June 16, 2014

I always figure that whatever *can* be done, *is* being done.

I don't need to have someone discover it and report it to me (although I am glad that the ACLU and others are doing so).

It long ago became clear to me that there is no such thing as restraint or limits anymore, or "enough" anything, as a concept. More is better, period. That goes for government, corporations, and little private individuals as well.

Accordingly, people today think that whatever they can get away with is a-ok, unfettered by archaic things like ethics or morality, or even the law as we used to know it. (And this is why we can't have nice things -- like rights and privacy, the homes we used to own, an education, a viable planet into the future, the list goes on... )

June 11, 2014

The theme of *white liberals are racists* continues...

Is this DU thread right here in GD by the very same poster a misunderstanding and/or coincidence too? Or is it once again making the same point? Personally, I don't think benefit of the doubt stretches that far, to believe that the two threads at the same time are just a coincidence.

A History of Liberal White Racism

Apparently now, as we learn from this thread, some nobody white racist Democrat in Mississippi makes FDR racist by association too, and all of his programs count for nothing now. Does the article linked there specifically say that? No, it doesn't dare to, but that meaning is assumed by most posting in the thread nonetheless. Progressivism is racist, and Liberalism is racist. Oh and we already knew that the Founders count for nothing because some of them had slaves at that time.

What a load of bigoted hooey.

(And no, before they even go there, I wasn't the one who alerted on that thread.)

June 11, 2014

Two questions

Could we possibly have a one-click "Trash Thread"? As it is, it takes two clicks, the little box on the thread title, and then the "Are You Sure" popup... but Firefox adds yet another click box, making the total 3 steps to trash each thread. Then to make the thread actually disappear, the page has to be refreshed, bringing it to 4 steps.

No, it isn't a big thing, but it would be very cool especially when a feeding frenzy is going on over something-or-other, to be able to just click the little thread title square. Could it at least be a setting option that people could choose, to trash without the reconfirm? (It would also be very cool if the trashed thread disappeared without having to refresh the page too... just poof! gone right away. Don't know if that would be too much work to arrange, but if both of those changes could happen, it would amount to a big time-saver for some of us, and make the big forums much less work.)

I like to not trash by key word because that is more drastic than trashing each thread individually. Sometimes there can be one specific thread containing the key word that I do want to see, and with key word trash that wouldn't be visible to ever know about it. People using key word trash don't have to manually reconfirm each time, so why should manual trashing have to be so cautious, when it's the more cautious way to trash already?

Second question... could we have a "beating dead horse" smilie? I don't have one to offer, but I've seen them. We really, really, really need that one.

Thanks for considering my requests.

June 9, 2014

"But you don't get to control what others care about."

And you continue...

WTF are you talking about? Where do you get off with this "control" stuff you repeatedly accuse people of here on DU? WTH does that mean?

And you say it again...



Really??? Who is telling you what to think and post about? And "allowed" again? What is up with this kind of rhetoric? You use it all the time, and it's very odd, to say the least. DU deserves an explanation for it by now. Are you under some misimpression that you are being held against your will in some parochial school somewhere?

If you think someone is controlling you and what you post, that would logically have everything to do with the grievances you always seem to think you have here.

Let me assure you... Nobody is controlling you, and nobody is controlling what you post. Nobody is INTERESTED in controlling you, or your thoughts, or your posts. We have "Trash Thread" and "Ignore", thankfully, we can adequately defend ourselves from your posts that we don't want to look at, so there's no need to control you. Or for that matter, we can log off if need be.

What I'm saying in a roundabout way is... "don't flatter yourself!" so much. It's a bit excessive. (that was understatement)

June 9, 2014

K&R

The mysterious reason why people managed to come together in a big way now and then, to actually get some things done when us old people were younger:

(Notice btw, that this is a black group, and nobody is making them sing this song, it's one of their own, expressing what they wanted to say.)

June 1, 2014

Same here, and I think the same things JDP.

What would this ancestor or that, think about this (whatever it is). Sometimes I almost feel like I can sense them watching "over my shoulder" at whatever is going on, I get the feeling there would be a lot of head shaking. But not only that, because they would know our DNA too and that we have our great moments as it always is.

Your OP reminded me of a favorite quote, oddly enough by Winston Churchill. But he was speaking with his American half, I think, when he said this:

We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy. (Dec 30, 1941)

The forces undermining us today have always been here, this same struggle has always gone on since day one here, only via different means and media. (On that, just a side note, I highly recommend a fascinating, little-known book called "Treason in America: from Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman") We have always had to deal with it, and have risen to the occasion and done so, and we always will -- as you say, because so many episodes by now show us that it is indeed hardwired into us.

At times, one side or the other is more dominant, but we are by no means finished just because the controllers are on top at this point in time. Although this is not meant to downplay the role of anybody else, I find the most encouragement about the future from people like you, JDP, and me and so many, others who come from "many times removed" grands who were here at or near the beginning... I think that's mostly because we have so much invested here, in this "experiment" in self-government. 15 generations for me, that's a lot of folks engaged in a lot of struggles, over 400+ years, to get this far -- and as you said, without slaves even here in the Mid-Atlantic, they believed in big families instead, and communities, in which people cooperated in aid of each other to get big things done. And those communities included commons, this country was not built on the ideas of libertarian assholes, contrary to what some today want to think!

Yes, just as you said, we need to remember that we are the descendants of the people who brought us this far, and this is nothing compared to what most of them had to face. And we are no less up to our chapter of the story, whatever it may be

The NSA (and cohort agencies) is running an illegal shop, and it needs to be shut down and cut down to size. It's an extra-legal operation, that's where we stand now. And people like Snowden (who btw comes from a here-from-the-beginning Maryland family) who stand up to tell us about it are patriots. The same goes for everybody involved in the effort on that, and on countless other fronts, to keep our structure on the side of "the people". All people, not the ego-centric, ethics-challenged, law-buying, ruthless, few -- they need to be knocked down to size too, and eventually, I'm sure they will be. Again, the same as many times before.

An excellent OP, JDP.

May 31, 2014

You wrote what I was thinking

but didn't have the patience to post.

Judging content by its source is a very RW thing to do, anyway. They train themselves to think in terms of who said something, not whether it was true or valid. They look for people to "trust" and once trusted, then by definition, whatever that source tells them is true. It can be ludicrous nonsense, and they will still insist that it's true because it has been defined as true by their standards. This is why they don't have to care about facts or reality. They don't have to bother to think, and they like that.

I look at it this way: if the worst person in the world made a true statement, would it still be a true statement? And if that true statement is opposed and/or discarded because of who said it, then where does that leave us? It leaves us pretty much where the RW is, with truth by popularity or "trust rating" (based on nothing, usually a "feeling&quot , where meaning has left the building.

I'm not suggesting that we should have a flood of crap sources here, I'm advocating for developing the judgment to evaluate content on its own. Even people who are good at that kind of judgment can always develop better. It's something that should be exercised, all the time. I thought that was a large part of the purpose of this site -- for people to consider things, and decide what they think. Yes, considering the source is one element in judging content, but it is only that -- one element, a beginning point.

People try to categorize other people, and they try to categorize facts/ideas the same way, and it just isn't applicable to either. It's lazy, and it isn't valid.

May 10, 2014

Rights and privileges are two entirely different things.

Rights are the standard of treatment that must be given to everybody by law. It is not optional, it is required. It is illegal to discriminate against members of designated minority groups, or to deny them equal treatment under the law.

For the most part, what people refer to as white privilege or male privilege, is the standard of rights that all are entitled to. It is not something special, or extra. It is the way all are supposed to be treated.

Privilege (by this I mean social privilege, not legal privilege such as attorney client privilege etc.) is in addition to that. It is often arbitrary and subjective. Privileges are not something that can be demanded or enforced. They do not have to be fair, and in fact by definition, they never are fair. They are exceptions to the rules, not the rules themselves. Equal treatment is exactly what privileges are NOT. Today, privilege is largely based on wealth, rather than race or gender: things such as country clubs, private schools, VIP treatment of various kinds, even driving a car is a privilege, not a right. Privileges can also be based simply on preferences: such as who you choose to give a gift to. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's nothing that civil society can do about it.

Racism is the belief that a given race is superior or inferior to another, which I think is obvious nonsense. (At the bottom line of it, I think it comes from people being far too obsessed with comparing themselves to each other, which is a habit of mind that I have low regard for to begin with.)

But I acknowledge that racism exists and that the rights of PoC are violated on a routine basis, such as for instance, within the law enforcement and justice system. I am four-square against that, and support any efforts to end those practices. Ending institutional racism (and sexism, and other abuses of civil rights) is usually a matter of either enforcing the laws that already exist, or changing them. I'm all for helping to do that.

There are rights, and there are privileges, and the two do not overlap. Privilege has nothing to do with attaining equality or equal rights. It is an entirely different subject. That's why I completely reject the use of the term privilege in discussing minority issues. The term is both misleading (in confusing basic concepts) and counterproductive (it focuses attention away from corrective action), two very good reasons for rejecting it.

Where racism exists in society, there should be legal and/or political action to correct it; where racism exists on DU, it should be alerted on. There shouldn't be a big, nebulous, unaddressed racism (or minority rights) problem on DU. That's mostly what I see claimed, that I question.

What I do see, when these issues come up, is about 8 out of 10 people agreeing 100%, and maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 raising an indirect point such as I have here. That is not racism, or sexism, or whatever.

People can disagree with me, they can think I'm wrong about this or anything else of course, that's fine. But this is how I see it. And what I want them to understand is that I'm just as entitled to my opinion as they are. I am not going to change my mind because a couple of people on here don't like it and think they can throw their weight around.

Maligning people's character is something I see done every time one of these issues is brought up, and it is not a legitimate way to discuss anything. To those few who I'm sure will continue to do it anyway... attempting to smear others with intentional lies is just as abusive and just as wrong as being a racist or a sexist.

March 7, 2014

All of Big Tobacco combined has less than 1% of the ecig market.

As of November 2013.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/22/big-tobacco-admits-defeat-will-develop-e-cigarettes/

That leaves 99% of the market comprised of independents.

February 28, 2014

What a stunning nerve you have!

That's your answer to this? I highly recommend The Kentuckian's whole post: