Hey ogged, when they inter you, do you promise to blog the whole process? Because that would be cool.
Manzanar is stark and gorgeous, Ogged. The high desert with the Sierras in the background would remind you of your heathen homeland.
I'm kinda pissed off that there was a whole cache of Lange pictures that had just been forgotten.
he's also a Republican
I might be, too. It was FDR that done it.
Irrelevant rambling: I am bemused by those who, when painting the Democrats as soft on security, refer to WWII.
Gee, what would have happened if a Democrat had been in the White House in 1941?
You know, more and more I think that the entire Republican party is founded on coded racism. The idealized middle American, the nostalgia, the lipservice to small business while helping WalMart replace (increasingly immigrant-owned) local businesses, the anti-city, anti-liberal, anti-elite (read anti-cosmopolitan) angle, the focus on law and order and giving people back "their" tax money, the whole fear/anxiety about the public sphere, the patriotic defense angle, all of it. The worst part is that one can't talk about this stuff in terms of race because most Americans are, in fact, racist enough to think that talking about race is somehow fundamentally unfair to someone (read whitey).
C'mon, Dr. B. the Republican Party was founded as an anti-slavery party. Of course, everyone was racist then. If you want to moan about the fact that Strom Thurmond led a revolt out of what was then the Solid South for the Democrats, and the Republicans figured out by pandering to those who had just left their party they would pick up a lot of votes, then go ahead. But I wouldn't make it a partisan political litmus test.
TLL, bphd said *is* founded on coded racism, not *was*. As in, coded racism is its current foundation.
No argument there, but don't scratch the Dems too deep, or you'll find much of the same.
TLL, the Republican Party today bears no resemblance to the Republican Party as it was founded. Nixon's Southern Strategy made the racist gambit explicit, and it's no coincidence that all the overtly racist Dems left the party for the other side. Sorry if you feel put upon by people pointing out that the modern GOP relies on hate as Options A, B, and C, but facts is facts.
TLL: That's pretty natural in a racist society, no? But there is a difference between pandering to it and not doing enough to combat it.
No argument there, but don't scratch the Dems too deep, or you'll find much of the same.
No, not much of the same, sorry. The two sides aren't equivalent on this front, no matter how much you might say they are.
Hey look over there! It's Robert Byrd!
15. Exactly. I guess the Grand Keagle didn't get the memo. I had hoped that the Republicans would seriously go for the Latino vote, because I think that there was some natural affinity there. Cesar Chavez and Bobby Kennedy were a long time ago after all. But the anti immigrant slant will be too hard to overcome. (PS Cesar Chavez was rabidly anti- immigrant. He correctly saw that it would diminish the power of his union).
Do you think the anti-homosexual rhetoric from the GOP is based in fear or in hatred, yoyo?
fear, 90%.
Thats just a guess, two things come to mind:
Hatred usually requires some actual historical grievance. You can have fear without some actual harm, just uncertainty and thoughts of future risk.
I don't think distate for physical acts of male-male sex is as big a part of it as (mainly) sexual insecurity.
I think they have distaaste for physical acts of sex, period. Let's not forget misogyny.
20: i agree, but i don't think its the main thing. Or there's lots of abstraction stacked on top. Mysognyny is a large part of what i'm pointing to.
13:At some time I will spiel my spiel about all the ways Lincoln was a typical Republican. There can be a similar argument made about 19th century Democrats, if you get past the racism. Remember Wilson started the Fed and income tax, multilateralism, and may have a connection to women's suffrage. Etc.
Republicanism and the racist South is a bad fit.
Fair enough. New schematic:
Fear - Option A
Hate - Option B
Vote suppression - Option C
The Democratic Party of today hardly resembles the pre-FDR party at all, and the FDR-Truman party only so much, and really came into being, alas, in 1968.
#8: ...the lipservice to small business while helping WalMart replace (increasingly immigrant-owned) local businesses...
Wal-Mart means people on a tight budget, including poor immigrants, can find a greater selection of the goods they need at lower prices. Why is it somehow noble and righteous to protect mom-and-pop shops at the expense of low-income consumers?
A Richmond Republican originally from the North had the idea of erecting a monument to Lincoln there -- Richmond is full of Confederate monuments. He eventually succeeded, but only after quite a bitter fight.
As far as I know, subject to correction, there isn't a single other monument to Lincoln anywhere in the South. The founder of the Republican party is still hated in the Republican stronghold.
Trivia: a statue of Arminius, the German who defeated the Romans in the battle of Teutoborg, was erected in New Ulm MN (an all-German town) in 1897. How it survived WWI and WWII I don't know.
"Why is it somehow noble and righteous...."
GB, could you learn to express yourself without cheesy cliche sarcasm? We have a higher sarcasm standard here.
Um, because low-income consumers need to make decent wages and have things like benefits in order not to be low-income consumers any more, and low! low! prices are kept low by underpaying employees and not giving them benefits.
Maybe next time you can come up with a *hard* dumb question.
Wal-mart pays well above the minimum wage for even its lowest-ranking jobs.
29. I'm not sure that's true. Average wage is $10 / hr. There are wage caps on all classifications. There's no pension, no security, and poor medical-dental benefits, and there are well-ducumented practices of abuse, e.g., asking workers to clock out and then continue working.
Don't forget locking employees in the store overnight.
Actually, low! low! prices come more from Wal-mart's ability to use its massive purchasing power to demand low prices from suppliers, than from stiffing its employees. In fact, when Wal-mart's CEO Lee Scott last year called for Congress to raise the minimum wage, he was accused of cynically trying to squeeze out smaller mom-and-pop stores, which lack the clout to negotiate favorable prices and so depend more heavily on cheap labor.
29: Well no shit. But they cap hours just under 40 in order to avoid paying benefits. And if I were mom or pop, I'd sure as shit rather own my own goddamn store than go out of business and end up stocking the shelves at fucking WalMart and having yuppies try to tell me that WalMart is doing me a favor by buying cheap crap in bulk from China so that I, too, can own my very own Sponge Bob tshirt.
Whatever happened to Republicans? Didn't they used to actually give a shit about small business owners?
An even better article/dialog on Wal-Mart.
After an irrelevant comparison of the compensation of a Wal-mart worker to that of its CEO, Timothy Noah tells us (via the link in #33):
"the average pay of a sales clerk [italics mine] at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three." That the current minimum wage of $5.15 per hour leaves families even farther below the poverty line is a depressing topic for another day."
So Wal-Mart is being criticized for paying sales clerks, on average, 65% above the federal minimum wage. Those heartless bastards.
Apropos of nothing, Noah then expresses outrage that Wal-mart's CEO got paid more than General Motors' CEO. Although Noah was writing in February 2005, this has proved a spectacularly bad comparison, as GM is losing money hand over fist and has since announced that it is laying off workers by the thousands — in large part because of the crippling costs of its pension plan! A company does not exist to provide social services to retirees, and if you run it like it does, you won't be providing those services very long, because you'll go out of business.
In sum, Noah seems far more interested in pointing to irrelevant differences between CEO pay and worker pay, and differences among CEO pay at different companies, than the relevant question of whether sales clerks at Wal-mart are getting paid too little for the work they do.
GB, "above minimum wage" is kind of like the "but it's not a gulag!" argument. It still sucks. That said, I'm not much of a Walmart hater; obviously, a lot of consumers have chosen it over mom and pop shops. But I don't understand the motivation (absent correcting egregious errors of fact) behind defending Walmart wages. Walmart's management isn't going to let the company go out of business, so why not let the bleeding hearts put pressure on them to raise wages as far as they're able?
"The heartless bastards"
Forget the moron sarcasm, asshole. (I'm trying to speak your language, with a little bonus).
The mention of the CEOs wages is part of the wage pool, it is not irrelevant at all. As the article says, the median wage is what's relevant, and it isn't high.
The federal minimum wage is far too low. It's not a standard. The Oregon minimum wage is $7.50.
The minimum wage comparison is the only relevant point you made, and it wasn't a very good one.
Civility, John, civility, above all else.
Someday, I hope to become as witty as you are, John. Give me time.
A company does not exist to provide social services to retirees
Unfortunately we in America have no proper welfare state to provide social services to retirees. If we had one, companies could focus on doing what they do best. It would also be nice if we had a proper medical insurance program, and get companies out of providing medical care for their employees.
The mention of the CEO's wages is not irrelevant at all, if it's part of the wage pool which is averaged. As the article says, the median wage is what's relevant, and it isn't high.
Just lay off the lame sarcasm. You don't have to replace it with wit if you're not able to.
What we should be talking about is the fact that the person at the deli counter didn't put turkey on my turkey sandwich; a sad fact I discovered only after I had exercised and was famished. I blame the Patriot Act.
Or maybe we should be talking about the fact that GB's bare ass showed up in my RSS reader this morning. How about a little fair warning next time, eh?
Did they replace your turkey with a different cold cut, or did they give you a sandwich with no meat at all?
Honestly, I find it hard to get much worked up about Wal-Mart. It feels like getting angry about the weather.
#38: Neither the mean nor the median wage is relevant, since both compare wages for vastly different jobs. What is relevant is whether someone is getting paid fairly for the work they do.
It's relatively easy to determine this for jobs with a highly liquid labor market, like retail sales clerks. It's harder to determine for jobs that are less fungible, like CEO of a particular company. Even then, however, it makes no sense to compare worker pay to CEO pay.
36: So let me get this right. Your argument is that since they're obeying the letter, if not the spirit, and even though they've violated other laws, and even though their pricing practices destroy independently owned businesses, that the fact that their employees earn *under* the federal poverty line and have no benefits is somehow a good thing? And moreover that businesses shouldn't provide health benefits to their employees, thereby leaving people dependent on the state for health care and food stamps?
So the goal, if I understand this line of reasoning, is that the state should be responsible for feeding people, and helping them get medical care and housing. And that independently owned businesses are worse for the economy than national chain stores, for which people should be happy to work. This is sounding awfully like communism, except for the lack of any realistic source of state revenue.
Oh, and the lack of any of the idealism that at least made some of the communist experiments somewhat defensible in their time.
Actually, never mind that last comment. Why I'm letting myself be trolled by a patently stupid and sliding non-argument is completely beyond me. It's probably just because the rim job Ogged gave me was half-assed, as usual.
48: So the goal, if I understand this line of reasoning, is that the state should be responsible for feeding people, and helping them get medical care and housing.
I would say that people should be responsible for feeding themselves, etc. But to the extent that we need a social safety net, it should not be the private sector's responsibility to provide it. What am I paying taxes for?
What am I paying taxes for?
Strictly national defense and enforcement of contracts, I thought was the consensus.
Sorry BPhD; I posted #51 before seeing that you had dismissed my attempt to present the other side of the issue as "patently stupid" and "trolling". My bad.
Christ, tonight is like every bad Unfogged conversation rolled into one.
How could they leave off the goddamned meat, Ogged? Weren't you watching?
As for people taking responsibility for their own (e.g.) medical care: There's no way to administer a medical insurance plan without a risk pool. If everyone is out buying policies as a free agent, there is no meaningful risk pool.
Jesus fuck, GB.
You're paying taxes for as much social safety net as we have (along with a a lot of other things) but that's not very much social spending. Do you advocate increased taxes and increased social spending by government (as I do)? My guess is that you don't.
A company does not exist to provide social services to retirees
No kididng. But companies used to do that, and under pressure from a large number of forces, it's happening increasingly less. That's pretty much the topic here; Walmart is, for good reason, a standard example.
No, that'll be when GB tells B she doesn't understand because she's a girl.
Weren't you watching?
I was momentarily distracted, and no, I don't keep an eye on them, since I'm a regular there and they're typically great, but this was a person I hadn't seen before, and I should have paid attention. Self-blaming the victim, I know.
Guys, I'm trying, but I've never shared the Unfogged fondness for civil dog-and-pony-show debates with contrarians and libertarians.
They're so Nineties.
distracted
Hurray! Boy, you must have been pissed after your workout. I would be seething.
54: Did Ogged let you down again, too?
Oh, wait, I know how to make this better: I can't wait to cast my vote for Ralph Nader tomorrow!
B, you know ogged can't play above the rim.
I would be seething.
Typically, this would have been my reaction, but for some reason, I calmly retrieved some chicken from the fridge and used it to complete my 'sandwich." Next time time, Allah Akbar, all over the place.
This means I'm never getting my cheese grater back, doesn't it?
Every Iranian has his own cheese grater, with his initials (and the names of his enemies) engraved on the side.
What is this -- the civility intervention team sandwich move?
Actually, John, after What am I paying taxes for? I stopped worrying about civility. I just can't stand another wal-mart conversation.
This is a fairly ordinary political-site thread, and I like those fine, but I feel terribly cramped here.
Note that I didn't start it. I didn't start it with Yamamoto either. We do get people coming here with a chip on their shoulder, and I'm not an ignorer.
Ogged, when the shias do hajj, do they just sprinkle little fecal crumbs on Satan, instead of throwing rocks?
I like it when the lay whitefaces try to understand the rules. Satan gives us potent fecal matter, which we can use against our enemies. We really shouldn't, but who can resist?
but this was a person I hadn't seen before, and I should have paid attention.
He was probably robbing the place and the regular employees were bound and gagged back in the storeroom. He made you a sandwich so you wouldn't get suspicious before he made his getaway.
but who can resist?
Vegans, that's who.
John, I think the point is that there's no point in bothering. One has to assume that the gathered company is perfectly capable of recognizing dumb comments when they see 'em. Go have a smoke, or pet a chicken, or something.
Here's a decent article on Wal-Mart and poverty.
Honestly, I find it hard to get much worked up about Wal-Mart. It feels like getting angry about the weather.
Plenty of stuff to get worked up about here and here. I don't really understand your "like the weather" sentiment. There have been successful pushback campaigns.
76 reminds me that tonight, on being served bbq ribs for dinner (sadly, from the grocery store b/c I was too lazy to cook), PK declared MEAT! I AM A CARNIVORE! I AM NOT A HERBIVORE! which totally reminded me of Apo, and now Ogged.
One of my pet peeves (along with the phrase "pet peeves") is when people describe themselves as carnivores instead of as omnivores when announcing that they are not vegetarians.
Yeah B, teach that kid some manners.
PK knows what an omnivore is. Immediately after this big declaration Mr. B. said, "oh, then can I have your fruit salad?" and he said, "no, I'm an omnivore, really." So there.
Doesn't he, like, wear nail polish or something?
John, I think the point is that there's no point in bothering. One has to assume that the gathered company is perfectly capable of recognizing dumb comments when they see 'em.
When some guy at work has really poor hygiene and smells like a dead dog's ass on a muggy summer day, somebody has to tell the poor sap that everyone has noticed. Good on John for being willing to stand up and say it.
I swear to you that the long hair is HIS IDEA NOT MINE. And PK knows a lot about gender roles, including that they're often "stupid."
He wears nail polish from time to time, but he'll be damned if he'll let stupid people try to tell him he's not a boy because of it. The kid's more secure in his masculinity than the lot of you combined, I'm telling you.
And describe himself as "fancy?"
Everybody's fancy, ogged. Everybody's fine. Your body's fancy, and so is mine.
I've heard he wears dresses, and puts socks where his "boobies will grow someday."
Level with us: was your kid born intersexed, like Ogged?
No, but he pees sitting down. Just like his daddy, Ogged.
Chopper, stop slandering Labs. His boobies are quite pert.
I do that, but only when people are around.
Jinx. Funny about the intersexed thing: the other day he was griping about his teacher pitting the boys against the girls in some stupid game, and I told him that he's not allowed to yell at the teacher about it, but if he is really bothered he can say, calmly, "I think that's kinda sexist." Then he wanted to know what the sexes meant (as opposed to sex, the activity), so I explained X and Y chromosomes on the walk to school, making a point, actually, of explaining that most people are either XX or XY but that some people are intersexed, if the chromosomes combine in an unusual way, and that *those* people get even *more* pissed off about this "boys v. girls" thing because they're a little bit of *both*, damnit!
No one should ever say "pert". God.
Hey, I'm holding off on the gender/sex distinction for the time being, give me some credit.
No one should ever spell "dammit" with an "n."
Good deal, I'll countersue for "alright."
In retrospect I probably don't have sufficient resources to actually sue bitchphd.
if he is really bothered he can say, calmly, "I think that's kinda sexist."
B, why not cut out the middleman and beat the child yourself?
Boys v. girls really bothers PK a lot. He feels like the girls say they're "better" than the boys, and it pisses him off. And there's a fair amount of really obnoxious grade-school bullshit about how boys and girls aren't supposed to be friends with each other (e.g., the teacher has some dumbass rule that kids can either invite the whole class, or else the boys can invite all the boys and the girls can invite all the girls), and he's kinda defensive about the fact that the kids he's liked best at his last two schools have been both girls and boys (and the girls have turned out, as it happens, to be better friends--PK tends to admire the troublemaking little boys, who sooner or later learn that it's easy to frustrate him and then tease him until he declares they're no longer his friends).
So I think that from his pov, it kinda is, yeah. It certainly reinforces some of the more obnoxious little clubby instincts of kids that age, and I wish the teachers would cut it the fuck out.
107: Ogged, I think you could really improve B's kid's self-esteem and well-being if you followed him around at school, shoved him every so often and called him a sissy, just in case the other kids weren't doing so to your satisfaction.
I'm glad the old-timey child-rearing traditions haven't died out, SJ.
the girls say they're "better" than the boys
The chickens coming home to roost, eh?
Agreed it's dumb to enforce sex segregation. I was wondering if you'd go with "bad b/c reifying socially constructed categories" or "ok b/c no normative judgment included in the sorting."
107: Other first graders aren't going to beat him for things like that, but it's a reasonable way of explaining to the teacher why he gets mad, since she is pretty impatient with his frustrations.
Kidding aside, boys vs. girls is really stupid, especially at such a young age. Why set up the antagonism? Later on, when they hate each other naturally, you should of course exploit and exacerbate the enmity.
"If he can dodge a wrench, he can dodge a ball."
"He's old enough to lose."
The funny thing about that was that I was completely serious. I could have sworn that I've read that you should let kids win until they're about five or so, but beyond that, they understand what's going on, and you're hurting their self-esteem if you don't compete. I guess I could just try to fake trying better, but fuck that. Victory, baby.
boys vs. girls is really stupid, especially at such a young age
Yeah, at that age, you should be doing it blacks vs. whites.
111: Neither. I'm going to go with "bad, because it teaches kids that gender is a primary sorting mechanism," which is stupid.
Re. chickens roosting, girls and boys have always had those kind of bullshit games. It's of a piece with the "stupid husband/competent wife" sitcom scenario, the "boys will be boys" indulgent crap, and a lot of other nonsense. Admittedly the "girl power" phenomenon pretends to be semi-feminist, but that doesn't make it so.
It is interesting, though, that in his last school it was the girls who hassled him about his long hair; he never complained about the boys saying anything. I do suspect, though, that the way the two boys he played with last year started picking on him a bit at the end might have had something to do with his failure to fully express boyish exclusiveness.
On the being beaten up front, however, he's actually pretty rambunctious and confident; I'll be surprised if he ends up being bullied. Mostly he seems to be admired by the slightly older boys for being cool, what with the hair and the Chuck Taylors and the scooter and so on.
Yeah, at that age, you should be doing it blacks vs. whites.
We did it "blackies" vs. "normals," but whatever.
"boys will be boys" indulgent crap
Dudette, "boys will be boys" is one of the last remaining bits of sanity in our overscheduled, overprogrammed modern child-rearing regime; it's just that it also needs to be extended to girls, not curtailed for boys.
116 is kinda true. PK's finally gotten to the point (thank god) where he gets slightly more angry if you obviously throw a game than he does if you beat him. Though he's quite willing to institute a handicap from the outset, as long as it seems like a fair one, which seems a reasonable compromise most of the time.
120: Granted, absolutely. Kids will be kids. This is one of the reasons I'm sekritly teaching him which code phrases to use to talk back to his teacher, who is awfully uptight about normal little kid naughtiness, imho.
We did it "blackies" vs. "normals," but whatever
Which team were your people on, ogged?
he gets slightly more angry if you obviously throw a game than he does if you beat him.
Natural part of growing up. As the kids get bigger and stronger, you just have to beat them even harder to have the same effect.
Which team were your people on, ogged?
Whichever one was winning, apo. We are a clever and insincere people.
"We did it "blackies" vs. "normals," but whatever"
how do you play smear the queer with teams?