Withdrawing room 5

#1

Silentbob

October 28, 2016 at 6:14 pm

(Really, it was Mano.)

#2

Samantha Vimes

October 28, 2016 at 7:08 pm

It looked like a pretty strong current. I’d be glad to have an elephant looking after me.

#3

Ophelia Benson

October 29, 2016 at 9:01 am

Well it was Mano who alerted Silentbob but it was Silentbob who alerted us. Credit where it’s due.

#4

Ophelia Benson

October 29, 2016 at 9:04 am

It’s actually not a bit clear that the phant jumped in to save her human as opposed to jumping in to join her human playing in the water. She jumped in and swam to where he was, but that’s all we can tell. For all we know they spend hours every day swimming in that river. Elephants love being in water.

#5

Samantha Vimes

October 29, 2016 at 3:27 pm

I’m just taking the caption at face value. Elephants are most closely related to manatees, I know. Some of them have been spotted pretty far from shore swimming in the Indian Ocean. So, yeah, great swimmers.

#6

Ophelia Benson

October 29, 2016 at 4:47 pm

I know, and I’m just saying the caption is oddly confident in its interpretation…especially because I echoed it myself in the post and felt correcty later.

#7

John

October 30, 2016 at 6:02 am

Elephants are most closely related to manatees

Manatees still have ‘toe nails’ on their flippers that are very reminiscent of the toe nails on an elephant’s front feet.

The similarities in appearance are quite astounding.

#8

Rob

October 30, 2016 at 5:45 pm

Lacking anywhere else appropriate to say this, I want to record my deep regret at the death of Sheri S Tepper, one of my favourite and most admired authors, and my gratitude at the pleasure and opportunity to think that her work brought me.

#9

Sackbut

November 3, 2016 at 7:19 am

I see the National Network of Abortion Funds has a new mission statement:

THE NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS BUILDS POWER WITH MEMBERS TO REMOVE FINANCIAL AND LOGISTICAL BARRIERS TO ABORTION ACCESS BY CENTERING PEOPLE WHO HAVE ABORTIONS AND ORGANIZING AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF RACIAL, ECONOMIC, AND REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE.

I’m not sure I can parse that.

#10

Silentbob

November 8, 2016 at 10:51 pm

Look, I apologize for every snarky comment I ever made, okay? I promise never to be cheeky again… Please, please, PLEASE tell me you have not elected Trump — PLEASE!!! I’m watching the news and you’re scaring the crap out of me!!!

#11

Silentbob

November 8, 2016 at 10:52 pm

HOLY FUCK — THEY JUST SAID TRUMP HAS WON!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!!!! AAAARRRRGHH!!!

#12

Silentbob

November 8, 2016 at 10:56 pm

SAY IT ISN’T SO AMERICANS — SAY IT IT ISN’T SO!!!!

Okay, I’ll go and take a tranquilizer now.

#13

Silentbob

November 8, 2016 at 10:56 pm

But seriously…

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

#14

Silentbob

November 8, 2016 at 11:00 pm

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

#15

Artymorty

November 9, 2016 at 9:47 am

Oh great, January 20th is gonna be Kristallnacht 2: Ethnic Cleansing Boogaloo.

Trump aides are organizing what one Republican close to the campaign calls the First Day Project. “Trump spends several hours signing papers—and erases the Obama Presidency,” he said. Stephen Moore, an official campaign adviser who is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained, “We want to identify maybe twenty-five executive orders that Trump could sign literally the first day in office.”

[…] Trump’s advisers are weighing several options for the First Day Project: He can renounce the Paris Agreement on greenhouse-gas emissions, much as George W. Bush, in 2002, “unsigned” American support for the International Criminal Court. He can re-start exploration of the Keystone pipeline, suspend the Syrian refugee program, and direct the Commerce Department to bring trade cases against China. Or, to loosen restrictions on gun purchases, he can relax background checks.

But those are secondary issues; whatever else Trump would do on January 20th, he would begin with a step (“my first hour in office”) to fulfill his central promise of radical change in American immigration. “Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation,” he told a crowd in Phoenix in August.

(Evan Osnos at The New Yorker)

#16

Artymorty

November 9, 2016 at 10:24 am

Paul Ryan has a “bazooka in his pocket” and it’s aimed squarely at the 99%:

For all the talk of “feuding” or even “civil war” between Trump and congressional Republican leaders, they are actually on the same page on a lot of very radical ideas. These include, of course, the linchpin of Republican domestic policy: a big upper-end tax cut rationalized by the imaginary economic boom it will be advertised to create. Beyond that, however, there is a big increase in defense spending that both Trump and congressional Republicans have promised, and then the decimation of the low-income safety net. Every analysis of Paul Ryan’s various budget proposals — quite likely the building block of what Republicans will try to enact — indicates savage consequences for poor people. Think the expanded Medicaid coverage created by Obamacare will survive? Hah! The bigger question is whether Medicaid itself survives, since both Trump’s platform and the Ryan budget would dump the program on the tender mercies of the states through a block grant sure to bleed funding regularly.

[…]

But speed and quick marginalization of those hated opponents will be essential. That is why, as Paul Ryan told us all in early October, he has long planned to use the budget reconciliation process — where there is no filibuster available in the Senate — to enact his entire budget in one bill. Again, a bill that cannot be filibustered. He referred to it, appropriately, as a bazooka in his pocket. And while there are some things you cannot do in a reconciliation bill, there aren’t many of them: Congressional Republicans did a trial run last year (nobody paid much attention, because they knew Barack Obama would veto it), and it aimed at crippling Obamacare, defunding Planned Parenthood, and disabling regulators, in addition to the nasty surprises for poor people mentioned above.

This all sounds like the precursor to a violent revolution.

(Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine.)

#17

Ophelia Benson

November 13, 2016 at 11:54 am

New Zealand friends – please check in. Rob already has so he’s excused.

#18

Silentbob

November 19, 2016 at 10:20 pm

Did you see the video of the straight-talking senator in Ireland? (3m36s)

I don’t use the term fascist lightly. What else would you call someone who threatens to imprison his political opponents[?] What else would you call somebody who threatens to not allow people of a certain [religious] faith into their country[?] What would you say, or what would you call somebody who was threatening to [deport] 10 million people[?]

[… ] how we are supposed to deal with this monster that has just been elected president of America?

(source)

I don’t know anything about him except that I share his prognosis.

#19

Silentbob

November 25, 2016 at 8:57 pm

Have I done something wrong?

I’m just asking because the comment you deleted seems entirely innocuous to me. If it was one where I was railling against Reilly-Cooper or something like that, I’d understand, because political disagreements. But the exchange went like this:

Seeing Mano Singham and Marcus Ranum (and others) so blithely dismiss this kind of thing with “There’s no evidence!” and “Even if it is true, it pales in comparison to what the US has done to other countries’ elections” was one of the more infuriating bits of obfuscation I witnessed in the past few months. The implications for this shit are dire, and we have to live in a world that that kind of smugness helped to wreak.

I don’t know why you’ve got this weird bee in your bonnet about Mano. He voted for Clinton. He declared to his audience he was voting for Clinton. His alleged smugness had fuck all to do with the result.

It’s a complete mystery to me where I crossed the line. Don’t get me wrong, you should moderate as you see fit and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it’s a real puzzle how this response was offensive in any way that the original comment wasn’t.

:-/

#20

Ophelia Benson

November 26, 2016 at 8:06 am

I replied to it, irritably, at the time, and then felt exasperated by the derail and unpleasantness so deleted both. I did think you meant to be irritating, so if you didn’t…we’ll start over.

Why I thought you meant to: it’s very odd to call one remark “this weird bee in your bonnet.” The bee in the bonnet implies obsession, and one comment can’t very well be obsession. It looked as if you were importing a quarrel from somewhere else to here, and I don’t want that.

#21

Silentbob

November 26, 2016 at 9:24 pm

Yes it’s true, Seth also comments at Mano’s (where they’ve made the same criticism) so I was importing a quarrel a from elsewhere (or assisting them in importing a quarrel from elsewhere). I’m sorry.

Delete this exchange if you want, I can’t imagine it’s of any interest to anyone else. :-)

#22

Ophelia Benson

November 27, 2016 at 8:35 am

Oh. But then…why was it such a mystery to you? You know I dislike your habit of sniping and jabbing – I know you know that because you’ve made jokes about it. So why were you so baffled?

#23

Silentbob

January 6, 2017 at 6:06 pm

Oh, Donald! I thought you loved those “second amendment people”.

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