About damn time; it’s been almost 12 hours since the last open thread. Now all we need is a picture of Our Lord and Master.
2.
"Serious" Superluminar
At this rate, open threads are going to become the new Sully threads around here.
3.
"Serious" Superluminar
Arsenal v Liverpool about to start. Feeling nervous. Anyone see F1 earlier? Pretty good race.
4.
Brian R.
So the power-mad governor of Michigan just used that new wingnut law to dissolve the government of an entire city.
Unreal.
5.
Linnaeus
Just put on some coffee; waiting a few hours for the hockey to start.
6.
CA Doc
Steeling myself to take 12 9 yr old girls to the bowling alley for my daughter’s birthday. Last year I let her talk me into a slumber party, so this will be a walk in the park by comparison!
@CA Doc: Going somewhere already noisy gives you an edge.
I’ve been trying out new recipes all weekend; they are low carb, so don’t beg me unless you are prepared for weird.
9.
Daulnay
To be accurate, the financial manager appointed by the previous governor used the new law: Benton Harbor Dissolved
10.
PurpleGirl
When I woke up this morning to a blue sky and sunlight (after yesterday’s gray clouds and last night’s rain storm) I decided to go to the SOFA Expo. SOFA = Sculpture Objects and Functional Art. It’s a yearly show of high quality art craft. It means I won’t have lunch for several days but I find it very inspirational.
11.
Anya
The best quote, I’ve read about Atlas Shrugged by Kung Fu Monkey
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
12.
El Cid
The AP notices something about the US near tax day.
Super rich see federal taxes drop dramatically
__
WASHINGTON – As millions of procrastinators scramble to meet Monday’s tax filing deadline, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago, and nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all.
__
The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.
__
Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.
__
The top income tax rate is 35 percent, so how can people who make so much pay so little in taxes? The nation’s tax laws are packed with breaks for people at every income level. There are breaks for having children, paying a mortgage, going to college, and even for paying other taxes. Plus, the top rate on capital gains is only 15 percent.
__
There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
I also endorse, and have long used, terms like “super-rich” or “ultra-rich” to make sure that your average local big shot insta-mansion owner doesn’t think he’s up there with the billionaires. Or as I say, the real rich.
However, wingnut whining about how the lower income levels pay no taxes shouldn’t ever be allowed to pass.
The policy of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which allows for the lowest incomes to pay no federal taxes, was a Reagan / Heritage Foundation policy.
At the time the argument was that since taxes are merely a horrendous Soviet oppressive government theft scheme, those least able to bear that burden should be freed of it. Clinton just expanded and refined the Reagan-started program.
Now it apparently is thought of as some soshullist conspiracy by Demoncraps to steal more from the rich.
I haven’t seen or heard anyone responding to the ‘conservatives’ whinging about how unferr it is for them to have to pay when the poors don’t ‘why do yoo hayt Raygun’ or some such.
13.
burnspbesq
Made my quarterly run to Amoeba Records in Hollywood the other night, so I have lots of new music to listen to while I pay bills and work today.
New Smithereens record is nice. Paul Simon’s new record is his best since “Graceland.” Marc-Andre Hamelin’s recording of the Liszt piano sonata is teh awesome.
14.
PurpleGirl
@El Cid: You (and other BJers) may find this article by David Cay Johnson interesting:
Our duty and our mandate under UN Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Gaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in power.
__
{snip]
__
Gaddafi has promised to carry out terrorist attacks against civilian ships and airliners. And because he has lost the consent of his people any deal that leaves him in power would lead to further chaos and lawlessness.
__
[snip]
__
so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin
Looks like we get our delicious refreshing regime change after all.
Ugh. Worked from 2 pm to 4 am yesterday. To bed at 5 am and woke up at 10. back to work later for 2 completely unnecessary hours, then it’s my weekend.
I see a long nap in my near future.
19.
Corner Stone
@Stillwater: I also recently posted this: Obama Sees Libya ‘Stalemate,’ Qaddafi’s Eventual Departure
“Obama acknowledged the limits to what air power can do in situations such as Misrata. “The fact of the matter is that, in the absence of actual soldiers on the ground, Qaddafi’s forces are still going to be able to at least defend their current positions, particularly when we’re concerned about collateral damage, civilian casualties,” he said in the interview.”
20.
CJ
Bob Schieffer is an idiot.
21.
Yutsano
@garage mahal: YouTube comments are always precious. It’s nice to know those fail to disappoint there.
A little off the beaten path, but I’ve wondered for a while, it’s a civil/chemical engineering question.
When Hoover Dam was built I know they built a huge water coolant plant close to the site, there had to be a way to cool down the huge forms of concrete as they cured or it would be for nothing, initial cement chemistry at those volumes can generate temperatures of up to 170 F, wrecking the cure.
Well, how’d they do it? Cool the forms? No one ever says how. Did they run piping through the form and then encase it in concrete, cool water running through? The piping would then be part of the concrete, I don’t like it.
But when you see films of the construction one never sees any piping around the forms for coolant. Also, the form would be a serious form of insulation, inhibiting the totally necessary cooling.
You enter your income tax, social security tax and medicare tax and it tells you what your taxes are spent on. I did my taxes in February so I don’t have them easily at hand and will have to try it later. if someone tries it, i’d love to hear what you think.
25.
RossinDetroit
Stinkin’ laptop. Re; Hoover dam, it’s my understanding that water channels were cast into the concrete sections as they were poured and water was pumped through to cool them as they cured. I haven’t seen any pix either. Interesting question.
One of my favorite past times is settling down with a good book and I’ve got two new ones. I just started Sarah Vowell’s “Unfamiliar Fishes” . Next up is “The Savage City” by T.J. English.
27.
Suck It Up!
debt ceiling, 2012 budget fight, and now immigration reform. fun times ahead folks.
President Barack Obama called Massachusetts’ new Republican senator, Scott Brown, from Air Force One today to deliver some news: Democrats are moving forward with an immigration overhaul in a month.
“[Obama] has pledged the blood and treasure of the United States to “regime change” in Libya: that is to say, an act of military aggression designed to overthrow the government of a sovereign nation which has not attacked your own country nor posed the slightest threat to it. This is, of course, precisely the same blatantly illegal posture taken by that great monstrous bogey-man of all good concerned engaged enlightened rule-of-law liberal progressives everywhere, George W. Bush, in his invasion of Iraq.
… No, instead of offering blastments of moral outrage at yet another president launching yet another illegal regime change operation in yet another Muslim country, our Good Concerned Engaged Progressives have nothing to say. They are still too wiggly about Obama’s meaningless expectoration of blather on the “budget battle” — that ludicrous puppet-show where two factions of hirelings strut and bellow over the few infinitesimal differences in their techniques of corporate whoredom. This is what seems to be the most pressing matter of the day to the Good and Engaged — because of course it may have some bearing on what is their Tillichian “ultimate concern”: the re-election of a man who is now embarked on his first wholly-owned war of aggression. That’s right, the Peace Laureate is no longer simply following (and extending) the Terror Wars of his predecessor — he’s done gone and started one of his very own! Reason enough to fight tooth and nail to get him another term; after all, you don’t want one of those militarist Republicans in there, do you? …
But precisely because this “accumulated evil” is being committed by a Democrat in the White House, the “progressive” movement is silent. They don’t care. Aggressive war? They don’t care. International law? They don’t care. A blanket refusal of ceasefires and peace plans that could spare countless civilian lives? They don’t care. An “active role on the ground” — new mounds of Iraq-style “collateral damage,” corpses, chaos, breakdown, extremism, brutality, suffering? They don’t care.”
31.
Yutsano
@Suck It Up!: Just as a head’s up: that article is a year old. But I suppose there might be some movement on that front here.
32.
SIA
@Strandedvandal: Actually, I find that oddly comforting. Mr Screaming is always reading book passages to me about other batshit periods in our history. (But I still think this must be the worst).
@Suck It Up!: lock n’ load.
This is why Obama did HCR first when he had beaucoup political capital from his electoral landslide. He saved immigration for when it would have max effect for the 2012 election. He knew conservatives would fight like cats dipped in turpentine on both issues, so he deliberately chose the time and place for each battle.
The more the conservatives demagogue the immigration issue, the more strongly hispanics and latinos will be welded to the dems.
i luff 13D chess.
;)
35.
SIA
@garage mahal: You were mentioned in the comments @ Althouse & creepy Mead site. 24 hours later I’m still asking myself why I clicked that link.
36.
sukabi
@Brian R.: which town… am googling and don’t come up with anything on a particular… just articles where he’s asserting the right to…
37.
Strandedvandal
@SIA: I found comfort as well. I have noticed that security here has gone up 100 fold from 6 years ago. Soldiers with Assault weapons are conspicuously present at the airport in large numbers, and armed guards are at the hotel as well. Everyone is on edge it seems. Everyone is very nice, just don’t screw around is the message I am getting.
38.
SIA
@sukabi: I think it’s Benton Harbor or something like that.
Benton Harbor. Daulnay linked to it in comment #9.
41.
ppcli
@WaterGirl: That thing can’t be accurate. Everyone knows that 50% of the Federal Budget goes to foreign aid, Planned Parenthood and art that disrespects Jesus. And they don’t even have a category for the “Waste, Fraud and Mismanagement” that takes another 25%.
42.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Linnaeus: I have been there. Valuable lakefront property occupied by working class folk with no current jobs, beautiful beach, nice marina.
Its high time for the invisible hand to fist those slackers.
43.
sukabi
thanks, SIA & Linneaus, saw that after I asked… the R’s are certainly determined to take this country down… even if they have to do it town by town, state by state to do it… hope the folks there are gearing up for a huge fight.
No, not immigration “reform.” Immigration posturing to win Hispanic votes in 2012. There’s a difference.
Harry Reid doesn’t even have 51 votes for any such hypothetical bill, let alone 60. It’s just a way to use the Senate majority to shift the political space away from the Republican House.
Never mind. That makes more sense. Jesus, Suck it Up, stop being such a reflexive shill for the administration for five minutes.
46.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@sukabi: no, the freemarket fucktards just wanna remake Benton Harbor into Grand Haven.
Poor black people should live in inland ghettos, not on Lake Michigan in property that rich white retirees might want.
Think of all the economic stimulus! Building luxury retirement condos and summer homes, boat sales, golf courses, etc.
;)
47.
SIA
@sukabi: I really don’t understand it. Is it a mad power grab trying to beat the demographics clock? Or is it just insanity? They can’t pillage the country for the Koch Brothers if it’s destroyed.
@Joe Beese: you’re right Joe, we’re baaad people. We’re witholding our disdain until we’re welcomed with open arms as liberators, then, with our troops already in place on the ground, we can move in our mercs and contractors to secure the oil reserves in sweetheart deals. Screw the old passe’ Republican nationbuilding model that we halfassed before, besides its still too early to tell if the infrastucture is gonna need to be rebuilt before we even cross that civil war threshold. Once we’ve accomplished the fait de’ accompli, then and only then, will it be safe for us to express our outrage.
It’s not as if we’re looking for weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Queida and the like, just a simple regime change with a touch of restraint. Besides, the Frogs make a much better stalking horse than the Limeys, dontchathink?
The demographics of Benton Harbor contrast sharply with those across the river in St. Joseph.
White Black Household Income
Benton Harbor 5.49% 92.40% $17,471
St. Joseph 90.31% 5.11% $37,032
Benton Harbor borders a mostly white city called St. Joseph, which is much more prosperous. It’s nicknamed St. Johannesberg. My guess is B.H. gets annexed and redeveloped, moving all of the undesirables out of that nice real estate.
54.
Strandedvandal
@gene108: Peak is in a month in this region. And I expected hot and muggy.
55.
Yutsano
Stupidest. Sports. Column. Evah. Basically saying that Pete Rose not being in the Hall of Fame hurts his fee-fees.
Is it a mad power grab trying to beat the demographics clock? Or is it just insanity?
they are motivated purely by instinct, like a Jurassic superpredator extincting its prey base.
57.
Maude
@paradox:
concretecontractor.com Colorado.
I put in search engine, how was Hoover dam concrete cooled as it cured.
This is a great question you had there. It has the how they did it.
Edit had wrong name , it’s concrete contractor.
58.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Stillwater: im not confused, Stil. You are confused. You have mistaken Feyd and the Harkonnens for allies when they are our kanly-sworn enemies.
It’s really interesting how the St. Joe’s-Benton Harbor area is a study in the two different Americas that still exist in this country. Standing in St. Joe’s, you’d never realize that just across the river, there’s a community that’s nearly everything your community isn’t, and vice versa.
Benton Harbor borders a mostly white city called St. Joseph, which is much more prosperous. It’s nicknamed St. Johannesberg. My guess is B.H. gets annexed and redeveloped, moving all of the undesirables out of that nice real estate.
This would not surprise me in the least.
62.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@RossinDetroit: yup. think of the stimulus to local economies!
After I clicked submit I had a flashback to 1972. Freshman in college, first time voting. My friend Robin Atlas was telling me all about this break-in at some hotel called watergate and about all sorts of illegal activity. I recall telling her that if that were true, we would be hearing all about it on the news. I voted for Nixon.
64.
Stillwater
@Linnaeus: Only harsh metaphors capture how crazy it really is.
65.
Phoebe
I just saw the documentary Still Bill, about Bill Withers, because you people (I don’t remember which ones) recommended it. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.
I cannot thank you enough.
Thank you. Also: Jesus FXXXXXXX Christ. It’s great. Thanks again.
@Strandedvandal: April / May are the hottest months in India. At some point you are just splitting hairs, when the night time temps don’t drop below 30 C and highs area degree or two above or below 40 C (that’s about 90+F for the lows and 110 F for the highs).
I will say there’s something about the tilt of the Earth and the intensity of sun light, which makes the heat in India feel different than in the U.S. I’ve met people, who came to the U.S. from India, during July or August, and they complain about the heat here (New Jersey). They say (and I agree with them) the sun feels hotter or more intense here. When I tell them it’s at or just below 30 C, they are surprised, because of how hot they feel.
P.S. I think the preferred term for nigh times in India is ‘sultry’, instead of ‘muggy’ or at least that’s what my relatives say, when it’s hot all the time there.
68.
Joe Beese
breathless baseless hyperbole
Nope. Just an “inconvenient truth”.
Writing in Washington Post, the Times and Le Figaro (in French), the three leaders say the world would have committed an “unconscionable betrayal” if the Libyan leader is left in place, putting rebels who have been fighting against the Gaddafi regime at the mercy of his government. If left, Libya risks becoming a failed state, they write. Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron call on Gaddafi to “go and go for good”, rejecting demands for an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated exit for the Libyan dictator.
@SIA: They can’t pillage the country for the Koch Brothers if it’s destroyed.
The pillaging comes first. Followed by a survey of the damage. Followed by the inevitable assertion that liberal policies brought us to our knees! So vote GOP!
I have been [to Benton Harbor].Valuable lakefront property occupied by working class folk with no current jobs, beautiful beach, nice marina.
Just another in a long line of examples that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
71.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Joe Beese: Obama has not “committed” anything. The coalition is trying to pressure Qaddafi to step down.
If you want to rant about something, put your shoulder to the wheel on A-stan.
Stop the droning.
It just makes more Taliban.
Standing in St. Joe’s, you’d never realize that just across the river, there’s a community that’s nearly everything your community isn’t, and vice versa.
Why should anyone want to “realize” this? There’s a reason why “they” are across the river…
No, not immigration “reform.” Immigration posturing to win Hispanic votes in 2012. There’s a difference.
Exactly. The Democrats spent two solid years reaching across the aisle and trimming their sails and doing what it took to actually get legislation passed when they had a majority. It was all realism, all the time, because they couldn’t let that opportunity pass.
Now, it’s contrast time. They don’t have to worry about what can pass, just what they believe in. Same thing with Obama’s budget speech this week.
76.
SIA
@WaterGirl: Well don’t feel bad. I voted for Perot. :)
@Stillwater: It always comes around to that conclusion anyway, doesn’t it? But, tick tock.
77.
artem1s
starting heirloom tomato seeds today. rewired the grow lamp yesterday. looking forward to the Indians game today. Should be interesting with 60mph gusts. they have a chance to win 10 in a row today. the mayanapocalypse is surely coming…
speaking of which I’m thinking that the TeaGOP solution to drowsy air traffic controllers will be full automation. Happy Judgment Day on Thursday (4/21/11) folks!
@joe from Lowell: But all their energy had to be devoted to HCR. And even then it was a close call.
WTF is wrong with you people?
The country is still roughly 50% bubba, and Obama needs to get reelected in 2012.
Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron call on Gaddafi to “go and go for good”, rejecting demands for an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated exit for the Libyan dictator.
You are the most gullible human being on the face of the earth. Any attention-seeking con man tells you what you want to hear, and any critical reasoning or even reading skills you might have go right out the window.
80.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
US ambassador to Malta, Douglas Kmiec (former constitutional law profesor at Pepperdine and former dean at the Catholic University of America) resigns after been accused of spending too much time writing and speaking about his Catholic faith.
@gene108: I was going off what locals are telling me. When the skies are clear, it’s quite nice. I don’t mind the heat so much, I am from the desert region anyway, it’s when the clouds come in and the humidity cranks up that everything gets sticky. The thunderstorm that rolled in this evening was quite the show. Lightning stuck the tower next to the hotel and it made a sound as if a bomb went off, which was the first thing I thought sadly.
83.
WaterGirl
@SIA: I just feel bad because at that point in my life, I was one of “them”. You know, one of the low information voters who don’t believe you even after you give them the facts and even spell it out for them. Oh well. I was only 18 coming out of a republican family. Last vote for a republican, though.
84.
Corner Stone
@Yutsano: I was shocked when I heard my local sports broadcasters mention Pete Rose is/will be 70.
Not cool.
85.
Keith G
I am at work but can’t concentrate. Izzy, one of two DSH grey tabby sisters (and the best cuddle kitty evah), was lethargic and had no appetite at breakfast – 4 AM. Given the time, I went on to work and went home over lunch. No change. Only a nibble on her fav Sci Diet canned.
So she is at a clinic waiting to be seen and I am at work a few blocks away trying to get something done.
You just repeated the point I made, in less knowledgeable form (they got quite a bit more passed than just HCR. It was the most accomplished legislative session in decades), and then insulted me for it.
I haven’t the foggiest idea how you managed to read what I wrote as a criticism.
Grow lamp?!
Nice knowing you arty. DEA/BATF in 3…2…
88.
Amir_Khalid
@Keith G:
Here’s hoping Izzy’s OK and just having a mood.
89.
WaterGirl
@Keith G: Oh, no. But we will hope for a simple problem that is easily fixable. I can’t imagine being able to work, either. Hopefully you have some mindless task you can do, or at least pretend to do. Is someone with her at the clinic?
They don’t have to worry about what can pass, just what they want their base to think they believe in.
FTFY. I’m not saying the Democrats don’t believe in comprehensive immigration reform, but you should never take anything a politician says literally, least of all when he’s campaigning. It’s always at least part posture, with more of it being posturing the less likely the legislation is to pass.
91.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Stillwater: what is your problem? I just said the same thing RossinDetroit and Linneaus are saying. That land is too valuable for po’ black folk to occupy. Its too close to the lake.
I have relatives that have summer homes in Grand Haven and in Traverse City.
Summer home/resort/retirement communities are big bidness in Michigan.
92.
sukabi
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: in a couple of communities in Florida a couple of years ago they were using “eminent domain” and “neighborhood blight” as the apparatus for seizing waterfront neighborhoods… this was ramped up after a Supreme Court ruling earlier that gave gov. broader powers to use eminent domain to seize property from one private citizen to give to another private party… “economic development” is the only reason that’s needed to seize one person’s property and give to another.
93.
Amir_Khalid
And now for some sports. Jamie Carragher got knocked out cold in a head-to-head collision with teammate and has been taken off. Ouch. Still 0-0 at the Emirates.
94.
"Serious" Superluminar
Re: Libya
There’s no evidence NATO have committed to a anything further than 1973, and I very much doubt they will. It’s all posturing at the moment, leave the outrage for when something concrete happens (if it does…).
95.
Yutsano
@Corner Stone: I just lurve the constant drumbeat to get Johnny Hustle into the HoF. Like “lifetime ban” means nothing because, well, he still was good dammit! Excuses for elite athletes, even when they did what Rose did, still stand for the sportswriting class. I propose the go third in line behind the bankstas and billionaires. I think we can manage without em.
96.
WaterGirl
Can anyone recommend a good news aggregator? I have been going to the Daily Beast, but it’s just getting sleazier and sleazier, and I would rather not give them my clicks anymore.
Now, it’s contrast time. They don’t have to worry about what can pass, just what they believe in. Same thing with Obama’s budget speech this week.
i guess i misinterpreted this as more concern trolling.
sry, i apolo if i have misjudged you.
Obama said “social compact” in his speech, but he also had to say “free markets”.
Summer home/resort/retirement communities are big bidness in Michigan.
St Joseph is easy driving distance from Chicago. Think condos. that lakefront is wonderful and the property would be a gold mine if not for the inconvenient residents there.
@Roger Moore: Thank you I’d never before realized that individual politicians posture for their supporters.
When talking about what a political party or caucus believes in, whether any individual member’s stance is heartfelt or convenient is irrelevant. It’s still the position, their beliefs, of the collective organization.
103.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@sukabi: yup, its the invisible hand of the market fisting the poor again.
@CA Doc: The missus and I have been good at massaging expectations. We just sent home my soon-to-be-eight-year-old’s BiFFL after a birthday sleepover. We took the two for conveyor belt sushi, came home and had cake, let the two watch a movie, give each other spa treatments, etc.
Much easier than a party at an alternate venue–especially since, with Brownies, classmates, activity partners, friends and friends’ siblings, the invite list could be tougher to negotiate than that of Will and Kate’s forthcoming nups.
Next year it all could go to hell: Already my daughter is talking about having “all my friends” to a pool party or go ice skating. Here in NNJ, we’re talking about a minimum of $25/head…
this was ramped up after a Supreme Court ruling earlier that gave gov. broader powers to use eminent domain to seize property from one private citizen to give to another private party… “economic development” is the only reason that’s needed to seize one person’s property and give to another.
It wasn’t actually ramped up, nor did the Kelo case broaden the authority to use eminent domain for cases in which the ultimate owner of a redeveloped parcel was a private party. The case was just an affirmation of existing case law, backed by decades of rulings. The libertarians who pushed the case were trying to roll back the status quo, not prevent its expansion.
Gov’t asks high court to take GPS tracking case
“The Obama administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to take up an important privacy case for the digital age, whether the police need a warrant before using a global positioning system device to track a suspect’s movements.”
HT TalkLeft
108.
Amir_Khalid
@Yutsano: Not a baseball fan, of course, but I have to agree with you. That columnist has got his reasoning exactly backwards. What the steroid takers did doesn’t mean Pete Rose should be eligible for the Hall of Fame along with them, it means they should be ineligible along with him.
109.
Corner Stone
@cleek: cleek, what do you think is going to happen in Libya?
I’m just asking for your SWAG.
Obama said “social compact” in his speech, but he also had to say “free markets”.
Actually, the people who came up with the concept of a social compact were big believers in free markets. The free market fetishists of today need to edit down Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith and the rest of the Enlightenment into something almost unrecognizable in order to pretend that those thinkers opposed the idea of a social compact, or even the use of government redistribution to protect it.
once again, you and you fellow dingbats are just making shit up because that’s the only way you can satisfy your need to hate Obama.
I don’t think it’s entirely personal about Obama.
Humanitarian intervention poses some genuinely difficult questions for people who bring a liberal-left perspective to international affairs.
Sufficiently difficult that a lot of dimmer bulbs are driven to deny that such a thing exists, and pretend that it’s something else that they are more competent to discuss.
Hence, the United Nations authorizing force to protect civilian populations from a military that is attacking them is transformed, in their minds, into a war of aggression in violation of international law.
I guess it’s not just the generals who are doomed to fight the last war.
114.
Amir_Khalid
Arsenal 1-0 up over Liverpool on a penalty in the 8th minute of injury time. Shit shit shit.
Like “lifetime ban” means nothing because, well, he still was good dammit!
Technically speaking it’s a permanent ban, not a lifetime ban. It sounds silly, but it’s actually important. There are some people who suggest that Rose should be allowed to go into the HOF after he dies because then the lifetime ban will be over. Because it’s a permanent ban, though, he’s still not allowed in even after he’s dead.
IMO, any sportwriter who supports Rose but not drug users is a fucking tool. The PED cheats either broke no rule (if they offended before there were rules explicitly banning PEDs) or broke a rule and lived with the punishment, which has never been a permanent ban. Saying that the players should be punished for breaking an unwritten rule that the writers decided on without telling them is grossly unfair. Rose, OTOH, broke a rule that had been on the books for well over a century and which had always given a permanent ban as the punishment. He then signed an agreement saying the Commissioner was justified in imposing a lifetime ban. To suggest that Rose was somehow a lesser offender is ridiculous.
116.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: maybe it’s more accurate to say, that it hadn’t been used in such a blatant manner or so frequently prior to the 2005 US Supreme Court ruling… usually gov kept the seized land for “right of way” purposes… highway expansion, power grid, airport expansion, ect… the 2005 ruling made clear that “economic development” could be used as a means to put in private resorts and that kind of crap… and big money took that ball and RAN.
117.
SIA
@WaterGirl: Not sure which is worse, voting for a Republican or for a little cartoon man. :D
Anyway, a lot of us were low info at 18. I was busy getting very, very high. I reflexively voted Dem after that, but we’re allowed a pass once or twice, yes?
I didn’t become really political until the 2000 Coronation. Been mad ever since, alas.
ETA, also re news source – I like Greg Sargent (The Daily Plum) and Steve Benen (Washington Monthly) for coverage of the most important stories and good analysis & links.
118.
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: Thanks for the correction, I tend to conflate the two in my mind. And yeah the distinction matters, because the calls to put him in will get even louder after he’s dead.
@Keith G: OH, I so understand that anxiety. But it could just be UTI or something similar. If the vet can’t find anything wrong with her, try this site. It has lots of helpful info on natural remedies for animals and humans. Thinking good thoughts for her.
@sukabi:
And the Libertarians have tried to use Kelo as an excuse to roll back all kinds of stuff. It’s a great excuse to try to expand “taking” to include any regulation of any kind, so that attempts to end Kelo would effectively prevent any limits on what property owners do with their land.
122.
befuggled
@burnspbesq: Cool. Looks like originals, too. For a while it looked like they were planning to become a tribute band.
123.
sacman701
@114 – I thought the first penalty call was very soft, the second one was a make-up call. The result was fair, but it should have been 0-0.
124.
CADoc
@Jamey: There is light at the end of the tunnel on this birthday thing. My 11 yr old was willing to wait from February to June so he could take 2 friends to the Giants game. Now THAT’S something worthwhile to chaperone!
125.
Tom Q
@Roger Moore: And, just to emphasize your point: the rule Rose broke has been posted in many stadium dugouts for the entire time Rose played.
The steroid thing is, as you say, much more complicated. If the writers now claiming they’ll never vote for anyone connected with the issue hold sway: 1) many of the greatest players of the generation will be Hall of Famers by any standard except having the Cooperstown ceremony; 2) it will be a hugely selective punishment, as the users we know about are simply those who were leaked about from possibly a single random test — meaning many other users may simply have evaded exposure; 3) given the many forms of performance enhancement snickered about through earlier periods (esp. amphetamines), it’s randomly choosing to find one generation’s drug of choice evil but another’s just dandy.
Lurking behind alot of this is old-timer “the players today aren’t squat compared to those in MY day”. (And I’m allowed to say this, given that I’m approaching old-timer-hood myself)
126.
sacman701
addendum: In one respect, 1-1 is better than 0-0: Kuyt now has more goals than Torres for the whole season.
127.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: not quite sure I understand what you’re saying…
It seems to me that seizing one person’s property to give to another would set EVERYBODY’s hair on fire… not just libertarians.
Acquiring “right of ways” for infrastructure development is an entirely different thing than displacing neighborhoods to put in condos, resorts or upscale shopping.
I can see a very legitimate reason for wanting to limit the scope of seizures to reasonable “right of way” infrastructure projects.
maybe it’s more accurate to say, that it hadn’t been used in such a blatant manner or so frequently prior to the 2005 US Supreme Court ruling…
That isn’t actually true.
usually gov kept the seized land for “right of way” purposes… highway expansion, power grid, airport expansion, ect…
Eminent domain has always been used for both purposes.
Eminent domain seizures are both the 2005 ruling made clear that “economic development” could be used as a means to put in private resorts and that kind of crap…
Actually, the first laws authorizing the seizure of land on behalf of a private party, for the purpose of promoting economic development, were the Mill Acts of the late 1700s, which were often passed by the same legislators who’d approved the Bill of Rights. These acts allowed private citizens to seize – by flooding – the land of their neighbors so that they could power their privately-owned, commercial girst (grain-grinding) mills, in order to promote the development of farms in the vicinity.
The Koch brothers funded a lot of media outlets, like Reason magazine, that spread a lot of bullshit about the state of eminent domain law. And with a poster child as attractive as the blue-collar homeowners of New London, they were able to tug a lot of liberal heart strings. (I was criticizing the Ft. Trumbull plan back in the 20th century, as a grad students working on my masters degree in planning.) But their line about the history legal status of private-to-private eminent domain is simply bullshit.
and what happened to that property in the US Supreme Court Case in Kelo vs. New London after it was seized? It sits empty, no development, just an abandoned, empty lot… Now THAT’S economic development…
Yeah, it was a really terrible plan. They took a stable, solid neighborhood full of long-time homeowners and tenants – a neighborhood full of affordable single-family homes – and they just threw it away. A terrible, terrible waste.
It’s a great excuse to try to expand “taking” to include any regulation of any kind
Wait a minute, are you saying that the Koch brothers media empire’s obsession with the case didn’t reflect a passionate desire to stand up for the little guy against corporate power? That they had another agenda?
@Tom Q:
IMO, a big part of what’s going on with PEDs is that they give writers an excuse for voting to settle personal scores. Almost every great player from the past generation is at least a suspected user, and a writer can always make up rumors if they aren’t there already. If they like the player (and he wasn’t caught red handed) they can argue the rumors are unfounded and vote for him. If they don’t like the guy, they can talk up the rumors to justify not voting for him.
Acquiring “right of ways” for infrastructure development is an entirely different thing than displacing neighborhoods to put in condos, resorts or upscale shopping.
What about seizing dilapidated warehouse space to build neighborhoods? What about relocating ugly, intrusive, unpleasant industrial uses from a densely-built neighborhood full of apartment houses into an industrial park? What about replacing a few acres of surface parking in the middle of an urban core with housing and businesses?
You can’t make up your mind about a legal doctrine based on which party you find more sympathetic.
135.
CADoc
@Nellcote: sadly, no promotions on the night I have tickets. But Mom’s credit card will undoubtedly be pressed into service to fill in that deficiency!
I’m probably more excited than my son, it will be my first time at AT&T. I’m actually an A’s fan from childhood but it gets boring being the only one in the family.
@sukabi:
Sure, but the Libertarians want to go further than that. They argue that any restrictions on what a property owner does with his property, including stuff like environmental regulations and zoning, are a taking. So they use popular anger at Kelo to advance their more radical anti-regulation agenda. Here in California, for example, they put an initiative on the ballot that would have prevented Kelo type use of eminent domain but also would have ended rent control.
137.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: it would be nice if any of those examples actually happened… nice to think about in theory, when was the last time any of those examples actually happened? and who was the property taken from?
138.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: if that’s the case, it sounds like they are exploiting a poorly or too broadly written law for their own purposes… and would be an excellent reason to have strict regulations for maintaining clean water, air quality, ect. whether on private land or public… and huge fines for polluting your neighbors’ or public air and or water…
They argue that any restrictions on what a property owner does with his property, including stuff like environmental regulations and zoning, are a taking.
Nice little combo they were going for there – combine their argument in the Kelo case with this little doozy, and you couldn’t impose regulations on the use of property unless they served to make the land available for occupation by the general public.
140.
Tom Q
@Roger Moore: Absolutely. Watch how some writers twist themselves into knots to justify voting for David Ortiz but leaving out ARod.
it would be nice if any of those examples actually happened… nice to think about in theory, when was the last time any of those examples actually happened?
@joe from Lowell: there should be huge fines or some other kind of punishment associated with these kinds of cases for when the entity seizing property for “economic purposes” fails to deliver on their project and causes further “blight” to an area…
maybe that’s just me, but really if you’re going to take someone’s property with the government’s blessing, then you’d better damned well do something with it to contribute to the community at large, or face enormous fines for eroding the community’s tax base.
Ever read about the urban highways projects in the 60s and 70s? Just the kind of eminent domain you like, every inch seized for the construction of public infrastructure.
Too bad about all of the neighborhoods and cities destroyed, the racially-skewed demographics of the property owners who were pushed out, and the elimination of urban neighborhoods for the convenience of suburban commuters.
I’m afraid that there’s no constitutional shortcut here. You actually have to look at individual plans and make up your mind on the merits. You can’t just say “public owner good, private owner bad.”
there should be huge fines or some other kind of punishment associated with these kinds of cases for when the entity seizing property for “economic purposes” fails to deliver on their project and causes further “blight” to an area…
Fines on whom? The City Council? The municipal staffers who followed their directions?
We’re now fining public officials for doing their jobs poorly, instead of letting the political process handle it?
145.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: isn’t it convenient that in the info there isn’t any mention of what the property was used for prior to the redevelopment… no mention of how many people were displaced, how much they were paid to leave or where they went or how they fared?
so what you get is a very “positive” picture… only one side of the story… sure the city of Lowell may be better off financially, and certainly a number of “private investors” are much better off… but what happens to the displaced people, because you know damned well they won’t be able to afford to live any where near there.
146.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: fines on the “new” property owners for taking property and failing to utilize it… which is supposedly WHY the property was taken to begin with.
147.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: I realize that, and that’s kind of what I’m getting at… most of the seizures have been done with an eye to benefit an individual or corporation, meaning projects are “planned” and properties are seized based on personal profit… and yes, screwing minorities and the poor is always one of the considerations in exactly where to build something.
Oh, and I personally don’t like any property seizures, but I can see where once in a while it might be necessary… but only when there isn’t any other option, and then the person losing their land should be compensated well above what the land is worth, not for pennies on the dollar as is the case now.
if that’s the case, it sounds like they are exploiting a poorly or too broadly written law for their own purposes
The problem is with initiatives. Because they don’t have to go through the back-and-forth argument that ordinary legislation does, and because the people circulating the petitions are free to be misleading to people signing them, it’s easy to include all kinds of buried provisions. In this case, they talked up the parts about preventing the government from taking your house and avoided talking about ending rent control. Their opponents were able to defeat it by pointing out A) that the parts that were supposed to prevent Kelo-type takings were already the law and B) the buried parts that most people wouldn’t like. But it’s an example of how Libertarians have tried to use Kelo to pass all kinds of much more radical restrictions.
@joe from Lowell:
Yeah, we have an excellent example of the politics of road building with the Long Beach Freeway. It was originally intended to run from Long Beach to Pasadena, but was only run through the poor neighborhoods. When it got to South Pasadena, a nice wealthy white city, the locals pitched a monster hissy fit and managed to block the construction. We’ve been waiting for decades for the damn thing to be finished. Of course the traffic hasn’t disappeared; it’s just gone onto surface streets where it’s caused worse blight than the freeway would have.
150.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: so if initiatives are a problem with screwing up the intent of existing laws… how about championing an initiative that would “reconcile initiatives with existing laws”…
something that would require all laws that are amended or otherwise changed via the initiative process to have all the changes to the law explicitly called out, reconciled and “reaffirmed” with a second vote, so that these “sneak attacks” would be more difficult to implement… and if not through a public vote, then through a vote on the “modified law” via the legislature…
Sam Axe movie tonight. Bruce Campbell. Doom to all enemies. And get the beer.
152.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@joe from Lowell: oh you fucking retard. Sure they were. THEY WERE ALL LANDHOLDERS. That was when the social compact was White Patriarchy Social Cohesion Model and blacks and wimmens didnt vote.
Do I have to repeat my deconstruction of the Kain/Kuznicki “Pretend 8 Years of Bush Never Happened” Plan?
Hermione Granger-Weasley – April 16, 2011 | 8:57 am · Link
__
@E.D. Kain: We already discussed this once.
__
“Return to Clinton-era rates of taxation, or at least something like them.
Reduce military spending to 1990s levels.”
__
This is the Pretend 8 Years of Bush Never Happened Plan, endorsed by glibertarians everywhere, and you ALREADY talked about this here. TWICE, actually, because this is your Free Market Fantasy Forest all over again.
This is just another freemarket solution.
The middle class has ALREADY shrunk, jobs have ALREADY flown offshore, the inequality gap has ALREADY grown, America is ALREADY 25th in math and 20th in science.
There have to be social justice solutions to problems that were CREATED by freemarket policies.
Freemarket solutions do not work. Remember how you couldn’t come up with a single example?
backstory.
And for the semanticians in the Balloon Juice Hall Monitor Nation, the THEORETICAL Free Market is a well-defined construct that has not existed and probably cannot exist in any known society.
Freemarket policies, freemarket solutions, market-based policies, market-based applications are ALL the same thing—ALL applications of Freemarket THEORY made into practice, the only difference being the amount of regulation leveled on the market..
The opposite of market-based or freemarket solutions (same thing) which at best rely on the action (invisible hand) of the market to deliver social justice as a trickle-down or side-effect, are social justice solutions, which DO attempt to directly deliver social justice with safety nets, redistribution (in islam we call that zahat, catholics call it tithing), childhood nutrion and pre-natal nutrition programs, etc.
When President Obama actually used the words “social compact” in his speech that was revelation. He gets it. He may pay lip service to the “free market” for the bubba consumption, but we are starting to get there.
People like EDK actually think there is no alternative to blind market-worship of the freemarket god.
There are many alternatives, for example evolutionary economics.
@Corner Stone: its so simple a retard could get it. The old social compact failed when blacks and wimmens got the vote. A society cannot exist without a social compact, blah blah blah the consent of the governed.
So we are evolving a new one. Social Democracy. Like the brits have or like soc1alist Sweden has.
157.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: I dont mind hybrid solutions a’tall. There can be market-based components.
But we need a lavish helping of social justice solutions to get us out of the ditch the freemarket fucktards put us in.
free market as in “free from regulation”, or “free from competition” or “free from oversight”… because that’s what those in charge mean when they espouse the virtues of the “free market”…
what they want is the freedom to rob you blind, while poisoning you and your family and leave you with no recourse.
161.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: the problem is we are starting underwater.
Like I said to EDK, give me an example of a free market policy that worked.
He couldn’t do it.
How do we encourage innovation without the requisite rewards?
WTF? innovation is going to happen anyways. Markets are going to happen anyways. No one needs to fucking coddle the Market. Read some 21st century shit like evolutionary economics.
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats…
we already are evolving into that.
Obama is bricolaging existing strutures to serve a new purpose.
It can’t be stopped.
It can only happen faster or slower.
163.
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: But if we don’t build in a reward for the makers then how can they provide support for the takers?
164.
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: When we bricolage existing structures what happens to the ownership society of the existing infrastructure?
165.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: wallah….are you so intellectually impoverished that you cannot think outside the box your overlords put us in?
166.
sukabi
@Corner Stone: “the ownership society” is a euphemism for the wealthy own and control everything, and look where we are now, quickly becoming the land of the lords and the serfs…
past time to level that field.
167.
sukabi
@Corner Stone: there is already a “reward” built into the structure… and would likely be the same kind of “reward”… ie, business owners / innovators take a portion of the profits as their reward…
except now they are taking their “profit” at the expense of their company, at the expense of their employees, and at the expense of the world at large… ie, they are gutting long-term company welfare / sustainability, you know things like R&D, workforce, and quality in favor of going after short-term profit… ie, doing everything to “meet market expectations”… which means they are more concerned with pleasing some “analyst” on Wall Street who doesn’t know squat about their business, rather than doing the long term investing in their own company and technologies and being a responsible “citizen” wrt the communities, countries they operate in.
168.
sukabi
@Corner Stone: take issue with your “makers and takers” terminology… the CEOs, executives and shareholders are not “makers”. The people you describe as “takers” are the real makers… without them, all you have is a bunch of guys sitting around their boardrooms rolling in their dwindling piles of cash.
@Corner Stone:
i assume we’ll get entangled. but we haven’t yet.
and until we do, it seems pointless to assume we already are (except if you’re one of those people coughBeesecough who need to convince yourself that Obama is still as evil as you’ve always claimed).
170.
Corner Stone
@cleek: Of course Obama is eebil. He’s the POTUS.
You don’t get that spot without doing it live.
171.
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I’m just trying to determine how it is we can realize future rewards if we don’t set the award pointsets to a location that helps the ownership society.
172.
Corner Stone
@sukabi: Bullshyyte. The makers set policy and determine our path moving forward. The takers sit back and find ways to grift off the system.
173.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: you are kiddin’ right?
The Market is evolutionary. It is robust. It is fuckin’ beastin’. It doesn’t need a wet nurse.
You are no different than the rest of the serfs.
174.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: that is what evolutionary economics is all about. The Market needs restrained and channelled, not pampered and coddled. The Market needs a bridle, not spurs.
But doesn’t a freemarket provide needed solutions?
Name one. EDK couldn’t do it. Mebbe you can.
In the beginning the Market needed training wheels, sure. But it doesn’t anymore.
How do market-based solutions create jobs? Either by side effecting or trickle down. Highly inefficient. So what you get is a feast or famine cycle at best.
But we don’t even get that anymore…. the current crop of oligarchs has evoived to superpredator status in their evolutionary niche.
They are basically ruthlessly farming the underclass class for Profit.
Like I said, evolutionary economics takes this into account, and proposes a bridle for the market instead of the traditional spurs.
Let the Market become the servant of the People, instead of the master/false god.
176.
Mandramas
@Corner Stone: Well, Yuri Gagarin and the soviet space program reached the space with no free market to push them. Free marked do not breed innovation, except in the rare cases where it is profitable.
Half of the high tech of America has been created on Bell Labs, the R&D division of a monopolistic, state based and regulated marked company.
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Roger Moore
About damn time; it’s been almost 12 hours since the last open thread. Now all we need is a picture of Our Lord and Master.
"Serious" Superluminar
At this rate, open threads are going to become the new Sully threads around here.
"Serious" Superluminar
Arsenal v Liverpool about to start. Feeling nervous. Anyone see F1 earlier? Pretty good race.
Brian R.
So the power-mad governor of Michigan just used that new wingnut law to dissolve the government of an entire city.
Unreal.
Linnaeus
Just put on some coffee; waiting a few hours for the hockey to start.
CA Doc
Steeling myself to take 12 9 yr old girls to the bowling alley for my daughter’s birthday. Last year I let her talk me into a slumber party, so this will be a walk in the park by comparison!
Linnaeus
@Brian R.:
And a poor, mostly black city at that. Which leads me to suspect that this move won’t generate the scrutiny that it should.
WereBear
@CA Doc: Going somewhere already noisy gives you an edge.
I’ve been trying out new recipes all weekend; they are low carb, so don’t beg me unless you are prepared for weird.
Daulnay
To be accurate, the financial manager appointed by the previous governor used the new law: Benton Harbor Dissolved
PurpleGirl
When I woke up this morning to a blue sky and sunlight (after yesterday’s gray clouds and last night’s rain storm) I decided to go to the SOFA Expo. SOFA = Sculpture Objects and Functional Art. It’s a yearly show of high quality art craft. It means I won’t have lunch for several days but I find it very inspirational.
Anya
The best quote, I’ve read about Atlas Shrugged by Kung Fu Monkey
El Cid
The AP notices something about the US near tax day.
I also endorse, and have long used, terms like “super-rich” or “ultra-rich” to make sure that your average local big shot insta-mansion owner doesn’t think he’s up there with the billionaires. Or as I say, the real rich.
However, wingnut whining about how the lower income levels pay no taxes shouldn’t ever be allowed to pass.
The policy of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which allows for the lowest incomes to pay no federal taxes, was a Reagan / Heritage Foundation policy.
At the time the argument was that since taxes are merely a horrendous Soviet oppressive government theft scheme, those least able to bear that burden should be freed of it. Clinton just expanded and refined the Reagan-started program.
Now it apparently is thought of as some soshullist conspiracy by Demoncraps to steal more from the rich.
I haven’t seen or heard anyone responding to the ‘conservatives’ whinging about how unferr it is for them to have to pay when the poors don’t ‘why do yoo hayt Raygun’ or some such.
burnspbesq
Made my quarterly run to Amoeba Records in Hollywood the other night, so I have lots of new music to listen to while I pay bills and work today.
New Smithereens record is nice. Paul Simon’s new record is his best since “Graceland.” Marc-Andre Hamelin’s recording of the Liszt piano sonata is teh awesome.
PurpleGirl
@El Cid: You (and other BJers) may find this article by David Cay Johnson interesting:
http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html
In it he has answer about who doesn’t pay what taxes. It’s very good.
Strandedvandal
Greetings from New Delhi. It’s hot, muggy and 9pm. You’ll be happy to note that their politics and Govt are just as screwed up as our is back home.
Stillwater
Is this old news? In Libya, regime change is now the official US/NATO policy:
Looks like we get our delicious refreshing regime change after all.
garage mahal
Interesting Tea Party Rally yesterday. Here is how Sarah Palin sounded where I was at.
RossinDetroit
Ugh. Worked from 2 pm to 4 am yesterday. To bed at 5 am and woke up at 10. back to work later for 2 completely unnecessary hours, then it’s my weekend.
I see a long nap in my near future.
Corner Stone
@Stillwater: I also recently posted this:
Obama Sees Libya ‘Stalemate,’ Qaddafi’s Eventual Departure
“Obama acknowledged the limits to what air power can do in situations such as Misrata. “The fact of the matter is that, in the absence of actual soldiers on the ground, Qaddafi’s forces are still going to be able to at least defend their current positions, particularly when we’re concerned about collateral damage, civilian casualties,” he said in the interview.”
CJ
Bob Schieffer is an idiot.
Yutsano
@garage mahal: YouTube comments are always precious. It’s nice to know those fail to disappoint there.
paradox
A little off the beaten path, but I’ve wondered for a while, it’s a civil/chemical engineering question.
When Hoover Dam was built I know they built a huge water coolant plant close to the site, there had to be a way to cool down the huge forms of concrete as they cured or it would be for nothing, initial cement chemistry at those volumes can generate temperatures of up to 170 F, wrecking the cure.
Well, how’d they do it? Cool the forms? No one ever says how. Did they run piping through the form and then encase it in concrete, cool water running through? The piping would then be part of the concrete, I don’t like it.
But when you see films of the construction one never sees any piping around the forms for coolant. Also, the form would be a serious form of insulation, inhibiting the totally necessary cooling.
A bit out there, I realize, but I want to know.
RossinDetroit
@paradox:
WaterGirl
This is pretty cool:
Federal Taxpayer Receipt
You enter your income tax, social security tax and medicare tax and it tells you what your taxes are spent on. I did my taxes in February so I don’t have them easily at hand and will have to try it later. if someone tries it, i’d love to hear what you think.
RossinDetroit
Stinkin’ laptop. Re; Hoover dam, it’s my understanding that water channels were cast into the concrete sections as they were poured and water was pumped through to cool them as they cured. I haven’t seen any pix either. Interesting question.
AliceBlue
One of my favorite past times is settling down with a good book and I’ve got two new ones. I just started Sarah Vowell’s “Unfamiliar Fishes” . Next up is “The Savage City” by T.J. English.
Suck It Up!
debt ceiling, 2012 budget fight, and now immigration reform. fun times ahead folks.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/04/20/next-up-obama-calls-sen-scott-brown-about-immigration/
jeffreyw
Mmm…breakfast
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: BOGTM!!
Joe Beese
Chris Floyd:
“[Obama] has pledged the blood and treasure of the United States to “regime change” in Libya: that is to say, an act of military aggression designed to overthrow the government of a sovereign nation which has not attacked your own country nor posed the slightest threat to it. This is, of course, precisely the same blatantly illegal posture taken by that great monstrous bogey-man of all good concerned engaged enlightened rule-of-law liberal progressives everywhere, George W. Bush, in his invasion of Iraq.
… No, instead of offering blastments of moral outrage at yet another president launching yet another illegal regime change operation in yet another Muslim country, our Good Concerned Engaged Progressives have nothing to say. They are still too wiggly about Obama’s meaningless expectoration of blather on the “budget battle” — that ludicrous puppet-show where two factions of hirelings strut and bellow over the few infinitesimal differences in their techniques of corporate whoredom. This is what seems to be the most pressing matter of the day to the Good and Engaged — because of course it may have some bearing on what is their Tillichian “ultimate concern”: the re-election of a man who is now embarked on his first wholly-owned war of aggression. That’s right, the Peace Laureate is no longer simply following (and extending) the Terror Wars of his predecessor — he’s done gone and started one of his very own! Reason enough to fight tooth and nail to get him another term; after all, you don’t want one of those militarist Republicans in there, do you? …
But precisely because this “accumulated evil” is being committed by a Democrat in the White House, the “progressive” movement is silent. They don’t care. Aggressive war? They don’t care. International law? They don’t care. A blanket refusal of ceasefires and peace plans that could spare countless civilian lives? They don’t care. An “active role on the ground” — new mounds of Iraq-style “collateral damage,” corpses, chaos, breakdown, extremism, brutality, suffering? They don’t care.”
Yutsano
@Suck It Up!: Just as a head’s up: that article is a year old. But I suppose there might be some movement on that front here.
SIA
@Strandedvandal: Actually, I find that oddly comforting. Mr Screaming is always reading book passages to me about other batshit periods in our history. (But I still think this must be the worst).
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: WTFCN! (Who The Fuck Coulda Node!)
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Suck It Up!: lock n’ load.
This is why Obama did HCR first when he had beaucoup political capital from his electoral landslide. He saved immigration for when it would have max effect for the 2012 election. He knew conservatives would fight like cats dipped in turpentine on both issues, so he deliberately chose the time and place for each battle.
The more the conservatives demagogue the immigration issue, the more strongly hispanics and latinos will be welded to the dems.
i luff 13D chess.
;)
SIA
@garage mahal: You were mentioned in the comments @ Althouse & creepy Mead site. 24 hours later I’m still asking myself why I clicked that link.
sukabi
@Brian R.: which town… am googling and don’t come up with anything on a particular… just articles where he’s asserting the right to…
Strandedvandal
@SIA: I found comfort as well. I have noticed that security here has gone up 100 fold from 6 years ago. Soldiers with Assault weapons are conspicuously present at the airport in large numbers, and armed guards are at the hotel as well. Everyone is on edge it seems. Everyone is very nice, just don’t screw around is the message I am getting.
SIA
@sukabi: I think it’s Benton Harbor or something like that.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Yutsano:
Linnaeus
@sukabi:
Benton Harbor. Daulnay linked to it in comment #9.
ppcli
@WaterGirl: That thing can’t be accurate. Everyone knows that 50% of the Federal Budget goes to foreign aid, Planned Parenthood and art that disrespects Jesus. And they don’t even have a category for the “Waste, Fraud and Mismanagement” that takes another 25%.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Linnaeus: I have been there. Valuable lakefront property occupied by working class folk with no current jobs, beautiful beach, nice marina.
Its high time for the invisible hand to fist those slackers.
sukabi
thanks, SIA & Linneaus, saw that after I asked… the R’s are certainly determined to take this country down… even if they have to do it town by town, state by state to do it… hope the folks there are gearing up for a huge fight.
Stillwater
@sukabi: @Linnaeus:
My own hypothesis for why there is no coverage of Benton Harbor is that the whole town has disappeared due to lack of interest.
Bob Loblaw
@Suck It Up!:
No, not immigration “reform.” Immigration posturing to win Hispanic votes in 2012. There’s a difference.
Harry Reid doesn’t even have 51 votes for any such hypothetical bill, let alone 60. It’s just a way to use the Senate majority to shift the political space away from the Republican House.
@Yutsano:
Never mind. That makes more sense. Jesus, Suck it Up, stop being such a reflexive shill for the administration for five minutes.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@sukabi: no, the freemarket fucktards just wanna remake Benton Harbor into Grand Haven.
Poor black people should live in inland ghettos, not on Lake Michigan in property that rich white retirees might want.
Think of all the economic stimulus! Building luxury retirement condos and summer homes, boat sales, golf courses, etc.
;)
SIA
@sukabi: I really don’t understand it. Is it a mad power grab trying to beat the demographics clock? Or is it just insanity? They can’t pillage the country for the Koch Brothers if it’s destroyed.
piratedan
@Joe Beese: you’re right Joe, we’re baaad people. We’re witholding our disdain until we’re welcomed with open arms as liberators, then, with our troops already in place on the ground, we can move in our mercs and contractors to secure the oil reserves in sweetheart deals. Screw the old passe’ Republican nationbuilding model that we halfassed before, besides its still too early to tell if the infrastucture is gonna need to be rebuilt before we even cross that civil war threshold. Once we’ve accomplished the fait de’ accompli, then and only then, will it be safe for us to express our outrage.
It’s not as if we’re looking for weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Queida and the like, just a simple regime change with a touch of restraint. Besides, the Frogs make a much better stalking horse than the Limeys, dontchathink?
gene108
@Strandedvandal:
What did you expect landing up in India during peak summer?
cleek
@Joe Beese:
breathless baseless hyperbole.
Stillwater
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I think you’re confused.
The demographics of Benton Harbor contrast sharply with those across the river in St. Joseph.
White Black Household Income
Benton Harbor 5.49% 92.40% $17,471
St. Joseph 90.31% 5.11% $37,032
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
where the white women at?
RossinDetroit
Benton Harbor borders a mostly white city called St. Joseph, which is much more prosperous. It’s nicknamed St. Johannesberg. My guess is B.H. gets annexed and redeveloped, moving all of the undesirables out of that nice real estate.
Strandedvandal
@gene108: Peak is in a month in this region. And I expected hot and muggy.
Yutsano
Stupidest. Sports. Column. Evah. Basically saying that Pete Rose not being in the Hall of Fame hurts his fee-fees.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@SIA:
they are motivated purely by instinct, like a Jurassic superpredator extincting its prey base.
Maude
@paradox:
concretecontractor.com Colorado.
I put in search engine, how was Hoover dam concrete cooled as it cured.
This is a great question you had there. It has the how they did it.
Edit had wrong name , it’s concrete contractor.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Stillwater: im not confused, Stil. You are confused. You have mistaken Feyd and the Harkonnens for allies when they are our kanly-sworn enemies.
SIA
Inhuman monsters. Good answer.
Linnaeus
@Stillwater:
It’s really interesting how the St. Joe’s-Benton Harbor area is a study in the two different Americas that still exist in this country. Standing in St. Joe’s, you’d never realize that just across the river, there’s a community that’s nearly everything your community isn’t, and vice versa.
Linnaeus
@RossinDetroit:
This would not surprise me in the least.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@RossinDetroit: yup. think of the stimulus to local economies!
WaterGirl
@SIA: That can’t possibly be legal. Right?
After I clicked submit I had a flashback to 1972. Freshman in college, first time voting. My friend Robin Atlas was telling me all about this break-in at some hotel called watergate and about all sorts of illegal activity. I recall telling her that if that were true, we would be hearing all about it on the news. I voted for Nixon.
Stillwater
@Linnaeus: Only harsh metaphors capture how crazy it really is.
Phoebe
I just saw the documentary Still Bill, about Bill Withers, because you people (I don’t remember which ones) recommended it. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.
I cannot thank you enough.
Thank you. Also: Jesus FXXXXXXX Christ. It’s great. Thanks again.
RossinDetroit
David Simon says that the ruling class no longer hs a use for 15% – 20% of the working class. But apparently they want their real estate.
http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/2530/simon_4_1_11/
gene108
@Strandedvandal: April / May are the hottest months in India. At some point you are just splitting hairs, when the night time temps don’t drop below 30 C and highs area degree or two above or below 40 C (that’s about 90+F for the lows and 110 F for the highs).
I will say there’s something about the tilt of the Earth and the intensity of sun light, which makes the heat in India feel different than in the U.S. I’ve met people, who came to the U.S. from India, during July or August, and they complain about the heat here (New Jersey). They say (and I agree with them) the sun feels hotter or more intense here. When I tell them it’s at or just below 30 C, they are surprised, because of how hot they feel.
P.S. I think the preferred term for nigh times in India is ‘sultry’, instead of ‘muggy’ or at least that’s what my relatives say, when it’s hot all the time there.
Joe Beese
Nope. Just an “inconvenient truth”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/15/obama-sarkozy-cameron-libya
Stillwater
@SIA: They can’t pillage the country for the Koch Brothers if it’s destroyed.
The pillaging comes first. Followed by a survey of the damage. Followed by the inevitable assertion that liberal policies brought us to our knees! So vote GOP!
Stillwater
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: im not confused
HG-W/M_C:
Just another in a long line of examples that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Joe Beese: Obama has not “committed” anything. The coalition is trying to pressure Qaddafi to step down.
If you want to rant about something, put your shoulder to the wheel on A-stan.
Stop the droning.
It just makes more Taliban.
Jay C
@Linnaeus:
Why should anyone want to “realize” this? There’s a reason why “they” are across the river…
Linnaeus
@Jay C:
Point taken.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Stillwater: lol, you dumbass, I’ve sailed out of Pier 1000.
What the fuck is your problem?
joe from Lowell
@Bob Loblaw:
Exactly. The Democrats spent two solid years reaching across the aisle and trimming their sails and doing what it took to actually get legislation passed when they had a majority. It was all realism, all the time, because they couldn’t let that opportunity pass.
Now, it’s contrast time. They don’t have to worry about what can pass, just what they believe in. Same thing with Obama’s budget speech this week.
SIA
@WaterGirl: Well don’t feel bad. I voted for Perot. :)
@Stillwater: It always comes around to that conclusion anyway, doesn’t it? But, tick tock.
artem1s
starting heirloom tomato seeds today. rewired the grow lamp yesterday. looking forward to the Indians game today. Should be interesting with 60mph gusts. they have a chance to win 10 in a row today. the mayanapocalypse is surely coming…
speaking of which I’m thinking that the TeaGOP solution to drowsy air traffic controllers will be full automation. Happy Judgment Day on Thursday (4/21/11) folks!
http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Judgment_Day
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@joe from Lowell: But all their energy had to be devoted to HCR. And even then it was a close call.
WTF is wrong with you people?
The country is still roughly 50% bubba, and Obama needs to get reelected in 2012.
joe from Lowell
@Joe Beese:
Um, no.
You are the most gullible human being on the face of the earth. Any attention-seeking con man tells you what you want to hear, and any critical reasoning or even reading skills you might have go right out the window.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
US ambassador to Malta, Douglas Kmiec (former constitutional law profesor at Pepperdine and former dean at the Catholic University of America) resigns after been accused of spending too much time writing and speaking about his Catholic faith.
Stillwater
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Have you gone inland from those beautiful Marinas you sail out of?
You’re ridiculous.
Strandedvandal
@gene108: I was going off what locals are telling me. When the skies are clear, it’s quite nice. I don’t mind the heat so much, I am from the desert region anyway, it’s when the clouds come in and the humidity cranks up that everything gets sticky. The thunderstorm that rolled in this evening was quite the show. Lightning stuck the tower next to the hotel and it made a sound as if a bomb went off, which was the first thing I thought sadly.
WaterGirl
@SIA: I just feel bad because at that point in my life, I was one of “them”. You know, one of the low information voters who don’t believe you even after you give them the facts and even spell it out for them. Oh well. I was only 18 coming out of a republican family. Last vote for a republican, though.
Corner Stone
@Yutsano: I was shocked when I heard my local sports broadcasters mention Pete Rose is/will be 70.
Not cool.
Keith G
I am at work but can’t concentrate. Izzy, one of two DSH grey tabby sisters (and the best cuddle kitty evah), was lethargic and had no appetite at breakfast – 4 AM. Given the time, I went on to work and went home over lunch. No change. Only a nibble on her fav Sci Diet canned.
So she is at a clinic waiting to be seen and I am at work a few blocks away trying to get something done.
Ugh!
joe from Lowell
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
WTF are you talking about?
You just repeated the point I made, in less knowledgeable form (they got quite a bit more passed than just HCR. It was the most accomplished legislative session in decades), and then insulted me for it.
I haven’t the foggiest idea how you managed to read what I wrote as a criticism.
Corner Stone
@artem1s:
Grow lamp?!
Nice knowing you arty. DEA/BATF in 3…2…
Amir_Khalid
@Keith G:
Here’s hoping Izzy’s OK and just having a mood.
WaterGirl
@Keith G: Oh, no. But we will hope for a simple problem that is easily fixable. I can’t imagine being able to work, either. Hopefully you have some mindless task you can do, or at least pretend to do. Is someone with her at the clinic?
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
FTFY. I’m not saying the Democrats don’t believe in comprehensive immigration reform, but you should never take anything a politician says literally, least of all when he’s campaigning. It’s always at least part posture, with more of it being posturing the less likely the legislation is to pass.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Stillwater: what is your problem? I just said the same thing RossinDetroit and Linneaus are saying. That land is too valuable for po’ black folk to occupy. Its too close to the lake.
I have relatives that have summer homes in Grand Haven and in Traverse City.
Summer home/resort/retirement communities are big bidness in Michigan.
sukabi
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: in a couple of communities in Florida a couple of years ago they were using “eminent domain” and “neighborhood blight” as the apparatus for seizing waterfront neighborhoods… this was ramped up after a Supreme Court ruling earlier that gave gov. broader powers to use eminent domain to seize property from one private citizen to give to another private party… “economic development” is the only reason that’s needed to seize one person’s property and give to another.
Amir_Khalid
And now for some sports. Jamie Carragher got knocked out cold in a head-to-head collision with teammate and has been taken off. Ouch. Still 0-0 at the Emirates.
"Serious" Superluminar
Re: Libya
There’s no evidence NATO have committed to a anything further than 1973, and I very much doubt they will. It’s all posturing at the moment, leave the outrage for when something concrete happens (if it does…).
Yutsano
@Corner Stone: I just lurve the constant drumbeat to get Johnny Hustle into the HoF. Like “lifetime ban” means nothing because, well, he still was good dammit! Excuses for elite athletes, even when they did what Rose did, still stand for the sportswriting class. I propose the go third in line behind the bankstas and billionaires. I think we can manage without em.
WaterGirl
Can anyone recommend a good news aggregator? I have been going to the Daily Beast, but it’s just getting sleazier and sleazier, and I would rather not give them my clicks anymore.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@joe from Lowell:
i guess i misinterpreted this as more concern trolling.
sry, i apolo if i have misjudged you.
Obama said “social compact” in his speech, but he also had to say “free markets”.
Stillwater
@Yutsano: Like “lifetime ban” means nothing
And apparently it means even less because Rose agreed to a deal.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
Does anyone have time to mock a Randroid for me?
I’m busy hunting through my old boxes of papers for the Donald’s Mexican birth certificate…
cleek
@Joe Beese:
your conclusion does not follow from the evidence.
once again, you and you fellow dingbats are just making shit up because that’s the only way you can satisfy your need to hate Obama.
RossInDetroit
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
St Joseph is easy driving distance from Chicago. Think condos. that lakefront is wonderful and the property would be a gold mine if not for the inconvenient residents there.
joe from Lowell
@Roger Moore: Thank you I’d never before realized that individual politicians posture for their supporters.
When talking about what a political party or caucus believes in, whether any individual member’s stance is heartfelt or convenient is irrelevant. It’s still the position, their beliefs, of the collective organization.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@sukabi: yup, its the invisible hand of the market fisting the poor again.
Jamey
@CA Doc: The missus and I have been good at massaging expectations. We just sent home my soon-to-be-eight-year-old’s BiFFL after a birthday sleepover. We took the two for conveyor belt sushi, came home and had cake, let the two watch a movie, give each other spa treatments, etc.
Much easier than a party at an alternate venue–especially since, with Brownies, classmates, activity partners, friends and friends’ siblings, the invite list could be tougher to negotiate than that of Will and Kate’s forthcoming nups.
Next year it all could go to hell: Already my daughter is talking about having “all my friends” to a pool party or go ice skating. Here in NNJ, we’re talking about a minimum of $25/head…
joe from Lowell
@sukabi:
It wasn’t actually ramped up, nor did the Kelo case broaden the authority to use eminent domain for cases in which the ultimate owner of a redeveloped parcel was a private party. The case was just an affirmation of existing case law, backed by decades of rulings. The libertarians who pushed the case were trying to roll back the status quo, not prevent its expansion.
piratedan
must be time for some more subbed anime!
Corner Stone
Gov’t asks high court to take GPS tracking case
“The Obama administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to take up an important privacy case for the digital age, whether the police need a warrant before using a global positioning system device to track a suspect’s movements.”
HT TalkLeft
Amir_Khalid
@Yutsano: Not a baseball fan, of course, but I have to agree with you. That columnist has got his reasoning exactly backwards. What the steroid takers did doesn’t mean Pete Rose should be eligible for the Hall of Fame along with them, it means they should be ineligible along with him.
Corner Stone
@cleek: cleek, what do you think is going to happen in Libya?
I’m just asking for your SWAG.
joe from Lowell
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: De nada.
Actually, the people who came up with the concept of a social compact were big believers in free markets. The free market fetishists of today need to edit down Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith and the rest of the Enlightenment into something almost unrecognizable in order to pretend that those thinkers opposed the idea of a social compact, or even the use of government redistribution to protect it.
Corner Stone
@RossInDetroit:
How dare those people keep that property from the rest of us!
The balls on those people!
artem1s
@Corner Stone:
nothing to see here, just though it might come in handy for my boehner tan.
joe from Lowell
@cleek:
I don’t think it’s entirely personal about Obama.
Humanitarian intervention poses some genuinely difficult questions for people who bring a liberal-left perspective to international affairs.
Sufficiently difficult that a lot of dimmer bulbs are driven to deny that such a thing exists, and pretend that it’s something else that they are more competent to discuss.
Hence, the United Nations authorizing force to protect civilian populations from a military that is attacking them is transformed, in their minds, into a war of aggression in violation of international law.
I guess it’s not just the generals who are doomed to fight the last war.
Amir_Khalid
Arsenal 1-0 up over Liverpool on a penalty in the 8th minute of injury time. Shit shit shit.
ETA: Penalty to Liverpool!
ETA: 1-1!
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
Technically speaking it’s a permanent ban, not a lifetime ban. It sounds silly, but it’s actually important. There are some people who suggest that Rose should be allowed to go into the HOF after he dies because then the lifetime ban will be over. Because it’s a permanent ban, though, he’s still not allowed in even after he’s dead.
IMO, any sportwriter who supports Rose but not drug users is a fucking tool. The PED cheats either broke no rule (if they offended before there were rules explicitly banning PEDs) or broke a rule and lived with the punishment, which has never been a permanent ban. Saying that the players should be punished for breaking an unwritten rule that the writers decided on without telling them is grossly unfair. Rose, OTOH, broke a rule that had been on the books for well over a century and which had always given a permanent ban as the punishment. He then signed an agreement saying the Commissioner was justified in imposing a lifetime ban. To suggest that Rose was somehow a lesser offender is ridiculous.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: maybe it’s more accurate to say, that it hadn’t been used in such a blatant manner or so frequently prior to the 2005 US Supreme Court ruling… usually gov kept the seized land for “right of way” purposes… highway expansion, power grid, airport expansion, ect… the 2005 ruling made clear that “economic development” could be used as a means to put in private resorts and that kind of crap… and big money took that ball and RAN.
SIA
@WaterGirl: Not sure which is worse, voting for a Republican or for a little cartoon man. :D
Anyway, a lot of us were low info at 18. I was busy getting very, very high. I reflexively voted Dem after that, but we’re allowed a pass once or twice, yes?
I didn’t become really political until the 2000 Coronation. Been mad ever since, alas.
ETA, also re news source – I like Greg Sargent (The Daily Plum) and Steve Benen (Washington Monthly) for coverage of the most important stories and good analysis & links.
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: Thanks for the correction, I tend to conflate the two in my mind. And yeah the distinction matters, because the calls to put him in will get even louder after he’s dead.
sukabi
and what happened to that property in the US Supreme Court Case in Kelo vs. New London after it was seized? It sits empty, no development, just an abandoned, empty lot… Now THAT’S economic development…
SIA
@Keith G: OH, I so understand that anxiety. But it could just be UTI or something similar. If the vet can’t find anything wrong with her, try this site. It has lots of helpful info on natural remedies for animals and humans. Thinking good thoughts for her.
Roger Moore
@sukabi:
And the Libertarians have tried to use Kelo as an excuse to roll back all kinds of stuff. It’s a great excuse to try to expand “taking” to include any regulation of any kind, so that attempts to end Kelo would effectively prevent any limits on what property owners do with their land.
befuggled
@burnspbesq: Cool. Looks like originals, too. For a while it looked like they were planning to become a tribute band.
sacman701
@114 – I thought the first penalty call was very soft, the second one was a make-up call. The result was fair, but it should have been 0-0.
CADoc
@Jamey: There is light at the end of the tunnel on this birthday thing. My 11 yr old was willing to wait from February to June so he could take 2 friends to the Giants game. Now THAT’S something worthwhile to chaperone!
Tom Q
@Roger Moore: And, just to emphasize your point: the rule Rose broke has been posted in many stadium dugouts for the entire time Rose played.
The steroid thing is, as you say, much more complicated. If the writers now claiming they’ll never vote for anyone connected with the issue hold sway: 1) many of the greatest players of the generation will be Hall of Famers by any standard except having the Cooperstown ceremony; 2) it will be a hugely selective punishment, as the users we know about are simply those who were leaked about from possibly a single random test — meaning many other users may simply have evaded exposure; 3) given the many forms of performance enhancement snickered about through earlier periods (esp. amphetamines), it’s randomly choosing to find one generation’s drug of choice evil but another’s just dandy.
Lurking behind alot of this is old-timer “the players today aren’t squat compared to those in MY day”. (And I’m allowed to say this, given that I’m approaching old-timer-hood myself)
sacman701
addendum: In one respect, 1-1 is better than 0-0: Kuyt now has more goals than Torres for the whole season.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: not quite sure I understand what you’re saying…
It seems to me that seizing one person’s property to give to another would set EVERYBODY’s hair on fire… not just libertarians.
Acquiring “right of ways” for infrastructure development is an entirely different thing than displacing neighborhoods to put in condos, resorts or upscale shopping.
I can see a very legitimate reason for wanting to limit the scope of seizures to reasonable “right of way” infrastructure projects.
Nellcote
@WaterGirl:
http://www.politicususa.com/
Nellcote
@CADoc:
Assuming you’re going to the fabulous PacBell Park, there’s some fun Giants promotions in June.
http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/schedule/promotions.jsp?c_id=sf
joe from Lowell
@sukabi:
That isn’t actually true.
Eminent domain has always been used for both purposes.
Actually, the first laws authorizing the seizure of land on behalf of a private party, for the purpose of promoting economic development, were the Mill Acts of the late 1700s, which were often passed by the same legislators who’d approved the Bill of Rights. These acts allowed private citizens to seize – by flooding – the land of their neighbors so that they could power their privately-owned, commercial girst (grain-grinding) mills, in order to promote the development of farms in the vicinity.
The Koch brothers funded a lot of media outlets, like Reason magazine, that spread a lot of bullshit about the state of eminent domain law. And with a poster child as attractive as the blue-collar homeowners of New London, they were able to tug a lot of liberal heart strings. (I was criticizing the Ft. Trumbull plan back in the 20th century, as a grad students working on my masters degree in planning.) But their line about the history legal status of private-to-private eminent domain is simply bullshit.
joe from Lowell
@sukabi:
Yeah, it was a really terrible plan. They took a stable, solid neighborhood full of long-time homeowners and tenants – a neighborhood full of affordable single-family homes – and they just threw it away. A terrible, terrible waste.
joe from Lowell
@Roger Moore:
Wait a minute, are you saying that the Koch brothers media empire’s obsession with the case didn’t reflect a passionate desire to stand up for the little guy against corporate power? That they had another agenda?
How dare you, sir? How DARE you?!?
Roger Moore
@Tom Q:
IMO, a big part of what’s going on with PEDs is that they give writers an excuse for voting to settle personal scores. Almost every great player from the past generation is at least a suspected user, and a writer can always make up rumors if they aren’t there already. If they like the player (and he wasn’t caught red handed) they can argue the rumors are unfounded and vote for him. If they don’t like the guy, they can talk up the rumors to justify not voting for him.
joe from Lowell
@sukabi:
What about seizing dilapidated warehouse space to build neighborhoods? What about relocating ugly, intrusive, unpleasant industrial uses from a densely-built neighborhood full of apartment houses into an industrial park? What about replacing a few acres of surface parking in the middle of an urban core with housing and businesses?
You can’t make up your mind about a legal doctrine based on which party you find more sympathetic.
CADoc
@Nellcote: sadly, no promotions on the night I have tickets. But Mom’s credit card will undoubtedly be pressed into service to fill in that deficiency!
I’m probably more excited than my son, it will be my first time at AT&T. I’m actually an A’s fan from childhood but it gets boring being the only one in the family.
Roger Moore
@sukabi:
Sure, but the Libertarians want to go further than that. They argue that any restrictions on what a property owner does with his property, including stuff like environmental regulations and zoning, are a taking. So they use popular anger at Kelo to advance their more radical anti-regulation agenda. Here in California, for example, they put an initiative on the ballot that would have prevented Kelo type use of eminent domain but also would have ended rent control.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: it would be nice if any of those examples actually happened… nice to think about in theory, when was the last time any of those examples actually happened? and who was the property taken from?
sukabi
@Roger Moore: if that’s the case, it sounds like they are exploiting a poorly or too broadly written law for their own purposes… and would be an excellent reason to have strict regulations for maintaining clean water, air quality, ect. whether on private land or public… and huge fines for polluting your neighbors’ or public air and or water…
joe from Lowell
@Roger Moore:
Lucas vs. South Carolina Coastal Commission
Nice little combo they were going for there – combine their argument in the Kelo case with this little doozy, and you couldn’t impose regulations on the use of property unless they served to make the land available for occupation by the general public.
Tom Q
@Roger Moore: Absolutely. Watch how some writers twist themselves into knots to justify voting for David Ortiz but leaving out ARod.
joe from Lowell
@sukabi:
You mean like this?
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: there should be huge fines or some other kind of punishment associated with these kinds of cases for when the entity seizing property for “economic purposes” fails to deliver on their project and causes further “blight” to an area…
maybe that’s just me, but really if you’re going to take someone’s property with the government’s blessing, then you’d better damned well do something with it to contribute to the community at large, or face enormous fines for eroding the community’s tax base.
joe from Lowell
sukabi,
Ever read about the urban highways projects in the 60s and 70s? Just the kind of eminent domain you like, every inch seized for the construction of public infrastructure.
Too bad about all of the neighborhoods and cities destroyed, the racially-skewed demographics of the property owners who were pushed out, and the elimination of urban neighborhoods for the convenience of suburban commuters.
I’m afraid that there’s no constitutional shortcut here. You actually have to look at individual plans and make up your mind on the merits. You can’t just say “public owner good, private owner bad.”
joe from Lowell
@sukabi:
Fines on whom? The City Council? The municipal staffers who followed their directions?
We’re now fining public officials for doing their jobs poorly, instead of letting the political process handle it?
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: isn’t it convenient that in the info there isn’t any mention of what the property was used for prior to the redevelopment… no mention of how many people were displaced, how much they were paid to leave or where they went or how they fared?
so what you get is a very “positive” picture… only one side of the story… sure the city of Lowell may be better off financially, and certainly a number of “private investors” are much better off… but what happens to the displaced people, because you know damned well they won’t be able to afford to live any where near there.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: fines on the “new” property owners for taking property and failing to utilize it… which is supposedly WHY the property was taken to begin with.
sukabi
@joe from Lowell: I realize that, and that’s kind of what I’m getting at… most of the seizures have been done with an eye to benefit an individual or corporation, meaning projects are “planned” and properties are seized based on personal profit… and yes, screwing minorities and the poor is always one of the considerations in exactly where to build something.
Oh, and I personally don’t like any property seizures, but I can see where once in a while it might be necessary… but only when there isn’t any other option, and then the person losing their land should be compensated well above what the land is worth, not for pennies on the dollar as is the case now.
Roger Moore
@sukabi:
The problem is with initiatives. Because they don’t have to go through the back-and-forth argument that ordinary legislation does, and because the people circulating the petitions are free to be misleading to people signing them, it’s easy to include all kinds of buried provisions. In this case, they talked up the parts about preventing the government from taking your house and avoided talking about ending rent control. Their opponents were able to defeat it by pointing out A) that the parts that were supposed to prevent Kelo-type takings were already the law and B) the buried parts that most people wouldn’t like. But it’s an example of how Libertarians have tried to use Kelo to pass all kinds of much more radical restrictions.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
Yeah, we have an excellent example of the politics of road building with the Long Beach Freeway. It was originally intended to run from Long Beach to Pasadena, but was only run through the poor neighborhoods. When it got to South Pasadena, a nice wealthy white city, the locals pitched a monster hissy fit and managed to block the construction. We’ve been waiting for decades for the damn thing to be finished. Of course the traffic hasn’t disappeared; it’s just gone onto surface streets where it’s caused worse blight than the freeway would have.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: so if initiatives are a problem with screwing up the intent of existing laws… how about championing an initiative that would “reconcile initiatives with existing laws”…
something that would require all laws that are amended or otherwise changed via the initiative process to have all the changes to the law explicitly called out, reconciled and “reaffirmed” with a second vote, so that these “sneak attacks” would be more difficult to implement… and if not through a public vote, then through a vote on the “modified law” via the legislature…
TooManyPaulWs
Sam Axe movie tonight. Bruce Campbell. Doom to all enemies. And get the beer.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@joe from Lowell: oh you fucking retard. Sure they were. THEY WERE ALL LANDHOLDERS. That was when the social compact was White Patriarchy Social Cohesion Model and blacks and wimmens didnt vote.
Do I have to repeat my deconstruction of the Kain/Kuznicki “Pretend 8 Years of Bush Never Happened” Plan?
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Please do.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: your wish is my command.
backstory.
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I’d like to hear more about this “social justice” construct.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: its so simple a retard could get it. The old social compact failed when blacks and wimmens got the vote. A society cannot exist without a social compact, blah blah blah the consent of the governed.
So we are evolving a new one. Social Democracy. Like the brits have or like soc1alist Sweden has.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: I dont mind hybrid solutions a’tall. There can be market-based components.
But we need a lavish helping of social justice solutions to get us out of the ditch the freemarket fucktards put us in.
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
But we don’t have the infrastructure to support those kinds of models.
How do we evolve into that?
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: But doesn’t a freemarket provide needed solutions? How do we encourage innovation without the requisite rewards?
sukabi
@Corner Stone: define “freemarket”…
free market as in “free from regulation”, or “free from competition” or “free from oversight”… because that’s what those in charge mean when they espouse the virtues of the “free market”…
what they want is the freedom to rob you blind, while poisoning you and your family and leave you with no recourse.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: the problem is we are starting underwater.
Like I said to EDK, give me an example of a free market policy that worked.
He couldn’t do it.
WTF? innovation is going to happen anyways. Markets are going to happen anyways. No one needs to fucking coddle the Market. Read some 21st century shit like evolutionary economics.
Wake up.
Hey Cole, give this guy a front page slot.
He was in the comment trackback.
wallah.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone:
we already are evolving into that.
Obama is bricolaging existing strutures to serve a new purpose.
It can’t be stopped.
It can only happen faster or slower.
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: But if we don’t build in a reward for the makers then how can they provide support for the takers?
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: When we bricolage existing structures what happens to the ownership society of the existing infrastructure?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: wallah….are you so intellectually impoverished that you cannot think outside the box your overlords put us in?
sukabi
@Corner Stone: “the ownership society” is a euphemism for the wealthy own and control everything, and look where we are now, quickly becoming the land of the lords and the serfs…
past time to level that field.
sukabi
@Corner Stone: there is already a “reward” built into the structure… and would likely be the same kind of “reward”… ie, business owners / innovators take a portion of the profits as their reward…
except now they are taking their “profit” at the expense of their company, at the expense of their employees, and at the expense of the world at large… ie, they are gutting long-term company welfare / sustainability, you know things like R&D, workforce, and quality in favor of going after short-term profit… ie, doing everything to “meet market expectations”… which means they are more concerned with pleasing some “analyst” on Wall Street who doesn’t know squat about their business, rather than doing the long term investing in their own company and technologies and being a responsible “citizen” wrt the communities, countries they operate in.
sukabi
@Corner Stone: take issue with your “makers and takers” terminology… the CEOs, executives and shareholders are not “makers”. The people you describe as “takers” are the real makers… without them, all you have is a bunch of guys sitting around their boardrooms rolling in their dwindling piles of cash.
cleek
@Corner Stone:
i assume we’ll get entangled. but we haven’t yet.
and until we do, it seems pointless to assume we already are (except if you’re one of those people coughBeesecough who need to convince yourself that Obama is still as evil as you’ve always claimed).
Corner Stone
@cleek: Of course Obama is eebil. He’s the POTUS.
You don’t get that spot without doing it live.
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I’m just trying to determine how it is we can realize future rewards if we don’t set the award pointsets to a location that helps the ownership society.
Corner Stone
@sukabi: Bullshyyte. The makers set policy and determine our path moving forward. The takers sit back and find ways to grift off the system.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: you are kiddin’ right?
The Market is evolutionary. It is robust. It is fuckin’ beastin’. It doesn’t need a wet nurse.
You are no different than the rest of the serfs.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone: that is what evolutionary economics is all about. The Market needs restrained and channelled, not pampered and coddled. The Market needs a bridle, not spurs.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Corner Stone:
Name one. EDK couldn’t do it. Mebbe you can.
In the beginning the Market needed training wheels, sure. But it doesn’t anymore.
How do market-based solutions create jobs? Either by side effecting or trickle down. Highly inefficient. So what you get is a feast or famine cycle at best.
But we don’t even get that anymore…. the current crop of oligarchs has evoived to superpredator status in their evolutionary niche.
They are basically ruthlessly farming the underclass class for Profit.
Like I said, evolutionary economics takes this into account, and proposes a bridle for the market instead of the traditional spurs.
Let the Market become the servant of the People, instead of the master/false god.
Mandramas
@Corner Stone: Well, Yuri Gagarin and the soviet space program reached the space with no free market to push them. Free marked do not breed innovation, except in the rare cases where it is profitable.
Half of the high tech of America has been created on Bell Labs, the R&D division of a monopolistic, state based and regulated marked company.