StrangeSox

Stop listening to talk radio

Campaign Trollbama out in force today, gonna miss this guy.

Ambassadors are definitely old school patronage jobs, pretty much always have been. Doesn't look good but it's always that way.

Oh and the rate of uninsured fell below 10% for the first time ever.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 13, 2016 -> 09:44 AM) The poverty rate dropped from 14.8% to 13.5% year over year. 5 million people are out of poverty from year before. That is incredible\ Hell, just read Justin Wolfers twitter: twitter.com/justinwolfers This is one of the best census reports ever recorded. Largest ever gains from 10th-80th percentiles. Income inequality decreased. So the only group that didn't see growth is people outside of metropolitan areas. Rural areas are continuing to die.

The National Anthem isn't a military hymnal or something. There are actual military anthems and songs.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on the "deplorables" comment and the reactions to it

South Park actually did a decent job on this two years ago:

SCORCHING hot take from the NC GOP in reaction to the NCAA pulling out all tournament games from the state: https://twitter.com/BobbyBigWheel/status/77...src=twsrc%5Etfw NC has been slowly turning blue thanks to the tech triangle and an influx of younger people. The GOP party there went head-over-heels for Tea Party types over the past few years, and now they're facing a huge wave of backlash for nonsense like HB2 and other movement conservative causes.

should have gone with "sweeps me off my feet" for maximum effect

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 12, 2016 -> 03:40 PM) By the way here is more insanity on the trump foundation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how...db62_story.html Fahrenholdt has been doing pretty difficult but classic journalistic legwork. Very interesting stuff here: First, he stopped giving his own money. His contribution shrank to $35,000 in 2007. Then to $30,000 in 2008. Then to $0. At the same time, Trump’s foundation began to fill with money from other people. But in many other cases, his biggest donors have not wanted to say why they gave their own money, when Trump was giving none of his. “I don’t have time for this. Thank you,” said Richard Ebers, a ticket broker in New York City who has given the Trump Foundation $1.9 million since 2011. “No. No. No. I’m not going to comment on anything. I’m not answering any of your questions,” said John Stark, the chief executive of a carpet company that has donated $64,000 over the years. Vince and Linda McMahon declined to comment. ha Trump’s campaign says he’s given ‘tens of millions’ to charity, but offers no details and no proof

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 12, 2016 -> 05:33 PM) I generally support Snowden as I think the United States should make an explicit decision to support those measures. I'd prefer they explicitly restrict them, but it seems like that is a battle to be fought. I support Greenwald as a journalist but he can be hysterical. Of the work of foreign policy journalists I've always favored Spencer Ackerman and Juan Cole. But I trust that Greenwald will perform due diligence with information. That is my complaint (along with anti-semitism) of Assange. He doesn't appear to understand what he releases. That's what I was trying to express when I brought up Greenwald earlier. His political conclusions are crap imo and his argumentative style leaves a lot to be desired, but I don't think that devalues the work he's done or his importance re: Snowden. And as far as Snowden goes, he confirmed a lot of suspicions people had about the NSA and uncovered new information as well at risk to his own life and well-being. I think Assange is in a different category because even if it started out as a noble project, it's pretty clearly lost its way over the years and is more harmful than anything these days. I don't say that because of the DNC leaks, which actually have had only a good result in finally getting DWS out, but because of everything else--the Russian stoogism, the anti-semitism, the uncurrated leak of innocent peoples' information including underage rape victims and entire political parties, routinely overhyping what they have or just simply not understanding it, refusing to address claims that they sometimes just function as a clearing house for government intel dumps. You don't need to be buying any sort of government line (has the US government even said anything about WL since Collateral Murder?) to find Assange/WL to be pretty slimy. There are better people doing better, more responsible

can you expand on the dead Obama critics thing?

QUOTE (raBBit @ Sep 12, 2016 -> 04:43 PM) Government is evil. Partisanship and ideology aren't the same thing, and if you don't think you're clearly tacking along some obvious ideological lines, you should reexamine. Your posts are shot through with some pretty hardcore libertarian and isolationist ideologies. Which is fine! Be honest with yourself and don't try to pretend that you're somehow above it all and just taking every atomized event on a completely rational and non-ideologically motivated basis. I think most of the posters here could make a decent generalized guess at where you'd stand on a given piece of news as well, or at least on any piece of news that touches on topics you've posted on previously--disdain for government in general, hardcore pro-capitalist, pro-Assange/Greenwald/etc. isolationist and anti-Western military, typical conservative views on American academia. I never said that but you can keep putting words in my mouth. You said Russia was more noble with regards to government transparency. They aren't; they're opportunistically helping someone who damages western countries in ways that benefit Russia--makes plenty of sense from a geopolitical standpoint, but it's not a noble stance and they're just as awful as the US government if not worse when it comes to these same issues.

https://twitter.com/Scott_Gilmore/status/77...src=twsrc%5Etfw

Heard on the radio last week that Kaep jerseys were the number 1 seller in all of the NFL. Hope its a bunch of dummies dropping $100 to make youtubes of themselves burning them.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 12, 2016 -> 03:40 PM) By the way here is more insanity on the trump foundation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how...db62_story.html Fahrenholdt has been doing pretty difficult but classic journalistic legwork. Very interesting stuff here: First, he stopped giving his own money. His contribution shrank to $35,000 in 2007. Then to $30,000 in 2008. Then to $0. At the same time, Trump’s foundation began to fill with money from other people. But in many other cases, his biggest donors have not wanted to say why they gave their own money, when Trump was giving none of his. “I don’t have time for this. Thank you,” said Richard Ebers, a ticket broker in New York City who has given the Trump Foundation $1.9 million since 2011. “No. No. No. I’m not going to comment on anything. I’m not answering any of your questions,” said John Stark, the chief executive of a carpet company that has donated $64,000 over the years. Vince and Linda McMahon declined to comment. I've been following his "Trump gave essentially no money to charity ever" stories for a couple of months now. He's the one who first shamed Trump into finally donating that $1M to the veterans' group he raised back when he skipped a primary debate.

The US hegemony isn't exactly fantastic but lol if you think a Russian or Chinese one would be better in pretty much any conceivable way. You're wrapping around the horseshoe into full tankie territory now.

raBBit do you consider yourself unbiased?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 12, 2016 -> 07:16 AM) Slightly different context. Do all the Trump voters really want to have the price of their iphones and nearly every good at Wal-Mart increase by 45%? Because doing that will apparently bring back all those lost blue collar jobs that used to pay decent, liveable wages. Those jobs aren't coming back anyway. We produce more in this country than ever before, but so much of it is automated. If tariffs drove production costs too high for foreign manufacturing, we'd just get more automated factories here that employ a small number of highly educated people. That's not to say the status quo is a good thing, but a tariff war won't solve it.

Wiki leaks actively denounced the Panama papers as an anti Russian smear job. I think Glen Greenwald is a sanctimonious ass with far too high of an opinion of himself and too narrow an understanding or interest in policy, but I wouldn't call him a hack or a stooge like Assange. Recognizing wikileaks for what they are these days isn't some sort of partisan thing, and plenty of other pro transparency groups including Snowden himself have called them out for their sloppy and reckless methods.

An oral history of air force one on 9/11 (non partisan, just an interesting story) http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201...-the-sky-214230

I have to say, the couple of "Actually, this is Good for Clinton" takes I've seen are pretty funny. http://shareblue.com/hillary-clintons-feat...h-conspiracies/

QUOTE (raBBit @ Sep 11, 2016 -> 07:47 PM) Maybe it was taken down at his behest? You don't know the details and you're calling him names for something that cannot be associated to anyone in particular. If you want to rip WikiLeaks that's fair but going at Assange is just another one of your unfounded, ad hominem attacks at him. Wikileaks is his operation, so he's accountable for it. And given his past behavior and statements, it's not exactly unfair to associate him with that great "poll" they put out earlier. I also don't think my previous shots at him/WL have been unfounded, nor have they been ad hominems (simply insulting someone isn't an ad hominem).

There are over 80 strains of pneumonia and the vaccines cover 23 at most. She may or may not have been vaccinated, but just like the flu, it doesn't mean you're 100% immune. There's "a lot of weird s*** going on with her and her health" if you give credence to conspiracy videos about her being on her death bed, having Parkinsans, etc. And while she hasn't been giving press conferences until lately, she hasn't been out of the public eye. She's done fundraisers and small meet-and-greet type campaign events every day for months. I too have passed out at a concert! I was on some Vicodin from having my wisdom teeth out earlier that day, and my friend helped me out of the crowd. I also had a friend pass out from the heat at the Fireside Bowl, it was probably 120 degrees in there, scary stuff.