I haven't read the article yet, but I have been thinking about this, because there is going to be a "Free Speech Rally" with a lot of alt-right people on Boston Common this weekend. My inclination is to avoid the area, but I wonder if that's cowardly on my part.
My understanding is that there's also a cosplay event for the same location. You could split the difference and show up dressed as an elf?
The phone knows you're a friend of the maître d'.
There was supposed to be some kind of protest at Google in Pittsburgh, but I think it got canceled because they're cowards.
I had this in the other thread but it belongs here: This seems pretty optimistic. https://thebaffler.com/latest/goodbye-pepe
Same in NYC. I had plans with Sally for Saturday, and was feeling guilty about not planning to show up to counterprotest, but now that it's canceled I'm okay.
To treat 1 more seriously, yeah, I think there's at least some responsibility to show up and be a decent person on the right side if you know there's going to be a Nazi/white supremacist event in your area. I obviously, through a combination of lack of inclination and incapacity, am not going to be doing any kind of antifa-type counter-violence, but extremely large numbers of nonviolently reasonable people dwarfing the pathetic bands of violent loons has to be the right way to go.
2- Someone has to show up as Gandalf and block the alt-right marchers with a sign that says You Shall Not Pass.
8: And then a huge fight will break out between the pro-Tolkien and anti-Tolkien left.
That's quite enough uplifting.
Fifty-five percent of Americans disapprove of Trump's response to the Charlottesville protests, while 67 percent of Republicans approve, according to a CBS News poll taken from Monday to Wednesday.
Sixty-three percent of Americans consider the attack that killed Heyer an act of domestic terrorism, the poll found.
Republicans interviewed after Trump's news conference said the president is accurately assigning blame in the matter, according to CBS.
6: Two-thirds of Republicans and one-third of the US approve of Trump's response to Charlottesville, per this CBS poll. It's a bit too soon to say that the alt-right has peaked, I think. But one can hope.
Hmm. Possibly I should preview before posting.
Well, I thought this was uplifting.
In fact, instead of lauding Jackson's violence, we choose to celebrate Stonewall's sister--our great-great-grandaunt--Laura Jackson Arnold. As an adult Laura became a staunch Unionist and abolitionist. Though she and Stonewall were incredibly close through childhood, she never spoke to Stonewall after his decision to support the Confederacy. We choose to stand on the right side of history with Laura Jackson Arnold.
There's not much to feel good about these days
This is the truth. I've been unusually gloomy and sad the last few days.
The Helena city commission has ordered the Confederate fountain removed. Notably, the charge was led by the Native caucus in our legislature.
I don't know if Gov. Meagher is going to survive, but I wouldn't bet on Custer Park in Hardin.
The Custer National Forest has already become the Custer-Gallatin, because of consolidation. It would take an act of Congress to make it the Gallatin: maybe some Pennsylvania congressperson wants to take that on?
Witnessed on the free downtown shuttle yesterday: A young-ish white guy is sitting on the floor talking loudly into his phone. The driver (black woman) politely asks him to either stand up or sit in the seats, because sitting on the floor isn't allowed. White guy gets defiant and hostile. A group of teenagers start laughing at angry dude. Angry dude gets increasingly angry, which of course only serves to further entertain the teenagers. After angry dude starts yelling profanity at passengers and driver, the driver kicks him off the bus with a parting shot of "This isn't Charlottesville."
14: I got assigned to review a paper and have been cheered by both how very late I am in doing the work and how, on actually reading the paper, I find it is an easy reject.
21: White guys on the bus can usually hold their liquor.
Maybe interesting research, but it was written by somebody with no ability to convey information in a useful form (or a "doctor").
And then a huge fight will break out between the pro-Tolkien and anti-Tolkien left.
The anti-Tolkien left will show up as Dolores Ibarruri and block the alt-right marchers with a sign that says You Shall Not Pass.
There was a red hand painted on a wall that I just noticed today. Possibly because of reading too much Sherlock Holmes, I'm wondering if it means anything. The hand is in outline. That is, it looks like somebody put their hand there and spray painted around it like the cavemen in France. Except they used a stencil instead of their hand (you can see the straight edge on one side).
re: 28
If that was in Scotland, or NI, I'd have gone with 'sectarianism'. But not in France.
I was thinking about the cave painting in France, but maybe I have the wrong cave.
It's right by Robber Baron U, so it might have been done by Scotsmen.
I realize I've still been gauchely chattering both online and in person on the theme of antifa seeming like enjoying provocation as recreation. Whatever the case in other circumstances, right now they're in the front lines against actual Nazis and I should be there making common cause (esp. with my CWM status as shield). Berkeley 8/27.
30. Restricting ourselves to the Upper Palaeolithic, France is OK, also Spain, Sulawesi, Australia and PNG. Presumably there were a shitload elsewhere that have either crumbled away or await discovery.
I'm kind of fascinated by Bannon right now. He's driven out the corporate CEOs, and maybe he can drive out Cohn, Chao, and Mnuchin. He seems to be totally going for broke -- maybe this is his last chance -- on the bet that right populism can work. And he might be right.
One area where mealy subtweets do seem to me to be meaningful is when they come from members of the Joint Chiefs, as it implies that in the worst case, if Trump tries to go full authoritarian and actually lock up enemies arbitrarily, they will not go along with it. (Who knows about ICE/CBP, tho.)
Did we ever get a clear picture of why Priebus was forced out?
It's like how Peter Petigrew was killed by Voldemort. A single second of not being a total shit results in a death sentence.
36: I don't know that we have a full story, but I think some combination of (a) emotional need for someone to blame for lack of winning, (b) Priebus not even being objectively well-qualified, (c) court politics where establishment GOP types are at a disadvantage, and (d) for months nobody would agree to step in as replacement and Kelly finally came around.
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Argh. I am just going to vent. My school starts next week and we couldn't come up with childcare so we're paying through the nose for babysitters, except for Monday which we're splitting. That's all fine. Also Jammies is going to a wedding this weekend, I'm staying home with kids. Totally fine.
The part that makes me irate: Jammies' job is doing the thing where he thinks there's a 90% chance he'll need to travel next week. I really need to know what's going to happen on Monday, and I need to know essentially now. Do I need to reorganize things and stay late tonight to get ready for the first day of school on Tuesday or will I be able to come in for a part day on Monday? It drives me up the FUCKING WALL that they can toy with us like this. When will he be leaving and returning? We're talking about THIS MONDAY. I just like to have my ducks in a row, especially for the first week of the semester.
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Leave your kids alone to stare at the sun all day, it will keep them entertained.
How long after the eclipse will it be safe to stare at the sun again?
I have mixed feelings on the start of the school year. On the one hand, it's so very much cheaper to not have to pay for somebody to watch the kid. On the other hand, all the college kids come back and make it hard to get on the bus or order lunch.
Also, their parents drive like shit on move-in days. I guess it's a confusing time for them in a new city, but still.
Of course, the students being back probably makes it more likely the alt-right Google protests will never happen here. Or that if they do happen, counterprotests will be much larger than they would have been otherwise.
Which comment makes us now on topic again.
This is a nice story (additional visual)
Four activists turned themselves in Thursday, bringing to eight the number of people charged in the toppling of the Confederate statue in downtown Durham on Monday.
...
All four faced warrants charging them with three misdemeanors - disorderly conduct by injury of a statue, damage to real property valued at more than $200, and damage to real property - and two counts of felony inciting a riot to cause property damage in excess of $1,500.
About 100 people gathered outside the Durham County courthouse on Dillard Street around 8 a.m. Thursday and walked down the street to the jail to support those charged.
...
Initially activists announced that people facing warrants would turn themselves, along with others who planned to surrender in solidarity with them.
"Dozens are here to take responsibility for the removal of that statue, which should make it clear that there are so many of us that support what happened," said Serena Sebring, a regional organizer with Southerners on New Ground who was not at Monday's protest.
"All us of are willing to share the cost of our freedom," she said. "All of us are here, and we are willing to take whatever responsibility, whatever consequences come along with the removal of that statue."
(via vox)
Shit. The eclipse-view glasses don't look that rugged.
34- I hope he is wrong. Is this something you might like? http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-fire-steve-bannon-w498354
I think Bannon might be trying to get himself fired as a way of deserting a sinking ship, at least that is what I hope is happening.
|| Has Google stopped indexing Unfogged? I'm having trouble finding things in the archives I know must be there.
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52: I would link you to a relevant recent subthread, but I can't find it.
54 I half remember that. Also, haha.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_16127.html#1967121
I actually got that in one, once I was done harvesting the low-hanging fruit.
When I want to find something I remember commenting on, the following search gets me there more than half the time.
site:unfogged.com "posted by: cyrus" [the thing I'm searching for]
I very rarely search for something in a thread where I had nothing to say, but if I did, I assume I'd narrow it by searching for some other person.
It's harder when you comment on nearly everything.
59 That's a good tip but it's still not there. Hmmm.
Especially if you can't keep all your opinionated selves straight.
I believe the Unfogged-approved search engine for the site is duckduckgo.
Compare that result with the Google result for the same query.
Yahoo looks pretty identical with duckduckgo for this search.
I'm hearing good thinks about Alta Vista.
Huh. Altavista.com sends you to yahoo. Excite.com still exists. AskJeeves turns out to be Ask.com these days.
Excite and Ask don't accept the site search syntax that I used for Yahoo, Google and duckduckgo.
65- It's being recognized more and more these days.
I remember telling people, "You should try this new search engine! It's called Google, and it works really well."
Damn! I created a monster!
Honestly, a librarian in Columbus, Ohio is the person who told me about Google.
Did you ever work for the state library?
72: No.
Amazing that there was another librarian in Columbus recommending Google.
Almost as if they have expertise in information retrieval.
74: Well, that other librarian may have had it. I foolishly gave away my only special knowledge when I told other people about Google.
63 A story I told about how during a job interview for a position at a library in Georgia I flubbed it by saying that I've always thought of it as the "War of Treason in Defense of Slavery" when the director told me she'd had a teacher who called it the War of Northern Aggression.
It was politicalfootball's suggestion to use Duck Duck Go what done it.
76: That's great. I will remember that.
Bannon out, apparently. Sooner than I expected.
76: I've been calling it that ever since I read it on some blog. I can't remember which one but probably the same one as you.
Bannon out, apparently. Sooner than I expected.
Ezra Klein has an interesting take.
There are two ways a president can make sure the federal policy roughly tracks his wishes. One way is to insist on it himself, but Trump has no interest in doing that. Another way is to outsource ideological enforcement to committed, empowered lieutenants.
Bannon was the closest thing Trump had to a lieutenant like that: He was the true believer running around the federal government trying to force various agencies and officials to align their work with Trump's campaign promises. In his interview with the American Prospect's Robert Kuttner, Bannon said that forcing the government to actually carry out Trump's trade agenda was a daily struggle. "That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury and [National Economic Council Chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying. ... The president's default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy."
The problem is that Bannon could only win those fights if Trump wanted him to win those fights -- and now we see Trump didn't. Instead, Trump has systematically elevated outsiders to his campaign and operation like John Kelly and Gary Cohn while alienating or firing allies like Bannon and Reince Priebus. The result is a White House where the top staff doesn't care what Trump says and the president doesn't seem to care that they don't care.
Wasn't it the Confederate Yankee? I don't remember a thing about him but the name and that line, but I think he was one of the crowd of leftish political bloggers back in the early 2000s.
82: No, Confederate Yankee was a right-wing blogger (recently deceased) whom LGM monickered TIDOS Yankee, if I recall correctly.
79- I have to say that cheers me immensely. Bannon is in a really good position to know if this White House is going down the tubes, and I think he got himself fired deliberately, which would mean he's pretty sure. I thought there was a good chance Trump was just going to keep weathering these endless crises, but now I think he is going down.
76: You can't really tell a story that demonstrates that you are greatest hero of all time and describe it as a "flub". When Joe Biden told Slobodan Milosovic, "You are a goddamn war criminal and I'm going to see you tried as one," it didn't really count as a flub.
Bannon is out. yay! I see this as great and wanted to put it in herbie's thread, but then I saw that it is apolitical. I know it's already been mentioned here, but still I want to say: Hip, hip, hooray!
85: Biden wasn't hoping to be Slobodan's VP.
83. Yes, I think the term comes from Lemieux at LGM.
Oh, that makes more sense. I remembered the words 'Confederate Yankee' and thought it must have been some kind of reclamation thing, but in retrospect that makes no sense.
Spooky, I just looked at his twitter and it says one follower you know: SEK
:(
There were lots of protesters in Boston today, but only a few dozen people at the rally they were protesting.
The poor darlings. They must feel so weak and outnumbered.