The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[Dave_LF]

And yet:

Economic woes cripple Biden approval ratings, new polling shows

It's a weird disconnect. When you ask people how they feel about their personal finances, they feel good, but when asked about the nation as a whole, it's a very different story.

As long as store shelves have so many empty holes, and as long as cars and computers are at best expensive and at worst unavailable at any price, people are going to feel bad about the economy. And that's the ones who aren't routinely dealing with new fires at work because supplier X has announced they can't deliver any more Y, so how are we going to make Z?

[N.E. Brigand]

I certainly would not dispute your personal experiences with supply chain issues. But across the nation it seems to be happening in patchy way. In my personal life, the only item I've found in short supply over the past couple months is cat food. And at work, we've more than doubled the number of employees, many of whom needed new computers, which we've had no trouble acquiring.

[N.E. Brigand]

[sorry, double posted that]

[RoseMorninStar]

We've had trouble getting anything with resin, which is evidently in short supply. So some painting supplies; paint, varnishes, spray paint, that sort of thing. Also, one of our local bakeries have said they cannot get chopped peanuts and won't have anything with peanuts in the foreseeable future. I suppose they can't take whole peanuts off the shelves and chop them due to strict rules about equipment used for peanuts and allergy/cross contamination.

[Dave_LF]

Hexane, virtually all GPUs, a particular oscillator, saltine crackers… it’s a weird list.

[River]

How do we end up with a hexane shortage??

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I wasn't quite sure where to put this; it is sort of like the opposite of the WTF thread.

Wisconsin senators warn in rare joint statement outsiders may try to exploit Waukesha tragedy for 'political purposes'

Wisconsin's senators, Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin are about as far from each other as I could imagine, both on the political spectrum and personality-wise. Having them issue a joint statement is indeed rare.

[RoseMorninStar]

Phugh! To say they are about as opposite as they come is an understatement of the grandest sort.

[River]

It's impressive. It probably won't persuade anyone hellbent on twisting the tragedy into something they can use in the acquisition of power, fame, and/or money, but it's nice to see the WI Senate delegation standing up for their constituents.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I was pleasantly surprised to see Ron Johnson join that. I'd be curious to know how to that came about. I would have expected him to be at the front of the line of people looking to make political points out of the tragedy. It goes to show you that things don't always go the way you (or I) expect them to.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The hits keep coming for the formerly on the top of the world Cuomo brothers.

CNN suspends Chris Cuomo indefinitely

[N.E. Brigand]

I have no idea where this belongs, but emails leaked by the not necessarily reliable Trumpist lawyer Lin Wood purport to show that in 2014, Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, to write a letter of recommendation to Georgetown University for Carlson's son Buckley, and Hunter, himself a Georgetown graduate, happily obliged.

It appears that Buckley Carlson ended up attending the University of Virginia rather than Georgetown and that after graduating in 2019, he interned in the White House and now is the communications director for Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana.

Why Wood would have an email exchange between Carlson and Biden is not clear.

[N.E. Brigand]

I have no idea where this belongs, but emails leaked by the not necessarily reliable Trumpist lawyer Lin Wood purport to show that in 2014, Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, to write a letter of recommendation to Georgetown University for Carlson's son Buckley, and Hunter, himself a Georgetown graduate, happily obliged.

It appears that Buckley Carlson ended up attending the University of Virginia rather than Georgetown and that after graduating in 2019, he interned in the White House and now is the communications director for Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana.

Why Wood would have an email exchange between Carlson and Biden is not clear.

I had quite forgotten how Tucker Carlson in October 2020 claimed that a trove of "damning" Hunter Biden materials being shipped to him had "vanished" -- before they supposedly turned up again -- and then in July 2021 he claimed the NSA had been spying on him.

[N.E. Brigand]

This seems to fit a pattern I've mentioned before:



(Source.)

One counterargument to my view (that mainstream media is biased in favor of Republicans) I've seen about this claim specifically is: 200,000 jobs was normal in 2018 but weak compared to other months this year.

Another argument I've seen that addresses my view more broadly is: so what if the media is biased against Democrats? Whining about it is only likely to make the public like them less.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The hits keep coming for the formerly on the top of the world Cuomo brothers.

CNN suspends Chris Cuomo indefinitely

CNN has now terminated Chris Cuomo.

[River]

I noticed something interesting about the way the jobs report got reported yesterday. In the morning, there was much doom and gloom about the disappointing number of jobs added. In the evening, NPR at least was offering a more nuanced take. Yes, the jobs added was low...but the unemployment number also dropped and labor force participation even went up a little. Overall, ~200,000 jobs were added but ~1,000,000 people went back to work. This is a ~ five-fold discrepancy and we're still in a labor shortage, so it would be weird if businesses just stopped posting openings.
I'm wondering if we aren't seeing a repeat of a couple months back, when the jobs added seemed low and then the number got revised upward a few weeks later because businesses were so busy on-boarding they didn't have time to submit paperwork for the DoL. It sure would be nice if journalists got away from super hot takes and actually spent a minute looking at the data before breathlessly jabbering about it.

[N.E. Brigand]

One counterargument to my view (that mainstream media is biased in favor of Republicans) I've seen about this claim specifically is: 200,000 jobs was normal in 2018 but weak compared to other months this year.

Another argument I've seen that addresses my view more broadly is: so what if the media is biased against Democrats? Whining about it is only likely to make the public like them less.

The latter argument is being advanced in response to a new opinion column by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:

The media treats Biden as badly as -- or worse than -- Trump. Here's proof.

Per that piece, which draws on an analysis of 200,000 different new stories, there was more negative coverage Joe Biden during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan this past summer than there was at any point in the nine months of Donald Trump's presidency (or for that matter in all of 2019):

Think about that. In 2020, Trump presided over a worst-in-world pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths; held a superspreader event at the White House and got covid-19 himself; praised QAnon adherents; embraced violent white supremacists; waged a racist campaign against Black Lives Matter demonstrators; attempted to discredit mail-in voting; and refused to accept his defeat in a free and fair election...

Trump also was the subject of twice as much coverage in 2020 as Biden was in 2021. Make of that what you will.

[N.E. Brigand]

Actual sentence from a Politico article about how Vice President Kamala Harris is extra careful about tech security, which leads her, for example, not to use Bluetooth devices (which may be easier to hack):

"But still, should someone who travels with the nuclear football be spending time untangling her headphone wires?"

I get that could be just a joke, but if so, given that a key factor leading to Hillary Clinton's defeat (and thus Donald Trump's disastrous presidency, which cost hundreds of thousands of American lives) is that she was deemed not to be careful enough regarding electronic security, I think it falls flat.

[N.E. Brigand]

On Monday, President Biden had a conference call with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, and the U.K. to discuss what response, if any, western nations should take if Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, something that Russia is signalling may happen. (As you may recall, Russia in 2014 invaded the Ukrainian province of Crimea and also subsequently provided military support to separatists in Ukraine's Donbas region, where fighting continues.) On Tuesday, Biden spoke with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, by video conference. Later on Tuesday, Biden followed up with the four European leaders to debrief on his discussion with Putin. It's generally believed that the response would be heavy sanctions and possibly blocking Russia's access to the SWIFT banking system.

Fortunately Fox News is around to provide some helpful context:





Those are real screenshots, typo and all. I checked the video of that segment to make sure. Other chyrons shown in that broadcast say "U.S. Would Gain Nothing From Taking Over Ukraine," "Nothing We Could Gain From War With Putin," and "There Were No Pointless Wars Under Trump."

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Edit: Meanwhile the official Twitter account of the nation of Ukraine is sharing this image:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I tried to find a meme of Tucker Carlson in a tutu, but alas I couldn't find one, and I don't have the photoshop skills to do it.