– Another Birthright Citizenship link in an open thread. This time from Eric Foner in The Nation.
– Other than the legitimate dome-related questions I raised on Twitter, my main issue with Walker’s Canada wall idea is will it go all the way to the Beaufort Sea?
– Seattle, nice job using somewhat less water.
– Feminist_Tinder is pretty funny.
– I’m not a big fan of country music, but I found this analysis of some Martina McBride songs interesting.
I am not a Seahawks fan. I will never be a Seahawks fan. At best, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Seahawks; at worst, I root against them, if only to return the schadenfreude some local friends and family members have enjoyed in rubbing the Seahawks’ recent success in my face.
One score and seven years since leaving my native Philadelphia, I remain a loyal Eagles fan. And any Seahawks fan who questions the depth of my unswerving loyalty doesn’t really deserve the designation “fan” at all. (Note: this is different from all you Packers fans and Cowboys fans who have no geographic or familial connection to your teams. You’re just assholes.)
Which brings me to my annual preseason rant: Why won’t the NFL let me pay to watch my team?
Yes, DirecTV offers a streaming only version of its NFL Sunday Ticket, but I’m not sure to whom—every zip code I plug in doesn’t qualify. And even if I did qualify, I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay $400 (plus tax, I presume) for 10 or so Eagles games (some are available broadcast, others I’ll miss due to other commitments), let alone the minimum $1,000 or so a year it would cost to fully subscribe to DirectTV and Sunday Ticket.
I don’t want to purchase every out-of-market game. I just want the out-of-market games of one team. My team. The Philadelphia Eagles. So why won’t the NFL let me stream my games legally?
Charge me a reasonable price for a high-quality stream of just one team—say, $200 a season, or maybe $15 a game—and I’ll happily pay it. But if the NFL continues to put its head in the sand and pretend expatriate fans like me don’t have other options, don’t blame us if we look to the black market.
Genesis 11:10-24
Two years after the flood, when Shem was one hundred, he had a son named Arpachshad. He had more children and died at the age of six hundred. This is a list of his descendants:When Arpachshad was thirty-five, he had a son named Shelah. Arpachshad had more children and died at the age of four hundred thirty-eight.
When Shelah was thirty, he had a son named Eber. Shelah had more children and died at the age of four hundred thirty-three.
When Eber was thirty-four, he had a son named Peleg. Eber had more children and died at the age of four hundred sixty-four.
When Peleg was thirty, he had a son named Reu. Peleg had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty-nine.
When Reu was thirty-two he had a son named Serug. Reu had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty-nine.
When Serug was thirty, he had a son named Nahor. Serug had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty.
When Nahor was twenty-nine, he had a son named Terah. Nahor had more children and died at the age of one hundred forty-eight.
Discuss.
Mark Fiore: Smokey the Climate Scientist.
Mental Floss: Does ginger ale really help with stomach aches?
The 2016 Clown Show:
Mental Floss: Misconceptions about cancer.
Young Turks: Terrorist attempts to bomb abortion clinic.
Gunzzzz:
Mental Floss: 31 amazing facts about household items.
Bill Maher with some New Rules.
White House: West Wing Week.
New Orleans, Ten Years after Katrina:
Sam Seder: FAUX News, “It’s hard out there for white people”.
Congressional hits and misses: Best of Ted Cruz.
Eric Schwartz: Fuck You:
Nuclear Football:
Slate: What is sex like in space?
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Three tourists from Rhode Island were beaten, burned and robbed outside the 3rd Avenue transit tunnel entrance on Monday night. Why am I not surprised?
The 3rd and Pike area is so terrible that it has it’s own Twitter feed. On most days the tunnel entrance and sidewalk outside are full of drug dealers and thugs who fuck with people coming in and out of the tunnel. I stopped using that tunnel entrance and now use the one across the street next to Macy’s because of this reason. The King County Sheriff department seems to be less interested in providing security and more interested in getting themselves fired. The city and SPD have tried with the 9 1/2 block strategy to reform the area, and it has had some success, apparently not as much as could have been hoped for.
My favorite part (if you want to call it that) of the incident is this:
Police arrived at the scene, but the group of suspects had fled. However, officers did arrest one man at the scene after he interfered with medics’ efforts to treat the victims, and told the victims they “deserved’ to be beaten and robbed. Police are investigating whether the man was also involved in the robbery.
If you have anything to share regarding the crime, you can contact the SPD Robbery Unit at (206) 684-5535.
– Huzzah. It’s raining. Remember, people forget to drive in the rain every summer in Western Washington, and I’m sure this year will be worse than normal.
– A homeless woman was beaten to death so can we all just get on board with encampments now?
– The Seattle Times Editorial Board Can Go Phở Itself
– I think Donald Trump could check out the HA Bible Study if he wants to find a new favorite verse.
– My worst nightmare would be being Tim Eyman.
Rand Paul came to town recently. He said some nonsense about guns:
It was a terrible morning to glorify guns. At the exact same time that everyone on the internet was horrified by the latest in a seemingly unending string of mass shootings, Paul’s adulation of the 2nd amendment felt awkward and dripping with an unpleasant machismo. ( “If you doubt me on the 2nd Amendment, come into my house unannounced,” Paul warned as the room applauded the thought of Paul shooting another person to death.) Before Paul took the stage, local politician Elizabeth Scott was proudly introduced as a member of the NRA. Meanwhile, on Twitter, people were scrolling past auto-play videos filmed by a man as he murdered two innocent people in cold blood. For a candidate who repeatedly claims to be uniquely in touch with reality, Paul is surprisingly out-of-step with an America that overwhelmingly favors commonsense gun safety laws.
When I talk about gun control with my pro gun friends, I’ll almost always hear someone talk about responsible gun ownership. But this sort of braggadocio is alarmingly common. Oh, give me the chance to kill the fuck out of someone who comes to my house unannounced. That’s not a death penalty offense, but I’m so excited about it I’m going to share this fantasy that to a decent person would be one of the worst days of their life with several hundred supporters.
It’s something decent people aren’t fantasizing about. It isn’t something the sort of people who feel responsible would say. And if people wanted hold him responsible, they could boo instead of applaud.
Now sure, I realize that one candidate from one party who isn’t doing very well in the polls isn’t indicative of the whole of gun owners. But this sort of thing rarely, if ever, gets called out from the people who tell me they’re the responsible sort. Hell, a dickbag can wrap bacon around his gun, get what type of gun it is wrong, and nobody who claims to be all about responsible gun ownership is like “Um, noppers buddy. That’s not how ya’ do it.”
So you know, step the fuck up. Or people like me — that rare breed who do actually want to take your gun away — are going to keep being the ones to call it out.
Hirabayashi Place will be a mixed use, transit oriented, workforce housing development that includes 96 apartments and a childcare center. Units will be studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom apartments affordable for households with incomes at or below 40%, 50%, and 60% of Area Mean Income.
Please visit the rental website for an application for the housing lottery. The application has two parts and must be received by September 15, 2015.
(Emphasis mine)
There is such a huge demand for these kind of buildings. The non-profits who develop these projects (InterIm CDA, Bellwether Housing, Capitol Hill Housing are three such developers) open maybe one new affordable building a year. Their collective efforts are appreciated, but they suffer from a lack of resources and muscle and can’t compete with for-profit developers. Either the government has to get involved to even the odds or we’re going to have to give up the pretension that we care about this issue in the first place.
I decided to hold off on this post mostly due to laziness, but also because writing it while the stock market was going down in the last week or so might seem a bit justifying Obama or whatever. But now today that the Dow went up 619.07 mostly meaningless to me points, the post stands on it’s own. And that is why the fuck were people claiming a week’s worth of bad stock market news was some how reflective of Obama’s handling of the economy, of some sort of shade of capitalism more generally, or of stories about panic!!!!!!! throughout the land?
The truth is that Obama is handling the economy fine, and on the granular level doesn’t have much to do one way or the other with the stock market going down in a given day or week, or week and change. Capitalism will have its ups and downs but it’s here for a long time. And stories about panic!!!!!!!!!!!!!! are pretty boring absent actual panic.
Of course, people’s retirement accounts are often tied up with the market. I know mine are. But I’m not retiring for several decades. So unless you’re planning on retiring this month, these fluctuations will probably be something you’ll be able to ride out. While it was bad for some people, for the majority, it wasn’t anything unless you panic.
Maybe the issue is that the Dow — or the market more generally — is the only snapshot of the economy we have. However flawed it is, it’s something to say what the economy did today. Or this week. Or whatever short amount of time. But maybe we don’t need that. Maybe we don’t have a good measure of the economy in such short bursts because that’s not a good way to think of the economy.
– I’m surprised it took Senator Murray that long to support the Iran deal. Still, good for her for being on the right side of this.
– This oil train forum in Olympia looks like it might be interesting.
– I generally don’t think of myself as being a big fan of 80’s music (not a genre, but whatever), but I’ve been enjoying 80’s day on KEXP so far.
– Despite agreeing with everything in this cartoon, it seems to me the best reason to oppose treating prisoners poorly isn’t recidivism, but because it’s bad on its own.
It looks like Bertha’s cut cut bits are getting back underground.
Welp, another recovery goal has been met for the broke-down, downtown tunnel boring machine: Bertha’s repaired front end is now reuniting with the rest of its body. Seattle Tunnel Partners (STP), the state’s contractor, started lowering Bertha’s 2,000-ton cutterhead and drive unit into the rescue pit this afternoon—a complex positioning job that will wrap up tomorrow.
Once Bertha’s new facial transplant makes its way into the pit, STP will begin reconnecting all of the machine’s parts and test the monster for two months. These tests consist of a “no load” (read: no soil and water) exam and another exam that will measure how the machine’s cutterhead spins into earth.
It won’t be until November that they finish all the tests, and start it up properly. Now the project is scheduled to finish in early 2018. We’ll see.
Honestly, I was as as opposed to the project as anyone, but we had a vote, and that matters. So as long as the state or the contractor — who whoever that isn’t Seattle really — is paying for it, I wish the project the best. Also, please finish before there’s a major earthquake.
Please join us tonight for an evening of political pontification over a pint. An evening of electoral erudition over an elixer! An evening of conservative contraindication over a cocktail!! It’s this week’s edition of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks stop by even earlier for dinner.
Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities chapter also meets. On Wednesday, the Burien chapter meets. The Spokane and Woodinville chapters meet on Thursday.
There are 183 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are good there’s a chapter meeting near you.
– Maybe we shouldn’t reward Chuck Schumer for being so wrong on Iran by making him the next Democratic leader.
– Seriously, birthright citizenship is the best, and anyone opposing it is the worst. QED.
– The seawall project is over budget.
– The Breitbart people should be ashamed of themselves. Part something in an infinity series.
Revelation 18:8-10
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
Discuss.
Last weekend at Hempfest, the Sanders campaign had a booth passing out buttons and flyers. Hempfest is probably the only place you’ll ever see an anti-tax protestor in a Bernie t-shirt next to other campaign volunteers.
#SeattleHempfest this anti-tax protestor in a Bernie Sanders t-shirt is right next to the Bernie booth pic.twitter.com/pOBbqSbBny
— Lee Rosenberg (@Lee_Rosenberg) August 15, 2015
I stopped by for a bit and chatted with an older volunteer. When it comes to the long battle to reform drug laws, Sanders is better than many politicians, but still not that close to where I think he could and probably should be. As I left, they handed me a homemade printed flyer and I shoved it in my pocket. When I got home, I noticed that the flyer listing out his campaign’s positions had a line saying simply “All Lives Matter”.
This wasn’t official campaign literature, just a small flyer a volunteer made, but it was pretty tone deaf considering what happened about a mile or two from there the weekend before. Saying that ‘All Lives Matter’ in a political sense right now isn’t just some vanilla statement, it’s a response to the millions of African Americans fighting for a level of respect from the police and the criminal justice system that’s afforded to others. Responding with All Lives Matter is an attempt to brush over the fairly substantial gap that exists in how various forms of the government interact with black communities.
Our politics are defined by our fears. The Black Lives Matter movement is a response to the very legitimate fear among African Americans that they’ll become victims of the police or the court system. Many white Sanders supporters recognize that as a legitimate fear, but for most, it’s not the political issue that drives them. Most Sanders supporters are driven by their own fears over an economic system that favors the wealthy and often fails to provide basic economic protections for everyone else. And it’s the latter fear that’s been drawing large crowds to see Bernie, while Black Lives Matter rallies continue to be met with riot gear and spotty media attention.
I have to admit that my first impression after two activists stole the microphone from Bernie Sanders at Westlake was that it was obnoxious. I understand the powerlessness those activists feel when they see more abstract economic issues dominating the political conversation on the left, while the issues that many in their communities face are far more dire and direct. But the reality is, who the fuck cares what I think. It has no bearing on my attitude towards Black Lives Matter. I’ve long been beating this drum. I’m not really the target audience here. I’m not even sure Bernie was the audience that day. The audience was the cross-section of America who doesn’t personally experience the insecurity and fears that black America experiences and who doesn’t really think about it much.
For many of those who’d stood out on a hot Saturday afternoon to see Bernie talk about social security, the disruption of the event was an annoyance. The hope of the activists is that the crowd will weigh their own annoyance against the injustices faced in the black community and come away with some perspective. Does this work? Maybe. But it seems a lot more likely to work at a Bernie Sanders rally than a Donald Trump one.
I’ve been calling this strategy inconvenienceism. I hope someone can think up a better word for it, but that’s the best I’ve come up with. From blocking highways to disrupting public events, this strategy relies on an optimistic take on human nature, that most people have the ability to put aside their own discomfort to think harder about someone else’s. The name is an attempt to draw a contrast between it and terrorism, a strategy that comes from the same pit of powerlessness, but clearly doesn’t work to endear people to your cause.
Does inconveniencism work? It got the Sanders campaign to add a pretty solid racial justice page to their issue list. They hired black activist Symone Sanders and encouraged people to chant “We Stand Together” if there’s another disruption. So it certainly had an impact on the campaign. But does this really translate to better policies down the road? Or will it harden pockets of antagonism within the campaign inner circle and make the hard work of reform even harder?
When I was talking to the volunteer at Bernie’s Hempfest booth, I was tempted to ask him if he ever worried about pot activists disrupting one of his rallies. It was a funny contrast to me. Bernie’s official position isn’t much different from Hillary Clinton’s or even Rand Paul’s. He believes that states should be able to legalize, but hasn’t come out and said that they should. If a group of pot activists grabbed the microphone at one of his events and demanded clear support for legalizing pot across America, how would that play out?
I can’t think of a single instance where drug law reformers of any kind have used inconvenienceism as a tactic in the way that Black Lives Matter has. But maybe that’s why drug law reform has been such a slow process. Perhaps it would’ve sped things up and gotten us to this point sooner. Or maybe it would’ve played into negative stereotypes and hardened opposition. I have no idea. And I don’t think anyone else really does either. It’s a phenomenon that seems extremely difficult to study with any kind of scientific certainty.
My best guess is that it’s mostly a sideshow and has little effect on achieving real reforms. When Hillary Clinton met with Black Lives Matter activists last week, she seemed to echo that belief:
“Look, I don’t believe you change hearts,” Clinton said. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we could do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them, to live up to their own God-given potential.”
What was understandably frustrating for Black Lives Matter activists is to hear this from someone who has long supported policies that created the crisis in our black communities in the first place, and still seems reluctant to engage in any self-reflection over it. But it highlights the fundamental challenge for this movement and others like it. It’s extremely difficult to get the powerful to fight for the powerless, or even to see the world through their eyes. I think many whites feel that Bernie Sanders can be an exception to that rule. But I don’t think many non-whites do. And I think how that dynamic goes forward will end up deciding the Democratic nomination.
In the news for the past two weeks…
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