I can't quite bring myself to watch it -- is it a "gosh darn it I just wasn't cynical enough, I should've dug even harder" or is it a "I let myself be fooled into what I and my viewers wanted to believe"? I assume the former.
Those Democrats whose decisions have a measurable impact on election outcomes should definitely be taking a cold hard look at the numbers; but for us random internet commenters, I think the equation might be different. Questioning your own beliefs & actions can be painful, and even if you do that, the world probably won't visibly change anyway, so why not just find a story you can believe that makes you feel better?
I think the crazy stories out of SF were in some way obscuring how much there's a larger question of Dem governance in big cities. It's easy to write off the SF city govt as a bunch of kooks and not representative, but there are less dramatic but more impactful issues in a number of cities that have been dragging down the party's reputation. See e.g Josh Barro: https://www.joshbarro.com/p/democrats-will-not-win-by-changing
Jaybird is humorously suggesting that the Luigi fandom is coming from his sex appeal and that this new information that he's not tall reduces said appeal.
I wonder if ChatGPT could've figured this out...maybe someone can set up the appropriate prompts to make a custom Jaybird interpreter for the folks who struggle.
What's the current rate for a professional hitman? I assume it's pretty high, especially given the post-Covid inflation. So maybe more likely he was getting ready to come clean about all their shady practices and endanger the bajillions of dollars they make, and someone decided 125K to silence him would provide a good ROI.
Disclaimer: This is me just joking around, I have no specific knowledge of any actual shady business practices.
It's all very sketchy, especially since that 11-year horizon just happens to take it back to 2014, the year Hunter joined the Burisma board.
The people here trying to defend it or whatabout it are being dumb, in my opinion -- the election is over, Biden will not be running for office ever again, this action benefits only the Bidens and actually hurts the Democratic party -- but the harm to the Dems is even higher if they turn themselves in knots trying to defend him. Joe is a career politician, not a saint -- let him take some heat for this.
Of course her campaign people are going to defend themselves -- we'll see as the jockeying for 2028 begins how many of them get hired. The base will be coping however they can, but hopefully the people whose jobs depend on winning elections will be taking a more objective look at the outcomes.
Wayyyy too much food at our usual multi-family potluck-ish friendsgiving this year -- like, every year there are plenty of leftovers but this time it was ridiculous, we were all stuffed by appetizers before anyone sat at the table, no one even went back for seconds even though the food was uniformly excellent.
The root cause we identified was that all the "kids" are now in their 30s and mostly paired off -- so, our numbers were lighter than usual due to their unfortunate obligation to trade holidays with their significant others' families, but also the younger generation are now bringing their own contributions to the meal while the parents are still bringing as much as they did as when the kids were teenagers. It was a lovely day, but for future holiday gatherings we will have a more careful conversation about expected number of servings to target.
I think the problem is the original post -- it seems to be aimed at a very small number of people, none of whom post or comment here (and David himself rarely joins the discussion to his posts, if ever). It's also rather confused, mixing up a quite premature "i told you so" (except maybe to the one or two people on the planet who thought Trump would make conventional Republican appointments) with a plausible "just wait and see".
I saw a post a few days ago talking about how so many reactions to the election sound like a guy whose girlfriend just dumped him for another guy, and this one fits that model -- "I can't believe you left me for him!! You'll be sorry!"
LOL. The Noah Smith article I linked has five studies, I'm sure there are many more -- who knew, it turns out a lot of people actually study this kind of stuff professionally, and statistical models can produce different results depending on different assumptions and methodologies. I'm not one of these people though, so I don't have my own personal numbers to share with you. You're welcome to believe whatever makes you happy.
I assume you got this from Kevin Drum, who plucked it out of that article to crow about the low number. The original SF Fed analysis that was pulled in for the WSJ article was written in March 2021 and is titled "Why Is U.S. Inflation Higher than in Other Countries?".
I'm not an economist and I'm sure that there are any number of models out there with different conclusions, and different assessments of impact; but "very little impact" is already different from "no impact and the US did better than a lot of the world". You're obviously starting from the question "how can I most plausibly minimize Biden's responsibility" instead of "what's the best explanation for the data". But as I say, it's not my field so I'll settle for at least pushing y'all off your original stance a bit.
Inflation was not just something that happened naturally, completely outside the Democrats' control. See e.g. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-hate-inflation-more-than :
In February 2021, Olivier Blanchard, another prominent macroeconomist, wrote a detailed argument that the Biden administration was spending too much on Covid relief with the American Rescue Plan, and that this would generate a surge of inflation. The argument included a simple model whose predictions ended up being close to what actually happened.
Other economists pushed back hard against Blanchard and Summers, arguing that inflation was due to transitory factors, and that it was important to keep spending in order to preserve full employment. One of these was Paul Krugman, who declared himself “a card-carrying member of Team Transitory” — “Team Transitory” being those who thought inflation was mostly due to pandemic disruptions and would fade on its own. There was even a live debate between Krugman and Summers in early 2022. But by late 2022, Krugman issued a mea culpa, and admitted that Biden’s American Rescue Plan had exacerbated inflation
Sweet! I never played any of the Castlevania games, have been tempted many times to pick up one of these collections -- finally the price is right. Just got a new laptop a few weeks ago so it's a perfect time to finally get some new games.
Several years ago I got a puzzle game bundle with three games, but I only played 1.5 of them before my old laptop more or less gave up the ghost; and since I mostly am in front of my work laptop anyway, i didn't rush to get a new one. So now I'm finally getting around to playing Baba is You and enjoying it tremendously.
He said this on Fox and Friends, and the other hosts were laughing -- it was just ripped out of context. Facetious humor like this rarely survives a political border crossing in either direction.
Seems like even before 45/47, it would've been a good idea for them to have instituted a 20-year waiting period to be added, after the partisan fires have had a chance to be smothered by the blankets of nostalgia.
Was the lesson to be sure to make a show of consistent moral judgment when there's nothing on the line? Franken resigned and was replaced by another Democrat, who was appointed by the sitting Democratic governor. Whatever else it is, it's not an example of Democrats demonstrating their commitment to enforcing their moral values even at the price of political power.
Rogan just seems like a fun guy to be around who would say insane and inappropriate things at times because that's literally what a normal human being does sometimes. All the liberal podcasts are like they're trying way too hard to impress the HR department at their office.
On “From The Wall Street Journal: How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge”
I can't quite bring myself to watch it -- is it a "gosh darn it I just wasn't cynical enough, I should've dug even harder" or is it a "I let myself be fooled into what I and my viewers wanted to believe"? I assume the former.
On “From Semafor: Kamala Harris’ digital chief on Democrats ‘losing hold of culture’”
Those Democrats whose decisions have a measurable impact on election outcomes should definitely be taking a cold hard look at the numbers; but for us random internet commenters, I think the equation might be different. Questioning your own beliefs & actions can be painful, and even if you do that, the world probably won't visibly change anyway, so why not just find a story you can believe that makes you feel better?
On “Asian Voters Abandoned Democrats in Droves and Might Not be Coming Back”
I think the crazy stories out of SF were in some way obscuring how much there's a larger question of Dem governance in big cities. It's easy to write off the SF city govt as a bunch of kooks and not representative, but there are less dramatic but more impactful issues in a number of cities that have been dragging down the party's reputation. See e.g Josh Barro: https://www.joshbarro.com/p/democrats-will-not-win-by-changing
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/9/2024”
Jaybird is humorously suggesting that the Luigi fandom is coming from his sex appeal and that this new information that he's not tall reduces said appeal.
I wonder if ChatGPT could've figured this out...maybe someone can set up the appropriate prompts to make a custom Jaybird interpreter for the folks who struggle.
On “From the New York Post: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot outside Hilton hotel in Midtown in targeted attack: cops”
And a Unabomber fan.
"
Thanks for the prompt service! I will be sure to come to you for all my future potentially self-incriminating queries about illegal activity.
"
What's the current rate for a professional hitman? I assume it's pretty high, especially given the post-Covid inflation. So maybe more likely he was getting ready to come clean about all their shady practices and endanger the bajillions of dollars they make, and someone decided 125K to silence him would provide a good ROI.
Disclaimer: This is me just joking around, I have no specific knowledge of any actual shady business practices.
On “Joe Biden Pardons Local Man”
It's all very sketchy, especially since that 11-year horizon just happens to take it back to 2014, the year Hunter joined the Burisma board.
The people here trying to defend it or whatabout it are being dumb, in my opinion -- the election is over, Biden will not be running for office ever again, this action benefits only the Bidens and actually hurts the Democratic party -- but the harm to the Dems is even higher if they turn themselves in knots trying to defend him. Joe is a career politician, not a saint -- let him take some heat for this.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/25/2024”
Of course her campaign people are going to defend themselves -- we'll see as the jockeying for 2028 begins how many of them get hired. The base will be coping however they can, but hopefully the people whose jobs depend on winning elections will be taking a more objective look at the outcomes.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Thanksgiving in Iceland”
Wayyyy too much food at our usual multi-family potluck-ish friendsgiving this year -- like, every year there are plenty of leftovers but this time it was ridiculous, we were all stuffed by appetizers before anyone sat at the table, no one even went back for seconds even though the food was uniformly excellent.
The root cause we identified was that all the "kids" are now in their 30s and mostly paired off -- so, our numbers were lighter than usual due to their unfortunate obligation to trade holidays with their significant others' families, but also the younger generation are now bringing their own contributions to the meal while the parents are still bringing as much as they did as when the kids were teenagers. It was a lovely day, but for future holiday gatherings we will have a more careful conversation about expected number of servings to target.
On “I Told You So”
I wouldn't ordinarily comment on these, but in this case it seemed to me to be dragging down the conversation.
"
I think the problem is the original post -- it seems to be aimed at a very small number of people, none of whom post or comment here (and David himself rarely joins the discussion to his posts, if ever). It's also rather confused, mixing up a quite premature "i told you so" (except maybe to the one or two people on the planet who thought Trump would make conventional Republican appointments) with a plausible "just wait and see".
I saw a post a few days ago talking about how so many reactions to the election sound like a guy whose girlfriend just dumped him for another guy, and this one fits that model -- "I can't believe you left me for him!! You'll be sorry!"
On “Paper: Inflation and the 2024 US Presidential Election”
LOL. The Noah Smith article I linked has five studies, I'm sure there are many more -- who knew, it turns out a lot of people actually study this kind of stuff professionally, and statistical models can produce different results depending on different assumptions and methodologies. I'm not one of these people though, so I don't have my own personal numbers to share with you. You're welcome to believe whatever makes you happy.
"
Are you seriously so ignorant that you think there's exactly one correct economic analysis?
"
I assume you got this from Kevin Drum, who plucked it out of that article to crow about the low number. The original SF Fed analysis that was pulled in for the WSJ article was written in March 2021 and is titled "Why Is U.S. Inflation Higher than in Other Countries?".
I'm not an economist and I'm sure that there are any number of models out there with different conclusions, and different assessments of impact; but "very little impact" is already different from "no impact and the US did better than a lot of the world". You're obviously starting from the question "how can I most plausibly minimize Biden's responsibility" instead of "what's the best explanation for the data". But as I say, it's not my field so I'll settle for at least pushing y'all off your original stance a bit.
"
Inflation was not just something that happened naturally, completely outside the Democrats' control. See e.g. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-hate-inflation-more-than :
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/11/2024”
Maybe he anticipated there would be a pledge drive starting soon and decided to switch the station.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Castlevania (Remembered)”
Sweet! I never played any of the Castlevania games, have been tempted many times to pick up one of these collections -- finally the price is right. Just got a new laptop a few weeks ago so it's a perfect time to finally get some new games.
Several years ago I got a puzzle game bundle with three games, but I only played 1.5 of them before my old laptop more or less gave up the ghost; and since I mostly am in front of my work laptop anyway, i didn't rush to get a new one. So now I'm finally getting around to playing Baba is You and enjoying it tremendously.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/11/2024”
OK, everyone, you can stop all the finger-pointing and scapegoating -- the true guilty party has finally confessed and apologized!
"
He said this on Fox and Friends, and the other hosts were laughing -- it was just ripped out of context. Facetious humor like this rarely survives a political border crossing in either direction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX-tRTD1lqU
"
Seems like even before 45/47, it would've been a good idea for them to have instituted a 20-year waiting period to be added, after the partisan fires have had a chance to be smothered by the blankets of nostalgia.
"
You should probably lower your current assessment of that site’s veracity.
On “He Got Away With It”
Was the lesson to be sure to make a show of consistent moral judgment when there's nothing on the line? Franken resigned and was replaced by another Democrat, who was appointed by the sitting Democratic governor. Whatever else it is, it's not an example of Democrats demonstrating their commitment to enforcing their moral values even at the price of political power.
On “Trumped”
I found this Zaid Jilani twitter thread on the topic interesting, especially the last bit:
On “Ain’t It a Grand and Glorious Feeling?”
“Help me help you to help me!”
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.