DonCoquixote
DonCoquixote's JournalOn Blue Dogs and Kavanaugh
OK, let me state the usual opposition
"but we need Blue Dogs"
"there vote would make no difference anyway"
OK, I can admit that 90 percent of the time, the worst democrat is better than the best GOP. However...if it gets to the point where they do not offer token resistance on things that WILL affect the country for 20 years or more, than we have to say there is an exception.
If the Blue Dogs do not at least offer a no vote, or worse, support the GOP, then they are NOT worth keeping, because this is nothing less than a takeover of one branch of govt. The fact that RBG is sick should add emphasis, as you know the GOP is ready to replace her with someone that, thanks to Blue Dogs rolling over, will NOT EVEN PRETEND not to be the extremist.
Manchin, Heitkamp, et al, if you do not vote no, you are not worth keeping. You aid the gop by poitning out that they can not expect resistance.
and do not give me the "the vote makes no difference", even a no means that the GOP did not get their way.
Report: 3D printed gun advocate accused of paying minor for sex is arrested in Taiwan
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/report-3d-printed-gun-advocate-accused-of-paying-minor-for-sex-is-arrested-in-taiwan/ar-AAAreoz?ocid=spartandhpOK...is anybody surprised? How many Libertarians are people who want to do things the law does not allow civilized people to do? How many sex criminals probably now have these untraceable guns so they can probably rape more little girls?
http://leftycartoons.com/2010/06/29/the-24-types-of-libertarian/
This guy managed to hit several of the types
it won't
I got pilloried for saying the same thing, with a lot of, sorry to say it the people that inspired the term "wypipo" getting all in my case. Serena is a threat to the tennis establishment, where someone like Anna Kournekova can be loauded because she has the Aryan looks. The types that like to think they could be in the country club got MAD.
and I also get yelled at because Osaka "was black."
Let me say this, She is Japanese. If she was raised in America, she would be called the "N" word. Granted, being of mixed race in Japan, a culture that does not even consider Chinese or Koreans worthy, was probably NOT easy, but she did not have to live in a culture where the default setting for any black or brown person was "hate them, kill them, take their ideas and money and say you deserve credit."
tennis...spoiler alert, and anger alert
Ok I post it down here so that people who were warned of a spoiler will have less excuses to say they were not warned.
OK, what happened is a travesty, and oh yes, it is full of RACISM and SEXISM. Long story short, Serena did something that has been done for DECADES, and that many male players are known to do, get hand signals from a coach. The referee went ahead and deducted a point, then when Serena complained, took ANOTHER Point.
Look, I have seen even in DU where people rail on Serena. Sorry that a white sport has a pair of twin black sisters that are currently the BEST IN THE WORLD. Sorry a lot of white tennis players whine about it! Sorry that she is not some white male that can be allowed to be a (A**hole) and get praised for it (yes John McEnroe, yes Jimmy Connors, I am pointing at you.) Of course, white males are allowed to be jerks in sports, whether it is Tim Tebow praying in the field, Tom Brady inflating footballs, or any number of examples, but the minute a player of color, especially a female, complains, then the guillotine blade is dropped!
Laugh if you will, but the message is being sent. Kapernick notwithstanding, the rich white males who run sports, who use it to control the "working class" white males, are going to send a message that reminds players fo color that they better stay sweet, and of course, it does nto help that Trump will support said measures!
The problem with Facebook and truth
Facebook, as we are told, is supposed to be impartial because of algorithms. Algorithms are just fancy words for a mathematical formula that will repeat itself again, based on a set condition:
A famous example is the old song "As In was going to st Ives"
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StIvesProblem.html
A well-known nursery rhyme states, "As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sacks, every sack had seven cats, every cat had seven kitts. Kitts, cats, sacks, wives, how many were going to St. Ives?"
now the page I quoted shows that there is a way to calculate all the variables..to determine just how many kittens, cats, sacks, there are.
However, the trick is: NONE of them were expressly stated to go to St Ives.
OF course, if you are thinking of Die hard, this clip shows why algorithms, without a sense of context, can be deadly when applied outside of math.
In other words, when facebook just says the algorithms make things impartial, that is a lie, because just as the villain in the clip shows, it is easy to use something that looks like a math issue to hide deception. In short, when all the political operatives (of all countries) want to use them to fool people, they make you think the answer is to count how many kittens, sacks, etc, without realizing it is a trick question. Indeed, one of the reasons why Trump wasable to use facebook to trick people is because he knows that rather than call him out for lying, we will neatly do our math, multiplying by seven while Rome Burns.
But getting back to Facebook, Zuckerberg better realize that what he has done is remove a lotof the context from his equations, which means that journalism as a whole has become a trick question. Yes, this is a symptom of the fact that under the current form of capitalism, everything is considered good if there is money made. But if he is serious, he will need to work with the magazine, journalists, professors, and yes even governments, to make sure that these algorithms are not hijacked by a bunch of people who are asking "how many afre going to st ives" knowing full well that is not the answer.
and now, I offer soomeone who stated things in a nicer way, at least nicer than die hard:
Miami billboards accuse cruise ships that sail to Cuba of dealing in confiscated property
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article213916384.htmlSUCH a CROCK! Hey you diehard Anti Castro folks in Miami, maybe the arrogance of a bunch of people who can claim to own a nation's port as if it were some luxury car is the reason why, for all their faults, the Regime is still in power.
ok, what if it is Jeff Sessions?
Now, before you laugh, he knows he is a deadman walking. He has been humiliated as few have, and he also knows he can take the Alabama senate seat in 2020.
my open letter to the Phantom Op ed writer.
re : https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html
I am not going to join the people speculating about who you are, because frankly it does not matter.
You pretty much lost me when you said THIS:
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
Whoa, instant failure. First of all, while many wearing the badge of "Democrat" were so eager to make nice, to pour libations at the altar of John McCain, many of us knew that the policies that the GOP PARTY pursued were BAD FOR THE COUNTRY. They did make people poorer, they did get us in debt, and they made America a whole lot less safer, especially in the classrooms where our children have to worry about being shot, or if they are going to be shamed by the Lunch ladies because they are poor! We told you about the harm you were doing to people, and frankly, you just blew cigar smoke in our faces and had security throw us out. Now, you are like Faust, realizing that selling your soul is not going to give you any advantages when it is time to drag YOU to your Doom! the same friends you used to laugh with as children and others were hauled to the furnace will be the same people laughing AT you, especially when Trump has made betrayal a virtue.
YOU fed this monster, you hoped to ride him to the heavens!
and frankly, you have not gained any wisdom. Let's look at this pearl of wisdom you offer.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
First off, Tax reform = the billionaires just taking more and more. These are the same billionaires that have turned Congress into lapdogs, with bribes and kneecap threats. We have a legislative branch that is in effect a SERVANT of the executive. Effective regulation?, more like a chance for every corporation from internet giants to toxic polluters to literally get away with murder. As far as that more robust military, talk to many of the soldiers that have already had their lives ruined, and the expensive JUNK they have to work with which has proven useless, namely because everybody from the Russians to the Chinese has already been sold the blueprints, and has made strategies to counter us. Betsy Devos is gutting our education, and her brother is helping the CHINESE make private armies that Xi Jinping can disavow, in effect, the modern day game of privateers, private pirates, the same ones that will be shooting at our soldiers while the new aristocrats dives past their funerals in Limousines!
So, spare me the song..the fact you invoked McCain shows how much you soil his name. I may have thought JM was a SOB a lot, but he would have the guts to put his name forward, and NOT hide behind a pen name!
So to you, be you a cabinet member, melania, or whoever, know this: You have dynamited the sense of common good will that kept this country together! When, and oh yes, it will be a When, we rebuild, heal, and oh yes redesign the foundation of this nation, rest assured, some of us will point at you, and make sure you get buried in the same trench as the Steve bannons, or for that Matter, the Mikas, Joe Scabs, Koch borthers, etc.
You have made life Hell for your fellow citizens, and you are about to taste it!
RE: Libations for McCain, and the toxic aftertaste.
Look, I realize that McCain, unlike many of his generation, did not dodge the draft. Yes...the Ted ralls of the world may say the real heroes of the Vietnam War were the folks that moved to Canada, but the truth is that he thought, like many, that he owed the country service, and he did not use trickery to get out of it like president Bone Spurs did.
That being said, this funeral is very much an exercise in camouflage, for both the GOP and many of the Democrats. The GOP hypocrisy is easy to focus on, low hanging fruit. However, we do need to focus on ourselves. Simply put, how far have we let the democrats teeter to the right where John McCain was not just a respected adversary, but at times considered a friend?
Did he ever stop trying to get abortion banned?
Did her ever stop trying to get the country to go to war?
Did he ever stop trying to cut social services?
Did he ever stop trying to help the Bushes and Reagans?
NO, NO, NO, and while he can respect a worthy opponent, we should nto shower on him the sort of affection that should be reserved for FELLOW DEMOCRATS. Instead, he gets it as if he was one of us, some great statesman that had fought against Trump.
I hatw to say this, but a lot of this is wishful thinking that after Trump has uprooted much of what used to be the status quo, things will get back to "normal"...sorry, but we knew that a certain faction;s willingness to make nice with the McCains of the world is what got us into this mess. IF we do manage to defeat trump, we will NOT want to see the sort of sweetness and affection poured out for some of your "friends and allies" while you made us stand out in the rain and eat our peas.
MCain helped make Trump Possible,
and yes, certain people proud to call him a friend, so did YOU.
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Member since: Thu Apr 17, 2008, 05:51 PMNumber of posts: 13,616
