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Thom’s “Rumble” segments’ Rightists detract from issues’ analysis and discussion. Some of the panelists tend excessively boorish in pressing their “talking points” rather than in reacting intelligently to Thom’s points. WHY SUCH A PANEL on such a regular basis?
Whoa. Wait. In order to be transgendered, you have to wear a dress? I thought anyone could just self-identify as "gender questioning" on the spot. How are you going to test someone's true intentions? How are you going to enforce this, "You have to be really, really transgendered, not just transgendered because you saw an attractive person walk into the bathroom and wanted to follow them."
Just as sad is that the Democrats, in their effort to have the "big tent", keep giving the Republicans these opportunities. Did the Democrats not anticipate this kind of push-back in Houston? Did they ever think that maybe they should leave the transgendered part of the bill off? Even if it's morally right to leave it on, look at where it got them.
Social wedge issues work. And they will always work. It's human nature. It's not about rightness or wrongness - it's about practicality. It's going to take generations to get the kind of social changes Democrats want. You literally have to wait for the opposition to die off. But by then, will it be too late to "save" the economy, the way Democrats want to do?
Because in this country, you can be denied a job, or a home, or otherwise discriminated against for any "traits" not specifically prohibited by law.
"WORKERS NEEDED. 9-toed people need not apply"
"HIRING DANCERS - MUST HAVE BLACK HAIR"
"HOMES FOR SALE - But only to people with hairy arms."
"APARTMENT FOR RENT - 'Flat-Earthers' will get first month rent FREE!"
These are ridiculus examples, but all perfectly legal.
Yes, you, too, can be refused service in a resteraunt because your eyes are the wrong color, your clothing is made of the wrong fabric, you have too many moles (or not enough), or for almost any reason.
Isn't America just a wonderful country?
Or maybe the voters of Houston spoke.
This is a huge mistake for the left. Eighty years ago Margaret Mead demonstrated that, cross-culturally, personality traits are not linked to sex (gender). Sure, poor Bradley Manning was taught by the Army that "real men" are bloodthirsty serial killers. But that is pure bull. Gandhi, Russell, MLK and the Berrigan Brothers are/were all "real men". Transsexuals mutilate their bodies and give up any chance for orgasms to conform with the sexual "norms" of a very sick society.
Roland
Fascism is killing Americans! "Free Trade" is just a small segment of a giant corrupt, corporate, empathy defict disordered monstrocity.
When people realize that everything they have been taught about our "democracy", the reason for our wars and our government's "concern" for their health and welfare is propaganda on behalf of an oligachy, they tend to get depressed.
When a large segment of the population is chronically depressed because they have lost all hope of living under just laws and avoiding fascist cruelty, ALONG with the global warming the fossil fuel OWNED government REFUSES to address beyond token measures, it is expected that suicides will rise.
But nature is not going to bend to the will of these oligarchs or negotiate with their insanity. And people realize what THAT means for future generations.
Hank Roberts says:
2 Nov 2015 at 7:58 PM
Oops.
just published research suggesting that destabilization of the Amundsen sea’s glaciers would indeed undermine the entirety of West Antarctica, as has long been feared.
In a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Johannes Feldmann and Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research use a sophisticated climate model to study what will happen if these glaciers are, indeed, fully destabilized.
And in essence, they find that the process of retreat doesn’t end with the region currently up against the ocean.
“We showed that there is actually nothing that stops it,” said Levermann. “There are troughs and channels and all this stuff, there’s a lot of topography that actually has the potential to slow down or stop the instability, but it doesn’t.”
Or as the paper puts it: “The result of this study is an if–then statement, saying that if the Amundsen Sea Sector is destabilized, then the entire marine part of West Antarctica will be discharged into the ocean.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/11/02/scientists-confirm-their-fears-about-west-antarctica-that-its-inherently-unstable/
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/10/28/1512482112
This article contains supporting information online:
http://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1512482112/-/DCSupplemental
Download Supporting Information (PDF)
Download Movie_S01 (AVI)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/11/unforced-variations-nov-2015/
Do not understand why descrimation laws are needed?
Either someone breaks a law of the land or they do not.
Why should their movtivations change the penalty?
ct
This is the same BS they used to defeat the ERA back in the 1970's. Guess cons hate to lose a scare tactic.
The bill was presented on the voting ballot as a privatized monopoly. It got defeated for that reason. A hand full of investors, trying to get rich, spent 28 million on the pot issue to privitize it as a monopoly. But, Ohioians didn't want another monopoly and voted it down. That bill will come up again next year but not as a privatized monopoly.
The far right wing in this country won't stop till they repeal all anti-discirmation laws for LGBT people, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, women, etc.
Maybe we should pass a law banning all Republicans from restrooms?
On a subject covered in today's show;
Thom,
With all due respect, as a fairly well off person who lives inside the beltway bubble, you may need to come around to what Kshama Sawant is saying about the Democratic Party. Many of us outside the beltway have considered them irrelevant for years. I agreed initially that Bernie should run as a Democrat for obvious reasons, but now that I see how completely corrupt the DNC establishment is with regard to the debates & super delegates in particular, I wish he would run as an Independent. If HE can’t change the Dem. party from within, who can? He’d clean up in the general against both parties. Electronic election fraud would probably still throw it for the Repug/Dem establishment, but it's our best and only chance. We must right him in w/ party affiliation, even if he is on the ballot, so our votes can't get flipped.
Watching the state of affairs with regard to illegal wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, ongoing in Afghanistan, the aide to Israel enabling the slaughter of Palestinians, the weaponization of Isis backing, civilian killing S’Audi Arabia, I fear another Corp. Dem. administration will do us in..especially one run by the same person who’s State Dept. contributed massively to the weaponization and destabilization of those regions, saying, “We came, we saw, he died”. The Supreme court will not be staffed, if need be, with progressive enough justices to stop global war, the TPP, TPIP, to save civil liberties, stop climate disaster. Bernie is our only chance to start this revolution.
Bad trade deals and the coming crash may just bring civilization as we know it to it’s knees. With plutocrats, whether, Dem. or Repub., total dystopia may well be in our future. That being said, despair is not an option! As Chris Hedges says, “We don’t fight fascists because we will win, we fight them because we must”. I think it’s time to start a campaign to write Bernie in as an Independent in the General, even if he supports Hillary out of loyalty. I am glad for his integrity, but he is not being treated with the same respect by the DNC establishment. His supporters should fight back on his behalf. It’s high time we stop fearing the ultimate evil so much that we cling to the lessor of the two. It’s time we fearlessly put principal over party and hold Democrats’ feet to the same fire to which we hold Republican’s.
The religious right has been promoting so much sexual paranoia, people are afraid to even touch each other.
How does a group that is so paranoid about sex manage to reproduce in such prodigious numbers? I know! They RECRUIT and corrupt minors and children, starting at a very early age. Hmmm. So who are the REAL child abusers?
Thom, you are correct and I don't know who could better do it and get Americans to follow and help but Senator Sanders. That is if we can keep big money and wallstreet Clinton from stopping him. I am one of the exact white men Thom speaks of. I served an apprenticeship and was paid union wages. My spine gave out and put me on dissability. After four spine surgeries, rods and pins in my lumbar and cervical spine I did end up on pain medication. That is where the comparison ends. I haven't had any desire to try heroine, don't plan to and am not suicidal. I am embarrased and ashamed of my country though, for what has happened to our middle class, jobs, health care, wages, and all the many low down things that have happened to all of us regardless of race, religion, or beliefs. I do know many in my position and they also are not addicts or suicidal. That may be true for some and one can't blame them for being depressed over what our politicians have let happen to our once thriving economy. I'd like to see it back. Get rid of the ass-hat Roberts that is to blame for the sale of our democracy and gutting of voting rights. Get rid of the dysfunctional gop and sold out politicians that take bribes against the common good. Where to start, they infest like rats in our politics. I hope we can come together and make the changes needed, one way or another, peacefully or not. America is worth fighting for.
Actually, the majority of the questions asked by CNBC were childish. This is serious business and serious questions need to be asked regardless of whether it's a Democrat or Republican debate.
I'm hearing logically contraditory arguments about the transgender bathroom issue:
1) It's terribly distressing for a trangendered person to use a bathroom or locker room designated for people with the same type of genitals that the transgendered person currently has.
2) If a transgendered person uses a bathroom or locker room designated for people with genitals different from what the transgendered person currently has, the other people in that room are supposed to have no care whatsoever.
These rooms are not designated according to what type of genitals people want or don't want to see, it's according to what they have, but until now, we've simply referred to those by the words "male" and "female", which no longer works.
I would say, how about instead of naming the rooms by gender, we name them by anatomy? If you have a penis, use the room for people with penises. If you have a vagina, use the room for people with vaginas. Once you get a sex-change operation, start using the other type of room.
Excellent points!
Thwarted off and assasitnated like JFK, MLK and Senator Paul Wellstone to name a few.
I do not have confidence that any polotician can change things. I DON'T ! We can all see what happened to Sadam Hussain when he tried to sell oil outside the world economic channel. He was waned and punished once in the 90's with a war. When econimic Hit men like Rumsfeld could not sway Sadam he was hit again and then killed. I am not endorsing Sadam as any sort of a hero, I'm just merely suggesting that anyone businessman, politician, or world leader tries to upset the world econmic organization they will be crushed. Remember Obama's campaign promises ? What happened ? His intentions, If he was sincere< were thwarted by world economic power. I like Bernie Sanders for what he is saying, but I do not wish to see him assasinated for truth and ethics. I believe Bernie will be publicly disgraced if he tries. Anyone who tries to buck the system will be somehow subverted, or worse. The adversary is too great, who ever the adversary is. This world is in trouble and I believe we are headed for war, poverty, and misery and if so I hope the desparity is distributed equally among the rich power brokers as it is among the poorest of the world.
West Virginia was probably the last state to enjoy real representation in Washington for many years via their long serving Congressman Sen. Robert Byrd who died in 2010. Sen. Byrd was the last of a generation who viewed representative government as a means to bettering the lives of his constituents. By the time his career in Washington had come to an end, his fellow members of Congress had long ago abandoned that cause to pursue a career in government based solely on self-aggrandizement and selling out to the highest private bidder. I seriously doubt that many working class citizens in this country can look at their current elected representatives in state and national elected offices and list anything that has been accomplished that has improved their and their families lives over the long run ! Byrd was no saint but he never forgot those who consistently returned him to Washington over a fifty year period (1959 - 2009). We know that over the past five years the citizens of West Virginia have experienced a precipitous down turn in their standard of living that has likely only reinforced their respect for this man and what he accomplished on their behalf !
Your atricle most educational. However, I would offer that the solution really requires interntional cooperation, so that rather than pulling back from all interntional agreements, we mofify all of them. Using international agreements, we should assure that all changes will result in equal impacts on each nation involved. I don't think corporate America can be solely trusted with this responsibility.
Lets face it, the super rich and republican politicians aren't concerned about the well-being of those of us who suffer. They'd prefer that we do struggle and then die off because we're no good to them.
Thom's is yet anOther really-worthy blog, ...but kindly let me here change-the-subject to yesterday's elections:
Low-turnout Distorts Elections
…a rhyme…
Low-turnout elections
tend to go to selections
made by “intense {minorities} mi-nor-i-tees”
{who’re often nitwits with {insanities} in-san-i-tees},
for whom such winning’s a breeze.
This happens oft in a off-year.
Not much could be much {more awful} awf’leer
for democ-ra-cee.
{Well, there’s PLUtoc-ra-cee.}
================================
Now that we've made the connection that Free Trade is harmful to white people maybe we'll now have our politicians follow-up with meaningful legislation to correct or at least address the problem. It is like President Obama speaking out about the "heroin epidemic" in rural America now that it is affecting all these young white kids. I guess nothing happens unless it affects white people. I just hope that it leads to meaningful legislation and not more drug war policing and enforcement or more free trade deals disguised as job creation.
Plutocratic Dominion with the Tea Party as Minion
…a rhyme…
Sneakily yet blatantly, the brothers the Kochs
are strangling our nation. - Democracy chokes
on these dudes’ gall, their appalling effrontery.
America, let’s vigorously these perps confront, or we
shall continue
as the venue
where their deluded Tea Party minion
facilitates plutocratic dominion.
============================
I read the article put out earlier by the "Ring of Fire"http://ringoffireradio.com/2015/11/02/weak-democrats-try-to-silence-bernie-sanders/
and it listed the The Third Way.. I noted it did have a website http://www.thirdway.org.. found it someone illusive when I went in search of who owned the website and found it could only be pulled up by searching third-way.org.. when I went onto the site I begin to realize that it was leaning to being a new democrat movement, yet all of the elements seemed to match only one of the current candidates.. I also found that it seems to stretch internationally and all of those I could find on the site involved were all young corporates.. Pulling searches in google.. I finally settled in Wikipedia, I realized it was made up of people from the Clinton Administration.. But not until around 2005, and those involved are also involved in Wall Street.
Why is any of this important.. This comment alone..
"Third Way, the centrist Democratic Think Tank, believes that Bernie Sanders is taking the Party too far to the left, and they’ve introduced a string of policy proposals for the Democrats as we head into 2016 that take a more moderate (conservative) tone. They are trying to silence a candidate that the public seems to love, and this will cost Democrats a lot of support next year and in the future. "
This group thinks they have the right and authority to change the democratic party? Are they directly associated with Hillary Clinton, it appears so.. My answer to the think tank. NO..
On the subject of today's show; Excellent expose on Democracy Now w/ Wendell Potter re. the collapse of 10 out of 23 of the National State Health Coops and sky rocketing health insurance costs under the ACA : http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/3/the_co_ops_collapse_how_gop