http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/12/30/stillwater-neighbors-at-odds-over-pond-skating-rink/
I’m prepared to diagnose the rink naysayer there, Cameron, as someone with a misanthropy ailment.
Someone might ask: why flood a pond? To make the surface of the ice better for skating.
I played so much pond hockey as a 9th grader I developed a ganglion cyst in my right ankle. And it literally squeaked. Doc dissolved it with a cortisone shot.
The reporter raises “questions”. I don’t see questions. I see innuendo, family dynamics, and meh.
Take the facts on their face. In 2002 Marco’s BIL is a felon out of prison a couple years, and he wants a real estate license…. so he can, ya know, work at some job that remunerates at an adult paying level. Oooh. Due to his felony status, grant of the license requires a review by the state real estate board. Marco writes a (perhaps somewhat ambiguous) letter for the file.
Not exactly delivering big spoils of political graft there, though fer sure it is in its way Marco throwing a little weight around, emphasis on “little”. How much weight did he have in 2002? Other thing is, when you are a credible name and you assert the reliability of an unknown for the in group’s stamp of approval, this what we call ‘vouching’. This allows the decision makers to offload the blame if something goes wrong. So this is Marco not actually getting a favor because in 2002 you’re on the FL real estate board and you want to stay on Marco’s good side because he’s a state legislator. It’s a reference process, giving the board a reason to say yes besides the sole word of the felon / applicant. And the risk there is quite a bit on Marco.
To the extent the letter is ambiguous. Meh. You write letters, you are no doubt putting things on the record in a more explicit way, and you are not obligated to make the contrarian case to your request. If board wanted to explore that, they could write Marco another letter back to probe it no doubt.
It’s a curious bit to me because we just finished watching Narcos on Netflix. The BIL’s crimes happened during the Escobar cocaine era in Miami right? Anyway, couple things:
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 37 trips to carry that many people.
What it means, what it represents….
With the increased scrutiny / coverage, that city is going to be going to be making 4 or 5 settlements a year in amounts of about $5 million each, this for police practices that used to be understood as fairly normal.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/1209315/relatives-2-killed-chicago-police-demand-changes
They won’t be able to sustain that, so police tactics will change. Chicago, then the nation.
This, on the “mental health issues” that black people find themselves shot over by the police.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/illegitimacy-and-american-policing/422094/
Point is, “mental health issues” is a bit trope-ish. And not in a good way.
Now, I am no racist, but nor do I have an investment in a ‘magic negro’ view of black people. They have their foibles, and if you find yourself around some and feel some fear of the energy and dynamics going on … there might be a good reason for that fear and the righteousness of second-guessing / shaming yourself out of that fear isn’t assured.
If I have to go to lengths to great lengths to justify an observation that black dudes are physically intimidating in a way that white dudes are not … the more you explain, the crasser you look alright. But let’s be real, this has stuck since ya know, Jack Johnson or before.
Where the rubber meets the road in terms of police practices is, these $85k a year urban cops…who are generally in is as decent shape as a 25-45 year old man can be…. and some in better shape than that…. and have body armor or lesser but useful protective girdles…. are basically refusing to tangle physically with black guys and women they encounter not necessarily committing ‘crimes’ but having mere ‘mental health’ episodes. Instead they go to the Glock.
Fair to say, this is racist when they don’t do their jobs the same way they would for white people. And it will change / happen if only because of the payouts.
Related: Glock is the wrong gun for cops http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-owens-glock-accidents-20150508-story.html This on the LA Times editorial page by one of the nation’s prominent pro-gun bloggers. His observation is somewhat technical, and it sounds right to me as a casual observer of these guys who contemplate the fine points of combat shooting. I’d add this… the Glock is dangerous in the hands of police for the same reason people think ‘assault weapons’ are dangerous in the hands of civilians. They work well, with all that capacity and rate of fire and aim-ability. They work well in excess of the practical needs for them to work well. So yeah, it follows then that you take those ergonomics and functionalities and reliabilities away from the police, and make them use a lesser tool… like is desired on the civilian end…
I guess this was on KARE 11, I would have been jazzed to see it live, but …. I haven’t watched the news in about 15 years.
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/441093/capt-eydie-sakura#.VnsY3_krKCg
And I woulda paid the $9 for schlonged.com
Qualitatively ‘Trump as ISIS recruiter’ is a bit of an oral air biscuit. And thus, I think you cut it some slack such that it’s too lightweight and gaseous to be a ‘lie’.
Ya know you get 3 or 4 or more pro Democrats together to talk politics, and invariably (in my imagination at least…) whatever they’re discussing turns into a contest to determine the room’s top glib-ster / snark merchant. So I think this gets said at Hillary’s debate prep session. “Hey ya know Trump is polly ISIS’ best recruiter gehar gehar”. But she’s getting up there in age, and maybe with diminishing abilities to discern the breeziness of quips from millennial staffer ironists. So she makes the mistake of thinking oh that’s good and takes it into the real debate.
Coulda happened amirite?
Fine, and somewhat forgivable, and not worthy then of a fellow like me deploying my functional fixation for Democrat ‘lies’ there.
But I think challenging the premise is quite apropos. Which is to ask….. if Trump ‘s attitude towards Muslims such as it might be was really useful to ISIS as propaganda content for their little videos….
So? ISIS gonna ISIS, and they’ll attract who they’re going to attract. We’re going to at a minimum respond with cruise missiles and drones. And if it’s here, it’s working to interdict and snuff out any domestic cells. Any President is going to do that, and not much rhetorical modulation is going to affect the quantity of the interdiction response at various points.
Now, I’m sure the more serious observation is rather that Trump is a bigot, and his rhetoric impedes harmony between Muslims and the US/west. But… ‘bigotry’ claims tend to be overstated, and I think absent some qualitatively cruder statements that Trump is merely peddling generic xenophobia…. Which I’m not sure is not a completely appropriate response in this moment. Certainly the Obama administration looks naïve taking the extreme opposite tack.
Anyway, generally I doubt here’s much practical value in a softer rhetorical approach to Islam. I haven’t seen US pols be rewarded for that in the recent past.
Obamacare is working / Cadillac and Medical Device tax are dead http://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10310766/obamacare-budget-deal-ryan Now yeah, they are specified as merely “delayed” in this tax bill. But that’s because the administration maintains an investment in some fictions about Obamacare and its mechanisms. Whereas the President can tell himself they are merely delayed, Hillary or Marco or Ted will sign on to a full repeal two years from now, they will never get implemented. Speaking of those fictions…. The usual obsequious do-gooder scolds like Vox lament the loss of Cadillac tax revenue that makes Obamacare revenue neutral. Gimme a Fing break alright. The Cadillac tax’ revenue projection assumes static behavior, where companies go on with expensive plans as they have (and thus are compelled to pay the tax), while the tax itself is there to exactly discourage them from exceeding the premium threshold. It’s one or the other that would happen, but not a 50/50 potentiality really. The tax was actually seemingly onerous enough to be effective. Which is to say, there wasn’t going to be any tax revenues of meaningful size because companies would have scaled back health benefits. So this is not a diminishment of Obamacare’s revenue neutrality, because it was a bullshit story that never would have come to fruition on the accounting side.
It’s a source of contention now whether the SB shooters revealed their sentiments ‘openly’ on social media particularly for the lovely bride there prior to her fiancé visa. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/12/strike-two-pair-new-york-times-reporters The technical distinction for ‘openly’ is ostensibly a question of whether she did her jihadist rants on a public profile page or was doing it on FB direct messages. Of course, Drum and Salon and some of the other (D) apologists are arguing that direct messages exculpates the administration for any assertions to their negligence, cuz whoever was doing the background check then wouldn’t have had access to see it provided they were actually doing the social media check. Which they were not, actually. http://thehill.com/policy/technology/263101-immigration-officials-prohibited-from-looking-at-visa-applicants-social because of civil liberty concerns for the émigré applicants and concerns for ‘bad public relations’ from I dunno who, but presume CAIR and that ilk I guess. The civil liberty concerns you would not think have materially changed, but San Bernardino has denuded the potential for ‘bad public relations’ from CAIR et al while creating a new, superseding electoral danger of ‘bad public relations’ from a larger group of ‘regular Americans’ who expect the (Democrat) administration to perform its missions with mind to more obvious, practical objectives. So they will do a social media check now. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dhs-secretary-unveils-revised-terror-alert-system/story?id=35790668 This whole episode is rich in incompetencys and hypocrisies. Really kinda of a Brownie moment that would require Jeh Johnson to resign if he were a Republican. But I think it stinks most as a product of this grotesque sycophancy for multi-culturism on the D side. And look, I know that the whole no-fly list / no guns thing was tribal communication to the low info partisans within Blue states and Blue enclaves and that it didn’t resonate anywhere else. It’s almost hard to complain about it qualitatively, because it wasn’t really serious, and such that it was a public discourse my side won again. But if this stuff was supposed to make sense, you would note the incongruity of having civil liberty concerns for émigré applicants while not having civil liberty concerns for people on the no guns / no fly list.
Yes, my wisdom tells me deficit scoldery on the R side is a bit of a fraud http://theweek.com/articles/594629/republicans-fed-are-blowing-deficit–no-cares I don’t know that the people I read dislike the rate hike yesterday, but they are dubious of the Fed as an institution. I suppose I’m dubious too but contemplating it as a center for nefariousness never took with me. Meh.
I listened to the whole thing, which I have not yet had occasion to do. Listened rather than watched, we don’t have expanded cable. I don’t know that it was intended to be all foreign policy, but that’s what happened relative to San Bernardino. Individual thoughts:
Carly – I like her generally. Not that she’s going to win, but as a celebrity candidate she’s serious in a way that Ben Carson is not. Anyway, word I want to use is one David Brauer uses about Kerri Miller. “Stentorian”. I look up the definition now, I see it’s in some ways supposed to mean merely “loud”, but I think vis the Miller example it means formal and authoritative maybe to excess. That’s Fiorina. And by now its starting to be a little grating.
Rand – If anything, still useful to provide the academic framework for a foreign policy discussion. Tone is actually a little too academic.
Jeb – One hindrance among the many is he’s not a good speaker, does not have the charisma of his brother certainly. Talks like he’s got two left tongues. His candidacy remains kind of an absurdity.
Carson – we’re pretty sure this is a speaker’s bureau operation by now right? He’s doing speakers bureau storytelling and analogizing that is a waste of time / out of place in this venue.
Christie – hey you know he’s a former federal prosecutor? Heard you the 75th time Chris.
Kasich – I barely think about Kasich at all
Marco – I like Marco. One thing…. he’s got answers to all these questions memorized as complete paragraphs in his head. I think this is a little too much / overpowering.
Ted – the field on the whole could benefit from a little more joviality. And Ted is supposed to be one of the dicks amirite, but actually in his question answering he has nice natural progressions and an appealing breeziness that the other candidates do not.
The Donald – I’ve registered my displeasure here before. I’ll assert the bottom line is, everything wrong with the Donald’s candidacy is because it’s a vanity junket done to affirm a vain person. But…. he is competing…. somehow… and fear of him damaging the party is probably overwrought.
Nora there and then my neighbor Laura Sobiech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zach_Sobiech are kinda peas in a pod in that their personal tragedies made them known locally, but they remain prominent for a certain grace in public conduct.
They oughta be regional ambassadors for something something…
Zingy Skyway Lunch 