Comments

1

Stop pouting Dan. It gives you wrinkles.

3

Oh, about the Danish thing - every kid in Denmark goes to the kindergarden. It's been a big problem with the "ghetto" children that they arrive to primary school with less preparation than "normal" Danish children and their academic progress suffers greatly. The measure is intended to help them catch up. The journalist who wrote the story is not great with their craft, but could do well in Fox News.

4

Nin, I'm all for incentivizing early childhood care/education so that the poor and less integrated take advantage of a universal program at the same rates as the wealthier and more connected. Also I wish we had that program here in the US. But the way the policy is presented (and it might be a fault of the journalist, I don't know) is that it is A) mandatory for (some? all?) parents to send their kids to this preschool program from 1 year old and B) that it specifically teaches assimilation. Are either of those things true?

5

@2:

If by "OK" you mean: a massive die-off of a large portion of the human species, social collapse on an unprecedented scale, and a reversion back to a mostly pre-industrial feudalistic agrarian subsistence lifestyle, then sure, everything will be just dandy. Because that's pretty much what's going to happen if corporations, political and economic elites, Apocalypse-obsessed religious fundamentalists, and climate-change deniers continue to refuse to do anything about stemming the rise of atmospheric CO2 levels. Admittedly, that's the worst-case scenario, but we humans tend to exhibit a shocking propensity for inflicting the most amount of damage on ourselves, when given half a chance.

6

Ta for working the holiday, man. Enjoyed the read.

8

A little reality therapy for you folks in the "it'll all work out ok in the long run" camp...
Daily CO2
July 3, 2018: 409.72 ppm

July 3, 2017: 407.14 ppm

Well its a good thing we have a handle on that problem. Soon we will have deployed all those giant CO2 suckers and Elon Musk will be mining Unobtanium from his Mars bases and we will all be powering our houses and cars with free unlimited energy from fusion reactors and the skies will be filled with flying pigs.

9

@7:

Problem with that is, a significant portion of the North American subcontinent will be just as adversely affected as other places, and with literally billions of people desperately seeking relief, any possible means we could deploy to stem the onslaught, not just of U.S. citizens heading north, but also those migrating up from South and Central America, will quickly be overwhelmed. No wall will be big enough, and no amount of bullets will be effective. So, we would need to deploy either nuclear or biological weapons (or both) on a massive scale, which of course would simply create a whole new set of environmental and health-related problems to the long list of shit with which we would need to contend.

10

Oh, please, the news is not all bad. They did find those Thai boys. Although I'm quite disappointed that Ms. Anna had clearly not taught them anything about safe cave exploration. I do, though, hope they're using this time, as they await rescue, to work on their polka skills. One, Two, Three, And. One, Two, Three, And. Shall we dance? On a bright cloud of music, shall we fly? Shall we dance? Shall we then say "Goodnight" and mean "Goodbye"?

11

Yep, back to bed with a good book and close the curtains and shutters. Fuck em fuck em all.

12

Well, I'M ready to go back to reading good books, and watching "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and "Thelma & Louise" on DVD for the three zillionth time.
@11 LavaGirl: Agreed and +1. At least I can still go outside and find asylum in my beloved little VW.

14

@10 BadBreathMommy: That's like saying, "Oh, wait! Here's one sand bag to stop the mass flooding from 1,000,000 overflowing toilets full of shit."

15

“The media reports [hard-right wingnut / Senator from Ohio Jim] Jordan cited were from Fox News—so they were bullshit and Rosenstein was able to slap Jordan down hard.”

Gosh. I was thinking that just because ‘reports’ were seen on FOX, that wouldn’t automatically make them Fake News, and then I thought about it for ÂŒ second, and yep, our Prez’s SOLE source of “news” never need be-fact checked – if it’s Fake, it’s on FOX. Vice versa too.

It only LOOKS like news – because they can call it that, on the bottom of the fucking screen.

"In Denmark, children over the age of 1 who live in low-income, heavily Muslim immigrant communities that the government classifies as “ghettos” will soon be subject to mandatory training in 'Danish values.'”

I'm guessing the Danish Indoctrination is probably a lot less horrific than a fool-blown “Christian” Indoctrination (into Patriarchy) (minus Jesus) (NO sparing the Rod!) here in the U:S might be. The difference is probably the difference between being taught to Believe vs. learning critical thinking. (It’s easy to cripple a mind [for ever, perhaps] if can you teach it that Belief trumps facts.)

Giving those kids a leg up (and a break for the parents!) (for fucking FREE!*) and a view into the Culture in which they've been delivered might go miles in preventing Fundamentalism -- actually, militant or violent fundamentalism, sometime down the road. Pragmatic. I like that.

*Yeah, we might be the Richest fucking Country on the whole fucking Planet, be we just cannot (currently!) afford that kinda shit. We've got an Empire to defend. A Corporate Empire, but still --

16

The WORLD is on fire? Uh, speaking as someone living outside your borders, I think it's just your own country that's on fire, Dan. You're employing the same kind of right-wing viewpoint of "America is the world." Take a look at Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, Korea (both of them), etc ... some of the places are doing better, others no worse, than before 2016. If anything, Trump has been better for "the world" than Bush. All you right-leaning liberals (you, Maher, Maddow) pine for Bush to come back (and for Pence to follow), but you forget how worse the actual world was under Bush's rule. And Trump's trade tariffs aren't exactly going to ruin our lives. In some ways we're better off without trade agreements that favor the US. So. Yeah. We're not on fire. Thanks for your concern though.

17

"All you right-leaning liberals (you [Dan Savage], Maher, Maddow) pine for Bush to come back... " --Xian-Qi

Whoa -- Dan's a 'right-leaning lib'?! And pining for Gee Dubya the Disgraced's return?

Dan, fess up -- HAVE you been holding out on us? Pining for the third act/return of the Second Worst President in the History of Earth? Boy oh boy, just when you think you know someone....

18

@17

I mean, he did support the Iraq war. In case you haven't heard. It's mentioned in SLOG comments every once in a while.

And before that, for those with long memories, he was a self-described "left libertarian", which as far as I can tell meant "fiscal conservative, but with gay stuff."

The secret to Dan's success has always been dishing out super sexy sex advice, but with a pretty stodgy midwestern backbone when you turn it over. It shouldn't be any surprise that his politics have a whiff of that from time to time, too.

19

Yeah. Sure. “Humanity will come through climate change just fine.”

Europe came through the Black Death “just fine,” too.

Unless you were one of countless millions that died slow agonizing deaths.

And many of the “lucky” that managed to then survive the crushing decade or two or three after had degraded lives picking through ruins existing under the yoke of authoritarianism.

See. That’s what happens after civilizations get so disrupted. The effects take decades or centuries to shake out.

And the disruption from climate change will make the Black Death look like a dawdle.

20

@16 while I too appreciate that the US is not the default for the world your statement essentially replaces the US with China as the “world.” While China is certainly a larger share of the world in population it is certainly not in interests. I’m currently in the EU and Trump is not seen as better for “the world” than Bush here.

Not to mention Trumps trade/tariff policy is entirely based on a rather immature but nonetheless single minded idea of US trade hegemony. How you think somehow it’s not favoritism for the US as his goal belies a very ignorant understanding of trade and Trump.

21

Does anyone seriously expect counsel for the Defence to be eternally and entirely truthful? Sir John Mortimer could well be turning in his grave. But this gives me an idea. Having played Rodrigo Borgia as well as Claus von Bulow, could Jeremy Irons pull off the role of playing Pres Trump?

23

I am not pining for George W. Bush's return. We have some lovely parting gifts for you. Thank you for playing Slog.

24

So are pedophilia and rape institutionalized in the Big 10?
Is it now a requirement in their athletic departments?

26

Danish Lutherans would happily allow Dan and Terry to reaffirm their vows in any of their churches.

Danish Salafis might well prefer to murder Dan and Terry.

Less evil is....you said it about Hillary, Dan....less evil.

27

It's mostly fair to say that Dan and Maddow etc are the conservative liberals, but it's insane to group conservative liberals with far right conservatives like Bush, c'mon.

At least as far as we can tell from his public stance, Dan has historically been very good on domestic issues, especially civil liberties. Everyone knows he's been great as a feminist and LGBT rights activist, but it's worth defending him also because he was among the few mainstream liberals who were publicly supportive of Black Lives Matter, of attacking ICE and of calling for something better than Obamacare even back when those stances were not popular. And he's always had a good stance on climate change and (as far as I know) he's avoided any of the Islamophobia bullshit that has clouded over Maher's brain.

He's been terrible on foreign policy and some economic issues and the reason is it's clear he does not understand the military-industrial complex. I think this ties into his support for regime change wars in the past (Iraq as mentioned above) and also his lack of disapproval of regime change wars more recently (Libya for example) and his most recent ridiculous post that certain aspects of the US's years-long military involvement in wars in the middle east are actually not really happening but just wink wink stuff with Putin. He's not been so crazy as Maddow in this way though- see that Dan didn't claim conspiracy theories around the NK summit. But I think this is why he is able to shout about people refusing to vote for mainstream Dems without also calling for them to stop corporate funding. I think it's actually so simple as him not understanding imperialism combined with being rich and old enough that the crash didn't shake his worldview or materially harm him to the extent that it did most people younger and/or poorer than him. But of course none of us know him any more than we know each other. We are only talking about Dan's public persona here.

Salafists anywhere will eliminate huge chunks of the population if they have their way, including the other non-salafist Muslims, even other sunnis, who make up the vast majority of their victims. Refugees fleeing to Denmark or other European countries are not salafists, and if you look at the small number (but still alarming) people who left Europe to join ISIS and the like, you'll see that plenty of them are native born. The things that cause young men (mostly) to feel alienated and isolated in their societies and to turn to fundamentalism are not unique to Islam or you wouldn't have incels and white supremacists and the like killing people in the US. And anyway, the vast majority of religious fundamentalists who seek to restrict the rights of women and gay people (both Christians and Muslim fundamentalists) are not violent murderers. But when it's Muslims they get grouped together as extremists.

Back to the actual Danish preschool policy, I wish there were some clarification on what it actually is. Most Danes send their kids to preschool and it's free - basically free childcare that also educates kids in a very good system. I see nothing wrong with that and wish we had it here. If they are incentivizing it for poor people and immigrants, I think that's probably a good idea for all sorts of reasons. But if they are requiring it - mandatory- for kids at 1 year old, that's authoritarian. If it's required only of one particular group and they are teaching assimilation and Christianity, that's fascist. Makes me wonder if this is true though?

28

@17 "Whoa -- Dan's a 'right-leaning lib'?"

People who think Russia rigged the election and that Jill Stein is a Russian plant are attacking Trump from the RIGHT. The cold war is over. Seeing Democrats (of all people) try to revive it is really stomach-turning.

Trump and his ilk laundered money through Russia. That is where their interests lie. The 15 Facebook ads that came from Russia were targeted at Alt-Right rednecks, nothing in there that could turn a Hillary voter. But Dan's (and Maher's and Maddow's) constant Red-baiting would have made McCarthy, Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan proud. Saying that the president and the Green Party are taking direct orders from Putin is just the kind of conspiracy-theory bullshit you see on Fox News... not to mention the instigation of a second civil war. It's attacking from the Right, not the Left.

29

Xian I agree with your view generally, but it's not attacking from the right. People attacking from the right are the Alex Jones and conspiracy theorist types who believe that Trump has been compromised in some way (drugged, blackmailed) by a deep state or globalist cabal that is making him do things like continue to support Saudi Arabia and continue to arm/fund the FSA in Syria, etc. The Maddow types- that believe in very simplistic and overblown Russian conspiracy theories- they are attacking from the center. This is all assuming we can understand political factions on a left-right spectrum in the first place which is sort of a made up thing.

30

@16 Xian-Qi & @17 kristofarian: WTF?
@23 Dan the Man: I knew you weren't pining for GWB. Nobody of sound mind would put another Bush in office. Currently, some of the biggest idiots are the ones running around claiming that if we'd "only voted for Romney / Ryan in 2012 we wouldn't have this mess now".


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