Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, August 14, 2024
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73 comments
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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Putin is legitimately pissed off that Ukraine invaded Russia. He thinks that the West should be appalled and apologetic that Ukraine has violated their sovereign territory. What the actual fuck?
Dude!
You get what you give. Good on Ukraine! Push back hard!
I sorta thought Putin was going to have a “sudden health emergency” several years ago. I thought that his Ukraine failure meant he would have a sudden fatal emergency.
That Putin has somehow survived the Ukraine debacle says a lot about how entrenched he is in their state system.
In the Soviet era such a failure would have prompted a sudden health emergency for the purported leader. A sudden heart attack. So sad.
It’s scary that he hasn’t had a state declared heart attack by now given his obvious fuck-ups have been. The center has lost control to the coldest fish, least charismatic possible of a autocrat.
Putin has the charisma of jellied eel, but it is clear he weilds undisputed, unchecked power.
I predicted he would have been unalived by the deep state by now. I was wrong.
So yeah, being killed for the possible crime of shoplifting and /or failure to comply, just another day in America. But here’s the part that really sticks in my craw:
She was shot and killed on August 24, 2023. So basically hey have had the evidence for full f’n year and didn’t even look at it? BS. Secondly, they chose not to begin the disciplinary process until they were forced to?????
‘Nuff said.
Liz Truss leaves stage over ‘I crashed the economy’ lettuce banner
Shorter Lizzie: “Waaaahh! Everybody is soooooo mean to meeeee!!!!!”
There was a very intoxicated guy in my elevator. Not a big deal, I just wanted him to get home.
He was passed out / asleep. He was very intoxicated.
I kinda wanted him out of the elevator car, mostly. But, he has always been a good dude to me, so I get a bit obligated. He was very fucked up – I snapped fingers, I poked him, I grabbed his shoulder and shook him. And then I shook him fairly hard.
Dude was out. He’s my neighbor and he’s totally out, dead to the world on the floor of the elevator. I poked him repeatedly. I said “hey” repeatedly. Loudly. Snapped my fingers directly in front of his face. Said “hey” again 13 times or so.
I pulled up Rancid on my phone and stuck the ear bud in his ear. Arguably too far, too intimate, but whatever. Sorta worked, he rolled away from the noise. Hey, fucker, you’re sort of awake. Get the fuck up! Wake up!
He didn’t wake up.
I spent about two hours all told getting super intoxicated guy out of the elevator and to his door. I don’t care if he sleeps the next 12 hours directly outside his apartment – that is on him.
I’ve basically been up all night making sure blitzed guy didn’t die. In the elevator. At one point I grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the elevator into the lobby. He’d dropped his phone and at one point taken his shoes off for some reason.
He was absolutely crashed out in the elevator. I could not wake him, rouse him. He was totally out.
I got him into the third floor beyond the security door and walked away. Getting your stupid ass into bed ain’t my problem.
None of this was my problem, but I’d briefly interacted with him before and he seems like a pretty solid, decent dude. I’ll help you out once.
Next time I’ll ignore you. It’s a fairly upscale downtown loft apartments. You’re gonna get evicted if you pass out super hard in the common areas.
I’m going to be on the security feed. So I’m going down the office at 9 tomorrow to explain what happened and what I did. I did the best I could to do no harm to that gentleman. The idiot has his phone, wallet, and shoes thanks to me.
Dammit, I’m still awake.
I have a bone to pick with main stream media. Trump strongly suggested to Elon Musk that if he lost the election he would move to Venezuela
If anyone else said what he said it would be banner headlines on every news outlet from now until election day. Trump gets a dumb person pass for some reason, even though it is quite possible he might be elected.
Trump gets an idiot, narcissist, ignorant person pass in the media. What he said was false and he’s lying, but we’re just going with what he declared for the headline. If anyone else was a Presidential nominee, if they said what Trump routinely says it would be front page news from now until election day.
Trump gets a dumb-ass, ignoramus pass in the vast majority of big media reporting. If another candidate said what he says regularly it would the scandal of the century.
Everyone knows he’s a dumb, ignorant asshole but they pretend he’s a normal candidate.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I find the banner inaccurate and misleading.
The perpetrators owe an apology to the lettuce. It didn’t crash the economy.
@de stijl: If they reported accurately and honestly about everything trump says and does, they would be accused of being anti tump/pro Harris to the nth degree which would be totally unfair to him and his legions of cult members.
So they have to ignore 90% of the sht he says and does in order to maintain their “both sides” bona fides.
@Kathy: Heh. I miss my edit function.
The headline of the day- 1 dead, 2 injured after man drives through strip club following argument
Medicare released its annual report recently. It’s very long but Munnell has a shorter review at link. The good news is that the solvency date is pushed out another 5 years and the ACA has had pretty good results in slowing down spending. The bad news is that it may not be enough and that if Trump wins they will try to get rid fo the ACA again.
Steve
https://crr.bc.edu/medicare-finances-a-2024-update/
@Bill Jempty:
No business that doesn’t have a drive- thru should be drive through-able. Even those businesses that do have a drive-thru should protect the core.
Yesterday night some idiot trying to elude the cops lost control and drove into a house on the north side and ended up a third inside of the house. Bashed in the living room wall.
Post 9/11 every federal building has bollards or posts to prevent a Timothy McVeigh style bum rush vehicle attack. My morning walk takes me past almost a dozen federal, state, county, and city buildings. All (almost) have protective features to thwart a drive up explosion attack.
Des Moines has at least three federal courthouses which is probably overkill. I’m pretty sure one is just an administrative / annex building but is designated as federal courthouse. All are ringed by 3 to 4 foot posts or bollards. The newer buildings build them in organically and you barely notice them they are so cleverly designed. One building has a quite beautiful fountain feature along the street-side with four foot heavy walls; the design is pretty brilliant. You’d never know it was a security feature unless you pondered it awhile. Some have retractable bollards that can sink down for big truck deliveries.
For buildings built before 1995 – those had to be retrofitted. Some work better than others aesthetically. A lot of times they use design features like monuments surrounded by substantial walls to do double duty as also preventative security. One courthouse is surrounded by historical markers on substantial brick and concrete posts. It feels organic to the site.
For one building it is both semi-discrete bollards and just a bunch of wide steps surrounding the building. No one could drive a van or truck up those steps even going at speed.
One building is entirely unprotected as far as I can tell. County building. Apparently, no one wants to blow up that county courthouse.
They are learning:
Trump Campaign Forced to Pay North Carolina City $82k in Advance for Rally
Cook Political Report has Kamala ahead in every battleground state except for Nevada. The pollsters they use are, I believe, not particularly highly-regarded, but this supports the narrative of a dramatic change in Democratic fortunes as show in the top-ranked NYT poll.
@Scott: “They are learning”
Are they though? This sounds like the advance is being paid because there’s a policy about last minute events (“While the campaign paid in advance due to Asheville’s policy for short-notice bookings…”), rather than municipalities getting smarter about renting to Trump.
Honestly, every single event location that has been contacted by the campaign should be reviewing their policies on payment. It’s insane that this isn’t a bigger issue for them.
@Jen:
Trump’s reputation for stiffing people goes back decades. It’s how he does “business.” Why would anyone think he or she would be the exception?
@de stijl: No politburo of avaricious aspirants to power. He’s more Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, the Kims in Korea than Khruchev or Brezhnev.
@de stijl:
Well, I like to think that Putin is the Deep State in Russia, hence why so many folks who try to go up against him (such as running against him in elections) end up with Polonium in their bloodstream, or are so clumsy that they accidentally stumble out of a window that is several stories above the ground.
Putin does have a real image problem in that his 3 day incursion into Ukraine to fold Ukraine into Russian hands is now going on it’s what, third year, so an assumption of a 3 day conflict that turned into a multi-year war with no end in sight. That has to be beyond frustrating to Putin and the powers that be in Russia.
Even if Ukraine’s gains inside Russian territory (which actually is a big deal this long into the conflict, which explains James’ post on this news) are temporary, this would be like if the U.S. invaded Mexico, and several years later Mexico is not only fighting hard against U.S. troops and attacks from the sky, but they end up crossing the border and briefly occupying San Diego and maybe some other border towns in AZ and TX, yikes.
One of these years Russian’s are going to want to stop living in fear of retaliatory attacks from Ukraine and do something about it (remove Putin from power, just in case I needed to point out the obvious), but Russians are tough little buggers who can handle a lot of hardship before they say enough is enough.
Right now, the most concerning thing for Putin is that he can also read the writing on the wall and is well aware that based on the news he is seeing and hearing coming out of the U.S., he can’t count on Trump becoming President again and ending the conflict in 24 hours by basically giving Ukraine to Putin, this really is a problem and could mean many more years of a grinding war with a neighbor state, war with Ukraine.
What a waste of Russian money and flesh and blood, so many dead for what, the possibility of expanding Russia’s borders, Putin should be going on vacations and enjoying the good life instead of being hyper paranoid and constantly taking steps to make sure he is not being poisoned by his own security team.
@OzarkHillbilly: The chief is going to assert that she was killed while trying to run down an officer with her car, but yeah, a stop about suspected shoplifting ending in a dead suspect and a dead fetus is both just another day in Murka and a WTF is wrong with this picture.
@CSK: Literally everyone should be smarter by now. Either event locations think that because it’s the campaign and not part of Trump Inc., that they’ll get paid, or, possibly, they don’t have policies in place that require money up front.
The people who should be most annoyed are the taxpayers in the jurisdictions that have been stiffed, because paying for all of that extra security and crowd control comes out of somewhere–with “somewhere” being the city/town budget I would think.
@OzarkHillbilly: @Kathy:
Enlighten me: What does a lettuce have to do with crashing the economy?
@Jen:
You’d hope that would induce the taxpayers to reconsider their votes.
Can someone with better military tactical thinking and knowledge than I have explain how Russia cannot just overwhelm Ukraine with sheer numbers? How / why is Ukraine surviving?
I expected the whole thing to be over in less than a week. They share a land border, ffs. Why is Russia stymied?
@Michael Reynolds:
Nevada polls have been odd this cycle, often showing the state voting to the right of the other battleground states. It could be a sign of a realignment, but it’s also worth keeping in mind that the state has a history (going back about a decade and a half) of underestimating Dems in polls, even sometimes against the national trend. (In 2016 it was the only state Hillary won despite RCP showing Trump ahead.) It’s true that Joe Lombardo won the governorship in 2022, but he did so in part by distancing himself from election denialism and pledging to protect abortion rights.
One thing that strikes me as odd about Trump’s campaigns not paying his rally location bills is that the bills are relatively small change for a purported billionaire like Trump. Stiffing a city what, 82 thousand, that 82K should be pocket change for a campaign that has raised many millions up to this date.
The real kicker is that he is stiffing cities that are pretty much MAGA strongholds, so it is not like he is sticking it to liberals by not paying his bills. It is long overdue that the cities that host his rallies say hey dude, we are your MAGA faithful, but we still need money to pay folks to provide security, food, porta-potties, shelter tents, etc., so why stiff us like you are sticking it to Kamala Harris, not cool Trump, just grow up dude, we get it…not paying your bills is your schtick, but that is just not going to work, I have an army of folks who would be happy to help you ramp up your rally in a short time, but they need money to pay the people they are contracting with to install porta potties, etc., at your event.
This whole thing where he fracks over folks who are his friends and they for the most part sit calmly and just offer no pushback, it really is like he is a cult leader who gets a kick out of asking his faithful to eat a shit sandwich knowing they will say yum, can I have another sandwich please, it is so delicious. Just yuck, yeah…just yuck, such a loathsome creature that so many folks claim to love.
To while away my current incarceration in physical rehab, I’m trying to read Pat Conroy’s South of Broad. How the hell did this blathering fool ever get a rep as a good writer? His motto seems to be “never say well in 100 words what you can say badly in 1000.”
@inhumans99: it really is like he is a cult leader who gets a kick out of asking his faithful to eat a shit sandwich knowing they will say yum, can I have another sandwich please, it is so delicious.
Sums up Trump perfectly. He’s the guy who delights in cheating everyone – businesses, acquaintance, even family. Trump enjoys other people’s misery. That is what he lives for.
I can’t conceive of a person with any values voting for Trump. He is remarkable open about his complete lack of ethics. I firmly believe that the vast majority of people in prison have a better moral center than Donald Trump.
@de stijl:
The Lantana public library, adjacent to the post office which my wife goes to get church mail on a daily basis and where my S corp has a PO Box, had a drive through area because it was originally a bank building. Drive up book drop offs weren’t possible however.
The area was changed one year or so. You can’t drive up that portion of the parking lot anymore.
@CSK:
When Truss was appointed Prime Minister, the Economist published an opinion piece that basically said Truss would last about as long as a head of lettuce. A British tabloid subsequently started a livestream of a head of lettuce next to a picture of Truss.
Truss was gone before the lettuce wilted.
@CSK:
I’ve never read any of his books. I do love the movie The Great Santini, but mostly because of Robert Duvall’s acting. I know it was written by Conroy.
I’ve been on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately. That is bleak stuff. I re-read The Road and it kicked my ass (again). It was a first time reading of No Country For Old Men.
“Can someone with better military tactical thinking and knowledge than I have explain how Russia cannot just overwhelm Ukraine with sheer numbers?”
1) Its easier to play defense.
2) Russia just assumed Ukraine would roll over. Their initial invasion attempt was poorly planned and executed. Russia also had a relatively small number of well trained troops and they lost a lot fo them in the early part of the war. They are now fighting with an awful lot of conscripts with variable training.
3) Putin is trying to conduct a war but call it a special military action. That means he is trying to avoid it have major negative spillover in the economy. That means he has limited the number of troops he has called up rather than have a general call like he would for a full war.
4) Russians arent good at logistics. Ukraine is right next door but Russia has had trouble getting supplies in place. They have also, AFAICT, never really established the air superiority that was expected. I dont really understand that.
5) Give credit to Ukraine. The Russians killed millions and deported hundreds of thousands of people, especially children, when they ruled Ukraine. They are willing to fight pretty hard to avoid Russia ruling them again.
Steve
@inhumans99:
It might be informative to consider what Michael Cohen said were his standing orders when he worked for Trump: bully people into giving up on collecting a bill and, failing that, get a reduction. Cohen said Trump explicitly stated, “Never just pay a bill”.
On top of that, I imagine Trump realizes what a mere town official might be risking in calling attention to bad faith on der fuerer’s part, especially one deep into MAGA land
@Mikey:
Thank you.
@de stijl:
McCarthy’s in a different league from Conroy. Bigly. As for Duvall, he makes anything he’s in worth watching.
@MarkedMan:
Trump once said that he loved suing writers because it bankrupted them and cost him only a few dollars a year.
As Adam Serwer observed, “the cruelty is the point.” Trump delights in it.
@steve:
6) Old equipment failing because of slipshod maintenance.
7) Equipment failures because of corruption thus inferior knockoffs substituted for specified parts.
8) Equipment failures from just plain shitty design.
9) Incompetant leadership and flawed military doctrine.
In short, the corruption and grift chickens of the Russian system coming home to roost.
@CSK: I have often thought (and said!) that the most important thing to know about Trump is that he is a moron. But I think the second most important thing is that he is a miser. A miser differs from the repulsively frugal man in that the former is unable to release a nickel from his grasp, even if it will cost him thousands, while the latter, however annoyingly, calculates the plusses and minuses of every action or inaction. Being a miser has nothing to do with frugality, and everything to do with compulsion.
@charontwo:
ETA:
10) Ukraine is fighting on its home turf, it knows the terrain better.
To expand on the corruption thing – people grift, wet their beaks at every level, it all adds up.
@Bill Jempty:..Lantana…
The one time I worked in Florida, February 98-99? can’t remember, the job site was in West Palm Beach. Stayed at the Motel 6 in Lantana. By the Google maps it looks like the place is still there. In all my travels to jobs in 14 states over 35 years and accommodations too numerous to count that Motel 6 was the only lodge I stayed at where the hookers would call my room from theirs to offer their services. No thanks.
There was a fantastic Cuban restaurant in the shopping center across the street that served a soup that would knock your sox off!
The other memories of that job was that my truck caught on fire on I 95 and it was the only job I ever worked where I got beat out of my pay. I won’t blame Florida Man for that as the guys that stiffed me were from Chicago.
@MarkedMan:
Yes, but do misers take the absolute orgasmic delight in crushing people they owe the way Trump does?
@de stijl:
Kursk is surrounded and criss-crossed by large rivers, and is somewhat bordered by thick forests. There are limited areas for Russia to travel, and last week when they did try to move a large amount of troops into the Kursk region, Ukraine obliterated the column of troops and armor with rocket and artillery fire.
It’s the ol’ “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” Ukraine saw a potential logistical nightmare for the Russians and exploited it.
@steve:
I would guess it would have something to do with the fact that while pilots can be replaced, the planes can’t. Replacing the pilots is difficult to impossible if there are no planes and you can’t trust the training equipment at all.
My bet would be that if Russia committed their air force to achieve air superiority and they didn’t win the war in like a week they wouldn’t have an air force. As I understand it, that’s why they are so big on that glide bombing. Every one of those bombers the Ukranians take out is an immense lose to the Russians.
@de stijl: The TLDR is basically that Russia expected an easy fight (like Crimea) so they didn’t mobilize the logistics or people for a real war. By the time Russia started getting kind of serious the attack had already failed. So Russia dug in and prepared for a short war. That short war is now years and Russia is being forced into desperate measures such as reactivating 60s/70s tanks/equipment to make up for losses.
Russia has two real problems right now. One is that they cannot make high end thermal sights and other fancy toys because they are cut off from western gear (French provided optics for example) and silicon (aka chips needed for high end gear). The second problem is that Putin is unable to fully mobilize the country for war. Putin’s been trying to mobilize as much as possible where he can but he clearly has to step carefully or he’ll risk major blowback from the populace. Right now it’s the poor minorities and other “undesirables” doing most of the dying. Once Muscovites and such are gang pressed Putin is going to have trouble surviving. If leadership’s children are in the Kursk region then that’s just a cherry on top for Ukraine.
Meanwhile Ukraine is about to mobilize even more of their citizenry for the war. This has to be done carefully because pulling too many people from civilian jobs can crater the economy and make producing war goods more difficult. The big downside for Ukrainian fighters right now is that there is no end they can see for their deployment. Much like German fighters during the end of WW2 Ukrainians are expected to fight until they die. That gives Ukraine a whole lot of experienced soldiers but it also causes moral issues (and some crazies).
Had the free world now armed Ukraine the war would of been mostly over if not over by now. It would of been exceedingly bloody but Russia would of prevailed.
@Mister Bluster:..Lantana (edit)…
Now I remember. I was in my room at the Lantana Motel 6 and watching the news on TV when Impeached President Bill Clinton was acquitted at trial by the United States Senate on
February 12, 1999.
@steve:
Western equipment/training (manpads etc). Turns out Russian countermeasures/gear were over-hyped.
@charontwo: In Russia it’s basically considered a sign of intelligence and being a superior person to steal from the government/company without being caught. If you’re not stealing you’re a moron basically. The culture of corruption is the single biggest reason for Russia’s gear issues. There’s a whole lot of issues but corruption is the singular biggest one.
@CSK: From what I’ve seen, yes, some do. Trump is more an example of the banality of evil than of an apex or avatar of anything.
@Matt:
I also didn’t mention is Ukraine has many allies supporting it with equipment and supplies – e.g., artillery shells.
Russia’s allies are pretty much only China, North Korea and Iran – countries who like to be paid for the stuff they send to Russia.
@Scott:
Never been there, but my understanding is that Asheville is fairly funky, kinda hippie, vegan friendly, non-GMO, gluten-free kind of town next to a national park. Think Estes Park, CO or Sedona, AZ. Like that. Upscale hikers and b and b’s and indie coffee shops.
City proper is probably +25 D. Outlying areas nearby probably + 15 R. Asheville is covering their butt.
When it comes to Trump, always get paid upfront or else you’ll have to sue to get re-imbursed. That’s kinda his go-to move.
Thanks, everybody, for educating me as to Russian military / political failures in re: Ukraine. I appreciate it!
I know other folks also got some insights, too. From a layman’s perspective I just assumed Russia would steamroll Ukraine within a week just by looking at the comparisons. Size isn’t everything; it’s how you use it. I’ve been told that, anyway.
Again, thank you!
@Scott: Polling’s all over, but Cook shows Harris 46-44 over Trump in NC with 3rd parties and 48-47 head to head. Asheville can say pay up or we’ll go public. El Paso can too, but it won’t scare Trump.
(Holy crap – she’s up 2 in NC?!)
@charontwo: If I may take the liberty:
11. Man portable anti tank and anti aircraft weapons, longer ranged anti-aircraft, and close in drone surveillance and weapons seem to have restored a WWI like trench warfare in which attack becomes very costly. But Russia apparently wasn’t prepared to defend Kursk, allowing at least a limited mobile offense.
@de stijl:
Numbers alone aren’t everything.
The evidence from all recent major wars is that if you charge infantry into dug-in positions that are equipped with modern weapons, you have virtually zero chance of breaking through.
The lesson of WW1.
The best you can hope for is to gradually drive your opponent back, at the cost of horrendous losses to that attacker.
To improve the odds, you need well co-ordinated artillery and armoured support, and can still expect to take losses of around 3 to 1 even to achieve a local “win”.
Key point: the Russian army in Ukraine has never had a general superiority of numbers on that scale.
And probably can’t hope to get it; because Russia actually only has roughly three times the population of Ukraine.
And for political and economic reasons Putin seems very reluctant to initiate general conscription that would impact the “middle class” of the Moscow and St Petersburg conurbations.
It didn’t help that much of the core “professional” Russian field army was badly mauled in the losing battles for Kyiv, the north-east, and Kherson in 2022.
The NATO response, deriving from lessons of WW2 on, has been to emphasize air superiority, “deep strikes” aimed at dislocating the enemy, and a modified “blitzkrieg” around a crippled opponent.
That was what Russia attempted in Feb 2022, and screwed up. Largely because the UAF was far more resilient than Russia expected., and Russia was unable to gain and exploit air superiority.
As neither side has been able to achieve air superiority, and the West throttled UAF use of deep strike assets, and slow-walked a lot of weapons supplies during 2022, it comes down a to a slogging match.
In which Ukraine has, sensibly, largely stood on the defensive, and Russia has kept on trying to grind forward, in central Donbas mainly, at the cost of massive losses.
Of course, Ukraine has suffered severe losses as well. But it seems likely Russian casualties overall are about minimum three to maximum five time greater.
@JohnSF:
Another factor is the supply situation: Russia seems unable to adequately support more a couple of “hot” sectors at any one time, and because of the road and rail nets, Donbas is easiest,while both the south coast salient and the north seem more difficult. Ukraine seems able to match this readily enough.
Russia seems incapable of finding and hitting key logistics targets in Ukraine, and continues to use its drones and missiles to strike civilian targets with known fixed locations.
@JohnSF:
Russia is like “what is combined arms comrade?”
@de stijl: The structure of the Russian initial attack matched what they said at the time, that they assumed there would be little to no resistance. “Welcomed as liberators”, the Dick Cheney mistake revisited.
They did not prepare for a hard war, nor a long one. They expected it to be over before anyone could get any aid in. Preparation of that sort takes years.
@JohnSF: Back when this started I saw some expert say Russia was dependent on rail for logistics, that they didn’t have the truck fleet to move from the railhead to the front. IIRC, he added that the trucks they had had been sitting for years on rotted cheap Chinese tires.
(OK, off into the ozone a bit, but I’m old enough to have experienced most of the Cold War first hand. It always struck me that conservatives were more afraid of the USSR than liberals. Part of it was anti-communism. But I always felt a lot of it was that in their dark, shriveled hearts, they really thought autocracy was a superior system.)
@gVOR10:
Yes, Russian logistics seems to still be very rail-heavy.
Hence the effort it’s putting into upgrading the south coat rail links from Rostov all the way to Crimea. (As the Kerch Bridge is a obvious vulnerability)
.
They do seem to have sufficient road transport to run from railheads to front to support a major battle; but perhaps not over very great distances or wide dispersal.
Perhaps part of their problems in February/March 2022?
Needs more info than I have to be certain of any of this, tbh.
Road and rail nets seem rather denser in central Donbas than in some other parts, so that may be part of the reason Russia keeps trying to bull on through there?
@just nutha: Yep, exactly.
VP candidate and regular sufferer of foot-in-mouth disease J. D. Vance has been heard to agree that helping raise grandchildren is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.”
I guess if you’re an older woman with no grandchildren you should just go off yourself, then.
There seems to be no bottom to this guy’s toxicity.
Ouchies! Somehow, I’m just not surprised.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/patreon-to-creators-sorry-we-have-to-let-apple-take-a-cut-of-in-app-support
Edit button test
@Matt Bernius:
None for me, thanks, I’m drinking.
@Mikey: to be fair, there is an evolutionary biology idea that the evolutionary advantage of human females surviving post menopause is to help raise the next generation. But I wonder what JD thinks about the “gay uncle” explanation for homosexuality in evolutionary biology—the idea that since human children need so much care, some members of the clan wouldn’t reproduce and would instead assist in raising their nieces and nephews.
@Mikey: I will add (since I can’t edit my comment) that whatever evolutionary pressures led to gay people or post menopausal women among humans, are meaningless as far as what people should do with their lives today.
EDIT Key test
No Edit here.
@Monala:
I thought of that, too.
What’s odd is that fundamentalist “Christians” so opposed to evolution, go to drink deeply of the well of natural selection and evolutionary pressures.
Wally Famous Amos has baked his last batch of cookies.
1936-2024
RIP
I just saw a dead skunk in the road earlier this evening.
He can eMail me at
Mr*******@ge******.com
for directions.
So no edit to fix the gag eMail address.
It should read MrBluster (at) get bent (dot) com
@Mister Bluster:
Maybe each cabinet department should have a Constanza undersecretary. Their job would be offer the best advice they can think of to the Secretary, who would then do the exact opposite.
On the other hand, if he will take votes away from the Felon, he can best serve his country that way.
Or get on a Xlon Xtarship to Mars. That would be good, too.
@Kathy:..Or get on a Xlon Xtarship to Mars.
As much as I wanted to ride a rocket into outer space (after I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was 20 I thought for sure I would celebrate my 30th on the moon) that fantasy has waned and I’m not sure what the requirements are today. I fear that RFK jr would be denied passage since he would refuse any required vaccinations.
@Mister Bluster: Selling endorsements for a chance to be kinda relevant, I’m sure your dad would be proud.
@Mister Bluster:
The way Xlon’s been devolving, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he turned against vaccines as well.