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  • in reply to: signs, comics, memes, & other visual aids #115428
    Avatar photoZooey
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    I tried adding to that thread twice and my posts simply vaporized.

    I got em back, right?

    Yeah, both items are there: the video and the tweet. Now if you would restore the Rams’ dominance, that would be cool.

    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    And I had seen that story about the umbrella guy and his violence. It’s still not quite definitive enough as a story for me yet, but I am far from automatically doubting it.

    Yeah, at this point, the only thing I can really say about it is that it wouldn’t surprise me. But it is not definitive. Not that it matters to me, really. Either way, it will just be used by one side to change the subject.

    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    Not sure what just happened. Do links to FB just go up in flames?

    Found it on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UJR_FJcg1c

    in reply to: signs, comics, memes, & other visual aids #115410
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    Oh, and a CNN reporter got arrested and Floyd’s killer(s) haven’t been.

    Yeah I got stuff on that, in here: http://theramshuddle.com/topic/police-v-demonstrators-protesting-killing-of-george-floyd/

    I tried adding to that thread twice and my posts simply vaporized.

    in reply to: signs, comics, memes, & other visual aids #115408
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    Oh, and a CNN reporter got arrested and Floyd’s killer(s) haven’t been.

    in reply to: signs, comics, memes, & other visual aids #115400
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    I am just so fucking angry right now.

    That’s my meme. Or maybe Tweet. Maybe this should go in the Tweet thread.

    Fuck.

    Floyd?

    Yeah, Floyd. Floyd. Yeah. And Aubery, and Cooper.

    And the fact we are in the beginning of a terrible economic crisis, the 3rd one since 20ish years, and each time the government has used the occasion to transfer wealth to the richest people. We have a global pandemic and the president is blocking the CDC from issuing guidelines to navigate the worst disease outbreak in a century while encouraging people to protest minor inconveniences that limit the scope and duration of the damage. And the president is engaging in vengeance against social media companies for finally calling bullshit on his egregious lies. And Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi have no serious interest in fixing any of this.

    And hurricane season, and wildfire season are about to start.

    in reply to: signs, comics, memes, & other visual aids #115389
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    I am just so fucking angry right now.

    That’s my meme. Or maybe Tweet. Maybe this should go in the Tweet thread.

    Fuck.

    in reply to: Tom Tomorrow #115384
    Avatar photoZooey
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    Avatar photoZooey
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    in reply to: Today is really hard. #115355
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    I’m sorry to hear that, Jack. It’s tough, I know. You will always have the memories of her, though, and they will someday make you smile.

    in reply to: I admit it. I’ve become a cynic #115298
    Avatar photoZooey
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    in reply to: The Autopsy #115272
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    Krystal said the leftist movement was ‘on the cusp of victory…’

    But it wasn’t. It was a mirage. The only reason Bernie won so many states early was the Corporate-Neolibs had spread out their votes among all those Corporate-Dems.
    As soon as the game got down to Corporate vs Bernie — Corporate dominated.

    When you add up the Corporate-Dems and the Corporate-Rightwingers…..how big is the ‘progressive left’ really?

    All ya haf to do is count that actual, real-life, real-left national office-holders. There’s AOC. There’s Bernie. And a few others.

    A handful. Christ there were more leftist officeholders in the 1920s.

    Ah well.

    Granted, as Noam noted, the left has made some agonizing, slow, progress. Medicare For All is not anathema among the Dems anymore. As far as i can tell…thats about it. Thats what we got, after all these years. That much.

    w
    v

    Bernie may have won if the corporate Dems hadn’t all bailed and rallied around Biden. If the field had stayed spread out through Super Tuesday. If Pete and Amy and Mike stayed through Super Tuesday, Sanders would have won more delegates than anybody else, and had the appearance of inevitability. But…yeah. He probably still wouldn’t have had the majority of delegates, and they still would have screwed him at the convention. But it would have been a lot harder to sabotage him if he had made it that far.

    It is really amazing – and discouraging – to see that the Democrats are more energetic and effective at fighting the progressives than they are at fighting Republicans and Trump. I think that is the most depressing takeaway of the entire Sanders story. Democrats have completely moved into the traditional Republican camp, and Republicans have become Fascists, and there is almost no FDR Democrats left. The unions are basically washed up and sold out. The politicians serve Wall Street. The only trace of liberal compassion left is in identity politics and marijuana laws. That’s it. The only progressive accomplishments since the Civil Rights Act are the legalization of gay marriage and the legalization of pot in a handful of states. Oh…and gays can serve in the military. Sort of.

    That’s it. In the past 50 years, that’s it.

    Every other political sphere has regressed. And the courts are being stacked with assholes to lock up the next 40 years.

    It was nice knowing ya, wv. I hope Armageddon is good to you.

    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    ================

    I dunno though. I think the Corporate-Media would smear a leftist Veggie like Cauliflower.

    They would get behind processed meat, I think. Or maybe Wheaties.

    w
    v

    Sure, but they don’t take the cauliflower threat seriously yet. Besides, processed meat has consensus backing among the power establishment.

    in reply to: I admit it. I’ve become a cynic #115255
    Avatar photoZooey
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    in reply to: I admit it. I’ve become a cynic #115254
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    As an example you mentioned McCarthyism and the red scare. I don’t think for a minute that was orchestrated by corporate capitalists who sat down and said lets get the American public to be frightened because it will mean more $ for us.

    Chomsky’s argument is that nobody has to do that. People have inherited a schema for their world from a variety of sources – family, school, church, whatever – and that they are already conditioned to respond in predictable ways.

    There ARE people who do that kind of thing, though. You must certainly recognize that the Koch brothers and several of their peers have spent a good deal of money on shaping public opinion. They’ve created Think Tanks and PACs with lofty sounding names, funded chairs at universities, and so on, all to give credibility to the horseshit philosophies and “science” that enable them to make more money.

    So…it’s both self-perpetuating and manipulated at the same time.

    Avatar photoZooey
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    Avatar photoZooey
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    in reply to: A Q for Progressives #115176
    Avatar photoZooey
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    FDR.

    And Sanders basically matches his policy positions, though being more modern, Sanders would include minorities in his programs from the beginning.

    in reply to: Tom Tomorrow #115156
    Avatar photoZooey
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    in reply to: I admit it. I’ve become a cynic #115147
    Avatar photoZooey
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    I don’t think you can separate Americans from the media stew they grow up in. Their ignorance, apathy, and short attention spans are deliberately cultivated and exploited.

    And I don’t think there was a time in American history where that wasn’t true. It may be worse now, but the powers-that-be have been massaging the message since the beginning. Part of it is that many people today realize that things are not always what they are told, but to them the lies are only coming from the group they don’t identify with. They cling to and vehemently defend the propaganda that fits their own word view, and dismiss out of hand any alternatives as fake news.

    The saturation level is much higher now, both on TV and the radio, and the message is more consolidated. And I think the message is more proactive now rather than reactive.

    Avatar photoZooey
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    in reply to: I admit it. I’ve become a cynic #115128
    Avatar photoZooey
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    ’m not saying it addresses your notion. Just something I thought was interesting.

    It doesn’t because I’m not saying poor people are having more children. I’m saying the raw selfishness and lack of interest in current issues has to do with parents-wealthy or poor. IMO those parents who are unable to give to their children the elementary nature and value of civics are the ones producing far more children. And in order for democracy to work it needs an informed and curious public. It doesn’t work well if we are for the most part ignorant on the issues in front of us. And corporations will always have their way with the ignorant.

    Well, I agree with wv that this is a systemic failure, not an individual failure. I blame this factor – this ignorance and apathy – on the media, and in particular to the dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine. There is a straight line from there to these conditions. Another major driver, imo, is the profit motive in the news media. It is no accident that the consumers of NPR/PBS are the best informed – factually – on current affairs, and the FOX and MSNBC have the most misinformed audiences. Sensationalism will draw more viewers for longer periods of time, and in depth reporting on issues is discouraged by the profit motive.

    I don’t think you can separate Americans from the media stew they grow up in. Their ignorance, apathy, and short attention spans are deliberately cultivated and exploited.

    in reply to: Coronavirus and Us #115086
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    A good friend of our family recently died of COVID-19 in a nursing home in Philadelphia. He and his wife had been my parent’s best friends since I was in my teens. Our families vacationed together in the Outer Banks every summer. He was a kind and fun-loving man. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s and had been living with his son’s family, but he started experiencing “Korean War” flashbacks accompanied by a lot of screaming. He was frightening his son’s small children, and not knowing what else to do, they put him in a nursing home. I had not seen him in years, but from what I have heard, Alzheimer’s had taken the man I used to know. He no longer existed. What was left was a frightened, tormented, shell of his former self who didn’t know where he was and didn’t recognize anyone around him. Perhaps this is one case where COVID-19 was a blessing.

    Oof. Alzheimer’s is the worst, I think. What meaning does life have if memory is destroyed, and the personality becomes tempest-tossed? That’s tough.

    in reply to: I admit it. I’ve become a cynic #115049
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    Welcome to the Slough of Despair.

    Bash on, regardless.

    in reply to: Mark Doran blog #115041
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    I want to clarify the comment “I am afraid that many Liberals are blind to this. They think these people won’t ‘go that far.’”

    I think that rich people are totally fine with wiping out the much-talked-about Middle Class.

    They don’t need middle class people. I think liberals tend to overestimate the degree to which their interests align with the wealthy. A lot of Democrats worry about Sanders going too far with his social policy because they instinctively worry that it will cost them something, that they will lose privileges of some kind. They kind of feel like they shouldn’t fight for these things.

    They think the system needs tweaking. They don’t realize that the wealthy want THEIR slice of the pie, too.

    They are coming for pensions and all health care. They want everything commodified. And I don’t think many middle class people see what they’re going to do to them.

    in reply to: Mark Doran blog #115032
    Avatar photoZooey
    Moderator

    Okay. Leaves out the “radical disregard for national laws and domestic lives.”

    I think people are deluded who think that these contemporary conservatives have some kind of sense of noblesse oblige to their own countries. They don’t. They are actively pursuing wealth and power and KNOW that the consequence will be increased squalor.

    They don’t care about us. At all. They have said so. McConnell has repeatedly stated in public that they are coming for Social Security and Medicare if Trump is re-elected. These people are quite clearly comfortable saying the quiet parts out loud now. They are comfortable with the knowledge that many people in this country can see plainly that they do not serve the interests of the bottom 90%.

    I am afraid that many Liberals are blind to this. They think these people won’t “go that far.”

    They will. They are. They are throwing people back to work without proper protections, and passing legislation to prevent the ownership class from liability. People are disposable. They have calculated that a million dead people won’t drive up the cost of labor, and they all know that AI is coming anyway, so there are going to be too many people. Sharing resources with them plays no part in their plans for the future.

    in reply to: My wife & I are grandparents #115013
    Avatar photoZooey
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    Congratulations, grandpa. I hear it’s a good gig.

    in reply to: signs, comics, memes, & other visual aids #114980
    Avatar photoZooey
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    in reply to: Tom Tomorrow #114934
    Avatar photoZooey
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    Avatar photoZooey
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    There were not as many holes last year, but Gurley didn’t pop through the ones that were there. It’s too bad. He had HOF talent on blasted knees.

Viewing 30 posts - 3,991 through 4,020 (of 8,029 total)