We’re taking a little road trip this weekend, and I hit the library in search of reading material. I’d selected a couple of novels when I saw Maggie Haberman’s “Confidence Man” there on the new-books shelf, and put the novels down. It’s a thick book. I doubt I’ll finish it in the two-week new-book borrowing period, road trip or no.
But I’m making progress, and one thing is abundantly clear from the earliest pages: Donald Trump not only is a fraud, a fool, a confidence man and every other pejorative assigned to him in the last seven years, but he always has been. From the jump, this guy was as bad as he was in the White House, and barely 100 pages in, I’m mad at every enabler who let him get away with it, mostly in the New York media – the reporters who printed his lies, his exaggerations, his steaming piles of bullshit, because it was good copy, or good TV or whatever. Sure, we didn’t know how dangerous he’d become. All through 2016, a friend would gleefully post his shenanigans on his social media and comment, “Best. Election. Ever.” I remember his face a few days later, after his daughter had someone scream at her from a passing car in the days after the vote, “I’m gonna grab your pussy!!” Not so funny.
During the worst of that administration, I would sometimes mentally list of the Five Men to Blame, and think how swift and merciless their punishment should be (and only a guillotine would do, in my opinion). Mark Burnett, Rupert Murdoch, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Erik Prince, and that was only the list I’m thinking of now. It changed a lot, although Burnett and Murdoch were always on it. (And Rudy’s pretty pathetic now; his punishment is having to be Rudy Giuliani, pathetic drunken clown. A woman I know works in a Manhattan office building with a lobby Rudy passes through regularly. The security guard told her America’s Mayor no longer ties his shoes.)
But it’s plain that there are a lot more than five men to blame for Trump. Skipping ahead to read passages here and there, I appreciate Haberman’s withering gaze, and her ability to deploy that old reporter’s trick of demonstrating an idiot’s idiocy by just quoting him accurately. Another observation: All of his speaking tics – “fantastic,” “disaster,” “tremendous,” the way he never said “very” without repeating it once or twice – were all there from the beginning.
I don’t like to immerse myself in this man’s life again. The habit certain of my friends have adopted, of ignoring the news more or less entirely, has occurred to me from time to time. But that strikes me as turning one’s back on a rabid dog. It may be out of sight, but it’s still dangerous.
OK, time to make dinner. See, I can do a second blog in a week. Cleared some shit off my desk, and the next few days look pretty good.
Sherri said on March 7, 2023 at 6:37 pm
I don’t ignore the news, but I am much more careful about my consumption of the news. I do try to ignore Trump as much as possible, but I do keep aware of what’s happening with the QOP and what they’re doing in the states where they have control.
The 2016 election was a life changer for me. It’s why I’m now president of the board of the ACLU of Washington. It’s why I’m a powerlifter. It’s why I no longer politely ignore things that maybe I used to let go, which is why I stopped going to church. I can’t share the Eucharist with people who prioritize their comfort over the safety of others.
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LAMary said on March 7, 2023 at 7:06 pm
My sons think I’m fixated on Trump. I try to tamp it down. I don’t get the adoration this slimy con man gets. Allegedly a crowd followed Nikki Haley to the exit at CPAC, threatening her, demanding she not run for the nomination against Trump. There are people who love this orange lump of corruption and slime enough to threaten the life of a political challenger. Who are these people? When I talk to republican relatives I tell them my intense dislike of Trump isn’t political. It’s about who he is but that’s exactly why people love him. He’s not talking about actual political issues or policy or law. He’s just lying to them, using them, conning them.
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Jeff Borden said on March 7, 2023 at 7:12 pm
Great minds think alike? I’ve also started a list and it includes Murdoch and Gingrich, but the fountainhead for me is St. Ronald of Reagan. Fucker eliminated the Fairness Doctrine and advocated for eliminating media ownership limits, creating the handful of behemoths who rule the media world. He’s the original sin and I despise the worship he still generates.
My list also includes the unctuous racist, sexist Rush Limbaugh, who resurrected Father Coughlin’s rotting, fetid corpse. And the Koch Brothers, libertarian billionaires who funded the worst of these right-wing PACs.
A pox upon them all.
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Deborah said on March 7, 2023 at 7:26 pm
But isn’t Haberman a bit to blame too. She wrote about him for years and as they say there’s no such thing as bad press, if it gets him attention, that’s all he needs. Of course as many people do I wish he would just go away, maybe he’ll end up doing time, but I doubt it. He’s disgusting, always has been.
I had no idea there were so many gullible people until Trump came along, even the likes of grifter preachers like Joel Osteen etc with the hoards they pack in their mega churches didn’t alert me to just how many rubes are out there. I’m sorry I know now, I’ll never be the same because of the revelation.
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Julie Robinson said on March 7, 2023 at 8:26 pm
Also Sandra Day O’Connor, deciding vote in Bush v Gore, which then lead to corporations being proclaimed people. She lived to regret it, along with stepping down early.
WaPo reported that Michelle Obama cried for half an hour after leaving the 2017 inauguration. She understood what was coming.
I have no desire to revisit those four years and am not reading any of the books. But I think he’s over, and the small crowds at CPAC were an indication.
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Jeff Borden said on March 7, 2023 at 8:43 pm
Julie R.,
The original infection is dying, but new strains will replace it. And they will be smarter and more strategic than that bumbling moron.
The battle is ongoing.
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Julie Robinson said on March 7, 2023 at 10:42 pm
Jeff B, I’m under no illusions that the infection is over. The orange tinge, though? Done for.
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Sherri said on March 8, 2023 at 12:26 am
Well, my day ended poorly. We were going out this evening for a rare dinner out, meeting a friend from out of town, but unfortunately, we got rear-ended on the way there, so we never made it. Good news is, nobody was hurt, but now I don’t have a car. I don’t know yet what insurance will do with it, but I’m guessing there’s a decent chance it’s totaled.
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Dexter Friend said on March 8, 2023 at 3:55 am
“I never watch the news but I know Trump won.” That quote was from that farmer at his wife’s produce stand when he began grilling me as to where I was from, was I married? Was I a church-goer? That was when I casually said that Covid19 had taken my wife. “You mean she had THE FLU !”
Trump rules Williams County where I live and even moreso in the surrounding rural counties. At CPAC, Trump slaughtered all his competitors in their straw poll.
Unless Georgia gets ballsy and indicts Trump over this election tampering charge, and since Lower New York (Manhattan) District had ample evidence to indict Trump but passed on it, Trump will be the 2024 repugg candidate. If nobody will even attempt to derail him, and he is not in jail or at least indicted and restricted from traveling outside a limited area, he will absolutely steamroll the 2024 convention. This is much more certain than any given that Biden will run. As repugg murmurings suggest most elected officials actually want to turn away from Trump, and a growing sentiment is for Joe to step down just because of age, the kettle is simmering to a boil, eventually.
It took a couple weeks of phone calls, but I finally got a reputable contractor to come to schedule a date to fix my roof and drywall problem. I learned this from several contractors: either a new shingled roof or a steel roof will cost nearly the same. I was really surprised. No wonder all the old houses around here have installed steel roofing.
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David C said on March 8, 2023 at 5:54 am
Bill Fucking Clinton signed the Telecomminications Act of 1996 so he bears a lot of the burden of media consolidation. But hey, he collected some checks from telecom companies so all’s well, right?
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Jim said on March 8, 2023 at 6:01 am
Mr Dumper (still flushing) has been lying ALL his life and he’s only happy when the spotlight is on HIM .
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alex said on March 8, 2023 at 7:09 am
Dominion’s giving us a glimpse of how sausage is made at Fox News and the schadenfreude couldn’t be more delicious, even if the revelations are completely unsurprising. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson is presenting cherry-picked footage of January 6 and recasting the event as the capitol police giving public tours.
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FDChief said on March 8, 2023 at 8:47 am
So it’s not so much a question of ignoring Tubby. The question – actually, the ANSWER to the question – “so what can us sane people DO about Tubby?” that’s so difficult and disturbing as to be unaskable.
Because Tubby isn’t the problem. Oh, sure, he’s shit and always has been.
But it’s the rest of them. The pussy-grab shouters. The “THE FLU!” farmers. The millions and millions of mother-Tucking, anti-vaxxing, trans-panicking, book-banning, lib-owning, gun-humping, Christopathic chucklefucks who are the problem.
Because they’re a cult. Because nothing Haberman could have said or done – and, yes, she’s as bad as Murdoch and should had done much, much more – would have changed them or fixed them. Like the armies of Imperial Japan, they will kill and die for their tangerine god-emperor until their nation is a reeking heap of death.
We know what it took to bring the Empire to its knees in 1945.
That’s what it will take to save the promise of this country from these people. That nice farmer and his wife…they will have to be Hiroshima-ed. Nothing short of unconditional and demeaning surrender will force them to bend the knee to a pluralist, nonsectarian, modern scientific nation.
THAT’S the answer.
And that’s horrifying. No sane person wants to hear or speak it.
So none of us…not Haberman, not Biden, no one…is willing to say it out loud. It’s Republicans, “fellow Americans”, neighbors, who have become too dangerous and must be defeated…
Or destroyed.
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FDChief said on March 8, 2023 at 9:53 am
And I will give Trump “credit” for knowing his crowd.
The GOP has been going there since Reagan, or at least Gingrich. But the party nabobs, even Gingrich himself, even human dogturds like Limbaugh, believed they needed to talk in code to avoid scaring the normies. That they could use the ooga-booga to whip up the nutbars but could govern for their plutocrat masters.
But Trump – greedy, lazy, dumber than a bag of hammers – knew that the critical mushy middle wouldn’t believe what they heard, or wouldn’t be willing to do anything if he said all the idiotic toxic nonsense and open hate for all the things the base believed and hated, too.
Not because he’s some sort of political savant, but because he IS one; a stupid, addled, toxic FOX News grandpa, too proudly ignorant to learn the code words.
And now all the hard work that generations of good people have done shaming ALL those ignorant racist, sexist (insert every other toxic “-ist” here) into sitting down and shutting up has been undone. Even the idea that you should keep your shitty ideas to yourself and act sensible in public is under attack as “woke” and “cancel culture”.
That bomb was lying there since the Civil Rights Era..but the old GOP knew that to set it off would shatter the tenuous truce between the right and everyone else. Only a boneheaded cluck like Trump was too clueless and too vicious to care.
So here we are.
And the GOP isn’t going back. Doesn’t matter if it’s Trump now. They’re open white power Christian fascists, and they’re gonna ride or die with that. Trump just showed them the road.
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Jeff Borden said on March 8, 2023 at 10:18 am
The degeneracy of Tucker McNear Swanson Carlson is on full display in some of the Dominion lawsuit revelations. Putin’s little poodle texted someone else at Fox that soon tRump could be ignored and that Carlson himself hated tRump “passionately.” Yet he continues to spew the swill at his viewers. . .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/03/07/fox-news-lawsuit/
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Deborah said on March 8, 2023 at 10:47 am
We keep thinking that the rightwing cares that Carlson lies, they couldn’t care less as long as he keeps spewing the hate they like. I found out from my sane niece that my sister now watches those other whacked out cable channels now (I don’t remember what they’re called and I don’t want to remember), not that she cares about Fox lies but that Fox isn’t sufficiently crazy enough for her apparently. It’s sad when it happens to people you used to think were at least not completely off the deep end.
I keep reading about how they want to destroy it all, people like Bannon especially, what I want to know is what do they think will rise up out of the ashes?
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Scout said on March 8, 2023 at 11:12 am
The hate and regression trump and his enablers unleashed in this country is why my 21 y/o openly gay grandson and his partner are leaving. They’re moving to Germany in May. I think they have the right idea in case the repugnantcants succeed in their efforts to burn it all down. At the very least, it’s right for them.
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Jeff Borden said on March 8, 2023 at 11:16 am
There are some contributors to this page who’ve chided me for describing some prominent QOPers as fascists, but it is an absolutely accurate description of several of the top goons in the “party ” tRump, DeathSantis, the Freedumb Caucus..
they’re all in and the MAGA hordes love ’em for it.
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FDChief said on March 8, 2023 at 11:35 am
But Jeff! “Fascist” is sooooo 1922! Plus it has to come with swastikas and jackboots or it’s just sparkling authoritarianism.
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4dbirds said on March 8, 2023 at 11:41 am
Nancy and her commenters give me hope that I’m not the only one who doesn’t hate for hate’s sake. I lived in Germany for many years and would move there now if I didn’t have a disabled child who would never be accepted in their healthcare system. To think we’ve changed places where vulnerable people are afraid in this country (well, to be real, they always were but my middle-class white self didn’t realize it.) and Germany is now considered safe.
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JodiP said on March 8, 2023 at 11:53 am
The political situation in this country makes it imperative we retire somewhere in Europe for my wife and me. We had dreamed about it because we love to travel and explore, but retirement can’t come soon enough….and it will be about 6 years because she’s a bit younger than I am.
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Jeff Borden said on March 8, 2023 at 12:35 pm
Those who are seriously thinking of retiring outside the borders of our sadly insane nation should check out International Living, which is dedicated to finding and delineating overseas abodes ranging from urban areas to isolated coastal fishing villages. Cost of living in, say, Central or South America is much lower, but there may be concerns about the quality of health care. That’s not the case for Western Europe. Barcelona, Spain and Porto, Portugal would be my first choices, though Portuguese is a mighty tough language to master. (Google Translate is needed.)
The truth is at almost 72 (and my wife is six years older than me) it’s highly unlikely I could muster the cojones needed to sever my ties and relocate to another country. Then again, a president in the mold of the Sunshine Mussolini would be a powerful motivator.
One thing is certain: I’d be a lot safer in Portugal and Spain from gun violence. Or anywhere else in Europe and Asia for that matter.
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Peter said on March 8, 2023 at 12:49 pm
I must admit that my opinion of Maggie Haberman is…complicated. There are instances when she could have released some damning information about Trump, but kept quiet until she published her book. On the other hand, you can’t say she’s his apologist. I mean, what can she say that hasn’t been said yet that would change people’s minds about this mope.
I guess the best evidence that the rot goes really deep is this: Has any NYC real estate developer or construction company executive ever endorsed him? I don’t recall seeing any. And that’s from a group that would endorse anybody or anything in a second if that could bring them a deal in the future.
People in NY knew he was a dumb turd. Look at the vote totals he got in Manhattan. Sure, it’s a Democratic stronghold, but his share of the vote was a lot lower than previous candidates. They knew. Those reporters let people know. They just didn’t listen.
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Julie Robinson said on March 8, 2023 at 1:34 pm
A cousin just asked for information on our Irish ancestors because she is going to pursue citizenship there. My great grandparents were her grandparents, so she should be eligible. A high school friend went through the process and it takes a couple of years, but at the end you’re a dual citizen. I don’t know if anyone here would qualify, just putting it out there.
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David C said on March 8, 2023 at 3:15 pm
Putin is offering wingnut Americans and Europeans 10 hectares of free land to move to Russia. If they’d like Putin as their President more than Joe this is their chance. Sure it would be in the far East and they’d have no plumbing or electricity but what’s having to go in a shithouse when it’s -40 degrees compared to all that freedumb.
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JodiP said on March 8, 2023 at 3:17 pm
Thanks, Jeff, for the tip on International Living; I was familiar with it. There are also brokers who help decide visas etc.
Julie, I knew about the citizenship path in Ireland, but sadly my Irish ancestor is at least a great-great grandparent. I have friends who qualify and are thinking about it. They told me that after 5 year’s residency in Ireland they can go anywhere in the EU.
We had considered Portugal but have ruled it out–it takes forever to get elsewhere by train. It’s too bad because it looks beautiful and friendly. Plus I already have a base of Portuguese, albeit Brazilian. It’s my favorite language, so I’m bummed I probably won’t use it. The Netherlands, France and Italy are the top 3, possibly Spain. We are trying to take climate change into account as well, but I think anywhere we go we will be dealing with increased temps.
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Suzanne said on March 8, 2023 at 3:35 pm
“I keep reading about how they want to destroy it all, people like Bannon especially, what I want to know is what do they think will rise up out of the ashes?” What they think will arise is a white Christian utopia where they will be at liberty to kill all those who don’t meet their criteria to live and any others can be slaves to serve them.
Peter, I have friends who live in NYC, the husband made a fortune in commercial real estate. They told us before the 2016 election that Trump did virtually no business in NYC any more because he’d screwed over so many people. When I tried to tell this to people here in Indiana, the reaction was usually that this was just my friend’s opinion and therefore, untrustworthy.
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ROGirl said on March 8, 2023 at 3:36 pm
I could go to Israel, but it’s not something I’ve ever wanted to do, especially now.
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Bob (not Greene) said on March 8, 2023 at 3:44 pm
Like probably a lot of people here, both my wife and I are one generation too far removed for automatic qualification for foreign citizenship. My great grandparents immigrated from Ireland and my wife’s great grandparents immigrated from Sweden. Had we qualified, we’d already be in process or had it done. If my mom had sought citizenship before a certain date, I think I’d have qualified, but of course that would have never crossed her mind.
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LAMary said on March 8, 2023 at 3:44 pm
The Trump organization in NYC never paid me for the stuff I sold them. My loss was small beans compared to a lot of other vendors and contractors. He put companies out of business by not paying.
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Snarkworth said on March 8, 2023 at 3:55 pm
My father was born in Canada, and that qualifies me for citizenship. But I’d have to produce a birth certificate, which doesn’t exist because he was born on a ranch miles from anywhere.
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Julie Robinson said on March 8, 2023 at 3:59 pm
My cousin said for Ireland you have to become a citizen before you have kids. She wanted to be able to pass it to her adult kids, but apparently she’s about 30 years too late.
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Sherri said on March 8, 2023 at 4:38 pm
It’s always a bit surprising these days when a company is actually helpful, but our insurance company is being pretty pleasant to deal with so far with our car wreck, other than the nice woman who called me this morning not realizing that I was three hours behind her. Which meant that what seemed like a perfectly reasonable time to her (10:15 am), was only 7:15 here, so none of the other places we needed to contact (the collision repair shop or the tow impound lot) were open yet.
When I did talk to the collision repair shop, they told me they couldn’t do an estimate for my car because their database didn’t go back that far!
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Deborah said on March 8, 2023 at 4:44 pm
My husband knows architects who worked for Trump and got screwed, Trump would use their services and then claim they didn’t live up to their contract and sue them. Then after the architects would hire lawyers etc to defend themselves Trump would drop the case but by then the architects would be so intimidated they wouldn’t press for payment. He would also have meetings where architects he’d hired would have pinned up their drawings on a wall, then right away as soon as he entered before anyone had said a word he tear down the drawings, crumple them up and throw them on the floor and walk out. He also smashed architectural models. It was all intimidation to exert power and get away with everything.
I just made preserved lemons for the first time ever, it’ll take a month before I can use them, I can’t wait to see how they taste in recipes. When I was in CA a few weeks ago I got to pick a bunch of lemons and took them back to NM but had to leave them there. I had to buy lemons here in Chicago. I’ve gone gaga over lemons lately.
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David C said on March 8, 2023 at 4:50 pm
We’re here for the duration. We’re good at slipping through life unnoticed, so we’d probably be OK. Maybe the best we can do is get the attic ready for someone gets noticed and needs to hide.
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Jeff Borden said on March 8, 2023 at 5:14 pm
We can thank Mark Burnett for creating the myth of tRump as a business genius through “The Apprentice.” His company is really just a small, family business, not a spawling corporate giant. tRump couldn’t have found work at a real company because he’s dumber than a box of rocks. Daddy gave him the whole shebang, then contributed hundreds of millions to keep it afloat. tRump couldn’t run a lemonade stand without people like Cohen and Weisselberg doing the heavy lifting.
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alex said on March 8, 2023 at 7:08 pm
My dad worked for an investment operation that partnered with developers to build hotels and office buildings and shopping malls — Trammell Crow, Herb Simon and other big names that aren’t coming to me right now. Anyway, Donald Trump’s name was a joke in this business and no one wanted anything to do with him. My dad was astounded that the American people weren’t more aware of what a fraud he really is and that it didn’t get more press during the run-up to the 2016 election. Absolutely disreputable for as long as he’s been holding himself up as a real estate developer.
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Mark P said on March 8, 2023 at 7:50 pm
Reporting on T***p’s true nature and business history would have made no difference. It was abundantly clear what kind of person he is from his behavior during the election. Anyone who would mock an obviously handicapped person would be immediately excluded from consideration by a decent person. The fact that it made no difference to his supporters says enough about them.
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Dexter Friend said on March 9, 2023 at 4:59 am
My old army pal grew up in Syosset out on Long Island. His dad was a working class salesman and a savvy investor, and left my friend and my pal’s sister $600,000 each after fees were deducted. He then was all fired up to move to Eire. So he goes over with the intention of building a monolithic dome house, but was never given a chance due to strict codes in Ireland. His insistence on building a dome led him back to the USA , where he lost all his dough attempting to build his dome in rural Vermont, never checking that his property taxes there were to be $1,200 per month. Cost overruns took away his inheritance, and now he just wishes he would have bought that home in Ireland he easily could have paid cash for, and been settled in long ago where he longs to be. His shell of the proposed dome and the land were sold for a few cents on the dollar.
I get sick of Joe Scarborough and some of his guests fawning over the legacy and works of Reagan. I have it in my head and my heart that Reagan was the worst President ever, period. Trump is just the latest, freshest in our minds. These TV guys rave on how Reagan was the last true conservative, all that shit. I have posted here before my reasons, so I’ll pass on that repeating, but Reagan was bane to the working class of the USA. Senile, tarot cards made the decisions, can’t recall one thing under oath, bomb Russia in 5 minutes, refusing to listen to Gorbachev about destruction of all nuclear missiles…oh there I go again…and “drum-beat , drum-beat, drum-beat…PATCO !” The chant outside the White House on September 19, 1981 by a thousand or more air traffic controllers after Reagan fired the lot. I was there, Solidarity Day, 1981, and we rode Amtrak; all unions refused to fly.
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alex said on March 9, 2023 at 7:29 am
Loved how Patti Davis (St. Ronnie’s daughter) wrote a tell-all that put Kitty Kelly’s book to shame. And these days Ron Junior is airing a jaw-dropping national TV ad endorsing atheism. The kids add a nice layer of tarnish to their parents’ reputations, I must say.
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Dave said on March 9, 2023 at 7:32 am
I remember a story in the Tampa Bay Times back when T**** was running for president the first time. He was going to build a luxurious building in Tampa with condos, the whole gilded palace thing. There were interviews with people who had put money down as a deposit to live in the place. The building was never built and the people never got their deposits back. The deposits were substantial, something like $50,000. Yet, despite all of that, these people all said essentially the same thing, that they would vote for him.
As I frequently say, I don’t get it.
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4dbirds said on March 9, 2023 at 8:46 am
My sister-in-law and niece followed Trump to attend his rallies up and down the East Coast. When I heard that, I was done with them. My SIL always was a loud, angry person and hated black people. Said she was beat up by six black girls when she was in high school and that was enough for her. I asked if she would have hated white people if the girls had been white. She looked at me as if I was delusional. I haven’t spoken to her since 2015 and it has been surprisingly pleasant.
I never had a crush on any celebrity or politician. I don’t get it. I hated Reagan and Trump and wondered why people couldn’t see what fakes they were. I don’t understand hanging a picture of Kennedy, Trump or Reagan in your living room, yet I’ve seen plenty of that. I’ve had a few company and battalion commanders that I would walk through fire for but they earned that respect.
My hubby is eligible for Irish citizenship, and I think I may start the process for him. I have a feeling, just on how much his grandfather was going back to see his parents, that all his children, (father-in-law, uncles) are registered in the foreign birth registry. If so, my husband would automatically be considered an Irish citizen and my children would be eligible also. I’ve put it off for too long. I owe it to my kids to give them some flexabity if things go south. Not that I have any illusions about Ireland. They are a deeply conservative country heavily influenced by the church and let a woman die a few years ago by denying her an abortion as her dead baby rotted inside of her. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/world/europe/savita-halappanavar-ireland-abortion.html#:~:text=%20Dr.%20Halappanavar%2C%2031%2C%20died%20in%202012%20after,miscarried.%20Her%20death%20from%20infection%20propelled%20a%20movement.
As someone mentioned above, after getting Irish citizenship you can go anywhere else in the EU. That’s the icing.
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alex said on March 9, 2023 at 9:22 am
I could conceivably lay claim to Hungarian citizenship as my father is a WWII refugee, but that shithole country is already at the place where this one seems to be headed. Tucker Carlson holds up totalitarian Hungary as a place the U.S. should emulate. I could be happy in Canada if they’ll have me.
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susan said on March 9, 2023 at 10:37 am
I could be a citizen of Austria or Israel. But why would I want to?
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FDChief said on March 9, 2023 at 10:44 am
I can understand the impulse to flee. Nobody sane wants a civil war.
But that would leave Empty G and her tubby lust object in charge of the richest, most powerful nation on Earth.
How safe would anywhere be with those loons in charge here? Remember the LAST time they ran this joint? And now they have a supercharged agenda of revenge.
This seems kind of a “die on your feet/live on your knees” sort of situation.
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Dorothy said on March 9, 2023 at 10:48 am
I’m cast in a play that opens tomorrow night. One of my cast members, a young lady of about 30-35, mentioned the other night when we were b.s.ing before rehearsal that she had visited an uncle a few years ago and was sort of stunned to see his set up in his living room with FIVE different screens, each one monitoring a different conservative t.v. channel/talk show and he kept them on ALL the time, he said. She didn’t stay long. We all agree that they’re all brain washed. My belief is that they all have brain damage from indoctrinating themselves so deeply in the worship of that sh** for brains former guy.
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Mark P said on March 9, 2023 at 11:15 am
I wish I could understand exactly what’s going on inside the heads of the right wingnuts. I see plenty of explanations but none seem to really explain the phenomenon. It’s easy to just say they are all stupid, which may well be true, or evil, which may well be true for some of them. But what the hell actually makes them think that taking a dump on Capitol building floor is a good idea? My inclination is to stay far away from them, if we can’t load all of them into a ship, sail it out over the Marianas Trench and then sink it. I don’t know that understanding would be productive, but not understanding is surely not productive.
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Little Bird said on March 9, 2023 at 12:23 pm
I just read that Mitch McConnell fell at a hotel and is now hospitalized. I just want to know if he fell on his back and couldn’t get up.
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Peter said on March 9, 2023 at 1:01 pm
Dave at #40, I agree with you. Forget $50,000.00 – if I had a deposit of $5,000.00 taken away from me I would shit on that person the first chance I got. You’d vote for him after he stiffed you on your deposit? No wonder these right wing charlatans are in on the grift – talk about low lying fruit.
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Sherri said on March 9, 2023 at 2:02 pm
Digital surveillance and rich right wing vigilantes wanting to purify the Catholic Church: https://wapo.st/3mH709f
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Jeff Gill said on March 9, 2023 at 3:23 pm
Say not there is no joy in Mudville, if Mudville is Ohio, and joy is seeing Householder & Borges get convicted. A year before we know if they’ll do prison time, but the fact that it could happen is enough to make the sun shine here.
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Jeff Borden said on March 9, 2023 at 3:26 pm
FDChief is correct. Some nations simply cannot be ignored simply because they have the power to destroy the planet and that includes ‘Murica alone with Russia, China, India, Israel and maybe North Korea. Stories coming out of the tRump “administration” report he frequently questioned why nuclear weapons couldn’t be used since we had so many of them. This is the thinking of a profoundly stupid, stupid person.
Not more than two or three days ago, MTG called for launching missiles at cartel sites in Mexico, a sovereign nation and one of our largest trading partners. The siren song of a fresh start in a wonderful place probably is best ignored. We have to fight these bastards right here, right now with everything we have.
I’m encouraged by a couple of stories recently suggesting the “woke culture wars” are not really thrilling the masses, who are just a bit more concerned about the price of eggs and home ownership than drag queen story hours and kid’s books like “Tango Makes Three.” Since this is the major thrust of DeathSantis’ appeal, perhaps the fascist creep will do a belly flop on the national stage. I certainly hope so.
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Jim said on March 9, 2023 at 5:06 pm
Don’t let the article title fool you. Possible plagiarism alert ahead: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2023/03/08/a_book_all_americans_should_read_593244.html
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Mark P said on March 9, 2023 at 5:24 pm
I have been assuming that a good, perhaps the best chance of seeing TFG go to jail was in Georgia, where the Fulton County DA is looking at pursuing an indictment for soliciting election fraud. Now I learn that a bill is likely to be passed that will allow a commission appointed by state officials, who are Republicans, to remove an elected DA. It all sounds great and innocent until you find out that one of the supporters of the bill is a target of the investigation.
I am not optimistic about the future of this country.
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FDChief said on March 9, 2023 at 5:33 pm
I took a look at the WaPo piece Sherri linked to and.. .seriously, tradcaths?
Your church has been repeatedly convicted of running what amounts to a massive intercontinental sex abuse/rape/pedophilia ring, but what really spins you up is a handful of church employees using adult hookup apps?
You’re not howling for the heads of the princes of the Church who spent decades hiding everything from kindly Father Dooley pronging his favorite altar boy to the Magdalen Laundries, but rather because some poor closeted SOB has a Grindr profile?
No wonder so many people are checking the “not religious” box. It’s one thing to have a head full of Bronze Age superstition. It’s quite another to be completely fatheaded about that…
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Suzanne said on March 9, 2023 at 5:56 pm
Oh, Jim. Tim Goeglein wrote a book. Barf.
Speaking of church bodies and why more and more people are bailing on religion, there is this gem:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/lutheran-church-white-nationalism-rejection-1234690317/
Anyone who grew up in NE Indiana is familiar with this part of the Lutheran denomination since there is an LCMS church on every 7th corner. There is no way the church leadership could be surprised by this kind of crap going on like they claim to be. One of the professors from the Lutheran Seminary in Ft Wayne routinely writes extremist right wing letters to the editor of the Journal-Gazette.
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Deborah said on March 9, 2023 at 7:25 pm
OMG, I never thought I’d see the day there would be an article in Rolling Stone about what’s going on in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. The fact that they’re being infiltrated by nazi loving fascists does not surprise me. Ripe for the picking. As I’ve said here before I grew up in the LCMS, went to one of their colleges, later left them for the AELC (which later had become the ELCA), then left the church altogether. Not a minute too soon.
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alex said on March 9, 2023 at 7:35 pm
Little Bird for the win.
Alas, poor Yertel. But I don’t wish him ill or dead because he’s the only Republican officeholder at this point with the balls to be anti-Trump.
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Jeff Gill said on March 9, 2023 at 9:47 pm
Oh, if you knew Chicago in the 70s, you have to read this.
https://open.substack.com/pub/roselandchicago1972/p/chapter-3-notes-part-b-chicago-newspapers
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A. Riley said on March 10, 2023 at 1:38 am
Deborah’s vignette of that orange bastard tearing architectural drawings off the wall and smashing the model buildings — the only thing to say is, “Christ, what an asshole.”
I hope I live long enough to read what the historians will say about how and why that criminal came to infest the White House. I hope the last sentence of all their books reads, “Trump spent the rest of his money on attorney’s fees, and the rest of his life in prison.”
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Dexter Friend said on March 10, 2023 at 4:57 am
Little Bird: You rock! Elderly people falling ain’t funny, but your post had me laffin’ out loud.
FD Chief, you are on point: can we even imagine what Trump would do if elected? He has said that on day one all the incarcerated insurrectionists will be granted immediate total pardons. He said he has Putin on a string and he would make this happen: Russian speaking areas of The Donbass will be ceded back to Russia en toto, along with adjoining area where Russian is spoken, and Zelenskyy will bow to whatever Trump commands. All this is total bullshit.
And now a rant. Bryan HS girls played a parochial school from Cincinnati on Thursday in the state Final Four semifinals. While public schools play the local girls, these parochial and charter schools recruit from all over to dominate state sports. Bryan was really good, best ever for this part of the state, but I saw a photo of the Cincinnati team. They were towering giants and husky girls who looked like footballers. In a couple minutes, they led Bryan 8-0 due to four straight turnovers. After a timeout, Bryan went on an incredible 20-0 run, only immediately to surrender a 12-0 run in this crazy game. The physical domination and speed slowly wore the local girls down, and Cincinnati won 61-47. This high school recruiting has been around forever, I know that, but I think those schools that do that should have their own tournament.
A few years ago, DeKalb High, where my school merged into 55 years ago, made it to the big school final game of the state basketball tournament. They played a charter school which was a basketball factory. They went like 6’10” 6’9″ 6’8″, 6’8, and 6’7″ . Every one of them had a D1 scholarship lined up already. DeKalb looked like Little People out there. DeKalb played even for the first half then the domination of those Bigs blew out DeKalb.
Smaller public schools these days have no chance. However, Bryan girls did beat out Akron SVSM , LeBron’s school, and they are a parochial school. But if you saw that Cincinnati team yesterday, man…really no chance.
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alex said on March 10, 2023 at 7:19 am
Last night while having dinner at the bar rail of a local eatery, I got chatted up by a lady next to me, a “social x-ray” type who was humble-bragging about her house in Fort Wayne and her house on Lake James and how she’s about to go to the Bahamas tomorrow. She began the conversation talking about the weather and then related it to each of those things.
I told the bartender I wanted a box for my food and my check because I wanted to get home to a TV show — “Ghosts,” my new guilty pleasure.
The lady next to me said she’d never heard of it so I described it. Her reaction was “Really? You’re watching that and not FOX? Not politics?”
It occurred to me that these days perhaps there are few of us who are able to let go of our worries and be entertained by a sitcom with a silly premise. This show reminds me, in a way, of oldies like “Bewitched” or “The Munsters” in how it sets up suspense.
I’m not ordinarily a TV watcher who makes time for a show but this one has hooked me. And I only got into it recently although it has been running now for a few seasons.
But back to social x-rays. I don’t know what it is with these upper-middle-class dumber-than-sacks-of-shit women in Indiana, but I’ve been exposed to these types my entire life and they just exude pettiness and superficiality and they wear right-wing politics on their sleeves just like a flashy bauble. They’re definitely not the educated suburbanites who’ve become disenchanted with the GOP, but like everything else they do they wear their political affiliation as an affectation of wealth. Really they’re just fucking hicks with fat wallets.
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Suzanne said on March 10, 2023 at 7:35 am
For sure Alex on the wealthy Hoosier white women. The owner of the local Anytime Fitness had a rant on Facebook saying “OMG, NO! Our country doesn’t need cheaper insulin that makes it easier to stay unhealthy. (Obviously Type 1 is a whole different beast). Shame on govt/medical. This is not a win; it perpetuates the need for insulin and puts in the pockets of big pharma.”
We know her. Her husband has a good paying job and she has done well with her fitness franchise. I guess the rest of us can just die off if we aren’t healthy or can’t afford meds or the fees to her gym.
She’s, of course, a good Republican.
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alex said on March 10, 2023 at 8:14 am
Making insulin affordable is perpetuating diabetes? Those Republican medical experts have an answer for everything.
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Julie Robinson said on March 10, 2023 at 9:52 am
Mad about people staying healthy without bankrupting themselves? What Christian compassion.
I read the Rolling Stone article last week and was not one whit surprised, since I grew up in the Missouri Synod and lived in Fort Wayne for 40 years. The current head, Matthew Harrison, was a pastor there for a few years. He tried to get our ELCA school kids kicked off the Lutheran bus system, in case they tried to teach their kids bad theology. For reals.
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Scout said on March 10, 2023 at 11:58 am
So of the multitudes of investigations into the former mobster-in-chief, it looks like the NY Stormy Daniels one may indict first.
“The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
The prosecutors offered Mr. Trump the chance to testify next week before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the potential case, the people said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/nyregion/trump-potential-criminal-charges-bragg.html?ref=am-quickie
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Jeff Borden said on March 10, 2023 at 12:07 pm
Alex,
Count me as a fellow fan of “Ghosts.” It’s charming and funny and sweet in a way reminiscent of “The Good Place.”
On the culture war front, Jodi Picoult is blasting away at DeathSantis and his fascist book bans after public school libraries in Martin County, Floriduh pulled 20 of her books off the shelves. Twenty! She’s sold 48 million books that are translated into 34 languages, but “Meatball Ron” and his QOP brownshirts are having none of that in their “woke free” state.
This fucking country…
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Mark P said on March 10, 2023 at 12:19 pm
I was hoping Georgia would win the “who puts T***p behind bars first” race, but I’ll take NY. At least the New York legislature is not likely to hand T***p a get-out-of-jail-free card, like Georgia seems to be headed.
By the way, it is clear that Trump violated at least one part of the Georgia code, solicitation of election fraud. The only question is whether it’s first degree (a felony with a sentence of one to three years), or second degree, a misdemeanor. That depends on exactly what he was asking the Secretary of State to do (“find” votes).
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Scout said on March 10, 2023 at 12:49 pm
Alex and Jeff – I also love Ghosts. It’s clever and amusing and a good escape from the ‘interesting times’ in which we live.
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Deborah said on March 10, 2023 at 1:57 pm
Julie, regarding getting kicked off the school bus, that doesn’t surprise me either.
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Sherri said on March 10, 2023 at 2:43 pm
This happened early this morning less than 2 miles from my house: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/redmond-couple-and-suspected-stalker-dead-in-home-invasion/
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Julie Robinson said on March 10, 2023 at 3:53 pm
Deborah, I’m happy to say they were unsuccessful. We reminded them that our school had actually started the system and they backed off. All bark, not bite.
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Sherri said on March 10, 2023 at 4:59 pm
This article is behind a paywall, and I don’t see a way to gift a link, but I wonder if it’s a sign of things to come: https://theathletic.com/4294478/2023/03/10/nhl-pride-jerseys-russia-lgbtq-explainer/
Many professional sports teams have been doing Pride nights for years now, where the team wears rainbow-themed jerseys which are auctioned off and proceeds donated to a LGTBQ+ organization. For the most part now, this is uncontroversial, but now in the NHL, it has become an issue. The NHL has a lot of Russian players, and Putin has passed anti-LGTBQ+ propaganda laws. Especially after what happened with Brittney Griner, Russian players are concerned about what will happen to them when they return to Russia if they wear the jersey.
Could never happen here, right? Our First Amendment is too strong. I hope so, but read Dahlia on the challenge to Indiana’s abortion ban on religious grounds and the amicus brief filed against it: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/abortion-whose-religious-objection-counts.html
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Deborah said on March 10, 2023 at 7:06 pm
Sherri, I read Slava Malamud on Twitter (I no longer have an account but I can still read a few people’s Twitter just by googling them and clicking) he also has a hilarious website called “Slava Does America”. He’s an immigrant from Moldova, came here as a kid when it was still part of the Soviet Union, lives in Maryland now. He has a lot to say about Russian athletes and team owners, and all of it is negative. He used to be a journalist writing about Russian and Eastern European sports, but he eventually got banned. He posts a lot about Hockey and it can be very entertaining.
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Sherri said on March 10, 2023 at 8:27 pm
Silicon Valley Bank has failed, and with the majority of the deposits not FDIC insured because most of their customers are startups banking their VC money, watching all the Masters of the Valley suddenly crying for their bailout and blaming the government capriciously driving up interest rates for all the problems in the way they’ve been handing out money to startups who never had a business plan for making a profit but we’re arbitraging regulation until they could grift enough money from the suckers, is hilarious.
The PayPal mafia, Marc Andreeson, Balaji what’s his name, none of them were ever as smart as they thought they were, and I’ve been baffled by this for years.
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Sherri said on March 10, 2023 at 8:45 pm
Howard Ahmanson is going to stop bankrolling Rod Dreher’s column in The American Conservative! HAHAHAHA
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/03/rod-dreher-blog-weird-american-conservative
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Suzanne said on March 10, 2023 at 9:34 pm
The CEO of Silicon Valley Bank is a good Hoosier. Grad of IU, apparently grew up in the Decatur, IN area. It seems he cashed out a whole lotta his stock right before the crash. Surely, it’s a coincidence.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/silicon-valley-bank-ceo-greg-becker-cashed-out-2-million-just-before-the-collapse-e45c6b53
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Sherri said on March 11, 2023 at 12:00 am
Matt Levine is one of the best writers around at explaining financial stuff. I subscribe to his newsletter, and learn something regularly. His explanation of what actually happened at Silicon Valley Bank is excellent: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-10/startup-bank-had-a-startup-bank-run
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Dexter Friend said on March 11, 2023 at 3:46 am
Even I, a pauper, know that $250Gs is all a depositor is insured for. I saw a lady on NBC Nightly saying she has $10M in SVB and will lose all but the $250Gs. I do not understand how this works…shouldn’t business capital be held in a safe account somehow?
The Death Highway of olde has come back again to claim two women in 2 separate wrecks on that deadly stretch between Waterloo and Butler, Indiana. One woman was in her 40s and one just 30. Straightening out those deadly curves many years ago didn’t fix this deadly stretch of doing its grim reaping.
I am a streaming addict, and last night I saw my favorite film of the past year. Last year, my favorite to win the Oscar, Best Motion Picture. “CODA”.
This year, “The Whale” takes the trophy if I decided.
When the film was bandied about in the press and on radio, it was made fun of because some don’t care much or think much about Brendan Fraser’s talents. Fat suit films turn some people off, too, I reckon. But damn, this one is unique.
Sadie Sink as the daughter and Hong Chau as the caretaker/sort of sister-in-law just knocked my socks off with their acting. I have never seen anything like “The Whale”.
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Dexter Friend said on March 11, 2023 at 4:11 am
NY Post offers this …oh…I skim this source, this right wing thing, for gossip and stuff cuz it’s a no paywall site, a Murdoch property, sure, but free.
“Elon Musk called for Jacob Chansley to be freed from prison on Friday, arguing that the so-called QAnon Shaman’s actions during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, were “falsely portrayed.”
“Free Jacob Chansley,” Musk wrote in an explosive tweet on Friday.
The Twitter CEO and founder of Tesla and SpaceX said it was an issue of “fairness of justice,” as he shared resurfaced footage from the day supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol Building that shows Chansley, now 35, urging rioters to go home.
“I’m not part of MAGA, but I do believe in fairness of justice,” Musk continued.
“Chansley was falsely portrayed in the media as a violent criminal who tried to overthrow the state and who urged others to commit violence. But here he is urging people to be peaceful and go home. And the other video shows him calmly walking in the Capitol Building, being escorted by officers and then thanking the officers,” Musk added, referencing bombshell security camera footage from inside the Capitol Building obtained by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. ”
WHAT FUTURE HORSESHIT IS TO COME FROM MUSK?
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David C said on March 11, 2023 at 6:00 am
That old shit Larry Summers said this all will be OK if the depositors get all of their money back. Of course if a janitor managed to save $252,000 and his bank failed, Leapin’ Larry would be incensed if he didn’t lose $2000 because that’s the law (for poors) and he should have been more responsible. FU Larry.
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FDChief said on March 11, 2023 at 8:00 am
Mark P: the Grand Unified Field Theory of Wingnut Fauxtrage is simply this; the entire world is supposed to defer to straight white rich Christians. Any change in any of that is so evil and wrong that it must be responded to with existential rage.
Dexter: Elmo beclowning himself for a high profile wingnut? Yawn. The real atrocity is that he’s just part of the raving pack of wingnut liars trying to normalize Tubby’s Bargain Basement Beer Hall Putsch. The whole point is to get the gormless nitwits who populate the “center” to join the wingnuts in pretending that the Right isn’t an unhinged pack of fascist lunatics.
It matters not a lick what young Mister Red Blue and Horny was doing in the Capitol on J6; he and all his buddies’ only option – in a functional republic – were to GOTV for 2024. They had no business sticking their whole ass into the daily business of governance. Write your fucking congressperson, dipshit. But, no; you fucked around and found out.
But…see my reply to Mark P above. That’s the whole point of GQP fauxtrage – that a “conservative” CAN fuck around and is never forced to find out. The whole “finding out” thing is for Those People – poor, dark-colored, female, queer…if the world doesn’t work that way? It’s the world that’s wrong.
That’s all there is to it, and all Elmo’s mouth-farts are just the gassy emissions of another wingnut bloated with fauxtrage about that.
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Deborah said on March 11, 2023 at 9:44 am
when I had and opportunity to be around a bunch of young people who happened to be employed in silicon valley tech start up companies one thing I learned is that quite a few were receiving their pay checks mostly from the pot of money VC investors had plowed into them, because many of the start ups hadn’t yet figured out how to generate revenue to make the investments profitable for the investors. The investors didn’t seem to mind and kept plowing money into new start ups hoping eventually for big returns from a unicorn. It seemed like high risk gambling to me, destined to implode spectacularly. It appears to be imploding lately, maybe not spectacularly but by dribs and drabs.
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alex said on March 11, 2023 at 9:55 am
Thank you Sherri.
Rod Dreher — cancelled for confessing his fixation on a Black man’s “primitive root wiener” spied at an adjacent urinal. Best news I’ve read all week.
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Sherri said on March 11, 2023 at 12:16 pm
Deborah, employees of startups are paid from a combination of VC capital and revenue. It can take a while for a new product, especially a new idea, to be cash flow positive. It’s not unusual for a startup to get several rounds of VC funding, but at least back in the day, you’d never get any more funding unless you were showing growing revenue and control of your “burn rate”, ie, how fast you were spending that capital. VCs get their big win when a startup goes public, and the VCs sell the huge chunk of the company they own at a very low share price on the public market at a large multiple. They don’t get paid back out of the revenues of the startup. The VC investors in my husband’s startup got paid when Microsoft bought the company.
If the company never makes it to the point where it can be sold, the VCs don’t make money. It can be sold without ever becoming cash flow positive; Uber went public and the VCs made their bucks and Uber still doesn’t make money.
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Sherri said on March 11, 2023 at 12:54 pm
It’s really galling to see all these VCs, like Peter Thiel, who spent Thursday telling all the startups in their portfolio to get their money out of SVB as fast as they could, now begging for a bailout of a bank that failed due to a bank run they caused.
These men are personally wealthy, and their VC firms are loaded. They don’t blink at throwing hundreds of millions at sketchy crypto schemes, but they break a bank, and it’s “where’s my bailout!?!”
And yes, I do feel a bit for the employees of the startups who won’t be able to make payroll, but again, the VCs could fix this, they just don’t want to. Also, *working for a startup is inherently risky.* Most of them fail, and often fail suddenly. You should always be prepared to jump ship.
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Deborah said on March 11, 2023 at 1:07 pm
Sherri, thanks for clearing that up. I know that one of the companies where a young woman worked is no longer out there, I don’t know if it was sold, if it was sold it doesn’t have the same name anymore. I know that one of the things that happens is large companies, like eBay for instance will buy up a start up and then squelch it to get rid of possible future competition. That happened to someone I know. It was too bad because the company that was squelched had a lot of potential in my mind, they’re very sorry they sold it.
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Julie Robinson said on March 11, 2023 at 1:46 pm
Like Dexter, I’m amazed that anyone would maintain a deposit beyond the FDIC insured amount. I saw a story about a business named Slumberkins that had all their capital in SVB and say they may have to close. Who are their business advisors? Where are the accountants? It staggers the imagination.
Suzanne, I always disliked the Kelley School of Business and the crassness of seemingly every person I met who was a student there. I’m wondering if there are any kind of claw back laws, because clearly the CEO knew what was going down.
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Dorothy said on March 11, 2023 at 2:00 pm
I could not imagine leaving this country and settling somewhere overseas at this age, or older. As someone who has moved five times since the year 2002, let me tell you that making new friends each time you move gets harder and harder. Most people already have lots of friends. Most people you meet in new cities have already lived there a long time. They’re not necessarily looking to increase their list of people to go out to dinner with. I don’t mean we never made friends with each move, or lacked for companions to do things with on occasion. But it just feels so odd and forced sometimes. I’m glad now to be so close to our son’s home, and I’ve made friends in the modern quilt guild here, and now in the cast of the show I’m doing. But these kind of friendships don’t really resemble the kind we had from where we first lived after we got married. There’s something to be said for familiar surroundings.
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Sherri said on March 11, 2023 at 2:28 pm
The FDIC insured amount is only $250,000 dollars. Startup capital, even for a small software startup, is in the millions; it’s enough to cover salary, benefits, rent, operating expenses for 12-18 months while you build the product and hire and start to grow revenue.
It would be difficult and expensive to manage dividing that capital up across multiple banks. Plus, the VCs that invested the money *are* the advisors; they get at least one seat on the board. They’re telling you where to bank. There’s a whole startup ecosystem in Silicon Valley, companies that provide services to startups, managing payroll, benefits, leasing, all the logistics so startups don’t have to hire people to do that for themselves.
Even as an individual, if you have lots of money, it’s not all in FDIC insured accounts. For every million you have, that’s four accounts, and really more if the account is earning anything.
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David C said on March 11, 2023 at 2:31 pm
What Dorothy said. When you have two introverts it’s harder. When you have one heathen and one semi-heathen so church is out it’s harder too.
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Sherri said on March 11, 2023 at 2:39 pm
My husband was one of six founders of a startup in 1996. I don’t remember how much VC funding they got in the first round, but I do remember he took a below market rate salary of $90K. There were about 10 employees in the first few months, they had office space to pay for, leased office furniture, and computers. The rule of thumb back then was to double the salary to gauge the total expense of an employee, so obviously $250K wouldn’t have gone very far.
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Icarus said on March 11, 2023 at 2:58 pm
So what do people with more than $250K do? Where do lottery winners put their money until they blow through it?
Remember when Start-ups were called Dot-Coms? good times.
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Sherri said on March 11, 2023 at 3:35 pm
We have more than $250K, and I’ll tell you what we do.
We have money in various index funds at Vanguard and Fidelity, and just recently put some money (mostly IRA money) with a wealth advisory firm who uses Charles Schwab. That’s what most of the people I know with assets in the low millions do – put it in brokerage accounts and invest in relatively safe assets. The money we need relatively short term access to, beyond day to day expenses (for things like buying a car), is in a US Treasuries money market account. So no, not insured, but backed by US treasury securities.
But generally, if you have more money, you accept more risk, as is reasonable, because you have more
resources for surviving the consequences.
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David C said on March 11, 2023 at 6:24 pm
We have about a dead appliance worth in a regular savings account and a half a good used car worth in an FDIC insured money market account. At that you’re just picking how slowly inflation, even at pre-pandemic levels, will eat up your money. Even insured, bank accounts just aren’t worth it except for quick money for an emergency. Almost all of the rest is in our 401(k) in a Vanguard S&P 500 fund. As we’re reaching retirement age we’re gradually switching into a cash account that keeps up with inflation, barely, but is low risk.
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Deborah said on March 11, 2023 at 9:27 pm
Oh come on, I just read that Lauren Boebert announced at CPAC that her 17 year old son and his girlfriend (don’t know her age) are having a baby. She’ll be a grandmother at 36 and she’s so proud of her son. I realize she did this herself when she was 17 and dropped out of high school. Sarah Palin all over again.
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Dexter Friend said on March 12, 2023 at 6:04 am
My CU now has CDs at 4% for 9 months, no cap. I am thinking of dropping 60K into one. Banks pay zero interest now as we all know. 4% ain’t bad.
As a recreational lottery player, I have known about this for many years, but have never used it…yet!
https://www.bcbonline.com/home/fiFiles/static/documents/CDARS_FAQs.pdf
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David C said on March 12, 2023 at 6:57 am
She’s fifteen, Deborah. The Boeberts are trying to prove they’re better at Palining than the Palins.
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Julie Robinson said on March 12, 2023 at 12:07 pm
Talk about grim reading; this story in yesterday’s WaPo mentioned our insurance company as one who cheated homeowners out of claims after Hurricane Ian: https://wapo.st/3JxR8P1. (unlocked so you can read the horror) A few hours later we got our new policy and the premium increase was $1100. Last year, $700 increase.
When we searched for a better price we only found higher ones. Yikes, yikes, yikes.
Many people are dropping insurance once their home is paid off. Then they’re stuck with the full bill. But one friend had a 20K bill for her roof and the company only gave her $1500, so I kind of understand it.
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David C said on March 12, 2023 at 12:22 pm
Almost like there’s a bigger problem in Florida than wokeism.
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Carter Cleland said on March 12, 2023 at 6:20 pm
To Nance, and all – Maggie Haberman was a guest on Hacks on Tap last week.
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Deborah said on March 12, 2023 at 6:33 pm
So the Boebert kid’s girlfriend is 15, huh. Can you imagine the pressure on that girl and her family to make her go ahead and deliver the baby. I mean, Boebert and her rightwing minders must have been all over them to make the young girl give birth. That poor girl.
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Dexter Friend said on March 13, 2023 at 5:27 am
I have more water damage than first noticed…Friday and then early next week, the contractor and insurance adjustor will make me happy or make me cower in the corner…water damage to the house is covered minus $500 deductible, but in 2023 will they cover the interior restoration like they did 25 years ago when a fallen tree cracked this place in two? If I need a new roof, that’s out of my little accounts.
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FDChief said on March 13, 2023 at 10:14 am
Given the default GQP setting (“woman = life support system for a uterus”) of COURSE La Boebert is thrilled that her boy popped a bun in a teenage oven. I mean…what ELSE was the little hussy gonna do? Go to college? Now she’s going to fulfill her correct destiny and be an incubator.
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basset said on March 13, 2023 at 11:22 am
Dexter, a private adjuster was a big help for us during our flood rebuild… negotiated with the insurance co. on what the damage was and how it would be fixed, on commission so he was motivated to work hard for us.
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Dexter said on March 13, 2023 at 12:10 pm
Thanks basset …Good advice.
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Scout said on March 13, 2023 at 12:37 pm
National Treasure Heather Cox Richardson has a good explainer about the SVB debacle.
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/march-12-2023?r=dnmfs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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Sherri said on March 13, 2023 at 5:50 pm
A WSJ editorial says that SVB’s board may have been too focused on diversity, because it didn’t have all white men. I don’t know, in my experience with boards, the white men on the board wouldn’t have listened to anyone else anyway.
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Heather said on March 13, 2023 at 8:49 pm
Yeah, Sherri, the GOP’s pivot is to blame the bank’s failure on “wokeness.” Probably to divert attention from the fact that their party is the one that repealed some Dodd-Frank regulations that could have prevented this.
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Sherri said on March 13, 2023 at 11:12 pm
We all know that banks never failed before they started diversifying their boards, after all.
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FDChief said on March 14, 2023 at 1:04 am
David Dayen has the receipts: “There’s something called Insured Cash Sweep. It essentially cuts up your large account if you’re a business into insured pieces, $250k each. In the event of a run, those deposits over the limit are safe. So the conclusion is 1 of 3:
* The whole of Silicon Valley has no idea how to run a competent business
* There was some financial chicanery that led to a requirement to bank at SVB without an ICS backstop
* This is all a Big Lie to engineer a bailout”
https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1634925784271036417?s=20
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Dexter Friend said on March 14, 2023 at 6:31 am
A stroke of Presidential pen, and the $250K max-insurance promise is obliterated, as now all money in banks is insured federally, no cap. I guess this eliminates the need for CDARS altogether, just sock your millions into your local Citizen’s Bank. But I just cannot believe it’s all that simple.
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