105 Comments

It's amusing to watch so many on the Right contort themselves trying to reframe Biden's remarks about SS/Medicare and elaborately over-analyze the response of the Congressional GOP, all in an effort to evade the obvious explanation: a hit dog will holler.

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Rick Scott: How dare they! Now here's how we're going to, er, um, REORGANIZE social security...

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Right? The euphemisms are endless, and I was saying yesterday how they are trying to turn "entitlement" into a dirty word. And Mike Lee expressing outrage when Biden said "you want to end Social Security," and there is an easily accessible clip of Lee SAYING "I want to end Social Security" -- just a tutorial in having brass balls. It really shows how the GOP have fully grasped there will be no consequences for lying.

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The Mike Lee video shows it's the True Believers you REALLY have to worry about. The guy just really, truly hates Social Security and Medicare and when he's been sufficiently liquored-up he'll tell you so, in the privacy of a Utah steakhouse.

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The part about that video I remember is that they pan around the room as he says it. The audience is mostly old White people. They are *not* applauding.

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But you’re deliberately misunderstanding what he said so directly! That’s how you libs are! Another gotcha!

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Can they still go to the Frank Luntz well and use "reform", or have they over-used that?

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What if we say we want SS to be Born Again?

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Would need a rename; maybe "Fashy Security"?

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Too bad Kraft durch Freude is taken.

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Unfortunately, "Move fast and break things" doesn't spark the same admiration it once did (can't imagine why) so we must reluctantly take that one off the whiteboard.

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I heartily endorse this erasure. I was afraid we were gonna need a bigger whiteboard.

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Worse, he wants to "sunset" SS and Medicare, along with all other government programs, every five years, because surely no Congress (and certainly not one with, say, a spineless, neutered Speaker who owes his job the the Burn-It-All-Down caucus) would fail to re-authorize such popular programs, right? RIGHT?

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By then it wouldn't surprise me if MTG -- or as I refer to her after seeing her caterwaul in full villain drag at the SOTU, Cruella de Moron -- was Speaker herself.

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Cruella de Vile was right there...

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Good one, but I'm sticking with mine because I believe idiocy is the most prevalent characteristic in play here. Of course, venality, rank ambition, and a low but effective cunning all rank pretty high as well.

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Either one. Both their records are spotty.

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And the debate/amendments wouldn't take up so much time that Congress would be able to do nothing else.

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"he wants to "sunset" SS and Medicare, along with all other government programs, every five years"

What makes this a particularly cynical bit of bullshit is that there are thousands of government programs just for public assistance, and there are tens of thousands for everything else (if not more -- while mandated by law, there is still no definitive list). It would probably take years just to vote on them all, and that's only if no one makes any objections, proposes new amendments, or demands debate.

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Yeah. They are doing NOTHING now. Imagine them actually trying to do EVERYTHING (file under not gonna happen)

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" it’s Friday and I sort of need an easy lay up"

I will use this line before the day is out- perhaps more than once!

She really looks horrific in that picture, doesn't she ?

I was going to watch the State of the Union address but I was flipping channels just beforehand and came across a clean copy of" Outlaws of the Rockies" a Durango Kid western starring Charles Starrett and the Murderous King of Western Swing - Spade Cooley. It also had Dub Taylor as a sidekick instead of that asshole Smiley Burnette. The movie seem much more relevant to my daily life then the State of the Union Address. I'm ready to turn 65 and I realize my hours are numbered and it's just not worth it to piss it all away on frivolous stupid things.

Nice column! I'm sure we all did our usual " Peggy Noonan" grimace when we saw the title but you got out in front of it right away with an apology and the whole thing was pretty funny.

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" it’s Friday and I sort of need an easy lay up"

I was gonna give the boss 2 marks, but more accurately it's 2 points.

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And one! makes it three.

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Only if he nails the free throw after the foul...

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Do you doubt Roy's high frow percentage? I thought not!

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"Roy deliberately clanks the free throw! He races in, steals the rebound, and slams it home! A four point play!"

or, just watch this: https://www.sbnation.com/2023/2/9/23592537/njcu-5-seconds-2-threes-highlight

entitled "Stop what you’re doing and watch this college team hit two 3s in 5 seconds to win"

because sometimes the stupid title is actually fairly accurate.

Even the missus was amused.

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We're now at the one-year anniversary of everyone in media telling us that the Great Biden Recession will be starting *any day now.* That recession has been predicted as a constant drumbeat despite news from the economy that states pretty emphatically that there's no recession in sight.

This obviously presents a serious problem for the media. How do you report about the imminent recession without mentioning anything else about the economy? How many times can you say "Experts predict the economy will slip into a deep recession within the next two months. In other news, unemployment is now down to 3.6 percent, wages are rising, corporate profits are up, and Wall Street is holding steady" before listeners/viewers/readers start to notice you have a problem?

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You point out Biden will be 86 at the end of his second term and pivot to pre-SOTU poll numbers.

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Oh, they've been pounding his poll numbers since before he took office. Remember back in May of 2021 when WAPO breathlessly ran a story about how Biden's then 60% approval rating represented a real problem for him?

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I was listening to an NPR report in the latest layoffs of tech workers, and it made me wonder: How is it that ALL of these companies SUDDENLY DISCOVERED that they had more workers than they really needed? Because that must be it, right? This couldn't all just be performative cruelty just to impress the stockholders?

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Musk set the example for them by firing all those Twitter employees. I could wallpaper a room with just what I saw of conservative tweets chortling that no problem, everything was working fine*, but then I'd never want to go in that room again.

*Ron Howard: "It was not, in fact, working fine."

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May I humbly recommend Christopher Bouzy's Spoutible? I like it much better than Post or Mastodon.

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Software companies have long practiced performative cruelty to impress stockholders. Companies like Google and "Meta" had been coasting for years on the fumes of the 2nd tech boom (and byproducts of our 2nd Gilded Age) with no need for the occasional RIF purge. Having your stock valuation drop by half means you have to do something, laying off workers is an easy layup and a favorite of analysts, so...

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I'd look deep into the big spendy packages recently set loose on an unsuspecting nation. Would not be surprised if there were certain tax advantages or incentives for hiring big tranches of workers (new or retread) that the tech cos could hoover up now that they are lean mean job shufflin' machines.

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But inflation is "elevated"! Save the children first!

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Biden like Trump" Howe many times did Dems heckle Trump?

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FFS, I keep telling y'all that it's rude to respond with GOP BS with facts and stuff because they have nearly none inter defense and have a documented inability to apply facts as needed.

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But... but... Nancy tore up his speech! On camera! It was the worst thing ever!

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God, I remember the screeching. "It's a GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT! TREASON!"

They were just mad Pelosi was smirking instead of King Toad.

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OOOH Nancy, yer gonna be in trouble with the NATIONAL ARCHIVES now!

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BUT YOU DON'T SEE THE FBI RAIDING HER UNDERWEAR DRAWER

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This deserves an 'oof' but I feel too squeamish to apply it.

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The nice thing about the media emphasis on the Biden vs Republican hecklers is it gives the “numbers are boooring” opinionators something to focus on besides throat-clearing, stutters and malapropisms.

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I like how they decide that any actual ideas Biden proposes are DOA in a Republican House, so no need to bother the simpletons who watch the news with any of that stuff. That's their job, isn't it, to predict the future so you and I won't be burdened with too much information?

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Honestly, how hard would it be to do "Twelve things Biden proposed in the SOTU" in a phone-formatted listicle? C'mon, you guys just LOVE listicles, don't you?

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They love "Washington is broken, and both sides are to blame" much more. It's really the only thing you can count on from the legacy media folks.

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"Eh, that's never gonna happen, so let's never speak of it again" is a key tenet of the Church of Savvy. Why waste your readers time talking about gay marriage, everybody smart knows it's never happening!

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"Restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and child-care centers"

In other words, poorly paid shit jobs for the most part. Anything decent and well-compensated is hard to come by and harder to keep. If you're in a decent job, you have a great big target on your back, because there's no shortage of greedy sons-of-bitches looking to get it done cheaper.

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Overheard a coworker say, "I was a little late coming in today. I hope I don't get in trouble."

I said, "Don't sweat it. The only unforgivable thing you can do is earn a decent living."

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Yeah, and one of the few counters to that complete dissolution of anything other than wage slavery is the persistent labor force long covid hit. Who's doing anything about getting those folks healthy enough to return to work? And if they all did (not gonna happen) would that drive those pesky wages back down again?

If I were a long covid patient my entire struggle back to(ward) functional (enough for re-employment anyway) cogency would be spent on learning as much about manipulating AI as I could fathom – then I'd take that to the bank (assuming my fathoming went deep enough).

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Somewhere, some workin' stiff is making a family-supporting wage working only 40 hours a week. But we'll find him, the bastard, because THIS OUTRAGE MUST END.

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"Somewhere, some workin' stiff is making a family-supporting wage working only 40 hours a week."

Germany, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Austria, France, Sweden, Fin... oh, wait, you meant in the U.S. Never mind.

(Also, all of those countries and more have average work weeks closer to 30 hours)

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Over at the Minion Death Cult podcast, they did a segment on conservative reactions to French protests over raising the retirement age. One was all "WE didn't make a big deal when they raised OUR retirement age!" and my reaction was "YEAH, THAT'S THE PROBLEM!". Anyway, don't start me on working hours; I did at least an entire sixth day last week in overtime. Thank GOBBS the GOP isn't sniffing around rescinding overtime requirements.

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Gotta insert here the line I heard this morning outta the mouth of a self-important-acting suited dude on Connecticut Av (we locals all say Conn Av and everyone understands). He was jabbering loudly into a phone as I rode by. His companion, a well-tho-slightly-too-electric-blue-dressed woman, was staring anywhere but at him as he bellowed the following:

"You’re never fuckin’ gonna get any money from a water truck."

Which, to be fair, true enough.

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This now replaces "Can't get blood from a turnip" in my lexicon. Where do I send the royalty checks?

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As an anti-royalist I will take the checks off your hands and deposit them directly in my peasantry account for safe-ishkeeping.

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"'There was little in it Donald Trump wouldn’t have been happy to say.'

"???"

If you read Pegs' line with the understanding that someone who bullshits with nearly every statement -- that is, would say anything he feels like saying -- well, then, she's correct.

Pegs stumbles though with the American carnage thing because Brandon defined what he meant clearly enough.

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Apparently, concern about jobs lost in the American Heartland is now owned by Donald J. Trump, you have to pay him a licensing fee every time you mention it.

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Trump's giant tax cut will be helping them out any day now.

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Anti-intellectual property, as it were.

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One of the things the media econ “experts” like to cite wrt the looming bad news is consumer confidence. (My iPhone auto-filled that phrase for me!) I’m not sure how real this is, or even if real, how impactful it might be on any long-term trends. But the recitation of the phrase is never qualified or supported by anything other than whether it’s up or down, not even with a percentage or other comparative information.

So, in order to not seem like an ignoramus I googled it and found it’s an opinion survey published by a nonpartisan, nonprofit group called The Conference Board. Taking its self description at face value, I still have my doubts as to the value of this metric. It seems that it’s measuring opinions that might be subject to influence by those very same media pushing the Chicken Little scenarios. I’m dubious that the survey accounts for this effect. I’ve got to think all the perfunctory and ubiquitous pessimism and fear mongering has a feedback effect. And not a good one like Jimi Hendrix’s.

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"Taking its self description at face value" ha ha good one

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We are nothing if not fair.

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"Consumer confidence" = "vibes." Seems like a silly thing to base economic policy on, but then, everyone thinks that violent crime is totally out of control, when it's actually been falling for decades, and entire campaigns are run on how people actually feel about crime, rather than the reality.

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True enough about the crime rate, but does that really affect the crime rate? The consumer confidence index seems like it can negatively or positively influence itself. Like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz movie saying, “I do believe in spooks! I do believe in spooks!”

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Sure, but then you get the current House, which just passed a bill to block DC's new criminal code (with the help of 31 Democrats, natch), after a hearing in which Republicans constantly harped on how crime is "running rampant" in DC, in spite of the actual evidence that violent crime has declined there for two years in a row. It won't actually get signed into law, but the fact that Democrats voted for it (as well as another bill on non-citizen voting) does'nt bode well for DC statehood.

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Reminds me of the now painted-over mural in Adams-Morgan:

"If you lived here you'd be home now...but you STILL couldn't VOTE!"

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First of all, never apologize for taking down Noonan. She sold eleventy-billion copies of that Ronnie-for-Sainthood book, and every single one must be avenged. Secondly, Kamala Harris may be fulfilling her historical duty of showing up for photo ops and rah-rah-ing the administration's agenda, but there's a new paradigm for the Veep, and it involves a noose. And "There was little in it Donald Trump wouldn’t have been happy to say." Lol. Imagine the same text delivered by the Idjit, with of course the interjection of personal anecdotes and braggadocio, weird gestures and tics and sighs, a substantial number of mispronunciations, and the palpable boredom when he got to the policy part. Yeah, exactly the same.

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It's pretty common for "liberal" media outlets to report on the "dangers" of low unemployment, because it might "drive wages up", by allowing workers greater "bargaining power", and this is "inflationary" in a way that rising corporate profits and CEO pay are not.

Really, you'd have to go to Marx to find the class war put as plainly as that.

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Of course, rising corporate profits are now the CAUSE behind "inflation". "We're struggling, just like you!" say the CEOs, surreptitiously kicking the stacks of money behind their desks.

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In response to the argument that "Sunset just means we hold a vote! Doesn't mean we'd necessarily shut it down!" the Democrats should invite every middle-aged American to imagine the quinquennial phone conversation with their elderly parent, to explain that they PROBABLY won't have to move in with you. It'll be just as much fun as walking them through the controls on the remote, with a big heap of added fear.

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The beauty of the sunset idea is that it's an even better propositions for hostage taking than the debt ceiling. Just link SS or Medicare funding to something truly heinous and watch the mainstream media portray the Dems as unreasonable for not going along.

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Ooh, just think of the opportunities to set people against each other! "Oh, you don't want to starve Grandma? Well then cut the public schools instead! C'mon, it's gotta be one or the other!"

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GOP politicians are professional liars. They don't want to cut SS and Medicare just like they didn't want to overturn Roe v. Wade. Lickspittles like Noonan know this. But she's a professional liar, too.

My education about what matters to Wall St. and the investor class came when I was a teenager and a too-big-to-fail bank announced a huge round of layoffs. To my naive surprise, their stock soared as a result. Having been indoctrinated that this was the greatest nation on earth for working people I naturally expected the opposite (again, naive). I've since learned that, for the Wall St. parasites, anything resembling a "jobs boom" may be a mystery for propaganda purposes, but it's definitely not something to cheer about.

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Stockholders, to CEO: "We hear you've been HIRING people again! You've got some splainin' to do, buddy!"

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*sigh* Remember when technology was going to give us more leisure time? Instead it's become just another cattle prod, like homelessness, to cut "dead weight" while squeezing ever more productivity from the remaining employees. (Back in history, before they changed the water, this was known as "the speed-up".)

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Upvoted for Firesign reference!

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For the last forty years it's been Dow Jones versus Deion Jones, and Deion Jones has consistently lost.

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Slightly off-topic, but the likelihood that Peggy's former boss was suffering from Alzheimer's while he was president (as early as three years into his first term, according to Ron Reagan, although legacy media folks discounted it) should totally end all Republican bullshit about Biden's age. But of course it won't.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/17/ronald-reagan-alzheimers-president-son

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The Reagan hagiography has done its job. Very few of us think "dimwit" when we hear his name.

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Speak for yourself, please. I not only think "dimwit," I also think "fkg bigoted glad-handing lousy actor." I have 2 diplomas from UCLA with his signature on them that live in a file cabinet because I wouldn't have his name on my wall.

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Fair.

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HEY! Just noticed that everyone's comments now have "PAID" after our names. Makes me feel like I'm getting paid to opine here. When do I start getting checks?

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See yesterday's jolly payola thread.

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I would gladly pay Roy on Tuesday for a hamburger today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaspgmHH4wk

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I've already copped, here, to how naive I am, but seriously: What politician, of any party, can possibly think ending Social Security is a good idea? Or, rather, is an idea that seniors, their adult children, and their teenage grandchildren will approve of? EVER--But especially in these days of modern time, what with the wealth inequality, the skyrocketing cost of housing, the displacements and devastations of climate change, the arrival of new and increasingly contagious viral strains, et-fucking-cetera. I know Republicans don't care if anybody, or everybody, dies of COVID. But even they might be expected to understand how dumping millions of destitute seniors onto the streets is a "bad look."

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I am guessing the pitch will be "We don't want to ennnd social security, but someone needs to step up and be the adult in the room, and say NO to the tykes yelling gimme-gimme." And enough older people who have already gotten their money back, and who love to be flattered that they are the adults, will vote for the "reform." And when their middle-aged kids say, "Hey, you just voted to cut my retirement in half, I'm going to die in a shared studio apartment eating dollar-store soup," the response will be "I only voted for sensible reform -- you're so young, you have 15 years left to invest," with a side of "The cuts won't actually affect *you* because you're a human being like me, not the child I imagined yelling gimme."

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This is a scam that, sadly, many union members have fallen for. To preserve the pay and benefits of the old-timers (or maybe just not cut them so much) we've got to fuck over the new hires with a two-tier wage scale. So sure, I could imagine it working at the national level. It kinda already did when they raised my retirement age to 67.

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Also, it's about CHOICE. You can turn your money over to the investment community and come out ahead! Uncle Sugar has no right to keep you from taking your allowance to the casino.

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Right! Aka surely you're not telling me you truly want the *government* in charge of your money! Have you been to a DMV lately?? Compare that to how many billions Elon Musk has. I'll talk to you when you're ready to be serious.

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"I'm going to die in a shared studio apartment eating dollar-store soup" is perilously close to alt-country song lyric territory. I just can't quite hear the chord changes.

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>Rushing to the store to see if Son Volt has a new record out<

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With a guy like Mike Lee, I think he really does just live in a bubble where everyone around him is either rich or wannabe-rich or suck-up-to-the-rich and so he really does believe shutting down Social Security is popular. Oh, there are polls saying otherwise? Well, joke's on you, because I REFUSE TO READ THEM.

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These polls saying what 95% of people think can't be accurate. I talk to 5% of the people and they all say the opposite!

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Not a single person in this Utah steakhouse openly disagrees with me!

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Well that's because the kitchen staff are really good at hiding it when they put the special stuff in Mikey's drink.

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The jobs stories at WSJ get a lot of attention from the top editors in NY and DC. And the political angle always comes up. I hired Sarah out of college when I was at WSJ. She's a good reporter. Haven't read the latest story but the wide-eyed attitude you point out could simply be an attempt to avoid the editorial/politics meatgrinder on deadline.

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Thanks for this.

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