The utter look of terror on the infant’s face is totally understandable. What’s a baby to do? All in on Elizabeth Warren, but not quite old enough to run away from home.
Trapped in Trumplandia
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Tag Archives: Elizabeth Warren
Weekend Assorted Links
1. The Quick Therapy That Actually Works. Referred to as “microtherapy”.
“Effective solutions are crucial because Americans—stressed out, lonely, and ghosted by Tinder dates—are in desperate need of someone to talk to. The data suggest that most of the Americans who have a mental illness aren’t receiving treatment. About 30 percent of psychotherapists don’t take insurance. Quick interventions offer ‘something, when the alternative is nothing.'”
Research findings are hopeful, but skepticism is understandable.
“Lynn Bufka, a psychologist with the American Psychological Association, says that these types of brief interventions could be just a first step toward the treatment of various mental-health woes. They might be enough for some people, while others go on to get more intensive therapy. But. . . for more severe issues, such as bipolar disorder and major depression, a quick dose of therapy is unlikely to be enough. ‘These kinds of interventions are probably more likely to be beneficial before full-blown symptoms or disorders have developed.'”
2. An Echo Dot in Every Dorm Room.
“If students can’t or don’t want to spend money on their own smart speaker, Saint Louis University’s Echo Dots offer a way to bring voice assistants into the dorm without any added cost to the student, since the project went through the capital funding process and wasn’t funded by tuition increases.”
I’m calling bullshit on this. There is an opportunity cost. Money that is being directed to Echo Dots is money not being spent on something else like physical plant maintenance and that money for physical plant maintenance will come from students. I’m also very wary of the wholesale adoption of any technology. Maybe my thinking will change, but right now, if I were an SLU student, I would not want an Echo Dot.
3. The worrying future of Greece’s most Instagrammable island.
A Greek-American who has lived in Santorini for 12 years laments:
“‘People treat churches like selfie studios. There’s one in front of my house and people used to ring the bell every three minutes or climb up on the roof for their fake wedding shoots. I’d get woken up at 6am by people traipsing across my terrace.” His frustration at the crowds has led him to start hanging ‘respect’ signs around Oia that state ‘it’s your holiday… but it’s our home’.”
As if that’s not enough.
“The constant building and flood of tourists create tons of rubbish, which is all dumped illegally. Santorini still has no proper waste-management facilities, so all the empty water bottles, coffee cups and restaurant leftovers go into a huge dump which doesn’t meet EUregulations. Leakage is free to infect the surrounding earth, water and air.”
Alexa, find me someplace free of deranged photographers.
4. The Mistrust of Opposite-Sex Friendships.
The headline is misleading since the focus is on opposite-sex best friends.
This makes sense to me:
“Alexandra Solomon, an assistant psychology professor at Northwestern University and the instructor of the university’s Marriage 101 course. . . wonders whether the correlation between negative attitudes toward opposite-sex friendships and negative or violent expressions of jealousy could be due to participants’ personal beliefs about gender roles.
It speaks to a bit of a rigid, dichotomous way of thinking—I suspect there’s a layer in there about how much [the subjects] endorse traditional gender roles. . . . A woman with more traditional ideas about gender might feel threatened by her boyfriend’s female best friend because. . . ‘she may have this idea that I ought to be your one and only, and I ought to be able to meet all your needs. If you love me, then you’ll only turn to me.‘ A man with similarly rigid or traditional ideas about gender roles, she added, might feel territorial or possessive, as though his female partner belongs to him and only him.”
The more important, relevant question is about the potential for opposite-sex friendship more generally. I’ve long been intrigued by the tendency of friends to congregate in same sex circles at social gatherings. Even opposite-sex friendships of multiple decades seem relatively superficial. Opposite-sex friends seem to bump up against an invisible wall as if friendship is a zero-sum game. It’s that wall that intrigues me the most. More specifically, why the wall?
5. Waze Hijacked L.A. in the Name of Convenience. Can Anyone Put the Genie Back in the Bottle?
This was a hard read. Seemingly, my favorite app has no regard for the common good.
6. Elizabeth Warren Is Attracting More Supporters and More Media Attention.
An easy read. :)
Demo Debate 2
More middle school classroom. The talking over one another was distracting and disappointing. Props to Harris for reigning the class back in. The consensus is correct, Harris dominated at Biden’s expense. Other thoughts:
- The party is listing too far left for the surviving candidate to win the general election. Of course there’s still a lot of time to correct for that.
- The pundits said Biden should’ve apologized for his anti-busing stance. It would’ve been even more authentic for him to have said that busing was, and is, a subject upon which reasonable people disagree. He could’ve summarized his long standing commitment to civil rights, why he opposed forced busing, and what we can/should do to better integrate schools today. Or he could’ve gone egghead professor like I would’ve and asked how are we supposed to have integrated schools given intense residential racial segregation?
- Improving schools is sometimes mentioned in passing, but no has talked in any detail at all about what that means. That is a huge opening for someone especially since Trump (fortunately) never says anything about schools, unless you count his arm teachers bullshit after school shootings. No candidate should be allowed to say schools are obsolete without explaining how they specifically intend to update them. Where is the national leadership on education reform?
- Buttigieg’s owning of the police problems in South Bend was an unexpectedly refreshing break from the status quo of politician’s never admitting faults. “I couldn’t get it done,” he admitted when asked about diversifying the police force. When was the last time you heard a politician be as honest? The moderators should’ve asked everyone to share something they’ve failed to get done despite good intentions and hard work. If the President was asked that he’d deflect by blaming the media or Democrats or the media and Democrats.
- Also, in contrast to Gabbard, a real life Danny Chung (VEEP), props to Buttigieg for not bringing up his military service unless asked directly about it. Impressive guy, but his last name is too damn hard to spell and there should be a step or two between South Bend and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (sorry Dano).
- Sanders is hella grating. The guy you make sure to avoid at the party. Half of it is his nonstop haranguing. He’s channeling this guy.
- The other half is his answer to the problems of growing inequality. “Guts”. Guts to challenge Wall Street, the insurance industry, the military industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, etc. And he’s the only one with sufficient guts. Fool me once. Obama promised to bridge the partisan divide. But it only deepened. One person’s guts, even the Presidents, is irrelevant compared to winning the Senate. Sanders hasn’t come close to convincing me he’s the best person to win the Presidency and help retake the Senate. Then again, I’ve started to tune him out.
- Swalwell is the most opportunist politician going. Instead of empathizing with Buttigieg and the people of South Bend, he attacked him for not firing the Chief of Police as if that would solve everything. He does tons of media. I get the sense he’d run over his mom to raise his profile. Doubt he has any friends in Congress.
- Does Biden think his resume is sufficient to get the nod? It is impressive, but he’s the Golden State Warriors whose window is fast closing. Last night, he tore his achilles. As Hillary proved, the Presidency is not a lifetime achievement award.
- I want to see Warren, Castro, Harris, Buttigieg sitting at a round table with time to lay out their ideas and interact with one another. Debates are flawed in that it’s difficult to assess interpersonal skills. Of course that won’t happen. The much needed winnowing is still many moons away.
- The Demos are absolutely right that the economy is not working for many people. Harris’s point about the limited number of people who own stocks was important. The walking wounded are always evident in our downtown. Yesterday, while running around Capital Lake, I was more aware than normal of people sleeping and living out of their cars. What’s left of the middle class is struggling with rising health care, higher education, and housing costs. The Republican base is deluded to think that their leadership cares about these issues. Just yesterday, their President proposed another tax cut for the wealthy, by indexing capital gains to inflation.
- The Demos are wrong to paint all business with the same broad brush. People are smarter than that, knowing that businesses vary widely. Why not highlight positive examples of profitable businesses that are committed to living wages, the right to organize, and sustainability. I’d be perfectly happy in Scandinavia or Western Europe, but individualism is so deeply rooted in the US that most people have deep-seated, negative associations with socialism. The Demos need to talk more about a new capitalism, one more aligned with Adam Smith’s thinking about regulated markets, than socialism.
Gendered Bullshit
I knew what I was going to think about Jennifer Palmieri’s essay, “The Hidden Sexism Behind the Amy Klobuchar Reports” before I started it.
Yes, reports of Klobuchar’s egregious mistreatment of her staff are drawing more fire because she’s female, one person referred to it as “gendered bullshit”, but the remedy is to respond more quickly and effectively whenever men in power abuse their staffs. We should be gender-neutral when it comes to abuse of power.
Ah heck, may as well read it anyways.
I can’t recall doing a mental 180 in a shorter period of time. There’s no such thing as gender neutrality. Palmieri’s argument is this:
“. . . the problem is not that political journalists fail to report altogether on demanding and difficult men in politics. It’s that the reporting on such behavior is presented in a dramatically different fashion than it is in stories about female bosses in politics—as a badge of honor, not a mark of shame.”
I let that phrase, “badge of honor, not a mark of shame” sink in.
Palmieri’s just warming up y’all:
“It is not hard to think of tough male bosses in Washington. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has a reputation for being demanding; you will find such stories chronicled in the press. The same holds for men in politics with whom I have worked. A Google search of “Bill Clinton” and “purple rage” yields a number of anecdotes about the private temper tantrums we in the Clinton press office would endure when preparing the president for White House news conferences. Profiles of my friend and former colleague Rahm Emanuel are littered with stories of his profanity in the office and warnings by his staff that anyone working for him needs to “develop a thick skin,” write off going to weddings or family vacations, and expect to be available “25/8.”
While the anecdotes about these men are not entirely flattering, they are presented as colorful asides meant to give dimension to the hard-charging zeal with which these individuals do their jobs. Stories about intimidating male bosses are typically not presented as disqualifying, but as evidence of these men as formidable leaders. These are men who should not be underestimated. These are men who should be respected.” (emphasis mine)
Hook firmly entrenched in mouth, Palmieri reels me in:
“Imagine if it was reported that a female politician was prone to bouts of “purple rage” or that she expected staff to skip weddings and family vacations, and be available to her “25/8.” She would not be admired for the hard-charging zeal she brought to the job. She would be seen as unhinged. She would not be considered a formidable leader.”
Damn. She’s right. And not in a subtle, nuanced way, but in a “Wow, I’m not nearly as enlightened as I like to think” kinda way. I’m guilty of the thought process she details, and when it comes to gender relations, I’m much less a Neanderthal than normal. Hence, the systemic nature of the double standard.
To resolve myself of my gendered bullshit, I once again am firmly in the Kobuchar 2020 camp. Or EWarren. Two formidable leaders, either of whom would represent a bit of an upgrade.
Postscript: Also worth reading.
Most Americans Support Warren’s ‘Ultramillionare Tax’
The title of a FiveThirtyEight feature:
“Sixty-three percent of Americans believe ‘upper income people’ pay too little in taxes, according to a new survey from Morning Consult. The poll also found that 61 percent of Americans either “strongly” or “somewhat” favor 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s tax plan, which would levy a new tax on households with a net worth of $50 million or more.”
More generally:
Fund those Roth IRAs friends, like the ocean surface, taxes are going to rise.
“Warren’s tax plan has been described as an “ultramillionare tax” that aims to make the rich pay taxes on accumulated wealth. It would place a 2 percent tax on households whose net worth exceeds $50 million and then an additional 1 percent (so 3 percent total) on those worth more than $1 billion. The plan has faced some criticism, including claims that it’s unconstitutional. Interestingly, however, the support for the plan appears to be somewhat bipartisan, according to the Morning Consult poll: 74 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans said they strongly or somewhat favor the proposal.”
However, as Paul Sullivan explains here, Warren’s proposal will be very difficult to implement. Just to be safe though, I’m going to do everything in my power to keep my net worth under $50m.
Semi-related. As those who know me even a little can attest, I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my 56 years, but I’ve never threatened the world’s richest person with legal action. That’s next-level stupid.
I Saw the Future of the Democratic Party
When will Hillary Clinton stop trying to explain away her 2016 election loss? Peggy Noonan’s hard hitting editorial, “Hillary Lacks Remorse of Conscience” is in my view, fair. Of Hillary’s long list of external reasons why she lost, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer concludes, “It is a tribute to the power of human denial.”
Noonan adds:
“It is insisting on alternative facts so that journalists and historians will have to take them into account. It is a monotonous repetition of a certain version of events, which will be amplified, picked up and repeated into the future.
And it’s not true.
The truth is Bernie Sanders destroyed Mrs. Clinton’s chance of winning by almost knocking her off, and in the process revealing her party’s base had changed. Her plodding, charmless, insincere style of campaigning defeated her. Bad decisions in her campaign approach to the battleground states did it; a long history of personal scandals did it; fat Wall Street speeches did it; the Clinton Foundation’s bloat and chicanery did it—and most of all the sense that she ultimately stands for nothing but Hillary did it.”
Immediately post election, political analysts told us Hillary’s public life was over. Something about long walks in Westchester County, yoga, and grandchildren. Now she seems intent on re-reinventing herself. She’ll be 73 in 2020. The oldest president ever elected is Donald Trump, who is 70. To succeed in future elections, the Democratic Party desperately needs an infusion of younger women to take the mantle of national leadership from Hillary Clinton.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cizzilla by way of Amy Davidson at the New Yorker recommends eleven:
1. Elizabeth Warren
2. Kirstin Gillibrand
3. Kamala Harris
4. Amy Klobuchar
5. Tulsi Gabbard
6. (tie) Tammy Baldwin and Claire McCaskill
8. Maggie Hassan
9. Tammy Duckworth
10. Val Demings
11. Sheryl Sandberg
To me, Warren appears cut from very similar cloth as HRC, smart, always serious, and to borrow from Noonan, “plodding and charmless”. In extremely stark contrast, there is one particular “top eleven” woman I would want to have a few beers with, Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, who was the commencement speaker at my daughter’s college graduation last Sunday.
Klobuchar’s talk was amazingly refreshing. It was not a generic speech that she could’ve given previously. Her daughter graduated college the weekend before and she wove in stories from her perspective as a parent. She was funny in making fun of the press’s overwrought criticisms of Millenials. And she was challenging and inspiring in talking about the struggles of a Somali-American family to gain genuine acceptance in Minneapolis. And the harder the wind blew her hair sideways, the more she smiled. She was clearly enjoying herself, not just campaigning. Don’t take my word for it, decide for yourself. Watch it in its entirely here (starts at 34:00).
I hope I get a chance to vote for her sometime soon.
I Need Your Help
At a dinner at my university recently, I was seated next to a nice guy from our Development office. That means he asks wealthy people for money for a living. Wooing wealthy donors entails nonstop travel and an uncanny ability to feign interest in rich strangers’ lives. I would rather work in China retrieving cell phones from shit-filled porta-potties.
This Saturday I’m cycling from Portland to the Pacific Ocean on a ride designed to raise money for the American Lung Association. To participate, I had to raise at least $100. Instead of asking you my loyal readers to consider chipping in at so many cents a mile, I paid the $100 myself.
That’s not to say I don’t ever need other people’s help. The truth of the matter is I need something else from you—a female Democratic candidate capable of winning the 2016 Presidential election. Not named Clinton. We desperately need to shatter the political glass ceiling once and for all, but count me among the “Can’t we be more creative than Bush v Clinton?” contingent.
Clinton’s smart and progressive, but her public persona really rubs me the wrong way. No, that probably shouldn’t matter, but it does. Of course it’s impossible to be a Presidential candidate if you’re not hyper-ambitious. With Clinton though I don’t get a sense that her intense desire to be president is motivated by even a semi-selfless sense of public service, instead it seems like pure, unadulterated personal ambition.
Can’t wait for eldest daughter, who is going to work for her campaign, to write on Facebook or here, “You would never say a male candidate’s public persona rubs you the wrong way.” Save it sister. Ever seen Al Gore in a debate? Detached stiffness personified.
Before you attempt to help by suggesting Elizabeth Warren, know that she has been consistent in saying she isn’t running. If she did, I’d support her in a heartbeat. So someone Elizabeth Warren-like.
I’m counting on you. Thank you in advance.
This is who I thought eldest daughter would work.
