Morning Ed: Politics {2016.08.15.M}

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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159 Responses

  1. Corbyn’s takeover of Labour continues apace. All thanks to the voters. Sigh.

    Yeah. Democracy would work a lot better if we could get rid of the voters. 😀Report

    • notme in reply to Larry Hamelin says:

      I didn’t think that there would be a need for voters after the socialist revolution.Report

      • Larry Hamelin in reply to notme says:

        @notme

        I didn’t think that there would be a need for voters after the socialist revolution.

        Exactly correct. Voting (for representatives) is the weakest form of democracy. A socialist revolution will require way more democracy.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Larry Hamelin says:

          Me thinks you are assuming socialism is a lot more popular among the general population than it actually is.Report

          • Larry Hamelin in reply to LeeEsq says:

            @leeesq

            I don’t quite understand your comment. I’m talking about what socialism will require (future modal tense), not what the general population happens to think today.

            But I do think that a lot of people — possibly not a majority, but at least a sizeable minority — are quite unhappy with the ever-narrowing role of mere voters in Western “democracies.”Report

        • notme in reply to Larry Hamelin says:

          When you say “way more democracy”, do you mean direct democracy? If so, what happens if folks don’t want socialism?Report

          • Larry Hamelin in reply to notme says:

            Direct democracy is one possibility, although delegated democracy, pioneered, as Marx described, in the Paris Commune, is another possibility.

            The dialectics between individual opinion, popular opinion, and political-economic institutions is complicated, especially in a revolutionary situation, but in general, if most people really don’t want socialism, and they have democratic power, they they’ll get rid of socialism for something they prefer.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Larry Hamelin says:

      Than they go down in the general election.Report

      • Larry Hamelin in reply to LeeEsq says:

        @leeesq

        The point, though, is not to have some party that happens to have the name “Labour” win the election; the point is to have a party that stands for specific set of principles and policies to win. (Similarly for our own elections). Presumably, Corbyn believes that the Labour electorate wants one set of principles and policies, and the Parliamentary party wants a different set. There are enough impediments to actual democracy that the PLP might actually thwart the people. (And I suspect Mr. Truman sighs because these impediments might not be sufficient.)

        As Eugene Debs said, “It’s better to vote for what you want and not get it than vote for what you don’t want and get it.”Report

        • J_A in reply to Larry Hamelin says:

          There’s a critical difference between the Labour electorate, and the members of the Labour Party.

          The Labour electorate is those millions of voters that vote in the Labour candidates into Parliament. They are orders of magnitude more that the members of the Labour Party, and there is a very large probability that their preferences are closer to the PLP than to Corbyn.

          The argument of the PLP is that the Labour electorate will not vote for the Corbyn party. That you have to meet the voters where they are, propose incremental ideas that move the needle a little bit and them, rinse, repeat. The argument of the Corbyn Party is “let’s offer the voters this pure ideal unblemished set of policies, and if they reject them, we will know it’s all their fault because we had purity in our platform”.

          By the way, I don’t like the PLP policies much. I can barely see a difference between PLP Labour and the Tories, except that they seem to apologize a lot for supporting the same policies as the Tories. I honestly hope Corbyn succeeds in destroying the Labour Party and the Labour electorate slowly becomes the LibDem electorate.Report

          • Larry Hamelin in reply to J_A says:

            @j_a

            There’s a critical difference between the Labour electorate, and the members of the Labour Party.

            Roger that. I’m not an expert in the UK electoral system, but that matches what I’ve absorbed by context.

            The argument of the PLP is that the Labour electorate will not vote for the Corbyn party.

            Seems fair. My counter-argument would be that by design the Labour party has a well-constituted membership differentiated from the electorate, so it seems at least dodgy (and at worst inappropriate) for the PLP to impose their judgment on the party: the PLP are beneficiaries of the party membership, not its leaders.Report

            • J_A in reply to Larry Hamelin says:

              A lot of the Labour Membership did not exist as such prior to last year, when the leadership election was moved from the PLP and the unions, and membership was opened to anyone. Hundreds of thousands registered and carried Corbyn from being a renegade to being the Party Leader in one round.

              Let me say that at that time I was favoring Corbyn because the PLP was a rotten core that was of no use to left of center politics. I was in favor of Labour moving left and fully occupying the Social Democratic space that was empty in England (basically, I was hoping for a non nationalistic SDP to come from that election)

              I could never in my nightmares imagine that Corbyn would be so incompetent. Less than a month after the election it was clear Corbyn had no idea what policies to propose that would be a valid alternative to Cameron’s/Osborne’s, had no clue what the UK electorate believed, and had the same respect towards the MPs we was supposed to lead as he had when as backbencher he openly defied the Leadership and the whips., that is, none. He would not hear anyone else. He had been elected in a landslide of the base, so he was Dei in “vox populi-vox Dei”.

              Corbyn will be reelected without a doubt, having learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. He will do his best to destroy the PLP, blocking (deselecting) their nominations for the next election, and in the mean keeping them in the backbenches, with only a close circle of supporters with him in the Leadership. Existing MPs will react by ignoring his whips, and eventually jumping off Labour if they hope for a political future, taking the Labour electorate with them

              And there will be no Labour Party come 2020Report

          • LeeEsq in reply to J_A says:

            The LibDems really disgraced themselves by teaming up with the Conservatives though.Report

            • Will Truman in reply to LeeEsq says:

              Seems to me it’s more likely they start a new party that LD joins, rather than joining the LD.Report

              • J_A in reply to Will Truman says:

                Corbyn will keep the party name and assets, and the local party infrastructure. The PLP will have the voters. A takeover of the LibDems by the PLP makes sense. They take over an existing party and can be in business in no timeReport

              • Will Truman in reply to J_A says:

                According to one of my previous linkies, whoever leaves loses most of the voters. If that’s PLP, they’ll have their work cut out for them. You’re a Brit and I’m not, so I’ll defer to your judgment, but like Lee it just seems to me that the LD name is just too tarnished.

                So I sort of think of it being like how the Liberals and Social Democrats became the the Liberal Democrats. Except accelerated and with the Labour breakaways being in the stronger position.Report

  2. notme says:

    Citing Clinton, sailor seeks leniency in submarine photos case

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/08/sailor-seeks-leniency-in-submarine-photos-case-by-citing-clinton-226995

    The rise of the “Clinton defense.” I hope it works for him. After all there was no intent and that is what really matters.Report

    • Mo in reply to notme says:

      Maybe Hillary should have been fined $560.

      Saucier’s drive for leniency may ultimately benefit more from the treatment of some of his fellow submates than from the handling of cases involving Clinton or other prominent officials. Hogan cites incidents involving two other Navy sailors on the Alexandria who were caught taking photos in classified spaces on the vessel. One received a one rank reduction and was docked $560 in pay. The other was just docked $560 in pay. Both cases were handled through a Captain’s Mast hearing used for relatively minor cases.

      This may be why the prosecution is going tougher on him.

      Saucier’s defense disputes a probation officer’s conclusion that the sailor intended to share some of the photos with “foreign agencies,” an allegation that prosecutors have not made publicly.

      Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    That’s what Owen Ellickson does for a living – write and produce TV shows. Or did I miss the joke?Report

  4. Marchmaine says:

    I don’t know exactly why, but this one cracked me up…

    Trump is planning his convention and his staff has given him a list of people he should call to make speeches:

    TRUMP: You got, what, 1% of the vote?
    GRAHAM: Roughly.
    TRUMP: Pathetic. Why would I want you to speak?
    GRAHAM: (wounded) Look, you called me

    The most plausible ones are the funniest.Report

  5. notme says:

    3-D Printed Guns Could Outsmart Gun-Control Efforts

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/15/3-d-printed-guns-could-outsmart-gun-control-efforts.html

    I’m glad Cody Wilson gets it. ““When we fixate on things like the AR, most of that’s done for partisan reasons that avoid the true root of ‘gun crime.’ [Gun crime] is dominantly produced by the hand gun, and dominantly conducted in these urban environments that have all kinds of variables—gang violence, endemic poverty,” Wilson told The Daily Beast.”Report

  6. pillsy says:

    What happened to the “(Trump) Sign of the Times” post? It seems to have vanished into ether.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to pillsy says:

      It’s no longer headlining/featured. Scroll down a bit. You’ll see it.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to pillsy says:

      Stand by, please.Report

      • LTL FTC in reply to Burt Likko says:

        I get a dead link.

        The comments were pointed. The author’s mental gymnastics to justify her (in)action were rightly criticized, but I can see how so many people doing at once could be a little intimidating. It’s an important conversation to have, but I can understand why someone wouldn’t want to be the focus of it.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Burt Likko says:

        This is a test of the Likko Broadcast SystemReport

        • Burt Likko in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          I appreciate the sense of humor, my friend, but I am very seriously pissed off about how this went down and I’m going to refrain from further public comment on the matter until I have calmed down some and conferred with my colleagues.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Burt Likko says:

            Hoo boy.

            I’m guessing that I was part of the problem with all that.

            I’m sorry for the harm that I did.Report

          • Saul Degraw in reply to Burt Likko says:

            I honestly didn’t see the post. Just this thread. I thought it was just a prematurely published post. Were the commenters regular or not?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

              Regular. All too regular.Report

            • Regular in the gastrointestinal sense.Report

            • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

              Basically a personal post was commented on as a political/policy post. I’m very unhappy about how it went down but at the same time nothing that was said was unfair, just very tough.Report

              • Damon in reply to North says:

                Most of the posts I read I didn’t interpret as political/policy but personal. It was a post about parenting wasn’t it?Report

              • KenB in reply to Damon says:

                To me it looked like a post about politics with a personal frame, and some people aimed at the frame instead of the picture.Report

              • North in reply to Damon says:

                I thought it was mostly personal rather than parenting but YMMV.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to North says:

                A way to avoid this problem in the future would be to have personal posts identified such. There will still be some or even a lot of misinterpretation but it should stop some problems.Report

              • Will Truman in reply to LeeEsq says:

                That’s what the First Person category is for. Maybe we need a logo. (To be fair, it was also categorized under “Politics”)Report

              • KenB in reply to Will Truman says:

                FWIW, I basically never look at the categories when I read a post. I’m vaguely aware that the info is there, but it’s not at all the same as having an actual separate space like the old sub-blogs provided.Report

              • InMD in reply to North says:

                I read it the same way Damon did. It’s unfortunate it was pulled because I thought it was an interesting piece. I can of course also understand why the author might not want her family life to be the touch point of the discussion that ensued.Report

              • Damon in reply to InMD says:

                “I can of course also understand why the author might not want her family life to be the touch point of the discussion that ensued.”

                Kinda think that train of thought should take place BEFORE the article was posted. Once something is released into the world, you can no longer control it.Report

              • InMD in reply to Damon says:

                No disagreement from me.Report

              • trizzlor in reply to Damon says:

                >>Once something is released into the world, you can no longer control it.

                Yes, but YOU can control YOUR OWN behavior, right? Telling the author that they are a bad parent, doing damage to their child, part of the problem, etc etc after reading one anecdote from their life is, honestly, disgraceful. I’m glad the author has chosen not to provide a venue for you to continue spouting off. And I’m also disappointed that the meaningful discussion that the post initiated – one I thought about throughout the day as I took care of my own daughter, and was hoping to engage in here – was poisoned by a few of thoughtless comments. I certainly hope “don’t make vulnerable posts if you don’t want me to be a dick” does not become the new commenting policy.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to trizzlor says:

                I’m pretty sure that none of the commentors were actually planning to hunt the poster’s children down and assault them.Report

              • Maribou in reply to DensityDuck says:

                @densityduck @trizzlor never said that they did. are you misreading the “doing damage to their child” as something trizzlor says commenters did rather than something trizzlor says commenters were accusing a poster of doing? If so, well, maybe read more closely before trying to escalate.Report

              • Will Truman in reply to trizzlor says:

                I’m mostly withholding comment until I get slightly less pissed off, but I want to second everything @trizzlor says.

                I expend a lot of effort trying to get outside voices to contribute to this site, and I don’t know how motivated I am to try to find good cooks if the general attitude is people with blowtorches talking about heat and kitchens.Report

              • Damon in reply to trizzlor says:

                My comments were entirely proper–I’ve received NO communication that my post were to the contrary. Since we are abiding by Tod’s requests RE discussion of this post, I’ll just say, generally, the post was comprised of a factual incident regarding the behavior of children and the author’s unwillingness / inability to correct that bad behavior–because of the political beliefs of the wronged neighbor. There was a lot of emotional hand wringing, but as I said in my post, all that was filler. She knew what the correct course of action should have been, she was unwilling to do it. The politics of the story are irrelevant. I called the author out on that. I stand by that.

                As to the “don’t make vulnerable” post comment, when you right something and release it to the world, what you think/intend the writing to be about is not necessarily what others read will read into it. You have to expect that. That was my point.Report

              • Maribou in reply to Damon says:

                @damon You have to expect that people won’t read exactly what you meant to express, but that is a long long way from having to expect that they will lose their temper with you, and express themselves as such, when you’ve let your guard down. I post publically to my personal blog all the time (well, I used to, other stuff going on for the last year or two), and only maybe once in every 3 years did someone lose their temper at me.

                If you don’t think your comments on the post were losing your temper, well, I guess I didn’t read them the way you expected me to.Report

              • Damon in reply to Maribou says:

                Oh, I didn’t lose my temper. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I was frustrated that it took so many works to essentially say [Maribou in her capacity as site editor is editing this part out because it is more detailed about specifics than we had requested people keep to if they were going to be discussing the post]. I’ll admit to being “testy” though.Report

              • notme in reply to Damon says:

                The real problem is that you weren’t supportive enough and didn’t tell her that she was a great parent or that she handled the issue correctly.Report

              • pillsy in reply to trizzlor says:

                I’m mildly frustrated that my own comments are no longer visible to me for review.

                I don’t think I was being an egregious dick in them, and was mostly objecting to the politicization of teenage mischief in other comments, but the message I intended to send may not have been the message received.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to pillsy says:

                I didn’t interpret your teenage mischief comment as being out of line.Report

              • InMD in reply to pillsy says:

                I thought it was a good point. Just constructive criticism to the moderators/editors but it might be helpful to get some guidance on where the line crossing occurred. Not saying name and shame or anything but I don’t get the impression anyone was trying to run her off and I certainly don’t want to contribute to harming the (much appreciated) efforts to get good writers.

                The conversation didn’t strike me as particularly intense compared to some I’ve seen/participated in here but it seems others disagree.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to InMD says:

                Todd’s post probably answers many of your questions.Report

          • LeeEsq in reply to Burt Likko says:

            A problem with guest posters who do not participate with the regular commentariat is that they might get a conversation about their post that they do not expect. Most of the posters, including myself, on this site of a certain belief system and posting style that can seem hostile or harsh many times. We can be a strident bunch and I consider this to be one of the better behaved mixed ideological blogs.Report

          • Anne in reply to Burt Likko says:

            @burt-likko @will-truman @Tod and any other powers that be, Would you please pass on to the author that I thought her story was honest and brave, and I for one hope she will not be put off from posting on this site in the future. I thought her post set up what could have been a very interesting and worthwhile conversation.

            I am really discouraged at the responses from the commentariat . Many of the points were valid but I have to say the tone was WAY harsher than need be especially for a brand new writer to the site on such a personal topic. I don’t blame her one bit on asking that the post be removed.Report

  7. Kimmi says:

    appears to have been made private. which means that only the “site folks” are still talking on it.Report

  8. Oscar Gordon says:

    INFJ?Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Introverted Ninjas For JoeReport

    • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Myers-Briggs personality.

      Some say it’s Astrology for smart people.
      I kinda like it because, for the most part, it does capture stuff that can be quantified to some degree. HOWEVER. Taking a 20 question web personality test is likely to give bad results and to take a good, real, test is going to be a time (and perhaps even money) investment. So the web version is, effectively, astrology for smart people.

      But if you want to read posts about all of the personality tests we took here… well, I have got a handful of posts for you!Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

        Oh, but if you don’t want to read posts (who has time?), the Myers-Briggs personality types are based on the following axes:

        Extrovert vs. Introvert
        Sensing vs. iNtuition
        Thinking vs. Feeling
        Judging vs. Perceiving

        So an INFJ would be an Introvert iNtuition Feeling Judging kinda person.

        (Oscar, If I were going to throw a type and guess about your type, it’d be INTJ. But if I were to make a guess about anyone who ended up here and ended up staying here, it’d be INTJ or INTP.)Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

          Thanks for providing the context for the alphabet soup. I’m familiar with Myers-Briggs. I did one of those long ago, but aside from the introvert aspect, I can’t remember what else it said.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:

          Back in the day when HR still believed that personality types as determined by tests had predictive power about who would be a good programmer, the following hypothetical exchange was often claimed to have been overheard:

          HR: We want you to take this personality test to see if we should keep you on as a programmer.
          PROGRAMMER: What kind of personality are you looking for?
          HR: We want you to answer the test questions honestly.
          PROGRAMMER: What kind of a fool do you take me for?Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

          I have enough E (99%) for the whole site.Report

      • dragonfrog in reply to Jaybird says:

        We had some kind of personality test things done at work for our whole team, at a cost I do not like to contemplate. As I understand, it was based on the Jungian stuff that was also the foundation of Myers-Briggs, so used three of the four axes along which M-B classifies a person.

        I felt that if we had shuffled the results and handed everyone a random colleague’s results it wouldn’t have materially affected the accuracy.

        My parents came to visit the day after this exercise, and I gave them my results to read. My mom was literally howling with laughter at the description of me.Report

        • Expressive and quick-witted, INTJ represents two different sides of personality and you will never be sure with whom you will face. INTJ can be sociable, communicative and ready for fun, while on the other hand it can be very serious, thoughtful, restless and even indecisive.Report

  9. Saul Degraw says:

    I would argue that the divided government thing might be bad for the GOP now because of Trump but in different circumstances could be good for them and bad for my side.Report

    • LTL FTC in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      That article was a mixed bag. There were good points to be made about Turkey, but throwing in Brexit and the Nice attacks in there conflates democratic results that elites dislike with the failure of democracy.

      Maybe it’s a failure of oligarchy or a failure of people to listen to experts, but it’s plenty democratic. What’s not democratic is the concept of an ever-expanding sphere of issues for which the people cannot be trusted to have a preference worth honoring.

      There’s no reason that the question of whether or not a country should outsource its immigration and trade policies to a multinational organization is legitimate, even if that organization has the “right” policy. Criticizing a government for not doing enough to prevent a steady drumbeat of vicious high-casualty terrorist attacks is also legitimate: a government’s first job is to protect its people, which it’s clearly failing to do.

      Every now and then, if you failed to convince a majority of the populace that you’re right, you’re going to get an outcome you don’t like. That’s a feature, not a bug.Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to LTL FTC says:

        The authors promised to talk about liberal anti-democracy but never seemed to get around at it. A lot of people on my side of the aisle fail to recognize that many people operate on a tribal level when it comes to politics. Which is kind of weird because they are really into identity politics and can not stand Leftists like Frank and DeBoer who hate identity politics. Its just that they don’t like identity politics that they do not like.Report

    • And yet, in November, I will vote on whether Colorado does a state-based single payer health insurance system, and on a higher minimum wage. If the signature verification step is passed, I will also vote on local control of hydraulic fracturing, open primaries, and medically-assisted suicide for people with terminal diseases. A somewhat longer shot is that I will get to vote on taking Congressional redistricting authority away from the state legislature (which failed to agree on a plan in either 2001 or 2011, leaving it up to the courts). Note that all of these are topics, in addition to things like marijuana legalization, that are actively discussed in western US states, but not at the federal level because they’re all dead in the water there. IMO, representative democracy requires a safety valve, and most national-level versions of it don’t have one.Report

    • North in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      How very very slatepitchy. Ugh. I dunno why I even click through to slate.com articles.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      This isn’t democracy dying. It’s democracy going off the leash. We had a system of controls to temper the will of the people with a passable facsimile of sanity, and it’s been systematically dismantled over the years. This is the result. There’s a reason they’re called populists.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      There is a tendency in politics to view ideologies like universal laws and theorems, that they have a discrete cause-and-effect logic like physical laws.

      But as we have discussed here on this blog, there is no single entity as “democracy” any more than there exists such an animal as “socialism”.
      These terms can only point towards a fuzzy set of principles and preferences and can be practiced and applied in vastly different ways.

      Moreover, they are not independent of culture; the American style democracy that we usually speak of was heavily influenced by and integral to the Enlightenment era culture, and the subsequent religious and cultural movements and battles that have followed.

      “Democracy is failing” is just the flip side version of “Lets spread democracy throughout the world!”

      The assertion usually contains the implication that “democracy” properly applied, what The People Want, will result in a just and peaceful society.

      Yet all too often, what The People Want, is injustice and violence.Report

  10. Jaybird says:

    I look at the Libertarian Party and I think “okay, guys… if there’s any year to go for a solid single when you’re up at bat, THIS IS THE YEAR!!!!”

    And Johnson talked about baking the cake and Weld called AR-15s “weapons of mass destruction” and called handguns even worse.

    I suppose it’s a testament to how they have principles so strong that they aren’t willing to pander.

    I suppose.Report

    • Morat20 in reply to notme says:

      Louisiana, where summers are over 100 degrees. In prisons, not known for their wide-open spaces that allow in the breeze. It’s not like they can open all the windows, prop the doors open, and cool it down to a nice 95 or so in there.

      Yeah, I can see a cruel and unusual claim there.Report

      • notme in reply to Morat20 says:

        The Constitution “does not mandate comfortable prisons,” but neither does it permit inhumane ones. Farmer v. Brennan , 511 U.S. 825, 832 (1994). So 95 is now considered inhumane? People have gone soft these days.Report

        • Aaron David in reply to notme says:

          95 is pretty inhumane by any stretch, and again, we want the prisoners to be chill, literally.

          I don’t think keeping them at beef jerky drying temps vs. soft serve temps will encourage anyone to get put on lockdown just for the recreational aspects.Report

        • Morat20 in reply to notme says:

          Let’s lock you in a 10×10 steel box with no ventilation when it’s 100 degrees outside and a relative humidity of 80%.

          We’ll leave you there with plenty of water, four hours of yard time a day, and see how you feel after a full summer.

          You sound exactly like those idiots claiming waterboarding wasn’t torture. At least a few of them had the guts to try it, and IIRC, every flat one of them changed their minds. It’s pretty easy to talk about “being soft” from your comfy computer chair.Report

          • Damon in reply to Morat20 says:

            “What we have here…..is failure to communicate”Report

            • Morat20 in reply to Damon says:

              If he considers those conditions “soft”, then he should be willing to try them.

              Ugh. That extrajudicial punishment streak in conservatives has been irking me more and more. It’s not enough that you lock them up — you have to treat them like animals, and make prison rape jokes. It’s not enough to use the Army Field manual to interrogate prisoners, you have to break out Pol Pot’s tools.

              Because “just enough to get the job done” isn’t ever enough. You have to make it hurt more.

              Can’t ever admit to a shred of human decency — or human limits. I live in Houston. We just got done with two weeks of 100+ temps with heat indexes above 120. The mere idea of locking someone in a concrete or steel box with no AC in temperatures like that? It’s a crime against humanity.

              I don’t care if they’re murderers, rapists, or what. Don’t matter. There’s such a thing as human decency, and the State should practice it even if people like notme don’t.Report

              • Damon in reply to Morat20 says:

                I agree. If only because if I ever get into a situation like that I won’t like it. You do know that the quote I made was from Cool Hand Luke before he was put into the hot box yes?Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Damon says:

                Didn’t recognize it. I haven’t seen that movie in…a long, long time actually.

                I did finally see the Martian though. 🙂Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to notme says:

          If “not 95” is a possibility and it is only (mumbles something about budgets) keeping us from making “not 95” a reality, then yeah, 95 can be considered inhumane.Report

    • Will Truman in reply to notme says:

      Hell yeah air conditioning for prisoners.Report

    • dragonfrog in reply to notme says:

      Food, shelter, and clothing are at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – shelter being, as you may know, a thing that makes the harsh elements, whatever those are in a particular locale, less harsh.

      So, it happens that in 1902 a fellow invented a thing that made Louisiana and its fellow Sun Belt states considerably more habitable to humans.

      So yeah, air conditioning for prisoners.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to notme says:

      Its for the guards to. Prisons guards want prisoners to be as content as possible under the circumstances so their job is not harder than it needs to be.Report

    • Aaron David in reply to notme says:

      Yeah, most of the replies are spot on about keeping relations among inmates chill. That said, there are a lot of airflow regulations out there for big buildings (read prisons and high rises) that are only really solvable with HVAC.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Aaron David says:

        To make houses or buildings even livable in that kind of climate in the summer, you need to encourage breezes and air movement. (It’s not terribly comfortable even then, given the humidity in Louisana. I’m less than 200 miles from New Orleans, and we’ve had heat indexes of 120+ for the last two weeks due to 100 degree weather and high humidity).

        Building a prison that’s large, airy, promotes high airflow to keep the indoor heat index in just the high 90s? A non-trivial architectural challenge, and more expensive than just putting in air conditioning.Report

        • Aaron David in reply to Morat20 says:

          Its the dewpoint* (humidity) that is the factor of whether manufactured cooling (HVAC) vs. forced air alone should be the primary method, along with what constitutes your primary heat load. IE human bodies vs. machinery. Most buildings are made of cement when they reach that size, and Cement has a different R factor than the metal that used to be used. Also your facings, and a variety of other factors (overcrowding being a prime example, as it leads to air change issues.)

          *As you well know, Louisiana carries significant dewpoint numbers.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to notme says:

      Reader’s Digest circa 1979 called; they want their Outrageous! story back.

      There is a gap that needs filling between between “Strapping Young Bucks Buying Tbone Steaks” and “Crazy Housewife Sues McDonald’s for Hot CoffeeReport

    • Aaron David in reply to notme says:

      Well, to be fair to Notme here, John Kerry is on the same page:

      And the use of hydrofluorocarbons is unfortunately growing. Already, the HFCs used in refrigerators, air conditioners, inhalers, and other items are emitting an entire gigaton of carbon dioxide — equivalent pollution into the atmosphere annually. Now, if that sounds like a lot, my friends, it’s because it is. It’s the equivalent to emissions from nearly 300 coal-fired power plants every single year.

      Report

  11. Autolukos says:

    Excellent reporting from the NYT on the return of malaria in VenezuelaReport