Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The revolution will be supervised.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

In after Baud. Damn.

Republicans do not trust women.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Bark louder, little dog.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

You are here: Home / Archives for 2016

Archives for 2016

Through the Mansions of Fear, Through the Mansions of Pain

by | 198 Comments

This post is in: 

I’ve been talking with my brother, who’s a Democrat in a deep red state, about our common disaster. One of the topics has been the working class. He sent me this piece on fundamentalism in rural America. Read the whole thing, but the gist of it is that fundamentalist, white America cannot be swayed by reason, by populism or by anything else. I accept that thesis:  the White Fundamentalist Working Class (WFWC) is, for the most part, lost to the Democratic party.  Nothing we can say to this group will register because the constant diet of bullshit from Fox and the pulpit of their local church drowns out reason about a social safety net and real opportunity. When ~80% of evangelicals vote for Trump, it’s clear that these sheep will vote for Satan if he said he’d punish sluts while quoting a couple of bible verses.

That said, I think we need to separate the White Working Class (WWC) from the WFWC.  Obama was elected with a significant number of WWC votes. House districts, and some Senate seats, will swing only if we can swing some of the WWC back to the Democratic column.  Erik Loomis is right:

Where the economic anxiety debate legitimately matters is not in long-term Republican counties. It’s in traditionally blue counties in swing states that swung sharply to the right in the last 4 years. Erie County, Pennsylvania went 48-46 for Trump. He won by 2000 votes. In 2012, Obama defeated Romney 57-41 in Erie County, winning by 19,000 votes. Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by about 68,000 votes. It is counties like these–blue-collar union counties with long histories within the Democratic Party, histories that lasted long after LBJ delivered the South to the Republicans in 1964, long after the Reagan era, that voted for Barack Hussein Obama twice. The critical question is why did these people switch their votes at this time. This is where a discussion of economic dislocation and hopelessness plays an important role. It must play an important role. These are voters that Democrats can probably get back without appealing to racism, which it absolutely must never do. That’s the debate we need to be having. Economic issues need to be taken seriously as part of that debate.

Paul Ryan is about to hand us a golden opportunity to talk about economic issues – like how you will die on the street at age 66 of curable cancer after your privatized Medicare vouchers run out. There’s a segment of the WWC that can be swayed if we can package up that issue in a simple, powerful way.

Through the Mansions of Fear, Through the Mansions of PainPost + Comments (198)

Do Not Be Distracted By What The Shitgibbon Says. Pay Attention To What His People Do

by | 128 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , ,

One of the signal failures of the media throughout the Trump dumpster fire of a campaign was to focus on his words — parsing, shifts in terminology, trying to distinguish between lies and hyperbole, or simply providing theater criticism on his performances, connections to audience and so on.  All the while, the critical information: what the combination of his ample history, the (few) clear positions he staked, and the people he hired revealed about what Trump would actually do as President.

That basic error is still with us, nicely diagnosed in this post by Robinson Meyer over at The Atlantic:

It works like this: Donald Trump, the president-elect himself, says something that sounds like he might be moderating on the issue. Then, his staff takes a radical action in the other direction.

Last week, Trump told the staff of The New York Times that he was keeping an open mind about the existence of climate change.

This was, as Meyer notes, treated as a major shift, given Trump’s earlier claim that global warming was a Chinese hoax.  As a result, many slow learners touted this story (Meyer self-indicts here.) But, of course, Trump’s almost certainly intentionally vague statement —

“I think there is some connectivity” between human activity and the warming climate, Trump said. “There is some, something. It depends on how much.”…

both grants him almost unlimited freedom of maneuver and was almost immediately belied by what his transition team is actually doing:

A day after Trump talked to the Times, The Guardian reported that the Trump administration plans could cut all of NASA’s Earth science research….

…which, as many have already noted, is vital for ongoing climate monitoring and ongoing attempts to study the implications of human – driven global warming with the resolution needed to inform action.

hieronymus_bosch_versuchung_des_hl-_antonius

Then there’s this:

Politico reports that the Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, Steven Groves, has been added to Trump’s State Department transition team. Just last week, Groves called for the United States to leave the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the overarching treaty that governs how the world organizes itself to address global warming. Groves also said the U.S. should move to “dismantle” domestic climate regulations.

Thus, a picture of a Trump administration policy on climate change: destroy the research infrastructure needed to study climate, and wreck both national and international prospects for action to address what a true existential crisis.

The moral, to use Meyer’s phrase, is that Trump is a master of the two-step, baffling the unwary (aka, seemingly, the entire New York Times staff) while proceeding behind that verbal smokescreen towards the worst possible choices.  We need a much more vigilant press, and a brave one.

Image: Hieronymous Bosch, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (left panel detail), 1495-1515.  Not an exact match to the post, but I’m kinda just looking for apocalyptic images these days, and this certainly works for that.

Do Not Be Distracted By What The Shitgibbon Says. Pay Attention To What His People DoPost + Comments (128)

You be the referee

by | 27 Comments

This post is in: ,

The NFL had an interesting case of aggressive rules lawyering this weekend by the Baltimore Ravens:

The basic exploit that the Ravens hacked is that a game can end on an offensive penalty. A punt is considered an offensive play for rule purposes. So the Ravens wanted to minimize their risk and they were willing to concede two points to kill the clock as those two points only mattered to the gamblers that the NFL officially pays no mind to. If you believe that, you need to get into the bridge buying business. The Ravens punt team held every potential defender until the punter could run out the clock and then step out of bounds.

That was legal and the game was over on a cheap but legal play.

So let’s think as referees for this scenario. The first thing to do is try to figure out the assumptions behind the rule. The assumption is that most of the time the offensive team if it is actively playing the ball instead of kneeling needs the points. In that assumption, it makes no sense to reward a team for committing a penalty as yardage in the last 10-20 seconds of a game is far less valuable than time. The scenario that this guards against is the offensive team needing to go 30 yards for a TD, the QB seeing nothing open and he tells his center to hold his opponent after a four count to get another shot at the end zone. This makes enough sense although the rule that the fouled team can decline the penalty also guards against this advantage transfer scenario.

If I was a soccer referee and I saw a team up 1-0 taking a goal kick have their ten field players clutch, grab and piggy back ride their opponent’s field players to run out the time, my first response in a USSF/FIFA match would be to continue to add time after I book the entire team for unsporting behavior. NFL officials don’t have the ability to add time on a non-defensive penalty. Once the clock hits 00:00 the game is over if the ball is no longer in play.

I would be worried about retaliation. If I was an NFL coach I would tell my defensive players to hold, kick, punch, apply illegal hands to the face and otherwise attempt to draw a flag on themselves as soon as they feel like they are being fouled. That creates offsetting penalties and another nice big mess for the referees to handle.

This was creative rules lawyering by the Ravens. The NFL will respond. My bet is that the defensive team in cases of egregrious planned tactical fouling will be allowed to elect to have the play replayed at the original time on the clock. As soon as there is no reward of taking time away, this behavior that brings the game into disrepute will no longer be engaged in.

/OPEN THREAD

You be the refereePost + Comments (27)

Monday Afternoon Open Thread

by | 78 Comments

This post is in: ,

Here’s an intriguing photo from reader “cope” featuring a waterspout on the edge of a squall:

waterspout

Continuing the rain theme: I pulled a great hoax on my husband earlier today. A while back, he attempted to replace the shower head in the master bathroom with a fancy new “rain” model. But when he was unscrewing the old fixture, the connector that attached it to the water pipe sheared off behind the tile wall.

The mister experimented with various ways to remove the broken connector in his spare time. Meanwhile, we were forced to take showers in the other bathroom, which is a tub enclosure rather than a shower stall.

I just hate tubs — I had never used that shower in the 12 years we’ve lived here until this plumbing crisis for that reason — so I was all for calling a plumber right away. The mister thought he could save a few bucks by figuring it out himself…when he had time to fool with it. His big fear was the plumber would have to knock down part of the tile wall to get at the problem, which would be an expensive mess to fix on top of the plumbing bill.

Long story not quite as interminably long, he finally gave up and agreed on the need for a professional, but did so the day before Thanksgiving. So I had to wait until today to call a plumber, who showed up within half an hour and fixed the pipe in a jiff (without wall damage) for an extremely reasonable fee — all while my husband was out.

Instead of telling my husband about this marvelous jewel of a plumber, I told him I had figured out how to fix the pipe. I told him I’d used pliers to reach through the hole and pull the pipe forward, sawed off the broken connector without damaging the threads and installed the new connector and shower head. And he believed me!

We’ve been married for 20 years and do not lie to each other about important things (e.g., money, birth control, etc.), but we do occasionally make up fantastic stories to see how gullible the other person is. Actually, he is much more prone to do that than I am, so much so that my first reaction is to disbelieve him when he tells an outlandish tale. He’s actually got quite a talent for making up plausible-sounding explanations for scientific phenomena, historical events, etc., inventing things out of whole cloth, right on the spot.

So I was very proud of my ability to pull off the plumbing hoax with a straight face, for the five minutes or so I was able to maintain the illusion without laughing at his astonishment. He’ll try to get back at me somehow, but I will be ready. Anyhoo, open thread!

Monday Afternoon Open ThreadPost + Comments (78)

Breaking: Ongoing events at The Ohio State University

by | 69 Comments

This post is in: ,

An active shooter event and law enforcement response began this morning around 10 AM EST. NBC4 Columbus has reported that local law enforcement has killed the shooter, taken two other men into custody, eight individuals have been injured. They have reported that there was a vehicular incident as well: a driver ran over several people, though it is unclear how that is or may be related. Additionally, at least one of the students interviewed indicated he heard an explosion in addition to three gunshots.

The shelter in place has been lifted as has the active shooter alert, but all OSU classes have been cancelled today.

Here’s the link to NBC4 Columbus’s live feed.

https://livestream.com/accounts/7338206/events/2798220/player?width=640&height=360&autoPlay=true&mute=false

And here’s OSU Campus Police’s twitter’s most recent update.

Breaking: Ongoing events at The Ohio State UniversityPost + Comments (69)

If You Don’t Know Who The Patsy At The Table Is, Dear Trumpkins…

by | 111 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

...it’s you:

Again and again, President-elect Donald Trump presented himself as the coal miners’ candidate. During the campaign, he promised to bring coal back into the economy, and jobs back into struggling Appalachian towns.

But now some in coal country are worried that instead of helping, Trump’s first actions will deprive miners — and their widows and children — of the compensation they can receive if they are disabled by respiratory problems linked to breathing coal mine dust.

That’s because buried in the Affordable Care Act are three sentences that made it much easier to access these benefits. If Trump repeals Obamacare — as he vowed to do before the election — and does not keep that section on the books, the miners will be back to where they were in 2009, when it was exceedingly difficult to be awarded compensation for “black lung” disease.

coal_mining_18th_c

This is by no means a done deal, given that at least some coal-country legislators (Joe Manchin, for one) have declared their support for retaining this in whatever comes out of the health care catastrophe the GOP is determined to commit.  But McConnell is, as usual, mum on the matter, and if I were a coal mining family depending on the pittance they do get (top payment for a miner with three dependents: $1,289/month), I’d be getting ready not for hard times — they’re already here — but worse.

[update: obligatory post soundtrack]

The key change the ACA implemented in black lung cases was to shift the burden of proof: instead of a miner having to prove that the work caused the disease, under the new rules,

If a miner has spent 15 years or more underground and can prove respiratory disability, then it is presumed to be black lung related to mine work, unless the company can prove otherwise.

This wasn’t a case of free money all around. As reporter Eric Boodman writes,  “In 2009, 19 percent of claims for black lung benefits were successful; in 2015, that percentage had jumped to 28.” That’s a big jump — but hardly evidence that the black lung compensation process is a wild government grab of beleaguered coal company assets.

Those companies hate the rule, with a spokesman telling Boodman that it’s created “a supplemental pension program” rather than the compensation for occupational disease, which is as fine a bit of high priced turd polishing as I’ve seen in a while.

TL:DR?  Think of this as Mencken’s rule in action:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Trump voters in coal country — West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky — were promised their country back.

What will they receive?

The shaft, deeper and darker than any hole miners have dug in the hunt for what will continue to kill them where they stand.

Image: Léonard Defrance, Coal Mining, before 1805.

If You Don’t Know Who The Patsy At The Table Is, Dear Trumpkins…Post + Comments (111)