Jake wants you to know this was not him:
Local police notes this week:
A cat was injured at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday by a dog in the 1600 block of Sixth Avenue. Further investigation revealed the cat started the fight and the dog owner was not at fault.
I’m not getting a lot of work done today. That needs to change. How are you wrapping up your afternoon?
Open thread.
Calming Influence
Why does he look so guilty?
oldster
That’s a lie. The dog totally started it, and the cat was completely innocent.
That “further investigation” is just propaganda put out by the dog’s owner.
raven
Deleted my shit huh?
Amir Khalid
Sure, blame the poor kitteh. But who let that dog look at him funny like that?
The guy at one of my favourite YouTube channels (it’s all about languages, and it’s educational and fascinating) put up a video about my native language I commend it to everyone’s attention.
Miss Bianca
I just checked with Pancho and Lefty and they say it wasn’t them!
TaMara (HFG)
@raven: I don’t see anything pending….sorry.
NotMax
Rule 1: The cat is always at fault.
Rule 2: See Rule 1.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@Miss Bianca:
They’ll say anything!
geg6
All I have to say is WTF. So….two weeks ago the hard drive of my work computer died an ignominious death. Which didn’t bother me much since that computer had been a bit of a lemon ever since I got it about 2 years ago. So, the University has its own computer store, so that’s where we have to get new ones. It was ordered within a day, so I figured it would be about a week for it to get here and for the IT department to configure it. I figured I’d have it this past Monday, at the latest. Meanwhile, the loaner they sent the work study student over with wasn’t hooked up to my printer nor to the shared drive my department uses and where I store a lot of the things I need to administer here, such as scholarships and veterans information, etc. Not to mention that I wouldn’t have access to anything on my hard drive. Which wasn’t a big deal for a week or ten days. Well, it’s now exactly two weeks and no word on my new computer. So I call over to the IT department to get an update. Turns out the new computer came in about a week ago. But there was apparently something wrong with it or something that wasn’t working when they tried to configure it. And the guy that was working on it has been calling off sick and no one else knows where he was in the process. My question is why did no one tell me any of this? It’s too difficult to shoot off an email now? So I kind of got a little testy, which I never, ever do with people like the IT department or maintenance because my philosophy is that I need those people and it pays to be nice to them. Asked if maybe, at the very least, they could get me hooked up to a printer. So they sent a student over to hook up the printer about an hour ago. I’m more than a little pissed. If this is what I get when I’m one of the nicest people on campus toward them, then why do I bother?
/rant
piratedan
reposting from wee hours thread… with some clean up from any post that originates at 0230
my apologies for this tl:dr post that is forthcoming.
I’ve been really concerned about how the millennials are essentially telling us(Dems) that our arguments are incredibly unconvincing for them to buy into our reasons that voting for Clinton this year, as what many of us see as a moral imperative. So, I guess I wanted to get down some thoughts on what I am reading out there on other sites and the book of faces and the arguments that are being made.
Most of the complaints that I am seeing fall into the following categories:
1) They haven’t seen enough from when the Democrats have been in office and in charge in regards to progressive politics
2) Debt – too much mind numbing debt associated with getting an education for them to earn a viable living
3) Opportunity – They don’t see it, while unemployment is down, there aren’t the types of jobs that young people are seeking, i.e. applying those pricey degrees in their desired field
4) Income Inequality
5) Racial intolerance
6) The killing of people with drones
The focus that many of us are using to make our arguments do not seem real to them and as such, they (millennials) don’t believe in their veracity. They are under the impression that the rights that exist now, will ALWAYS exist. As such, scary stories about the Supreme Court balance do not resonate with them. They do not take seriously the idea that if Christian Conservatives manage to elect Trump, that the rights that they enjoy in regards to health care, birth control, and quite possibly those of their gay and trans friends might be in jeopardy. THEY DO NOT SEE IT AS A POSSIBILITY.
so, lets break this down shall we, and you folks can add on where I’ve screwed up or pile on where we need to because it is on us to articulate to them some quality responses for our support of HRC, because what is being said is still being ignored by a large number of folks…
1) Where is my pony? – They are under the impression that while Obama has been in office for nearly 8 years, so where are their fucking ponies? Why are we STILL bombing people? Why are we still murdering innocents abroad. Now before we get mad, for a large number of these folks, we’re now 15 years past 9/11. So… many of them were say 3 years old, or even 8, or 10. How many of you were politically aware at that age? They haven’t lived thru THAT specific tragedy, so for a good many of them, it doesn’t have the same effect that it does on older generations.
Also, context is important… Obama had a Dem House and Senate for two years… not 8. Do they even know this? Plus, in the 2 years there was control in both chambers, it really even wasn’t 2 years. It was… wait for it.. 2 months. Yup, two fucking months was it. Why? Because the GOP prevented Al Franken from being seated in the Senate until June. In August, Ted Kennedy died, followed quickly by Robert Byrd. In the interim, Obama and Nancy Smash and Harry Reid were kind of busy saving the country (and the world as we understand it) from economic collapse and in trying to get healthcare to millions of uninsured people. They do not remember/care/understand the GOP pattern of obstruction that permeated all of the DEM legislative initiatives. Then, even the latter was hamstrung by the SCOTUS (that supposedly doesn’t really matter) giving GOP governors the opportunity to opt out and refuse matching federal funds to help even more people… like young struggling millennials in their first jobs who never get sick and are now having to see more of their paychecks go to healthcare that they never think they will need (on top of that student loan debt)
What strangely reinforces their disdain is that via Executive order, Obama did get shit done, despite the Congress, but the types of things that he got done were on the fringes (not insignificant but not as much as we would have liked), but hey, that’s not their problem, its our problem because half of America is fucking stupid and racist and keeps putting GOP tools in office because Dems can’t be arsed to vote or stay informed or appreciate context.
Also, they don’t seem to understand that when Bill Clinton was in office that we had these things called Blue Dogs, that were essentially GOP lite, yet they see the crappy after effects of the mixed results of the Crime Bill and NAFTA and gee, the DEMS were just as bad because we helped out in Bosnia and got our hands slapped in Ethiopia (both sides are just as evil and war mongery as the other… see). Now nearly every Dem still in office is actually a damn Democrat but they saw the D and think progressive when back in the 1990, that wasn’t exactly true.
2) Debt – many of the kids when they get out of school have loans that are simply crushing them (I know valued commenter Suzanne is one of them). They don’t see what the Dems are proposing. They heard Bernie talk about it, but for whatever reason, they haven’t heard Hillary. Here’s the link on her webpage that discusses what she wants to do:Education policy I have no idea why people don’t like this or why they think that the GOP or the LIB party would even come close to this. Even the Green Party does talk about expansion of education but nothing on how they would do it, but they do touch on how much they would like to relieve the debt of those going to college and those that still have it. There’s really not a lot of difference here in policy here, just that the Dems have more specifics and harder numbers.
3) Opportunity – They’re coming out of school and they don’t see the jobs that pay 35-50k a year in their chosen field. Who is to blame for that? Part of it could be the schools turning out graduates in fields for which there are no jobs (a time honored American tradition) and part of this could be that businesses are slow to take on additional labor, despite the slow and steady growth of the economy because of.. well Greed. Why should I hire two more fresh faces when I can set up that money as a personal honorarium for the board and we can all go to Cancun and applaud ourselves for making a profit. To be fair… I don’t know how to fix this. Part of the solution is shutting down the diploma mills. Part of it is actually rebuilding the country so that there will be jobs in engineering, landscape design, waste water treatment, chemical engineering etc. I’ve looked at the Greens plans for economic diversity and expansion and they want to promote additional workplace diversity and employee ownership and employee democracy. That’s all well and good, but how is that going to happen?
Small town USA is dying, how do we make it viable once again? Treat internet access as if it is a utility, like water and energy and sewage? What else can be done to make small town America a viable concern again?
4) Income Inequality – In this regard, the Greens and Dems are incredibly similar. Hillary is proposing raising the tax rates on the wealthy. Closing down additional income loopholes that allow profits to be untaxed. The Greens are even more aggressive in doing so but without the specifics that are provided on Hillary’s website. The LIB and GOP position is essentially, FU, we’re not sharing with ANYONE.
5) Racial Intolerance – The folks that are questioning voting for a Dem because of this cite that the DEMS aren’t doing enough. For some reason Obama speeches of outrage and Congressional sit ins aren’t cutting it. Nor are the DOJ investigations, but until people get fired and arrested, it still seems too slow and too little. The Greens state that racial intolerance shouldn’t be tolerated and believes that there should be more community involvement (no real difference from the Dems) but when you have a GOP majority in the house, nothing is going to happen since they believe that Obama is the REAL racist. Obama was able to executive order gay and transgender rights, why not this?
i tend to point to guns.. we have somewhere between 80-92% of the country that want updated gun control and yet we can’t get that done, do they know why? Or understand how its being blocked?
6) The remote death squads – There are a LOT of youngsters that feel that the drone campaign is ugly, sinister and unethical.
You know what… they’re absolutely correct. It is all of those things. The part that seems to trip them up however is that there is no other solution that they offer. They seem to feel if we stop that, then things will get better, somehow, magically, as if we suddenly clean up our act and behave as better citizens then there won’t be any cause for there to be additional terrorists. This strikes me as a real tough issue to argue about. For a number of reasons:
a) what is the alternative… boots or humint on the ground to handle this conflict on a more “personal” basis. Would they prefer that? Do we/can we simply stop and wait and see… at what potential cost? They want to feel good about not having collateral damage (and I agree) but what is a better solution?
b) The green Party has no foreign policy statement… at all … on their web page. With the monetary backing of their party from Russian nationalists, it tends to make one dubious about how they would handle this issue
c) The Libertarian candidate doesn’t even know where the fuck Aleppo is… enough said.. no, not really. Because who are the LIBs? Why they are essentially GOP folks that enjoy the personal freedom and belief that pot is okay. Fine, what were they before, they were republicans. So how could we believe that their policy would significantly vary from that of the GOP… I’ll wait for any arguments.
d) the GOP position is currently covered by the following synopsis… we go in and we take the oil… if its too much hassle, we’ll nuke them or at least consider it.
****
To be fair, I can understand their points and I have some worries on how do we address them…
Part of me wants to explore, how we can reach them and try to understand their issues and how they are also our issues too…
Okay, how do we game this out…
Say… we look at the vote for Stein…who do they vote for down ballot? Dem or GOP? A vote for Stein is likely taking away a potential vote for Clinton… so say on the off chance that Stein gets elected… what is she left to deal with… a GOP House? a GOP Senate? A split chamber? Dem Majorities in each? If you’re voting Stein as a protest vote are you not casting any down ballot votes for DEMS? If they’re equally evil, then the status quo is more likely, that means GOP control of the house and senate….
Who is she going to build consensus with? How will she govern? Okay, she has SCOTUS nominees, how will she get them through to confirmation?
How will she find common ground since she has zero relationships in the House and the Senate? So does the Senate ignore her? Do they see Paul Ryan as being willing to work with her or will she be treated as a figurehead? How will she handle the budget? The unspoken part of the Green platform has nothing indicated towards the Military or foreign policy, how does she get the money moved from that area to the other areas that the Greens say that they want to fund? Do we get to watch additional gridlock in place until the next Presidential election?
Okay, lets ignore the idea that Stein gets the Presidency.. so you voted for her to express your issues with how it stands today.. now you get an outcome of Hillary in the White House… and if she gets a Dem House and Senate or close to a split in either chamber, then what we’re likely to see is some incremental progress and implementation of her agenda (and if you look, there’s a fair bit in their to like that covers, debt and opportunity and income inequality). Maybe not all, but some. If she gets both chambers, then more of her agenda gets pushed (By the effective Ms. Pelosi). So you get a modest win and still get to bitch.. yay you. If that happens but then again, you’re sniping a possible DEM vote away (in theory). If we get an HRC presidency and GOP control of either of te chambers (House much more likely) then she has to work the system and try and get the best that she can. Which you get to bitch about (most likely).
If Trump gets elected, what will you likely see…
– drones and more boots.. most likely.. instead of measured support roles in the fight against ISIS, probably redeployment wholesale into IRAQ, possibly IRAN. Instead of the gradual draw down in Afghanistan… who knows.
– Probably more Russian expansionism, more bites out of Ukraine, the Baltic states will be twitchy considering his NATO remarks
– Instead of trying to house and home refugees, that will stop.
– Dreamers will be deported, possible family members as well. If you didn’t like Arizona SB1070, I would expect to see more of the same, except nationwide. The immigration process gets “fixed”, namely we won’t really have one.
– Wouldn’t expect any debt forgiveness, not in the GOP platform.
– No spending on infrastructure, so unsure where jobs are coming from but business would be allowed to be unconcerned about the handling of the waste products without an EPA.
– so you could probably expect there to be more environmental disasters, and that would apply to our national parks being reduced or sold off to private businesses for development.
– Plus that the SCOTUS (and all of those other court vacancies that the Senate has been sitting on) now go to conservatives instead, who will be pro business and much more conservative christian inclined. So chances are good that your right to birth control could be limited. Plus gays and women and minorities can probably be safely discriminated against on “religious” grounds. Also, any of those civil servants that were appointed during the Obama years will probably be outed, per the statements of the GOP campaign.
– the dismantling of the ACA and have it replaced with… nothing. Youngsters can go back to being uninsured, and everyone else gets to watch their health care costs spiral upward because there’s no oversight on the insurance industry to limit profits and allocate resources to payment of policies.
– zero gun reform, everyone gets a semi automatic weapon, if you buy two, you get a bazooka. I’m sure that this will continue to allow race relations to improve.
In short, what does a protest vote really buy the outraged Millennial? Can anyone see a real advantage here?
I understand being angry with the status quo and in believing that Dems are potentially or possibly just as crappy as the GOP.
Yet, if you want to effect change, then you have to build your 3rd party from the ground up to do so. You have to have legislators in place to help drive the necessary change, and if you can do that by co-opting the Greens and Libertarians, well good on you. Let’s see you do that. Get organized, bring some definition to the process and put yourselves out there.
My biggest issue is if Trump is elected, under what environment do you think such an effort can thrive? Which party is into restricting voter rights? Which party is moving the goal posts?
Anything else that anyone can add, how can we reach them? Or is the game so hopelessly rigged (in their mind) that it simply doesn’t matter? How do we convince them otherwise?
Or have they even noticed that the GOP isn’t even bothering to reach out to them at all in any meaningful fashion?
thanks for reading
? Martin
Dogwhistling past the genocide:
Video
JPL
@piratedan: I saw that this morning, and thank you for writing your comment.
? Martin
@piratedan: Primary answer: nearly every existing institution has failed them. Churches molested them. Government and industry are polluting them. Police and government are suppressing them. We educate them in factories guarded by police. Our only economic interest is really whether the market goes up or down, our only educational interest is whether some ranking goes up or down, etc. Nobody lifted a finger to stop the housing crisis until shit was literally on fire. Nobody lifted a finger to deal with the unemployment problem (that was already in full swing prior to the action on the housing crisis) until shit was literally on fire. Regulators couldn’t prevent Flint or the Deepwater Horizon, etc. Government can’t stop voter suppression (which actually originates from government). It can’t stop the police violence against blacks (which originates from government) and so on.
The Democratic platform talks about different results from the same institutions that failed them before, and they don’t for a moment buy that the institutions that have been failing them their entire lives are suddenly going to start working just because you declare different results.
A lot of the Trump voters/Tea Party people/etc aren’t wrong about the elite, the establishment, the MOTU not being held accountable for blowing shit up. We don’t hold Senators accountable for denying global warming. We don’t hold presidents accountable for starting unnecessary wars. We don’t hold companies responsible for destroying the environment, or screwing over the public. Look at how slow and tepid the Wells Fargo response would be. Now, China would have executed that CEO by now, and we don’t need that, but maybe we could not get a 2 year long series of congressional investigations followed by 4 years of FBI probes, followed by a fine that doesn’t go to the people fucked over and a non-admission of wrongdoing.
Trump is at least promising to change that. Mostly by blowing it up and replacing it with something out of an Orwell novel, but at least it’s an acknowledgement that our institutions from stem to stern are failing the public. Clinton isn’t delivering that message. She not even suggesting foundational change. Bernie was, though – even if in a limited and not entirely responsible way, IMO. But he wasn’t looking to replace it with something out of Orwell either.
If Democrats want to win, they need to be willing to tear shit down that benefit them. The result should still collectively benefit them as well, but it won’t individually. Young people like the low-regulation, decentralized nature of modern services. They are either freed form the old institutional order or they route around it. They may introduce a new order around another central institution – they aren’t libertarians – but they understand the incentives attached to the new institution and believe they will work better for them.
And this isn’t entirely a Tea Party/Trump attitude. Chris Hayes wrote a book about it.
TriassicSands
A cat start a fight? Unpossible! Dogs are always to blame. They’re needy and smell bad. (Except when they aren’t and don’t.)
Miss Bianca
@? Martin: “If Democrats want to win, they need to be willing to tear shit down that benefit them. The result should still collectively benefit them as well, but it won’t individually. Young people like the low-regulation, decentralized nature of modern services. They are either freed form the old institutional order or they route around it. They may introduce a new order around another central institution – they aren’t libertarians – but they understand the incentives attached to the new institution and believe they will work better for them. ”
You know what? I don’t normally find myself saying this to you, but I have no idea WTF you think are talking about, here. “Low-regulation, decentralized nature of modern services?” “A new order around another central institution?” What? This is authentic frontier gibberish.
Mary G
@Amir Khalid: I don’t usually make it all the way through videos, but I watched that one in full. It was really interesting how much easier Malay is than English, but I lolled at “diskoun” for discount. English words worm their way in.
Major Major Major Major
Sam Wang interviews Rick Perlstein (Nixonland) about the alt-right on a podcast. Looking forward to listening to that tonight.
AdamK
@piratedan: Thanks. That was a thought-provoking read.
piratedan
@AdamK: thanks Adam, just trying to find out how I can reach certain people who I haven’t been able to reach with my arguments. Don’t if I can reach them but still want to try… so looking for other ways to present my case. In doing so, maybe I help others do the same.
cat copeland
Does Jake have an alibi? I want to see videos.
TriassicSands
The cat’s alibi? “I was home asleep.”
But isn’t that always the cat’s alibi?
JR in WV
If Trump gets elected, there are going to be wars of choice. That is, wars Trump wants to fight because… well, because some foreigner told his Trump Resort to pay taxes, or some sailors gave our sailors the finger, or even mooned our guys!!! Gotta take that back, I’m just the guy who can make you!!!!
People pretty much lined up to fight after 9/11. Plenty of volunteers to fight, except that they got held past their discharge date, or sent to the ‘stans 6 times in their hitch, or…
If Trump needs bodies to send to where ever, he’s gonna draft them. Let me tell you about the draft. Basically, they come and get you, and send you to boot camp. I got to stand in the rain with a ton of dweebs at 2 and 3 am on March 2, up north of Chicago. Without a rain coat, imagine that. I got to do that for 12 weeks, pretty much. And I wasn’t in the Marines or the Army, I was in the Navy.
If you don’t want to go fight in the desert, or the swamps maybe of Nigeria, cool. They will take you at gun point to jail, in chains. How about that career now, jackass? Not gonna have a career after spending a Trumpian jail sentence on a chain gang. Gonna wash windshields and hope for a tip, remember that kinda gig?
LBJ (fuck LBJ, right Raven?) was a democrat. He pushed through the Civil Rights Act AND the Voting Rights Act. AND Medicare, which keeps me and your parents and Aunts and Uncles alive. He also drafted a million guys, and sent 500,000 of them to fight and KILL and die in the swamps of SE Asia. Those guys aren’t over that 50 years later, will never be over that, not ever.
Trump is not a democrat, with ideas to pass ground-breaking legislation enforcing freedom and health. He is a crazed greed head who will steal the nation blind, and every other nation. He believes in stealing OIL, taking it home like it is the Fuqn crown jewels, instead of a dangerous industrial fluid, difficult to extract at all, much less when people are setting off bombs and shooting at you every night.
YOU will get to go steal stuff for TRUMP. Probably mostly oil, but also minerals for cell phones and computers, and gold and copper, without which there is no advanced technology. You will take stuff at gunpoint, and people will point guns at you when you least expect it, and will shoot you.
Bush’s (R-Dumfuckitexastan) excellent Arabic adventures cost the USA thousands of dead men and women, and cost our victim states hundreds of thousands of dead people, women and children included. LBJ’s excellent Asian adventures cost us 50000 people dead, and 10 times that in wounded, brain damaged, not quite sane. And killed millions of Asians, still killing and maiming little kids with ancient but still deadly weapons buried in mud.
Trump’s excellent adventures that he will start but YOU will get to try to FINISH, yes YOU! will probably dwarf LBJ’s wars. LBJ didn’t intend to kill people, he just felt boxed into having to do what he did. Trump can’t wait to start killing people, anyone. And YOU will get drafted no matter what you do to go fight for TRUMP. Not for the USA, not for freedom, for stupidity and GREED. You will learn to be a killer, or you will be on a chain gang, those will be your life choices.
Good luck.