That’s totally fair. Although I’m not sure how you figure that the Portland area isn’t a big part of the PNW.

He probably meant to say, “people of color,” but “accidentally” --or maybe on purpose-- slipped up as a signaling mechanism to his base.

That said, I am entirely on board with the idea that “POC” is a problematic term in the sense that all it is, is a socially acceptable inversion of “colored people,” that still draws the same phony distinction between white people and everyone else.

I don’t for a moment argue that there aren’t valid reasons for talking about “racial” categories when it comes to things like diversity equity and inclusion, since those are the phony constructs upon which our society is built, rather, my point is that we need to move away from terminology that supports these phony distinctions, and that as such, using terms that basically mean “non-white,” is a habit we should try to grow out of since they are based on phony bullshit ideas about race that don’t actually have any currency in reality.

Hold my beer…

Burgerville is pretty good if you live in the PNW. It’s downsides are that it’s overpriced for what you get and it’s had some labor issues that don’t put ownership in a good light.

Lol! Those are meant for washing your hands, not for pissing. Although I guess I can imagine a scenario where some genius thinks one is a urinal and somehow the idea catches on. Still pretty funny though.

It’s not a urinal, it’s for washing your hands. I’ve mostly ever seen them in factories where you have shifts coming on and off the clock at the same time so they need to be able to handle a high volume of workers.

That said, I’m not a big fan of the piss walls you get in the UK and Ireland. They always feel awkward to me, but I guess if you’re used to it…

Nonsense. All of that can be true, but the vast majority of casual drug use never becomes problematic.

I think my old man had much the same, or at least somewhat similar thoughts, when he came home from Vietnam. He was a UH1 door-gunner/crew-chief with the 4th ID in the Central Highlands, survived being shot down, was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, a purple heart, a fistful of air medals and came home with a giant chip on his shoulder.

I’m so tired of this trope. It could not be more obvious that they’re specifically referring to “the left” in an American rather than global context. Do we really need to harp on this every single fucking time?

Well, I’m in my 50s and I still haven’t figured it all out. That said, I’m pretty content, so I must be doing something at least somewhat right.

Not really. The real answer is that different parts of the federal government are underfunded or overfunded according to political ideology and expedience. This is a great example; the SSA is underfunded while the military is overfunded which results in clear performance differences.

You’ll never hear a conservative bitch about the US military saying that it can’t do anything right, and it’s like, yeah, duh, because it has a huge fucking budget and basically gets anything it asks for.

Social safety net programs? Not so much.

It’s a common lie. The reality is that red states score much lower on every objective quality of life metric, while having much higher rates of things like violent crime, addiction and suicide than any blue state let alone any of the US’s peer nations in the rest of the developed world. It’s not even remotely close. With very few exceptions, the social pathologies we see throughout the US are concentrated in red states. Blue states have problems too, but they tend to be related to the fact that they are highly desirable places to live.

Especially since those guys are pretty much all lard-asses. There’s a reason why every competent military on the planet emphasizes physical fitness before anything else; it’s because real combat --as opposed to playing paintball with your fatbody friends-- is one of the most physically and psychologically punishing activities known to man.

I am a union member so this isn’t a thing that happens. If management does something unacceptable, we do a strike authorization vote which, if passed by the membership, starts a clock ticking down to strike time and management knows that they are on notice and need to start negotiations.

All of which is just to say that unions are good for workers, regardless of what kind of bullshit you may have been led to believe.