It's also possible, of course, that all Sensible People™ are, quite understandably, given to anger, shame, hopeless despair etc. etc. at the sheer insanity of Trump, the evil of Brexit, and the incompetence of Johnson.
This anger, shame, etc. etc. expresses itself (eloquently) on these boards.
From an obituary in this morning's Phoenix newspaper:
Due to the ongoing restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the family will be having a closed, private funeral. Instead of flowers, those who wish to pay their respects, it was M...'s wish that we all consider casting a vote for President Trump or making a donation to (specified charity).
At least he didn't ask for donations to Trump's re-election campaign.
And once M realizes he was so, so wrong, how will he let "those who wish to pay their respects" know that voting for the fartletter-in-chief would be so, so wrong?
And was poor M one of the victims of Trumpbleach? 'We gave him bleach, like the President said, but it was too late...'
Nope.
M. departed from the loving arms of his wife C. to be received by the Lord Jesus Christ on April 23, 2020, marking the end of a decades-long battle with heart failure and the culmination of a lifetime of loving and serving Jesus Christ.
By definition, UNREST means not happy with the status quo, IMB. Even though this thread, and others, have been very critical of (t)Rump, Boris, and Brexit that is what it is all about. Have we become monochrome? Probably, but I am thinking as sure as shooting that if Biden comes to office and Boris is replaced there will be some unrestful comments about the new leadership as well. Hell, I do have my problems with Biden. Maybe I should start a new thread on him.
Well, Blair generated plenty of unrest. There tends to be a revulsion from current incumbents, which at the moment are to the right. I remember fierce criticism of Obama, although not on a Trumpian scale.
Someone told me once before, that the Republican Party was horribly evil, but it was competent, and there would be a lot of people who would be willing to vote for the anti-christ as long as he was reasonably competent.
Nowadays under Trump, the GOP is both evil and incompetent.
The Trump administration is completely incompetent, but the rest of the GOP is still plenty competent, which means we're getting the worst of both combinations.
I guess we could do with an Ainsley Hayes Shipmate (smart honest conservative Republican in the West Wing).
Ainsley Hayes is fiction. Kellyanne Conway is reality.
Couldn't think of a real person up to Ainsley Hayes standard. I suppose there must be some about.
Kellyanne Conway seemed to believe at one time that because the current virus was labelled COVID-19, there must have been 18 previous COVID viruses. As mentioned earlier. You couldn't make it up.
I guess we could do with an Ainsley Hayes Shipmate (smart honest conservative Republican in the West Wing).
Ainsley Hayes is fiction. Kellyanne Conway is reality.
Couldn't think of a real person up to Ainsley Hayes standard. I suppose there must be some about.
This is what makes bothsidesism so dangerous; the underlying assumption that somewhere among the Kellyanne Conways and Laura Ingrahams and Sarah Huckabee Sanders you must, by some immutable law of the Cosmos, eventually come across an Ainsley Hayes if you just look hard enough. The really dangerous bit comes when you can't find your well intentioned and reasonable conservative within the ranks of the Republican Party that you decide to manufacture one. Paul Ryan was the beneficiary of such a system and treated for years as a serious fiscal expert who cared deeply about budget deficits despite the fact that every economic plan he ever advocated rested on a foundation of magic asterisks. This can have all sorts of distorting effects on politics and policy since it equates demagogic nonsense with serious proposals.
In conclusion, two main points. First, maybe you should consider the fact that you can't think of a real life equivalent of Ainsley Hayes to suggest that maybe Ainsley Hayes doesn't have a real life equivalent. (See also Amash, Justin for why this might be the case.)
Second, Aaron Sorkin has many crimes to answer for in distorting the way people think about American governance.
Ah well. So far as individuals are concerned, I think that is a counsel of despair. I may be justifiably criticized for being an optimist without much evidence. Lamb Chopped may be for the present an ex Republican but she's no Kellyanne Conway. Erin sure wasn't either.
Bothsidesism is about excusing the inexcusable because of some misplaced a priori sense of balance. Hoping you might find individual decency in unlikely places is not the same as that.
Aaron Sorkin? Maybe. The West Wing was fiction for sure. I'm not sure he intended an objective picture of US politics. It's a series that resonates. What's next?
Trump lost two significant Supreme Court Decisions today.
The first one had to do with the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. When it was set up Congress had set up a fund that was intended to help insurance co-ops get started, but when the Republicans took control of Congress, they refused to fund it. The insurance companies sued. Trump opposed them. Guess who won.
The case is significant in that it indicates where the court may be leaning when it comes to deciding the constitutionality of the ACA.
The second case has to do with a New York City ordinance regarding the possession of a handgun. The ordinance said, in essence, the owner of a handgun that is registered at a particular address could not take the gun to a second address. The NRA and Trump sued saying this infringed on people wanting to protect their homes.
But before SCOTUS handed down the decision, NYC changed the ordinance and the justices said the issue is moot. Story here.
I find it significant in that the conservative justices and liberal justices have found a way to work together. They really do not want to tackle 2nd Amendment cases if they can avoid them.
That's right up there, but there is a long list. We'll see how he goes if he becomes President. This election, depressingly, is alleged pussygrabber v gloating pussygrabber.
Well, Blair generated plenty of unrest. There tends to be a revulsion from current incumbents, which at the moment are to the right. I remember fierce criticism of Obama, although not on a Trumpian scale.
Perhaps because Obama's problems weren't on the scale of Trump's. Although you may not remember all the holy shit the right flung at him for being black.
Obama faced three pandemics: Ebola, the Swine Flu, and Zika. In all three cases, the Obama Administration stayed focused and worked hard to keep them all to a minimum. They also left a playbook on how to attack the next pandemic and guess who tore it up.
It worries me that the Ship is becoming monochrome. We're overwhelmingly anti Trump, anti Johnson, anti Brexit, and the list could be extended. And, as the last few posts have demonstrated, many are quick to ridicule those who go against the stream. The Ship is meant to be about Christian UNrest. Are we in danger of losing that?
(Or should this be a separate thread?)
Personally I'm far more anti- one of those things than the other two. Which I think is apparent in my postings.
Mind you, I'm not especially pro- the other two things. But I do hope we left room for the undistributed ambivalent middle. It's one of the great flaws of modern society/social media that people constantly assume the only two options on everything are For and Against.
Re Obama being treated horribly by the right for being black:
Absolutely. I was worried for him. Colin Powell might have been the first black president; but his family was terrified he would be killed, and talked him out of running.
I think Obama also set off a panoply of "difference!" alarms that maybe people weren't quite aware of, or didn't deeply understand. (Nursed along by the right, of course.) E.g., mixed race; dad from Africa; mom an anthropologist; lived overseas; Indonesian, Muslim step-dad and step-family; went to a Muslim school in Indonesia, but reportedly not the hate-filled, terror-promoting kind that people assumed; born in Hawai'i, which hadn't been a state very long, and which some people still see as a "foreign" destination. And, of course, some people decided he wasn't a born American...
Aaron Sorkin? Maybe. The West Wing was fiction for sure. I'm not sure he intended an objective picture of US politics. It's a series that resonates. What's next?
I think what Crœsos was referring to was the tendency of a significant percentage of people going into politics to assume that the model of politics within West Wing is something to aspire to both purely stylistically and tactically.
@stetson wrote in another thread, and I thought it would be better off here:
I think Gramps was being sarcastic.
All nations are allowed to have a military, and I'm not versed enough in military matters to know if the recent missile tests count as as a step toward nuclearization. But I do wonder what the alternative to Trump's dovish approach would be.
And as I've said before, on peninsular issues, I tend to take my cues from the Korean centre-left, whose main political vehicle, the Democratic Party, support Trump's outreach. The only other options being put forward are from the Korean right, whose idea of getting tough with the North is to arrest more SOUTH Koreans for saying pro-North stuff. (Slight hyperbole, but really, things were no better under the conservatives than under the liberals.)
My response is partly that Trump himself is not personally equipped to carry that or any other diplomatic strategy off. Really, Trump got what he wanted already out of the situation, which was to grandstand for a domestic political audience.
Putting Trump's sins to one side, I thought South Korea got what it could out of Trump's approaches, in terms of once again opening up some dialogue between the Koreas. I would like to see, rather than US and NK head-guy talks, or even Secretary of State level talks, the countries with the greatest interests in peace talking. I believe the North Koreans insist upon American involvement for their own reasons, but it strikes me that the whole situation involves more than an us and them approach.
I *think* this was the approach of Obama and his predecessors, with the difference being that Obama didn't want the US at the table.
Not to derail, but as to what Golden Key said, (a) I was unaware that Powell's family begged him not to run, and (b) I think that the risible tap dance that Powell performed in front of the Security Council for the invasion of Iraq put paid to serious presidential ambitions.
Aaron Sorkin? Maybe. The West Wing was fiction for sure. I'm not sure he intended an objective picture of US politics. It's a series that resonates. What's next?
I think what Crœsos was referring to was the tendency of a significant percentage of people going into politics to assume that the model of politics within West Wing is something to aspire to both purely stylistically and tactically.
tangent
Was that really about a model of politics? I thought it was dramatisation about liberal and conservative attitudes re a hot button issue. It didn't go any deeper than that for me. I did think the conevo "doctor" got a well deserved comeupppance, but that's all.
I actually think the Korean issue can be a thread in and of itself, but I just did not know where to begin.
It does seem like Kim Jong Un fires off missiles anytime he thinks we are not paying enough attention to him. The most recent missile launches appear to be short-range missiles, hitting things within the diameter of Japan and maybe down to Taiwan.
I also asked about Kim Jong Un's health, and no one picked up on it. He has completely disappeared from the public. Rumors were that he had undergone a botched heart surgery, but now it seems he is self-isolating in a remote area in North Korea. Commercial satellite images show his personal train on a siding, and it has not moved for weeks.
Kim's health is critical for the region. He has not indicated an heir apparent. His sister has taken a prominent role in running the government, but there are some military leaders that are also "chomping at the bit." What will it be like when Kim is gone?
T claims he knows what's up with Kim, can't talk about it right now, and wishes him well.
Kim's younger sister has been mentioned as a possible successor. I don't know anything about her. When Kim Jung On took the reins, I hoped he'd be better than his father, since he'd gone to school in the outside world (Switzerland). Though there's some question about that, because he allegedly went under a different name. Anyway, AFAIK, it didn't make a positive difference.
It does seem like Kim Jong Un fires off missiles anytime he thinks we are not paying enough attention to him.
I think it's more accurate to say that North Korea fires off missiles whenever everyone else's attention is on something else, which isn't quite the same thing.
For humor value a trending hashtag #KimJongUnDead has been re-parsed as Kim Jong Undead.
I don't think anything can be said about Kim Jong Un's health because we are in an information vacuum. When the North Koreans get around to telling their people what's going on, we will find out.
Chances are they won't get sick. They're middle-class suburban white people living in a place that hasn't suffered all that much, comparatively. Over 3,100,000 people live in Orange County, and they've had 32 deaths so far. (Compare that to Los Angeles County, where I live just to the north, which has 10,000,000 people and 577 deaths so far.) About 200 people, some of them spectators, some protestors, were scattered on the corners of a fairly large street intersection.
Covid-19 is not a great equalizer, and we're not all in this together. These people have privileges not afforded to every American, and on top of that they're benefiting from the fact that most people in Orange County are doing the social distance thing. If I had to bet, I'd put money on these folks not getting sick from this stupidity.
Going back to this comment from April 19: The Orange County Register is today reporting that over 1000 people are protesting in the same place, on the day that Orange County is reporting its highest number of new cases yet. No masks, no social distancing for most of them. So maybe being suburban white people won't protect them from their own foolishness.
Going back to this comment from April 19: The Orange County Register is today reporting that over 1000 people are protesting in the same place, on the day that Orange County is reporting its highest number of new cases yet. No masks, no social distancing for most of them. So maybe being suburban white people won't protect them from their own foolishness.
Shouldn't people ignoring advice to stay home for their own good and the good of others around them - say on a protest and being seen on TV waving a placard - be grounds for invalidating their health insurance? It might bring people to their senses.
It would be worth health insurers saying it clearly: "taking unnecessary risks with your health means your cover may be compromised and don't expect to get priority treatment if others need ICU beds, ventilators etc. too." If someone in a crowd is seen on TV someone will probably spot them.
Imagine protestors, seeing people are there with cameras, covering their faces to avoid recognition - inadvertantly reducing their risk of infecting someone.
It would be worth health insurers saying it clearly: "taking unnecessary risks with your health means your cover may be compromised and don't expect to get priority treatment if others need ICU beds, ventilators etc. too." If someone in a crowd is seen on TV someone will probably spot them.
Imagine protestors, seeing people are there with cameras, covering their faces to avoid recognition - inadvertantly reducing their risk of infecting someone.
If these protestors are genuine libertarians, or at least believers in liberty as understood in a classical sense, then they should have no problem with insurance companies, as privately owned emtities, using whatever criteria they want to decide who to insure.
But as others have already stated, it would probably raise a host of other issues.
Imagine protestors, seeing people are there with cameras, covering their faces to avoid recognition - inadvertantly reducing their risk of infecting someone.
No, they'd probably use eye masks, rather than nose/mouth masks.
(I have seen pictures of a few in Guy Fawkes masks.)
Why would it be illegal? Don't people who take part in extreme sports pay a different premium to those who don't?
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) everyone is group rated, meaning that they all pay the same premiums. Insurance companies are allowed to vary their premiums only by geographic region (because the cost of health care varies from place to place) and smoking status (because sometimes government uses market forces to achieve policy ends, like reducing smoking rates). So no, people who take part in extreme sports or work in exceptionally dangerous jobs aren't charged more for health insurance, at least on the Obamacare exchanges. Not entirely sure about employer-provided health insurance.
Comments
This anger, shame, etc. etc. expresses itself (eloquently) on these boards.
YMMV. In which case, post accordingly.
Ainsley Hayes is fiction. Kellyanne Conway is reality.
At least he didn't ask for donations to Trump's re-election campaign.
But how will M's family know if anyone 'casts a vote' for Trump?
And was poor M one of the victims of Trumpbleach? 'We gave him bleach, like the President said, but it was too late...'
Nope.
Nowadays under Trump, the GOP is both evil and incompetent.
Couldn't think of a real person up to Ainsley Hayes standard. I suppose there must be some about.
Kellyanne Conway seemed to believe at one time that because the current virus was labelled COVID-19, there must have been 18 previous COVID viruses. As mentioned earlier. You couldn't make it up.
This is what makes bothsidesism so dangerous; the underlying assumption that somewhere among the Kellyanne Conways and Laura Ingrahams and Sarah Huckabee Sanders you must, by some immutable law of the Cosmos, eventually come across an Ainsley Hayes if you just look hard enough. The really dangerous bit comes when you can't find your well intentioned and reasonable conservative within the ranks of the Republican Party that you decide to manufacture one. Paul Ryan was the beneficiary of such a system and treated for years as a serious fiscal expert who cared deeply about budget deficits despite the fact that every economic plan he ever advocated rested on a foundation of magic asterisks. This can have all sorts of distorting effects on politics and policy since it equates demagogic nonsense with serious proposals.
In conclusion, two main points. First, maybe you should consider the fact that you can't think of a real life equivalent of Ainsley Hayes to suggest that maybe Ainsley Hayes doesn't have a real life equivalent. (See also Amash, Justin for why this might be the case.)
Second, Aaron Sorkin has many crimes to answer for in distorting the way people think about American governance.
Bothsidesism is about excusing the inexcusable because of some misplaced a priori sense of balance. Hoping you might find individual decency in unlikely places is not the same as that.
Aaron Sorkin? Maybe. The West Wing was fiction for sure. I'm not sure he intended an objective picture of US politics. It's a series that resonates. What's next?
Like him being an alleged rapist?
The first one had to do with the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. When it was set up Congress had set up a fund that was intended to help insurance co-ops get started, but when the Republicans took control of Congress, they refused to fund it. The insurance companies sued. Trump opposed them. Guess who won.
The case is significant in that it indicates where the court may be leaning when it comes to deciding the constitutionality of the ACA.
The second case has to do with a New York City ordinance regarding the possession of a handgun. The ordinance said, in essence, the owner of a handgun that is registered at a particular address could not take the gun to a second address. The NRA and Trump sued saying this infringed on people wanting to protect their homes.
But before SCOTUS handed down the decision, NYC changed the ordinance and the justices said the issue is moot. Story here.
I find it significant in that the conservative justices and liberal justices have found a way to work together. They really do not want to tackle 2nd Amendment cases if they can avoid them.
That's right up there, but there is a long list. We'll see how he goes if he becomes President. This election, depressingly, is alleged pussygrabber v gloating pussygrabber.
Perhaps because Obama's problems weren't on the scale of Trump's. Although you may not remember all the holy shit the right flung at him for being black.
Personally I'm far more anti- one of those things than the other two. Which I think is apparent in my postings.
Mind you, I'm not especially pro- the other two things. But I do hope we left room for the undistributed ambivalent middle. It's one of the great flaws of modern society/social media that people constantly assume the only two options on everything are For and Against.
Wondermark #1515: Gaping at the void.
I was comic-surfing just now, and came across Wondermark for the first time. I really like the style.
Absolutely. I was worried for him. Colin Powell might have been the first black president; but his family was terrified he would be killed, and talked him out of running.
I think Obama also set off a panoply of "difference!" alarms that maybe people weren't quite aware of, or didn't deeply understand. (Nursed along by the right, of course.) E.g., mixed race; dad from Africa; mom an anthropologist; lived overseas; Indonesian, Muslim step-dad and step-family; went to a Muslim school in Indonesia, but reportedly not the hate-filled, terror-promoting kind that people assumed; born in Hawai'i, which hadn't been a state very long, and which some people still see as a "foreign" destination. And, of course, some people decided he wasn't a born American...
Etc.
I think what Crœsos was referring to was the tendency of a significant percentage of people going into politics to assume that the model of politics within West Wing is something to aspire to both purely stylistically and tactically.
My response is partly that Trump himself is not personally equipped to carry that or any other diplomatic strategy off. Really, Trump got what he wanted already out of the situation, which was to grandstand for a domestic political audience.
Putting Trump's sins to one side, I thought South Korea got what it could out of Trump's approaches, in terms of once again opening up some dialogue between the Koreas. I would like to see, rather than US and NK head-guy talks, or even Secretary of State level talks, the countries with the greatest interests in peace talking. I believe the North Koreans insist upon American involvement for their own reasons, but it strikes me that the whole situation involves more than an us and them approach.
I *think* this was the approach of Obama and his predecessors, with the difference being that Obama didn't want the US at the table.
tangent
Was that really about a model of politics? I thought it was dramatisation about liberal and conservative attitudes re a hot button issue. It didn't go any deeper than that for me. I did think the conevo "doctor" got a well deserved comeupppance, but that's all.
end tangent
It does seem like Kim Jong Un fires off missiles anytime he thinks we are not paying enough attention to him. The most recent missile launches appear to be short-range missiles, hitting things within the diameter of Japan and maybe down to Taiwan.
I also asked about Kim Jong Un's health, and no one picked up on it. He has completely disappeared from the public. Rumors were that he had undergone a botched heart surgery, but now it seems he is self-isolating in a remote area in North Korea. Commercial satellite images show his personal train on a siding, and it has not moved for weeks.
Kim's health is critical for the region. He has not indicated an heir apparent. His sister has taken a prominent role in running the government, but there are some military leaders that are also "chomping at the bit." What will it be like when Kim is gone?
Kim's younger sister has been mentioned as a possible successor. I don't know anything about her. When Kim Jung On took the reins, I hoped he'd be better than his father, since he'd gone to school in the outside world (Switzerland). Though there's some question about that, because he allegedly went under a different name. Anyway, AFAIK, it didn't make a positive difference.
I think it's more accurate to say that North Korea fires off missiles whenever everyone else's attention is on something else, which isn't quite the same thing.
For humor value a trending hashtag #KimJongUnDead has been re-parsed as Kim Jong Undead.
Going back to this comment from April 19: The Orange County Register is today reporting that over 1000 people are protesting in the same place, on the day that Orange County is reporting its highest number of new cases yet. No masks, no social distancing for most of them. So maybe being suburban white people won't protect them from their own foolishness.
See also. Seriously, that is one slogan that you think no one would try to rehabilitate, but people surprise you.
Actually nothing new in the article, but, sadly, I suppose that it bears repeating.
I wish we still had the head-banging emoticon...but I suspect God has borrowed it for Herself.
Indeed, their enthusiasm can sometimes be overwhelming !
Gramps, thanks for that link. I found it enlightening; what a word to use for such men.
I think tRump is now rivalling this record.
Shouldn't people ignoring advice to stay home for their own good and the good of others around them - say on a protest and being seen on TV waving a placard - be grounds for invalidating their health insurance? It might bring people to their senses.
And of course it's a risky bet legally. Though it greatly appeals to the frustrated part of me.
Imagine protestors, seeing people are there with cameras, covering their faces to avoid recognition - inadvertantly reducing their risk of infecting someone.
If these protestors are genuine libertarians, or at least believers in liberty as understood in a classical sense, then they should have no problem with insurance companies, as privately owned emtities, using whatever criteria they want to decide who to insure.
But as others have already stated, it would probably raise a host of other issues.
No, they'd probably use eye masks, rather than nose/mouth masks.
(I have seen pictures of a few in Guy Fawkes masks.)
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) everyone is group rated, meaning that they all pay the same premiums. Insurance companies are allowed to vary their premiums only by geographic region (because the cost of health care varies from place to place) and smoking status (because sometimes government uses market forces to achieve policy ends, like reducing smoking rates). So no, people who take part in extreme sports or work in exceptionally dangerous jobs aren't charged more for health insurance, at least on the Obamacare exchanges. Not entirely sure about employer-provided health insurance.
Life insurance is another question.