I was not aware that badgers and coyotes team up to hunt, but according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (or, as my dad calls them, “the bunny sheriffs”), the two species do enjoy a beneficial partnership. This pair was caught on night-vision camera:
A coyote and a badger use a culvert as a wildlife crossing to pass under a busy California highway together. Coyotes and badgers are known to hunt together.
?Peninsula Open Space Trust pic.twitter.com/oS9BL5JOoK
— Russ McSpadden (@PeccaryNotPig) February 4, 2020
I love how the coyote wags its tail and leaps playfully at the badger. It has a “lets go!” energy every dog owner will immediately recognize and seems to urge its squat companion to hurry the hell up so they can go slay some ground squirrels or whatever. Then the coyote trots through the tunnel with the badger waddling stolidly in its wake.
It’s the cutest damned thing, but their complementary skills — speed to catch prey on the run and burrowing to flush out underground prey — must make them unstoppable bad asses. I demand to see this buddy film!
Open thread!
dr. bloor
Do the badgers realize that they’re the main course if they fuck up?
Kylroy
@dr. bloor: Are they, though? I don’t doubt that a determined coyote could take down a badger, but the damage the badger would inflict in return probably makes it a bad choice.
Jerzy Russian
I wonder where in California these events occurred. There are plenty of coyotes here in San Diego, but I am not aware of any evidence of badgers.
TaMara (HFG)
OMG, that was the most adorable killing team since I don’t know when (if I’d had more coffee, I’d have some clever movie reference here). Thank you!
Omnes Omnibus
@dr. bloor: I’d bet on the badger.
evodevo
@Jerzy Russian: I always thought of them as a north woods animal, but evidently they occur all the way from Canada to Mexico in the West…
satby
Popped open the Kindle to see this adorable video, which beats twiddling my thumbs at an empty market. Thanks for sharing. It’s amazing what we still don’t know about the creatures we share the planet with, isn’t it?
Mr. Mack
Has me wondering coyotes aren’t evolving. At our place, called, btw, Coyote Creek..we have watched a pack grow up here, and they are so used to us that I frequently catch my dogs playing with them and their pups. Recently, as my dogs were playing what has to be a canine version of grab-ass with two them, another five or so came out of the brush, but they just watched. Still, I was nervous enough to call my girls in.
germy
Badger and Coyote hunting together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVO4XIxjIEQ
(trigger warning: footage contains scenes of hunting and killing)
This world is just one big restaurant. Everybody eating everybody. How did God dream this up?
Feathers
“Bunny sheriffs”? I approve, although I’ve been partial to “trout troopers” myself. “Fish cops” also works. My brother worked for Marine Patrol one summer, so I guess I am more up on the aquatic insults.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): The ducks do okay with the winter storm.
JPL
@germy: Doesn’t he know he’s not to eat with his mouth open? chomp, chomp, chomp.
Citizen Alan
@germy:
According to Evangelical Christianity, the coyote and the badger (and all other carnivores) would have been vegetarians had The Woman not messed everything up with her wicked ways.
Betty Cracker
@Feathers: “Trout troopers” — gonna remember that one to lob back at my dad! :)
Miss Bianca
It would take a pack of coyotes – or at least a tag team – to take down a badger.
ETA: We have both badgers and coyotes out here in CO.
Jerzy Russian
@evodevo: I guess they have a low population density and/or have less tolerance for human populated areas.
Miss Bianca
@Mr. Mack:
As you should be. Coyotes are notorious for luring dogs out to ‘play’ and then ganging up on them. Not saying that’s what’s going on with your pack, but that’s a known thing about coyotes in general.
germy
@Citizen Alan: I’ve always maintained it was Adam who took the first bite of the apple. And then cooked and ate the snake who told him to do it.
Eve made a convenient scapegoat.
MattF
NYT Magazine article about Trump and Deutsche Bank. It’s likely that DB knows all of Trump’s financial secrets, Supreme Court will soon decide about revealing them.
MattF
@germy: And if anyone ever comments that you have a ‘biblical’ name, you can reply, ‘Yeah, like my cousin Snake’.
Gin & Tonic
I always get confused between groundhogs and badgers.
germy
Tulsi Gabbard sends ‘love and best wishes’ to Rush Limbaugh
Jager
At the Weslake Blvd exit on 101, I saw a coyote sitting in the grass watching the traffic go by at 80 miles an hour, his partner/mate was rolling around on the grass. They seemed very pleased with themselves.
Missed the bourbon thread last night. Try Basil Hayden if you get the chance.
Mr. Longform
I encourage you to read Alexandra Petri’s caucus experience – it is both hilarious and
perfectly illustrative of how these things go: “I went to the Iowa caucuses because I love democracy — well, I’m a fan of its earlier work “
Jim, Foolish Literalist
There were reports of two coyote attacks in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, a five year old was bitten in Lincoln Park before the mom drove the thing off, and a day or so later a guy reported being bitten on the ass about a block from Michigan Avenue. I looked it up for a previous discussion on coyotes here– it does keep coming up– and it looks like the cops were suspicious of the second report. I was curious about that second report– why would you make up a coyote biting you on the ass?– but I never did follow up.
Mr. Mack
@Miss Bianca: Yup I’ve heard that. Usually, it’s the pups they play with, with the coyote mom looking on, almost bored by it all. The last time when they all came out of the woods, i wondered if they weren’t setting up an ambush. But both of my girls are big..Georgia is 100 plus pounds, so they may have decided that they gave away too much weight for that fight.
Aleta
Feathers
@Gin & Tonic: Just don’t let the badgers find out. They are known to take advantage of this.
Honey badger don’t give a shit. Oldie but goodie.
MisterForkbeard
@germy:
Tell me you’re kidding
Ksmiami
@germy: omg you win the internets today – ps the Peninsula open space trust is in Palo Alto and surroundings.
sdhays
Talk about unintended consequences! That law was just supposed to allow cake makers to shit on gay people! It’s not supposed to be used to protect kindness!
germy
@MisterForkbeard: no, not kidding. It’s a headline from The Hill
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/481309-tulsi-gabbard-sends-love-and-best-wishes-to-rush-limbaugh
Aleta
@Aleta:
trollhattan
We have badgers? I want to see a badger!
We did have a lone wolverine show up in game cameras in NE California a couple years ago, I wonder if he has a coyote buddy too?
The coyote’s, “Come-on, this way” pose is super cute.
Quinerly
Coyote/Badger 2020!
Luciamia
@Kylroy: In Wind in the Willows, Mr. Badger is not to be trivaled with.
Feathers
@sdhays: Interestingly enough, that was the same logic used back in the Reagan administration in our town to allow churches to house the homeless and do other sorts of outreach in the church buildings themselves. Because the corporeal acts of mercy are part of the function of a church, zoning laws which allowed churches couldn’t be used to forbid them from housing the homeless or feeding the hungry. Big boom in church basement shelters and kitchens.
One of the sad outcomes for the Boston Archdiocese reckoning was that a plan to sell off a lot of church land to a foundation that would create large amounts of affordable housing apartment buildings fell apart because the default zoning for land a church is on is single family housing. So if the church was torn down, only single family homes could be built.
Spanky
Time lapse here.
Felanius Kootea
@Luciamia: Trifled?
Bill Arnold
@MattF:
Thanks; that is a good piece. Here’s a formal link to encourage others to look at it.
The Money Behind Trump’s Money – The inside story of the president and Deutsche Bank, his lender of last resort. (David Enrich, Feb. 4, 2020)
kindness
Cute. We have coyotes out in the Central Valley. I’ve never seen a badger around here. They’re up in the Sierras and it looks like out on the Coastal Range. I don’t think of coyotes as vermin because they are natures rodent killers but I’m surrounded by farm fields where I live. You have to have smart cats or the coyotes get ’em. Yea, I have indoor/outdoor cats. They don’t hunt over the fence or stray too far much. The ones that do are short termers.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: You would. :P
NotMax
“Why do you opt to hunt alone?”
“I don’ need no stinkin’ badgers!”
chopper
i have a coyote that visits my yard most evenings. uses it to prowl around the properties around me. which is nice cause i think he or she is helping with the rat problem.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jerzy Russian: The Peninsula Open Space Trust is based in Palo Alto (near where I live), so likely it’s on the SF Peninsula somewhere.
Judging by the traffic noise, I’d guess it’s probably somewhere along the 280, since it borders undeveloped parkland along the Coastal Range, although since they said “highway” rather than “freeway” suggests it might be somewhere on Highway 92, which goes from San Mateo to Half Moon Bay.
TaMara (HFG)
@JPL: They are on day two of three “cooped” up. They are unhappy. And you know who they are going to blame…
BroD
Anyone wondering how humans and dogs came to bond should watch this.
Cermet
@germy: simple – no such thing did – its evolution and its the law; as in law of nature – its brutal, cruel and without mercy. Without antibiotics, clean water and vaccinations, we’d still be losing nearly half our children to our wonderful illnesses. Amazing how people attribute all good things with the unseen spaghetti sky monster and all evil to nature because a book written by delusional or crazy people say its all real. Puzzling but goes explain alot.
Cermet
@chopper:or the local free range cat problem … .
Eric U.
The Democratic party is going to have to refuse to seat Iowa delegates or we are stuck with the idiocy of Iowa caucuses forever. Do they have the courage to do that?
sherparick
@Mr. Mack: @MattF: I think it is best to shelve all these expectations about all the shit finally coming out about Trump on these subpoenas and lawsuits. They will all be 5-4, Trump wins on the principle that it is IOKIYAR and to establish a White Supremacist Christianist, Neo-feudal Monarchy, he is the rough tool for the accomplishment of this “Noble” Objective, that the Conservatives/Reactionaries for the last 70 years to order society with the very rich on top, no restraint on their power to do as they will, and put everyone else in their proper place in the social hierarchy with the power of the state. So they will be all in on swinging this election by hook or by crook to Trump.
different-church-lady
The irony here being that Twitter appears to be melting down as well right now, so I had to cut-and-paste this from the sidebar of LGM:
The Moar You Know
@Mr. Mack: VERY common behavior. Estimated that 50% of coyote/dog encounters end in play sessions.
50% of them end up with one trying to kill (not an exaggeration) the other.
Nobody is sure why the difference in responses.
MagdaInBlack
@TaMara (HFG):
I went thru 10 northern Illinois winters with a pair of geese and a handful of ducks. I carried two 5 gallon buckets of hot water out to them, morning and night. I can tell you ducks ( and geese) do enjoy a hot foot soak ☺
That was my favorite part of the chore, watching them luxuriate in that hot water. Oh the duck chattering! ?
Gin & Tonic
@different-church-lady: Estonia has been using electronic voting for all elections for over a decade. The country seems to have survived.
sherparick
@Aleta: It will be really interesting when the Gang of 5 (Roberts and the other 4 Right Wing Federalist justices on the the Supreme Court) overrules the judge and sends these folks to prison, how they will distinguish the religious freedom of corporations and right-wing business owners to discriminate against women, LBGT, and eventually race, and how there is no religious right to try to save people from dying of thirst in the desert. The word salad will be spectacular.
The Dangerman
OK, Iowa. Heads up!! You need help. I’m here for you.
It goes … ONE … TWO … then reach down and buckle your shoes. If you are wearing shoes that don’t buckle, you’re doing it wrong.
Dupe1970
@Quinerly: I wish we could like comments.
Gin & Tonic
@Dupe1970: You can.
Kent
Turns out there is a lot more in the bible about helping the poor, hungry, and thirsty refugee than there is about hating on the gays or opposing birth control. Who knew???
Quinerly
@Dupe1970: ?
Kent
Estonia is a mostly urban country that is 1/3 the size of Iowa and with 1/2 the population. And the stakes are MUCH MUCH lower so much less incentive for fuckery by foreign or malicious actors.
NotMax
Open thread?
The memory foam in my house slippers has developed amnesia.
Foresaw this coming when I slipped them on this winter as it became chilly enough to do so and promptly ordered a back-up pair, which arrived last week. So the tootsies are once again toasty and comfy.
;)
MattF
@sherparick: I don’t expect Trump’s financial misbehavior to be revealed through lawsuits. The legal maneuvering serves mainly as a reminder that he’s a career criminal and has not changed his spots.
Aleta
@sdhays: They’re going to wear out that RFR act (enacted in 1993) from all the uses the right wing is trying to put it to! /s
The RFRA is now being used to argue against transgender rights. The rw claim is that the EEOC doesn’t have authority to enforce anti-discrimination laws (under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act) for trans people.
As I understand it (not a lawyer so prob. mistakes), when the EEOC sued on behalf of Aimee Stephens (fired after informing her employer she’s trans), a district court found that the RFRA prevented them from doing that because, the court said, Title VII (of the Civil Rights Act) doesn’t protect against anti-trans discrimination.
The EEOC appealed. In 2018 the Sixth Circuit reversed the district court. It’s now at the Supreme Court, which heard opening arguments last fall.
Bad times for our civil rights.
Kent
We live in suburban Vancouver WA (north of Portland) along a greenbelt and have coyotes passing along the trails behind our house every evening. I don’t usually see them but I see fresh coyote scat pretty much every morning when walking the dog. You can tell it’s not dog scat because it’s full of rabbit fur and seeds.
Anyway, my yellow lab who is friendly to virtually every single dog we ever encounter just bristles on alert when a coyote is near. He totally knows the difference. All the playfulness instantly vanishes. I’ve never let him get close to one and they don’t generally approach. But clearly there is always alarm.
Gin & Tonic
@Kent:
Excuse me?
Mr. Mack
@The Moar You Know: I think that we have so much small game here like rabbit and squirrel, they would likely opt out of tackling other creatures that could do damage in return.
VeniceRiley
My GF works in a prison, and they call the department that has rehabilitation mission “The Care Bears.”
J R in WV
@Jager:
Yes! Basil is the real goods. Another one I like is Buffalo Trace… high end smooth whisky but hard to come by here in WV, where the wholesale end is still controlled by the state ABC rather than someone trying to make a profit by providing the most popular goods. Yet in NYC the nearest liquor store to our hotel had plenty of both Basil AND Buffalo Trace. Go figure!
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
Yup. One of my inlaws takes whatever dogs are in the household to his southern Napa Valley vineyard every day, and one of them got badly ripped up by coyotes. It’s all fun and games until they decide it’s killing time.
Martin
@Jerzy Russian: Badgers are pretty much everywhere but coastal LA, OC, and SD.
Kent
@Gin & Tonic: Feel free to present your arguments about how the identity of the Estonian president Kersti Kaljulaid is more consequential to the rest of the world than the identity of the American president, Donald Trump.
Yes, I understand the Russians have fucked with Estonia. But the location of statue in Estonia is somewhat less consequential than the existence of a free Ukraine, the Paris climate treaties, the existence of NATO, world-wide trade wars, North Korean nukes, and middle east peace, and a hundred other things Trump has been empowered to do as a result of Russian meddling in our elections.
My point was that the incentives for rigging the American election are about 1000x higher than for a tiny European country like Estonia. So we can expect about 1000x the effort expended by bad actors, both foreign and domestic. I doubt it is just the Russians. I expect if groups like the Kochs also thought they could get away with it they would, perhaps already are. Especially now that we have the example of 2016 and the utter lack of consequences.
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know: almost certainly depends on the hunger level, and number, of the coyotes
Gin & Tonic
@Kent: You really think that hacking had anything to do with the location of a statue?
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: This speaks to the observation in the previous thread that the problem wasn’t the app, the problem was the idiotic process that needs to change but is resistant to change.
Estonia likely has good processes as well as other niceties like a national ID, rather than having to cobble together 3 different forms of weapon licenses to prove your identity.
Electronic voting isn’t necessarily a terrible idea. Electronic voting with no form of national infrastructure – user identity, trustworthy (to the voter) data verification, unified process, and so on is a terrible idea, and all of that shit is busted in the US.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kent:
One of my favorite bible facts is that the anti-homosexuality case revolves around a word that appears twice in Paul’s writing and nowhere else in Greek. It’s a compound word of ‘man love’ but as any linguist will tell you, that means diddly squat. The sentences it appears in condemn slavery and particularly prostitution of prepubescent boys. Not a context that suggests it means gay sex in general, but the basic truth is, the word is gibberish.
All laws in Leviticus except the ones telling you to be kind were declared void in the New Testament, of course. There is a fascinating clear reference to homosexual sex in a passage where God punishes people having orgies by making them like same-sex sex.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kent: Russia ALWAYS feels there is a reason to f*** with Estonia. During the 1990s, polls in Russia found that significant majorities of people felt that Estonia was Russia’s greatest danger.
Litlebritdifrnt
I have watched the latest episode of Dr. Who three times so far because it is fascinating. I love the way the writers of the series are trying to weave threads of current events into the scripts. Sunday’s ep was about plastic pollution, but not in the way you would think. Jodie Whittaker is doing a stellar job as the new Doctor and her companions are coming into their own, working and thinking independently. Sunday was also the first gay kiss (that I recall, although there could have been one during Captain Jack’s episodes). I hope you all in the US are able to watch.
Mostly lurker
@Miss Bianca: I spent a summer many years ago working on a cattle ranch. One day as I biked out to where I was supposed to work, the ranch dogs accompanying me flushed a badger. The biggest–about the size of a labrador–obviously had experience with badgers and immediately grabbed it by the back of the neck and pinned it to the ground, then choked it to death over the next 20 minutes or so by bearing down on it against the ground. The sound the badger made was heartbreaking, but I couldn’t think of a way to rescue it that wouldn’t get me bit, possibly seriously, either by the dog or the badger or both. So, yes, a dog or coyote can kill a badger, but I wouldn’t bet on it unless the predator had experience.
leeleeFL
@germy: I prefer the Lilith story, Adam being unfaithful to Eve with Lilith as the Real Original Sin.
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady:
Can someone please re-write this sentence or tell me what it’s supposed to mean?
Kent
@Gin & Tonic: I think the Russians are rather like Velociraptors. The are constantly probing the fences everywhere, in every corner. But the prize of the US presidency on the other side of the fence at one end of their cage is about 1000x more appetizing than the prize of the Estonian presidency across the fence at the other end of their cage.
That is all I’m saying. The fact that tiny European countries might be doing fully electronic elections successfully doesn’t mean it makes sense to do it in the US with our hugely dispersed voting systems and much higher prize for hacking.
lurker dean
@Spanky: was just reading about this. it looks to be mostly prefab on concrete, but still impressive. i’m sure the scientists and docs are working just as hard on a vaccine, hopefully they find one soon.
JaySinWA
@Quinerly:
Sounds like Trump/Pence 2016.
Kent
Yeah, OK, that wasn’t my main point. My main point was just because Estonia is doing electronic elections doesn’t make it a good idea in the US where the stakes for the entire planet are so much higher.
Amir Khalid
@WaterGirl:
I think it means that there’s a nihilistic streak in tech-innovator culture that will happily see things (social institutions, relationships, etc.) destroyed to make way for New & Better creations.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kent: Agree that electronic voting is far in the future for the US
Brachiator
Did not know about badger and coyote team ups. The script for the almost inevitable Hollywood buddy cop film almost writes itself.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: Thank you!
Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray
@Kent: And my main point was primarily to counteract DCL’s persistent Luddism.
Kent
I don’t know how things are done in Estonia, but I do know how they are done in Chile because my wife is Chilean and my 3 daughters are all dual-citizens. So we deal with maintaining both US and Chilean IDs and passports.
In Chile everyone has a national ID number from birth that goes on your birth certificate. That same number is used as your passport number, social security number, and driver’s license number. And it is printed on your national ID card called a “Cedula” that basically looks like a fancy driver’s license with holograms and such.
Every town in Chile has a Federal records office where you go to register births, marriages, etc. and go to renew your ID card and passport. The ID card is free, passports are not. But normally you can renew them both at the same time. Things like drivers licenses are actually low tech because the driver’s license isn’t used for ID, you present it with your actual ID card when you get pulled over and the police can scan your ID card and pull up your driving record. They don’t really even need your drivers license to do that.
When people go to vote, they just electronically scan the national ID card upon entry. No one doesn’t have one because you basically can’t do anything like cash a check without one.
Having a national ID like that also makes taxes about 100x easier. You just log into the web site of the Chilean version of the IRS with your national ID, they show you all the information they already have from you from employer-reported income and taxes with-held and taxes owed. You can agree with what they have and just click done, or you can edit/supplement their information as necessary. No Turbotax or paper forms nonsense.
Most Americans have absolutely no fucking idea how backward we are.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mostly lurker: that’s really interesting, I don’t have any personal experience, but I’ve always seen/heard (from nature documentaries) that badgers and their wolverine cousins punch and kill well above their weight, weasels, too. ETA: and of course, I think your average house cat could fuck up a German Shepherd
As to canines learning to kill. One time a rest stop in Nebraska an old guy came up to pet my dog, and we got to talking (I got to listening) and he told me about a half-coyote dog he had who could kill porcupines. He said he’d never heard of another dog who figured that out. Neither had I.
debbie
I did not expect that to be such a cute video. Would that we humans could cooperate as well.
Anyone else voting for paper ballots for everything?
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: And yet they’re still Estonia.
Brachiator
@Kent:
I enjoyed this little snippet from an article about how Chile is playing catch up with respect to cyber security.
different-church-lady
@WaterGirl: “We have to destroy the village to save it”
Barbara
@Amir Khalid: “New and better” being defined primarily by whether it results in revenue for them.
sdhays
@different-church-lady: Oops, that village was going to vote for us.
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray: Yeah, I’m so anti-tech that I’m posting this by passenger pigeon. ?
Ruckus
@germy:
He’s an asshole?
The whole thing is a cosmic joke?
He’s still trying to get it right? But found out it’s more fun to just watch?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@lurker dean: Not so much a case of finding a vaccine as growing enough virus in order to produce a vaccine. Viruses have to be grown, in either animal cells or fertilized eggs. It takes time:
How Flu vaccines are made
Flu vaccine’s egg free future.
About the current way many vaccines are made: “These are not the ordinary eggs you buy in the grocery store which are generally not fertilized. But it requires a fertilized hen’s egg.
So you’ve got to have a rooster and a hen get together, do their thing, then the eggs have to be laid. And then they have to be incubated until 10 days old for the idea culture medium.”
different-church-lady
@J R in WV: Michter’s rye or get out.
Kent
@Brachiator: I guess being a small country of 1.5 million on the border of Russia tends to focus the mind doesn’t it?
NotMax
@Kent
IMHO no matter how it is dressed up papers, please is abhorrent, invites abuse via mission creep and antithetical to freedom on entirely too many levels.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): You are going to get quacked at. Thanks for letting me know.
Kathleen
@WaterGirl: There is a strain of tech industry types who are anarchists.
Gin & Tonic
@different-church-lady:
Which is a darn sight better than being the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Kent
Honestly I think we are WAY past that at this point. With facial recognition, license plate recognition, security cameras everywhere, cookies tracking your every moment online. We are in the worst of all possible worlds where no one really has any anonymity but because the system is decentralized we can’t do sensible shit like prevent identity theft or easy universal voter registration.
You think an 18 year old black kid who gets pulled over walking on the side of the road in Mississippi the cops are going to say: “oh, you don’t have any ID? Sorry to bother you then, we respect your right to privacy, have a nice day sir.”
NotMax
@Kent
Basing any national mandatory registration program on what is quotidian in Mississippi is a misbegotten exercise from the get-go.
Brachiator
@Kent:
It’s also that, as I think Cheryl pointed out, a disproportionate chunk of the history of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Russia again, has been devoted to fucking up and fucking with Estonia, and with Estonian resistance.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
more coyote-based interspecies interaction
Martin
@Kent: This exactly. The US has no agreed-upon notion of identity. No process to enforce it or communicate it, which is why so many systems in the US are so fucked up with crazy ad-hoc local patches. Yes, a national id does invite abuse, but not nearly on the scale as a million local jurisdictions all rolling their own shit, deciding that the polling place needs to be as far from the black people as possible, deciding that a gun license is a better form of id than from the state university, that the DMV will only be open when the fields need to be harvested, and so on.
In a triple hierarchy system like the US, having a national ID means the cities can help ensure the state is honest and both ensure the feds are honest, and vice versa – and they are generally motivated to do so.
NotMax
@Kent
Will add also that what you describe is a problem with policing, not a problem with I.D. Addressing the source of where and how the problem emanates, not accepting it as a given and attempting ameliorative measures based on it being a given, is the greater priority.
sdhays
@Martin: We also already have a national ID. It’s called your Social Security number. It’s just a lot crappier than what other countries have.
lurker dean
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: aha, good info, thanks!
Kent
@Martin: Somehow lack of a national ID hasn’t prevented the US from leading the civilized world in incarceration rates of minorities, police misconduct, identity theft, voter suppression, and bureaucratic pigheadedness. The notion that somehow not having an ID card in your pocket somehow makes you more free is a uniquely American conceit that is belied by anyone who has experienced life in a more modern and civilized country.
Martin
@sdhays: But it doesn’t serve as an ID:
1) Nobody can use it as an ID – that’s against the law.
2) There’s no validation of it as an ID. An identity is built on a chain of trust, so that you can take that identifier and work back through supporting information that the ID is yours – that includes other documentation but also biometrics, photos, etc. Social Security number has none of that. The Social Security Administration uses fucking Equifax to validate your identity when you set up an online account.
3) It’s fundamentally broken as an ID. 6% of Americans have more than one SSN, and 15% of all SSNs are assigned to more than one person. And there are Americans that don’t have a SSN because they aren’t paying in. You don’t need to apply for one at birth.
different-church-lady
Remember when they promised our Social Security number would never be used as a personal ID number? Good times, those.
Martin
@Kent: I’m of the view that not having a national ID enables those things to happen.
lurker dean
@Spanky: was just reading about this. it looks to be mostly prefab on concrete, but still impressive. i’m sure the scientists and docs are working just as hard on a vaccine, hopefully they find one soon.
@lurker dean: looks like it took over a year for sars. that’s long :(
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-why-it-takes-at-least-a-year-to-make-a-vaccine.html
NotMax
@Kent
Would be much less antagonistic towards the concept if it includes an ability and process to opt out for conscientious objectors.
Ben Cisco
So I got a look at the list of GrOPer candidates for the Senate here in the 205 – best described as a smorgasbord of crap:
Moore’s got loser stink (among other things) on him. A passel of current Senators are backing Sessions, and Tuberville got the much-coveted Sean Spicer endorsement.
Anyone queuing up to write Doug Jones off is doing so prematurely…
Kelly
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
When I was a child we had a Momma cat that did fuck up the neighbor’s German Shepard.
WaterGirl
@Kathleen: This is true. Libertarians, also. thanks for putting that together for me.
WaterGirl
@Ben Cisco:
??
Kent
@Martin: That was my point too. The notion that we actually have any privacy in this digital age is nonsensical. We have the worst of all possible worlds.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: I’m guessing that is Ben’s AL area code
Kent
What are you conscientiously objecting too? Paying taxes? Paying into social security? Having a drivers license? Having a credit card? Having a bank account? Having a netflix account? Having a facebook account? Having a plastic card with your picture and ID number on it?
I’m just wondering what conscience has to do with it.
Kelly
@Kent: Have you followed what a mess Oregon has made of Real Id? Stalled in protest for 15 years it’s now impossible to issue enough id’s by the deadline. Fortunately I have a passport.
NotMax
@Kent
The universe of privacy has diminished but we still maintain the ability to have as much (or as little) privacy as we choose to through our actions and interactions rather than having even that remaining penumbra of personal sanctuary dissipated by overarching legislation.
Ben Cisco
@WaterGirl: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Correct!
Steeplejack (phone)
@WaterGirl:
Area code. West-central Alabama.
Ben Cisco
An ID, even a national one, is only as good as the authorities’ willingness to accept it. We’ve had citizens deported whose ID wasn’t nearly as helpful to them as it should have been…
Gin & Tonic
@different-church-lady: I have for many years refused to provide that number in interactions where there was no legal basis for requesting it, and have found its use as an ID number is much rarer than it used to be.
NotMax
@Kent
What is the objection? For one (there are others but trying to keep this short), the government having controlling authority as to whether or not my presence in public and movement therein is valid, and the accompanying presumption of criminality (or malicious intent) unless authenticated.
Bringing up driver’s licenses is a red herring. Operating a motor vehicle on any but one’s own property is an implicit contract that one has been certified capable of doing so.
Brachiator
@Kelly:
California Real ID is also a mess. I don’t even know why all this nonsense is necessary.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Because security theater never has a closing performance.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@lurker dean: Welcome! TV and movies have not done medicine and science a lot of favors as they make it seem like it’s magic and people can whip up a batch of vaccine like baking a cake. Except it takes time and/or very expensive equipment and in many cases, Millions of eggs…
(I am not in any form a health care worker, I just read a lot and I work with a lot of health care people)
Watching things like CSI or medical shows where they get results/cultures in minutes make my head want to explode…
Kent
@Brachiator: Yes I have. The Real ID fiasco is a direct consequence of not having a legitimate national ID. The Federal Government is basically trying to strong-arm states into doing their job for them by turning drivers licenses into a more secure form of ID and citizenship validation. Instead of actually implementing a real national ID. But it is still half-assed because only about 80% of adults even have drivers licenses.
Same thing is happening here in WA except that our DMV is ahead of Oregon. We all travel overseas frequently so we all have passports. So I don’t know when I’ll get around to upgrading my drivers license.
Kent
It is all driven by Homeland Security and the realization that states were issuing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. Can’t have undocumented immigrants boarding planes with state driver’s licenses. At least according to homeland security. Perhaps they do have a point in that any Saudi terrorist could have crossed the border and use fake paperwork to get an old OR or CA drivers license and use that to fly. The problem was that the Federal government was using drivers licenses in the first place for ID screening when they weren’t created for that purpose at all.
catclub
@Felanius Kootea: Tribbled
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
Indigenous American folks been telling coyote/badger buddy stories for thousands of years. I especially like the ones where Mrs. Badger talks about her husband’s no-good shady buddy.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That makes sense, now that you say it. I have never lived in a place where it was referred to by the zip code.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: I think it started as a pop culture thing of people referring to Manhattan (?) as the 212 (?), but it started after I started to disengage from pop culture.
Brachiator
@Kent:
I was being somewhat snarky when I said I didn’t know why this nonsense was necessary. I know the Homeland Security rationale. But you have also hit on another point.
One of the ideas behind ID cards is not to make things easier for citizens, but to allow the state to more easily identify “undesirables” such as undocumented people. It’s all about ways to single out “people who don’t belong.”
And inevitably, oppressive governments also use this to single out people who are “troublemakers” or otherwise undesirable.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Like the 90120 zip code for beverly hills, I guess.
phein60
@evodevo: They are now found throughout Illinois, although they prefer grasslands in the north and central parts of the state.
Just what we need: We already have to guard our pets from coyotes, and now they have colleagues?
Kayla Rudbek
@Brachiator: some other considerations: fleeing domestic violence or parental abuse, going into witness protection, being a child of nut jobs that do home births and deny their kids birth certificates, etc. – how do people who 1) have good reasons to change their identity or 2) have to establish an identity deal with a national ID?