[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Sadly it seems if he would just switch party affiliation to Republican he could stay.

This would have been super helpful 2 weeks ago.

No Family Is Safe From This Epidemic

I still underestimate how bad the opioid epidemic is.

The last photograph of my son Jonathan was taken at the end of a new-student barbecue on the campus green at the University of Denver. It was one of those bittersweet transitional moments. We were feeling the combination of apprehension and optimism that every parent feels when dropping off a kid at college for the first time, which was amplified by the fact that we were coming off a rocky 16 months with our son.

We had moved him into his dormitory room only that morning. I remember how sharp he looked in the outfit he had selected, and his eagerness to start class and make new friends. We were happy, relieved, and, knowing what we thought he had overcome, proud. At lunch, I asked Jonathan whether he thought he was ready for the coming school year. “Dad, I can handle it as long as I continue my recovery,” he said. “Everything flows from that.”

Only three days later, Jonathan was found unresponsive in his dormitory-room bed, one of several victims of a fentanyl-laden batch of heroin that had spread through the Denver area that week.

An addendum to that...

Why Can't Addicts Just Quit?

SEATTLE—Mere blocks from the tourists swarming Pike Place Market, Stacy Lenny pointed out the tradecraft of some of her drug-dealing clients: “There’s Todd with a wheelchair—that’s good camo for a drug hustle,” she said, nodding toward one man sitting on the corner and dealing crack out of his motorized scooter. “Missy has a lot of drugs in that bag,” she said, about another woman passing by.

A 50-year-old mom with short, gray hair and bright-blue glasses, Lenny is a harm-reduction recovery specialist with a program called REACH. The job involves driving around Seattle finding homeless drug users, befriending them, and trying to help them with their health and housing problems.

Lenny and I drove south of the city together, down roads lined with RVs and strewn with trash. Seattle has lately been strained by both rising homelessness and heroin addiction. Last year, a record 359 people died in Seattle from drug overdoses. The majority of them involved opioids—heroin or prescription painkillers.

Working with the city’s most economically fragile addicts has made Lenny skeptical about the typical rhetoric about addiction—that it is a moral failing, that it is a choice, that users all want treatment, that addicts should be funneled swiftly into rehab. At rehab, they might be required to “admit to being a ‘junkie,’ or you detox and might die, or turn your life over to God,” she said.

That works for some people, but others spin through treatment and end up right back on the streets or using again. So instead of telling addicts what they need or where they should go, Lenny listens to what addicts tell her they need.

Eventually Lenny pulled her car over on a dirt patch surrounded by a chain-link fence. The fence was adorned with ribbons in the shape of a heart, along with a hand-drawn sign: Camp Second Chance. Alongside rows of tents and makeshift tiny houses for the homeless, there was a TV tent, a library, and a kitchen stocked with coffee cups and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The camp doesn’t allow drugs or alcohol on the premises—the homeless people who live here decided to outlaw drugs, one resident explained to me, in an effort to avoid the awful violence that happens in non-sober homeless camps, like one nearby called “The Jungle.”

At the center of Camp Second Chance, I met Tammy Stephen, who lives in one of the few dozen domed tents that are lined up on pallets. She was sharply attired in a black dress and Uggs-style boots, and she had a similarly dignified perspective on her living situation: “We’re not homeless, we’re houseless,” she said. “This is our home.”

Our conversation turned to one of the hottest topics in Seattle, one so controversial that everyone—including an Uber driver and a Canadian border guard—offered up his own, unsolicited take when I revealed what I was there to report. Seattle is poised to become the first city in America to open up a so-called safe-injection site—a place where addicts can inject heroin openly under the watchful eyes of nurses, who could then rescue them in the case of an overdose by using the opioid antagonist* naloxone. Even in ultraliberal Seattle, where marijuana is legal and pottery shops advertise being part of the “Resistance,” the idea seems, to many, a little too much like enabling.

“We need to stigmatize the people hooked on heroin who refuse to go into treatment, to save their lives,” Washington State Senator Mark Miloscia, an opponent of the safe-injection facilities, told Al Jazeera. “We need to push people into treatment, with cultural values and cultural pressure.”

To Stephen, though, safe-consumption sites are “the best thing in the world.” If they had existed when her 27-year-old daughter, Emily Hays, was still using heroin a few years ago, “she would have had somewhere other than a Subway bathroom” to shoot up, Stephen told me. Hays overdosed several times before getting clean, and some of her friends died from overdoses.

Stephen had nagged the girl to enter treatment, saying: “Why won’t you quit? Why don’t you stop?”

“I don’t want to feel,” she remembered her daughter saying.

“Tough love didn’t work on my daughter,” Stephen told me.

Also, Bitcoin! But not what you'd probably expect to think about in a Bitcoin article:

Bitcoin could cost us our clean-energy future

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been ignoring the bitcoin phenomenon for years — because it seemed too complex, far-fetched, or maybe even too libertarian. But if you have any interest in a future where the world moves beyond fossil fuels, you and I should both start paying attention now.

Last week, the value of a single bitcoin broke the $10,000 barrier for the first time. Over the weekend, the price nearly hit $12,000. At the beginning of this year, it was less than $1,000.

If you had bought $100 in bitcoin back in 2011, your investment would be worth nearly $4 million today. All over the internet there are stories of people who treated their friends to lunch a few years ago and, as a novelty, paid with bitcoin. Those same people are now realizing that if they’d just paid in cash and held onto their digital currency, they’d now have enough money to buy a house.

That sort of precipitous rise is stunning, of course, but bitcoin wasn’t intended to be an investment instrument. Its creators envisioned it as a replacement for money itself — a decentralized, secure, anonymous method for transferring value between people.

But what they might not have accounted for is how much of an energy suck the computer network behind bitcoin could one day become. Simply put, bitcoin is slowing the effort to achieve a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. What’s more, this is just the beginning. Given its rapidly growing climate footprint, bitcoin is a malignant development, and it’s getting worse.

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin provide a unique service: Financial transactions that don’t require governments to issue currency or banks to process payments. Writing in the Atlantic, Derek Thompson calls bitcoin an “ingenious and potentially transformative technology” that the entire economy could be built on — the currency equivalent of the internet. Some are even speculating that bitcoin could someday make the U.S. dollar obsolete.

But the rise of bitcoin is also happening at a specific moment in history: Humanity is decades behind schedule on counteracting climate change, and every action in this era should be evaluated on its net impact on the climate. Increasingly, bitcoin is failing the test.

Digital financial transactions come with a real-world price: The tremendous growth of cryptocurrencies has created an exponential demand for computing power. As bitcoin grows, the math problems computers must solve to make more bitcoin (a process called “mining”) get more and more difficult — a wrinkle designed to control the currency’s supply.

Today, each bitcoin transaction requires the same amount of energy used to power nine homes in the U.S. for one day. And miners are constantly installing more and faster computers. Already, the aggregate computing power of the bitcoin network is nearly 100,000 times larger than the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers combined.

The total energy use of this web of hardware is huge — an estimated 31 terawatt-hours per year. More than 150 individual countries in the world consume less energy annually. And that power-hungry network is currently increasing its energy use every day by about 450 gigawatt-hours, roughly the same amount of electricity the entire country of Haiti uses in a year.

That sort of electricity use is pulling energy from grids all over the world, where it could be charging electric vehicles and powering homes, to bitcoin-mining farms. In Venezuela, where rampant hyperinflation and subsidized electricity has led to a boom in bitcoin mining, rogue operations are now occasionally causing blackouts across the country. The world’s largest bitcoin mines are in China, where they siphon energy from huge hydroelectric dams, some of the cheapest sources of carbon-free energy in the world. One enterprising Tesla owner even attempted to rig up a mining operation in his car, to make use of free electricity at a public charging station.

In just a few months from now, at bitcoin’s current growth rate, the electricity demanded by the cryptocurrency network will start to outstrip what’s available, requiring new energy-generating plants. And with the climate conscious racing to replace fossil fuel-base plants with renewable energy sources, new stress on the grid means more facilities using dirty technologies. By July 2019, the bitcoin network will require more electricity than the entire United States currently uses. By February 2020, it will use as much electricity as the entire world does today.

This is an unsustainable trajectory. It simply can’t continue.

There are already several efforts underway to reform how the bitcoin network processes transactions, with the hope that it’ll one day require less electricity to make new coins. But as with other technological advances like irrigation in agriculture and outdoor LED lighting, more efficient systems for mining bitcoin could have the effect of attracting thousands of new miners.

It’s certain that the increasing energy burden of bitcoin transactions will divert progress from electrifying the world and reducing global carbon emissions. In fact, I’d guess it probably already has. The only question at this point is: by how much?

I feel terrible about the opioid epidemic (seriously) but I also felt terrible about the meth epidemic. I was even willing to have to sign to buy allergy pills (and still have to do so.)

However I can't help but remember my high school economics which taught me that if there was a demand there would be someone who made a supply. It seems like there is a demand for drugs and when the supply of meth became scarce people found another supply.

So rather than try to track how many scripts doctor's write or the other methods of restricting supply perhaps we need to really look at how to reduce the demand.

Although that is not the strong suit of America. We much prefer to do "wack-a-mole" for the supply instead of tackle the tougher issues of demand.

We could just legalize marijuana, especially for medical use, but maybe just in general.

Hell of a lot less dangerous and addictive than opioids. In a lot of cases it's a much better treatment.

Stele wrote:

We could just legalize marijuana, especially for medical use, but maybe just in general.

Hell of a lot less dangerous and addictive than opioids. In a lot of cases it's a much better treatment.

It'll help, but it's far from a panacea.

To whit - Seattle has legal weed shops *and* a killer opioid problem. The stretch of Aurora Ave, north of town, where there's a weed shop every quarter mile, is also meth alley.

farley3k wrote:

So rather than try to track how many scripts doctor's write or the other methods of restricting supply perhaps we need to really look at how to reduce the demand.

Although that is not the strong suit of America. We much prefer to do "wack-a-mole" for the supply instead of tackle the tougher issues of demand.

Technically we prefer a "whack-a-mole" method to reduce supply because, as a society, we view drug abuse as a personal moral failure and we are loathe to spend tax dollars to help someone we think got themselves in trouble with their own poor decisions.

The moral stigma of drug use is why you have people opposing things like needle exchanges--programs that have been repeatedly proven to improve community health and reduce public health expenditures--because they feel like they enable a drug user's bad behavior. We dislike drug users so much that we'd rather pay more to treat the inevitable outbreaks of HIV and hepatitis than give them clean needles.

A John Hopkins study from a few years back found that the public viewed drug addiction much more negatively than mental illness, which is saying a lot because we *really* don't like mental illness. Nearly two thirds of respondents felt that drug abusers should be denied employment. Nearly half felt that addicts shouldn't be given any access to health insurance.

Theres actually some pretty strong preliminary evidence from the places that have opened up recreational MJ that for at least a subset of opiod users mj can serve as a substitute. I don't know if that's a step-down or a replacement, but IMO even if it's merely a replacement thats an improvement health wise.

The cynic in me says the fact that MJ can serve as a replacement for opioids is the reason the pharmaceutical industry pours so much money into anti-legalization lobbying.

I believe Portugal already solved the drug crisis, didnt they? I thought the issue was, as those statistics show, too many Americans prefer to punish addiction instead of curing it.

Seth wrote:

I believe Portugal already solved the drug crisis, didnt they? I thought the issue was, as those statistics show, too many Americans prefer to punish addiction instead of curing it.

Nope. It's tempting to blame all those authoritarian nutjobs for their irrational behavior, but the truth is, as noisy as they are, they are a minority of both the population and more importantly the voting population. As I said elsewhere recently, American police departments have had decades to become addicted to the revenue from drug bust asset seizures. There is no way that is going away without strong leadership from a non-morally-bankrupt president paired with both federal and state legislation. In other words, icicles in hell.

Obama was the best chance in years we had of abolishing or at least toning down the war on drugs, and instead we got a DEA war on state marijuana legislation, and outrageous c*ck-ups like operation Fast and Furious. Of course by the second half of his administration, he was utterly hobbled by a contrarian congress who would defund any positive initiative he attempted.

BadKen wrote:
Seth wrote:

I believe Portugal already solved the drug crisis, didnt they? I thought the issue was, as those statistics show, too many Americans prefer to punish addiction instead of curing it.

Nope. It's tempting to blame all those authoritarian nutjobs for their irrational behavior, but the truth is, as noisy as they are, they are a minority of both the population and more importantly the voting population. As I said elsewhere recently, American police departments have had decades to become addicted to the revenue from drug bust asset seizures. There is no way that is going away without strong leadership from a non-morally-bankrupt president paired with both federal and state legislation. In other words, icicles in hell.

Obama was the best chance in years we had of abolishing or at least toning down the war on drugs, and instead we got a DEA war on state marijuana legislation, and outrageous c*ck-ups like operation Fast and Furious. Of course by the second half of his administration, he was utterly hobbled by a contrarian congress who would defund any positive initiative he attempted.

54% of Americans have an authoritarian orientation. The people who have an authoritarian bent make up the vast majority (69%) of one of the two political parties we have.

Americans who value authoritarian traits are also a scared, fearful lot. 69% of them are concerned they're going to be a victim of violent crime and 57% think they or a family member is going to be attacked by terrorists.

Authoritarians *love* law enforcement because they represent personal security and social stability (authoritarians dislike social change and 62% of them think that America has mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s, #MAGA).

Authoritarians are completely cool with law enforcement seizing assets because anything that provides more funding to police is seen as good (doubleplusgood if it gives them more resources and doesn't raise their taxes) and they also view asset seizures as something that rightly punishes criminals.

We aren't going to see the political change required to roll back things like asset forfeiture until a lot of Americans stop being scaredy cats who will fawn over any politician who promises to make them safe from whatever boogeyman they currently fear the most. And when I say Americans, I really mean white people.

54% of Americans have an authoritarian orientation. The people who have an authoritarian bent make up the vast majority (69%) of one of the two political parties we have.

Right, that is 54% of white Americans (as you mentioned), and that survey says nothing about their likelihood of voting. And of course white Americans are rapidly losing their majority status. And that is referring to an "authoritarian bent," while strict authoritarians make up about half that number, based on other statistics in the report.

My point was that I don't believe compassion is so much in short supply as Seth implied. I don't think it is an urge to punish addictive behavior that is the problem, especially as more people from all walks of life know someone with an opioid addiction.

For decades we have given law enforcement more and more power to profit from drug enforcement. At this point they are not going to give up that power without a fight. And it's even harder to curtail their abuses when they work hard and successfully to claim the moral high ground, while consistently abusing their power.

BadKen wrote:

Right, that is 54% of white Americans (as you mentioned), and that survey says nothing about their likelihood of voting. And of course white Americans are rapidly losing their majority status. And that is referring to an "authoritarian bent," while strict authoritarians make up about half that number, based on other statistics in the report.

It's 54% of *all* Americans, not white Americans.

I said it really means white people because 72% of Trump (candidate) supporters and 57% of Republicans have an authoritarian orientation and Trump supporters and Republicans are overwhelmingly white. About nine out of ten Trump supporters were white people, a number that was very similar to the percentage of Romney voters who were white (88%).

The survey only included results for registered voters and we know from exit polls that 65ish percent of eligible white people voted in 2016.

BadKen wrote:

My point was that I don't believe compassion is so much in short supply as Seth implied. I don't think it is an urge to punish addictive behavior that is the problem, especially as more people from all walks of life know someone with an opioid addiction.

For decades we have given law enforcement more and more power to profit from drug enforcement. At this point they are not going to give up that power without a fight. And it's even harder to curtail their abuses when they work hard and successfully to claim the moral high ground, while consistently abusing their power.

The opioid epidemic is overwhelmingly a white problem. In 2015 90% of all opioid deaths nationwide were white people.

So while a lot of white America may have a friend or relative who has an opioid addiction that doesn't automatically translate into support for national policies like ending drug-related asset forfeiture.

That's because as with welfare and abortion there's a strong tendency for people think that the only moral drug problem is their drug problem or the drug problem of someone they're close to. Everyone else is weak, made poor personal choices, and doesn't deserve help, especially taxpayer-funded help.

Again, it doesn't help that those three quarters of folks with authoritarian orientations are religious because that layers moral judgements and sin onto drug abuse. It's why f*cking Pence let Indiana get the largest outbreak of HIV since the 90s because he had moral and religious objections to needle exchange programs in areas he knew were opioid addiction central.

OG_slinger wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Right, that is 54% of white Americans (as you mentioned), and that survey says nothing about their likelihood of voting. And of course white Americans are rapidly losing their majority status. And that is referring to an "authoritarian bent," while strict authoritarians make up about half that number, based on other statistics in the report.

It's 54% of *all* Americans, not white Americans.

  • Nearly seven in ten (69%) Republicans have an authoritarian orientation, including four in ten (40%) who register as highly authoritarian. Political independents and Democrats are less likely to have an authoritarian orientation (55% and 51%, respectively). Notably, Trump supporters (66%) are not any more likely than Republicans overall to hold an authoritarian orientation.
  • A majority (54%) of white Americans have an authoritarian orientation, although there are substantial differences by class. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of white working-class Americans have an authoritarian orientation, compared to fewer than four in ten (39%) white college-educated Americans.

(emphasis mine)

Clearly there is very little will to change drug enforcement policy, at least on a federal level. Even on a state level, though, I feel pretty strongly that the influence of law enforcement, their lobbyists and their PACs has more to do with the failure of state referendums relaxing drug enforcement than any vindictive morality of a majority of voters. Those organizations spend a lot of money demonizing decriminalization.

  • Police unions. The revenue from waging the War on Drugs has become a significant source of financial support for local law enforcement. Federal and state funding of the drug war – as well as the property officers seize as a part of drug raids – have become significant supplements to the budgets of local forces. While unions exert more influence at the local level, they have a presence in Washington as well. Every year since 2008, the National Fraternal Order of Police has spent at least $220,000 as a lobbying client. The National Association of Police Organizations has spent at least $160,000 a year. The International Union of Police Associations has laid out $80,000 every year. And the International Association of Chiefs of Police has spent $80,000 each year since 2009.
  • Private prison companies. Private prisons are in the business of filling beds, and they make millions by incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders along with violent offenders and white-collar criminals. One private prison company, the GEO Group, Inc., is particularly successful at this: In its 2014 annual report, GEO noted that it had, on average, a facility occupancy rate of 95.7 percent. One of the largest for-profit prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America, stated in a 2010 regulatory filing that laxer drug laws could shrink its bottom line: “[A]ny changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.” Since 2008, the Corrections Corporation of America has spent at least $970,000 a year on lobbying. However, in its federal lobbying reports, the corporation includes a disclaimer that it does not lobby for or against policies that would determine whether an individual is incarcerated.
  • Prison guard unions. Like for-profit prison companies, prison guard unions also have a vested interest in keeping nonviolent drug offenders behind bars. On the federal level, many prison guards are represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the most politically active labor unions. During the 2014 election cycle, AFSCME gave more than $11 million to federal candidates, parties and committees. The union also spent $2.4 million to lobby in 2014.
  • Pharmaceutical corporations. Retired police officer Howard Wooldridge, now an anti-drug war lobbyist, told the anti-corruption blog Republic Report in 2012 that one of the biggest opponents to marijuana legalization is the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), given that marijuana can replace drugs from “Advil, ibuprofen all the way to Vicodin, pills for nausea – I mean expensive store-bought pills.” PhRMA is certainly an organization to be reckoned with: In 2014 alone, PhRMA spent about $16.6 million on lobbying, ranking it 11th in spending among all lobbying clients that year. And the drug manufacturing industry as a whole poured $14.7 million into the 2014 election cycle.
  • Big booze. If legalized, marijuana would compete with alcoholic beverages for consumers seeking a buzz. Since 2009, the beer, wine and liquor industry has spent at least $20 million each year on lobbying efforts, most of which have been focused on alcohol taxes and regulations. And during the 2014 election cycle, the industry gave $17 million to federal candidates, parties and committees.

Those numbers are just lobbying efforts. They don't even account for money spent on advertising opposing specific state and local referendums.

BadKen wrote:
  • A majority (54%) of white Americans have an authoritarian orientation, although there are substantial differences by class. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of white working-class Americans have an authoritarian orientation, compared to fewer than four in ten (39%) white college-educated Americans.
  • Whoops. You're right. I misread that bit.

    BadKen wrote:

    Clearly there is very little will to change drug enforcement policy, at least on a federal level. Even on a state level, though, I feel pretty strongly that the influence of law enforcement, their lobbyists and their PACs has more to do with the failure of state referendums relaxing drug enforcement than any vindictive morality of a majority of voters. Those organizations spend a lot of money demonizing decriminalization.

    Law enforcement and prison lobbyists obviously have an impact on policy. But they also play into the security and safety concerns of authoritarian voters who eagerly support them because they crave security. Those voters aren't going to support decreasing police powers to combat drugs.

    The point being there's a whole host of interconnected reasons and beliefs--moral, racial, political, etc.--as to why America hasn't followed Portugal in decriminalizing drugs and focusing on de-stigmatizing and treating drug abuse.

    Ryan: We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit

    This is a declaration of war on the American people.

    Days after the senate grows the deficit MINIMUM 1.5t in the next decade, they go after our vulnerable.

    Do not be fooled, this has been the republican game plan for the last 30 years.

    Whatever we're doing now isn't enough. We need to fight harder.

    I sincerely believe that most Republicans feel the only purpose of the federal government is to fund the military and that infrastructure should be left to the states and social safety nets completely eliminated. This is in keeping with that kind of outlook. Whether the hatred of social programs comes from an honest held belief that they keep people from helping themselves or just flat out racism, doesn't change the fact that more people than just the "lazy" or "non-white" people depend on entitlements. Without social security and medicare my parents would be homeless and starving unless I took them in, in which case my household would then be barely scraping by with my income having to support 7 people.

    To be fair, Democrats capitulated on prioritizing big investments when they perused Third Way politics. So it’s not shocking that most Americans look around at what their taxes are paying for and just don’t see it.

    DSGamer wrote:

    So it’s not shocking that most Americans look around at what their taxes are paying for and just don’t see it.

    Oh they see it, it just belongs to the big Democratic and Republican donors.

    Along those lines, saw this news story the other day. It's from over twenty years ago, and the author has some...problematic stances, let's say, but the fact that it *is* from over twenty years ago makes it interesting:

    A substantial number of Americans (as much as a third of the electorate, in some polls) are indeed alienated by a two-party system that tends to present only two options -- conservative Republican or liberal Democrat. But the growing number of disaffected voters do not form a cohesive bloc with a shared viewpoint that might serve as the basis for a third party. On the contrary, alienated voters tend to divide into two distinct and incompatible camps: the moderate middle and the radical center.

    (LINK)

    DSGamer wrote:

    So it’s not shocking that most Americans look around at what their taxes are paying for and just don’t see it.

    Most Americans, especially middle-class Americans, also fail to see all the tax cuts and government bennies they get. Mortgage interest tax deductions. Employer health insurance tax deductions. Deductions for having kids.

    They either don't recognize them as tangible benefits (that far dwarf, say, food stamps) or have come to view them as their birthright.

    Prederick wrote:

    Michael Slager, who shot Walter Scott in 2015, gets 20 years in jail.

    Little other for me to add but Good.

    A cop was not only prosecuted, but also convicted and sentenced? Inconceivable!

    It's still a crock, though, because he pleaded guilty to "violating civil rights" instead of murder. If you ask me, it was at least second degree murder and a hate crime to boot.

    I should also add, as I was reminded on Twitter, the only reason we're here is because Feidin Santana, a Dominican immigrant, happened to shoot the video of Scott's death.

    Donald Trump is turning us into a bunch of alcoholics

    We all handle stress differently. Some people do yoga, some cry to their therapists, some chug a bottle of pinot noir after reading the New York Times on the train.

    The latter is apparently becoming a problem.

    Munchies reports on the rise of “headline stress disorder,” which is causing perfectly responsible adults to develop pretty bad alcohol problems. While post-election stress was reported on at length following the 2016 election, the evidence that we might have a problem keeps piling up:

    Bars and taverns alone are expected to bring in $19.8 billion dollars in 2017, a 2.5 percent increase from the $19.3 billion they earned in 2016, the National Restaurant Association reports.
    Booze delivery service Drizly said it had an an 86 percent increase in orders the night of the 2016 election compared to a typical Tuesday, and other alcohol delivery apps saw the same trend.
    Problematic drinking, which researchers say means drinking to the point of disrupting your life, increased by nearly 50 percent between 2002 and 2013.
    Even before the ultra-stressful campaign and election, our drinking habits were heading in a scary direction, according to a study published in JAMA Psychiatry, which notes that women and minorities are turning to the bottle for comfort. Hmm, I wonder why.

    Donald Trump is not a typical Republican, but even if he were liberals would likely be boozing extra hard right about now. A 2013 study published in the Journal of Wine Economics showed that liberals tend to consume more alcohol on average than conservatives:

    “Holding everything else constant, our findings suggest that when a state becomes more liberal politically, its population consumes more beer and spirits per capita, but possibly less wine per capita,” researchers said.

    The why wasn’t explored in depth here, but researchers hypothesized that “people of a more liberal persuasion tend to be more open to new experiences, including the consumption of alcohol or drugs.” Another theory that appears to be written by my father is that liberals think “government healthcare and social welfare [will] pick up the pieces of their socially irresponsible behavior.”

    LOL. Nope.

    While it’s hard to get solid data on how much drinking habits have changed from 2015 to 2017, the anecdotes in the Munchies piece ring true here in progressive Chicago. Whether it’s drinking more to cope with infuriating family conversations or seeking comfort in like-minded friends over beers—we might want to switch to a mocktail once in awhile.

    BadKen wrote:
    Prederick wrote:

    Michael Slager, who shot Walter Scott in 2015, gets 20 years in jail.

    Little other for me to add but Good.

    A cop was not only prosecuted, but also convicted and sentenced? Inconceivable!

    It's still a crock, though, because he pleaded guilty to "violating civil rights" instead of murder. If you ask me, it was at least second degree murder and a hate crime to boot.

    And the cop that stood by and watched the other cop plant evidence and lied for him still has a job.

    RE: The sexual harassment scandals -

    Had I brought up rumors about Bryan Singer before? Because they've just shifted from "well-known rumors" to "rape lawsuit".

    Bryan Singer, the big-budget filmmaker behind multiple X-Men movies, has been sued for allegedly raping a 17-year-old boy on a yacht, and then using his position in Hollywood to threaten him into silence.

    In the lawsuit, Cesar Sanchez-Guzman alleges that Singer offered to give him a tour of the yacht during a boat party near Seattle in 2003. Once cornered in a room, Singer allegedly forced the teen to perform oral sex before raping him, according to the lawsuit filed in Washington state court.

    The lawsuit states that the yacht was owned by wealthy tech investor Lester Waters, and that the party was attended by a number of young gay men. Sanchez-Guzman states that he was 17 at the time of the party and did not know Singer except that he was a friend of Waters.

    After the alleged assault, Sanchez-Guzman states in the lawsuit that Singer threatened to ruin his reputation if he came forward.

    A representative for Singer said the filmmaker denied the allegations and "will vehemently defend this lawsuit to the very end." The statement said the lawsuit was filed by the same lawyer who represented Michael Egan, who several years ago accused Singer and others in the industry of sexual misconduct, only to withdraw the claims and face a malicious prosecution case.

    The statement was issued through Andrew Brettler, a partner at Martin Singer's law firm, Lavely & Singer (no relation).

    "Notwithstanding his track record, this same lawyer is coming after Bryan again," it continued. "We are confident that this case will turn out the same way the Egan case did. And once Bryan prevails, he will pursue his own claims for malicious prosecution."

    f*ck. No. Godammit. I called it this week.

    EDIT: Wait I got my X-Men directors mixed up. Apparently they both suck