Is social media fueling the economic angst This explains things a little bit to me: Look at economic data, and you’d think that young voters would be riding high right now. Unemployment remains low. Job opportunities are plentiful. Inequality is down, wage growth is finally beating inflation, and the economy has expanded rapidly this year. Look at TikTok, and you get a very different impression — one that seems more in line with both consumer confidence data and President Biden’s performance in political polls. Several of the economy-related trends getting traction on TikTok are downright dire. The term “Silent Depression” recently spawned a spate of viral videos. Clips critical of capitalism are common. On Instagram, jokes about poor housing affordability are a genre unto themselves. Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the economy that is showing up in surveys of younger consumers and political polls alike. It suggests that even as the job market booms, people are focusing on long-running issues like housing affordability as they assess the economy.
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Rescue Cubs! Two very young, orphaned mountain lion siblings were rescued and transported to Oakland Zoo yesterday morning by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) following their search for the kittens, which started yesterday morning. An adult female mountain lion, who CDFW suspects is their mother, was struck by a car and killed on Saturday, November 11th, along Highway 280, near the Hillsboro/Burlingame area. Over the weekend, residents reported seeing two cubs alone near the area, and they were found safe in one of the reporting residents’ backyard. Both kittens are female, approximately six to ten weeks old, and weigh five and five-and-a-half pounds, respectively. These kittens mark the 25th and 26th mountain lion rescues as part of the Zoo’s Rescue and Recovery Program for local wildlife in need. Upon arrival, at 11:30am today, Oakland Zoo’s Veterinary Hospital staff conducted a thorough health examination on both female cubs. The exam included virus testing, parasite treatment, and bloodwork testing. Additionally, vital fluids were administered to the visibly dehydrated kittens.
Who needs consultants? When opponents write your campaign ads for you? Vanity Fair: On Wednesday, Representative Chip Roy took to House floor to tear into his fellow Republicans, accusing them of doing literally nothing useful with their time in Washington—definitely not anything he could actually tell voters about in an effort to get reelected. “You know, we have had a tumultuous year of sorts, but in the eyes of the American people, they’ve been watching from afar wondering when this body, the people’s House, will stand up in defense of the people who send us here,” Roy said. “When are we going to do what we said we would do?” Taking aim expressly at his GOP colleagues, Roy added: “For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town as a member of a party who allegedly stands for something…and then do nothing about it. One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing—one—that I can go campaign on and say we did.
While the Israel-Gaza horror carries on, Biden and Xi manage to thaw the frozen relationship with China a little bit This David Sanger piece is a nice succinct rundown of the summit this week Between Biden and Xi: When President Biden met President Xi Jinping on Wednesday on the edges of Silicon Valley, there was a subtle but noticeable shift in the power dynamic between two countries that have spent most of the past few years denouncing, undercutting and imposing sanctions on each other. For the first time in years, a Chinese leader desperately needed a few things from the United States. Mr. Xi’s list at the summit started with a revival of American financial investments in China and a break in the technology export controls that have, at least temporarily, crimped Beijing’s ability to make the most advanced semiconductors and the artificial intelligence breakthroughs they enable. All this may explain why Mr.
Kevin Drum adds: There is, obviously, not much that can be done about the fact that Biden reads as old. But having now listened to a number of Biden’s recent speaking gigs, there’s really no question that this is solely about his physical appearance. Cognitively, Biden is perfectly normal. The worst he ever does is the occasional verbal flub, a longtime Biden habit. Agree with him or not, he says what he means to say and has obviously run the White House to his own specifications. He withdrew from Afghanistan despite internal qualms. He continued negotiating with Joe Manchin even though much of his staff hated the guy. He is staunchly pro-Israel in the face of a virtual staff revolt. He thinks Xi Jinping is a dictator and has repeated this through the grimaces of his Secretary of State. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who doesn’t read as old but can barely remember who the president is, who he’s run against in the past, and how many world wars we’ve had. We can either have the charade of an active president with a deteriorating mind behind it, or we can have an actual active president with a strong mind but physical limitations.
The soothing sounds of Steely Dan to ease your way into the weekend. You’re welcome. Steely Dan, guitarist Walter Becker and singer-pianist Donald Fagen are masters of irony and erudition. They grew up listening to Bill Evans, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. Since the late 1960s, they have been a musical Rubik’s Cube, continually honing their integration of jazz and rock. The pair performs Steely Dan hits “Josie” and “Chain Lightning” as well as standards “Mood Indigo” and “Hesitation Blues.” Originally recorded July 23, 2002. Originally aired in 2003.
The coach won’t give up. And he has a little MAGA minion helping him now. More GOPer on GOPer acrimony: Republican Senators Tommy Tuberville and Mike Lee maintained the Alabama Republican’s hold on military nominations despite a group of Republican senators who attempted to push through nominations when they returned to the Senate floor in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Sens. Dan Sullivan, Joni Ernst, Lindsay Graham and Todd Young began their effort to confirm nominees around 12:15a.m. ET and wrapped around 3:45a.m. ET. Tuberville was joined by Lee, who objected to confirming every nominee brought up for consideration. Once it became clear that Lee would speak at length every time he objected, the group of senators began reading the resumes of each of the nominees rather than attempting to confirm them one at a time. As he objected, Lee acknowledged that he understood his colleagues’ concerns about military readiness and politicizing the military and noted that he wouldn’t necessarily have chosen the same approach as Tuberville. However, he insisted that he needed to “defend” the Alabama Republican.
Tread carefully or go for it? Pick your metaphor. Whistling past a graveyard. Tiptoeing through a minefield. Every day feels like the country is doing a tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. And we know what happened to them. The question of Donald Trump’s qualification for any elected office is a hot potato neither the courts nor election officials nor Congress want to touch. Hayes Brown writes: Efforts to block former President Donald Trump from being on the ballot next year have yet to score a major win in court. Nobody in power seems willing to decide whether the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause disqualifies him from returning to the White House. Instead, judges and state officials have either pawned off that decision to someone else or determined that there will be some other, better time to make a judgment. The result is a rapidly shrinking window for that decision to be made. And, based on the standard in a ruling issued in Michigan on Tuesday, we might not know the answer until after all the votes have been cast on Election Day next year. It might be after the presidential electors have met and submitted their ballots.
It’s been a wild one. Does it matter? Dahlia Lithwick on the stakes: It’s been just a clutch of days since former President Donald Trump and his allies made clear that if he wins reelection, he plans to gut the existing U.S. government and “install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists” to take over senior legal, judicial, defense, regulatory, and domestic policy jobs in the civil service.
What the physical violence in the US Congress portends Philip Bump takes a look at the possible meaning of GOP officials resorting to threats and physical violence this week on Capitol Hill. It is probably not terribly useful to draw sweeping conclusions from Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s demand Tuesday that a witness at a Senate hearing stand up and fight him. Mullin’s background is atypical for a senator, including a brief stint about 15 years ago during which he did mixed-martial arts fighting. The witness, meanwhile, was the head of the Teamsters union; his willingness to goad Mullin (R-Okla.) into the challenge was probably also atypical for someone appearing on Capitol Hill. We might also be cautious about the weird, probably overheated interaction between Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), also on Tuesday, in which the latter accuses the former of elbowing him. Or the scuffle in January when the Republican Party was trying to elect McCarthy speaker in the first place. These were all isolated incidents, explainable in isolated contexts.