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Open——Thread

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Last night after Drinking Liberally, there was a car idling in the bus stop. Nobody in it. The bus was a bit later than On Bus Away said it would be, so it was there for at least 5 minutes.

A small part of me thinks that I should have stolen it and driven home. I mean it’s a public service removing it from the bus stop, and I get home sooner. I realize that there are some moral and societal downsides to car theft, so I waited for the bus.

Also the Senate Republicans hate you and want you to die without health care.

Pen Thread

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Am I in Hell? I think I’m on the bus home from Drinking Liberally, but perhaps my ring of Hell smells of stale fries and the soundtrack is off key versions of whistled patriotic songs. If this posts, I was not in Hell.

Open Thread

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Did y’all have a nice 4th? I hope so. There was a pretty good spot to watch the fireworks near Drinking Liberally. It was just on the other side of the freeway, and a couple times, I saw ambulances going by. I know that rationally, it could be for anything, but I assumed it was fireworks accidents.

O-o-o-o-open thread-d-d-d-d

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I walked by a building the on the way to Drinking Liberally, and I noticed that the name of it was written in cursive. People aren’t being taught cursive in a lot of schools. It’s a decision I generally support, so this isn’t a getoffmylawn post.

I wonder how long until most people find that building indecipherable. It’ll probably get painted over long before that. It made me wonder what I walk by that I don’t notice that everyone would have understood 50, 100 whatever years ago.

Open thread

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I was talking to Darryl last night, and he wants you all to know he is very, very, very sorry that he missed yesterday’s Drinking Liberally thread. It’s a deep sadness. It probably kept him up last night. He’s wearing a hare shirt.

openthread

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This week 3 of my dinners have been Rainier cherries. I don’t think it’s good for me, but it’s still pretty great. I was talking to one of the people selling them at Pike Place, and she said they were not from Washington yet. I may be done with them by the time the Washington crop is selling, but I doubt it. Hopefully the price comes down a bit.

I did have a minor ethical issue. On Tuesday night I had 2 pounds of cherries before going to Drinking Liberally. I wasn’t hungry. I don’t normally drink on weekdays. So I wasn’t going to spend money. Is it ethical to do that in a group if you’re a regular who normally gets food? I eventually felt bad and got the smallest thing on the menu, and over tipped.

Open*Thread

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It’s Tuesday night and I’m on the bus back home from Drinking Liberally. I just realized that I haven’t written anything for the open thread, and I just want to go to sleep when I get home. So here’s not much. Sorry.

2 things: I love talking the bus home, but this is the second week in a row where the post 11:00 bus has some unfortunate smells. Also the driver is really shouting at some driver parked in a bus stop.

Hope this isn’t too incoherent.

Editorial Dissent (Open Thread)

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Only several hours after Ed Murray decided against running for reelection, the HA Editorial Board decided to endorse Ed Murray not running for reelection. Unlike The Seattle Times or other editorial boards, the HA Editorial Board encourages dissent (at Drinking Liberally last night).

So no, Ed Murray can run if he wants. Nothing has been proven. That said, if he decides to run, or even just in his public statements and defense in court, he should stop the victim blaming. And obviously, fuck him if he did it.

Carl Ballard

Live Blogging the First Presidential Debate

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Okay…the debate is about to begin. Have at it in the comment threads. I’ll post my nuggets of wisdom from the folks at Drinking Liberally and from Twitter.

[6:05] Opening topic: reducing income inequality in a period of low unemployment.
Clinton: Invest, invest, invest.
Drumpf: CHINA! CHINA! CHINA!

Trump claims that U.S. doesn’t have the largest, most sophisticated manufacturing facilities in the world. Ummm…Mr. Trump, ever hear of Boeing’s plant in Everett? Largest in the world.

[6:13] Drumpf, “The U.S. doesn’t know what it is doing” in manufacturing. Unbelievable!

[6:14] Drumpf is starting to fall apart already, with his little aside to Clinton.

[6:15] Drumpf’s import tax bring to mind Bill Murray’s famous SNL lounge skit: “Trade Wars / If they had made wars / Let there be trade wars / ooohhh oh yeah.

[6:19] Again and again, Drumpf tells us what we “have to do” without any concrete proposals.

[6:20] Clinton successfully holds off Drumpf’s attempt at disruption.

[6:21] Hello? Moderators?

[6:26]: Drumpf completely LOST IT! “No wonder you have been fighting ISIS your entire life.” ISIS didn’t even exist when she last held a government position.

[6:33]: Drumpf has an audit conspiracy.

[6:39]: “We spent 6 trillion dollars in the middle east” and we didn’t even take all of their oil….

[6:40]: Clinton may have used a private email server, but at least she paid her IT subcontractors.

[6:43]: Drumpf has calmed down, but is having trouble focusing.

[6:44]: Drumpf things Hillary is afraid to say “law and order”. WTF?!?

[6:48]: Drumpf is rattling off endorsements. What’s next, poll numbers?

[6:50]: Donald Trump wants to take guns away…from dark-skinned people.

[6:52]: Clinton makes a passionate argument for justice reform. Trump’s response, “she won’t law and order!” and “stop and frisk!”

[7:00]: Dear @realDonaldTrump Obama produced the standard Hawaii birth certificate in 2008.

[7:12]: DJT uses “Cyber” incorrectly. Clearly new to the word. Norbert Weiner spins in his grave.

[7:15]:Drumpf blames Obama/Clinton for leaving Iraq. You know…the withdrawal that was set up by Bush’s failure to come to an agreement with Iraq.

[7:22]: At the end of a crazy, defensive tyrade, “I have better judgement than her.”

[7:24]: Trump is sniffling a lot. Is he well enough to be President?????????

[7:26]: Clinton’s “caviler attitude about nuclear weapons” segment was potent.

[7:27]: Holy shit. @realDonaldTrump understanding of defending other countries amounts to gangster movies.

[7:33]: Clinton’s strategy: say something clear. Let Drumpf babble.

[7:35]: No shit on Clinton’s statement on stamina. Look at her freaking schedule while SOS! Brutal travel and meeting schedule.

The Minimum Wage Survives

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Darryl mentioned it in this morning’s Drinking Liberally thread, but it’s kind of a big deal that the US Supreme Court won’t hear the Seattle minimum wage case. There are 2 reasons why it’s mass rad. First, for Seattle and other places where we want to set a minimum wage, and are going to have the sort of slow, multi-tiered implementation that we got. We can keep the law in place without this imaginary legal hurdle. For the fast food workers and other franchise employees who’ll get a raise going forward, it’s worth it on its own.

But, it also signals that with Antonin Scalia off the court, maybe the country won’t slip further into a new Lochner era. Maybe we won’t decide as many cases primarily on the basis of what’s good for business.

Systemic

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When liberals and conservatives have conversations about things like homelessness, it can be frustrating. Conservatives want individuals to take personal responsibility. And while liberals find individual responsibility important, we also understand that there are systemic problems that have to be dealt with. That it’s really tough to bootstrap yourself into a house if you’re homeless and there isn’t enough supply. So, sometimes we talk past each other. Jason Rantz tries to circle that square by showing how liberals being tolerant is the real systemic problem (h/t).

I’ve been meaning to do a longer piece for a while, but it keeps being nice out. After like 4 days, it’s still too nice of a day to do a metacommentary piece on the whole thing, but here are some highlights:

But why so many in this neighborhood? I’ve never seen as many until recently. As other neighborhoods are engaged in trying to help deal with the problem, Capitol Hill seems like they’re allowing it to develop unfettered. I think I know why: ideology.

Homelessness is everywhere. I don’t know what neighborhood doesn’t have homeless people. Including suburban and rural places in King County. Also, is Cap. Hill’s tolerance new? Because otherwise, it doesn’t really apply to this supposedly new problem. Also, too, I walked from the light rail station to Drinking Liberally last Tuesday, and back fairly late at night. It was after reading this piece, so I was on the lookout for homeless people. It didn’t seem like a whole lot, at least compared to other neighborhoods. Sure, I passed by some people sleeping in doorways, but I don’t think more than Downtown or Belltown. Certainly not more than, say, the Terminal 91 Bike Path or SoDo, if we’re trading anecdote for data.

Progressive ideologues like to preach how tolerant they are. You ask them and they’ll proudly tell you. Now, they don’t support ideological diversity, but they’re pro-LGBT, pro-people of color, pro-atheist, pro-multicultralism, pro-whatever. The only things they’re against seem to be capitalism and cisgendered white Christian Republican men. And to show how tolerant they are, they seek to ban microaggressions; they support college students who need “safe spaces” from opinions that make them uncomfortable. They like to declare themselves allies of any group they believe to be oppressed.

Atheism and multiculturalism are both ideologies. So that third sentence is self-refuting. Some progressive ideologues are against capitalism, but I think most aren’t. Also, I don’t know what against “cisgendered white Christian Republican men” even means. Like, don’t think they should dominate the conversation, sure. But progressives are not the ones trying to regulate where cis people can poop or poised to nominate someone who wants a travel ban on Christians. Anyway, I guess we should just be glad he learned the word cisgendered and this isn’t a rant about that.

Oh my God there was so much wrong with that paragraph. OK. Keep going.

Nobody is trying to ban microaggressions. Pointing out how harmful they are? Sure. You can go yell racial epithets (macroaggressions if you like) in the park, and nobody is going to ban you. But you think a ban on microaggressions is in the works? Also, safe spaces and being allies to the oppressed is pretty rad. Like everywhere should be unsafe in general and harmful to oppressed people? What the fuck even is that? In fairness, he walks that back a bit in the next couple paragraphs, that I’m skipping. But still.

I think some ideological activists won’t help the homeless because they subconsciously want to live around them. They can say that they don’t judge people based on their appearance or status as someone who lives on the street, and this gives them a sense of superiority to those of us who want to intervene.

This describes literally nobody. The solutions to homelessness include build more housing and make it affordable. It isn’t just tolerate it. The closest thing I can think of to being tolerant as a policy was housing for chronic public inebriates, but that has been a success story among King County’s mixed-at-best record.

Open Thread 3/21

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So this happened over the weekend.

If you care about the opening of the new line, other people have said more interesting things than me. But here’s my 2 cents anyway.

This isn’t such a new thing in the way that the line from the airport to Westlake was. That being the first line and all. But it being on time and under budget, as well as a useful extension is promising. The stations are beautiful, and in great locations.

the only real negative for me was that I was a bit claustrophobic getting off at the U-Link station. I wandered around a bit before getting on the escalators but still felt boxed in. I hope at some point we get better as a city at stand to the right walk on the left.

All in all, quite good. I imagine I’ll take it pretty regularly. It’s a bit far from the Capitol Hill station, but if it isn’t raining too bad, you can take the train to Drinking Liberally.

Open Thread 2-3

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This (autoplays) is a few days old (they make Iowa Caucus predictions) but I just listened to it yesterday on my way to Drinking Liberally. It got me thinking about the foreign policy philosophies of the Democratic candidates. I would dispute that Clinton’s foreign policy philosophy is just about competence. I’d say that women’s rights are human rights was an animating idea during her tenure at State and in the Senate.

I asked a few people at Drinking Liberally how they would sum up Sanders’ foreign policy. And we found some interesting things about his record, but I don’t know if it’s predictive for voters or for the bureaucracy if he gets elected. I’d very much like to know more about his foreign policy, but I haven’t seen it yet. It’s one state down, so we may well see something that crystallizes it going forward.

(this has been edited a bit to make it clear I’m just talking about foreign policy)

The Socialist State of the Union Response!

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Assuming I get my blown-out tire replaced in time (thanks, I-5 through Tacoma!), I’ll be at Drinking Liberally live tweeting the State of the Union. But afterwards I invite you to join me for what’s become a Seattle tradition these past few years: city council member Kshama Sawant’s annual Socialist response.

I’ve embedded the live stream above. And remember all you Bernie-come-latelies: we’ve been electing Socialists here in Seattle since before it was cool!

Open Thread 1-6

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Now that Jim McDermott has made it official, it’ll be interesting to see who replaces him. I don’t have any favorites really, but I’d sort of prefer not voting for a person who thought they should primary him. One worry that came up at Drinking Liberally would be someone running as a Prefers Republican Party candidate could slip past a crowded primary field and make it into the general if there are enough Democrats. I don’t think that’s an issue.

So, any preferences?

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