No chance, boyo...but, now states can hijack, delete or work around any kinda fed reg or law, start trolling yer state reps. 50 possibilities! I bet they's lotsa deep south folx who'd love to get yer Hardcore Digest.
"You have to get a gun, because the n*****s are coming to steal your stuff" has worked on White people for over fifty years now. It was a motivational factor, unrealized or not, behind Tuesday's results. For starters.
A news story about the surge in AR-15 sales after the Uvalde shooting (which happens after every high-profile mass shooting, because 'Merica) quotes one shopper saying, "Well, what if there's a mob coming at your house, you better have some firepower to defend your family." Left unsaid was WHY this guy thought a mob would be coming at his house. But it stands to reason, if you want to move from selling semiauto handguns to semiauto rifles, you've got to notch up the fear from "Willie Horton coming in my bedroom window" to "Zombie Apocalypse."
Of course it goes back to the Southern Strategy and beyond, but just in this century its lineage goes back to swift-boating, and you’d think by now the Democrats would have learned that taking the high road is a mug’s game. You have to FIGHT the culture war, not sniff at it from a lofty height because conservative’s claims are ridiculous (even though they are).
AOC is a master at this kind of combat, and one of the reasons I like John Fetterman – even with his problems – is because he operates this way too. He hasn’t achieved the mastery of the form AOC has, but he knows he’s got to go head to head with the bullshit to have his message break through.
There are a pack of new dems who know how to take the fight to mat. Someone needs to prefab and package it the way the right has. Neat little catch phrases and overt cattle calls as clear as SOO-EEEY! so the pigs know when gather at the trough.
Fun fact: "Soo-eyy" is etymologically derived from the Old English "sū" (pig) -- both "pig" and "hog" come into the language later, though it's tough to say exactly where ["hog" might be related to Welsh hwch].
And, bonus fun fact, "sū" is an i-mutating stem (like goose -> geese, foot -> feet, etc.), and so its plural was originally "sy" [that y is a high front vowel pronounced like French "lune"]. Cow (cū) was the same deal -- and over time those words edged over to a more regular plural form in "-ne" (like "children" and at the time "lambren"). And so, "kine" (rarely used these days) but also....
"because, face it, the store writes these losses off and how is it worth the unpaid clerks’ or guard’s time to fight people in the aisles" -- Let's not forget the ever-increasing likelihood that everyone in this scenario is armed, a store-wide bloodbath could bust out, and Walgreens is better off losing some Pampers than having to hire a pricey PR firm to entice shoppers back into the stores, because Freedom.
And as I've said, that's why conservatives want the Supreme Court to fix it so even jurisidictions that really, really don't want guns will be flooded with them nonetheless.
Every posturing Dem should be required to explain how their proposals will survive next month’s SCOTUS decision which is going to bar state and localities from restricting ammosexuals’ absolute 2A rights.
We've already determined it is not only impolite, it is unpolitic to restrain the (invariably white) man stuffing billions of ill-got dollars into his offshore account. So there's that...
The clerks and guards are not unpaid. Many of them especially the unionized ones are very well paid. They are trained to attempt to overwhelm suspected shoplifters with customer service and ease them out of the building hopefully not taking anything or dropping what they have and get enough info from store surveillance cameras and witnesses to make a case that will hold up. However, in many years of working in grocery stores I have seen employees get pissed off that a shoplifter is getting away with it and try to confront them or chase them into the parking lot to attempt to hold them for the cops. This rarely works because outside the building it is easier for the perp to get away or for the employee to be injured. And, should the employee touch or hurt the perp the tables can turn and the employee can turn into the criminal. Much as the company may admire the aggressive loyalty they can't tolerate it because it muddies the legal water and it really is better to let the Pampers go.
So the internet is good for funny animal videos, how - to videos for everything under the sun from polish dumplings to repairing old record turntables. Finding parts for said turntables and antique mowers, Kenmore Dryers and vintage buggy parts. It's a source of wonderful writing (Mr. Ed Rosos' work comes to mind) and a grand reference work for most every bit of knowledge mankind has aquired.It's also great at proselytizing everyday folks into raging hate mobs that threaten to destroy our society and providing a place where anyone with a weird vile urge or notion can find a large support group for their worst impulses.
Taking all that into consideration, I suggest we return to hard copies of books from the library and getting to know our neighbors. I'll miss all you folks but. you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Somebody handed me a crack pipe once and being me, relatively young and convinced I was going to live forever ( and fuck it if I didn't) I hit that motherfucker like Muhammad Ali hitting Sonny Liston down for the count. I realized at once this was the GREATEST THING EVER and if I ever tried it again I probably wouldn't survive a year.
We maybe need to put that internet pipe down. Sure we lose a lot but our odds of survival increase.
We can chip in to get Roy a roll of stamps and a mimeograph machine.
“Somebody handed me a crack pipe once and being me, relatively young and convinced I was going to live forever…”
O/T, but you’ve got me reminiscing: A bit over half a century ago, as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, I happened to be couch-surfing at a friend’s place when an acquaintance of his came by in a generous mood, having just brokered a transaction in which what must have been an extraordinary quantity of Bolivian marching powder changed hands. I say “extraordinary quantity” because he lightheartedly left the two of us, gratis, with enough magic dust to keep us snorting a few rails each every couple of hours for the next week and change.
I decided on the basis of this experience that I really, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 liked cocaine. I also resolved that I would never, ever, purchase the stuff, because even at nineteen I could descry some potential bad outcomes (in later life I knew a woman who lost her home because her husband had been paying his dealer and not the mortgage). My wife and others have recalled that, in her and their circles at least, routine access to abundant supplies of free coke in the seventies was easier if one happened to possess the attributes of a comely young female. Lacking her advantages, and hewing to that early promise to myself, I never repeated the scale of those glorious ten days in 1971.
Not on Twitter myself, but some math teacher friends talk in glowing terms about Math Twitter, which is a wondrous land where people are helpful and supportive, offering clever math problems that will spark your students interest and emotional support after your brilliant lesson plan blew up in your face. The main thing, they say, is to create a separate Twitter account that's just for math and nothing else, otherwise the sewage leaks in. I wonder if others use Twitter in the same way?
Twitter’s far from as bad as its press. Too, it’s just a tool and how it is for you depends on how you use it. And at its worse, it’s magnitudes better than ThielBook.
Well, now, overlooked in this righteous, impossible-to-criticize rant is the role of the media or, more specifically, the irresponsibility in reporting.
In the sad case of Boudin’s defeat is the simple fact that a prosecutor’s effect on crime is minimal. To the contrary: If the DA looks bad, it’s safe to presume that the real problem is with Porky, which, regratbly, is an issue our exceptional mainstream reporters will not, cannot touch.
In other words, Boudin was seen as failing because the made it clear that he was failing, facts and truth, as they say, be damned.
The Boudin defeat made me think back decades to 2014 and the run up to the 2014 elections. The mainstream wildly echoed GOP claims of Obama and the Democrats failing to respond vigorously to the huge threat of Ebola. Fact: At its worse, the number of cases in the US were in the double digits because back then we were a functional nation (Compare to the response to Covid which y’all know has been far from what it should be.) Within days of the election, the Ebola crisis disappeared from the news.
Amongst other mainstream bullshit that does no good is that Timesman who wrote the book on Jack Welch as the result of an epiphany that maybe a reporter shouldn’t be a mindless cheerleader (or groupie??) for business but report facts and stuff. His epiphany doesn’t extend to the fact that Welch engaged in arguable securities fraud in order to keep goosing GE’s stock price or that he left GE in awful, awful shape.
Or, one of my other current bete noires: That the current trendy mass shootings coverage overlooks two related facts that should be part of all the coverage: Mass shootings happens on average daily and school shootings at least once a week. So in that regard, the media (ideally) need to explain why this one’s special given all the other shootings they don’t report. (I know; in that regard, the media are size queens, the more killed the better. Still, a little framing and context would help.)
And the instant classic: The inability or refusal to call GOP pols’ response to mitigating Covid is literally deadly, making said pols by definition killers.
Meanwhile, to say the GOP has been pulling shit for decades is a gross understatement. But they’d have had a shit ton fewer successes without the help from the mainstream media. You know, like if there was all appropriate honest, fact-based coverage.
OTOH, the might grow their audiences if they lowered the BS content. Too, honest framing would include why shush criticism is complete bullshit. (And historical factoid: the term liberal media is not fact based but is a conservative lie.)
It might also upset the politicians who control their tax breaks and reach.
Journalism is one of the most shockingly short sighted industries I have ever seen, and yes I'm aware of the oil industry. At this point I can only conclude that they've decided to run print media into the ground and sell off the employees for organs. And that they made that decision twenty five years ago.
Just watching some of the early Dem ads against Ron Johnson, they don't mention Covid, but they do mention that Johnson was against tariffs on China, which somehow is making inflation worse? (Johnson being against the tariffs, not the tariffs themselves).
The media tends to follow the politicians lead (I know, they shouldn't, but they do) and if Dems are going to decide that the Republican response to Covid isn't an effective line of attack, the media isn't going to do the work for them.
Democrat's election messaging is usually aimed at trying to get some Repubs to vote for them rather than trying to get their base out and get the centrists on their side
"Florida handled it best" is both stupid and crazy, but if there's no one out there making an opposing argument, I could see it catching on. Darn shame those focus groups told the Dem campaign consultants that Covid wasn't a winning issue.
The media have had two-odd years to correctly characterize Trump, et al, as literally murderous. If a Dem pol characterized a GOP pol like that, the mainstream would treat it as a scandalous affront. That said Dem would be correct is irrelevant.
I'm always struck by those voters outraged by the burgeoning homeless population. Those voters are PISSED that so many people have no place to live. So the voters vote out the incumbent and vote in someone who will "do something" about the homeless.
And that's when things get stupid because the only ways to deal with homelessness is with liberal applications of money and changes in zoning. Shelters, transition housing, low-income housing, increasing welfare benefits, providing substantial mental health resources, fully funding substance abuse programs--these are the things that actually do something about reducing homelessness.
And these are the very things that voters will always vote against.
There's plenty of eliminationist rhetoric on both sides, I guess...
And yet, the programs Derelict cites above actually would make homelessness disappear, by giving people places to live, and by making treatment accessible, transform the behavioral patterns that make rich white liberals feel uncomfortable or unsafe around that segment of the poor.
One of the most important moments in my transformation to an anarchist was when I heard that the most commonly shoplifted items are not videogames or fashion brands, but infant formula, shaving cream, deodorant, and tampons. That's fucked -- it means our society is purposefully denying health & humanity to the poor, as well as preventing them from any form of upward mobility.
Sure. But the wealthy are not allowed to steal those items, either.
I am most definitely not an anarchist because that means you're just giving up. I am one of those people who explains to Rightwing "government is the problem " types that the answer is to vote for people who will make government actually work. That CAN mean higher taxes, but that also means the things you want most can happen.
Being an anarchist means being opposed to hierarchies. Granted, that would be a hella difficult thing to achieve, and we don't have a lot of experience with what such a state would look like, but it certainly doesn't mean giving up (I mean, are socialists "giving up?" Their desired future looks similarly impossible in the US).
Life without some form of government is not possible as long as humans have to live together. There are too many who are too willing to harm or enslave others to benefit themselves.
So thinking anarchy can work is saying "I give up on the idea that humans can work together. " (Also, whatever ideal you might have about how anarchy might work, we now have 120 years of anarchists basically proving the necessity for government by showing the movement to be nothing more or less than vandalism. )
Anarchism≠anarchy. That seems to be the point that's being missed here. A radically flattened society where power isn't centralized in any one place may seem implausible--and it DOES seem implausible to me; I don't call myself an anarchist--but it isn't just sketchy dudes in trenchcoats with spherical black bombs.
I'm just going to push back a bit more: in the past 5-10 years, people of anarchist affiliation have been showing up to fascist shows of force to fight them if necessary (and have) as well as being deeply committed to mutual aid projects that directly serve people in need. Many of those occur in areas Dems give up as lost to GOP votes, like Appalachia.
The project of derailing the fascist express we are all on right now requires many hands and many tactics & approaches. I don't agree with most of the liberal approach & its fundamental complacency, but there's no time to push well-intentioned people away.
Well, some of them. Others are hoping to watch some beatings.
And even your more well meaning types are mostly just voting for someone to "get rid of them somehow without giving me any details so I can pretend it's solved". This usually means just making them move somewhere else.
Most of the laws really are designed to just make the problem go somewhere else and that's good enough for everyone. It's one of the subjects where yeah, I agree, liberals suck. And I'm starting to think progressives suck on this too.
They hate the homeless because they hate the poor, who are too unmotivated and lazy to be real Americans. Real Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that poverty is a moral failing of the poor (see Armey, Dick), not the society that tolerates the obscene levels of inequality that modern capitalism creates. IOW, they hate the poor, instead of the poverty that afflicts them.
I've been thinking that the first 4 words in response to these lies should always be: "This is a lie" after that go into the reasons. Not first explain what the problems are with the reporting and hope that people then get that this is a lie. Whether or not that would work, I don't know, but it might have the advantage of getting peoples attention.
Indeed. The problem with too many liberals, from the hidebound political leaders to the centrists who get furious when people aren’t enlightened enough to agree with them, is they assume people are going to naturally come to the “right” conclusion. “The voters should research this topic carefully, do their homework, and then they’ll agree with us!”
Well, that’s not how the world works, and it’s not how people work. As much as we all hate advertising, it exists for a reason. You have to advertise your position even if you’re right—especially if you’re right! This isn’t a Jane Austen novel where everyone keeps their true feelings hidden behind a wall of artifice. There are no bonus points for being the most genteel while losing the argument.
Yes, dammit. ASSERT SOMETHING. Don't wait for the right-wingers to make all the assertions, and then jump in with "Well, actually..."
I don't want Democrats to get better at batting away right wing lies about voter fraud, I want them to assert that "We've found exactly NINE cases of proven voter fraud in the 2020 election, prove me wrong,"
There's a place for fact-checking, but leave it to Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post, and the billion people on Twitter who see to enjoy that sort of thing. I don't want Dem politicians fact-checking right-wing lies about immigrants, their job is to make the positive case FOR immigration, and they'd better get busy doing that, I hear there's an election coming up.
Your mention of Orwell puts me in mind of 𝘈𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘭 𝘍𝘢𝘳𝘮, which was required reading in my seventh grade English class. The paperback edition had a helpful foreword, in which the editors explained that what we were about to read was an allegory setting forth the wicked workings and chilling consequences of communism. The author himself was quoted: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism.” Well and good, but (as I discovered some years later) the original sentence, in its entirety read (emphasis added, natch): “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮, 𝘢𝘴 𝘐 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵.” Er, “George,” that last bit’s, you know, kinda off-message. You won’t mind if we memory-hole it, will you?
Testament to the insights fiction writers come up with to create fiction, which subsequently are identified as scientific characteristics of behavior and psychology. Has anyone done a study of the development of fiction and characters in fiction preceding the innovations in human behavioral science and psychology?
We all got that treatment. And that (along with Orwell's actual references to Soviet practice) is how that shitheel Norman Podhoretz got away with rebranding Orwell as a conservative.
I'm late to the convo, but the same goes for Jefferson as for Orwell. The quote that adorns his memorial: "I swear upon the altar of God eternal hostility to all forms of tyranny over the minds of man." Boom! Sound like he's ready to take up his AR15 and start watering trees with little kid blood, if you want it to! Memory-holed, however, is the fact that when he wrote that line, by tyrants he meant... Christians. Especially those trying to get around the First Amendment and establish their asses. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl134.php
In this Time of Need, I am happy to introduce the John Munch Anti-Crime Act of 2022, which is to require police departments to hire actual DETECTIVES whose ONLY job is the INVESTIGATE violent crime. Trade off some beat cops driving around checking for non-functioning tail lights for actual detective work that might nudge Chicago's clearance rate on murders above 50%. A young black man gets shot down on the west side, instead of the cops saying, "Eh, he was probably a drug dealer, LOL", they investigate the crime like his life actually mattered, like he was a tourist shot on his way to the Cubs game.
There's a really interesting (to me anyway) issue about beat patrol that I finally sussed after being in/adjacent to law enforcement for awhile. I was working park patrol in San Jose and got to chatting with a couple guys on holiday from a northwest city's police dept. We were near one of the parking lots when a SJPD cruiser swung by, then rolled on out again. They both noticed there was only one cop in the car. Their immediate reaction was to ask me why the car was understaffed. I gently explained San Jose is a hotbed of social rest, and it is much cheaper to have each cop in their own car because the area coverage is doubled. They could not understand that there is very seldom any reason for more than one cop to respond to a callout in SJ.
The practical results of that policy might include more individual interactions with civilians, potentially leading to better relations in the community, and less opportunity for groupthink practice because less time spent bs'ing with colleagues in the car.
I've heard one of the reasons to move to one cop per car is that is should force cops to call for backup in dangerous situations instead of "Grab our guns n' go!" We had a police shooting here in Madison a few years ago when a cop chose to chase an unarmed suspect into a house and then claim "I had no choice to shoot him, my life was in danger!" When the correct response would have been to stay in the damn car and call for backup, which, at the very least, tends to slow things down and makes it harder for cops to say we can't second-guess their decision to shoot because it was the product of "split-second" thinking. Anyway, just one cop in the car, he decides to go in alone anyway, a kid ends up dead, no discipline brought against the cop.
Funny how the cops in Uvalde, faced with an armed man in the process of murdering children, had no trouble at all slowing down their decision-making process. No need for "split-second" decision-making there, I guess. Cops rush in precisely when they know the suspect is NOT armed, it's safer that way.
In my experience (7 years en porc), all having one cop in a car results in is two cop cars pulled up together, driver's side windows together, so they can bullshit -- two patrol units now motionless.
Left out an important point about Boudin's term: according to some post I read somewhere yesterday violent crimes generally were down significantly during his tenure. Several thousand fewer than the previous period. But the national press cares not, and the locals were/are/always will be/freaked out about derelict/unkempt/undermoneyed humans living on the pavements.
Also, I believe the recall effort started the day (or fairly shortly after) he was elected. You throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and some is bound to stick
I like to read SFGate, the free Id to the paywalled SF Chronicle Ego. They had knives out for Boudin early on. To be fair, they also run every anonymous staffer attack on Kamala Harris the can get their hands on, in between regular stories on how many restaurants closed in SF this month.
Yeah, SFGate is easy to get to and hard to stop popups. But some of us hanker for the good ol' days of Caen and Carroll and Delaplane and Hoppe and McCabe, Gilliam, King and Stienstra, Rosenbaum, Jenkins and Ostler, Elwood, Garchik and even Willie Brown on a good day. But The Little Man was the best.
I remember reading that in 2020 (I think) Walgreens stole tens of millions of dollars (maybe more) in wages from its employees in California. The employees sued to recover the wages but ended up having to settle for like .25 cents for every dollar stolen by Walgreens. So Walgreens legally kept about 75% of the proceeds of their theft. As always though with the media, real crime is someone boosting Huggies and Noxzema makeup wipes.
Lotta good stuff in this post and comments. I live in the Bay area and married into a SF family, and can testify that the bums with their bum poop and tents is a big big deal with the locals (tourists are a mix of horrified and think it's some sort of art installation). SF is not a cheap place to live, and a rather painful place to run any sort of business, so locals believe they have a right not to have to deal with bums in exchange for the money they pay to live there. A long-winded into to saying the Bum Problem mattered a lot more to voters than all the misleading anecdotes about Boudin "refusing" to prosecute criminals who rob Walgreens (there were also a series of smash-and-grab robberies of higher-end stores that were on high rotation on the tv, though those guys got caught). Car break-ins are another raging problem, a few anti-Boudin commercials claim he "shut down" prosecution of car break-ins. Between the cops (based on a few sf cops I know they hated his guts) and the bums Boudin never stood a chance.
Didn't the DA's office have to rent a U-Haul to recover stolen stuff from one apprehended criminal because the cop's wouldn't? Also, didn't the cops also tell civilians that they wouldn't arrest someone for a crime because Boudin wouldn't prosecute it?
In the old days the Irish cop myth was not quite so much mythology as assumed wisdom. Lots of animosity toward the Other. Was an undercurrent of the Moscone/Milk murder followup. And the City went downhill in short order once Feinstein ascended following Moscone's death.
Hearted for the honesty rather than the outcome...
SF has its moments and its madnesses in equal measure. Doesn't really help that the South Bay Masters of the Universe have set up homes in SF and decided their infinite wisdom would trump the past and the present to the point that they demand everyone they do not like the look of should be deported to Stockton or somewhere further valley-distanced.
" I have my own ideas about how the Democrats could pitch it better, but//"
Well, we'd like to hear 'em.
Ditto!
Me three.
Well, for starters, a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down federal subsidy!
Independent journalism should be subsidized. What a radical concept!
National Endowment for Journalism
I can't speak for anyone else, but I would consider this a far better use of tax dollars than at least half the current budget.
Certainly up there with national defense as the information war (WWWIII) makes clear.
It's... it's... INFRASTRUCTURE! Yeah, that's it.
You're a flipping genius, Steve. Indeed it is infrastructure...and it doesn't exist in this country.
No chance, boyo...but, now states can hijack, delete or work around any kinda fed reg or law, start trolling yer state reps. 50 possibilities! I bet they's lotsa deep south folx who'd love to get yer Hardcore Digest.
"You have to get a gun, because the n*****s are coming to steal your stuff" has worked on White people for over fifty years now. It was a motivational factor, unrealized or not, behind Tuesday's results. For starters.
A news story about the surge in AR-15 sales after the Uvalde shooting (which happens after every high-profile mass shooting, because 'Merica) quotes one shopper saying, "Well, what if there's a mob coming at your house, you better have some firepower to defend your family." Left unsaid was WHY this guy thought a mob would be coming at his house. But it stands to reason, if you want to move from selling semiauto handguns to semiauto rifles, you've got to notch up the fear from "Willie Horton coming in my bedroom window" to "Zombie Apocalypse."
Technically, it has worked since at least Nat Turner, and probably since the adoption of the Constitution
Of course it goes back to the Southern Strategy and beyond, but just in this century its lineage goes back to swift-boating, and you’d think by now the Democrats would have learned that taking the high road is a mug’s game. You have to FIGHT the culture war, not sniff at it from a lofty height because conservative’s claims are ridiculous (even though they are).
AOC is a master at this kind of combat, and one of the reasons I like John Fetterman – even with his problems – is because he operates this way too. He hasn’t achieved the mastery of the form AOC has, but he knows he’s got to go head to head with the bullshit to have his message break through.
AOC is a master at this kind of combat
which is one of the reasons the more centristy-Dems dislike her so much
The DNC has been focused on being as GOP-like as possible for ~30 years. Progressives interfere with that,sometimes even make the DNC look bad.
Sometimes?
I think I’d stick with that but given the bigger problem of endemic Dem failure, not sure it’s worth the remaining brain cells and synapses to ponder.
Either way, the party will be completely irrelevant in a few cycles.
There are a pack of new dems who know how to take the fight to mat. Someone needs to prefab and package it the way the right has. Neat little catch phrases and overt cattle calls as clear as SOO-EEEY! so the pigs know when gather at the trough.
Fun fact: "Soo-eyy" is etymologically derived from the Old English "sū" (pig) -- both "pig" and "hog" come into the language later, though it's tough to say exactly where ["hog" might be related to Welsh hwch].
And, bonus fun fact, "sū" is an i-mutating stem (like goose -> geese, foot -> feet, etc.), and so its plural was originally "sy" [that y is a high front vowel pronounced like French "lune"]. Cow (cū) was the same deal -- and over time those words edged over to a more regular plural form in "-ne" (like "children" and at the time "lambren"). And so, "kine" (rarely used these days) but also....
"Swine"
Now you know the _rest_ of the story... of words!
"because, face it, the store writes these losses off and how is it worth the unpaid clerks’ or guard’s time to fight people in the aisles" -- Let's not forget the ever-increasing likelihood that everyone in this scenario is armed, a store-wide bloodbath could bust out, and Walgreens is better off losing some Pampers than having to hire a pricey PR firm to entice shoppers back into the stores, because Freedom.
And as I've said, that's why conservatives want the Supreme Court to fix it so even jurisidictions that really, really don't want guns will be flooded with them nonetheless.
So local control over federal authority is only for the things we say it's for?
Yup...er...nope...er...crap – ya got me there, pal...
Every posturing Dem should be required to explain how their proposals will survive next month’s SCOTUS decision which is going to bar state and localities from restricting ammosexuals’ absolute 2A rights.
An armed society is a polite society, and it would be impolite to attempt to restrain the man stuffing disposable razors into a garbage bag.
We've already determined it is not only impolite, it is unpolitic to restrain the (invariably white) man stuffing billions of ill-got dollars into his offshore account. So there's that...
The clerks and guards are not unpaid. Many of them especially the unionized ones are very well paid. They are trained to attempt to overwhelm suspected shoplifters with customer service and ease them out of the building hopefully not taking anything or dropping what they have and get enough info from store surveillance cameras and witnesses to make a case that will hold up. However, in many years of working in grocery stores I have seen employees get pissed off that a shoplifter is getting away with it and try to confront them or chase them into the parking lot to attempt to hold them for the cops. This rarely works because outside the building it is easier for the perp to get away or for the employee to be injured. And, should the employee touch or hurt the perp the tables can turn and the employee can turn into the criminal. Much as the company may admire the aggressive loyalty they can't tolerate it because it muddies the legal water and it really is better to let the Pampers go.
Sigh.
Buck up, Sharon – you still got the Big Easy...
Until they wash us away.
So the internet is good for funny animal videos, how - to videos for everything under the sun from polish dumplings to repairing old record turntables. Finding parts for said turntables and antique mowers, Kenmore Dryers and vintage buggy parts. It's a source of wonderful writing (Mr. Ed Rosos' work comes to mind) and a grand reference work for most every bit of knowledge mankind has aquired.It's also great at proselytizing everyday folks into raging hate mobs that threaten to destroy our society and providing a place where anyone with a weird vile urge or notion can find a large support group for their worst impulses.
Taking all that into consideration, I suggest we return to hard copies of books from the library and getting to know our neighbors. I'll miss all you folks but. you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Somebody handed me a crack pipe once and being me, relatively young and convinced I was going to live forever ( and fuck it if I didn't) I hit that motherfucker like Muhammad Ali hitting Sonny Liston down for the count. I realized at once this was the GREATEST THING EVER and if I ever tried it again I probably wouldn't survive a year.
We maybe need to put that internet pipe down. Sure we lose a lot but our odds of survival increase.
We can chip in to get Roy a roll of stamps and a mimeograph machine.
“Somebody handed me a crack pipe once and being me, relatively young and convinced I was going to live forever…”
O/T, but you’ve got me reminiscing: A bit over half a century ago, as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, I happened to be couch-surfing at a friend’s place when an acquaintance of his came by in a generous mood, having just brokered a transaction in which what must have been an extraordinary quantity of Bolivian marching powder changed hands. I say “extraordinary quantity” because he lightheartedly left the two of us, gratis, with enough magic dust to keep us snorting a few rails each every couple of hours for the next week and change.
I decided on the basis of this experience that I really, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 liked cocaine. I also resolved that I would never, ever, purchase the stuff, because even at nineteen I could descry some potential bad outcomes (in later life I knew a woman who lost her home because her husband had been paying his dealer and not the mortgage). My wife and others have recalled that, in her and their circles at least, routine access to abundant supplies of free coke in the seventies was easier if one happened to possess the attributes of a comely young female. Lacking her advantages, and hewing to that early promise to myself, I never repeated the scale of those glorious ten days in 1971.
"There's a hole in daddy's nose where all the money goes..."
Not on Twitter myself, but some math teacher friends talk in glowing terms about Math Twitter, which is a wondrous land where people are helpful and supportive, offering clever math problems that will spark your students interest and emotional support after your brilliant lesson plan blew up in your face. The main thing, they say, is to create a separate Twitter account that's just for math and nothing else, otherwise the sewage leaks in. I wonder if others use Twitter in the same way?
Ya got me there – I endeavor mightily to stay clear of twits...
Twitter’s far from as bad as its press. Too, it’s just a tool and how it is for you depends on how you use it. And at its worse, it’s magnitudes better than ThielBook.
Amen.
Well, now, overlooked in this righteous, impossible-to-criticize rant is the role of the media or, more specifically, the irresponsibility in reporting.
In the sad case of Boudin’s defeat is the simple fact that a prosecutor’s effect on crime is minimal. To the contrary: If the DA looks bad, it’s safe to presume that the real problem is with Porky, which, regratbly, is an issue our exceptional mainstream reporters will not, cannot touch.
In other words, Boudin was seen as failing because the made it clear that he was failing, facts and truth, as they say, be damned.
The Boudin defeat made me think back decades to 2014 and the run up to the 2014 elections. The mainstream wildly echoed GOP claims of Obama and the Democrats failing to respond vigorously to the huge threat of Ebola. Fact: At its worse, the number of cases in the US were in the double digits because back then we were a functional nation (Compare to the response to Covid which y’all know has been far from what it should be.) Within days of the election, the Ebola crisis disappeared from the news.
Amongst other mainstream bullshit that does no good is that Timesman who wrote the book on Jack Welch as the result of an epiphany that maybe a reporter shouldn’t be a mindless cheerleader (or groupie??) for business but report facts and stuff. His epiphany doesn’t extend to the fact that Welch engaged in arguable securities fraud in order to keep goosing GE’s stock price or that he left GE in awful, awful shape.
Or, one of my other current bete noires: That the current trendy mass shootings coverage overlooks two related facts that should be part of all the coverage: Mass shootings happens on average daily and school shootings at least once a week. So in that regard, the media (ideally) need to explain why this one’s special given all the other shootings they don’t report. (I know; in that regard, the media are size queens, the more killed the better. Still, a little framing and context would help.)
And the instant classic: The inability or refusal to call GOP pols’ response to mitigating Covid is literally deadly, making said pols by definition killers.
Meanwhile, to say the GOP has been pulling shit for decades is a gross understatement. But they’d have had a shit ton fewer successes without the help from the mainstream media. You know, like if there was all appropriate honest, fact-based coverage.
But then they would be accused of being Lie-Brul shills! They have been suckered by Bothsidesism.
OTOH, the might grow their audiences if they lowered the BS content. Too, honest framing would include why shush criticism is complete bullshit. (And historical factoid: the term liberal media is not fact based but is a conservative lie.)
It might also upset the politicians who control their tax breaks and reach.
Journalism is one of the most shockingly short sighted industries I have ever seen, and yes I'm aware of the oil industry. At this point I can only conclude that they've decided to run print media into the ground and sell off the employees for organs. And that they made that decision twenty five years ago.
As I keep saying, the mainstream prefer to provide a news-like product instead of providing a little honest reporting.
Just watching some of the early Dem ads against Ron Johnson, they don't mention Covid, but they do mention that Johnson was against tariffs on China, which somehow is making inflation worse? (Johnson being against the tariffs, not the tariffs themselves).
The media tends to follow the politicians lead (I know, they shouldn't, but they do) and if Dems are going to decide that the Republican response to Covid isn't an effective line of attack, the media isn't going to do the work for them.
Democrat's election messaging is usually aimed at trying to get some Repubs to vote for them rather than trying to get their base out and get the centrists on their side
As far as I can tell, it's "Let's wait for the Republicans to pick all the issues, and then spend the next six months playing defense."
I think that's a distinction without a difference
GOP wisdom in my blue state is that our govt overreacted to Covid, Florida handled it the best.
"Florida handled it best" is both stupid and crazy, but if there's no one out there making an opposing argument, I could see it catching on. Darn shame those focus groups told the Dem campaign consultants that Covid wasn't a winning issue.
Also, the Florida Democratic Party is rather poorly organized
Caught on months ago. Check out mainstream coverage of DeathSantis.
The media have had two-odd years to correctly characterize Trump, et al, as literally murderous. If a Dem pol characterized a GOP pol like that, the mainstream would treat it as a scandalous affront. That said Dem would be correct is irrelevant.
"trendy mass shootings"
Has anyone told Vogue yet?
I'm always struck by those voters outraged by the burgeoning homeless population. Those voters are PISSED that so many people have no place to live. So the voters vote out the incumbent and vote in someone who will "do something" about the homeless.
And that's when things get stupid because the only ways to deal with homelessness is with liberal applications of money and changes in zoning. Shelters, transition housing, low-income housing, increasing welfare benefits, providing substantial mental health resources, fully funding substance abuse programs--these are the things that actually do something about reducing homelessness.
And these are the very things that voters will always vote against.
They're voting to make the homeless disappear, perhaps by Rapture.
There's plenty of eliminationist rhetoric on both sides, I guess...
And yet, the programs Derelict cites above actually would make homelessness disappear, by giving people places to live, and by making treatment accessible, transform the behavioral patterns that make rich white liberals feel uncomfortable or unsafe around that segment of the poor.
One of the most important moments in my transformation to an anarchist was when I heard that the most commonly shoplifted items are not videogames or fashion brands, but infant formula, shaving cream, deodorant, and tampons. That's fucked -- it means our society is purposefully denying health & humanity to the poor, as well as preventing them from any form of upward mobility.
Sure. But the wealthy are not allowed to steal those items, either.
I am most definitely not an anarchist because that means you're just giving up. I am one of those people who explains to Rightwing "government is the problem " types that the answer is to vote for people who will make government actually work. That CAN mean higher taxes, but that also means the things you want most can happen.
2 marks for Anatole France reference.
But they hate taxes more than they hate government not working for anyone but the rich
Being an anarchist means being opposed to hierarchies. Granted, that would be a hella difficult thing to achieve, and we don't have a lot of experience with what such a state would look like, but it certainly doesn't mean giving up (I mean, are socialists "giving up?" Their desired future looks similarly impossible in the US).
Life without some form of government is not possible as long as humans have to live together. There are too many who are too willing to harm or enslave others to benefit themselves.
So thinking anarchy can work is saying "I give up on the idea that humans can work together. " (Also, whatever ideal you might have about how anarchy might work, we now have 120 years of anarchists basically proving the necessity for government by showing the movement to be nothing more or less than vandalism. )
Anarchism≠anarchy. That seems to be the point that's being missed here. A radically flattened society where power isn't centralized in any one place may seem implausible--and it DOES seem implausible to me; I don't call myself an anarchist--but it isn't just sketchy dudes in trenchcoats with spherical black bombs.
I'm just going to push back a bit more: in the past 5-10 years, people of anarchist affiliation have been showing up to fascist shows of force to fight them if necessary (and have) as well as being deeply committed to mutual aid projects that directly serve people in need. Many of those occur in areas Dems give up as lost to GOP votes, like Appalachia.
The project of derailing the fascist express we are all on right now requires many hands and many tactics & approaches. I don't agree with most of the liberal approach & its fundamental complacency, but there's no time to push well-intentioned people away.
"But the wealthy are not allowed to steal those items, either."
All Shoplifters Matter, amirite?
Shoplifters of the world -- Unite
You're reminding me of the shoplifting scene in Raising Arizona (one of my favorite crime scenes on film with its almost beautiful tracking shot).
"it's not armed robbery if the gun ain't loaded"
"I'm robberer!"
In an economy that withholds a living wage from 25% of full time workers, no surprise many, homeless and otherwise, feel compelled to lift basics.
Also sucks that helping the deeply needy is unacceptable to too many. Fucking shameful, but that’s this nation.
Well, some of them. Others are hoping to watch some beatings.
And even your more well meaning types are mostly just voting for someone to "get rid of them somehow without giving me any details so I can pretend it's solved". This usually means just making them move somewhere else.
Most of the laws really are designed to just make the problem go somewhere else and that's good enough for everyone. It's one of the subjects where yeah, I agree, liberals suck. And I'm starting to think progressives suck on this too.
They're thinking "The cops should just arrest these low-lifes" and the "thinking" never gets any farther than that.
They hate the homeless because they hate the poor, who are too unmotivated and lazy to be real Americans. Real Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that poverty is a moral failing of the poor (see Armey, Dick), not the society that tolerates the obscene levels of inequality that modern capitalism creates. IOW, they hate the poor, instead of the poverty that afflicts them.
As Christopher Hitchens said of Mother Theresa, "She doesn't love poor people; she loves poverty."
"Are you a member of the Dick Armey?"
Conscientious Objector, I.
I've been thinking that the first 4 words in response to these lies should always be: "This is a lie" after that go into the reasons. Not first explain what the problems are with the reporting and hope that people then get that this is a lie. Whether or not that would work, I don't know, but it might have the advantage of getting peoples attention.
Indeed. The problem with too many liberals, from the hidebound political leaders to the centrists who get furious when people aren’t enlightened enough to agree with them, is they assume people are going to naturally come to the “right” conclusion. “The voters should research this topic carefully, do their homework, and then they’ll agree with us!”
Well, that’s not how the world works, and it’s not how people work. As much as we all hate advertising, it exists for a reason. You have to advertise your position even if you’re right—especially if you’re right! This isn’t a Jane Austen novel where everyone keeps their true feelings hidden behind a wall of artifice. There are no bonus points for being the most genteel while losing the argument.
Boo-yah!
Yes, dammit. ASSERT SOMETHING. Don't wait for the right-wingers to make all the assertions, and then jump in with "Well, actually..."
I don't want Democrats to get better at batting away right wing lies about voter fraud, I want them to assert that "We've found exactly NINE cases of proven voter fraud in the 2020 election, prove me wrong,"
There's a place for fact-checking, but leave it to Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post, and the billion people on Twitter who see to enjoy that sort of thing. I don't want Dem politicians fact-checking right-wing lies about immigrants, their job is to make the positive case FOR immigration, and they'd better get busy doing that, I hear there's an election coming up.
"I don't want Dem politicians fact-checking right-wing lies"
Right, 'cause who's got the time?
And yeah, anyone who actually wants to look can find those kinda answers tracked down and confirmed by people who get paid to do it (bless 'em).
"We've found exactly NINE cases of proven voter fraud in the 2020 election, and they're all Republicans!"
I approve of this change.
I'm too lazy to look it up, but I would guess it's accurate.
As they say in the military BLUF meaning Bottom Line Up Front.
Excellent.
Your mention of Orwell puts me in mind of 𝘈𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘭 𝘍𝘢𝘳𝘮, which was required reading in my seventh grade English class. The paperback edition had a helpful foreword, in which the editors explained that what we were about to read was an allegory setting forth the wicked workings and chilling consequences of communism. The author himself was quoted: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism.” Well and good, but (as I discovered some years later) the original sentence, in its entirety read (emphasis added, natch): “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮, 𝘢𝘴 𝘐 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵.” Er, “George,” that last bit’s, you know, kinda off-message. You won’t mind if we memory-hole it, will you?
Wonderful. More evidence that 1984 has probably had more effect as an instruction manual than as a warning.
Testament to the insights fiction writers come up with to create fiction, which subsequently are identified as scientific characteristics of behavior and psychology. Has anyone done a study of the development of fiction and characters in fiction preceding the innovations in human behavioral science and psychology?
We all got that treatment. And that (along with Orwell's actual references to Soviet practice) is how that shitheel Norman Podhoretz got away with rebranding Orwell as a conservative.
I'm late to the convo, but the same goes for Jefferson as for Orwell. The quote that adorns his memorial: "I swear upon the altar of God eternal hostility to all forms of tyranny over the minds of man." Boom! Sound like he's ready to take up his AR15 and start watering trees with little kid blood, if you want it to! Memory-holed, however, is the fact that when he wrote that line, by tyrants he meant... Christians. Especially those trying to get around the First Amendment and establish their asses. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl134.php
In this Time of Need, I am happy to introduce the John Munch Anti-Crime Act of 2022, which is to require police departments to hire actual DETECTIVES whose ONLY job is the INVESTIGATE violent crime. Trade off some beat cops driving around checking for non-functioning tail lights for actual detective work that might nudge Chicago's clearance rate on murders above 50%. A young black man gets shot down on the west side, instead of the cops saying, "Eh, he was probably a drug dealer, LOL", they investigate the crime like his life actually mattered, like he was a tourist shot on his way to the Cubs game.
There's a really interesting (to me anyway) issue about beat patrol that I finally sussed after being in/adjacent to law enforcement for awhile. I was working park patrol in San Jose and got to chatting with a couple guys on holiday from a northwest city's police dept. We were near one of the parking lots when a SJPD cruiser swung by, then rolled on out again. They both noticed there was only one cop in the car. Their immediate reaction was to ask me why the car was understaffed. I gently explained San Jose is a hotbed of social rest, and it is much cheaper to have each cop in their own car because the area coverage is doubled. They could not understand that there is very seldom any reason for more than one cop to respond to a callout in SJ.
The practical results of that policy might include more individual interactions with civilians, potentially leading to better relations in the community, and less opportunity for groupthink practice because less time spent bs'ing with colleagues in the car.
Dunno if any of that last is actually true...
I've heard one of the reasons to move to one cop per car is that is should force cops to call for backup in dangerous situations instead of "Grab our guns n' go!" We had a police shooting here in Madison a few years ago when a cop chose to chase an unarmed suspect into a house and then claim "I had no choice to shoot him, my life was in danger!" When the correct response would have been to stay in the damn car and call for backup, which, at the very least, tends to slow things down and makes it harder for cops to say we can't second-guess their decision to shoot because it was the product of "split-second" thinking. Anyway, just one cop in the car, he decides to go in alone anyway, a kid ends up dead, no discipline brought against the cop.
Funny how the cops in Uvalde, faced with an armed man in the process of murdering children, had no trouble at all slowing down their decision-making process. No need for "split-second" decision-making there, I guess. Cops rush in precisely when they know the suspect is NOT armed, it's safer that way.
In my experience (7 years en porc), all having one cop in a car results in is two cop cars pulled up together, driver's side windows together, so they can bullshit -- two patrol units now motionless.
I think adding mental health professionals and social workers trained to de-escalate tense situations would help even more
That’s un-American. Solution’s more money for Porky; nothing else.
Left out an important point about Boudin's term: according to some post I read somewhere yesterday violent crimes generally were down significantly during his tenure. Several thousand fewer than the previous period. But the national press cares not, and the locals were/are/always will be/freaked out about derelict/unkempt/undermoneyed humans living on the pavements.
Also, I believe the recall effort started the day (or fairly shortly after) he was elected. You throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and some is bound to stick
I like to read SFGate, the free Id to the paywalled SF Chronicle Ego. They had knives out for Boudin early on. To be fair, they also run every anonymous staffer attack on Kamala Harris the can get their hands on, in between regular stories on how many restaurants closed in SF this month.
Yeah, SFGate is easy to get to and hard to stop popups. But some of us hanker for the good ol' days of Caen and Carroll and Delaplane and Hoppe and McCabe, Gilliam, King and Stienstra, Rosenbaum, Jenkins and Ostler, Elwood, Garchik and even Willie Brown on a good day. But The Little Man was the best.
I remember reading that in 2020 (I think) Walgreens stole tens of millions of dollars (maybe more) in wages from its employees in California. The employees sued to recover the wages but ended up having to settle for like .25 cents for every dollar stolen by Walgreens. So Walgreens legally kept about 75% of the proceeds of their theft. As always though with the media, real crime is someone boosting Huggies and Noxzema makeup wipes.
Was there video? You're not going to get very far on Facebook without video.
Lotta good stuff in this post and comments. I live in the Bay area and married into a SF family, and can testify that the bums with their bum poop and tents is a big big deal with the locals (tourists are a mix of horrified and think it's some sort of art installation). SF is not a cheap place to live, and a rather painful place to run any sort of business, so locals believe they have a right not to have to deal with bums in exchange for the money they pay to live there. A long-winded into to saying the Bum Problem mattered a lot more to voters than all the misleading anecdotes about Boudin "refusing" to prosecute criminals who rob Walgreens (there were also a series of smash-and-grab robberies of higher-end stores that were on high rotation on the tv, though those guys got caught). Car break-ins are another raging problem, a few anti-Boudin commercials claim he "shut down" prosecution of car break-ins. Between the cops (based on a few sf cops I know they hated his guts) and the bums Boudin never stood a chance.
Didn't the DA's office have to rent a U-Haul to recover stolen stuff from one apprehended criminal because the cop's wouldn't? Also, didn't the cops also tell civilians that they wouldn't arrest someone for a crime because Boudin wouldn't prosecute it?
Yep and yep. SF cops are cops, and they protect themselves as much as any other force in the country.
In the old days the Irish cop myth was not quite so much mythology as assumed wisdom. Lots of animosity toward the Other. Was an undercurrent of the Moscone/Milk murder followup. And the City went downhill in short order once Feinstein ascended following Moscone's death.
Hearted for the honesty rather than the outcome...
SF has its moments and its madnesses in equal measure. Doesn't really help that the South Bay Masters of the Universe have set up homes in SF and decided their infinite wisdom would trump the past and the present to the point that they demand everyone they do not like the look of should be deported to Stockton or somewhere further valley-distanced.
. . . the obscene levels of inequality that the intense wealth generated by capitalism should be able to alleviate without breaking a sweat.