This is his one strength. He can dog whistle as much as he wants because he always carefully chooses his words to add some sort of plausible deniability or innocent interpretation. So his base hears what he can’t fully say out loud yet and the media has to carefully tiptoe around interpreting it or lose credibility to his base
I actually looked into this one, was honestly surprised she’s registered as Independent, not Republican. Can’t really find more info on her at the moment aside from her resignation so can’t say for sure if she worked with GOP at all or just was a terrible person for some other reason.
It’s amazing how the smallest routine deviations can change things.
I once put my 1 year old in the car seat before loading the rest of the stuff into the car. My kid has always hated being constrained, so I didn’t bother buckling the seat belt, as I figured there’d be more joy in being able to reach and play with toys while I loaded the car.
All went well, we got underway, and upon arriving at our destination I realized I never actually did up the safety restraints.
Holy shit
I thought
If I’d gotten in an accident in the last 30m of driving, my kid probably would have died
What a shock and brutal realization to have.
Many people have complemented me on my parenting, complemented me on my nurturing and caring attitude towards my kid and other children too. I’d like to think I’m a good father…but the momentary lapse I had could have ended a life and ruined so many more.
Yes, it can happen to anyone. I feel nothing but sympathy for the parents who have lost a child this way.
While not every parent who loses a child this way is a good person, people like Lyn Balfour have demonstrated that many of the parents responsible for these cases are good people who simply had a momentary lapse in attention that resulted in the worse mistake of their entire life.
I think that it is not for the public to judge them, and it’s not appropriate to publically shame parents who have been through a tragedy like this.
Those parents will be forever haunted by the waxy face of their dead child, will see other children playing in parks, and remember what their child looked like the last time they saw their remains, will remember how beautiful and vibrant their baby was - and know that it’s their fault that the child is forever gone.
There have been other suggestions in the thread how to avoid ending up in this situation that I think are good, like put your work bag or purse in the back seat too, or if you’re really concerned, take off your non-driving shoe and put it back there.
Kidsandcars.org does great work too, and clearly the message is getting thru to auto manufacturers too.
My boss has a new ford ranger, it reminds him to check the back seat if it detects weight. There are lots of ways to prevent this happening to you, figure out what makes the most sense for you and go with it.
Also, you’re going to be a great parent. I don’t know how I know this, I just do.
Also terrified of the same with my 9 month old, but you’re right, my Ioniq also gives a reminder to check the back when the driver door is opened if the rear doors had opened prior to the drive. I hope I won’t need it but it is nice to have.
Quick followup. If you open the rear doors before a drive, drive to an intermediate location, turn of the car, get out, get back in (without opening those rear doors) does it warn you when arriving at the destination?
I ask because there’s been criticism previously that if a parent stops to say, drop off dry cleaning, that the systems that are based on door openings don’t work.
It’s the lack of REM sleep that really fucks you up. Those first months and years are brutal. I suggest making a habit of something that pulls you out of auto pilot. It can be as simple as a phrase like ‘‘close the door, check the kid’’ or ‘‘turn off the engine check the back seat’’ if it’s a habit, it will reenforce what your doing even when you haven’t had a solid 8hrs in almost a year. Also, if you have a partner, it can be a good idea, when possible, to switch night duty on baby so you can recharge, but honestly, it’s impossible if you can ever hear the baby fuss your animal instincts shoot you right up.
All went well, we got underway, and upon arriving at our destination I realized I never actually did up the safety restraints.
This happened with my youngest once. I forget what lead up to it (this was 16-17 years ago), he might have climbed into his seat on his own or something that deviated me from my routine, but as we were driving he said something about his buckles, and his sister, sitting next to me started yelling at me because I forgot to buckle him.
i was a toddler in the 70’s. i was never put in a child seat. i distinctly remember crawling around in the floorboard and watching the streetlights go past from a lying position. i’m glad i have those memories instead of being put in restraints every time i was ferried around. we were even in a car wreck once and i got thrown around a little bit. got a few cuts on my hand and that was it.
but i don’t have kids so i don’t worry about any of that shit.
i’m not sure if there was a point to this other than to be amused at yall for freaking out over everything.
I once lit a cigarette, but it didnt stay lit. So i guess that means that everyone who lights a cigarette has to light it twice…
Except that it doesnt and my experience put me in a minority that day.
Thats why we dont use anecdotes as evidence of facts.
People are right to be concerned about safety when the evidence shows that not being concerned causes more deaths despite there being some lucky idiots out there.
Given that it wasn’t angry or controlling, it wasn’t actually a particularly uptight thing to say. No.
You presented your personal experience as evidence of fact and used that to act condescendingly towards people who care about the safety of their children.
Are you ok? How did you get to raising a child in a dystopia from you rolling around on the floor of a car and surviving a wreck without wearing a seatbelt?
Please take a step back from this and look at yourself. You have lost the thread.
nope. i’m actually looking at the big picture and this thread is a microcosm of the problem: leftists are too soft to stand up to fascism. the obsession with car seats epitomizes why you are all too fragile to be relied on to oppose violent right wingers.
it also underscores my lack of concern for your petty grievances. i take pleasure in pointing out my very anecdotal childhood story because i knew it would bring out the limp-wristed folks like yourself. congratulations on taking the wimpy boy bait.
believe it or not, it’s not a troll. i’m seriously worried about most of you. you’ve lived in a padded, comfortable society for so long, you’ve lost sight of the larger historical narrative: most social change happens through violence. lots of people historically never saw it coming and were woefully unprepared when it did. most people don’t seem to realize that the entire framework of our society is held together at gunpoint. the threat of violence is the thing that underlies any lawful society. it’s what guarantees your rights.
and most of you are helpless to do anything about it when the people that do understand how it works decide to flex those muscles.
furthermore, your dependence on safety and security actually pads the way for your corporate overlords to determine what your life will be. it’s not like they have to really worry about you fighting back. they know you’re a bunch of cowards and it empowers them to push you around like the peasants that you seem to be willing to make yourselves into.
being rational means knowing what is the appropriate tool for the given task is. most of you seem irrationally unable to see that your peaceful and calm methods have failed to prevent the steady deterioration of the quality of life for the last 5 decades.
i’m not afraid of anger. anger is a motivator. anger gets shit done.
Yeah we’ve all seen ‘V for Vendetta’, it’s really not that deep. You’re acting like the average person doesn’t understand this - but the implicit threat of violence is central to all human culture. It’s impossible to miss. You’re railing about how a strawman you’ve built for yourself can’t wake up from it’s complacent slumber, and it’s distracted you from the truth; everyone already knows what you’re preaching. You’re not special for this realization, it’s not a deep insight. People fight against it all the time, and we’re winning, slowly. But it’s called a culture war for a reason, and we know that we’re going to lose some battles while we wage it.
Most people aren’t helpless. Throughout history, populations have appeared unprepared for war because they did not want to fight that war. but time after time we see that a populace will retreat to violence as a solution when deprived of all other options. Your ‘strong survive, weak perish’ thing is so woefully oversimplified that it no longer resembles, even in abstract, the problems and supposed solutions that you then extrapolate from it.
for this the first time in human history, the average person has the tools in their pocket to organize on a massive scale. tired of conservative politics? show up en masse and dispose of the morons. tired of corporate overreach? bombs, terrified CEOs. we could make change happen in a heartbeat if we wanted to. the clock is ticking on climate change, but keep telling yourself you’re making ‘sLoW cHaNge’.
Not to cite my own horn here but I did address exactly what you’re bringing up.
Throughout history, populations have appeared unprepared for war because they did not want to fight that war. But time after time we see that a populace will retreat to violence as a solution when deprived of all other options.
I should probably mention that I don’t really disagree with your point, I just think that in holding your understanding of this issue as some unique insight instead of acknowledging that this has ever been the tragic irony of a peaceful society makes you come across as something of an edgy cretin instead of a fairly insightful commenter talking on an important subject they’re passionate about. “All men are created equal”, while both trite and rather out of touch with our modern sensibilities, is still important as a concept. You and I aren’t special. I might have some largely unique insights about database structures you don’t share, and you no doubt have some aspects I have never fathomed, but we are both the homogenized result of countless little insights and facets that average out to a blend which is both totally unique and yet uniformly conforming. If you start thinking you’re special beyond the variation normal to that blend, then you’re going to quickly lose your understanding of what an actual ‘average person’ really is like.
I hate to say it, but the way one presents their message is perhaps more important even than the actual content they’re trying to present. Depressing, really, but… there it is.
well, unfortunately, cynicism has pretty much consumed me, so i kinda stopped caring about getting my message across a long time ago. i tried reasoning with conservatives until i realized how futile that was. then i tried reasoning with liberals about useless debate was until i realized how futile that was. i think i’m just here to yell at clouds now.
This whole “Trump is weird ‘attack’” is so milquetoast. Austin is weird. The Guardians of the Galaxy are weird. Weird Al Yankovic is weird. Donald Trump isn’t weird. He’s a dangerous criminal being manipulated by the Russians. This is not the time to be silly.
I get it. It’s one of the most innocuous “attacks” you could make against someone, but it also seems like stuff that other people would find harmless is what really gets under his skin. Like, call him a fascist, a criminal, manipulated by the Russians (all of which are true) and he just makes that stupid, constipated grin and his base eats it up.
Talk about how weirdly tiny his hands are, though, and he’ll make sure to run into you personally on the street, once a week, for the rest of his sad life, to show you that, actually, his hands are perfectly normal. Larger than average, even. His ego can’t handle being considered strange or abnormal in any way.
So the idea is the “does she look tired to you” (credit to Doctor Who) attack. Something quiet, innocuous, maybe even whispered to someone else, that is almost guaranteed to make him rip out his hair plugs. Can’t effectively parrot Russian propaganda if you’re having a meltdown about people calling you weird. Maybe it’ll be the thing that finally short-circuits his hateful black heart.
I’m sorry that guy was at a shooting but a visor with Trump 20204 might be the most loser-coded thing I’ve ever seen. If you hold that visor up to your ear like a seashell, you can hear someone complaining about a family court judge ruling against him after he represented himself.
Apparently the only way the candidates will agree to do it is if the format is so stilted that there's no chance of anyone learning anything or seeing the candidates get challenged on anything. It's basically just a taking-in-turns version of a campaign commercial.
What, indeed, is the point. Like a lot of American politics, the whole "debate" survives as a pointless vestige of a thing (now long forgotten) that was useful and productive in its original form, but now is mutated to a useless and unrecognizable monstrosity, which you have to pretend is super serious and important if you want to be able to be on TV.
(But seriously, what a terrible television program, one old man spouting nonsense and the other looking confused and lost. There was absolutely zero reason for anyone to watch it.)
This is simply huge. I don’t know if the average person knows how much this is going to affect Americans. It will have a massive positive benefit. I mean so much of my life was a struggle because of medical debt on my credit report, that should never have been there in the first place by the way. I’m thrilled by this this is a great change.
My credit got tanked years ago for a $95 doctor visit bill I was disputing that got sent to collections. Took me years to repair my credit. I spent most of my twenties with credit well below 600 and unable to get even small increases to my credit.
I hope this goes through and others don’t have to deal with this kind of crap (or worse) because of the mess that is credit reporting.
Could you expand on why this makes such a big difference? I’m not very knowledgeable in this area. Is medical debt treated differently than other debts by lenders?
My first thought was that medical debt, like any other debt, has financial obligations that lenders would have to know about to determine the amount of credit a person is eligible for. Wouldn’t medical debt payments impact the amount of additional debt you can afford?
It ends up on your credit report while you’re trying work it out between the hospital and the insurance company. Phone calls to one, phone calls to the other, and then, if you get it worked out, you have to file a claim with each credit reporting agency to get it removed. It’s like a full time job. And, once you get it cleared up with the hospital, you have to do the same with every medical person involved.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining. I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid major medical expenses or debt, so I hadn’t thought of the situation you’ve described.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but similar to how you don’t need to disclose alimony when applying for a mortgage, it’s more on the type of debt. Yes it’s still debt at the end of the day and certainly impacts your ability to pay a loan, but most reasonable people and proponents of universal healthcare push for it to not be considered a factor when assessing one’s credit worthiness because of how destructive it is. Healthcare is something that cannot be avoided, unlike non-essential credit card debt from shopping for example.
I’m kinda rambling as I can’t really say exactly what I want to say, but hopefully someone who can explain it better can chime in.
The significant difference is that medical debt in the US is not usually elective. I can choose to sign up for a credit card, or I can choose to apply for a house/car loan, or I can choose to go to college, or I can choose to start a business. Are you gonna choose to ignore going to the ER when you break your arm, or are having chest pains, or are airlifted after a drunk driver T-bones your car? Are you gonna refuse your child’s chemotherapy or dialysis treatments?
The US medical system is fucked up from top to bottom.
(Also note I’m not commenting on whether elective debt in the US is fair, only highlighting the difference between medical debt and other debts.)
It’s not as huge as some people think. All 3 credit bureaus stopped reporting unpaid medical debt with an initial balance under $500 as of July 1, 2022, which is 70% of medical debt (when you have $15,000 of debt that’s usually split 50 ways).
They also no longer report medical debt that has been paid - even if it is late. Additionally, debt collectors now have to wait a year to report you, giving you time to negotiate a more reasonable rate or have the debt discharged.
That’s not to say this isn’t good, but things have been improving massively on this front for the past few years. Reality is that with so much bullshit medical debt, the bureaus are going to have to either ignore it or nobody will be able to get a loan, which is worse for the banks than loaning out money to someone who had an unexpected 6-figure bill because their insurance sucks.
Myers, who says he’s a licensed security guard, was sitting in his car Wednesday to conduct “overwatch” while his son trains because “he has seen numerous crimes occur” in the parking lot, according to the probable cause statement.
His son was taking a jiu-jitsu class next door. This guy is like peak gravy seals/tacticool wannabe.
I will reluctantly admit that there are good activists who come from Harvard. I work with some and know of many more. But the vast majority is just like you describe
If Joe Biden hasn’t done anything, then why does Trump have so many things to revoke and reverse?
A lot of it is posturing.
Trump claims that Joe Biden made the military Woke and bimbofied all the generals. All the universities teach are the Perverted Arts. And the TikToks are turning your kids Chinese.
But when he’s President, he promises to fix all of that on Day One.
Not saying Biden has done nothing, but if you haven’t noticed yet, the GOP standard play is to take the most lukewarm democrat positions, pretend it’s the end of western civilization, and then promise things will be fixed once he’s elected.
Ie, CRT, Wokeness, DEI, whatever “monster of the week” they pick as an enemy. They always swap it around.
Because getting people riled up in culture wars gets their mind off of real issues. It’s the ol street magician trick of getting people to look at their right hand while the left hand is stealing your watch.
The liberals think they can push cathode ray tubes on the rest of us?? I’m fine with them using sinful processing components in their own homes, but this would be violating my rights as an american!
Biden hasn’t done well addressing the core issues driving the voters he needs–ie young voters and POC voters.
Trump is doing his best to mobilize his supporters, as turnout is going to determine who wins in November. I’m not sure this was a wise move for him as it could energize his opposition as well. We shall see.
They’re against anything that the Democrats want. If the Democrats decided to fix the pothole out front, Republicans would rally in favor of potholes’ right to damage your car.
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