US Politics April 2019 Thread: 'I find that pretty hard to believe'

xp i know that in w va teachers packed bag lunches for kids using their own personal $$$

Idk I don’t have a union to my dismay but I support the right to strike for everyone including teachers, EMTs, home health aides, firefighters, and children. Kids to the pickets.

Anyway u know I’m a chaos agent just fp me

No kid of mine gonna cross the picket line if their teachers are striking (jk I won’t have kids)

late great: are you saying it should be illegal for teachers to strike because they provide a service that is essential to public welfare and safety? do you think the recent strikes in W. Va and LA were tactically or morally bad?

fwiw LAUSD managed to provide a safe space for kids to be, without hiring scab teachers, during their ~2 week strike in the second biggest school district in the country.

it wasn't easy, and it wasn't a great experience for the kids. but it's possible. and (in hindsight) pretty much the the entirity of LA thinks the strike was a huge success for the kids of LA (as evidenced by the insanely pro-union result in the one school board election since the strike).

here's an example of how this impacted parents (and obviously poor families were more impacted by most of this stuff): https://laist.com/2019/01/08/lausd_teachers_strike_guide_for_parents.php. you're right that striking isn't free. schools are community resources and if they close that hurts the community.

but look at the outcome of the LA strike! they'd already won the pay increase *before* they went on strike. the strike was about class sizes, libraries, nurses, counseling, etc. (see https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/01/23/the-striking-demands-of-la-teachers/).

TLG your list of essential things schools provide to the community was ... not being provided. your list was pretty much their list of things they were striking about.

i don't think it should be illegal for teachers to strike and i wouldn't want to draw analogies between what i do and what, say, air traffic controllers or cops or firefighters do

i don't think the strike in w.va (which lasted a day or two iirc?) was tactically or morally bad. i didn't think so at the time, either. i don't think the strike in LA was tactically bad, and i certainly wouldn't presume to call it immoral.

i wouldn't be comfortable with my school closing for two weeks, but if my school wasn't providing those services to my students then

then i might be

tlg I appreciate yr take on things and your posts here even when I don't agree 100%

As opposed to some other regulars who post 100% garbage, reading this on mobile reminds me again why I use killfile.

🥺

dang

Y'all --

Richard Lugar died, a bygone relic of an age of bipartisan contempt for liberals.

he always reminded me of those battery people in the old Duracell commercials

He always reminded me of the battery powered fake people in those Duracell commercials

oops sprry

not gen a fan of Lugar, but he did tell Reagan that his indifference to South African apartheid was no longer tenable

Knew it was too good to last.

don't be a Kamala, you dick

As opposed to some other regulars who post 100% garbage, reading this on mobile reminds me again why I use killfile.

kudos. it must be interesting to have no sense of irony. come back again sometime to congratulate yourself on how it's those other people who post garbage.

Serious question tlg, are you aware that not all teachers are independently wealthy?

good morning

Hey buddy, can you spare a dime? I know I messed up with #AnitaHill and a bunch of other stuff in the 100 years I’ve been in govt but I did say sorry to her even tho she doesn’t believe me. Whadaya say?? https://t.co/pSbAnYhi9s

— Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) April 29, 2019

padma lakshmi,,, welcome to the #resistance

He didn’t actually say sorry, he said he was sorry it happened to her

dan i are you aware that i am not independently wealthy?

Oh cool, guess ur not the Stanford-educated dude who "doesn't technically have a trust fund" that I thought you were. I'll update the ol' jaymc.xls

wow dude

i am stanford educated: one year, cost $70k, almost paid off after 10 years.

i worked 9-5 on saturday, after my 45 hr regular workweek. made $500 cash. that’s my trust fund.

get a life

I got a life. What I don't have is any inter-generational capital.

good morning!

sorry dan i can’t hear you over the roar of my charter helicopter

I can't follow whose dick is out here.

dan i is measuring my unjustly inherited and very large dick, so he can chop it up and distribute it to the poor

where'd you get the charter helicopter, a charter school???

Robin Dick Hood

xp HA

Richard Hood III Charter Helicopter School

Dan I, protecting labor from the nefarious interests of poor starving children one ilx post at a time

yeah, the good old "won't somebody think of the children" argument, always deployed in perfectly good faith

at least it's already the 29th, maybe you guys will have this all out of your system in time for the May thread.

one to watch imo. she should take feinstein's senate seat when feinstein is done doing nothing with it.

During my questioning, @jpmorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said he didn’t know if all my numbers were accurate. Here’s the math so he can check. pic.twitter.com/OIDkrWfASC

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) April 10, 2019

yeah everything I've seen of her is super impressive. she's smart and doesn't give a fuck about confrontation with these assholes.

love her

she's very good

Rosenstein out

thanks for your hard work shitstain

Interesting piece on how the NRA's implosion could impact 2020.

The NRA played a big, big role in the 2016 election for Donald Trump, spending dramatically more than it had in previous elections. Part of that pivotal role was tied to the fact that the Trump campaign proper had little ground operation for the general election. The NRA basically supplied one. The organization spent $30 million supporting Donald Trump and over $55 million in total, according to formal reporting. These numbers have escalated dramatically over the last four election cycles. But the actual spending was likely far higher since a lot of its field organizing work doesn’t have to be reported.

It’s hard to imagine, as the incumbent, that Trump’s campaign will be similarly unprepared for 2020. But the NRA is still a critical part of the GOP’s coalitional apparatus. Between financial woes and serious legal problems, it’s hard to imagine they won’t be seriously distracted and hobbled through 2020 in parts of the country that are critical for President Trump’s reelection.

afaict the trump 2020 plan is to bet even more on facebook ads targetting old people in swing states. it's not a terrible plan, and it doesn't need the NRA.

maybe we can blow up facebook before 2020

Rod Rosenstein resigning effective 5/11. A recent exchange I had with him:

Me: You quoted Donald Trump on respecting the rule of law. Seriously?
RR: It was a good quote.
Me: Do you think he believed it?
RR: [Pause]
Me: Do you?
RR: Those were good words.

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) April 29, 2019

"Those Were Good Words" for May title.