October 24, 2019

DU is not "fundamentally the same" as FB, which has a billion users. Anarchy doesn't work ...

...anywhere online, as you should well know.

Here at DU we have the TOS and a self-policing system that keeps the trolls in check, but we are a relatively small group, especially when compared to FB.

"Under what power of government?" Well, since common decency and a sense of the social contract are not working for Mr Zuckerberg, he needs laws to regulate his business.

So do oil companies that spill their crap all over my beach. The oil companies (to extend the comparison) may think my unusable beach and its dead and stinking sea life are not their problem, and that their only responsibility is to their shareholders, but there are in fact a body of laws that say otherwise.

When he allows and even encourages political actors to flood the cyberverse with lies, he is causing immeasurable harm to this country. He shrugs. Cambridge Analytica paid their bills on time and he thinks this is not his responsibility. "My God how the money rolls in" says the old song about a whorehouse.

October 22, 2019

Listen to the tale, Grasshopper. This is a professionally-run site with lots of safeguards, and...

...someone tried to murder us. Members logged in and were met with Pepe the Frog, statements that Trump is the God-King, and worse. The whole site was offline for weeks.

All we know for sure is that the Admins, who own the site, sought legal counsel -- lawyer and FBI type legal counsel -- and apparently have been advised to not discuss whatever they were told. I respect that. They also worked like dogs to repair the vandalism. Who was it -- 4chan? Who could do this and why?

I was among those loath to say the Russians had anything to do with it, because I don't go for and after all we're not that important in the scheme of things, right? But so much was being revealed ...and something really odd happened on CSpan during a committee meeting of Congressional Representatives on the interference with our elections. People were discussing and giving testimony, and as soon as one of them said the word "Russia" the feed was abruptly switched away from the US Capitol and onto a Russia Today broadcast.

Make of it what you will, but I think someone was making an example of us, and of the participants in that meeting: "See what we can do?"

October 19, 2019

Actually, we need to discuss her and her friends: Tucker Carlson, Trey Gowdy, the Howdi Modi event

...that was a campaign rally for Trump. Then there's the awesome support for her from RT and other Russian outlets, and the many Russian bots that are now known to be fluffing up her numbers. Oh, and the ever-popular question of where does her money come from and where is her money going?

Hillary Clinton never says a careless word, and Hillary is still friends with the Intelligence community. Who are you going to trust?

October 6, 2019

To all those who still want to pound on Warren for her family history that turned out to be legend--

I am so very sorry you were raised by wolves and had no family to tell you entertaining bedtime stories to give you something to live up to -- or even to live down.

Mythology is not the same as "lies," though we may believe a myth as long as we need to.

Trump lies -- he lies to build himself up, to conceal crimes, to tear others down, to destroy others. I don't see any of our Dems doing that, do you?

The myth of the Native American ancestor is very common among white Americans. It's a badge of belonging to the land, I think. As long as the believer isn't trying to access some set-aside reserved for tribal members (and tribes decide who belongs, by the way) where is the harm?

I have a Native American ancestor. She's listed in the family genealogy I copied out at 13 when I stayed with my grandma. It was compiled from family Bibles. No one ever mentioned that ancestor -- she was listed as "part-Pequot Indian," and would have married into the original English branch of the family around 1700, possibly earlier. My grandma was much more interested in the Irish, who came a lot later and some of whom she remembered personally. We have, as it happens, a lot of family lore (mythology?) about them, the Irish that is.

The point is -- at this remove in time, what is the likelihood that this lady's DNA would show up in my DNA sample as even a minute trace? If I mentioned my connection as a point of interest, would I be lying? She existed, right enough. (Later on, my mom did 4 books of serious research, much more than that list of begats.) If I mention her, am I bragging about something I have no right to? If I fail to mention her, would I be accused of being ashamed if someone found out?

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. What a country.

One final point, DUers: stop letting goddammed Trump set the goddam narrative about our candidates. Just stop it.

Edited to add: this is my 57,000th post. Happy to defend a Dem.

September 24, 2019

My 6-month old granddaughter died of SIDS 10 years ago. The trauma was unspeakable...

But my daughter has been hooked into the anti-vaxxer movement and is now a crusader whose devotion to this cause is, sadly, fanatic. She is a local spokeswoman for the cause. The things she states as fact about California's efforts to vaccinate kids would curl your hair.

There is nothing I can do -- nothing. I try to talk about our family medical history -- which I can recite back for a century, before routine childhood vaccinations. No, no -- it's all due to vaccinations. (Part of that history involves one of my grandmother's sisters, who tragically never raised a living child. All her babies were born live, apparently healthy, and all died in infancy. There were no vaccines involved -- her generation was born in the 1880s for gods' sake.) The latest thing she threw at me, two days ago, was that she thinks I blame her for her child's death.

Grieving mothers are being victimized, and in their pain they go to war against science and against others.

September 21, 2019

I hope to see all of them speak up in the next few days. If they don't hang together in the face of

...Trump, they will surely hang separately.

Trump's MO is to pick off opponents one at a time -- that is how he got to be nominee in the first place. No one should delude themselves that Trump will not come for them if they fail to speak out -- all that will happen is that there will be no one left to speak for them.

Senator Harris is just the first one to recognize this in its fullness.

September 17, 2019

Time to share and update my Tulsi bookmarks again. Links for those who wish to know more

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211695834

In addition, there is a Hawaiian journalist who has been doing some deep digging on Tulsi's background, and one of our Hawaii DUers has posted those links.

That young lady is not all that she seems, by a long shot. She was groomed from childhood to be the public face of a very undemocratic philosophy.

Here it is, from Mahina, with many additional links

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211667912

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This new one from the OP, so it's in my files
https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/09/why-is-tulsi-gabbard-paying-this-obscure-consultant-big-bucks/

September 15, 2019

The "gaffes" are a longstanding LAZY journalistic meme. The meme goes back decades.

Oooh, Joe's a gaffe machine, how can he run in (pick a year, any year). Okay?

It's on a par with "But her emails." Actually it is lower than that.

Here's a litmus test for you: if Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell are chewing it over with their panels of talking heads With Great Concern, just discount it entirely.

September 13, 2019

It might depend on your age. Second-wave feminists were tough Athena-women succeeding ...

...in a man's world, and the battle-advice they gave the rest of us really had that flavor. How well I remember it. "Find a mentor" -- really? How is that even done? "You can do it all/you can have it all" -- Pardon me, but what a crock of shit that was for most of us.

And of course, never show weakness in the business or academic world.

They spoke a different language than I was brought up with. Feminism felt so right, so just, but I wanted to be a mother and raise children at home, and when I was thrust untimely into the work-world with a BA and 2 toddlers to support I looked around my town and ended up as a secretary. Every day I felt like a failure, at home for not being there for my kids and at work for not knowing how to get beyond where I was.

But my musings aside: No, it was not safe to share our stories. It was not safe to have difficulties with child care. It was not okay to take time off work to care for a sick child. It was not okay to get phone calls at work for any reason (and there were no cell phones).

I thought my problems were because I was so low on the totem pole that people had no respect for me and my job, and if only... And then I ran into (almost literally) a young physician tearing out of the day care center, and was told by the caregivers that she had the exact same problems at the clinic where she was employed that I had at the university where I worked. Our mutual problem was being female and being mothers, not who had achieved more academically or who had better focus on a career.

Hillary Clinton is my age. She was shaped in that era: young, idealistic, ambitious. A skilled lawyer. For various reasons she early on became the favorite piñata of the RW hate-machine. But talk about persisting! Talk about being a unicorn... She was criticized for being too harsh, criticized for being too soft, attacked for being the wrong woman. But what a pioneer.

To have this many women all at once running for POTUS, and this many among the top 10 is amazing enough. But to hear them share their personal stories as women and not try to elide them as something generic to be non-threatening to a male audience just blew me away.

September 13, 2019

Women presidential candidates have hit critical mass when they can tell their woman-stories...

...without fear of seeming weak (i.e. unmanly).

It hit me last night. Amy Klobuchar talked about giving birth to a baby who had to stay in the NICU while she was forced to leave the hospital 24 hours after giving birth, and ultimately went to the legislature to get that rule changed. Elizabeth Warren talked about wanting to be a teacher from earliest childhood as "I lined up my dollies and taught school. I was firm but fair."

These are specifically woman-stories. Hillary could not tell hers -- nor could so many other women who entered political life before her. Hillary had to appear strong the way a man would because she was alone on that stage without a sisterhood around her.

My heart just swelled when it hit me. Did you notice? Did you see?