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Billy_TParticipantBilly, I think you stole my thunder: Archie Manning. Awesome talent, nothing around him…
I’d also hitch my wagon to Dan Fouts.
Warren Beatty would be third, then Mick Jagger and Judge Judy.
Yep. Papa Manning was an amazing talent, on a terrible, new-franchise team. Imagine him with the current Saints. Or last year’s version . . .
I’ve never actually watched the Judge Judy show. Can she throw an out route?
Billy_TParticipantRun on climate change, economic equality, an end to war, mass incarceration and the surveillance state (public and private). Run on peace, justice and ice cream for breakfast, and they’ve got it!
Billy: I hate to sound so cynical (its my very worst quality) but do you really think people today-right here in River City-actually care about these things-as opposed to whats in their own little lives and self interest ?
The great thing about leftist proposals? They deal with the Big Picture and individual concerns. Both/and. Centrist to conservative proposals don’t. They ignore the Big Picture, and when they deal with individual concerns, they focus almost entirely on rich people. By definition, that leaves the vast majority of voters out.
You live in a state overwhelmed by fires right now. That’s primarily a result of climate change and a failure to deal with it. Dealing with economic inequality means helping the vast majority of voters with their everyday, kitchen-table issues, instead of the desires of the rich. An end to war means an end to early death for those same voters, and it means money can go to their direct concerns, none of which are helped via war.
Etc. etc.
Only the left offers huge improvements to the quality of life for all citizens. Only the left has that tradition. Not the center and certainly not the right.
The above, of course, is my own two cents. My take on the way of things. Others may well disagree.
Hope all is well, W.
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This reply was modified 5 years ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantThat said, I do think the Dem field is uninspiring overall, outside of Sanders. She has a lot of flaws, but Warren comes in second for me. Both of them are too old, in my view, and that will hurt them in the general.
(Trump, of course, is in his 70s too.)
I probably won’t live to see it, but I hope the Dems groom the younger DSA reps for the title. They have what the party needs the most: charisma, guts, sincerity, authenticity, and they’re genuinely left-populist. Someone like AOC, in 2028, could be extremely formidable, and great for the country.
The Dems need to inspire the nation, not put it to sleep. And nothing would be better as a wake up call than a strong and young progressive or outright leftist, preferably (for me) a woman of color. Run on climate change, economic equality, an end to war, mass incarceration and the surveillance state (public and private). Run on peace, justice and ice cream for breakfast, and they’ve got it!
Billy_TParticipantIf the election is even remotely on the level, Trump will get crushed. He and Clinton were the two most disliked candidates in the modern era, and Trump “won” with only 26% of the potential vote. HRC had 28%.
Clinton’s not running. She was pretty much the only Dem Trump could beat, and he still needed help from Comey, especially, to do that. I don’t see a similar scenario this time, and Trump’s negatives have gotten even worse while in office. Racism, kids in cages, the destruction of the environment, endless lies, endless grifting and self-dealing.
Plus, he can no longer run against the establishment. He is the establishment. And he can no longer run as the swamp drainer. He is the swamp. He’s made it a thousand times worse.
Prior to the 2016 election, voters didn’t know he was under investigation for collusion with Russia. Now they know he colluded, lied about it, obstructed justice, and continued to seek help from other nations like Ukraine. And unlike the Mueller investigation, which took two years and was pretty much silent, the Ukraine scandal is already public, and the public hearings haven’t even started.
He’s toast. His only chance is to cheat on an international level, without exposure, and I have no doubt he’ll do his damndest in that realm. But too many people have had enough of him and are speaking out. Including insiders, in his own administration.
IMO, the Dems are going to have to work really, really hard to blow this. It’s theirs to win. They should be able to destroy him. If they can’t, they need to find other occupations.
Billy_TParticipantYou forgot Gabriel. If you asked me that question when I was a kid, back in the 1960s, it’s definitely Roman Gabriel. Today, I’d have to choose between Elway, Manning (Peyton), Rogers, Montana and Brady. I want another year to see what Mahomes can do. But he’s almost there.
If I knew I had a really strong team surrounding the QB, I might go off-road a bit and choose Archie Manning. I think he could have been an all-time great, but was saddled with horrible teams, year after year. Great scrambler, great arm, smart.
Greg Cook is kinda in that category too. Though it was the injuries, mostly, that did him in. He had major potential. HOF level. Terrible injuries and team, if memory serves.
And speaking of smart. I think Starr was the smartest field general QB of them all. Montana, Brady and Peyton are close. But Starr wins that prize, IMO.
Most physically gifted? Mahomes and Elway. Wilson’s up there too.
I like your choice of Young as well. But I think Montana, if you’re going with a Niner, was better.
Billy_TParticipantThanks for posting that, WV.
I read his Life and Fate, and thought it was brilliant. Then I read about Grossman.
If you’re interested, The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman by John and Carol Garrard, is excellent non-fiction, and highly moving.
I bought the latter as a remainder, and need to reread it.
Stalingrad sounds fantastic . . . though I usually steer clear of massive books. May make an exception for this one. I think New York Review of Books has it in paper back.
Billy_TParticipant105 million people stayed home
66 million voted for HRC
63 million voted for Trump
4.5 million voted for Gary Johnson
1.4 million voted for Jill SteinIn no known universe can the smallest number on that list be the “decisive” factor.
======================
I blame The Party For Socialism And Liberation — 74,402 votes.
wiki:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_electionw
vYou need to tell Hillary. ;>)
She’ll call them a “Russian asset” too. Which, of course, is yet another irony. Russia under Putin is far-right. He’s helped far-right parties and candidates all over the world. He became perhaps the richest man in the world because Russia privatized everything public after 1991, and he and his oligarchical buddies made a killing.
Of course, in America, we never had much of a “Commons” to begin with, so our oligarchs have always had private control. But they didn’t have the same Gold Rush opportunities as the Russians after 1991.
Sidenote on my Stein vote. I would have chosen someone well to her left if he or she were on the ballot. The Greens were the only option beyond the duopoly. I do think their platform is a hell of a lot better than the Dems/GOP’s. It’s not close. But they’re not anticapitalists per se. If I had my druthers, that’s who I’d vote for every time.
To me, the root of all our problems stems from an economic system that makes it legal for humans to own the economic output of other humans. I’d limit that to one’s own. You get to own your own output, not anyone else’s. Once the economic entity in question grows beyond that one human, it’s co-ownership or it’s not legal.
A person or party that seeks the complete and wholesale removal and replacement of capitalism with true democratic, radical egalitarian, localized, self-rule will get my full commitment.
Closest thing we have right now to a viable alternative, to me, is the DSA.
October 26, 2019 at 4:01 pm in reply to: Yet another crossroads and moment of truth for America #107397Billy_TParticipantThe media, the Dems and Mueller did a terrible job clarifying the radical limitations of the investigation itself, at least when it came to Trump. I still think Americans are confused about what, exactly, was at issue, and this is crucial for the sense of Trump’s guilt or innocence.
If I understand things correctly, Mueller was only looking at the legal term for “collusion” when it came to Russia’s actual hacking of the DNC. He couldn’t find sufficient evidence to demonstrate Trump’s guilt in the act of that hacking. Mueller actually demonstrates nearly 200 cases of Trump/campaign “colluding” with Russia when it came to accepting their help — which breaks our laws. The only thing he couldn’t demonstrate was a direct coordination of cyberwar activities.
Trump and his campaign are guilty of working with the Russians to help the Trump campaign. There is abundant proof of that. The media, Dems and Mueller just did a horrible job of explaining the difference to the country. If they had been able to separate the act of theft from the exploitation of that theft . . . I think Trump would already have been impeached and the trial would have already happened in the Senate.
And now? Trump is seeking revenge on his political enemies, and using Barr as his sword. The Ukraine scandal is just the tip of iceberg, to mix metaphor. His obsession with revenge, and his own insecurities, may well bring the whole house down. I don’t think Trump has any limits when it comes to that. None.
Billy_TParticipantTo add a tad to the Stein thingy. Voting for Stein had absolutely zero impact on the election results, in any state with a majority vote for HRC. It happened in my state. My own vote for Stein was cancelled out because HRC won.
That’s the way the EC system works. I think it’s deeply anti-democratic, and we need to go to a national, popular vote, but it is what it is. We’re stuck with it for now.
There are already a thousand and one ways in which the Dems and the Republicans make life next to impossible for third parties. Rather than whining about a few million votes, maybe the major parties should find ways to earn them via their deeds instead. Give people actual reasons to vote for the two major parties, rather than moan about how unfair everything is.
Ironically, the people with legit rationales for complaint are those third party candidates, not the Dems or the Republicans.
Billy_TParticipantMirrors. Geopolitical mirrors. I can easily imagine a CIA-backed “alternative” media company, doing the same thing in Russia or another nation as RT does here. Selected dissidents in those nations would gather as “the only truth-tellers around,” thereby helping the American empire, while sowing discord in that home country.
To me, if someone has a problem with a CIA-backed propaganda operation, they should have a problem with RT. And it’s not as if we can’t find independent print journalism by these same people, without RT being at all involved.
That said, I agree that the “guilt by association” meme is ugly and dangerous. It’s a favorite of mainstream Dems — to cast anyone who can be placed in an RT Venn diagram as a “Russia asset” . . . is “deplorable.” And I’ve long thought the people who keep blaming Jill Stein for the loss need to take remedial math courses and study counterfactuals too. I usually show them these numbers for 2016, and it still doesn’t make a dent:
105 million people stayed home
66 million voted for HRC
63 million voted for Trump
4.5 million voted for Gary Johnson
1.4 million voted for Jill SteinIn no known universe can the smallest number on that list be the “decisive” factor.
Billy_TParticipanti watched the first quarter so far. Does it seem like Legatron never puts em through the middle anymore? Even the kicks he makes now always seem to be barely inside the uprights.
w
vDo you have Game Pass, WV? Or did you tape it via the Sunday Ticket?
This is my first season in aeons without the Ticket. Bummed that I couldn’t watch the game as it happened.
In limbo now . . . debating whether or not to get Game Pass. The Rams will likely be on local TV five more times this season. Maybe another game or two at a sports bar. But it’s much more enjoyable for me to relax in my own home.
I wish the NFL would diversify and offer other options beyond Game Pass and Directv. I’d be happy if I could just hook up with LA channels. Limit my out of market watching to just the Rams. I don’t need to see all the other games . . . but that’s not an option.
I thought capitalism was supposed to be all about competition!!
;>)
Billy_TParticipantYeah, I think if you make the investment in Peters the Rams made . . . the trade for picks, etc . . . then you do what is necessary to help him be successful.
They should have known, going in, that he’s not a shutdown corner. He’s a ball-hawk, with great skills in that arena. But in order for that to work, you have to have back-end coverage of an exceptional (and coordinated) nature. You have to make sure safeties literally have his back when he gambles. The Rams, all too often, seemed to forget all about that . . . perhaps the most glaring example was the Saints game last year.
What does make me feel better, though, is the news that they at least tried to get top value for him in a trade.
Report: Rams offered Marcus Peters to Browns for OL Joel Bitonio
Bitonio would have helped the Rams a ton. At 28, in his prime, and plenty experienced, Bitonio could have been a key linemen for at least another three years or so.
Only saw highlights, but Ramsey seemed to make a seriously positive impact today.
October 20, 2019 at 8:00 pm in reply to: Should the left reassess its relationship to the Establishment? #107023Billy_TParticipantDon’t you think that if leftists were able to get our info out to the mainstream, things would change?…
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Well, I dunno. Once the masses have been drenched in propaganda for decades I am afraid “non-capitalist” info just bounces off them, BT. I think propaganda changes their brains. If you dont think so, go talk to a mainstreamer and just give them some facts on any issue, and see what happens 🙂 The facts bounce off em.
And of course the facts ‘are’ out there. You read books on facts all the time. But its all drowned out by the MSM and the propaganda-state. In order to ‘get thru’ to the masses, I suspect you’d have to eliminate the MSM and THEN maybe after a few years of ‘deprogramming’ you might have a chance. I dunno.
Its academic at this point. And the proof is always at the ballot box.
w
vYou’re such a buzzkill, WV!! Here I was, awash in a moment of pollyannish hopefulness, and you come along and talk of “reality“!!!
:>)
I’ve experienced the part in bold first hand about a billion times. They do bounce off them. Hell, I was kinda shocked at a recent family and friends gathering when it happened after one of my patented anticapitalist rants. Twenty years ago, I think they would have clapped after my speechifying. Today, the same people were, like, stop it.
Anyway, I’m gonna hold onto at least this part. Yeah, I think you’re right about the longterm effects of generations of capitalist propaganda — perhaps I shouldn’t use the term (it’s kinda out of date), but I don’t know what to replace it with — and even if leftists were on an even playing field in the here and now, there’s still roughly 50 years to battle through, to catch up. . . but we have to start somewhere, sometime, right? If we give up, they win in an absolute way. If we don’t tilt at windmills, they win, in a final, game over, turn out the lights sense.
The stakes are that big.
As Zooey says, Essayons. Let’s add Nous to that too.
October 20, 2019 at 12:39 pm in reply to: Should the left reassess its relationship to the Establishment? #106985Billy_TParticipantI’m working up a long-winded post on Marx, Proudhon and their battles. It’s gonna be scintillating!!
;>)
Will post it later this afternoon. Probably after the Rams game I won’t be able to watch.
Thanks for the Tilman quote too, WV.
October 20, 2019 at 12:36 pm in reply to: Should the left reassess its relationship to the Establishment? #106984Billy_TParticipantGood response, WV.
As mentioned, lotsa them from you guys.
On voting. You know from Manufactured Consent the kind of info our population receives. Don’t you think that if leftists were able to get our info out to the mainstream, things would change? I think that’s basically the strategy right now of the DSA, of the AOCs, Ilhan Omars, etc. etc.
The DSA is basically trying to mainstream socialism, and I love that they’re doing this. We also need to invest in media, education and other sectors of society . . . Do that outside/inside game. Intentional communities, co-ops, WSDEs, etc. etc. Agitate for change from the outside, but do our best to get on the inside too. Both/and. Change from both directions.
A great example today on the Sunday Shows of why this is necessary. This Week had a panel of Chris Christie, Rahm Emmanuel, Heidi Heitkamp and Sara Fagen. That’s a conservative Republican, a conservative Dem, another conservative Dem, and a conservative Republican strategist. All those voters are hearing is conservative rhetoric, spin, etc. They’re not even getting “liberal” Dem stuff. Don’t you think voters would respond in new ways if we had a seat at the table too?
October 20, 2019 at 10:47 am in reply to: Should the left reassess its relationship to the Establishment? #106969Billy_TParticipantLast comment this round:
I lean left-anarchist. So “power,” to me, isn’t the goal. It’s a means to an end. My ideal society would be as non-hierarchical as is humanly possible, and a “classless” society is a must. It’s the ground for everything else, the starting point for non-violent, democratic revolution in the first place.
No gods, no masters. No bosses. Rotate ’em, if they’re ever necessary for this or that. Temps only. Lottery being a great way to do this. No permanent centers of power. Anywhere. We’d take turns, if “leaders” are needed.
That said, because of the deeply hierarchical nature of modern society, I don’t see a way to go instantly from what we have to that ideal. If we could skip past all the “power” modes, I’d be in favor of that. But I don’t see how it’s possible at the moment. Unfortunately, I think leftists are going to have to “take power” in order to create a society without it. If this were the 19th century, and the world was predominately agrarian, I think we could skip that “stage.” But it appears too late for that in the 21st century.
Of course, in the areas of the world conducive already to non-hierarchical structures . . . yeah. So a truly democratic revolution should be agile enough to base things on the various facts on the ground . . . not on overarching ideologies or dogmas. The latter never ends well.
Facts on the ground. Democratic processes. Participatory self-rule. Go from there.
October 20, 2019 at 10:27 am in reply to: Should the left reassess its relationship to the Establishment? #106968Billy_TParticipantA quick return to the adaptability thing. Again, I think we sometimes confuse people wanting to “go along to get along” with support for this or that regime, or at least a popular critical mass of some kind. I think it’s far more likely that most people are just falling into whichever faction rules at any given moment, and they’d do the same if it were leftists.
(It’s always minority rule at the top. The top never has the numbers.)
In fact, since leftist philosophy has always championed the common man and woman, it seems self-evident to me that we’d add to the usual “adaptability” mode . . . seriously effective, positive, forward-looking benefits for the mass of citizens — and the earth itself. So they wouldn’t just be going along to get along, they’d actually gain huge increases in quality of life, that no other part of the political spectrum offers. This latter aspect would do what no previous regime has ever done:
Sustain power through deeds, not simply through the combination of strategic control and the human tendency to adapt.
October 20, 2019 at 10:19 am in reply to: Should the left reassess its relationship to the Establishment? #106967Billy_TParticipantWhat those revolutionaries understood, and we’ve probably forgotten, is that strategic control of the levers of power generally beats numerical superiority. Not always, but generally.
This is why pretty much every successful revolution was a minority affair, including the American Revolution. It never had much in the way of “popular support,” outside the merchant class in the North and the slaveholder class in the South. The rest of the colonials could take it or leave it. Didn’t much matter to them if their bosses were the British or the Americans. They mostly felt screwed no matter what happened via geopolitics.
To try to make a long story shorter, we leftists can maximize our relatively small numbers strategically, and through unity of goals and methods. It’s really the latter that has hurt us through time, including today. It’s basically like herding cats to get leftists to agree about much of anything.
;>)
October 20, 2019 at 10:12 am in reply to: Should the left reassess its relationship to the Establishment? #106965Billy_TParticipantExcellent responses here and in the “Smearing Gabbard” thread. Lotsa food for thought.
On the numbers thing. I often feel that way too, and it depresses the hell out of me. But I was thinking about this last night from a different angle . . . In reality, our opponents don’t have the numbers either. We actually outnumber them. By “opponents” I’m talking about the ruling class, the owners of the means of production, the folks who pull the strings.
Throughout history, the smartest revolutionaries recognized this. They tended to get all kinds of other things wrong. But they saw this part accurately:
Those in power are woefully outnumbered by their “subjects.” And they retain that power, especially in the age of mass communication, by controlling the levers of information, the media, the education system, etc. Police and militaries too, obviously.
We leftists, in my view, should remember this and not exaggerate the “support” for the Establishment. It’s less than shallow and highly contingent. The mass of citizens aren’t fans of their bosses. Not in the slightest. They’ve adapted to the system. They don’t really support it. Humans are a highly adaptive species in general. Probably to a fault.
Continued below . . .
Billy_TParticipantAvid Game Pass user here . I got the app on Amazon’s Fire TV. I love it! Really works well on my Samsung UHD 4k. I have a digital antenna and fairly fast internet but no cable and no dish. Also have Sunday Ticket’s streaming service but they won’t let you do that if you can have dish. Game Pass on the Fire tv is way better than on my pc.(Ancient pc newer tv) . You can also cast from your phone to Tv.
Is that a subscription? What’s it cost to set this up? Are the games Live, or released later?
I seem to recall having Game Pass long, long ago, and watching the games on Monday. But I don’t have to settle for that now, so I don’t do it.
I would pay to watch the games if it was a “reasonable” amount, but I’m not paying whatever it is to have a dish – $60/month or ? – and then another fee on top of that for Ticket when I don’t watch TV much apart from football.
Zooey,
From what I understand, Game Pass is $75 total, and the games are viewable right after they end in real time. So it’s same day . . . You don’t have to wait until Monday.
. . .
I’ve had Directv for a long time, and consistently managed to get the Sunday Ticket for free — until this year. Normally, it’s more than $300. I’d even get discounts on the rest of the TV package. Don’t know if you saw it, but the Herd used to have an hysterical yearly thread . . . usually led by James JM, detailing how he could never get those freebies, while other posters talked about Directv giving them new cars, houses, vacations, along with the Sunday Ticket.
;>)
Anyway, since AT&T took over, it’s been tougher. But I did get it for free last season, plus a $50 discount overall. The best offer this season was two months of credit for the Ticket only, and my other discounts expire in December. So I said no. Leave the service on hold (since June now). I’ll probably cancel it before year’s end.
Game Pass seems to be the next best option to watching it “live.”
October 19, 2019 at 11:48 am in reply to: Zone versus Man coverage: Shouldn't the Rams have known about Peters? #106930Billy_TParticipantLotsa good responses. Thanks, everyone.
Good article, ZN. Makes sense to me. That’s pretty much my assessment too.
If Peters has really good safety help behind him, he can gamble and not cost his team touchdowns. It’s not going to work 100% of time, but logic tells us that the number of losing gambles can be reduced a great deal, via scheme and the right athletes behind him . . . and in front of him, of course.
Peters needs both a strong rush and very athletic, smart safeties behind him. That frees him up to take chances and break on the ball, etc.
For whatever reason, things didn’t come together with the Rams. That said, I don’t think the FO did its due diligence before getting him, and the recent trade seems like a loss for the Rams — to me. I’m fine with a trade. Just not the one they did. Peters should have garnered more, and given all the draft picks they gave up for Ramsey, they should have demanded picks in return . . . or, as already mentioned, made it clear that Peters would count as a #1 in the deal for Ramsey.
They may have tried all of that and failed. Who knows? But, on balance, I’m not happy with “value” they received in return for Peters, and they likely shouldn’t have trade FOR him in the first place.
I hope this is a learning experience for McVay and company. They can’t afford any more of these, in my view.
Billy_TParticipantQuick update on the Clinton smear of Gabbard. Good to see some pushback (from Van Jones, in this case), aired on CNN. Wonder if they received a ton of angry feedback after the Sellers commment . . .
Excerpt:
CNN political commentator Van Jones said Friday that Hillary Clinton was “playing a very dangerous game” by suggesting that Russia was grooming 2020 Democratic hopeful Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) to launch a third-party presidential bid.
“If you’re concerned about disinformation … that is what just happened — just throw out some information, disinformation, smear somebody,” Jones told CNN host Erin Burnett on Friday night while responding to the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee’s remarks.
“She is Hillary Clinton. She’s a legend. She’s going to be in the history books, she’s a former nominee of our party, and she just came out against a sitting U.S. congresswoman, a decorated war veteran, and somebody who’s running for the nomination of our party with a complete smear and no facts,” he said.
“I do not want someone of her stature to legitimate these attacks against anybody,” Jones continued. “If you’ve got real evidence, come forward with it. But if you’re just going to smear people casually on podcasts, you are playing right into the Russians’ hands.”
Billy_TParticipantNittany,
Good extension/improvement of what I suggested above. By naming the specific kinds of jobs, it brings the matter home.
Thanks.
Billy_TParticipantThe thing is, if we all said no, then guess who ends up staffing and running all of these sectors of society? The worst of the worst. In the absence of good people making the case directly for humane, ethical, moral practice, in all of these sectors, each one of them will become far more aggressively rotten or “evil.”
. . .
One of the biggest mistakes “the left” made (generations ago) and still makes, in my opinion, is to cede ground on the issue of who runs this and that part of society. Overt and unsaid pressure not to participate in certain realms has pretty much guaranteed that far-right factions control things like the military, police departments around the country, the Intel communities, judgeships, and so on. We all too often believe strongly that our conscience precludes working in those sectors, so we don’t. Guess who fills that void?
And an agency like the CIA isn’t going anywhere. If “the left” basically boycotts it, it just goes on doing what it does, with a much, much higher concentration of far-right zealots than it might have if we had jumped in to “fix it.”
As citizens, isn’t it our “duty” to fight against those forces? My mother always said to me that the best way to change the system is from the inside. Depending upon my age at the time, I’d usually argue to one degree or another in favor of a different route. But as I get older, I wonder if she wasn’t correct all along. Not saying that “the left” should ever stop agitating from the outside. Just saying we need the proverbial holistic approach. Outside and inside.
Marshall Faulk and Stephen Jackson.
Billy_TParticipantWV,
Well said. I understand why you feel that way about the CIA. But, frankly, isn’t that the case with the majority of “the state”? Should people become police officers, for example, given the history of abuses? Should they become border patrol agents, given its long, long history of (what I would call) state terrorism against migrants? Or the military, given its history, which includes wiping out Native peoples? The list goes on and on, and it’s not limited to the United States, obviously. Every empire on earth has that dilemma. Every empire that has ever existed has engaged in mayhem and the slaughter of the innocent, and each hegemon among those empires has engaged to a greater degree than anyone else.
If a citizen’s duty is not to participate, then none of us should ever work for anything remotely attached to state power, or private, corporate power. Hell, the medical community has an awful history of testing drugs and procedures on the innocent, resulting in death and other horrors. Should every citizen say no to the healing professions too?
(Again, splitting this up into two posts. More below)
Billy_TParticipantWV,
I hope you managed to get through all of that without falling asleep.
;>)
After rereading my own responses, I often think of Old Hacker and his football posts. Short, direct, to the point. Took seconds to read.
I wish I had that skill.
Billy_TParticipantOk, we just have different reactions to Dore. I dont mind his ‘shoot from the hip’ qualities. I think of him as a ‘gonzo’ type. Also, I dont have a problem with saying Anderson Cooper ‘worked for the CIA’ if he indeed interned with them. Its the same thing to me. He chose to intern with Murder-Inc, imho. It tells me a lot about him. Is there really any ‘non-sinister’ way to work for the CIA? They are a Murder-Organization. Or do you see them as more nuanced than that? 🙂
w
vFirst off, we agree about how reprehensible it is to smear Gabbard. That was your initial question. And I added the Clinton interview to point out that she smeared Stein as well. Again, that really, really pisses me off.
As mentioned above, Dore was spot on in his critique of the CNN guest, and justified in blasting him for what he said.
I just have a problem with him then turning around and basically engaging in what he just accused others of doing. He should practice what he preaches, in my view.
As for the CIA and Anderson:
I tend to cut teenagers a lot of slack when it comes to their choices. Anderson was a teen when he interned for the CIA. If he’s maintained a relationship without letting his audience know, then I have a problem with that. But not the initial internship.
As for the CIA itself: We’re on the same page when it comes to its ugly history and likely current ugly ops. But I think we differ in the overall picture. I think it is actually possible to work for it and not be a part of that monstrous past and/or present. I think it’s possible to work on Intel that actually saves innocent lives around the world. And I don’t mean as the state propagandists would define innocent. I don’t mean in the sense of “America is the greatest nation evah, so whatever we do is the greatest, evah.” I mean legit, objective prevention of the loss of innocent lives . . . through the discovery and disruption of planned attacks.
My theory of human beings applies to bureaucracies like the CIA too: I honestly, sincerely believe the vast majority of people are basically good, want to just live and let live, and reject hurting others. It’s a relatively small portion of humanity that seeks to harm others, seeks power over others, or worse. A portion of that portion actually loves cruelty, etc. But most of the people in society aren’t like that, and generally won’t engage in that.
I see our problems as top down, predominantly. The traits that drive people to reach positions of power are all too often sociopathic in nature to begin with. So those in power are, ironically, frequently the last people on earth who should hold it.
To make a long story short: Yes, I think people can work for the CIA and not be monsters.
Billy_TParticipantTo sum up, WV. As you know, I’m terrible at being succinct!!
;>)
Clinton and that CNN guest are dead wrong to smear Gabbard (and Stein). It’s ugly and reprehensible and, frankly, pathetic. They don’t even try to provide evidence.
We both know they can’t.
Billy_TParticipantI duckduckgo’d Anderson Cooper and the CIA. It appears to be yet another case of Dore jumping the gun.
He interned with them during the summer of his sophomore and junior years at Yale, apparently. And that was the end of his connection, as far as we know.
Could he have retained the connection? Sure. Of course. Could he be Jason Bourne in disguise? Sure. But Dore should have been honest about this, instead of insinuating that he “worked for the CIA” in some sinister capacity as an adult.
Seriously, I have less and less patience for these youtube-host “progressives.” They don’t practice what they preach.
Billy_TParticipantClinton is such a petty, vindictive person here, and acts like Trump in this case:
Hurl accusations against others without any evidence:
Excerpt:
At Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) hit back at critics who charged she’s too close to Russia. “This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I’m an asset of Russia,” she said. “Completely despicable.”
Gabbard won’t be happy to hear Hillary Clinton’s latest interview. Nor will President Trump or another of Clinton’s 2016 opponents, whom Clinton has now lodged similar accusations about.
In a conversation on former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe’s podcast, Clinton suggested the Russians are leveraging a number of top U.S. politicians. She suggested Russia had kompromat on Trump. She accused 2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein of being a “Russian asset.” And she suggested Russia might back Gabbard as a third-party candidate.
“They’re also going to do third-party again,” Clinton said. “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Trump is easily the most despicable human being to occupy the White House. But Clinton proves, yet again, she didn’t deserve the office either.
We had two horrible choices. Clinton was the better of the two. But I’m glad I voted Third Party.
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