REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 13, 2024 08:08
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Thursday, June 25, 2020 10:55 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

In other words, it was not the book you were looking for.

But it certainly seems to show what I already knew about Bolton and what you should have.

WTF did you think was going to be in that book, dummy?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Bolton, as an author, is a smart observer. Trump, as an author, is stupid and oblivious.

All those synonyms describe Trump, but not Bolton:
unaware
unconscious
heedless
unmindful
insensible
unheeding
ignorant
blind
deaf
unsuspecting
unobservant

Bolton is worth reading for his smart observations. Trump is not worth reading because of his stupid observations and all around lying in every paragraph he writes, especially about business. But both Trump and Bolton are Republicans. It is simply that one them is out-of-his-mind crazy and it is not Bolton.

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




I have no interest in reading either of their fucking books man. Who the hell brought that up.


The topic of discussion here is how John Bolton is one of the biggest pieces of shit who ever lived and he didn't write the book you were hoping that he would write.


You REALLY wanted to give him a pass for his past atrocities. I know it was VERY painful for vox to write that article about his book.


I'm honestly floored that they did. Obviously it's laced with all the agenda driven bullshit we've come to expect from Vox, and they in no way come to the takeaway that they should have or suggest their readers do the same...


But wow... Maybe we've finally found somebody so fucking awful that even Vox can't get behind them even if they have something bad to say about Trump.

I never thought I'd see the day.


Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, June 26, 2020 1:55 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


At this point the best thing that could happen to the democrats and the country is if Biden has to step out for medical reasons.

Other than that, you can tell who the media is behind by what you're not hearing. Those things went quiet, very quickly.

Hunter Biden?

Ukraine quid pro quo?

Tara Reade?

China?



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Friday, June 26, 2020 2:41 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


It would be the best thing for Democrats for sure.

Not the country.

America needs Trump right now. The Democrats cannot be rewarded for their continual and increasingly bad behavior. Nor can the entirely corrupt Legacy Media who's allegiance is not to Our Country.

Biden is a 100% chance of a loss for Democrats in November.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, June 26, 2020 6:22 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Should Biden win, he'd be a disaster for democracy. We might as well just forget about self-rule and sign our souls over to the global corporation.

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Friday, June 26, 2020 6:36 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Should Biden win, he'd be a disaster for democracy. We might as well just forget about self-rule and sign our souls over to the global corporation.

Fiddlesticks, 1kiki. Another four years of Attorney General Barr will change the country far more than Biden.

What’s the most important thing people should know about William Barr? He has one of the most extreme views of how powerful an American president should be.

He does not believe that we should have three co-equal branches of government. He believes the president should be more powerful than Congress and the courts. In his mind, that’s the only thing that can keep the country safe when it is threatened by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse. He believes that is what the founders intended.

I wonder why Barr’s radicalism wasn’t reflected in the commentary when he was first nominated by Trump. The conventional wisdom at the time was that he was a banal establishment type. Why was this missed?

In hindsight, it looks like the extremism of Barr’s views didn’t emerge during his first tenure as attorney general because the president he served then, George H. W. Bush, was a traditionalist. Bush had witnessed Nixon’s abuses and resignation. Bush accepted that the three branches were co-equal.

Working as attorney general for Donald Trump, obviously, is completely different. Trump is contemptuous of post-Watergate norms and of congressional and judicial oversight. Trump has enabled Barr to pursue his decades-long goal of increasing the power of the presidency. And Barr has enabled Trump to stonewall congressional investigations to an extent not seen since Nixon. It’s an ideologue meets grifter.

But the idea of “checks and balances” is literally the basis of our constitutional system. Why does he find it so inadequate?

Barr believes that if you look at American history, it’s been the presidency that has been able to intervene when we’ve faced war or economic calamity or natural disaster. And Congress has dithered and the courts simply don’t have the mechanisms to respond. He really believes this in his bones.

In fact, I just spoke to someone who knows him well, who works closely with him, and he told me that Barr is fully committed, that he stands by every action he’s taken in this administration, from clearing Lafayette Park with tear gas to trying to fire the US attorney in Manhattan this weekend. And this person said that Barr is doing these actions because he himself believes in empowering the presidency. It is not because he’s being pressured or bullied by Trump.

He’s fully committed. And if you pay attention to what he’s been saying for decades, nothing he’s doing now is all that surprising. He’s been calling for tough law-and-order policies for a long time. His reaction to the demonstrations in Washington was nothing new.

When the Rodney King riots erupted in the 1990s, Barr was attorney general for George H.W. Bush. He sent thousands of federal agents out to Los Angeles to put down the riots and saw it as a missed opportunity to crack down on gangs in Los Angeles. He agreed to bring charges against the officers who beat Rodney King, but he complained it was a missed opportunity and federal civil rights charges should have been brought against the gangs as well.

So the idea of dominating the streets, the idea of overwhelming force to bring order, is something he’s advocated for decades. It’s not something that he’s mouthing for Trump. The thing about Barr is that he’s sort of a quiet revolutionary. He understands how power works and he’s willing to methodically transform the system from within. I mean, it’s funny watching interviews with him. He’s very measured in how he speaks, but what he is saying is very far right across the board. And his actions are extraordinary, at times unprecedented, for an attorney general, from dispatching National Guard troops from multiple states all over DC, to setting up a command bunker where he oversaw all of that, to removing prosecutors and pushing for lower sentences for the president’s allies. He speaks carefully but his actions are anything but measured.

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/24/21281485/bill-barr-donald-tr
ump-berman-doj-david-rohde


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, June 26, 2020 6:48 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


I always find articles funny that rely on anonymous sources who mind-read other people.



If Barr TRULY believes something, there should be a trail of statements from the mind of Barr himself that indicate it.

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Friday, June 26, 2020 7:06 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I have no interest in reading either of their fucking books man. Who the hell brought that up.


The topic of discussion here is how John Bolton is one of the biggest pieces of shit who ever lived and he didn't write the book you were hoping that he would write.


You REALLY wanted to give him a pass for his past atrocities. I know it was VERY painful for vox to write that article about his book.


I'm honestly floored that they did. Obviously it's laced with all the agenda driven bullshit we've come to expect from Vox, and they in no way come to the takeaway that they should have or suggest their readers do the same...


But wow... Maybe we've finally found somebody so fucking awful that even Vox can't get behind them even if they have something bad to say about Trump.

I never thought I'd see the day.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

If you want to know what is really wrong with America, read the article "John Bolton’s Original Sin"
It’s not about what’s in his book; it’s about how he’s always framed his decision to do nothing.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/john-bolton-original-sin.h
tml


What's wrong is that either energetically or lazily doing nothing is habitual with most Americans. Oh, they do a lot of little somethings, like write books and talk endlessly in Bolton's case, but it amounts to almost nothing because they are, inside, scared little rabbits, not big and brave like they pretend to be on the outside.

The Bolton book won’t make any difference. The people closest to Trump understand and discern precisely the chaos that Bolton describes. To stop the worst mistakes one must be ‘in the room where it happens,’ to quote Bolton, quoting the musical Hamilton. But to stay in the room, one must engage in the flattery and the loud public defenses Trump requires. In other words, people enter Trump’s orbit knowing his limitations and deficiencies. They say nothing while in service to him, they flatter and pander to him, then they all leave and suggest they were powerless to stop him. They want credit (and royalties) for having had the best of intentions, while perpetuating the myth that nobody bears any responsibility for enabling Trumpism because it’s unstoppable.

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, June 26, 2020 7:13 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I always find articles funny that rely on anonymous sources who mind-read other people.

If Barr TRULY believes something, there should be a trail of statements from the mind of Barr himself that indicate it.

1kiki, that is the nuttiest comment you have made this week. Barr can't stop telling people what he truly believes. He puts it on a government website:

Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers the 19th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society's 2019 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC
~ Friday, November 15, 2019
www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-19
th-annual-barbara-k-olson-memorial-lecture


Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Remarks to the Law School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame
South Bend, IN
~ Friday, October 11, 2019
www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-re
marks-law-school-and-de-nicola-center-ethics


But all too obviously, 1kiki doesn't understand what Barr is plainly saying in thousands of words. When some unnamed person (with Barr's help in private) distills those vast number of words down to dozens of words, 1kiki will make believe it is "mind-reading". No, 1kiki, it is called underlining the main themes of Barr's thinking.

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, June 26, 2020 12:06 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Should Biden win, he'd be a disaster for democracy. We might as well just forget about self-rule and sign our souls over to the global corporation.



At the end of the day, I suppose we need to realize that there is a lot more common ground between us than most folk still hanging around in here.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, June 26, 2020 1:35 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Not really. As I keep posting, and neither extremely partisan side seems to understand, just because I'm against someone doesn't mean I'm for the other side.

I dislike them both, because BOTH of them will take the planet in the wrong direction when it comes to global warming and nuclear threat. And those are my 2 bottom-line priorities.

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Friday, June 26, 2020 2:18 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Not really. As I keep posting, and neither extremely partisan side seems to understand, just because I'm against someone doesn't mean I'm for the other side.

I dislike them both, because BOTH of them will take the planet in the wrong direction when it comes to global warming and nuclear threat. And those are my 2 bottom-line priorities.

I am pretty sure that you are correct about Trump and the GOP position on "global warming and nuclear threat". You are not correct on the Democratic Party and Biden's position.

https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/the-issues/environment/

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

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Saturday, June 27, 2020 6:29 AM

SECOND

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


More Tax Cuts From the GOP

In 1993 Bill Clinton passed a tax increase to reduce the deficit. Republicans insisted it would do no such thing. In fact, they said, it would cripple the economy.

They were wrong. The economy boomed, and for the first time since the Roaring ’20s the deficit turned into a surplus for four consecutive years.

In 2001—and again in 2003—George W. Bush passed a tax cut. Once again, Republicans said it would supercharge the economy and pay for itself.

They were wrong. All we got was a jobless recovery and a housing bubble that wrecked the economy. It produced the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

At the beginning of 2013, as part of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, Barack Obama forced Republicans to accept a tax increase on high earners. But even though the bill passed with bipartisan support, some Republicans insisted it would kill the economy.

They were wrong. The deficit declined and Obama produced the longest economic recovery in American history—one that was still going strong until the coronavirus pandemic killed it.

Finally, in 2017, Republicans passed yet another tax cut. This one primarily benefited corporations and the rich, and once again Republicans insisted it would supercharge the economy and pay for itself.

They were wrong. No — scratch that. They lied. They knew the evidence of the past 40 years as well as anyone, but they sold the public a bill of goods anyway. Why? Because for all of Donald Trump’s bluster, this was the one thing he really, truly had to do. It’s the one thing the Republican Party’s big donors insist on.

www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/trumps-tax-cuts-were-a-disaster-n
aturally-republicans-want-even-more
/

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

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Saturday, June 27, 2020 8:49 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
More Tax Cuts From the GOP

In 1993 Bill Clinton passed a tax increase to reduce the deficit. Republicans insisted it would do no such thing. In fact, they said, it would cripple the economy.

They were wrong. The economy boomed, and for the first time since the Roaring ’20s the deficit turned into a surplus for four consecutive years.



Wrong. That was because the Clinton admin sold us out to China.

Quote:

In 2001—and again in 2003—George W. Bush passed a tax cut. Once again, Republicans said it would supercharge the economy and pay for itself.

They were wrong. All we got was a jobless recovery and a housing bubble that wrecked the economy. It produced the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.



The housing bubble is in no way related to the tax cut.

Quote:

At the beginning of 2013, as part of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, Barack Obama forced Republicans to accept a tax increase on high earners. But even though the bill passed with bipartisan support, some Republicans insisted it would kill the economy.

They were wrong. The deficit declined and Obama produced the longest economic recovery in American history—one that was still going strong until the coronavirus pandemic killed it.



lol. Now MotherJones is just being silly.

Quote:

Finally, in 2017, Republicans passed yet another tax cut. This one primarily benefited corporations and the rich, and once again Republicans insisted it would supercharge the economy and pay for itself.

They were wrong. No — scratch that. They lied. They knew the evidence of the past 40 years as well as anyone, but they sold the public a bill of goods anyway. Why? Because for all of Donald Trump’s bluster, this was the one thing he really, truly had to do. It’s the one thing the Republican Party’s big donors insist on.



Fuck MotherJones and their lies.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, June 27, 2020 8:51 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Not really. As I keep posting, and neither extremely partisan side seems to understand, just because I'm against someone doesn't mean I'm for the other side.

I dislike them both, because BOTH of them will take the planet in the wrong direction when it comes to global warming and nuclear threat. And those are my 2 bottom-line priorities.




I'm not partisan. I'm two things.

1. A huge Trump supporter.
2. I hate 2020 Democrats.


By default, they've pushed me to support Republicans now. I can't believe that they've gotten so bad that I long for the days where I thought I couldn't hate a party more back when GWB was president.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, June 27, 2020 10:02 AM

THG


Jacks one of those loyal democrats who loves social programs. That is, until they are extended to minorities. Then he hates the democrats for doing that and becomes a bigoted republican. Who, try to only provide social program assistance to white people.

T


Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Saturday, June 27, 2020 1:20 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Jacks one of those loyal democrats who loves social programs. That is, until they are extended to minorities. Then he hates the democrats for doing that and becomes a bigoted republican. Who, try to only provide social program assistance to white people.

T


Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.




You're going to have to go back and show me any posts I've ever made that make that claim.

I guaranty you that you won't find any.


And no, giving our tax dollars to people in another country does not count.

I'm a Nationalist. Not a racist.


You're either too fucking stupid to know the difference, or you hate America.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, June 28, 2020 7:58 AM

SECOND

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


From an hour ago: Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
THE VAST SILENT MAJORITY IS ALIVE AND WELL!!!
7:37 AM · Jun 28, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

The Un-President

On June 2, Trump issued another of his minimalist tweets, which said in total: “SILENT MAJORITY!” The great predecessor he was summoning was not Lincoln but Richard Nixon, who used the phrase in his televised address to the nation in November 1969. The speech was specifically about the Vietnam war, Nixon appealing to “the great silent majority of my fellow Americans” to stand with him against the antiwar movement. Trump’s own Silent Majority is neither a majority nor silent — his base is a very noisy minority. But his evocation of that speech is more meaningful than Trump can have consciously intended. For Nixon began the address by raising questions of truth and lies:

“Many Americans have lost confidence in what their Government has told them about our policy. The American people cannot and should not be asked to support a policy which involves the overriding issues of war and peace unless they know the truth about that policy.”

That, though, is precisely what they were never permitted to know. The Vietnam War was conducted through a fog of lies. That sustained campaign of deception — of Congress and of citizens — broke something in the presidency itself. One of the most gifted politicians of the twentieth century, Lyndon Johnson, was shattered by it. Nixon, a formidable operator with a substantial domestic program and a wide popular base, ended up as a political racketeer, authorizing and covering up illegal dirty tricks against his opponents. Watergate was a side-effect of Vietnam.

In 1974 James Mann, a conservative southern Democrat and a member of the committee of the House of Representatives that was considering the impeachment of Nixon for his role in Watergate, explained his support for that process: “If there be no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses. But the next time there may be no watchman in the night.” There is now “another president” who feels “free to do as he chooses.” As Trump told a right-wing student rally in July 2019, “I have an Article 2 of the Constitution, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” The great difference is that the watchman is now a willing accomplice.

Nixon was forced out because Republican-appointed judges and Republican members of Congress joined with Democrats to reassert constitutional checks on the abuse of presidential power. Now the Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. Trump’s wild response to the coronavirus disaster and to the Black Lives Matter protests must be seen in connection with the refusal of the Republican-controlled Senate even to go through the motions of a trial after his impeachment by the House. Unshackled from any notion of accountability, Trump has also become unmoored from any relationship to reality.

The Senate Republicans told Trump, in effect, that he can exercise power arbitrarily. Absolute power deranges absolutely. During the 2016 election campaign, Trump was asked about whom he consulted on foreign policy: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain. My primary consultant is myself.” Freed from any need to pretend that there is anyone else he might possibly need to talk to, Trump is now openly talking to himself in public. He is, often on live TV, communing with the voices in his head that tell him that he is a combination of Lincoln and Churchill, that coronavirus will suddenly vanish, that it can be cured by ingesting disinfectant, that Joe Scarborough is a murderer, that George Floyd is looking down on him and rejoicing.

There is that sense of a spilling over of history, of the madness that, with Nixon, was only revealed to close confidantes in the White House and recorded on secret tapes, now parading itself naked before the world, the embodiment of absolute unrestraint, the president’s unchecked exhalation of hallucinatory gibberish.

www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/07/23/trump-unpresident-unredeemed-promi
se
/

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, June 28, 2020 10:47 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Trump is the president.

Sorry not sorry if that's Double Plus Ungood to you, Napoleon. Or is it Mr. Pilkington.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, June 28, 2020 10:58 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Trump is the president.

Sorry not sorry if that's Double Plus Ungood to you, Napoleon. Or is it Mr. Pilkington.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

For all rich Americans, Trump is double plus good. But for less than rich Americans: “I have an Article 2 of the Constitution, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” No, Article II does not grant Trump absolute power to do ‘Whatever’ he wants, but what he wants is to help himself and me to large amounts of money. I am for that. If Trump wasn't crazy, or it was Pence for President, I'd vote for the GOP candidate just to get more money.

https://hillreporter.com/no-article-ii-does-not-grant-trump-absolute-p
ower-to-do-whatever-he-wants-analysis-41451


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, June 28, 2020 12:07 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Trump is the president.

Sorry not sorry if that's Double Plus Ungood to you, Napoleon. Or is it Mr. Pilkington.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

For all rich Americans, Trump is double plus good. But for less than rich Americans: “I have an Article 2 of the Constitution, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” No, Article II does not grant Trump absolute power to do ‘Whatever’ he wants, but what he wants is to help himself and me to large amounts of money. I am for that. If Trump wasn't crazy, or it was Pence for President, I'd vote for the GOP candidate just to get more money.

https://hillreporter.com/no-article-ii-does-not-grant-trump-absolute-p
ower-to-do-whatever-he-wants-analysis-41451


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




Yeah. We get it. You're rich dude.

lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, June 28, 2020 12:12 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


BTW... Pence will never be president. He's got to be the most boring and silent VP that ever existed, and most people haven't even heard him speak once since he debated Kane.

I wouldn't be surprised if the lead-up to 2024 saw somebody like Candice Owens running on the Republican ticket, and I think she'd get the nomination too.

I would so love to see the first female and black female president be on the Republican ticket. Get Ivanaka as her running mate and they can't lose in 2024.



You guys and gals should really go on YouTube more and see what actual black people have to say about 2020 so far instead of letting rich white people on CNN and MSNBC tell you what they think.

But be warned that you're going to have that fantasy world you've been living in shattered if you do.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, June 28, 2020 12:51 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Yeah. We get it. You're rich dude.

lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
BTW... Pence will never be president. He's got to be the most boring and silent VP that ever existed, and most people haven't even heard him speak once since he debated Kane.

I wouldn't be surprised if the lead-up to 2024 saw somebody like Candice Owens running on the Republican ticket, and I think she'd get the nomination too.

I would so love to see the first female and black female president be on the Republican ticket. Get Ivanaka as her running mate and they can't lose in 2024.



You guys and gals should really go on YouTube more and see what actual black people have to say about 2020 so far instead of letting rich white people on CNN and MSNBC tell you what they think.

But be warned that you're going to have that fantasy world you've been living in shattered if you do.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

6ix, I live in the real world, and I have the proof all around me. The Trump voters who are not rich live in dreams and fantasies while people like me control their real world. If we want to lower their wages, we can do that. If we want to ship their jobs overseas, we can do that. Raise prices? Can do! If we want to fire them, we can and they can't stop us. That is the kind of power that you don't have, 6ix, and Trump won't remind you that he and other of his class took it away from you 40 years ago.

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, June 28, 2020 1:26 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


You, personally, cannot do any of that.

You live in your mom's basement and leach off of her.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, June 28, 2020 1:33 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You, personally, cannot do any of that.

You live in your mom's basement and leach off of her.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

My Mother died when she was 94 years old in 2013. You keep reminding me why you are poor -- you don't learn, but here is some old history that shines light on what is happening today:

More soldiers fought to keep slavery than owned slaves. Why? They were easily persuaded by rich slave-owners. If the poorer Trump voters want to fight to save the property and power of today’s equivalent to rich slave-owners, go right ahead. But learn from the past. If you are fighting to protect the rich, at least get rich Trump to pay you in real money rather than reward you with praise and psychological benefits. Trump and rich Republicans and Democrats will be well paid if he wins. Why not you? (You won't get paid because he knows you'll do it for free. You're that stupid.)

www.history.com/news/5-myths-about-slavery
https://web.archive.org/web/20200620235008/https://www.theatlantic.com
/national/archive/2010/08/small-truth-papering-over-a-big-lie/61136
/

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, June 28, 2020 6:18 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Oh. So she gave you the house when she died.

Whatever.

Nobody cares dude.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 29, 2020 7:22 AM

SECOND

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


I Read (Almost) Every Memoir by a Former Trump Official

Together they reveal the full picture.

https://slate.com/culture/2020/06/best-trump-books-memoirs-bolton-room
-where-it-happened.html


Exposés of the dysfunctional inner workings of the Trump White House have reaped plenty of cash for the book business, but the best dish has mostly come from outsiders, journalists like Michael Wolff (2018’s Fire and Fury), Bob Woodward (2018’s Fear), and Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker (this year’s A Very Stable Genius). Books by former Trump staffers — of which John Bolton’s headline-making The Room Where It Happened is the most recent — tend to be stunted, partial accounts, twisted like bonsai trees by the authors’ needs to make excuses, cover their tracks, and justify choices that in retrospect look poor indeed.

But taken all together, these staffer memoirs offer a sense of something that no outsider can ever completely understand: what it’s like to live in Trump World. That’s what its denizens call the alternate reality surrounding our petty, distractible, praise-hungry president. Under its spell, people strive to gain and hold onto their perches in what has to be one of the worst workplaces in the history of the ruling classes, short of Caligula’s Rome. The Room Where It Happened contains its share of outraging scoops, thoroughly covered elsewhere, and is as replete with pontification, chickenhawk saber rattling, and numbing notebook dumps as its initial reviewers have attested. But it also provides the public with yet another facet of the mad tea party that is Trump World.

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, June 29, 2020 8:12 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Laura Miller is an activist and Slate is trash.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 29, 2020 8:23 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Laura Miller is an activist and Slate is trash.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

Both FBI Directors Comey and McCabe have backgrounds that ideally position them to compare Trump to a mob boss — but, really, isn’t this an insult to mob bosses? Running an extensive and ongoing criminal enterprise requires a consistency and an accountability to one’s underlings that Trump has never exhibited. And as Sims ruefully puts it at the end of Team of Vipers, “He hadn’t lifted a finger for countless loyal aides before me, and I’m sure he wouldn’t for countless loyal aides to come. It was well known that in Trump World, loyalty was mostly a one-way street.” Mafiosi may impose primitive honor codes, but as Comey observes with no small fascination, these are nevertheless codes that apply to everyone. How long could a mob boss as capricious and untrustworthy as Trump last before his lieutenants revolted and replaced him with someone more competent?

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, June 30, 2020 6:31 AM

SECOND

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


Obamacare Versus the G.O.P.

The G.O.P. has ten years of failed promises to come up with something better.

www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/opinion/obamacare-coronavirus-republicans.h
tml


June 29, 2020, 7:02 p.m. ET

Covid-19 cases are surging in states that took Donald Trump’s advice and reopened for business too soon. This new surge — is it OK now to call it a second wave? — is, on average, hitting people younger than the initial surge in the Northeast did. Perhaps as a result, rising infections haven’t been reflected in a comparable rise in deaths, although that may be only a matter of time.

There is, however, growing evidence that even those who survive Covid-19 can suffer long-term adverse effects: scarred lungs, damaged hearts and perhaps neurological disorders.

And if the Trump administration gets its way, there may be another source of long-term damage: permanent inability to get health insurance.

Remarkably, last week the administration reaffirmed its support for a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which would, among other things, eliminate protection for Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. If the suit were to succeed, having had Covid-19 would surely be one of the pre-existing conditions making health insurance hard, perhaps impossible, to get.

Now, the legal argument behind the case is beyond flimsy: The lawsuit claims that the 2017 tax cut effectively invalidated the act, even though that was no part of Congress’s intention. But with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, nobody knows what will happen. And Trump’s support for the suit makes it clear that if re-elected he will do all he can to destroy Obamacare.

Not to worry, says the president. In tweets over the weekend he insisted that he would come up with an alternative to Obamacare that would be “FAR BETTER AND MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE” while protecting Americans with pre-existing conditions.

But he’s been claiming to have a much better alternative to Obamacare since he took office. Republicans in Congress, who voted to repeal Obamacare 70 times during the Obama years, have been making the same claim for more than a decade.

Yet somehow the great alternative to the Affordable Care Act has never materialized. In 2017, when the G.O.P. finally came close to repealing the act — failing thanks only to a last-minute change of heart on the part of Senator John McCain — the plan on offer would have stripped away protection for pre-existing conditions and added 23 million Americans to the ranks of the uninsured.

In other words, Republicans’ insistence that they have a superior alternative to Obamacare is a zombie lie — a claim that should be dead after having been proved false again and again, but it is still shambling along, eating people’s brains.

But why can’t Republicans come up with a better alternative to Obamacare? Are they just incompetent? Possibly — but even if they did know what they were doing, they couldn’t produce a superior plan, because no such plan is possible. In particular, unless you’re willing to move left instead of right, by going for single payer, the only way to guarantee coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions is a system that looks a lot like Obamacare.

The logic here has been clear from the beginning. To ensure coverage of people with pre-existing conditions, you have to prohibit insurers from discriminating based on medical history. But that’s not enough: To provide a decent risk pool, you also have to induce healthy people to sign up, preferably with both subsidies and a penalty for being uninsured. In other words, you need a system that is basically Obamacare.

The 2017 tax cut, which did away with the individual mandate — the penalty for noninsurance — weakened the system; you can see this by the fact that states, like New Jersey, that imposed their own mandates saw a drop in insurance premiums. But the design of the subsidies, which insulated most people from rising premiums, contained the damage: The percentage of Americans without health insurance, which fell sharply as a result of Obamacare, remains near record lows.

So is there any alternative to Obamacare? Of course there is. We could go back to being a country in which people with pre-existing conditions and/or low incomes can’t get health insurance, where for a large fraction of the population illness either goes untreated or leads to bankruptcy. That would, in part, mean becoming a country in which Americans who caught Covid-19 during the pandemic would be uninsurable for the rest of their lives.

Indeed, turning us back into that kind of country is the G.O.P.’s true goal, and is what will happen if the party gets its way either as a result of the current lawsuit or through legislation during a second Trump term.

But Republicans can’t admit that this is their goal. The public overwhelmingly supports protection for Americans with pre-existing conditions, so right-wing politicians have to pretend they can provide that while dismantling the regulations and subsidies such protection requires. And they have to hope that voters won’t remember that they have been promising a plan, but never delivering, for more than a decade.

Let’s hope voters are smarter than that. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 70 times and counting, shame on me.

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, June 30, 2020 11:25 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Obamacare, along with other Democrat policies, is turning the middle class into the poor.

Soon we won't have to worry about that pesky third class anymore. We'll be just like the Russians. Good times.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, June 30, 2020 2:06 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Obamacare, along with other Democrat policies, is turning the middle class into the poor.

Soon we won't have to worry about that pesky third class anymore. We'll be just like the Russians. Good times.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

The prices paid for Obamacare are set by the Medical profession, which chooses the prices to maximize their wealth. Capitalists love that arrangement. In stark contrast, the prices paid by the elderly for Medicare are set by the Federal government. Capitalists hate that interference with their wealth building. It would be better if the government set the prices for both Obamacare and Medicare. Maybe the prices should be exactly the same for everybody, but the Medical profession does not want that, since different prices for different people will maximize wealth building by doctors, hospitals, drug companies, etc.

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, June 30, 2020 2:37 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Obamacare, along with other Democrat policies, is turning the middle class into the poor.

Soon we won't have to worry about that pesky third class anymore. We'll be just like the Russians. Good times.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

The prices paid for Obamacare are set by the Medical profession, which chooses the prices to maximize their wealth. Capitalists love that arrangement. In stark contrast, the prices paid by the elderly for Medicare are set by the Federal government. Capitalists hate that interference with their wealth building. It would be better if the government set the prices for both Obamacare and Medicare. Maybe the prices should be exactly the same for everybody, but the Medical profession does not want that, since different prices for different people will maximize wealth building by doctors, hospitals, drug companies, etc.

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





If you're looking for an argument from me that the system isn't broke, then look elsewhere.

But all "Obamacare" did was make the rich richer.

If and when you ever stop pretending that isn't the case, we can have a discussion about it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, July 1, 2020 6:32 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

If you're looking for an argument from me that the system isn't broke, then look elsewhere.

But all "Obamacare" did was make the rich richer.

If and when you ever stop pretending that isn't the case, we can have a discussion about it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Obamacare did not take control of prices that doctors get paid because, if it had, it would not have gotten the 60 votes it needed in the Senate to pass. So the system stayed broken.

Control of the prices that minimum wage earners get paid are another part of the system that is broken. Can't get 60 votes in the Senate to fix that, either.

Burger King Worker
DENMARK / UNITED STATES
$20 an hour / $9 an hour
5 Weeks paid vacation / No paid vacation
Pension Plan / No Pension Plan
Doesn't have to struggle to get by. / Has to choose between buying food or clothes.

This isn’t because Burger King is nicer in Denmark. It’s the law. and the US is actually the only so-called “developed” country that doesn’t mandate jobs provide a minimum amount of paid vacation, sick leave, or both.

www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Burger_King_Corporation/Hourly_R
ate

www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Burger-King-Team-Member-Hourly-Pay-E7201_
D_KO12,23.htm


https://fightfor15.org/
https://fb.com/fightfor15
https://twitter.com/fightfor15

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, July 2, 2020 6:34 AM

SECOND

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


The Trump Administration Is Waiving the Public’s Right to Affordable Coronavirus Treatments

Standard federal contracts ensure that inventions developed with government funding are available to the public “on reasonable terms.” But the four agreements for Covid-19-related products — three of which were made by a division of the Department of Health and Human Services known as the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and one of which was made with the Department of Defense — notably omitted the phrase “on reasonable terms.” The government contracts with pharmaceutical companies Janssen, Regeneron, Genentech, and Ology Bioservices also limit the government’s patent rights to the products being developed for Covid-19, even though they are using taxpayer dollars to do so.

The details of the contracts, which were released to the nonprofit advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International, come as another pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences, announced pricing for its Covid-19 therapy, remdesivir. That drug, which was developed with at least $79 million in federal funding, will cost private insurers $520 for a single vial, hundreds of times its production cost, which researchers at the University of Liverpool have estimated at 93 cents per dose.

In an open letter on pricing released Monday, Gilead chair and CEO Daniel O’Day said that “we approached this with the aim of helping as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible and in the most responsible way” and noted that in “normal circumstances,” the company would set the price according to the value a drug provides. Based on a study that shows that the hospital stays of patients who take remdesivir are four days shorter on average than those who didn’t take the drug, Gilead estimated that value to be $12,000.

But, given its low production cost, Gilead could profit from remdesivir even if it was priced at just $1 a day, according to an analysis by Public Citizen. Instead the drug, which was rolled out with the help of the Trump administration, will cost insurers between $3,120 for a five-day course of treatment and $5,720 for a 10-day course.

More at https://theintercept.com/2020/07/01/coronavirus-treatment-drug-contrac
ts-trump
/

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, July 3, 2020 7:59 AM

SECOND

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


The radicalism of the American Revolution — and its lessons for today

Ezra Klein
What do we get wrong about the Declaration of Independence?

Danielle Allen
The first thing we get wrong is the notion that we should focus on Thomas Jefferson as the author. He put on his tombstone “author, the Declaration of Independence.” That was a real self-aggrandizing gesture. In fact, he was just the scribe. The intellectual work of the declaration was driven significantly by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.

That’s an important thing to say out loud because Adams is someone who never owned slaves and Franklin was somebody who was an enslaver earlier in his life but repudiated enslavement and became a vocal advocate of abolition. Both Adams and Franklin were in a different place on enslavement than Jefferson was.

That matters. The Declaration of Independence fed straight into abolitionist movements and efforts. It was the basis of a text that was submitted in Massachusetts in January 1777 moving forward abolition, and abolition had been achieved already in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania by the early 1770s and 1780s.

When we focus on Jefferson, we get one part of America’s story — the story of the slaveholding South. We don’t get the part of the story which was about how abolitionism was developing already, even in the 18th century. That’s part of our story in history, too. We should see it and tell it.

Ezra Klein
That’s a corrective to something that I’ve bought into myself, which is that the central story of the Declaration of Independence is one of hypocrisy — at the same time these beautiful ideals were being written, they were being betrayed. What you seem to be saying is that this story is only partial — that feeding into the Declaration Independence was conscious abolitionist intent.

Danielle Allen
Yes, there was already conscious abolitionist intention by the 1770s. The person who is famous for having coined the “no taxation without representation” argument, James Otis, had already in 1760 written a powerful pamphlet against enslavement. So there was a strand of revolutionary thought that worked its way all the way through to seeing the need for the end of enslavement. Thomas Paine was another figure of whom that’s true.

More at www.vox.com/2020/7/3/21311294/delcaration-of-independence-fourth-of-ju
ly-american-revolution-the-ezra-klein-show


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, July 3, 2020 9:47 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


"What do we get wrong about the Declaration of Independence?"

According to Vox.



Nobody gives a shit what Vox has to say on that subject matter.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, July 3, 2020 10:35 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
"What do we get wrong about the Declaration of Independence?"

According to Vox.



Nobody gives a shit what Vox has to say on that subject matter.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

It was NOT Vox that said it, but a book that said the writers of the Declaration of Independence (John Adams and Ben Franklin) were thinking that ending slavery was necessary even though Thomas Jefferson wanted slavery to last so that he could continue living in luxury and never have to work hard, not at all like Adams and Franklin were thinking.

In 21st Century America, most of the Upper 1% think exactly the same as Jefferson. They see what is wrong with America, but they hope change comes after they are dead and they won't cooperate with immediate change because that would immediately make them poorer and force them to work harder. Who wants that if you are selfish and rich? You'd have to be like Adams or Franklin, not like Jefferson, to want that.

The book is Danielle Allen's "Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality"
www.amazon.com/Our-Declaration-Reading-Independence-Equality-ebook/dp/
B00FPT5KYW


Free download at https://libgen.unblockit.id/search.php?req=Danielle+Allen

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, July 3, 2020 10:48 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


If Vox is promoting the book, I have no interest in reading it.

Vox hates America.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, July 3, 2020 4:01 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Clinton on Trump's handling of coronavirus: 'I would have done a better job'

Someone should tell her every time she opens her mouth about politics, she makes Trump's reelection job easier.

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Friday, July 3, 2020 6:18 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Hillary would have called the virus deplorable right before starting World War III.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, July 4, 2020 7:14 AM

SECOND

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


As much as the United States was founded on ideals, it was also established in response to the manifold failings of King George III. The British monarch is, in fact, the defining bad leader of American history. He and the system over which he presided were so dire that they fundamentally shaped our idea of what a leader should and shouldn’t be.

The Declaration of Independence was primarily a denunciation of George III. The crux of the document is a section devoted to his wrongs — “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States” — a litany of twenty-seven separate complaints about his rule.

George is condemned for, among other offenses, having refused to approve laws that are “necessary for the public good,” for bullying governors, for blocking reasonable legislative progress, for blocking immigration to the states, for “obstructing the Administration of Justice,” for bending the judiciary to his will, for seeking to make the military “independent of and superior to the Civil Power,” for conspiring “with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution,” “for cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,” and for having “excited domestic insurrections amongst us.” Any of those grievances sound familiar?

We would need a list of more than twenty-seven complaints if we were to enumerate Trump’s misdeeds, from defrauding US tax authorities to obstructing justice. He has invited our enemies to interfere with our elections to help him win, then sought to do it again. He has misused federal resources, inappropriately elevated his own family members, and enriched his own businesses. He has repeatedly attacked the First and the Fourteenth Amendments. He has had infants thrown in cages and denied relief to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria at the cost of thousands of lives. He has gutted environmental protections and attacked alliances that the US spent decades building and maintaining. And now he has mismanaged the worst public health crisis in a hundred years, overseen the greatest economic crisis since the Depression, and attempted to use the US military to crush legitimate protests on the streets of the capital.

Lately, in the space of just a few days, he was revealed to have endorsed concentration camps in China and to have again sought the assistance of a foreign adversary in winning a US election, was quoted as calling for the deaths and imprisonment of US journalists, defended the slave power traitors of the Confederacy, admitted that he suppressed testing during the pandemic because true data about the rate of infections would harm him politically, sought to fire more truthtellers in the administration and had his attorney general remove an official in charge of investigations into him and his supporters. He was reportedly briefed about a Russian scheme to place bounties on American and allied troops in Afghanistan, and not only did nothing about it but continued to act as an advocate for Putin. And so it goes on . . .

www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/07/03/the-most-ignorant-and-unfit-what-made
-americas-worst-ever-leader
/

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, July 5, 2020 5:25 AM

SECOND

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


Russian democracy is a farce. Putin and Trump want the same fate for America

Opinion by Garry Kasparov
"Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative. The views expressed in this commentary are his own."

Updated 1:10 AM ET, Sun July 5, 2020

The Kremlin bullied and bribed Russians to the ballot box again on Wednesday, the latest episode of what long ago became a painful mockery of democracy. Democracy means choices, and there has been no real choice in Russia for many years. All roads, all votes, lead to Vladimir Putin.

The plebiscite was on changing the Russian constitution to, among other things, allow Putin to stay in power until 2036. Of course, "allow" is a silly word to use when Putin was always going to rule the Kremlin until he's carried out, no matter what any piece of paper says. Even this formality was a foregone conclusion; the new constitution was available for purchase on newsstands and bookstores for days ahead of the vote. Early analysis from statistician Sergey Shpilkin shows an estimated 22 million fake votes out of a reported 74 million cast. www.newsweek.com/ballot-fraud-gave-russias-putin-22-million-extra-vote
s-says-expert-1515314


It's fair to ask, why bother with the pretense of democracy? Dictatorships are obsessed with the superficial trappings of legitimacy and democracy, both as distraction and to sully the meaning of these terms. And after decades of liquidating the opposition and crushing all dissent, a despot might even enjoy thinking that he's as popular as the worthless polls, elections and state media say he is.

These sham votes aren't only to provide Putin with cover in Russia, where civil society barely exists, but to give foreign leaders the pretext of treating Putin like an equal instead of confronting him like the autocrat he is. It also allows foreign media to continue calling him "president," putting him on par with the leaders of free countries. As with every tyrant before him, Putin thrives partly due to the cowardice of those who could deter him but choose not to.

These aren't just semantics. It would be awkward, even outrageous, to make deals with dictator Putin, to trust him, or to speak fondly of him the way President Donald Trump does. The title feeds the hypocrisy, and so the myth of Putin the elected, Putin the popular, must be perpetuated.

This is a choice to be made by every foreign official and every media organization. They could make sure to mention in their coverage that Russian elections are neither free nor fair. They could strip Putin of the democratic title of "president," of which he is unworthy -- and they should.

With Russia's disastrous coronavirus response exposing the myth of Putin's competence and weakening the economy further, it's no surprise that he's looking abroad again. In an interview for a recently-aired documentary, Putin talked about "historical Russian territories" and condemned former Soviet republics, saying they should have "left with what they arrived, rather than taking with them gifts from the Russian people" when the USSR broke up in 1991. Considering that Putin has already invaded two former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine, this must be taken as a clear threat.

Putin's apparent desire for fresh conquest brings us to his most successful operation yet, the ascension of Donald Trump as US president. The degree of influence Russian operations had on the 2016 election can never be known for sure, but whatever Putin invested, it's paid off a thousandfold. Even aside from Trump's bizarre loyalty to Putin personally, America's role as a global champion of democratic values has evaporated in a cloud of quid pro quos thanks to a president who is more likely to criticize traditional American allies than dictators like Putin and Xi Jinping.

For Putin to cross another border, he needs to know he won't face any serious opposition from the US, or from a NATO that is toothless without American support. In other words, he needs Trump to be in the White House, not Joe Biden. The only consistent thing about Trump's erratic foreign policy has been his refusal to criticize Putin, whose influence was confirmed in detail in John Bolton's new book. Even the shocking revelations that Russia was, according to reported intelligence, paying bounties to the Taliban for killing US troops have been met with typical White House obfuscation and claims of ignorance.

As for what Putin might do to help Trump in 2020, an expanded version of the hacking and disinformation campaigns of 2016 is just one of the potential worries. The Republican-led Senate seems ready to remove a requirement for campaigns to reveal foreign support, practically rolling out a red carpet to Putin and others like the Saudis and Chinese with a vested interest in keeping America out -- or at least on the sidelines -- of the pro-democracy business.


Putin came to power in 1999 in no small part due to the bombings of Russian apartment buildings that were blamed on Chechen terrorists. Then-prime minister Putin's brutal response brought him to prominence even as evidence mounted that the Russian security services had been caught in the act of plotting an apartment bombing in Ryazan. As a former KGB man, Putin prefers subtler methods, but as the recent assassinations of his political targets on foreign soil and the Afghanistan bounty program confirm, he has no allergy to blood, including American blood.

Along with the fear-mongering and violence, Putin exploited the legitimate grievances of the Russian people for his own gain. His themes were familiar ones: security, cultural preservation, ethnic tension. Twitter didn't exist then, but if it had, Putin would have been tweeting "Law & order!" in Russian. Those of us in the Russian pro-democracy movement had the dual challenge of protesting Putin's crackdowns while acknowledging the other problems the country faced.

I watched as Putin destroyed our fragile democracy by focusing only on his own power and wealth while mouthing nationalist rhetoric and attacking the free press. Now I'm watching Trump use many of the same techniques to chip away at democracy in my new home, although I cannot complain of exile when some of my Russian colleagues have been jailed or killed.

But Trump has yet to do his worst, a prediction I make with confidence not because I know what he will do, but because I know what such people are capable of.

Russian democracy is a farce, and Putin would like nothing more than to inflict the same fate on the American version. In this he has a partner in Trump, who accuses Democrats of trying to rig the elections, attacks voting by mail, and has done little to prevent the raging coronavirus pandemic that looks set to continue into November and sow chaos at the polls.

An ounce of deterrence is worth a pound of retaliation. US lawmakers, and candidate Biden, must make it clear that any attack on the integrity of the 2020 election will be met with the harshest penalties -- regardless of whether those attacks come from the Kremlin or from the Oval Office.


www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/opinions/russian-democracy-is-a-farce-kasparov/
index.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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Sunday, July 5, 2020 6:02 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


lol

That one was SOOOOOOOO good you had to post it all over the place, huh?


Nobody cares what your American-Hating Marxists have to say Second.

If you hate America so much, it's about time you get out.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, July 5, 2020 8:24 PM

THG


T

Stupid people don't know they're stupid, and they certainly don't realize how obvious it is to others.

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Monday, July 6, 2020 6:44 AM

SECOND

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



The anti-slavery symbolism of the Statue of Liberty is an overlooked part of the monument’s history.

The real saga of the Statue of Liberty — the symbolic face of America around the world, and the backdrop of New York’s dazzling Fourth of July fireworks show — is an obscure piece of U.S. history. It had nothing to do with immigration. The telltale clue is the chain under Lady Liberty’s feet: she is stomping on it. “In the early sketches, she was also holding chains in her hand,” Edward Berenson, a professor of history at New York University, told me last week. The shackles were later replaced with a tablet noting the date of America’s independence. But the shattered chain under her feet remained.

The statue was the brainchild of Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French expert on the U.S. Constitution who also headed the French Anti-Slavery Society. After the Civil War, in 1865, he wanted to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., enshrined in the new Thirteenth Amendment, which, in theory, reaffirmed the ideals of freedom — this time for all people — first embodied in the Declaration of Independence. The now famous line—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” from a poem by Emma Lazarus — wasn’t added until 1903, Berenson noted. The poem had been donated as part of a literary auction to raise funds for the statue’s pedestal. France donated the statue; the Americans had to raise the funds to pay for its pedestal. Long after Lazarus’s death, a friend lobbied to have the poem engraved on a plaque and added to the base. It has since associated the Statue of Liberty with a meaning that Laboulaye never intended.

One has to wonder what Laboulaye would think of America today, amid one of the country’s gravest periods of racial turmoil since the Civil War. Last month, a poll by Ipsos found that an overwhelming majority of people in fourteen countries, on six continents, support the protests that erupted across the United States after the murder of George Floyd. Russia, the fifteenth country in the survey, was the only place where a minority — about a third — backed the demonstrators.

On the eve of America’s anniversary — our two hundred and forty-fourth — much of the world believes that the country is racist, battered and bruised. “Europe has long been suspicious — even jealous — of the way America has been able to pursue national wealth and power despite its deep social inequities,” Robin Niblett, the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, in London, told me. “When you take the Acela and pass through the poorest areas of Baltimore, you can’t believe you’re looking at part of the United States. There’s always been this sense of an underlying flaw in the U.S. system that it was getting away with — that somehow America was keeping just one step ahead of the grim reaper.

The flaw, he said, is reflected in the American obsession with the stock market as the barometer of national health — economically, politically, socially. The reaction to Floyd’s murder exposed the deep injustices in the American economic model, as well as in the police and judicial systems, Niblett said. Europeans, he added, are no longer so envious.

America’s standing worldwide has sunk before, although usually over foreign-policy decisions, such as the invasion of Iraq, in 2003. The mood globally feels different now, Richard Burkholder, who was the director of Gallup’s international polling for decades, told me. Criticism is now focussed on American practices at home. “The United States was once a beacon,” he said. “I don’t see people looking up to us as they did before.” Fintan O’Toole, a columnist for the Irish Times, was blunter. “Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” he wrote, in April. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20200703160808/https://www.newyorker.com/n
ews/our-columnists/to-the-world-were-now-america-the-racist-and-pitiful


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, July 6, 2020 9:22 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Russian democracy is a farce. Putin and Trump want the same fate for America

Opinion by Garry Kasparov
"Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative. The views expressed in this commentary are his own."

Updated 1:10 AM ET, Sun July 5, 2020

The Kremlin bullied and bribed Russians to the ballot box again on Wednesday, the latest episode of what long ago became a painful mockery of democracy. Democracy means choices, and there has been no real choice in Russia for many years. All roads, all votes, lead to Vladimir Putin.

The plebiscite was on changing the Russian constitution to, among other things, allow Putin to stay in power until 2036. Of course, "allow" is a silly word to use when Putin was always going to rule the Kremlin until he's carried out, no matter what any piece of paper says. Even this formality was a foregone conclusion; the new constitution was available for purchase on newsstands and bookstores for days ahead of the vote. Early analysis from statistician Sergey Shpilkin shows an estimated 22 million fake votes out of a reported 74 million cast. www.newsweek.com/ballot-fraud-gave-russias-putin-22-million-extra-vote
s-says-expert-1515314


It's fair to ask, why bother with the pretense of democracy? Dictatorships are obsessed with the superficial trappings of legitimacy and democracy, both as distraction and to sully the meaning of these terms. And after decades of liquidating the opposition and crushing all dissent, a despot might even enjoy thinking that he's as popular as the worthless polls, elections and state media say he is.

These sham votes aren't only to provide Putin with cover in Russia, where civil society barely exists, but to give foreign leaders the pretext of treating Putin like an equal instead of confronting him like the autocrat he is. It also allows foreign media to continue calling him "president," putting him on par with the leaders of free countries. As with every tyrant before him, Putin thrives partly due to the cowardice of those who could deter him but choose not to.

These aren't just semantics. It would be awkward, even outrageous, to make deals with dictator Putin, to trust him, or to speak fondly of him the way President Donald Trump does. The title feeds the hypocrisy, and so the myth of Putin the elected, Putin the popular, must be perpetuated.

This is a choice to be made by every foreign official and every media organization. They could make sure to mention in their coverage that Russian elections are neither free nor fair. They could strip Putin of the democratic title of "president," of which he is unworthy -- and they should.

With Russia's disastrous coronavirus response exposing the myth of Putin's competence and weakening the economy further, it's no surprise that he's looking abroad again. In an interview for a recently-aired documentary, Putin talked about "historical Russian territories" and condemned former Soviet republics, saying they should have "left with what they arrived, rather than taking with them gifts from the Russian people" when the USSR broke up in 1991. Considering that Putin has already invaded two former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine, this must be taken as a clear threat.

Putin's apparent desire for fresh conquest brings us to his most successful operation yet, the ascension of Donald Trump as US president. The degree of influence Russian operations had on the 2016 election can never be known for sure, but whatever Putin invested, it's paid off a thousandfold. Even aside from Trump's bizarre loyalty to Putin personally, America's role as a global champion of democratic values has evaporated in a cloud of quid pro quos thanks to a president who is more likely to criticize traditional American allies than dictators like Putin and Xi Jinping.

For Putin to cross another border, he needs to know he won't face any serious opposition from the US, or from a NATO that is toothless without American support. In other words, he needs Trump to be in the White House, not Joe Biden. The only consistent thing about Trump's erratic foreign policy has been his refusal to criticize Putin, whose influence was confirmed in detail in John Bolton's new book. Even the shocking revelations that Russia was, according to reported intelligence, paying bounties to the Taliban for killing US troops have been met with typical White House obfuscation and claims of ignorance.

As for what Putin might do to help Trump in 2020, an expanded version of the hacking and disinformation campaigns of 2016 is just one of the potential worries. The Republican-led Senate seems ready to remove a requirement for campaigns to reveal foreign support, practically rolling out a red carpet to Putin and others like the Saudis and Chinese with a vested interest in keeping America out -- or at least on the sidelines -- of the pro-democracy business.


Putin came to power in 1999 in no small part due to the bombings of Russian apartment buildings that were blamed on Chechen terrorists. Then-prime minister Putin's brutal response brought him to prominence even as evidence mounted that the Russian security services had been caught in the act of plotting an apartment bombing in Ryazan. As a former KGB man, Putin prefers subtler methods, but as the recent assassinations of his political targets on foreign soil and the Afghanistan bounty program confirm, he has no allergy to blood, including American blood.

Along with the fear-mongering and violence, Putin exploited the legitimate grievances of the Russian people for his own gain. His themes were familiar ones: security, cultural preservation, ethnic tension. Twitter didn't exist then, but if it had, Putin would have been tweeting "Law & order!" in Russian. Those of us in the Russian pro-democracy movement had the dual challenge of protesting Putin's crackdowns while acknowledging the other problems the country faced.

I watched as Putin destroyed our fragile democracy by focusing only on his own power and wealth while mouthing nationalist rhetoric and attacking the free press. Now I'm watching Trump use many of the same techniques to chip away at democracy in my new home, although I cannot complain of exile when some of my Russian colleagues have been jailed or killed.

But Trump has yet to do his worst, a prediction I make with confidence not because I know what he will do, but because I know what such people are capable of.

Russian democracy is a farce, and Putin would like nothing more than to inflict the same fate on the American version. In this he has a partner in Trump, who accuses Democrats of trying to rig the elections, attacks voting by mail, and has done little to prevent the raging coronavirus pandemic that looks set to continue into November and sow chaos at the polls.

An ounce of deterrence is worth a pound of retaliation. US lawmakers, and candidate Biden, must make it clear that any attack on the integrity of the 2020 election will be met with the harshest penalties -- regardless of whether those attacks come from the Kremlin or from the Oval Office.





Also good:
https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/stay-tuned-putin-pawns-and-propaganda-with
-garry-kasparov
/


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Monday, July 6, 2020 9:47 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:

The anti-slavery symbolism of the Statue of Liberty is an overlooked part of the monument’s history.

The real saga of the Statue of Liberty — the symbolic face of America around the world, and the backdrop of New York’s dazzling Fourth of July fireworks show — is an obscure piece of U.S. history. It had nothing to do with immigration. The telltale clue is the chain under Lady Liberty’s feet: she is stomping on it. “In the early sketches, she was also holding chains in her hand,” Edward Berenson, a professor of history at New York University, told me last week. The shackles were later replaced with a tablet noting the date of America’s independence. But the shattered chain under her feet remained.

The statue was the brainchild of Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French expert on the U.S. Constitution who also headed the French Anti-Slavery Society. After the Civil War, in 1865, he wanted to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., enshrined in the new Thirteenth Amendment, which, in theory, reaffirmed the ideals of freedom — this time for all people — first embodied in the Declaration of Independence. The now famous line—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” from a poem by Emma Lazarus — wasn’t added until 1903, Berenson noted. The poem had been donated as part of a literary auction to raise funds for the statue’s pedestal. France donated the statue; the Americans had to raise the funds to pay for its pedestal. Long after Lazarus’s death, a friend lobbied to have the poem engraved on a plaque and added to the base. It has since associated the Statue of Liberty with a meaning that Laboulaye never intended.

One has to wonder what Laboulaye would think of America today, amid one of the country’s gravest periods of racial turmoil since the Civil War. Last month, a poll by Ipsos found that an overwhelming majority of people in fourteen countries, on six continents, support the protests that erupted across the United States after the murder of George Floyd. Russia, the fifteenth country in the survey, was the only place where a minority — about a third — backed the demonstrators.

On the eve of America’s anniversary — our two hundred and forty-fourth — much of the world believes that the country is racist, battered and bruised. “Europe has long been suspicious — even jealous — of the way America has been able to pursue national wealth and power despite its deep social inequities,” Robin Niblett, the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, in London, told me. “When you take the Acela and pass through the poorest areas of Baltimore, you can’t believe you’re looking at part of the United States. There’s always been this sense of an underlying flaw in the U.S. system that it was getting away with — that somehow America was keeping just one step ahead of the grim reaper.

The flaw, he said, is reflected in the American obsession with the stock market as the barometer of national health — economically, politically, socially. The reaction to Floyd’s murder exposed the deep injustices in the American economic model, as well as in the police and judicial systems, Niblett said. Europeans, he added, are no longer so envious.

America’s standing worldwide has sunk before, although usually over foreign-policy decisions, such as the invasion of Iraq, in 2003. The mood globally feels different now, Richard Burkholder, who was the director of Gallup’s international polling for decades, told me. Criticism is now focussed on American practices at home. “The United States was once a beacon,” he said. “I don’t see people looking up to us as they did before.” Fintan O’Toole, a columnist for the Irish Times, was blunter. “Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” he wrote, in April. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20200703160808/https://www.newyorker.com/n
ews/our-columnists/to-the-world-were-now-america-the-racist-and-pitiful


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




Man.

You guys really hate America, don't you?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, July 7, 2020 6:26 AM

SECOND

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


National Review Is Trying to Rewrite its Own Racist History

Black Americans’ drift away from the GOP began long before the Civil Rights Act. A majority of Black voters went for virulent racist Woodrow Wilson in 1912, attracted by his progressive economic platform, the first time since winning the right to vote that Black voters had cast it for a Democrat for president. That trend continued over the next several decades. In 1948, Harry Truman insisted on including a strong civil rights plank in the party’s platform. Southerners walked out of the Democratic National Convention in protest and ran Strom Thurmond as their “Dixiecrat” nominee.

Voters, even white ones in the South, reacted to Thurmond with a yawn. He won 2.4 percent of the vote, just over a million, which was roughly what the Populist Party’s candidate had won in the 1890s. Truman won Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and the rest of the South and border states other than the four most hardcore: South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. The Dixiecrat revolt was crushed.

It was clear that the South couldn’t win the fight alone, and for that, needed conservative allies in the North. The problem was that the rest of the country, Northern Republican conservatives included, wanted nothing to do with the explicit, raw racism on display in the South, preferring the more subtle kind that is more familiar today.

But those Republicans did want something else: an end to the New Deal. In order to forge the alliance between the racist Democrats in the South, then, and the business wing of the Republicans in the North, they had to fuse two, unlinked political movements — the drive for segregation and the rollback of the New Deal. That required the South to go along with attacking programs that were extremely popular with the people of the South, and for Northern Republicans to get behind segregation and the preservation of the white Southern way of life.

Getting each to accept the other was not inevitable, nor was it easy. That’s where the National Review comes in.

The move was made by linking the New Deal to a big, overreaching government that, yes, had electrified the country, built Social Security, dug the country out of the Depression, and so on, but also wanted to forcibly integrate society and ensure the franchise for Black voters. Buckley was primarily against all the former insults upon the Constitution, and Southern segregationists were primarily against the latter. Buckley argued to Southerners that their defense of Jim Crow through the rhetoric of states’ rights was too often “opportunistic” rather than principled — inarguably true — and that if they didn’t embrace a broader ideology of limited government, they wouldn’t find the allies they needed to succeed.

With Southerners willing to break from the New Deal, the Northern Republican elites were open to some level of compromise on segregation that would allow white supremacy to continue without party leaders needing to endorse white supremacy. They satisfied their own consciences by pretending that their new allies weren’t racist; rather, they simply deeply believed in the principle of local democracy and states rights. That game of pretend is still going on in the National Review today.

The magazine was founded in 1955 as a project to undermine the New Deal, with the famous motto, “It stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” It invested extraordinary amounts of time and resources into building an intellectual edifice for segregation that could be bandied about in polite society.

More at https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-ra
cism
/

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, July 7, 2020 6:38 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:

Also good:
https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/stay-tuned-putin-pawns-and-propaganda-with
-garry-kasparov
/


Preet Bharara: Do you see any echoes of that Russian strategy of attacking the very concept of truth going on in the United States?

Garry Kasparov: Oh, absolutely. So, it seems to me that now they already succeeded in spreading doubts among American public. It’s more about partisanship than about facts. If one sort of American public is not sure whether to believe a special prosecutor, or Russia Today, that’s already a victory for Kremlin. When I say Russia Today, of course, we can cite American media outlets that are simply repeating RT’s stories. But it’s hard now to convince people pointing at facts. That’s a big victory of Putin’s propaganda machine.

Preet Bharara: And is this a clever strategy because at base, many people, they want to believe what they want to believe, and they have an inclination towards a particular belief? And so, if you provide them with something that they hope to be true, they’ll believe it, or is it something different from that?

Garry Kasparov: You’re right. There are natural instincts of people, who are addicted to certain political views, to stick with the heroes. And if you feed them with information that satisfies their interest about the outside world, they can buy it. But while you have partisans on both sides, they have many people in the middle. And I think Putin’s propaganda is most effective for this middle, because it’s about doubts. You don’t want these people to actually look at the facts and take them at a face value. You want them to doubt.

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, July 7, 2020 7:40 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Gross.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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