Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Jolisa,
I mean, I do get what Dylan’s saying
So do I. And I very much get what everyone else is saying. If we keep on assuming each other's good faith, I think we'll survive.
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Lilith __,
Some men cross the street so it’s clear they’re not “following”. That can help.
I think I’ve shared the story before of walking home late at night on Ponsonby Road and deliberately putting some distance between me and her so she wouldn’t have to worry that I might be a threat.
But no matter how briskly I walked, I didn’t seem to be able to stretch the gap. Eventually she called out and asked me to slow down, because even though I was a stranger, she felt more comfortable walking with someone who seemed okay. We laughed, once we’d recovered from this unexpected bout of suburban speedwalking.
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Hard News: Thursday Music: Doing the Business, in reply to Ken Double,
Abbaesque? Goddammit I’ll never be able to enjoy “Sprawl II” again.
Strictly speaking, late-period Abba. (Apparently they even referred to it as “the Abba song” when they were recording it.)
Also: you got a problem with Abba, buddy?
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Hard News: Thursday Music: Doing the Business, in reply to Simon Grigg,
See you tonight at the library. It's where all the cool kids hang out.
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This is really interesting: Americablog founder John Aravosis reports on his day-one experience with the Obamacare exchange in Washington DC.
What Americans pay for prescription medicines is insane.
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Likewise, Douglas controlled the inner Cabinet and so had a majority in Cabinet, which had a majority in the Parliamentary Party which had a majority in the House. You don’t need FPP for this (although it helps), you just need party discipline and a certain degree of idiocy.
Douglas also controlled the party funding, independently of the strategy committee, which would have to go cap-in-hand to him in 1987. He reserved a proportion of total donations for his own projects -- chiefly helping out candidates and MPs regarded as "one of us".
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Wow. I'm not sure I can recall a New York Times editorial quite this angry:
Earlier in his presidency, Mr. Obama made the catastrophic mistake — in the face of just this sort of extortion — to believe in Mr. Boehner’s willingness to be reasonable. This time, however, the cynical games of the Republicans are not going to work.
The Republicans’ reckless obsession with destroying health reform and with wounding the president has been on full display. And, as the public’s anger grows over this entirely unnecessary crisis, it should be aimed at a party and a speaker that are incapable of governing.
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Hard News: The Crazy Gang Nation, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Should the government somehow lose its majority, I’d be disappointed if Labour and the Greens weren’t straight in there with a motion of no confidence at the first opportunity. That is their job.
Absolutely. But that’s the normal operation of the system, not a constitutional crisis.
Quite.
The one we might want to look at is the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, which saw the upper house in a bicameral system refuse to pass appropriation bills.
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Hi Soph xxx I think the point she was making that for women with PTSD, their voices weren’t necessarily being heard above the more popular bloggers/tweeters/commenters. Not that the noise was an issue, just that sometimes, in the quiet, someone says something, and we might miss it.
It's a very important point. We all leap in and start firing things around and forget that that might not be so great for some of us.
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So Jimmy Kimmel had someone go out and vox-pop people on whether they preferred Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act. You can probably guess what happened. Sigh.