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sheeeit

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  1. Agree. Trump does knee jerk, childish things and I wish he wasn't POTUS. I notice you neglected to comment on Biden firing Robb as general counsel of the NLRB which ended 70 plus years of precedent. This was so much worse for the country and for the things you seem to be suggesting regarding bending to party and squashing dissent and hurting the country. Robb was going after some union shops for workplace violations. During the campain the Communications Workers of America union actively complained about Robb and called for his firing. Biden fired him day 1 and replaced him with a senior lawyer for....the Communications Workers of America union who promptly closed the investigations. Which is worse and more reflective of an authoritarian/fascist regime? If I am being totally honest, I actually have a bit of respect for the guy that comes right out on national TV and says he is going to primary someone. I think it is a totally wrong thing to do, but at a bare minimum he is being transparent. You don't think every admin since the beginning of the USA doesn't use the same tactic? Of course they do. They just don't advertise it. Biden spurned Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman because they did not vote for his infrastructure bill. They both lost primaries. This happens all the time. Again, I don't like it and think it is one of the shittier aspects of politics but it is common.
  2. Agree completely. Did you believe Mayorkas when asked about border policy and actions?
  3. Talk about stupid. From your link and my link: 1/5/2024 (my wife's birthday and certainly "when 2024 started" arctic ice extent 13.4 M sq km, 1/5/24 of historical baseline 13.9 M sq km. That is 3.6%. Exactly what I said. You are showing your ass when I said that the network news and CNN and Fox and late night TV and morning talk shows were talking about the decline in 2012 and you countered that it is still being talked about with links from nsidc.org and climate.gov. True bastions of mainstream information sources. And you and brisket still miss the point or choose to ignore it. If the ice extent was a massive story when it was at low points then it had to be a massive story when it rebounded. I watched Scott Bessent (one of the Trump guys I like) on nbc or cbs. He pointed out that after the tariffs were announced the network ran with headlines of major stock market crash. Then a few weeks later when the market recovered to historics levels the network ignored it. And of course Fox and OAN do the opposite. It is shocking that reasonably intelligent people actually think one side is more virtuous than the other.
  4. Trying to keep it civil but this is just blatant bullshit. You are a fucking attorney? I have laid out my plan for immigration control on here for years. I am likely more pro legal immigration than most on here. I think the vast, vast total of immigrants in the country are good people and we are a better country because of it. You really have just become exactly what you claim to hate. What you will not admit, what the previous admin will not admit, what this whole "squash the lies of repubs like germany bullshit" talk will not admit when it comes to immigration is that under Biden, on purpose, the controls we had on who was allowed into the country were completely removed. We let in a massive number of really horrible people, we allowed immigrant children to go virtually unchecked to "host" families that we can not even find anymore, we let massive amounts of fentanyl into the country etc. Yet Mayorkas and Kamala and a large percentage of the media just lied about it and ignored it. Of course the number of really bad people was a small percentage but a small percentage of 10 million is a shitload of people. Remind me when any ranking dem member of congress criticized Biden when literally thousands of hispanic gang members entered the country illegally. I think Trump firing the BLS guy is stupid and wrong. But not any more stupid and wrong than Biden firing the general counsel of the NLRB because the unions wanted him too. But both are legal.
  5. LOL. Define government? Last time I checked, Schumer, AOC, Warren, Booker are all part of the government. If you are suggesting that whichever party holds the executive will rally around their leader, then I will agree. What you can not seem to realize is that it is possible to not like most aspects of either party. There are a few people in Trump's exec that I like and there were a few people in Biden's exec that I liked. Off the top of my head I can think of: Hiding Bidens mental decline, Janet Yellen telling the world in the summer of 2024 before the election that the debt was in a "reasonable place", Mayorkas continually telling us the border was secure etc. The dems rallied around Biden and swallowed those lies just like is happening now.
  6. Wow. Nowhere did I say the earth is not warming or that emissions are not part of the force. Nowhere. I do not deny it at all. I also said 2024 (it was the graph I used as 2025 is not over yet). https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph When 2024 started, the arctic ice extent was approximately 3.4% under the baseline used to track it. Exactly what I posted. I do not remember but I am guessing the old post was from 2012. There were stories almost nightly on network news, Fox, CNN, MSNBC etc. Late night talk shows, morning shows, newspapers etc. We were told that this was a catastrophic sign. Yet in 2024 the issue gets not a peep. That is my point. You are doing exactly what Brisket wrongly accused me of doing. You can not argue the fact that in 2024 the Arctic ice extent was within percentage points of the historical mean. Of course it could still go down and it could still be catastrophic. But if anyone suggested in 2012 that by 2024 the ice extent would be almost all the way back to the historical mean, they would have been ostracized and laughed out of the building. But it is true.
  7. Oh for fucks sake. I will happily admit my percentages were off. It is really hard to get accurate data. Here is NBC news tracking of current migrants in ICE detention. https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/us-immigration-tracker-follow-arrests-detentions-border-crossings-rcna189148 54% with either a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges. From the same article, they estimate there are 435,000 immigrants currently free in the US with criminal convictions. If you want to argue the stats, take it up with NBC. Good rant though.
  8. Agree with a lot of this but you are over simplifying and ignoring context. No serious person ever bitches about reporting of increased temps in the Gulf of Maine. Some may question the methodology of the temp data or question if the data is raw or smoothed, but most every serious person will agree with the findings to some degree. It is the opinion of what caused the increase or what that means for the future that is debatable. I remember the very old thread by MOP (I think) talking about the prediction of an ice free arctic. There was wide spread coverage of the issue. The implications were catastrophic. Now, a few decades later, Arctic ice extent is within a few percentage points of its mean and I haven't seen a show or read an article about arctic sea ice in years. My guess is that if someone did simply report that "for 2024 the arctic sea ice extent was within 5% of the historical average of testing" (which is true) that it would be met with conservative, climate denying slant/bias. Your last point is just too stupid. There is so much more information available today than in any point in the world's history. To suggest an "authoritarian" government can gut these entities is just ridiculous. The numbers are provided to everyone. The government has no control of the numbers or their dissemination. All of the data collected gets shared with the entire freaking world. The govt may get a first look but all the info gets out. If Trump decided tomorrow to completely eliminate the BLS, all of the information that the BLS publishes will still be available. Hell, AI could analyze payroll data of virtually every company in the world in almost real time and give us a much better picture of what is going on.
  9. Don't we have a few hundred page topic on the bias of some conservative leaning news sites? I agree there are biases in almost all news organizations. As far as I know, none of them are a topic of what I am posting about and none of them receive federal funding. Surely you are not suggesting that having NPR is necessary to offset conservative leaning news sites? It is not always about simply editorializing or analyzing. You have to look at the guest list for interviews and the topics discussed. Plus, as all humans do, we often fail to see a bias if the coverage supports our own worldview. Quick example, I queried Immigration and NPR. There is actually a link on NPR's website that collates NPR's coverage of immigration. Of the first 15-20 links, all of them were negative towards the current policy and its actions. Fine. Its newsworthy discussion and the negative impacts need to be made public. But not one single article about the positives. Not one. Just throw in one article out of 20 that details the deportation of hardened criminals, rapists, human smugglers etc. When ICE raids a plant and say ten people are rounded up, there likely will be 1 us citizen wrongly swept up, there likely will be 2 cases of immigrants that really should be here that are law abiding and productive and the rest will likely be really horrible people that never should have been here and need to be deported post haste. We absolutely need reporting and transparency on the first two groups. But we equally need transparency and reporting on the bad guys. How were they able to get here? How have they not already been deported or arrested? When you are publicly funded, you need to try to be even handed. Sure they have been bitching since Nixon. You are unwittingly making my argument. The reason nothing could be done previously is that in Nixon's day there were about as many conservative hosts/panels as there were liberal. There was actual political diversity in the editorial positions at NPR. The right could bitch but there were legitimate facts the left could argue. I think it is a bit telling that you ignored the fact that there seem to be almost zero republican editors currently at NPR. That is a staggering fact. It is almost impossible to explain away. On your last point we agree mostly. I completely favor continued funding. I do think there should be some changes but it is foolish to just abolish. I will also argue that it is unlikely the next great breakthrough in children's educational programming will come from a source like PBS. Today, PBS just doesn't have the reach or funding of other sources and the competition is brutal versus the 1960's when there wasn't any competition.
  10. I think the cutting of funding for public broadcasting is short sighted and wrong. I think some changes needed to be made but cutting funding is just silly and non productive and political theater. To the above, when shows like Mr Rogers and Sesame street were created (late 1960s) there were only 3 real channels for television. Marketing for the fledgling tv industry had to focus on shows that adults watched because that is what advertisers would pay for. The networks did not have the financial ability to generate exclusively kids shows because there were no advertisers for those shows. There were cartoons that offered mindless entertainment for kids but not educational. So getting PBS to do shows like Sesame was great. A really good use of public funding. What some are suggesting is that times are different now. There are literally thousands of shows on network, cable, streaming services etc that are considered educational children's programming. So it is a fair question whether the public funding is still necessary. I personally think it is but I can see the argument. There is also a pretty big distinction, in my mind, from PBS and NPR. For anyone to suggest that NPR does not have a political lean to liberals/democrats is just foolish. When Berliner resigned he uncovered a lot of what people certainly suspected. Berliner was as "inside" as you can get and worked there for 20 years and was a strong liberal. The staff at NPR, especially the editors, are overwhelmingly registered democrats. Berliner suggested that there were zero registered republican editors at the headquarters. May or may not be true but the democrat numbers there are overwhelming. That is an astonishing fact for an institution that receives federal funding. It will never be 50/50 but to not even have a few token republicans on the editorial staff just opens NPR up to legitimate criticism by hard core conservatives. NPR did it to themselves. Even if in their hearts the editors wanted to be balanced and thought they were being balanced, they just couldn't. Every human has personal biases. It is part of our DNA and unavoidable at a subconscious level. When the numbers of people editing stories is 95% left leaning, then it is absolutely inevitable that that bias is going to creep into their thought making. Inevitable. Not every single time. But over a period of time it is simply inevitable. And for certain NPR is not over the top bias like OAN or MSNBC, but it is there. And there is plenty of programming on NPR that is not political at all. But they opened themselves up for this by their own actions and hiring practices. And I have zero objection to any private outfit aligning their staff to a certain ideological similarity, but it just can't exist when receiving public funds. As an analogy, if there was a publication of some sort in Texas that prided itself on diversity of opinions and the entire editorial staff of the publication were TAMU graduates, no one here, including myself, would believe the publication was not biased. We all know aggies that are hard core, moderate and a small group that are actually liberal. But putting them all together will guarantee a right leaning bent to their reporting. It is just human nature. If NPR announced back in 2024 when Berliner resigned that it was going to look inward at their editorial staff and make some changes and really try to add a percentage of diversity of opinion to their staff then they would have a good argument against the far right wanting to defund them. Maybe add 20% of conservative leaning editors. But they didn't. They dug in and kept the status quo and are now suffering for it.
  11. Great? Does not pass smell test.
  12. sheeeit

    High

    I think I finally really get John Prine.
  13. In my mind, character actor in this thread should mean an actor that maybe 25% of the population could put a name with a face. Pesci, Seymour Hoffman, Duvall etc are fantastic actors that play a myriad of roles, but have become recognizable stars. Been some really great ones named here. I have a couple (and hopefully a few people will not recognize the name but will the face or the other way): Mark Strong, Ben Mendelsohn, Luiz Guzman, Scott Glen Interestingly, very few women come to mind. Not sure why that is?
  14. The situation in Gaza is truly heart breaking. I really do not know what to make of a situation where aid can't even be provided safely. And it is not just one side at fault for that. The reality at this point is that Israel is the bigger bear by far and Hamas needs to give up if it has even a sliver of care for its people. I'm not saying Israel doesnt deserve blame. I'm saying sometimes you have to face reality if you care about your kids. As to the article, if we have learned anything in the last few years it should be that anonymous quotes in articles are worthless. They may actually be true, but if there isn't a name attached it is worthless.
  15. The logic just doesn’t even come close to adding up. Not everyone over reacts to the stupid things that Trump tweets. But by your logic, we have Putin sitting in Russia contemplating an attack on Germany. Germany, who’s two biggest trading partners to the tune of over half a trillion are the United States and China. Germany, who is the fifth most powerful country in the world by most analysis. Germany, who buy all accounts is the strongest member of the EU. And what exactly in your scenario does Russia think that they will gain from invading Germany? Are they going to take it over? Are they going to force Germany to buy more oil and gas from them? But even though the idea of Russia invading Germany is so far-fetched to the point of not even really needing to be talked about, and even though Russia knows that if they did for some reason invade Germany, that China and the United States and the European Union and the UK would all mobilize against them instantly, in your mind it is possible. However, if Germany suddenly had a nuclear bomb, then Putin would decide against it? I can just see Putin thinking to himself that he could invade Germany and take on the US and China and the EU and the UK and somehow win (knowing full well that those countries have literally thousands of nuclear weapons) but mighty Russia could probably pull it off. But if Germany decides to get a nuke, then it would be too hard.
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