Lefties are so cute, how they think the monsters they create won’t eat them.

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Lefties are so cute, how they think the monsters they create won’t eat them.

1Carnophile
Bewerkt: nov 18, 2018, 12:39 pm

Politico: Ocasio-Cortez backs campaign to primary fellow Democrats
The incoming congresswoman endorses an effort by the group Justice Democrats to make the House Democratic Caucus more liberal and diverse by taking on incumbents.
...
The incoming congresswoman's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, a co-founder of Justice Democrats, was blunter.
"We need new leaders, period," he said on the call. "We gotta primary folks."

2Carnophile
nov 18, 2018, 12:38 pm

Ocasio-Cortez joins climate change sit-in at Pelosi’s office.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/416411-youth-protestors-fill-nancy...

3Carnophile
Bewerkt: nov 18, 2018, 12:56 pm

Bonus: Ocasio-Cortez claims she was recently mistaken for a Congressional intern and implies this is RACISM! and/or SEXISM!

Her tweet:
Dem Spouse + Member luncheon were at the same time today. I was sent to spouse event.

Last night I was stopped bc it was assumed I was an intern/staffer

Next time try believing women + people of color when they talk about their experiences being a woman or person of color

She’s probably just lying, as one does when one needs a rush of victim crack.

But on the off chance that it actually happened...

You can’t brag about being the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, and also shriek about being mistaken for an intern.

Narcisisstic little asshole.

4KAzevedo
nov 18, 2018, 3:38 pm

Wow, well you're sure paying attention, aren't you.

5Carnophile
dec 31, 2018, 1:42 pm

Women’s march cancelled for being too white.

The organizers’ press release explains,

“Up to this point, the participants have been overwhelmingly white, lacking representation from several perspectives in our community. Instead of pushing forward with crucial voices absent, the organizing team will take time for more outreach.”

6JGL53
jan 1, 2019, 6:18 pm

And yet lefties stomped conservative ass in the most recent national election.

And what if they continue to stomp conservative ass in 2020? Well the whining by all the butt-hurt righties will just get louder about the cruelty of life and how evil is triumphing and so forth.

Wake up and smell your own shit, righties. trump and company are full bore in the process of destroying the republican party for god damn good. Just sit back and enjoy the show and STFU about socialism. Socialism is coming soon to a town near you.

lol.

7proximity1
jan 2, 2019, 6:16 am


>5 Carnophile:

Yeah! "Our strength is in our (racial/ethnic) diversity" works! Who knew!?

LOL! I love this shit!

__________________________________________________

..."the participants have been overwhelmingly white" ...

I feel their pain. I, too, have found that each and every time I've been personally involved in some social action, protest movement, etc., I've always been 'overwhelmingly white'.



8Carnophile
jan 9, 2019, 12:08 am

Feminist kicked out of bar because she was wearing a T-shirt that defined a woman as an “adult human female.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/feminist-mom-booted-from-bar-over-t-shirt-with-the-...

9amysisson
jan 9, 2019, 12:24 am

>3 Carnophile:: She’s probably just lying, as one does when one needs a rush of victim crack.

Baseless accusation much? We have no evidence to support her being a liar. On the other hand:

"“This building the wall should have been done by all of the presidents that preceded me, and they all know it,” he said during a news conference. “Some of them have told me that we should have done it.”"

Yeah, except not so much. The four living ex-presidents pulled that rug out from under Mr. T, didn't they?

10Carnophile
jan 9, 2019, 5:39 pm

>9 amysisson: "She’s probably just lying, as one does when one needs a rush of victim crack."

Baseless accusation much? We have no evidence to support her being a liar.


WRONG. We have innumerable examples of lefties issuing false accusations of racism, sexism, etc. Leftists do it constantly. See my posts in this thread starting here for just some of the many examples.

11krolik
jan 9, 2019, 6:40 pm

>10 Carnophile:
Your reference in >3 Carnophile: was to a specific person, and the post in >9 amysisson: responded in regard to that person.

No need to change the subject.

12Carnophile
jan 9, 2019, 8:51 pm

Wrong again. If the last million people you meet who were wearing purple turtlenecks say, "I was born in Lisbon," and turn out to be lying, then the next person you meet who is wearing purple turtleneck and says, "I was born on Lisbon" is also very probably lying.

It's called empiricism.

13John5918
Bewerkt: jan 10, 2019, 1:25 am

>12 Carnophile:

Did you ever study probability in maths? (or math, as I believe you say across the Pond).

14Carnophile
Bewerkt: jan 10, 2019, 6:55 pm

>13 John5918: Did you ever study probability in maths?

This is like your priceless question to me in another thread,

How much do you know about transvestite communities in Asia?

If you have a point to make about #12, just make it.

15krolik
jan 11, 2019, 3:39 am

>14 Carnophile:
John is probably referring to the "gambler's fallacy."

16John5918
jan 11, 2019, 10:01 am

>15 krolik:

Thanks, yes.

17Carnophile
jan 11, 2019, 12:37 pm

The gambler's fallacy is the opposite of what I said, as you two would have seen if you'd actually read the first paragraph of the link in #15.

18amysisson
jan 11, 2019, 1:05 pm

>10 Carnophile:

Two questions:

1. Do you have specific evidence of Ocasio-Cortez lying?

2. What is your response to the fact that Trump lied about what the ex-Presidents didn't say?

19John5918
jan 11, 2019, 1:57 pm

>17 Carnophile:

Maybe you didn't read the next few paragraphs?

20TrippB
jan 11, 2019, 8:21 pm

>18 amysisson: 1. Do you have specific evidence of Ocasio-Cortez lying?

Rather than lying, I think she believes everything she says. She's fantastic. Best Democrat representative in years, and I'm glad she's the new face of the Democrat party.

21proximity1
Bewerkt: jan 12, 2019, 9:40 am

>20 TrippB:

"I think she believes everything she says."

Yeah? So? I believe I could say, with equal accuracy, the same thing about a whole slew of people you wouldn't approve--they, too, actually believed all or very nearly all of what they said or wrote or, today, what they're saying and writing:

Ayn Rand comes to mind, for example. A whole "rogues' gallery" of elected officials: Democrats and Republicans in the U.S., Tories and, alas, Labour party members in the U.K. Tony Blair, hard to beat for being despicable--but it's possible--is another example. The Clintons, the insufferably smug Obamas--I'm convinced that they really believe the smug, ingratiating bilge they routinely spew at private addresses before their wealthy, high-fee paying audiences.

Hitler and Churchill were both people of stubborn conviction; each believed firmly in an ideology which informed and drove his policy-decisions. But their general aims were irreconcilable in nearly all aspects except one of note: both believed in a future dominated by ever evolving and ever more controlling technological prowess combined, inevitably, with ever more rationalized administrative practices in an elite-dominated world of social, political and economic "Mandarins" who rule the world's social and business affairs in their respective domains. Ayn Rand, too, subscribed to this view. Still, at the time, Britain was fortunate to have seen Atlee replaced by Churchill and, similarly, Americans fortunate--if we can apply that term to a world careening into World War II--to have seen Hoover (who was, as a business administrator, extremely accomplished and astute) replaced by Franklin Roosevelt.

For another quite interesting angle on the pitfalls of people who, without a doubt, believe what they're saying, see this important reading:



From "The Comversation" : www.theconverstation.com
()


The downside of doing good with a market mindset |
by David Campbell*
| January 10, 2019 11.50am GMT

__________________________________


... ...

"(Anand) Giridharadas contends that the wealthy philanthropists and other prominent social change leaders co-exist in a parallel universe he calls “MarketWorld,” where the best solutions to society’s problems require the same knowhow used in corporate boardrooms. That is because MarketWorld, as he sees it, ignores the underlying causes for problems like poverty and hunger.

"Its virtual inhabitants do this, he argues, because inequality causes many of these issues. And taking on inequality directly threatens the status and power of elite donors.

Paradox of privilege

'Winners Take All' is one of several recently published books raising difficult questions about how the world’s biggest donors approach their giving. As someone who studies, teaches and believes in philanthropy, I believe these writers have started an important debate that could potentially lead future donors to make make a bigger difference with their giving.

"Giridharadas to a degree echoes Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, who has made a stir by denouncing a 'paradox of privilege' that “shields (wealthy people) from fully experiencing or acknowledging inequality, even while giving us more power to do something about it.'

"Like Walker, Giridharadas finds it hard to shake the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke of 'the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.' "

... ...




* Associate Professor of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Other Binghamton University contributing-authors of articles at The Conversation




22John5918
Bewerkt: jan 12, 2019, 7:08 am

>21 proximity1: Still, at the time, Britain was fortunate to have seen Atlee replaced by Churchill... if we can apply that term to a world careening into World War II

I think you meant Churchill replaced Chamberlain, not Attlee (in 1940, in a world in which World War II had already begun).

To complicate matters, Attlee then replaced Churchill (in 1945), and Churchill then replaced Attlee (in 1951, long after the world had careened out of World War II).

23proximity1
Bewerkt: jan 13, 2019, 7:05 am

>1 Carnophile:

At its essence, an astute recognition underpins this thread's idea--

in its spirit, I recommend the following reading and YouTube listening; these things, which in one way or another turn around what Anand Giridharadas refers to as the "Aspen consensus".

Read, listen and consider:

First and foremost, listen to this address presented at the Aspen Institute:

Anand Giridharadas presents "The Thriving World, the Wilting World, and You"


“…creating a generous side endeavor rather than fighting to reform, bite by bite, the hands that feed us. … Is your regular life, not your ‘side project,’ on the right side of justice?”


(from "World Affairs" Conversations that matter) Anand Giridharadas: Are Elites Really Making the World a Better Place?

WINNERS TAKE ALL: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

The New Yorker : Gospels of Giving for the New Gilded Age || Are today’s donor classes solving problems—or creating new ones? |
By Elizabeth Kolbert | American Chronicles | August 27, 2018 Issue

24krolik
jan 12, 2019, 11:27 am

>21 proximity1:
Err, I think that >20 TrippB: was tongue-in-cheek. But I can't speak for Mr. Tripp.

She's become the face of the party especially among conservatives. Seriously, my Republican friends on Facebook can't stop talking about her. Mostly in fear and anger. Lots of venting going on.

25Carnophile
jan 12, 2019, 11:03 pm

>18 amysisson: Do you have specific evidence of Ocasio-Cortez lying?

Certainly. See #10.

What is your response to the fact that Trump lied about what the ex-Presidents didn't say?

I don't know about that alleged lie. In any case, this thread is about lefties' pets eating them. To quote krolik, "No need to change the subject."

26Carnophile
Bewerkt: jan 12, 2019, 11:08 pm

>19 John5918: Maybe you didn't read the next few paragraphs?

I did. You didn’t, apparently. You certainly didn’t read down to the “Reverse position,” per Wikipedia:
After a consistent tendency towards tails, a gambler may also decide that tails has become a more likely outcome. This is a rational and Bayesian conclusion, bearing in mind the possibility that the coin may not be fair; it is not a fallacy.
Which is the kind of argument I was making.

Stop pretending that you don’t understand the notion of basing beliefs on evidence.

If I tried, if I actually tried, I don’t think I could successfully bait lefties into *literally* arguing that evidence is irrelevant.

All my best baiting of lefties occurs unintentionally.

27Carnophile
jan 12, 2019, 11:11 pm

Pretending that you don’t understand the notion of basing beliefs on evidence is the sort of thing that made me call you the most intellectually dishonest person I know.

Even for a leftist, the level of this kind of behavior from you is remarkable.

28Carnophile
jan 12, 2019, 11:15 pm

>24 krolik: She's become the face of the party especially among conservatives. Seriously, my Republican friends on Facebook can't stop talking about her.

Please. It was the left that started pimping her, even before the primary she won to become the Dem candidate. See, e.g., the New York Times's coverage last summer.

The fact that the left couldn't resist making this FUCKING IDIOT the face of their party is just another one of the enjoyable auto-foot-shootings of the left.

29John5918
Bewerkt: jan 13, 2019, 12:35 am

>25 Carnophile:, >26 Carnophile:, >27 Carnophile:

Ah yes, evidence. You have evidence that a particular individual is lying? Wasn't that the question in >9 amysisson:?

30krolik
jan 13, 2019, 3:00 am

>28 Carnophile:
The people I was referring to do not read or care about the New York Times. But your remark about pimping is of a piece with their attitude toward this person.

31RickHarsch
jan 13, 2019, 5:49 am

>29 John5918: He answered >9 amysisson: with >10 Carnophile:, which of course meant that, no, he has no evidence of her lying.

32proximity1
Bewerkt: jan 16, 2019, 5:17 am

>24 krolik:

Of course. And I missed that because I'm not acquainted enough with the opinions of TrippB to have caught the point you saw.

I haven't bothered--till now--to even pay attention to her, what she says and thinks and the facts of her background.

Apparently, she has about as much in "roots" in the Bronx as the Clintons did when Bill parachuted into the borough with Hillary so that she could run for office "from New York."

Some of her policy positions are fine. But they aren't new. They've been plain common sense for decades or even many generations. If the political order was going to allow such things, they'd have happened a long time ago. So why haven't they happened? The answer to that question is what Giriharadas—and others like him—is talking about. In a way, this extremely fortunate young woman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with her great expectations and ambitions is, really, exactly what Anand Giriharadas is talking about when he explains what the "Aspen consensus" elite love and why they love it.

That topic deserves fuller, dedicated treatment in threads devoted to these issues. To quote Giriharadas, (from
(from "World Affairs" Conversations that matter) Anand Giridharadas: Are Elites Really Making the World a Better Place? )


... "My argument, in a nutshell, is that fake "change"* is what you get when you put the people with most to lose from real change in charge of change." ...

... “I want to say something very positive— about a great, uh— about a man who has forced a great re-thinking in America and that is Donald J. Trump.

"I am, Iam serious about this—because, you know, there’s a lot of research about people’s assumptions—we are all stuck in our assumptions, we all think what we think, we know what we know. It takes an earthquake, a Tsunami, a hurricane, illness, divorce, loss—often—to make people really re-think something fundamental in their lives—change their direction. We all know or have experienced this ourselves.

"Well Donald Trump is the earthquake, Tsunami, illness in the life of our nation. And I find myself in conversation with a lot of people who say, ‘You know what? I have a bunch of strong beliefs: trade is good, business is how you solve problems, blah, blah, blah, blah—but, if Donald Trump is president, probably, a lot of things we all think (are true) are wrong. So I’m open.’ And there is—I am finding in my reporting—an openness to a new conversation and to new assumptions, uhm, that I don’t recognize in my time as a reporter. Uhm, and so I think that we gotta make use of that.” …




____________________________

* fake "change": i.e. addressing social ills through phony, superficial designs which ultimately leave the circumstances unchanged because, to actually effect real change would demand a redress of wide and deep injustice--and doing that would always seriously threaten the wealth, privileges and power of the ruling elite.

Giriharadas estimates (from his reading) that in the five-county San Francisco area, there are approximately 7400-and-something homeless people. In the same area there are 74 billionaires. There are, then, if accurate, around 100 homeless people there for each billionaire.

33Carnophile
jan 14, 2019, 8:26 pm

>29 John5918:
>31 RickHarsch:

Wah, Carnophile won’t let us exclude relevant evidence!

>29 John5918:

I don't know whether to be happy you've dropped the idiotic gambler thing or annoyed that you dropped it without any acknowledgement of your, uh, error.

34Carnophile
jan 14, 2019, 8:30 pm

>30 krolik: The people I was referring to do not read or care about the New York Times.

Note I said, "See, e.g., the New York Times..."

The left started pushing Ocasio-Cortez. Maybe there's some buyer's remorse about it now, but it's too late.

35RickHarsch
jan 15, 2019, 3:04 am

Jtf, I think it just has to be put down to one of those bizarre things the human mind can't decipher. You want proof? Okay, check out this 300+ post thread that ended last April. Somewhere in there is evidence Ocasio-Cortez is a liar...Plus you might consider plain fatigue, as he is at war with South Sudan, as explained on another thread.

36krolik
jan 15, 2019, 6:43 pm

>34 Carnophile:
Sure, the left is pushing her. I don't doubt that. And they're pushing other new faces, too, like Tlaib, Finkenauer and Omar. There's boosterism all over the place. Milking the moment for all they can.

My point in earlier posts, if you can get the chip off your shoulder that obstructs your head, is that in the examples I'm referring to of the "right" (which in other aspects I thought was more varied than you suggest--this is weird shit, me inviting you to be more nuanced about the right), has especially zeroed in on and anointed Ocasio-Cortez as their poster child, their fear figure, and object of two-minutes hate.

This is what intrigues me, and maybe you could school my ignorant liberal ass. Why her and not some of these others, who, ideologically, probably aren't significantly different. What accounts for your demonstrated attraction (repulsion) to Ocasio-Cortez?

37lriley
Bewerkt: jan 15, 2019, 10:04 pm

FWIW Fox News and conservatives are absolutely obsessed with Ocasio-Cortez. They can't stop talking about her. They've completely misrepresented what she's talking about on taxes. They make out as if she wants to tax everyone at a 70% tax rate. That would only be true if everyone were earning $10,000,000.00 a year. I don't know about other people around here--I know these people exist but I've never met one--so the truth is her tax idea is aimed at a small sub-percentage of the 1%--the biggest earners of all in the United States---those who control well over 50% of the wealth of the nation. Why this outrages people on the right so much is beyond me but it does.

Interesting tidbit about Kentucky Senator Rand Paul I heard today. The libertarian who is dead set against government health care has gone north of the border to have a hernia procedure done at an Ontario hospital whose profits come out of Canada's National Health care system. Go fucking figure. We've heard all these horror stories down here about how horrible Canada's health care system is and how terrible their hospitals are because of it. Really Rand!

38Carnophile
jan 16, 2019, 12:13 am

>36 krolik: No. The left thrust her into the spotlight, not the right.

I've never heard of Finkenauer, and I never heard of Tlaib until she made the "impeach the motherfucker" comment.

39RickHarsch
jan 16, 2019, 5:08 am

>38 Carnophile: I guess it depends what the spotlight is. Ocasio-Cortez thrust herself into prominence and the media took note. The 'left' has had a wide range of responses--the more progressive left is excited, the Democrats in general are a little nervous. Anderson Cooper is concerned about a return to 50s through 70s progressive tax rates. The 'right' is nervous to spiteful.

This issue exposes the rift among Democrats: https://theintercept.com/2019/01/15/la-teachers-strike-charter-schools/

Here is another indication that the 'left' is not Nancy Pelose: https://theintercept.com/2019/01/10/house-committee-assignments-democrats/

40John5918
jan 16, 2019, 6:57 am

>39 RickHarsch: the 'left' is not Nancy Pelose

Ah yes, that old myth of a monolithic organised "left".

41lriley
jan 16, 2019, 9:18 am

I don't think AOC minds being a focus of attention because it's a way for her to get some ideas out. I don't think she's really 'thrusting' herself out--more like media people and pundits are thrusting themselves at her . If people (especially conservatives) would chill out a bit--they might keep in perspective that she has just been a congresswoman for a few days and that there are 434 other House members. That said I do wish there were a lot more like minded congress people like her but the Democratic Socialist wing of the Democratic party is kind of small.

42RickHarsch
jan 16, 2019, 10:18 am

>41 lriley: It seems to me there is good reason for conservatives to...what's the opposite of chill out? warm in? They have good reason to be concerned, because Ocasio-Cortez has people THINKING about taxation again, and the vast majority of voters would realize that they would benefit a great deal from a re-institution of an Eisenhower era progressive tax. The truth of taxation has been fogged in for decades, but plenty of people are still around who benefitted in the 70s from progressive taxation and Fox may not have enough coal left ot operate its fog machine...

43lriley
Bewerkt: jan 16, 2019, 1:11 pm

#42--not to get me wrong--I'm all for what Ocasio-Cortez has in mind. That said I don't think the Democratic party is at all interested in bringing any such tax legislation to a vote at least at this time and probably not for a long time. All in all the Democratic party is much too conservative of a party for that. In any case there are a bunch of things that the great majority of the public would be for--such as national health care---the politicians know what the polling says and hear what their constituents say but are past masters at ignoring, obfuscating and putting off to another day. In any case with this Republican POTUS and this Republican Senate that is not going anywhere for the coming two years.

Hopefully though a lot more people like AOC will run for Congress in 2020--that could make a difference.

But as you say history for a lot of people is foggy. Used to be a time when many Republicans believed in a progressive tax system too--like President Eisenhower. Nixon twice tried to give the country a National Health Care system.

44JGL53
Bewerkt: jan 16, 2019, 1:10 pm

From Ocasio-Cortez to Pelosi it is all good. The far left, the near left, the center moderates, and the majority of U.S. voters who are basically sane will unite to crush the orange fat traitor in 2020 like the motherfucking bug that he is - assuming he is still around then.

During the Eisenhower administration the super rich were taxed at something like 70 or 80 per cent and no one raised much of a fuss. After all the exemptions allowed the super rich actually paid much less than that, as would be the case in the future if taxes were increased on them to the same degree.

Again, separating the republican and trumpian lies from actual reality is the issue to be addressed - continually.

trump is not a mere motherfucker - he is a stupid lying motherfucking huckster moron. That will be his everlasting legacy.

45JGL53
jan 16, 2019, 1:26 pm

1. A new Rasmussen poll (a super conservative poll) found that if Ocasio-Cortez were old enough to run and were selected as the Democratic nominee in 2020 she would get 40 per cent to trump's 43 with 17 per cent undecided.

Pretty good for an admitted socialist as determined by a conservatively biased poll.

2. Pelosi, in effect, has now informed the fat orange traitor that there will be no SOTU address until the government is opened. Pelosi calls the shots as to what happens in the House chambers. Bet the fat orange traitor wasn't aware. What a motherfucking dipshit moron he is.

46lriley
jan 16, 2019, 1:36 pm

#45--that was a interesting move on Pelosi's part. I agree. Turn the screws.

47RickHarsch
Bewerkt: jan 16, 2019, 7:12 pm

Nevertheless, as a face of the party...she's a bit origami Meiji unrestored. (Pelosi, I mean, of course.)

48krolik
jan 16, 2019, 6:24 pm


Inevitably, I suppose, this conversation has a strong whiff of Onion.

49proximity1
jan 17, 2019, 5:20 am


"Trump Turns On Fox News And Tells Aides To Make Whatever They’re Saying A Law"

—The Onion, 'America's Finest News Source'

50JGL53
jan 17, 2019, 1:37 pm

"Fox News Now Just Airing Continuous Blood-Red Screen With Disembodied Voice Chanting ‘They’re Coming To Kill You’"

51prosfilaes
jan 17, 2019, 10:36 pm

I'm not a huge fan of Ocasio-Cortez; she's come up on Politifact too often with questionable statements, and they often seem to be careless misunderstandings. But she's young and new; maybe she can season up, and she doesn't seem ill-intentioned. I find this concept that she's a monster that's going to eat us is absurd.

Liberals sometimes do similar things; I hear a lot about Steve King from liberal sources. But that's a white supremacist versus someone proposing high taxes on the rich.

52RickHarsch
jan 18, 2019, 8:24 am

>51 prosfilaes: What a condescending little post. I've had a great deal more experience arguing with the poster of #51 than I have listening to or reading the words of Ocasio-Cortez, so I am not aware of her limitations, but up to now her grasp of what's important in politics has been impressive, while the posts of prosfilaes are of the quality of an Anderson Cooper interview question.

53margaretbartley
jan 20, 2019, 1:52 am

She was being deliberately provocative. Good thing she was banned. So what if some pervs invade girl's dressing rooms and women's bath rooms? Like, she can't take care of herself? Why is she so special?

54jjwilson61
jan 20, 2019, 10:08 am

>53 margaretbartley: What are you talking about? If you're responding to a particular post please include the post number in your message.

55RickHarsch
jan 20, 2019, 11:46 am

>54 jjwilson61: I think it's just fine. I think the thread was dropped in on by a novelist.

And the he turned back: those holes drilled in his back? It had to have been her eyes. She was a provacateur of pervs, a pervercateur, if you will, and if she says so you damn welll will. Ha ha ha, the laughter echoed in the chambers of...

56John5918
jan 20, 2019, 12:33 pm

>55 RickHarsch:

Oh dear, Rick, have you been smoking those funny mushrooms again? Or maybe it was >53 margaretbartley: who was smoking that stuff?

57RickHarsch
jan 20, 2019, 3:17 pm

All that time in Africa and you still don't know that one does not SMOKE mushrooms?

58John5918
jan 20, 2019, 10:55 pm

True enough. They're much better if injected...

59Carnophile
jan 24, 2019, 11:56 am

Michigan College cancels Vagina Monologues because it excludes transvestites.
Eastern Michigan University's Women's Resource Center will no longer host productions of "The Vagina Monologues," noting that the play's version of feminism excludes some women.

The WRC announced its decision...after the center evaluated responses from a survey. Survey respondents opposing the production consistently indicated they were concerned that the play centers on cisgender women, that the play's version of feminism excludes some women, including trans women, and that overall, "The Vagina Monologue" lacks diversity and inclusion.
I remember when feminists wanted to make sure that women’s voices were heard. Now the campus feminist center tells women, “Make sure men’s voices are heard, OR WE’LL SILENCE YOU.”

60margaretbartley
jan 24, 2019, 3:07 pm

>54 jjwilson61: thanks for the advice. How do I do that? I tried just typing the link in; I guess I'll see, after it's posted, if it has a link in it, or not.

61krolik
jan 24, 2019, 3:54 pm

>59 Carnophile:
Nice to see you exploring conceivable variations and nuances regarding feminists and the possibility of plural perspectives.

62Carnophile
feb 3, 2019, 5:38 pm

Democratic Virginia Governor circling the drain.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) on Friday acknowledged appearing in a “clearly racist and offensive” photograph in his 1984 medical school yearbook that shows a man in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe.
...
Northam, 59, did not say whether he was the man dressed in blackface or the one in a Klan robe and hood.

Calls for his resignation, which began as a trickle, turned into a torrent as the night progressed. Late Friday, even his most trusted allies called for him to step down...
For once, leftists are truthfully accusing someone of racist behavior!

What I find interesting and encouraging about this is that Democrats are avidly after the head of a fellow Democrat. That’s relatively new. Dems used to be able to count on shameless hypocrisy by fellow Dems to protect them. (E.g., Robert Byrd.) No more. The outrage mob has slipped the leash.

63mamzel
feb 4, 2019, 3:42 pm

>62 Carnophile: Al Franken?

64timspalding
feb 4, 2019, 4:09 pm

>59 Carnophile:

The meteoric rise to universal acclaim and—at Michigan and elsewhere—sudden sidelining of the Vagina Monologues is indeed a parable for our time.

65Carnophile
Bewerkt: feb 4, 2019, 10:26 pm

>63 mamzel: Al Franken?

Definitely, Franken and lots of others since the MeToo thing got underway. In fact that's one of the things I had in mind when I said "relatively new" (as opposed to totally new). One of the reasons Northam is of particular interest is simply that he's a state Governor, so is especially prominent.

>64 timspalding: Quite. It's like something out a Tom Wolfe essay.

66proximity1
feb 5, 2019, 6:22 am


>65 Carnophile:

Today's hip, trendy Liberal-lefties don't read Tom Wolfe. He's worse than so-yesterday. He's a dead, white male. Ewww!

67Carnophile
feb 5, 2019, 10:17 pm

>66 proximity1: Plus, they don't have the sense of humor needed to look at themselves through that kind of lens.

68Carnophile
feb 5, 2019, 10:19 pm

Now Virginia’s LIEUTENANT Governor is facing sexual assault allegations.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/washpost-pushes-back-against-justin-fairfax-sta...

69proximity1
feb 6, 2019, 5:52 am


>67 Carnophile:

True. Their sense of humor was sacrificed at the altar of political-correctness. Worse, this sacrifice is now raised to ritual status. The youth must be properly brought up in their cult's faithless faith.

70JGL53
Bewerkt: feb 6, 2019, 2:48 pm

A small per cent of those on the left of the political spectrum are politically-correct micro-aggression sensitive types. They get a lot of coverage and this gives the impression that lefties have no sense of humor.

That is incorrect.

Most lefties are like, e.g., Bill Maher, or myself - as a non-celebrity example. I would say super-sensitive snowflake types make up less than 10 per cent of all left of center folks. I invite righties to prove otherwise.

As to lack of humor the right is overwhelmingly clueless assholes who cannot even get a joke when told one. Most righties either have sticks up their asses or are just too ignorant and/or stupid to get a joke. The exception is the schadenfreude type of humor, or cruelty jokes - i.e., sick humor only a sick person would find that particularly humorous. Righties love that kind of shit.

Righties find the black face problem of the Virginian Democratic governor quite amusing - pure schadenfreude - .i.e., if a Democrat is disgraced then that MUST be humorous. Since right-wingers are racist bastards, for the most part, they have no particular outrage at black face, like lefties do. So if a republican official has a black face problem show up they will not care and will go balls-to-the-wall to defend him. We all know this. Why not fucking admit it?

Hell, righties don't give a shit even when a republican candidate for high office is a child molester. I don't think we can say the same about democrats.

No matter how lacking in common human decency any particular democrat is democrats as a whole will never equal republicans in just sheer unadulterated amoral scumbaggery and unflinching absolutist partisanship (trump being the best example of what I speak).

71JGL53
feb 6, 2019, 2:45 pm

Well Jesus Joseph Mary! The latest headline is about the Virginia AG who has now admitted to a black face problem also.

I would guess this eventuation has thrown both Carnophile and proximity1 into extreme masturbation mode.

I would advise their loved ones and pets to take cover.

72mamzel
feb 6, 2019, 2:46 pm

>68 Carnophile: Funny the timing on that, huh? Didn't come up when he originally ran for governor.

73timspalding
feb 6, 2019, 3:11 pm

>72 mamzel:

This is because, in between now and the last election, someone went back in time and changed his yearbook.

74lriley
feb 6, 2019, 5:36 pm

#69--speaking of humorlessness is this remark. But anyway I'm trying to think of a single time you've said anything remotely humorous...to me it's never been your shtick.

And however funny Wolfe is or isn't probably doesn't have all that much to do with whatever his particular political takes are so much as that's the way he writes. Some people have more the talent for that than others.

75Carnophile
feb 6, 2019, 8:39 pm

>70 JGL53: Righties find the black face problem of the Virginian Democratic governor quite amusing - pure schadenfreude

Damn right.

>72 mamzel: Yeah, a lot of people have been wondering why all this stuff didn't emerge earlier. I don't have any theories or anything; it's just odd that so much was missed. Are Republicans really that inept at oppo research?

76Carnophile
feb 6, 2019, 8:43 pm

Sigh. Funny, but sad.

Lesbian Activist Faces Leftist Fury After ‘Misgendering’ a Male Rapist
Julia Beck, a lesbian activist and former member of the LGBTQ Commission for the mayor of Baltimore, got in a “little trouble” after she called a male rapist “he” when "he" actually considered himself a transgendered woman.
...
“I got kicked off of the Baltimore mayor’s LGBTQ Commission as the only lesbian, simply for stating biological facts,” she said. “After a months long witch hunt I was found guilty of ‘violence.’ My crime? Using male pronouns to talk about a convicted male rapist who identifies as transgender and prefers female pronouns.”

77proximity1
feb 7, 2019, 7:44 am


>74 lriley:

"I'm trying to think of a single time you've said anything remotely humorous...to me it's never been your shtick."

(Unlike you, who are just hilarious all the time.)

Well, there's this candidate, for example of evidence of a sense of humor.

And, you don't have to take my word for that.

78lriley
feb 7, 2019, 9:45 am

#77--FWIW I haven't read through the entirety of every thread in Pro and Con.....and anyone can have their moments and I didn't mean to infer that you can't appreciate humor but generally the tones I get from you are pretty damned angry. But you are hardly the only one who is pissed off or very angry at the current state of politics either as they are here or as they are somewhere else and it's on all sides of the political spectrum of beliefs.

....and sometimes it's healthy for a person (or any person) to take a break from things that are keeping them angry all the time or too much of their time.

But as far as myself--I never said I was a comedian either. In fact I'll often tell people that I have no sense of humor--I might say that with a smile though.

79proximity1
feb 7, 2019, 11:01 am


... "the tones I get from you are pretty damned angry" ...

Seeing our time's wanton injustice and obscene corruption and complacent folly?

Not "pretty", v e r y damned angry. And how! To be less than very angry is to be complicit. Tell victims that you look placidly at their suffering? while others don't even bother to turn their attention from their amusements?

There is far too little anger where so much is warranted.

Meanwhile, taboo to mention, envy and jealousy vie with conformity for rule over our sentiments.
Notwithstanding all of that, I can still appreciate a good joke, a worthy laugh.

80lriley
Bewerkt: feb 7, 2019, 12:20 pm

#79--I wasn't saying you shouldn't be angry. Politicians these days don't very often work for the public good--more for their own ambitions or bank accounts but defining exactly what the public good is--that's kind of an open book when there are millions of people with all kinds of views that intersect or don't with millions of others. So they have leeway but what they do with that leeway is important and that's why corruption and lack of integrity is important too--that's why when someone like Sanders comes along who has been hammering away consistently at the same message for a good 40 some years anyway and a lot of that in a political limbo or obscurity meant a lot to the people who had been watching him for so long---but his is not the only view to take on everything and he's not perfect either. It's also why some younger politicians who might be more naive but they're cleaner because they haven't been corrupted and there's better chance that they actually believe what they're talking about.

But another thing if you're going to get into politics you need to be interested enough to work at it and work at it continually and get into the actual details of things and it should be a never ending process of learning and trying to understand. Even corrupt politicians will do that--take Cheney for example--he knew the govt. like the back of his hand. He knew how everything worked. I hated Clinton but he was smart as fuck. That's just giving devils their due.

81krolik
feb 7, 2019, 4:21 pm

>62 Carnophile:
"What I find interesting and encouraging about this is that Democrats are avidly after the head of a fellow Democrat. That’s relatively new. Dems used to be able to count on shameless hypocrisy by fellow Dems to protect them. (E.g., Robert Byrd.) No more. The outrage mob has slipped the leash.

I partly agree with you on this one, Carno. Guys like Byrd used to be a part of the Democratic establishment fabric. Now they're no longer possible. Not, I think, because "the outrage mob has slipped the leash." But because times have changed. People have wised up. (A bit.) Byrd's ilk are too embarrassing. (Cue Ralph Northam.) I don't see this as hysterical. We're living in another generation, with different expectations and standards. Good riddance.

I don't think progress is ineluctable. Can't get sentimental about that idea. But change happens, and sometimes it's a good change.

The racist heritage of the Democratic party is a matter of historical record. Sure. And if we go back a bit in history, yes, the Republicans did comparatively better on questions of race. But that was then. And the bar was so very low.

People like William F. Buckley, coming from a markedly different culture and circumstances than a person like Byrd, could mention in his memoirs that he cried as a child because his elder siblings didn't take him along to a cross burning.

Such were good old boys in...Connecticut.

Racism permeates American history and culture and yes, its political parties. All its parties. Excuse me if I'm not shocked.

Re Northam, this bit isn't too bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5JKhRRhbRY


82proximity1
Bewerkt: feb 12, 2019, 6:30 am


First posted and revised 10 February, 2019
Additions on 11 & 12 February, 2019,

___________________________________

Now thus, our downward-spiraled course is set.



"Domestic fury and fierce civil strife ... encumber" us.

"Brutus wants to save the Republic, but the Republic does not want to be saved. When the crowd is still listening to him, you will recall, a shout rises from its midst: 'Let him (i.e. Brutus) be Cæsar.' From now on, whoever prevails against Cæsar must be another Cæsar."

..."The desire to avenge this leader (i.e. the murdered Julius Caesar) is a mimesis of the conspiracy (to murder Caesar). Cinna (who is only "an unfortunate bystander"; another by the same name is a member of the conspiratorial faction) is the first totally uninvolved and perfectly innocent victim. A poet, he has nothing to do with the conspirator named Cinna and politely says so to the crowd. His only connection with Cæsar's murder is a fortuitous coincidence of names. He even happens to be a friend of Cæsar and mentions the fact, but to no avail; one anonymous shout comes from the mob: 'Tear him to pieces!'

"A mob never lacks reasons for tearing its victims to pieces. The more numerous they seem, the more insignificant they really are. Learning that Cinna is a bachelor, the married men in the mob feel insulted. Others resent the poet in this harmless individual, and one more shout is heard: 'Tear him for his bad verse!' Obediently, mimetically, the mob tears the wrong Cinna to pieces." ...

"When it is first organized, the conspiracy against Caesar was still an unusual enterprise that required a rather lengthy genesis. Once Caesar is murdered, conspiracies sprout everywhere, and their violence is so sudden and haphazard that the word itself, 'consiracy,' no longer seems right for the spontaneity of the disorder. Violent imitation is responsible for this as for everything else that it operates as a single continuous process—and not as a series of discontinuous synchronic patterns such as the structuralists want to discover everywhere, in a misguided denial of history. Strictly speaking, separate configurations have no independent existence, but they are a convenient way of identifying and characterizing the most salient moments in the perpetual metamorphosis that mimesis, all by itself, is bringing about. (Emphasis added)

"The general trend is clear: it takes less and less time for more and more people to polarize against more and more victims for flimsier and flimsier reasons. A little earlier, Ligarius's indifference to the identity of his victim was still an exceptional phenomenon; after (Julius) Cæsar's murder, this indifference becomes commonplace and the last criteria disappear in the selection of victims. Mimesis learns fast and, after only a single try, it will do routinely and automatically what seemed almost unthinkable a moment before.

"The contagion is such that the entire community is finally divided into to vast 'conspiracies' that can only do one thing: go to war with each other. They have the same structure as individual doubles; one is led by Brutus and Cassius and the other by Octavius Cæsar and Mark Antony. Shakespeare (e.n: Edward Oxford, i.e.) sees this civil conflict not as ordinary civil war but as the total unleashing of the mob"...

... ...

" 'Domestic fury and fierce civil strife ' culminate in the battle of Philippi, which Shakespeare does not treat as a banal military encounter but as the climactic epiphany of the mimetic crisis, the final explosion of the mob that gathered after the murder of Cæsar, when the conspiracy began to metastasize. Peter S. Anderson correctly observes that, in this battle, no one is really where he should be; everything is dislocated; death is the sole common denominator.(1) Instead of a few victims killed by still relatively small mobs, thousands of people are killed by thousands of others who are really their brothers and do not have the faintest idea why they or their victims should die." ...

... "Because of the crisis, the quality of all desires is deteriorating." ...

"The dramatic process I am describing contradicts all political interpretations of Julius Cæsar. Political questions are all of the same differential type: which party does Shakespeare favor in the civil war, the republicans or the monarchists? Which leader does he like best, Cæsar or Brutus? Which social class does he esteem and which despise, the aristocrats or the commoners? ... Shakespeare, I believe, feels human sympathy for all his characters and antipathy for the mimetic process that turns them all into equivalent doubles.

...

"One of the errors generated by the twentieth-century love affair with politics is the widespread belief that the mob-like propensities of the crowd in Julius Cæsar must reflect contempt for the common man, a distressingly 'conservative' bias on the part of Shakespeare himself.

...

"Shakespeare does not try to be 'impartial.' We must not see the practical equivalence of all parties to the conflict as a hard-won victory of 'detachment' over 'prejudice,' as the heroic triumph of 'objectivity' over 'subjectivity,' or as some other feat of epistemological asceticism that historians of all stripes should either emulate or denounce as a mystification. Mimetic reciprocity is the structure of human relations for Shakespeare, and his dramatization of it is no laborious obligation but his intellectual and æsthetic delight. ... Like 'true love' in the comedies, politics in Julius Cæsar is always a direct or indirect reflection of what is taking place on some mimetic chessboard. Cæsar's politics of imperial reconciliation is a move on this chessboard, and so is Brutus's defense of republicanism.

"I do not want to imply that political questioning is always out of place in Shakespeare. Until the mimetic logic that erases differences is established, it is premature; after this logic is in place, to inquire about the political significance of the logic is not only legitimate but imperative.

"The perpetual 'plague on both your houses' in Shakespeare must not be void of political significance. When I read Julius Cæsar I picture (as author) a man more nauseated with the aristocratic politics of his time than critics usually believe."

___________________

(1) Peter S. Anderson, "Shakespeare's Cæsar The Language of Sacrifice,", Comparative Drama (journal) 3 (1969) 5-6.



—René Girard, from his study, A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare (Oxford Univ. Press, 1991/ Gracewing & Inigo Enterprises, U.K., 2000) (at pp. 194-199), exposing the dramatic operations in (Edward, Earl of Oxford's work (under his pen-name Wm. Shakespeare)) The Tragedie of Julius Cæsar

___________________________



In Lyon, Sunday, 10 February, Rival (right-wing & left-wing) factions of the 'Gilets Jaunes' ('Yellow vests') anti-Macron protesters squared off in skirmishes on the street.

(The Daily Mail, London; from Footage shared on Twitter)

83Carnophile
mrt 2, 2019, 4:59 pm

Judge rules that an all-male military draft is unconstitutional:

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/02/24/judge-rules-men-only-military-dra...

84Carnophile
Bewerkt: mrt 17, 2019, 11:05 pm

On the Ilhan Omar thing:
Just days ago, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) faced rebuke, albeit indirectly, from her own party in a resolution condemning anti-Semitism that had been developed as a response to her repeated anti-Semitic statements... (But now) Omar’s victory is total. The anti-Semitism resolution was turned into a condemnation of “Islamophobia” and “white supremacism,” she remains on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the entire Democratic leadership has made it clear that they don’t dare cross her.

...the sclerotic Democratic Party establishment lacks the will to tangle with Omar, who is an exponent of a skilled and ruthless propaganda machine that has long been in the Democrats’ corner, but has never -- until now -- turned its brute force against the Democrats themselves.

What Pelosi and her cohorts learned this week is that if they cross Ilhan Omar, they will be accused of “racism” and “Islamophobia” just as swiftly and reflexively as those smear labels are applied to Republicans... The Democrats’ long record of support for mass Muslim migration into the U.S....
...is fucking hilarious in this context, and gives me a schadenboner the size of Staten Island.

85proximity1
Bewerkt: mrt 18, 2019, 8:56 am


>84 Carnophile:

LOL!

The chickens come home to roost. And, goddamn, are they angry!

;^)

And they look more and more like vultures.



___________________________

Now this is fucking hilarious.

It doesn't stop with Ihan Omar, of course.

The insanity of Dems' love-affair with political-correctness is the "gift that keeps on giving" to Dems' political opponents.

Here, Beto O'Rourke -- I challenge you to find a less 'Texan-like' name than that--has to follow his past (and some of his near-present) around with a mop-and-pail:

"Ham-handed"!!??




"During a taping of the "Political Party Live" podcast in Cedar Rapids, he addressed criticism of his campaign-trail joke that his wife, Amy, has raised their three kids 'sometimes with my help.' O'Rourke made the comment at multiple campaign stops during his first swing through Iowa, including earlier Friday, eliciting laughs each time, but he also drew criticism as being insensitive to the challenges faced by single parents raising children.

"O'Rourke said the criticism of his 'ham-handed' attempt to highlight his wife's work in their marriage was "right on.

" 'Not only will I not say that again, but I will be much more thoughtful in the ways that I talk about my marriage,' he said.

"O'Rourke, 46, also said he was 'mortified' when he reread the violent fiction he wrote as a teen, which received fresh attention Friday after a Reuters report outlined his involvement in a hacker group as a teen. O'Rourke wrote a handful of posts on the group's message board under the name 'Psychedelic Warlord,' including a fictional piece he penned when he was 15 about children getting run over by a car."



"Ham-handed"!!??

O'Rourke has just grossly slighted the entire porcine spectrum of the animal kingdom! These highly-intelligent animals do not deserve such disrespect! What was he thinking!? We raise them in factory-farm conditions and then slaughter then---- for sandwich meat! and now O'Rourke shows his utter disregard for these wonderful animals likening his own gaffes and fuck-ups to "Ham"-handedness!!

https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/orourke-apologizes-for-teen-writings-rhe...
______________________________________________

We're not done as long as there's a Democratic-party candidate for elective office who hasn't been shamed into complete silence over verbal gaffes and past adolescent behavior.

You know what you've said & done! Confess now! Seek forgiveness!

otherwise,

"Vultures."

86lriley
Bewerkt: mrt 18, 2019, 8:32 am

#84--we've been over this at least in one other thread. The right wing is trying to conflate any critique of the govt. of Israel currently presided over by an extreme right politician as anti-semetic. If you want to go down that road it's up to you but Palestinians are just as Semetic as the Jewish people of Israel and yet they are treated not even like citizens. Israel currently is an apartheid like regime. Omar's objections to taking an oath of allegiance to the Israeli govt. as some United States state legislatures would have (require) their own citizens do just to apply for a govt. contract or to take or hold a govt. job are correct and not weak as liquid shit like a good many of her democratic compatriots in the House and Senate. Most of them (along with almost all of their republican cohorts) are bought off by a foreign govt. That she has encouraged Muslims not to take part in the Haj to protest the Saudi's and their vicious regime seems to fly right past you and a lot of other assholes but that's par for the course. Maybe you should make a point of swearing allegiance to Israel too.

87Carnophile
mrt 18, 2019, 11:10 pm

>85 proximity1: The chickens come home to roost.

Yup. And other metaphors come to mind, like They made the bed, now they have to lie in it, etc. What gets me is that this was all so predictable.

88Carnophile
mrt 18, 2019, 11:16 pm

>86 lriley: (blah blah) seems to fly right past you and a lot of other assholes

Relax; you'll live longer.

we've been over this at least in one other thread.

What is "this"?

The right wing is trying to conflate any critique of the govt. of Israel currently presided over by an extreme right politician as anti-semetic. If you want to go down that road it's up to you... Maybe you should make a point of swearing allegiance to Israel too.

What on earth? You missed the entire point of 84. It has nothing to do with whether Omar's statements are defensible or not. Read 84 again. Start with the word in the upper left and finish with the word in the lower right.

90Carnophile
Bewerkt: mrt 23, 2019, 5:13 pm

Video: Muslims get in Chelsea Clinton's face and berate her for inciting the New Zealand mosque attacks:

Chelsea Clinton is berated by Muslim NYU students who blame her for New Zealand mosques attack because she 'incited an Islamophobic mob' against Rep Ilhan Omar.
“This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,” says Dweik, gesturing to the vigil for the 49 who were killed in Christchurch when a white nationalist shooter stormed two mosques.

“And I want you to know that and I want you to feel that deeply - 49 people died because of the rhetoric you put out there,” Dweik continues, jabbing her index finger toward Clinton as other students snap their fingers in apparent approval of her words.
You have to watch the video to get the tension and anger in the accuser's voice... the way she jabs her finger an inch or two from Clinton's chest... the fact that Clinton is outnumbered... the fact that Clinton is (visibly, swollenly) pregnant, increasing the menace of being outnumbered by angry people getting in her face... the fact that when Clinton meekly says, “I’m so sorry that you feel that way,” a man off screen responds with an aggressive, “What does 'I’m sorry that you feel that way' mean? What does that mean?”

All lefties who think they're still in control of the identity politics monster really should click through and watch the video.

91lriley
Bewerkt: mrt 23, 2019, 6:23 pm

#90--FWIW Chelsea had played into the anti-Muslim rhetoric hard pushed by the Trump regime after Ilhan Omar made her remarks on Israel. FWIW he's said a lot of anti-Muslim shit before that too. Chelsea is a child of some privilege. She took sides but felt bad about the Christchurch Mosque shooting afterwards. Hopefully it's a learning moment for her and she begins to see that Israel isn't just for Jewish people and it's okay for people like Omar to question loyalty oaths. And FWIW the murderer of all the people at the Mosque was a huge fan of Mr. Trump. Go fucking figure that one. Donald runs his irresponsibly fat mouth all the time and then some nutjob inspired by his racism and/or bigotry goes off and murders a lot of people. Go figure that too.

92JGL53
mrt 23, 2019, 6:42 pm

The only famous Clinton I ever really liked is George Clinton.

The rest of them seem to be dicks.

93rolandperkins
mrt 23, 2019, 7:22 pm

Well, there was Lou Clinton, briefly a regular in
the post-Ted Williams Boston Red Sox outfield
(-- a little disappointing; Ted he wasn't; in fact it
was the near-great Carl Yastrzemski who took
oveer Williams's left field place, but Lou was hardly
a "dick".

94John5918
Bewerkt: mrt 24, 2019, 1:56 am

>91 lriley: Donald runs his irresponsibly fat mouth all the time and then some nutjob inspired by his racism and/or bigotry goes off and murders a lot of people

Reminds me of a quote from a Muslim woman in UK which I posted in another thread:

People need to understand that what they say has an impact on what happens on the streets (original link)

95krolik
Bewerkt: mrt 24, 2019, 4:06 am

>92 JGL53:, >93 rolandperkins:

I'd forgotten about Lou. Lots of people like the actor Clinton Eastwood, though he usually goes by a shorter version of his name. I can take him or leave him.

96lriley
Bewerkt: mrt 24, 2019, 7:43 am

#94--he's continually aiming his rhetoric at white greivance and then some think it's unfair to call him a racist. The Klanners and white supremacists though think he's great--that he's their guy. They've never been so happy. He's doing the same along religious lines--Christians and Jews are great--Muslims are not....and to top it off he doesn't have a religious bone in his body. It's just dog whistling all the time.

And if you're Muslim, Hispanic, black or LGBT and voting for him you're out of your mind. He's constantly inciting hatred against these groups.

97Carnophile
mrt 24, 2019, 1:02 pm

>91 lriley: the murderer of all the people at the Mosque was a huge fan of Mr. Trump... Donald runs his irresponsibly fat mouth all the time and then some nutjob inspired by his racism and/or bigotry goes off and murders a lot of people.

The killer was a hardcore environmentalist:
He calls himself an “Eco-fascist,” ... He calls for a form of “Green Nationalism” which will save the planet by stopping “the continued destruction of the natural environment...”
ENVIRONMENTALISM KILLS.

98lriley
mrt 24, 2019, 1:23 pm

#97--LOL! He was a MAGA guy and you know it.

99Carnophile
mrt 24, 2019, 7:39 pm

#98--LOL! He was an environmentalist and you know it.

100lriley
Bewerkt: mrt 24, 2019, 9:12 pm

#99--I'm sure if you asked Trump he'd call himself an environmentalist too. He thinks he has solutions to all kinds of environmental events. People aren't sweeping out the millions of acres of California forest land for instance. And of course he's an imbecile but that doesn't matter as long as he's your imbecile.

But anyway Mr. Tarrant said of Trump in his manifesto--'that he is a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose'--which is to say he (Tarrant, that is) as a white supremacist sees common purpose between the thing he did (murder at least 50 innocent people, that is) and the things that Mr. Trump is doing. He also referenced in his manifesto immigrants as invaders saying 'to show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands' which is eerily similar to the language Trump uses quite often when referencing immigrants crossing the Mexican border. Some more for instances anyway. So to Tarrant Trump is an inspiration--that's pretty clear or why would he write such shit? And personally I think Tarrant sounds a bit like you too when you start going off on people you don't like.

101Carnophile
Bewerkt: mrt 26, 2019, 9:36 pm

>100 lriley: Tarrant said of Trump in his manifesto--'that he is a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose' etc.

And...
He calls himself an “Eco-fascist,” ... He calls for a form of “Green Nationalism” which will save the planet by stopping “the continued destruction of the natural environment...”

I'm sure if you asked Trump he'd call himself an environmentalist too.

Let's ask your fellow lefties what they think about that, right here in Pro and Con.

Here, for example: https://www.librarything.com/topic/253425

And here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/269635

And here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/292416

And here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/298994

Here's YOU, at #9: https://www.librarything.com/topic/253425#5989280

"The Dakota pipeline is an inevitable disaster waiting to happen. All pipelines eventually leak. It's unconscionable what they're doing. The Obama administration should have done much more to stop it. The Trump administration has greenlighted it. Business trumps health and safety."

102lriley
mrt 26, 2019, 10:21 pm

Why bother with all those people? You don't like or believe them anyway. Why not go to the source?--the proverbial horse's mouth (or ass in this case). All you have to do is cut to the chase and google 'Trump calls himself an environmentalist' like I did. See for yourself whether he ever said or didn't say such a thing. See how recently even.

Here is the first example that popped up for me.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/140069/trump-calls-environmentalist-pledging-cut...

103JGL53
mrt 27, 2019, 10:58 am

trump is a bad man, let us count the ways.

The number is indefinitely large.

So, moving on.

105JGL53
mrt 27, 2019, 10:06 pm

Yes, moving on - well, let Steven Colbert explain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_7wPf9geSM

(See especially minute 14 to the end.)

- trump is still in the middle of a fiery legal inferno that even a thousand Russian hookers couldn't piss out.

LOL.

106Carnophile
mrt 27, 2019, 11:47 pm

>102 lriley: The question is whether anyone takes it seriously when he says that. (I don't, and I freakin voted for him.) But sure, if you want to say that Trump's known for being an environmentalist, go for it.

107Carnophile
Bewerkt: mrt 31, 2019, 1:04 pm

Attack-mob asshole destroyed by his own gang:

IMPORTANT: He’s black and gay. Still think racking up PC identity points will protect you, lefties?


He Was Part of a Twitter Mob That Attacked Young Adult Novelists. Then It Turned on Him. Now His Book Is Canceled.
Kosoko Jackson, a gay black author writing about a gay black protagonist, gets taken down by the YA Twitterati.

Sourcebooks announced that A Place for Wolves, the debut YA novel by Kosoko Jackson, will be withdrawn from publication, at the request of the author.

Until recently, Kosoko Jackson's website described him as “a vocal champion of diversity in YA (young adult) literature, the author of YA novels featuring African American queer protagonists, and a sensitivity reader for Big Five Publishers.”
Then the SJW rage mob went after him. Among other things, the accusations included the fact that he had a Muslim bad guy in the story. (Seriously, how could a politically correct SJW “sensitivity reader” possibly make that mistake? LOL.) They intimidated him into canceling the book.
Part of what makes this story so interesting is that Kosoko himself has been on the other side of these online attacks on authors.

He was outspoken during a particularly intense recent example, when a campaign based on misunderstanding and exaggeration led the author Amélie Zhao to take the unusual step of agreeing to cancel the publication of Blood Heir, her hotly anticipated debut novel...
And now the same hate mob has destroyed him!

Delicious, delicious poetic justice.

108Carnophile
Bewerkt: jun 15, 2019, 8:52 am

LOL: SJWs eating their own, part whatever:

Chelsea Cain Deletes Twitter Account Following Accusations of Transphobia
Chelsea Cain has deleted her Twitter account after facing mounting backlash and accusations of transphobia due to a creative choice present in the latest issue of her comic book series Man-Eaters.

Cain’s self-described “feminist” series Man-Eaters... follows the exploits of a twelve-year old girl named Maude as she navigates a world wherein a mutation causes women’s menstrual cycles to change a woman into a ‘were-cat’ creature and the ensuing harsh, fear and paranoia motivated response from the government.

Cain has repeatedly faced waves of criticism and accusations of holding Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (or TERF) beliefs due to the alleged trans-exclusionary nature of the series’ concept, as some believed associating the monstrous change in women with a biological menstrual cycle excluded persons who were not biologically female but identified as such.
WTF?

Anyway, at first she hit back at her accusers, with images that implied that they were anti-feminist bigots. Other people then leapt in, basically saying, “How DARE she call them bigots when they call her a bigot!” So she gave up and tried to apologize.

Heh.

Anyone who has been paying attention in recent years knows what happens when you try to appease SJWs.

Let’s see how it worked out when she got own on her knees and apologized:

109Carnophile
Bewerkt: jun 13, 2019, 4:45 pm

Some of her self-abasing tweets:

Let me make this clear: I’m an idiot. I’m super sorry. I’m defensive because it MEANS so much. If you are trans and feel excluded by MAN-EATERS, that’s on me. Not you. You are glorious. And brave. And, gah. Thank you. I am listening. I am trying.

LOL. “If you psychotically take offense at a story for not featuring transvestite were-cats, it’s my fault! You’re glorious!”

I can be dumb sometimes. I get so defensive and self-righteous. It creates blind spots. And that’s not okay. And I’m sorry.

Would any of you be willing to be a trans sensitivity reader for our last few issues of MAN-EATERS? We can’t pay. But I will send you comics!


The article notes that this offer only “served to further stoke the flames of outrage” - of course it did; she was trying to appease an SJW attack mob - so she tried apologizing again:

I’m sorry. I’ve never worked with a sensitivity reader. I can’t seem to stop screwing up, can I? I was just trying to say that I was open to feedback. But you’re right. Of course. I can’t ask anyone to work for free.

I didn’t even know sensitivity readers were a thing in comics. I really have no business being here. I work on ME for free. We thought we were doing something good. I’m so sorry.

I appreciate yr patience as I educate myself.


“Thank you for the whippings, master! They’re helping me to see how horrible I am. I will show my appreciation by getting upon my belly and licking your feet.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The article continues,
Ultimately, the anger, backlash, and the rejection of her haphazard attempts at placating the outrage caused Cain to delete her Twitter account after publishing a final Tweet:

Nothing I say can make it better. I’ve learned that here. Intentions are kind of irrelevant. Actions are everything... I will work really hard to make up for my mistakes. Sorry, again. For all of it.
LOL, have fun being destroyed by the identity-politics crap that you took part in.

110John5918
jun 13, 2019, 4:43 pm

SJW?

111Carnophile
Bewerkt: jun 13, 2019, 4:46 pm

It's funny that you don't know what that means.

112sashame
jun 14, 2019, 12:10 am

u think if u agree w a person on one issue (say, electoral politics) but disagree on another (say, transphobia) then u shouldn't ever criticize that person? what?

113John5918
jun 14, 2019, 1:34 am

>111 Carnophile:

I'm happy to provide amusement for you. Any chance you could enlighten me on that abbreviation?

114proximity1
jun 14, 2019, 5:23 am


>109 Carnophile:

"LOL, have fun being destroyed by the identity-politics crap that you took part in."

Exactly! At last there's something in the press about fucking pseudo-liberals that, rather than making one cry in desperate disbelief, just makes one burst out in honest feel-good laughter.

(Quote) ... "Let me make this clear: I’m an idiot." ... (Chelsea Cain) (Endquote)

Got it. Thank you!

God these morons so deserve this! LOL! ;^)

116John5918
jun 14, 2019, 6:41 am

>115 davidgn:

Thanks. Never heard that one before. It appears to be pejorative. I wonder which end of the political spectrum it originates from? I have my suspicions...

117krolik
jun 14, 2019, 4:13 pm

>116 John5918:
It comes from the folks for whom social justice is ironically bracketed as "social justice" with fingers ironically clawing air quotes. It embraces a certain kind of postmodern skepticism for its own ends, rendering the concept inoperable.

118Carnophile
jun 14, 2019, 8:43 pm

>112 sashame: u think if u agree w a person on one issue (say, electoral politics) but disagree on another (say, transphobia) then u shouldn't ever criticize that person? what?

You've misunderstood me. I am delighted with this development.

119Carnophile
jun 14, 2019, 8:47 pm

>114 proximity1: And one wonders if they will learn this is not a good approach to politics, and if so how long the learning will take.

120sashame
Bewerkt: jun 14, 2019, 9:10 pm

>119 Carnophile:
See, thats the thing. i think being willing to criticize those within a certain movement (whether feminism or a vague opposition to the GOP) is a GOOD thing, and is in fact a GOOD approach to politics. intra-group critique is vital for growth

121Carnophile
jun 15, 2019, 8:47 am

>120 sashame:

You say you think hurling accusations of bigotry for no sane reason is a good thing ("critique," LOL).

Excellent! I applaud this judgment on your part, and encourage you to continue participating in this autophagy.

Also, thank you for providing a data point on my question above, about how long the learning will take.

122sashame
jun 15, 2019, 11:00 am

>121 Carnophile:
"no good reason"
I see u dont care to read or even feign understanding of the events u discuss

123Carnophile
jun 15, 2019, 1:56 pm

>122 sashame: Don’t worry about it. You think this is a good thing. I think this is a good thing. Carry on!

124JGL53
Bewerkt: jun 17, 2019, 2:36 pm

The inane politically-correct high-jinks of the extreme left is nausea-producing, no doubt about it. No normal person thinks or acts that way.

However there are levels of evils. The gop and trump are so insanely evil that, in comparison, they make the radical left look like a bunch of innocent harmless three-year-olds playing with their dump trucks, pails and shovels in their tiny sandboxes.

The fucking bible says something about beams vs. motes in the eye. Some people, even if they are atheists, should look those verses up and see if there is not a lesson there to be learned. Just saying.

125Gerson001
jun 17, 2019, 2:38 pm

Deze gebruiker is verwijderd als spam.

126JGL53
jun 19, 2019, 11:45 am

Yo, Gerson - your popularity level here is somewhere between Ebola and d. trump. lol.

I officially offer you an invitation to piérdase.

127Carnophile
jun 24, 2019, 3:54 pm

'Erosion in acceptance' of LGBTQ people among young Americans, survey finds
“Young Americans ages 18-34 are increasingly uncomfortable around LGBTQ people in personal situations, like learning a family member, doctor, or child’s teacher is LGBTQ.”
Nationwide, the support for “equal rights for the LGBT community” remained stable at 80 percent, GLAAD’s survey found. But the biggest drop in support identified by the LGBTQ rights group was among the youngest Americans.

In 2016, 24 percent of respondents age 18-34 said they would feel uncomfortable with a LGBTQ family member; by 2018 that rose to 36 percent — about one in three. A similar rise was measured among the youngest group of respondents who say they would feel uncomfortable to learn their child was receiving an LGBTQ history lesson at school, from 27 percent to 39 percent.
I have a solution: Continue to import people from Muslim and macho Hispanic countries. (Ya might wanna look at the age breakdown of immigrants vs. non-immigrants.)
This marked shift is reflected in the shrinking of a group of respondents that GLAAD classifies as “allies” — those who say they are “very” or “somewhat” comfortable in all seven interpersonal situations tested. In 2016, 62 percent of young men ages 18-34 reported feeling comfortable in all seven LGBTQ situations; in 2018, that number dropped to 35 percent, although GLAAD did not say which or how many interpersonal situations saw a decline in support.

"The younger generation has traditionally been thought of as a beacon of progressive values," said Ellis said. "We have taken that idea for granted, and this year’s results show that the sharp and quick rise in divisive rhetoric in politics and culture is having a negative influence on younger Americans"
Don't worry about it. Just continue to import people from cultures where they execute gays by throwing them from rooftops. What could go wrong?

128Limelite
Bewerkt: jun 24, 2019, 5:19 pm

Another example of a right wingnut blaming "lefties" for a (HORRORS!) political "boogeyman" their weird imagination created. Why are Trumpers so afraid of people having strong opinions that differ from their own? What snowflakes they are.

Yep, those border prisons for immigrants ARE concentration camps. AOC destroyed the Trump lie publicly. The Trumpers screamed, "Wah, wah, wah!!!" to cover the fact of their shame they tried to bully their way out of. Those camps are more than that. Since the deaths that have occurred in them due to harsh treatment, abuse, and willful neglect, everyone may accurately refer to them as death camps.

It took Nancy Pelosi to get in the Orange Shite-Gibbon's face for him to evacuate one such camp of its 300 minor prisoners after several children there were discovered by investigators to be deadly ill due to inhumane treatment and willful neglect by guards. This is an Administration who sent lawyers to testify before a panel of judges that soap and oral hygiene are not among life's necessities and therefore need not be provided to detainees, regardless of how young and vulnerable to disease they are. This is an Administration that is proud of forcing its minor political prisoners to sleep without bedding on cement floors.

Lovely compassionate family value Christians that Trumpers are. Make America Gestapo Alright -- MAGA!

Cute, aren't they?

129sashame
jun 24, 2019, 6:43 pm

>127 Carnophile:

its the state and its propaganda that prosecute queer muslims; otherwise their "culture" is only as queerphobic as our own

Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature

Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran

Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims

Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims

Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations

queer latinx immigrants r often more threatened by ICE and the police (predominantly natural-born white) than by their also latinx immigrant family/friends

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55b6e526e4b02f9283ae1969/t/56feaa3eb6aa60...

https://www.hrc.org/blog/the-precarious-position-of-transgender-immigrants-and-a...

https://srlp.org/files/disprop%20deportation.pdf

queer natural-born americans also tend to xp violence within their communities at a comparable rate to queer immigrants within their own communities

https://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2015_ncavp_lgbtqipvreport.pdf

(the above source is optimistic only bc obama's admin was still rolling out queer protections and regulations; most have been undone since trump's admin took over)

also i have to ask, do u actually care abt queer lives? bc the way ur framing it, it kinda sounds like u just wanted an opportunity to b xenophobic and Islamophobic and then say queer ppl r responsible for their own oppression

130Carnophile
jun 26, 2019, 11:18 pm

>128 Limelite: Man, that was even more incoherent than usual.

131Carnophile
jun 26, 2019, 11:37 pm

>129 sashame: its the state and its propaganda that prosecute queer muslims

LOL, I love this notion that the populace of Islamic nations is just thirsting for Gay Lib, but their oppressive governments are keeping them down.

Thank you for that. That was one of the better chuckles I’ve had at Pro & Con in a while.

I looked at the one link you provided that was not a pdf file or an entire book. It exquisitely makes my point for me as early as the first and second paragraphs:
Many transgender people come to this country fleeing persecution in their home countries...

numbers are hard to estimate, as many people are reluctant to self-report as transgender due, in part, to fear of maltreatment by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials (yeah, right) and the persecution they faced at home. More than 70 countries criminalize LGBTQ people, while many more still serve as challenging places for transgender people to live freely and peacefully.
If we import more people from countries that “criminalize” and engage in “persecution” of transvestites, we’re going to get more of the attitudes that lead to criminalization and persecution. Which was my original point.

queer latinx immigrants r often more threatened by ICE and the police... than by their also latinx immigrant family/friends

This is an utterly irrelevant comparison. Also, illegal immigrants should be detained by ICE; that’s ICE’s job.

queer natural-born americans also tend to xp violence within their communities at a comparable rate to queer immigrants within their own communities

Your citation for this is an 84-page pdf file. Focus.

132Carnophile
jun 26, 2019, 11:43 pm

>129 sashame: also i have to ask, do u actually care abt queer lives?

I'm not advocating importing people from cultures that persecute them.

And unlike some people, it wouldn't even occur to me to place more or less value on someone's life because of their sexual preference.

133John5918
Bewerkt: jun 27, 2019, 12:56 am

>131 Carnophile:Your citation for this is an 84-page pdf file. Focus.

Most complex issues are better understood by reading deeply than by soundbites and slogans.

>132 Carnophile: it wouldn't even occur to me to place more or less value on someone's life because of their sexual preference.

And yet many of your posts appear very hostile to certain people based on their sexual orientation.

134proximity1
Bewerkt: jun 27, 2019, 11:43 am

>132 Carnophile:

RE: "it wouldn't even occur to me..."

Exactly. The ethos of these people who certainly do place greater value on any lives other than heterosexual "white" males simply screams out an insanely stupid and utterly false set of notions about a vague thing called "diversity"--catnip for viciously intolerant LGBTQ militants who, in actual fact, hate and will not tolerate mere equality of opportunity. They demand from all others a servile deference toward all of their privileged minority groups--and that's just for starters. When these people get their way, there'll be forced re-education camps for people who don't toe their lines.

They are anything but guardians of a fair and reliable practice of general civil liberties without regard for race, religion, creed, color, or national origin.

135John5918
Bewerkt: jun 27, 2019, 7:22 am

>134 proximity1:

You make a common rightwing mistake when you assume that wanting equal rights and opportunities for all implies placing greater value on one group. The key word is "all". However members of the formerly privileged group may feel as if they are being undervalued when they gradually realise that their own values, ideas, practices, culture, religion, etc which they have always assumed to be the default norm (because they had the power and privilege to make it the norm, whether consciously or unconsciously) is in fact not considered the default norm by society as a whole (including the formerly underprivileged groups), and they have to accept that they now live in a society where in many aspects of life there is no single default norm. That's what diversity and equality of opportunity imply.

136Carnophile
Bewerkt: jun 27, 2019, 4:37 pm

Me: "Your citation for this is an 84-page pdf file. Focus."

>133 John5918: Most complex issues are better understood by reading deeply than by soundbites and slogans.

You've never written an 84-page argument for a single assertion here in Pro & Con. I take it you're admitting that you only think in soundbites and slogans.

many of your posts appear very hostile to certain people based on their sexual orientation.

Stop attacking me. Every time you issue a false accusation like this you admit, implicitly, that you can't win based on the truth.

137Limelite
jun 27, 2019, 9:16 pm

>130 Carnophile:

Cowardly sort of comment. Flippant throw-away remarks can't refute the evidence. As usual.

In the absence of any refutation, guess I'll have to conclude that you approve of and admire the New Trump America no longer being symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. The Trumpists have supplanted Lady Liberty with a now iconic photo of a drowned father and two-year-old daughter face down in the Rio Grande, feet from the shore where the tired and poor were once welcomed. You remember that time back in 2016, before Trump, when we were truly great and the entire world thought so, too.

138John5918
Bewerkt: jun 28, 2019, 6:32 am

>133 John5918:

Not accusing you of anything. Just querying an apparent (note my use of the word "appears") inconsistency in your position. You're welcome to enlighten me and explain how there is no apparent inconsistency, if that is the case.

139Carnophile
jun 28, 2019, 5:09 pm

>137 Limelite: can't refute the evidence

Stay coherent and on-topic, then *maybe* you'll get a longer response.

140Carnophile
jun 28, 2019, 5:11 pm

>138 John5918: Not accusing you of anything.

Yes you did. You accused me of appearing "very hostile to certain people based on their sexual orientation."

And now you're lying about it.

note my use of the word "appears"

Weasel words.

141Limelite
jun 28, 2019, 8:36 pm

>139 Carnophile:

You are your own boogeyman. And an autophage.

142John5918
Bewerkt: jun 29, 2019, 2:01 am

>140 Carnophile:

You may call it weasel words, but note that I was querying your posts, not accusing you, and the use of the word "appears" puts the onus on me (that is how your posts appear to me) not on you. It aso strikes me as being within the spirit and the letter of the TOS in terms of challenging what people post but not attacking the person. You have the opportunity to enlighten me on the substance of my post and explain to me how in your view your posts do not appear, or are not intended to be, hostile to a certain group, if you so wish. I note that you have made no attempt to do so.

I would also suggest that accusing someone of lying because there is a difference of understanding is not very helpful.

143sashame
jun 29, 2019, 3:31 am

>131 Carnophile:

i mean, im literally trying to point u towards historical archives of parts of the populace of islamic nations who DO thirst for gay lib, bc theyre gay! and ya, the state does not necessarily mirror the attitudes of the populace at large? is that so unbelievable to u? allowing refugees to seek asylum in the us will not lead to the introduction of the government policies of their home countries bc, in fact, the refugees have FLED the government policies of their home countries!

the reason i brought up the comparison bw the threat of ICE versus the threat of other latinx immigrants was to illustrate how queer latinx ppl, at least based on the statistics presented (abt intimate partner violence, attitudes towards police, rates of deportation), r MORE persecuted by white natural-born americans than by other immigrants from countries that do have governments that criminalize queerness. that is, the immigrants from countries that criminalize queerness (most latin american countries) do not seem to b more predisposed to abuse queer ppl more than natural-born americans; u implied that immigrants from such countries should b MORE predisposed to abuse queer ppl

also, even if immigrants do not cross at a legitimate port of entry, according to US law they can still be legally seeking asylum, and so r not actually illegal immigrants. but the executive branch has the leeway to completely ignore some laws, at least when the other branches have little motivation to challenge the executive branch

>132 Carnophile:

r u literally tryna say "all lives matter" wrt queer ppl. in >127 Carnophile: u sarcastically feign concern for the safety of LGBT ppl. its rather tasteless to reference the real suffering of a group of ppl merely to make a petty political jab. plz dont talk abt queer ppl again.

>136 Carnophile:

not only is it tasteless to exploit the suffering of an oppressed group for petty rhetoric, but to make the safety of queer ppl a sarcastic punchline ("What could go wrong?") devalues their lives and xp. and to devalue the life and xp of a group of ppl is pretty hateful, even queerphobic. then to immediately suggest/assume that queerphobia in the us would b closely linked to immigration based solely on the concept of age cohorts is, frankly, kinda xenophobic!

now i dont mean to call u a queerphobe or a xenophobe, i just think its the most probable explanation for how/why u write the things u do. im just trying to give u feedback on how u come across to others! im sure ur not rly a hateful bigot on the inside, im just tryna warn u that that's kinda how u come across here!

144Carnophile
jul 1, 2019, 9:05 pm

>141 Limelite: ...autophage...

Aww, you read #121 and learned a new word! That’s cute!

145Carnophile
jul 1, 2019, 9:07 pm

>142 John5918: You have the opportunity to... explain to me how in your view your posts do not appear, or are not intended to be, hostile to a certain group

Like I’d fall for such a blatant attempt to reverse the burden of proof.

146Carnophile
jul 1, 2019, 9:18 pm

>143 sashame: im literally trying to point u towards historical archives of parts of the populace of islamic nations who DO thirst for gay lib, bc theyre gay!

Sure. But gays are far from the majority of islamic nations.

the reason i brought up the comparison bw the threat of ICE...

This paragraph and the next are doubling down on your attempt to change the subject. ICE should be detaining illegals. In any case, this is simply a wholesale attempt to change the subject from the likely effects of an influx of people from gay-hostile cultures.

In fact, by even engaging with this, I’m falling for your attempt to change the subject.

Which you want to do, I suspect, because the plausibility of what I’m saying is so uncomfortable.

147Carnophile
jul 1, 2019, 9:19 pm

>143 sashame:plz dont talk abt queer ppl again.

You disagree with my opinions on immigration. plz dont talk abt immigration again.

148Carnophile
jul 1, 2019, 9:38 pm

>143 sashame: suggest/assume that queerphobia in the us would b closely linked to immigration

It’s not an assumption. Let’s see what they think.

Pew Research asked, “Should society accept homosexuality?”

In the Middle East, literally every country surveyed said “No” at much higher rates than the US. In the US, the “No” response was 33%. In the Middle East, the lowest No rate was 47% and the highest rate of No was 97%.

In Latin America, mixed, but more countries said No at higher rates than the US (4), than said No at lower rates (3).
(If you exclude two countries where it was inside the margin of error, 3 to 2.)

...is, frankly, kinda xenophobic!

Unlike you, I actually listen to what the people of those cultures are telling us. Your cavalier indifference to hearing their beliefs suggests serious xenophobia.

149John5918
jul 2, 2019, 2:48 am

>145 Carnophile: attempt to reverse the burden of proof

Good grief, how grandiose! We're not in court, we're having a conversation. There's no burden of proof on anybody. I pointed out how some of your posts appear to me, you object, and I ask you to explain why you believe I have misconstrued your posts. Simple. You can respond by clarifying what you believe to be a misapprehension on my part, or not, as you choose.

150Limelite
Bewerkt: jul 3, 2019, 4:23 pm

>144 Carnophile:

Pity you had to look it up before posting. Who knew you could read? From your inability to respond to facts, I assumed you were illiterate and just another member of the Trumpist insultirati.

151Carnophile
Bewerkt: jul 3, 2019, 5:11 pm

>149 John5918:

I think you're a mass murderer, based on your posts. It's on you to prove you're not. If you suggest otherwise, you're being "grandiose."

>150 Limelite: Who knew you could read? ... I assumed you were illiterate

Got that from reading the posts I wrote, did you? Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

152John5918
jul 4, 2019, 12:32 am

>151 Carnophile:

No, it's not the same thing at all. But for the record, I'm not a mass murderer, although I have met quite a few, and I doubt whether there is anything I have written that could reasonably be construed as such.

Note that I haven't accused you of accusing me of anything. I have simply explained to you that you have gained a false understanding of me from your reading of some of my posts.

153proximity1
jul 4, 2019, 5:16 am



>151 Carnophile:

"mass-murderer" properly takes a hyphen.

Otherwise, "spot on." ;^)

154krolik
jul 4, 2019, 3:20 pm

>153 proximity1:
Naw. It's just a combination of intellectual laziness and emotional neediness.

155RickHarsch
jul 4, 2019, 4:15 pm

>153 proximity1: Checked on google and it appears there has been a mass-murder of hyphens.

156sometimeunderwater
jul 4, 2019, 5:09 pm

As a non-American, honest question to all posters in this thread: is this how conversations about politics usually go in the US, or is this one especially unfriendly?

157Limelite
Bewerkt: jul 4, 2019, 5:14 pm

>153 proximity1: >155 RickHarsch:

After the Great Hyphen Slaughter scientists discovered the strange effect the tragedy had on certain conservatives of the Trumpist conviction. Their conclusion follows:
The stages of grief cloud their abilities to reason and reduce their abilities to counterargue (no hyphen needed) to mere ad hominem comebacks (still no hyphen needed). We conclude this phenomonon has resulted in a new syndrome to which we give the name "Grammar Nazi."
(Parenthetical remarks added.)

For love of a hyphen an argument was lost.

158proximity1
Bewerkt: jul 5, 2019, 5:46 am

>156 sometimeunderwater:

"is this how conversations about politics usually go in the U.S....?"

No, the hypocrisy, question-dodging, disingenuousness, blatant lying, wild self-deceiving flights into convenient and self-serving fantasies, the refusal to cede an honestly and fairly-won point by one's opponents--all these and much more in the panoply of all that is worst in human nature that is so common here is helped along by the fact that here, unlike in direct exchanges of views in person, people typically don't ever come to meet and see those with whom they're arguing. Elsewhere, by contrast, in those relatively few places where people--strangers to each other-- will even engage in a political discussion, there is usually much more reserve, much more cheap and dishonest superficial "politeness," a great deal more hypocrisy and practically none of what, for some, is recognized as refreshing candor.

I much prefer to see people here present themselves as the assholes which they so often actually are. I'll take open, clear and undisguised bullshitters over others, those who are full of a hyper-refined politeness, devoid of truth, devoid of honesty, completely phony and worthless as a basis for a clear exchange of opinions--I'll prefer dealing with them over dealing with those of the phony polite set any day of the week.

Politics is the realm (everywhere) in which power asserts itself. It's the arena where those who have the means, seek to dominate and control, defeat and marginalize those who haven't the power to adequately defend themselves. Down the beautiful, tree-lined lanes of wealthy people's homes, it is deceptively quiet, peaceful. Behind those walls, inside the beautiful carpeted rooms with their lovely curtain-dressed sparkling windows are the very comfortable vicious people who regularly win in a fierce daily competition for first-place, for the best of everything, leaving their vanquished opposition with much less or sometimes nothing at all--in many cases.

159RickHarsch
jul 5, 2019, 5:01 pm

>156 sometimeunderwater: I'll answer with a brief anecdote. Back in the early 1980s I had a used book store. Those were horrible years for me, a lifelong leftist. I suppose in a way Reagan struck me as Trump strikes many today...improbably, let's say. And there were the wars and death squads in Central America...Anyway, a Reagan supporter came in every Saturday morning and we argued every Saturday morning...We're still friends today. I've not changed much, and though he has gone through some extreme changes he's back closer to where he was then.

What does it mean? I'm sure to some degree it has to do with the anonymity of this venue, although I have found most online discussions to be more polite than this one. And of course it depends what is on the line here and now. In Portland, being face to face these days isn't so good, as the left and right are fighting on the streets.

160sometimeunderwater
jul 5, 2019, 7:08 pm

Two really eloquent responses - thanks both.

My question was a tiny bit disingenuous, as I don't live under a rock. But I was honestly surprised to read such impoliteness on a small book-cataloging website. Thanks again for such interesting responses to my stupid question.

161John5918
Bewerkt: jul 6, 2019, 6:47 am

>159 RickHarsch: I have found most online discussions to be more polite than this one

This is the only site where I really engage in such conversations, so I don't have much to judge it against, but it does surprise me that it is so discourteous, particularly as when LT Talk first started, for the first couple of years it did seem much more civil (or is that just nostalgia and rose-tinted spectacles)? It continues to surprise me that educated people on a book-catalguing website cannot discuss and disagree, even robustly about deeply-felt issues, without the level of offensiveness which one sees here. Having said that, I'm still around, because there are issues where I feel I have something to say, and I really appreciate the posts by many of the posters. I have learned a lot, which for me is the point of engaging with people, even (especially?) people with whom I fundamentally disagree. It hasn't changed many of my views, but it has given me a deeper understanding of where others are coming from.

It is also just about the only space where I get to interact deeply with extreme right wing people, as most of my own friends and colleagues, whether left or right wing, are more moderate and towards the centre of the political spectrum. And, as Rick implies, when you're talking face to face with someone, it's a different dynamic. sometimeunderwater, if you're from UK you'll remember Billy Connolly, of course, and you may recall a joke he tells about the Rangers-Celtic match where one wee supporter finds himself in the wrong part of the stand, surrounded by hulking giants from the other team. Apart from the fact that they end up shitting in his shoes while he pisses in their Bovril, one line that struck me was how they gathered around him fascinated, because they had never been that close to one (an opposition supporter) before. I think I can say I had never been so close to one before, and I suppose we are metaphorically shitting in each others' shoes and pissing in each others' Bovril here, especially in this Pro and Con group.

Broadly, I think that conversations about politics in the USA have tended to be more heated than in the UK, at least until recently. The upsurge of populism and nationalism which we are seeing in many parts of the world is perhaps levelling that playing field a little.

And finally, sometimeunderwater, welcome to the fray!

Edited to add: By pure coincidence the Billy Connolly story appeared in the "recommendations" when I logged in to YouTube today, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMzbbK9vmaM

162proximity1
Bewerkt: jul 6, 2019, 7:58 am

>160 sometimeunderwater:

You're really very welcome.

Well, your question isn't a stupid one. If you want to think of this as an academic question, there's a good deal more which could be said about it.

Consider, for example: You write of this place as a "small book-cataloging website"--which it is. But that's to overlook a very big socio-political factor. There's a great deal of passion here about issues which are VERY important to the groups--rather, the individuals--who come here to debate them. Why? Where else are they going to go? The places where (non-academicians, lay-) people used to meet for serious discussions of matters of public interest have mostly dried up --like that "lake" in Russia. In many cases, it's well understood that there is not and there is unlikely ever to be a "meeting of the minds" behind these posts. (There are now many regulars to these fora whose posted comments I no longer ever look at. (e.g. >161 John5918:) They (may) return that "favour." There is clearly no point in engaging with these people. But I post comments more often than not for the consideration of others who can be reached intellectually.)

In modern societies where meaningful democracy (participatory self-government) has become reduced to an even greater farce than it had been known as for the past several generations, people are left seething in their discontent. You probably see little evidence of this around you in the public sphere. That's because so many people have become, publicly, so thoroughly muted. (think: head-phones/ear-phones) The passion is going to go somewhere and, when, like a volcanic subterranean force, it finds an outlet, expect explosions.

In some areas of academic study, (where psychology meets politics, sociology and linguistics) this is referred to as the phenomenon of the magnification of "small differences". (1) (2)
also, e.g. : Barbarism and Its Discontents Stanford, CA., (2013) Stanford University Press, and "Barbarism of the Similar," by Maria BOLETSI (3), ; Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice, London, New York, Routledge, (Taylor and Francis Group, Publishers) (2004) (full text at this link) ) by Paul Anthony CHILTON (4) )--where people who agree on a good many things are fiercely divided on matters which, to the disinterested, appear "marginal." To their advocates, these matters are not felt to be marginal in character.

__________________________________

(1) Freud, Signmund - Taboo of Virginity (1918) for "the narcissicm of minor differences". Freud cites Ernest Crawley's work.

(2) Crawley, Ernest - (1867-1924) (Worldcat.org link, above)

(3) Maria Boletsi, is Assistant Professor at the Film & Comparative Literature Department, Leiden University.

(4) Paul A. Chilton is professor of linguistics at the University of East Anglia.

163RickHarsch
Bewerkt: jul 6, 2019, 3:28 pm

>162 proximity1: That lake in Russia referred to in the post above is of course the Aral Sea, which is far from Russia, straddling the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

164Limelite
jul 8, 2019, 9:38 pm

Petard, meet >1 Carnophile:

Faux News, Trump's personal propaganda cheerleading machine and State Information System is now Public Enemy #1 in the mind of the Occupant-in-Chief. The network's crime? Broadcasting the loudly voiced opinions of him live from a French bar where patrons were celebrating USA women's soccer championship win with boisterous chants of "F*ck Trump!" that were heard over the airwaves by him, Trumpist idolators, and those cute lefties brave enough to monitor.

He unloaded, using his weapon of habit, Twitter, with a series of excoriating tweets critical of his once Golden-Haired Network. Best bits below.
"Watching @FoxNews weekend anchors is worse than watching low ratings Fake News CNN, or Lyin’ Brian Williams. . . @FoxNews is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there!" https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/trump-slams-tweetstorm-fox-news.html

Better than just Trump eating his own is the recent development from several Trump anchors and hosts, not a few of their guests, including (gasp) Democrats who appear on Faux airwaves in order to beard the lion. They are criticizing Fearless Illegitimate Leader! Could it be that those Faux TV propagandists are developing a healthy appetite? One for the truth? They certainly are prepared to eat "their own" if that's what's required before acknowledging reality and telling the truth.

For instance: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-turns-on-trump_n_5a99e885e4b0e6069a17f3d...
And: https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-will-look-into-fox-news-decision-to-st... Ahhhh, new flavors!

Even Neil Cavuto has had it up to here with Trump; in fact he broke the enchantment a year and a half ago. Just look at the Google listings for "Neil Cavuto goes off on Trump." Tasty!

Shepard Smith has been fact-checking the lying liar ever since -- you name it. Yum yum!

Karma is a b*tch, >1 Carnophile:

165Carnophile
jul 11, 2019, 11:54 am

>152 John5918:

In #142 you wrote,
You have the opportunity to enlighten me on the substance of my post and explain to me how in your view your posts do not appear, or are not intended to be, hostile to a certain group, if you so wish. I note that you have made no attempt to do so.

You have the opportunity to enlighten me on the substance of my post and explain to me how in your view your posts do not appear, or are not intended to be, an indication that you’re a mass murderer, if you so wish. I note that you have made no attempt to do so.

(Just saying, "I'm not a mass murderer" doesn't "explain" anything.)

166Carnophile
jul 11, 2019, 11:56 am

>164 Limelite: They are criticizing Fearless Illegitimate Leader! Could it be that those Faux TV propagandists are developing a healthy appetite? ... They certainly are prepared to eat "their own"

LOL, that reminds me of this:

Mueller is building a case; applying pressure; climbing the chain in the same way a prosecutor goes after ordinary organized crime bosses... Thread by thread, Mueller is untangling the skein of corruption, collusion, and cover-up. Members of DJT's family will be going down soon. They will throw him under the bus...

167John5918
jul 11, 2019, 2:22 pm

>165 Carnophile:

The difference is perhaps that I have not accused you of accusing me of anything, and I have no interest in pursuing it. You have accused me of accusing you of something, and you have pursued the matter. But if you're not interested, fine.

168Limelite
jul 11, 2019, 7:47 pm

>166 Carnophile:

You know what those who can't refute an argument are labeled, especially when their claim is turned against them?

"Cherry-picker," aka, the favorite summer pastime of Trumpists. snicker

169Carnophile
jul 12, 2019, 11:52 pm

>164 Limelite:
>168 Limelite:

Really? Trump created Fox News the same way that leftists created some of their own problems as noted in this thread?

Uh-huh. Remember: When getting your ass kicked, include a "snicker." Then no one will notice!

170StormRaven
jul 13, 2019, 11:32 am

No, the hypocrisy, question-dodging, disingenuousness, blatant lying, wild self-deceiving flights into convenient and self-serving fantasies

Nice of you to describe your posts in this way.

171Limelite
jul 13, 2019, 7:44 pm

>169 Carnophile:
Maybe not delusional Trumpist "really," but yes. Really really (with citations!). Petard really.

172Carnophile
jul 14, 2019, 11:31 am

>171 Limelite: Trump really created Fox News. Wow, I'm learning a lot in this thread.

173Limelite
jul 14, 2019, 12:19 pm

One of the walls poor reasoners erect to actual learning, beyond cherry-picking, is attempting to mischaracterize figurative language as literal same. In college, professors face this mental hurdle in their freshman writing and rhetoric classes and work with the enrollees to show them how to think (not what to think).

Students who achieve a passing grade in these introductory courses for teaching "thinking like an adult" have overcome the deficits they left high school with (emotional response, attacking the messenger, arguing from false premise, and inability to separate signal from noise, etc) and go on to effectively use their new powers of reason in problem solving, research, and persuasion, to name a few areas of mind training that university education addresses across the curriculum.

174Carnophile
jul 14, 2019, 3:46 pm

>173 Limelite: I am a college professor. The vast majority of college student writing displays better writing, and thinking, than your posts.

175StormRaven
jul 14, 2019, 7:55 pm

174: I am a college professor.

That's a dubious claim.

176jjwilson61
jul 14, 2019, 10:47 pm

Depends on the college

177Carnophile
jul 14, 2019, 10:53 pm

>175 StormRaven: "It stings too much! Deny! Deny!"

178Carnophile
Bewerkt: jul 14, 2019, 10:59 pm

Racial politics roil Democratic Party
Democrats who have called President Trump and his policies racist are now pointing fingers at one another on issues of race.

Allegations of racial insensitivity are flying between the 2020 Democratic contenders, as well as between House Democrats, raising concerns that internecine squabbles over identity and race are tarnishing party leaders and distracting Democrats from their goal of ousting the president in 2020...

Frustrated lawmakers say the backbiting over race has gotten out of control... “It’s damaging to this party and the internal workings of the Democratic Party,” said Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.). “I can tell you it’s not helpful.”
Clay did not explain why racial divisiveness is helpful in society in general, but "damaging" within the Democratic Party.

179StormRaven
Bewerkt: jul 14, 2019, 11:03 pm

177: Any child taught by you is being cheated out of their tuition.

It is dubious that someone of such deficient mental faculties as you could possibly be employed by a college.

180proximity1
jul 15, 2019, 7:23 am


>174 Carnophile:

I'm lovin' this! ;^)

&

>177 Carnophile: : Yep. And, as evidence, these goomers have done the usual in such a case and "continued" the thread, leaving your stinging comments in the background where they hope readers won't bother to look.

Typical.

181Carnophile
jul 15, 2019, 1:46 pm

>180 proximity1: Yes, and the other cheap thing about that new thread is the attempt to completely change the thread title in the new thread.

182Carnophile
Bewerkt: jul 15, 2019, 1:51 pm

>179 StormRaven: ...someone of such deficient mental faculties as you...

Input: Years of law school. Output: "Yer stoopid!"

Something something mental faculties something.

183Carnophile
jul 15, 2019, 1:55 pm

More from the article in #178, Racial politics roil Democratic Party:
Tensions exploded on Capitol Hill this week after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) accused Pelosi of singling out women of color for criticism... Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks ignited a long-simmering feud with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

CBC members, such as (Rep. William Lacy) Clay, exploded in anger at Ocasio-Cortez for having “used the race card” (L.O.L.) and accused progressives of seeking to oust black lawmakers by endorsing their primary challengers.

The progressive group Justice Democrats, which is closely aligned with Ocasio-Cortez, is supporting primary challengers to several longtime Democrats, including Clay and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), a Hispanic Caucus member.

Justice Democrats have also considered a challenge to House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), a CBC member who is viewed by many as a potential heir to Pelosi.

184StormRaven
Bewerkt: jul 15, 2019, 2:27 pm

Something something mental faculties something.

I'm just going on the posts you've made over the years here. Literally nothing you have ever written on this site has been anything other than idiotic drivel. If you want others to believe you are something other than a clueless clown, you should learn how to write something that is other than debunked right-wing knee-jerk talking points.

You are like the creationists who get mad when biologists dismiss their creationist "arguments" out of hand. You, like those creationists, don't present anything that anyone needs to take any more seriously than a dismissive wave. You, like those creationists, are making stupid arguments that are so stupid that they don't deserve more respect than a snort of derision.

185Limelite
jul 15, 2019, 3:58 pm

>174 Carnophile:

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

186Carnophile
jul 15, 2019, 9:33 pm

>184 StormRaven: “I could so refute you! I totally could! I just don’t want to!”

187Carnophile
jul 15, 2019, 9:41 pm

Still more from the article in #178, Racial politics roil Democratic Party:
In the presidential race, Biden’s backers are still fuming over what they view as a dishonest characterization of his record on race by his rivals for the presidential nomination, including Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.)...

Harris catapulted into the top tier of Democratic presidential contenders after an exchange with Biden at the first presidential debate. The California Democrat called Biden’s remarks about finding common ground with segregationist senators “hurtful,” and she attacked him for his decades-old opposition to a federal busing program aimed at integrating schools.

“I think Sen. Harris is out of control,” said Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.), a CBC (Congressional Black Caucus) member who has endorsed Biden for president...

Biden has slipped some in the polls since the first debate, but he remains the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary in part because of his strong support from black voters.

Taken together, the controversies have Democrats shaking their heads over how they have reached the point of attacking one another over race.
Yeah, how could that happen? We spent decades normalizing attacking people for “racism” and making that the path to status and power on the left. We’re completely puzzled as why that behavior is increasing!

188LolaWalser
jul 16, 2019, 8:31 pm

>160 sometimeunderwater:

Depends on your gender. Women in here are not only routinely exposed to misogyny and sexism of opinion, they may live to be insulted out of the blue (possibly the effects of alcohol, a frequent handicap) as a "slut" and a "putrid cunt". It may happen in a language you don't speak, as that allows the sod to circumvent the TOS and avoid getting flagged. It may happen repeatedly. The offending sod will never apologise, and those who run the site won't lift a finger to penalise such behaviour. Other asshole bros of the local self-styled "left" will try to mansplain that you're a very "irritating" woman and hence insulting you is a fair game. See? Violence against women wouldn't be happening if we bitches weren't so darn irritating. (My shitlist populated that day like unto mushrooms after rain.)

A few years later, that same putrid-cunting individual may be sharing views on politesse & etiquette with the public, as I see by chance and to much amusement from John's post, but probably not warning one of the putrid-cunting, slutting hazard.

If this is too hair-raising to contemplate, then there's nothing but to retreat to that haven of civility that is Brexitannia these days, is there!

>161 John5918:

All of that made me laugh a good minute. So much so I had to post in this dumbass thread...

189RickHarsch
jul 16, 2019, 9:47 pm

"It may happen in a language you don't speak, as that allows the sod to circumvent the TOS and avoid getting flagged."

Or it may happen in a partly shared non-English tongue by someone sandbagged abusively who had years before been referred to by the person as a monolingual 'sod' (it wasn't sod, but sod will do), who responded unkindly in kind in that partly shared foreign tongue, exasperated by a torrent of dishonest verbal assault.

190John5918
jul 18, 2019, 7:13 am

>188 LolaWalser:

Thanks, Lola. And when I wrote, "I have learned a lot, which for me is the point of engaging", you and southernbooklady were two of the people I had in mind from whom I have learned a lot. Thanks to both of you.

191LolaWalser
jul 18, 2019, 11:39 am

>190 John5918:

No need to thank me. If it's true that we can learn from almost anything and anyone, it's also true that "lessons" eventually have an end and there are limits to not just useful but moral "engagement". After a certain point your "engagement" with vile shits only legitimizes them and their behaviour. If the misogynists, the homophobes, the racists were less coddled here, fewer decent people would be blocking this group.

192RickHarsch
Bewerkt: jul 18, 2019, 2:48 pm

>191 LolaWalser: The best literary group I found here reformed as a private group specifically to block LolaWalser. It's called Tropic of Ideas, an offshoot of a great group called Salon, and various other titles playing on Salon. Spiteful personal attacks became too much in that group and though it still exists, the core retreated to privacy.
I mention this because post 188 is referring to a spat between LolaWalser and me and she therefore has brought it up again after two or three years of blessed peace.

(ETA: it's an ugly irony that this resurfaced in the thread with the most pathetic, jejune title, which just a few days ago I attempted to divert. Further, I happen to agree with about 97% of what LolaWalser posts, admire her ability capture her outrage eloquently, and fully support her refusal to tread carefully where she has determined that enough is enough.)

193John5918
jul 19, 2019, 8:28 am

>192 RickHarsch: Further, I happen to agree with about 97% of what LolaWalser posts, admire her ability capture her outrage eloquently, and fully support her refusal to tread carefully where she has determined that enough is enough

Well said.

194LolaWalser
jul 21, 2019, 11:04 am

>193 John5918:

Nice, really nice.

I'm all out of patience here, John. I say this not for my sake, in order to elicit something from you on my behalf (that train has gone long ago), but because you will keep doing this: when you feel the temptation to lecture someone on the advantages of "engaging", do check first whether that person is a woman, or any other type of person without your male white privilege.

Because your "engaging" misogynistic shits comes at no cost to you and never will and is in itself a demonstration of your privilege. No misogynistic shit is going to call YOU a slut and a putrid cunt; such insults simply don't apply among "men"; you will never be depreciated because of your gender (or race, or sexual orientation etc.) and because you DON'T share this basic injustice with those of us open to such attacks, you also DON'T have the right to presume to tell us how to deal with them.

By all means, hobnob with the sleaze, buddy up to putrid cunters. But don't think you're acting in a better way than someone who is that sleaze's target. The whole fucking life.

195John5918
Bewerkt: jul 21, 2019, 5:21 pm

>194 LolaWalser: But don't think you're acting in a better way than someone who is that sleaze's target

Thanks, Lola. I don't think it's about anyone thinking they're acting better. My experience in life (which you so succintly sum up) leads me to engage in a certain way, yours leads you to engage differently. I respect you for that, but I act and think from my own experience while trying to learn from that of others, including your good self.

196JGL53
Bewerkt: jul 21, 2019, 3:08 pm

> 195

I have to admire your old style christianity, john, but it just doesn't work in the Year of Our Lard 2019. I. e., the more you extend love and understanding to the monsters the more they will want to devour you (perhaps you should put down your bible and read some H.P. Lovecraft occasionally).

But your heart really seems to be in the right place so we all should respect that.

Namaste, john.

197John5918
jul 21, 2019, 5:26 pm

>196 JGL53:

Thanks, JGL. While "old style christianity" is a foundational part of my value system (more precisely, Catholic Social Thought), I would add that it is also based on personal experience of peacebuilding. Working for peace in particular conflicts one has to engage with all stakeholders, including mass murderers, "terrorists" and war criminals, as well as "spoilers" who wish to derail the peace process. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it has to be done.

198LolaWalser
jul 21, 2019, 7:31 pm

>195 John5918:

Your experiences are not those of an unprivileged person and never will be. When it comes to dealing with those specific forms of discrimination, you have nothing to say that should take precedence over the viewpoint of the unprivileged persons.

Did you ever in your life consider how everything you have done was not just facilitated but made possible in the first place by the fact that you are a white man? Where would you be if you had been a woman, a black African, gay? Could a woman have had your life, stepped in your shoes, exactly as everything happened, making and maintaining your connections? If not, why not? Could an African, of any ethnicity or religion? Could an openly gay person?

You go around mediating between factions of non-whites, and specifically you meet a whole lot of men in doing so, not women, because women count for shit there even more than here--why can you do that? Because you are a man, and white, a foreigner in an exalted position, never one belonging to the bloodied parties, and you represent one of the oldest, richest and most powerful churches on earth. You have access to that church's hierarchy in a way only a man would. You are not a pariah where you live, because you are not gay and not a woman.

Whatever discomfort, hardship, danger you suffered, they'll have been the result of changing, passing circumstance, same as may happen to anyone. The risk of adventure, no more. And if you were sometimes wounded in your very being, because of what you are born like and not for any reason in your power to choose or change, you will smart at the injsutice and feel very wronged, but it will be a passing insult, an individual occurrence, of no import to the great scheme of things in which your maleness and whiteness place you at the top. It is not how you have lived your whole life. It is not a permanent stance the world takes on you, forces on you, mutilates and hounds you with. You know nothing of that and never will.

199John5918
Bewerkt: jul 21, 2019, 8:48 pm

>198 LolaWalser:

Lola, I'm not making any claims of precedence over anybody. I'm aware of my privilege. All I'm doing is sharing my experience, which is really all any of us can do authentically. I have huge respect for your authenticity in sharing your experience, which is obviously different from mine. I learn from you and others. I'm not attacking you nor challenging your experience, and I hope you don't feel that I am. I'm simply sharing my experience.

And yes, I have often asked myself those questions, but of course I don't have an answer to them. I'm who I am. But thanks for reminding me.

200RickHarsch
Bewerkt: jul 22, 2019, 9:23 am

>199 John5918: Perhaps you already know this, jtf, but your crime was committed in >193 John5918: when you, rather than condemning me as a misogynistic shit, quoted something I said that you liked. This was taken to mean that you 'hobnob with the sleaze, buddy up to putrid cunters,' which means, implicitly, that you are posturing yourself as better than LW in that you fail to condemn as she condemns. I would not be surprised if you had received a pm describing the LW version of what happened. My own version would be far different. I believe mine is accurate. LW no doubt believes hers is accurate. It is hardly surprising that someone with your experience would do his best to engage the situation fairly and based on what you actually know. Luckily for you I am not a terrorist, torturer, mass murderer, rapist, misongynist, and even am only occasionally an asshole. Like you, I do my best to try to understand the existential circumstances of the female, and like you I can only do my best to make the best decisions I can based on empathy. And like you I believe in economic equality. Unlike you, I am only engaged in 'the battle' as a writer and so have no evidence to present that I have done any good in the universe.

Edited to attempt to present the word implicitly with the appropriate number of ells.

201John5918
jul 22, 2019, 9:57 am

>200 RickHarsch:

Thanks, Rick. Mind you, I may have to stop engaging with you and cut you off for ever over the issue of the appropriate number of ells in "implicitly"...

202RickHarsch
jul 22, 2019, 10:08 am

>201 John5918: I know, but i knew with you I had better be up front about it...

203Carnophile
Bewerkt: jun 29, 2020, 6:04 pm

While the last twenty or so posts don't exactly illustrate the point of the thread title, they illustrate a related point, that trying to appease leftists just increases their aggression. With leftists there is no "He apologized so now I'm satisfied," there is only "He apologized, so he's weak and safe to attack!"

204Carnophile
Bewerkt: jun 29, 2020, 6:05 pm

Do leftist rioters destroy stuff because it offends their "principles," or do they just like destroying stuff?

Here's a relevant data point:

“Demonstrators also tore down two statues, including Wisconsin's motto "Forward" and the likeness of Col. Hans Christian Heg. Heg was a Norwegian migrant and an abolitionist who died for the Union Army during the Civil War.”

205Carnophile
Bewerkt: jul 11, 2020, 10:40 pm

From the same link as the previous post:

Gay Democrat state senator in Wisconsin hospitalized due to beating by thugs. I doubt the thugs knew that he was a gay Dem politician, but that makes the point almost as well as if they did. The point here being:

Lefty thugs don’t stop and check out your Twitter feed to assess your sexual identity or your politics, etc., before they decide to kick you in the head until you need to be hospitalized.

Being a PC leftist is not going to save you.

206Carnophile
jul 11, 2020, 10:39 pm

Afghan Held After French Migrant Activist Murdered
French police are holding a man of Afghan nationality after a prominent activist in the north of France who helped migrants was bludgeoned to death...

The attacker entered the home of Jean Dussine in Bretteville, just outside the northern port city of Cherbourg, before hitting him repeatedly with a blunt object. ...The suspect has confessed...

(The victim,) Jean Dussine, 63, had headed a local migrants assistance organisation called Itinerance since 2016 and also hosted migrants at his own home.
LOL.

207Carnophile
jul 12, 2020, 11:59 pm

Social democrat fired for re-tweeting academic paper about the benfits of non-violence.
David Shor is a 28-year-old political data analyst and social democrat who worked for President Obama’s reelection campaign. On May 28, Shor tweeted out a short summary of a paper by Princeton professor Omar Wasow. The research compiled by Wasow analyzed public opinion in the 1960s, and found violent and nonviolent protest tactics had contradictory effects. Shor’s synopsis was straightforward:

“Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests *increase* Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage.”
—(@davidshor) May 28, 2020

...But in certain quarters of the left... criticizing violent protest tactics is considered improper on the grounds that it distracts from deeper underlying injustice, and shifts the blame from police and other malefactors onto their victims.
(Yeah, imagine putting the blame for violence on the people who commit violence! The nerve!)

Anyway, some other lefty tweeted to Shor’s employer about Shor’s tweet, and Shor was fired as a result.

208John5918
Bewerkt: jul 13, 2020, 1:51 am

>207 Carnophile:

Worth noting that Democrats (with a capital D referring to your US political party) are not "lefties", they are at best centrists and at worst right of centre, and they are an establishment political party, not a social justice movement.

I'm quite heavily involved in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, and I would say that most of the people I encounter are genuinely leftish.

imagine putting the blame for violence on the people who commit violence!

Yes, it has been quite a radical shift in thinking, probably since the 1960s, to begin to put the blame for violence on those who commit violence but previously had rarely been challenged for it, namely governments, police forces, business cartels, etc - forms of violence committed by and/or supported by and/or colluded with by the state and the establishment. Christian Liberation Theology played a role in this paradigm shift. Sometimes desperate people feel they have no other recourse except, as a last resort, to respond to this state-sponsored violence with violence. But personally I don't believe that is the best response, and along with many of my left-leaning colleagues, would advocate nonviolence.

209Cubby.R.S.
Bewerkt: jul 13, 2020, 10:22 am

https://lawliberty.org/flaunting-a-presumptuous-innocence/

A nice, if imperfect bit of writing. I would add that many of you won't read it and or find that it penetrates anything but the nerve before you close it, but it is quite interesting in its totality. I hope you filthy Lefties read it ; ).

210John5918
jul 13, 2020, 12:45 pm

>209 Cubby.R.S.: filthy Lefties

Do you not find it possible to argue rationally without insulting people?

211Cubby.R.S.
jul 13, 2020, 1:15 pm

>210 John5918:

I do hope you'll find that I am not so dreadfully serious, hence my attempt at a wink and smile. Even when it may seem that I am a curmudgeonly bitter neo-nazi racist filled with the utmost contempt for any who may disagree, I'm really a fairly light-hearted chap with ever-morphing views. I.e., I did not really mean for it to be seriously taken and sorry if you took offense.

212kiparsky
jul 13, 2020, 1:20 pm

>211 Cubby.R.S.: There's enough ugliness in this group, let's try not to add to it, even "in fun".

213John5918
jul 13, 2020, 3:07 pm

>211 Cubby.R.S.:

Thank you for your response. I personally didn't take offence, but I second >212 kiparsky:'s comment.

214Carnophile
jul 14, 2020, 9:50 pm

>209 Cubby.R.S.: Interesting, thanks for posting.

215Cubby.R.S.
jul 16, 2020, 10:36 am

https://lawliberty.org/flannery-oconnor-and-the-terrors-of-american-sentimentali...

Above is another link of fair writing. If you are to judge others by their perceived morality, then you will find nothing left to learn. There's always a barn to raze and folks to frog-walk at pitchfork point. But then again, thought is dangerous... and just like every other great medieval town, or communist regime, we should ban only certain things.

216prosfilaes
jul 17, 2020, 2:52 pm

>215 Cubby.R.S.: It's certainly a discussable statement, but not in the context of this thread, and not in the context of the author, who is the "Director of the Saint Vincent Center for Catholic Thought and Culture", whose Flannery O’Connor spoke similarly when she said, “I write the way I do because and only because I am a Catholic. I feel that if I were not a Catholic, I would have no reason to write, no reason to see, no reason ever to feel horrified or even to enjoy anything … I have never had the sense that being a Catholic is a limit to the freedom of the writer, but just the reverse.”

When I started pulling that quote, I didn't realize that that was the same author he was being defended in the article. So basically the director of a center focusing on Catholic thought, quoting an author that says they wouldn't write if they weren't Catholic, is being used to justify "If you are to judge others by their perceived morality, then you will find nothing left to learn."

It's not even relevant to the article. Nothing I see in that article implies that you shouldn't judge Marxists and atheists. It's just classic "my side deserves benefit of the doubt and forgiveness".

To quote from the end of the article:

"... when rightly read, O’Connor reminds us that seeking health and racial justice without charity can easily lead to American-style labor camps and gas chambers."

Cool; I'm glad there doesn't need to be any evidence behind that. The US imprisons more than any nation in the world, both by absolute numbers and per capita and is the only nation in this hemisphere to have the death penalty, so we already have American-style labor camps and gas chambers. But we can take the word of a fiction writer that it somehow would be worse.

"What this may mean in terms of the COVID-19 response I’ll leave to the reader to discern; regarding racial injustice, the obvious answer is character assassination, even of those who have long been resting in their graves...."

It must have been nice to live in the days when dog whistles were inaudible; if the author wants to say that there's something wrong with how we're handling COVID-19, perhaps he should be intellectually honest enough to say it.

As for character assassination, the author hardly defends O'Connor from the claim of racism. He argues that art shouldn't be read in the light of the artist, which is a very different claim. He never says anything like "If you are to judge others by their perceived morality, then you will find nothing left to learn."; that would imply, perhaps, that he should get out of his Catholic bubble. It is not character assassination to study the morality of historical figures, and no matter where you fall on the line of letting the author inform their work, arguing for it is not character assassination. This is just knee-jerk "how dare you criticize my favorite author" stuff, combined with "it's evil to fight against injustice if you're not doing it my way."

So, yeah, the article doesn't even say what you claim it says.

217Cubby.R.S.
jul 17, 2020, 3:45 pm

>216 prosfilaes:

Golly, I never said the article said that. It was my comment, because it seems some are using one statement or action to give credence for disregarding all other statements by the same individual. I think we can still look for the positive comments regardless of the views, because searching for only perfect individuals makes it impossible to learn. Which is sort of what you do in your response to me.

So you know, the U.S. under Franklin Roosevelt, did put Japanese and American citizens in reeducation camps.

218prosfilaes
jul 17, 2020, 5:57 pm

>217 Cubby.R.S.: Golly, I never said the article said that.

Ah, so you gave a link, and put a random sentence after it. Generally one of the principles of communication is that we interpret statements in context. So what the fuck what that supposed to mean?

So you know, the U.S. under Franklin Roosevelt, did put Japanese and American citizens in reeducation camps.

I could reply to this, but I would have to be using that principle of context, because otherwise it's just a random historical fact.

219Cubby.R.S.
Bewerkt: jul 17, 2020, 7:03 pm

>218 prosfilaes:

I said that and you legitimized it, so I don't know why you're upset.

Because the subject of the piece was of that era, I didn't think it was that random.

I have to assume you looked up the author, disregarded them on principle and did not read the article. Further legitimizing that arbitrary comment of mine with the link.

220prosfilaes
jul 17, 2020, 8:33 pm

>219 Cubby.R.S.: Because the subject of the piece was of that era, I didn't think it was that random.

You've told me that I don't understand what you wrote, thus I asked you for more clarification. One of the more annoying games people play is saying something to provoke and then denying its obvious meaning when people give it that means. So make it clear what you mean by that statement.

I have to assume you looked up the author, disregarded them on principle and did not read the article.

Of course, I always quote from works I haven't read. No, I did not read every line; I skimmed it, because I don't care about Flannery O'Connor. Why didn't you post it to some group where O'Connor is relevant? If you were going to post it here, why not make its relevance to this topic clear?

What do you think I missed? Outside the author, it whines about the response to COVID-19 but refuses to actually make a clear claim. It complains about "character assassination" when never establishing that anything said about O'Connor's character is actually wrong; it's somehow wrong to mention anything a dead person did wrong (or at least a dead person the author approves of.) It otherwise makes a fairly standard "death of the author" argument, with a weird thing about how you have to read an introduction she wrote. I don't see any reason to assume you read what I wrote.

Wait, when you were talking about FDR, were you referring to American-style labor camps? If so, then you need to clarify that; it wasn't at all obvious to me.

221Cubby.R.S.
jul 17, 2020, 10:36 pm

>220 prosfilaes:

You should read the whole thing.

I never said you didn't understand what I wrote, all I've done is defend a simple tangent statement to an article I posted.

222John5918
Bewerkt: jul 18, 2020, 3:11 am

Dit bericht is door zijn auteur gewist.

223Carnophile
jul 20, 2020, 10:33 pm

June 23, 2020: Scott Alexander shuts down the Slate Star Codex blog due to being doxxed by the New York Times.

224Carnophile
jul 28, 2020, 4:55 pm

The first post in this thread was about Young Turk Dems primarying the Old Guard. More on that:

Suburban Voters Rage Against Political Machine
Mark Lungariello, Rockland/Westchester Journal News, July 1, 2020 (paywalled)
The new breed isn’t exactly young but younger than the alternatives, and their ranks include people of color, women and members of the LGBTQ community.

...early results show signs that it was a bad night for incumbents and establishment-backed politicians. If the results hold (Update: They did - C.), it would show the region embracing a progressive policy agenda and it may also prove the influence of local party insiders is eroding.

...After Tuesday’s primaries, some longtime officeholders are facing the possible end of decades-long political careers.
Weeks later we can update this from “possible” to “actual.” Mondaire Jones, Jamaal Bowman, and Mimi Rocah all won their primary contests. As an example,
Jamaal Bowman, a former middle-school principal, declared victory over 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel in the 16th congressional district... despite the incumbent’s support from old guard national Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, and local leaders like Westchester county Executive George Latimer.

226Carnophile
sep 4, 2020, 10:21 pm

Portland's rioter-coddling Mayor Ted Wheeler moving to avoid rioters targeting his home.
The Democratic mayor of Portland, Ore., is moving from his $840,000 condo to avoid rioters who have repeatedly targeted the building, according to a report.

Ted Wheeler wrote to neighbors in his building to say it would be “best for me and for everyone else’s safety and peace” for him to move from the building that rioters tried to torch on his 58th birthday...
LOL.

227Carnophile
nov 15, 2020, 9:40 pm

Antifa demonstrators vandalize Democratic office in Portland, spray paint 'F--- Biden' on walls
Demonstrators identifying themselves as Antifa vandalized a Democratic campaign office in downtown Portland, Oregon, smashing windows and spray painting “F—- Biden” and other profane messages on its walls, police said Monday.

The damage occurred late Sunday, resulting in the arrest of three people, the Portland Police Bureau said.

“Several members of the group began to tag the Multnomah County Democrats building with graffiti and broke out several of the building’s windows,” the police bureau said in a statement.

228Matke
nov 15, 2020, 9:49 pm

>227 Carnophile: You are incorrect. A private individual tweeted that the vandalism was done by an antifa group.

The Portland police, who have made three arrests in the incident, said they know of no connection between the vandalism and any group.

You’ve got to read all the way to the end to have all the information.

https://www.newsweek.com/f-biden-portland-democrats-building-vandalized-proteste...

229Carnophile
nov 18, 2020, 11:38 pm

Please. The only part of that that was wrong was that it said the police identified them as Antifa. But they obviously were Antifa. They were rioting in Portland as part of a mob dressed in black, spraypainting BLM and ACAB on the building.

230Earthling1
nov 18, 2020, 11:42 pm

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

231Carnophile
nov 18, 2020, 11:54 pm

I don't trust Newsweek either, ridiculous passel of liars that they are. But in this case it was a photograph, and a photo that was an "admission against interest," given that Newsweek wants to defend the left.

232proximity1
nov 19, 2020, 7:32 am


"admission against interest"

bin
search-string: get, search= "admission"+"against"+"interest",



"no such file or directory" ...
"no such file or directory" ...
"no such file or directory" ...
"no such file or directory" ...
"no such file or directory" ...
"no such file or directory" ...

_______________________________

A "beaut"---but, then, you're using here a phrase which expresses a concept which is beyond these people's capacity to conceive. So your meaning isn't lost in translation--it simply never gets that far.

Pity. But this is why we're in a "dialogue of the deaf."

233proximity1
Bewerkt: dec 14, 2020, 2:30 pm



(from The Federalist, (Washington, D.C.) |
(Censorship) | ‘Nonpartisan’ Facebook Fact-Checking Arbiter Trashed Republicans On Russian Propaganda Outlet' | The 'independent certifier' who retweeted the claim that all Republican voters are racists approved as a Facebook fact-checker an organization funded by Chinese Communists and U.S. Democrats.
| By Jonah Gottschalk
December 14, 2020


___________________________


"A professor Facebook has empowered to decide who can become a fact-checker is an open political leftist who has expressed animus against all Republican U.S. voters, according to recently uncovered documents exposing the official — and the process by which social media censors obtain their powers.

"According to Jack Houghton of Sky News, the platform’s fact-checking certifier Margot Susca retweeted the claim that racism is 'embraced by nearly half of the country’s electorate' in America, called herself a member of Hillary Clinton’s “team” in 2019, and on Russian propaganda network RT she insisted that the U.S. president’s speeches should not be broadcast. Susca is an American University journalism professor and has been a 'certifier' for the International Fact-Checking Network since 2017.

"ICFN is run by the leftist journalism nonprofit organization Poynter Institute, which claims to be nonpartisan but openly and far more frequently censors right-identified politicians, outlets, and ideas. Facebook uses ICFN to approve censors for its immense platform.

"In her role, Susca has certified 19 fact-checking applications from organizations that include the obscure Chinese- and Democrat-funded Lead Stories. Lead Stories has been censoring stories from The Federalist and other non-leftist outlets despite making documented factual errors that boost Democrat-friendly narratives. Susca approved its application for Facebook fact-checker three times in a row." ... ...

... ...


More than a month since the news-media's proclaimed "victory" of Biden/Harris, RealClearPolitics' poll



(as of this date, 14 December, 2020)

Direction of Country

Right Direction ........... 28.4
Wrong Track ............. 64.4

Wrong Track +36.0


has not moved significantly one iota.

"What hap'?!?" LOL!

234Earthling1
dec 14, 2020, 2:52 pm

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

235proximity1
Bewerkt: aug 4, 2021, 8:10 am

LOL!!!!! :

the flesh-eating feminist-inspired moral monster comes for one of "its own", N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who used to come and take the monster out for exercise-walks.

Bye, Andrew!

LOL!

(Homage to Carnophile, who started this thread on 18 Nov. 2018.)

236John5918
aug 4, 2021, 9:24 am

>235 proximity1:

Not sure what point you are trying to make here. Sexual abusers are found across the political spectrum. As is only right and proper, there is widespread condemnation of Cuomo's actions and calls for him to resign, both from within his own party (including President Biden) and from the left wing generally.

237TheToadRevoltof84
aug 4, 2021, 7:57 pm

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

238Limelite
aug 4, 2021, 11:21 pm

What have Cuomo and liberals got to offer to the perverse compared to the sexually deviant Orange Shitegibbon and his pederast ex-candidate for US Senate from AL? His #1 pederast Republican House member fan from FL? His BFF procurer of underage victims of his sexual attentions who hanged himself in his prison cell? Or his immoral evangelical bible mangling sex obsessed sanctimonious base? Nothing. Republicans, conservatives, MAGArats, and Trump cultists can out-deviate any transgressor from the leftward end of the political spectrum

FACT: The most corrupt government ever witnessed by this country was #45's. A true pig of a 'leader' in every pejorative sense of the word.

The middle of the Trumpian swamp is where abusive tyrannical types are mostly found crouching in the slime, where hypocrisy became a requisite criterion for admiration from and approval of right wingers; it is the best environment for Trump's adherents. May they continue to remain there.

Right wing nuts are the wasted who are always wrong because they deny facts.

239TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 5, 2021, 11:21 am

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

240kiparsky
aug 5, 2021, 9:56 am

>235 proximity1: I do appreciate your acknowledgement that the right really doesn't give a toss about sexual harassment, and that holding men accountable for their actions against women has been largely an effort by the left. It's rare that someone on your side owns up to the ideological failings which have doomed you to eternal irrelevance, and I congratulate you for it.

On the other hand, I think it's interesting that you characterize the prosecution of sexual harassment cases a "monster". Is the idea that sexual harassment should be taken seriously and have consequences really that frightening to you?

241Limelite
aug 5, 2021, 6:26 pm

>239 TheToadRevoltof84:

Wrong again.

The left and Democraats did not lie abut any of those things. Those on the wrong side of history, that is, those on the right can't handle the truth. That is why right wing nuts resort to rewriting history. What Republicans and Trumpty-Dumbpties say happened January 6th is the most current and most egregiously vile example of all the rightist lickspittle liars' kowtowing to their cult leader.

Creating alternative "facts" by inventing lies about reality doesn't make something true or real.

Your post is an example of many 'favorite tactics resorted to by fearful authoritarians: Redefine words in order to appropriate them and employ them as opposite of their true meaning , i.e. 'patriot'; accuse truth-tellers of lying while hosing right wing faithful with lies that make them think they're winners in order to "own the libs" -- i.e. 'the election was stolen'; manipulate facts to appear more or less damning than they are (depending on which is needed) to right wing nut ideologues in an attempt to justify unjustifiable words and actions -- i.e. "Bengazi! Bengazi! Bengazi!"; demean honorable people as "weak," defame admirable people with despicable labels, as in ______ lovers, 'commies,' "criminals and rapists"; embrace the destruction of democracy by spewing false tropes that American freedom is being attacked when, in reality, the same American freedoms once only enjoyed by white males are being distributed beyond merely white males for the first time in our history. That historical change makes rightists' hair ignite!

To be polite, your post is a clotted mess of specious claims invented by right wing propagandists who don't give a damn about their followers as long as they behave like the mindless cattle they're most comfortable emulating and keep sending money to Trump and his cronies. The entire charade of the Republican Party since Nixon and Reagan is now gleefully and publicly celebrated by Republicans -- destroy democracy, its institutions, and its values and install a dictatorial oligarchy of rich white men intent on further enriching themselves on the backs of their splendid herds of willing idiots who can be kept down in their place by lies, fraud, and cons.

What pisses Republicans off and is driving them to violence is that Truth defeated Lies in the 2020 presidential election. What pisses Republicans off and is driving them to violence is that COVID vaccines trump (ha ha!) hoax memes, and hydroxychloroquine. What pisses Republicans off and is driving them to violence is that they're LOSERS factually, morally, ethically, and really. And the majority in the USA is telling them so by shredding the false ground on which they've staked their identities out from under them every day, 24/7.

Worse than all that is that Democrats and libs, even a super majority of Americans, don't give a damn that you who believe Trump crap are gullible victims of Trumpism. To borrow from the distinguished astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, who said when the subject is science, “The good thing about Truth is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”

242TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 5, 2021, 11:03 pm

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

243Limelite
aug 5, 2021, 11:35 pm

>242 TheToadRevoltof84:

Wrong again, actually, Toady. Sorry, your side's lies can't be verified as true or factual for the simple reason that they're the fantasies of crazed MAGArats, ergo, patently false. Take #1 Trump Hanger-On Pillow Guy's 'evidence' of voter fraud by Democrats that he waved around on CNN tonight. But keep adhering to alt reality if you're comfortable there. No one gives a damn. It's just live entertainment for all of us in the Reality Based Community.
During an interview that aired on Thursday night (tonight!), (Mike) Lindell handed Griffin (of CNN) a document that he claimed was his linchpin in proving that the Chinese government had interfered to illegitimately elect President Joe Biden last year.

Griffin showed the document to cybersecurity experts, however, and they all said they had no idea what Lindell believed the document proved.

"What is this?" asked a baffled Griffin.

"That's just one piece of 1.2 billion lines of data from the election, OK?" Lindell replied. "Within that will be timestamps when it happened, there'll be flips in there."

"We sent this to our experts," Griffin replied. "They said that it doesn't show any specific actions of any kind, election-related or not, and it's proof of nothing."

"OK," said a defensive Lindell. "He said that's nothing, huh? Then you didn't hire a cyber expert."

In fact, Griffin said CNN talked with nine top cybersecurity experts, all of whom said Lindell's document proved nothing, and one of whom called Lindell's claims "completely ridiculous."
Or, as we on the left say, "BWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

244TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 5, 2021, 11:46 pm

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

245kiparsky
aug 5, 2021, 11:59 pm

>244 TheToadRevoltof84: Oh gee, I guess there must be something going on with the Gaetz pedophilia trial. You can always tell the Party Bosses are getting nervous about their real live pedo problem when they start yammering about TV shows and random one-off comments by people that nobody ever cared about.

And you can always tell a True Believer when they fall for it.

246Limelite
aug 6, 2021, 12:58 am

>244 TheToadRevoltof84:

Still wrong, Toady.

The Federalist article is the product of a conservative rag, not a report of scholarly study. Therefore it has no credibility as a substantiating source for any argument, be it on pederasts or the Big Lie.

Besides, a scan of headlines and page two news reports in many newspapers, local and national proves that the abundance of sexual offenders in this category head and/or belong to Protestant religious cults. As a study published by one shows.
∗Sex offenders are often religious and many of them attend church. In a study of 3,952 male sex offenders, 93% of these perpetrators described themselves as
"religious" (Abel & Harlow,2001).

Sex offenders maintaining significant involvement with religious institutions have “more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims" (Eshuys
& Smallbone, 2006; Firestone & Moulden, 2009).
It isn't Democrats who have the problem, Toady. It's white "devout Christian" males. The more "devout" they are, the more conservative they are. And we know that's synonymous with the overwhelming numbers of base Trump supporters.

The problem isn't with liberals. The Federalist is just employing a right wing nut tactic, one consistently used by Trump whenever he found himself caught out in reprehensible behavior -- accusations against the (enemy) opponent derived from projection.

Indigestible as it may be to the Masters of Lying Denial on the right, a condition suffered by wing nuts when they encounter facts, there are far more conservative American Christian Protestants in this country than in the other "pedaristic" religious behemoth, the Catholic Church. And they enjoy a competetive edge when it comes to committing under age sex crimes.
One of only a few estimates regarding the frequency of sex abuse at Protestant Christian churches is based on numbers released to the Associated Press by three insurance companies that provide various insurance coverage to Protestant churches. Collectively, these three insurance companies insure approximately 165,500 churches, with most being Protestant churches, in addition to 5,500 other religious-oriented organizations (e.g., schools, camps, etc.) (Seattle-Post Intelligencer, 2007). These insurance figures suggest that approximately 260 claims are made each year involving individuals under 18 being sexually abused by either church clergy, staff, congregation members, or volunteers, resulting in a collective $4 million payout (Seattle-Post Intelligencer, 2007). Although these numbers give some indication of the extent of sex abuse, these estimates almost certainly do not include every instance of abuse, victims 18 or older, nor does it separate churches from faith-based primary/secondary schools. Furthermore, these numbers do not include churches insured by other companies or even those without insurance.

However, what these numbers do suggest is that sex abuse and offenses do, in fact, occur at Protestant Christian churches and with some frequency rivaling the numbers over the past decade found in the Roman Catholic Church (Bishop Accountability, 2011).
AND THAT'S ONLY IN THE CHURCH ENVIRONMENT. Further still, t doesn't begin to address the sex offenses these devout Protestant believers engage in in bathrooms, in malls, in Russian hotels, on private islands.

The epidemic plaguing conservatives -- other than the delta variant of COVID -- is squarely one of denial, especially among evangelical churches, pastors, and members of what they're doing in secret.

You can learn more about conservative Protestant 'dark sin,' and I don't mean money, here. As well about denial's left-hand partner -- hypocrisy.
More than 375 leaders and volunteers in the Southern Baptist church have been charged with some form of sexual misconduct over the past 12 years. Over 200 of these volunteers and leaders pled guilty or were convicted for their crimes. However, the Southern Baptist Convention will not take significant steps to stop abuse in churches, claiming that each church should act independently to tend to this matter. As a result, several pastors and leaders who are registered sex offenders or accused of sexual misconduct are permitted to maintain their position in the church.
And here's the hypocrisy lesson.
However, the Southern Baptist church has taken active steps to stop gay or female pastors from leading in the church. This indicates that the church cares more about excluded female or homosexual pastors from attaining leadership positions than addressing the matter of sexual abuse.
Of course it does. In case you can't acknowledge the truth, let me remind you that the SBC is the most conservative religious organization in the red states, and the largest in terms of membership.

The fact is, conservative evangelicals who can be found by the millions on SBC church membership rolls, are judged by other Christians as worse than Catholics, the religion right wing nuts ascribe as the satanic church of libs, when it comes to sex abuse.
Evangelicals often frown upon transparency and accountability, he (Boz Tchividjian, executive director of Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE), speaking to journalists attending the Religion Newswriters Association conference in Austin, Texas. said, as many Protestants rely on scripture more than religious leaders, compared to Catholics. Abusers condemn gossip in their efforts to keep people from reporting abuse, he said. Victims are also told to protect the reputation of Jesus.
Right wing nut political behavior, morals, and behavior derive from their 'devout'Christianity.' Their actions in re sex abuse and crimes among their coterie are parallel to their actions in re governing when the sign on to the Trump Cult. They lie and pressure other Republicans to deny or downplay the sins and crimes committed by Trump. Got to protect the reputation of their political Jesus.

Look at all those citations. Not one of them from a leftist calling out the obvious nastiness in their opponent. Not one from a liberal 'house organ' like The Federalist Society is a conservative one of the same. Nope. All of it from studies and statistics, and surveys produced by independent insurers or fellow Protestants' observational evaluations.

Read it and weep, just like a liberal.

247prosfilaes
Bewerkt: aug 6, 2021, 2:43 am

>244 TheToadRevoltof84: A subset of children growing up today will likely recall certain aspects of their childhood very differently. The left has, with a startling degree of success, endeavored to reshape our society by embedding their beliefs within the experience of childhood, overshadowing 4th of July parades with Pride parades, implanting LGBT propaganda in children’s shows, and supplanting gingerbread men with the “genderbread person.”

In isolation, any of these specific incidences would be unsettling, to say the least, but by viewing them in the larger context one reaches a conclusion that is just as unconscionable as it is unavoidable. It isn’t just that controversial beliefs are being thrust into childhood experiences, but that the natural curiosity, openness, and naivety that is the inherent disposition of youth is being hijacked to normalize a divergent sexual ethic.


We need to stop showing shows like Bewitched and I Love Lucy, where it is made blatantly clear via pregnancy and children that two people on the show are having sex! And all those horrible Disney movies; obviously "101 Dalmatians" is solely designed to introduce kids to bestiality, by showing with approval the results of animal sex.

70% of the US supports gay marriage. These aren't particularly controversial beliefs anymore.

Oh, and Roy Moore, established child abuser, still managed to get 48.3% of the vote against Doug Jones. 650,000 Republicans in Alabama voted for this man, a man who by his own admission learned his future wife's name when she was 15 and in a dance competition and he was in his 30s, and while denying pederasty, did say he would get permission from a girl's mother before dating her. If the accusations from Republican, Trump-voting, Alabaman woman he assaulted when she was 14 don't matter, let his own words creep you out.

treating them as if they are anything other than well-crafted maneuvers to undermine any sexual ethic that leaves childhood innocence intact is the height of naivety.

Yawn. It ends with with at it assumed to begin with. It can't even begin to make an argument to anyone who disagrees with it.

248TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 6, 2021, 7:48 am

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

249Limelite
aug 6, 2021, 12:30 pm

>248 TheToadRevoltof84:

Well, Toady, having just announced to the world that Southern Baptists and evangelicls are "leftist," hadn't you better turn your attention to disabusing them of their convictions that they're conservative? 'Cause your wasting your efforts on the Reality Based Community. None of the citations you use to assert those "lies" are "true" are credible. Your only support is your ideology. And that p.o.v. only holds up inside your closed right wing nut bubble.

In the Reality Based Community where the overwhelming majority of people live, those statements you believe to be true have LONG AGO been debunked as FALSE.

But intelligent realists don't give a rat's derriere what myths the inhabitants of the Delusion Bubble cling to. Knock yourself out! Go on believing in the Big Lie, go on believing that Democrats are out to get your guns, go on believing that climate change is a leftist conspiracy against right wing 'freedumb,' go on believing that COVID is a hoax. In short, go on blithering. Realists will happily carry on -- without letting stupid kill us.

In short, no one in the Reality Based Community gives a damn that those inside the Delusion Bubble can look at the 'digital billboard' that says. . .
WORLDWIDE DAILY DEATHS from COVID: 9,000-10,000

WORLDWIDE DAILY DEATHS from VACCINATION: 0
. . .and still squawk about COVID being an exaggerated danger and that vaccines make people sterile; or vaccines are a leftist plot by the Biden government to insert tracking chips into pure right wing bodies; or they will make you magnetic; or they will alter your DNA; or give you a positive COVID test; etc., etc. etc., ad nauseum. The rest of us will BWAHAHAHAHA and carry on.

250TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 6, 2021, 12:51 pm

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

251Limelite
aug 6, 2021, 12:56 pm

>250 TheToadRevoltof84:

Toady, reduced to nothing but name calling? The first argumentative refuge of bullying LOSERS, à la DJT.

252TheToadRevoltof84
aug 6, 2021, 1:18 pm

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253kiparsky
aug 6, 2021, 1:35 pm

>250 TheToadRevoltof84: Name-calling is violation of the terms of service. Flagged.

254TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 6, 2021, 2:28 pm

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255kiparsky
aug 6, 2021, 2:40 pm

>254 TheToadRevoltof84: Did you just call me flagged?

No. I noted that I was flagging the post, since it was a violation of the TOS. If I flag a post, I try to make sure the offending poster is aware of what the issue was, otherwise it's hard for them to learn from the feedback.

I don't know what it would mean to call someone "flagged".

256Limelite
aug 6, 2021, 5:11 pm

Toady sounds more and more like a reincarnation of a former LTer who was tombstoned not too long ago. I recognize a phrase of mine being abused in this case, and -- naturally -- receiving the Dreaded Red Flags of Shame.

257TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 6, 2021, 8:27 pm

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258Limelite
aug 6, 2021, 9:41 pm

>257 TheToadRevoltof84:

Only possibly wrong? Now, that's an interesting qualifier. for you to use.

Guess I'll have to repeat myself, people in the Reality Based Community don't give a hoot about what you believe or disbelieve. Unlike those who don't belong to the Reality Based Community, everything I've posted is verified and substantiated from multiple credible sources, not the ravings of disgruntled losers and willing dupes who believe anything that aligns with their prejudices and deny all that makes them face the truth about themselves.

Sad so many give their minds over to a stupid conman just because he hates the same people they do and disparages them out loud when they don't dare express their shared sentiments as bluntly. Sad for so many angry white men to find their personal identities tied to a universally despised criminal failure who fooled them completely with his shining fool's gold promise to "make America great again" but delivered them absolutely nothing but disease and death. So sad.

You know what else is sad? Everyone of those people who were fooled by Trump into believing he was their savior and who lost their identities within the Trump cult could have held onto their integrity just by refusing to allow themselves to be manipulated by a man well known to the Reality Based Community as nothing but an empty suit con artist whose only abilities were lying, cheating, and stealing.

You might find the Debunking thread in this group very interesting. If you're not afraid to look.

259TheToadRevoltof84
aug 6, 2021, 9:50 pm

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260Limelite
Bewerkt: aug 6, 2021, 11:14 pm

>259 TheToadRevoltof84:

That was a test. How do you think you did? As to your further comments. Sad.

261John5918
aug 6, 2021, 11:56 pm

This may be relevant to the conversation on facts or the lack thereof.

Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream (Guardian)

He left in disgrace, yet all signs point to a third presidential run. And his disdain for facts is now an article of Republican faith...

262prosfilaes
aug 7, 2021, 12:16 am

>259 TheToadRevoltof84: Trump wasn't trying to destroy the country

I don't see anyone here saying he was, nor anyone elsewhere. Like many others, his destruction was a combination of refusing to see and not caring about what he saw.

263TheToadRevoltof84
aug 7, 2021, 8:27 am

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264John5918
aug 7, 2021, 10:40 am

>263 TheToadRevoltof84: If we just say it, it's true, because we are wise

Well yes, that's the point. Trump's supporters and a significant section of the Republican party just say things are true when quite clearly they aren't true.

265Limelite
aug 7, 2021, 12:28 pm

>264 John5918:

And that is the definition of mindlessness.

266prosfilaes
aug 7, 2021, 3:20 pm

>263 TheToadRevoltof84: Biden is intentionally destroying the country,

Which is one of the stupidest statements I've read. Read him any way you want, Biden has huge investments in the US. There's no reason he would intentionally destroy the country. Only a cartoon villain president would intentionally destroy the nation.

There's no debate that race relations, wealth disparity and overall mental health started its downward spiral

Why do we have contempt for rightwing facts? https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth... shows over and over that wealth disparity has been increasing since the 1980s, and that the Reagan years were bad for wealth disparity.

267kiparsky
aug 7, 2021, 9:41 pm

I wonder what it means to say that someone "is intentionally destroying the country". Is it, as it sounds, more or less synonymous with "is a person representing the party that I don't vote for", or does it actually mean something?

268TheToadRevoltof84
aug 7, 2021, 10:17 pm

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269Limelite
aug 8, 2021, 1:01 am

>268 TheToadRevoltof84:

Two can play that game. Only, RULES CHANGE: your statements must be truthful.

Trump allowed Solar Winds hack attack on his own government because it was carried out on the orders of his Puppet Master, Vladimir Putin. Hillary Clinton was absolutely correct, sir.

Trump obviously loves North Korea, China, and Russia more than America because he said he admires their leaders and that they said nice things about him. He calls American leaders dumb, sleepy, lying, bad, and worse and betrayed our country to Russia, tried to strongarm Ukraine, knows nothing about American history, and has tried to actually destroy the very country he took an oath to protect.

10 reasons why the Keystone Pipeline was a BAD idea. No. 1 Reason: It would not create jobs because pipeline interests were/are cutting them.

Trump supported the destruction of lives, families, classroom education, and the economy by COVID because Jared Kushner told him blue state liberal cities would be most impacted by deaths; so, he should do nothing. So, he did nothing.

Biden has set the record for increased jobs, higher wages, and higher GDP than Trump ever saw, including record stock market gains. Trump left the Nation having created the worst economic performance ever and the biggest job destruction. Your hysteria about temporary inflation is unfounded, notwithstanding Sen. Scott's (R-FL) insane ravings. FACT: Republican spending in 2000 exceeded 2,000 billion dollars in economic stimulus, mostly to business. Democratic spending in 2021 is just over 1,000 billion dollars, put has put people back on their feet and the economy is up and running. Across the board, the cost of living has risen 0.9%, with the cost of used cars and trucks being the uppermost cause. And it is a temporary phenomenon in part due to job loss, supply pipeline shrinkage, shortage of computer chips, and a huge jump in demand with concomitant bottlenecks in supply since the Biden economy is surging.

Mom & Pop landlords are eligible for corresponding relief benefits to what their tenants are receiving under the provisions of the same statute. Of course, they have to apply and qualify, just like their tenant have. Biden just extended it until December because of the impact of the delta variant of COVID. A tsunami of homelessness is counterproductive to protecting people during a pandemic. State governors haven't released the money or processed requests in a timely fashion depending on 1) their politics (red state resistance); or 2) reduced numbers of government employees creating -- yes -- bottlenecks in administration. Thanks, Trump, for destroying government as well as the economy.

Your flu/plague comment exceeds ridiculousness, and you probably feel humiliated for making such a patently false assertion that the Reality Based Community and a majority of Republicans know is a lie. You mean Missouri has just asked for additional FEMA ambulance help because COVID is a hoax the state can't cope with? That's crazy stupid thinking!

Just because Biden isn't running a "build a wall" scam like Trump did doesn't mean his Administration is ignoring immigration. Immigration frankly isn't the problem racist bigots are trying to sell to the ignorant whites. Quite the contrary! The nation is in desperate need for labor they provide because white men won't deign to do the work that feeds the people of America, or keep the hospitality industry -- especially the small businesses -- cooking. (Pun intended.) Who does the landscaping in your state? Who takes care of the home-bound, the nursing home residents, and the hospital, government, and university physical plants where you live? It ain't primarily white, native born males.

Trump WAS and IS both horrific and racist, at minimum. Nobody in the Reality Based Community cares what the right wing nuts say they "believe" on the subject of racism. Right wing nuts have proven their bigotry and hatred by their crimes against minorities, their racist militias, and their shouted slurs.

Trump IS a Loser.
Trump WAS the Worst President Ever.
Trump has the blood of more than 600,000 Americans on his hands.
Trump instigated a failed coup and still is working in the dark to destroy America and its democracy.
Trump IS, WAS, and ALWAYS WILL BE an utter FAILURE at whatever he tries in life (except one), be it hotelier, trade-marker, educator, negotiator; executive; decision maker; politician. His sole success in life is being a conman. Whose fault is that? His gullible cultists' maybe?

270TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 8, 2021, 8:48 am

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271TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 8, 2021, 8:41 am

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272Limelite
Bewerkt: aug 8, 2021, 3:24 pm

>270 TheToadRevoltof84:

Nobody is going to argue with your magical thinking. You filter out facts in order to allow propaganda in to form your beliefs. You will always be subjected to the BWAHAHAHAs from liberals because of your attitude to what constitutes debate.

But here's just one topic. How taxable wealth has been, or has not been, accrued by Biden vs. Trump.

Anyone can know how Biden's wealth was accrued, after all his tax returns have been made public. You don't even have to go to a "liberal" media outlet to get informed; here's a rich white man's one that lays it all out for the ideologically blinded right wing nuts. It wasn't from rents. His real estate wealth comes from personal assets' value, not from income they generate. Because they don't generate income.

Totally the opposite of Trump and his racist rental habits carried on from his father's same. Heck, Trump's motto when he started out was, "No Vacancies" for Blacks. You know that.

You also know that Trump is in serious legal trouble because of tax fraud; you know that he's still desperately trying to hide his cheating from Congress in court again. Where he'll lose again. You also know that Trump's fraud extends to double book keeping; one set for the tax man, another set for Trump. This aspect of his life is not a liberal conspiracy to have bad things to say about him. This aspect of his life was exposed and continues to be exposed, first by his once faithful employees (before he screwed them); by his own family members by marriage and blood; by documents subpoenaed by prosecutors; by sworn testimony from eye witnesses; and by institutional records of Trump accounts from such places as Deutsche Bank. You know that, too, even though Trump has hidden his tax returns from you. But racist Trump cultists are all right with that because Orange Jesus can do no wrong in their eyes.

Why do Trump's cultists believe differently from how the Reality Based Community thinks? They choose to believe anti-factually because they can't handle the truth. The world has changed. It's no longer only the white man's oyster. That fact scares them to death. Could it be that their fear stems from understanding that minorities can now treat them the the way treated minorities and women for hundreds of years? All the evidence of Trump's behavior and speech indicates that that is the root of his crippling insecurity.

If it weren't for the childish belief in fairy stories that Trump and his white cultist supporters cling to within their low-information bubble, they'd have no other mental binky to assuage their fears. I am not making that statement up. Here is an addendum updating a 2018 study.
. . .partisans will think of themselves as far more politically knowledgeable than an out-partisan, even when that person is extremely politically knowledgeable. (Anson, 2018(Anson, , p. 1173 This was more the case among Republicans than Democrats, the former using partisan cues to judge peers' political knowledge to a greater extent confirming, Anson noted, the findings of an emerging literature on "asymmetric polarization" (Anson, 2018). To put it simply, the bulk of those identifying themselves as partisan Republicans, which by 2020 are effectively almost all supporters of Trump, are not only unaware of their being politically misinformed, but dismiss efforts to bring out the actual facts as politically motivated.
From: Ian G. Anson, Partisanship, Political Knowledge, and the Dunning‐Kruger Effect, March 2018, Political Psychology 39

273prosfilaes
aug 8, 2021, 4:12 pm

>270 TheToadRevoltof84: The record setting job growth is so ignorant, you know the reason why that is based on farce growth from your forced pandemic.

So the economy is the responsibility of Biden except when it's good, then it's just the pandemic. Your statements are wearing their self-serving nature on their sleeve.

274TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 9, 2021, 8:10 am

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275TheToadRevoltof84
aug 9, 2021, 8:13 am

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276Limelite
aug 9, 2021, 12:44 pm

>274 TheToadRevoltof84:

Deny. Deny. Deny. Nevertheless, the shoe, glove, hat, coat, and pants fit.
To put it simply, the bulk of those identifying themselves as partisan Republicans, which by 2020 are effectively almost all supporters of Trump, are not only unaware of their being politically misinformed, but dismiss efforts to bring out the actual facts as politically motivated.

277TheToadRevoltof84
aug 9, 2021, 1:27 pm

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278prosfilaes
aug 9, 2021, 2:13 pm

>275 TheToadRevoltof84: That's not even a response to what I said. If there's a sudden influx of money into the economy from new jobs, there's likely to be inflation. The economy is all linked; you can't have the President strongly responsible for inflation and not responsible for job growth.

279TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 9, 2021, 2:59 pm

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280prosfilaes
aug 9, 2021, 3:53 pm

>279 TheToadRevoltof84: I'm not surprised you don't believe that Trump broke any laws, since you don't understand that Congress sets the money to dole out and tells the President to do so.

In any case, "The job growth is due to states run by Governors that choose to allow people to start working" is not a fact. The actual data is, as almost always is the case in economics, far more equivocal.

The latest date available is for June 2021. USA Today says these states ended unemployment extensions early, on the given dates by the end of June. Note that most of them are late enough to make it questionable they had a major effect. Bureau of Labor Statistics data says six states lost jobs: Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Maryland, New Hampshire and Minnesota. Five out of the six are on the list of states that ended unemployment early. States that added the most jobs percentage-wise are Arizona, Nevada, Florida, North Carolina and Idaho, with only Florida and Idaho on the list. In terms of absolute numbers, Florida, California, Texas, North Carolina and Arizona, with only Florida and Texas ending unemployment early. (Note that there's 21 states in that list, so 42% of the states have done this.)

It's factually wrong to say that the job growth is due to states run by Governors that ended unemployment early, on a national level, it's driven by those five states I mentioned last, three out of the five not having ended unemployment before the end of June. The top five in an absolute sense and the top five in a percentage sense are both 40% early enders, which is exactly what we'd expect if there was no connection.

Alaska June 12
Missouri June 12
Mississippi June 12
Iowa June 12
Alabama June 19
Idaho June 19
Nebraska June 19
New Hampshire June 19
North Dakota June 19
West Virginia June 19
Wyoming June 19
Arkansas June 26
Florida June 26
Georgia June 26
Montana June 26
Ohio June 26
Oklahoma June 26
South Carolina June 26
South Dakota June 26
Texas June 26
Utah June 26

281TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 9, 2021, 4:09 pm

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282Limelite
aug 9, 2021, 4:14 pm

Job Growth So Strong, Republicans Literally Speechless

Republicans thought they'd win on the economy, tying Biden's economic plan and badmouthing his policies. Typical. Republicans always call LOSING winning.

Friday morning. . .the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy created 943,000 new jobs in July and the unemployment rate dropped to its lowest point since the start of the pandemic. Harvard's Jason Furman, an economist who isn't prone to exaggeration, said, "I have yet to find a blemish in this jobs report. I've never before seen such a wonderful set of economic data."


As of June, 2021. The largest DROP in unemployment over a period of one year was in these states: Massachusetts (-9.9 percentage points).
Michigan (-9.1 percentage points)
and New Jersey (-9.0 points)

All BLUE states. The biggest drops in unemployment have come in the last 6 months as compared to when Trump was in office. The reasons? U.S. jobs gain largest in 10 months; employers raise wages, sweeten perks. US unemployment figures had NOTHING to do with redneck governors at all.

Furthermore. . .
The acceleration in hiring suggested the economy ended the second quarter with strong momentum, following a reopening made possible by vaccinations against COVID-19.
(SNIP)
Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% last month, led by low-wage industries, after gaining 0.4% in May. That raised the year-on-year increase in wages to 3.6% from 1.9% in May.

4.1% of job postings advertised hiring incentives through the seven days ending June 18, more than double the 1.8% share in the week ending July 1, 2020.

Some restaurant jobs are paying as much as $27 per hour plus tips. . .The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, but some states have higher minimum wages.
Can't attribute that to right wing nut governors, either. Turns out the American worker won't work for peanuts because Democrats, even without legislating it yet, told them they were worth at least $15.00 an hour.

Wait, it gets better; more salt in the Republicans' economic wounds.
With employment not expected to return to its pre-pandemic level until sometime in 2022, rising wages are unlikely to worry Federal Reserve officials even as inflation is heating up because of supply constraints. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly said he expects high inflation will be transitory.
It's the Fed's job to balance employment and inflation. Look for more stable ratios establishing themselves at the end of this year, and will be given time to further stabilize in '22 (if we can get the population vaccinated), which indicates interest rates will remain historically low until '23. In the meantime, look for a spike in retirements and early retirements because of the soaring stock market and housing prices during the next quarter. Cooling in these two areas will probably begin in the winter when COVID and FLU will undoubtedly be more prevalent and weather conditions less conducive to shopping and vacationing.

Sensible and humane economic policies are reversing much of the damage done to the economy by Trump's "let them all die" do nothing pandemic response and tariffs that caused wholesale and retail chaos during his tenure. Look what's happened, even Republicans have bought into the Biden Infrastructure bill, with no hope of reelection being the alternative. It's popularity with the people has forced them to jump into the Pool of Hypocrisy where they're struggling to stay afloat. Ain't that a shame, Moscow Mitch?

283TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 9, 2021, 4:41 pm

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284prosfilaes
aug 9, 2021, 5:29 pm

>283 TheToadRevoltof84: Walmart is giving warehouse employees bonuses and pay raises to discourage exits and vacations.

Oh my God, poor Walmart, they're going to go out of business! We want to save the middle class, but not at the cost of raising prices at Walmart!

Despite rising inflation, the Federal Open Market Committee — which oversees the execution of monetary policy in the United States — has so far declined to amend its near-zero interest rate target or scale back its $120 billion in monthly asset purchases.

The Federal Open Market Committee is run by 12 people, including the seven (six, with one vacancy) members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Of the permanent board, four were appointed by Trump and two by Obama. But it's all Biden's fault!!!!

Bottom line, wage increases and job loss is not going to meet the inflation. This is the same way Obama tortured the average American.

I thought he was a Satan-worshipper born on Mars and tortured average Americans in his lair on the moon. Come on, if you're going to make claims nobody believes, go big or go home.

285prosfilaes
Bewerkt: aug 9, 2021, 5:35 pm

>281 TheToadRevoltof84: I.e. facts are hard, so let's ignore them and make wild claims. Above you blamed "the Federal Open Market Committee" for inflation, which Biden has no control over; which is it, the one with some facts to back it up, or the one that makes you feel good?

I have a nurse friend who says his ICU is full with virtually all beds filled with COVID-19 patients. It's bizarre how you deny something you could just talk to average everyday people about to prove.

286TheToadRevoltof84
aug 9, 2021, 5:56 pm

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287prosfilaes
aug 9, 2021, 9:18 pm

>286 TheToadRevoltof84: You're right. There's no such thing as deer hunting. I could try talking to alleged deer hunters, but why? The mainstream media and the government says there's deer hunters, but they're just lying because they hate the US and want to portray us all as Bambi killers. Nobody could kill Bambi and anyone who claims that people do is lying.

Also, as usual, Leftists cling to the only tedious point they can quibble with rather than looking at the big picture.

Facts don't care about your feelings, and reality is hard. You've looked at the big picture, and somehow all you can see is Biden, despite the fact that, like is proper in the US system, he is but a small cog in a huge system bustling with freedom and independence at all levels. You see a kindergarten version of reality, not reality itself.

Why should I believe you when you say that Biden is not helping the economy? You have no idea what impact Biden is having on the economy. You can't separate out the Federal Open Market Committee from Congress from the states from Biden, and you won't even try.

288Limelite
Bewerkt: aug 9, 2021, 10:27 pm

>283 TheToadRevoltof84:

It takes a real deluded Trumpty-Dumbpty or Rand* Paul/Ayn Rand fan to call the Bureau of Labor Statistics data report for July Orwellian, especially when using earlier data for May-June to make such an argument. What's propaganda in July is factual in May-June? Once again, a reminder seems appropriate. They're the department that attributes the causes for the unemployment figures they report. Their conclusions are objective. COVID vaccination rates and rising wages, especially for the bottom rung earners, and generous perks for the higher rung earners are what the BLS determined is behind the unexpectedly good news. Thank you, President Biden for reversing America's disastrous course under Trump with you sane science-based policies.

*His real name is Randall, but he wants to be Ayn Rand.

Things change. In this case, Biden's policy regarding the pandemic is but one of two underlying causes of the good change in the economic report. The good change due to both of the reported factors is especially true for women workers. They filled nearly 50% of the jobs in July, long before kids returned to school, or rent support ended. Obviously, they felt it was safe to do so and worth it, too. However, the delta variant epidemic due to the unvaccinated has been making indoor work places increasingly dangerous for workers. I expect this will impact next month's report.

And thanks to the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party for putting a basic living wage mentality rather than a sub-basic minimum wage mentality into the American workers' consciences. Holding out for pay that mirrors the worthiness of their labor has spurred much higher wages, especially for food service workers.

Every American should also feel the optimism that the Democratic Party's pending two-part infrastructure legislation holds for continued healthy economic news over the long run.

Meanwhile, the Leader of La-La Land and his lickspittle acolytes bash mask and vaccine mandates, the possibility of the latter is growing in popularity among Americans. By September 15, all active military will have to be vaccinated. The nation's largest nursing organization advocates mandated vaccination for all health care workers, including nursing home and home healthcare workers. Some universities will only allow vaccinated students to enroll. At a minimum, increasing numbers of businesses are requiring masks for all and weekly screening for their unvaccinated employees. Even the NFL got in on the movement to require vaccines, not by rewarding the holdouts, but by punishing the teams with forfeiture if games are cancelled because of COVID infections. That implies pay will be taken out of players pockets, especially if their contracts have performance and post-season bonuses, and out of team owners' pockets in stadium losses.

Signs of sane public health measures are sweeping the country. Perhaps the tremendous jump in vaccinations in hard hit red states also signals rejection of "only the flu" fictions and the flood of disinformation they were willing to listen to when they thought Trump was a winner. But having spent the last six month with a real winner in the WH directing the country's economic policy, pandemic response, and providing emergency aid to those most in need, and who isn't a bullying empty suit, has given them a change or heart. And mind.

289TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 9, 2021, 11:18 pm

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290prosfilaes
aug 10, 2021, 3:23 am

>289 TheToadRevoltof84: Biden is running the country via executive orders, and most of them are harmful.

How many executive orders? Have you read them? At least the titles? It took me five seconds to find how many executive orders he's issued, but I don't think you looked at them before issuing that statement, or that you even really know what an executive order is.

And you can say that "most of them are harmful" as many times as you want, but why would you think that we would find your judgement informative, I don't know.

How you cannot parse this is beyond me

Wow, people who disagree with you disagree with you and don't accept you throwing up your hands and saying Biden just is bad and is responsible for everything bad.

you're behaving like terrorists.

So what you're saying is that the problem with Al-Qaeda is that they overthought it, carefully examining which part of the US was responsible for what, instead of just going America is the great Satan? And why do I think you're going to sputter at this, instead of acting like it's your responsibility to communicate clearly? You mention 1984; I would feel that's a very Big Brotherish statement, a statement to say that we're bad people that doesn't actually state why, that can't invoke any discussion or thought, just doubleplusungood feelings against us.

291TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 10, 2021, 8:56 am

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292TheToadRevoltof84
aug 10, 2021, 10:50 am

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293Limelite
aug 10, 2021, 10:58 am

Right Wing Nuts Are So Cute, Their Own Monsters Do Eat Them!

Credible Investigation into Voting Machine Tampering in Colorado

294aspirit
Bewerkt: aug 10, 2021, 1:00 pm

Did someone say "executive orders"? I'm a believer that American citizens should know what POTUS officially orders, but EOs rarely appear in news media. How many people know about more than two of Trump's 219 EOs? (I doubt even he knows what his orders said. He would have had to listen to another person for more than a few minutes each time.)

President Biden has to undo massive damage to the nation from the incredibly unqualified monstrosity of an administration that come before him, at the same time his administration is dealing with an unstable Congress and stacked Supreme Court, all within a pandemic and the gobal climate crisis while certain countries have been revving up their military actions. EOs are one of the long established tools for running the country, and it shouldn't be a surprise President Biden has been busy from the start. His orders to date are below.

EO 14037:
Strengthening American Leadership in Clean Cars and Trucks

EO 14036:
Promoting Competition in the American Economy
See: EO 13725, April 15, 2016

EO 14035:
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce
See: EO 13548, July 26, 2010; EO 13583, August 18, 2011; EO 13985, January 20, 2021; EO 13988, January 20, 2021; EO 14020, March 8, 2021

EO 14034:
Protecting Americans' Sensitive Data From Foreign Adversaries
See: EO 13873, May 15, 2019
Revokes: EO 13942, August 6, 2020; EO 13943, August 6, 2020; EO 13971, January 5, 2021

EO 14033:
Blocking Property and Suspending Entry Into the United States of Certain Persons Contributing to the Destabilizing Situation in the Western Balkans
See: EO 13219, June 26, 2001; EO 13304, May 28, 2003

EO 14032:
Addressing the Threat From Securities Investments That Finance Certain Companies of the People's Republic of China
Supersedes in part: EO 13959, November 12, 2020
Revokes: EO 13974, January 13, 2021

EO 14031:
Advancing Equity, Justice, and Opportunity for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders
See: EO 13985, January 20, 2021
Supersedes: EO 13125, June 7, 1999; EO 13339, May 13, 2004; EO 13515, October 14, 2009; EO 13872, May 13, 2019

EO 14030:
Climate-Related Financial Risk
See: EO 13690, January 30, 2015; EO 13707, September 15, 2015; EO 13807, August 15, 2017; EO 13985, January 20, 2021; EO 14008, January 27, 2021

EO 14029:
Revocation of Certain Presidential Actions and Technical Amendment
Revokes: EO 13925, May 28, 2020; EO 13933, June 26, 2020; EO 13934, July 3, 2020; EO 13964, December 10, 2020; EO 13978, January 18, 2021; EO 13980, January 18, 2021
See: EO 14003, January 22, 2021; EO 13957, October 21, 2020

EO 14028:
Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity

EO 14027:
Establishment of the Climate Change Support Office
See: EO 14008, January 27, 2021

EO 14026:
Increasing the Minimum Wage for Federal Contractors
Revokes: EO 13838, May 25, 2018; Supersedes: EO 13658, February 12, 2014

EO 14025:
Worker Organizing and Empowerment
Revokes: EO 13845, July 19, 2018; EO 13931, June 26, 2020

EO 14024:
Blocking Property With Respect To Specified Harmful Foreign Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation

EO 14023:
Establishment of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States

EO 14022:
Termination of Emergency With Respect to the International Criminal Court
Revokes: EO 13928, June 11, 2020

EO 14021:
Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free From Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity

EO 14020:
Establishment of the White House Gender Policy Council
See: EO 12250, November 2, 1980; EO 13995, January 21, 2021

EO 14019:
Promoting Access to Voting
Partially supersedes: EO 12926, September 12, 1994

EO 14018:
Revocation of Certain Presidential Actions
Revokes: EO 13772, February 3, 2017; EO 13828, April 10, 2018; Memorandum of January 29, 2020; EO 13924, May 19, 2020; Memorandum of September 2, 2020; EO 13967, December 18, 2020; EO 13979, January 18, 2021

EO 14017:
America's Supply Chains
See: EO 13806, July 21, 2017; EO 13953, September 30, 2020; EO 14001, January 21, 2021

EO 14016:
Revocation of Executive Order 13801
Revokes: EO 13801, June 15, 2017

EO 14015:
Establishment of the White House Office of Faith- Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Amends: EO 13198, January 29, 2001; EO 13279, December 12, 2002; EO 13280, December 12, 2002, EO 13342, June 1, 2004; EO 13397, March 7, 2006; Revokes: EO 13831, May 3, 2018

EO 14014:
Blocking Property With Respect to the Situation in Burma
See: EO 13742, October 7, 2016

EO 14013:
Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs To Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration
Revokes: EO 13815, October 24, 2017; EO 13888, September 26, 2019

EO 14012:
Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans

EO 14011:
Establishment of Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families
Revokes: EO 13841, June 20, 2018

EO 14010:
Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework To Address the Causes of Migration, To Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America, and To Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border
Revokes: EO 13767, January 25, 2017

EO 14009:
Strengthening Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act
Revokes: EO 13765, January 20, 2017; EO 13813, October 12, 2017

EO 14008:
Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad
See: EO 14005 of January 25, 2021; Amends: EO 12898, February 11, 1994

EO 14007:
President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
See: EO 12968, August 2, 1995; Revokes: EO 13895, October 22, 2019

EO 14006:
Reforming Our Incarceration System To Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities

EO 14005:
Ensuring the Future Is Made in All of America by All of America's Workers
See: EO 12866, September 30, 1993; Revokes: EO 13788, April 18, 2017; EO 13975, January 14, 2021; Partially revokes: EO 13858, January 31, 2019; Supersedes: EO 10582, December 17, 1954; EO 13881, July 15, 2019

EO 14004:
Enabling All Qualified Americans To Serve Their Country in Uniform

EO 14003:
Protecting the Federal Workforce
Revokes: EO 13957 of October 21, 2020; EO EO 13836, May 25, 2018; EO 13837, May 25, 2018; EO 13839, May 25, 2018

EO 14002:
Economic Relief Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic

EO 14001:
A Sustainable Public Health Supply Chain
See: EO 13910, March 23, 2020

EO 14000:
Supporting the Reopening and Continuing Operation of Schools and Early Childhood Education Providers

EO 13999:
Protecting Worker Health and Safety

EO 13998:
Promoting COVID-19 Safety in Domestic and International Travel

EO 13997:
Improving and Expanding Access to Care and Treatments for COVID-19

EO 13996:
Establishing the COVID-19 Pandemic Testing Board and Ensuring a Sustainable Public Health Workforce for COVID-19 and Other Biological Threats

EO 13995:
Ensuring an Equitable Pandemic Response and Recovery

EO 13994:
Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High-Consequence Public Health Threats

EO 13993:
Revision of Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities

EO 13992:
Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Federal Regulation
Revokes: EO 13771, January 30, 2017; EO 13777, February 24, 2017; EO 13875, June 14, 2019; EO 13891, October 9, 2019; EO 13892, October 9, 2019; EO 13893, October 10, 2019

EO 13991:
Protecting the Federal Workforce and Requiring Mask-Wearing

EO 13990:
Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science To Tackle the Climate Crisis
Revokes: EO 13766, January 24, 2017; EO 13778, February 28, 2017; EO 13783, March 28, 2017; EO 13792, April 26, 2017; EO 13795, April 28, 2017; EO 13807, August 15, 2017; EO 13868 of April 10, 2019; EO 13927, June 4, 2020; Revokes in part: EO 13834, May 17, 2018; Suspends: EO 13920, May 1, 2020

EO 13989:
Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel

EO 13988:
Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation

EO 13987:
Organizing and Mobilizing the United States Government To Provide a Unified and Effective Response To Combat COVID-19 and To Provide United States Leadership on Global Health and Security

EO 13986:
Ensuring a Lawful and Accurate Enumeration and Apportionment Pursuant to the Decennial Census

EO 13985:
Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government

Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders/joe-bide...
Any cut and paste errors are unintentional.

It some of these orders are scaring right-wingers, it might be worthwhile to take a hard look at why (as in the actual cause of their fear). Because this list looks centrist so far.

295John5918
aug 10, 2021, 11:57 am

>294 aspirit:

And it certainly doesn't look as if they "are intentionally designed to weaken the country" (cf >291 TheToadRevoltof84:). Quite the opposite.

296Limelite
Bewerkt: aug 10, 2021, 12:37 pm

Could the Passage of the $2+ Trillion Infrastructure Bill Signal Sanity on the Rise Among Republicans?

Faint hope that the passage of Biden's infrastructure bill in a 69-30 super majority vote indicates McConnell's bid to retake control of his caucus. It would be a good time to do so, since only the wing nuttiest of the the right wing nuts in the senate voted no. The vote certainly marked the clearest delineation yet between Senate Trumpist ideologues and non-Trumpists who actually know how to make America great again.

With the camps demarcated, McConnell is able to court his pro-progress caucus and use them to help him pick off weak-chinned Trumpty-Dumbpties who are worth saving (if there are any) while simultaneously organizing and informing the Republican Senate Committee to support and fund candidates he blesses to primary the lost cultist minority in the next election.

If he doesn't, then he's no politician he's just the Grim Reaper who killed his own legacy instead of eating Trump's own to save his Party.

297TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 10, 2021, 2:16 pm

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

298prosfilaes
Bewerkt: aug 10, 2021, 7:18 pm

>291 TheToadRevoltof84: Almost all of the executive orders are bad, because they all give the government more power and are intentionally designed to weaken the country.

You fail to communicate and then you blame us. Advice for a communicator; if your audience rolls their eyes at a claim, have previously explained why they think it's ludicrous, try and avoid repeating it. In this case, you've had it explained that a US president intentionally trying to weaken the country is insane and a sign of unwillingness to deal with the complexity of reality, but you repeat it, because you don't care to communicate.

they are intentionally changing definitions, quite literally in front of our eyes.

And I'm sure you think that's awesome, because definitions never change and dictionaries never have to adapt to modern usage. ("Awesome" of course, meaning awful, as it always has and always will.)

Now, the definition has been updated to claim the word is "offensive." In fact, Webster's Dictionary claims the phrase is "widely" believed to be considered offensive, despite the fact that it was not listed as offensive until after Barrett used it.

Does the author understand English? "widely" is a limiter on the word offensive here; it's not (universally) "offensive", it's "widely offensive".

Hirono's statement — that "sexual orientation is a key part of a person's identity" and, therefore, is not a choice — is not backed by science.

In fact, there is no scientific evidence proving that genetic code concretely determines the people with whom someone engages in sex.


This fails so hard at the logical level before we really bring any facts in. "X is a key part of a person's identity and therefore is not a choice" is absurd; the first part clearly does not imply the second part. Why did the author not understand this and continue on with "is not backed by science"? I question whether that's actually a good quote from Hirono and what it means to say "is not backed by science" on such a statement?

Then the author says "in fact", and changes the rules! Now instead of science backing it, whether or not it's true or all the science has supported the claim, they're talking about proof! Now they're pulling in "genetic code concretely determines" as if all non-choices are concretely determined by genetic code. Schizophrenia--not a choice! Schizophrenia--if one twin has it, the other twin has 50% chance to show symptoms, so it's not concretely determined by "genetic code". Then "the people with whom someone engages in sex", as if that's the same as "sexual orientation".

>292 TheToadRevoltof84: Biden, I should note, is a general name for the Democrats

No. Biden is a metonym for the Democrats. Metonyms are rhetorical devices and definitely confusing in this discussion; are we talking the President or the Democratic Party?

as Joe himself has said; "I am the Democrat Party!"

That's false. That's a quibble; it's "I am the Democratic Party". But if you cared about all potentially relevant information, you might give the entire quote. "I’m the Democratic Party; I am President. So is the Speaker of the House and so is the –- the Majority Leader. We are not the defunding the police." Huh; so Biden didn't mean that I, Joe Biden, is the Democratic Party, and was in fact joining himself with other major Democrats in opposition to a more extreme branch of the party.

But, isn't it also one of my points, you find a quibble and you overlook all potentially relevant information.

It's one of your claims. You make false claims, like that the "The job growth is due to states run by Governors that choose to allow people to start working", and then whine when we disprove them. How can you know that a bigger claim is true if you don't know that the smaller claims are true? You can't build a solid foundation on shifting sand; know the facts and you'll be much better armed to reach correct conclusions.

https://larrysanger.org/2021/06/wikipedia-is-more-one-sided-than-ever/

The Biden Laptop: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/here-s-what-happened-when-nbc-new... . Hey, it's like journalists don't just repeat what you feed them, but would like to verify what they're reporting.
Also, not everything can be broken down into Progressive and Conservative, especially not globally, and especially if you're using Conservative as another name for the US Republican Party. He wants Wikipedia to repeat Republican (a minority party in one of many English speaking countries) talking points as if they're one side of two, when there's a lot more facets out there.

299prosfilaes
Bewerkt: aug 10, 2021, 7:26 pm

>297 TheToadRevoltof84: This is a horrible spiral the US government has been on for decades,

Fuck. This. Shit. I'm going to go straight to my pissed-off feelings here. You want to say "for decades" so you don't have to face any facts. Give me a year, give me an event. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, maybe? Brown v. Board of Education (1954)? Lawrence v. Texas (2003)? Yes, you're going to whine, because you don't want to have to put a year on it, discuss how the laws screwed over racial and sexual minorities and women. You don't like how there is no Golden Age in reality you can wave your hands at and say was all good. You don't want to have to deal with nasty, complex facts.

the average individual.

The average white straight American-born male, you mean. Cf. above.

All in the name of, we know better.

Cf. Lawrence v. Texas (2003). Texas has more people than Venezuela and all but 50 nations; doesn't their crushing of freedoms matter?

However, in his first seven days in office, President Biden signed more executive orders than President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, and President Barack Obama averaged per year.

See, when I write lists like that, I try and be honest. I'd point out that President Trump averaged more per year than Biden signed in his first seven days, and hence more than those presidents. Since it's no longer his first seven days in office, I'd point out that Biden has signed only 11 more, making it likely that he would reach W's first year (54) and Trump's first year (55), but quite possibly not Trump's 2020 (69). (I might not toss in "almost certainly not Trump's last year (1/20/2020-1/20/2021) (82)" if I were a Trump supporter, maybe even leave out Trump's 2020 performance, leave out that Trump's 69 in 2020 is the 21st century record for most EOs in a year; but if you're going to be honest, the last president has to be included on lists like that, especially if it hurts your case.)

As for the EOs themselves, okay? "Extends deferrals of deportation and work authorizations for Liberians with a haven in the United States until June 30, 2022" certainly sounds like it's enhancing freedom and reducing barriers for a certain set of people.

300TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 10, 2021, 11:15 pm

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

301prosfilaes
aug 11, 2021, 3:15 am

>300 TheToadRevoltof84: You again assume your "facts" are facts

I'm happy to back up my facts. What fact do you disagree with?

they knew about Hunter you can't be that big of a fucking twit.

That's abuse, not an argument.

You're also a complete fucking moron if you think getting closer to China's way of governing is s positive.

Again, that's abuse, not an argument. Again, you're going all Big Brother; Eastasia is doubleplusungood, and nothing more sophisticated needs to be said. In reality, Republicans love Chinese-style governance; when there's a protest, the government should go all law and order and shut it down. The government should do whatever it wants to to deal with those nasty Muslims and other religious minorities. To quote Trump, “He {Xi, China's leader} is now president for life, president for life. And he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday”. I guess the Chinese did just sentence two men to death for selling adulterated milk that killed children, and Republicans surely aren't a fan of holding business people responsible for the acts of their companies.

Put another way, you're a complete fucking moron if you think that good and bad in governance can be defined by how "close" it is to China, instead of actually thinking about what's good and bad in governance and how certain examples both in and out of the US, both present and past, may reflect that.

302prosfilaes
aug 11, 2021, 3:54 am

>300 TheToadRevoltof84: As a Democrat that has tried to keep every single group down with your bigotry of low expectations,

Democrats elect black US president with JD from Harvard, knows his shit. Republicans tear him down, call him a product of affirmative action, demand his birth certificate, demand his college records. Then Republicans elect white US president with bachelor's degree born with golden spoon in his mouth, who made false claims about previous president and preemptively threatens the schools he went to if they release his records. Naturally, the problem is we're holding black people to too low expectations.

303TheToadRevoltof84
Bewerkt: aug 11, 2021, 7:27 am

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

304TheToadRevoltof84
aug 11, 2021, 6:58 am

Dit lid is geschorst van de site.

305Limelite
aug 11, 2021, 12:34 pm

Back to the Subject: REPUBLICANS Eating Their Own

Steve Bannon took a bite out of Mike "Pillow Guy" Lindell's so-called 'cyber-symposium' when he declared in his own broadcast that Lindell, whose day job is now promoting stolen election conspiracies instead of good night's sleep, "didn't bring the receipts" to his followers.

In other words, Lindell did an infomercial without delivering the goods in the form of evidence for any of his wild claims. Says Bannon,
"People have said, 'Hey, Mike's been out there for a long time doing this and it's time now to get to the details.'"
(SNIP)
"You've (Lindell) laid a theory of the case out here that's very powerful, but in laying that case out, you've got to bring the receipts," he added.
Sounds to me like Lindell, in his role as Giuliani's replacement in the role of the King's Fool, is overstaying his entertainment value among the professional fraudsters and scammers (Bannon and the much subdued Rger Stone) who served as the King's Counselors and put Trump in power. Mr. Fluff My Pillow better watch his back; winter is coming.

306proximity1
feb 14, 2022, 12:49 pm





(City Journal, New York)
eye on the news |

Authoritarian Science and the Case of Hydroxychloroquine | "The approach to medical information increasingly taken by authorities and the media is damaging to public health and scientific inquiry." | Connor Harris | February 11, 2022


... "Two doctors in Imperial County, though—George Fareed and Brian Tyson, who run the All Valley Urgent Care network of medical centers—claim to have done far better with their Covid-19 patients. In fact, they claim near-perfect success: in a book that they published last January, they claim to have seen more than 7,000 patients and had only three deaths, all among patients who began treatment in later disease stages. A statistical analysis of part of their results by the statistician Mathew Crawford, included in their book, counts only seven hospitalizations and three deaths among 4,376 patients seen up through March 13, 2021—a reduction in hospitalization risk of well over 90 percent from the county average, even after (admittedly imperfect) statistical adjustments for differences in age between Fareed and Tyson’s patients and the general population.

"According to prevailing medical views, Fareed and Tyson’s claimed results should be impossible. The doctors’ first protocol was based around hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a repurposed anti-malarial drug, with other drugs such as ivermectin as more recent additions. Received opinion on the drugs is that ivermectin is at best unproven in treating Covid-19 (the Food and Drug Administration maintains an official webpage warning against using it as a treatment for the virus), and that HCQ has been actively disproved: early optimism from laboratory experiments and small clinical studies did not hold up in larger, more rigorous trials.

"Such opinions have influenced not just news coverage but also the moderation policies of social media platforms, which have imposed ever-stricter rules against “misinformation” (meaning, in practice, contradicting American public health authorities). After Fareed and Tyson spoke by invitation at a meeting of the Imperial County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Times ran an article noting that the Imperial County Medical Society “had urged supervisors to ‘not contribute to the dissemination of false or misleading information by legitimizing unproven treatments.’” The paper also quoted an executive at an Imperial County hospital, saying, “We need to stick with what we know is approved by the FDA for COVID-19 treatments. . . . Misinformation itself ought to be stopped.” In December, Twitter also suspended Tyson’s account for breaking its policies against Covid misinformation. ...

307proximity1
Bewerkt: feb 28, 2022, 12:20 pm



(New York Post) Opinion | How our weak elites emboldened Putin | By Brendan O'Neill
February 26, 2022 | 12:19pm



"... "As Russian troops pile into Ukraine, and Russian bombs fall on Ukrainian cities, what are the security services in the UK focusing on? White privilege. This is not a joke.

"As the Daily Mail reports, “Britain’s spies are being urged to consider their ‘white privilege’ and declare their pronouns as Europe descends into war.”

"This comes from a leaked report on 'improving diversity' in the security services, written by Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the UK’s national security adviser. It also advises against using gendered terms like 'manpower' and even words like 'strong' and 'grip,' which can ‘reinforce dominant cultural patterns.' ”

"And there you have it: as Putin plays the strongman, our security bosses are saying ze and zir and advising against inappropriate usage of upsetting words like… 'strength.'

You couldn’t ask for a clearer snapshot of the divide between the West and Russia today. In the West, institutions are riddled with political correctness, incapacitated by wokeness, and increasingly incapable of being serious about almost any issue, including geopolitics. And in Russia there is a leader who is a keen observer of this Western 'decay,' as he sees it. The West is beset by 'sociocultural disturbances,' Putin recently said.

"Where Russia under Putin is reviving pride and nostalgia for Russian history – at least the version of history that the Putin regime prefers – in the West they pursue 'the aggressive deletion of whole pages of their own history,' Putin says. The West is too busy '(teaching) that a boy can become a girl and vice versa' to be able to defend its own traditions and truths, Putin chastises. And now we have British security bosses obsessing over pronouns as Putin spies more territory for the Russian Federation. Fiddling while Ukraine burns. ...





In these threads I've predicted exactly this senario already: A "pussified" (now called "Woke"-ish) society telegraphs its weaknesses to every brutal thug with an army and air force. Never mind that, at the moment, it isn't the "Woke" La-La Land of the U.S. which is being invaded. The point is the same. Putin's invasion of Ukraine was predicated on the entirely justified expectation that his implied challenge to NATO, "Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?" would be answered by handwringing, dithering, and non-lethal care packages.

This kind of mobilization is a month or much more than a month late:

United States Army Europe and Africa and the United States Sixth Fleet

U.S. forces should have been placed at "Defcon 1" -- without announcing it to Putin.

(Update: So, it's announced in the press (but true?) that madman Putin has placed his nuclear forces on "high alert"--which I gather means that U.S. & allied European forces must be somewhere around Defcon 2.

308Limelite
feb 27, 2022, 3:17 pm

Wussie Pussy & Putin -- Trumpty-Dumbpties' Love Fest!!

309proximity1
mrt 2, 2022, 8:41 am


Putin the Apostate: We thought he would be our bastard. Then, he became his own bastard.
| Matt Taibbi | Feb 28


The White-washed history delusional Biden-supporters don't want you to remember or know
_______________________________

War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, and Reckless Every useful or pleasing claim about the war, no matter how unverified or subsequently debunked, rapidly spreads, while dissenters are vilified as traitors or Kremlin agents | Glenn Greenwald | Feb 27

__________________________________________________


"Knock, knock,
Let the Devil in,

...

"I said knock knock, let the devil in
Alien, E-E-Elliott phone home
Ain't no telling when this chokehold
On this game will end, I'm loco
Became a Symbiote, so
My fangs are in your throat, ho
You're snake-bitten with my—venom
With the ballpoint pen I'm
Gun cocked, bump stock, double-aught, buckshot
Tire thumper, a garrote, tie a couple knots
Fired up and caught fire, juggernaut
Punk rock, bitch, it's goin' down like Yung Joc
' Cause the Doc put me on like sunblock
Why the fuck not, you only get one shot"
...
then drank 'til I faint
And awake with a headache
And I take anything in rectangular shape
Then I wait to face the demons I'm bonded to
'Cause they're chasin' me but I'm part of you
So escapin' me is impossible
I latch onto you like a—parasite
And I probably ruined your parents' life
And your childhood too
'Cause if I'm the music that y'all grew up on
I'm responsible for you retarded fools
I'm the super villain Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to
You marvel that? Eddie Brock is you
And I'm the suit, so call me—"

________________
"Venom" -- Eminem

310Limelite
mrt 2, 2022, 12:49 pm

Right Wingnut Feast

311proximity1
mei 11, 2022, 1:30 pm



This discussion linked here is not part of the views of those Cute Leftists Who Don't Imagine that the Monsters They Create Could Also Eat Them

(MATT TAIBBI's blog "TK News" presents this (linked here) BUT they are talking about those Cute Leftists here: Podcast: Discussing Free Speech on "So to Speak"


'So to Speak's (podcast) host Nico Perrino of FIRE, or the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, speaks with professor Amna Khaled of Carleton College and with former ACLU president Nadine Strossen, and with Matt Taibbi, writer-editor-producer of "TK News" about Elon Musk’s possible acquisition of Twitter.


312proximity1
Bewerkt: sep 13, 2022, 1:24 pm

"Leftists are so cute, how they think the monsters they create won't eat them" * :

(NOTE BENE: in the link which follows, John McWhorter is not one of these "leftists" alluded to in the phrase cited above.
------------------------------

An interesting podcast from John McWhorter's "Lexicon Valley"

"Is 'Nego' (the term) a slur or just antiquated?"


----------------------------------

* Homage to "Carnophile"

313lriley
sep 13, 2022, 7:53 pm

312 Interesting that this gets pulled out of nowhere after 4 months. Really I look at the past few posts and I'm not sure what to make of them. As for the sentiment of the original thread starter and the agenda of the person who keeps reviving this thread I'll say this. It's ironic that the day you choose here is the day that Bill Clinton's bete noire Ken Starr decides to kick the proverbial bucket. Did not like him and when I mean him I kind of mean both hims but since one is still likely to be above ground for a while we'll go with the one who is going under or away for good. I know.....my day is coming too. But still so many people make heroes out of people but all people....everyone that is is flawed. Some a lot more flawed as others and Starr was IMO a dickhead.

As for Bill he was fairly elected twice with both the popular and electoral vote....gnash your teeth all you like (it's true) and when he finally left office (not saying he never did anything criminal because really he's another that lived a somewhat charmed life) he left without issue (unless you want to count all the silverware, some furniture and a set of curtains or two). There weren't any riots any calling hellfire down from the heavens.....it was one of those peaceful turnovers of power that should be expected from any departing President. The National Archives never had to chase his ass down afterwards for top secret documents he wasn't supposed to have either. Nor into his former President status did he ever assert to my knowledge executive privilege because for all his bad and shady behavior he wasn't a complete joke.

314proximity1
apr 15, 2023, 2:20 pm


Daniel Radcliffe is a stupid twat.


Excerpt from | The privileged ignorance of Daniel Radcliffe | What a shame that JK Rowling made a star out of such a privileged plonker. | Spiked | 14 April 2023 | by Julie Burchill


... "Trans-rights activists hate our side because they’ve failed to force us to lie. The words they expect us to use are designed to spread untruths. ‘Genderfluid’ sounds lovely, for instance. It’s what my teenage idol David Bowie was being when he shagged around like a sailor on shore leave one day, and wore a dress the next. When I used to dance to my favourite song of his – ‘Rebel Rebel’ – I was always full of glee at the line that never got old:

‘Got your mother in a whirl / She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl.’

"We old people don’t look down on today’s trans antics because we’re uptight fuddy-duddies – we do so because we’re still reprobates. We find the idea of needing external validation for one’s identity pathetic. We didn’t need it from our parents; we certainly wouldn’t have wanted it from building societies to beer brands, as the softies do today. And as for the poor old whirling mum (trying her best!), today she’d be marched off to the Pronoun Police for not immediately identifying which one of the 72 BBC-approved genders her indecisive offspring was on that particular day. Boy or girl? How dare you limit my potential – today I’m otherkin!

"If you go and get sterilised before you can vote, you’re not going to be genderfluid, which sounds like being a mermaid cavorting atop a unicorn. If you’re a young woman having your primary- and secondary-sex characteristics eviscerated, you’re not going to have much in the way of fluids at all – you will be scarred and desiccated instead. If you’re going the other way, you will most likely keep hold of your precious male genitalia (less than five per cent of transwomen actually have the chop). Perhaps you’ll become a big bully in too much blusher yelling at lesbians to suck your lady-dick. The first option is sad and the second is bad, but they both often have roots in mental ill-health. That’s what Daniel Radcliffe doesn’t understand, sitting up there on his money mountain, in the rarefied air of ignorant bliss, with his net worth of $100million.

"But why should we expect him to understand? He (son of a literary agent and a casting agent) – like his equally irritating sidekick, Emma Watson (daughter of two lawyers) – has only ever known privilege. And, it must be said, immense luck. You can see that some child stars, from Judy Garland to Lindsay Lohan, were natural stand-outs from the start. But look at the young Radcliffe and Watson and tell me with a straight face that they had star quality stamped all over them. I’ve seen pairs of twice-used teabags with more charisma. How handy that he was already in his thirties – and therefore unlikely to be called upon to play the schoolboy wizard again – before he first bit the hand that fed him such a sumptuous smorgasbord of opportunities. But if it wasn’t for Rowling, it’s highly likely that the most creative job he’d be doing would be drawing hearts on coffee foam.

"One of the handy effects of wokeism is that it conveniently ignores class as a form of privilege. So if you went to a fee-paying school, but then identify as ‘queer’ or an ‘ally’, you can then behave as if you had a tougher start than, say, JK Rowling. As a child, Rowling was told that, due to her social class, the nearest she could ever get to her dream of being a writer was being a teacher. During the years she spent struggling to become a writer, she was a single parent, on benefits, escaping a violent husband. She has gone from being a billionaire to a multimillionaire through the sheer amount of money she has given away. So she doesn’t need to ponce about #BeingKind to prove she’s one of the good guys."

---------------------------------------

315prosfilaes
Bewerkt: apr 16, 2023, 7:54 pm

>314 proximity1: Daniel Radcliffe is a stupid twat.

That's certainly an erudite statement.

"We old people don’t look down on today’s trans antics because we’re uptight fuddy-duddies – we do so because we’re still reprobates. We find the idea of needing external validation for one’s identity pathetic. We didn’t need it from our parents; we certainly wouldn’t have wanted it from building societies to beer brands, as the softies do today.

Right. Ignore that you're talking about listening to a mass-produced pop star in your day selling you your external validation. Ignore that beer brands have long validated anyone to get them to pony up a few bucks for the beer. Tucker Carlson seems to be the only person who cares what the M&M candy characters are doing today, for crying out loud.

today she’d be marched off to the Pronoun Police for not immediately identifying which one of the 72 BBC-approved genders her indecisive offspring was on that particular day.

"The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished in England and Wales by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008." " Same-sex sexual activities were legalised in Scotland ... by section 80 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980, which came into force on 1 February 1981." But hey, real laws imposing real punishments in her day aren't as interesting as modern fake laws, eh?

One of the handy effects of wokeism is that it conveniently ignores class as a form of privilege ... you can then behave as if you had a tougher start than, say, JK Rowling.

For crying out loud, when you pull out these type of lies, you lose all credibility. Ever heard of intersectionality? If no, we can trump the class card with the race card; nobody was going to try and deport Rowling, despite her class, because she wasn't from the Caribbean (cf. Windrush scandal). Nobody tried to arrest her for her religious opinions or her sexual activities.

JK Rowling didn't have a bad start; she got a free college education no longer provided to the UK student, for example. It wasn't perfect, but if you want to run an oppression Olympics, the UK was never going to send her, and the competitors from the UK were never going to win.

She has gone from being a billionaire to a multimillionaire through the sheer amount of money she has given away.

Jeffery Epstein gave away a bunch of money. Martin Luther famously become a little piqued at the idea that your sins could be washed away by giving a few bucks to the right source.

316lriley
apr 17, 2023, 10:25 am

About a week ago just because and for no other reason than just because I thought I'd might like to block some member of this group for a couple weeks (like say take a vacation from some of the dopier crap that passes through here sometimes) and...............I fortunately landed on Prox as someone who's shit I could do very well not reading (which is another way of saying my instincts must still be pretty good) and judging by the glimpses of dumbass remarks highlighted by profilaes in #315 I can't say I'm sorry for missing out on the rest of what looks like a pretty bizarre and asinine rant. Anyway maybe I should make it a month.

317kiparsky
apr 17, 2023, 1:17 pm

>316 lriley: You didn't miss much. The asnine rant wasn't even prox's, it was some gabble copied and pasted from somewhere. I have no idea why it seemed necessary to dump this turd here, in a dead thread, but there was nothing there worth wasting your time on.

The through line for so-called conservatives continues: they're very, very concerned about other people's private parts and what they do with them, and it's very upsetting to them (I could even say "triggering") when they do the wrong thing with their bits. This seems to be the main thing conservatives think about: other people's bits. It's like they're obsessed with other people's parts, and particularly with penises. They're really excited about penises, and what people should be allowed to do with them. I can't think why that would be, but it's certainly a dominant theme in conservative politics for a long time.

318lriley
apr 17, 2023, 3:58 pm

>317 kiparsky: I don't know why people care so much about what other people are doing with their bodies--or how someone might want to look at their body as long as they're not harming others. This business about 'woke-ness' is just what the fuck. These gender issue meltdowns by people on the right are just stupid. Nobody's that disturbed besides those who like to claim their perceived enemies/targets are 'woke'. There's not a day goes by on the internet anymore without a fresh batch of absurd outrage.

319prosfilaes
apr 17, 2023, 4:17 pm

The article apparently starts with "It was King Lear who said, 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child'." She fails to realize King Lear was the villain, and was attacking his only honest child.

320pnppl
Bewerkt: nov 17, 2023, 2:47 am

Dit bericht is door zijn auteur gewist.

321prosfilaes
Bewerkt: apr 17, 2023, 10:30 pm

I've just read the Wikipedia article on author Julie Burchill, and holy mackerel, she is all-around offensive. No shame, no self-awareness.

322proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 18, 2023, 3:49 pm

>315 prosfilaes:

Rowling's Burchill's* talent, like that of all people's innate talent, struck lucky (though, in Burchill's case, not so much in in the extreme as in Rowling's case) if one measures such luck by the resulting fame and fortune. What she (Burchill) possessed and possesses in writer-talent is found to an equal or greater extent in many people who live and die in obscurity because their talents are not "in the right place at the right time".
So, we leave aside all this:
The "Harry Potter" series never appealed to me mainly because, by the time it appeared on the publishing scene, I'd long outgrown such juvenile fantasy. And, knowing myself as I do, I strongly doubt that it could have captured my enthusiastic attention even if I'd been a pre-teen at the time. (Meanwhile, by the way, the typical average age by which people outgrow such juvenile fantasy had extended in spoiled Western culture to people's third decade of life.)
The point, however, is that Rowling's Burchill's expectations that her work could find a large and devoted audience were quite correct. For publishers, that is really the overriding factor.

The further point and the one most germaine here is that there are, as always, lots and lots of people who are trying to do what Burchill and other published writers did and who are never heard from; they remain on eeking out a bare existence on state-provided benefits, their book projects never find a publisher willing to take a gamble on them. At no time in her pre-"Harry Potter" existence did J.K. Rowling even remotely qualify as "privileged" in any respect. That her later later life took a greatly different turn is a fluke of the rarest kind.

>318 lriley:

RE: " 'It was King Lear who said, 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child'. She (Rowling Burchill) fails to realize King Lear was the villain, and was attacking his only honest child."

No, she doesn't. It's very amusing--but completely unsurprising--that such a simplistic assumption comes from a Stratfordian's view. Rowling Burchill, unlike the Stratfordian (though I don't know her views on the "authorship question" and she might, for all I know, be a Stratfordian herself), grasps that "Shakespeare" could and often did put pearls of wisdom into the mouths (via dialogue) of even those characters he portrayed as villainous. That's because his astute talents were not so meagre as to make cartoonish clichés of the characters' personality-traits. The best had flaws and the worst had admirable moments about them. No easy black-and-white, good-vs.-evil picture was on offer. "What a concept!" LOL!

Leave the profiting from "Shakespeare"'s genius to others. You don't have the chops to criticize them.

No wonder you don't understand why these posts belong here.

---------------------------------
* see my corrections in post 328, below.

323lriley
apr 18, 2023, 10:44 am

Oh--another 'message hidden because you blocked the member (show). Oh no! I think not. That'd be cheating.

324prosfilaes
apr 18, 2023, 10:47 am

>322 proximity1: At no time in her pre-"Harry Potter" existence did J.K. Rowling even remotely qualify as "privileged" in any respect.

The University of Exeter is not the top university in the UK, but it's still pretty prestigious; one site put it at 19th best in the UK and 137th best in the world. (Or 18th and 152nd, according to US News and World Report. And unlike US students or students in the current UK, she got to go there for free.

There are better universities (by the UNWR article) in 21 nations, including one each in Africa and South America. There are none in India. There's a couple billion people who would have to leave their home nation to get to go to a university that good, and we're not talking Luxembourg here.

Leave the profiting from "Shakespeare"'s genius to others. You don't have the chops to criticize them.

You misattributed who wrote the quote (that was me, in >319 prosfilaes:) and somehow concluded I was talking about Rowling, even though I was clearly responding to the article and its author Julie Burchill.

The worst of Shakespeare's villains may have had admirable moments about them, but this wasn't one of them; King Lear was chastising his only loyal daughter for not being loyal enough. Cut it how you want, using a quote from that scene and abusing Daniel Radcliffe for disloyalty isn't a great look.

(Meanwhile, by the way, the typical average age by which people outgrow such juvenile fantasy had extended in spoiled Western culture to people's third decade of life.) ... LOL!

Funny, I'm more concerned about the average age by which people outgrow responding to other people's arguments with "LOL" instead of reasoned response. Stop judging people for what they read, and start judging them for how they act with each other.

325kiparsky
apr 18, 2023, 1:30 pm

>324 prosfilaes: I think it's hilarious that prox is going full-on pompous on you, when they can't even remember the first line from an article that three days ago impressed them so much they had to share it here.

>323 lriley: I can assure you that you are not missing anything here, just the usual blithering. Apparently Rowling must be a hero because she's a transphobe (she's not) and therefore she must have transcended an upbringing in desperate poverty (which she didn't) but don't worry, prox still can be contemptuous of her writing (okay, fine, but who asked?) because it's written for the enjoyment of the masses unlike Shakespeare (um, wait a second...) who wasn't actually Shakespeare (hang on!) because nobody could have ever come up from poverty to write a body of popular literature.

And if all that makes sense to you, you're probably prox.

326lriley
apr 18, 2023, 1:43 pm

>325 kiparsky: FWIW if we're going way way back I much prefer Cervantes, Boccaccio and Rabelais to Shakespeare. I've seen Prox go on about Will before though. Whether he has the classical education and whatnot to call himself a scholar I really don't know but it seems to be something super important to him though it's not something that interests me very much but I kind of find it amusing he's being called out on King Lear. Anyway I'm not what most people would consider an educated person. I have 0 college degrees which I'm more than okay with. I'm more in the autodidact sphere of things.

327kiparsky
apr 18, 2023, 1:53 pm

>326 lriley: I'm not much of a Shakespeare scholar myself - I enjoy seeing what a good director and a good cast do with that material, but that's as far as I go with it.

On the subject of Lear, I really enjoy Hammy Hamilton's take: https://youtu.be/MWlq3i5TT5A

328proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 18, 2023, 3:46 pm

..."even though I was clearly responding to the article and its author Julie Burchill...."

So was I (in the post, above, >322 proximity1:). True, I misstated from forgetful confusion the speaker as Rowling--but it was Julie Burchill's comment I meant to and had first in mind to refer to when I began composing my reply's thoughts.

With that correction made, everything else stands. So, whose "privilege" is it? Burchill's? LOL! If anything, her case as an example of a lack of early privilege is even sounder than that of J.K. Rowling. About Burchill's parents, Wikipedia's article, if true, has it that "Her father... worked in a distillery. Her mother had a job in a cardboard box factory." LOL! Your case is worse than when I confused Burchill's part with Rowling's.

RE: ..."Shakespeare's villains may have had admirable moments about them, but this wasn't one of them".

Not that I claimed it was either per se admirable or intended by Burchill to be seen as such--that is, admirable in and of itself, in or out of its context. Your own confused nonsense returns center-stage. Burchill cited King Lear's remark, not King Lear's personality or anything else about this character as "admirable". That was your own foolish and misconceived gloss on it. Again, citing a Shakespeare character's dialogue is no more necessarily any endorsement of either the personality of the character or anything else about the character, play, or its author. The citation's point stands on its own as either germaine or not to the use it's put to for relevance. No one even need either agree with the dialogue's observation or its author's or its character's personality for that dialogue to be alluded to with correct effect. But, again, you just don't get even such simple stuff as that.

..."she (Burchill) got to go there (Univ. of Exeter) for free."

Yeah. At the time, so did everyone who went there. So what? This is irrelevant to any reasonable argument about "privilege" since, at that time, for native Britons, going to "uni" in the U.K. wasn't a matter of having or not having privilege--whether earned or unearned.

After the top five or ten U.K. universities--if not, indeed, including them--these college rankings are a joke and so are the people who set any great store by them. For "prestige" is a subjective matter. I personally don't regard even Oxford or Cambridge degrees as at all sound evidence of a quality education--nor do I ascribe any particularly special intelligence to those who have or boast of holding degrees from a Cambridge or Oxford college. But, if anything, that goes the same or more so for all the other U.K. colleges and universities.

By the way, for those who think such rankings do hold some significance, Exeter's 2022 rankings by The Times Higher Education Supplement and U.S. News and World Report were, respectively, 143rd and 149th. So much for "prestige" or for the usefulness of these rankings.

329prosfilaes
Bewerkt: apr 18, 2023, 5:42 pm

>328 proximity1: So, whose "privilege" is it? Burchill's? LOL!

No, we were talking about Rowling's. Try and follow the conversation.

Again, citing a Shakespeare character's dialogue is no more necessarily any endorsement of either the personality of the character or anything else about the character, play, or its author. The citation's point stands on its own as either germaine or not to the use it's put to for relevance.

Wow. Apparently context doesn't matter, at all, and just take an author's words out of context.

at that time, for native Britons, going to "uni" in the U.K. wasn't a matter of having or not having privilege--whether earned or unearned.

"At that time for native Britons". We're comparing Rowling to younger Britons that don't have the privilege of free education. On the other hand, "at that time" only between 15 and 25% of Britons went to university. ( https://www.bbc.com/news/education-49841620 )

After the top five or ten U.K. universities--if not, indeed, including them--these college rankings are a joke and so are the people who set any great store by them.

I don't swear by the exact numbers, but there's certain classes of universities, and this was a way for an American to put this university in context. It's clear for me that the University of Exeter is not in the top level of UK universities, but it's still a quite respectable university, not one that takes everyone.

By the way, for those who think such rankings do hold some significance, Exeter's 2022 rankings by The Times Higher Education Supplement and U.S. News and World Report were, respectively, 143rd and 149th. So much for "prestige" or for the usefulness of these rankings.

I don't understand. That shows that the measurements are consistent, between 137 and 152. I wasn't looking for the precise value, but that tells me that it's better than most State U. in the US.

So Rowling had a degree from a major British university that was all paid for. At least 75% of Britons at the time couldn't say that, and while more Britons can say they have a degree from some British university now, they can't say it was all paid for unless they're rich. Even among Britons alone, that's privilege, and amazingly so in the larger world.

330proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 18, 2023, 8:19 pm

>329 prosfilaes:

..."No, we were talking about Rowling's."

Well, then everything I'd posted the first time concerning Rowling was pertinent. Try to keep up. And don't dishonestly object and move the goal-posts around.


The annual Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings (WUR), started in 2010, aims to provide the definitive list of the best universities, evaluated across five key areas of Teaching, Research, Citations, International Outlook and Industry Income. Times Higher Education’s data is trusted by governments and universities and is a vital resource for students, helping them choose where to study.
(https://www.timeshighereducation.com/sites/default/files/breaking_news_files/the_2022_world_university_rankings_methodology_31082021_final.pdf)
---------------------------
(emphasis added)


Lots of U.S. universities are excluded from consideration right off the bat because they simply don't correspond to entry-criteria designed by the Times Higher Education (THE) Supplement's editors for their World University Rankings (WUR).

Concerning U.S. News and World Report's criteria, things are even wackier in their subjective character:

(alphabetically arranged criteria)
"Alumni giving rate average: This is the nonweighted mean percentage of undergraduate alumni of record who donated money to the college or university." ...

"Class size: This assesses the ability of students to engage with their instructors in class." ...

"Expert opinion: This is a measure of how a school is regarded by top administrators at other institutions and accounts for qualitative attributes of schools that may not be fully captured by the other ranking factors. A school's expert opinion score is determined by the average of ratings on academic quality it received by presidents, provosts and deans of admissions – or officials in equivalent positions – at institutions submitting a peer assessment survey administered by U.S. News." ...

"Faculty salary average: Research shows there is a link between academic outcomes and compensation of faculty. This indicator averaged salaries – excluding non-salary benefits – from all of a school's instructional tenured and non-tenured faculty who were full-time assistant, associate and full-time professors; "...

"Faculty with a doctoral or terminal degree: This is the percentage of full-time equivalent instructional faculty with a doctorate or the highest degree possible in their field or specialty during the 2021-2022 academic year – aligned with the 2021-2022 Common Data Set instructions for reporting faculty counts." ...

"Faculty who are full-time: Representative of faculty resources, this is the proportion of the 2021-2022 faculty that is full time. We compare the count of full-time instructional faculty members to the count of full-time-equivalent faculty members (full-time faculty members plus one-third the count of part-time faculty members)." ...

" Financial resources: This represents a school's ability to have a strong environment for instruction and impact in academia. Financial resources are measured by comparing an institution's total expenditures on instruction, research, public service, academic support, student services and institutional support – just as schools are required to report each year to the U.S. Department of Education – against its total fall full-time equivalent student enrollment." ...

"First-year student retention rate average: This is the average proportion of the first-year classes entering from fall 2017 through fall 2020 who returned the following fall." ...

"Graduate indebtedness average: This is the average amount of accumulated federal loan debt among the 2020 and 2021 bachelor's degree graduating classes, specific to graduates with federal loan debt." ...

"Graduate indebtedness proportion: This is the percentage of graduates from the 2020 and 2021 bachelor's degree graduating classes who borrowed federal loans." ...

"Graduation rate average: This is the percentage of entering first-year students who graduated within a six-year period, averaged over the classes entering from fall 2012 through fall 2015. For standardized comparisons, this excludes students who transferred to the school after their first year." ...

"Graduation rate performance: This is a comparison between the actual six-year graduation rate for students entering in fall 2014 and fall 2015 and the corresponding predicted graduation rates for the proportions who graduated six years later in 2020 and 2021." ...

"High school class standing: This is the proportion of students enrolled for the academic year beginning in fall 2021 who graduated in the top 10% (for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges) or top 25% (for Regional Universities and Regional Colleges) of their high school class, aligned with the 2021-2022 Common Data Set instructions for reporting high school class standing." ...

"Pell Grant graduation rate performance: This social mobility ranking factor assesses success at achieving equitable outcomes for students from underserved backgrounds. It divides each school's six-year graduation rate among fall 2014 and fall 2015 new entrant Pell recipients by the rate achieved by non-Pell recipients, with higher ratios scoring better than lower ratios." ...

"Standardized test scores: Average test scores on both the SAT math and evidence-based reading and writing portions, and the composite ACT of all enrolled first-time, first-year students entering in fall 2021 are combined for the ranking model." ...

"Student-faculty ratio: This is the ratio of full-time-equivalent students to full-time-equivalent faculty members during fall 2021, aligned with 2021-2022 Common Data Set instructions for reporting faculty." ...

"Data Collection:
U.S. News relies on schools to accurately report their data."



Huh?!?!? "LAUGHING MY FUCKING ASS OFF!" We at U.S. News and World Report don't actually check and confirm the validity of the data on which we judge the institutions--rather, we take the institutions' word for the data's accuracy! --- I mean, it's not like there's literally many millions of dollars hanging in the balance of accuracy, right?

..."Apparently context doesn't matter, at all, and just take an author's words out of context."

Wrong. I gave the cited remark its proper, unadulterated, context according to Burchill's use of it. You, on the other hand, imposed a different and extraneous "context" which was never in her point, usage or meanings. So. if anyone distorted Birchill's clear meaning, that was you.

..."So Rowling had a degree from a major British university that was all paid for." ...

You may try again to ignore it, but, again, so what?!? Everyone, rich or poor, at that time who wanted to go to university went to university on the same basis: the tuition was covered by the state's coffers. The grading system may be criticized as having been inherently biased since it may be that those attending exclusive private pre-university schools had relatively better instruction and instructors. (If they did not, what were these students' parents paying all that money for?) But none of those advantages attached to Joanne Rowling or her family. Quite the contrary. If you insist on stressing "privilege," your case lies elsewhere than in mere admission to university. The only arguable distinctions where "privilege"-bias might be alleged with justification at that time related to the top 2 or 3 universities as opposed to "all the rest". Again, this very decidedly doesn't apply to Joanne Rowling's life story. She applied to Oxford University and her application was rejected. So, what did she do? Miss university? Of course not. She wanted to go to university; so, when Oxford rejected her application, she did what many thousands of her peers did: she chose to go to a different university where she was admitted and from which she eventually graduated--just like many thousands of her peers of that time.

..."At least 75% of Britons at the time couldn't say that,"...

That's a cooked, loaded and distorted picture of the reality of the time.

If "75% of Britons...couldn't say that", it was because they didn't "care or want to 'say that'" in the first place--they chose not to attend university. A university degree was neither compulsory nor even essential to finding and having a sound, well-earning career.

Here's a profile (according to Wikipedia's page) of your so-called "privileged" back-ground of the Rowling family--and Joanne, the author you've reverted to discussing here:


(Joanne Rowling's parents) ..."came from middle-class backgrounds; Pete (her father, who met his future wife, Anne Volant (later, her mother), during a train journey while they were both in the Royal Navy) was the son of a machine-tool setter who later opened a grocery shop. They left the navy life and sought a country home to raise the baby they were expecting, and married on 14 March 1965 when both were 19. The Rowlings settled in Yate, where Pete started work as an assembly-line production worker at the Bristol Siddeley factory. The company became part of Rolls-Royce, and he worked his way into management as a chartered engineer. Anne later worked as a science technician. Neither Anne nor Pete attended university."


Some "privileged" back-ground that is!

About Anne and Pete's daughter, Joanne, and her "privileged" life and upbringing:

"When Joanne was four, the family moved to Winterbourne, Gloucestershire. She began at St Michael's Church of England Primary School in Winterbourne when she was five." ... "When ... about nine, ... (i)n 1974, Rowling began attending the nearby Church of England School." ... "her teacher ... seated Rowling in 'dunces' row' after she performed poorly on an arithmetic test." ... "She later described herself during this period as 'the epitome of a bookish child – short and squat, thick National Health glasses, living in a world of complete daydreams'." ... "Rowling's secondary school was Wyedean School and College, a state school she began attending at the age of eleven...." "...Living in a small town with pressures at home, Rowling became more interested in her school work. Steve Eddy, her first secondary school English teacher, remembers her as 'not exceptional' but 'one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English'. Rowling took A-levels in English, French and German, achieving two As and a B and was named head girl at Wyedean. She applied to Oxford University in 1982 but was rejected. Biographers attribute her rejection to privilege*, as she had attended a state school rather than a private one."

(*Note: the "privilege" just mentioned was not that of the young Miss Rowling but, rather, that typical of the entrants to Oxford University of the time.)

"Rowling always wanted to be a writer, but chose to study French and the classics at the University of Exeter for practical reasons, influenced by her parents who thought job prospects would be better with evidence of bilingualism. She later stated that Exeter was not initially what she expected ("to be among lots of similar people – thinking radical thoughts") but that she enjoyed herself after she met more people like her. She was an average student at Exeter, described by biographers as prioritising her social life over her studies, and lacking ambition and enthusiasm. Rowling recalls doing little work at university, preferring to read Dickens and Tolkien. She earned a BA in French from Exeter, graduating in 1987 after a year of study in Paris. ... (Wikipedia | J.K. Rowling)


..."We're comparing Rowling to younger Britons that don't have the privilege of free education."

"We"? Wrong. No, we're not. You're trying to "compare" what was, in Rowling's college years, not a "privilege" but, rather, a generally given right: the right to choose, regardless of family resources or income, to go to some university, with, on the other hand, today's very different circumstances by which only those with either the needed financial resources or, lacking that, the demonstrated academic standing to win a scholarship-backed entry are "privileged" to attend a U.K. university. That is rank "cherry-picking" on your part as to a pertinent issue.

Today's students live in today's world, not the circumstances which obtained at the time Rowling went to university. If Rowling and all her contemporaries enjoyed relative advantages which today's university-aged cohorts do not enjoy, that's not Rowling's fault or the faults of the generality of her age-peers.

331pnppl
Bewerkt: nov 17, 2023, 2:47 am

Dit bericht is door zijn auteur gewist.

332John5918
Bewerkt: apr 19, 2023, 1:11 am

I went to a good university in UK free fifty years ago. I believe free education should be a right, not a privilege, but in practice I recognise that I was privileged, because the vast majority of people in the world, including in the USA and modern Britain, did not and still do not have that right.

Edited to add: >331 pnppl:

Good point. I come from a lower middle class background (working class parents who "made good") and I definitely consider myself privileged to have had that background. Being a white male and growing up in a highly developed nation with free high quality education and health care helped. Having spent most of my adult life living in Africa, I'm very conscious of how privileged my upbringing was.

333lriley
apr 19, 2023, 2:45 am

>332 John5918: Health Care and Education should be rights not privileges. Here in the United States though so many people have these ideas about who deserves and who doesn't deserve. Everyone should have these things. So many people though would rather feed a war machine or build prisons to house poor non violent offenders....but then look the other way at political corruption if it's their favored politician......and though he is easily the current poster child corruption didn't start with Trump. It's built right into our system.

334John5918
apr 19, 2023, 4:57 am

>333 lriley:

Indeed. The "privileged" in this world are the ones who can access their human rights. The underprivileged are the ones who are denied these basic rights.

335proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 19, 2023, 7:47 am

>331 pnppl: --> >333 lriley:

Yet, you're here expressly or implicitly defending the likes of posh-boy Daniel Radcliffe, raised very comfortably by parents whose careers were in the hard-labor world of literary agent and casting agent and Radcliffe's co-star, Emma Watson, poor boot-strapping daughter of two career attorneys, as they join the chorus of Rowling's would-be detractors for her having come from roots which are socially not even in the same galaxy as these young stars who made scores of millions of dollars portraying characters created in the imagination of Rowling.

Again, the mental-disconnect which so smacks of rank hypocrisy is very amusing.

You say you weren't particularly privileged? -- no, rather, and disingenuously, you say that you were, just by having enjoyed what was, at the time and in the circumstances which were completely common to your social cohort, just a given in any of numerous better ordered and similarly prosperous societies of that day--and, were thus through no faults of those societies, much less of your own or your peers. It is a fact that economic prosperity and social and political justice which so often go together aren't found equally distributed around the world. It's also a fact that others in other societies at that time suffered in the dregs of the local third-world poverty and injustice. But you now want everyone, and, above all, every "White"-skin-toned person, heterosexual, man--or fellow-travelling woman-- to join you in apologizing for that history--whatever their own life-circumstances, unless, of course, they're Black, or of some other fashionably-approved ethnicity. (You've therefore self-consciously adopted the convenient demeanor of people who feel obliged to apologize for their not also having been born to poverty in third-world failed-states run by cartels of brutal dictators.)

Well, it's never too late: you could always don a hair-shirt, take up the medieval Catholic's tools of self-inflicted physical harm, give away all your worldly possessions to the poor --who'll you'll easily find around any corner outside your own neighborhood.

Rowling, meanwhile, who came from far more socially modest beginnings than your own, has given away to charity more money than you have earned or could earn in twelve lifetimes. And she's the pathetic self-righteous virtue-signalling hypocrites' target for scorn being echoed here.



336pnppl
Bewerkt: nov 17, 2023, 2:47 am

Dit bericht is door zijn auteur gewist.

337proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 19, 2023, 8:29 am



"Stick up for" you?!? Give me a fucking break!

Those who belong anywhere in the LGBTQ+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ alphabet of fashionably favored get their own parades! And woe unto he or to she who should dare to utter a not-entirely-flattering word about anyone who happens, entirely incidentally to the not-entirely-flattering terms' import, to be other-than-White, other-than heterosexual, other than a "binary' (LOL!) and still sexually-assigned male.

Get over yourself. And make up your mind: you're supposedly either the beneficiary of privilege or you're in need of the likes of Radcliffe and Watson to "stick up for you" (and yours) against the terrible onslaught of oppression from the J.K. Rowling types. Which is it to be?

White, hetero-males (who aren't themselves dirt poor--because, of course, in that case, they're clearly social non-entities who'd never cross your radar screen of "speaking of things that matter"), on the other hand, are now obliged constantly to tip-toe around your ("your" in the plural, group sense, not necessarily you) every-exposed nerve since the overwhelming weight of social authority has placed you and all LGBTQ+++++++++++++++ in a now-absurdly-protected class. And who--apart from the rare (because he speaks up) Douglas Murrays of the world-- like you (and, here, I do mean you specifically) would not, find such circumstances quite suitably convenient?

Today, the servile mass-media have rushed to help you label as springing from "hate" anything or anyone who is anything resembling indifferent to you and yours as a class and who simply expects that, like they and everyone else are supposed to do without undue grumbling, you lot "wait your turns in line" along with the rest of us in the in-no-way-specially-privileged society.

LMFAO!!!

338pnppl
Bewerkt: nov 17, 2023, 2:47 am

Dit bericht is door zijn auteur gewist.

339proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 19, 2023, 8:58 am


Long before "straight" men (and women(?)) are nearly "extinct", the "trans community" shall be at the environmental equivalent of a final effort in last-life-support. But you're welcome to such self-serving infantile fantasies as your "I'll be waiting up here on my social pedestal, sitting on my tranny throne and laughing as the nearly extinct straight men kiss my feet."

That's an echo of what I've personally heard out of the mouth of an embittered young homosexual man: "We'll be content when you're (i.e. heterosexuals) all dead and gone." (straight out of the pages of How to Win Friends and Influence People)

This particular aspect of this thread (which is more generally concerned with "Lefties are so cute, how they think the monsters they create won’t eat them") is about the media-driven hyper-sensitive backlash of comments by Joanne Rowling, not the everyday life and hardships of the "trans-sexual community"--though these matters have some common aspects since it was this community which found Rowling's comments outrageous.

In a more appropriate thread, for having a serious conversation I'd wonder:

What's the average full-cost of the full gamut of "sexual reassignment" these days?

How many people could be reasonably expected to seek such a course of medical intervention--per million of population but who'd require most or all of these costs to be carried by government's social spending budgets -- according to figures you can cite as credibly founded?

In arriving at that figure--the number of claimants--please indicate the range of ages included in the qualifying criteria. From what age can, should, a person be admitted to apply for this support? And is this to be discretionarily granted--i.e. subject to authority's grant--or a firmly protected "right" to be given to all designated as age-qualified ?

Why should such expenditures come before other needs in poverty and homeless relief if and when the recipients of it are neither poor nor homeless?

Those are important questions in any "serious discussion". I don't notice them being high on the priority list of those who have all the time in the world to denounce J. K. Rowling.

340proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 19, 2023, 9:44 am

RE: >338 pnppl: : (your) "I won't bother to reply to the rest of your post."

Of course you won't. It's a culture-war we're in, not a civil public-policy disputation.

I gather (my outsider's guess at an interpretation from what I've observed) that the trans community is most interested in an imposed vindication of rights being claimed as theirs, not a civil discourse--which I guess has been relegated to the "that's tried-and-failed, so it's on to confrontation and combat à la 'Extinction Rebellion'" category.

I suppose it runs something like this:

We're the unfortunate victims of the biosphere's random genetic mishaps which occur throughout nature in plant and animal life and always have done--namely, our body's sexual apparatus by birth doesn't correspond to our psychic indentity (or, from a group-wide social point of view, our in-groups' ever-burgeoning indentities). This is a tragedy of life-ruining proportions and, while, for eons, it has been the fate of those unfortunate people so born to live with it, today, it's our objective to see that this tragedy is corrected and that the correction be afforded us by right.

341John5918
Bewerkt: apr 19, 2023, 10:02 am

>339 proximity1:

Health care, whether medical or psychological, should never be "discretionary". It should be available free at the point of delivery to everybody who needs it.

As for "other needs in poverty and homeless relief", it does not have to be either/or. An equitable tax system which does not favour the wealthy, and a reduction in military expenditure, are but two avenues which could fund all those needs.

342pnppl
Bewerkt: nov 17, 2023, 2:47 am

Dit bericht is door zijn auteur gewist.

343proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 19, 2023, 12:05 pm

>342 pnppl:

..."did you think I actually believe straight people are going extinct?"

I actually think that it's an actual fantasy which you actually entertain--you demonstrated that to us. And I demonstated that your fantasy is one which is shared by other (LGBTQ+) who I've personally heard express the same fantasy wish.

You're supposedly concerned about --and you allege-- heterosexual people "hate" your kind:
336> ..."I dislike Rowling for leading a hate campaign against me and mine," ...


Even if that was true--and it is not-- in your place, I'd stop wasting time imputing to *heteros* some undifferentiated bigotry toward you and wasting time believing that this adequately explains the *hatred* you've already accused them of harboring--for no reason other than that they're a bunch of undifferentiated bigots.

So, no responsive answers from you
Who's surprised?

344lriley
apr 19, 2023, 2:47 pm

People have the right to pursue happiness in pretty much whatever form. For me the line is drawn when you're physically harming others or when you set out to emotionally or psychologically harm someone else. A relative for instance of a trans person might feel emotionally wrecked by the decisions a trans person makes but they should not have the right to stop them. That is simply their issue with life as it's progressed into the 21st century. To me emotional or psychological harm falls more into bullying others realm.......something which a lot of conservatives seem to like to do.

On the question of happiness though it's something that most all people chase but never really get to completely. You do what you can.

345proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 22, 2023, 3:01 pm

Some terrifically insightful reader captured brilliantly my own sentiments about the amazing stupidity and self-inflicted harm of our times in a comment he posted at the end of an article at a site I no longer read--as a subscriber.

The site is "The Free Press"* (https://www.thefp.com), and the article is "A conversation with Jonathan Rosen about his magnificent new book The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions " (from Penguin / Random House Publishers).

Here is the reader's comment in full:



Bruce Miller
7 hr ago

A parable of our society. Believing that patent madness is overcome by good intentions. Letting violent vagrants roam our streets and hoping that they'll follow their "better angels." Mutilating children in the vain belief that we're gods and can alter their sex on whim. Opening our borders to uneducated, third world hordes and pretending we'll still be America. Releasing violent sociopaths and defunding police departments. Basing our energy grid on pinwheels and panels, with a blind eye to the consequences to serve the false god of "climate change." Erasing competence requirements to serve some mad notion of "racial justice." Ignoring our deep tradition of due process and equal protection while turning a blind eye to corruption. And installing a senile imbecile as president and pretending otherwise.

America has become an asylum in the service of lunacy. Pretending otherwise doesn't change a thing. Progressive beliefs hold us in national schizophrenia. How long before our beloved nation becomes the slaughtered Carrie?
Like (136) Reply (10)


Among the replies was this, the first sentence of which perfectly states what I'd have written if I still subscribed:



Linda in MI
6 hr ago
·edited 6 hr ago

"Your phrases perfectly describe America now, and it’s unrecognizable. If people, as in most democrats, can’t see the destruction Biden has caused in two years, then they have no appreciation for what America stands for and what it means to the rest of the world. We are no longer the country that leads and helps. We are no longer a country of intelligent leaders who use logic and fact. It’s all fluff. We’re a sad mess. I pray daily for a brighter future.
Like (39) Reply (1)


Biden fans, you have neither sanity nor shame.

_______________________________

* "The Free Press", frequently a site which is piece of shit as a place to find things worthy of reading.

346John5918
apr 22, 2023, 11:26 pm

>345 proximity1:

Sounds like complete nonsense to me. A fantasy rant which is not in any way based on reality.

347proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 23, 2023, 8:30 am

Now, this next could not possibily be more in the center of the bull's-eye of this thread's OP-- by "Carnophile", who has since been effectively driven out of this intolerant place by the harpies he opposed.

It's the latest from Diane Abbott. For those who don't follow the craziness of current U.K. politics, Diane Abbott is, for me, one of the most spectacular of members of the current cast of political clowns inhabiting parliament. She's a first-class fool.

And, here, exactly as Carnophile's thread title warns us ("Lefties ... think the monsters they create won’t eat them"), Abbott has now been caught up in the very web of stupidity--racialist-based bigotry (hers and others')-- that she was previously so eager to fashion and employ.

What exactly was her crime ( what is it for which she's now been placed on formal suspension from her official roles by her party's "leadership") ?

She had written-- but only in an unpublished early draft of a commentary published in The (Sunday) Observer (London) newspaper-- a blindingly obvious fact which, it happens, is still so taboo that the mainscream-media cannot abide it. (With a few added terms for clarity and context, here's what Abbott contended--the outrageous thing which might, as happened in the case of the outcast fellow Labour Party moron, Jeremy Corbyn, who committed the same "sin", spell her banishment from the party's "elite". (Good riddance!, Diane.)) ---

(to paraphrase, while remaining as faithful to the spirit of the comment as the press's failure to re-cite verbatim the offending comment allows.)


The antisemitism Jewish people typically face (in everyday british life) from the non-jewish society in which they live is akin in severity and in actual harms (extreme, and, so, exceptional cases notwithstanding--since they are not "typical") to what red-heads commonly experience in having a hair-colour which happens not to be particularly favoured in comparison with other hair-colours.


Now, everyone (even albinos) has something of a "hair-colour" (Albinism is a genetically founded absence of normal pigmentation in skin and hair. The resulting "colour" is a blanched lightness which resembles "white"). Normally, it comes as standard genetically-supplied equipment.

But not everyone subscribes--by birth or otherwise--to a practice of a religious faith. And no one is any longer required (by civil law) to do so. Once upon a time, everyone was required to do so since failure to outwardly respect in worshipful word and deed the state-sanctioned religion was punishable by imprisonment or by death-- death by hanging, beheading, breaking on the rack, stoning to death, being burnt at the stake, etc.

Our forebears managed to develop a toleration which in our time is becoming rarer and rarer. So, for much of the last few centuries, most of the most morally enlightened (Western) societies have been spared such murderous and intolerant bigotry. We've been spoiled by not having to have earned this through our own struggles for it--and, yes, that does include you, Black people. All of you were born and raised after your legal equality was written formally into law and susceptible to be vindicated in a court or other tribunal when violated.

But, since then, Abbott and many like her were instrumental in spinning a web of race-based bigoted claims of systemic racism, society-wide and inherently part of what Western Civilization itself was bound to mean and to be. That absurd and deeply offensive nonsense has now come round to entrap the moron Abbott herself: the pitch-fork crowd has at last come for her.

Now, suspended and consigned to political limbo for failures to respect changeable fashions in intolerance's orthodoxy, she has time to contemplate her part in all this.

So, Ms. Abbott, you spectacular fool, think long and hard on what you've helped create--the thing which has now made you its recent victim.

348John5918
apr 23, 2023, 8:40 am

>347 proximity1:

I haven't been following the Diane Abbott case in detail, but if she or Jeremy Corbyn or anyone else has been caught being anti-semitic then they deserve to be held to account. It's got nothing to do with "lefties creating monsters which then eat them".

But not everyone subscribes--by birth or otherwise--to a practice of a religious faith

But anti-semitism has nothing to do with practising one's faith. Under Nazism people were persecuted simply because they had distant Jewish ancestry, regardless of whether or not they practised Judaism or any other religious faith.

All of you were born and raised after your legal equality was written formally into law and susceptible to be vindicated in a court or other tribunal when violated

Indeed. But that doesn't automatically and by itself reduce the level of systemic racism, anti-semitism and other forms of discrimination in society.

349prosfilaes
apr 23, 2023, 10:52 am

>347 proximity1: (to paraphrase, while remaining as faithful to the spirit of the comment as the press's failure to re-cite verbatim the offending comment allows.)

You could try quoting what was said, perhaps.

what red-heads commonly experience in having a hair-colour which happens not to be particularly favoured in comparison with other hair-colours.

You understand that's an ethnic marker; that Scotland and Ireland are 10% redheads and England around half that? From the conqueror of Ireland and subjugator of Scotland, a dislike of redheads is clearly a feeling of superiority over the rest of the British Isles.

All of you were born and raised after your legal equality was written formally into law and susceptible to be vindicated in a court or other tribunal when violated.

So you're saying people don't do illegal things, or that when they do, a court will always be quick and easy to vindicate the victim. Wow, I'm glad to hear that; I was under the impression that most people just get another job after getting fired illegally, because lawyers are expensive and trials are hard and risky, and standing up for your rights can get you black-balled from a whole industry. From your comments, I wouldn't expect you to hire someone who sued their company for racial discrimination, especially if they lost the case.

350proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 23, 2023, 12:25 pm

>349 prosfilaes:

"You could try quoting what was said, perhaps."

No, I can't. None of the so-called "news media" to which I have access is gutsy--or honest, or professional--enough to relate Abbott's comment verbatim and in full. Maybe because if they had, it should not be seen as so outrageous.

Why don't you cite it for us?

... "So you're saying people don't do illegal things, or that when they do, a court will always be quick and easy to vindicate the victim."

Not necessarily. But in many cases, they will, especially if the complainant is Black and not as stupid and as dishonest as, for example, Jussie Smollett-- notice the initial public reaction to Smollett's allegations.

And, no, I'm not saying "people don't do illegal things". Smollett's own allegations are an example of someone "doing illegal things". Nor am I claiming that, when such things are done, "a court will always be quick and easy to vindicate the victim. (emphasis added.)

But, in the case of Smollett's victims--those who trusted him at his word-- the "vindication" and his exposure as a fraud was rather prompt--and some of that came from a court while in other respects, it came from news orgs' fact-checking. But the "Believe-all-Black-people" crowd didn't wait to leap to Smollett's defense.

351lriley
Bewerkt: apr 23, 2023, 1:38 pm

Not sure why at least in these times Conservatives here in the United States are so interested in having so many divergent groups as targets. Whether it's women, blacks, hispanics, immigrants, gays, transgender people, Asians, Muslims, Jews it seems like there is no end to their enemies list. It's like they have to have all this vitriol for sustenance......and then it's everyone else that's woke or everyone else that doesn't understand they're the good guys only standing up for originalist American values. Why they care so much about people who for the much greater part are just trying to improve their lives or lifestyles as if it was some kind of critique of their own.
'

352kiparsky
Bewerkt: apr 23, 2023, 2:44 pm

As usual, I find myself at a loss trying to work out exactly what >347 proximity1: is going on about - this particular post beats even their usual high standards of incoherence. Obviously, there are very strong feelings here - so much emoting! - but can anyone tell what exactly they're upset or elated about? If so, a translation into something like ordinary English would be appreciated for those of us less skilled in prox-talk.

353prosfilaes
apr 23, 2023, 4:06 pm

>350 proximity1:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/23/diane-abbott-suspended-by-labou...

That's a lot more context.

Smollett's own allegations are an example of someone "doing illegal things".

It's weird how that comes up. I was talking about how how Black people were discriminated against, and the law didn't magically change that, and you came up with crimes by a Black guy.

But the "Believe-all-Black-people" crowd didn't wait to leap to Smollett's defense.

So this story about Abbott appeared today, and for whatever reason, the letter has not been posted in full. And you're already shaping that to fit your agenda. You know, when that Trump guy said that some Antifa spray-painted his garage, I believed that some left-wing individuals had done so, giving him the benefit of the doubt, until it turned out otherwise.

354proximity1
Bewerkt: apr 24, 2023, 7:01 am

>353 prosfilaes:


Racism is black and white

Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.

It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.
Diane Abbott
House of Commons, London SW1


Owolade's observation, if accurately captured in this head-line (which is far from reliably the case with newspapers' head-lines) that “Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, is true on its face. Just as, if Owolade asserted it, using the term "racism" as a catch-all synonym for "prejudice" or "bigotry"--something which I object to as semantically and conceptually sloppy, false and misleading but which today is so common as to be the pathetic norm-- I don't subscribe to doing but which is seen and heard everywhere in English-speaking countries--is also, stretching things, but, substituting for "racism" the terms "prejudice" or "bigotry", we have, that is, more accurately stated, "Irish, Jewish and Traveller people (have, historically,) all suffer(ed) from “racism prejudice, from bigotry” (emphasis added) and that, again, is essentially correct. "Racism", "prejudice" and "bigotry" are commonly abused terms, used interchangeably. So, Abbott is typically stupid and incorrect when writing, "Racism is black and white". "Racism", of course, knows no boundaries. It comes in every skin-tone and nationality and ethnicity. So of course it's "black", "white" and all the other colors people are found in. But she's correct--and states the obvious--in writing that the terms are used interchangeably.

Abbott's observation that "many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice" is also true on its face. And, used correctly, it's also true that redheads (in Britain and America) "are not all their lives subject to racism" on account of being redheads.

"In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus." ... Maybe that was the case, if we read that strictly and literally. But if we consider "racism" as interchangeable with "prejudice" and "bigotry," then Irish people, Jews and "Travellers" (Roma) were subject to all sorts of unjust (legally unequal) treatment in America from colonial times to the enactment of the civil rights acts. The gist of Abbott's observation is that on average, the Irish, Jews and Roma had a relatively better lot than did Blacks of the same time. I think that's essentially correct. Irish immigrants to the British colonies of North America were routinely subject to prejudice for the fact that they were Irish, speaking English with what were easily-recognized as Irish accents.

Then, to this: "And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships." If true, that's only because the slave-ship transports carrying Negroes from Africa to the North American colonies--and, later, to the slave-holding United States-- typically sailed in ships which carried only such slaves in their cargo-holds. Other sailing ships carried White people --men, women and minor children-- sent into bondage and indentured servitude -- to North American colonies and, somewhat later and in far greater numbers, to Australia's penal colonies; though it's true that in relative numbers, there were considerably fewer of these people than the numbers of Blacks, commonly first sold into slavery by their "fellow Blacks", the White people were, otherwise, in every important practical respect owned as property and held and kept as slaves, the sole distinguishing feature being their skin-color and languages. So, as a matter of historical fact, on that point, Abbott is flatly mistaken. And, in the course of the transport, if it was considered necessary, these White people definitely were held manacled--though perhaps not as a routine matter. Once at sea, they weren't going anywhere except overboard. And she might even care enough to take note of and correct this error since, as with reheads, she's aware enough to make and take into account such distinctions and nuances of historical fact.

For me, the larger point and fact is that prejudice and bigotry are human universals. Whatever one's rights to equal treatment before the law, there is no way to legislate a requirement that others show a spontaneous and sincere liking for others whose habits, traits, customary behaviors are quite different from those of the majority of society and which clearly "set them apart" from them.

But, though stupid and sloppy in her statements, I consider it's absurd to carry on the Labour party's present Maoist-orthodoxy by giving Abbott "the treatment" for having written the letter--as published or in more offensive terms in earlier unpublished drafts. But it's so very in keeping with the idiocy which now reigns in British party politics and morons such as Abbott did a great deal to create and promote that idiocy.

355John5918
apr 24, 2023, 11:49 pm

A rather more nuanced take on the Diane Abbott story from the Guardian.

The lesson from the Diane Abbott furore: neither false equivalence nor hierarchies of victimhood help us

As the political row intensifies, I fear nuance will be lost. This is too sensitive an issue to address without care and precision...