It’s Tuesday, and the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally will, once again, meet. As it happens, this meeting is the last week of our ninth year since the inaugural meeting of the Seattle chapter. That’s right…next Tuesday will be the tenth anniversary of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. That’s a huge number of meetings, and a boat-load of political conversation floating in an ocean of beer.
Please join us. We meet every Tuesday evening at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks stop by earlier for dinner.
Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities, Vancouver, WA, and Shelton chapters also meet. The Kent chapter meets on Wednesday. And on Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets.
There are 189 chapters of Living Liberally, including seventeen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.
One of Goldy’s tweet links goes to a Space Needle story in which an elevator operator laments a deterioration in his situation over the past four years.
He’s an elevator operator. He really ought to be worried about his status over the NEXT four years:
Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.
http://www.technologyreview.co.....ying-jobs/
How many floor buttons are there in the Space Needle elevator? Two? Three?
Yup, algorithms are going to get rid of so many jobs. What are the conservatives soutions to algorithm related joblessness?
These conservatives have a solution..
But we’ve had a solution of sorts for a long time..
It’s called “Social Security for all”.. I recall a time when full-time students could get a social security check.. Raygun ended that.
Tooooo funny!
http://www.theatlantic.com/fea.....ts/384980/
ISIS is the ANSWER to the village idiot troll’s end-times cult prayers!
And the village idiot troll’s prayers especially..
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
@2. Do you envision the randians, the generations indoctrinated in the religion of selfishness and greed, the corporations willingly paying the taxes needed for a guaranteed min income? Is that realistic?
@ 3
I recall a time when full-time students could get a social security check.. Raygun ended that.
You probably still hate your father for cutting off your allowance when you turned 35, YLB.
Did Reagan end that all by his aged self, YLB? Or did Congress have a role?
80 US senators voted for the bill. There were only 53 Republican senators at that time.
232 representatives voted for it. There were only 191 GOP representatives at that time.
I think Ronald Reagan may have had some help from the other side of the aisle, YLB. What do you think?
Oh. In his 1979 budget, Jimmy Carter made a similar proposal. Of course, by then Carter was so weak he could barely pass gas by himself.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/studentbenefit.html
@ 4
Tooooo funny!
Laugh away, YLB.
Jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS) have burned to death 45 people in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, the local police chief says.
Exactly who these people were and why they were killed is not clear, but Col Qasim al-Obeidi said he believed some were members of the security forces.
IS fighters captured much of the town, near Ain al-Asad air base, last week.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31502863
We’ve got more than 300 Marines only about 5 miles from that location.
Real funny.
There’s only one thing that will take the smile off of YLB’s face, and that’s criticism of the president.
Washington (CNN)Americans are increasingly unhappy with President Barack Obama’s handling of ISIS, and a growing share of the nation believes that fight is going badly, according to a new CNN/ORC survey released Monday.
The CNN/ORC poll found 57% of Americans disapprove of how Obama is handling the threat posed by ISIS, a significant decline in support for the President over the past few months. In late September, that number was 49%.
…
The declining approval ratings for Obama on national security come as a weekend of international turmoil further underscores the growing threats abroad.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/16/.....-approval/
For most humans, the mental images of nearly two dozen near-simultaneous decapitations of people who have committed the crime of being Christian, and of the burning to death of nearly four dozen Iraqis would focus the mind on the severity of the threat ISIS has created.
Not YLB. He’s busy brushing up on Crusades history with more than a small measure of glee. Perhaps the prospect of direct combat between US troops and ISIS might be a little bit sobering to YLB, especially if two-term President Obama’s public image is at risk.
“Not YLB.”
So when are you and yours gonna head on over there and do something about it, tough guy?
“232 representatives voted for it. There were only 191 GOP representatives at that time.”
Nice point. The vast majority of dickheads back then were Republicans. Just like now.
@ 10
I didn’t say there was a great answer at hand to what has become an awful problem.
I just think that the time for unseriously jousting over whether using the Crusades reference was or was not correct has passed, Steve. ISIS seems to be accelerating its violence. There’s a problem, and we have yet to address it with a level of seriousness that it seems to warrant.
What is the seriousness it warrants? Have you made your sons and daughters enlist so long as they fight ISIS? Are you demanding your taxes are doubled to help pay for the endless war ? What’s your personal sacrifice to fight ISIS?
@11 you don’t say, no easy solution? But you gloat in blaming the president. Go fuck yourself, you and ISIS.
You support a party that is very similar to ISIS with regard to tactics and conservative ideology.
@12 he’s going to give up hotdogs for lent.
@1/2/3 Take the red pill.
LOL! Only person who’s mentioned the Crusades in this thread so far is YOU Bob..
Any of your equipment leaking radiation Doc? Break out the Geiger counter. Dude, that stuff’ll rot your brains.
Toooooo funny!
Cheap shot bob, what’s the conservatives take on what to do with those people after automation gets rid of all those jobs?
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”
– George H. W. Bush
Anyone who goes to bed at night praying for the world to end so they can justify their belief system is a psychopathic asshole who either needs to be permanently locked up and sedated, or lined up against the wall and shot. These people will deliberately start a war and then hide behind their bronze-age religion while calling the War inevitable as being the work of their bullshit “god”.
Thats what the fucking Nazis were doing. Erasing their enemies, in the Name of the LORD. Butchering people, in the name of the LORD. Burning babies in their cribs, in the name of the LORD. Now America has replaced its own Republican form of government with a small group of oligarchs and plutocrats who have taken it upon themselves to send our young men to murder and die in the name of the LORD.
Welcome to the Fourth Reich.
As predictably as winter snow in Boston, a GOP legislator has introduced a “compromise” bill that would roll back Seattle’s $15 minimum wage and eliminate local-option minimum wages. Republicans are trying to put lipstick on this pig by slightly raising the state minimum wage.