The Democratic Party, 2019

[Grizzly]

^^^ Not to backtrack or god forbid, be a pessimist, but how's this chasm work? "Ten years of night school, then off to Stanford"? hmmm??
----
While I'm here...
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Gravelanche?src=hash



I'd post this in the Gravel thread to, if I CAN find it...

[RocketMan]

Meanwhile, definitely native American Elizabeth Warren is deeply concerned on behalf of the US military...

[Harvey]

^ Christ on a bike!

[JackRiddler]

.

Integrity is a terrible thing to waste.

Am I supposed to believe the same brainy one on financial matters can't figure out what the Pentagon really is and does? It's the same cowardice we saw from her in 2016.

.

[stickdog99]

^^^ Not to backtrack or god forbid, be a pessimist, but how's this chasm work? "Ten years of night school, then off to Stanford"? hmmm??

That's somehow suspicious to you? Really?

https://missionlocal.org/2019/04/meet-s ... cy-pelosi/

Buttar feels his childhood memories are of America at its best. His subsequent experiences were not as idyllic. His family’s home was foreclosed upon when he was a freshman at the University of Chicago, and he spent the better part of the next decade bouncing around jobs by day while amassing university courses at night. He did graphic presentation work for Merrill Lynch, Saloman Smith Barney, JP Morgan and other captains of industry. These were eye-opening experiences, and, not coincidentally, he would write an undergraduate thesis about “radical redistribution in the market economy.” This won a statewide prize, and Buttar caught the attention of Stanford law school.

And that put him on his current trajectory: A young attorney defending the mayor of New Paltz, New York, who opted to marry same-sex couples; staff counsel for a Muslim advocacy group combating FBI infiltration into activist groups, and, for the past four years, an advocacy director with the digital civil rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

It’s partly this work against big-government surveillance that spurs Buttar in a political quest he laughingly likens to public immolation. For while Pelosi demonstrably — and theatrically — kneecapped the president in his quest for a Medieval border wall, Buttar claims she’s hardly countered him on something he considers more insidious: “the surveillance net across the country that corporate Democrats accept and even embrace.”

If that sounds "too good to be true" to you, whose life story that ended in an advanced degree wouldn't?

[stickdog99]

.

Integrity is a terrible thing to waste.

Am I supposed to believe the same brainy one on financial matters can't figure out what the Pentagon really is and does? It's the same cowardice we saw from her in 2016.

Consider me both shocked and awed.

If we don't address the problem immediately, global warming will surely make war hell.

[JackRiddler]

To be fair, that was the kickoff to a long series of tweets focusing on cutting the defense budget.

I don't particularly take that seriously because her Pentagon talk is all about corruption and the revolving door and "waste," and a bit about foreign lobbying, which of course are all enormous and important, but still not about the main issue, which is that it's not a defense budget, it's an organization for conducting perpetual global imperialist war by every means, overt and covert. "We" are the bad guys and we should stop being the bad guys. If you don't address that, change is unlikely to follow.

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[JackRiddler]

Grizzly, that comment cannot be serious.

Working class people do get into Stanford, the Ivy League, MIT et al., not in proportion to their share of the population but in the thousands. They generally do so by earning it, three times over.

[Grizzly]

I was merely pondering it; I appreciate the info supplied. I guess it just never occurred to me that working class people, especially from "night school" can get into Ivy League schools. I just have not had that experience to reference from or know anyone that has or does...

[JackRiddler]

Again, read his bio. Pretty impressive. Or just look at the guy. He's smart. Also, working class maybe he wasn't. Already in at U Chicago, then his family went bankrupt. Then the night school, finally Stanford. It's the hard working part that did it, at least for him. (That's no guarantee either.)

[stickdog99]

To be fair, that was the kickoff to a long series of tweets focusing on cutting the defense budget.

I don't particularly take that seriously because her Pentagon talk is all about corruption and the revolving door and "waste," and a bit about foreign lobbying, which of course are all enormous and important, but still not about the main issue, which is that it's not a defense budget, it's an organization for conducting perpetual global imperialist war by every means, overt and covert. "We" are the bad guys and we should stop being the bad guys. If you don't address that, change is unlikely to follow.

Agreed, but I think corruption, revolving doors, and "waste" are all prime motivations for our being such bad guys. Our waste is their profit.

There are no foxes guarding that hen house. There are only convoys continually pulling up, filling up, and driving away with all the eggs.

https://www.mikegravel.org/

[stickdog99]

I was merely pondering it; I appreciate the info supplied. I guess it just never occurred to me that working class people, especially from "night school" can get into Ivy League schools. I just have not had that experience to reference from or know anyone that has or does...

Believe it or not, most US colleges still accept a percentage of students who are the first members of their families to attend college or graduate school. In fact, college admissions departments tend to give preference to such students over all but donors' and grifters' children.

[JackRiddler]

.

It's kind of chicken and egg, whether the plunder business or the enemy image comes first. You can't stop the plunder without directly addressing the enemy image, however. As long as people believe the bullshit, it will continue, and the profits will keep flowing. That at any rate is what I believe. I believe one has to say it: Venezuela is not an enemy. Russia and Iran are not enemies. Whether or not you like them or they are bad is not relevant to whether they are enemies, because they are not, and they are not military threats. Saudi and Israel are not allies. They are aggressor states and can no longer receive aid. No one should be receiving military aid. International arms sales must end and the US must lead the way because it's the only one who can. NATO is a scam. US wars are scams. They are out-and-out aggressions. The troops have been used and abused. The fate of the peoples we have attacked has been far worse. The non-state enemies are largely fabrications, 500 million was spent on making fake "Al-Qaeda" videos. The forever wars are destroying any legitimate US interest. All the regional arms buildups are idiotic and short-sighted and US policy must be devoted to scaling back military buildups everywhere. This cannot go on. It can only end in disaster for all (mayhem, bankruptcy, mass death, more countries in ruins, ecological catastrophe), or an even worse disaster for all (nuclear war).

These truths need to be said without camouflage or apology. The time is ripe for it, I believe. Americans can be pulled away from desiring this brink.

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[Elvis]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/f ... e-night-2/

[Elvis]

Laura Bronner
10:39 PM

Did Biden just make sure he didn’t have to talk for longer than 30 seconds?

Seth Masket
10:41 PM

Yeah, that’s twice that Biden has attempted to limit his time at the mic.


https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/f ... e-night-2/

I noticed that. Biden talked most but was happy to shut up when digging a hole: "My time is up."