Tuesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "pit bull on a plane" and posted in the "Pets" forum. The original poster says that as she was debarking from a regional airplane, she noticed that a pit bull had been in the seat behind her. This caused her to wonder what would happen if the dog had "snapped" in the confines of a small airplane. She asked for advice about what to do if that happened again in the future. This thread was reported a number of times with the accusation that the original poster is a troll. So, let me commment on that first. I can't say whether the poster is a troll or not. What I can say is that she has been creating a large number of threads, mostly on fairly mundane topics. She was also the author of the thread that I discussed yesterday about hiding a trip from a friend. Whether the poster is a troll or just has a knack for provoking engagement I can't say. While I have not read every post in this thread, I am fairly comfortable saying that it is unlikely that the original poster received any useful advice about what to do about a pit bull that suddenly goes bersek in an airplane. The most common reaction was to ask the original poster why she was concerned about a dog that she hadn't even noticed during the flight. In the original poster's defense, she was asking about what to do on future flights, not the one that she had just completed. The second most common reaction was to argue about put bulls. In the pets forum there are two topics that are guaranteed to launch flame wars. The first is whether pets should be adopted from shelters or purchased from breeders. Posters will fight like cats and dogs over that topic. The second is pit bulls,. There are posters who detest pit bulls, considering them to be unreasonably dangerous. In fact, one of the main arguments against adopting from a shelter is that many of the dogs are at least part pit bull. There was actually a thread in which a poster attempted to document attacks by pit bulls. The thread reached 23 pages before I locked it. I locked it because a pro-pit bull poster kept posting off-topic posts which the anti-pit bull poster would report. There was a constant cycle of anti-put bull post, off-topic post, and then a report to me resulting in my removing the post. This went on long enough that I got tired of it. In the case of this thread, posters on both sides of the pit bull debate showed up. The anti-pit bull position is, of course, that the dogs are dangerous and should be banned. None of these posters would want to be on an airplane with a pit bull and they don't think pit bulls should be allowed on airplanes. They would ask to move or leave the plane if they were seated near one. The pro-pit bull position is that it is not the dogs but the owners who are the problem. In the case of this dog — which most of the pro-pit bull posters don't believe even existed because they consider the original poster to be a troll — the dog was very well behaved and not a threat to anyone. The dog obviously had a good owner. Any behavioral issues with a pit bull are the fault of the owner rather than the breed, these posters say. In any case, they argue, dogs from other breeds also attack people. Personally, I believe that if you are on an airplane and suddenly attacked by a pit bull you should do exactly the same thing that you would do if you were attacked by a poodle or a great dane. I am not sure what that is, but I don't think that air travellers need to learn specific anti-pit bull defense responses.

The next most active thread yesterday was a thread that was also one of the most active back in February. Since I have already discussed that thread, which is about girls lacrosse, I'll skip it today. The most active thread after that was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum and titled, "White House 'Strongly Opposes' Proposed 19.5% Pay Hike for Junior Enlisted Troops". The original poster posted a long excerpt from an article published by the "Military.Com" website. The issue here is that President Joe Biden's administration requested a 4.5% pay raise for all service members. The U.S. House of Representatives committee working on the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) approved that salary increase, but also added an additional 15% raise on top of that for lower-ranking service members. That would result in a 19.5% increase for the lower-ranking personnel. The Biden administration issued a statement saying that it strongly opposed the additional 15% because the administration is currently conducting a study of military compensation and wants to wait for the completion of that study before determining pay increases. Moreover, the administration points out that with an increase last year, this year, and the requested increase for next year, military personnel will have already received a 15% pay increase over three years. One truth of politics is that there is always money available for the military. No surprise, therefore, that posters who normally attack any government spending, constantly complain about overpaid federal employees, and hate minimum wage increases are fully supportive of this pay increase. Conversely, some — but far from all — posters who are normally completely in favor of increasing salaries find reasons to oppose this one. Almost immediately this discussion gets diverted to other issues. Posters argue about whether or not Biden supports the military with Biden supporters pointing out that both of Biden's sons served in the military, resulting in other posters attacking Hunter Biden. Posters argue about money being spent to defend other countries such as Ukraine rather than using that money to support American troops. There is even a debate about who should or should not serve in the military. One poster is in favor of making "fat" kids enlist and another of forcing prisoners to serve in the military. Eventually the thread turned into a debate about the type of warfare in which U.S. troops currently participate. I am cynical enough about the Republican-led House that I would normally suspect a proposal of this type was primarily aimed at provoking this type of opposition from the Biden administration so that political points could be scored. But, in this case, Democrats on the committee also support the increase which was proposed after a Congressional study of military salaries. It remains to be seen how the Senate will react and whether or not it will also approve the pay increase. Notably, despite announcing its strong opposition to the raise, the administration did not include a veto threat. Rather, the administration stressed its strong support for passing the underlying bill. Therefore, if the raise is included in the final version of the NDAA, Biden will almost certainly sign it into law.

Next was a thread titled, "Sonia Sotomayor's bodyguard shoots armed carjacker outside of justice's NW DC home" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. The original poster quoted the "Daily Mail" (ugh) reporting that an 18-year-old armed with a pistol had attempted to carjack a car that, unfortunately for the youth, was occupied by a U.S. marshal assigned to protect U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. During the carjacking attempt, the marshal shot and wounded the 18-year-old. This is exactly the sort of thread guaranteed to bring out idiotic posters and that is exactly what happened. Multiple posters express happiness that the carjacker was shot and one even expressed regret that he was recovering and had not died. Others thought this thread presented a good opportunity to make sarcastic remarks about the District of Columbia's gun laws or Sotomayor's support for gun control. Worse, several posters were explicitly racist in their responses. The quality of discourse in this thread is probably as low as I have ever seen on DCUM. For instance, one poster seriously argues that we should adopt Saudi Arabia's system of criminal punishment which includes public beheading. I suspect that poster would not want the U.S. to adopt Saudi Arabia's gun control policies, however. This is at least the third attempt to carjack a vehicle from armed law enforcement personnel of which I am aware. I'm not sure if that says more about the frequency of carjacking in DC, which has lowered significantly in recent months, or the number of armed law enforcement officers in the District. I suspect that the vast majority of posters in this thread, especially those who are calling for the summary execution of carjackers, don't live in the District. Their idea of what life is like here is far from reality. In addition, the complaints about Sotomayor having security are ridiculous. Multiple posters suggested that Sotomayor has guards because she lives in a dangerous area. But all U.S. Supreme Court justices have security. Even the the justices that live in the comfy suburbs have security. There was also quite a bit of criticism of Sotomayor for living in a condominium in a part of the city that was well below the standards of many posters (again, likely not DC residents). But, as one poster explained, she is living in a perfectly nice area. One thing that I think that the posters in this thread missed is that the U.S. marshal inadvertently made himself a target. It is likely that the marshal was the only person in that area sitting in a vehicle at that hour. The carjacker probably didn't have a lot of other choices.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Health and Medicine" forum. Titled, "Why are people still testing for COVID", the original poster posits that COVID is currently no more dangerous for most people than a cold or the flu and wonders why anyone bothers to test for it. The original poster appears to be almost exclusively fixated on testing. She has no issue with vaccines or isolating if you are ill (that goes for illnesses other than COVID as well). She is just against testing. I am surprised that this sort of topic is still coming up. Those who are especially worried about COVID are not exactly shy about discussing their motivations. As such, this is a well-discussed topic. Moreover, I question why anyone cares if others test. How does that affect them? Needless to say, several posters challenge a number of the original poster's assumptions. Particularly, her brushing off of the effect of COVID. A number of posters explain that the current variant has been fairly serious and posters who have it or have recently had it argue that it should not be taken lightly. Posters list a number of reasons that they continue to test for COVID. Many want to know if they are infected so that they don't give the virus to others. COVID continues to be serious, even life-threatening, to many. I always come away from threads like these feeling very disappointed by the selfishness displayed by so many posters. There tends to be a lot of criticism about people "hiding in their basements" or needing treatment for anxiety because of their concerns about COVID. But those with such concerns really only impact themselves. If they want to mask in public or test more than necessary, who cares? But those who don't want to know if they are infected and don't care if they are because they have no intention of changing their lifestyles are the ones spreading COVID unnecessarily. It is not enough for those individuals to be irresponsible, they won't be satisfied until everyone else is being irresponsible along with them. That, of course, is not true for the original poster, but the thread certainly brought out those folks. There are a number of posters in this thread who are concerned about others and don't want to spread illness to unsuspecting bystanders. They make cogent arguments and provide reasonable explanations. But, for the most part, what they have to say falls on deaf ears. Or, even worse, those responding hear but don't care. The one new wrinkle in this thread is the large number of posters who are not in favor of testing, but are in favor of at least minimal isolating for any illness. These posters don't distinguish between COVID, a cold, the flu, or any other common illness. If they don't feel well, they stay home. If they do feel well, they go out.