Politics

[NorthDakota]

I'm going to be a biiiit further back than that. It's not like African sailors came upon American shores and said "This land looks plentiful. We shall settle it, and call it Harlem."

Off topic: Was just in Harlem a few weeks ago...not nearly as bad as i expected.

 

[Cackalacky]

I'm going to be a biiiit further back than that. It's not like African sailors came upon American shores and said "This land looks plentiful. We shall settle it, and call it Harlem."

 

[Buster Bluth]

Off topic: Was just in Harlem a few weeks ago...not nearly as bad as i expected.

Because contrary to what them there flat landers think, New York City is one of the safest major cities in the world.

 

[NorthDakota]

Because contrary to what them there flat landers think, New York City is one of the safest major cities in the world.

I listen to Bloomberg every day. I didnt expect to get shot or anything. Just wasn't expecting what I ran into. Wasn't the ghetto, maybe I was in the wrong parts, who knows.

Never have felt really unsafe in New York.

 

[ACamp1900]

New York and LA have both come a long way from the depths of the 60's, 70s, 80s... I was in Inglewood yesterday, just walking around in neighborhoods that when I was a kid you would have avoided like your life depended on it, and it sometimes did.

 

[GowerND11]

New York and LA have both come a long way from the depths of the 60's, 70s, 80s... I was in Inglewood yesterday, just walking around in neighborhoods that when I was a kid you would have avoided like your life depended on it, and it sometimes did.

Totally random not on topic story about Inglewood. There is a section in my town called Englewood, and the volunteer fire company runs an all you can eat crabfest every year as a fundraiser. Always a good time, food tastes good, etc.

Anyways... I'm on their Facebook page looking at the date and price on their flyer. I notice a couple comments and decide to read them. One comes from a woman asking if this is a scam. I think, well that's weird. The fire company responds and says it is not. She replies asking if they are sure, because she has already lost her money on a couple "blahblah"fests this year on Facebook and doesn't want that to happen again. Interesting... I decide to creep on her page, and won't you know it... She's from Inglewood, California. Somehow she managed to get Englewood and Inglewood mixed up, and clearly was the victim of some fake pages haha.

Carry on!

 

[Bishop2b5]

Because contrary to what them there flat landers think, New York City is one of the safest major cities in the world.

NYC's rep is based mostly on how it was a few decades ago. You're right, it's actually one of the safer major cities. I've been to each of the five boroughs multiple times and never had any problems at all. In fact, I've found the people to be a LOT friendlier & nicer than I'd expected. I'd walk the streets of NYC any time of the day or night before I'd set foot in half of Birmingham or Detroit.

 

[phgreek]

NYC's rep is based mostly on how it was a few decades ago. You're right, it's actually one of the safer major cities. I've been to each of the five boroughs multiple times and never had any problems at all. In fact, I've found the people to be a LOT friendlier & nicer than I'd expected. I'd walk the streets of NYC any time of the day or night before I'd set foot in half of Birmingham or Detroit.

Time square is dangerous as hell if boobies and cartoons scamming you is particularly scary to you...hehehe.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Week's Matthew Walther just published an article titled "The Lost Democrats":

That does it mean to be a member of the Democratic Party? What do Democrats believe in 2017? I have no idea. Do you?

Republicans, for good or ill, know what they stand for: on economic issues, an interminable litany of libertarian lite clichés; in foreign affairs, recklessness and posturing adventurism; on the so-called social issues, a holding pattern in which something is opposed half-heartedly until it's inexorable.

What about Democrats? They are not, as Dana Milbank recently suggested, "socialists." No one in the party is clamoring for the nationalization of industries. Even single-payer health care, which is about as left-wing in practice as Lee Kuan Yew, is a fringe issue in the party of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Sen. Bernie Sanders, despite his self-designation as a "democratic socialist," is nothing so much as a throwback to the party of FDR.

It would, in fact, be a gross exaggeration to call the Democrats left-wing. The Democratic Party is, vaguely, a pro-business, pro-free-trade, socially moderate, hawkish entity. In any European country, they would be the right-wingers in an uneasy coalition with the mainstream center-right party. The British Conservative Party of half a century ago under the leadership of the High Tory Harold Macmillan looks Stalinist in comparison with today's Democrats. When my Marxist friends told me that from their perspective the only meaningful difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was that the former was a credible opponent of free trade, they were on to something.

Insofar as it has stood for anything in my lifetime, the Democratic Party has defined itself against its opponents. When George W. Bush was president, the war in Iraq was bad and so were the unconstitutional Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay prison, and the lame aesthetics of the '60s anti-war movement were due for a revival. When President Obama and his first secretary of state made a hash of Libya, there was virtually no outcry from within the ranks of his party; the ill-fated invasion was not a wrong-headed and arbitrary exercise of presidential authority but a prudent example of statesmanship by a credible tough-minded intellect firmly ensconced in the tradition of foreign policy realism. (Republicans did not, to their credit, change their tune: Rather than suggest that overthrowing Moammar Gadhafi was a bad idea, they trivialized the murders of American diplomatic personnel with conspiracy theories. Clearly consistency for its own sake has its limits.)

Nothing could be more bleakly hilarious than to read what its sounds like when a roomful of Democrats gather to discuss their collective identity problem. Some of them insist that all they need to win control of the House for only the third time in 13 elections is to denounce President Trump. A few of the more self-aware members recognize that this probably won't work. Instead what they need is an agenda — a "Better Deal." What should the deal look like? Do they need a bold, detailed but practical new outline for revitalizing the American economy, like the one that Hillary Clinton lost on in 2016? "I think we're going to avoid 18-point plans," says Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), wisely.

Not even Howard Dean knows what to do. It is impossible not to appreciate his refreshing honesty when he observes that the party's young voters not only do not identify with the Democratic brand but are "libertarian economically." With obvious relish, he points out that by not totally selling out their own base of socially conservative voters, the Republican Party has missed an opportunity to remake itself as the voice of my own upwardly mobile, forward-thinking, optimistic, socially antinomian generation. Meanwhile the Democrats hold onto most of us with an increasingly desperate series of #woke gestures.

The pleas for relevance are getting more desperate every day. If Twitter is to be believed, Hillary Clinton's new memoir begins with a quasi-hip reference to Chipotle, that not-at-all lame chain restaurant beloved of young foodies everywhere, and contains, among other things, a pseudo-admission that hearing "Fight Song," her erstwhile campaign theme, brings her to tears. On the floor of the Senate, Schumer dismisses the border wall as a "Game of Thrones idea for a world that looks a lot more like Star Wars." It's meant to make him sound cool and with it, but it doesn't work unless you acknowledge instantly that he's BSing. The idea of Schumer earnestly sitting down to enjoy hobbit smut on Sunday nights is only slightly less uncomfortable than finding Tinder on your grandpa's phone. Say what you want about Mitch McConnell, but at least his idea of what's cool is still Seersucker Thursday.

There is an upside for Democrats, however, namely that a party that is ontologically parasitic on the unpopularity of another can technically never run out of things to be against. As long as Paul Ryan doesn't come out in favor of same-sex marriage, small plates, and Ghostbusters (2016) in an op-ed for Verrit, Democrats will probably manage to survive.

Too bad that isn't the same thing as winning House seats.

 

[wizards8507]

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Saw that, and immediately thought of your post below from the Economics thread:

I'm not sure how to read that, but if it means we start to see a similar shift over at National Review, we'd be talking about a seismic shift indeed.

 

[wizards8507]

Saw that, and immediately thought of your post below from the Economics thread:

Looks like French has a short article at NR supporting the premise from the tweet, focused specifically on health care. He includes the chart you shared in the Culture thread.

American Death-Rate Spike: Culture Is Solution, Not Politics | National Review

 

[Buster Bluth]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A Sassy Gay Republican DRAMA in Four Acts. &#55357;&#56908;&#55356;&#57339; <a href="https://t.co/O3tNiTg56A">pic.twitter.com/O3tNiTg56A</a></p>— Billy, Just Billy (@BillyArmagh) <a href="https://twitter.com/BillyArmagh/status/910571065264324608">September 20, 2017</a></blockquote>
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[wizards8507]

Buster lurks in the bowels of gay Twitter confirmed.

 

[Buster Bluth]

All day every day.

*flips wrist*

 

[Whiskeyjack]

A satirical political site recently went up at centrism.biz:

 

[zelezo vlk]

Wow that's some good stuff

 

[ACamp1900]

Wow that's some good stuff

Reads like it was written legitimately by a few select posters here...

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The NYT's David Brooks just published an article titled "The Coming War on Business":

The only time I saw Sam Francis face-to-face — in the Washington Times cafeteria sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s — I thought he was a crank, but it’s clear now that he was at that moment becoming one of the most prescient writers of the past 50 years. There’s very little Donald Trump has done or said that Francis didn’t champion a quarter century ago.

In a series of essays for conservative magazines like Chronicles, Francis hammered home three key insights. The first was that globalization was screwing Middle America. The Cold War had just ended, capitalism seemed triumphant and the Clinton years seemed to be an era of broad prosperity. But Francis stressed that the service economy was ruining small farms and taking jobs from the working class.

His second insight was that the Republican and conservative establishment did not understand what was happening. He railed against the pro-business “Economic Men” who thought G.D.P. growth could solve the nation’s problems, and the Washington Republicans, who he thought were infected with the values of the educated elites.

In 1991, when his political mentor, Pat Buchanan, was contemplating a presidential bid, Francis told him to break with the conservative movement. “These people are defunct,” Francis told Buchanan. “Go to New Hampshire and call yourself a patriot, a nationalist, an America Firster, but don’t even use the word ‘conservative.’ It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

Pat Buchanan, who was mentored by Sam Francis, ran for president in 1992. The Buchanan campaign was the first run at what is now known as Trumpian populism. Credit Peter Cosgrove/Associated Press
“Middle American groups are more and more coming to perceive their exploitation at the hands of the dominant elites. The exploitation works on several fronts — economically, by hypertaxation and the design of a globalized economy dependent on exports and services in place of manufacturing; culturally, by the managed destruction of Middle American norms and institutions; and politically, by the regimentation of Middle Americans under the federal leviathan.”

Middle American voters, he wrote, were stuck without a party, appalled by pro-corporate Republican economic policies on the one hand and liberal cultural radicalism on the other. They swung to whichever party seemed most likely to resist the ruling class, but neither party really provided a solution. “A nationalist reaction is almost inevitable and will probably assume populist form when it arrives. The sooner it comes the better.”

The Buchanan campaign was the first run at what we now know as Trumpian populism. In a profile of Francis called “The Castaway,” Michael Brendan Dougherty smartly observed that Buchanan and Francis weren’t just against government, they were against the entire cultural hegemony of the ruling class.

Francis wrote a wickedly brilliant 1996 essay on Buchanan, “From Household to Nation”: “The ‘culture war’ for Buchanan is not Republican swaggering about family values and dirty movies but a battle over whether the nation itself can continue to exist under the onslaught of the militant secularism, acquisitive egoism, economic and political globalism, demographic inundation, and unchecked state centralism supported by the ruling class.”

Francis urged Buchanan to run an unorthodox campaign (of the sort Trump ended up running), and was ignored. “If Buchanan loses the nomination, it will be because his time has not yet come,” Francis wrote. The moment would end up coming in 2016, 11 years after Francis’ death.

Francis’ thought was infected by the same cancer that may destroy Trumpism. Francis was a racist. His friends and allies counseled him not to express his racist views openly, but people like that always go there, sooner or later.

The Civil War was an open wound for many in his circle, and in 1994 Francis told a conference, “The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.”

He was fired by The Washington Times and cast out of the conservative movement by William F. Buckley and others.

When you look at today’s world through the prism of Francis’ work, a few things seem clear: Trump is not a one-time phenomenon; the populist tide has been rising for years. His base sticks with him through scandal because it’s not just about him; it’s a movement defined against the so-called ruling class. Congressional Republicans get all tangled on health care and other issues because they don’t understand their voters. Finally, Trump may not be the culmination, but merely a way station toward an even purer populism.

Trump is nominally pro-business. The next populism will probably take his ethnic nationalism and add an anti-corporate, anti-tech layer. Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple stand for everything Francis hated — economically, culturally, demographically and nationalistically.

As the tech behemoths intrude more deeply into daily life and our very minds, they will become a defining issue in American politics. It wouldn’t surprise me if a new demagogue emerged, one that is even more pure Francis.

I've been reading articles like this in fringe publications for years, so it's crazy to see similar stuff getting printed in the NYT and NRO. Times they are a-changin'.

 

[wizards8507]

Whiskey, have you read Charles Murray's Coming Apart? I was vaguely aware of it and decided to pick it up from the library after it was referenced a few times in the context of that Journal of the American Medical Association report that was making the rounds on the blogs last week (and you shared here). I'm only about 10% through but interested to hear your thoughts if you've read it.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Whiskey, have you read Charles Murray's Coming Apart? I was vaguely aware of it and decided to pick it up from the library after it was referenced a few times in the context of that Journal of the American Medical Association report that was making the rounds on the blogs last week (and you shared here). I'm only about 10% through but interested to hear your thoughts if you've read it.

I've read a lot about it, but I haven't read the book itself yet. Will be interested to read your thoughts on it.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

Meanwhile in Venezuela...

In Venezuela, they were teachers and doctors. To buy food, they became prostitutes. | Miami Herald

 

[Legacy]

Flood insurance program exhausts Treasury borrowing

The National Flood Insurance Program has depleted its borrowing authority after a series of devastating hurricanes over the past several weeks, a turning point that will put pressure on Congress to allow it to tap Treasury further to pay claims.

FEMA, which runs the program, said it notified Congress on Sept. 20 that it borrowed $5.8 billion from Treasury to fund losses this year, including those incurred by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and "anticipated programmatic activities."

House Passes Bill to Assure Private Policies Satisfy Flood Insurance Requirement

 

[ulukinatme]

<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FFoxNews%2Fvideos%2F10156066095831336%2F&show_text=0&width=560" width="560" height="315" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe>

 

[Cackalacky]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Just wanted to point out that a man dressed like Monopoly mascot Rich Uncle Pennybags is currently photobombing the Senate's Equifax hearing <a href="https://t.co/IobkAosSLC">pic.twitter.com/IobkAosSLC</a></p>— TheResistance Report (@AntiTrumpReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/AntiTrumpReport/status/915605166656716801?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
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[Legacy]

The Foundation for Moral Law??

Roy Moore's salary from foundation draws scrutiny (Al.com)

Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore was promised a $180,000 a year salary in the five years he was president of a Montgomery-based charity, and the Foundation for Moral Law created a separate bank account and an unconventional vehicle to pay Moore, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

AL.com previously reported on the foundation taking out a second mortgage to pay Moore $465,000 in back pay at the same time it unsuccessfully fought a breach of contract lawsuit from a company that helped the charity raised funds.

Moore's salary from 2007-2012 didn't jibe with the foundation's tax records, and the Post discovered that the judge's salary had been under-reported.

The Post report outlines how the foundation's board, which includes Moore's wife, Kayla Moore, agreed to pay Moore the $180,000 a year salary, and drew up a promissory note for years where fundraising fell short of that mark. The note also entitled Moore to a $565,000 stake in the foundation's headquarters on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, which would allow Moore to recoup the money by selling the building. Kayla Moore recused herself from the decision.

But the foundation, whose activities have raised questions about its nonprofit status by engaging in political activity favorable to Moore, used creative ways to pay Moore - including listing him as a legal advisor when a foundation board member said Moore did not perform legal work for the charity. The compensation also wasn't accurately reflected in the foundation's tax records.

The foundation also set up an initiative called "Project Jeremiah," which Moore would be paid out of through appearance and speaking fees he commanded throughout the country after he became a nationwide figure when he was removed from the bench over the Ten Commandments statue in the state judicial building....

Foundation paper trail shows Roy Moore is a man of principal, not principle (Al.com)

The foundation is a non-profit Christian legal organization Moore founded 15 years ago. He and his wife have both spent stints as Executive Director and President, while Roy Moore has also acted as an attorney. Money from the foundation has also been given to Moore's children. Since 2007, the foundation has had revenue of around $5.12 million against total expenditures of $6 million, with $1 million of that paid to the Moores.

Should the Foundation be dissolved with money still owed the Moores, they have the promissory note that entitles Moore to $565,000 stake in the foundation's buildings, approved by the board of which Kayla Moore is a member. From the 2014 tax report, the organizations reports nearly $860,000 in assets, presumably including the foundation's buildings. In six out of the last eight years, the Foundation has had a shortfall when comparing yearly revenues and expenditures.

The IRS had audited the nonprofit's 2013 returns and said that the Foundation for Moral Law as in danger of losing its tax exempt status if it doesn't resolve problems with how the nonprofit is run.

The Foundation has not filed tax returns for 2015 or 2016, which will incur penalties from the IRS, and if a non-profit organization does not file tax returns for three straight years, it can lose its tax exempt status.

 

[connor_in]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Brace yourselves: New 2020 numbers out of New Hampshire via UNH --><br><br>Sanders 31%<br>Biden 24%<br>Warren 13%<br>Booker 6%<br>O'Malley 3%<br>Hickenlooper 2%<br>Zuckerberg 2%<br>Harris 1%<br>Ryan 1%<br>Klobuchar 1%<br>Gillibrand 1%<br>Delaney 0%</p>— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) <a href="https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/920741254543151109?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 18, 2017</a></blockquote>
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[Whiskeyjack]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">What is neoliberalism? Here's my definition. <a href="https://t.co/qgr7nMgoau">pic.twitter.com/qgr7nMgoau</a></p>— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) <a href="https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/841389028410814465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 13, 2017</a></blockquote>
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[yankeehater]

Did not see this mentioned, but this quietly came through yesterday. DOJ settled with Conservative groups targeted by the IRS.

https://www.usnews.com/news/nationa...es-with-conservative-groups-over-irs-scrutiny

 

[GowerND11]

What are peoples' thoughts on what's going on in Spain with the Catalan independence movement ramping up again?