grumpyduck
grumpyduck's JournalPrioritizing things after the election: accountability by public officials.
I don't want to derail the other thread about priorities, but it seems to me that one thing the government needs to do is figure out a way to make public officials accountable for their actions. Like the ones who ignored Congressional subpoenas, like the ones who acted like what they are (assholes) during hearings, and so on and on. Seems like right now the only recourse for much of this is to suck it up and maybe file a lawsuit and then wait a couple of years for the bullshit to repeat again.
It's getting fucking ridiculous.
Facebook: is it time for a tin hat theory?
There's a fair amount of stuff online about how some of FB's early investors were Russian companies, and a couple of days ago there was an item here in DU about how Mark's stock in the company is "special" in the sense that it allows him to make major decisions all on his own.
Added to that is FB's refusal to use the same rules for political material as for everyone else, and then there are the recent complaints by employees.
So, is it even just remotely possible that 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = tin hat theory?
Re: the gestapo -- people can be so stupid.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see an organized effort to get rid of these nazi thugs by harassing and embarrassing them. Fire hoses come to mind. That, and somehow arranging for a huge skein of geese to fly overhead and take a collective dump on them.
But given the nature of trumputin's minions, I also believe that there might be a plan here to escalate the situation to give hair furor an excuse to do something like declare martial law around election time and somehow fuck it up. Something along those lines.
Right now the protests are giving the gestapo an excuse to hang around, and giving "himmler" an excuse to send out more teams. If people just said fuck you and stayed home, the gestapo would have nothing to do and eventually get pulled. People can protest from home just as well in creative ways.
IMHO, the protesters are playing right into "himmler's" hand.
And yes, I left capitalization out on purpose.
I am so fed up with the MSM.
Granted, for them it's all about which stories are "news-worthy" because they generate ad revenue, but really, do they have to jump on every distraction the current regime unloads on us?
A few days ago I was thinking about starting a YouTube channel, a "back door news" kind of thing to cover the stuff the MSM isn't covering. No spin, no opinion, no talking heads telling us what to think. Just plain facts. Like is anyone in Congress looking into the Russian bounty story? Like, is the shooting outside a funeral home in Chicago, just days after 45 threatened to send the Gestapo out there a coincidence? Maybe it was, but the question lingers. There are lots of sources out there for information.
Unfortunately, I know it could never happen. You need to be objective to do this, and I take this shit too personally and would probably end up living on antidepressants and anger-management stuff.
I had a call the other day from a long-time friend who's a Republican. We don't talk politics, but discovered we both detest all those talking heads telling us what to think. Which is why we don't spend our time on them.
Fox News: the new snake oil peddlers (with a bit of history)
An OP here this morning about Laura Ingraham's tweet about Biden and Toronto got me thinking.
There's a fair amount of information online about snake oil and its salespeople back in the 1800s to early 1900s. Turns out that Chinese indentured immigrants who came over to work on the railroads brought some of their medicines with them, including a compound, made from water snake fat, that actually helped relieve pain.
An entrepreneur (so to speak) named Clark Stanley seized on the concept and began to produce his own liniment. This was tested and found to contain no water-snake oil (the snakes used by the Chinese weren't around in the U.S.), but to consist of "mineral oil, 1% fatty oil (assumed to be tallow), capsaicin from chili peppers, turpentine, and camphor." Yup, turpentine.
And here's where I think Fox News fits in.
The marketing plan (again, so to speak) for Stanley's product consisted of hawking it to people he considered too dumb to question it. With the frontier opening and people scattered all over (and no internet), he probably figured he could make a killing selling it at scattered locations and get away before someone realized the stuff was useless or even dangerous. Then, of course, Hollywood caught on to "snake oil salesmen" and the rest is history.
But for Fox News to push some of the stuff they push, and to expect that their viewers will accept it, tells me that they believe their viewers are too dumb to question their material, or to go elsewhere for other takes on the same stories, or to call B.S. They want to spew their spins and expect people to swallow them.
Granted, some Fox viewers may only watch Fox, and we at DU tend to believe that most of them are die-hard conservatives. But I've known a number of them over the years, and I can tell you they could smell bullshit a mile away, regardless of which side it was spewed by. I say again: regardless of which side it was spewed by.
So, for me, being expected to swallow bullshit by a "news" network without a second glance is just plain galaxy-class offensive. It gives me a hint as to what Fox thinks of their viewers. And I really want to believe that some Fox viewers do smell the bullshit.
Are some in the GOP feeling like Dr. Frankenstein?
Some of the recent news clips and reports would seem to indicate they do.
Karma sucks.
[Edit] Like they created a monster that's biting them in the ass in an election year?
Cause and effect: say what?
Ever since I was a kid, I've been fascinated by people who don't seem to have a sense of cause and effect: "If I do this, that may happen." I've known a lot of them, and many were in the "Well, it may, but it shouldn't" camp.
But I seem to be noticing this more and more today -- stuff like cops doing stuff with their body cameras rolling, or people flying off the handle while being videoed, or road rage, or just dumb stuff. So I don't know if I'm just seeing more of it because of the internet, or because it's happening more and more. Or both.
But I just find it fascinating.
Indoor fireworks.
I wanted to do a video on this, but know I won't get around to it:
Inflate a small paper bag, like a lunch bag.
Burst it just as someone lights a match.
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Member since: Sat Dec 16, 2017, 01:51 PMNumber of posts: 6,233