Strictly speaking, I don't hear Trump admit that he ordered an extrajudicial killing, but he acknowledges and praises the killing and certainly seems to wish to share credit for it. Did he order it explicitly? Probably yes, but there's still a little bit of wiggle room. Anyway, I assume every far right terrorist and shit-stirrer is going to hear "we've got your back" and I consequently don't know how to add this to my predictions of election-night mayhem.
Who here is going to be out watching the polls on Election Day?
Ha, I was editing as you were commenting.
Wow do I want those marshalls prosecuted next year.
1 last -- I will. Going out door knocking right now.
How is Jeff Flake going to save us? I must have missed something.
3: Not even actually marshals, at least mostly, but local officers working on a task force outside their normal jurisdictions.
5: I think that is ogged's way of saying that there is no hope.
7: I am but an unfrozen caveman software engineer, so ogged's subtlety is sometimes beyond me.
Did Trump brag about this being a hit as soon as it happened, before there was confirmation that it was basically a hit?
5: Jeff Flake pretended for a while like he might vote against Kavanaugh.
The vote to move forward without a quorum is really incredible. This process has no legitimacy. Barrett declined to view Roe as a super precedent in the way that Marbury vs Madison is. I'm really rethinking Marbury myself, or at least thinking that the other branches of government have or ought to have some role in shaping its meaning. Kind of the way that George Ryan did when he did a blanket commutation of death sentences in Illinois. By making it a blanket policy, he was essentially saying that it was cruel and (ought to be) unusual punishment and saying that the judicial process had allowed a policy which ought to have been deemed unconstitutional.
Packing the court is not that radical compared to the modern Repubs.
Newsflash you morons, your local U.S. Marshall run fugitive teams are not in fact getting orders directly from the president.
DaveLHI is correct that most of the members are from local agencies and have been cross deputized by the Marshalls. I've for sure seen some questionable tactics from them but they're not presidential kill squads.
You're a really terrible reader for someone who's so quick with the insults. What's the matter, you can't get enough people to be rude to you in real life?
12: Yeah doubtless 3 was due to your careful reading of the incident and knowledge of fugitive apprehension.
It notably said nothing about direct orders from the president. I was relying on the eyewitness account saying they killed him without any attempt to arrest him first -- if you've got professional training that tells you that's okay, then I'd like to thank you for continuing to be this blog's finest advocate for police abolition.
Maybe you should recall how eyewitness reliance served you on the Michael Brown case.
So how's abolition going in your city? Your department disbanded their pro active gun unit and your state basically ended cash bail. So far shootings and homicides have doubled. Good work.
Like, fuck, at a minimum, it's bad that a President thinks (brags? what is the most meaningful verb here?) he ordered a hit squad. Like, that shit isn't done. That's enough to be in our fucking vapours about.
15: Wait, maybe murders are only up like 35 percent, it's the shootings that have doubled. Carry on!
16: Absolutely.
Right, crime in New York is back to the horrifying charnelhouse it was in what, the early 2010s? And causality of changes in crime rates is clear, because nothing much else has been happening this year.
And you keep on harking back to the Michael Brown case as one where the police shooting was ultimately shown to everyone's satisfaction to have been justified. That's not something you've got broad agreement on here.
11.2: To be clear, I was noting the local affiliation because that makes it seem even more bizarre that they would just roll up and open fire. It's not the only possible explanation, but when a bunch of people working together do a bizarre thing, it's grounds to wonder what direction they were given. I wouldn't expect "go out there and kill that guy no matter what," but the Bin Laden raid, among others, suggests that the US Government knows how to give a lawful order that will be understood to mean that it's better to come back with a body than a prisoner.
19: My experience with our local team is that they're not looking to shoot anyone, they genuinely are just trying to get the guy arrested. But there's definitely times where they cowboy the tactics in a way that increases the odds they're going to shoot the guy. My agency doesn't participate in that team for that exact reason.
Newsflash you morons, your local Chuck E. Cheese-themed massage parlour is not in fact getting oh I give up.
Yeah, that's really good for you and yours (though could you please clarify who the "they" is that "cowboy the tactics"?) , but this seemed sorta shady to begin with, and I think the President is doing a good job pointing out: hey, the shadiness is the point. I assume the people who identify as libertarian are particularly het up over it.
Anyway, fuck the president for slandering those guys.
For something actually interesting about the Marshalls, I give you Bass Reeves, legend and first black Marshall west of the Mississippi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Reeves
His great great great grandson is a black pro hockey player in Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Reaves
your local Chuck E. Cheese-themed massage parlour is not in fact getting oh I give up.
Give up, get up, we're really not making it easy for ESL learners.
though could you please clarify who the "they" is that "cowboy the tactics"?
"they" is our local equivalent to the Portland team. They're task forces run by the Marshalls that involve members from local and state agencies. Out here it's called VFAST. In Oregon it's "Ad hoc fugitive task force".
https://www.usmarshals.gov/district/ut/taskforces/index.html
https://www.usmarshals.gov/district/or/taskforces/index.html
Hi Moby! How's it going? I'm having a nice bit of dry cider, but it's really hot out and also inside our apartment. No killer cops and/or Marshall's (tm) assassin squads (your favorite state violence brands for less!) in the vicinity though.
I've never been to a massage parlor, but there's no way your average Chuck E. Cheese isn't less sanitary, even without considering covid.
27: Godamnit, why did I spell it like that. Ugh.
I'm fine. I'm not drinking because if I drink on weekdays, I wind up with pain. We have a seasonal, cool, rain. I went for a walk.
I should buy some cider for tomorrow.
26: So your local agency doesn't participate in the (local?) team under federal jurisdiction? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is: are the guys who cowboy it up locals who get excited for being under federal jurisdiction, or federales who rope in locals without taking into account local mores, promoting gung ho machoness? Or both? I think there's a meaningful distinction there, but my second graph (below) might be a counterpoint.
30: I on the other hand am totally drinking too much, in recognition of us entering Tier 2.
||Also, apparently, when we drove back from Scotland, it was literally the wettest day ever recorded in this nation known for wetness, and I drove through 600 miles of it. What a stupid idea. |>
I'll take credit for the initial misspelling of marshals. I blame autocorrect.
So your local agency doesn't participate in the (local?) team under federal jurisdiction?
Correct.
are the guys who cowboy it up locals who get excited for being under federal jurisdiction, or federales who rope in locals without taking into account local mores, promoting gung ho machoness? Or both?
Bit of both. Local mores vary widely in this country because we have a patchwork of agencies instead of a national police force.
There's a dead mouse in my basement.
The good thing about dead mice in out-of-the-way places is, they tend to dry up and be less gross after a while. I don't like them when they're fleshy.
If my wife notices the smell, she'll make me look for it. I don't want to look for it until it dries out.
What your basement needs is a snake.
But I guess then you end up buying mice to bring home to it once it clears out the locals, so maybe that strategy has some flaws.
We tried but it was afraid of the spiders.
My neighbor has a cat and even more mice, I think because everything lives under her deck.
Moby has an old lady who swallowed a fly in his basement.
I forgot. Need to get her a ballot.
There is significant evidence that the marshals executed the guy. Trump has bragged about the marshals executing the guy.
No, Trump didn't order the execution. He doesn't have either the courage or the planning skills for that sort of thing, and he is always happy to take credit for other people's accomplishments.
But the marshals stand unambiguously with Trump. When it was discussed as a potential criminal matter, the marshals objected. When Trump gave them credit for being lawless killers -- which first happened at least a couple of days ago -- well, crickets chirping. Silence.
The marshals perceive their interests as being aligned with Trump's, or they would have said something. Is the marshals' failure to support basic law a result of cowardice, or is it because they affirmatively support Trump's lawlessness? I don't care. Fuck 'em. Defund 'em. Jail 'em. Give their jobs to non-monsters.
If they want to silently accede to Trump, fine. Maybe they and Trump will win. Or if Trump loses, maybe they will gutlessly slink away. But decent Americans don't have to accept this shit.
If the marshals don't want to defend themselves against Trump's accusations, I sure as fuck am not going to.
Maybe you should recall how eyewitness reliance served you on the Michael Brown case.
It's possible that you should reflect on this. What evidence do the marshals have in their favor that extends beyond eyewitness accounts? The fact that a gun was found in the corpse's pocket?
It's just a total fucking coincidence that Trump is tweeting "liberate Michigan!" and attacking the governor of Michigan and then some nitwits hatch a plot to kidnap and murder her. Or else he personally ordered them to do it. The only two possible options.
Newsflash you morons, your local U.S. Marshall run fugitive teams are not in fact getting orders directly from the president.
Christ. No one needs to call me a moron to correct or instruct me -- indeed, it's not all that instructive! -- and I'm the only person here who said anything remotely like the above. (For whatever it's worth, I was originally responding to all the tweets about how this showed that Trump had given orders along these lines, which it clearly doesn't -- maybe that's also what you're picking up.) I take your point that my speculations are off base. However, I'm not a moron. You've said yourself that this blog has virtually no audience, so why the bluster?
Just as I think fundamentalist Christians will come to regret tying themselves to this pathetic figure,* so too will a number of folks in law enforcement. By taking his insults without complaint -- that SEAL team guy who still supports Trump even after he retweeted that they hadn't killed Bin Laden and that Biden had had the SEAL team killed is another example -- they show, again, that they've placed tribalism ahead of their job, which is enforcing the law fairly. All summer long, police departments seemed to be competing to see which could most conclusively prove the need for some pretty serious re-allocation of funding.
Of course it's not easy to change rotten entrenched systems, and there will be ups and downs. I think, though, that the arc is going to bend towards justice here, and a lot of guys are going to find themselves with a shorter end of a stick than they expected.
* If you can vote for the living embodiment of each of the seven deadly sins to have more power than anyone on earth, I don't want to hear about your delicate principles that prevent you from baking a fucking cake.
Ignorant question: would there be a comparison between this case and the SAS shooting an IRA squad in Gibraltar , many years ago? That was clearly also an extra-judicial killing, even if they were on their way to plant a bomb (I can't remember the details)* But it was one that was widely popular among conservatives** and not a ditch that many liberals much wanted to die in, so to say. Certainly. Margaret Thatcher took full credit for it and had much more plausible responsibility for that killing than Trump for this.
I suppose my question is really whether republican suburbanites feel they are already at war with a shadowy terrorist organisation, the way we were with the IRA. Or is it simply bravado and posturing without any real fear behind it?
*wikipedia establishes they were not, even if that was the ultimate purpose of their trip to Gibraltar
**with honourable exceptions.My crustiest, parodically high tory friend, a solicitor, was absolutely outraged by it
Parenthetically. I am really interested in the long-term consequences for religion of Trumpism. Charley is obviously right that there will be a huge backlash against organised fundamentalism -- to some extent it is already visible in the spread of religious disaffiliation among the young -- but I'm not sure that ordinary decent criminals Christians will be the beneficiaries. This looks very clear in the Catholic church where the hard right is a clear minority but still hugely influential. The people who are leaving in disgust are the moderate. pro-Francis ones. And if he is succeeded by a candidate acceptable to the American Right, that process is going to accelerate.
would there be a comparison between this case and the SAS shooting an IRA squad in Gibraltar
Statistically it's hard to say for sure.
Oh hey, it's a presidentially-approved death squad. Don't worry about that slippery slope to fascism folks, gswift is here to tell us that skiing is really really fun. Whee!
Somehow in my head I conflated Jeff Flake with Ben Sasse (I pleas easy to do) and thought ogged was referring ironically to the reporting of a recent call Sasse had with constituents in which criticized Trump on several fronts.
31. I would suggest that the Gibraltar operation had more in common with the UBL takedown, in that they were both extrajudicial killings carried out by the regular armed forces of the countries involved with the knowledge and connivance of, if not on the orders of, their respective heads of government.
I'm still unclear what the guy killed in this latest snafu is supposed to have done, but gswift is almost certainly right to suggest that Trump had no knowledge of the operation until after the event.
54: Killed a guy during a protest he was attending as armed antifa 'security'. It seems very likely that he did kill the guy -- there's an all-but-explicit confession on tape, and while I'm not looking it up, I think there was also fairly but not completely inculpating video evidence from the event. He certainly should have been arrested, although it seems possible he could have put forth a good defense of self-defense.
Newsflash you morons, your local U.S. Marshall run fugitive teams are not in fact getting orders directly from the president.
No one here or elsewhere is arguing this, that's not how any of this works.
* If you can vote for the living embodiment of each of the seven deadly sins to have more power than anyone on earth, I don't want to hear about your delicate principles that prevent you from baking a fucking cake.
Just wanted to see that again.
Trump had no knowledge of the operation until after the event.
Right. He merely stated, publicly and repeatedly, that something like that should happen and then after it happened, bragged about it.
That penance they made Henry II do was bullshit, anyway. How could he have known anyone was going to do a thing just because he said he wished they would?
So this is that "gswift adding value" I've been hearing so much about?
Trump has already gotten at least half-way to: I'm not sayin' that the police should take out these punks Dirty-Harry-style, like they do in the Philippines, but these things are hard to prove, aren't they... I'm hoping there are obvious reasons why state-level institutions can't easily come to conform themselves to talk like that.
That was me on 12-23-16. It didn't occur to me that it might be more accurate without the "not".
59: the problem seems to be the persistent mass delusion that we're all morally and intellectually obligated to respond. That can stop anytime, really; people just need to do it.
Anyway, recap for Chris Y and others:
Precipitating incident discussed in this thread; shooter's account of what happened before his own death discussed in this thread; NYT investigative report on the suspect's killing by authorities.
In the unlikely event shit really does go wrong, we now have dual citizenship in an EU nation. Well, not me yet, but I figure they'd let me go with my EU citizen wife and kids.
I have no idea where I'd go if a sequence of events forced it upon us.
36: Public Service Announcement. The thing about having a dead mouse in the basement is that it was once a live mouse, and where there is one live mouse there will likely be others. Your dead mouse might just desiccate, but it's equally likely the next live mouse will eat it: partially, leaving mouse parts strewn about, and bloodstains. Mice are sloppy like that. At best you will get a collection of desiccated mouse tidbits. The skull and spine are particularly interesting.
In short, remove your dead mouse.
If there weren't pandemic constraints, I feel like if persecuted I'd flee to Japan. White people get a bit of a pass there to bum around and teach English on tourist visas, and speaking Japanese is a further leg up to find a job and sort out immigration.
65 isn't even close to the top of the list of things I'm actively working to live in denial of.
I have no idea where I'd go if a sequence of events forced it upon us.
The ideal place, for me, would be a suburb of Vancouver (BC), but that would be really difficult at the moment. Even with planning and time, it would be a ton of work to get the necessary visas. Looking at the requirements I'd need to have a job offer (in my field) from a Canadian company to even have a shot of applying as a skilled worker, and I'm not sure the points would work out even with that.
What "sequences of events" do you all have in mind? No need to reveal more than is comfortable; I'm just curious. I confirmed that I have a viable emigration option through my job (technically two options, but I don't think I could persuade my boss or anyone else that I'd be equally available and able to collaborate from UTC+10), but I would have to think pretty hard before pulling the trigger.
It's important to have both a dog and a cat, because then you can use the dog shit bags to pick up the dead rodents the cat leaves.
What "sequences of events" do you all have in mind?
All I can think of is local violence? If it literally started to feel like my family might be in physical danger? (Or natural disaster, but that's different.)
Anything short of that and I think that if I left, I'd be abandoning the vulnerable people here who are catching it much worse than I am.
It's hard to imagine a sequence of events where the violence here is significant enough for us to leave, but we can't just head to another part of the country. Hence me sort of flailing to come up with an answer.
63: I'd really prefer the EU to Canada, but that's my Out. Tim's paternal grandfather was born in Britain. His grandfather's father died in WWI, and his great grandmother married a Canadian soldier. You used to be able to move and get citizenship if you had a job, but the UK is no longer part of the EU, and it too seems to be falling apart.
A grandfather born here and £3 will get you a cup of coffee in modern Britain.. Hostile environment is the word.
Living in Montana, or Texas, or Florida without a television and without being a member of an underground revolutionary cell is probably sufficient. If one lives in Costa Rica, one will get every bit as upset if one watches the TV, and one will not be able to be part of a resistance cell anyway. And if you were part of a resistance group, being in Costa Rica wouldn't protect you.
I think I remember chrisY repeating an old dictum that 'what we think of as "the 60s" was something that happened to [x -- a small number] people living in London.' For the vast majority of Germans -- obviously depending on ethnicity, sexual identity, able-bodiness, and prior political activity -- the Third Reich wasn't that big a deal, other than the War. So it would be here, even under fairly dire conditions under a re-elected Trump. None of this excuses a slide fascism, of course. It's just that performative exile planning isn't really a thing for most of us.
What I'm saying is, the real choices are between staying and fighting (safely!), and staying and tuning it out.
Yes, it's true, I'm married to a citizen of the EU. We're not rich enough to retire to Sicily though.
I have no idea where I'd go if a sequence of events forced it upon us.
As for fleeing the DC area, living with my family in Vermont would probably be the best option. Not a great option, but better than any alternative. My and Cassandane's jobs can be done remotely. We might have a car as early as tomorrow, not sure. (It's a weird situation.)
As for fleeing the country, hell, I have no idea. At this particular moment, no foreign countries want Americans due to the coronavirus, but that's going to end someday even if Trump stays in office. As a middle-class cishet white family, we are not at high personal risk. If things get bad enough that we'd need to seek refugee status, it would be reeeeeeeally fucking bad.
My family has barely been gone from Sicily for 125 years. Not going back.
For the vast majority of Germans -- obviously depending on ethnicity, sexual identity, able-bodiness, and prior political activity -- the Third Reich wasn't that big a deal, other than the War.
I mean, yes, the majority wasn't at risk of imprisonment/civil violence, but if Tooze has it right, there was a sharp decline in material welfare even before the war.
I said unlikely because I can't think of a specific chain of events that would make it so bad we'd have to flee, but as an end state something like a federal police force harassing people in targeted cities and letting right wing vigilantes commit random violence. There are broader ways of targeting enemies with federal power- everyone who gave over $X to a dem candidate gets audited- but general risks to personal safety requires a lot of things to go very wrong.
Oh man, I would have moved years ago, if it were purely up to me. But uprooting the family and moving away from aging parents is a tough sell. Depending on how much you follow the news and how bummed you get by raging injustice, there's simple psychological value to going somewhere that makes it not so much your problem. Is that selfish? Maybe? I'm not a big believer in individual action, I guess. It's gonna go how it's gonna go, based on various material and demographic conditions, and I don't need to ride the wave. I also think it would be nice for my kids to grow up as citizens of a more functional polity, though those are kind of thin on the ground these days, or nearly impossible to get into.
My theory is fuck them and I've got a better claim on "western civilization" than they do and fuck them.
Is that selfish? Maybe?
Yes, but all people have selfish motives, and trying to suppress them completely is as counterproductive as repressing libido. Of course you want your kids to grow up as citizens of a functional polity with a functioning health insurance scheme and legal abortions, and taxes paying for social welfare rather than kleptocracy.
So say we have two columns: Column 1 is "Countries where it's wrong/selfish for people to leave instead of staying and working for change," and Column 2 is "Countries where you can't really blame people for leaving, because what the hell can/could they do to resist effectively?" Which countries are in each column? (It's a spectrum rather than a strict dichotomy, yes, but the spectrum has ends.)
After the 2016 election, there seemed to be consensus that the US was firmly in column 1 for most people -- not that I knew of any leavers who were actually shamed for it. But I think the consensus is also that Column 2 is much longer.
||
My cousin-by-marriage Bobby, who is an associate of Giuliani's, shows up in the Post's coverage of the Hunter Biden hard-drive hoax. Always good having terrible terrible people in the extended family.
|>
I know how you feel. My dad's cousin was a hospital administrator.
Column 1 is "Countries where it's wrong/selfish for people to leave instead of staying and working for change," and Column 2 is "Countries where you can't really blame people for leaving, because what the hell can/could they do to resist effectively?"
Is there a Column 3 of countries where people don't want to leave except to have adventures?
More seriously, I don't think the difference between columns 1 and 2 should be placed on the country so much as the people. People who are not in much danger and have more power and money and security have more obligation to stay and fight for change than people who have less power, money, and security.
I'm not going to say that anyone has THAT much obligation to stay, but the difference is wealth/power/security in terms of who can actually effectively fight for change and who deserves to strike out for a better life.
That's a good point and it also is good to keep in mind that the people least able to flee are generally also least able to protect themselves if they stay.
83 is pretty much how I see it. Fuck these racist dumbshits. They're viciously aggressive right now because they're losing and they know it. Eventually they'll learn to cope with not being majority white, including such horrors as better food, more holidays, and better-looking kids.
Yeah, looks like I've been wrong on the internet again. Of course there are going to be people who feel differently enough about the US that emigrating isn't such a big deal. And, obviously, people for whom staying is genuinely dangerous, there's no reason not to look for an exit.
I wouldn't say leaving is selfish, just, in general, ineffectual. But I say that as someone who grew up knowing that my ancestors were among the earliest European settlers of North America, and dozens of whom fought in the Revolution. My grandfather was in WWII and the other grandfather's grandfather fought for the Union in the Civil War. All my life I've known that it's my generation's job to do what we can to live up to the nation's promise, so often not kept. We're all doing it in our own way, maybe mostly be teaching our children good values, but also by individually growing into and living those values. Our work isn't finished, obviously, and leaving it to the haters to demolish all the progress (insufficient though it is) made in my lifetime is just not in play for me. There's no where I can go that the destruction of my country wouldn't matter to me. Obviously, my immigrant wife has a completely different relationship to the US, and if we still had a family home in Canada, I might well be writing this in a different time zone.
92.2: The ancestry thing is tricky because it's so easily misused. I also have lines going back to the first half of the 17th century in British North America. My wife's earliest European ancestors, if she could trace them, likely got to what's now the US from Spain at least that early, and interbred with people who were already there. The other large chunks of my ancestry are from Sweden in the second half of the 19th century; hers are from Okinawa in the second half of the 19th century. Very similar patterns, and yet somehow people who look like I do are supposed to be more American than people who look like she does. And the most recent immigrants are the ones doing now what our ancestors did back then, so they have a pretty good claim too.
Right, people can feel more or less American, and more or less invested in the future of our culture. *I* have no business judging anyone, except those folks who are enemies of our self-improvement project, clinging to white supremacy, toxic masculinity, or other poisons.
Trump is threatening to leave if Biden wins. Greenland should offer him asylum.
95: Biden should have a few bucks left over from last month's fundraising to buy him a ticket. But the rest of the gang needs their passports pulled until after they complete their sentences.
One more hopeful bit: there's a lot of fundamentally clueless racism and toxic masculinity, built on failure of imagination and fear of engaging on equal terms with people who don't see the world the same way. Most of us probably know (or are related to) people like that. They don't think of themselves as racist because they get along just fine with non-white people when they're in their comfort zones, but they're vaguely terrified of the world changing in ways they won't understand and won't know how to cope with. They're not looking for opportunities to be vicious and they're not actually threatened, so the political significance of their racism could fade pretty quickly if it's no longer profitable to stir them up.
Trump is threatening to leave if Biden wins. Greenland should offer him asylum.
Ha! Well, he certainly can't come to Canada, since our PM has said no border opening until the US gets the virus under control...
_Newsflash you morons_ activates gswift's smarthome device
I was saving them for breakfast, so I could be regular.
I have shat out
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
I do not want
to end up
like Mike Pence
Having moved overseas over 5 years ago I find the news from back home no less upsetting.
I liked it way better the few weeks after the cop flounced out of here.
fundamentally clueless racism and toxic masculinity, built on failure of imagination and fear of engaging on equal terms with people who don't see the world the same way.
Surely there's some way to write sitcoms to model engaging on equal terms and then it's basically okay and no-one either gets killed or has to go without their favorite side dish at holidays? ( I thought that's what a lot of the Onion jokes about Biden and Obama were doing --" look, a white guy is subordinate and it's fine! You can quit panicking about retribution!")
But they did panic about retribution anyway.
Anyway, if there's one thing I've learned over the past 4 years it's that people can just be horrible if they get in invitation to do so and that this can happen regardless of how they had been behaving before.
Most of us probably know (or are related to) people like that. They don't think of themselves as racist because they get along just fine with non-white people when they're in their comfort zones, but they're vaguely terrified of the world changing in ways they won't understand and won't know how to cope with. They're not looking for opportunities to be vicious and they're not actually threatened, so the political significance of their racism could fade pretty quickly if it's no longer profitable to stir them up.
Until we try to end single-family zoning.
Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!
97: This is breaking Tim's heart. I wish they would let you in with multiple tests, but I understand that a 2-week quarantine is better.
107. Yes. Even in my leafy MA green suburb of mostly white folks who would never vote for a Republican (except decorative ones like Charley Baker), and who in principal support affordable housing (not the same as multi-family zoning, but exemplary), all it takes to call out the fears of the apocalypse is a developer threatening to do a "40B" development. (40B is the MA law that says that if a town doesn't have at least 10% affordable housing, zoning rules can be over-ridden to construct affordable housing.) My leafy green suburb is right on the cusp of 10% at the moment, and there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth as a consequence.
Note that in practice (a) 40B is a club used by developers to get a better deal from the planning board, and (b) the actual most fearful thing to residents is (they claim) not the race or class of potential dwellers in such housing, but the number of children they have, because children go to school [/cite?] and therefore drive up the school budget, and drives up property taxes. Finally, (c) "affordable" still being out of reach for most actual rather than theoretical buyers, like all housing in MA: poor or even middle-class people can't afford the housing that developers build if they use 40B. The Town totally prefers anything that doesn't come with children, for example "downsizing homes" which are for people whose kids have grown and moved out.
"Multi-family" zoning in previously "single family" areas here would probably not be very successful, because it is far more profitable to build single-family homes, or tear down existing single-family homes (the sort of ranches and Cape Cods that were the thing back in the 50's) and build McMansions on the lot.
In the urban core there is a slightly different dynamic, which is to build luxury apartment complexes ($2-3 million for a condo) rather than apartments normal people can afford. Some of those are bought by foreign investors who never actually occupy them.
"Multi-family" zoning in previously "single family" areas here would probably not be very successful, because it is far more profitable to build single-family homes, or tear down existing single-family homes (the sort of ranches and Cape Cods that were the thing back in the 50's) and build McMansions on the lot.
I strongly believe that profit proposition, while true now, is a result of single-family zoning. There's research strongly suggesting that when you open up these areas to fourplex development, that suddenly becomes a more profitable option than mansionization. Also, single-family neighborhoods getting denser on the natural was the pattern of private development before single-family zoning became dominant. (Partly because it doesn't have to be huge developers, it can be moderately well-off homeowners doing an expansion or lot split or backyard rental structure instead of buying a separate investment property.)
Also, single family zoning was explicitly conceived as a tool of racial and class exclusion - I'll bet if you look you can find ads from your own area from the 20's-50's boasting how the combination of covenants and zoning restrictions would keep out the riffraff - so even if you're skeptical that removing it will do a lot, there's no good reason to keep it regardless.
OT?: I understand that exaggerated-to-the-point-it-looks-false masculinity is having a moment all around the world, but what the fuck?
109: Yeah, it's rough. But multiple tests don't necessarily catch the asymptomatic carrier who does not yet show up as a positive...
You guys really need to elect Biden! As soon as Biden-Harris are elected, the Canadian govt will take a different stance toward the border reopening, I can promise you...
Hey, a pride parade in Egypt. Progress!
Turns out I made the same joke as 2/3 of the people on that Twitter thread.
I stopped myself because I have values.
114.2: The way things are going, the covid rates will be so high by January that Canada would be nuts to open the border quickly.
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wait wtf there's a massive oil tanker about to capsize/sink/spill fucking everywhere off the coast of Venezuela? Unvetted seemingly innocuous Twitter link adds that a similar situation is threatening the Red Sea, with this link. As bad as it all sounds?
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Turns out I made the same joke as 2/3 of the people on that Twitter thread.
Ha! I came here after seeing that on twitter because I was trying to remember the name of Sifu Tweety's old blogmate who would write extended letters to conservative icons challenging them to traditional, naked, oil-ed up greek wrestling.
Searching for him, of course, led to this:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5912687/Greek-athletes-olive-oil-traditional-wrestling-rivals-hands-rivals-trousers.html
«Strictly speaking, I don't hear Trump admit that he ordered an extrajudicial killing, but he acknowledges and praises the killing and certainly seems to wish to share credit for it.»
GW Bush, BH Obama, D Trump, and G Williamson (UK secretary of defense) have all boasted publicly, for electoral purposes, about signing off regular "kill lists" of "enemies of the the people", suspected potential future criminals, both USA/UK citizens and others, that are given to DoD/CIA or MI6/MoD death squads; several hundred "unpeople" have been eliminated, to much popular applause. Most of the eliminations have been carried out in various other countries, but abductions, renditions, torture, and elimination of "enemies of the people" are rather likely to have happened within the USA and UK too, just less overtly.
Predictably enough, the Canada-US border closure has been extended by yet another month (until at least 21 November).
I have a bunch of household goods in a storage unit in Watertown, NY that I had intended to pick up last spring, before I realized we were about to be hit by a global pandemic. Some kitchen stuff; a couple of bookcases that I had treated with milk paint to give them a vintage-y, shabby chic feel; too many books; and my mother's good china. So: maybe spring 2021?