This blog is dedicated to the memory of David Weintraub, who took on insidious astroturfers and won.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Bubble Boy Freak Society


Within fifty to 100 years, there will no longer be one normal person left in America. Something fundamental has shifted with social reality. The source of this is the computer and its relation to society. To be specific, the root cause of this collective, spiritual angst is the internet medium and its stranglehold on the soul of every individual.

McLuhan spoke of the television in the same way of how it influences and contorts our very own central nervous systems. Our being spiritually damaged goods is not anything new. What has changed is the extent of this stranglehold on pure freedom and happiness.

One of the greatest aspects of American society has been the fundamental right to be left alone. People are now being born into the internet, the decades later version of Travolta's bubble boy state. BubbleBoy became dependent on all around him. He couldn't leave. He couldn't explore the world on his own terms. He might as well have been born in a prison.

The bubble we are all trapped into today is the internet. Everything is being saved, watched, and manipulated by the Orwellian Military-Industrial Complex which includes police, corporations, and government. Malcolm X spoke of the chickens coming home to roost in regards to the Kennedy assassination. He wasn't praising the tragedy. It was akin to John Lennon saying that the Beatles were bigger than God. John wasn't saying that he was God or better than God. He was merely pointing out the truth that the Beatles had greater influence over the medium than anything to do with religious belief.

Ron Paul said that Chris Kyle had lived by the sword and died by it. He was crucified (no pun intended) for that statement through social media. We are now witnessing this chicken roosting phenomenon Malcolm X alluded to. If you live a life of violence, it will boomerang. We have seen this maxim play out recently with the killing of approximately nine cops in twelve days. While the ptb's would like folks to believe that this is a result of rhetoric and especially from the difficult to define Black Lives Matter movement, cops being assassinated is the natural progression of a society based on police brutality, Spy Factory oppression, and widespread poverty.

At some point there will not be one individual who has experienced life outside of this internet bubble surveillance society. They will not understand how folks could live without a laptop or cell phones. Internet oppression has taken the numbing down of our senses through television and multiplied the oppression factor by an absurd, incalculable number.

Young people are now substituting google for the library. They are exchanging their own development for a shortcut process that allows elites to do the thinking for them. I should have seen this coming. I was late to the internet party. I first noticed its influence forming in the mid to late 90's. I was in teacher college at the time and saw people "surfing" the web in computer rooms.

But I had a life to lead and couldn't have cared less. I was still reading books, reflecting, and writing. I had returned from my five year life in Ireland where nature and people keep one grounded in humanity. I was in classrooms. I was interacting with many people in the flesh, not this fake bullshit called social media.

There is a major difference between reading and writing pre-internet bubble from today. I didn't miss the memo. I simply didn't agree with it and thought it was silly. The teacher college was shoving computers down our throats in regards to pedagogy. There was also this thing called charter schools that was also being pushed. I didn't care. I mailed it in for those classes. I did what I had to do to get the teacher degree. I was from the old-school and didn't realise rich fockers such as Teach for America were growing like a fungus allowing non-qualified "teachers" into schools.

I was overqualified. I was a tweener. I was probably a notch below what it takes to be a true scholar, yet far more advanced than most teachers. My goal was to bring higher powered learning to public education. I knew that it would have to be presented at the level of young students. I was in it to win it in democratic fashion.

As with police, a lot of people going into teaching are not all that smart and original. I have always been against standardised testing. I have also on occasion mentioned the big brouhaha between Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills. I am talking historic academic debate and philosophy. My goal was not to become famous. I wanted to teach for about five to ten years, then become a social studies department head, then superintendent. I wanted to change the world from the bottom up as a regular guy.

What I found out the hard way is that it is not what you know, but who you know that matters. For those from historic academia with their hearts and minds in the right place, it was all about inspiring and motivating every student. Nowadays such teachers are being pushed out as the last one of our fat knuckled grips on past free and critical thinking perspectives are claw hammered off of influence.

The medium became the end in itself. People will soon forget what it meant to grow up outside of the computer and total electronic control by those in power. The cult of personality has won at least for now. It will maintain control as long as the vast majority of people accept the computer as our new vehicle by which to pass time.

Folks are no longer thinking for themselves. Teachers are being hired not for their wisdom or ability to pass such knowledge onto the next generations, but rather for how well they control behaviour and produce in regards to test results. The personal has always been political. Yet, it used to be that younger folks took years to learn and find their identity. Now they are being told not only what to think but how to think. This is a tragedy.

Socrates said that the wise man knows what he knows and knows what he doesn't know. That was an instant masterpiece of a concept. However, that profound insight has become deformed into the idea that you pick a side, find so-called experts who you can submit to for defining social reality, and then base your "work" on such influence. Then to top it off, one is to insert hyperlinks throughout this blah, blah process to further evoke the authority which is defined by the phrase status quo.

I did not have a good last couple days. Despite my wanting to always be strong and tell myself outside verbal abuse and cyber-stalking does not draw blood, it does. Brynaert is a verbal abuser. But it becomes the personification of the Chinese finger torture test; the more one tries to become free of the oppression, the stronger the oppression becomes. It helps to see that others who had nothing to do with Kimberlin, Weinergate, SWATs, Breitbart, Neal R., et al have explained how Ron operates. I could post so much of his verbal abuse, but it would draw me further into his psychotic delusions. People. Have. The. Right. To. Not. Be. Verbally. Abused.

It is years later. One regret I have is that I never truly thanked donkeytale for watching my back. Some time recently the shadowthief website emerged with the FireDogLake archive that had disappeared when Jane Hamsher shut it down. It is there in which folks can read donkeytale's Troll Wars series.

His Troll Wars 6.66 is considered by many to be his best work in regards to the Breitbart Cult/Numbnut story. I am sure there are things in his series which may trigger more angst in myself or supply some ideas that I disagree with, but for the most part, I sincerely believe he nailed it.

I mock Dwight Howard for his "Let's All Breathe" movement, but there is great truth to that. The end game for each of should be health, happiness, and wisdom. Verbal abusers deny us of our ability to breathe. The internet is depriving us of that ability also. It has forced us into free speech cages. It has created the illusion of there being a keyboard commando movement that will bring us to the Promised Land. Don't bet on it.


81 comments:

donkeytale said...

Somehow this masterpiece feels Brynaert-inspired. I loves me sum Ron but I also comprehend your feelings toward him. I know they are mixed. Clearly, he took the wrong side of history at some critical junctures and has at least now admitted it regarding you, perhaps a couple years too late.


Confession, I did listen to a couple of the Vince in the Bay podcasts featuring Ron and found the exchanges to be very humourous. Had I caught them live I would have called in.

Also one of the funniest things I ever read here was your caption of a Ron selfie, I think from the night he went out drinking with VITB: "a disheveled internet predator."

That still brings a smile.

donkeytale said...

Ron also deserves credit for popularising the term "vile and menacing" although for a time he seemed to be menaced an awful lot by a tremendous number of vile people.

I realise its his schtick, much like your own paid fake vs useful idiot gambit.

And for the record, I own zero stocks. Owning stocks is like internet addiction only more boring. I am not wealthy although I could have taken that route I decided to remain smaller and closer to the ground in my daily affairs. I'm not struggling exactly but I do struggle every day to stay in the moment. Mostly I have a house and not much else.

My feeling for Obama is measured and based on the historical comparisons and perspective of the times in which he and we are trapped. His rating will increase in time while Clinton's will fall, imho. Did he lead as a leftier than thou? Of course not, and only the ltt's ever thought he would. I didn't see much evidence of his suggesting he would at any point during his campaign.

He wanted to heal the political divide but of course his ascendency threw the GOP into another gear of insane reaction. One can only imaging how the they will react when they feel the bern in the 2017.

donkeytale said...

My plan is to work a few more years than retire or semi-retire and live simply enough that social security will sustain me. Working keeps you younger but also in recognition that work life is a younger person's game. Humbling. Frau Tale has taught me great wisdom about living life correctly. Someday I hope to live mine more like her. LOL. I have no grand desire for travel and old age adventures. I see these people taking cruises and vacations and it never strikes me as something I would ever want to do.

I stopped playing golf for the most part. Like you, I am more dedicated to fitness and wholeness in these, the September of my years. FInding the center. Not the political center but the center of balance.

I prefer the mind's adventure. Hopefully, I still have one. Some days not sure.

Yes, I am also an introvert.

donkeytale said...

The pleasure of the Troll Wars was all mine, the torment was yours. I'm glad that you came out the backside of that experience in better shape than when you went in.

If I help you retain any balance and sense of perspective during what were very rough and uncertain times for you than I am happy to have helped in whatever small way.

Your acknowledgment is kind but dont you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do.

The movement you need is on your shoulder.

donkeytale said...

Linky thingie:

http://davefromqueens2.blogspot.com/2013_11_01_archive.html

Tokyo Shemp said...

I was inspired mostly by some dude named Burkely Hermann and perhaps even Lost Wheel, the British kid who goes nuts back and forth with bike/car road rage. The Ron stuff I kind of smushed and crammed into the entry. In previous years, I would have written a very long, tough to grok entry on Burkeley. Now I realise it just doesn't matter.

Yes, you taught me the the value of mimicry and playful schtick theft. Bet on it? The last sentence I stole from you (and TLNL?) which of course to the inside baseball people, Artis Gilmore originated the bet on it part. Oh wait, Arthur Gilroy is his name. I was close.

There is a fine line between gratuitous blather and profundity.

That too is a lesson plan somewhere.

Younger people may have faster minds. That is true. But there is also the concept of essence. One old man, regular guy thought could be worth more especially in this new information economy than reams of innocuous, ultimately self-promoting pages with hyperlinks from whippersnappers.

It is probably true that unemployment saps the life juice out of people. I believe there is a new study out backing that. I suppose it is not the unemployment/under-employment part that is actually to blame. It's probably the uncertainty. There is also societal peer pressure which tends to blame the victim. If someone feels worthless, then some or many aspects of their personal life may fall apart.

I agree with Bernie that a poor economy and lack of safety nets and compassion are mostly to blame for violence. One thing though that adds a monkey wrench to that is the awkward proliferation of weapons in Amerikkka and our collective history. We as a nation were borne with violence and it has been a consistent motif or wtf of the American Nightmare.

I suppose this fresh entry is really nothing new under the sun and is an extension of what we've always talked about. It is our common thread.

Obama is like our Gorbachev or Yeltsin. The problem with that is we could end up with Putin. Yet your main point stands for grokability. Obama trolled the F out of the Republican Party until they obviously lost their minds. Does the problem then become what to do with the neoliberal side of things co-opting authentic leftier than thouism? That's the problem, imho, and one Bernard has been hammering home of late.

It's in the NYT. Bernie warned the DNC or DLC, yeah my mind is also slowing down, but he points out that they will go nowhere if there is no followup and grassroots support. Bernie is pulling the rich man's Trump maneuver. He's saying you need me. I don't need you. I mean them, not you. I too like to let loose and allow the mind to go where it's meanst to goesth. Why is google telling me those aren't real words?

(continued)

Tokyo Shemp said...

Yes! "The movement you need is on your shoulder."

It's remarkable how much support Bernie has generated. It goes against every conventional analysis of our country. Something has changed and you had a timely piece on Greece and wondered about the chance of such a paradigm shift next occurring here.

The reason why I said Bernie had no good chance until recently is I didn't want to jinx it. That probably sounds like a lame attempt to defer a lack of being prescient.

It was fun the last couple months. I can't remember any other time in my life I've ever felt such passion for political chatter. I'm pretty sure it's obvious that I am the proverbial leftier than thou who recognises the Nader conundrum which played a big factor in your schtick development.

I don't think Biden is going to run. It would be pointless, imho. I think Joe and Warren met to discuss that option, but that primarily they were discussing both Hillary and Bernie. And new polls have emerged showing Hillary is tied with Republicans. That would be like the Celtics last year taking LeBron to seven games or maybe taking the series. It wasn't going to happen. Hillary is turning into last year's Celtics, but replace Marcus Smart with a 41-year-old Kenny Anderson or wtf. She seems to be fading fast with little upside. Though I am obviously biased.

I doubt Trump could beat Hillary, but one never knows. I can't really see any Republican winning, but then again, shite happens. Bernie is saying that if he wins, then that will mean so many other Democrats will be gaining ground across the country. That would be the only way to bypass gridlock.

Now I am rambling.

It is exciting!

I can't believe Rocky Marciano beat Muhammad Ali. I suppose it's possible. He seems to have been the rich man's Mike Tyson or Tyson before the Japan fight or his legal troubles.

People downplay Bill Russell because they say look at all the slow dinosaurs he had for competition, Wilt to the side.

I loved that ESPN Classic stuff back in the day and I found it again at YouTube. I love those shows with the crusty cigar smoking boxing experts shooting the shite in between rounds or fights they replay.

The best video I found last night was an interview of Ali by Cosell and he's asked what happened with Marciano. Ali was soooo funny. He said yes I could tip toe around with my speed and of course I was the prettiest, etc., but that he was still aching from Rocky's hits despite their being fake hits from a computer simulation.

I love Kareem. I even suppose I must love the Apple Silicon Valley dude who endorsed the Bernster yesterday.

Unless the voting boxes are rigged, it does look like a Bernie win is on the table. It is remarkable and goose bump inducing.

And I do agree that Bernie is not perfect, but he is so much better than any other Democrat. He is also a seasoned politician.

Again with my rambling.

You are very lucky to have the FrauTale to keep you grounded. I think one very excellent point supporting the concept of reincarnation is how babies and little kids already seem a bit formed with a personality. Where does that come from? Am I seeing things? Am I so-called extrapolating?

I love the McCartney video for Band on the Run. If a picture speaks a zillion words, then that video is a fricken cosmic motherfoooker.

(continued)

Tokyo Shemp said...

I don't know who the Black woman is. I forget. Maybe it's Rosa Parks? But I recall Rosa Parks was not that old when she refused to move from the front of the bus. The video also I believe has FBI's Hoover in a football schtick. They also zoom in on Edgar Allan Poe when the dome lifts. I apologise for any mistakes I might make.

I thought of perhaps using the Truman Show again for this one, but bubble boy seems more appropriate or easier to grokify.

I thought I knew it all and that I was over any learning process. That was my dogmatic slumber. And that's a phrase I believe Kant made famous. He said David Hume woke him up. Hume seems to have battered around Rene Descartes. Kant seems to have been extremely overrated and obviously he was not user-friendly. (see digress, but I)

Diving into Malcolm X woke me up. It is one of the most fascinating stories of all time. Same with Poe. Same with Bukowski. Are there people out there today who reach those kind of levels?

I am thinking of writing up something on fitness. For most of my life I was at the weight I should be. Then age (changes in metabolism) caught up with me. But it is difficult to know how out of control the weight gain can go because so many other people are overweight.

Dying is a terrifying thought. But then one can say wait a second, why's it on me to worry about that when I'm not the one who ever had a say in being born?

I recall that Latino culture has a very healthy relationship with death.

Some people don't want to talk about it. It is a bit scary to reflect on whether it's a pure poof I'm done or we enter a new body.

I agree Obama will do okay for generic historic analysis. Lincoln seems to be glorified despite not being all that great.

I believe the Warren/Biden thingie is the thing to watch. It has to come to a conclusion soon. While early and often I said Bernie had taken care of step one, whittling down the Democratic nomination process to himself and Hillary, I never expected to look that prescient. But it happened. O'Malley is generating nothing. Chafee and Webb are also generating next to zilch for support, at least in polls.

Hillary probably did break some laws with the email thing, yet I doubt she will ever be charged with anything. But it does seem she is done for viability. No one trusts her.

(continued)

Tokyo Shemp said...

Bernie has vindicated you. You spoke of people needing to hit the streets and actually do stuff outside of keyboard commando activities. Bernie is crafty as all stuff. The medium was presenting him as Kucinich volume two. Bernie is my imaginary friend. I fake served for the man during this election process. Kucinich is no Bernie Sanders.

In your defense, and I admit I got a bit nasty about the notion of moving the pile only a few inches, no one saw this coming. And in fact, you were ahead of the curve in saying don't give up on Bernie just yet.

Bernie is the Rocky Marciano of politics. The ESPN dudes (Bert Sugar? I love that guy and the others too, even the cheesy host Brian Kenny.) anyway, haha this must be driving anyone nuts who is a pure grammar kind of person. Anyway, they said Rocky was short, had dinosaur arms, no footwork, couldn't throw combinations, etc.. Sometimes it doesn't matter. That is my hope with Bernie. I think our society as a whole is tired of gridlock and strife. Change seems to be more possible than it used to. Gay people can now get married. Ben Carson is doing well in Republican polls. I guess Mondale should be given some credit for adding Geraldine to his ticket. He didn't win, but maybe that kind of move pushed society a little closer to the enough is enough campaign of Sanders.

Obama is president. No one saw that coming. Certainly not Archie Bunker.

You were prescient about the fairleft vote. We have to let those suckers go on their way. Let them read Russia Today and now I see there is a similar garbage media coming out of Iran called PressTV.

So yes, while I have shown the stereotypical bitterness of a leftier than thou, I was able to stay grounded enough to recognise the stupidity of the third party movement. Of course if Bernie doesn't win, I will probably give up on electoral politics. I know I shouldn't, but it would be tough not to.

People are tired of meme politics and dumb-ass mainstream media. They are also fed up with fake left media to be specific. I think Bernie can win because he wants to tax the rich, not regular guys.

He has an FDR styled New Deal approach. He says we can create jobs with dignified wages while cleaning up our society/infrastructure.

The fake leftists talk about "stans" ruining it for Bernie and especially with the Black vote. That makes my spider tinglers set off. I socratised stans. I mean I googled for wtf it meant. They are stalker fans.

Oh really, the truth is going to lose Bernie the Black vote he never had to begin with?

I'm loving this quick vindication from Bernie's success which has made fools of blowhards from Jason Johnson and Marc Lamont Hill to the increasingly non-prescient Nate Silver crowd whose shine has started to worn off. Yes, Silver nailed it a few years back. He is good with crunching numbers. But like I said, and no, it's not all about me, there is something going on which does not always register in polls. There is nothing definite in any one moment. McLuhan spoke about that, how we must always remind ourselves that the medium is always pushing forward. If one stays too long in any one moment, one is going to miss out on what is truly happening in future moments.

(continued)

Tokyo Shemp said...

I think that is what's going on. A lot of so-called experts like to sound smart and prescient when they really aren't. There's a lot of wisdom to what Bernie is saying about Obama, that his mistake was not in galvanising the electorate, but in that after doing so, he basically told the peanut gallery, "We'll take it from here." Or like you are saying, Obama did what he had to do to crush the Republican Party.

In that respect Obama is a winner, no doubt. That was then, this is now. People got fed up with the Republicans and they will get fed up with Democrats also if they are continued to be controlled by big moneyed interests. Hillary hanging out in the Hamptons does not look good. Those photos displayed on trash outlets such as Daily Mail of the rich and famous fake leftists does not make Hillary look like a regular guy.

I see many parallels between Bernie and ourselves. He too is a supertroll. And Kareem pretty much verified your analysis that Bernie handled himself quite well with Black Lives Matter.

I don't know what kind of bug crawled up Hillary's arse. She doesn't seem very bright. She and Wasserman-Schultz types are so arrogant that they missed the memo that the word coronation reached the top of zeitgeist awareness. Hillary messed up with her meeting with BLM. She also has completely mishandled the email scandal. She sounds like Nixon with his "I am not a crook" schtick. She said people will see that there's nothing to see there, we are moving along to the coronation.

[see "Why Is DNC Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz Afraid of Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley Debating Hillary Clinton?" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/why-is-dnc-chairwoman-afraid-of-bernie-sanders-and-martin-omalley-debating-hillary-clinton_b_8087334.html ]

And the fake farther left such as Counterpunch are also looking like idiots. They never gave Bernie any benefit of the doubt. They said he was a useful idiot bringing in votes that would only end up going to Hitlary. There are a lot of looooosers who have been downplaying Bernie's odds. I got cynical too. It's said that constant attacks can make one start to believe such ideas.

But you said hold on, we shall see, that the score is 5-3 Hillary in the 3rd inning. You were correct to wonder if Bernie could get beyond the lily-white state votes. I then wondered about New York and California. Those are juicy delegate states. It is strange that there aren't polls from there. Does it really cost that much money to call up 500 registered voters?

People sense that the process is rigged. They become cynical. On the other hand, a true winner knows that you must end the fight as quickly as possible and not let the opponent have even a whiff of hope. Hillary is Foreman. She looks great in the early rounds. But she's not doing any damage to Bernie Ali and she is losing stamina.

I think this Bernie Sanders thingie is a fluke or fate or something otherwise wonderful. I'm starting to think Bernie is Golden State and Clinton is Cleveland. Maybe this is Boston-New York 2004.

"Four Days In October"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGp8vIt2Ltg

do you believe in miracles ~~ Al Michaels

(I'm done)

Tokyo Shemp said...

I see that Biden had good words for Bernie at a fundraiser. I also saw that Hillary took a jab at Bernie during her recent interview.

I also saw that Bernie is not perfect. I also saw someone at Counterpunch seems to realise folks like me have been wtf with their non-stop attacks on him.

The Hillary thing to me smacks of desperation. The Biden stuff tells me he is not running and that he and Lizzie did what I said they did, spoke about him.... probably after speaking about life and how Joe is a tired man.

The stuff that says Bernie is not perfect is the kind of thing that would get him elected over any Republican.

If Obama has been moving the pile a few inches or a yard or two, Bernie would be a crispy spiral for thirty yards or wtf past the fifty yard line.

I will keep googling in pursuit of knowledge and awareness. Oh wait, that's the opposite of the blog entry.

Oh, I believe that Andrea Mitchell is the rich man's Dana Bash. That is all, grasshopper.

Tokyo Shemp said...

The only problem with Four Days in October, the ESPN movie on the Red Sox is that creepy Lenny Clarke guy. I love Beantown, blah, blah, but he is not funny. He was never funny. Bill Simmons was fine.

And Kevin Millar was prescient. He was one of the main 'idiots' who kept saying cowboy up. He's a Texan maybe. He was fun. Now I couldn't care less about baseball. After 2004 what happened, who cares? After they were down 0-3 he kept telling everyone they better win game four. They better end it now. Because then it's Pedro game five, Schilldog game six, then anything can happen in game seven.

That was the best thing that ever happened to me. The Patriots had already shed their loser title. The Celtics were set for life after Bill Russell. I never got into hockey too much despite Massachusetts being a hockey state. It was all about the Red Sox being lovable chokers. Once they won in 2004, that was the end of sports history.

I think there are some more of those simulation boxing matches. I hope so. I wouldn't mind watching Tyson fight Ali.

Tokyo Shemp said...

"Mike Tyson vs Muhammad Ali Who Wins?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsB86DapR4s

That looks like another ESPN show where they talk about and is close to an hour.

There are videos of them fighting, but I don't think they are anything but from video games. They look put together pretty well, but nothing like the ABC Ali-Marciano simulation which was great to watch.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Muhammad Ali in his prime was the 2008 Celtics before KG got hurt, Perk traded. We are talking immortality. I think Ali in his prime beats Marciano without any doubt.

Later on after he was forced out of boxing and became rusty, that's a different Ali, not the same guy.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Marciano would never get to the in his prime Ali, no? Same with Tyson. Ali would kick Tyson's ass, prime versus prime. That's my electoral boxing position made with no funding from superpac networks like ESPN and ABC. Cosell would also kick Bill Simmons' arse or any other announcer of this day. He told it like it is.

I guess those boxing simulations are impossible to make, that for the Ali-Rocky movie the two actually sparred to make it look real. But science was never my thing so I say wtf. I like the idea, though. Like do it with Bill Russell's Celtics versus Shaq's Lakers or wtf and have it look real, not some video game.

I'd love to see Jordan's Bulls exposed. I think they were tremendously overrated and would have gotten their arses whupped by either the Celtics and Lakers who came before him or even the Big Bad Pistons would have put a stop to the Michael Jordan tyranny.

There is one video at youtube I saw where Larry Bird completely made Jordan look like a child. I don't know why Jordan was playing against Bird. It was sort of very unfair. Maybe it was prescient to today's game where the best players are getting all the action and it no longer goes by conventional wisdom.... little fellas at pg, big seven footers at center, etc..

Miami or Cleveland liked to do that with LeBron. It was weird. Five guys at once all six foot seven.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I need to self-hypnotise myself off of Twitter. It is truly stupid. It is very addictive. You see all these quick pops for links. It never stops. One can also enter the fray and drop links and pithy quick hits.

I had my first alcoholic beverage the other day after years off the sauce. I got drunk off of one beer. There's the rub. You only get that kind of value after stopping. Or with weed. You go without it for a while, then go back without the tolerance, and one is reaching Cheech and Chong levels.

Ali-Marciano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XKcGRREcaM

Ali interviewed by Cosell on the fake fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDaw2QFC1Qg

fricken two hour ESPN Classic marathon on Rocky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YZL8Vlbq3g

Free stuff is good. I too am not perfect and like a bit of escape.

donkeytale said...

Ali in his prime (pre-draft dodge banning) destroys everybody. Tyson in his prime may have given him the stiffest challenge but Ali had the unparalleled foot speed and size to avoid the bull rushing Iron Mike or tie him up before destroying him in the mid to late rounds.

Probably, it is what it is, Ali's greatest challenger was Frazier who had the ability to get inside and under Ali and neutralise his size and reach advantage, absorb Ali's relentless jabs and get in debilitating body punches of his own.

Tyson never demonstrated staying power in the mid to late rounds and he also faced questionable competition and lost to at least one of them in his prime.

I'm not old enough to remember Marciano but from everything I read he never faced alltime greatness competition and so cannot be considered at the top.

His whiteyness is his main asset and racism is why he is considered by some the alltime best or top 3.

Joe Louis is probably in the discussion too. I like Ali, Louis, Frazier for heavies.

donkeytale said...

I disagree somewhat on Jordan's Bulls at least in the years they had Rodman they were stout.

Beating the Magic Lakers or the Bird or Russell Celtics? No. All those teams had great depth down the bench. Michael Cooper was a great defender of Jordan in his early years in the league. He also defended Bird pretty well too, at least making Larry work hard for his offense. Cooper was a very underrated factor on those great Laker teams, as was Rambis off the bench.

donkeytale said...

Latino's have a very unhealthy relationship with their diets which often lead to early disease and death. Poverty exacerbates the unhealthy eating thing but it is ingrained in the culture.

I have a latino buddy, an older guy who grew up on a ranch in S. Texas, is big and strong, played college football on scholarship back in the day.

He lost 50 lbs simply by giving up tortillas. It is amazing the number of obese people in the US. Simply amazing. The obese of Latin descent is off the charts. Unfortunately also true of many African Americans and also poor white trash.

It is extremely expensive to feed a family a wholesome diet these days. Only the well off can do so it appears. One of the great tragedies of the population/environmental time bomb.

donkeytale said...

You are falling in to several fake left blog dilettante traps reminiscent of fairleft and the FDL crowd circa 2012.

When I say the system moves the pile an inch at a time that is not my preference. However, it is what it is. I will not sugar coat the truth to be a dumbed down idealist. Not to say that's what you are but more a newbie on the political scene.

Let me repeat: the US system is designed to move the pile an inch at a time. The founding fathers had some wisdom but they were also neocon elitists trying to throw off the shackles of the traditional monarchical elitists.

The US Revolution was not a leftist rebellion of the people. In fact, the people hardly existed in the US at the time. It was an unprecedented socio-cultural situation in the nascent stages of creating a Euro centric nation on a different continent.

The US is and was unique. Exceptional as the righties would tend to call it.

Now, does this mean I would prefer to see Bernie win, the people rally behind him after the election, maybe torch a Trump property or two in the process of blowing up Wall Street?

Of course.

Is it going to happen? I also lambasted the fake left and still do for sitting on their collective hands after Obama won. I was prescient in all phases of the game and you are correct: Bernie's candidacy has totally vindicated me for all time mainly because he is running from inside the party apparatus which I have harped on since my earliest blogging days.

Will he win the nomination? He has a chance for sure but it will be the second and third rounds of primaries that will tell the story and first he absolutely must win NH and at least run a close second if not win Iowa outright.

There is little polling that I can find in those states probably because the results in Iowa and NH will have a major effect on voter preferences in the subsequent states, thus rendering current polling meaningless.

You don't like what Nate Silver is saying, however, your bias has no bearing. I agree that he is not factoring in the populist momentum because it is not tangible or mathematically expressed.

I think he is saying what we are saying perhaps a bit less hoepfully (and I believe he probably votes for the Bern in real life---kossacks don't like Hillary) there is a chance for Bernie if things fall into place for him, but without a HRC meltdown his road is going to be rocky.

And without a political revolution behind him the system will produce another four-eight years of gridlock just as it always has done, the only exceptions in my lifetime being LBJ on the left getting majour things done and Reagan on the right.

Obama got a few things done in first term, the healthcare thingie which did prove somewhat helpful to poor people at least in the majour states where Medicaid expanded. Some tax increases on the rich and keeping the economy on a better track than either Euro and Japan during the recession both of which were led by center right governments during the bad yearss.

But no, Obama's social achievements are far less than LBJ (civil rights and Medicare/Medicaid) or Reagan (tax cuts on the rich and the change of national political zeitgeist to the right that endures to this day). His war mongering tepid, such as it was limited mostly to the Libyan campaign with a pullback in Iraq and Afghanistan and zero action in Syria may be judged negatively in history depending on how the middle east develops over the next twenty years or so.

However, Bush will alway be blamed rightfully so for causing the destabilisation of the Middle East by his nonsense war in Iraq.

Bernie's accomplishment is already tangible: he i changing the political zeitgeist back towards the left. Win or loose that is significant and herstorical achievement.

donkeytale said...

As for this dairy, I concur however I would go so far to say there is a new normal already in place and it causes no small amount of angst in its disruptive qualities on human relations.

So when you say there will no longer be normal people I would agree based on pre-internet definition of normal. The early years of the TV era which I was born into were somewhat shocking and galvanising. People were still spoon fed their ideas but generally speaking a consensus could formed around those ideas or rejection of them (Vietnam as example).

Today you have an interactive and decentralised medium with fewer controls on the messages, which are variable and multiplicitous. It is become impossible to form a consensus, thus we constantly have variable competing ideas and ideologies and with the new ability for us all to actively participate we quickly become more antagonistic towards those with whom we disagree.

The Medium is the Messages. You hear what you want and tune out the rest. This is produces negative results for humanity.

Long ago the Church and Monarchy were the sole mediums. The there was print and radio followed by TV as the single authority weakened.

Today there is no authority except that built into the medium by its owners (private enterprise in the US and West, authoritarian govts mostly elsewhere).

The Medium is the conspiracy.

Tokyo Shemp said...

That was a great series of comments. I wish I had time to respond right now. It seems we have opposite schedules for free time. Weekends tend to be my busy days. You seem more busy during the week and often only have the time to write quick comments over your morning coffee.

I think we have had good success writing together because we tend to listen to the other person or at least with a mailed in necessary amount of attention. That is remarkable considering we are both introverts. But that's another rub. Extraverts tend to love small talk. Since introverts don't, we are able to reach amateur McLuhan status for interacting with others. So maybe it is not surprising we have had some good give and take.

Thanks for clarifying your snow bowl, football game analogy for politics. You are saying you don't like it, but that it is reality or has been for the most part.

I wanted to drop this quick note, so that you don't think I ignored the insights.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Okay, here are my responses:

We agree on Ali. Unfortunately a lot of the old boxing videos are not easy to watch. It's like following the hockey puck. I forget which network, but they ended up adding some computer doohickey to the puck for viewers. With boxing, it is similar. It is difficult to see if punches actually hit or graze. The Ali-Foreman fight is a good one. You can see exactly what Ali did with his post-prime body. He won with his mind. It helped to hear the announcer say the punches weren't connecting. Yet you could see that anyway.

Tyson was a monster, a brawler. He too has been videotaped quite well. Some guy on one of the Rocky videos kept spamming the idea that Marciano could punch a refrigerator twelve feet. I don't know about that, but I'll accept that he had Tyson quality power.

Rocky also seems to have proven he could take punishment. While you are correct he never had the best competition (picture Duran, Leonard, Hagler, and Hearns and other good fighters all competing for the same greatness). Holmes gets that kind of treatment too. I am not sure how to gauge that.

On the ESPN show, only one expert picked Tyson. I forget who it was, but he might have been biased. The rest of them picked Ali and for a number of reasons. Height. Ali was a stand up fighter. Tyson did better against tall guys who crouched down. They also pointed out that Ali could not be knocked out, even when he was holding onto the game when he should have been long retired.

They gave Iron Mike a bit of love for his stamina. They said he didn't have many opportunities to prove it, but that he showed he too could take a punch. They also praised his defensive skills.

Maybe Tyson could have become the greatest, but he lost the old man for guidance and wisdom. He raped that woman. He was quite deranged. Although he does seem to have evolved, similar to Foreman, into much nicer people as they got older.

So basically they said Ali could stand up. He'd fend him off with the jabs and clinch when he'd need to. They said Ali didn't have the strongest punch, but with those combinations, it didn't matter. Eventually the opponent would get tired of being a bobble head.

Plus Ali had the screw driver punch. So yes, Ali is considered the greatest of all time for some very tough to debate reasons. And of course we must talk about prime versus prime. That is only fair.

The experts said even if Tyson could land some devastating blows on Mike, it would freak him out when Ali would keep on keeping on. Tyson trained to get fights over early and often in sprint fashion. Ali was legendary for stamina.

By the time Tyson had the chance to prove his historic greatness, he was a skeleton of what he once was. Buster obviously showed the way how a tall man could pretty much beat on Tyson by taking over the bully role. Then Holyfield, wow, that was it to me. That was when it became obvious Mike Tyson had been solved. Holyfield is probably very underrated. I saw the fight where Evander pummeled Mike with twenty straight blows to end it.

(continued)

Tokyo Shemp said...

Tyson deserves credit for greatness, however, and he was definitely more of a boxer than brawler or it wasn't like he was only a brawler. He just happened to be greatness for brawling. He lost his way and that stopped his trajectory. Ali got his belt taken away and forced out of boxing (see Vietcong never called him the N word) and that was that. Frazier deserves some credit too. He would get knocked down a lot and still get up. He, like Ali, had a lot of heart. Tyson never needed to have heat because he was that good. But when push came to shove and he needed heart and stamina, he wasn't the same guy. And who knows what would have happened in the Japan fight if he had actually had a true corner and not that Mickey Mouse balloon crew.

I wish the videos were better, then I'd watch Joe Louis and some of the other guys. I liked the story about Max Baer. I smushed him into the entry on Richie Cunningham, but I digress.

My favourite boxer of all time to watch is Emanuel Augustus. Omg what a supertroll with heart. He's the guy who danced reggae as his boxing schtick. He had a mediocre won-loss record because he didn't play the mickey mouse stat padding game. He fought anyone, anytime, but he was darn tooting good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khAfVgSjWn0

I wanted to post that all at once, but it's too many words. I'll just continue with the continued schtick.

Fair enough with your Chicago Bulls analysis. Rodman was greatness, as was Scottie Pippen. And it's true the older teams had much more depth.

I do remember Michael Cooper. Those Laker teams were tough. Maybe he was the Bill Russell to Wilt in regards to Larry Bird. Some players can never be stopped completely. It comes down to containment or playing the greats as good as you can and take care of everyone else and do your own thing, etc. to offset it.

The Celtics were the most lucky team of all time until Bias and Lewis. The C's shouldn't have beaten the Sixers in '81 nor the Lakers a few years later. But it happened.

(I'll get to the rest of your comments next. Not done.)

Tokyo Shemp said...

up above. I wrote Mike instead of Ali, but that should be obvious. Sorry for any confusion.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I didn't know that about Latinos and weight gain, but that makes sense. Carbohydrates loves them some water bloating. Sodium too messes with us. We shoul eat like Tyson approached boxing. Make it quick and clean. Eat to live, not live to eat. That's easier said than done.

It's also true that the poor are at a disadvantage. A lot of the foods that wreak havoc on our bodies are the cheapest, like pasta.

The key is to stay regular. People need to grow up and toss out the junk food. It is not worth it. Okay, every once in a while people can let loose. Have some cake. What else? I don't know. You can't really ruin your body in one day, but what's the point of overeating? People are ridiculous on Thanksgiving especially and thankfully I never bought into that.

I heard when younger or learned that perhaps Mexicans or some other Latino culture were known to not going all tears over death. It would be more of a celebration. Or I heard or read that Americans have massive hangups with death. I suppose it is not a pleasant topic and will leave it at that. But maybe it really isn't unpleasant.

I learned that scales are not accurate because of water retention. That is, people should not freak out if they are dieting etc. and working with the scale.

Another thing to keep in mind are the fat cells. People can lose the visceral fat, but they cells are going to remain hungry until they eventually shrink.

Weintraub tried to lose it too quickly and his heart gave. People need to be careful and patient.

So basically folks may think wtf, why am I gaining weight when I am eating good and exercising? It comes down to the carbs, sodium, possibly lack of sleep I recently heard as a causation, and water retention.

I am probably about ten pounds overweight. I heard we lose bone density as we age, so a friend advised to keep that in mind when initially thinking why not go back to one's weight at age 20? What I do feel confident in is that I have gotten away from the diabetes weight area, not that I was ever that overweight. What truly scared me was how easy it is to go from a Freshman 15 to the old man's 40 due to metabolism slowdown.

I would like to live until about 80 or 90. These will be the decades when the rest of society interboobwatchers will see how prescient and great we were. I'm just joking and that is false ego nonsense. But I guess life philosophy is similar to working to optimise health. It's never too late to change. Malcolm X solved that. It's not about who we were, but who we are today.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Since the Mike Brown murder, people have hit the streets. Unfortunately the media doesn't make that known unless a CVS is getting firebombed.

The problem with police is they are still living in the past. People are dying because of them. This respect towards pigs nonsense needs to stop. We all have the right to due process and to be left alone. Cops should not be able to simply "suspect" something and that's when the shit seems to mostly happen. It's on them, not us. The reason why they are being attacked is because they refuse to cut it out. Too may of them are on steroids. Too many cops are criminals. The collective consciousness has outpaced by far the idiotic notion that we must all freeze up and let the NAZIs control us.

The Sandra Bland death never should have happened. And that's just one story, though one of the famous ones.

It didn't take me long to make the move to hopeless romantic idealist. I did try political science as a freshman. We were covering the space defense initiative. I wrote about how that would be dangerous. What if the NAZIs had become the overall superpower? What if Reagan's Amerikkka did somehow figure out how to have a total defense and total offensive military power? It would suck. But the Prof was a d-bag and probably suffering from authoritarian personality disorder and had no fricken clue what I was arguing in my paper.

The Bernie versus Hillary thing is only now heating up. There is no way to tell. Nate Silver's website has no more clue than us two slobs.

There could be a huge march on Washington. That is a definite possibility. There are debates. I am finally seeing how deep the doodoo slope goes for the Clinton family.

When Ann Coulter is even saying Bernie is much more viable than Hillary for the Finals, I take heed of that. Hillary is in a weird statistical tie with the Repubs. Bernie I think is still clobbering them.

Coulter is a nutjob, no doubt, but she sounded kinda sorta normal on the Bill Maher show. It was only a couple minutes, so there was no debate on Berns being a commie, that kind of economic debate. She said Hillary is not trusted and that Bernie is. And that Bernie is fighting for the middle class and is sincere.

Fricken, I'm a dumb-ass citing Ann Coulter.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I like your idea of there being a new normal already in place. I agree. It does seem that the internet can now be broken down into a couple decades and that phase one and two are now over.

I think though that this new normal is nothing like the old normal.

You know what I'm talking about. I guess I am trying to send out the message to those born inside the internet bubble.

I can't really disagree with what you wrote. It's a good exegesis of the McLuhan methodology in your own words.

I also think you have nailed in a sociological manner how exactly people are wasting their time and pissing into the wind and supporting people they shouldn't. It sounds similar imho to my both sides suck analysis.

I fell for BradBlog because I felt the election was stolen in 2000 and 2004.

I fell for the internet because my real life wasn't going so well.

People fall for DeRay because they are thirsty for leadership and an end to police oppression.

The Shaun King is very similar to DeRay and in fact they have joined forces. One of his tweets was some nonsense which would lead to both privatised education and police. His resume apparently includes working with charter schools. DeRay was TFA and is obviously still in cahoots with and praising them.

Maybe this is similar to your critique of Cornel. In Cornel's defense, he is not even 1% the fake activists that DeRay and Shaun are.

Maybe you don't want to jinx Bernie either. I feel that despite our cynicism towards the internet, people are not as unaware as it seems. You said it when you said it, that Hillary is a loss waiting to happen. Yes, she could still end up president. No one knows for sure what the future will bring. That also includes Nate Silver and anyone else spreading their opinions as facts.

Hillary has started the process of trash talking Bernie. That is a change of direction. I doubt Biden is running. Everything is falling into place for Bernie and it will be Show Time soon enough.

I don't think Bernie has to win South Carolina. It seems pretty weird that Iowa, NH, and then that big block of primaries have so much influence.

It would be phenomenal if Bernie wins. He is against Citizens United. He is against the buying of elections. Yes, he is not perfect and made some Warren like compromises throughout his political career. But it would be a start and it would wake up a lot of people, young people especially, who are the next in line to become cynical and give up, unless that trajectory is finally stopped.

donkeytale said...

I'm guessing Corny is where DeRay eventually wants to be.

Wealthy, tenured, "authentic."

I see little to no difference there at all in fact, certainly nothing like the 99 to 1 differential you posit.

You're perfectly OK with a Cornel West who totally gets by in life play acting a caricature of a 60s radical, who in reality is pampered and petted by elitist (lily white) academic and media institutions, without producing a shred of notable scholarship to support his gig.

Who now strains to keep his old school ass in the media spotlight by feeding off #BLM and DeRay too, even getting himself playact arrested right alongside DeRay, whose current media relevance West attempts to borrow (steal?) in order to guild his own fading public image.

Cornel West is 99% more authentic than DeRay? Only difference is mainstream media bubble boy (West) versus social media (DeRay).

Absolve one and I would absolve the other or admit to inconsistency.

Condemn one and condemn the other.

But why condemn either if you wish for Bernie to be elected? Bernie already knows he needs both in his corner along with about 40% of the black votes (minimum) to have any chance of unseating Hillary during the primaries.

donkeytale said...

I guess I should have said "bubble man" not "boy." Apologies.

donkeytale said...

Also, I think you are projecting your cynicism unto the young people. The ones I interact with are already determined that the system is stacked against them. They aren't cynical they are realistic. College loans, lack of social security because of the boomers taking so much of the pie, etc. They are planning to live in a new and different world.

Likewise, the young people of #BLM are taking the actions into their own hands. That's their point. They aren't relying on Hillary or Bernie to deliver justice to them.

#BLM is NOT mainstream boomer blacks (the ones who tend to vote DLC). It is frankly racist to assume both generations hold the same outlook.

And #BLM know it. That is why the resentment of young blacks is focused more on BernieSoWhite supporters than the man himself. Bernie quickly pivotted in recognition that the #BLM crit was on target. Bernie white fans don't grok the black experience because we haven't lived it. Therefore, black kids resent us telling them how they must vote and why.

They may not in fact vote at all until one of their own makes a political run. Which should start happening at the local level soon I would think. Someone will step up to make that run, and of course be accused of co-opting the movement for personal gain.

Same as it ever was.

donkeytale said...

At this stage the GOP are perhaps the Bern's biggest allies in that they will do anything to derail Hillary whether we like it or not.

Politricks make strange bedfellows. Hence you have Coulter who wants HRC to wet the bed as badly we do.

Swift boating Hillary may in fact be Bernie's best chance at the nomination unless he can gain enough natural traction among the Dem primary electorate thru wins in Iowa and NH.

donkeytale said...

And of course, someday the system that is stacked against young people will become their system, which will be stacked against a new generation of young people unless today's young people somehow break the circle, which the Greatest Gen and the Boomers definitely have not done in our own times of zeitgeistic autocracy.

donkeytale said...

No Bernie doesn't have to win S. Carolina. He needs to win Iowa (or close) and NH for sure.

Then he needs a strong showing in SC, say 40% of the black vote.

The reason the early primaries matter more is because no one else pays attention (beyond us political junkies) until the primaries begin and the media angle and a lot of subsequent voter preferences are determined by the early states as the people start to pay more attention they will naturally see what happened in the early states.

The 2008 nomination was basically won by Obama in SC. The aha! moment when it became apparent he had the black vote in his pocket meant the end of Hillary.

If Bern wins the caucus in Iowa he may win the caucus in NV too even though the electorate is disproportionately hispanic there. Obama managed to pull off both because caucuses require better campaign focus and discipline and are not necessarily reflective of the electorate. Clearly, Obama had the best boots on the ground in 2008 and 2012. Bernie will need the best boots on the ground in 2016 to have a chance, assuming HRC doesn't self-implode.

The fact that she is fat and out of shape maybe means she will explode rather than implode.

Looks and personality are also detrimental to Hillary and potentially galvanising features for Bernie that are not yet reflective in the polling because it is too early to demonstrate that head to head comparison.

Or body to body as the case may be. The only place you regularly see Hillary's blimp like physique by the way is on Fox News. I was eating breakfast in a hotel room a few weeks ago watching Fox on the dining room TV woith sound off and they repeated a GIF for like five minutes of HRC head to toe entering a room in one of those tent-like pant suits that accentuated the fact she is fat rather than hides it, which the tent-like clothes are trying to do.

I realised in the MSM you NEVER see anything but shots of HRC.

She needs to drop 30-40 lbs NOW if she wants to win.

donkeytale said...

"in the MSM you never see anything but HEAD shots of HRC"

donkeytale said...

The fat fuck candidate in these times of financial inequality and the obviously corrupt wealth the Clintons have attained are powerful images of why the people should not vote for her.

However, the entire society is also obese and the poorest tending to be the most obese, so maybe this is also an outmoded comparison. Wow, this country is fat.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Cornel is another example of how one can be suckered from what is portrayed on the surface. I suppose it is a matter of context. At least Cornel is an academic, while DeRay is part and parcel of Teach for America.

I can see your point. I can now see it because you said to take a closer look. There was a recent brouhaha between West and Eric Michael Dyson. The latter is professional Black elite class. I keep falling for the pick a sides option instead of none of the above. It does seem that Cornel is all talk. If he was more critical of people instead of calling everyone their brother, then I wouldn't be peeling the egg of of my face.

I see Cornel is a big fan of Louis Farrakhan. That is a scary thought. He missed the memo that Farrakhan basically admitted to killing Malcolm X? I am from the school of forum thought that says stay in the moment, but if later on new info emerges, retract the support.

Did you know that Farrakhan believes in UFOs and Scientology? It doesn't get more ridiculous than that. I don't actually believe he believes any of that. It's weird. And the attacks on me say I see Hal Turner around every corner. I am seeing it with Louis.

I don't think young people are cynical like Erich Fromm was approaching or us when taking a closer look at our condemnation of the internet. I meant they are the next people to say this sucks and forget about changing the system from within. I agree with you. I disagree with your interpretation of what I wrote. They are realists, not cynical, but they too will be broken down and become cynical also.

Yet I am also proof that one can be cynical and then be woken up from the cynical slumber. Bernie is now up ten in NH and down ten in Iowa. I think he may end up with a landslide in NH and a decent win in Iowa. That is the trajectory.

Bernie is playing this perfect. Counterpunch types couldn't have been farther off from being prescient. They said Bernie was a tool gathering in the progressive wing, give a speech at the convention, and a peck on the Hillary cheek along with all his delegates.

They never gave him any benefit of the doubt, to repeat. He said he was in it to win it and he meant it. You were vindicated and exactly like you describe it.

I will repeat one more time that I was attacking specifics, as in Bernie never said all lives matter and Hillary did. I figure I exposed CNN disinfo and the only difference is we are a nobody blog and not Mediate or Media Matters or wtf or Raw Story or some other blowhard copy and paste website.

You could be correct about Coulter. I see she is considered as some sort of satirist, some Morton Downey Jr. who was acting the whole time.

If she thinks Bernie is easier to beat than Hillary and is doing some reverse psychology, say like the rumors of Bill Clinton social engineering his buddy Don into the race, then so be it. Bernie is not a socialist. He just likes the word. Hitler also called himself a socialist, no? And we know that he was a fascist. That old-school attack on Bernie is not going to work. I think she was being sincere. Bernie is fighting for the middle class. He just happens to not shy away from the S word.

Even a blind squirrel will find an acorn once in a while. I think that's what happened with Annie.

(continued)

Tokyo Shemp said...

Scott Brown won Teddy's seat in the only state that boted for McGovern. He didn't win. The DINOs lost. It was a protest vote. A protest vote works in Bernie's favor, not to mention that he is a fricken US Senator and has gotten some things accomplished working with Republicans. Yeah, it was for Veterans' rights.

Bernie is viable for the Finals. Hillary is turning into Martha Coakley who lost to loser Scott Brown. That was Coulter's point. She is a nutjob, yes.

Bernie is brilliant in how he is now trolling Hillary. Every progressive platform she has come up with followed what Bernie first said, from student loans to raising the minimum wage.

I don't know if you saw it, but he went hush, don't let anyone know this, but I think the Hillary campaign is a bit rattled. Counterpunch has had no clue. It fit well into their business model to torch the kid no matter what the facts.

He runs positive campaigns. It doesn't mean he is a doormat.

I was prescient all over the place the last several months. I tweeted about this Hillary desperation. I trolled one of the Nate Silver guys about his proclamation that the Bern surge was over. I was the first to out DeRay as Teach for America. I think so anyway.

But to repeat, I am a nobody at a nobody blog.

I nailed the Governor of Connecticut. Politico had a recent article naming apparent Hillary shills. I found out he got big money from billionaires. I do what I can. Yes, I am not going to attack DeRay or Cornel like crazy until after the primaries. You are correct on that.

Too bad nearly every media outlet is trash and irrelevant.

Or maybe the word is shallow. And a lot of this stuff only takes me a couple minutes to figure out, stuff that blowhards never fit into their mailed in entries at major outlets.

I am feeling confident in the ability to shed the false ego. Alan Watts got through to me last night. There is no Fritos, socrates, or prepostericity. Those are concepts. I am simply part and parcel of nature. Sure I still have a ways to go, but I see the light at the end of the fake tunnel. Watts called society a hoax. It's true.

But he is famous for eternity. I am scraping for 200 page views a day.

But it doesn't matter. That's my false ego looking for recognition and that too shall pass.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I think you are correct. Hillary losing votes means they are going to Bernie. She is like Wade and LeBron prematurely celebrating against the Mavs a couple years ago. Who won that series?

Unless you are Larry Bird, it's probably best not to trash talk and that's been the equivalent of Hillary so far. She messed up big time going after Sanders. They sort of had an oral agreement to keep it clean, each do their thing and let the chips fall where they may and Hillary broke the pact!

Bernie is doing an end-around against superpacs. The more the DINOs try to strong arm the coronation, the more Bernie surges. If he pulls off that march on Washington, it will be all over imho. He got a bit lucky. No Warren. Biden doesn't seem emotionally in it to win it or even try. It helps Bernie that there are hardly any other challengers and O'Malley was the one everyone said to keep an eye on, and he is utterly clanking the rim. Your BubbleBoy Webb is generating zero interest. Chafee? He should make himself some hot milk and watch some Lawrence Welk. He's done.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Hush, between us, don't tell anyone else... I think Counterpunch, Jason Johnson, and Nate Silver are a bit rattled.

Tokyo Shemp said...

"Don't tell anybody. I think they're getting nervous. Shh, don't tell anybody."

~~ Bernie Sanders in a recent interview

Tokyo Shemp said...

Sorry for spelling mistakes and I even got Dyson's names mixed up.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Fruit is apparently overrated and unhealthy. People believe it is healthy, but it has sugar and carbohydrates.

In one of Hillary's emails she asks someone for the article arguing there is a connection between lack of sleep and weight gain.

I can't believe all these people have eating disorders, food addictions or some other excuse. Some, yes, probably and I apologise to them in advance. Most overweight people imho are soft and lazy. I hate to sound cruel, but it is what it is.

donkeytale said...

Fresh, whole fruit is very good for you. Fresh is also very expensive and must be washed well before consuming because of pesticide.

3-4 servings a day, in lieu of other more junkier foods to fill you up and provide nutrition. I tend to eat 1-2 main meals a day and three servings of fresh fruit. Frau Tale has friends in the area who grow their own and trade with her for the fish she catches.

Growing your own is always the best althernative. See also, cannabis.

Avoid smoothies mixed with yogurt or milk. Avoid dried fruits. These are more like consuming ice cream and candy and are generally speaking in the junk food category..

donkeytale said...

Yes, people are stupid. However, I myself pull the occasional boner in my daily affairs so I'm not going to get into that judgment category.

Much of it is economic-related. Much of it is emotional/psychological.

Eating gives some people a great sense of comfort, like smoking or drinking.

Then there are those who eat too much, smoke and drink.

My biggest vice these days is coffee. Actually, coffee has been a big vice of mine since teenage years. My dad drank it by the gallon but his was too weak. He lived to a ripe old age and mostly healthy as a horse until the last few years but his heart and kidneys wore out at the end.

He was a smoker too.

My determination to get back into shape stems from a desire to stay active and vital into my late years. I may have told you the story of this old lady who walked her dogs TWICE a day all the way around our lake. Now it is a smallish lake but it is still like 5 miles all the way around. I would stop and chat with her if I was outside. Our house is around the corner from hers so I would see her at the tail end of her trek, usually carrying one of her smaller dogs who was worn out. She was slender with strong legs, obviously in great shape for her age.

As the years went by her conversations became increasingly bizarre, the obvious effects of dementia. She also had a large, beautifully maintained lot around her house for which she did all the work herself.

I figured her for late 70s. Then one day the local monthly community newspaper did an article on her. She had been an artist, a spinster who had lived in the same house since she was a child. She'd outlived 3 sets of dogs and was on her fourth dragging them around the lake every day for decades.

94!

Alas, her mind gave out before her body and she is now in a nursing home.

donkeytale said...

In fact, I may or may not live all that long that is not necessarily the goal but I want to be able to do what I can do at the best physical condition possible for as long as I'm allowed.

There is also the stress factor which is worse than ever, in this the age of the infoboobtubes. The need to not only respond to all these inquiries but do so immediately.

Twenty years ago you had a day to return a phone call or an email. Today you have five minutes. It's nuts.

The internet induces its own form of dementia as we order our lives, especially our work lives around it. I see tremendously productive younger people at work but unfortunately with the same issues we have noted in most bloggers: polarized, extremely black and white in their thinking, tending to follow rather than lead, unable to think outside narrow boxes, not very creative.

donkeytale said...

It is the smart phone as opposed to the desktop or laptop that is the root of all evil, IMHO.

The laptop allows one to accomplish amazing things at work, including the ability to google invaluable information.

I can honestly say I am the go to guy on all types of issues because of my ability to google, a skill honed by years of wasting time blogging.

Amazingly, most people still don't google effectively or even realize how easy it is.

donkeytale said...

I have sleeping difficulties. I am most often awake and active 3-4 in the morning as you noted. I am often tired during the day. Especially I don't sleep well in hotel rooms where unfortunately I spend much time.

Believe it or not I have found meditation and prayer the best way to relax my mind and gain restful sleep.

By meditation I mean fixing the mind on one sound or a mental thought of the sound.

By prayer, I mean the lord's prayer, the only one I know. Catholic in that respect.

I never pray asking for stuff. On occasion, I may express thoughts to take care of and protect those whom I love, generally offering myself in their place if something bad needs to happen to make God happy, or wtf He's up to with this daily grind inflicted upon our mortal souls.

I never ask for anything for myself but forgiveness.

I fully recognise I may indeed be talking only to myself. I never go to church, maybe once every five years or so.

But what I do works for me, so what can I say?

donkeytale said...

I'm still thinking Bernie has about a 3 in 8 chance of gaining the nomination.

I don't see Biden running unless there is a HRC implosion, which I frankly don't see happening either,

The Bern will have to earn it and while I'm not as pessimistic on this point as Nate Silver, I do concede that Silver's analysis is usually spot on. Bernie will have to shake some pretty big trees along the way and we'll know pretty much through SC whether he can win.

MAMZ actually predicted 2012 better than former kossack Silver which is saying something because Silver was almost entirely correct and had the bigger megaphone at the NYT. I guess it was a matter of a few small degrees of correctness. Daily Kos is as pro-Bernie as we are, which frankly gives me pause and keeps me from bashing Counterpunch too much.

Bernie is the candidate of the fake left, after all.

donkeytale said...

I expect him to take NH. Iowa will be huge because the results there are more about the ground game. Bernie will need massive ground game. Hillary had nothing but aging blowhard pundit types in 2008 while Obama put together a revolution in political organising if nothing else.

Supposedly, Hillary has that machine in her corner now but offset by the fact she's a poor candidate. If the Bern develops as good a ground game he will come close or even win Iowa.

This will be huge

If he does significantly better than expected among blacks in SC I will be revising his odds upward closer to 50-50.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I was wrong the other day to downplay your threads are greatness schtick. I got petulant and whined, "No one gives a darn about long, past discussions." I suppose it is akin to Immanuel "pussyfoot" Kant. People later on rewrote his schtick better than he ever could with the result being more peanuts having the ability to absorb the essence.

Perhaps in future years someone can pick and choose from our blah blah proficiency and then our false ego greatness will finally be recognised.

You are correct about fruit. Yet, I sincerely believe I am also correctamundo about fruit. How can that be? Does this all add up to fruitcake?

I am coming from the angle that fruit added to an unhealthy diet will contribute to that unhealthiness.

If someone is pounding back a bag of doritos, or fritos to be consistent, but is also drinking a diet coke (aspartame to the side) instead of the obvious junk which is sugared soda, that is not stopping the bleeding.

I am sure if we continue with this new emphasis on health and diet, we will eventually be discussing alkaline versus acid. We would fine-tune this discussion so that anyone with a scoosh of common sense would be able to solve health and happiness on his or her own.

90 is apparently the new 70. I hear you. 60 became the new 40 at some point. Your reporting on the old lady was very insightful. Use it or lose it?

I am not sure how you are able to fudge around the major differences between Catholicism and Buddhism, but we all have our crosses to bear. That pun is obviously intended.

I have had this one "vine family" plant for over ten years. I didn't take very good care of it until recently. I wish I knew exactly what its name is. It looks more like a flowery kind of concoction rather than the stuff growing off of buildings.

I have learned so much from it. I must have done a sorta kinda good job if it is still alive ten years later, but recently I re-potted it and it is so alive.

The point isn't to make a blog entry on how to care for plants. The thing I'm trying to get to is nature in and of itself. It needs no t.v. nor internet, just the right amount of water, new soil every year or so, sufficient sunlight, and yeah, those little stick thingies you can feed into it help a lot.

We are no different but are simply much more complex.

The old lady was able to stay young because she seems to have stuck in the moment decade after decade. It doesn't sound like she ever hit a rut.

Alan Watts pretty much demolished conventional wisdom on social reality and its impact on individual development. He said by the time we get through twenty years of conformist indoctrination, we have already wasted a big chunk of our false ego time within the present body. I want to keep living because now is when I am reaping the benefits of awareness or maybe it is false awareness. If it's the latter, I am still ahead of the fake game. Perhaps in the next ten or twenty years I can become even more spiritually healed.

The plant survived despite my ineptness as its caretaker. Now that I have upped my florist game, it is fricken whooping it up as part and parcel of the godhead.

We do not know when our number will be called. I certainly cannot prove reincarnation, just as Descartes fell flat on his fat fucking face with proving "reason."

But yes, I agree with your implication that the goal should be to reach the top of one's spiritual game when God says, "Okay buddy, it's time to get out of the pool."

As the plant regenerates the more it is able to exist under optimal conditions, we mere mortals can do the same within our much more developed and intense ecological structure.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Coffee is another drug or wtf we have in common. I was in a music camp one summer. One night I was in the cafeteria and pounded back twelve cups. I was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Recently I learned a fancy trick and it seems verified through empirical study. One should wait an hour or so before drinking it. It also helps if one times it so the first hour without coffee coincides with the start of the day.

So basically one should let God wake up first, let him or her do her thing, then go for the java.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I also agree with your analysis of society pressuring us to speed up our games. I have been very fortunate in being able to experience various cultures. I got in Ireland. I was mostly from the Boston area. I got a year in the Bay Area, California.

The internet seems to bypass those intricate differences and force all of us to be the equivalent of a 12-year-old who just pounded back twelve cups of caffeine.

I hate that. I hate being rushed. I hate feeling obligated.

I do see your point about cell phones. The first thing is to put any health concerns to the side. Doctors need pagers. Those were the original cell phones? Others also benefit from providing easy access to themselves no matter where they are or what they are up to.

Oftentimes I want to be left alone. I don't want to always be easily contacted. Email is sort of the same thing, yet less intrusive.

Twitter is kind of like the cell phone, but it is even more annoying because any Dick, Jane, or BubbleBoy can get in one's triple F. I cannot believe how shallow Twitter is. I can believe it. I contradict myself. I know.

Google is remarkable and obviously that is another commonality we share. We both hate the company and what it represents and we both understand how it is an amazing tool to sift through social media or whatever it is the internet has become.

McLuhan was prescient and predicted the internet. I think he saw it as the equivalent of microfiche on steroids. He spoke of how we could each become our own versions of a human encyclopedia.

Although I think over time it has lost a lot of its value. There is much more garbage at this point to sift through.

My best example for this point would probably be with the Kimberlin schtick. When I started out, it was just pretty much me and the googler. Now it is me, the googler, and the monstrosity of both Breitbart cultists and the numbnuts.

Tokyo Shemp said...

As for the politics, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems there has already been a shift in the mainstream media and how they frame the horse race as sports. It is still primarily too much Donald Trump, but Bernie is also benefiting from their warped coverage.

I point to the lack of any coverage on O'Malley, Webb, and Chafee. I also reiterate your idea of the best Bernie odds could come from Hillary getting her arse whupped in terms of public perception.

Bernie is like anything else. His success and the energy of those supporting him is forcing the mainstream media to keep upping his odds.

Hillary should not have broken that unwritten pact I alluded to.

Methinks that is the equivalent of a tell in poker.

I will take 38.75% Bernie odds any day of the week. I do think it will come down to what you have articulated and to the stuff I have mentioned folks should keep an eye on such as the potential for a massive Bernie rally in Washington D.C..

It's never a wise move to try to run out the clock in the first quarter of a game in which one has taken a big lead.

I keep forgetting to look to see if there is a list of all the states and how many delegates there are.

The ptb blowhards keep pushing the field goal posts. At what point will they acknowledge that Bernie is a serious threat to the coronation? I do believe that point has arrived or is very close to happening. What happens if the trajectory persists? What if the next or some ensuing poll has Bernie up say 54% to 30% Hillary in New Hampshire?

Of course, the blowhards will talk about home field advantage and how Hillary still has the Black vote in her fat hipped, back pocket.

Enough is enough!

Tokyo Shemp said...

That's 37.5%, oops, three into eight. And that's only for the present moment and doesn't take into account Bernmentum and whatnot. So yes, you are to be respected for your wisdom and if you say those are Berns' current odds, to quote from J.J. Evans, "Looking good, Dyn-o-mite, and I knnnnnooooooooowww."

Tokyo Shemp said...

Proficiency was the wrong word. I meant our capacity for volume production. The word now escapes me.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Oh, prolific? Aaaah, proficiency!

Tokyo Shemp said...

Omg, I did say proficiency. I am proofreading after it's too late to proofread and saw what I wrote as prolific. To quote BubbleBoy in Welcome Back Kotter, "I'm so confused."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll9-jEtEiiI

Tokyo Shemp said...

Prolific is the actual word. I too am an idiot like most regular guys.

Tokyo Shemp said...

So what is the word for prolific that grammatically corresponds to proficiency? Prolific-ness?

Tokyo Shemp said...

prolificosity?

Tokyo Shemp said...

stat padding, gratuitous, rancid schtick, maybe we should join forces and mail in one of those stupid little books that rake in millions: The numbnut's guide to sounding smart when he is snot. You had a snot misspellicism schtick. I forget how that one worked.

Wow, I just googled misspellicism. There are ten results, for me anyway, and all of them are myself talking about you. I wish I was Catholic. I could do hail mary's or whatever youse guys do when you get freaked out. There's even a link to Field's blog, but the other nine are from here.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I didn't miss your point about smart phones, but I forgot to address it directly and went deep into the bleachers away from the game.

Yes, there's a big difference between having a laptop with room to breathe and google and have a million tabs opened, etc..

I don't know how people do it with their thumbs. I did phone text a couple years ago and did not like it. I cannot imagine getting much done blogging wise if I was forced to work off of a phone.

donkeytale said...

Well, I was baptised catholic but never confirmed. My parents were both brought up seriously Catholic, attending parochial school etc but never in my lifetime do I recall them attending Mass. Once they left the holy land (Wisconsin) for Babylon (Los Angeles) it was basically over for them and G.O.D.

I recall begging them to take me to Mass when I was about 6 which they did. Mass was said in latin in those days. That was pretty much it for me too, although I also attended for awhile as an adult with my first wife who was more nominally Catholic. We attended St Anthony the Workers Church located somewhere in downtown Boston as I recall because it was one of our first stops when we hit town after a rather harrowing journey from California in December 1976.

We lit candles and felt less afraid immediately, so we kept going back for awhile. Obviously, we both survived, had a daughter together who we baptised (or "christened" as they say in NE) at some church in Everett, MA. Today our daughter has a daughter, is also divorced, is doing quite well in life AFAIK and never mentions God at all, much less attends church. Had dinner with her and me granddaughter just the other night.

The apple fell close the tree. I guess. Everybody says she is like me, except not an introvert.

I've done some phone blogging but not lately. You're right not fun.

This is silly season for the campaign. You can say Bernie has a 40% chance if you want to round the percentage up.

I'm not one to blame the media. Like the govt, if it sucks it is because it represents a people and a nation that sucks. It's fairly representative as far as I can see. That doesn't mean it's good or effective. Not at all. But it is more representative and fair than say the rags the fake left tends to believe in wholeheartedly, such as RT or Pepe Escobar.

I mean, ok, great, the media sucks, so what do we do now? Give up?

Yes, Trump sucked [overuse of the word 'sucks' alert] the air out of the room on the GOP side but the Bern has gotten if anything more and less critical coverage than Hillary far as I can see. Or it is pretty equal. Omalley and the others aren't even registering so they aren't going to get anywhere. The media owes them nothing IMHO. Trump helps legitimise Bernie in a weird way by making outsiders the current buzz and also because the Bern seems normal even if he is a "socialist" at least in the fake left meaning of the term.

And polls now dont mean diddle anyway as we have discussed in this very thread. Nothing pollwise will matter much until the primary games begin and average people actually start paying attention after the first 2-3 primary/caucuses.

donkeytale said...

It seems that quiet, genial physician Carson, sort of the anti-Trump of outsiders on the right is also quietly moving up the charts. Interesting development there. Unlike Obama he did not have the advantage of an African intellectual mixed with a white middle class background and upbringing.

He's purely self made from Detroit of all places. I guess. Extremely conservative but he could end up pulling some black voters in his direction, obviously the more conservative ones, of which there are a surprisingly large number in my experience.

If he catches fire and some black voters abandon the Dem side to vote GOP (I know, a big if which seems unlikely) because they like him (and he does seem likeable), this would actually benefit Bernie.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Carson could do okay, but that would be limited to the Republican side. He has many wackadoo ideas and those would play out in the Finals. Kasich appears to be the best Republican in regards to that wackadoo factor. Maybe he is also a nutjob, but it appears he would be the lesser of all nutjobs by far in that cuckoo banana party. I do see he has risen to second in one NH poll. Yet, NH is part of the smarty pants region and it makes sense he would gain traction there.

I think you are correct to downplay polls. Yet, I think the Democratic polls are much more indicative of the truth. Captain Obvious says wait and see what happens when a lot of those Republican losers with 1-5% drop out and then those votes have to go somewhere.

It's too bad you don't watch at least a bit of cable news. They had a clip of Hillary today. She is now raising her voice and sounding like Bernie with an enough is enough schtick. It's bizarre. She is so rattled, imho. She expected an easy coronation, like Obama four years ago, and it's falling apart, plain and simple.

She's still the favourite, no doubt. I'm not that biased. But from another angle, Bernie is the favourite. And of course we are in wait and see mode, so anyone can say anything and if it lands that way, they will look prescient.

I looked and can't find any video of it. To me it seemed she was trying to sound fiery instead of her usual Bill O'Reilly form of smarmy pretentiousness.

I found a couple new articles that make her look bad:

Hillary Clinton’s death spiral in the polls
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/09/07/hillary-clintons-death-spiral-in-the-polls/

Smoking guns aplenty in Clinton emails
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-goldberg-clinton-emails-20150907-story.html

Those are op-eds and I don't know who those people are. NH is definitely home turf for Bern, so the stronger he can beat her down there, the better.

There's yet to be one debate nor the alleged march on Washington.

This isn't Globetrotters-Washington Generals.

Right now it is shaping up to be old-school Celtics/Lakers.

From August 28th:
Bernie Sanders Update: Plan for Enormous D.C. Rally Gains Steam
http://observer.com/2015/08/bernie-sanders-update-plan-for-enormous-d-c-rally-gains-steam/

I have to believe I am not the only one having more fun this election fight than any other and perhaps that extends to folks like yourself who seem to follow them every single cycle.

I'm done.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I'm never done.

"Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective."

There's circumstantial proof of your being prescient, that right wingers could be Bernie's best allies. They could do the dirty work he refuses to do except for the occasional hush hush just between us playful remarks.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Hillary and the DINO's are playing from the cynical vast right wing conspiracy platform which characterised the internet from 2000-2010.

People are tired of that. When her response to all the critiques are that they are coming from Breitbart or wtf, people start to say wait a second. This is why I am hopeful Bernie pulls off that big rally in D.C.. That will show like Bernie's surge that this isn't about the wingnuts trying to smear their way in. The non-biased observer no matter from what party must admit that Hillary or Bernie is the next President. Yes, there could be an HRC implosion after she wins the nomination or someone like Kasich bubbles up to the unexpected win. I see it as between Hillary and Bernie for all the marbles. That's one dude's let's cut to the chase analysis.

I think many or most of the useful idiots still supporting her are still trapped in that simplistic outlook. That it's the goodness party (Democrats) versus the evil empire (Republicans). There is a little bit of truth to that, as you and many pointed out how much damage the Nader campaign ultimately wreaked on humanity.

We shall see.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Yes, maybe Carson can steal some Hillary votes. There are a number of factors. The Snowden vote. The rapper vote, Lil' B. Kareem came out strong for Bernie only stopping short of an endorsement, imho.

I know this Grandmom who is nice and liberal and she is liking Trump. It is the protest vote, period. I doubt she will like him forever. He is so arrogant and says so many awful things, that protest vote becomes at risk and not definite. Bernie's support is legit and strong. Us Bernie supporters are going nowhere.

There are also the hep conservative/libertarian who I could see voting for Bernie because of that idea of a protest vote, to reshuffle the deck. To make it so okay we will help Bernie get elected, so a pure sincere conservative will someday have their chance too.

People are fed up.

There is also the not yet evolved vote, those younger people who might listen to Stern and whatnot. They might be picked up in the emotional side of it all and vote for Bernie also.

This is a phenomenal story and is perhaps waking up a lot of people. It is turning out to be an election where a lot of us who never vote are going to, even stupid people who follow and don't lead.

I found this. It's from June 2014.

'I'M RIGHT AND EVERYBODY ELSE IS WRONG. CLEAR ABOUT THAT?'
Bernie Sanders will likely represent the hard-line Left in 2016. Will he help or hurt the movement?


http://web.archive.org/web/20140620163805/http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/i-m-right-and-everybody-else-is-wrong-clear-about-that-20140618

I think I'm definitely now done. I am not trying to spam the F out of the medium.

Tokyo Shemp said...

That's a very interesting article. It shows why he needed to evolve and did in regards to BLM.

He seems to believe it is the Reagan blue collar vote that is needed to build a strong national movement.

It sounds like what I said above about the Howard Stern vote.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Vermont may be lily-white, etc., but Bernie has shown the capacity to dominate that state. He is very politically savvy and consistent.

When Sanders is in a good mood, as he is today, he adopts a didactic tone, happy to school anyone who deigns to question his wisdom. I ask him how exactly he plans to convince millions of disaffected Reagan Democrats to stop voting Republican, and he answers by telling a story about his unsuccessful 1986 gubernatorial run. On the ballot that year was a referendum on the Vermont Equal Rights Amendment. "When they came up with the votes, they found a very interesting thing," Sanders says, softening his booming, Brooklyn-inflected voice to emphasize the point. "They had people who were voting 'no' on equal rights and 'yes' for Sanders. And my point is, look: You have a country split on abortion, a country split on gay rights, you have many of these social issues, split on marijuana legalization. But what I believe very strongly is, working [people will] say: 'I disagree with him on abortion rights, I disagree with him on gay rights, but you know what, he's fighting for my kids and I support him.'"

Tokyo Shemp said...

This is a fun article. Now they are talking about how Bernie and Nader used to be close friends and that now Sanders outright ignores him.

donkeytale said...

Nader should be ignored. What a waste of time he is, a completely egocentric looser who now wants to cling onto Bernie because nobody cares about Ralphie anymore. Shithead that he is. The entire third party fake leftist looser trap descends from Nader.

Yes, great article. 20% of the US is white working class GOP.

Can Bernie get them back? The problem in a nutshell is that the white working class are not the truly economically oppressed or they don't define themselves that way.

It is also a demographic issue. These people are also old and while not well off for the most part they get by OK. Their favourite sport is resentment of the liberal elites. They are the ones who don't want the government messing with their social security and Medicare, meanwhile supporting the GOP who want to cut both ASAP.

Frankly, I believe the theory of attracting these voters back to the Demotards is correct but the practical nature of the issue, in this cycle especially, is just as daunting, perhaps moreso for Bernie than wooing black and hispanic voters.

And, for the most part, he's competing with Trump for this demographic not Hillary and won't even have a chance at them UNTIL the general election anyway since they are registered GOP.

And you will notice Trump also believes in taxing the rich. Krugman just penned an OPED stating that Trump is actually on the correct side of many economic issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/opinion/paul-krugman-trump-is-right-on-economics.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/opinion/paul-krugman-trump-is-right-on-economics.html

So, yeah, forgive me for this but the article is outdated (before #BLM made Bernie pivot on racial injustice) and I'll wait to see evidence of Bernie attracting the "Stern audience" whatever that is, my guess people who love infotainment but generally don't vote.

I agree with you there. The Bern needs to bring normally nonvoters to the polls of all stripes in order to defeat Hillary. Just as Obama did in 2008 and 2012.

donkeytale said...

In fact, what seems to be happening in this cycle is that older working class white people are finally just as fed up with conservative elites as they are liberal elites. Still, it seems more of a sport for the aging white more than a real sense of economic despair among this demographic which is why Trump resonates with them and why the truly oppressed, the minourity underclasses, SHOULD resonate with the Bern. Thankfully, he has righted his ship a bit, but the obvious answer was his campaign at first was missing the boat and still may end up dry docked if he doesn't find broad support among blacks and hispanice

But definitely, populism reules at the moment. The Bern has my vote.



donkeytale said...

LOL. This is why Hillary will never make it. All calculation all the time, dripping with insincerity. And note the full body shot. Beginning of the end?

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/09/08/hillary-clinton-calls-private-email-server-a-mistake-says-im-sorry-about-that/

Tokyo Shemp said...

You're so cynical, donkeytale. You don't think people can evolve in one day? Next you're going to say it had something to do with the NH focus group informing her campaign worker they'd like some answers?

Are you trying to elect Donald Trump?

Next you'll say she is making a cold calculation to speak with Ellen next to show her warm, spontaneous, regular guy personality.

You're going to attack her for apologising for her pro-Iraq War vote? How can you?

“In our political culture, saying you made a mistake is often taken as weakness when in fact it can be a sign of strength and growth for people and nations,” Mrs. Clinton wrote.

“I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had. And I wasn’t alone in getting it wrong,” she wrote. “But I still got it wrong. Plain and simple.”


Jerry said in King of Comedy, "Hitler made a mistake."

How can you be so holier than thou?

Next you'll say the DINOs are rigging the debate schedule to ensure the coronation pushes forward.

And I might add it looks today that Biden will run. That guy seems to have changed his tune. Next you'll say Hillary's problems are why Joe might now enter the race despite looking done a week ago?

Shame. On. You.

But yeah, seriously, take my wife. Henny Youngman. Somehow I ended up on the old school Sanders article which you agree was greatness.

The Reagan thingie was like a tough knuckleball and explains why he missed the memo to play it smarter with the minority vote.

Good points all around.

I ended up on a Thomas Frank article after googling Reagan Democrats. I suppose the Stern vote are the equivalent of them but younger, say Generation Y. Generation X my weight class was solid. You can look it up. Generation Y was the one too young to see the Reagan Revolution for what it was.

I don't know who this Frank guy is, but he sounded both smart and idiotic. He praised the US for stopping the Nazis. I guess he never heard of Russia.

He also had some awkward idea that Watergate destroyed liberalism. Maybe he is correct. It was interesting. He said the loooosers went overboard with an anti-corruption schtick and forgot about the FDR roots of safety nets and compassion.

So he said Reagan didn't happen in a vacuum. He also pummeled Gary Hart, Carter, and Obama.

I find it tough to trust someone with the name Frank, something to do with the show M*A*S*H.

Yes, great fin that NYT article. She is so obviously full of it and operating like it is still 1930 and people might hear something on the radio or newspaper.

Or else guys like us are a small minority who can see the obvious and our country is stupid and there is not much hope.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Apologies for adding the Ron stuff in the main entry. A friend liked this one better than most, but yeah, then there was the Ron stuff at the end which didn't fit in. Mea culpa. It was near greatness. The BubbleBoy syndrome is not only for those born in 1990 on. We too have become BubbleBoys.

To be Frank Burns, I should have just kept it as a title with no content. The title to me was greatness. Bubble Boy Freak Society? That's the best shite I ever came up with. If I was drinking something right now, it'd be flying out me nostrils, laddie.

Maybe that's how I will next evolve. I will create only titles and then send them to click bait major outlets who will pay me for such greatness.

donkeytale said...

I luvs me sum Ron.

You never have to apologise for inlc==uding Ron.

donkeytale said...

I mean, the disheveled internet predator.

donkeytale said...

And he chose to occur during Mahler's 8th.

donkeytale said...

See I am not a cynic.

Even Ron Brynaert can be redeemed.

And donkeytale auto soc pilotA DOT COME