A thread for Democrats Only
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UPDATED: Thursday, September 17, 2026 09:05
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How America Became “A City Upon a Hill”
“A society that is both clear and articulate about its intentions is something of a rarity in modern history,” Perry Miller lectured. “Most of the nations of Europe and Asia grew up by chance and by accident either of geography or politics.” In other countries, so much had changed over so much time, he explained, “that even the most patriotic citizens would not dare say to what conscious purpose the nation was originally devoted.” Europe had legends and myths, a murky past misted over by a cloud of unknowing. But America had a recorded past — a written and articulate beginning. All one needed to do was gather up the texts. All one had to do was check the sources. All one really had to do, Miller insisted, was read a single sermon by Winthrop.
This need for a purpose — this story of a nation founded in purpose and defined by it ever since — resonated with a wide range of thinkers and writers following the close of World War II and the opening of the Cold War. In the late 1950s, for example, Henry Luce, the powerful editor of Life magazine, asked respected intellectual and political leaders to articulate and explain the purpose of the country. “More than anything else,” he claimed, “the people of America are asking for a clear sense of National Purpose.” Respondents included politicians, poets, journalists, evangelists, and government officials — everyone from Billy Graham to Adlai Stevenson.
Most in this august group were haunted by a nation that seemed to have lost its way. As John Jessup, a prominent journalist, wrote, “Is there not a connection between the rise of nations and great purpose, between the loss of purpose and their decline?” The problem, it seemed, was complacency. Wealth had made Americans weak. “Part of our problem,” John W. Gardner declared, “is how to stay awake on a full stomach.” Nothing was being asked of the American people. Having achieved material success and world power, the United States seemed content to let citizens go about spending and consuming, little caring about a higher cause.
A whole culture of academics and public intellectuals took up these concerns. David Brinkley, Betty Friedan, Richard Hofstadter, C. Wright Mills, David Reisman, William Appleman Williams, and so many others in their own ways condemned American consumerism and anti-intellectualism in works that were broadly digested and debated by the American masses. Miller, who portrayed himself as a “lone wolf,” was by no means alone in his concerns. He, like others, believed that America’s influence might be terribly short-lived. “History is littered with the corpses of civilization that reached the limit of expansion, dug in behind walls and moats, and there yielded to decay,” he proclaimed. According to him, the materialistic culture of America would soon exhaust itself. It didn’t require particular genius “to ask yourself, at least from time to time, whether this American way of life is not rushing at a steadily accelerating pace toward a massive megalopolis which finally, of sheer dead weight, shall grind to an agonizing stop, and then crumble into ruin by the force of inertia.” As one of his students summarized, “He could imagine the end of America, if not of American affluence.” Yet for Miller, as for others, mere affluence constituted its own form of demise.
The content of Winthrop’s sermon — what Miller thought Winthrop was actually saying or proposing as a model — differed radically from what Reagan and others would make of it. According to Miller, this sermon called Puritans to model radical communal solidarity. It had nothing to do with the American Dream, nothing to do with bettering one’s life, nothing at all to do with making money or getting ahead. In fact, Miller claimed, Winthrop specifically rejected all such ideas. Going it alone, pulling ahead of others, getting rich or even trying to — these were the very dangers that Winthrop sought to guard against. Society’s success depended instead on mutual affection, bei
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Quote:Explain to me how cutting back Medicare, Social Security, taxes on the Wealthy, regulations on pollution, and building more H-bombs and increasing the Pentagon's budget is the answer to anything other than making the Rich even more Wealthy. Every time I do another summing up of my own wealth, it has increased at a faster and faster rate and I can only thank Trump and the Republican Party for that. Were Democrats in control I would NOT be swimming in a vast, overflowing pool of money.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Explain to me how Democrats are the answer to any of this.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Oh, bullshit. You were rich before Trump, right? You were rich under Obama, right? Worth 100+ million when Trump came into office already, right? You can't have $20 million in tax SAVINGS unless you're already very wealthy, correct?
SIX:Explain to me how Democrats are the answer to any of this.
SECONDRATE: Explain to me how cutting back Medicare, Social Security, taxes on the Wealthy, regulations on pollution, and building more H-bombs and increasing the Pentagon's budget is the answer to anything other than making the Rich even more Wealthy. Every time I do another summing up of my own wealth, it has increased at a faster and faster rate and I can only thank Trump and the Republican Party for that. Were Democrats in control I would NOT be swimming in a vast, overflowing pool of money.
Do you suppose maybe it's possible that NEITHER Dems nor Repubs are the answer to our problems??
But you hate Americans, so why pretend you care about what happens to the rest of us?
Quote:Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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T 
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
During Trump’s State of the Union Address he told a bunch of lies, did not shake Nancy Pelosi’s hand, gave Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rosa Parks Day, and Guillermo gave the official Spanish language response.
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Oh, let's remember some of our previous politicians' whoppers ...
"I feel your pain"
"Most transparent administration ever"
"Like, with a cloth?"
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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Quote:Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.
This is why I don't think you are a Firefly fan. If you were, you'd know I didn't write that 190 page alternative history of Firefly. Joss Whedon wrote it. Then he could not afford to make it on his budget and within 2 hours running time. He revised to make a 126 page version, which you can also download at the same URL.
Trump is rewriting his history all the time. If you don't know about Joss' two scripts it makes sense you don't know about Trump's ever changing past. ‘Something has to be done’: Trump’s quest to rewrite history of the Russia probe
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-quest-to-rewrite-the-history-o
f-the-russia-probe/ar-BB103ff5?ocid=msedgntp
or
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/something-has-to-be-done-trumps-quest-
to-rewrite-history-of-the-russia-probe/2020/02/15/ea7a1b06-4f61-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_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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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.
'This is why I don't think you are a Firefly fan. If you were, you'd know I didn't write that 190 page alternative history of Firefly. Joss Whedon wrote it. Then he could not afford to make it on his budget and within 2 hours running time. He revised to make a 126 page version, which you can also download at the same URL.
Yep, she is a russian troll...
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
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Quote:The decision was made, the movie was completed. Why do you keep bringing up coulda-beens? Not very Mal-like of you!
SECONDRATE: The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
SIGNY: Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history. History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.
SECONDRATE: This is why I don't think you are a Firefly fan. If you were, you'd know I didn't write that 190 page alternative history of Firefly. Joss Whedon wrote it. Then he could not afford to make it on his budget and within 2 hours running time. He revised to make a 126 page version, which you can also download at the same URL.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Yanno, this is emblematic of your problem: You're constantly trying to rewrite history.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
History happened, son. It's over. You can't undo your bad decisions, just like you can't blame everyone else for your bad decisions. Stop trying -it isn't good for you because it isn't going to work.
'This is why I don't think you are a Firefly fan. If you were, you'd know I didn't write that 190 page alternative history of Firefly. Joss Whedon wrote it. Then he could not afford to make it on his budget and within 2 hours running time. He revised to make a 126 page version, which you can also download at the same URL.
Yep, she is a russian troll...
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
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How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy
Dystopian titles are often nothing more than marketing tools, but such a title is necessary for this book. How America Lost Its Mind describes the sorry state of our democracy at this early point in the twenty-first century. The corruption of thought, information, and common sense is eroding governing institutions and traditions that took more than two centuries and ten generations of Americans to build.
Americans have lost touch with reality. On virtually every issue, from climate change to immigration, tens of millions of Americans have opinions and beliefs wildly at odds with the facts. As I show in the first chapter, today’s level of misinformation is unprecedented and is a far greater danger to our democracy than the long-standing problem of an uninformed citizenry. The uninformed know what they don’t know, whereas the misinformed think they know something but don’t know it, which leads them into senseless decisions. The second chapter examines the link between misinformation and partisanship. On almost every issue, misinformation is concentrated in the minds of either Republicans or Democrats. It has reached the point where, although Republicans and Democrats live in the same country, their minds reside in different ones, making it nearly impossible for them to understand each other, much less resolve their differences.
Age-old incentives—the lure of power, celebrity, and money—have corrupted the media system that is the source of our information. Media dysfunction began decades ago but is now careening out of control. One set of information corruptors, whom I call the “disruptors” and discuss in the third chapter, lust for power and have weaponized information, twisting it to serve their political and personal agendas. Another set, whom I call the “performers,” lust after celebrity and thrive in a mutual-referential world of caricatures and inane chatter. Their role in misinforming us is explained in the fourth chapter. Then there are the “marketers,” who are the subject of the fifth chapter. Their lust is money, and they peddle what sells, no matter how trivial, inaccurate, or distracting. Collectively, these media and political actors have scrambled our minds. We’ve reached a point where we think that nonsense is knowledge. It’s a dangerous position for a democracy. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt noted decades ago, demagoguery is abetted by “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
The forces that have brought us to this point are powerful and will not bend easily. But I discuss in the final chapter what could be done to bring about change. It would require us to wrest power from the ideologues and mind twisters and entrust it to level-headed leaders and reliable sources. It would also require us as citizens to accept our role in the misinformation crisis. We can’t have a thriving citizen democracy if citizens fail to accept the responsibilities of citizenship.
www.amazon.com/How-America-Lost-Mind-Distinguished/dp/0806164328/
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/02/12/when-balance-comes-at-the-exp
ense-of-the-truth/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy
Dystopian titles are often nothing more than marketing tools, but such a title is necessary for this book. How America Lost Its Mind describes the sorry state of our democracy at this early point in the twenty-first century. The corruption of thought, information, and common sense is eroding governing institutions and traditions that took more than two centuries and ten generations of Americans to build.
Americans have lost touch with reality. On virtually every issue, from climate change to immigration, tens of millions of Americans have opinions and beliefs wildly at odds with the facts. As I show in the first chapter, today’s level of misinformation is unprecedented and is a far greater danger to our democracy than the long-standing problem of an uninformed citizenry. The uninformed know what they don’t know, whereas the misinformed think they know something but don’t know it, which leads them into senseless decisions. The second chapter examines the link between misinformation and partisanship. On almost every issue, misinformation is concentrated in the minds of either Republicans or Democrats. It has reached the point where, although Republicans and Democrats live in the same country, their minds reside in different ones, making it nearly impossible for them to understand each other, much less resolve their differences.
Age-old incentives—the lure of power, celebrity, and money—have corrupted the media system that is the source of our information. Media dysfunction began decades ago but is now careening out of control. One set of information corruptors, whom I call the “disruptors” and discuss in the third chapter, lust for power and have weaponized information, twisting it to serve their political and personal agendas. Another set, whom I call the “performers,” lust after celebrity and thrive in a mutual-referential world of caricatures and inane chatter. Their role in misinforming us is explained in the fourth chapter. Then there are the “marketers,” who are the subject of the fifth chapter. Their lust is money, and they peddle what sells, no matter how trivial, inaccurate, or distracting. Collectively, these media and political actors have scrambled our minds. We’ve reached a point where we think that nonsense is knowledge. It’s a dangerous position for a democracy. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt noted decades ago, demagoguery is abetted by “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
The forces that have brought us to this point are powerful and will not bend easily. But I discuss in the final chapter what could be done to bring about change. It would require us to wrest power from the ideologues and mind twisters and entrust it to level-headed leaders and reliable sources. It would also require us as citizens to accept our role in the misinformation crisis. We can’t have a thriving citizen democracy if citizens fail to accept the responsibilities of citizenship.
www.amazon.com/How-America-Lost-Mind-Distinguished/dp/0806164328/
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/02/12/when-balance-comes-at-the-exp
ense-of-the-truth/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I agree with this.
However, it's not saying what you think it's saying.
Democrats run the media and celebrity. The misinformation campaign is a strictly partisan thing today, and it's a tool of the Democrats.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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GEEK SPEAK
Fox hits local ‘Firefly’ group with cease and desist
https://blog.mysanantonio.com/geekspeak/2011/04/fox-hits-local-firefly
-group-with-cease-and-desist/
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
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In 1775, Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia who wanted to quickly end the war, issued a proclamation to free enslaved Black people if they defected from the colonies and fought for the British army. In response, George Washington revised the policy that restricted Black persons (free or enslaved) from joining his Continental army. His reversal was based in a convergence of his interests: competing with a growing British military, securing the slave economy, and increasing labor needs for the Continental army. When enslaved persons left the plantation, this caused serious social and economic unrest in the colonies. These defections were encouragement for many white plantation owners to join the Patriotic cause even if they previously held reservations.
Washington also saw other benefits in Black enlistment: White revolutionary soldiers only fought in three- to four-month increments and returned to their farms or plantation, but many Black soldiers could serve longer terms. The need for the Black soldier was essential for the war effort, and the need to win the war became greater than racial or racist ideology.
Interests converged with those of Black revolutionary soldiers as well. Once the American colonies promised freedom, about a quarter of the Continental army became Black; before that, more Black people defected to the British military for a chance to be free. Black revolutionary soldiers understood the stakes of the war and realized that they could also benefit and leave bondage. As historian Gary Nash has said, the Black revolutionary soldier “can best be understood by realizing that his major loyalty was not to a place, not to a people, but to a principle.”
Black people played a dual role — service with the American forces and fleeing to the British — both for freedom. The notion of the Black Patriot is a misused term. In many ways, while the majority of the whites were fighting in the American Revolution, Black revolutionary soldiers were fighting the “African Americans’ Revolution.”
More at www.vox.com/identities/2020/2/18/21134644/black-history-month-2020-myt
hs
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
GEEK SPEAK
Fox hits local ‘Firefly’ group with cease and desist
https://blog.mysanantonio.com/geekspeak/2011/04/fox-hits-local-firefly
-group-with-cease-and-desist/
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
From 2011?
You'd have to call Disney in 2020 for permission. Kaylee is a Disney Princess now.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Bernie Sanders has refused to release his medical records even though (a) he promised to do so, and (b) he’s 78 years old and recently had a heart attack, making him the exact kind of person whose medical history is especially salient in a presidential election. Will this pay off? It seems like it: Sanders is soaring in the polls. The price of concealing his medical history is — in his estimation, anyway — smaller than the price he’d pay for whatever his medical history shows.
In 2016 Donald Trump refused to release his income tax records even though (a) he had promised to do so, and (b) he’s a real estate billionaire, the exact kind of person whose financial history is especially salient in a presidential election. This paid off: no one really cared, apparently, and Trump became president. The price of concealing his financial history was smaller than the price he would have paid for whatever that history would have shown.
Presidential candidates are learning that releasing records of any kind is all downside. If the records show that everything is OK, no one cares and it buys you nothing. But if the records show a problem, it could blow your candidacy to pieces. The voters will literally give you no reason to do it. Voters might want to think about that more clearly because NOT showing your record is absolute evidence you are a crook and a liar.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Bernie Sanders has refused to release his medical records even though (a) he promised to do so, and (b) he’s 78 years old and recently had a heart attack, making him the exact kind of person whose medical history is especially salient in a presidential election. Will this pay off? It seems like it: Sanders is soaring in the polls. The price of concealing his medical history is — in his estimation, anyway — smaller than the price he’d pay for whatever his medical history shows.
In 2016 Donald Trump refused to release his income tax records even though (a) he had promised to do so, and (b) he’s a real estate billionaire, the exact kind of person whose financial history is especially salient in a presidential election. This paid off: no one really cared, apparently, and Trump became president. The price of concealing his financial history was smaller than the price he would have paid for whatever that history would have shown.
Presidential candidates are learning that releasing records of any kind is all downside. If the records show that everything is OK, no one cares and it buys you nothing. But if the records show a problem, it could blow your candidacy to pieces. The voters will literally give you no reason to do it. Voters might want to think about that more clearly because NOT showing your record is absolute evidence you are a crook and a liar.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Should probably change the laws about that. Dontcha think?
Given that Bernie's doing it now, you would think it would be a bi-partisan effort, at least for the president.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:I have dealt with plenty of crooks and liars. What they were doing was illegal, but that didn't stop them and laws/courts/police in the United States are excruciatingly slow and unhelpful. Ordinary people can, all by themselves, handle these crooks and liars by not giving them money, but about 99% of the time ordinary people do give them the money. It's like they have no brains or even ordinary good sense. Similarly, ordinary voters can handle crooks and liars by not giving them their vote. But, once again, 99% of voters don't exercise their god given good sense and, instead, vote for the crook and the liar anyway, as if the voter was helpless and had no sense and no wits.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Should probably change the laws about that. Dontcha think?
Given that Bernie's doing it now, you would think it would be a bi-partisan effort, at least for the president.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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There might be one or two here who aren't crooks and liars, but only one independent enough to get the full-on leper-of-the-year treatment.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
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Is the two-party system good for democracy? A Debate: Yascha Mounk & Norman Ornstein vs. Lee Drutman & Katherine Gehl
At the beginning of the video there is an amusing talk "US History Can Be Fun" about how violent Senators once were about defending slavery. The Senators lowered the level of violence in the 20th Century to legislative maneuvers keeping blacks in their proper place, but it never went completely away.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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America’s monopoly problem, explained by your internet bill
We should be asking the government and corporate America how we got here. Instead, we just keep handing over our money.
Seriously, be mad about your internet bill.
In 2019, New York University economist Thomas Philippon did a deep dive into market concentration and monopolies in The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets. And one of his touch points for the book is the internet. Looking at the data, he found that the United States has fallen behind other developed economies in broadband penetration and that prices are significantly higher. In 2017, the average monthly cost of broadband in America was $66.17; in France, it was $38.10, in Germany, $35.71, and in South Korea, $29.90. How did this happen? In his view, a lot of it comes down to competition — or, rather, lack thereof.
That’s where the government could come in by regulating the network or forcing the company that built it to lease out parts of it to rivals. As Philippon notes, that’s what happened in France — an incumbent carrier was compelled to lease out the “last mile” of its network — basically, the last bit of cable that gets to your hours or apartment building — and therefore letting competitors have a chance at also appealing to customers.
In the US, however, just a few big companies, often without overlap, control much of the telecom industry, and the result is high prices and uneven connectivity.
Experts and advocates have laid out a range of ideas for restoring healthy competition in the economy. Some of it would entail new laws, which, given the current state of affairs in Washington, seems unlikely — Congress can barely agree to fund the government, let alone enact a major overhaul of the workings of the US economy. But it has happened in the past. “What happened in the New Deal was a systemic attack on every aspect of the old order, and the old order was somewhat similar to what we have now,” Stoller noted.
Competition is lacking across countless industries, including baby formula, agriculture, candy, beer, just to name some examples. When you look, monopolies and oligopolies (meaning instead of one dominant company, there are a few) are everywhere. They’re a systemic feature of the economy.
More at www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/2/18/21126347/antitrust-monopolies-internet
-telecommunications-cheerleading
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Why the Presidency Can’t Just Go Back to ‘Normal’ After Trump
The “norms and traditions” that Trump has incinerated aren’t timeless features of American democracy; they’re actually quite new—and brittle.
Under President John F. Kennedy, the Department of Justice approved wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr. and ordered the IRS to audit Richard Nixon, JFK’s once and presumed future opponent. On President Lyndon B. Johnson’s watch, the FBI illegally bugged King’s hotel rooms, attempted to blackmail him into suicide, and famously infiltrated and attempted to sabotage the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Under LBJ, the CIA also ran extensive, extralegal sabotage of domestic political organizations, while the FBI placed violent saboteurs in the ranks of peaceful anti-war demonstrators.
President Nixon, whose abuses of office are well-documented, instructed the IRS to audit wealthy Jewish Democrats, whom he privately denounced as “cocksuckers.” At White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman’s request, the agency subjected Edward Bennett Williams, the Washington Post’s attorney in the Pentagon Papers case, to three consecutive audits. (“I wouldn’t want to be in Edward Bennett Williams’ … position after this election,” Nixon told his staff members. “I think we’re going to fix the son-of-a-bitch. Believe me. We’re going to. We’ve got to, because he’s a bad man.”) On the advice of Pat Buchanan, a conservative White House speechwriter, Nixon ordered the IRS to investigate the finances of liberal organizations like the Ford Foundation and Brookings Institution; the agency complied, compiling data on over 1,000 institutions and 4,000 individual citizens.
It wasn’t just the IRS. When news of the highly secret bombing campaign in Cambodia broke on the pages of the New York Times in late 1969, then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger ordered FBI wiretaps on 13 of his own aides and four journalists. When even the FBI balked at tapping the phone of Joseph Kraft, a highly respected syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s chief domestic policy adviser, hired a private detective to do the job without the cloak of legal authority.
Nixon also ordered the FBI, CIA and NSA to surveil New Left organizations and instructed the Justice Department to arrest several thousand anti-war protesters who marched on Washington, D.C., in May 1971. The federal courts overturned many of the convictions. But the judges did not know the half of it. Coordinating the arrests from the Oval Office, Nixon heartily approved of plans by Charles Colson, a top political aide, to have rank-and-file teamsters rough up the protesters before their detention. “They’ve got guys who’ll go in and knock their heads off,” the president beamed. Nixon’s chief of staff, Haldeman, confirmed this point. “Murderers. Guys that really, you know, that’s what they really do … they’re going to beat the shit out of some of these people.”
In the wake of Nixon’s disgrace, Congress undertook a sweeping investigation of these abuses, leading to new congressional oversight mechanisms and restrictions on FBI and CIA political activity.
All of which is to say, the idea of independent agencies staffed by nonpartisan career public servants, free of political interference, is a very recent development. Once unraveled, it is not certain to be reassembled.
More at www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/15/why-presidency-cant-go-back-
normal-trump-115362
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Why the Presidency Can’t Just Go Back to ‘Normal’ After Trump
The “norms and traditions” that Trump has incinerated aren’t timeless features of American democracy; they’re actually quite new—and brittle.
Under President John F. Kennedy, the Department of Justice approved wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr. and ordered the IRS to audit Richard Nixon, JFK’s once and presumed future opponent. On President Lyndon B. Johnson’s watch, the FBI illegally bugged King’s hotel rooms, attempted to blackmail him into suicide, and famously infiltrated and attempted to sabotage the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Under LBJ, the CIA also ran extensive, extralegal sabotage of domestic political organizations, while the FBI placed violent saboteurs in the ranks of peaceful anti-war demonstrators.
President Nixon, whose abuses of office are well-documented, instructed the IRS to audit wealthy Jewish Democrats, whom he privately denounced as “cocksuckers.” At White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman’s request, the agency subjected Edward Bennett Williams, the Washington Post’s attorney in the Pentagon Papers case, to three consecutive audits. (“I wouldn’t want to be in Edward Bennett Williams’ … position after this election,” Nixon told his staff members. “I think we’re going to fix the son-of-a-bitch. Believe me. We’re going to. We’ve got to, because he’s a bad man.”) On the advice of Pat Buchanan, a conservative White House speechwriter, Nixon ordered the IRS to investigate the finances of liberal organizations like the Ford Foundation and Brookings Institution; the agency complied, compiling data on over 1,000 institutions and 4,000 individual citizens.
It wasn’t just the IRS. When news of the highly secret bombing campaign in Cambodia broke on the pages of the New York Times in late 1969, then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger ordered FBI wiretaps on 13 of his own aides and four journalists. When even the FBI balked at tapping the phone of Joseph Kraft, a highly respected syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s chief domestic policy adviser, hired a private detective to do the job without the cloak of legal authority.
Nixon also ordered the FBI, CIA and NSA to surveil New Left organizations and instructed the Justice Department to arrest several thousand anti-war protesters who marched on Washington, D.C., in May 1971. The federal courts overturned many of the convictions. But the judges did not know the half of it. Coordinating the arrests from the Oval Office, Nixon heartily approved of plans by Charles Colson, a top political aide, to have rank-and-file teamsters rough up the protesters before their detention. “They’ve got guys who’ll go in and knock their heads off,” the president beamed. Nixon’s chief of staff, Haldeman, confirmed this point. “Murderers. Guys that really, you know, that’s what they really do … they’re going to beat the shit out of some of these people.”
In the wake of Nixon’s disgrace, Congress undertook a sweeping investigation of these abuses, leading to new congressional oversight mechanisms and restrictions on FBI and CIA political activity.
All of which is to say, the idea of independent agencies staffed by nonpartisan career public servants, free of political interference, is a very recent development. Once unraveled, it is not certain to be reassembled.
More at www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/15/why-presidency-cant-go-back-
normal-trump-115362
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Trump didn't start that fire. GWB did. Obama ran with it.
Let's stop re-writing history here.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
America’s monopoly problem, explained by your internet bill
We should be asking the government and corporate America how we got here. Instead, we just keep handing over our money.
Seriously, be mad about your internet bill.
In 2019, New York University economist Thomas Philippon did a deep dive into market concentration and monopolies in The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets. And one of his touch points for the book is the internet. Looking at the data, he found that the United States has fallen behind other developed economies in broadband penetration and that prices are significantly higher. In 2017, the average monthly cost of broadband in America was $66.17; in France, it was $38.10, in Germany, $35.71, and in South Korea, $29.90. How did this happen? In his view, a lot of it comes down to competition — or, rather, lack thereof.
That’s where the government could come in by regulating the network or forcing the company that built it to lease out parts of it to rivals. As Philippon notes, that’s what happened in France — an incumbent carrier was compelled to lease out the “last mile” of its network — basically, the last bit of cable that gets to your hours or apartment building — and therefore letting competitors have a chance at also appealing to customers.
In the US, however, just a few big companies, often without overlap, control much of the telecom industry, and the result is high prices and uneven connectivity.
Experts and advocates have laid out a range of ideas for restoring healthy competition in the economy. Some of it would entail new laws, which, given the current state of affairs in Washington, seems unlikely — Congress can barely agree to fund the government, let alone enact a major overhaul of the workings of the US economy. But it has happened in the past. “What happened in the New Deal was a systemic attack on every aspect of the old order, and the old order was somewhat similar to what we have now,” Stoller noted.
Competition is lacking across countless industries, including baby formula, agriculture, candy, beer, just to name some examples. When you look, monopolies and oligopolies (meaning instead of one dominant company, there are a few) are everywhere. They’re a systemic feature of the economy.
More at www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/2/18/21126347/antitrust-monopolies-internet
-telecommunications-cheerleading
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.
Not only are their different tiers of service, and many Americans are paying for higher tiers than they're ever going to use, but there are also discounts for setting up auto-pay, paperless billing and doing a contract.
I wasn't even aware of this and had been paying $50 per month for years, month to month without any of the discounts.
All it took was one 20 minute call to Customer Retention and I'm now paying little more than I would be paying if my service were subsidized (which requires proving you have a child on the student lunch program in school).
If you feel you're paying too much, which you almost certainly are, call and ask for the Customer Retention department and see what they have to offer you.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Per your usual, you completely missed the point about monopolies charging high prices for inferior products. It's one of those things that Congress and the President either take care of or else, when the GOP has any control in either the Senate or the White House, it is not taken care of.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Given the increased White House involvement in judicial matters, Yale University's Timothy Snyder, a historian and author who has devoted much of his career to understanding the rise of tyranny in different parts of the world, sits down with Ana Cabrera to discuss his concerns about a worrying trend taking root in the U.S.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Senator Mitch McConnell is about to plunge the Senate into the nation’s culture wars with votes on bills to sharply restrict access to late-term abortions and threaten some doctors who perform them with criminal penalties, signaling that Republicans plan to make curbing a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy a central theme of their re-election campaigns this year.
Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, is expected to bring the bills up for votes on Tuesday. Both lack the necessary 60-vote supermajority to advance, and the Senate has voted previously to reject them.
But by putting them on the floor again, Mr. McConnell hopes to energize the social conservatives who helped elect Mr. Trump and whose enthusiasm will be needed to help Republicans hold on to the Senate this year, while forcing vulnerable Democrats to take uncomfortable votes on bills that frame abortion as infanticide. The rhetoric around the measures is hot; Mr. Trump, for instance, has pointed to one of the bills to falsely assert that Democrats favor “executing babies AFTER birth.”
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mcconnell-looking-to-energize-social-c
onservatives-forces-votes-on-abortion/ar-BB10looV?ocid=spartanntp
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Bernie and the Filibuster
During a conversation on gun control, wherein former Vice President Joe Biden bragged about beating the NRA in the ’90s, he said he’d do it again as president. What he didn’t mention is that the Obama administration repeatedly sought, and failed, to pass gun control in the aftermath of horrific mass shootings. Biden was part of that effort, and he was unsuccessful. It fell to Warren to explain why:
We have to talk about what it’s really going to take to get something done. I’ve been in the Senate. What I’ve seen is gun safety legislation introduced, get a majority, and then doesn’t pass because of the filibuster. Understand this: The filibuster is giving a veto to the gun industry. It gives a veto to the oil industry. It’s going to give a veto on immigration. Until we’re willing to dig in and say that if Mitch McConnell is going to do to the next Democratic president what he did to President Obama, and that is try to block every single thing he does, that we are willing to roll back the filibuster, go with the majority vote, and do what needs to be done for the American people. Understand this: Many people on this stage do not support rolling back the filibuster. Until we’re ready to do that, we won’t have change.
Warren is right, on all counts. Among those who oppose rolling back the filibuster are Biden, and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar.
Pete Buttigieg tried to press the point a few minutes later, saying:
I want to come back to the question of the filibuster because this is not some long-ago bad vote that Bernie Sanders took. This is a current bad position that Bernie Sanders holds. And we’re in South Carolina. How are we going to deliver a revolution if you won’t even support a filibuster rule change?
Sanders got the next word and, again, ignored the issue. The tension between Sanders’s revolutionary rhetoric and his more institutionalist approach to Senate rules on the filibuster is unexplored in his candidacy, but would be a serious problem for his presidency. The only place he has sought to resolve it is Medicare-for-all, where he’s offered a complex plan to use the budget reconciliation process by instructing his vice president to try overturning the Senate parliamentarian’s rulings. But since Senator Bernie won’t support ending the filibuster, President Bernie won’t have Medicare-for-All. The filibuster will bloody murder any hope Bernie and his supporters have about a transformative Presidency. Senator Bernie should murder the filibuster, but he won’t do it because he is a fake revolutionary.
www.vox.com/2020/2/25/21153846/filibuster-south-carolina-debate-democr
atic-primary-2020
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Per your usual, you completely missed the point about monopolies charging high prices for inferior products. It's one of those things that Congress and the President either take care of or else, when the GOP has any control in either the Senate or the White House, it is not taken care of.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Yup. I clearly remember Obama being known for all of that monopoly busting he did.
Oh... wait...
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ix, you never stop missing the point, do you? Trump is Doubling Down on Obama and Bush's Legacy of Going Soft on Antitrust Problems. If you keep missing the point, 6ix, you will end up dead sooner rather than later. While thinking about that, go have a smoke, then suddenly realize you must give up smoking.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Per your usual, you completely missed the point about monopolies charging high prices for inferior products. It's one of those things that Congress and the President either take care of or else, when the GOP has any control in either the Senate or the White House, it is not taken care of.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Yup. I clearly remember Obama being known for all of that monopoly busting he did.
Oh... wait...
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.vice.com/en_us/article/evmqye/trump-is-doubling-down-on-obama-and-
bushs-legacy-of-going-soft-on-antitrust-problems
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you never stop missing the point, do you? Trump is Doubling Down on Obama and Bush's Legacy of Going Soft on Antitrust Problems. If you keep missing the point, 6ix, you will end up dead sooner rather than later. While thinking about that, go have a smoke, then suddenly realize you must give up smoking.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Per your usual, you completely missed the point about monopolies charging high prices for inferior products. It's one of those things that Congress and the President either take care of or else, when the GOP has any control in either the Senate or the White House, it is not taken care of.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
My monthly internet bill is $20. That's $10 less than South Korea.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Yup. I clearly remember Obama being known for all of that monopoly busting he did.
Oh... wait...
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.vice.com/en_us/article/evmqye/trump-is-doubling-down-on-obama-and-
bushs-legacy-of-going-soft-on-antitrust-problems
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I like smoking. I have zero plans on quitting.
I'm not missing the point. You just made it for me.
There isn't anybody on that Democrat debate stage that is going to do a goddamned thing about breaking up monopolies, so in light of the fact that Democrats are just awful in every other thing they say or do I'm going to be voting for Republicans.
Hopefully when they lose both the popular vote and the electoral college to Trump and get crushed in November, they'll start coming around and being a better party for the next cycle.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:I have not watched any debates, but even I know about Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Big Fight’ Against Monopolies: Warren speaks to The Nation about power, markets, and breaking up corporate giants. Why does 6ix not know better?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I like smoking. I have zero plans on quitting.
I'm not missing the point. You just made it for me.
There isn't anybody on that Democrat debate stage that is going to do a goddamned thing about breaking up monopolies, so in light of the fact that Democrats are just awful in every other thing they say or do I'm going to be voting for Republicans.
Hopefully when they lose both the popular vote and the electoral college to Trump and get crushed in November, they'll start coming around and being a better party for the next cycle.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.thenation.com/article/archive/elizabeth-warrens-big-fight-against-
monopolies/
Republicans refuse to break monopolies. By the way, I know why the Federal government will have a very hard fight breaking up monopolies if Democrats are in charge: there are 3.5 million in the top 1%. We outnumber the Federal government's employees. And your average 1%er has far more motivation (it's about money as a motivator, you know) and firepower to fight a monopoly breakup than even the very best paid Federal employees will have. It will be a tough and slow fight for the Federal government.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Border Patrol Invited the Press to Watch It Blow Up a National Monument
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/27/border-wall-construction-organ-pip
e-explosion/
U.S. Army and Border Patrol officials hosted an unusual event in the Sonoran Desert on Wednesday, inviting members of the press to watch as they blew up a portion of a national monument in support of the president’s ongoing effort to wall off the United States from Mexico.
Presented as a run-of-the mill construction project, the explosives detonated on the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona went off just as the chair of the Tohono O’odham Nation — a Native American tribe with deep historic and cultural ties to the area — offered testimony in Washington, D.C. regarding the Trump administration’s desecration of O’odham lands.
Wednesday’s explosive event was an elaborate effort, with journalists invited to a trailer in a dirt lot that has served as a base of operations for the Organ Pipe project.
Taped to the walls inside the space were Google Earth-style images of the border with colored demarcations charting different portions of wall expansion and replacement. Sitting in plain view was a set of Department of Homeland Security blueprints — labeled “Wall Standard Details” — that showed a wall topped with spikes (while President Donald Trump has described his desire for a spiked border wall, the existing wall in Arizona currently lacks spikes). When asked why the wall had spikes, a Border Patrol agent examined the document for a moment, told us all of our questions would be answered, and then took the documents into another room and shut the door. James O’Loughlin, a contractor with the Logistics Management Institute and project manager for Customs and Border Protection-Pentagon projects, later told me that “there is no current plan for spikes on the wall” nor are there current plans to paint the wall black, which the president has also expressed interest in.
Soon after the blueprints disappeared, the day’s events began.
Having offered to pardon U.S. officials if they commit crimes in the process of building his border wall, Trump’s desire to make good on his core 2016 campaign promise ahead of the 2020 election is no secret.
More at https://theintercept.com/2020/02/27/border-wall-construction-organ-pip
e-explosion/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I have not watched any debates, but even I know about Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Big Fight’ Against Monopolies: Warren speaks to The Nation about power, markets, and breaking up corporate giants. Why does 6ix not know better?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I like smoking. I have zero plans on quitting.
I'm not missing the point. You just made it for me.
There isn't anybody on that Democrat debate stage that is going to do a goddamned thing about breaking up monopolies, so in light of the fact that Democrats are just awful in every other thing they say or do I'm going to be voting for Republicans.
Hopefully when they lose both the popular vote and the electoral college to Trump and get crushed in November, they'll start coming around and being a better party for the next cycle.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Because she's full of shit.
We all hear her saying that, but she brought over 10 million dollars of big money donations from her previous Senate run while lying and saying she had no big donors for the primary.
We've gone over this months ago when I showed you the FEC receipts.
Go check it out yourself. I'm not doing the research twice for you.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:She has $10 million and Trump has $1,000 million. Trump gets his money directly from monopolies. Trump has and will go easy on monopolies.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
. . . she brought over 10 million dollars of big money donations from her previous Senate run while lying and saying she had no big donors for the primary.
Members of President Donald Trump’s re-election team and some of the GOP’s biggest fundraisers are discussing a new goal of raising an extra $1 billion, according to two bundlers who have been part of the discussions.
Trump’s campaign and the RNC have boasted about their strong fund-raising, regularly declaring record hauls and comparing their numbers to those of former President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election.
Republicans will look to super-PAC donors to give more, raise more money at high-dollar events headlined by Trump, and expand other efforts to bring in additional money.
One way to match Bloomberg’s spending is to raise more money from a handful of billionaires, the people said. They speculated that casino owner Sheldon Adelson, Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison, Blackstone Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Stephen Schwarzman, and Continental Resources Inc. founder Harold Hamm could be asked to up their donations.
Trump’s re-election committees and the Republican National Committee said they have combined to raise $525 million so far in the election cycle, and ended January with more than $200 million cash on hand.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/trump-backers-want-extra-bi
llion-to-counter-bloomberg-spending
If Elizabeth Warren has $10 million and Trump has $200 million in his checking account with more coming in every day, who do you think is working for the monopolies?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I'v reseeved 10$ so far.
That wuz in 2017.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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Star Trek has a lesson for Bernie: We're Not Ready For First Contact
www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/29/star-trek-first-contact-bern
ie-sanders-democratic-primary-column/4913386002/
In one episode, the crew of the Enterprise is instructed to make “first contact” with a new world, let them know that aliens exist and invite them to join The Federation. The chancellor of the planet’s government is thrilled with the idea but a traditionalist member of his cabinet is completely opposed, convinced that making this information public will destroy their culture. At the end, the traditionalist leader tries to force the chancellor to reject The Federation by attempting to kill himself and frame a member of the crew for his murder.
When he eventually regains consciousness, he grabs the Chancellor’s arm and says, “Chancellor, you must not do this!” The Chancellor responds, “I know, old friend, I know.” He then explains to the Enterprise crew that, as much as he wants to take this step, it is too soon. His people just are not ready for it and that trying to do so prematurely would tear his planet apart. Someday, hopefully soon, his people would be ready for what The Federation has to offer. But not today.
The Bernie Sanders campaign is based on an idea that the data just does not support, that voters will rise up and throw Donald Trump out of office. The reality is that Presidential Candidate Sanders would present voters in critical, must-win states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan with the question of who terrifies them less. And it is by no means certain that they will conclude that a committed socialist, even a democratic one, is the lesser of two evils.
But suppose Bernie did win the presidency. What then? If there is no evidence that millions of previously-unseen voters will flock to his banner, there is massive, irrefutable evidence that huge swaths of America absolutely will not. We all saw the debate and the extreme discomfort that even many Democrats have with many of Bernie’s ideas. Imagine how Independents and Republicans feel.
Even if having Senator Sanders at the top of the ticket did not put at risk the moderate Democrats who won in 2018 and return the House to Republican control, no one can possibly imagine that Bernie’s laundry list of socialist plans and government giveaways will sweep away powerful opposition once Bernie is sitting in the Oval Office. On the contrary, America is still fighting bitterly over Obamacare, a minor — at least compared to Bernie’s plans — tweak of the healthcare system that was based on what was originally a Republican idea.
Electing Bernie Sanders as president would mean committed activists on both sides fighting to the (hopefully metaphorical) death with a lot of us trapped in no-man’s land and taking fire from both camps. A vote for Bernie Sanders isn’t a vote for a return to honest government and peace, it’s a vote for war.
Many of Sanders’ most committed supporters think that’s exactly what America needs and that the only way to save America is a revolution. But none of us should be comfortable with the idea of destroying America in order to save it.
If you are a progressive activist and a Sanders supporter, I understand that you yearn for President Sanders and his re-making of America with all your heart. But most of us are not ready for what Sanders would bring. After four years of Donald Trump’s efforts to fray the bonds that bind us together, we need a period of peace and healing, not a new period of even more intensive conflict. Over the next four years, we need to recapture our common ground, not seize the high ground and use our advantage to batter our enemies. Doing so would damage this country and our institutions on a scale that would dwarf what Donald Trump has done.
Even if blue America is ready for Bernie Sanders, red America is not. Purple America is not. Most of the country is not there and trying to drag it there will tear it apart. Someday, perhaps, America will be ready for what Bernie Sanders and his
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
I'v reseeved 10$ so far.
That wuz in 2017.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
Good thing you don't smoke man. You can't even buy a pack of cigarettes in your county with that budget pool.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Watch Trump Kiss and Caress an American Flag: “I Love You, Baby.”
And he is still bitter that climate activist Greta Thunberg was named Time's "Person of the Year" instead of him.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/watch-trump-kiss-caress-am
erican-flag-cpac-love-you-baby.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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Greta who?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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The fate of Obamacare is in the Supreme Court’s hands yet again
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear California v. Texas and United States House of Representatives v. Texas, two consolidated cases that represent an existential threat to Obamacare, and that were brought by a coalition of Republican-governed states. For the third time since President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the justices will hear a lawsuit seeking to eviscerate the legislation.
www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21147037/obamacare-supreme-court-texas-john-rober
ts
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Sumthing haz me a little worried.
Wut if Putin haz dirt on Bernie?
The evidens for that iz paper thin now, but wut if?
Its an alternate explanation to the theory that they are boosting Bernie kuz they think he will be eazy for Trump to beat.
Insted, depending on exactly wut the dirt iz, Putin cant looz if Bernie iz the candidate. He may still prefer Trump, but coud at least work with a komprimized Bernie.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals. 
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Brett Kavanaugh does not approve of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
https://qz.com/1811652/
Today, the US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Ironically, this agency that protects Americans from predatory lenders now needs help. It has a “friend of the court” assigned to advocate on its behalf, having been abandoned by its own director, appointed by Trump, in a supreme legal challenge that could unravel a decade of the bureau’s work.
The CFPB is the brainchild of Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. It was created by the 2010 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Under that law, the agency director is appointed for five years and can only be removed by the president “for cause.” This single director’s fixed term is meant to ensure that the CFPB chief can act on behalf of consumers, insulated from political concerns.
Indeed, during its decade or so of existence, the agency has collected billions of dollars and shut down numerous scams.
The agency’s leadership structure is being challenged by a law firm the CFPB was investigating, and things don’t look great for the bureau designed to protect the people. Not only is the agency siding with the challengers against itself, but one of the justices who will decide this case—Brett Kavanaugh—has already made it abundantly clear he’s no CFPB fan.
The right to say “you’re fired!”
Seila Law, a California-based law firm involved in consumer-debt cases that was under investigation by the CFPB, challenged the agency’s leadership structure in court in 2017. The firm argues that the CFPB is unconstitutionally composed because its director’s fixed five-year term allowing only removal for cause violates constitutional “separation of powers” requirements. The Dodd Frank reforms passed by Congress, which then created the CFPB, rob the president of power granted by the Constitution to fire any officers for whatever reason or none at all, it contends.
The Trump administration agrees with this view, perhaps unsurprisingly given its high turnover rate and the president’s “you’re fired!” catchphrase from his reality TV show days. The commander-in-chief is not shy about firing people and it appears his administration believes it’s an executive’s constitutional right. Under CFPB director Kathy Kraninger, Trump’s 2018 appointee, the agency is siding with Seila Law on the merits.
Thus, justice Elena Kagan appointed a lawyer to stand for the orphaned bureau before the Supreme Court. Somewhat counterintuitively, she chose Paul Clement, who last week argued his 100th high court case representing a company seeking to build a pipeline under the Appalachian Trail.
A partner at the law firm Kirkland and Ellis, former solicitor general under president George W. Bush, and a longtime champion of conservative causes, Clement’s “defense of the consumer bureau … put[s] him at odds—at least in this case—with groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce and others that have questioned the power of the CFPB director,” Law.com has noted.
But Amy Howe of SCOTUSBlog suggested to Quartz that Clement was a strategic choice, someone conservatives can’t easily dismiss. Appointing him may have been a way to depoliticize an ideologically divisive matter—conservatives don’t like the CFPB and progressives, like Warren who created it, do. But conservatives and business do like Clement and he’s considered a talented advocate, so he’ll zealously represent the agency progressives champion.
Individual liberty and the executive check
The orphaned agency faces another serious challenge though. Clement must convince Kavanaugh he is wrong.
In 2016, before Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court by Trump, he wrote about the CFPB as a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. In PHH Corporation v. CFPB, similar issues arose when a mortgage lender challenged the agency. Kavanaugh framed the case creatively, finding the single-director fixed-term structure is an assault on individual liberty.
Essentially
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Brett Kavanaugh does not approve of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
https://qz.com/1811652/
Today, the US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Ironically, this agency that protects Americans from predatory lenders now needs help. It has a “friend of the court” assigned to advocate on its behalf, having been abandoned by its own director, appointed by Trump, in a supreme legal challenge that could unravel a decade of the bureau’s work.
The voter base is shifting in a big way now. Soon the Trump voter will no longer have the numbers to scratch an itch. Texas in on the verge of flipping and may do so this very election. Judges can be impeached.
tick tock
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
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Why does Trump want to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
It is easy to see why once you look at who is cheating who out of their money.
https://qz.com/1139249/
The agency’s own list of enforcement actions provides a guide to the most popular ways lenders and collection agencies have been creatively cheating US customers over the past seven years. Here’s a look at some recurring scams:
1) Fake debt collection
The CFPB receives more complaints about illegal debt collection than anything else, and it is a growing problem in America. Unscrupulous companies buy information from banks about loans that are too old to collect, or not even owed, and then hound consumers into paying them back with illegal lawsuits and other threats, often with exorbitant fees attached.
The CFPB has investigated and fined 33 different companies for unscrupulous debt collection practices.
In September, the CFPB forced the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts to pay $19.1 million back to consumers for “private student loan debt that the companies couldn’t prove was owed or was too old to sue over.” In October of 2016, it sued to shut down Northern Resolution Group, a Buffalo group accused of harassing, threatening, and deceiving “millions” of consumers across the country into paying debts they didn’t owe. And in July of 2015, JP Morgan Chase was required to refund $50 million to consumers for selling “zombie debt” to collectors that was “inaccurate, settled, discharged in bankruptcy, not owed, or otherwise not collectible.”
2) Tricking student borrowers into paying more
The CFPB has investigated and fined 14 lenders for over-charging student borrowers, lying to them about loan rates, and misrepresenting themselves as having a relationship with the federal government. Citibank, for example, was ordered in September to return $3.75 million to student borrowers that it had charged in late fees and interest while they were still in school. (Student loan borrowers can defer payments until they graduate).
In August of 2016, the agency required for-profit education company Bridgepoint to refund $23.5 million to students that it had “deceived” into taking out loans that were more expensive than advertised. And in July of 2015, it forced Discover Bank to refund $16 million to student borrowers for inflating their minimum payments.
3) Charging minorities more for car loans
Auto lending in the US has skyrocketed in recent years, including to borrowers without good credit history. Economists and bank analysts see some parallels between the subprime mortgage crash that caused the 2008 recession and the frothy auto loan market. Just as with mortgages then, there are plenty of unscrupulous practices happening in auto lending now.
The CFPB has filed 13 judgements against lenders and debt collectors related to auto loans.
In February of 2016, Toyota Motor Credit was forced to pay $21.9 million back to “thousands of African-American and Asian and Pacific Islander borrowers who paid higher interest rates than white borrowers for their auto loans, without regard to their creditworthiness.” In Sept. of 2015, Fifth Third Bank was required to pay $18 million to African-American and Hispanic auto loan customers who were charged, on average, $200 more per car loan than white borrowers with similar credit history.
4) Starting fake accounts
In September 2016, the CFPB fined Wells Fargo $100 million after it opened an estimated two million unauthorized credit card and deposit accounts, and then billed customers fees through existing accounts. This is the largest fine ever paid to the CFPB.
Beyond the CFPB, in some ways it has become easier for banks to rip off US customers since the subprime crisis. A growing number of big banks include language in the fine print of checking account applications that requires customers to rely on private arbitration to settle disputes, for example. In October, the US Senate killed a rule that would made it easier for bank customers to file class action suits.
Profits at big ba
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Brett Kavanaugh does not approve of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
https://qz.com/1811652/
Today, the US Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Ironically, this agency that protects Americans from predatory lenders now needs help. It has a “friend of the court” assigned to advocate on its behalf, having been abandoned by its own director, appointed by Trump, in a supreme legal challenge that could unravel a decade of the bureau’s work.
The voter base is shifting in a big way now. Soon the Trump voter will no longer have the numbers to scratch an itch. Texas in on the verge of flipping and may do so this very election. Judges can be impeached.
tick tock
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
lol. Is that what the Legacy Media is telling you now?
Poor, poor T...
Enjoy the summer, because it's going to be a very long winter for you.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Sumthing haz me a little worried.
Wut if Putin haz dirt on Bernie?
The evidens for that iz paper thin now, but wut if?
Its an alternate explanation to the theory that they are boosting Bernie kuz they think he will be eazy for Trump to beat.
Insted, depending on exactly wut the dirt iz, Putin cant looz if Bernie iz the candidate. He may still prefer Trump, but coud at least work with a komprimized Bernie.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
Bernie for President would be like having Putin for President.
Read a book.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Blowout, Chapter 28 www.amazon.com/Blowout-Corrupted-Democracy-Destructive-Industry-ebook/
dp/B07Q18953R/
What is the point of outrage at oil and gas producers? What good can possibly come of it? It’s like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s who he is; it’s in his nature.
The nature of Big Oil and Gas hasn’t much changed since its inception at the end of the nineteenth century. The entire point, and therefore the controlling instinct and the base ethos, is to make money—as much money as possible. That’s true in theory for every industry, but the amount of money potentially at hand for producers of oil and gas sets these particular products apart from every other low-tech filthy widget in the world. Combine that with the inherently destructive and polluting nature of production, and you end up in a relentlessly, recklessly driven cost-cutting environment in which it’s probably mathematically worth it to try to get away with almost anything. In the most profit-making industry on earth, there is still no meaningful R&D investment in cleanup technology, nor has there ever been any measurable slowdown in the pace or number of disasters that need cleaning up.
And it is in the nature of the beast to go get those barrels, so long as there is money to be made. In fact, the breakthrough technologies of hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling in the last generation have made the industry more energetically predatory than ever before. And even more delusional. “Every time we can’t drill a well in America, terrorism is being funded,” Harold Hamm said at the 2016 Republican National Convention. “Every onerous regulation puts American lives at risk.” This is an industry that has demanded and received special treatment for more than a century and regards this private right as its due. But even if “energy independence” is our international relations insurance policy and the safety of our energy supply is a core national security issue, why are oil and gas the only energy sources to which those imperatives redound? Why are oil and gas the only energy sources seen as appropriate tools to reach these two national goals? Heaven forbid the government instead offers breaks and incentives to, say, renewable energy. Then suddenly the industry becomes the champion of the free market. Government should not be in the business of picking winners!
The oil and gas industry, as ever, is wholly incapable of any real self-examination, or of policing or reforming itself. Might as well ask the lions to take up a plant-based diet. If we want the most powerful and consequential industry on our planet to operate safely, and rationally, and with actual accountability, well, make it. It’s not mission-to-Mars complicated either, but it works.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals. 
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Hand sanitizer applied to your balding scalp isn't going to undo years of what Maddow's done to your brain space.
You need a colonic in your ear canal to fix what ails you, buddy. 
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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What’s the meaning of life? (It is a political question even more than a philosophical and religious question)
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/5/18663220/god-religion-sociali
sm-martin-hagglund-this-life
It’s the biggest question anyone has ever asked, and there is no easy answer. It’s even harder to answer if you consider this possibility: That this life — the here and now — is all we have. There is no heaven nor hell, no eternal beyond, no consciousness of any kind after death. We are thrown into existence, we live for a while, and then we pass away into nonexistence.
If all of that’s true, how should we spend our time? What should we care about? And most importantly, what do owe each other?
A new book, called This Life, by Yale philosopher Martin Hägglund somehow tackles all of these questions and much more. For Hägglund, the best religious and philosophical traditions all implicitly recognize that the highest good, the thing we’re really after, is this life that we share together. And that means we have to think about meaning and commitment with this truth in mind.
This is Hägglund’s point of departure, and it leads him through the history of religious and political ideas and finally to a deep critique of capitalism and the values that undergird it. In the end, Hägglund argues that some form of socialism is the only political project that takes the human condition seriously, unlike capitalism, because it allows us to devote ourselves to projects that we actually care about as opposed to selling our labor — and time — for the sake of profit and survival.
Sean Illing: Capitalism values time in the sense that someone has to pay us for it, but it doesn’t value the ability to spend our time in ways that aren’t connected to survival or money. Everything turns on wealth and profit and property, and you’re defined by what you own, what you possess. It’s the most spiritually impoverished way of being I could possibly imagine.
Martin Hägglund: Yes, but the thing about Marx is that, even though he’s very critical of capitalism and thinks it has to be overcome, he also thinks it was a form of progress compared to previous forms of life. And the question of time is at the center of that.
There’s a contradiction here because, on the one hand, capitalism is the first social form of life which recognizes that everyone’s time is valuable in the sense that you have to pay someone to do something rather than just enslave them. What you’re saying to the enslaved person is that you don’t own your time at all; I own you and your time.
So capitalism, at least minimally, recognizes that our time is important. Even if you’re not a capitalist or don’t own any property, you at least own the time of your life. In other words, there’s a negative recognition that your time is valuable because it costs something to buy it, and this is a qualitative shift that capitalism makes possible.
Sean Illing: Can you say a little more about Marx’s critique of capitalism and why it was both a necessary step on the way toward something like socialism and why it had to be discarded in order for us to really own our time in the way you think we should?
Martin Hägglund: Well, Marx asked, how did we come to embrace this idea of everyone’s right to freedom and equality? And the answer is that capitalism helped gives us this language, this way of thinking, because this mode of production, of buying and selling our labor on the market, couldn’t be justified by race or caste or any of these things.
But this is where the contradictions emerged for Marx. While we’re all formally equal under capitalism in terms of our rights to sell our labor, we’re still unequal because we have different amounts of capital. So we’re minimally free in that no one can just enslave us or force us to do something, but we’re only free to sell our labor in order to survive.
This is progress over the old feudal system, and it helps to establish the importance of freedom and equality, but it can’t
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Awesome links.
I'm sure the author won't mind.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ix, Martin Hägglund is a Commie. Excuse me -- Marxist/Socialist. He wrote the book because that is what professors do. If he was writing for money, he'd be writing movie scripts for Disney. Hollywood sure needs some smarter writers and Hägglund is one. Did you see Star Wars 9? What a stupid movie! But it made money. A billion people will eventually waste some of their life watching it and Martin Hägglund would not approve of such waste, which is why he wrote "This Life, Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom".
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Awesome links.
I'm sure the author won't mind.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Chapter 5 begins with:
The greatest resources for developing a secular notion of freedom can be found in the writings of Karl Marx. This may be surprising, since Marxism is notorious for having given rise to totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century. Yet, as I will seek to show, there is no support in Marx’s thinking for any form of totalitarian state. On the contrary, the premise for all of his work is “the existence of living human individuals” as ends in themselves. This commitment to individual freedom—what Marx describes as “the free development of individualities”—is the foundation for his critique of capitalism and his critique of religion.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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And you too can have a legal copy of it for just $19.98 at Target:
https://www.target.com/p/this-life-by-martin-h-gglund-hardcover/-/A-54
175371?ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=google_pla_df&fndsrc=tgtao&CPNG=PLA_Entertainment%2BShopping&adgroup=SC_Entertainment&LID=700000001170770pgs&network=g&device=c&location=9016186&ds_rl=1246978&ds_rl=1248099&ds_rl=1246978&gclid=Cj0KCQiAhojzBRC3ARIsAGtNtHWCklSioDXZ6p0PFFpwuHA_Cc2W24raU2_8eycqkhj3BeivXAbxIsIaAtz5EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Or just $12.99 on Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/This-Life-Secular-Spiritual-Freedom-ebook/dp/B0
72MXPYQB
So when are you cutting your pay to $70,000 per year and giving the rest away? You never got back to me on that one.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Why do many working-class white Americans support politicians whose policies are literally killing them?
This is the question sociologist and psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl tries to answer in his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland. The book is a serious look at how cultural attitudes associated with “whiteness” encourage white people to adopt political views — like opposition to gun laws or the Affordable Care Act — that undercut their own health.
The book is not about racism at the individual level, though you can certainly read that into it. For Metzl, the key question is how did a politics of racial resentment become so powerful that it overwhelmed even the basic instinct for self-preservation? To get answers, he spent years talking to voters in Southern and Midwestern states, asking them to explain their political choices. The answers aren’t terribly satisfying, but they are instructive.
I spoke to Metzl about what he learned and what he thinks we can do to solve this problem. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing: Why are so many poor and working-class white Americans endorsing policies that are literally killing them?
Jonathan Metzl: That’s the core question I address in the book. I look at the rejection of the Affordable Care Act in the South. I look at policies that make it far easier for people to get guns and carry guns everywhere. I look at tax cuts that benefit wealthy Americans but cut roads, bridges, and schools in poor and working-class areas. Every one of those policies has been sold as a policy that will make America great again. But they have devastating consequences for working-class populations, particularly working-class white populations, in many instances.
You can’t really understand why people might support those agendas if you just start the conversation today. There are long trajectories of anti-government sentiment that course through the South that Trump has tapped into. There are also concerns about what it means to have the government intervene in ways that equally distribute resources that working-class white populations fear might undermine their own sense of privilege.
I think the GOP has also been remarkably successful at tapping into this narrative — a narrative that makes people anxious that immigrants and minorities are going to take away privileges that are theirs.
Sean Illing: When you say that certain policies or dogmas are “killing people,” what exactly do you mean? How are people dying?
Jonathan Metzl: Well, part of what I do in the book is talk to people in their daily lives and try to examine the everyday effects of particular GOP policies. And the other part of the book looks at the data trends of those policies, which is pretty remarkable.
I found that if you lived in a state that rejected the Medicaid expansion and blocked the full passage of the Affordable Care Act, you lived about a 21- to 28-day shorter life span on the aggregate. So it was costing people about three to four weeks of life in those states.
When I looked at states that made it incredibly easy for people to buy and carry guns pretty much anywhere they wanted, I found that this correlated with hundreds of deaths that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, particularly in white populations, because gun suicide rose dramatically. And I found that if you lived in a state that cut away infrastructure and schools and funding, that correlated with higher high school dropout rates.
All these variables are associated with shorter life expectancies, so this is what I mean when I say these policies are killing people.
Free Download for "Dying of Whiteness"
https://libgen.unblockit.red/search.php?req=Dying+of+Whiteness
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:The free links are for you, but would you exert yourself to click? The $70,000 job is out there for you, but would you exert yourself to move where the job is?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And you too can have a legal copy of it for just $19.98 at Target:
Or just $12.99 on Kindle:
So when are you cutting your pay to $70,000 per year and giving the rest away? You never got back to me on that one.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Why do many working-class white Americans support politicians whose policies are literally killing them?
This is the question sociologist and psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl tries to answer in his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland. The book is a serious look at how cultural attitudes associated with “whiteness” encourage white people to adopt political views — like opposition to gun laws or the Affordable Care Act — that undercut their own health.
The book is not about racism at the individual level, though you can certainly read that into it. For Metzl, the key question is how did a politics of racial resentment become so powerful that it overwhelmed even the basic instinct for self-preservation? To get answers, he spent years talking to voters in Southern and Midwestern states, asking them to explain their political choices. The answers aren’t terribly satisfying, but they are instructive.
I spoke to Metzl about what he learned and what he thinks we can do to solve this problem. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing: Why are so many poor and working-class white Americans endorsing policies that are literally killing them?
Jonathan Metzl: That’s the core question I address in the book. I look at the rejection of the Affordable Care Act in the South. I look at policies that make it far easier for people to get guns and carry guns everywhere. I look at tax cuts that benefit wealthy Americans but cut roads, bridges, and schools in poor and working-class areas. Every one of those policies has been sold as a policy that will make America great again. But they have devastating consequences for working-class populations, particularly working-class white populations, in many instances.
You can’t really understand why people might support those agendas if you just start the conversation today. There are long trajectories of anti-government sentiment that course through the South that Trump has tapped into. There are also concerns about what it means to have the government intervene in ways that equally distribute resources that working-class white populations fear might undermine their own sense of privilege.
I think the GOP has also been remarkably successful at tapping into this narrative — a narrative that makes people anxious that immigrants and minorities are going to take away privileges that are theirs.
Sean Illing: When you say that certain policies or dogmas are “killing people,” what exactly do you mean? How are people dying?
Jonathan Metzl: Well, part of what I do in the book is talk to people in their daily lives and try to examine the everyday effects of particular GOP policies. And the other part of the book looks at the data trends of those policies, which is pretty remarkable.
I found that if you lived in a state that rejected the Medicaid expansion and blocked the full passage of the Affordable Care Act, you lived about a 21- to 28-day shorter life span on the aggregate. So it was costing people about three to four weeks of life in those states.
When I looked at states that made it incredibly easy for people to buy and carry guns pretty much anywhere they wanted, I found that this correlated with hundreds of deaths that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, particularly in white populations, because gun suicide rose dramatically. And I found that if you lived in a state that cut away infrastructure and schools and funding, that correlated with higher high school dropout rates.
All these variables are associated with shorter life expectancies, so this is what I mean when I say these policies are killing people.
Free Download for "Dying of Whiteness"
https://libgen.unblockit.red/search.php?req=Dying+of+Whiteness
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Fuck Metzl and fuck his racist book.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:If I had a dollar for every time a Texas Republican told me he wasn't a racist but he did have a problem with lazy, no good niggers and Mexicans expecting the government to give them free stuff, I'd have enough money to fix 6ix's screwed up life, which is all his fault, not Democrats'.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Fuck Metzl and fuck his racist book.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
I forgot to mention how much Texas Republicans, who described themselves as completely non-racist, hated that goddamn stupid Obama because the nigger only got into Harvard since there is a quota for dumb niggers. Then they would remind listeners that they are not racist, they are simply stating the facts.
He is not a Texas Republican, but Donald Trump in 2011 upped the ante against President Barack Obama's legitimacy, raising questions about how the president was admitted to two Ivy League schools.
Trump openly questioned how Obama, who he said had been a "terrible student," got accepted into Columbia University for undergraduate studies and then Harvard Law School.
"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible," Trump told the Associated Press in an interview, a claim he's made in the past but one he doubled down on by suggesting he's probing that area of the president's life.
"How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records," he said, without providing backup for his claim.
Trump added, "I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard."
"We don't know a thing about this guy," Trump said. "There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president."
More at www.politico.com/story/2011/04/trump-howd-obama-get-into-ivies-053694
Trump claims he is ‘least racist person in the world’ despite repeated racist attacks
More at www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-racist-twe
ets-aoc-ilhan-omar-baltimore-al-sharpton-jamestown-a9027306.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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I blame the damn russians'. Hell, it's always the russians'.
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
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We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America
by Jennifer M. Silva
Oxford University Press, 206 pp., $24.95
During the run-up to the 2016 election, the sociologist Jennifer Silva interviewed people in the Pennsylvania coal region, which delivered Trump a two-thirds majority, to find out how they made political decisions. Pennsylvania’s coal mines, which once employed 175,000 people, now employ just 837. With those jobs went an entire way of life. The work was dangerous and dirty; thousands died in accidents or succumbed to black lung disease; miners depended on company stores and homes, and those who lost their jobs faced destitution; but they nevertheless had a profound sense of solidarity. Most marriages lasted a lifetime, and communities were held together by social clubs, churches, unions, and friendships.
Today, Coal Brook, the (pseudonymous) town that Silva describes in We’re Still Here, is a depressed wasteland of bars, chain stores, fast food restaurants, and drug rehab centers. Most of the white, black, and Hispanic men and women Silva interviewed struggled with drug or alcohol problems, had spent time in jail, and/or were unemployed. Virtually all said that voting was pointless because the system was rigged in favor of the rich. When Silva turned up for an interview on Election Day wearing an “I Voted” sticker, she was mocked as a gullible fool.
“All politicians are bought off,” declared Joshua, a twenty-eight-year-old white ex-con in drug recovery. “Once they get thrown into the machine they become puppets like all the rest…. I’m not a fan of either [Trump or Clinton]. It’s like choose shit or a shit sandwich.”
Bree, a white waitress suffering from chronic pain whose black boyfriend was recently released from prison, felt similarly:
I love women, and I think they can do anything a man can do, but that woman should not be the President of this United States, so help me God, but neither should that jackass. So it’s like, who the frick do you pick? I’m like, you’re not giving us much of a choice here. Either way we’re going to be destroyed.
Very few of the people of color interviewed by Silva bothered to vote at all, but some whites held their noses and voted for Trump. “Oh, he got us rednecks!” said Steven, a sixty-two-year-old janitor. Danielle, a twenty-eight-year-old child abuse survivor with debilitating anxiety, put it this way: Trump is “so in your face, like eff you, I don’t give a crap what you think of me. I think he belongs in this area because that’s what we are.” Bree agreed: “At the end of the day, I would rather have President Dickhead than President Sellout.”
Silva’s white informants tended to see themselves as lonely warriors facing strange, undefined threats to their community. Weird conspiracy theories were common. Graham Hendry, a white nursing-home aide who’d been chain-smoking since age nine and had recently lost three friends to heroin, believed that September 11 and the Sandy Hook school massacre were hoaxes, that FEMA was building a network of concentration camps for minorities, and that the government put fluoride in toothpaste and aluminum chloride in deodorant in order to calcify people’s pineal glands, allowing the authorities to control their minds.
“Everybody is getting cancer,” Mary Ann Wilson, a fifty-one-year-old white smoker, told Silva. “There’s something in the air,” said her adult daughter Vivian, also a smoker. Could it be landfill from those trucks from New York, they wondered? Or the dust kicked up by the mines?
Many of the white men carried guns everywhere—to high school football games, the supermarket, the sub shop. Their anger focused on a faceless government that neglected people like them and on supposedly shiftless immigrants and minorities who feasted at the public trough. Some embraced white nationalist ideas, which unconvincingly concealed deep feelings of loneliness, shame, worry about the future, and a yearning for solidarity.
America’s white working class seems to have fashioned a new culture of pain and trauma
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:If I had a dollar for every time a Texas Republican told me he wasn't a racist but he did have a problem with lazy, no good niggers and Mexicans expecting the government to give them free stuff, I'd have enough money to fix 6ix's screwed up life, which is all his fault, not Democrats'.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Fuck Metzl and fuck his racist book.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Lucky for me you got those hundreds of millions in tax breaks from your fake business you lie about about everyday so you have enough money to fix 6ix's screwed up life, which is all his fault, not Democrats'.
I'm sure the check is in the mail.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
I blame the damn russians'. Hell, it's always the russians'.
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
And now T has become a parody of himself.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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In 2020 we’re relearning the lessons of 2008 — namely, that America’s right-wingers can’t handle the truth.
www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/opinion/trump-economy-coronavirus.html
Over the weekend Donald Trump once again declared that the coronavirus is perfectly under control, that any impressions to the contrary are due to the “Fake News Media” out to get him. Question: Does anyone have a count of how many times he’s done this, comparable to the running tallies fact checkers are keeping of his lies?
In any case, we’ve pretty clearly reached the point where Trump’s assurances that everything is fine actually worsen the panic, because they demonstrate the depths of his delusions. Even as he was tweeting out praise for himself, global markets were in free-fall.
Never mind cratering stock prices. The best indicator of collapsing confidence is what is happening to interest rates, which have plunged almost as far and as fast as they did during the 2008 financial crisis. Markets are implicitly predicting not just a recession, but multiple years of economic weakness.
And at first I was tempted to say that our current situation is even worse than it was in 2008, because at least then we had leadership that recognized the seriousness of the crisis rather than dismissing it all as a liberal conspiracy.
When you look back at the record, however, you discover that as the financial crisis developed right-wingers were also deeply in denial, inclined to dismiss bad news or attribute it to liberal and/or media conspiracies. It was only in the final stages of financial collapse that top officials got real, and right-wing pundits never did.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane.
The 2008 financial crisis was brought on by the collapse of an immense housing bubble. But many on the right denied that there was anything amiss. Larry Kudlow, now Trump’s chief economist, ridiculed “bubbleheads” who suggested that housing prices were out of line.
And I can tell you from personal experience that when I began writing about the housing bubble I was relentlessly accused of playing politics: “You only say there’s a bubble because you hate President Bush.”
When the economy began to slide, mainstream Republicans remained deeply in denial. Phil Gramm, John McCain’s senior economic adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign, declared that America was only suffering a “mental recession” and had become a “nation of whiners.”
Even the failure of Lehman Brothers, which sent the economy into a full meltdown, initially didn’t put a dent in conservative denial. Kudlow hailed the failure as good news, because it signaled an end to bailouts, and predicted housing and financial recovery in “months, not years.”
Wait, there’s more. After the economic crisis helped Barack Obama win the 2008 election, right-wing pundits declared that it was all a left-wing conspiracy. Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly accused the news media of hyping bad news to enable Obama’s socialist agenda, while Rush Limbaugh asserted that Senator Chuck Schumer personally caused the crisis (don’t ask).
The point is that Trump’s luridly delusional response to the coronavirus and his conspiracy theorizing about Democrats and the news media aren’t really that different from the way the right dealt with the financial crisis a dozen years ago. True, last time the crazy talk wasn’t coming directly from the president of the United States. But that’s not the important distinction between then and now.
No, what’s different now is that denial and the resulting delay are likely to have deadly consequences.
It’s not clear, even in retrospect, how much better things would have been if right-wingers had recognized economic reality in 2008. Years of deregulation and lax enforcement had already weakened the financial system, and it was probably too late to head off the coming crisis.
Virus denial, by contrast, squandered crucial time — time that could have been used to slow the coronavirus’s spread. For the clear and present danger now isn’t so much that large numbers of Americ
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Anybody need more proof that NYT is a biased Democrat shill farm?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:You don't remember 2008, do you? I do. I clearly remember Bush not doing a damn thing about the crisis until too late to make any difference. Then the clock ran out and Bush and his team were gone from the White House, having not saved the situation and leaving a mess for somebody else to clean up.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Anybody need more proof that NYT is a biased Democrat shill farm?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Texas oil loses when OPEC doesn’t manipulate prices
www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Texas-o
il-loses-when-OPEC-doesn-t-manipulate-15121361.php
Everyone loves a free market on the ride up, but they become socialists on the journey down.
Saudi Arabia, Russia and other oil producers struck a deal two years ago to boost oil prices by cutting production. At the time, I questioned how long this new group, calling itself OPEC+, could connive without some party cheating or rewriting the deal.
Meanwhile, American oil executives, those conservative paragons of capitalism, hypocritically cheered the price-fixing scheme. After all, they know they can’t compete in a truly free market, where oil flows without someone, somewhere manipulating the market.
What OPEC+ gives, though, OPEC+ can take away.
Dozens of times over the past two years, energy consulting firms have confidently predicted oil prices would skyrocket and generate enormous profits for investors. They assumed OPEC+ was going to subsidize Texas shale drillers, who cannot turn a profit for less than $55 a barrel.
I repeatedly warned the world had too much supply. Why would Saudi Arabia and Russia allow U.S. oil companies to leech market share? OPEC+ has 2 million barrels a day of spare capacity, most of it cheaper to produce than West Texas Intermediate.
The deal lasted longer than I expected and fell apart last week.
For the first time in two years, we have a free market in crude, and the price is about $35 a barrel. In a note released Monday, Bank of America expects the price to remain below $50 for the rest of the year.
Big Oil’s cries of betrayal would be hilarious if they were not so cynical. The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s lobbying arm, sent an email to journalists calling the price drop “Putin’s War on America’s Shale Oil Industry.”
“Russia has a history of using energy policy to advance geopolitical goals,” advises Scott Parker, an API spokesman. “Ultimately, it’s helpful to remind readers that this may be a foreign policy decision by Russia to reclaim its geopolitical leverage and undermine a key U.S. strategic asset.”
Who cares if the policy decision creates a competitive market where consumers pay only the marginal cost for petroleum instead of a rigged price that benefits oligarchs and dictators? I guess nothing sets Big Oil’s hair on fire like a 50 percent drop.
President Donald Trump called Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on Monday, presumably to get him to resume price-fixing. The Trump administration’s chest-pounding is pitiful.
“These attempts by state actors to manipulate and shock oil markets reinforce the importance of the role of the United States as a reliable energy supplier to partners and allies around the world,” Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said in a statement.
OPEC and Russia are not manipulating the market; they just stopped colluding. Not long ago, Republicans in Congress were promoting an anti-trust law to make OPEC’s quota-setting punishable in U.S. courts. Now they want OPEC to rig the game and force American consumers to pay more?
A few years ago, American oil executives bragged that shale oil companies were the new swing producers, ready to raise or lower production depending on global demand. They claimed they would make OPEC irrelevant because they would guarantee energy independence.
The oil and stock market’s behavior over the last 10 days proves that energy independence is a fairy tale told (by Trump and) by nationalists who do not understand how markets work.
The truth is that Texas shale drillers can’t compete on an even playing field with Saudi or Russia, where production costs are half of those in the Permian Basin. They do not have to drill horizontally. They don’t have to hydraulically fracture the well. Their oil always will be cheaper.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You don't remember 2008, do you? I do. I clearly remember Bush not doing a damn thing about the crisis until too late to make any difference. Then the clock ran out and Bush and his team were gone from the White House, having not saved the situation and leaving a mess for somebody else to clean up.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Anybody need more proof that NYT is a biased Democrat shill farm?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I also remember back in 2008 when the NYT at least held up the pretense of being non-partisan as well.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Last week, five Democratic senators sent disturbing missives to three Trump administration officials about secret forces transforming the US courts and about one very powerful American lawyer in particular, Leonard Leo.
www.whitehouse.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Barr Letter.pdf
United States Senate
WASHINGTON, DC 20510
March 4, 2020
Attorney General William Barr
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Barr,
As members of the United States Senate, we have witnessed an unprecedented rise in anonymous funding which now pervades the process for selecting federal judicial nominees, confirming them, and advancing cases and legal theories that serve special interests to the detriment of the American people. We believe this anonymous funding, likely from entities that have interests before the federal courts, is undermining the rule of law and the bedrock American principle of equal justice under law.
Investigative reporting has brought attention to Leonard Leo’s leading role in these efforts, including his service with the Trump Administration advising its judicial selection and nominations process.1 In March 2016, Mr. Leo, who was then Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, met with Don McGahn and then-candidate Donald Trump to provide a list of possible Supreme Court nominees. After President Trump’s election, Mr. Leo reportedly also served on his transition team, took leave from the Federalist Society to advise the Trump Administration on Supreme Court nominations, and continues to serve as an advisor on nominations to federal district and appeals courts. To date, over 85 percent of President Trump’s appellate court nominees, including both of his nominees to the Supreme Court, are current or former members of the Federalist Society.
This reporting also places Mr. Leo at the center of a complex network of nonprofit groups and shell entities funded largely by anonymous donors. Between 2014 and 2017 alone, Mr. Leo’s network collected more than $250 million in donations, the sources of which remain unknown. While much of this money has been directed toward advocacy spending in support of judicial nominees through advertising and other means, it appears that Mr. Leo also has a financial interest in these anonymous donations. Although he has regularly received upwards of $400,000 in annual compensation from the Federalist Society, Mr. Leo has declined to disclose his total compensation received through other entities in his network, including from the BH Group, which contributed $1 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee. In addition, he has recently indicated that he is forming a new venture which plans, among other things, to raise and spend millions on issue advocacy campaigns focusing on judges in the 2020 election cycle.
1 Robert O’Harrow & Shawn Boburg, A Conservative Activist's Behind-the-Scenes Campaign to Remake the Nation’s Courts, THE WASHINGTON POST (May 21,2019).
Mr. Leo’s prominent role in the Trump Administration’s judicial selection and nominations process while maintaining a financial interest in advocacy efforts related to this process has raised questions regarding his potential status as a federal employee and compliance with accompanying laws and regulations. By outward appearances, Mr. Leo may have engaged in the performance of a federal function that must be conducted by government employees authorized to act on behalf of the United States by leading the Administration’s efforts to identify and select judicial nominees, and press for their confirmation.2
As a federal employee, Mr. Leo would have been responsible for complying with federal records retention and financial disclosure requirements, as well as the criminal financial conflict of interest statute, 18 U.S.C. § 208. If he was not deemed a federal employee, Mr. Leo’s role in the Trump Administration may have violated legal limitations on the federal government’s acceptance of voluntary services or restrictions on access to
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Trump Can’t Cancel the Election. But States Could Do It for Him.
There’s a perfectly legal shortcut around a free and fair presidential election.
If the pandemic gets so severe that we cannot responsibly hold in-person elections, Congress should require states to allow no-excuse absentee balloting. But if Trump does not want to risk a loss at the polls, he can exploit a constitutional shortcut around free and fair elections. The president can ask Republican-controlled state legislatures to assign their electoral votes to him—without allowing any citizen to cast a ballot for president. This maneuver would constitute an appalling assault on democracy. But it would be legal.
As the 2016 election reminded the country, the president is chosen by the Electoral College, not the popular vote. There are 538 electors, and a candidate needs 270 of them to win. Currently, every state assigns electors to the candidate who won the popular vote statewide. (Two states add a twist that’s irrelevant here.) But the Constitution does not require states to assign their electors on the basis of the statewide vote. It does not even require a statewide vote. Rather, it explains that each state “shall appoint” its electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” In other words, each state legislature gets to decide how electors are appointed—and, by extension, who gets their votes.
Today, every state legislature has delegated this task to the people. But at first, state legislatures just did it themselves. In the first presidential election, for instance, the legislatures of Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina appointed electors directly. Eventually, every state moved toward the modern system. But the Supreme Court confirmed in 1892’s McPherson v. Blacker that states were free to revert to the old method, and in 2000’s Bush v. Gore, the court reiterated this point. The majority declared that the state legislature “may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself,” and retains authority to “take back the power to appoint electors” even after switching to a statewide vote.
Put simply, it is perfectly constitutional for a state legislature to scrap statewide elections for president and appoint electors itself. It would also be constitutional for a state legislature to disregard the winner of the statewide vote and assign electors to the loser. And because the Constitution grants legislatures the authority to pick electors this way, Congress cannot stop them.
Due in part to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans control the legislatures of 28 states. Collectively, these states have 294 electoral votes. (Only 270 votes needed to win.) Trump himself could not cancel the entire presidential election. But he could ask these GOP-dominated legislatures to cancel their statewide presidential elections and assign their electors to him. It’s doubtful that we will face this situation in November. But imagine a worst-case scenario: The election is approaching, and the coronavirus remains rampant in our communities. States are unsure whether they have the personnel and resources to hold an election. Congress has failed to mandate no-excuse absentee balloting, and many states have declined to implement it. Or the postal service is so hard hit that it cannot reliably carry ballots to and from voters’ residences. It’s not difficult to envision Trump’s allies in state legislatures assigning their states’ electoral votes to the president, insisting that these dire circumstances justify pulling a constitutional fire alarm.
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/trump-cancel-election-day-
constitution-state-electors-coronavirus.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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I seriously doubt this is going to happen.
November is a LONG way away and this will have all died down by then and we'll be left with the economic fallout.
The WORST thing we can do is absentee ballots on a wide scale. It's bad enough we do as many as we do today.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:But Trump and Biden will be older fools by then:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I seriously doubt this is going to happen.
November is a LONG way away and this will have all died down by then and we'll be left with the economic fallout.
The WORST thing we can do is absentee ballots on a wide scale. It's bad enough we do as many as we do today.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Presidential inability hasn’t exactly been a rarity. Beginning with George Washington, who nearly died of a month-long bout of pneumonia a few months into his presidency, a number of chief executives have been incapacitated, from periods ranging from a few hours to several weeks. In 1881, President James A. Garfield, mortally wounded by an assassin, lingered for two and a half months before dying. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson suffered a major stroke, which permanently altered his cognitive functioning. During his final years, Franklin D. Roosevelt was suffering badly enough from cardiovascular disease to cause his top subordinates severe worry before his death, from a cerebral hemorrhage, and in 1981 Ronald Reagan was under general anesthesia for a time following John Hinckley’s assassination attempt. There are many more examples.
Many episodes of disability, such as Wilson’s stroke, FDR’s illness, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack and 1957 stroke, and Reagan’s 1985 cancer surgery, relate to infirmities that are more likely to occur in older populations. But nearly all of these instances were sudden occurrences, unlike dementia, Alzheimer’s, and the generally reduced cognitive functioning that are an almost inescapable consequence of growing older. Presidential advisers have often worried about a chief executive’s deteriorating condition, as in the case of Reagan and even Richard Nixon (though the latter was more a case of depression than age), but no official statement of inability or disability from individual advisers, the Cabinet, or even Congress has ever resulted from such concerns. Yet senescence, the creeping incapacity of an aging presidential brain, is something that could very well lead to a crisis in the coming years.
The Founders, of course, knew that age could affect capacity. Anyone who has dealt with either young children or elderly relatives has learned this from personal experience. But in discussing age qualifications for federal office, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention never expressly connected advancing age with the Constitution’s standard of “inability.” Instead they limited their age concerns to the dangers of having officeholders who were too young. Representatives must be 25; senators, 30; presidents, 35. (Interestingly, there’s no minimum age for judges, who are supposed to be the repositories of disinterested reason born of mature wisdom.) The convention’s longest discussion of age came in the context of debating requirements for representatives. The Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson argued that minimum-age requirements were undemocratic and could deprive the country of the services of youthful geniuses, citing England’s William Pitt the Younger as an example. In the end he was overruled; George Mason retorted that while people claimed that the Confederation Congress “had proved a good school for our young men,” he himself preferred those youngsters to “bear the expense of their own education.”
More at www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/no-constitution-old-presiden
ts/608206/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I think they'll all get the virus before the elections are over and all will be dead.
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
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Mortality rate is extremely low, even among old people. Once there are millions of people tested, that will become crystal clear.
My prediction is that not one single person who was running for President is going to die of COVID-19.
Expect to hear about Tom Hanks and his wife recovering shortly.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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The Fantasy of “Paying for” Universal Health Care
One of our most bizarre delusions, manifested in the Democratic presidential primary, is that we can’t have Medicare for All unless we figure out how to pay for it. In reality, Medicare for All would either cost as much as we’re currently paying or save America money.
Between government and private spending, our current monstrous hybrid system spends more than 18 percent of our gross domestic product on health care, twice the average for the other 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Even worse, health care costs are going up faster than the economy is growing. That means that if nothing changes, the 18 percent number will continue to increase. This is already a genuine drain on the U.S. and will eventually cause something to break.
The only solution to this problem that any country has ever discovered is universal health care. A unified system that covers everybody has the power and moral authority to bargain with providers and hold costs down. So while Medicare for All would require more spending by the federal government, individuals would spend so much less in premiums, deductibles, and copays that we’d almost certainly come out ahead overall — plus we’d never have to think about paying doctor’s bills again. In other words, in reality, the only question is how we can possibly pay for the status quo.
This total disconnect from the real world was embodied by former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s lament that Medicare for All would eliminate millions of private health insurance jobs. Yes, it would — and that’s the point. At best, these jobs are pointless bureaucratic time-wasting; at worst, they involve preventing patients from getting health care. If Buttigieg thinks that’s a good thing, he should propose hiring millions of Americans to play World of Warcraft all day long and occasionally go to emergency rooms and strangle people.
More at https://theintercept.com/2020/03/18/stock-market-coronavirus/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
If Buttigieg thinks that’s a good thing, he should propose hiring millions of Americans to play World of Warcraft all day long and occasionally go to emergency rooms and strangle people.
Pretty hilarious, if quite dated reference.
I can't tell if that was a Boomer comment or an OK Boomer comment.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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3 Rules for the Trump Pandemic
One: Don’t trust the president.
www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html
March 19, 2020, 4:58 p.m. ET
So Donald Trump is now calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus.” Of course he is: Racism and blaming other people for his own failures are the defining features of his presidency. But if we’re going to give it a nickname, much better to refer to it as the “Trump pandemic.”
True, the virus didn’t originate here. But the U.S. response to the threat has been catastrophically slow and inadequate, and the buck stops with Trump, who minimized the threat and discouraged action until just a few days ago.
Compare, for example, America’s handling of the coronavirus with that of South Korea. Both countries reported their first case on Jan. 20. But Korea moved quickly to implement widespread testing; it has used the data from that testing to guide social distancing and other containment measures; and the disease appears to be on the wane there.
In the U.S., by contrast, testing has barely begun — we’ve tested only 60,000 people compared with South Korea’s 290,000, even though we have six times its population, and the number of cases here appears to be skyrocketing.
The details of our failure are complex, but they all flow ultimately from Trump’s minimization of the threat: He was asserting that Covid-19 was no worse than the flu just last week (although true to form, he’s now claiming to have known all along that a pandemic was coming).
Why did Trump and his team deny and delay? All the evidence suggests that he didn’t want to do or say anything that might drive down stock prices, which he seems to regard as the key measure of his success. That’s presumably why as late as Feb. 25 Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared that the U.S. had “contained” the coronavirus, and that the economy was “holding up nicely.”
Well, that was a bad bet. Since then, the stock market has more or less given up all its gains under the Trump presidency. More important, the economy is clearly in free-fall.
I’ll leave health policy to the experts. On economic policy, I’d suggest three principles. First, focus on hardship, not G.D.P. Second, stop worrying about incentives to work. Third, don’t trust Trump.
On the first point: Many of the job losses we’ll experience over the next few months will be not just unavoidable but actually desirable. We want workers who are or might be sick to stay home, to “flatten the curve” of the virus’s spread. We want to partly or wholly close large business establishments, like auto plants, that could act as human petri dishes. We want to close restaurants, bars and nonessential retail establishments.
Now, there will surely be additional, unnecessary job losses caused by a plunge in consumer and business spending, which is why we should be engaged in substantial overall stimulus. But policy can’t and shouldn’t prevent widespread temporary job loss.
What policy can do is reduce the hardship facing those who are temporarily out of work. That means that we need to spend much more on programs like paid sick leave, unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicaid that aid Americans in distress, who need far more help than they’ll get from an across-the-board cash drop. This spending would also provide stimulus, but that’s a secondary concern.
Which brings me to my second point. The usual suspects are already objecting that helping Americans in need reduces their incentive to work. That’s a lousy argument even in good times, but it’s absurd in the face of a pandemic. And state governments that have been trying, with encouragement from the Trump administration, to reduce public assistance by imposing work requirements should suspend all such requirements, immediately.
Finally, about Trump: Over the past few days state TV, I mean Fox News, and right-wing pundits have abruptly pivoted from dismissing Covid-19 as a liberal hoax to demanding an end to all criticism of the president in a time of national emergency. This sh
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
3 Rules for the Trump Pandemic
One: Don’t trust the president.
LOL
As if anybody trusts the NYT.
It's 2020 dude. There's more truth on the front page of The Onion than an entire NYT paper.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:I knew people like you - knew because they died in their forties since they would not listen to warnings about cigarettes, seat belts, alcohol, guns, etc. declaring that the dangers were exaggerated. One particularly memorable death involved a warning to not bypass an interlock. His lasts words to me were "I've done this hundreds of times." It has been 26 years, but whenever I remember him my first and last thoughts are "Never could tell him anything. The world is better with him dead." That will be engraved on your tombstone, 6ix.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
3 Rules for the Trump Pandemic
One: Don’t trust the president.
LOL
As if anybody trusts the NYT.
It's 2020 dude. There's more truth on the front page of The Onion than an entire NYT paper.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Romans Tried to Save the Republic From Men Like Trump. They Failed.
by Joy Connolly
January 17, 2017
A man stands before a crowd, trawling for votes. He’s rich and the son of a rich man, though his personal finances are tangled, he’s saddled with debt, and his career to date has been studded with scandal. Far from pretending to be good, he makes a virtue out of his lack of pretense, and plays up his excesses as extravagantly as he stokes the crowd’s resentment of his own class.
Call him Donald Trump. But this man is also Julius Caesar, Catiline, Clodius, and a legion of other men who lived in ancient Rome, from which the American Founders drew inspiration for the political system we have today. Long before Max Weber studied “charismatic authority” or Adorno the “authoritarian personality,” Alexander Hamilton, unexpected darling of today’s Broadway, would have recognized the type instantly from his knowledge of Roman history.
He’s a man of wealth and power, but he tells the people he is an outsider, just like them. He insists the system is rigged against them by the influential few. He rails against the people, too: “You’ve given up everything in exchange for laziness and apathy, thinking you’ve got freedom in abundance because your backs are spared the lash. The elite will fight and enjoy their victory, and regular people will be treated like a conquered nation: This will be more the case every day, so long as they work harder for total power than you do to get your freedom back.”
That’s not Trump, though it sounds like him. It’s a politician called Licinius Macer, haranguing a crowd in Rome in 73 BCE. It was with men like Macer in mind that in the first of the Federalist papers, Hamilton identified the claim to fight for popular freedom as the demagogue’s most insidious and effective tactic. “Dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people,” he wrote. Far from the innocent meaning of the original ancient Greek word, “leader of the people,” for Hamilton the demagogue paves a “much more certain road to the introduction of despotism.”
Trump now takes office on the strength of his demagoguery. A student of little else, Trump is an intuitive expert in popular fantasy, and he plays his American audience like a well-worn instrument. What to the pundits seemed like outrageous rhetorical excesses (“total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S.,” “She has to go to jail,” and so on) turned out to be the notes roughly half the country wanted to hear.
Since the election, the excesses have continued, in speeches, casual asides, and tweets at all times of day or night. The professional classes marvel that Trump summarily dismisses advice (“I know a lot about hacking”), jabs at perceived enemies in the press, and tweets bellicose threats to foreign governments. But this is par for the course. Both as candidate and president-elect, Trump has invited the elites to bring it on, rubbing raw the weakest point of the republican constitution: the relationship between the people and their elected politicians, or as the Romans would put it, “plebs” and “pauci,” the many and the few.
More at www.villagevoice.com/2017/01/17/the-romans-tried-to-save-the-republic-
from-men-like-trump-they-failed/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I knew people like you - knew because they died in their forties since they would not listen to warnings about cigarettes, seat belts, alcohol, guns, etc. declaring that the dangers were exaggerated. One particularly memorable death involved a warning to not bypass an interlock. His lasts words to me were "I've done this hundreds of times." It has been 26 years, but whenever I remember him my first and last thoughts are "Never could tell him anything. The world is better with him dead." That will be engraved on your tombstone, 6ix.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
3 Rules for the Trump Pandemic
One: Don’t trust the president.
LOL
As if anybody trusts the NYT.
It's 2020 dude. There's more truth on the front page of The Onion than an entire NYT paper.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I know that smoking is bad for me, dummy. I just don't give a shit is all.
You know the character of a man by what he does when he knows nobody is watching him. If we had any clue at all about the real you, then we could have equally stupid and unrelated arguments to any of yours based off of your bad habits.
That being said, shut the fuck up dude. You're an idiot.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals. 
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Quote:The GOP’s War on Government
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That being said, shut the fuck up dude. You're an idiot.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
For many years, Republicans and conservatives have demonized government. In his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan, the superstar of the right, proclaimed, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” The well-known conservative strategist and lobbyist Grover Norquist once said, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” The tea party arose in opposition to federal assistance for those Americans slammed by the housing collapse of 2007 and became a movement encompassing anti-government fervor and intense paranoia. And Trump rode this wave into the White House.
On the campaign trail, Trump embraced the right-wing caricature of the federal government as a collection of ineffectual fools who did little more than collect taxes, impose regulations, and hinder American greatness. Trade, health care, the economy—all of this, Trump said, were challenges he could easily take on while delivering spectacular results. Know-how and experience were not needed. Not with a brain like his. Governing was simple.
Trump could only be acceptable to voters who had long been told that government was the problem. He was the antithesis of government experience and expertise. And he made that a selling point and convinced 63 million people to vote for him, as if they were picking a winner on a reality television show. After all, he was amusing and a kick in the ass of the libs who thought credentials and seriousness actually mattered.
Trump entered the White House not taking the job seriously. He fretted over the estimates of the inauguration crowd size, while, out of neglect or with intent, he depopulated the federal government. Key positions across various agencies have gone unfilled throughout his tenure. He hollowed out the State Department. The Department of Homeland Security has had top slots empty for long stretches. As has been noted much in recent days, Trump’s downsizing of the National Security Council included dumping the office of global health. And when he did appoint people, there frequently was little consideration of experience. His acting director of national intelligence has no previous background in intelligence. And if you haven’t seen the recent stories about college seniors snagging important posts in the Trump administration, google away.
For Trump, governing didn’t really matter. He had no interest in it. When Republican legislators met with him to discuss a health care bill, he told them he didn’t care about the details: “Forget about the little shit.”
Trump took credit for an economic recovery that was long in motion before he moved into the White House. He claimed responsibility for plant openings that had been planned prior to his election. He bombed other nations without bothering to formulate strategic policies. And he ripped up international agreements that had been the result of tremendous work and effort—the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris climate accord—claiming he could come up with better deals. And then he didn’t even try to come up with better deals.
Government was just another show for Trump. If a celebrity was interested in an issue, perhaps then it counted. If he could build something that would carry his brand, that counted, too. And, of course, if he could demagogue a controversy, that would hold his interest. But managing an entire branch of government and ensuring it served the public? He’d rather be bragging about ending environmental regulations or be on the golf course. With his nonstop tweeting and constant retreating to Trump properties, he gave the impression the presidency was not a full-time position.
After decades of Republican attempts to delegitimize government, he came along and downgraded the job of president. Mostly, Trump has been a post-government president.
M
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Someday there will be "Trump The Final Days", but until then there is "Nixon The Final Days" a serious movie about a brilliant but flawed man trying his best, excluding Vietnam, Watergate, tax cheating, etc. Trump’s movie will be a dark comedy about an entertaining blowhard barely trying at all.
https://yts.mx/movie/the-final-days-1989
Thirteen years before it was filmed as a TV-movie, "The Final Days" was the title of a bestselling book, whose 1976 publication "just happened" to coincide with the cinematic release of "All the President's Men" (based on an earlier book by the same authors). The Final Days book was noted for its complete reliance on anonymous sources, and for its witheringly negative portrait of Nixon and his personality, even including humiliating details about the Nixons' marriage. Shortly after it was published, Pat Nixon determined to read the book (against her husband's advice), and suffered a stroke within a day or two after she started on it. She was in hospital for about a month. All in all, TFD was probably the most sadistic literary attack ever leveled on a living ex-President up to that time.
With all that background, it seems very unlikely to me that Nixon, personally, sat through the TV-movie version of "The Final Days" when it came out in 1989. My guess is that he had one or more staff aides watch it; possibly Tricia/Julie and/or their husbands, but that he himself couldn't bear the thought of it. But who knows for sure. Nixon's office put out a press release at the time, saying that sponsor AT&T should change its slogan to "Reach Out and Smear Someone", which (IMO) was rather clever.
The movie itself was highly praised by William F. Buckley, Jr., who specifically singled out the performance of Lane Smith as impeccable. Despite misgivings about the source-material, I watched it (I think it was broadcast on ABC, if I remember correctly) and was mesmerized. The whole show was simply brilliant from start to finish. Smith's performance as Nixon is, indeed, flawless, and the overall atmosphere of the last 15 months of the Nixon White House was nicely judged, in my view. "The Final Days" is absolutely one of the small handful of TV- movies with an abundance of dramatic power and credibility, and with the ability to withstand repeated viewings.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Hashtag # PelosiHatesAmericans Trends On Twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/PelosiHatesAmericans?src=tren
Secretary Mnuchin Outlines Details of Recovery Bill some are Blocking…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/03/23/important-details-secr
etary-mnuchin-outlines-details-of-recovery-bill-democrats-are-blocking/
The Virus is Not Invincible, But It’s Exposing Who’s Irreplaceable
https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/22/the-virus-is-not-invincible-but-its
-exposing-whos-irreplaceable/
I think one of the strangest of all sequelae to the virus... might be the millions of high-paid Americans whose absences were hardly missed either by the public or count much in subsequent economic analyses of damage to the economy.
In a sophisticated society under lockdown, is it more existentially valuable to know how to fix a toilet, replace a circuit breaker, or change a tire, or to be a New York fashion designer, a Hollywood actor, or a corporate merger lawyer?
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Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Hashtag # PelosiHatesAmericans Trends On Twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/PelosiHatesAmericans?src=tren
I actually don't argue with the things that Democrats don't want in the bill (although I bet I'd argue a lot of things they want to stick in there themselves).
But there is zero scenarios where this ends up well for Democrats. They can pretend all they want to have the upper hand here, but when you're talking about money promised to millions of Americans, especially millions of Americans who are going to depend on it, you're going to see hellfire reign down on the Dems if they don't let the bill pass, no matter what.
As the current face of the Democratic Party, Nancy will become the most hated person in America overnight if those checks aren't in accounts by April 6th.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Youre failing to see hoo haz the most to looz.
Trump and the GoPs are toast alredy and every day he desperately gets up in frunt uv the cameraz he burnz himself and them deeper.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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tick tock
T
Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.
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Quote:Trump is NOT TOAST.
Originally posted by JO753:
Youre failing to see hoo haz the most to looz.
Trump and the GoPs are toast alredy and every day he desperately gets up in frunt uv the cameraz he burnz himself and them deeper.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
I will not vote for Trump but:
45% of likely voters approve of Trump
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/voters/
48% of gamblers approve of Trump
https://odds.watch/trump-2020
If Biden dies before the election (4% chance) Trump will be in an even better position to win.
www.finder.com/life-insurance/odds-of-dying
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Trump is NOT TOAST.
Originally posted by JO753:
Youre failing to see hoo haz the most to looz.
Trump and the GoPs are toast alredy and every day he desperately gets up in frunt uv the cameraz he burnz himself and them deeper.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
I will not vote for Trump but:
45% of likely voters approve of Trump
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/voters/
48% of gamblers approve of Trump
https://odds.watch/trump-2020
If Biden dies before the election (4% chance) Trump will be in an even better position to win.
www.finder.com/life-insurance/odds-of-dying
His odds are even better than that.
RCP aggregate 3/25: 46.3%
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_app
roval-6179.html
That's tied right now with his highest ever approval rating since he's taken office.
Also, Gallup: 49%
https://news.gallup.com/poll/298313/president-trump-job-approval-ratin
g.aspx
Also, Trump's handling of the Coronavirus, per Gallup: 60%, meaning even Democrats are jumping ship. (and that 60% is a benchmark that Trump never got when his polls against impeachment were at their highest and conflicted with his job approval percentages).
OPPS
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Trump won with 46.1% of the votes in 2016. That is also his approval rating with likely voters in 2020. Any Democrat that believes Trump cannot win cannot be remembering 2016.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
OPPS
Do Right, Be Right. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Trump won with 46.1% of the votes in 2016. That is also his approval rating with likely voters in 2020. Any Democrat that believes Trump cannot win cannot be remembering 2016.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
OPPS
Do Right, Be Right. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Yup.
Also keep in mind all of the things that have happened in the last 2 weeks that SHOULD have knocked him down so low he wouldn't have a chance no matter who he ran against.
I'll state for the record once again that this has little to do with Trump and says far more about the Democratic Party and how terrible it is in 2020.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Nope.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup.
Also keep in mind all of the things that have happened in the last 2 weeks that SHOULD have knocked him down so low he wouldn't have a chance no matter who he ran against.
1. Political leaders' popularity often rises temporarily after the onset of a crisis. Political scientists call this pattern the "rally effect," and it's been documented many times over decades of history; most dramatically, George W. Bush's job approval shot up from about 50 percent to about 90 percent virtually overnight after the events of September 11, 2001. There are several plausible factors contributing to this phenomenon: citizens close psychological ranks around their national leaders in a moment of uncertainty and fear; they evaluate these figures on different criteria than they did before the crisis erupted; and the normally critical opposition party (sometimes) mutes its attacks on the incumbent. Both French president Emmanuel Macron and Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte have enjoyed spikes in popularity during the current coronavirus outbreak, despite (especially in Italy's case) substantial national dislocation and tragedy.
But these popularity bumps fade with time.
More at "Four Reasons to Be Cautious About Trump's Approval Ratings"
www.honestgraft.com/2020/03/four-reasons-to-be-cautious-about.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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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Nope.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup.
Also keep in mind all of the things that have happened in the last 2 weeks that SHOULD have knocked him down so low he wouldn't have a chance no matter who he ran against.
1. Political leaders' popularity often rises temporarily after the onset of a crisis. Political scientists call this pattern the "rally effect," and it's been documented many times over decades of history; most dramatically, George W. Bush's job approval shot up from about 50 percent to about 90 percent virtually overnight after the events of September 11, 2001. There are several plausible factors contributing to this phenomenon: citizens close psychological ranks around their national leaders in a moment of uncertainty and fear; they evaluate these figures on different criteria than they did before the crisis erupted; and the normally critical opposition party (sometimes) mutes its attacks on the incumbent. Both French president Emmanuel Macron and Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte have enjoyed spikes in popularity during the current coronavirus outbreak, despite (especially in Italy's case) substantial national dislocation and tragedy.
But these popularity bumps fade with time.
More at "Four Reasons to Be Cautious About Trump's Approval Ratings"
www.honestgraft.com/2020/03/four-reasons-to-be-cautious-about.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
lol...
Funny how you weren't critical of the temporary dip in polls when they told you what you wanted to hear, huh?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Toast
o
a
s
t
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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Quote:You’ve read stories about when a small town elects a dog as mayor?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol...
Funny how you weren't critical of the temporary dip in polls when they told you what you wanted to hear, huh?
America did that when Trump was elected President.
About half of America sees no reason NOT to reelect the dog. Story from Fox News:
www.foxnews.com/us/duke-dog-mayor-of-minnesota-town-went-to-doggy-heav
en
Trump Wants to Reopen America by Easter as Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerates: A Closer Look
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Trump is suing TV stations that run this ad. Many voters actually need advertisements to remind them since they can't remember without help what happened. In an environment like that, where many voters are foggy in the head, Trump can still be the winner.
Originally posted by JO753:
Toast
o
a
s
t
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/trump-political-ad-cease-a
nd-desist-letter.html
Exponential Threat
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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You seemed to like the message when I posted it in the other forum, Second, so I'll respond to this post with the same thing.
Maybe somebody should make an ad with all the shit these lefty Legacy Media outlets had to say. Throw in footage of Joey B calling Trump a racist when he first suggested shutting down flights spliced in with Joey B saying that it was done to late when it happened.
To be fair to Coomer Joe, he doesn't even know what year it is.
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
From sledgehammer to scalpel
It’s worth remembering why we’re in this situation.
Yes. Yes it is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/opinion/china-travel-coronavirus.ht
ml
Quote:
Who Says It’s Not Safe to Travel to China?
Sadly, one doesn’t have to look far for evidence of these top-down decisions morphing into outright racism within the general population, a trend that has a long history in the narrative of outbreaks such as this one.
Coronavirus shares something in common with other kinds of civil disruption, natural disasters or emergencies that affect localized travel industries: Its destructive power lies not in the actual risk but in the perception of that risk. Numerous experts have said that the majority of people who contract coronavirus will experience it as a respiratory infection they will fully recover from. But the extreme reactions — the canceling of flights, closing of borders and level-four travel warnings — seem more appropriate for something much worse.
With the rhetoric surrounding coronavirus, however, it appears the astonishing growth of the Chinese travel market in the past 15 years did little to rid the industry of the impulse to treat Chinese travelers as “others” in the face of doubt and uncertainty. Canceling flights, cruises and locking down borders when it’s not advised by international agencies will be not only an act of economic self-harm but also a wasted opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Well, Rosie. That article hasn't aged well, has it?
Have we learned anything from mistakes of the very recent past yet?
I'll bet you haven't. I'll bet when the COVID thing blows over you'll be at the front lines of the Legacy Media to open our boarders wide to everybody else and call anybody who doesn't agree with you a Nationalist, as if that is a bad word or something.
https://www.vox.com/2020/2/7/21126758/coronavirus-xenophobia-racism-ch
ina-asians
Quote:
The coronavirus exposes the history of racism and “cleanliness”
While the epidemic may be new, xenophobia has been intertwined with public health discourse for a very long time.
Quote:
While panic about a sudden, deadly virus is to be expected, some fears — especially in North America and the West — have been based on something other than health. The panic has exposed a deep-seated xenophobia, and with it, a symptom of its own has surfaced: hostility toward East Asian people.
Maybe if instead of listening to the Twitter Mob and the Legacy Media lefty shills and they did what I said all along and shut down all flights when I said to, including for US citizens who were abroad (which JSF said I was being un-American by suggesting), we wouldn't have it spreading in the US now and terrorizing people like Kiki and Sigs.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/31/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-racism-fear-intl
-hnk/index.html
Quote:
As the coronavirus spreads, fear is fueling racism and xenophobia
Quote:
Toronto Mayor John Tory also spoke out this week about the coronavirus panic. "Standing with our Chinese community against stigmatization and discrimination," he said. "We must not allow fear to triumph over our values as a city."
Well... those of you who are still standing right now, be sure to do it at least 6 feet apart from each other, mkay?
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-chinese-allowed-racism-and-fear-a
re-now-spreading-along-with-the-coronavirus-2020-01-29
[q
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Quote:6ix, you've got a future as propagandist for the GOP, but get paid. Stop working for free at fff.net.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
These articles are gross, and they only fester and reek even more with time. And it's a wonderful thing that we live in the age of the internet where they're preserved forever and we can REALLY do some research to figure out exactly what went wrong.
Hindsight is truly 20/20 in 2020.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you've got a future as propagandist for the GOP, but get paid. Stop working for free at fff.net.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
These articles are gross, and they only fester and reek even more with time. And it's a wonderful thing that we live in the age of the internet where they're preserved forever and we can REALLY do some research to figure out exactly what went wrong.
Hindsight is truly 20/20 in 2020.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Why would I ever do that. I'm not a Republican. I hate Republicans. I just happen to hate Democrats more is all. In 10 or 15 years, it will probably look like I flipped sides again, when in actuality I'm still standing in the same place.
I like doing volunteer work.
Check out the volunteer work I did for Marvel in the Cinema board.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ix, I have heard hundreds of Republicans claim they are anything but. Some use the word "Independent" to describe themselves. Make life simple and call yourself a "Republican", 6ix, and get paid to write GOP propaganda.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you've got a future as propagandist for the GOP, but get paid. Stop working for free at fff.net.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
These articles are gross, and they only fester and reek even more with time. And it's a wonderful thing that we live in the age of the internet where they're preserved forever and we can REALLY do some research to figure out exactly what went wrong.
Hindsight is truly 20/20 in 2020.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Why would I ever do that. I'm not a Republican. I hate Republicans. I just happen to hate Democrats more is all. In 10 or 15 years, it will probably look like I flipped sides again, when in actuality I'm still standing in the same place.
I like doing volunteer work.
Check out the volunteer work I did for Marvel in the Cinema board.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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