Quickies

Quickies: Lobbying Congress, Homeopathic Treatments, and the Working Class

  • Obscure punk & fuzz by all-girl bands from the 1970s – These pictures are gorgeous and the songs are awesome. From Alex.
  • How to Effectively Lobby Your Congressperson – “I worked for Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Congressman Chris Stewart (R-Utah) from 2009 to 2014 as a state office-staffer. My full-time job was to listen to constituents and make sure their voices were heard by their elected officials. After nearly six years on the job, I got a good idea of what types of activism worked and what didn’t. I learned that a coordinated effort with a large group of people goes a long way toward influencing change. Here’s how to make that happen.”
  • One of Hillary Clinton’s top aides nailed exactly why she lost – “That’s how the Clinton campaign communicated with voters throughout the fall. Sure, Trump is change. But he’s dangerous change. He’s change for change’s sake that could leave us far worse off than we are today.”
  • Homeopathic Treatments To Be Held To Same Standards As Other Health Products – “In spite of the lack of actual medication or supporting evidence, some products still make claims that they can actually treat ailments or relieve pain. Now the federal government is confirming that homeopathic items will be held to the same standards as other products on drugstore shelves.”
  • What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class – “For months, the only thing that’s surprised me about Donald Trump is my friends’ astonishment at his success. What’s driving it is the class culture gap.”
  • Bernie Sanders solemnly pledges to continue stirring shit in Colbert interview – “Bernie Sanders appeared on The Late Show last night to promote his book, and by all appearances, the fiery presidential contender is ready to start raising hell again. Freed from any need to temper his message while acting as a Clinton surrogate, Sanders was back to challenging the ‘liberal elite’ running the Democratic machine and calling on everyone else dismayed by the election to stand up and make their voices known. ‘People ask me every day, well, what do we do now,’ Sanders told Stephen Colbert. ‘What you do now is get involved heavily into the political process. When millions of people stand up and fight back, we will not be denied.’ “
  • An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways – “Alarm sounds are engineered to elicit particular responses in humans. And yet, sometimes, humans choose not to respond, having decided that the situation is not urgent enough or that the sound is a false alarm. Audio alarm designers seek to avoid this by designing sounds that have an intuitive meaning and precisely reflect the level of urgency.”

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Mary

Mary Brock works as an Immunology scientist by day and takes care of a pink-loving princess child by night. She likes cloudy days, crafting, cooking, and Fall weather in New England.

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One Comment

  1. A few thoughts on the white working class, from someone who grew up in a very white deep-red state (albeit in a deep-blue county that was mostly Indian, but hey, I was told I was white repeatedly over the primary):

    1) They don’t hate all professionals. They hate bankers, lawyers, bureaucrats, the media, and the entire field of ethnic and gender studies, but on the other hand, they have no problem with engineers, doctors, repairmen…There might be some antisemitism there.
    2) The big problem is, and Tom Franks covered it better than I can, basically in 1968, the unions backed Nixon. So in 1972, the Democrats said no to McGovern, relying instead on “demographic inevitability”. (Keep in mind the use of “demographic inevitability” among the Clinton campaign, predicting such audacious gains as Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Georgia, along with gaining Utah via the spoiler effect and Alaska because reasons.) After that, there was the Koch DLC, such as Bill Clinton. I could go into further detail. Hell, I might need to just be a guest contributor.
    3) Most of the deplorables are suburban whites who makes six figures. The white working class just left the presidential ticket blank. (For insight, we turn to Robert Satiacum, who said he couldn’t vote for Hillary, but he would vote for her if it was close. Which brings us back to 2. The inevitability narrative really screwed Democrats over.)

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