I'm not relaxing until noon. Trump can still launch nuclear weapons for another 107 minutes. Although I was pleased to see that his last-minute pardons didn't include many if any people involved in the attempted coup.
101 minutes at this writing. Assuming we get through it, I'm actually a little surprised that he didn't find some new horror to inflict on us. The pardons, as awful as they were, weren't as bad as one might reasonably expect.
Trump can still launch nuclear weapons for another 107 minutes. Although I was pleased to see that his last-minute pardons didn't include many if any people involved in the attempted coup.
Yeah, I can't be fully reassured until noon comes with minimal incident, but I think the last 24 hours he's been showing his true colors as a punk.
It was amazing when I noticed his "farewell address" yesterday was barely getting any notice on NYT, WaPo, or Twitter - no "Trump strikes defiant tone with" blah blah blah.
I've been trying to figure out the mechanics of inauguration. Am I right in thinking that Biden becomes president at noon regardless of oath? He needs to say the oath somewhere before signing anything official, but change of power is not contingent on that ceremony happening on time.
Also his already being on a plane far out of DC (due to land in Florida at 11) seems like it would take the wind out of a lot of incorrigibles' sails. Lone actors would be less predictable though.
The real nuclear weapon is the assholes buried in the bureaucracy along the way.
I love the snow globe imagery. I'm pretty sure the only way to make a movie about the last four years, drama or comedy, is to have Trump played by a muppet. Everyone else human.
Should I have known who Kodiak Black was?
6 is the rightest thing I have ever heard.
This is some great shade https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1351890941087522820
I have a suspicion there were a bunch of pardons that were granted but not publicly announced yet.
There's only one nuclear football, right? So did it go with Trump to Florida? Or maybe one set of codes that becomes invalid at noon and a set with Biden that becomes active?
Reportedly Trump did leave a note for Biden. Unfortunately if it's just "I actually won loser" I think Biden is too big to tell everyone.
10.2 No, there are two, one will be with Biden at the Inauguration.
The teevee is saying that Biden is president at the stroke of noon.
10.2 Also there are not really a set of codes in it, there is a secure telephone with a code (the 'biscuit') that authenticates the president's voice and that connects to the National Military Command Center. The rest of it is basically a big briefing book outlining various targeting options. I recommend this Arms Control Wonk podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-donald-and-the-nuclear-7-parting-shots/id872594726?i=1000504760196
Clinton mari isn't wearing his mask properly? Ugh.
Never was big on using protection properly.
I think I should step out info the yard and shoot into the air at noon.
To protect myself, I go on nextdoor and complain about kids shooting fireworks.
Like when I shit in someone's yard and then post about the people walking their dogs.
I am going to go out on my balcony and whoop. I suspect I will be joined on the block.
I'm still pretty sure Trump can't read.
I just turned on the YouTube stream for a little bit. Never has all the pomp and circumstance seemed to me to serve such a clear purpose as it does now.
Wait. Lady Gaga is wearing a Mockingjay Pin? What does that MEAN?
27: I was watching a webinar and turned it back on halfway through her oath. I didn't think the thing started until noon.
Woody Guthrie just woke up and is feeling a little bewildered.
They're doing Biden's oath a bit early...
It's ok Moby all guys have trouble timing their performance every now and then.
I just felt probably something like... 1/5 the joy of VE day. 1/6? Let's say 1/5.
Apparently not completely official until noon. Address starting now.
Did anyone else see the silly movie, "My Fellow Americans"? The most redeeming feature was the lyrics to Hail to the Chief:
Hail to the chief
He's the chief so he needs hailing.
Hail to the chief
Here he comes so we must hail like crazy...
It's a good thing to get stuck in your head.
Today is the day Donald Trump truly became President.
So I guess it's now official.
They're doing Biden's oath a bit early...
Thanks; just turned it on and am listening to Biden's speech.
Biden's kind of old to have premature inauguration.
Yep, it's 12:05 Eastern so all the boxes have been ticked.
I cried for about 10 minutes. I did not do that when Obama replaced Bush, as glad as I was to see W. go. The cloud of absolute existential dread is lifting.
The former mayor of Baltimore who left office after a financial scandal (involving children's books somehow) and was convicted apparently asked Trump for a pardon earlier this week. Looks like she didn't get one. Presumably because the "F*ck you, libtards!" factor wouldn't have been high enough.
Biden: "I promise to work just hard for those who voted against me as for those who did."
Audience: "...oh, that was supposed to be an applause line? OK, I guess"
"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" was a good Bible choice.
Interesting that Pugh didn't get a pardon, but Kilpatrick did. Probably combination of (a) he's a man and (b) they got him for perjury and obstruction, whereas she just resigned and made a plea deal for the underlying crimes.
I was vaguely worried he was going to start singing.
Wait, Garth Brooks? I was promised Chris Gaines.
NOW I AM BECOME DEATH, THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS!
It doesn't look like McConnell was singing along to the last verse.
Who was that speaking and why did he say that this was our first ever national poet laureate?
39: I get that stuck in my head sometimes too. Interestingly, I had thought it was from the radio, but they must've been quoting the film I guess.
She's the first National Youth Poet Laureate.
Oh shit, I have to teach class.
Let's put you up on this shelf, or in this trash can.
Florida, where America puts its unwanted scented candles?
56: her performance was really something, no?
5: The real nuclear weapon is the assholes buried in the bureaucracy along the way.
Yep. In addition to Ellis at NSA I'm sure there are many others.
Probably one of the most successful was J Christian Adams* who as part of the DOJ led the New Black Panther Party 2008 election BS which was early harbinger of the White People backlash and was flogged relentlessly on Fox News**and other Right wing media.
Can also detonate over the long haul such as the former Chuck Grassley staffer who was high up in SoS IG dept. and pushed the Clinton email stuff.
Related are self-inflicted fuckups like Comey. (Not exactly "buried" I guess.)
*Especially the loathsome Megyn Kelly: Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly had 45 segments totaling more than 3 1/2 hours from June 30 through July 14 on the subject of the New Black Panthers and Adams' allegations.
Speaking of Fox News they seem to be entrenching to try to fend of Newsmax and OANN as the voice of the lying right-wing.
1) 7:00 PM weekday slot moves from "news" to Maria Bartiromo who was one of the more enthusiastic supporters of the Big Election Lie.
2) Fired a number of their behind the scenes "straight news" staff including the guy who oversaw the early projection for Arizona* **.
*Which really was premature, but as discussed at the time led to stupidly holding off on Nevada (and only slightly more defensibly Pennsylvania) because with AZ it would have given overall election to Biden.
**It does seem that the early Fox call of Arizona was particularly enraging to Trump per multiple reports. I semi-recommend Axios's 7-part "Off the Rails" series on Trump's fight to overturn the election*** (they are shameless access wraiths but that sometimes leads to actual insider perspective... motives of all sides just need to be kept in mind). Anyway, The AZ call complicated a more straightforward Trump declaration of victory on election night.
***I do think it might be a useful thing to provide to marginally non-crazed Republicans**** who think the election was stolen. It lays out all the (should be) transparent manipulations that Trump et al used starting months before the election.
****Like the husband of a dear friend of mine who is one of those overly "clever" libertarian engineers who have massive motivated-reasoning arguments for all of their stupid positions and beliefs.
It's good that the youth are interested in poetry, because I just don't have the time.
47: I had almost that exact thought.
Further to 5 and 59 it looks like one of Biden's first steps was to get rid of Michael Pack the utter hack who was head of the agency that oversaw (and was destroying) Voice of America.
Good fucking riddance.
62 points to something that's been worrying me. We all talk as if the problem was solely the supply of poisonous lies. But we also need to address the demand, and that will be even harder.
Best caption so far of the Bernie inauguration pic: In Jewish yoga this pose is: waiting for my wife at Loehmann's
Because I made a point of suppressing negative feelings about politics for four years -- apart from the times when it was impossible to block them -- I think some kind of catharsis has to come before joy, relief, etc. Something like five years of unexpurgated anger and hatred and fear and despair is not diffusing out quietly. I don't know how I feel. I cried at the end of the poem, but I couldn't even tell you why.
I'm meta-angry that I couldn't do more to block out all the bullshit. There is nothing, nothing on earth or in the cosmos, more fucking boring than Donald fucking Trump. Nothing. Whatever passions he was able to arouse in others, the one I have felt most was a kind of weaponized low-grade annoyance, like a stale air freshener miasma that you can never quite flush out of the room even when you open all the windows. Of all the forms I thought fascism would take in America, I didn't come prepared for that, and in hindsight I should have.
Legendary bargain designer clothing store in the Bronx. If you wanted to find grumpy old Jewish men waiting for their wives to find something nice to wear to a niece's wedding, that's where you'd look.
You're using the past tense. What if I want to find them now?
How do you pronounce it, LB? "Lowman's" or "Layman's" or something else? Merely curious.
They reminds me that I was going to buy a bunch of new clothes, but wanted to wait until after the inauguration so I wasn't stimulating Trump's economy.
74: Regardless of the right answer, if go with the same as the guy in Death of a Salesman.
I thought Bernie looked happier than that. He looks like he's smiling under his mask.
I'm probably just order more wine, so I can celebrate when I have time.
Loehmanns, at least the original in the Bronx, is closed for maybe ten years, so I don't know where you'd go for grumpy old Jewish men waiting now. And it was Low-mans. Had a terrific no-privacy dressing room with a strong culture of supportive critique from other women changing.
I think there's an argument to be made for muppet Jared and muppet Stephen Miller as well, everyone else human. But then it would be a horror film.
6 and 83 are demeaning to Muppets and the memory of Jim Henson.
Popped the cork on the champagne the moment he said, "So help me God."
As a narrative arc, the Jan 6th riots couldn't have been written more cinematically script-like as the final climactic scene in the upcoming Muppet-umentary if they'd tried.
Aw, Eugene Goodman escorted Kamala Harris at the inauguration.
9 is great by itself, but I just learned the context.
> Am I right in thinking that Biden becomes president at noon regardless of oath? He needs to say the oath somewhere before signing anything official, but change of power is not contingent on that ceremony happening on time.
Basically, yeah.
The important thing of course is that Trump's term *ends* at noon regardless of what else is going on. He can zap the whole of DC with his satellite-mounted Doom Ray and kill everyone there at 11:59, and he still won't be president at 12:01. (But having the Doom Ray is a pretty good consolation prize).
The new prez has to take the oath before doing any official presidentery. There does not have to be an "inauguration ceremony" per se (cf LBJ being sworn in on a plane with no preparation).
> Am I right in thinking that Biden becomes president at noon regardless of oath? He needs to say the oath somewhere before signing anything official, but change of power is not contingent on that ceremony happening on time.
Basically, yeah.
The important thing of course is that Trump's term *ends* at noon regardless of what else is going on. He can zap the whole of DC with his satellite-mounted Doom Ray and kill everyone there at 11:59, and he still won't be president at 12:01. (But having the Doom Ray is a pretty good consolation prize).
The new prez has to take the oath before doing any official presidentery. There does not have to be an "inauguration ceremony" per se (cf LBJ being sworn in on a plane with no preparation).
So vastly relieved that it's over, but it's going to take some time for the numbness to wear off.
One day I will remember that the Unfogged comment page offers zero feedback on the "post" click, and not reflexively press it again.
That day may even come before the site is upgraded to fix the problem.
I'm torn between wanting to bask in the not-terribleness of the news, or to finally get a break from the news.
To be fair, it's hard to convince a plane that it needs to practice.
Three new Senators now sworn in to make it 50-50 and VP Harris is now presiding over the Democratic Senate majority.
Does that mean I didn't get picked to fill Harris's seat?
I'm sure the only problem was the residency requirement.
I've spent almost two weeks in California.
That day may even come before the site is upgraded to fix the problem.
Ham-fingered Love is banned!
Kids these days won't even know Ham-Love is a reference neither to Broadway nor to that HBO show.
I assumed it's a reference to Maggie and the Ferocious Beast.
It never occurred to me that JFK and Robert Frost were alive at the same time.
I think of Frost as not knowing about cars and JFK as being peer to my parents.
I certainly didn't like how Robert Frost installed my alternator.
Two repair manuals diverged, and he took the one less traveled by. And that made all the difference.
I'm going to tamp down on posting about Trump generally, except where it's about accountability, but someone pointed out something interesting I had not realized - after the election was called, Fox News stopped taking Trump's calls live on air.
Lock him up and throw away the snowglobe.
Congrats, Americans! You've just rid yourselves of a tyrant. A tyrant who was way worse, and far more dangerous, than the George III of American Revolutionary mythology, imo. All thanks to Stacey Abrams, and to James Clyburn.
And yes, of course, Biden is going to be way too centrist, is going to disappoint. But he will restore sanity and decency as the basic MO of the American federal government; and, as the past 4 years have taught us, sanity and decency are not just frivolous 'extras,' they are the bedrock foundations of sound and sane government.
Bonus points, from a Canadian perspective. What with Biden's revocation of the Keystone XL pipeline deal: boy, does Alberta's Trump-lite premier Jason Kenney ever look silly.
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/alberta-biden-keystone
My mother was just reminiscing today about her school in Connecticut calling a 'snow day' for JFK's inauguration, so she got to hear Frost give his poem. Probably had more resonance for her since she was buddies with a couple of his granddaughters (I think -- maybe great-nieces or something).
Bay of Pigs notwithstanding, I'll take Frost/Kennedy over Frost/Nixon any day of the week.
Someday we're going to get a Republican inauguration where they put up a hologram of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reciting The Courtship of Miles Standish in its entirety. This will be followed by impeachment.
Do the kids even read Longfellow these days?
Naw, it's all Shortbro with the youth now.
Why do people keep talking like Trump left the Paris Accord because of Pittsburgh? The Paris Accord is way more popular here than Trump ever was. Fucking outer suburbs can go shit in their own lunch.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure we didn't read Longfellow in high school because I don't recall getting in trouble for making a penis joke about that particular name.
But he will restore sanity and decency as the basic MO of the American federal government
I found Biden's inaugural speech highly satisfactory this way, because my sense was that he was directly addressing this issue. Obama, by and large, declined to do this post-Bush -- and, of course, Bush also had some huge problems with sanity and decency.
You know, despite Mpls. having a neighborhood, street and a few other things named after HWL, and a waterfall he made famous, I don't think I ever had to read any of his work in school. Maybe "Hiawatha" was mentioned here and there, but otherwise not a peep.
We had to read Willa Cather just because she was from Nebraska.
Longfellow was an absolutely decent, standup guy who suffered at least one horrible personal tragedy, and I hate to speak ill of him, but none of that poetry is readable by modern audiences. There was a particular, limited moment in the past when it was, and the racehorse-on-shrooms gait of the verses can perhaps be defended as folk art. I can't take more than a page of it, though, except that one time when it occurred to me to substitute "Godzilla" for "Priscilla" in the aforementioned "Courtship." My grandmother (b. 1918) had "Hiawatha" committed to memory, though.
It's probably still better than The Day of Doom.
121: Born in Virginia. Spent significant time in Pittsburgh and New York. But yes, she live in Nebraska between ages 10 and 23 and went to school at U Neb.
5,59 & 66: Ellis at NSA placed on administrative leave. More aggressive than I might have expected. Also the effed up Labor attorney gone. Food steps.
123: I think people in Massachusetts are familiar with his "Paul Revere's Ride". The other stuff, not so much.
Personally, I always liked "The Children's Hour".
I lived in the dorm named after her.
Oh right, BG, of course! I recited that over the PA system in third grade (1987, Constitution bicentennial) while a costumed guy rode up and down the hallways on a horse, ringing a bell and hollering anachronisms. It was very exciting and I got overwrought and took it faster and faster as the horse sped up; then I probably had to lie down on the school nurse's overwrought-dorks couch. I remember the aftermath less well.
Remember how it took Trump like three tries to get the Muslim ban in place? It's awesome not only that Biden is reversing it but it's one of like twenty things he did today because he also hires people who know how to do their fucking jobs.
"Evangeline" had some currency in my youth as I recal.
But anyway, Cather and I are the only two people I know of who went from Nebraska to Squirrel Hill.
She was from a different county. The guy who ran the URA when they fucked up East Liberty was from my same county.
If you regard too many Whole Foods-shopping computer professionals moving in as "fucking up", then it was the first time they fucked up East Liberty.
Holy cow. Someone I used to work with just got appointed to the Biden administration. She is fabulous. I am beyond thrilled.
We had to read Willa Cather just because she was from Nebraska.
I read her, voluntarily, even though I was from Ontario.
That's probably why you guys have healthcare. Nobody wanted to go the way of the poor sculptor.
We have healthcare because of some Baptist, fire-and-brimstone, minister from Scotland (Tommy Douglas!), who knew how to stick it to the powers that be.
Almost everything about Canada that is democratic and egalitarian can be attributed to some sort of breakaway sect of the Scottish kirk. I say this as a Catholic; and, for backup, I refer you to the short stories of Alice Munro.
Everyone here travels in much better circles than I do. I had two old grad school colleagues who worked for the Trump administration. It's a real effort to avoid a gloating check-in with them right now.
Obama, by and large, declined to do this post-Bush -- and, of course, Bush also had some huge problems with sanity and decency
Obama being black, of course, put him on the tightest of tightropes, and holding his 2 term predecessor accountable would have been good, but a very different needle to thread than Biden doing it here.
The elected Democrats of the time were nearly all opposed to holding the W administration to account. I don't think Obama was an outlier.
I had two old grad school colleagues who worked for the Trump administration.
Yikes. I hope you studied something disreputable.
Anyway, the first professor I was every a graduate assistant for is (was?) a Trump supporter.
then I probably had to lie down on the school nurse's overwrought-dorks couch.
this made me laugh way too hard.
Everyone asks me if I like Cather because of Ace's name. In truth, I've never read any and just liked the name.
Supposedly, I am descended from John and Priscilla Alden on my mother's mother's father's side.
I had a stereotypical left wing professor in 1995 and he made a big deal about how Rupert Murdoch was going to ruin the world.
149. And how right he was! Not that he hasn't had some useful assistance over the years.
149: to be honest, that was a bit like looking out of the window and forecasting that the sun would rise tomorrow. It wasn't as if Murdoch wasn't already spewing poison into the water supply.
in 1995? I don't think Murdoch was more obviously going to wreck the world compared to Kenneth Starr or Newt Gingrich.
I have just seen someone refer to the 45th president as "P45" and it is a tragedy that this joke doesn't work outside the UK. (P45 is the tax form you get given when you lose your job)
Also, apparently 31 Democrats agreed that lying about an affair under oath is impeachable. The rest were probably worried about death threats and violence from NPR listeners.
Also, apparently 31 Democrats agreed that lying about an affair under oath is impeachable. The rest were probably worried about death threats and violence from NPR listeners.
141: Political science. But to be specific, these two were IR-realists. I say 'were' because I'm sure they're professionally dead at this point. I'm hoping so anyway.
True story: One time, a realist whose name rhymes with Benneth Smaltz was giving a seminar while visiting my department. The guy I mentioned in 142 said "As Winston Churchill said, ' there's a lot of ruin in a nation.'" The more distinguished realist replied, "That was Adam Smith. Churchill didn't say everything."
Let's all post or SAT scores and how many realists we've had lunch with.
158: Do Greek pretenders and future kings of Spain count?
Also, and only because someone mentioned the SAT (not really, I've been waiting to share this snippet here), a HS friend is apparently for-real buddies with Mutombo. She was the shortest person in their Georgetown class. I sure hope there's a Hollywood comedy in the works.
139, 140: I tend to take my signals about what it politically possible from successful politicians.* Obama's unwillingness to confront the Bush legacy is, to my mind, a pretty strong argument that doing so wasn't practical. Biden's modest starting steps in that direction suggest that maybe the political climate has changed enough that accountability is possible.
*I know there are limits to the usefulness of this heuristic, but it does tend to be my starting point.
I have seen several times in the media -- including in a video from three former presidents -- that America deserves congratulations for conducting a peaceful transition of power.
American mythmaking is powerful. Why have accountability when it's so much easier to pretend that nothing bad happened?
Maybe I should try that. It's not that I totaled the car. It's a chance to upgrade our transportation technology.
I'm uninspired on what to post today. Any ideas?
greatest album covers of the eighties. Greatest overproduced R+B song, ranked by bassline quality. Not really suitable, but I've thought about them.
The second question is bad, bc no serious contender for Jocelyn Brown's "Somebody Else's Guy". Maybe Luther's "All Night Longh"
This has turned out to be comfort music for me these last months, why?
165: I'm decompressing from the last four years and still pretty much hate everything. So whatever you come up with, I'm sure I'll hate it.
The Bernie sitting wearing wool mittens memes on twitter are very good.
Wasn't the poem great? Apparently Ms. Gorman is selling a lot of books.
I was just thinking about Biden and the Beast -- how do we avoid bored reporters cooking up stupid shit like the travel office "scandal" and all the rest. One way I've thought of is to have someone in the press office charged with releasing some kind of bullshit Don, Ivanka, or Jared communication every week. Give them a shiny object. Of course not doing dumb shit like messing with the travel office is also a good idea. And maybe the kind of thing we can count on from Biden: he's the first president I can remember who didn't run as an outsider coming to purge Washington of its awful ways, bringing with him a bunch of outsiders looking to become insiders. OK, I guess GHWB counts, and maybe the fact that the scandals were Jennifer Fitzgerald level tells us the lesson.
Of course not doing dumb shit like messing with the travel office is also a good idea.
There's always dumb shit like that available. If it isn't the travel office, it's a promise that you won't have to change your doctor under Obamacare.
Trump, though, seems to ahve taught the responsible media a lesson. For the NYT, the firing of James Bennet appears to have been a watershed moment, and the Bezos WaPo has been doing a fine job. We're not going to see anywhere near as much uncritical acceptance of Fox News talking points.
The social media have also learned a useful lesson: In a capitalist, somewhat democratic society, decent people are numerous enough that you can't alienate them. Twitter banned the president of the United States!
(OK, the NYT's discussion of Biden's anti-populist Peleton is pretty fucking stupid, but the actual thrust of that story -- the security issue involved -- is interesting and informative.)
And it seems Schumer is holding fast against McConnell's demand he promise to safeguard the filibuster. (There may not be 50 votes to end the filibuster right now, but the Democratic holdouts aren't hard noes, so keeping the threat of ending the filibuster seems like maximizing leverage in this situation.)
157: A medium-status realist, the advisor of the two Trump-realists I know, once told me to be careful when talking about Nietzsche because people will think I'm a Nazi. Well, who are the Nazis now?!
Trump, though, seems to ahve taught the responsible media a lesson.
But there's quite a bit of irresponsible media to continue the grift
The real Nazis were the people working to politically entrench white supremacists along the way.
Anyway, expect for the realist and a couple of theory people, the department was very quantitative, so not much Nietzsche and lots of transferable skills for selling out.
131- Moby I don't count?
176: No argument. A lot of the asshole media's growth was encouraged by the decent media, though. That relationship is changing, but I don't have a good read on how that will end up.
I am genuinely optimistic that we won't get any more disgraceful episodes like the NYT collaboration with Steve Fucking Bannon on "Clinton Cash.
I didn't know you ever lived here.
A good friend I made during my HS years (1963) at a summer school became a Straussian and then a Reagan Undersecretary of State. Straussians are not realists, but just as bad and more cunning. It was really sad for me; we really liked one another and I was hoping we'd be lifelong friends, but thinking back, there were already signs that we were moving in different directions.
Altogether I've met 4 Undersecretaries of something and one reputed CIA agent in my life (neither confirmed nor denied). Sidelight: Two of them were notably weenie when I knew them, but had buffed up a lot by the time I saw them at a reunion much later.
I'm going by "A Fish Called Wanda" for my Nietzsche.
165: How about this important piece about why you should stop trolley debating and doing ethical consumer stuff and TAKE THE GODDAMN VACCINE WHEN IT'S OFFERED TO YOU: ttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/covid-vaccine-ethics.html?referringSource=articleShare
h
(no, I didn't set out to request it via the Text Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer.)
Emerson!!! Is it really you?!!?? I was just thinking of you! Have you been commenting here all along and I've been reading the wrong threads?
It was just like two comments in another thread.
Frowner: I came back only a few days ago and have only posted a few times.
We know it's really him because of the invisible blue check.
OK, his bonehead appointments are pleasingly few overall so far, but why on earth would Biden want to keep the FBI under a Trump appointee?
156: Did you attend The Ohio State University, by any chance?
158: I had drinks with the IR realist whose name rhymes with Sean Sheershimer, and he was a witty and enjoyable conversationalist. Everything he ever said about my theoretical tradition has been incorrect, but I'm happy he saved his real vitriol for people in his own area.
I saw him too, but can't remember much.
Also, since there are more IR people than I realized here, I can share that the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy nominee is a mainstream constructivist with lots of experience being yelled at (and subsequently ignoring ::sigh::) postmarxians.
183: You're telling me.
192: Not that one. It's a prominent Baltimore institution.
194: He's already got a COVID-19 book coming out. I am a terrible slacker.
192: not only that, but everything he predicted about international relations! [as Hedley Bull said, most states are at peace, almost all the time. as he didn't say, take this into account when you make predictions, your percentages will be better]
192.1: I did go to Ohio State and 157 is about who you were thinking of, I think.
101:
Never heard of it.
"Hamilton Hocks (voiced by Michael Caruana) is a pig who can be bossy and quite fussy, but he has a warm heart. He lives inside a portable cardboard box which he loves, is the best cook in Nowhere Land, and is a total clean freak."
Mmmmnope.
Way pre-musical, landed on Hamilton via some "which founding father are you" online quiz, but Hamilton doesn't have enough tentacles on his own. Was "Hamilton Lovecraft" for a while, then hyphenated, then went to "Hamilton—Lovecraft" for a bit, which someone on here objected to because their steam-powered operating system had trouble with it, so elected for hyphen restoration surgery.
197: Yep!
198: Even the people I know who like (or liked pre-Trump) the person you were probably referring to describe him as a complete and total asshole.
I'm not going to defend his work or overall ethics. But, he really didn't give me very much work, which was nice.
I certainly have not kept in touch.
Further to 200.2, while I don't think I've ever met Schwandell Reller personally, he has been epically interpersonally and professionally shitty to people I respect and care about, so he can go fuck himself.
Though I'm glad he didn't overwork you.
I don't know who his graduate students are. I never even took a class with him.
I don't know his grad students either, though the last time I was in DC I overheard one of his advisees at a bar loudly stressing out about his upcoming dissertation defense, which: small world! I'm talking about people who already had PhDs at the time.
And I believe you. He was too new to have much influence when I know him, but even then he was massively dismissive of many other research traditions and at least half of the common genders.
"I tend to take my signals about what it politically possible from successful politicians."
Well, an overcautious politician cand be immediately successful while failing to do what needs to be done. Obama's approach to the 2008 financial crash was also overcautious and to my mind, unsuccessful.
I've feared for some time that there is no overlap between what is politically possible and what needs to be done. This is most frightening WRT climate and environmental issues.
It also seems to be true WRT the increasing immiserization of a large part of the population. As far as this goes, we have to remember that for many significant political figures immiserization is (usually not quite openly) an outcome greatly to ne desired.
Interestingly, Trump lost the outer Pittsburgh suburbs this time. This is how I, aside from common sense, knew that Biden's victory in Pennsylvania wasn't a fluke. When you've lost Upper St. Clair....
Well, an overcautious politician cand be immediately successful while failing to do what needs to be done.
Yeah, that specifically is what makes it a problem as a heuristic. Even a well-intentioned politician can make choices guided not by what is possible, but what it politically costly in the moment.
Obama's approach to the 2008 financial crash was also overcautious and to my mind, unsuccessful.
The response was a lot of different things -- stimulus, regulation, legislation. Aspects of it seem undeniably overcautious. But unsuccessful? In the end, it answered the most pressing needs of the moment and put the country on a solid footing -- even if it did so more slowly than necessary.
It really didn't. It saved finance (the ones who caused the problem, in some cases by criminal acts) without saving the populace. The finance depression was about 2 years, but the employment depression was years longer, and a lot of people lost most of their net worth during that time (repossessed house, shrunken IRAs, etc.)
I'm positive that this was a major factor in the 2016 election -- political wonkls used to call it "fundamentals" -- but Democrats don't want to talk about it. It was all just Comey, Russia, and racism.
"Depression" should be "recession", but there are reasons why they call it "The Great Recession".
And damn if we aren't going through the same thing again. The D millionaires in Congress seem a little less chickenshit and austerian this time, but the R millionaires are adamant and will do what they can to sabotage recovery.
I mean, it's a little early to condemn Biden as the worst president we've ever had.
Let's give him till next week to solve climate change?
I'm hoping that he will depart from the Clinton-Obama path. He has done several thing so far which were better than expected, but his foreign and military policy choices haven't been encouraging.
And what a sexist! He fired Gina Haspel.
There was so much news this week, that I remember reading that Trump declassified whether or not aliens were real. But I don't recall what the answer was.
No, he's a sexist because he's recognizing the rights of transpeople. There's even a hashtag.
173 There is always something, but the travel office was pretty dumb: messing with bureaucrats that reporters knew in order to let friends siphon off some public money? Nothing illegal, but exactly the right kind of bait to catch the wrong kind of attention.
The inadequate and unheralded bailout of 2009 was a major cause of 2010 and 2016. We need less technocratic nudgey bullshit and more direct aid for which we take fucking credit.
The stimulus checks will say, "From our family to yours, Hunter."
John Emerson complaining about Obama's economic stimulus--it's like I stumbled through a time warp to the good old days! I didn't realize at the time they were the good days.
I have a colleague who just will not shut up about aliens.
221: I looked it up and was a bit surprised. In the 47 years from 1970 to 2016 inclusive, unemployment in 2016 (4.7%) was the fifth lowest of any year, and the second lowest of any election year. In 2000 -- a defeat for Democrats with a lot of similarities with the 2016 defeat -- unemployment was even lower -- 3.9%.
Of course, the conventional wisdom is that what really matters is the change during the election year. (That suggests that the failures of 2009 don't really matter to 2016, but let's run with it anyway.) Here are the unemployment rates from 2009 to 2016, inclusive: 9.90%, 9.30%, 8.50%, 7.90%, 6.70%, 5.60%, 5.00%, 4.70%.
I think the conventional wisdom also doesn't care much about unemployment in this context. (The conventional wisdom doesn't have a populist sensibility.) Rather, the CW contends instead that GDP is what matters. It looks tougher for Obama there in 2016 -- only 1.7%, for the 12th-worst figure of the 47 years, and the third-worst election year of the 12 election years. (The two worse years were wipeouts for the incumbents, 1980 and 2008.) But it seems tough to blame Obama's response to the crisis for that, because all but one of the years after 2009 was better than 2016, and of course they were all better than 2009. The figures for 2009 to 2016 inclusive: -2.50%, 2.60%, 1.60%, 2.20%, 1.80%, 2.50%, 3.10%, 1.70%.
I don't see, in the broad macroeconomic sense but also in the political sense, how Obama's response to the crisis can be judged a failure. His stewardship of the economy, with the Republicans engaging in every kind of sabotage available, may have become a problem. But the crisis itself was managed middlin' well -- and certainly better than the Republicans wanted it to be with a Democratic president.
224: A good friend of mine -- a retired semi muckety-muck in Defense intelligence -- used to go on a lot about aliens, but doesn't do it in front of me any more because I made relentless fun of him.
181- Yeah. When I was going to CMU.
If you were there first, before Nebraska, it doesn't count.
I'm not sure I understand either political football's post or essear's. PF first.
The lowest unemployment during Obama's term, 4.7%, is still high in human terms. There was also the crash in housing prices. Millions of people lost their homes, their jobs, much of their net worth, and their futures. Whole areas were full of such people. The conventional wisdom is full of shit, as I have always said. By and large the CW deals with aggregates, but huge sectors of the population can be ruined without the aggreate looking bad.
It's really worse than that. Obama was not at all responsible for the crash, but had to clean up the mess, but not only did he get blamed for the consequences (life isn't fair, as St. Carter pointed out), but when the long delayed recovery finally came, Trump took the credit. I have trouble imagining a worse failure, either in political terms or in governance terms, though in aggregate averaging terms, and when politics is regarded as a contamination of economic planning, I suppose can be regarded as triumphant (as Hillary claimed).
Essear:
It's true that I was looking way back 12 years ago, but it's not like I was resurrecting an ancient grudge. I was giving one of the causes of the disaster we just experienced, but also suggesting that we may be on the verge of doing more or less the same thing again. Many never recovered form 2008, and already the COVID recession has hurt another group.
And alternate history: 100,000 votes in WS, MI, and PA would have meant that *we would have no real idea what President Trump would have done*. But the Hillary wonks knew that they were safe states.
People say that, but from on the ground in Pennsylvania, it sure did not look like we were being considered safe.
It matters way less how well the recovery was measured to be (which to my recollection was pretty great for the mean household, not nearly as great for the median household, and downright awful for the bottom quintile) and far more how it was perceived to be. Obama and Susstein and crew opened themselves up to charges of just bailing out the rich that weren't entirely unfounded, and Holder's failure to hold the bank execs or anyone collected to account for the massive fraud was just the icing in the cake.
Even if e.g. direct cash payments would be less tactically effective than e.g. an unnoticed reduction in payroll taxes, they're much, much smarter strategically because people notice them, and like them, and then elect you to do more things like that, and then you can, well, do more things.
Maybe we didn't know the extent of the Republican intransigence at the time. We can't pretend otherwise now. The Blue Dogs (down to, what, 18 members? The progressive caucus is up to 100!) need to get with the program.
Dude, Emerson, I love you, but there has been copious reporting about how many of Biden's economic advisors bitterly learned the lessons of the $787 billion Obama Feb 2009 stimulus package and are determined to go big or die trying this time around. The guy in charge may be saying benign platitudes about unity, but he's hired a bunch of knife fighters.
The Chief Economist of the Department of Labor is about to be Janelle Jones, ffs. There are precious few individuals in this entire country who have done more public-facing research on Black unemployment rates and the way that labor market policy can either exploit or protect marginalized workers.
I have plenty of bones to pick with Biden (yes, already) but this ain't one of them. This crew may yet screw up in terrible ways, but IMO repeating the problems of 2008 is not likely to be one of them.
Emerson I've been saying the same stuff for my tenure here mostly I've gotten attacked. I feel like this stuff doesn't matter anymore it's way too late.
Moby I was born in Nebraska
Then I should have counted you. I didn't know that before.
We buried my mother today. She was diagnosed with COVID last Friday and died Tuesday. I'm a very long-time lurker, but so much appreciate the compassion of this community, And I have no where else to share this with. Thank you for being you all.
Oh Kenneth how awful. I'm so sorry. May her memory be a blessing.
Oh how sudden and terribly sad. I'm so sorry for your loss.
What a senseless tragedy, Kenneth. Maybe tell us something about her, if it would make you feel better?
Kenneth, I am so very sorry for your loss. RIP. The suddenness of it seems like it would make it extra hard. You have my deepest sympathies.
Kenneth, I am so, so sorry for your loss. What a cruel tragedy.
And I echo Walt's comment - if you want, do tell us a little about her.
I am sorry you lost your mother. My condolences.
So sorry, Kenneth. Losing a loved one unexpectedly is hard enough under normal conditions; this is awful for you.
I'm so sorry, and I'd also love to hear anything you want to tell us about her.
So sorry, Kenneth. A terrible thing.
kenneth, i am so very sorry, how cruel and painful this virus is. sending you my deepest condolences. would very much like to hear about your mother, her life and your relationship with her.
Adding to the sympathy and the invitation to tell a story or two. My condolences. What a hard time for you, especially right as the clouds are lifting for a lot of people. Please take care.
I am sorry to hear this dreadful news as well.
That's horrific. I am so sorry.
And by the way...In the name of Unfogged, may I offer you this basket of fruit in token of our condolences?
Witt: I'll believe it when I see it. There's lots of optimistic stuff out there saying Biden:2021 won't be
Biden-->2021, and I hope it's right, but people are stancing and and pressuring and floating trial balloons, and then there's Manchin et al. Biden HAS said that he'll veto Medicare for all.
If Medicare for All gets to his desk of course he'll sign it. It doesn't get to his desk without the concerns he raised last year about it being resolved.
To be clearer on 255, Biden has been very clear that his objection was fiscal, not ideological. As proponents have pointed out from the beginning, there's enough money being spent in the sector to be able to afford M4A of pretty much any complexion. The tough question has always been how to capture and redirect that same money (less, even, perhaps?): obviously, a bill that passes Congress is going to set forth the mechanism, and while there may be some magic asterisks here or there, the actual mechanism for getting the money Boeing and I are each paying into the health insurance system into a government fund is going to be spelled out.
He's not the Second Coming. But the guy has way less in the way of ideological commitments that most of his recent predecessors. What can get through the Senate and yet draw a veto? It's hard to imagine.
(Trump barely ever vetoed anything. OK, he had to protect the Confederate legacy, and Saudi war criminals, but that's about the only ideology the man had.)
It's impressive how much the new administration (more the staff than Biden, I think) seems to be steeped in the memory of Democrats being jerked around under Obama, combined with what McConnell pulled under Trump, and a determination not to let it happen again. I can't find the link, but someone tried to catalog the most common follows of the appointees with Twitter accounts, and Ezra Klein was near the top. You also see that in how they're discussing the filibuster.
Biden-Harris 2020: We'd rather you fucked your feelings.
The fiscal objections to Medicare for All are a Republican fraud systematically used to cripple Democrats. Note that the last Republican President to try to run a balanced budget was Eisenhower, before most of you were born. Fiscal concerns never stopped tax cuts or military spending.
Cheney has explained that deficits don't matter, and so has Greenspan. Not kidding. And Cheney explained that he had learned that during the Reagan Administration. (It drove David Stockman crazy; he didn't realize that the balanced budget was a fraud).
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-01-12-0401120168-story.html
This is just to say
I have used
the healthcarecare
that was in
the medicare
and which
you were probably
saving
for retirement
Forgive me
it was expeditious
so universal
and so bold
CharlieCarp - I hope you are right about Biden and medicare for all. I was going to say we'll see, but I just hope we will. Does anyone in the Senate other than Bernie and Elizabeth support it?
The specifics of how Medicare-for-All might get passed are kind of hypothetical at this point; there's not going to be any high-level effort to fashion it to be more acceptable to Senate Democrats, not this year at least. The Biden-Sanders unity platform has a closely-Medicare-like public option on generous terms with low barriers for everyone not currently covered, and that's what they will see as their mandate to get through the Senate; I don't know if Manchin et al will be barriers.
Medicare for all. Gold-level Medicare for West Virginia.
261 They've been able to sell their fiscal fraud with the big lie that tax cuts increase collections. They pretend to believe it, and, as you've so eloquently pointed out in the past, owners of media companies pretend to believe it as well.
263 I don't know how many votes there are for 0 co-pay 0 deductible better-than-Europe M4A. Can't be 50. Might it be as high as 10? Probably. Are there 50 votes for dropping the eligibility age on the existing Medicare program to 50, and getting corporate America to pony up the larger share of the resulting windfall to help pay for it? As a first step? There might well be. Are there 50 votes for something bolder? I guess we'll find out.
Greenspan didn't EXACTLY say that deficits don't matter. What he (and Benanke) said is this:
"As former Fed chair Alan Greenspan testified, "There's nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to someone.' His successor, Ben Bernanke, went further, describing how the federal government pays its bills: "It's not taxpayer money. We sinply use the computer to mark up the size of the account". ("The Deficit Myth", Stephanie Kelton, PublicAffairs, 2020, p. 256)
Both know that government isn't dependent on taxes to pay bills and cannot go bankrupt, because it prints money. They were mostly arguing for the 2008 bailout rescuing the banks, which did involve printing trillions of dollars (or actually, just entering them into a government account an then distributing them).
For them that was a valid use of deficit spending, and so are deficit-producing tax cuts, but both want "social spending" minimized, and huge tax-cut deficits can be used to demand cuts in social spending. The big lie.
As it is, the US is sort of a shitty country, in large part because of its medical system, and we probably can't get a medical system that's much better because of our shitty political system and our shitty political realities, and that's our fate.
I am sorry to hear this dreadful news as well.
Belatedly:
Longfellow [...] none of that poetry is readable by modern audiences
I did general HS tutoring for a young woman who had come here from Somalia at, mm, eight? so she was solidly bilingual. One week she was griping about the poetry unit, not because she didn't like poetry but because nothing the teacher had read or offered them was satisfactory poetry to her. So I recited everything I could remember from memory, and the bits she liked were all big 19th c bouncy boys, and we went to see what the library had and she wrote her report on Longfellow. Did well with it too.
I think that was the same year she apparently electrified her history class by getting across just how awful living through a Civil War was, do not think it doesn't matter because they dressed funny, do not skip over "brother against brother" like it was a TV episode.
Thank you all for your condolences and nice thoughts (and your compassion):
Here are the few words I prepared and read at her funeral. I think it will give you some idea of what a wonderful woman she was. I'm hoping this formatting will not be too bad.
When I was in the second grade, my mother
volunteered to be the "cookie mother" or
"class mother" or whatever they called that
position at the time. My teacher, upon
meeting her in person, told me "Your mother
is so beautiful." I of course already knew
that.
Her beauty and goodness and kindness were
timeless.
When I was sixteen I told her that I was
taking my first date ever to see the movie
"Back to the Future".
She only knew about the movie from what
she saw in the commercials, where a son
time travels back to November 5th
(coincidentally my birthday) in the year
1955 where he meets his mother-to-be.
My mother would have been 16 years old
on November 5th, 1955, if I did my math
correctly.
She didn't want to know about the girl I
took on the date or how it went or anything
like that. She wanted to know if the son
in the movie found his mother attractive
back when she was in high school. I said,
"Oh, yes, absolutely, almost too much."
She enjoyed hearing that.
One of her favorite songs is called "With
Anne on My Arm". For years she always
hoped that someone would write a classic song
about a girl named Ann. And she loved it
even more that it was written for a Broadway
musical.
[With Anne on my Arm]
When I was visiting from college and had the
privilege to accompany my mother's mother,
-- our grandmother -- Lillian, to Church, she
would always have me take her arm when we made
our entrance. Like my mother, she enjoyed
having a young man offer his arm and walk with
her so everyone could see.
For my mother, her first grandchild -- Sean's --
was her favorite arm to hold.
She was better than us. Earlier in life, she
cared for dying cancer patients. She gave life
to and raised four amazing children. She was
an avid reader and passed on her love
of books and knowledge to all her children.
She loved doing crossword puzzles and acrostics.
She was a devout Catholic and worked for many
years as secretary of the religious education
program at our Church, even learning to operate
the first word processor I had ever seen (it
had no screen or monitor).
And all she wanted was for a handsome young
man to offer her his arm once in a while.
She is in Heaven now. She absolutely earned it.
She earned it with many years of prayer and
struggle and compassion and grace.
And, someday, may we all get the chance to walk
arm-in-arm with her again.
Thanks for posting this, Kenneth. It's lovely.
Thank you. So sorry for your loss. She sounds like a wonderful woman.
Thank you PF and Moby. Please keep posting your jokes, Moby, they always crack me up.
What beautiful words, Kenneth. What a loss.
Thank you Heebie. You are wonderful for keeping this site going,
That's a really nice tribute, Kenneth.
