Sunday, 27 September 2020

Fire and Ashes

I think it's time to take a break from the pandemic and politics to reflect on something that doesn't care about either. It will do what it wills. That is our planet. The one we all live on. The one that has been crying out for attention for some time now. The latest salvo was the wildfires out West.

A lesson on our connected world.




A little brush clearing just won't cut it.




Aftermath




The danger in our political climate goes hand in hand with the danger in our planet's climate. If we don't work together we will all lose.


410 comments:

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Lynnette In Minnesota said...

...they're looking for people willing to do that kind of work.

They are asking specifically for people with Special Ops background.

You're looking at a recruitment poster there, in case you didn't recognize that

They are recruiting for something.

I was just listening to someone on Fareed Zakaria's show talking about extreme right wing groups, like those who plotted against the Governor of Michigan. She was saying that the most dangerous time will be between election day and the January inauguration.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "They are recruiting for something."

Yeah, that's what I was gettin' at.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
I saw broadcast tv commercials campaigning for public approval of Amy Coney Barrett's pursuit of the available seat as a Supreme Trumpkin.  They've run on the local broadcast affiliates of NBC, CBS and FoxNewsSunday today.  (I presume they're running on the cable channels as well; probably on the ABC affilate as well although that's just a guess on my part.)
This pretty well dispenses with any pretense that her nomination and her seat on the Court will be apolitical, although I'm sure we can depend on the Trumpkins/Republicans to return to pious pronunciations about an apolitical court as soon as she's confirmed.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Just wandered past a television set tuned to the Senate confirmation hearings of Amy Coney Barrett.  The Republicans were up to bat (specifically, Chuck Grassley).

They are outraged, loudly, fiercely, almost violently outraged.  (They're winning; they got the votes lined up; there's nothing the Democrats can do to stop this; but they are outraged nonetheless.)

Marcus said...

Lynnette:

“ There is now a 10.4 positivity rate in France. I think the virus was just waiting for people to get out and about again. It have not went away, despite locking down.”

Or maybe it hasn’t gone away BECAUSE they locked down.

First: a lockdown when you sit at home and are not encountering the thousands of pathogens we regularly encounter, most of which our immune system swiftly deals with, makes you more succeptible once you come out of quarantine.

Second: when you quarantine people and then let them out they are wont to behave kinda like cows let out to pasture after a winter in the barn, they go all in for socializing.

The Swedish approach was not to lock down but to do a mostly voluntary distancing, with some hard rules, and trust the people to follow the guidelines. We took a hit in the beginning for sure, worse than neighbors, but better than some, and now it looks pretty good here. We’re still gonna abide by the same rules as in the spring, but as they were easy to understand and not too challenging to live by that’s ok. Boring af but ok.

So what is your suggestion for those that locked down hard and now once they’ve opened up see an increase? Lock down hard again? For how long and how many times?

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

Marcus,

The lockdown was never going to be a cure. It was only a delaying tactic until a vaccine or better treatments were developed.

I believe we have learned quite a bit about the virus and developed some promising medications and treatments that help.

Do I think there should be another lockdown? I honestly don't know. I think it will have to be up to those who actually have access to up to date information and whose job it is to secure the safety, as much as is possible, of the citizens of their various countries or states, as the case may be.

I do know that I would not trust Donald Trump when he says he is immune. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, but it is still a little soon to rely on that I think.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

Minnesota's positivity rate was at 5% the last I heard. An increase.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

They are outraged, loudly, fiercely, almost violently outraged. (They're winning; they got the votes lined up; there's nothing the Democrats can do to stop this; but they are outraged nonetheless.)

Maybe they felt that gloating would be a bad look?

I watched Amy Klobuchar's remarks. No anger, just determination. No matter what happens she says they will not give up their fight for health care for everyone.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

I spoke to someone yesterday who is looking at this whole election from the religious standpoint. Now I understand why Trump's multiple marriages and affairs make no difference. He basically said that the only issues he cares about are Israel and abortion. And Trump is delivering on those in his opinion. So there will be no changing the minds of those who share that belief.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "He basically said that the only issues he cares about are
      Israel and abortion."


It is possible that his mind is indeed so limited.  It's much more likely that he's learned that the answer he gave you means he doesn't have to admit to the rest of it.  (There's a reason they claimed Obama was a secret Muslim; it meant they didn't have to put up with the looks they got from their children and grandchildren when they admitted that was racial.)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
I've noticed a new argument in favor of "packing" the Supreme Court starting to make the rounds of late.  (In addition to Pete Buttigeig's notion of raising the number of justices to 15 and giving them 18 year maximum terms).
The new idea is to raise it to 19, or maybe 21 justices (term limits are then a separate question).
This would reduce the importance of any one single nomination.  (One version wants to raise it to 33 Justices, but they've a rather complicated notion for how things should work from there--simpler is better, which is why our Constitution has held together this long.)  We could split the Supreme Court up into "panels" of judges to hear appeals, and then have them meet en banc to finally settle a question if the panel decisions need to be reconciled.  (The Appellate Courts do that already--it works; it's a proven system.)

I'm not sure what to think about this notion, but I think it is an interesting idea.  I'm gonna give it further thought.

Petes said...

Yeah, increasing the number of justices sounds like the best idea since Roosevelt's court-packing plan. 'Cos that would never get political.

Amy Coney Barrett is the judge most committed to originalism in years. She lectures on the topic. Her public statements on it are available for anyone to find. She reiterated it at her appointment hearing. She plans to interpret the constitution as written. Dems, of course, have no interest in the constitution as written. They prefer to "discover" rights embedded in it that nobody knew about until they were pulled out of it like a rabbit from a hat. Such as "the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life", which in turn is apparently a license to kill babies.

(I wonder could the Flat Earth Society use that "own concept of the universe" ruling to chip away at more of the science education that the loony creationists have already been eroding).

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "Yeah, increasing the number of justices sounds like the
      best idea since Roosevelt's court-packing plan. 'Cos that
      would never get political."


Your immediately negative reaction suggests it may be an even better idea than it first appeared to me.

      "Amy Coney Barrett is the judge most committed to
      originalism in years."


"Textualism" too.

An interesting confession on your part.  The Constitution was, of course, originally intended to ensconce a permanent American aristocracy, but it failed in that mission (thankfully).
The Federalists were almost implacably hostile to democracy.  In the years since then, the subsequent twenty-seven Amendments and the Civil War (and the fact that the Democrats won that one) allowed us to overcome those initial impediments and eventually create the United States of America as one nation.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Typo there:  That should be small "d" democrats, as in, "…the democrats won that one.")

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "Oh, no one ever said dealing with climate change would be easy. The idea of voluntarily paying more for something is kind of a tough sell. But the longer we do nothing the more expensive it becomes. Adding $3 to my electric bill to support renewable fuel is nothing compared to what may be coming."

Wow. $3 to fix climate change. I can't see anybody arguing with that. ;-)

I think it might be a tad more than that, though. If your retail electricity costs went to the same levels as Ireland or Germany (i.e around double yours), you would spend half a trillion more on electricity alone each year. That's an order of magnitude more than the estimated cost of climate change, although estimates are insanely variable (e.g. food costing between 3% and 84% more by 2050).

[Lynnette]: "Even if they were to exploit their natural resources for their own benefit it is usually those in power who benefit, not the average citizen of the various African countries. But climate change will affect those in Africa, Asia and the Middle East just as it does those in the west. It already is, through drought, floods and hunger."

So why aren't Americans or Europeans going hungry as a result of climate change? Every now and again we hear about a potato or wheat harvest that is sub-par. But we don't see people starving. That's because affluent people are relatively immune to food price changes as they spend a far smaller proportion of their income on food in the first place.

Africa is easily able to produce enough food to feed its populations. Despite hilariously wrong predictions a couple of decades back that west African agricultural productivity would decline 50% by 2020 due to climate change, it has actually increased about 15%. African poverty is due in no small part to catastrophically bad management, and exploitative practices by foreign powers. It's not the climate that needs fixing.

[Lynnette]: "But the point you make that if all people in the world were to live like those in the United States it would not be sustainable is correct. There simply are not enough planetary resources to support all of us like that. So eventually something will have to give."

Nobody needs to achieve US levels of energy consumption. Much more modest increases would suffice to dramatically increase living standards. But the US is only 4% of global population. A modest increase for everyone else would still dwarf US consumption in absolute terms. We better get used to the idea, because it's coming.

[Lynnette]: "...ultimately it will not be me who has to live with the more serious effects for long. I feel sad though for those who will."

I don't feel sad in the slightest. Except for those who currently suffer anxiety and depression because of the current hysteria about climate. That, I feel, is unnecessary suffering. The rest of it will work out fine.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "The rest of it will work out fine."

Yeah, right.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "Africa is easily able to produce enough food to feed its
      populations."


So you say.
So, does Africa actually feed its populations?  (Hint, the correct answer is, "No".)

Marcus said...

Lynnette

“The lockdown was never going to be a cure. It was only a delaying tactic until a vaccine or better treatments were developed. “

No not at all. That was not what your or any health Organisation or political leaders were saying at the time. You must have forgotten what they said.

They said that the lockdown was introduced to “flatten the curve” so that hospitals could cope and not be overwhelmed by too many patients at once. THAT was the onus for the lockdown to begin with, not a vaccine or any such thing. Have you forgotten that?

Well, hospitals are largely empty so why keep up w this whole lockdown shamble.

I mean if a 74 yo fat orange bastard who eats McDonalds twice a day gets better after 2-3 days, and I read a story from Norway where a retired people’s bus where there were 40 people from 65 to 85 on it and of the 40 there were 38 that got Covid and they’re all well now. 5 had to go to a hospital but even they got well.

This whole Corona scare is just a manufactured craze. It’s little more than a usual yearly flu. The reaction to it will end up magnitudes worse than the dicease itself..

Marcus said...

Lee

“ Africa is easily able to produce enough food to feed its
populations."

So you say.
So, does Africa actually feed its populations? (Hint, the correct answer is, "No".)”

Right. And why is that? BC they confiscated white owned farmland and hounded the whites out. That’s why. Africa USED to be able to feed its population and then some. But sadly no more, as black guerilla fighters aligned with the so called freedom movements were given previously white owned farm lands.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "You must have forgotten what they said."

And you seem to have forgotten the "contact tracing" part of it.  The "lockdowns" were supposed to keep the spread of the virus down to a level where they could do the necessary testing and contact tracing to keep the virus suppressed until we got better treatments, or preferably a vaccine.  The fact that the Trump administration has abandoned that effort doesn't change the initial argument for the "lockdown"--they'd like to pretend it does; they'd like to revise that history; you'd like to pretend along with them; still ain't so.

      "Well, hospitals are largely empty so why keep up w this
      whole lockdown shamble."


That's largely true in the "blue" states.  But, there are "red" states running at or near capacity, and more of them looking at risk for that.
                           ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Once again, when's the last time 6,000 Swedes died in one year from influenza?  1918 maybe?

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "Right. And why is that? BC they confiscated white
      owned farmland…"


So, you're arguing that we can't be addressing global warming until after the white people recolonize Africa?  That what you're getting at?  (Petes has a different "until" in mind as reason to not address global warming, but we'll let that pass for now.)

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

UN on climate change

Currently, the world is on course for a temperature increase of 3.2 degrees Celsius or more, unless industrialized nations can drastically cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
That projected temperature increase is enough to increase the frequency of extreme climate events across the world, the report said, rendering any improvements to disaster response or climate adaptation "obsolete in many countries."
Emissions will need to be reduced by at least 7.2% every year over the next 10 years in order to achieve the 1.5 degree target agreed in Paris.
"We have seen little progress on reducing climate disruption and environmental degradation," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. "To eradicate poverty and reduce the impacts of climate change, we must place the public good above all other considerations."


Lynnette In Minnesota said...

It is possible that his mind is indeed so limited.

*sigh*

I think part of the problem is that he has been looking for answers in some of the wrong places. QAnon for one. *double sigh*

Conspiracy theorists seem to abound in times of trouble.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Petes] Wow. $3 to fix climate change. I can't see anybody arguing with that. ;-)

I think it might be a tad more than that, though.


Oh, I can see people arguing with that and, yes, eventually whatever we do or don't do will cost us far more.

[Petes] So why aren't Americans or Europeans going hungry as a result of climate change?

We are only at the early stages of climate change.

[Petes] African poverty is due in no small part to catastrophically bad management, and exploitative practices by foreign powers. It's not the climate that needs fixing.

Africa has multiple problems. That's why it will probably suffer some of the most extreme consequences.

[Petes] Nobody needs to achieve US levels of energy consumption. Much more modest increases would suffice to dramatically increase living standards. But the US is only 4% of global population. A modest increase for everyone else would still dwarf US consumption in absolute terms. We better get used to the idea, because it's coming.

Which is why we need to change how we do things. African nations have an opportunity to create new infrastructure that will help offset increased power usage. What has China been doing on the continent? I know they have massively increased their involvement as we have pulled back.

[Petes] I don't feel sad in the slightest.

Well, I do admit to not feeling sad for some. We may ultimately be the masters of our own destruction.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Marcus] They said that the lockdown was introduced to “flatten the curve” so that hospitals could cope and not be overwhelmed by too many patients at once.

Yes, that was part of it. We are currently seeing an increase in hospitalizations in some of the harder hit states now.

[Marcus] I mean if a 74 yo fat orange bastard who eats McDonalds twice a day gets better after 2-3 days,...

That would be those new treatments that have been developed since the start of the pandemic. And, he is only one of a very few to get some of that.

[Marcus] It’s little more than a usual yearly flu.

The flu killed around 34,000 Americans in the 2018-2019 season. Covid has killed over 214,000 in 2020 so far.


      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
That nasal Yankee whine of Amy Barrett's irritates me no end.  I wasn't expecting that.  And I'm not looking forward to years of listening to it.  (How the hell did a New Orleans native acquire that accent?)

Anonymous said...

Have you guys seen the recent 180-turn from the WHO? Pretty funny. Before, lockdowns were considered mandatory and you were called a "Trumpkin" by our local TDS sufferer if you even suggested that lockdowns had more costs than benefits for the country as a whole.

The Spectator's Andrew Neil is joined by David Nabarro, World Health Organization special envoy for Covid-19, who urged world leaders to change strategy.

"We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method," he said. "Look what's happening to poverty levels - it seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at school... This is a terrible ghastly global catastrophe, actually."


Kind of the like the ventilator insanity.

Looks like Marcus was right and Lee C., unsurprisingly, was wrong.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Just because it will cause you considerable consternation trying to formulate an answer you can document, and because you are not entitled to respect, I will forgo the proper response (which would be to forgo any effort to pretend you got a clue here and just ignore you like I should), and I will ask the question you're trying to get me to ask.

So…

Wrong about what, precisely?

Anonymous said...

Since back in January, along with following Dr. Seheult over at Medcram, I've followed Dr. Chris Mortenson at Peak Prosperity. While Dr. Seheult only discusses the medical issues around the coronavirus, Dr. Morteson adds the societal and political issues to his commentary.

Today, he posted a video on the subject of the recent news coming out of the WHO that brings both humor and analysis:

Combo Therapy Works! And another U-Turn on the W.H.O. bus?

The W.H.O. backs up the bus again and makes a u-turn on a very crowded information highway and now recommends against country-wide lockdowns.

This after initially saying they work. Same as for the constant u-turning around masks, and whether or not Sars2 is airborne, etc.

Beyond that, we've got great new data that Ivermectin really (really!) works. Especially and particularly in combination therapy with D3, Doxycycline, and Zinc. Go figure! /s

Also, believe it or not, but having young kids in the house work in a dose dependent manner to reduce your risk of getting Covid or ending up hospitalized with Covid. Weird, but fascinating data.
Combine all that and I remain very respectful of SARS2, but not fearful.


If you're a discriminating consumer of information, you'll stay away from all of the partisan media outlets that Lynnette and Lee C. seem to obsess over each day.

What you need to do is find just a few reliable sources and forget the rest. I've never watched a single show from CNN or Fox News. They both peddle concentrated, biased "news stories" because their business model is to feed your addiction to your side's view (left or right). They hand you your desired world view (it comes packaged already for you, so no need to think), you come back for more, and they sell your addiction to sponsors. You're the junkie on the corner.

I mean, c'mon, look at Lee C.'s life. He spends most of his waking hours combing media outlets to support his habit, his hatred of Trump. It's very sad.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
So, you decided to move along quickly to something else.

That probably was you best move.

Petes said...

[Yappy]: "That nasal Yankee whine of Amy Barrett's irritates me no end. I wasn't expecting that. And I'm not looking forward to years of listening to it."

I was thinking the same thing. And then I thought exactly the same about Kamala Harris. Sounds like she's wearing a clothes peg on her nose. Only thing is, I'm hearing Harris whine on the TV a lot more than Coney Barrett, and it's a much more annoying self-righteous prattle.

Anonymous said...

It's the same topic, dumbass.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Well, no, that's not true either.

Anonymous said...

Lee C.,

By the way, do you even have a job? How can you spend all day and every day online? Maybe you're retired. I don't know. If you're smart (yes, that's a stretch), you'll toss your laptop and try to start living a real life.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Ah, another new topic.

You move right along doncha?

Anonymous said...

Actually, both claims are true. The topic is the WHO's sudden change of mind, and you're a dumbass.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "The topic is the WHO's sudden change of mind…"

About what?  Lockdowns or "combo therapy"?  And how do you make those out to be one and the same topic?  (Gotta be an interesting glimpse into your mental weirdness lurking in that explanation; I'm looking forward to it.)

Anonymous said...

Lee C.,

Well, come to think of it, I can't see you working in any job. Have you ever worked? Maybe you have some kind of disability (beyond TDS, of course).

My guess is that you're one of those guys who talks a lot about economics and politics and such but has never actually done anything in his life.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
So, not gonna give us the merger of "lockdowns" and "combo therapy" then?

Well, I guess I shoulda expected you'd punt on that one.

Ah, well…

Anonymous said...

Lee C.,

Okay, I can picture you as a backwoods taxidermist, pecking away on your laptop while surrounded by stuffed owls and foxes.

Close? Not close?

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Petes said...

[Jeffrey]: "I've never watched a single show from CNN or Fox News. They both peddle concentrated, biased "news stories" because their business model is to feed your addiction to your side's view (left or right)."

I used to watch Fox News years ago for entertainment, but thought of it more as trash TV than serious news. I did think CNN was a serious channel but I probably hadn't seen a lot of it since its rise to fame in the first Gulf War. I was appalled not to long ago to find it had turned into a similar partisan cesspit as Fox News. Now I watch snippets of it for entertainment too. It usually consists of a split screen format in which a po-faced panel sits around and talks scathingly about how many times Trump appeared in public without a mask.

I'm about to dump my TV anyway. Mostly it's in defiance of my own government and its national broadcaster which I don't watch, but which I have to pay a licence fee to for any equipment containing a TV tuner. Seeing as most of what I watch is youtube science and maths videos, I'll just replace the TV with a giant tunerless monitor. A happy corollary is that I'll stop watching broadcast news altogether.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
So, another one prepares to surrender to the clickbot algorithms.  Well, it's not like I thought he was smarter than that.

Anonymous said...

Petes,

Seeing as most of what I watch is youtube science and maths videos, I'll just replace the TV with a giant tunerless monitor. A happy corollary is that I'll stop watching broadcast news altogether.

Yes, makes sense to me. There are many sources online out there to learn all kinds of information, like your science and maths YouTube videos. For my career as an ESL/EFL teacher, I research daily phonetics and phonology. Of course, I'm also learning Mandarin Chinese here in Ningbo, so my days are full.

When I think about it, I never even watched CNN or Fox News when I was running Iraqi Bloggers Central. I read all the new entries from the Iraqi bloggers themselves, but the political commentary coming from the media outlets on the liberal and conservative sides never interested me.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Petes said...

Jeffrey, if you're interested in languages in general here's some stuff I found entertaining recently: Italian, Spanish and Portuguese speakers try to understand a Latin speaker, three Latin speakers try to understand a Romanian speaker, and how the Romance languages diverged from Latin (spoiler: they didn't -- it diverged from them when Charlemagne drafted Alcuin to restore classical Latin).

Anonymous said...

Petes,

Excellent link. Thanks.

And here's one for you.

The Speech Accent Archive.

Using this archive, you can listen to both native and non-native speakers from around the world reading out loud the same text. Here's one of my favorite, from Edinburgh, Scotland:

Speaker 611 Edinburgh Scotland.

If you find a speaker from Ireland that sounds interesting, post the link.

And yes, of course, I'd love to hear Lee C. read that text out loud. "Please call Stella...." How thick is his backwoods twang?

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Anonymous said...

Petes,

It's so lovely to listen to the host's spoken Latin. My undergraduate degree was a double major in English literature and Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek). Latin, of course, was not taught as a spoken language (being categorized as a dead language), although we would read out loud passages from Cicero's court speeches or Catullus's lyrics (for example), but we never used it in class as a language of direct communication (which was a mistake, I think).

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Petes said...

Thanks Jeffrey, I love listening to accents. Not to blow my own trumpet, but I can easily distinguish an Edinburgh / eastern accent from a Glasgow /western one, and indeed from a Hebridean / western isles one. (The young lady in that vid made a series of TV programs with another from southwest Ireland in which they speak each other's variety of Gaelic as well as their accented English. Unfortunately I can't find any of it on yt). The Scottish accents form something of a continuum with northern Irish ones, due to two-way migration that stretches back centuries. The similarities are just as striking in the Gaelic / Gáidhlig languages, with the Scottish variety being most similar to the Ulster Irish dialect, and both of them being barely mutually intelligible with the other dialects of Ireland.

Petes said...

Sounds like you were taught Latin the way I was taught Irish / Gaelic. I can read it and sound fluent, but I could barely carry on a two-sentence conversation in it.

Anonymous said...

Petes,

Much to comment, but I have to run to class now. More later.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

I will have to catch up tonight...

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Lee] That nasal Yankee whine of Amy Barrett's irritates me no end.

I've finally had a chance to listen to her a little bit. Yes, a little bit of that goes a long way.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Petes] A happy corollary is that I'll stop watching broadcast news altogether.

I've spoken recently to two people who have done that and appear to get most of their information from the internet. It does not appear to have improved their ability to critically think.

The problem with information gotten solely from the internet is that you can't always tell what is real and what is, forgive me, fake. At least with the mainstream media you actually know who you are listening to.

[Petes] It usually consists of a split screen format in which a po-faced panel sits around and talks scathingly about how many times Trump appeared in public without a mask.

Yes, well, CNN like most news outlets tends to focus on the main story. In this case it is the virus and Trump's handling of it. It is still having a major impact in our country.

The media's job is to inform the American public. The president, whoever he/she, is is also a major story. When you have someone who craves the spotlight as much as Trump it is no surprise that he will be a main source of their news.

As for the media bias, yes you will find that in the opinion shows out there. You will find that on the internet as well. But it is up to the viewer to fact check or seek out other sources if he/she feels there is a untruthful slant to the coverage.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "It does not appear to have improved their ability to
      critically think."


I believe you may have misunderstood Petes' motivation.  The hope of abandoning critical thinking is one of the selling points for folks like Petes.
You will notice, if you look at it again, and a little closer this time.  He thinks that escaping "broadcast news altogether" is a good thing.  The ability to silo himself away from widely disseminated news and restrict his field of view to what he already believes, to not be bothered by contrary thoughts, is a positive benefit in his mind.

(On the other hand… You might, perhaps, have noticed that I fairly regularly make note of what's passing for news on FoxNews, among other strictly partisan outlets.  I make it a point to visit their platforms online because I don't take cable tv--too far out in the boonies for the cable companies to lay lines, and not interested enough in pre-siloed viewpoints to buy it off of the space satellites.  So,….  But, I do think the exposure is important, so I seek it out regularly.  He and I differ in that respect.)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Politico:  They say Minnesota has settled down solidly in Biden's favor.
Apparently Trump's support in the Iron Range area has slid back away from him quite considerably.  He'll still win the vote in that area, but not by enough to offset his losses in the rest of Minnesota.

Anonymous said...

Petes,

Did you follow along with the host speaking Latin and giving that quiz? It's really fun. Just by using my Latin, I was able to take part. I listened to the clues and then wrote down my guesses, just like the three guests, from Brazil, Italy, and Mexico.

One of the reasons English is such a widely used language (esp. in Europe) is that it is a hybrid language, half Germanic and half Romance. When I teach intermediate and advanced students, we get into the details of the hybrid nature and history of the language. Speakers of from either the Germanic or the Romance family will find many cognate words to help them along the way towards comprehension.

One odd thing is that one of the answers I guessed correctly with the Latin word "gens" while the Romance speakers used versions of "populus."

Lee C., Lynnette, and Marcus:

Let me give you three clues in Latin for one of the words and see if you can guess:

I will bold the roots.

Nos edimus hoc.
Fructus est.
Venit ex arbore.
Es satis dulce est.

And one more clue given by the Spanish speaker: Es la fruta del pecada original.

What word is the host looking for? Of course, just give the word in English (or Swedish for Marcus).

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Anonymous said...

Petes,

Oh my, I looked into the Irish sound system. Very hard. Broad and slender consonants and lots of sound-change rules. Hats off to you for struggling with the pronunciation issues. No wonder your listening discrimination is advanced.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Anonymous said...

Lee C., Lynnette, and Marcus.

Yes, that was, in fact, five clues.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "I've spoken recently to two people who have done that and appear to get most of their information from the internet. It does not appear to have improved their ability to critically think."

I think you misconstrue me. My plan is merely to ditch live TV channels and 24-hour rolling news. All the same sources are available online in bulletin format. Don't know what you call it over there, but it usually goes by the name "on demand TV" or "catchup TV" here. My requirement is simply to not have a TV tuner. Doesn't mean I'm planning to get my news from 8-chan or other Internet cesspits.

[Lynnette]: "At least with the mainstream media you actually know who you are listening to."

I don't agree. Editorial decisions in the MSM are not necessarily transparent. Everyone's got an agenda. Unlike Trump, I'm not claiming everything I disagree with is "fake news". That's a conspiratorial mindset which I definitely don't share. But most of what is peddled as "news" on the 24-hour channels is not actually news. If you look critically at it, the large majority is journalists incestuously talking to each other, rehashing and recycling each other's talking points. The fact is, there isn't enough news to fill 24 hours. But news junkies watch it anyway.

[Lynnette]: "Yes, well, CNN like most news outlets tends to focus on the main story.

No, it really doesn't. It focuses on its main story in an attempt to set the news agenda. Trump calls it "fake news" but I rather think it just isn't news at all. It's a gossip column in video format. It's on a par with Fox News, just with a different slant. In the thirty years that I've been watching American news output I've always considered it pretty trashy, with a showmanship quality that other countries just don't do. But I reckon it has descended to new lows in recent years and CNN is one of the leaders in the race to the bottom.

[Lynnette]: "As for the media bias, yes you will find that in the opinion shows out there. You will find that on the internet as well. But it is up to the viewer to fact check or seek out other sources if he/she feels there is a untruthful slant to the coverage."

Of course, the news channels don't want you to seek out other sources. Perhaps they have learned some tricks from youtube's search algorithm. If you keep feeding people material that fits their prejudices they'll keep watching your content ... and your ads. (I generally don't watch anything with ads, either on TV or the Internet). I still think the polarisation of society has a lot to do with the new online media, but the good ole' MSM is certainly playing its part.

(Still meaning to get back to you about your climate change post).

Petes said...

Jeffrey, yes I did follow the Latin quiz and did ok. I'm interested in Latin and Greek roots of scientific terms, and of course I have some church Latin. (It was mostly done away with before my time, but I've been revisiting church services in Latin of late, at least before lockdown).

The Irish pronunciation is not all that hard if you're born in Ireland. Even if you don't learn the language, your accented English ("Hiberno-English") contains many of the native sounds. My accent (along with all Irish accents) is full of diphthongal vowel sounds. It's straight out of the Gaelic way of speaking, which has hardly a straight vowel in it. Of course, my accent sounds neutral to me! ;-)

The Gaelic pronunciation is not that hard to master once you learn a few rules. Firstly, lots of words have about seven vowels in them, even the made-up neologisms like teicneolaíocht (technology). And yes, unfortunately if you want a true Irish accent, all the vowels are at least somewhat pronounced. But some are of minor importance and you can get away with a more clipped pronunciation such as you would hear in British English.

And of course, the vowels follow the sacred rule that is beaten into every Irish schoolchild and must not be transgressed: "caol le caol, agus leathan le leathan" -- slender with slender and broad with broad. That's the rule for vowels surrounding a consonant, with 'e' and 'i' being slender, and 'a', 'o', and 'u' broad. Look at teicneolaíocht for example. 'i and 'e' surround 'cn' ("caol le caol") while 'o' and 'a' surround 'l' ("leathan le leathan"). Within a vowel group, though, you can go nuts. SO the last syllable of teicneolaíocht would run all three vowel sounds AA-EE-OH together in very rapid succession.

Oh, and then there's that 'CH' at the end. That's an aspirated consonant. If you know how "loch" is pronounced in a Scottish accent, it's kind of like that but must be neither too soft nor too gutteral. But then there's all the rules for aspirated consonants when using certain grammatical cases. For example, my name in Irish is Peadar (pronounced "Padder"), but if you were addressing me you would say "a Pheader" and the P would be pronounced like an F. By and large the consonants are pronounced as in English, and there's less of them -- no J, K, Q, V, X, Y, or Z. But then you have the aspirated forms whereby BH becomes V, CH sounds like clearing your throat, DH sounds like saying G while clearing your throat, FH is silent, GH is more throat clearing, MH sounds like V also, PH like F, SH and TH both like H. Unless, of course, you are speaking in a northern dialect. Then BH and MH are both pronounced like W -- "a mháthair" ("his mother") would be pronounced "waw-her" instead of "vaw-her".

You're right. It's complicated. :)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "I think you misconstrue me."

      ♫♪ Whoddooo!…♪♫
      ♫♪ Who do ya think you're foolin'?   ♪♫


Neither CNN nor FoxNews are "broadcast" tv and ditching your built-in tuner will have absolutely zero effect on your exposure to either of them.
Nobody misconstrued you.  You're just tryin' to walk that one back.

Anonymous said...

Petes,

Jeffrey, yes I did follow the Latin quiz and did ok. I'm interested in Latin and Greek roots of scientific terms, and of course I have some church Latin.

Yes, you don't need to learn the Latin and Ancient Greek languages. You just need to memorize the Latin and Ancient Greek roots. For advanced students, that's what I have them do. Of course, for the students coming from a Romance language it's much easier than a student from, say, China.

As you know, I'm a Roman Cathlolic, too. As an altar boy, I learned the Introibo in Latin. Later, we changed to English. But twenty or more years ago at the basilica in my hometown, Dyersville, they started running Latin masses again. People missed the sound of Latin. They missed this:

A: Dominus vobisucm.

B. Et cum spiritu tuo.

My town is all Catholic, German and Irish Catholics (and Luxembourg Catholics, like my family). The church was and is the center of our life. Only much later, when I moved away, did I understand how much it influenced all of us.

Basilica of St. Francis Xavier.

Two of my uncles were Marianist Brothers (Society of Mary), both of them joining the order when they were teenagers -- off to St. Louis.

Chinese people are not religious at all. They don't believe they have a soul and the have no concept of personal sin -- and that makes a huge difference in their behavior.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China.

*


Anonymous said...

Lee C.,

My guess is that you were inadequately raised by a couple holy-roller parents and have now backslid to the point where you now consider yourself a freethinker. Who knows? Maybe Das Kapital is now the bible you thump.

If anyone needs the hand of the Lord, it's you, Lee.

Pride, Anger, and (most likely) Sloth compete in you for dominance each day as you fuel your hatred by fixating on CNN and MSNBC. Oh, that awful Trump and his Trumpkins!

You really can't see how lost you are?

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Anonymous said...

I'll guess that Lynnette was raised as a Lutheran.

Lynnette, am I right?

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

Anonymous said...

The strangle-hold on any discussion of the true costs and benefits of lockdowns has finally been broken.

"Closedown, lockdown, closing borders—nothing has a historical scientific basis, in my view," observed Agners Tegnell, one of the architects of Sweden's less-restrictive pandemic response.

Back in March, David L. Katz, former director of Yale University's Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, wrote: "I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life—schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned—will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself."

But these objections have largely been ignored as the views of a few fringe heretics to the supposedly science-dictated dogma of restrictive policies that close whole societies.

Such sidelining gets harder as more high-profile scientists join together to muscle their way into the public view.


WHO Joins Top Epidemiologists in Emphasizing Harm Caused by Lockdowns.

Jeffrey -- Ningbo, China

*

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...


      "The farther behind Donald Trump has fallen in the
      competition for campaign dollars, the more he’s milked
      government resources to make up the difference.
      "Millions of boxes of food doled out to needy families — with
      letters signed by the president taking credit stuffed inside. An
      $8 billion program for drug-discount cards to seniors featuring
      Trump branding — intended to arrive before the Nov. 3
      election. A $300 million advertising blitz to 'defeat despair'
      over the coronavirus pandemic — the biggest threat to
      Trump’s reelection.
      "Each of those initiatives have two things in common: They’re
      paid for with taxpayer money, and they are plainly intended
      to help Trump’s flagging reelection campaign. The actions are
      just the latest examples of how the president has eviscerated
      the traditional boundaries separating politics from
      government."
      Politico


Okay, so what if, after Trump's defeat in November, the Federal Election Commission decides those are illegal campaign contributions and sues Trump to recover the money?
Lawsuits to recover the money are not pardonable, either by Trump or by Pence or by anybody.

Petes said...

[Yappy the Terrier]: "Neither CNN nor FoxNews are "broadcast" tv and ditching your built-in tuner will have absolutely zero effect on your exposure to either of them.
Nobody misconstrued you. You're just tryin' to walk that one back."


I know yore from the boondocks, but surely y'all can't be that unbelievably parochial. Do y'all imagine that American cable TV runs coaxial cables across the salty Atlantic to Ireland? A moment's reflection (and not peerin' through the red mist) should'a told ya there's no such concept outside of y'all's godforsaken country.

There is no distinction between American cable and network TV for us furriners. Everything arrives via dual digital terrestrial and satellite tuners in my assorted TVs and set-top boxes. Also via local cable before I ditched that. You may have heard of satellites? ... yore cleverer compatriots have been stickin'em up in the sky since y'all were a young'un and us Euroweenies even have a few too. CNN may have the word "cable" in their name, but they broadcast on the Astra 2G satellite at 28°E and Fox are also on the Astra constellation.

So perhaps a bit more thinkin' and a bit less frothin' at the mouth is in order before y'all issue yore next lesson on how my TV works.

Petes said...

[Jeffrey]: "My guess is that you were inadequately raised by a couple holy-roller parents and have now backslid to the point where you now consider yourself a freethinker. Who knows?"

I do believe that some of Yappy's orneriness is explained by friction with an autocratic pater familias. Some of it is no doubt by choice, too.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "You may have heard of satellites?"

I have indeed.

      "…not interested enough in pre-siloed viewpoints to buy it off
      of the space satellites."

      Lee C. @ Wed Oct 14, 10:41 pm ↑↑

Already way ahead of ya there fat boy.
The the satellite boxes are separate from and different than the "TV tuners" in the television receivers themselves; entirely distinct.  Same observation still applies--getting rid of the "TV tuners" doesn't rid of either CNN nor FoxNews.  Because they are not "broadcast" television, even over there; neither one.

      "A happy corollary is that I'll stop watching broadcast news altogether."
      Petes @ Tue Oct 13, 10:59 pm ↑↑
                           ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
      "♫♪ Whoddooo!…♪♫
      ♫♪ Who do ya think you're foolin'?   ♪♫"
 

Petes said...

[Jeffrey]: As an altar boy, I learned the Introibo in Latin. Later, we changed to English."

I missed that transition by a couple of years. I was born eight months before the end of Vatican II but by the time I reached altar boy stage the vernacular was firmly in place and they had started ripping down the ad orientem altars. So I've been a Novus Ordo Catholic until it struck me that the Tridentine was probably preferable to hearing golfing anecdotes in place of sermons from bored priests. Once you hear a proper sung high Mass it's hard not to be hooked.

[Jeffrey]: But twenty or more years ago at the basilica in my hometown, Dyersville, they started running Latin masses again. People missed the sound of Latin. They missed this:

A: Dominus vobiscum.

B. Et cum spiritu tuo.


That must have been pretty soon after JP II's Ecclesia Dei and well before B XVI's Summorum Pontificum. Americans were certainly ahead of the curve in restoring the Tridentine rite. Probably because the polarisation that is evident in US politics today hit the US Catholic church much earlier. I was having conversations with American friends thirty years ago about it and it goes back much further. I guess it was because the Dorothy Day / Catholic Worker Movement type of Catholics who were naturally left-leaning and traditionally Democrat voters were faced with a dilemma when the Democrats morphed into the party of moral turpitude and unrestricted abortion. Many of them succumbed, Biden-style. Many others switched sides, despite Republican policies not necessarily gelling with Catholic ideas of social justice. The political aspects are somewhat unfortunate, but there is no doubt that there was a new dawn for conservative Catholicism in which America led the way.

About that "et cum spiritu tuo", I note that Americans changed the vernacular English translation back in 2008 also, where we only did it three years ago. "And with your spirit" was a big improvement on "and also with you" ... which sounded a bit like "yeah, whatever". But gimme the Latin any day compared to either.

[Jeffrey]: "My town is all Catholic, German and Irish Catholics (and Luxembourg Catholics, like my family)".

Interesting. One of my former colleagues who worked at NASA during the Apollo program was from Texas German Catholic immigrants, around Fredericksburg. I'm afraid the Catholics weren't nearly as historically interesting as German Anabaptists like the Amish I visited in Lancaster, PA ;-)

That basilica in Dyersville looks nice.

[Jeffrey]: "Chinese people are not religious at all. They don't believe they have a soul and the have no concept of personal sin -- and that makes a huge difference in their behavior."

I've wondered about that. It strikes me that the Chinese have historically had a huge ethic of personal duty, family loyalty, and hard work. I wonder if, as it becomes unmoored from tradition, it will suffer the same decline as the so-called Protestant work ethic in the US.

Petes said...

[Yappy Goes for Broke]: "The the (sic) satellite boxes are separate from and different than the "TV tuners" in the television receivers themselves; entirely distinct. Same observation still applies--getting rid of the "TV tuners" doesn't rid of either CNN nor FoxNews. Because they are not "broadcast" television, even over there; neither one."

I did warn y'all that ya should do more thinkin' and less frothin' before responding, but thanks for the hilarious part 2 of the lesson on how my TV works. First of all, I don't need a satellite box. My TV has two DVB tuners in it. Obviously I wouldn't expect the news to have reached the US let alone the boonies, but there is such a thing as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute and the DVB standard. The DVB-S tuner in my TV directly decodes satellite broadcasts. There is no intervening decoding, processing, or anything else. Just a wire from the satellite dish to the TV. The entirely separate DVB-T tuner decodes digital terrestrial signals. I also have two set-top boxes, each with DVB-S and DVB-T tuners. Under Irish law I cannot own any type of equipment with any type of tuner without purchasing a license. Covers TVs, STBs, laptop dongles, etc. etc. So yeah, jettisoning my tuners means no more broadcast news. Yore welcome.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
You might be surprised to know that television is digital in the United States as well.  The "standard" operating here is named ATSC, but that doesn't matter because flooding the zone with acronyms doesn't do your argument any real service (Nope I'm not the one who treats Lynnette like she's stupid.).  Babbling on about the names of the digital standards makes no difference at all.

      "Under Irish law I cannot own any type of equipment with
      any type of tuner without purchasing a license."


Irrelevant to the question at hand.  Diversionary probably.  I doubt that you're stupid enough to not have noticed it was irrelevant.

     "So yeah, jettisoning my tuners means no more broadcast news."

But, it doesn't mean you're cut off from FoxNews or CNN.  You're just hoping Lynnette doesn't notice that you're lookin' at the argument through the wrong end there.

(I already know that; way ahead of ya here fat boy.)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...


Post Script:  Nor does it somehow convert either FoxNews or CNN into "broadcast" news.

Repeating the notice:

      "A happy corollary is that I'll stop watching broadcast news altogether."
      Petes @ Tue Oct 13, 10:59 pm ↑↑

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
And, before you try to run the other direction, back into the dust cloud ya already kicked up in your first diversonary efforts…

      "Also via local cable before I ditched that. "
      Petes @ Thu Oct 15, 03:01:00 pm ↑↑

So, since that won't work either.  Maybe you'll try telling us that the Irish streaming services just don't work with FoxNews nor CNN?  (Hint: I don't think ya wanna go there.)  Might be time for you to just give it up.

Petes said...

[Yappy Digs a Deeper Hole]: "Also via local cable before I ditched that. Petes @ whenever"

Nope. Requires a DVB-C tuner. You beginnin' to get the picture yet? Even a small inklin'?

[Petes]: "So yeah, jettisoning my tuners means no more broadcast news."
[Yappy]: "But, it doesn't mean you're cut off from FoxNews or CNN."

It does mean I can't receive a TV broadcast of CNN. If ya wanna take it to an extreme, though, nobody is "cut off" from CNN unless they leave planet earth and go far, far away. (Don't suppose y'all would be interested in tryin' that out to see if it works?)

[Petes]: "Under Irish law I cannot own any type of equipment with any type of tuner without purchasing a license."
[Yappy]: "Irrelevant to the question at hand. Diversionary probably."

Dunno what paranoid questions y'all are askin' y'all's self, but seein' as I made the comment @Tue Oct 13, 10:59:00 pm that started ya off, I will refer you back there. To wit:

"I'm about to dump my TV anyway... A happy corollary is that I'll stop watching broadcast news altogether."

Didn't say I couldn't visit websites. Didn't say I couldn't watch video news bulletins on the web. Heck, didn't say I couldn't use a VPN and an illegal streaming service to jes' watch those channels anyway. I said I would stop watching 'em because they won't constantly be two button clicks away on the remote.

[Yappy]: "Nope I'm not the one who treats Lynnette like she's stupid."

What, by sayin' I'm gonna dump the telly and not watch CNN? I'd imagine Lynnette read that as any normal person would. She prolly doesn't require a certificate in triplicate, stamped by Sheriff Lee to warrant that I am incapable of accessing any news source in spite of having 1000 megabit internet. 'Cos basically she ain't a delusional paranoid idiot unlike some here.

[Yappy]: "Might be time for you to just give it up"

Nope. Too much fun watchin' y'all go thru yer paranoid contortions.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "You beginnin' to get the picture yet? Even a small inklin'?"

Way ahead of ya fat boy.  And still ain't falling for any of your smoke and mirrors stuff either.  (DBS as it's called here, is also available here, so I'm familiar with that too, although most tvs have only the one tuner installed on purchase.  You claim to have two tuners, which almost certainly means you have a British-market tv sitting in your house and yet you've still gotta pay the Irish tv license fee.  And you ditched the FoxNews and CNN when you dropped the cable back when, so you're just trying to talk you way past that fact in the here and now 'cause you want to try to walk back that "broadcast news" reference that you wish you hadn't let leak out.)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Just to clear up the jargon for Lynnette.  (DVB-S, as Petes calls it, is DBS here (satellite ready tv).  His DBV-T is regular digital tv (a/k/a ATSC here)  His DVB-C is the cable box.)  Don't let him lose you in the jargon babble.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
And he ain't dropping FoxNews and CNN when he drops his "broadcast news", because he let those go way back when he dropped his cable.  That's just a smokescreen for what he's plotting on doing in the here and now, which is going to totally siloed content, abandoning the broader based reporting still done on the "broadcast news".
Which is the sort of siloed exposure and thinking patterns that FoxNews pioneered in the late 1980s and that's now gotten us to Breitbart, Q-Anon, 4chan, and 8chan, and YouTube circles he especially seems to favor these days.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Typo:  DVB-T not "BV"

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
And…  I really rather doubt that anybody is any more interested than I am (which is hardly at all interested) in Petes' sophistries and the contortions that go with his ongoing efforts to pretend that FoxNews and CNN are or were the "broadcast news" that he's planning to ditch.

But, he'll spin sophistries about almost anything.  (Figures if he keeps it up eventually he'll win one sometime.) So….

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
So….
Just to rattle him a little, we'll circle back to the basics here.

      "Neither CNN nor FoxNews are 'broadcast' tv and ditching
      your built-in tuner will have absolutely zero effect on your
      exposure to either of them.
      Nobody misconstrued you. You're just tryin' to walk that one
      back."

      Lee C. @ Thu Oct 15, 06:48 am ↑↑

Petes said...

[Yappy the Delusional Dawg]: "And he ain't dropping FoxNews and CNN when he drops his "broadcast news", because he let those go way back when he dropped his cable."

Y'all are an utter delusional fantasist. Sure, I lied about CNN because, uh, ... reasons. LOL. I used to think you would be too embarrassed to lie about stuff that was quite so easily refutable. That was before y'all swore blind that a hundred thousand people on Wikipedia were wrong and you were right. Thanks for provin' once again that y'all are an incorrigible idiot. Here's a pic I snapped just now, of CNN, with the EPG showing the date and time, and the sat tuner telling you it's on Astra 2A and not cable. Ok, wasted enough time for now with yer paranoid self. Been fun. Ciao.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...


      "Here's a pic I snapped just now, of CNN…"

More likely a pic you snagged off the internet after about 50 minutes of furious searching for an active lead on it.  (I remember the "Antifa" photo you faked as being from Charlottesville.)

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

I've been watching Biden's Town Hall. It was far more interesting than the debate with Trump. He gave answers of substance which clarified some of his plans. His demeanor was also far more pleasant.

Biden was asked about packing the Supreme Court and his response was that he would clarify his position after the Amy Coney Barrett vote. He said he didn't want that to become the focus at this time. So we'll see if he follows through.

But, of course, I have obviously already made up my mind and did not need help in making up my mind. I was just relieved to listen to someone who wasn't all about himself. Someone who understood that a president should be working for the American people.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Tell ya what…  You back up from "your" TV screen there just a little bit and show us the edges of the screen and the little glowing light (wherever it is) and the manufacturer's logo, maybe even the legs of the screen and the stand upon which it stands.

Then maybe we'll believe you just happened to get extremely lucky the first time and capture a shot of only the screen, a shot that just happened coincidentally to isolated from all its background elements that might establish it as real.

It's not like we don't already know you'll fake evidence to show us.  We do know that happens.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "I've been watching Biden's Town Hall."

I locked on to it with the DVR, figured I might look at it later.  Watched Trump's appearance on another network in the same time frame instead.
I was not impressed with Trump.

I'll take a look at Biden though, wasn't sure I would, but now I think I will.

Petes said...

LOL. I was literally in the middle of posting that the pic had either shut y'all up or ya were off in the weeds tryin' to figger out how I could've faked it.

You tryin' to win some kind of idiot prize now? The timestamp on the EPG pic was 20 minutes before I posted, about as quick as I could snap it, upload it, and write a suitably scathing post befitting yer iggerance. Anyway, I don't believe that even you can be this stupid. Y'all's jes' trying to save face now. Ya actually think people are postin' screenshots of CNN on the net jes' so that I can download them for y'all? And by the way, the DST setting on my EPG ain't set, so actually that timestamp would have to be from a timezone 15 degrees west of here in the Atlantic. Maybe y'all think they're on the same boat that's layin' the secret undersea cable from CNN headquarters in Atlanta?

As for SES, that same Wikipedia page ya looked them up on tells ya that the Astra sats at 19.2E and 28.2E broadcasts 900 channels to 156 million homes. That's most of the population of Europe. And the 14 transponders on UK spot beam? ... that's someone who only does direct to home service in Germany? LOL. Y'all are plumbin' new depths of stupidity. And by the way, I don't have any satellite service from any company. CNN is broadcast free-to-air and those electromagnetic waves have a habit of jes' spreadin' out to anyone pointin' a dish in their direction. Though y'all could probably make yer tinfoil hat pick 'em up too.

Now please. This level of stupid is actually makin' my head hurt. So it really is ciao for now.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
So, you're not confident that you can find a picture to download from the internet that might approximate an actual tv in an actual room?  (At least, not soon.)  Well, I'm not surprised.

Petes said...

[Yappy]: "You back up from "your" TV screen there just a little bit and show us the edges of the screen and the little glowing light (wherever it is) and the manufacturer's logo, maybe even the legs of the screen and the stand upon which it stands."

LOL. Y'all have now gone blind as well as dumb.

Petes said...

Or maybe y'all's some kind of lunatic stalker. Wouldn't surprise me. Yer certainly sufficiently unhinged.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Jeffrey] What word is the host looking for?

Apple

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "Y'all have now gone blind as well as dumb."

No, but I did have to adjust the contrast and the gamma to get a clearer view.  So corrected, I do see the edge of the tv on the right and the wall behind, sure 'nuff.  But, that also exposed the timestamp.  00:00~01:00, 51 seconds into the broadcast.  You posted on this blog at 9:31 pm (EDT).

But, the time difference between Dublin time and EDT is five hours, not three.  So, who'd you get to send you the picture?

Petes said...

Lynnette, apologies, finally getting around to this:

[Petes]: "Wow. $3 to fix climate change. I can't see anybody arguing with that. ;-)"

[Lynnette]: "I can see people arguing with that and, yes, eventually whatever we do or don't do will cost us far more."

How much more? Have you tried putting a number on it? Serious question.


[Petes]: "So why aren't Americans or Europeans going hungry as a result of climate change?"
[Lynnette]: "We are only at the early stages of climate change."

So you think it will happen. When? Have you tried to put a timeframe on it? And whose projections are you using? Not trying to put you on the spot. But I've spent the last two years reading a lot about climate change -- and I mean the published academic papers because media hysteria is just so unreliable on this -- and I have never come across such a claim.

[Petes]: "African poverty is due in no small part to catastrophically bad management, and exploitative practices by foreign powers. It's not the climate that needs fixing."
[Lynnette]: "Africa has multiple problems. That's why it will probably suffer some of the most extreme consequences."

Here I don't disagree with you. Poorer nations are less resilient. Africa currently doesn't use enough energy to make it resilient. Energy truly is wealth. That's why every country in a position to do anything about it is building out their energy infrastructure. They are not interested in the "climate colonialism" of the west. And that's why CO2 levels are not going to go down.

[Lynnette]: "... we need to change how we do things. African nations have an opportunity to create new infrastructure that will help offset increased power usage."
Why should Africans cripple their own prospects to assuage western guilt? Renewable energy projects are capital intensive with most of the costs up front. They provide intermittent energy which is only useful when buffered by an existing mature energy infrastructure which they don't have.

What you are talking about is simply not going to happen, except to the extent it makes sense. Morocco, for example, is generating plenty of solar. And they are burning natural gas, not coal. But they need lots and lots more of it to become a thriving economy. Ironically, they are in the middle of a decision about whether to build an LNG terminal to process imported US fracked gas.

They say politics is the art of the possible. Energy provision is even more so. When you rule out all the options that cannot supply the world's increasing demand -- which includes wind and solar -- you are left with a lot more hydrocarbons about to be burned. If we want to reduce CO2 the climate activists better start talking about options that can work instead of utopian pipedreams.

Petes said...

[Yappy]: "00:00~01:00, 51 seconds into the broadcast."

I've actually stopped believing that even you are quite this uncomprehendingly stupid. Quit wastin' my time Yappy dog.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
That's the best ya got for the time zone not matching?

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Petes] . My requirement is simply to not have a TV tuner. Doesn't mean I'm planning to get my news from 8-chan or other Internet cesspits.

Well, I was starting to worry about QAnon and the like. Lately I've been running into people who I thought would know better.

[Lynnette]: "At least with the mainstream media you actually know who you are listening to."

[Petes] Editorial decisions in the MSM are not necessarily transparent. Everyone's got an agenda.

Yes, they do. But everyone's agendas are not made equal. I do believe that there are those who make a strong effort to present the facts as they happen, not as they wish them to be. I do not vilify all mainstream media.

[Petes] But most of what is peddled as "news" on the 24-hour channels is not actually news. If you look critically at it, the large majority is journalists incestuously talking to each other, rehashing and recycling each other's talking points. The fact is, there isn't enough news to fill 24 hours. But news junkies watch it anyway.

Oh, of course there is a huge amount of "filler" when you are on 24 hours. You have just described Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon. Their content may have been fresh right after it became apparent how bad Trump was, but now it is becoming repetitious. And, what's more, they know that. However, that doesn't make them wrong in their analysis.

[Petes] In the thirty years that I've been watching American news output I've always considered it pretty trashy, with a showmanship quality that other countries just don't do. But I reckon it has descended to new lows in recent years and CNN is one of the leaders in the race to the bottom.

I will not speculate on why you watched something that you considered trashy for thirty years, but I suppose we all have our quirks. Anyway, most people don't watch news 24/7. If Americans tune in to a half hour around dinner or before bed that is probably all they see. And those news shows are tighter in their content, since they have so little time. The drawback to them is that they have so little time that doing an in depth story is rather difficult.

I still think CNN is better than the other cable news networks. But you have to be selective in what you watch.

[Petes] I still think the polarisation of society has a lot to do with the new online media, but the good ole' MSM is certainly playing its part.

I agree that the internet is playing a huge role in sowing the divisions we see. It has given everyone the opportunity to spread whatever nonsense they want at lightening speed. But not only that, it is something people pay attention to in a way they don't regular media, either TV or print. Just about everyone has a phone that connects to the internet. And they are on them a lot, checking social media accounts or emails. If you don't have critical thinking skills anything and everything becomes reality.

Petes said...

No, the best I got is that yore 51 seconds is 51 minutes, and I've got my DST flag switched off. That's yore 5 hours right there. But I ain't buyin' that y'all are this stupid. Ya couldn't possibly read that timestamp as ya did, in good faith. So run along now, Yappy. There must be a fire hydrant or a lamppost somewhere needin' yore attention.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Lee] I was not impressed with Trump.

I switched over to that during a couple of commercials and had the same impression. The man can't put together a substantive answer for love nor money. Everything is all wonderful and he's always done such a perfect job and has a plan, which he never will divulge.

I stopped switching over. Biden was a relief.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Actually "no" the "dst" timeflag would account for only one hour, not two.  I'll take the correction on the 51 minutes; I don't take cable and I've never had cause to pay attention to their prevailing standards, so I'll go along with that much.

But, since you're not going to get prompted into telling the truth, I'll drop the prompting and just tell the truth for you.

   
      "Here's a pic I snapped just now, of CNN…"
      Petes @ Thu Oct 15, 09:10 pm ↑↑

That's a lie.  That's not a pic of CNN; you don't get CNN.  That's a picture of a different channel making reference to a CNN show on a cable channel that you don't get anymore.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

Petes I see you slipped in there with a climate post. I'll have to look at that later. It's late and that may take some research to answer...:)

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "Well, I was starting to worry about QAnon and the like. Lately I've been running into people who I thought would know better."

Nothing surprises me. I ran across QAnon quite early on, from talking to conspiracy nuts and trying to dissuade them. But it is only the extreme version of a lack of critical thinking that seems to be quite pervasive, including -- as you say -- among people you would have expected to know better. I find it intriguing and scary.

[Lynnette]: "But everyone's agendas are not made equal. I do believe that there are those who make a strong effort to present the facts as they happen, not as they wish them to be. I do not vilify all mainstream media."

Nor do I. CNN just isn't on my non-vilification list. It's pure trash.

[Lynnette]: "I will not speculate on why you watched something that you considered trashy for thirty years, but I suppose we all have our quirks."

LOL. When you're stuck in a US hotel bedroom, what else you gonna watch?

[Lynnette]: "I agree that the internet is playing a huge role in sowing the divisions we see... If you don't have critical thinking skills anything and everything becomes reality."

Sadly true. I've been making a case study of Flat Earthers. Yes, they really exist, in considerable numbers. I think they are illustrative. At the top of the pile you have a small number of convincing snakeoil salesman who are actually making a living out of the scam. (When I say "convincing" I mean they are smooth talkers, not that they would stand up to a millisecond of scientific scrutiny). Then there is a second tier of people who seem to be titillated by remixing other people's content into their own videos. They're just out for attention.

Finally, at the bottom there are the gullible majority, who are easily convinced that space is fake, NASA is a government hoax (they don't seem to allow that there are countries that are not the US, but then by definition they are geographically challenged), Tycho Brahe was murdered in a medieval plot when he discovered the sky was a glass snow globe, all of the millions of modern scientists are part of a global conspiracy ... and so on. Apart from gullibility, these people have to be getting something out of it. I believe that is a sense of community, of belonging to a brave little group that is standing up against tyrannical oppression.

That, I think is what unites all the conspiracy nuts, whether Flat Earthers, QAnon disciples, 9/11 Truthers, and so on.

Petes said...

And speaking of conspiracy nuts ...

[Yappy the Dog]: "That's a picture of a different channel making reference to a CNN show on a cable channel that you don't get anymore."

Even though the EPG tells you it's the CNN HD channel on the Astra sat. LOL.

I'll grant you, your particular conspiracy mania is quite unique. Here you sit, all day every day, spewing out yer nuttery. You can't be on the attention seeking spectrum, as you've an audience of approximately one. And yore fixations are different to most. But conspiracy nut you most certainly are, with strong evidence of paranoid delusions.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "Even though the EPG tells you it's the CNN HD channel
      on the Astra sat. LOL."


It doesn't tell us that's a pic of the actual CNN channel playing on your tv at your house in Ireland.

This time zone calculator tells us that 00:51 (am) Irish Standard Time (assuming that's 51 minutes as you say and not 51 seconds) converts to 7:51 pm EDT, and yet you posted at 9:31 pm EDT (claiming a 20 minute lag between the taking of the picture and the posting thereof.)

You can't make that time lag go away simply by blustering.  The evidence of fakery isn't in the stuff you thought you could use to create the fake, but in the things you didn't manage to get conformed--i.e. the timestamp you neglected to fix.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
N.B.  (My sister's got cable.  I have seen promos of stuff she could watch if she'd just pay a little more per month.  Not impressed.)

Petes said...

[Yappy]: "Irish Standard Time"

Try again Yappy. My TV's on GMT, not IST. Couldn't y'all make yer conspiracy a bit more "grand"? Flat Earthers worry about fake photos of the Earth from space. Y'all are obsessing about a snaphot of a telly! Y'all's conspiracy is in the runnin' for most stupid and most borin'. If this is what passes for entertainment in Indiana y'all prolly need to get out more.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Wasting your time Petes; I figured it out.  Just like I eventually tracked down the real source of that Antifa shot you faked as from Charlottesville.  It was obviously a fake, but now I know its "provenance".

You grabbed a screenshot of CNNNI (CNN International) broadcasting out of London, one that happened to be promoting CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" at the time.

Wiki say:

      "CNN International (CNNI, on-air branding simply as CNN)
      is an international television channel that is operated by CNN.
      CNN International carries news-related programming
      worldwide; it cooperates with parent network CNN's national
      and international news bureaus. Unlike its sister channel,
      CNN, a North American only subscription service which is
      mostly broadcast from CNN studios in New York City and
      Atlanta, CNN International is carried on a variety of TV
      platforms across the world, and mostly broadcast from studios
      outside the US, in London, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Abu
      Dhabi. In some countries, it is available as a free-to-air
      network. The service is aimed at the overseas market, similar
      to BBC World News, France 24, DW, RT, CGTN, NHK World
      or Al Jazeera English."


Knew you were defending a fake; you've got tells.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
(Possible, by the way, that you never got CNN at your home in Ireland.)

And, I'm down for the night.

Petes said...

Yappy, you truly are a frickin' dolt.

[Yappy]: "one that happened to be promoting CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" at the time."

Uh, the EPG showed you it was an hour long. It was the live Anderson Cooper 360 that aired at 8pm EDT, covering Trump's Miami town hall (or should I say, whinin' like a pack of old men about it). Now you are officially being a bore, so how can I put it politely? Go lick yer balls elsewhere like a good Yappy dog.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "You can't be on the attention seeking spectrum…"

Well, now, you got that much right (and you so seldom get those sorts of things right).  I'm not motivated by a desire for attention.  And I see no reason to coöperate with your repeated attempts to make me the center of attention or the subject of the discussion.  (Lee C. @ Sun Aug 30, 09:05 am.  But, history shows that your repeated failures on that front are not likely to ever educate you or dissuade you.
Still, I can shrug it off with considerably less effort than you devote to it.   So your repeated failure to learn is your problem more than mine.
                           ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
      "…the EPG showed you it was an hour long…"

"It" being Anderson Cooper's show as I understand your meaning; so understood, yes "it" showed there as an hour long.  The EPG also showed that "Cuomo Prime Time" was an hour long.  But it couldn't possibly have been showing both of them at once, and quite possibly wasn't showing either of them just then--perhaps just an advert for the real CNN channel, first Cooper, then Cuomo.  Not that any of this matters.  (Or could be they're airing some mainline CNN stuff on CNNI just now; there's probably a lot of interest in Europe these days about what's gonna happen in Washington D.C in the next few days.  Also doesn't matter if the facts happen to match the latter instead of the former.  Just not real important, no matter that you work so hard to make it seem so.)

The important part is, you were lying again, and now we've identified the lie, found it--it wasn't CNN although it looks like CNN from a quick still pic pulled from the on-air CNNI.
Quoting again from the Wiki page…

      "(CNNI, on-air branding simply as CNN)"

So:  You found a not-CNN that you thought you could sell as a "pic of CNN" (close enough that you thought you could get away with it).  You lied again, and you faked your evidence again.
And now you're caught, again.

And it's so damn unimportant an issue that you lied about as to be remarkable that you'd bother to create the lie and fake the evidence, it doesn't really seem worth the effort or the risk of getting caught.
At least, doesn't seem to me like it should be worth it, but obviously it's worth it to you. 
So, I do think it's important that certain folk know all that and consider that and examine your arguments, and your evidence, carefully, in light of that knowledge, especially your evidence.  You lie with abandon nowadays (and with unconcealed malice), and they should remember that.
And your "evidence" especially needs to be examined closely; 'cause you will happily fake evidence.

And I think that about covers it.

(I was up way too late and might take a nap after breakfast.  So, Petes can maybe rant unrestrained for awhile now.)

Petes said...

[Yappy Licks His Balls]: "And it's so damn unimportant an issue that you lied about as to be remarkable that you'd bother to create the lie and fake the evidence, it doesn't really seem worth the effort or the risk of getting caught."

LOL. Ya know, that's the essential point that most crackpot conspiracy theorists miss. Why? Why would anyone go to those lengths to pretend the Earth ain't flat, the towers weren't brought down by nukes, and the Preznit isn't saving the world from cheese-eating pedophiles. Most of the conspiracy theorists are just too dim to wonder. Y'all on the other hand have asked the question and still come to the crackpot conclusion. Don't know if it makes ya stupider than the rest of 'em, but certainly more obsessive. And given it's all about a television set ... well that probably makes ya the most uninteresting stupid obsessive I've encountered. Ciao.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Nap's over.  So, there it is.  You've got the dual tuners, makes it almost certainly a British market ready set.  And CNN International broadcasts out of London, "on-air branding simply as CNN" another easy fake for you.

      "…the essential point…. Why"

That would be an invitation to think about you.  That would surely the most uninteresting topic I could be dragged into today.  Hardly an essential point at all.  Let's just say that it seems you lie when you think you can for largely the same reason Trump does it.  Because you think you can.

     

Petes said...

LOL.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...


      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Moving along now…

      "A recent Morning Consult poll found that 38 percent of
      Republicans believe that at least parts of the QAnon con-
      spiracy are true
[and]…a Pew Research survey last month
      found that 41 percent of Republicans believed that QAnon
      was 'somewhat' or 'very good' for the country."

      Politico

Petes said...

At least they only believe CNN is fake news. Can't imagine many of them share Yappy's belief that it's a fake channel. LOL.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
CNN International is a real channel, broadcasting out of London studios.  (And flying the flag of the real CNN--no on-screen indicators of its offshoot "international" status.)

You ain't that stupid you can't figure that out.

Why pretend to be that stupid?

Petes said...

Yap yap.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
That's all ya got?

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Well, I got a chance to watch Biden's performance from last night.  (And to re-watch Trump's performance.)
Clearly advantage Biden.  All he really had to do to get the advantage was successfully hold center stage for 90 minutes without a glitch, throwing shade once again on Trump's efforts to portray him as senile.  And he got that much done, lookin' good, made it look easy.  Granted that was a low bar, but Trump set the bar there, and so there it is.

I think I'll lay odds on Trump finding a reason for skipping the next debate.  I can see him settling in on the debate commission insisting on a kill switch for his microphone this time as his reason for skipping.  Maybe something else, but that'd be an easy one for him; his "base" would accept it.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Petes] How much more? Have you tried putting a number on it? Serious question.

No, I have not personally tried to put a number on it. Nor have I tried to put a number on the cost of doing nothing. I believe that each geographic area will need to do what works best for them. In Minnesota's case we have turned to wind for some of our alternative sources of energy. From what I have read a 2 MW commercial windmill costs between $3 - $4 million installed. It will supposedly pay for itself in 5 - 8 months as its fuel is free. Obviously one windmill won't do it, you will need a windfarm to generate enough electricity for large amounts of demand. Extrapolate that across the whole country and the costs will be massive.

Here is some info on Minnesota's wind generation capacity and cost.

[Petes]: "So why aren't Americans or Europeans going hungry as a result of climate change?"
[Lynnette]: "We are only at the early stages of climate change."

[Petes] So you think it will happen. When? Have you tried to put a timeframe on it? And whose projections are you using? Not trying to put you on the spot. But I've spent the last two years reading a lot about climate change -- and I mean the published academic papers because media hysteria is just so unreliable on this -- and I have never come across such a claim.

I doubt anyone would talk about possible food shortages here in the States. That only happens elsewhere. Do I think that could really happen? I hope not. But on the other hand we have seen what happens when only part of our supply lines are interrupted. It wasn't just toilet paper that went missing. And that was due to a pandemic. What happens if our agriculture capacity is seriously impacted by a changing climate? I look out at my garden and watch the crazy weather we are having and wonder. It snowed today. But I made sure that I picked my peppers and brussels sprouts this week, just in case we have cold weather that lingers. My peppers are now resting comfortably on my window sill in hopes that they will turn red. Alongside my tomatoes.

When do I think we will reach a tipping point where we cannot go back? That our climate is forever changed, and not for the good? I don't know. I have read some people who thought we wouldn't see anything that extreme until 2050. But there are things such as more ice melting in the arctic that make me wonder if things are speeding up. But I still think it depends on us. I have to believe that we have an impact on our climate, because then we might be able to stop its slide into a world where it will be difficult for us to live.

Continued...

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Petes] Energy truly is wealth. That's why every country in a position to do anything about it is building out their energy infrastructure. They are not interested in the "climate colonialism" of the west. And that's why CO2 levels are not going to go down.

Then they have learned nothing from our mistakes.

[Petes] What you are talking about is simply not going to happen, except to the extent it makes sense. Morocco, for example, is generating plenty of solar. And they are burning natural gas, not coal. But they need lots and lots more of it to become a thriving economy. Ironically, they are in the middle of a decision about whether to build an LNG terminal to process imported US fracked gas.

Believe me I do understand the dilemma. Everybody dreams for a better life. They have that right. But I also suspect that there will be areas of the world that will grow to be uninhabitable due to such things as drought or flooding. At that point in time the worry about generating enough energy with whatever resources are at hand will be the lesser of their problems.

[Petes] If we want to reduce CO2 the climate activists better start talking about options that can work instead of utopian pipedreams.

I totally agree.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lynnette In Minnesota said...

Forgot this the other night:

[Jeffrey] I'll guess that Lynnette was raised as a Lutheran.

Lynnette, am I right?


Nope, sorry. Catholic.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "…there will be areas of the world that will grow to be unin-
      habitable due to such things as drought or flooding."


Or scorching heat.  Qatar is air-conditioning open air stadia this year for the World Cup Championships.  That can't go on forever.  And I think it's Abu Dhabi that's now air conditioning public streets (shopping districts) to keep the citizens coming to the stores.  That can't go on forever either.
And, as the saw says, "If something can't go on forever then it will stop."

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "Biden’s town hall on ABC averaged 13.9 million viewers,
      compared to just over 13 million for Trump’s NBC town hall on
      television. The higher figure for Biden’s event is particularly
      surprising given that he appeared just on one network,
      compared to Trump, whose town hall was simulcast on
      MSNBC and CNBC."
      WashingtonPost
(with minor caveats)

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Petes] Nothing surprises me. I ran across QAnon quite early on, from talking to conspiracy nuts and trying to dissuade them. But it is only the extreme version of a lack of critical thinking that seems to be quite pervasive, including -- as you say -- among people you would have expected to know better. I find it intriguing and scary.

I have tried a couple times to talk to people who believe in conspiracy theories and have found it just about impossible to get them to look at other views. Yes, it is rather scary, especially as it has become part of our highest office.

[Petes] CNN just isn't on my non-vilification list. It's pure trash.

I cannot agree with you on CNN. While they are not perfect I think they are doing their job, part of which is to watch and question those who hold our elected offices. I like Fareed Zakaria and Anderson Cooper the best.

I am curious to know what you see there that you label trash? Some shows may showcase the anchor's views, yes, but opinion pieces have always been included in other media outlets. And as we both agree 24 hours is a lot of time to fill.

[Pets] I've been making a case study of Flat Earthers. Yes, they really exist, in considerable numbers. I think they are illustrative. At the top of the pile you have a small number of convincing snakeoil salesman who are actually making a living out of the scam...Finally, at the bottom there are the gullible majority,... Apart from gullibility, these people have to be getting something out of it. I believe that is a sense of community, of belonging to a brave little group that is standing up against tyrannical oppression.

That, I think is what unites all the conspiracy nuts, whether Flat Earthers, QAnon disciples, 9/11 Truthers, and so on.


I believe you are correct. What you describe there fits perfectly for those who follow Trump unquestioningly as well. Trump is a talented con man who has roped in the gullible during times of extreme stress.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lynnette In Minnesota said...

I keep finding typos..


[Lee] Clearly advantage Biden. All he really had to do to get the advantage was successfully hold center stage for 90 minutes without a glitch, throwing shade once again on Trump's efforts to portray him as senile.

He also reminded us of what normal looks like. It was nice to visit there again.

Yes, I thought he looked good. He also stayed and chatted with the audience after the town hall. It was nice to see someone running for public office giving them some attention and instead of usurping it all for himself.


[Lee] I can see him settling in on the debate commission insisting on a kill switch for his microphone this time as his reason for skipping.

lol! That's one thing Trump can't stand, to be silenced.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

Qatar is air-conditioning open air stadia this year for the World Cup Championships. That can't go on forever. And I think it's Abu Dhabi that's now air conditioning public streets (shopping districts) to keep the citizens coming to the stores.

Crazy.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Not to denigrate the notion of "community" among the crazies, there is an innate human tendency to recognize patterns.  This is driven by evolutionary forces.  The tendency is so strong that people will often manage to recognize patterns that don't actually exist.
Once they've noticed (or imagined) a pattern there's a corresponding urge to notice, or imagine, an explanation.  (Conspiracies are easy to imagine (if sometimes a lot to swallow); the truth can be much harder; and too many people find "don't know" to be an unacceptable situation.)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
I remembered that "World" Channel (an affiliate of some sort with America's PBS network) has a six-part series on "Conspiracy Theories:  Pulling the Thread".
It's loaded on YouTube, by subscription.  (I didn't subscribe.  I don't actually know what that would entail--probably a modest fee and more personal data than I want to give them.)

Maybe some time in the future it'll get released to general PBS use, but it seems to be restricted to one of their YouTube channels at present.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
It occurs to me that the Republicans' sweeping voter suppression efforts of late are likely to prove counterproductive to them in the very near future.
Currently they have a "high engagement" cadre of voters in the over 60 crowd.  These folks learned to vote back when it actually was widely considered to be a civic duty.  Plus they're angry about the demographic and social changes taking place in the country, and anger drives votes.  But they're also old and they're "quitting" voting at high rates on account of being increasingly dead.

Also, Republicans have been registering new voters at higher rates than the Democrats have here of late.  Most of these new voters are hard-core right-wingers who wouldn't vote before because neither Mussolini nor Hitler were on the ballot.  They have begun to accept Trump as an adequate stand-in (this is a large part of the increase in the Trumpkin "base" by 5% over the four years to Trump's presidency), and they're signing up to vote Republican.  But, when Trump loses, and the revolution don't happen (or they think it is happening and get themselves crushed trying to join in, whichever it proves to be), they're going to go back oiling their assault rifles and being apathetic about voting.

So, "voting Republican" is likely to fall off among the high intensity crowd in the next few voting cycles, which will leave them facing the voting restrictions they've promulgated the last few cycles with a remaining base of low intensity voters, and having some trouble getting "their" voters to fight their way through the impediments they've erected to actually cast a vote.

All too often what goes around comes back around.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
TheAtlantic points out that the Trumpkins will dominate in the post Trump Republican party (probably about 65%).  And they'll be really, really pissed about having their project to overwhelm democratic self-government in America interrupted.
And Trump will still be there lead the chants, and FoxNews will still be there to supply the unifying propaganda voice.

It'll be over for Trump, but the Trumpkins have become the real force that the "Tea-Party" Republicans never could manage to be (mostly because the Trumpkins have embraced the white supremacists without flinching and have largely abandoned any pretense at economic conservatism).
We may be looking at the creation of America's first openly fascist major political party out of the remnants of what used to be the Republican Party.

(Not long; in fact, quite short by Atlantic standards.)

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

I have continued an exchange with the person I mentioned earlier who believes in QAnon. It is hard to get him to move beyond all media being left wing mouthpieces that hate Trump, who is seen as fighting corruption.

*sigh*

I also noticed one of those tricked out Trump pick up trucks with large Trump signs and the American flag driving around the other day.

*deeper sigh*

Two weeks to go.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

It snowed pretty much all day today. Luckily it melted as the ground is still relatively warm. But they are predicting snow for tomorrow too.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

   
      "Trump…is seen as fighting corruption."

Best way to deal with that is to nod and smile, maybe give 'im a noncommital, "I see" type response, and then remember to laugh, later, after he's gone.
Remembering to laugh later helps you reset your mind to normal and not be subject to a vague but lingering disquiet.

      "I also noticed one of those tricked out Trump pick up trucks…"

However, Trump's still losing Minnesota (by 6.6 percentage points) according to the RCP average of polls.  Bigger truck don't give 'im more votes.

Laugh, breath, relax.  Save your energy for the post-election uprising of the Trumpkins.  That's where things may get dicey.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
The Trump campaign has issued a statement to the effect that Trump will participate in Thursday's debate in spite of the new rule cutting off the candidates' mic's during the initial 2 minute "answer" to the moderator's questions.  I had guessed Trump wouldn't participate under that condition (Lee C. @ Fri Oct 16, 02:54 pm ↑↑), but the Trump campaign has now said otherwise.

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "Crazy."

Of course they're going to air condition the stadiums. The average daily high temperature in Qatar is above 40°C for the entire summer. The only crazy thing is that they were awarded the soccer world cup in a country that everybody knew was completely, utterly unsuitable and said so at the time. It's nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with corruption, which even the disgraced ex-president of FIFA admitted.

Petes said...

[Yappy]: "We may be looking at the creation of America's first openly fascist major political party out of the remnants of what used to be the Republican Party."

You've been predicting the demise of the Republican party in your little hate-filled diatribes since long before Trump got elected.

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "I have continued an exchange with the person I mentioned earlier who believes in QAnon. It is hard to get him to move beyond all media being left wing mouthpieces that hate Trump, who is seen as fighting corruption."

“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” -- Thomas Paine.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "You've been predicting the demise of the Republican party…
      since long before Trump got elected."


No, I've been saying that they were on track to either suffer a major schism or to wither into a regional party unable to win national elections (we have only the one national elected office).  As it turns out the de facto demise of the Republican Party has already occurred first.  (It's now Trump's Party.)  And whether it will suffer a subsequent schism leaving the bolshevik remnant as the Trumpkin fascist party (perhaps continuing to bear the "Republican" name, perhaps not) or simply wither further into America's first openly fascist party under a new name is yet to be determined.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Perhaps rather than simply saying "No" to start that explanation, I should have said that you're oversimplifying what I did say.

Let's just treat it as if I said it the long way the first time, instead of clipping the answer short like I did.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
They moving the World Cup in Qatar to summer are they?  When did they decide to do that?

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
CBS' morning news says Ireland is instituting a wide ranging lockdown again, expected to last six weeks.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Lee] Laugh, breath, relax. Save your energy for the post-election uprising of the Trumpkins. That's where things may get dicey.

Yes, I have been focusing on yard work, trying to get ahead of the snow which is now coming down again!

Oddly I'm kind of sorry I voted early. I would be interested to see if there was anything out of the ordinary going on at my polling place on election day.

Although I suspect it will be after the counting is done that we may see some unusual activity.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Lee] I had guessed Trump wouldn't participate under that condition (Lee C. @ Fri Oct 16, 02:54 pm ↑↑), but the Trump campaign has now said otherwise.

Someone did point out that even though the microphone is shut off the other debater can still hear if his opponent is talking over him. That can still be distracting for the person speaking. My guess is that nothing will really shut up Trump.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Petes] Of course they're going to air condition the stadiums.

I was reacting more to the air conditioning of the streets. But I am sure my father would have thought air conditioning an open air stadium is also crazy. I well remember him telling me when I was a kid to shut the door we don't want to cool down the outdoors. The same worked for heating. lol!

But I suppose if they have the fuel to waste...

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” -- Thomas Paine.

*sigh*

I had to try. But I do get that those who are sucked into what is basically a cult are difficult to reach.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

CBS' morning news says Ireland is instituting a wide ranging lockdown again

I thought I heard that in passing!

It does appear that countries who seemed to have beaten back the virus during the first lockdown are now finding themselves back in the soup. Of course, the US never did leave the soup. We just sloshed it around some.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "I would be interested to see if there was anything out of
      the ordinary going on at my polling place on election day."


I had the same reaction.  In my case, I'd have to pass by my polling place to get to town.  I'll probably go to town for something.

Petes said...

[Yappy]: "They moving the World Cup in Qatar to summer are they? When did they decide to do that?"

Other way round. The World Cup is always held in the summer off-season, has been for its entire 90 year history. Qatar bid for the tournament on that basis eleven years ago, and won it. They only rescheduled it for winter five years ago after the shitstorm that ensued (and only a few months before FIFA finally rid itself of its chronically bent president). Stupidest decision ever. That said, the daily highs get down to under 30 C by November. And Qatar said the stadium cooling would be solar powered, an option which they also only bolted on after the shitstorm. (And it's not strictly true -- the air con will be grid-powered, with solar panels exporting power to the grid during daytime to achieve overall carbon neutrality ... allegedly. I'm inclined to think it's sleight-of-hand greenwashing).

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
So, the World Cup is still scheduled for winter--and yet you were trying to feed us the summer temperatures in Qatar as the basis for your initial argument.

Why don't you just learn to go with the truth the first time?  Before you get caught stretching your story.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Post Script:  The 2016 World Cup was held in December 2016.
The 2012 World Cup was held in December 2012
The 2008 World Cup was held in December 2008.

And now we're back well past that supposed "shitstorm" of "five years ago".  (Petes @ Tue Oct 20, 07:34 pm ↑↑)  And past the 11 year ago date at which time Petes tells us Qatar bid on the games thinking they were in summer.
They didn't think they were in summer.

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "...trying to get ahead of the snow which is now coming down again!"

Sounds like you need some global warming! ;-)

Only joking. I do realise that warming can cause a meandering jet stream which allows more frequent breakouts of Arctic air. We've got it too. Not snow, of course -- that would be unheard of. But I've noticed that the phase of the meander in the jetstream is often the same in Minnesota as it is here. When I looked it up it made sense: the meanders have a typical scale of 6000 km (the boundary between so-called short and long Rossby waves). Pretty much exactly the distance between Ireland and Minnesota. So we've had an unseasonably cold October, daytime highs down around 12 C and nighttime lows well down into single digits. Airflow has been constantly from the north. My decision to plant grass at the end of September wasn't so great. It just about germinated, but has no hope of outcompeting the weeds, which seem immune to cold. Reckon I'll be digging it all up again in Spring.

Petes said...

[Yappy]: "The 2016 World Cup was held in December 2016... yap yap ... 2012 ... yap ... 2008."

Y'all are talkin' about the FIFA Club World Cup. I am talking about the FIFA World Cup, more generally known around the world (outside the US) as "the world cup". Has never before been held outside of June and July afaik. And yes, Qatar bid for them in 2009 on that basis with the change to winter announced only in 2015, years after they became 2022 hosts.

[Yappy]: "They didn't think they were in summer.

Yawn. Go chase a different car. Ain't in the mood for entertainin' yer orneriness.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "Y'all are talkin' about the FIFA Club World Cup. I am talking
      about the FIFA World Cup."


I stand corrected.  But, your history ain't conducive to taking you at your word.  So, ya gotta expect some skepticism, and having your claims and your evidence examined.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
And, just for the record.  The meanders in the Jet Steam (Rossby Waves) are defined as long (6,000 to 8,000 kilometers) or short (less than 6,000 kilometers). At 6,000 kilometers distance it's running at the very edge of the available wavelength to get Ireland and Minnesota at the same point on the waveform.  It's coincidence entirely if the weather between the two matches up when the waveform matches, and, in fact, it runs on the outside edge of possible that the waveform will actually match at any point in time--that's pushing the lowside boundary of the Rossby Wave length to get that to work out.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
forgot…  link

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "It does appear that countries who seemed to have beaten back the virus during the first lockdown are now finding themselves back in the soup. Of course, the US never did leave the soup. We just sloshed it around some."

Yep, we are most definitely back in the soup. Infection rates and hospitalisations are climbing. Deaths back up to a dozen a day, well short of the 50-ish back in April, but definitely on the wrong trajectory. We also have a new phenomenon of small but angry public demonstrations again lockdowns and mask-wearing. I guess you could call them Trump supporters, bizarre as that may seem -- fairly dimwitted right wingers who are likely to be also spouting QAnon memes.

Speaking of which ...

[Lynnette]: "I would be interested to see if there was anything out of the ordinary going on at my polling place on election day."

I take it you're expecting possible trouble from your own Trump fans. I still find that a little odd, given that your looting and burning over the summer has been almost exclusively the domain of the left wing. I also expect that if Trump were to win the election the violent backlash would be far more extreme than anything you will see when he loses. Of course, my theory is unlikely to be tested. ;-)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
And, also for the record, you still haven't addressed the central question of why "you were trying to feed us the summer temperatures in Qatar as the basis for your initial argument."  (Lee C. @ Tue Oct 20, 07:41:00 pm ↑↑)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "…that your looting and burning over the summer has been
      almost exclusively the domain of the left wing."


That's not exactly true.  The daytime protests were almost exclusively populated from center-left type citizens.  (Killing blacks isn't considered a rational reason to protest by most of the political right.)  The nighttime looting and burning seem to have been about equally distributed between the radical activists on the two extremes (where they actually caught the people involved)

Petes said...

According to a report produced by the US Crisis Project at Princeton University, 93% of 10,600 racial justice protests the examined were peaceful. That means over 700 weren't. As you noted, the people involved were probably not Trump voters.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
The local protest (there was one, surprised me, but it happened) became "not peaceful" with the sun still up, when a presumable Trump supporter accelerated his pickup truck into the crowd.  (They were quick on their feet; couple got brushed and bruised, but nobody got run over.)  The local prosecutor actually made a public announcement after a couple of days telling the public that he did not want them to keep calling his office with the name of the driver and "bothering" them with more evidence.  (There was cell phone video got shown on local tv--several people recognized the truck and the drive.)  No charges were ever filed.

I'll put the local protest down as "not peaceful" on account of right-wingers rather than otherwise.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "As you noted, the people involved were probably
      not Trump voters."


You misstated me again.  I said that "The daytime protests were almost exclusively populated from center-left type citizens."  I did not say that they were the ones who initiated, or even participated in, the violence, on those occasions when it did occur.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...


According to "US Crisis Project at Princeton University, 93% of 10,600 racial justice protests the examined were peaceful." (Petes @ Tue Oct 20, 09:24 pm ↑↑)
Most of that 7% turned out to be police greeting the protests with the use of force (that would 5% of the protests total, most of that 7% you wanted to make note of--you forgot to make note of who was being "not peaceful").  CNN

      "More than 5% of protests linked to the Black Lives Matter
      movement were met with force by authorities…."

      ibid.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

   
      "While these data present only a snapshot of demon-
      stration activity and political violence in America, the
      trendlines are clear: demonstrations have erupted en masse
      around the country, and they are increasingly met with
      violence by state actors, non-state actors, and counter-
      demonstrators alike."
      U.S. Crisis Monitor

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Could be those "state actors, non-state actors, and counter-demonstrators alike" be comin' back out, eager for more violence, when Trump loses in November.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
By the way, the link to that U.S. Crisis Project Study that Petes has repeatedly misrepresented on these pages is here.  It's 23 pages long.
And it's a really bad idea to let Petes read it for you and then tell you what he wants you to believe it says.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
CBS Morning News just said that there's been an additional 100,000 "excess deaths" over the expected average, over and above, on top of the additional 220,000 deaths from the coronavirus, just this year.

Kinda shoots a hole in Marcus' repeated arguments that other causes of death are being counted as covid-19 deaths.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

   
      "Opinion polls and early voting returns indicate that millions
      of Americans who typically don’t participate in elections are
      coming off the sidelines this year and backing the Democrat
     
[Joe Biden] by wide margins."
      Reuters

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
I wonder how our newest Supreme Trumpkin's gonna learn to live with this one.
 
      "ROME — In a new documentary, Pope Francis has called for
      the creation of civil union laws for same-sex couples, in
      remarks that break from the Catholic Church’s official
      teaching and mark his clearest support to date for the issue.
      In the documentary, according to the Catholic News Agency,
      Francis says same-sex couples should be “legally covered.”" 
      WashingtonPost


There were new revelations early this week that she'd sat on the Board of a private school system which prohibited gay teachers (and other gay employees) as well as refusing to accept the children of gay couples.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "I also expect that if Trump were to win the election the
      violent backlash would be far more extreme than anything
      you will see when he loses."

      Petes @ Tue Oct 20, 08:44 pm ↑↑
                           ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
      "Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes."
      R.A. Heinlein -- The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Petes' insistence that blame for America's recent violence be ascribed to the "the left", and, specifically, to the BLM protesters is merely another expression of that human trait noticed by Heinlein in the quote.  Lacking any other decent and presentable explanation for why he has aligned himself the current American fascist movement, he now has to pretend that "the left" is at least as bad and probably worse.
This is why he's built up the argument that the police violence that's greeted some (but only a fairly small percentage) of the BLM protests must be ascribed to "the left" instead to the police who initiated the violence.

(Of course, Petes isn't important, but the motivated reasoning we get from him is important.  We'll be seeing much more of it after November the 3rd.)

Petes said...

Yappy gonna yap.

[Yappy]: "And it's a really bad idea to let Petes read it for you and then tell you what he wants you to believe it says."

Still treatin' yer fellow contributors as morons I see.

[Yappy]: "Pope Francis has called for the creation of civil union laws for same-sex couples"

Francis: "What we have to create is a civil union law". The pope doesn't make civil law. Don't know if you know that. Don't know if he knows it either.

[Yappy]: "Lacking any other decent and presentable explanation for why he has aligned himself the current American fascist movement..."

I don't know what "the current American fascist movement" is. I do know all fascists are execrable gits. I guessin' that's why you fantasise about them and me.

[Yappy]: "police violence ... must be ascribed to "the left" instead to the police who initiated the violence."

Yeah, those violent police tossing Molotov cocktails and smashin' up stores. LOL.


Yap on.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Notice what he chose not to address.

      "Most of that 7% turned out to be police greeting the protests
      with the use of force…
                                    ***
      "More than 5% of protests linked to the Black Lives Matter
      movement were met with force by authorities…."

      Lee C. @ Tue Oct 20, 09:52 pm ↑↑

Petes got not a word in response to that.

The real question going forward is whether he'll just wait a week or so and then try again to sell that 7% fake.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "I don't know what 'the current American fascist movement' is."

Not my problem.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Petes] Not snow, of course -- that would be unheard of.

Oh, don't I wish! I had 6 inches of the white stuff on my deck last night. It's too early for that! I haven't even gotten my carrots dug yet. And I still have leaves to pick up. Some of that has melted, but they are predicting snow tomorrow too. I am hoping for a warm up in the first two weeks of November. But I still remember the Halloween blizzard. The snow came...and stayed.

Petes said...


[Yappy]: "Not my problem."

Nor mine. Ain't a problem, then.

[Yappy]: "Most of that 7% turned out to be police greeting the protests with the use of force..."

That's what the police do with rioters. 'S what they're paid for. It's why the rioters want to defund them.

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "I haven't even gotten my carrots dug yet."

Well they are winter vegetables ;-)

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "'S what they're paid for."

Ah, so, today's plan is to try to present that 7% of protests which were "not peaceful" as a (mostly--5%) good thing, and only 2% a bad thing.  Not much of a plan in my opinion.

I s'pose we'll havta wait a bit to see if that's the second version he's gonna go with or if he's just gonna hope we forget how that worked out, and then try to sell that 7% thing again.

But, I can wait; I'm patient.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

[Lynnette]: "I would be interested to see if there was anything out of the ordinary going on at my polling place on election day."

[Petes] "I take it you're expecting possible trouble from your own Trump fans."

I am more curious about the company that was advertising for former Special Ops soldiers to act as security at Minnesota polling places, businesses and private residences during the election and after. This is not in accordance with the laws in Minnesota and this company is being asked for an explanation and who has hired them.

Their explanation is that they are going to prevent any violence by antifa. There has been no threat by antifa to interfere in our election. The only threat has been by Trump.

Petes said...

[Lynnette]: "I am more curious about the company that was advertising for former Special Ops soldiers to act as security at Minnesota polling places"

While I think people are entitled to be observers in the electoral process, I agree with you that it's outrageous for any private individual to purport to police it.

[Lynnette]: "There has been no threat by antifa to interfere in our election."

Makes sense. Their guy's the front runner.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Pretty much by definition, Antifa ain't about "their guy" vs your guy.

Petes said...

With an election choice as utterly dismal as Trump vs. Biden, "their guy" is the guy who isn't the guy they want least.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Nope.  They ain't about "the guy", neither guy.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
Been skimming the headlines this morning.  It seems that pundits on the right are committed to the notion that Trump will answer questions about Hunter Biden at some considerable length.  (Much less clear that Trump will be asked any such questions; Hunter Biden isn't on the list of scheduled topics.)
Aside from that, which promises to be diversion worthy of Petes, sound and fury signifying nothing, tonight's debate looks to be Trump's last scheduled opportunity to turn his flailing campaign around.
I think I'll watch.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "The pope doesn't make civil law. Don't know if you know
      that. Don't know if he knows it either."


You think that's likely, do ya?  Either one?

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

They have dropped the third degree murder charge against Chauvin, going with second degree.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

Snowing again this morning, but now it appears to have turned to rain. Maybe that will melt some of the lingering snow on lawns and gardens...

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
As I understand Minnesota law (from reading news reports, which isn't exactly an in-depth learning experience), 3rd degree murder requires a reckless indifference to the welfare of bystanders and the death of someone not specifically targeted, and Chauvin killed the person he had targeted rather than a bystander, so 3rd degree wasn't covered.  (Basically, this would be bad news for Chauvin as it means a jury can't "compromise" down to 3rd degree, which would be a lesser prison term.)

Petes said...

First two minutes of the Nashville debate (after the moderator issued the warning on interruptions, as if to children) -- Trump lying through his teeth about Covid. Utterly awful presentation. I think Biden's "won" already, before opening his mouth.

Petes said...

Trump now dishing out the sleaze about Biden and his family. This part was expected.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

Biden opened poorly.  He'd been seriously overprepped.  He tried to get too much into his retorts to Trump's opening and his intentions got out ahead of his ability to speak without the stutter.  Made him look as lost as Trump was.
But, he steadied down after the first 15 minutes or so.

And Biden got in the first hit on "Russian Interference", seemed to confuse Trump about how to proceed, and he couldn't get his "sleaze" to come 'round to coherence.
 
Then Biden let him run with it.  Trump did not improve his presentation.  Turned out letting Trump run with it was a good idea, 'cause Trump couldn't pull it together--came across as no more than wild accusations, just noise.

Then came incoherence, inside FoxNews type stuff, on both sides (more with Trump than with Biden, but, so what).  This works to Biden's advantage.  Tie goes to Biden 'cause he's ahead.
And then Trump just sorta melted down and babbled.

And now we're at the halfway point.

Petes said...

Actually I thought Biden was sharp from the get go. Trump's a buffoon. A dishonorable one. The back and forth on health care and the economy was more of an actual debate. I still think Biden sounded better.

Petes said...

Trump: "those kids" (whose parents can't be found) "are SO well taken care of" ;-)
No matter which side of the immigration debate you're on, it doesn't sound good.

Petes said...

Biden: "Global warming is an existential threat to humanity".

Sorry Joe, it ain't.

Lot of stumbling over his numbers in this section too.

      Lee C.   ―  U.S.A.      said...

 
      "Actually I thought Biden was sharp from the get go."

Judgment call I guess.  I thought he was trying to cram in too much and that his intended audience would have gotten lost.

      "The back and forth on health care and the economy was
      more of an actual debate. I still think Biden sounded better."


That came well after the 15 minute mark.  By that time Biden had his stance steadied, had gotten back to his own voice.

Trump did better this time than last, but it would have been hard to do worse than last time (might have actually helped him that they cut his mic, a theory that Paul Begala proposed earlier).

      "'Global warming is an existential threat to humanity'.
      "Sorry Joe, it ain't."


He probably should have said it was a threat to our current civilization.  Humans will likely survive it in much smaller numbers.

Win goes to Biden.

Petes said...

Biden: "completely zero emissions by 2025".

LOL.

Petes said...

"He probably should have said it was a threat to our current civilization. Humans will likely survive it in much smaller numbers."

Nonsense.

Petes said...

Biden later corrected himself to net zero emissions by 2050.

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