The Frankish Reich

tl;dr Journalist Chait says real wages are going up. Critic hits back: paper towels are getting really expensive. Chait mocks that. I don't know about you, but I buy the 12 roll Costco pack. Now $26. Basically 2 bucks a roll. Each roll lasts a week or more in my small household. I'm with Chait here.

Great news for all people who have a uterus. 😁

Thanks. I guess. I don't know what "one of those people" are. I am not a Biden apologist. We have some serious problems with the economy, but in general the job market is very strong, the economy is still growing, and that means there's no recession.

So you have adopted the more woke definition of a recession - "Damn your charts and graphs ... I just feel like I'm not doing as well as I have a right to be doing."

What is your definition of "recession?" Source?

Maybe Jack should stick to finding those kids in the Comet Pizza basement. Ukraine in NATO - is a key bargaining chip, and Biden is keeping it on the table. "The destablization is the goal" - what "destabilization?" Apparently Jack thinks an ongoing invasion and war is stable.

Same thing here. My college age daughter has basically zero memory of the sites we saw in Europe when she was 9. I have decided that all the photos/videos are for the purpose of creating false memories in our kids, which in many cases may be better than the real thing (since we tend to take pictures/videos of the peak moment and not of endless waiting in line, etc)

Different societies, different economies. But take a step back and we have similar things happening for similar reasons: both the US and China grossly inflated the money supply to keep things humming. And the spike in demand caused by that can't last forever. It was a bubble in both cases. The only thing we don't know yet is how big the bubble was in each case, and whether it can be slowly deflated or whether it will burst.

Setting spin aside: I am still betting on a recession starting later this year. The ripple effect of the Fed raising rates takes time to work its way through the economy. We may finally be seeing signs of a cooling job market. We are certainly seeing signs of cooling inflation. But ... that whole "soft landing" thing now looks like a real possibility. From a political standpoint: a recession is the Republicans' friend. An actual soft landing? The opposite. There's a lot of time between now and November 2024. It's a dangerous policy. They've created the brand now - "Bidenomics" - and that's great if they do get the "soft landing." Otherwise they've created a new one-word way to mock themselves.

This is what I'm getting at: while we were all talking about policies and aging and all that fun stuff, what really happened was that the United States essentially became a parliamentary government. We have a set of official Republican Party policies (lower taxes, stricter immigration enforcement, opposition to anything touching on identity politics), and we have a set of official Democratic Party policies (higher taxes on the wealthy and more social program spending, looser immigration enforcement, official recognition of the special situation of racial and sexual minorities). And there is nearly complete party discipline in voting in Congress. Manchin and Sinema are basically the only Senators who have occasionally departed from their party's lines, and Sinema officially left the Democratic party. So you are voting for an elephant or a donkey. Period. There is a figurehead at the top, at President, but essentially you are voting for either a Democratic or a Republican agenda. We focus too much on the top guy (so far, always a guy) perhaps because we have two front runners who are so obviously compromised in Biden and Trump.

I've been thinking of abandoning the old convertible since I'm aging out of the mid-life crisis car and my dermatologist says I should keep out of the sun anyway. Maybe I can put together that kind of justification. I'll work on it.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/08/ron-desantis-memes-lgbtq-ad-00105238 I finally took a look at it (the campaign has taken it down, but it exists elsewhere.) It is every bit as offensive as characterized, implicitly calling out Trump not for supporting things like drag queen story hour, but simply for supporting gay rights in general. But that's not the whole story. The Politico article explains that. It is full of homoerotic images like "GigaChad" (something I was blissfully unaware of), which is apparently the symbol of the alpha male so loved and hated by the incels. We also get this, which was accurately characterized by the very much gay Pete Buttigieg as, well, exactly what it is: "I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders." And a whole host of other supposedly manly men who, had I passed them on the street when I lived in San Francisco, I would have immediately thought "there must be a gay club nearby." WTF is going on in the Republican Party now? Is this an Incel Recruitment drive? And why are these so-called cultural conservatives so obsessed with homoerotic images and personalities? This is beyond weird. Vote for Ron because he's more of a self-hating closeted gay man than his opponent? Is that what they're trying to say?

OK, it's official - I'm in the market for one. Don't tell my wife. Does that account for the EV rebate?

So if an Antifa mob descends on your house and tries to smash a window to break in, you will kindly step aside until you have visual confirmation that they are armed.

Silly comment on many levels, but let's start with this: you really believe Putin attacked Ukraine because he feared NATO expansion would compromise Russia's security?

Not really. Remember Trump in 2016? There were a lot of questions about his lack of government experience and his temperament. He reassured us: "I have the best people." Part of the sale was "I will bring in the best advisors and managers to make the government work like a successful business." And then he fired all of them.

Is he just a pure troll now? I really don't know much about this creep, but he is (even if ultimately acquitted) a pornographer. I mean, that's his occupation. And the same guy who just talked about defining deviancy down has given a platform to a deviant. So it's devolved into "my enemy's enemy is my friend" - since Tate is 100% anti-woke he must be good. That's all that's left now.

Exactly.

Interesting. And the price is certainly not deterring new buyers: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-05/toyota-us-new-car-sales-jump-in-sign-of-auto-industry-strength Usually if I think I can't easily afford buying a new car, I just hold onto my old ones another year. But that's just me in this 2023 world.

This must explain why hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are trudging across Central America and Mexico for the opportunity to live under our equally oppressive government. Again: best numbers in the developed world.

I forgot about that - our formerly resident screenwriter. Hollywood producers should expect an increase in the number of unsolicited convoluted UFO and espionage/conspiracy scripts just as soon as the strike ends.

In a simple way: Turkey threatened to obstruct Sweden joining NATO, which would disrupt the unity NATO wants to show. And Biden and the US stopped that from happening. A win.

Sometimes a legit discussion breaks out here...

The boring-ass politician (now judicial) book is always a way of bringing in extra income through institutional sales. I have never bought a single one of these books, and can’t imagine who does other than libraries and other institutions.

Depends how it’s outfitted. I know it’s cheaper than a Tesla Model S. I’m gonna say … 75k? I didn’t cheat and google it.