Because HBO changed their posting schedule for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, I forget that it now goes online on Thursdays, so I forgot to post it then. I'll do my best to get back on schedule, but for now here's the Main Story from last week. And it's excellent. It's something I've long been aware of, but not the depth of the problem. I only thought it was a sort of usury-type issue with food delivery services like GrubHub and Postmates, but it is far more pervasive and deceptive. The report tells it well with get detail and a lot of humor.
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This week, recorded live from Maine, the ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is Stephen Smith, CEO of L.L. Bean. It’s a fun, light-hearted conversation with host Peter Sagal about him getting hired for the job, as well as a funny exchange with the panel about the store’s open return policy. A personal side note. Back in 1989, I worked on the movie Pet Sematary, that filmed in Ellsworth, Maine, and one of my go-to spots was Freeport, Maine, a town that is literally made up of outlet stores sprouting everywhere. And the centerpiece of Freeport is the corporate store of L.L. Bean which is open 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, with an outlet store connected to it. The main Bean store is huge, and my favorite thing there was that they actually had a cobbler working on shoes out in the open for people to watch. I still have a great bathrobe and cashmere vest sweater that I bought at the Bean Outlet for peanuts that are both in great condition. (In fairness, I don’t wear them regularly, because I want to keep them in great condition…) Even though the drive was about 2-1/4 hours each way, and I don’t like driving, I nonetheless made the drive several times – and once stayed at Bean’s browsing around until probably 11 PM, just because the store was so wonderful and fun, and it was a treat being in a store so late without worrying about hearing an announcement that it would be closing so. All the while knowing that I had a 2-1/4 hour drive back. This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts around the 19:30 mark. If you missed Last Week Tonight with John Oliver this past Sunday (HBO is now delaying their videos of the show until Thursdays...), the Main Story is on Boeing -- which leads into its merger with McDonnell-Douglas. It's a wonderful report. Very funny, through, but detailed and fascinating and at times scathing (with, it seems, good reason.) Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugam had a great seven-tweet thread over the weekend, aided significantly by two clear-to-understand charts in particular. His premise was, as he wrote, that "Recent economic news has been extremely good. But there's a strange meme among some D consultants that Biden shouldn't boast about it, because it seems out of touch — that people aren't feeling the good economy. But they are!" What Krugman described was that Democrats and Independents actually show they understand the economy is getting significantly better, but Republicans are so heavily the opposite that it's that which brings numbers down so much that polls show "the public" thinks the economy is bad. When it's not "the public" at all, but just Republicans. Further, Krugman notes that this is always what Republicans do historically when a Democrat is in the White House. And he has the charts and data to back him up. Here's the first chart about Republicans. To clarify what it show, since much of the writing is small -- The horizontal numbers along the bottom are months/years. The vertical numbers are the percentages of how good people feel. The higher, of course, the better. The baseline of 0% is the top horizontal line of that pinkish area. (You'll also see vertical dotted lines. Those are hard to read, but they're all markers about notable events in the news that affect economics.) The numbers start very low, at -60%, on the far left. That's around February, 2016, when Barack Obama was finishing his last year as President. When you see the number go high, that starts in January, 2017 -- when Trump took office. When it dips very briefly, that's basically around April, 2020, at the beginning of COVID. It starts to go up again around June, 2020 -- meaning Republicans only felt bad about the economy during COVID for just a couple of months. And level off for a very long time (during COVID!) at a consistent 90%. When you see the number plummet again -- that's (oh, okay, you can figure this out by now) January, 2021...when Joe Biden was sworn in as President. Now, here is the chart that polled Democrats, covering the same time-frame. The numbers are high during Barack Obama's last year in office, though more reasonable, not at the steady 90% sentiment Republicans gave Trump during COVID. And yes, the numbers do start to drop when Trump takes office (around the two vertical dotted lines). But as you can see, Democrats didn't plummet the Trump numbers below zero, but rated them somewhat fairly, all in the positive range, only slowly dropping over time, unevenly. The numbers do eventually plummet -- but that's during COVID, and last about a year (not the "two months" Republicans gave it. And though numbers do start to go when Joe Biden becomes President in January, 2021, you'll note that Democrats are still be fair by acknowledging that the economy is not good and not recovered yet, still rating the Biden economy below 0%. Democrats finally give the economy a positive rating around April, 2021 -- though not skyrocketed up to 90%, but realistically around only 5%. And even as their sentiment grows, Democrats still are honest enough to only give the rating a 35%. And it drops below the 0% baseline for Democrats in May, 2022. But then jumps back up a couple months later. Why? You see that vertical dotted line? That's when the Inflation Reduction Act passed, and people got checks and economic relief. Look back at the Republican chart -- after the Inflation Reduction Act passed, and they got checks and their economic situation improved with all Americans, they gave the economy a -95%! And since then, Democrats have watched the economy improve and -- though not dancing on the ceiling at a 90% GOP level -- their opinion of the economy has grown along with the encouraging economic news to 40%. As for Independents, Krugman says that polls show that Independents who lean Republican react the same as Republicans -- and Independents who lean Democratic react the same as Democrats. So, the charts have Independent reaction built into them. The point being, as Krugman writes, is that along Democratic numbers are lower than the economic news suggests they should be, "Democrats have more or less fully accepted the good news." And his larger point is that despite what the overall polls show "the public" thinks about the economy, since that includes Republicans who always says the economy is terrible when Democrats are in the White House, Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents actually fell pretty good with it -- as they should. And therefore, the party shouldn't be at all reticent about talking about it. Or as Krugman puts it -- "So people who will say you're out of touch if you tout the current economy are people who will never, ever vote Democrat anyway. Boast away!" When I was tracking down the groundhog video I posted here for Groundhog Day, I came across this video. It’s a series of odd, fun TV ads for Lay’s Potato Chip which I’d never seen. That turns out to be for a good reason -- they only just started airing on Disney-owned ABC, on Groundhog Day. They star the actor Stephen Tobolowsky, and are a sort of homage to the movie Groundhog Day, in which he had a popular role as ‘Ned Ryerson,’ the annoying insurance salesman. To be clear, he’s not recreating that role, it’s just his connection to the movie that they draw on. As I did more research into the ads, it turns out that they were made by the Maximum Effort marketing agency co-owned by Ryan Reynolds. And were produced by Jimmy Kimmel’s production company, Kimmelot. Reynolds posted this collection on his YouTube site, and wrote, “What if we tried to make ads more fun the other 364 days of the year?” I should note, as well, that periodically I mention my friend here Rob Hedden, who’s a writer-director. And whenever he directs a movie, he tries to draw as much as he can from his “repertory company” of sorts, actors whose work he loves and knows he can count on. And Stephen Tobolowsky is one of those. And Rob always speaks so well of “Tobo,” it made it even more fun for me to come across this. As brief background, Garry Trudeau has done a few scathing strips in the past about Balance of Nature and Prevagen. Apparently, he also did a strip recently that was about a Balance of Nature “research study” on rats (which seems like it might have taken place in Russia).
That brings us to Sunday’s strip. I can't embed the whole thing, but you can find it by clicking here. This is how it begins... |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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