Thought for the Day

[KnightHawk 2.0]

It looks like the Republican civil war might be over with barely a shot fired. After a week or two of soul-searching, the party establishment appears to have decided that they can't do without Trump and his supporters, so they've reverted to their old habits of appeasing him.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/28/republicans-need-trump-463684Not surprised at all the Republican Party reverted back to their old habits by appeasing the Demagouge And Malignant Narcissist Donald Trump,and all that talk about unity from the Republicans was bullshit,because they never had any intention on coming together and uniting and healing the country.

[broncofan]

Without starting some big thing, I would like to point out that if we're going to talk about political parties "holding themselves to a higher standard," it is quite disingenuous to apply this demand to Republicans while ignoring the behavior of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY for the last 4 years - in particular its behavior since the George Floyd incident.

Democratic elected officials have promoted rioting, sedition, and murder. The party's adherents have turned some parts of this country into literal war zones. For 4 years they have behaved like 4-year-olds, utterly failing to accept the results of the 2016 election. "Not My President" has been the cry from these naive children.

The Republicans, in defeat, have been quite tame compared to the violent excess of the Democrats. Stricly objectively, it's the very limit of hypocrisy for Democrats to act as if they suddenly occupy the high moral ground of political methodology. Half of the people crying out for Trump's post-presidency impeachment should rightfully be in prison right now, and probably would be if the election had gone the other way.

Anyway, again, not looking to start some big debate. We all know nobody here is going to change anyone else's mind about politics. But let's not act as if Republicans have the monopoly on political temper tantrums. If anything, they are mere plebs compared to the Democrats when it comes to showing one's ass.
I am against rioting no matter who is doing it. I guess what I'd ask you is whether Joe Biden supported vandalism or violence? Did he incite violence or engage in the kind of conspiracy mongering Trump did? You will remember that all of our intelligence agencies concluded that Russia did hack the DNC. Nobody credible concluded anything about shredded ballots or the batshit stuff Trump has promoted. He filed 60 lawsuits without any real evidence and tried to subvert every political process we have including using the potential for violence to pressure Pence to impede the peaceful transfer of power.

The former President promoted outrageous lies about the election, he refused to concede at any point, and during the counting of the votes tried to claim victory because he knew the mail-in ballots were counted last and he had discouraged his supporters from sending in those ballots. He then spent more than two months claiming he would remain President. During that time he tried to extort Brad Raffensperger into calling Georgia for him. The vandalism he incited was not against a privately owned building, which is indefensible, but was, more dangerously, against our capitol.

Many of the people who broke into the capitol were looking to hang Mike Pence and kill legislators. They did kill a police officer and injured many others. Afterwards he told them he loved them.

You might have an argument if storming the capitol to overturn an election were simply vandalism, if saying "not my President" was the same thing as the President promoting outlandish conspiracy theories and refusing to concede, and if the people who stormed the Capitol were protesting some civil rights violation and were not people waving the confederate flag and wearing Camp Auschwitz shirts. Everything about what he did threatened the very basis of our democracy and tried to empower the worst people in our society (Neo-Nazis).

No the Democrats aren't perfect and any fringe person shouldn't be in the party. For Republicans, that is who is at the helm. A Representative who thinks there are Jewish space lasers and senators and congress-people who lie up until the minute people start getting killed and then pretend they didn't.

[filghy2]

The Republicans, in defeat, have been quite tame compared to the violent excess of the Democrats.

I assume this is some kind of joke - you making a deliberately outrageous statement just to provoke a reaction.

On the oft chance you are actually serious, here is a link to Hillary Clinton's concession speech, which you seem to have missed. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/hillary-clinton-concession-speech/index.html

Perhaps you'd like to give us some links on how the Democrat party tried to overturn the result in the courts and Congress, pressure state electoral officials and goad an armed Democrat mob into storming the Capitol.

[Stavros]

Without starting some big thing, I would like to point out that if we're going to talk about political parties "holding themselves to a higher standard," it is quite disingenuous to apply this demand to Republicans while ignoring the behavior of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY for the last 4 years - in particular its behavior since the George Floyd incident.

Democratic elected officials have promoted rioting, sedition, and murder. The party's adherents have turned some parts of this country into literal war zones. For 4 years they have behaved like 4-year-olds, utterly failing to accept the results of the 2016 election. "Not My President" has been the cry from these naive children.

The Republicans, in defeat, have been quite tame compared to the violent excess of the Democrats. Stricly objectively, it's the very limit of hypocrisy for Democrats to act as if they suddenly occupy the high moral ground of political methodology. Half of the people crying out for Trump's post-presidency impeachment should rightfully be in prison right now, and probably would be if the election had gone the other way.

Anyway, again, not looking to start some big debate. We all know nobody here is going to change anyone else's mind about politics. But let's not act as if Republicans have the monopoly on political temper tantrums. If anything, they are mere plebs compared to the Democrats when it comes to showing one's ass.

A few points.

1) In a two party system it is easy to fall into the either/or trap. I don't know that the Democrats have been presented here as 'the good guys', if you care to read back through a lot of posts you will find I have been critical of the party. Do both parties benefit from Gerrymandered districts? Yes. Do both parties run their machines free of corruption? No (name me one party anywhere in the world that does not habitually bend or break the rules). Do both parties manipulate the procedures in Congress to their own benefit? Yes, as in, that's the nature of Congressional politics.

2) The agument that the Democrats never accepted the result of the 2016 election on one level is factually wrong, as filghy2 points out Hillary Clinton conceded the election to Trump, and moreover, attended the 2017 Inauguration ceremony. The obvious problem, one that your election system can present at times, is that Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College, which to some Americans, is a challenge to legitimacy -yes, you have this system, but it has rarely produced two different results, and you have no mechanism to resolve the contradiction.

3) Legitimacy -what has been unique in the Trump dilemma, is that the legitimacy of the 2016 result has been challenged because Trump himself not only broke the 1971 Election Campaign Law when he twice in one day publicly solicited the help of the Russian Governmen in his campaign, the evidence of the Mueller Enquiry and the Senate Intelligence Committee is that the Trump campaign met with Russians close to the Russian Government more than 100 times, at the same time that the Russians were hacking the computers of the DNC. Call it co-operation if not collusion, then ask how many members of that campaign ended up in Prison for what they did? How many members of Democrat campaigns over the years ended up in prison for breaking the law?

It looks to me like there is a case for treason if it can be established that at the very momen the Russians were attacking the USA, the Trump campaign, which had a moral and a legal duty to reject Russian offers of help, moreover, to inform the FBI/CIA that such offers had been made, chose instead to join the Russian attack against the USA.

If you factor in the basis of the Impeachment, that the US President sought the help of a foreign government in his election campaign against a fellow American, then you have the deep suspicion that Trump and his campaign have used and relied on foreign support unike any other President or Presidential campaign in US history -that is the measure of the challenge to Trump's legitimacy problem, underlined even more when sitting next to Vladimir Putin, Trump publicly endorsed the views of Russian, rather than American intelligence.

Has any US President ever publicly undermined the Intelligence Services of his country in favour of a Foreign Government, and, moreover, one viewed as hostile to the USA?

4) yes, we can agree that as a man, Trump is ignorant, stupid, vulgar, vain, a liar and a racist, but that's just tough luck on the US. But ask yourself how many Presidents have lined their pockets with tax-payers money as Trump has done, playing golf only at places he owns, knowing the cost will benefit his business? Obama played golf too, but never made a dime from it, Trump has made millions from it, and with a security detail for life has a guaranteed revenue stream as long as he only plays golf in places he owns. Trump might have done the US a favour by deliberately undermining the Office of the Presidency by breaking its norms and values, if it means Congress fine tunes the law on what a President can and cannot do.

5) You might suggest that just as the Republicans have their QAnon supporters, the TEA Party, Armed Militias, 'Christian' Fundamentalists and the Koch Brothers, the Democrats have BLM, Wall St and other Billionaire backers -presumably Bill Gates and George Soros-and a motley group of Feminists, Radical Feminists, Green/Environmental activists, LGBT+ activists -but is it not the case, that these groups are all working within the US political system to extend its remit, its inclusiveness, rather than against it?

Republicans actively purge voter rolles, suppress the vote, and spent more than 40 years filleting the Voter Regstration Act of 1965 as part of the Cancel Culture they accuse Democrats of. They have made every atttempt they can to Cancel Roe-v-Wade and have succeeded at the State level in doing so through the re-definition of term limits.

Thus, even if you set aside the assault on the Capitol, of the two parties, neither of which are perfect, only one has actively sought to de-legitimise the electoral process, to exclude Americans from voting, and that is the Republican Party. It has reached a point where not only is the US system in a fragile condition, so too is the Republican Party, now tearing itself apart because it cannot decide who its leader is, what its policies are and should be, and to whom it is appealing for support. The Democrats are divided too, but their divisions are shaped by policies not personalities, which makes them more congenial to the open debate that is what enables Liberal Democracies to survive.

For now the fundamental question is this: does the Republican Party believe Liberal Democracy is the best system of Government for the USA? And it is the only one of the two parties asking the question, and appearing in some cases to reply, 'No' -this is the core dilemma now for those who vote for and support the Republican Party, and that 'other America' they ignore, who must live with the consequences of four destructive years that resulted in 25 million people infected with Covid-19, over 400,000 deaths and a President who didn't care.

[Nick Danger]

Wow looks like I've dropped myself right into the middle of a hornets' nest here.

But if you guys would be willing to accept just one simple fact, I think we can all get out of here alive. That fact is that you are looking at the world through liberal-colored spectacles, and I am looking at it through conservative-colored spectacles.

It's not much more complicated than that. I saw what Trump did. I'm pretty sure he was in bed with Putin. I'm 100% sure he used the office of the Presidency to enrich himself and his family. And certainly, from one perspective, it could easily be said that he handled the pandemic crisis poorly - although for myself I've maintained all along that it was more damaging to the USA to shut down the economy than it would have been to allow the virus to simply run its course and cull the weak, which pretty much happened anyway and would have happened despite our best efforts. I.E., we have yet to parse the number of deaths that can be attributed directly to the impact of the economic shutdown rather than the virus itself, but I'm guessing...comparable numbers. Point being that Trump and I are in agreement on how he should have handled the pandemic.

And in summary to my original point, the things you see as problems, I see as clever. For example, I don't see the big problem with the "Russian election interference" issue. The Russians interfere in every election, whether you know that or not - and so does every other first-world nation with an intelligence service. They all have their preference in an American election. It bothers me more that Putin preferred Trump over Clinton than it does that he helped get Trump elected. But it doesn't bother me that Trump used all the pieces already in play to secure his victory.

Trump was no more poorly-behaved than any other President, but his flaws were amplified constantly by the media. I won't say this is unprecedented, George W. Bush got quite a bit of that treatment but he got it in the days before social media was omnipresent.

So I'm a little brainwashed right now, guys. And so are you. We probably agree on a lot of fundamental issues but we'll never know it, because now we're all just pawns of the media, suckling at the giant corporate teat of information, misinformation, disinformation, spin, outright lies and under-reported truths.

Unfortunately what we've had for the past 4 years is a uniquely 4-branched government that has been forced to concede to the (mostsly) liberal media on several occasions. No other President in history has encountered such vigorous opposition from the press, and the average American citizen, bless his little pea-sized brain, is now essentially unable to discern the difference in media spin and hard truth.

The very definition of "divisive" is up for grabs right now. Was Trump divisive? Sure, I guess, if you call "winning when a bunch of people didn't want you to win" divisive. Seems like the Democrats are totally willing to throw the word "divisive" out there to describe any action with which they disagree, so who's actually doing the "dividing?"

Anyway, I'll tell you guys right now, I am not even a little upset that Biden won. It's nothing more than the usual ebb and flow of politics. If you want my opinion on what's going to happen over the next 4 years, here it is: The LGBT community is going to get everything it wants. Blacks, Hispanics, Women, and Immigrants are going to get everything they want. Inflation is going through the roof, that will be unavoidable. Unemployment will rise as business regulation increases. By the end of Biden's 4 years we will be living in a borderline dystopia in which everyone is equally fucked.

Then in 2024, amidst the economic shambles, we'll elect another Republican. He'll reverse a lot of Democratic policies, kill Obamacare (again), and fix the economy. HOPEFULLY that will keep him too busy to cater to the Religious Right, and everyone who has obtained their human rights during this coming Democratic administration will be allowed to keep them.

There is no happy ending, guys. Just a continuous back-and-forth cycle of opposing ideas. We could hash all those out here and now. But for me, I'm prepared to simply agree to disagree at this point. Frankly, the USA is giving me a headache.

[broncofan]

although for myself I've maintained all along that it was more damaging to the USA to shut down the economy than it would have been to allow the virus to simply run its course and cull the weak, which pretty much happened anyway and would have happened despite our best efforts. I.E., we have yet to parse the number of deaths that can be attributed directly to the impact of the economic shutdown rather than the virus itself, but I'm guessing...comparable numbers.
The choice wasn't between shutting down the economy and herd immunity by infection. In fact, carefully tailored health measures in a bunch of countries resulted in fewer deaths and less economic loss. People could have been encouraged to wear masks instead of being told by the President well after April 3 (when there was a consensus about presymptomatic transmission) that the verdict was still out on whether they're effective. Or being told that the virus was like the flu, would magically disappear, that hydroxychloroquine works, or any number of pseudo-scientific things.

We have 450,000 deaths from covid and our excess deaths this year are in that range. Excess death data will tell you with some reasonable probability whether you have an additional cause of death in a given year and whether it's consistent with the deaths you attribute to a new cause of death. Do you have any evidence that anywhere close to 450,000 deaths have been caused by the "economic shutdown"?

I focus on this part of your post because it's the part that isn't just vague characterizations about how everyone is biased, both sides are the same, one man's insurrection is another man's disagreement etc.

[broncofan]

Trump was no more poorly-behaved than any other President, but his flaws were amplified constantly by the media. I won't say this is unprecedented, George W. Bush got quite a bit of that treatment but he got it in the days before social media was omnipresent.

Someone else can maybe address this, though that's not a demand if you think it's pointless. Before I saw Nick responded I was going to write a paragraph about how the fact/opinion distinction is not always conceptually clear. Facts can be made to look murky by bad faith and opinions can be almost universally agreed upon. Whether someone's behavior is poor is a matter of opinion but to the extent most people have similar criteria for it I don't think this is true. I also don't see any way to resolve this except by listing behaviors of Trump, describing why they're "poor" and asking you to name comparably bad behaviors of previous presidents that aren't mischaracterizations.

[broncofan]

Nick tldr: there is no such thing as a fact and everything is reducible to opinion. Black is white, white is black, and there isn't any difference because it's all subjective and that's part of the game. Vice is virtue, Trump is good, but so is corruption. Also, here are a bunch of opinions, each one of which can be easily rebutted but the rebuttal is simply an expression of your bias.

[Nick Danger]

We have 450,000 deaths from covid...

Exactly. And the exact same people who would be wearing masks if there was a nationwide mask mandate from the first sniffle in Wuhan are wearing masks, and the same people who won't wear masks even if it means not being allowed into a grocery store are still not wearing them.

I've been alive long enough to recognize a half-measure when I see one - the kind of measure governments take when they're expected to do something but don't know what the fuck to do. The mask thing is a farce IMO, just another token half-measure by a government that is in truth helpless against this pandemic.

Now, at the same time I feel that way, I also respect YOUR right to buy into the mask mandate. I respect it so much that I wear a mask, Bronco. Even though I don't think it helps, I stifle my face with one of those hot, uncomfortable pieces of recycled garbage every time I get out of my car. EXCLUSIVELY out of respect for YOUR opinion.

Now that's the kind of bi-partisan, across-the-aisle cooperative effort that's going to lead humanity hurtling full-speed into the current light at the end of the current tunnel. :p

[filghy2]

If you want my opinion on what's going to happen over the next 4 years, here it is: The LGBT community is going to get everything it wants. Blacks, Hispanics, Women, and Immigrants are going to get everything they want. Inflation is going through the roof, that will be unavoidable. Unemployment will rise as business regulation increases. By the end of Biden's 4 years we will be living in a borderline dystopia in which everyone is equally fucked.

Then in 2024, amidst the economic shambles, we'll elect another Republican. He'll reverse a lot of Democratic policies, kill Obamacare (again), and fix the economy. HOPEFULLY that will keep him too busy to cater to the Religious Right, and everyone who has obtained their human rights during this coming Democratic administration will be allowed to keep them.

If your previous over-confident predictions fail, why not make some new equally over-confident predictions. How many of your predictions in this thread proved to be correct? http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?99116-Trannies-for-Trump/page38&highlight=trannies+trump

I'm not going to waste time addressing your points because it's all just a false equivalence game. As long as you kind find examples of things other politicians have done that resemble what Trump has done in some way you can say "see, he's no worse than others", but you're asking us to ignore the degree and overall pattern of his behaviour.

[filghy2]

And certainly, from one perspective, it could easily be said that he handled the pandemic crisis poorly - although for myself I've maintained all along that it was more damaging to the USA to shut down the economy than it would have been to allow the virus to simply run its course and cull the weak, which pretty much happened anyway and would have happened despite our best efforts.

You're ignoring the obvious point that the USA is around the bottom 10 out of more than 200 countries in terms of death rates per capita. https://virusncov.com/ If there was nothing that could have been done to achieve a better outcome, how do you explain the fact that so many countries have done much better?

[filghy2]

It's also not true that countries have succeeded in controlling the virus only at the expense of their economies - in fact, the countries with lower virus numbers have generally done better economically.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy
https://theconversation.com/data-from-45-countries-show-containing-covid-vs-saving-the-economy-is-a-false-dichotomy-150533

[filghy2]

Nick tldr: there is no such thing as a fact and everything is reducible to opinion. Black is white, white is black, and there isn't any difference because it's all subjective and that's part of the game. Vice is virtue, Trump is good, but so is corruption. Also, here are a bunch of opinions, each one of which can be easily rebutted but the rebuttal is simply an expression of your bias.

The other element is that all degrees of wrongdoing are equivalent. If most people sometimes twist the truth, then a President who constantly tells outrageous lies is no worse. If most people sometimes bend rules to their own advantage, a President who puts himself above the law and tries to overturn an election is no worse. If most people are inclined to think less favourably of their opponents than their own side, a President who makes 'us versus them' hate-mongering his political credo (to the exclusion of any policy platform) is no worse.

I think you made this point before, but it used to be the right who criticised the left for moral relativism - the idea that there are no absolute rights or wrongs and it all depends on where you are coming from. Conservative values aren't what they used to be, it seems.

[broncofan]

The other element is that all degrees of wrongdoing are equivalent. If most people sometimes twist the truth, then a President who constantly tells outrageous lies is no worse. If most people sometimes bend rules to their own advantage, a President who puts himself above the law and tries to overturn an election is no worse. If most people are inclined to think less favourably of their opponents than their own side, a President who makes 'us versus them' hate-mongering his political credo (to the exclusion of any policy platform) is no worse.

Great point. If one is not perfect they are as bad as the worst offender. And since nobody is perfect, then the most egregious offender is no worse than anyone. And once they've used whataboutism to claim Trump's behavior hasn't been exceptional, those who think it is are left explaining all of the degrees of difference.

I can't put this in a category but I've often noticed when someone wants impunity for a person they support, they will require one single smoking gun to condemn them. If you have ten circumstances each highly suggestive of corrupt behavior they will not look at the combined probability. Or even consider what the combined effect of all of these instances says about the person's conduct in general.

It's not as much a Republican thing but a tactic I've noticed that is hard to break through because it challenges people's ability to hold all of the incriminating instances in their heads at the same time. It also means that if there's an occasional frivolous accusation by someone they can focus on that and pretend it's characteristic of every other complaint.

[Stavros]

It's nothing more than the usual ebb and flow of politics.


You have expressed this so what? view of politics before, but it begs the question -has anything changed, is the US still 'merely' dominated by a two-party system? Right now, it appears that the Republican Party is in such a deep crisis many of its long-standing supporters are leaving it while a new cohort of conspiracy-based and militia linked people are moving in -but this must means the GOP is not longer the 'Party of Lincoln' -indeed the 'newbies' probably detest Lincoln as an 'Imperial President'-, while the mere concept of Fiscal Resposibility that Eisenhower was associated with presents itself as somewhere between satire and ridicule. Add in the fact that even in 2016 Trump said he would accept the result of the election 'If I win' and the means by which he attempted to reject the actual vote in 2020 with all its attendant lies, violence and the -prior to 1812- unprecedented attack on the Capitol, and you can see that the US is in danger of moving away from what is left of a Consensual system -it may not be bi-partisan these days, but the two main parties have adhered to the view that there are three brances to American Government, not One, whereas Trump never seemed to even understand how a system of checks and balances work.

So on the one hand, you may be right, but on the other, it remains to be seen what damage Trump has done to the Republican Party and the American system, and that is without an assessment of the long term damage caused by domestic and foreign policy.

It is not just Liberals who are concerned at the direction that Trump is taking his party in, but many of the people who enabled him to do it four years ago. Incredible as it might sound, it is reported that Mitch McConnell thought Trump's inflamed rhetoric before and during the 6th of January was 'just buster', a stunning lapse of judgment which suggests McConnell deliberately ignored a lot fo what Trump said for four years, or just didn't care as long as he got the judges and tax cuts that were his priority. Sounds like someone saying of the driver of the car or the bus, 'he may be drunk, but he will get us there faster' -assuming there is no fatal collision on the way. But the drunk is still in the driver's seat, and there is little McConnell can do about it.

[Nick Danger]

If your previous over-confident predictions fail, why not make some new equally over-confident predictions. How many of your predictions in this thread proved to be correct? http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?99116-Trannies-for-Trump/page38&highlight=trannies+trump

I'm not going to waste time addressing your points because it's all just a false equivalence game.

In my defense, Flighty, I can only say that I absolutely did NOT foresee the global pandemic or what my friends and I like to call the Retard Riots.

>says he's not going to waste time addressing my points
>proceeds to address my points over the course of three additional posts

If you'll recall, Flighty, I'm just fine with not addressing anyone's points. It'd just be the same old inflexible assholes rehashing the same old arguments. On both sides.

I will be very specific for you, though, regarding the pandemic and how I feel about it.

First of all, while simultaneously believing that masks do not help the problem, I also understand fully the benefit of the mask. Scenario: I have the virus, and I am wearing a mask. You do not have the virus and you pass in front of me as I cough or sneeze or simply exhale. The mask prevents the moist, virus-carrying particles exiting my mouth from reaching you and infecting you with the goddamn Covid.

But guess what? You're still going to get it. There's a good chance you've already HAD it.

Think of it like a cum shot, Flighty - if you're there, in front of the dick, and the cum starts flying, you're going to get some on you, no matter how you might try to avoid it. The only way to avoid the cum is to get away from the dick altogether, which in this analogy translates to complete isolation from the rest of the human race.

Some people have gone that route. For most people that isn't a viable option.

I personally am immune to the thing. So far I've been in direct contact with it 3 times I'm aware of, including nursing both my parents through it, so either I had it and was completely asymptomatic (making me a "super-carrier"), or I'm immune. Either way I've got no dog in this hunt.

Nonetheless I could have solved this whole problem had I been in charge of operations when it happened. The solution is so obvious that any well-heeled bureaucracy could accomplish it.

Each person would be responsible to decide whether or not he/she is at risk. Old people, frail people, lungers, etc., would be allowed to apply for assistance. If they do fall into an at-risk category, they'd be allowed to self-quarantine, and the taxpayers would kindly foot the bill for their sustenance until the pandemic has passed. At that point, they command their own destiny. If they stick to the program and don't leave their house, they'll be fine. Also, obviously, if people apply for quarantine who in fact do NOT fall into an at-risk category, sorry, denied, get back to working for a living. There'd be a lot of screening with my plan.

This way you've taken all your high-risk individuals and given them the tools they need to survive. And everyone else can just get back to business as usual. Sure, there'd be some deaths among the general population, people who should have applied for quarantine but didn't, out of pride or stupidity. But they'd be minimal, what you'd have more than anything would be a lot of people getting sick but then getting over it. And it would have been OVER by now.

I know, I know, Flighty, I'm a goddamn genius. The irony is, you don't even have to be a genius to be smarter than the government.

[broncofan]

First of all, while simultaneously believing that masks do not help the problem, I also understand fully the benefit of the mask. Scenario: I have the virus, and I am wearing a mask. You do not have the virus and you pass in front of me as I cough or sneeze or simply exhale. The mask prevents the moist, virus-carrying particles exiting my mouth from reaching you and infecting you with the goddamn Covid.

But guess what? You're still going to get it. There's a good chance you've already HAD it.

You know there are serological tests that people can get to see if they've had it? Detectable antibodies wane but there are people called epidemiologists who estimate the prevalence of infection and it is nowhere near inevitable that people get covid, even here.

There are also estimates about how common asymptomatic infection is that you can look up. I have not had covid and my mother who is recovering from cancer has not had it but she has survived to get her first shot of a covid vaccine. My father who has had a stroke has also not had covid. In fact, he had an antibody test a couple months after he was under the weather to see if he'd had covid, and he did not have have antibodies. But he has now survived to get a vaccine.

Your analogies are also completely misguided about how risk works. Even when risks aren't reduced to zero, decreasing risky activities like maskless rallies or congregating with hundreds of people indoors, will reduce one's chances of getting the virus. Anyhow, I have nothing against you but I wouldn't trust you to manage a parking lot.

Here is a link to some of the people who have died or gotten very sick from covid. Perhaps it will make you less glib about the subject or not. https://twitter.com/SusanSchutte2

And just random points that don't have to do with your overall argument but are not entirely logical: coming into contact with someone who has covid does not guarantee you get it. Even three people. It is not known what the infectious dose of the virus is or even whether these people were shedding a lot of virus. The amount of virus people with the disease shed is highly variable. If you had it and were a true asymptomatic it wouldn't make you a super-spreader. Asymptomatic people can spread the disease, but typically people who eventually develop symptoms spread it more readily. You also say that you might be immune. If you had it that's possible, but cross-immunity from other pathogens is unlikely to be completely protective. And immunity from covid wanes as antibody levels are not nearly as high after infection as they are after vaccination. While vaccine immunity will not last forever and might have variable protection against new variants, here are some key numbers so far https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1356079020878786561

[broncofan]

But guess what? You're still going to get it. There's a good chance you've already HAD it.

While I don't know filghy's exact latitude and longitude I would say this is extremely unlikely. I live in a county with 1000 new cases per million and so while I'm fairly certain I haven't gotten it I can't guarantee I won't. Curious how many new cases there were yesterday where filghy is from....

[Nick Danger]

You know there are serological tests that people can get to see if they've had it? Detectable antibodies wane but there are people called epidemiologists who estimate the prevalence of infection and it is nowhere near inevitable that people get covid, even here.

There are also estimates about how common asymptomatic infection is that you can look up. I have not had covid and my mother who is recovering from cancer has not had it but she has survived to get her first shot of a covid vaccine. My father who has had a stroke has also not had covid. In fact, he had an antibody test a couple months after he was under the weather to see if he'd had covid, and he did not have have antibodies. But he has now survived to get a vaccine.

Your analogies are also completely misguided about how risk works. Even when risks aren't reduced to zero, decreasing risky activities like maskless rallies or congregating with hundreds of people indoors, will reduce one's chances of getting the virus. Anyhow, I have nothing against you but I wouldn't trust you to manage a parking lot.

Here is a link to some of the people who have died or gotten very sick from covid. Perhaps it will make you less glib about the subject or not. https://twitter.com/SusanSchutte2

And just random points that don't have to do with your overall argument but are not entirely logical: coming into contact with someone who has covid does not guarantee you get it. Even three people. It is not known what the infectious dose of the virus is or even whether these people were shedding a lot of virus. The amount of virus people with the disease shed is highly variable. If you had it and were a true asymptomatic it wouldn't make you a super-spreader. Asymptomatic people can spread the disease, but typically people who eventually develop symptoms spread it more readily. You also say that you might be immune. If you had it that's possible, but cross-immunity from other pathogens is unlikely to be completely protective. And immunity from covid wanes as antibody levels are not nearly as high after infection as they are after vaccination. While vaccine immunity will not last forever and might have variable protection against new variants, here are some key numbers so far https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1356079020878786561

You know how my parents got it? Them either. They might come into contact with 3 people in a month if it's a heavy birthday month, otherwise they never leave the house. All their friends are dead. They're both borderline hypochondriacs who have been wearing masks, packing hand sanitizer, and skipping church since they first heard the word "pandemic."

But sure enough, about 3 months ago, I got the call - "We've both got the Covid!"

So that's MY perspective. I don't think people are escaping it, I think you're either disposed to getting it or you're not, and if you're disposed that way, you're going to get it unless you TRULY quarantine yourself, which most people can't. Again, all this mask stuff is just a virtue-signaling half-measure from a government whose hands are basically tied, IMO.

I'm not a doctor obviously. But I know what I see. I see a lot of people taking every recommended measure not to get the damn virus and getting it anyway. I see entire sectors of industry shut down and the economy suffering, all for no better purpose than prolonging the inevitable.

I'm sorry, Bronco, but I see this thing panning out exactly as it was always going to pan out - everyone who's going to get it is going to get it. And everyone who isn't, ain't. Frankly, that's not much less information than the entire medical community can provide you.

[broncofan]

You don't seem to understand how probabilities work. Someone can take lots of precautions and though they have a small percentage chance of getting it, if it's not zero they might get it. Someone can take lots of risks and not get it. When these behaviors are magnified across millions of people those who have more exposure to the virus get sick more often. Over time they increase the risk of even people who are being careful.

The fact that there's some randomness and efforts to suppress the virus are slightly porous is one reason it takes some time to get the virus under control (I can see you losing a hand in hold 'em poker with pocket aces and concluding pocket aces isn't really the best hand preflop). You seem to be ignoring not just what the medical community is saying, which is considerably more and different from what you say, but also empirical results from the rest of the world. It's not a surprise that the country that had a charlatan telling people things all epidemiologists disagreed with ended up having lots of viral spread.

You don't think it's possible anyone's escaping it? The highest estimate I've seen of the percent of the US population that has had covid is something like 88 million or 27%. Maybe there are higher estimates. That is with one of the worst public health efforts in the world. Most countries are probably around half of that and some a fraction of that. And btw, I saw a graph yesterday...countries that have completely suppressed the virus barely have excess deaths. In fact, excess deaths seem to correlate very well with deaths reported from covid in every country I've seen data from.

If you really don't want to read or think about this stuff, why not just defer to epidemiologists and virologists? Are they wrong occasionally? Yes. Are they more likely to be wrong than you? Definitely not. What they're not unanimous? Can you find their opinions sort of coalesce around certain commonly held views? Sure. Don't go with the outliers.

Edit: Just going by mortality rate from cruise ships where everyone is tested and other estimates of ifr, you can estimate number of infections based on number of deaths. I did it earlier and it would come out to roughly 64 million which is less than twenty percent of the US population.

[Nick Danger]

You don't seem to understand how probabilities work.

Funny, that's what they said to me last time I went to Vegas.

Trust me, Bronco, I'm much thinker than you smart I am. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal evidence. You gave yours and I was giving mine.

I don't really trust any of the numbers that get thrown at me about this thing - from any source. The problem with lying government is, you never really know when they're lying and when they aren't. The problem with medicine for profit is, you never really know whether a doctor is being paid by the government or Big Pharma or SuperHospoCorp for his opinion or if he's actually giving sound medical advice.

And let me ask you something, Bronco, and I want you to give this some serious thought, try to look at it from all angles - There is a LOT of evidence that this virus was cooked up in a lab in China. There is scientific evidence and eyewitness testimony. There's a Chinese lab technician in hiding.

So where's the outrage? Where's the investigation? China is the 2nd-richest nation on the planet. They've stopped calculating the global cost of Covid-19 in trillions because it has entered the realm of incalculable.

I've read stories before, in American newspapers, about men going to prison for decades for stealing $10, or $4, or $37, or whatever. We are not a forgiving society. But China owes the world...well, what do they owe the world? And we're not even TALKING about it anymore? "Oh yeah, China inflicted this on the world by negligence at a minimum, and possibly even on purpose, but we're just gonna let that go."

Uh-uh. Doesn't work that way unless there's a larger picture. Globalist conspiracy IMHO.

[filghy2]

While I don't know filghy's exact latitude and longitude I would say this is extremely unlikely. I live in a county with 1000 new cases per million and so while I'm fairly certain I haven't gotten it I can't guarantee I won't. Curious how many new cases there were yesterday where filghy is from....

No new cases for the last 6 months, apart from a few people returning from overseas who went into quarantine. But according to Nick's idiot logic that can't possibly be right, so they must be faking the data.

[filghy2]

In my defense, Flighty, I can only say that I absolutely did NOT foresee the global pandemic or what my friends and I like to call the Retard Riots..

You are like the man who refuses to take out insurance, then when he is ruined says in his defence that he didn't expect his house to burn down. You want to claim good luck to your credit, but make excuses if you get bad luck.

Sensible people know that bad things can happen, even if they can't predict them exactly. That is why sensible people don't make over-confident predictions.

Sensible people also have plans for how to respond to unfortunate events. The possibility of a global pandemic was not unpredictable, as experts have been warning of it for many years.

[Stavros]

I don't really trust any of the numbers that get thrown at me about this thing - from any source. The problem with lying government is, you never really know when they're lying and when they aren't. The problem with medicine for profit is, you never really know whether a doctor is being paid by the government or Big Pharma or SuperHospoCorp for his opinion or if he's actually giving sound medical advice.

And let me ask you something, Bronco, and I want you to give this some serious thought, try to look at it from all angles - There is a LOT of evidence that this virus was cooked up in a lab in China. There is scientific evidence and eyewitness testimony. There's a Chinese lab technician in hiding.


Nick, your posts are rather like watching The Third Man, or Tom Cruise in Collateral dismissing human endeavour as having the importance of a fly on the back of an elephant. The statistics are there to try and give an accurate profile of how the virus has affected us, and it is no surprise that some sectors of the population are more adversely affected than others, because just about every epidemic and pandemic has recorded the impact poverty has on disease, in terms of illness and death. Frank Snowden's Naples in the Time of Cholera (1995) is an exemplary study of its kind.

But what your cynical post also asks is for your view on vaccinations. Immunology has been one of the most successful branches of medical science, eradicating Smallpox, all but eradicating other diseases such as Polio, Measles, Tuberculosis, and so on, to the benefit of mankind in general. In the UK the NHS has administered millions of doses of vaccines in early childhood to late maturity and it costs the patient nothing because they pay or have paid for it through their National Insurance. And yes, the Pharmacauetical Companies make billions in profit, but they are also among the very few industries that spend vast amounts of their own profits on R&D where in most industries this is farmed out (Computing is the other top ranked R&D industry).

I might be wrong, but why would you support vaccinations of any kind? We fall sick, and we either recover or we die, that seems to be your position. Florida has a Governor who seems to think there is little or nothing that can be done to tackle Covid-19. Result?
1.74 Million infections, 26, 821 deaths. Tough shit?

As for the Wuhan Lab theory, the question is, why? Labs in many countries, including yours, have been conducting experiments on bats and other creatures to help tackle zoonotic disease, it is not part of a weapons programme.

We are an enquiring species, and have developed the science that has proven illness and disease can be resolved or even eliminated. I see that as a cause of comfort and celebration, as the demonstration that for all its flaws in morality and behaviour, we humans can do good things that benefit us all, just as we need to show more care for the planet we live on. You can dismiss that as 'Virtue Signalling' if you choose to, but to me, like music, good food and human company it is what gives life its meaning and purpose, all of it threatened by Covid-19. And if the politics was so simple -'let the virus take its course', are you going to take responsibility for the millions of deaths and infections with long term complications that is just as likely if not more so, to damage the economy? I am at least fortunate that you are not in government.

[broncofan]

I'm kind of at a loss Nick with your last post. This is not even close to the first zoonotic disease and also not the first disease to be subject to conspiracy theories about its origins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis

There have now been three deadly coronaviruses that have infected humans in the last 20 years. There was Sars-1, which is so closely related to the pathogen that causes covid that I heard a biologist estimate that their lineages may have separated as recently as 800 years ago.

There was also MERS or Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome which originated in camels in Saudi Arabia and can infect humans. It is extremely deadly but it has an r0 of less than 1 which means even when it spills over and kills people it eventually burns out.

Since both Sars-1 and Sars-2 originated in China I guess I can ask you how you account for MERS? Is Saudi Arabia in on the conspiracy or is it mere coincidence that it's in the same class of virus as the other two?

Why didn't China let Sars-1 spread if they created it? Why is it so easy to account for the ability of the government to suppress Sars-1 but not Sars-2? We know why public health efforts are easier in the first case even though the virus is more deadly.

If we accept that Sars-1 was not created in a lab (given that China suppressed it and they'd have no incentive to suppress a virus they cooked up as a biological weapon) and MERS was not created in a lab doesn't it make it look like there's a trend for coronaviruses to mutate and infect humans?

You sound like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani with their conspiracy theories about the election. I do think we should investigate the virus' origins because we'd like to know the cause.

[filghy2]

Why didn't China let Sars-1 spread if they created it?

The argument that China created this deliberately to damage their opponents is particularly silly. If so, why would they have launched it first in their own country?

There's no doubt that China has behaved poorly in terms of transparency, and continues to do so in limiting the WHO investigation. However, what are people who say they should be held accountable for the costs really proposing - that we invade the country and force them to pay reparations?

Anyway the US hardly has clean hands when it comes to inflicting harm on other countries by deliberate choice or by negligence. How much harm has been caused by the decision to invade Iraq on false pretences? How much harm was caused by the global financial crisis, which originated in the USA?

[broncofan]

I agree there is no way to make them pay and possibly no reason to. They might not have been negligent. Had the virus originated anywhere else can we be certain it wouldn't have left the country?

They have behaved poorly in terms of transparency in the aftermath and it is probably to suppress information about when they knew there was a problem v when they let everyone know.

I don't know enough about international law to know whether there's an enforcement mechanism but I do think if it's found to have originated in a wet market China has less grounds to claim maintaining these markets is only a domestic matter. That's a hell of a negative externality for a non-essential food source. Wouldn't the rest of the world have some grounds to insist they stop butchering food in a way that risks the creation of zoonotic diseases, at least prospectively?

[broncofan]

I don't really trust any of the numbers that get thrown at me about this thing - from any source. The problem with lying government is, you never really know when they're lying and when they aren't. The problem with medicine for profit is, you never really know whether a doctor is being paid by the government or Big Pharma or SuperHospoCorp for his opinion or if he's actually giving sound medical advice.

When I listen to medical experts it's not based on blind faith. Typically they can provide reasons that are coherent and the research that underpins their views is peer-reviewed. It reminds me of when other liberals were saying they would not take a vaccine that was approved under Trump. I thought, even if you don't trust the agency that approves it there is data available that is not always easy to interpret but not overly difficult either. There are experts at our universities who could offer opinions about safety and effectiveness. One should start with experts because they can help you interpret data and the consensus among experts is usually correct. But you should also try to understand their reasoning.

In the mind of a conspiracy theorist everyone is disqualified by bias of some sort. People can have minor conflicts that do not affect their conclusions. I think disclosure laws are important and if someone has a conflict I'd like to know about it. Occasionally a conflict is so significant that a person should avoid being involved in something. But this idea that you can't trust anyone because everyone has a conflict (is it the same conflict?) and even the data is unreliable is intended, whether consciously or not, to avoid acknowledging truths you don't want to acknowledge. It might irritate you to hear what you are unintentionally doing but the majority of scientists don't have an agenda other than advancing human knowledge.

[broncofan]

People can have minor conflicts that do not affect their conclusions.
Not to mention the fact that someone with a bias can bring to light a fact that you initially don't trust but which can then be independently verified. Facts exist independent of their source.

Once a fact can be independently verified any bias is irrelevant but conspiracy theorists will still argue one person's proximity to something or other has a magical effect that puts everything under a cloud. It's not logical but to them nothing ever has to do with what is true but rather what "they" do or don't want you to think.

[Nick Danger]

Not to mention the fact that someone with a bias can bring to light a fact that you initially don't trust but which can then be independently verified. Facts exist independent of their source.

Once a fact can be independently verified any bias is irrelevant but conspiracy theorists will still argue one person's proximity to something or other has a magical effect that puts everything under a cloud. It's not logical but to them nothing ever has to do with what is true but rather what "they" do or don't want you to think.

What is a "conspiracy theorist," Bronco? Me? No, I'm a mechanic. I do have some theories though, about some of the things that happen in the world, and sometimes those theories involve multiple people executing some evil plan for profit, which meets the qualifications for a "conspiracy." But nobody pays me to do that, they pay me to be a mechanic.

It's interesting to me when people weaponize those words. If you are a "conspiracy theorist" you are automatically suspected of mental illness. Never mind that many so-called conspiracy theories have proven to be true as time passes and the conspirators die off. JFK? Is that a "conspiracy theory?" Because as even the government itself has admitted at this point, Oswald didn't act alone. The Military-Industrial Complex, conspiracy theory, or has 70 years of continuous warfare finally convinced people that there actually IS a not-entirely-public group of powerful people intent on keeping this country at war for profit? FBI complicity in the 1993 WTC bombing - conspiracy theory, or proved true by the New York Times in this article - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/31/nyregion/bomb-informer-s-tapes-give-rare-glimpse-of-fbi-dealings.html ?

I guess my real question is, when did gullibility become a virtue? How does NOT believing a steaming pile of lies make me the sucker?

Perfect example, the Sandy Hook incident. I can tell you with near 100% certainty that no children were killed in this incident and in fact, the entire incident was completely fabricated, never happened at all, was entirely staged. How can I say this? Because I've studied the matter at length. I've seen the Robbie Parker video in which he is enjoying a nice belly laugh before stepping up to the podium, completely changing his facial expression, and discussing the slaughter of his daughter less than 24 hours prior. I've seen video of parents who had supposedly just lost their children to a crazed killer, yet somehow not a single tear was shed. I saw these same parents being interviewed on television immediately after the event, and every single one of them immediately wanted to advocate gun control - not a SINGLE PARENT was of the opinion that it would have been better if someone at the school had been armed and able to address the problem of the lone gunman, they were ALL gun control proponents, to the extent that the issue of gun control was more important to them than grieving over their lost children. I watched as the Connecticut legislature IMMEDIATELY sealed all records of the event, so that at this point, it is no longer even possible to prove that these children existed, let alone that they were murdered. I saw the famous "firehouse circles" video in which paid actors walked in a continuous circle into, out of, around, and back into the nearby firehouse in order to portray the image of a lot of activity. I saw the indisputable hard-drive evidence that the news story about the event in the local paper was written THE DAY BEFORE THE INCIDENT.

I saw all this, I saw a motive for staging exactly such an incident, I saw tons of evidence that it was indeed staged, and I determined it was not real.

Now, I am not theorizing about a conspiracy here. I KNOW it didn't happen, and every single solitary piece of evidence that still exists about this thing (which of course doesn't include bodies of victims, the body of the alleged perpetrator, the school itself, the weapons used, or even a single reliable piece of eyewitness testimony) agrees with me.

In the real world, I'm absolutely correct about this thing, and I can prove it to a much greater extent than you can try to prove me wrong. But in THIS world, the one we actually live in, I'm considered to be the crazy one. All the world's dipshits are aligned against me - of course it really happened, didn't you read the government story? What are you, a crazy conspiracy theorist?

It's funny in a clownish way, but ultimately those who speak out against "conspiracy theories" are merely stupid, easily manipulated, and live in constant fear of any data that doesn't confirm their own media-centric world view.

There is a "They," Bronco. The government does lie. The media lies. People lie. For reasons. And some other people prefer sifting through all these layers of bullshit and trying to parse out those reasons over silent acceptance of the lies. Those people are your "conspiracy theorists." Or, as some of us prefer to be called, your mechanic.

[broncofan]

What is a "conspiracy theorist," Bronco? Me? No, I'm a mechanic. I do have some theories though, about some of the things that happen in the world, and sometimes those theories involve multiple people executing some evil plan for profit, which meets the qualifications for a "conspiracy." But nobody pays me to do that, they pay me to be a mechanic.

It's interesting to me when people weaponize those words. If you are a "conspiracy theorist" you are automatically suspected of mental illness. Never mind that many so-called conspiracy theories have proven to be true as time passes and the conspirators die off. JFK? Is that a "conspiracy theory?" Because as even the government itself has admitted at this point, Oswald didn't act alone. The Military-Industrial Complex, conspiracy theory, or has 70 years of continuous warfare finally convinced people that there actually IS a not-entirely-public group of powerful people intent on keeping this country at war for profit? FBI complicity in the 1993 WTC bombing - conspiracy theory, or proved true by the New York Times in this article - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/31/nyregion/bomb-informer-s-tapes-give-rare-glimpse-of-fbi-dealings.html ?

I guess my real question is, when did gullibility become a virtue? How does NOT believing a steaming pile of lies make me the sucker?

Perfect example, the Sandy Hook incident. I can tell you with near 100% certainty that no children were killed in this incident and in fact, the entire incident was completely fabricated, never happened at all, was entirely staged. How can I say this? Because I've studied the matter at length. I've seen the Robbie Parker video in which he is enjoying a nice belly laugh before stepping up to the podium, completely changing his facial expression, and discussing the slaughter of his daughter less than 24 hours prior. I've seen video of parents who had supposedly just lost their children to a crazed killer, yet somehow not a single tear was shed. I saw these same parents being interviewed on television immediately after the event, and every single one of them immediately wanted to advocate gun control - not a SINGLE PARENT was of the opinion that it would have been better if someone at the school had been armed and able to address the problem of the lone gunman, they were ALL gun control proponents, to the extent that the issue of gun control was more important to them than grieving over their lost children. I watched as the Connecticut legislature IMMEDIATELY sealed all records of the event, so that at this point, it is no longer even possible to prove that these children existed, let alone that they were murdered. I saw the famous "firehouse circles" video in which paid actors walked in a continuous circle into, out of, around, and back into the nearby firehouse in order to portray the image of a lot of activity. I saw the indisputable hard-drive evidence that the news story about the event in the local paper was written THE DAY BEFORE THE INCIDENT.

I saw all this, I saw a motive for staging exactly such an incident, I saw tons of evidence that it was indeed staged, and I determined it was not real.

Now, I am not theorizing about a conspiracy here. I KNOW it didn't happen, and every single solitary piece of evidence that still exists about this thing (which of course doesn't include bodies of victims, the body of the alleged perpetrator, the school itself, the weapons used, or even a single reliable piece of eyewitness testimony) agrees with me.

In the real world, I'm absolutely correct about this thing, and I can prove it to a much greater extent than you can try to prove me wrong. But in THIS world, the one we actually live in, I'm considered to be the crazy one. All the world's dipshits are aligned against me - of course it really happened, didn't you read the government story? What are you, a crazy conspiracy theorist?

It's funny in a clownish way, but ultimately those who speak out against "conspiracy theories" are merely stupid, easily manipulated, and live in constant fear of any data that doesn't confirm their own media-centric world view.

There is a "They," Bronco. The government does lie. The media lies. People lie. For reasons. And some other people prefer sifting through all these layers of bullshit and trying to parse out those reasons over silent acceptance of the lies. Those people are your "conspiracy theorists." Or, as some of us prefer to be called, your mechanic.

I feel like we're seeing a much darker side of you Nick Peligro. You seem much less affable in this last post.

I'll let it speak for itself but am hopeful the Republican party can become a movement for conservative ideas instead of a fan club for Sandy Hook Truthers and insurrectionists.

Edit: wanted to include Nick's post on this page. I don't think it convinces anyone who didn't already feel this way but it is kind of disturbing.

[Nick Danger]

I feel like we're seeing a much darker side of you Nick Peligro. You seem much less affable in this last post.

I'll let it speak for itself but am hopeful the Republican party can become a movement for conservative ideas instead of a fan club for Sandy Hook Truthers and insurrectionists.

Edit: wanted to include Nick's post on this page. I don't think it convinces anyone who didn't already feel this way but it is kind of disturbing.

There's another one of those weaponized words - Truther. Comes complete with the implication of a sweaty, double-chinned man-child hovering over a multi-screen computer array in his parents' basement, wearing a tin-foil hat with an expression of determined ignorance on his face.

But I'm not a "truther." I don't readily accept bullshit, particularly when it's the kind that's not even wrapped up in a sweet candy shell for mass consumption. E.G., not only was Sandy Hook a hoax, it wasn't even a well-done hoax. It was so easy to see through the lies that I remember actually thinking to myself, "Uh oh, the government's gotten themselves into some trouble on this one, there's no WAY the masses are going to swallow this." But that was just foolish of me, of COURSE the public swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.

Matters very little to me. I know what I know. You saw the exact same "massacre" as I did, Bronco. Didn't seem even a little suspicious? No problem understanding how an entire group of 52 parents of slaughtered children could all be gun control advocates with no tear ducts?

It's like when you start bringing up all the questionable aspects of 9/11, such as Tower 7 collapsing free-fall style without ever having been struck by a plane, the Pentagon being free of airplane wreckage, no debris at the crash site in Shanksville (it was ultimately explained to us that this plane "disintegrated on impact," in mocking violation of the laws of physics), and so on, and on, and on, and on. Now, no matter which side of the belief spectrum you're on, it can't be denied that this is a subject worth discussing - a great big important subject with far-reaching consequences to the entire planet. But the very moment you begin to suggest that maybe the public hasn't gotten the whole truth on the matter of 9/11, you're met with a cacophony of "Truthers LOL" and "conspiracy-tard." Which is eerily reminiscent of the public's general attitude about the JFK conspiracy in the decades immediately following it - until, of course, a congressional investigation and a deathbed confession or two revealed that the real dipshits were the ones who believed the Warren Report all along.

In any case, I have a slight advantage on John Q. Public because I was in the Air Force. Not only was I in the Air Force, I was actually the civilian press liaison at a large stateside SAC base. I know for a fact that the public is fed a constant stream of misinformation and disinformation, because I used to feed it to them. I was quite literally trained in the fine art of the cover-up, and participated in more than one. Here's a hint: Military cover-ups don't involve MUCH lying; they are more about stonewalling the press or insisting on a certain level of coverage ("Well Below Saturation" and "Single Touch" are two terms that will probably be part of a handshake agreement between a millitary commander and a newspaper editor during an exchange of sensistive information) from behind closed doors. But they certainly will lie if it becomes necessary - they will have a meeting, they will decide which lie is best, they will brainstorm all the various ways the lie might be discovered, and then they will pick up the phone and lie, lie, lie.

I'm sorry to disturb your reverie with truthiness, Bronco. I could easily say that it's disturbing to me that so many people are so easily deceived, but fact is, I don't much care what people believe. I certainly don't anticipate ever living in a country in which too-big-to-fuck-with liars are unable to manipulate public opinion at their leisure. I'm even aware that to a great degree, most people prefer being lied to rather than having to contend with the ramifications of the truth.

There is some incredibly shady shit going on at the very highest levels of government and media, Bronco. Most people don't have the stomach to hash it all out or the intellect to read between the lines even if they did. Doesn't make them bad people. Weak, maybe. Brainwashed? Definitely. Stupid? I don't think most people are stupid. But I will hearken back to that classic Tommy Lee Jones line from Men In Black, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

As far as what the Republican Party might become, I think it is what it is. It makes perfect sense to me that the Repubican Party would be home to more conspiracy theorists than the Democratic Party, for the same reason that it's home to the more affluent, intelligent, and responsible members of society. It takes at least a little intelligence to align oneself with the party that's moved beyond "Give everyone everything they want."

[Laphroaig]

In any case, I have a slight advantage on John Q. Public because I was in the Air Force. Not only was I in the Air Force, I was actually the civilian press liaison at a large stateside SAC base. I know for a fact that the public is fed a constant stream of misinformation and disinformation, because I used to feed it to them. I was quite literally trained in the fine art of the cover-up, and participated in more than one. Here's a hint: Military cover-ups don't involve MUCH lying; they are more about stonewalling the press or insisting on a certain level of coverage ("Well Below Saturation" and "Single Touch" are two terms that will probably be part of a handshake agreement between a millitary commander and a newspaper editor during an exchange of sensistive information) from behind closed doors. But they certainly will lie if it becomes necessary - they will have a meeting, they will decide which lie is best, they will brainstorm all the various ways the lie might be discovered, and then they will pick up the phone and lie, lie, lie.


So why should we believe anything you say? You've basically just said "trust me, I was trained to lie and use disinformation"...:shrug

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Nick Danger;1957616]

What is a "conspiracy theorist," Bronco? Me? No, I'm a mechanic. I do have some theories though, about some of the things that happen in the world, and sometimes those theories involve multiple people executing some evil plan for profit, which meets the qualifications for a "conspiracy." But nobody pays me to do that, they pay me to be a mechanic.

--A Conspiracy is an event that takes place, or is planned to take place. A Conspiracy Theory is the belief that the event did or did not take place, but is merely a theory, as Conspiracy Theories, by their nature, rely on a fictitious representation of the truth, or a distortion of it. We know for a fact that there people conspired to attack the Capitol building on Jan 6th to stop the Certification of the Presidential election, because the Conspirators discussed it openly on social media platforms, and do not themselves deny it.

Perfect example, the Sandy Hook incident. I can tell you with near 100% certainty that no children were killed in this incident and in fact, the entire incident was completely fabricated, never happened at all, was entirely staged.
Now, I am not theorizing about a conspiracy here. I KNOW it didn't happen, and every single solitary piece of evidence that still exists about this thing (which of course doesn't include bodies of victims, the body of the alleged perpetrator, the school itself, the weapons used, or even a single reliable piece of eyewitness testimony) agrees with me.
In the real world, I'm absolutely correct about this thing, and I can prove it to a much greater extent than you can try to prove me wrong.

--Every claim made about Sandy Hook has been debunked . The smiling parents were interviewed days after the massacre and asked to recall what their children were like, it was a moment of sympathy and remembrance, not wailing and tears. The 'dead girl' who was photographed with Obama was the sister, wearing her dead sisters dress. The people making such claims never produce any evidence that the aim of the 'hoax' was to inspire a repeal of the 2nd Amendment or any law intended to 'take the guns away from the American people'. The theories rarely explain why Adam Lanza murdered his mother or himself, they refuse to accept his personal responsibility, his mental illness, but one can be sure that if asked, it will all be wished away with claims void of evidence.

Nick, you are asking the wrong questions, which is why you get the wrong answers. Government departments that massage the truth have been doing so for as long as we can remember, mostly to defend themselves from criticism, to make themselves look good, no conspiracy required. It's just politics.

American Governments didn't need to slaughter Americans to justify war after 9/11, the Arabs were doing well on their own, and they justified it by arguing US interference in their homelands was unacceptable, to them. American Governments don't need to massacre schoolchildren or college students to enact Gun Control laws, they need only use the State or Federal Congress to do that, as happened in California -when Ronald Reagan was Governor.

No hoax, no conspiracy, no hysteria, just politics and the rule of law. Can't beat it.

Ever considered that Trump, who used to give money to Democrats, was faking it all along, that all that baloney about Covid, Covid, Covid, the insults and the abuse, were made up so that the Republicans would be damnd for a generation? After all, to Trump the last four years was just a tv show, like the one he used to front....they paid him to do a job, and he did it. Ain't that the truth?

[filghy2]

What is a "conspiracy theorist," Bronco? Me? No, I'm a mechanic. I do have some theories though, about some of the things that happen in the world, and sometimes those theories involve multiple people executing some evil plan for profit, which meets the qualifications for a "conspiracy." But nobody pays me to do that, they pay me to be a mechanic.


In any case, I have a slight advantage on John Q. Public because I was in the Air Force. Not only was I in the Air Force, I was actually the civilian press liaison at a large stateside SAC base. I know for a fact that the public is fed a constant stream of misinformation and disinformation, because I used to feed it to them. I was quite literally trained in the fine art of the cover-up, and participated in more than one.

It's funny in a clownish way, but ultimately those who speak out against "conspiracy theories" are merely stupid, easily manipulated, and live in constant fear of any data that doesn't confirm their own media-centric world view.

Your a mechanic but you used to work in press liaison for the air force? Sounds like an unusual career progression.

This reminds me of your previous tall story about jumping off a ship and swimming to shore without any ID.

You really do love playing fictional characters don't you, Nick Danger aka The Sphinx?

You seem to be telling us that everyone lies for ulterior motives, so we can't trust any official or mainstream media source, but we can trust you and other conspiracy theorists.

Nice touch with reversing the onus of proof and claiming that it's people who refuse to believe nonsense who are gullible and deluded. It is funny in a (sad) clownish way.

[sukumvit boy]

I'm so disappointed about what has happened in Myanmar with Aung San Suu Kuy.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/aung-san-suu-kyi-the-generals-and-how-myanmars-democracy-hopes-collapsed-11612542400

[broncofan]

No, I'm a mechanic.
But nobody pays me to do that, they pay me to be a mechanic.
Or, as some of us prefer to be called, your mechanic.
I haven't hired you yet. Why the hell do you keep repeating that you're a mechanic like it has some weird significance we don't know about?

Is a mechanic a special person who can see into the souls of other men? Your mechanic knows the truth! Want to know where the illuminati put your spark plugs? Ask your mechanic. Totally confused here.

Also do you really prefer it when your customers call you their "mechanic"? That's off. If my mechanic Andy told me he preferred to be called "my mechanic" I'd take my car to Steve down the road who doesn't have a fucking screw loose.

Hey Nick Danger I prefer it if you call me your future customer who overpays for shit and rolls his eyes at your loony tunes ideas. Now shut the fuck up.

[Nick Danger]

Your a mechanic but you used to work in press liaison for the air force? Sounds like an unusual career progression.

This reminds me of your previous tall story about jumping off a ship and swimming to shore without any ID.

You really do love playing fictional characters don't you, Nick Danger aka The Sphinx?

You seem to be telling us that everyone lies for ulterior motives, so we can't trust any official or mainstream media source, but we can trust you and other conspiracy theorists.

Nice touch with reversing the onus of proof and claiming that it's people who refuse to believe nonsense who are gullible and deluded. It is funny in a (sad) clownish way.

LOL - I'm 55 years old, Flighty. I guess it seems out of the realm of possibility to the average person that someone could actually have multiple careers in their lives but I have. I joined the Air Force as a youth and they made me a journalist. Then I went to college for a while. Then I started an 18-year career as a radio personality, during which I was compelled to engage in a wide variety of jobs between radio gigs - roofing, pool-cleaning, and steel press manufacturing are three that come immediately to mind, but there were more way more side-jobs than that. In the late 90's I quit the radio business permanently and moved to New Orleans to become a professional drunk. While I was down there I started working in the offshore drilling industry, first as a roughneck and then as a deckhand on supply vessels.

I left New Orleans in 2000 and moved to Nashville TN where I briefly dabbled in talent management. I made quite a bit of money around that time so I started doing some traveling, and that's when I fell in love with southern Utah. I'd always been a mechanic, though never professionally. I took a job at a body shop in Washington UT and worked it for a few years. While I was there I learned quite a bit about turbo chargers from a fellow I worked with, and eventually I recruited him to work for me and opened my own custom after-market turbo business in St. George UT, which is where I now spend most of my time, and resultant of which I have become reasonably financially secure.

You don't need to trust me, Flighty, though it's interesting that you're so personally invested in my life story. IMO you shouldn't trust anyone. On the other hand, when you get to that point, you have to rely strictly on your own powers of reason and discernment to seek the truth. So maybe you do need someone to trust, Flighty.


shut the fuck up.

Now THAT...is "less affable."

[Nick Danger]

Stumbled onto this little gem in today's Hartford Courant. It's the absolutely true story of a young lady who survived the Sandy Hook Massacre and is finally breaking her long silence to talk about - wait for it - gun control:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/teen-survivor-of-sandy-hook-elementary-school-shooting-in-newtown-speaking-publicly-for-the-first-time-directs-her-outrage-at-deniers/ar-BB1dqOtx

She is OUTRAGED at the deniers! Her name is Ashley (no last name given). And she most certainly does exist, you can be certain of it.

"I can’t give you proof except for my trauma, except for the letters people wrote to us, except for the fact that I actually went to that school, you know."

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[broncofan]

Why do so many people from St. George use the name Nick Danger as an alias when posting comments;? The aggressive driver had been driving for 37 years as of 2018 which would have made him 53 if he got his license at 16. How odd.

He also seems to think homosexuality is a sin and waxes all sorts of religious orthodoxy to make the argument. Weird town you come from but it sounds like you've lived an interesting life.

https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2018/07/27/apc-apple-ceo-imagine-dragons-at-salt-lake-city-music-festival-for-mormon-lgbt-youth/#.YB4TKOhKjIU (https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2018/07/27/apc-apple-ceo-imagine-dragons-at-salt-lake-city-music-festival-for-mormon-lgbt-youth/#.YB4TKOhKjIU)

https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2018/09/30/letter-to-the-editor-st-george-drivers-have-taken-on-the-mantra-of-get-out-of-my-way-or-ill-kill-you/#.YB4S7OhKjIU

[Stavros]

Stumbled onto this little gem in today's Hartford Courant. It's the absolutely true story of a young lady who survived the Sandy Hook Massacre and is finally breaking her long silence to talk about - wait for it - gun control:



How many people would Adam Lanza have been able to kill had he arrived at the school with a bow and arrow? There is a reason why gun control is a consequence of the crimes that result in multiple murders, but no explanation from the 'gun lobby' why any American citizen needs an AR-15. If a law was passed making it illegal to own an AR-15 it would not violate the 2d Amendment, but it might save lives. And it would hurt the fragile egos of grown men, and some women, who cling to their 'weapon of choice' as if it were the only thing saving them from drowning. Instead of ridiculing a suvivor from Sandy Hook, Nick, I suggest you justify the ownership of a range of weapons that in most countries are the ordnance of the armed forces, not citizens.

[Stavros]

I'm so disappointed about what has happened in Myanmar with Aung San Suu Kuy.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/aung-san-suu-kyi-the-generals-and-how-myanmars-democracy-hopes-collapsed-11612542400


Aung Sang Suu Kyi may have charisma and thus be leadership material, but too much was expected of her in a country as corrupt as Myanmar. She has argued that the 'communal violence' in Rakhine State is part of an historic claim to the Kingdom of Arakan and that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army has been pivotal in the inter-communal violence that has displaced so many Muslims and Hindus in Rakhine State, indeed, it was the basis of the speech she gave in The Hague rejecting the claim of Genocide.

That Rakhine/Arakan has been multi-ethnic and multi-religious, including in the heyday of the Kingdom between the 15th and 18th centures, is now complicated by the brutal suppression of Muslim and Hindu people in Rakhine by the military, the claims that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army is an Islamist outfit, and the more obvious fact that Aung Sang Suu Kyi is in reality powerless, as her detention has shown. For the military, she was a political showgirl, and if she failed to please the West too by not condemning her country's military response to a crisis which has erupted at varous times since 1948 and never been resolved (as is also the case with the Shan and the Karen rebellions), then it suggests she has been caught between two aspirations, unable to deal with either of them.

In the end, it is quite simple -the military owns the county, as it does in Egypt and Syria, and they and their familes and friends are not about to sell their inheritance to outsiders, unless it is in foreign investment deals in gas, real estate and natural resources from which the main beneficiaries are themselves.

Aung Sang Suu Kyi's speech to The Hague in December 2019 is here-
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/12/transcript-aung-san-suu-kyis-speech-at-the-icj-in-full

An American academic looks at the ARSA here-
https://www.lawfareblog.com/arakan-rohingya-salvation-army-not-jihadis-you-might-expect

An Amnesty International report highlights attacks by the ARSA on Hindus-
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/myanmar-new-evidence-reveals-rohingya-armed-group-massacred-scores-in-rakhine-state/

[filghy2]

On the other hand, when you get to that point, you have to rely strictly on your own powers of reason and discernment to seek the truth.

I do. That's why if I know someone has a history of bullshitting I'm inclined to take everything they say with a large grain of salt.

If you are telling the truth it's interesting that you are prepared to reveal so many personal details to complete strangers on the internet. I'm guessing love of transsexuals is not an approved conversation topic at the workshop in St George. The chances of someone you know stumbling across this are probably very small, but most people would think "why take the risk?"

[Laphroaig]

I haven't hired you yet. Why the hell do you keep repeating that you're a mechanic like it has some weird significance we don't know about?

Is a mechanic a special person who can see into the souls of other men? Your mechanic knows the truth! Want to know where the illuminati put your spark plugs? Ask your mechanic. Totally confused here.

Also do you really prefer it when your customers call you their "mechanic"? That's off. If my mechanic Andy told me he preferred to be called "my mechanic" I'd take my car to Steve down the road who doesn't have a fucking screw loose.

Hey Nick Danger I prefer it if you call me your future customer who overpays for shit and rolls his eyes at your loony tunes ideas. Now shut the fuck up.

He fancies himself as Jason Statham.

1297095

Crank might be more appropriate though...

[Laphroaig]

How many people would Adam Lanza have been able to kill had he arrived at the school with a bow and arrow? There is a reason why gun control is a consequence of the crimes that result in multiple murders, but no explanation from the 'gun lobby' why any American citizen needs an AR-15. If a law was passed making it illegal to own an AR-15 it would not violate the 2d Amendment, but it might save lives. And it would hurt the fragile egos of grown men, and some women, who cling to their 'weapon of choice' as if it were the only thing saving them from drowning. Instead of ridiculing a suvivor from Sandy Hook, Nick, I suggest you justify the ownership of a range of weapons that in most countries are the ordnance of the armed forces, not citizens.

Had an argument with a gun nut recently where I said they should ban AR-15's. His counter argument (and I kid you not) was why ban AR-15's when other gun types contribute to far more deaths.

[Nick Danger]

I do. That's why if I know someone has a history of bullshitting I'm inclined to take everything they say with a large grain of salt.

If you are telling the truth it's interesting that you are prepared to reveal so many personal details to complete strangers on the internet. I'm guessing love of transsexuals is not an approved conversation topic at the workshop in St George. The chances of someone you know stumbling across this are probably very small, but most people would think "why take the risk?"

What risk? What would anyone do to me if they knew exactly who I was and exactly where to find me? What would the Mormons all around me do if they knew t-girls were a thing for me? Kick me out of the LDS Church? Someone going to hack into my bank account? Nope.

I'm not scared of the internet Flighty. Just like Popeye, I am what I am. Everything I have, I built for myself, and no one can take it away. There's no shame in my game. If any of you are seriously interested in a professionally-installed after-market turbo for your American-made vehicle, I'll be more than happy to PM you how to get in touch with me. No foreign cars though.

[broncofan]

There's no shame in my game. If any of you are seriously interested in a professionally-installed after-market turbo for your American-made vehicle, I'll be more than happy to PM you how to get in touch with me. No foreign cars though.
I appreciate the hustle Nick. I'm driving a Volvo these days and it's been really reliable and drives smoothly. I do of course worry about giving the upper hand to the Swedes who might invest the money in a lingonberry based missile system. Or more likely, use the tax revenue to take care of their citizens. Disappointed by their covid response compared to Norway for instance but still the Volvo has worked out.

[Nick Danger]

How many people would Adam Lanza have been able to kill had he arrived at the school with a bow and arrow? There is a reason why gun control is a consequence of the crimes that result in multiple murders, but no explanation from the 'gun lobby' why any American citizen needs an AR-15. If a law was passed making it illegal to own an AR-15 it would not violate the 2d Amendment, but it might save lives. And it would hurt the fragile egos of grown men, and some women, who cling to their 'weapon of choice' as if it were the only thing saving them from drowning. Instead of ridiculing a suvivor from Sandy Hook, Nick, I suggest you justify the ownership of a range of weapons that in most countries are the ordnance of the armed forces, not citizens.

The essential logical fallacy of the pro-gun control argument has not suddenly become logical because there have been a lot of mass shootings, Stavros. If guns are criminalized only criminals will have guns.

Let me ask you something - are you even peripherally aware of a criminal activity in which street gangs like the Crips and Bloods are grooming young men to keep their criminal records clean so they can eventually join the police or military and supply guns, ammo, and information to the gangs?

Anything the military or police have, the street gangs can get. So basically what gun control advocates are espousing is a society in which the gangsters are armed and you are not.

You live in England, Stavros. I realize there are gangs there, but they are laughably small and quiet compared to American gangs, which have now infiltrated all of American society. The government wanted a War on Drugs. They lost.

And even this is pretty much beside the point of why Americans are actually allowed to own guns. Our founding fathers envisioned a society in which the citizens were in control, not the government. "You have guns, we have guns. Now, let's talk about the structure of society in a non-violent manner."

I am personally against all forms of armament control. I.E., I think properly vetted citizens of the USA should be allowed to own tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, or any other tool of violence they desire. Anything the government has, the citizens should be allowed to have.

Interesting thing about England - all the mass knifings. Instead of mass shootings over there, you've got crazy people going out into the streets and hacking people up with machetes. Nothing stops crazy people from doing crazy things.

Let's imagine for a moment that the Sandy Hook Massacre actually happened. It's a stretch, but I can go there. Adam Lanza approaches the school with an AR-15. The ARMED SECURITY OFFICER at the door says, "Hey, tiny human, you can't come into this school with that high-powered rifle and kill a bunch of children!" Little Adam levels his AR-15 at the officer but the officer's superior training wins out, and young, fictional Adam Lanza is shot and killed. Poor little guy.

Later that day, the students learn about what happened at their own front door and are utterly horrified. Then they go home for dinner.

Gun control advocates always wonder why they can't seem to make their point to gun enthusiasts. But it's no mystery to me. Nothing they say makes a bit of sense. The government would love to see the citizens disarmed - then their reliance on the government would be total.

Luckily we have a lot of people in this country who understand logic and common sense, and aren't going to let that happen. God bless the NRA!

[Nick Danger]

I appreciate the hustle Nick. I'm driving a Volvo these days and it's been really reliable and drives smoothly. I do of course worry about giving the upper hand to the Swedes who might invest the money in a lingonberry based missile system. Or more likely, use the tax revenue to take care of their citizens. Disappointed by their covid response compared to Norway for instance but still the Volvo has worked out.

I actually have no issue with foreign cars, Bronco, I own a couple myself. My reason for not working on them is basically that there's a lot to learn and I'm too lazy to learn it. I can build and install a turbocharger on a Volvo fairly easily, as long as it's a recent model with an up-to-date computer. But retrofitting a carbureted engine can get complicated and usually results in a lot of turbo lag, which kinda defeats the purpose of the turbocharger in the first place. To sidestep that awkward conversation in which I have to tell my customer that I can do the job but can't provide a guarantee against lag, I simply advertise American Cars Only.

[broncofan]

Interesting thing about England - all the mass knifings. Instead of mass shootings over there, you've got crazy people going out into the streets and hacking people up with machetes. Nothing stops crazy people from doing crazy things.

There's nothing we can do about the virus you said except just get infected. Then you look at countries that have many fewer deaths per capita so what do you say? That you can't trust numbers.

Here is a list of countries and homicide rate. The US has a homicide rate that is more than 4 times as great as the UK. You can't stop crazy people from doing crazy things? More like you cannot stop every crazy person from killing but if you make it harder you do end up stopping some crazy people from killing. The primary logical fallacy for Republicans is that no effort to protect the public is at all useful if it's not 100% effective. It's also the primary logical fallacy of 8 year olds.

Of course your entire argument begins with a strawman argument which is that all gun ownership should be illegal and not that certain kinds of weapons are dangerous in the hands of civilians, particularly those who have committed felonies or have psychoses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

[broncofan]

I actually have no issue with foreign cars, Bronco, I own a couple myself. My reason for not working on them is basically that there's a lot to learn and I'm too lazy to learn it. I can build and install a turbocharger on a Volvo fairly easily, as long as it's a recent model with an up-to-date computer. But retrofitting a carbureted engine can get complicated and usually results in a lot of turbo lag, which kinda defeats the purpose of the turbocharger in the first place. To sidestep that awkward conversation in which I have to tell my customer that I can do the job but can't provide a guarantee against lag, I simply advertise American Cars Only.
It's a 2018 s60 but truthfully I'm not good enough with cars for performance to matter that much. I'm lucky if I keep it clean and properly serviced.

[Stavros]

Had an argument with a gun nut recently where I said they should ban AR-15's. His counter argument (and I kid you not) was why ban AR-15's when other gun types contribute to far more deaths.

I read this article in The Atlantic a few days ago, in which the author quotes people who claim the AR-15 is a poor weapon for accuracy and efficiency compared to others -they are sufficiently obsessed to know which millimetre works best- with this typical remark-

"The AR-15 is not more lethal and is in fact a poor choice for defense or hunting. Las Vegas shooter fired over 2000 rounds with 57 deaths shows how poor a killing machine it really is."
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/11/the-nature-of-the-ar-15/545414/

[Nick Danger]

It's a 2018 s60 but truthfully I'm not good enough with cars for performance to matter that much. I'm lucky if I keep it clean and properly serviced.

Probably would come as no surprise to you that most of my customers are teenagers with rich parents. I do install a lot of turbochargers for senior citizens on restored classics, recently finished a job on a sweet metallic blue '69 Camaro for a guy who's so old he probably shouldn't even be allowed to drive. But mostly it's teenagers with zippy little cars that I wouldn't be seen in.

My everyday ride is a stock F-150, I left my personal need for speed behind decades ago.


There's nothing we can do about the virus you said except just get infected. Then you look at countries that have many fewer deaths per capita so what do you say? That you can't trust numbers.

Here is a list of countries and homicide rate. The US has a homicide rate that is more than 4 times as great as the UK. You can't stop crazy people from doing crazy things? More like you cannot stop every crazy person from killing but if you make it harder you do end up stopping some crazy people from killing. The primary logical fallacy for Republicans is that no effort to protect the public is at all useful if it's not 100% effective. It's also the primary logical fallacy of 8 year olds.

Of course your entire argument begins with a strawman argument which is that all gun ownership should be illegal and not that certain kinds of weapons are dangerous in the hands of civilians, particularly those who have committed felonies or have psychoses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

So where does that line of thinking end, Bronco? What am I left holding in my hand to defend myself, my property, and my family (no I don't have a family but I am writing for effect here) when the gun control advocates are done determining what I should and shouldn't be allowed to have? A .22?

What's the difference? If I wanted to kill you, a .22 would do the job. But if I wanted to defend myself, it probably wouldn't, not against a higher-powered gun.

To me that's a dead-end chain of reasoning.

[sukumvit boy]

Aung Sang Suu Kyi may have charisma and thus be leadership material, but too much was expected of her in a country as corrupt as Myanmar. She has argued that the 'communal violence' in Rakhine State is part of an historic claim to the Kingdom of Arakan and that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army has been pivotal in the inter-communal violence that has displaced so many Muslims and Hindus in Rakhine State, indeed, it was the basis of the speech she gave in The Hague rejecting the claim of Genocide.

That Rakhine/Arakan has been multi-ethnic and multi-religious, including in the heyday of the Kingdom between the 15th and 18th centures, is now complicated by the brutal suppression of Muslim and Hindu people in Rakhine by the military, the claims that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army is an Islamist outfit, and the more obvious fact that Aung Sang Suu Kyi is in reality powerless, as her detention has shown. For the military, she was a political showgirl, and if she failed to please the West too by not condemning her country's military response to a crisis which has erupted at varous times since 1948 and never been resolved (as is also the case with the Shan and the Karen rebellions), then it suggests she has been caught between two aspirations, unable to deal with either of them.

In the end, it is quite simple -the military owns the county, as it does in Egypt and Syria, and they and their familes and friends are not about to sell their inheritance to outsiders, unless it is in foreign investment deals in gas, real estate and natural resources from which the main beneficiaries are themselves.

Aung Sang Suu Kyi's speech to The Hague in December 2019 is here-
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/12/transcript-aung-san-suu-kyis-speech-at-the-icj-in-full

An American academic looks at the ARSA here-
https://www.lawfareblog.com/arakan-rohingya-salvation-army-not-jihadis-you-might-expect

An Amnesty International report highlights attacks by the ARSA on Hindus-
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/myanmar-new-evidence-reveals-rohingya-armed-group-massacred-scores-in-rakhine-state/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55950420

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Nick Danger;1957823]

The essential logical fallacy of the pro-gun control argument has not suddenly become logical because there have been a lot of mass shootings, Stavros. If guns are criminalized only criminals will have guns.

- I agree that a comprehensive ban would limit the need for firearms to those who intend to use them for criminal purposes, though I would accept that farmers may have a need to own firearms, and there is a large sporting culture which engages in shooting at a competitive level, and not just the Olympic Games. It is not that hard to control access to guns in the case of sports, and, moreover, I think the people who want to engage in shooting sports would themselves be willing to surrender their storage of weapons at home and leave them in the clubhouse. Society would thus find a way to balance a ban with control.

And even this is pretty much beside the point of why Americans are actually allowed to own guns. Our founding fathers envisioned a society in which the citizens were in control, not the government.

-I agree that for your Revolutionaries, the concept of freedom and individual liberty was fundamental to the form of Governmen that was created in the two decades after 1776. Your problem is that the context in which the Amendment was ratified (and it was in any case a repeat of a clause in the 1781 Articles of Confederation) was one in which a) the new US was under military threat from the British (who did indeed return to the US with deadly intent in 1812), and b) the armed opposition to tyranny, which at the time was assumed to be the Monarchy, or any attempt by an American to create one or a tyranny of any other form.
For this reason the Heller judgment has been challenged because a 'well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state' does not by definition give an individual the right to bear arms when the intention is to 'defend' oneself against another indivdual -Washington did not want a standing army which could only be financed by taxation, but there was a standing army paid for by taxes.
Crucially, the evolution of American society and its law enforcement insitutions has created at least three levels of armed protection for the citizen -the armed forces, the National Guard, and local Law Enforcement. There is no need for an individual to own firearms for their own protection when the protection is already there. Moreover, the fact that individual gun ownership is allowed if anything, undermines the institutional basis of security and thus in effect de-legitimizes existing law enforcement as having a monopoly of the use of force. Gun Ownership is this eroding democracy in the USA, as was on full display on the 6th of January.

I am personally against all forms of armament control. I.E., I think properly vetted citizens of the USA should be allowed to own tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, or any other tool of violence they desire. Anything the government has, the citizens should be allowed to have.

-This is just madness. There was a time when the mere idea of a Congressional Representative arriving at the Capitol in a tank would only be possible in a Mel Brooks movie. With Lauren Boebert in the House, the prospect of her arriving for work in a tank, wearing a full metal jacket, with a hand grenade in her bra, and a Magnum inside her jacket, Clint Eastwood style, is not as far fetched as the prospect of her using the weapons. Something tells me the time has come for you people to put a stop to this, or you are handing the keys of the Republic to people who don't respect it, don't want it, and will storm the Capitol again if they feel they need to. 'The Fire Next Time' may not just be a book by James Baldwin, but a slogan of intent.

Let's imagine for a moment that the Sandy Hook Massacre actually happened. It's a stretch, but I can go there. Adam Lanza approaches the school with an AR-15. The ARMED SECURITY OFFICER at the door says, "Hey, tiny human, you can't come into this school with that high-powered rifle and kill a bunch of children!" Little Adam levels his AR-15 at the officer but the officer's superior training wins out, and young, fictional Adam Lanza is shot and killed. Poor little guy.

-No, let's instead imagine a society in which armed guards patrol nurseries and kindergardens, and shopping malls and cinemas. Then ask yourself 'how did it come to this?' You imply there are so many bad people out there society has no other option but to arm itself and guard itself always assuming the armed guard will stop a massacre. Yet even with the knowledge they had, Washington DC's armed law enforcment could not defend the Capitol building, so where were the 'good guys' on the 6th of January?

Lastly, gun control works. If you want to know how, and where, look at Japan. If you want to know how it doesn't work, look at the USA, and not just what appears to be an utterly corrrupt NRA. Look at the context of gun control when it was first introduced -after the Civil War when Southern White folks were terrified freed slaves would come after them. Why did Ronald Reagan introduce gun control laws in California? Because the 'right of the people to keep and bear Arms' should not be extended to the Black Panther Party or its associates,also known as 'Americans'.
There is your freedom, your gun control, your precious 2nd Amendment -soaked in the Race that has shaped so much of American history, from Jamestown to today.

If you let gun ownership define America, don't be surprised if the owners destroy it.

[fred41]

Kevin Bacon moment lol. My last car was a Volvo S60. I had to get rid of it because, here in NYC, we prefer bicycles...so I had to get up every morning just to move the car because - alternate side of the street parking. Once the battery was dead because I wasn’t driving it far enough to charge it. The other half of the Kevin Bacon moment is that the S60 has a turbo engine.....and for a while...was produced in (drum roll).....China .

[Nick Danger]

[QUOTE=Nick Danger;1957823]

The essential logical fallacy of the pro-gun control argument has not suddenly become logical because there have been a lot of mass shootings, Stavros. If guns are criminalized only criminals will have guns.

- I agree that a comprehensive ban would limit the need for firearms to those who intend to use them for criminal purposes, though I would accept that farmers may have a need to own firearms, and there is a large sporting culture which engages in shooting at a competitive level, and not just the Olympic Games. It is not that hard to control access to guns in the case of sports, and, moreover, I think the people who want to engage in shooting sports would themselves be willing to surrender their storage of weapons at home and leave them in the clubhouse. Society would thus find a way to balance a ban with control.

And even this is pretty much beside the point of why Americans are actually allowed to own guns. Our founding fathers envisioned a society in which the citizens were in control, not the government.

-I agree that for your Revolutionaries, the concept of freedom and individual liberty was fundamental to the form of Governmen that was created in the two decades after 1776. Your problem is that the context in which the Amendment was ratified (and it was in any case a repeat of a clause in the 1781 Articles of Confederation) was one in which a) the new US was under military threat from the British (who did indeed return to the US with deadly intent in 1812), and b) the armed opposition to tyranny, which at the time was assumed to be the Monarchy, or any attempt by an American to create one or a tyranny of any other form.
For this reason the Heller judgment has been challenged because a 'well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state' does not by definition give an individual the right to bear arms when the intention is to 'defend' oneself against another indivdual -Washington did not want a standing army which could only be financed by taxation, but there was a standing army paid for by taxes.
Crucially, the evolution of American society and its law enforcement insitutions has created at least three levels of armed protection for the citizen -the armed forces, the National Guard, and local Law Enforcement. There is no need for an individual to own firearms for their own protection when the protection is already there. Moreover, the fact that individual gun ownership is allowed if anything, undermines the institutional basis of security and thus in effect de-legitimizes existing law enforcement as having a monopoly of the use of force. Gun Ownership is this eroding democracy in the USA, as was on full display on the 6th of January.

I am personally against all forms of armament control. I.E., I think properly vetted citizens of the USA should be allowed to own tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, or any other tool of violence they desire. Anything the government has, the citizens should be allowed to have.

-This is just madness. There was a time when the mere idea of a Congressional Representative arriving at the Capitol in a tank would only be possible in a Mel Brooks movie. With Lauren Boebert in the House, the prospect of her arriving for work in a tank, wearing a full metal jacket, with a hand grenade in her bra, and a Magnum inside her jacket, Clint Eastwood style, is not as far fetched as the prospect of her using the weapons. Something tells me the time has come for you people to put a stop to this, or you are handing the keys of the Republic to people who don't respect it, don't want it, and will storm the Capitol again if they feel they need to. 'The Fire Next Time' may not just be a book by James Baldwin, but a slogan of intent.

Let's imagine for a moment that the Sandy Hook Massacre actually happened. It's a stretch, but I can go there. Adam Lanza approaches the school with an AR-15. The ARMED SECURITY OFFICER at the door says, "Hey, tiny human, you can't come into this school with that high-powered rifle and kill a bunch of children!" Little Adam levels his AR-15 at the officer but the officer's superior training wins out, and young, fictional Adam Lanza is shot and killed. Poor little guy.

-No, let's instead imagine a society in which armed guards patrol nurseries and kindergardens, and shopping malls and cinemas. Then ask yourself 'how did it come to this?' You imply there are so many bad people out there society has no other option but to arm itself and guard itself always assuming the armed guard will stop a massacre. Yet even with the knowledge they had, Washington DC's armed law enforcment could not defend the Capitol building, so where were the 'good guys' on the 6th of January?

Lastly, gun control works. If you want to know how, and where, look at Japan. If you want to know how it doesn't work, look at the USA, and not just what appears to be an utterly corrrupt NRA. Look at the context of gun control when it was first introduced -after the Civil War when Southern White folks were terrified freed slaves would come after them. Why did Ronald Reagan introduce gun control laws in California? Because the 'right of the people to keep and bear Arms' should not be extended to the Black Panther Party or its associates,also known as 'Americans'.
There is your freedom, your gun control, your precious 2nd Amendment -soaked in the Race that has shaped so much of American history, from Jamestown to today.

If you let gun ownership define America, don't be surprised if the owners destroy it.

I'm going to field this argument Stavros because you've truly touched the heart of the matter - Why DOES gun control work in Japan, or England, but not in the USA?

There are several reasons but the most obvious is that there are already 600 million guns in the USA. Pandora's Box is already open here. If you'll recall the myth, it cannot subsequently be closed.

Also, the USA is a society given to crime and violence. We are wealthy. Walk down any suburban street in the USA and every house you pass, there's probably $30,000 worth of shit in there - electronics, high-end furniture, jewelry, gold, cash, you name it, we've got it in our homes. I don't think the same can be said of most other countries.

We also have no genuine collective identity. In Japan, everyone is Japanese. In England, there's a culture stretching back to medieval times. But in the USA, you're on your own. The guy who lives next door to you may very well hate your guts for reasons unknown. I recently saw a video in which a guy gunned down his neighbors in the streets over a snow-shoveling argument. Things get testy here, real fast. We're a society of cowboys and yahoos. There's a LOT of testosterone in the USA, aggravated by a lot of media instigation. Your manhood might get tested anytime, anywhere.

And then there's the ill-conceived War on Drugs, which is what brought us to this sad state. The USA is obviously the largest consumer base for illegal drugs in the world. It's a trillion-dollar market, and a lot of very violent people want a piece of it.

Gun ownership certainly does NOT "define" America. America defines gun ownership.

I can scarcely imagine the sheer numbers of police that would be required to keep the peace if guns were outlawed. You'd literally need multiple cops on every corner. Because the highly-advanced, ultra-violent criminals of this country would steal everything in sight if they knew it was all undefended.

I'm not pushing American exceptionalism here. I'm saying, though, that the USA is not like your country, and certainly nothing like Japan. We have our own society here that is quite different from every other society on the planet - MORE violent, MORE wealthy, MORE of everything.

If you want to pose a legitimate argument against guns in America, you need to know America. Trust me, you don't.

[broncofan]

Kevin Bacon moment lol. My last car was a Volvo S60. I had to get rid of it because, here in NYC, we prefer bicycles...so I had to get up every morning just to move the car because - alternate side of the street parking. Once the battery was dead because I wasn’t driving it far enough to charge it. The other half of the Kevin Bacon moment is that the S60 has a turbo engine.....and for a while...was produced in (drum roll).....China .
lol I moved to NYC after college and was there for a year. I brought a car with me and once I figured out how difficult it was to use and park I sold it. That took a month and a half.

And btw, getting up to move the car so I could walk, use public transport, or bike and avoid tickets probably would have lasted two weeks before I was ticketed, booted, and/or towed. Even putting my car in a garage in NYC cost too much to be worth it. I did love that city to be honest but it's not the easiest place to live.

[Laphroaig]

Anything the military or police have, the street gangs can get. So basically what gun control advocates are espousing is a society in which the gangsters are armed and you are not.

You live in England, Stavros. I realize there are gangs there, but they are laughably small and quiet compared to American gangs, which have now infiltrated all of American society. The government wanted a War on Drugs. They lost.

I'm not pushing American exceptionalism here. I'm saying, though, that the USA is not like your country, and certainly nothing like Japan. We have our own society here that is quite different from every other society on the planet - MORE violent, MORE wealthy, MORE of everything.

If you want to pose a legitimate argument against guns in America, you need to know America. Trust me, you don't.



So what you're basically admitting is the USA, a supposedly progressive and forward looking nation, is actually too backward to effectively implement gun control measures that have been successful in many other countries?

[Laphroaig]

Interesting thing about England - all the mass knifings. Instead of mass shootings over there, you've got crazy people going out into the streets and hacking people up with machetes. Nothing stops crazy people from doing crazy things.



Indeed but a crazy with a machine gun can do a lot more damage than a crazy with a knife, so your argument, which isn't exactly an original one, is pure bollocks...

[sukumvit boy]

Indeed but a crazy with a machine gun can do a lot more damage than a crazy with a knife, so your argument, which isn't exactly an original one, is pure bollocks...
Yeah , but we may need our Mack 10s for when the Zombie invasions comes ,right?

[Nick Danger]

So what you're basically admitting is the USA, a supposedly progressive and forward looking nation, is actually too backward to effectively implement gun control measures that have been successful in many other countries?

A supposedly progressive and forward looking nation? What planet do you live on? The USA is 100% at the mercy of special interests and the media, whether those interests are taxes, personal freedoms, employment, housing, marriage, guns, war, peace, sex, drugs, life, or death.

The American public can no longer differentiate between fiction and reality. We were recently presented with a months-long series of "PEACEFUL PROTESTS" by liberals that nearly brought the country to its knees and created billions of dollars in property damage and medical costs in the wake of countless acts of violence, mayhem, sedition, and vandalism. Then, we were presented a solitary "RIOT" by conservatives that ultimately resulted in two broken light fixtures, a dozen or so cracked or broken windows, and some grafitti.

The USA is neither progressive or forward looking, we are a high-functioning horseshit factory thanks to our corrupt media and incompetent government.


Indeed but a crazy with a machine gun can do a lot more damage than a crazy with a knife, so your argument, which isn't exactly an original one, is pure bollocks...

Are you really looking for an original argument against gun control? This national conversation has been ongoing since the 1970's. The logic of either side of the argument is the same as it ever was. There's nothing more to say, Laphro, it's all been said, documented, spun, unspun, debated, re-debated, shelved, unshelved, and printed on bumper stickers at this point.

[broncofan]

The American public can no longer differentiate between fiction and reality. Then, we were presented a solitary "RIOT" by conservatives that ultimately resulted in two broken light fixtures, a dozen or so cracked or broken windows, and some grafitti.

Imagine saying that the sum total of damage caused by the insurrection is a couple of broken light fixtures and not thinking you reveal something about your disregard for human life. Did Officer Sicknick cease to matter because he wanted to prevent an attempt to overturn a democratic election? Was arresting Republicans that were trying to murder Pence a partisan act that makes his death irrelevant? And of the countless police officers who were injured? Do they not matter either? Does it not matter that someone planted pipe bombs at the capitol or that a man was caught parking a truck full of napalm?

Reporting the truth doesn't make the media corrupt just because you don't like it. Trying to extort the Secretary of State of Georgia to overturn an election is corrupt no matter how much you do like it. The person who has lost touch with reality is you and your cult.

What you offer is not a critique of your country's policies which people sometimes accuse those on the left of lacking patriotism for making. Instead you hide a visceral loathing of this country's political system, of most of its citizens and a desire to replace our government with an authoritarian cult of personality. How disgraceful.

[Nick Danger]

Imagine saying that the sum total of damage caused by the insurrection is a couple of broken light fixtures and not thinking you reveal something about your disregard for human life. Did Officer Sicknick cease to matter because he wanted to prevent an attempt to overturn a democratic election? Was arresting Republicans that were trying to murder Pence a partisan act that makes his death irrelevant? And of the countless police officers who were injured? Do they not matter either? Does it not matter that someone planted pipe bombs at the capitol or that a man was caught parking a truck full of napalm?

Reporting the truth doesn't make the media corrupt just because you don't like it. Trying to extort the Secretary of State of Georgia to overturn an election is corrupt no matter how much you do like it. The person who has lost touch with reality is you and your cult.

What you offer is not a critique of your country's policies which people sometimes accuse those on the left of lacking patriotism for making. Instead you hide a visceral loathing of this country's political system, of most of its citizens and a desire to replace our government with an authoritarian cult of personality. How disgraceful.

Okay, Bronco, you want to talk about actual politics now? Because I thought I was talking about riots. I can critique policy all day long but I really don't think anyone here wants to have that conversation at all, and certainly not with me.

I have some concern for Officer Sicknick. But I figured I'd leave off mentioning the 700+ police officers who were killed or injured during the George Floyd protests, and maybe by doing so I could slide on mentioning Officer Sicknick. All these officers were simply doing their jobs. Death and injury are part of it.

The rest of it - the pipe bombs, napalm, whatever - is probably liberal-media bullshit. But in any case, was anything blown up? No.

I'm not even trying to justify the Capitol "Riot." All I'm pointing out is that somehow, it was a RIOT, but when the people who align politically with the leftist media did much worse, the self-same media stood in the burning streets of Minneapolis, right in front of a store that was being looted, and unashamedly called it a "peaceful protest."

You're entirely missing my point. My point is not that Republican riots are better than Democratic riots. My point is that 95% of Americans are not intelligent enough to discern when they are being manipulated by the media, which these days is pretty much 95% of the time. Our democracy has been hijacked by "journalism."

[filghy2]

The American public can no longer differentiate between fiction and reality. We were recently presented with a months-long series of "PEACEFUL PROTESTS" by liberals that nearly brought the country to its knees and created billions of dollars in property damage and medical costs in the wake of countless acts of violence, mayhem, sedition, and vandalism. Then, we were presented a solitary "RIOT" by conservatives that ultimately resulted in two broken light fixtures, a dozen or so cracked or broken windows, and some grafitti.

Far from being an isolated incident, right-wing extremists have been responsible for the great majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the USA in recent years. As at July last year, attacks by right-wing extremists had resulted in 335 deaths since 1994, compared to 22 by left-wing extremists.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/war-comes-home-evolution-domestic-terrorism-united-states
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states

The Department of Homeland Security and FBI have both concluded that violent white supremacists constitute the biggest threat to US domestic security. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020_10_06_homeland-threat-assessment.pdf

Around 93-96% of BLM protests have been peaceful, and most of those killed or injured were protestors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd _protests#cite_note-Jemima_McEvoy-1
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/06/08/14-days-of-protests-19-dead/?sh=1bae0dba4de4

[Nick Danger]

Far from being an isolated incident, right-wing extremists have been responsible for the great majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the USA in recent years. As at July last year, attacks by right-wing extremists had resulted in 335 deaths since 1994, compared to 22 by left-wing extremists.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/war-comes-home-evolution-domestic-terrorism-united-states
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states

The Department of Homeland Security and FBI have both concluded that violent white supremacists constitute the biggest threat to US domestic security. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020_10_06_homeland-threat-assessment.pdf

Around 93-96% of BLM protests have been peaceful, and most of those killed or injured were protestors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd _protests#cite_note-Jemima_McEvoy-1
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/06/08/14-days-of-protests-19-dead/?sh=1bae0dba4de4

Soooo, in other words, around 4-7% of BLM protests have been violent. I dunno, Flighty, that feels like a high percentage to me.

White supremacy has absolutely nothing to do with conservative politics. White supremacists identify with the Republican Party because the Republican Party does not cater to people based on their race (Republicans are assholes to all equally). It is the obvious of their two choices in a political party; what are they going to do, espouse Affirmative Action? But the Republican Party does NOT identify with white supremacists, in any way, and in fact repudiates them at every opportunity.

Unlike the Democratic Party and its media goon squad, Republican politicians and conservative-slanted broadcasters do not encourage their constitutents to engage in violence. And before you even go there, let's not forget how Donald Trump finished the speech in which the liberal media claims he incited the Capitol Riots - "PEACEFULLY AND PATRIOTICALLY MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD." Funny how that quote never seems to make it into the news coverage.

Sorry Flighty but if you're trying to make a point to me I've missed it. It's incredibly weird to me how liberals are suddenly acting as if they didn't spend the 6 months prior to the election violently tearing this country apart over a counterfeiter who died of a fentanyl overdose. But I guess when you've got nearly the entirety of the nation's media re-writing history as it happens, you can get away with it.

[broncofan]

- "PEACEFULLY AND PATRIOTICALLY MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD." Funny how that quote never seems to make it into the news coverage.

Is that all he said? Did you know David Duke once said "I don't consider myself a racist." He also said "I'm called a racist but I have respect for the Black people of my country."

*spoiler alert-that's not all David Duke said that's relevant on the subject.

And on the subject of Trump did you know that when somebody spends months spreading conspiracy theories and then gives a speech, the content of that speech shouldn't be boiled down to the most exculpatory line? I'm sure at some level you do know. I'm watching one more episode of Brooklyn 99 and going to bed. My heart's not in this debate right now but I sense there's more to Trump's speech than that one line. Like when he sometimes condemns things and then equivocates and then contradicts his earlier condemnation.

[broncofan]

Like when he sometimes condemns things and then equivocates and then contradicts his earlier condemnation.
It's almost like we didn't hear Trump give a groveling apologetic speech that someone wrote for him as damage control and then get on twitter and started spreading the same poison. Did it ever occur to you that people sometimes say things to cover their ass and then contradict the spirit of it?

It reminds me of the most amusing trick I see by lay lawyers. They will write "no copyright violation intended" while they're violating copyright laws. I took an intellectual property class and I don't remember a thing from it. But I have a feeling that the intent required for a copyright violation is an intent to commit the relevant act (posting a video that is the subject of copyright protection) rather than an intent that it be considered an infraction. It's stuff like this that fools you but explains why briefs written by the worst lawyers in the country are laughed out of court.

You say you have intelligent people on your side. Trump is considered a moron by nearly every professor he had, he likely had someone sit for the SATs for him, and he didn't go to graduate school because it probably would have been harder to bribe his way in. The affluent people in your party are mostly old money, or third generation recipients of their grandpap's dough. But Trump is considered an embarrassment by most educated people and the rest of the world. Good night dude.

[broncofan]

But the Republican Party does NOT identify with white supremacists, in any way, and in fact repudiates them at every opportunity.

They didn't even vote for Marjorie Taylor Greene to be removed from committee roles for impersonating a klansman. Again, your words are tested against your actions. She literally promoted great replacement theory which has been the catalyst for hate crime murders.

[Laphroaig]

The USA is neither progressive or forward looking, we are a high-functioning horseshit factory thanks to our corrupt media and incompetent government.


Or perhaps it's being held back by conspiracy theorist, gun nut jobs who think Joe Public should be allowed to own a tank or an F-22?

[filghy2]

Unlike the Democratic Party and its media goon squad, Republican politicians and conservative-slanted broadcasters do not encourage their constitutents to engage in violence. And before you even go there, let's not forget how Donald Trump finished the speech in which the liberal media claims he incited the Capitol Riots - "PEACEFULLY AND PATRIOTICALLY MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD." Funny how that quote never seems to make it into the news coverage.

Here's an article documenting all the times Trump has encouraged violence, which has occurred many times at his rallies. And what exactly do you suggest Rudi Giuliani had in mind when he called for 'trial by combat'?
https://www.vox.com/21506029/trump-violence-tweets-racist-hate-speech

Where is your evidence that the Democrat Party of mainstream media have encouraged violence? Put up or shut the fuck up.

[filghy2]

White supremacy has absolutely nothing to do with conservative politics. White supremacists identify with the Republican Party because the Republican Party does not cater to people based on their race (Republicans are assholes to all equally). It is the obvious of their two choices in a political party; what are they going to do, espouse Affirmative Action? But the Republican Party does NOT identify with white supremacists, in any way, and in fact repudiates them at every opportunity.


Trump has refused to condemn white supremacists numerous times, most notably at the first presidential debate, or only condemned them in half-hearted terms. Typically he only reads out words (written by someone else) condemning them belatedly after there has been a backlash. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/trumps-history-of-support-from-white-supremacist-far-right-groups-2020-9?r=US&IR=T

It's pretty clear the white supremacists perceive the message and see him as someone who's on their side. They are not just doing it because there is nowhere else to go - they love Trump far more than they do any conventional Republican politician.

[filghy2]

Just in case anyone needed a refresher on Trump's history with White supremacists.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5juf1RkWnpM

And Nick Danger's response?
1297871

[Nick Danger]

Here's an article documenting all the times Trump has encouraged violence, which has occurred many times at his rallies. And what exactly do you suggest Rudi Giuliani had in mind when he called for 'trial by combat'?
https://www.vox.com/21506029/trump-violence-tweets-racist-hate-speech

Where is your evidence that the Democrat Party of mainstream media have encouraged violence? Put up or shut the fuck up.

You make me shudder a little, Flighty. I guess...I suppose this is...I reckon this is how most Democrats are living now - in their own private Idaho where they didn't do nothing.

Here's the video you want, Flighty:

https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1300290897922453504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5 Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1300290897922453504%7Ctwgr% 5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.louderwithcrowder.com%2F viral-video-democrats-violence-riots

Took me about 30 seconds to find a video of dozens and dozens of high-profile Democratic politicians, "news" broadcasters, and celebrities calling for violence (up to and including murder, sedition, and uprising in the streets) against the duly-elected administration.

Not sure if you live in another dimension or you're just ignorant, Flighty. I won't completely rule out the "different dimension" theory, because what do we really know about the structure of reality in light of recent advances in Quantum Field Theory, right?

1297878

[Nick Danger]

Or perhaps it's being held back by conspiracy theorist, gun nut jobs who think Joe Public should be allowed to own a tank or an F-22?

Or an aircraft carrier. I mean, as a citizen, what am I supposed to do if I want to attack Iran? You can't just show up with a pistol.

[Nick Danger]

They didn't even vote for Marjorie Taylor Greene to be removed from committee roles for impersonating a klansman. Again, your words are tested against your actions. She literally promoted great replacement theory which has been the catalyst for hate crime murders.

Bronco, I would like to see you illustrate the "Circle of Death" in which Marjorie Taylor Greene's ramblings led to hate crime murders.

I'm not going to defend that woman. Here in the world of conspiracy theorists, we have our standards. For example, while I do believe the Sandy Hook Massacre was staged, I don't think the Parkland shooting was. I don't believe in Bigfoot or UFO's, but I have seen some evidence that there was, at some point, an extremely large fish in Loch Ness. And I believe we did put two men on the Moon on July 20, 1969 - frankly that doesn't seem too difficult as long as you get the math right.

In truth, 11 Republicans DID vote MTG off her committees. The rest probably just made a black-and-white choice not to vote against a fellow Republican. I have yet to see a single Republican speak favorably on her behalf though.

She is a racist, and she was voted into office by racists in a very racist section of the country. It's not much more complicated than that.

[broncofan]

Bronco, I would like to see you illustrate the "Circle of Death" in which Marjorie Taylor Greene's ramblings led to hate crime murders.
I didn't say they did. In most cases where someone's rhetoric is dangerous it's not possible to show a direct link. I'm not suggesting every racist remark then has something to do with subsequent hate crimes but I also don't think you need a direct link when the advocacy is that extreme. One of the theories she promoted is great replacement theory which is basically the essence of modern white supremacist thinking. It states that the biggest threat to white people is having kids with non-white people and that Jews are facilitating it somehow. It also wasn't just a mistake or a careless moment but a commitment to the kind of overt hatred that motivates killers. 11 Republicans out of 210 voted to remove her from committees. It should have been unanimous.

Was that Nicole Wallace in the video you included about Democrats above? That would be odd since she was the white house communications director for GW Bush.

I fail to see how Robert De Niro saying he wants to punch Trump in the face is the equivalent of Trump saying he wants people to be punched at his rallies while he's running for President. I fail to see how someone saying we need to be out in the streets is the same as saying an election was stolen, of layering lie on top of lie to give people that impression, and engaging in all sorts of maneuvers to try to overturn the election including by trying to bully the vice president into not certify the electoral college vote. On the day that the vote was being certified he was putting public pressure on Pence not to certify the votes while speaking to a mob of mostly white supremacists. But you don't want to take my word for it, let's hear what that other famous Democrat Mitch McConnell said "They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government."

What I think you fail to acknowledge the gravity of is that we have a form of government that is spelled out in our constitution. We have rules governing how we have elections and we have laws. Trying to overturn a free and fair election by making dozens of completely implausible accusations and encouraging other Republicans to interfere with the will of the people is about the most dangerous thing a politician can do, besides advocate killing other politicians (see Marjorie Taylor Greene), or promoting a literal race war (see MTG).

[Stavros]

The American public can no longer differentiate between fiction and reality. We were recently presented with a months-long series of "PEACEFUL PROTESTS" by liberals that nearly brought the country to its knees and created billions of dollars in property damage and medical costs in the wake of countless acts of violence, mayhem, sedition, and vandalism.

This is just rubbish -if the USA has been 'nearly...brought to its knees' in the last year it has been due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the refusal of idiot Governors in Florida, Texas and South Dakota to take the measures necessary to mitigate its worst effects, and the economic cost of Covid is greater than BLM/Liberal protests by far. You also know that various armed militias took advantage of the BLM protests to cause trouble in Portland, as did the vigilante Kyle Rittencourt who seems to have disappeared when he should be in prison (which he would be were he Black).

Overall, your depiction of the USA as a hell on earth of violent, hateful, selfish, greedy, armed-to-the-teeth morons is closer to some extravaganty funded hoakum on Netflix than it is to real life. Yes, I have an apartment full of books, I have the flat-screen tv, computers, iPads, cell phones -but they are not signs of wealth, as collectively they are not worth much, and how many of the neighbours you have are rich, or bought their 60" Smart TV with a credit card because in fact they can't afford to buy one?

Covid-19 has also demonstrated the common phrase 'the kindness of strangers' is common because it is real. Volunteers working in food banks are real, they exist, as do millions of Americans who don't own guns, don't want to, and far from hating anyone get along with their neighbours, go to the same churches on Sunday, organize football and baseball and other sports in their spare times for themeselves and their children. It may not all be Apple Pie and baskets in the yard, but the USA is not as soulless and bleak as your present it. Or maybe that's just Utah, the irony being that the home of Mormons is the home of morons, what one assumes to be a citadel of Reigious fellowship just a sewer or envy and conflict. Funny old world, innit? Oh, and leave Kevin Bacon out of it. He is one of the good guys

[Nick Danger]

I didn't say they did. In most cases where someone's rhetoric is dangerous it's not possible to show a direct link. I'm not suggesting every racist remark then has something to do with subsequent hate crimes but I also don't think you need a direct link when the advocacy is that extreme. One of the theories she promoted is great replacement theory which is basically the essence of modern white supremacist thinking. It states that the biggest threat to white people is having kids with non-white people and that Jews are facilitating it somehow. It also wasn't just a mistake or a careless moment but a commitment to the kind of overt hatred that motivates killers. 11 Republicans out of 210 voted to remove her from committees. It should have been unanimous.

Was that Nicole Wallace in the video you included about Democrats above? That would be odd since she was the white house communications director for GW Bush.

I fail to see how Robert De Niro saying he wants to punch Trump in the face is the equivalent of Trump saying he wants people to be punched at his rallies while he's running for President. I fail to see how someone saying we need to be out in the streets is the same as saying an election was stolen, of layering lie on top of lie to give people that impression, and engaging in all sorts of maneuvers to try to overturn the election including by trying to bully the vice president into not certify the electoral college vote. On the day that the vote was being certified he was putting public pressure on Pence not to certify the votes while speaking to a mob of mostly white supremacists. But you don't want to take my word for it, let's hear what that other famous Democrat Mitch McConnell said "They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government."

What I think you fail to acknowledge the gravity of is that we have a form of government that is spelled out in our constitution. We have rules governing how we have elections and we have laws. Trying to overturn a free and fair election by making dozens of completely implausible accusations and encouraging other Republicans to interfere with the will of the people is about the most dangerous thing a politician can do, besides advocate killing other politicians (see Marjorie Taylor Greene), or promoting a literal race war (see MTG).

I think you're engaging in some very selective information processing there, Bronco. I see that you have elected to respond to Bob DeNiro's desire to punch the President in the face, but NOT to respond to Nancy Pelosi (the de facto leader of this nation's adult juveniles) encouraging "uprisings all over the country."

And let me ask you something - is it illegal to challenge the results of an election? "Unconstitutional?" Because factually, there have been EIGHT contested Presidential elections in this country's history, and COUNTLESS contested elections for various other offices.

Trump thought he won. Perhaps in hindsight it could be said he was somewhat delusional about it, but he certainly isn't the first and won't be the last American politician to fiercely protest the results of an election.

Now, what I believe is that Trump has an ego the size of a small planet, and he simply couldn't accept the defeat. But if I didn't know what I know about Donald Trump, I could just as easily say contesting the election results was one of the most savvy moves in modern political history. Pulls the teeth from the Democratic victory. Democrats WILL ruin the economy if given the chance, they have no economic plan whatsoever - their plan is literally to give every minority and special interest everything they want until they don't have any more money. But because Trump contested the election, there's no true public mandate for that kind of economic recklessness - a lot of Americans will go to their graves believing the Democrats lost in 2020.

It's interesting to me that you're taking what Mitch McConnell says at face value right now. Of course he's going to bend with the prevailing winds, he's a goddamn politician, and a pretty darn good one actually. All Republicans are currently in the process of distancing themselves from the Trump administration. Either that or they're preparing for a cancellation shitstorm from the liberal media.

There are 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Bronco. How dangerous do you REALLY think Marjorie Taylor Greene is? Or are you just cherry-picking Republican dipshits to put on display. Because if that's the case, I can start cherry-picking Democratic dipshits and I really wouldn't have to brush many cherries aside. I'd start with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who actually wants to spend 93 TRILLION dollars - an amount greater than the entire value of the nation's GDP, real estate, and household assets combined - to kill the oil industry. Or how about Ilhan Omar, a corrupt Muslim politician who funneled 80% of her campaign contributions into her husband's consulting firm, is currently under investigation by the FBI for marrying her own brother, and has flatly stated that her political goal is to dismantle the entire oppressive system.

I mean yes, pot calls kettle black, it's the oldest trope in politics. Still, I don't see ANY Republican support for Marjorie Taylor Greene. I see quite a lot of Democratic support, though, for its collection of congressional fruit loops.

[broncofan]

You didn't put the video together but you posted it. The video wouldn't be long enough and needed people who aren't Democrats and actors. A video with Trump alone would have included as many legitimate instances. It wouldn't have to include someone saying something innocuous like that the majority of terrorists are right-wing and white. Samantha Bee said Ivanka was a "feckless cunt" which is rude and uncivil. How long would a video of Republican media personalities saying far worse things be? Imagine a video with Republicans who pitched snake oil for a deadly disease, who lied about the deadliness of disease, or the like?

A person has a right to use reasonable means to challenge a close vote. Requesting a recount is not unreasonable. Pursuing a claim of systematic voter fraud in good faith if there's any factual foundation is reasonable.

What Trump did was spend two months filing 60 lawsuits that in other circumstances probably would have gotten his attorneys sanctioned. The lawsuits were dismissed because they had no evidentiary foundation and/or the plaintiffs did not have standing which is a Constitutional requirement. In some cases the attorneys were afraid to repeat the claims in court for fear of sanctions. He had meetings where advisors of his were requesting a declaration of martial law to commandeer voting machines.

He was trying to stop legal votes from being counted while they were being counted. He was calling on Republican state level officials to go against the popular votes of their states. He called Brad Raffensperger on the phone and tried to get him to make him the winner of Georgia. If he had a legitimate theory for how he won the vote he didn't state it. In fact his theories were all over the place and when one was shot down he would raise another one just as implausible. That's not "smart". It's dangerous and destructive.

I haven't heard AOC or Ilhan Omar say or do anything that is anywhere close to advocating the death of other politicians which Greene did or support white supremacism or every conspiracy theory under the sun. Your bogeymen aren't actually advocating violence or warning people about "miscegenation".

[broncofan]

But because Trump contested the election, there's no true public mandate for that kind of economic recklessness - a lot of Americans will go to their graves believing the Democrats lost in 2020.
That is because Trump told dozens of lies, promoted idiocy, and they believed him. You want standing for a set of fictions because one person repeated them over and over again and people believed him? If only there were precedent for that. Trump merely contested the election in the same way that people engaged in insurrection at the capitol merely rioted.

[Nick Danger]

You didn't put the video together but you posted it.

But...you DID watch it, right?

I want you to know that I understand your predicament, Bronco. If someone posted a video of President Trump calling for nationwide riots, and on that same video was Bobcat Goldthwaite saying he wanted to give the President a noogie, I'd probably choose to respond to the noogie. Of course, no such video exists.

I'll tell you what does exist though - a video of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking Democrat in the USA, encouraging "uprisings all over the country."

I wouldn't worry. The video will eventually disappear from YouTube, Twitter, and all mainstream formats, just like the video "We Need To Talk About Sandy Hook" did. It's amazing what politicians can accomplish when they have a nation's media in their pockets.

Just hold out for a few more years, Bronco, and history will be completely rewritten to accomodate your posts.

[broncofan]

If someone posted a video of President Trump calling for nationwide riots, and on that same video was Bobcat Goldthwaite saying he wanted to give the President a noogie.

I'll tell you what does exist though - a video of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking Democrat in the USA, encouraging "uprisings all over the country."

Just hold out for a few more years, Bronco, and history will be completely rewritten to accomodate your posts.
So you chose to post a clip where 99% of the content was irrelevant? Imagine if buried in the hundreds of election fraud claims Trump had proof of millions of votes being changed. I might get through 90 totally made up claims and think, "why would someone provide so many lies if they have something incriminating?"

Did you know that Nancy Pelosi's statement had nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter protests and riots and that she wasn't even talking about them in that clip?

It didn't have anything to do with police brutality and to my knowledge no "uprisings" occurred based on this speech. You seem to think a pipe bomb that didn't explode is irrelevant and don't consider the potential harm so why isn't that the standard here? Well Nancy Pelosi's irresponsible language was about the family separation policy and did not result in "uprisings" or violence. And btw she used the word uprising incorrectly. If it meant overthrow the government, which is what was incited at the capitol by the President, how could it be plural?

It was incendiary and stupid and had she spent months trying to stoke violence and making clear she wanted our government to be overthrown AND people tried to do that she'd be just as culpable as Trump.

[broncofan]

Did you know that Nancy Pelosi's statement had nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter protests and riots and that she wasn't even talking about them in that clip?.
And not only was she talking about a different subject completely the statement was made more than two years before the rioting in Kenosha. The statement in that clip was made on June 14 2018 by the way.

[Nick Danger]

And not only was she talking about a different subject completely the statement was made more than two years before the rioting in Kenosha. The statement in that clip was made on June 14 2018 by the way.

The important first step in your recovery from liberalism is to recognize that she DID say it. IIRC it was in response to Trump's immigration policy, which I happen to agree with but that's a whole different post. Do you agree, Bronco? Do you agree that there should be "uprisings all over the country" over Trump's refusal to admit Muslim refugees?

Also, "99%" of that content is not "irrelevant." Maxine Waters is on there calling for violence at BLM protests specifically. Kamala Harris is on there threatening the administration directly with riots. "Everyone, beware!" she says with a smile on her face, as if she is secretly conducting the riots from behind the scenes. "They're not gonna stop, not before Election Day." All of those liberal newscasts calling for non-peaceful protests are post-George Floyd.

So you know, yeah Bronco, it happened. Your party tore up the country over a counterfeiter who died of a fentanyl overdose. Your leaders encouraged it, drew the roadmap for it really, and it happened. I'd be the first to admit, the George Floyd video was absolutely incendiary. I wanted to choke that officer out myself before it was over with. But it turns out, Officer Chauvin was acting within policy, a lot of video of George Floyd FIGHTING the police was redacted, and the final medical determination was that the guy was a junkie who swallowed his whole stash as he was being arrested. Not EXACTLY as advertised eh?

Still, I get it. If I were black I'd probably have picked up a sign and protested myself, and maybe some of that protesting might get out of control, it happens.

But we're talking months and months here. Even after it was determined that the incident wasn't what it seemed, the Democratic machine kept pushing for violence. Because they knew that was the only thing that was going to get them into office in 2020. It worked. I stand in awe of the power of a political party that owns the media. Even though they have absolutely zero good ideas on how to move forward from the crises of 2020 (other than to simply cave in to every special interest that holds out a cup), they won the White House and the Senate. Incredible really. If I were a Democrat I'd be on here crowing about our amazing powers of political skullduggery.

But since I'm a Republican, all I can do is point out that they won it like a bunch of criminals.

[filghy2]

Here's a thought. This is supposed to be the 'thought for the day' thread, not one endless argument. Your persistence n trying to rebut our resident post-truth wingnut is commendable bronco, but you must realise it is pointless.

How about we cancel the Nick Danger show by not responding any further, as least in this thread? If he wants to start another thread let him do so, but we should stop the hijacking of this thread.

[filghy2]

To help the process along I've created a new thread on political violence and copied Nick Danger's last comment, so people can continue the discussion if they want without hijacking this thread.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Nick Danger;1957970]

And let me ask you something - is it illegal to challenge the results of an election? "Unconstitutional?" Because factually, there have been EIGHT contested Presidential elections in this country's history, and COUNTLESS contested elections for various other offices.
Trump thought he won. Perhaps in hindsight it could be said he was somewhat delusional about it, but he certainly isn't the first and won't be the last American politician to fiercely protest the results of an election.

-"Somewhat"? Trump said in 2016 he would accept the result of the elecion 'if I win', and said it again last year, indeed, declared the election was rigged before anyone had cast a vote. That makes him more than "somewhat" deusional, and in the past there were legitimate grounds for contesting elections, not the bruised ego of a loser.

Democrats WILL ruin the economy if given the chance, they have no economic plan whatsoever - their plan is literally to give every minority and special interest everything they want until they don't have any more money.

-If Biden is comparable to other Democrat Presidents, he is unlikely to 'ruin' the economy, as the evidence show that Democrats are better stewards of the economy than Republicans. Biden was put in charge of the recovery programme in 2009 so for all the eye-watering sums being spent now, one has to believe he knows what he is doing, and more importantly, has the team to get it donee. The US has developed a diverse economy that can weather shocks easier, if not without pain, compared to others -right now, Brexit Britain is a speeding (and empty) truck headed for a brick wall, but I think this time it may take the full first term for the US to get out of the Pandemic mess it is in right now.

These studies will show you why Democrats do better than Republicans with the economy-

https://www.thebalance.com/democrats-vs-republicans-which-is-better-for-the-economy-4771839

https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2020/09/08/republicans-or-democrats-who-is-better-for-the-economy/

https://evonomics.com/economists-agree-democratic-presidents-better-making-us-rich-eight-reasons/

[Nick Danger]

Here's a thought. This is supposed to be the 'thought for the day' thread, not one endless argument. Your persistence n trying to rebut our resident post-truth wingnut is commendable bronco, but you must realise it is pointless.

How about we cancel the Nick Danger show by not responding any further, as least in this thread? If he wants to start another thread let him do so, but we should stop the hijacking of this thread.

Is that your Thought For The Day, Flighty?

I understand. I'd rather lose a testicle than debate me on politics. Or geez, I dunno, maybe I could win, it'd be damn close though. The key would be to catch myself spouting off some statistical bullshit as if it were factual then cramming the evidence that I'm wrong right down my throat. But damn, it's hard to know when I'm full of shit or actually kicking your ass.

Anyway, MY Thought For The Day is, that was a shitty Super Bowl. But it does show us that Republican quarterbacks are better than Democratic quarterbacks.

If you guys want to preserve this thread for...I don't know, whatever it is you think is going to happen here...I'll be glad to accommodate. Now, don't REPLY to me and then expect me to disappear into the ether - YOU'RE going to have to STFU if you want me to. But really, don't act as if you don't enjoy the abuse. If you didn't love it, you'd have STFU a long, long time ago.

BTW Flighty I enjoyed "resident post-truth wingnut," it's got a flow.

[broncofan]

My thought of the day:
When I saw filghy's post my first thought was maybe I haven't been as considerate as I should be and someone is requesting that I allow this thread to be used for the reason it was created. Nick's first thought is that it was to keep him from spreading the "gospel of Nick" even though a thread was created specifically for his self-aggrandizing ramblings. I'd be happy to discuss whatever subject you want there and certainly didn't direct filghy to request I avoid having a long meandering argument here. It does happen and often it's hard to keep a debate to one subject but I did notice Sukumvit Boy and Stavros were having a conversation that was crowded out maybe. So apologies for that.

[Stavros]

There are numerous rebuttals of the Sandy Hook hoax on the web, indeed, I wonder why people continue to insist it was a hoax when all of their claims are simply, and verifiably rubbish. In a collection of films We Need to Talk About Sandy Hook, prepared by the Tyranny News Network (a go-to site fore conspiracy theories), allegations are made about the mother of one of the chidren that can be easily verified as false. In another a well-publicized photo of children being led away from the school, it is claimed to be fake because video taken shortly after 10.00 am does not show them, yet a comparison of the two shows they happened at different times of the day- overcast in the video, sunny in the photo. And so on. It is deeply depressing and to me a form of Holocaust Denial which begs the question, what is being denied and for what reason?

It is one thing to argue the Federal Government doesn't always tell the truth, all governments massage the facts or try to cover up embarrassing events or policy details. But to leap from that to accuse government of crimes such as Sandy Hook is perverse, its demonization of the victims simply wicked. There are many problems in the US but it isn't Syria or North Korea.

More serious has been the decision of a Court in Poland that two historians apologize for -according to the judgment of the Court- defaming a Polish relative of a Mayor accused of helping the Nazis round up Jews in the town that were sent to their death in Treblinka. It is a controversial case because there is evidence the man concerned helped some Jews escape, while condemning others. Here we are dealng with a real Holocaust where 80 years after the event the tangled testimony begs questions, but surely ought to be left open for more debate and research, rather than be shut down as part of a campaign by a Nationalist Party in Government to 'resurrect' the reputation of Poland from accusations it was complicit in the Holocaust -which it was, indeed, violence against Jews was common even before 1933; but where there is also evidence of anti-Nazi activity, of heroic deeds and sacrifices on behalf of Jews, thus making an either/or account of history a travesty of what happened.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/09/fears-polish-holocaust-research-historians-ordered-apologise


If you haven't seen it, there is a rebuttal of the Sandy Hook hoax here
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sandy-hook-exposed/

[filghy2]

There are numerous rebuttals of the Sandy Hook hoax on the web, indeed, I wonder why people continue to insist it was a hoax when all of their claims are simply, and verifiably rubbish.

Conspiracy theories are just an extreme example of the common phenomenon of motivated reasoning - people believing what it suits them to believe. Conspiracies appeal to some people because they offer a ready-made story into which everything can be fitted, in which anything they don't like can be attributed to plots by evil people. It also allows any inconsistent evidence to be dismissed as being as part of the conspiracy, while anything that can be portrayed as supporting the conspiracy is accepted, so matter how dubious, ambiguous or inconsistent.
https://www.livescience.com/26314-sandy-hook-massacre-conspiracy-theories.html

We can see this easily in previous comments by our resident persona non grata, with their continual references to the liberal-media complex allegedly manipulating the American public. His enthusiastic support for the Sandy Hook conspiracy claim is hardly an outlier, given that his entire political worldview centres on one big conspiracy.

[fred41]

Conspiracy theories are like a warm blanket to some believers...if they cast it away it will leave them cold and uncomfortable..lol. Their altered reality allows them to belong to groups with their own ‘special’ beliefs. The more absurd the belief...the more ‘special’ they feel they are - clearly superior to an un believer, because only they can see reality for what it is. In many ways like religious fundamentalists. There are times though, that I think some folks post conspiracy theories for the troll thrills it gives them.

[Stavros]

Proposals are emerging for a tunnel to link Scotland with Northern Ireland. It is being seen as an alternative to a bridge, which is something Boris Johnson thought of. Some have already called it 'Boris's Burrow' which is surely too obscure for the internet generation, unless the word Burrow appears in a video game. The Channel Tunnel linking the UK to France was nicknamed the 'Chunnel', but I am not sure what this new one, if it happens, could be called.

My initial thought was to called it the ScotNir, but that slipped into SnotNir. Then there was Irnal, but this rapidly deteriorated from Urinal into Anal, and as I don't think that matches the brief, perhaps a more erudite member of HA can toss out an alternative?

[filghy2]

The Channel Tunnel linking the UK to France was nicknamed the 'Chunnel', but I am not sure what this new one, if it happens, could be called.

The historical reference might be too obscure for most people, but how about the Dal Riata Dig? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata
Alternatively, the Celtic Connection, or CeltCon.
Or maybe the Sculster Subway?

[fred41]

You can just call it “The Pipe” in deference to the pipes...the playing of which is a shared tradition between the two countries. That, and because a tunnel is a pipe. I hope this makes sense in the morning because I wrote it slightly drunk.

[Stavros]

The historical reference might be too obscure for most people, but how about the Dal Riata Dig? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata
Alternatively, the Celtic Connection, or CeltCon.
Or maybe the Sculster Subway?

Erudition indeed! Had never heard of Dal Riata before. Sculster Subway sounds too rude, but see my response to Fred below.

[Stavros]

You can just call it “The Pipe” in deference to the pipes...the playing of which is a shared tradition between the two countries. That, and because a tunnel is a pipe. I hope this makes sense in the morning because I wrote it slightly drunk.


It makes sense, Fred, not just if you are drunk, but French, though not in the way you may intend 'la Pipe' to mean...

https://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/faire+une+pipe

[Stavros]

I sort of understand the conflict between Facebook and the Australian Government, but then maybe I don't. How did the Government, as appears to be the case, become dependent on Facebook as a source of news and advice on policies over which it has total control and indeed, which presents its policies on its own websites. Has the public chosen Facebook over the Government? And what if Facebook did not exist? It cannot mean Australians being ignorant of their own Government's policies and advice- or can it?

Facebook -nice to have, not need to have. I don't use it and I am reasonably well informed. What's the big deal? Looks to me like the Australian Govt is whining like a spoiled brat. Get a grip, Bruce.

[Nick Danger]

Proposals are emerging for a tunnel to link Scotland with Northern Ireland. It is being seen as an alternative to a bridge, which is something Boris Johnson thought of. Some have already called it 'Boris's Burrow' which is surely too obscure for the internet generation, unless the word Burrow appears in a video game. The Channel Tunnel linking the UK to France was nicknamed the 'Chunnel', but I am not sure what this new one, if it happens, could be called.

My initial thought was to called it the ScotNir, but that slipped into SnotNir. Then there was Irnal, but this rapidly deteriorated from Urinal into Anal, and as I don't think that matches the brief, perhaps a more erudite member of HA can toss out an alternative?

The Funnel, obviously. That's how you connect one alcoholic society to another.

[filghy2]

I sort of understand the conflict between Facebook and the Australian Government, but then maybe I don't. How did the Government, as appears to be the case, become dependent on Facebook as a source of news and advice on policies over which it has total control and indeed, which presents its policies on its own websites. Has the public chosen Facebook over the Government? And what if Facebook did not exist? It cannot mean Australians being ignorant of their own Government's policies and advice- or can it?

Facebook -nice to have, not need to have. I don't use it and I am reasonably well informed. What's the big deal? Looks to me like the Australian Govt is whining like a spoiled brat. Get a grip, Bruce.

The issue is not that the Government chose to depend on Facebook: it's that so many of its citizens have chosen to rely on it as a convenient information source, which has given Facebook and a few other tech giants so much power. Most people don't want to spend hours researching like you do. They just want to get a quick news summary while they are eating breakfast or riding the train or bus to work.

Most people have never got government information directly from government sources: they've always relied on media reports. Facebook has just taken this step further in aggregating those reports in one place. No doubt people will find other ways to get their news, and some of them may find that they don't need Facebook so much, which is the risk the company is taking.

[Stavros]

You make a good point, as usual. I don't really know what these 'news bites' or 'news on the go' look like, they are probably more influential than I realise. I was persuaded to create a Facebook page some years ago but have never used it, so I don't know what the news feed looks like. I wonder if they are neutral or have a bias. I do believe Facebook and similar sites are an important part of civil society and that they are essential in an open democracy, but as with all forms of publishing, there is no unimited freedom of speech, and the question is thus focused on content and whether or not is is illegal, which may be easy to determine, or immoral, which is harder to define. Without any proper regulation I suspect a lot of offensive material gets through, but how does one define 'offensive' which may be obvious to me, but not to you.

In addition, there was Kevin Rudd's attack on the Murdoch press in Australia and his claim that politicians are scared of Rupert and Lachlan, which is astonishing, even if true, given that they are not even Australians and I don't think have lived in the country for years. These days Rupert, that outstanding American, lives in the UK -why?

[filghy2]

In addition, there was Kevin Rudd's attack on the Murdoch press in Australia and his claim that politicians are scared of Rupert and Lachlan, which is astonishing, even if true, given that they are not even Australians and I don't think have lived in the country for years. These days Rupert, that outstanding American, lives in the UK -why?

Murdoch become a US citizen in 1985 only in order to purchase a TV network, which became the basis for Fox News (foreigners were limited to 25% shareholding).
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/aug/24/rupertmurdoch.business

The Murdoch press accounts for more than half of all newspaper readership in Australia. It's among the most concentrated media markets of any democratic country.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2020/nov/13/australia-newspaper-ownership-is-among-the-most-concentrated-in-the-world

There's data here on the impact of Facebook's move on traffic to Australian news sites. There's been a significant fall, so people haven't just shifted to other platforms as yet, though there might be more movement over time.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-19/facebook-referral-traffic-down-news-ban-morrison-frydenberg/13171568

[Stavros]

I have been puzzled to see some of the headlinees that refer to the recently deceased Rush Limbaugh as a 'Conservative'. I admit I don't know much about Limbaugh other than what I have read, and the snippets of his radio show I have seen, such as the one from about a year ago in which he sneers at anyone taking Covid-19 seriously- 'its just the common cold, folks' or words to that effect. Judged from what I have read, I don't consider him to be a Conservative, but the problem is deep enough now, because as more and more people like him and Trump form the centre ground of the Republican Party, it can no longer be considered a Conservative Party. I woud suggest Limbaugh was an anarchist, or a Libertarian, and definitely not a Conservative.

Fundamental to Conservatism, as its name implies, is hostility to, or suspicion of change. On that basis, there hasn't been a Conservative President since Eisenhower, but on one level, a refusal to change Wall St and the power of Capital does suggest a lingering Conservatism when it comes to the 'heights of Capitalism in the USA' -but Democrat Presidents have made a pact with Wall St and Corporate Finance not to rock their boat, and Obama rescued 'them' from the mess they created without addressing in a serious way the causes of the 2008 crash. So Conservatism on a policy by policy basis might endure, but doesn't need a self-proclaimed Conservative to practice it.

It is plainly stupid to claim any President or Party believes in Fiscal Responsibility, that has not been part of American Government since, again, Eisenhower. In fact, Republican Presidents and the Republican Party have presided over profligate spending, have created debt mountains and liabilities and have thus been shown to be poor stewards of the US economy compared to Democrats- so anyone who says Democrats are bad for the economy is talking verfiable rubbish.

But the key now, is the extent to which there is a cult of personality around Donald Trump, because if there is one thing that a Conservative Party is not, it is a slave to idolatry. And yet we read that a majority of Republican voters willl not support a candidate for their party if he or she has voted against or is opposed to Trump, and Trump has been persuaded not to create a separate party even though a majority of his supporters say they would vote for it. And none of this has anything to do with Conservative policies, just the realization that if he creates a third party, Trump cannot challenge incumbent Senators and Congressional Reps in their primaries, thus creating a division among Republican voters on election day that splits the vote and lets in the Democrat.

Roger Scruton was opposed to Margaret Thatcher's liberal economics of the 1980s because, as an English Conservative, he did not believe freedom was expressed in free markets, and he was right. It is true that there has been a division in the party over the role of the State and Markets since the 19th century, and is also true that Thatcher was in the end, a little bit Liberal, and a lot of State Power Conservative, but here the differences with the US diverge owing to the role that Monarchy has played here. Moreover, the two most serious splits in the Conservative Party occurred over the Corn Laws in the 1840s, and Tariff Reform in the early 1900s -arguments about ideas and policy, not individuals.

But in the end, the question in the US, What is a Conservative? doesn't seem to me to have a coherent answer. If the Republican Party is the party of Rush Limbaugh and Trump why does it engage in the manipulation of State laws on elections to make them more 'efficient' when in reality, it should declare its belief that Black Americans must be denied the right to vote? To oppose Abortion is to oppose a Constitutional Right -how can any Conservative claim to be one if they adopt a policy that not only opposes the Constitution, but takes away the Rights of citizens that the Constitution is supposed to guarantee?

A personality cult rather than a rational party. Debt mountains rather than Fiscal Responsibility. Attacks on, and defiance of the Constitution, rather than its protection. The language of hatred and division targeted at American citizens, rather than the simple acceptance that all citizens are equal. The demands for change, from a party historically opposed to it. (Was Abraham Lincoln a Conservative? Or, when did the Republican Party claim to be a party of Conservatives?).

-who, now, in the USA at the level of State and Federal politics, is a Conservative? And that private army of liars such as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr -are they Conservatives?

[filghy2]

But in the end, the question in the US, What is a Conservative? doesn't seem to me to have a coherent answer.

I think in the US a 'çonservative' is defined mainly by being against whatever 'liberals' are for. However, given the Americans have also managed to screw up the meaning of liberalism that may not be too enlightening.

'Authoritarian populist-nationalist' is probably a more fitting descriptor than 'conservative'.

[Nick Danger]

But in the end, the question in the US, What is a Conservative? doesn't seem to me to have a coherent answer.


I think in the US a 'çonservative' is defined mainly by being against whatever 'liberals' are for. However, given the Americans have also managed to screw up the meaning of liberalism that may not be too enlightening.

'Authoritarian populist-nationalist' is probably a more fitting descriptor than 'conservative'.

Just FYI you guys didn't have to admit to me that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

But I'm always here to help.

Liberal: 1. A person who believes in reliance on the state for sustenance and protection. 2. A simple-minded and/or unskilled individual who's most comfortable when his fate rests in the hands of others. 3. A "simp" or "beta."

Conservative: 1. A person who believes in reliance on himself for sustenance and protection. 2. An abstract thinker who understands that the structure of society reflects his actions, not vice versa. 3. A "boss" or "alpha."

[broncofan]

Just FYI you guys didn't have to admit to me that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

But I'm always here to help.

Liberal: 1. A person who believes in reliance on the state for sustenance and protection. 2. A simple-minded and/or unskilled individual who's most comfortable when his fate rests in the hands of others. 3. A "simp" or "beta."

Conservative: 1. A person who believes in reliance on himself for sustenance and protection. 2. An abstract thinker who understands that the structure of society reflects his actions, not vice versa. 3. A "boss" or "alpha."
Conservative: 1. A man who rails against homosexuality and also gets railed.... against his kitchen counter.

You have to admit that kind of duality has become a notable conservative feature. Doing it from the pulpit is an even bigger hallmark. Denounces homosexuality then has sex with a man in a bathroom stall. I only mind the hypocrisy.

[Stavros]

I think in the US a 'çonservative' is defined mainly by being against whatever 'liberals' are for. However, given the Americans have also managed to screw up the meaning of liberalism that may not be too enlightening.

'Authoritarian populist-nationalist' is probably a more fitting descriptor than 'conservative'.

It is not difficult to find out how Conservatives define their politics, but where for years the definitions were made by people like William F. Buckley, and Bill and Irving Kristol, and based in part on their reading of the Constitution, and their alternative to the State-Economy relations as they were shaped first, by the New Deal Administration of FDR, and its 'last gasp' in the policies of LBJ, so you should be able to trace the descent into incoherence since Reagan's first term. Famously, in his first inauguration speech he said 'Government is not the solution to the problem, Government IS the problem' -and then proceeded to expand Government and its costs leaving office with the highest public debt in US history.

Now fast forward to two of today's news items- a) as more Repubicans de-register, the remaining cohort being loyal Trumpits make it easier for him to either get the nomination for 2024 and/or 'primary' candidates not part of the Cult. B) It has been stated today, and it is a truly remarkable statement in American history, if that is not too pompous-

"Jason Miller, said: “Trump effectively is the Republican party. The only chasm is between Beltway insiders and grass-roots Republicans (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/republicans) around the country. When you attack President Trump, you’re attacking the Republican grass roots.” "
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/22/trump-cpac-republican-presumptive-2024-nominee

There is no Conservatism here, it is pure idolatry, the transformation of American politics into a clash of civilizations, those who believe in the America of 1776 -civilization-. and those who believe only in Donald Trump, a man who is uncivilized and rejects all that it represents in order to line his pockets and hear the crowd roar.

How such a man came to literally embody the Republican Party will be the subject of many histories, assuming they live to tell the tale. "'Authoritarian populist-nationalist'" -? Not even close. As Brecht once put it, albeit in another context, 'Truly, I live in dark times'.

[Stavros]

I think in the US a 'çonservative' is defined mainly by being against whatever 'liberals' are for. However, given the Americans have also managed to screw up the meaning of liberalism that may not be too enlightening.

'Authoritarian populist-nationalist' is probably a more fitting descriptor than 'conservative'.

It is not difficult to find out how Conservatives define their politics, but where for years the definitions were made by people like William F. Buckley, and Bill and Irving Kristol, and based in part on their reading of the Constitution, and their alternative to the State-Economy relations as they were shaped first, by the New Deal Administration of FDR, and its 'last gasp' in the policies of LBJ, so you should be able to trace the descent into incoherence since Reagan's first term. Famously, in his first inauguration speech he said 'Government is not the solution to the problem, Government IS the problem' -and then proceeded to expand Government and its costs leaving office with the highest public debt in US history.

Now fast forward to two of today's news items- a) as more Republicans de-register, the remaining cohort being loyal Trumpits make it easier for him to either get the nomination for 2024 and/or 'primary' candidates not part of the Cult. B) It has been stated today, and it is a truly remarkable statement in American history, if that is not too pompous-

"Jason Miller, said: “Trump effectively is the Republican party. The only chasm is between Beltway insiders and grass-roots Republicans (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/republicans) around the country. When you attack President Trump, you’re attacking the Republican grass roots.” "
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/22/trump-cpac-republican-presumptive-2024-nominee

There is no Conservatism here, it is pure idolatry, the transformation of American politics into a clash of civilizations, those who believe in the America of 1776 -civilization-. and those who believe only in Donald Trump, a man who is uncivilized and rejects all that it represents in order to line his pockets and hear the crowd roar.

How such a man came to literally embody the Republican Party will be the subject of many histories, assuming they live to tell the tale. "'Authoritarian populist-nationalist'" -? Not even close. As Brecht once put it, albeit in another context, 'Truly, I live in dark times'.

[Nick Danger]

Conservative: 1. A man who rails against homosexuality and also gets railed.... against his kitchen counter.

You have to admit that kind of duality has become a notable conservative feature. Doing it from the pulpit is an even bigger hallmark. Denounces homosexuality then has sex with a man in a bathroom stall. I only mind the hypocrisy.

I assume you're talking about Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig? Oh he's not the worst of American hypocrisy but that was pretty fun to watch.

Americans are a pretty cynical lot, and also totally unforgiving. If you're a politician and you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar or your cock in the wrong honeypot, you're canceled, period, and that's not based on "cancel culture," it's always been that way.

There are exceptions. Bill Clinton rivals John Gotti when it comes to being made of Teflon. My personal opinion is, to escape America's wrath behind any public scandal, you've got to be EXTREMELY likable. People continued to like John Gotti even after being 100% convinced he was a murderous thug, because he was exactly our idea of what a murderous thug should be - unrepentant, cocky, and just plain dangerous to know. And people continued to like Bill Clinton even after being 100% convinced he was a serial adulterer because anyone could easily understand why someone would cheat on Hillary.

Larry Craig? Not so likable.

1301686

[Nick Danger]

My Thought For The Day is, I really enjoyed the statement Donald Trump issued regarding the Supreme Court's nod to release his tax returns. Here it is:

"This investigation is a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country, whether it was the never ending $32 million Mueller hoax, which already investigated everything that could possible be investigation, "Russia Russia Russia," where there was a finding of "No Collusion," or two ridiculous "Crazy Nancy" inspired impeachment attempts where I was found NOT GUILTY. It just never ends!

"So now, for more than two years, New York City has been looking at almost every transaction I've ever done, including seeking tax returns which were done by among the biggest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the U.S. The Tea Party was treated far better by the IRS than Donald Trump. The Supreme Court never should have let this "fishing expedition" happen, but they did. This is something which has never happened to a President before, it is all Democrat-inspired in a totally Democrat location, New York City and State, completely controlled and dominated by a heavily reported enemy of mine, Governor Andrew Cuomo. These are attacks by Democrats willing to do anything to stop the almost 75 million people (the most votes, by far, ever gotten by a sitting president) who voted for me in the election—an election which many people, and experts, feel that I won. I agree!"

Probably the main thing I like about Trump is that he doesn't even bother using an editor, as exampled by "...which already investigated everything that could possible be investigation."

I'd be curious what some of you Democrats think Trump's tax returns are going to show. I think they're going to show two things:

1. Trump is not as rich as he claims, but still pretty damn rich.
2. Trump is not a criminal.

Nothing more than that.

1301711

[filghy2]

"Jason Miller, said: “Trump effectively is the Republican party. The only chasm is between Beltway insiders and grass-roots Republicans (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/republicans) around the country. When you attack President Trump, you’re attacking the Republican grass roots.”

And why do you think the Republican grass roots love him so much? It's not because orange is their favourite colour. Surely it's because Trump presents everything in terms of a fight between 'us' and 'them', which is the essence of populism?

You seem to be too focussed on one individual, rather than seeing him as a manifestation of deeper issues. If Trump dropped dead tomorrow the Republican party would not go back to normal.

[filghy2]

I'd be curious what some of you Democrats think Trump's tax returns are going to show. I think they're going to show two things:

1. Trump is not as rich as he claims, but still pretty damn rich.
2. Trump is not a criminal.

Nothing more than that.

You're telling us he went to such extraordinary lengths to keep them secret simply to boost his ego?

At a minimum I think they will show two things:
1. That he has used dubious devices to avoid paying tax. Whether this amounts to criminal fraud is yet to be determined.
2. That he has obtained financing from sources that he didn't want to be revealed.

[Nick Danger]

You're telling us he went to such extraordinary lengths to keep them secret simply to boost his ego?

At a minimum I think they will show two things:
1. That he has used dubious devices to avoid paying tax. Whether this amounts to criminal fraud is yet to be determined.
2. That he has obtained financing from sources that he didn't want to be revealed.

Do you really believe it's out of the realm of possibility that Trump is driven by pure ego. I think he is. And actually I like that about him, I believe that if it hadn't been for the unfortunate circumstance of the pandemic hitting during his presidency he'd have followed through on every single thing he promised voters, simply because "I said I was going to do this so I'm going to do it." That's the path he was on, but then disaster struck.

So yes, I honestly think that the sole reason Trump didn't want his tax returns made public is because they are going to show that he exaggerated his wealth. It's just that simple, IMHO, but we will find out soon enough.

Far as "dubious devices to avoid paying tax," no American is going to hold that against him, we all do it. Paying as little tax as possible within the bounds of the law is the American way.

[Stavros]

2. That he has obtained financing from sources that he didn't want to be revealed.


And as far as I am aware, there has been no conclusion to the allegation that the Trump campaign in 2016 had a direct link to the Alfa Bank, just as the identity of Trump's Russian girlfriend has never been revealed. The key point in all this, whether it it is Felix Sater, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn or Roger Stone, is that Trump and his campaign is on one side, 'the other' is always Russian.

Nobody is suggesting Trump or his campaigin have long-established ties to Nigeria, or Portugal, and even in the case of Israel, the Trump family ties to Netanyahu that go back years are not assumed to be merely financial even though they have interests in Israel and in the illegally-occupied Palestinian territories. But getting to the raw truth of the Russian connection is proving hard because certain people and institutions are 'protecting their assets'....

Trump and the Alfa Bank -from 2020
https://www.justsecurity.org/72262/the-trump-alfa-bank-server-mystery-resurfaces/

Trump and the Alfa Bank- from 2016, an unusually detailed article for the DailyMail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3892150/Did-Donald-Trump-secret-server-communicating-Moscow-Computer-scientists-uncovers-sustained-relationship-Trump-Organization-Russian-bank.html

Trump and his 'new woman' in 1996
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/03/trump-russia-senate-report-mueller/

[broncofan]

So yes, I honestly think that the sole reason Trump didn't want his tax returns made public is because they are going to show that he exaggerated his wealth. It's just that simple, IMHO, but we will find out soon enough.

Far as "dubious devices to avoid paying tax," no American is going to hold that against him, we all do it. Paying as little tax as possible within the bounds of the law is the American way.
His tax returns might show that he is a poor investor but won't tell us his net worth, which would be difficult to calculate for a number of reasons anyway. He can claim huge losses because he makes large vanity investments and doesn't make great returns.

Special emphasis on within the bounds of the law. Everybody is entitled to make good faith arguments for why they should qualify for deductions or even better tax credits. They can make arguments for why they can defer recognition of some kinds of income. But the characterizations cannot be false. Yes everybody wants the maximum in deductions and the minimum in income or failing that, deferral of recognition. Do the characterizations he makes reflect economic reality?

Are they at all consistent with characterizations he makes when he applies for loans? If he consistently shows losses and is only able to service his debt by securing more debt isn't it close to a pyramid scheme? I take it he has enough equity in his properties that even if banks stop lending to him he can probably salvage a lot of value but I'm curious how he got these loans to begin with.

[broncofan]

2. That he has obtained financing from sources that he didn't want to be revealed.
This has to be the case. Banks do want to allocate a lot of money at a time if they can find a really credit-worthy businessman who carefully selects business ventures, the ventures consistently generate cash flow that is much greater than the mortgage payments and the collateral is worth much more than the loans. We know this isn't Trump.

First, a bank would be concerned about whether they can get a personal guarantee given that his businesses have declared bankruptcy. Wouldn't they want to know what that personal guarantee is worth? Wouldn't they be concerned about other lenders and the priority of creditors if Trump goes belly up? How is someone who declares enormous carry forward losses getting loans for buildings that would not be easy to sell in foreclosure and are not managed in a way that they generate good yields?

Banks make stupid decisions and banking regulation is important for this reason but there are millions of people they can lend to who provide a better risk-adjusted return.

[Stavros]

But in the 1990s no US bank would lend Trump even a dime, so where did he get the money from to open Trump SoHo if it wasn't through Felix Sater's 'connections'?

[Nick Danger]

His tax returns might show that he is a poor investor but won't tell us his net worth, which would be difficult to calculate for a number of reasons anyway. He can claim huge losses because he makes large vanity investments and doesn't make great returns.

Special emphasis on within the bounds of the law. Everybody is entitled to make good faith arguments for why they should qualify for deductions or even better tax credits. They can make arguments for why they can defer recognition of some kinds of income. But the characterizations cannot be false. Yes everybody wants the maximum in deductions and the minimum in income or failing that, deferral of recognition. Do the characterizations he makes reflect economic reality?

Are they at all consistent with characterizations he makes when he applies for loans? If he consistently shows losses and is only able to service his debt by securing more debt isn't it close to a pyramid scheme? I take it he has enough equity in his properties that even if banks stop lending to him he can probably salvage a lot of value but I'm curious how he got these loans to begin with.

I definitely remember Trump claiming a net worth of >$10 billion. It was around the time he was just threatening to throw his hat in the ring and making claims of being a genius and so forth, I mean he's always been a braggart. So that's been out there, for years, that $10 billion figure, and no one really talks about it. A lot of people questioned it but then all of a sudden he was running for president and talking about building a wall on the Mexican border and it was kinda forgotten.

I don't recall his net worth being brought up by him or the media at any point during his presidency, though I'm not a news freak or anything so I could have missed something. But as far as I know, the guy claims to be worth $10 billion, and as far as Trump's concerned, he made everyone believe he was worth $10 billion and that's the end of that.

Now, obviously, we're going to find out if he was telling the truth or not. Enough people are far enough up Trump's ass right now that, armed with his tax returns, they will have all the data necessary to put a precise figure on Trump's net worth.

My opinion is that Trump isn't stupid enough to do anything outright illegal. The guy is so cocky and so public that he's essentially had a target painted on his forehead his entire adult life. I think he's been very, very careful not to give anyone a legitimate reason to take him down, because if they could have, they would have. If my opinion is correct, there's only one reason I can think of that he wouldn't want those tax returns made public.

[filghy2]

My opinion is that Trump isn't stupid enough to do anything outright illegal. The guy is so cocky and so public that he's essentially had a target painted on his forehead his entire adult life. I think he's been very, very careful not to give anyone a legitimate reason to take him down, because if they could have, they would have. If my opinion is correct, there's only one reason I can think of that he wouldn't want those tax returns made public.

That doesn't seem consistent with what you said previously.


Well how 'bout this, Giovanni - I'm much more critical of Donald Trump than you'll ever be. I've been following his antics for decades, I know he's a near-pathological liar, a cheat, an egomaniac, a bully, and an insatiable pussy-hound. He's impulsive, it's an absolute miracle he hasn't been charged with a crime in his lifetime. And he's absolutely sociopathic when it comes to business, he once cheated a great uncle of mine out of tens of thousands of dollars on a plumbing contract - my uncle just couldn't afford to fight him in court, and my uncle was rich af. Trump is also mobbed up, you can't be in Manhattan real estate and not get a little mafia on you; also, to be totally forthcoming, if he did business with my great uncle, he's fucking mobbed up.

We are talking about a man who stupid enough to think that Mike Pence could overturn the election result for him.

[Nick Danger]

That doesn't seem consistent with what you said previously.

I love that you're a fan of mine, Flighty.

I admit that before his presidency I thought Trump was dirty, in a vulnerable way. I know for a fact he did business with the mob, but that in itself does not mean he's committed a crime. NYC is full of people who got rich off the efforts of mobsters who are now rotting in prison but that doesn't necessarily mean that they themselves did something illegal. Doing business with a criminal is not a crime of itself.

But after watching 4 years of the Democratic Party mustering the full strength of the American media against him, using all the resources at their disposal to bring him down, and failing...well, I have to assume at this point that there is no dirt. Or if there is, Trump has been very smart about it. Here's a good example of what I'm talking about: This is a picture of Donald Trump and well-known mob lawyer Roy Cohn. It carries some implications with it. Cohn represented both Carmine Galante and Anthony Salerno, both NYC family bosses.

1301846

So you've got pictures of Trump with a lawyer. But you'll never find a picture of Trump with Galante or Salerno.

I'll tell you something else too, Flighty - I think you're going to have to get used to saying "President Trump" again in 2024.

1301847

[broncofan]

If he's prosecuted it is likely to be at the state level (specifically New York). Even if it's appropriate it would not look right to have Biden's Justice department pursue him.

I would not be surprised if he has committed multiple counts of fraud. We'll see. The tax documents are possibly being subpoenaed only to compare disclosures he's made elsewhere. This is a good article on the subject. I'm guessing fraud in his loan documents, but we'll see.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-prosecutors-investigating-trumps-manhattan-properties-11613241198

[broncofan]

It carries some implications with it. Cohn represented both Carmine Galante and Anthony Salerno, both NYC family bosses.

It carries no implications whatsoever even though Cohn was an awful person. You have someone who has had a half dozen business bankruptcies that ended up screwing creditors, who declares huge losses in his personal tax documents getting loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Even thinking about it from an underwriting standpoint is irritating. I don't put much value in the Trump personal brand but if a bank had to foreclose on a Trump building they own an overpriced, gaudy, illiquid piece of real estate that doesn't have the Trump brand.

Take this statement below. Do you think a bank would want to loan to Trump without a personal guarantee. This doesn't sound like someone who's careful, it sounds like someone who admits they use the corporate form and bankruptcy laws to defraud creditors. If a bank had gone after him a statement like this would almost be a justification to pierce the corporate veil.

"I've used the laws of this country to pare debt. ... We'll have the company. We'll throw it into a chapter. We'll negotiate with the banks. We'll make a fantastic deal. You know, it's like on The Apprentice. It's not personal. It's just business."

[tslvr]

Gas price on 1/19/20 at my local station, 2 bucks a gallon, today the price is $2.73.

[Nick Danger]

It carries no implications whatsoever even though Cohn was an awful person. You have someone who has had a half dozen business bankruptcies that ended up screwing creditors, who declares huge losses in his personal tax documents getting loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Even thinking about it from an underwriting standpoint is irritating. I don't put much value in the Trump personal brand but if a bank had to foreclose on a Trump building they own an overpriced, gaudy, illiquid piece of real estate that doesn't have the Trump brand.

Take this statement below. Do you think a bank would want to loan to Trump without a personal guarantee. This doesn't sound like someone who's careful, it sounds like someone who admits they use the corporate form and bankruptcy laws to defraud creditors. If a bank had gone after him a statement like this would almost be a justification to pierce the corporate veil.

"I've used the laws of this country to pare debt. ... We'll have the company. We'll throw it into a chapter. We'll negotiate with the banks. We'll make a fantastic deal. You know, it's like on The Apprentice. It's not personal. It's just business."

You are really trashing Trump's credit-worthiness, Bronco. And hell, you might be right. YET, he has become wealthy - to whatever extent - doing business like he does it.

Not sure what you do for a living, Bronco, but if you're in business for yourself then you should know very well that it's strictly dog-eat-dog. It's a game, but it's a life-or-death game. Bankruptcy is a strategy. I've never filed but I've threatened it, and I've had people threaten me with it.

The conversation goes like this - "Nick, if I can't get that money by the end of the month I'm gonna have to take you to court."

"Well goddamn Bob, you know you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip, if you do that I'm gonna have to go Chapter 11. You're running me out of business here."

"Well, fuck, when CAN you pay me?"

And everybody eventually gets their money.

People who don't play the game don't understand that business is essentially an adult extension of schoolyard brinksmanship.

Laws and regulations are there for a reason. They're simply the rules of the game. The reason everyone hates lawyers is that their entire profession constitutes the effort to make those rules work for their clients.

If you play by the rules - even if you stretch the intention of those rules to your own benefit - you are still doing business. Step outside them and you've entered the realm of criminality. I think if Trump has stepped outside them, he's done so ever-so-gently and carefully.

[broncofan]

I understand that when a business is nearly insolvent banks will negotiate with them so that they can get paid without foreclosing their assets. People probably do threaten to declare bankruptcy as a way of inducing flexibility. I am not used to hearing such naked statements about people throwing a company into chapter 11 to pare debt because it sounds like the business isn't really at risk of insolvency.

If you threaten financial institutions with declaring business bankruptcy in order to renegotiate debt you damage your credit-worthiness and would make them want to value all of your assets before lending to you. I am not so worried about his creditworthiness as what would induce a bank to lend to him. If he lied about the value of his assets to a bank that is fraud. That's the important point here.

[broncofan]

Gas price on 1/19/20 at my local station, 2 bucks a gallon, today the price is $2.73.
This is ingenious. Biden made your gas prices go up in the month since his inauguration. BTW you mean 1/19/2021. But on that date my local cvs sold toothpaste for 3.59. Today it is selling for 3.29 because Biden negotiated with the fluoride wholesalers.

[Nick Danger]

I understand that when a business is nearly insolvent banks will negotiate with them so that they can get paid without foreclosing their assets. People probably do threaten to declare bankruptcy as a way of inducing flexibility. I am not used to hearing such naked statements about people throwing a company into chapter 11 to pare debt because it sounds like the business isn't really at risk of insolvency.

If you threaten financial institutions with declaring business bankruptcy in order to renegotiate debt you damage your credit-worthiness and would make them want to value all of your assets before lending to you. I am not so worried about his creditworthiness as what would induce a bank to lend to him. If he lied about the value of his assets to a bank that is fraud. That's the important point here.

Has nothing to do with solvency, Bronco, it's merely a question of cashflow. I'll provide an example with some over-simplified numbers.

I buy $1000 worth of aluminum from you. I get your bill and it's due on the 15th. But gold is at a low and I'd like to get a piece of that. Armed with the knowledge that I can probably talk you into waiting until next month to get paid, I use your $1000 to buy $1000 worth of gold. On the 16th we'll be talking, and that's when the game begins - maybe you put so much pressure on me that I'm forced to divest to get you paid, or maybe I convince you that it's in your best interest to wait til next month for your money. The same guy I'm pleading poverty to is probably simultaneously pleading poverty to his guy and may very well be doing so for the exact same reason I'm doing it. In the end, though, I come out ahead by doing a little negotiating instead of giving my creditor instant gratification.

I once had to find a new magnesium supplier because I put mine off one too many times. But simple solution, I DID find a new magnesium supplier. Meanwhile my old supplier has lost business because he decided the headache wasn't worth it. So, okay, move on.

Like I said, it's a game. Everyone plays it, some people play it a hell of a lot better than I do and I'm more often on the receiving end - a business bottom. But when I can get on top, I do.

[broncofan]

I'm over on the Viper thread now! I'll respond to this over there but I only have ten minutes until later tonight.

[filghy2]

I love that you're a fan of mine, Flighty.

I am a fan of the character Nick Danger, though more for entertainment than for educational purposes. How closely that character is related to the real person doing the typing I do not know - I'm sure there is some degree of deliberate exaggeration. If I didn't know already that the USA is full of crazy people I would have assumed you were just pulling our legs for fun.

[Nick Danger]

I am a fan of the character Nick Danger, though more for entertainment than for educational purposes. How closely that character is related to the real person doing the typing I do not know - I'm sure there is some degree of deliberate exaggeration. If I didn't know already that the USA is full of crazy people I would have assumed you were just pulling our legs for fun.

And that's the extent to which you're brainwashed, Flighty. I've offered you nothing but common sense conservatism, and you view that as so nonsensical that it must be a joke.

I do exaggerate, we know this. But there's a grain of truth in everything I say.

[broncofan]

And that's the extent to which you're brainwashed, Flighty. I've offered you nothing but common sense conservatism, and you view that as so nonsensical that it must be a joke.

I do exaggerate, we know this. But there's a grain of truth in everything I say.
Principled conservative ideas Nick. Your exaggerations are ways of saying anything goes when your guy does it. It is tearing this country apart. But where are the conservative ideas?

Surely the core of conservatism isn't
1. denying the consensus among epidemiologists about public health measures in a pandemic
2. stoking violent insurrection and then blaming antifa for it
3. making up claims of election fraud to threaten the peaceful transition of power
4. accusing the media of being biased when it reports these outrages

Your movement has descended into a pit of self-pity, self-delusion, and conspiracism. Come back to planet earth.

[tslvr]

This is ingenious. Biden made your gas prices go up in the month since his inauguration. BTW you mean 1/19/2021. But on that date my local cvs sold toothpaste for 3.59. Today it is selling for 3.29 because Biden negotiated with the fluoride wholesalers.

I did not say Biden made the gas prices go up, I was just posting my thought for the day which was gas has changed 73 cents in a month and I'm wondering why? My thought for today is, I wonder why 30 democratic members of congress are asking the president to give up total control of the nuclear football, which I believe is against the constitution.

[Nick Danger]

Principled conservative ideas Nick. Your exaggerations are ways of saying anything goes when your guy does it. It is tearing this country apart. But where are the conservative ideas?

Surely the core of conservatism isn't
1. denying the consensus among epidemiologists about public health measures in a pandemic
2. stoking violent insurrection and then blaming antifa for it
3. making up claims of election fraud to threaten the peaceful transition of power
4. accusing the media of being biased when it reports these outrages

Your movement has descended into a pit of self-pity, self-delusion, and conspiracism. Come back to planet earth.

The core of conservatism, the core of conservatism... It's definitely not Trumpism, Trumpism is its own thing that's more about America First than anything else.

I'll tell you how I see conservatism. Others might see it differently but to me it's strictly economic in nature. However much I might disagree with some non-economic conservative policies, or agree with some liberal morality policies, liberal fiscal policy is so ridiculous to me that I only really have one option politically.

Here are, to me, the 3 over-simplified conservative fiscal principles:

1. No charity. Get a job, start a business, run for office, or jump off a cliff, those are the four true outcomes - people passing on the first 3 options but not taking the 4th is the reason we still have Democrats. Obviously some people become unable to work, or are born unable to work. Those are the exceptions, society has an obligation there. But if you're able-bodied, you ain't getting shit from the government. Ass, grass, or gas, no one rides for free.

2. The least possible government regulation of business. Let the market decide. If people feel so strongly about the environment, they should let their checkbook do the talking. Nobody is holding anyone at gunpoint and forcing them to buy gas from Exxon, or from anyone for that matter. You think we're killing the planet with emissions, fine. Walk. You believe in LGBTQ rights, don't patronize businesses that don't. You believe small business is important, keep your fat, flabby, wrinkled ass out of Walmart. Don't like the way Harvey Weinstein treats women? Don't go see his movies. If everyone simply let their purchasing power speak for them, all our human rights and environmental issues would automatically adjust themselves to the satisfaction of the majority.

3. Low taxes on the wealthy. Give the job creators and innovators a good reason to stay solidly right here in the USA.

That's it. It's not complicated, it's parenting. Conservatives are the ones who stop you from eating all the cookies and feeding the brussel sprouts to the dog. Conservatives are the ones who send you to bed even though Real Housewives of West Virginia is coming on. Conservatives are the ones who spank you for shitty grades.

You don't like it. But it's good for you.

[filghy2]

I've offered you nothing but common sense conservatism.

I do exaggerate, we know this.

Conspiracy theories and lurid Chicken Little predictions must be common sense conservatism then. Or was that another of your exaggerations?

[filghy2]

2. The least possible government regulation of business. Let the market decide. If people feel so strongly about the environment, they should let their checkbook do the talking. Nobody is holding anyone at gunpoint and forcing them to buy gas from Exxon, or from anyone for that matter. You think we're killing the planet with emissions, fine. Walk. You believe in LGBTQ rights, don't patronize businesses that don't. You believe small business is important, keep your fat, flabby, wrinkled ass out of Walmart. Don't like the way Harvey Weinstein treats women? Don't go see his movies. If everyone simply let their purchasing power speak for them, all our human rights and environmental issues would automatically adjust themselves to the satisfaction of the majority.

Your next economics lesson. You're about 100 years out of date this time. Your economic ideas are just a simplistic parody of economics that bears no relationship to the real world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

[Nick Danger]

Your next economics lesson. You're about 100 years out of date this time. Your economic ideas are just a simplistic parody of economics that bears no relationship to the real world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

I knew it. You ARE Tipper Gore.

Also, make your damn argument, Flighty, IF you have one. I'm not gonna spend half my night reading your links. You don't see me saying, "My argument is this guy's essay, go read it and then argue back at me." For fuck's sake.

[filghy2]

Also, make your damn argument, Flighty, IF you have one. I'm not gonna spend half my night reading your links. You don't see me saying, "My argument is this guy's essay, go read it and then argue back at me." For fuck's sake.

You can't be bothered reading links yet you post several long diatribes every day that I assume you expect somebody to read. Wordiness seems to be the one trait you have in common with Stavros.

To put it simply, people who don't give a shit about the environment, etc impose costs on the rest. That's like your neighbour throwing trash over the fence into your yard. They also get to free-ride because they get some of the benefit from the people who do care without paying any of the costs. That's called market failure. Leaving it to the market to fix market failure is a non sequitur.

[filghy2]

I did not say Biden made the gas prices go up, I was just posting my thought for the day which was gas has changed 73 cents in a month and I'm wondering why?

Probably because the price of crude oil has been rising due to increased demand. It's not likely you will find a better answer on this forum than you would by just googling.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/oil-prices-are-rising-here-are-next-steps-for-producers-51614254401

[Nick Danger]

You can't be bothered reading links yet you post several long diatribes every day that I assume you expect somebody to read. Wordiness seems to be the one trait you have in common with Stavros.

You can see, right Flighty? I mean, when you see one of my posts, you can see how long it is before you even start reading it, yes? So it is certainly your choice whether to read a long post or not. What I've noticed about your posts is that they've gotten shorter and shorter over the past few days until we're now at the point where you're just posting links. I understand. Like Steve Martin once said, "Some people have a way with words, and other people just not have way."


To put it simply, people who don't give a shit about the environment, etc impose costs on the rest. That's like your neighbour throwing trash over the fence into your yard. They also get to free-ride because they get some of the benefit from the people who do care without paying any of the costs. That's called market failure. Leaving it to the market to fix market failure is a non sequitur.

Yep, that's the classic argument for the Nanny State all right, Tipper.

The conservative solution to your garbage analogy there would be that the individual who was getting dumped on address the problem with the neighbor himself. But yeah, fixing your own problems is hard.

[Nick Danger]

To put it simply, people who don't give a shit about the environment, etc impose costs on the rest. That's like your neighbour throwing trash over the fence into your yard. They also get to free-ride because they get some of the benefit from the people who do care without paying any of the costs. That's called market failure. Leaving it to the market to fix market failure is a non sequitur.

As I was saying previously, if people just put their money where their mouth is, we wouldn't have these problems.

Let's look at this problem of the environment. Now I'm going to say that about half the people on the planet don't give a flying fuck about the environment. They all have their reasons, be it simple lack of knowledge about the issue, active unconcern for the fate of future generations, disbelief that we are the cause of the problem, or disbelief that there even is a problem.

The other half of the people are concerned, and outwardly, this half certainly give the appearance (i.e., "signal the virtue") that they are willing to take measures to correct the problem.

So that being the case, I can tell you, right now and right here in this post, how we can IMMEDIATELY cut environmental pollution in half, planet-wide. Have you already figured it out, Flighty? WRONG, it's not "Kill all the Republicans."

[broncofan]

The conservative solution to your garbage analogy there would be that the individual who was getting dumped on address the problem with the neighbor himself.
Is that what happened to Rand Paul? What about public drinking water that gets polluted? Or when a business operates for 20 years dispersing carcinogenic material in the air? How does the market solve that problem if the business owner is out of business by the time people develop cancer?

How about banks? They get insurance on deposits they collect. Should we stop doing that because it operates as a subsidy to the bank? I can tell you that I would not accept the paltry interest rate I get on my checking account if there was a chance the bank could lose my money. So shouldn't they have some restrictions on the investments they make as a trade-off for the subsidy they get?

And insurance companies? Should we not regulate them? They get to charge premiums, invest those premiums in all sorts of illiquid and risky investments and then when people make a claim they can just declare bankruptcy? Maybe it will be their way of paring debt:)

Read the externality link. It provides food for thought. It's only the beginning of you expanding your horizons;

[Nick Danger]

Is that what happened to Rand Paul? What about public drinking water that gets polluted? Or when a business operates for 20 years dispersing carcinogenic material in the air? How does the market solve that problem if the business owner is out of business by the time people develop cancer?

How about banks? They get insurance on deposits they collect. Should we stop doing that because it operates as a subsidy to the bank? I can tell you that I would not accept the paltry interest rate I get on my checking account if there was a chance the bank could lose my money. So shouldn't they have some restrictions on the investments they make as a trade-off for the subsidy they get?

And insurance companies? Should we not regulate them? They get to charge premiums, invest those premiums in all sorts of illiquid and risky investments and then when people make a claim they can just declare bankruptcy? Maybe it will be their way of paring debt:)

Read the externality link. It provides food for thought. It's only the beginning of you expanding your horizons;

I did read the link, Bronco, I just want Flighty to be an adult and make his own argument.

Of course there are some problems that have to be addressed by the government. If I didn't believe that I'd be a Libertarian. Human weakness is a real thing. You can't rely on people to be altruistic with their money or their vote. What you can rely on is people hypocritically whining about problems that they themselves are helping to create.

But I said "minimum possible government regulation of business" and that's what I believe in.

Look at this problem of the Keystone pipeline project. It's canceled now because special interests got the attention of the American public via the liberal-owned media, and spun a picture of the situation that simply isn't true. There are problems with oil pipelines, true enough. But not nearly as many problems as the next best method of moving that oil, which is rail. Big environmental victory - the consensus is that a spill is now going to be 4.5 times more likely. It also cost the American economy 8000 jobs and $900 million in GDP, and that's aside from the 10,400 jobs that completing the project would have created. Not to mention the nearly incalculable cost of simply scrapping the pipeline that's already been laid.

That's liberal economics. Stupid. Counterproductive. Virtue-Signaling.

[Nick Danger]

My Thought For The Day: Hypocrite much, Democrats?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/us/politics/biden-mbs-khashoggi.html

OH! There's a COST to holding Mohammed bin Salman accountable for Jamal Khashoggi's death! Biden must not have realized that when he was campaigning behind doing it.

[filghy2]

For all my talk about Trump being above the law, he actually isn't. He'll never be able to pass a piece of legislation stating that all Americans must worship him as a god.

Looks like it's going to be compulsory in the Republican party though. They've made a golden statue just like in the Bible. Time for you to invest in a pair of knee pads.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/2/26/22302887/trump-cpac-2021-republican-gold-statue

[filghy2]

As I was saying previously, if people just put their money where their mouth is, we wouldn't have these problems.

Let's look at this problem of the environment. Now I'm going to say that about half the people on the planet don't give a flying fuck about the environment. They all have their reasons, be it simple lack of knowledge about the issue, active unconcern for the fate of future generations, disbelief that we are the cause of the problem, or disbelief that there even is a problem.

The other half of the people are concerned, and outwardly, this half certainly give the appearance (i.e., "signal the virtue") that they are willing to take measures to correct the problem.

So that being the case, I can tell you, right now and right here in this post, how we can IMMEDIATELY cut environmental pollution in half, planet-wide. Have you already figured it out, Flighty? WRONG, it's not "Kill all the Republicans."

There are plenty of people who already do put their money where their mouth is: ie they choose more environmentally-friendly options even though they may be more expensive. The problem is that it doesn't go far enough for the reasons already explained. Leaving it to individuals to fix the environment is not an effective or efficient solution.

There is no puzzle about how to reduce environmental pollution - some mix of environmental taxes and regulation - so it's just a question of political will. Cleaner energy sources and technologies exist and their cost is falling. If fossil fuels are cheaper it is only because there is a hidden cost in pollution that the user does not currently pay.

The principled conservative approach would be to impose environmental taxes that reflect these costs and leave it to the market to find the most efficient way to reduce pollution. If you won't believe me, perhaps you should take notice of these people who have worked for Republican administrations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opinion/a-conservative-case-for-climate-action.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/07/politics/republicans-climate-change/index.html

[filghy2]

Like Steve Martin once said, "Some people have a way with words, and other people just not have way."


My Thought For The Day: Hypocrite much, Democrats?

It seems that some people have a way of using nouns for verbs (eg "learn to economy"). Did you learn to English at school?

[Stavros]

Some thoughts on the CPAC in Florida, some of which I have watched.

1) A panel discussion on 'voter fraud' -I can't recall who took part, but what struck me about it was that, even when one panellist claimed there is aways voter fraud to some degree, and he suggested it was both deliberate and accidental, the primary discussion suggested in 2020 a) there was widespread voter fraud, and b) it was Democrats using fraudulent means to guarantee a victory by Joe Biden. But why? Why is voter fraud apparently exclusive to Democrats, or is it that they are better at fraud than the Republicans? It is an argument that has no substance and no logic. And if the Republicans are so bad at fixing elections, are they going to use fraudulent means in 2020?

2) I watched the speech by Senator Rafael Cruz, though part of it was blacked out for some reason. On the petty side, he needs a haircut, he needs to shave off the beard, and to lose weight. Whoever told him to hold the mike and walk around isn't aware that for public speakers, this suggests a man who walks from a to b because he is unsure of himself, or worse, is angry about something.

On the substance, insofar as there was any, he claimed 'the radical left and Socialists now control the Presidency, the Senate and the House' or words to that effect, and that their aim is to 'change the country'. He used that terrifying image to describe the proposed changes that would transform Americans into obedient robots who all think the same, claiming without a shred of ridiculous laughter in his voice for that reason the Republican Party is the party of diversity! On the protection of individual liberty, to protect it, the Republicans are going to 'fight' which has ominous echoes of January 6th.

3) On the matter of individual liberty and change, this I think is where the so-called Conservatives have run aground. The origins of the American Revolution are Liberal in politics. To be a Conservative in 1776 was to support British America as a colony of the Crown, King George its head of state. The politics that rebelled against Monarchy, which created a Republic, was Liberal in the sense that existed at the time, where a Liberal state is one that establishes Government and the Rule of Law as the framework of the state and allows the individual the right to be free from government, on the understanding that they will respect the rule of law and not harm others, and that the government will be of their choosing and not imposed upon them.

One can sense the way in which, as the United States evolved, 'to conserve' has meant to conserve the Constitution and its principles and values, thus placing the American Conservative in the paradoxical position of conserving a Liberal Constitution. This is where change comes in.

For change it seems, has meant that Liberal politics as it is now understood in the US, requires the very extension of Government into people's lives the 'Founding Fathers' opposed. It began with taxation, and has continued with various mechanisms, temporary or permanent -the draft in times of war is a temporary example, requiring individuals to have a social security no. is a more permanent one.

If a polarisation began with the New Deal Administration of FDR which, for exampe, sanctioned Federal expenditure on the Arts, and was extended by LB Johnson's Great Society Programme and the War on Poverty, particularly with extensions to welfare, then one can understand Conservatism as opposing this expansion of Government services funded by the tax payer, on the basis that if the USA is to be a country of laws and free markets, then individuals must look after themselves within the law, and not expect taxes and taxpayers to reward failure. Welfare at a basic level can exist to prevent hunger and destitution, as can happen if people lose their job, or through tornado, hurricane or fire, their home- thus welfare becomes a temporary bridge from crisis to restoration.

But as the USA changes organically -immigrants arrive, have children, who have children -the question of change can become a weapon on the basis it is not change Conservatives want. Immigrants A are fine, but Immigrants B are not -select a winner, or loser. But does this mean that in policy terms, Conservatives should oppose immigration, and not just illegal immigration, where, as Rafael Cruz claimed yesterday immigrants are sending their children unaccompanied across the southern border?

And shoud these Conservatives not be focused on the expansion of the State and thus be opposed to all welfare other than a most basic form of subsistence? Because neither in the last four years, nor so far at CPAC have I heard an extensive critique of welfare, but there has been a lot of waffle about voter fraud, 'cancel culture' and the threats to liberty posed by America's 'radical left' and 'Socialists'.

This incoherence I have noticed for some time (we have it in the UK too), made worse by the fact that Donald Trump is not a Conservative, and isn't a Liberal either. He and his family have lived on a form of welfare for the rich that is how bankruptcy law operates at the corporate level, just as the family apartment blocks and condos were built usng other people's money, and through State and Federal loans, including other tax-payer's money -where is the Conservative policy to end Government funding of such investments, to demand that entrepeneurs use their own money to take a risk in the market?

And that is without touching on the gerrymandered boundaries of Electoral Districts, the purging of Electoral Rolls, Voter ID and other forms of suppression which suggest the politics of the USSR and East Germany rather than a free country.

Conservative? Meaning what?

[broncofan]

My thought of the day is a bit on the self-indulgent side. Lauren Boebert, the insurrection promoting congresswoman, looks a lot like a girl I knew and wanted to have sex with. The likeness is especially strong in her mugshot. What's worse is the girl was also kind of mean and kind of stupid. So in the interests of fairness I will recuse myself when she comes up. I know Nick Danger feels the same way about Nancy Pelosi so it wouldn't be a bad idea if he did the same there.

[filghy2]

The conservative solution to your garbage analogy there would be that the individual who was getting dumped on address the problem with the neighbor himself. But yeah, fixing your own problems is hard.

Let's consider a concrete example. Suppose a big factory sets up near your house. There's no regulation so it's noisy and smelly and they can operate 24/7. How would you propose to go about fixing the problem yourself?

[filghy2]

My thought of the day is a bit on the self-indulgent side. Lauren Boebert, the insurrection promoting congresswoman, looks a lot like a girl I knew and wanted to have sex with. The likeness is especially strong in her mugshot. What's worse is the girl was also kind of mean and kind of stupid. So in the interests of fairness I will recuse myself when she comes up. I know Nick Danger feels the same way about Nancy Pelosi so it wouldn't be a bad idea if he did the same there.

I never checked Lauren Boebert's picture before, but she's not bad looking for a complete arsehole. Nancy looked okay in her younger days too, so I could understand Nick having some repressed sexual fantasies. He definitely has obsessive fantasies about being disciplined by Tipper Gore.

[filghy2]

2) I watched the speech by Senator Rafael Cruz, though part of it was blacked out for some reason. On the petty side, he needs a haircut, he needs to shave off the beard, and to lose weight. Whoever told him to hold the mike and walk around isn't aware that for public speakers, this suggests a man who walks from a to b because he is unsure of himself, or worse, is angry about something.

Perhaps he's trying to look like the working class voters he seems to be trying to appeal to.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/27/republicans-trump-blue-collar-comeback-working-people
Let's not forget that this man would have been the Republican candidate in 2016 if there had been no Trump.

Did this conference include any discussion of policies to improve the lives of ordinary Americans or how to win over people who didn't vote for them last year?

It looks like the remaining issue of interest will be whether Trump tips a bucket over Kevin McCarthy despite the latter's recent efforts to reingratiate himself. What does it say about a man when he abases himself before someone who showed complete indifference to his welfare?
https://www.vox.com/2021/2/27/22304757/kevin-mccarthy-cpac-trump

[Nick Danger]

There are plenty of people who already do put their money where their mouth is: ie they choose more environmentally-friendly options even though they may be more expensive. The problem is that it doesn't go far enough for the reasons already explained. Leaving it to individuals to fix the environment is not an effective or efficient solution.

There is no puzzle about how to reduce environmental pollution - some mix of environmental taxes and regulation - so it's just a question of political will. Cleaner energy sources and technologies exist and their cost is falling. If fossil fuels are cheaper it is only because there is a hidden cost in pollution that the user does not currently pay.

The principled conservative approach would be to impose environmental taxes that reflect these costs and leave it to the market to find the most efficient way to reduce pollution. If you won't believe me, perhaps you should take notice of these people who have worked for Republican administrations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opinion/a-conservative-case-for-climate-action.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/07/politics/republicans-climate-change/index.html

Here's the thing about environmental pollution though, Bronco, and bear with me here because I'm going to speak some raw truth first but then I'm going to mitigate it by taking your side. Somewhat.

As long as there is a QUESTION of whether or not we are destroying the environment, no one has the right to impose their will on anyone else environmentally.

Because see what you have right now is a relatively small group of environmental activists trying to get their way. Politically, it's no different from a small group of white supremacists trying to get slavery reinstated, or a small group of flat-earthers trying to get globes outlawed. It's the few trying to impose their will on the many.

You can't convince anyone of anything with "scientific evidence" anymore because all the people we're supposed to be able to trust have been proven time and time again to be full of shit, including many so-called experts. That's the big problem with government and media bullshit - it creates an atmosphere in which nothing true can be advanced because no one knows what the truth is anymore. Am I supposed to turn my life upside down because some weird angry German girl and Al Gore say we're killing the planet? They could be right. On the other hand, I need aluminum, magnesium, titanium, and steel in order to make a living. Who am I to argue about the methods people use to get it to me? And it's a BIG planet.

However, as I've tried to express here before, I'm a reasoning and logical person. That's why I'm so sure Sandy Hook was a hoax, because I trust my own eyes and my own powers of perception. And my perception is, we certainly are doing a lot of damage to the environment. I guess that makes me an environmentally-conscious person. So then what? What are MY priorities. I don't have children. I'm 55 years old but from a pretty long-lived line so I've got maybe another 40 years on this planet. After that it doesn't matter to me at all what happens on Planet Earth.

That pretty much defaults my priority structure to not giving a fuck about Greta Thunberg's problems. Fact is, I'm pretty sure we're going to blow ourselves up long before we get a chance to destroy the planet, I'm amazed we haven't done it already. And even though I am convinced we are polluting the fuck out of the environment, I'm not at all convinced about man-made climate change. Climate change happens with or without our help, been happening for billions of years.

You might not agree with that, but you have to respect it, because I get the same vote as you. You can say, "But I do have children, and I do care about the future of humanity!" Well, that's you. You get a vote too. But it doesn't count more than mine just because you claim the moral high ground.

So that's what environmentalists are up against, Bronco. Not to mention the constant battle with their own blatant hypocrisy.

Still, I have no problem with taxes on polluters. Makes perfect sense. Taxing someone is not the same as telling them they can't do what they're doing. Know what else made perfect sense? Milk bottles. That big island of plastic waste in the Pacific is pretty ugly.

[Nick Danger]

Sorry Flighty I called you Bronco. Must be the tequila.

[Nick Danger]

Let's consider a concrete example. Suppose a big factory sets up near your house. There's no regulation so it's noisy and smelly and they can operate 24/7. How would you propose to go about fixing the problem yourself?

Interesting you ask me that, Flighty, because something just like that happened to me. There's an old ice cream factory in St. George not far from where I live. It was closed down for like a decade but then a company called Dean Foods bought it and started making ice cream there again.

And you might think, oh, ice cream, nice. BUT - the smell coming from that factory was ATROCIOUS! Imagine spoiled milk times 100, every time you walk out your door. Even inside you'd get a little of it.

So what did I do? I went right over there to the factory and talked to the plant manager. Guy named Dave Hugie. Dave seemed quite reasonable, he told me the smell was from ice cream waste in dumpsters that were supposed to be lined with plastic but weren't, the ice cream was melting and leaking into the ground and spoiling to create that smell (this turned out later to be a lie), and they were taking steps.

Weeks passed and the smell remained. My neighbors and I talked about it all the time - it was, in fact, pretty much all we talked about. I went over there again and talked to Dave Hugie and he again assured me steps were being taken - something about not being able to acquire plastic sheets large enough to line the dumpsters. Again, a lie.

Well, it became news. There was a story in the local paper about it, people raising hell, city council promising to look into it, the situation was deemed unacceptable.

The VERY NEXT DAY after that story came out in the paper, the smell was gone. Turns out, it had nothing to do with ice cream leaking out of dumpsters, and everything to do with the chemicals they were using to treat their waste. They were cutting costs by low-balling the amount of chemical they were using, and the smell was totally controllable all along if they'd simply decided to spend the extra money to fix the problem. It was strictly a bottom-line business decision.

So they were relying on people in the area to be tolerant. We weren't. And ultimately they had to take care of business. Nobody went to court, nobody filed a lawsuit, nobody made some new law - the problem got solved by me, my neighbors, and the local paper. That's what I'M talking about.

[Nick Danger]

It seems that some people have a way of using nouns for verbs (eg "learn to economy"). Did you learn to English at school?

I'll have you know I have two lovely plaques sitting in the bottom of a box somewhere that say the Strategic Air Command thinks I can English good.

[broncofan]

Interesting you ask me that, Flighty, because something just like that happened to me. There's an old ice cream factory in St. George not far from where I live. It was closed down for like a decade but then a company called Dean Foods bought it and started making ice cream there again.
My thought of the day is that you're either setting up an alibi or you're trying to frame us for something you do in St. George. I can just see the St. George cops grilling you and you say "it could have been anyone. There's a whole website of people I told my life story to. When they didn't show as much interest as I wanted I gave them my gps coordinates, three samples of hair, several copies of my fingerprints, and even some local esoteria about an ice cream store."

[filghy2]

Well, it became news. There was a story in the local paper about it, people raising hell, city council promising to look into it, the situation was deemed unacceptable.

The VERY NEXT DAY after that story came out in the paper, the smell was gone. Turns out, it had nothing to do with ice cream leaking out of dumpsters, and everything to do with the chemicals they were using to treat their waste. They were cutting costs by low-balling the amount of chemical they were using, and the smell was totally controllable all along if they'd simply decided to spend the extra money to fix the problem. It was strictly a bottom-line business decision.

So they were relying on people in the area to be tolerant. We weren't. And ultimately they had to take care of business. Nobody went to court, nobody filed a lawsuit, nobody made some new law - the problem got solved by me, my neighbors, and the local paper. That's what I'M talking about.

Some people might find it suspicious that you always happen to have a suitable anecdote for any issue. Putting that aside, it seems to me you've just made a good argument for regulation, especially as the company was prepared to lie just to save some money.

First, you don't think the threat of regulation being imposed by the council might have had something to do with their willingness to do the right thing belatedly?

Second, what exactly would have been the cost of requiring them to do this in the first place?

Third, how much time did you and your neighbours expend that could have been avoided had there been some kind of approval process requiring the company to show what it was going to do to avoid this kind of impact?

Finally, how many of the people making a fuss were the sort of virtue-signallers you normally like to deride?

[Nick Danger]

My thought of the day is that you're either setting up an alibi or you're trying to frame us for something you do in St. George. I can just see the St. George cops grilling you and you say "it could have been anyone. There's a whole website of people I told my life story to. When they didn't show as much interest as I wanted I gave them my gps coordinates, three samples of hair, several copies of my fingerprints, and even some local esoteria about an ice cream store."

Some people post pictures of their dicks on here, Bronco. I stop short of that. Here's some more for you - one of these kids is me:

1303898

[Nick Danger]

Some people might find it suspicious that you always happen to have a suitable anecdote for any issue. Putting that aside, it seems to me you've just made a good argument for regulation, especially as the company was prepared to lie just to save some money.

First, you don't think the threat of regulation being imposed by the council might have had something to do with their willingness to do the right thing belatedly?

Second, what exactly would have been the cost of requiring them to do this in the first place?

Third, how much time did you and your neighbours expend that could have been avoided had there been some kind of approval process requiring the company to show what it was going to do to avoid this kind of impact?

Finally, how many of the people making a fuss were the sort of virtue-signallers you normally like to deride?

Flighty, it seems to be a foreign concept to you that businesses cheat and lie. I don't doubt for a moment that all along, Dean Foods was intending to kill that smell the moment it started to smell like a community relations nightmare. I think they concocted a cover story they were expecting to have to tell to far fewer people, and they calculated the profit of using X amount of expensive chemical instead of Y amount. I think the one thing they didn't rely on was how far the smell was going to carry. Pretty sure this is all a matter of public record, aside from my evaluation of their motives.

[filghy2]

Flighty, it seems to be a foreign concept to you that businesses cheat and lie.

No, and that's an argument for regulation, not against.

If you want to know what things are like in a world without regulation I suggest you read this book on early 20th century USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle Or just go to any third-world country away from the tourist areas.

It seems your story does check out this time. https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2017/08/24/mgk-what-the-smell-little-valley-residents-scream-about-foul-odors/#.YDyEOU7itRZ

I realise public pressure does work sometimes. It's more likely to work when the impact is very noticeable (eg a foul smell) and the problem can be fixed without too much trouble. It also helps if the people affected are middle-class and reasonably well-educated, because those people are better at getting heard. It's less likely to work on things like climate change where the impacts are longer-term and there is no quick fix.

I think the noisy minority trying to impose their will on that issue might be people like you.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/

Greta Thunberg is Swedish, not German, btw

[filghy2]

Some people post pictures of their dicks on here, Bronco. I stop short of that. Here's some more for you - one of these kids is me:

1303898

You were in a Puerto Rican boy band?
https://www.latintimes.com/subete-mi-moto-history-menudo-drama-series-will-tell-story-successful-70s-latin-boy-425660
That seems a bit hard to believe.


Give you a perfect example - my own father. My father is a racist. He only knows one word for black people and it's the one you think it is. He's also got slurs for every other ethnicity from the Irish to the Puerto Ricans to the Japanese. He's old, obviously. And to be fair, he grew up in an Italian neighborhood of New York City which was strictly divided along racial lines. Not a single person I've ever met from that neighborhood is a bit different from my father.

[broncofan]

Wow. Good find. Seriously.

What the fuck Nick? Obviously it's not you but why say it is? Maybe you can spin an anecdote about how Democrats have raised taxes on boy bands and are the reason Justin Timberlake left n sync.

[Nick Danger]

Wow. Good find. Seriously.

What the fuck Nick? Obviously it's not you but why say it is? Maybe you can spin an anecdote about how Democrats have raised taxes on boy bands and are the reason Justin Timberlake left n sync.


You were in a Puerto Rican boy band?
https://www.latintimes.com/subete-mi-moto-history-menudo-drama-series-will-tell-story-successful-70s-latin-boy-425660
That seems a bit hard to believe.

Okay, I'm gonna 'fess up because it looks like I'm caught out anyway - I wasn't in Menudo.

[broncofan]

Okay, I'm gonna 'fess up because it looks like I'm caught out anyway - I wasn't in Menudo.
Hey we're all trying to relive our glory days. I never shared this with anyone here but I won a few tennis tournaments as a youth. Here's me as a blond Swede taking home my local usta championship. They really went all out with the trophies back then.

1304033

[broncofan]

Okay, I'm gonna 'fess up because it looks like I'm caught out anyway - I wasn't in Menudo.
My thought for the day is that yes it's a little embarrassing you were caught making stuff up. I personally think it's worse to say the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax than to pretend to be a boy band member though I understand how embarrassment works. I find some of what you say entertaining though the political content is often highly delusional.

I also liked the fact that you could be kind of affable. This section could use some of that though without letting the personal narratives get too outlandish (or the views too abhorrent). The somewhat sterile and unfriendly one-upsmanship of political conversations gets a bit old though I'm not sure what the answer is. Not fiction but a bit of color and some good will goes a long way. Have we seen the last of you?

[Stavros]

My thought for the day is that yes it's a little embarrassing you were caught making stuff up. I personally think it's worse to say the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax than to pretend to be a boy band member though I understand how embarrassment works. I find some of what you say entertaining though the political content is often highly delusional.

I also liked the fact that you could be kind of affable. This section could use some of that though without letting the personal narratives get too outlandish (or the views too abhorrent). The somewhat sterile and unfriendly one-upsmanship of political conversations gets a bit old though I'm not sure what the answer is. Not fiction but a bit of color and some good will goes a long way. Have we seen the last of you?


Swap 'Sandy Hook' for Auschwitz and ask yourself if you would be so lenient with someone telling you the Holocaust never happened. Then ask yourself why it is that an as yet unknow number of armed Law Enforcement Officers in the US are simultaenously members of the III Percenters and so proud to be so they have the Militia emblem sewn onto their uniforms -but are not fired for their dual membership of the Police and what ought to be a Domestic Terrorist group.

Then ask what percentage of Black Americans have been harassed, arrested and charged, injured or murdered by Law Enforcement Officers who are also III Percenters, or Proud Boys, or Oathkeepers or the KKK -are they not the equivalent of the Brown Shirts in the Weimar Republic but not as well organized? How many III Percenters and Oathkeepers are there in the Judiciary, Local Government? Are the USA's Black Amercian Citizens today the equivalent of Germany's Jews in the 1930s? From that perspective, there is nothing entertaining about anyone who through their sophisticated language of hate, targets their fellow citizens for abuse, and regards mass murder as a hoax.

Trump may have betrayed his most violent supporters, though at least one person on his staff may have been liaising with them on January 6th, but these Militias are not going away, and it is only a matter of time before they start killing people, individually or in groups. What will you do when their supporters tell you it is 'fake news' and it wasn't them but the 'deep state', or 'antifa' or Jews with Lasers Beamed in from Outer Space? Nothing entertaining here, but a lot to be worried about.

[broncofan]

Swap 'Sandy Hook' for Auschwitz and ask yourself if you would be so lenient with someone telling you the Holocaust never happened. Then ask yourself why it is that an as yet unknow number of armed Law Enforcement Officers in the US are simultaenously members of the III Percenters and so proud to be so they have the Militia emblem sewn onto their uniforms -but are not fired for their dual membership of the Police and what ought to be a Domestic Terrorist group.
Would I have described someone who is a Holocaust denier as entertaining but possessing loathsome views? Maybe I wouldn't have out of feelings of hurt but I would probably know it's possible and makes them dangerous.

Redvex said a number of things about Jews I didn't like and even posted a video of a Jewish caricature being shot and I still enjoyed debating her. I know it's not a good thing but often the presence of people saying things you know others believe provides an opportunity for debate. It would be better if nobody believed these things.

I agree I didn't have to compliment him as his affability is how he's able to peddle this stuff and he could be entertaining without being abhorrent.

I fully acknowledge the stuff he said is beyond the pale but after watching so many people vote for Trump I figured I have to deal with people whose views I find repugnant and sadly it is more interesting to have adversaries.

[broncofan]

Nothing entertaining here, but a lot to be worried about.
To be clear I found the anecdotes about swimming in the Mississippi and losing his id entertaining, not the mental health jibes, the racism, or the Sandy Hook truther-ism. If he's done posting it's because he's embarrassed about fabricating biographical facts, not because his views embarrass him.

[filghy2]

To be clear I found the anecdotes about swimming in the Mississippi and losing his id entertaining, not the mental health jibes, the racism, or the Sandy Hook truther-ism. If he's done posting it's because he's embarrassed about fabricating biographical facts, not because his views embarrass him.

Nick's past pattern of behaviour seems to involve short periods of intense posting followed by long periods of silence. I suspect he starts because he needs a distraction and then gets bored with it eventually. I would be surprised if he's stopped out of embarrassment at getting caught out because he doesn't seem easily embarrassable. Perhaps he was just looking for a pretext to quit.

I agree that his contributions have been entertaining, despite the many dubious elements (some of which may be deliberate trolling). Discussions can get a bit sterile when people agree on most things, so it's good to have somebody different to spice things up. His approach is far preferable to someone like Mr Fanti, who just repeats the same things and never engages with anyone else's responses.

I don't think he is personally a racist, though he is certainly inclined to minimise the role of racism on his own side and to believe stereotypes that confirm his political narrative about individual responsibility. I think he is a Republican supporter for the reasons he says, though this involves being wilfully blind to many things.

It's hard to know how to deal with people like Nick. When people are firmly committed to believing certain things due to political motivations it is extremely difficult to shift them with any kind of evidence. I don't think it's constructive, however, to refuse to engage with people because some of their views are abhorrent. There's no doubt that Nick's views are far from being an outlier in today's Republican Party, so if we can't engage with him we can't engage with too many people on the other side.

[broncofan]

I don't think he is personally a racist, though he is certainly inclined to minimise the role of racism on his own side and to believe stereotypes that confirm his political narrative about individual responsibility.

I agree though I'm sometimes nervous to make this category distinction just because I've been misunderstood doing it. There are people who even though they might not like being called racist, are more or less avowed racists. They use degrading language about minorities, they think minorities possess intrinsic characteristics, and see the world as being divided into different groups with antagonistic interests.

Then there are people who will occasionally engage in stereotyping without thinking they are and will minimize the effects of racism. They will agree in principle that racism is wrong but will define it out of existence except in obvious cases, which they'll acknowledge as though it's the epitome of enlightenment to do so.

It's not that I don't think the second category is wrong but it does sometimes leave a debate about whether one is minimizing racism or disagreeing about what its effects are. It also is less malicious so there's a greater chance they can be reached. I have a major problem with conspiracism but I'm not sure what the answer is there. I think you're right about the embarrassment thing....

[Nick Danger]

My thought for the day is that yes it's a little embarrassing you were caught making stuff up. I personally think it's worse to say the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax than to pretend to be a boy band member though I understand how embarrassment works. I find some of what you say entertaining though the political content is often highly delusional.

I also liked the fact that you could be kind of affable. This section could use some of that though without letting the personal narratives get too outlandish (or the views too abhorrent). The somewhat sterile and unfriendly one-upsmanship of political conversations gets a bit old though I'm not sure what the answer is. Not fiction but a bit of color and some good will goes a long way. Have we seen the last of you?

I should probably just go ahead and say, rather than imply, that the whole point of posting the Menudo picture and claiming to be ex-Menudo was to provide a frame of reference for truth vs deceit. Of course I wasn't in Menudo, I figured that much would be...pretty obvious (in fact, I rather thought YOU GUYS were embarassed by the fact you even bothered to call me out on it).

But that doesn't mean my neighbors and I didn't confront a huge corporation and get them to stop stinking up our neighborhood, or that I've made up anything else. I'm glad you enjoyed my story about jumping off the boat, it's an absolutely 100% true story and somewhere in Louisiana right now, there's probably some old man who was standing on that deck telling his grandchildren about that crazy guy who came flying out onto the deck and jumped overboard.

I truly don't get it - is it really that hard to swallow that someone could be a middle-aged middle class conservative? Sometimes you cats act as if I'm claiming to be the son of Zeus.

You (obviously) haven't seen the last of me, Bronco. Hell, I'm at your disposal! I'm always ready to jump into the conversation as soon as somebody says something that requires a conservative counterpoint. But since I am so often treated as an intrusive guest in any given liberal circle-jerk, I usually wait until someone yanks my chain before I start barking.


Swap 'Sandy Hook' for Auschwitz and ask yourself if you would be so lenient with someone telling you the Holocaust never happened.

Really Stavros? You went there? Are these two "events" so easily interchangable?

I'll tell you guys, I think Stavros may have lost it. Either that or he's taken a cue from the liberal media and decided to go full nazi on the virtue-signaling.


Nick's past pattern of behaviour seems to involve short periods of intense posting followed by long periods of silence. I suspect he starts because he needs a distraction and then gets bored with it eventually. I would be surprised if he's stopped out of embarrassment at getting caught out because he doesn't seem easily embarrassable. Perhaps he was just looking for a pretext to quit.

I agree that his contributions have been entertaining, despite the many dubious elements (some of which may be deliberate trolling). Discussions can get a bit sterile when people agree on most things, so it's good to have somebody different to spice things up. His approach is far preferable to someone like Mr Fanti, who just repeats the same things and never engages with anyone else's responses.

I don't think he is personally a racist, though he is certainly inclined to minimise the role of racism on his own side and to believe stereotypes that confirm his political narrative about individual responsibility. I think he is a Republican supporter for the reasons he says, though this involves being wilfully blind to many things.

It's hard to know how to deal with people like Nick. When people are firmly committed to believing certain things due to political motivations it is extremely difficult to shift them with any kind of evidence. I don't think it's constructive, however, to refuse to engage with people because some of their views are abhorrent. There's no doubt that Nick's views are far from being an outlier in today's Republican Party, so if we can't engage with him we can't engage with too many people on the other side.

You're a wise man, Flighty. Yes, ENGAGE the conservative force. Let it flow through you until you're flush with righteous indignation at the over-spending of the current administration.

Now though - I'm not sure where you guys got the impression that my racism or not-racism is on the table for discussion. My close friend Stan - a black, 6'4", 280-pound, tattoo-covered ex-Crip from Compton, would happily attest to the fact that I judge each man (quite harshly) on his own personal character. Oh sure, I know, you've got "a black friend" too. But my black friend is an actual friend, we're going to Tahoe in November and I recently spent 3 days sleeping on his couch while my house was painted.

My guess is that the reason you guys are so comfortable playing the race card against ME is because I'm not afraid to speak truthfully about race and race problems. Doesn't seem quite right to your liberal mindset, that someone could actually talk about these things without burying the truth under a mountain of pussyfooting and patronizing. Because that's what you're used to.

What I'd really like to express to you though, Flighty, about me, is that I am "firmly committed" to believing absolutely nothing whatsoever. I've spent my entire life in the shadow of my father, and made substantial efforts to be as far away from him politically as possible. But what I've found out as I've grown older is that my old man is no dumbass. I have RELUCTANTLY acquiesced to conservative views as I've come to realize that personal responsibility = societal responsibility = economic growth. You're either contributing or you're part of the problem. I used to be part of the problem. Now I'm contributing. But that didn't come about because I'm entrenched in some belief system. I don't believe in beliefs, I believe what my eyes and brain tell me.

You actually have a much better chance of changing MY mind about something than practically anyone else you've ever argued with on the internet, Flighty. If someone presents a solid argument to me, it doesn't matter where it falls on the political or moral spectrum, I will respect the argument itself. I'm WIDE OPEN to new information.

You guys just haven't provided any.

Discuss the abhorrence factor of my views as you will. I find it pretty lame that many people have no problem applying negative adjectives to my "views" without actually being able to provide a valid counter-argument against them. Of course, the standard for liberal arguments is pretty low these days - "We're liberals so we're right" is pretty much the full extent of it.

I will tell you this - if I'm bothering to argue about something you can rest assured that I have carefully considered my side of the argument. If I'm holding forth abhorrent views, that makes me an abhorrent person, and I'll own that if you can demonstrate it. But I view myself as a reasonable, philosophical, and compassionate person. I realize I'm a full-on hardass but you know, someone's got to be tough with you liberals and your child-like capacity for blind idealism.

Oh, regarding my posting patterns - I don't have a pattern. If I'm in a conversation I stay in it. When it's over I go away.


I agree though I'm sometimes nervous to make this category distinction just because I've been misunderstood doing it. There are people who even though they might not like being called racist, are more or less avowed racists. They use degrading language about minorities, they think minorities possess intrinsic characteristics, and see the world as being divided into different groups with antagonistic interests.

Then there are people who will occasionally engage in stereotyping without thinking they are and will minimize the effects of racism. They will agree in principle that racism is wrong but will define it out of existence except in obvious cases, which they'll acknowledge as though it's the epitome of enlightenment to do so.

It's not that I don't think the second category is wrong but it does sometimes leave a debate about whether one is minimizing racism or disagreeing about what its effects are. It also is less malicious so there's a greater chance they can be reached. I have a major problem with conspiracism but I'm not sure what the answer is there. I think you're right about the embarrassment thing....

I'd be interested in knowing, Bronco - what is your definition of "conspiracism?"

[filghy2]

My guess is that the reason you guys are so comfortable playing the race card against ME is because I'm not afraid to speak truthfully about race and race problems. Doesn't seem quite right to your liberal mindset, that someone could actually talk about these things without burying the truth under a mountain of pussyfooting and patronizing. Because that's what you're used to.

What I'd really like to express to you though, Flighty, about me, is that I am "firmly committed" to believing absolutely nothing whatsoever. I've spent my entire life in the shadow of my father, and made substantial efforts to be as far away from him politically as possible. But what I've found out as I've grown older is that my old man is no dumbass. I have RELUCTANTLY acquiesced to conservative views as I've come to realize that personal responsibility = societal responsibility = economic growth. You're either contributing or you're part of the problem. I used to be part of the problem. Now I'm contributing. But that didn't come about because I'm entrenched in some belief system. I don't believe in beliefs, I believe what my eyes and brain tell me.

The example I recall particularly is when I posted a chart showing the economic growth had been higher under Democrat administrations, and you made a pathetic excuse that the chart was not clear.

You actually have a much better chance of changing MY mind about something than practically anyone else you've ever argued with on the internet, Flighty. If someone presents a solid argument to me, it doesn't matter where it falls on the political or moral spectrum, I will respect the argument itself. I'm WIDE OPEN to new information.

You guys just haven't provided any.

Discuss the abhorrence factor of my views as you will. I find it pretty lame that many people have no problem applying negative adjectives to my "views" without actually being able to provide a valid counter-argument against them. Of course, the standard for liberal arguments is pretty low these days - "We're liberals so we're right" is pretty much the full extent of it.

I will tell you this - if I'm bothering to argue about something you can rest assured that I have carefully considered my side of the argument. If I'm holding forth abhorrent views, that makes me an abhorrent person, and I'll own that if you can demonstrate it. But I view myself as a reasonable, philosophical, and compassionate person. I realize I'm a full-on hardass but you know, someone's got to be tough with you liberals and your child-like capacity for blind idealism.

Oh, regarding my posting patterns - I don't have a pattern. If I'm in a conversation I stay in it. When it's over I go away.

Rumours of your demise were clearly exaggerated.

Why is it that every time I give you the benefit of the doubt you immediately make me regret it by responding in your usual arrogant way? If you really believe you are exceptionally open-minded then you are delusional and lacking in self-awareness. People have provided you with evidence on numerous occasions, and you have consistently made excuses for ignoring any inconvenient facts. Apart from personal anecdotes you rarely offer any evidence for your own claims.

One example is distinctly recall was when I posted a chart showing stronger economic growth under Democrat adminisitrations, and you made a pathetic excuse claiming that the chart was unclear,

I would not be surprised that you held different political views in the past. Former leftists often turn into the most committed rightists later in life, just as former alcoholics or smokers often turn into the most zealous opponents of drinking and smoking.

Your last point is also inconsistent with the facts. The record clearly shows that it was you who ended the discussion last time. http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?99116-Trannies-for-Trump/page38
Between that and the recent discussions here you posted virtually nothing on politics for 2 1/2 years, even though there was no shortage of discussions you could have joined, as you did eventually. Your pattern has clearly been either floods or droughts.

[Laphroaig]

What I'd really like to express to you though, Flighty, about me, is that I am "firmly committed" to believing absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Other than the stupid conspiracy theories that you are "firmly committed to believing" and defending on here...

1305777

[Stavros]

When people are firmly committed to believing certain things due to political motivations it is extremely difficult to shift them with any kind of evidence. I don't think it's constructive, however, to refuse to engage with people because some of their views are abhorrent. There's no doubt that Nick's views are far from being an outlier in today's Republican Party, so if we can't engage with him we can't engage with too many people on the other side.

Surely the core problem is that 'they' refuse to engage with 'us' or anyone who does not share their loathing of what the US has become, citing all the buzzwords -'multi-culturalism', 'open borders', 'woke', 'gender fluid', 'radical left' etc.

Today it is the Republican party that has shut itself off from debate, and in doing so has created what in another context someone once called 'the Prison House of Language'. For 'open borders' as an attack on the USA you have Immigration, which has become one of the most toxic issues both sides of the Atlantic (and on Continental Europe too not just the UK) but which for that reason rarely receives the honest and open debate it needs if the US, the UK, Hungary and Greece are to find a just solution to 'the problem' -if it is a problem.

Multi-culturalism, Woke, Cancel Culture -again, words and terms being used to shut down debate rather than open it up, to imprison thought lest it be shown that Republicans themselves are involved in cancel culture, while appearing to reject the multiple cultures immigrants bring into the US, people who, politically, ought to find their home in the Republican rather than the Democrat party.

Thus the narrowing of its electoral base, the shrinking horizons of its policy options present a party and its supporters who refuse to even accept the evidence in front of them, that their base is too narrow to earn majority support, their retreat into the politics of extremes rather than middles a vote loser. Especially for those who believe the whole point of the American Dream is that anyone can make a success of their American adventure, regardless of 'race, creed, or sexual orientation' -to be told no, that White Privilege is what it says on the tin, is not a recruitment strategy but a losing strategy.

And, as they find themselves less appealing, what do they do? One one level, Riot and Sedition. But on the more sophisticted level, just as Congress passes Federal laws making it easier to vote, the States find ways to make it harder. As Congress votes to end Gerrymandering of District Boundaries, the States make it tighter. At some point, there must be a collision between 'the Feds' and the 'States', and as presently constituted, I wonder if the Supreme Court will decide that 'States Rights' trump Federal law every time, thus consolidating the age-old Confederate Dream of putting the Blacks in their place. It would be more honest if those States simply passed a law making it illegal for Black Americans to vote.

To let this all ride on a smile and a chuckle about the Mississippi, of all places, with people who can't tell the difference between a Sandy Hook Hoax and Belsen Baloney is to give them the space and the freedom they use to take away your Republic and by riot or stealth, mount a counter-revolution against the one that happened in 1776 which has failed them. Just a week ago, their leader continued to brag about his achievements, refusing to accept he lost the White House, the Senate and the House of Represenatives, because as Prison Governor, nobody gets released on his watch, or it will be the Apocalypse.

Americans need to take care, or they will end their days in stripes rather than strides.

[Nick Danger]

Other than the stupid conspiracy theories that you are "firmly committed to believing" and defending on here...

I support a few conspiracy "theories" and none of them are theories.

1. JFK was not assassinated by a lone gunman.
2. The FBI was, at a minimum negligent, and more likely complicit in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
3. Sandy Hook was a hoax.

I'll go to the mat on those, Laphro, and anyone who believes anything else about those particular subjects is a brainwashed media slave.


Rumours of your demise were clearly exaggerated.

Why is it that every time I give you the benefit of the doubt you immediately make me regret it by responding in your usual arrogant way? If you really believe you are exceptionally open-minded then you are delusional and lacking in self-awareness. People have provided you with evidence on numerous occasions, and you have consistently made excuses for ignoring any inconvenient facts. Apart from personal anecdotes you rarely offer any evidence for your own claims.

One example is distinctly recall was when I posted a chart showing stronger economic growth under Democrat adminisitrations, and you made a pathetic excuse claiming that the chart was unclear,

I would not be surprised that you held different political views in the past. Former leftists often turn into the most committed rightists later in life, just as former alcoholics or smokers often turn into the most zealous opponents of drinking and smoking.

Your last point is also inconsistent with the facts. The record clearly shows that it was you who ended the discussion last time. http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?99116-Trannies-for-Trump/page38
Between that and the recent discussions here you posted virtually nothing on politics for 2 1/2 years, even though there was no shortage of discussions you could have joined, as you did eventually. Your pattern has clearly been either floods or droughts.

If I did end the discussion last time, Flighty, it's because the discussion was over. Nine times out of 10 it will be me who ends it, I'm just better at shutting people down than most. On the other hand, once I've made my point, I'm just fine if someone else has the last word. Rarely happens that way though, nobody on the internet has to accept that they've just been verbally owned, they can simply pretend it never happened and keep on chirping.

That's why I started my own thread actually, with the subject line left wide open. We could have chit-chatted about relevancies there non-stop, but as so often happens with liberals, you said one thing but ended up doing another - making your non-"Thought For The Day" replies to me in this thread instead of the one I made for that exact purpose.

I'm not a follower of any particular forum, Flighty. Not even this one, this one bores me with its laser focus on porn. In fact I'm not even present on any actual political forums, I merely confront liberals when I bump into them. If you missed me for a couple of years, that represents a failure on your part to present a point worth arguing against; no one has to twist my arm to drag me into a political debate. But if you have my attention and you actually want to keep it for some reason, you have to give me something. Something like a lot of well-intentioned but poorly-considered liberal hogwash. You guys are doing well.

You are definitely on to something with your theory about ex-liberals being the toughest conservatives. Know why? Because I remember what a joke my political beliefs were. They were based on nothing more than simplistic idealism, just as yours are now. As I've said before, nothing liberals say sounds dangerous and stupid, it all makes perfect sense when taken in the context of the way things SHOULD be. But eventually in life, I had to contend with the way things actually ARE.

This point you're constantly trying to make about Democrats being some kind of master stewards of public money is a perfect example. Look at the current macro-economic situation. Despite the BLM riots and the covid-19 epidemic, the USA still has enough money, after 4 years of the Trump administration, to hand out trillions of dollars to citizens.

But it's not the Trump administration who's handing it out. The reason we still have all that money is precisely because the Trump administration did NOT hand it out. Republicans have a firm understanding of the fact that when Democrats start crying "National Emergency," it means they're struggling with financing body mods and 5-dollar coffees.

So now we'll seemingly boom for a while. Everyone will have a little pocket money handed to them by the Democrats and they'll spend it on trips to the beach or the latest iPhone. Some scattered, irresponsible, lazy few will need it to pay bills, but for the most part the USA's $2 trillion (MY $2 trillion) in relief money is going to be spent on frivolities and socialist propaganda. Goddamn I'd love to own a beachfront iPhone store called Bernie's Place this summer! I'd paint it red and hire a graphics team to design a logo that subtly suggests a hammer and sickle.

I've said before that economic optimism is its own form of currency. I don't see any economic optimism happening, Flighty. I read a tweet from a liberal source recently that said, "I know that with Trump out of office our problems are over, so why do I feel like I'm at a horror show where the monster just died but there's 20 minutes left in the movie?" LOL - liberals, thinking, it's fun.

So yeah, Flighty, liberals do an excellent job at handing out money that conservatives have held back. They buy the support of the mouth-breathing masses with short-sighted solutions to long-term problems.

Bronco asked me once what I considered the core of conservatism. I should have thought about it a bit longer because it can really be summed up very briefly - Enforced Personal Responsibility. In order for our country to prosper, people have to be forced to do things they don't want to do, like work hard and live responsibly. Have you ever even CONSIDERED, Flighty, how strong our nation would be if ALL our citizens were properly motivated to contribute to the GDP instead of sucking government tit? "Work or die" is how you motivate the unmotivated in a capitalist economy.

You can't motivate people while you're giving them handouts, it simply doesn't work, and that's why liberal economics is a lost cause. Obamacare was only possible because Bush didn't care at all.

[broncofan]

Rumours of your demise were clearly exaggerated.

Why is it that every time I give you the benefit of the doubt you immediately make me regret it by responding in your usual arrogant way? If you really believe you are exceptionally open-minded then you are delusional and lacking in self-awareness. People have provided you with evidence on numerous occasions, and you have consistently made excuses for ignoring any inconvenient facts. Apart from personal anecdotes you rarely offer any evidence for your own claims.

Maybe I'm not putting enough thought into it but I have no faith at all in the coherence of his beliefs or the truth of his statements. I like the shtick, the personality, the banter, the anecdotes, and he seems good-natured until he spouts off about Sandy Hook or well several other subjects. Maybe I am like those people who said they wanted to vote for GW Bush over Kerry because they could have a beer with him. Liking someone who is glib and easy-going is part of a set of natural instincts that sets me up to be a sucker; like feeling bad for Donald Trump while he had covid even though I knew when he recovered he'd say a bunch of things that would condemn other people to death.

I was looking at that other thread and I think Nick said he couldn't bring himself to vote for McCain. I'm not a McCain fan but finding McCain tougher to vote for than Trump really is a kind of ideological and moral nihilism. Did he also say he wasn't able to vote for Romney? I'll have to look.

Nick, can you explain the point you were making about Menudo again bc I don't think I got it? They may have been a famous boy band but I had never heard of them, have had menudo which is a kind of soup served at Mexican restaurants, and am also curious why you saved the photo as 1986.

[broncofan]

I was looking at that other thread and I think Nick said he couldn't bring himself to vote for McCain. I'm not a McCain fan but finding McCain tougher to vote for than Trump really is a kind of ideological and moral nihilism. Did he also say he wasn't able to vote for Romney? I'll have to look.




I am not closed-minded. I'm a snow-white small business owner who was raised about 40 miles from the birthplace of the KKK. But that didn't stop me from voting for a black Democrat when given a choice between Obama and a grizzled war-hawk riding on little more than 50 years of ex-POW status, or Obama and an elitist religious fanatic. I may have even voted Democratic at that point no matter who was running, since I have a helpful understanding of the fact that the back-and-forth political cycle is necessary to keep our country strong.
This seems pretty hard to take seriously or make any sense out of. You may have voted Democrat to help the back and forth cycle? Maybe there are some policies one party proposes that you like? It sounds to me like Romney and McCain were just too boring and it was better to vote for a draft-dodging crook who comes up with nicknames for everyone than an actual Republican.

Nobody called you on it but I guess the I have a Black friend defense kind of works if you show self-awareness while you're invoking it. And your friend happens to be an enormously large Black friend, who was in the Crips, and born in Compton. Would be awful if I came by with my Black friend who is also large but was in the Bloods. I'll tell him not to wear his red bandana when we hang out.

[Nick Danger]

Maybe I'm not putting enough thought into it but I have no faith at all in the coherence of his beliefs or the truth of his statements. I like the shtick, the personality, the banter, the anecdotes, and he seems good-natured until he spouts off about Sandy Hook or well several other subjects. Maybe I am like those people who said they wanted to vote for GW Bush over Kerry because they could have a beer with him. Liking someone who is glib and easy-going is part of a set of natural instincts that sets me up to be a sucker; like feeling bad for Donald Trump while he had covid even though I knew when he recovered he'd say a bunch of things that would condemn other people to death.

I was looking at that other thread and I think Nick said he couldn't bring himself to vote for McCain. I'm not a McCain fan but finding McCain tougher to vote for than Trump really is a kind of ideological and moral nihilism. Did he also say he wasn't able to vote for Romney? I'll have to look.

Nick, can you explain the point you were making about Menudo again bc I don't think I got it? They may have been a famous boy band but I had never heard of them, have had menudo which is a kind of soup served at Mexican restaurants, and am also curious why you saved the photo as 1986.

I didn't have as much an issue with McCain as I had with Sarah Palin. As you well know McCain has long since shuffled off this mortal coil. He probably would have outlived his Presidency but if he didn't, we would have had Palin, and that would truly be a dystopian nightmare. I didn't like McCain. I don't like anyone who plays up their veteran status - you did it, it's done, move on. And I did like Obama, still do in fact. I liked a lot of his ideas about LGBTQ issues, I liked the fact that he was black, and I'm certain he was the most personable President these United States have seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM-Q_zpuJGU

So sure I voted Democrat in '08. And I am, as I've said numerous times, just fine with the back and forth. The country needed some diaper changing behind Bush, he was as much a polarizing figure as Trump but the public has a short memory and people have forgotten.

It's this particular administration that bothers me. The President is a wind-up doll. The Vice-President is a mean-spirited, unqualified panderer. The Democratic congressional leadership just came off half a year of promoting violence in the streets behind what turned out to be a lie, and are now acting as if it never happened. It's an administration of hypocrites and criminals, who rode a wave of unprecedented media control to the White House. And when I say "unprecedented," I mean unprecedented in HISTORY, not just in the USA. Maybe Stalin or Kim Jong-Il had slightly tighter control of the press than does the current Democratic administration of the USA. Thanks Google.


Nobody called you on it but I guess the I have a Black friend defense kind of works if you show self-awareness while you're invoking it. And your friend happens to be an enormously large Black friend, who was in the Crips, and born in Compton. Would be awful if I came by with my Black friend who is also large but was in the Bloods. I'll tell him not to wear his red bandana when we hang out.

No, nobody called me on anything, you were merely discussing whether or not I was a racist among yourselves as if I wasn't even in the thread. I'm pretty sure my black friend can beat up your black friend. Hell, that's the main reason I hang out with him - that and the looks we get when we walk into a casino together.

Your vague insinuations that I'm full of shit are quite tired BTW, Bronco. This is the internet. You are more than welcome to believe or disbelieve anything you read. But I'm pretty sure that what bothers you the most about me is that you know deep down inside that I'm telling you the truth.

[Nick Danger]

Nick, can you explain the point you were making about Menudo again bc I don't think I got it? They may have been a famous boy band but I had never heard of them, have had menudo which is a kind of soup served at Mexican restaurants, and am also curious why you saved the photo as 1986.

Oh yeah, the point of that photo was, you were accusing me of being a liar. So I accommodated you. The reason it was titled "1986" is because it was originally titled "menudo_1986_australia_tour" or something to that effect. So I shortened it. You don't want to be too obvious about things when you're subtly manipulating the minds of liberals.

[fred41]

Any American over 40 should know who Menudo was. it’s where Ricky Martin came from for Christ’s sake...lol.

[broncofan]

Any American over 40 should know who Menudo was. it’s where Ricky Martin came from for Christ’s sake...lol.
All these elitist cultural judgments.:-D You ask me who Mozart is and I can definitely tell you he had a funny laugh and the guy who played him should have won an oscar. Maybe.

I know who Ricky Martin is. But I didn't know anything about him until that horrible song La Vida Loca came out. Then he was around for a couple of years, and I just didn't pay any attention because the music is not good. Am I on safe ground here? It's not good right? I wasn't supposed to have heard that song and thought, this genius, where did he come from? BTW, I've been doing some running for about 6 months and my knees have held up (I saw your comment in the other thread). I had a weird ankle injury, but it passed and I'm on the trail, waiting to play tennis once I'm vaccinated.

I'll be with you shortly Nick. The Menudo story is sounding vaguely plausible now that I know everyone knows them.

[broncofan]

No, nobody called me on anything, you were merely discussing whether or not I was a racist among yourselves as if I wasn't even in the thread. I'm pretty sure my black friend can beat up your black friend. Hell, that's the main reason I hang out with him - that and the looks we get when we walk into a casino together.

Your vague insinuations that I'm full of shit are quite tired BTW, Bronco. This is the internet. You are more than welcome to believe or disbelieve anything you read. But I'm pretty sure that what bothers you the most about me is that you know deep down inside that I'm telling you the truth.
Yes dude. It's been troubling me much more than the fact that I'm someone who's been hospitalized for pneumonia a bunch of times, living in a hot spot country for a respiratory pathogen during a pandemic.

I wish you well. I was trying to set you up at Mar a Lago with the heavy hitters. I thought maybe you could go there and give covid to a foreign premier who's paying a courtesy visit. It was a diabolical plan, but then I saw filghy's article about Trump cheating at golf and I scrapped it. If you're reporting a handicap you shouldn't be raking putts and I didn't want you to have to see that.

I suppose I just don't understand why it's so important to your political arguments that you're doing well. It reminds me of when Bill O'Reilly was telling everyone how nobody had it harder than him coming up and they found out he went to private school or was middle class. There's actual data on economic and social mobility in this country. If you've done something it doesn't mean anyone can. These anecdotes always end up favoring your argument too which is easy to happen. I've thought of things that have happened to me and it's easy to finagle a version that makes poor people seem lazy or sick people seem weak or negligent. Or the opposite. It's also easy for the anecdotes to relate to real events but what if you're in the foreground or the background or it's kind of hazy because alcohol does that. You remember James Frey?

[Nick Danger]

You remember James Frey?

I don't but I paid you the courtesy of googling him. Wrote a book of bullshit, went on Oprah and made a fool out of her. You don't want to be the Oprah of the HungAngels containment board. Don't worry, Bronco, if you ever make a fool of yourself on here it won't be because of anything I said.

I'm going back to my thread now. AGAIN, if somebody here has some special feelings for this thread, like, you love this thread and want to marry it, or you actually believe a political thread can consist of each special snowflake posting his own special thought for the day and no one arguing with it, JUST DON'T REPLY TO ME HERE. I have no special feelings for this thread at all, I will fuck it and stop returning its calls without thinking twice.

[filghy2]

Any American over 40 should know who Menudo was. it’s where Ricky Martin came from for Christ’s sake...lol.

I'm not American but American music is an international thing and I'd never heard of them until I image-searched that picture. I gather they sang mostly in Spanish, so it's a bit of a niche market even though they sold lots of records.

[filghy2]

What I'd really like to express to you though, Flighty, about me, is that I am "firmly committed" to believing absolutely nothing whatsoever.

I'd say the one thing you are most committed to believing is your own sense of superiority.

The thing that fascinates me most about your posts is not their substance, but what they indicate as a sort of psychological case study. Why would a person invest so much time in making spurious arguments that are never likely to convince any reasonable person? You've never made a convert here and I doubt you've done it anywhere else. The answer must be that you are doing it mainly for yourself - your posts are to bolster your own sense of superiority.

[Nick Danger]

I'd say the one thing you are most committed to believing is your own sense of superiority.

The thing that fascinates me most about your posts is not their substance, but what they indicate as a sort of psychological case study. Why would a person invest so much time in making spurious arguments that are never likely to convince any reasonable person? You've never made a convert here and I doubt you've done it anywhere else. The answer must be that you are doing it mainly for yourself - your posts are to bolster your own sense of superiority.

You disappoint me, Flighty. First the racist card, now this. Here I am, perfectly comfortable with my sense of superiority and you try to make it out as a negative quality.

I give it all up to you, Flighty, the pretty parts and the ugly parts. I spend a reasonable amount of time here advising you. When the spirit moves me. I'll tell you one thing I don't invest my time in, though, and that's re-reading your old posts. But you do read mine. I can't help but feel that at some point, maybe in the far, far future, you're going to be in a situation where conservative politics is the obvious answer to your big question. And you're going to think back to all my rambling posts that you've read and re-read, all that insouciant rhetoric and obtuse antagonism, and you're gonna say to yourself - and ONLY to yourself - "Goddamit that asshole was RIGHT!"

You know a little about black holes Flighty? Maybe you're aware that the prevailing theory among physicists is that no information in the universe is ever lost. Even when it gets sucked into a black hole, it finds its way back out again in the form of Hawking Radiation. You can burn a book and it will turn to ash and smoke, but if you had the proper tools, you could turn that ash and smoke right back into a book again.

So you can write me off as some raving megalomaniac if you want. But I'm in your head now, Flighty, and I will ALWAYS be there.

[filghy2]

I give it all up to you, Flighty, the pretty parts and the ugly parts.

And the made-up parts? Rather than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly you seem to have taken your inspiration from the famous line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Most of your stories seem designed to embellish the legend of Nick Danger, the self-made man who learns important lessons, overcomes challenges, succeeds through his own efforts and sees the truth where others cannot. The question is, have your political views been chosen to fit the self-image, or is it the other way around?

[Nick Danger]

And the made-up parts? Rather than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly you seem to have taken your inspiration from the famous line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Most of your stories seem designed to embellish the legend of Nick Danger, the self-made man who learns important lessons, overcomes challenges, succeeds through his own efforts and sees the truth where others cannot. The question is, have your political views been chosen to fit the self-image, or is it the other way around?

You must live in a dark world, Flighty. If you're not the hero of your own story then who is?

I mean here we are, and I've posted on this site - wait, let me check - 301 times now. Long, detailed posts most of them. Some people have found them entertaining and I'm glad for that, but you, Flighty - you have actually STUDIED my posts, looking for any little contradiction, even from YEARS ago, that you can throw up in my face and say, "See, you're a goddamn liar, Nick, and here's the proof!"

You've found no such thing. Still you belabor the point.

I'll tell you all about my stories, Flighty, and you can take this or leave it - they're ALL 100% true. And while it is also true that I always end up the hero, there's a very good reason for that. The reason is that I don't tell stories in which I DON'T end up the hero. But there are plenty of them.

Now I said I shared the ugly with you, but that's a pretty borderline statement, I certainly haven't shared all the ugly aspects of my life. So to make up for it, I AM going to share the ugly with you, right here and now.

I'm terrible at relationships, Flighty. I'd love to be able to say that every failed relationship I've had has been the result of me getting tired of some girl's bullshit, but in at least half of them it was her getting tired of mine. I've been told that I have no capacity for intimacy. I've been told I'm controlling, and I've also been told I'm not controlling enough. I've been told that a REAL man would NEVER do...whatever the hell I did.

I'm highly intelligent but I'm also a huge fuck-up. I barely graduated high school. As a young man I was quite impulsive and also lacked integrity, got myself in a good deal of trouble with the law. In the Air Force I had a LOT of letters of reprimand and letters of counseling, a dozen at least. Even got myself an Article 15 once for going AWOL.

I can be quite lazy. Example, I'm currently still in Tennessee visiting family, been here several weeks while my employees run my business. I've lied to them twice about why I haven't made it back to Utah. The real reason is, I'm enjoying doing nothing.

I can be a compulsive gambler. The kind who loses all the money he designated for gambling then hits the ATM for more. I've kinda got that under control, but not really, I'll still occasionally drop a grand just because I happened to be driving by a casino and got the urge.

I have a strong tendency toward binge drinking that I constantly have to keep in check. Sometimes...hell, OFTEN times, I fail to do so.

I have a terrible relationship with my mother, she doesn't like me and I don't like her, we barely tolerate each other and that only for my father's sake.

So you see, Flighty, I'm pretty goddamn human. But the story of my many faults is not the one I'm here to tell.

[Laphroaig]

I mean here we are, and I've posted on this site - wait, let me check - 301 times now. Long, detailed posts most of them. Some people have found them entertaining and I'm glad for that, but you, Flighty - you have actually STUDIED my posts, looking for any little contradiction, even from YEARS ago, that you can throw up in my face and say, "See, you're a goddamn liar, Nick, and here's the proof!"

You've found no such thing. Still you belabor the point.

I'll tell you all about my stories, Flighty, and you can take this or leave it - they're ALL 100% true. And while it is also true that I always end up the hero, there's a very good reason for that. The reason is that I don't tell stories in which I DON'T end up the hero. But there are plenty of them.



You've backed yourself into this corner. You said yourself you were a liar. Now, why should anyone believe anything from someone who admits to being a trained liar, or was that a lie in itself?




Not only was I in the Air Force, I was actually the civilian press liaison at a large stateside SAC base. I know for a fact that the public is fed a constant stream of misinformation and disinformation, because I used to feed it to them. I was quite literally trained in the fine art of the cover-up, and participated in more than one. Here's a hint: Military cover-ups don't involve MUCH lying; they are more about stonewalling the press or insisting on a certain level of coverage ("Well Below Saturation" and "Single Touch" are two terms that will probably be part of a handshake agreement between a millitary commander and a newspaper editor during an exchange of sensistive information) from behind closed doors. But they certainly will lie if it becomes necessary - they will have a meeting, they will decide which lie is best, they will brainstorm all the various ways the lie might be discovered, and then they will pick up the phone and lie, lie, lie.

[filghy2]

I'll tell you all about my stories, Flighty, and you can take this or leave it - they're ALL 100% true.

You've already admitted to exaggerating, so that statement must be another exaggeration. That's almost a mirror image of the "Everything I say is a lie" paradox.

How often does your binge drinking correspond to posting here?

[Stavros]

Does this thread risk becoming 'Thoughts About Me' rather than 'Thought for the Day'?

[Nick Danger]

You've backed yourself into this corner. You said yourself you were a liar. Now, why should anyone believe anything from someone who admits to being a trained liar, or was that a lie in itself?

What corner?


You've already admitted to exaggerating, so that statement must be another exaggeration. That's almost a mirror image of the "Everything I say is a lie" paradox.

How often does your binge drinking correspond to posting here?

You MIGHT be a lost cause, Flighty. Most people who find it impossible to trust other people are pretty untrustworthy themselves.


Does this thread risk becoming 'Thoughts About Me' rather than 'Thought for the Day'?

At least people actually read my thoughts, Stavros.

[Laphroaig]

What corner?



if you can't work it out, I'd suggest this one...

1306286

[Nick Danger]

if you can't work it out, I'd suggest this one...

Work out what, Laphro? Are you on an alternate timeline? If so, please give my best to Elvis.

[filghy2]

There is a "They," Bronco. The government does lie. The media lies. People lie. For reasons. And some other people prefer sifting through all these layers of bullshit and trying to parse out those reasons over silent acceptance of the lies. Those people are your "conspiracy theorists." Or, as some of us prefer to be called, your mechanic.


I don't really trust any of the numbers that get thrown at me about this thing - from any source. The problem with lying government is, you never really know when they're lying and when they aren't. The problem with medicine for profit is, you never really know whether a doctor is being paid by the government or Big Pharma or SuperHospoCorp for his opinion or if he's actually giving sound medical advice.


Most people who find it impossible to trust other people are pretty untrustworthy themselves.

You might be onto something there.

[filghy2]

Does this thread risk becoming 'Thoughts About Me' rather than 'Thought for the Day'?

Is it surprising the man is a big Trump fan when they have so many character traits in common?

You're right though. We should try to respond to Nick's posts in the Viper Room thread, especially when its about nothing but his delusional self-absorption.

[Nick Danger]

Is it surprising the man is a big Trump fan when they have so many character traits in common?

You're right though. We should try to respond to Nick's posts in the Viper Room thread, especially when its about nothing but his delusional self-absorption.

I think you're more absorbed with me than I am, Flighty.

[Nick Danger]

My father called me this morning and said, "Well, I'm off to deliver Joe Biden to the homeless."

"Wut?" I replied, knowing this was going to be good.

"Joe Biden" is what he named the wild turkey that was foolish enough to wander through his back yard this morning. He shoots them and brings them to a guy who cleans them and takes them to a shelter.

[Stavros]

Londoners (not me), will vote in May in local Borough elections, and for The Mayor. With Mr Cuomo under siege in the city of New York, my thought for the day is -are Mayors the best way to organize the management of a large city?

London did not have a political Mayor until 1999, management previously being organized through a Council or the Greater London Authority, which Margaret Thatcher abolished. Most Boroughs, like most towns and cities, have Mayors which perform ceremonial duties only. The City of London, which is an autonomous authority governing the Financial District, has had a Mayor since 1189.

if London and New York did not have Mayors, should they have a Management Committe? A Council? Blackchubby may pipe in -'been there, tried that' - but as I don't know, I can't add much more. Other than to query the position of Mayor, if only because it puts so much pressure to deliver on one Man (has a woman ever run for Mayor in NYC?) even if they don't work alone.

Some years ago the Mayor of Nice, Jacques Médecin, once ruled this beautiful, but crime-addled city like an Autocrat (he effectively inherited the job from his dad, Jean [Vichy? Pas moi!]) -until he did a runner with a suitcase full of cash. So I have tended to think of Mayors with enormous powers as a mistake waiting to happen.

But are there practical alternatives?

[blackchubby38]

Londoners (not me), will vote in May in local Borough elections, and for The Mayor. With Mr Cuomo under siege in the city of New York, my thought for the day is -are Mayors the best way to organize the management of a large city?

London did not have a political Mayor until 1999, management previously being organized through a Council or the Greater London Authority, which Margaret Thatcher abolished. Most Boroughs, like most towns and cities, have Mayors which perform ceremonial duties only. The City of London, which is an autonomous authority governing the Financial District, has had a Mayor since 1189.

if London and New York did not have Mayors, should they have a Management Committe? A Council? Blackchubby may pipe in -'been there, tried that' - but as I don't know, I can't add much more. Other than to query the position of Mayor, if only because it puts so much pressure to deliver on one Man (has a woman ever run for Mayor in NYC?) even if they don't work alone.

Some years ago the Mayor of Nice, Jacques Médecin, once ruled this beautiful, but crime-addled city like an Autocrat (he effectively inherited the job from his dad, Jean [Vichy? Pas moi!]) -until he did a runner with a suitcase full of cash. So I have tended to think of Mayors with enormous powers as a mistake waiting to happen.

But are there practical alternatives?

Cuomo is the Governor of New York State. Bill De Blasio is the Mayor of New York City.

I think a mayor is still the best option to manage a large city. The issues you run into is when that mayor is a shitty leader like De Blasio or when you have one political party that not only controls the mayor's mansion, but the city council as well.

Each borough also has its own president. But from what I can tell, most of them just use it as a stepping stone to becoming mayor.

[fred41]

We should also mention that Mayors also have city Councils that represent districts in the city ( my local council member, at the moment, is Jimmy Van Bramer). They help to vote on the budget and to enact laws for the city, along with the Mayor, similar to the larger bodies of government in this country. We also have a City Comptroller along with a State Comptroller, etc....As blackchubby38 has stated, each borough has their own president, but the job does seem mostly perfunctory (ribbon cutting ceremonies and such). each borough also has it’s own elected District attorney along with their own Civil/Criminal Courts - both Supreme and lower Criminal (along with Family and Housing Courts..etc..). So Mayor’s don’t go it alone, but they are quite frequently the more recognizable face in the local government.

[fred41]

To BC’s point, out of around 51 Council seats..only three are Republican (two of those belonging to Staten Island ). So yeah, one party.

[fred41]

Blackchubby38, do you feel good about any of the possible contenders for the crown? I’m not feeling good about too many, including Presidential Democratic primary reject Andrew Yang. I thought the young man who got kicked out of Staten Island , Max Rose, might’ve been a good selection - a fairly moderate Democrat, who only lost because Staten Island, which he represented, is still pretty conservative, so they elected Nicole Malliotakis instead (she lost her try at Mayor, when DeBlasio won his second term).

[Stavros]

Thanks to Blackchubby and Fred for your thoughts -and apologies for a schoolboy error though from this remote location Bill de Blasio doesn't register on my radar, and I suspect that is a relief. It seems you both satisfied with the set-up if not the men elected, so I wonder who has impressed you in the past, and why?

For example, though I left London in the mid-1980s, earlier in the decade Ken Livingstone when leader of the Greater London Council was popular for mounting a 'Fair's Fair' campaign which lowered the cost of travelling on the Underground, for which he was taken to Court and beaten -when he became the elected Mayor years later, he saw through both the rationalization of travel with the Oyster Card which can be used for both the Underground and the bus network, and Investment in buses and staff that meant that the days of old when you could wait an hour for a No 73 and then find four arrive at the same time came to an end. I recall working with someone who lived on the Isle of Dogs for whom its bus service west to Bethnal Green was a legend rather than a reality -not only are those days gone, but with the new Docklands Light Railway London acquired a transport sector that does appear to have met the challenges of population and commercial expansion, whereas I read that the Subway system in NYC is in real need of an overhaul.

Boris Johnson's innovation as Mayor was to persuade the UAE to create a cable car link across the Thames in a part of London most commonly populated by weasels and newts -irrelevance at great expense being one of his specialities, as the millions wasted on 'Boris buses' proved. Just imagine, having been born in Manhattan, had Mr Brexit not surrendered his American passport -for tax reasons, not loyalty as he doesn't know what that is -he would have been able to stand as a candidate to be Mayor of your amazing city. And he may well have been elected. Maybe de Niro should run, I assume he needs the money after this dismal year for his various business interests...not to mention the alimony...

[blackchubby38]

Blackchubby38, do you feel good about any of the possible contenders for the crown? I’m not feeling good about too many, including Presidential Democratic primary reject Andrew Yang. I thought the young man who got kicked out of Staten Island , Max Rose, might’ve been a good selection - a fairly moderate Democrat, who only lost because Staten Island, which he represented, is still pretty conservative, so they elected Nicole Malliotakis instead (she lost her try at Mayor, when DeBlasio won his second term).

Malliotakis is the only Republican that I have ever voted for. That's how much I despise DeBlasio.

I feel really good about Andrew Yang. Despite his early gaffs and certain media outlets taking shots at him, he is still leading in the polls. I think the other contenders are starting to worry about his chances because you're starting to hear the "he doesn't have any experience in government" arguments.

He definitely has peaked my interest after saying the following two things:

"Yang said he would support decriminalizing possessing small amounts of all drugs, and instead wants to steer people into substance-abuse treatment."

nypost.com/2021/03/18/nyc-mayoral-candidates-adams-yang-clash-over-drug-legalization/


“I will confess to being a parent that has been frustrated by how slow our schools have been to open, and I do believe that the UFT has been a significant reason why our schools have been slow to open,” Yang told Politico New York in an interview published Friday.


//nypost.com/2021/03/19/andrew-yang-blames-nyc-teachers-union-for-slow-school-restart/


But hey, if Yang doesn't get the nomination, we can always continue the trend of famous 1980s' personalities being elected to office and vote for Curtis Silwa.

[Stavros]

This thought is for filghy2 as I read a horrendous report on the Rodent Explosion in Australia, and wonder if you have any experience f it. I had a traumatic experience with rodents in the first place I lived in when I left home, and have a loathing of such creatures such that I can't even watch them when they are screen in films. Have the just as extraordinary rains washed them away? And what has been the cause of the epidemic?

Contains distressing images-
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/19/you-cant-escape-the-smell-mouse-plague-grows-to-biblical-proportions-across-eastern-australia

[sukumvit boy]

LOL,however one must respect the pure tenacity of rodents . When asked which creatures will most likely survive a nuclear holocaust or the next great asteroid impact most biologists will tell you Bats Rats and Roaches .

[filghy2]

This thought is for filghy2 as I read a horrendous report on the Rodent Explosion in Australia, and wonder if you have any experience f it. I had a traumatic experience with rodents in the first place I lived in when I left home, and have a loathing of such creatures such that I can't even watch them when they are screen in films. Have the just as extraordinary rains washed them away? And what has been the cause of the epidemic?

It's not near me fortunately, and nor are the floods. Mice plagues seem to be problem mainly in grain-growing regions. The thought of them crawling over me while I'm sleeping would be disconcerting.

I'm not sure what they are doing to the mice, but the floods are causing other problems. How do you feel about spiders?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/22/horrific-swarms-of-spiders-flee-into-homes-and-up-legs-to-escape-nsw-floods

[Stavros]

It's not near me fortunately, and nor are the floods. Mice plagues seem to be problem mainly in grain-growing regions. The thought of them crawling over me while I'm sleeping would be disconcerting.

I'm not sure what they are doing to the mice, but the floods are causing other problems. How do you feel about spiders?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/22/horrific-swarms-of-spiders-flee-into-homes-and-up-legs-to-escape-nsw-floods

I am pleased to here you have not been affected. To paraphrase Sukumvit Boy's post above, I don't have a problem with the tenacity of revolting creatures, but their proximity to me. In the case of spiders, I usually put them in a cup or a jar and send them out into the big wide world, which I believe is far more interesting for them than my bathroom or bedroom. That said, there are spiders, and then there are Australian spiders....so I don't envy your geography, fascinating as it is -from a distance....

https://www.facebook.com/Goggleboxfanpage/videos/who-else-likes-spiders-%EF%B8%8F-gogglebox/1713840542088576/

[sukumvit boy]

Not to mention giant white sharks and saltwater crocodiles ,deadly box jellyfish and ring octopuses and cone snails, and a host of the most venomous snakes . Yet in my opinion this ,the largest island on earth, hosts the friendliest people on the planet!

[Stavros]

hrumph! The Amazon Basin aso has a phenomenal bio-diversity which incudes lethal creatures on land and in rivers just waiting for you to arrive -are you up for it? Some places look better on tv, which is where they should remain for me, and most of us.

I think a key point about Australia is that much of it is still wilderness and hostile to human settlement, while the 'Outback' seems to contain humans hostile to other humans. I am sure plenty of indigenous people will know where to go and where not to go, barefoot, or in shoes, or camper vans.

My experience of Australians has been poor, from a woman I met on a train to Paris who tried to convince me 'Aboriginals' are stone deaf being from the Stone Age and not really humans; to the guy at work who insulted me when I was the Union rep (not that he was in our Union) blaming Britain for the 'Communists' who were sent to Australia that he loathed and detested (he assumed I was one of them) -and had mininal impact on Australian politics. I did meet a congenial Aussie in Dublin's justly, and famously musical pub, O'Donoghue's in the 1970s, but he didn't live in Australia. Once I almost collided with Germaine Greer in the South Front, which would have left me the worse for wear given her size and mine; and in the distant days when I worked in Broadcasting House Rolf Harris waived me across a zebra crossing on Portand Place.
There was the gruff, no-nonsense Aussie I shared a small table with in a packed Diwan-i-Am who grabbed the waiter by the arm ''Get me a mutton curry, yella rice and a beer", telling me "I'll be in Bomby tomorra nght and get the real thing" which was not fair, as the Diwan-i-Am was one of the best 'Indian' restaurants in London at the time. Someone I know who went to Australia, on being asked said 'It's really just England with very hot weather', and after a flush of truly interesting films in the late 1970s-early 1980s the best directors left for the US.
Yes, Xavier Herbert, Les Murray and Judith Wright are some of the finest writers in English, but that cannot be said of the crabbed, asthmatic, strangulated prose of Patrick Wright, designed as it is to inflict misery on its readers, or the irritating if now deceased Clive James whose only contribution to literature was a series of bad tempered letters in The Times Literary Supplement exchanged with America's most intelligent, if nauseating gossip, Gore Vidal, disputing Hiroshima and the end of the War in the Pacific.
As for Dame Edna Everege, no words can describe 'the horror! The horror!'. Someone once told me she thought Nicole Kidman was/is the most beautiful woman in the world, and was not blind when she said it. I did see Melbourne's drag review, Les Girls when they had a season at the Wimbledon Theatre in London in, I think, 1979 and two or three were amazing, including the 'legendary' Carlotta, but if you were not 6 foot six with the girth of a combine harvester there was no chance of getting a root with the cast on that occasion. And Bob Hawke's rehabilitation of the Labour Party after the Whitlam Paradox was the model for Tony Blair's cake and ale reforms in Cool Britannia. If one assumes that was a positive step foward for Labour, which three election victories tends to confirm.

I am sure I am mistaken about the place, but I don't have any plans to go, and in the current situation we find ourselves in, it is not going to happen this side of eternity.

[filghy2]

Not to mention giant white sharks and saltwater crocodiles ,deadly box jellyfish and ring octopuses and cone snails, and a host of the most venomous snakes . Yet in my opinion this ,the largest island on earth, hosts the friendliest people on the planet!

Don't forget that the most dangerous animal is man. Animals normally attack people only for food or defence - they don't kill masses of people just because they are angry at something. Australia is a safer country than the US because guns are much less prevalent and there is less social disfunction.

[Stavros]

One of the curious tendencies of extremists is that they give full vent to their views wihen the reality of political power is a distant dream, then suddenly recant when it becomes a close-up reality. Americans have had to assume Marjorie Taylor-Greene is being honest when she disavows any sympathy with QAnon, now that she is in a member of the House. Sidney Powell, having spent months claiming voting machines in the US 2020 elections were rigged, now faced with lawsuit after lawsuit, claims ' No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.

Thus, in Israel, Belalzel Smotrich and colleagues in his party, Otzma Yehudit [Jewish Power] have suddenly decided the nauseating views they have been expressing about Israel's LGBQ+ citizens for yers are not in fact what they said they were. Thus,

"Smotrich helped organize an event in 2006 called the “beast parade” in which goats and donkeys were paraded in Jerusalem in a protest against the LGBTQ+ pride parade in the city, but has since expressed regret for taking part in the event, telling Haaretz “I did it when I was young, and I regret it.” In an interview with Arutz Sheva at the time of the parade, Smotrich had stated that the Pride Parade was “worse than the acts of animals.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-elections/israel-elections-what-does-religious-zionist-win-mean-for-progressives-663037

Even Netanyahu once said he could never govern with people like that in coalition, whereas his position now is so precarious he may have to, though he will presumably praise Otzma Yehudit for 'changing' their views.

As for the LGBTQ+ citizes of Israel, as the Jerusalem Post article states-

"Despite being a relatively progressive country in terms of LGBTQ+ issues, LGBTQ-phobia is still strong in Israel, and LGBTQ+ civil rights are still lacking.
Hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people have been on the rise for years, with LGBTQ-phobic cases reported once every three hours in 2020 in Israel, a 27% increase compared to 2019.
Conversion therapy is still legal in Israel, and Jewish conversion therapy organizations from the US have found refuge in Israel.
Same-sex couples still can’t marry, adopt or have children through surrogacy within Israel, and have to go through court rulings and expensive and complicated bureaucracy to achieve these basic parts of establishing a marriage and a family."

A more bleak view has this-

"Nahum Barnea, a commentator for the country’s top-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote on Wednesday that the rise of Religious Zionism “isn’t just a blow to morale, it’s an ideological catastrophe.”
He said Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party was now “a hostage in the hands of an anti-democratic, racist, homophobic, terrorism-sponsoring group of people.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/24/racist-and-reprehensible-jewish-power-set-to-enter-israels-parliament

But hey, once they are in the Knesset and the Government, who knows, maybe they will go all cuddly and warm, like Lauren and Marjorie...

[sukumvit boy]

I most certainly agree with all your points flighty2, I was just having a little fun about Australia since I just happen to be reading Bill Bryson's ,"In a Sunburnt Country" a most entertaining book about Australia .

[Jericho]

Well done, New York!
3oz?
Lucky bastards!

[Stavros]

Oh dear, it seems that the Mattinee idol of Congress might be facing the final curtain many years before he thought it was due to fall....

"The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz appears increasingly politically isolated amid a spiralling scandal over a federal sex-trafficking investigation. Even for Donald Trump, one Republican political operative said (https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-isnt-coming-to-matt-gaetzs-rescue-for-now), “a 10ft pole is not long enough”. "

I had a good laugh at this -"The Daily Beast, meanwhile, reported (https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-isnt-coming-to-matt-gaetzs-rescue-for-now) that advisers were pleading with the former president to keep quiet".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/03/matt-gaetz-republican-sex-trafficking-scandal

But is he guilty?

[fred41]

Yeah Jericho...the law had to catch up to what everyone was already doing. My neighborhood already has a constant skunky smell from it.lol. ........Oh , and I think Gaetz is definitely guilty. He was always a weird wolf. Remember when he said he had a young Hispanic son...that he’s not related to? I saw that interview with Tucker Tuesday...it was odd, to say the least.

[fred41]

Here’s my thought for the day. we now have a saner President...but he lies almost as much as Trump did.

[blackchubby38]

Yeah Jericho...the law had to catch up to what everyone was already doing. My neighborhood already has a constant skunky smell from it.lol. ........Oh , and I think Gaetz is definitely guilty. He was always a weird wolf. Remember when he said he had a young Hispanic son...that he’s not related to? I saw that interview with Tucker Tuesday...it was odd, to say the least.

If I was Tucker Carlson, I would had asked Gaetz if he was wearing a wire. Gaetz sounded like he was trying get Tucker to admit to something he did.

[broncofan]

Here’s my thought for the day. we now have a saner President...but he lies almost as much as Trump did.
I haven't closely followed what Biden has said and I don't doubt he occasionally lies but it's hard for me to believe anyone in public life could come close.

Promising a vaccine in three months, saying the virus will disappear (over and over again), saying ballots were destroyed, saying they were shipped in. It got to the point where it wasn't even spin, it was an alternate universe. Typically when politicians lie it's to make their policies seem more effective and it's subtler.

I've followed Gaetz for a while and he's a complete doofus. I remember when he started sharing the pictures of Nestor. I don't think the tweets hurt him but I can't believe he thought tweeting about his situation would help.

[Jericho]

Yeah Jericho...the law had to catch up to what everyone was already doing. My neighborhood already has a constant skunky smell from it.lol. ........Oh , and I think Gaetz is definitely guilty. He was always a weird wolf. Remember when he said he had a young Hispanic son...that he’s not related to? I saw that interview with Tucker Tuesday...it was odd, to say the least.

Wait, whut?
But not related...Someone started early on his 3oz!

The weed situation over here's a joke, I don't think it'll ever be legal, or at least not until they figure out a way of taxing the are out of it!

[Stavros]

Two takeaways from the trial of Derek Chauvin -

1) how common are fake banknotes in the US, has anyone ever handled one?

2) I would argue that if a suspect has been taking drugs, by prescrption or from another source, the suspect is more vulnerable to a potentially morbid incident if handled in the manner in which Chauvin is alleged to have done, so I don't think the defence can claim 'it was the fentanyl that killed him' or whatever drug/drugs they cite. In fact they should have led Floyd go and told him to appear at the station the next day or they would come get him -I mean, all that aggro for a $20 bill?

[fred41]

Once I suspect he’s a possible EDP and/or on drugs (especially with the Fentanyl problem in the States)..I would’ve called for an EMT bus. George Floyd was clearly a big strong guy, but the hardest part is usually getting the handcuffs on...but they had already accomplished that. They could’ve rolled him on his side..with handcuffs on and both legs on the ground, he would’ve been easy enough to control, because he wouldn’t have any leverage. If I was already familiar with him, then I would’ve changed tactics slightly according to what I would then already know about him, but if you let him drive off, as a possible EDP or on drugs or both..then it would be irresponsible to just let him drive off (a caller had described him as “awfully drunk and not in control of himself).

[fred41]

I haven’t watched the trial, just the reports and the footage.

[Stavros]

Once I suspect he’s a possible EDP and/or on drugs (especially with the Fentanyl problem in the States)..I would’ve called for an EMT bus. George Floyd was clearly a big strong guy, but the hardest part is usually getting the handcuffs on...but they had already accomplished that. They could’ve rolled him on his side..with handcuffs on and both legs on the ground, he would’ve been easy enough to control, because he wouldn’t have any leverage. If I was already familiar with him, then I would’ve changed tactics slightly according to what I would then already know about him, but if you let him drive off, as a possible EDP or on drugs or both..then it would be irresponsible to just let him drive off (a caller had described him as “awfully drunk and not in control of himself).


Good points Fred, especially on the car which I had not thought of. It seems to be that training is a major issue in this and other cases, not just the placing of a knee on the neck, but more broadly. I came across some footage of a five-year old being handcuffed and then taken back into the school he had walked out of owing to some incident with a computer, but the officer sceaming at the boy is clearly in need of anger management training or something to overhaul her attitude to children and 'suspects'. I mean, a five year old!
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/outrage-in-maryland-over-video-of-police-handcuffing-5-year-old-109200965560

I would like to say our policemen are wonderful, but they ain't. There was the gruesome case of two officers who took selfies next to the dead bodies of two women murdered in a London park, and there have been no successful prosecutions of police officers following a death in custody since 1971. There is one case outstanding (the death of Dalian Atikinson) that has not been tried owing to the delays caused by Covid. So bad policing is not unique to the US.

Wembly Park murders-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53198702

Overview of police prosecutions in the UK-
https://fullfact.org/crime/prosecutions-deaths-police-custody/

[Stavros]

"This morning, Buckingham Palace confirmed the news Prince Philip had died at the age of 99 (https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/current-affairs/prince-philip-dead-dies/).
Broadcasters have halted their scheduled programming in order to air tributes, including a statement from the Prime Minister Boris Johnson."

-As a result, the final of Masterchef will not be shown in BBC1 tonight. This change to the scheduling is outrageous, because Prince Phillip was not an important person. I would understand it if the Queen, as Head of State, were the one who died and they had saturation coverage of the event, but to deprive me of one of the few TV programmes I watch is disgraceful and undemocratic and proves the lies you read in the Telegraph that the BBC is a 'woke' radical left organization.

It is also a good year with three very good cooks in the frame. I am rooting for Alexina Anatole who has made some delicious looking plates of food, which is of greater importance to me than a 99-year old who bedded a Princess who became Queen producing four children, two of whom are either bonkers or crooked, a third so irrelevant most people in the country cannot remember his name or list a single thing he has done. The daugher likes horses and supports Scotland when it plays Rugby Union. I prefer perectly made croissants, lobster mousse, and someone who knows how to cook a rack of lamb so it can actually be eaten and washed down with a robust Burgundy. Let's get some priorities in order here!

[Stavros]

Hmm Tucker Carlson -I don't know a lot about him but read these stories, which presumably conform to the Murdoch view that rude, insulting, racist language and reporting is better at making the news, rather than reporting what is actually happening Anyway, this latest rant begs the question -rather than claim that he is being 'replaced' by "more obedient voters from the Third World", maybe he can explain why, if it is true, new immigrants to the USA don't vote Republican? And, more to the point, maybe he should ask if the problem is w ith a Democratic Party with magic powers of coercion, or the party he supports that is viewed by new immigrants as irrelevant to their needs and interests?

Thus-
"“Everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it,” he said. “No, no, no. This is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they’re importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that?”"
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/antisemitic-racist-toxic-tucker-carlson-214904963.html


-No, spud, spend your time persuading them to change their vote to match yours. Or does that take too much effort?

[filghy2]

"“Everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it,” he said. “No, no, no. This is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they’re importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that?”"

If it's not about the skin colour of immigrants then why is he objecting to something that's been happening since 1783? Is he unaware that the USA was built on immigration? Does he think the population should have been held constant to avoid diluting the political power of existing voters?

[Stavros]

I think the US is heading for a crisis in regard to the changes to voting that may become law in many states, with the Supreme Court asked to make a judgment -but will it do so or refer these matters back to the State, or support the changes? It is when Carlson talks about 'obedient voters' that one wonders what his intentions are.

Most immigrants tend to be conservative, they want to make their own way in the US -or the UK or Australia- and don't want state handouts or look for a life on welfare. It has long been one of the standard allegations made by people like Farage that asylum seekers arrive and get put up in nice hotels, or are given apartments and benefits, which is rubbish, or that migrant workers from the EU were living on benefits when most were not.

It suits the narrative that 'our country is being taken away from us' and that it is 'the left' and 'the Liberals' who are responsible, when the fact in the US is that the Republican Party has made itself hostile to what ought to be one of its most loyal constituencies, as Florida and its Cuban-American voters suggest, though there is a historical twist to that. In the UK and parts of Europe, the left in the form of Socialist and Social Democrtic parties has been losing votes, in spite of the 'austere' policies that have created the feeling the working class and even the middle cass have been 'left behind', as they were also implemented in the US, so the comparison reveals the stark differences among Conservatives.

But as I have suggested before, I am not sure that the current 'leadership' in the GOP whether that is Trump or the various Governors and Congressional reps are in fact Conservatives. Much as in the UK the language and policies of the neo-Nazi National Front were considered unacceptable in the 1970s, they are now common currency in the Government of Boris Johnson as they were in Farage's UKIP. And 'race' plays a more significant role in shaping US politics than in the UK, not that we are immune to its evils. And to think I thought a decade or so ago that we had moved on from the brainless nationalism that agitated the 'right', only to see it's vengeance in action today.

[broncofan]

https://twitter.com/meakoopa/status/1380953732091944966

I'm curious what everyone's response is to this tweet. It came up on my timeline and is extremely popular. I don't think it makes sense. I would love to live in a world where everyone invested money without expectation of return and every scientist worked on cures and vaccines solely because it's rewarding but some people do want to protect and monetize their creations.

We can say that drug companies should not patent vaccines but if we made it impossible to do so there would be fewer vaccines. Research and development costs are enormous and given the failure rate of vaccines companies want to be able to make a windfall to justify the initial investment.

Could we amend the patent system for life-saving drugs? Sure. I don't doubt that market exclusivity is greater than is necessary to create the right incentives but this just seems like the kind of ineffectual, unrealistic nonsense I hear from some quarters. The sentiment is right, but are they even considering what would achieve the best outcome?

[Stavros]

Surely the issue here is not so much about making a profit, but the Patent as a guarantee of quality and authenticity, and is the reason why patents exist (ask a lawyer!). Woud you rather have a vaccine which costs, say £10 and says 'Pfizer' on the label knowing it was made in Belgium, or one that costs £1 and says Pfizer, but was made in North Korea?

[broncofan]

Surely the issue here is not so much about making a profit, but the Patent as a guarantee of quality and authenticity, and is the reason why patents exist (ask a lawyer!). Woud you rather have a vaccine which costs, say £10 and says 'Pfizer' on the label knowing it was made in Belgium, or one that costs £1 and says Pfizer, but was made in North Korea?
I think the purpose of patents is to provide a property right to the inventor so that they can exclude other people from making their invention. This is thought to provide an incentive to create. By disclosing the invention the inventor gets a monopoly on its production for a term of years. In the U.S. that term is 20 years but the FDA also layers on top of it short periods of protection depending on the investment for that type of drug.

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/development-approval-process-drugs/frequently-asked-questions-patents-and-exclusivity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States

Trademarks on the other hand identify the source of a good and help guarantee quality control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_trademark_law

[blackchubby38]

https://twitter.com/meakoopa/status/1380953732091944966

I'm curious what everyone's response is to this tweet. It came up on my timeline and is extremely popular. I don't think it makes sense. I would love to live in a world where everyone invested money without expectation of return and every scientist worked on cures and vaccines solely because it's rewarding but some people do want to protect and monetize their creations.

We can say that drug companies should not patent vaccines but if we made it impossible to do so there would be fewer vaccines. Research and development costs are enormous and given the failure rate of vaccines companies want to be able to make a windfall to justify the initial investment.

Could we amend the patent system for life-saving drugs? Sure. I don't doubt that market exclusivity is greater than is necessary to create the right incentives but this just seems like the kind of ineffectual, unrealistic nonsense I hear from some quarters. The sentiment is right, but are they even considering what would achieve the best outcome?

It doesn't make sense and the person who made the tweet and those who are liking it are thinking emotionally and not rationally.

[Stavros]

I think the purpose of patents is to provide a property right to the inventor so that they can exclude other people from making their invention. This is thought to provide an incentive to create. By disclosing the invention the inventor gets a monopoly on its production for a term of years. In the U.S. that term is 20 years but the FDA also layers on top of it short periods of protection depending on the investment for that type of drug.

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/development-approval-process-drugs/frequently-asked-questions-patents-and-exclusivity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States

Trademarks on the other hand identify the source of a good and help guarantee quality control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_trademark_law


Thanks for pointing out the difference between a Patent and a Trademark, not something I had thought about. But one has to chuckle at your description of Trademarks which "identify the source of a good and help guarantee quality control"- perhaps that is why it cost so much for the President's securty detail to stay at Mar-a-Lago? Or maybe the words 'quality' and 'control' are in this instance separate concepts? One wonders what other establishments with the famous Trademark deserve the accolades associated with the word 'quality'.

[filghy2]

I'm curious what everyone's response is to this tweet. It came up on my timeline and is extremely popular. I don't think it makes sense. I would love to live in a world where everyone invested money without expectation of return and every scientist worked on cures and vaccines solely because it's rewarding but some people do want to protect and monetize their creations.

I think what people are really objecting to is that life-preserving drugs should be priced at a level that many people cannot afford. The obvious solution is that the government should subsidise essential drugs, which is what happens in most developed countries (though maybe not the US). In Australia we only have to make a specified co-payment for drug prescriptions, regardless of the original price. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_Benefits_Scheme

Monopolies lead to excessive profiteering due to lack of competition, so if the government grants a monopoly (which is what a patent does) it should also regulate the price. In Australia this is done through the price the government is willing to pay for drugs. I guess health insurers play a somewhat similar role in the US, although the government is likely to have more bargaining power as it's effectively the sole buyer.

[broncofan]

I think what people are really objecting to is that life-preserving drugs should be priced at a level that many people cannot afford. The obvious solution is that the government should subsidise essential drugs, which is what happens in most developed countries (though maybe not the US). In Australia we only have to make a specified co-payment for drug prescriptions, regardless of the original price. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_Benefits_Scheme

Monopolies lead to excessive profiteering due to lack of competition, so if the government grants a monopoly (which is what a patent does) it should also regulate the price. In Australia this is done through the price the government is willing to pay for drugs. I guess health insurers play a somewhat similar role in the US, although the government is likely to have more bargaining power as it's effectively the sole buyer.
I agree with you. I just think the tweet is in such a hurry to go after the bad guy that it suggests an unrealistic solution (not patenting new drugs) and avoids the useful one you suggest. A subsidy would mean the company can recover its r&d investment, make a profit and that people get access to a vaccine.

So far the U.S. government or state and local governments are covering 100% of the vaccine cost. I think there should be more and better ways to put leverage on pharma companies not to exploit their short-term monopolies in ways that are unethical. Yes drug companies seem to get away with charging excessive prices when they're dealing with insurance companies and patients.

I am definitely in favor of (lots of) reform of our healthcare system as well as the system in place to provide additional layers of market exclusivity beyond the patent life for new drugs. I'd support subsidies and even some price control measures in extreme cases.

[Stavros]

Change has not come to America-

"Andy Ngo, a journalist affiliated with right-wing groups, shared what he said were friends’ social media tributes to Toledo — who was shot to death by police while reportedly unarmed with his hands up — while claiming that Toledo’s nickname was “Lil Homicide” (https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1382811697279295493) in gang circles. Ngo shared these screenshots alongside a video of Toledo being accosted by police.
And in a recent segment on his radio show, Sean Hannity (https://www.newsweek.com/sean-hannity-slammed-calling-adam-toledo-13-year-old-man-1584143) described Toledo as a “thirteen-year-old man”. Comparatively, Fox News programming that aired in 2020 described Kyle Rittenhouse — a seventeen-year-old who traveled across state lines with an unlicensed AR-15, shot two people to death and injured another while counter-protesting a rally in support of Jacob Blake — as a “little boy trying to help his community (https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-defends-all-american-kyle-rittenhouse-says-hes-a-little-boy-just-protecting-his-state)”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/adam-toledo-sean-hannity-fox-news-kyle-rittenhouse-b1832814.html

[Stavros]

The trail of tears -a $20 bill, and an air freshener in the car...

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQYEf1noTQGo9LVyq3RUDP3GSeXJW-XN1NU8aahUAdfkzI6zqmUSk7cHj8k_o93y3v4JHc&usqp=CAU

https://blogmedia.dealerfire.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/234/2017/08/Air-freshener_b.jpg

[sukumvit boy]

A fascinating and in depth look at the state sponsored hacking culture in the hermit kingdom whose activities include 'milking' ATM cash machines on a grand scale ,robbing cryptocurrency exchanges and targeting governments,corporations and even individuals with ransomware.
https://media.newyorker.com/photos/6078ec594dd18df4288a94d5/4:3/w_116,c_limit/210426_r38269_rd.jpg

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/6078ec594dd18df4288a94d5/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/210426_r38269_rd.jpg

[sukumvit boy]

I can't get the link to the article to copy I think because the article is still too recent ,April New Yorker magazine article

[sukumvit boy]

Sorry. I discovered that since this is the May 3rd issue of the magazine it is not officially available for download yet.I will post it as soon as available.

[Stavros]

There are other accounts, and I believe the article you refer to i the New Yorker is a follow-up to the one that it published on April 19 2021.

There are other sources on North Korean cyber-crime, from the DoJ indictment linked below, to some artices, also linked below. One of them claims that what NK is doing is not just crime, thus-

"Nam Jae-joon, the former director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, reports that Kim Jong Un himself said that cyber capabilities are just as important as nuclear power and that "cyber warfare, along with nuclear weapons and missiles, is an 'all-purpose sword' (https://news.joins.com/article/13048072) that guarantees our [North Korea's] military's capability to strike relentlessly."
https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/why-north-korea-excels-in-cybercrime--/a/d-id/1339887

This prompts the question, is this the kind of 'war' that we now face, if, as I suggested in your thread on the Thucydides Trap, conventional war is avoided because the parties cannot guaratee military success, and the consquences may not resolve the conflict between, say, the US and China?

Also, if North Korea uses computing as a weapon of war, as have Israel and Iran (on each other and their allies), does this pose an even greater threat if at some point 'smart computers' make their own decisions about a perceived threat and -if they can do so- launch a computer-generated nuclear attack -as Henry Kissinger claims in an article in today's Guardian -?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/01/us-china-doomsday-threat-ramped-up-by-hi-tech-advances-says-kissinger

And presumably, if North Korea can attack the US, the US can attack North Korea -? It may be warfare, but not as we have known it -and who wins in such conflicts? And how do we know when 'we' have won?

DoJ indictment is here-
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-north-korean-military-hackers-indicted-wide-ranging-scheme-commit-cyberattacks-and

Article in Foreign Polcy here-
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/15/north-korea-missiles-cyberattack-hacker-armies-crime/

[Stavros]

Further to the posts above, the attack on the Colonial pipeline seems to expose the difference between Cyber-Crime, and Cyber-Warfare, thus blurring the point I made in my post above.

That said, if the attack(s) originate in Russia, and the Guardian/Observer journalist can read the 'Dark Web' messages of the criminals involved, so too can the Russian Government -so do they not have a responsibility to 'take action' against organized criminals in their country openly advertising for partners in crime? This is a key passage in this from Naughton's article-

"So who or what is DarkSide? According to Intel 471 (https://www.intel471.com/), a security company that surveys the teeming cybercriminal ecosystem of the internet, DarkSide was first spotted (https://www.intel471.com/blog/darkside-ransomware-colonial-pipeline-attack) in November 2020 on a Russian-language hacker forum, advertising for partners for a ransomware service. What it was pitching was a platform that “approved” cybercriminals could use to infect companies with ransomware and carry out negotiations and payments with victims. “We are a new product on the market,” it burbled (https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/a-closer-look-at-the-darkside-ransomware-gang/), “but that does not mean that we have no experience and came from nowhere. We received millions of dollars profit by partnering with other well-known cryptolockers. We created DarkSide because we didn’t find the perfect product for us. Now we have it.” Not long afterwards, its software was found to be behind several ransomware attacks on manufacturers and legal firms in Europe and the US."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/15/welcome-to-darkside-and-the-inexorable-rise-of-ransomware

[Stavros]

What puzzles me about the new Abortion law in Texas, is why, when she becomes pregnant, the woman loses her rights as a citizen, while the rights of the foetus become more important than her. Moreover, I don't know how some anti-Abortion fanatic in Oregon can sue a Doctor in Texas unless there is some information network or campaign that informs people across the US that this Dr is working in an abortion clinic, or that someone has found out that a Gynaecologist has had a conversation with a patient regardng complications in her pregnancy - a consultation that surely is legally private? I can understand the political aim of the Bill, but I don't understand how it works in practice, and does it not violate the First Amendment as well as Roe-v-Wade?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/19/texas-abortion-ban-law-greg-abbott

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/texas-new-abortion-laws-1164730/

[broncofan]

What puzzles me about the new Abortion law in Texas, is why, when she becomes pregnant, the woman loses her rights as a citizen, while the rights of the foetus become more important than her. Moreover, I don't know how some anti-Abortion fanatic in Oregon can sue a Doctor in Texas unless there is some information network or campaign that informs people across the US that this Dr is working in an abortion clinic, or that someone has found out that a Gynaecologist has had a conversation with a patient regardng complications in her pregnancy - a consultation that surely is legally private? I can understand the political aim of the Bill, but I don't understand how it works in practice, and does it not violate the First Amendment as well as Roe-v-Wade?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/19/texas-abortion-ban-law-greg-abbott

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/texas-new-abortion-laws-1164730/
I don't understand it either. There is a problem with the fact that the composition of our courts has changed and at the level of the Supreme Court the Justices don't have to respect precedent. Under previous precedent, states cannot ban abortion, they can regulate it but the regulations cannot place an "undue burden" on a woman's right to get an abortion. There are lots of cases that deal with what regulations would be an undue burden but even without analysis it's easy to say the Texas laws should be unconstitutional.

But what the Supreme Court thinks is an undue burden may not be the issue because they may overturn Roe v. Wade and hold that a woman doesn't have a right to get an abortion. I think it would end up harming Republicans politically but I'm more concerned about the immediate harm to women.

[Stavros]

It seems to me to be another nail in the Constitution and its promotion of the rights of the individual. It is to my mind part of the 'New Wave Fascism' that has its adherents in the US, notably Steve Bannon, probably Tucker Carlson but I am not sure what it is he thinks or if he just improvises anything that will upset people which is his job.

The situation now is that the people who voted for Trump and say they will do so again, no longer believe in the Constitution or the aims of the 1776 Revolution, because by definition if Rights mean what they say, everyone must have them, but that means people being equal, and enough White Americans consider themselves superior to Black, Asian and Latina people to make accepting this equivalent to giving up their 'God-given' right to live in America.

Belief in the rule of law now means, 'our law, not yours' which is why it was possible for Trump in 2016 to say he would accept the result of the election 'If I win', and carried this into the 2020 election to deny even the possibility that he did not win, and for a stunning majority of his supporters in and out of Congress to maintain the belief that the 2020 election result was fraudulent -because they did not win.

For States like Texas, their law is more relevant than the Federal law of the USA, and I don't doubt any challenge to this new law will be repudiated on the basis of 'State's Rights', which in effect now means that Texas need not secede from the USA, merely ignore it when it chooses to. Like the other Confederate States that have never accepted they lost their war against the US in 1865, they will be 'half-in, half-out' of the USA as presently constituted. There was even an article this past week suggesting Florida's Governor could prevent Trump from being 'extradited' to New York were he supboeed to appear in Court there, presumably for tax avoidance/fraud, though evidence is mounting of his Scottish properties laundering money, presumably for the Mafia.

Critical to this new position is that the Constitutional Rights of Women are cancelled when it comes to pregnancy, at which moment the woman's body becomes the property of the State and its laws which deny that woman the right to control it, even if she became pregnant at 13 after being gang-raped by her father and nine of his buddies. It is a cynical move that is using women's bodies and their Constitutional Rights to repudiate the authority of the USA in Texas, to assert that the Bible is of greater meaning, and to insist that it is only the State, not the indivdual who can make decisions on pregnancy.

And this, in a State supposedly opposed to Abortion, that aborted the life of Quintin Jones two days ago.

[broncofan]

I agree with the entirety of your post. I think you do a good job of pointing out that there isn't a principle based justification for their set of policy views. Or at least not one they would feel comfortable articulating. The rights they hold sacred are only those things cognizable to their base. The ability to exclude gay men and women from businesses, not the ability to exclude people from businesses who violate public health guidelines, not the right to abortion, not the right to vote if one is a minority, but the right to own any weapon no matter how dangerous to public welfare and how unlikely any practical legal use can be found for such a weapon.

If they are successful in preventing women from getting abortions they will only increase the cultural divide between the U.S. and the rest of the developed world. Unless such regressions occur everywhere it will end badly for everyone, especially women, but notably for Republicans who are harmed politically whenever people are able to clearly see the impact of their policy choices.

[Stavros]

On the specific issue of abortion, the question might be, how important an issue is it for most Americans? Is it as the term has it, a ‘deal breaker’? In the UK it is a minor issue for voters so it has little impact on parties, with the exception of the DUP in Northern Ireland.

This, it seems to me, makes the Abortion issue in the US more than the act itself, but the broader view that Abortion is supported by ‘the left’ and for that reason must be opposed, but also thrown into the basket of policies that separate one America from the other- climate change as an emergency, BLM, Transgender rights, the right to vote.

But your point about women and women’s rights must surely be the anvil on which this nonsense is broken? Does Greg Abbott oppose child marriage in America where most of the children who get married are female, not male? I am permanently surprised child marriage has not become a major issue in US politics as its moral content is more stark than abortion where there are medical and psychological, as well as political issues to contend with. And I would have thought it is the kind of subject Biden has strong enough views on which to act. So what is Congress doing about it?

[Stavros]

Two thoughts today-

1) would it make any difference to Congressional Representative Greene, to point out in her comparison of Jews wearing a “Gold Star” and Americans wearing masks, that the stars Jews were forced to wear, were Yellow? It seems to me her only aim in political life is to be as offensive as she can be, so as to make the news without whose attention she would be an insignificant nobody.

2) I read headlines and bylines that tell me George Floyd’s death has ‘changed the world’. I am not sure it has even changed the US, and while I do not dismiss the theme as irrelevant or wrong, I wonder if it merely acts as a symbol of the policing crisis that exists in parts of the US, while underlining the extent to which Race continues to shape social and political relations. To the authenticity of the movement for change that has emerged in the last year, one sees in the same timeframe the insertion of terrorist groups such as the III Percenters into law enforcement, the growing belief among people like them that the Constitution and Congress are irrelevant to their needs, and thus a terrible sense that these two movements are either going to collide, or some States, currently Texas is the model, effectively opt out of those parts of the Union they don’t like. It remains to be seen if the murder of non-White Americans in Texas increases in line with its Wild West gun laws.