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[shenmue]

1. Spiders

I don't like spiders.

[Journeyman]

2. They're fine to play "The Spider Symphony" with . . .

It's usually played with a rolled-up newspaper or a handy shoe in the key of B-flat.

[Warpy]

4. I do. They eat all the bad stuff

like insects that suck our blood and give us diseases.

Even those insects have a place, mosquito larvae feed small fish that go on to feed bigger fish that eventually feed us.

As for people, I have a little list and they'd none of them be missed.

[1monster]

42. Fleas... I can't think of a single purpose for those blood sucking, monsterous

parsites other than making our furry family members and friends miserable, enriching chemical and pharmaceutical companies that make "flea management" products, making serious inroads on the family budgers to pay for those products.

[Igel]

8. Fire ants.

I've engaged in numerous incidents of wholesale slaughter of the critters, ultimately aiming at mass reginicide. If I'm allowed to re-coin a fairly rare word.


I'll take two mosquito bites for each fire ant bite.

Of course, it helps that most of the mosquitoes in Houston don't seem to produce near as much itching as mosquitoes that I've fed in MD and OR.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

12. Ticks, Japanese Beetles, Fleas, Bedbugs

...and Fire Ants!

[djean111]

3. I don't think that is the point. It seems as if black lives can be ended with impunity and on

a whim, almost.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

5. I get that, although I think other groups might make that claim as well

Native Americans in particular.

Does a concept like #BLM simply invite other groups to copycat? BlueLivesMatter? SoldierLivesmatter? etc?

[djean111]

22. It seems to me that black lives have been casually dismissed, for the most part, in the US,

since slavery. I think that it would be so missing the point for other groups to parrot this. I do not think, however, that any candidate should campaign as if this was the only thing on the agenda. And, again, racist constructs and inequalities can certainly be legislated, but racism cannot be legislated away.

I grew up in South Philly, where "Polacks" and "Wops" and "Moulignons" and "Papes" and "Hebes" were regularly ranted about, by my father and his friends. My father was crazy about JFK, though. Anyway, that sort of thing just went in one ear and out the other, for my brother and sister and I; we were not going to argue about it - my dad was a hitter - but we were embarrassed about it. The closest I got to even really talking about it was when my father told me that my cousin's ex-wife (he was quite the hitter, too) married a black guy. For some reason, even though we had never joined in on the racism (and yes, my father did not consider many other nationalities or ethnic groups as the same race that he was) - he thought I would be aghast. I just said Oh! I am glad she found someone. Billy was horrible to her. We stared at each other, and that was that.
My ex-husband (a Pape AND a Wop!) once grandly told a black guy he worked with that he was the first black person to ever be in our house. As if it was an honor. And this was in the late sixties, and I think that asshole I was married to still feels the same. And he came from some money, and I had been poor.

Anyway, I had thought a lot of racism and prejudice had just faded away, until I moved to NC for a couple of years. No, it is ingrained in some people, many people, and I would not know how to even begin to address how to get rid of it. Just how to get rid of the inequalities.

This is not meant to be a contentious post, just observations.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Call me back when whites fear going to the corner store

[Algernon Moncrieff]

13. I know whites that fear going outside their gated community

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. I am sure this is not as common as you think.

I could provide statistics, but in this case I fear, we are both wasting our time. So...trash thread.

[brush]

19. Stop it already. It's not a game to joke about to black people

Tell me how many white Sandra Blands, Michael Browns, Tamir Rices, Eric Garners, Oscar Grants, Walter Scotts and on and on and on and on have there been recently?

Black people are being gunned down so please stop with actions that take the focus off the immediate, critical issue.

Please help with the black lives matter movement.

[beevul]

35. Obviously not equivalent, but it is indicative...

We - the wife and I - pretty much never go out on holidays. We turn the radio on, and hear that the so and so taskforce will be out and active this holiday weekend blah blah blah, so we stay home. Its not worth the chance of running into a roidraging cop, bent out of shape from having to work weekends before writing the first ticket or making any arrests.

Obviously not equivalent, but it is indicative of the perception that modern day law enforcement has earned for itself.

[NutmegYankee]

7. Terrorists?

[ljm2002]

9. Apparently, when it comes to many in law enforcement...

...there is such a group: black people.

[edhopper]

10. you do miss the point about BLM

it's like diminishing the importance of LGBT rights by saying, everyone's rights are important.

BLM isva direct response to an obvious problem. Are Native Americans routinely gunned down by the police?

[historylovr]

15. Yes. We just don't hear about it.

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/native-americans-getting-shot-police

[1StrongBlackMan]

28. And if this were raised in the context of BLM ...

there would be no problem. Why? Because the root problem stems from the same exploitive place.

[GeorgeGist]

11. This group ...

[Rex]

37. Those are the usual suspects at large.

For them it is #moneymattersmost

[Orrex]

16. Sure--the 99%, for all intents and purposes

We're here as fodder for the convenience of the 1%, but practically speaking we don't matter.


Having said that, whites absolutely don't face the sort of open season that's been declared on people of color, so ultimately your question is a petty distraction.

[One of the 99]

17. Mimes. So annoying. ;-)

[murielm99]

18. This thread is in poor taste.

Of course, much of DU is like that these days.

We have had to have the obvious pointed out to us, that black lives matter. Black people get killed over nothing all the time. It has been going on for a long time, and white people were unaware of it, or indifferent to it.

I am not going to say anything that detracts from the BLM statement. It is not a joke.

[pinboy3niner]

20. +1

[City Lights]

21. I agree. nt

[lunatica]

23. - 1,000

Where's the unrec?

Let's all die laughing at the clever jokes.

[ileus]

24. Republicans...

[BillZBubb]

25. In the United States, yes

Blacks, Immigrants, Native Americans, the Poor, Muslims.

Your post is in very poor taste indeed.

This is serious stuff, not something to be made a joke of. Not only are blacks killed by police at a high rate, but they are profiled, jailed and abused as well. The percentage of blacks who have been imprisoned is astounding. They are the number one victims of the disgusting "war on drugs". Black lives are being taken or ruined by a system that works under the premise that they don't matter.

[NobodyHere]

26. ISIS

[DinahMoeHum]

27. Trashed.

n/t

[Kaleva]

29. The Cooking and Baking Group

[Algernon Moncrieff]

45. Chicken - for cryin out loud

[azmom]

30. So, it's not just the Bernie supporters who don't

Get it.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

33. Of course not.

There's nothing unique to Bernie that appeals to bigots. If Hillary had been there instead of Bernie, we'd be having 'HillarySoBlack' jokes after her supporters got overly defensive of her 'record' with racial issues. She lucked out, in that she'd already been boo'd previously at NN, and decided to skip. That gave her time to see what happened with Bernie and O'Malley and craft a much better message on Facebook.

[azmom]

34. So true.

[Rex]

31. Well judging by what we see in real life, I would say with respects to our nation

it seems homeless lives don't matter. Since now we are all getting high up on the cross, really women's lives don't seem to matter much and from the coverage over the domestic terrorist hits on black churches - I would say their lives still don't seem to matter very much in the eyes of the public and the nation at large.

Why the fuck is that? How much does it take to make them matter?

[Octafish]

32. Then, there's the brown people living overseas.

Especially the ones on our oil. And gold. And diamond mines. And phosphates. And whatever can be stolen and sold for profit.

[Rex]

36. Yes they even have a bullshit corporate term for it

resource misallocation. The lip service given to 'all lives matter' by people that never had a day of worry in theirs. That send others out to kill those 'lives that matter...wait nope sorry don't'. Oops.

[Octafish]

40. That's mine!

[femmocrat]

44. I was going to add older women.

We are invisible. The only time you see an "older woman" on TV is in a Cialis ad, and they are still 20 years younger than the men. OK, that isn't a good benchmark.

Pretty, younger women are valued, older women.... invisible. Nothing is geared toward us except incontinence products.

I know this is not the same as "mattering"--- I'm sure we matter to our families. Most of us, anyhow. And no one is going around targeting or killing older women as a group, TG.

[Lee-Lee]

38. Based on posts, to most DU posters cops lives don't matter

[Rex]

41. Well every cop story on DU is 50 police brutality, 1 police do a good thing.

It's as if that is the ratio out there, don't have to like it - post more pro-police doing good deeds for soceity if you can find them.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

39. No man is an island,

No Man Is An Island - Poem by John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne

[MerryBlooms]

43. If ALL LIVES MATTERED

we wouldn't need a BlackLivesMatter.

fuck. how can you and so many others NOT GET IT!?!