This is really how they think, isn't it?

Apparently, this is really how conservatives think. Or at least how one Megan McArdle thinks.

Beware of Blaming Government for London Tower Fire

Perhaps safety rules could have saved some residents. But at what cost to others' lives? There's always a trade-off.

by

Megan McArdle

June 16, 2017, 12:15 PM EDT

Oh, fuck you! Lives could have been saved, but at what cost? What kind of inhuman monster asks a question like that?

A few days ago fire swept through Grenfell Tower, a large apartment building in London. It’s not yet known what caused the fire, and we aren’t conclusively sure how it spread so quickly, consuming the entire 24-story building. Nor is it known how many died in the fire; as of Friday, the count is at least 30.
What we do know is that there are ways to help control the spread of fire in apartment buildings, such as sprinkler systems. This has the makings of a scandal for Prime Minister Theresa May’s beleaguered government. Her immigration minister, Brandon Lewis, was formerly the housing minister. He declined to require developers to install sprinklers. The Independent quotes him as telling Parliament in 2014: “We believe that it is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the Government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively and to encourage their wider installation. … The cost of fitting a fire sprinkler system may affect house building -- something we want to encourage -- so we must wait to see what impact that regulation has.”

Now at this point, any sane, reasonable person would conclude the column with a call for the ouster of May and Lewis and an appeal to make fire safety systems mandatory in all housing developments.

But no. This is not a sane, rational person. This is a conservative.

People who died in the Grenfell fire might be alive today if regulators had required sprinkler systems. This does not play well for the Tories.

How this plays for the Tories, or any other political party, should hardly be relevant when you are talking about the deaths of dozens of innocent people.

But before we start hanging them in effigy, there are a couple of things we should consider. The first is that, even if the regulation had passed, and required existing developers to retrofit sprinklers into older buildings, Grenfell Tower might not have gotten a sprinkler system before the fire occurred. Regulations are not implemented like instant coffee; they take time to formulate, and further time for businesses to comply. All the political will in the world cannot conjure up enough sprinkler systems, and sprinkler-system installers, to instantly transform a nation’s housing stock.

Really? You don't think they could have complied between 2014 and now? You think three years is not enough time to install life-saving sprinkler systems?

This, however, is only a quibble; even if Grenfell Tower could not have been saved, there are surely other buildings where fires will soon occur that would benefit from sprinklers. Must we wait for those deaths before we can say that his was a bad calculation?
Well, no. But we should wait until we can establish that it was actually a bad calculation.

Well, let's see. . .



. . .  They chose to not do a thing. People died because they didn't do that thing. . .

Yup, you got yourself a bad calculation there.

It may sound heartless to discuss life-saving measures as a calculation. But the fact is that we all make these sorts of calculations every day, about ourselves and others. We just don’t like to admit that we’re doing it.


Consider the speed at which many of you drove to work this morning. I’m sure you’re all splendid, careful drivers. Nonetheless, when a vehicle is being piloted at 50 or 60 miles an hour, the margin of error for avoiding an accident is pretty small. To drive a car even at 5 miles per hour is to accept a small risk of killing oneself and others. To drive at 50 miles per hour is to accept a much higher risk of doing so. It’s a calculation: risk versus reward.

Yes, and that is why our government, back when it was sane, put in rules requiring safety belts, air bags, bumpers, etc so as to minimize the risk.  Also we have speed limits, licensing requirements, and police and highway patrol to enforce safety by ticketing those who drive in an unsafe manner. Does this eliminate risk? Of course not. But at least we're trying. At least we're not saying "I think the seat belt manufacturers should just try to encourage automakers to install their product. and convince motorists to use them." Or "the auto insurers should just encourage drivers to maintain a safe speed."  We don't let the car companies decide whether or not they want to spend the extra few bucks to include safety features.

In the U.S., tens of thousands of people were killed in auto accidents last year. We could probably eliminate most of those deaths if we simply made sure that no one ever piloted their personal vehicle above some prudent speed -- say, 25 mph -- which would reduce both the likelihood of crashes occurring, and the damage any crashes would do.

Are you willing to make that trade-off? To avert 40,000 deaths a year, all you have to do is move closer to work, take public transportation (where available), or spend a lot more time in the car.
Americans have made that choice: Nope, not worth it. We are manifestly not willing to exchange personal convenience for lower auto fatalities. Nor, as far as I am aware, is anyone anywhere else. Government sets much higher speed limits -- speeds that are still quite deadly! -- and most drivers opt for even deadlier speeds. Every speeding driver knows, at some level, that what they’re doing is dangerous; they simply care more about what the boss will say when they’re late than they do about the increased risk of killing other people.

Which is why those decisions should not be left up to individuals. That's why we have traffic laws. Are they enough to keep us safe? No. Of course not. But they do a hell of a lot better job than letting every motorist decide for himself what his speed should be or how closely he should be allowed to follow the car in front of him, or whether to use turn signals, etc.

Now, I won’t defend the folks who go 90 in a 50 mph zone.  But in less extreme cases, the broader calculation is probably correct. Auto accidents cost lives. But automobile transport has also saved a lot of lives, by enabling the economic growth that has made us richer and healthier.

Um, source?
On what are you basing that claim?
And would our economy be hurt in some way by lowering speed limits?  Or if more people started taking trains and buses to work?
And how does economic growth make us healthier? Especially if that growth is tied to CO-spewing automobiles?

When the cost is as personal, as glaring and obvious, as restricting every car to a snail’s pace, we can see that not all safety trade-offs are worth it. However, when the cost seems to be borne by someone else, we suddenly become safety absolutists: no price is too great to pay.

Ah, the straw man argument. Classic conservative "technique." If people want builders to have to install sprinkler systems, that's the same as wanting them to spend untold zillions of dollars on any ludicrous over-the-top safety measure that could be imagined.

Unfortunately, “other peoples’ money” has a way of ultimately coming out of our own pockets. If it costs more to build buildings, then rents will rise.

Yes. No one is unaware of this. Just like the price of a car is slightly increased by the inclusion of airbags and safety belts. Everyone knows this.

People will be forced to live in smaller spaces, perhaps farther away. Some of them, in fact, may be forced to commute by automobile, and then die in a car accident. We don’t see those costs in the same way as we see a fire’s victims; we will never know the name of the guy who was killed in a car accident because he had to live far from work because rents rose because regulators required sprinkler systems. But that is a distinction for public opinion, not for good policy making. Good regulations would take into account the proximate and distant effects.

Yes, we certainly shouldn't have a common-sense safety rule because of the off chance of a butterfly effect rippling outward and resulting in the death of an unnamed hypothetical motorist! Because if safety measures are required, obviously, the rent would just skyrocket, forcing people to move far away and drive to work, because it's not as if the cost of the sprinkler system would be borne by a large number of tenants over the course of many many months!

Back to the case at hand: Maybe sprinkler systems should be required in multifamily dwellings. It’s completely possible that the former housing minister made the wrong call. But his comment indicates he was thinking about the question in the right way -- taking seriously the fact that safety regulations come at a cost, which may exceed their benefit. Such calculations have to be made, no matter how horrified the tut-tutting after the fact.

WHAT?!?!?!

That's the "right way" to think about things? Worrying about the price tag for saving human lives? You're seriously going to sit there and say putting a price on the lives of human beings is the "right way" to think?
FUCK YOU!






And what you call the  the "tut-tuttimg" after the fact is the sobs of people who have lost parents, sons, daughters, friends that were apparently just dollar amounts on a spreadsheet and not worth the cost of saving in your sick conservative logic.

Yes, "tut-tut" indeed.

And he is certainly right about one thing: When it comes to many regulations, it is best to leave such calculations of benefit and cost to the market, rather than the government.

Seriously? Because they did that and now at least 80 people are dead.  People. Dead. Not embryos, people. Actual living, breathing people with families and friends and hopes and dreams are dead because your goddammned market didn't think the cost of protecting them made sense for the bottom line. 

Heck of a job, Free Market!

It’s possible that by allowing large residential buildings to operate without sprinkler systems, the British government has prevented untold thousands of people from being driven into homelessness by higher housing costs.

Sure, and it's possible that the vomiting caused by reading this column might cause me to lose weight and avoid a heart attack! Anything is possible. Why not deal with what we actually know to have actually happened? People died for the cause of saving money.

And how much do you think that rents would have been driven up by requiring safety measures anyway? According to the Guardian UK:

Some estimates suggest that the additional cost of fitting the fire-resistant product would have been as little as £5,000.

 Also:

. . . in 2012 the British Automatic Fire Sprinkler Association (BAFSA) commissioned a report on the economics of fire sprinkler retrofit in residential apartment blocks of this type. The study concluded that fire sprinklers could be retrofitted with tenants in place at a cost of about £1150 per flat. (source)

 At a cost of £1150 per flat, the sprinklers could be completely paid off in one year by raising rent £96 per month. Or rent could go up a mere £48 per month and the sprinklers would be paid for in two years. If you paid them off over 5 years, you're looking at less than £20 per month increase in rent. Who is being "driven into homelessness" by that?

Grenfell Tower, of course, was public housing, which changes the calculation somewhat. And yet, even there, trade-offs have to be made. The government spends money on a great number of things, many of which save lives. Every dollar it spends on installing sprinkler systems cannot be spent on the health service, or national defense, or pollution control. Would more lives be saved by those measures or by sprinkler systems in public housing? It’s hard to say.

Ah, the false choice. More classic conservative argument. 


Because we all know that there is no way for the government to increase the amount of revenue it has to spend. No, hard choices must be made, whether to spend money on public safety, or to continue following the US into disastrous, pointless wars that cost millions of pounds. I mean, they both save lives, right? Fire sprinklers and fire-retardent panels save lives in apartment buildings, invading and bombing Muslim countries saves, um . . . lives. . . uh, somehow, I think? Right?

Regulatory decisions are never without costs, and sometimes their benefits are invisible.

Yes, invisible. Like you don't actually see buildings not burning down, people not being killed. That's how it works. When regulations are effective, you don't see anything. It's like they say about offensive linemen in American football: If they're doing a good job, you don't notice them. They only get mentioned when they miss a block and allow the quarterback to be crushed or a runner to lose yardage. That's how regulations are. When they work, you don't notice anything. You just eat a meal and don't get food poisoning.




Or you go fishing and you don't catch any three-eyed mutant fish. 
 





I'm not sure you're making the strong anti-regulation  case you think you are.

Weirdo is weird, totally not gay, though!

So my new favorite podcast Chapo Trap House ran an episode last week in which writer Alex Nichols discussed his survey of conservative media outlets ranked by insufferability.

 

One of these outlets I had never heard of is called The Federalist. According to Nichols:

 The Federalist is a strange beast. Rather than the usual red-faced louts or country-club fodder, its masthead is overflowing with young women. Even though the ‘list remains ~95 percent white, women actually outnumber men 24 to 15, a rare occurrence in conservative (and non-conservative, let’s be real) media. . . The Federalist is almost singularly paranoid about threats to the nuclear family and “traditional values.” What are those threats? Well, the marginal practice of identifying as a “dog mom,” for one

Sp I had the masochistic urge to check this site out even though the only thing worse than conservative men is conservative women. And yes, that probably sounds a bit sexist, but I stand by it. It's, if not forgivable, at least understandable when men insist on traditional gender roles and "family values" that place them at the top of the social hierarchy, but when women argue for pre-feminist  social norms, it's as inexplicable as it is sad. Also, Ann Coulter. Eewww!

So anyway, I took a look at the "dog mom" article. I was not disappointed. This was the actual, honest-to God headline:

Having Pets Instead Of Kids Should Be Considered A Psychiatric Disorder

I was a bit disappointed, however to see that this article was not written by a lady-type person, but just a regular dumb ol' man!

By G. Shane Morris

May 9, 2017

 Now judging by his picture, I would imagine G. Shane probably doesn't have a lot of experience with parenting.

shanemorris

G. Shane Morris is a senior writer at BreakPoint, a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s also written for Summit Ministries and The Christian Post, and blogs regularly at Patheos. 

Shane lives with his wife and three children in Leesburg, Virginia.

"His wife and three children?" His WIFE? and three children?

All right, whatever. It's none of my beezwax.

If you grew up with dogs (as I did), you know that something bizarre and sad often happens when a mother dog loses her puppies. With hormones and maternal instinct coursing through her, she will frequently adopt inanimate objects as “replacement-puppies.”

I don't know why that's "bizarre" to you. Let her grieve in her own way.

Anyway, I thought this was supposed to be about human people being the "parents" of dogs, not dog ladies being the parents of  non-dog objects.

Something in her brain is soothed by the non-living replacement, but ironically, this replacement-puppy can prevent the mother from trying again to bear actual young.

Um, I'm sorry,are you under the impression that dogs "try" to have puppies? Like lady dogs decide to stop the pill and "try" for puppies? You think there's alot of family planning that goes on in the lives of dogs?

I don't know, Rex. Do you really think we're ready?

 Anyway, I assume next up is the part where human women are totally analogous to female dogs, right?

Even sadder is when humans do the same thing. I’m not talking about mothers who have lost their babies. I’m talking about men and women, especially from the millennial generation, who have chosen to indefinitely postpone having children, yet still feel the unshakeable urge to parent.

People who have made a conscious decision to not have kids (at least not yet) but are feeling an "unshakable urge" to parent? Why there must be literally dozens of those people!

This urge is natural. It’s good. It was placed in us to let us know that our reproductive systems are in prime shape to marry, build a home, and raise children. As the father of three, I can also say what a joy it is to feel the tug of those parental instincts and fulfill them as God intended.

You just made it creepy.

But for many in my generation who are also approaching 30, children (and the ideal prerequisite for children, marriage), are still out of the question because they’re too expensive, too time-consuming, and might cramp their style. Those nurturing instincts don’t go anywhere, though. A disturbing number of young adults are directing them toward substitutes—not boots or stuffed toys, but dogs and cats.

 What? Is that what you think is happening? People are buying dogs and cats because they really really want to have babies but for some reason decide not to do the thing they want to do because it might "cramp their style?" (By the way, it's 2017. No one has said "cramp their style" in about 40 years.)
 And why is this disturbing? You know what I find disturbing? People who think about the prospect of making children and think "Naw, it's too much trouble," but end up having kids anyway because of societal pressures. You think those folks are going to be good parents?

 I’m convinced that psychology manuals 200 years from now will identify “replacement-baby syndrome” as a diagnosable epidemic in my generation.

 I'm convinced that psychology manuals will diagnose "listening to G. Shane Morris and taking him seriously syndrome" as a diagnosable illness. Not an epidemic, though, because that would require more than your parents and your poor poor wife being infected with this illness.

 It is now commonplace to hear young people my age unironically refer to their pooches and kitties (I’m horrified to even write this) as “children,” “fur-babies,” “kids,” “girls,” “boys,” or “sons and daughters.” Likewise, it’s not at all unusual to hear pet-owners refer to themselves as “pooch parents,” or “mommies and daddies.”

 Yes, that is really annoying. So is the practice of ladies referring to themselves as "soccer moms" or "hockey moms" or "Georgia Tech moms." (or insert the name of whatever college your dumb kids go to.)



 
 You're a person! You probably have many fine qualities. Why must you define yourself by the activities of your children?


But I'm not sure why any of that would horrify you.

Christian musician Nicole Nordeman recently posted an account on Facebook of a couple she overheard at the airport holding a FaceTime call with their “baby” and his “grandparents.”
“They are cooing and gushing and exclaiming ‘well look at YOU, big boy! So big! So handsome! Are you being so good for Nana???’” These “parents” pester their own parents with questions about baby’s feeding, pooping, and playtime, and “nearly collapse with joy” when “baby” comes back on screen for a last goodbye. “Mommy and Daddy love you,” the couple squeal. “You are the best boy! We’re coming home so soon!”
Nordeman says she turned around to sneak a look at this sweet baby who’s so beloved by his parents, only to find…a yellow Labrador retriever.

 Ugh, so annoying! Not really a big deal, but annoying.

How much embarrassment must it bring those “grandparents” to participate in such a call? How badly must they want real grandchildren, instead of pet-sitting an attention-smothered dog? How much grief must they feel watching their child waste her parental instincts on an animal while they’re forced to play along in the couple’s sick and disturbing charade?

 Well, first of all, the "grandparents" seem to be willing participants. Being an annoying dork is not the sole province of millennials, you know. Older generations also have people who take their love of pets a bit too far for comfort.

 And sure, it's an obnoxious display, no one wants to witness that conversation. (although, to be fair, it would be nearly as obnoxious had they been referring to an actual baby. Have that conversation in private, freaks!) But in what way is it "sick and disturbing?"


Well, he never answers that question, it's just taken as a given that people with an overabundance of love for their pets are somehow "sick" and "disturbing." 

I can't read any more of this. I skimmed through the rest, but I still have no idea why he thinks this is a serious issue. I'm sure it has something to do with God wanting averyone to have as many babies as possible, even if you are an obviously gay man who has to trick a woman into marrying him in order to reproduce.

Bad Ads -- AT&T

First of all, are we all just going to pretend that Mark Wahlberg hasn't done some terrible things?
(from Wikipedia: Commenting in 2006 on his past crimes, Wahlberg stated: "I did a lot of things that I regret, and I have certainly paid for my mistakes." He said the right thing to do would be to try to find the blinded man and make amends, and admitted he has not done so, but added that he was no longer burdened by guilt:)

But putting aside for the moment that AT&T decided they wanted a violent racist felon to represemt their brand, these ads are a tribute to Wahlberg's fragile masculinity.

So, even though he already would seemingly have proven his macho bona fides by punching out a bunch of robots when he gets to the lovers on the beach and says somehting about "unlimited romance," he has to toss in the line "if you're into that." Like it's important to him that the viewers understand that he does not go in for any of that mushy lovey-dovey girl stuff.  Like he's afraid that his old townie friends are going to see him endorsing "unlimited romance" and say "hey, Mahky, what are you, quee-ah?" I would bet money that the "if you're into that" line was not in the original script but Marky Mark insisted on adding it.





And then he has to make sure that everyone understands that he does NOT know who the "little cartoon thing" is.  The guy has four kids, no one would think it was strange that he would recognize a character from a cartoon. I have zero kids and I know that the cartoon character is named Gumball. I don't have to pretend like "I'm a grown man. I don't know anything about some dumb kids' show. I'm not a baby!"

Really kinda pathetic.

This is just sad

Whatever problems I have with Senator John McCain, and they are legion, this is just sad. His mind is just gone. He seems dazed and confused and unable to understand why one person could be cleared by an investigation and another person not cleared.  It's time to retire, Senator.

Why I hate the "Greatest Generation."

I mean, I don't hate those people.I don't hate the people who were alive in the 30s and 40s. I just hate how on days like this, the anniversary of D-Day, or Memorial Day, or the Fourth of July, we're supposed to venerate and worship this particular group of people just because Tom Brokaw decided they were the best people who ever lived. I guess what I really hate is the term "Greatest Generation."

For starters, they get a lot of credit for having lived through the Great Depression. Well what choice did they have? The only other choice was suicide. Ad, FYI, suicide rates hit an all-time high during the Depression, for what it's worth.

And it's not as if they chose to live through the Depression. It's not like they purposely took it upon themselves so that future generations wouldn't have to. They just had bad luck.
And a lot of people will say that us modern folk would never be able to make it through a 1930's-style depression, that we're too soft, but I would bet any money that if you had asked Americans during the Roaring Twenties whether they thought they and their friends and neighbors were tough enough to survive a great depression, they'd have said the same thing. "No, we're too soft nowadays, all hopped up on jazz and bootleg liquor, dancing the Charleston with flappers and whatnot." But survive it they did because they had no choice. You couldn't opt out except by suicide.

And they won World War Two. And thank God they did. But do you mean to tell me that they fought any more valiantly, any more courageously than the young men and women who fought and are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you think that today's armed forces lack the valor of the WWII soldiers? To even imply that is an insult to our troops.


And after living through the horrors of war, this great generation turned around and sent the next generation into the maw of Vietnam for no earthly good goddamm reason other than their pathetic fear of communists.


And after having been saved by FDR's New Deal and after having come home from war to attend college and buy houses on the GI Bill, the second they were comfortably ensconced in the middle class, these fine Americans starting voting for right-wing Repuiblicans to make sure no one else could ever get a hand up from Uncle Sam.

And this esteemed generation fought tooth and nail against integration. They voted in scumbags like George Wallace and Lester Maddox and terrorized children of color who just wanted to go to school.

It was this generation that defeated the Equal Rights Amendment and fought every other attempt by women to claim their rightful place in society.

This generation opposed any rights for LGBT people and still does.

This generation knew first-hand the benefits of strong unions and turned around and voted for Ronald Reagan and every other anti-labor Ayn Rand-inspired creep that came down the pike because those damn liberals were giving minorities too many rights or something, I don't know what the fuck the logic was, these were not logical people. These are people who bought into the idea that giving more and more money to the already wealthy would somehow benefit regular Joes like them, or would at least stick it to the lazy welfare recipients or the pinkos or whoever they were afraid of/angry at that day.

And they've learned nothing. They have seen first-hand the destructive results of this right-wing stupidity and they have learned nothing. Now they're retired and they have nothing better to do than ingest a steady stream of Hannity and O'Reilly and whatever other hateful pricks are on TV and radio and vote for a monstrous imbecile like Trump because they think that Mexicans are the reason their no-good son-in-law can't get a job and that Muslims are forcing eveyone to bow to Mecca and wear a burqa and the black people are sucking off the government teat and ny God no one better take away thier Social Security and Medicare!

So fuck this "Greatest Generation" bullshit. And fuck Tom Brokaw.