. And on both occasions, I found myself wondering why he’s never taken that fight and drive and ambition up against a Republican in a statewide race. I’ve never been all-in on the whole Beto train, but he tried, and he had coat tails
Jeffro
@Cacti: See above, er below. Best wishes!
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Great! So perhaps we could do better than Biden OR Castro, is what you’re saying? Agreed.
Anne Laurie
@Cacti:
Seriously? I got the feeling he thought so, too — and that he might as well kamikaze The Presumptive Frontrunner on his way out. Biden, I still believe, will not have the stamina to last through the primaries, and quite possibly Castro figures he might as well do Warren / Harris / Etc. a favor by taking the media heat now. If I’m right, it’ll be a point in his favor when the new Dem president is lining up cabinet members next year!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: Took me a few months to figure out that my car HAD a cd-player(I think it holds 5 cd’s).
Ruckus
@lamh36:
I don’t think the top opponents need to discuss policy with each other, at least not yet. The field has to narrow so that it isn’t like a news segment on the couch. It actually still is rather early. We are having all these “debates” to get rid of the chaff and fluff, those who are not ready and those who will never be ready. Which in my mind we’ve done, there seems to be only 2 or 3 real candidates left in the running. Harris, Warren, maybe Beto, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on him. Who else hasn’t stepped on themselves? Biden/BS are both obviously too old or too shouty or both. Beto and Mayor Pete are not ready for the top slot, Castro and Booker just don’t seem presidential enough although I like both of them and time may tell. Amy hasn’t got it, isn’t going to get it.
Mike J
https://twitter.com/AsteadWesley/status/1172347655529402370
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cacti: Ya know, I don’t know how old you are, but as someone approaching senior status(I’ll be 60 in January), most older folk know they’ve lost a step or two.
Cacti
@Anne Laurie:
He blew himself up on the runway. He made an attack on a lapse of memory that didn’t actually happen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeffro: I’m not trying to pick a fight, just trying to explain, from my own perspective why the reaction to Castro has been so visceral
also, saying “Castro is done” is like saying “Klobuchar is done”, or “Yang is done” or “Booker is done”, they’ve been done for a while, they just don’t know it
Major Major Major Major
@oldgold:
Oh, shit, that’s wild
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Hmmm… I got a lot from it. It helped me to clarify some thoughts about a number of the candidates. And now, I shall share some of those thoughts. You’re welcome.
Biden: I like Joe. But time has passed him by and even, if he were the kind of Dem we heed this time, I don’t think he is up to the challenge. I hope he does just well enough going forward that he isn’t humiliated but poorly enough that he and his people know that it is over.
Warren: She should be running away with it. But, to me, the whole ends up as less than a sum of the parts. She’s a great technocrat, that’s it.
Sanders: For fuck’s sake, just go home.
Harris: For me, Harris is the opposite of Warren. Maybe on paper her resume isn’t quite as good etc,. but she adds up to more than just a sum of her parts. And, this being the US where there are a lot of shallow people, the fact that she is every attractive in a non-Palinesque way shouldn’t hurt her. Also, as others have noted in these threads, her voice is very soothing and her laugh is infectious. Yeah, I think I made a decision tonight.
Beto: I thought he did very well. He got props from everyone. I have thought since the get go that he is in for VP or a Cabinet job. If so, he boosted his chances over the past month and tonight as well.
Pete: I am coming to like him more and more. I think he is in the same general position as Beto in it for VP or a Cabinet gig. He is still in the running for that.
Castro. I want to like him. I have a friend of a friend who is a lawyer in Houston who swears by the Castro brothers, but he couldn’t manage taking a shot at Biden the way Harris did in the first debate. He came off as mean.
Booker: God, he can be brilliant on so many topics. God damn it though, I cannot get past the charter school stuff.
Klobuchar. She is a senator; she should accept that she has reached her peak and just work in being good at that.
Yang: If I couldn’t get past the charter school shit with Booker….
Cacti
@oldgold:
It was both.
Mean + wrong = Trump
It’s a bad look for any Dem candidate.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@oldgold:
You know he was a Young Republican in college, right?
lamh36
So Castro is like Donald Trump huh…uh huh…ok then.
I like Castro. I don’t see anything wrong with what he did. And even if you did…to say it was on the level with Chump bullshit tweeting is overreaching at best!
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: My daughter keeps reassuring me I could just play playlists from my iTunes, on my iphone, via Bluetooth instead of playing my old CDs and/or the mix CDs I’ve made.
Oh SURE. Sounds so simple! ;)
CHETAN R MURTHY
@lamh36: I don’t think Sen. Klobuchar understands that kicking another also-ran doesn’t help her climb in the ranking.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: Nah, Harris was wielding a stiletto. Biden was bleeding before he noticed he was hurt. Castro wasn’t smooth or subtle. His attack was graceless. It may have been effective – we’ll see, but i wasn’t impressed.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: I keep my tunes on my Note8 and play them via Bluetooth. The CD player is behind the video panel(I wondered what the ‘eject’ button did).
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree it was quite clarifying.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ok, sounds good. I’m not looking to duke it out either, but the reaction to Castro seems stronger than I would have expected. And I guess a stronger response from Biden might have sounded more confident, jovial, on point: “Oh OKAY, Julian, I get what you’re trying to do here but nice try. I’m as sharp as ever and there’s a reason I’m on top, ‘kay?”
Whatever – as all of them kept reminding us all night (YES WE KNOW, DEMS, YOU’RE INFINITELY BETTER THAN trumpov!) they’re infinitely better than trumpov.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@?BillinGlendaleCA: and then some.
A hundred years ago, when Karl and I were young, CNN tried a Gen-X version of the Capital Gang/politcal panel chat show, hosted by Jake Tapper. The set looked a little like the Friends coffee shop, and Karl was the sneering Libertarian. Michelle Cottle was the other centrist, and another liberal but I can’t remember who
Cacti
@Ruckus:
Disagree. The primary is the time for sorting out policy differences.
The general is mostly a personality contest, with the election usually going to the candidate who seems more likable.
lamh36
oooh…Castro was mean to ole man Biden…whatever…
now this…THIS is something that needs to be shitted on..
THIS sounds like a threat to me…
TS (the original)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I see nothing in what he has to offer – he is not Obama, not matter how hard he tries to convince me otherwise & whether he is humiliated or not is irrelevant. I’m not sure he could win against trump – who would bring up non stop every last blunder/mis-speak ever made by Biden. No-one cares about trump mis-speak – if they did he would never have been elected.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: The thing is people like Joe. Not so much in this thread. but in the wider Democratic field. He needs to go, but there is a smart and a dumb way of demonstrating it.
Ruckus
@Cacti:
Not all olds think they are the shit just because they made it to old. Some actually want a candidate that isn’t having the same issues that they and/or a lot of their friends are having. You get up there you know that time is limited even if you believe you have decades left and that too much stress (not that the job of president has much stress….) can be the mountain you can no longer climb. You’ve seen too many funerals up to close and personal. It’s a massive amount of hubris to think that you are going to live forever and in prime condition.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
oh god, Tweety cites “Eddie Rendell” trying to criticize Warren
Cacti
@Ruckus:
If someone is hoping to peel away Biden’s support, it’s not going to happen by yammering about his age. Everyone knows he’s old.
It will happen by showing they are more likely to beat Trump in the general election. That’s the alpha and omega of most of Biden’s support.
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: Beto responded:
Cain, who is a state rep, tweeted a death threat at a presidential candidate. Maybe Louie Gohmert isn’t the stupidest politician in Texas after all.
jk
@Another Scott:
@lamh36:
Castro has nothing to apologize for. His comments were absolutely pitch perfect and i applaud him for going there!
Klobuchar’s criticism of Castro is pure bullshit and I’m disappointed that she’d sink to this level.
Omnes Omnibus
@TS (the original): Well, for one thing, Biden is popular in the party in general and if eased out of the race properly could be a great pitchman man for the nominee especially in his neck of the woods.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: It’s a strong competition.
lamh36
ok…just a bit on costuming…I gotta admit…I love the makeup and hair on Kamala. I think all the ladies look great. And whatever Liz Warren does to not look as close to her actual 70 years is fantastic. Compared to Biden and Bernie and Chump who all looks just as old as they are if not older…ok..that’s it for my superficial talk
Cacti
If Warren shit canned Berniecare and started campaigning on a public option, it would probably make a sizable dent in Biden’s support.
Mary G
@lamh36: I noticed Amy copied Warren’s uniform tonight – black pants and blouse with a brightly-colored jacket. It was smart. When Warren was the only one up there in a color she stood out.
Ruckus
@lamh36:
I’ve been told in the last 2 weeks a number of times that I don’t look anywhere near my age. I’m younger than Warren by less than a month. Some people don’t look their age, some don’t act it, some look a lot older than they are, and act it. Biden doesn’t look all that old, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s getting up there and it shows in many ways. BS is just a crusty old man who shouts at clouds because they listen to him.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Either that or they changed the onion on his belt.
lamh36
Alright good night.
Be just ICYMI, here’s Kamala Harris’ opening statement taking the fight to Chump and lighting him and Faux News on fire.
what’s the over/under of Chump tweet storm being racist or misogynistic or sexist or all of the above ??
BTW. I saw they Bill O’Really already tweeted bout Harris “insulting Fox News”…is expect some Fox and Friends bullshit tomorrow
https://twitter.com/blackwomenviews/status/1172345560285831168?s=21
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeffro:
No question Biden could have delivered a killer response if he could have done that, and he didn’t look like someone who’s capable of a comeback like that, and I wonder if he is. The fact that Biden is the only candidate, I think, that I haven’t seen do post-debate media is also not a great sign. [ETA: I’m watching MSNBC, maybe Biden has gone somewhere else. He probably would have done well with tweety, since they have more than a bit in common as old white guys who don’t know they’re out of touch]
But I’d bet a hundred bucks the polls have not significantly changed this time next week, by which I mean Biden, Sanders and Warren more or less tied, with maybe Harris moving a bit closer to that tier.
lamh36
@lamh36:
Major Major Major Major
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree with you on that. Graceless attack. There are ways to attack Biden. What Castro did didn’t work for me and apparently didn’t work for a lot of people.
That being said, Klobuchar’s comment doesn’t sit well with me either. Don’t compare one of the Dem candidates to Trump. That’s a dumb thing to do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: Cain has apparently deleted the tweet
Yarrow
@lamh36: I thought all the women looked great on stage tonight. Bernie looked off to me. His voice sounded hoarse but also he didn’t look good. Is he sick with something?
L85NJGT
Biden is selling the same nostalgia trip as Trump and Wilmer, just wrapped in a more digestible package. That shit is stale, and irrelevant. Also fuck Scranton and coal mining. The work was shit, anyone with a lick of sense left, and they killed eleven miners and the entire industry in 1959 because greedy fucking idiocy.
frosty
@Ruckus:
I’ll quote this but I agree with everything you said. I think Warren is showing she’s got the physical and mental ability to keep going over 70. The others, not so much.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: My local TV kept interrupting with weather warnings, so I missed some things.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That shouldn’t deter the Secret Service
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: The Klobuchar comment was in the tweet lamh36 posted above. I think it was after the debate.
E
Can we just stop shitting on people for their age, as in “the 2 old white guys”. Ridiculing someone for living long is a level of ignorance you expect from the right. Also, can we stop the hostility towards “white candidates”. We need some white people to win. As it is if it drops below our usual 40% we’re not winning even if we get 90 plus % of everyone else.
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: Do the candidates have Secret Service coverage at this point? Biden probably does as former VP. Maybe the Senators? Not sure if former Congressman O’Rourke would have it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: No, he would not have a detail yet, but tht doesn’t meant that the SS wouldn’t take an interest in this. If not them, I am sure Cain will have an unpleasant conversation with some FBI agents.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Redshift
@lamh36:
I assume provoking both of those responses was entirely intentional. If you’re going to use going after Trump as a major debate theme, probably the best way to sell it and generate publicity is to have him attack. And getting it into the Fox->Fox & Friends->Trump’s brain pipeline could be even more effective than mentioning him directly.
If this works, expect more of it. Wingnuts have been using Fox & Friends to get into Trump’s head for a while now; if Dems can use it to mess with him (without actually going on the show themselves, of course), that’d be great.
Omnes Omnibus
@E: I am going to take a guess that you are white and no longer accurately described by the word young. Are you going to stay home or vote for Trump because some commenter on a blog said something about old white dudes? Neither am I.
lamh36
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/11/682194015/-black-teachers-helps-black-students-get-to-college?utm_campaign=npr&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social
frosty
@Redshift: Oh lord, Fox News psyops. I’m not sure I’m ready for this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Redshift: i just checked the Beast’s feed, and he hasn’t tweeted himself about the debates yet, I wonder if Kellyanne is distracting him with Big Macs, or if they had to bring in Ivanka to dance in font of the TV
Ruckus
@E:
Sorry. I’m an old, not all that much younger than Biden and BS. They have no business being president. It’s a serious job, that requires a serious and capable person who can handle the stress and bullshit. This is not a vanity job, even though the ass that has it now is there only for the vanity. The contract is for 4 yrs and both of them will be 78 at the time of swearing in. I’m old enough to have been able to vote when we had a president who was in massive decline, and his wife and cabinet ran the place. Sort of like it’s being mishandled at this very moment. Some jobs just require the person to be physically and mentally capable and it’s quite likely that their age precludes that or will during their term. On the other hand neither of them have really ever had the ability to do the job at any age. And Biden I actually like, he’s just not capable. And he’s old. It’s just a fact of life. I see no reason not to exclude him or BS from this job. We deserve someone who isn’t at as great of risk of not being able to do the job. And it’s not like we don’t have better candidates.
So I’m not sorry that I don’t like them because of their age, I see way too many people in their age grouping who just haven’t got the ability any longer. It’s not just their time or turn. It doesn’t work that way.
Redshift
@Yarrow:
Few of any at this point. Apparently only presidents and their families get lifelong protection, for VPs it’s only while they’re in office. Unless there are major threats, they won’t get Secret Service protection until next year, and apparently their campaigns have to pay for it (which I didn’t know until I looked it up just now), so they won’t want to do that unless they really need it.
FlipYrWhig
@donnah:
I thought what he was trying to say was that not every family has the time or resources to read to their kids or play them music at bedtime. IOW he was saying that they should turn ON the record player. No? It was pretty garbled, but that’s par for the course for Biden lately.
david
Jemele Hill @jemelehill
———————–
Somebody gotta say it: The overwhelming support for Joe Biden is based purely
off fear that white folks won’t vote for anyone else on that stage. Because there is
no way you see him in these moments and think he’s actually the best candidate.
———————–
Joe Biden is leading the polls because he checks all the boxes — white, male, safe,
Obama. He has not presented himself as being the best candidate and that was
the case well before tonight.
———————–
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
When I had to get a CAT scan the other day (long story, but all turned out A-OK), there was a delay because someone in the decision line thought I might still be young enough to be pregnant.
I did not have a chance to thank the dear, sweet child who thought that. ?
Major Major Major Major
@david: that seems hard to square with Biden’s massive lead among black democrats.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Beto doesn’t have Secret Service protection.
BlueDWarrior
@Major Major Major Major: that is what confuses me too.
A better argument is that Biden doesn’t scare primary voters over 50 as much as the others, and most party primary voters are upper middle aged to elderly.
Ruckus
@frosty:
Warren is not my first choice for two reasons. First I think she would continue to be a fine senator. She’s a good/great legislator, with great ideas for legislation to move us forward. That’s not the same job as president. Second while she is younger than Biden and BS and doesn’t show her age pretty much at all, age is a factor, commenter E not withstanding. We are hiring someone to be in charge of the day to day operation of a major nation, made up of lots of fractions and sides to most issues. There is a lot coming at this person every day, unless one just decides to say fuck it, like our current squatter in chief. I want better, we all want better, we all need better. Much better. Do I think that Warren is capable? Yes I do but I see some risk there, which there always is, so we have an immediate backup preselected. Not nearly as much risk as the two older gentlemen. Plus she is far better qualified than either of them. But I just like Harris better. I’ve explained that here many times.
206inKY
@Cacti: Totally agree. Obama’s legacy is the single best asset for the party, no matter who wins the primary. Shitting on him is insanity.
We are in the midst of a national emergency and need to beat Trump at all costs. Now that Joe is clearly losing his marbles, I have a sick feeling in my stomach that Trump is probably going to win. Bernie and Warren have carved a niche as the furthest left of the entire field, specifically on health care, and it seems like a grave mistake.
You can’t shut down an entire white-collar sector of the economy (health insurance employs around 450,000 people) without massive blowback from the employees who will lose their jobs—I don’t mean CEOs but the army of actuaries, project managers, sales reps, etc. Asking them to walk the plank on their jobs is a big ask. This is not an industry like mining or trucking where everyone is Republican already; we will take a real, possibly fatal blow in the suburbs. This is why Klobaucher, Harris, Beto, and Buttigieg all emphasized the public option or some other framing short of shutting down the whole industry.
Obama came to realize that health care is a giant ship that can’t make a 90 degree turn.
After the bare-knuckle fight to pass, implement, and protect the ACA from relentless Republican attacks, it makes zero sense why we would risk starting over again when we’re right in the middle of a fight against fascism!
It’s totally a case of false consensus bias—Warren said she has never met anyone who likes their insurance, but I like my current insurance (I make $55K plus benefits). I don’t think I’d get a salary raise to compensate for the loss of benefits when my employer no longer has to provide coverage. They would just horde the windfall and I’d take the hit in new taxes. It seems like most readers here are already on Medicare and don’t have to worry about how MFA will be implemented.
This whole debate is another example of how our taxation structure has been rigged for Baby Boomers. We had very high taxes when you were getting an affordable start in life, then low taxes since 1980 when you were in your prime earning years, and now it’s proposed we go back to high taxes when your generation is retired and ready for reliable public benefits again. The latter proposal is the right thing to do (you never should have elected Reagan in the first place!), but I wish Boomers would at least acknowledge that mid-career young white-collar professionals will take the biggest hit in cleaning up this mess. It’s like a rerun of how the cost of college skyrocketed once you were done with it.
In any case, it’s enormously frustrating to see three aging Boomers with clear risks as the only viable alternative to a fascist Boomer in the White House. Along comes a generational talent like Beto, who lit a fire in precisely the type of communities we need to swing in 2020, and the immediate consensus here was to mock him for live-streaming his dental visit. So it looks like we’ll have to just roll the dice with either Biden or democratic socialism and see how it goes. I’m not at all confident.
jk
@E:
Being POTUS is the most stressful and demanding job on Earth and for this reason it’s entirely legitimate to raise the age issue concerning Biden and Sanders. Biden hasn’t demonstrated to me that he has the mental acuity for this job. God knows he’s anything but quick on his feet. He’d be a disaster in the general election against Trump. He’d be spending so much time and energy defending and explaining his own verbal blunders that he wouldn’t be able to make the case against Trump.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
@BlueDWarrior:
I think Joe is the safety candidate for a lot of people who are waiting for one of the other candidates to break out and seem like someone who could beat Trump.
I also think that the massive racism and misogyny that was released in 2016 is making a LOT of people nervous about running a woman or a minority candidate, but that genie is out of the bottle now. Running a white dude is not going to defuse it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: Yeah, that was a dick move.
david
Hey, for the last three years, we’ve been told “listen to female POC”. They knew.
So, if they’re all-in for Uncle Joe this time around, so be it.
But. No complaints when he decides to follow the Obama policy of “the past is the past”
and lets every last fucking GOP criminal over the last 3+ years get off totally free. And,
no complaints when (if) Schumer declares a “return to normal order” and McConnell
responds by bringing the Senate to a continued standstill with 41 votes.
Politics is over. We’re kinda in a bloodless war, right now. Warren knows it. Harris
knows it. Booker knows it. O’Rourke is coming around to realizing it. I don’t think
Uncle Joe knows it. At all.
Cacti
@Ruckus:
If they’re better candidates, it shouldn’t be a problem to win people over. Biden being over 75 is an issue, but zeroing in on that issue isn’t winning anyone over. If the erstwhile better candidates want to move the needle, they need to re-calibrate their message. Because so far, Warren and Bernie are fighting over the same slice of the pie, and Harris can’t seem to budge from high single digits.
As I noted above, there is a sizable contingent of Dem voters who are just looking for someone that they feel confident will beat Donald Trump and throw his sorry ass from the White House. They’re not looking to reinvent the country, or make massive structural changes. This is the group that Harris or Warren need to convince.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Well at least no one ever asks me that! BTW I would have no reason not to think that’s possible. My MRI visit didn’t return perfect news and while I spent 3 days, 3 separate times in 2 hospitals week before last, and 2 days this week getting results and information, it turns out that I have a couple of “issues.” Both probably will be fine but there is a bit of risk. Now there always is risk in living, mine is a bit higher than some others, lower than some others, that’s just the way it goes, it always ends the same for all of us anyway, it’s just in the timing and delivery. Just like comedy.
Omnes Omnibus
@david:
Yeah, lamh and rikyrah sure have been beating the Biden drum.
Cacti
@david:
And Jemele Hill will collect high fives from the internet bubble, without changing a single mind in the real world.
lamh36
@david: Black women are not “all in for Biden”. Yes Biden has a strong lead with AA overall, but polls from Black outlets of AA women show a bit more fluidity and nuance based on things like age, independence, professionals, etc.
AA women are the most loyal likely Dem voters…so Biden or not, AA women can be counted on to vote Dem regardless.
Don’t condescendingly dismiss us as a monolith. The only thing monolithic about us is that WE can be counted on to vote againat Chump and for the Dem candidates. The same certainty is not there for our white counterparts, male or female!
Black Women Voters Are Key to the 2020 Presidential Race. Here’s Who They Support – Fortune https://fortune.com/2019/09/12/joe-biden-polls-kamala-harris/
206inKY
@Cacti: Sorry to @ you twice in a row, but that sentence is the best analysis I’ve seen. I’d instantly be ordering a Warren yard sign if she shitcanned Berniecare and ran on a public option.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@206inKY:
Who are these people?*
You do know that the ONLY age demographic to vote AGAINST Reagan in 1980 were voters under 35. Thous folk would have been born between 1945 and 1962, eh Boomers.
*It ain’t Bernie or Joe.
BlueDWarrior
@lamh36: it feels like age is correlating more to preference than race/gender is. Also people can just be downright stubborn, and unless Biden decisively loses early, they’ll move when they personally feel like it.
I really think if Obama didn’t win Iowa by the margin he did over Clinton, it would have been a deadlock the whole race.
Cacti
@206inKY:
No apologies necessary. ;-)
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: My demographic didn’t vote for him in ’80. That was the year I turned 16. My cohort did not cover itself in glory in 1984 though.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cacti:
I’ll agree with you there.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
So far, my health issues have mostly turned out to dwell in the realm of farce, which is good in the long run for me, but annoying. I drove deep out into the valley to pick up my CPAP today, but they didn’t have my mask AND it was the wrong machine, so I went home empty handed. ? The respiratory therapist is supposed to track everything down and call me early next week.
Omnes Omnibus
@BlueDWarrior: It’s still really early. No one is locking up anything in the next few months. Once a few more people drop out, it will start to shape up into a real race.
Ruckus
@206inKY:
Just for clarification boomers are considered to be born between 1946 and 1964. Biden and BS are both older than that. They are of the silent generation. The tail end of it but still. Warren and I are early boomers.
So I think your point still stands, it’s just a bit worse for both of them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: No cohort covered themselves in glory in 1984*.
*I voted for they guy who said he’d raise our taxes.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Some of that group will never be convinced that a woman can win the presidency, unfortunately.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: We did that for orthopedic shoes for Madame, twice.
lamh36
@BlueDWarrior: exactly right. Black voters are IMHO the most pragmatic. We know that in a playing fields where we aren’t predominant, that we are not likely to see the representation we want to see in our public officials.
So we vote for the candidate that we feel have a chance of winning with the predominant white general electorate…but who has also been shown to be interested and advocate for causes we hold dear. Joe Biden on paper fits ideas of what we think the predominant white voters will be “comfortable” voting for over Chump. Of Kamala or Castro or Booker wins on some of the less diverse early states as PBO did…those Biden numbers can and likely would change.
Cause then we see the candidates that looks like us may actually really have a shot at this! Add to that the “Ride or Die” Joe PBO loyalty and THAT is what Biden’s numbers with AA are so high. Notice though not even nearly as high as PBOs, but maybe hire than HR (don’t really recall)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: I think he was talking about AA women, so I doubt that’s a problem.
ETA: I see lamh36 is still up, I’ll leave any further comments to her. She knows this much better than I.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
And I thought I was the only one who, if I didn’t have shit, wouldn’t have any life at all.
I just ordered some reading glasses online because the stores around here don’t seem to carry the ones I like any more. The order email came in with the wrong magnification. They did send me a prepaid return deal so it shouldn’t cost me anything for the wrong glasses, but now I have to try and find some more because I broke a pair last week. It don’t rain but it fucking pours.
What’s the old saying, “Life sucks, but the alternative is worse.”
joel hanes
@206inKY:
Warren said she has never met anyone who likes their insurance
Please excuse what may seem like nitpicking, but that’s not what she said.
She said she’d never met anyone who likes their insurance _company_.
There was a time fifteen years ago when
A. I was a valued computer engineer for a Large Tech Company You’d Recognize
B. I had gold-plated health insurance, for which I was very very glad, because
C. It so happened that for a year or so I really _needed_ that health insurance
D. But the damned insurance company that administered the program repeatedly denied coverage for things that were clearly covered, and I had to fight them through the corporate benefits office at a time when I was least ready and able to do so
Thus:
I loved having the insurance
I hated the insurance company.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: LOL, I decided to sit back as well when I saw that she was still kicking.
lamh36
ok this time I really am off to bed. good night BJ
BlueDWarrior
@joel hanes: I think an interesting topic for discussion would be “why do so many people tactcitly accept shit service?”
As much as people hate dealing with a government office, they hate dealing with customer service as much, if not more. They hate how mega-corps just do whatever they want and seemingly get away unscathed.
So why do we not elect people who would pass laws saying that use agreements can’t be filled with small print legalese, that telecoms can throttle your data without clearly warning you or having rubric for when it’d happen, and so on and so forth?
Why are Americans so willing to just accept shit service, and routinely give away thier consumer rights?
Chetan Murthy
@joel hanes:
It’s surprising [narrator: “not”] how often we find that when people actually need their insurance (even the gold-plated stuff) to work for them, they learn that in fact, the insurance company has placed all sorts of barriers in the way, making it a living hell. I remember Mnem discussing her experience with her insurance company (which is just a middleman, b/c her employer effin’ self-insures!)
I had a friend with a grave illness, and when he fell ill, was working for one of those tech companies with gold-plated insurance. Boy, they made life hell for him, and he was pretty convinced that all the extra stress shortened his life. I’m pretty sure he was right.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: Have you checked the Dollar Store? Ours has a pretty good selection, and they only cost a buck.
opiejeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: If you’ve got a question for her, better ask it quick now.
joel hanes
@Chetan Murthy:
her employer effin’ self-insures
So did mine.
joel hanes
@BlueDWarrior:
Why are Americans so willing to just accept
Lack of recourse or meaningful choice produces learned helplessness.
Mandatory arbitration, abusive shrink-wrap “agreements”, etc have become so universal that most people have ;ittle recent experience of anything better.
piratedan
@BlueDWarrior: part of that revolves around the amount of time you have to spend pursuing good customer service… and the amount of time and resources that companies devote to it…
– Namely, if you have a job, chances are that you’re working during the part of the day when these people are open, and not everyone staffs 24/7.
– If they do have off-shift support, chances are high that they are new, not knowledgeable or even that they are doing this part time, so chances are even higher that they don’t give a shit about you, the company or your problems.
– Don’t forget, that these are also usually shit gigs, not well paid and you get to sit on the phone or online with people who are pissed off enough to have even tracked down the number to make a call that they are ill equipped to handle, much less resolve.
The companies that give a crap about giving awesome customer support, to their internal and external customers are usually the ones that have passionate support in the marketplace (see Costco), they pay their people well, they handle customer complaints with the bring it back, we’ll replace it or refund you your money. Lots of specialty shops provide quality support because of the lucrativeness of their business and their customers and make sure that in their communities that they are there for the clients and to solve their problems ( I see that in the medical software and instrumentation fields because people are highly aware that mistakes can and have led to fatalities, so people take it seriously and are paid accordingly (in general)).
I tend to gauge a business on how they handle these kinds of personal transactions and there are quite a few that I’ve crossed off of my list for future business because of this (Dell, for instance) but its like with denying insurance claims, people only have so much time and to spend it on the phone or online with someone either personally obtuse or willingly so, is not good for ones blood pressure, so many people just give up and move on.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m dealing with the contractor’s sub-contractor’s sub-contractor, which, as we all know, is the most efficient healthcare delivery system possible. God bless America!
@206inKY:
I have great health insurance … on paper. But the actual insurance company decided to farm the HMO part out to a subcontractor, which is farming other pieces out to their own subcontractors. None of them want to deal with me because my great health insurance means that I pay them a pittance in cash and they then have to get the rest of their payments from the contractor, which is set up to deny claims from their own subcontractors as often as possible. It’s quite a racket, and I’m only seeing it from the outside.
Mandalay
@jk:
Oh FFS. This tired, dumb cliche keeps getting churned out. Just stop.
Trump watches TV and tweets constantly, and gets away to play golf most weekends. Where is there a shred of evidence that his job is “the most stressful and demanding job on Earth”?
Mnemosyne
@BlueDWarrior:
I’ve been fighting with the insurance company to get this fucking CPAP machine for almost TWO YEARS.
Don’t tell me that I’m just “accepting” terrible customer service. There’s shit-all I can do improve things like the HMO repeatedly giving out the wrong contact phone number for me even though I’ve instructed them to correct it multiple times.
Sorry, but putting the onus for fixing terrible customer service on the customers who are trapped into trying to get a problem solved is a crappy thing to do.
prostratedragon
This episode of Men in Clown Suits, presented without comment, is courtesy of the temporarily United Kingdom:
“Yellowhammer: no-deal chaos fears as secret Brexit papers published”
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne: Completely O/T, you might be interested in this:
The 100 best films of the 21st century
(Or maybe not.)
prostratedragon
“Pie-in-the-Face Polka,” Henry Mancini
SRW1
@Mnemosyne:
There apparently was a 73 year old lady in India who recently gave birth to twins. So, the concern of the sweet child had a morsel of a possibility. The wonders of modern medicine.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/06/indian-woman-73-gives-birth-twin-girls-mangayamma-yaramati-andhra-pradesh
206inKY
@joel hanes: Was this before the protections of the ACA kicked in around 2013-2014?
My own experience is from utilizing health coverage and is more complicated than what I described. I had great insurance in grad school (thanks to a union strike) that paid for my son’s delivery and my wife’s appendectomy. Then we switched to my current employer for three years, which was actually terrible insurance that had a “choice” of three bronze-equivalent plans in actuarial value. We are high utilizers and paid a ridiculous deductible. The past two years, we have moved to my wife’s insurance, which is fucking amazing and covers our chronic health needs with a $3000 out of pocket max for the family, $1500 family deductible for the year. I just decline coverage at own employer and get the rebate in an FSA that helps pay the deductible on my wife’s insurance that we are guaranteed to hit because of high utilization.
Buf my impression of the pre-2014 landscape was that it was very different and shittier since there was so much more leeway to demy claims.
206inKY
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Well shit, that’s a good point, and I stand corrected in assigning blame for Reagan.
But it still doesn’t mean Boomers didn’t disproportionately benefit from taxes plummeting once they were out of college and at the stage in one’s economic lifecycle when you pay into the pot (working years) instead of drawing from it (childhood and retirement). There’s a direct line from that generational benefit and the 17 years I’ve spent paying college loans once the states stopped subsidizing college.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chetan Murthy: Guy who ran for President told the story about his mom dying of cancer and fighting with her insurance company for treatment, he got a bill passed to change that. It’s called Obamacare(actually PPACA).
sukabi
@PJ: yes vinyl is popular and growing in popularity. But, Biden was clearly NOT making a point about vinyl’s comeback, he was stumbling over a slippage in his memory and was confused over which devices are actually used by young people today.
Elie
@206inKY:
THIS
Thank you
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mandalay: Unlike Trump, most people who have been President actually take the job seriously.
Amir Khalid
@Mandalay:
You can’t really judge how tough or demanding a job is by looking at someone as lazy and as oblivious to the consequences of his failures as Trump.
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Dang, you beated me to it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@206inKY: I get really tired of folk(usually Gen-X, I don’t hear it as much from Millennials) complaining about Boomers. I was born in 1960, I missed out on the 60’s. Yes, we didn’t have tuition when I went to college(I went to an in-state school), however we did have ‘fees”. Don’t blame boomers for this shit, we weren’t the only folk voting back then(Greatest Gen, Silents and even the ones before the Greatest Gen) were all voting back then. My first vote was against Prop 13, so don’t fucking blame me for this shit, I knew it was bullshit then.
ETA: I should also note for the last 10 years, I’ve heard this shit about the Boomers, starting with folk equating Boomers and the elderly in 2010. Spoiler alert: no Boomers were 65 or older in 2010.
BlueDWarrior
@Mnemosyne: that was my oversight, sorry.
It’s just that I understand the urge to lash out because it really does feel like every institution is out to screw you, and the number of people who will do right by you without a gun to thier head feels far and few between.
No wonder so many Trump voters voted for him with the intent to burn it all to the ground and dance on the ashes.
opiejeanne
@206inKY: I don’t remember taxes plummeting once we were out of college (1970 and 1976). When I graduated we were broke, had a baby and a mortgage but both cars were paid off because we kept them after the loans were paid off. I remember that wages were flat through the 70s, and my husband being laid off in 1975, then again in 1991, a week before Christmas that time.
We really didn’t feel like we caught a break until all three kids were out of college, around 2003.
It was our parents who benefitted from the lower taxes in the 80s.
And if you lived in California, proposition 13 only helped with property taxes if you never bought a house after that year.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It was our parents who benefitted most from those “plunging taxes”. Meanwhile, we were public employees and getting a raise relative to the cost of living was usually like getting blood from a stone.
My own youngest child started ranting about Boomers in 2008 or 9, for some reason. I I don’t think she realized who Boomers even were, but boy were we to blame for every damned thing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Give up, we’re Satan’s spawn.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: I’ve heard it most from the Gen-X crowd, at least on-line(including here). You’re right, in general the Silents probably benefited most from St. Ronnie’s tax cuts. By that time they were generally pretty well ensconced in their jobs Say somebody born in 1934 would have been 50 in 1984, so if white collar they’d been in senior management or executive positions. In 1984 the oldest Boomer would have been in their late 30’s. I think you’re right, as I noted about the comment about Boomers being the elderly in 2010, there’s confusion about who Boomers are(the oldest right now is 73) as evidenced by the comment that Bernie and Joe are Boomers. It seems that the Silents and the Boomers seem to always get jumbled together.
sukabi
@?BillinGlendaleCA: the same folks who push generational conflict are the same folks who use class warfare and racial animosity. The goal is to keep the attention focused on anybody but them.
Origuy
@prostratedragon:
That’s one of those holdovers from the 14th century. The Duke {not Duchess) of Lancaster is one of the titles of the Monarch. The Chancellor is nominally the person who takes care of his or her lands in the Duchy, which spreads over much of northern England. The title is now held by someone in the ruling party whom the PM wants in the Cabinet.
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: you’re absolutely correct. There was a small recession in the early 1980s too, just as a lot of us evil Boomers were just starting our career paths. I was born in 1955, so I’m a mid-Boomer. The silent generation was and continues to be the largest beneficiary of all of the Reganomics that began the decimation of the middle class.
@sukabi:
Absolutely true.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
.
surprised. I thought that was more of a millennial thing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Definitely not.
opiejeanne
@sukabi: Thank you. I can’t stand the pigeon-holing of any generation. It’s really lazy and unfair.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I decided to revisit my first Milky Way excursion shots, an abject failure for Milky Way shots, to process them for just beach shots with the moon(one of the reasons they didn’t work for MW shots).
Looking south with the lifeguard station at the right.
and
Looking east to LA.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You two are hilarious.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
But millennials are the avocado people, right?
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Is that Leo Carrillo Beach again?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: OTOH, people can be influenced by political events when they’re young that can set their voting patterns as they get older. For example, many in the Greatest Generation were FDR Democrats, folk that were in their teens and early 20’s when Ike was President probably lean more to the GOP.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Yes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: No, too young for the avocado colored appliances, that was the 70’s. (shutters)
opiejeanne
@Baud: You mean the avocado toast thing? The reason they can’t buy houses?Alas, my Boomer husband taught our kids to make avocado toast when they were little kids, and the price of avocados has dragged them down financially.
Baud
@opiejeanne:
Do they really only like it with toast?
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Then there’s hope for them yet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: See, we Boomers are Satan’s spawn.
?BillinGlendaleCA
My step-daughter is currently jetting her way to Bali with her bff from high school.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Those were hideous, as was the all Harvest Gold kitchen in a house we bought in 1992 in the SF Bay Area. The floor, the counters, the dishwasher, the sink, the stove, the refrigerator, and the little flowers in the ugly wallpaper were all harvest gold with avocado green leaves.
We gradually got rid of all of it except the formica countertops.
We’re going to be in Newport Beach for four days. We have a little business to take care of and we are meeting our grand nephew for the first time.
While we’re down here maybe we should buy a bunch of avocados to take home with us. They’re like gold in the Seattle area, and we can only get Hass.
opiejeanne
@Baud: I think it was some expensive thing that was a fad in restaurants or something. An overpriced appetizer.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Yup, time to load up on the avocados, you can probably pay for the trip by selling them in Seattle.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I know I have destroyed any chance at happiness for my sons.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: It could be related to greeting them in the morning with a “Blech”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Geez, I have to get to bed soon, I have a 10:30am appointment to get my windshield replaced. (yawns)
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That sounds like fun, all except the very long flight.
I’m contemplating a trip to Uganda and can’t quite commit to 24+ hours on a plane. I’ll be 70 in the spring, Dave will be 73, and I can barely tolerate the 7 hours from here to Reykjavik. I have tried to figure out a better way to get there, taking the trains across Europe, and flying out of Greece but it’s still a brutally long flight.
If we do go to Uganda we won’t want to just spend a few days before heading home, probably will want to visit a couple of other places in Africa, maybe Botswana, see the great wildlife parks, so I think we’re looking at a trip taking maybe four to six weeks.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Hmmmm…. Ya think? I was thinking it was all the times I made them get up in the morning.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m not sleepy, and I’m supposed to drive tomorrow for a while. I will be paying for it in the afternoon, so I’d better do my driving in the morning.
We are currently in Roseburg, OR. That delightful town that was so nasty to Obama after the shooting at the local Community College.
RAVEN
@opiejeanne: make sure you hit the wedge!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Well, she did Australia and New Zealand last year and did a weekend trip to Tokyo earlier this year. This trip was long planned since it required coordination with her bff(also a nurse). The Tokyo trip was, hey that’s a good airfare, I’ve got a couple of day, book it.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Get up, wash yer face, comb yer hair, shine yer shoes, nag nag nag. Eat yer breakfast, brush yer teeth, go to school. and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. We were so mean.
OzarkHillbilly
@opiejeanne:
It’s what my folks did when they went. I forget where all they went besides Kenya.
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Good night Bill!
Good morning everyone else!
Didn’t watch the debates. Caught up via the threads here and don’t regret missing them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Oh, when you said you’re coming to the Southland, I didn’t realize you were on your way.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: As I said, spawn of Satan.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Nite. (waves)
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: There have been some terrific fares to China, and we always thought we’d go but now we spend half the flight to Iceland walking the aisles. The first time we went to Europe it was to Ireland on a nearly empty Are Lingus, from LAX to Chicago Midway, then straight to Dublin. We did jumping jackes between the bulkheads when the attendants weren’t visiting with us. Iceland Air out of Seattle is so much shorter a flight that we can just stand it. Then it’s a couple of hours to Paris, but by then we’ve had at least an hour to walk around the airport in Reykjavik.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Blech.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, well, I didn’t mention that part.
We should be in LA on Saturday. Going to have lunch with our boy, another Bill.
opiejeanne
Good night. Going to try (again) to sleep.
Raven, I’m not sure what The Wedge is.
ETA: I just looked it up. We’re staying practically on the beach, in the Newport Beach Hotel. It’s pretty close to the Wedge.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Hey gramps when is the new grand child due to arrive.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: ?
I have a long day ahead, market in the morning and helping out at the Drs office this afternoon into evening. Wish I hadn’t woken up at 3:30 am.
And Notre Dame has a home game tomorrow, so that always effs up traffic as alumni and fans arrive.
RAVEN
@opiejeanne: THE WEDGE
RAVEN
@satby: They’re coming here next week. I’m flying my brother in from LA for the game and this town is going to be INSANE!
satby
@opiejeanne: you know Icelandic Air offers a free stopover in Reykjavik, you should do that on one of your long haul trips. Take a day to look around the city, walk around a bit, then hop the shorter flight to your next destination.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: T minus 12 days, 19 hours, 15 mins, and 42 seconds. Not that I’m counting it down or anything.
satby
@RAVEN: yes, it will! Notre Dame being the greedy, entitled fuckers of a school that they are, they try to keep everyone and everything on the campus, so South Bend itself deals with the cost of traffic and the disruption of the games, but gets very little benefit of the increased tourist dollars.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: wow, so soon!
Raven
@satby: Georgia took over the stadium there two years ago and everyone reported they had a wonderful time. Beating their overrated asses helped!
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Whaddya talking about? I’ve been waiting 6 months, 17 days, 13 hours and 34 seconds.
2liberal
@206inKY:
you ignorant annoying dipshit would you please get a clue. reagan didn’t cut boomer taxes, he shifted them. he cut taxes for the rich and had the biggest tax increase in history which was the social security tax increase on working people in 1983 which us boomers have been paying into for the past 30 years, to fund our own retirement.
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major:
Not if all those reliable Democratic African-American voters are convinced that too many white people are bigots. Could you blame them if they did?
Anne Laurie
@Mandalay:
Trump’s not even pretending to do the President-ing part of the job any longer, and even *he* looks older than he did on his (under-attended) inauguration day. President Obama made the job look easy, and he looked like he aged at least 20 years during his 8 in office.
Gvg
@Major Major Major Major: our black commentators have previously explained, it’s exactly why Biden has massive black support. Black voters are very pragmatic. They know we must win, and Biden seems to them to be the safest bet right now. They favored Hillary over Obama, until he proved he could get enough white voters to win.
Gin & Tonic
@opiejeanne: There was a former pro cyclist named Paul Sherwen who became a TV announcer for one of the NBC sports channels during the spring/summer cycling seasons. In the off-season he managed a gold mine in Uganda (literally.) During the peak of the season he would fly Kampala/NYC and back every weekend. I think he went via Amsterdam.
Uncle Cosmo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Which only goes to show what a bunch of imbeciles the gunhumpers are. It wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist to reply with something like, oh –
Then again, I guess he’d get run out of Gun Humpers Unanimous for tweeting something like that…
Betty
@L85NJGT: That Scranton bit annoys me. He left PA as a young child. He is a Delaware man. Is he ashamed of that?
BRyan
@206inKY: as a boomer whose first mortgage carried an interest rate of 14-1/2%, I can attest that it wasn’t all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows between high school and retirement.
L85NJGT
@Betty:
Maybe he thinks Russell Bufalino is still alive.
opiejeanne
@satby: Yes, we plan to do that on our next trip.
@RAVEN: Brutal.
J R in WV
@donnah:
Joe’s problem is that he was talking about parents telling their kids to shut down the music — for Biden “Record Player” is a synonym for “The Music”, which is and will stay an antique reference. At least as bad as not knowing what a grocery store scanner is all about.
Once, not that long ago, I was using the self-checkout lane at the grocery, and the older lady next to me was trying in vain to get the scanner to scan her item. But she had no idea what a barcode was nor that a barcode was essential to the scanning process. So I showed her a bar code on my purchase, and then showed the bar code to the scanner, which told me the price of that item. She still did not know how to scan an item. I tried again, with a different approach, still not really attempting to explain how it worked, just that there’s this thing you have to show the scanner for the process to work. I think she was still standing there with that first item when I arrived at home an hour later.
ETA: Ficks speling
Another Scott
@J R in WV: No, at least I as understand Joe’s word salad last night, he was saying that disadvantaged kids have poor vocabularies because they don’t hear adults talking enough. So parents should crank up the gramophone with a 78 of jokes and such so that infants will get that enrichment.
Of course, he was confused about what the dubious research was actually saying, so it came out even more garbled.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.