HereAndGone
2d ago
Which is a very different thing from liberal social norms!
HereAndGone
2d ago
where he can be the primary breadwinner without needing a second job or for the wife to work full time.
I would like to see that happen, but I'm dubious for a couple of reasons. First, we've set up our economies so that isn't really a runner, anymore. Unionised jobs which did provide good benefits and you could be the single breadwinner became corrupt and atrophied (see the fairly recent example of the longshoremen, for one). Industries collapsed during the 80s and the salvation was to outsource to cheaper labour and resources abroad, and to get more women into the workforce.
Second, a strong male-led household can be one where the man runs them into debt and other problems, or where the ostensible male head is weak and incapable. To work at its best, marriage should be a partnership. "This happens because I say so" can only work where "I say so" is reasonable and not "I've decided to take out loans, mortgage the house, and put all our savings into this sure thing a guy told me about, and if you don't like it, here's a black eye for you".
HereAndGone
2d ago
Women might finally, F-I-N-A-L-L-Y be required to either suffer from economic destitution or make some concessions to men to obtain the support of a good one.
Golly gee, I wonder why those uppity females are not rushing out to marry men who think they should have the right to beat and rape them just like the Good Old Days when the choice was between economic destitution or making concessions regarding marriage.
This is why there was a whole thing about women having careers of their own, so there wouldn't be the risk of economic destitution. This kind of statement is one step away from "and in fact being enslaved was better for the slaves because owners were obliged to feed and shelter them".
You are not going to solve the problem of "why are men and women not getting on? why isn't marriage and children happening?" by telling one side "we want to force you into marriage with someone you would not choose and who can be abusive thereafter, because the alternative is indeed literal starvation and he knows you will be trapped".
Why the hell are you making it "being a whore is better for me than being a wife"? Don't we want women to choose to be wives and mothers, instead of "well if it's sex for meat, then at least let me not be tied to one provider"?
HereAndGone
2d ago
because Millennials are the new boomers
(sigh) GenX erasure never ceases!
HereAndGone
2d ago
I doubt it - the mayor just doesn't have that many powers to ruin something that fast.
Yeah, I think that's the most likely outcome. Come into office on a slate of promises. Some get watered down, because he has to compromise to get them passed. Some get junked, because they were only campaign promises, ha ha did you really think you were going to get a pony for your birthday? And some will go nowhere, because he's butting right up against institutional inertia, 'this is the way we've always done it', entrenched power blocs, and "you gotta find the money to grease the palms somewhere, Zohran, or else nothin' doin'".
Like free bus services. First, that will have to jump through sixteen hoops, on fire, then swandive into a coffee cup just in order to get past everyone who wants it to die or they want too big a slice of the pie for it to work. Second, it will be tried. Thirdly, after ten minutes it will crash and burn and be quietly sidelined.
HereAndGone
2d ago
but empirically it seems to me that Catholicism is far worse at teaching proper catechesis than evangelicals.
Oh, yeah.
But the other problem is a deeper one: Christianity is not about "let's all be charitable and help the needy", it's about "let us love, obey, and serve God" primarily. So we get the conflicts over "sorry, we won't foster children out to gay couples"/"okay you're losing your state funding" and the Little Sisters of the Poor case and the likes of that, and then people finger-wag over "but Jesus said be nice!" as if that was the whole of the Gospel.
So trying to build influence based on "But Christianity will be so nice for the social fabric" is going nowhere. There will be offensive doctrines and practices ("what do you mean you don't ordain women, you bigots?") and it will be either give in on these and be empty buildings kept up as historical and artistic show pieces, but nobody goes to church because spiritual not religious, dude or keep the doctrines and be out of step with the world and keep shedding membership.
HereAndGone
2d ago
Evangelical Protestantism is the youngest tradition of the three and has developed under conditions of American liberalism. It is therefore the most comfortable with liberal norms.
Define your liberal norms, first! I agree that Evangelicalism has caved in on things like divorce and contraception, while abortion is a wavering standard. But what I've seen of the splits (as an outsider) is that the mainlines have indeed gone very much to the liberal side and are being shaped by, rather than shaping, the Zeitgeist. However, when it happens to the various Evangelical churches and non-denominational churches, they tend to either go "prosperity Gospel" megachurch where there's a thin veneer of Christianity over secular values (like the liberal mainliners) or they try and knuckle down to conservative theological principles, which may or may not adhere (see the struggles within the Southern Baptist Convention over trying to address perceived flaws and problems).
So it does depend what you mean by liberal values, and if you mean that the Evangelicals can influence wider society more easily since they are "most comfortable with liberal norms", or if they will go the same way as the mainlines, becoming more and more liberal in line with social changes while becoming less and less influential as religious institutions.
HereAndGone
5d ago
I'm also not sure that Kamala's ego can be discounted from political factors. She's made some poor political decisions in the past and 'it's my turn now' is a known failure mode for prominent democrats.
I was wondering why the heck she was making remarks about possibly running again. Someone with sense would realise that VP was as high as she is going to get, and that the only reason she got the job is Jim Clyburn and the black caucus demanding quid pro quo for supporting Biden, that it was owed to them to give a black woman the job.
But she may be vain enough to believe all the cope about "greatest candidate ever, sexism and racism and MAGA to blame" and think that the party and the nation are breathlessly waiting for her to announce she'll run again. Hence the dig at Newsom.
What the heck she thinks she's doing re: Buttigieg I honestly have no idea. This far into her book, she's all "oh my great pal Pete" but then she gives an interview about "couldn't possibly pick him for anything, way too gay". That's just begging him to refuse to take her calls in future: "Sorry, Kamala, wouldn't want to get my gay cooties all over your shiny campaign". If she's trying to distance herself, however clumsily, from the LGBT2SQIA+ stuff now that wokeness is on the wane, then okay "Pete too gay" but it's a terrible way to go about it.
HereAndGone
5d ago
Your standard implies that it's not possible to give a gun to someone else temporarily at all.
I don't mean to be saying that. There will of course be situations where you need someone else to hold the gun for you. But the difference is "This one person definitely has it and definitely it is secure" and not "well it could be anywhere".
"Well it could be anywhere" is not going to play well if some twelve year old gets their hands on it and shoots their friend while showing it off. "Yeah I was so careless that I got a kid killed, but that does not mean I should not be able to have as many guns as I want, that's my Constitutional right!"
Yeah, it's your Constitutional right. You are also an idiot, and it's dangerous to let idiots have guns, Constitution or no.
Yeah, if he did endorse her, then this is Kamala getting her retaliation in first. She really is planning to run herself, or at least queer the pitch for Newsom. I am now fascinated to know what behind-the-scenes dust-up in California Democratic politics is behind this rivalry. Maybe she was thinking of running for governor herself previously but Newsom out-manoeuvred her there (he did manage to get Biden to throw support behind him during the recall election, which might have been when Kamala got squished, if indeed she was thinking that was her chance; it looks pretty clear they were only willing to let no-hopers* go forward so Newsom would not be seriously challenged).
*E.g. "Kevin Paffrath, YouTuber Real estate broker UFOlogist Opioid Vendor Landlord". UFOlogist? Well, it is California!
Okay, that was 2021, she was VP. Can a sitting VP resign and run for a different office, or is that a no-no? Was she maybe bummed out that, if she had known there would be a recall in 2021, she would have waited for that instead?
Interestingly enough, it recently came out that Obama had agreed with Pelosi not to endorse Kamala too soon, as they were hoping for a mini primary.
I'm still only on chapter/day three of Kamala's book (too busy at the moment plus it's not riveting prose) and it's amazing how even this early in the book, it's clear she wanted the job - who the hell lets their brother-in-law make plans for if suppose just say maybe somehow someday you need to replace the boss? and forget all her coy 'oh I didn't want to dwell on it', she never said 'drop it, Tony, this is not how things are done' - and how she didn't need or want no stinkin' primary; it was gonna be her or nobody (there's also the slightest of hints that Obama, as you say, wasn't 300% on board the Coconut Queen Express):
[My brother-in-law Tony West] is also an astute political thinker, working on campaigns since he was a teenager, first for Representative Norm Mineta, then for Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, and Barack Obama. A year earlier, he had started what he called the “Red File.” With a president in his eighties, he suggested, it would be malpractice on my part to be unprepared if, God forbid, something should happen. In such a traumatic moment, it would be prudent to have a plan for the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, so people don’t have to make a lot of decisions in the pressure of a crisis. He had thought through the first twenty-five calls I would need to make to world leaders, the first twenty-five to political colleagues, when to make my first statement, and what the rules of transition are. I didn’t want to dwell on such an eventuality: I left it in his hands.
As the pressure for Joe to drop out had mounted, he’d pulled out the Red File and started adding to it. I did not want to be a part of any such discussions, so while Tony was in town for the family weekend, he’d gathered four members of my core team, without me, for a meeting in the pool house*. Tony had opened the meeting saying, “Let’s assume he’s dropping out tomorrow.”
...I knew I had everything I needed to do this. With Joe’s endorsement and more name recognition than anyone else who might challenge, I had the strongest case. I’d also proven in the midterms that I could help flip seats. I had appeal for moderates and independents.
I also had a powerful personal contact list. On the road for the past four years, touring college campuses to build youth support and, more recently, on my tour for reproductive rights, I’d made a point of inviting local elected leaders to my events. Later, I’d have a moment with them, take a picture, have a brief chat. I would meet fifty to a hundred people a day in this way, and I had made it a point to follow up and keep those connections alive. During the delegate selection process, I’d pressed to include people who were my enthusiastic supporters, not just Joe’s—people I’d known for years. I don’t think too many people grasped the strength of the relationships I’d forged. This was not going to be a coronation. It would be the result of years of work.
...I went from call to call with the clarity that comes when stakes are high, stress is through the roof, and there’s zero ambiguity. Some people I called would offer me support and then ask, “What do you think the process should be?”
If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them. How much more time would it have taken to pull that off? I could imagine the chaos of even trying to decide how to do it, much less actually doing it, as precious days slipped away.
“This is the process. If anyone wants to challenge me, they’re welcome to jump in. But I intend to earn the support of the majority of the delegates and I’m doing it right now.”
I have to laugh about her brother-in-law working for Dukakis, Kerry and Obama campaigns; two out of three that went nowhere is not a great omen for her campaign!
*Given the allegations of how she ran her staff as VP, no way four 'core team members' are gonna have any meetings behind her back if they don't want to be ex-team members. They knew that tacitly, if not explicitly, she's just fine with succession planning and having her brother-in-law draw up a road map for when she is coronated. This is some deniability bullshit in action: "no way I had anything to do with it, I knew nothing, it was all my family members and then suddenly out of nowhere it all became relevant due to circumstances beyond our control". Simultaneously "I was loyal and not scheming behind Joe's back" and "nevertheless, I too was sadly aware of his decline and preparing for the stepping down" so she can appease all sides.
HereAndGone
6d ago
Yeah, but you are also supposed to keep your gun(s) securely. "I gave it to my cousin to keep it safe" is one thing. "Where it is right now I have no idea" is another. In the midst of this maybe my cousin-maybe in storage-maybe my sister, what if the gun went missing? What if it turns up in the possession of criminals who use it to do crime?
Guns are not just harmless collectible objects like funkopops, they are for shooting. If you own something dangerous (be that a gun or a dog) you are supposed to be a responsible owner keeping other people safe by keeping control of what you own. "Man, I get so mad I might shoot my wife so I handed it off to someone else" is not, I submit, the same level as "I have this gun for personal safety/home defence/I like going to the range and shooting guns". Cops and judges want to take the gun away in the second case, protest it and I won't object. Cops and judges think maybe you're not the greatest guy to have guns around in the first case? That's not persecution.
HereAndGone
6d ago
See Kevin McAleer and the British Army 😁
HereAndGone
7d ago
Oh, I think that for California power politics, Newsom has her taped and she knows she can't beat him. That's why I was surprised that she didn't decide to run for governor while he runs for president, but then again maybe the inside baseball there is that his machine is too entrenched to let her have an easy victory there. I am surprised she is willing to take him on, but I guess she's hoping to invoke the power of the narrative around "Which do you, the party of representation and inclusion, want to pick as your public face: a Black and Asian woman or yet another (moderately) rich white guy?"
HereAndGone
7d ago
Except Biden isn't the boss anymore, and she's questioning the judgment of the people who are in charge now.
I wonder. There does seem to be a power struggle going on between the faction of the party that is, let's take Platner as an example: "we need to ditch the more extreme progressive/idpol/lefty stuff and move towards the centre to appeal to a broader set of voters" versus the "hell no we need fifty Stalins" faction right now, in the wake of Harris' defeat.
Look at what Jean-Pierre was saying in that New Yorker interview about black women being the backbone of the party. I think she's pinning her hopes that the progressivists will come out on top, and she's staking her claim: you guys need the black vote, particularly since the Hispanics/Latinos are ditching you for the other lot. You need the blacks and the LGBT+ set, and if you want to make history by having the First Female President, you need Harris instead of (let's say) Newsom.
So she's signalling her loyalty to the party line about "we did nothing wrong, Biden was great, it was sexism and racism that lost the race for Harris not any flaw on her part, and giving in on any of this is throwing the black and queer vote under the bus and appealing to the Nazi fascist element in the party".
I wonder how much influence Biden (or his inner circle) still have. He had a long career in politics, he made a lot of alliances and presumably has a lot of favours still banked. Crossing him or his faction could be a real mistake, while signalling loyalty may be more of a help than we think. Who exactly is in charge of the Democratic party right now? The old guard are hanging on, even while others are attempting to shove them off the stage, and some of the ones wanting to do the shoving are the progressive elements. "I am a queer black woman and if you try to shove me out of the way I will cry racism sexism homophobia" is still a credible threat.
HereAndGone
7d ago
Also angles of photos. I was looking at two different photos taken on the same set and at the same interview, and in one she looks bad and in another she looks okay.
I think her current hairstyle isn't doing her any favours and that particular outfit is awful, but she's older and she does have a plump face so it's going to be tough to look good all the time.
HereAndGone
7d ago
She is not the most ugly person I have ever seen. You don't need to think she's a beauty queen, but she could look worse.
HereAndGone
7d ago
She was also a late addition that wasn't particularly loved in Bidenworld apparently so one wonders what she gains.
The Biden element in the party, if there is one, may still have some influence. Or more that if Jill et al. feel spiteful about what happened, they can make sure she crashes and burns. So trying to placate the Biden partisans is worth it.
Especially if there is the hint that maybe Obama wasn't as enthused about Kamala as she might have liked, which even as early in her book as I am, I am getting. And she definitely has it in for Gavin Newsom, so once again, building alliances to counter her rivals is important:
It became a boiler room, a site for the rolling calls we needed to make right away to secure support from Democratic delegates gathering for our convention in Chicago in less than a month, as well as from the former presidents, elected officials, and labor leaders who would be attending.
...In my notes of the calls:
...Barack Obama: Saddle up! Joe did what I hoped he would do. But you have to earn it. Michelle and I are supportive but not going to put a finger on the scale right now. Let Joe have his moment. Think through timing.
...Gavin Newsom: Hiking. Will call back. (He never did.)
HereAndGone
7d ago
Outside of that, it's rather obvious KJP is carrying water for Biden. But to what end? Is he not out of politics?
I wondered about that, too. Turns out (when I looked it up) that she served as "as the chief of staff for U.S. vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris during the 2020 presidential campaign."
Kamala Harris is making noises about running in 2028 (after a lot of people thought she was dropping out of politics altogether) so I wonder if this is less about Biden and more about positioning herself for Harris maybe hoping to get another job with the second campaign (if it happens)? And part of Harris pitch is loyalty to Biden so anyone hoping to be onside with her has to repeat the message (as much a signal that she can sell the same message Harris is selling as anything).
From Harris' book:
Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president. On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best.
But at eighty-one, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser.
I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.
So the line is Joe was great, but yeah he had to step down, but yeah he was great and while he was president he was fine and that is what matters. It's threading the needle of "was he incapacitated while in office and if so, why didn't anyone speak up about it?" 'No he was fine so I/we didn't have to speak up but later on yeah he got tired and overwhelmed and that's ancient history now'.
HereAndGone
7d ago
I couldn't help knowing because they trotted it out every single time she was ever mentioned. The fact that she was terrible at her job? Not mentioned so much (I did watch one announcement she made as press secretary and it was bad).
So there's another black woman of an immigrant background from the Biden administration who has a book out about how she was right and everyone else was wrong? Well, well, what a surprise!
HereAndGone
7d ago
However, NB cannot remember where he left the gun! At first he says he left it at his cousin's house (intentionally, to prevent his anger issues from leading to violence during the divorce process).
Yeah, maybe I'm just a female supremacist, but I think if you are telling the cops "I had to hand my gun to my cousin in case I got so angry during the break-up that I'd shoot my wife" then the restraining order might indeed be justified.
Also "Uh, where is the gun? Well I'm not sure - I think I gave it to my cousin? Or it might be in storage? Oh wait, hang on, now I remember - my sister has it!" is not the most convincing thing ever. Again, I think the judge saying "If you have a gun, you have to know where it is and who has it" is reasonable, and taking away his gun ownership is not the most wicked imposition of authoritarianism ever.
Let him work on his anger and memory issues and then come back and argue he should be able to own guns.
HereAndGone
8d ago
Well, my view is that animals and humans are not equal moral agents.
However, animals are beings of their own. They have their own needs. Forcing an animal to act outside its nature is cruel, just as (say) beating a toddler for crying when they are hungry would be cruel. A dog is not meant to sit in one position or lie on a bed for hours. I don't know why the dog got up - hungry? needed to relieve itself? stiff from sitting? bored? - but shocking it for that is cruel.
And we don't have to introduce farmed humans, we just have to treat animals as creatures that, if we assume the authority over them of ownership, should be responsible ownership. I hate the modern notion of treating pets like quasi-humans, or living plushies, whose existence is to provide the owner with unconditional love on the owner's demand, and if this means locking a dog up for hours every day in an apartment while the owner goes to work, then so be it. Keeping cats indoors and never letting them out? So be it. The function of the animal is not to be a being in its own right, but an extension of the owner's needs. I hate that because, even if I don't think animals are the equivalent of a human as moral agents, a dog is a dog, not a living toy.
Piker's shocking his dog was obviously cruel and neglectful, but spoiling your pet is another, if less obvious, way of being cruel. C. S. Lewis from "The Four Loves":
This terrible need to be needed often finds its outlet in pampering an animal. To learn that someone is "fond of animals" tells us very little until we know in what way. For there are two ways. On the one hand the higher and domesticated animal is, so to speak, a "bridge" between us and the rest of nature. We all at times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the sub-human world--the atrophy of instinct which our intelligence entails, our excessive self-consciousness, the innumerable complexities of our situation, our inability to live in the present. If only we could shuffle it all off! We must not--and incidentally we can't--become beasts. But we can be with a beast. It is personal enough to give the word with a real meaning; yet it remains very largely an unconscious little bundle of biological impulses. It has three legs in nature's world and one in ours. It is a link, an ambassador. Who would not wish, as Bosanquet put it, "to have a representative at the court of Pan"? Man with dog closes a gap in the universe. But of course animals are often used in a worse fashion. If you need to be needed and if your family, very properly, decline to need you, a pet is the obvious substitute. You can keep it all its life in need of you. You can keep it permanently infantile, reduce it to permanent invalidism, cut it off from all genuine animal well-being, and compensate for this by creating needs for countless little indulgences which only you can grant. The unfortunate creature thus becomes very useful to the rest of the household; it acts as a sump or drain--you are too busy spoiling a dog's life to spoil theirs. Dogs are better for this purpose than cats: a monkey, I am told, is best of all. Also it is more like the real thing. To be sure, it's all very bad luck for the animal. But probably it cannot fully realise the wrong you have done it. Better still, you would never know if it did. The most down-trodden human, driven too far, may one day turn and blurt out a terrible truth. Animals can't speak.
Those who say "The more I see of men the better I like dogs"--those who find in animals a relief from the demands of human companionship--will be well advised to examine their real reasons.
HereAndGone
11d ago
I don’t care if Hasan used a shock collar on his dog- this beast is likely still doing better than the alternative, which is security for a scrap metal dealer.
Dog needs to go get a drink of water after hours in that bed? Dog needs to relieve itself and not make a mess on the bed (which probably would mean punishment)? Dog needs to stretch because no, it is not normal to be in one position for hours on end? Still gets shocked because its owner is an idiot?
By the same logic, if I (hypothetically, in Minecraft) put a bag over your head and chained you to a bed, you would still be doing better than, say, a migrant labourer in the UAE who is worked to death in the blazing sun. That may be true, but we are talking "lesser of two evils" and not "this is fine, this is okay, what is everyone making a fuss about?"
I suggest someone put a shock collar on Hasan and zap him every time he gets up from his chair to go get a drink or use the bathroom. After all, that's still way better than the alternative, right?
HereAndGone
14d ago
There's also the problem of enough women being dumb enough to date guys who are waving an entire Chinese National Day display of red flags, but staunchly refuse to believe guy is gong to beat the crap out of them or that it's just his crazy, jealous, obsessed ex going around bad-mouthing poor innocent guy (I remember reading an account of a court case where a guy was credibly accused and convicted of being abusive to his ex, and his current girlfriend turned up to be a character witness for him. If you're at a trial for your snuggle-bunny beating the crap out of his last girl friend, what the hell are you doing?)
So there probably is a good opening for "am I dating Mr/Ms Crazy or Mr/Ms Cheater?" website to check out "I met this guy/gal online and I have some doubts, am I over-reacting?" but we can't have nice things because this is the modern Internet. (Yeah, women are crazy violent stalkers too).
Funny, I could have sworn I heard something - ah well, must have imagined it!
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