TheMastersSon

You say that as if our current system is something other than winner take all.

In your opinion. Mine is that no substantive differences whatsoever remain between our current federal government and Nazi Germany. Except for gas chambers. It's true from the collapse of our Constitution to our "foreign policy" of military invasion and occupation. Constant war and threat of war. The Great Satan rising one last time before final expulsion from our planet. It might sound melodramatic but every day presents new evidence of it in my view. Yesterday's example: I managed to live long enough to see Lady Liberty entirely prostrated with her ankles in the air before the PRC's new permanent king: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/u-s-china-agree-to-increased-trade-cooperation-idUSKCN1IK0PM Instead of moving to properly limit the free market to free countries, we've been reduced to begging totalitarian Communists to please buy our exports. Pretty please. They wouldn't even commit to Trump's $200 billion request, and even if they had, it would have simply reduced their obscene "trade surplus" with our free country from $335B a year to $135B. It would have been another artificial and extremely short-lived blip for our economy, followed by another 20 years of vertical charts. We've arrived at the final stages of the collapsed global free market: our federal government now hand-picks the "winners" of this U.S.-PRC abomination, and every "win" is abject treason.

Instead of a perpetually and intentionally gridlocked two-party political cartel, I've always wondered if this intentional pointlessness was necessary. I mean the Brits never evolved beyond it, even in their however-many-hundreds of years, and our country certainly hasn't in 240 years. But for the last half century I've wondered what America would think of a cooperative government, where congressional representation, committee staffing and chairs etc are determined according to party registration and nothing else, and it is assumed all members work together and not against one another. Thus at least theoretically nobody should be completely shut out or disenfranchised in legislation negotiations. Our current system pretty much guarantees that roughly half of our country is utterly disenfranchised at any given time and on any given issue. It would shift the focus of special interests, PACs etc from elections and politicians to lobbying the current electorate for party registrations. Our House in its current state consists of 435 people who are perpetually running for re-election. Their re-election campaigns begin the day they take their offices and they never stop running for office at any time.

You missed my point. I'm not claiming and I'd be the last person to claim there's such a thing as an honest politician, including Obama. I'm saying that what he and our FCC did in 2015 was best for our country, regardless of his or anyone else's politics or desire for vindictiveness. And it was done, again, with overwhelming popular support. So the harder Trump and the R's attack net neutrality, in the face of this popular support, the only damage they're doing is to themselves. None of this has anything to do with Obama. It's one more thing that apparently no one has ever explained to Trump: the American people don't take kindly to leaders who put their own egos before the best interest of our country, and even before the constitutional rights of the people who elect them to office and pay their salaries. The R's will be reminded of these realities in November.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43902372 Regardless of the issue, or even the consequences of his actions, Trump appears to be an infinite well of resentment and revenge. Note the first of the three reasons cited in this article explaining why he's now turned his genital waving on Iran: "Shredding the Obama legacy". I'm sure the same resentment helped motivate Trump's undoing of Title II protection for internet traffic. What our FCC did under Obama, regardless of any and all current and future actions by our feds, will prove the key step that saved the internet in the U.S., and I think this reality is more than Trump's ego can handle. What astonishes me is that apparently no one has ever explained to Trump that what was done in 2015 was actually best for our country, and it was done with overwhelming popular support. He doesn't give a rat's ass, Obama did it so it must therefore be undone in his book. Therefore the harder he attacks net neutrality and pretends to destroy it, the more his own numbers plummet and the closer the Democrats are to retaking control of Congress -- and the more comprehensive and permanent the inevitable response to this intentional and orchestrated rights repression will be. I'm still stunned at how Trump allows nothing to interfere with his revenge fest, not even popular will, the best interest of our country or even the very constitutional rights of the people who put him into office. Very, VERY Hitleresque and that's not even a matter of opinion. It's established history now.

Our corporations actually lobbied the Republicans into proposing criminal laws against the public sharing of negative consumer product and customer service experiences. They didn't get away with it, obviously, but it's one more example of just how utterly disenfranchised we now are to our own federal government. These people are not just traitors, they are now proven fascist traitors, active enemies and destroyers of our Constitution and its rights. I'll say it one last time, the same document gives the American people not the right but the responsibility to forcibly remove and replace the lot of them by any means necessary. Who would have guessed "Better Dead Than Red" would eventually justify nationwide violent revolt against our own failed federal government? I sort of did. :) The silver lining if it happens is that the swamp will in fact be drained, and the will and best interests of the American people will once again be represented by our own paid employees in DC, instead of ignored and attacked by them. Our constitutional rights will be defended and protected and not sold to The Sinclair Group, Comcast and Rupert Murdoch. At least for a number of years, until human nature takes its toll as it always does, and the swamp needs draining again.

I've yet to hear anyone refer to Trump as presidential, I mean other than his own propaganda network (Fox). IMO what was "going on" with ABC/CNN/MSNBC during that brief period was likely a happy AIPAC and nothing else. Nothing earns brownie points with them more than dead Arabs, and Trump slaughtered 58 innocent people in his "show of force". I really wish America would or could get over the obsolete model of our media being divided into left-wing liberal sources and right-wing conservative sources. E.g. the known collusion between Karl Rove and your specific list of "liberal" news organizations: http://www.thenation.com/article/lights-cameras-attack-hollywood-enlists Please note the dates and attendee lists of these "summits", and then claim the "Showdown with Saddam", "Countdown to Iraq" etc etc which began immediately after on ABC, MSNBC etc every evening for months on end were products of a left-wing liberal media. It simply ain't so anymore and it hasn't been since 1980 or shortly thereafter. I was living in the middle of it at the time. We were given a year and a half of nightly, hours-long "news" coverage of whether Bill Clinton lied about a BJ from Monica Lewinsky, and not a single second of coverage of GWB's over 200 (including his administration, see: http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps60698/pdf_admin_iraq_on_the_record_rep.pdf) established lies and half-truths about Iraq, and intentionally misleading our entire country into war under false pretenses. Thousands dead, more thousands wounded, not billions but trillions of dollars flushed down the toilet, and unworthy of a single mention in our evil, liberal media. The simple reality is that our former and properly liberal (i.e. journalism is a liberal art etc) major media hasn't existed since the late 1970's in our country. It was a casualty of Reagan, or more accurately, the media machine behind both Reagan and Nixon. It's the same group of people who successfully turned the word liberalism into an epithet in our country, to refer to big government, tax-and-spend socialism. This is very close to the precise opposite of the word's actual meaning, or at least how its defined clear around the world except in our country. But all of a sudden any American who defended any of our social programs was branded a raging tax-and-spend "liberal" (i.e. socialist). Reagan spent a good chunk of his time trying to destroy Social Security, it was one of the few political battles he lost during his terms in office. In case anyone doesn't remember, he lobbied heavily for no annual COLAs at all for SS benefits, which would have definitely relegated the program to practical pointlessness. It's been a relentless attack by the Republican Party on America's poor and on true liberalism in our country ever since. Virtually nothing remains of it, even going back to the 1970's and 80's America was suddenly presented with e.g. Eleanor Clift as "The Left", so now our two choices in broadcast political discussions are pro-Israel and rabidly pro-Israel. Pro multinational and even more pro multinational. Etc. The true liberal takes on these issues, e.g. theocracy is stupid regardless of which religion is involved, 320 million people with recognized rights cannot fairly compete with 1.5 billion people who have no recognized rights, etc etc, simply vanished from our national political dialog and hasn't been seen since. In my view it's precisely how we got where we are today. BTW congrats to Tom Lehrer on making it to 90, when he goes so does one of the last actual living American liberals imo. The philosophy has absolutely nothing to do with throwing rich people's money at poor people OR taking poor people's money to give to rich people. Im case anyone missed it and cares, Rex Tillerson gave some imo very sage advice during his commencement speech at Virginia Military Institute last Wednesday: "As I reflect upon the state of our American democracy, I observe a growing crisis in ethics and integrity," he said at the VMI commencement ceremony. "If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom." This same person was Trump's Secretary of State just two months ago, so not a lot of guesswork is required. :smile: Even more remarkable imo are where and to whom the comments were addressed. IMO it was a clear heads-up to our military that they're facing a very difficult choice. Also it would have been more helpful if he hadn't spoken of loss of freedom as a possible eventuality. We're already there. With this intentional and orchestrated FCC treason it's now and officially forcible repression of rights by this same government, not a potential or voluntary relinquishing of rights by the people. That's the difference. Absolutely nothing in our Constitution requires the American people to beg anyone for their constitutional rights to be restored, because our government does not issue or provide these rights in the first place. All the federal (or any) government can do is repress and attempt to repress recognition of these rights, and when involuntary repression occurs our sole responsibility is to remove and/or replace the repression. Immediately and by any means necessary. The people are not obligated according to our Constitution to wait for any legislative, judicial or even electoral process to restore recognition of our inherent, God-given and now forcibly repressed rights. Period. I and 320 million other free Americans would be more than happy to explain the above to any judge or jury in our country, but we'd be telling them what they already know. Our armed services know it better than anyone.

Our "liberal media" hasn't existed since Ronald Reagan, and even if it did, how is it responsible for war hawks in Trump's administration? Trump is doing what he is fated to do: be the worst president in U.S. history and the one that sends most of the civilized world to its doom. If I had to sit down and design the perfect person to start WWIII, a brazen reactionary traitor with absolutely zero political ability, I could do no better than Donald Trump. Hillary would be a very close second try. Trump and the R's are currently hashing out the final details of our country's newest "fair trade deal" with their PRC masters. More smoke and mirrors. As a half century of U.S. presidents wrote, there is and can be no such thing as a fair trade deal with a Communist country. THERE IS ONLY TREASON TO OUR COUNTRY AND TO FREE MARKET CAPITALISM.

More horseshit from Traitor Thune: https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/net-neutrality-rescue-effort-is-exercise-in-futility-says-senator-john-thune/ He's about to learn what an exercise in futility is. With the first Democratic Congress this current charade is out the window, completely and permanently. And until then, regardless of what this federal government does, net neutrality isn't going anywhere right now: Comcast is obligated to it until September, Charter's legal obligation to net neutrality doesn't end until 2025 etc. Also I don't think he understands what grandstanding means, or if he does, he's admitting that even he knows Title II protections will be restored for internet traffic. What Ronald Reagan did at the Berlin Wall is the precise definition of grandstanding. David Bowie had more to do with the fall of the wall than Reagan did.

If Pai's decision isn't reversed it's because and only because no country remains to care about its former constitutional rights. Our president, a near majority of our Senate and apparently a majority of our House are now proven repressors of our rights and thus traitors to our Constitution, imo if we still had a country the Senate vote to reverse Pai's decision would have been 97 to 1. The issue simply transcends political party, partisanship and even ideology. 80% of the public comments this corrupted FCC received on the question of repealing net neutrality were bogus shills from the same machine responsible for the question in the first place. Future historians will be deservedly brutal to us imo.

After further reading of Thune's comments it's standard Republican deception and bald-faced lies. He's attempting to placate both sides by claiming he "wants net neutrality" -- but not Title II protection for internet traffic. What our FCC did in 2015, their proper recognition of internet traffic as a communications utility, and the resulting Title II protections, are the one and only thing that puts any legal teeth into FCC regulation of this traffic. Prior to 2015 the FCC had no authority to protect net neutrality, or authority to protect and defend our other rights for internet traffic. So Thune's ploy is pure deception and beyond reprehensible. He's not only a fascist traitor, he's a coward as well. Not surprising as these are usually found together in the same human vultures. A public service message to him and all other Republicans: Proper classification of internet traffic and resulting proper Title II protection as a two-way and private communications network under jurisdiction of our FCC are non-negotiable. That's a period at the end. Anything less is precisely equal to imposed fascism and the gutting of our internet, as a private citizen and patriot American I declare that this orchestrated bald-faced treason will not succeed or stand as law in our country. It is the job of our elected officials to defend and protect our constitutional rights, not sell them to The Sinclair Group, Rupert Murdoch and Comcast. How I wish it was five years from now, assuming our traitor in chief doesn't destroy the civilized world, when the internet is fully and properly protected exactly as our phone and mail networks, when Google have been legally divested of its search engine and Microsoft of Windows, and banishment of the rest of the former monopoly structure is complete. Of most significance is that cable/TV companies (who are now also our content producers) will be legally barred in our country from providing internet service to the general public, or will be required to divest internet service into new and completely separate companies. As wild as it sounds today, this is the only long-term inevitability. Because the only alternative is our current perpetual and blatant conflict of interest between the existing business (financial, political etc) interests of our cable/TV/media/NEWS/etc establishment and distributors, and the internet rights and access of the American people. If you're following what this same government is doing otherwise, and proposing to do with internet traffic, it's intentionally imposed fascism on specific behalf of this same establishment. They're attempting to make it a federal felony to bypass Geico and Big Pharma commercials. No joke. Consider it Orrin Hatch's final gift to Sinclair and Sony on his way to eternal damnation. Excuse me I mean retirement. The internet must go through the exact same development progression as every other new communications medium that has been introduced in the last 240 years, from our newspapers to our telephones. What we're seeing today is the nadir of the abuse phase of this progression, where a handful of companies find themselves lords and masters of the technology, with global monopoly control over it. Last time it was "Ma" Bell, and if you don't know how they got the nickname you should look it up. They (and Comcast, Google, Microsoft etc) are not evil or evil people, it's simply the profit motive doing its thing and I personally have nothing against it. But what happens now is inevitable increasing abuse and even more inevitable public outrage and demand for protection of rights for the new medium. These Title II protections are the exact same ones that have protected our postal mail and phone networks since 1934, and they are the singular reason why the American people are greeted with a dial tone instead of Geico and Big Pharma commercials when they pick up a telephone. They are at least partially why our government must seek proper search warrants before civil judges before they can tap our phones or follow our postal mail. Etc. These Republican fascists have succeeded at stripping internet traffic of its proper and accurate classification as a communications network. When hospitals and countless millions of other Americans need to communicate on the internet, it automatically qualifies the medium as an essential communications network, not cable TV goddamn it, so Thune is another example (along with Pai) of someone who I imagine is leading a very stressful personal life these days. It must be hell explaining to your own familiy and friends why you just sold their constitutional rights to The Sinclair Group, Rupert Murdoch and Comcast. Are these people utterly without consciences or just brains? Consider this: with the current near-total absence of objective journalism in our country, if our feds are successful at this rights repression for internet traffic, what options will remain for free and unfettered communication in our country? Are we supposed to go back to postal mail if we wish our privacy to be protected in our communications? That's why this Trump/Pai orchestrated treason is so utterly stupid imo, it's not in the best long-term interest EVEN OF THOSE WHO ARE FOISTING IT ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. As mentioned before this is in fact the first time in my six decades where I'm willing to go to the mat with my employees on an issue, and on behalf of either 83 or 93% of the American people, depending on which set of poll numbers one believes. Including, incidentally and in one poll, 75% of those who self-identified as conservative Republicans. Link furnished on request. So I'm personally not taking no for an answer on Title II protection. The internet has always been, is and can only be a two-way communications network, just as our phone and mail networks, and proper recognition of its traffic as such is the foundation required for any genuine legal protection of internet traffic. The Republicans know this better than any of us.

Depeding on location the "order of nature" is defined as everything from polygamy to marrying six year-old girls. But regardless of location every bit of it is testament to human stupidity imo, the imposition of human limitations on the infinite. Alan Watts once called religions "sexual regulation societies" and imo he nailed it. The regulation is often primarily and in many cases exclusively for financial purposes not moral, it's why they exert so much energy working against not for civil marriage rights for gay people and abortion rights for women. You gotta keep the money plopping into the baskets. Even in China, where the PRC has installed their own "bishops" in the RCC to siphon their take of donations. Apparently it's the only way the RCC is alllowed to remain in the country at all. Amazing what's possible when the world accepts totalitarian Communism as a legitimate form of government.

While it's all correct, your points don't address or disprove my claim. Can you name another instance in our history of intentional corruption of a public and chartered non-partisan agency to facilitate a specific act of partisan treason? Again you're confusing my claim that it's unprecedented with your claim that worse things have been done by our federal government. I'm referring to method of treason not severity, although I disagree entirely with your "not even a ripple in the ocean" assessment of it. It's the first time our federal government has not only attempted but succeeded at forcible repression of our constitutional rights, and from what I'm reading they're not done trying yet.

It was unprecedented in terms of intentional corruption of a public agency and subsequent treason specifically enabled by this corruption. I don't disagree with your list or point.

Almost all of that is hogwash. The Trump/Pai orchestrated treason was unprecedented in our 240-year history. And it will not stand because it cannot stand in our country. Or rather, the only way it can stand is if we no longer have a country. Between Trump and our current Congress (and even my state initiatives and votes, e.g. 60% of Californians no longer respect our Second Amendment etc) we may in fact be the world's newest Nazi Germany. In which case nothing else remains to be done imo except to leave while it's still possible and watch the final stages of this $22 trillion debt settlement from a hopefully-safe-from-the-nuclear-fallout distance. I certainly stand by my 40+ years of predictions of this eventuality, and decision to stop recognizing this illegitimate and now officially fascist government in 1971, ever since they started forcing the American people to get up and go to work every day to try and compete with 1.5 totalitarian Communists who have no recognized rights or freedoms. If you wish to know the actual reason why America now resembles the USSR more than the USA, with 70+ million people holding their hands out for government assistance, and the reason for inexorable evaporation of the world's private sector. It can and will only get worse until we address the cause of the problem.

Maybe. IMO it doesn't magically transform him into something other than a pedophile.

Whatever. The only way it will become our law is with millions of Americans behind prison bars or in graves. And a whole bunch of proven fascist traitors sent to their rightful fate.

That definition isn't justifiable according to their own scriptures. Unless you're claiming nine year-old girls are of childbearing age.

I should qualify my last post by saying that, as far as anyone knows, the PRC did nothing wrong throughout this ordeal since 1970/71. I mean if you don't count providing most of the munitions to put 57,000 of our kids to death in Vietnam. But it was Nixon who sent secret and then-illegal trade envoys to Beijing, on behalf on the multinationals who had been drooling at their artificially cheap, enslaved labor for over a half century, and this treason to our labor force was sold to the American people as a political wedge against the USSR. Every U.S. president regardless of party before Nixon refused to allow this exposure of our labor force to Communist labor forces, and many of them wrote books explaining why: it's impossible even theoretically for 320 million people who have fully recognized civil and human rights to fairly compete with 1.5 billion other people who have no recognized individual rights. And our federal government has been more aware of this than anyone for the last 70 or 80 years. The wound has festered to breaking point economically as well as politically, e.g. according to Trump's "diplomacy tour" and buddy buddy relationship with their newly promoted permanent king, the PRC's signoff is now required for our country's proposed tax and trade plans. I pray at least a little remains of our FBI regardless of Trump's staff changes.

What struck me about the phrase is that it requires one to actually be God, to know what might constitute the entire "order of nature". My favorite theory about gay people comes from indigenous American tribes ("Indians"), some of whom believe gay people are "special purpose" beings from God (i.e. not intended to procreate from the beginning). It rings true in my ears based on personal experience. Or they could simply be one natural form of population control. Who knows for sure? But to claim a definitive or comprehensive understanding of the "order of nature" is somewhere between absurd and delusional, and frankly embarrassing and pathetic imo.

Pai's decision was reversed in the Senate, and a very slight majority of our Senate still care about the constitutional rights of their own families. That's the good news. The horrible news is that 47 senators just formally decided that orchestrated treason and imposed fascist repression are A-ok in their books, thus declared their proven status as fascist traitors to our Constitution, and are thus removable by any means necessary. According to our Constitution, not me. Well both actually. The House is expected to thumb their nose at popular will, just as Trump's intentionally and specifically corrupted FCC did. I say let them thumb their noses while they still have thumbs and noses. :) If the House fails to reverse Pai's decision, our states will pass their own legislation to defend and protect our rights, and it will be the unfortunate and absurd (not to mention futile and doomed to failure before it even begins) job of our own federal employees to continue forcibly and outrageously repressing these rights, and repressing the right of the states to regulate their own utility traffic and other networks. I feed bad for them because the only eventuality possible is not the one they've deluded themselves into believing they've gotten away with. The internet will not be gutted on specific behalf of our media and cable TV establishments, or on behalf of pocketed politicians these same industries raise and elect (practically not technically of course) in our country.

Note to mods: another example of a topic that is potentially debatable, and please feel free to move it to Debates if you wish. But it's intended as an informational post and I'm sincerely not looking for debate from anyone who might believe Lebanon's abject fascism is justified. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-44141603 From the article: "Article 534 of Lebanon's penal code punishes "any sexual intercourse contrary to the order of nature" with up to one year in prison, and has been used to prosecute people suspected of homosexuality." Anyone know how they reconcile this law with what is actually observed in nature? Homosexuality is routinely seen in not dozens or hundreds but thousands of different animal species, including ours. It might be accurate to call it abnormal but it's certainly not unnatural. Also studies consistently indicate that somewhere around 80% of us have had or will have at least one homosexual experience in our lives, the vast majority of these for heterosexuals are during puberty and the following experimentation period. I've always been at a loss to explain institutionalized gay bashing, since another thing that all studies tell us is that sexual orientation is immutable for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. 5% of any human population are currently questioning their sexuality, the other 95% are not. These numbers never change, therefore what societal threat does (or even can) either orientation pose to the other? I've never understood it even as a kid a half century ago. One last thing studies have revealed is that the so-called "ick response" to homosexuality is a learned behavior and does not occur in children who are not taught to respond that way to it by their families, cultures and religions. It turns out the natural response is neutral since it's essentially and simply physical expression of self-love.

Today's news? Trump caves to the PRC's "demands" before he even fully knows what the demands are: https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/05/16/donald-trump-china-demands-josh-rogin-intv-newday.cnn And you gotta love the balls of these godless thugs, demanding things from our free country. Two and only two things are owed to the PRC: expulsion from the UN and cessation of all economic ties with free countries.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42250340 Downright surreal watching this proceed like a scripted film, with nobody able to change a single word. Queue Syrian invasion and WWIII. ACTION!

Here's what happened in 1968 when Andy Williams was talked into trying to appeal to the 1960's psychedelic culture: See how far you can make it before the nausea begins, and not from the cheesy graphics. Viewers turned it off in droves due to this opening when it was originally broadcast. The program (which was a semi-special, Andy's weekly show had been cut to six specials/year, and this was one of them in '68) was a disaster both in the ratings and for his career, which never fully recovered. Younger generations saw through it like tissue paper, older generations shook their heads and mourned the loss of another one to the drug culture. It's really a shame, because imo some later bits in this same program are among the most sublimely perfect music ever recorded in any medium e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyPhQkZNLw This is the tail end of longer S&G segment that includes Mrs. Robinson and Old Friends/Bookends. The first of those was mimed and forgettable but the latter was live and beyond stunning imo. The clip was on Youtube for years but I haven't found it there recently.