Is Panama an emerging economy? I think we will all agree it is. The Panama City skyline looks like Hong Kong. The rest of the country, less so.
GDP per capita Panama 15,575.07 USD (2018)
GDP per capita China: 9,770.85 USD (2018)
Most of China looks more like the rest of Panama that it looks like Hong Kong. It is an emerging economy. It is just a very, very, very, big emerging economy.
I don't disagree that China's size matters, making it unlike any other economy in the world. But we must not forget that China's government would very much like their country get to be at least as prosperous as Panama
I loved Rashomon, my first glimpse of Kurosawa. I'm happy to see it in this list.
I hope there will be several foreign films in the decades to come. Hollywood's manicheism (WE good, them BAD), and penchant for simple, unambiguous stories (*), tends to grate me
(*) One of the worst cinematographic crimes was turning Wim Wenders magnificent "Heaven over Berlin" (USA title, because that's also a thing, we need to change perfectly good titles: "Wings of Desire") and "Faraway, so Close" into the detestable "City of Angels"
As an aside, my friend is surprised how much they are making in pick-up and delivery. Not enough to cover their expenses, but much more volume than they figured
A friend of mine, whose day job is CEO of a small energy company, also owns a pizza restaurant (*).
My friend tried to apply for the PPP the day it opened. The two banks he works with (Wells Fargo and Capital One) were not processing applications. He had to open an account in a third bank (my friend is friend's with an executive of Bank #3), apply there, got approved almost instantly (being a CEO meant he had all his paperwork neatly done) and was told that the program was out of funds.
Mom and pap businesses never had a chance.
(*) long, sweet, story. My friend's brother runs the pizza place full time, but the brother didn't have the capital or credit to set it up, and my friend had it. Now the brother is contributing all his sweat in exchange from a salary and a share in the profits.
Large cities in Texas (like Houston) had implemented all their lockdown measures (restaurants, gyms, theaters, social distancing) about two weeks (*)before Gov. Abbot was reluctantly shamed into enacting a Texas wide order, (April 2nd) which was not different than the already existing Harris Co. one.
I expect that even if Gov. Abbot reduces or retracts the Texas wide order, the rest of the large cities will continue doing their own thing.
As it should be. Big government in Austin shouldn't be telling us in Houston and other communities what to do. That's what federalism and subsidiarity means. Cities do their thing, and rural areas do theirs.
(*) In Houston March 24. Schools had already closed on March 16
Though I find the mention to the Yellow Crosses obnoxious and disgusting, I was actually thinking about Tony Spell's Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge the other day
I would be a six-pack of good IPA that the members of Life Tabernacle Church are mostly working class and lower middle class (I know it is a mixed race with a substantial black membership).
Working and lower middle class people makes the bulk of those actually working,in supermarkets, in Amazon warehouses, in non stop delivery of almost everything, in maintaining the parks and bike trails, in maintaining and expanding the infrastructure. You know, those people who are actually risking their health day in/day out because they are in continues contact with others. They are risking their health and that of their families by showing up every morning at their place of work in exchange for enough money to make it to the end of the month.
Should they have a right to expect from their colleagues that every single one of them makes their best effort to also stay virus free in their spare time?
Should they have a right to know that the person they are working with for hours, just 6 ft away, has spent they Sunday in a packed up church, or in an equally packed demonstration in front of City Hall?
Yes, I know the symbolism of the yellow crosses, but if you believe, because of faith in God or faith in Trump that social distancing is a hoax, shouldn't you be required to make that belief clear to your coworkers, so they can react according to their beliefs, too? So they can embrace you, or stay the hell away of you?
As an aside Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, the Council of Senior Scholars, urged Muslims worldwide to pray at home during Ramadan if their countries require social distancing, to curb the spread of the coronavirus, state news agency SPA reported on Sunday.
“Muslims shall avoid gatherings, because they are the main cause of the spread of infection and shall remember that preserving the lives of people is a great act that brings them closer to God,”
I wish the Tony Spells of America would agree with that sentiment, that preserving the lives of others is indeed WJWD
The UK's Office of National Statistics has published a comparison of weekly deaths in England and Wales in 2020 vs the minimum-maximum range since 2010.
Last week close to 17,000 people died, in total, from every cause. The range for that particular week between 2010 and 2019 is between 8,500 and 12,000.
Two weeks ago, weekly death were at around 12,000, solidly in the middle of the range
The maximum number ever, before last week, in the whole 2010-2020 range, was just over 16,000, Last week was the deadliest week in ten years
I’m not clear on exactly how bankruptcies normally work, but apparently writing off the remainder of the mortgage got counted as income on their most recent tax filing, so despite them barely making ends meet on Social Security and my Dad’s pension, they’re evaluated as exceeding the upper limit of the means testing. So, no checks for them.
Write off of debt is counted as income for all taxpayers, generally. However, there's a long list of rules on home foreclosing that would minimize your parent's tax burden, most likely to zero (the most important one, if the mortgage was or not non-recourse)
As you should know by now, the original House proposal was that everyone, including you, me, and your parents, would get their checks, and a clawback -if applicable- would take place in your income tax filing next year. The Senate introduced the means testing procedure now.
To the extent you or your parents feel the means testing provision is unfair (I do, but that's me), please address this to your senator, and vote accordingly next time
What on earth are you talking about? What kind or arguments are you trying to make?
Germany is smaller than Montana
It seems that we need to point this out a lot, but acres don't vote, people do. We are not trying to give a National ID card to every acre of land, but to every person. Germany's population is 83 million, Montana's is 1.06 million. There's 78 Germans for every person in Montana. That's 78 ID cards in Germany for every one needed in Montana
I travel to MN quite a lot for work. People in Montana are not Yanomamis or Pashtos, living in impenetrably forests or mountaintops away from western civilization. People in Montana have cell phones, internet, cars (probably more than Germans do). It will be trivially easy to provide every Montana resident with National ID. Germany gives out 78 times more ID cards, and they are doing fine.
Fax machines became popular in the 1980’s, before that if Hawaii wanted to send a photo back to Washington DC to be checked, we’re talking about snail mail over the ocean.
What the hell? Before the fax machine there was something called wirephotos or radiiophotos, going around since the 1930s. It's how deadwood newspapers around the world got photos to put on their first pages. That's how you got to see pictures of bonzos lighting themselves on fire in Vietnam, or Apollo missions shooting to the moon from Florida.
In 1941 FDR heard about Pearl Harbor at 1:30 PM, the attack was at 8AM, adjusting for time zones that’s about 12 hours… which is presumably millitary state of the art at the time for important messages
The Titanic, in 1912, had radio (then called "wireless"). That's how so many people were rescued from it, because they radioed for help, and several vessels in the area came to succor. I'm fairly sure that military state of the art in 1941 also included radio.
Plus Honolulu in 5 hours behind DC in the winter (HI does not do DST still today). 8 am HI time is 1 pm Washington DC. The news of the attack reached FDR within 30 minutes.
So no, nothing in your argument would imply that the country is so big, and so lacking in communication and 100 years old technical infrastructure that was developed that National ID would be a fool's errand.
None of the above is a good reason not to have a national ID. You are both a citizen of a state and of The United States. The United States can, and should produce a The United States national ID
Spain, where there are regions that historically were separate countries has national ID. So does Belgium. So does Germany, who as a country is 100 years younger than USA.
No, we are not like the EU. I am a EU citizen. I can tell the difference. We are not even as federal as Spain, or Germany, or Belgium. The level of legal autonomy and cultural differentiation between Spain’s autonomies, German Lander, or Belgian Flanders and Wallonia is significantly bigger that between the states.
We can do many things - Most countries do them, and it is uncontroversial
We are cursed by this (false) belief that we are exceptional, and that there's nothing to be learned about how most people do most things
National ID is one of those things - Most countries have them, and National ID actually protects your identity better than this clusterfish of assorted pieces of paper, from birth certificates to the flimsy SS card to utility bills that we have to carry around
"And if we want ID to vote, why not insist on truly universal ID?
Because state residency is pretty clearly a state level responsibility. We don’t have federal elections, even at the Presidential level we’re voting for our state’s decision."
Every country with universal ID also has local elections. When you move for one local to another, you go to an official agency (in the USA could be the DNV) and change your local voting registration. We already do that to switch driving licenses.
Most people here know that I have dual citizenship. I vote in the Spanish elections, too. When I registered with the local consulate, the registration form asks me what municipality I want to be registered in for voting purposes: I vote for everything from major to senator in a city 5,000 miles away. I get my absentee votes materials in the US mail, without asking for them. I can mail them back via US Mail, or drop them at the consulate (I do the latter).
It's not difficult. It is already done by scores of countries using the same mechanics.
That we don't do it is not because it's difficult to figure out a way to do it. It is because politicians in charge DO NOT WANT to make voting easier.
It includes everything from the port of Houston area and refineries to tree shaded expensive inner ring suburbs to the Intercontinental airport.
The only commonality in the district is that is substantially more minority than the Houston area, and that the few white majority neighborhoods are very liberal (Montrose, The Heights, Oak Forest)
David Whitley, the Texas secretary of state, apologized for a misleading claim that tens of thousands of non-citizens were registered to vote.
Last month the secretary of state's office said it was investigating the legal status of 95,000 registered voters who had provided work visas or green cards as documents when they obtained a driver's license or ID, which may suggest they were not citizens.
Of these, according to the Texas Tribune, the secretary of state's office said about 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections since 1996. Officials said the names identified are "WEAK" matches that counties may choose to investigate or not.
Those figures have proven to be invalid, as outlets including the Texas Tribune found that tens of thousands of those counted were US citizens.
It is not as if the retraction by the TX Secretary of State of those numbers wasn't as publicized as the initial numbers were. But perhaps you just didn't read the retraction because it wasn't that interesting to you
Then Justin Amash gave away the chance to shut up. Either the contest should go on, or one of the two has to bow out. There's no "contest, nut no contest because it is not needed" third alternative
It might not be what we deserve - But we definitely NEED it
And we can have a bet who Amash will vote for in November. Not Biden, for sure
And thus far none of the people claiming the rurals are forcing the urbans to live as they want have offered up a specific policy example
Here's one: Charlotte NC issued a regulation about access to bathrooms, which was approved by Charlotte's legislative body, elected by Charlotte's voters only.
The NC assembly invalidated that regulation and issued a state wide contrary one
You might say that in our constitutional organization cities and counties are creations of the states, and subordinated to them, and that would be true.
But you cannot argue then that all voters in NC, urban and rural, are not equal, and that rural voters should commend a larger portion of the NC representatives.
If a majority of voters want public transportation, or bathroom access for transgender, they should be able to vote for that. Either at the city/county level, and teh state should not pre-empt them, or at the state level, and rural voters and urban voters should not have the same voting power.
If I was a rural voter, I'd give up trying to control the cities. After all, there's more people there
To just call off the whole thing as unneeded and move on to Trump's second term directly? For Trump to gracefully concede that he is unpopular and retire to Mar a Lago?
If Obama to Trump voters (which are the ones under discussion here) prefer Trump because of his message about minorities, women, liberals, the swamp, the lamestream media, etc., as opposed to liking his actual policies, like gutting the ACA, tax cuts for corporations, deficits, and war with Iran, then why would they abandon Trump for a candidate that is not a white, Christian, straight, man ?
Observe that except Bloomberg, Steyer, or Biden, all mayor candidates, even Tulsi, weren't able to tick the four boxes.
The problem with your analysis is is a lot of middle of the road folks who supported Mr. Obama took a look at Hillary and voted for Trump in no small measure because they looked at Obama’s policies – concluded Hillary would perpetuate them – and noted they didn’t see their very real needs in those policies and positions. Joe Biden doesn’t really represent enough of a pivot away from those policies to move that needle.
The problem with your analysis, @Philip_H, is that it assumes that those Obama to Trump voters (which exist)are satisfied with the Trump presidency enough to vote for four more years of it.
There is little in the Trump presidency that reflects any positive change from the Obama policies from the point of view of an Obama-to-Trump voter: health care is not more accessible, but less, infrastructure is not being built, inequality has increased, corruption is rampant, the wars continue, and are at the risk of increasing (see Iran), the USA is less respected in the world scene. Hey, even the coal mines continue closing. And Trump's bigger domestic triumph, the tax cut, definitely didn't impact the Obama to Trump voters in any meaningful way. Large corporations did not reinvest their tax cuts in new manufacturing but in distributions to shareholders.
The thing that Trump has offered to his base, including the Obama to Trump voters, is a lot cultural symbolism: children in cages, pardoning war criminals, bullying and insulting, etc.
If the Obama to Trump voters were looking for policies, Trump hasn't delivered those, and, if anything, their actual situation is worse than in the Obama era, and a vote for Biden represents going back to the better-off Obama years.
If, on the contrary, the Obama to Trump voters moved because they were drawn to the cultural message, then, yes, they will stick with Trump.
But then, let's all be clear, it has nothing to do with policies
I'd like to address a related but different issue that it's also bothering me a lot in the last few weeks
I'm lucky that my job can be done completely remotely. It's actually been my practice for a couple of years now to only go into the office two or three days a week, because I can take calls and write emails anywhere. I'm being paid punctually, and, if anything, my workload has increased trying to address all the various issues COVID raises.
Right now, we are about to re-staff the construction of a project in the Bay Area (*). There will be about 50 people working 10 hours a day for 5 months, in the middle of the middle of the COVID epidemic.
We use union labor. The unions are supportive of going back to work. They need the work. The options for the workers are, risking falling sick and bringing it to their families, and not having any income.
While me, I'm on my fourth week at home, and obviously I am not going anywhere near the project site for the foreseeable future (before last November, I used to spend about ten days a month there). I don't need to do anything riskier than going to the supermarket for fresh vegetables twice a week and ride the bicycle to de-stress.
But a lot of people have to go to work. Not just those that will build our plant, but those that are manning my supermarket day in and day out.
And they are the lucky ones, they can still chose between money and risk. Millions more would want to have the ability to make that choice.
And it is really starting to eat me inside.
All I can do I make sure I say Thank You to every supermarket employee, and meaning it. Thank You for risking yourself and your family's health.
Because I draw the lucky number, and I can work from home
(*)Under CA environmental law, you cannot do work that involves earth movement in certain areas between Nov 1 and April 15
One thing I didn't see clearly spelled in @Christopher Bradley's OP
Café con Leche requires that, at the end of the day, there's more milk than coffee in thefinal drink
Less than 50-50 is a cortado (cut), in Spain, or a marrón (brown), in LatAm, and you can have an endless variety, from just a drop (manchado-stained) to almost cafe con leche (claro-light)
On “On Libertarianism & China: Two Perspectives”
@ George
You forgot the sarcasm tags
"
Two islands were built in front of my mum's apartment in Panama City
She even bought binoculars to watch the process because, for several years, it was riveting to follow up the process.
Building islands is actually fairly low tech
"
Is Panama an emerging economy? I think we will all agree it is. The Panama City skyline looks like Hong Kong. The rest of the country, less so.
GDP per capita Panama 15,575.07 USD (2018)
GDP per capita China: 9,770.85 USD (2018)
Most of China looks more like the rest of Panama that it looks like Hong Kong. It is an emerging economy. It is just a very, very, very, big emerging economy.
I don't disagree that China's size matters, making it unlike any other economy in the world. But we must not forget that China's government would very much like their country get to be at least as prosperous as Panama
China is very much
On “100 Favorite Films To Recommend Part 4: The 1950s”
I loved Rashomon, my first glimpse of Kurosawa. I'm happy to see it in this list.
I hope there will be several foreign films in the decades to come. Hollywood's manicheism (WE good, them BAD), and penchant for simple, unambiguous stories (*), tends to grate me
(*) One of the worst cinematographic crimes was turning Wim Wenders magnificent "Heaven over Berlin" (USA title, because that's also a thing, we need to change perfectly good titles: "Wings of Desire") and "Faraway, so Close" into the detestable "City of Angels"
On “Las Vegas Follies: Goodman, Cooper, and Content Upon Content”
As an aside, my friend is surprised how much they are making in pick-up and delivery. Not enough to cover their expenses, but much more volume than they figured
"
A friend of mine, whose day job is CEO of a small energy company, also owns a pizza restaurant (*).
My friend tried to apply for the PPP the day it opened. The two banks he works with (Wells Fargo and Capital One) were not processing applications. He had to open an account in a third bank (my friend is friend's with an executive of Bank #3), apply there, got approved almost instantly (being a CEO meant he had all his paperwork neatly done) and was told that the program was out of funds.
Mom and pap businesses never had a chance.
(*) long, sweet, story. My friend's brother runs the pizza place full time, but the brother didn't have the capital or credit to set it up, and my friend had it. Now the brother is contributing all his sweat in exchange from a salary and a share in the profits.
On “Four States Announce “Re-Open” Plans”
Large cities in Texas (like Houston) had implemented all their lockdown measures (restaurants, gyms, theaters, social distancing) about two weeks (*)before Gov. Abbot was reluctantly shamed into enacting a Texas wide order, (April 2nd) which was not different than the already existing Harris Co. one.
I expect that even if Gov. Abbot reduces or retracts the Texas wide order, the rest of the large cities will continue doing their own thing.
As it should be. Big government in Austin shouldn't be telling us in Houston and other communities what to do. That's what federalism and subsidiarity means. Cities do their thing, and rural areas do theirs.
(*) In Houston March 24. Schools had already closed on March 16
On “Harsh Your Mellow Monday: Problems, Progress & Progressive Edition”
Re the Yellow Crosses
Though I find the mention to the Yellow Crosses obnoxious and disgusting, I was actually thinking about Tony Spell's Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge the other day
I would be a six-pack of good IPA that the members of Life Tabernacle Church are mostly working class and lower middle class (I know it is a mixed race with a substantial black membership).
Working and lower middle class people makes the bulk of those actually working,in supermarkets, in Amazon warehouses, in non stop delivery of almost everything, in maintaining the parks and bike trails, in maintaining and expanding the infrastructure. You know, those people who are actually risking their health day in/day out because they are in continues contact with others. They are risking their health and that of their families by showing up every morning at their place of work in exchange for enough money to make it to the end of the month.
Should they have a right to expect from their colleagues that every single one of them makes their best effort to also stay virus free in their spare time?
Should they have a right to know that the person they are working with for hours, just 6 ft away, has spent they Sunday in a packed up church, or in an equally packed demonstration in front of City Hall?
Yes, I know the symbolism of the yellow crosses, but if you believe, because of faith in God or faith in Trump that social distancing is a hoax, shouldn't you be required to make that belief clear to your coworkers, so they can react according to their beliefs, too? So they can embrace you, or stay the hell away of you?
As an aside Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, the Council of Senior Scholars, urged Muslims worldwide to pray at home during Ramadan if their countries require social distancing, to curb the spread of the coronavirus, state news agency SPA reported on Sunday.
“Muslims shall avoid gatherings, because they are the main cause of the spread of infection and shall remember that preserving the lives of people is a great act that brings them closer to God,”
I wish the Tony Spells of America would agree with that sentiment, that preserving the lives of others is indeed WJWD
On “Coronavirus Deaths: The Animated Series”
The UK's Office of National Statistics has published a comparison of weekly deaths in England and Wales in 2020 vs the minimum-maximum range since 2010.
Last week close to 17,000 people died, in total, from every cause. The range for that particular week between 2010 and 2019 is between 8,500 and 12,000.
Two weeks ago, weekly death were at around 12,000, solidly in the middle of the range
The maximum number ever, before last week, in the whole 2010-2020 range, was just over 16,000, Last week was the deadliest week in ten years
https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1250007002165755905/photo/1
On “Stimulus Legislation “Loophole” Allows Garnishment of Relief Checks”
I’m not clear on exactly how bankruptcies normally work, but apparently writing off the remainder of the mortgage got counted as income on their most recent tax filing, so despite them barely making ends meet on Social Security and my Dad’s pension, they’re evaluated as exceeding the upper limit of the means testing. So, no checks for them.
Write off of debt is counted as income for all taxpayers, generally. However, there's a long list of rules on home foreclosing that would minimize your parent's tax burden, most likely to zero (the most important one, if the mortgage was or not non-recourse)
As you should know by now, the original House proposal was that everyone, including you, me, and your parents, would get their checks, and a clawback -if applicable- would take place in your income tax filing next year. The Senate introduced the means testing procedure now.
To the extent you or your parents feel the means testing provision is unfair (I do, but that's me), please address this to your senator, and vote accordingly next time
On “A Clusterfark in Wisconsin”
@ Dark Matter
What on earth are you talking about? What kind or arguments are you trying to make?
Germany is smaller than Montana
It seems that we need to point this out a lot, but acres don't vote, people do. We are not trying to give a National ID card to every acre of land, but to every person. Germany's population is 83 million, Montana's is 1.06 million. There's 78 Germans for every person in Montana. That's 78 ID cards in Germany for every one needed in Montana
I travel to MN quite a lot for work. People in Montana are not Yanomamis or Pashtos, living in impenetrably forests or mountaintops away from western civilization. People in Montana have cell phones, internet, cars (probably more than Germans do). It will be trivially easy to provide every Montana resident with National ID. Germany gives out 78 times more ID cards, and they are doing fine.
Fax machines became popular in the 1980’s, before that if Hawaii wanted to send a photo back to Washington DC to be checked, we’re talking about snail mail over the ocean.
What the hell? Before the fax machine there was something called wirephotos or radiiophotos, going around since the 1930s. It's how deadwood newspapers around the world got photos to put on their first pages. That's how you got to see pictures of bonzos lighting themselves on fire in Vietnam, or Apollo missions shooting to the moon from Florida.
In 1941 FDR heard about Pearl Harbor at 1:30 PM, the attack was at 8AM, adjusting for time zones that’s about 12 hours… which is presumably millitary state of the art at the time for important messages
The Titanic, in 1912, had radio (then called "wireless"). That's how so many people were rescued from it, because they radioed for help, and several vessels in the area came to succor. I'm fairly sure that military state of the art in 1941 also included radio.
Plus Honolulu in 5 hours behind DC in the winter (HI does not do DST still today). 8 am HI time is 1 pm Washington DC. The news of the attack reached FDR within 30 minutes.
So no, nothing in your argument would imply that the country is so big, and so lacking in communication and 100 years old technical infrastructure that was developed that National ID would be a fool's errand.
"
None of the above is a good reason not to have a national ID. You are both a citizen of a state and of The United States. The United States can, and should produce a The United States national ID
Spain, where there are regions that historically were separate countries has national ID. So does Belgium. So does Germany, who as a country is 100 years younger than USA.
No, we are not like the EU. I am a EU citizen. I can tell the difference. We are not even as federal as Spain, or Germany, or Belgium. The level of legal autonomy and cultural differentiation between Spain’s autonomies, German Lander, or Belgian Flanders and Wallonia is significantly bigger that between the states.
"
We can do many things - Most countries do them, and it is uncontroversial
We are cursed by this (false) belief that we are exceptional, and that there's nothing to be learned about how most people do most things
National ID is one of those things - Most countries have them, and National ID actually protects your identity better than this clusterfish of assorted pieces of paper, from birth certificates to the flimsy SS card to utility bills that we have to carry around
"
Dark Matter sad
"And if we want ID to vote, why not insist on truly universal ID?
Because state residency is pretty clearly a state level responsibility. We don’t have federal elections, even at the Presidential level we’re voting for our state’s decision."
Every country with universal ID also has local elections. When you move for one local to another, you go to an official agency (in the USA could be the DNV) and change your local voting registration. We already do that to switch driving licenses.
Most people here know that I have dual citizenship. I vote in the Spanish elections, too. When I registered with the local consulate, the registration form asks me what municipality I want to be registered in for voting purposes: I vote for everything from major to senator in a city 5,000 miles away. I get my absentee votes materials in the US mail, without asking for them. I can mail them back via US Mail, or drop them at the consulate (I do the latter).
It's not difficult. It is already done by scores of countries using the same mechanics.
That we don't do it is not because it's difficult to figure out a way to do it. It is because politicians in charge DO NOT WANT to make voting easier.
"
The problem in Wisconsin was not whether to vote for Bernie or Biden, and everyone (at least everyone in this thread of highly informed people) knows
The real issue was the WI Supreme Court election
"
It is not as if mine is better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_18th_congressional_district
It includes everything from the port of Houston area and refineries to tree shaded expensive inner ring suburbs to the Intercontinental airport.
The only commonality in the district is that is substantially more minority than the Houston area, and that the few white majority neighborhoods are very liberal (Montrose, The Heights, Oak Forest)
"
What about when it is an offence that didn't happen ?
https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-secretary-of-state-retracts-figures-on-illegal-voters-2019-2
David Whitley, the Texas secretary of state, apologized for a misleading claim that tens of thousands of non-citizens were registered to vote.
Last month the secretary of state's office said it was investigating the legal status of 95,000 registered voters who had provided work visas or green cards as documents when they obtained a driver's license or ID, which may suggest they were not citizens.
Of these, according to the Texas Tribune, the secretary of state's office said about 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections since 1996. Officials said the names identified are "WEAK" matches that counties may choose to investigate or not.
Those figures have proven to be invalid, as outlets including the Texas Tribune found that tens of thousands of those counted were US citizens.
It is not as if the retraction by the TX Secretary of State of those numbers wasn't as publicized as the initial numbers were. But perhaps you just didn't read the retraction because it wasn't that interesting to you
On “Reality Comes and Brings the End for Bernie Sanders 2020”
Then Justin Amash gave away the chance to shut up. Either the contest should go on, or one of the two has to bow out. There's no "contest, nut no contest because it is not needed" third alternative
It might not be what we deserve - But we definitely NEED it
And we can have a bet who Amash will vote for in November. Not Biden, for sure
On “A Clusterfark in Wisconsin”
And thus far none of the people claiming the rurals are forcing the urbans to live as they want have offered up a specific policy example
Here's one: Charlotte NC issued a regulation about access to bathrooms, which was approved by Charlotte's legislative body, elected by Charlotte's voters only.
The NC assembly invalidated that regulation and issued a state wide contrary one
You might say that in our constitutional organization cities and counties are creations of the states, and subordinated to them, and that would be true.
But you cannot argue then that all voters in NC, urban and rural, are not equal, and that rural voters should commend a larger portion of the NC representatives.
If a majority of voters want public transportation, or bathroom access for transgender, they should be able to vote for that. Either at the city/county level, and teh state should not pre-empt them, or at the state level, and rural voters and urban voters should not have the same voting power.
If I was a rural voter, I'd give up trying to control the cities. After all, there's more people there
On “Reality Comes and Brings the End for Bernie Sanders 2020”
I'm not sure what is Amash proposing here
To just call off the whole thing as unneeded and move on to Trump's second term directly? For Trump to gracefully concede that he is unpopular and retire to Mar a Lago?
"
Your comment doesn't make much sense to me
If Obama to Trump voters (which are the ones under discussion here) prefer Trump because of his message about minorities, women, liberals, the swamp, the lamestream media, etc., as opposed to liking his actual policies, like gutting the ACA, tax cuts for corporations, deficits, and war with Iran, then why would they abandon Trump for a candidate that is not a white, Christian, straight, man ?
Observe that except Bloomberg, Steyer, or Biden, all mayor candidates, even Tulsi, weren't able to tick the four boxes.
"
The problem with your analysis is is a lot of middle of the road folks who supported Mr. Obama took a look at Hillary and voted for Trump in no small measure because they looked at Obama’s policies – concluded Hillary would perpetuate them – and noted they didn’t see their very real needs in those policies and positions. Joe Biden doesn’t really represent enough of a pivot away from those policies to move that needle.
The problem with your analysis, @Philip_H, is that it assumes that those Obama to Trump voters (which exist)are satisfied with the Trump presidency enough to vote for four more years of it.
There is little in the Trump presidency that reflects any positive change from the Obama policies from the point of view of an Obama-to-Trump voter: health care is not more accessible, but less, infrastructure is not being built, inequality has increased, corruption is rampant, the wars continue, and are at the risk of increasing (see Iran), the USA is less respected in the world scene. Hey, even the coal mines continue closing. And Trump's bigger domestic triumph, the tax cut, definitely didn't impact the Obama to Trump voters in any meaningful way. Large corporations did not reinvest their tax cuts in new manufacturing but in distributions to shareholders.
The thing that Trump has offered to his base, including the Obama to Trump voters, is a lot cultural symbolism: children in cages, pardoning war criminals, bullying and insulting, etc.
If the Obama to Trump voters were looking for policies, Trump hasn't delivered those, and, if anything, their actual situation is worse than in the Obama era, and a vote for Biden represents going back to the better-off Obama years.
If, on the contrary, the Obama to Trump voters moved because they were drawn to the cultural message, then, yes, they will stick with Trump.
But then, let's all be clear, it has nothing to do with policies
On “Here Comes the Pain, Shared and Otherwise”
I'd like to address a related but different issue that it's also bothering me a lot in the last few weeks
I'm lucky that my job can be done completely remotely. It's actually been my practice for a couple of years now to only go into the office two or three days a week, because I can take calls and write emails anywhere. I'm being paid punctually, and, if anything, my workload has increased trying to address all the various issues COVID raises.
Right now, we are about to re-staff the construction of a project in the Bay Area (*). There will be about 50 people working 10 hours a day for 5 months, in the middle of the middle of the COVID epidemic.
We use union labor. The unions are supportive of going back to work. They need the work. The options for the workers are, risking falling sick and bringing it to their families, and not having any income.
While me, I'm on my fourth week at home, and obviously I am not going anywhere near the project site for the foreseeable future (before last November, I used to spend about ten days a month there). I don't need to do anything riskier than going to the supermarket for fresh vegetables twice a week and ride the bicycle to de-stress.
But a lot of people have to go to work. Not just those that will build our plant, but those that are manning my supermarket day in and day out.
And they are the lucky ones, they can still chose between money and risk. Millions more would want to have the ability to make that choice.
And it is really starting to eat me inside.
All I can do I make sure I say Thank You to every supermarket employee, and meaning it. Thank You for risking yourself and your family's health.
Because I draw the lucky number, and I can work from home
(*)Under CA environmental law, you cannot do work that involves earth movement in certain areas between Nov 1 and April 15
On “Remote Barista: Cafe Con Leche”
One thing I didn't see clearly spelled in @Christopher Bradley's OP
Café con Leche requires that, at the end of the day, there's more milk than coffee in thefinal drink
Less than 50-50 is a cortado (cut), in Spain, or a marrón (brown), in LatAm, and you can have an endless variety, from just a drop (manchado-stained) to almost cafe con leche (claro-light)
"
I'm lactose intolerant, so I can't do café con leche, even though, being Spaniard born, that's how coffee has introduced to children.
But as a serious drinker of espressos, here my question to you, @Christopher Bradley.
Have you ever tried putting lemon peel (1/2 inch will do great) in your espresso?
Make sure you press the peel against the cup hard with your spoon, and prepare yourself for a completely new experience
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