May 2, 2016

Concerning "Goodbye DU" posts

I suggest that such things are a waste of time.

The HRC crowd does not care in the slightest, and will use such posts as an opportunity to insult, taunt and/or belittle the writer. They are not going to ask/beg us to come back, so each time such a post appears, they will cheer and count it as one more scalp acquired.

They have made it quite plain that they have this in the bag and that they do not need, nor want our vote. Let them have their gleeful grave dancing, but it should be met with silence.

Don't leave, just lurk and avoid talking to HRC folk, who will be easy to spot. Deprive them of the pleasure they get from a reaction of anger or sadness.

In fact, my suggestion is that if you agree with this view, you simply post a silent assent. If you want to discuss the issue, PM me.

Of course, it is still months away from the election and a lot can happen in that time. So, their victory dance may still be quite premature.

April 26, 2016

Is bragging about abusing the jury system

something the admins want to look into?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1107&pid=115161

April 22, 2016

My prediction: Within 48 hours

of the issue of the Harriet Tubman $20, we will have news stories about the bill being defaced with racial slurs. The dateline will be Texas or South Carolina.

April 8, 2016

Navy SEAL who claims shooting Osama Bin Laden charged with DUI

Source: Washington Post

Robert James O’Neill, the former member of SEAL Team 6 who claimed to have shot and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in a 2011 raid was charged with DUI in his hometown of Butte, Mont., Friday.

According to George Skuletich, the undersheriff of Butte-Silver Bow City and County, local officers responded to the parking lot of a local convenience store after multiple complaints of a man sleeping in the front seat of his car with the engine running.

The officers recognized O’Neill, 39, and proceeded to wake him. After a brief conversation, the officers noticed that he was impaired, said Skuletich. The officers then proceeded to administer one field sobriety test–known as the horizontal gaze–that O’Neill failed. O’Neill then refused any further field sobriety tests and was detained.

At the local jail, O’Neill took and failed a second sobriety test and then refused to take a breathalyzer or blood test. He was charged shortly after and released on bond for $685. His license is currently suspended and in the interim he was given a 72 hour temporary driver’s license, as it is his first offense, said Skueletich. O’Neill is expected to appear in court Monday.

Attempts to reach O’Neill were not successful.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/04/08/navy-seal-who-claimed-to-shoot-osama-bin-laden-charged-with-dui/

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I've met a few military "elite" types, and they aren't braggarts.

April 7, 2016

Ritual Human Sacrifice: Keeping the 99% in their place?

I would argue that eternal warfare, waged by the poor for the profit of the rich, is the new ritual human sacrifice:

Thanks to math, we can calculate the benefits of human sacrifice
Ars Technica

Most of us would agree that human sacrifice is a bad idea. Yet many ancient civilizations (and some more modern ones) engaged in religious rituals that involved sacrificing people. Why do so many societies evolve a system of human sacrifice, despite the obvious moral drawbacks? A group of social scientists has just published a statistical analysis in Nature that reveals how this grisly practice has fairly predictable results, which benefit elites in socially stratified cultures.

The group examined 93 Austronesian cultures in the Pacific Islands, drawing information from the Pulotu Database of Pacific Religions to determine which groups had human sacrifice and when. Previous analysts have suggested that human sacrifice helps to maintain social stratification. In this new study, the researchers wanted to understand the relationship between human sacrifice and social stratification over time.

To do that, they created statistical models using Bayesian methods, testing to see how human sacrifice affected societies that fit into three buckets: egalitarian, moderately stratified, and highly stratified. They write:

Evidence of human sacrifice was observed in 40 of the 93 cultures sampled (43%). Human sacrifice was practiced in 5 of the 20 egalitarian societies (25%), 17 of the 46 moderately stratified societies (37%), and 18 of the 27 highly stratified societies (67%) sampled.

The researchers ran these societies through several different probabilistic models, exploring how the cultures had changed over time and what role (if any) human sacrifice played in those changes.

What they found is probably not too surprising, though it is revealing. Human sacrifice has the effect of maintaining stability in highly stratified cultures, and it can also turn a moderately stratified society into a highly stratified one. Interestingly, egalitarian societies that introduced human sacrifice did not become stratified.

Human sacrifice, in other words, is a useful tool for elites who want to maintain their power in a stratified society. This is especially true in the Austronesian context, where religious and political leaders were often the ones doing the sacrificing, and the sacrificial humans were generally slaves or people with low social standing

March 29, 2016

Senate leader to attorney general: Defend LGBT law or resign

Source: Greensboro News & Record

A top legislative Republican says North Carolina's Democratic attorney general should resign if he won't defend a far-reaching new state law that in part voids Charlotte's anti-discrimination ordinance.

Senate Leader Phil Berger said Tuesday that Attorney General Roy Cooper appears to be pandering to left-wing backers as he runs for governor against incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. Berger says Cooper's campaigning is making it impossible for him to fulfill his duties as attorney general.

Berger issued a statement after Cooper said he won't defend in court the new state law that prevents local governments from adopting anti-discrimination measures for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Cooper says in response to Berger's comments that he's doing his job and will keep doing it.


Read more: http://www.greensboro.com/news/government/attorney-general-cooper-won-t-defend-transgender-law-in-court/article_ba5c8e64-85cc-525e-a229-ccd2ac1f8e7e.html

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This will get interesting. Maybe this will help us break the state free from Art Pope and his employees this November.

March 24, 2016

Alabama's creepy governor denying a sexual relationship with aide he totaly had a relationship with

Warning, brain bleach may be needed.

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March 22, 2016

This is why we are not about to be replaced by robots

I have seen and commented on a number of stories in the last few weeks where people were posting stories about the imminent replacement of humans in manufacturing by robots.

Folks, it is not going to happen any time soon, and by "soon", I mean any time in the next century. People constantly undervalue the marvel of engineering that is the human body and the human brain. Humans are flexible, agile and clever, something robots simply are not.

And here is an article from Popular Mechanics underscoring my point precisely. Here is the world's most powerful computer, trying and failing at a task a five year old can pull off without breaking a sweat: Identifying objects from a picture. Watson, IBM's genius computer that won a game of Jeopardy against human champions, fails epically when asked to "look at" pictures and identify what's in them. My favorite one is where it identifies a John Deer tractor as a "gazebo" with 61% confidence.

Robots have a use in the world, but at this time, and for some time to come, it will be in very specific tasks, in very controlled environments.

Humans rule!

(P.S.: Actually, the biggest fail is where Watson cannot identify a picture of itself.)

March 9, 2016

Nate Silver at 538 said Bernie's chance of winning MI was <1%

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/michigan-democratic/

Discuss!

March 2, 2016

Hey, maybe Christie is going to pull a "Game of Thrones" move on Trump?

Go all Red Wedding on him at the convention.

Maybe I can pitch it as a new reality TV series....