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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / Sunday Night Open Thread: What Are Our Media Betters Up To?

Sunday Night Open Thread: What Are Our Media Betters Up To?

by Anne Laurie|  October 25, 201510:06 pm| 89 Comments

This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Open Threads, Clown Shoes, Technically True but Collectively Nonsense

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Lady Gaga inspired @nytdavidbrooks to ask: "Who would you be and what would you do if you weren’t afraid?" https://t.co/YY7khoweP7

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 23, 2015

And some people say male menopause is just an old wives’ tale. Speaking of old wives… ‘They would have thought that impolite’ —

Peggy Noonan. Amen. pic.twitter.com/Qcc9tZKRFu

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) October 24, 2015

@Rschooley She's like Miss Havisham with a typewriter. @SimonMaloy pic.twitter.com/LyLStj4GuC

— Bogeyman Dire (@BCDreyer) October 24, 2015

Finally, Roy Edroso at Alicublog shares a message from Jane Galt:

It’s at National Review and it’s by Mona Charen, which is two strikes right off the bat, but I thought you might enjoy the first graf:

“It’s about what these women will let guys get away with.” You may not expect to hear commentary like that at your garden variety think tank panel discussion, but it got pretty lively at the American Enterprise Institute discussion on the topic “Do Healthy Families Affect the Wealth of States?”

Hot stuff indeed! But wait for the punchline:

Megan McArdle of Bloomberg View is author of the above comment.

These women! Oh for the good old days, when the transactional analysis of sexual favors ran “Why buy the cow when milk is so cheap?” Doubt I’m the only Balloon Juice regular who immediately flashed on a certain classic…

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Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Keith P.

    October 25, 2015 at 10:12 pm

    I see Peggy is wising up to her dinosaur-ness and is substituting Joe Biden for Tip “Who?” O’Neil.

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    October 25, 2015 at 10:13 pm

    One thing’s for sure: if David Brooks weren’t timid and afraid, he’d have left the Lunatic Party around Feb 2003 at the latest.

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 25, 2015 at 10:13 pm

    Since it’s an Open Thread, I’ll pose a question here that I put up a short time ago on my FB page (especially for any Juicers who may have Native American/First Nations background): Is the term “Indian Summer” considered offensive or insensitive? I find the concept very useful (a nice spell of warm weather following the first frost of the season), but if there’s a term that works better and is more culturally/racially/ethnically sensitive, I’d be glad to know about it.

    OTOH, I feel no need to modify my language in any respect when it comes to discussing Peggy Noonan or Mona Charen.

  4. 4.

    srv

    October 25, 2015 at 10:17 pm

    Did you know Peggy’s resignation letter to the Gipper was signed with X’s and O’s?

    Reagan’s acceptance letter had an autopen signature.

    True story. She’s never gotten over that.

  5. 5.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 25, 2015 at 10:20 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: I don’t have First People ancestry, but the term St. Martin’s Summer was used in Europe for the same phenomenon.

  6. 6.

    lamh36

    October 25, 2015 at 10:23 pm

    Watching Witches of Eastwick on Logo TV. Been a while since I’ve seen this movie.

    Weirdest thing bout watching Witches of Eastwick as adult…Jack Nicholson was supposed to be a sexy devil..blah…

    I can’t even lie…if someone got up at church and went on the “there are whores in our town” rant like in Witches of Eastwick, I.WOULD.DIE.LAUGHING!

    Let’s not even go there on the cherry excorcist scene with the mean bitchy woman… shudder…Just nasty…lol

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 25, 2015 at 10:24 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I am familiar with that term — problem is, it means nothing to most people in North America except for over-educated elitists like us :-)

  8. 8.

    srv

    October 25, 2015 at 10:25 pm

    With Agenda 21 all but wrapped up, one can see Hillary picking up a new project:

    The World Health Organization (WHO) will soon warn that some of America’s favorite meats are as dangerous a cigarettes.

    WHO will target processed meats such as bacon, ham and sausages as causes of cancer and will say red meat is also hazardous to health in a decision to be released Monday. The findings resulted from a meeting of scientists from 10 countries.

    The Daily Mail reports WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer will conclude that a host of processed meats should be placed in the highest of five possible rankings as “carcinogenic to humans.”

  9. 9.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 25, 2015 at 10:26 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: I thought the term was of Anglo-Indian origin. I thought it referred to the brief spell of warm weather in October before it starts getting cooler in November in India.

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    October 25, 2015 at 10:27 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I find the concept very useful (a nice spell of warm weather following the first frost of the season), but if there’s a term that works better and is less culturally/racially/ethnically insensitive, I’d be glad to know about it.

    Those of us of European extraction could always go back to St. Martin’s summer. The story told was that St Martin cut his own cloak in half to share with a beggar on a freezing day, and in reward/commemoration Jesus granted a brief spell of clement days after the first killing frost, for poor people and laborers to finish their harvest chores before true winter set in. Practically, the harvest lockdown (gleaning, planting winter crops, slaughtering stock that would otherwise not survive till spring, tapping the first wine of the season) fell in late October/early November, so a lot of just-so-stories accrued to the historical Martin of Tours, whose feastday is November 11.

    Although this is kind of charming, too:

    A warm period in autumn is called “Altweibersommer” (literally “old women’s summer”), or something similar, in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lithuania, Hungary, Finland,[7] and many Slavic-language countries—for example, in Russia and Croatia it is known as “grandma’s summer” (babye leto, bablje ljeto).

    Postmenopausal vigor, FTW!

  11. 11.

    redshirt

    October 25, 2015 at 10:27 pm

    @lamh36:

    Watching Witches of Eastwick on Logo TV. Been a while since I’ve seen this movie.

    A George Miller Joint.

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 25, 2015 at 10:27 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Altweibersommer?

  13. 13.

    different-church-lady

    October 25, 2015 at 10:34 pm

    If the shoe fits, Peggy…

  14. 14.

    Boudica

    October 25, 2015 at 10:49 pm

    My answer to he won’t buy the cow if he gets the milk for free: Why should I buy the pig when all I want is a little sausage?

  15. 15.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 25, 2015 at 10:49 pm

    @Boudica: Little?

  16. 16.

    mclaren

    October 25, 2015 at 10:50 pm

    @srv:

    I think I’ve finally figured out the true secret behind Benghazi. The base was actually a front for a secret staging ground – funded by George Soros, Planned Parenthood and ACORN – in which Obama kept his secret weapons. That was where they brainwashed the Ebola-infected child soldiers for Obama’s private army; maintained the Solyndra-powered drones he used to deliver weapons to Mexico; and kept the equipment used to produce phony birth certificates.

    The plan was to use these things to distract America while the IRS found old conservatives and killed them with Obamacare death panels and the knockout game. Meanwhile, he would use network neutrality to take over the internet and send messages to the kids on their Obamaphones telling them that gay marriage was okay, slowly weakening their resolve. The ultimate goal, of course, was to enact Agenda 21 and force everyone to use efficient light bulbs, invading Texas if necessary to install them by force.

    But the plan was nearly exposed, and Benghazi became a liability. So Obama posted gun-free zones around the base and goaded the terrorists into attacking by telling them that Black Lives Matter. He was going to follow it up with an apology tour in which he read the poetry of Frank Marshall Davis, but Jay-Z was coming by so they celebrated by renaming a mountain and persecuting Kim Davis.

  17. 17.

    srv

    October 25, 2015 at 10:51 pm

    Florida’s controversial black bear hunt ended after its second day after a higher than expected number of bears had been killed with 295 bears taken overall, nearing the official limit, Florida wildlife authorities said late Sunday.

    The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission posted a statement on its agency website that it was closing the 2015 hunt, saying the decision was taken by authorities as the hunt approached the overall “objective” of 320 bears overall.

    Sigh. Maybe next year.

  18. 18.

    different-church-lady

    October 25, 2015 at 10:52 pm

    @mclaren: Needs more FEMA trailer.

  19. 19.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 25, 2015 at 10:53 pm

    @mclaren: That makes as much sense as just about anything Ben Carson says. You should run for the Republican nomination.

  20. 20.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    October 25, 2015 at 11:00 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: But are we the overeducated sort who prefer the Tommy Dorsey version or the Glenn Miller version?

    Before you j’accuse me of plebian taste, remember that “Indian Summer” was composed by Victor Herbert.

  21. 21.

    Anne Laurie

    October 25, 2015 at 11:00 pm

    @mclaren: … And now it’s on the internet, so it must be true!

  22. 22.

    Mike J

    October 25, 2015 at 11:02 pm

    I liked the Thurl Ravenscroft tribute in the JohnK intro to the Simpsons tonight.

  23. 23.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 25, 2015 at 11:04 pm

    @srv: I want that to be true.

  24. 24.

    Nate Dawg

    October 25, 2015 at 11:04 pm

    “bears taken”….ugh. hate that euphemism. “bears murdered” is better.

  25. 25.

    esme

    October 25, 2015 at 11:05 pm

    I mostly lurk around here, but it’s an open thread and I organized a local fundraiser in honor of Paul and Sheila Wellstone tonight on the anniversary of the plane crash that took them from us way too early. I’m in central Minnesota and lots of people in the room knew the Wellstones and it was awesome to hear how many people were inspired and moved by their lives. I want to encourage everyone here to support their local politicians. The national contests suck up a lot of energy and attention but there are lots of great local candidates that need your help. And a few hours or a few dollars go a long way in city council, school board, or state house and senate races. Please consider devoting some resources, time or money, to support your local progressive candidates. As Paul Wellstone said, “We all do better when we all do better.”

  26. 26.

    Boudica

    October 25, 2015 at 11:06 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: it’s meant as an insult, not factual :-)

  27. 27.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 25, 2015 at 11:07 pm

    @Boudica: I apologize for intruding on your personal space.

  28. 28.

    GregB

    October 25, 2015 at 11:13 pm

    @mclaren:

    This was a pact among Obama, Hillary, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Ghost of Karl Marx and sealed with fist bumps and a feast of arugula.

  29. 29.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 25, 2015 at 11:14 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    As an old woman myself, I’m rolling that one around in my mind to see whether I get offended.

    :: chews ::

    Nope.

  30. 30.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 25, 2015 at 11:16 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Someone will. Never fear.

  31. 31.

    Ruckus

    October 25, 2015 at 11:19 pm

    @Boudica:
    Very nice comeback.
    So much of American language was/is littered with these sexist bon mots that should have had this kind of comeback, fortunately many have fallen out of daily if not complete use.

  32. 32.

    MobiusKlein

    October 25, 2015 at 11:29 pm

    @srv: re smoked meats – what if it is true?
    Stranger things have happened.

  33. 33.

    srv

    October 25, 2015 at 11:32 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: When will you realize Everything. I. Say. Is. True?

    “I was a little hurt when I left the White House,“ Noonan said. “I wanted the president to notice I was gone. But all I got was a goodbye note from the autograph pen.“ Noonan admits Reagan probably wouldn`t know her if he saw her. “I never registered with him.“

    @MobiusKlein: It will take a generation to undo all the damage of the last eight years.

    What most trouble me now is who will follow Trump in 2024 to ensure we don’t slip back into madness?

  34. 34.

    benw

    October 25, 2015 at 11:33 pm

    That tweet about David Brooks is so asinine that it has nine asses. More likely is that David heard “Bad Romance” for the first time last week and got a little excited.

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 25, 2015 at 11:34 pm

    @srv:

    When will you realize everything I say is true?

    Probably after it picks up some resemblence to the truth.

  36. 36.

    trollhattan

    October 25, 2015 at 11:40 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Generally starts with the line, “I always lie” and goes downhill from there.

  37. 37.

    Mike in NC

    October 25, 2015 at 11:45 pm

    @srv: Ivanka 2024! Tanned, rested, and ready.

  38. 38.

    22over7

    October 25, 2015 at 11:46 pm

    @lamh36: The movie was awful, just awful. The book is terrific, but the script used almost nothing from it.

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    October 25, 2015 at 11:52 pm

    @Mike in NC:
    And also, too, YUUUUGE…tracts of land.

  40. 40.

    David Koch

    October 25, 2015 at 11:59 pm

    “I can’t imagine Joe Biden ever needed an image consultant to coach him on how to be himself.”

    LOL

    For the past 40 years Noonan has worshiped an actor who made make-believe for a living with a chimpanzee. He had one director after another telling him how to be himself. Later he employed an image consultant in the oval office (mike deaver) to tell him how to be himself.

    As Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House, Deaver worked primarily on media management forming how the public perceived Reagan, sometimes by engineering press events so that the White House set the networks’ agenda for covering the president.

    what a drunk moron.

  41. 41.

    Keith G

    October 26, 2015 at 12:06 am

    @Jeffro:

    One thing’s for sure: if David Brooks weren’t timid and afraid, he’d have left the Lunatic Party around Feb 2003 at the latest.

    He should, but he hasn’t and as I have become aware that David seems to devoting less energy/time/space to writing about politics, I figure it is because David realized that he just doesn’t fit in where he used to

    @SiubhanDuinne: I always found it useful to say, “Gee, it’s warmed up again for a bit. How cool.”

  42. 42.

    mai naem mobile

    October 26, 2015 at 12:13 am

    I wonder when the media is going to ‘discover’ that Ben Carson is a vegetarian? I’m guessing it would affect his polls in Iowa and other farm states. I wonder if evangelicals would start treating his religion like Mormonism?

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 26, 2015 at 12:14 am

    @Keith G:

    I always found it useful to say, “Gee, it’s warmed up again for a bit. How cool.”

    Is it also useful to refer the March through May thing as “Gee, the snow is melting as it usually does at this time of year (if only there were a one or two word way of expressing this)?”*

    *Yeah, I know you are in Texas.

  44. 44.

    Mike J

    October 26, 2015 at 12:15 am

    @mai naem mobile: What if he didn’t eat a pig, but just castrated it in a commercial? Perhaps he could really appeal to the misogynists by saying, as the fateful cut is made, “don’t let Hillary do this to you.”

  45. 45.

    redshirt

    October 26, 2015 at 12:20 am

    @mai naem mobile: Is he really?

    Vegetarians are awesome, and I might consider supporting* Carson if so.

  46. 46.

    Mike in NC

    October 26, 2015 at 12:22 am

    @mai naem mobile: Pork, no. Corn, yes.

  47. 47.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 26, 2015 at 12:29 am

    @Mike in NC: I am trying to work out the euphemism.

  48. 48.

    mclaren

    October 26, 2015 at 12:30 am

    @mai naem mobile:

    I wonder when the media is going to ‘discover’ that Ben Carson is a vegetarian?

    They’ve figured out Carson is an evolution denier and climate change denier with a habit of leaving surgical sponges in peoples’ brains after the neurosurgery. So…any day now, probably.

  49. 49.

    Oatler.

    October 26, 2015 at 12:33 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: “Winter is coming; you know that from the way the mornings smell, the way the leaves, half turned to color, are poised to drop.But summer goes on, a small false summer, all the more precious for being small and false. In Little Belaire, we called this time- for some reason nobody now knows- engine summer.”
    -John Crowley 1979

  50. 50.

    MattF

    October 26, 2015 at 12:35 am

    Chris Cillizza at the WaPo (no link) manages, once again, to write a column about Hillary Clinton without mentioning policy. This time, it’s the Republican’s fault that Clinton’s popularity has recovered. They ‘overreached’. There’s no mention that Republican fixation on Benghazi and email has always been dicey as a long-run approach to beating Clinton. No mention of the fact that co-opted media are crucial to the Republican pursuit of Clinton’s supposed misdeeds.

    And what about the fact that the Republican policies are awful? C’mon, Chris, what about that?

  51. 51.

    redshirt

    October 26, 2015 at 12:37 am

    @Oatler.: Engine Summer is 9/22-10/10

  52. 52.

    redshirt

    October 26, 2015 at 12:41 am

    @efgoldman: Everyone has a volunteer fire department. Very few have anyone showing up.

  53. 53.

    Nate Dawg

    October 26, 2015 at 12:47 am

    @redshirt:

    yes, turns out you have to pay people to sit around and do nothing for 24 hours at a time.

  54. 54.

    sempronia

    October 26, 2015 at 12:49 am

    @mclaren:

    As to Ben Carson getting sued, it’s expected that someone who practiced as long as he did has been sued. Every surgeon gets sued, whether s/he actually performed negligently or not. Just goes with the territory. Leaving sponges in is still, unfortunately, much more common than you think, and was probably even more common early in Carson’s career, when medical mistakes were less scrutinized.

    BUT – Carson was Harvard med school’s commencement speaker in 2001. I DISTINCTLY remember him telling the new grads to maintain good, open communication with patients/families, especially when mistakes happened. I DISTINCTLY remember him saying that this was why he’d never been sued, and the audience clapping at that line.

  55. 55.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    October 26, 2015 at 12:54 am

    Good god, the AFC South is bad. Those four teams are an aggregate 4-15 against everyone except themselves.

  56. 56.

    amk

    October 26, 2015 at 12:58 am

    @Nate Dawg:

    you mean like the military?

  57. 57.

    redshirt

    October 26, 2015 at 12:59 am

    @efgoldman:

    Up theah with th’ mooses and th’ beahses. Down heah in civilization, th’ fiyah fightahs get paid.

    Helped a swan get unstuck from a well.

  58. 58.

    John Revolta

    October 26, 2015 at 1:09 am

    When I was growing up in Chicago it was pretty generally said that “Indian Summer” referred to the “fact” that Indians were sneaky and not to be trusted. Therefore “Indian Summer” was a trick; a ruse to make you think that summer was coming back when it was actually just about over.

    Kinda like a “Dutch Courage” kinda smear. OTOH, the Tribune used to run
    this on the cover of the Sunday magazine every year. It’s a somewhat less embarrassing explanation.

  59. 59.

    redshirt

    October 26, 2015 at 1:13 am

    @John Revolta: Just like an Indian Giver would give you something apparently sincerely, then take it back.

  60. 60.

    John Revolta

    October 26, 2015 at 1:14 am

    @redshirt: Bingo.

  61. 61.

    redshirt

    October 26, 2015 at 1:17 am

    All that said, and still Indian Summer is sweet, because it means warm temps in mid to late October. And no one is fooled these days, right?

  62. 62.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    October 26, 2015 at 1:22 am

    I’ve spent the day taking pictures with my ghost hunter(infrared) camera, I liked this shot.

  63. 63.

    Suzanne

    October 26, 2015 at 2:42 am

    @Nate Dawg: Firefighters actually do a lot more than just fighting fires, too. We have some that are divers who pull people, alive and otherwise, out of the lakes.

  64. 64.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    October 26, 2015 at 2:54 am

    @efgoldman: Yeah. The four teams the AFC South has beaten are the Bills, the Dolphins, and the Buccaneers, twice. Those teams are a combined 2-6 in games against anyone other than the AFC South or each other (3-8 if you count Tampa twice).

  65. 65.

    Nate Dawg

    October 26, 2015 at 3:29 am

    @Suzanne:

    Yes, and how often do they do that actually?

    I’m not anti-firefighter. They are necessary. The ones around here are also all paramedics. Fact is: they do not fight FIRES very often. In a major metropolitan area, any individual firefighter will fight maybe 3-8 fires a year. Maybe less. They will sit around nearly 95% of the time, doing nothing. Even the paramedic “emergencies” are little more than healthcare for impoverished, underinsured people.

    I’m not making any political statement, just stating the obvious: we have to pay people to sit around doing nothing, so that we have them when we need them. That’s a fact.

  66. 66.

    scav

    October 26, 2015 at 3:40 am

    “healthcare for the impoverished” Well, there’s a bit of a tell. I’m somewhat amused by the thought that the wealthy apparently somehow don’t have medical emergencies that require trucks to be rolled. No traffic accidents, no heart-attacks or drownings or strokes out of range of their private limos whisking them away to their gold-plated superior out-of-personal-pocket health care services.

  67. 67.

    Peale

    October 26, 2015 at 3:43 am

    There aren’t really Ancient Alien Theorists, are there? I wonder if Ben Carson would try to run them out of academia if their students complained.

  68. 68.

    Amir Khalid

    October 26, 2015 at 3:53 am

    @Nate Dawg:
    But firefighters don’t just sit around doing nothing when there’s no call, do they? They have specialised skills and expertise and gear to maintain, so they must spend some of that time training and going to class and working on stuff.

  69. 69.

    Pie Happens (opiejeanne)

    October 26, 2015 at 4:05 am

    @BillinGlendaleCA: That’s nice. I like the sky and the trees.

  70. 70.

    jl

    October 26, 2015 at 4:11 am

    @Nate Dawg: There are false alarms, many due to poorly maintained business and protection service alarms. So many that some cities are fining businesses and protection services for any attributable to poorly maintained equipment. But you want to cut fire departments on some statistical analysis for the average rate of false alarms that gets a station closed when the alarm for the fire in your neighborhood is not false?

    Firefighters also practice fire fighting, though that does not always mean actually putting out practice fires in training facilities.

    They do building inspections and inventories to plan how they will handle fires in large commercial and industrial buildings (at least in CA, I dunno about places like TX where looks like you can do any damn thing liable to blow up a whole town and not tell anyone). And process certain kinds of permits for events and businesses and organizations that present fire hazards.

    In San Francisco, the fire department runs the Neighborhood Emergency Response Training program.

    You are right there is a lot of sitting around, cooking, and maybe a little drinky-drink once in awhile, and what is efficient way to provide prompt response when rate of fires is going down is a tough problem.

    But just counting up alarms and firefighters and concluding that they don’t do dick anymore is the kind of simplistic analysis that you see goofy laissez-faire economist hacks doing (say, at marginal revolution blog for example)

  71. 71.

    Pie Happens (opiejeanne)

    October 26, 2015 at 4:13 am

    @Suzanne: They respond to all sorts of emergency calls unrelated to fires, at least they do in California and Washington; medical emergencies are probably the most common.

    I just remembered: several years ago my elderly dad fell during a Christmas party and couldn’t get up; my sister panicked, dialed 911, and the fire department showed up. By then he was sitting up and talking to us, but he appreciated all the special attention. Those guys offered to stay for supper which was just about to be served, and we told them they could, but for some reason they had to get back to the station. Our house then was at the end of a cul-de-sac in Anaheim, so all of the fire trucks showing up on Christmas Eve provided entertainment for the entire neighborhood and not just our dinner party.

  72. 72.

    Pie Happens (opiejeanne)

    October 26, 2015 at 4:15 am

    @Amir Khalid: They have to maintain their vehicles, hoses, and other equipment. The standard pattern is that they live at the station for four days, on duty 24/7, then they are off for three days. They tend to die younger than guys with desk jobs, too.

  73. 73.

    Ruckus

    October 26, 2015 at 4:16 am

    @Amir Khalid:
    I live in an urban area in a city with approx 140,000 people with 8 fire stations. I am one block away from a fire house. Ladder truck, pumper and 2 EMT rigs. Believe me they spend far more than 5% of their time away from the station, on fire runs, on EMT runs, auto accidents, the gamut. They earn the money they get paid.
    As I was in the navy after the USS Forrestal incident, the one John McCain was on when it caught fire. The point is that after that the navy started training everyone in firefighting so that anyone would have at least some idea of being in a fire and what to do in that situation. We put out fuel fires in a building with ships doors. So I’ve been in a small room with a raging fire going that had to be put out properly before you were allowed to leave. On board my first ship I was the entry man on a damage control party for nearly a year. That’s the first man in the room. We didn’t have any fire fighting equipment other than a hose, axe and oxygen masks, now the navy does use proper equipment. I know a small amount about fire fighting. I know I never want to do it again and that anyone who does it deserves at the very least to be paid well for it. It’s dirty, nasty, hot, dangerous work and most people wouldn’t go into a burning building. These people do it willingly and will do it again tomorrow if it’s needed.

    ETA Amir, wasn’t aimed at you should have replied to Nate, just filling out some general info about firefighting.

  74. 74.

    Pie Happens (opiejeanne)

    October 26, 2015 at 4:16 am

    @scav: Yeah, that line bothered me too. We have used paramedic services a couple of times and we are certainly not impoverished, and we have always had health care and used it to stay healthy.

  75. 75.

    Pie Happens (opiejeanne)

    October 26, 2015 at 4:21 am

    @jl: When I was a kid growing up in Southern California, the fire station was where you got your bicycle license. I wonder if anyone registers bikes these days.

  76. 76.

    jl

    October 26, 2015 at 4:23 am

    @Pie Happens (opiejeanne): The dumb-ass analysis that looks at rates of alarms for fires and counts fire fighters and says that they are dead beats now comes from hack economists who hate public employees and unions.

    A certain kind of economist spends their time pumping out mindless hack work like this, for money or to satisfy their ideological mania.

    A couple of economists pumped out a study that claimed to show that banning plastic bags and encouraging recyclable reusable grocery bags caused an increase in food poisoning. The economic study looked very scientific: they got all the ER admissions and hospital admission statistics by diagnosis and cause by bug.

    Only problem was that the study was nonsense, since many bugs that cause food poisoning are also transmitted directly between people too, and the economists did not account for that. Luckily the health department had already done its standard impact policy study that they do when new public health policies are implemented and that study did account for person to person transmission and found no impact.

    So a certain type of economist says goofy things like that, and don’t know or don’t care when people who know what they are talking about correct them.

  77. 77.

    Amir Khalid

    October 26, 2015 at 4:40 am

    @Ruckus:
    No problem. I think Nate Dawg is thoroughly aware now how much firefighters do, besides sit around and wait all shift.

  78. 78.

    Anne Laurie

    October 26, 2015 at 4:41 am

    @jl:

    So a certain type of economist says goofy things like that, and don’t know or don’t care when people who know what they are talking about correct them.

    … or they go with the McArdle Defense: Technically true but collectively nonsense!

    Translation: I have a beautiful philosophical theorem, which you are judging by the cold inconsiderate measure of ‘factuality’, or possibly ‘utility’. Philosophy doesn’t need mere FACTS to be useful!

  79. 79.

    Frankensteinbeck

    October 26, 2015 at 4:56 am

    They did not spend their time endlessly accusing people of being sexist-racist-homophobic-gender-biased persons of unchecked privilege.

    So what you’re saying, Peggy, is that you desperately want to return to the Reagan years, when he convinced America to turn a blind eye to bigotry. You’re appalled that sometimes you and your friends actually get called out for what you are these days.

    @MattF:

    And what about the fact that the Republican policies are awful? C’mon, Chris, what about that?

    Most of the media believe that Republican policies are wise and correct, both the ones we think are cruel and the ones we think are insane. If they ever accept that those policies are unpopular, it will be framed in terms of some segment of the population being greedy or short-sighted. It’s much like how they jumped onto the meme that Obama couldn’t have won without the minority vote, as if minorities aren’t Americans and their votes shouldn’t count.

  80. 80.

    tybee

    October 26, 2015 at 5:30 am

    @Pie Happens (opiejeanne):

    a programmer in my organization is also rides an ambulance at night as an EMT and he claims that over 75% of the roll outs of his bandaid are for poor peoples’ non-emergency medical issues.

    ymmv

  81. 81.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    October 26, 2015 at 5:33 am

    @Pie Happens (opiejeanne): That’s the effect you want with color IR. The sensors in digital cameras can pickup infrared, so most cameras have what’s called a “hot mirror” to keep the IR from reaching the sensor. This camera has the ‘hot mirror’ removed so right out of the camera trees and other vegetation show up red. I photoshopped it to white.

  82. 82.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 26, 2015 at 6:39 am

    @Keith G: He still has his NPR gig to say ridiculous shit for pay, opposite Mark Shields, who sucks as well (in a Tweety-esque, stuck in the past, lazy thinking kind of way).

  83. 83.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 26, 2015 at 6:43 am

    @Nate Dawg: That’s true of any profession, it’s called “Waiting to be engaged”.

    Recall the Obamacare flap over volunteer firefighters? It’s a deeply weird arrangement.

    On the nastier note, they’ve evaded “waiting to be engaged” on the manual labor side with those fucking day labor clearinghouses. They sell to businesses they have workers on demand, but the workers don’t get paid until engaged, and it’s all legal. That’s fucked. Have to wonder how that business model is working out with a tighter labor market and vastly slowed down transitory labor in-migration.

  84. 84.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 26, 2015 at 6:44 am

    @sempronia: Wow, what a tool.

  85. 85.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 26, 2015 at 6:49 am

    @efgoldman: Ya, I work with somebody who used to work for WPB FD as an EMT in the 70s and he went out multiple times every night. In fact, he tried to quantify how frequently he went out on calls about schizophrenics off their meds alone (not that I think this late reckoning was accurate–he had one call that was really traumatic, and that tends to distort your memory). They often needed to call EMTs in on OT as well.

    I know our local FD also does chemical spills, EMT/first response, medical transport of individuals over 1000 lbs. They’re out a lot. They put a gym in the firehouse and they’re supposed to be working out keeping themselves in tiptop condition. You have to be able to hug a gushing firehose to the ground and that takes an immense amount of physical strength.

  86. 86.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 26, 2015 at 6:51 am

    @John Revolta: less embarrassing? holy fucknuts that was racist

  87. 87.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 26, 2015 at 6:53 am

    @Nate Dawg: wow, lucky you

    my burg is plagued with house fires

    several of my coworkers have lost everything they owned over the last decade

  88. 88.

    Punchy

    October 26, 2015 at 7:27 am

    @John Revolta: I think the phrase was mistranslated and was origin is “Indiana sommelier”, to describe Ft. Wayne liquor store owners trying to pass off Boone’s Farm as a cabernet.

  89. 89.

    Chris

    October 26, 2015 at 8:41 am

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    I’m Native American…and I dont find the term offensive at all. (even though I THINK that there is an undercurrent of deceptiveness in the term..as in…it’s supposed to be cool now but its acting like summer). It’s such a beautiful time of the year that I think anyone would be happy to be associated with it…Just my $0.02…..

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