Carrying on here: what are the ethics at this point of going on (nonessential) domestic travel?
Also open to agitating TSA workers in some way.
What you do is define whatever you wanted to do in your travels as essential.
The best way to agitate TSA workers is to try to carry a gun into the airport.
Silence implies consent, so, Can the lawyers please explain the Barr memo thing? I've seen people in sane forums saying both that it's reprehensible and should exclude him and that it's an obscure technocratic argument on a fine point of law that doesn't actually have any consequences and is totally unobjectionable. [insert punctuation as needed]
4 probably should have been me.
FWIW, I love Nancy Pelosi's latest fuc^H^H^H message to Trump about the shutdown.
6: Don't be sneaky about it. Just strap one on.
Anyway, if the main impact of the shutdown on your life is because of air travel, you're probably a coastal elite.
I said probably. You don't even show up after rounding.
Even if you live in Kyle, South Dakota, spending time on an eclectic web magazine marks you as the out-of-touch coastal elite.
Inside of Kyle, it's too dark to see South Dakota.
7 Yes, that was great.
Another infuriating thing was how employees were brought back from furlough to work on processing oil exploration permits at Interior.
Can't grease the wheels without grease.
I think Pelosi's SOTU gambit was particularly clever because getting that kind of attention is one thing Trump really does care about.
The question is, if Trump broadcasts from the White House and calls it State of the Union, does media go along with it
I'm not sure how much impact the shutdown is having on air travel in rural Alaska, actually. There's no TSA coverage for the small planes that go to the villages. The regional hubs do have TSA checkpoints for flights to places like Anchorage and Fairbanks, so disruptions there would be a big deal, but I haven't heard about any so far. If disruptions spread to air traffic control that would be a very different matter.
No space suitable for a numerous audience of important people to look serious and clap. No camera pans over the persons of the invited crime victims, veterans, and minor celebrities in attendance. He's have to do it in the winter White House with a local audience, or possibly muppets.
The thing that strikes me is that McConnell and the Senate are covering for Trump. The House is sending bills to the Senate, McConnell is just not letting the Senate vote on it. (Not making them vote on it? Not sure how to put it). At this point I'm sure there isn't a veto-proof majority to pass anything, but he's keeping the "moderate" Republicans from having to go on the record either way, and making it harder for people to tell where the problem is. He's supporting Trump as much as he possibly can.
I'm not saying this is surprising. We're all sufficiently cynical to expect things like this. But it's revealing, I guess. It's something that for whatever it's worth I hope gets remembered about this.
He'll just schedule another rally instead, and say how he likes regular people better anyway.
It really can't go on a whole lot longer but I don't know how it ends. The administration appears to think that it can just keep calling people back to work without pay and eventually someone else will have to figure out how to pay them in a way that makes Trump happy.
Arguably the real contest of wills going on here is between McConnell and Pelosi. Trump is an insane, malevolent moron, so nobody expects to be able to negotiate with him in any meaningful way. McConnell is evil but rational and knows the shutdown is bad for Republicans. He also knows that crossing Trump could be bad for his primary in 2020. He can step up and force a solution, but he's still betting that someone else will blink first.
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Under what circumstances is the Speaker allowed to crush someone's skull with the mace? Just hypothetically.
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23: Right, it's the atmospherics of the thing rather than the opportunity to give the message per se. He hated doing that Oval Office address last week.
23: Good point. He's very low-energy, out of his element, when delivering a speech to a camera only.
When was the last rally, actually? Did they stop post-midterms?
Of course Wikipedia has a page for that now. Looks like two in Mississippi for their special election, both on Nov. 26, nothing else.
How do assholes socialize between the rallies?
Ha, now she's even explicitly saying he can give it from the Oval Office if he wants.
Arguably the real contest of wills going on here is between McConnell and Pelosi.
I hadn't thought about it this way, but it's a good point.
33 is brilliant, because once she gives it her seal of approval, he can no longer use it as a poke in her eye.
I know someone who has cancelled a vacation because of TSA concerns. At some point this is going to start to seriously drag on the economy.
Another possible resolution comes to mind: a genuine emergency or near-miss plausibly caused by the shutdown. An accident or terrorist incident on an airplane, something like that. I'm trying to think of other examples, but anything else I can think of would take months. The sane-but-evil Republicans go "Oh no, we never could have predicted that shutting down the government would have consequences, we're so sorry, here are the funds needed to reopen," pass a continuing resolution that expires in 3 months, and hope that next time Democrats can get the blame for it.
Nobody could have possibly predicted!
35 Pelosi is really a couple of tiers above Trump and anyone advising him. She also has a much easier climb-down. If it turns out that she has to give in and put 3B towards the stupid wall in order to save millions of people on food stamps or something, she'll find a way to sell it that mollifies all but the most unhinged people in the coalition. Trump's wall isn't actually anything real, and nothing he gets on that score can mollify his unhinged base, because if they get a wall, it won't solve any of their problems, including that everyone with two brain cells and a full set of teeth thinks they're morons who literally do not know shit from shinola.
Oh, yeah, morons willing to hit kids with a club. I guess that wins respect in some quarters.
25 would be epic. Let's just do it and be legends! Also possible: Mar-a-Lago.
CAN WE RE-CLASSIFY PRESIDENT AS NONESSENTIAL
I am definitely doing the coastal-elite, non-Federal-worker thing of worrying about how this might impact my vacation in a month (TSA? What about, say, ATC?). I realize that we're quite fucked in lots of ways if it gets that far. Nevertheless, I looked into travel insurance (which I never do) and I think "airports are fucked" is not actually covered.
Hey, does anyone have financial plans for 2019 that are more optimistic than "hoard cash" (in any amount)? I have still not quite internalized being a coastal elite and am decluttering the area under the mattress.
Let me be the first to suggest municipal bonds.
If the UK ends up saying never mind to Brexit, that automatically revokes Trump's election also, right?
46: Hoarding cash! That sounds like a great plan. Now I just need to get some.
Hoarding canned goods and ammunition may be closer to our present reality.
NW has kindly supplied our household with the airgun his mother bought (in her 90s) to drive the pigeons off her bird feeder. It still kinda sorta works, and looks very realistic. I find myself fantasizing about using it to protect my stash of pasta, lentils, and tinned tomatoes against hordes of starving Brexiteers.
I've been presuming that it'll all be resolved before I'm in DC from Feb 11-15. Can Trump really hold out for another month? It's hard to imagine. Of course, he's so stuck with his stupidity; he really needs some sort of deus ex machina to get out of this. War with Iran! Make that Libya! Qatar cannot be tolerated! Death to Venezuela! Is there a small island country we can find? As Scott-Heron said of Reagan The gladiator invader of Grenada!
I'll be lobbying Congress, as part of one of my non-paying gigs.
BTW, do any of you folks live in DC, and would anyone like to be my valentine?
he really needs some sort of deus ex machina to get out of this
A meteor strike on his weekly lunch with Vice President Dense would do nicely.
50: You jest, but there's a real disparity between my attitude toward the future (I don't know when the crash will come, but resilience is bleeding out of the national economy with hemophiliac gusto) and, say, my parents' long-term optimism. I'm not sitting here gaming out doomsday hyperinflation scenarios with my cash-to-cans converter, but I am always genuinely curious about how other people handle the precarity -- as you may have noticed, because I ask this question roughly every 4 months.
I'm not sure there's a plausible scenario that's worth planning for. If it's a major economic contraction that doesn't fundamentally collapse the system, you plan by doing the same sorts of things that you'd do anyway. If it's total social collapse with roving bands of starving marauders, a cabin in the woods with a 5-year food supply and a well-stocked armory isn't likely to help all that much. Maybe the best bet would be living in a mid-sized, relatively cohesive community well away from major cities, with plenty of water, diversified ag, and game nearby, which is great if that's what you're interested in anyway but not so much otherwise.
CCarp can be our designated survivor.
It's hard to imagine. Of course, he's so stuck with his stupidity; he really needs some sort of deus ex machina to get out of this.
This is a good way of putting it, the thing I was trying to say with the end of a TV season/election at the end of an election season.
It really is remarkable how "the president is a complete piece of shit" is really the elephant the room as far the news stories go. I think they just ran out of emphasis so they don't bother except for editorials.
56: Nah. I have a bunch of Mormon nieces and nephews that I'm very fond of. That's close enough.
I think if you're fond of them, you're supposed to call them LDS nieces and nephews.
They're Hawaii Mormons. Much mellower than the Utah variety.
Not that mellow. Although I wouldn't make any bets that the youngest never sampled pakalolo.
The longer this goes on the more it's going to become "Fund whatever conservatives want" as a backdoor way to cut government. They'll probably figure out some technically illegal way to pay workers, they'll get sued, conservative courts will say the remedy is impeachment and nothing will happen and the government will stay closed until the next president is sworn in. Effects will be more pollution, fewer audits and inspections, more incidents of food contamination, poor containment of disease outbreaks, maybe more transportation accidents (certainly no investigation into those that happen), no scientific research funding, a lot of knock on unemployment and a recession. But the majority of people aren't affected on a daily basis even if unemployment goes to 8-9%, it's a kind of Russian roulette is you get screwed (see what I did there?). I mean, a lot of economically mid tier countries probably are in a very similar situation- shit happens that a better government could prevent but most people go on living.
66 last: The difference is, I think the dominant discourse in most of those countries is that governance should get bigger and better, and people bitch when it fails.
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then they learned how to become rich by cheating the mountain people, such as only selling their tofu or pickles to the natives on credit, to cheat them through usury.|>
52. I was so busy worrying about other shit that I forgot until yesterday that they're about to tear up the Intermediate Range Forces Treaty with Russia, starting next month, so CC might want to bring forward his visit to DC, in case that's the Deus ex machina they decide to run with.
66: I don't actually think this could happen. the dems seem unusually vertebrate here, and as long as they can keep passing bills in the house that would fix the problem I think they can eventually pin the blame on mcconnell and trump in a secure way, setting aside the crazification crew. actually, I know that people ordinarily only run election ads, but I want the dems to buy ads on facebook and elsewhere that just play the tape of trump saying he's shutting down the government himself and will take full responsibility for it. I think years-long shutdowns are impossible, especially if they trigger a massive recession. trump is stupid, but his advisors aren't quite that stupid. they want him to get re-elected.
DC is well beyond intermediate range.
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Pretty big sandstorm here. Maybe this will give me the cover I need to take Aqaba.
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Prizes are on the Gulf of Aden these days.
The real prize is the friends you meet along the way.
NMM to Verna Bloom ("My name's Marion. They call me Mrs. Wormer.")
Friends will sometimes drown in quicksand. Gotta keep keep moving forward.
If they aren't buoyant, they were never your real friend.
Stay off comms, asshole.
I predicted on Twitter 8 days ago that a major airport would close or move to minimal operations before the shutdown ends. That could indeed be the precipitant.
Hello there, Hayward Fault! I do remember you, of course! Something on your mind? Anything I can do for you while FEMA's out of commission?
This time I was awake and stood up and walked toward the door, by which time the shaking stopped. (Yesterday observed the sound of glasses rattling slightly without more than half waking up.)
87: Just a little 30-year anniversary celebration.
It woke me up and I lay awake thinking about Mt. Pinatubo erupting in the middle of a typhoon. Even a 7.0 quake this morning would have been a joke in comparison, I know, but sometimes the thought of leaping into poorly-coordinated neighborhood action whenever the shaking stops leads me to hyperbole.
(Oh thanks Moby, but it was totally harmless, I think. Just a friendly reminder!)
Realistically, you'd need the New Madrid Zone to pop off to get past the Senate.
Yes, they were both almost identical low-magnitude - just enough to notice as a quake.
The news that Trump didn't want a single dollar to go to Puerto Rico is especially infuriating. What an utter piece of shit.
I too had a panic just now. I realized that other people at work can see my Outlook calendar. Then I panicked. Then I realized they could only see available/not available so I calmed down.
95 Good thing they can't see stuff like "9:30-11:00 Unfogged commenting".
86: I thought precisely this when Canadian ATC started sending your controllers pizza. How long before they just don't show up?
"Dune-dammed paleovalleys of the Nebraska Sand Hills". So great.
Still, the new tourism slogan really stands out.
This article implies the following level of exchange between White House and military:
WH: Give us options to attack Iran.
DOD: OK, what's the goal? Bloody nose without war? Get their proxies out of Syria? Full-on WWIII? We need some specifications.
WH: Iran! Attack! Did we stutter? Lol, nerds
(Specifically the NSC, so probably coming either from Bolton or from Trump-when-he-last-spoke-to-Bolton.)
Except they misspelled "damned".
They should have sent back a photoshopped version if that guy from Strangelove riding a bomb with Bolton's face.
89: All the local faults celebrate each other's anniversaries now.
My new complaint about the shutdown is that now, allasudden, I am supposed to be sympathetic to the TSA. I have a long record of despising the TSA and fucking ridiculous security theater, and now, like, the good thing to do is be compassionate to them 'cause they are all workers in the trenches? Damn.
At this point I have had to decide that the FBI, some of the NFL and now the TSA are all more-or-less on my side, and I am not enjoying this. Oh, and now Proctor&Gamble with their WokeGillette ad, the content of which I actually liked.
I'm sympathetic to TSA workers who make pretty shit money for stressful work - not the TSA as an organization.
Gillette makes the blades I scrape across my neck. They haven't cut my throat once.
This story provided an entertaining change of pace.
|| https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/01/new-zealand-tourists-john-johnson-tina-cash-arrest.html ||
There was a Unfoggetarian in New Zealand, I recall. I wonder if he still lurks.
The news that Trump didn't want a single dollar to go to Puerto Rico is especially infuriating. What an utter piece of shit.
This one is going to make me squirm for years. No one did enough to counteract his negligence. People like me -- I speak for myself here but exceptions are thin on the ground -- are still not doing enough to demand accountability and visibility and remedies. It's not just Trump, although I tend to think he should be impeached for this alone. It's practically the whole country, even riding its waves of wokeness. If I'm wrong here, I would love to hear about it.
Link for PR, please? I failed to pay attention in real time.
110: https://www.inquisitr.com/5253661/trump-not-a-single-dollar-spent-puerto-rico/
Links to the Washington Post article that broke the story, but not sure if you have access to the WP.
I hope I'm wrong but I think a no-deal crash out is looking more likely* and one of our ministers has now let slip what everybody knows, that there will of course have to be some kind of Border checks if that happens. All kinds of minor and major nuisances will abound: I have nothing to do with cross Border trade but I'll have to get a special insurance green card if I want to drive the logical route to Donegal.
* My old friend Nicholas, who some of you met back when his business card said "Independent Diplomat", gives his view here;
https://www.apcoworldwide.com/blog/detail/apcoforum/2018/12/14/the-threat-of-no-deal-brexit-is-greater-than-ever
He's from NI, lives just outside Brussels, was involved in politics both for the Alliance and later the Lib Dems (in the Ashdown days) and has worked for about 20 years in international affairs, so he's well clued in on all sides.
I'm going to take the dubious step of posting a link I haven't vetted and can't endorse, but it does make many of its sources available -- seems to be the work of some kind of think tank, not obviously funded by Russia or lunatics, so maybe in the "well-meaning but misguided" category? Idk, something rubbed me the wrong way but I want to know more about this.
https://news.littlesis.org/2019/01/10/debt-island-wall-street-closes-in-on-40-years-of-profit-at-puerto-ricos-expense/
114: This Alliance, presumably.
I've heard it's a long way to Tipperary, but maybe people aren't going the logical way.
I don't have any expertise on Brexit, but it seems to me that the option with the extrinsic deadline is the one that will happen. Everyone keeps saying that every option is impossible, so as each option comes up, it is rejected as impossible and put back on the bottom of the stack. Whichever one has an actual extrinsic deadline (no-deal Brexit?) is the one that's going to happen, because all the other ones will get rejected as they come up. Because they're impossible.
What happens at the deadline if there is no deal? Armed police with barriers will seal the borders?
Some government has to take some concrete action before a no deal Brexit can happen. It's just that the government doing so doesn't have to be the one from the United Kingdom.
Everyone gives €5 to Claude Juncker.
I remember seeing some kind of walkthrough of polls indicating that of three major Brexit routes, the public preferred A over B, B over C, and C over A.
122: Heh. That is sure what it looks like from the outside.
Yep. Poli Sci going to be teaching that as an example until long after we're dead and gone.
I liked it better when we had a President who wasn't a malevolent moron.
It really is remarkable how many problems that would solve.
From the point of view of Ireland, if we want to export to other EU countries they need to be sure we're not letting in unvetted goods across the border from NI. How we prove that in practice remains to be seen. We'll probably get a few weeks' grace to allow for the fact that there won't actually be container vessels full of chlorinated chicken hovering outside Belfast port on March 28.
Some stupid autofill keeps correcting back to my real name whenever I comment from my phone.
Do you have any hovering chickens to declare?
Rock Brexit: no Brexit, the rock stops it in its path (second referendum or whatever)
Paper Brexit: a Brexit with a deal
Scissors Brexit: cut off, no deal
|| Identical twins test ancestry companies --
According to 23andMe's findings, Charlsie has nearly 10 per cent less "broadly European" ancestry than Carly. She also has French and German ancestry (2.6 per cent) that her sister doesn't share.
The identical twins also apparently have different degrees of Eastern European heritage -- 28 per cent for Charlsie compared to 24.7 per cent for Carly. And while Carly's Eastern European ancestry was linked to Poland, the country was listed as "not detected" in Charlsie's results.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/dna-ancestry-kits-twins-marketplace-1.4980976
|| While the leaders of the national governments in the U.S. and U.K. are failing miserably, here in Ohio we are bursting with pride over our new governor who set a new world-record by being sworn in on a stack of 9 (!) Holy Bibles.
I loved this description -- As one Twitter user put it, it's "the 'stuffing an entire eggplant down your leather pants' of conservative political showmanship."
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/01/ohio-governor-mike-dewine-bible-stack-oath.html
||
In the event of dispute which translation shall govern?
114: Interesting. I know Nicolas from his work as the chief Hugo Award Administrator in 2017 which he is repeating this year for the 2019 Worldcon in Dublin. I got to meet him briefly at the Helsinki Worldcon in 2017. It's good to get his perspective on the Brexit politics. (I'm also wondering how a no-deal Brexit might affect at least one NI side-trip we're thinking about while we're visiting Dublin.)
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Their temples are too vast, their monks are too plentiful, and it is difficult to guarantee that their ranks do not harbor criminals.|>
I'm just here to get Thorn's take on the Catholic school students mocking the veteran. (Such as "My take is that I saw a pretty good movie this weekend with the kids.")
That smirking kid better hope he's on of those people who gets a very different face as they grow to adulthood, like Anthony Michael Hall, not one that keeps their youthful face into middle age, like Corey Feldman.
And something for everyone: I see mostly straightforward responses to this tweet:
A modest proposal: The cure for ignorance is understanding. Covington Catholic High School should organize a spring break project doing service on a Native American reservation.
How do you play it out as Swiftian satire?
Were there Caribs on US territory?
Forced adoption for the Covington kids would have a certain poetic justice.
Too much paperwork. Have them walk to Oklahoma. I'm sure those parole-anklet things could manage it.
We're looking for Swiftian satire here, people, not poetic justice.
Then when they arrive, Surprise! they have to walk to Arizona. Etc.
145: That's your department.
Wait, is the town and school named for General Covington?
I thought it was named after the Cincinnati Airport.
My version, if I had time to write it out, would probably culminate in the reinvention of the Mission system with liberal apologia all the way (noting in passing how the benevolent Church could improve on the poor track record of the federal government). I am not so familiar with Franciscan rhetoric of the period but probably a rich vein to mine...
The Franciscans ran the New Mexico missions in Swift's time and were constantly fighting with the secular authorities over their treatment of the Pueblos, so there's probably some good stuff in their writings. (The Pueblos themselves didn't feel that great about their treatment by either cross or crown, hence the Pueblo Revolt in 1680.)
I don't think they ever endorsed cannibalism, though.
137: My take is and has long been fuck 'em. Privilege is one hell of a drug and I'm shocked by how many Catholics on fb are not bothering to have any shame or guilt another that because what is even the point then? I've pretty much only been engaging with Mara's dad, who attended the school, about it, though I'll probably say something to a HS friend of mine who's apologizing for jerky, thoughtless things he did as a student there.
The Omaha appear to have been a really boring non-atrocious bunch. I'm not feeling my satire mojo.
Any thoughts on the latest (link goes to CNN "live updates" thread, so it's a fountain of novelty)? Tell me your best story about successfully freeing hostages.
Amazingly small that he's trying to do a SOTU from Congress regardless. I'd love it if he persisted enough to end up delivering to an empty chamber.