To be fair, it's not posturing if you are actually horrible.

Grifting not posturing. Thank you white voters in Maine and NC.

That's not hot states work.

2: The Maine thing makes me angry. For a second I forgot about Collins, because I know former Governor LePage was trying to make a comeback.

Have more thoughts but really do need to work.

The debt ceiling is just posturing. If it came down to an actual default, Mitch would find a Republican vote. Romney is an obvious choice, or Collins.

When the stock market gets worried is when I'll start worrying.

I still don't understand why stonks are so high. Not because of the debt ceiling, but just in general.

2 You shouldn't leave us out like that!

6. Nominal interest rates for bonds are negative in Europe, real bond yields are negative almost everywhere. Increasing productivity over past decades means that it doesn't take much capital to do everything useful, consequently there's a lot of capital with no obviously worthwhile destination.

China's helpfully withdrawing capital from its own markets, consequences both there and here yet to be seen. Not inflationary. Michael Pettis has been really good about that: https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/85391

I take foolish pleasure in the discovery that Corey Lewandowski is accused of drunkenly hitting on a Trump donor with the unimprovable name of Trashelle Odom. Why aren't more women who support Trump called Trashelle?

x. trapnel took a stab at the stonk question just a few days ago.

This novelty thread on Sinema kind of blew my mind. I didn't know that much about her. WTF.

Absolutely weird malformed link. Here: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_17781.html#2121487

I'm also forgetful.

I once met a very nice woman whose name was La/tree/na. I can see how the name came to be, but oof.

I think one of the French resistance guys in Top Secret was named Latrine.

9: Imagine going through life trying to tell everyone "no, it's TraSHELL." "OK, TRASHel."

Also I'm pretty sure that we're down to the part where God is just fucking with us before he sends in the horsemen. But I found a file in the office this morning labeled "CRANK LETTERS," which made me unreasonably happy for about 15 seconds.

I don't get what the rush is with the infrastructure legislation. If Manchin and Sinima want to be dicks about it now, just put it on ice for six months. I'm pretty sure something in some form can pass before the next election but its pretty clear there is not a consensus right now so why is it vital to push this thing through when its only half baked?

10 Huh, we're saying the same thing if {worsening inequality} and {increasing productivity} are the same, which for the last 20 years they have been.

Does the two-bill package force some of the timing? I know reconciliation has weird rules.

17: Putting things on ice is sometimes necessary, but it's a last resort. Obviously, that had to be done with, say, Medicare for All or serious gun control or stacking the Supreme Court or whatever. It's the tactic of losers.

With the infrastructure bills -- which are quite fully baked -- an unambiguous and overwhelming consensus among Democrats exists right now. What is lacking is unanimity. It's a heavy lift to keep a large, diverse coalition 100% united over time. Failing to pass the legislation now only strengthens the hand of people who want the legislation to fail.

pf: also, putting things on hold for 6mos risks that they never get done, b/c next year is (ugh) an election year. As has been remarked by many, basically a Dem president has about a year to get his agenda enacted; after that, it's campaign, campaign, campaign, and then campaign.

I was .... dismayed to learn that one of Mansion's red lines is the Hyde Amendment. Ugh. Ah, well. Maybe in another decade ....

Bills passed and signed into law (excluding resolutions) in the 2019-20 legislative session:
* U.S. Congress: 333, including the naming of post offices
* California Legislature: 1,242, many of them of great standalone importance, and including the meat of an actual budget as opposed to continuing resolutions

A consensus needs to be reached between what Manchin/Sinema will accept and what House progressives will accept. It seems like we are far away from getting that and figuring it out is going to take some time.

Does that create risks for the infrastructure bill? Sure, but 1) its not actually that great a bill so if it fails, no huge loss, and B) if the Dems cant pass an infrastructure bill going into an election, then they can't do anything.

with the unimprovable name of Trashelle Odom

How is this even possible as a person's name? I do not understand.

Manchin's commitment to means testing infuriates me.

Anyway, if the infrastructure bill is supposed to be so bipartisan, let the House Republicans take it over the finish line.

24: I assume her parents pronounced it to rhyme with "Michelle."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand bill delayed. That's fine. Get some space to regroup and renegotiate.

I can't imagine what kind of parent names their daughter Trashelle. I mean, come on.

Maybe a bunch of siblings with T names, and a beloved grandmother named Rachelle? DOB 1974

27. Tree Shell?

In America, we say "bark."

32: On the internet, nobody knows you're an American dog as long as you're careful not to give it away by what you say.

There are false positives when people ask you what goes on top of a house.

31: Kinda. More like Truh-shell. Short vowel in the front, that kind of vague could be i/e/a, and I assume her folks made a bad guess when completing the birth certificate. Midwestern US vowels are a mess.

Honestly, the food is a bigger problem.

And the militias.

31: Pretty sure most Americans pronounce the i in Michelle as a schwa as well.

It's the M-u-chigan M-uh-litia.

38: Through much of the south, there are two schwas: Muh-SHAY-uhl.

Supply of savings has gone up faster than the demand for investment, so saving is expensive. This drives up stock prices, and drives down bond interest rates. In some ways the supply have been restricted by the Fed by buying up so much debt. This is on purpose, because it makes investment cheaper. Drops in investment are a big part of the business cycle, which the Fed is trying to counteract.

All of this probably ultimately driven by inequality, because there are so many rich people looking for some place to park their money.

I guess Lenin was right.

I dud see that coming, but I'm still a little surprised that drugs won the war on drugs.

I was expecting a draw.

Like maybe drugs would get a Caribbean island or two but have to cede something in Europe.

I guess I'm not quite following the finer nuances of the Midwestern vowels discussion.

But here's an idea: what if Trashelle's parents had thought to name her Patricia Ellen, with Trish Elle as some kind of nickname/diminutive, and with an unfortunate misspelling of that nickname the ludicrous result?

(Am I grasping at straws? I just can't believe any version of Trash as a name for a child, and am therefore struggling to make this make sense).

40-

My GAY-uhl

Debris is not rare as a given name, there's an actress and people turn up when coupling it with common last names as a search.
I think there are a bunch of ways to make up that name and not notice.

I'd bet many of them boil down to "alcohol".

To be fair to alcohol, it's probably responsible for more children than almost anything else.

-almost

Besides sex.

It's a mediated effect.

39: The second half is entirely accurate for local pronunciation.

46 is genius level charitability, but if you google thrashelle without odom, you'll find this is totally a name people give their kids, with a reasonably even split between african-americans and (poor?) whites. I do think you're right that a variant of "Trish" is what folks are going for.

50. I read a story that featured a character called Chablis.

55:. Thrashelle is a great name for a little punk.

Thrushelle is a great name for a little yeast.

And yeast makes alcohol.

🎶the CIR-CLE of liiiiife🎶

Civilization really is just another yeast byproduct.

Civilization is the byproduct, alcohol is the product.

56: Footballers' Swives, an unforgettable bit of trash TV from the oughties, had a villain called "Chardonay Lane", who fucked one tiresome lover -- an elderly, overweight manager -- to death by feeding him viagra and cocaine.

had a villain called "Chardonay Lane", who f**ked one tiresome lover -- an elderly, overweight manager -- to death by feeding him viagra and cocaine.

I don't even know what anything even means, anymore.

Have people actually been naming their children after second-rate French wines?

Your sex-to-death the elderly name is your favorite wine plus the type of street you lived on when you were born.

Hard to pick a favorite, but femme fatale alter ego "Xinomavro Drive" does have a certain jnsq, and/or late 80s cyberpunk vibe.

Wait, is that actually the best literary idea I've had all day? DAMN IT. Time for more evening cocaine caffeine.

Fair warning. I've heard people say that cocaine is addictive.

Honestly, coffee after 3:00 pm isn't great for me either.

Have people actually been naming their children after second-rate French wines

Only in fiction I think/hope. Chablis in the thing I read was self-named. She was trans, born Frank.

Chardonay is not a second rate wine but you'll never know because you can't afford me.

"Thunderbird Drive" on the other hand is the hero of one of those Seventies thriller series about men with names like "The penetrator" which the @pulpLibrarian account on twitter keeps surfacing.

I think I will stay with Vacqueyras Lodge, the mysterious GCHQ operative who moonlights as a literary novelist.

I know one of Simena's dissertation committee members, and it's been taking a lot of self control on my part not to reach out to them and ask "WTF?".

Oh man, you should. I'm sure there's a way... some nominal scholarly inquiry plus "Wow, must be weird for you to watch the battle in the Senate right now."

Oh okay, Michelle Goldberg was even more obsessed than I was:

...it's worth reading Sinema's one book-length explication of her political philosophy, her 2009 "Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win -- and Last."

In "Unite and Conquer," Sinema describes entering the Republican-controlled Arizona State House as a strident progressive, accomplishing nothing, being miserable and then recalibrating so that she could collaborate with her Republican colleagues. The book is vaguely New Agey. It places a lot of emphasis on deep breathing and extols what Sinema calls "Enso politics," after a Zen term for a circle symbolizing enlightenment.

Sinema describes finding self-actualization in learning to "open up my own ways of thinking to embrace a much larger possibility than the strict party-line rhetoric I'd been using." She figured out how to have meetings with lobbyists that were "relaxed and comfortable," whether or not they agreed. Her "new ethos" helped her to get more done and, "perhaps most importantly," be "much happier," she writes.

I guess someone has to embody every single cliché about white women.