What happens when you have an area with higher end homes, or schools, across from public housing units? How does this affect the people who live and work in the area? This documentary was told through the eyes of the children and young people who are experiencing just that. Some of their views may surprise, or not, but they are thoughtful and intelligently expressed by some rather insightful young people (especially Rosa). :)
While America has never really achieved a truly classless society, we have in the past at least made an attempt to lift as many people as possible into a middle class existence. But what seems to be occurring now is an ever widening gap between the wealthier segment of the population and those on the lower rungs. A state of affairs that isn't sustainable.
222 comments:
1 – 200 of 222 Newer› Newest»First, another few brief forays off topic; after all, we wouldn't want Petes to be unable to respond on account of being ‘too busy’, as he claimed was the case last time. So, on account of he should have time this time, once, more, with feeling…
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
1.
"There's even a comment buried in there somewhere from YOU…"
Petes @ Mon Jul 31, 03:03:00 am (previous thread)
No, there's not. (Are we havin’ fun yet?)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
2.
"I…took a look at stormfront.org to check…most of them despise him."
Petes @ Mon Aug 14, 02:38:00 am
I took a look too. Ran a word search for ‘Trump’; turns out his name brings up one thread, which leads to a few more threads but not many (not even one of which was then remotely connected to Charlottesville (may have changed since, but, if so, there'll be dates included), so that doesn't back up your point either), and they seemed to not quite despise him after all, not in general. But then again, I may have not been motivate to make as diligent a search as you were disposed to make.
Quaere then: How many who ‘despise’ Trump do you claim to have found scattered across those threads? How many?
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
3.
"…these nice folks at Charlottesville…"
Petes @ Mon Aug 14, 05:11:00 am (prior thread)
‘Cept that photo wasn't taken at Chalottesville. And I know when it was uploaded to that holding gallery, just before, barely just before you then linked the gallery version, now free of its identifying markers, to the Comments section.
So, I'll start with a simple and obvious question.
Why were you pretending that photo was taken in Charlottesville?
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
And we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming….
I haven't had a chance to look at your documentary yet. At an hour plus it'll have to wait until later, but I'll try to get to it before too long.
Meantime, I was thinking as I read your post that you may have missed the bigger picture if you were worried mostly about gentrification of some Manhattan neighborhoods. Then I got to this near the end.
"But what seems to be occurring now is an ever widening gap
between the wealthier segment of the population and those on the
lower rungs."
Okay then, ‘lower rungs’, plural; yeah; we may see the same problem after all; the top 1% or even the top .01% pulling away from everybody else. Those Manhattan neighborhoods are showing only a part of that even larger problem.
The fix is complex, and I don't think either of our main political parties has even begun to come to grips with the problem, much less the fix. They don't want to lose those high dollar campaign contributors. (Which means that campaign finance reform is probably part of the fix--and that may mean we've got to get a couple of recent Supreme Court decisions reversed. So, yeah, the fix is complex, ‘cause that's just part of it, and that's gonna be a struggle all by itself.)
Morning headlines tell me that Shorthands spent his Phoenix, Arizona speech time attacking not Democrats, but his fellow Republicans (and the media, of course).
Doesn't seem to me to be the way to get coöperation from his fellow Republicans, but I'm not hoping for a lot of that anyway, so I'm okay with it.
Lee:
"
"I…took a look at stormfront.org to check…most of them despise him."
Petes @ Mon Aug 14, 02:38:00 am
I took a look too. Ran a word search for ‘Trump’; turns out his name brings up one thread, which leads to a few more threads but not many (not even one of which was then remotely connected to Charlottesville (may have changed since, but, if so, there'll be dates included), so that doesn't back up your point either), and they seemed to not quite despise him after all, not in general."
I took a look to for the first time at that webpage. But it was so poorly set up that I barely glanced at it. What's it trying to be? A discussion forum? A news page? A nazi-wikipedia? I don't know and I was none the wiser for visiting it.
But I have noticed in other forums that at least some in the newer Alt Right movement call the stormfront crowd "stormfags" in a derogatory way. So I'm not sure that webpage is very representative of this new "far right" that's been gaining ground in younger generations.
And I did read an article on altright.com (another page I just days ago didn't even know of) where the author said the biggest mistake of the alt right so far was to be seen with swastica flyin' nazis on the streets of Charlottesville.
"What's it trying to be?"
You'll have to ask Petes. His ‘hold his nose’ comment suggested he's been there before. That was my first turn there, so I know about as much as you know, except I may have looked a little closer for derogatory things about Trump (which I did not much find).
At an hour plus it'll have to wait until later,...
Oh believe me I understand. What is nice about You Tube videos is that you can watch part of it and pause it and return to it later to watch the rest. I have always tried to keep the videos short in the past because I understand time constraints, but some topics require longer to be addressed. But I do try to make sure the longer videos are worth the time.
Okay then, ‘lower rungs’, plural; yeah; we may see the same problem after all; the top 1% or even the top .01% pulling away from everybody else.
Yes, gentrification is just a symptom of a wider problem. And it is not just happening in Manhattan, or New York in general. We are seeing it here in the Cities as well. But it really hits home, literally. When you don't have affordable housing for lower or middle class income levels you are driving out people who are necessary to a properly functioning community, as well as depriving people of homes they may have lived in for years.
I was watching another, shorter, video about the BQX, which is a mass transit light rail system they want to build running between Brooklyn and Queens. The video was obviously made by those who oppose it, because the point they made was that it was the start of the displacement of people who have lived in many of those areas for years. It is being planned by those who are looking at redevelopment, bringing in higher end tenants. In short,
it is a money maker for real estate developers.
Lynnette,
I watched about the first half of your posted documentary, and I will likely watch the rest later because it was interesting. And, yes, that Rosa girl was endearing.
But I feel that it's not really that relevant. We're looking at relative poverty here, not real poverty. They contrast some of the very wealthiest in the whole world in a location, Manhattan, that sees more wealth than virtually any other place, to the "poor" living in that area. Those "poor" are still better off than at least 80% of the world population.
I hear things like "My dad has to to to work at 05 and doesn't get home until 5PM". Well, that's probably the case for many of the wealthy ones also, and for sure it's the case for much of the middle classes worldwide.
Manhattan is IMO a poor example of portraying the divide between rich and poor. Because the rich there are up in the stratosphere and the "poor" are better off than many middle income earners in other places.
It seems to me it's a lazy way of pointing out economic differences without actually having to take a stance.
"…the 'poor' are better off than many middle income earners in
other places."
Yeah, but, since the subject was the stratification and ossification of American society, the situation of middle income earners in ‘not America’ isn't really instructive.
Also, and something that's much more near and dear to me, is the opposite of gentrification - call it slumifiaton. The feeling you get when you have sunk time, energy and money into where you live and through forces you can't control your neigborhood turns into a getto and the equity you had in your home approaces zero.
You might rather look at Detriot or Chicago for that. Manhattan is not very representative. Looking to Manhattan would be like looking to Hong Kong as a model for East Asia. Not very relevant really.
One person's reaction to another Trump speech. Hmmm... apparently the Orange One was speaking in Arizona yesterday. *sigh*
President Donald Trump went to Arizona on Tuesday night and delivered what has now become a trademark speech: Full of invective, victimhood and fact-free retellings of recent historical events.
I went through the transcript of Trump's speech -- all 77 minutes -- and picked out his 57 most outrageous lines, in chronological order. They're below.
1. "And just so you know from the Secret Service, there aren't too many people outside protesting, OK. That I can tell you."
This is, literally, the first line of his speech. Trump is obsessed with the idea that the opposition to him is overstated while the support for him is understated. (They won't turn the cameras around and show the size of my crowds!) CNN's Saba Hamedy, who was on the scene of the protests, said that thousands of people were on the streets of Phoenix.
2. "A lot of people in here, a lot of people pouring right now. They can get them in. Whatever you can do, fire marshals, we'll appreciate it."
So many people love me -- it's hard to fit them all in the building! But, try!
Well, at least Trump is giving the media something to talk about. He actually manages to push other stories out of the headlines.
Lee: "Yeah, but, since the subject was the stratification and ossification of American society, the situation of middle income earners in ‘not America’ isn't really instructive."
Well, but my point still stands. The "poor" we saw portrayed live better than maybe not 80% but for sure more than many of the people in the USA too. You wanna highlight poverty you only need to go to the Bronx to find worse, and if you set your scope a bit wider you'll fing a helluva lot worse still.
My point is this documentary highlights RELATIVE poverty. And of course in an environment with many Billionairs and thousands of Multi Millionairs and hundreds of thousands of plain Millionairs, it's easy to point out a working family as "poor".
But the really poor and disenfranchised do not appear at all in this documentary (least not in the first half I saw).
Manhattan is IMO a poor example of portraying the divide between rich and poor. Because the rich there are up in the stratosphere and the "poor" are better off than many middle income earners in other places.
Well, even at the school Avenues there is a certain stratification, as some of those interviewed pointed out. But the video gives a good depiction of the struggles of anyone who is in a situation where opportunities provided to others are lacking for them. I singled out Rosa because she seemed to be a very bright girl for her age, one who could make a successful life for herself if given the opportunity. I don't necessarily mean financially, but as a person who gives something back to her community.
As for relevancy, I think what is happening now in the Trump administration is only encouraging the stratification of our society, instead of smoothing over the class differences. The voices in the video talk about how they feel and view the divide.
It also illustrates that for those who do have many opportunities, such as a private school to attend, the future is not always assured.
Also, and something that's much more near and dear to me, is the opposite of gentrification - call it slumifiaton. The feeling you get when you have sunk time, energy and money into where you live and through forces you can't control your neigborhood turns into a getto and the equity you had in your home approaces zero.
Yes, those are different problems. But in a sense I see something similar happening here in the US. That is, there are forces beyond my control turning my country into something I don't recognize or even want to live in. The solution, I suppose, is to try to get involved in government at some level, or support a candidate who would espouse my beliefs.
The demonstrations against Trump and his policies are a way to try to be heard, which is why I do support them, as long as they are not violent. Like those before me who felt that the country was going in the wrong direction under Obama, that is how I feel about Trump. The middle class are being marginalized both economically and politically.
But the really poor and disenfranchised do not appear at all in this documentary (least not in the first half I saw).
That doesn't mean they are not there. That only means they may not have wanted to be interviewed or were not up to being interviewed.
Lynnette: "As for relevancy, I think what is happening now in the Trump administration is only encouraging the stratification of our society, instead of smoothing over the class differences"
And how, pray tell, did the Obama administration deal with those differences. Because my view is that they have gotten progressively worse since Reagan. Clinton may have hade a reverse impact but that was more caused by the economy as a whole humming along nicely during his years.
Also, I believe that disregarding race and putting it all down to class is mere folly.
Lynnette: "The middle class are being marginalized both economically and politically."
Only as long as they sit at home and bitch about this or that, or whine on Facebook. If they real take action the will be heard.
Lynnette: "That doesn't mean they are not there. That only means they may not have wanted to be interviewed or were not up to being interviewed."
NO, no, no! It means they are not there. There is not a single family or a single person living in a subsidised apartment in Manhattan who knows REAL povery. They know RELATIVE poverty because their surroundings are so extremely rich. But they are not poor in an absolute sense.
There are BILLIONS of people around the world who would happily trade with your Manhattan-povers. Billions, Lynnette.
Because my view is that they have gotten progressively worse since Reagan.
I agree. I wouldn't even give Clinton a pass. None of the people we have had in office have managed to turn around something that began with misguided policy made in Republican land. And as long as we are not willing to work together to fix something that some portion of us refuse to even think is wrong, we will have this disparity in quality of living in our society. Don't get me wrong, I believe in free enterprise and capitalism, but what we have here is policies that are meant to enrich only those who already are well off. There needs to be a balance.
Also, I believe that disregarding race and putting it all down to class is mere folly.
Oh no, I wouldn't discount racial bias in some of this. Obviously we have the KKK and the white supremacists who are quite willing to encourage policies that do not encourage an equitable distribution of resources. As I said in the post, the economic divide is just another factor in our divisions.
Lynnette: "The middle class are being marginalized both economically and politically."
Marcus: "Only as long as they sit at home and bitch about this or that, or whine on Facebook. If they real take action the will be heard."
Well, that is certainly my hope. That people will realize that they must stand up and be heard or else we will have Trump for another 4 loooooonnnnnnggggg years!
There is not a single family or a single person living in a subsidised apartment in Manhattan who knows REAL povery.
As in they are not starving? Well, I hope not. But what I am talking about with this is the differences between people within the US. It is those differences, encouraged by racial bias or economic disparity, that are a danger to the future prosperity of the United States. And it is those differences that we need our government to address in such a way as to give everyone a shot at a piece of the pie. This is what Trump is most certainly not doing, and in fact is only worsening the divisions.
As for what Obama did, I will let you finish that video. He at least was making an attempt at working on a solution to our illegal immigrant issues. But like all other policy issues there was no agreement in Washington.
"Oh no, I wouldn't discount racial bias in some of this."
I read a piece the other day where the writer opined that part of the reason we have a Republican crack-down on immigration (rapists, job stealers, druggies, etc.) is because the old distraction's weren't working anymore. Couldn't get enough people excited and distracted by the niggers. That still worked across the Old South, but had lost a lot of its appeal elsewhere. They needed a new racial distraction that could get broader traction.
Lynnnette: "As in they are not starving? Well, I hope not. But what I am talking about with this is the differences between people within the US. It is those differences, encouraged by racial bias or economic disparity, that are a danger to the future prosperity of the United States."
And my opinion is you could find many better places even in the USA to depict that. Those "povers" your clip portrayed still have it much better than many in the bad naighborhoods of other US cities. Not to speak of world wide.
It's not a social stigma if you can't grow up to be a Billionaire, even if you have gone to school across the road from children who will inherit billions.
On an other topic, and one I'd like you to do a blogpost on Lynnette. There's a trend that manual labour is getting incteasingly less in demand. A single harvester an do the work of several hundred farmers in the past.
Robotics and AI is the next step in technology and many foresee that it will take the jobs from not only basic workers but for those with some education also.
We're seeing McDonalds skipping persons taking orders and replacing them with tablets, we're seeing tellers at supermarkets replaced by computers (actually YOU in the US might not have seen this to the extent we in Sweden have already - but you'll get it too).
In the very near future much of todays manual labour will be replaced by robots. And in an environtment with booming populations and mass immigration this leads to hordes of unemployable people. Folks like the ones in your documentary who struggled to get a job will not be able to get a job at all, period.
How will that play out?
I never order from a person at McDonalds these days, except at the drive in, I punch my order in on a tablet at a kiosk.
I never put my groceries up for a teller to punch them in, I scan them myself and pay with my card.
This is a very rapid switch happening. And much like before a small and advanced country like Sweden (or Korea, South Korea) will serve as the forebringer to what will happen in the USA too.
Korea and Sweden were the first nations where basically every household had a PC, they were the first countries where every houehold had broadband Internet.
The US might still have the companies that invent new stuff, but it's on a whole lateish in the game to implement it across the board.
Lee: " Couldn't get enough people excited and distracted by the niggers. That still worked across the Old South, but had lost a lot of its appeal elsewhere. They needed a new racial distraction that could get broader traction."
And of course you are of the politically correct opinion that different races all have the same intelligence levels, no?
I mean we all know a few facts:
Africans can't swim like white folks can. It's impossible for a black Michael Phelps to arrive. It will never happen.
West Africans are explosive with much muscle mass and have a great advantage in short sprints.
East Africans (like Ethiopians) have a body for long runs. They will never compete with west African sprinters but will always win in a Marathon race.
So obviously human races have different physichal strengths. We all know it because we can see it. It's obvious at any olympics.
Why is it then "forbidden" to claim there are also mental differences? And they are just as plain to see, even more so really, than any physical differences.
But that's "racism" or some other form of wrong-think.
"But that's ‘racism’ or some other form of wrong-think."
My point was that some are suggesting that the reason the Republican Party can no longer agree to overlook the illegal immigrant issue is because more people in the party respond to racism than are supportive of cheap labor for donor class, and racism against African-Americans is socially unpopular right now (not a good idea to admit to it), while hostility towards Hispanics or Muslims or other brown-skinned people can be masked as concern over culture.
There was a similar phenomenon where angry old white people pretended to believe that Obama was a Muslim because they got lectured at by their grandkids if they admitted to not liking having a black guy in the White House. If they claimed to believe he was a Muslim instead they just got the eye-roll and didn't have to listen to a lecture from the grandkids.
And, yes, that's racism sure ‘nuff.
And my opinion is you could find many better places even in the USA to depict that.
You certainly have a right to your opinion, Marcus. I will still stand by my post as depicting a disparity that does not bode well for the US.
On an other topic, and one I'd like you to do a blogpost on Lynnette.
Robotics and AI is the next step in technology and many foresee that it will take the jobs from not only basic workers but for those with some education also.
Odd you should mention that topic, as Lee mentioned something about it some time back. I have not posted anything on it as it is not a topic I am well versed in. I believe it was an article that Lee sent to me. I will keep my eyes open and see if I can find a good video on the subject.
I never order from a person at McDonalds these days, except at the drive in, I punch my order in on a tablet at a kiosk.
I never put my groceries up for a teller to punch them in, I scan them myself and pay with my card.
This is a very rapid switch happening.
This does not bode well for those who use those low paying jobs as the first rung of the economic ladder, such as new immigrants or teenagers. However, you will still need someone to maintain the machines.
Why is it then "forbidden" to claim there are also mental differences?
What is wrong is making the assumption that one race is somehow superior to another because of something like skin color. This is patently untrue and a device used by people who would retain control of situations that enrich them.
Neandertals had, on average, larger brains than the Cro-Magnon who eventually replaced them.
One theory for why this was says that the Neandertal, being less social than the Cro-Magnon were more reliant on individual memory and individual intelligence and less reliant on "group memory". In short, the Neandertals were probably smarter on average than the Cro-Magnon, but they were also less social, had a naturally shorter lifespan and repopulated slower than the dumber Cro-Magnons.
In the end, the Cro-Magnons declared themselves to be the Homo Sapiens Sapiens. (Smartest of the bunch.) But that's not necessarily true; their actual advantages may not have been intelligence, and they may have only gotten away with that assertion because they lived to write the story whereas the Neandertal did not.
...they lived to write the story whereas the Neandertal did not.
Ahh, but the theory that the Neandertal died out isn't quite accurate. They seemed to have mated with the Cro-Magnons and still live on in all of us.
Trump supporter/sometimes advisor and spokesman, Roger Stone (one of those under investigation for connections to Moscow) has once again threatened violence, a full on civil insurrection, should the Congress take action to impeach Trump. Politico.Com Team Trump is really twitchy on this subject.
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant to President Donald Trump, predicted Thursday there would be a "spasm of violence" tantamount to civil war if the president were brought under impeachment charges by Congress.
Yup, it's true, birds of a feather do flock together. I can see why Stone and Trump are long term confidants. That saying works for bullies too.
Wanna know how much trouble Team Trump's ‘tax relief’ plan is in?
After publicly announcing they were going to issue their tax plan come first of September, the Trump administration has now decided to not issue a plan at all. They're gonna let the Republicans in Congress work on a plan and let Trump take TwitterShots at the Republicans who're ostensibly on his own side on this. Politico.Com
Yeah, right, like that's gonna work.
Meanwhile, on another topic, it seems mother nature is also sending a blowhard our way, in the form of Hurricane Harvey. I suspect, though, that this one may cause some serious problems.
Highways in Texas filled with cars Thursday into the night as coastal residents made their way north and out of the path of a hurricane that forecasters say will bring "life-threatening" amounts of rain.
Yeah, right, like that's gonna work.
It worked so well with their health care bill...
It also appears as if Trump is threatening to shut down government if he doesn't get his wall funding. At some point in time even Congress is going to get tired of the bully tactics, especially from their own party's president!
"A single harvester an do the work of several hundred farmers in the
past."
Improved sensor technology is competing with pickers now too.
We are approaching a world in which the needs of the population can be largely supplied without employing that population. This leads to a new problem, to whom do the corporate producers sell their robot-produced product if nobody's employed? The old economic models don't deal with this question.
This leads to a new problem, to whom do the corporate producers sell their robot-produced product if nobody's employed? The old economic models don't deal with this question.
And it's a good question. What do you do with massive amounts of unemployed people? How do they earn a living or are they all given government stipends to survive? I don't think I really want to be around to see. Hopefully this scenario doesn't arrive before I leave.
It appears that Hurricane Harvey will be packing a serious punch. Now we will see how the Orange One deals with a natural disaster on a large scale.
My thoughts are with all of our friends and relatives who may be in its path.
"Now we will see how the Orange One deals with a natural disaster
on a large scale."
Glenn Beck is doing commercials right now, but he just wound up a 20 minute segment on why it is that the Orange One is not obliged to deal with natural disasters, not the fed's job according to Beck.
"What do you do with massive amounts of unemployed people?"
Might consider cutting back on immigration before we get to the ‘massive amounts of unemployed people’ stage. That may help lower the number of unemployed people our children have to deal with.
Lynnette: "What is wrong is making the assumption that one race is somehow superior to another because of something like skin color. This is patently untrue and a device used by people who would retain control of situations that enrich them."
Of course it's not the "skin colour" per se that makes a difference. Also "superior" is not something I have claimed.
But the facts remain:
Western africans are fast and agile and perform better at sports like especially sprinting than any others.
East Africans are near impossible to beat at Marathons, long runs.
No Africans can swim worth a damn and the Olympic gold medals will always go to whites (apart from those years the chinese women amped up on steroids won some games).
So it's fact: there ARE physical differences.
Now, why can't you acknowledge that there can be racial mental differences also?
Only because that'd be un-PC and in your mind a thought-crime. You know it, but you can't say it.
Or do you really think that Aboriginals in Australia have the same level of IQ on average as western Europeans have?
Lee: "Might consider cutting back on immigration before we get to the ‘massive amounts of unemployed people’ stage. That may help lower the number of unemployed people our children have to deal with."
Eureka!
Hardly qualifies as an Eureka moment. For a long time now I've been saying that we had plenty ‘nuff people here already, don't particularly need more.
Lee: "We are approaching a world in which the needs of the population can be largely supplied without employing that population. This leads to a new problem, to whom do the corporate producers sell their robot-produced product if nobody's employed? The old economic models don't deal with this question."
That's a very interesting topic. Worthy of a thread in its own for sure. ONE answer I have found so far (in a swedish contect to begin with) is that of a citizen salary.
The theory goes that we are getting so procductive we can't get meaningful jobs for a plurality in society. So the state collects taxes and pays a living but low wage to EVERYONE. Then those who have something to add can do that and get more money, others can just chill and live.
I do not believe in it. I think it will be completely unsustainable. But the idea is out there.
And of course it's ENTIRELY at odds with mass immigration. It might have worked in some advanced nations, but if you invite Billions of outsiders to partake it's gona go down in flames for sure.
Lee: "Hardly qualifies as an Eureka moment. For a long time now I've been saying that we had plenty ‘nuff people here already, don't particularly need more."
Yet in every case you have elected to vote for and propagate for further mass immigration.
I get that migration is maybe not at the top of your list of priorities. But I do think it should be. Because it touches on almost every other political area.
"Yet in every case you have elected to vote for and propagate for
further mass immigration."
You woefully misunderstand my objection to The Great Wall of Trump. Whether you're being willful, or merely dense is not of much interest to me at this point.
My objection to his wall is that it's a waste of money. To make it work we'll have to add patrols along the wall in the rural places. If we patrol the rural places we don't need the wall. It's not like there's an abundance of places to hide out there, and they're not gonna disappear into the crowds, on account of people look radically different from jack rabbits; they will stand out from the native flora and fauna.
Or, to put the matter bluntly…. The Great Wall of Trump is not a solution; it's a gimmick, and pretty much useless. Unfortunately it is also expensive.
I will, therefore, continue to resist wasting money on this gimmick.
Now, why can't you acknowledge that there can be racial mental differences also?
Brain development can certainly be affected by nutritional deficiencies caused by lack of proper nourishment in the developmental phase. I would think that is something you could find anywhere if people do not have access to sufficient resources.
Or do you really think that Aboriginals in Australia have the same level of IQ on average as western Europeans have?
If there is a difference in the IQ of an aboriginal in Australia and a western European you may want to consider diet rather than race as the cause.
Arpaio pardon would show contempt for constitution
If President Donald Trump pardons Joe Arpaio, as he broadly hinted at during a rally Tuesday in Arizona, it would not be an ordinary exercise of the power -- it would be an impeachable offense. Arpaio, the former sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, was convicted of criminal contempt of court for ignoring the federal judge’s order that he follow the U.S. Constitution in doing his job. For Trump to pardon him would be an assault on the federal judiciary, the Constitution and the rule of law itself.
I think Trump just thumbed his nose at the US Constitution. He pardoned Arpaio.
"Or do you really think that Aboriginals in Australia have the same
level of IQ on average as western Europeans have?"
Might, might not. IQ tests are generally slanted towards the cultural norms of the persons formulating the tests. (For the very practical reason that an ability to assimilate and to recognize cultural clues is usually taken an indicator of intelligence.) So, the IQ level kinda would depend on who's takin’ whose tests.
How long ya reckon the average western European would last dropped down in the Aussie Outback with only a pair of shorts to wear and a sharp stick?
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
"…Arpaio…"
Arapaio was a bad cop. We've got too many bad cops already. (Not to be branding all cops as bad just ‘cause we got too many bad ones already.) Offering pardons to bad cops is a bad deal for the nation. Set's a bad precedent that'll be noticed by too many bad cops.
"If there is a difference in the IQ of an aboriginal in Australia and a
western European…"
If there is a difference you may want to consider the probability that the Aborigine is likely smarter on average. Having lived in both urban and non-urban environments I can tell ya safely that most urban environments are easier places to hack out a living. Much easier for a dumbass to survive in an urban environment, and to leave little dumbasses scattered all about said environment to secure the future of dumbasserie.
Breathtaking amount of non sequiturs going on here.
[Marcus]: "Why is it then "forbidden" to claim there are also mental differences?"
It isn't forbidden -- you just did it. Have the cops called to your door yet? The reason why it's frowned upon is that the person asking the question is often a racist scumbag. (I'm not suggesting you are, though of course I can't rule it out either). Who cares if there are mental differences? Why does it matter? Are people claiming that a racial factor in IQ scores (which is by no means a settled "fact" -- see Lee's point about likely biases in tests) should have policy implications?
If IQ has a genetic component, it is supremely unlikely to be a simple one. That means it's very likely that we will discover additional genetic factors influencing IQ that are not linked to "race". It should then be a simple matter to DNA fingerprint the stupid members of the population. Then what? Whatcha gonna do about it? Unless one is a dyed-in-the-wool eugenicist or racist, the whole issue is bullshit.
A second point renders the racist position even more bankrupt. If you have ever looked at the IQ distributions claimed for different racial groups, there is -- as you would expect -- a huge amount of overlap. Membership of one group carries no guarantee that you or any particular individual is smarter or dumber than a randomly chosen individual from any other group. Any discrimination on this basis can only be a smokescreen for race hatred. I can certainly vouch that some of the white supremacists whose screeds I've read are among the dumbest clucks on the face of the earth.
And apart from all of that, why is IQ even important? Is there some implication that people with higher IQs are "better", or better adapted to a given environment? There is evidence that higher academic achievement is linked to higher rates of depression and mental illness.
[Marcus]: "Now, why can't you acknowledge that there can be racial mental differences also? Only because that'd be un-PC and in your mind a thought-crime. You know it, but you can't say it."
Here's one back at you: suppose it became an established fact that there was a racial component to IQ ... what ought you to do about it? When it comes right down to it, even if it is true that some individuals have lower IQ and are less suited to a given environment, so what? What inference can you draw or what policy can you formulate that does not fall foul of either the naturalistic fallacy or Hume's Law? Seeing as we're being all open and not bowing to PC-ness...
[Lee C]: "Neandertals had, on average, larger brains than the Cro-Magnon who eventually replaced them... the Neandertals were probably smarter on average than the Cro-Magnon"
Unless there are other factors not mentioned, there is no reason to equate larger brain size with higher intelligence. Otherwise we have to conclude that women are 8% dumber than men.
Here's a new one on me that I fell across while reading up on slavery in the ante-bellum southern US: drapetomania. In Greek, drapetes was a runaway slave. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright was the doctor who came up with drapetomania as the name of the mental disease that afflicted slaves who wanted to desert their owners. He documented it in an 1851 report commissioned by the Medical Association of Louisiana on "the diseases and peculiarities of the negro race". Cartwright cited both medical and scriptural evidence. Drapetomania could be avoided by treating slaves like children, with care and kindness. Those who succumbed to the affliction could be cured by whipping.
"…there is no reason to equate larger brain size with higher
intelligence."
I did not use the verb ‘equate’, nor any other verb that might have suggested any relationship as predictable as an equation.
However, if you are intending to suggest that, other factors being equal, smaller brains have any tendency to correlate with equal or even higher intelligences, you are free to make that argument any time you want to start on it.
For that matter, I didn't vouch for the ‘Neandertal was more intelligent’ theory.
Don't y'all ever tire of bein' so tiresome?
‘Tiresome’? You mean like you suggesting, without actually committing to the idea, that brain size was generally unrelated to intelligence? That happens to not be true by the way, but you had to try to give it a shot, even if you wouldn't allow yourself to get caught without maintaining a plausible deniability for the thing you wanted to suggest but not actually say.
That was tiresome. Ya always wanna get in a shot and likewise never wanna get caught taking responsibility for takin’ the shot.
Wuss! Tiresome wuss.
I've noticed that the various right-winger/white supremacist rallies and marches scheduled in the days following Charlottesville have mostly been called off. Most of the time the neo-Nazi organizers have referenced ‘threats of violence’ and a concern for the targeted community as their explanations. (Couple more got canceled on the west coast for this weekend.) Mainstream journalists mostly seem to be taking those explanations at face value.
However, I also noticed that a couple of journalists were looking into the plans for last weekend's rallies, also mostly canceled. They claimed that the rallies were not being subscribed--not enough people were signing up to come be Nazis in Public, or whatever name they were gonna go by that weekend.
Seems the organizers had made a mistake in their enthusiasm for the crowd size they generated in Charlottesville. They thought the crowd size, the hundreds of right-winger crazies collected together, meant that their rally was a success. They apparently did not take into consideration that the participants might have thought that getting their asses kicked in the fight they picked meant something else entirely.
That same dynamic may be what's behind this weekend's cancellations.
[Pathetic Chump]: "Ya always wanna get in a shot and likewise never wanna get caught taking responsibility for takin’ the shot."
Ah. I wuz momentarily forgettin' yore extreme paranoia. Everything always has to be a shot at you. I forgot that y'all must always flatter y'all's self that way. And that y'all ain't never gonna get over that particular tiresome trait. Leastways, y'all have displayed no propensity to it for many years now, and one is left to conclude y'all haven't the grace for it.
"Everything always has to be a shot at you."
Don't be absurd. Just because I appear to be the target you'd most like to hit doesn't mean you'd forgo and opportunity to obfuscate at another target.
For instance…
"What inference can you draw or what policy can you formulate that
does not fall foul of of either the naturalistic fallacy or Hume's Law?"
Ought things to be as they are or are they as the ought to be? Depends on which end of the Petes' babblescope one looks through, but that particular piece of having it both ways was clearly aimed at Marcus. It's an insertion of a morality argument (i.e. political correctness) under the guise of ‘not bowing to PC-ness...’, and hoping you can have it both ways.
Just a small aside here. Why did Trump pardon Arpaio? Really? I can't help but wonder if it wasn't done partly as a poke in the eye to John McCain, who represents AZ in the Senate. Kind of a see what I can do thing? Trump's mentality has always seemed to be retaliatory in nature, even if it may rebound on him later. Hmmm...probably too many Fruit Loops as a child.
Seems Hurricane Harvey has shrunk to a Category 1 hurricane on hitting land. Small comfort, though, to all of those who may have lost their homes or been displaced.
Pete: "Here's one back at you: suppose it became an established fact that there was a racial component to IQ ... what ought you to do about it? When it comes right down to it, even if it is true that some individuals have lower IQ and are less suited to a given environment, so what?"
Well if you're living in a high end economy where there are few basic jobs and most every employment position is for people with at least 12 years of schooling - and yet you advocate mass immigration in order to "save our pensions", then yeah I feel there's a distinct need to debate wether a newly arrived Somali is likely to take up the slacks from a retired ABB engineeer.
And not only education levels play into that. Basic IQ levels do also.
We do not need more store clercs or bus drivers. We're gonna automize those jobs in just a few years anyway. Still we are being told we must have mass immigration in order to save our pensions. So obviously we're looking for doctors, engineers and such. Or the whole "saving pensions" balywhoo is just a croak?
C'mon Pete, you're smart enough to know that taht's either folly or willful deception.
"Why did Trump pardon Arpaio? Really?"
The move is hugely popular with the dedicated Trumpkins.
"Why did Trump pardon Arpaio? Really?"
Articles I've been running across seem to suggest that Arpaio is rather more popular with the dedicated Trumpkins outside Arizona than inside Arizona, where they appear to have finally had their fill of Arpaio and his extra-legal tactics. (Although one would not have been able to tell that from the reactions of the dedicated Trumpkins who filled the arena for Trump last Tuesday in Phoenix.)
That pardon may create problems for the Republican Party in Arizona.
Speaking of ‘creating trouble’ inside the tent… The White House is going to exceptional lengths to make sure everybody knows that Sebastian Gorka did not resign his post, but rather was tossed out on his ear. Politico.Com They made publicizing this information a priority just before Gorka announced he'd been rehired by Breitbart. also Politico
That pardon may create problems for the Republican Party in Arizona.
And possibly Trump if he seeks re-election. That is, of course, if he finishes out his first term.
The White House is going to exceptional lengths to make sure everybody knows that Sebastian Gorka did not resign his post, but rather was tossed out on his ear.
Somebody is scrambling to try to make Trump look like he isn't an extreme right wing supporter.
"Somebody is scrambling to try to make Trump look like he isn't an
extreme right wing supporter."
The problem with that kinda move is that he's gonna need them to back him. Can't move too far away from them at the same time he's already trying to distance himself from the ‘Establishment’ Republicans (i.e. the Republican Congress).
Mayweather won. McGregor was bigger, younger, and whiter (that last for Marcus' benefit). And Mayweather walked all over him anyway. McGregor took a couple of cheap shots along the way. Didn't help him a bit. Ref stopped the fight when McGregor proved unable to defend himself in the 10th round.
[Marcus]: "Well if you're living in a high end economy where there are few basic jobs and most every employment position is for people with at least 12 years of schooling ... And not only education levels play into that. Basic IQ levels do also... C'mon Pete, you're smart enough to know that [that's] either folly or willful deception."
Ok, I'm all ears. Let's have your stats (with references) on how race-related IQ level, as distinct from education level, affect job suitability.
[Chumpy]: "Just because I appear to be the target you'd most like to hit..."
LOL. It must be a strain to be simultaneously so paranoid and attention-seeking.
"It must be a strain…"
Keeping you on topic is a strain. My point was that you did not miss your chance to obfuscate your point against Marcus. (You didn't actually want to make a solid point there, just pretend you were making a point, whilst drawing him out, getting him to write something solid for you to attack. Or, if you did want to make a point there, you sure as hell missed a good opportunity to do it.)
"Let's have your stats (with references) on…race-related IQ level…"
Didn't you already label such stats as inherently suspect?
Why are you asking for stats you won't accept anyway?
Can't move too far away from them at the same time he's already trying to distance himself from the ‘Establishment’ Republicans (i.e. the Republican Congress).
A very fine line to walk, considering that Congress can impeach him. Probably not wise, even with a Republican controlled Congress, to alienate those who you may need in the future to have your back(especially if you turn into a liability).
The hurricane that has hit Texas has been fed by the warmer waters of the Gulf, leading to a stronger storm. Something that was in the cards if global warming was a reality.
"Probably not wise…to alienate those who you may need in the
future to have your back…"
I begin to fear that Shorthands might be thinking that the people he needs to have his back are just those white supremacists and fellow travelers who cheered his pardon of Arpaio.
I begin to fear that his fall back position is to stoke that talk of a civil war on the theory that Congress will then be too afraid of his people to impeach him.
Hope that's just a passing fear, but it's back there in the back of my mind. Not a prediction, but rather a nagging ‘what if’….
Post Script:
Shorthands may be already considering running as an independent candidate in 2020. If he can get anything approaching an equal split between the Democrats and the rump Republican Party he leaves behind then his 38% hardcore, dedicated Trumpkins is a winning percentage. (Currently 38%.)
Turns out I'm not the only one who's begun to ponder on the idea of Shorthands dumping his Republican affiliation and running as an independent. WaPo
[Chumpy]: "My point was that you did not miss your chance to obfuscate your point against Marcus."
I have difficulty givin' a rat's ass about any point you make, let alone one you weren't invited to opine on.
"Why are you asking for stats you won't accept anyway?"
What's it to you, chump?
"I have difficulty givin' a rat's ass…"
But, ya cared ‘nuff to throw a short and bitter rant.
"What's it to you, chump?"
It is, in fact, a question that was put to you.
[Chumpy]: "It is, in fact, a question that was put to you."
And therefore not one that I will be takin' up with you.
[Chumpy]: stuff...
Chump is no longer even attemptin' anything beyond vexatious trollin'. Every one of yer posts is either a regurgitated WaPo headline with yer own whinge suffixed, or a meaningless obfuscation about somethin' not addressed to y'all. Are ya really that desperate for attention? In spite of me tossin' a charity post yore direction every now and again.
hey there Lynn. How are you there?
remember me? yeah still alive. it's nice to read your posts.
take care dear.
"And therefore…"
Another bitter rant; somewhat longer but no more enlightening.
Op-Ed by Fred Barnes (stalwart Republican talking head) to the effect that having Trump go independent would be a disaster for both Trump and the Republican Party. WaPo Looks like more people are pondering whether Trump might be prepping to bolt the party. The Republicans are pondering that possibility now.
"... but no more enlightening"
Y'all ain't capable of bein' enlightened. We established a long time ago that y'all's only talent is whingin'.
You seem to think that if you keep on posting about me then at some point I'll take up that conversation with you.
That theory doesn't seem to be workin’ out for ya so far.
Nope, I'd be perfectly happy for y'all to shut the hell up and stop whingin' about things that don't concern ya. I'm merely kickin' y'all until ya git the message.
It is equally a mistake to think I'm at all interested in contributing to your happiness.
Caesar! How are you?? I'm so glad to see you are still, well, alive. So much has happened in Iraq since we last spoke. I was so sorry about everything that happened with Daesh. I had never envisioned that being the end result of our intervention in your country. Naive of me, I know. I only hope that going forward things can improve and Iraq will prosper.
Have you talked to Mel? I haven't seen her for a while. Some people only reside on Facebook and other social media these days. :)
You are welcome here any time, Caesar. You too, take care.
Just in case anybody was worried… A White House advisor has assured the press that Shorthands is on top of the Texas/Louisiana hurricane situation. ‘He knows what a president is supposed to look like during something like this.’ WaPo All the necessary photographs will be taken.
Hmmm...not WaPo.
Shhhhhhhh........hush now.
WaPo?? It's actually a site better known for hiphop. So y'all've gone from suffixin' yer own whinge onto WaPo headlines, to collectin' gratuitous whinges from gossip sites. Four years of this is gonna give y'all a well-deserved ulcer.
As for Trump posin' for the cameras, when has any US president ever been different? The Obamas were total media whores. And almost by definition, with y'all's term limits, every preznit is goin' to encounter unfamiliar stuff.
That reminds me, when I was eclipse watching and making acquaintance with the adjacent watchers, one of them (from D.C.) made some comments that identified him as a likely Christian. One of the others (from Danbury, CT, close to Sandy Hook) sidled up to me when he reckoned Mr. Christian wasn't looking and starting apologising for Trump, wanting to know how stupid us Europeans thought you Yanks were for electing him. I've seen this presumptuous behaviour from Yanks many times before, with folks seemingly utterly convinced of the political leanings and values of people they've never met. It says a lot to me about y'all's modern day lack of tolerance. Tells me ya pretty much got what ya deserved in the last election, though y'all are gonna spend the next four years cluelessly misunderstandin' the result.
Now see girl, ya went and gave the game away. I figured they'd go for days or maybe even weeks before they figured it out.
"Four years of this is gonna give y'all a well-deserved ulcer."
I don't think so. However, seven months of trying to defend President Shorthands has seemingly made you bitter and semi-hysterical. (Well, noticeably more bitter.) I don't think you'll make it for the whole four years without a breakdown of some sort.
It occurs to me that hurricane Harvey is giving our old friend, Bridget, an up close and person look at the climate change she no longer believes in.
Be interesting to know whether and how long she maintains her new attitude on that subject, but I don't reckon we'll ever get to know.
Four years of this is gonna give y'all a well-deserved ulcer.
What?! Obama was never this much fun to, well, make fun of. Seriously, or not, as the case may be, while Trump's antics are not exactly the best for the country they are making every comedians job so very much easier.
Yeah, I know, that should be "comedian's". :)
Now see girl, ya went and gave the game away. I figured they'd go for days or maybe even weeks before they figured it out.
lol!
It occurs to me that hurricane Harvey is giving our old friend, Bridget, an up close and person look at the climate change she no longer believes in.
It should be a wake up call for anyone who questioned climate change. Stronger storms are a side effect of warmer Gulf waters and will be more of a norm rather than a once in a hundred years kind of event. Personally, I will take my Minnesota winters and the threats of tornadoes over hurricanes and flooding.
There may be greater risks in living too near the coastal areas in the future.
[Chumpy]: "However, seven months of trying to defend President Shorthands has seemingly made you bitter and semi-hysterical."
LOL. I think you'll find that callin' out yore relentless anti-Trump whinin' does not constitute a defence of Shorthands. I am far more interested in observin' the breakdown of traditional political discourse in y'all's country than takin' either side in it. Trump ain't even close to bein' an exemplar of any politics I support.
On a related note, I see that two major rumour mongers about Trump's Russian connections and his sexual escapades -- one of them a former UK MP -- have turned out to be the victims of a not-so-elaborate hoax. Just shows how gullible folks seem to get when it comes to the anti-Trump whinin'.
[Lynnette]: "It should be a wake up call for anyone who questioned climate change. Stronger storms are a side effect of warmer Gulf waters and will be more of a norm rather than a once in a hundred years kind of event."
It's not nearly that simple. Warmer gulf waters occur in essentially random splurges, as breakaway sections of the Gulf Loop Current. That's a warm ocean current that flows across the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, bulging into it. Winds drive the bulge and every now and again cause a section of it to break off, forming a phenomenon called a warm core eddy that drifts its way toward the western end of the gulf. The eddy is a rotating mass of warm water that can be hundreds of feet deep, packing a vast amount of thermal energy.
Warm core eddies can happen any time, and just sometimes will coincide with the height of hurricane season. Hurricane Harvey sat over an eddy that raised the gulf temperature by 1°C above average. The effect was compounded by slack winds which allowed the storm to meander above the heat source instead of turning to a more northerly track.
Harvey was the result of a combination of chance circumstances. Does climate change increase the odds of more Harveys? Maybe. Can Harvey itself be taken as evidence of climate change? No, of course not -- everyone knows the difference between weather and climate until it suits them to forget it. The only thing that can establish such a link is a statistical series. Have we got one? As of now, no.
"I think you'll find that callin' out yore relentless anti-Trump whinin'
does not constitute a defence of Shorthands."
Probably not what I'll find. Rather, you seem compelled to defend him. I've been most amused by your relentless comparisons to Obama, as if you actually think that, ‘But… But… But, Obama!’ constitutes some sort of a defense.
"Does climate change increase the odds of more Harveys? Maybe."
Maybe?
Turns out that I'm not the only who's noticed that Shorthands has been peculiarly restrained in the face of some of his subordinates public disavowals of his own very public political proclamations here of late. Specifically, Rex Tillerson and Gary Cohn. WaPo (One could add the very public repudiations by the heads of all five of the national military services.)
Now that I think on it just a minute, I guess we could add Jeff Sessions to that list above. Shorthands obviously wanted Sessions to resign, but Sessions didn't want to. He really didn't have anywhere to go, so he just stayed, Shorthands' preferences be damned. (Sessions was pretty much a non-entity in the Senate. He was considered cordial and friendly, but even with years of seniority he wasn't really a power player, and had no future as a power player; he got himself quoted occasionally because he was willing to be quoted, but he wasn't a player in the Senate and wasn't much missed.)
Shorthands now has not only the Congressional Republicans moving to distance themselves from him, he can't even command his own White House or effectively exercise his role as CinC.
[Chumpy]: "I've been most amused by your relentless comparisons to Obama, as if you actually think that, ‘But… But… But, Obama!’ constitutes some sort of a defense."
And I will continue to LMAO at yore pathetic delusion that I am interested in defendin' Trump. What I am interested in pointin' out is yore downright hypocrisy in whinin' about Trump on matters where he differs little from Obama (or most US presidents).
Don't worry, I am not expectin' you to realise this. You are no different from half yore compatriots. Indeed, even yore compatriots who talk to foreign media are as presumptuous as those engaged in domestic discourse. So, just now on Sky News in the UK, an American correspondent reckoned it was fine to state that Trump "seems to be enjoying the dramatic events in Houston", that he has "learned the [PR] lessons of Katrina too well, and by flying into Texas today may take away needed resources from the relief effort", and that "any improvement in the Federal response since Katrina is due to Obama". In other words, Trump don't give a crap about Houston, is actively tryin' to make things worse, and if things ever get better there it won't be down to him. It would be hilarious were it not so seditious.
Does nobody see the hypocrisy of this anti-Trump whinin' which is the real distraction at this time of disaster? Scratch that question -- of course y'all don't. Ya can't. Ya got those Trump blinkers on.
[Chumpy]: "Maybe?"
Yep. I don't expect y'all are able to comprehend the material I provided, but "maybe" is the correct answer.
P.S. I don't know if it featured on "Around the world in 60 milliseconds" or whatever y'all have that passes for international news, but ya might want to have a look at a certain ongoing trial in Montenegro to see what real Russian collusion looks like.
P.P.S. Lynnette, I finished looking at that Class Divide documentary you posted. Interesting. It's similar to what's happening in many cities where housing has become an obscenely valuable commodity, but the contrasts seem particular stark in New York.
"What I am interested in pointin' out is yore downright hypocrisy in
whinin' about Trump…"
Then you should try to not miss the point so very widely and so very often in your eagerness to defend Trump. The point was that Trump's own people are telling the media that he was being all hat and no cattle (to mix a metaphor a little on account of the hat thing). So, you show me an example of Obama showing up solely for the photo-op and then getting it undercut by his own publicity team telling the assembled media that Obama knew how to glare for the camera, but not much else. And then we'll have that example you wanted to have but don't have now.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
"I don't expect y'all are able to comprehend the material I provided…"
I do understand that, contrary to what you tried to imply to Lynnette, a warm core eddy is not a random event that just happened to be coincident to a hurricane this year. They're seasonal. And you've not yet learned to not lie to people. When you let my opening comment pass I had some hope for you, but ‘nope’, reckon not. Not yet anyway.
And, side note here, it has occurred to me that Shorthands is falling into his pattern of using superlatives to describe anything that he relates to himself. Even if it's just a hurricane that happened on his watch. So far he's reminded us that hurricane Harvey is ‘HISTORIC’, ‘unprecedented’, ‘epic’, the ‘biggest ever’.
Ya get the impression they may have to restrain him from trying to rename it Hurricane Trump.
And, by the way, ‘maybe’ is not the correct answer. It manages to be a not wholly incorrect answer, but there were considerably better answers available that you chose to not use.
TrumpTweets:
"Wow - Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood!"
Can't ya see him wide-eyed and eager as he wrote that? Ya can even imagine him looking for his MAGA hat to wear while he typed his exclamation points. Come on now Petes, even you…
"We have an all out effort going, and going well!"
Well, maybe not so well after all. Later the mayor of Houston had to ask for civilian volunteers to bring their own boats to help save people on account the saving people thing was not going well; not to mention that the governor of Texas was still yet to call out the entire state National Guard.
[Chumpy]: "So, you show me an example of Obama showing up solely for the photo-op and then getting it undercut by his own publicity team..."
I don't remember promisin' anything like that. You ain't callin' the shots here neither, though I realise y'all are prone to that misconception.
[Chumpy]: "a warm core eddy is not a random event that just happened to be coincident to a hurricane this year. They're seasonal."
So yore seasons go on a 6 to 11 month cycle, is that right? Thanks for confirmin' that ya really do quite literally live on a different planet to the rest of us. LOL.
[Chumpy]: "And, by the way, ‘maybe’ is not the correct answer. It manages to be a not wholly incorrect answer..."
LOLOL. Stop this! Y'all are crackin' me up. At this stage I reckon ya must have a PhD in orneriness. Nevertheless, this might be a good time to remind y'all I ain't here to debate it with y'all. In fact, I didn't even direct it at y'all in the first place. So I certainly ain't chasin' ya down no rabbit hole about the "meanin' of maybe"
[Chumpy]: "Ya can even imagine him looking for his MAGA hat to wear while he typed his exclamation points. Come on now Petes, even you…"
Nope, but I can certainly imagine you wettin' yoreself at the thought. In fact, I don't have to imagine it. That correspondent this morning was doing the same thing. It's kinda boringly predictable at this stage. Here's a suggestion for somethin' ya might repeat to yoreself every now 'n' again as a reality check: it ain't all about Trump! And it ain't all about you neither. Might save y'all from turnin' into a nation of boring whiners. (Hmmm ... not sure if it's too late for that already).
Side note:
It begins to appear that ‘to whinge’ has a different meaning in Irish English than it does in British English and also different from the American word ‘whine’, both of which seem perhaps related, but not quite the same thing. I suppose that, with study, I might outline the differences, but I can't for the life of me figure out a good reason to study on it. Don't think I really care.
"I don't remember promisin' anything like that."
Okay, so, no examples then.
"So yore seasons go on a 6 to 11 month cycle, is that right?"
I have no idea where you got the impression that I'd agreed to that ‘6 to 11 month’ language. But then, neither do you. You simply made that part up (the jump to me agreeing with that part I mean).
And, if you find the conversation boring I might remind you that nobody's chained you to it. You can just wander off any ol’ time you want. (I might even recommend that if you were to ask for a recommendation.) Meantime, I don't give a rat's ass if you find it boring but want to stay on just to whine about being bored, or whatever it is that's supposed to be your point this time.
Post Script:
Guess you gave up on trying to suggest those eddies were just random events then. Sure as hell looks like you decided to abandon that one (good idea really; that was a loser for ya).
" Nevertheless, this might be a good time to remind y'all I ain't
here to debate it with y'all."
And yet you can't seem to bring yourself to disengage. No self control I reckon.
"‘He enjoys playing the role even if he's never handled anything like
this,’ one close adviser said of Trump. ‘He knows what a president is
supposed to look like during something like this.’"
WaPo
I can't imagine an Obama advisor saying anything remotely like that about Obama. There simply are no comparables. Doesn't matter how much Petes wishes there were. They just ain't there.
Okay, here's a piece of spin worthy of our very own Petes.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants the court which convicted him of criminal contempt to vacate the conviction on the grounds that he's been pardoned. WaPo Of course, if the conviction is vacated (sort of an annulment for secular legal types) then the pardon is a moot point.
More to the point here, the legal precedents indicate that accepting a pardon is, effectively, an admission of guilt. It would seem to me that they're going to try to get that point overturned finally. Make it so that people can accept a pardon but still proclaim their innocence. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. I think I'm leaning against that.
"President Obama signed an executive order requiring builders
who receive federal funds for a project to account for the risk of
flooding in their construction plans. Trump rescinded the measure,
saying it was 'job-killing.' How many people went to work in Houston
today?"
Eugene Robinson in the WashingtonPost
[Chumpy]: "And yet you can't seem to bring yourself to disengage. No self control I reckon."
Pay attention ya dullard. I said I wasn't gettin' into a debate with ya about somethin' that warn't none of your bidness to begin with, and I ain't. That dudn't mean I'm not gonna keep callin' ya out on yore trollin'. I'll do that as often as I see fit. But y'all can muse upon yore 6 to 11 month seasons on yer own. Yore the only one with that particular fixation.
"…y'all can muse upon yore 6 to 11 month seasons on yer own."
The only one who believes in ‘6 to 11 month seasons’ is you. (And I'm assuming here that you are a late comer to the notion of Gulf eddies and just don't know any better. But, I'm being generous to you there--the evidence before me indicates, but not conclusively, that you probably do know better and are actively trying to mislead the conversation.)
Not just coincidentally with the Gulf eddies, the National Weather Service defines the ‘Hurricane Season’ to be six months long.
On another subject… We might take notice that under previous administrations, Presidential visits to disaster areas waited until after the rescue and recovery stage had passed, until the ‘assessment’ phase of FEMA involvement.
Trump's not waiting for the limelight to die out, or even for the disaster to quit unfolding, but is in Texas this very day. Every cop car protecting Trump is one not serving the citizens of Texas who need it most. Every chopper watching over Trump's head is another one not pulling stranded citizens out of the water.
I am far more interested in observin' the breakdown of traditional political discourse in y'all's country than takin' either side in it.
It is certainly sad. I suspect it is merely an extension of the internet culture of attacking others behind the mask of anonymity. It has merely come out into the open.
Trump ain't even close to bein' an exemplar of any politics I support.
Me either. A sentiment that I think you are free to speak your mind about. That's what freedom of speech is all about.
Can Harvey itself be taken as evidence of climate change? No, of course not --
But taken together with wild swings in temps or precipitation it might be construed as another symptom of climate change. The perfect storm of circumstances that allowed it to develop and wreak havoc on the Texas coast may seem like a coincidence but in reality it may just be another canary in the coal mine. I suspect we will eventually find out one way or another.
I finished looking at that Class Divide documentary you posted. Interesting. It's similar to what's happening in many cities where housing has become an obscenely valuable commodity, but the contrasts seem particular stark in New York.
It seems to be happening all over. As I mentioned earlier they have the same problem here in Minneapolis. There is a scarcity of affordable housing due to the rehabbing of older structures causing rents to rise and forcing lower income people out. It's an unhealthy situation for all really.
What I am interested in pointin' out is yore downright hypocrisy in whinin' about Trump on matters where he differs little from Obama (or most US presidents).
The only area I can think of where Trump and Obama behaved similarly is in trying, or in the case of Obama succeeding, to push through healthcare legislation that was unpopular with those across the aisle.
Otherwise Trump's behavior when taken in its entirety doesn't match that of past presidents in general. His attacks on institutions that are the bedrock of our democracy, such as the judiciary, are disturbing to say the least.
"…it might be construed as another symptom of climate change."
You seem to accept his premise that it's perhaps reasonable to consider Harvey as an isolated event.
[Lynnette]: "It seems to be happening all over. As I mentioned earlier they have the same problem here in Minneapolis. There is a scarcity of affordable housing due to the rehabbing of older structures causing rents to rise and forcing lower income people out. It's an unhealthy situation for all really."
It's unhealthier for some than others, though. The reason it's happening all over is because it's really just another facet of the same financial crisis that's been ongoing for over a decade now. Bond and asset buying programs ("quantitative easing") have blown an asset bubble whose only trickle down effect is from rich people to other rich people. The cost of the whole thing has been pushed out to the ultimate end users of that most necessary of assets -- housing. By spending an increasing proportion of their income on accommodation instead of consumables they keep the economy sluggish, and wages depressed. So the incomes of the less well off stagnate (and deteriorate relative to housing), while those rich enough to own assets see their values soar.
Monetary and fiscal policy since the GFC is robbing the poor to pay the rich. Arguably, we'd all be screwed without QE. While that might be true, the rich are the ones who would lose out most by pressing the big red debt reset button, which is probably the main reason we won't see it happen... at least, not willingly.
"By spending an increasing proportion of their income on
accommodation instead of consumables they keep the economy
sluggish, and wages depressed."
Presumably Petes means ‘consumables’ to cover the broader category of ‘consumer goods’, but, even so, this is flawed economics. Petes confuses the effect with the cause. It's true that the very well off are spending an increased portion of their income on housing, but that's an effect, not a cause. They're still buying all the consumer goods they'd otherwise buy, even if they weren't bidding up high end housing. They are not cutting back on their appetite for consumer goods.
The economies of developed nations are sluggish in large part because production of consumer goods (and of consumables for that matter) are increasingly being moved off-shore to low wage, developing countries, or they're being automated. This cuts down on the money available for the other 99% to spend on consumer goods of all kinds, including especially the more expensive durable consumer goods, which further depresses the economy, but again, the wealthiest among us are still purchasing those too, and at pretty much the same clip they'd otherwise be purchasing, even if the economy were more vigorous.
If there had been no ‘quantitative easing’ (to borrow a phrase he applies probably overbroadly--but that's a discussion for another day) then the very wealthy would have indeed found their stocks and bonds less attractive, which would leave an even larger percentage of their piles of funds available to bid up prices of housing. Arguably, the prices of housing would be even higher today. But that's speculation about what they'd find to speculate on. Always possible they'd have another tulip bulb fascination I suppose. Certainly though, there's no reason to believe the costs of housing would be any lower.
Pete: "Ok, I'm all ears. Let's have your stats (with references) on how race-related IQ level, as distinct from education level, affect job suitability."
You very well know there exists no such stats. Hell, when BRÅ (our crime stats department) discovered in 2005 the extreme over-representation of immigrants from some specific societies/ethnicities in sexual crime it was decided to SHUT IT DOWN and now we have no stats at all on crime based on any group. Stats on such matters are basically BANNED these days. There are older stuff I might point to, but then you would just shoot down those observations as old and bigoted so I won't bother.
But let's deconstruct your intentionally broad question here. Because you clearly designed it to be broad because you know in the details I'll have much better answers. First of all let's take race out of it.
Then your question would read like: How does IQ level, as opposed to education level, affect job suitability.
I think already there you see a whole lot of flaws in your argument. Because, for one, IQ level and educational level are not THAT easily separated.
Every person with a 120+ IQ is not equipped to get an engineering-degree. There may be many things to stop that individual from getting there. But they do have the needed intellignence to actually get there.
A person with a 90 IQ can have all the rest of what it takes. A will to study, a good heart, ready to work really hard, etc. But he/she just hasn't got the processing power to actually function as an engineer (probably not even to get the degree - maybe to get an affirmative action degree though).
So it takes some baseline of intelligence to, so to speak, climb some achademic tops. You know that, of course you do. (and if you try to argue against it I'll just pull the: why then can't you make a retard a surgeon and would you let that retard operate on your only child argument - so don't)
So obviously the prerequisite to be able to absorb some of our most advanced educations is indeed a high level IQ. And in educations/fields where a high IQ is not a real dealbreaker you'll still see the ones with the higher intelligence being the ones with the better grades, for the most part.
I mean c'mon Pete. You're into all this Astronomy stuff and you have a background in science. Surely you must know that if you go down to the pub and pick up 10 random people there are at least 5 (maybe even 8 or 9) you could NEVER explain your thinkings to no matter how long time you spent at it. Beacuse they just don't have a good enough processor in their brain to comprehend it.
I know myself from working in a very high tech environment where I came across persons with an IQ way superior of mine. Sometimes you know that given time I could learn to to this or that. Sometimes you just knew that this shit is just beyond me and no matter time or effort I am simply incapable of performing what this dude's performing.
Am I right? Taking race all out of the question, am I right in that IQ matters?
We'll start there. You reply. Then we'll go on.
Was that the sound of trollin' I just heard? Why, yes, it was. I won't encourage y'all by pointin' out a couple of major stupidities in yer screed.
Oops. That was, of course, directed at Chumpy. Marcus's post intervened unexpectedly.
"I won't encourage y'all by pointin' out a couple of major stupidities…"
Bluff; bluff don't work on me.
[Marcus]: "Every person with a 120+ IQ is not equipped to get an engineering-degree... A person with a 90 IQ can have all the rest of what it takes."
I don't have much of a quibble with your post. But I refer back the one at Sat Aug 26, 11:53:00 am. You suggested the IQ levels of immigrants were a factor in their unsuitability for jobs. I agreed with your point about education levels. But are you seriously suggesting that race-related IQ differences are an argument against permitting immigration? Even after you said above that IQs as different as 90 and 120 don't determine career suitability?
Just while we're getting hung up on whether climate change made Harvey worse, here's something that definitely did:
"How Washington Made Harvey Worse"
"Nearly two decades before the storm's historic assault on homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast of Texas this week, the National Wildlife Federation released a groundbreaking report about the United States government’s dysfunctional flood insurance program, demonstrating how it was making catastrophes worse by encouraging Americans to build and rebuild in flood-prone areas. The report, titled “Higher Ground,” crunched federal data to show that just 2 percent of the program’s insured properties were receiving 40 percent of its damage claims. The most egregious example was a home that had flooded 16 times in 18 years, netting its owners more than $800,000 even though it was valued at less than $115,000."
"That home was located in Houston, along with more than half of America’s worst “repetitive loss properties” identified in the report. There was one other city with more repetitive losses overall, but Houston is where the federation went to announce its Higher Ground findings in July 1998, to try to build a national case for reform."
"“Houston, we have a problem,” declared the report’s author, David Conrad. The repetitive losses from even modest floods, he warned, were a harbinger of a costly and potentially deadly future. “We haven’t seen the worst of this yet,” Conrad said."
Whoa Pete! Don't do that. Don't you try to "Lee" me here into a rabbit-hole where if is when and as is how. Just stop that right now!
Pete: "Even after you said above that IQs as different as 90 and 120 don't determine career suitability?"
I DID NOT say that. Read again. Don't "Lee" me Pete, I think higher of you than that.
Pete: "[Marcus]: "Every person with a 120+ IQ is not equipped to get an engineering-degree... A person with a 90 IQ can have all the rest of what it takes.""
That might be one of the most dishonest and out of context quotes I have read in a long while.
I think even Lee might be shamed if he took a post and mangled it so. Lee?
Lynnette: "…it might be construed as another symptom of climate change."
Lee: You seem to accept his premise that it's perhaps reasonable to consider Harvey as an isolated event.
No, personally I think it is just another symptom of climate change, despite Petes point about the Gulf Loop current. If it had been the only extreme or unusual event I might hesitate, but there are other strange things happening as well. Not least of which is the melting going on in the Arctic and Antarctic.
I did't suggest you personally believed that proposion, but you did (still do) appear to accept Petes' premise that it's reasonable to consider Harvey as an isolated event.
From Petes article:
And it’s true that federal flood policies have ignored climate. President Barack Obama tried to change that a bit, ordering federal agencies to account for rising seas and other flood risks when permitting infrastructure projects, but President Donald Trump revoked the order just last week.
Why doesn't this surprise me?
I did't suggest you personally believed that proposion, but you did (still do) appear to accept Petes' premise that it's reasonable to consider Harvey as an isolated event.
I believe that Petes can believe what he likes, just as I do. Climate change is such an extreme thing to wrap ones mind around that when looking at things like Harvey one might try to find other contributing factors. Anything to avoid thinking that life on this planet as we know it may not be possible in the future, near or far. Is that unreasonable? What I think is that it's very human.
"I believe that Petes can believe what he likes, just as I do."
Ah, I see. So you think he believes that it's reasonable to consider Harvey as an isolated incident?
I think we can add Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, to the list of administration officials who've displayed an extraordinary independence from Shorthands, very publicly disavowing his policy positions, or even correcting him outright. (Tue Aug 29, 01:50:00 am ↑↑) Yesterday Shorthands tweeted that:
"The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them
extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!"
TrumpTweets
Mattis decided to very publicly differ:
"During a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Mr Mattis
rejected the idea that the US was ready to take diplomacy off the
table.
“'We're never out of diplomatic solutions,' Mr Mattis said on
Wednesday. 'We always look for more.'"
TheIndependent
And, Mattis' Department of Defense has announced they're gonna slow-walk Shorthands' directive to exclude transsexuals from the military--‘study’ the matter for now, and no changes while they're in the study phase. Shorthands may finally insist on implementation, and they will eventually have no choice but to comply, but Mattis is publicly resisting.
Nobody's afraid of him anymore. Not the Republicans in Congress; not the Democrats, not even his own Cabinet Secretaries; certainly not our allies, nor our competitors, nor our enemies.
Me: "Am I right? Taking race all out of the question, am I right in that IQ matters?
We'll start there. You reply. Then we'll go on."
Still waiting Pete.
And as food for thought, not only for Pete but for ya'll, I'll add this:
A flawed counter argument against my IQ=prosperity argument would be like, when the Romans built magnificent aqueducts and such ya'll norsemen lived in huts. I anticipate this flawed counter argument so I'll adress it beforehand.
In those days people across the world lived isolated from eachother. Today we do not. Today a people in one place can, if they are able, make gains from the discoveries across the globe.
Japan was largely isolated pre WW2. They still developed war machinery almost on par with the rest of the planet. After WW2 they caught up on ALL areas of industry.
South Korea, after the war there did much the same as Japan did earlier.
China, as soon as the ruling commie dictatorship decided to free up the economic sector to capitalism and inventions made a huge leap, possibly the greatest transformation yet seen in the world from poverty to riches.
The things holding these people back visavi the western world were largely their politics, not their abilities.
Africa though. Where are the african car-models? There are the "made in Africa" high end products? Where are even products with more than a few moving parts coming out of Africa?
Why can't the same transformation we've seen in Asia take place in Africa? Or if it could, why does it not? After all there are even countries in Africa with peace and supposed "fweedom and dmocwacy", yet no economic catching up. Still only raw materials out and ready made products in. No factories, no inventions no even copying of advanced inventions from abroad.
Why is that?
COULD it be that it's in reality an HR problem? Do we dare think that thought?
How did this not occur to you?
"The things holding the African people back vis à vi the western world are largely their politics, not their abilities."
…vis à vis…
But Lee Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is a democracy. Relatively stable too. They have a muslim problem, but who doesn't these days. It's set to become the world's 3'd most populous country, surpassing yall, in about 50 years.
You think we'll come to see a future where cutting edge technology and new inventions come out of Lagos instead of Silicon Valley?
And Zimbabwe. When that country siezed being Rhodesia and they drove off or killed almost all the whites, why couldn't they at least maintain what the whites had built there? And then build and develop further on that?
Why did they go into regtrograde-mode and bring the nation from the bread basket of Africa into a starved hellhole dependent on foreign aid?
"But Lee Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is a
democracy. Relatively stable too."
Less than 20 years. (And ‘relative’ to what also matters.) It is currently considered a "multinational state", meaning the colonial borders established for Nigeria did not match African reality. That's gonna delay progress.
"And Zimbabwe."
More political instabilities.
Lee: "More political instabilities.[zimbabwe]"
No, not really. One strong man in Mugabe, death upon whitey, and the results pretty much speak for themselves. No real instability at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations
Mugabe is unstable, erratic, not the good king they might wish for.
Lee: "Mugabe is unstable, erratic, not the good king they might wish for."
Well, in a low IQ environment maybe "democracy" is not even an ideal solution. Hell, ya'll might eve be questiong that ya'll selves......
So you think he believes that it's reasonable to consider Harvey as an isolated incident?
Either that or he is playing devil's advocate to encourage critical thinking.
And, Mattis' Department of Defense has announced they're gonna slow-walk Shorthands' directive to exclude transsexuals from the military--‘study’ the matter for now, and no changes while they're in the study phase. Shorthands may finally insist on implementation, and they will eventually have no choice but to comply, but Mattis is publicly resisting.
I saw that. I always liked Mattis.
Why can't the same transformation we've seen in Asia take place in Africa?
In Africa you have extreme poverty, unstable political systems in various countries, as well as corruption. All of this leads to difficulty in encouraging ideas and inventions. Those who are ambitious enough to really want to make a difference are immigrating, leading to a talent drain that is a drag on development in Africa. Some countries may be democratic on the surface, but not in reality.
"I always liked Mattis."
"Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday pushed back hard
against reports that he is out of step with President Donald Trump —
particularly on how to deal with North Korea….
***
"When Mattis announced his transgender policy review, some
observers suggested he was delaying the president’s order. But he
said Thursday the president would not have given him time to look
closely at the issue if he didn’t want Mattis to actually examine it."
Politico.Com
And, let us not forget that it was Mattis' decision to increase our military committment to Afghanistan. Shorthands had to sign off on it, of course, but it's common knowledge that Mattis made the decision because Shorthands didn't wanna havta deal with it.
Story's running around that Robert Mueller is working with the Attorney General of the State of New York to see if they can charge Paul Manafort (one-time Campaign Manager for Shorthands' election campaign) with financial crimes under New York State law to prevent Shorthands from issuing a pardon to Manafort in exchange for Manafort keeping quiet.
It's also beginning to look like the United States will probably meet its carbon control targets for the year 2020 under the Paris Agreement, in spite of Shorthands' best efforts, unless, of course, he starts burning old tire dumps or does something equally radical to prevent that from happening.
It's also beginning to look like the United States will probably meet its carbon control targets for the year 2020 under the Paris Agreement, in spite of Shorthands' best efforts,...
Just another sign that Trump is out of touch with America.
"Just another sign that Trump is out of touch with America."
Perhaps not entirely. He's still holding at around 38% favorable rating. Might be enough.
Something I hadn't noticed until I ran across an article about it…
Mexico has offered post-Harvey assistance to the United States; food, water, boats, troops, whatever want we to ask of them; all we have to do is ask. Venezuela of all places has offered to accept requests for assistance ($5 million cap; they're having a national emergency of their own, but it's not weather related). The E.U. has offered to share their satellite imagery, after an inquiry from FEMA.
That's pretty much it.
We don't generally accept assistance from other countries for our natural disasters (by the time we could coördinate their capabilities with our needs, we'd have filled those needs already). But, even so, usually there are offers of assistance (perhaps pro forma, but real nonetheless); we customarily do formally express our national gratitude for the offers via the State Department, but do politely decline; this time there aren't any offers.
Trump. America first.
Op-Ed says that the ‘gentrification’ trend of the last two decades has crested, and discusses the reasons why. Perhaps to Petes surprise, ‘quantum easing’ is not among the reasons listed, not first, not second, not even on the list. WaPo
Lynnette: "In Africa you have extreme poverty, unstable political systems in various countries, as well as corruption."
In China you had the "cultural revolution" killing 50-60 million people, you had extreme poverty there also, and extreme corruption. But once they decided to scrap planned communist ecomomy and go with a capitalist economy, even under the authoritarian communist regime, they took off like a rocket.
There are 54 nation states in Africa. Africa is as big as the USA, Canada and Mexico, i.e the whole of North America. Many of those 54 nation states have had wars or troubles but far from all. Many too have been peaceful for way longer than China has.
Still.... No progress. No inventions. No industry. No exports of assembled goods. Actually oftentimes a need for aid caused by an inability for self sustainment.
I say the reason for this is a lower level of intelligence in those African nations, rendering them unable to compete in an advanced marketplace with people from the northern hemisphere.
What's your answer?
For the record: You have jumped the last hurdle (sometime back). You have moved on from xenophobia and bigotry to full on racism.
And to be honest I think ya'll Mericans just need to look at your own homeland. Why is there even a need for "affirmative actions"? Why is it that for every Condoleeza you have 25 gangbangers in jail for life? Why is it that "white flight" is an american phenomenon much more so than a European one, even if it's rapidly gaining traction here too?
If you can honestly say you would be OK with your own white child being a minority in an inner city Baltimore school, then OK. That's your perogative. If not, and you're still posing as a diversity clown, then you're a fucking hypocrite!
Lee: "For the record: You have jumped the last hurdle (sometime back). You have moved on from xenophobia and bigotry to full on racism."
Perhaps I have, perhaps I am. Define racism though. The moniker "racist" gets thrown around so much these days I am unclear what it means. So define it, and I'll tell you wether I am one or wether I'm not one.
I guess I probably am one because:
1 - I believe there are different races.
2 - I believe those different races have varying strengths and weaknesses relative to eachother.
Is that enough to be a racist?
As I said the first time, that was for the record, not for argument. (And, I don't need you to ‘tell’ me whether you're a racist or not.)
No Lee, but given you namin' me a racist the very least thing you could do is explain why you do so, and what constitutes a racist in your opinion.
Talk or Orwellian double-speek here.
Lee: "And, I don't need you to ‘tell’ me whether you're a racist or not."
Lee declares me a racist. I ask why. Lee retorts him not needing my opinion on the claim he made against me.
Well, Lee, why are you a GRIDS-ridden streetwalking whore in the meatlocker district of Kuala Lampur?
Don't suggest you're not that, because I will not listen to you...
Whether or not you listen to me has no impact. I'm not sure what ‛GRIDS’ is, but I'm fairly certain I'm not ‛ridden’ with it. (If I cared I'd look up what ‛GRIDS’ denotes. I do not care.)
I'm sure you know what it means. It would have taken you less time to just Google it than typing a wise ass responce. And I regret even typing that because it gave you a way to go off on a tangent like you so often do.
Forget about that though. And answer two questions:
1. What is a racist.
2. Why am I one. (not sayin' I'm not one, but I need your definition none the less)
"…I need your definition…)
That is unfortunate, for you anyway.
It seems to me quite cowardly to use a designation that is VERY negative these days, and then refuse to say why you're designating me as such and why that's
even wrong.
You just play the "racist" card and bet that will get you the win. Coward.
"…and bet that will get you the win."
There is nothing to ‘win’ there. We didn't have any contested issue open. Fool.
Still.... No progress. No inventions. No industry. No exports of assembled goods. Actually oftentimes a need for aid caused by an inability for self sustainment.
What's your answer?
Let me ask you this, if you are a poor person in Africa where there is little educational opportunity, especially higher education, how do you progress?
If by some miracle you are given an education and you then invent something that would help your country progress, how do you go about producing it? Who will manufacture it? Who will invest money to manufacture it? How many multinational corporations are willing to invest in Africa like they have in China?
You say that China has progressed nicely by converting to a capitalist economy. Yet they are not really capitalist, there is still strong economic control from the central government. Just look at all of those ghost cities that no one is living in. As for their progress, I think it has a lot to do with having consumers who are willing to buy their products. No, not Chinese consumers, but American and European consumers. China's miracle economic success has a lot to do with us.
I say again, if there are natives of Africa who are ambitious and bright enough to create, invent or just build their own business they are migrating to the US or Europe. There is a transfer of talent out of Africa due to instability or corruption or simple lack of opportunity. I personally know of at least two people who fit that bill. One actually went back to Kenya recently to run in one of the local elections. He is a strong supporter of women's rights. He did not win. That is Kenya's loss. The other is running a very successful business here.
Listening to noises about necessary upcoming financial legislation, I'm optimistic. There was a chance that the Republicans would turn out to be so totally disfunctional that they'd blow the necessary legislation to increase the debt limit. This would lead to a U.S. Government default. That's seriously bad news.
However, the need for FEMA funds for Texas has given the Republicans a way out. Normally budget-hawk Republicans think they can't be faulted for saving Republican Texas (whereas emergency assistance funds for Democratic states like New York or New Jersey or California would have to be fought tooth and nail.). So, they're probably gonna add the FEMA funds to the debt ceiling legislation and thereby skip lightly past all but the most committed right-winger resistance. We will likely avoid a government default (as opposed to a government shutdown which we may or may not avoid)
After that, things may get more difficult.
I went to our State Fair today. I was talking to someone earlier about what she liked best about it, as I was looking for ideas of what I wanted to do. She said what she liked best was people watching. She enjoyed looking down the streets and seeing such a diverse picture of Minnesota. So I sat a bit and watched.
They call it the Great Minnesota Get Together. They're right. :)
(Although, I also enjoyed the food too.)
Normally budget-hawk Republicans think they can't be faulted for saving Republican Texas...
I had read somewhere that they were actually talking about cutting disaster relief funds to fund Trump's Wall. Now that certainly wouldn't look good.
"…they were actually talking about cutting disaster relief funds to
fund Trump's Wall."
Yeah, I heard that one too. I think the point of that was to get it out there early and get it summarily shot down by the Republicans themselves. Make it easier to move on.
Australian argues that there are no ‘races’ among humanity, not currently anyway. There is only the one human race.
"Our biological diversity is too small, and too smoothly distributed
across geographic space, for race to be real."
TheConversation
I have made the same argument myself in the past, but I don't have this guy's credentials.
So, you are a firefighter and you have been notified that there is a fire in a building, and you respond. When you arrive you are met with a person saying, "no, no problem here". The building? One of the Russian consulates that the State Department has ordered closed. Ahhhh, the secrets we keep...or burn.
I stopped at Barnes and Noble on my way back from the fair to return some books and ended up buying more. They happened to have Red Notice, by Bill Browder sitting on a table up front. While I know in general about the Magnitsky affair I have never read the first person account of the events leading up to it. It might possibly shed some light on Russia and Putin.
[Chumpy]: "Op-Ed says that the ‘gentrification’ trend of the last two decades has crested, and discusses the reasons why. Perhaps to Petes surprise, ‘quantum easing’ is not among the reasons listed, not first, not second, not even on the list. WaPo"
I guess y'all were frothing at the mouth too much to notice ya posted the wrong link. Or if ya didn't, it ain't WaPo and neither it nor your comment have anything to do with anything I was talking about. Try to dial back the trolling. It might clear y'all's mind.
[Marcus]: "I DID NOT say that [IQs as different as 90 and 120 don't determine career suitability?]. Read again."
Then maybe I misunderstood you. You seemed to me to be making the case that you don't need low IQ immigrants, while at the same time saying that IQ is not the sine qua non of career aptitude.
[Marcus]: "Am I right? Taking race all out of the question, am I right in that IQ matters?"
I don't know what you're asking. Matters to what? The thing that I (mistakenly?) took you to be saying -- that IQ is not the sole determinant of anything -- I agree with that. I don't generally wonder about the IQs of people I interact with. They all have the potential to be sucessful human beings. I generally am more interested in good will than intelligence.
[Marcus]: "A flawed counter argument against my IQ=prosperity argument would be like, when the Romans built magnificent aqueducts and such ya'll norsemen lived in huts... In those days people across the world lived isolated from each other. Today we do not. Today a people in one place can, if they are able, make gains from the discoveries across the globe."
And that, of course, is exactly what is happening. Take a look at the by line on this article, one that I recently used to learn some new stuff about user interface development. He's one of a new breed of educational writers, signed up by small but globe-spanning online companies who use talent from literally anywhere -- Algiers to Windhoek to Capetown as well as every other continent. This particular guy is an urbanised Igbo person from a place you never heard of, in south eastern Nigeria near the Gulf of Guinea. In the knowledge economy, anyone can sell product. Not so with mechanical industry. Your point is misguided -- creating a thriving economy needs more than just knowledge. It needs a convergence of knowledge, political sophistication, and infrastructure which has taken centuries to build in the first world. My Igbo teacher is from a place that in the last half century has suffered devastating civil war and famine, suported by western powers who flooded the place with armaments. That he even exists is a miracle (and although I didn't even know it in advance nor do I mean to make a point of it, he is not surprisingly the product of a Catholic university). In short, there are historical reasons why not every place thrives, even with technical knowledge. To hijack your own example: even the Romans in Rome weren't able to rebuild aqueducts after that city was sacked, and the area surrounding Rome's seven hills returned to be being a malaria-infested swamp. That was because of lack of resources and political organisation.
(cont'd...)
(... cont'd)
[Marcus]: "Africa though. Where are the african car-models? There are the "made in Africa" high end products? Where are even products with more than a few moving parts coming out of Africa? ... Why is that? COULD it be that it's in reality an HR problem? Do we dare think that thought?"
I presume you're able to type your questions into Google as easily as I am.
[Marcus]: "You think we'll come to see a future where cutting edge technology and new inventions come out of Lagos instead of Silicon Valley?"
Already happening. It's just that it's small scale and you're too intellectually lazy to go looking for it. Just as I couldn't, off the top of my head, think of anything useful that comes out of Malmo, but I'm sure a bit of research would soon inform me.
[Marcus]: "And Zimbabwe. When that country siezed being Rhodesia and they drove off or killed almost all the whites, why couldn't they at least maintain what the whites had built there? And then build and develop further on that? Why did they go into regtrograde-mode and bring the nation from the bread basket of Africa into a starved hellhole dependent on foreign aid?"
I feel a little bit qualified to comment on that, seeing as I wrote their current social security systems. Zimbabwe is an example of a country that enters a downward spiral as a result of its revolutionary leaders not being up to the job of implementing the peace. Mugabe made all sorts of rash promises to a large constituency of his -- the war veterans -- around war pensions, grants of land etc. which, to the extent he kept them at all, were implemented by foolishly redistributing farm lands to people who had no idea how to work them. I presume you know that Mugabe is a revolutionary socialist, in the mould of the Russian socialists who managed to create famines in spite of owning Europe's breadbasket (Ukraine). How do you explain that the Russians problems? Could ZANU-PF's problem be more to do with socialism than being low-IQ Africans?
[Marcus]: "Well, in a low IQ environment maybe "democracy" is not even an ideal solution."
[Marcus]: "I say the reason for this is a lower level of intelligence in those African nations, rendering them unable to compete in an advanced marketplace with people from the northern hemisphere."
I say shame on you. Shame on you for abandoning your own critical faculties and then calling other people "low IQ". Lynnette, and even Chumpy Troll Lee, have written some decent replies which I see you have mostly ignored. Yeah, on balance I would call you a racist. If you want my definition of that word, it's the negative stereotyping of people based on (real or imagined) biological traits. For the record, I also agree with Lee -- race is a non-thing to begin with. There's never been a credible scientific definition of it as applied to humans.
"…it ain't WaPo…"
Duh!
[Chumpy]: "So you think he believes that it's reasonable to consider Harvey as an isolated incident?"
[Lynnette]: "Either that or he is playing devil's advocate to encourage critical thinking."
Well, on the one hand, there is no such thing as an isolated incident in Earth's weather. It is a connected system, and is also connected to an even bigger system which determines its energy balance over the course of aeons.
The question is whether Harvey is part of a modern trend caused by human activity. We don't have a scientific answer to this. Anybody who claims they do is bullshitting you. I get profoundly depressed by article such as this one, by an author who claims academic credentials. Both the article and the comments that follow it sound like they are written by zealots. It is strewn with downright misrepresentations.
[Lynnette, earlier]: "But taken together with wild swings in temps or precipitation it might be construed as another symptom of climate change. The perfect storm of circumstances that allowed it to develop and wreak havoc on the Texas coast may seem like a coincidence but in reality it may just be another canary in the coal mine. I suspect we will eventually find out one way or another."
I'm not sure we will eventually find out, as part of the reason for the whole debate is the extreme difficulty of separating out specific effects of warming and its anthropogenic components. But one thing we can say for sure is that such a construal cannot be made on the basis of current knowledge.
@ Lynnette,
Hints coming out of the White House that General Kelly isn't fully appreciated by his boss and may not have a long tenure at his current job. WaPo
"The question is whether Harvey is part of a modern trend caused
by human activity. We don't have a scientific answer to this. Anybody
who claims they do is bullshitting you."
Petes is bullshitting us. The trend is real. The human activity is real. The connection between the two is real.
It is just barely remotely possible that Harvey was somehow an unrelated independent anomaly. Not bloody damn likely, but just remotely possible. Trying to blow that remote possibility up into a credible question about the existence of anthropomorphic global warming is bullshitting us--intentionally.
Post a Comment