What is not going to come out of all of this is any kind of extension of the ACA subsidies.
My point was, that extension wasn't going to come out regardless. Those Republicans in Congress (on their own, let alone driven by Trump) simply are not going to extend those until the increased insurance costs generate howls from their own constituents. And they never were. There simply is no plausible scenario where that would happen before spring. Because, even if the Senate Republicans were somehow brought to agree to it, the House simply wouldn't concur.
Whether they allow a vote next month on those subsidies, as agreed, or not, it's fairly certain that an extension will fail to pass. And when it does, it will be defeated stand-alone -- no other spending distractions. (Of course, the Congressional Republicans might surprise us all. But I figure it will be months before they can bring themselves to act.)
GftNC, you have to understand. For some, the options were a) cave in like this (their phrasing, not mine), or b) hang tough a tiny bit longer until the Republicans cave. If those were indeed the choices, their rage over option a) would be well placed.
But those weren't actually the options. Instead we had
a) accept a continuing resolution for the next couple of months, get some relief for a whole lot of Federal workers, and pick up the fight again in January. There is, after all, no chance the GOP will be in any better position then than now. Oh yes, and get a couple of elected Democrats seated finally.
Or
b) hang tough, no matter the collateral damage. While a lot of Federal workers go bankrupt, SNAP money runs out (for real), and a lot of people see their health insurance premiums skyrocket -- except they hear a lot about how the Democrats wouldn't let a bill to fix it even come to a vote.
Be clear, getting ACA funding done wasn't going to happen either way. (At least not for several more months minimum.). But this way, it's starkly obvious that the Republicans have sole ownership of the mess.
Pretty clear where this is going. First, it isn't going anywhere unless Johnson is willing to bring the House back into session to vote on the changes from what they previously passed. In which case . . . Epstein Files! And if he won't, no cover about "if only the Democrats would let the Senate vote." They totally own the mess.
Second, assuming it passes, then what. First, a lot of Federal employees who were stuck working without pay, or were furloughed, get their family economies patched up thru the holidays. Also, the new funding bill only runs thru the end of January. Which means that we probably see another shutdown then -- lest voters forget this shutdown by the time voting starts.
Oh yes, there will be the usual wailing and rending of garments from the left. Because, the very idea of something less than total victory is anathema. But then, strategy and tactics: not a core competency there.
My bet is that the Democrats end up with a big boost out of this, come next November. And that's assuming (and frankly, it's a heroic assumption) that, some time next spring, the Republicans in Congress get themselves together without another shutdown at the end of the fiscal year, i.e. next fall, right before the election.
At heart, MAGA's problem is one of definition: who counts as Amurikans? Ramaswamy obviously feels that he qualifies. (No clue what his personal definition is. Maybe "anyone Trump supports is in"?) Others, using different definitions, differ. And not just about him.
The thing is, there are lots of definitions. And a movement based on exclusion is in trouble without a single, unified, definition. A charismatic figurehead can, with work, paper over the differences, at least for a while. But MAGAworld looks to be losing their unifying leader, so the fractures over definition are appearing. Put another way, the knives are coming out.
What is required is empathy. Which machines do not have. They can imitate. They cannot empathize. Those are different things.
Certainly they are different. The question is, are they distinguishable? I'm not sure that they necessarily are? Sure, a bad imitation is distinguishable. But a good one?
Put another way, is real empathy required? Or can it be simulated convincingly?
And I don’t think that one has to have written a song in order to understand and serve the emotions of the song. What you do need, however, is some life experience to connect it with.
I'm not so sure about that. Certainly it can help. But actors can play parts, with authentic appearing emotions, even about experiences they have never personally had -- all it takes is having seen someone else experiencing it. Or showing how it looked when a third party did. Great actors do it most convincingly, but even journeyman level actors can do a pretty convincing job.
Are singers any different from actors in that regard? I'm willing to be convinced, but it may take some doing.
Can an AI generated pop star understand your broken heart?
I read that, and my first thought was The Monkeys. A totally made-up-for-television group. In other words, about as authentic as an AI generated pop star.
My next thought was that lots (most?) pop stars are performers, and their songs are generally written by someone else.** If one person writes the music, another person writes the lyrics, and a third performs the song? Which, if any, have to understand your broken heart?
** There are exceptions. People who write and perform their own stuff, at least mostly. But they are just that: exceptions.
How can a person show compassion and empathy to strangers while supporting politics that denies it to undeserving Others?
I'm not entirely sure How. But it's hardly unusual for people to hold different views regarding the abstract and the particular. Regarding "those people" and "this person."
Currently, a lot of people here have problems in the abstract with immigration. But they don't make the connection between the immigration issue in the abstract and that nice young lady who helps grandma with her housekeeping and her shopping. Said nice young lady being an obvious immigrant, complete with accented English and occasional issues with words that any middle school kid would know.
At most, they manage a rationalization of "but she's different." Even though she isn't, except to the extent that every person is different from every other. I'm not sure it is even possible to bring someone to realize that the abstract, the general case, is more like the specific individuals he knows.
Perhaps someone with a stronger grounding in psychology than I can say how many specific cases someone needs personal knowledge of before their view of the abstract will change. I am sure that it needs personal knowledge. Just being told that immigrantion impacts food prices, because much everybody who works in agriculture, whether picking vegetables or butchering beef? Only works if you know some of those folks, your children (or grandchildren) attend school with their kids, etc.
Both Democrats won, which is noteworthy in itself because no Democrat has won a non-Federal statewide election in 20 years or so, but more noteworthy are the margins, which are currently 62-38.
With Governor Kemp being term-limited, 2026 could be exciting in Georgia. And that's before figuring in the impact of whatever wave might manifest nationwide.
In 2011, 30 percent of white evangelicals said that “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” Now, 72 percent say so
Kind of a necessity for them. If they still held to expecting morality of elected officials, there's no way they could vote for Trump.
I think you make a good point about people being complex. So the first question that's worth asking about someone whose politics you question is Why are you supporting this horrible person for office. The answer can be surprising.
Take one obvious example that most of us are old enough to remember. There are people who supported Clinton both times that he won, simply because they liked the platform he ran on and despite his character flaws. There are others who opposed him, not because they necessarily disliked his platform, but because they believed that character matters in elected officials and found his objectionable. (Personally, I think him a pretty appalling excuse for a human being, even if I like many of the things he tried to do while in office.)
Things get more complex when you find people that have essentially identical views on the issues. Faced by a candidate whom they agree with on some issues and disagree with on others, they may vote differently based on how they prioritize the various issues.
Certainly there are extreme cases -- Trump, for example, has absolutely nothing that I can see to recommend him. Unless you somehow manage to see politics are merely a show, with zero real world consequences. But in general people, and circumstances, are rarely binary good/bad.
Is there anyone in the US who has a stronger work ethic than immigrants?
In pretty much any country, no group has a stronger work ethic than immigrants. About the only exceptions are places where most of the immigrants are retirees or the idle rich.
The US is unusual only in the numbers of immigrants that we have been blessed (and we have been blessed) with. Not unique, certainly, but unusual.
Oh, I expect that they would be satisfied with establishing whether there had been miscegenation in the last generation or two. The old 1 drop approach having died of all the mixing in the century and a half since owners could, and did, rape their slaves with impunity.
One could try just going by melanin, except that would restrict testing to late winter and early spring. Otherwise summer tans start confusing the issue vs permanent sun tans.
And tends to be an enthusiasm of people whose "understanding" of the American frontier is limited to Hollywood movies and old TV westerns. When the reality was that, in the Old West people cooperated to survive. And those who didn't didn't.
As a plus the new categories would allow the reintroduction of miscegenation laws.
As a small bit of pedantry, what we had were anti-miscegenation laws.
At least this time around it would be possible (maybe not feasible as a general rule, but possible) to use DNA testing to determine if those laws had been violated. Although there might be an issue with the fact that some (whisper it!) expertise is required to run such tests and interpret the results.
"Relinquishing" as opposed to "being stripped of".
I'm put in mind of the executives who get offered the choice of resign or get fired. Or the occasional enlisted military methodology (for undesirable, but not actually dangerous, tasks): "I want 3 volunteers. You, you, and you."
Colleges and universities have an issue with silos. The mindset is that everything ought to fit into one of them.
They will (depending on the particular college) accept a double major. But the mindset is that, whatever the two majors, they must have some kind of synergy. Thus someone may have an undergraduate double major in chemistry and biology, and the faculty will nod sagely and say "aiming for biochemistry in grad school" (there being no undergraduate program in biochemistry). They can wrap their heads around that.
But I had a double major in Mechanical Engineering (fluid mechanics) and in Cultural Anthropology. Drove the professors in both majors nuts. In their minds, there must be some synergy there somewhere. They were seriously frustrated that, apparently, I could see it but they could not. The idea that I just found two disparate subjects which both interested me? Simply inconceivable, apparently.
It seems like the assumption of a shared language base actually rests on two factors: race, and a largely shared script. Neither of which really impact language.
For race, only consider Swedish, Hungarian, Spanish, and Ukranian. The Europeans who are native speakers of those languages are all the same race. But the languages are not related.
As for a shared script, note that the Latin script is used not only for all of the languages of Western and Northern Europe, but for the hundreds of languages of pretty much all of Sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention Vietnamese. The linguistic overlap is basically nonexistant (barring loan words, of course).
Sure, it would be convenient if learning Japanese was relevant to learning Korean or Chinese (either Mandarin or Cantonese, or one of the other "dialects" -- actually distinct languages rather than real dialects). But while all use related scripts, the spoken languages, as you discovered, are quite different. Just to state the obvious, Chinese is a tonal** language, which Japanese is definitely not. (I'm not familiar enough with Korean to know which, if either, it resembles.)
** In case anyone here is unfamiliar with the term, the only example in English is the use a rising tone in the last syllable of a sentence to indicate a question. The meaning of the word isn't changed. In contrast, Chinese uses 5 (IIRC) different tones to differentiate unrelated words. See the chart here for examples.
russell, the critical phrase there was "by comparison.". I don't think that, in any absolute sense, it will be quick or easy. I just think that the foreign relations impact will be harder and slower to repair. In part because they can decline to join us in anything, whereas we are basically stuck with each other. (The dreams of Steven Miller, et al. notwithstanding.)
There are times when it's a great coping mechanism to be a compulsive optimist. Although that should probably be a *relative* optimist.
I expect the nation will take a lot (more) damage in the near term. But I think it is, eventually, recoverable damage. Not without a lot of work. And in a lot of cases, it will probably take a couple of generations for the memories to fade. Definitely, in the case of our foreign relations.
But consider our relations (pre-Trump!) with Germany and Japan. Economic competitors to some degree, sure. But even the oldest of us are only the children of the folks who fought World War II, and it's never had the same emotional impact that it did for them. For us, it's just history; for our children it's mostly ancient history.
The rebuilding at home will be, by comparison with the destruction of trust, be quick and easy. Relatively. Lots and lots of people hurt in the meantime. But horrible as that is, overall it's a long way from "permanent".
And (see compulsive optimist) I could see us getting to something resembling the Progressive Era that followed the previous Gilded Age. Not just fixing the trashed stuff, by completely new improvements.
Thank you all for the information and suggestions.
I suppose you could say I'm at least somewhat into this stuff. Since I'm undertaking to produce a scroll which is in that mode, albeit with very different content. I've done such in the past, but I'm seriously out of practice. Like three decades out of practice. So I need all the help I can get.
Just for something completely different, I'm in Dublin, Ireland this week (conference). So I wandered over to Trinity College to check out The Book of Kells Experience.
A nicely done exhibition. I was particularly pleased to be able to see the Book itself. In a darkened room, and only the page it happened to be turned to. But still beautiful. And lots of other stuff from the book and about it. Way cool!
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “When virtues become vices”
What is not going to come out of all of this is any kind of extension of the ACA subsidies.
My point was, that extension wasn't going to come out regardless. Those Republicans in Congress (on their own, let alone driven by Trump) simply are not going to extend those until the increased insurance costs generate howls from their own constituents. And they never were. There simply is no plausible scenario where that would happen before spring. Because, even if the Senate Republicans were somehow brought to agree to it, the House simply wouldn't concur.
Whether they allow a vote next month on those subsidies, as agreed, or not, it's fairly certain that an extension will fail to pass. And when it does, it will be defeated stand-alone -- no other spending distractions. (Of course, the Congressional Republicans might surprise us all. But I figure it will be months before they can bring themselves to act.)
"
GftNC, you have to understand. For some, the options were a) cave in like this (their phrasing, not mine), or b) hang tough a tiny bit longer until the Republicans cave. If those were indeed the choices, their rage over option a) would be well placed.
But those weren't actually the options. Instead we had
a) accept a continuing resolution for the next couple of months, get some relief for a whole lot of Federal workers, and pick up the fight again in January. There is, after all, no chance the GOP will be in any better position then than now. Oh yes, and get a couple of elected Democrats seated finally.
Or
b) hang tough, no matter the collateral damage. While a lot of Federal workers go bankrupt, SNAP money runs out (for real), and a lot of people see their health insurance premiums skyrocket -- except they hear a lot about how the Democrats wouldn't let a bill to fix it even come to a vote.
Be clear, getting ACA funding done wasn't going to happen either way. (At least not for several more months minimum.). But this way, it's starkly obvious that the Republicans have sole ownership of the mess.
"
Pretty clear where this is going. First, it isn't going anywhere unless Johnson is willing to bring the House back into session to vote on the changes from what they previously passed. In which case . . . Epstein Files! And if he won't, no cover about "if only the Democrats would let the Senate vote." They totally own the mess.
Second, assuming it passes, then what. First, a lot of Federal employees who were stuck working without pay, or were furloughed, get their family economies patched up thru the holidays. Also, the new funding bill only runs thru the end of January. Which means that we probably see another shutdown then -- lest voters forget this shutdown by the time voting starts.
Oh yes, there will be the usual wailing and rending of garments from the left. Because, the very idea of something less than total victory is anathema. But then, strategy and tactics: not a core competency there.
My bet is that the Democrats end up with a big boost out of this, come next November. And that's assuming (and frankly, it's a heroic assumption) that, some time next spring, the Republicans in Congress get themselves together without another shutdown at the end of the fiscal year, i.e. next fall, right before the election.
"
At heart, MAGA's problem is one of definition: who counts as Amurikans? Ramaswamy obviously feels that he qualifies. (No clue what his personal definition is. Maybe "anyone Trump supports is in"?) Others, using different definitions, differ. And not just about him.
The thing is, there are lots of definitions. And a movement based on exclusion is in trouble without a single, unified, definition. A charismatic figurehead can, with work, paper over the differences, at least for a while. But MAGAworld looks to be losing their unifying leader, so the fractures over definition are appearing. Put another way, the knives are coming out.
On “Weekend Music Thread #04 John Mackey”
What is required is empathy. Which machines do not have.
They can imitate. They cannot empathize. Those are different things.
Certainly they are different. The question is, are they distinguishable? I'm not sure that they necessarily are? Sure, a bad imitation is distinguishable. But a good one?
Put another way, is real empathy required? Or can it be simulated convincingly?
"
And I don’t think that one has to have written a song in order to understand and serve the emotions of the song. What you do need, however, is some life experience to connect it with.
I'm not so sure about that. Certainly it can help. But actors can play parts, with authentic appearing emotions, even about experiences they have never personally had -- all it takes is having seen someone else experiencing it. Or showing how it looked when a third party did. Great actors do it most convincingly, but even journeyman level actors can do a pretty convincing job.
Are singers any different from actors in that regard? I'm willing to be convinced, but it may take some doing.
"
Can an AI generated pop star understand your broken heart?
I read that, and my first thought was The Monkeys. A totally made-up-for-television group. In other words, about as authentic as an AI generated pop star.
My next thought was that lots (most?) pop stars are performers, and their songs are generally written by someone else.** If one person writes the music, another person writes the lyrics, and a third performs the song? Which, if any, have to understand your broken heart?
** There are exceptions. People who write and perform their own stuff, at least mostly. But they are just that: exceptions.
On “People and poliltics”
How can a person show compassion and empathy to strangers while supporting politics that denies it to undeserving Others?
I'm not entirely sure How. But it's hardly unusual for people to hold different views regarding the abstract and the particular. Regarding "those people" and "this person."
Currently, a lot of people here have problems in the abstract with immigration. But they don't make the connection between the immigration issue in the abstract and that nice young lady who helps grandma with her housekeeping and her shopping. Said nice young lady being an obvious immigrant, complete with accented English and occasional issues with words that any middle school kid would know.
At most, they manage a rationalization of "but she's different." Even though she isn't, except to the extent that every person is different from every other. I'm not sure it is even possible to bring someone to realize that the abstract, the general case, is more like the specific individuals he knows.
Perhaps someone with a stronger grounding in psychology than I can say how many specific cases someone needs personal knowledge of before their view of the abstract will change. I am sure that it needs personal knowledge. Just being told that immigrantion impacts food prices, because much everybody who works in agriculture, whether picking vegetables or butchering beef? Only works if you know some of those folks, your children (or grandchildren) attend school with their kids, etc.
"
Both Democrats won, which is noteworthy in itself because no Democrat has won a non-Federal statewide election in 20 years or so, but more noteworthy are the margins, which are currently 62-38.
With Governor Kemp being term-limited, 2026 could be exciting in Georgia. And that's before figuring in the impact of whatever wave might manifest nationwide.
"
In 2011, 30 percent of white evangelicals said that “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” Now, 72 percent say so
Kind of a necessity for them. If they still held to expecting morality of elected officials, there's no way they could vote for Trump.
Does clarify what their priorities are.
"
I think you make a good point about people being complex. So the first question that's worth asking about someone whose politics you question is Why are you supporting this horrible person for office. The answer can be surprising.
Take one obvious example that most of us are old enough to remember. There are people who supported Clinton both times that he won, simply because they liked the platform he ran on and despite his character flaws. There are others who opposed him, not because they necessarily disliked his platform, but because they believed that character matters in elected officials and found his objectionable. (Personally, I think him a pretty appalling excuse for a human being, even if I like many of the things he tried to do while in office.)
Things get more complex when you find people that have essentially identical views on the issues. Faced by a candidate whom they agree with on some issues and disagree with on others, they may vote differently based on how they prioritize the various issues.
Certainly there are extreme cases -- Trump, for example, has absolutely nothing that I can see to recommend him. Unless you somehow manage to see politics are merely a show, with zero real world consequences. But in general people, and circumstances, are rarely binary good/bad.
On “Another variety in the diversity of greasy”
But cleaned up kinda misses the point, doesn't it?
On “Horrifying stuff”
Is there anyone in the US who has a stronger work ethic than immigrants?
In pretty much any country, no group has a stronger work ethic than immigrants. About the only exceptions are places where most of the immigrants are retirees or the idle rich.
The US is unusual only in the numbers of immigrants that we have been blessed (and we have been blessed) with. Not unique, certainly, but unusual.
"
Oh, I expect that they would be satisfied with establishing whether there had been miscegenation in the last generation or two. The old 1 drop approach having died of all the mixing in the century and a half since owners could, and did, rape their slaves with impunity.
One could try just going by melanin, except that would restrict testing to late winter and early spring. Otherwise summer tans start confusing the issue vs permanent sun tans.
"
And tends to be an enthusiasm of people whose "understanding" of the American frontier is limited to Hollywood movies and old TV westerns. When the reality was that, in the Old West people cooperated to survive. And those who didn't didn't.
"
As a plus the new categories would allow the reintroduction of miscegenation laws.
As a small bit of pedantry, what we had were anti-miscegenation laws.
At least this time around it would be possible (maybe not feasible as a general rule, but possible) to use DNA testing to determine if those laws had been violated. Although there might be an issue with the fact that some (whisper it!) expertise is required to run such tests and interpret the results.
"
Snarki, that's nonsense. No believing Christian fundamentalist accepts that Mormons are real Christians. Farther outside the pale than even Catholics.
"
Zing!
What more can be said? How he copes with the cognitive dissonance, how his family copes, is a mystery.
On “Monarchy in the UK”
"Relinquishing" as opposed to "being stripped of".
I'm put in mind of the executives who get offered the choice of resign or get fired. Or the occasional enlisted military methodology (for undesirable, but not actually dangerous, tasks): "I want 3 volunteers. You, you, and you."
On “Ramsayer, Korea and me”
Colleges and universities have an issue with silos. The mindset is that everything ought to fit into one of them.
They will (depending on the particular college) accept a double major. But the mindset is that, whatever the two majors, they must have some kind of synergy. Thus someone may have an undergraduate double major in chemistry and biology, and the faculty will nod sagely and say "aiming for biochemistry in grad school" (there being no undergraduate program in biochemistry). They can wrap their heads around that.
But I had a double major in Mechanical Engineering (fluid mechanics) and in Cultural Anthropology. Drove the professors in both majors nuts. In their minds, there must be some synergy there somewhere. They were seriously frustrated that, apparently, I could see it but they could not. The idea that I just found two disparate subjects which both interested me? Simply inconceivable, apparently.
"
It seems like the assumption of a shared language base actually rests on two factors: race, and a largely shared script. Neither of which really impact language.
For race, only consider Swedish, Hungarian, Spanish, and Ukranian. The Europeans who are native speakers of those languages are all the same race. But the languages are not related.
As for a shared script, note that the Latin script is used not only for all of the languages of Western and Northern Europe, but for the hundreds of languages of pretty much all of Sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention Vietnamese. The linguistic overlap is basically nonexistant (barring loan words, of course).
Sure, it would be convenient if learning Japanese was relevant to learning Korean or Chinese (either Mandarin or Cantonese, or one of the other "dialects" -- actually distinct languages rather than real dialects). But while all use related scripts, the spoken languages, as you discovered, are quite different. Just to state the obvious, Chinese is a tonal** language, which Japanese is definitely not. (I'm not familiar enough with Korean to know which, if either, it resembles.)
** In case anyone here is unfamiliar with the term, the only example in English is the use a rising tone in the last syllable of a sentence to indicate a question. The meaning of the word isn't changed. In contrast, Chinese uses 5 (IIRC) different tones to differentiate unrelated words. See the chart here for examples.
On “I got depressed so I bought hydrangeas”
russell, the critical phrase there was "by comparison.". I don't think that, in any absolute sense, it will be quick or easy. I just think that the foreign relations impact will be harder and slower to repair. In part because they can decline to join us in anything, whereas we are basically stuck with each other. (The dreams of Steven Miller, et al. notwithstanding.)
"
There are times when it's a great coping mechanism to be a compulsive optimist. Although that should probably be a *relative* optimist.
I expect the nation will take a lot (more) damage in the near term. But I think it is, eventually, recoverable damage. Not without a lot of work. And in a lot of cases, it will probably take a couple of generations for the memories to fade. Definitely, in the case of our foreign relations.
But consider our relations (pre-Trump!) with Germany and Japan. Economic competitors to some degree, sure. But even the oldest of us are only the children of the folks who fought World War II, and it's never had the same emotional impact that it did for them. For us, it's just history; for our children it's mostly ancient history.
The rebuilding at home will be, by comparison with the destruction of trust, be quick and easy. Relatively. Lots and lots of people hurt in the meantime. But horrible as that is, overall it's a long way from "permanent".
And (see compulsive optimist) I could see us getting to something resembling the Progressive Era that followed the previous Gilded Age. Not just fixing the trashed stuff, by completely new improvements.
On “Something Different”
Thank you all for the information and suggestions.
I suppose you could say I'm at least somewhat into this stuff. Since I'm undertaking to produce a scroll which is in that mode, albeit with very different content. I've done such in the past, but I'm seriously out of practice. Like three decades out of practice. So I need all the help I can get.
"
Just for something completely different, I'm in Dublin, Ireland this week (conference). So I wandered over to Trinity College to check out The Book of Kells Experience.
A nicely done exhibition. I was particularly pleased to be able to see the Book itself. In a darkened room, and only the page it happened to be turned to. But still beautiful. And lots of other stuff from the book and about it. Way cool!
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.