I think “edit comments” should now be fixed for most of y’all. (It’s never worked for everyone.)
This is an open thread. Post about what you want, when you want, how you want. Self-promote. Be free. Flock like birds, love like penguins, play like threshes. Jump up and down until you get dizzy. But don’t run with scissors. Or lightsabers.
- I just now came across Wikipaintings, but I can already see that it’s going to be a major timesuck for me. Above: “The Lovers” by Rene Magritte.
- The Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the Individual Mandate today. Things are not looking good for Obamacare, although of course trying to figure out the outcome from oral arguments can be deceptive. My guess is we’re going to see a pure party-line vote against the individual mandate, but I wouldn’t be willing to bet on it.
- I’m arguing about Obamacare on this thread at Ethics Alarms.
- The Extender: one seat. Excellent, heartfelt post about being fat and wanting a place to sit in your doctor’s waiting area.
- Hunger Games: What do you mean, the black girl was black?
- What it means for media to take climate seriously.
- And, along similar lines: Attempts: We Are All Senator Inhofe Now
- Why Xander Harris sucks like an annoying misogynistic judgmental toad.
- No, the CBO did not find that Obamacare is going to cost much more than originally estimated.
- Life as an Undocumented Immigrant: How Restrictive Local Immigration Policies Affect Daily Life
- Erik Scott’s Family Drops Lawsuit | The Agitator Why do stories like these have so little impact? Do Americans WANT to live in a society in which cops can shoot us to death at will and without fear of being held responsible?
- Shakesville: Rush Limbaugh and the Thought Police
- Bayard Rustin Turns 100 « wakingupnow.com The man who taught MLK about nonviolence.
- It’s been 101 years and two days since the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. This summary of it at Lawyers Guns and Money is excellent.
- The Manly Origins of Cheerleading » Sociological Images
- Man Flies Like a Bird, Flapping His Homemade Wings: VIDEO. Soooo cool! UPDATE: Alas, it’s a hoax.
- “Seeking Asian Female”, a new documentary about a marriage formed on one of those “find Asian women to marry” websites — but also about the impossibility of a filmmaker being separate from her subjects — sounds riveting.
- Box Turtle Bulletin » NOM Tactics Revealed in Court Docs Dump
- the HAES files: How to Photoshop a Research Study
- The Scale Of The Universe — a webtoy that simply shows the scale of different things — has been updated, and is as fascinating as ever. You should definitely spend a few minutes at this link.
- Why we shouldn’t want Obama to come out in favor of marriage equality before the election.
- The 2016 Litmus Test: In 2016, the Democratic nominee will be in favor of marriage equality.
- 1 in 3 Black Men Go To Prison? The 10 Most Disturbing Facts About Racial Inequality in the U.S. Criminal Justice System (Via).
- Check out this lovely gallery of drawings by Moebius, of humans riding odd creatures.
And now, for something completely different: Strandbeests. Courtesy of Grim’s Hall.
@21 – Seems to me that the author is saying that President Obama should lie about his opinions regarding gays and marriage. Ends justify the means, don’t you know.
@10: Laws restricting illegal immigrants makes their lives difficult. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. That’s the intent! Of course, the article took exactly 10 words to lie about the legislation in the first place: “What happens to undocumented immigrants after the passage of anti-immigrant state laws …”. They’re not anti-immigrant. They’re anti-illegal-immigrant laws.
Well, yeah. Of course. If someone in your family is known to you to be a thief or a drug dealer you’d be reluctant to call the cops to your house, too. It’s not a reason to get rid of anti-theft and anti-drug dealing laws.
This is a howler. Does the author have a clue as to the definition of the word “citizen”? How does a phrase equating someone in the U.S. illegally to be a citizen come to someone’s mind?
@ 22: Don’t be so sure. If the 2016 Democratic nominee is not black he or she is going to have to take a long look at the numbers. Blacks as a whole generally do NOT support changing the definition of marriage to include non-heterosexual couples. If the economy picks up between 2012 and 2016 under a Republican President it could be a deal breaker.
About #2 My wife’s coworkers are all gaga over the Hunger games books. In my opinion, they’re poorly researched and Mary Sueish in the extreme. Oh, and the heroes are a self-obsessed, psychopathic class traitor (the girl) and a creepy Nice Guy (Peter). I could not make it through the second part despite wanting to be able to badmouth it.
Still, the last time I heard people discussing it, they were two Hispanics who were complaining that both characters from the agricultural district were described as brown skinned, and that one of them was the only character in the book who spoke broken English. I guess those two guys are happy now that the author has stated that the fridge bait and the noble savage are African-American.
As a black guy, all I can say is that now I dislike the author a bit more, not that one could measure the difference.
About #16 You cannot POSSIBLY believe that this is true?! do you, Ampersand?
Ron — Most African-Americans are against marriage equality, true (pretty much in line with religiosity).
But it’s wistful thinking for Republicans to imagine that this is an issue that will be a “deal breaker” between Blacks and the Democrats. If this was going to happen, why hasn’t it already happened, over pro-choice issues, or with the many Democrats in Congress who support marriage equality but still win more or less 90% of the black vote?
Also, as far as the 2016 nominees go, it’s more about the primary election than the general election. When given a choice between credible Democratic candidates who support marriage equality (Cuomo, say) and those who do not, what will most Democratic primary voters support? I don’t think the Democrats will have a choice in 2016; either they’ll support marriage equality, or they’ll lose the primary election.
Sebastian: Petra, not Peter. I don’t think Petra technically counts as a Nice Guy ™, since he’s open about his attraction to Katniss for most of the book, and is not bitter and misogynistic at the prospect of Katniss being attracted to someone else. (He certainly does get bitter later, but it’s written as a reaction to being tortured by the government.)
Why do you say Katniss is a class traitor?
#16 is a hoax, sadly: http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/humanbirdwings.asp
Alas! Thanks for pointing that out; I’ve updated the post.
Ha ha, Amp doesn’t understand physics.
But I, too, wanted it to be true. For much of my life I have been TORTURED by dreams in which I have somehow, always very plausibly in dream-logic, gained the power of flight. And then I wake up and slowly realize that I *don’t* have a jetpack or an antigravity ray, or the blessing of the pegasus spirit, or whatever innovation my brain had concocted.
Stupid brain. Stupid 9.8 m/s^2 gravity field. This planet sucks.
Why would you expect pro-corporate Roberts to vote against the mandate? I’ll feel rather surprised if that happens. (Predictionbook dot com seems to agree.)
Ron, as far as #10, a couple things are worth remembering:
1. There have been multiple cases of deporting the wrong person. This means that the fears and stresses placed on illegal immigrants are also placed on legal immigrants and US citizens *especially* when it’s combined with racial profiling. If your neighbor, who looks an awful lot like you and has a similar accent and last name, just got pulled over for a missing tail light and was never seen again, the fact that you have a US birth certificate is not going to make you feel secure about being out in public or having any contact with law enforcement.
2. Theft and drug-dealing are inherently voluntary activities. Being an undocumented immigrant sometimes is and sometimes isn’t. We treat people who were brought here at the age of three and who have known no other home and no other language the same way we treat an adult who snuck across a border last week. If the parent of a small child shoplifts by hiding stuff in the kid’s backpack, we don’t throw the kid in jail ten years later.
3. Being made a target for crime is not an appropriate punishment for illegal immigration. If you have a population of people who can’t interact with law enforcement, that’s essentially painting a target on their backs for every mugger, rapist, and burglar: “Go ahead and do whatever you want to these people. What are they going to do, call the cops?” And even if one argues that people who choose to come here illegally deserve whatever they get (nevermind that no reasonable person would make the same argument about people with unpaid parking tickets or recreational drug users or people who cheat on their taxes), there’s still points 1 and 2.
4. Making a group of people unwilling to have any contact with law enforcement makes the whole area less safe, not just those people. If the only witnesses to a robbery or assault have reason to worry about INS (whether because they’re actually here illegally or not), what incentive is there for them to call 911 for help, or to tell the police what they saw?
Even if I look at this from a totally selfish perspective, it seems like a bad idea. If I get mugged, I would really prefer that someone who’s in a position to help me doesn’t have to weigh their desire to help against whether they or a family member are going to get deported.
Sure.
What are we to get from that? That we should stop deporting people?
I’m not suggesting that it doesn’t happen. There’s no question that our court system will occasionally fuck up adjudication of immigration issues, just as it occasionally fucks up adjudication of everything else–from petty theft to rape, drugs, assault, and murder.
But we are a country of 300 million people. There will be “multiple cases” of ANYTHING.
Generally speaking, the court system has an error rate which is estimated to be between 0.1% and 1%, AFAIK. And actually, deportation of the wrong person is (as these things go) relatively fixable: let them back in, and pay them some money for their trouble.
So let’s look at the numbers: We deported about 350,000 people in 2008. How many people would you permit the system to wrongfully deport?
Any changes to the system would also make it harder to deport people who WERE eligible for deportation. The same applies to other criminal issues: if you want to reduce the number of people who are falsely convicted of sexual assault, you’re going to make it harder to convict the guilty folks.
What %age seems reasonable to you?
You know, I honestly don’t know what percentage is reasonable. I think there should be a higher standard for deportation than for imprisonment because deportation is actually harder to fix. It’s easy to let someone out of jail if you know right where they are, but once you throw someone out of the country, you lose track of them. (I’m opposed to the death penalty on the same grounds–there’s no fixing mistakes at all.)
I bring up wrongful deportations not so much to argue that we should fix the system such that it never happens, but to point out that every attempt to make it harder to be an undocumented immigrant in this country also affects legal immigrants and citizens who are at risk of being mistaken for illegal immigrants.
I think you’ve got that backwards, actually. Neither case requires the state to “keep track of” them–the onus is always on the wrongfully convicted folks to clear their own name.
But prison is inherently horrific and dangerous. It is also an inherent violation of every fundamental liberty that you can imagine. Life outside prison is inherently superior to life within it, even if you’re not in the U.S.A.
I respect the fact that opinions can differ, and that yours doesn’t need to be the same as mine. But given what I know of prisons, I am still having trouble understanding how you could conclude that it is better to be falsely imprisoned than falsely deported. I’m trying to determine whether we disagree about the horrors of prison, the effects of deportation, or both. Can you give more details?
Yes, of course. I talk about error tradeoffs all the time.
Right now, given
a) the high number of illegal immigrants;
b) the much higher number of of citizens and legal aliens;
c) the relatively low number of yearly deportations compared to the number of illegal immigrants; and
d) the even lower number of wrongful deportations compared to the # of citizens/legal aliens…
Well, it seems that the complaints of error are more about stopping deportation than having a realistic discussion about the pros and cons and costs and benefits of where we set the line for error.
Good point though it depends a great deal on the type of prison and the specific prison. Whether deportation is worse depends not just on how bad prison is but on where you’re deported to–is it reasonably safe or terribly dangerous, do you speak the language, etc.? Can you make some kind of life for yourself and see that your basic needs are met, or are you likely to be starving on the street? (If you were going to wrongfully spend a year in a low-security prison, or a year in a war-torn plague and starvation stricken country, would you pick deportation? I don’t think I would.) Prison is probably usually worse, but I don’t think it’s unarguably worse than deportation in every possible case. If nothing else, a prison sentence at least has an end date. Deportation is intended to be permanent.
As far as keeping track of people, sure, it’s their responsibility in either case (though when someone deported is a child, it’s hard to imagine them being able to prove their right to come back). But if they have friends or family trying to help them out, those people have a lot better chance of communicating with them if they’re in prison.
GiW seems to have the right track on this – but I will say that while I’m pretty much in favor of the immigration laws passed by the States recently, I would favor some kind of legalization process for people brought here by their parents while they were in their minority.
Hunger Games: It’s Peeta, not Peter or Petra.
He speaks broken English? He barely speaks at all, but in the one scene where he does have lines, there’s nothing “broken” about it, other than a few sentence fragments, but since it’s a scene where everybody is trying to convey information and get out of there as fast as possible, everyone is talking like that.
(In case anyone cares, and SPOILERS for Hunger Games, this is everything that Thresh says in the book, as far as I can tell. “What’d you do to that little girl? You kill her?” “You said her name. I heard you. You kill her? You cut her up like you were going to cut up this girl here?” “What’d she mean? About Rue being your ally?” “To sleep?” “Just this one time, I let you go. For the little girl. You and me, we’re even now. No more owed. You understand?”)
For most of the book, I read him as more sullen than anything else — one of those teenage boys who mostly stands in the corner with his arms crossed, scowling at everybody. He seems scary because he’s big, but he doesn’t get excited at the violence like some of the others do.
I can see how Katniss could be described as psychopathic, but where does the self-obsessed and class traitor part come from?
A blog post by David Brothers about Trayvon Martin
And then there’s this video of Zimmerman entering the Sanford Police station.
I saw Hunger Games last night. I haven’t read the book(s). I found that I liked it a good deal more than I thought I would. I didn’t see Katniss as a class traitor, even.
SPOILERS:
Sure, she blew off boycotting watching the games, but after volunteering she was just trying to stay alive. Again, not having read the books at all, I can see where there’s conflicts once she gets back to District 12. She adopted the fiction that she had an attraction towards Peeta, but he certainly had an attraction for her (he could have killed her after the fall from the tree and before the rule change and instead helped her survive). Between what happened during the Games and what he did for her beforehand she’s conflicted as to whether she IS attracted to him. The shared experience they went through overshadows – maybe – what she shares with her old boyfriend. And now she may well have more money than the rest of the District combined and a taste of the good life (and an example of what can happen when you over-indulge). But while a guy like me would watch this movie, with plenty of action, the next movie is likely going to be mostly about relationships, not something you’re going to get the young male demographic in to see.
She’s also going to get sucked into the games as a former champion. Kids from her District will expect her to help them every year. She would be a traitor if she didn’t, but then she’s going to invest in these kids emotionally and then watch them get killed. Which, now that I think of it, is a way to explain why Woody Harrelson’s character was doing all that drinking to start off with. And the President will continue to see her as an outlier and someone around whom anti-regime resistance could coalesce – whether she wants it to or not, and how does she respond if/when it does? The likelihood of her dying violently has been greatly reduced, but not eliminated.
There were a couple of things that I found odd.
First, I don’t recall Katniss ever watching a video feed showing what the other tributes were up to, so how did the black male from District 11 know how Katniss treated Rue?
Second – when Peeta is healed and he and Katniss are running around together towards the end, how is it that Peeta is empty-handed? Even if he didn’t have a captured weapon at that point you’d think that he’d cut (with Katniss’ knife) a sapling and make himself a spear. There was a little too much unnecessary dependency on Katniss there.
He heard Clove talking about it, when she was about to kill Katniss, before he pulled her off. Although, now that you’ve asked that question, I’m not actually sure how Clove knew, though I suppose she could have figured out that Rue must have been the one to set the fires and Katniss must have been the one to shoot the arrows.
Without risking spoilers, all I can say is, read the next book. That would be my answer to your questions from the next paragraph, too — read the next two books.
I’m thinking of doing that. My daughter says I should read the books and she knows my tastes on this kind of thing well.
Once upon a time, Ampersand created The Alas Debate Annex (TADA) to host discussions parallel to the discussions on this site, but less heavily moderated. I hailed it as a brilliant solution to the problem of free speech.
But the naysayer Robert immediately predicted the site’s demise. He said that it would fail to attract its own following, and would rapidly become a derelict vessel upon the face of the Web. Or something like that; you know the insufferable way Robert talks.
It would appear Robert was prescient – and all the more insufferable for it.
Farwell, TADA, a valiant experiment in the service of public discourse. We hardly knew ye.
Oh believe me, I suffer.
Due to the wonder of anonymity I’ll take a minute to say I freaking LOVE being on the right side of consumer law.
I just won an appeal for an employment client. The dude has no money, and his employer totally screwed him over.
I took it on contingency (including the appeal) and I’m going to get paid probably $5k for what amounts to $30k of work. But he was so happy he had to pull over his car when I told him; it’s the only good news he has had in months. I even got my fees for the appeal! And his bastard employer (who routinely underpays his workers while owning boats, going to fancy restaurants, etc.) won’t know what hit him.
I also just won a case for another destitute client–both of these folks have young kids, on some form of state assistance, etc.–who desperately needs the money. Their landlord (who “can’t afford to” return their security deposit, but miraculously owns an expensive second home) will fund their rent for a while.
And I’ve got a beauty of a sex harassment claim in the works, where my client (who started off with the “it was my fault, really, not his; I invited it; do you think you can get me two weeks’ severance?” line) will hopefully take home mid-five figures.
And I think I’m about to get good news on another one where an employer took money (illegally!) from this woman’s paycheck for YEARS and now I get to sue their ass, and I’m going to win that one as well.
Ya know, SO MUCH of my practice involves taking one on the chin. There’s always settlement to consider, and often politics, and ongoing consequences, etc. And while I’d lose my hat if I only did consumer law (there’s not enough to go round) I love it. It is really refreshing to take on these cases–which almost never make me very much money–and finally get to put on my “Fuck you for trying to screw my client. No, I will not take pennies on the dollar to settle. I’ll see you in court, asshole, and you’ll be paying treble damages, AND my attorneys fees when I win” hat. And then win.
You think you get to steal my client’s wages just because they’re illegally in the country*? You think you get to stick my client in an illegal apartment AND charge the utilities illegally AND then try to steal their security deposit because they don’t know enough to get it back? Hell no.
Man, it is nice to wear the white hat. I don’t know how the hell I’ll make my mortgage payment right now, but the satisfaction is worth it.
(rant off.) I feel much better now.
*No, that’s not a typo. Illegal immigrants get to file wage claims.
Go G&W! :D
You’re one of the good ones, G&W.
Fine by me and good on you! You agree to pay someone for their work, they do the work, you pay. Whether they’re here legally or not was something you should have worked out before you hired them, but should have no bearing on whether you owe them agreed upon wages. If you hire them and then try to exploit that you should pay wages plus damages. Being an asshole should cost you.
Well, it is Lent, after all. It’s the season!
The Future of Small Blogs has me kinda worried.
Governor Nikki Haley (my governor, she sobbed), says “Women don’t care about Contraception!”
Lent is the Latin word for hey fever?
I’m working on a couple of blog postings. I just learned that my site and another critical of the city have apparently been banned from the city’s networks (including the police department’s) including those at the public library…but porn is still accessible there. I’m still trying to find out if a blog which serves mainly to support the city’s agenda and to castigate its critics calling us “tramps” and other sexist language and posting some truly disturbing cartoons demeaning women was blocked or is still accessible. This blogger who assaulted a photographer trying to grab his camera in front of two police officers at a public meeting is documented to have equipped himself soon after receiving campaign contributions by at least three elected officials. His use of sexist language and derogatory cartoons began after receiving those contributions.
Also on the fact that one of our elected officials was asked at a public meeting if he thought discrimination was funny and he said, “yes”.
At the same time the city started blocking blogs, the city manager started his own blog purportedly to counter allegations of misuse of public funds that a couple of blogs here had raised. He invited comments so I sent the following subject to approval of course. We’ll see if he approves it and how he’ll respond.
Gin-and-Tonic, that’s awesome!
Radfem:
This sounds like something that the ACLU might conceivably be interested in.
gin-and-whiskey:
That’s AWESOME, gin-and-whiskey. Congratulations.
It is. It’s one of the things which kept me in my career when the going got rough. “Yes, I know she’s your wife. And that means that she’s in a domestic relationship with you, and when you assaulted her, domestic violence law kicked in and we have extra-special consequences for you. Face away from me. Put your hands behind your back. Palms up. Don’t move. [ratchet noise, ratchet noise]”
Money can’t buy that kind of satisfaction. That kind of satisfaction won’t pay the bills, either, but it’s nice to have.
Grace
RE: #16 —
Maybe it’s just because as a severe acrophobe I have never had flight fantasies, but I found the Gizmodo article in which the CGI experts explained (complete with pictures with little arrows and everything!) the CGI giveaways on the flight video far more interesting than the video itself.
Hm. Let’s see, Radfem. You bring a FOI request against the city to show what sites they block and what they don’t. This kind of thing is found possibly on their firewall but more likely on something called a “proxy server” (forgive me if I’m telling you something you already know). Sites can be blocked either by their individual IP address/DNS name or by classifying them into a group and then restricting/blocking access to that group. What you want to know is what restrictions (total block, blocked to some people but not to others, not blocked but activity is logged so they know who’s looking at that site, etc.) are being placed for what kinds of sites.
Get the names of the groups and the list of the sites in them. That’s an easily run report, don’t take any $h!t that the info is hard to come up with. Get the policy on what kinds of sites are blocked and what are not, both from an administrative policy viewpoint (what directives have been given to the IT security group) and technical policy viewpoint (what the actual configuration on the machine is). If there are sites that are blocked for some people and not others, get the policy that explains that AND get the names/IP addresses of the people in the different groups of people that are subjected to different security policies.
Let them explain why you’re blocked and porn is not! If some people can get to some things and other people are not, let them explain why – especially if some people can get at porn and some cannot.
If you really want to have fun, see if you can get the activity logs. They’re using taxpayer-paid-for equipment on taxpayer-paid-for communications links on taxpayer-paid-for time. I don’t want to hear about privacy concerns. See who’s using what sites. Those logs are easy to pull. If they’re in raw form (IP addresses only, no names) have them pull the information off of the DHCP server that matches up user names with IP addresses. See if they can explain all the sites they access.
If you can get any of this stuff and need some help in interpreting it, have Amp drop me a note. What I can’t parse out my friends can.