I don't think the discussion will be that all consuming once the primaries are over. You've got to admit things look more interesting than usual now.
2: There's an apochryphal Chinese curse on that topic.
I used to not really read the parenting threads, but then I started dating someone who has a 6yo child. Now the parenting threads are more relevant and interesting to me.
What I'm saying, heebie, is, maybe you'll start hanging out with Ted Cruz.
You could always post a thread on the Brexit referendum for a change. What do the colonials think about that?
4. Seriously dating, then? Well done that punster!
I always think it involves Belgium at first.
Someone I know on twitter described the US election cycle as a denial of service attack on world (or at least UK) political culture. Despite epic wankery from our own government, Brexit (as per Chris' above), UK social media and the press are massively dominated by the US primaries, and Trump.
At least our election cycles only take about 1.5 years out of every four years. Or two, if you watch Congress.
"I could vote for Trump, but not Clinton"
"If you're voting for Donald Trump, you might be getting something very good or very bad. If you're voting for Hillary Clinton, you're going to get the same thing. Do you want the same thing?"
When the dude's right, he's right. Except for the "very good" part.
The greater point is that this is obviously an angry "change election" and unless Clinton works like hell and comes up with something interesting, she will lose.
I suggested promising to never talk to Republicans and work only for a Dem House in 2018.
"If you're voting for Hillary Clinton, you're going to get the same thing. Do you want the same thing?"
My God, that's a great line.
Clinton will never ever ever be able to distance herself from Obama the breadth of a hair.
What does it mean that in RCP polling averages, Rubio and Cruz now both consistently poll higher in head-to-heads with Clinton? Someone reassure me that's an artifact.
13
Why would she ever want to distance herself from the most successful US president in a generation?
Also, watch Webb.
It is far from outrageous that Trump picks a Democrat as VP, and Webb would add experience and foreign polict cred. And maybe Virginia.
"If you're voting for Hillary Clinton, you're going to get the same thing. Do you want the same thing?"
My God, that's a great line.
It really isn't. Or at least not unless you want her to win. If Clinton manages to put together the Obama coalition again, she wins, and it won't even be close.
Krugman gets it right:
As I see it, then, we should actually welcome Mr. Trump's ascent. Yes, he's a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people's cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times.
Clinton will never ever ever be able to distance herself from Obama the breadth of a hair.
And we all know that Obama could never win a national election.
14: The media focus isn't on Rubio or Cruz - or to the extent that it is, it's because they oppose Trump, which makes them look good by comparison.
If they succeed in dispatching Trump, that process is going to be ugly and will cut into their support. And then Hillary will be waiting to pounce.
I have a thought experiment I've been thinking -- how would the primary season have unfolded if Trump had decided to run as a Democrat?
It's like we're on a treadmill, trying to hone in on one very important problem: whether birds are dinosaurs.
Gab away here! Gab away there! The secret liberal matriarchy shows its iron fist.
Adding to my 22, note that Sanders comes out very well against the Republicans because he, too, hasn't been subject to any kind of sustained attack. (Contra Bernie's more sensitive supporters.)
The main rap on Bernie has been that he's too idealistic. Rough stuff!
Also seconding a Brexit thread. I've been wondering what the Europeans think.
2: They'll be interesting in some sense no matter what. But they might be too scary and/or depressing to talk about too much. That is a mixed blessing.
4
I used to not really read the parenting threads, but then I started dating someone who has a 6yo child. Now the parenting threads are more relevant and interesting to me.
Am I the only one here with a child less than one year old? Maybe I should be paying attention to the parenting threads more in a "what I can look forward to" sense, but they mostly seem to be about relating to school officials and how 4-to-6 year-olds view the world. The only interesting stuff I can say about my daughter is that she's ridiculously cute, and still not crawling yet which I have mixed feelings about, and our biggest concern is getting her to sleep through the night. (She's much better than most kids her age, apparently, but there's room for improvement.)
14: Here's some reassurance: She's much better-known than them and people already have strong opinions both for and against, which makes her look worse with low-information voters. And right now to everyone but Trump supporters, Cruz and Rubio look reasonable in comparison to Trump, but if it were a race between Clinton and them that wouldn't be relevant. And if Trump is the nominee it's definitely not relevant.
All that being said I share your concern at least a bit. Clinton's electability seems to be taken for granted too much.
23: Clinton would have definitely been the Democratic nominee. Trump would have sucked a lot of air out of Bernie's room. (I'm assuming Trump would adopt a less racist platform and attitude. If the thought experiment is about the present-day Trump completely unchanged except for which debates he's showing up at, he would get tarred and feathered, maybe literally.) No room for two anti-establishment figures in one primary. On the Republican side, it's really hard to say. Cruz would be the front-runner if Trump left today but he's both Cuban and Canadian; that's a problem for the base. Would Huckabee have done better? Rand Paul? Christie?
Can we lock the Super Tuesday thread? It's fittingly at 538 comments.
If Trump had tried to adapt himself to run as a Democrat, he would have looked a lot like Jim Webb, no?
I think Trump decided to run as a Republican because not having to be not racist gives you an automatic boost when running as anti-establishment.
29: That could be a new rule. And no guarantee of a new election thread when one caps out.
19 is a nice and non-crazy way of putting the argument, but the concept of a "whistle-blower" implies that there are people who get angry and change their mind once the whistle is blown.
The risk with Trump is that the whistle is blown and no one gives a shit. Instead of confirming for everyone that Republicans are as evil as we, the smart guys, have always believed them to be and inaugurating a new wave of understanding that Republicans are dicks, he affirmatively makes them even worse and crazier -- while still allowing them to claim 50% or more political control over the country. I'm still sticking with the view that -- to be clear, between very bad options -- when option (1) is someone openly and explicitly monstrous, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and option (2) is slightly more covertly and hypocritically monstrous, and somewhat answerable to a political establishment with some tenuous connections to reality, option (2) is better. I mean "better for the long term and for the country."
I do think that Trump is less electable than Rubio or a more generic Republican (maybe not Cruz), so in straight terms of "do the Rs win the 2016 Presidential election" his rise might on net be a good thing. But that's not at all the same thing as "welcoming" his ascent or viewing it in any way as a positive thing, because it's a seriously goddamn bad thing for the country.
The "Tea Party" is a good comparison here. They were clearly not on the merits much worse than bog-standard but somewhat more civilized conservative Republicans. They were openly and demonstrably crazy in a way that turned other people off. They helped their party to lose many very contestable general elections. But, even with all that we're in a world of partial Republican control over our political system. And since Republicans aren't likely to be completely out of power in the near or medium term, the Tea Party's appearance on the scene has made things, on net, worse.
I'm feeling increasingly pessimistic about the chances for either Clinton or Sanders in the general. I think Trump or Rubio will give them problems (for different reasons). I think they could beat Cruz, but I don't think he will be the nominee. Someone say something to cheer me up.
Last night there was a presidential debate over penis size. How can you not still be cheered?
34: When I feel that way I remind myself that Megan and heebie are always right.
Remember when everyone was worried McCain or Romney might win? And afterwords how stupid it looked to have been worried about such a thing?
35: They didn't actually unbuckle their belts and pull down their pants, so there's still room to fall.
I only watched it on Twitter, so I didn't know that.
it's a seriously goddamn bad thing for the country
I've been pretty giddy about the rise of Trump and the resulting Great Schism of the GOP. But I'm having second thoughts now and wondering if racially motivated violence will increase as Trump emboldens the jackholes. Like this story:
"They were screaming racial slurs: 'Heil Hitler', 'AV Skins,' just numerous racial slurs toward the Hispanics," the deputy, whose full name was not provided, said in an on-camera interview with The Antelope Valley Times. "One had a Confederate flag wallet, and he kept doing the 'Heil Hitler' salute."
The district attorney's office said the three defendants were charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of assault with force likely to cause injury, all felonies. It said the defendants committed the assaults "because of the victims' status and perceived race or ethnicity."
So if Brexit happens and then Scotland wants to leave the UK, will Spain be able to block Scotland from rejoining the EU? What would Brexit mean for Northern Ireland?
35: I was wondering whether it would have been possible with a sufficiently troll-y opponent, to actual bait Trump into dropping his pants during the debate.
I'm so optimistic I'm speculating as to what the Democrats agenda should be when they take back Congress in the fall.
Congress is a bigger reason to worry about a three-way race. If Romney and Trump both run, it is even more likely to affect Congressional races than the presidential one.
Cyrus: and still not crawling yet which I have mixed feelings about
Take it as an unmixed positive, really. Failure to crawl ever doesn't say a bad thing about her developmentally, but makes baby care much easier.
My two were essentially meatloaves until they started walking, and it was great. You could put them down in a position, and they would reliably stay there and not do any damage. Crawling babies are terrors.
41. Fuck knows. Unexplored territory and nobody has thought about it.
meatloves
I would do anything for love, but I won't do that.
43 seems impossible but oh man if it happened then yes, I would agree that the rise of Trump was on net good.
Damn you, I fixed the typo. But not fast enough.
I'm feeling increasingly pessimistic about the chances for either Clinton or Sanders in the general.
I still feel confident. I think the key is always turnout and that the very fact of Donald Trump will help turnout Democratic voters even if he ends up not being the nominee.
34: Cruz is viscerally repulsive to a lot of people so I'm guessing he'd appear strong for a while and then would just sort of slowly die off a bit, though with a dangerous level of support from Republicans and especially Evangelical/Hard-righters.
Trump is only scary inasmuch as he could exploit the establishment v. everyone else dynamic, or turn the campaign into a substance-free personality contest (sort of like he's doing to the Republicans right now) by owning the press too much to let "no let's seriously discuss politics" take hold. And the press might just decide "screw it, let's play fun Bush v. boring Gore again". But I'm guessing Trump would be disturbing enough to the people that own the papers to prevent them from actually doing much about the various invented Clinton scandals.
Rubio's only hope would be a Bush v. Gore style full court press on Clinton from the media. And I think it would be less effective not because he's an empty suit who doesn't know anything aside from what he's memorized, but because he's an empty suit who doesn't know anything aside from what he's memorized and visibly panics at the sight of even the slightest push back. It's something that I'm surprised hasn't hurt him more in the primary so far, but I'm guessing the desperate "he's got to be the nominee he's got to" establishment combined with the fact that his only real support base is people who are terrified that Trump or Cruz might win is covering over just how bad he'd come off in a general election debate.
I'm so optimistic I'm speculating as to what the Democrats agenda should be when they take back Congress in the fall.
Which social aim should be pursued incrementally by giving people the option to take a brand new, confusing, paperwork-laden tax deduction?
If Trump is the R nominee, it'll be murder on the downticket Republicans. They'll constantly be walking through a minefield of being asked whether they agree with every successive crazy thing that Trump says. If they disagree, they lose the support of Trump voters, but if they agree they have to explain why, and most don't have the brashness to and P.T. Barnum chops to sell crazy the way Trump does. Trump may be the one person in America who can return Congress to Democratic control.
41: AIUI, (1) there's no mechanism for membership to be transferred, so Scotland would have to apply from scratch and (2) applications need unanimous approval, so yes Spain could block it.
But chris y's 43 is really a much better answer.
If they disagree, they lose the support of Trump voters, but if they agree they have to explain why, and most don't have the brashness to and P.T. Barnum chops to sell crazy the way Trump does.
"Yes, I, the bland careerist local prosecutor, also share that particular, um, view."
Which social aim should be pursued incrementally by giving people the option to take a brand new, confusing, paperwork-laden tax deduction?
Very nice. I chuckled.
55: The obvious solution is to let Scotland be the successor state to the United Kingdom and have the rest of the current U.K. go back to being Great Britain.
Surely it would be only moderately good Britain then?
Re: 60
Shite Britain, I think you'll find.
The only downside is that I think Scotland would have to take over Northern Ireland.
Currrntly it is in full the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And GB refers to the whole island including Scotland. So it would be Lesser Britain. Except that's already taken by Brittany. So, the Kingdom of Middling Britain and Northern Ireland.
The name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Norn Iron. In the event of Scottish independence they would have to change this since "Great Britain" is the geographical name of the island on which England, Scotland and Wales are situated and an independent Scotland would still occupy a large chunk thereof. But this is a trivial problem in the greater scheme of things.
Remember when everyone was worried McCain or Romney might win?
I remember people flat out despairing during Palin's convention speech, which was mystifying. Trump is a deeply divisive candidate in a party that has lost the popular vote in 5 out of the last 6 presidential elections. That's not a winning strategy; it's a tantrum.
wondering if racially motivated violence will increase as Trump emboldens the jackholes
That was in the cards with or without a Trump candidacy. This is an ugly time.
63 is a good point. The great majority of Northern Irish unionists are of Scottish descent and might prefer to remain in a union with Scotland than with England, where they're not right popular at the best of times. OTOH, I can't see an SNP government welcoming them with open arms,
Just build a big canal around Scotland to make it another island.
More seriously, if Scotland becomes the succesor state it will have to divest itself of all sorts of random legacy commitments like owning Bermuda and suppling monarchs for Canada. And conversely Middling Britain would have to renegotiate all its current treaties. And anyway Scotland would succeed the UK after Brexit, so that wouldn't solve the problem on its own.
Is there still an actually-existing Jacobite pretender who could take the Scottish throne if offered?
70. I refer you to 46. In fact there is no chance of Scotland becoming the successor state because England is run by a gang of obnoxious bullies who aren't bright enough to allow it, although it's just possible that Paris would put the idea forward just to make mischief for Boris Johnson or whoever would be PM by then.
71: Are you really asking if there's time to make up a phony ancestry for yourself so you can claim the throne?
I'm sure we could find one. It had only been 209 years since the last one (who was a cardinal and childless).
71. The *Jacobite Pretender" at the moment is the titular Duke of Bavaria, who is 80 and unmarried. He has never shown the slightest interest in any British pretending.
Wasn't Brexit the super poisonous stuff that BP put in the Gulf to clean up the oil?
I did say 46 is the best answer. The question is, what are the actual chances of brexit? What is the actual Tory policy?
33: With Bernie, you found it dispositive that he could lower the chance of a Democrat being elected. Trump's apparent positive impact on Democratic odds doesn't seem to be a factor for you.
That's not inconsistent, of course - you find Bernie to be, in practice, not too different from Hillary, and Trump to be dramatically worse than the alternatives. I, on the other hand, would go so far as to say, on net, Trump is preferable to Rubio and Cruz.
What is Trump's stand on carpet bombing? How do the neocons feel about Trump? Who is likeliest to nominate a tolerable Supreme Court justice? Does Trump imperil Social Security or Medicare? What is Trump's position on whether women should be forced to bear children conceived by rape or incest?
Could Trump cut deals with the Democrats? He could! Could Trump avoid invading a Middle Eastern country? He could! (He might be one up on Hillary there.)
Bottom line: On almost every major issue, Trump is either the same as his rivals, or visibly superior.
Every major issue, that is, except one: Racism.
I think people generally understate the importance of the distinction between dog-whistle racism and overt racism. It's important. But it's not that important. Policy-wise, given the constraints placed by the existence of other branches of government, I don't see Trump going anywhere that Cruz or Rubio wouldn't also go. Mexico is not going to pay for a wall.
As you decry the Tea Party, remember that Cruz and Rubio are both TPers to the core - with all the racism and craziness that goes with that.
You cite, as a relative virtue for Cruz and Rubio, that they are:
somewhat answerable to a political establishment with some tenuous connections to reality
But there is no such establishment. George W. Bush was the epitome of the Republican Establishment, and he was proudly non-reality-based.
Trump is a clever guy, and he'll do whatever is in his own best interests. He's smart enough to know that nuclear war isn't going to come out well for him, personally. Cruz and Rubio, meanwhile, may be expecting the Rapture to grab them before the bombs actually hit the ground. Those two are pretty fucking crazy and unpredictable.
And as Krugman says, the mere fact of Trump's candidacy means that the Republicans are going to have a hard time returning to business-as-usual. That, in itself, puts him ahead of his rivals.
45
Take it as an unmixed positive, really. Failure to crawl ever doesn't say a bad thing about her developmentally, but makes baby care much easier.
Heh, thanks for the reassurance on the developmental issue. As for baby care, rationally I realize that crawling makes her almost entirely more difficult, but I've been looking forward it a tiny bit because things got easier when she started sitting up on her own. We have no soft carpets in our house worth mentioning. Until she could sit up, I never wanted to set her down lying on the floor, but if I had to reach into a drawer or bag or something, I had to either do it one-handed or set her down somewhere cushiony and walk and forth.
Recently, though, I can just sit her down on the floor while I'm doing whatever I have to do and she almost never falls over and bonks her head. How convenient!
He has never shown the slightest interest in any British pretending.
When he's alone, he daydreams that Mary Poppins is his nanny.
That's not true. Trump has actively promised much more explicit war crimes than any of the other Republican candidates.
British pretending is for losers. Scottish pretending is a whole different proposition.
76 -- thanks. And God bless Wikipedia, there is detailed answer. Here is some more info on the Jacobite pretender, Franz, Duke of Bavaria. Seems like not at all a bad guy, actually spent time in a concentration camp during the Nazi period. Modern art collector. Decent choice for the Scottish throne.
But even more awesomely, the future Jacobite succession will shortly move into the ruling family of Lichtenstein, specifically, this 20 year old guy who obviously already speaks good English. Lichtenstein-Scotland takeover!!! Make this happen, Scottish people.
It's hard to estimate the chances of Brexit, but it's far from negligible. A lot of leading Tories are on Team Out, including several cabinet ministers. The racist dog whistles flying around are fucking deafening. The Labour Party has at least put somebody actually pro-EU (Corbyn isn't) in charge of their campaign, but they haven't done anything yet. It's a hot mess.
45: Take it as an unmixed positive, really
I don't want to make you worry, and I don't have any actual knowledge, but my wife says the first thing that was developmentally off about her daughter (who turned out to be autistic, in case you didn't already know) was that she didn't crawl. Obviously, many, many counterexamples.
Seriously, if Scotland can't get its shit together and move into dynastic union with Lichtenstein, it doesn't deserve independence.
85 There are two things wrong with the nice old man inheriting the Scottish throne. The first is that he's Catholic, so they would have to change the law to allow it, and although that would be a no-brainer in most places it might actually cause trouble in Scotland. The second problem is that his claim by descent is actually not as good as the present lot, so it would be a bit silly. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the SNP are republican.
On the reassurance side, both my kids were late crawlers and one barely crawled at all (like, a week) before walking. None have developmental issues despite being age-appropriately insane.
Doh, Lichtenstein isn't actually in the EU, so a Scotland-Lichtenstein merger wouldn't help.
But Scotland must have a monarch, lest Canada and New Zealand collapse in bloody revolution!
Good point. I think the Bavarian Wittelsbachs would probably stay Catholic and renounce Scotland, but the Liechtenstein* 20 year old? That guy would totally get down with Calvinism to get a chance at ruling from Edinburgh, plus there would be an easy Scotland ski connection in Scotland's alpine outpost/weapons cache/mountain fortress. Make this happen.
*my spelling is improving comment-to-comment.
82: More of some types of war crimes. Less unprovoked invasions, which is also a war crime -- and one that leads to other war crimes.
At any rate, a Scottish republic is infinitely more likely than a Scotland with any of the pretenders.
While we're making up Scottish royalty fan-fiction scenarios, what if Brexit happens, Scotland leaves, QE2 dies, and the Church of Scotland decides that Charles in an unacceptable monarch. Would William accept the Scottish throne? If he said no, who would Scotland try next?
Oops, embarrassing error:
QE2Elizabeth the first, Queen of Scots dies
Instead of confirming for everyone that Republicans are as evil as we, the smart guys, have always believed them to be and inaugurating a new wave of understanding that Republicans are dicks, he affirmatively makes them even worse and crazier -- while still allowing them to claim 50% or more political control over the country
New bumper sticker:"Party Like It's 1859"
Before I read the comments, I just wanted to say:
Arcane re-worn debates over small details here!
Isn't this the motto of unfogged?
Why not an armed* uprising to install Bonnie Prince Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein onto the throne? If Scottish people weren't fundamentally pussies, they'd do this.
I guess the fan fiction way to do this scenario ends up with Princess Charlotte as the new Queen of Scots. She is the first in line to the throne who is unlikely to ever actually become King or Queen of England.
'Ok, I'll refresh the thread once more.'
101: That should have gone in the "taste" thread.
103 was to 98, but can go anywhere, really.
104: Trump will totally be selling his own leather before this is over.
87, 90: Yeah, my kids were like Tigre's.
||
I had posted this at the end of the Hamilton thread, but I'll post it here as well because it seems like the sort of trifle which could be appealing to anyone procrastinating on a Friday:
This is fabulous! -- "Watch the Schuyler Sisters Rap Feminist Quotes"
Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones, who play the Schuyler sisters in the Broadway musical Hamilton, were invited by Glamour magazine to rap feminist quotes in honor of Women's History Month.
|>
I think Jacob Weisberg has definitively settled the Trump vs. rivals argument in favor of Trump by coming down against him:
This is why those arguing that Trump's policies are more moderate than those of his rivals Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio miss the point. Trump's authoritarianism is an amalgam not of left and right but of wacko left and wacko right: He thinks that George Bush was to blame for 9/11 and that Muslims should be barred from the U.S. Believing both of those things does not make Mr. Trump a centrist--it makes him an eclectic extremist.
Here is Trump's actual wacky left-wing extremist position about Bush:
"You talk about George Bush, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time." The interviewer, Bloomberg's Stephanie Ruhle, pushes back and says, "Hold on: You can't blame George Bush for that." Trump presses on: "He was president, okay? Don't blame him or ... blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his reign."
What a nut that Trump is!
Weisberg again:
Since Super Tuesday, the GOP's reaction to Trump has been mildly heartening, with anti-Trump ads on television and principled politicians like Mitt Romney denouncing him amid torrents of personal abuse.
That's right: Mitt Romney, man of principle, who heavily promoted his endorsement from Trump four years ago, is now angling for the brokered convention purely out of a desire to save America, and without a thought to his own political prospects. It was just an oversight that Romney declined to say whether he would endorse Trump if he wins the nomination.
I say, burn it down! The Republican Party! Center-left pundits! Fox News! Up against the wall!
Okay, okay. I suppose Weisberg hasn't settled this completely. But when Saletan chimes in, I think we can consider this question resolved.
Just saw this headline that Romney now says he won't vote for Trump in general.
I'm sure the "crazy left" idea that Saletan quotes is the idea that we shouldn't cut social security.
110: I actually saw the Today Show bit on which that story is based, and the story pretty much gets it entirely wrong. (Although admittedly, it conveys the impression that Romney was trying to convey.)
Romney said he wasn't going to vote for Trump, and he wasn't going to vote for Clinton, and Trump wasn't going to be the nominee.
Here it is:
"I intend to vote for our nominee and I expect that nominee to be a real conservative, a real Republican," he said.
At one point, he came a little closer than this to saying he wouldn't ever vote for Trump, but I think he preserved his deniability.
Likewise, he said that he couldn't conceive of a circumstance where it would be appropriate to step in in a brokered convention, but when asked directly, he refused to flat-out say that there was no such circumstance possible.
He is leaving his options open.
109: Christ, Weisberg's argument is so stupid that I'm hoping that there's some other more egregious Trump quote we don't know about. The continuing desire of the media to let Bush off the hook for 9/11 is infuriating.
You mean like a quote where he said we have to kill the families of terrorists and then, when somebody asked him what he would do if the military refused to obey an order to kill the families of terrorist, he said something about how they wouldn't refuse him?
I think that was another case of "No, Trump is absolutely right." It's very hard to take seriously the "oh we would disobey an unlawful order like that" claims coming from the same people (CIA, armed forces, whoever) that were doing either those things or things morally (and legally) indistinguishable from them only a few years before at the request of the President at the time.
George Romney really stopped the Goldwater Republicans by skipping the 64 convention. The Romney's, not an ineffectual political family at all!
115: I think Moby's point was that Trump is an extraordinarily bad person, which, well, who can deny it? But if one of the other Republicans came out against 82 and 114, I missed it.
And I don't think their silence is a result of fear of confronting Trump and riling up his base. I think they are silent because they fear publicly agreeing with Trump, and angering decent human beings, a few of whom are going to have to vote Republican if the Republicans are going to win.
It's possible that I think Trump is better on many issues than Roberto and Moby do. But I also suspect that I think the Republican Establishment is worse on many issues than Moby and Roberto do.
The racist dog whistles flying around are fucking deafening.
I thought by this point the Brits had decided continentals were white.
I thought by this point the Brits had decided continentals were white.
I wouldn't be surprised if many still hold to the Calais rule.
This has been making the rounds on Twitter, and yet is genuine: first NYT article on Hitler in 1922.
But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch messes of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.
A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: "You can't expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them."
Someone, somewhere is probably still defending Hitler as not having been anti-Semitic, if you really got to know him.
If you knew Hitler like I know Hitler
Oh, oh, oh how he sells!
The world's a patsy for this cute Nazi
So, so, I romanticize this ratsy
I am so noble to tell of his fate
But while I'm telling
Sick folks I exhilarate
If you knew Hitler, you'd know that Hitler's
No, no worse than Mr Potato Head
120 is very true. The British even thought early reports on the holocaust were Soviet propaganda because, obviously, such policies would be insane. It's hard to accept someone can be genuinely smart and sincerely nuts at the same time.
In conclusion, a time traveller must kill baby Trump in his cradle.
114: I meant the implication that Trump was some sort of 9/11 truther.
Looks like today is Super Cruzday. Good for my prediction market portfolio.
125: 122 is an old MAD Magazine thing.
Thanks to a three-way election, Maine elected a racist Tea Party lunatic who is so despised by the bulk of his party that they considered impeaching him. That's Cruz Country, baby!
The second consecutive 3-way election. It's Nader squared.
The last time Maine didn't have at least a 3-way gubernatorial contest was 1982. Only once since then has a candidate received more than 50% of the vote (Angus King 1998) and he was an independent. To this day, no one has received more votes for governor in Maine since the winner of that 1982 election and he only won 62% of the vote.
How much of this is caucus vs. primary? Has Trump won any caucus state?
Also, is Rubio officially DOA? He couldn't even crack 10% in Maine, and he's battling it out for last place with Kasich in every other state. It's possible Kasich will get more delegates out of tonight.
I think after Super Tuesday it was clear that without some serious magic from out of nowhere Rubio was going down. I suspect part of his trouble now might be a chunk of the "Opportunists For Rubio" camp jumping ship to Cruz. At this point he's basically playing the Kasich game - staying in to dilute Trump's lead and maybe force a brokered convention, with the outside hope that a big win on the ides of march will change the dynamic of the race and put him back in play.
Also I'm pretty sure Trump has done OK in at least some of the caucus states, but I think KS and ME both have closed caucuses (to people not registered republican) which cuts into Trump's support among independents/god-only-knows-why-Democrats/etc.
When did they start having elections on Saturdays? It confuses me every time I see results. Like football on Thursday.
"He's winning Kentucky tonight" sounds like it ought to be a folk saying for something, but I'm not sure what.
And Clinton keeps winning in states she can't win in November.
Keep the faith for Sanders. All his better states are coming up, and Clinton is not impressing in swing states, or blue states.
Sanders could possibly win the nomination on the last day, in California.
Biggest Reason for Sanders Supporters to Hope for a Win: So far both Clinton and Sanders have been winning most of their states by large (60something - 30something type) margins, with the occasional tie-or-might-as-well-be-a-tie tossed in. Sanders in the midwest and northeast for the most part, and Clinton in the south. But at this point we've run through the majority of the Southern states, and a lot more Midwestern states remain. So if he can keep up his momentum we're heading into a part of the map that could be a lot stronger for him, and if he can manage MN/KS style wins the proportional allotment of delegates might not prevent him from closing the ~200 delegate gap that he has right now.
Biggest Reason for Clinton Supporters to Hope for a Win: She's actually going to win. And Sanders will not.
That's such a dumb argument at any time -- it in no way necessarily means that you will do better in a general election in a "blue" or "swing" state than another candidate if your same party simply because you win a primary (or, worse, a caucus) in that state.* But it's especially dumb when the two other states at issue are Kansas and Nebraska.
*eg, Jesse Jackson won Michigan, then a swing state, in the 1988 democratic primaries, and Mike Huckabee won the swing state of Iowa in 2008. Would either of those have been better general election candidates in those same states? Obviously of course not.
Or, an even better example, Rick Santorum winning the Republican vote in Colorado in 2012.
Or, I guess, Ted Cruz in Maine tonight.
It means precisely as much as having support among Democrats in South Carolina.
Right! But that's how primaries work.
Caucuses are simple. When some members of a political party love each other very, very, much...
...then when the voters reach the peak of their ecstasy highs, they all squint at their hookers and shout out the name of the candidate that the blurred image of the hooker looks most like. The delegates are then awarded proportionally to the number of times each candidates' name was called out.
"He's winning Kentucky tonight" sounds like it ought to be a folk saying banal country ballad.
they all squint at their hookers and shout out the name of the candidate that the blurred image of the hooker looks most like.
That plausibly explains why Rubio did relatively better in the more affluent districts, while Trump dominates in working class areas. Also, why Cruz won Oklahoma and Alaska.
I would have expected Hillary to do better in the caucuses then.
My understanding of caucuses was after six hours of dice rolling pizza and caffeinated sugar beverages everyone shouts out the name of the candidate they most want to roleplay slaying zombies or being president, or something, depending on the campaign.
150: The Democratic caucuses work differently. You shout out the name of the candidate you would most like to smoke a blunt with. Hence the surprise when Kerry overtook Dean in Iowa in 2004.
Hence the surprise when Kerry overtook Dean in Iowa in 2004.
You would think Dennis Kucinich would have done better that year...
Relatedly, here is an Ev-Psych theory I am inclined to believe: "Thousands of years of evolution have prepared us to be repulsed by Ted Cruz's face".
For Sanders to have any real hope of winning the nomination, he'll have to do well in Michigan, where I suspect he's going to lose by 15-20 points. All of the people who said from the get-go that he had no traction with African Americans were right. Doesn't mean that he or his partisans are racist, but it's unequivocally true. And no candidate is going to win the Democratic Party nomination with the support of African American voters.
And yes, I know Sanders is doing relatively well among younger African American voters. That's nice for him and maybe bodes well for the future. We'll see. But it's not enough now. Unless something very surprising happens -- a Clinton indictment, the whitey tape, whatever -- he's done. I'll still vote for him when I get my chance, but it will be, as it was always destined to be, a protest vote.
All of the people who said from the get-go that he had no traction with African Americans were right.
There is still the straw that northern blacks may vote differently from southern blacks, so I'll be grasping at that for the time being.
157 is totes possible! Unfortunately, the polling from Michigan, which I just looked up, makes it seems like Clinton is going to win even bigger than I suspected.
Agree that Sanders likely won't win in MI, but I like the ads he's been running here. They're positive and upbeat, focusing on his opposition to trade agreements and manufacturing jobs. He was also pretty good in news clips from appearances in Flint. I think it's not necessarily a problem of politics, more something akin to name recognition.
Well, that was poorly worded. Focused on his opposition to free trade agreements (eg NAFTA) and focused on bringing back manufacturing jobs.
Sanders's ads* have been great. His campaign has been absolutely amazing in nearly every way. The fact that he's winning states is the most hopeful thing that's happened in American politics in my lifetime.
* For example, this is the most powerful political ad I've ever seen.
That's 4 minutes long. Who is going to watch all that who isn't already voting for him? Anyway, I couldn't get it to load because somebody is using the internet to watch Slugterra.
most hopeful thing that's happened in American politics in my lifetime.
It sure is. But then it's been a pretty dispiriting run since '68.
It won't convince you to vote for him, but I'm pretty sure that's not the point of the ad.
I have to wait for Slugterra to end.
168: as I've said a gazillion times, but for the brief period between FDR's first election and Bobby Kennedy's death, American politics is pretty much a non-stop horror show. And even during the period of the New Deal consensus, things were pretty terrible for non-white people. USA! USA! USA!
I have to wait for Slugterra to end.
This is why we can't have a revolution.
No more masturbating to Nancy Reagan (is the grossest sentence I've ever written).
She'd probably have voted for Clinton if she'd lived.
Slugterra, huh? I might have to turn our resident YouTube Lets Player on to that one.
Watch it, Mobes. Seriously.
It won't convince you to vote for him, but I'm pretty sure that's not the point of the ad.
I agree with both of those. It's a great ad, and not a standard political ad.
171: I guess people who weren't there will always underestimate the horror of the fucking bipartisan consensus for the draft, Cold War, Empire, Vietnam, nuclear terror. The conformism was dispiriting also.
The economy did fucking rock, and there was hope for social progress.
Fucking entire histories and mountains of corpses are getting buried under smug and self-satisfied anti-racism and feminism.
Hey, I know! Meetup!
Why don't y'all spraypaint in florescent orange on the reflective black scar in DC:
"Oppressive white sexist scum. Fuck these guys."
Usually we stop drinking before that seems like a good idea.
Or we're too busy taking pictures in the bathtub/sex grotto.
So, as the primaries roll on, I assume Rubio is going to dominate in Puerto Rico. I suppose he can hang on to that until he gets crushed in FL. My guess is Sanders will win Maine by a landslide, because, well, Maine. Unless I'm underestimating how contrary Mainers like to be.
My guess is Clinton will win handily in PR, but it could provide a better sense of how Sanders does with (at least one group of) Latinos. I'm hoping he keeps it close-ish (
Never mind to 181.2, the Dems don't have a caucus in PR until June 5.
Way back to 132: Rubio is DOA because the GOP proportional delegate rules killed him on Super Tuesday in Alabama and Texas. The results shown at that link don't appear to be completely up to date, though.
Rubio's only hope is a contested convention; or, of course, Cruz dropping out (as if). Rubio's in it at this point, I imagine, just to try to keep Trump from taking Florida - winner take all state. Kasich likewise in Ohio.
They're trying to keep Trump from achieving a sheer majority (50% +1) of delegates, to keep him at just a plurality. In the latter case, Trump can fail to become the nominee on the so-called first ballot at the convention. If they go to a second ballot, things become a lot more dicey for Trump.
That's my understanding of state of play at the moment, at any rate.
I was about to pause to consider the horror of a Cruz nomination, but ... let's not do that.
Rubio's only hope is a contested convention
There's no chance they'd pick little Marco. None. He's in doing the bidding of people who don't want Trump or Cruz, and are hoping for a miracle.
This Tuesday is a big deal for Trump vs. Cruz. Michigan, yes, but also Mississippi and Idaho, which, together, have more delegates than Michigan. If Cruz can take 2 of 3, with his hugely ramped up effort in Florida and enough serious ass-kissing to get Marco out of the race, he can absolutely win the nomination.
At this point, I don't think Cruz gets to the WH absent HRC's indictment, but there are plenty of turns of the wheel to go yet.
Once it's one on one Cruz and Trump, it'll be great watching Trump knock the guy down. And knock him so far right, he can't pivot even if he wants to. And Cruz' whole deal is that he doesn't want to pivot.
185
In what way is the first ballot "so-called"?
Some people call me Maurice, cause I speak of the pompitous of love.
188: In what way is the first ballot "so-called"?
Oh, that's just what it's called. I didn't mean that it's wrongly so called.
187: Once it's one on one Cruz and Trump, it'll be great watching Trump knock the guy down. And knock him so far right, he can't pivot even if he wants to. And Cruz' whole deal is that he doesn't want to pivot.
I'm not sure Trump would need to knock him further right - he's already there, isn't he? That said, Cruz doesn't handle being belittled very well, and that of course is what Trump excels at.
Assuming a Cruz v. Clinton general election, I worry about turnout. The prospect of a Cruz presidency is truly terrifying to me. What will be needed, then, is a sustained public awareness campaign re: just what a Cruz presidency would mean. Sadly, a lot of people won't mind it.
Sanders' two main TV spots in MI: jobs/trade and Flint. The Flint one is pretty great. It reminds people that government's job is to protect its citizens, and the federal government should serve as a backstop after local and state officials failed. You don't hear that too often; most Dems pay lip service to the idea that smaller goveenment is a good thing.
VW, I assume you saw the interviews about the Garner ad? She approached his campaign and was given freedom to say whatever she wanted for that spot. Obviously, she's amazing, but I thought the fact that she spoke positively about the whole team and experience was really great.
The libertarian party convention calls it the zeroth ballot.
191: yeah, I've seen those interviews. It's a shame that Sanders isn't the right candidate for a national campaign, I don't think, because democratic socialism is the future. (I don't know if Carp was kidding about this the other day, but I genuinely believe it. I think my generation has to die off first, but maybe then.)
Based on my understanding of the word "dialectic," I think Republican Socialism is what's next.
187: I'm guessing Mississippi is leaning in a Trumpy direction, given the way Trump won LA (Cruz got most of his support along the western border it shares with TX/OK, and Trump along the eastern border it shares with Mississippi (and the ocean, but it doesn't get to vote). Michigan is up in the air as far as I know - Trump had a big big lead but in the latest poll Kasich was a couple points above him (suddenly) and Cruz may be doing better than the polling suggests as well. I really haven't a clue about Idaho - there are so few people there anyway that who knows and I don't know if anyone has bothered to poll it. Also it's the first state in that area to vote as far as I know so we don't have a feel for the regional variations.
The first ballot is kind of pro-forma, though, because at that point either someone has a majority of delegates and the enough state majorities to win or they don't and everyone is just getting it out of the way so they can start playing negotiation games for the second ballot. So a so-called ballot isn't an entirely bad way to describe it since it's a formality either way.
Not kidding. It's a question of how fast Millenials replace Fox News Geezers. I don't think 2016 is the year it tips, but am pretty sure that 2024 is far enough out. 2020 is too dependent on what happens in 2016 . . .
It's been decades since I watched one. Back when I was your age, hardly anybody had two TVs, so I had to watch what my dad wanted to watch or go outside where there was no air conditioning.
Maybe a north-south split in Idaho -- south going Cruz?
I was talking politics with a retired Idaho judge this week, and he says ID probably will legalize marijuana. In two centuries.
I kind of want to see Trump go after Cruz more seriously too because of all of them he's easily the creepiest and scariest. But "Lying Ted" really isn't as good a line as Little Marco so I'm not sure if he's hit on the right attack yet. And he should probably do that sooner rather than later.
I mean, yes Cruz does lie all the time, but that's not a negative with Republican primary voters in the slightest: they're somewhere between totally fine with that kind of thing and thinking it's a positive feature in a candidate. But I suspect Trump has already realized that that line isn't helping too much (just like "choke artist" didn't do much against Rubio, but "I'm pretty sure Little Marco" hurts him badly).
The leftward trend among US youth is almost entirely (not entirely, but almost) due to the youth vote being markedly less white. Slightly more than half of 18-29 year olds who are white vote Republican, and this is likely to get worse as they get older. Fortunately 45% of voters in that cohort are non-white. So whether or not the future brings democratic socialism in the US depends almost entirely on persuading minority voters en masse to vote for democratic socialism (which they may well).
I think the hopeful bit for the "youngish" (not so young for a lot of them, but...) generation's liberalism isn't necessarily that the white members of it are less likely to be racists or Republicans as it is that the ones who aren't in that group, minority or white, tend to be significantly on the left of Democrats from other generations. So you see a bunch more "Oh, I'm a socialist" type responses where you used to see "I think I'm more of a moderate than a liberal". (I suspect this is especially true of the white ones, but I don't really have much evidence there.)
There's no chance they'd pick little Marco. None. He's in doing the bidding of people who don't want Trump or Cruz, and are hoping for a miracle.
They all are at this point. I think that Mitt Romney strongly implied that he (or some other Northern Republican that hasn't spent his entire career appeasing a rabidly racist electorate) is ready to be drafted at a brokered convention, and that if voters want that, they should turn up to vote for whichever non-Trump candidate is most viable in their state.
200: May be confusing causality here.
Minorities may be voting Democratic because Republicans are racist, and may even give lip service to socialistic ideas, but may not be that favorable to actual socialism. I agree that some "social issues" are "left," but they do not map onto economic redistribution or strong social Keynesianism all that closely when more options are available.
Big difference between social democracy and democratic socialism. Sanders is correct to choose the latter.
It is useful to look at Europe, esp under stress. Greece voted in Syriza, voted for resistance, but when the people's views were really measured, they accepted neoliberalism. Podemos is having a hard time in Spain, Hollande had to pull back in France.
Social democracy, where politics but not economics is more egalitarian, can end up in situations where interest groups consider themselves socialist only in wanting to be able to vote themselves a particular bigger piece of the pie, and end up being controlled by neoliberalism.
In fact, if we assume that African-Americans are not just voting in a "bloc" for reasons of racial solidarity, but are voting for the "moderate" neoliberal Clinton in full understanding that she represents their economic interests better than Sanders does or might, African Americans may not be all that economically left after all. That is what the evidence would seem to show.
Coates may want to vote for "reparations" but not want to redistribute his MacArthur Grant or royalties, especially to poorer whites.
Actually Coates is supporting Sanders, so substitute Kanye or whoever in there.
I'd seen lots about the ad in 165, but I hadn't actually ever watched it, because, well, 4 minutes. But now I've watched it and agree: it's really good.
Minorities may be voting Democratic because Republicans are racist, and may even give lip service to socialistic ideas, but may not be that favorable to actual socialism.
I was explaining this to someone the other day: that there are actually strong currents of conservativism among African-Americans, and many would likely vote Republican if not for the whole Party of Giant Racists thing.
many would likely vote Republican if not for the whole Party of Giant Racists thing
People have been saying this about Jews for a very long time, and it's still not really true. I mean, it's truer than it is for African Americans, but still.
I'd like to elaborate a bit on why I think they're all doing the bidding of people who don't want Trump or Cruz and want a reset at the convention.
If it gets to a brokered convention, they will deny Trump the nomination. It's not too hard to see why. Virtually everyone in the top levels of government is refusing to work with him, including the military. The only economist that I can think of that thinks his plans would mean anything other than the kind of collapse that makes us long for the docile days of 2008 is Larry Kudlow (WARNING: BREITBART LINK), who was fired from Bear Stearns for letting his coke habit get out of hand. Military top brass are starting to say that they'd have to refuse his orders. The man is a literal national security threat at this point. If it gets to a brokered convention, the party will be able to argue (basically correctly) that because a majority of voters actually voted against Trump and many would leave the party if he were to be the nominee, he has no unique claim the the nomination. This leaves Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio.
Rubio looks weak, scripted, and plainly not ready to be President, and Hillary Clinton is likely to eat the guy for breakfast once he is subject to any scrutiny. Kasich seems plain goofy and a bit too wishy-washy and bland for the conservative base. And, more importantly, while Trump may have not gotten a majority, both of these guys have done so poorly in the primary season that it will look even less legitimate to give them the nomination. That leaves Ted Cruz.
Cruz is out for the simple reason that he is completely detested by the people who will be charged with choosing the nominee. I think that deep down, guys like Paul Ryan would probably rather see a Clinton Presidency than have to address the guy who forced them to sit still while he read from Atlas Shrugged and Green Eggs and Ham just to increase his own visibility and profile among Republican voters. I think he is well aware that he can't win a brokered convention, which is why he's now urging voters to vote for him simply to stop Trump. Every move Ted Cruz makes is meticulously calculated and he doesn't like to say anything of substance if he doesn't have to[1]. This represents a real break from his strategy for the past eight months of acting relatively neutral with Donald and hoping to quietly sweep up his voters in the event that Trump said something truly beyond the pale and alienated his supporters.[2] If he liked his chances at a brokered convention, I think you'd see him working more with Kasich and Rubio to carve out their own territories to minimize Trump support.
If the kinds of people who back Kasich or Rubio were comfortable with Cruz winning the nomination, they'd tell them to end their runs. But they're both sticking around at this point just to steal votes from the two front-runners.
I think we see Romney at the convention, which close to what Bob has been suggesting for a while now. It'll be good for the party (in the short-term) and good for Romney. The party gets to appeal to the fact that voters have nominated Romney once before and that he actually polled higher than anyone in the field in October. Romney gets to look like a loyal statesman making a real sacrifice (since he initially didn't want to run) to do his duty to party and country. And he gets to hit the road after the convention fresh and rested from a nice, long vacation and without having to deal with any of the mudslinging that goes on in the primaries.
[1] This is why you can basically always bet money in prediction markets that he won't get the most speaking time. Ted doesn't like to tip his hand and he doesn't like to get into fights that he doesn't think will help him.
[2] It's pretty clear now that that's not going to happen, unless he happens to say something like "black lives matter" or "hey you in the white pride t-shirt, get out of my rally"
208 is my dream scenario (even though, as I said four years ago, I think Romney is a stronger candidate than most people allow). Talk to your people, Trivers. Make it happen.
Seriously, the scenario in 208 would hasten a realignment, which I think is maybe already on the way but still, at least for now, in the murky future (along with democratic socialism).
Talk to your people, Trivers. Make it happen.
Oh dear, did I give off the impression that I was a Republican?
165: I love that Garner ad, but the one that moved me more than any I'd ever seen was the new Univision ad about Immokalee. It made me cry.
(and the ocean, but it
doesn't get to vote)
*Ahem*
I'm not going to look it up, but what happens on the first ballot to delegates who are pledged to candidates who don't win enough states to have their names put into nomination?
If they're unpledged, then now we're looking at Trump's core competency -- making deals with individual delegates.
It has seemed to me from the beginning that a brokered convention can't nominate any of the losers from the primary race. Which is why Bush should have suspended in October. Romney could be a fairly formidable opponent -- HRC is no BHO, and could possibly lose the rematch. If hard rightists aren't too demoralized by Cruz and Trump being cast aside.
212:
Wow. If the best thing that comes of the Sanders candidacy is that it raises his national profile to advocate for the causes he cares about, it will have been a successful candidacy.
It's really touching and inspiring that in these advertisements, the people and these causes come before Bernie himself.
I hope that this is only the beginning.
I mean, it's truer than it is for African Americans, but still.
In my admittedly small sample size, it seems to be true among black, middle class software professionals. One guy I used to work with was always reminding me he was a Republican, until Katrina happened, and then he didn't mention it any more.
214: This is actually something I hadn't thought about but it's a really good question. I assume that that rule must just sort of vanish after the first round of voting which, I guess, is mainly there to prevent someone from always-second-place-ing their way to more delegates than anyone else. (And in that case I guess... brokered convention I guess? Anyway it doesn't look likely to matter, especially since it's the majority of delegates and there are a bunch of winner-takes-all states.)
Or, I mean, they do get to vote but it doesn't matter because their majority isn't actually applicable. If the rule goes away in the second round but they had a majority of the delegates pledged to them it could be pretty hilarious though because they'd need to have deserters to lose. I'm guessing that also wouldn't happen in anything but the most Trumpy cases, and only when it could be a handful of delegates jumping ship rather than a lot just due to the obvious 'We-Wuz-Robbed!" response it would get.
214:
A Romney Presidency under a Republican Party that has disavowed once and for all its worst elements will be markedly better than a Republican President in the party's current state.
I've been thinking about what's really meant by "establishment" Republicans, and it occurs to me that this is a very, very old battle being fought here. In a recent press conference, Paul Ryan asserted that the Republican party "is the party of Lincoln" (emphasis his, and forcefully). The Republican "establishment" is really code for "Northern Republicans". Ryan is taking a much bigger stand than he's being credited for when he appeals to the Republican party's origins, which are sore spots for the kinds of Southerners that voted in Jeff Sessions and even Ted Cruz.[1] Guys like Ryan and Romney actually have to be pretty bothered to have to appeal to these folks nationally. When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act into law, he lamented that the Democrats had lost the South for decades. We've been dealing with the ramifications of that ever since, but I'm starting to think that kicking those racist fucks out of the Democratic Party was a good thing. Those voters are parasites and they'll burn your party down even if you are careful. Romney/Ryan/etc have to be pretty frustrated that they have these guys who consistently vote for them on the national ballot but would angrily pull their support if Romney/Ryan pushed through any serious Northern Republican priorities, like cutting Social Security and Medicare.
[1] I say even because Texas is much more complicated here than people are prone to realize. The power centers of the Texas Republican Party (Dallas, for instance) are somewhat more Midwestern than many realize. There's an excellent book on this
We need a Republican party with economic adviser who can control their coke habits.
Serious question about both theses ads, though: are there 30-second tv edits floating around? Or are these purely online-only ads? What reach can really be obtained with online-only ads?
212: somebody sent me that earlier today. It's incredibly good. As I said, the whole campaign is incredibly good. I wish I lived in an alternate universe where Bernie Sanders could be the Democratic nominee and then win the general election. Unfortunately, here I am.
206,207: I would never expect AAs or Jews (or maybe Muslims or Asians) to vote Republican, grudges and affiliations can last a while, mine has been burning in my heart since 1968 or 1964.
Unlikely, but there could come a new party.
But I do look at the identity forces that pull the Democratic Party to my economic right, the "our turn" factions. (Scotland? Hungary?) Obviously I don't want to kick AAs or UMC feminists out of the party.
Intersectionality is not just kumbaya or consciousness raising or inclusiveness or checking privilege. It is what people are socially constructed in many multi-tasking personal narratives. Intersectionality has whole multiple empirical dimensions of uncomfortable and inconvenient suckitude.
222: There was a shorter one of the Garner ad. I don't know about the Immokalea one. I think it was being aired at 8:48 pm on Univision as a mini documentary.
I did not expect to become misty-eyed from a couple of political ads today.
Someone pretty talented is directing those commercials. I wonder who it is?
I don't see how Republican's could expect to get good turnout after taking the nomination from Trump. The white nationalists might settle for Cruz, there is no way they are voting for Mitt.
I'm still hoping for Bernie vs Trump. a clear cut battle between good and evil.
If Sanders doesn't get the nom and Trump does. I think we would end up better off if Trump beat Hillary. There is going to be another crash soon and if HRC is president there will be another hated bailout. I don't see how the Democrats survive that.
Choosing Mitt would probably mean throwing the nomination, but I think the fiscal conservatives would probably rather take their chances with Clinton. She's been positioning herself very carefully to be able to take these people in for a while now.
I think Mitch McConnell has been telling Republican Senators up for re-election to run ads attacking Trump if they need to and to sell themselves as a necessary obstacle to Clinton's policies.
Apparently my sister in Maine flipped from Sanders to Hillary at the caucus today. Boooo!
232: Boo is right.
When did Maine go to caucuses. in 2000 they had a caucus and a primary.
229 is simply madness. Ok, yes, we're going to lose the Senate in 2018, and there's sure to be a recession prior to the 2020 election. On the other hand, there's the Iran deal, the continuing Syrian civil war (and bad as our policy currently is, it's really the least bad option currently permitted by our politics -- I'd expect any Republican to be worse, and I don't expect HRC to make any real changes in current policy), the Supreme Court, a zillion administrative decisions to make, including by EPA, and all the rest of it. Taking the heat for a bail-out is worth a whole lot.
If Bush hadn't beaten Gore, the groundwork would never have been laid for Obama!
And it really takes some doing to stand out on the madness front when bob is rolling in the thread.
I've been thinking of Maine lately because if I get into shape and never get enough time to walk all the way across Vermont (the long way), I could try Maine's Hundred Mole Wilderness.
234: I'd worry about HRC making changes as far as the middle east goes. She's been a critic of Obama's, well, not starting wars over there (or at least not aggressively and counterproductively rattling sabers). I can definitely see getting more involved in Syria in a Kissingery/neocony way that would leave us in a shitty position overall. And I'm not as confident in her set of advisers and history when it comes to economic decisions so I'd worry a little more about the crash because I'm not at all convinced we'd get anywhere near as successful a bailout as we did with Obama (and even that wasn't so great and came when Obama had a majority in the house and a near filibuster proof majority in the senate which definitely won't be the case any time in the next four years).
The Supreme Court and various administrative deals are probably the big advantages, and are probably enough right there to justify voting for her though. If there is a crash, the Republicans respond to it the way you'd expect, and Clinton doesn't have something magical up her sleeve for a bailout I seriously doubt she'd manage more than one term though.
"Hundred Mole Wilderness"
6.02 x 1024 is big.
I'm not too worried about Hillary catching flack for another bailout now that Bernie Sanders has paved the road for Democrats who are angry about that sort of thing. Maybe Warren runs against her in the 2020 primary? In any case, if the Republican Party of 2020 is preaching the evils of politics subservience to capital as a means of winning an election I'll consider that progress. They'll need to remake themselves as *something* after Trump.
238 -- OK, we can disagree on that, but in what universe would you prefer Trump to Clinton? That's just crazy talk.
I just had my first long conversation since the primary got real w/my relative who works in the Democratic Senate (but has no particular Clinton ties) re Sanders. Her take: nice guy, total lightweight, never been capable of getting anything done at all, staff is also nice but not capable of actually doing anything, not knowledgeable on policy, she doesn't know anyone who's met him who takes him seriously and they're bemused/baffled/somewhat annoyed that he's done so well. Conclusion: "it's OK that he's out there, but even if you agreed with him in principle in everything he's not in the top 1,000 Democrats I'd ever think could be a good President."
Obviously she's sold out to Wall Street and the establishment though, so who cares about this kind of information.
229: A sharpening of the contradictions and antimonies can be useful on the path to Revolution but is never to be desired, hoped for or especially aided. We must prepare for Catastrophes, even expect them, but our potential comrades will remember our betrayals. Kerensky learned that.
Well, except for Accelerationism, but that should be on the other side of the dialectic, and they're wrong anyway, but...not discussed here. Complicated, advanced post-Marzism.
As far as a crash, what Greece and Syriza (Europe in general, yes, including German workers before the crash) taught us is that the rich fucks really do have almost total control, and are able to modulate and tune the ongoing subproletarianization without social disorder.
Resistance is futile.
244 is surprising in light of the several articles I've read but will not even try to look for and link on my phone praising Sanders for amendment-related prowess and efficient behind-the-scenes action (there was a thing on quora, of all places, about him vis-a-vis veterans' stuff, from someone who worked at the VA, I think).
She also said "they gave him veterans because it kind of seemed like a nothing committee and even there he underperformed."
244: your "relative who works with the Democratic Senate" is right up there with the lurkers who support ogged in e-mail and the unnamed insiders that PGD used to cite to buttress his bullshit claims that Obama was going to sell out Social Security among the sources that I find most persuasive. Seriously, why in the world do you feel the need to keep attacking Sanders? Clinton is going to win. Everything's cool, man.
244: This is pretty much the definition of "Very Serious People."
Everyone knows, for instance, that Bernie is a lightweight on matters of war and peace. And certainly, for example, his vote against the Iraq War was ineffectual. It didn't accomplish a thing. I mean, yeah, technically, he was right about Iraq, but since when is being right the way to Get Things Done?
they're bemused/baffled/somewhat annoyed that he's done so well.
In what sense has he done well? Here he is, yet again, not accomplishing anything, right?
Not actually attacking the guy, just reporting a conversation that I don't think was particularly likely to be aimed at leveraging my vast media and political influence for evil.
Plume's utopian anti-capitalism is keeping me off CT.
Resistance is futile. Can I extend an EE metaphor here?
Whatever, Capitalism is the power system, this is not a metaphor, capitalism has subsumed all social flows and we can not only no longer turn it off without immediately dying, we can't even slow it down.
The Greeks couldn't even conceive of even temporarily losing their cellphones, Euros, internet, fast food and convenience store infrastructures. Can you?
Accelerationists want to be amplifiers...I know fuckall about electricity.
But the Revolutionary idea is to be fully in the current but not of it, so that when the circuit breaks of its own accord, a socialist splice can be made.
Bernie is a lightweight who can't get things done. Hillary, on the other hand, is a skilled neoliberal imperialist!
Not actually attacking the guy
You're drunk again, aren't you?
they're bemused/baffled/somewhat annoyed that he's done so well
The disturbing but true answer is that Bernie Sanders is not actually a very good candidate, and he's not doing well through any political magic on his part. He's doing well because Hillary Clinton is also not a very good candidate. Sanders is doing well because a very large portion of the democratic base is unenthusiastic (at best) about Clinton. (And the Democratic base likes her a WHOLE LOT MORE than Republicans do.)
The choice to report is not neutral, is the thing.
Bafflement that he's done so well does reflect somewhat poorly on the acuity of the baffled person.
So Bernie's not one of the cool kids in the Senate and the jocks talk shit about him behind his back? Shocked. I am shocked.
Bernie Sanders is not actually a very good candidate
I think this is true in a lot of ways -- except policy. His policy profile, such as it is, makes him a very good candidate for this election cycle. And he's been remarkably consistent and very ethically upright throughout his career, which helps a lot. On the other hand, he's an old, Jewish atheist, he screams in weirdly accented English, and he's not particularly quick on his feet. Which makes it all the more remarkable that he's doing as well as he is. The left wing of the possible!
You know, the left needed to put up somebody against Hillary and Elizabeth Warren was considered too important for such folly.
Bernie stepped up to do the job, and did way better than anyone expected. So maybe he's not such a bad candidate after all.
But, damn, if we had put up Elizabeth Warren, she could have won the thing.
Are people watching the debate?
Who do you think is doing better?
I don't get to vote for another month and half, so I figure I'll have time to catch the next one.
I think Bernie is kicking ass but then I would.
Here's a link if you want to catch it. I don't know how long it will stay up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGRBz6yarns
I have to say, I'm almost 50 now I've never seen a candidate with a level of integrity close to Bernie Sanders. If he loses I don't expect to ever again see someone as sincerely concerned with the lives of regular people.
Dennis Kucinich was too wily for you?
Denis wears a rug. He has a young wife. He believes in UFOs. Maybe I judge him too harshly but I never trusted him that far.
Was Dennis an early civil rights activist?
You have to give him extra points for starting in Cleveland.
257 - Sanders is also a pretty good candidate inasmuch as he's an old white dude like pretty much every president in the history of forever.
Not to take anything away from his policy and his personal record and all, but I think he gets a tail wind there that Elizabeth Warren wouldn't have got, for one.
Also, Kucinich survived a mob hit. By being ill, but still.
Always a good idea to call in sick on the day of your mob hit.
he screams in weirdly accented English
He's a bit shouty, sure, but I wouldn't say that he screams. And I like his Brooklyn Jewish accent (though I can see [or hear, I guess] how this might not play so well in the so-called 'heartland').
249.1 was the first thing I thought when I read that description as well. "Well meaning I guess but doesn't really have a sophisticated appreciation of the world which is why he thinks (x)" is, when the person in question is on the left, is usually what precedes "but no one could have predicted that (x) would happen" (a few years later). That description is exactly the kind of thing a Very Serious Person in DC would say about pretty much anyone who was right about something when the popular/serious consensus was wildly wrong, at the time but also later on.
244 is interesting, godamnit.
248: Come on motherfucker, you're smarter than that. We all know he's not making that conversation up so yeah, it should give us some pause and make us re examine our assumptions.
And fine, now that I'm drunk on a Sunday night, I'll take a moment to push back on the ad in 165, although it gives me no pleasure to do so. It's compelling as hell, and not based in any kind of reality. But I've come to accept that it doesn't matter. The people who cheer that ad the loudest are going to get a lot of what they're asking for. I think the result is going to be more of what we're already seeing in Chicago and Baltimore. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.
274: Serious question: what exactly do you mean by 'not based in any kind of reality'?
(I don't have any dog in that fight, not my country. Just curious.)
||
Loomis just linked to the Slate panic on Feb/Mar temperatures
Roy Spencer Phd ...provides a calmer more measured maybe reputable analysis.
Maybe more comforting.
There's history with the 1998 El Nino, but that one had a cooler band to its west that apparently 2016 doesn't have. Also apparently a very warm Arctic is a large contributor to the high mean, but with the permafrost methane up there, that is not exactly good news.
But the science is pretty new, and the dataset small. They don't know.
The pattern should show a cooler summer, so we may know how fucked we are by Jul-Aug. Of course, I am worried about the heat effects, but even more worried about the economic and geopolitical consequences. Lifeboat fights.
|>
275: There's a lot of narratives around the BLM and social justice warrior people that are pushed as racism by cops that are really structural racism problems. Garner's daughter says he was murdered by the cops. That's nonsense and misleading. The fact is that he was a chronic offender who had a ton of health problems that contributed to his death. Yes, an officer grabbed him around his neck like an idiot in violation of department policy and that contributed towards his death. But the real story is that this guy had thirty plus arrests on his sheet and was a chronically unemployed guy with poor health care in his forties with half a dozen kids. When we reduce the story to "my dad was a good guy who was murdered by the police" we're totally missing the real problem.
NYC from my approx recall from their reports is black people are twenty percent of the population but eighty percent of the robbery offenders and offenders who shoot at the police. That's the core of the issue but instead we're going to talk like black people are being harassed for no reason and the racist cops need to back off these communities. Well, the cops have backed off in a big way in Baltimore and Chicago and the murder rates have doubled.
( I swear if one of you try to turn this into me claiming policing doesn't have room for improvement I will kick you right in the pills. Through the internet.)
I swear if one of you try to turn this into me claiming policing doesn't have room for improvement I will kick you right in the pills.
So what specific improvements do you suggest?
For discounting purposes, this is someone who is 100% opposed to the Iraq War and spent a ton of time on various Bush Admin failures there. But whose current boss is definitely a few clicks to the right of the median congressional Democrat in a bunch of domestic issues (though those are the bosses view's, not the informant's, who is probably well to the left of the boss). Policy person, not on the political side. So definitely for sure an "establishment Democrat" type person but not a foreign policy hawk at all and not a Clinton insider. I know she generally hates the State Department and wasn't a big fan of Clonton's tenure there either. I guess I should probably leave it there.
||
Damn.
Oh, and sorry if Spencer is some variety of denier.
The comments and a lot of the online discussion of Global Warming is a fucking mess, and the trolls use numbers and jargon themselves.
And of course my own position as a reader of Guy McPherson is that a lot of the most "reputable" analyses you might point me to are themselves too optimistic and conservative.
Just cause it was like x 1950-2000 or 2000-2010 doesn't mean it will be like x this year or next. We have broken the models.
|>
Thanks, gswift. Second 278.
Right wing trolls are gonna troll. I'm sure a lot of 277 is true and valid from your point of view, but "and that contributed towards his death." is just a silly way to put it. It can both be the case that black people disproportionately commit crime and that they are mistreated and even murdered by police.
Since Tigre brought up Hill staffers, I'd like to note that the only active Trump supporter in my FB feed is a Republican Hill staffer who is Navajo. He's currently vacationing in Colombia and recently posted a picture of a beer can in a Trump cozy in front of the Cartagena skyline, to which he added "Making (Latin/South) America Great Again!" I just... don't even.
I just... don't evenSounds like the guy's right on message then.
277 is well-said except I would recommend that instead of "grabbed him around the neck like an idiot in violation of department policies and contributed to his death" you should use the colloquial term "manslaughter" or possibly "murder ".
I guess incongruity and incoherence is sort of inherent to the ideology of Trumpism.
I don't recall that Mr. Garner was engaging in a robbery or shooting at the police at yhe yime of the most unfortunate incident in question.
The time. Autocorrect is fucking useless when it's not outright meddlesome.
Right wing trolls are gonna troll.
Are you sure you want to take it down this path? I've just about had my fill of internet activists so if any commenter here would like to compare their day to day leftier than thou interventions in the world to mine then lets do it.
285: RTFA.
278:
There's too much protection of the police certs in certain states. Convicted of a felony is way too high a bar. It's easier to pull a cop's cert in this state and it's largely a benefit to everyone.
Erosion of benefits is killing good recruitment. In this state pension (which I'm grandfathered in on) used to be 50 percent at 20 years, 60 percent at 25, 70 percent at 30. Keep in mind we don't get SS. The current revamped system is a 25 year minimum at a straight 1.5 percent per year of service, so a whopping 37 percent at that 25 years. New hires are way more skewed towards "too young, not enough life experience" to do the job. But how are we supposed to talk older guys into the job at these numbers?
Use of force could be better. There's lots of underfunded training budgets out there as well as crazy policies (I'm looking at you, The South) like how the taser is the next level of force after verbal non compliance.
Department admin (and the public at large) need to learn the different between broken windows and zero tolerance.
No Social Security sounds crazy if unpossible to me but I see it is a possible if there's no Section 218 agreement. That jyst seems so wrong. I had no idea.
||
NMM2 Ray Tomlinson. Too young.
|>
290: What is a police cert? Do you mean it should be easier for felons to have their records expunged and become cops?
Accelerationists want to be amplifiers...I know fuckall about electricity.
Magnets. How do they work?
293: I mean the state cert to be a cop. Here there's a state board that can revoke it for all kinds of things, so even if you're in a dept inclined to look the other way they don't really have a choice but to fire you once the state takes that away. For example, a DUI here typically means a suspension anywhere from 12-24 months. Anything over a year usually means not working in the profession again because it's hard to get an agency to take that chance on you. This is a typical article around here more than once a year.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2293661-155/12-utah-police-officers-disciplined-for
Bob confused his fundamental forces: it's actually gravity. The proletariat aggregates around the vanguard party like dust around a protoplanet in the primordial solar system.
295: So enforcing higher standards of behaviour. Makes sense.
Come on motherfucker, you're smarter than that.
Smarter than what? I don't doubt that halford's girlfriend from Canada actually exists. I just don't care. As I've said a zillion times, Sanders is going to lose. Still, he's a protest candidate who's been weirdly effective. So why in the world should I, or anyone else, care that some DC staffer thinks Sanders is a joke? I'm actually asking a serious question.
291: States are sovereign governments, and the Feds don't tell them what to do in this area. Usually those pensions predate social security. In MA they chose to make employees contribute to Medicare, but in the past they didn't and retirees had State-paid Blue Cross.
289- I don't see how your laudable real world activities change the nature of your Unfogged presence.
298- " halford's girlfriend from Canada" is delightful.
Other people have real world activities?
298: Come on, man. You don't think the inside view of a Congressional staffer on Sanders is interesting? I say that even though I had the exact same reaction as MHPH in 273.
302 wasn't me, but I'll sign on to it.
You don't think the inside view of a Congressional staffer on Sanders is interesting?
Not even a little, no. And I've said why: Sanders is a protest candidate. But even leaving that aside, the hill is absolutely crawling with striving fuckwits who have their own agendas. That one of them thinks that Sanders, a senator outside of her party's caucus, is unserious and ineffectual is absolutely shocking news. SHOCKING!
I should grant that it's entirely possible that halford's source isn't a striving fuckwit. I have absolutely no idea who she is, which is yet another reason that her opinion is of absolutely zero interest to me.
There's not like a certificate of striving fuckwittery, unless an MBA counts.
Anyway, having decided over a year ago (it's in the archives somewhere) to vote for Clinton, this has been a very calm election for me.
Rationing cognitive resources, FTW.
Having decided, in utero, that I would always vote for the Democratic nominee, it's hard for me to get too worked up during the primaries. I expect that I'll be pretty stressed out when it's Clinton versus Voldemort.
It's also hard to get worked up when the decision will already be made before we can vote. I think that there is also a contested primary for Senate. I'll probably vote for the candidate with the biggest biceps.
302 was me. Firefox randomly forgets my name. Fuck you, Firefox!
I voted on Super Tuesday. This is the first time I've voted in a primary where it wasn't a foregone conclusion. I didn't like it.
In my first election, I voted in a gubernatorial primary that was won by 41 votes. I don't think I voted for the winner (Ben Nelson), but I can't remember for certain.
There's not like a certificate of striving fuckwittery, unless an MBA counts.
In this country, being a member of the Young Conservatives surely counts.
OT: I'm trying to find inner peace so I can do one project at a time to completion without worrying about the 12 other projects (and the associated emails). Is there a way to do that in under fifteen minutes?
I'm trying deep breathing and it's not working for shit.
Fine. I'll do it my regular peaceless way.
Clinton versus Voldemort
I don't think Rick Scott has any plans to switch parties.
I think part of the problem is that I had cereal for breakfast instead of McDonald's.
300: I was going to ask where you're getting "right wing" from but then I remembered I don't give a shit.
Remembering not to give a shit would probably help me with my email problem. Except that I have to give a shit at times because I want to get paid.
309 is basically me except that I doubt I'll get worked up about the general election either. I'll show up and punch the D ticket but god, Donald Trump is the R front runner and the Dems big idea is a rerun of the Clinton years with a 70 year old? What a shitshow.
Is there a way to do that in under fifteen minutes?
I was going to suggest you burn a doobie, but that's probably a bad idea if you have to answer emails after.
I'm still amused that when I go get a cup of coffee, I go to room 420.
I missed it before, but calling gswift a right-wing troll is stupid.
320- I haven't been commenting here for long, but I've been reading Unfogged for years.
Maybe there is an instance of you, being on the left side of an argument here, but if so I haven't seen it.
I'm pretty sure you can be on the right side of every single argument here without being "right wing" in a national context.
I should just point out here that, as some of you may remember, the city of Delhi was considering dealing with its infestation of large, aggressive macaque monkeys by importing the larger, more aggressive langur monkeys to scare them off. This worked better than I thought it would - hiring a langur to urinate in your garden became a popular option among middle-class Delhites - but then the local government banned private ownership of langurs for complicated Indian bureaucracy reasons.
The solution: LANGUR IMPERSONATORS. If you can do a convincing impression of a langur, there's a job for you in Delhi, scaring monkeys. (If they see through you, don't worry; you're allowed to use rubber bullets.)
There should be some kind of compromise, like a seven-day waiting period for the purchase of a langur.
I don't know why 328 happened, but am glad it did.
I just remembered bringing it up here about six years ago and I felt people probably wanted an update.
Well, the cops have backed off in a big way in Baltimore and Chicago and the murder rates have doubled.
Seriously? Cops get nervous about bouncing someone around in the back of a van, or shooting someone walking in the other direction, and that has made murder rates go up?
Oh, corroborative link from the Times of India, the finest newspaper in the world:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Now-men-ape-langurs-in-Lutyens-Delhi/articleshow/39380970.cms
For not very much money, I would hire a coyote impersenator to chase stray cats out of my neighborhood.
(If they see through you, don't worry; you're allowed to use rubber bullets.)
I like to imagine the "they" here is the bureaucrats.
Don't the cats help against all the rats? Or did you fix that?
Yes but now we have a cat problem. The city and my wife won't let me kidnap coyotes from the hills to chase the cats, and the coyote and with a coyote impersenator maybe I could achieve optimum cat/rat balance (a few, none). The coyote that seemed to be moving in for cat snacks has moved on for whatever reason.
327- I didn't make a claim that he was a right wing Republican. I said he was being a right wing troll here.
Couldn't you just obtain some coyote dung and sprinkle it about the place?
I think urine is more traditional.
Maybe there is an instance of you, being on the left side of an argument here, but if so I haven't seen it.
Remember, Gswift doesn't get into that many arguments here. He seems to have plenty of things going on in his life, and most of his comments are just dropping in to make a quick comment, brag about the camping trips he will take, and then leave.
So a disproportionate number of the arguments that he gets involved in are about policing, about which his position is more pro-police than average on unfogged but also well informed and he's striking patient about frequently being the only person on the pro-police side and taking a lot of flack for it.
So I think it's one thing to disagree with his positions, but to hassle him just for the fact that he does show up to argue the pro-police side from time to time seems unnecessary and obnoxious.
341
And what will you bring in to control the coyotes? Mountain lions? And after that? I vote for Pleistocene Park carnivorous giant sloths (surely to be brought back to life any time now!).
The sloths in turn to be controlled by unfoggetarians, casting atlatls from a soaring ekranoplan. And there will be rejoicing in the land.
345- Except that's not really true. In 274 gswift chimes in to endorse RT's Canadian girlfriend. That kind of tag-team behavior is IIRC pretty typical of the way right wing arguments go around here, and why I used the plural trolls.
In mild defense of gswift: I have a Chicago cop in my family, so I see a lot of "I stand with the boys in blue" pro-police memes, where the general thesis seems to be "the police are always right; people who get injured when interacting with police obviously had it coming because they attracted the attention of the police in the first place." Oh, and if it's a teenager that gets hurt/dead, it's his parents' fault for not doing a better job parenting and keeping their kids "off the streets."
I often disagree with the way gswift characterizes police situations (cf. "officer grabbed him around his neck like an idiot in violation of department policy and that contributed towards his death"), but he's definitely not a right-wing, absolutist pro-police-in-all-situations troll.
348: it really isn't, because for that to be the case we would need to have more than one right-wing troll, and I think we've only ever had one or fewer at a time. Describing two people who have both criticised Hillary Clinton from the left as right-wing trolls is, well, stupid.
Pleistocene Park carnivorous giant sloths
Carnivorous sloths?? There's a thought. "Run! It's very, very slowly charging us!" Perhaps it preyed on those kakapo parrots of which LB is so fond (the ones whose response to threat is to freeze motionless, and which therefore die of cat).
345- Except that's not really true. In 274 gswift chimes in to endorse RT's Canadian girlfriend. That kind of tag-team behavior is IIRC pretty typical of the way right wing arguments go around here, and why I used the plural trolls.
The two people who agree with each other agreeing with each other seems like a common phenomenon in the world of arguments, and not related to anything I know as "trolling".
244/279: Interestingly enough, this relative of yours sounds a lot like Cassandane. Congressional staffer on the policy side, Democrat, well to the left of her boss who is probably to the right of the median Democrat. (Her boss is a Representative rather than a Senator, which may be relevant under the circumstances, and they obviously aren't the same person for other reasons, but still, parallels.) She's a strong supporter of Sanders, and for whatever it's worth, this is not due to my endorsement.
I value her opinion far more than your relative's. I'm sure the reverse is true. I can't blame anyone else here for putting very little weight on either of them.
Re: the police brutality subthread, murder rates were up in several cities around the country in 2015. General overview. Baltimore-specific. Neither, though, talks about changes in the nationwide murder rate if there were any, and neither draws any conclusions about causes.
I can believe it's partially related to the recent incidents of highly-publicized uses of unnecessary force - sure, why not, partially. I don't see how that's supposed to be exculpatory of the police, though. At best, it's an argument for better training, which gswift is indeed making. More realistically, if rank-and-file police or their leadership view a little criticism as a reason to not do their jobs when lives are at stake, I don't have much sympathy for them.
For not very much money, I would hire a coyote impersenator to chase stray cats out of my neighborhood.
Can one impersonate something that is not a person? Maybe what you're looking for is a "person incoyotenator"?
In Chicago, the increase in murder rate is basically due to the governor cutting off the funding for an extremely effective anti-gang/anti-crime community outreach program in the South Side because of him being a giant cock who hates black people and is engaged in an ongoing grudge match with our giant cock of a mayor budget cuts.
Holy shit, there are no right-wing trolls here, and there haven't been for years.
I wonder what happened to James. Prison?
355: When did Shearer leave? Maybe his funding source finally realized Unfogged is irrelevant?
356: He commented over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money last week.
356: I don't remember exactly, but I thought we drove him off. We were too intolerant of his intolerance or something.
Occasionally I regret living in such an echo chamber that I can say that kind of thing and have it make sense; this place is if anything more ideologically diverse than daily life for me. But I've said that before and people assured me that I'm not missing much.
He has a personal blog that was last updated in January.
Most of what gswift said seemed reasonable enough, even if, I think, unreasonably unsympathetic to Garner. But the Ferguson Effect bullshit in 274 is just bald faced nonsense and trying to rely on that for any kind of point is as close to open trolling as you can get while still at least trying to come off as sincere.
I can believe it's partially related to the recent incidents of highly-publicized uses of unnecessary force - sure, why not, partially.
What do you figure the mechanism might be here? Are we saying that police brutality is such an effective murder prevention tool that any abatement of it results in an immediate increase in the murder rate?
If so, what evidence do we have that brutality has abated? Nobody has been caught on camera this week? And what evidence do we have that jurisdictions that are more circumspect about brutality have had higher murder rates? Is there anything to this beyond cherry-picked data in some of the places that have had well-publicized incidents?
360: He was driven off for valid reasons.
Not actually attacking the guy, just reporting a conversation that I don't think was particularly likely to be aimed at leveraging my vast media and political influence for evil.
Come on, RT. You should be supremely aware after the past 15 years that our elites' view of the world is normally honestly held, if wrong, and combined with the bubble effect, that honesty helps it self-perpetuate. No schemey manipulation need be assumed for them to be wrong.
First of all, calling gswift a rightwing troll is assholish bullshit.
Second of all, it's been obvious from Day One that Bernie was the inheritor of the energy that's been gathering around Warren since before she was even in the Senate. That energy was never going to go to Clinton, and it's IMO silly to ascribe any blame to her for that fact.
However, that energy is not the end-all and be-all of the Democratic Party, no moreso than any of the other myriad loci of energy, whether BLM or climate change or unionism. It's a coalition party, it has been for 85+ years, and part of the reason it's always been prone to circular firing squads is that each part of the coalition is always convinced that they'd have won, too, if not for those meddling DINOs in the other part of the coalition. If you're of the left, then Bernie seems like the embodiment of the true spirit of the Democratic Party, just like business elites think Mitt Romney is the embodiment of true Republicanism, and angry white guys think Trump is the same thing.
Anyway, what I think is interesting is how Bernie came to inherit Warren's nascent support. She seemed like the ideal Dem candidate because she has the affect of a classic Dem technocrat (or at least wonk) paired with the passion of a populist and the empathy of Bill Clinton. Bernie had the lefty bona fides to get started, but his affect is quite different, and I think that's one reason for the Bernie Bro thing: he genuinely appeals to a more bro-ey slice than would Warren, even as his obvious and career-long decency has kept the appeal broad. But I don't think we'd be seeing Prof. Warren's Dank Meme Stash and what have you--she's bookish, not brash.
I'm taking issue with gswift here, but of course, nobody with any sense thinks he's a troll, or that Roberto is a rightwing troll.
I think Roberto is a moderate troll.
I think bob is going to be hurt by all this talk of other commenters being trolls.
366 is well-said.
That anyone would suggest that Tigre is a right-wing troll says a lot about how insulated this place is from actual right-wingers.
Carnivorous sloths?? There's a thought. "Run! It's very, very slowly charging us!" Perhaps it preyed on those kakapo parrots of which LB is so fond (the ones whose response to threat is to freeze motionless, and which therefore die of cat).
Kakapos, the only* winged things that spend all their time closer to the ground than ekranoplans.
* No factchecking.
For not very much money, I would hire a coyote impersenator to chase stray cats out of my neighborhood.
These used to be known as "dogs."
One of my crackpot theories is that the phenomenon of urban coyotes is the result of leash laws than mean dogs aren't running around on their own any more. So coyotes have moved in to fill their ecological niche.
I wonder what happened to James. Prison?
I heard he ate some bad acid at a Phish show.
3 Trump signs just popped up in front of houses just one block south of me. I may need to move.
I live in Obama ground zero, and I've seen two Sanders signs, a few Sanders bumper stickers, a few signs for local races, and nothing else. I doubt this means much of anything, but I thought I'd share.
Carnivorous sloths?? There's a thought. "Run! It's very, very slowly charging us!"
An SF mystery with a scene much like this exists: Emissaries from the Dead by Adam-Troy Castro.
Bernie had the lefty bona fides to get started, but his affect is quite different, and I think that's one reason for the Bernie Bro thing: he genuinely appeals to a more bro-ey slice than would Warren
I'm pretty sure this is false: the Bernie Bro thing, despite having a catchy name, was as far as I could tell a matter of (1) young people being pushy (of both genders but, hey, a nice mental pattern makes one gender more memorable that way); (2) twitter being a dwelling place of assholes; and (3) right wing trolls. It wasn't like some additional faction (Fratction?) of bros would have been anti-Warren but were also anti-Hillary and so went for Sanders, and it certainly wasn't (though I can remember the accusations of this) that the Sanders supporters were all just obnoxious frat boys who couldn't stand the idea of a woman in power (an accusation I saw a couple times in prominent places right up till the point where polling made it clear that it was pretty much the opposite of true).
I'd say that Sanders' affect is better matched to (way, way better matched to) the internet than Clinton's carefully managed branding is. He's consistent in what he talks about and doesn't do much in the way of serious gaffes or contradictions, but it comes off as the result of a commitment to what he's talking about (or possibly "obsession") rather than an attempt to stay on a particular message. He's rumpled in a way that also plays well, and just generally matches the old-idiosyncratic-person thing that seems to be a fixture of internet-love. Warren wouldn't appeal to the internet in the same way exactly (the various Sanders-in-outline t-shirts/etc. wouldn't work without the hunched over posture and the wild hair), but she's got the same basic stuff there just in a more inspiring/angry way than an angry/endearing one.
James was explicitly asked to leave. I can't remember if it happened publicly or privately.
Obama ground zero
I knew it was that Barack Hussein Obama that did 9/11
I think 366.3 describes something that exists, but isn't the dominant explanation for intra-party disagreements. I am both a yellow-dog Democrat and a Sanders supporter, but I don't presume to say what the Democratic party is. Rather, I have an opinion about what it ought to be.
Similarly, Trump supporters aren't all het up about being real Republicans - they think Mitt Romney is a real Republican. Similarly Cruz supporters deem themselves real conservatives, and find Romney to be a fraud as a conservative, but an authentic Republican.
Like me, Trump and Cruz supporters are aspirational: They know what they want their party to become.
Bernie was the inheritor of the energy that's been gathering around Warren since before she was even in the Senate. That energy was never going to go to Clinton, and it's IMO silly to ascribe any blame to her for that fact
How is it silly to ascribe blame to Clinton for the fact that liberal energy was never going to back her? It's not like liberals dislike Clinton on some irrational basis. They don't like her hawkishness or her centrist/moderate right policy positions. If she wanted their enthusiastic support she should have spent the last few decades being less hawkish and less centrist.
I live in Obama ground zero
Chicago? Springfield? Harvard? Hawaii? Kenya? Indonesia? Teheran?
363
What do you figure the mechanism might be here?
Ex recto, the most likely mechanism would be something like this. An officer gets in a dangerous and racially charged situation somehow and he lacks the experience, training, judgment, or backup to defuse the situation nonviolently. Five years ago, he would have used excessive force and got away with it. Now, he's more afraid of getting on the news, so he stays very cautious. The suspect gets away, or they have a few more minutes to hide the evidence of a serious crime and therefore they get charged with nothing or only something minor. It turns out that this was a situation where force would have been justified in hindsight and the bad guy kills someone later.
If so, what evidence do we have that...
I don't have any, and I don't know why you seem to expect me to. I was not trying to make a strong defense of the idea of a "Ferguson effect." I was allowing for the possibility that it has some influence and went on to say that the best solution would be better police work anyway.
Also, Clinton isn't stupid, but she spent the past 4-5 years making highly paid speeches to institutions who are not supportive of or supported by leftists. She didn't need the money, so it comes off either as compulsive greediness or a complete uninterest/misunderstanding in how such behavior is unsavory or at least that it would be interpreted as such. At best, it speaks to life in a certain sort of elite bubble. At worst, it looks like a pretty grave character flaw.
We know this isn't unique to Clinton, but it so happens she's the establishment candidate running. People are fed up with a system where the wealthy and famous create circles of grift to pay themselves ever increasing amounts of money to tell each other how great they are, and the epistemic and moral blindness it creates. There are ways in which Clinton is better than a lot of establishment politicians, but there are ways she's not (e.g. Iraq vote, where only people in the Very Serious Bubble were blind to the utter and obvious morally bankrupt destructive stupidity of the action.) There are also ways in which the Clintons are particularly establishment, so Hillary is getting hit with this more than a relatively young and up-coming politician would be (e.g. Obama in 2008).
385- That's one possible mechanism but not the only one. Black neighborhoods are often dangerous and or unpleasant to police. Cops have good reason to want to avoid working in these areas. One way to get them to do it sometimes is let them go in in numbers and use maximum force for maximum intimidation. If they don't have recourse to intimidate people they are going to be very reluctant to police these areas at all.
I think the doubling of the murder rate represents police abandonment of large areas.
The boring answer is I'm a 10 min walk from his house, but the real answer is I operate the Islamofascist wormhole which allowed him to time travel to Hawaii and invent a birth certificate so people wouldn't know he was the secret lovechild of Madame Mao and the Ayatollah Khomeini born in a Kenyan terrorist training camp.
He does look kind of Iranian, now you mention it. Obviously that's why he hasn't grown a beard: it would make the resemblance too obvious.
You heard it hear first. Of course, now I'm going to have to kill everyone who reads this blog. Since I operate the wormhole, I'll have to go back in time and simply prevent your parents from having ever met, and no one will be the wiser.
That or murder the blog in its infancy.
she spent the past 4-5 years making highly paid speeches to institutions who are not supportive of or supported by leftists
Among them:
March 19, 2015 American Camping Association Atlantic City, NJ $260,000.00
December 4, 2014 Massachusetts Conference for Women Boston, MA $205,500.00
October 2, 2014 Commercial Real Estate Women Network Miami Beach, FL $225,500.00
September 15, 2014 Cardiovascular Research Foundation Washington, DC $275,000.00
June 2, 2014 International Deli-Dairy-Bakery Association Denver, CO $225,500.00
May 6, 2014 National Council for Behavorial Healthcare Washington, DC $225,500.00
April 11, 2014 California Medical Association (via Satellite) San Diego, CA $100,000.00
April 10, 2014 Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc. Las Vegas, NV $225,500.00
April 8, 2014 World Affairs Council Portland, OR $250,500.00
March 18, 2014 Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal Montreal, Canada $275,000.00
March 6, 2014 tinePublic Inc. Calgary, Canada $225,500.00
March 5, 2014 The Vancouver Board of Trade Vancouver, Canada $275,500.00
February 27, 2014 A&E Television Networks New York, NY $280,000.00
November 21, 2013 U.S. Green Building Council Philadelphia, PA $225,000.00
October 28, 2013 Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago $400,000.00
October 27, 2013 Beth El Synagogue Minneapolis, MN $225,000.00
October 15, 2013 National Association of Convenience Stores Atlanta, GA $265,000.00
October 4, 2013 Long Island Association Long Island, NY $225,000.00
September 19, 2013 American Society of Travel Agents, Inc. Miami, FL $225,000.00
September 18, 2013 American Society for Clinical Pathology Chicago, IL $225,000.00
June 24, 2013 American Jewish University University City, CA $225,000.00
||
We've talked about the situations in which "Eskimo" is considered offensive or not here, right? (Ah, yes.) I found a new and unexpected use of it.
|>
Why on earth does the American Society of Travel Agents regard it as a good use of funds to pay nearly a quarter of a million dollars so that its members can listen to the thoughts of an (at that time) retired politician?
Also, why do travel agents still exist?
Also how on earth is that some kind of sensible reply or rebuttal?
You might as well have said "Reading the newspaper while going to the bathroom doesn't count as making highly paid speeches to institutions who are not supportive of or supported by leftists!!" I'm sure she did that too but it's hardly fucking relevant to the claim.
compulsive greediness
As Lenny Bruce said so well (emphasis mine).
I feel some guilt at the fact that my salary exceeds twenty-fold school teachers in states like OK. They get $3,200/year. Which is is a disgrace; school teacher salaries. Education is the answer to everything. World leadership hinges on education. Take Zaza Gabor, who gets $50,000 a week in Los Vegas and school teachers' top salary is $6,000 a year. This is really sick to me. That's the kind of sick material that I wish Time would have written about. I'm not that much of a moralist. If I were then I'd be donating my salary to school teachers. I admit that. If a man came to me and said, "we're going to levy a tax and raise school teachers' salary to $750/week." I'd approve of that pay that tax like that. I realize it's an insurance factor. If school teachers get that kind of money the education system would change immediately. I'm a hustler, as long as they give, I'll grab.
395: I was literally just this weekend thinking that, of all the jobs completely killed by the Internet, "travel agent" is the one for which the Internet is the poorest replacement. I do not want to google aimlessly trying to figure out where I might want to go and how much it might cost and what an itinerary might look like. I want to describe the sort of vacation I want to have, and then have someone offer concrete suggestions, tell me how much it will cost, help me modify plans as necessary, and then book it all for me.
(Seriously: I want to take my kids on a relatively inexpensive beach vacation this summer. Where? I don't know. We don't usually go to the beach. Where should we go? How much will it cost? The Internet is basically useless. A travel agent could solve this for me in 15 minutes. As far as I can tell it will take me weeks of research to even figure out what might be good options, and I'm not even sure they'll be good options.)
"Travel agent" as a job description these days seems most to mean someone pushing a specific product. They're not travel planners; they're marketers.
398 is true. The internet killed travel agents by making us all our own, mostly pretty crappy and ignorant, travel agents.
Why on earth does the American Society of Travel Agents regard it as a good use of funds to pay nearly a quarter of a million dollars so that its members can listen to the thoughts of an (at that time) retired politician?
Because Hillary Clinton is an extremely able public speaker and one of the most, if not the most, famous women in the world, and ASTA runs an expo every year for its members, who pay $300 each to attend, and get exhibited at by exhibitors who pay ten times that much or more to set up a booth. They have a big-name speaker at it every year (this year it's Chesley Sullenberger). We are not talking about some sort of rubber-chicken dinner in a Holiday Inn ballroom here. If getting Clinton to speak gets a few more delegates through the door, then they can sell more tickets and more booth space and more memberships.
Also how on earth is that some kind of sensible reply or rebuttal?
It points out that she has, in fact, been giving speeches not simply to anti-leftist groups, but to pretty much anyone who'll pay. She has in fact been on the professional speaker circuit, just like Chesley Sullenberger has.
Saying "she spent the past 4-5 years making highly paid speeches to institutions who are not supportive of or supported by leftists" is analogous to saying "Bernie Sanders has spent the last year raising money from wife-beaters, tax evaders and convicted felons". I'm sure that he has raised a great deal of money from people who fall into those categories.
Also, why do travel agents still exist?
One big market must be business travel: lots of companies outsource their employee travel arrangements to, well, travel agents.
400: sure, sounds fine. Where should I stay?
Googling Baltimore shirking gives you lots of stories like this one:
"Googling baltimore shirking gets you a hundred stories like this one.
"Baltimore saw its deadliest May in more than 40 years this month following a pair of double shootings Sunday. Violence is surging in Baltimore while arrests are declining as police face intense scrutiny following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died April 19 after suffering injuries in the back of a police van.
Baltimore's 43rd homicide in May happened late Sunday morning, surpassing the 42 homicides the city saw in August 1990, the Baltimore Sun reported. The city has seen 116 homicides so far this year, compared to 208 homicides for all of 2014.
The last time Baltimore experienced a deadlier month was December 1971, when 44 people were killed, the Sun reported. Baltimore's population was far greater then -- about 908,000 residents -- compared to roughly 623,000 people today, according to U.S. census estimates.
At the same time, arrests in Baltimore have tumbled: Police are booking fewer than half the number of people they arrested last year, the Associated Press reported last week. West Baltimore residents said they feel abandoned by the officers they once considered overbearing. "Before it was overpolicing. Now there's no police," Donnail "Dreads" Lee, who lives in the public housing complex where Gray was chased down, told the AP.
Police officials say their officers are not shirking their duties. But some officers have acknowledged feeling hesitant after Gray's death unleashed protests against police and following the criminal indictment of six Baltimore officers involved in Gray's arrest.
"I'm hearing it from guys who were go-getters, who would go out here and get the guns and the bad guys and drugs. They're hands-off now," Lt. Kenneth Butler, president of the Vanguard Justice Society, a group for black Baltimore police officers, told the Baltimore Sun in early May. "I've never seen so many dejected faces," he added. "Policing, as we once knew it, has changed."""
Regarding the paid speaking gigs, I believe that this from 386:
People are fed up with a system where the wealthy and famous create circles of grift to pay themselves ever increasing amounts of money to tell each other how great they are, and the epistemic and moral blindness it creates.
gets to the heart of why people are annoyed, even more than the fact that some of the gigs in question were for investment banks. People are increasingly pissed at self-dealing insiders, and this sort of thing basically screams "self-dealing insider".
On our trip to New Zealand, it was uncanny that every town had a travel agent. I gather Kiwis like to travel, and apparently do it well.
Saying "she spent the past 4-5 years making highly paid speeches to institutions who are not supportive of or supported by leftists" is analogous to saying "Bernie Sanders has spent the last year raising money from wife-beaters, tax evaders and convicted felons". I'm sure that he has raised a great deal of money from people who fall into those categories.
Who's trolling now? Hillary could easily have said yes to all those speaking gigs you listed and then said no to Goldman Sachs etc. It would be very difficult for Bernie to determine which of his small donors beat their wives.
405: We stayed at the Sonesta and the Marriott Resort. Both were very nice. (There are about seven different Marriott things there, so if you go be sure you get the one on the actual beach.)
Don't fuck with the turtles or you go to prison.
One big market must be business travel: lots of companies outsource their employee travel arrangements to, well, travel agents.
Which, given their ostensible purpose, they are suprisingly terrible at. We're supposed to use our corporate travel agents, unless we can find a cheaper flight/hotel ourselves. I've never not been able to. And that's before I get into things like fucking up visa dates, as my previous employer's travel agent managed to do, so I was turned away at the departure gate in Frankfurt.
Urple, I have a decent travel agent if you want one. She's a family friend who we might not use otherwise but she's great for what it is. Definitely not good for low-end travel, and doesn't save you substantial money. But good suggestions and at hotels and elsewhere she can generally get some kind of special perk -- free breakfasts, room upgrades, etc -- that are nice. She booked a ski trip for us this year that was at kind of a perfect place we might not have gone otherwise and got us upgraded to a really nice room.
Urple, I have a decent travel agent if you want one. She's a family friend who we might not use otherwise but she's great for what it is. Definitely not good for low-end travel, and doesn't save you substantial money. But good suggestions and at hotels and elsewhere she can generally get some kind of special perk -- free breakfasts, room upgrades, etc -- that are nice. She booked a ski trip for us this year that was at kind of a perfect place we might not have gone otherwise and got us upgraded to a really nice room.
Urple, I have a decent travel agent if you want one. She's a family friend who we might not use otherwise but she's great for what it is. Definitely not good for low-end travel, and doesn't save you substantial money. But good suggestions and at hotels and elsewhere she can generally get some kind of special perk -- free breakfasts, room upgrades, etc -- that are nice. She booked a ski trip for us this year that was at kind of a perfect place we might not have gone otherwise and got us upgraded to a really nice room.
Still, beach holidays seem like the easiest possible holiday to internet research, other than something like Disneyland, and the most dangerous to trust to a non-vouched for travel agent.
Sorry. Occasionally we get pitches for a travel agent for work travel but that seems worthless. If I'm traveling for work I just pick the most convenient flight on whatever airline I'm trying to maximize miles on and I'm perfectly capable of quickly using the internet on my own to get into the fanciest hotel in Dallas or whatever that the budget/convenience will allow me to stay at.
We now have to book flights through the corporate travel agent, I think so that we don't get to keep the air miles.
I don't suppose Bernie Sanders could fix that. If I have to sit on the plane, I should get the miles even if I don't pay for the ticket.
398
Travel agents still exist. I actually know one. They tend to come in two types, one that is like old-school travel agents whose clientele is people who don't want to spend the time arranging trips but don't want to do tours. The other type is more or less "travel concierge" service that sets up luxury trips for the very well heeled. My friend is the first type; it's a part-time job, word of mouth customers, mostly. I know a few people who have used the second type; they are by my standards rich but not among the 1% (I think).
378
Carnivorous sloths?? There's a thought. "Run! It's very, very slowly charging us!"
I was thinking of genetically engineered sloths; regular giant ground sloths were slow (but dangerous!) plant-eaters. If you're willing to hire coyote impersonators, you might as well go for the whole package when they go wild on you.
I'm just not sure what you use to control the ground sloths. Hunters, maybe; lot o' good eatin' on a ground sloth.
402.last: This is why analogies are banned.
387/406: Good points. Something like that occurred to me but I ignored it because I assumed it would be accompanied by an increase in the rate of other crimes. In hindsight, I know I shouldn't have expected to be aware of that.
410: thanks! If you were getting a commission, you'd make a good travel agent.
Regular travel agents don't warn you about the turtles. But I took a class while I was there.
In Virginia, at least as of a little while ago, it was illegal to sell turtles, but you could give them away. So in order to sell you a pet turtle, the pet stores would sell you a turtle habitat, food, etc. and then give you the turtle for free.
Let's plan urple's beach trip. It's definitely more fun than yelling about the primaries. Do you want to fly or drive? If the former what is your max per-person ticket cost and flight time? If the latter what is maximum travel time? What is the price/time point where you would pick flying over driving?
Suddenly I'm curious how anyone took a plane or train anywhere before the Internet. I assume people didn't just go to the airport or train station and hope you could get a seat that day on something going your general direction. Did you need an agent for any ticket anywhere? That must have been a hell of a lot of middlemen.
Cassandane's parents take trips overseas two or three times a year with a group of a couple dozen other retirees and get group rates and guided tours on day trips. You'd need something like a travel agent to organize that. But would you need an agent just for a school reunion or the annual trip to see Grandma for Christmas or whatever?
These are sea turtles. You even touch them (or disturb a nest even if you don't touch an egg), you've committed a federal offense.
426: You'd just call the airline or a travel agent.
All colleges of any size would have a student travel office or something like it. It was supposed to get you a student discount.
Yes. Does STA still exist? I guess I can answer that question myself through the magic of the internet.
They sent me on a French charter airline once where the flight attendants were surreptitiously smoking in the bathrooms, so I'll never forget them.
They sent me on TWA, which doesn't even exist anymore. It didn't even exist then in the sense that my flight was cancelled and I was put on United. I was only twenty, but they still served me because international. They guy next to me had grave, theological concerns about the papacy that he wanted to share with me, so I drank until I fell asleep.
Most important here is keeping urple off any sort of cruise ship. Those things already seem prone to serious problems (not to mention a shitty way to go on vacation), but with urple on board, I can't even imagine what kind of unmitigated disasters might unfold. Probably some perfect storm where everyone gets ringworm, the plumbing starts flowing backwards, and then they get stranded in New Jersey.
Suddenly I'm curious how anyone took a plane or train anywhere before the Internet.
One aspect of pre-Internet air travel that seems really weird now was the practice of calling the airline a couple of days before your scheduled flight to confirm your reservation. Whenever I travel by air now, there's still a voice in the back of my mind nagging me that I've neglected to perform this step, even though current technology has rendered it so obviously unnecessary.
I forgot to mention one trick about Hilton Head. It gets much cheaper in August, I think because kids in Ohio have to go back to school. Or maybe because the jellyfish come out.
Never trust a travel agent who may be secretly working for the jellyfish. Also god damn it Urple show up and let us plan your trip! Other people pay me hundreds of dollars an hour to do work for them I'm barely qualified to do.
425/427: I'm pretty flexible. Hilton head is 10 hours from me, which I could do either way, although it's just long enough that I'd lean towards flying. I'd probably drive if I couldn't find tickets for under $400 / ticket or so. Anywhere that was much longer of a drive, though, I'd probably just fly and eat whatever the ticket cost was as an unavoidable cost of the vacation.
Timeframe is first full week of August.
Let's plan urple's beach trip. It's definitely more fun than yelling about the primaries.
425 comments in and finally someone agrees with the OP (and myself).
You could also go to Myrtle Beach, but that automatically makes you lower middle class.
436
My mother still made me do that until not that long ago. I'd have to call a very confused person and be like, "you know the flight I'm scheduled to fly on? I'm still flying on it."
I also booked a ticket a few years ago through an airline over the phone when my CC refused to let me buy two RT intl tickets off of the Turkish airlines site.
Also, does it have to be a beach at an actual ocean? There are some nice beaches on the Great Lakes that I'm sure are really reasonable. The Indiana Dunes immediately springs to mind, and I know there's some nice places in Michigan and Wisconsin as well.
It's almost time to yell about the primaries in a new thread! I'm instituting a 500-comment recommended length. It's preferred, not strict policy.
The Indiana Dunes are very convenient to Gary.
I actually have family (aunt/uncle/cousins) that live on [an island that shall remain nameless] who have made a regular habit (two or three times annually for the last 5 or 6 years) of describing to me how wonderful their beachfront property is and how much my kids would love it, and then inviting me down in vague terms like "we'll really have to find a time soon when it would be convenient for us to invite you down to visit us!", but never actually offering any concrete times. I've never been and would love to visit. And the one time I offered up a few possibilities of times that could work on my end, thinking maybe that's what they were waiting for, I was coldly rebuffed.
443: If you're looking for a topic for a new thread, how about this? I assume it's up the alley of some people around here.
442.3: no, I'm totally flexible. In theory the Great Lakes are fine. But I was under the impression that they were already booked for the summer.
445 should probably be redacted since only like 15 people live on that goddamn island. Mods?
OK. Let's think here.
1) Hilton Head seems cheap but maybe jellyfish, also hot. Moby liked it but can you really trust Moby?
2) San Diego area at that time of year is amazing. Not too hot but warm enough to sit on a beach, beaches are perfect, you have kids and there are like 10,000,000 kid things to do in the area. Rent a house on Coronado or Encinitas or Solana Beach or Mission Bay or something. Tons of hotels at different ranges. Definitely a flight but Southwest says you can do it for under $400/ticket and under 10 hours from where you are.
3) Only sort of "beach" but I like this and am doing it myself this year at about that same time because I like it so much -- northern Michigan on lake Michigan. Effectively a real beach with sand and everything but instead of swimming in a salty ocean you're in a refreshing freshwater lake, and it feels very summer-y and Americana-y. Probably need to fly but can for not an insane price or distance.
4) A high school FB friendquaintance of mine whom I didn't know is gay popped up recently heavily promoting some condo he owns in South Padre Island in some condo complex that seems to be for bears only. Lots of pictures of shirtless hairy men on the condo furniture. I bet the weather there at that time of year is miserable and I don't think of South Padre Island in the summer as a gay destination vacation but this guy does, it seems pretty cheap and I don't know what you're into.
I should say for (3) where I've been is the Petoskey/Harbor Springs area which is great and amazing for kids.
I thought South Padre was for drunk young people.
You'll want to get down to SPI soon, before SpaceX gunks up that part of the gulf with their rocket gunk.
447
You might know more than I do, but I'd assume there'd still be somewhere nice available on the Great Lakes for August.
Growing up near SPI was great. It's actually not very crowded most of the year. The locals tend to avoid it for Spring Break.
My mother still made me do that until not that long ago. I'd have to call a very confused person and be like, "you know the flight I'm scheduled to fly on? I'm still flying on it."
Given the bullshit that airlines pull (overbooking, cancelling return flights if you're not on the outbound, etc), I don't really blame your mum.
There's also the Wacken Open Air Festival which should be on your bucket list, and Schleswig-Holstein is kind of a beach, I think. Probably the airfare is a bit higher than you'd like, though.
My youngest is angling hard for the Bahamas, for some reason. (Actually, I know why: he has a friend at school who vacations there regularly.)
This has probably already been linked here, but Dinesh D'Sousa is back with a new movie. For those of you who don't want to sully yourselves by watching the trailer, here are the spoilers:
--"All crime is about stealing." [Honest to God--that's an actual quote.]
--The Democrats were the party of slavery and racism [a long time ago,] and this fact has been swept under the rug . . . UNTIL NOW!
--Birth of a Nation was originally released in 3D.
It points out that she has, in fact, been giving speeches not simply to anti-leftist groups, but to pretty much anyone who'll pay. She has in fact been on the professional speaker circuit, just like Chesley Sullenberger has.
Yeah that's not actually even remotely convincing as a rebuttal.
We've got a candidate that is famously closely linked to a group that, for years, her (anticipated) voters have loathed and blamed, accurately, for predatory fraudulent crap that led to a massive meltdown. A group that she knew was openly toxic to almost every single person she wanted to appeal to when running. A group that she knew she would have to publicly separate herself from the second she asked anyone to vote for her. And then she made 21.7 million dollars giving massively paid speeches, many of which were to exactly that same group that she's now claiming she isn't linked to. (Hey, check it out! 92 speeches is more speeches than the 21 speeches you listed!) And when someone points out that she's made millions of dollars giving secret speeches to those exact same organizations at a time when they (and everyone) knew that she was about to run for President your point is.. that she also gave some speeches to other people too?
I mean, if somehow you were under the impression that people were objection to public speaking, independent of the context or paid nature of it then... maybe? Or if you were somehow completely and utterly ignorant of what the criticism being made was despite literally responding to that criticism being made then maybe. But as an actual response to the argument? It doesn't even rise to the level of hey-look-over-there-at-something-else!
Bahamas are probably great and cheap (if hot) in the summer, but buy travel insurance in case of hurricane.
The Bahamas are pretty good. I went to Andros which is remarkably undeveloped because of a curse. Not much to do except swim, dive, sail, eat grilled fish and drink beer.
Isn't HH a gated enclave of golf players? Living hell if yes.
Chincoteague has a national seashore (no restaurants or lodging on the beach), is at the tip of Delmarva, has a bay and a walkable small town with a few nice places to eat. IME kid-friendly. You'd want to drive there. There are also a few nice beach-adjacent towns in DE, though actual beachfront lodging in Rehoboth is IMO not that great and not at all cheap.
Is that true?
The first demonstration of a 3D film was in 1915 at the Astor Theatre in New York City. Red and green glasses were required to view test reels of 3D footage - an untitled anaglyphic one-reel demonstration film made by Edwin S. Porter and William E. Waddell. The film consisted of stereoscopic footage of random scenes (i.e., dancing girls, Niagara Falls).
http://www.filmsite.org/1915-filmhistory.html
1915 was also the year that Birth of a Nation was released. Maybe that's close enough for Dinesh?
Broadkill Beach, Delaware. At the mouth of the Deleware Bay. The ocean (and boardwalks, etc.) is not a far drive, but the swimming is better in the bay (calmer, warmer, not the least bit crowded). Its a residential community, so what you do is you rent something like this for a week and just chill.
And if that one's too expensive, you can get a double-wide on stilts across the street for a much lower price.
Schleswig-Holstein is kind of a beach, I think.
Things got pretty wild that Spring Break. I don't remember.
There are lots of golf courses on HH, yes. Somebody told me we should go to Rehoboth this summer and the hotels didn't seem as nice as HH.
464: Obviously directed at the 3rd spoiler in 459.
3) Only sort of "beach" but I like this and am doing it myself this year at about that same time because I like it so much -- northern Michigan on lake Michigan. Effectively a real beach with sand and everything but instead of swimming in a salty ocean you're in a refreshing freshwater lake, and it feels very summer-y and Americana-y. Probably need to fly but can for not an insane price or distance.
I lobbied so hard to get my family to go to the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes for my mom's 70th, but we decided a nice hotel in Orlando in July would be much more pleasant. I still intend to go at some point soon-ish.
Isn't HH a gated enclave of golf players? Living hell if yes.
If true, this is 110% the opposite of what I want, and Moby is fired. OTOH, I can't imagine Moby would have recommended the place if this were true, so it's probably not true.
465 is extremely nice. I was there for a wedding 2 summers ago. Really great place, not particularly fancy/expensive. Only downside is that it's at least a 2 hour drive from major airports.
That was also my impression of HH, based on my facebook feed and who goes there. You know the feature where you can find out which of your friends like Trump? My sole Trump-liker has a bunch of rental property on HH.
I would also highly recommend Curaçao, which is not in the hurricane belt.
There are definitely gated areas in HH, but not the whole thing. Unless you count that it is a toll road to get on the island. And lots of golf courses, but the areas we stayed at were tennis-y.
Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes was the specific place I was looking into as a possibility a few weeks ago, and which generated comment 447: as far as I can tell, every possible place to stay is already booked. Someone I know who goes there annually said that people would now be booking plans for summer 2017.
464 - I'm probably exaggerating a bit--I don't know what D'Sousa was implying, but there's a scene in the trailer where the audience watching Birth of a Nation is astonished when a Klansman on horseback leaps from the movie screen.
But it probably is golf-people that live there year round.
Curaçao has legal prostitution and large open-air brothels? I did not know that.
459:
I think at this point the best reason to run Bernie is so that D'Souza and all the other right-wingers who have expensive films and books ready to be dropped on Hillary end up looking extra stupid.
You could probably find a closed-in one if you looked.
Curaçao has legal prostitution and large open-air brothels?
Come for the beach, stay for the open-air brothels.
I'd be worried about anything that advertised itself as a closed-air brothel for David Carradine-ish reasons.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is very nice but super-duper not high-end. We go to St. Ignace and Mackinac Island most summers, for the reasons halford says: fresh water instead of salty water and not too much heat. The zebra muscles, which are destroying the Great Lakes, have made Lake Michigan crystal clear. It's kind of amazing.
Actually, there are some pretty fancy hotels on the island, but we never stay there, because there's only so much fudge one wants to eat. Still, the lack of cars is pretty great.
I've actually been to a brothel in Curacao, which at least as of the time (more than 20 years ago) was I believe the only brothel in Curacao and known as "the" brothel. It was not open air but there was an open-air patio where you could sit and have a beer. I had a friend who was from there whom I was visiting; people who grew up on the island would often just go to the brothel and use it as a regular bar without taking up with the incredibly bored-looking prostitutes, at least back then.
479 - It really was delightful when Obama released his birth certificate on the eve of the publication of the book Where's the Birth Certificate?
RELEASE THE SCHLONG FORM GIRTH CERTIFICATE
We went to Sleeping Bear last summer and found the nearby beaches considerably less nice than what we're used to around Mackinac/the UP. But Petoskey had bunches of fancy places to stay and some really good restaurants (the UP has neither, I don't think).
Anyhow, there are definitely better places you could go if prostitutes are a key decision factor in your family vacation calculus. I am so providing better value than Moby here.
brag about the camping trips he will take, and then leave.
Ha, I'm looking at the reservation site for Yellowstone right now. But yeah, I used to comment more my first couple years when I was trapped in a cubicle at ebay.
I'm on my phone at work so this will be brief but I can expand more later after work. The driving factor for Baltimore's slowdown in proactive stops is the Freddie trial, full stop. Mosby has charged police for doing absolutely legal police work and I'll be surprised if we see any real proactive work out there with her in office. Maybe before if she gets smacked down in court.
Chicago is due to them instituting a two page handwritten form for investigative stops. Separate form for each person and they give a written receipt to the suspect. These are then being combed through by city attorneys and the ACLU. The ACLU has openly said their goal out there was less stops and they got their wish. Street contacts are down by something like 80 percent. Gun arrests ate down I think 37 percent? Homicides have doubled.
Homicides are undoubtedly up in Chicago, but I think the "doubled" figure is based on an aberration. It's comparing the start of 2015 with the start of 2016. The warmer winter compared to last year just means that the usual winter break didn't happen.
2010: 436
2011: 435
2012: 516
2013: 441
2014: 432
2015: 488
We have never ventured as far up MI as Sleeping Bear, but we've been to other parts (Warren Dunes and Benton Harbor) 3 times and love it. On a similar note, Kelly's Island in Lake Erie is supposed to be really great. We stayed on nearby Put-In-Bay (which is also an island), but it's a bit heavy on the college party vibe. Even so, it was nice.
I just can't bring myself to vacation in Ohio.
441: wait, was that a joke? what's wrong with myrtle beach? (I've never been but it was on my list of possibilities.)
Big spike in Baltimore in 2015, but that appears to have calmed back down in 2016. So far, 40 homicides in 2016, which is an annual rate of 218.5. Here's the link, and kudos to the Sun for creating such an excellent online resource.
2015 344
2014 211
2013 235
2012 217
2011 197
2010 224
495: I have never been, but even people in Ohio called it "the Redneck Riviera."
That is so annoying. The Redneck Riviera is the Florida Panhandle, hands down.
I think Myrtle Beach is where the World Miniature Golf Championships are held.
Which would actually be a reasonable destination for Urple and Co. Fort Walton Beach has absolutely beautiful beaches, it's on the cheap side, it's driveable.
152, 264, 497: What do you mean "even people in Ohio." Ohio is the home of Dennis Kucinich, a genuine American hero who kept the local Cleveland oligarchs from forcing the sale of publicly owned utility Muny Light.
Black neighborhoods are often dangerous and or unpleasant to police. Cops have good reason to want to avoid working in these areas. One way to get them to do it sometimes is let them go in in numbers and use maximum force for maximum intimidation. If they don't have recourse to intimidate people they are going to be very reluctant to police these areas at all.
Has anyone ever considered hiring cops who are from these areas or spent time there in the past?
495: My grandmother lived there for the first 17 years of my life, and I was just there last weekend. "Redneck Riviera" doesn't sound inaccurate, but it's a lot nicer and more fun than the name would imply. Found several nice bars, there's a boardwalk, sandy beaches, several malls in the area, etc.
As for "Redneck Riviera"... a lot of little things. My memories of long trips there are now faded but it was lower-class than some other coastal tourist areas. Not a huge difference and we had fun last week but that's still how I'd describe it. Some more concrete details: Sunday morning the best place we could find for breakfast turned out to have "plantation" in its name, and Monday as we were looking for breakfast we thought about "Mamie's Kitchen." And this is just an hour or two away.
There's a Club Med on San Salvador. It got hit with a hurricane last year, so this year you are probably good. I mean, what are the odds?
494: Mara was whining when we didn't go anywhere for Christmas about "Why can't we take a real vacation, like to Cleveland or Pittsburgh?" And I'll take Lake Erie over Lake Michigan, but the Canadian side is the good side.
500: the FL panhandle is obvious in a lot of ways but doesn't work because my in-laws live there and won't tolerate us vacationing anywhere within several hours of them instead of staying with them, but I don't want to stay with them because they don't actually live on or near a beach, except to the extent that all of the FL panhandle could be considered "near a beach" (about an hour drive, in their case), and staying at their house is mostly boring for the kids and even more boring for me, and we already do that semi-frequently, and I don't want to spend another vacation with them. I'd rather stay home.
Myrtle beach looks great, but it doesn't look like it would provide much seclusion. I don't want to see anyone else all week, except for unobtrusive staff/servants.
That's probably why I don't usually go to beaches.
Why can't we take a real vacation, like to Cleveland or Pittsburgh?
That's awesome. When you write your screenplay, be sure to work that line in somewhere.
496: Maybe. January dipped after a crazy high end of 2015 but Feb went right back to about double the average.
Among mentioned options with which I'm familiar, then, I think Broadkill Beach is the best. You would probably have to bring your own servants though. Or maybe some more isolated spot on the great lakes.
Do any of the Great Lakes places have like a beach and also some small watercraft stuff and nice restaurants?
I don't want to eat normal Michigan food.
I want Wisconsin quality or better.
My family once went on vacation to Lodi, Wisconsin,* and it was the first time I had ever encountered (a) Piggly Wiggly grocery stores and (b) Bugles the snack food. So I kind of just assume that all Wisconsinites are constantly making runs to the Piggly Wiggly for more Bugles, their main form of sustenance.
*urple: don't go on vacation to Lodi, Wisconsin.
Bugles are pretty good. I remember when they were marketed as "Andy Capp's Bugles."
Not as good as Pirate's Booty, but much better than Pringles or something.
502- It seems to me like it would be hard to make that work. I mean ideally you would want rough and tough guys from that area, but those guys are going to have criminal records. A really large proportion of the normal population there is going to have tangled with the criminal justice system at some point.
Also there's a cultural problem. If you regard cops as an army of occupation and feel that snitches deservedly get stitches it may be difficult to persuade you to consider a career in law enforcement. Many police agencies might also be reluctant to hire that sort of raw material.
Before we left the mid-Atlantic, we were renting places in Broadkill Beach for like 4 straight Memorial/Labor Days. One time we were there on a full moon when the horseshoe crabs were mating. Broadkill being one of a few spots where horseshoe crabs swim hundreds of miles to get there to mate.
Holy shit you've never seen so many horseshoe crabs emerge from the water at one time.
I've seen leatherback turtles do something similar, and I've got to say I think the horseshoe crabs were cooler.
||Holy shit, there was no way I was going to watch the game, because I'm not a masochist, and this season I only read weekly updates on the team because it's just too depressing otherwise, but the Lakers actually beat the Warriors at Staples yesterday? I actually read the headline twice in other places and mentally corrected it to the Warriors beating the Lakers before just now realizing what happened.|>
Half of the Warriors' losses have been to terrible teams. They almost lost to the Sixers, even (but didn't quite suffer that).
I've been to Kiowa Island, and it was nice. Every pond comes equipped with a resident alligator. I didn't pay for it so I don't know how much it costs: looks expensive though. It does have golf courses, so that's a downside.
NC's Outer Banks are good, and also family friendly. I hear it's getting more crowded though.
523: Deadspin's article on that was something like "Sixers beat Warriors 99-102" since beating the Sixers by 3 is like losing to any real team. The comment section went crazy, demanding the headline be corrected since it was the Warriors that won and that people should be fired for getting it wrong. It was hilarious.
522: they didn't just beat the Warriors. They crushed the Warriors.
I thought about the Outer Banks. I had one of my few childhood beach vacations there and it was really great.
I want to go to Wales, but that's probably a bit expensive (starting from here) and none of us has a passport.
538 now has the Spurs as title favorites.
Warriors had not one, but two, nailbiters agains Brooklyn. They reall do seem to have trouble against terrible teams. Apparently Kerr blames it on them being mellenials.
Are you talking about hiking that wall along the border? I've wanted to do that for a while, now.
Hiking or whatever. Still the worst.
If a terrible team makes the playoffs, the Warriors could be in trouble. Or they'll win four of five.
528. You should certainly go to Wales, which is a fantastic country, and most places will offer friendly service if you don't speak Welsh. Make it a project- I'm sure a person of your calibre can acquire plausible looking passports with a bit of effort.
The service isn't friendly if you do speak Welsh because that's how the locals like it?
They don't expect friendliness from their own kind. It's a sign of weakness.
Ok, you people are as useless as the internet. Yesterday Moby said "Hilton Head" and named two hotels, both of which looked fine, and for a few minutes I legitimately thought my vacation was planned. It felt great. Now I have been told that Hilton Head sucks and instead I have like 30 goddamn potential vacation spots I'm supposed to research. And no suggestions for places to stay in any of those locations. Fuck.
Apparently, we're thinking of Cape May this summer. My objection ("It's in New Jersey") was considered insufficiently weighty.
538: This is just so unfair, urple. All these nice people took time out of their workday to help you plan a vacation. And now you are blaming them, because you can't make up your mind. You owe the good people at Unfogged an apology, young man.
I know I'm being ungrateful. You've collectively given me a lot of legitimately good ideas to think about. Thanks. I just don't enjoy planning these sort of things.
Urple: OK, here's a plan. You should go here, to this guest house. http://www.tighard.co.uk/
It's on a beautiful island (Canna), with any amount of white sand beaches. The island's small enough that the urplings can basically be left to run free, and you won't need a car to get around.
Here is how you travel there:
Obtain passports.
Fly to Glasgow Airport.
Take the train from Glasgow to Fort William.
At Fort William, board the steam train for Mallaig (as seen in Harry Potter etc.)
At Mallaig, get on the ferry for Canna.
There you go.
That would certainly let you avoid all those sandy beaches that the other places suggested have.
I thought his complaint was that he wasn't being given sufficient detail in the suggestions re. how to get there, places to stay etc.
539: I've been there! It's great if your main goals in going to the beach are (1) dreariness, (2) vaguely cutesy but boring "Look it's Norman Rockwell's beach!" themed stuff, and (3) nothing whatsoever to offset the dreariness.
As long as there's liquor, I'll make due.
Why travel all the way to Scotland, when Indiana Beach (slogan: "There's more than corn in Indiana!") is just a short drive to the north? It's under new ownership and currently undergoing an extensive renovation ahead of the 2016 tourist season. You could rent a cottage right on Lake Shafer or stay at one of the two (yes, two!) hotels in nearby Monticello (pronounced "mont-uh-SELL-oh"). If you're still not convinced, just watch this great ad from the 1980s.
Maybe I'll argue more for Lake Michigan.
If ajay's around I would appreciate suggestions for things to see and do in Narnia, as I'm extending my stay past the film retro weekend.
Chew gum and piss on the elevator.
My neighborhood has sandy beaches too! Have it all--city and beaches in an idyllic urban setting. August also gives you the perfect balance of warmth and fecal matter counts. Another plus about August is the quarter doesn't start until October, so you could probably get a really cheap sublet on a place. I might not mention kids in the email though, grad students are tetchy about kids living in their apartments.
When I was a kid, we went to the beach in Chicago. We (my siblings and I) found a whole bunch of money washing in to the shore. We assumed the source was the wallet of a dead guy, but never found him.
549: Go and visit alameida? In her brutally airconditioned eyrie overlooking a hoard of retro furniture for sale?
Hawker centre at Newton Circus, walk around Little India and Chinatown, get yourself a suit made... alameida is probably the person to ask though. If you see an exceptionally lanky red haired seven year old talking about pirates, that's Small God Daughter. Wish her happy birthday from me.
Holy crap I want to just move to that place in 542, hopefully without access to the internet but easy access to single malts.
I just checked their rates and if I abandoned my family and took a single room I could live in that guest house on that Scottish island year round for $42,000 per year. That includes "full" breakfast so presumably I could eat a lot of "bangers" or "kippers" or whatever in the morning and save on meals. Add in a $18k/year single malt and other meals and book-ordering budget and a bit of a cushion and you could do it completely comfortably on $60,000/year income. Total isolation, someone makes your bed, and free breakfast. Now how do I get to $60,000/year income without having to work at all and abandon my family.
Maybe they'd even give me a discount if I booked it "until death" in advance.
Hmmm, it seems like the permanent population of the island has declined from 32 to 8, apparently due to rampant "bullying" from the lead local official. Probably a good time to pick up property at low rates and I can bully back for fun until that guy dies.
And they're even pet friendly. Seems like the best place in the world for a dog. I could spend my time reading, walking the dog, getting into ongoing fights with the local tyrant, greeting guest house visitors as an eccentric character, eating sausage for breakfast, lifting stones and running to stay strong, and looking at puffins. And they even have wifi so I could still dick around on the internet if I wanted to. Is there a more perfect life?
557 is very depressing news. Feel free to head over there and bully back, Tigre.
For once I agree with Tigre's view of what is best in life.
Except that I don't really like Scotch. But I'm sure there's someplace similar in Kentucky.
You can't abandon your family and move no further than Kentucky. You'll never get away with it.
557 is very depressing news.
That does sound terrible.
You can't abandon your family and move no further than Kentucky
Nonsense. You could easily disappear into the 400 miles of passageways in scenic Mammoth Cave, which boasts approximately the same annual sunshine as Scotland. Bonus points: underground lake!
557: I am so curious about how that one guy is successfully bullying so many. Why is that working? Would it work against someone who was financially independent? Does it work because, like heebie, he is a power-crazed maniac who controls the planning board? Would someone shameless be able to resist his bullying? From the story, I can't tell what his edge is. Would Halford be impervious?
