Open Forum
If it's Sunday night . . .
It’s that time again.
One possible avenue of discussion: Is the current Sunday/Wednesday night frequency sufficient?
Remember, you can always find these via the Open Forum link on the top navigation menu.
FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Last Tuesday, April 2, 2019, was Illinois Consolidated Election Day.
In Jackson County where I live (pop. 58,284 2017) there are 33,545 registered voters.
On various ballots were contests for 29 elected officials from eleven cities and villages of which 15 were uncontested.
Ballots included contests for board members of 13 different Grade School, High School and Community College Districts. Including these instructions:
There were three Park District Commissioner contests. One which listed “No Candidate”.
Two Educational Service Region Trustee contests. One Library Board Trustee contest.
A Public Question concerning Home Rule for a Village and a non binding Advisory Question:
“Should the City of Carbondale and the Carbondale Park District explore merging their operations?
Of the 33,545 above mentioned registered voters in the county only 4582 (13.66%) ballots were cast in all these elections.
Question: Do these duly elected officials have a responsibility to serve the 86% of the registered voters in the county who did not bother to participate in these elections?
A 2020 candidate should announce a policy of $10 insulin.
Frequency of Open Forum: Maybe every other day. Or even every day. It would relieve James and Steven of some of the burden of content provision.
@CSK: I like twice a week but maybe morning would work better than night.
@Teve: Morning would be great.
I went to see “Captain Marvel” today. Good movie, just not as good as “Wonder Woman.”
Also, one of those movies where I’d have liked a deeper look at the background than the story. Like how did the Kree fool Danvers for so long, and whom else did/do they fool?
@Teve: That’s low ambition. We have insulin for free in the public healthcare system in Brazil. At least for now.
@Andre Kenji de Sousa:
insulin should be free, but it would be a bad idea for a candidate to come out and just say insulin should be free. The inevitable problem is you get people saying why isn’t my essential ________ medication free too? So you immediately turn needy people against other needy people. Insulin was developed decades ago, there’s no reason other than greed that companies charge high prices anymore, and it can be manufactured for something like $6 a vial. But lately drug companies have been colluding with each other to keep generics expensive. so the government could easily license companies to supply at 10 bucks a vial without taxpayer subsidies and with the contracting companies making some money too.
$10 insulin isn’t my long-range goal. Things like that should be free, and one day they will be free. But it would be a good policy for a Democrat politician to have right now. Some things are expensive because there’s no way to do them cheaply, insulin is expensive purely because of greed and collusion. And a whole lot of trump supporters who would vote themselves into a cemetery if you called it free government healthcare, wouldn’t see any problem with this scenario. And it wouldn’t be seen as unfair, and it wouldn’t cost any taxpayer dollars, and it would help millions of people, so it would be almost impossible to criticize.
@Andre Kenji de Sousa: we should go one better than merely free and administer it via blow darts in all public spaces!
Either than of what @Teve said. Although, if it costs $6 to produce, I might say $20 to make sure there is plenty of room for profit, to ensure supply. Or create a public generic drug company, non-profit.
@CSK:
I’ve been spending more time than usual on OTB, and greatly appreciate the work that Dr. Joyner, Dr. Taylor, Mr. Mataconis and other Main Page writers do to keep the site up and running.
CSK, your post made me realize how much I enjoy this site, and how I’ve never paid for it. I just rectified that. It was only $100, but I am signing up to be a monthly subscriber. Anyone who can afford it should think about donating, if you haven’t already, given how much time we all spend here.
I am somehow not surprised to discover that Pete Buttigieg appeared on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me — after decades of listening to NPR, I have been being conditioned to like Buttigieg for almost as long as he has been alive. The brain washing has been successful.
(There’s a pretty awesome video about one of the questions, but I don’t want to spoil it… When you think “Was this caught on video?”, it was)
So let’s talk photo editing. It is not unique to this site or to Trump, but I find it interesting how the visual media attaches photos to certain stories, in order to establish some impression. The examples here at OTB would be the dozen or so photos of Trump that run at the top of stories about him. As a celebrity/politician, there are countless pictures of him from all angles in all moods: angry Trump, clueless Trump, cruel Trump, etc. The Trump picture you use is the basic Trump characteristic the story pertains to, but it in no way is a picture of Trump taking the action you are highlighting. I am not sure its unfair and its certainly not unethical and I don’t have a good alternative, but it sort of front loads the story. It’s a common media practice. I try to remind myself when I see those pictures (of anybody at the top of any story in any medium) that they aren’t usually informational – rather they are an editorial statement about the subject.
@Joe:
Yes.
In the case of Trump in particular, we have a lot of images and I do try to pick one that conveys the mood of the post.
Lately, I’ve been more cautious about this issue. In particular, in the case of women politicians, I’ve tried especially hard to find neutral or even flattering images. In some cases, such as Bernie Sanders, that’s actually rather challenging since he’s typically disheveled and/or comes across as angry.
Dennison recently claimed the country is full.
This is a very worrisome development. I wonder how El Cheeto will address it. He probably won’t make abortion mandatory, but clearly he can’t let american keep procreating, the country’s full! Contraception needs to be made mandatory, and subsidized when necessary. maybe sterilization should get a hard look. And of course legal immigration should end once and for all, not to mention tourists should all be expelled an none should be allowed back in. the country’s full!
@Teve:
I know that. I was being provocative. 😉
A couple of years ago I drove from Florida to Seattle and back a different way, and in total covered about 20 States. 6,000-mile round trip. All told it was about maybe 1,000 miles of civilization and 5,000 miles of desolation.
Although I didn’t watch it last night (except for the pre-show matches that were streamed on line for free), I was disappointed that Kurt Angle, in his 4th or 5th “final match ever” at various promotions, had to put over Baron Corbin at Wrestlemania. Corbin is a decent ring worker, but the character he’s booked as is not particularly interesting. Also, I don’t see how this will advance Corbin’s role in the overall program.
I hope Angle finally starts enjoying his retirement so that WWE can move on and start promoting the several million dollars of young talent that they have and free up bloated salaries that they’ve been paying to old guys who perform 3 or 4 times a year. Also here’s to Triple H’s final match and to the retirement from the ring of ShaneO Mac–at least we can hope.
Congratulations also to Velveteen Dream and Matt Riddle, who tore the house down at NXT Take Over on Friday. Yes, I know that they probably rehearsed this match for weeks getting it right. That doesn’t matter; it was a great performance.
@Teve:..desolation…
Drove this road once in each direction between Salina UT and the junction with I-80 east of Reno.
It’s the kind of desoation I enjoy!
Per Jake Tapper, Trump is about to can the director of the Secret Service, Randolph Alles, whom Trump appointed in April 2017.
Only the best people.
@CSK:
Your country’s government, or what passes for one, is conducting a slow-motion purge.
Those sacked can count themselves lucky there’s no gulag to send them to. And the rest of you ought to be thankful for the limited powers of government.
@Mister Bluster: I spent a lot of time on interstate 90 going to Seattle, and a lot of time on interstate 80 coming back. Desolation. Some of those areas look like moonscapes.
You could hide everyone in Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in South Dakota and Americans wouldn’t even notice for years.
@Kathy: The Trumpkins are happy about this. Trump needs, they feel, a Secret Service who will protect him from the DOJ and the FBI, who are out to get him.
@CSK:
To paraphrase Sheldon Cooper: I would like to tell you not even Dennison could be that stupid; and if I find a way to do so without dissolving into laughter, I shall do so.
On other things, I’m taking this latest bout of daylight savings time particularly hard (began yesterday in Mexico).
@CSK:
In fairness, it is their job to be out to get people like Trump.
As much traveling as I have done over the years for work and play the are still 15 states I have not visited and endless miles of pavement I have not yet beat down.
Starting with pre Interstate summer vacation jaunts in the ’52 Studebaker from New York State to Illinois and back with mom and dad every other year visiting the grandparents to hitchhiking from California to St. Louis on Route 66 in January of 1971 (had the plane fare in my pocket, just wanted to see if I could do it. made it in three days) to racking up 320,000 miles on my 1992 F-150 and 400,000 on three other trucks working in 14 states I still have places I want to go.
I know I have been on Interstate 80 between Cleveland and Salt Lake City at one time or another and from Exit 46 at Fernley NV to San Francisco.
The 500 +/- miles between SLC and Fernley have eluded me. Usually because of the weather.
Some pilgrims want to travel that stretch to visit Promontory UT to see the where the Golden Spike joined two great RailRoads. Others want to visit the Bonneville Salt Flats and watch land speed records challenged.
Since I spent my 35 year career in the landline telephone industry splicing wires together the shrine I want to visit is the site on the Nevada-Utah State line at Wendover where the first transcontinental telephone line was completed.
Hope I get there before the price of gas goes up again!
@Mister Bluster: Nice road, indeed.
What’s up with all the pixel-art avatars all of a sudden?
@Kit: I’m just playing around with the available options. Ideally, everyone who comments regularly would sign up for a free Gravitar associated with the email address under which they comment and associate an icon of their choice with their posts. I’d been using a generic Gravatar logo. This method is weird-looking but has the advantage of at least associating a consistent image with anyone using the same email address.
Texas lawmakers consider death penalty for abortion.