Domain: salon.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to salon.com.
Comments · 5,228
-
Re: They just hate Clinton because...
That's definitely not all they hate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/1...If you ever wondered where the 'Obama is a muslim' rhetoric came from, it was Cruz's new foreign policy guy.
-
Trump must be stopped at all costs!
Election of any RethugliKKKan will mean death of privacy and send a chilling signal to all would-be whistle-blowers.
Oh, wait...
-
Re:Some Questions...
Why is the middle class disappearing?
-
Re:They signed up for this
Did people in the Army sign up for the toxic smoke from the burn pits in Iraq, too?
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/1...
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/2... -
Re:They signed up for this
Did people in the Army sign up for the toxic smoke from the burn pits in Iraq, too?
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/1...
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/2... -
Re:technically illiterate and totalitarian
Even AlterNet and Salon complain about "Obama's dismal civil liberties record".. The blind partisanship of progressives and Obama fanbois like you is sickening.
-
Re:Let me tell you how it is...
Read this and see if it changes your mind at all.
-
Re:Why stay?
During the foreclosure crisis, banks were issuing tons of forged documents.
-
Re:Trump vote
No, she is a criminal. She should be in prison. She should have been in prison long ago after running the elderly out of their houses. That was just the start of her corrupt political career. I'd might as well be voting for some third world dictator thug. At least Trump is not a criminal. That's about what it boils down to.
Are you sure Trump isn't a criminal?
From the evidence presented I think it's quite likely he did rape his wife in 1989, it would hardly be the first rape that wasn't pursued in court and his lawyer's bizarre defence that raping your wife is not a crime is hardly convincing.
-
ExxonMobil president here
Thanks for the tip guys!
There is definitely more energy (hydrogen) in the oceans than there is in those silly oil patches. Who needs water anyway?
We might have to make a deal with Nestlé but this should come along well.
https://www.salon.com/2015/04/...
Truly yours,
Rex Wayne Tillerson
-
Re:Supply and Demand
Texas? Are you refering to the state that has gone out of it''s way to hamper women's civil rights by enacting new barriers to abortion?
Or is it Texas - the state that has made it illegal for people who are legally women to use the women's washroom?
Or is it Texas - the state that just loves to hate on anyone not white?
Texax - where if you're not white and male, you're sh*t. No thanks.
-
Re:Crypto?
The main difference is that the core book of Islam not only justifies but demands abhorent behaviour.
Do you have any specifics?
The core book of Christianity not only justifies but demands abhorent behaviour.
Here are some death penalties:
http://valerietarico.com/2009/...Here are some other "crazy" bits:
https://www.salon.com/2014/05/...In any case, one can with some justification make the argument that the vast majority of christians reject a literal understanding of these types of passages, claiming that other passages supercede these or that they reflect the society in which they were written and that modern understanding has become more nuanced. They do not interpret the scriptures in a violent and opressive manner.
A similar argument can be made that the vast majority of muslims have a similarly nuanced approach to the abhorrent interpretations of their scriptures.
Just for easy access - here are some of the more "controversial" verses of the Koran/Quran/Qur'an they are not too great either:
https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Top... -
Re:Is he really agreeing?
Are you not familiar with their posts? In my effort to be polite, I'll say this; They make some very strong claims from time to time and do not generally provide citations. However...
It is known, not really conjectured, that Google did, in fact, cooperate with the NSA on at least one occasion. As near as I can recall, there's at least one instance where they did so and I've gone ahead and found a link.
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/1...
Now, do not read into that what I did not say. It's important to note *how* and *why* Google assisted and cooperated with the NSA - at least in that one particular instance. If you don't want to read the link, basically some server in China was attacking Google and their users. Google traced 'em, shared the data with the NSA, and gave them technical assistance (probably).
So, you can say that Google has cooperated with the NSA and be completely factual. Except, it's not as it seems. I suspect that's the case here - and he may not even be doing it intentionally and not have actually read the story.
I've heard other accusations and traced them down - they're often just conjecture. I've read quite a bit of the Snowden stuff and, if I recall correctly, you're recounting it well enough. The NSA was grabbing the data without Google's consent or aid - so far as I know. In fact, seeing as I'm providing citations, let me find an article for that....
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
In that article (and all the others that I know of that are generally factual) it points out that the NSA was *secretly* doing so - that means that Google was not aiding them. However, if you squint just enough (and never bother to ask for citations) then you can *factually* claim that Google has cooperated with the NSA. They have. Err... It's just that it was probably the right thing to do at the time.
-
New development? Nah.
This is pretty old news. I’ve had one of these TVs for more than two years — I don’t use the voice recognition feature. There’s a Salon piece from Oct. 30, 2014 on the security aspects of the feature.
-
Re:But they're not white, so it's OKNo need to ban it - it's already dying out on it's own
Ironically, the rise of the Christian Right over the course of the past three decades may well end up being the catalyst for Christianity’s rapid decline. From the moment Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, evangelical Christians, who account for roughly 30 percent of the U.S. population, identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. Michael Spencer, a writer who describes himself as a post-evangelical reform Christian, says, “Evangelicals fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith. Evangelicals will be seen increasingly as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.”
In light of the recent backlash against Republicans who supported the right-to-discriminate bills across 11 states, Spencer’s words seem prophetic. Republican lawmakers had expected evangelicals to mobilize in the aftermath of Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s veto of SB1062. Instead, legislatures in states like Mississippi, Kansas, and Oklahoma have largely backed down from attempts to protect “religious freedom” after a national outcry branded the proposed bills discriminatory.
Every denomination in the U.S. is losing both affiliation and church attendance. In some ways the country is a half-generation behind the declining rate of Christianity in other western countries like the U.K., Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, France, and the Netherlands. In those countries, what were once churches are now art galleries, cafes and pubs. In Germany more than 50 percent say they do not believe in any god, and this number is declining rapidly. In the U.K., church attendances have halved since the 1970s.
or as the bible would put it - "sowing the seeds of their own destruction"
...A recent study into the beliefs of people living in 137 countries concludes that religious people will be a minority in many developed countries by 2041. Nigel Barber, an Irish bio-psychologist, based his book, Why Atheism Will Replace Religion, on the findings. His book also debunks the popular belief that religious groups will dominate atheistic ones because they collectively have more children. “Noisy as they can be, such groups are tiny minorities of the global population and they will become even more marginalized as global prosperity increases and standards of living improve,” writes Barber.
Research has shown that religion declines not just with rising national wealth but with all plausible measures of the quality of life, including length of life, decline of infectious diseases, education, the rise of the welfare state, and more equal distribution of income. Clearly there is less of a market for religion in societies where ordinary people feel secure in their daily lives. In the most developed countries, such as Japan and Sweden, the quality of life is so good that the majority is already secular.
In my book I asked how long it would take for the average country in the world to reach a similar level of development as countries that already have secular majorities. This transition was measured either as a minority believing in God or a minority seeing religion as important. The average rate of economic development was assessed both in terms of GDP (corrected for local prices, PPP) and the human development index (HDI), which includes health and education as well as GDP. So I calculated four estimates of when the average country in the world is likely to transition to a secular majority, and the average estimate was 2041. The more reliable HDI method predicts an earlier transition than does GDP alone.
Religious people will become the new "red shirts".
-
Re:should be interesting
Maybe not.
The rush to smear Assange’s rape accuser
Actually, as far as I can tell, the only source for that claim is an August Counterpunch article by Assange fanboys (seriously, they recast him as Neo of “The Matrix”) Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett. Here’s the most damning evidence Shamir and Bennett have compiled against Assange’s accuser:
1) She’s published “anti-Castro diatribes” in a Swedish-language publication that, according to an Oslo professor, Michael Seltzer (who?), is “connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner,” who reportedly has CIA ties. Let me repeat that: She has been published in a journal that is connected with a group that is led by a guy with CIA ties. Says this one guy.
2) “In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter.” That link goes to an English translation of a Spanish article noting that at a march last spring, Posada “wander[ed] unleashed and un-vaccinated along Calle Ocho in Miami, marching alongside” — wait for it — “Gloria Estefan in support of the so-called Ladies in White.” Apparently, it’s “an established fact” that Posada and the Ladies also share a shady benefactor, which means he should clearly be called a “friend” of the organization, and this is totally relevant to the rape charges against Julian Assange, because the accuser once interacted with them in some manner.
3) The accuser is a known feminist who once wrote a blog post about getting revenge on men, and “was involved in Gender Studies in Uppsala University, in charge of gender equality in the Students’ Union, a junior inquisitor of sorts.”
Are you kidding me? That’s what we’re basing the “CIA ties” meme on? An article that reads like a screenplay treatment by a college freshman who’s terrified of women? Actual quote: “[T]he Matrix plays dirty and lets loose a sex bomb upon our intrepid Neo. When you can’t contest the message, you smear the messenger. Sweden is tailor-made for sending a young man into a honey trap.”
-
Re: should be interesting
Well then, "thank goodness" you're here to help set the record straight. How could progress occur without folk like you?
The rush to smear Assange’s rape accuser
OK, so maybe the charges really are for rape-rape, but still — the woman has CIA ties! I’ve read that on at least a dozen blogs! Keith Olbermann tweeted it and everything! That’s got to be coming from a highly credible source, right?
Actually, as far as I can tell, the only source for that claim is an August Counterpunch article by Assange fanboys (seriously, they recast him as Neo of “The Matrix”) Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett. Here’s the most damning evidence Shamir and Bennett have compiled against Assange’s accuser:
1) She’s published “anti-Castro diatribes” in a Swedish-language publication that, according to an Oslo professor, Michael Seltzer (who?), is “connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner,” who reportedly has CIA ties. Let me repeat that: She has been published in a journal that is connected with a group that is led by a guy with CIA ties. Says this one guy.
2) “In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter.” That link goes to an English translation of a Spanish article noting that at a march last spring, Posada “wander[ed] unleashed and un-vaccinated along Calle Ocho in Miami, marching alongside” — wait for it — “Gloria Estefan in support of the so-called Ladies in White.” Apparently, it’s “an established fact” that Posada and the Ladies also share a shady benefactor, which means he should clearly be called a “friend” of the organization, and this is totally relevant to the rape charges against Julian Assange, because the accuser once interacted with them in some manner.
Are you kidding me? That’s what we’re basing the “CIA ties” meme on? An article that reads like a screenplay treatment by a college freshman who’s terrified of women? Actual quote: “[T]he Matrix plays dirty and lets loose a sex bomb upon our intrepid Neo. When you can’t contest the message, you smear the messenger. Sweden is tailor-made for sending a young man into a honey trap.”
-
DTT is powerful.
Due to Digital Turnip Twaddling, it's required socially to have the latest iPhone.
-
Media bias and misrepresentations
One thing has struck me recently, which is that YouTube allows us to catch out misrepresentations and media bias.
In previous years, we would *only* have the media interpretations of current events. My parents, for instance, would read the newspaper article about some incident or other, and have no way to judge whether the opinions and position were in any way correct.
Nowadays we can easily dig down to the source, and verify what we are told.
As an example that everyone knows about, we can look to some of the things said about Trump:
- The New York Times: “Trump’s claim that illegal Mexican immigrants are ‘rapists.”
- Time Magazine: “Trump’s comment that Mexican immigrants are ‘rapists.’”
- Associated Press: “Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals”
- CBS News: “Trump defends calling Mexican immigrants ‘rapists.’”
- L.A. Times: “describing Mexican immigrants as ‘rapists.’”
- Fortune: “in a speech branding Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.”
- Hollywood Reporter: “he referred to Mexican immigrants as ‘rapists.’”
- Huffington Post: “He called Latino immigrants ‘criminals’ and ‘rapists.’”
- The Washington Post: “He referred to Mexicans as “rapists.”
What he actually said:
They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.
An accurate representation of what he said was "some illegal immigrants are criminals", which is true simply by the law of averages, with the implication that if they went through a vetting procedure we could perhaps filter out the criminal portion.
This was taken so completely out of context that WaPo rephrased it as "He referred to Mexicans as “rapists.", with the implication that he insulted the entire population of another country, and a fair portion of our own citizens.
It's highly interesting to me that, as individuals, we now have the ability to find the evidence and come to our own conclusions, rather than blindly listen to the pronouncements of the elite.
And a little bit, I think that's why Trump's supporters are so immovable. When the MSM cries "but he's a *racist*!", most of the people who were at the rally think "he didn't actually say that".
It's definitely interesting the effect that YouTube has had on the political landscape.
-
Re:Jah booty
Actually, recent studies show that the remote pilots do have PTSD issues....they don't just fly a drone in, launch a missile from 20 miles, and leave. The pilots often work 10-12 hour shifts 6 days a week, and they often follow their targets for weeks if not months before any attacks. After the attack, the drone has to hang out and continue watching, doing an assessment of the damage; ie a body count. The drone team (usually three people) has to count and catalog each dead body. It's highly stressful; these soldiers know damn well it's NOT a video game, they know they are actually killing people. And when they do go home from the office, they can't talk to anyone about the burning bodies of the children they had to tally up that day.
Here's more articles on this, if you don't believe me. -
Gawker
Archive link for those who prefer not to support the reprehensible Gawker: https://archive.is/PP7q2
IMHO Gawker is an absolutely vile clickbait machine that portrays itself as a progressive voice while selling outrage.
It undermines what I consider valid, socially responsible goals by trivialising most of them, generating needless conflict by labelling "bad" people and maintaining a ludicrous left-wing good, right-wing evil narrative. It produces propaganda and hatred for cash.Nick Denton - the CEO of Gawker - has admitted that the company has a severe empathy problem and tried to relaunch it:
http://www.thewrap.com/nick-de...
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/2...The problem with journalism is not that one needs an audience, the problem with journalism is that factual reporting is no longer the main goal. Truth is secondary to page-views. Nolan suggests that people are the problem because they won't pay for factual material, http://www.private-eye.co.uk/ demonstrates that one can successfully run a publication that focuses on the pursuit and publication of truth (with a healthy injection of humour).
TFA is an attempt to blame absolutely shitty "journalism" on the audience, what in fact is happening is that those of us who do care about quality journalism recognise Gawker for what it is and don't give it ad-revenue or page-impressions.
-
The nanny state is ridiculous
When I was in kindergarten I walked to school every day, it was only around 3 blocks away. Going to the park alone was also normal. The sad thing is that it is a lot safer today than it was back then. I consider myself quite liberal, but I detest the whole nanny state. I've also read numerous articles about parents who are arrested for leaving young children in the car, in the shade with the windows open while running into the grocery store.
Hell, reading this article reminded me about how my mother would go into a local supermarket to do some quick shopping while I watched my younger sister in the car. Today my mother would have been arrested.
As a kid I ran around all over the place without my parents hovering over me every second. I got out and got exercise and explored, something many parents won't allow today. That was before the days of the Internet or before cell phones or bike helmets. The only difference I would have with my own kids is to make them wear a bicycle helmet when riding (due to experience with how it saved the life of a relative several times) and possibly a cell phone.
Kids need to be kids and also to learn responsibility, not be coddled like crazy.
-
Re:I am amazed and disappointed
I'm amazed that people didn't grasp the implications of the Jane Harman wiretap .
-
Re: Mental Illness Reporting
It's misleading because not all gun owners are mentally ill, mostly just the ones you see on TV.
This is true.
It's also misleading because most of homicide with a firearm also don't involve mental illness.
Mental illness, which is generally an unresolved problem in this nation outside of the gun debate, does however make a convenient scapegoat to prevent any action on gun control.Truth is both problems need solving, and using one to stall the other is despicable.
-
Re:I.S.I.S.
According to THIS [washingtonpost.com], it's well-educated engineer types who are most likely to embrace terrorism.
Yeah, about that:
https://www.democracynow.org/i...
https://media.salon.com/2015/1...
-
Re:FTFY...
Only in America is being a good and decent person considered a negative trait.
-
Re:Did you say "fascist"? (Re:Hypocrisy)
Really? What militant group was formed in response to Trump's rhetoric?
http://www.thewrap.com/donald-...
-
Are all cultures equal?
That's subjective.
It may be subjective, but I was asking your opinion. Please, state for the record, whether you consider cultures, where kai-kaiing people is acceptable (and even heroic) to be neither better nor worse than those, where eating people is considered an outrage?
And, should your answer be affirmative, why is it, that neither UNESCO nor any other prominent organization has yet organized a Cannibalism Month (or Week) — complete with recipe-exchanges and denunciations of the evil West appropriating the authentic practice while adopting "knee-jerk" laws against it? Is not ignoring such cultures — and their unique contributions to the wonderful tapestry of diversity — evidence of despicable bigotry and closed-mindedness? Should the Western colonizers not atone for extinguishing most of such rituals?
Given your already demonstrated tendency to puh-puh inconvenient questions, I regret to inform you, that a post not containing direct answer(s) to the above will be returned unopened.
-
Re:I have an idea
And you lost me when you said oil, and helpers in the congo...
The US DOES have "helpers" in Africa-- when it comes to training, we actually spend more money and send more units there. We train nearly twice as many people in Sub-Saharan Africa compared to the Middle east and North Africa combined. source
Also note that special forces deployments are 10x what they were in Africa ten years ago, while presence in the middle east is actually going down. source
I know you want to make this about OIL, but I think this is a gross simplification.
It just coincidence that the biggest recipient listed is Nigeria - which also is a major oil producer.
-
Re:Equality of opportunity matters
those of us who aren't sociopaths
Easy with the name-calling. Please, don't hate.
Glass ceilings are a real thing.
Whether that's true or not, there is not one in Linux (nor FreeBSD) project. And yet, the ratio of females there is even worse, than at Microsoft.
People don't have to be enslaved for a workplace to be a very bad place.
If the free people willingly choose to work somewhere, then it can not be that bad.
there is clear and unambiguous evidence that if we allow discrimination based on those criteria that the results are bad both for society and for the individuals
Such a claim sounds rather hollow without citations. Got any?
Your "anti-discrimination" (poorly) fights symptoms, not the problem — which only gets worse because of your efforts, as we are forced to wonder, if a protected minority occupying an important post really deserved it, or got it thanks to the color of his skin. Racial relations today are worse than before — with Blacks especially alienated.
Your approach demonstrably failed. Decades ago we surrendered an essential liberty to your kind in exchange for a promise of harmony, and now we have neither the liberty nor the harmony. Look at Baltimore — despite having Black mayor and Black police commissioner, it still got racial tensions like nowhere else... It is such an egg on your face, your wisest now blame lead paint!
You are a pathetic failure. And yet, instead of pulling back to reflect on what went wrong, your kind doubles and triples down with new charges. Today even the belly-dancing or yoga are off-limits to the Whitey.
Constitution is junk to you — you may preach "tolerance", but wish to ban "hate speech". And that includes everything that makes you uncomfortable.
The market demonstrably cannot fairly deal with this problem.
Because it is not a market problem. In fact, I am not convinced, it is a problem at all. But, if it is, you and yours are the least qualified to address it.
-
Re:I have an idea
And you lost me when you said oil, and helpers in the congo...
The US DOES have "helpers" in Africa-- when it comes to training, we actually spend more money and send more units there. We train nearly twice as many people in Sub-Saharan Africa compared to the Middle east and North Africa combined. source
Also note that special forces deployments are 10x what they were in Africa ten years ago, while presence in the middle east is actually going down. source
I know you want to make this about OIL, but I think this is a gross simplification. Even if it were about oil, none of this would apply to Syria, which is not a large producer. source
I'm not saying that oil companies have no influence in our government (I'm sure they do--- just like military contractors and a myriad other huge industries in the US and the world influence probably every part of our lives and governments) but the US is training and policing all sorts of areas of the world, regardless of whether or not they fit some predetermined "OMG OIL" narrative. Is this a great idea? Honestly I have no idea, I'm sure some citizens are happy to have the US intervene just as sure as some will hate us for it.
-
Re: Unbelievable
Do you even know what started the Jihad?
-
Don't see the problem
The point of a textbook should be to objectively present facts. This particular sentence is entirely clear. It begins by referring to the slave trade, and continue to give the reason that the slaves were brought over, which was to be workers. There is nothing factually wrong with this sentence, it is entirely clear about the fact that the people were brought over as slaves.
Some people sure look hard for ways to be offended. Here's another example: Someone is occupying two seats on overly crowded public transport, one for themselves, one for their bag. They aren't paying attention, and they have headphones on. Another passenger wants to sit down, but can't get their attention. So he picks up their bag and sets it on their lap. Now, maybe that's rude, but so is blocking a seat with your bag. What it isn't, however, is racist. But because the oblivious person was black, that's the first word out of their mouth.
This gets tiresome. More, it's counterproductive, because it means that people must treat blacks differently. Would you willingly hire a black to work at your company, knowing that they will cry racism every time something doesn't go their way? More, you will never be able to fire then, even if you have cause, because you know you will have an EEO suit on your hands. So the only possible answer is to avoid hiring blacks in the first place.
-
Actually, no.
even Salon and LiveScience (neither is right wing) agree that conservatives tend to be happier people. Of course, left wingers then have to go all bitter and mean about it and try to diagnose this happiness as some form of dysfunction... (thereby reenforcing the whole thing)
Conservatives have not made any movie about assassinating Obama while he is actually serving in the White House; Liberals DID make such a film about assassinating Bush while HE was in office. Conservatives do not insist that nobody should watch a TV channel with opposing political view (like MSNBC for example), no they WANT people to watch the insanity and see it for what it is. Liberals on the other hand are nearly paranoid about opposing points of view and are always insisting people should not watch the channel they oppose (Fox News).
The Left end of the political spectrum views people as only interchangeable parts of groups and wants to treat them as such in a grand social machine; this means the rights of the group trump the rights of the individual and the desires of the masses, hence the fixation on the US as a Democracy and the willingness to shut down free speech anytime a group is offended. This leads to identity-politics, socialized services, re-distributive economics, ever-growing government, and the general unhappiness of many as they realize their ideology means that, as individuals, they are insignificant and should be sacrificed for the good-of-the-many (as defined by the many, rather than by them). People on the left also tend to be more secular and therefore have a bleak view that they will live for a few decades and then plunge into oblivion, nullifying their existence and making it completely irrational to even care about what happens after they are gone, including even whether anybody cares that they were ever among the living.
The right end of the political spectrum views people as unique individuals who each have their own value; this means the rights of the individual trump the desires of the masses unless something like an national security threat is involved, hence the fixation on the US as a Republic and the reflexive repulsion towards political correctness. This leads to a desire for smaller government that generally leaves people alone (just doing the critical stuff like national defense and dealing with murderers etc), allowing them to succeed or fail as they choose. This is the freedom-to-try model over the protection-from-failure model. They also tend to believe in VOLUNTARY private charity over forced government re-distribution. Whether it's true or not, this idea of a freedom to succeed leads people to think they might "strike it rich" or succeed in some other way. People on the right also tend to be more religious, often (depending on faith) believing in some sort of after-life that is generally hoped will be better than their current life and an ongoing existence. All of this puts value (often God-given value) on each individual - an idea that can hardly make one bitter.
I'm not arguing which side is "right" in the sense of true/correct, just that the different beliefs (whether completely true or loony-tunes wrong) have a natural and rational effect upon the attitudes and behaviors of those who hold them - and that this has been exposed countless times by academic studies, so No, you cannot honestly say the same thing about conservatives
-
If New York Times complains about it...
If even the staunchly illiberal publications like New York Times and The Atlantic complain about there being too many grievances, it must, indeed, be a real problem.
A problem, they helped facilitate, I might add. Because, when people are simply pursuing happiness, one can get a (sorely mistaken!!) impression, everything is right in the land of Capitalism — so, if causes for real complaints are gone, we must dig deeper to rouse up new ones. Somebody complimented your demeanour? They must be RACIST!.. Girls learn belly-dancing — to stay fit and please their boyfriends? They are appropriating! And so on.
-
Re:Why is the Left so fiercely defending Islamism?
Pics or it didn't happen. Do you actually have any examples of "the left" defending these attacks, or are you just finding someone to hate?
How about one of the most popular sites of "the Left" blaming the victims?
The author seems to have spent a lot more than 40 minutes. That's just what was on Google News.
-
Re:The best candidate is...
here's a (woefully incomplete) list of said flipflops:
Rand Paul, serial panderer: 5 major flip-flops that reveal his brazen hypocrisy
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/2... -
Re:Real problem: He's an idiot
It's not like the Democratic party called him up and gave him permission to run. He declared his candidacy and then quickly and effectively put out a message that the majority of the country agrees with in a way that caused a lot of people to start talking about him. He forced his way into the Democratic contest, he was not "allowed" in. If they would have tried to push him away then there either would have been a lot of people asking questions about why some candidates aren't allowed to debate (which neither party wants to answer), or he would just run as an independent.
He wasn't "allowed" to run, he made it happen because people agree with his message. The reason why there is so much doubt around his candidacy is because the media and the parties keep telling the public that he is a fringe candidate. He's not fringe, he's mainstream. The media is trying to push fringe candidates like Clinton and Trump/Rubio/Cruz on people and call them mainstream, but the polls show that the majority of the country supports Sanders when people aren't being shoved loaded terms like "socialism", where they think it means something that it doesn't. You can see that in polls where people say that they agree with Sanders' positions, and also that they wouldn't vote for a socialist. The media is controlling the dialog, which is why you think Sanders is a fringe candidate or does not have a realistic chance at getting elected.
-
Re:Failures of Capitalism #20896733190411 in a ser
This strategy has been around since the 2001 bubble burst. The valley knows it well..
-
Re:Censoring speech...
i'm skeptical of the human motivations and methodology of those wanting to CONTROL large portions of the economy, under the guise of Climate (what ever they call it today).
I'm skeptical of the pecuniary motivation of those who will profit - and thereby control large portions of the economy, by the continuation of present practices, and who employ Tobacco insustry and creationist tactics to do so.
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/2...
So when a corporation lies about their research, is it your science boogiemen's fault?
I don't say that Exxon "sealed outr fate, only that it wasn't your fairy tale of evil AGW supporters.
Your move, science rejecting denialist.
-
Re: Did they learn anything??
Vouchers will get students out of failing public schools, like, Newark, Chicago, etc. and give them a chance to break the cycle of poverty.
School vouchers are a scam to keep the prisons full. If you hear someone talk about "school reform", run for the hills. They're famous flim-flammers.
The school "privatization" movement is one of the biggest scandals of the 21st century. Charter schools fail. They exist to funnel money upward, not to educate kids.
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/1...
-
Re:$10/hr minimum wage coming to Walmart
They're getting out of the "slave/subsistence wages" business model. Walmart is in the process of upping their minimum wage to $10/hr (and taking a large financial hit along the way http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... ). They've already raised it to $9/hr. Moreover, it's not like Amazon warehouse workers get treated well. In fact, some say it's worse that Walmart: http://www.salon.com/2014/02/2...
Sorry, that's still pretty much "slave/subsistence wages". I had friends getting better wages than that twenty years ago in flyover states with nothing more than a high school degree. Still, the real issue isn't strictly the wages, but rather that they give people like my uncle as many hours a week as they can but not give him benefits. There's a reason that like fast food, you pretty much only see the young and old working at Walmart. They do not offer any sort of career type wage, even for the unambitious in a low cost of living state.
-
$10/hr minimum wage coming to Walmart
They're getting out of the "slave/subsistence wages" business model. Walmart is in the process of upping their minimum wage to $10/hr (and taking a large financial hit along the way http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... ). They've already raised it to $9/hr. Moreover, it's not like Amazon warehouse workers get treated well. In fact, some say it's worse that Walmart: http://www.salon.com/2014/02/2...
(That said, I still get a lot more stuff from Amazon than Walmart.)
-
Re: Outer space?
Yes, according to an institution where the world's most corrupt leaders vastly outnumber the West, where mass-murderers head the "Human Rights" council and where Israel is held up to vastly higher standards than the rest.
OK, if you don't believe the UN, let's ask some Jews:
http://livefromoccupiedpalesti...
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/2...
http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Z...
Now please do your best to make ad hominem attacks on those voices, since you don't have any substantive argument to make.
-
Re:Political-correctness gone insane ..
-
San Francisco prices are so high...
...because of multiple government regulations that have choked off supply, namely:
* Rent Control
* Excessive environmental regulations
* Excessive land use regulations
* An institutional hostility to landlords (so bad that many landlords simply refuse to rent at all since renters could tie them up in court for years when they tried to sell the property).
* California's general hostility to development.And now San Francisco has said they'll try to limit price increases by restricting supply. Looks like someone failed Economics 101.
Bonus: Did you know that the Rev. Jim Jones (yes, that one) once served on San Francisco's Housing Authority?
-
Opus said it even better.
-
Re:What about the rights of those injured by firea
oh, and its not about mental illness, not solely, and not largely.
makes a convenient excuse though.http://www.salon.com/2015/06/1...
We do have statistics showing that the vast majority of people who commit acts of violence do not have a diagnosis of mental illness and, conversely, people who have mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.
We know that the stigma of people who suffer from mental illness as scary, dangerous potential murderers hurts people every single day — it costs people relationships and jobs, it scares people away from seeking help who need it, it brings shame and fear down on the heads of people who already have it bad enough.
But the media insists on trotting out “mental illness” and blaring out that phrase nonstop in the wake of any mass killing. I had to grit my teeth every time I personally debated someone defaulting to the mindless mantra of “The real issue is mental illness” over the Isla Vista shootings.
“The real issue is mental illness” is a goddamn cop-out. I almost never hear it from actual mental health professionals, or advocates working in the mental health sphere, or anyone who actually has any kind of informed opinion on mental health or serious policy proposals for how to improve our treatment of the mentally ill in this country.
What I hear from people who bleat on about “The real issue is mental illness,” when pressed for specific suggestions on how to deal with said “real issue,” is terrifying nonsense designed to throw the mentally ill under the bus. Elliot Rodger’s parents should’ve been able to force risperidone down his throat. Seung-Hui Cho should’ve been forcibly institutionalized. Anyone with a mental illness diagnosis should surrender all of their constitutional rights, right now, rather than at all compromise the right to bear arms of self-declared sane people.
What’s interesting is to watch who the mentally ill people are being thrown under the bus to defend. In the wake of Sandy Hook, the NRA tells us that creating a national registry of firearms owners would be giving the government dangerously unchecked tyrannical power, but a national registry of the mentally ill would not — even though a “sane” person holding a gun is intrinsically more dangerous than a “crazy” person, no matter how crazy, without a gun.
and
And the big splashy headliner atrocities tend to distract us from the ones that don’t make headline news. People are willing to call one white man emptying five magazines and murdering nine black people in a church and openly saying it was because of race a hate crime, even if they have to then cover it up with the fig leaf of individual “mental illness”–but a white man wearing a uniform who fires two magazines at two people in a car in a “bad neighborhood” in Cleveland? That just ends up a statistic in a DoJ report on systemic bias.
And hundreds of years of history in which an entire country’s economy was set up around chaining up millions of black people, forcing them to work and shooting them if they get out of line? That’s just history.
The reason a certain kind of person loves talking about “mental illness” is to draw attention to the big bold scary exceptional crimes and treat them as exceptions. It’s to distract from the fact that the worst crimes in history were committed by people just doing their jobs–cops enforcing the law, soldiers following orders, bureaucrats signing paperwork. That if we define “sanity” as going along to get along with what’s “normal” in the society around you, then for most of history the sane t
-
Profit now depends on abusing customers.
"The PC has stopped being the primary computing device of most people meaning that if they don't make it big on the mobile front they'll be irrelevant in the long run."
Agreed. But I think Microsoft will not "make it big" with mobile software.
Products that face low sales because of abuse and foolishness:
Windows: If you have Windows 7, why get a new version? At some point the version you have is enough. Apparently there aren't any new features in Windows 10 that are attractive to customers. Apparently the new features in Windows 10 are all anti-customer.
Google is becoming more and more abusive: F.T.C. Is Said to Investigate Claims That Google Used Android to Promote Its Products.
Apple iPhones: What will the future iPhone 7 have that the iPhone 6 doesn't have? Digital Turnip Twaddling? At some point people will stop rushing to buy new iPhones.
Apple watches? Now that Steve Jobs is dead, Apple no longer releases easy-to-use products. Apple now does the Microsoft thing and releases buggy products that it slowly fixes. Articles:
Verdict: "... there's a learning curve you have to overcome..."
Seven problems facing the Apple Watch
Apple Watch: Issues We Know Of And Possible Fixes.
Opinion: One month later, fixing 15 early Apple Watch problems seems straightforward
These 8 problems with the Apple Watch are 'infuriating'
9 of the biggest complaints about the Apple Watch so far
8 Infuriating Problems With The Apple Watch -
Re:A discussion of constitutional limits of power?
Pick a decade, any decade, the two-party duopoly has always been interested in collect it all.
Main Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... from the 1980's
Salon has uncovered new evidence of post-9/11 spying on Americans. Obtained documents point to a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate. (Jul 23, 2008)
http://www.salon.com/2008/07/2...
1960's Project MINARET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...