Veterans Day Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, November 11, 2024
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103 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Re-upping on this since “Democrats abandoned the working class” is shaping up as 2024’s “Hillary didn’t visit Wisconsin”: a lazy take, oversimplifing complex and overdetermined realities.
Kamala Harris’ campaign didn’t ignore working class voters (NBC):
Win some, lose some.
Here is a college professor who discussed the election with his class:
https://medium.com/@Brocktoon/notes-from-a-classroom-3e69c810f54f
Highlights:
They get all their news from podcasts and ignore newspapers and the TV machine.
They do not think Trump will do what he says he will.
snip
snip
snip
snip
Bottom line, it was Trump who campaigned the right way, Harris not so much.
ETA: I do not think the Madison Square Garden hatefest actually hurt Trump, he might even have net benefitted. He did OK with the latino vote, too.
The Dems really need to rethink how to reach young voters, they are, after all, the future.
I’d caution against making broad assumptions about the general electorate based on the youth vote. Overall it was down from 2020, with the exception being the battleground states.
The problem with podcasts, of course, is that they are opinion outlets and not news. Without legacy news media, what are they going to do? Don helmets and head to war zones themselves? Just make sh!t up?
They need information to pivot their opinions off of, and without real, actual reporters doing real, actual reporting, I’m not sure how this is sustainable.
On my phone, I use DuckDuckGo’s browser, it recently updated and I noticed that it had turned on a couple of AI features, one of which was the ability to “chat” with an AI bot. Now, why would I want to do that, I thought before turning it and the other AI feature off.
A chat feature that offered the opportunity to chat with a random person, might provide a bit of amusement, but at the risk of exploitation, but to chat with a computer????
@charontwo:
Interesting.
They see celebrity endorsements as self-serving, but think podcast hosts are authentic? Are they not the same damn thing?
This obsession with life hacks may be a problem. Text takes too much attention, which implicitly means that when they are trying to learn something, they listen to something that limits their learning. I love podcasts, too. I listen to audio books. But I know, especially with the latter, that I am not engaged the same way as I would be reading text. So I still read.
The funny thing is, if you start a podcast, and give me the transcript of the episode. I will finish first. And I will likely have a better grasp of what it was about. Most importantly, my brain would have engaged with it quite differently from the person who listened to it. Of course, they were doing something else while they listened. But half-learned shit can be worse than knowing nothing.
Seems to me that Neil Postman should be required reading.
@Kurtz:
And Harris went on podcasts and alternative media, while Trump had plenty of celebrity endorsements from sports to “Hollywood,” just like Harris.
@DK:
I know.
I haven’t taken a position on why the election turned out the way it did. The most I can say is that I doubt going on Rogan or Fox News would have made a difference.
Maybe if this is was a regular thing for Democrats to do, it would have an effect over time. But I don’t know.
My comment is mainly aimed at the habit of taking shortcuts to learning. Podcasts are great! But they are not a substitute for reading. And they can be worse in that they make you think you have a better grasp on something than you actually do.
Per NBC, Elise Stefanik is going to be Trump's U.N. ambassador.
My top reason why Trump won
1. Inflation – people don’t know/care that wages went up slightly more than inflation, they just know things cost a lot more than they did five years ago. They blame the incumbent.
2. Black woman – I suspect Harris is a problem for some white males. Probably cost a lot among white male union workers, teamsters, UAW union workers.
3. Social issues – Trump hates the right people. My brother is in NJ and watches a fair amount of sports on cable. He couldn’t believe how often he saw one particular anti-trans ad. He though the overall implication of the ad was that the mere presence of trans people was the main issue because of all the problems they cause. His comments that was the ad was vile but probably very effective. He’s in high end sales and reads people very well. Ads like that rally the base and keeps up his turnout.
4. Immigration – I really don’t think it was nearly as big a deal as people thought. Anyone who really wants 15 million deported was always going to vote for Donald Trump.
@CSK: He only hires the best toadies.
RE inflation. One problem in grasping it, is that the overall rate is an average (whether weighted or not). This means some products and/or services rose higher than the number of the overall rate.
Take Mexico’s case. The overall inflation for 2022 was 8.41% The reports issued by the Bank of Mexico (about the same as the Fed in the US), break down the rates for various sectors/categories. The rate for food was 13.95%. Further, the rate for agricultural products (meat, vegetables, dairy, fruits, etc.) was 14.25%.
I don’t know whether wages overall went up as well. Even if they did by, say, 9%, which would be a bit over the inflation rate, purchasing power as far as food goes would still have gone down. Increases for food in 23 and 24 were 6.95% and 3.81% respectively. The last is even lower than overall inflation, but food remains more expensive than it was in 2021 as compared to the money available.
This has different effect on different people. the more of your income you spend on food, the worse you’re affected. So even if working class incomes rose in real terms (aka adjusted for inflation), they may not have risen enough to overcome the loss of purchasing power as regards groceries.
The big political problem is the above is too long to fit in a campaign slogan.
Yesterday’s amazing sports feat. Bernhard Langer won for the 47th time on the PGA Champions tour.
Langer is the winningest golfer in that tour’s history
He has won a tournament on that tour for 17 consecutive years
Langer is 67 years old and tore an achilles tendon earlier this year.
Langer shot his age or better for the 23rd time this weekend.
Players on the Champions Tour, which started up in 1980, have their most success between age 50 and 55 and then fade away. Some players peak earlier than that. Age doesn’t help your golf game. It is just incredible that Langer has kept going like he has.
@Kurtz:
A rational behavior. Because the why is not just one thing. That won’t stop all observers from jockeying to have their pet issue placed at the top of the list.
Trump is winning less than 1% more votes than in 2020, a few thousands. Harris lost 12% of Biden’s total, winning 10 million fewer. Harris is running tens of thousands of votes behind swing state Dem governor and senate campaigns that won. Despite having no daylight with them on any issue.
The reasons why are multifaceted and complicated, and not even necessarily within party control.
In 2020, voters were angry about Trump’s COVID mismanagement. In 2022, they were angry about abortion bans. In 2024, they were angry at immigration (and how transgender aliens from Haiti eating cats in prison has raised gas and egg prices.)
So millions stayed home, and thousands who showed up in swing states decided to split their tickets.
Those hellbent on not accepting the uncertainty in overdetermined outcomes must push lazy takes: ‘Dems abandoned the working class (but only at the presidential level).’ Too bad they can’t go to North Carolina, Arizona, and Wisconsin to interview those who voted for Trump + Democratic governors and senators.
They would look to find what (supposedly) makes the Dem Party of Josh Stein, Ruben Gallego, and Tammy Baldwin better than the Dem Party of Kamala Harris. They’d soon discover the answers are a mishmash — not particularly rational, consistent, or pragmatic.
Then they could put aside the backbiting and scapegoating, and start preparing to a) defend the rule of law against fascist creep, b) protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, and c) position themselves to respond well to whatever new thing the zeitgeist is mad about in 2026.
Reminds me of how voters were so mad about gay marriage in 2004 that failure to vocally oppose marriage equality would forever doom Dems to minority status. Good times.
@Lucysfootball:
Also Latino males and black males.
ETA: I hate to obey in advance, but, pragmatically, the Dems need to stick to Christian white dudes for both Prez and VP.
I cooked air fryer burgers. Mixed results. I theorized the air fryer would produce a good crust. I was half right. It was a great crust. On the other hand, I overcooked them a bit and the first two batches were a little dry…
I made a topping of balsamic onions, but then added some garlic powder, paprika, and chipotle mayo to the mix.
On the side I made plain oven roasted potatoes. I wanted to try a Lan Lam technique that involves a corn starch slurry coating, but didn’t. For one thing, I was running late. For another, I found I don’t have a microwave safe bowl. Only later I realized I could have used a soup bowl instead… Next time. I just don’t use the microwave much past reheating food and for making oatmeal.
Oh, I forgot, and the edit windows is too small for this.
One of the housemates got a new toaster oven. Bigger and with more knobs and lights than the old one. I attempted to make a grilled cheese sandwich in it, specifically using its convention function.
Why? because air fryers are often dismissed as “just a small convection oven,” and here was a small convection oven to try.
The results were acceptable, but a far cry from what the air fryer does. I made it the same way, with a filling, as well as mayo on the outside of the bread. I got semi-toasted bread and hot mayo, not the crispy mayo-toasted result of an air fryer or even a stove top pan. Same temperature selection and all.
What’s the difference? The same as the convection function on my gas oven: BIG.
What the air fryer does is direct a high speed flow of jot air over the food. This is clear form mine, which has a lid you lift and can see the fan is behind the heating element. And it’s a big, noisy fan, meaning it pushes out a lot of air.
The toaster oven, and the gas one as well, heat from the bottom (the former maybe from the top as well), and have a fan on one of the sides that moves air around. But it’s just stirring the ambient air, not heating it, and doesn’t move it very fast.
So, at best an air fryer is a kind of small convection oven, but makes for different results than merely a small convection oven.
@Lucysfootball:
My wife’s wages went up 10 percent since the Pandemic.
Her work hours were increased too. By 25%. She went from working 9-4 with a hour lunch to 8-4 with a half hour lunch.
What’s the old Groucho line about workers demanding shorter hours “We’ll start by cutting their lunch hours to 20 minutes.”
DW’s boss is still begging her not to quit. He hasn’t exactly motivated her to stay.
I keep coming back to the fact that Trump got about the same number of votes (74M) as he did 4 years ago, while Harris got (71M) or 10M less than Biden in 2020. Despite the apparent excitement surrounding the Harris campaign, it was not enough to get the turnout needed to win.
@Bill Jempty: This is data from the US Treasury:
Lower-middle-wage: From 2019–2023, real hourly wages for this group increased by 5.0%.
Middle-wage: From 2019–2023, real hourly wages for this group increased by 3.0%.
Upper-middle-wage: From 2019–2023, real hourly wages for this group increased by 2.0%.
High-wage: From 2019–2023, real hourly wages for this group increased by 0.9%.
These are adjusted for inflation, so for all groups purchasing wage growth exceeded inflation. If you are a data geek, here’s a neat tool from the Fed that tracks nominal (not inflation-adjusted) wage growth:
https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker
You can select a lot of different combinations.
@CSK: Oh! The next Nikki Haley. May she meet a similar future irrelevance.
I forgot, four reasons why Trump won, in no particular order:
1. He promised them he could fix all their problems, and was somewhat specific: cut taxes, cut inflation, insurance cut of 50%, cut price of oil down to $2.
2. He is a white male, who didn’t bother with the dog whistles anymore: Harris is dumb, lazy, low IQ – the sort of thing that makes most of the people in this blog recoil, but his base and a not insignificant part of the country eat that stuff up.
3. People forgot how bad things were during Covid, and how he completely screwed up Covid response.
4. He is what some men think is “a real man”.
@DK:
I agree 100% with your post.
That said, the results of this election have led me to question a common bit of conventional wisdom about 2004: that ballot initiatives for a Federal Marriage Amendment helped pull Bush across the finish line in key swing states (particularly Ohio) by bringing out the evangelical base. The abortion-rights referenda this year didn’t seem to have that effect for us. Of course, it’s possible the strategy was effective for opposition to gay marriage in 2004 but not for abortion rights this year. But I think we need to consider the possibility that the story about 2004 is a myth, that those ballot initiatives had little to no impact on the election, and that the power of ballot initiatives to sway elections in that way is overstated at best.
@Lucysfootball: @Scott:
Tom Homan is border czar.
Stephen Miller is White House deputy chief of staff for policy.
@Lucysfootball:
Not to toot my own horn, but consider my post above about price increases in groceries.
I’ve no idea how to get at the data, much less how to adjust for inflation, but a useful exercise would be to adjust wages for food inflation, not just for general inflation.
No one likes inflation, yet we live with low levels of it our whole lives. But there’s a big difference is the prices of essential, periodic, necessary expenses go up a lot more than everything else, than when they go up a little along with everything else.
Say the price of cars went up far more than general inflation. This would hurt some people, but many could simply put off buying a car for months or even years, especially if you already own one. Same with air fare, cell phones, computers, furniture, big appliances, etc. But you need to buy groceries several times a month every month.
@Lucysfootball: Lucy,
You can cite all the statistics you want to, but I was saying it here for the whole year that inflation was going to hurt the dems in November. Because people have had their grocery bills increased, auto insurance increased, rents increased, and not in insignificant numbers. People like you, you’re well meaning, cite stats, job reports, etc etc and said I’m misreading voters. Voters look at their wallets not economic reports, and see only less there and more being asked of them. Nov 5 answered who was right.
This issue of a substantial increase in the number of undervoted ballots in swing states is something to watch.
While it’s entirely possible there were many new voters (particularly young men) who popped in, voted for Trump and then left, it’s apparently enough of an aberration that it’s being remarked upon in political circles. Will be interesting to see if it gets to the reporting stage.
@Bill Jempty: I don’t disagree that inflation hurt the Dems, it killed them. My response was solely to you wife’s situation. It sounds like her experience is not consistent with the general working population. The wages in my area for low-paying jobs (Walmart, grocery stores, fast-food, etc.) are much higher than five years ago. We were in SD, MT and WY two months ago and I saw in two Walmarts probably 500 miles apart signs saying they were hiring starting at $22 per hour in one and $24 in the other. I would imagine that is at least 25% higher than five years ago. Here in South Florida they can’t get people to work in the restaurants.
Next day reply to @Micahel Reynolds:
You know, I keep expecting DNA to file a defamation and libel suit against all of humanity any day now…
That said, genetics have an effect on almost all aspects of being. Just not as much and not in as deterministic a fashion as popular belief will have it, especially not in highly complex issues like mind and personality. Side note: there was a joke going around a decade or so ago that “scientists found the gene that makes people believe genes determine everything.”
My answer to Beth’s question is that it’s innate. That is, transgender people (and in this term I include non-binary people as well) are born that way. Why this happens is not known, even in the case of intersex individuals, and very likely there are different types of transgender persons, beyond individual variability. An intersex XY woman with a missing SRY/TDF gene (the big gene that determines masculine genitalia), ought to be different from an intersex XY woman with androgen insensitivity. I use these examples because they may have simpler causes and are definitely the beneficiaries of better, or at least more, research.
Some postmortem studies on transgender people have found small but significant anatomical differences in small areas of the brain. I forget the details exactly. Part of the problem is that male and female brains are not that dissimilar (small differences and HUGE similarities), and that small differences in a very complex system can have no effect or can have a big effect.
What causes such differences could be some mix of genetic factors (DNA), or environmental factors during fetal development (circulating sex hormones during pregnancy), or a mix of both. Regardless of the effect of a small difference, whether big or small, the cause of a small difference tends to be very hard to determine.
And that’s long enough for something I, and everyone else, knows almost nothing about.
I’m far more certain that people are not turned transgender by either education, upbringing, and much less indoctrination (which isn’t even a thing).
@Lucysfootball:
An important nuance here that has come out in a lot of exit interviews is that people do not believe that “wages went up” because their wages did not. The people who experience the higher wages were (1) already highly-compensated people like me, and (2) people who changed jobs. In the gig economy, nobody gets a raise — you get a better offer. And so people who are (for whatever reason) unwilling or unable to change jobs get left behind. That’s the demographic Trump captured.
The lag between economic policies and their impacts has been killing Democrats for decades. Reagan breaks the economy, but the damage doesn’t show until Clinton is president. He fixes some of it, but his fixes are unpopular so Bush gets in and breaks it again. Etc. Trump’s mishandling of COVID (plus the parts of COVID that nobody could fix) get blamed on Biden, because that’s when they were felt by the masses.
Climate change, of course, will be the sine qua non of this. I wonder if our grandchildren will be smart enough to assign blame appropriately, or if they will blame their current administration…
@charontwo: That’s partly prejudice and misogyny, but a lot of it is just the old line that we cast a president. Looking presidential matters. And with one exception, on one characteristic, elected just after a Republican crashed the economy, all of our presidents have been white males. And Trump, gross as he is, meets those criteria, and was frequently photographed as president.
@Lucysfootball:
Forgot? Read comments on RW sites. The Mighty RW Wurlitzer convinced them Trump saved us from Fauci and the rest of those deep state elites who wanted to make you wear a face diaper.
@DrDaveT: The people who experience the higher wages were (1) already highly-compensated people like me, and (2) people who changed jobs. In the gig economy, nobody gets a raise — you get a better offer.
According to the Fed and the Treasury department, that simply is not true. For example, Walmart minimum went from $11 in 2018 to $14 in Jan, 2023. For Target, average hourly wages went from $13.50 to $17 in four years.
I am not arguing that inflation didn’t hurt the Democrats, it hurt them a lot. And the lower your wages, the more inflation affects you. Plus, perception is reality and if you perceive your wage increases did not match inflation, and you are told for more than a year that the overall income is also in terrible shape, it reinforces the whole “the economy is in shambles”narrative. To me the disconnect is that the uber-wealthy are better off than ever and corporate profits are through the roof. People don’t seem to realize that corporate profits are that high because CEOs want more bonuses at the expense of better wages for employees.
@Lucysfootball:
What my wife earns don’t matter any more because of my book business. If it was like in 2013, me not earning a penny and being sick with cancer, what DW brought home would have had significant impact. We were dependent on the help of people to survive back then. Two of those three most generous people are dead. God bless Nick, Eleanor and Terry. RIP to the last two now.
Home Depot, where I worked for a almost a year in 2015-16, now pays cashiers in our area $17 an hour last time I heard (There’s a store a mile and one half from my home and there are 3 people there that I worked with back then but at a different location) that’s at least 4 dollars more than minimum. When I worked for HD I made 9 an hour not even a dollar more than minimum.
DW is aggravated with her boss but her salary isn’t the biggest factor. She wants to enjoy life. Trips to Rome, The British Virgin Islands (for book research but enjoyment too), and maybe a world cruise. The latter could be in store over the next year or two. Something really big may be about to happen with one of my books. Won’t say more so not to jinx myself. My meeting with my LA last Friday was very interesting.
I gave in and broached the subject of trump to my very maga neighbor yesterday. It was illuminating, but not totally surprising.
I’ll preface by writing that my dog Sadie opens many doors. When my neighbor saw Sadie and I walking by on an afternoon jaunt, she came out to give Sadie hugs. Sadie has that effect on a lot of people.
We have chatted in the past, politely for the most part, but once I left abruptly when she went on about cutting boys penises off at Vanderbilt university hospital. This girl is deep in it.
The major takeaways from our chat are propaganda and disinformation played a big part of my neighbors opinions. She is pure unadulterated maga. Also, she said she didn’t think trump would really do a lot of what he said to which I responded “Why on earth would he say it?”. We both agreed it was divisive and unhelpful. When she brought up “sex change” in public schools. That was weird. She’s a nurse so I asked her if she really believed fully equipped operating rooms and teams of doctors and nurses were doing same day sex changes and, if that were even possible, wouldn’t parents be beyond outraged this was happening without their knowledge? I could see her wavering.
It went on for a while. I behaved myself, I was earnest and sincere and not judgy. She is a kind and thoughtful neighbor here on earth, but the virtual world has done a number on her. I think she gets her views from YouTube and podcasts. When I asked her sources for news are, she got vague and changed the subject.
In the end, we hugged.
@DK:
“Abandoned the working class” doesn’t always mean literally abandoning the working class.
When Bernie Sanders says it, he is referring to a set of economic policies, the division of haves and have-nots, a minimum wage that lags behind inflation, etc.
I think Bernie has some points, and from his “far to the left of the center of the Democratic Party” position, I can see what he’s getting at. Biden has done a lot, but the lower middle class continues to get a little lower. Biden did not fundamentally restructure society enough to blah blah blah blah.
There’s data to support some of Bernie’s positions, but overall I would say that Biden has done as much as an institutionalist could do.
When a lot of other people say “abandoned the working class” they mean “didn’t hurt the people blue collar white men hate.” And then they start talking about trans people, illegal immigrants, etc.
And, there is data to show that the Biden administration has failed to hurt these people enough to satisfy the bigoted bloodlust of the worst elements of our society — not just the white blue collar workers, but also the more well to do folks who project their own hatreds onto the white blue collar workers (who, admittedly, often share those hatreds).
@becca: I am just glad to hear a Sadie update!!! 🙂
@Jen: The increase in undervotes is making its way through the lefty conspiracy channels, so I expect it to be reported on by news outlets in the near future in a desperate attempt to try to stop conspiracy theories.
I’m curious about the increase, but not in a “this shows Republicans stole the election for Trump” sort of way, and more in a “what’s up with those people” sort of way.
The conspiracy theory doesn’t pass the initial sniff test. I know Trump doesn’t surround himself with the best and brightest, so fixing an election without being caught in the act seems unlikely. As does hiring competent people who then don’t fix the down-ballot races.
The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month
The fighting continued until the last possible moment. As a result, there were 10,944 casualties, including 2,738 deaths, on the war’s last day. Most occurred within a period of three hours. The last soldier to be killed in World War I was Henry Gunther, an American of German descent, who was killed just sixty seconds before the guns fell silent.
As a general rule in politics as in life, the answer to the multiple choice test is usually, e) All of the above. Which is why I’m not talking about blame, nor am I suggesting policies so much as a change of attitude and approach among Democrats. The scolding and pedantry and heretic-hunting don’t seem to be working. We used to be the fun party, and we became the tiresome party.
The response to, ‘eggs cost too much,’ can’t be, ‘not according to the latest statistic.’ The response to, ‘eggs cost too much,’ goes like this: “What are you paying? Wow, that much? That’s nuts. I look for coupons and sales and all, but you and I both know that only helps a little. Inflation is a bitch and unfortunately it’s everywhere, France, Italy, England. And California, wow. You know what eggs cost in Los Angeles right now? Movie stars are getting paid in hard-boiled eggs. They say the rate of inflation has come down, but that doesn’t make your omelet cost any less today. It sucks but it looks like things are turning around. Hang in there, we’ll get through it.”
That’s not the kind of thing a lawyer from Harvard can say, but an HVAC installer or a beautician, can. We should begin aggressively looking for candidates from the working class, preferably with a sense of humor and a minimum of stick-up-the-ass. Extra points for a certificate from a tech school or an AA from community college.
I wish Kamala had some pix or videos of her time at McDonalds. If she could have talked about how much her feet hurt, and how she had grease burns all over her hands, and her uniform smelled like Filet O Fish by the end of her shift, she might have come through as authentic.
@Mister Bluster:
Dude could write.
@Gustopher:
That’s interesting, I guess. I came across it when a couple of former campaign friends mentioned it in a “yeesh, this is going to be a nightmare to work with for future election efforts”-way, because there’s not a lot you can parse out from the limited data.
As I noted in my original post, I think the Occam’s Razor explanation is that a specific cohort of voters turned out who DNGAF about politics, they just wanted to vote for Trump. No conspiracy whatsoever there.
However, the story itself reinforces a point I made several days ago: voter fraud is rare in no small part because it’s actually EASY to detect aberrations. Undervoting happens in every presidential election. But, when a precinct or county goes from an undervoting rate of (ETA: less than 1% to greater than*) 5%, that’s noticeable.
* Can’t use the symbols! 😀
On TV watching news, having consumed season 2 of The Diplomat too quickly, I’ve yet to find something else I want to watch daily. There’s a series on Netflix called Kaos. It’s about Olympian gods in the present. this is the kind of premise that grabs me and I feel compelled to watch. Unfortunately it has already been cancelled, so there’s only the one season.
Netflix does this too much. I imagine the series is expensive to produce, and not rated highly enough (however they measure such things), so it’s out.
For me, it works out better if such series are bad. Then I don’t mind if they get cancelled. When they do, though, it’s like finding a novel filled with blank pages after reading the first chapter. So every time I think of watching one of these cancelled series, the feeling that wins is “why bother?”
For now, I’ve settled on re-watching The Good Place. It’s been two years since I last did.
there are some shows I want to watch on Amazon and Apple, but they’ll have to wait until at least Lower Decks ends and I cancel Paramount+ (unless season 3 of Strange New Worlds drops before then. I can wait to see it, but only if I cancel the subscription before it begins). And Apple also until Severance premieres season 2.
Maybe this one season and done thing, coupled with the common long delay between seasons for those who don’t get cancelled, is why we have arc seasons (mostly), rather than arc shows.
For instance, had Picard been just one season, it would have been fine. Had they left a ton of issues unresolved for future story lines and the series been cancelled, we’d be wondering what happens next. This happened with Final Space after two seasons.
@Kathy:
This is useful information! Thank you for sharing.
I made cabbage and onion pancakes yesterday, plus pumpkin bars and soup. Nice late fall supper.
@CSK: Given that it moves a high-ranking Republican from the House and replaces her with a novice, I approve the choice.
@Michael Reynolds: I wish Kamala had some pix or videos of her time at McDonalds.
I don’t think it would have mattered, it might have hurt her overall. Most of the people who vote for Trump think he is one of them, and if you believe that nothing will convince you that she isn’t an elitist who looks down on you (or maybe uppity). Certainly not hard working, because Trump told you she was lazy, low IQ and dumb, like they all are. There are probably some who don’t think that, but were never going to vote for a black woman under any circumstances. But pictures of her time at MacDonalds? Once he said she was lying that was all they needed to know.
@charontwo: Liberals want to want a woman as President, but they don’t want to have a woman as President. It always qualifies as “but not this woman.” So yeah, until the dam breaks, nominate white pseudo evangelical males.
It might even start peeling evangelicals from the margins on the right. Elections are won at the margin, you know.
@Lucysfootball:
Stop worrying about the culties. You can’t un-brainwash people. But they are not the entire voting public. People who didn’t bother to vote at all, are not in the cult. They can be reached. The people who just shrugged and flipped a coin can be reached. We have to stop this defeatist, what can we do? attitude. We need some swagger. Nobody gets in line behind a hang-dog wimp.
I lived for 22 years under the threat of arrest and imprisonment. You know how I got through it? Sheer cockiness. I never skulked, I swaggered. You cannot get through bad times thinking you’re going to lose.
@Jen: Sadie is such a joyous creature, as my husband says. Loves riding on the boat and going on errands with us. We take her everywhere. She’s the best.
And we will never forget your words of encouragement when we needed them. It was tough at first, but your advice got us all through. Thanks, again!
@Kathy: When I saw Beth’s question yesterday, I skimmed a Wikipedia page, and nothing particularly surprised me.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence
Likely genetic or epigenetic differences, twin studies, small brain structure differences (where trans people appear to have a few features more commonly found in their stated gender, but also different). Some testing with trans folks who weren’t able to transition that suggests these differences are not caused by HRT and were preexisting.
It basically matched all my initial vaguely informed guesses. The most surprising thing being the warning at the top of the page: “This article relies excessively on references to primary sources.”
I expect that if I looked up causes of homosexuality, it would be similar (incredibly quick skim seems to confirm).
This is similar to depression, anxiety, adhd and autism — the boundaries between mental health and physical health are kind of nonexistent.*
And that makes people uncomfortable because it can lead to a variety of dystopian outcomes, from eugenics to “curing” queer folks, and it has done so repeatedly in the past.
All the same, 12 year old Gustopher would have probably been relieved to take a pill so he would only have crushes on girls and not boys too. A healthy and tolerant culture would be better, of course, but that is as much a fantasy as that pill.
——
*: I’m betting we could also find a genetic or structural tie to excessive risk-taking behaviors, and then show that broken arms have a mental health component
@Kathy: I got the Ninja Foodie air fryer/convection oven combination unit last Christmas. It does equally well using the air frying and air roasting settings but is too small to roast a whole chicken.* So you’re probably right on the size assumption (though I’d never bother trying to air fry a grilled cheese sarny).
*While I’m sad about the space limitation, it doesn’t trouble me. The local supermarket sells rotisserie chickens for $5.99 periodically.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.”
@CSK:
Could be a lot worse. Could be head of DHS. 🙁
@Bill Jempty: Inflation is perception, not statistics. Numbers don’t matter as much as what I know.
@Skookum:
You’re welcome. though I thought I was just being defensive and pedantic.
I’ve done marinated skin-on chicken thighs in the oven, on stove top, and in the air fryer. The first gets me no crispy skin, unless I turn the heat on too high (which has other problems), and then only slight crispiness, with or without convection. The pan does better, but not by a lot (I want to try cast iron someday). The air fryer makes the skin very crispy and golden brown.
So definitely a lot of very hot air circulating quickly over the food is different from warmed ambient air that may circulate a bit.
Overall foods with some fat in or on them crisp very well in the air fryer. I think it compares favorably with some kinds of deep frying, but I’ve never deep fried anything myself. And I doubt an air fryer would do a passable version of, for instance, deep fried chicken.
@DrDaveT: @Lucysfootball: Either way, people at large don’t evaluate inflation and wage at macro level. Perception is micro economics. To some degree Dr.DaveT’s comment reflects that– he’s observing and generalizing his personal experience “people like me.”
@just nutha:
I wonder how long Susan Wiles lasts, her resume suggests someone too pragmatic to fit in.
@just nutha:
I usually make grilled cheese on a pan, it’s much better. I did it on the air fryer once only, out of curiosity and because I’d just gotten it and wanted to play with it. The housemate was very insistent I try her toaster oven, and about all I had on hand that I could cook in it was fixings for grilled cheese.
As this would provide a fair comparison with the air fryer, I went for it.
Ninja strikes me as good quality for its price point. it also makes lots of different models for the same thing, and changes them often. There are at least 3 iterations of the pressure cooker with air fryer combo, not including the Ninja Speedi (whatever it is).
I woke up this morning thinking of fast food franchises as exemplars of social and economic pulses over the last 5 years.
1. Capital owners resist providing a living wage and benefits that create economic safety for their workers to increase profits.
2. Childcare workers and facilities to help young families make economic progress are inadequate.
3. Employees are not loyal because of the gig economy.
4. Drugs and lack of treatment create a permanent non-functional segment of society.
5. Low-income folk rely upon fast and low-cost processed food for survival.
6. COVID hit.
7. Employees quickly pivot to better jobs, pursue education, retire, stay home with children who aren’t in school, or just live off of stimulus.
8. Forced by the threat of major global and national depression/recession, Congress enacts legislation to shore up the economy–including raising the minimum wage. Capital owners improve employee benefits to attract workers.
9. Capital owners immediately pass the cost on to consumers (higher cost for fast food, shrinkflation for grocery items)
10. So now when I (infrequently) buy fast food, the workers are better paid and have better benefits, I am encouraged to use a kiosk to order, the portions are smaller and of less quality, and the cost has doubled.
11. The druggies next door are really hurting because their low-cost fast food breakfasts are history.
12. The paycheck-to-paycheck workers are angry at inflation, but not at their elected leaders who refuse to craft programs and policies that modestly curb the worst tendencies of capital owners to create a better functioning economy for all.
@Kathy:
I was raised using cast iron and cook with it all the time. It just requires consistent seasoning. Use the pans for baking bread as well as frying. Also have an antique dutch oven that produces exquisite stews and pot roasts.
My issue is the need to eat less meat. I love my pressure cooker for beans and sometimes meat (for my husband), but from what I hear, InstaPots do the same thing. I oven roast veggies and sheet pan dinners, but am weighing the counter space taken by another appliance with the overall merits.
And cleaning. From what I’ve read keeping an air fryer clean is hard.
@Mister Bluster: Wilfred Owen, great anti-war poet, was killed on November 4, 1918. He wasn’t the last to die, but close enough. I think that the cosmos is sending us a message with this; a message that I don’t understand. He had been hospitalized for PTSD, but went back to the front as a gesture or solidarity.
@Michael Reynolds:
Dude, you’ve got that cowboy thing going now that you live in Nevada.
@Skookum:
An Instant Pot is an electric pressure cooker with other functions.
Plain truth is stove top pressure cookers scare the hell out of me. They have few safeguards, and I’m too well acquainted with how pressure differences can be catastrophic. The electric models have several safeguards (or so I’m told), plus they have extra functions. I’ve used the slow cooking function in mine a lot. Some day I expect I’ll try the yogurt function, and maybe find out what the steam function does.
Cleaning the air fryer parts one can remove from the appliance is as easy as cleaning anything else (and should be diswasher safe). The problem is the heating element and fan. Steam and vapors and sputter produced by the food can and will cause crud to accumulate there. There’s a grate in front of the fan, too (speaking of the one I have). I wipe it with a damp cloth or paper towel right after each use. But you can’t clean either the fan baldes or the heating element, at least not without taking the assembly apart*.
I’m not worried about microbial growth. The machine works at high temps, and the heating element in particular gets really hot. Any bug that can survive in there should get a medal. Nor have I heard anything at all about hygiene issues with air fryers in general. You may have flavor and aroma issues, though. I’ve noticed none thus far.
* I’m terrible at putting things back together, even with instructions and even when I note carefully how I took it apart. So I hardly ever do that absent an emergency.
From one of my newsletter subscriptions:
“Image“
@Sleeping Dog:
I was thinking that as well.
@Sleeping Dog:
When you have no hair in eternally sunny Nevada, you need a hat. I rock the flat cap when in Europe – don’t want to be a baseball cap guy and cowboy hats don’t fit in a suitcase. I thought about going full Peaky Blinders, but TSA would have caught the razor blades.
@Gustopher:
The problem with genetics is that individual genes aren’t expressed the exact same way across people. Check out epigenetics to see what I’m talking about.
@just nutha: My point was more that people don’t evaluate the economy in terms of averages — they evaluate it at the personal level, and (as you note) subjectively. Nobody experiences a general increase in average wages. Everyone experiences inflation directly, and many people do not directly experience compensating wage growth. If they change to a higher-paying job, they psychologically attribute the entire increase to getting a better job, not to any rising tide. If minimum wage goes up, they either experience that as other people getting a raise that doesn’t help them, or as partial (but incomplete) making up for past losses. In the presence of significant inflation, nobody ever feels like the general economy is helping them personally.
@Kathy:
My dietician recommended that I get an air fryer with horizontal trays rather than baskets.
Maybe I’m overthinking the cleaning part. I doubt that an air fryer creates the explosions that a microwave does. Bacon probably doesn’t splatter as much when air fried.
I know of only one person who has an air fryer and doesn’t use it. She received as a gift and simply doesn’t find that it makes her meal preparations easier. Everyone else loves theirs. Holiday sales are starting NOW, so maybe I’ll take the plunge and buy one.
Also, I was afraid of pressure cookers, too (having never used one). But invested in a few cookbooks and it seems safe. I would like a small electric pressure canner, however, for small batch canning.
@Gustopher:
Yes, yes. I realize Bernie is flogging his pet issue. Problem is there’s no evidence working class voters are actually looking for this. Incumbent parties have lost everywhere recently, whether economically left, right, or center.
I doubt Democrats can out message or out campaign that kind of global vibes-based anger till it passes. Even though we want to believe electoral outcomes are always under our control — the fault of someone or something that could’ve been adjusted to create a different outcome.
Reality is voter behavior atm doesn’t seem transactional or connected to empirical realities — either on economic performance or ideological beliefs. The Tories are an anti-immigrant, Thatherite party. They suffered major losses. Democrats are a pro-immigrant, Keynesian party. They suffered a significant presidential loss and blunted losses elsewhere (can’t gloss over this supposedly out-of-touch party still winning important gubernatorial and senate races).
becca‘s convo with her MAGA neighbor demonstrates the futility of searching for perfection in hindsight. Imagine Dems had found the slogans to effectively communicate about Biden-Harris wage growth outpacing inflation, about the woke liberals at The Wall Street Journal belatedly hailing Biden’s economy as historically great, about Biden’s working class jobs boom, and about how Trump would cut Social Security and Medicare while raising prices with tarriffs and mass deportation of low income taxpayers.
You’d still hear this in response: “I don’t think Trump would really do a lot of what he said.”
Oh. Okay.
And that’s when libs move into acceptance stage, stop blaming and backbiting, and start getting prepared for the moment voters realize Trump and his first lady Musk are indeed implementing their fascist, unpopular Project 2025 disaster.
@Kathy:
Have you watched Ted Lasso? The Wire is dark, but compelling. I was skeptical of Outlander (didn’t like the books), but the series is much better. Also, if you like crime, The Shetlands is good (as least the first few season were, agnostic about the new characters). And have your watched Poldark?
Musk gamble, and he picked the right horse:
On Monday, Wedbush Securities raised its price target for Tesla to $400 from $300, implying an upside of about 16% from current levels, and maintained an ‘Outperform’ rating.
Wedbush’s analyst believes that a Trump White House will be a “gamechanger” for Tesla’s autonomous driving and artificial intelligence efforts, citing the opportunity in AI and autonomy as potentially worth $1 trillion.
Tesla’s already up about 35% since Trump won. Bezos blew it, he compromised the integrity of the Post and he’ll still get Musk’s crumbs. I assume Musk will get all the deals out there, including some made-up deals, and all he need do is give some “consideration” to Trump on the back end. I believe SCOTUS said bribery in form of quid pro quo is illegal but there are ways to do it after the fact.
Bear in mind that Elon has already told Americans they might be in for short term hardship. That’s necessary because how else can he become a trillionaire? He and Trump are quite the role models, maybe Kristi Noem can put them up on Mt. Rushmore.
Truthfully, I’m just happy my wife and I are in comfortable retirement, with nice pensions that will be almost impossible to touch.
@Skookum:
I’m wondering whether I should try oven cleaner in the fan grate…
Anyway, what I’d suggest is to look up air fryer recipes for the dishes and/or ingredients you want. Maybe on Youtube so you can see what the end result looks like.
I’ve never cooked bacon in the air fryer. I’ve done it in the oven, and comes out rather well. If I ever get smaller oven baking trays, I’d do it more often. The big ones I have now are a PITA to clean afterward. Yes, I do line them with foil, but the bacon grease doesn’t respect the boundaries.
Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but this article almost seems like a parody. If this guy Mitchell thinks that Trump gives a shit about human rights he must be so stupid that I’m guessing when he walks he has to whisper to himself “left, right, left”.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/muslim-americans-respond-to-donald-trump-s-nomination-of-elise-stefanik/ar-AA1tTqwT?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=19cd0444c21f4165ab75dbd53fba16b5&ei=13
@DrDaveT:
I wonder if this explains why Trickle Down Economics is so hard to kill. I mean it’s obviously and objectively stupid, but it presupposes the person hearing it believes that they are SOLELY in control of their destiny. Like, they are just a temporarily dispossessed billionaire, all they need is a new job.
@Lucysfootball:
Trump doesn’t give much of a shit about free speech, either, unless it’s his own.
@Skookum:
I’ve heard of those. I’m incapable to watch anything related to soccer, plus I don’t care that much for comedy just now. I do when it’s science fiction (Lower Decks, Rick and Morty*, Futurama**)
Don’t care at all for crime. I used to like police procedurals, but I think I’ve had my fill of those. I found the Law & Order reboot on a free streaming service, and lost interest in the whole thing while watching it.
I haven’t heard about the others.
*Talk about dark and disturbing. but they wealth of outlandish ideas is amazing.
** Futurama exists in a dimension all its own, where from time to time they tackle deep subjects. I’m still amazed by last season’s finale, All The Way Down.
Looks like Gallego has defeated Lake for Senate in AZ.
@Gustopher:
This touches on one of my pet peeves. Namely that the brain is part of the body, and the mind is a product largely of the brain (there’s plenty of evidence for this, from brain injuries to psycho-active chemicals to psychiatric drugs).
That’s why I find it so infuriating when people want to limit sex and gender to genitals, or chromosomes.
BTW, we don’t understand a lot about the function of heredity. We know a lot more than we used to, even a decade ago, never mind forty years ago, but what we don’t know dwarfs what we do know.
And what we do know we often misunderstand. For instance, there’s no such thing as a gene for blue yes, or large hands, or hair color, etc. And I don’t mean such things depend on several genes (some do, some don’t). But that all genes code for is proteins. nothing else. Not one damned other thing.
This would be a small mystery if the body were made entirely of proteins and DNA. It isn’t. There are many other components, like bone and fat and sugars (precisely shoring up the DNA helix) and some hormones, especially the so-called sex hormones.
We do know something about how proteins work within cells and within the body, how tissues are formed and so on. but we’ve no clue how a gene or group of genes that correlates with, say, small feet codes for a protein or several that result in small feet.
Biology isn’t just messy, as I like to remind people, but also hideously complicated.
@Jen:
Didn’t she start screeching about election fraud yesterday, when it was clear she was losing?
The headline of the day- Mattel apologizes for link to porn site on ‘Wicked’ movie doll boxes
@CSK: I have been on a deeply restricted news diet for the last few days. She may well have, I’ve just not done much proactive reading. I saw the headline that the race had been called, and it felt like a teeny tiny ray of light, so I spread it. 🙂
@Jen:
She trashed John McCain, which I don’t think helped her case. McCain is a demi-god in Arizona. Bad move to dump on him. But then, she’s an idiot.
Lee Zeldin will head the EPA under Trump.
@CSK: Trump dumped on McCain too, and won AZ. I still think it’s the sexism that matters.
@Kurtz:
Hardest part of my job as a teacher was convincing students that, grammar for example (my major content area), isn’t hard as much as it is labor intensive.
@Jen:
That would explain the motive of those who voted for Gallegos and Trump.
@CSK: “Lee Zeldin will head the EPA under Trump.”
When I first saw your post, I thought you’d typed Led Zeppelin. Which actually would have been a better choice.
@wr:
Yeah, it would.
@Kurtz:
It depends on the subject and the people behind the podcast.
I’ve read extensively on ancient Rome, for example, and little of it wasn’t covered by Mike Duncan in his podcast The History of Rome. Of his Revolutions podcast, I can tell you he covered more aspects of the Mexican Revolution than I learned in over 9 years at school. Also more detail than a Great Courses lecture series on the French Revolution. I can’t say how extensive or accurate the others were. based on what I’ve said, I assume reasonably so at least.
Tim Harford at Cautionary Tales is reasonably accurate, but he has gotten things wrong in three stories regarding aviation, where an amateur like me can spot it. But he doesn’t do history so much as draw lessons from specific past events. In the main he’s an economist and an entertainer, as far as his podcast goes. He does a lot better in his books like How to Make the World Add Up (aka The Data Detective).
Malcolm Gladwell is a terrific entertainer, but also a manipulative and misleading one. He delves more on the personal stories of the people he covers than on the events that transpired or what we can learn from them. I found his ep on a nutritional study particularly frustrating*. So much so, that I quit listening to his podcast.
Jill Lepore’s podcast, The Last Archive, is harder to characterize. But she digs up odd and forgotten items from the past which are, at times, useful to know. Her eps are available, but she turned over the podcast to someone else a year or two ago. It’s too bad, because I also found her voice most pleasant (really, I could listen to her read the phone book).
Sebastian Major at Our Fake History is mostly entertainment, but smart and detailed historical entertainment. Think of it as Mythbusters for history, with research rather than experiments and no explosions at all.
Near the beginning of the felon’s first term, I listened to some current event podcasts. This didn’t last long and I can’t even recall which these were. Largely I stopped because I began to accumulate audiobooks I’d rather spend time reading.
*Nutrition studies are notoriously difficult to do, and rely mostly on self-reported data. Gladwell found there was a double-blind randomized study involving saturated vs unsaturated fats (it involved patients at a mental hospital, I think). And he focused entirely on the researcher, and his son’s hunt for the data tapes found in some basement.
As to the study’s data, results, replication, or even correlations, not one f**ng word.
@charontwo: Chief of staff? I recall him burning through several last time. I’ll take October 2025 on the resignation pool.
@just nutha:
@charontwo:
I don’t think it matters, Steven Miller is the actual Chief of Staff, he just doesn’t have to do the bullshit work.
@Lucysfootball:
Be interesting to see this IRL.
@Kathy: In the restaurant I worked at, we did bacon on 1/2 inch deep sheets in the oven, but restaurants may buy leaner bacon than grocery consumers get. The wholesaler I worked for sold nice bacon, but price wise it was more expensive than my grocery store sold.
@Beth: You may be right. That may speed up her departure, too.
@just nutha:
With the crazy valuation of Texla’s stock, Xlon may well decide to acquire GM or Ford. He allegedly bought Texla to help reduce fossil fuel use by making capable and popular electric cars. But that was before his brain broke. now he seems dead set on autonomous cars for his own enrichment. Texla’s production numbers are rather low, especially compared to the US’s Big Three, never mind Toyota, Nissan, VW, etc.
Autonomous driving works just as well with internal combustion as it does with EVs (which is to say, not that well at all). Besides, the felon’s base definitely prefers gas guzzlers anyway, and they are cheaper to make, and these people spend actual money. the math pretty much does itself.
BTW, in the last Texla event, he presented an autonomous passenger van that looks a lot like a toaster on wheels. Much as the Xybertruck looks like fridge on wheels. Xlon Cisgender god Mars Emperor of Phobos has a serious kitchen appliance fetish.
On the bacon matter, I have a couple of baking trays about that deep. The problem isn’t that they get some bacon grease, but that they don’t fit well in the sink. I wind up splashing water all over.
I was going to say lean bacon is kind of a contradiction, but I’ve noticed the more expensive bacon in the store tends to look more red and less white. that is, more meat and less fat, though still with a lot of fat.
@Michael Reynolds: not just the uniform smelling like grease. Your hair and skin, too (based on my own experience in food service).
Great pic, by the way.
It’s being reported Trump has chosen Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his Secretary of State.
My wife literally burst out laughing at the news.
Rubio is on the Foreign Affairs Committee, so I guess the pick sort of makes sense.
@Mikey:
My wife too. And he’s our senior Senator (sic). I haven’t checked. I assume DeUseless gets to appoint a replacement.
@CSK:
@wr:
But now it’s time for me to go
The autumn moon lights my way
For now I smell the rain
And with it pain
And it’s headed my way
@gVOR10:
Yes, DeSantis will pick someone to fill out Rubio’s senate term.
Mike Waltz will be national security advisor.
Well….shit. There goes the House. Buckle up. It’s really gonna happen good and hard.
Democrats have a young men problem and it isn’t likely to change since the drivers are the most ardent Democrat supporters, teachers and professors. Of course, the latter are feeling the impact of their decades long denigration of young men as the young men turn away from wasting years on campus being lectured on toxic masculinity. College has little value if HR will pass you over due to your race or gender. Young men are opting instead to learn to do things that are objectively economically valuable.
@JKB: That young man’s parents have failed him, not society. If men can’t figure out how to be men without being toxic, that’s at least in part on those who raise them.
Believe it or not, women haven’t enjoyed being denigrated and passed over for jobs because of our gender. We were only allowed (wow that’s a word, huh?) to have credit cards in our own names starting in 1974. You know the list, I’m not going to bother with it here.
This young man “broke down in tears.” Do you know what women do? Do you know what we’ve always seem to have done? We buckle down and do the work. Good grief. Since the establishment of religion, men have denigrated, marginalized, and erased the accomplishments of women. We finally start to see a smidgen of rebalancing, slowly, over the last 50 years and men go to utter pieces. It’s depressing.