Commenter Archive

I think this works in a world where people are really evaluating performance based on policy implementation/legislative successes but I'm not sure thats happening even within our parties (I'd say it definitively isn't in the GOP).

Not to sound like a Marxist or something similarly crass but I think the disconnect between voters and politicians has more to do with economics and culture than the process thats granting power.

Bingo. This fool should've never been allowed to purchase a firearm and was prohibited from doing so under existing law. Its an enforcement/bureacratic failure. If fingers must be pointed the US Air Force and probably to a slightly lesser degree the FBI seem much more blameworthy than the NRA.

In Canada, for example, the Progressive Conservatives (PC) made one bad decision after another. A new party formed, became bigger than the old, and merged with (essentially absorbed) the PC. We don’t really have a mechanism for that here

In our parallel though the Trump-populists just completed their take over of the GOP and absorbed the rump Zombie Reagan (I love that description @marchmaine) establishment. It all just happened intra-party and I'm not sure we'd be in a particularly different place if there had been an official party split beforehand. I'm agnostic on whether or not our current electoral system is the best we can do but I also don't know that a different one would have prevented Trump. Even with multiple parties the vagaries of forming a government can still result in some weird/sub-optimal outcomes (see Berlusconi, Silvio).

@oscar-gordon This exchange you and @kazzy had interested me enough I called a relative of mine who is an FFL and asked if he had any idea why the 4473 is in paper only. He said that the ATF did in the last few years introduce an e form but for whatever reason has done a bad job of keeping the software and versioning correct. Wikipedia seems to confirm this. The result has been essentially zero adoption.

Not a real investigation but it sounds like the answer is government incompetence. The transaction and NICS system is ridiculously outdated and there's no good reason not to bring it into the 21st century.

It makes an outrageously cynical sense when you consider that the Democratic party has completely lost its bearings on the immigration issue. The primary forced national issues into the conversation and Northam wasn't ready. The fact that they let that LVF ad get on the air is baffling to me.

Honestly? Utter desperation by team blue activists and a weird ambivalence elsewhere. House money is probably right to favor Northam but you get the feeling even a rainy day or something could give Gillespie the upset. Northam had to see off a primary challenger to his left that resulted in him seeming a little... off to me. There was a widely circulated one where he said 'Donald Trump is a narcissistic maniac!' that maybe played well with the base but I think seemed patronizing to everyone else.

Caveat is I'm north of the Potomac and my contact with Virginians is primarily with the very blue DC suburbs. This will be decided a bit further out and probably in the Hampton Roads/Norfolk area.

Living in the media market where this is going on has been quite interesting. Most brutal and cynical advertisements I can recall seeing. The big one right now ties Northams votes on restoration of rights to felons to a guy who got caught with a huge amount of kiddie porn.

To give you a response that probably validates just about all of that comment (not least about the community here) I think it might depend on how broadly we define 'legitimate.'

Part of making liberal democracy work I think is learning how to be a good winner, even when the people you've defeated are still bitterly fighting a doomed and largely symbolic rearguard action.

What it sounds like he's asking for is netting covering the entire lower deck of the stadium.

It's what you get when you start with a flawed premise i.e. perfect safety is possible without seriously compromising the thing in question. Maybe there is something cost effective that could make a big dent in foul ball/broken bat injuries to spectators (or panoramic sun roof injuries) that doesnt or only marginally alters the experience but that's not the argument being made.

In retrospect my comment on [sp2] was way too harsh. I'm sure the experience for his wife was horrible and traumatic and it sucks she had to go through that. Still it comes from the 'something bad happened to me therefore the world should change' genre that drives me nuts. It's right up there with 'won't someone please think of the children' pieces. He even admits he doesn't really know the scope of the problem but Something Must Be Done!

[Sp2] maybe the author and his wife should just start wearing their own catchers masks to games.

[Sp3] definitely an interesting read but I wish they went a little more into detail about Moore's personal demons. I get the sense that the author was trying to make a point about the lows that follow the dizzying highs of a career as a pro athlete but didn't quite make the connection. Instead it came off as 'well he was a drunk and a wife beater, of course he committed suicide.'

[Sp4] its a nice thought and the point is dead on, but without constant propaganda how else will our government convince people to be killed in Niger for no reason?

[Sp9] it sucks but it seems like, absent a miracle, football will eventually go the way of professional boxing.

Sounds about right.

Somehow we seem to have lost our way on working out these issues with kids. I remember in elementary school I got into a fight with a kid a year older who was picking on me. The principal flipped out on us both and said we had to sit in a room together every recess until Christmas. I don't remember how early in the year this occurred, but I think it was about a 6 week sentence. Around the 4 week mark it became apparent we no longer hated each other and the principal said 'merry Christmas' and we were free to go. I'd be lying if I said we became the best of friends after that but we got on well enough that we never had another issue.

I mention this not because I think it's the right solution for every incident but because there was some discretion exercised by the administrator to address the actual problem. I get the impression now that there's sort of a bureacratic response designed to avoid litigation. It's where you get these stories of kids being punished for defending themselves and cops called to schools for disciplinary problems. The caveat to my personal experience is that it occurred in Catholic school. I noticed a lot more zero tolerance when I was in public school later in life.

I hate to make a prediction but I suspect you're right. The federal laws in question are broad enough that it probably won't be hard to get a conviction or force a plea (so far we are just at the 'indictment of ham sandwich' phase). Even if that happens though I doubt that it will uncover the conclusive evidence people keep promising. Those who want to see this as evidence of a conspiracy will, those who want plausible deniability will have it.

And now that I've said this in less than a fortnight tapes will surface of Trump promising to sell Alaska back in exchange for Putin's help, all over salat Olivier and shots of vodka.

I do wonder if there isn't a substantial political divide around age. I too remember when the attempts at cultural policing were coming from the Christian right, and it informs my views on these issues. It's weird to think that side has lost so much ground in the last 20 years that there's a generation of people for whom it may as well have never existed.

Agreed. There's absolutely a cycle of escalation facilitated by the internet/consumerism. No one wants their brand associated with a controversy. Every overreaction to a small number of cranks and social media trolls proves someone's political or social narrative which then, like Oscar said, gets bounced around various echo chambers until whoever the other side is feels they must respond, ad nauseum.

Alas the closest we've ever gotten is Space Balls.

I see what you're saying but if that's really what we're talking about it seems that the appropriate target for criticism is Disney for making the film at all, not parents buying costumes for their kids. You and Maribou went into the details of that and I don't really have much to add.

The only other comment I'd make is seems like another situation where I'm not sure there's a reasonable/workable rule for artistic enterprises to follow. Even people who work hard to portray other cultures fairly and accurately end up on the receiving end of these kinds of criticisms. It was just the other week we were talking about the Kirkus review correction. At some point you just have to say you can't please everyone and go about your business.

That rule misses the 'that works for a big diverse country' part that I think is just as important. There are too many sensibilities to take into account even for that to be workable.

I guess I'm in the camp that does not believe it can be harmful if the concept of harm is to have any meaning. No Polynesian American is suffering any type of injury or deprivation by white children dressing as Moana for Halloween. I believe it can be offensive, but mostly just in the sense that, much like what constitutes cultural appropriation, offense is inherently in the eye of the beholder.

Maybe thats fair from an academic standpoint but if we are expecting people to live it in their day to day lives lest they be judged harshly, as these annual Halloween controversies imply, I dont agree. It isnt reasonable to tell people not to break rules that can't be articulated.

Until someone comes up with a hard, fast, and easy to understand rule that works for a big diverse country the concept needs to be thrown out. I think its fair to condemn a very specific form of minstrelsy where a person is intentionally acting like a negative stereotype of another race. Cultural appropriation on the other hand is so fleeting and impossible to define that in practice its another form of partisan gotcha or tribal signifier. It helps no one in any material way so screw it.

And thats exactly what they'll do.

You hit on a couple of the more bizarre aspects of the 'cultural appropriation' debates that illustrate how schizophrenic the underlying ideology is. As I understand it, we are to applaud boys dressing as girls and girls dressing in costumes more traditionally associated with boys, most of which are associated with mass market fictional products (I think there's always been a bit more flexibility for girls on this in modern times).

However, even as we celebrate our culture's newfound appreciation of gender fluidity by buying these costumes, we are to condemn as evil costumes in some way associated with another culture, most of which also arise out of a mass marketed fictional product.

BUT the inclusion of the other culture in the mass marketed product must be vocally celebrated as a watershed moment or our own benighted and backward society. Except that the plurality of the people who make up our society shouldnt celebrate TOO much (certainly they must NEVER buy a Halloween costume associated with it) because that mass marketed fiction product isnt really for them, and they better damn well remember that!

I'm not sure I understand where all this is going, but what a weird moment it is we are living in.