REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 13, 2024 08:08
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PAGE 9 of 138

Friday, January 26, 2018 6:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The Art of the Broken Deal

“L’état, c’est moi,” declared Louis XIV: “I am the state.” Louis was an absolute monarch, whose word was law, and serving France meant being personally loyal to Louis himself.

There were obvious advantages to such a system: no ambiguity about where authority lay, no time wasted in legislative debates, no need to cobble coalitions together to get things done. Yet Louis’s France, Europe’s most powerful state, was fought to a standstill by England and the Netherlands — a constitutional monarchy (after the Glorious Revolution of 1688) and a republic, with a combined population only a fraction as large.

And in the Anglo-French wars that followed, France generally got the worst of it, while sliding ever deeper into fiscal crisis — a crisis that eventually helped precipitate the French Revolution.

Why was an absolute monarchy weaker, in practice, than quarrelsome republics? One reason was that the very absence of limits on the ruler undermined French credibility: Whatever the king might promise, he could always change his mind. Not incidentally, France repeatedly defaulted on its debt, while post-1688 England, its king effectively constrained by Parliament, never did. As a result, England was much more successful at wartime borrowing, and paid much lower interest rates.

Which brings us, as all things do these days, to Donald Trump — a man who has evident contempt for the rule of law and who, like Louis, sees no distinction between loyalty to the nation and loyalty to himself. The main difference is that Louis seems to have at least tried to understand the issues.

On Friday night, something unprecedented happened: The U.S. government shut down temporarily even though the same party controls both Congress and the White House. Why? Because when it comes to Trump, a deal isn’t a deal — it’s just words he feels free to ignore a few days later.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, seemed to have at least a short-term agreement with Trump, only to see it pulled back a few hours later. Working with Trump is “like negotiating with Jell-O,” Schumer fumed.

But what did he expect? Trump’s whole business career has been a series of betrayals — failed business ventures from which he personally profited while others, whether they were Trump University students, vendors or creditors, ended up holding the bag. And he hasn’t grown a bit in office, unless you count that mysterious extra inch in height since 2016.

Think, for example, about the international consequences of a U.S. president whose word can’t be trusted. Who can we count on to be a reliable ally, when no country knows whether America will stand by it if it needs help?

During the 2016 campaign Trump openly talked about forcing the nation’s creditors — like creditors of some of his businesses — to accept less than they were owed. Does this government have any reserve of financial credibility if something should go wrong? Probably not.

In other words, Trump’s unreliability is a big problem, over and above the substance of his policies.

The result is that promises from the U.S. government are now as worthless as those from a tinpot dictator. We don’t yet know how high a price we’ll pay for that loss of credibility, but it probably won’t be small.

www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/opinion/art-deal-trump-shutdown.html

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Friday, January 26, 2018 7:22 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Absolute Proof Russia Was Behind 2016 Election Hacking
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/01/new-report-says-dutch-have-abso
lute-proof-russia-was-behind-2016-election-hacking
/

The Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant (“The People’s Paper”) has quite the intriguing story today. Apparently AIVD, the Dutch equivalent of the CIA, broke into the computer systems of a nondescript building in Moscow a few years ago. They had no idea what was there, but eventually they figured it out. It was the workplace of Cozy Bear, Russia’s most infamous hacking group:

That’s how the AIVD becomes witness to the Russian hackers harassing and penetrating the leadership of the Democratic Party, transferring thousands of emails and documents. It won’t be the last time they alert their American counterparts. And yet, it will be months before the United States realize what this warning means: that with these hacks the Russians have interfered with the American elections. And the AIVD hackers have seen it happening before their very eyes.

….The Cozy Bear hackers are in a space in a university building near the Red Square. The group’s composition varies, usually about ten people are active. . . .

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Friday, January 26, 2018 7:32 AM

THGRRI


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Absolute Proof Russia Was Behind 2016 Election Hacking
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/01/new-report-says-dutch-have-abso
lute-proof-russia-was-behind-2016-election-hacking
/

The Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant (“The People’s Paper”) has quite the intriguing story today. Apparently AIVD, the Dutch equivalent of the CIA, broke into the computer systems of a nondescript building in Moscow a few years ago. They had no idea what was there, but eventually they figured it out. It was the workplace of Cozy Bear, Russia’s most infamous hacking group:

That’s how the AIVD becomes witness to the Russian hackers harassing and penetrating the leadership of the Democratic Party, transferring thousands of emails and documents. It won’t be the last time they alert their American counterparts. And yet, it will be months before the United States realize what this warning means: that with these hacks the Russians have interfered with the American elections. And the AIVD hackers have seen it happening before their very eyes.

….The Cozy Bear hackers are in a space in a university building near the Red Square. The group’s composition varies, usually about ten people are active. . . .



Try telling this to rappy and some others here. He still thinks there is no proof russia interfered in our elections. How is it possible after all this time, and all the intel reports, along with all the media coverage regarding this, for someone to not believe it? Not to believe they are still at it when everything points to they are?

It's not, so trolls they must be.


T

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Friday, January 26, 2018 8:31 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Absolute Proof Russia Was Behind 2016 Election Hacking

by

www.motherjones.com



lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, January 26, 2018 9:05 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Absolute Proof Russia Was Behind 2016 Election Hacking

by

www.motherjones.com



lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Today’s Dilbert comic was written especially for 6ixStringJack http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-01-26

6ixStringJack: “Dilbert is a total narcissist. He refuses to admit when he’s wrong.”

Asok: “How would this situation look any different to you if he’s actually right most of the time and you’re too dumb to know it?”

6ixStringJack: “I don’t understand your point.”

Asok: “According to you, that makes me a narcissist.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 26, 2018 2:24 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Trump’s disengaged from the details of big questions like NAFTA — “I may terminate NAFTA, I may not,” he says profoundly. He can’t even describe his own negotiating positions in the immigration standoff accurately.

Listening to Trump talk is interesting from an entertainment perspective (he did once host a popular television show), but it conveys no information about the world, the American government, or the Trump administration’s policies. If interviewer wanted to help his viewers understand what’s going on, he’d have been better off interviewing someone else.

Trump keeps getting facts wrong. He’s holding the office but not doing the job.

In a fairly typically Trumpian gesture, one of the president’s first remarks explains that most people don’t appreciate the significance of Apple’s commitment to invest $350 billion in US manufacturing facilities. Most people probably don’t appreciate this because it isn’t true.


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Friday, January 26, 2018 7:11 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Absolute Proof Russia Was Behind 2016 Election Hacking

by

www.motherjones.com


lol

lol.

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Friday, January 26, 2018 7:47 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Absolute Proof Russia Was Behind 2016 Election Hacking

by

www.motherjones.com



lol

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Today’s Dilbert comic was written especially for 6ixStringJack http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-01-26

6ixStringJack: “Dilbert is a total narcissist. He refuses to admit when he’s wrong.”

Asok: “How would this situation look any different to you if he’s actually right most of the time and you’re too dumb to know it?”

6ixStringJack: “I don’t understand your point.”

Asok: “According to you, that makes me a narcissist.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly



The fact that the irony of your post is completely lost on you amuses me.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, January 27, 2018 9:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

The fact that the irony of your post is completely lost on you amuses me.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Funny guy! So articulate! Even your very first comment from 2006 shows you are intelligent, far smarter than me. You deserve to be happy with your life, contented with all you have accomplished. http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=2&tid=21787&mid=326575
#326575


But all those additional comments you made over the years after that first one shows you are not happy. And it is not really Washington DC’s fault. Your sense of direction might not be that accurate. Your GPS system programmed by the GOP has been sending you along too many of the wrong right-hand forks in the road and you find yourself facing a dead end. Or maybe it is lake. I saw a picture in today’s newspaper about a guy who drove into a lake because the GPS (or is it the GOP?) told him to. Funny guy thinks he can sue the GPS for misleading him when, instead, he should have been using his head and his eyes.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 27, 2018 9:35 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


A cunning adviser to Trump has for some time kept the world from war:
“According to the law, I have to give you the nuclear codes, but it doesn't say anywhere that they can't be hidden in the answer to a Sudoku ...”
www.gocomics.com/wumo/2018/01/27

“There are responsible, competent, powerful people guided by a sense of duty who can save us. These people just have to act with the utmost stability and sobriety, which is a better tactic than trying to prove that Trump is guided by insanity.” - Stop Asking What’s Wrong With Trump
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/asking-about-trumps-mental
-fitness-is-the-wrong-question.html


Working Overtime Because Trump Tried To Fire Mueller



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 27, 2018 4:36 PM

THGRRI


As Republicans Attack The DOJ And FBI, Sessions Vows To Stand Up To 'Unfair' Criticism

WASHINGTON ? With his Justice Department and FBI facing broad attacks from some of his former colleagues on Capitol Hill, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Friday that he’ll stand up to any “unfair” attacks on the men and women of the Justice Department he now oversees.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/as-republicans-attack-the-doj-
and-fbi-sessions-vows-to-stand-up-to-unfair-criticism/ar-BBIhFFE?li=AA5a8k&ocid=spartanntp


We'll see

T

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Saturday, January 27, 2018 4:58 PM

THGRRI

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Saturday, January 27, 2018 7:06 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

The fact that the irony of your post is completely lost on you amuses me.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Funny guy! So articulate! Even your very first comment from 2006 shows you are intelligent, far smarter than me. You deserve to be happy with your life, contented with all you have accomplished. http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=2&tid=21787&mid=326575
#326575


But all those additional comments you made over the years after that first one shows you are not happy. And it is not really Washington DC’s fault. Your sense of direction might not be that accurate. Your GPS system programmed by the GOP has been sending you along too many of the wrong right-hand forks in the road and you find yourself facing a dead end. Or maybe it is lake. I saw a picture in today’s newspaper about a guy who drove into a lake because the GPS (or is it the GOP?) told him to. Funny guy thinks he can sue the GPS for misleading him when, instead, he should have been using his head and his eyes.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly



I don't know why you think I've been programmed by the GOP. If you're capable of finding my first post here, you should probably be able to spend some time in the RWED in those early days and see how little I cared for the GOP and GWB and government in general.

I haven't changed much since then. The entire country has gone nuts in the last 12 years.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 5:45 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I haven't changed much since then. The entire country has gone nuts in the last 12 years.

No, you haven't. You were bitching about the movie Serenity back then and you have been bitching about The Last Jedi now.

The USA hasn't changed, either. The USA has not gone nuts in the last 12 years. If you were alive during the Vietnam War, you'd know that the pro-war people were already completely nuts in 1968. Those nuts were the majority and they elected Nixon twice.

The nuts never gave any thought to the kill ratio of 20 Vietnamese for every American. The nuts never understood that the Vietnamese must accept 10,000,000 dead, since there was no place else for the Vietnamese to go back to, but America would not accept 500,000 dead Americans (remember the 20 to 1 kill ratio?) which is more than WWII. Americans could retreat back to North America at anytime, but the Vietnamese had nowhere to go.

Fifty years ago America had a majority of voters who were completely nuts and, although they couldn't love their Richard Nixon, the nuts voted for him because he was the man who would give them a victory in Vietnam. The nuts' goals are nuts and the nuts backed Nixon who couldn't possibly deliver on his promises. And the nuts hated anybody who told them truthfully they could not have what their hearts desired because the nuts were not willing to pay the cost in dead nuts. The nuts, even today, are not willing to pay the cost for getting their dreams, even though now the cost is measured in taxes, not dead Americans.
www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 8:11 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I haven't changed much since then. The entire country has gone nuts in the last 12 years.

No, you haven't. You were bitching about the movie Serenity back then and you have been bitching about The Last Jedi now.



Wow. That is a really stupid observation. Apples to Oranges.

What are you trying to say. I hated what Serenity meant to the possibility of bringing back Firefly, compared to how I have no interest in watching any new Star Wars movies because they are a Disney cash grab and are full of identity politics...

Somehow this explains how I vehemently denounced nearly every move that GWB made, yet I don't jump on the Hate Trump bandwagon?

What exactly is your point here again?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 9:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I haven't changed much since then. The entire country has gone nuts in the last 12 years.

No, you haven't. You were bitching about the movie Serenity back then and you have been bitching about The Last Jedi now.



Wow. That is a really stupid observation. Apples to Oranges.

What are you trying to say. I hated what Serenity meant to the possibility of bringing back Firefly, compared to how I have no interest in watching any new Star Wars movies because they are a Disney cash grab and are full of identity politics...

Somehow this explains how I vehemently denounced nearly every move that GWB made, yet I don't jump on the Hate Trump bandwagon?

What exactly is your point here again?

The essence of it is that your understanding of what was wrong with Serenity in June 25, 2005 is as wrong as Vietnam war-mongers understanding of why they weren't going to get their victory over the Vietnamese. Republicans always think their personal problems can be solved with moderate amounts of effort in reasonable amounts of time at an unexceptional expense. They get really angry when told that their half-ass plans with weak efforts and too low a budget will end with failure. Then the Republicans blame the government, not themselves.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 10:26 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


LOL...

Remember the Dilbert comic strip that you were projecting on to me?

You telling me that my opinion on a movie is wrong is a perfect illustration of said irony.

Halfwit.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 12:40 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
LOL...

Remember the Dilbert comic strip that you were projecting on to me?

You telling me that my opinion on a movie is wrong is a perfect illustration of said irony.

Halfwit.

6ixStringJack, you've dumped your guts here at fireflyfans.net time after time over the years. Doing that is silly unless you use your experience to make a point. But you don't use it to make a point. You just endlessly bitch about the government.

Luckily for you, you could immediately fix your life without fixing government if you would make an about-face, which is easy to do, except for stubborn people, by the way. (I'll tell you where to read the books, one book more complicated than the other, but will you understand? **) You need a mirror to look at your back to see the "Kick Me" sign you have scotch-taped to yourself.

In other news:

“Don’t forget, we’re still in two different wars that I started.” - George Bush

Actor Will Ferrell revived his portrayal of President George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live to deliver a reminder about the 43rd president, whose approval ratings have skyrocketed recently: Just because Trump is a bad president doesn’t mean Bush was a good one.

“I’m suddenly popular AF,” Ferrell, who hosted SNL on Saturday, said. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Man, I wish George W. Bush was still our president right about now. So I just wanted to address my fellow Americans tonight and remind you guys that I was really bad.”

Sixty-one percent of Americans now say they have a favorable view of Bush, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS released this week, including 54 percent of Democrats. When he left office in 2009, his favorability was at just 33 percent overall and 11 percent among Democrats. This is a perfect example of how easily Americans, including Democrats, forget precisely what went wrong in the past, which makes it impossible to avoid nearly the same mistakes in the present.

** hash: ba92ba485468002194c43d5125d5775189c8ed1f
and hash: 21b873817a563437c72601267fdd556c29386f37
Add Torrent Link to qBittorrent www.qbittorrent.org

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 7:35 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Really man, I have no idea what you're on about. From the looks of it, I'm the only one who has improved their life at all here in the one year of my sobriety. I'm not going to bother bringing up again all the ways it has been drastically improving since I hit my depths. Everybody else here seems to be static characters.

I've got a healthy distrust in the general Government. I'm unapologetic of that.

You, on the other hand, seem to believe that the Democrats are everything good and right with the world while the GOP is the exact opposite.

Comparing my dislike of what the movie Serenity did to Firefly, to Americans voting for Nixon and a 20/1 kill ratio in Vietnam. Just who the hell do you think you are anyway?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 7:50 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


I will tell you what I am up to by quoting a parody of 12 Rules for Life:

#4 Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not the useless person you are today
Face it, you’re never going to be that smart, so don’t compare yourself to someone who is.

www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/28/12-rules-for-life-an-antidote-to
-chaos-by-jordan-b-peterson-digested-read


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Really man, I have no idea what you're on about. From the looks of it, I'm the only one who has improved their life at all here in the one year of my sobriety. I'm not going to bother bringing up again all the ways it has been drastically improving since I hit my depths. Everybody else here seems to be static characters.

I've got a healthy distrust in the general Government. I'm unapologetic of that.

You, on the other hand, seem to believe that the Democrats are everything good and right with the world while the GOP is the exact opposite.

Comparing my dislike of what the movie Serenity did to Firefly, to Americans voting for Nixon and a 20/1 kill ratio in Vietnam. Just who the hell do you think you are anyway?

Do Right, Be Right. :)


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Sunday, January 28, 2018 8:31 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


One thing that I'm not and that you are is a real asshole, Second.

Why is a supposedly mega-rich guy like you coming to a forum with about 8 regular people left and continually taking personal jabs at them when your argument isn't going well?

Look at your replies to me here in the last 48 hours on this thread. You haven't actually said anything to me other than insults.

Face it. You're a bully. That's all you are.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 8:41 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:

In other news:

“Don’t forget, we’re still in two different wars that I started.” - George Bush

Actor Will Ferrell revived his portrayal of President George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live to deliver a reminder about the 43rd president, whose approval ratings have skyrocketed recently: Just because Trump is a bad president doesn’t mean Bush was a good one.

“I’m suddenly popular AF,” Ferrell, who hosted SNL on Saturday, said. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Man, I wish George W. Bush was still our president right about now. So I just wanted to address my fellow Americans tonight and remind you guys that I was really bad.”

Sixty-one percent of Americans now say they have a favorable view of Bush, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS released this week, including 54 percent of Democrats. When he left office in 2009, his favorability was at just 33 percent overall and 11 percent among Democrats. This is a perfect example of how easily Americans, including Democrats, forget precisely what went wrong in the past, which makes it impossible to avoid nearly the same mistakes in the present.



And I really do hope you're not throwing me in that box, Second.

Obama is still the worst, and I'm just as against GWB as I ever was. In fact, I blame the Obama administration squarely on the GWB administration. One would have never happened without the other one happening first.

I'm glad the article you quoted threw Democrats in there as well.

Anybody saying "Man, I wish GWB were president right now" are just as bad as anybody saying "Man, I wish Obama were president right now". It doesn't surprise me that even Democrats have a 54% favorability to GWB now.

It's a gross statistic. Gross as in filthy, as in I need to take a shower after reading it.

People, even Democrats, would say this today, knowing all of the very, very bad things that the GWB administration DID do... yet at this point in time there isn't any actual evidence of anything Trump has supposedly done other than being an asshole on Twitter.




And regarding learning from previous mistakes...

You don't have to go back 10 years to see how people forget the lessons. They're already forgetting the daily lessons that are being pounded into their heads as we speak.

Talk to me when the Left votes in a celebrity for President in 2020. It's worked out amazingly so far for Trump in 2016. It will work out even better with Oprah and The Rock in 2020!

[insert definition of insanity here]

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, January 28, 2018 8:56 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


I see you're trying to engage SECOND in an actual discussion, Jack. Let me know if you have any luck. Because as far as I can tell, SECOND is here to bitch, moan, troll, and feed his ego. Nothing more.




HAS IT NOT OCCURRED TO YOU BY NOW THAT IF YOU HAVE TO RESORT TO LOGICAL FALLACIES AND TROLLING YOUR SO-CALLED ARGUMENTS ARE LIES?

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Monday, January 29, 2018 6:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
I see you're trying to engage SECOND in an actual discussion, Jack. Let me know if you have any luck. Because as far as I can tell, SECOND is here to bitch, moan, troll, and feed his ego. Nothing more.

As if you're being paid by the word, you guys are big on engaging in discussion, but your "discussions" never amount to anything useful or interesting. It always devolves, year after year and thread after thread, into your hurt feelings or your angry denouncements. Except in your imagination, this is not the right place for engaging in something so civilized as debate about the issues of the day. Firefly is the wrong TV show for what you want to do. Maybe you ought to try debating with fans of Star Trek Discovery? I hear it has more complexity and uncertainty about good and evil.

Before reading the following story, the words “bad faith” need explanation. Some examples of bad faith include: a company representative who negotiates with union workers while secretly having no intent of compromising; a prosecutor who argues a legal position that he secretly knows to be false; an insurer who uses language and reasoning which are deliberately misleading in order to deny a claim. And now to the story:

Fascism Is Speaking In Bad Faith
http://miniver.blogspot.com/2017/12/fascism-is-speaking-in-bad-faith.h
tml

Labels: antifa, BS, Trumpism

It is important to understand that fascism is not a political ideology in the same way that communism is. Communists have a detailed policy program which they espouse and pursue. Fascists do not; their policy prescriptions are often outright incoherent.

Fascism is better understood as a political method. And a key part of that method is speaking in bad faith: falsely describing what they want and care about, as a way of disrupting the process of political discussion itself. The vigor with which fascists do this is difficult to understand unless one has encountered it.

I have talked about this before, when talking about Milo Yiannopoulos, the Alt Right, and free speech:

We should not defend that as free speech; we need to recognize it as an attack on free speech. .... This is a method and it has a purpose. If we look at the history of far right movements, we can recognize the basic pattern. These movements are not simply opposed to liberalism-as-in-the-Democratic-Party; they are opposed to liberalism-as-in-liberal-democracy. They oppose universal human rights and equality. They aim to discredit liberalism by turning its systems against itself, making them impracticable, perverting the meaning of words like “free speech”.

In this we see a continuity between the fascists of the early 20th century and the fascists and para-fascists of today. Sartre's Reflections on the Jewish question describes this pattern in a troublingly familiar way.
Quote:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
This is not restricted to the specifics of anti-semitism. It is a general rhetorical style. Here is Harry Frankfurt, the author of the wonderful short book On Bullshit summing up the method.
Quote:

The distinction between lying and bullshitting is fairly clear. The liar asserts something which he himself believes to be false. He deliberately misrepresents what he takes to be the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, is not constrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. In making his assertion, he is indifferent to whether what he is says is true or false. His goal is not to report facts. It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of his listeners in a certain way.
I bet you can guess who Frankfurt was talking about in the essay where he said that. (“Donald Trump Is BS, Says Expert in BS” http://time.com/4321036/donald-trump-bs/ )

To get a feel for how this works in governance, I vigorously recommend the (exceedingly fun) party game Secret Hitler ( http://secrethitler.com/ ), in which players pretend to be a parliament where fascists are trying to pass legislation and get their leader elected Chancellor. In the game, the fascists know who each other are but the liberals don't; this makes the gameplay include the fascists lying about their intentions and pretending to be liberals. The player who is their secret leader tries the hardest to appear to be a liberal. The game is structured such that the fascists are always outnumbered. But they usually win.

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Monday, January 29, 2018 7:56 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Projecting:

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
As if you're being paid by the word, you guys are big on engaging in discussion, but your "discussions" never amount to anything useful or interesting.



Followed by fifty thousand words that nobody bothered reading:

Quote:

It always devolves, year after year and thread after thread, into your hurt feelings or your angry denouncements. Except in your imagination, this is not the right place for engaging in something so civilized as debate about the issues of the day. Firefly is the wrong TV show for what you want to do. Maybe you ought to try debating with fans of Star Trek Discovery? I hear it has more complexity and uncertainty about good and evil.

Before reading the following story, the words “bad faith” need explanation. Some examples of bad faith include: a company representative who negotiates with union workers while secretly having no intent of compromising; a prosecutor who argues a legal position that he secretly knows to be false; an insurer who uses language and reasoning which are deliberately misleading in order to deny a claim. And now to the story:

Fascism Is Speaking In Bad Faith
http://miniver.blogspot.com/2017/12/fascism-is-speaking-in-bad-faith.h
tml

Labels: antifa, BS, Trumpism

It is important to understand that fascism is not a political ideology in the same way that communism is. Communists have a detailed policy program which they espouse and pursue. Fascists do not; their policy prescriptions are often outright incoherent.

Fascism is better understood as a political method. And a key part of that method is speaking in bad faith: falsely describing what they want and care about, as a way of disrupting the process of political discussion itself. The vigor with which fascists do this is difficult to understand unless one has encountered it.

I have talked about this before, when talking about Milo Yiannopoulos, the Alt Right, and free speech:

We should not defend that as free speech; we need to recognize it as an attack on free speech. .... This is a method and it has a purpose. If we look at the history of far right movements, we can recognize the basic pattern. These movements are not simply opposed to liberalism-as-in-the-Democratic-Party; they are opposed to liberalism-as-in-liberal-democracy. They oppose universal human rights and equality. They aim to discredit liberalism by turning its systems against itself, making them impracticable, perverting the meaning of words like “free speech”.

In this we see a continuity between the fascists of the early 20th century and the fascists and para-fascists of today. Sartre's Reflections on the Jewish question describes this pattern in a troublingly familiar way.
Quote:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
This is not restricted to the specifics of anti-semitism. It is a general rhetorical style. Here is Harry Frankfurt, the author of the wonderful short book On Bullshit summing up the method.
Quote:

The distinction between lying and bullshitting is fairly clear. The liar asserts something which he himself believes to be false. He deliberately misrepresents what he takes to be the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, is not constrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. In making his assertion, he is indifferent to whether what he is says is true or false. His goal is not to report facts. It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of his listeners in a certain way.
I bet you can guess who Frankfurt was talking about in the essay where he said that. (“Donald Trump Is BS, Says Expert in BS” http://time.com/4321036/donald-trump-bs/ )

To get a feel for how this works in governance, I vigorously recommend the (exceedingly fun) party game Secret Hitler ( http://secrethitler.com/ ), in which players pretend to be a parliament where fascists are trying to pass legislation and get their leader elected Chancellor. In the game, the fascists know who each other are but the liberals don't; this makes the gameplay include the fascists lying about their intentions and pretending to be liberals. The player who is their secret leader tries the hardest to appear to be a liberal. The game is structured such that the fascists are always outnumbered. But they usually win.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, January 29, 2018 8:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Trump’s General Just Announced a New Cold War.
https://ourfuture.org/20180126/trumps-general-just-announced-the-new-c
old-war-who-will-stop-it


Defense Secretary James Mattis announced a dramatic shift in military policy last week.

Mattis made his announcement in a speech to the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins. Mattis began the speech by paying tribute to what his prepared remarks called the “character” of Paul Nitze, a noted Cold War hawk. Together with fellow cold warriors Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz, Nitze created “Team B,” a private Cold War think tank whose sole purpose was to overrule the CIA’s more modest estimates of the Soviet military threat.

Nitze’s “background,” according to Mattis’ text, made the SAIS “a fitting place” to unveil the administration’s new national defense strategy. That’s true, although perhaps not for the reasons Mattis may think.

Team B’s estimates were “grossly inaccurate,” as former Reagan defense official Lawrence Korb noted in a 2004 Los Angeles Times op-ed; even the CIA’s more modest estimates of Soviet power turned out to be overstated. Nevertheless, its findings were “widely leaked to the press” shortly before Jimmy Carter became president.

Team B’s backers got the military spending they wanted, with a buildup that began under Carter and accelerated under Ronald Reagan. Wolfowitz and his fellow neoconservatives eventually used equally spurious data to drum up support for the invasion of Iraq.

As president-elect, Donald Trump promised an end to “intervention and chaos” and insisted that “our focus must be on defeating terrorism and destroying ISIS.” But with Defense Secretary James Mattis’ speech, Trump’s administration has fallen even more in line with the bipartisan consensus of the last eighty years.

The New Cold War

In the SAIS speech, Mattis declared that “Great Power competition between nations (is) becoming a reality once again.” He continued: “Great Power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

Nitze named China and Russia as the primary threat, describing them as “nations that … seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models, pursuing veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.”

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Monday, January 29, 2018 12:27 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Trump’s law: attention creates value

The insight that has separated him from his competitors is that he has cared less about the nature of the coverage he received than that he received coverage at all.

“Even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business,” Trump said in his 1987 book The Art of the Deal. He goes on to recall the lesson he learned being attacked for a particularly gaudy skyscraper he sought to build. “The point,” he says, “is that we got a lot of attention, and that alone creates value.”

This is the law by which Trump lives his life. Attention creates value, at least for him. Before Trump, every politician hewed to the same basic rule: You want as much positive coverage, and as little negative coverage, as possible. Trump upended that.

His rule, his realization, is that you want as much coverage as possible, full stop. The point is that it’s coverage — that you’re the story, that you’re squeezing out your competitors, that you’re on people’s minds.

This was Trump’s true political innovation: He realized that presidential campaigns — and particularly presidential primaries — had become reality shows, and the path to victory was to get the most attention, even if much of that attention was negative.

There is an old line about the media: We don’t cover the planes that land safely. Most politicians try to get media coverage while landing the plane safely. They stage photo ops at factories, give prepared statements, deliver carefully crafted speeches. The result is dull, predictable, normal — and ignored.

Trump dominates news cycle after news cycle by crashing planes into Twitter.

The media is laser-focused on Trump’s words, behavior, decisions, grievances. America ends up having the fights Trump wants us to have.

Trump understands this power. He knows he can wrest the news cycle back at a moment’s notice.

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/29/16900646/trump-administratio
n-tweets-media-polarization

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018 7:30 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Trump’s State of the Union Address


The President tries to revive his low approval ratings by delivering the greatest State of the Union speech in history and to strengthen his relationship with First Lady Melania by naming her the national bird.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018 7:45 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Trump’s State of the Union

www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/opinion/what-the-economic-data-dont-tell-us
.html


It’s a sure thing that Donald Trump will spend much of his State of the Union boasting about the economy. So this seems like a good time for a refresher on some basic macroeconomics – and the reasons why the expansion of 2017, which continued the long expansion that began in 2010, is in no sense a justification for wildly optimistic growth projections looking forward.

As a reminder, the Trump Treasury department claims that tax cuts will pay for themselves because the economy will grow at almost 3 percent a year for the next decade. This growth projection didn’t come from any model; it was just pulled out of … well, you fill in the rest. But every time there’s a good quarter of growth, the usual suspects take time off from talking about deep state conspiracies to claim that the 3% forecast is coming true. Why is this nonsense?

First, you need to know that quarter-to-quarter and even year-to-year growth rates are very variable. The economy grew at a 5 percent annual rate during much of the Carter administration (how many people know that?); it grew around 4 percent during the second Clinton administration. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=hRWd

What’s behind these growth fluctuations? The business cycle. Potential output – the economy’s productive capacity – grows fairly smoothly. But recessions leave some of that capacity idle, and the economy can temporarily grow fast as idle capacity is put back to use. The unemployment rate is an imperfect measure of idle capacity; still, there’s a strong relationship – Okun’s Law – between changes in the unemployment rate – capacity going into or out of use – and short-run economic growth.

The thing is, however, that we’re currently close to full employment. The unemployment rate is historically low. Other indicators, like the rate at which workers are quitting jobs (a sign of how confident they are of finding new jobs) also point to a more or less full employment economy. Wage growth and inflation are still subdued, but it’s still unlikely that unemployment can fall a lot from here. This means that growth over the next decade will have to come from rising capacity, meaning growth in potential output.

So is there any sign that potential output growth is anywhere near 3 percent, or in fact that it has accelerated? No. Here’s Okun’s Law for the past decade: www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/opinion/what-the-economic-data-dont-tell-us
.html


The relationship isn’t perfect, because this is economics, but it’s pretty strong. It suggests a potential growth rate – growth consistent with constant unemployment – of maybe 1.5 percent. And 2017 isn’t an outlier. (It took a minute looking at the data for the last 11 years, but then it was obvious that predicted growth would be 1.5% if the unemployment rate was neither increasing nor decreasing.)

Why is potential growth so low? Unfavorable demographics are one big culprit: the baby-boomers are getting old (you kids get off my lawn), so the working-age population is barely growing. Oh, and cracking down on immigration is, you know, not likely to help on that front.

Productivity growth is also lackluster, despite all the hype about robots and all that.

So if you think about it, 2017 offers no evidence to support big talk about future growth. On the contrary, the fact that unemployment declined despite not-so-fast growth is a sign that growth will be a lot slower going forward, now that we don’t have a lot of unemployed Americans to put back to work.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018 8:16 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


hmmmmm... no mention of quantitative easing in there. Surely that has something to do with it, even though I'm sure Trump won't mention it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018 10:24 AM

THGRRI


I doubt Trump will be talking about this.


Paul Ryan Thanks Koch Network Donors For Helping Pass Tax Cuts That Benefit Them

At a lavish resort near Palm Springs, California, on Sunday, the biggest donors in the billionaire Koch brothers’ powerful political network turned their eyes to a video from Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. “We would not be in this unique position if not for the hard work and devotion from everyone in the Koch network,” said Ryan to some of his party’s biggest financiers, the Washington Post reported Monday.

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/paul-ryan-thanks-koch-network
-donors-helping-pass-tax-cuts-benefit-them-2646810



T

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018 10:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
hmmmmm... no mention of quantitative easing in there. Surely that has something to do with it, even though I'm sure Trump won't mention it.

What government is supposed to do during a economic depression, if the people running government know what the fuck about how an economy really works, is increase spending on infrastructure projects to put people back to work, but the states controlled by the GOP and the federal government did not do that, except when the Democrats beat the shit out of the GOP. Instead, the GOP controlled states were firing employees, firemen and police and, in general, making things worse. The Federal government wasn't much help either. Do you remember how the angry GOP crapped in their pants when the Democrats prevented GM and Chrysler from bankruptcy and the firing hundreds of thousands of their employees and the employees of GM's and Chrysler's suppliers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_2008%E2%80%9310_automotiv
e_industry_crisis_on_the_United_States


The Democrats could not do much because of the GOP's obstructionism in Congress, so the Federal Reserve had to lower short-term interest rates to encourage people to keep buying stuff so that the economy did not collapse even worse than it did. Once the short-term interest rate got to zero, the Federal Reserve had run out of options other than quantitative easing, where it gives $Trillions of cashy money that they printed in exchange for Treasury bonds. The cash was to keep people buying stuff so that the economy doesn't completely collapse. But the GOP was violently opposed to quantitative easing because Republicans, at least those in the lower 99%, have no true understanding of how anything actually works. They have delusions, which not only screw-up government but also their financial lives, making them poorer than they ought to be.
www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quantitative-easing.asp

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:21 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Once again, I'm not a Republican.

Don't try to disguise your insults, Second. You're not half as clever as you think you are.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018 1:42 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Once again, I'm not a Republican.

Don't try to disguise your insults, Second. You're not half as clever as you think you are.

And I'm not half as rich as you are either, Mr. Genius 6ixStringJack. In other news:

The Russian Sanctions Act bill passed 419-3 in the House and 98-2 in the Senate. In other words, virtually every Republican in Congress supported it. Now Trump says he’s not going to bother with it. So far, there’s been barely a peep about this from Republicans or 6ixStringJack. Does that make 6ix a Republican? Who knows when he repeats most of the same mistaken ideas a Republican does except not admitting to being a Republican. Here’s The Hill with the Russian Sanctions Act bill story:

Democrats excoriated Trump, whose campaign is the subject of a special counsel investigation over possible collusion with Russia, for declining to follow Congress’ directive. Some Republicans also expressed concerns about the lack of new sanctions.

….Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Mnuchin he hopes the administration issues new sanctions soon, and said in a statement that “it is clear the administration is working in good faith, and I am committed to applying pressure, as needed, to ensure further implementation.”

This is yet another bit of evidence that Republicans have fallen ever further into the Trump black hole over the past six months. In August they were willing to openly and unanimously defy him by imposing sanctions he opposed. Today, when he blows them off in the most cavalier way possible, a few Republicans mumble a bit about Russia being a bad actor but then shrug their shoulders. Whatever Trump wants to do is OK with them.

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/01/republicans-have-all-but-given-
up-on-opposing-trump
/

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Tuesday, January 30, 2018 8:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
And I'm not half as rich as you are either, Mr. Genius 6ixStringJack.



That could very well be one of the most true things you've ever said on this board.

I don't actually believe you have any money Second. I don't think anybody here does, beyond the human tenancy to give a tiny bit of trust that somebody is who they say they are as long as that trust can't somehow burn them.

If you are rich, you are the most pathetic person I've ever met. What? All the money in the world isn't enough? That money doesn't actually buy you the ability to actually do something to help people you claim to care about but don't actually give a shit about? You need to come to a long dead forum with less than a dozen regular posters and brag about it every day and insult them?

Let me make this absolutely clear to you right now.

I
Don't
Believe
you.
Period.

I don't think anybody else here should either, and I doubt many of them do.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 7:19 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
And I'm not half as rich as you are either, Mr. Genius 6ixStringJack.



That could very well be one of the most true things you've ever said on this board.

I don't actually believe you have any money Second. I don't think anybody here does, beyond the human tenancy to give a tiny bit of trust that somebody is who they say they are as long as that trust can't somehow burn them.

You're always talking about which personalities offend you of people using pseudonyms. Think about something more tangible that could change your life if it was structured correctly. Trump's infrastructure plan is not the correct plan:

Trump gave a big number, $1.5 trillion, for infrastructure spending in his SOTU address. But a leaked draft of his plan says that it will involve only $200 billion of federal money. The rest is supposed to be induced spending from private investors. That’s quite a trick. How does it work?
www.axios.com/draft-white-house-infrastructure-plan-1516644555-0d43f41
7-6ccd-43f7-9eae-3ccbe711314d.html


The answer is that it doesn’t work. Private investors won’t spend on public infrastructure unless guaranteed a return. This only works if they’re given ownership, and the ability to collect future revenue from the public.

First point: lots of infrastructure just can’t work that way. There’s no way to turn sewer systems, protective levees on rivers, and lots of other stuff (flood control in Houston) into profit centers.

Second, even where it does work — say, on toll roads and bridges — that private investment doesn’t come free; it’s in return for the ability to collect fees from the public, which is just taxation in another form. And there’s no evidence that doing public investment this way saves any money. On the contrary, it usually ends up costing taxpayers more than just having the government build the thing.

Wait, it gets worse. Where does even the $200 billion come from? It’s not at all clear that it’s new money; much of it would probably be money that would have been spent on public projects anyway.

What this means is that we aren’t talking about a program to build infrastructure so much as a plan to convert what should have been public projects into private ventures, presumably with big tax breaks.

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 7:24 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


By the standards Trump used to trash the Obama era, the Trump era has been another economic nightmare. “Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force!” he complained last year. That was true at the time, if you included students, retirees and the disabled, but today, 95.5 million Americans are out of the labor force. “Over 43 million Americans are on food stamps,” Trump said last year. This year, it’s over 42 million. “Our trade deficit in goods last year was nearly $800 billion!” Trump marveled. Under Trump, the trade deficit is increasing.

Trump has addressed this largely by changing the criteria by which he evaluates the economy. No longer does a healthy America require closing the trade deficit, drastically increasing the labor force participation rate, or making the labor market so robust nobody needs social assistance. Instead, Trump points to a record-high stock market.

But the stock market first hit record high territories under Obama, and Trump-era market performance has actually lagged its Obama-era average. Whether you want to characterize current economic trends as fantastic or terrible, they simply aren’t very different from the trends we saw under Obama. In the fourth quarter of 2017, the economy grew 2.5 percent relative to where it had been a year ago. That’s worse than Canada or Mexico did last year. Maybe the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico should be tooting their horn louder than Trump? Maybe Trump needs lessons from his neighbors on how it is done?

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/30/16945146/trump-economic-reco
rd

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 7:40 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
And I'm not half as rich as you are either, Mr. Genius 6ixStringJack.



That could very well be one of the most true things you've ever said on this board.

I don't actually believe you have any money Second. I don't think anybody here does, beyond the human tenancy to give a tiny bit of trust that somebody is who they say they are as long as that trust can't somehow burn them.

You're always talking about which personalities offend you of people using pseudonyms. Think about something more tangible that could change your life if it was structured correctly. Trump's infrastructure plan is not the correct plan:

Trump gave a big number, $1.5 trillion, for infrastructure spending in his SOTU address. But a leaked draft of his plan says that it will involve only $200 billion of federal money. The rest is supposed to be induced spending from private investors. That’s quite a trick. How does it work?
www.axios.com/draft-white-house-infrastructure-plan-1516644555-0d43f41
7-6ccd-43f7-9eae-3ccbe711314d.html


The answer is that it doesn’t work. Private investors won’t spend on public infrastructure unless guaranteed a return. This only works if they’re given ownership, and the ability to collect future revenue from the public.

First point: lots of infrastructure just can’t work that way. There’s no way to turn sewer systems, protective levees on rivers, and lots of other stuff (flood control in Houston) into profit centers.

Second, even where it does work — say, on toll roads and bridges — that private investment doesn’t come free; it’s in return for the ability to collect fees from the public, which is just taxation in another form. And there’s no evidence that doing public investment this way saves any money. On the contrary, it usually ends up costing taxpayers more than just having the government build the thing.

Wait, it gets worse. Where does even the $200 billion come from? It’s not at all clear that it’s new money; much of it would probably be money that would have been spent on public projects anyway.

What this means is that we aren’t talking about a program to build infrastructure so much as a plan to convert what should have been public projects into private ventures, presumably with big tax breaks.



lol...

I'd tell you to stay on topic, but we all know by now that this would fall on deaf ears.

I bet your Asperger's goes over swimmingly at those regular board meetings that you head up in your day to day operations.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 10:57 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I'd tell you to stay on topic, but we all know by now that this would fall on deaf ears.

6ix, the topic is the same old "Democrats Only". It is not about your touchy personality or your uninformed opinions.

Wages are easy to measure, so many studies focus on them for the sake of methodological simplicity. But there is more to life than cash wages, and studies show that immigration has significant indirect benefits.

One example is what happened in the 1960s when the United States decided to eliminate Mexican guest workers from America’s agricultural labor force. These guest workers, called braceros, were heavily present in some states, like Texas and California. Other states, such as Georgia and Wisconsin, had a few braceros. Some had no braceros whatsoever. By comparing wage trends in high-exposure, low-exposure, and no-exposure states, the researchers were able to show that kicking out the guest workers had no real impact on farm wages.

That doesn’t mean the laws of supply and demand were magically repealed. It means that landowners changed their strategy. For some crops, like tomatoes and sugar beets, producers were able to switch to more mechanical harvesting techniques.

For other crops — including asparagus, fresh strawberries, lettuce, celery, and cucumbers — mechanization techniques were not available, and production simply fell. Wages did not rise; instead, Americans learned to live with reduced produce variety.

Immigration skeptics often pivot from the labor market economics to the notion that immigrants — especially the dreaded undocumented — are a drain on public resources, thus keying in to longstanding racial perceptions of the welfare state. Trump went so far as to falsely claim on the campaign trail that undocumented workers are actually receiving more generous public services than America’s veterans.

This idea plays a critical role in holding together the political coalition of conservatism — selling the idea that cutting taxes is compatible with financial support for Social Security because there will be plenty of money for the elderly once we get rid of the foreign-born leeches.

But it’s completely false. Unauthorized workers receive few if any public services (they ride the bus, but they’re ineligible for social assistance programs) but contribute to the tax base. Indeed, since people living and working in the United States illegally are often paying Social Security taxes without collecting benefits, they are the great heroes of the US Treasury.

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/30/16934726/trump-immigration-v
alues-decline

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 11:44 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The closest Trump got to the poetry one expects from a formal presidential speech came at the beginning, when he said “to everyone still recovering in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, California, and everywhere else — we are with you, we love you, and we will pull through together.”

Back on planet Earth, FEMA announced today that it’s ending food and water shipments to Puerto Rico. About a third of the island still lacks power.

The Puerto Rico saga is marginal to American politics because Puerto Rico itself is a marginal part of the country — an island physically separated from the mainland, whose residents lack representation in Congress or the right to vote in presidential elections.

But the sad state of that island is worth dwelling on, because the devastation of Hurricane Maria remains the one real crisis that Trump’s dealt with that hasn’t simply been self-inflicted. He’s been inattentive, ill-informed, dishonest, and ineffective, capping it with last night’s solemn pledge of solidarity that’s totally disconnected from the actual reality on the ground.

Most of the problems Trump is ignoring are chronic rather than acute, and if the country needs to suffer through a few more years of neglect we’ll make it. Puerto Rico is facing acute problems and the president is, likewise, doing nothing.

If we’re lucky, those of us on the mainland won’t have to find out what it’s like to live through that. But Trump makes it clear on a daily basis that if we ever do, there’s no way he’s going to rise to the occasion.

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 12:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I'd tell you to stay on topic, but we all know by now that this would fall on deaf ears.

6ix, the topic is the same old "Democrats Only". It is not about your touchy personality or your uninformed opinions.



The topic is whatever I say it is, bitch.

Stop quoting me and then changing the topic completely by posting another article by vox or motherjones.

If you can't speak to me directly, I don't want my words in any of your quotes before your mindless drivel.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 12:33 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

The topic is whatever I say it is, bitch.

Stop quoting me and then changing the topic completely by posting another article by vox or motherjones.

If you can't speak to me directly, I don't want my words in any of your quotes before your mindless drivel.

How's Indiana treating you? No friends because of your touchy personality, except on the internet, where they never meet you in person? And your boss, going to give you more hours and a raise because you are loved? One more jab: Are you living alone because you need space to decompress from your fan club in Indiana? All those fans who are so needy for your attention?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 2:39 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


lol... awwwwwwww. Poor Second. Nothing left but personal attacks, huh?

Why don't you go and spend some of those big bucks you have instead of picking on one of the lowly 99%ers.



Oh... that's right. Nobody takes Monopoly money.

Be a dear and crawl out of your dungeon and take out the trash today without having to be asked for the 20th time. Tell your mom I said hi.

:)



P.S. Kudos to you for finally making a reply to somebody that was on point and didn't have an article from vox or motherjones attached.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 2:54 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol... awwwwwwww. Poor Second. Nothing left but personal attacks, huh?

6ixStringJack said, "If you can't speak to me directly, I don't want my words in any of your quotes before your mindless drivel." I was speaking directly to you. Nothing I said came from my imagination. You've done all those crazy, stupid things I mentioned and it hasn't worked out so well for you, has it? You are pathological, which gives me an opportunity to launch on the despair, rage, and anxiety of living in a collapsing society. 6ixStringJack is under great stress in Indiana. Let me give you just one example of what I’ll call the social pathologies of collapse — strange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we don’t usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society.

America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days. That’s one every other day, more or less. That statistic is alarming enough — but it is just a number. Perspective asks us for comparison. So let me put that another way. America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days, which is more than anywhere else in the world, even Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, the phenomenon of regular school shootings appears to be a unique feature of American collapse — it just doesn’t happen in any other country — and that is what I mean by “social pathologies of collapse”: a new, bizarre, terrible disease striking society.

There are four more examples of Americans just like 6ixStringJack acting seriously crazy at https://eand.co/why-were-underestimating-american-collapse-be04d9e5523
5

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018 11:51 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Hey man... the one thing I've got is that I'm real. Nobody here doubts who I say I am, or what I've said I have, even those who think I'm an idiot. Flaws and all, my stories remained consistent about my own situation in life whether I was drunk or sober.

You might notice that I have actual conversations with people here, and yes, some of them happen to disagree very much with me on political topics. But I can actually get along with at least some people from both "sides", which is something you can't say for yourself. The only reason a few of the regulars here tolerate you is because you post from websites they also read and they see your presence here as somewhat of an ally. Nobody on your "side" ever has a real conversation with you.

You were able to manage a human interaction for one single post. And everything in that post was you being off tilt and trying to get a rise out of me. Why did you do that? Because even you believe I am who I say I am and I've done what I say I've done.


I'm done letting you lord your "superiority" around here, moral or otherwise. I'm calling your bullshit. You aren't rich. You don't run a major company. You likely live with your parents and haven't been able to do anything with that worthless liberal arts college degree they paid for. It would certainly explain all of your free time.

The funny thing is, I'll bet your parents that you live with are Texas Republicans.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, February 1, 2018 9:03 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Hey man... the one thing I've got is that I'm real.

No, you are not real. I know you switched from 6ixStringJoker to 6ixStringJack, but that doesn't change who you are. But if you want to keep claiming you are real, you don't get to leave behind the baggage you posted over the years, 6ix. That stuff is you. It's only Christians that believe in rebirth, the idea of a new you, with all your sins forgiven in a personal transformation. But there is nothing about you that suggests Christianity.

If Trump acted normal, he’d be unpopular with his base voters.

Trump’s culture warrior persona isn’t an encrustation holding his policy agenda back — it’s the essence of his political appeal. Without it, he’d just be a billionaire cutting taxes for billionaires while bragging about the millions of people he was kicking off health insurance. He’d appeal to the uberwealthy Republican Party, but he’d lose out on using racial and cultural divisions to whip up support from his base.


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Thursday, February 1, 2018 10:06 AM

THGRRI


Funny video SECOND. As for Jack I agree. We've all looked into the soul of the man for years. His conscious and unconscious unvarnished mind. He's a perv with a history of disgusting and psyche revealing posts.

He may admit to that but he can't remember most I'm sure. Therefore he doesn't know the degree to which he revealed his inner thoughts. It's not my intent to punish the man but his lack of concern for what Trump is doing, the way Trump treats our intel agencies, our media and our judicial system. The way Trump and Jack trash the people working in these institutions, demands action.

Why should Jack cry foul? Winning like a baby because someone speaks truthfully about him and he doesn't like it. When it concerns him he acts like it is uncivilized. What a joke.


T

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Thursday, February 1, 2018 10:31 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:
Funny video SECOND. As for Jack I agree. We've all looked into the soul of the man for years. His conscious and unconscious unvarnished mind. He's a perv with a history of disgusting and psyche revealing posts.

He may admit to that but he can't remember most I'm sure. Therefore he doesn't know the degree to which he revealed his inner thoughts. It's not my intent to punish the man but his lack of concern for what Trump is doing, the way Trump treats our intel agencies, our media and our judicial system. The way Trump and Jack trash the people working in these institutions, demands action.

Why should Jack cry foul? Whining like a baby because someone speaks truthfully about him and he doesn't like it. When it concerns him he acts like it is uncivilized. What a joke.

6ix can look at his past posts to remind himself. If those have been deleted, there is the Internet Archives https://archive.org/web/ I’m not forgiving of other people’s evasions, delusions, or amnesia about themselves, their words, their actions. That comes from business experience with Republicans and the resulting lawsuits my lawyers file against those fucking liars.

During campaign 2016, some worried that Trump’s erratic, impulsive behavior would get the country ensnared in a disastrous war or crash the American economy. So far, he hasn’t. That’s a low bar, to be sure. But it’s not a given that a president will clear it; just ask George W. Bush.

And the real question going forward isn’t whether Trump can behave himself on Twitter — it’s whether he can continue to more or less successfully navigate the shoals of objective reality without crashing the ship of state.

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Thursday, February 1, 2018 5:30 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


I have no idea what you two goons are talking about.

Jack is my original name, which you already know I've used since 2006 or so. I used Joker many months after I was already sober for a while after a Firefox upgrade was saying that logging into this site could be dangerous, using a disposable email address. I explained so in the very first post I used with that new name, and I intentionally used an extremely similar name so nobody would confuse it as me trying to use a sockpuppet since there was a lot of that already going on here at the time.

When I started using this name again, it was after the computer I was using died and I couldn't log back into either name because I couldn't remember the passwords for them that were stored in Firefox. (Something I usually don't do, but because both the email and that name were disposable, I didn't care).

I've never deleted a single post I've ever written here. Please feel free to check if you really have no lives. The deeper you look, the more you'll see that once again I'm telling the truth on that.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, February 1, 2018 7:07 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Hey man... the one thing I've got is that I'm real. Nobody here doubts who I say I am, or what I've said I have, even those who think I'm an idiot. Flaws and all, my stories remained consistent about my own situation in life whether I was drunk or sober.

You might notice that I have actual conversations with people here, and yes, some of them happen to disagree very much with me on political topics. But I can actually get along with at least some people from both "sides", which is something you can't say for yourself. The only reason a few of the regulars here tolerate you is because you post from websites they also read and they see your presence here as somewhat of an ally. Nobody on your "side" ever has a real conversation with you.

You were able to manage a human interaction for one single post. And everything in that post was you being off tilt and trying to get a rise out of me. Why did you do that? Because even you believe I am who I say I am and I've done what I say I've done.


I'm done letting you lord your "superiority" around here, moral or otherwise. I'm calling your bullshit. You aren't rich. You don't run a major company. You likely live with your parents and haven't been able to do anything with that worthless liberal arts college degree they paid for. It would certainly explain all of your free time.

The funny thing is, I'll bet your parents that you live with are Texas Republicans.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

I'm not sure if you are real. It's suspicious that you only post in RWED, when this is a site for a SciFi work.

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