Odd Bits - Editia Latina

Republicans are still bellyaching over the president daring to help the lives of ordinary citizens by easing their debt load. As usual, misinformation, misdirection, and outright lies take center stage.

Misinformation: this meme.

One of the main points of the debt relief order is that just getting a job does not solve the problem of paying off the debt. Between the high interest and the structuring of the payment process (to pay interest before principle), it takes a truly high-paying job to make a dent, let alone pay it all off. Lots of people struggling with student debt have jobs. But they also have life expenses like housing, groceries, medical issues, and utilities, all of which are at all-time highs. Unlike non-executive wages.

The simplistic notion of “Just get a job” doesn’t do justice to the situation. In fact, it pretends that’s the solution when it clearly is not. “Just get a job as a CEO or Hedge Fund Manager” would be much more accurate, but sadly, there are not tens of thousands of such job openings.

I saw a commercial last week that was intended to mock the notion of student debt relief. In it, they had people portraying various manual laborers sarcastically talking about how they don’t mind paying for other people to go to college. This brings us to:

Misdirection: Talking about how all these “college graduates” get a free education on the backs of the rest of them.

One of the glaring problems with the whole situation is that student debt is hardly limited to people that got their degrees. When I went to school, I was told that only about a quarter of the freshman class would ever graduate. Assuming those stats are accurate, or close to accurate, that leaves a buttload of people who took out the loans but never earned that degree that was supposed to be key in paying off the loan.

Sure, some partied their way out of school, and others couldn’t hack it academically, but there are also many who had to drop out for other reasons, like having to go to work to support a family, medical issues, or getting pregnant and starting a family. Or any of a myriad of reasons that don’t involve a lack of effort or attention. So right out of the gate, they have to find entry-level (and usually low-paying) jobs and still service a high-interest loan.

Also, consider that $10,000 doesn’t necessarily pay off a student loan. While a reduced payment is welcome, the payment structure is still the same and the lendee still has to make payments aggressively if they are to ever pay down the balance.

Republicans don’t want you to think about those sides of the story, they’d rather you concentrate on getting angry over supporting basket-weavers, navel-gazers, and partiers.

The commercial actors also mention paying the loans for “rich guys,” which brings us to:

Outright Lies: The advertiser knows very well that there is no debt relief in this order for anyone making more than $125,000 a year, which hardly qualifies as “rich,” so this is an outright lie. That’s what bothers me so much; that these guys are broadcasting a 100% verifiable lie, knowing a segment of the population will eat it up. They do this just to make more tax money available for being grifted by the banking industry. Keeping a boot on the necks of the working poor is just a fringe benefit.

Free Speech

You may have heard that President Biden gave a speech last week. Not many heard it first-hand, as none of the major networks covered it live, but the reverberations were massive. Immediately there was a great crying-out from the Radical Right, for having just been called out as fascists. Gee, all they did was try to overthrow the government, there was no need for name calling!”

I saw a conservative Facebook friend writing about this as the most incendiary and divisive speech ever. I was like, “Have you ever HEARD TFG speak before? Perhaps you’ve heard the crowd mooing back about “Brandon?” Christ, the cognitive dissonance is off the charts. Like most bullies, these people love to dish it out but they cry like babies when it’s thrown back. Perhaps it’s because it’s got that extra sting of truth.

I say it’s about time the Dems take the gloves off and go toe to toe. I’d rather be aggressive and win (by telling the truth) than turn the “other cheek” and get pasted.

Free Press

I came across a little editing snafu within the Baltimore Sun this weekend. It seems the Chess column was designed for a niche audience: Popes.

The text is in Latin. Not “Latin-American,” but Latin Latin. Like, Ancient Rome Latin. Medical School Latin. Ancient English Teacher Latin.

And not only that, what’s up with the chessboard moves on the right? They look like redacted nuclear codes sent by TFG. I think they’re playing it a little fast and loose in the page design room.

Local Poop

We’ve had a bit of stress over the last week… our dog came down with a case of the runs. We’re so fortunate I work from home because on Monday, the boy came to me every 60-90 minutes to be let out for a squirt. If we were both away from home for work, well I don’t even want to think about what kind of fresh hell we’d return to at the end of the day.

Sweetpea scheduled a vet appointment for Saturday so until then, we tried to fix things through diet. No more kibble and scraps, our boy dined on chicken breast, rice, broth, and a probiotic at every meal.

Our new preoccupation became trying to get glimpses of what the dog was producing and how to describe it, which wasn’t always easy or successful when he had to go out after dark. And we had to make extra sure we wore shoes out in the yard.

His frequency of going tapered off as the week went past until Friday when he never attempted a poop at all, so we were beginning to worry about the opposite condition taking hold. Like what if he now had a big chunk of rice holding up the works? We wanted to cancel the vet appointment, (“Put him on bland food for the week. That’ll be $300,”) but we didn’t want to be foolish about it.

Then when I got up Saturday morning, Sweetpea was out grocery shopping, but I found this note:

* "At the Loin” refers to the local “Food Lion,” which we always refer to as the “Food Loin” or just “The Loin.”

But yes, that was the top story, that we had finally achieved “poop.” Huzzah!

When she got back and gave me the rundown, she said she’d “Never been so glad to see a piece of shit in her life.”

What really cracked me up is the “we” part of the note, because it read to me like she was crouching down right alongside him. I’m sure the neighbors with Ring cameras would have been shocked. Or amused.

 Director’s DVD Commentary: The post title “Editio Latina” translates to “The Latin Edition.”