@snood,
Edgar and I are friends. But I would be interesting in hearing his answer to that question.
@revelette1,
I actually don't have anyone identified as my favorite candidate. I think a bunch of them will do well in that office. That said, given the choice between a male and a female, my serious preference is for a female. It is long past time, god dammit. And getting women to the polls will be critical. But I am far and away more concerned with, first, removing this sociopath from the WH and, second, with crushing the GOP/modern conservative world. The consequences of this election are immeasurable. If Dems do not win, Roe v Wade will be overturned. Voting rights will be further diminished. Big money will have next to no restrictions on influencing elections. Media ownership rules will be further decimated. Media entities will come under much more stringent and oppressive controls to diminish criticism of those in power. Action to address the causes of global warming will be broadly stimied unless and until the fossil fuel giants figure out how to make money some other way as that is their singular motivation. It's a long ******* list.
@edgarblythe,
Quote:It’s like watching a bad rerun
I certainly agree but in a different sense than you have it. If Sanders wins then he has my support. If someone else wins, they'll have my support. Internecine warfare at this point in time is folly of the most profound sort.
Hightor pointed out an extremely worthwhile and important piece at the New York Review of Books. You'll have to invest a dollar or ten dollars (for access to 10 issues plus archives which is a better ******* deal than anything else you'll run into today). It is a review by Sean Willenz of Ken Starr's recent book. I'll paste just one small part as it is more than relevant to this particular thread.
Quote:But as Starr’s memoir makes clear, his office had a singular disgust for the first lady, the focus of the most powerful and lasting sexual politics of his entire inquest. The right-wing-provocateur-turned-Clinton-supporter David Brock tells of watching the 1997 State of the Union speech on television at Laura Ingraham’s house with a group of friends including Brett Kavanaugh. At one point, the camera panned to the first lady and, according to Brock, Kavanaugh exclaimed, “Bitch!” This response summed up what Hillary Clinton had become to the hard right, and would remain.
...At the time, some of the writers and journalists whom I knew around Washington speculated that, by including explicit details in his report, Starr really just wanted to humiliate Bill Clinton, with Lewinsky suffering collateral damage. After reading Contempt, though, it seems much more likely that the person Starr wanted to humiliate wasn’t the president so much as it was the president’s unyielding feminist attorney wife.
NYRB
A common and destructive, self-defeating tendency in the pro-Bernie camp has been failure to grasp how the right wing campaign to smear the Clintons has influenced mainstream media and served (and services) the goals of the very worst people in American politics. We've got to get smarter about this!
@revelette1,
I’m putting my money (literally) with Klobuchar.
@edgarblythe,
Who is the anointed one this cycle Edgar? Honestly curious.
@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Edgar and I are friends. But I would be interesting in hearing his answer to that question.
I can appreciate that. Forgive my snark. I just have no tolerance for the pointless, endless sniping against supposedly unworthy Democrats. Do you really suppose that if he does admit he only sees Bernie as worthy of support that you can disabuse him of his belief?
@edgarblythe,
I’m not really sure what this is trying to say
@snood,
First of all, it's always been a pleasure speaking with you.
Second, to your final question, no, probably not. But I want to know what he's thinking and why.
By the way, this thought has just occurred to me... I was just smoking a bit of canadian weed and watching a musical scene from Jungle Book. I'm a bit of an animation nerd and I looooooove Walt Disney and his teams. This particular scene is animated to Louis Prima's bouncy and rythmic "I Wanna Be Like You" (clearly written for this film). The main character singing is an orangutan, a knuckle dragger (but whose long arms allow him to slap rhythms on the floor or whatever. It's a black Hollywood stereotype. And, important aspect, he longs to be like the more advanced creature.
The problem here though is that this piece of art is verging on perfect.
Link here
Thoughts?
How a wall can be built (or not)
Swiped this from a friend's page.
National Emergency? Here's an interesting take from Quora: Why are engineers not voicing their opinions on Trump's Border Wall proposal? We are only seeing politicians talking about it.
Kelly Schweighsr, Former Civil Engineer, now on disability
Updated Thu ·
You want an engineer’s opinion on “The Wall”? Okay then.
1 - the environmental study will take 3 to 5 years to complete, but only if the project is divided into manageable chunks of 1/2 mile to 2 miles in length. That give us about 1,000 different design sections. And if you think that this phase can be skipped, the lawsuits over that decision will take 10 to 20 years to resolve and the court would probably order the environmental study done anyway.
2 - once you have the environmental clearance, the actual design can begin. Don’t think you need to design something as basic as a wall? The first step is to perform soils testing to see what kind of foundation is needed; skip that and your wall has a good chance of falling down or falling over. While, technically, you could probably design a 1/2 mile section of wall in 3 or 4 working days, you also need to account for the approval process and review times. Chances are that the design stage will take a minimum of 18 months.
3 - acquiring the land/ right-of-way will take from 4 to 6 months, *provided* that the landowner is willing and you don't have to go to court. That gives you time to get an estimate, get the estimate reviewed and approved, contact the land-owner, make the offer, accept a counter-offer (if they make one) and get the documents signed and sealed. If the land-owner does NOT want to sell, expect a protracted court fight of 3 to 7 years (longer if the land-owner has lots of money). If you can't get the land, go back to step 1 and start over.
4 - add on another 4 to 6 months to advertise for bids, accept the bids, make certain that the bidding contractor has done all the proper paperwork and insurance (and isn’t just going to run off with the first payment or produce shoddy work) and generally get the project out the door.
5 - building the stupid thing probably takes the least amount of time, but you will still need to allot 2 months for the contractor to mobilize and order the raw materials, plus another 2 to 6 months for construction.
Now multiply that by 1,000 different sections of wall.
As a civil engineer for the State of Pennsylvania, I oversaw the design of about 100 bridges, so I'm fairly familiar with the system. Oh, and of those 100 bridge projects, exactly *1* of them came in on time. As a general rule, something will go wrong in the design process; if we knew what it was in advance we would budget time for it, but there is no way of knowing in advance what it will be. So this is actually what I would call an *optimistic* appraisal of the possible time-line and I would bet it takes at least twice as long as I have suggested.
Hope this helps.
Edit: Many folks are commenting on remote sections of the wall that do not have the infrastructure needed to get supplies and equipment to the construction site. You are correct, I did not address that in this answer.
Building the roads to get to the remote portions of “The Wall” would require a series of entirely separate projects to build those roads, which would need to go through the 5 steps above. That means each new access road would need an environmental clearance, design, right-of-way/ land acquisition, and so on.
But one additional step would also be needed before the road could be built - utility coordination. It is probable that where the access road tied into an existing roadway, there would be utilities that needed to be moved. If utilities needed to be brought to the construction site that would also require coordination with the various utility companies. (It is possible that the contractor could bring their own generators, truck in water and truck-out waste on a daily basis, though.)
Working with the utility companies would add another 6 months to 2 years to the project, depending on how many utilities were affected and whether or not electricity, water and sewer were extended to the actual building site.
As for housing workers, I imagine that most contractors would rent camping trailers or mobile homes to house the workers on-site in remote areas. Because most contactors already bring in a mobile home (or two, or more) to the site to use as a construction office, I don’t see that this would be a problem - unless the government builds 100 sections of wall simultaneously, in which case the trailers might be in short supply, resulting in higher costs.
Edit, the Second: fixed the typo in step 4.
Edit, the Third: (2/76/2019) A lot of comments suggest that the President can waive these standards, or that they won’t apply for this reason or that, or that “eminent domain” somehow speeds thing along. The answer is No.
No, the President can’t waive the requirements for an environmental document. This document is required by law, and those laws were written and approved by Congress and signed by previous Presidents. If the government won’t follow its own laws, why should anyone else? Declaring a national emergency doesn’t change those laws, nor does anything else.
No, eminent domain doesn’t speed up the process of acquiring the land. Eminent domain allows the government to take land FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC. The land-owner can dispute the value the government places on the land taken; they can dispute the amount of land being taken; they can dispute the need for their land to be taken to build the project; they can dispute the need for the project (either in its entirety or just that section); or they can demand mitigation measure be taken. Depending on their claim, the Court might stop just that section from advancing or it might stop the entire program from advancing. And, in some cases, the Court will order the government to pay the land-owners costs for the suit. I accounted for the requirements of eminent domain in Stage 3, above.
But thanks for the comments anyway.
Edit, the Fourth: About Eminent Domain: the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that the goverment must give just compensation for anything taken by the government. So, no, Eminent Domain does not mean that the government can take the land for “free”, or can take the land by putting some money into a bank account while the land-owner and the government haggle over the value. That would compromise the land-owner’s right to sue to stop the project or to sue to force the government to build somewhere else.
@blatham,
The pleasure has always been mutual.
Stereotyping and cultural appropriation are real things, but not always easy to gauge one’s reaction to. And part of the reason that it’s hard to know how to react is that sometimes the product in question is a song with a real catchy beat, or a piece of clothing that hangs just right. I’m sure that there is a line between right ways and wrong ways to “borrow” from others’ ethnic essence; I trust my own instincts about where the line is for me, but I don’t necessarily feel imbued with the right to tell anyone else that they are selling out, or patronizing selling out.
Hope that responds to you. I’d probably have a more creative answer were I able to absorb some of your Canadian herb.
@edgarblythe,
Now that you know all this, are you still pissed that there was 55 miles of fence out into a bill to keep the government open? Even though there is a presidential election in 20 months?
🦋🔥 Enelrac #RunBernieRun 🔥🦋
@Carlene_Meyers
·
3m
I like how it’s worded: “Democrat Harris” or “Independent Sanders,” when the Vermont Dem Party proclaimed Sanders is considered a member of the Democratic Party, has all the rights & privileges that comes w/being a member of the Democratic Party, at thestate & federal level.🥴👇
I am not about to read all the posts here, since I decided to get my personal affairs going, instead of arguing social media all day long. I had to make a choice and chose creative writing. I glanced through a few posts and there is one point I want to make. It bothers me that people would think I simply hate somebody so am looking for reasons to smear the person. It's a petty small person that does that. Likewise I don't hold people in high esteem if they want to go after me in a personal way instead of sticking to the issues. Harris is part of the old guard and practices the politics that got us Trump. The DNC wants for her to take Clinton's "turn" and are already making moves to anoint her. If they can't have a clean vote and let the people make an un-manipulated choice I and a substantial number of liberals will not play along from convention on. Conversely, if the DNC has a change of heart and lets the vote get decided without their interference, I will abide by the voters' decision. I view that likelihood as low to zero.
@coldjoint,
coldjoint wrote:
All this fuss over something that will save American lives. Pitiful.
There are better ways to save American lives.
