TrickstaPriest

Yeah -- Thanks, Simon, it is indeed frustrating as hell but it is indeed a point to remember.
 
(My late father was an investigative reporter. I know the constraints sometimes became frustrating for him... but when the story did run, he rather enjoyed telling outraged politicians, business owners and assorted criminals to go ahead and sue and see what happens. They rarely did, and the Tacoma News Tribune employed him for a great many years.)
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 
dean Shomshak

A lawyer friend of mine pointed this out regarding a state Supreme Court candidate who said she wanted the job to be an advocate for minorities and the poor against corporate power. It is in fact possible that in a dispute between a large, rich corporation and a "little guy" that the corporation may be in the right.
 
(He also pointed out -- I shall try to recollect his words as closely as I can -- that this candidate "Literally does not understand the job she's applying for. A judge is not supposed to be an advocate. A judge is who you advocate to.")
 
Dean Shomshak

They are sure they won't die on it.  They bank on limited attention span and supporting their overlords... who have much better attention spans.

As far as the big news orgs? Yeah, they suck and have since the beginning.
 
Which is not to say that there aren't people in their newsrooms doing good work every day. And every once in a while, those orgs will get a story out there that actually makes a positive difference.
 
But they can't be trusted as a daily, sole news source.
 
I do keep up with them daily, but just to scan through and see if anything they have is worth reading. I get most of my news from Reuters and AP News, which are a bit less bad than most.
 
I appreciate ProPublica a lot. They do good investigative work, so I feel good about supporting them.
 
Other than that, I read Common Dreams, keep up with economics via Calculated Risk, and then read a bit from Vox and the like.
 
It all gets sort of tiresome after a while though.

Only now? An off-air sound bite by Dan Rather made it into a song by OSI back in 2003:
 
 

That was some game of poker I played to win a state.....
 
what ?
 
There is only one DT and that is me......
 
Any questions ?

He never brings up tithing either, but they work that Old Testament 10% action for all its worth.
 
I once asked a pastor how he could defend asking businesses for 10% of their profit while asking the congregation for 10% of their income (two VERY different numbers) and he had nothing.
 
Even if you agree to give based on Old Testament tithing it is based on 10% of your INCREASE, not 10% of your income.

Well, it looks like my podunk hometown voted down a bond to replace the 60+ year old high school.

President or no, I don't think Trump can expect to be shown respect until he starts showing some to other people.

"The liberum veto (Latin for "(I) freely oppose") was a parliamentary device in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was a form of unanimity voting rule that allowed any member of the Sejm (legislature) to force an immediate end to the current session and to nullify any legislation that had already been passed at the session by shouting, Sisto activitatem! (Latin: "I stop the activity!") or Nie pozwalam! (Polish: "I do not allow!"). The rule was in place from the mid-17th century to the late 18th century in the Sejm's parliamentary deliberations. It was based on the premise that since all Polish noblemen were equal, every measure that came before the Sejm had to be passed unanimously. The liberum veto was a key part of the political system of the Commonwealth, strengthening democratic elements and checking royal power and went against the European-wide trend of having a strong executive (absolute monarchy).
Many historians hold that the liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system, particularly in the 18th century, when foreign powers bribed Sejm members to paralyze its proceedings, and the Commonwealth's eventual destruction in the partitions of Poland and foreign occupation, dominance and manipulation of Poland for the next 200 years or so. Piotr Stefan Wandycz wrote that the "liberum veto had become the sinister symbol of old Polish anarchy". In the period of 1573–1763, about 150 sejms were held, about a third failing to pass any legislation, mostly because of the liberum veto. The expression Polish parliament in many European languages originated from the apparent paralysis."
 
Ironically, the situation got so bad that the last King of Poland whose election was secured by Russian money ran on a platform of getting rid of the liberum veto. But then Russia changed its mind and got rid of Poland, instead.
 
Good times. 

Another thread prone to arguments and giving Dan headaches
 
I've been working on writing a small RPG game involving your character being unknowingly part of a cult.  Writing it is going to be... difficult.  It's inspired directly from channels like Telltale and his various stories.
 
----
 
In general, I do appreciate all the attention the environment is getting from the younger generation.  The big obstacle is the existing power base, and I think it's just going to take far too long for anything substantial enough to happen.
 
But I'm more hopeful than I was a couple years ago.

Another thread prone to arguments and giving Dan headaches
 
I've been working on writing a small RPG game involving your character being unknowingly part of a cult.  Writing it is going to be... difficult.  It's inspired directly from channels like Telltale and his various stories.
 
----
 
In general, I do appreciate all the attention the environment is getting from the younger generation.  The big obstacle is the existing power base, and I think it's just going to take far too long for anything substantial enough to happen.
 
But I'm more hopeful than I was a couple years ago.

Yeah, BO was such a disappointment. His rhetoric soared, but he clearly had no clue how to handle an opposition party that wanted him to fail at any cost. At first I thought it was just his inexperience as a politician that was hurting him, but as the years wore on it just seemed that he was temperamentally unable to deal with the reality he'd been dealt.
 
As for the future, I think we'll need to do the work of electing people to Congress who share our philosophy if we want things to really change, rather than just looking to the Presidency as a means of change. And of course we'll need the President and Senate to work together to make sure the courts aren't filled with people who want to block progress.
 
There's a big job ahead, in other words, and I fear that even under the best-case scenario it will take more than my remaining life to get things back to where they were when I was born.

For that to happen effectively, the United States needs a leader with a positive vision, the ability to articulate it in a way that makes Americans believe it, and the courage and skill to take the hard steps to make it happen. At first many of us thought we got that in Barack Obama, but it turned out he didn't have what it takes in those last two qualities. I'm sad to say I don't see a comparable candidate on the horizon.

I'm not an evangelical (and some evangelicals probably wouldn't even consider me a Christian) but this makes perfect sense to me. We read the Parable of the Stewards the other day. If you belive that God, through whatever mechanism, created the Earth as a place for His creations to live, it only makes sense that part of your accountability for your life on Earth would be how well you took care of the place.

Yup. I know a lot of Christians who read "custodianship" or even "Guardianship" as part of the "Dominion of all the Earth" so hence pick up trash or the like.
Good to see it getting even more steam against Clime Change specifically though

One small bit of hope from today's All Things Considered: At least some young Evangelicals are breaking from their parents' hostility to environmentalism and adopting "Creation Care" as both religious and political approach.
 
There was also a rather jolly story about how Moore County, Texas is coping with demographic shift from all the migrants and refugees moving in to work at the beef slaughterhouse. Of course you have the people who are upset at walking into a store and finding everyone, including the staff, speaking Spanish. But... Without the immigrants, the slaughterhouse closes. As a local judge put it, people are learning tolerance from necessity. He compares changing attitudes to gaining weight: You put on a few pounds and don't think about it, then a few more, and one day you find your clothes, or social habits, don't fit anymore. So you change them, hardly even noticing how they've changed.
 
Dean Shomshak

Not just bankrupting our children.  Destroying the planet.
 
The literal cost in damage from environmental degradation and other issues are going to easily cost trillions... because frankly, the country can and will abandon any location hit by 'too many' natural disasters or struggling too hard without external support.  How much and how many times will we have cities repaired before the state or country says "eeeh you deal with it".  Or "its too much work to maintain roads and ship goods to your little town, sorry."
 
This is long before we consider food production, wars in remote locations.  If you happen to be concerned about immigration from South America, boy howdy you haven't seen anything yet.
 
And how will a government handle these costs and resources?  By shoving them onto people and abandoning those people.  The immigration thing is the early complaint, but it won't stop there...

I feel like both parties are in this mode and have been for some time.  Left and right are distractions.  It's up and down where we need to be looking.
 
In my brain the image is two people being goaded into fighting each other while the 3rd person picks their pockets.

The memes on Epstein are pretty excellent though. 

Iuz has it in one.

Given the context, I'm thinking this is "fear, uncertainty, and doubt"

I should add that Clinton is not the only person who'd want Epstein out.  Trump and he were very close associates after all... since Trump was a close part of the Clinton circle until he ran for President.  All major parties probably wanted him out of the picture.  I'm very disappointed it happened.

I too have worried what Trump might try if he were impeached and removed, or simply lost in 2020. This is not something I would have worried about from any other president, or candidate, or any other politician at any level. For instance, I think he could mobilize at least a few hundred thousand fanatics into an armed insurgency -- maybe millions. I hope I'm wrong but... Even a small percentage of 320 million people is a lot of angry nutjobs. And a lot of people on the right seem to be very, very angry. Sure, the military would never back a Trump presidential coup, and the insurgency would be put down, but it would wreck the last illusions of Americans being one nation.
 
As mentioned, Team Pence may be the best hope of avoiding real disaster. According to the NYTimes program The Daily, Pence very much wants to be president. Running with Trump was supposed to be a ploy to raise his profile; he didn't expect Trump to win. Trump, for his part, chose Pence for his deep connection to the Evangelical community. So Pence can tell one of the most important far-right constituencies to accept Trump's ouster and they'll probably be happy with Pence as a replacement.
 
And yes, Pence makes me ill, too. But as governor, Pence showed he could be moved by public and corporate pressure. He also knows how government works and is not flipping insane. A few months of President Pence would be survivable, though I'm not sure I'd want him in office for four years.
 
The other great hope is that Trump is a coward. He's never faced real danger or real consequence. For all his rage, he may not have the nerve to really fight back when the office is taken away.
 
Again, I very much hope I'm wrong and worrying about nothing. But as the author of On Tyranny said, people who say, "It can't happen here!" are already halfway lost. The proper approach is, "It can happen here, but we will not allow it."
 
Dean Shomshak

It has happened to a better President. Several, in fact. But "better" in this case is a very low bar.