Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

[vt]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Sorry for your loss DC from senseless violence.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Sorry for your loss DC from senseless violence.

Thanks, vt. Appreciate it. I'm just glad the justice system worked eventually. Shooter's kid was police chief, so no charges were filed at first. Took some wrangling. Had the victim been someone with fewer friends & family, he might have gotten away with it.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Over 115 million now and climbing. Exceeded the 1966 midterm voter turnout rate. Heading towards the previous midterm record set in 1914. Both were special years. 1966 was the first time many black folk could vote in the south. 1914 was the first time men could vote for US Senator anywhere. Truly remarkable turnout. May exceed 50% of all registered voters by final count. Compare that to 36.4% who turned out in 2014, and you'll see that voting participation in the midterm increased by 35-40%.

[touchring]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Over 115 million now and climbing. Exceeded the 1966 midterm voter turnout rate. Heading towards the previous midterm record set in 1914. Both were special years. 1966 was the first time many black folk could vote in the south. 1914 was the first time men could vote for US Senator anywhere. Truly remarkable turnout. May exceed 50% of all registered voters by final count. Compare that to 36.4% who turned out in 2014, and you'll see that voting participation in the midterm increased by 35-40%.

A showdown between the pro-WWIII (HRC/Soros) vs pro-USA (Trump).

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

A showdown between the pro-WWIII (HRC/Soros) vs pro-USA (Trump).

That seems like an odd dichotomy. Those who want world war 3 and those who love America?
Have I misunderstood?

[Chris Coles]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

That seems like an odd dichotomy. Those who want world war 3 and those who love America?
Have I misunderstood?

That is certainly as I understood the above quote.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

That is certainly as I understood the above quote.

I personally don't understand the HRC obsession either. She was a terrible candidate who lost twice. To the extent she has die-hard fans, they're mostly older, wealthier, liberal white women who convinced themselves she'd be the first woman president and therefore will stand by her no matter what. But no Democrat I've talked to--not even ones who backed her in 2016--wants her to run anything again. Not even a party subcommittee. She's a very polarizing force. Most Democrats are pissed she handled 2016 the way she did. The whole party's rules got re-written in large part in an effort to prevent that from happening again. Anyone who thinks HRC is out there pulling Democrats' strings just isn't paying attention.

Ditto with the Soros thing. I get that lots of nazis and confederates just use his name as a euphemism for Jew. But for those who aren't doing that, welcome to the club! Billionaires play an outsized role in American politics and ought to be stopped. Most of us on the Left have been shouting about this for decades, and would be more than happy to lose Soros and Oprah's input and take the Kochs and Adelson and others off the board too. It's super ridiculous that a Hungarian-born New Yorker funds an organization that does GOTV for my local state rep in New England whilst the heads of an oil company out of Kansas fund her opponent's entire candidacy. They'll blow $40k on a 2-year job that only pays $15k per year without thinking twice. Worse still in New Hampshire, where they'll blow thousands on a job that only pays $200. And most of the time it doesn't matter anyways, because it's local enough of a contest that we all know each other. Seeing Christie and Walker and Kasich and Rubio and Paul and others line up in Las Vegas to kiss the ring of a casino owner was as disgusting and debasing as any of the worst things that have come out of Trump's mouth. This isn't even a titan of industry making something productive. It's not even someone who provides legit services or who does investments. It's a guy who owns gambling concerns. Begging for his patronage to become president of the US is just gross. It's something I don't think politicians even in the 1990s would have thought was reasonable to do openly in public like this. But in the 2010s, we're so used to everything being for sale, they just dutifully fly out there with press one by one begging to sell themselves and their souls for money. It's a Wonderful Life was a long, long time ago.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

There is no dichotomy.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2...m-2018-midterm

There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political system than the Senate race in New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The senator had flown to the Dominican Republic with Melgen on the physician’s private jet and stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen, including helping some of the Dominican women acquire visas to the United States. Menendez was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung jury.
Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats’. He supported the $716 billion military spending bill, along with 85 percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed a letter, along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel—a country that routinely and massively interferes in our elections—and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and investment banks.
His Republican rival in the Senate race that will be decided Tuesday is Bob Hugin, whose reported net worth is at least $84 million. With Hugin as its CEO, the pharmaceutical firm Celgene made $200 million by conspiring to keep generic cancer drugs off the market, according to its critics. Celgene, a model of everything that is wrong with our for-profit health care system, paid $280 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower who accused the firm of improperly marketing two drugs to treat several forms of cancer without getting Federal Drug Administration approval, thereby defrauding Medicare. Celgene, over seven years, also doubled the price of the cancer drug Revlimid to some $20,000 for a supply of 28 pills.

[touchring]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

That seems like an odd dichotomy. Those who want world war 3 and those who love America?
Have I misunderstood?

No, nothing surprising. WWIII has already started with Arab Spring and Ukraine, and Russia taking over Crimea.

Americans may not see it because you are the target of MSM, but ask any foreigner, Brit or Australian.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

No, nothing surprising. WWIII has already started with Arab Spring and Ukraine, and Russia taking over Crimea.

Americans may not see it because you are the target of MSM, but ask any foreigner, Brit or Australian.

Not just MSM, & not just America. Big daddy Putin's spending big bucks to keep whacko lost causers in the news via RT, just like big daddy Murdoch's using his dollarydoos to push straight RNC propaganda and undo big daddy Turner. Anyone who believes "alternative news" sources are less biased than "mainstream" is just a stark raving fool at this point. There's a reason right-wingers from Brexit to Sweden Democrats are all flying Confederate Flags now.

Alex Jones is even more full of shit than Donna Brazile, and she's so full of shit she leaked debate questions to one candidate, admitted it, and still has a job. Then again, so does Hannity, who literally went on stage at campaign rallies for one candidate. Objectivity is dead, but that doesn't mean you have to believe any whack-job with a gravely voice and a cowboy hat.

The whole Russian psyop relies on three pillars. The first is that some half-assed internet research & a couple social scientists in Moscow will be enough to understand America. It won't. The second is that Americans are as clueless, jaded, and conspiracy-oriented that the shit that works in Russia will work here. They're not. Some percentage are. But not enough. The last is that Americans are greedy and put money before honor or anything else. This will work. Almost every time.

Chinese intelligence should take note. It'd only cost a couple billion to buy their own Manchurian Candidate. And since the Supreme Court decided money is free speech, there's literally nothing to stop them. It would only cost a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the state budget. And they could use it to drive the US deep into debt by borrowing trillions to just hand that cash to foreign companies and destroy its soft power and go back on its promises and deals and de-fund its military. Wouldn't be hard. In fact, 2 out of 3 ain't bad, and we're already there.

[touchring]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Not just MSM, & not just America. Big daddy Putin's spending big bucks to keep whacko lost causers in the news via RT, just like big daddy Murdoch's using his dollarydoos to push straight RNC propaganda and undo big daddy Turner.

RT is a joke, they are even more biased than ZH. At the minimum, you need to "pretend" to be unbiased.

We're now in a New World Order in which emerging powers no longer respects the US - this happened because of what Obama+HRC did in the Syria and the Middle East. Nothing to do with trade war or tariffs.

There is nothing that a US president can do to gain back that respect. It's long gone and cannot be regained.

The best outcome now is for the US to fix its economy so that people can gaining employment, get a real job instead of signing up for the military and wasting more money on useless expeditions.

This is also the best outcome for the world peace because a US that behaves itself will act as a stabilizing force in an increasingly unstable world.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

... The last is that Americans are greedy and put money before honor or anything else. This will work. Almost every time...

A great example in the news now is Amazon's two new headquarters, google HQ2 to find it.
They made a big show of inviting a bidding war from hundreds of cities, and in the end Amazon picked New York and Washington DC. Bezos has homes in both cities and they are unrivaled centers of wealth and political power.

But the spectacle of the bidding war forced both of the great cities to offer up billions in incentives, because they needed to offer up something to offset the loot offered by the desperate likes of Detroit and Philadelphia. The others were never really in the running, and the two winners should have offered nothing at all.

By splitting the new offices across the two winners Bezos gets two gift packages instead of just one.

The whole disgusting show is evidence of the great dysfunction described here by dcarrigg, touchring, and Thailandnotes.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Speaking of tech & that other thread in which Reggie was talking about amygdala, did you catch this story?

Turns out Facebook was actively paying a company to spin up Soros conspiracy theories about left-wing protestors (against facebook) while at the same time paying anti-defamation groups to call right-wing criticism anti-semitic. Talk about playing both sides against the middle for profit...which is exactly what this HQ2 stunt was about, right? Couldn't suck $3bn out of NYC and $1bn out of Virginia by just admitting they wanted to expand in DC and NYC. But by pretending they were going to build one second headquarters and inviting cities to bid for the opportunity to host it with tax dollars, they created a bidding war. But they never intended to go anywhere but NYC and DC. In fact, they never even intended to build a second HQ in one city. They simply used it as a ruse to extract maximum public money out of two big, thriving cities that don't really need the jobs all that badly right now.

[jk]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

Turns out Facebook was actively paying a company to spin up Soros conspiracy theories about left-wing protestors (against facebook) while at the same time paying anti-defamation groups to call right-wing criticism anti-semitic.

it's great for "engagement" - keeps people on facebook longer so they can be exposed to more ads. a class act.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Meanwhile Back in the Sandbox...

it's great for "engagement" - keeps people on facebook longer so they can be exposed to more ads. a class act.[/COLOR]

No! It is not! We are supposed to live within nation's that are under the rule of the law. That report, if is true, is a clear case of a conspiracy to defraud; telling a blatant lie to encourage people to give you money is classic fraud. Period!

What happens next will set the scene for the future of the entire Western culture; we are either under the rule of law or we are all living within a failed concept.