Me also. At least lawyers everywhere work with the Delaware corporate law.
The Delaware part, or the Clinton and Trump part?
I didn't know specifically that Clinton has a corporation there, but it doesn't surprise me. I assumed Trump had one there.
I didn't know the latter, but it's not remotely surprising. For an arbitrary US company, it's more likely to be incorporated in Delaware than anywhere else.
The three most important industries in Delaware are toll booths, tax evasion, and scrapple.
I didn't know the part about not needing ID. That seems like an obvious mistake/opportunity for grifting if you can impersonate these people.
The article would be a lot more compelling if it alleged that the entities owned by Clinton and Trump were actually using the Delaware loophole -- iiuc, certain transfers within a corporate family to a Delaware entity can be deducted in the corporations actual home state but then don't show up as taxable in Delaware. Is Clinton paying her Delaware LLC some amount for use of the LLC's copyrights, and deducting the expenses from her NY taxes?
Huh. So all that outraged noise about the Panama thing was just noise? Shocking.
The Delaware thing is different. It isn't hiding income. All that income is declared and on federal taxes.
9 I didn't follow the Panama story, but I'd draw a distinction between gaming and cheating. Obviously, one can disapprove of gaming, but it's still a different category from cheating.
it's not a loophole.
different states have different tax laws. Delaware's tax laws are more attractive to corporations than other states, so corporations incorporate themselves in Delaware.
conspiracy!
different states have different tax laws. and that's ok!
Jonathan Chait once wrote an article all about how Delaware is a scam.
Except credit card corporations, which all use the South Dakota usury laws. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
You can't spell "usury" without U.S.
I had a corporation registered there, we wanted to apply for an SBIR so we needed a corporate ID, TIN, etc. and that's just how it's done by every lawyer you talk to. Unfortunately we didn't get the grant so we shut down the corporation since you do have to pay some minimum tax/fee to Delaware each year your corporation is active. So I actually lost a couple hundred bucks on the whole enterprise. I still get junk mail for the now-defunct corporation, though.
I still get junk mail for the people that used to live in my house and I moved in 13 years ago. Apparently, Jewish charities have comically bad mailing lists or really long memories.
13: different states have different tax laws. and that's ok! senseless and idiotic, like all the other pseudo-sovereign powers of the states
I'm not saying there's any way to fix it without a constitutional convention, but saying that there's any reason that New York and New Jersey should have a different tax structure is purely Panglossian. All it does is set up races to the bottom.
Obviously I haven't paid enough attention to either story to understand the details, but I don't really get the distinction. Don't they both involve pretending your business is located someplace it's not, so as to be able to avoid paying taxes in the place it actually is located? One's avoiding federal and one's avoiding state taxes, but the companies still aren't actually in Delaware.
You can't win a race to the bottom with New Jersey.
We still get collection calls for the people we bought our house from 12 years ago. Apparently they didn't become deadbeats until after they sold us the place, because the calls didn't start until ~6 years ago, but I guess all previous addresses are in credit reports to we get a call every year or two.
Except credit card corporations, which all use the South Dakota usury laws. Let a thousand flowers bloom
Huh. The P2P lenders mostly use Utah's.
Not directly related to the candidates, but because of the anonymity, Delaware is practically its own Switzerland for tax-evading foreigners. I remember something about foreign tax agencies typically tracing disappearing money to Delaware, where the trial runs cold.
I definitely don't see why anonymity should be a corporate privilege. Congress should ban.
21: The Panama Papers scandal is about avoiding taxes and hiding assets (to avoid taxes or to break other laws). Delaware incorporation doesn't hide assets.
Obviously I haven't paid enough attention to either story to understand the details, but I don't really get the distinction. Don't they both involve pretending your business is located someplace it's not, so as to be able to avoid paying taxes in the place it actually is located? One's avoiding federal and one's avoiding state taxes, but the companies still aren't actually in Delaware.
There's multiple angles to the Panama story, some of which are more substantive than others. Part of it, like the Roldugin stuff, is the revelation of straight up criminality - details of transactions that clearly have no commercial rationale. Some of it is bog standard*, legal, but politically embarrassing offshore trust stuff (eg Cameron, Gunlaugsson), some of which is about tax and some of which is about secrecy. There's been relatively little, that I've seen highlighted, of what you might call legal tax evasion, ie the underlying activity is fine but the financial/corporate engineering illegally hides taxable income from the authorities. But that could just be because the documents don't implicate anyone in that that the British press cares about. Or because other havens are more suited to it (though I've not seen evidence of that).
*For rich folks.
A business entity formed to hold intangibles isn't really anywhere. I suppose you could say it's where the shareholders are (or members in the case of an LLC) -- didn't the Supreme Court just finally resolve this for diversity jurisdictional purposes? -- but if you make some kind of physical test, then you're just going to get more gaming at a different level.
Gaming can be hard. I probably mentioned last fall trying to help a client open a bank account in Delaware. A DE LLC, members are Iraqi exiles living in the Emirates. The company's NY bank had closed their account, without notice, and given the CFO a check for the balance. So I'm walking around Wilmington with an Arab with a cashiers check for some 300k in his pocket trying to find a bank he can put it in. All the banks wanted more physical activity in Delaware.
So I'm walking around Wilmington with an Arab with a cashiers check for some 300k in his pocket trying to find a bank he can put it in.
We've all been painted into that corner before.
I thought this was a nice contextualization of the complexity of the tax code. (Not hugely relevant.)
(It was hard because my ankle was still pretty swollen from last year's bone breakage. I should have charged more.)
A business entity formed to hold intangibles isn't really anywhere. I suppose you could say it's where the shareholders are (or members in the case of an LLC) -- didn't the Supreme Court just finally resolve this for diversity jurisdictional purposes? -- but if you make some kind of physical test, then you're just going to get more gaming at a different level.
Well, it is for different purposes. So for insolvency purposes, under UK law, it's basically where management decisions are taken. For tax purposes, there's more of a physical test, but we (OECD countries) seem to be moving toward a common definition of permanent establishment that reflects business reality more than formal corporate structure/location.
Of course, the other thing Delawere is famous for is not having a sales tax. That has its benefits, but might also be why everything around here is so shitty.
They tried to be famous for being the first state, if you believe your numismatics.
Right, Delaware is trivially a tax haven in that US corporations incorporate there (instead of the other 49 states) and can avoid some state corporate (but not personal) income tax. Except that (a) 6 states (including Texas) don't have corporate income tax, but Delaware isn't one of them (b) state corporate income taxes are small anyway and a miniscule part of state revenue (under 5%) (c) this has nothing to do with the much much more important federal corporate income tax, which does get collected on Delaware companies (d) almost all states and most cities, including California and the City of Los Angeles, collect tax on in-state activities of registered Delaware companies.
Delaware is almost entirely a corporate governance haven/your lawyer knows the law of this place haven, not a tax haven. The Guardian article is just a dumb attempt at Americans-do-it-too without knowing what it is talking about.
Birds do it, bees do it. But not more than once, according to what I remember from science class.
33 Delaware is famously a venue for corporate bankruptcies.
Wikipedia tells us about Delaware that
Over 50% of publicly traded corporations in the United States and 60% of the Fortune 500 are incorporated in the state.
(Now I'm thinking it was the fall before, and my leg hurt because of sciatica. Anyway, a painful and unsuccessful stroll through the business district.)
If it comes up again, I think Walmart will let you cash a check there.
If you hire lawyers to deal with incorporation of a C corp for you because you have no expertise in doing that, they will give you a standard package which includes incorporation in Delaware. It is to a first approximation meaningless as a decision taken by a specific corporation, but it is of course meaningful in a larger societal sense for all the reasons discussed above.
Relevant, "The Case Against Delaware"
Also pwned on that link, Mr. President.
Speaking of states being different for unseemly reasons, the PA Republican primary rules strike me as bizarre. 17 delegates go to the winning candidate and for the rest (n = 54), you vote for just the delegate with no reference to the candidate on the ballot. I had to vote for Clinton and then for nine delegates from a list but nine of those people on the list had "Delegate for Hillary Clinton" written below their names. I guess the Republicans just have the names. That's pretty bizarre, even for Republicans.
The Delaware bar also requires that you clerkship for 5 months to prevent people from other states getting admitted to the Delaware bar
http://courts.delaware.gov/bbe/
so scam-y
I voted for Bernie in PA today and that delegate thing threw me.
My daughter and her friends protested a Trump rally yesterday
I enjoy the "long standing tradition" paper. It opens with a name-check of Warren Burger.
Sure, we could do like other states and allow any law school grad to take the bar exam, but you wouldn't want to disappoint Ghost Warren Burger.
46: The Clinton delegates were basically the local political establishment.
50: Indeed. The only name I recognized among Bernie's was Fetterman's wife.
I eventually settled on Sestak. Figure he has a chance and so every vote counts.
I felt oddly conflicted about the judicial age change plebiscite--on the one hand, arbitrary retirement ages could mean getting rid of good judges unnecessarily;on the other, raising it means that it'll take longer to get fresh blood in. I ended up voting yes, but I'm not sure that was right.
I voted for McGinty, because I figure I owe Obama a favor and Sestak has already lost to Toomey once.
In 2010, an awful year for the Dems in general, he came within a few points of Toomey; he outpolled Onorato, the Democratic gubernatorial candidat, by 7 points. If he makes it out of the primary I think he has a pretty good shot.
He does poll slightly better against Toomey that her. I wonder if that isn't partially name recognition.
Candidate, even. I got the 7 points thing from something Ezra posted on That Website People Here Are Often Irritated By, but looking at the numbers I think he meant that the margin of loss was 7 points lower; he only had 3.5% more votes.
Speaking of voting, if anyone here cares, the Hugo shortlists are up.
I've mentioned before that I've ended up in charge of setting up the county delegate selection convention to go to the state convention. I'm going with a high school gym, bleachers on one side for C the other side for S. Pep rally style.
We've got spirit yes we do, Clinton Clinton how bout you!
Does anyone know wmtgw stars on where privately owned companies incorporate? Do they do it in their home state or are lawyers just sp familiar with Delaware law that that's where it's done.
I assume that a huge private corporation like Epic is incorporated in Delaware, and some tiny Mom and Pop businesses are incorporated without a lawyer, but what about the mid-sized ones?
57: Don't you realize that McGinty is just a bum off the street that some sleazy political boss with a foreign accent elevated to his present position in hopes of him being easy to manipulate?
62: I'd assume everybody from out of state who incorporates in Delaware has to use a lawyer. And even most mom & pop businesses use a lawyer when incorporating in their own state, though I don't think you have to if it is just an S Corp.
55/58/60 were me, probably obviously. My browser has been losing all sorts of info recently. I probably shouldn't try to internet while hopped up on allergy medicine.
I felt oddly conflicted about the judicial age change plebiscite--on the one hand, arbitrary retirement ages could mean getting rid of good judges unnecessarily;on the other, raising it means that it'll take longer to get fresh blood in. I ended up voting yes, but I'm not sure that was right.
Never fear, Moby, you can have a do-over in November. A judge pulled that question off the ballot at the last minute, so no votes on that question are being counted.
(FWIW, my thought process was the same as yours.)
Also, my pollworkers said turnout was strong at 8:45 this morning and the weather was lovely all day, so maybe good turnout? Although now we're having a massive thunderstorm. Hopefully it will pass quickly.
How about your screwed up traffic court? Should I have voted to close it? Will I get a chance again?
*According to the article it sounds like relatively substantial things: royalties, copyrights, etc.
Definitely kill the Traffic Court! The legislature already mostly did. Horribly corrupt. Good riddance.
Never fear, Moby, you can have a do-over in November. A judge pulled that question off the ballot at the last minute, so no votes on that question are being counted.
Good on the judge. It's silly to have important referenda during the primaries.
That's true. Could independents show up and vote for referenda at least?
I've been torn about the Senate primary from Day One. I've always liked Sestak. I can't tell whether McGinty really is a crappy corporate Dem or if she's a standard one being slandered by purists. I'd love for Fetterman to do well, but AFAICT he's gotten little traction. My general rule of thumb is always to vote for the woman unless there are disqualifying reasons. Repeat.
On the Wikipedia disambiguation page for "McGinty" it lists her as "American environmentalist". That seems promising.
74: Yes, independents (I am one) can vote on ballot questions in the primary.
Turns out the retirement-age thing was yet another battle between our Democratic governor and Republican legislature. What a surprise. Sigh.
68: I felt oddly conflicted about the judicial age change plebiscite--on the one hand, arbitrary retirement ages could mean getting rid of good judges unnecessarily;on the other, raising it means that it'll take longer to get fresh blood in. I ended up voting yes, but I'm not sure that was right.
Don't know about Pennsylvania specifically, but I'm generally in favor of required retirement ages for judges. While there are some excellent ancient judges, there are also definitely some who stay on the bench well after they're capable of functioning, and I think it'd be worth losing the first to get rid of the second. I mean, they probably shouldn't have to retire before seventy, but at that point, they can relax.
The question is 70 or 75, not 70 or nothing.
OT Primary question:
Given how the Republican primaries are turning out, do you think Scott Walker dropped out too soon? (I mean, from a purely tactical perspective, not for the sake of humanity). It seems not unlikely that he could have hung on at 1% for a few weeks/months and then given Cruz a run for his money. He's evil enough to be ok to much of the base, but far more beloved than Cruz.
My dad agreed with you about the hanging on part. He retired at 72 to be sure he went before he had any trouble, but there was no law about it. And he did part-time judging until he was close to 80.
75: I had a lot of trouble with that, too.I would have loved to vote Fetterman if I thought he had a chance; Sestak is not as liberal but he legitimately does have a real chance, so to a person who prefers both of those to McGinty that's vote thrown away. Anyway, Fetterman is young and good at self-promoting; he'll be around again for something else.
I am somewhat grimacing that I voted against women in two separate races. Sure, I expect to vote for both women in the general. it's unfortunate that systemic sexism probably means that women who are relatively to the right are more likely to advance farther and faster. I'm convinced McGinty could do the job and to be particularly excellent on environmental issues, but I'm reflexively skeptical of candidates who, although they might have done a good job with behind-the-scenes roles, are unknowns catapulted into high-stakes elections by the party brass. How those interact means that I probably don't vote for women as often as I should, so I'll have to work to change that.
78: That's helpful. I suppose I'll vote against it (i.e. keep the age limit at 70) next time.
80: It's possible he could have hung on by virtue of just not going away until he was in a position to duke it out with Kasich for pretend-sane-person. But with his utter lack of charisma and (apparently) total incompetence when it came to running his own campaign finances it would have been difficult to keep qualifying for debates. And it would have meant months of humiliation before he got to the point where anyone was even willing to consider looking at him as a potential candidate, probably enough to utterly eliminate any chance of a political career outside of the presidency (which he wouldn't be able to win).
Sestak vs McGinty ...Vox; writer Dara Lind
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has sent over $1.5 million McGinty's way; no other non-incumbent Democrat has gotten more than $14,000. In total, outside groups have spent $4 million on her.This isn't about love for Katie McGinty. It's about distrust of Joe Sestak. But what could have earned such skepticism from party elders?
1) McGinty is a crappy corporate Dem; Obama supports her.
2) In the real world with luck, we have to choose between the conflicting judgements and characters of more than one woman on a given issue or race, here Dara Lind obviously favors Sestak and voting for McGinty would diss a woman, Lind.
3) IOW, the affiliation politics will usually fail as metric
My general rule of thumb is always to vote for the woman
And of course as we see in so many ways this year, the crappy corporate Dems know this very well and will take advantage of this and anti-racism to turn us all into debt peons. There will be according to my own trollish egalitarian anti-essentialist non-feminism, no shortage of women willing to take the money and power and serve the oligarchs.
Some guys put women on pedestals.
Last One:
Feminism For Sale ...Sarah Jaffe at New Republic reviews Andi Zeisler, cultural critic, ex of Bitch magazine, new book: We Were Feminists Once h/t Loomis
"Zeisler cites Marjorie Ferguson's 1990 argument about the "feminist fallacy"--the idea that images of powerful women in the media translate into power for women out in the world. In this moment we too often fall under the spell of this and of another kind of "feminist fallacy": that the success of powerful women will trickle down to the rest of us."
Also Hester Eisenstein Feminism Seduced How Global Elites Use Womens Labour 2009, and use male guilt
Now back to practicing Venomancer pulling creeps in Dota 2 cause I'm a mature serious caring person.
Trump absolutely will hammer Clinton on the Delaware address. He's hammered Bush on eminent domain (successfully) despite using it several times himself. His modus operandi is not to convince anyone that he's anything other than a filthy, shit-sucking, gutter dweller, but rather to convince everyone that the other person is just as bad as him but is both worse for not admitting it outright and a loser for failing to become as wealthy as him while they've been at it.
That's why I always felt better about the idea of running Bernie against him; the man's credibility and record force Trump out of the comfort zone. Bloomberg was actually probably the best bet to stop Trump. And though a Bloomberg administration would probably be worse than a Clinton one, it would also be at least bearable.
55, 68: Just so you all know, the reason for the judicial age plebiscite is that the trial lawyers noticed that several pro-plaintiff. Democratic, hack judges on the state Supreme Court are about to age out, and they might be replaced by corporate tool Republicans. It's completely unprincipled and somewhat corrupt that it;s but also good for plaintiffs lawyers like me, and (theoretically) for our clients.
What party was supposed to nominate Bloomberg?
89: The Connecticut For Lieberman nomination is still up for grabs!
87: The polls have consistently had Hillary beat Trump. If someone hasn't been scared off from Hillary yet, what possibly could tip them over? A Delaware corporation--shitty but standard practice--is going to get her when Benghazi and emailgate and every little thing from the 1990s couldn't?
88: Ahhh. Thanks. I figured it had something to do with the current crop but didn't know the details.
Holy crap, another friend of mine got elected.
Turns out I'm going to be a superdelegate at the state convention. You have to buy your own cape.
91: My guess would be the intention would be less to scare people off of Hillary (though that's absolutely doable for plenty of people) but to put a big dent in enthusiasm for voting for her. I absolutely believe Trump could do a lot of 'why-even-bother' damage with that kind of stuff.
I really don't understand the conventional wisdom that years of (constantly) reinforcing nasty attacks on Clinton is going to make people not find them plausible when the right starts up with a whole new batch. I'm willing to bet that there's a hopefully-small chunk of the electorate whose understanding going into September will mostly be "I did like the Clinton years but she was always really shady wasn't she?" And that's a group that will absolutely be receptive to New! Shiny! Clinton! Scandal! stuff. And for all the "She's Invincible!" arguments it's not obvious to me what 'didn't get her' means - didn't make her shrink away and hide from everyone? Didn't prevent her from getting elected to a safe Senate seat once she had the nomination? They're attacks on her character, after all, not actual bullets. And even polls of her supporters seem to indicate that they did some damage there.
They're attacks on her character, after all, not actual bullets
The actual bullets are the ones she fired, point-blank, into Vince Foster's skull from her snub-nosed .38.
It's really over now, isn't it? Fuck.
Should we have a primary thread or is everyone asleep?
I'm awake! Today's results reinforce my sense that Trump really is likely to win the nomination outright.
Also bad news, less internecine warfare on the floor of the GOP convention. Perhaps it was too much to hope for.
In other news yesterday afternoon was the first over 100 degree day. Goodbye spring it's been nice knowing ye.
People have bizarre, unpredictable, and monstrously stupid reactions to Trump. It's like Trump is so bad that he gets major points from a lot of people for saying a single thing that isn't completely crazy.
And like I said, the Trump cannons (which are worse than the general right wing cannons) haven't been turned directly on Clinton yet.
96 - Yup! Since I can't say so in public, suck it losers!!!!
I'm choosing to interpret 102 as Tigre switching his allegiance to Trump.
With all the gnashing of hair and pulling of teeth over Trump's nomination in the press, I think it's a good time to remember exactly who set the stage for this load of shit.
Remember, we already had a President who built a database of Muslims, ordered the use of waterboarding and worse, went after the terrorists' families, and built a wall on the border complete with rhetoric about how we had to do "whatever it takes to keep America safe" and total disregard for facts and the press.
103- One thing that has struck me about RT's position is that he is so down on Bernie because the bernie bros on Facebook were insufferable. So if you responded emotionally to RT's posts the way that he would, you'd end up being dead set against HRC.
Trump and Halfordissmo always were a more natural fit.
To be fair, Bernie bros on FB can be pretty damn insufferable.
105- And the press loved him so much they're spending one billion dollars and counting trying to get back that loving feeling.
106:
RT is pretty conservative once you get down to it. So is Hillary. And that's part of what irks me so fucking much about the Clintons and New Dems more broadly. Here there's very clearly a Republican Party in total fucking shambles that they could be taking over. But they've already got their power and they really, really want to be sure that actual leftists continue to have no voice in this country, so they just stay over here and punch left and say stupid shit like "this is a center-right country". But really, when I think about what a sane Republican Party that wasn't a weird coalition of apocalyptic death cultists and rich con men but instead had actual principles other than a general love of violence, mayhem, and bullies... well, it looks a lot like the Clinton camp.
103- One thing that has struck me about RT's position is that he is so down on Bernie because the bernie bros on Facebook were insufferable. So if you responded emotionally to RT's posts the way that he would, you'd end up being dead set against HRC.
That's been my response. On the internet everyone who likes Hillary seems to be motivated purely by contempt for the adorable idealism of simple-minded teenagers who know nothing of the way life works.
RT is pretty conservative once you get down to it.
Yeah, and I'm a right wing troll. You're venturing down a dumb path.
I still like Tigre, but many of his instincts are basically conservative in nature. I'm not going to dig it up but there was a thread a few months ago where he was more or less questioning the value of actually voting over having party elites hand-pick candidates. Even if you think that leads to generally better outcomes, that's a conservative instinct.
Oh FFS you guys. I like Bernie as much as the next millennial, and I caucused for him in a state where he got 80% of the vote. But this talk about how Clinton and her supporters are fundamentally conservative Republicans or whatever is just nonsense. (I'm not just picking on Unfogged here, as this is the same stuff I was hearing from my sister last week.) HRC is a typical politician in that she tacks left or right on various issues depending on the overall political winds and where she sees her best opportunities for personal advancement. Over the course of this primary season she's been moving to the left under pressure from Sanders, just as she and her husband moved to the right in the eighties and nineties under pressure from the GOP and the blue dog Democrats. And, yes, once she secures the nomination she'll tack to the center to some extent to position herself for the general. This is just what politicians do. Bernie is unusual in sticking to a consistent ideological message for decades, and good for him, but that's not typical and it doesn't necessarily indicate that he would be more effective in putting his agenda into practice if he did win. If anything, the opposite is true; cynical deal-making and compromise is ugly, but it's how things get done. There's a lot of truth in the old analogy to sausage-making.
Hillary and her supporters may be "pretty conservative" compared to Bernie and his, but that doesn't mean they're secretly Republicans. It just means the Democratic coalition is diverse and contains a lot of different factions, of which the "Democratic socialist" left is just one. This primary is demonstrating that the left is a more robust and vocal faction than the Clintonian centrist faction had realized, but it's still just one faction among many, and a large minority but not a majority. The best way to get the policy priorities of the left to move forward is for it to continue to function as a vocal faction within the party, and I've always thought, and continue to think, that this was Bernie's main goal all along. Yes, Hillary will tack to the center, but the exact extent of that movement will depend on how much pressure the left continues to put on her. I think Sanders himself will concede and endorse her at some point but continue to keep that pressure on, and I hope his supporters will do the same rather than rejecting the whole process.
And I'm really frustrated because I think they really (as a group) ought to take their "centrist" fight up with Republicans more often, but this basically never happens and it's really bad for actual leftist politics in America.
None of that is really about Tigre personally, who certainly has his conservative tendencies and has been totally upfront about being an authoritarian Christian despite his openness to economic leftism.
Also, no fucking way are Democratic centrists going to wade into the disaster that is the Republican party. That's just not how realignments work.
I definitely have some "conservative" qualities but I think my actual policy preferences are not meaningfully to the right of the most social-democratic wing of the Democratic party. My beef with the Sanders campaign was that I thought and think that he was and is an ever-increasingly more annoying fraud and political lightweight, and that his supporters started off annoying and got consistently more annoying and self-righteous as the campaign went on. On net (as I've said about a zillion times!) his campaign may well end up being a net good thing for the party, but it definitely won't be because of his personal theory of politics or political revolution or the general bullshititude of it all. I see him as a destroyer and an annoying gadfly, not a builder. Lots more left wing young people is a good thing, but I don't really think he's meaningfully responsible for that and am not willing to give him credit for it right now. Comment 102 was just glee that his most annoying supporters are sad, which isn't the most noble sentiment but I've made a commitment to airing my personal dickitude in public on this website.
Saying Hillary is conservative and saying she's a conservative Republican are two very different things at this point. Although, I wouldn't say she's a conservative, really, either.
Teo's got it right in 113 but I definitely feel a lot like 110.
Also signing on to 116. Let it implode. I'll be over here with the popcorn.
Yeah, this is fucking nutty. Tigre had a completely irrational hatred of Sanders, but I doubt there are many issues where Sanders is appreciably to Tigre's left.
Yeah, the Bernie is a fraud bit is BS and annoying as hell if not downright bizarre but I still love you RT. Too much of that is why I've been scarce at LGM.
Wow Cruz was really humiliated. Seeing that is reward enough even if I was hoping he'd remain enough of a contender to contest the nomination at the convention.
Cruz was humiliated, but Kasich is still behind Rubio in delegates. That's pretty embarrassing.
Two- what do you mean by "authoritarian Christian"? Do you see all Christians as authoritarian? I have no plans to argue with you about that, but I want to make sure that I understand your position.
Also, no fucking way are Democratic centrists going to wade into the disaster that is the Republican party.
Well, right. What will, and is, happening is that Republican centrists are hoping the other way.
But I'm not sure that's not what Trivers was getting at.
Had a really interesting experience at City Council last night. In short, one member was - I think objectively - shallowly grandstanding, seizing on the latest alt weekly article on the subject and acting like those concerns had always been hers, but it actually ended up with a decent result. Politicians as conduits rather than leaders.
Wouldn't the phrase "authoritarian Christian" mean that there isn't any essential link between Christianity and authoritarianism? Otherwise it's just an odd redundancy.
125: You haven't noticed that that there may be a slight authoritarian tendency in Halfordismo?
Can't speak for Teo, but I don't think the Christianity has anything to do with the authoritarianism - it's just another true fact about RT.
it's just another true fact about RT.
I would watch that ZeFrank video.
I guess it works either way, but when people say "authoritarian," they usually refer to people who want to follow a dictator, not be one.
I suppose having said that I do think that there's a pretty strong link between the two. It's composed of a bunch of (theoretically at least) tightly knit communities with a strong element of 'we are better than others because we belong to this one', a lengthy tradition and a lot of norm policing all built around an idealized (perfect, strong) authority figure. And you have to go pretty far out on the 'but by "GOD" I mean the ineffable sense of wonder I feel when I take shrooms contemplate the size and majesty of the universe"* branch before those stop being really prominent elements of any particular Christian community.
It doesn't necessarily mean that the people are especially susceptible to authoritarian personalities, especially since most religions look like that. But it is definitely a feature of Christianity and I wouldn't be surprised if it had a tendency to push people a notch over in the direction of that kind of thing compared to where they'd otherwise be.
125/129. I don't see RT as an authoritarian Christian according to my understanding, which is Protestant congregations who unquestioningly accept the diktats of their media star pastors, and Catholics who do likewise in respect of their Bishops. There are plenty of these types around. They infest the internet, most vocally on the subject of women's bodily autonomy (they're against it), but we all know the score. This isn't Halfordismo territory as I understand it.
And yes, there are plenty of non-authoritarian Christians. Most mainstream Protestant, in practice.
Have you people actually met Catholics?
135: note the missing commas, which make the difference between "One example of authoritarians would be Catholics who unquestioningly obey their bishops" and "One example of authoritarians would be Catholics, who unquestioningly obey their bishops".
That was partially to 134 but also to "we are better than others because we belong to this one."
Does "authoritarian Christian" mean "all nations shall bow to and fear my authority, which shall backed with bikini-clad flamethrowing hotties with pictures of Jesus on their bikini bottoms"?
Shall BE backed. Feel the Jesus-bikini-clad burn, losers!
bikini-clad flamethrowing hotties with pictures of Jesus on their bikini bottoms
Get thee behind me, Satan, and behold my spectacular ass.
When there was only one set of footprints in the sand, that was when my bikini-clad hottie assassin was carrying you.
Somehow, on the sand wearing heels.
Anecdata: my Wheaton-grad (but liberal) friend's father just re-registered from R to I after 42 years, and intends to vote for Hillary against Trump.
138. Is that a chapter of Revelation that wasn't included in my Bible? Changes everything.
Also, congratulations to JRoth Sr.
My dad switched from Republican to Democrat shortly after Bush was elected. And his high school year book as a joke about him supporting Dewey.
146: was unclear; it's my friend's father, and my friend is the grad of Wheaton.
Roth Sr. has been a stealth liberal Democrat under deep cover in a NJ country club for years now. Before that he was a regular Democrat under regular cover at Exxon, under deeper cover in his marriage to my personally liberal, politically conservative mom.
What do you mean by personally liberal, politically conservative?
149: She really had none of the daily life characteristics of her politics*. Which I know is not uncommon for conservatives--hate the class, love the individual--but it was especially stark in her case. Basically, the innate worldview she inculcated in me is precisely what led me to reject conservatism. Especially modern-day conservatism, with its contempt for the very idea of empathy, but lots of other things as well. I've no idea what she'd have made of the modern Republican Party, because she had her accident in '91, but it's unimaginable to me that she'd like any of it.
*I never heard her express prejudice towards any group**, including affinity groups like hippies, she was incredibly welcoming/nonjudgmental towards my sister's fucked-up HS friends, she was happy with Vatican II Catholicism, etc.
**that's a little strong, but on the Archie Bunker scale, she'd have been a 2 or 3: the occasional mildly-phrased complaint about a few groups. I'm pretty sure she griped about Cubans in Miami, frex, but IIRC it was mostly about the arrogance of the '59 generation, not about e.g. the shiftlessness of the Mariel Boatlift people
Who didn't gripe about the meddling the gusanos got up to in those days?
Reading 113 was like going to a deep, soothing place where all the bullshit was washed away in the waves of the gentle, calming sea.
Then Trump won the nomination.
I have no plans to argue with you about that, but I want to make sure that I understand your position.
I look forward to the BG/teo throwdown, once the research phase is complete.
Ted Cruz, in a move rivaled only by the savvy way he spoke of the "basketball ring" when making a reference to the movie Hoosiers, will announce a VP pick despite not having or being likely to have the nomination. (Fiorina)
Come on, lighten up, the guy's an immigrant. Who know what they call the thing in Canada.
Basketball was invented by a Canadian immigrant.
Actually, Basketball Ring sounds like exactly the sort of thing the Sherman Act was targeted at. Is the Sen signaling the confidence to take on Big Balls?
Who know what they call the thing in Canada.
Ringette?
Cruz Comma Ted: Human Being for President.
Is it too late to point out that "Delaware" should have been a part of Maryland? As well as the southernmost 10 or 20 miles of Pennsylvania. Doesn't "Philadelphia, MD" sound much more distinguished? #ScumbagMasonDixon
More seriously, by "authoritarian Christian" I meant that authoritarianism and Christianity are both aspects of RT's worldview (at least as expressed through his persona here), not that they're necessarily connected or that all Christians are authoritarian, which I think is very far from the truth. That said, I'm not sure they're totally unconnected when they do occur together, as there is certainly a strain of authoritarianism in Christianity going back as far as Constantine along with an anti-authoritarian strain going back even further.
162: Right on, brother/sister. My mother State! to thee I kneel,
for life and death, for woe and weal, thy peerless chivalry reveal and gird thy beauteous limbs with steel, Maryland! My Maryland!
(But actually, fuck that Dixie-loving song.)
Great, now the blog's all covered with patriotic gore. Damn Maryland irredentists.
As for Delaware, in light of its current status and reputation I find it amusing that it originated as essentially a scam by unscrupulous Dutch businessmen trying to rip off gullible Swedes.
Also, no fucking way are Democratic centrists going to wade into the disaster that is the Republican party.
No, the centrists will take the disaster that is the Republican Party as an opportunity to further ostracize the left. Look! There's one now.
I agree with 168. The Democrats can become the Angela Merkel "There is no alternative" party for a little while if Trump keeps crapping the bed with offensive insults throughout the election. And the Republicans become the equivalent of the Adolf Von Football Hooligan party that gets 20% in every European country nowadays. In this scenario actual left-wing people need to start concentrating on primaries, since Bernie Sanders has shown that there is a big market for actual left-wing people in elections where there isn't an actual racist running.
165: Potentially on its way to being sanitized.
168, 169 Yup.
The Democrats can become the Angela Merkel...
I'd almost be happy with Merkels. This is all so much more Tony Blair.
Is it too late to point out that "Delaware" should have been a part of Maryland? As well as the southernmost 10 or 20 miles of Pennsylvania. Doesn't "Philadelphia, MD" sound much more distinguished? #ScumbagMasonDixon
Wow, it wasn't even me who posed that. We Maryland irridentalists are legion!
Also, don't forget Accomack County, VA, which also should be a part of Maryland. As should everything north of the Shenandoah.
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So this is completely unrelated to anything in this thread -- unless I can somehow link the guilt I am now feeling (it's of a classic Catholic variety) to the discussion of Tigre's theological predilections:
A couple of years ago, I heard from a long-lost friend through social media. R. and I had once been the best of friends, but had grown apart, both geographically and in other respects. And we had had something of a falling-out, I suppose, about eight or nine years ago: not a major blowup or anything like that, but there was an incident that caused irritation and hurt feelings on both sides.
Anyway, I heard from R. more or less out of the blue in the summer of 2014 (at which point we had been out of touch for about six or seven years); and we exchanged emails, and then had a couple of lengthy telephone conversations. In the course of catching up on the past decade or so, R. informed me that was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, but assured me that it was all under control, and that she was feeling quite well, and was planning a trip out west, and etc. We made hypothetical, not-really-serious plans to get together (maybe I would go up to Toronto, or perhaps she'd come down to NJ, or how about meeting in the Adirondacks?), but the whole thing sort of petered out. We were last in touch in November 2014, and the last phone call was made by R.
And then every once in a while, I'd think, 'I really should give R. a call.' Which I thought of again today, and, in an idle moment, decided to google her, only to come up with her obituary.
R. died in March 2015. And I really f*cking should have made more of an effort to stay in touch with her. It's too late to call her now.
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169
AIHMHB, my godmother is a huge Merkel fan (she's German), and possibly an even bigger Hillary Clinton fan. She says stuff like, "Clinton is the Merkel of America" except she means it as a giant compliment.
She also says, "Merkel is the Clinton of Germany" and she means it as an even bigger compliment to Merkel.
Oh hell JPJ, I'm so sorry for your loss.
And I think that while you should grieve the loss of your friend you should also give yourself a break from the guilt part of it. You were on the way to rekindling that friendship but from the sound of it it was going to be a long and slow process just as a matter of course.
176, 177 And they see Sanders as the Greece of America. Or something. Seriously the gleeful gloating in 168 is ugly as fuck.
179: Thanks, Barry, but I'm not quite ready to cut myself a break. Had R. not been so ill, sure, a slow rekindling of our friendship. But while I honestly did not realize how sick she actually was, in retrospect, I can't help thinking that I missed some cues, and that I should have connected some dots. I just feel shitty and so, so sad about the whole thing.
Also: f*ck breast cancer, which also claimed the lives of my paternal aunt and godmother (my dad's only sister), and of my own dear mother.
175:
That's really hard. I'm sorry about your friend.
182: I'm so sorry to hear that, JPJ. Tangentially, have you been tested for the BRCA mutations (that Heebie and I--and Angelina Jolie--have)?
Meanwhile, I've been trying to figure out the likelihood of a recurrence. Based on my tumor's characteristics, my age, and my treatment, my best guess is that I have a 10-15% risk over the next ten years. So: real, but not terrible.
171. The (apparent) new lyrics sound boring as hell: "The state Senate voted 38-8 Thursday to approve a compromise bill that would keep the song -- but with the lyrics from an alternative version that has often been used at functions across the state. "They're about trees, streams and hills, and they hammer home the point that Maryland sure is a pretty state."
There's at lot to be said for a state song that contains the lines: "She spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She'll come! She'll come! Maryland! My Maryland!"
184.1: No, I have not been tested. You are right that I should look into this. Thanks.
I'm so sorry, Jane, but also glad for you that getting back in touch and talking is part of the story. I had a similar relationship (although thank goodness no illness to my knowledge) and still haven't managed the in-person reconnection, despite our both being in the same metro area. I should redouble efforts.
In general, everyone, call all your friends. I spent five days with most of my best friends on the other coast a few weeks ago, and it made me as happy as I've been in years.
You killed him, didn't you? You killed him and now talk to his corpse all evening.