California Politics: Madame Senator, this is a morgue

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > California Politics: Madame Senator, this is a morgue

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cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

If the slate article I read is to be believed, 10% of it went to growing almonds in the desert. 80% turns into the food our great nation consumes. And when it's all gone, let the bodies hit the floor.

Its important to make distinctions between food types. 10% went to almonds, but we are essentially the worlds supplier of almonds and I think you get a good return on the investment. Compare that to, say, raising cows, which consume water like crazy (it takes an insane number o gallons to raise a cow) and are probably not a good water -> food ratio.

# ¿ May 16, 2014 02:26

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 20:48

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

I think we can all agree on two things:

1) Making sweeping generalizations about million+ person metropolitan regions is silly. SF, East/South Bay, LA, Austin, etc all have cool people and places, and awful people and places.

2) Watching tourists in July at the Embarcadero wearing short sleeves and shorts is the gift that keeps on giving.

# ¿ May 17, 2014 03:22

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

California's property situation is hosed, and there is no easy solution to making it better in the the bay area. I make low 50's as a newish teacher and my gf makes low 60's working as one of the barely valued non-engineers for a peninsula tech company. We have come to the conclusion that one (or both) of us is going to have to change careers if we ever want to own a home that isn't in the little Mexico area of San Jose. The insult to injury is that all of the attractive new 3-4 story apartment units being built start at 2500 a month for a fairly modest 2 bedroom...

# ¿ May 28, 2014 23:09

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Trabisnikof posted:

Obviously just live in ~~Livermore~~ Tracy.

I've...seen things you people wouldn't believe. The endless headlights of poor bastards driving from Tracy at 5am. 3 hour gridlock commutes burning away a mans soul. All those...moments...will be lost in time, like...tears...in rain. Time...to drive...

# ¿ May 28, 2014 23:21

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Leperflesh posted:

Not as far as Tracy, but a long commute is in your future if you want to own a home. With an income of 110k gross, you can probably afford a house in various parts of the East Bay. There are still modest homes at around $300k in my neck of the woods, for example (Concord).

The conclusion we came to, after factoring everything in, including potential future volatility in state budgets (teacher layoffs) and the probability of a future "correction" in the tech industry (private sector marketing layoffs), was that home ownership may never be for us. If it becomes a cost/benefits analysis, its hard to justify unless you can be 100% sure you want to be in the same area in 10 or 20 years (and we can't).

# ¿ May 28, 2014 23:31

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Capitalism gives no fucks about anything other than profit, until those things threaten profit enough to make interest in them profitable. If anyone tells you contrary to this, they are relying on anecdote and should be ignored. No one will fix bay area traffic until it is profitable to do so. Given that it will almost certainly never be profitable, it will never be fixed.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 03:15

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Shbobdb posted:

Given broad strokes, I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this.

Except the last bit. While public transit isn't directly profitable, it can be very profitable (indirectly). That's why a lot of hyper-capitalist areas (NYC, London, Paris, etc.) have really incredible (albeit overcrowded during peak hours) public transit systems.

As far as I can tell, all of those major public transit system you mentioned were 1) begun long, long ago (like the 19th century), 2) received significant and sometimes massive public subsidies when they were private and 3) the huge boosts in construction and expansion during the 30's-50's (probably the golden age of public works) that made them what they are today were done through public ownership, not private corporate ownership. It is not profitable to conduct now, in 21st century American urban areas for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is that we spend countless billions propping up the automobile industry through freeway and highway construction and maintenance. The absolutely staggering amount of money it costs to go through super urban areas doesn't help either.

Shbobdb posted:

I mean, if we are gonna blame capitalism, let's just go for the commute itself. Things like concentration of wealth, white flight (and its close sibling gentrification) and all that poo poo is a function of capitalism.

Don't get me wrong. I'd rather full Communism. But I'm rich enough, comfortable enough, white enough and straight enough for me not to want to rock the boat too much. So, I'll happily agitate for Maoist third-worldism while hoping to settle for what was politically acceptable as "European Left" in the '60s and '70s. I'd love to Zhou Enlai it, but he was a lot savvier than I am. So, I'll advocate extremism in service of moderation.

I'm right behind you, just a lot more pessimistic I guess.

Space-Bird posted:

It's weird. I don't know a single person who doesn't want better public transport in the Bay Area. Most people want to pay for it too, but local politics seem to prevent anything productive from happening. What's the "real story" behind it?

Don't forget the unique geography of the bay area. A huge ring of dozens of cities around a large bay, with a few annoying mountain ranges mean that commute times can be really crazy. The gaps in coverage (like in the east part of the south bay) exaggerate the issue - it probably takes 2.5 hours or more to go from San Jose to Antioch (a distance of about 65 miles/1 hour on the freeway outside of traffic) on public transit because you have to go west from San Jose, up the peninsula, then east back across the bay.

cheese fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Jun 21, 2014

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 08:02

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Trabisnikof posted:

Uh, I mean that commute would still be 2.5+ on public transit, but not for the reasons you suggest. It's a 30 minute bus ride to the Fremont BART station from downtown San Jose. Plus the Caltrain would be way more expensive than taking a bus from San Jose to Fremont.

Anyway, we are building a BART to San Jose interconnection, while the BART will never go through the peninsula.

I can assure you that the bus ride from downtown to the Fremont BART station is not 30 minutes during afternoon rush hour, the time when public transit should have the big advantage over cars.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 17:36

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

It really is so god drat beautiful.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2014 20:54

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Trabisnikof posted:

Glad to see our corporate warriors are fighting against tyranny for us: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/06/26/monkeyparking-tells-sf-its-not-going-to-kill-its-parking-app/

I love how patently ridiculous that claim is when you apply it to other standards. "Guys, I'm not selling unregistered handguns. I'm just storing them in a place and selling information about where they are. Its totally legal and not at all the same as you giving me money for a gun."

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 02:08

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

mA posted:

If you're attempting to justify Google's hilariously pathetic hiring track record by appealing to UC admissions you should probably look elsewhere (nice try, though!). The UC system's newly admitted class is over 28.8% Chicano/Latino, which is a tad higher than a "tiny portion".

http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table3.pdf

Sorry - you don't have real diversity, especially when the percentage of black and brown people you employ is literally so minuscule that it could almost fall into the margin of error of an election year poll.

Since the Google non-diverstiy numbers have come out, it's been interesting watching the tech crowd try to "DISRUPT!!!!" and reconceptualize ideas of diversity (i.e. We have white, male programmers from all over and...... Asians! ). Since the tech world in SF and SV are so ahead of the curve compared to the rest of us, they've totally bypassed this antiquated idea of diversity and they literally are the embodiment of equal opportunity and meritocracy - everyone else just needs to catch up!

Its also important to remind everyone that Google, Facebook, etc have been lobbying the goverment to block the release of this data for years. These companies have known they have a huge demographic PR nightmare on their hands and have almost certainly been working very hard over the last few years to fix that (read: hire latinos, blacks and women - bonus points for black/latino women!). And THIS is as diverse as they could get the company. I'd love to see what Facebooks demographics looked like in 2010. No words.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 19:49

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

on the left posted:

I am sure this is true for Africa as well, but there are plenty of well-qualified Hispanics in central and south America who can't get visas to come work for Google in the USA. If congress would fix the visa situation, a lot more diversity would take place. Hispanics are definitely hurt by the fact that immigration has been dominated by the uneducated/unskilled, who will then have children who are behind their peers, and so on and so forth.

This might make sense if every one of Google's 50k employees was a CS/CE job. But its not. Only part of that huge number of jobs takes a specialized tech degree. They have thousands and thousands of people working non tech jobs in marketing, human resources, PR, art, social media, etc etc etc. Take a closer look at the difference between the tech and non-tech tabs. It improves to almost 50/50 for male female, but the racial numbers change only slightly. Google may hire women for their non-tech jobs, but its still white and Asian women.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 01:33

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

on the left posted:

Yes, and for those jobs they hire the top part of the class at selective universities.

So their only hires in all of those areas are top of the class grads from selective universities? You SURE about that bro? All their marketing interns are from Stanford?

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 02:47

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

on the left posted:

Not Stanford only, but I did find this graphic:

Top 5 schools for Google recruiting are Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, UCLA, and Carnegie Mellon. I'm sure it's heavily influenced by the tech recruiting, but i've known a lot of non-technical people from Google who went to one of those schools, although mostly MIT.

That data is only a fraction of their employees and probably heavily influenced by tech specific hiring.

on the left posted:

Why on Earth should Google adopt those kind of hiring practices?

Google are the one who said they care about having a diverse workforce.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2014 03:25

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Rah! posted:

I just saw news footage of a community meeting type thing they had, where the people were voicing their concerns. One old woman (white, of course) was literally crying as she spoke into the mic, and said: "I feel we're being destroyed"

These people really believe they're under attack by the America-destroying Mexican horde. I mean, I already knew that, but it still blows my mind how delusional people can be.

One thing that always confused me. Are the Mexicans who are crossing the border to come destroy us also using the same route that the Muslims who are crossing the border to come destroy us? What about the socialists? Seems like the mountain passes leading into Arizona must be jam packed.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 02:15

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

The Insect Court posted:

It's not that they're delusional, it's that to the Americanness = Whiteness. An America where a black guy is President and a female guy will probably be the next one and where you occasional see billboards and signs in shop windows written in Spanish and have to press 1 for English is to them not America. Not "it's a possible future for America we really wouldn't like" but it's not America. Not in a hyperbolic or metaphorical sense, but literally not America.

Obama is biologically as much a white man as he is a black man. America's race identity is an absolutely fascinating topic.

Leperflesh posted:

They've been lied to, as well. They don't have an accurate perception of the country's economic prosperity, or of the proportion of the population made up of recent immigrants (illegal or not). They have been told that Mexicans are literally stealing and destroying everything that they and their forefathers made, that the country's wealth and prosperity is bleeding out from all those greedy immigrants welching off of the system.

Conservatives tend to care a lot about a certain kind of "fairness." Not the fairness of being treated equally, but the fairness of other people not getting more handouts than they do, not getting help when they don't "deserve it" based on some nebulous, vague idea of self-sufficiency, being a tax payer, being naturally born to this country (which means being white), and climbing up the wealth ladder by virtue of "hard work" (which means white collar jobs and definitely not brutal agricultural labor).

If they are or know someone who is white and unemployed, they believe (and have been told, over and over again) that it's due to immigrants. If their taxes seem payful to pay, it's because of immigrants coming here for free health care and education off of the taxpayer's dollars. If they feel scared around minorities, it's justifiable fear because those people are born into violent ways, violence is all they know.

It's a sick mixture of racism, "just so" stories told by politicians, news organizations and religious organizations on the right, and a heaping pile of mostly bullshit American mythology about the founding fathers, pioneering individuals, rags to riches, and being the bestest most free and righteous country and people in the world.

After all, if America is the best, that must mean everyone from other countries are worse.

There was a book that talked about the shift towards ideologically homogenous neighborhoods but I can't remember the title of it for the life of me. tl;dr most of us used to live in neighborhoods that were a lot more diverse in terms of political ideology, but white flight/suburbanization has created many more places across the country where you will no longer have to see or interact with the political other.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 18:13

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

bango skank posted:

That seems a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face though. When people show up with the scalped reservation you can refuse them service on principle but then you're still screwed as far as filling your tables goes.

A better option would be a service that searches these sites and notifies you when something from your restaurant shows up so you can free up the spot for actual reservations.

The real money maker would be for this Reservation Hop to also sell that service :smug:

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 03:15

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Forceholy posted:

Honestly, everything east of Ontario is pretty much Arizona at that point.

In other news, California is close to becoming the first state to pass a clear sexual consent bill into law.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/29/california-lawmakerspasscampussexassaultbill.html

An Awful Bill posted:

Silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. The legislation says it's also not consent if the person is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep.

Lawmakers say consent can be nonverbal, and universities with similar policies have outlined examples as maybe a nod of the head or moving in closer to the person.

Read this loving sentence. "Your honor, the sex was consensual. She totally nodded her head when I suggested we get it on. I know she says she was cowering in fear but she definitely "moved in closer" to me - that is consent!". This is an absolute disaster, will be totally unenforceable and do nothing but confuse the issue while ensuring the focus remains on technicalities of consent rather than a culture that encourages men to be aggressive creeps who use alcohol to wear down a woman so she will let him have sex with her.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2014 17:12

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Pohl posted:

You failed to mention that budget was for firefighting.
I read what you wrote and I was like, what...?

Don't worry, they will find more money, and they will have Federal funds coming in to help with the effort. No one is going to just stop fighting fires because the budgeted money runs out.

Don't worry bro. There is always more money to pay police/firefighters, and to keep expensive ski cabins in the Sierra's from burning. Unlike, say, paying teachers.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2014 04:18

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Family Values posted:

Source.

This is true of literally every state. Not to defend central valley conservatives, but "rich areas with high cost of living paying more in per capita taxes than poor areas with cheap cost of living" is pretty much the norm and almost inevitable math wise. That map could also read "the people with the most money own homes in these yellow areas" and it would be true.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2014 07:03

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Bip Roberts posted:

Nothing in the world is more funny than Northern Californians acting like they don't ship in water from across the state.

Not quite the same. All the Yosemite/Hetch Hetchy water would end up in SF bay via the San Joaquin Delta anyway. In CA, moving water on the east-west axis is very different than the north-south axis (in general, and with some exceptions).

Trabisnikof posted:

And I'm asking if you believe a less distorted and "suitable for the state's needs" water market would impact either the total actual consumption of water for Ag or local food availability or prices?

It just seems like your asking for something more like AB32 and less like Venezuela. We don't need to redistribute property rights just tax use more effectively.

I would imagine that solution would use less total water, and use that water much more effectively.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 04:06

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Sounds like the free market hard at work here folks. Sorry you guys arnt down with the creative disruption of an archaic old economy :smug:

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 06:34

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Kenning posted:

So when do we start burning down almond orchards? This isn't apropos the AZ troll guy, just something I've been thinking about.

A good start would be to force farmers to use efficient technologies to reduce water usage. A shocking number of almond farmers pay little to no attention to when they water and how they water, resulting in significant over use of water and under production of crops. Using electronic measuring of water flow rates through the soil, computer weather modeling and other tools, we can greatly increase our water usage efficiency - but with grandfathered water rights and artificially cheap water, why bother with more expensive systems?

# ¿ Mar 30, 2015 00:40

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

gonger posted:

A targeted anti-tech protest action (https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/04/14/18771083.php) flopped pretty hard today:

What's interesting about it is that the bus drivers for most of the major companies that run shuttle programs have unionized in the last year. The union asked the radicals in advance to call off the protest, but they went ahead with it anyway. Have we crossed peak tech bus outrage?

"People trying to get to work in the morning" isn't a great target for otherwise completely justifiable outrage at the social and economic effects that the expanding tech industry is having on the Bay Area.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 00:31

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

SirPablo posted:

I'm late on this, but here is an article about food deserts right in the goddamn San Joaquin Valley.

[url] http://m.hanfordsentinel.com/news/l...bile_touch=true[/url]

Its a town of 1200 people in the middle of nowhere with no real reason to exist. What do you want?

# ¿ May 26, 2015 00:11

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Trabisnikof posted:

Oh sounds like this thread could use a map!

Also why does that map think there is a huge lake near Bakersfield.

This is definitely a pre-white people map, as there are no wetlands in the central/southern central valley outside of the Delta system just west of the Stockton/Sacramento area, and even that is now heavily canal covered.

Baby Babbeh posted:

People from other states are really ignorant of California's ecology in general. It's a dry state, but only the far southeastern part of it is actually a desert. The rest of it basically has a Mediterranean climate.

Ya, no. A lot of it is now desert because the once massive central valley delta system has been almost entirely diverted into canals and aquaducts for ag usage. Everything south of Bakersfield is arid land that gets water piped into it.

Bip Roberts posted:

Even places where it is a genuine desert, irrigating in places like the Coachella valley creates by far the most productive ($/acre) farmland in the US. It's not sustainable for a number of reasons but no the productivity is absolutely unmatched.

Edit:

California cropland value 2014 was 10140 $/acre. National average was 4100 $/acre. The $10140 is aggregate over the state, with by far the highest values coming from irrigated desert in the south.

A not insignificant part of this is that CA cropland is right next door to LA and the SF bay areas, 2 of the 6 largest metropolitan areas in the country. It also makes shipping products to Asia faster and more viable (cough almonds).

cheese fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jul 22, 2015

# ¿ Jul 22, 2015 00:53

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Leperflesh posted:

Without going into details, I have personal contacts who are close to Newsom's family (mostly his father, a retired judge). He's well-connected to extreme wealth, he's incredibly carefully groomed, he's carefully Democratic, and he has taken some very, very calculated risks that have paid off very well. I don't think he's a replicant. I think he's a archetypical politician. He's very effective as an executive. All of his opinions and positions and speeches are meticulously vetted and calculated. He is especially good at schmoozing with the deep-pocketed donor class that drive all effective political campaigns.

I think there's an excellent chance he'll serve two terms as CA governor, and a significant (but still small) chance he'll eventually serve as vice president. I don't think he can win a presidential campaign, but only because he's from San Francisco, and huge swathes of the country reflexively hate politicians from San Francisco, just on the basis that obviously they are way too liberal. Maybe by the time Newsom would be running (I'd guess 2024 at the earliest) that will change, but I dunno.

His affair with his staffer's wife is going to gently caress him hard if he ever tries to run for something on the level of governorship.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 17:59

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Spite posted:

Repealing it would completely gently caress over the Bay Area. Currently the only way to afford a home in the Bay Area is to 1a) be rich 1b) make a bunch of money in tech or 2) have bought it 30 years ago. Suddenly making property taxes adjust would kick a huge portion of the populace out of their homes. And rent is already sky high.

It's a completely hosed situation all around. The best solution I can think of is to repeal it for businesses but not private homeowners, but that's not very realistic.

It would also cause a big drop in home value. Probably the only sustainable way to do it is to repeal prop 13 and have your property tax bill return to what it should be over time. Make it so that it can't increases by 10% a year until you reach the true value.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2015 04:26

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Trabisnikof posted:

Large corporate farms waste less water and pollute less per unit of food produced than smaller farms or growing food at home.

Larger farms tend to be more efficient for obvious reasons. That they are corporate owned and part of an agriculture oligarchy has nothing to do with the benefits large scale ag.

Leperflesh posted:

It's about a handful of wealthy families and profitable corporations exporting California's limited water to Texas and China in the form of an unnecessary alfalfa crop, depleting its millenia-old aquifer permanently, and a state goverment so far largely unwilling to give up the lucrative lobbying dollars those families shovel into their pockets.

Pretty much.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2015 04:10

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

HelloSailorSign posted:

What then should be California's long term water solution(s)?

Are things like desalination plants, improved water reclamation systems, "sustainable" groundwater systems, government control of what gets grown in agriculture (or free market whatever), etc., real things that can/should be implemented and actually have a chance of making a difference?

I have spent a lot of time driving I-5 seeing all those, "Is growing food wasting water?" and "Stop the politician created dust bowl!!!" and "Dams not trains!" and thought, well, what then?

Our plan should be to desalinate water using renewable green energy, especially given that by far the two biggest urban centers are located on the coast. It is still much, much cheaper in terms of dollars per acre foot to implement water conservation methods like drip irrigation, but there is only so much mileage to be had there and piggybacking renewables onto desal could be a great way to improve our energy creation. Obviously this is a "how should CA cities get their water" idea and not a statewide ag reform. On that front, we absolutely have to use a combination of state subsidies for more water efficient crops and higher water prices for farmers to destroy the exporting of water intensive crops for profit.

cheese fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Aug 31, 2015

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 05:27

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

ProperGanderPusher posted:

You'd be surprised how much I hear the sentiment, "Trains are for Europeans. This is America. We drive cars here. The solution is always more roads." Typically from people over 60, of course, but they vote faithfully.

This is their subconscious mind trying to shield them from realizing that there were viable alternatives to them spending 5 hours a day in a car on a jammed freeway for the last 30 years of their lives. The psychological trauma from fully comprehending that they need not have missed their kids growing up could be devastating.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2015 18:06

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

FRINGE posted:

Youre trying too hard.

edit: Lol. "The happy enlightened motorcycle rider physically attacked another drivers vehicle because they deserved it."

So a motorcycle rider just drove up to you, glared at you while punching out your side mirror and then drove off because reasons?

# ¿ Sep 5, 2015 22:13

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Ron Jeremy posted:

Some people are pissed Junipero Serra is going to be a Saint.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-junipero-serra-vandalized-20150927-story.html

I guess they figured "Hey now that we have a pope who is finally more or less from the New World, its all good and we can start canonizing all those genocidal, native-enslaving monks!" Something about the end of racism and Obama black President.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2015 01:13

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Leperflesh posted:

And, seriously, it doesn't loving matter. We can't afford to keep watering lawns, so we need to change perceptions, which we know for a fact can be done because many cultures worldwide have favored gardens that aren't lawns at various times for centuries.

I think there is a difference between "We need to reform the way we use water in the state of CA" and "NO ONE CAN EVER HAVE A LAWN AGAIN". We in fact CAN continue to have green lawns as one part of our statewide water usage, but there does need to be big changes to the way water is allocated and consumed in CA. As has been repeated in various ways in this thread and others, we can turn every front lawn in CA to sand and still run out of water if we grow Alfalfa in the central valley in August.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2015 00:23

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Leperflesh posted:

Oh I completely agree. Watering lawns is a drop in the bucket in terms of overall consumption of water in the state. But I believe we got started on this topic by discussing the very wealthy individuals spending many thousands of dollars a month to water their palatial estates? And I also think there's something to be said for reversing or fighting the acculturation that makes people prefer (totally unnatural) trimmed green patches of lawn, to (much more natural) varied gardens of native plants. Because if we as Californians can take personal responsibility for making good decisions about water use, we're more likely to insist on the government and private industry reforms necessary to make large-scale water conservation and sustainability possible.

Ya all fair. And obviously someone spending thousands of dollars a month on water for his multiple acres of Kentucky Blue Grass is very different than Jim the Plumber just wanting a little patch of cool grass for his kids to play barefoot in on warm summer evenings. I'm not a homeowner yet, but our small patio has a good mix of native CA plants along with some water thirsty non-natives that I consciously decide to spend water on. You can definitely create attractive, green gardens without a lot of water, but if done right, our water system should be able to tolerate someone willing to spend money for thirsty plants. Either way, the entire water system in the west (not just California, because everything west of the Rockies is interconnected) needs to be totally rebuilt from the ground up.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2015 01:03

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

That "average effective apartment rate in San Jose" number is pretty crazily influenced the by flood of high end luxury apartments. poo poo, the triangle formed by the 237, 880 and 101 must have added 2k new units just in the last few years (they just finished a ~450 unit 4 story complex across from the Chik-fil-A on north 1st street and the cheapest unit in that thing is a 2600 dollar one bedroom).

# ¿ Nov 24, 2015 07:55

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Spazzle posted:

How is SJ more expensive than SF?

It might have to do with the way they are calculating those numbers. I know renting a room in SF is far more common?

Bast Relief posted:

I find the biking, but only in midtown, in Sac is really easy too. I rarely drove my car. I found it really difficult to leave, but hey, love. I just really miss the coveneince and the tree-lined streets.

Sacramento, and by Sacramento, I mean Mid-Town and the surrounding area (love the Land Park area), has a lot going for it. Gorgeous tree lined streets filled with old craftsman homes, lots of non-chain coffee shops/bars/places to eat, it gets decent music coming through, etc. What SJ has going for it is 1) access to the monopoly money tech jobs and 2) it doesn't get soul crushingly hot during peak summer. Even the tree canopy of Mid-Town won't save you from July/August heat.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2015 19:22

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Litany Unheard posted:

That said the dating scene here is poo poo compared to SF/the Bay.

In what sense?

# ¿ Nov 24, 2015 19:32

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Keyser S0ze posted:

Yeah all that poo poo is awful and horrifying and more fun down in old Roseville dive bars and away from all the megamegachain poo poo.

Midtown Sac is great but price/sq foot is brutal compared to 25 miles away. I'm not paying $550k for an 1100 sq ft hipster loft in downtown Sac either, sorry.

I'm old though and don't give a gently caress anymore. Get off my dirt lawn!

True true, but you can still buy a 3+ bedroom craftsman in midtown for 400-600k, with old trees and walking distance to cool poo poo. Those are 1.5m dollar houses in a Campell or Cupertino, and 900k in a soul less south San Jose sprawl.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 01:36

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 20:48

cheese: Jan 7, 2004; Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Runaktla posted:

Guy gets shot by bean bag gun and doesn't drop knife, I hate to say it but he deserves to be shot. Knives can kill/maim as well, and sometimes better than guns (though not 20 of them lol). He was walking away and could harm somebody.

If the guy ends up getting close to and lunges with a knife at somebody the people are going to point fingers at the cops for not killing him earlier.

I'm ok with this. Sorry black dude for not learning common sense. Sucks. But poo poo happens.

Do we really not have any tools in which 12 officers who have surrounded a cornered, knife wielding suspect can disable said man safely? Like, shoot him with all the bean bags or spray him with loving sticky foam or hit him with a net gun or something? A stun gun on a pole, I don't know?

# ¿ Dec 13, 2015 20:57

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > California Politics: Madame Senator, this is a morgue

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