MA and shipping

[David Erickson]

originally posted by VLM:
MA and shippingIs it legal now for stores in MA to ship out of state?

That caught me by surprise. Does anyone know for sure?

My google search didn't turn up anything convincingly conclusive.

TIA.

It is not. From my largest customer in western MA:

"Due to State of Massachusetts regulations, we are sorry to inform you that Table & Vine is currently not allowed to ship alcohol outside of Massachusetts. However, if you know anyone locally that we could ship to we will gladly arrange that for you. Or, we can always charge out your order and store in our climate-controlled storage facility until you can make it to our retail location."

 

[VLM]

originally posted by David Erickson:

originally posted by VLM:
MA and shippingIs it legal now for stores in MA to ship out of state?

That caught me by surprise. Does anyone know for sure?

My google search didn't turn up anything convincingly conclusive.

TIA.

It is not. From my largest customer in western MA:

"Due to State of Massachusetts regulations, we are sorry to inform you that Table & Vine is currently not allowed to ship alcohol outside of Massachusetts. However, if you know anyone locally that we could ship to we will gladly arrange that for you. Or, we can always charge out your order and store in our climate-controlled storage facility until you can make it to our retail location."

My guess about how Gordon's got around it is that they are close enough on the I-95 corridor that they hand it off to the shipping company in the Bronx who then delivers it to me via common courier. HDH has a similar approach out of DE.

T&V is in BFE so that work-around would be a lot harder.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Rahsaan:
Seems like VLM may be slightly conflating Republicans with his FIL and his vacuum repair cousin. Those folks may make your blood boil, but it's a bigger tent than that!

Not really sure how big the tent is. Whatever its size, it's all full of scum.

 

[Rahsaan]

Come on. Plenty of scum to go around and many of them are in leadership positions. But that doesn't mean everyone who is Conservative-leaning is responsible for today's actions.

Without even looking to blame the generic Conservative citizen, it's these elected clowns and other hangers-on who really irritate me, for 'humoring' the Orange Fool and letting it get so far. The Emperor has no clothes, but we may never get the cathartic release of him knowing that about himself.

 

[robert ames]

originally posted by Rahsaan:
Come on. Plenty of scum to go around and many of them are in leadership positions. But that doesn't mean everyone who is Conservative-leaning is responsible for today's actions.

Without even looking to blame the generic Conservative citizen, it's these elected clowns and other hangers-on who really irritate me, for 'humoring' the Orange Fool and letting it get so far. The Emperor has no clothes, but we may never get the cathartic release of him knowing that about himself.

we can't have the cheetoh with a comb-over outa office too soon, but at least his rank cluelessness, as well as his non-existent grasp of the relation between cause and effect, has been sufficient give control of the senate to the dems.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by Rahsaan:
Come on. Plenty of scum to go around...

False equivalence. No one in the other tent has committed sedition or fomented insurrection.

But that doesn't mean everyone who is Conservative-leaning is responsible for today's actions.

Actually, yes, it does: They voted for the Orange Menace and his Clown Car of cruelty and greed. Whether that is what they thought they were doing is immaterial. Sophistry and weasel words do not defend them. They, and only they, are responsible for putting the anti-democratic thugs in charge.

 

[Rahsaan]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Rahsaan:
Come on. Plenty of scum to go around...

False equivalence. No one in the other tent has committed sedition or fomented insurrection.

To be clear, I wasn't trying to set up a good people/bad people on both sides argument. I was saying there are plenty of scum to go around among Republicans, while still trying to say that not all of them are scum!

But that doesn't mean everyone who is Conservative-leaning is responsible for today's actions.

Actually, yes, it does: They voted for the Orange Menace and his Clown Car of cruelty and greed. Whether that is what they thought they were doing is immaterial. Sophistry and weasel words do not defend them. They, and only they, are responsible for putting the anti-democratic thugs in charge.

This is a tough line to pursue. Should we be held personally responsible for all the civilians Obama killed with his drone strikes? What does that even mean.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

Mostly I'm with Rahsaan on this argument and am against tarring every one with the same brush. I also think it's inherently anti-democratic to condemn everyone who voted for someone with every action his leadership leads to. But yesterday's events do make it hard to take a balanced position on things. At very least, every member of the Republican Congress (senators and representatives) who supported Trump's lies about election fraud (and not merely the ones who supported the manifestly anti-democratic action of resisting certification of a reality) bear some guilt for what happened and ought to pay a price in terms at least of their careers, though that is unlikely to happen.

With regard to holding voters to blame, I have an erstwhile colleague in the philosophy department who argues that population bombing of a nation that occupies other nations, murders its own citizens and those of other natins, etc. (think Hitler) is justified since even those people who don't support that nation's leader, have failed to revolt and still allow him to act. Although, I don't believe Jeff is going that far, I'm not willing to accept that France would be justified in bombing DC because of Trump.

 

[Christian Miller (CMM)]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Although, I don't believe Jeff is going that far, I'm not willing to accept that France would be justified in bombing DC because of Trump.

How about a few well-targeted drone strikes? ;^}

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by Rahsaan:

But that doesn't mean everyone who is Conservative-leaning is responsible for today's actions.

Actually, yes, it does: They voted for the Orange Menace and his Clown Car of cruelty and greed. Whether that is what they thought they were doing is immaterial. Sophistry and weasel words do not defend them. They, and only they, are responsible for putting the anti-democratic thugs in charge.

This is a tough line to pursue. Should we be held personally responsible for all the civilians Obama killed with his drone strikes? What does that even mean.

He acted within the law; your people did not.

And the answer to your question is yes, else your soul is lost.

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Rahsaan:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Rahsaan:
Come on. Plenty of scum to go around...

False equivalence. No one in the other tent has committed sedition or fomented insurrection.

To be clear, I wasn't trying to set up a good people/bad people on both sides argument. I was saying there are plenty of scum to go around among Republicans, while still trying to say that not all of them are scum!

Aren't they, though? I'm not letting my FiL off the hook because he said he hated Trump, but voted for him the first time because of taxes (his defense was, "this too will pass"). He doesn't get a pass for allegedly voting for Biden this time. His granddaughters know he voted for Trump. He'll have to explain himself to them.

The thing is, Trump was just personally noxious. A President Romney would have done everything else Trump did except maybe, maybe, lock kids up at the border. He probably would have done a better job with the pandemic but people are still stupid assholes.

So what exactly is the Republican platform besides intellectually bankrupt and empirically disproven trickle down economics, sexism and racism? I have no idea what Republicans are even for. What does it look like for a republican to not be venal or stupid? I'm still waiting for an answer. I guess that looks like the Lincoln Project, but honestly, fuck those guys.

America has been dragged so far to the right that our "left" party would be center right at best in any other OECD country (well, except Hungary, Israel or Turkey). There aren't two sides to this anymore when one party completely abandons truth, rationality, and science. Anyone who votes for that party is voting for those things (with some racism, sexism, and fascism on the side).

I think these "reasonable Republicans" you speak of don't really exist and are at best just venal. They don't care what happens to anything, in fact oligarchy/robber baronism is fine with them, as long as they get to keep what is "theirs" and pull the ladder up after themselves.

 

[Rahsaan]

I don't know how I got to be the defender of Republicans. None of my close friends are Republicans and I can't remember the last time I had a deep conversation with a Republican about politics!

I'm mainly going off what I know about most people being very uninvolved and uninterested in politics. The mobs on tv and twitter and elsewhere on the internet represent such a tiny sliver.

But, I can't claim any deep Republican knowledge!

 

[VLM]

originally posted by Rahsaan:
I don't know how I got to be the defender of Republicans. None of my close friends are Republicans and I can't remember the last time I had a deep conversation with a Republican about politics!

I'm mainly going off what I know about most people being very uninvolved and uninterested in politics. The mobs on tv and twitter and elsewhere on the internet represent such a tiny sliver.

But, I can't claim any deep Republican knowledge!

I never thought you were a defender of Republicans per se, but your response could be read as a bit of bothsiderism.

I reject the supposition that it is a tiny sliver. 74,223,744 people voted for Trump AFTER they already knew who he was.

As a political scientist who looks at things through a historical lens I feel like you are a bit sanguine about all this. Is that a Hegelian view of history? This is a minor blip. I used to think that way, but maybe I'm more like Tony Judt (sorry for getting outside of my wheelhouse a bit and using a popular historian as an example) where I sort of split the difference between the Hegelian long march and real pressure points where the actions of a few can change the trajectory of a society.

I'm trying to find ways to intellectualize what I've seen for the past 4 years in some way that gives me hope.

 

[Christian Miller (CMM)]

originally posted by Rahsaan:
I don't know how I got to be the defender of Republicans. None of my close friends are Republicans and I can't remember the last time I had a deep conversation with a Republican about politics!

I'm mainly going off what I know about most people being very uninvolved and uninterested in politics. The mobs on tv and twitter and elsewhere on the internet represent such a tiny sliver.

But, I can't claim any deep Republican knowledge!

It's like the Necronomicon; if you study too deeply you'll go mad.

 

[Rahsaan]

originally posted by VLM:

As a political scientist who looks at things through a historical lens I feel like you are a bit sanguine about all this...I'm trying to find ways to intellectualize what I've seen for the past 4 years in some way that gives me hope.

I am not sanguine about anything! The structural conditions across the West are ripe for serious social conflict for the foreseeable future!

The combination of economic insecurity and racial/cultural resentment leaves lots of room for opportunistic politicians to mobilize people in nasty ways. It's been happening across Europe for decades. I always said we had the same potential reservoir of support for a Far Right party here in the States, but our two-party system had previously marginalized their voices. Trump obviously changed that.

I have zero sympathy for the racial/cultural resentment side of things. I leave compromising on that front to other people. (Although that doesn't mean I agree with every single aspect of the 'woke' cultural agenda)

But there is a lot of economic pain and layers of disadvantage that apply to all sorts of people, of all colors and political affiliations. I think we can appreciate that without being tribal.

 

[mark e]

originally posted by Rahsaan:

originally posted by VLM:

As a political scientist who looks at things through a historical lens I feel like you are a bit sanguine about all this...I'm trying to find ways to intellectualize what I've seen for the past 4 years in some way that gives me hope.

I always said we had the same potential reservoir of support for a Far Right party here in the States, but our two-party system had previously marginalized their voices. Trump obviously changed that.

Seriously, Rahsaan? It seems ahistorical and perhaps even revisionist to suggest that Republicans marginalized these voices (and Southern Democrats before them). Trump may have encouraged a vast number of conspiracy theorists and white supremacists to crawl out from under their rocks, but he didn't invent them. To me, at least, trumpism and its vile bedfellow, birtherism, appear merely as monstrous, highly visible excrescences on a body politic thoroughly parasitized by the disease of racism.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

What Rahsaan meant by marginalizing the voices, or rather the manner in which I agree with that statement, is that as long as the Republican party represented a range of center right views, it paid lip service to the Radical Right and its votes but it gave it very little voice in its governing policies. One reason for the Trump rebellion within the party was their sense that they had to take it back from that ruling class. In that sense, it is near to becoming that Far Right party, with the third party becoming a breakaway center right party, whatever the two of them may be called. The one limit on that Far Right, as long as Trump represents it is that, unlike say the National Front (or, now, the National Union, I guess), which is actually a real populist party and thus is for socialism for white people, Trump doesn't really back any policies that benefit his supporters other than giving voice to their rage. At some point,those people can potentially be co-opted by a party that actually represents their interests.

 

[Rahsaan]

originally posted by mark e:
Seriously, Rahsaan? It seems ahistorical and perhaps even revisionist to suggest that Republicans marginalized these voices (and Southern Democrats before them). Trump may have encouraged a vast number of conspiracy theorists and white supremacists to crawl out from under their rocks, but he didn't invent them.

Who said anything about Trump inventing racism.

As Jonathan said, Trump has been more outspoken in his support for racist far right ideologies than other top Republicans of the past few decades (Romney, GWB, McCain, Dole).

As I said, these radical currents have always been present in the US and I'm not sure they are any more or less common than in European countries. Until now, the big difference has been that the radical currents in the US did not have their own party and were co-mingling with the center right.

 

[mark e]

originally posted by VLM:

I guess that looks like the Lincoln Project, but honestly, fuck those guys.

Yup. Besides getting rid of Trump we probably agree with them 0% of the time on policy.

America has been dragged so far to the right that our "left" party would be center right at best in any other OECD country

[/quote]
Correct. The ruling Norwegian Conservative party (Høyre) is more progressive than the US Democratic party, while the left would make Bernie Sanders look like a moderate centrist (which he is).

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

What positions does Norway's Socialist Left Party hold that you think Sanders would oppose? He looks like a pretty standard European, non-communist leftist to me, except that, despite the rigidity of his rhetoric, he has regularly shown a pragmatic side at least as a mayor.