The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[DC Al Fine]

You know, the fact that she's an extreme socon and a Democrat doesn't surprise me so much in that part of the country, but the fact that she's an Apostolic and a Democrat DOES. Actually even if she was a Republican I'd be surprised that an Apostolic is holding public office, especially one like that.

For those unaware, Apostolics are a Pentecostal denomination that are mostly found only in Appalachia and the Upper South and yet for whatever reason also North Dakota, (there's a non-negligible population around Bismarck, I know the chiropractor I went to in high school was one, and the receptionist, his daughter was recognizable as one), that basically shun alcohol and tobacco, jewelry, tattoos, most modern clothing and forbid women from wearing pants (they view this as equivalent to crossdressing like men wearing dresses), and their women wear their hair waist long while men are prohibited from having long hair, if you ever thought she was dressed a little odd and archaicly that's why (and notice her hair in the pic above.) They also heavily discourage though I don't believe actually "ban" owning a TV and watching movies. Much like Jehova's Witnesses they tend to be very "anti-worldly" and having one be in charge of record keeping for a county is an odd position. Although worth noting part of the reason why they hold to that is that such jobs could put someone in a position where they must be an accessory to sin...which brings up a valid point here. By the logic of her church she should've resigned as soon as the Supreme Court decision came if not sooner. Though I'm sure her local congregation support her and all.

BRTD adds some interesting information on the Kim Davis case.

[DC Al Fine]

Not a long post, but this very insightful graph deserves a repost.

Relevant:



The huge differences between the voters and the establishments of both parties is astounding.

The Republican establishment is staunchly pro-free trade. Most GOP congressmen are staunchly pro-TPP and pro-free trade. The GOP voters are significantly anti-free trade overall (as shown on the graph posted above).

On the flip side, the Democratic establishment tends to be anti-free trade. IIRC, most Democratic Party congressmen voted against TPP and are anti-free trade. A majority of Democratic voters are pro-free trade (as shown on the graph I posted above).

A majority of liberals aren't "enamored" by protectionism (as the graph above proves).

To answer the OP's question, a significant portion of liberals are enamored by protectionism due to anti-corporatism. Many liberals see free-trade as something that is destructive to the working-class of our country and only benefits large corporations.

I'm staunchly pro-free trade FTR.

[DC Al Fine]

Guys can we please get back to putting effortposts in here?

[DC Al Fine]

Here's a non-political one:

The thing that will save you the most money in the long run is learning a few extra recipes that are healthy and tasty.

Pasta is very easy, and you don't have to be pretentious about the ingredients.  Do you buy pasta sauce?  Don't.  Tinned tomatoes are cheaper and they are the same thing after you add some garlic and herbs.  Throw in some frozen vegetables, or fresh vegetables, whichever is cheaper.  Beans are great.  Canned beans are cheap and last forever.  If you really want to go the extra mile, it's even cheaper to buy dried beans.  Then you soak them and boil them before adding them to food.  It does take more time, but you really just have to be organized.  Set aside a few extra minutes to soak the beans in the morning - boil a large amount all at once so that you only have to do it once a week.

Lentils.  Sunflower seeds.

Once you get confident with cooking, you should look for discounted vegetables.  A big bag of peppers that is about to go bad can go straight in the oven with oil and herbs for 20 minutes.  Take them out and preserve them in a used jar with water, salt, and white vinegar.  Now you've got roast peppers, super cheap and a great addition to sandwiches, sauces, or anything else.

Vegetables really aren't that intimidating.  Pumpkin, carrots, beets, sweet potato, etc are often cheap and are pretty good roasted.  You can even roast things like cauliflower and brussel sprouts.

If you are trying to move away from unhealthy foods, I recommend transitioning rather than doing it cold turkey.  The key is to make healthier choices in the supermarket.  But buy a couple comfort foods and give yourself some wiggle room.  As long as you remain conscious of slowly reducing the frequency of how often you eat these sorts of foods, you should be OK.  Even something as simple as 'I had five very unhealthy meals this week, and next week I will have four.'  If you stick to it for long enough, your body will start to crave different things.  I would get sick if I ate bad food now.  A good snack, to me, is a fresh carrot and some almonds.  But it took a long time to get there.

I do worry about your options given that they seem so lacking.  Would you have time to drive a further distance to do a "stock up" of things like nuts, seeds, dried beans, or other stuff you could buy in bulk?  Are there small businesses or farms nearby?  They often have better prices on fresh produce.  When you have the ability, stock up on big ticket things like potatoes and onions.  If you find them for a good price, don't hesitate to buy plenty of them because these vegetables usually last in your cupboard for a long time.

Good luck, and if you have any questions about recipes or food storage tips, I'd love to try and help you.

[DC Al Fine]

Sorry, TJ, but

I think he's generally a very nice person, but I have a very hard time dealing with his staunch anti-gay stance. I can live with pro-lifers, those that support the death penalty, and many other socially conservative stances. My mom is pro-death penalty, my grandpa is pro-life in opposition to my grandma's staunchly pro-choice position, and so on. I can accept difference of opinion to an extent. I cannot accept someone that is willing to accept discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or sexual identity.

It'd be like living next door to someone that was similar to Ned Flanders. Yes, he's very nice and would be a good neighbour, but there are some things I could never get past. I voted HP, with a fair amount of remorse. As a Catholic, I would strongly urge him to take heart of the words of the Holy Father himself. I'm not a practicing Catholic myself, but I do believe His Holiness Pope Francis is a truly great man and an absolute inspiration for all.

I need to dig out that article of Pope Francis quotes that are actually Pope Benedict XVI quotes.

[DC Al Fine]

Thank you for posting an actual good post Nathan. One or two liners don't belong here people!

[DC Al Fine]

This is what the abortion debate seems like:

-A man is murdering people, and has been doing so for decades.
-Nine people are in a room, and are about to take a vote on whether or not to call the police about this man.
-Four people want to immediately call the police.
-Three people don't actually think that the man is guilty, so they see no point in calling the cops.
-One person says that, "While I personally believe he shouldn't be killing people, I shouldn't force my morality on others."
-Another person says "We all agree that killing people isn't ideal, but his victims are mostly poor people.  And I don't see any of you volunteering to pay for his future victims medical bills.  That means that you don't really care about the lives of his victims."

So they voted 5-4 to not call the police.  The 5 were convinced that they had a moral high ground and attacked the 4, claiming that calling the cops on the murderer would mean the establishment of a theocracy.

[DC Al Fine]

Excellent discussion by Hash about why Quebec City is so conservative.

It's a very interesting topic, one which is often presented as a bit of a 'mystery' (you can find a lot of newspaper op-eds or blog posts in French about "le mystère de Québec", mostly from PQ-sympathizing leftists wondering why the capital of their future pays is so terribly right-wing). I haven't found much in the way of more academic treatment of the issue, and Pierre Drouilly's idea of the Québec tranquille (to explain the conservatism/non-nationalism of parts of Francophone Quebec, including Quebec City's surroundings - i.e. Chaudière-Appalaches, Beauce, Bas-Saint-Laurent etc.) doesn't really hold up for the city itself.

Quebec City's conservatism is a suburban phenomenon - the inner city doesn't vote for conservatives, and in fact they tend to do pretty poorly there (almost as poorly as they do in demographically similar parts of Montreal); the older working-class, low-income and nowadays gentrified/up-and-coming neighbourhoods (Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Saint-Roch, parts of Limoilou and, to a lesser extent, Saint-Sauveur) do not vote for conservatives either - in fact, they're generally solidly left-wing and nationalist, with a very strong QS and Option nationale vote in the last two provincial elections (particularly 2014). In addition, the wealthiest, highly educated suburban neighbourhoods - Sillery, parts of Sainte-Foy and Cap-Rouge, while typically federalist (i.e. provincial Liberal) haven't voted for conservatives very often either - you can see this in the last federal and provincial elections (but also in 2012, 2008 etc.).

So, it's the large swathes of nondescript and forgettable middle-class (neither very wealthy or poor) suburbia (though also exurbia/small satellite towns) where the ADQ/CAQ and federal Conservatives have consistently done best, where they've won their seats and where the bulk of their support comes from. Rather importantly, the separatists (PQ/Bloc) have basically become also-rans since 2003/2006 here, and it's become a matter of pretty serious concern for the PQ in the last two provincial elections. Already in 1995, the Oui to independence had 'under performed' in suburban Francophone Quebec City (and is one of the best explanations for the narrow loss). Given these demographics, it's not all that surprising that they'd favour the right or that they'd have a penchant for anti-government right-populism. The mystery is that, in other regions of Quebec, particularly Francophone suburban Montreal, demographically similar middle-class suburbs aren't right-wing and/or anti-nationalist -- or, more accurately, if they are, they don't vote for the right-wing parties (ADQ/CAQ or federal Tories) although they are susceptible to (2007 provincial elections).

Without being able to say whether these explanations hold up to close scrutiny, here are a few possible explanations as to why suburban/exurban Quebec City is so right-wing:

Quebec City is a government city, but that doesn't mean that everybody there works for the government: per the 2011 NHS, 15% worked in 'public administration' (which is not a lot less than Ottawa), in addition to people classified under other industries whose jobs depend on provincial government contracts or what have you. There's also no guarantee that public servants vote uniformly against the right-wing party: a lot has been made of provincial public servants not voting Oui in 1995 because they were fretful that they'd lose their jobs with the PQ's (boneheaded) promise to re-employ federal public servants. In any case, the separatist party has consistently underperformed in basically every provincial and federal election in the city since then.

Quebec City is often overshadowed by the bigger city, Montreal - and that's particularly true in culture, entertainment/arts and sports. Quebec City is the historic city, the political city; Montreal is everything else, it's the big provincial metropolis. The left-wing, nationalist 'urban intelligentsia' of Montreal has tended to look down on Quebec City - often with some kind of disdain, and election results have reinforced that condescension. I mean, you can ask many educated/politicized Francophones in Montreal about Quebec City and I think you're guaranteed to get some kind of comment about how it's a weird city with somewhat crazy, almost inbred hick-ish people who listen to trash talk radio and elect crazy right-wingers. In response, Quebec City has clearly been seeking to affirm itself, seeking recognition and civic pride -- their current mayor, the populist-ish loudmouth Régis Labeaume, elected with Soviet-style majorities in the aforementioned suburbia, is a good example of that; as are all his projects, or the massive local support for the defunct Nordiques. An argument can be made that, being secondary to Montreal, Quebec City distrusts Montreal 'elites' (like much of the nationalistic intelligentsia) and this breeds protest votes and/or sympathy for anti-elitist, populist right discourses.

The city's lack of a large visible minority or Anglo population, alluded to above, is only a partial and limited explanation: many lily-white Francophone Québécois parts of the province don't have Quebec City's "odd" politics (i.e. they generally vote pretty solidly PQ), a good example being the North Shore suburbs of Montreal, although that doesn't necessarily mean they're not ideologically right-leaning. However, the lack of ethnic/linguistic diversity likely plays a role, even if I don't think it's the main one. Montreal is the cosmopolitan, multicultural and diverse metropolis and Quebec City has none of that - so many younger people in the latter are tempted to move to the former to have that multicultural experience (or, more practically, to get a job or go to university out of town). It's also important to place the city in its immediate regional context: it is at the centre of the province's most conservative region (Chaudière-Appalaches, Bas-Saint-Laurent, Beauce, Portneuf, La Jacques-Cartier) -- although it's not only only conservative, but also traditionally non-nationalist in spite of being heavily Francophone (Beauce is probably the most homogeneously Francophone Québécois region in the province), something which is quite obvious from recent federal elections, although these are also the rural regions which voted for the créditistes in the 1960s. The late Pierre Drouilly is, to my knowledge, the only academic who looked into this phenomenon in depth, and his conclusion about what he called le Québec tranquille was that it was an older, blue-collar, lower-income, less-educated (but not poor) region. These demographics, even if Francophone, have always had below-average support for the nationalist cause. This was quite obvious in 1995. We can assume that, in the absence of international immigration, Quebec City's population growth (and that of its exurbs now) which isn't from natural growth, largely comes from the surrounding rural areas, many of which are continuing to decline.

This 2011 blog post (despite being a blog post, the writer appears to be well-informed, not an idiot and educated) and this 2007 comment piece from a disaffected former Lévesque PQ minister (both in French) make an interesting point: wealth in Quebec City, unlike in Montreal, is neither obvious nor ostentatious (I'd also add that it also isn't associated with the old White-English ogre), so popular resentment is not directed at an easily identifiable wealthy elite (or, to add, an old economic elite historically defined by the minority language), but rather against the 'overpaid' public servant, municipal employee (Quebec's loathed cols-bleus municipal 'labour aristocracy') or another target of right-populist rage. The 2007 piece I linked to said that provincial civil servants earn less than the municipal employees, and the private sector knows it earns less than any public servant. Mix that in with anti-tax and anti-government sentiments, and voilà. To use him as an example again, Régis Labeaume is usually in the news whenever he's going on about a feud with municipal employees over their pension fund or something.

In 2003, the PQ was tossed out in every seat in the city besides Agnès Maltais' downtown seat (Taschereau), which incidentally remains the lone PQ seat in the city today. Like in Montreal and its suburbs, there was widespread anger with the PQ that year over its imposed municipal amalgamations (unlike in Montreal, only two former - small - municipalities later voted to de-amalgamate in Quebec City). In suburban Quebec City, while amalgamation rage has died off, the PQ likely remains seen as a high-tax, 'big-government' party, as well as being poor 'defenders' of the city's interests (likely self-reinforcing since, by not electing PQ members, they don't get much representation in a PQ government, although Quebec is probably bound to be ruled by the PLQ Mafia forever now so that's moot).

The talk-radio point is important as well, as has been mentioned by several posts here. Quebec City is notorious for its very popular crass hard-right talk radio shows, and two of their most famous hosts have sought elected office: Jeff Fillion, who ran for mayor in 2009 (but did poorly), and André Arthur, the independent-conservative (cryptofascist) MP for Portneauf-Jacques-Cartier for two terms (2006-2011); both are (pretty crass) right-wing anti-separatists, in both cases because they say an independent Quebec would be a socialist hellscape. Whether this affection for right-wing talk radio is a cause or effect of Quebec City's "odd" politics is unclear.