Political Randomness

[Isgrimnur]

We just hid the cross-breeding better. White-washed it, if you will.

[Gwar21]

While I despise Trump and all his lackeys, I think stunts like this are going to backfire. You attract more flies with honey and all that.

I just have so many philosophical issues with this. Yes, if both parties are engaging in good faith, fine. But Trump and his followers break norms and shit the bed daily. Why is it the responsibility of the left to play nice?

Because it’s hard to claim you’re the better person when you sink to their level. At some point deceny and sense may return. But it will take that much longer if folks don’t try to rise above it all. And yes, I’m perfectly aware how hypocritical I sound. However, IRL I have tried to be an adult in situations like that. If nothing else, it keeps ammunition out of the orange one’s hands. He lives for shit like that. It lets him Jim Jones the hell out of his sheople.

But on the Internet? It’s game on, baby!

If somebody is doing something truly horrible, I think it's morally wrong to treat them as a civilized person who just has a different opinion. I love the fact that people are following around Kristen Nielsen around and playing the sounds of the crying children her agency has created. When Sarah Huckabee Sanders is blatantly lying every single day from that podium I don't mind that she's told she's not welcome in polite society. I don't want Stephen Miller treated like a respectable human being.

Personally, I'm on the fence over how I feel about this news story. On the one hand, I love seeing high level officials suffer some consequences for the policies they support. On the other hand, I'm concerned that incidents like this will open the door to discriminating against people for their political and religious beliefs. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with businesses refusing service to Muslims and Democrats.

[GreenGoo]

You can only be white by being 100% white. That sounds familiar for some reason...

Having read dbt's other musings, I don't think it's nearly as complicated. Just as light skinned people are "mistaken" for white, "darker skinned people are assumed to be black.

It's pigment related. Unless you're a eugenicist, it's purely looks based.

[Skinypupy]

You can only be white by being 100% white. That sounds familiar for some reason...

Having read dbt's other musings, I don't think it's nearly as complicated. Just as light skinned people are "mistaken" for white, "darker skinned people are assumed to be black.

It's pigment related. Unless you're a eugenicist, it's purely looks based.

I tend to agree.

With it being dbt, I was not assuming any bad intent with his question. Others here would likely not get that same benefit of the doubt.

[GreenGoo]

Absolutely no bad intent. Just typical dbt speculation.

Why do my goats only vote during the primaries sort of thing.

[Freyland]

Absolutely no bad intent. Just typical dbt speculation.

Why do my goats only vote during the primaries sort of thing.

[coopasonic]

Oh I wasn't saying anything about dbt, jsut the 100% white thing sounds wrong.

[Isgrimnur]

Angles, Saxons, Franks, Vandals, Gauls, Celts,....

[noxiousdog]

Oh I wasn't saying anything about dbt, jsut the 100% white thing sounds wrong.

United States Hispanics are officially counted as Caucasian, so we'll have to work that into the theory.

[Pyperkub]

You can only be white by being 100% white. That sounds familiar for some reason...

Having read dbt's other musings, I don't think it's nearly as complicated. Just as light skinned people are "mistaken" for white, "darker skinned people are assumed to be black.

It's pigment related. Unless you're a eugenicist, it's purely looks based.

First and foremost it was a legal argument in terms of who could be discriminated against (and enslaved?). Frontline:

To be considered black in the United States not even half of one's ancestry must be African black. But will one-fourth do, or one-eighth, or less? The nation's answer to the question 'Who is black?" has long been that a black is any person with any known African black ancestry. This definition reflects the long experience with slavery and later with Jim Crow segregation. In the South it became known as the "one-drop rule,'' meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person a black. It is also known as the "one black ancestor rule," some courts have called it the "traceable amount rule," and anthropologists call it the "hypo-descent rule," meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. This definition emerged from the American South to become the nation's definition, generally accepted by whites and blacks. Blacks had no other choice. As we shall see, this American cultural definition of blacks is taken for granted as readily by judges, affirmative action officers, and black protesters as it is by Ku Klux Klansmen.

[GreenGoo]

I guess dbt would have to clarify his question for us.

[Archinerd]

While I despise Trump and all his lackeys, I think stunts like this are going to backfire. You attract more flies with honey and all that.

I just have so many philosophical issues with this. Yes, if both parties are engaging in good faith, fine. But Trump and his followers break norms and shit the bed daily. Why is it the responsibility of the left to play nice?

Because it’s hard to claim you’re the better person when you sink to their level. At some point deceny and sense may return. But it will take that much longer if folks don’t try to rise above it all. And yes, I’m perfectly aware how hypocritical I sound. However, IRL I have tried to be an adult in situations like that. If nothing else, it keeps ammunition out of the orange one’s hands. He lives for shit like that. It lets him Jim Jones the hell out of his sheople.

But on the Internet? It’s game on, baby!

If somebody is doing something truly horrible, I think it's morally wrong to treat them as a civilized person who just has a different opinion. I love the fact that people are following around Kristen Nielsen around and playing the sounds of the crying children her agency has created. When Sarah Huckabee Sanders is blatantly lying every single day from that podium I don't mind that she's told she's not welcome in polite society. I don't want Stephen Miller treated like a respectable human being.

This isn't going to end well. It's a strong temptation to fight but all it's doing is escalating the situation. Do this enough and it will turn into a cycle that will be difficult to get out of, how much pain can be inflicted before it's "enough"? These 'tit for tat' actions are how (trade) wars get started.

[Isgrimnur]

Little Libertarians On the Prairie

Fascinating story worth reading in full. If you don't have time, here's the gist:

A few months after the stock market crash, in the winter of 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder sat at a small desk in Mansfield, Mo., and began scratching out her life story on a cheap yellow pad. That beginning would lead to a children's book series that would inspire millions of people to follow its simple values of optimistic self-sufficiency in the face of danger and economic struggle.

WaPo

Laura Ingalls Wilder was on the brink of having an award named in her honor, from the Association for Library Service to Children, when in 1952 a reader complained to the publisher of “Little House on the Prairie” about what the reader found to be a deeply offensive statement about Native Americans.

The reader pointed specifically to the book’s opening chapter, “Going West.” The 1935 tale of a pioneering family seeking unvarnished, unoccupied land opens with a character named Pa, modeled after Wilder’s own father, who tells of his desire to go “where the wild animals lived without being afraid.” Where “the land was level, and there were no trees.”

And where “there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”

The editor at Harper’s who received the reader’s complaint wrote back saying it was “unbelievable” to her that not a single person at Harper’s ever noticed, for nearly 20 years, that the sentence appeared to imply that Native Americans were not people, according to a 2007 biography of Wilder by Pamela Smith Hill.

Yet Harper’s decision in 1953 to change “people” to “settlers” in the offending sentence did little to quell the critics in later decades, who began describing Wilder’s depictions of Native Americans and some African Americans — and her story lines evoking white settlers’ Manifest Destiny beliefs — as racist.

Now, after years of complaints, the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, says it voted Saturday to strip Wilder’s name from the award.
...
In its decision to remove Wilder’s name from the award, the library association had cited “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work” when it announced the review of Wilder’s award in February. The award, reserved for authors or illustrators who have made “significant and lasting contribution to children’s literature,” will no longer be called the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. It’s now the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

[dbt1949]

What brought the black/white thing up for me was the morning news about a white woman who called the cops on a "black" girl selling water without a permit.
First of all let me say the woman was a jerk, but that said both the media and the girls white mother claimed the woman was racist.
The little girl had a white mother ergo she has to be mulatto.Or is that a bad word too?
But for sensationalism the media chose to make her black, when in fact she could have been called white just as easily. The girl's mother evidently married a black man because she wants to be identified with blacks. Otherwise why call her little girl black.
But back to the jist of my "concern". I think the original woman was an ass and was just reporting the girl for selling water without a permit and that the liberal media is only too happy to stir the pot and make news by bringing up the race card.
Evidently me bringing this up has some people concerned that I must be a racist too just for bringing up the subject.
I remember a while back there was some concern because I used the term "black blood" in referring to my wife's lineage. I was ignorant to that being a bad term and I guess I am ignorant for bringing up this subject too.
Or am I a racist? Or can no one bring up such subjects without being a racist?

[ImLawBoy]

People with some visible degree of African blood tend to be labeled as black because that's how society typically treats them.

[Defiant]

How not to campaign:

Mr. Patel has waged the most millennial of campaigns. On a recent Thursday evening, he was sitting in a former bar in the East Village that he uses as his campaign headquarters. His campaign manager handed him one of three phones that was logged into the dating app Tinder, and Mr. Patel began furiously swiping right.

All around the bar — adorned with blue-velvet booths and a sound system that was playing Kanye West — campaign volunteers, logged onto Tinder, Grindr or Bumble, were doing the same thing. Mr. Patel calls it Tinder banking: Participants set up an account with a picture of an attractive person, usually not themselves, and begin seeking matches. Mr. Patel uses a picture of his brother.

He compared it to the practice of creating a fake online persona to lure someone into a relationship. “It’s kinda like catfishing,” he admitted, “but you are telling people who you are.”

When someone responds, Mr. Patel replies with a political pickup line: “Hi Sarah. Are you into civic engagement?” He soon reveals who he really is.

link

And now...



Spending campaign money on condoms?

[stessier]

Just trying to give the people what they want!

(I'll show myself out...)

[Paingod]

Is it too early to be really depressed about the retirement announcement yesterday in the Supreme Court? I feel like it's not. I'm very disturbed at the way this is working.

They block Democrats from pushing their own candidates, and then flush in their own immediately when the Presidency changes hands. Now they're salivating at the chance for a second nominee. I see the clip of Mitch saying they're going to vote in someone before this fall's election, and he visibly wishes he had an erection the size of Kansas when he's speaking. I hear the glee in Trump's voice as he announces "we have a pick" and I just want to vomit.

[malchior]

What brought the black/white thing up for me was the morning news about a white woman who called the cops on a "black" girl selling water without a permit.
First of all let me say the woman was a jerk, but that said both the media and the girls white mother claimed the woman was racist.
The little girl had a white mother ergo she has to be mulatto.Or is that a bad word too?
But for sensationalism the media chose to make her black, when in fact she could have been called white just as easily.

Do you think the media got onto this story randomly? It is very likely they were called and someone described it as a racist incident. The media almost certainly didn't make up the facts. However, they certainly would have played up the racist angle otherwise there is pretty much no story.

The girl's mother evidently married a black man because she wants to be identified with blacks. Otherwise why call her little girl black.

These sentences are not great and I'm not talking in a grammar sense.

But back to the jist of my "concern". I think the original woman was an ass and was just reporting the girl for selling water without a permit and that the liberal media is only too happy to stir the pot and make news by bringing up the race card.

Why do you think this? Why would anyone care about someone selling water without a permit other than the authorities? These questions aren't really important here - the thing I'm pointing out is you have a surety of narrative crafted without much evidence of it.

Evidently me bringing this up has some people concerned that I must be a racist too just for bringing up the subject.
I remember a while back there was some concern because I used the term "black blood" in referring to my wife's lineage. I was ignorant to that being a bad term and I guess I am ignorant for bringing up this subject too.
Or am I a racist? Or can no one bring up such subjects without being a racist?

You can totally bring them up but when you throw in those sentences above I can see how it could be ... problematic. To put it another way her mom likely married a black man because she was attracted to him and has seen racism first hand. Maybe she believed this was racist based on her experience. But this is all a shot in the dark without the source info.

Edit: Found what I think is an account of what happened they are dubbing the woman #permitpatty.

1) The girl appears pretty dark

2) The woman has a reasonable story - that the girl was hawking and it was annoying her.

3) Racism? Maybe. Maybe not.

4) My personal problem is this is more of the terrible trend of social media mob justice - god help us all.

[hepcat]

4) My personal problem is this is more of the terrible trend of social media mob justice - god help us all.

This is what bothers me most in these situations. Being an ass used to result in people calling you an ass and moving on. Nowadays it can mean the destruction of your entire life. There isn't a single one of us here who hasn't done something they've regretted. Any one of those incidents, if broadcast to the world, would now potentially be devastating to their lives.

That needs to stop. Unfortunately, I blame humanity and not politics for this. Social media has done more damage to our society in my opinion than it has good.

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

[Max Peck]

[Paingod]

It's the privacy swing coming back to slap us in the face.

Used to be, you lived in a small community and did something wrong, you'd get the communal disapproval and have to survive that. People understood the rules, kept their secrets, and lived their lives. Then we found privacy and loved it. Small towns where everyone knew what everyone else was doing fell by the wayside. People started feeling safe and getting more asshat-y. Now the advent of social media has torn down the walls and we're back to small town mentalities but on a much larger scale.

Humans are a terrible communal species as we're always looking to form groups to feel empowered at the cost of other groups.

[YellowKing]

I thought about that with the case of the woman who called the cops on the black firefighter walking around the neighborhood. Apparently they walk around in people's yards and take pictures as part of their inspection. If I saw a guy walking around in my yard taking pictures, I don't care if he's black, white, or heathen Chinee (joke), I'd be concerned. That wouldn't be racial profiling - it would be "dude I don't know walking on my property" profiling.

[Holman]

I thought about that with the case of the woman who called the cops on the black firefighter walking around the neighborhood. Apparently they walk around in people's yards and take pictures as part of their inspection. If I saw a guy walking around in my yard taking pictures, I don't care if he's black, white, or heathen Chinee (joke), I'd be concerned. That wouldn't be racial profiling - it would be "dude I don't know walking on my property" profiling.

What if he's in a very obvious fire department uniform? Presumably (because you're not an idiot) you would ask what's up before calling the police.

Reporting I've seen points out that the FD does this all the time, and they never get complaints when the inspector is white.

[El Guapo]

Is it too early to be really depressed about the retirement announcement yesterday in the Supreme Court? I feel like it's not. I'm very disturbed at the way this is working.

They block Democrats from pushing their own candidates, and then flush in their own immediately when the Presidency changes hands. Now they're salivating at the chance for a second nominee. I see the clip of Mitch saying they're going to vote in someone before this fall's election, and he visibly wishes he had an erection the size of Kansas when he's speaking. I hear the glee in Trump's voice as he announces "we have a pick" and I just want to vomit.

On the plus side, you live in Maine, so there is something small you can do here. Call Susan Collins's office and let her know that you won't be voting for her in 2020 unless she delays any confirmation until after the mid-terms (or whatever your litmus test here might be).

[Paingod]

On the plus side, you live in Maine, so there is something small you can do here. Call Susan Collins's office and let her know that you won't be voting for her in 2020 unless she delays any confirmation until after the mid-terms (or whatever your litmus test here might be).

I can certainly do that, but I doubt the effectiveness. I've left her more than one message letting her know I plan to vote against her as soon as I can if she doesn't oppose whatever insanity the GOP is up to. So far she's been ignoring me, but her voting base is small - given that it's Maine and all.

I'd be willing to bet that come 2019, she'll be another one to say "Hey, I'm done now. I won't run again" like the other ... what ... 30+(?) GOP members that have thrown in the towel? I always thought of her as more of a moderate member, and I just can't see her wanting to stay aligned as the party shifts from Lawful Evil to Chaotic Evil. I could be completely wrong.

She's let them screw her twice now (that I can recall; I can't recall on what, exactly - I think the tax cut was a big one - just that she agreed to vote YES on something based on promises by her party twice (since Trump came around) that never came to fruition). She must know people are seeing that.

[El Guapo]

On the plus side, you live in Maine, so there is something small you can do here. Call Susan Collins's office and let her know that you won't be voting for her in 2020 unless she delays any confirmation until after the mid-terms (or whatever your litmus test here might be).

I can certainly do that, but I doubt the effectiveness. I've left her more than one message letting her know I plan to vote against her as soon as I can if she doesn't oppose whatever insanity the GOP is up to. So far she's been ignoring me, but her voting base is small - given that it's Maine and all.

I'd be willing to bet that come 2019, she'll be another one to say "Hey, I'm done now. I won't run again" like the other ... what ... 30+(?) GOP members that have thrown in the towel? I always thought of her as more of a moderate member, and I just can't see her wanting to stay aligned as the party shifts from Lawful Evil to Chaotic Evil. I could be completely wrong.

She's let them screw her twice now (that I can recall; I can't recall on what, exactly - I think the tax cut was a big one - just that she agreed to vote YES on something based on promises by her party twice (since Trump came around) that never came to fruition). She must know people are seeing that.

FWIW she's basically said that she's going to run for re-election in 2020 (she was previously deciding between that and running for governor). She could change her mind, of course, but that appears to be her current plan.

And yeah, it's just one voice, but if you rouse family and friends and people in the area on social media...if she starts getting deluged by calls, it could make a difference.

[Paingod]

FWIW she's basically said that she's going to run for re-election in 2020 (she was previously deciding between that and running for governor). She could change her mind, of course, but that appears to be her current plan.

I went hunting and found some articles on her saying she wasn't going to walk and run for Maine Governor (this year) because she thought she could do more where she is, and that she didn't think Trump was 100% guaranteed the GOP nomination in 2020 (last year), and that she's opposed him since the beginning (2016)... but nothing specifically saying she's in for 2020.

I suppose it's all malleable right now anyway, so kind of moot.

[YellowKing]

What if he's in a very obvious fire department uniform? Presumably (because you're not an idiot) you would ask what's up before calling the police.

Reporting I've seen points out that the FD does this all the time, and they never get complaints when the inspector is white.

You can't extrapolate one person's intentions from what their neighbors have done or haven't done.

Maybe the uniform is obvious to us, but maybe it isn't obvious to her. Maybe she's a scared old lady who didn't get a good look, she just saw someone traipsing around and panicked. If inspections were done all the time, and this lady knew this was an inspector, would it make sense to call the police even if she was a racist? Of course not. I think we have to assume she didn't know it was a fireman.

And just because they "never" get complaints when the inspector is white doesn't mean this is a race incident. Maybe they don't get complaints period, and this was the first one. Who knows - I can't find the original article so I don't know if this was addressed. Maybe in the same circumstance this particular lady *would* have called the cops on a white fireman. We don't know.

Was there some racism involved? Hey, probably.

But I would hope that someone would give me the benefit of the doubt first, before rushing to judgment and calling me a racist. What happened to "innocent until proven guilty" in this country? Apparently when it comes to race, it doesn't exist. Repeated behavior? Sure, call it for what it is. One incident should not be national news dragging someone's name through the mud though.

We have a diversity supervisor at work whose entire job consists of making sure our organization is not biased (intentionally or unintentionally), works with our marketing, etc. This guy knows racism in and out, and as an African-American I'm sure he's experienced it firsthand on numerous occasions. But one message he shared with us in our department meeting was "Always assume good intentions." Because he understood the very real danger of jumping to conclusions and making someone out to be maliciously racist when they may have just made a mistake, were a little tone deaf socially, or simply didn't have the understanding due to lack of education.

[noxiousdog]

I thought about that with the case of the woman who called the cops on the black firefighter walking around the neighborhood. Apparently they walk around in people's yards and take pictures as part of their inspection. If I saw a guy walking around in my yard taking pictures, I don't care if he's black, white, or heathen Chinee (joke), I'd be concerned. That wouldn't be racial profiling - it would be "dude I don't know walking on my property" profiling.

What if he's in a very obvious fire department uniform? Presumably (because you're not an idiot) you would ask what's up before calling the police.

Reporting I've seen points out that the FD does this all the time, and they never get complaints when the inspector is white.

I call bull crap. The only reason this is a story (and it could be a valid story, though the details are super important) is because the firefighter is black. "Resident reports white firefighter in backyard" isn't a story.

[El Guapo]

What if he's in a very obvious fire department uniform? Presumably (because you're not an idiot) you would ask what's up before calling the police.

Reporting I've seen points out that the FD does this all the time, and they never get complaints when the inspector is white.

You can't extrapolate one person's intentions from what their neighbors have done or haven't done.

Maybe the uniform is obvious to us, but maybe it isn't obvious to her. Maybe she's a scared old lady who didn't get a good look, she just saw someone traipsing around and panicked. If inspections were done all the time, and this lady knew this was an inspector, would it make sense to call the police even if she was a racist? Of course not. I think we have to assume she didn't know it was a fireman.

And just because they "never" get complaints when the inspector is white doesn't mean this is a race incident. Maybe they don't get complaints period, and this was the first one. Who knows - I can't find the original article so I don't know if this was addressed. Maybe in the same circumstance this particular lady *would* have called the cops on a white fireman. We don't know.

Was there some racism involved? Hey, probably.

But I would hope that someone would give me the benefit of the doubt first, before rushing to judgment and calling me a racist. What happened to "innocent until proven guilty" in this country? Apparently when it comes to race, it doesn't exist. Repeated behavior? Sure, call it for what it is. One incident should not be national news dragging someone's name through the mud though.

We have a diversity supervisor at work whose entire job consists of making sure our organization is not biased (intentionally or unintentionally), works with our marketing, etc. This guy knows racism in and out, and as an African-American I'm sure he's experienced it firsthand on numerous occasions. But one message he shared with us in our department meeting was "Always assume good intentions." Because he understood the very real danger of jumping to conclusions and making someone out to be maliciously racist when they may have just made a mistake, were a little tone deaf socially, or simply didn't have the understanding due to lack of education.

I don't think anyone is calling the people involved "maliciously racist". I think that's part of the point. People tend to disproportionately call the police on black people not because (in general) they are thinking to themselves "ah ha! This is a chance to hurt a black person!" but instead because many people are unconsciously predisposed to be suspicious of black people or to think that they are a likely criminal. And when the police do show up, they're disproportionately likely to use force on a black person, not because they think "well! I can't wait to injure a black person!" but again because they're disproportionately likely to be suspicious that a black person is engaging in criminal activity.

The story is about how people regularly call the police on the black fire fighter when he is out doing inspection, but pretty much never call the police on white fire fighters. With any one incident there could be any number of reasons, but the consistent pattern suggests that race is the reason. And I think people tend to think that racism is the absence of good intentions, but that's not really the case - I'm sure that everyone who has called the police on the black fire fighter did so with good intentions, because they thought that they had spotted a criminal. The point is that race and unconscious bias play a huge role in people thinking that they have identified a criminal.

[Rip]

4) My personal problem is this is more of the terrible trend of social media mob justice - god help us all.

This is what bothers me most in these situations. Being an ass used to result in people calling you an ass and moving on. Nowadays it can mean the destruction of your entire life. There isn't a single one of us here who hasn't done something they've regretted. Any one of those incidents, if broadcast to the world, would now potentially be devastating to their lives.

That needs to stop. Unfortunately, I blame humanity and not politics for this. Social media has done more damage to our society in my opinion than it has good.

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

Having had a friend whose kid was cited for selling lemonade in front of their house, I would have guessed it was one of those my kid got in trouble for this so I am making sure they do the same to other peoples kids. There has been a notable increase in cops harassing kids for collecting money for various trips and the like without permits for some time. At least it has seemed that way to me. Up until 10 years ago or so I had never heard of anyone getting harassed by cops for such things.

[LordMortis]

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

Heh, my parents kept their pulse dial phone right up until they sold their house, what, 10 years ago. ATT SBC Ameritich ATT Michigan Bell Telephone wanted to charge them $5 more a month to convert to tone dialing and so that was the end of that conversation. Made no sense to me whatsoever, but that's bureaucracy. We will make things insanely more expensive four ourselves in order because we want an excuse to make a few more dollars from you.

Which make them (and me) much more hostile today as everything is now short term subscription based following the SaaS mold. We will get you in cheaply, force you to adapt to us, and then out date your model and force you into this much more expensive system in order for you to keep everything else you have working.

/shakes cane menacingly

[GreenGoo]

My mom kept her rotary phone forever for the same reason.

[Rip]

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

Heh, my parents kept their pulse dial phone right up until they sold their house, what, 10 years ago. ATT SBC Ameritich ATT Michigan Bell Telephone wanted to charge them $5 more a month to convert to tone dialing and so that was the end of that conversation. Made no sense to me whatsoever, but that's bureaucracy. We will make things insanely more expensive four ourselves in order because we want an excuse to make a few more dollars from you.

Which make them (and me) much more hostile today as everything is now short term subscription based following the SaaS mold. We will get you in cheaply, force you to adapt to us, and then out date your model and force you into this much more expensive system in order for you to keep everything else you have working.

/shakes cane menacingly

It makes perfect sense if you are in telcom. Just like MS charging a lot to support XP years after it was EOL or cable systems charging for analog TV support after it was phased out. It takes special equipment to handle/deal with old systems. Someone has to pay for the increased cost.

[Skinypupy]

When doing a segment about what a horrible and scary liberal Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez is, Hannity posted a screen of her agenda items, and positioned them as a huge negative.



The fact that these are all considered awful things to Fox News viewers is just further proof that we're living in completely opposite realities.

The Hannity clip is here, if you're brave enough to stomach it.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Sent to me by CC:





Nice to see we have gone beyond the subtle dog whistles to the no-doubt-there-are-Neo-Nazis-in-the-administration dog whistles...

[Holman]

Not much time to post (and I have no doubt that there are straight-up Nazis in DHS), but the numerology here doesn't hold up.

In re: the viral DHS post: the article only has 13 bullet points (not 14) and the 88 appears to be working off the fact that 88% of applicants pass their credible fear interview. (But a far lower percentage are granted asylum)

[Ralph-Wiggum]

But it doesn’t say 88% of whatever; it says out of 88 claims, 13 will be granted asylum. Who gives a fraction out of 88? It’s not like that makes the percentage a round number.

Also, there is one section that is bolded instead of bullet pointed. So there are 14 discrete blocks of text.

[LordMortis]

edit: now you kids get off my lawn! I've got to write this letter by hand and then call my brother on my rotary phone!

Heh, my parents kept their pulse dial phone right up until they sold their house, what, 10 years ago. ATT SBC Ameritich ATT Michigan Bell Telephone wanted to charge them $5 more a month to convert to tone dialing and so that was the end of that conversation. Made no sense to me whatsoever, but that's bureaucracy. We will make things insanely more expensive four ourselves in order because we want an excuse to make a few more dollars from you.

Which make them (and me) much more hostile today as everything is now short term subscription based following the SaaS mold. We will get you in cheaply, force you to adapt to us, and then out date your model and force you into this much more expensive system in order for you to keep everything else you have working.

/shakes cane menacingly

It makes perfect sense if you are in telcom. Just like MS charging a lot to support XP years after it was EOL or cable systems charging for analog TV support after it was phased out. It takes special equipment to handle/deal with old systems. Someone has to pay for the increased cost.

I was not clear. Their POTS bill was like $29 a month sans long distance on pulse (rotary) dialing. The TelCo both wanted them to switch and wanted to charge the $34 a month for tone dialing.