Now that this error is almost over, I think it is time to revisit predictions from November 2016.
TLDR: We’re fucked hard and good
Yep!
I expect the Supreme Court to be a 5-4 reactionary majority on voter rights. I would not be shocked if there is a bill filed to expand the court to 11 or 13 Justices filed and floating around as a sword of Damocles to threaten Kennedy to vote for anything coming off of the Susan B. Anthony fund’s wishlist. I expect the filibuster to be gone by lunchtime on the first day of the new Congress.
Yes, there is a reactionary majority on voting rights and it looks to be durable. Susan B. Anthony List wishlist will be fulfilled but through a different mechanism than I thought. The filibuster is still limping along.
I would give myself a 1.5 out of 3
I expect the Republican Party to use their position of concentrated minorities against a dispersed majority to do as much as they can to lock in as much of a partisan tilt as possible. Packing the courts is the big one as the Democrats have majorities on most of the Appeals circuits right now. Getting to Republican majorities via packing in 40 something Federalist society drones is extraordinarily efficient as that can only be altered quickly if the Democrats can get a trifecta and they re-pack. It’s nasty but efficient.
Yep! 1 for 1
We’re going to see massive mistakes of basic execution (and many executions that should not occur even if one supports the death penalty) as competence does not matter. We will be governed by the Brietbart comments section. Any policy (even if it is a good one) that is more complex than allowing contributors to use the commons as a waste dump or passing out large checks to the already comfortable or beating up on liberals/Democrats/Other will get fucked up. Deep Water Horizon in the Trump Administration would still be leaking.
Yep, significantly more federal executions. Significantly more use of the commons as a dumping ground and upward redistribution of wealth. I under-estimated the clusterfuckedness of incompetency and inattention when it came to COVID.
3 for 3
We are going to be in caveat emptor low trust/high verification cost world as fidicuary duty obligations disappear, as the CFPB disappears and Dodd-Frank unwinds.
I was wrong on Dodd Frank —its sails got trimmed by regulation but not much by law.
1 for 2
We’re going to see any larger opioid outbreaks in rural counties as Medicaid funded drug treatment will be harder.
We’re going to see a lot of counties that voted for Trump continue to get kicked in the balls economically.
We’re going to lose a lot of people that have options to go elsewhere in the world. Immigrants with an education will find other places to go.
3 for 3
A lot of what has happened was predictable as it was predicted.
51 more hours of this error.
Emma from FL
Don’t you hate being a Cassandra? I don’t think being believed actually makes it better.
Ken
So there’s still time for some of your misses to happen. Hooray?
Punchy
I too predicted with great confidence that McConnell would bounce the filibuster. Why he didnt….I dont understand. That would have given the GOP all 3 bramches and no mechanism for Dems to block anything. They could have passed voter restriction shit that would have locked their ilk into office for the foreseeable future. Maybe enough old-guard GOPers refused to support the move? But why?
PST
Last year as the COVID pandemic was catching hold I predicted that the American death toll would be 500,000. I was certainly not unique in that prediction. I guessed 100 million would be infected and 0.5 percent would die. It was very rough, order-of-magnitude reasoning. For a long time a hoped I was wrong. Now I hope I was right, but it looks like the final toll will be substantially higher. I lost an old friend over the weekend.
raven
I remember standing on the beach a Edisto Island having a conversation with a guy. I told him Trump was a Nazi and he said “oh, he’s not a Nazi’!!!
WereBear
@PST: My sympathies. It sometimes sucks to be right.
M31
I was getting gas in Baltimore the week after the election and got into a conversation with some Black teens —
Teens: “HEY did you vote for Trump”
Me: “NO FUCKING WAY”
Teens (after laughing their heads off): “the economy is going to crash, isn’t it”
Me: “not right away! but yes, eventually, and if there’s an emergency we’re fucked good”
That’s 2 for 2, I think
different-church-lady
I predicted nuclear winter. 0 for 1 (if this lead hold for the final out).
geg6
Pretty much everything I predicted to friends and family have come true over these last four years. It sucks to be right, but the upside is that people who scoffed at me then aren’t scoffing now. Now they are coming to me and asking what will happen next. I tell them that, despite my brilliant prognostications in November 2016, I’m not fucking Nostradamus. I just knew what would logically follow when a stupid fucking Nazi wins the presidency.
Dagaetch
@Punchy: because most elected Republicans don’t actually want to pass new laws, they just want to undo old ones. But they know their constituents actually want some new laws. So having the filibuster in place is a perfect solution for them, they can shrug and say “those damned Democrats wouldn’t let us pass new laws” while undermining the ability of government to function properly through regulations and staffing.
Shorter version: they want to burn it down, not build it up.
Cheryl Rofer
I’ve been predicting, on Twitter, that we would have half a million deaths by Inauguration. Looks like I’m off by a month.
I also expected Trump to crash the economy and the stock market. 1 out of 2.
Raoul Paste
I went to my doctors office after the 2016 election. She told me my blood pressure was okay and I told her I’m surprised it’s not higher She asked why and I said “ President Trump— Are you kidding me? Really? “. It’s the only time I’ve seen her laugh
Ken B
@Punchy: The filibuster is only an obstacle to passing legislation. Turtle doesn’t really care about passing legislation. He could pass a tax cut with 50+1, and, again, he doesn’t pass bills, he kills them.
Killing the filibuster doesn’t help his agenda, and it makes obstruction harder when he’s in the minority.
Drdavechemist
You get an “A” on the test.
That said, it was a pretty easy test since all the answers were in the reading—you just had to do the homework. Too bad a large enough plurality of the population never figured out that homework is important.
Gin & Tonic
Chyron HR
@Gin & Tonic:
I guess it’s not espionage if you’re dumb? Is that the legal principle at work here?
Baud
@Chyron HR:
How many times have people defended Trump’s actions by saying he doesn’t understand what he’s doing?
Spanky
@Chyron HR: Not espionage unless her “friend” is a state actor. And if s/he is, being dumb is going to be irrelevant.
cmorenc
The move to artificially tilt the electoral college which I anticipated would be sorely tempting to Rs in states that tend to be blue-leaning swing states in Presidential elections, but where Rs controlled the state legislature & governorships – would be to change allocating electoral votes from statewide winner-take-all to instead allocate them by congressional district, which can be gerrymandered to produce consistent R-majority congressional delegations even in states where the overall statewide cumulative vote would be a modest D majority (e.g. Pennsylvania), while retaining winner-take-all in more reliably red states. That sort of selective change would have locked in R electoral vote majorities in Presidential elections, making it possible to lose the overall nationwide popular vote by tens of millions of votes and still win the electoral college.
Of course, getting rid of the electoral college would be by far the better reform, but it would still be an improvement if a change was made to consistently splitting each state’s EV according to % of popular vote according to a determinate neutral algorithm – which would create a strong incentive to not just concentrate campaigns in swing states, but Rs in blue states and Ds in red states.
Geminid
@Ken B: “Reconciliation,” by which qualifying laws can be passed with a majority Senate vote, will be big factor in the new Congress. My knowledge of the reconciliation process is general and vague. Fortunately a lot of Democratic Congressional and White House staff know the ins and outs, and are now busy calculating how to render proposed Democratic initiatives into legislation that qualifies under the reconciliation rule.
mali muso
Yeah, I remember friends telling me that I was “over-reacting” or that I was “too partisan” in my assessment of how fucked we were in 2016. I told them that I hoped that they were right and I was wrong. Sadly, if anything I think I was too optimistic.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
“A friend in Russia”?! WTF.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
Hey, some of us have friends in Russia.
Jay C
@Gin & Tonic:
And we can add Ms. Williams’ name to the (quite lengthy) list of 1/6 insurrectionists turned in to authorities by friends/family (in Riley’s case, her mother). And, reportedly, for the usual reason: alarm at the relations’ “frequenting far-right websites”….
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Hope you’re not selling them stolen government computers.
dmsilev
Let’s hope that the last few years have put a stake through the heart of the “run government like a business” bullshit.
Hope springs eternal…
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: I’ve noticed ex-partners have been instrumental in identifying multiple insurrectionists. It’s almost as if fascist jerks leave a trail of disgruntled former love interests who are eager to see them jailed!
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: Funny how that works.
Matt McIrvin
I expected mass death but I didn’t expect Trump to care so little about keeping his own core supporters alive.
schrodingers_cat
@raven: I had a similar conversation with a friend who is an air force vet. He vehemently denied that the Orange President was a Nazi in 2017 but now he agrees. He voted for Biden in November.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That’s probably why the right invested so effort into incels.
Immanentize
I am not sanguine about this whole week. MLK Day, Inauguration, students returning to college, Covid, threats against churches….
Let’s let Jackie DeShannon explain my mood
artem1s
I thought for sure we would have another bubble crash like 2007. I think if not for the pandemic, we may have. Gains by Amazon and other tech stock that profited off people working and isolating at home, probably put it off for a year. And the deficit hawks are definitely going to slow down trading and lending so Joe will have that and the pandemic to deal with. They are going to try to slow walk the stimulus parts of the relief bill in the hopes that the vaccine will make it all magically disappear. Once again, they won’t see the housing crash coming until it smacks them right in the ass. Only this time it’s going to include lots of middle class white people living on the street with their families because they already lost their homes in 2007 and their new absentee landlord evicted them when unemployment and rent relief ran out last year. I give it until end of February maybe and then utility companies will start shutting off heat and electricity.
unless there is a stimulus bill that prevents wholesale evictions and foreclosures, we are looking at W’s housing crisis X10 and a stock market crash to match that.
germy
@Steeplejack:
She’s 22?
But I was clearly told “Once all the old boomers die out, we’ll usher in a progressive new paradise”
sab
@Gin & Tonic: Where would the FBI be without all these exes: ex-wives, ex- boyfriends, ex-girfriends
ETA every commmenter beat me to it.
cmorenc
With Trump and the R Senate majority no longer able to restrict access and the scope of subject-matter inquiry, it will be interesting to see how much more of Trump’s corrupt financial connections with Russia come to light. During the ongoing Mueller probe, Rob Rosenstein was given credit for protecting its continuance against Trump’s urges to shut it down, but it later turned out that Rosenstein effectively walled off Trump’s finances (and potential ties to Russia) from the investigation. There are doubtless also records of more dubious dealings with foreign entities than we ever even knew, that Trump Admin flunkies may not be able to erase on their way out the door.
dmsilev
It wouldn’t be the Trump administration without at least one (and almost definitely more) last-minute scandal: The Trump administration bailed out prominent anti-vaccine groups during a pandemic
schrodingers_cat
I knew he would be a disaster when he was elected. A lot of us knew. He put a target on every immigrant’s back when he got down that escalator when he announced his candidacy. My friend’s ten year old son knew. He wondered out aloud whether he was going to be deported because he was an “anchor” baby. Both his parents are naturalized citizens and were permanent residents when he was born.
CarolDuhart2
I was afraid he would lob a nuke somewhere if he lost-and so far, he’s deteriorated enough not to make it creditable.
BTW, can we thank a lot of fellow Democrats for things not getting worse? Who knows what Republicans were planning if they held the House in 2018 and the Presidency last year?
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: Some of the pro-Trump assholes who opine moronically in my local paper’s letters page are pulling the businessman card to excuse Trump’s gross incompetence as a politician. Well, politics is part of the fucking job, I think, as my eyes rotate in my head like slot machine dials.
Historical question: have we ever really had a “successful businessman” president? GWB and Trump certainly don’t count as both were unaccomplished wastrels pumped up by inherited money. IIRC, Grant and Truman were businessmen early in their careers, but neither was particularly successful nor was their business acumen a selling point for the office since they accomplished much more as public servants after their business careers ended.
debbie
@Chyron HR:
Let’s see if she can come up with a better excuse than that guy from Virginia who was arrested yesterday for carrying an unregistered weapon. He and his mom insist he works in security, but what kind of legitimate security would involve an unregistered weapon? I saw him interviewed on the 11pm news — he was angry and spoke much like the insurrectionists.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Oddly, my green card relatives weren’t particularly concerned. They still believe in American due process. I guess because they come from so much worse places. They are still here, so they still trust us.
CarolDuhart2
@germy: You are always going to have a brainwashed remnant of home-schoolers and fundie raised kids who share the prejudices of their elders. The change has been that subsequent generations and the rest of us aren’t buying their stuff anymore. Thus the rage and the raid on the Capitol and the frantic almost deifying defense of Trump.
They in earlier generations would have felt no need to do this. Nixon and Reagan were elected by landslides by people who largely shared their values.
America is slowly becoming more secular, more diverse and more informed. Gay marriage became legal with barely a hiccup. Interracial marriages, ditto. East Asians dominate medicine and tech. There are temples alongside churches and mosques and Americans shrug.
debbie
@dmsilev:
Also, “trickle down,” please.
Dorothy A. Winsor
One of my R neighbors told me he voted third party in 2016. A year later, I asked him how that worked out for him. He said he still thought Hillary would have been worse. Because of the pandemic, I haven’t had a chance to ask him again post-coup attempt. I guess his counter-factual wasn’t exactly a prediction but whatever it was, it was wrong.
Salty Sam
My wife had gone to bed early that night, and woke up about ten minutes after the election had been called for Trump. I was sitting on the sofa with my jaw hanging open, slowly shaking my head.
I remember saying “There’s going to be a major global crisis sometime in the next four years, and this guy’s response is going to be FUBAR.” There have been others, but his response to the Pandemic has been WAY worse than I could’ve imagined.
SO glad Joe will take the reins in 48.5 hrs…
I also predicted that the Fuck Your Feelings crowd would become emboldened and ratchet up their sociopathy. Got that one right too, unfortunately.
mali muso
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, this was what I told my incredulous friends who parroted the “not all Republican voters are bad” line. It was blatantly obvious from day 1 that Trump was running on pure, unadulterated xenophobia. And if you voted for him, all I can assume is that you are ok with that. And if you are ok with that, then you are a danger to me and my mixed-race, immigrant family.
p.a.
@Betty Cracker: Hoover was thought of as a businessman. Oops.
Another Scott
Here’s hoping they’re just being cautious…
If it’s a bomb threat, I hope they catch and prosecute the monster.
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@debbie: Unregistered — in DC. Another fall out from Holder.
germy
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
My youngest brother returned from a trip that included a tour of a concentration camp, not understanding how people could have let that happen. Were he to have a moment of self-awareness, having voted for Trump, he might understand now.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Inject this into their brains…
https://youtu.be/qud-CiuJTnI
Immanentize
@Another Scott: Stay away from doors and windows sounds like a shooter, not a bomba
Suzanne
@geg6:
Exactly. I was 100% correct, too…. but none of this was difficult to foresee. When you elect stupid AND evil, herp-a-dee-derp, you get a pile of shit.
I will totally admit that I didn’t see COVID coming, but once it became a thing, I knew it would be a shitshow.
It’s a good thing I’m not in AZ anymore, because I was not quiet about what a CF Trump would be, and I would be absolutely insufferable and completely rub it in their faces.
Trump’s voters need to be blamed and shamed.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: Were GCs of those who lost them during the chaos of the so-called Muslim ban ever reinstated? Even if you believe in due process, living with the sword of Damocles hanging over your head 24/7 day in and day out for 4 years is no fun.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Another Scott: I saw that and hoped it, too, was part of the rehearsal. Just in case.
Nicole
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t think so. And that’s probably because it takes time and experience to get good at politicking. There are some who are naturally talented at it, but they don’t tend to go into business first.
This post reminded me the fight goes on; I just ordered another 200 postcards. Plenty of local races between now and 2022.
No One You Know
@PST: I am so sorry for your loss.
Another Scott
@artem1s: You’re right that a big, long-lasting rescue plan is needed for the economy. Biden’s plan apparently includes “automatic stabilizers” so that relief will continue as long as needed without requiring additional renewals by Congress.
Housing is very different now compared to the housing bubble. Keep an eye on calculcatedriskblog.com if that’s your concern. Yes, rent relief, foreclosure moratoriums, etc., are required, but it’s very different from 2006-2008.
Cheers,
Scott.
AliceBlue
“Eyes rotate in my head like slot machine dials”
LMAO.
debbie
@Nicole:
CEOs rule by issuing orders. Period. That makes them unfit for governing.
germy
The painted clowns were the first to be arrested, and the easiest to find. The more serious insurrectionists are up next.
Another Scott
@germy: Funny how that works, isn’t it??
Donnie’s NSA lawyer guy looks like he’s about 25.
Maybe horrible people can be born at any time? Maybe it’s not their birth year that matters??!
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
@Another Scott:
I just got tired of all the jokes about mobility scooters every time the subject of RW protesters came up.
sab
@CarolDuhart2: I second you on relief at avoiding continued Republican control of Senate and Presidency. The Republicans still have almost half the legislators in Congress. After all this unfolded, even after there was an actual riot inside the Capitol, only about a dozen of them have spoken out against it. Before the actual riot, you could count the Republican election defenders on one hand.
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker:
None that come to mind. The two closest candidates were Bloomberg and Perot, neither of which came particularly close to winning. The vast vast majority of Presidents came from political backgrounds, mainly because “good at politics” is a skill set that takes both innate talent and time/experience to develop.
Ken
My response to that is “The average US business goes bankrupt in under 20 years. I’d prefer the government to last longer than that.”
(It of course has no more effect on true believers than any other argument…)
schrodingers_cat
I predicted that the generals in the Orange Bigot’s cabinet were not going to save us. It was our taking back the House in 2018 that stopped the worse from happening.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That was immensely huge.
JWR
@dmsilev:
Yeah, I’ve had many arguments about that particular line, but some people simply can’t imagine that that’s not how a government is run. It’s frustrating.
germy
Jeffro
I remember going to bed on Election Night, praying for a miracle, and then waking up to find there was no miracle to be had. Just a nightmare, or as Hillary herself called it, “the Apocalypse“. I remember telling my wife later that morning that the country was in grave danger, and I remember how she didn’t laugh or brush it off – must have been something about the way I said it. And she was like, “…shit”. And we were both right.
I remember telling my then-RWNJ dad and brother, all the way back in February of 2016, that if they and their fellow “conservatives” and “libertarians” (respectively) didn’t speak up loudly and kick the corrupt moron out of the party, they’d regret it. I told them that every six months, they’d follow trumpov further down the spiral, becoming something that their previous self wouldn’t recognize from the six months before. I told them they’d be excusing things that (obviously) they would NEVER excuse from a Democratic leader, and perhaps more importantly would appall their previous selves. I should have just left it at that, but unfortunately I wasted a lot of time arguing with them, hoping that something, anything would turn them around. Nope. Not once, not one glimmer of reflection from them, not one time did they admit I was spot-on, not once did they see how utterly degraded they and their party had become. And now…even the attack on the Capitol has become just another excuse for ‘both sides’ BS. So, I was right on that prediction, too. (Not wasting another second on arguing with them about politics ever again, either).
The last thing I was right about was faith that the Dems weren’t going to fracture, weren’t going to have a ‘brokered convention’, weren’t going to nominate Bloomberg OR Bernie, and were going to be tremendously fired up going into Nov 2020. A year out, I told my brother that the nominee would be either Biden or Warren. And I knew (as most of us here do) that while trumpov does drive up GOP turnout, he drives up ours even more.
Ah well…right about some good things, right about some bad things. The only thing I got really wrong – for now – was the impact of the Mueller report. I truly thought that it was going to be much bigger, bolder, wide-ranging, and would result in dozens of criminal indictments for everything from money laundering to conspiracy against the U.S. to obstruction of justice and more. Unfortunately, Mueller was pretty gutless, and Barr did a number on the whole thing. But FSM willing, we’ll eventually hear more about what the trumpov campaign was up to with a hostile foreign power, and what trumpov specifically did to repay his prime patron, Putin.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It was indeed.
germy
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes, and I appreciated how clear-eyed you were about those guys. You were proved right.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think the lame duck in WH was ever a successful businessman.
CarolDuhart2
@dmsilev: Not only that, but the CEOs who do run don’t want to undergo an apprenticeship in lower office first and learn from experienced professionals. It’s like someone wanted to practice medicine without going to medical school.
Geminid
@p.a.: Herbert Hoover made his named heading up a major relief effort in Europe after the first World War. But when the Great Depression hit, he could not think past the conventional Republican doctrine of austerity. As Will Rogers said, “Mister Hoover was an engineer, and he understood that water trickles down, but he did not understand that money trickles up.”
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Ken: I told my then-coworkers who spouted both the “He’s a billionaire” and the “Run the government like a business” lines that the first was bullshit and that he would prove that the second one was as well. Wonder if any of them get it now…
Another Scott
@CarolDuhart2: +1
And people thinking about Yang for NYC should keep that in mind.
Politics is important – it’s how we address important collective problems. And requires people with skill in the art of thoughtful discussion and compromise and inspiring others to do a good job and so much more.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Emma from FL:
Au contraire. Even though what happened at the Capitol was terrible — and I am deeply concerned for the safety of Joe, Kamala, Nancy Smash, and many others — I have been feeling good since January 6. I had been feeling so gaslighted for the last four years. It’s not that I wanted bad things to come to pass, but I had been saying and saying and saying that bad things would come to pass, and now I don’t doubt my judgment.
Kristine
@raven:
SF convention, January 2017. ‘ll never forget the guy who mocked me when I said that I had friends who depended on the ACA and we feared for it. “Trump isn’t going to touch the ACA.”
Nicole
@debbie: Excellent, excellent point.
Another Scott
@Another Scott:
Update.
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
Early rumors that tomorrow is going to be pardon day. Over 100 pardons or commutations…. Too much time left for him to really hurt the country.
Ken
@schrodingers_cat: The string of bankruptcies is something of a clue.
Say, could Biden sign an executive order that all Presidential candidates’ tax returns will be put in the public domain on the day they announce their candidacy? As I understand it, a law requiring the candidate to release the returns would be somewhat shaky, since it amounts to an additional requirement for office not in the Constitution.
Nicole
@Another Scott:
His “bodega” video sure didn’t help him any. I mean, you never know; Bloomberg bought himself 3 terms, but that video, on top of his comment about it being impossible to live in a 2 bedroom in Manhattan with both kids home schooling did not help.
Immanentize
@Ken: Also might be a first amendment violation -+ forced speech.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: I personally do not understand their complacency, especially since their kids and grandkids are all here and American, so losing the green card would be very wrenching to all theirfamilies.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
Herbert Hoover had a successful career as a mining engineer, before starting his own mine engineering consulting company that did very well making him a multimillionaire before becoming Commerce Secretary
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: a quick check of Wiki isn’t very informative, but it mostly confirms my vague idea that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter turned (his share of) the family farm into a profitable business. As twitter Nixon observed every time some story of trump’s self-dealing came up, “they made Carter give up his peanut farm”.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump is to incompetent to be a Nazis, remember the Nazis rebuilt a defeated nation, were popular among the German population for a period, kept the world at bay for four years and fought to the bitter end.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic:
Italics mine.
Insane. Absolutely insane.
trollhattan
@debbie:
The kid was an exchange student in Germany and toured Dachau. Germany does a good job keeping Nazism in the public consciousness because they know full well the consequences of reliving it. We’re not similarly committed, obviously.
Spanky
WaPo:
gene108
@CarolDuhart2:
As a South Asian, I respectfully disagree.
Another Scott
@gene108: My (limited) understanding is that Hoover was an objectively great man of the time before he became president. But (as someone upthread also pointed out), he was brainwashed by the economics of the time and would not accept that Keyes was right.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
“Run government like a business!”
There’s an old Robert Benchley short subject (The Trouble With Husbands) where he complains that his wife needs to run their household like a businessman would, after she forgets to buy butter. He volunteers to visit a delicatessen to buy butter, complaining the whole time “It’s time you let me run this place, like a real businessman would!” because the deli is twice as expensive as the regular grocery.
He arrives at the deli and gets distracted by all the items for sale: “Half-sour pickles! I haven’t had them since I was a boy!” Canned lobster: “Lobster?? Real fresh lobster? Perfectly safe? Better give me a few of those!” etc.
So he finally gets home after ringing up a sixty dollar expense (the deli owner’s eyes lit up when he told Benchley “Do come again, sir!”)
Back in his kitchen his wife unpacks all the stuff he’s purchased, including a long string of salami sausage, various boxes and cans… and then exclaims “And you’ve forgotten the butter!”
He turns and says he’ll go back to the deli, but she physically restrains him.
Run this place like a business, indeed.
smedley the uncertain
@Immanentize: Dunno, flying glass makes an awful mess and doors are a weak barrier to explosives. Just sayin…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kind of on topic: Jonathan Chait published a book in the winter of 2016-17 about Obama’s enduring legacy, and reviews from the New Republic to the National Review were all “Haw-haw!”. Now he takes a modified victory lap
The Moar You Know
Ain’t just immigrants. My wife and I look at this last election as a four-year reprieve/deadline to get the fuck out of America to any reasonably civilized nation that will take us permanently. I’ve read enough history to know how this part of the fall of the American empire goes and it won’t be pretty.
mrmoshpotato
I guess I’ll get in on this depressing game.
Generally, I just knew 2017-20 was going to be bad. All of the racist shit bellowed during Dump’s disgusting campaign was at least going to be attempted.
Specifically, the Muslim ban and trashing environmental regulations and protections were going to be pushed hard. 2/2
ETA – oh, a conman isn’t going to magically bring the coal industry roaring back. Idiots. 3/3
I’m sure I could think of more, but we raise a glass in muted celebration in 49 hours, not in dispair.
smedley the uncertain
@Another Scott: linky not found.
Immanentize
@smedley the uncertain: good points
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
No reasonably civilized nation will have me. :-(
Geminid
@Another Scott: I think Yang is running for New York Mayor to advance his brand in a high profile race, not to actually win. Yang’s fans will take his unelectability as more proof of the wisdom of his program.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think it’s safe to say no one expected a Republican administration to embrace an On-Line Role Playing Game as an instrument of government.
sab
@dmsilev: Romney is the closest, and he couldn’t get elected. Herbert Hoover was a competent business person but not a competent president.
I think the really competent business people who also have the chops to succeed in politics just aren’t interested. The combination of business and political skills just makes it too much fun to stay in business. They stay in business and influence politics from the sidelines.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The jury is out on how civilized we are but we need you.
schrodingers_cat
@The Moar You Know: I went back and forth on this one during the last transition and ended up filing my naturalization papers one day before the inaugural of the current menace in the WH.
This is my home and there is nowhere else I’d rather be.
ETA: I seriously considered Canada since I have many relatives there.
trollhattan
@gene108:
Doctor fight! :-)
Another Scott
@smedley the uncertain: Whoops – typo. Sorry.
https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/
For housing and real estate in particular, consider:
https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2021/01/update-inland-empire.html
https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2021/01/phoenix-real-estate-in-december-sales.html
https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2021/01/leading-index-for-commercial-real.html
Stuff like that.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
mrmoshpotato
@schrodingers_cat:
Haha, I was going to say that we’ll have Baud.
Citizen Alan
@Betty Cracker: The whole idea is bullshit. People who say they want someone to run the country like a business are actually people who want a dictatorship but are too cowardly to admit it. They want someone who can rule autocratically from the top down without consulting or considering anyone else. And they assume based on nothing but egotism that the CEO-dictator’s decisions would only hurt the people they hate and never them. Meanwhile, the sad reality is that if we actually had a President who really ran the country like a business and had the power to do so, his first act would be to expel half the red states from the Union. Because in real life, the first thing new CEOs do when they take over a struggling corporation is to shut down all the unprofitable divisions like Mississippi and Alabama.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
My curiosity was piqued, so I googled it and found this brief list. Lincoln and Truman failed as small retailers before politics; Washington, Hoover, Harding, Carter, and Andrew Johnson were successful, but Washington used slave labour. As a businessman, Trump is a poseur and a failure. If there’s a correlation between success in business and success as POTUS, I don’t see it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Citizen Alan:
one of my political hobby-horses is “Two Dakotas? Really?”. Montana and Wyoming? Idaho? Why? All these redundant and inefficient subsidiaries.
Uncle Cosmo
Hoover made his chops first as a mining engineer, then as the organizer of food relief to Belgium during the Great War, then as Secy of Commerce when the 20s were still Roaring. Neither a stupid nor an incompetent man – but completely dumbfounded by the economic collapse of 1929-31.
IMO the coup de disgrace was the feds’ (over)reaction to the Bonus Army. No ordinary American could really give him the benefit of the doubt after that. And yet he got nearly 40% of the popular vote. Go figger.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: Both Washington and Jefferson did pretty well. I think that’s it.
Geminid
@Jeffro: Hey, Jeffro! Did you see that VA 5th Democratic congressional candidate Cameron Webb is going to work with the White House Covid response team? WINA had the news Friday. Webb’s been there before, when he was a White House Fellow under President Obama. Other Obama White House Fellows include Representatives Colin Allred (TX) and Sharice Davids (KS). If Charlottesville and Campbell County are both still in the 5th after redistricting, I look for a rematch between Webb and the current Congressman, whose name I won’t mention so close to lunch.
Mike in NC
This line from today’s Washington Post made my day:
“On the other side of Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency, the lawyers are waiting.”
J R in WV
@debbie:
Actually, while my weapons were all bought from licensed Firearms Dealers after I was run through the FBI’s system to check that I am not a felon, they are NOT registered because West Virginia has no gun registration system!
Despite the fact that they are all legally purchased and I hold a Concealed Carry Permit issued by the sheriff of my county after my application and a couple of renewals were processed through the State Police, not registered guns at all.
Amir Khalid
@J R in WV:
Oh my God! Why ever not?
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I remember Erik Loomis saying right after the 2016 election that Obama would have no enduring legacy at all, that it had just been erased (and kind of blaming Obama for it).
Uncle Cosmo
Q: What’s the difference between a panicked chicken and the Trump misAdministration?
A: The one is a flustered cluck, the latter…
FTR coming up on B/H minus 48h30m…
gene108
@Another Scott:
From my limited understanding of Hoover, he was quite remarkable. He just did not have the skill set to handle the 1929 crash and the fallout from it.
There are a few terrible Presidents, who could’ve been perfectly mediocre, if not for a crisis beyond their capabilities.
I think Hoover, Bush, Jr., and Buchanan, among others would be on this list.
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan: The other thing that makes me crazy about the trope of “running government like a business” is that businesses work to increase revenues and often increase prices and expand service offerings to do so. And yet, the people who say they want government run like a business always want to reduce government’s reach and resources. So I can only conclude that they’re stupid or that they’re liars.
Gin & Tonic
After the last election my son and his immigrant then-girlfriend were shocked and appalled. She is now his wife, and they are living 2,500 miles apart because USCIS and NVC are under the command of assholes. Soon that will change, and we are hopeful.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Freedom.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: Yeah, probably the best example of a very successful businessman turned successful President is George Washington–he was loaded. But, as you say, it was success built on slavery. And he was elected as a military hero, not on “run the country like a business” grounds.
The Moar You Know
@schrodingers_cat: Good. Everyone needs a home.
I lost that feeling of belonging here a long time ago; time to move on.
Geminid
@The Moar You Know: Jefferson actually ran his inherited lands at a loss, and his debts were such that his land and all but a few of his slaves were taken by creditors soon after his death. Towards the end of his life Congress bought Jefferson’s library to put money in his pocket. It became the core of the library of Congress.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat: My father nearly died in 2000 in a tractor accident. If he had died, I would be a Canadian citizen today. But he lived, albeit in poor health, for another thirteen years. And in 2004, after Dubya’s reelection, I promised my mother that I wouldn’t move away while he was alive. Now, I’m 51, have health issues of my own, and don’t have near enough money in the bank to finance a foreign retirement. So I’m stuck here and will consider myself fortunate if I’m not stuck in Mississippi for the rest of my life.
I try not to think about that due to the mixed emotions I feel about all that.
Kelly
Nor Oregon
RandomMonster
I was following the stories of Russian involvement in 2016 and predicted that it would be a major scandal, probably impeachable. I remember the feeling of dread, as well as a comical sense of embarrassment as an American. “We elected this guy?”
November 9, 2016 was memorable because I was giving notice to start a new (and better) job. The prospect of Trump as president made it hard for me to enjoy that, or pretty much anything.
sab
@The Moar You Know: Jefferson didn’t do all that well as a businessman. He left an estate that was broke and had to be sold off.
Paraphrasing Ta-nehisi Coates: Jefferson went broke with a labor imtensive business that had zero labor costs (slaves pretty much grew their own food and made their own clothes.)
schrodingers_cat
@The Moar You Know: I wish you luck!
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC:
Yes! Counting down joyously to the Biden-Harris inauguration is also joyously counting down to the loss of legal protection for the Soviet shitpile mobster crime family.
Tick tock motherfuckers!
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: Few states register guns. California is a leader in this are, requiring all guns to be individually registered. My state of Virginia does not register guns, and it is “open carry” where any non felon can legally carry a handgun or long gun openly. Last year the General Assembly finally passed measures allowing localities to prohibit weapons on public property and at demonstrations.
Matt McIrvin
I think I thought Trump’s horrors and violence would be more partisan than they are. By which I mean I expected more concerted effort to ram through a Republican policy agenda. He did it in a huge way in the courts, there’s no denying that, and his cruel and tyrannical executive actions were very “make the libs cry”-motivated. But there’s been very little legislation apart from the splashy and terrible tax bill, because the Senate, surprisingly, didn’t kill the legislative filibuster, and because Trump is fairly lazy and unfocused. The transformation of Congress into a purely obstructive body has continued. In this case, it worked for us, but I imagine we’ll be regretting it again shortly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Moar You Know: I think quite a few of the ante-bellum slave-owners were born rich and got richer. Not a historian but from reading various bios and watching documentaries over the years: Washington was one of many younger sons of an immensely rich planter. He inherited some land, made money surveying and speculating, married a rich widow. Jefferson was the son of a relatively minor planter who IIRC married the daughter and heiress of a major one, and still died in debt. Andrew Jackson was a penniless orphan and died a rich man, IIRC. All participants in human trafficking
I think John Adams was more of a self-made man. Born to the comfortable middle-class, earned his living as a lawyer and farmer , and died part of the upper-middle-class. Again, all IIRC.
Citizen Alan
@Amir Khalid: Because FREEEE-DUMB!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Matt McIrvin:
I know Loomis’s name but little else about him, and he had, and has, a lot of company in that. Chait addresses some of the Green Lanternism and insistent Constitutional illiteracy of that faction. That could probably be a book in itself.
Martin
My prediction probably won’t be right, but it was close up to the wire: that Trump would need to be carried out of the WH. Metaphorically, I think I nailed it, but I also meant it literally. We’ll see. Narcissists are anything but predictable when the lose the ability to get what they need.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Anthony Atamanuik did a sketch years ago about an increasingly isolated and furious Trump refusing to leave the White House, screaming that he was robbed and he won the election. He pretty much nailed it, except that the bit underestimated the amount of mainstream Republican support he’d have.
schrodingers_cat
@Citizen Alan: Can you move to a blue state?
PJ
@Uncle Cosmo: Before the election, Trump directed and presided over the complete failure to respond to Covid-19, resulting in the collapse of the economy and over 250,000 deaths before the election; was impeached for attempting to bribe and extort false allegations of corruption from the Ukrainian President against Joe Biden, whom Trump (correctly) perceived as the strongest Democratic candidate against himself; saw numerous members of his 2016 campaign team go to jail for collusion with the Russians in the 2016 election; deliberately separated refugee children from their parents with the intention that they should never be reunited; enriched the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else; enriched himself mightily at the taxpayers’ expense; and on a daily basis committed innumerable hateful, petty, bigoted, and cruel acts, to the lasting shame of this country.
46.8% of voters voted for him. Go figger.
StringOnAStick
@Citizen Alan: Your history matches when we seriously considered becoming Canadians thanks to close friends we had there, but my husband’s father started to decline, then his brother discovered he had a extremely rate cancer. Flying back and forth from CO to the Midwest went from once or twice a year to 8 times for at least 2 weeks each trip that last year both were alive. The costs of doing that across the US-Canada border would have been more than double and my husband’s long history with his company here plus a great boss meant he could be there as needed.
Now the Canadian friends are AGW deniers because he works oil & gas adjacent, and we just moved to a place we love in OR with a great climate, so I’m glad we stayed. I’m also more politically active than ever and I’m determined to restore our country.
StringOnAStick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: When I got my knees replaced (at different times) I had a ton of time to read blogs and I used to read LGM and Loomis (and here, plus others) until I realized it was depressing the hell out of me. LGM is where hope goes to die in a cynical and erudite fashion.
Brachiator
The Trump era was worse than anyone predicted.
I think, though, that predictions and reactions to the reality of the Trump administration, informed resistance and opposition.
Which is the only value of predictions.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
According to Ballotpedia:
Eight states prohibit such registries. So WV isn’t exceptional at all. Going way back, WV was self-regarded as a frontier until very late, well into the 1900s. No real highway system prior to WW II, very rugged topography. Ladies pretty much all carried pistols in their purses well into the 1900s — I did an oral history project in the 1970s and interviewed very proper little old ladies, well to do daughters of mine owners, who were taught to shoot and shoot well as teens around the turn of the last century. They would hang their pistol on their bed post when they went to bed.
My grandma taught me to shoot, she kept a country store from 1932 into the mid 1950s, and carried a pistol in one apron pocket and the monies in the other pocket. Everyone knew she shot, as she emptied the pistol at a tin can once a month in her back yard. She was never held up, either. She was taught by her father, in Louisa KY.
Plus no one back then cared to spend the money, they would have thought it like registering tools, like axes or chainsaws. Now the 2nd Amendment nuts would go berserk if someone wanted to start up, plus the state legislature is now controlled by fairly rabid Republicans who want to strangle the government in a bucket of dirty water.
I am inclined to carry a .45 pistol in Arizona after being stalked by a (very large & scary) mountain lion in my cousin’s back yard on evening after dinner, walking to my RV trailer around 9 pm. I smelled it when the wind changed, and broke into a dash for the trailer door, where the pistol was uselessly lying on the counter. And she lives very near the small town, while our little place is up in the mountains. Some years before her cocker spaniel dog was eaten in the front yard by a lion.
I’m personally in favor of registration, but that and $5 will get you a lottery ticket.