Has anyone mentioned to them about how Hoover turned out?
for the past decade or two, big business has been actively working against its own financial interests out of undue allegiance to Republicans.
This is dumb as shit.
Ouch, you're right. They really ate it under Obama.
And under Clinton, they must have been pining for the profits of Reagan. Yes thank you for showing me my shit-for-brains.
Oh! And I can modify the graph to include the Trump years, which really puts my theory to shame.
You specified 20 years. In which time Rs dominated all 3 branches and corporate returns shot to a plateau and stayed there.
You're right insofar as they can trust Republican leadership to erode consumer protections and put phony watchdogs in place, so their motivations extend beyond just lower taxes. But they also have spent a shit ton of money lobbying against socialized medicine, which they supported until the early 90s or something, when that shrew lady-Clinton also thought it was good idea.
The tax system change from the mid- century is significant, much less supporting of economic equality, and the Republicans have kept it that way even when parts were politically unpopular.
And it's not at all a foregone conclusion that their profits wouldn't have been as high (or higher) if the lower middle class hadn't been so increasingly precarious for the past few decades. You can have shitty watchdogs and credit default swaps and more people who can afford to pay Target prices over Walmart prices!
Yes, I think they're wrong on that in the long term. But I think they paid for a tax system and got it.
But this vaccine passport thing!! What the utter fuck.
That is, I think they see their own interest as maximizing short-term profit/ income.
I feel like you're hanging on to the old conversation. I demand vaccine passport conversation now.
I have no idea how that would work. I have a card. It would take about two minutes to copy it.
Many have probably already read the far-sighted essay by Michal Kalecki linked to by my name. (Sorry, not about vaccines.)
15: isn't the idea that it would be a digital passport linked to your identity?
But who is going to verify that I got the shot to give me the passport?
The people administering the shot didn't keep any records on their end? The only documentation is our little cards? I had to turn in some paperwork, at least.
I imagine you'd pay $10 and say the date and location that you got the shot, and give them permission to go verify it with whoever administered the shot.
I think 'passport' is a dumb name for what are cards, and choosing to talk about this using the dumb name is a positive detriment to the rational side of the discussion.
I have been hearing my whole life that Republicans are on the verge of losing some constituency: CEOs, Asian Americans, Texas, Millennials. And yet they still control everything. I guess I'm saying this article might be true but it isn't going to matter electorally.
I suppose they did. But I didn't show any ID at the site. They just took my word for who I was. Everything was submitted earlier and online. Honestly, I considered cheating and trying to get my son a shot even though he's 14. I decided against it because I figured out would get awkward when it came time to a shot legitimately.
22: Republicans had Millenials?
21: I'm not invested in what we call it, but what makes this name so bad?
It's what the Soviets used to keep dissidents and the untrustworthy from living in nice or important places.
Would Democratic government make corporate America as a whole richer on a 20+ year horizon? Yes. Would any given corporation, on a ~30yr life expectancy, live to see that return? Probably not. Would any given C-suiter, on a rolling 12-month contract? Definitely not. Separating capital from management, would any given rich person get richer? Maybe, but they'd definitely pay more tax in the interim.
Even Trump (only 4 years of your 20, which may yet prove an aberration) delivered lower taxes and eroded regulation for all sectors, despite giving some headaches to some of them; and even while making Covid worse, to the extent they did,* Rs took good care of big business.
You present D government as a no-brainer for the rich, but it isn't at all.
*Chinese and European fuckups would have made for contraction anyway, regardless of US policy; and the slapdash shutdowns apparently have led to a shallower crash and steeper rebound, of which corporations will see far more of the benefits than the costs.
Stay focused, Mossy. We're talking about vaccine passports now.
In MA, we have a registry, so you can query that and find it. I went to my hospital, so it's in my Epic medical record there, and in the state registry. Tim went to Harvard Vanguard which is also on Epic, so he can share it with his Physician at another Epic practice and it's also in the State Immunization registry.
Leave MA and the proof we have is controlled by Judy Faulkner.
21 Charley is right about the framing. The problem is if you want to travel most places overseas you'll soon need to show proof of vaccination.
Anyway, I've been planning my summer as if there will be no way to know who is vaccinated among adults beyond public assholishness. It is very much going to limit what we do over vacation because we will have an unvaccinated household member for at least several months.
32: What's the right framing? I'm still not seeing the drawback here.
I think we should use tags, like for dogs with the rabies shot.
I have been hearing my whole life that Republicans are on the verge of losing some constituency: CEOs, Asian Americans, Texas, Millennials. And yet they still control everything. I guess I'm saying this article might be true but it isn't going to matter electorally.
I explicitly don't endorse the quoted statements as an accurate description about the world.
That said, I think it fits into a point that Ezra Klein has made a couple of times -- the median voters is about 10 years older than the overall median age in the country, and the average person that companies are trying to target with advertising is about 10 years younger than the overall median age. This means that you have a significant gap between what groups have political power and what groups are most culturally visible. I read this and wonder if there's a similar dynamic at work in employment. I don't know what median age of somebody working at Coca-cola, but I would guess that it's significantly younger than the average voter (assume Coke employees a lot of people in fairly menial jobs and that those are going to be younger, on average).
34 They're records. Not a passport. You may need to show the records in order to travel or enter certain establishments but it confuses the issue to conflate the two and causes unnecessary friction, especially as it introduces government control into the issue mostly among those on the right inclined to act like giant babies.
34: What you want is "proof of immunization" or some such. With "vaccine passports" both words are sub-optimal because they emphasize the burden on the shot-getter. 1.) You have to get a shot, or 2.) you can't travel.
School immunizations could be called vaccine passports with just as much justification.
I mean, a passport is also a record, and Republicans are going to be giant babies because they're courting a base of literally delusional crazy people, but I take your basic point. (I'm less convinced that it has an outsized impact?)
(assume Coke employees a lot of people in fairly menial jobs and that those are going to be younger, on average)
I suspect this is wrong all counts; that the menial jobs are almost all automated/offshored/outsourced, and few of such jobs as are created are entry level (since big business as a whole notoriously doesn't create many jobs).
A Republican voter/leaner hears 'vaccine passport' as 'fancy people want to ban me from my own country'. The framing conforms perfectly with their entire grievance-as-cosmology.
Somebody has to park like an asshole and get the cans delivered. They don't work for Coke, but for a local distributor.
31: I guess I'm supposed to take a picture of my card and sent it to my doctor via the health system's app. That sounds like a pain.
I suspect this is wrong all counts; that the menial jobs are almost all automated/offshored/outsourced, and few of such jobs as are created are entry level (since big business as a whole notoriously doesn't create many jobs).
I'm not sure; let's see what we can find out. It looks like Coke employees ~80K people directly, but they say, "Coca-Cola and its nearly 225 independent bottling partners employ more than 700,000 people." So, obviously, (a) the bottling employees overwhelm the direct employees, (b) for the purpose of this conversation, does Coke think of those bottling partners as part of it's strategic vision (i.e., does it care if politics is going to create more division among employees at the bottling plants).
I think you're correct that the 80K Coke employees aren't going to be younger than the population as a whole (but note, in my comment I just said younger than voters who are old). But I'd be curious about the bottlers.
Elites have passports. It's a special thing you apply for separately. Half the right-wingers hearing this think it's something different from the card they give everyone who gets a shot.
What are they going to tell you you have to have to go to a ballgame? A shot. It's not going to be "papers please" and acting like that's what we want is dumber than dumb.
The health department here pretty clearly has records of our vaccinations. I had registered for a first appointment, but later in the day snagged an extra dose. By the time I'd finished my fifteen-minute wait period, I'd received an e-mail that had canceled my no-longer-needed first appointment and directed me to schedule a second dose.
34: Calling it a "vaccine passport" makes it sounds like "papers please" is going to be needed to go to the grocery store where poor Christians will have to face lions with syringes in the parking lot., when it's really no different than the "vaccine passport" my kid needed to enroll in kindergarten. Call it a vaccination record or proof of vaccination, because that's what it is. If it's required for a visa (still not a passport!), that's a distinct claim that as yet has not been determined anywhere.
I'm kind of assuming this is going to be the summer of the maskless shithead saying "I'm vaccinated and HIPPA" means you can't check that."
Even though you moved on I just got here so my late take...I read this sentence: "And [not using wedge issues to sway voters] is a million times more important to [the business community] than how many dollars of taxes are paid" and my mind exploded. lol the publisher put "a million times" in italics, too.
We're more than 40 comments in, and if I understand correctly, that means that I'm allowed to post something on-topic.
Both Politico and the experts that it quotes really suck if you're interested in truth over spin. Here's how Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, "a legendary business professor and associate dean at the Yale School of Management," describes the priorities of the business community:
"The political desire to use wedge issues to divide--which used to be fringe in the GOP--has become mainstream," Sonnenfeld says. "That is 100 percent at variance with what the business community wants. And that is a million times more important to them than how many dollars of taxes are paid here or there."
Politico is this stupid, but is Sonnenfeld this dumb? I think he is. I think certain jobs select for certain kinds of stupidity.
Hah. 50 before reading 49.
49, 50: It works if you translate that "the business community" as "a tiny subset of corporate leaders who tell me socially what they personally believe, and neither of us acknowledge that their companies' actions don't match these claimed beliefs."
44: I love to nitpick peripheral issues. Coca-Cola leaves this vague in their promotional statements, but it is barely a United States company. From the 10-K: "As of December 31, 2020 and 2019, our Company had approximately 80,300 and 86,200 employees, respectively, of which approximately 9,300 and 10,100, respectively, were located in the United States." Also, "Unit case volume outside the United States represented 82 percent of the Company's worldwide unit case volume for 2020."
This has been true forever. Here's the 2004 10K, the oldest on line: "As of December 31, 2004, our Company employed approximately 50,000 persons, compared to approximately 49,000 at the end of 2003. The increase in the number of employees was primarily due to the consolidation of variable interest entities, mainly in Africa, offset by the decrease due to the deconsolidation of certain bottling operations. At the end of 2004, approximately 9,600 Company employees were located in the United States." Almost exactly the same number as 2020!
The U.S. workforce, both at HQ and in syrup manufacturing, is almost certainly older than the median company,. Coca-Cola in the U.S., and for the most part its bottlers in the U.S., have been steady employers for a very long time, with some attrition due to automation, but not many massive layoffs. People drink Coke during recessions! Lots of people hired in the 1980's still work there. Not true at Facebook.
49/52: The question in my mind is, "is he living in such a bubble that he believes this is true" vs "is he trying to provide cover to corporate leaders who want to challenge the Republican party?"
The former is largely meaningless, the latter might be meaningful. Consider this answer:
First, they have to know what is in the strategic interests of the business. As a steward of other people's resources, they have to be mindful that it can't just be their personal values alone--and when it is, then they have to be willing to put their job on the line, as Ken Frazier did at Merck [following Trump's comments after Charlottesville].
Is the target audience for that people who would like to speak out but feel constrained because they don't want to get ahead of the crowd -- and he's encouraging them to speak up.
A Republican voter/leaner hears 'vaccine passport' as 'fancy people want to ban me from my own country'.
We assume of others what we know of ourselves - so this puts me in mind of Republicans wanting to keep their spaces pure.
I love to nitpick peripheral issues
New mouseover text?
I was teaching when I read 49, and had a panic that I'd written that somewhere. (I didn't, right???)
53: I think you and MC are correct on this one, and Coke was an poor choice of example to try to support my speculation (as a different example, MLB/NBA do have younger workforces, but they also aren't representative of labor dynamics in any other industry ).
To turn back to the political , Coca Cola cares more about foreign policy than anything else. Oddly, it's not a major importer or a major exporter, since it manufacturers its products locally around the world. In this it is quite similar to Facebook and Google, which sell advertising locally around the world. If these companies take positions on things like voting rights, it's because they want one party or the other running foreign policy. I would guess that Trump's ugly American act, and his attempts at trade wars, were bad for Coca Cola.
59: Good point. But OTOH the foreign policy it cares about most is going to be tax treaties.
Proof of vaccination is indeed one interesting special case.
IMO along with pointless conflict, Fox/Limbaugh republicans like to look backwards, literally bringing back the past seems popular. The feeling that a place is unfamiliar causes unease.
That's inconsistent with software topping out the SP500.
Along with taxation levels, the level of financialization in the US economy and the amount of leverage allowed are both pretty sensitive questions where individual multinationals may have different preferences. (Leverage isn't a single quantity, already looking forward to the detailed explanations and snide asides). I am still aghast at business school management's destruction of GE and of Boeing, which should have had sensible industrial policy to make disaster less likely.
In what sense has GE been destroyed? Not arguing, just ignorant.
The quote is a bit over the top, but Sonnenfeld is obviously right. The relationship between the GOP and the business elite is the most strained that it's ever been. We now see routine exercises of corporate power in the service of liberal goals -- Disney canceling the Gina Carano show, the corporate pushback against the Georgia voting bill, etc. Inter-elite conflict has risen to the level where the President of the United States used the Saudi government to spy on the richest man in the world and release damaging information about him, all because of a newspaper.
I feel like liberals have just successfully engaged in Gramsci's "Long March through the institutions", and didn't even notice that they did it.
Didn't GE stop making shit and now just loans money or something?
62. Not much capital available for R&D since GE's financial fiasco of 2010-2015. There shouldn't be one or two rump efforts to make engines out of better materials with a moron client as the target, but veritable flotillas. Engines lightweight and powerful enough would give us seafaring ekranoplans that could navigate over pack ice, as well as durable technical advanatges over the people's army navy air force (that is, the air division of the people's army's navy).
I don't actually know much detail on efforts to use new materials in new engines-- I make halfhearted efforts to understand how far behind PRC engine manufacture is, mostly my reaction is to management idiocy leading to financial distress for the owners of what's clearly a huge capital-intensive business that's important for both the future of the military and a lot of civilian industry. Maybe management's fire-sale in fact left this subsidiary happily and accidentally unaffected.
54/63: Nick appropriately qualified his interpretation as a possibility, but no, I don't think it's possible. People like Ken Frazier are covering their asses. When democracy goes down the drain, Frazier and his ilk will have literally contributed to the insurrection. I mean, literally, they will have sent money to the party that promoted it.
Here's Open Secrets regarding Merck, where the company itself is very carefully hedging its anti-democracy donations with pro-democracy donations. ($65K for Republicans, $40K for Democrats.)
Sonnenfeld -- properly understood -- is not saying that businesses want to come down on the side of decency. He is saying that businesses want to say they are coming down on the side of decency. That way, that take less damage from undercutting America, even as they profit from doing so.
To 63: Disney cancels lots of shows/actors when that's the obviously correct business move. There was basically zero corporate pushback against the Georgia bill until it was safely passed.
In the next election, will our Captains of Industry be more likely to support Republicans or Democrats? The question is ridiculous.
As the linked article points out, even Mitch McConnell gets this. He had told the corporations to stay out of politics except for donations, but he has since come around to the view that corporations can say whatever they want to, as long as the money keeps rolling in.
This, in itself, is a significant accomplishment that I don't want to downplay -- but it's not the corporations that are doing it. It's the customers and employees.
62: It's not destroyed, but it's literally a quarter the size under its peak circa 1999 when "Neutron Jack" Welch got paid hundreds of millions of dollars to fire people, outsource manufacturing, and fiddle the reported earnings with extremely dishonest accounting. (The two-sentence summary of what happened is that Welch got the company out of boring manufacturing and into exciting and fraud-adjacent world of finance and insurance, then left his successor to deal with the Great Recession and a disaster in their long-term-care insurance division that was decades in the making. Then *that* guy blew a bunch of GE's remaining cash on buying oil drilling equipment companies right before the oilfield crash and also French power plant giant Alstom right before that market melted down.)
67 was me.
64 - They shut down or spun off a bunch of those businesses and are now largely involved in making things again. their three big business lines are now airplane engines, medical equipment like MRI machines, and power plant equipment.
I remember that about Jack. And also the hugely expensive divorce.
It's about ethics in business journalism.
Anyway, as in the OP, it strikes me that business overall would benefit from a reliable way to tell who was vaccinated. Business travel seems to be way down. I have gone like 14 and a half months since I've had a dinner out that somebody expensed. It's a real loss to me personally because it turns out that frequent business travelers with expense accounts really know how to find good food. And that's got to be way more money for the local businesses than what they can get by fighting over whether they can serve drinks to somebody who doesn't order food or how close they can put people inside. But it's not coming back until covid is gone because there's not going to be a workable way to get sub-herd immunity. People who can have learned to protect themselves, people who don't give a fuck have been conditioned that they don't need to give a fuck, and everybody else has had to adapt to that.
71 reminded me that back before the 2008 financial crisis, Lexis and Westlaw would take all the big firm and academic law librarians out for fancy lunches several times a year. This all ended abruptly in 2008, and never came back.
But it's not coming back until covid is gone because there's not going to be a workable way to get sub-herd immunity.
Do you really think that? I was just telling someone that because the vaccines are so ridiculously good, I don't care if those fuckers never get vaccinated. I'm likely well-protected, and kids should be able to join the ranks in 6-9 months. I'm not returning to exactly regular life, but I'll be pretty comfortable grocery shopping at normal hours again. (Second shot tomorrow for me).
I think it seems a bit tricky to have people show immunization records for some things but a great idea for others. Schools? Crossing international borders? Yep. I'm not sure how I feel about flashing a health records to get into a baseball game or a bar.
Agreed that the terminology is pretty unappealing to people who think passports are elitist. Maybe if you called it a travel license it would be cool.
Not being able to vaccinate kids for six months means we won't take a summer vacation that puts us in restaurants or crowds. Work is putting off any expensed dinners until October, which fits with waiting until the kids get a shot in six months. That's like at least two nice dinners missed and probably a dozen for the people with jobs that require them to talk to humans.
While I agree that big businesses have an interest in decency, in being able to hire workers without worrying about them getting lynched, in being able to have a peaceful workforce, etc, etc, there's another thing, though:
the *owners* of big business don't necessarily have the same motives. Sure, they want vaccine passports so they don't have to worry about liability, but they also want their low, low personal taxes, and for sure they wanna keep the IRS kneecapped. But of a principal-agent problem there, in short.
politicalfootball had it right: they waited to complain until after the bill had been safely passed. B/c yanno, you (Mr. CEO) want your employees and customers to think you're a good guy. Sure. But you also want that sweet, sweet cash. And you're probably old enough that you're a bit of a bigot. And rich enough, that nobody's called you on it in a long, long, looong time.
politicalfootball had it right: they waited to complain until after the bill had been safely passed
But didn't that playbook work (to some extent) in North Carolina? The success wasn't complete, but the after-the-fact pushback had an impact.
The law created an intense backlash, ultimately costing the state an estimated $3.7 billion after businesses pulled out and events moved elsewhere.
In March, lawmakers came up with a compromise to partially repeal the measure - but "the deal prohibits local communities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances for at least three years," as NPR's Camila Domonoske reported. "That will block cities from imposing their own protections for LGBT people."
I'm going to Vermont this summer. I figure they'll have high vaccination rates, but I picked a room with a deck, and there's a gazebo by the pond, so I may eat outside rather than in the dining room. I'll probably eat in the dining room but otherwise avoid restaurants inside. I'd prefer it if I knew that the staff were vaccinated.
Nick in 77, meet Nick in 58. It's hard to say which sport has the most awful owners, but the players in most of them are middlin' decent, and in basketball they are both decent and unusually powerful. Business owners have to answer to different constituencies, and their own employees are an important one. High-visibility businesses that depend on an image of civic involvement (like major league sports) are particularly vulnerable to this sort of arm-twisting.
But that's not "Big Business." My beef with the original post is not that the steps you cite are meaningless. I'm saying basically two things:
1.) To adopt the language of Politico: The GOP-Big Business Divorce is Shallower Than You Think.
2.) To the extent that it's happening, it has little to do with the overall sympathies of "Big Business," which supported Republicans who brought us to this point and which will continue to support Republicans who want to push us further down the slope.
Dammit, he's the first person I ever voted for for President, in our third-grade mock election.
He missed season three of the Mandolorian.
81: I was in 4th, I think. For 2 weeks, all of the kids at school went around saying we were going to die in a nuclear war because Reagan was re-elected.
81:.He was the first presidential candidate I voted for too. I was so out of touch I thought he had a chance.
Don't blame me. I voted for John Anderson.
Anyway, I'm season one because I skipped it.
Rather than passports for the vaccinated, I'd rather just brand the people who refuse to get the vaccine.
What about the people who can't get vaccinated because of some condition or having skin made of steel?
85: Ugh, I'm afraid I might have done that too, but I don't have a clear recollection. That was the first year I was old enough to vote and I know I didn't vote for St. Ronnie, but it took a very long time for the Republican I was raised with to wear off completely.
I thought we were talking about 1984. Now I must be explaining a joke I don't get.
I'm happy to have voted for the guy 3 times: we didn't get incinerated, not right away anyway, but we'd be in a much better place if we'd elected him in 1984.
I didn't know Anderson ran that many times.
I was talking about 1984. Was Anderson 1980? If so, who was the third party candidate in 1984?
There wasn't a "major" third-party candidate that year.
Looking it up, all the 1984 third-party candidates together got only 2/3 of a percent, probably one of the smallest totals in modern times.
For 2 weeks, all of the kids at school went around saying we were going to die in a nuclear war because Reagan was re-elected
I spent most of the '80s expecting to die in a nuclear holocaust. Which is, you know, kinda stressful for a kid.
I was very annoyed, in the '80s, that my two closest friends were allowed to watch "The Day After" and I was not. Of course, you tell that to young people today and they don't believe you!
You know the problem with young people is they don't eat enough oats.
I learned this week that young people today don't want to hear about "The Day After" because it interferes with their notion that their generation has suffered more than generation before them. (I was probably exactly the same back then.)
I wasn't allowed to watch "Dallas."
101: Dallas was the Game of Thrones of its day.
Was Anderson 1980?
Wes Anderson still is.
CCarp - what is up with Montana voter registration and ID? Love that student ID isn't enough. How does this affect Native people?
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Apropos of nothing in particular but I thought you should all know that there was a 16th century Flemish engraver and publisher named Hieronymus Cock.
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I wasn't allowed to watch "Dallas."
I wasn't allowed to watch Wild Wild West or professional wrestling when I was a kid. Couldn't have cared less about the latter, but the former was deeply upsetting for some reason.
I watched that. It was pretty good.
I can't figure what was wrong with it.
Also, my parents would not grant a bedtime exemption for me to watch KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park when it aired, and I nursed that grudge for years afterward.
It was one of those things where the hero never killed anyone.
My sister wouldn't let her kids watch the Simpsons. Too crude. But it's apparently okay if they vote for Donald Trump.
79: One interesting thing about player/owner relationships in Basketball is that unlike in most sports there's not a clear line between the player class and the owner class. Most notably Michael Jordan is a majority owner, but Magic used to own 4.5% of the Lakers, Garnett tried to buy the Timberwolves, etc. A key part of this is that basketball stars are genuinely wealthy in a way that few other athletes are, if you're one of the top players of your generation you can expect to be a billionaire down the line.
I have a crazy idea that I think the NBA owners should do, which is to lean into this phenomenon as a way to improve their team branding by keeping aging stars. Namely, if you hit certain career benchmarks (more than x years in the league, more than y years with the team, more than z weighted all-NBA teams, etc.) then you can be resigned by your long-time team for something like $10million/year base salary against the cap plus $20million/year equity in the team (at a $2B evaluation that's 1% stake per year) that doesn't go against the cap. Players get to finish their careers with their team in a way that doesn't hurt the team's competitiveness and preserve's the teams brand and marketing, and you give the star players a reason to think of themselves as future owners which gives the owners a better position in bargaining.
All My Children in the morning, Dallas at night, can't watch the game or the Sugar Ray fight.
That's how those two will be remembered.
114: Baseball players get traded, but they seem to have a decent union. Non-elite, top-tier football players seem to be in an incredibly precarious position.
From the family archive, - my classic old-fashioned American family would eat dinner together watching the evening news. The show that came on our local ABC affiliate after the news was "Rawhide" and someone would have to remember to turn off the TV right away, or else the sound of the whip cracking in the Rawhide theme song would make little peep cry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKC8pSFg1Vw
I just listened to it, maybe for the first time since I was a child. I still find it kind of upsetting although I didn't burst into tears.
The very top soccer players are comparably wealthy to the top basketball players, and you do see some of that same phenomenon there where Beckham owns a team (but in MLS and not a top league).
Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep those doggies rolling.
Off topic, what is going on with Nate Silver? Today he's comparing maps where the scales are off by a factor of 3+. Downright embarrassing.
I was allowed to watch "Dallas", "Wild Wild West", and "KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park". The idea behind "KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park" was so weird and incomprehensible to me that I wondered if I had somehow imagined the whole thing. Like, there were little medallions in the shape of their heads (with makeup) that gave them superpowers? What?
The only thing I remember my mom wanting me not to watch was "Soap," and even that she wasn't completely consistent about.
117: I had a vague memory that I had posted this story before.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_11983.html#1424603
Maybe I need to go into the world and have some different experiences, before I comment here again.
I was just telling someone that because the vaccines are so ridiculously good, I don't care if those fuckers never get vaccinated.
I want to feel this way, but I already know of 2 breakthrough cases. Both people had two shots and waited at least 2 weeks. One then went on a traveling and socializing spree, including with unvaccinated people; the other continued a fairly retired life. They were both in their '80's and had mild cases, but I don't want any form of COVID because of the possibility the next time will be worse. (Both actually tested positive for COVID -- it wasn't just symptoms.)
I couldn't understand why my mother wouldn't let us stay up to watch "Helen Keller" -- so educational! -- until I realized my sister was saying "Helter Skelter."
Yep. I'm not sure how I feel about flashing a health records to get into a baseball game or a bar.
I'm guessing it takes more of the form of telling people they should have their card on their person, but then only checking once some different flavor of assholery is manifested.
At our local ski hill, they have someone at the bottom of the lift checking tickets. I keep my pass in my pocket all year, and it's kind of a pain to get it out. Luckily, I usually only have to show it once or twice a season, and otherwise just call out my number so they can cross it off the list.
I wasn't allowed to watch Three's Company. I was more of a Dynasty fan than Dallas.
I was allowed to watch Three's Company, but it felt wrong if my parents were in the room.
Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Miami Vice all had nice theme music, actually so did the A-Team and Golden Girls-- the Three's Company music was terrible.
In a classic case of insight coming too late, I really liked reading Inside Prime Time, a book Halford recommended about how television got made in the eighties; it really laid out why so much of it was horrible.
116: A lot more players on a pro football roster (48) than baseball (26) or basketball (15), plus 32 NFL teams vs 30 in MLB/NBA, and due to the relative injury attrition/severity rates and average career lengths, hugely more churn. Definitely precarious.
134.1: For a few weeks early in the quarantine, the Golden Girls theme was inexplicably playing in my brain almost continuously -- that is to say, as soon as I would think, "Thank goodness! It stopped!" it would start again. It's not nice. It is evil.
At least it wasn't the theme from The Facts of Life.
I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch the 90210 prom and graduation episodes. Let Donna Martin graduate!
I've tried to watch some of the best '70's shows again (Good Times, The Jeffersons) but the laugh track is just too damn annoying and loud. The couple that I did watch held up.
At age 8 or 9 or so, Hawaii said unironically that she liked shows where there was a laugh track*, because then she knew when the show was being funny.
*I doubt she knew this word, but that's what she was describing.
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Verdict to be read shortly in the Chauvin case.
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To the stuff about sitcoms, that is, not 143.
Seems like a fairly quick verdict, which I choose to be optimistic about. Presumably the only debate was over which crime to convict him of.
I hope.
"Shortly" : likely between 3:30 and 4 Central time.
Stupid question, I can just wait an hour, but if it took this relatively short amount of time, it suggests a guilty verdict, right? Presumably considering the solidity of the case combined with the racial makeup of the jury, an acquittal would have been a lot more contentious and taken much longer.
Maybe not guilty on all counts.
Or maybe this jury just has to choose between three different counts, rather than choose at least one.
It sure seems to me like a quick verdict here means it's guilty on a murder charge, less clear whether that's the 2nd or 3rd degree murder charge. I could imagine a quick compromise to 3rd degree, it still has murder in the name and normal people don't have strong opinions about the numbers. Seems less likely that you'd have a quick compromise to manslaughter.
Hope so.
I'm hearing on Washington Post stream that the recommended sentence according to the guidelines is a bit over 10 years whether it's second or third-degree murder, in this particular case.
I can post a chauvin thread when I get home from picking up kids.
128, here are the stats on breakthrough cases (carefully notes as an undercount of true cases, but still):
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html
I don't want it either and am in the the worst state in the country, but I plan to resume some of my prior activities: getting on planes, going back to the gym, seeing family. I don't want to jinx myself, but the numbers look pretty good to this fairly risk-averse person.
156: Are you ready for an indoor restaurant?
I've been wondering about kids going over to each others' houses where all four parents are vaccinated. It doesn't yet seem safe, but I don't know if I'm being overly cautious.
In our cases, it would be where both families are sending their kids into schools. At the schools, social distancing is half-assed but masks are worn mostly, AFAIK.
158:. I ate indoors in restaurants twice already since I got my second vaccine. Both times were in fast-casual restaurants and both places were nearly empty. I'm thinking there was virtually no Covid risk at all, but I still don't think I would have done this before my vaccine.
I guess I should think about when I want to go back to the gym. I haven't been since 2002.
The problem is that the best gym near me is the JCC and they don't let you bring Slim Jims into weight room.
158: We didn't eat out frequently before, but we have indoor restaurant reservations with friends around Memorial Day. Our group will all be fully vaccinated.
160: At that point, I'd think I'd personally be very comfortable with getting together outside. Not sure how I'd feel about extended periods indoors unmasked. Maybe a no. But that's just a gut reaction and more about the kids getting it. I gather the variants are hitting kids harder.
We're pondering the logistics of having my in-law family visiting. Two cousins in the age range of my kid (all 7-11), adults vaccinated. Formally, unvaccinated people from different households aren't supposed to mix unprotected, but I don't know how well three rambunctious kids are going to do with that.
160: FWIW, I'm planning a small get together with vaccinated adults and our unvaccinated children in a couple of weeks. The kids are in school; the adults wear masks everywhere. But also, fwiw, I haven't worried at all about outdoor activities once it was pretty clear they weren't major vectors of transmission, and I'm hoping summer means most activities are out of doors or easy to ventilate, and by the time we have to worry about it again the kids' vaccine will be approved.
This reminds me that when I got my second shot, I didn't get a bandaid. He did the shot, said I wasn't bleeding, and pulled my sleeve down. Like he's going to bring the pandemic to an end with a surplus in the sundries budget.
I have a bleg in safe vs not safe. I'm not sure what the answer is and don't know what factors around case prevalence and the like need to be considered. I think that most of the people on my team at work have been vaccinated but maybe not all. My boss was talking about having us over to her house once the weather is warm enough to do something outside. She's vaccinated but is a kidney transplant recipient on immunosuppressants. The only communication she's gotten from her transplant program is that they will not be testing them for antibodies. At one point is it safe for her to have people over inside without masks - especially if she can't be sure that every single person at an event is vaccinated.
And how does she navigate once things open up? When everyone else takes off the masks, should she be wearing them? - especially in the fall and winter.
168: There really isn't a clear line for safe vs not safe, so I don't think you'll get an unambiguous answer from any source. If I were immunocompromised, I'd feel pretty good about the combination of lower case rates (fewer than 20/100K) and a mostly vaccinated medium sized group for indoors. I'd also feel pretty good about an unvaccinated but very careful small group (maybe up to 6?) as long as case rates and positivity were low and dropping. In that position, I'd probably keep masking indoors and continue to avoid restaurants and other high-risk activities until vaccine coverage was excellent, 70-80% including children and case rates dropped even lower. Maybe one of those odds calculators about a given gathering size would be helpful.
169: I think the transplant program has been pretty bad about the communication. I asked her if she had a plan for what to do if she got it, and they've done nothing. I'm sure the nurses at the central call center or her primary care office would just punt. I think we are at more like 30-40 per 100k.