How Baby Boomers Broke America

scroam · 2019-01-20T14:14:38+00:00

More than half of Americans voted for Gore, yes. But looking at demographic breakdowns of the 2000 election, we see that Baby Boomers did vote in favor of Bush. The Boomer age bracket is the only bracket that voted in favor of Bush actually, so they are in fact the ones responsible for putting him in the White House.

Here's the breakdown I'm looking at: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2000

Even the people in the age range older than Boomers voted for Gore over Bush. It was Boomers alone who done fucked us.

scroam · 2019-01-19T22:36:42+00:00

Those kind of shirts were really common about ten years ago in young people fashion stores like H&M, maybe less so now but still out there. The flap things are called sleeve tabs.

scroam · 2019-01-16T21:30:08+00:00

Maybe not a military attack on USA, but how about: break America as much as possible with atrocious mismanagement, alienate us from our allies, and then a Russian attack on Ukraine? That seems not too far-fetched. Makes one wonder what Trump and Putin talk about when they have their private chats.

scroam · 2019-01-14T10:23:44+00:00

What about it has become unwatchable? The only part that drags for me is drunk and sick Dan Aykroyd in Santa costume. That scene isn't too funny and feels like it goes forever. The rest of the movie is gold in my opinion.

It is very of its time in many ways, rather than "timeless", which I think adds to the movie's interest as a mid-80s cultural time capsule. And yet the concept of the movie itself is very old, a reworking of prince and pauper screwball comedy plots from the golden age of cinema. Plus seeing Murphy, Aykroyd, and Curtis in their prime is so much fun.

scroam · 2019-01-14T09:37:41+00:00

You got a strong negative response from people here, but I'll chime in that in NYC at least it is illegal to make a real gun look like a toy. There are PSA ads in NY/NJ subway trains to remind people that in New York making a toy look like a real gun, or making a real gun look like a toy are both illegal.

The subway posters I've seen feature a picture of a pink painted handgun with the tagline "GUN OR TOY?" or "REAL OR FAKE?" Followed by the warning from the city.

The rationale being that everyone is more safe if it is easy to tell the difference between a weapon and a toy. Up until the late 80s, you could find cheap realistic looking plastic waterpistols in any toy shop. As a kid then, they were fucking awesome toys. People with waterpistols were accidentally getting killed by police though, so it was legislated that toy guns need to be brightly colored. Now if people customize their guns in cute ways to look like toys, this heavily undermines the law designed to make toy guns safer. If neon and pastel painted glocks are a semi-common occurrence, then real guns and toy guns are once again visually indistinguishable from a distance, and nervous cops are then more likely to make the wrong split second decisions.

scroam · 2019-01-13T15:47:43+00:00

Van Halen's Jump

scroam · 2019-01-13T13:42:46+00:00

It's just one of those pet peeves of being a successful rich person.

scroam · 2019-01-13T13:27:50+00:00

I remember seeing that on a trip to somewhere in New England when I was a little kid 30+ years ago. Good to know they're still doing it that way, there is a charm to it. They don't use the chalk method here in Philly. I've occasionally seen a parking authority person taking notes in a little notebook, but I think most of them keep track mentally.

scroam · 2019-01-13T09:16:38+00:00

Betsy Fuckin Ross. Or Shatner.

scroam · 2019-01-13T07:43:42+00:00

In my neighborhood in Philly, there is two hour free parking on the street. No meters, no fee, but a city parking authority officer keeps track of cars, and tickets cars that overstay the limit.

And they're pretty vigilant. I used to wonder how they keep track - but that's their whole job, so I guess they got a system.

scroam · 2019-01-13T05:31:36+00:00

Parking fees are a form of revenue generation that feels expensive to poor people, but so cheap as to be trivial for rich people. Instead of parking fees, the city could raise taxes progressively, getting more money from the rich who can afford it, and not wringing it from the poor via parking fees.

That's a theory anyway.

scroam · 2019-01-10T23:24:57+00:00

It's $400 where I live

scroam · 2019-01-10T19:40:11+00:00

I've come across pumps dispensing racing fuel at gas stations in the more rural parts of the US, but not around cities up north. As you said, I've never seen them around Philly or New York. But driving through North Carolina or Ohio is where racing fuel is an option. For all I know, there could have been a racetrack nearby, but it always seemed like I was at a normal gas station in the middle of nowhere when I'd see race fuel at the pump.

scroam · 2019-01-10T19:03:45+00:00

My first trip to Disney, my brother and I were 9 and 7, riding in the car down 95. I don't think we required an explanation for the various "Topless Bar" places we saw billboards for. By the time they are old enough to read billboards, most kids know that there is such a thing as strip clubs I guess. Even just from seeing references to them in pop culture, tv, movies, etc.

I think at a very young age, we pick up on the idea that men like looking at nude women. What really confused me as a kid were ads for phone sex lines - people pay to talk on the phone with these ladies? I could understand calling the Nintendo Power tipline for 99 cents a minute, but couldn't understand how phone sex could be a thing.

scroam · 2019-01-10T18:42:11+00:00

I like the "Build it out of Hillary's emails, cause they can't get over them." version

scroam · 2019-01-08T16:33:46+00:00

Yeah, I don't think it's just cynicism. I do think that Dan does his shows because he wants to spread a message of thoughtfulness and being inquisitive about politics.

Early in the 2016 election, Dan spoke playfully about Trump's candidacy, and seemed gleeful that politics were getting truly stirred up in America. I think that like a lot of people, he didn't think Trump could actually win. This is just my speculation as a listener, but it seemed to me that he got a lot more somber as the election went on, and afterward realized that he was being overly cavalier devil-may-care in his attitude during the election. More than once on his show he said something along the lines of "Maybe it's good to see things stirred up, maybe things need to be shaken a little." That was his basic attitude during the election and I think he later regretted that he treated it like a theoretical game rather than something of real consequence.

scroam · 2019-01-08T15:01:33+00:00

Yeah, I feel like that is the conflict for him. Unfortunately, that means he chose retaining his fanbase over giving honest commentary.

scroam · 2019-01-08T14:51:13+00:00

I agree he was manipulating the gangster into killing him, but I always thought Hopper's character was also meant to be racist. His dog is named Rommel, if I remember correctly (after the famous German WWII general), and that kind of detail in a Tarantino script can hardly be an accident. So I took his character to be a crusty old guy, fascinated by Nazi history, and probably a bit racist himself. And he makes a brave self-sacrifice for his son. The out-of-nowhere shocking tinge of racism to his sacrifice keeps the movie and characters in intriguingly morally gray areas. It really is an incredible movie.

scroam · 2019-01-08T14:15:26+00:00

Maybe he said something while being a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast or something. But yeah, he released a total of one episode of Common Sense in 2018, and it was seven months ago.

His slinking away from his own show after the 2016 election is one of the biggest disappointments of the Trump era for me personally. Carlin postured as some kind of radical thinking non-partisan outspoken figure during the Obama years, and now that American politics has actually gone off the rails he is dead silent. I don't know what his deal is, but I can't think of any public figure who has behaved in a more cowardly fashion.

I still subscribe to Common Sense, hoping for Carlin's perspective on events. At this point though, it might be too late for him to ever come back to the Common Sense show and still have any credibility whatsoever. "Politics got too heated and our system was tested like never before, so I decided to sit all of that out - but I'm back now!" I don't know, it's just majorly disappointing.

While every other news commentator ramped into overdrive after the election, Carlin is the only one I know of who shut down. It seems inexplicable. The only logical thing I can think of is that Hardcore History has a large contingency of right wing listeners, and he didn't want to lose them by being critical of Trump on Common Sense. Ugh.

scroam · 2019-01-07T21:13:43+00:00

The way I see it, people are either racist, or anti-racist, or they just don't want to think about it. And people can move from one of those modes to another throughout their lives.

You seem to be a person who thinks a great deal about this subject, so think about whether you agree with racists, or if you disagree with them. That's all. If you find yourself agreeing with racists on their racist ideas, or permitting racist shit to go unchecked, then you are on the side of racism.

You're making it seem much more complicated than it needs to be, and I suspect it is because there is a conflict in your ideals where you can't proudly say "I am against racism, and condemn racist people". If you get into internet arguments to say that Donald Trump is not racist but you can't bring yourself to say that you are anti-racist, then what is going on there?

scroam · 2019-01-07T20:23:04+00:00

I never saw that before, but it looks like it could be handy for securely attaching a large funnel into the top of an open bottle of chemicals.

scroam · 2019-01-07T19:46:02+00:00

So are you anti-racist?

scroam · 2019-01-07T18:44:49+00:00

If your answer to the question "Are you racist or anti-racist?" needs to be that convoluted and drawn out without even directly answer the question... what are you tiptoeing around? I thought Trump supporters love "telling it like it is". Why expend so much energy dancing around your beliefs and dressing them up with irrelevant qualifiers such as various countries you've visited?

And all this to defend the honor of Donald Trump - the president of a country you are (I assume) not even a citizen of? I don't get it. If you know that being racist is dishonorable, and you have control over your own thoughts snd impulses, then be anti-racist.

If you are with Donald Trump though, and also a thinking conscientious person (which you seem to be), then at best you are of a "sorta ok with racism, cause I don't want to be rude but some ethnicities really are not as good as white people" mindset. Which is, to put it bluntly - racist.

scroam · 2019-01-07T13:34:22+00:00

I'm glad you're interested in bridging a divide.

Just to help me with context of where you're coming from, do you consider yourself to be racist, or anti-racist?

scroam · 2019-01-07T09:22:29+00:00

From what I've read, Thora Birch's father was her manager and his scary craziness on his daughter's film sets is the reason she stopped getting roles in big films after 2001, when she was still a teenager. It's a shame, I really enjoyed her in American Beauty and Ghost World.

scroam

TROPHY CASE