Stars - The Night Starts Here.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Inconvenienced
DETROIT (WJBK) - A local business owner flies to Iraq to bring his mother back home to the US for medical treatment. But under President Trump's ban on immigration and travel from seven predominately Muslim nations, he was forced to leave his family behind.
His mother died just one day after being told she couldn't return to the United States.
Mike Hager fled Iraq with his family during the Gulf War, returned during the Iraq war and worked alongside United States Marines and Army forces. He now owns a business in Metro Detroit and said his mom would still be alive today if President Donald Trump had not instituted his travel ban on Muslim countries.
not true, apparently.
Live From Somewhere!
I'm out so I can't watch, but what really matters is not the Supreme Court choice, but the ratings for "Supreme Court Choice - The TV Show." You're hired!
The Silly Stage
When this is the kind of think pieces we're getting, I'm pretty sure those driverless cars are a few decades away...
Driverless cars: they might put chiropractors out of business!
Driverless cars: they might put chiropractors out of business!
I Love Global Climate Change
Saving on my heating bill, and the Jersey Shore inches a little bit closer every year!
This will be the eighth consecutive month of above-normal temperatures recorded at Philadelphia International Airport.
Rules
This point has been made a thousand times, but when one side decides it's cool to play with 15 players on the field and keeps firing refs until they find one who agrees, the other side doesn't get any points for sticking with 11. Qualified praise about sportsmanship from the Washington Post editorial page doesn't count as a victory.
Can't Unshit That Bed
Even if they walk back most of the worst parts of the executive order, asserting a willingness to play Calvinball with lives in this fashion will have long lasting impacts. I'd be shocked if foreign enrollment in colleges and universities wasn't down 10%+ next year (I completely made up that figure, of course, but you get the idea) even if they started handing out green cards to anyone who asked for one. And those institutions really rely on full paying foreign students these days, for better or for worse (certainly for worse in some ways, but just ripping away that revenue source isn't going to help).
Our Betters
I often think plagiarism "scandals" are overblown, but the closer you get to education and academia, places where the concept is more clearly defined, the more of a genuine scandal they become.
But she's a billionaire who only thinks education is for the right sorts of people. If only the poors didn't take all the good education and she would have actually had some.
BTW thanks to certain Democrats who have helped to bolster her reputation over the years. Heckuva job.
President Trump’s nominee for education secretary, in written responses to questions from senators, appears to have used several sentences and phrases from other sources without attribution — including from a top Obama administration civil rights official.
But she's a billionaire who only thinks education is for the right sorts of people. If only the poors didn't take all the good education and she would have actually had some.
BTW thanks to certain Democrats who have helped to bolster her reputation over the years. Heckuva job.
Totebaggers No More
One difficult thing during the Bush years was that a lot of people who fancied themselves to be pretty liberal still had a hard time abandoning their Totebagger upbringing. You know, compromise is good, if it's bipartisan it is, by definition, good, we need unity, we need to listen to each other, the truly great politicians are the ones who cross the party aisle, "both sides" have good points, really, if you think about it, those Gangs of Wankers in the Senate are the true saviors of our nation, we must follow our leaders in a time of war, etc. This is mostly style and process stuff, not actual policy, but it's the bullshit "we just need to come together" version of politics that's been sold to suckers for decades. Was always just a con game on liberals, of course.
Suckers no more.
Suckers no more.
You Know More Than I Do
Slightly meta, but one increasingly difficult thing about blooging is that it's impossible to stay 5 minutes ahead of the news cycle anymore. I'm usually 15 minutes behind. Once upon a time I could highlight things that you, dear readers, were probably unaware of. Now that's almost impossible. You know the what and what it means before I do, usually.
Morning Thread
Yesterday evening I stepped away from the computer for some relaxing tv and all hell broke loose.
Monday, January 30, 2017
Betrayal
I try to avoid the "if this had been a Democrat.." construction, tempting as it is, but if this had been a Democrat...
Click to embiggen, then embiggen your liver...
Click to embiggen, then embiggen your liver...
Good Move On The Way Out
Holocaust denier Donald Trump is very mad.
WASHINGTON — Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, ordered the Justice Department on Monday not to defend President Trump’s executive order on immigration in court.
Horrible People
I've long paid attention to right wing media, so this isn't surprising, but more and more "deplorables" are starting to bleed through to me through social media and wow people are such horrible assholes.
Even in the Bush days they pretended it was all about spreading peeance and freeance, but now it's just "kill the other" whoever the hell the other is, and then blame it on some other other to justify killing them, too.
Even in the Bush days they pretended it was all about spreading peeance and freeance, but now it's just "kill the other" whoever the hell the other is, and then blame it on some other other to justify killing them, too.
The Pie Is Getting Higher
Over a quarter of the way to the ACLU goal.
Outrage inspires giving as it should, but they're going to need money in hand before the next outrage comes (like, say, tomorrow) to be prepared...
Outrage inspires giving as it should, but they're going to need money in hand before the next outrage comes (like, say, tomorrow) to be prepared...
In Other Obsessions
A few people emailed me this. Basically, it's correct because it agrees with me (joke). The point is that unless self-driving cars work 100% they don't really work. They might be neat technology with some specific applications, but they aren't revolutionary. Cruise Control+++ with some robot buses and maybe some long haul trucking (something I think is more possible but I'm still more skeptical about than most). Cool but not transformative.
Gill Pratt: The most important thing to understand is that not all miles are the same. Most miles that we drive are very easy, and we can drive them while daydreaming or thinking about something else or having a conversation. But some miles are really, really hard, and so it’s those difficult miles that we should be looking at: How often do those show up, and can you ensure on a given route that the car will actually be able to handle the whole route without any problem at all? Level 5 autonomy says all miles will be handled by the car in an autonomous mode without any need for human intervention at all, ever.
So if we’re talking to a company that says, “We can do full autonomy in this pre-mapped area and we’ve mapped almost every area,” that’s not Level 5.
That’s Level 4. And I wouldn’t even stop there: I would ask, “Is that at all times of the day, is it in all weather, is it in all traffic?” And then what you’ll usually find is a little bit of hedging on that too. The trouble with this Level 4 thing, or the “full autonomy” phrase, is that it covers a very wide spectrum of possible competencies. It covers “my car can run fully autonomously in a dedicated lane that has no other traffic,” which isn’t very different from a train on a set of rails, to “I can drive in Rome in the middle of the worst traffic they ever have there, while it’s raining," which is quite hard.
Because the “full autonomy” phrase can mean such a wide range of things, you really have to ask the question, “What do you really mean, what are the actual circumstances?” And usually you’ll find that it’s geofenced for area, it may be restricted by how much traffic it can handle, for the weather, the time of day, things like that. So that’s the elaboration of why we’re not even close.
Because That's What Happened?
Unambiguous holocaust denial and zomg the real racist is the person who accused them of it!!!
This was a. deliberate. expression. of. holocaust. denial. You can't even say it was "in code" or some shit, it was clear. It's obvious. This is a longstanding thing for anti-semites, white nationalists, and holocaust deniers generally. I don't know if Trump has any idea that he signed a holocaust denial proclamation - though not knowing is no excuse - but Bannon surely did. Priebus knows. Spicer knows. This is not secret stuff. If Obama had done this, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in the US media would have lost their shit until he resigned. It's that bad.
Sweet Jesus: Sitting U.S. Senator accuses White House of Holocaust denial on national television. https://t.co/lvZ3ISFS9M
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) January 30, 2017
This was a. deliberate. expression. of. holocaust. denial. You can't even say it was "in code" or some shit, it was clear. It's obvious. This is a longstanding thing for anti-semites, white nationalists, and holocaust deniers generally. I don't know if Trump has any idea that he signed a holocaust denial proclamation - though not knowing is no excuse - but Bannon surely did. Priebus knows. Spicer knows. This is not secret stuff. If Obama had done this, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in the US media would have lost their shit until he resigned. It's that bad.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Week 2
The administration is run by two holocaust denying co-presidents (President Pig Vomit and his puppet President Pig Fucker). Gonna be a fun ride.
Sunday Evening Afternoon
Keep rockin'.
I hate when I set the time stamp on blogger and it doesn't record it, which happens frequently... busy with stuff this afternoon.
I hate when I set the time stamp on blogger and it doesn't record it, which happens frequently... busy with stuff this afternoon.
International Law is for Suckers
Hahaha silly cucks.
“A bedrock of refugee and asylum law is the concept of non-refoulement — not returning an individual to a place where they will be harmed,” the immigration official told The Intercept. Under international law, the United States is required to screen applicants to ensure they will not face prosecution if returned to their countries, a process known as “credible fear screening.”
“Asylum law requires CBP officers to affirmatively ask if an applicant fears return when placing them into expedited removal,” the immigration official said. “By pressuring them to simply get on a plane without going into formal removal proceedings, they are violating our obligations under the refugee convention.”
“We are violating international law.”
Holocaust Denial
White House says Trump didn't mention Jews on Holocaust Rememberace Day because others were killed, too https://t.co/dQdG9fxTy5 pic.twitter.com/rxzBQkO6fl
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) January 29, 2017
This is textbook holocaust denial, or specifically soft holocaust denial "minimization." Basically, it's a denial that Jews were targeted specifically. Oh yes, it's sad that there were so many people who died during the war, but there's no reason to single out the Jews as victims. Wars are just tragic and sad, generally.
As Mel Gibson said to Nooners once:
I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.
President Bannon is a holocaust denier, but some guy with a sign somewhere once compared Bush to Hitler, so, you know, both sides.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Philly, Go
I can't tonight, but if you can:
URGENT CALL TO ACTION: Families are being detained at PHL airport. **Gather at 7pm at Terminal A to demand their release.** Share widely.
— Helen Gym (@HelenGymAtLarge) January 28, 2017
Reciprocal
President Pig Fucker has banned dual citizens of the list of random countries from coming into the US. Meaning, a dual UK-Iranian citizen would be banned from entering the US on a UK passport.
I don't know the precise details of our visa waiver reciprocity agreement with EU countries, but they shouldn't put up with their citizens being treated that way without a response. Obviously Theresa Trump isn't going to do anything, but other countries should.
I don't know the precise details of our visa waiver reciprocity agreement with EU countries, but they shouldn't put up with their citizens being treated that way without a response. Obviously Theresa Trump isn't going to do anything, but other countries should.
Not That It's About Me And My Comfortable Life
But I'm in a shitty mood and assholes on the internet aren't helping. Time to step away for a little bit...
Not A Humane Country
Nothing in the last 15 years of glorious humanitarian interventions has suggested that we are much into the "humanitarian" part of the intervention. As I've long said, if we can't even take in anything more than a trivial number of refugees from the conflicts we directly or indirectly have participated in, then the whole concept is a farce.
I know it's considered to be bad form to acknowledge anything from the wikileaks dump, but when this is what our "liberal" Think Tankies are coming up with...
..apologies, this wasn't even from the wikileaks dump.
One remarkable email exchange in particular reveals the critical role played by Tanden in that positioning. In October 2011, a CAP national security writer, Benjamin Armbruster, circulated a discussion on CNN about whether Libya should be forced to turn over its oil revenue to the U.S. as compensation and gratitude for the U.S. having “liberated” Libya.
After one CAP official, Faiz Shakir, noted how perverse it is to first bomb a poor country and then make it turn over its revenues to you for doing so, Tanden argued that this made a great deal of sense:
Tanden’s argument is quite similar to Donald Trump’s long-time stance about Iraqi oil: “I say we should take it and pay ourselves back.” But Tanden’s twist on the argument — that Americans will continue to support foreign wars only if they see the invaded countries forced to turn over assets that the U.S. can use to fund its own programs — is singularly perverse, as it turns the U.S. military into some sort of explicit for-profit imperial force. As Shakir put it in a subsequent email, that suggestion would “make people start to think that our military is just for-hire to carry out the agendas of other people.”
..apologies, this wasn't even from the wikileaks dump.
Knowledge Failure
I'm sure these guys are evil, but they also probably lack any sense of what it's like to move to another country for a job even if you are relatively financial secure. The timing is a nightmare. You have to get all of your paperwork together, relying on unclear and inconsistent legal advice which could potentially cause a lot of problems if it's either bad advice or you fail to follow it correctly. You have to time your arrival, get a place to stay, magically set up a bank account in the post-9/11 era where for some reason that's treated like a terrorist activity, all when your job is supposed to begin AND when all of your papers have come through AND when you have money to pay your rent AND etc... etc... You have to force the stars to align pretty well and have a great deal of luck to make it all happen. Suddenly saying "never mind" is a big fucking deal, and that's before we get to people who are trapped in foreign countries with kids here waiting for them...
Not Just Those People
It's maddening when something has to hit Real White America In The Suburbs before it's something to treat with compassion, rather than as an excuse to continue destroying lives and communities, but...
In Bucks last year, there were 185 fatalities, up from 124 in 2015. In that time, Montgomery County deaths increased to 253 from 177. Considering the size of the populations, the crisis is similar: Each county had about 30 deadly overdoses for every 100,000 residents.
Shit Is Fucked Up And Bullshit
So if you popped out for a little winter beach vacation or work trip, your kids might not have a parent for awhile.
We do love families and children.
WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - People holding so-called green cards, making them legal permanent U.S. residents, are included in President Donald Trump's executive action temporarily barring people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, a Department of Homeland security spokeswoman said on Saturday.
"It will bar green card holders," Gillian Christensen, acting Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in an email.
We do love families and children.
Really Never Alarmist Enough
Back during the worst of the Bush days I'd occasionally get genuinely well-meaning people telling me that something I had posted was wrong, and that the alarmism was dangerous. Even when I'd point to the source of whatever it was - not the liberal version of infowars, but, say, the New York Times (an imperfect publication but the beef should be with them, not me), or the clear text of an order or law, they wouldn't back down. The point is not that I was always right about everything, but that some people were always trying to say "no, no, it's not that bad, and you're being alarmist which is also super bad." Anyway, I think it's probably helpful, not harmful, to be extra alarmist. Not that I'd do it deliberately, but I don't really see the point in searching for the more charitable view of things, especially when it's so often the wrong one.
In that spirit, I'm not smart lawyer type, but I wouldn't recommend that any noncitizen resident of the country (visa/green card, whatever) travel outside the country at the moment if you're planning to try to come back. Whatever the specific intention of the regulations (or wording), throwing this shit out there on a Friday night with no explanations means that multiple agencies, individuals, and private entities (airlines) have to figure out on their own just how they're supposed to carry out President Pig Fucker's instructions.
In that spirit, I'm not smart lawyer type, but I wouldn't recommend that any noncitizen resident of the country (visa/green card, whatever) travel outside the country at the moment if you're planning to try to come back. Whatever the specific intention of the regulations (or wording), throwing this shit out there on a Friday night with no explanations means that multiple agencies, individuals, and private entities (airlines) have to figure out on their own just how they're supposed to carry out President Pig Fucker's instructions.
Friday, January 27, 2017
Heroes
Good job everybody.
In what was perhaps the grandest metaphor of a week’s worth of visiting Republican Party retreat members being literally cornered by protestors wherever they found themselves in downtown Philadelphia — grander still than even the fact that the city deemed to protect the Loews Hotel where they were staying by using trash trucks to block off the streets — a ghost train of sorts was there to carry them off, back to Washington, D.C., this morning. When protestors arrived at 30th Street Station late this morning, to greet the visiting GOP one last time for the week with messages of dissent and resistance to an increasingly aberrant, toxic presidency, they soon realized: None from the party had the courage to enter the station, and take the train that had been chartered on the GOP’s behalf.
What Are We Defending?
I have no doubt that anything good that comes out of something planned by the Trumpkins is accidental, but I would recommend that fellow lefties not overstate the case by bending over backwards to defend Washington Consensus economic ideas. NAFTA probably was not a good thing for either the US or Mexico.
Rodrik doesn't say it precisely, but almost all discussions of policies which discuss "number of jobs created (destroyed)," either expected or actual, are basically bullshit (the exception being more short run things like fiscal policy during a downturn). It's all about income distribution (individual and geographic), something we're not allowed to talk about.
Rodrik doesn't say it precisely, but almost all discussions of policies which discuss "number of jobs created (destroyed)," either expected or actual, are basically bullshit (the exception being more short run things like fiscal policy during a downturn). It's all about income distribution (individual and geographic), something we're not allowed to talk about.
The American Dream
Good luck, Florida Man.
Designed as a larger version of Minnesota’s Mall of America, the six-million-square-foot mall and amusement park would be large enough to include an indoor ski slope, submarine rides and an enclosed water park. Triple Five, owner of the Mall of America, expects 30 million visitors a year and more than 14,000 permanent jobs at the 200-acre complex on a wedge of pastures and wetlands where I-75 meets Florida’s Turnpike.
American Dream’s hiring projections would make the mall Miami-Dade’s largest employment center. An economic-impact report submitted by Triple Five estimates that more than 60 percent of the positions would pay less than $25,000 a year.
Should Have Gone With $.99
A bit too generous, I think.
You'd think that for PR purposes they'd feel the need to construct some sort of system through which they would at least *pretend* to pay a real rent, but, nah, fuck it, one buck it is.
The Oakland Raiders have submitted a proposed lease agreement to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority that would have the team pay $1 a year in rent for the use of a new dome.
The team presented the document at Thursday’s brief authority board meeting as the team awaits a decision from National Football League owners on whether it will be allowed to relocate to Southern Nevada.
You'd think that for PR purposes they'd feel the need to construct some sort of system through which they would at least *pretend* to pay a real rent, but, nah, fuck it, one buck it is.
Tell Us More, Chuck
I know that there's understandably and perhaps even correct view that anything anti-Trump is good at this point, but this was (from a few weeks ago) more than a little disturbing if the senior Senator from New York wasn't just flapping his gums.
It's the kind of thing we "joke" about, and it would explain a lot, but...
Rachel asked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) about Trump’s bizarre antics, and he replied, “[Y]ou take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you. So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”
It's the kind of thing we "joke" about, and it would explain a lot, but...
Constant
Through Republican and Democratic administrations, every crazy crackpot right wing idea gets a serious (if sometimes critical) airing on cable news.
Morning Thread
I thought I learned in High School Economics that tariffs never work. I guess we're all going to learn more about tariffs than we ever wanted to know.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Normalization
One thing that seems to have been normalized is protest. I can't quantify this in any way, but way back in the early aughts, protesting was something that weirdos did, a bit like playing D&D in the early 80s. Nothing wrong with it, necessarily, but somehow weird. Now it's like "republicans in town? ok, we're there."
I Live On Hell St.
Trump's lying about my city, saying that the murder rate is steadily increasing. It isn't.
Too many people are killed, of course, but the man who never leaves his golden palace believes that life in cities is like all of those dystopian 70s movies. The best you can say is that he's just a typcal philly.com commenter. More worrying is that this is a Bannon-esque vision of military occupation of places where black people live. Time to send the Feds into Chicago. Probably the truth is somewhere inbetween.
I live about a mile from where the action was today. I never worry about safety, or at least I worry much less about violent crime than I worry about being run over while being a lawful pedestrian. Cities like Philly have problems, but not the ones the Trumpkins imagine.
Too many people are killed, of course, but the man who never leaves his golden palace believes that life in cities is like all of those dystopian 70s movies. The best you can say is that he's just a typcal philly.com commenter. More worrying is that this is a Bannon-esque vision of military occupation of places where black people live. Time to send the Feds into Chicago. Probably the truth is somewhere inbetween.
I live about a mile from where the action was today. I never worry about safety, or at least I worry much less about violent crime than I worry about being run over while being a lawful pedestrian. Cities like Philly have problems, but not the ones the Trumpkins imagine.
Not Really
This has been bugging me for a couple of days. I'm all for doing what can be done to put the best people in office, but that's the beginning, not the end. The "organizing" by those with money and entrenched interests doesn't stop on voting day, either. Voting is the first step, not the last. Voting is good, but not BEST!!! This is a stupid and wrong hierarchy.
Marching, good. organizing, better. Speaking up, good. Running for office, better. Registering, good. Voting BEST!! #MakeAmericaSaneAgain!
— Michael A. Nutter (@Michael_Nutter) January 21, 2017
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
I Think We Might Have A Problem, Guys
President Trump on his remarks at the CIA, via the @ABC transcript pic.twitter.com/u4qt0XNYJq
— Mark Berman (@markberman) January 26, 2017
Assholes
Didn't realize there was a protest this evening, so wandered over there a bit too late. But here's a picture someone took of the Philly welcome to the Republicans staying in the hotel right there.
...oy
...video.
...oy
...video.
Police estimate 1000 Anti-Trump protesters outside GOP retreat at Loews hotel in Philly tonight pic.twitter.com/yd8aQr0wMF
— Robert Moran (@RobertMoran215) January 26, 2017
White on White Crime
Something about that community.
A man has been charged with killing his girlfriend and then dumping her body in the woods near the house where they lived just outside Lafayette, Ga., according to Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson.
Small Favors
At least with the election of Trump we don't have numerous think pieces (and sweet sweet consulting cash) about how Democrats just need to pretend to love Jesus more.
I always thought that stuff was wrong politically, but also really offensive to actual religious people (I am not one). Just hit the love Jesus button often enough and the rubes will believe you.
I always thought that stuff was wrong politically, but also really offensive to actual religious people (I am not one). Just hit the love Jesus button often enough and the rubes will believe you.
All In All
As I've said a few times (I've said everything a few times by this point), a wall doesn't keep people out (or in). Armed guard towers do.
Difference Between The Parties
Of course there is. I know there is and I'd never suggest otherwise. But you can forgive "normal" people for not being clear on exactly how.
The US federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 at about $10.81/hour in 1968 in 2016 dollars (inflation adjusted). It is currently $7.25 in today's dollars. Maryland's minimum wage is currently $8.75/hour and is scheduled to be increase to $10.10/hour in 2017, still about a buck an hour lower than it was in 1968 (adjusting for presumed inflation).
Per capita GDP is about as twice as high as it was then.
Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett on Monday vetoed legislation that would have made the wealthy county the first jurisdiction in Maryland to require a $15 minimum wage.
Leggett (D) said boosting the wage to the level embraced by national progressive activists, including former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), would harm Montgomery’s economy and its ability to compete for jobs in the Washington region.
...
Leggett left the door open to considering a revised bill, contingent on a study of the economic impact of a $15 minimum wage on the county’s public, private, and nonprofit sectors. His other conditions for signing a revised bill include extending the wage hike’s phase-in to 2022 — two years after the District will begin requiring a minimum of $15 an hour — and including an exemption for small business and youth workers.
The US federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 at about $10.81/hour in 1968 in 2016 dollars (inflation adjusted). It is currently $7.25 in today's dollars. Maryland's minimum wage is currently $8.75/hour and is scheduled to be increase to $10.10/hour in 2017, still about a buck an hour lower than it was in 1968 (adjusting for presumed inflation).
Per capita GDP is about as twice as high as it was then.
Unfair Competition
Normally we think that sweetheart tax deals and similar at least steal jobs from one state and move them to another so there's some local justification for it (increase the tax base even though we aren't making them pay any taxes!!!). Of course, quite often it's just screwing other local companies.
pssst..don't tell them about what's going in New Jersey...
Can the largest mall in America get built without some financial help from Miami-Dade County?
That’s the question well-funded opponents of the American Dream Miami project want answered before county commissioners give preliminary approval Wednesday to a zoning change needed to build the $3 billion retail theme park planned for Northwest Miami-Dade.
The large malls that would compete with American Dream want commissioners to preemptively ban the planned six-million-square-foot complex from pursuing a special taxing district that could divert millions of dollars from Miami-Dade coffers and into infrastructure expenses that developer Triple Five would otherwise have to pay.
pssst..don't tell them about what's going in New Jersey...
In It To Win It
As I've been gently saying for a couple of months, with great responsibility comes great responsibility. Too many times I've seen what happens when people who were given lots of your (probably) money to save the world from destruction piss it all away. What happens is that they get rich.
The consequences of failure of this magnitude never fall on the people responsible for it.
Rival campaign managers from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s respective presidential bids are set to join forces on the lucrative paid speaking circuit.
In joint appearances across the country, Robby Mook and Corey Lewandowski will offer a “future-focused look at why Trump won” in what their speaking agency, Leading Authorities, promises will be an “entertaining pair sure to keep any audience engaged,” according to the Washington-based firm’s website.
The consequences of failure of this magnitude never fall on the people responsible for it.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Where's My Reward
When you thought becoming president would fill the dark holes of despair inside you, but instead...
The bad press over the weekend has not allowed Trump to "enjoy" the White House as he feels he deserves, according to one person who has spoken with him.
The Mall Is Flat
Clearly frightened of the competition from the American Dream.
More mall landlords are choosing to walk away from struggling properties, leaving creditors in the lurch and posing a threat to the values of nearby real estate.
As competition from online shopping batters retailers, some of the largest U.S. landlords are calculating it is more advantageous to hand over ownership to lenders than to attempt to restructure debts on properties with darkening outlooks.
That, in turn, leaves lenders with little choice but to unload the distressed properties at fire-sale prices.
Don't Be Savvy
Resist the tendency to think that you are "in on the joke," that you know what politicians really mean, that seemingly incomprehensible strategies have a grand purpose behind them, and that, most importantly, only those with deep insight can divine what they are.
If you can figure out it, the rubes can too.
If you can figure out it, the rubes can too.
Life Goes On
Sometimes people get on a "why can you post about X when TRUMP ARGLEBARGLE" and, yes, there are few things more important than the catastrophe being imposed on our country and the world, but there are also many things in the world and they don't all stop happening.
Right Thing
Yes, the junior senator from New York is doing the right thing. The opposite of that is some senators are doing the wrong thing. I wish we didn't have to explain this.
The Heroes We Need
People always park in crosswalks around here. It's bad. It's unsafe. There are a lot of elderly people in the neighborhood who do, yes, walk places. They need access to the crosswalk and the associated curb cuts (the good kind, not the garage front kind). There's a bit of an enforcement hole, as the state authority tasked with enforcing parking violations tends not to patrol areas without permit parking, and the cops understandably think they have better things to do. Cars also block sight lines, making accidents more likely. There neeeds to be more enforcement. People get enraged by this idea.
There are a lot of ways to improve the parking situation - such having more residential parking permit areas (permits are really really cheap) to cut down on the number of people who just use it to store their beaters and people who use it as a parking lot for the bus line - but too many people prefer the "just let me park wherever the fuck I want" solution (blocks need to vote to get permits, many refuse), which doesn't really help. Also, too, it's unsafe.
There are a lot of ways to improve the parking situation - such having more residential parking permit areas (permits are really really cheap) to cut down on the number of people who just use it to store their beaters and people who use it as a parking lot for the bus line - but too many people prefer the "just let me park wherever the fuck I want" solution (blocks need to vote to get permits, many refuse), which doesn't really help. Also, too, it's unsafe.
Scary Times
The press knows, or soon will know, the scope of what we're dealing with. Unlike past presidents with issues, who at least surrounded themselves with some semi-competent people, Trump has surrounded himself with sycophantic incompetents. Republicans are completely corrupt, and those nasty Dems just turn everything (according to the institutional press) into a partisan problem. You know, both sides.
It is at times like these when a press imbued with some respect and authority is about the only possible check there is left. I do not think they are up to the task.
It is at times like these when a press imbued with some respect and authority is about the only possible check there is left. I do not think they are up to the task.
Monday, January 23, 2017
Somewhere Out There
While it's true that people abroad get a bit more US-related news than we get of other countries and generally know a bit more about things here than we know of them, it isn't actually the case that people in other countries spend all day thinking about the US. We aren't actually the center of their universe, just the biggest star on the horizon. They have their own politics, own culture, own daily bullshit, own memes and favorite cats on the internet sites, etc. It really ain't all about us.
Policy Matters
One thing our political press is usually (not always!) very bad about is engaging with the fact that policy actually matters, that it isn't just some debate club. Making it harder to access legal abortions will make people die. Making health insurance coverage worse will make people die. It's very rude to point it out, and it's also very true.
The Sunkist King
Is Trump so unaware that his handlers can get away with calming his feefees with his traveling sycophants, or is he aware and likes it that way anyway? I vote the former, but..
Authorities are also pushing back against the perception that the CIA workforce was cheering for the president. They say the first three rows in front of the president were largely made up of supporters of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
An official with knowledge of the make-up of the crowd says that there were about 40 people who’d been invited by the Trump, Mike Pence and Rep. Mike Pompeo teams. The Trump team expected Rep. Pompeo, R-Kansas, to be sworn in during the event as the next CIA director, but the vote to confirm him was delayed on Friday by Senate Democrats. Also sitting in the first several rows in front of the president was the CIA’s senior leadership, which was not cheering the remarks.
Where'd All The People Go
It's true that in much of America pedestrians are weird invading life forms, but shore towns are generally an exception to this. I don't think most people understand precisely why they love going down the shore, as they say here. Sure they like the beach and all that, but they also like that they can wander around (what the fuck do you think a boardwalk is for) and maybe even stumble home after a drink without having to drive. And, yeah, they get to do it without all the perceived scary residents of cities (you know who I mean!!!). So, sure, it makes perfect sense for state reps of shore towns to declare it's Deathrace 2017.
Ending Welfare As We Know It
One of the more maddening things was the victory laps about "welfare reform" as if getting people off welfare should have been the goal, instead of getting people to not need welfare, which should have been.
Spice, Spice, Baby
A press conference today! Exciting!!! Hopefully he yells at the naughty children again!
Word to your mother.
Word to your mother.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
I've Known This Guy
When I was younger. Men from a certain generation (maybe they exist now, too, I just don't know them), the parents of some of my friends. You know, guys who are Trump's age. At least at home - most weren't big enough shits in life too pull it off outside the home - everybody had to circle around and make sure that Daddy was ok, that Daddy got what he wanted for dinner, that people talked about what Daddy wanted to talk about, which was, of course, Daddy. Their moods would fluctuate wildly, from amusing (a bit, anyway) raconteur to despondent black hole. Everybody spent all their time doing what they could to keep Daddy happy, though there really wasn't anything that could be done.
Mr. Trump grew increasingly angry on Inauguration Day after reading a series of Twitter messages pointing out that the size of his inaugural crowd did not rival that of Mr. Obama’s in 2009. But he spent his Friday night in a whirlwind of celebration and affirmation. When he awoke on Saturday morning, after his first night in the executive mansion, the glow was gone, several people close to him said, and the new president was filled anew with a sense of injury.
Joe Piscopo Will Save The American Dream
And some nonsense about replacing pensions with tax cuts and raising money with naming rights for highways. MAGA!
It's Biff's America, we just live in it.
He also said that he would make a second attempt at a casinos referendum in 2019 that would allow the American Dream Meadowlands retail complex in Bergen County to open a casino. He believes the state's share of casino revenue could be used to defray pension costs by $100 million each year.
It's Biff's America, we just live in it.
You'll Leave When You Have Kids
This article is about how there are no kids in San Francisco, but it makes the point that somehow there are kids in other urban hellholes.
As an urban renaissance has swept through major American cities in recent decades, San Francisco’s population has risen to historical highs and a forest of skyscraping condominiums has replaced tumbledown warehouses and abandoned wharves. At the same time, the share of children in San Francisco fell to 13 percent, low even compared with another expensive city, New York, with 21 percent. In Chicago, 23 percent of the population is under 18 years old, which is also the overall average across the United States.
It Doesn't Matter
You know, low inauguration attendance is just something for stupid liberals to respond to with "hur derp President Trump is a big loser hur derp" and then move onto something else the next day. Sure there's some value in all of the evidence that the guy who won the election isn't exactly supremely popular, which does but shouldn't impact how the press covers him, but mostly it just gives something else for team liberal to make fun of Tiny Hands about. The Tiny Hands thing is the same. Both are only "funny" (also incredibly scary but we also have to laugh or drink ourselves to death) because the most powerful man in the world actually cares about these things. He's awake at 4 AM obsessing about TV ratings, still claiming (and having his flunkies claim) that he won in an historic landslide, and losing his shit because more people showed up to see the black guy get inaugurated.
The point is, we know it doesn't matter. He thinks it does matter. Eek.
The point is, we know it doesn't matter. He thinks it does matter. Eek.
America's Worst Boss
You sign up with the devil because you figure it'll be a great career move (not justifying, just how DC works). Put in a bit of time, and have sweet sweet access jobs for the rest of your life. Doesn't work too well if the devil chews you up and shits you out in record time.
He just said what the boss said, but sometimes looking in the mirror is troubling.
But most of his remarks were devoted to attacking the news media. And Mr. Spicer picked up the theme later in the day in the White House briefing room. But his appearance, according to the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking, went too far, in the president’s opinion.
He just said what the boss said, but sometimes looking in the mirror is troubling.
But The Next One Will Be Worse
When the bullpen is filled with a Rogue's Gallery filled with Arkham Asylum's worst, it's hard to even root for a Cabinet appointee to be shot down. And, I admit, I lean towards thinking that the "advise and consent role" for appointees whose terms don't outlast that of the president is a bit silly..
Saturday, January 21, 2017
He's Gandalf And Magneto
Sir Ian McKellen's sign is EVERYTHING#WomensMarch pic.twitter.com/XS3hQ14Mir
— #womensmarch (@shxrlocked) January 21, 2017
Now We Know How Civilizations Crumble
You hear stories about the kings of old who are so insecure and petty that they do the wackiest shit. Always sound a bit made up, a bit legendary. I guess not.
WH has set up crowd size pics in briefing room pic.twitter.com/gIDIuhdcdD
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 21, 2017
All Year Long
It isn't that hard to keep people organized and energized for politics all the time, to make it seem important and to make them think that they can contribute in some small way. And, no, clicktivism doesn't count. Victory (Obama) brings complacency generally, but the people with all the money and influence are rarely interested in that kind of organizing. And even grassroots require leadership and, yes, money.
If not getting out on the streets, then what? There were a lot of quirky quixotic efforts during the Bush years. They mostly faded away or got absorbed into the borg.
Political parties are membership organizations. They should ask something of their members other than "CONTRIBUTE OR DIE!!!!"
If not getting out on the streets, then what? There were a lot of quirky quixotic efforts during the Bush years. They mostly faded away or got absorbed into the borg.
Political parties are membership organizations. They should ask something of their members other than "CONTRIBUTE OR DIE!!!!"
March
Good for all who are out. I don't know how effective protest marches are. I also don't know how effective signing online petitions, spending hundreds of millions on television, writing sternly-worded oped pieces for a nice salary, or writing anguished blog posts and tweets are.
Something about people gathering in public is exotic or foreign to people in this country. I think, in part, because we lack public spaces in our daily lives.
Anyway, it's one way to stand up and say "we're here." It doesn't have to change any minds. What does?
Something about people gathering in public is exotic or foreign to people in this country. I think, in part, because we lack public spaces in our daily lives.
Anyway, it's one way to stand up and say "we're here." It doesn't have to change any minds. What does?
Sorry About Your Missing Bits, Bruh
When people say stuff like this seriously I imagine they just mean "my noisy public farts don't get the public acclaim they used to. I blame women. Also I am a sad old man."
Friday, January 20, 2017
Don't Smash Windows
Violent protest especially directed at random things nearby is wrong. Don't smash random windows. On the other hand, small scale property damage isn't that big of a deal either. Not defending it, just saying that it's of minimal importance compared to violence against people.
The Horrors To Come
As I've said, the scariest part of this administration won't be the standard conservative horrors that we all expect (though we are right to expect them), it'll be the unraveling of the presidency itself. Our system, like many (most, really), puts too much power into the executive, and, despite all of our talk of "checks and balances," ultimately depends on the man (team) in charge showing some restraint and some respect for real if evolving norms. Goodbye to all that...
Make America Late Again
I know this is one of my obsessions none of you care about, but, you know, they call it the American Dream. It's a metaphor, people!
Attorneys for Triple Five, the developer of American Dream Meadowlands, told the state Appellate Court in September that immediate dismissal of a lawsuit against the project must be made so as not to impede a complex financial sequence that must culminate on Nov. 4. The court dismissed the case the next day.
Yet more than nine weeks later, the project site looks as deserted as it has since before Christmas – and as it has many times over the past decade. The bond issuance plan – which has expanded to a planned $1.15 billion offering - was approved by the state for the first time in fall 2013.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Honesty
I wouldn't really align myself with the bulk of this piece (sorry, not in the mood to do a line by line discussion, I am a lazy blogger after all), but I thought this was a good point.
Well, perhaps not the first sentence, but otherwise I agree with the basic point. One thing about the primary, during which too often Bernie versus Hillary obscured Bernieism versus Hillaryism (that is, the basic ideological positioning of the two as opposed to the specifics of the people who were representing them), is that a lot of people did reveal themselves to be, at heart, Chait Democrats (I think this was true much more of prominent Hillary supporters/surrogates, than was true of of the campaign or Hillary herself). That's fine. People can be Chait Democrats. And people can disagree with Chait Democrats. But the point is that there are disagreements which are, as the above says, papered over with claims of solidarity and practicality and electability. Team D (or Team Liberal or Team Left of Center or whatever) actually don't agree about policy goals. It isn't simply that one segment thinks they are going as Lefty as they can get away with. They're going about as Lefty as they want to go. More lefty Democrats have a pretty good case that their crazy ideas aren't just crazy, but perhaps popular and necessary,too. The campaign highlighted that and also sharpened divisions. That's good and bad, I guess. Fight away.
I have always respected Jonathan Chait. That may come as a surprise, but he possesses a quality that is rare among liberal pundits. Most will lie to you about the politics of their hearts. They will tell you that they’re all for the left’s ambitions, or at least for a United States more like the benevolent states of Europe. They will assure you that when the time is right, they’ll throw their weight behind the moral cause of socialism; it’s just that it isn’t practical right now. It’s just that you’ve got to be reasonable, compromise, capitulate to the demands of the Democratic Party without protest, or else we’ll never get anywhere. Chait does not do this. He believes that the mild welfare state championed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is not merely an acceptable form of government, but very nearly an ideal one. When he scolds the left for their hostility toward business, or lectures college students over their inadequate reverence for liberal free speech norms, or endorses the Iraq War and later cops only to an inadequate consideration of its logistical prospects, Chait is telling you precisely what he thinks. I’ve often, almost always, taken issue with his conclusions. But I have never gotten the sense that Chait is operating in bad faith. He’s a liberal capitalist, a technocrat, what any sane assessment of the political spectrum would rate a conservative centrist, and he does not pretend otherwise.
Well, perhaps not the first sentence, but otherwise I agree with the basic point. One thing about the primary, during which too often Bernie versus Hillary obscured Bernieism versus Hillaryism (that is, the basic ideological positioning of the two as opposed to the specifics of the people who were representing them), is that a lot of people did reveal themselves to be, at heart, Chait Democrats (I think this was true much more of prominent Hillary supporters/surrogates, than was true of of the campaign or Hillary herself). That's fine. People can be Chait Democrats. And people can disagree with Chait Democrats. But the point is that there are disagreements which are, as the above says, papered over with claims of solidarity and practicality and electability. Team D (or Team Liberal or Team Left of Center or whatever) actually don't agree about policy goals. It isn't simply that one segment thinks they are going as Lefty as they can get away with. They're going about as Lefty as they want to go. More lefty Democrats have a pretty good case that their crazy ideas aren't just crazy, but perhaps popular and necessary,too. The campaign highlighted that and also sharpened divisions. That's good and bad, I guess. Fight away.
Republicans Will Not Save Us
Oh, sure, they might pile on a confirmation vote or two just to maintain their "independent" cred. But I doubt even that's going to happen, and it sure as hell isn't going to be Little Marco who will take anything but the occasional rhetorical stand.
Mini Book Review
Trying to rid mor good books this year. I'm a bad reviewer, and not much interested in slamming books I don't like, but I might as well mention the ones I do like. It won a Pulitzer, too, so I guess that means something. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is long but worth reading.
Who Won The Twitterz
Jeebus save me from coverage like this.
You know, the thing about Trump becoming an incoming president with an approval rating in the 30s is that whatever he's doing isn't winning. I mean, sure, he might win at destroying everything good about the country and the world in the process, but he isn't winning the fucking PR battle. He isn't winning with his +1 Vorpal Twitter powers.
You know, the thing about Trump becoming an incoming president with an approval rating in the 30s is that whatever he's doing isn't winning. I mean, sure, he might win at destroying everything good about the country and the world in the process, but he isn't winning the fucking PR battle. He isn't winning with his +1 Vorpal Twitter powers.
Obama and The Press
Speaking very generally for a couple of paragraphs blog post, I think the Obama administration had decent press coverage. Campaign 2008 was kind of shitshow - LEAVE JOHN MCCAIN ALLOOOOOOONE - but campaign 2012 was surprisingly "balanced." The rise of non-fake-"view from nowhere" media, which certainly isn't always liberal and definitely isn't advocacy journalism but in which reporters are a bit more free to inject a perspective that doesn't require shutting off their brains has been good. Obama's actually had his own "sycophants" in the press, which while not always good is a necessary balance to the weight of sycophancy that comes with any Republican administration. There was that Tea party nonsense early on, of course, which everyone should be ashamed about, but aren't (the coverage of it, I mean).
But, campaign 2016 was a shitshow and all signs point to the shitshow continuing. Of course there are good journalists doing good journalism - given the mountain of conflicts and corruption it isn't as if there's a shortage of work to be done here - but there's the news and there's the talking about the news, the way what's "important" gets distilled and inserted into the ears of people who just catch a few minutes on TV or the radio here and there. And that's probably going to be as bad as we have ever seen, despite Trump being the most unpopular incoming president we have polls for. Get ready for the new normal in which 37% approval is "popular."
But, campaign 2016 was a shitshow and all signs point to the shitshow continuing. Of course there are good journalists doing good journalism - given the mountain of conflicts and corruption it isn't as if there's a shortage of work to be done here - but there's the news and there's the talking about the news, the way what's "important" gets distilled and inserted into the ears of people who just catch a few minutes on TV or the radio here and there. And that's probably going to be as bad as we have ever seen, despite Trump being the most unpopular incoming president we have polls for. Get ready for the new normal in which 37% approval is "popular."
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Let Me Google That For You, Rick
I'm sure the people who offered him the job didn't know, either.
Good thing it isn't all that important.
But, hey, not like our crack reporting staff knew either.
...and another:
WASHINGTON — When President-elect Donald J. Trump offered Rick Perry the job of energy secretary five weeks ago, Mr. Perry gladly accepted, believing he was taking on a role as a global ambassador for the American oil and gas industry that he had long championed in his home state.
In the days after, Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor, discovered that he would be no such thing — that in fact, if confirmed by the Senate, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the planet, the United States’ nuclear arsenal.
Good thing it isn't all that important.
But, hey, not like our crack reporting staff knew either.
Guys, Rick Perry was Gov of a state that produces lots of oil - not that crazy to think he could be head of Dept of Energy
— amy walter (@amyewalter) December 13, 2016
...and another:
I don't really care, but Perry was governor of the largest energy-producing state in the country for 14 years. https://t.co/cYeD0qIVD8 https://t.co/Qzjr6AmkZs
— Nathan Gonzales (@nathanlgonzales) January 19, 2017
Win-Win
Something I keep coming back to is how we should be able to pay the corruption tax and get overpriced nice things, that we can pay off existing "stakeholders" and get the result we want.
Instead we pay the corruption tax, bribe the existing stakeholders, and get nothing in return.
Instead we pay the corruption tax, bribe the existing stakeholders, and get nothing in return.
Afternoon Thread
Make America sleepy again.
You can check out all the construction activity at the America Dream site here.
You can check out all the construction activity at the America Dream site here.
Nothing to See Here
Move along.
The industries that were powerful enough to prevent meaningful climate change action would have been powerful enough to get adequate "compensation" for doing something to not destroy civilization. They just wanted to roll coal to piss off liberals.
Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.
The industries that were powerful enough to prevent meaningful climate change action would have been powerful enough to get adequate "compensation" for doing something to not destroy civilization. They just wanted to roll coal to piss off liberals.
While We're On My Favorite Subject
That "we're" talking about these issues just shows they can't solve the actual issues.
Such research might say something interesting about us, but will have little value in making a "better" self-driving car. Let a thousand thinkpieces bloom! I'll be on the bus.
Who would HAL choose to kill?
BOSTON (AP) — Imagine you're behind the wheel when your brakes fail. As you speed toward a crowded crosswalk, you're confronted with an impossible choice: veer right and mow down a large group of elderly people, or veer left into a woman pushing a stroller.
Now imagine you're riding in the back of a self-driving car. How would it decide?
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are asking people worldwide how they think a robot car should handle such life-or-death decisions. Their goal is not just for better algorithms and ethical tenets to guide autonomous vehicles, but to understand what it will take for society to accept the vehicles and use them.
Such research might say something interesting about us, but will have little value in making a "better" self-driving car. Let a thousand thinkpieces bloom! I'll be on the bus.
Who would HAL choose to kill?
All You Need
And more inklings about how they'll try (and still fail) to solve self-driving car issues.
It isn't entirely clear what this means, but I look forward to legislation requiring that all roadworks, with precise measurements, be submitted in advance. Anyway, point being is that the only chance this works (it still won't) is a lot of external infrastructure and changes to how things are done. And who will pay for all of that?
Autonomous vehicles, the patent warns, “may not have information about reversible lanes when approaching a portion of a roadway that has reversible lane”, leading to a worst-case scenario of them driving headfirst into oncoming traffic.
More generally, the inability to plan for reversible lanes means cars and trucks can’t optimise their routes by getting into the correct lane well in advance, something that could otherwise prove to be one of the benefits of self-driving cars.
Amazon’s solution to the problem could have much larger ramifications than simply dealing with highway traffic in large cities. The patent proposes a centralised roadway management system that can communicate with multiple self-driving cars to exchange information and coordinate vehicle movement at a large scale.
It isn't entirely clear what this means, but I look forward to legislation requiring that all roadworks, with precise measurements, be submitted in advance. Anyway, point being is that the only chance this works (it still won't) is a lot of external infrastructure and changes to how things are done. And who will pay for all of that?
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
For Your Consideration
On the way out the door.
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday largely commuted the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of an enormous 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted the administration, and made WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures, famous.
Nutpicking
La Resistance will have protests. People will spend most of their time nutpicking the protests. As always happens.
Conservative Health Care Plan
Liberal Trump fanfic scenarios aside, the conservative plan for health care is "if you can't pay for it, you suffer and then die." This could be modified slightly to setting up a system by which your income is garnished for the rest of your life to pay for your treatment (not so different than what we have now, except with more pressure to actually treat people), or with a system that forces you to buy shitty health care insurance that you can't afford and which won't cover treatment anyway (ACA does this to some, though with health care that isn't entirely shitty and which might actually cover you).
That's how it is, and anyone who pretends otherwise is stupid or lying. I suppose there's some slight chance they'll blackmail Democrats into supporting some plan which is only 90% as bad as this sounds, so that Republicans don't get blamed for it, but otherwise that's the only template for "replacement."
That's how it is, and anyone who pretends otherwise is stupid or lying. I suppose there's some slight chance they'll blackmail Democrats into supporting some plan which is only 90% as bad as this sounds, so that Republicans don't get blamed for it, but otherwise that's the only template for "replacement."
Fee Fees
Rumors are a couple of Trump nominees don't like people being mean to them and want to retreat to their safe spaces under their mountain lairs of gold.
What did they expect?
What did they expect?
Monday, January 16, 2017
Miserable Failure
One frustrating thing during the Bush presidency was that this horrible person remained popular for so long. Yes it was post-9/11 and rally around the flag, but still. The second frustrating thing about the Bush presidency was that even when he was unpopular the press talked about him like he was popular, until he went so low that they couldn't so they started writing comeback story fan fiction.
Trump's already quite unpopular, and I'm pretty sure he'll stay that way. The press will, however, keep writing about how he's winning the news cycle or whatever due to his BOOYAH tweets. This is not opinion, this is ANALYSIS, and it is true no matter what the polls say.
Trump's already quite unpopular, and I'm pretty sure he'll stay that way. The press will, however, keep writing about how he's winning the news cycle or whatever due to his BOOYAH tweets. This is not opinion, this is ANALYSIS, and it is true no matter what the polls say.
Extraordinarily Profound Thought For The Day
Even when people fundamentally agree about things, they can differ wildly about how to prioritize those things.
Troll The World
Don't worry, I'm not one of those "maybe Trump won't be so bad" types. My estimation of how bad things will be probably exceeds that of most people, which is why I'm subsisting on a diet of ketamine and bath salts. Still the one way to shut most of his critics up for awhile (not that I think he cares to, really, he just wants to be loved and worshiped for being just the way he is) would be to actually ram through a better health care plan.
No it won't happen.
No it won't happen.
Why Martin Luther King Jr. Would Have Been An Atriot
I'm sure many of us heard the lovely tales about the glories of nonviolent resistance movements in our various Myths Of America American History classes. It seems that idea gets increasingly morphed from a largely utilitarian one - nonviolence can work - to a moral one, which says that victims of state oppression and violence have no right to fight back, that the oppressors are the only justified users of force. They're bad, but fighting back is worse. Unless, I suppose, the US State Department declares that you are "moderate rebels" in which case anything goes.
The title is a sardonic joke, of course, as everyone rushes to claim MLK as their own. Pretty sure there's an automated program which sends the "Why MLK Was a Conservative" column to the Washington Post every year.
Anyway, I've been a bit remiss in my life about reading more black writers of all genres and going a bit deeper into black history. A good enough time as any to start remedying that.
The title is a sardonic joke, of course, as everyone rushes to claim MLK as their own. Pretty sure there's an automated program which sends the "Why MLK Was a Conservative" column to the Washington Post every year.
Anyway, I've been a bit remiss in my life about reading more black writers of all genres and going a bit deeper into black history. A good enough time as any to start remedying that.
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Drug Test Them All
White House staff used to be drug tested. Got some attention in the Clinton years because of all of those druggy hippies he hired. Anyway, just drug test anyone who does regular work in the White House. Fair!
(No I don't really think people should be drug tested).
(No I don't really think people should be drug tested).
Random Thought For A Sunday
Nothing new, but as I read the numerous arguments about "gentrification" (a word that like so many others tends to mean whatever people want it to mean at that moment), I just keep coming back what is to me the primary issue, at least in my urban hellhole (though not unique to it): the problem isn't that rich people moving in drives up property values, the problem is that rich people moving in magically causes better better public service provision (quality police, fixed streets and sidewalks, school quality, etc) which causes property values to rise. Provide public services equally across the city and the neighborhood by neighborhood gentrification really isn't such of an issue...
Changing Perspectives
Short blog post means big generalizations, but...
Post-impeachment, post-Bush selection, post-9/11 was a weird time in American politics (I suppose a specific weird time, it's always a weird time). One thing people forget about the impeachment era was that it was basically The Left (sometimes actually The Left like The Nation magazine writers and sometimes people who found themselves being branded The Left because of this) who defended Bill Clinton in the whole Monica Madness era (and before). Mainstream media (hi New York Times!), columnists, cable news personalities, all the respectable prominent "centrist" Democrats, were falling all over themselves to condemn that nasty Bill Clinton and his nasty penis, and Ken Starr was treated as the second coming of Jesus in respectable DC circles. It was a weird time in which the crazy left were actually the biggest defenders of the Democratic party, much bigger defenders of it than the Democratic party itself. It was a time when you wouldn't have been surprised if you woke up one morning and half the party hadn't decided to switch teams and become Republicans. "I was a Democrat before Bill Clinton did nasty things with that woman, but now I don't think rich people should pay taxes anymore..."
And then the selection, and then Iraq, and then Bush's re-election, and the whole Social Security privatization nonsense... It was always the "crazy left" that was trying to make the Democratic party just, you know, be Democrats, and everybody else basically being like "Why can't a Democrat be more like a Republican." Being against the war or against Social Security privatization (the Dems finally woke up on that one, but it took a lot of yelling) wasn't exactly calling for full communism, and plenty of people who thought they were just standard squishy Democrats suddenly found themselves being lumped together with radicals.
So I found myself on the crazy left. I'm genuinely more "lefty" than I was 15 years ago, but even now I'm not exactly calling for full communism. I generally think that usually the best use of my efforts are to pull the party leftward (not that I think I have the superpowers required to do this), not just because I'm more lefty, but because the forces pulling them to the right continue to be powerful and well-funded. Also, if the "crazy" position is a minimum wage of $25 an hour, then $15 an hour doesn't look so crazy anymore (for example). If the best we can ever do is a compromise, then it's best not to start the negotiations with the compromise position.
People get mad about criticizing Democrats these days in a way they never did before. People like Obama and associate "the crazy left" with Bernie, blaming him (and therefore the crazy left) for Clinton's election problems. Maybe I'm wrong, but whatever horrors the Trump administration is going to unleash, the important thing is for the Democrats to draw distinctions, and not just hope for team R to step on enough rakes. "Not as evil as the other guys" just doesn't win elections, even when the other guys are really fucking evil.
Post-impeachment, post-Bush selection, post-9/11 was a weird time in American politics (I suppose a specific weird time, it's always a weird time). One thing people forget about the impeachment era was that it was basically The Left (sometimes actually The Left like The Nation magazine writers and sometimes people who found themselves being branded The Left because of this) who defended Bill Clinton in the whole Monica Madness era (and before). Mainstream media (hi New York Times!), columnists, cable news personalities, all the respectable prominent "centrist" Democrats, were falling all over themselves to condemn that nasty Bill Clinton and his nasty penis, and Ken Starr was treated as the second coming of Jesus in respectable DC circles. It was a weird time in which the crazy left were actually the biggest defenders of the Democratic party, much bigger defenders of it than the Democratic party itself. It was a time when you wouldn't have been surprised if you woke up one morning and half the party hadn't decided to switch teams and become Republicans. "I was a Democrat before Bill Clinton did nasty things with that woman, but now I don't think rich people should pay taxes anymore..."
And then the selection, and then Iraq, and then Bush's re-election, and the whole Social Security privatization nonsense... It was always the "crazy left" that was trying to make the Democratic party just, you know, be Democrats, and everybody else basically being like "Why can't a Democrat be more like a Republican." Being against the war or against Social Security privatization (the Dems finally woke up on that one, but it took a lot of yelling) wasn't exactly calling for full communism, and plenty of people who thought they were just standard squishy Democrats suddenly found themselves being lumped together with radicals.
So I found myself on the crazy left. I'm genuinely more "lefty" than I was 15 years ago, but even now I'm not exactly calling for full communism. I generally think that usually the best use of my efforts are to pull the party leftward (not that I think I have the superpowers required to do this), not just because I'm more lefty, but because the forces pulling them to the right continue to be powerful and well-funded. Also, if the "crazy" position is a minimum wage of $25 an hour, then $15 an hour doesn't look so crazy anymore (for example). If the best we can ever do is a compromise, then it's best not to start the negotiations with the compromise position.
People get mad about criticizing Democrats these days in a way they never did before. People like Obama and associate "the crazy left" with Bernie, blaming him (and therefore the crazy left) for Clinton's election problems. Maybe I'm wrong, but whatever horrors the Trump administration is going to unleash, the important thing is for the Democrats to draw distinctions, and not just hope for team R to step on enough rakes. "Not as evil as the other guys" just doesn't win elections, even when the other guys are really fucking evil.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Hell St.
I try to resist responding to every one of our idiot manchild president-elect's idiot tweets, but his most recent tirade about how John Lewis's congressional district is poverty stricken hellhole hit all of my pet peeves. I mean, his district includes a combination of prosperous (a lot!) and less prosperous bits of Atlanta and is a high income/high education (average) one.
But basically this is Trump's view that all black people live in hellholes and all urban areas not within 15 feet of his golden palace in the sky are hellholes. A lifetime New Yorker but really where he'd rather be is a expensive suburban country club residential development somewhere. Which is fine, he's entitled to his preferences. But 70 years on this Earth and it seems like he's seen his penthouse, some golf courses, the occasional glance out his limo window, and that's it other than 24/7 cable news. Strange life, given his resources.
But basically this is Trump's view that all black people live in hellholes and all urban areas not within 15 feet of his golden palace in the sky are hellholes. A lifetime New Yorker but really where he'd rather be is a expensive suburban country club residential development somewhere. Which is fine, he's entitled to his preferences. But 70 years on this Earth and it seems like he's seen his penthouse, some golf courses, the occasional glance out his limo window, and that's it other than 24/7 cable news. Strange life, given his resources.
Carceral State
One of those worst thing about the carceral state (there are so many!!!) is that reintegration and rebuilding your life after incarceration is extremely difficult. So many barriers are imposed by state, employers, culture, etc. Philabundance is by all accounts a very good organization.
Founded in 2000 as a branch of hunger relief nonprofit Philabundance, PCK is usually described as a vocational program that works with formerly incarcerated people. But sometimes students are still in the prison system. Sometimes they were never behind bars to begin with, just down on their luck with housing or laid off from their jobs with no where else to go. Either way, PCK is there to help them take the next step.
...
Philabundance has cultivated relationships with several restaurateurs and outlets to whom they know they can turn when they have job-ready candidates. Among the locations where students served internships this year are the Bynum brothers’ places (South, Relish, Green Soul, Paris Bistro); Earth Bread + Brewery; Marty Grims’ Moshulu and White Dog Cafe; Vetri’s Alla Spina and Osteria; and the cafeterias at Einstein Healthcare Network and Hahnemann and Abington Hospitals.
Crisis
A 37% approval rating would be a major crisis for any president at any time -- Trump needs a policy win, and fast https://t.co/viCU6vDdWq
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) January 14, 2017
Not picking on Thrush in any way, but Bush was basically at sub-40% popularity for 3 years. He hit 25%! I have the ponies to prove it! (well, i think linkrot killed most of them, but you remember the ponies, don't you?). The "joke" at the time was that this was never treated as a crisis, that Bush was always about to have his comeback with the public. He had that lovely little war, after all! People love war, and it's a center right nation.
As Dean Broder said over a year into the approval ratings toilet:
It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case.
Nasty Times
George Bush brought out the ugly in America (overall true, though I actually do/did give him credit for sometimes minimizing it, too). No rose colored memories of those days, but they're going to look like summer at Happy Hippie Camp compared to the next few years.
Friday, January 13, 2017
Politics As Usual
One gets a lot of pushback for criticizing Democrats these days. What about Trump yarglebargle!!! But, you know, I'm just a madman with a blog and I'm pretty sure those with lots of power/money, the people who have been entrusted with our votes and money to fight the good fight, those that in many ways monopolize that fight, are more in a position to curb the worst of the Trump era than I am. People can't be like "zomg Trump fascism AHHH!" one minute and the next minute support the Republican agenda by backing big Pharma (just an example) with the usual transparent bullshit excuses.
La Resistance needs them to step up, and the most I can do is flap my little butterfly wings occasionally and try to get them to do it.
So far, as the man says, pretty sad!
La Resistance needs them to step up, and the most I can do is flap my little butterfly wings occasionally and try to get them to do it.
So far, as the man says, pretty sad!
PEOPLE ARE MADE OF PEOPLE
This is positive. The focus on moving vehicles, instead of people, has been a big problem...
America's Worst Humans
Chris Cillizza.
I'm sure Cillizza got his career opportunities through nothing other than the pure meritocracy that exists in our free market Nirvana. Certainly he got none of the breaks that blah people do. Still if he wasn't doing this, I don't see how he wouldn't be under a bridge somewhere.
I'm sure Cillizza got his career opportunities through nothing other than the pure meritocracy that exists in our free market Nirvana. Certainly he got none of the breaks that blah people do. Still if he wasn't doing this, I don't see how he wouldn't be under a bridge somewhere.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
I Guess I'm Getting Old
When 99% of my responses to anything are "yes I know," "yes I've thought of that," or some variation... It isn't about being a know-it-all, just a sense of having been around every block a few times already...
Snip Snip
I often thing media plagiarism "scandals" are overblown, and almost always highly selective. Citation standards are cultural and vary by types of publication. There's no room for footnotes in a column or in a speech, and sometimes things which are clearly meant to be referential, like quoting a relatively famous quote without actually crediting the original author, are attacked. Often it's clear that sloppy paraphrasing is involved. That's wrong, but it isn't capital crime level wrong.
But that doesn't mean anything goes. Lifting whole paragraphs regularly without proper citation is wrong. And most of the defenses I mentioned don't apply to your Ph.D dissertation, as in academia citation standards are fairly clear and fairly high. There is room for those foot(or end)notes. This seems to be a "degree revoking" level of plagiarism, though I don't know anything about how universities deal with such things (specifically, it's a "throw them out before you grant the degree" situation if you catch them, but without clear processes in place, it's a bit more problematic to revoke a degree once granted.)
But that doesn't mean anything goes. Lifting whole paragraphs regularly without proper citation is wrong. And most of the defenses I mentioned don't apply to your Ph.D dissertation, as in academia citation standards are fairly clear and fairly high. There is room for those foot(or end)notes. This seems to be a "degree revoking" level of plagiarism, though I don't know anything about how universities deal with such things (specifically, it's a "throw them out before you grant the degree" situation if you catch them, but without clear processes in place, it's a bit more problematic to revoke a degree once granted.)
Causing Pain
A million years ago, before the Senator from Illinois was officially running for president, and back when people occasionally pretended to care what happened in the bloogersphere, one of Obama's guys gave me some shit about holding Obama to a higher standard than we held other politicians. I even forget what the issue was. I think he was trying to suggest that it wasn't fair to hold the black guy to a higher standard, which is a true enough point that it gave me pause and I thought about it for awhile. But the reason, even then, to hold Obama to a higher standard was that a) he already had the charisma and standing to have some influence b) He could probably win re-election for life in Illinois no matter what he did, so no excuses c) He had higher political aspirations d) his people cared enough about his broader reputation to spend 5 seconds talking to sucky bloggers like me about it.
Anyway, you find the pressure points that work. Some Dems don't care. Some might. They can't stop everything horrible that comes out of this Congress/administration, but when they blow things in 2018 and start blaming the voters for not voting for them (quite the unique electoral strategy), we can remind them why they really lost.
Anyway, you find the pressure points that work. Some Dems don't care. Some might. They can't stop everything horrible that comes out of this Congress/administration, but when they blow things in 2018 and start blaming the voters for not voting for them (quite the unique electoral strategy), we can remind them why they really lost.
Maybe Somebody Will Listen To Atrios
This has always been my point. The self-driving cars will get to 90% or 95% or 99% or eve 99.9% but that isn't good enough to be the self-driving cars of the imagination.
And safety as usually conceived isn't really the issue. If they "work" then they'll be safe enough, almost tautologically. But they won't work.
How did I arrive at this crazy conclusion? While my experience isn't the universal one, I imagined the simple task of ordering up a self-driving taxi to my house and having it take me to the airport. I punch in my address and destination on my app, after pre-clearing this use of my funds with the local welfare authority, perhaps by running an extra couple of hours on the treadmill, and wait for it.
The car hits my street, a one way street with parking on both sides. I live half way down the block. There probably isn't a parking spot outside my house, though perhaps there is elsewhere on the block. Does the car pull into a spot further away, pull into a nearby illegal spot (too close to stop sign, in front of a fire hydrant, in front of one of the curb cuts people have) like most humans would do temporarily (whether they should or not), or just pause in the middle of the street while other cars start lining up behind it, waiting for me to get my ass out the door with my suitcases. How long does it wait for me? How many cars are stuck behind it before it pulls around the block and tries again? Also, who throws my heavy suitcases in the trunk after carrying them down the steps of my stoop? OK, I can do it. Who throws grandma's heavy suitcases in the trunk?
The trip to the airport requires driving down a major arterial that was once the path of a freight rail line. It's 4 lanes, roughly, but there are lots of light industrial and wholesalers along the route. Double and triple parking for deliveries is common. Constant lane changes are necessary. It's a horrible street to drive on on. There are bus stops, too, with the bus drivers having to navigate all of this. Lanes aren't exactly clearly marked.
Skip to the end of this boring story for the airport dropoff. Have any of you ever done an airport dropoff? Vehicles pulling in and out constantly 2 and even 3 cars deep in places by the curb? Gotta get those suitcases out of the trunk...
Anyway, there are places where this stuff isn't that hard. There are ways I can imagine automated long haul trucking working, and that is something to think about. But the snap my fingers and be whisked away anywhere I want to go vision? Not going to happen.
The implication is clear. The self-driving challenge doesn’t relate as much to getting cars to operate in self-driving mode at least 99 per cent of a time, it relates to producing the tech at economically affordable rates whilst also cracking the critical 1 per cent manual requirement threshold.
And safety as usually conceived isn't really the issue. If they "work" then they'll be safe enough, almost tautologically. But they won't work.
How did I arrive at this crazy conclusion? While my experience isn't the universal one, I imagined the simple task of ordering up a self-driving taxi to my house and having it take me to the airport. I punch in my address and destination on my app, after pre-clearing this use of my funds with the local welfare authority, perhaps by running an extra couple of hours on the treadmill, and wait for it.
The car hits my street, a one way street with parking on both sides. I live half way down the block. There probably isn't a parking spot outside my house, though perhaps there is elsewhere on the block. Does the car pull into a spot further away, pull into a nearby illegal spot (too close to stop sign, in front of a fire hydrant, in front of one of the curb cuts people have) like most humans would do temporarily (whether they should or not), or just pause in the middle of the street while other cars start lining up behind it, waiting for me to get my ass out the door with my suitcases. How long does it wait for me? How many cars are stuck behind it before it pulls around the block and tries again? Also, who throws my heavy suitcases in the trunk after carrying them down the steps of my stoop? OK, I can do it. Who throws grandma's heavy suitcases in the trunk?
The trip to the airport requires driving down a major arterial that was once the path of a freight rail line. It's 4 lanes, roughly, but there are lots of light industrial and wholesalers along the route. Double and triple parking for deliveries is common. Constant lane changes are necessary. It's a horrible street to drive on on. There are bus stops, too, with the bus drivers having to navigate all of this. Lanes aren't exactly clearly marked.
Skip to the end of this boring story for the airport dropoff. Have any of you ever done an airport dropoff? Vehicles pulling in and out constantly 2 and even 3 cars deep in places by the curb? Gotta get those suitcases out of the trunk...
Anyway, there are places where this stuff isn't that hard. There are ways I can imagine automated long haul trucking working, and that is something to think about. But the snap my fingers and be whisked away anywhere I want to go vision? Not going to happen.
The Good Old Days Are Back
Everybody forgets now, but we didn't really spend the aughts trying to influence George Bush. We couldn't do that. We spent the aughts trying to get horrible Democrats to not be quite as horrible, and the media covering the whole thing to not be so horrible. If we couldn't stop the horrible things we could maybe at least stop the Democrats from owning all of them. Saving them (and us) from themselves was a big part of it. I didn't know if we could stop Republicans from privatizing Social Security (we did! yay us!) but we had to do our best to make sure it wasn't all bipartisany. It's the usual "if everyone is to blame, then no one is" combined with the Democrats' love of running on the slogan, "Not quite as evil as the other guys!"
This all buried in some legislative procedural stuff in the Senate, but basically last night 13 Democrats in the Senate voted against allowing cheaper drug imports from The People's Republic of Canadia. Some hope you don't notice, and some don't care if you notice. Some do care. I bet Cory Booker, who took some time off rescuing pets in front of TV cameras and posting inspirational quotes on the website twitter dot com to show how woke he is to help to make sure you have to pay more for lifesaving drugs, cares quite a bit if you notice. Someone's gotta be the Dem candidate for president in 2020, after all.
His DC office number is:
(202) 224-3224
His Newark office number is:
(973) 639-8700
They care a lot more if they get calls from people they represent generally. People who have worked in Congressional offices always say this and mostly they're right. But when the phone lines are jammed because so many people are calling they don't have time to care about who is calling, they just want it to stop.
Call DC if you don't live in New Jersey, call Newark if you do.
Get an explanation for the vote, if he has one. Let us know what it is!
This all buried in some legislative procedural stuff in the Senate, but basically last night 13 Democrats in the Senate voted against allowing cheaper drug imports from The People's Republic of Canadia. Some hope you don't notice, and some don't care if you notice. Some do care. I bet Cory Booker, who took some time off rescuing pets in front of TV cameras and posting inspirational quotes on the website twitter dot com to show how woke he is to help to make sure you have to pay more for lifesaving drugs, cares quite a bit if you notice. Someone's gotta be the Dem candidate for president in 2020, after all.
His DC office number is:
(202) 224-3224
His Newark office number is:
(973) 639-8700
They care a lot more if they get calls from people they represent generally. People who have worked in Congressional offices always say this and mostly they're right. But when the phone lines are jammed because so many people are calling they don't have time to care about who is calling, they just want it to stop.
Call DC if you don't live in New Jersey, call Newark if you do.
Get an explanation for the vote, if he has one. Let us know what it is!
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