Please join us this evening for some politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.
We meet every Tuesday evening at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier than that for Dinner.
Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out the plethora of other DL meetings over the next week. Tonight there are also meetings of the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, WA chapters. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. On Thursday Drinking Liberally Bremerton meets. On Friday, the Centralia chapter meets. Finally, next Monday, the Yakima and Olympia chapters meet.
With 203 chapters of Living Liberally, including sixteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.
Today banks lobbied hard to Congress and the White House, arguing that depression-era laws which allowed credit unions to be non-profit are “unfair” to banks.
Of course, the reason why this issue has come up over the past couple of years is because lots of bank customers have left big banks in favor of credit unions. It’s no secret why – they’ve treated us like cash cows with little customer service (sometimes nothing more than a phone in the lobby to call their call center).
So close your bank account and open a credit union account. There are lots of them to choose from.
Well.. We never would have guessed:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n.....an-voters/
Marco Rubio is no longer klownservative enough for the bagger klownservatives who elected him.
It applies to even the most batshit insane of baggers – if your skin is not pale enough and/or your name ends in a vowel and/or you moderate your bat guano insane views just one little bit – you are on your way OUT!
How about you guys discuss this…would be interesting to see you justify this.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201.....dyufzbn-Uk
3 – Heh. Could it be that klownservatives are pissed that their cushy dod and homeland security contracting jobs are being made intolerable by leakers with a bill of rights hair up their backside?
Couldn’t happen to nicer people. Find another job.
As all klownservatives say, “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
@ 3, 4
Notice the Motto under the website title:
Domestic Surveillance Directorate
Defending our nation, Securing the Citizens, Promoting Transparency.
Now, that word, secure interests me.
In military parlance, that word means to put something under control. It is made safe for the situation in terms of preventing harm to personnel. You secure a ship, you secure an area. An area is secured when it is brought under control by a military force.
That being said, I wonder, who is it that is being secured here? For what purpose? The TeaBagger/Fascist party is sure as shit dead set against any reduction in military expenditures, and the military is now openly planting news stories in the mainstream media in support of maintaining those expenditures, and in support of fomenting war. Iraq is perfect evidence of that. They learned the lessons that W.R. Hearst taught them about propaganda. And it seems, those of Joseph Goebbles.
I’m not so sure I would feel comfortable being so tightly secured, that I would get in trouble if I felt like it was becoming too burdensome. And that last one, “Promoting transparency” is just a sick joke.
Florida has joined North Korea in banning its citizens from accessing the internet.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....ostpopular
In these financially straitened times, practical-minded students are being urged to pursue the MRS degree again.
http://www.today.com/books/pri.....6C10584675
It’s cheaper to pay a divorce lawyer, and you do less jail time.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....sband?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Her dumbass husband — after all, he married her, didn’t he? — says he “forgives” her and “still loves” her after she tried to hire a guy to kill him, intending to use his life insurance to pay for his murder. Er, if I were him, I don’t think I’d want to get back in bed with her — she might have a knife.
After nearly 40 years as a lawyer, I’ve noticed a lot of the hatred in this world is between people who are married to each other. You think countries have problems? War is small change compared to matrimony! You humans are weird. We rabbits don’t behave like that. After a few bites, kicks, and eye gouges it’s over.
Asian culture may have contributed to the crash of Flight 214. Apparently in Korean culture a junior employee (co-pilot) can’t question the actions of a more senior employee (pilot), even if he’s driving the plane straight into the ground. Why employ a co-pilot if he just sits there like a statue while the pilot plows the field like he was planting corn? Seems like a waste of the co-pilot’s salary.
@1 “Today banks lobbied hard to Congress and the White House, arguing that depression-era laws which allowed credit unions to be non-profit are ‘unfair’ to banks.”
That’s like saying antibiotics are unfair to infections.
@3 I’ve been saying for years that Democrats should behave more like Republicans. That can go too far, though.
4: So spying on your coworkers and neighbors is ok as long as you can piss of some republicans ? Very interesting.
I bet the Stasi had the same arguments
Turns out with the tank train derailment and explosion in Quebec, a fire preceded it. After it was doused, the firefighter turned the engine off. One engine had to be left on to power the brakes. The crew, when they had gone off duty, had set the breaks, but left one of the 5 engines running.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/.....antic.html
Meanwhile in Toronto a train incident of a different kind. A GO Transit commuter train was stranded in floodwaters, with around 1500 commuters stranded.
http://www.yorkregion.com/news.....-flooding/
If you don’t like it take it up with your klownservative idiot politicians…
They seem to support the surveillance state if you didn’t know. Right wing hypocrites seem to sing a different tune when their guy is in charge..
@13
Patriot Act ring a bell? Section 215?
# 10: It’s too early to tell if the Korean culture contributed to this accident. There was surprisingly little conversation in the cockpit during the landing approach. Interviews between the FAA and the pilots were conducted yesterday, but the results have not been released. There were four pilots in the cockpit at the time, the on-duty pilot and co-pilot, and the relief crew. I was surprised to hear that the relief crew was in the cockpit, usually the crew which is not on duty are in cabin seats reserved for them when they take off and land. Was there some prior indication of a difficulty which had them sitting in the jump seats in the cockpit instead?
There’s been a lot of talk about the Korean culture ever since a KAL801 flew into terrain in Guam in 1997. An investigation then blamed the Korean culture of subservance to elders, multiplied because most KAL and Asiana pilots are ex-military. But this was only one of several accidents (most of them considerably less serious but newsworthy anyway), and the S. Korean government got serious about re-training it’s airline air crews to be more independent and question authority. That’s why the head flight attendent, Lee, ordered the evacuation of the aircraft even though the pilots told everyone to remain seated (the pilots didn’t know that they had lost the back end of the airplane at the time).
The activist that wanted to organize a march with loaded weapons in DC, well he himself showed up and loaded a shotgun. His home was raided, and drugs were found.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....s-charges/
18)One of the reasons that I wonder if the AFA-CWA CB Lansing award for extraordinary heroism can go to foreign aircrews. The flight attendants seemed to do more things right than the pilots.
In Yesterday’s open thread, I mentioned the complicated size of Australian Senate ballots, due to a high number of political parties, and compulsory preferences on the ballot. Here is the list of parties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L....._Australia
Other than the Labor, Liberals, and Nationals, only the Country Liberals, Liberal National Party, Greens, Democratic Labor Party, and 2 parties formed by independent members, have representation in Canberra. The others, run candidates in the Senate, but uses the rules governing Group Voting Tickets to endorse like minded candidates of other parties. In the past, the DLP has used this to keep Australian Labor Party leaders they have a problem with out of the government. Although they had been dormant for 30 years, only coming back in 2010 with a win in a Senate Seat in Victoria. The issue that the DLP ran with until the 1970s was the Red Scare and Australian troops in Vietnam(they supported it
), but today, they are probably getting union voters who are pro-life and pro-traditional marriage.
Sarah Palin says that she considered a Senate run, but decided that the Republicans needed new faces in the electoral contests.
Translation: polling and/or fundraising queries showed she didn’t have a chance in hell of getting elected to the Senate. But she probably still thinks that by 2016 she has a chance to win the presidency, if she lays the groundwork right.
I’ll admit, a Clinton/Palin contest would be interesting, at least. But it would be a bit too much like the Saturday Night Live skit.
And late yesterday, Rodney Tom complained about the cost of the special sessions, and proposed a $250 fine per day on legislatures for each day the legislature is in special session.
That’s an awful lot of chutzpah – being the primary cause of the special sessions, and then grandstanding to voters by acting as if he had nothing to do with it.
I heard an fascinating ethical dilemma for non profits. The talker had a company that was raising, at it’s peak, $75 mill for X charity but spending 30% of that on “overhead’ of paid staff and promotions and growth. That was considered too much and the company lost it’s funding. The subsequent charity had a measly 3% overhead, using mostly volunteers and staff paid almost nothing, but only made 10 mill for the X charity.
His question, was which was better?
Some more background on the Quebec railroad disaster. The owner of the railroad, Rail World, is led by a CEO that once ran midwest regional Wisconsin Central. An attempt there to use Remote Control and one man trains led to the employees turning to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, after failing at previous unionization votes. The BLET is not against the two practices mentioned, just pro-safety, they represent Engineers at the Indiana Railroad, a company that perfected one man trains and RCL.
http://www.ble-t.org/pr/newsle.....page1.html
From the nrws reports, this train was a one man job.
@18 What hairbrain (sic*) of a pilot would tell passengers to stay aboard a plane that has just crashed? Crashed planes almost always burn. This one did, too. Everyone would be dead if they had followed this pilot’s instructions.
* Frequently misspelled as “harebrain;” rabbits are actually very smart, at least compared to you stupid humans.
@22 Delusion seems to be a Republican virus these days. Rick Perry still thinks he can win the presidency, too.
@23 Rodney is taking a well-deserved beating in the comment threads to the Seattle Times article on this subject. One of the proposals there is to fine legislators who switch parties after being elected. I have a better idea: Change the law to make that grounds for recall.
Looks like all you need to do to get rid of Walmart is threaten to require them to pay a living wage.
http://t.money.msn.com/now/wal.....e-showdown
@24 It costs money to raise money, but how much is reasonable? Many legitimate charities understandably hire professional fundraisers, because the charities themselves have neither the know-how or staff and infrastructure to bring in donations consistently, but for donors too-high fundraising costs mean too little of their contribution is actually going to the charity. And then, of course, you have the outright scams to look out for.
The Secretary of State’s office maintains a registry of charities where you can find information of what percentage of donations goes to fundraisers and how much to the charity. Some charities are just shells set up to stay within the law while 90% or more (sometimes 98%) of the donations go to the fundraiser, and these so-called “charities” are nothing more than vehicles to enrich the professional fundraisers. Purported police and firefighter charity groups that rely on telemarketing to solicit donations are especially notorious for this. The best thing to do is check the SoS info before donating.
Your tax dollars at work:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....print.html
What a freaking mess.
@25 What happens to a one-man train if the sole engineer has a heart attack or falls asleep at the controls?
If I were rich and could afford my own private jet airplane, I wouldn’t even think of flying in it without a two-man flight crew in the cockpit, even though much of aviation is automated now. I wouldn’t want to have to land it myself if something happened to the pilot.
Ian Welsh, getting it right last June 9:
http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-lo.....nce-state/
The NSA with all their technology couldn’t stop 3 recent terrorist attacks.. You gotta keep hoping that the Krackpot Kongress will eventually be deposed and this surveillance state will then be dismantled.
@32 That reminds me of a news story I read many years ago. A corporate turboprop was being ferried somewhere by a sole pilot. He needed to take a leak, so he put the plane on autopilot, and trotted to lavatory in the back of the plane. The cockpit door slammed shut behind him and locked itself. It took him an hour of kicking and battering to force it open, but fortunately he regained the cockpit before the plane ran out of fuel. By then, air traffic control was wondering what the hell was going on, because of no response to their air traffic instructions. As I recall, the pilot lost his license for this fiasco.
@33 Yeah, but for the rich what’s the point of having a more prosperous economy if they don’t get the extra output?
Some people born to wealth are generous with the fortunes accumulated by their robber baron ancestors, and some of the robber barons themselves turn into do-gooders after they accumulate more money than they know what to do with and need tax shelters (see, e.g., Bill Gates); but the self-made rich usually got that way by being selfish assholes with no compunctions about taking advantage of anyone they can (see, e.g., Bill Gates) and sometimes extremely dishonest to boot (see, e.g., Hank Greenberg).
See, e.g., CEOs with captive boards and crony compensation committees who pay themselves millions to run companies into the ground; and “whale” traders who get to keep their hundred-million-dollar bonuses after losing billions and bankrupting the banks that employed them.
One of laissez-faire capitalism’s bigger failings is the extremely large rewards conferred on wreckers and destroyers. We’re not talking about “creative destruction” here, we’re talking about unabashed looting. People like Boone Pickens, a corporate raider who tried to seize control of Boeing so he could break it up and sell it off in parts, and Mitt Romney (no explanation needed) come to mind. And the “London whale” whose unauthorized trading not only cost J. P. Morgan Chase Bank $5.8 billion in losses and counting (the final toll could exceed $9 billion) not only didn’t go to jail, he got to keep more than $135 million of compensation and bonuses. Meanwhile, a retail cashier whose register till comes up $1 short at the end of a frenetic day on her feet with many distractions gets fired and maybe prosecuted for theft. Our society has a twisted sense of values and priorities.
Workers are treated so badly in our economic system that nobody should work.
This was a slow day in the stock market, and I made only $51.76 today from sitting on my fat rabbit ass in front of a computer screen doing absolutely nothing, but that’s almost as much as I’d make by working 8 hours for federal minimum wage, and I don’t have commuting and other work expenses and my stock-speculating income enjoys special tax privileges.
I realize, of course, that if nobody worked there would be no production. Because workers create ALL of the world’s wealth, bloodsuckers like me wouldn’t have anything to skim except from each other, because there would be no economy. But so much of the wealth produced by the working economy has ended up in bloodsucking hands it would take several lifetimes to run out of other bloodsuckers to suck blood from, so as a practical matter, that isn’t a problem for the bloodsucking class.
I want to be completely honest with my readers here, so in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I incurred about $15k of paper losses in the recent short-lived correction that was prompted by the Federal Reserve’s talk of eventually withdrawing its subsidies to the financial markets. However, thanks to the glorious power of capitalism and financial markets to manufacture paper wealth from hot air, all of those paper losses have been reinstated to my stock portfolio, and as of today I’m about $6,000 richer on paper than I was a week ago when I posted that the $19,209.28 of my own hard-earned money that I stuck into the stock market beginning 30 years ago was then work $327k and change.
I’ve gotta say, can’t avoid it, that predatory skimming is MUCH more rewarding than honest work.
It strikes me as screwy that you stupid humans would create an economic system like this, but I’m just a rabbit, I had no say in it, and I’m only along for the ride. Kinda like a duck who parks his ass on top of a boxcar so he doesn’t have to fly south for the winter using his own wings.
I’ve gotta say, can’t avoid it saying it, that skimming the cream off the top of the economy is MUCH more rewarding than doing honest work.
It strikes me as screwy that you stupid humans created an economic system that works like this, but I’m just a rabbit and had no say in it, and I’m only along for the free ride. Kinda like a duck who parks his downy butt on a moving flatcar so he doesn’t have to flap his own wings to get south for the winter. It’s always easier to let someone else do all the work.
The rich have set up our economy that way, and you can’t fight ’em, so you might as well join ’em. I’m a member of the Idle Class now.
A big development in the trial of vigilante killer George Zimmerman: The defendant won’t testify. That means the jury won’t hear the sworn testimony of, and attorney’s won’t be able to question, the only living person who knows what happened.
# 26: What was clearly a crash at the front of the plane may have felt like a “hard landing”, with a tail skid, in the cockpit. Of course, the pilots should have opened the door to see what was going on in back. And don’t forget that passengers are frequently injured (though not severely) in any evacuation.
My thought is that the pilots were concered that they had a hard landing and tail skid, and if they evacuated it would be treated much more seriously by everyone involved, including their superiors. So they spent some time discussing it when they should have been assisting in the evacuation. Compare instead the January emergency landing and evacuation by ANA of a Boeing 787 – at the first wift of smoke they landed at the closest airport and deployed slides.
# 32: Good luck in kicking a cockpit door open since 9/11. Any commercial airliner operating within a couple of years after 9/11 have reinforced cockpit doors and cockpit wall panels (note: the prevailing correct PC term is “flight deck”, but I have a hard time remembering to use that nomenclature).
32)One fail safe I have heard of over the years, is an alarm that goes off if the engineer does not touch the console after a certain time. As for if the engineer is incapacitated, that is one of the drawbacks, and a good reason for two man crews. The Brotherhoods fought hard for keeping brakemen and firemen on trains, but in the early 90’s, the National Mediation Board agreed that freght trains could safely be operated by 2 people.
Keystone XL proponents are getting their wish: Even without that pipeline, domestic oil is finally moving to refineries and end markets, and is no longer piling up in Cushing storage tanks because of transportation bottlenecks. The net result is U.S. motorists now get to pay the global oil price, which is $15-$20/bbl. higher than WTI used to be.
http://www.nbcnews.com/busines.....6C10597412
@42 Locomotives don’t have a “deadman” switch?
The Dead Man’s Pedal was on older diesels, the alerter replaced it. Montreal, Maine and Atlantic uses a mix of first and second generation diesels, but they might have been retrofitted. The alerter is supposed to provide a penalty brake application if no response from the engineer. Their is a FRA mandate for better signal systems, called Positive Train Control, but the railroads want a delay in implementation.
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/153340.aspx