redcairo

I like relabeling them losers, Luke. Here's why: 1. Generally: I think one of the genuine problems we have as a social-culture with issues such as islamic terrorism (which is the vast vast vast vast majority of terrorism here and in Islamic countries, though not all others) is that nobody wants to call anything what it is and all the whitewashed phrasings and labelings pretty much err on the side of making everything prettier and not so bad. So first off, the fact that he is just brutally clear in the various things he has said about -- totally outside the normal "political speech" -- I think is great. 2. Second, specifically to the label losers, I like it -- if you call them muslims people get pissed ("because my muslim neighbor hasn't bombed anybody yet so how rude") and if you call them terrorists you merely highlight their terror and I suspect make them feel like yeah, we're he-man, we're bad-ass, be terrified. He is trying to instantiate -- and there is a bigger picture to this -- a change in how the world thinks about this including arabic countries, and to create a reaction that is not about terror but about disgust. Marginalization, to minimize the terror. Enough disgust that it loses the glossy, may be less attractive to young people to join, and so that even other muslims will be more willing to report them and not support them. You can't just call them killers and slavers -- hell by Islam's standards you've done good for Allah if you're those things. You (and others) see it as just a simple, childish name calling. I see it as a deliberate, and probably carefully thought out beforehand, "strategy" -- just like you'd have in business or marketing -- intentionally simple spit-wadding level. He is refusing to give them the "drama" that they WANT and the terror that they WANT, and instead "reframing" it into something else. RC

One of the problems I encountered in adulthood was gradually realizing how profoundly misindoctrinated I'd been throughout childhood. When I left high school for example: * I hated christianity with a knee-jerk, mouth-frothing frenzy. I thought the crusades were basically a money-based hoax using religion to inspire the idiots and proved that 'organized religion' especially that one was the worst in the world and 'white religious fanatics' were a big problem even here and now. I believed that probably the main reason muslims had been doing international terrorism that I'd witnessed since the 1970s (Yassir was big back then) was because we were so mean to them so of course they didn't like us. Then I learned just enough of history to realized that the Crusades were not merely a whim of an arrogant king who wanted money. That there was actually a reason why both noble's sons and poor boys were willing to sell everything they owned to buy weapons or armor and go fight. That the number of places all over europe which had been attacked, invaded, and 'converted' (that usually meant mass death and slavery) by 'Islamists' was extensive and the slavery issue (of every race) extensive and that by the time it came around to 'fight back' many felt like it was a survival issue and the only chance. Then I learned that islamic terrorism actually dated to basically, islam's founding close enough, and had been applied not only to just about every country on earth, every race of people, gradually from the time of its inception until the present, but that plenty of this predated the modern era (last 50 years) of the US getting involved in a major way in the middle east. Does our involvement drive more people hating us? Certainly it does, and should. Did we cause Islamic Terrorism? No, that's basically inseparable from the larger topic of Islam given its range of countries, races, and years perpetuated. And so on. I got that info from growing up in california and going to public school. I had no other sources of info. I didn't go to church (brief period as a teen, topic never came up). I didn't talk to my parents (very dysfunctional family life). I had very little interaction with friends (on room restriction for about six years though I had school. But there, don't think it ever came up). So somewhere between 'media' and 'school' I had come to the idea that a/ Muslims were only blowing up innocent people because the USA was mean to them and b/ the Crusades had no good cause to come about and c/ The biggest threat was really Christianity. So... how did the sources combine to bring about this belief system in a kid? And talking with others my age over the years esp. those from where I was, other people got the same ideas as 'beliefs' without ever realizing it. So it wasn't just me; it's a larger effect. And why? What motive/agenda/circumstance would WANT that impression conveyed? Many of the ridiculously biased media people today, were biased just as I was growing up, and truly believe they're right by now. Now those indoctrinated are doing the indoctrination. Probably that's been the case for at least 30 years. So at this point we're doubling-down. When someone believes something growing up, new experiences tie into those existing beliefs. Eventually it's a solid web and you cannot change that belief in them without seriously threatening or messing with a huge range of psychological belief systems. At best they hit cognitive dissonance and fight back rabidly. At worst they 'break' from the overall impact and begin degrading, psychologically, bad situation. Successful propaganda doesn't just provide wrong information. It creates entire generation of people who are basically damaged goods in terms of ever being able to correctly perceive reality in that area. Meanwhile islamists are still raping/murdering/enslaving everybody around them, including of course, their own countries and fellows. And it's a valid argument that most Muslims are not blowing up concert stadiums. But then again, there are many tigers in the world. Most of them are not killing anybody I know. But if one killed someone I know, I would be wary about tigers. If lots of them killed lots of people I at least heard of, I would think it was pretty fair to label them dangerous and make sure Tigers were not put in situations where they had that opportunity. Even though most of them have not and never will hurt any human. Potentially they might. Back when it was ok to care about protecting your country, people, family and person, this would be sufficient reason to make some clear rules. The human traits of 'label it' and 'build a wall to keep it out' may seem archaic in behavior, but remember the reason humanity is here to have the argument at all, is because we survived. And we survived because we made labels, and we made rules to protect ourselves from the most "potentially" dangerous things, and we built walls to protect our cities and kingdoms from enemies. RC

I agree with your larger point but there is some humor in the contradiction there.

Thanks you guys, good thoughts all. RC

Thanks. :-) Hopefully this one is real. :-) The "spanish dancer" jellyfish:

About 20 years ago I first saw this, allegedly an old photo from 1890 from the city I grew up in, Ventura CA. The source was allegedly from the AZ desert (I'm guessing that is maybe 200 miles away). I always found this fascinating. There are some stories about this kind of thing found in mining efforts in diff parts of the world. But, it could be a fake. Who knows.

A magical sunset in Africa, taken by Bess Hamiti Picture is larger than default-show in forum and is so beautiful

I read one of Brandon Sanderson's 3-book series. I went to find the title but dang, I didn't know he had so much stuff, I can't remember which it was. It had this element where a selective (genetically selective) group of people could control things physically and they would for example be able to jump, not quite fly really, through a control of... I think it was the metallic elements, and it would play off throwing something akin to a coin to the ground for example and then controlling between that and body. I think it was one of his early works. He was clearly, and I mean overwhelmingly, inspired by Jordan, to the point that it seemed slightly in places like his own story but RJ fanfic, but then again, epic fantasy genre does tend to have an often very repetitive set of elements I guess. The fight scenes were so complex I had to slow down so much to try and keep track of what was happening (and they went ON) I ended up skimming through them eventually. But aside from that, I actually really enjoyed them, you could see his talent even if raw in places, and I was in a thoughtful mode at the time so I kept stopping and going, "Hmm!" at various ideas in it, as it had a lot of stuff related to... who you are, and choose to be, vs. who you naturally are via environment, and that sort of thing. I read DUNE series when I was about 19 and was utterly obsessed with it. I have to say though I don't think I have the patience for it anymore. I was much more a reader in those days. I would have given anything for a whole spinoff series on Duncan Idaho, the ghola (not quite a clone). I recall that was during one of the periods when I would so be "in the other world of the book" my father would go, "ARE YOU ON DRUGS?!" which I found totally hilarious (given I was so straight). There is a certain niche of epic fantasy where everything is horrible and everyone dies horribly and everyone is evil and there's just a few characters you so hope for that you hang on. I dislike that niche hugely and felt GoT was like that. I read that stuff and when I am done, I am just dark all the way through, as if the darkness has gotten into me. Most epic series have a lot of that. I am a big fan of stuff that has a little more optimism in there somewhere. I've read stuff via kindle fire that I probably wouldn't have otherwise and have found some good stuff. Next time I'm in my e-library I will look for this genre and make a note of stuff to mention here in case others are interested. There's been a few neat books although they're often just one-off. Probably from my e-library I can leave out the weredragon alien shapeshifter navy seal biker club stepbrother billionaire romance novels haha. I am half kidding. Amazon 'unlimited' is, in fact, limited, and when I really want to read I do enormous amounts very fast, so I go through a lot in many genres. My favorite romance of the unlimited list was actually a few about half-human soldier androids, although I admit to not much plot (much romance is just pxrn, sadly), but I have a real interest in the whole development-of-self stuff, and I think chimera and hybrid-androids are examples of people who'd have a real helluva time with the metaphysics of who-am-I. And occasionally you stumble on something that doesn't belong in romance AT ALL (like one about a wounded soldier in Iraq who is protected by a young prostitute and falls in love with her that could nearly give you proxy ptsd it was so heavy) or humorously offbeat. I found an epic book I really liked but the sequel wasn't ready and when it was, I couldn't even remember who/what was going on, lots of foreign names, so didn't buy it. Short attention span lately... the whole kindle phenomenon that amazon sparked has gotten a lot to market that never would have gotten there previously so I am a big fan of giving new authors a chance. Rambling. Cause I got up at some ungodly hour to troubleshoot server issues. And it's done but now I think I want to sleep! When I should be working. There is no winning. ;-) RC

Looks like copyright pulled it down now. Sorry about that. Best book for interest: 'Remote Viewers' by Jim Schnabel. Tragically missed most the science part but is a good Joe-the-amazing and There-Is-No-God-but-Ingo book. Best book from the boss: Mind Trek, by McMoneagle, though I found the foreword and chapter 1 yawningly slow, the rest was very good and has simple how-to. Best book as an introduction to the scientific study of psi and really damn interesting too: The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin. RC

Well you get people 'enforcing rules' when there's just no reason to enforce them because the 'rules' were actually written for some worst-case far edge-scenario and they're trying to be consistent because with law you should be. But then they end up applied like in the examples I gave. You cannot legislate common-sense, appropriate-discretion or compassionate-fairness. Legislation is by its nature the antithesis of those things because they remove human judgment from the equation entirely. RC

Oh heck yeah! Thanks Dust, yeah I'm a huge Robert Jordan fan. Read all those, and the prequel. He was absolutely brilliant, that man. I cried when he died (of cancer). Brandon Sanderson has done a really great job in finishing his stuff... but isn't him. I was just mentioning him the other day. I was telling someone about this amazing epic fantasy author who had this group of women who were magically bound from telling lies, they couldn't do it. And they still managed to be the most deviously distrustworthy group of humans on the planet LOL!!! I think I wish the very last book was... I dunno. Maybe more... expanded. A couple areas I thought would go somewhere didn't. But then I realize that technically... that bleeping series could still be going on, it just had to be ended somewhere. My best friend is still not done with the series. He loves it so much he hates the idea of being done with it. I tease him because it's taking so long. I thought by book 7 Jordan should have been fined for every new character. And I nearly quit reading in the middle of book 8 because of the new characters, and then I really didn't like the Seanchan so didn't like reading about them from then on. I had a 'moment of insight' prior to finishing that series, that the 'world' of Jordan had become (if it wasn't always) literally his body I mean like microbiology writ to global humanization scale. Of course my mystical stuff always ties into "we are the universe literally" so maybe it's just part of that. But for a few minutes while that was strong in me it seemed like everything fell into place as that making perfect sense. :-) RC

Oh. The video I posted above, has a focus on Pat Price, but it also has a little on Uri Geller. Uri was pretty well known to be working for Mossad so they only did six weeks of testing with him. Uri's a tough call because in the lab he is the real deal, but personality-wise/presentation he is ... prone to make even the most open minded person doubt he's anything but smoke and mirrors. RC

Back in the day, Joseph McMoneagle performing in front of the senate subcommittee that voted to approve continued funding, was given a very tiny cut out from a b&w satellite photograph that appeared to be the roof of some kind of building somewhere in the world, from a distance. Nothing else was visible. He was asked to describe what was going on underneath that roof. He described (over the course of a few sessions as there were followups) a gigantic building in which was being constructed the hugest submarine the world had ever seen. It was put together in an unusual way he described. There were precisely this many missile tubes and so on. And around a certain date they were going to suddenly dig a giant channel from this building to a nearby waterway and drag it out to sea. Intell laughed and laughed. Soooo stupid! Totally impossible. None were anywhere near that big, the building wasn't near enough to the water, and so on. It was the super secret Typhoon class soviet submarine, with details exactly as he had described. His date for the release was off by 2-3 weeks. Then-current leader of the CIA was later to describe this, and many other even more impressive and detailed viewings, as "a lucky guess." McMoneagle is apparently just the luckiest SOB ever to walk the planet. A current documentary which someone pirated to youtube can be viewed before copyright takes it away :-) Third Eye Spies - Remote Viewing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoNUgQE0uDg I'm well familiar with this field for a long time, so I found much of it sort of amusing, and hokey, and a bit of historical revision but in harmless ways more about personalities than facts -- the basics are accurate and it has some neat old video and a few interesting stories the public probably hasn't heard. RC

You know, our world got on just fine for years and decades and centuries before bathroom laws and I could be wrong about this because I don't follow this kind of news, but I do not recall hearing of any legitimate transsexual crime related to it. Note that people who are criminals might dress up as women, and do many other things, but I do not consider that the same. Prior to this law, there could be women in the bathroom who were women, who were very masculine women, and who were probably men or once-men now living as women, and people who we assume are women but we have no real idea. And we all primp in front of the mirror and go OMG I LOVE THOSE EARRINGS and NOBODY CARES. But now that this BS had to get legislated -- I think this desire to make laws about every damn thing is one of the things at the root of human misery -- now what? Are we expected to pat down women to be sure their boobs are real if they have a kinda heavy hairline above their upper lip? Should we insult masculine-looking women by implying they're probably men? Should we send women who are likely once-men or cross-dressers -- and worse, OMG far worse, sometimes children -- into the men's restroom so they can (and I HAVE seen reports of THIS kind of crime) be horribly assaulted for not being manly enough? And if a father has his four year old daughter with him, does he have to take her into an often messy smelly restroom with lots of men rather than into the ladies room because OMG he's a man and he'd be in the wrong bathroom? My dad took me into the ladies' room when he was a single father and I was 6. What part of modern life makes it so difficult to just not legislate stuff and expect people to do what is reasonable and rational? RC

I don't see what difference it makes as long as people aren't being vile in habits or spending half an hour in there. I mean we all share bathrooms in private residences after all, it's not like it's some kind of novel idea.

I am involved in some threads that are ridiculously wonderously very active. When I visit, it takes quite some time to go back through pages, trying to figure out where I left off. Since I usually open 'quote' in tabs and post before leaving, it would be great if I could just go to MY last post on a given thread. From there it would all be new to me. Is there any way to do this? Many thanks RC

Well it's very... Zen in the moment, in its own way :-)

This made me crack up. This is actually political and anti-Trump-admin but I still thought it was pretty funny. It reminded me of the SNL that I used to love circa '79-82 or so, which has been worse than gone for a long, long time. RC

Thanks Ralis. Nope, not offended at all. It takes me an hour to write a 6000-word essay and two days to write a half-page brief LOL. Poetry is the only way I've found to somehow get "more than the sum of its parts" into english. And what works well in fiction or conversation is not what works best in non-fiction. (Unless the non-fiction is meant to be persuasive rather than pedagogically memorizable.) So I know I can use the help. ;-) RC

You're right that I should be more careful with my words. However the emails from Wikileaks did indicate that nearly EVERY major news source was intentionally colluding with DNC. So if I am a bit generalized about the reference to MSM there is some just cause. And I agree that lots of stories are not lies, or in many cases are simply highly selective to be present at all, highly selective in which facts to include, highly editorial not objective is very common, and the stories, the 'facts excluded,' the subjective elements, and the headlines, are -- concerning the major topics we have been discussing here which is generally federal government and just a few very specific issues (such as this thread's) -- highly prone to create, not by accident but by clear design, both an erroneous conclusion/belief in the reader, and usually some degree of emotional/dramatic response. Like the news has en masse become The National Enquirer. That doesn't mean every single possible source in the whole country. But it does seem to mean "the majority of the most major sources" -- like the ones that colluded with DNC, as a place to start, though even on that list some are better/worse than others. It's not like on any given topic, one can be prevented from having a conversation unless they spend a day doing a whole research project to find 12 MSM sources and review all articles on the topic and evaluate what % of those might have clear inaccuracy or bias in order to be able to provide a list of caveat/conditions -- for a mention in passing. It does not seem injust or inaccurate to me, to suggest that the majority of the 'mainstream news media' has evidenced a very clear bias in favor of politics we call liberal Leftist. RC

I actually only listened to Rush in the 90's and not for long, and I thought he was totally hilarious, in a good way. His take on the Menendez brothers trial (and his rants on Feminazis) I thought were great. I haven't actually heard/read much of him in many years -- very rarely some brief article perhaps over the last few months -- I wasn't even reading anything news/media-like on the internet until super briefly when the campaigning began, and then just before the election to now. Is he nuttier now? My familiarity with him is pretty long ago I admit. So I missed whatever Rush had to say about the Russians and likely a million other things. There were some fairly right-wing news sources I used to like ok -- there's bias on both sides so there's limited options -- but have become so hyperbolic I don't much like them so well anymore, such as Brietbart and Infowars. Too bad. I joke that Alex Jones is the David Icke of political media. I often like College Fix, they are conservative but usually specific to the edu industry. They have a lot to talk about since Title IX has basically wrecked any sanity on campus, particularly for men. Re: Communist propaganda: if you mean is our media doing official statist propaganda that looks just like the Soviet Union in 1973, why no, I would agree it's nothing like that. But I do mean that I think a great deal of the intentional 5th column undermining and divisiveness that has gradually permeated our culture -- and yes I mean the stuff McCarthy was battling, though his approach was imperfect -- has come initially 'through' -- and now intentionally 'from' -- many of the most massive media outlets. I suppose blaming it on either wing of politics is injust and probably wrong, you may be right about that -- but I see the 5C element as having gone from present to virulent to pretty well nearly out in the open at this point. RC

Right, not much. Of course, using our own steel creates jobs in that industry, and mfg creates jobs (what is the official stat, 2.3 subsidiary jobs for every 1 mfg job I think) in dependent industries. Still I agree the pipelines are not huge job creators on their own, though the funds will help in more governmental but less tangible-to-us-proletariat ways. And realistically, most of the jobs we need to do and that will really create temporary (few years) jobs are infrastructure. So many of our bridges are just disasters waiting to happen as one example. Hopefully by the time a nationwide mass effort for infrastructure upgrade is worked at least partly through, we may have other options, depending on what is able to be brought back. I work in IT/publishing, where offshoring is a total vampire. And the really offensive thing is that most of it IS NOT EVEN CHEAPER. It seems like it would be. What it IS, is "instantly expendable" and "infinitely scalable" and "someone else's HR problem." But as far as the cost goes, we have outsourced a huge % of the work in our corp gradually (including, against my will, the sub-dept. I built) and they in fact pay *more* than I paid my in-country 1099 vendors who were distributed and scalable with a little warning. We got 'contracts' that paid them more money for far worse work with more 'notice' for scalability and far less options for urgent/exception things, because the execs think offshoring is the freakin' answer to everything. It's horribly depressing especially since they basically dumped multiple small companies and all their people with zero notice, when they'd done zero wrong and been good-faith very close vendors for a decade. (They also do an every 3 month 'restructuring' and get rid of more people who have been around longer, and then open 'new' positions nearly identical, and on occasion 'offer them' to 'reapply' for the 'new' job which is half the pay, start vacation & 401K amts over, and usually require something like move across the country to a big city nobody sane wants to live in with no $ help for doing so at all. And they can do this because a country full of offshoring that at this point likely employs far more people in india/pakistan than it does here, has left so many people out of work here, there's sheer desperation.) As the final irony, the not-even-cheaper-really amounts paid on contract to overseas, compared to 1099 remote workers here, are paid to agencies. The people in those countries often work for pittance, being pimped out by the agency project managers who are making most the money. RC

DJT's made mention in the past of other/alternate energy sources, but I think since a} we are clearly heavily dependent on the ordinary ones (coal, gas, oil) at the moment, and b} dependent, to be specific, on people in regions of the world that hate and want to kill us (the middle east), and c} we already have most of the infrastructure and know-how as well as the energy reserves needed, to pursue them, it'll go first with the Big Energy. I have hope though, and I think there is some reason for it, that down the line he will do much to facilitate a more serious look at other energy forms than anybody has done before, in part due to the entrenched dependence on the others. RC

Yes, my sense of humor (the caps) doesn't convey very well in writing, sorry... Liberal media really does correspond with the communist agenda so maybe it's a better word than I realized. Can't do much about the jews association. They may dominate several positions of power in media but they do in many other fields too so that doesn't mean much. You responded so fast, I apologize for the edit, I usually don't edit for real-content except immediately after, must start using preview more often. RC