zoogs

I care that our universities should offer plentiful and equitable opportunities for not just the male portion of their student-athlete body.

This "I'm going to punish Delta" faux pas is an important reminder of what Republicans and present-day "conservatives" really want: authoritarian control over speech and behavior in the country. "Corporations are just exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech, some of which is political" was never, ever an honest argument.

@commando, gosh, that's an interesting read. In the early 20th century there was a time when gun owners had to register with the government? How did America ever emerge from such rank tyranny? Also -- it seems like a really good thing to have again.

A half measure can be a bad measure if it moves in the wrong direction. The (arbitrary) fact that our states are drawn such that we have these big blue chunk votes is a counter to the fact (what happens to be, arbitrarily) red areas are weighted much more heavily. What happens if you take away the former and retain the latter? It seems like a serious political own goal, and it doesn't even accomplish fairness. 

Dana Loesch is all for the children, alright? Her advocacy for widespread access to guns and her obstinate resistance to any gun regulations has nothing to do with her commendable conviction that people's lives not be ended by gunshot.

5 hours ago, Landlord said:

 

Whats the point of college then 

Oh, no, the sanctity!  

There's an absurd amount of dancing around the basic desire to declare that a certain kind of autonomy must not be allowed to women when they get pregnant.

The intention is to reduce autonomy. You may argue it's just. You may argue it's necessary. You may defend your policy advocacy on these grounds. You may not argue that you're all for women's rights and freedoms and not for restricting them.

Further, it's patently ludicrous to suggest that firmly pro-choice stances are part of the reason why "nothing" gets done. This only makes sense if the requirement for something being done is movement in the restrictive direction. Additionally, all the relatively agreeable middle ground -- expanding access to healthcare, birth control, better and proper sex ed, and so on -- these things are not in the slightest being stopped or impeded by the pro-choice movement. They are in fact being fought to the fullest extent possible by the other side. The one with the supposedly so defensible motivations.

Motivations are defined by outcomes. “But that’s not really the intent” is a completely inadequate response to the actual restrictions that are imposed, through every possible avenue, as sought by the movement. 

This isn’t “screaming.” It’s calling it what it is. 

I don’t know, really. Maybe pay the players and let them get endorsements and shoe deals if they can? 

I think the take-home here is that the kids and their families are subject to a bizarre and unforgiving system, not the active bad actors. That same system, unfortunately, puts fans in a position to harangue and blame the people least deserving of it.

Yeah, that's fair. I think I'd break it down this way. The EC has two notably odd features about it. First is that it gives substantially more weight to smaller population states. Second is that states are almost all winner-takes-all. 

In concert, there is at least an argument to be made for it: we aren't trying to approximate the popular vote result, we're trying to have a President of the (United) States. It is, effectively, the weighted yes/no's of each of the fifty states, and it's weighted in such a way that small states are not totally drowned out.

When only one of these features is changed but the other remains the same, you have a weird middle ground. As an approximation, it's not merely a poor one -- it's a purposefully inaccurate one, and inaccurate in a very specific direction. Even supposing we can neatly solve the additional complicating issue of non-fractional electors, it leaves us in a bad place. We would then have a President of the People, where Small State People count more than Big State People. To me, including the Senator count in each state's electoral count becomes far less justified.

But I think we both agree that the effects of both the status quo and these proposed tweaks are so convoluted, it's better to just have a popular vote. I just think that if you want to move towards a popular vote, you have to *really* have a popular vote, and lose the part that biases the vote significantly in one direction. National popular votes, as you might expect, can be reasonably close. The consistency of the bias hurts.

College sports. What a world.

What's bad about this is the use of the language of the anti-harrassment movement (are you familiar with the #TimesUp hashtag?) to express political differences.

I don't know that much about Feinstein, frankly. From what I do know I'm probably more inclined to support her opponent. And to be clear her opponent's supporters are not uniform in this tactic, but it's an ugly one. Feinstein is not someone who committed sexual assault or harassment and is now being justifiably outed on those grounds*. Nor is she comparable to one. The reason this is bad is not the injury to Feinstein, it's the way in which #MeToo has been co-opted and trivialized. IMO, #MeToo is an area where there's a great deal of inadequacy on the left, and this seems like an example of that. 

*I mean, maybe she is --- but AFAIK, this is largely about her "militarism" and deference to the security state; at least, if Glenn Greenwald's characterization is reliable. It isn't always.

For a second there, I thought you were talking about Carnegie Mellon University. Which, actually, does have a football team!

I'm a little bummed that he didn't get that position at Nebraska. He was in line for it.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/02/lane-windham-interview-knocking-on-labors-door-unions

Having talked a lot about the crushing of labor in the 1970s and 80s, I think it's good to get some historical context on the history of those decades. This is vital reading, and told a somewhat different story than I was expecting. It also offers a broader, more hopeful message on labor than I had.

A few selected passages from the interview (which is with Lane Windham, of Georgetown University):

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"Well, first, I think we need to all accept that our employer-based social welfare system is fundamentally flawed. And I don’t think you can fix it by just tinkering with existing labor law. Benefits like pensions and health care need to be unhinged from employers, especially now that employers are becoming so successful at unhinging themselves from the employment relationship." (...)

 

The tools that workers have been given, this weak labor law, is no match for how our employment system is set up. (...) Collective bargaining–based organizations are part of the movement, but are not the full movement.

The key observation here is that we have offloaded to employers the burden of social welfare that is better suited for government. One of the best examples is the uniquely American employer-based healthcare model. Private enterprise, in order to be successful in the marketplace, would of course avoid this where they can (for example, by offering poor benefits to those who can't negotiate better, or shifting more to part-time employees and contractors to avoid the burdens of providing benefits entirely). This is less an indictment on the individual evils of CEOs than a straightforward consequence of the public's abdication. And there seems to me to be no good way of pushing back on this other than reclaiming the public role in social welfare.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/12/trump-has-undercut-u-s-refugee-resettlement-heres-one-way-to-restore-it/?utm_content=buffer2b2db&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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Since the end of the Vietnam War, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States has been the world’s leader in resettling refugees — offering a new life to those who have been persecuted at the hands of repressive governments or warring armies.

 

Yet at a time when there are more refugees globally than at any time since World War II, the Trump administration has abandoned America’s traditional leadership role. The State Department has slashed refugee admissions by more than half, to 45,000, a historic low. 

 

"Nation of immigrants" isn't all we're leaving behind. Among the other things we're happily burying: "Give us your tired, your poor, your hungry."

Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/justice-neil-gorsuch-is-about-to-deliver-republicans-a-big-return-on-their-investment.html

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According to Alito, bargaining for a labor contract is actually political activity, because nonunion workers may hold an ideological opposition to benefits like health insurance and overtime pay. ...

 

Conservative originalist scholar Michael Ramsey agrees with Volokh ["a right-leaning libertarian who generally opposes union", who wrote an amicus brief rebutting Alito's First Amendment invocation]. The Supreme Court will not. [...] We know how this case will end; the dark-money group that spent $17 million to put Gorsuch on the court will receive a return on its investment.

 

While the legal theory upon which Janus is based is specious at best, the political theory is brilliant. The Republican Party has done an excellent job persuading the court’s conservative appointees that the thrust of the First Amendment is that constituencies who do not support the Republican Party should not have political power.

 

This should be one of the big stories of the day. This is frightening. And remember, too, that it is for cases such as this that Republicans in Congress took the incredible step of denying a sitting President consideration of his SCOTUS nomination, just because they could. They have made a farce of our democracy, in more ways than just that one, and they had goals.

15 minutes ago, B.B. Hemingway said:

 

You keep trying to turn the pro-life movement into an indictment on women and their ability to make a decision. It's a savvy political move, but it's also bulls#!t. It has much less ( not at all) to do with women and their decision making, and everything to do with saving an innocent life that, as of right now, has no say in whether they live or die. More times than not (by some margin) you get pregnant because of a decision that YOU (man and woman) made. With decisions come responsibility.

 

It's interesting that you speak to the possible inconvenience a child may bring to a woman for the rest of her life, and how she should be able to avoid that inconvenience at all cost, even if she's already conceived. So, I'd assume that you're in support of a father who chooses not to be a father, even if the woman chooses to have the child? Didn't think so. The father is inconvenienced, at the mother's will.... And in no way am I advocating for dead beat father's,just pointing out the obvious hypocrisy here, that you'll no doubt explain away, or completely ignore.

In more detail: 

- anti-choice has everything to do with women and their decision-making. In particular, it's about removing it. This is not difficult to see, and we should all be honest about what we're trying to accomplish.

- having sex is not a decision to become pregnant. I suspect we simply don't share the same moralistic view of recreational sex.

- not all people have the knowledge, or the resources, to use effective means of avoiding pregnancy. I suspect (or hope) we have the same views on improving this situation with the use of efforts both private and especially public. 

- even on top of that, there are a million different reasons a pregnancy can happen anyway. you, nor I, are in the shoes of the women placed in each of those situations. If we were, we may choose differently. We may consider it not even a choice. But I believe it's not for us to say, for them.

- given this, it is to me wholly monstrous to say what is in effect "since you conceived, you've brought this on yourself, unless you were raped."

I've already taken exception to the minimizing language often used in this debate to describe the woman's situation. A pregnancy is no mere inconvenience, it's enormous, life-changing, and risky. What galls me most about this language is the way it casually casts aspersions on the woman's motivations, in a way that I don't think is necessarily conscious to the people who use it. How could she, this vile witch, treat such a precious thing as a potential life as just a bother? How dare she not, for the sake of society at least, shoulder the minor burden and just go through with it? 

To this:  "So, I'd assume that you're in support of a father who chooses not to be a father, even if the woman chooses to have the child?"

If you mean a man who chooses not to be around as the father, then of course. That's not something that ought to be forbidden by law, nor is it even up for discussion. If you mean a father being able to compel a woman to go through with an abortion, then the answer is, obviously, no -- because it's not his body. The contours of this debate might be very, very different if all babies were incubated in external machines, but this is not the case. 

It’s galling to see the woman’s situation routinely trivialized to “inconvenience.” 

We disagree — very strongly.

It's interesting how important a positive feel-good perception of their advocacy is to people. Match your position to your priorities. If individual agency must be made subservient to other, overriding considerations then it is *entirely* about creating a framework of control.

Frankly, I think we have fairly similar policy positions on abortion itself. But I wholeheartedly disagree with this idea that we must regard anti-choice positions as good-hearted and decent; challenging that is the reason I jumped in this particular debate. To me and I think to a lot of pro-choice people, the anti-choice position is inherently brutal -- though I understand why people simply feel their intentions are nothing but good. I just disagree that we should all accept that characterization.

Let's talk 20-week bans: https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/20-week-bans

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Nearly 99 percent of abortions occur before 21 weeks, but when they are needed later in pregnancy, it’s often in very complex circumstances.

Another example of why we shouldn't let what are already exceptional circumstances drive the debate. And this is a case, too, where we tend to let anti-choice advocates, misleadingly, color our perception of what is actually at stake.

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In the past I would have been indignant at such attacks and eager to assert my conservative credentials. (...) Being conservative used to be central to my identity. But now, frankly, I don’t give a damn. I prefer to think of myself as a classical liberal, because “conservative” has become practically synonymous with “Trump lackey.”

Yes! Well said. 

Accommodation with these people is a losing battle. Whether you're a liberal who doesn't want to appear partisan or unreasonable, or an erstwhile conservative who still wants to be seen as such. There is no decent effect of responding to the pressures placed by these people.

A reminder that the beating heart of White House policy is keeping foreigners out of this erstwhile nation of immigrants: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/23/588469561/trump-administration-restricts-h-1b-worker-visas-coveted-by-high-tech

Not just the bad ones. The ones in the most highly-skilled sectors. This is echoes of Steve Bannon complaining that Silicon Valley is full of Asian CEOs, a claim that isn't even true.

Yay!! A hearty high five for your Mom.

The map is unfavorable, as we always knew, but the fight will be worth it. Fractures in the Republican voting bloc (as we have seen, on numerous occasions) are that much more significant when the seat advantage they have is small. 

2 hours ago, gratefullred said:

I just dont understand why we need to create more women scholarship athletes in order to add more men non-scholarship athletes.  I understand opportunities need to be created, but couldnt that be achieved by creating more women non-scholarship athletes.  There's got to be 10 women's programs that could add 2 walk-ons each.

Yes, there could be -- but maybe those programs don't want to, or aren't equipped to accommodate the additional numbers, and so the "opportunities" created there are a lot less real than in FB. With 105-man rosters in FB, I'm not sure I understand why there's a need to create more roster space, anyway. The bottom line is if they want to do this, there will probably be an easy way, and maybe exactly the one that you mention. Maybe not.

Bear in mind what's being done here: putting the pressure on Title IX. Administrators do not tend to like Title IX. Everything would be easier without it, or with some moderated version of it. So they'll frame the issue in such a way that everyone fully understands that it's the women who are ruining things. "Gee, I'd really love to, and as you all know walk-ons are so core to the Nebraska football identity, but you know, this Title IX stuff is just throwing a big ol' wrench into things...we're going to work really hard to try to appease these onerous requirements, because as you know, we're forced to."

Build that wave! Don't give up before the fight.

Shameful SJW Glenn Greenwald fighting the liberal culture war:

In 2008 Obama hadn't even directed his labor dept. to require US employers to treat gay employees equal treatment. That was 2010.

The bill in question:

Good to see Republicans have caught up now, having been in roughly the same place to start with ten years ago.