Geoff > Status Update

David,

I think if it gets tagged or blocked, it becomes 'deleted user.' Beyond that, carry on, soldier.

xXx

Ah, I see. Well otherwise, yes, he had some good points.

David wrote: "Ah, I see. Well otherwise, yes, he had some good points."

Oh, fuck 'im. Who needs objectivity when we have disco?

Is that a Robert Pollard lyric?

David wrote: "Is that a Robert Pollard lyric?"

If not, it's only a matter of time until he assembles that word order. Just math.

He's the chimpanzee composing the complete works of Shakespeare over the lifespan of the universe.

MahatnaG wrote: "As has been done with other posters, David has misquoted me with the probable intent of putting me on the defensive. I don't play that game. Other speculations about my deletions are incorrect and ..."

Positeth the great Philosopher of Cocaine and Hair Dye: Is there life on Mars?

•

Ok, enough levity. Everyone play nice and be good. I wish you all happiness and peace; not just here but the world over. Fuck Trump (cursing!)

FYI I block Edward Drobinski at first sight. Trolls of his ilk I do not tolerate. Even the most permissive regime has its prohibitions.

Hadrian wrote: "The Bloomberg article claims that the information was downloaded too quickly for it to have been done through the internet, ~180 megabits/second. Some big organizations and some regions (like those with access to Google Fiber) have bandwidth at 500 megabits/second or even 1 gigabit/second. It's not implausible for an intelligence agency (hell even a big company) to shell out for faster internet speeds. "

In the UK and some other European countries, connections of up to 300mbps are routinely available even to domestic customers, esp. cable users in urban areas. That 180mbps speed in itself doesn't provide sufficient evidence for anything, except that the material wasn't downloaded to some tiny village in the middle of nowhere. In general I agree with Manny's summaries of the "was Russia backing Trump?" issue, however.

Manny wrote: "On thinking more about it, I see your point of view better. This stuff, and selling hundreds of billions of dollars of arms to the Saudis, is worse than accepting help from Putin.

On the other ha..."

I agree that it's not really feasible to impeach a president for facilitating mass death, but I think that's a much bigger than Trump himself.

David wrote: 'stratified in accordance with the US election laws' - lol; stratified, that certainly is le mot juste, is it the one you meant?."

No. I meant your 2-tiered voting system. And it's so according to the US law, so discussing if it's according to 'le mot juste' is pointless as it obviously is in accordance with both the letter and the spirit of the US law, until the US changes their voting system, if they ever decide to do so. Law is law.

Manny wrote: "Hey, Misericordia, I just noticed that your profile says you're Russian! Well, isn't that 2017 in a nutshell: Russians lecturing Americans on the meaning of democracy. Keep up the good work."

Some of speakers here obviously do need some good lectures from somebody sensible and maybe a bit of education.

And that's a discriminating post, you do realise that, Manny? You do know that you can't discriminate against people if they are Black, Russian, Jewish, Chinese, LGBT, whatever, right? Who the damn cares where I reside, Palau, Austria, Ukraine, Russia or Mexico? Pesonally I'm from multiple cultural backgrounds. You won't be able to fit me into a tidy 'Russian' box. And overall, it's not your business. If you live in a liberal country you should be liberal yourself and open and fair to people from different cultures/backgrounds/etc. That a citizen of the EU is trying to nation-shame a person, on a book-reading site, that's a freaking disgrace.

At the moment the US doesn't sound too democratic to me. In a democracy people respect each other choices. And such discussions go a long way to show that mutual respect seems to be in shortage these days. People can't even agree who their president is, for almost a year. *Yawn*

Manny wrote: "Congress clearly believes it."
I'll look it up, thanks for the info. Though congress clearly believes a lot of unusual things:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YnWr...
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp402...
Have fun!

David wrote: "I agree that it's not really feasible to impeach a president for facilitating mass death, but I think that's a much bigger than Trump himself."

I think many people in the US government, including Republicans, are now seriously alarmed by what Trump is doing, and they're looking for legal ways to address the problem. Demonstrating collusion with the Russians seems the most promising option.

It would be nice if the US electorate actually wanted candidates who would use the country's vast military power responsibly. Good luck with that. The people, God bless them, do gradually seem to be swinging round to the idea that they may prefer not to have a delusional nazi crook after all, which at least is progress.

Misericordia wrote: "David wrote: 'stratified in accordance with the US election laws' - lol; stratified, that certainly is le mot juste, is it the one you meant?."

No. I meant your weird 2-tiered voting system. And i..."

Right, Trump came in third -first place was no one, then Clinton, and then Trump, and you seem to be acknowledging the electoral college is not a democratic institution. So then why do you think citizens of the US owe him their fealty?

Also, did you see what happened this weekend? Sort of an awkward time to argue that the problem is Trump's critics when his supporters are mowing down peaceful protesters.

Misericordia wrote: "David wrote: 'stratified in accordance with the US election laws' - lol; stratified, that certainly is le mot juste, is it the one you meant?."

No. I meant your 2-tiered voting system. And it's so..."

Hint: Manny was joking at America's expense.

It's America's fault. I'm no economist, but you can't solve the balance of trade problem just by exporting more comedy material. Trump seems to be learning that the hard way.

Reading a story like this, despite the headline, the content actually appears more or less exculpatory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtm...

And I swore I'd never be sucked back in. However, sometimes you gotta call bullshit when you see it...

***
The persnickety GR habit of lynch-mobbing and pitchfork-touting has arisen YET again. I don't know why Geoff's thread decided to show back up in my feed (to my phone, no less), but it did. That said, I've been reading over the last few days and have been witness to the piling-on phenomenon. It's saddening.

Not that he isn't more than capable of defending himself, nor have we always seen eye-to-eye on political issues, but the 'David is an asshole/selective/biased/high-in-calories' narrative is utter bullshit. He's absolutely right: the Trump/Russia collusion, DNC hack coverage, rigging the election et al is a diversionary tactic and little more. It behooves the Right far more to keep that in public focus than the manifold other going's-on Herr Hair is involving us in--directly (NK) or indirectly (Yemen) for example. The Democrats, foot-shooters if ever there were, are actually feeding this hat-rabbit by buying it and clogging the news with 'new findings' and 'probes' and other errata. Meanwhile, The Donald has us fucked six ways to the day after Saturday in an almost impossible number of scenarios. Charlottesville, North Korea and the absolutely ludicrous taunts and dick-measurings, deportation of half of my state alone, escalating institutional (flat-out and condoned) racism, etc. These are receiving coverage, sure, but let me real-time this: "Trump declares 'racism is evil' amid pressure;" "Young Girl Killed in Paris Attack;" "Donald Trump Goes After CEO;" and "How To Be A Yo Yo Master" (I'm not fucking kidding). Those were JUST NOW the leading news stories on the little news app thingy that haunts my phone. So one token nod and little more to what is under discussion in this thread (besides the awesomeness of yo-yo's).

Manny, I hear what you are saying: collusion would be the only practical way to oust the fucker. I agree. However, I don't think David is denying that nor saying otherwise: he's waving his arms to signal a four-alarm fire while others are looking at a lit match. It's the equivalent of weighing evils, something we all must do. Should we disappear too-fully down the Russian rabbit hole, what happens in the meantime? Who has to die and who gets to kill? Democrats need to stop with the Russian angle because they're only doing it to keep Trump from being able to pass legislature by reasserting his base illegitimacy. Again: what the fuck happens in the meantime?

David: not trying to rush to your defense. I know you're far handier than I with this political jive, but the proposed devolution of your stance by others (who appear to post attacks and then delete their accounts; which...totally normal) has reached that bullying level that you know rankles the piss outta me.

That's it, back to my political agnosticism and lighthearted summer reading. It may not prove to be the end of the world, but this ain't no CBGB's either.

love and hope to all

Ah Cody, really there was no need, my darling.

Nonetheless,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWTaaS...

David wrote: "Ah Cody, really there was no need, my darling.

Nonetheless,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWTaaS..."

I know there wasn't, but I fucking can't abide the tendency toward vitriol-in-numbers on this thread. You know that.

And I will always love you too, of course.
xx

Once a friend of mine was complaining about how no good movies ever get made anymore, and as an example of the former glories of cinema he gave... the Bodyguard.

Still, no arguing with those pipes.

David wrote: "Once a friend of mine was complaining about how no good movies ever get made anymore, and as an example of the former glories of cinema he gave... the Bodyguard.

Still, no arguing with those pipes."

Whitney did love the pipe. Zong!

As to your friend, I hope you kindly beat him about the head and neck. Also, what about Jeff Nichols movies?

I have a hard time believing that Donald would have scripted the word "repugnant" himself.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...

And he just gave the wrong history lesson. America wasn't founded on the principle of equality for everyone.

I reckon it was not the right time and place to remind people of how America was founded lol

Unless that was another dog whistle? Trump is actually rather in favor of equality as traditionally defined.

Read 5 different articles on 'Baked Alaska' today. Stalled on Capital, probably not going to get to Proust this year, too many pieces of shit to keep track of...


http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/08/ba...

Jessaka, you may not have noticed that Misericordia is Russian. She is clearly well qualified to advise Americans on how to run their so-called democracy, and I hope we will all treat her comments with suitable respect.

This is the time for united fronts

https://socialistworker.org/2017/08/1...

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

What's the point of bringing down statues now as if the civil war has been just concluded?

If this had to be done, it should have done 150 years ago.

Jibran, you're missing the idea. People want to take them down before the next one starts. You can see why they're in a hurry.

Jibran wrote: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRUCA...

What's the point of bringing down statues now as if the civil war has been just concluded?

If this had to be done, it should have done 150 years ago."

Many of those statues were actually put up quite recently. Memory, you know, is its own battlefield.

Manny wrote: "Jibran, you're missing the idea. People want to take them down before the next one starts. You can see why they're in a hurry."

Ah, yeah. Watching American TV for the last few days, l was beginning to wonder if the events this past weekend are Charlottesville or Chancellorsville.

David wrote: "Many of those statues were actually put up quite recently. Memory, you know, is its own battlefield. "

That's what I'm saying. The symbols and sigils of Confederacy should have been lost a long time ago to end the matter once and for all. Lost by force if necessary. Now it's too late to ban flags and destroy statues because we're no longer talking about a period of history but a contemporary phenomenon and a rallying point for certain interest groups in the US.

Nothing resembling the conditions exist after 150 years, so it's very strange for confederate memory to be still alive the way it it is.

Pretty strange it certainly is.

This is a hypermilitarized, hyper-stratified society with the second largest prison population in the history of the modern world (second only to Stalin's Soviet Union). The populace has been known to drug itself with bizarre forms of hero worship, and not just in the old confederacy. Note the vulgar & ridiculous practice of singing the national anthem at the start of every non-international sporting event (& twice at baseball games). Behold the cult of the founding fathers. D.C. has been aptly dubbed 'Pyongyang on the Potomac' for its giant garish icons to secular gods.

(...and for the past 100 year or so we've had this bad habit of blaming 'the Russians' for things that are plainly our own damn fault)

Look David, if the Russians hadn't sold you Alaska then you wouldn't have to deal with Sarah Palin. You can't tell me it's just your fault. She's obviously a tsarist sleeper agent.

PS I see Rasputin's fingerprints all over this. Tell me I'm wrong.

If you guys think America is a mess, look at India. You are mulling fascism, we are already halfway there, with religious minorities being lynched with frightening regularity on the streets, in the name of the Holy Cow. 😕

No doubt, but the US does actually have a much larger prison population... pretty crazy, huh?

Jibran wrote: "Watching American TV for the last few days, l was beginning to wonder if the events this past weekend are Charlottesville or Chancellorsville"

When Trump says "There's violence on both side" I wonder if he confuses Charlottesville with Illinois:
https://youtu.be/ZTT1qUswYL0?t=1m52s

I think something is going snap here in the US very soon.

All time tweet

https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke/statu...

Whoa, look at this editorial from the National Review. Quite an aboutface ; their whole raison d'etre has pretty much always been to attack campus leftism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article...

sorry, insomnia. overposting, but what the fuck look at this from the estimable Jeet Heer

https://newrepublic.com/article/14431...

Apparently the president knows who Adorno and Marcuse are, and thinks 'cultural Marxism' is a plague in America today?

“As used in this discussion, cultural Marxism relates to programs and activities that arise out of Gramsci Marxism, Fabian Socialism and most directly from the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt strategy deconstructs societies through attacks on culture by imposing a dialectic that forces unresolvable contradictions under the rubric of critical theory.”

'Cultural Marxism' is anti-semitic horeshit. The president is an utter piece of garbage.

In case y'all ain't watched this yet

https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news...

David wrote: "'Cultural Marxism' is anti-semitic horeshit. The president is an utter piece of garbage.

In case y'all ain't watched this yet

https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news......"
Apparently, it is big on the right here in the US. When I engage Fox Republicans for the past few years I have heard buzzwords like Cultural Marxism, Frankfurt School, Adorno, Marcuse, and Saul Alinsky. It is really big in the Breitbart crowd. Not many real old time socialists around these days so why not call anybody who is not a right winger a cultural Marxist. Outside of a trendy cultural studies class from the 1990s most normal people never heard of this stuff.

Basically just anti-semitism.

This twitter account could almost be true. But I love it for the laughs haha

https://mobile.twitter.com/DPRK_News

"Latest idiocies vomited from the mind of Donald Trump are dismissed as the ravings of an impotent buffoon. " Aug 11

"Annual "bar exam" in United States separates masters from serfs, hunters from prey, saprophytic fungi from slowly rotting corpses." July 26

"Idiotic Italian Stereotype Anthony Sacramucci fired as US Propaganda Minister due to being an Idiotic Italian Stereotype. " Aug 1

"Orange-faced oaf Donald Trump threatens DPRK with "fire and fury," yet delivers only wind and flatulence." Aug 9.

You gotta agree with some of those...

It is amazing how anything you put next to Donald Trump magically looks good. I'd also noticed it starting to work with North Korea.

A variation of the King Midas theme.

Yes, gold is definitely involved. But in an exciting new way!