A thread for Democrats Only by THGRRI

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Wednesday, November 20, 2024 08:17
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Friday, March 15, 2019 9:22 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump also felt the need to call Obama a dumb nigger that would have flunked out of school if Obama had been white...

Yeah... Gonna need a legitimate source cited for this one.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, March 15, 2019 9:24 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump also felt the need to call Obama a dumb nigger that would have flunked out of school if Obama had been white...

Yeah... Gonna need a legitimate source cited for this one.

lol - irony

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Friday, March 15, 2019 9:32 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump also felt the need to call Obama a dumb nigger that would have flunked out of school if Obama had been white...

Yeah... Gonna need a legitimate source cited for this one.

https://theweek.com/articles/653840/donald-trumps-30year-crusade-again
st-central-park-five

6ix, once in a while concentrate on what is important. For example, Why are you poorly paid? Because of the GOP:

These days, when people talk about the robot apocalypse, they don’t usually think of things like strip mining and mountaintop removal. Yet these technologies utterly transformed coal mining: Coal production almost doubled between 1950 and 2000 (it only began falling a few years ago), yet the number of coal miners fell from 470,000 to fewer than 80,000.

Or consider freight containerization. Longshoremen used to be a big part of the scene in major port cities. But while global trade has soared since the 1970s, the share of U.S. workers engaged in “marine cargo handling” has fallen by two-thirds.

Technological disruption, then, isn’t a new phenomenon. Still, is it accelerating? Not according to the data. If robots really were replacing workers en masse, we’d expect to see the amount of stuff produced by each remaining worker — labor productivity — soaring. In fact, productivity grew a lot faster from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s than it has since.

So technological change is an old story. What’s new is the failure of workers to share in the fruits of that technological change.

I’m not saying that coping with change was ever easy. The decline of coal employment had devastating effects on many families, and much of what used to be coal country has never recovered. The loss of manual jobs in port cities surely contributed to the urban social crisis of the ’70s and ’80s.

But while there have always been some victims of technological progress, until the 1970s rising productivity translated into rising wages for a great majority of workers. Then the connection was broken. And it wasn’t the robots that did it.

What did? There is a growing though incomplete consensus among economists that a key factor in wage stagnation has been workers’ declining bargaining power — a decline whose roots are ultimately political.

Most obviously, the federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has fallen by a third over the past half century, even as worker productivity has risen 150 percent. That divergence was politics, pure and simple.

The decline of unions, which covered a quarter of private-sector workers in 1973 but only 6 percent now, may not be as obviously political. But other countries haven’t seen the same kind of decline. Canada is as unionized now as the U.S. was in 1973; in the Nordic nations unions cover two-thirds of the work force. What made America exceptional was a political environment deeply hostile to labor organizing and friendly toward union-busting employers.

And the decline of unions has made a huge difference. Consider the case of trucking, which used to be a good job but now pays a third less than it did in the 1970s, with terrible working conditions. What made the difference? De-unionization was a big part of the story.

And these easily quantifiable factors are just indicators of a sustained, across-the-board anti-worker bias in our politics.

More at www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/opinion/robots-jobs.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 15, 2019 9:32 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump also felt the need to call Obama a dumb nigger that would have flunked out of school if Obama had been white...

Yeah... Gonna need a legitimate source cited for this one.

lol - irony

Says the guy who can't help himself from constantly lobbing personal attacks and doesn't back up a single word of his with any legitimate links to anything and regularly bails out of threads when he gets his ass handed to him.

You're a real character.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, March 15, 2019 10:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump also felt the need to call Obama a dumb nigger that would have flunked out of school if Obama had been white...

Yeah... Gonna need a legitimate source cited for this one.

lol - irony

Says the guy who can't help himself from constantly lobbing personal attacks and doesn't back up a single word of his with any legitimate links to anything and regularly bails out of threads when he gets his ass handed to him.

You're a real character.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

But did you go to the link?
https://theweek.com/articles/653840/donald-trumps-30year-crusade-again
st-central-park-five

Or to this link where Trump was saying nigger-nigger-nigger since he was a baby-baby-baby? www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trumps-long-history-of
-racism-201446/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 15, 2019 12:24 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Says the guy who can't help himself from constantly lobbing personal attacks and doesn't back up a single word of his with any legitimate links to anything and regularly bails out of threads when he gets his ass handed to him.

cites? lol

You can make up any sh*t you want 6, you can even be superman for a day if you want to believe it.

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Friday, March 15, 2019 3:14 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) was set up after the Great Recession to protect consumer finances. Republicans hated it from the start, and you can hardly blame them. After all, there are two sides to everything, and if you’re protecting consumer finances you must be protecting them from something. And that something is big banks and other financial corporations. Republicans don’t like it when their CEO pals are told that they have to either treat their customers fairly or else risk big fines.

Still, there was nothing Republicans could do about it once the CFPB was set up. Its funding comes from the Fed and its director is independent of Congress. But then Donald Trump was elected president. He couldn’t dismantle the CFPB or cut its funding, but he could install a new director who would simply decide not to open new cases. So that’s what he did.

More at https://consumerfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CFPB-Enforcement-in
-Decline.pdf

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 15, 2019 6:13 PM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Says the guy who can't help himself from constantly lobbing personal attacks and doesn't back up a single word of his with any legitimate links to anything and regularly bails out of threads when he gets his ass handed to him.

cites? lol

You can make up any sh*t you want 6, you can even be superman for a day if you want to believe it.

Brilliantly put G.

T

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Friday, March 15, 2019 8:46 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Says the guy who can't help himself from constantly lobbing personal attacks and doesn't back up a single word of his with any legitimate links to anything and regularly bails out of threads when he gets his ass handed to him.

cites? lol

You can make up any sh*t you want 6, you can even be superman for a day if you want to believe it.

Brilliantly put G.

T

lol... Your standards are comically low, when you hear what you want to hear.

What absolutely isn't brilliant, and needs no citations at all, is your atrocious grammar.

You are aware of commas... Aren't you?

I've just never seen you use one.

BTW... Captain. Your citation is right here: http://fireflyfans.net/mboard.aspx?bid=18

It's called the RWED in fff.net. You'll find dozens of examples.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, March 17, 2019 12:21 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

“It looks very much as if we are heading into an arms race where the current ban on full lethal autonomy” — a US military policy that mandates some level of human interaction when actually making the decision to fire — “will be dropped as soon as it’s politically convenient to do so,” said Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and AI expert.

When is a killer robot tank not a killer robot tank? When the Army says it’s not. More at https://qz.com/1571597/

It seems foolhardy, but why would Republicans get the idea stuck in their heads to build killer robot tanks? Because it is an ancient ideal: "When robot assassins hunted down their own makers in an ancient Indian legend"
More at https://qz.com/india/1574936/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, March 20, 2019 7:59 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

"No Joe! Joe Biden's disastrous legislative legacy" — Joe liked to reach across the aisle to Strom Thurmond, among others, and tie his name to other horrible GOP ideas. "Despite pleas from the NAACP and the ACLU, the 1990s brought no relief from Biden's crime crusade. He vied with the first Bush Administration to introduce ever more draconian laws, including one proposing to expand the number of offenses for which the death penalty would be permitted to fifty-one. Bill Clinton quickly became a reliable ally upon his 1992 election, and Biden encouraged him to 'maintain crime as a Democratic initiative' with suitably tough legislation. The ensuing 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, passed with enthusiastic administration pressure, would consign millions of black Americans to a life behind bars."
More at https://harpers.org/archive/2019/03/joe-biden-record/

Michael Brooks started his show with clips of Joe Biden making a series of claims about criminals that were not true but sure helped him get that horrible crime bill passed.
Biden starts a 2 minutes:

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, March 20, 2019 8:00 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy. He’s all these things not because the technocrats in his administration think they’re the best possible policies, but because [White House adviser] David Axelrod and company say they poll well.

And [Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel and company say we’ve got to build bridges to the Republicans. We’ve got to let Republicans amend cap and trade up the wazoo, we’ve got to let Republicans amend the [Affordable Care Act] up the wazoo before it comes up to a final vote, we’ve got to tread very lightly with finance on Dodd-Frank, we have to do a very premature pivot away from recession recovery to “entitlement reform.”

All of these with the idea that you would then collect a broad political coalition behind what is, indeed, Mitt Romney’s health care policy and John McCain’s climate policy and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy.

And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years?

No, they did not.

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/4/18246381/democrats-clinton-sa
nders-left-brad-delong

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, March 20, 2019 10:49 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

If you’re a conservative who wants the Trump agenda to succeed, you want to see the administration win court cases. Except they’re losing, not because nefarious liberals in black robes are being unfair, but because too often Team Trump doesn’t know what it’s doing.

The Post focused particular attention on the relatively obscure Administrative Procedure Act, approved in 1946 to limit the reach of various federal agencies.

The Trump administration has won about 6% of these cases. Other administrations have won APA cases about 70% of the time.

The Post explained why Donald Trump’s team has struggled so badly:

Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration at least 63 times over the past two years, an extraordinary record of legal defeat that has stymied large parts of the president’s agenda on the environment, immigration and other matters.

In case after case, judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance, including providing legitimate explanations for shifts in policy, supported by facts and, where required, public input. […]

[T]he rulings so far paint a remarkable portrait of a government rushing to implement sweeping changes in policy without regard for longstanding rules against arbitrary and capricious behavior.

Georgetown Law School’s William Buzbee told the newspaper that in regulatory cases, Trump administration officials are “making it very easy for the courts to reject them because they’re not doing their homework.”

Seth Jaffe, a lawyer who represents corporations, said the administration has failed to deliver. Some errors are so basic that Jaffe said he has to wonder whether agency officials are more interested in announcing policy shifts than in actually implementing them. “It’s not just that they’re losing. But they’re being so nuts about it,” he said, adding that the losses in court have “set regulatory reform back for a period of time.”

More at www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-real-reason-preside
nt-trump-is-constantly-losing-in-court/2019/03/19/f5ffb056-33a8-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, March 21, 2019 12:01 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

"There is no higher priority for national defense,” the Pentagon declared last year, than for the United States to “replace its strategic nuclear triad and sustain the warheads it carries.” In plain English, this means spending an estimated $1.7 trillion to rebuild every component of the US nuclear arsenal: the entire three-legged strategic “triad” of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and long-range bombers. Military officials claim the existing force has become obsolete and inflexible, and thus unable to deter potential adversaries. In order to eliminate any doubt that America has the will and the capacity to wreak catastrophic retribution, they argue, we need to replace our current atomic weapons with even more terrifying ones. “To remain effective [as a deterrent force],” explained then–Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in February 2018, “we must recapitalize our Cold War legacy nuclear forces.”

“Recapitalize,” “modernize,” “replace”: These are the anodyne terms being used by the Pentagon and the Trump administration to describe their exorbitant plans to overhaul America’s nuclear arsenal. With great-power conflict now the defining theme in US military strategy, the administration seeks weapons that can overawe Russia and China. At the same time, White House officials—led by National Security Adviser John Bolton—seek to extinguish any remaining arms-control agreements that might constrain US arms-acquisition efforts. Bolton has already orchestrated the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which covers short- and medium-range missiles, and has reportedly set his sights on scuttling the last remaining curb on intercontinental weapons, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), when it comes up for renewal in 2021.

Refurbishing the nuclear arsenal and exiting arms-control agreements are all part of a White House effort to restore the coercive power of the US stockpile. In 2009, President Barack Obama proclaimed his intent to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” and the following year he signed the New START agreement with Russia, resulting in a 50 percent reduction in the number of deployed US warheads.

While bringing relief to those of us who feared the devastating consequences of nuclear war, the move provoked dismay among hawkish Republicans and military leaders who view nuclear arms as the ultimate tool of national power.

More at www.thenation.com/article/us-nuclear-arsenal-triad/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 22, 2019 7:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

An expert explains why the US struggles with modern wars.
www.vox.com/2018/2/15/17007678/syria-trump-war-win-interview

Dominic Tierney: At the heart of the Obama doctrine was “no more Iraq War.” And yet he basically made the same mistake in Libya, where there was very little planning for what would occur after Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011. In fact, Obama went on the record saying that the Libya intervention was his worst mistake a president.

We don’t learn very well from history. Presidents convince themselves that the next time will be different. The lesson Obama took from Iraq was not to allow any US ground forces to get involved in nation-building. Since Obama was willing to support regime change, the end result was going to be the overthrow of Qaddafi with no real plan to stabilize Libya. If a thoughtful president like Obama — who was very cognizant of the errors of Iraq — can do that, it suggests that any president would be capable of doing that.

Alex Ward: It seems like one of the problems is that we’re involving ourselves in these wars with little preparation. How do we solve that?

Dominic Tierney: We need better language training, cultural training, more resources for special forces — and that would mean less money spent on nuclear attack submarines, for example.

Alex Ward: But then there’s another problem: Sometimes groups like ISIS arise, and US leaders and many Americans want the military to take them out. So when the president is faced with the option to target a group like ISIS with airpower, some would argue that it’s better, politically, to do that.

Dominic Tierney: The US doesn’t think several moves ahead. The US military is good at taking out bad guys. But the removal of the bad guy creates a power vacuum, and that power vacuum is filled by somebody else.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, March 25, 2019 12:16 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

How flexible should constitutions be?

In 1947, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote to a member of India’s drafting committee, Sir Benegal Narsing Rau, advising him to delete references to “the due process of law” from the working draft of the Constitution of India.

Justice Frankfurter’s logic was simple. In the so-called ‘Lochner era’ (1897-1937), the US Supreme Court, by utilizing its power of judicial review, had often struck down social welfare legislation enacted by a busy US legislature. The legislature’s social welfare programs were responses to the needs of an economically desperate polity; the court answered by reasserting the needs of the ‘business class’ and the ‘haves’. Such inclinations were arrested only by the ‘switch in time that saved nine’.

That was how Thomas Reed Powell of the Harvard Law School characterized the US Supreme Court’s reversal of its rulings in this domain in the face of President Franklin Roosevelt’s threat to place additional judges more sympathetic to his legislative initiatives on the Supreme Court. Politics, in other words, compelled a historic constitutional transformation.

The first version of the due process clause in the constitution of India had read: ‘Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty and property without due process of law.’ Soon, the word ‘property’ was deleted. Moreover, to prevent the broad interpretation of ‘liberty’ that the US Supreme Court had shown in Lochner v New York, when it had struck down minimum-wage legislation, ‘liberty’ was qualified as ‘personal liberty’—not corporate. Lastly, to minimise the expressive impact of “due process of law,” that phrase was replaced by “procedure established by law.”

Finally, Article 21 of the Constitution of India read: ‘No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.’ India’s land reforms went through partially helping a newly independent democracy, the world’s largest, move beyond feudalism.

More at https://qz.com/india/1579673/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, March 27, 2019 6:19 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Michelle Obama's best-selling memoir, "Becoming," has sold nearly 10 million copies, the parent company of publisher Penguin Random House announced Tuesday.

The candid memoir, released in November, quickly became a best-seller and is one of the most popular books of the decade.

"We believe this could be the most successful memoir in history," said Thomas Rabe, the chief executive of Bertelsmann, a parent company of Penguin Random House, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The book had the longest streak at No. 1 for any book since "Fifty Shades of Grey" came out in 2012, according to Amazon.

www.cnn.com/2019/03/26/politics/michelle-obama-memoir-10-million-copie
s/index.html

I’m looking forward to Melania Trump’s book, but in the meantime, here is Michelle Obama’s:

Becoming by Michelle Obama (.epub)
https://1337x.to/torrent/3379919/Becoming-by-Michelle-Obama-epub/

March 2017
When I was a kid, my aspirations were simple. I wanted a dog. I wanted a house that had stairs in it—two floors for one family. I wanted, for some reason, a four-door station wagon instead of the two-door Buick that was my father’s pride and joy. I used to tell people that when I grew up, I was going to be a pediatrician. Why? Because I loved being around little kids and I quickly learned that it was a pleasing answer for adults to hear. Oh, a doctor! What a good choice! In those days, I wore pigtails and bossed my older brother around and managed, always and no matter what, to get As at school. I was ambitious, though I didn’t know exactly what I was shooting for. Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.

So far in my life, I’ve been a lawyer. I’ve been a vice president at a hospital and the director of a nonprofit that helps young people build meaningful careers. I’ve been a working-class black student at a fancy mostly white college. I’ve been the only woman, the only African American, in all sorts of rooms. I’ve been a bride, a stressed-out new mother, a daughter torn up by grief. And until recently, I was the First Lady of the United States of America—a job that’s not officially a job, but that nonetheless has given me a platform like nothing I could have imagined. It challenged me and humbled me, lifted me up and shrank me down, sometimes all at once. I’m just beginning to process what took place over these last years—from the moment in 2006 when my husband first started talking about running for president to the cold morning this winter when I climbed into a limo with Melania Trump, accompanying her to her husband’s inauguration. It’s been quite a ride.

When you’re First Lady, America shows itself to you in its extremes. I’ve been to fund-raisers in private homes that look more like art museums, houses where people own bathtubs made from gemstones. I’ve visited families who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and were tearful and grateful just to have a working refrigerator and stove. I’ve encountered people I find to be shallow and hypocritical and others—teachers and military spouses and so many more—whose spirits are so deep and strong it’s astonishing. And I’ve met kids—lots of them, all over the world—who crack me up and fill me with hope and who blessedly manage to forget about my title once we start rooting around in the dirt of a garden.

Since stepping reluctantly into public life, I’ve been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an “angry black woman.” I’ve wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most—is it “angry” or “black” or “woman”? I’ve smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantel. I’ve heard about the swampy parts of the internet that question everything about me, right down to whether I’m a woman or a man. A sitting U.S. congressman has made fun of my butt. I’ve been hurt. I’ve been furious. But mostly, I’ve tried to laugh this stuff off.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, March 27, 2019 8:24 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

8 posts in a row here by Second in the last 10 days.

Just posting to say nobody cares.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, April 1, 2019 9:59 AM

THG

Erdogan loses control of Turkish capital in local elections setback

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/erdogan-loses-control-of-turkish-
capital-in-local-elections-setback/ar-BBVtM9z?ocid=spartanntp

T

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Tuesday, April 2, 2019 6:55 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Joe Biden’s Creepiness Problem

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 2, 2019 9:32 AM

THG

I think Joe may not run. He should have run last time.

T

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Thursday, April 4, 2019 6:58 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

We asked our sample two questions about why they think some people are rich and other people are poor.

The differences between the parties was stark. Fully 93 percent of Democrats said the poor lack opportunity, while 77 percent of Republicans said they lack initiative; 83 percent of Republicans said rich people work harder, while just 9 percent of Democrats said that. Independents supported the Democratic position on both questions: They said the poor lack opportunity by 58-42 and that the rich have advantages of birth by 61-39.

When asked how much of the wealth the top 1 percent should hold, a plurality of 26 percent of our sample said 20 percent. (The real number is 90 percent.) Personally, I am striving to make that number larger than 90 -- I'm going for 99% of all American wealth to the richest 1%. I'm not seeing any real, tangible resistance to my arbitrary goal, except from the Democratic Party.

Much more at https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/52/the-democracy-poll-americans-
and-the-economy/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, April 4, 2019 8:33 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Personally, I am striving to make that number larger than 90 -- I'm going for 99% of all American wealth to the richest 1%. I'm not seeing any real, tangible resistance to my arbitrary goal, except from the Democratic Party.

Science would argue with you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, April 4, 2019 11:49 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

After Obama, Democrats need a new theory of change. Pete Buttigieg thinks he’s got it.

The central lesson of Obama’s presidency, Buttigieg argues, is that “any decisions that are based on an assumption of good faith by Republicans in the Senate will be defeated.” The hope that you can pass laws through bipartisan compromise is dead. And that means governance is consistently, reliably failing to solve people’s problems, which is in turn radicalizing them against government itself.

“You can only go so long with this divergence that we have between the center of the American people and the center of the American Congress,” Buttigieg says. “Donald Trump was not exactly a corrective, but he was a consequence of the fact that people watched their government drifting further and further away from them in terms of what it would deliver.”

Buttigieg’s response — one that you also hear from 2020 hopefuls Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Gov. Jay Inslee — is to restructure government so that popular majorities translate more cleanly into governing majorities. He’s discussed eliminating the Electoral College, scrapping the filibuster, and remaking the Supreme Court so each party nominates the same number of justices and vacancies become less “apocalyptic.”

There’s nothing new about a Democratic candidate promising to fix the system. Obama ran on similar themes in 2008. House Democrats opened their session by passing a sweeping package of good-government reforms. But once Democrats take power, concrete policy change, with the immediate benefits it promises, tends to win out over the abstractions of procedural reform. It’s easier to run for reelection bragging about a tax cut than about weakening the Electoral College.

Obama’s presidency, in this respect, was typical. Once he was elected — and understandably, given the economic freefall — fixing the system took a back seat to moving legislation through the system. Obama stabilized the financial sector and expanded health insurance to tens of millions of people, but he left the corrupting influence money plays in our politics untouched.

What surprised me while talking to Buttigieg was his insistence that he would prioritize political reforms over policy wins. “This is the difference between somebody who’s thinking about 2024 versus somebody who’s thinking about 2054,” he says. “To me, yes, it’s worth it because we’re talking about setting the terms of the debate as they will play out for the rest of my life.”

More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/4/18290753/pete-buttigieg-berni
e-sanders-filibuster-electoral-college-supreme-court

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, April 5, 2019 6:19 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Indiana Jones finds Donald Trump's hidden treasure trove of tax returns.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, April 7, 2019 7:32 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Ten years ago, the tax agency formed a special team to unravel the complex tax-lowering strategies of the nation’s wealthiest people. But with big money — and Congress — arrayed against the team, it never had a chance.

The IRS tried to take on the Ultrawealthy. It didn’t go well. The Top 0.5% underpay $50 billion a year in taxes and crushed the IRS Plan to stop them.

The tax lawyer who out-maneuvered the IRS is Charles Rettig, then a high-powered tax lawyer and today President Donald Trump’s IRS commissioner. Enforcement against the wealthy is now the weakest it has ever been.

More at www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-ser
vice-global-high-wealth-audits

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, April 8, 2019 6:14 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

What’s wrong with letting wealthy people solve the world’s problems?

There are strict limits to the kind of solutions that powerful “change makers” will entertain. They don’t want to pay higher wages or taxes or sell better products.

See, for example, Jeff Bezos’s recent behavior. Last June, the Amazon founder and richest man in the world — who has been widely criticized for underpaying workers — resisted a tax on major businesses in Seattle that would fund affordable housing, threatening to cease construction on new building in the company’s hometown. The city walked back the tax. Then Bezos announced in September that he would pledge $2 billion to supporting organizations that address homelessness and preschool education. In this way, the founder gets to deduct his charitable donation, shirk paying additional business taxes, and come out looking like a generous fellow and responsible citizen.

He wins. Society loses.

A 40-year narrative of business people and entrepreneurs as social geniuses is crashing because US president Donald Trump has flamboyantly discredited the idea that a businessman might be especially equipped to run government.

More at https://qz.com/1586242/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, April 8, 2019 9:38 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, April 9, 2019 6:02 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

It’s been more than half a century since Republicans were willing to cross the aisle to vote for progressive legislation. So here’s the only theory of change that matters:

1) Get a Democratic majority in both houses.

2) Ditch the filibuster.

3) Pass whatever legislation is acceptable to the 51st most liberal senator.

All you have to do is take a look at the past and ask what Democrats needed to pass big liberal legislation and the answer suddenly becomes easy: big Democratic majorities in Congress. That’s it. It’s what made the New Deal possible, the Great Society possible, and Obamacare possible. Its lack is what killed Bill Clinton’s health care plan. There are, it’s true, a few counterexamples of big things that were passed on a bipartisan basis: the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, ADA, the 1986 tax reform, and a handful of others. However, nearly all of these were passed under Republican presidents and all of them were passed more than 30 years ago.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/theory-of-change-is-disarmingly
-simple/

www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-fury-and-failure-of-donald-
trump-w444943

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 9, 2019 10:06 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015, Mark Muro and Sifan Liu found in their analysis of the 2016 election results. By contrast, the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country’s output.

America’s political system is structured to advantage sparsely populated areas over densely populated ones. To the extent that more areas are seeing populations stagnate and even decline, and more economic growth is concentrated in the fastest-growing zip codes, political turbulence is to be expected.

“Our Country,” President Donald Trump says, “is FULL!” America isn’t full.

America is growing more slowly than at any time since the Great Depression.

www.vox.com/2019/4/9/18300621/donald-trump-immigration-population-amer
ica-full

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, April 10, 2019 12:08 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

President Donald Trump reportedly wondered why the country’s first president didn’t name his Mount Vernon compound after himself. Politico reports that when Trump took a tour of the Virginia estate with French President Emmanuel Macron last April, he told Macron that if George Washington “was smart, he would’ve put his name on it.”

“You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you,” Politico quoted Trump as saying, citing three sources briefed on the exchange.

The capital city of the United States is named after the first U.S. president. When will Washington, DC become DDT, District of Donald Trump? I hope soon.

More Trump inanity at www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-wonders-why-washington-didnt-name-moun
t-vernon-after-himself-mulvaney-most-dangerous-man-in-dc-senator-says-2019-04-10

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Thursday, April 11, 2019 2:25 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump's sister, a federal appeals judge, resigns amid ethics inquiry

www.abajournal.com/news/article/trumps-sister-a-federal-appeals-judge-
resigns-amid-ethics-inquiry

The statute of limitations likely would foreclose any criminal prosecution, but there is no time limit on civil fines for tax fraud.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, April 14, 2019 8:41 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Roland B. Hedlay Jr. @RealRBHJr
Trump calls Tim Cook "Tim Apple" to "save time". We all do this. If I had a nickel for every time I've said "Mark Facebook," I’d be rich as Donald Russia.

Roland B. Hadley Jr. @RealRBHJr
If $5.6 billion Border Wall becomes reality, Sinaloa Cartel reportedly prepared to counter by investing $56,000 in new tunnel infrastructure.

Roland B. Hadley Jr. @RealRBHJr
Governor Chris Christie would be inspired choice for Chief of Staff. Already soiled by scandal, humiliated by Trump, no future, so could skip those steps.

Roland B. Hedley Jr. @RealRBHJr
To avoid being technically "obese", Trump to use Executive Order to increase height to 6'5".

https://twitter.com/realrbhjr

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, April 17, 2019 7:14 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Employers are pocketing taxes, and facing few consequences.

Millions of employers are getting away with tax embezzlement each year and that won’t change unless employers face jail time.

Americans are often unaware of how much the US government depends on payroll taxes. Employment taxes are the federal government’s second largest source of revenue. The IRS collected $1.1 trillion in employment taxes in 2017 — about 38 percent of all federal taxes collected.

As of 2017, about 6.9 million employers hadn’t paid those taxes.

There are fewer than 100 criminal convictions per year — a number so minuscule, there is little deterrent effect.

In fact, prosecutions of all tax crimes have fallen in recent years, and the Trump administration’s budget cuts to the IRS have made the problem worse.

Part of the reason people owe more money to the IRS is the agency doesn’t have enough investigators. Don Fort, the chief of IRS criminal enforcement, told Bloomberg in October that the agency has the same number of special agents — about 2,200 — as it did 50 years ago, even though the number of tax filers has increased and financial crimes have gotten more complex, according to Bloomberg. (The Trump administration cut even more positions last year.)

The inspector general’s office had urged the IRS in 2007 to focus on investigating the most egregious cases — businesses that hadn’t paid employment taxes in more than five years, or who owed more than $1 million.

The IRS said that was unlikely to happen.

“The biggest challenge facing both our civil and criminal enforcement of employment tax fraud is the significant and sustained decline in IRS resources ... this is a reality that no strategy can overcome,” wrote Richard Weber, who was the agency’s chief of criminal investigations, in 2017.

Eight years ago, the GOP began aggressively cutting the IRS budget each year, and the agency’s enforcement staff has since dropped by a third.

The Trump administration cut another 140 special agents from the IRS last year, and his proposed 2020 budget, for example, would cut funding for IRS enforcement by nearly $154 million.

That would make it even harder for the IRS to collect unpaid taxes, pushing the US government even further into debt.

For about every 30 taxpayers who file their tax returns each year, there’s one business or household that doesn’t even file a return. The amount of money they would owe if they filed is about $131 billion.

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/16/18311366/tax-day-cheating-pr
osecutions-jail

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, April 18, 2019 7:35 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

70% say we spend too little on assistance to the poor.
20% say we spend too little on welfare.

This is a pretty astounding difference considering that "welfare" and "assistance to the poor" are pretty much the same thing.

So how do people really feel about spending on safety net programs? It’s impossible to say. I doubt very much that 70 percent of whites are truly in favor of spending more, but I also doubt very much that only 20 percent are truly in favor of spending more. I guess it all depends on how you sell it.

It’s also worth noting that these responses are completely divorced from actual spending levels. Spending on poor families has increased by about 300 percent since 1973, but the answer to these questions has stayed rock steady the entire time.

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/the-power-of-words-social-welfa
re-edition/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, April 18, 2019 7:41 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
70% say we spend too little on assistance to the poor.
20% say we spend too little on welfare.

This is a pretty astounding difference considering that "welfare" and "assistance to the poor" are pretty much the same thing.

So how do people really feel about spending on safety net programs? It’s impossible to say. I doubt very much that 70 percent of whites are truly in favor of spending more, but I also doubt very much that only 20 percent are truly in favor of spending more. I guess it all depends on how you sell it.

It’s also worth noting that these responses are completely divorced from actual spending levels. Spending on poor families has increased by about 300 percent since 1973, but the answer to these questions has stayed rock steady the entire time.

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/the-power-of-words-social-welfa
re-edition/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Somebody better figure it out.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, April 18, 2019 10:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
70% say we spend too little on assistance to the poor.
20% say we spend too little on welfare.

This is a pretty astounding difference considering that "welfare" and "assistance to the poor" are pretty much the same thing.

So how do people really feel about spending on safety net programs? It’s impossible to say. I doubt very much that 70 percent of whites are truly in favor of spending more, but I also doubt very much that only 20 percent are truly in favor of spending more. I guess it all depends on how you sell it.

It’s also worth noting that these responses are completely divorced from actual spending levels. Spending on poor families has increased by about 300 percent since 1973, but the answer to these questions has stayed rock steady the entire time.

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/the-power-of-words-social-welfa
re-edition/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Somebody better figure it out.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

70% to 100% of Congressional Democrats say we spend too little on assistance to the poor.
20% to 0% of Congressional Republicans say we spend too little on welfare.

"Somebody better figure it out." This is how Congress figures it out:

Whichever political party happens to be in majority in both houses of Congress will decide spending on poor people for the two years they are the majority. But if the Senate and the House of Representatives are controlled by opposite parties, spending stays the same as the previous two years.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, April 18, 2019 1:30 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

When Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked." (p. 290 of the PDF)
www.documentcloud.org/documents/5955210-Redacted-Mueller-Report.html

www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-pm/2019/04/18/the-report-is-out-
trump-tried-to-remove-mueller-426190

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Sunday, April 21, 2019 6:36 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Best Hot Take on the Mueller Report is from 1796 by George Washington

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/20/mueller-report-george-washington-f
arewell-address/

We should pay attention to the fact that much of Washington’s Farewell Address is devoted to a specific warning: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

Americans have almost totally forgotten the relevant subsequent history. But the 223 years since the Farewell Address have proven that Washington’s anxieties were justified. Foreign influence indeed has repeatedly and perniciously warped U.S. politics.

The Civil War would likely have ended in a Union victory years earlier if Great Britain hadn’t unofficially intervened on the side of the Confederacy: The South had a minuscule industrial base and needed the British to build their navy and manufacture their guns. After the war, the U.S. forced Great Britain to pay $15 million for damages caused by the ships it had built for the rebels.

The British manipulated American politics with more success 50 years later, via a covert propaganda campaign designed to nudge the U.S. to enter World War I on their side. The head of the effort secretly told the British cabinet, “In the eyes of the American people the quiet and subterranean nature of our work has the appearance of a purely private patriotism and enterprise.”

More recently, Richard Nixon conspired with the government of South Vietnam during his 1968 presidential campaign to sabotage Lyndon Johnson’s attempts to strike a peace deal with North Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The election was extremely close, with Nixon beating LBJ’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, by just 500,000 votes out of 73 million cast. If Nixon hadn’t scuttled Johnson’s efforts, or if Nixon’s treachery had been revealed, it’s likely that Humphrey would have won. Instead, Nixon took the White House, and in 1973 signed a treaty with North Vietnam on essentially the same terms available in 1968. In the meantime, 20,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians died.

Just 12 years later, in 1980, Ronald Reagan’s campaign almost certainly colluded with Iran’s newborn Islamic Republic. During the chaos of the Iranian revolution the year before, students in Tehran had overrun the U.S. embassy there and seized 52 Americans as hostages. Reagan’s top staff were deeply worried that President Jimmy Carter would strike a politically popular deal just before the election to get the hostages out. The evidence is quite strong that Reagan campaign therefore made some kind of agreement with Iran to keep the hostages until the moment Reagan was inaugurated. As the January 1981 headline in The Onion book “Our Dumb Century” put it: “Hostages Released: Reagan Urges American People Not to Put Two and Two Together.”

The fact that the U.S. government has brutally intervened in the politics of dozens of other countries doesn’t mean that normal Americans can’t legitimately be angry about Russia’s 2016 meddling or the GOP’s response.

Given the unusual circumstances of Trump’s election, it’s also understandable that regular Democrats are maddened by his glee in governing from the far right. His margin of victory was so thin — just 80,000 votes in three states gave him his electoral college victory — that it’s irrational to deny that Russia’s interference, as weak as it was by historical comparison, may have made the difference.

Finally, and most fundamentally, the citizens of all countries have the right to expect their leaders to oppose attempts by foreign nations to influence their politics, even if an attempt benefits them. Instead, the intense factionalism of Trump and the GOP generally has made them incapable of even pretending to care. In a healthy democracy, Trump wouldn’t, even “in jest,” have asked Russia to steal Clinton’s emails.

Most of all, Republicans should be deeply concerned by the new information in the Mueller report about Russia’s attempts to manipulate the nuts and bolts of the U.S. voting system. The Republican lack of concern is exactly what Washington feared: “The spirit of party,” he said, “opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, April 22, 2019 5:51 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

To Defend Against a Mercurial Boss, Trump Aides Wield the Pen as Shield

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-memo-to-defend-against-a-m
ercurial-boss-trump-aides-wield-the-pen-as-shield/ar-BBW9TvI

Cliff Sims, a former communications aide to Mr. Trump who wrote the book “Team of Vipers” about his time in the White House, said he and others took notes during meetings with the president to “ensure everyone was echoing his messaging” when they went out to speak for him in public.

“But I do think there’s also a pervasive sense in this White House that at some point you’re going to have to set the record straight or give your perspective on events that took place, or actions you took — or didn’t take — as the case may be,” Mr. Sims said on Sunday.

W. Neil Eggleston, who served as a lawyer for President Bill Clinton and as White House counsel to President Barack Obama, said taking notes in such jobs can be problematic because it creates a record that investigators or political foes can try to obtain and then distort for partisan gain.

“I didn’t take notes when I worked with either president,” he said. “But I thought that was protecting the president, not protecting me. This notion of people taking notes to make sure they’re not part of a criminal conspiracy, that’s something I had never considered. That’s the reason they took these notes. They took these notes to protect themselves.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 23, 2019 7:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #616
www.chucklorre.com/index.php?p=616

For as long as I can remember, I believed that the trajectory of humankind arced toward improvement. Yes, we may have begun in ignorance and brute force, but I fervently believed we were slowly and inexorably evolving into creatures of greater intelligence and compassion.

I was wrong.

It appears as if the only thing that's inexorable is stupidity and violence. Sadly, Nature or God - take your pick - has designed an ecosystem in which intelligence and compassion are anomalies. (Martin Luther King Jr. said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. He was right about most other stuff.)

Now if you've been reading my vanity cards over the years, you know I rarely end them with words of pessimism and despair. So let me leave you with what I hope is an uplifting sentiment:

While we all know that a person can go mad, so can a small group of people, or a town, or a state, or a nation, or a world. But the madness always begins with one, dark, deranged soul.

Make America Great Again!

1st Aired: 18 Apr 2019

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Tuesday, April 23, 2019 6:25 PM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

This may be a fork in the road for the Democratic party.

At a fundamental level, their only purpose iz to oppoze the Republican party. If they fail to win, at least they tried. But if they dont even try, or do a haf assed effort, they are less than useless.

The Republicanz hav perhaps reached the pinnacle uv their efforts to be the party uv crime by putting a con man traitor in the Oval Offis and are actively partisipating in hiz attacks on the nation.

That pinnacle rests on a mountain uv damming evidens.

The Demz need to pick up and uze the defensiv weponz provided by the Constitution and the law. Subpeona, indite, impeach, censure, sue. Not just wun token shot to be able to claim a try.

Sure, McConnell will block everything, but the constant publication uv the facts will wear down the faith the GoP Propaganda Machine dependz on from the gullible Republican voterz. The flimzy webz uv liez they weave will bekum less and less believable.

The Republicanz will do ANYTHING to win. Teaming up with forin adversaryz provez that.

If Pelosi desidez to make it about 'a pozitiv lejislativ ajenda', the Democratic party will be seen az a blind cow stumbling around a battle field.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com .

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Tuesday, April 23, 2019 8:33 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
This may be a fork in the road for the Democratic party.

At a fundamental level, their only purpose iz to oppoze the Republican party. If they fail to win, at least they tried. But if they dont even try, or do a haf assed effort, they are less than useless.

The Republicanz hav perhaps reached the pinnacle uv their efforts to be the party uv crime by putting a con man traitor in the Oval Offis and are actively partisipating in hiz attacks on the nation.

That pinnacle rests on a mountain uv damming evidens.

The Demz need to pick up and uze the defensiv weponz provided by the Constitution and the law. Subpeona, indite, impeach, censure, sue. Not just wun token shot to be able to claim a try.

Sure, McConnell will block everything, but the constant publication uv the facts will wear down the faith the GoP Propaganda Machine dependz on from the gullible Republican voterz. The flimzy webz uv liez they weave will bekum less and less believable.

The Republicanz will do ANYTHING to win. Teaming up with forin adversaryz provez that.

If Pelosi desidez to make it about 'a pozitiv lejislativ ajenda', the Democratic party will be seen az a blind cow stumbling around a battle field.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com .

Well the problem, JO, is that you could virtually flip everything you said here about Republicans to Democrats and it would be just as true as what you wrote.

The choice for Democrats to embrace identity politics above everything else in recent years makes them a party that a large portion of Americans are never going to vote for no matter what happens.

I've said a hundred times before, and I'll keep saying it again, but I have a long post history here of being highly skeptical of the GOP and even hostile toward them during the GWB years. But most of the things that I was against the GOP for are the very same things that the Democrats do today.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, April 24, 2019 12:19 AM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

You are mistaken.

I'm not saying the Demz are all good, but for every exampl uv Democrat corruption or stoopidity you find I can show you at least 5 Republicanz doing the same or similar.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.7532020.com .

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Wednesday, April 24, 2019 1:08 AM

WISHIMAY

When you standardize the stats by getting annual averages, GOP administrations still have 29 times more indictments, 64 times more convictions, and 24 times more prison sentences. And that was before Trump. I tried factoring those in and my calculator just laughed and said "Why bother??"

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/11/1619079/-Comparing-Presiden
tial-Administrations-by-Arrests-and-Convictions-A-Warning-for-Trump-Appointees

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Wednesday, April 24, 2019 7:30 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Why does the Federal Government not function well, today? We know it can, for a few years during the Civil War when the Constitution was being amended and during the Great Depression, when the New Deal was being designed. What happens to cause the change that goes back-and-forth between functional and non-functional?

What is Trump’s approval rating? 42%
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

What about Senators? 53% are Republican, which is surprisingly better than Trump’s 42%.

42% is not enough to get Trump reelected, but 53% is enough to keep him from being removed.

How many states had slavery in 1860? 44% or 15 states out of 34.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_states_and_free_states

How many Senators were pro-slavery? 44%

44% was more than enough to prevent any compromise about slavery.
But how could slavery end when any change in law for the better would be blocked in the Senate?

How many states had slavery in 1864? How many pro-slavery Senators? 17% or 4 states out of 23.

The only reason slavery ended was because 11 pro-slavery states lost their obstinate Senators.
www.history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment

How many Senators voted against the 13th Amendment? 14% or 6 out 44, which is almost the same percent of states where slavery remained legal.

The only way slavery could end is with 33% or fewer Senators being pro-slavery. Thank the Civil War for removing those pro-slavery Senators. Their pro-slavery revolt got them kick out of the Senate, which made legislative progress possible in the Senate.

There are other occasions when obstinate Senators were outnumbered.

In 1930 Republicans had 48 Senators or 50% and the New Deal would have been impossible even if FDR was President rather than Herbert Hoover.

Then in the next election the GOP had a disaster, mostly because its solution to every problem of the Great Depression was to wait and see if the economy gets better on its own, without any help from government.

In 1932 Republicans had 36 Senators or 38%, FDR could only do what the GOP allowed. But at this point even some of the less obstinate Republican Senators were thinking that waiting for the problems to solve themselves would get the GOP Senators removed from office in the next election.

In 1934 Republicans had 25 Senators or 26%, FDR had what he needed: obstinate Senators couldn’t stop progress although they did try.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_United_States_Senate_elections

Today, America is in a much worse situation than Lincoln and FDR faced at the worst. Nothing much can be accomplished when more than 33% of Senators oppose it.

We are now in a situation where 53% of Senators oppose everything, including impeachment of Trump. Nothing will be accomplished in this situation. It is as decreed by the design of Jefferson and Madison in the US Constitution.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, April 24, 2019 8:06 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Do try to keep in mind that by comparison, Obama was usually somewhere in the 20s and 30s, percentage-wise for most of his time in the hot seat.

Maintaining a 42% even though he has been attacked relentlessly by the media every single day for 2 1/2 years is pretty impressive.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, April 24, 2019 9:06 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Do try to keep in mind that by comparison, Obama was usually somewhere in the 20s and 30s, percentage-wise for most of his time in the hot seat.

Maintaining a 42% even though he has been attacked relentlessly by the media every single day for 2 1/2 years is pretty impressive.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

6ix, look again at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Down at the bottom of the page there is a comparison between popularity of previous presidents and Trump.

6ix, you are kind of right: Obama wasn't particularly popular. He was a little more than Trump.

The bigger thing to notice, which isn't on that page, is that when the most obstinate political party has more than 33% of the seats in the Senate, that party can obstruct the functioning of the Federal Government.

There have only been a few times in history when the obstinate party didn't have more than 33%: The Civil War and The Great Depression. These two major disasters caused the obstinate party to lose elections. Only then could the Federal Government function effectively. As soon as the most obstinate Senators got up to 34%, all progress was dragged to a halt by the friction from obstinacy. It is the way the US Constitution was designed. It is full of friction as was intended by Jefferson and Monroe.

The obvious solution to Trump's tax cheating and general incompetence is to replace him with Mike Pence, but the Republican Senators won't do it because they are obstinate. Same reason why they couldn't replace Obamacare and couldn't build Trump's Wall and a hundred other things they won't do out of obstinacy.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, April 25, 2019 8:25 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

How Should Liberals Fight a Citizenship Question on the Census?

Let’s suppose, as seems likely, that the Supreme Court lets Donald Trump go ahead with adding an obviously partisan citizenship question to the 2020 census. How should liberals react?

1) Mount a big educational campaign telling non-citizens not to be afraid of telling census takers that they aren’t citizens.

2) Mount a big educational campaign telling non-citizens to just go ahead and lie about being citizens.

This is what makes the cynicism of modern conservatism so toxic. The best bet for liberals is almost certainly the second one, but that merely fights cynicism toward governance with yet more cynicism. When does it end?

The Census Case Will Define the Roberts Court
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/census-case-roberts-court-
legacy.html
The court’s conservative wing disregarded the fact that both the original Constitution and the 14th Amendment require the Census to count all persons — citizens and non-citizens alike.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, April 26, 2019 12:53 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

No matter the current political battle, whether it’s NFL players kneeling, Brett Kavanaugh getting on the bench, or cap and trade, the right-wing base is unified and furious. The left has no such machine (and even if it did, it is too demographically and economically heterogeneous to maintain a simple common narrative). No matter how broadly supported the left’s tax, health, or climate policies, it can rarely match the right’s depth of intensity. And in politics, intensity wins.

www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/26/18512213/climate-change-r
epublicans-conservatives

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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