U.S. Politics NEXT!

[mormont]

54 minutes ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

It’s still vandalism though, and of a century-old piece of art at that.

'A century old' - or as we call it in Europe, 'nearly new'.

Anyway, on tipping: are troncs not a thing in the US? A tronc is where you pool tips and split them between all staff, not just servers, according to agreed criteria. They're sometimes run by the management but often by the staff themselves. They're really common here.

[Bonnot OG]

2 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Just trying to imagine how a statue hands could be 'surgically' removed.  Was the statue under anesthesia for this procedure?  Did a licensed medical professional perform the surgery?  

Seriously, the attempts at humanizing a statue creating to memorialize slavers is a reason why these statues need to be vandalized.  "Surgically" chop off all the confederate hands!

It's sickening isn't it? 

 

2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

All the people complaining about damaging "history" with the destruction of this statue. Wonder if they would have complained about the destruction of the Stalin monument during the 1953 revolution in Hungary.

The loudest ones in the room whining about the destruction of statues of white supremacists that fought to preserve the ownership of people of color like they were property, property they would torture, rape and murder, are most likely people that have some really racist views and are truly ignorant of history thanks to being spoon fed revisionist white washed garbage that the school system pushes. 

 

1 hour ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

It’s still vandalism though, and of a century-old piece of art at that. I would prefer that these statues and flags were removed by proper democratic decisions instead and kept in a museum, sort of the way Auschwitz is preserved to the world. 

I really don’t like the Lost Cause narrative and the idea that the civil war wasn’t about slavery - it was - but I’m not sure vandalism is the best way to sway opinion on this topic. 

Yea, destroying an object is so much worse than that what the object is memorializing, ya know,  murderous slave owning white supremacists that raped, tortured and murdered people of color they enslaved and worked to death. People they broke apart from their families, or kept as a family and brutalized in front of one another to break them down and terrorize them. 

Sorry, no respect should be given to "artwork" that memorializes horrible people.

Also, yea, discourse isn't working with ignorant racists that follow and  spew revisionist history. Fuck their feelings and screw trying to sway them. Either cities will tear them down thanks to their governments, like some have already, or regular citizens will do it for the cities when the officials sit on their asses trying to appease the racists. 

Either is fine with me. 

[TrueMetis]

1 hour ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

It’s still vandalism though, and of a century-old piece of art at that. I would prefer that these statues and flags were removed by proper democratic decisions instead and kept in a museum, sort of the way Auschwitz is preserved to the world. 

I really don’t like the Lost Cause narrative and the idea that the civil war wasn’t about slavery - it was - but I’m not sure vandalism is the best way to sway opinion on this topic. 

I mean sure, ideally these would be put in a museum in a display about attempted white washing of history just to hammer home how fucked the existence of these statues are. But if people are going to be a shitty as they have been in wanting to protect these statues and keep them were they are then I'm not going to get to choked up about people taking them down.

On another note bunch of people in that twitter thread were trying to compare this to ISIS destroying statues. Which is a hilariously bad comparison. Old statues are important to us because we use them to learn about the societies they are from, the people, places, events, etc. We use them in lieu of better sources. We have plenty of better sources for the civil war and the time that these statues were built. So we don't need the statues to remember history, and I operate under the assumption that future historians will have access to those sources as well. If we aren't operating under that assumption and are worried about making sure that future historians and archeologists have what they need to learn about us than fuck the statues, people should be complaining every time a building is knocked down. But we don't do that, because that would be stupid.

[MercenaryChef]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

'A century old' - or as we call it in Europe, 'nearly new'.

Anyway, on tipping: are troncs not a thing in the US? A tronc is where you pool tips and split them between all staff, not just servers, according to agreed criteria. They're sometimes run by the management but often by the staff themselves. They're really common here.

tip pooling happens in some places. but it is anything from common. at best a server will give a % of their tips to the bussers or bartenders.  a kitchen crew being part of the mix is quite rare.   

where I work my servers pull in easily $1000 a week and often more in gratuity. I personallly approve of the idea that a cut of it goes to other members of the team to bolster wages, create a greater feeling of ownership, and bridge the gap between the wage differences in the restaurant.  

but,  believe you me,  these servers (and most around the country) don't want to share.  they have had the opportunity to do it every day and don't because they don't have to. 

[Martell Spy]

The Rise and Fall of the Racist Right
White nationalists entered 2017 on a high. They ended it in disarray.

https://newrepublic.com/article/146352/rise-fall-racist-right

[LongRider]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

'A century old' - or as we call it in Europe, 'nearly new'.

Anyway, on tipping: are troncs not a thing in the US? A tronc is where you pool tips and split them between all staff, not just servers, according to agreed criteria. They're sometimes run by the management but often by the staff themselves. They're really common here.

When I worked at Harrah's Casino in Lake Tahoe back in the late '70 early '80 the Slot Department where I worked did that, the only department there that did.   The big issue tho, is if the employer is allowed to keep the tips, will they then increase the wages of the staff?  The answer is of course, no.  Wage theft will be made legal and the workers will suffer for it.   

[Fez]

5 hours ago, mormont said:

'A century old' - or as we call it in Europe, 'nearly new'.

Anyway, on tipping: are troncs not a thing in the US? A tronc is where you pool tips and split them between all staff, not just servers, according to agreed criteria. They're sometimes run by the management but often by the staff themselves. They're really common here.

I assumed they were common. I was a bartender for three years during college, and the agreed system that was that all tips for each shift were shared equally among everyone who worked during that shift. Management was not involved in any way, and it was the responsibility of existing servers to tell new hires what the system was. No new hires were ever surprised by this, and I think it helped keep us more harmonious/friendly with each by reducing competition for getting more desirable slots (e.g. tips were always better at the bar than the tables).

Of course, since each shift was divided separately, it did mean there was competition for the best shifts; Friday and Saturday night. But my point is, because of the non-reaction everybody had to this, I assumed it was common. This was my only foray in the service industry though, so my sample size is small.

[Serious Callers Only]

Wish someone had the guts to vandalize some statues in my country (portugal). Expecially, marquis of pombal statue, that's basically a abomination on the center of the city of a mass murderer and corrupt prick, and probably a rapist. Just because the guy killed some jesuits and murdered some nobles in public to cement the king's reign of terror in-between ordering the public exhibition of 'condemned' townspeople's heads because they disagreed with his dumb get rich scheme*. Like this was the middle ages instead of Voltaire's time. There is no reason to give him a huge statue in the middle of the city you turn of the century absolutist pricks.

This prick managed to execute (barbarically and publicly) the whole family of the marquise he was previously fucking, probably because he had a small dick or something.

*there are also two separate burnings of 'poor' (ie: miserable) neighborhoods alleged to his creature, Pina Manique, but these have no proof in 'respectable' history because of lack of multiple sources. I can only say that if i was a powerful and corrupt secret police guy and minister, i'd make sure my massacres had no sources.

[Tywin et al.]

This ad is a week old, but I just saw it this morning. It doesn’t feel like a Dear Leader ad at all….:

 

Idk what’s worse, Trump’s authoritarian tendencies or Congressional Republicans willingness to feed into them.

[lokisnow]

Re: the price of tea in China. Sure labor isn’t everything In USAs our of control costs, but it is the most elastic one that the power holders in charge of the hospital cartels will actually try to decrease. you have a ton of fixed capital costs and financing costs that aren’t going away, and you’re still going to have each hospital all buying a billion dollars in reusable equipment and and a billion dollars in disposables every year and that’s not going to decrease. 

The overlords are still going to charge $10,000 per day for a maternity recovery room because they love their 3.65 millionn in rent per room. But they will happily slash salaries.

that is to say, without seizing the means of production from the owners, hospitals are going to remain expensive rent extraction schemes

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

It’s still vandalism though, and of a century-old piece of art at that. I would prefer that these statues and flags were removed by proper democratic decisions instead and kept in a museum, sort of the way Auschwitz is preserved to the world. 

I really don’t like the Lost Cause narrative and the idea that the civil war wasn’t about slavery - it was - but I’m not sure vandalism is the best way to sway opinion on this topic. 

Well, maybe a better way would be to move it to another location, let the white supremacists protests the relocation, and murder a counter-protester with a vehicle while that's going on.  It seemed to work great in Charlottesville.  What were these renegade hand surgeons thinking!?!?!

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Triskele said:

The best is when someone comes by to ask you how everything is 30 seconds after your food was dropped off.

To be fair, this is actually how they're trained. Or at least it was when I was working as a server and then bartender.

The good ones learn how to read a table (do they want more interaction - to be "entertained" - or do they want to be left alone) while the average ones follow the training which was usually about making oneself as omnipresent as possible.

[Dr. Pepper]

16 minutes ago, Triskele said:

The best is when someone comes by to ask you how everything is 30 seconds after your food was dropped off.

Yes!  

We really could have a full thread of complaining about 'customer service'.  Walked into a store today for a new bra, five people asked if they could help me and when I said no they went through a summary of their sales.  Never had a chance to actually look at bras before I gave up and decided to order online.

[Fragile Bird]

Is it too early yet to look forward to 2018?

I am going to predict this is a phrase you will hear a lot of next year: "reversion to the mean".

I mean with regard to the stock market, but it will probably be used more widely after a while.

[denstorebog]

12 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Is it too early yet to look forward to 2018?

Not after checking this nifty slideshow of ActBlue's 2017 results. $474 million from small donors, and a doubling of donors, candidates etc. from 2015. Pretty encouraging, and something to remember whenever you read about how badly the DNC is being outraised.

Quote

I am going to predict this is a phrase you will hear a lot of next year: "reversion to the mean".

Gonna have to counter-predict that "restoration of sanity" will yield more hits on Google.

[Tywin et al.]

If only there was a socially acceptable way to get the waiter’s attention……

Also, please don’t ask me how my burger is as I take a giant bite into it.

[Fragile Bird]

I just watched this Republican congressman guy named Rooney calling for a "purge" of the FBI.

I want to add to my list of words we will see next year the words "fascists" and "Nazis".

Yes, we can repeat words from last year!

 

[OldGimletEye]

It’s been over 30 years since the Reagan revolution, when we were all promised such awesome pro growth policies that we’d all see prosperity like we’ve never seen before.

So where is it at, Republican Party? Where is it conservatives?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/business/economy/tax-cuts-incomes.html

Quote

That’s because Reagan’s cuts didn’t quite work as advertised.

Gross domestic product grew quickly during his two terms, averaging about 3.5 percent a year, pretty decent compared with the current measly pace. For one in two Americans, though — those in the bottom half of the income pile — income actually shrank on Reagan’s watch. In 1980, the year he was elected, they earned $16,371 a year on average, in today’s dollars, according to the World Wealth and Income Database. By 1988, Reagan’s last year in office, they had to make do with $16,268.

 

[Martell Spy]

Trump’s Legal Team is Reportedly Planning to Depict Michael Flynn as a Liar

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/12/trump-legal-strategy-michael-flynn-credibility.html

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

It’s been over 30 years since the Reagan revolution, when we were all promised such awesome pro growth policies that we’d all see prosperity like we’ve never seen before.

So where is it at, Republican Party? Where is it conservatives?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/business/economy/tax-cuts-incomes.html

 

Funny. My first or second post in these threads was arguing that high growth can be meaningless if it isn't distributed throughout the population. This would seem to be proof positive. 

7 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Trump’s Legal Team is Reportedly Planning to Depict Michael Flynn as a Liar

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/12/trump-legal-strategy-michael-flynn-credibility.html

You freaking ! I just came here to post this. 

Nothing surprising about this development. I expected as much in the coming days. Trump's behavior, as well as that of his fellow Republicans', indicates that there is legitimate fear that Mueller might find something. But the question remains, will the latter do anything if Mueller produces credible evidence that Trump's campaign colluded on some level with Russia?