Tuesday’s Forum

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    Three months ago our nation, and the very heart of our Government, was attacked.
    No on has been held accountable.

    6
  2. CSK says:
  3. Teve says:

    @espiers

    The capitalism-at-all-costs party has decided it’s a good idea to demand that large corporations take a side on whether democracy should exist, and they’ve now framed “yes, democracy should exist” as a partisan Dem position. I’m not sure this is going to work out for them.

    13
  4. Teve says:

    So, I saw this:

    @asabaro

    LA resident here: I was able to get the Pfizer vaccine today from CSU Bakersfield. They said they have the capacity to administer 5000+ doses/day, but only have 286 appointments for today. With walk-ins they had given around 400 doses in the first 2 hours today

    And thought holy shit!, even the Libtards in California are rejecting this vaccine. Goddam reiki hippies and their stupid Healing Crystals. Then I remembered, wait, some counties in California are actually seriously conservative, where is Bakersfield located? OK Kern County. How did Kern County vote in 2016?

    D. Trump 53.1
    H. Clinton 39.5

    So it ain’t the Libtards.

    6
  5. Teve says:

    Opinion: This should not happen more than once

    Alexandra Petri
    Columnist
    April 5, 2021 at 1:17 p.m. EDT

    There are several details of the Matt Gaetz story that keep sticking in my head, but the one that sticks in it most is the report that the Florida Republican used to wander around and show his colleagues nude photos of people he had slept with. There’s a kind of grim weirdness to the idea of these interactions (which Gaetz denies) — a very “I Read On eHow.com That Men Bond Over Conquests” bewilderment. The callousness and the violation involved are enough of a sock to the gut. But the fact that this was allegedly known about him is what keeps getting to me. The fact that this, or something in this neighborhood of bad, occasioned senior staff from then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) office to have a talk with Gaetz about professional behavior.

    Over all of this I keep hearing the uncomfortable laughter of Billy Bush. I keep coming back to the fact that it takes two to make a locker room.

    I keep coming back to the detail in CNN’s report that this wasn’t something Matt Gaetz did a single time, but repeatedly. Because if it happened more than once — if it happened twice, even — that is because the first time went better than it should have.

    To me, this is something you do, ideally, zero times. You never experience the impulse to do it, and you lead a pleasant life. You travel. You eat lunchmeat sandwiches. Maybe you do a marathon, or climb something. You lead a blithe existence for many decades, you die in your bed in your mid-nineties surrounded by your cherished relatives, and in all that time, you never walk up to a colleague on the floor of the House of Representatives and out of nowhere present him with a nude photograph of someone you claim to have had sex with.

    But if you can’t do it zero times, then ideally it happens only once. It happens only once, because the moment you do it, the person you show it to responds the way a person should respond. You produce your photograph to your colleague, and your colleague looks at you and says, “Never show that to anyone, ever again. Go home and rethink your life. I do not feel closer to you. If anything, I want to have you removed forcibly from my presence by strong gentlemen whose biceps are tattooed with ‘MOM.’ The fact that you thought this would make us closer makes me question every decision in my life that has led me to this point. Leave now and never come back.”

    10
  6. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Teve:

    Catherine Rampell
    @crampell

    ·
    14h
    Republican politicians have proven themselves an admirably selfless bunch. Time and again, they’ve been willing to concede credit to Democrats — and Democrats alone — on all sorts of popular policy initiatives.

    5
  7. Kingdaddy says:

    Anti-Confederate group (?) stole Jefferson Davis’ memorial chair in Selma, Alabama, and won’t return it until the United Daughters of the Confederacy agree to display a quote from a Black radical.

    “We took their toy, and we don’t feel guilty about it,” the White Lies Matter group wrote. “They never play with it anyway. They just want it there to remind us what they’ve done, what they are still willing to do.


    “But the south won’t rise again. Not as the Confederacy. Because that coalition left out a large portion of its population. All that’s left of that nightmare is an obscenely heavy chair that’s a throne for a ghost whose greatest accomplishment was treason.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/04/06/ransom-confederate-chair-selma/

    4
  8. OzarkHillbilly says:

    delthia ricks

    @DelthiaRicks
    ·
    6h
    White evangelical resistance is obstacle in vaccination effort. Millions of white evangelical adults in the U.S. do not intend to get vaccinated against #Covid19. Tenets of faith and mistrust of science play a role; so does politics

    God helps those who help themselves. All others S/He shits on.

    3
  9. Teve says:

    This is hilarious. Ta-Nehisi Coates has written an issue of Captain America, and Red Skull is in the issue, and Red Skull is talking and acting like Jordan Peterson.

    4
  10. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Republicans’ standing as the party of corporate America appears to be under threat after Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate, told chief executives critical of voting restrictions to “stay out of politics”.

    Last week Coca-Cola, Delta and dozens of other companies condemned a new election law in Georgia while Major League Baseball announced it would move the All-Star Game from the state in protest.

    “I found it completely discouraging to find a bunch of corporate CEOs getting in the middle of politics,” McConnell told a press conference in his home state of Kentucky on Monday. “My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics. Don’t pick sides in these big fights.”

    He warned companies against giving into advocacy campaigns. “It’s jaw-dropping to see powerful American institutions not just permit themselves to be bullied, but join in the bullying themselves,” he said.

    @Immanentize: Corporations should take that to mean Corporations should not fund candidates or parties.

    4
  11. OzarkHillbilly says:

    trump seems to think we, the “radical left”, can succeed where he failed:

    Trump issued an angry email statement on Saturday denouncing “WOKE CANCEL CULTURE” and calling for a boycott of Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta and other companies.

    “Never submit, never give up!” he wrote. “The Radical Left will destroy our Country if we let them. We will not become a Socialist Nation. Happy Easter!”

    1
  12. Kingdaddy says:

    Something to add to your watch list: The Soviet version of The Fellowship Of The Ring.

  13. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Wagatwe Wanjuki
    Flag of Kenya
    Flag of Bahamas
    @wagatwe

    What i especially hate about rich white Americans crying about vaccine passports is how the US requires Africans to jump through hoops to even visit. It’s so invasive…have to show bank statements and other things to “prove” you’re not going to abandon your life and stay

    there are already so many unfair rules around travel and borders, arbitrarily restricting movement.

    the selfishness of Americans never cease to amaze me. so self-centered in such a dangerous way.

    it’s so wild to hang out with my cousins and our abilities to travel are VASTLY different…just because I was born here. Something out of my control! it’s bananas! it’s unfair.

    our passport system already encourages apartheid and it’s racist!

    5
  14. Mikey says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Trump issued an angry email statement on Saturday denouncing “WOKE CANCEL CULTURE” and calling for a boycott of Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta and other companies.

    I guess that’s why in a recent picture of Trump in his office at Mar-a-Lago it appears he made a half-assed attempt at hiding his bottle of Diet Coke behind his desk phone.

    Also, he still looks terrible. The lack of slobbering cultist adulation must be getting to him.

    1
  15. Kathy says:

    Carried over from yesterday by @reid:

    I’m sure I’ve seen flights where nearly every seat had some charge associated with it as part of the ticket-buying process.

    It may have been a function of the fare or the ultra-low cost model. Some fares don’t include seat selection, therefore if you want to pick a seat there’s a charge for every seat, typically cheaper towards the back and in the middle seats.

    Ultra-low costs charge for just about everything. back in 2016, I wrote this short satire:

    They could just box people up in crates and load the whole plane. You’d be charged by net weight, crate included, times the mileage expected. In case of a detour due to weather, a diversion or a turnaround, you’ll pay the extra mileage upon landing. The crates don’t open from the inside. Diapers will be available only on flights lasting longer than three hours, for a fee, or you can bring your own, if you pay a higher fee for doing so. Travel sites will feature articles about how much you can save from your net-weight fare if you fast and do an enema the day before flight. Security will be a breeze, as the whole crate is scanned. No need to take off your shoes or belt, but you’re still not allowed to bring in liquids. And if TSA needs to unpack you for a more thorough inspection, there will be a re-crating fee. Payment by cash at the counter nets you a cash payment fee, by phone or website a credit/debit payment fee. Lastly, the “Even More Crate” option will add one whole linear inch to your crate for only double the bare fare and an Even More Crate fee, plus a payment fee and an upgrade fee.

    Sure it looks bleak, but the fares will be unbelievable!

    At the time, I meant the ultra-low cost airlines like Spirit, Frontier, and Ryanair. Today it might apply to the legacy full service carriers.

    4
  16. Teve says:

    @Mikey: he looks like he’s wearing a thicker than normal layer of BHC06.

    1
  17. Michael Cain says:

    @Mikey:

    Also, he still looks terrible.

    How many rules about lighting a photograph can you break in one picture?

    1
  18. Kathy says:

    I had either an odd lucid dream last night, or I was imagining things while half asleep.

    I recall a kind of therapy session, where a disembodied voice asked me questions and I answered aloud (this comes straight from the Gateway novels, where the protagonist has an AI psychotherapist originally named Sigmund).

    At one point the voice tells me “See, this was a big breakthrough.”

    I laughed and replied “No! It’s the Valley of the Kings. You know, “No one seeing, no one hearing”. Do you think I’ll remember much tomorrow when I’m awake?”

    I prefer my dreams more symbolic and less serious.

    2
  19. The Republican Governor of Arkansaa has vetoed an anti-transgender bill passed by the state’s Republican controlled legislature.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/05/politics/asa-hutchinson-arkansas-transgender-health-care-veto/index.html

    3
  20. CSK says:

    Trump has a habit of throwing people under the bus, but even so, this is amusing:

    http://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/06/trump-matt-gaetz-lifeline-479126

    When you’re too sleazy for Donald….

    2
  21. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Mikey: He’s going thru withdrawals I guess.

    One for the “Did not See That one Coming” file: Arkansas governor vetoes bill banning medical treatment for young trans people

    ETA: I see @Doug Mataconis: beat me to it.

    2
  22. MarkedMan says:

    @Teve: I’ve loved Coate’s work since his Atlantic blogging days. BTW, I was searching for Red Skull’s 10 Rules for Life so I could compare them to Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, but couldn’t find them online. Anyone know where they are at?

    1
  23. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Five ski through snowstorm after planes stranded on Alaska mountain

    The five landed Friday in three separate small airplanes – a Cessna 180 and two Piper PA18s – on Ruth Glacier on Denali, said Maureen Gualtieri, a spokesperson for Denali national park and preserve.

    A fast-moving storm prevented them from flying off the glacier, and they spent Friday night in their airplanes at about 4,500ft (1,372 meters).
    ……………………………….
    But their aircraft will remain on Denali for now because the storm dumped up to 3ft (1 meter) of snow on the glacier, she said.

    Litterbugs. They should pay a fine.

    1
  24. KM says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    I wanna know what moron told them to pick the MAGA crowd over Big Business, especially now that Trump’s power is rapidly waning. Do they think companies are going to take kindly to the GOP’s threats? Money is God in this country and money gets you power, not the other way around. Companies buy political power and sway easily but an elected politician can be helpless without $$$ to back them up. Coke holds the cards here- Americans aren’t going to stop drinking it and they know it. Hell, the South will have to change their very language to do a boycott since “Coke=soft drink down” there. Trump’s screaming to boycott while indulging himself and will not change his habits no matter how much they piss him off.

    1
  25. Teve says:

    @CSK: there was a rich kid clique in my high school of maybe 20 kids. Sons and daughters of a local orthopedic surgeon or financial investment advisor etc. Most of them were ordinary well-adjusted teenagers, insofar as teenagers can be well-adjusted. But four or five of them were absolutely out-of-control shitheads. Get drunk and drive their BMWs through fences at the country club, carry around a sharp pencil and score a point every time they popped the air bubble in somebody’s Air Jordan 3s, sneak up behind their friends in the cafeteria and try to light the bottom of their shirt on fire, etc. The way teenagers act if they’ve never been taught empathy and never faced a consequence once in their lives.

    Matt Gaetz reminds me of those shitheads.

    5
  26. Teve says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Coate’s

    What did I ever do to you?

    1
  27. Joe says:

    @Doug Mataconis: It is an interesting call-out when your own Republican Governor gets up on his hind legs and tells you your statute is government overreach into doctor and family relationships and you go ahead (as predicted) and override his veto anyway.

    2
  28. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    And now Mattie is telling the Washington Examiner that “the swamp is trying to drown me with false charges, but I’m not giving up.”

    2
  29. OzarkHillbilly says:
  30. MarkedMan says:

    @Teve: Oh. I see. It should have been Coates”. Or Coates]. Maybe Coates; – ) ?

    1
  31. CSK says:

    Alcee Hastings has died. He was 84, and the longest serving congressional rep from Florida.

  32. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: All I can think to say is, “glub glub glub”.

  33. @CSK:

    He was also a former Federal Judge who was impeached and removed from office and a convicted felon.

    2
  34. gVOR08 says:

    @Kathy:

    They could just box people up in crates and load the whole plane. You’d be charged by net weight, crate included, times the mileage expected.

    There’s an old The Simpsons episode in which Homer and Grampa buy a pub in Ireland. They ask Moe for advice. The next day a crate arrives. They open it and Moe steps out. ‘Moe, you had yourself shipped to Ireland?’ ‘Nah, this is how Delta does coach now.’

    1
  35. Teve says:

    @MarkedMan: it should be Coatés, duh.

  36. Jim Brown 32 says:

    Soooooo—the pool guy just took some time out of the kindness of his heart to educate me about the tracking devices in the Covid Vaccines.

    GHATT DAMMMITTTT!!!!!!!!!!!

    7
  37. Teve says:

    Man accused of drinking Four Lokos while giving Botox injections without license at Florida spa

    It’s only the deadliest toxin known to man, what could go wrong?

    https://www.wftv.com/news/trending/man-without-medical-license-accused-drinking-four-lokos-while-giving-botox-injections-florida/TCYGKTW6GZAO5J36HCNOGZJ3HA/

    This state Rules.

  38. Teve says:

    @Jim Brown 32: i’m guessing he was carrying a GPS-enabled cell phone on his person at the time. 😀

    2
  39. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Doug Mataconis:

    All considered qualifications to be a congress critter from Fla. Florida Man!

    1
  40. Teve says:

    Grass pollen is extremely high right now in this area and that must be what’s been triggering my allergies for the last four days. I’m eating Claritin and Sudafed like they’re skittles and a real godsend for itchy eyes is ketotifen fumarate eyedrops (sold under the name Alaways) but the annoying thing is that, while it gives you hours of eye relief, for the first five seconds after you put the eyedrops in they burn like a mother.

    1
  41. Jim Brown 32 says:

    @Teve: Along with his Facebook, Ticktock, and Youtube accounts. I don’t even argue with these people. I give them the old Colombo style of conversation–“You dont say?!?!?” “What will they think of next?”

    Its just not worth the energy–they don’t want the truth anyway

    5
  42. CSK says:

    @Doug Mataconis:
    I know.

  43. Teve says:

    @Jim Brown 32: I used to be extremely argumentative. A friend jokes that when we were in high school the most common way I started a response was “you’re wrong, and here’s why”. Then at some point in my early-20s I realized it was just exhausting and I was kind of a jerk and I wasn’t changing any minds anyway.

    3
  44. Kathy says:

    @gVOR08:

    I recall the episode and the scene, but not the Delta joke.

  45. Kathy says:

    @Jim Brown 32:

    You could try to augment the conspiracy (though I don’t know why anyone would want to), by telling them, “Did you know they’re hiring illegals to give people COVID shots in their sleep?”

    3
  46. gVOR08 says:

    @Kathy: I remember the Delta joke because, at the time, I lived in Cincinnati which, at the time, was a Delta hub. If you flew to or from Cincinnati, you flew Delta.

    1
  47. Stormy Dragon says:

    @Kathy:

    It’s because most consumers by airline tickets by putting their depature and destination into google and then picking whichever flight comes up cheapest, without any regard to the quality of the flight at all. This creates an incentive for airlines to try and game the system with a super low base price and then nickel and dime you back to profitability.

    I remember seeing an article once that once you add in the fees, the average flight on Spirit actually ends up costing more than a flight on a supposedly more expensive full service airline.

    My personal philosophy is that you’re going to be spending a whole day travelling, and there’s no benefit to spend a ton of money on a nice vacation just to ruin it by cheaping out on the flight and arriving at your destination too exhausted and unhappy to really enjoy it.

    2
  48. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    A thought for the day (and possible explanation for why climate change is here to stay) from the inside back cover of Harper’s Magazine for April 2021:

    The greatest act of environmentalism is to stop creating demand.

    2
  49. Sleeping Dog says:

    I’ll let someone else be the market maker.

    Could Index Funds Be ‘Worse Than Marxism’?
    Economists and policy makers are worried that the Vanguard model of passive investment is hurting markets.

    Yet economists, policy makers, and investors are worried that American markets have become inert—the product of a decades-long trend, not a months-long one. For millions of Americans, getting into the market no longer means picking stocks or hiring a portfolio manager to pick them for you. It means pushing money into an index fund, as offered by financial giants such as Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, otherwise known as the Big Three.

    With index funds, nobody’s behind the scenes, dumping bad investments and selecting good ones. Nobody’s making a bet on shorting Tesla or going long on Apple. Nobody’s hedging Europe and plowing money into Vietnam. Nobody is doing much of anything at all. These funds are “passively managed,” in investor-speak. They generally buy and sell stocks when those stocks enter or exit indices, such as the S&P 500, and size their holdings according to metrics such as market value. Index funds mirror the market, in other words, rather than trying to pick winners and losers within it.

    An acquaintance actively manages half her own portfolio with the other half in index funds. She’s told me that her actively managed funds have out performed the index funds over the last 10 years, but part of that is she executes her trades via an online broker and doesn’t have a money manager involved. She also has a plan, based on growth so she is not chasing changes in stock valuations. She told me managing her portfolio is in part intellectual recreation.

    Me, the money has always been in index funds and I never gave it much thought. When it was time to consider retiring, we could.

    1
  50. Kathy says:

    @Stormy Dragon:

    Kind of. there is a segment of rich fliers who do care about service. However, they rarely fly coach. This is why business and first class, where it still exists, has become more elaborate and luxurious over the years.

    The other thing is that taxes on fees are lower, for the airlines, than taxes on fares. The incentive is to offer low fares and lots of high fees. These days the posted fare may mean a spot on the plane and air to breathe.

    You can beat some fees by planning. For instance, if I do travel for the vaccine, I plan to either return the same day or stay overnight only. This means I can make do without any luggage fees, either carry on or documented, as all I need to bring is a toothbrush, comb, and a change of underwear, all of which fits in my laptop bag easily (without the laptop).

  51. gVOR08 says:

    @Kathy:

    These days the posted fare may mean a spot on the plane and air to breathe.

    Don’t give them ideas.

  52. Teve says:

    Pima cotton, egyptian cotton, sateen, 60/40 cotton/polyester, thread count only counts for cotton, this is smoother but warmer,…I’ve spent several hours at Bed Bath and Beyond and The Wirecutter puzzling out knowledge about sheet sets.

  53. Gustopher says:

    @Kathy:

    Kind of. there is a segment of rich fliers who do care about service. However, they rarely fly coach. This is why business and first class, where it still exists, has become more elaborate and luxurious over the years.

    At 6’6”, I don’t fit in coach, except in agony. I fly first class when I can, now that I can afford it. First class is not getting more elaborate or luxurious. Not in the US. It’s barely better than coach was 20 years ago (larger, yes, but nothing beyond that and one or two free drinks).

    Coach has been getting worse much faster, though.

  54. Mike in Arlington says:

    @Jim Brown 32: I got my first shot yesterday, and I have to tell you I’m now getting great 5g reception.

    Also, funny thing, no side effects… well except for all of the talking lizards, but everybody gets that, right?

    7
  55. Kathy says:

    @Gustopher:

    It depends on the kind of first/business/premium class you mean. In the US, the big three legacy airlines offer domestic first class on narrow body aircraft, which is a wider seat with more recline and better legroom than coach. Not at all impressive. In wide bodies, they offer international first and/or business class, which is very wide a lie-flat bed/seat. Jet Blue offers this type of seat in select routes, mostly transcontinental and international routes, in their narrow body aircraft.

    Then there’s European first class on narrow bodies, which is a regular economy/coach seat, but the middle seat is blocked. It comes with better catering and drinks. European carriers also offer the lie-flat seats on international routes.

    It’s those international premium classes that have grown more elaborate and luxurious over time.

  56. DrDaveT says:

    @Sleeping Dog:

    She told me managing her portfolio is in part intellectual recreation.

    This.

    I outperformed the market when I was treating it as a hobby — investing a fair bit of time and effort, watching things closely, etc.

    When I got a real life, that started to be too much of a time and energy sink — and I stopped beating the market. Now, my investments are split between index funds and a robot trader. The robot may or may not beat the market on average for its level of risk, but it lets me pick where on the risk/return curve I want to be.

    1
  57. Kurtz says:

    @Teve:

    Matt Gaetz reminds me of those shit heads.

    I didn’t listen to the podcast, but here is a condensed version of the conversation with an Orlando Sentinel writer that gives some details about the Gaetz scandal. To quote the most simianesque former President, “that was some weird shit.”

    ETA: I forgot to write what I initially wanted to say here. Tyler Cowen once wrote (paraphrase) if you get 12 people together, you’re going to have a terrible person along them. That number is likely lower for American teenagers. Give that subset money and it becomes more than a mild headache for everyone around them.

    1
  58. Kurtz says:

    @DrDaveT:

    Which robot do you use?

  59. Teve says:

    Clothing post:

    I’m not 100% committing to a ‘uniform’ à la Steve Jobs, because variety is the spice of life, but I’ve decided I look decent in black t-shirts and they’re cheap and easy and so I’m about to buy 12-15 more. The final decision is crew-neck or v-neck?

  60. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    Half and half.

    1
  61. DrDaveT says:

    @Kurtz:

    Which robot do you use?

    Schwab Intelligent Portfolios

  62. Jay L Gischer says:

    @Sleeping Dog: I am aware of many managed funds that don’t outperform index funds, and that’s even before they take their fees.

    I mean, if it were that easy to beat the market, which is what would be happening if people were picking winners and losers, everyone would be doing it, right?

    The fact is, people ARE picking winners and losers, they are just doing faster than most money managers, let alone individual investors, can keep up with. Also, nobody, but nobody, has a crystal ball, and can forsee things like the Google LLC v. Oracle judgement that was just handed down.

  63. Teve says:

    @DavidFrum

    If your administration is so popular that your opponents decide it’s more rewarding to fight Coke and baseball instead … then your administration is very popular indeed.

    1
  64. Teve says:

    @Sleeping Dog: Barry Ritholtz wrote an essay in 2018 taking the opposite position to Lowrey.

    https://ritholtz.com/2018/12/index-funds-are-the-root-of-all-evil/

  65. @Sleeping Dog:

    Unless you’re a professional financial analyst who has a deep understanding of individual industries and the companies that are part of those industries, index funds and mutual funds are the way to go.

    This is especially true for people investing primarily for retirement or their child’s education.

    1
  66. Jen says:

    NH employers for years have been trying to recruit more diverse employees, because we’re trapped in a weird little cycle here. Surveys done by our “Stay Work Play” group (an organization that tries to keep young people from leaving the state) show that one of the reasons young people leave is that they don’t think the state is diverse enough. So employers are trying, HARD, to recruit more diverse employees.

    Enter NH Republicans, who have introduced a bill prohibiting public schools, organizations, and state contractors from conducting any training or classes teaching about systemic racism or sexism. Nearly 80 NH businesses/organizations have gone on record opposing the bill.

    I’m not sure when Republicans are going to wake up and realize that the world has moved on without them.

    4
  67. Monala says:

    @Doug Mataconis: I was surprised and rather impressed by that.

  68. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Teve: I used to be extremely argumentative.

    I still am with Jehovah’s Witnesses. I consider it a public service. All the time they are arguing with me is time they couldn’t use proselytizing others.

    3
  69. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Sleeping Dog: Say what? Not gambling with other people’s money?? What kinda commies are running these index funds???

  70. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Teve: I’ve decided I look decent in black t-shirts and they’re cheap and easy and so I’m about to buy 12-15 more.

    Obviously, you don’t work out in the sun. I go with gray myself.

  71. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Teve: Has that actually been published, and will I be able to buy a copy at a comicbook store? I gotta go check Amazon, I see.

    1
  72. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Americans? Encouraging apartheid and racism? Say it ain’t so Roy. I know they’re lying; just say it ain’t so.

    1
  73. Teve says:
  74. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Teve: Nah, that’s not practical, you have to know an ascii code to do that. 🙁

  75. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Kathy: I love that idea. Now I wish I knew some Covidiot anti-vaxxers. So sad that I don’t. 🙁

    1
  76. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Jay L Gischer:
    @Doug Mataconis:

    Which is why I’ve always stayed in index funds.

    @Teve:

    I don’t think that Lowrey would dispute Ritholtz view, what I see her doing is reporting on the arguments that Ritholtz is refuting. Index funds may or may not be bad for the market, but that is someone else’s problem they are great for the small investor who is trying to fund his/her retirement.

  77. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Jen:

    I don’t think that’s going anywhere, still too many small business owners who are R state legislators who will take the biz lobby opinion into account. Also it is hard to see Sununu signing it into law. The R majority in the legislature isn’t large enough that they can lose a lot of votes.

    Was it introduced by the same idiots who want to impeach Sununu?

  78. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Doug Mataconis: Back in the late 70s or early 80s, a group of Wharton finance students conducted a survey of retirees who had larger than median retirement incomes about their investment habits, comparing growth between market investors and simple bank/bond savers. As I recall, the comparison showed that the most important factor was the regularity of saving rather than the method of investment–overall, savers did as well in aggregate as equity investors (yes, it surprised me, too).

    I don’t see any particular reason to believe that situations have changed significantly, though a new study might find that funds can consistently outperform saving with interest rates as low as they are now. So far, in my case, the cash equivalents portion of my portfolio has been outperforming the equities since I returned from Korea, but the past 5 or 6 years have been crazyfied.

  79. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Jen: I would guess a generation after the last grandchild of the last Boomer has died, so not very soon.

    1
  80. Jen says:

    @Sleeping Dog: I don’t think it will go anywhere either, but there’s just so much garbage coming out of Concord, it’s hard to know what to pay attention to and what to blow off.

    I’m so annoyed with these clowns.

  81. Teve says:

    @Sleeping Dog: yeah 100% of my (pittance) of retirement money is in a Large Cap index fund.

  82. Kathy says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Just don’t go trolling for some on social media. there are better ways to waste one’s time.

  83. JohnMcC says:

    From time to time the fate of the U.K. and Ireland is brought up here. There have been a couple of events that seem worth mentioning. The ‘Loyalist’ faction has had three nights of rioting in several N.I. cities. Derry is where it seems to have begun and spread to Belfast and a couple of other places. Mostly young people including many teenagers have been arrested. Dramatic photography since ‘petrol bombs’ (Molotov cocktails is what I think we’d call them) have been a staple.

    In Scotland a new political party has formed (Alba) by a former official named Salmond that is unabashedly in favor of separating from England. There’s apparently some question as to whether another referendum is necessary for that to happen.

    2
  84. Jen says:

    @JohnMcC:

    There’s apparently some question as to whether another referendum is necessary for that to happen.

    Interesting, I thought that it was a given that there would need to be another referendum. What is the argument that they could just separate?

  85. Kathy says:

    @JohnMcC:

    I’m sure I’m missing a great deal of background, but it strikes me that for Scotland to leave the UK would be on par with the UK leaving the EU, if not worse economically.

  86. Teve says:
  87. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Teve:

    Obviously

  88. Sleeping Dog says:

    Interesting. All day after posting a comment in the forum, the page has reloaded automatically (as it should) offering the edit function and the HTML short cuts. This isn’t happening on the other posts.

  89. Teve says:

    @TomCottonAR

    We have a major under-incarceration problem in America.

    And it’s only getting worse.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/03/us/us-crime-rate-rise-2020/index.html

    ETA The CNN article that Cotton links to disputes his claim that it’s all about incarceration, saying that it’s a perfect storm of various factors to do with the pandemic, but he knows his followers don’t want to read.

  90. Teve says:

    @Sleeping Dog: A weird thing that’s been happening on my iPad all day is that sometimes I get the OTB desktop page, and sometimes I get the mobile page, and it’s kind of random.

    (Or there’s a method to the madness that I haven’t discovered because I haven’t bothered to do any systematic data collection)

  91. Kathy says:

    @Teve:

    Well, there are too many trumps, trumpies, and insurrectionists not currently incarcerated.

    2
  92. Jax says:

    I’ve been getting an Edit button on a page refresh pretty reliably the last couple days. And it’s remembering my information in the name and email.

  93. JohnMcC says:

    @Jen: @Kathy: Woop! I’m not any kind of expert or even that well informed on the issues over there. It’s pretty interesting to me and there is some attachment to Ireland because my peeps came from there (250yrs ago). I have been following a youtube channel posted by a young man using the handle “Maximillian Robespierre”.

  94. Teve says:

    WaPo

    Could the economy get … too good?

    Why some prominent economists and Republican lawmakers are worried the economy might recover too quickly. And, what it’s like to be a teenager while lawmakers debate your right to exist.

    Ed Burmilla:

    You know what? Just eat the fucking tide pods, nothing matters anyway.

  95. Teve says:

    @Kathy: Cotton was, as you can imagine, referring to inner cities.

    1
  96. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Kathy: No worries there. This is about the extent of my “social media presence” (or is that “presents?”).

    1
  97. Teve says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker: it’s Present’s.

    2
  98. DrDaveT says:

    @JohnMcC:

    It’s pretty interesting to me and there is some attachment to Ireland because my peeps came from there (250yrs ago).

    The US is in the interesting position of having the majority of the world’s “Irish”, if you go by descent from people who lived in Ireland 200 years ago. Unlike real Irish, these Irish-Americans are vaguely loyal to a mythical Ireland that never existed, and to various corrupted histories of English-Irish relations.

    I’m about 1/3 Irish by DNA, with the rest a mix of English, Scottish, Scandinavian, German, Swiss. But all of them came over to North America so long ago that it’s irrelevant — I’m just plain old American. It’s amusing to be just as Irish as many residents of Dublin (by DNA), but entirely dissociated from the Republic of Ireland as a political entity.

  99. Jax says:

    Good Lord, can somebody just cancel the crazies already?

    Timothy Phillips

    Donald J. Trump will make a celebrated return to the White House on July 4, Independence Day, as the last vestiges of Deep State corruption are rounded up in a massive sting and sent to GITMO to face military tribunals, said a Mar-a-Lago source involved in Trump’s operation to invalidate the illegal 2020 election.
    At his Mar-a-Lago command center, Trump and his councilors have been working tirelessly to solve an almost unsolvable jigsaw puzzle—digging up the names of all elected or appointed officials who dishonored their oath of office to America and its people. Although Trump is aware of the primary and secondary players, below them lies an intricate web of tertiary Deep State operatives yet to be named on sealed indictments, any one of whom could potentially foil his planned return to power.
    “Trump and his guys have been hunkered down at Mar-a-Lago figuring this mess out. They’re going after more than people like Pelosi, AOC, and Adam Schiff. He’s taking out their staff too, and if their staff has staff, well they might go down too. This is total purge. The abolishment of the liberal elites and the gutting of Hollywood. Why do you think pedo Tom Hanks sought citizenship in Australia? They know what’s coming,” our source said.
    Asked how Trump plans to muster sufficient forces to enact his plan, our source said the following: “Trump has military support. Don’t believe MSM narrative about the military backing Biden. Trump is a patriot. When he gives the order, the military will respond at once, and they will arrest Joe Biden on the spot. It’ll be like Order 66 from Revenge of the Sith, except this time it’ll be the good guys giving the order.”
    Six of the 8 Joint Chiefs of Staff support Donald Trump, our source added. The holdouts are Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Commandant of the Coast Guard Karl L. Schultz, both of whom Trump will give an opportunity to reconsider their allegiance. If they stick with Biden, then they, too, will receive a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay.
    “No one is getting a free pass,” our source said.
    President Trump will likely issue a declaration of martial law when the arrests begin, as he doesn’t want innocent, law-abiding, patriotic Americans caught in the crossfire if the Deep State decides to resist the purge. Trump feels he has enough military support to put down the resistance, and believes expunging the Deep State will take 10 days.
    “He won’t be declaring martial law to infringe on Constitutional rights, but to protect Americans in those perilous days. Trump loves America. He loves Americans. He doesn’t want harm to come to innocent bystanders. The Deep State’s desperation knows no limits, and if they know they’re going down, they might just try to take innocents with them,” our source said.
    After the purge, Trump will rescind martial law and return the U.S. to the people as he is rightfully sworn into office.
    In closing, we asked our source why Trump didn’t fulfill that promise on March 4, as many had predicted.
    “Trump never gave that date. If it was to happen, it was always going to be Independence Day,” he said.

  100. CSK says:

    @Jax:
    Well, this sounds totally credible.

  101. CSK says:

    @Jax:
    May I ask where you got this? I can’t find it anywhere.

  102. dazedandconfused says:

    @CSK:

    Found it, http://mnewstv.com/english/details/116

    English version of a Chinese site.

  103. dazedandconfused says:

    @dazedandconfused:

    …and that Chinese sites sucks it’s US news from from RealRawNews. https://realrawnews.com/

    The Onion could do nothing with that stuff. Nothing!

  104. CSK says:

    @dazedandconfused:
    Thank you! I notice that Real Raw News reported on April 4 that Huma Abedin and John Podesta had been arrested by the Special Forces.