winsor

Anyone else get a mental image of Fidel on his deathbed whispering: "Rosebud"? For the record, 'Rosebud' was William Randolph Hearst's pet name for Marion Davies' clitoris, which she made the mistake of mentioning to her hairdresser. When Orson Welles et al. got wind of this, they wrote it into the script at every turn. This evidently caused WRH to wax apoplectic, and he never forgave them for their levity. Needless to say, the sled was simply a ruse to allow them to work the joke. Talk about your legendary ladybits...

The enlistment oath and commissioning oath for all branches of the military refer to the Constitution, not to a piece of cloth or a song. And respect for the Constitutional right of anyone to sit through a warbled song is what people died for. It truly amazes me that people attach more importance to a piece of colored cloth or a doggerel song based on a British drinking song than to the Constitution that they seem to think it represents. The football player guy was apparently concerned about the meaning of the second or third verse as originally written. This is irrelevant, since these verses are moot. The last words of the National Anthem, as adopted, are "Play ball!"

Parse better. Rational voices are so thoroughly drowned out that they are not a factor. The people screaming 'RACISM!' should generally STFU. Jesse Jackson is a wonderful guy who has made a pretty good living at his racism niche. If a policeman is an asshole to someone, it may have nothing whatsoever to do with race. If you truly want to reduce the number of negroes being murdered, there are orders of magnitude more negroes being murdered by other negroes than by cops. That doesn't make it okay for either cops or other negroes to kill negroes, but go with the numbers if you want results. A significant number of negroes who are killed by cops would have been killed regardless of their race, given what they were doing when killed. Cops are more likely to beat the shit out of/tase/pepper spray negroes, but are LESS likely to kill them, than other races on a case by case basis. You are free to look up the study. I don't expect you to catch on, but what the hell.

Given the noise to signal ratio, it's a losing proposition. Also, those voices that actually have worthwhile recommendations don't show up on the scope. Thus, bringing up racism by any side of the issue elicits a hearty STFU!

My point is that blacks are as uniformly racist as any group you might find, so it is hardly surprising that systemic racism is their lot. I didn't say people should not refer to themselves as 'African American,' but I'll be damned if I will. Jesse Jackson is a professional race baiter, and i will not defer to him in any manner 'Jewish' is a term that was coined during the Babylonian Exile, and referred to those displaced from Judea. 'Hebrews' was apparently the Egyptian term that made reference to nomadic status. 'Children of Israel' is the tribal identity that refers to the common ancestor Jacob/Israel. When someone makes a big deal about how everything revolves around their being Jewish, I again recommend being careful about asking for 'special treatment.' That has not always worked out well. BSBD, Winsor

Wide of the mark. Our National Anthem is a maudlin bit of tripe that defies the ability to sing it well. I am as opposed to maltreatment due to race as I am to preferential treatment due to race. Racism is racism. I would rather ignore race in the sense of a Juilliard audition, where the panel cannot see the player. All that matters is the skill under consideration. If someone insists on making their race an issue, whether it be Al Sharpton or Robert Byrd, it is THEIR choice to make race an issue. I then begrudge them the right to do my thinking for me, since they are singularly unsuited to the task. The people who refer to themselves as the descriptor coined by Jesse Jackson, 'African American,' with very few exceptions have never been to Africa, and are largely clueless regarding the Dark Continent. I, OTOH, have spent time in Africa, and have some idea of the differences between Kikuyu, Yoruba, Zulu and Berber cultures and lifestyles. If negro activists insist on 'special treatment,' I can only recommend they study history and be very careful for what they ask. I do not approve of police brutality, but consider Michael Brown's actions to be 'suicide by cop.' A charging rhino is unarmed in the same sense that Michael Brown was. If 'Black Lives Matter' activists wanted to address the senseless killing of innocent black people, they should note that there are orders of magnitude more senseless killings at the hands of other blacks than by police, and focus their energies accordingly. If I can't be indifferent to race, I will resent those who deny me the privilege of ignoring it, whether they be KKK or BLM. Thus, my generic response to anyone insists that I should give deference to their racism is "go fuck yourself.' Nothing personal. BSBD, Winsor

================ Sitting in a bunker here behind my wall Waiting for the worms to come. Waiting . . . to cut out the deadwood. Waiting . . . to clean up the city. Waiting . . . to follow the worms. Waiting . . . to put on a black shirt. Waiting . . . to weed out the weaklings. Waiting . . . to smash in their windows and kick in their doors. Waiting . . . for the Final Solution, to strengthen the strain. Waiting . . . to follow the worms. Waiting . . . to turn on the showers and fire the ovens. Waiting . . . for the queens and the coons and the reds and the jews. Waiting . . . to follow the worms. Would you like to see Britannia rule again, my friend? All you have to do is follow the worms. Would you like to send our colored cousins home again, my friend? All you need to do is follow the worms. (Roger Waters) =================== My point is not to send anyone anywhere. It's that I am fresh out of sympathy for the endless bitching. I have no use for David Duke, but I call bullshit to someone who takes him to task but tolerates professional racists with a more fashionable skin color. If you want to say that all 'racists' are assholes, fine. If you want to pick and choose which are the 'good' or 'bad' ones, your credibility is shot.

If it displeases you, I must be doing something right. If your goal is to displease me, then for the love of mankind, find something more worthwhile to do with your life. Boy, are you projecting. I have concluded that you are a marvelous baseline for whether or not a stance is valid. I thus find it reassuring if you take the time to disagree. Your progression (sorry, regression) towards simply being a more erudite version of rushmc is equal parts amusing and depressing. Another paradigm of intellectual acuity! Let's go for a Trifecta, shall we?

If it displeases you, I must be doing something right. If your goal is to displease me, then for the love of mankind, find something more worthwhile to do with your life. Boy, are you projecting. I have concluded that you are a marvelous baseline for whether or not a stance is valid. I thus find it reassuring if you take the time to disagree.

If it displeases you, I must be doing something right.

For all the bitching about the raw deal they got, I am unaware of any large group of U.S. negroes putting their money where their mouth is and going home to the place where their ancestors were sold into slavery in the first place. Make with an Exodus or STFU.

David Duke is less of a professional racist than is Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Oh, that's right, what constitutes racism is race-dependent. I get it.

Source: https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/u-s-military-now-says-isis-leader-was-held-in-notorious-abu-ghraib-prison/ So, what do you guys think? Did we torture him too much or not enough (to kill him)? In either case, it looks like the US captured a relative nobody, the experience turned him into a monster, and then the US released him. And yet Trump says Obama is the creator of ISIS. SMH. Honest to god, why wasn't this the lead story on every media outlet on Friday? Okay, let's take it as a given that GWB could and did fuck up a wet dream. Having said that, BHO was not to be outdone. My aunt can't listen to community orchestras because she finds it painful to observe amateurs at work. I know the feeling.

This must be a mistake. This guy is anti-gay; he said so himself.

If prostitution was legalized, people might have sex out of wedlock. In addition, there would be money involved. Since love of money is the root of all evil, love FOR money must be pretty bad as well. Luckily we have laws in place that prevent prostitution from occurring.

Bullshit. Jesus was an Observant Jew, and the movement of Messianic Judaism was wholeheartedly conservative. The 'New Testament' is an unauthorized sequel to texts to which we held the copyright, written under Roman editorial authority for a Roman audience, Romans being the people that killed him in the first place (if he was killed by Hebrews, he would have been stoned - crucifixion was strictly a Roman prerogative). What is written in the Christian Scriptures bears as little resemblance to historical reality as Thomas Nast's version of Santa Claus does to Saint Nicholas of Myra. Don't get me wrong, the Hebrew Scriptures constitute the tribal lore of one big and very dysfunctional family (much of which was coopted from the Babylonian under direction of Ezra the Scribe), but they are by no means a prequel to the dreck that is touted as an addendum, either by Rome or Mecca. BSBD, Winsor Ah yes, the beloved "our way is superior of your way" argument. 'Scarlett' is more valid a sequel to 'Gone With the Wind' than the Christian Scriptures are to the Hebrew. This has nothing to do with whether one likes or dislikes, approves or disapproves of any of them. One could absolutely despise everything about Margaret Mitchell and/or Alexandra Ripley and still dispute the continuity between the two works, and object to their being offered as a bound set. I do not recall thinking one is better than the other, and generally am in awe at how seriously fucked up any of the texts are. My point is that the propensity to use an earlier work to validate a newer one does not always fly. A case in point is 'The Book of Mormon,' which was supposedly 'translated' from hieroglyphics into English, but wound up in vernacular common only to the era when most common religious texts were translated. Please don't attribute to me any sense of comparative goodness of one text or another, since I think it's all nonsense.

Bullshit. Jesus was an Observant Jew, and the movement of Messianic Judaism was wholeheartedly conservative. The 'New Testament' is an unauthorized sequel to texts to which we held the copyright, written under Roman editorial authority for a Roman audience, Romans being the people that killed him in the first place (if he was killed by Hebrews, he would have been stoned - crucifixion was strictly a Roman prerogative). What is written in the Christian Scriptures bears as little resemblance to historical reality as Thomas Nast's version of Santa Claus does to Saint Nicholas of Myra. Don't get me wrong, the Hebrew Scriptures constitute the tribal lore of one big and very dysfunctional family (much of which was coopted from the Babylonian under direction of Ezra the Scribe), but they are by no means a prequel to the dreck that is touted as an addendum, either by Rome or Mecca. BSBD, Winsor

Explain? Jerry Baumchen PS) Ronald Reagan had 15 words solutions to every problem because he could not understand the problems. Basically you decouple the litigation lottery and require a posted menu of services with prices. I can go over 15 words if absolutely necessary.

Exactly. It was never going to be successful in the form it ended up being passed in. The Democrats were too afraid to stand up and pass a bill that would work. In both houses. But, the camel now has it's nose inside the tent......There is no going back now, anymore than conservatives can repeal medicare or social security. What do you think will happen next? The one thing I can assure you is that the fundamental issues the plague us will remain firmly in place. Too much money is at stake. Treatment that should cost in the tens of dollars at most will continue to cost tens of thousands of dollars. An Engineer is defined as someone who can accomplish for $0.05 what any idiot can do for a dollar. A politician cannot accomplish with unlimited funds what any idiot could do for free. There are no math requirements for Law School or the Bar, yet we keep electing people responsible for public accounts from the most singularly innumerate of our population - with predictable results. Expecting Attorneys to bring sanity to the practice of Medicine is the stuff from which bad jokes are made, and this time it is not funny. Given free rein, I could correct the system in one fell swoop. There would be too many people whose ride on the gravy train would be over to get much of a buy-in, so we are stuck with whatever transpires. Whatever 'fixes' are put in place are sure to make things worse. BSBD, Winsor

Hey, NOBODY saw this coming. Expecting the ACA to go tits up would have required, say, a Third Grade understanding of arithmetic, which is TOTALLY unrealistic.

We need to bookmark this for future hilarious mocking. I also need to send this to Nate Silver. Spare me.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2016/08/13/app-maker---trump-win-election/88640044/

The father of a friend of mine changed market research methods greatly, and made a good deal of money doing so. It turns out that, when customers were asked whether they bought Lux (a high-end soap) or Palmolive (a more pedestrian brand), they generally said 'Lux.' He found through detailed market research that more people actually bought Palmolive. Similarly, even if U.S. News and World Report is viewed as a more reputable source, it is tabloids that fly off the shelves by the checkout counter. As Mencken noted, nobody ever went broke overestimating the vulgarity of the American buying public. I suspect there are enough reality show/Jerry Springer watching, tabloid reading, 'muricans out there that won't admit to disliking negroes and illegal immigrants when asked, but will vote against such things in the polling booth, that Hillary may have a run for her money. There is certainly a large population who dislike Trump greatly but would vote for Charlie Manson before they would vote for her. Putting another Ivy League Attorney in charge is likely to have predictable results (what Trump will do is anyone's guess). For different reasons, this may be a case of 'Dewey Defeats Truman!' My preference is 'None Of The Above.' BSBD, Winsor

Think Scientology.

I'm a Colonial, so the analogue is inexact. I went to a High School that required testing to enter; 10% of applicants were accepted, and middling students did not even try, so the student body was largely Mensa material. It infuriated many of the taxpayers whose kids did not have a chance in hell of getting in, and I do rather see their point. OTOH, nobody bitched about having equally expensive programs for people on the lowest tier, so my sympathy is limited. Since I went straight to College from the middle of Junior year, and never properly graduated from High School, I suppose I lack standing on the issue. In any event, with three hard Engineering Majors culminating in a Master's (the privileges of my P.E. License extend to four disciplines), I suppose I did okay.