trump’s lifelong compulsion to troll his way into the spotlight by leeroy jenkinsing the least popular stances has predictably resulted in landing on the horribly unpopular side of an uncontrolled pandemic, mass unemployment, the confederacy, and police brutality https://t.co/DDnwE9ufdR
— kilgore trout, potato thief (@KT_So_It_Goes) June 12, 2020
I can understand Trump's identification with the Confederacy, since his MAGA presidency will soon take its place in American history as the next great Lost Cause.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) June 12, 2020
Trump has switched his Big Reopening Rally from Juneteenth to the next day, Saturday, “out of respect”. Rude twitter peasants are suggesting there just wasn’t the expected demand for the available tickets, the theory being more people would be able to show up on a weekend. Some tweeters are also suggesting they’ve applied for those tickets with the intent to leave the seats empty (with the hoped-for effect on the Oval Office Squatter’s temper).
Campaign manager Brad Parscale is talking up sales bigly, which I assume means he understands that his cushy job is gonzo unless a miracle happens, and two (no, three!) hundred thousand MAGAts can be conjured up, possibly from the graveyards. Well, QAnon is very excited about the event, so…
As another sf writer (Ray Bradbury) once said, I was not predicting the future…
And begins with a depiction of the Tulsa massacre. https://t.co/suHx2uhsbJ
— Maryn McKenna (@marynmck) June 11, 2020
TV's "Watchmen" opened with an astonishing reenactment of the Tulsa 1921 genocide of African Americans. You can see much of it in the first 5 minutes of this Watchmen review: https://t.co/wMqbUIi14r https://t.co/IybPNms7we
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) June 11, 2020
those four words explain essentially all of Trumpism. https://t.co/l6akCkl8xl
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 12, 2020
Baud
I guess this whole episode raised awareness of the Tulsa race massacre.
Thanks, Trump!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Baud: And people now know what Juneteenth is!
WereBear
We HAVE to do a Denazification of America. No matter how long it takes or where it leads us.
Ken
There’s also Penny Dreadful: City of Angels set in 1930s LA, with racist cops, Nazis, radio preachers, corrupt government, and a politician who sparks this exchange:
Oh, and there’s a conflict between the goddess of death and her sister, who’s the bad one. Still finding out what that’s about.
Gin & Tonic
They should just distill the 2020 Republican platform to its essence. Why have pages and pages when it fits on a bumper sticker: “Fuck you!” After all, that’s precisely what 63 million of your fellow Americans said when they voted in 2016.
debbie
They need to leash their man. He only intensifies the backlash when he says chokeholds are “beautiful.”
John S.
SpringtimeSummertime forHitlerTrump andGermanyAmerica…Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party!
No real need to modify the second part.
waspuppet
I mean, this is a “man” who says he won the women’s vote when actually he won the white women’s vote. There has never been any doubt about who this is.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
gene108
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I think people now know the name Juneteenth, but they probably don’t know much else.
Juneteenth did not end slavery nationally, which is how it’s being portrayed, in my opinion.
Juneteenth is an event rather specific to that area (Texas, Oklahoma), and not when the 13th amendment was passed, nor when other slaves were freed via the Emancipation Proclamation.
Phylllis
@Ken: An excellent deep dive into that story: Hitler in Los Angeles, by Steven J. Ross.
Immanentize
Good morning, weekend Jackals.
I was in a zoomeeting yesterday which ended with a righteous rant by one of my colleagues which went on for some time. And at the end, I now suspect he was a Stein voter maybe. I really did not want to know that. Or even suspect that.
JPL
@Immanentize: Was he smoking?
gene108
@rikyrah:
Good morning ???
Dorothy A. Winsor
Mr DAW made a run for bagels this morning and came back with a fresh croissant for me. I am eating it with orange marmalade. Life is good so far.
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize: Rant about what?
Brachiator
@Ken:
Oddly revisionist. While the wealthy plutocrats felt betrayed by Roosevelt, the people were with him. He won in 1936, for example, by a landslide.
Immanentize
@gene108: Juneteenth is from a Texas event — when federal troops declared Texas slaves free and emancipated —
two and a half friggin years after the emancipation proclamation.
It is a day to both celebrate freedom and mourn the horrible loss of life and dignity. It is solemn joyous. But now, I expect/worry it has finally hit the mainstream and will, in ten years, involve a big baseball game hyped like the Superbowl and picnics with lots of beer commercials.
debbie
What a joke! “Out of respect”! That is one thing not to be found anywhere in that orange pig.
oldgold
Trump performs the Prime Minister aspect of the presidency horribly.
Trump performs the Head of State aspect of the presidency even worse. He makes absolutely no effort to be the President of the entire country, but acts as chief of his deplorable tribe.
Immanentize
@JPL: Ha. I think he might have been smoking too much Cornel West. It’s odd — have you ever had that experience listening to someone which, in your head, goes something like:
Yes, absolutely, well said! With you 100%, hmmmm, perhaps…, what? I don’t really think so, no, hell no!
That is what it was like.
debbie
@oldgold:
Which is really stupid. If he does the math, or has Ivanka or Jared do it for him, he sees he doesn’t have enough voters to win.
Brachiator
This would be a very nice burn. I would love to see Trump’s people scramble to fill empty seats.
MattF
Odd, that someone in the Trump entourage felt that a rally on the 19th was inappropriate… and that Trump agreed.
Immanentize
@mrmoshpotato: we were talking about how to teach to the George Floyd moment. He — rightly — said he was really done talking about remedies and wanted to teach to the root underlying causes and structures. He had a great line — he said we should all just call ourselves “slavery abolitionists” instead of reformers. I’m going to adopt that one. It’s like the opposite of racist is not “not racist” it’s anti-racism. It was also a broader talk on ending incarceration and the prison industrial complex.
NotMax
Neglected to note the death of writer Bruce Jay Friedman earlier this month, age 90.
Had a ball back in the dim past playing God in a production of his play Steambath.
Immanentize
@MattF: Trump probably had no idea what the significance of Juneteenth was until the blowback came. But I’m sure Steven Miller did. The man Trump is a dupe and demagogue alone. Untroubled by details.
Immanentize
@debbie: Depends on which votes get counted, no?
A Ghost to Most
It’s good to see the Resistance Auxiliary concerned.
Let loose the candlelight vigils!
Immanentize
@NotMax: I did not read that. Steambath was such a great play. Do you think it has aged well? I’d love to see it again.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator:
They just give those tickets away, right? They’re not selling them. How do they decide who gets them?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@gene108: No, but it’s the day that African-Americans chose to celebrate the end of slavery, largely because the migrations of the mid-20th Century carried the tradition across the country. Folk holidays are like that.
Kay
The “available hospital beds” part of this is another layer. Recall they didn’t just add hospital beds in some places (like NY)- they opened most of the existing beds up by limiting non-Covid related surgeries to only the most essential. With that lifted they’ll have more non-Covid use of the available beds at the same time as they have the surge that followed opening up.
OzarkHillbilly
Guns and Poses
Below Average White Band
They Might Be Fascists
Big Brother and the Chokeholding Company
Sgt. Pepperspray…. & The Empty Hearts Club Band
many more at the link.
Geminid
@Immanentize: The Greens are about to nominate as their presidential candidate retired UPS driver and teamster Howie Hawkins. He ran for NY governor a few years ago, as a green. I’d expect him to get ~2% like Nader and Stein, but- at least one state Green Party (RI) announced it will not work to put their presidential candidate on the ballot. Could be because they want to do the right thing, or it may be prudential: they have a lot of candidates at lower levels that could suffer from a backlash if anti-trump voters see the Green party draining votes from Biden.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: Latin beat Boy Band: “Pendejo?”
Immanentize
@Kay: I wonder how did they ever get the for-profit hospitals (which are all over Texas) to switch over their beds?
Ramiah Ariya
Since Open Thread, I want to briefly capture what happened in my state (Tamilnadu) in India that caused COVID-19 to shoot up:
On March 24, an immediate lockdown was announced by the federal govt, with a 4 hour notice at 8 PM. This was largely successful, but it caused a crisis for migrant workers and there was much criticism that the central govt gave only a 4 hour notice.
Therefore, in my state, the govt, which wanted to tighten the lockdown, announced a “harsher curfew” but gave 36 hour notice on April 29.
The next morning, which was a Saturday, masses of people rushed the vegetable markets and groceries, basically panic buying. Behind my home, the open market, which has a capacity for hundreds, suddenly had five thousand people show up. In the main central market a hundred thousand people showed up.
This was for a stricter lockdown of just 4 days!
When these panic buyers left, and reached different cities and rural areas in my state, the virus spread all among them; and that day sealed the fate of my city Chennai – we now are a Red zone, with a ever increasing number of cases, and there are reports of beds running out.
debbie
@Immanentize:
I don’t think they can hide/suppress enough votes to come out on top.
Ladyraxterinok
OT?
Tulsa cop Travis Yates quits! ‘The courts no longer take our wor’!!
Published 6-12 in lawofficer.com/america-we-are-leaving
Long list of reasons from decline in general civility to nobody respects us
–
WereBear
Mr WereBear, who has a Marine father and worked extensively with military personnel during his career, says the cascade of military figures declaring tRump a danger to the republic is a BFD.
NotMax
Sign of the times for car rental companies –
Popped into town for the monthly grocery run yesterday. Decided to avoid all the traffic lights on the main drag leaving town by taking the alternative twisty two-lane back road from Costco, which wends its way around behind the airport before connecting with the highway going up the mountain.
Drove past, at minimum, 500 cars (most likely closer to double that) parked nose to tail along the shoulder and standing row upon row in the empty fields abutting the road almost the whole way.
@Immanentize
Dunno. Probably has aged patchily, much as everything else considered cutting edge and controversial eventually does.
Kay
@Immanentize:
OzarkHillbilly
@Ladyraxterinok: What a bunch of snowflakes.
Immanentize
@Kay: Ah ha. Thank you.
MattF
@Immanentize: I guess I can see that. Like having a political rally on a Jewish holiday.
Kay
@Immanentize:
No one talked about the huge 100 billion emergency subsidy health care providers got or how they could spend the huge emergency subsidy nearly any way they wanted to, which may have been a mistake since they laid off so many health care people, apparently spending it on things other than payroll, which meant the employees they laid off went into the UI system where they were eligible for UI plus the federal bump, allowing health care companies to essentially double dip.
Aleta
Re @Immanentize:
themarshallproject.org/2019/06/19/the-case-for-abolition by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and James Kilgore
Geminid
The Libertarian Party has nominated Joy Jacobson, who teaches introductory psychology at Clemson U. She ran for Vice President on the 1996 Libertarian ticket. The 2020 Libertarian vice presidential candidate is better known than Jacobson. He’s an internet comedian. Gary Johnson got 3.6 million votes last election. I think a lot of those voters will fall to Biden without much or any effort by his campaign. At this point there are just not very many “swing voters” as regards the presidential race. But I’m counting on swing voters in statewide races to put people like Barbara Bollier (KS) and Steve Bullock (MT) over the top. John Tester has won twice in Montana, so voters there will swing to the right candidate.
Kay
@Ladyraxterinok:
They do lie under oath, though, cops, and everyone knows it. I wish it weren’t true but it is true and it’s fairly common. So whether they know it or not “courts” (meaning a lot of people in courts and not just criminal defense) have had doubts about their credibility for a long time. It’s just baked in the cake.
SFAW
@debbie:
Of course they can. They’ve done it before, and things have only gotten worse. Doesn’t mean they’ll succeed this time, but it won’t be for lack of trying.
gbbalto
@Ramiah Ariya: My best wishes for you staying healthy! Sounds like the crowd scenes at U.S. airports when Trump bungled the border closing announcement – I’m sure that spread the virus effectively.
Gin & Tonic
@Geminid:
Huh, I was unaware of this. I have also been unaware of “a lot of [Green] candidates at lower levels”
MattF
@Kay: NYT archive column by Alan Dershowitz (!) about lying cops. He notes that judges and prosecutors are entirely aware of what’s going on, and do nothing about it. Created a stir at the time, as I recall.
MomSense
@WereBear:
I was thinking exorcism, but DeNazification would do it, too.
Geminid
Rachel Bitecoffer puts out a lot of good concise analysis on her Twitter feed. Two observations she made last week: 1) participation by voters 30 and under jumped a lot in 2018, and that trend has continued this year, 2) by far the biggest pool of voters still on table are registered voters who don’t vote. Bitecofer says that of 7 million registered women in Texas, 2 million did not vote in 2016. She says the those are the ones for the Dems to go after. Bitecofer focuses a lot on Texas congressional races, and identifies 6 potential red-to-blue opportunities. And her Twitter feed features pictures of her dog.
Nora
@Kay: It’s one of those things nobody talks about in the criminal justice system, but all the lawyers and judges know cops lie and that judges (and juries) believe them despite their lying.
Shalimar
@debbie: I would say Trump has plenty enough voters to win if half of us aren’t allowed to vote. Republicans work diligently on that part of the strategy too.
Geminid
@Gin & Tonic: Well, a lot of candidates for them. Maybe a dozen.
Exregis
Leona Wen, former health commissioner of Baltimore and frequent MSNBC analyst, has an interesting article in the Washington Post today, titled “Instead of ‘defund’ the police, imagine a broader role for them with public health.”
Here’s one example of using police she mentioned
She has numerous examples, including the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program (LEAD).
She ends with a call for suitable framing.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Aleta: Powerful – thank you for this link.
I’d like to imagine a future where prisons and cops aren’t used as the “solution” to the social and mental problems faced by Americans.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Shalimar: They may try – but if November is anything like the Georgia primary… where turnout was THREE TIMES HIGHER than last time… their voter suppression can’t stop us (and can’t save them)
Emma from FL
As I do my usual morning news run, may I say how disorienting it is to be agreeing with Joe FLIPPING Scarborough?!
MomSense
@Exregis:
I had a woman ask me about what I think of the whole defund the police thing (clearly it upset her) and I said it’s really the idea of healthy safe neighborhoods and police aren’t the appropriate response to every problem. Then we talked about some of the issues and better responses – social workers, career counselors, childcare etc. I don’t think the word reflects the proposed policy changes
oatler.
Trafalgar Square is a hot nazi mess right now.
Geminid
@debbie: One positive factor in the question of voter suppression and fraud is that Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina now have Democratic governors. Republican governors made it easy to steal and suppress votes in 2016.
Ken
Ahem. “Respect is earned.”
And lots of people have been pointing to the decline in civility for years, so I expect he only noticed when people stopped being civil to him.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Like I said the other night: thanks to Trump, racism has never been less popular.
If everything he touches dies, then this is the silver lining, ’cause he’s got bigotry in a bear hug.
Ken
@Geminid: One of my fantasies is that at least one Democratic-controlled state gerrymanders hard in 2021, and the Republicans appeal to the Federal courts. Then I want the Democrats to do nothing but cite the Supreme Court ruling that federal courts have no power to intervene in these matters.
mad citizen
@Emma from FL: I think all jackals deserve to have this turned around, meaning that Joe Friggin’ Scarborough is agreeing with you.
Good morning jackal….folks!
WereBear
@MomSense: I saw an excellent video by an organizer explaining that we already have a good concept:
Calling 911.
This works when we are sick, when someone stole our stuff, when our house is on fire. Just expand on that.
Let 911 figure out who to send.
Dorothy A. Winsor
FOX was on the TV in the café as I passed it this morning, and they showed Trump arriving at West Point. Someone on here said they hoped the cadets remember this and vote with extreme prejudice in November. I thought that was well put.
MattF
@Ken: Try googling ‘Maryland gerrymander’.
PsiFighter37
@Ken: I would rather they do not. Democrats can easily win a majority of seats if gerrymanders are undone and put into sensibly-cut districts. Just look at what happened to Pennsylvania in 2018 – 4 seats gained – and look at what will happen to NC this year, where we are basically guaranteed a 2-seat pickup. Unfortunately, Wisconsin is a lost cause until we can gain a majority on the state SCOTUS, but Virginia will be un-gerrymandered next time around for sure, and Michigan should be a gimme as well. The long shot that would be great is if we can win the Texas State House this year…I would imagine that gives us a seat at the table for redistricting and would mean we can fortify any potential pickups we get this year as well.
Jinchi
Don’t be too surprised about Alan Dershowitz criticizing the police. He’s a defense lawyer and police misconduct is one his go-to tactics. Usually in defense of famous and wealthy clients. His defenses of Trump range from ‘it’s ok because everybody does it’ (presidents interfering in DOJ decisions) to ‘cops lied’ (President Obama personally asking the FBI to set up Trump).
A Ghost to Most
Pass this on to Mistermix. He loves a good antifa sighting.
Denver Post:
Sorry, no Lara Logan.
satby
Popping in from the farmer’s market to say again:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WATERGIRL!!!
Aleta
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Yeah, the excited mainstream headlines about abolishing the current police system seem to leave out that part about solving health care, education, housing, etc. instead of solving political problems by building more prisons and militarizing local police.
Chyron HR
@A Ghost to Most:
Condescension entirely devoid of content, well done.
germy
The glowing bio of Ms. Alexander is from Birch Box.
The tweet is from someone she tried to have arrested.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Well by 1936 the wealthy had not only survived the crash, they profited from it. The general population, not so much. The last major crash we had, the great recession, was handled a lot the same way, the banks were made whole. (There really wasn’t much else that could be done, the banks had screwed themselves because they knew they would get saved, because the banks/WS are considered the basis of the economy.) The next major debacle we faced that massively affected the economy, this “flu” bug going around now has been mishandled in a similar way. Because the wealthy are more important, why else would they have so much money? Who does the day to day work that creates the economy is considered inconsequential – replaceable, only those who gather the result of that work is important. And the lesson had been learned but the person in charge is one of the worst of the hoarders, mainly because he’s incredibly incompetent at being human, only one among his many, many incredible incompetencies.
Aleta
Story from a police officer, Paul Manning, about trying to do the right thing. threadreaderapp.com/thread/1271432151142223872.html
Another story. cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/criminal-justice/black-buffalo-cop-stopped-another-officers-choke…
A good part is at the end of that story. (14 years later)
debbie
@SFAW:
Trump’s much farther behind than Hillary ever was.
Sab
I am watching the West Point graduation. My college graduation speaker meant well but was kind of dull. This Trump speech is tje exact opposite. My gooodness! Very, very, very weird and scary. Kind of a word salad from the Book of Revelation.
ETA deleted extra s.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: I’ve worked with and otherwise been associated with people in the criminal justice system since the 80s. It is a rare, rare day that a cop isn’t lying. What really pisses me off is that over the HUNDREDS (literally, hundreds) of times that I have personal knowledge of that cops have been shown to be lying under oath, absolutely caught in a lie on the witness stand in court, exactly ONE time has there even been talk of bringing perjury charges. Which of course never happened.
Jinchi
Banks may be the basis of the economy, but the people who run them are replaceable. It seems like bank bailouts in 2008 could have been structured with that in mind, to include conditions on bankers ability to foreclose on homeowners, and to compel restructuring of debt from suddenly unemployed debtors.
debbie
@MomSense:
Seconded. And as we are seeing, it can be twisted by opponents to mean something entirely different. Glenn Beck’s as gleeful as he would be on Christmas morning.
debbie
@MattF:
Article’s dated May 2, 1994. I’d bet this was his entrée onto the OJ team. Bet he’d be arguing exactly the opposite today.
Jinchi
Right. Trump just barely won the electoral college under conditions that were extremely favorable to him, including governors in several states who were suppressing the vote. He cannot afford to lose any support in 2020 and he cannot survive an energized Democratic turnout. He’s currently looking at both.
Kay
Has there been a single one of these claims that turned out to be true? One?
At the time they said it, Columbus police knew it was a lie.
Kay
Columbus Ohio Police
Flat out lie. By that time they knew they were “Flow Arts” performers.
Omnes Omnibus
@A Ghost to Most: Shouldn’t you be stocking up on dried beans or checking the placement of your Claymores? Have I told you lately how much I admire your bravery?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: @Kay: The CPD has been known to arrest black people for jay walking and for turn campus house parties into “riots.” This should come as no surprise.
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
It is so common if you work in a smaller place you hear specific names of cops who don’t lie. The non-liars get special attention.
“Jeremy is a straight shooter”, “I talked to Rex and checked so it’s reliable”
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: I know, these drive-by comments putting the rest of us down from the heights of Colorado Rocky Mountain High! It’s just so *butch*!
Omnes Omnibus
The murders didn’t happen until June 12, 1994, so I doubt it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Hey, he’s seen it raining fire in the sky.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Rubio has moved on to another incident:
To his credit, this actually happened, but it was two weeks ago. It’s almost like he doesn’t really want to address the problem. Hmmm.
Marcopolo
In case this hasn’t been reported, today the state of Kentucky is taking down the Jefferson Davis statue that was standing in the state capital.
Also, the Kentucky US Senate primary is 10 days from now on June 23rd. No doubt everyone here is aware that Amy McGrath is running for the nomination to be on the ballot against McConnell (and she has raised a hella lotta money). But it is a primary & I want folks to see who another one of the candidates for Dem Senate is: Charles Booker. He has very steep odds against McGrath in the primary but I like the idea that we have multiple great candidates running for election in red states.
Here’s his kickoff ad, which I think is pretty good.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Here’s the NYPD with an even more outlandish story:
The containers have the mix ratio penciled on the side. They knew exactly what they were.
Marcopolo
@Kay: So my mom is from a small town in NW Ohio. Very red, very Trump supporting. For shits & giggles I googled Black Lives Matter and the town name. Wow & knock me over with a feather–there was a George Floyd BLM protest march there on June 3rd.
I’ve been reading about the marches happening all over and deep within rural areas that are typically conservative & Republican but this hammered home for me how widespread it really is.
Ruckus
@Jinchi:
I don’t disagree, at all. Which of course is part of the point. It isn’t actually the banks, it’s the worship of money, that money is more important than anything else. Everything is what does it cost, long before it’s why and how badly do we need this. It seems rare when the question what does it cost to not do it comes up. And that is about money as well, rarely about the cost in humanity.
germy
@Betty Cracker:
It took him weeks to finally find footage of looters who weren’t white.
Kay
@Marcopolo:
We had one here. My youngest went. He didn’t want me to go, and since there were only about 20 of them and as it turned out he would have been one of only three males and with his mom I’m glad he barred me :)
They rallied at the courthouse square which is under the jurisdiction of the county – sheriff- and they got kicked off because you have to reserve that area but they moved 10 or so feet off the lawn and carried on. A tattoo parlor owner sent them over pizza.
Aleta
@Chief Oshkosh: That makes me think about the irony of how police TV shows spend 1/2 their effort on aggressive interrogation scenes, police assuming from the start that everything a ‘suspect’ says is a lie.
IRL if lying is expected of police as a required part of the job, real-life police (especially with certain personalities) would assume everyone else lies all the time too.
And racism means they already believe every Black and nonwhite citizen, immigrant and refugee is a liar.
Irony doesn’t begin to describe the disgrace.
…
susanna
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Rhetorical question.
How does being opposed to abuse of authority, opposed to entrenched inequality, opposed to racism, opposed to murder, equate with being an anarchist?
Kay
@Marcopolo:
That there was one in Van Wert is amazing. I love their courthouse. It’s kind of run down – that’s a tiny county- and it has an incredibly bad mural. I think it depicts something to do with the ….settler/Indian wars? Not clear. It inexplicably has the universal circle/slash “no” symbol incorporated, along with a buckeye leaf.
dirge
@Jinchi: It seems like bank bailouts in 2008 could have been structured with that in mind, to include conditions on bankers ability to foreclose on homeowners…
Could have just bailed out homeowners instead, which, because all but the most reckless could have continued making mortgage payments, would have had the side effect of bailing out all but the most reckless banks.
Doug R
@Ramiah Ariya: There’s proof that lockdowns have to be carefully calculated that they don’t create the problem they are trying to solve.
Marcopolo
@Kay: We were there for her 55th HS reunion a few years ago. One of (or maybe the only–I don’t really remember) the major economic development projects in Van Wert county was a huge wind turbine farm. The company was talking about investing another $1 Billion (yeah, that does sound like a lot) to expand their operation. A friend of the family who lives there & serves on the county economic development commission said that the jobs affiliated with the wind turbines pay ~$100,000/year. According to him & what she heard from her classmates, the general consensus was wind turbines destroy the view, folks with high wage jobs like those will ruin the local economy for everyone cause prices for everything will go up, and they didn’t like them.
Needless to say, downtown Van Wert is pretty much a ghost town now (all the commercial development is on the outskirts where the land was cheaper for building from the 80’s onward) though 40-50 years ago it was very nice little town. And as you’ve remarked, almost all the decent paying jobs stem from the local government/school district hires.
Doug R
@Marcopolo: Ironic they would hate WIND turbines, being named after a Dutch-American.
Marcopolo
@dirge: Agreed. The bailout should have been bottom up not top down. And provisions could have been put into place to deal with the mom & pop housing speculators who were buying (with the intent to flip) more than, say, two homes.
So much generational accrued wealth would have been preserved doing that–especially in regards to POC.
germy
I mean, who knew teh blacks would act out?
mad citizen
@Marcopolo: Thanks for posting, good stuff indeed. I grew up in Fort Wayne, and my best friend is from NW Ohio. I’m familiar with the area, though if I ever was in Van Wert I don’t recall it. It is a great name, though.
Kay
@Marcopolo:
I go thru there quite a bit. Turbines as far as the eye can see. The turbine jobs do pay well but if you want 100k a year you have to work 70 hours a week and live in motels. They sent them all over hell. They make 40 or 50k a year, generally.
We have a turbine worker who bought in my neighborhood. He and his GF and her son- he is never home. He actually met the GF in one of the Dakotas on a work trip.
frosty
@Ramiah Ariya: Interesting story, thanks for commenting.
debbie
@Kay:
Huh. Surprised that got no coverage. //
Cameron
@Immanentize: Excuse me, excuse me, but Donald Trump knows all about Juneteenth, more than you do: youtu.be/GPXhNT0cii4
Tony Jay
@oatler.:
And you can bet your left fun-nugget that Prime Minister Chubby of Chequers is absolutely shitting himself that Dumb Don the Klansman’s Son will tweet out something supportive of our drunk, racist bigots and their white riot in the middle of London.
What’s he going to do then? He can’t contradict his direct line-manager, can he? His handlers wouldn’t allow it. Best to just hide out and wait for the BBC to convince everyone that all those fat, white thugs chucking bottles at the Police and pissing on Churchill’s (shielded) statue were really just average Britons deeply concerned about the ethics of historical accuracy in statue location.
The British Right. Fat, stupid and unsettled by the Police.
frosty
@Ken:
Maryland has done that – one of the most ridiculous gerrymanders in the country. It went to the Supreme Court along with a Republican gerrymander and the SC decided not to take the case.
Kay
@debbie:
And, not to be a pain in the ass, but let’s talk about this unrestrained looting we keep hearing about. These protest places are crawling with police. They have enough time to spend 5 hours harassing the hippie magic bus but they can’t stop the looting? They’re acting as if they MUST abuse the peaceful protesters in addition to curtailing looting. Maybe just work on the looting?
debbie
@Kay:
But then they’d be doing what they were hired for, wouldn’t they? The FOP won’t be having any of that, thank you very much. //
debbie
@Kay:
A couple of friends went to the protests the first couple of days. Neither saw anything other than lawful demonstrations.
MomSense
@WereBear:
I think I’m going to call it Healthy Safe and Happy neighborhoods and explain that it means if you call 911 – the dispatchers have more and better options. They can send a social worker and EMTs. They can refer to crisis counselors or housing programs.
I also think we have to promote the idea of happiness.
trnc
Speaking of things going viral in Rubio’s and DeSantis’ Florida, they keep setting new records in cases. 2625 today, blowing past the 1902 record set yesterday.
Matt McIrvin
@Ramiah Ariya: That reminds me of what happened when Trump responded to COVID by shutting off travel from Europe–he caused a panic crush of everyone coming home from Europe at the same time (partly because the guidelines had been insufficiently communicated) and cramming together in airport customs/immigration lines, and hot spots immediately blossomed in a bunch of US cities.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I have a friend who did this for 3-4 years; He graduated from college as a mechanical engineer, spent a few years working on tanks. Then he was a turbine engineer for 3-4 years and went all over the United States – lots of work, but pretty neat if you’re in your mid-20s and want to travel around a lot.
He quit as soon as he started thinking about starting a family. Works for a large firm in Chicago now. Says the turbine jobs are basically a stepping stone, because no one can actually make a career out of it unless you move into management.
Fair Economist
@Immanentize:
In spite of the sense it would cheapen it, I think it would be a very good thing for the country to celebrate the end of slavery in this country (which is what Juneteenth is; the day people in the last Confederate state learned the Confederates had lost and slavery was no more.)
Fair Economist
@Ladyraxterinok:
Well, Travis, if you left your bodycam on *that* would count as evidence.
The Pale Scot
@Kay:
Thanks to that twitter, I now know about the The Doodlebops, now I just need to find some mushrooms
Matt McIrvin
@Immanentize: It’s fine. It’s how we do this stuff.
When public celebration of Martin Luther King Day became a big nationwide thing, Saturday Night Live did a bit imagining a cheesy Martin Luther King Day car sale ad (“I HAVE A DREAM that you’ll take advantage of these terrific savings!”), and that’s pretty much exactly what we did with it. But I don’t see this as necessarily wrong. It can be empty symbolism but it’s how we designate what we think is important.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Pale Scot: This is not a road you want to travel. Take it from me. Teletubbies and the pain meds following knee surgery showed me things that still haunt my nightmares.
Brachiator
@Ramiah Ariya:
Thanks for your comment. I read some of the international news stories, but they often don’t provide enough detail or even background information.
BellyCat
Yes. And they believe the cops, regardless of the lies they tell.
rikyrah
@satby:
Happy Birthday ??????
Mohagan
@Marcopolo: I had not realized anyone besides Amy McGrath was running again MoscowMitch, and then I saw Charles Booker interviewed on one of the MSNBC shows. He was very impressive. Unfortunately, the CW is that he is too liberal to win in Kentucky. I have no idea – what do you think?