June 30, 2016

I agree, with one caveat

I understand that some horse trading and pissing off of your friends may indeed need to be done, but, when the "pragmatic" types come to the table, they need to acknowledge that the rich have in effect damaged the "horse trading" mechanism they used to rely on. It used to be that even a die hard conservative realized that he or she was accountable to people that were watching them and expecting RESULTS, which meant they realized they had to give a little something, a few slices of bread. Come election time, they could tell the voters "Would you rather I lost the whole loaf?" Even the ideological realize a half loaf beats starving. What used to define America is that, however ideologically heated we were, we realized there were bills to be paid, and that we did not want to emulate the political crusades of Europe where we got high off the conflict, but ended up hungry.

However, especially after Citizens United, you have a breed of congressperson who knows they really do not have to achieve anything as long as their backers keep shoveling out the money, buying the commercials, and making sure the right pundits and megachurch clergy keep banging the drums. Look at Ted Cruz. In a saner age, someone who even THOUGHT of having America default would have been ruined. Here, he came very close to winning the nomination, outlasting the aristocrats like Jeb Bush, only to be beaten out by someone who does not even PRETEND to DISLIKE the idea of defaulting, who advocates it as something that is a secret of his success. It is not that Trump is merely and example of all this is wrong with the GOP, it is that those who want to emulate him know that there are a bunch of robber barons willing to pay them to imitate Trump. It says a lot that in just four years, Mitt Romney has gone from being Obama's main opponent to someone that, in his own right, could get a respectable amount of hate on Fox News.

All I am saying is this, yes I know our Democrats need to make sausage, and to quote Bismarck, making those sausages is not pretty. However, in light of the fact that some of those GOP "co workers" at the sausage factory are begin hired to sabotage the process, I would expect them to start from a higher position towards the left, so that by the time the process is done, we end up somewhere like a 4 to 6 out of ten, ten being leftism as defined by FDR. As is, we start the negotiation already saying "I know we wont get anything more than a three, and by the time the GOP applies its saboteurs, we end up at -1.

June 24, 2016

what we need to make brexit about

It is no accident that Brexit was done by a lot of angry white voters who felt shafted. It is not an accident that just liker in America, the cities voted left, the suburbs voted right.

WE know Britain is going to suffer, we need to tie home the fact that brexit and trump voters are the same, and that when you do not make a bunch of loudmouth bigots SHUT THE HELL UP, they wreck the nation.

June 24, 2016

pro Brexit UK, Trump Supporters, Putin, China, Isis, and the return of old demons

We can all wave fingers at something they do and say "that's awful" and indeed, it often is, despite the fact that many can easily pull up something we do and say "that's awful, and indeed, it is."

However, the overall thread that binds these phenomena together is the fact that once, for all of it's faults, the idea of Democratic values, the idea that one person was a citizen and had rights and responsibilities as a citizen, was considered a desired ideal. Now, in all these groups I have mentioned there is an obvious link, and a not so obvious link.

The link is that these people have lost faith in democracy and the state as a means of curing ills and providing stability. Yes Putin and Beijing can wave every communist flag they want, but they do have bought into the fact that the strongest people should exploit the weaker people, and that if the lower classes know what is good for them, they will either be shut up or be shutup. Isis revive atrocities that should have been lond dead, and yet they attract more followers every day. Of Trump, little need be said, save that he is also reviving old old things that most Americans thought were left behind in the 20th century. Of Brexit, it says a lot that London voted against it, but that it's support are from "middle england" aka conservative England.

And these is the NOT so obvious link. The very people who democracy and liberalism was founded on reject it. The very people who were the "populists" are the very people championing the rich men who do not even pretend to put away the handcuffs and clubs, but instead promise more of it. The common people, so bereft of strength, see the fact that this person is a THUG as an asset, i.e. someone who will beat up other thugs, even if he is certain to beat up locals too.

It is easy to say "dammit those egghead liberal technocrat wonks screwed up again by not making the message clear." and yes, that it true, but the real horror is that the so called "common man" the person upon whom the idea of free,liberal governments were made, has shown themselves as corrupt, and therefor, willing to promote corruption. This means that the demogouges are on the rise.

June 22, 2016

a question adressed to the UK Duers: Re brexit

two actually:

1) how likely do you think it is that England leaves the Eu?

2) If so, then what happens?

June 18, 2016

LGBT pride flag raised after Orlando shooting 'unbearable' for Christian employee,

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/baybuzz/lgbt-pride-flag-raised-after-orlando-shooting-unbearable-for-christian/2282099

OK first off, if you work for the county, LGBT people pay your salary.

Second, this is the same county where we have to drive past that big old ugly confederate flag on 1-4

Third, this is one of the counties that were targeted in the recently defanged Civil Rights act because they had one of the highest incidents of lynchings.

Simply put, how dare this person who exists at our whim dare to be offended and demand power. No one owes your religion kowtowing, especially as it has rarely respected the rights of others.

Warning, the comments section is a sewer, mostly aimed at an openly gay council member.

June 13, 2016

Omar Mateen: Angry, pious 'lost soul' driven to kill

http://www.tampabay.com/news/omar-mateen-angry-pious-lost-soul-driven-to-kill/2281430

I fell this is an important article because it has a lot of the actual facts about Mateen, much of which will be blown over in all the hype.

Outside of that, several things stand out IMHO.

"Public records and interviews with neighbors, coworkers and family friends paint a picture of a man who had become increasingly withdrawn from the world. Having weathered job loss and a broken marriage, he was the father of a young boy. He had begun to act more and more devout in recent years but still was capable of sudden vulgarity and flashes of anger at gay people, blacks, Jews and women."

"Mateen's ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, described him as unstable and abusive during a Sunday news conference in Colorado, where she now lives. "

Now here come some chilling parts:
"He took classes at Indian River State College in Fort Pierce and in October 2006 got a job as a prison guard for the Florida Department of Corrections. He didn't last long in the position. Records show he left the job in April 2007 for an "administrative matter unrelated to misconduct."

Now, I can tell you, as a former employee of the Florida Department of Corrections, it takes EFFORT to get fired as a guard, namely because the department needs any warm body willing to get getting stabbed, raped, or have a gang member kill you on the orders of some guy writing a coded letter from the inside. This is the same department where officers would probably have these tied knot key chains that would act as nooses. The behavior was blatantly encouraged.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2001/sep/15/racist-knot-of-florida-guards/

so for this person to have gotten canned, in a job that frankly encourages bullies, says a LOT. Throw in wife beating, and you showcase a nasty character.

"G4S placed him at the St. Lucie County Courthouse, manning the metal detectors at the front, said Daniel Gilroy, a former coworker. Before long, Mateen was involved in an incident with a black colleague, Gilroy said, and was sent to man the gate at the PGA Village neighborhood in St. Lucie West."

"He said Mateen would smack things in the guard house when he got angry, openly lusted after female guests of the country club and used slurs to describe gay people, blacks, Jews and women. "He never used other words to describe them," Gilroy said. "Oh, he hated women. He thought they were objects, he thought they shouldn't be allowed to drive, he thought he should have his pick."

So, what do we have here, the sort of person typically recruited by religious extremists, a person whose sense of manhood was bruised, who was used to taking it out on women, blacks, gays, and who felt he was not given respect. He was someone mired in the abusive, violent culture of security, whose empathy was probably already ground thin. Someone who had no thought about what his act would do to his young son.

and exactly the sort of person that would have no problem buying guns in Florida, hell, this person was trusted with being a Corrections Officer and a Security guard, despite a number of red flags. Does beating your wife mean nothing on a background check?

I focus here because yes,this is easily politicized, by both sides, at the expense of the LGBT in Florida who not only know there are plenty of people of all creeds who could have done this, but that there are probably several wannabee warriors who want to be next. There is an ugly gun culture in America, but in Florida it has blossomed and rotted, and it knows how to target desperate people (the people who want to prove their manhood) against desperate people (the people group one feels they have a right to oppress with said gun.) These are the same people who defended the right of George Zimmerman to sell the gun that killed a young black man.

June 10, 2016

the meat of the matter

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.

And that is exactly why the current pseudo-center/would have been Republican in the 80's crew is doubling down hard; they know that people have seen through them. They can no longer pretend to be some helpless character tied to the tracks while those mean old republicans hide all the goods. They know that they have been the team that throws every game and gets a paycheck from the Rich men, who go ahead and say "buy your people a little consolation prize, and if you can, find a way I can still make money off it." Whether it is the snark factory at MSNBC, or the gang of people on DU who seriously defend "reforming" Social Security and other programs, or defend Democrats supporting GOP policies because "whacha gonna do, it's a red state", or "hey, the kid was threatening, it has nothing to do with his skin color", whether it is any of these and ten thousand candy coated lies, we know the truth.

And these people know that the next step is replacing them with people that will at least TRY to become COMPETENT. Call it outsourcing, save that we are just tossing people OUT.

June 9, 2016

IF this part is followed

No personal attacks or flaming
Do not personally attack, insult, flame, threaten, bully, harass, stalk, negatively call-out, ascribe ugly ulterior motives to, or make baseless claims about any member of this community. Do not post in a manner that is hostile, abusive, or aggressive toward any member of this community.

I will be pleasantly surprised. However, let's be honest,half the jury traffic is because this rule has been run over more times than a cigarette butt on an interstate.

June 8, 2016

the real truth is

and I might as well say Trigger warning....


The truth is, many of the people in America believe that their own white virtue somehow made the nation prosperous, and that the inclusion of brown people ruined it. Granted, they ignore the fact that if Africans did not pick the cotton years ago, or that if Latinos did not pick fruit now, they would be poorer. They do not need to articulate it, they just need to believe it, and sadly both the media and the churches know exactly how to make sure they never think hard enough to dispel the illusion.

It is not an accident that trump is praised by Putin, the same person that is manipulating the Brexit folks, the marine Le Pens, and the Germans, who after all, turned out to be as hateful of brown people as the Yanks they used to look down on. Worldwide, those who want to use Whiteness as a default power setting are losing, and sorry to say, they may very well be willing to start a Third World War and a second Civil War if they think they will either win or just go out in a Blaze of Glory.

June 7, 2016

until such time as we can get China

to avoid shielding them, nothing we do will work. The Kims know that China to them is what Israel is to us and Serbia is to the Russians, the kid brother can get away with murder. However, if China sees the Kims as a liability, they can drop them, and then the Kims will know true vulnerability.

Of course, this also means we may need to plan to get out of South Korea, which frankly does nto want us. Good, all those people who want "unification" can learn what it means, and the world will know that sometimes, when America leaves, it means you get the death and misery that we were the only ones holding back. Let Atlas Shrug, and see how clever the South Koreans are as Kim gnaws Seoul into the dead husk Pyongyang is.