Level-2. No doubt. Trump repeatedy claimed that his electoral college victory was the biggest. What do you say? Was he right or was he lying?

I don’t think he was right. But I also don’t think he was lying. Were you aware that event goers had to contend with riots and a violent mob? What are your views on terrorism against fellow citizens?

It is a fact, by their own statements, that they intended to disrupt the inauguration, and attempted to do so.

The idea, one, is we want to undermine Trump’s presidency from the get-go. There has been a lot of talk of peaceful transition of power as being a core element in a democracy and we want to reject that entirely and really undermine the peaceful transition. We would like the headline the next day to be “Trump Inauguration a Complete Meltdown and Clusterfuck.”

What is being planned is over the next several days, starting with this past weekend, we have had an Action Camp running all of MLK weekend. We are doing a lot of non-violent direct action trainings. Then, on Wednesday, we are doing a queer dance party at Mike Pence’s house. Thursday there is an action at an Alt-Right Trump inaugural ball called the Deploraball, trying to shut that down. Then, starting on Friday morning, which is the big day, we are having blockades go into action at all the checkpoints around the inauguration parade route and to get into the viewing area. We are also doing transit blockades all day. Then, there is going to be several unpermitted marches, an especially big one at Logan Circle at 10:00 AM. Then, at noon we are doing a permitted march and we have got stuff going on all evening, too.

The media was astroturfed, the inauguration was disrupted, and you guys ate a propaganda platter.

You weren’t even aware of that, were you.

Obama’s was bigger. He didn’t have professional agitators and anarchists blocking the entrance and threatening attendees.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/20/inauguration-protesters-police-washington-dc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisruptJ20

Like a god he speaks and brings ruin and pestilence. And they say I’m in a cult. Meanwhile the politicians of the last 40 years receive your endorsements because you can be sure they‘ll pay your causes lip service.

Does the United States subsidize the drug prices of wealthy countries with governments that regulate their own drug prices? Trump and his council of economic advisers seem to think so and have devised an E.O. to counter it.

It will be interesting to see if the new “payment model” will lead to higher drug prices abroad, lower drug prices in terms US. If such is the case, we might come to realize that the American taxpayer has been subsidizing the health care of foreign governments all along, without a single thank you.

Executive Order on Lowering Drug Prices by Putting America First

The administration’s foreign and domestic policy has had such an affect that only a once-in-a-century global pandemic could injure it. With a few exceptions I agree with nearly every executive order.

My family lives where Democrats have reigned for decades—currently under lockdown, on fire, and always under threat of mob violence. They aren’t looking to the president to furnish them with stately behaviors and lullabies. They see him as the last bulwark between America and its ruin.

You tell us what you think Trump is - you have spent so much effort conveying what you think he isn't.

As for the what, he is a man. As for the who, his life is a matter of public record, and is probably the most scrutinized and famous figure of the 21st century.

People such as yourself and the foreign meddlers are concerned with his breath, his combinations of words, whatever shape his pixels take on Twitter. In the absence of the Hitler you were promised but never arrived, this is all that you really have to work with.

I’m concerned with what he can do, and so far so good.

Say what you want, but you’ve deviated so far from the topic into a tirade of histrionics. Are you able to approach the topic without the typical Trump throat-clearing? Not once in that salad of words could you mention any racism, let alone any of the systemic type.

More mail-in ballot failures, this time in 4th congressional primary in Massachusetts.

A recount could be looming in the 4th Congressional District race between two Democrats as more uncounted ballots surfaced on Thursday.

Officials in Newton, Wellesley and Franklin on Thursday restarted counting primary ballots after Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin filed a court order to authorize local poll workers to continue counting ballots that were received on time and had not been tallied by the end of Tuesday night.

In Franklin, poll workers Thursday evening were counting about 3,000 uncounted ballots — much more than the previously estimated 600 uncounted ballots, according to a spokeswoman for the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office.

The newly discovered 3,000 uncounted ballots were mail-in votes that appeared to have never made it to polling locations on Election Day.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/09/03/massachusetts-4th-congressional-district-thousands-of-ballots-found-in-franklin-jesse-mermells-campaign-solicits-recount-signatures/

3000 uncounted mail-in ballots.

We’ve been conditioned to believe words and thoughts can affect a listener in ways beyond simple physics. We are taught that, though a word can barely move a blade of grass, it can cause pain and anxiety and stress in human beings. We should rid ourselves of this magical thinking because it gives power to those who would use thoughts and words against us. Rather, we should learn that this pain, anxiety and stress is caused by, finds it’s genesis within, the listener, and seek ways to mitigate and strengthen them for future interactions.

Devaluing another group of people based upon the color of their skin is not in short supply.

Your head is currently up the ass of a bonafide racist.

Calling peaceful protestors "sons a bitches" for quietly kneeling during the national anthem, and then not ever considering the grievance, but rather insisting that that demonstration was somehow anti-American and disrespectful to American armed services, was a blatant act of denying black Americans the right to peaceful protest and the redress of grievances.

You cannot deny the rights of Americans by criticizing ultra-wealthy athletes. Have you gone mad?

I’m not sure whether it is a crime or not, but it seems to me that phones and data payed for by the taxpayer should be a matter of public record and transparency, for the same reason we have the Freedom of Information act.

Whenever I agree with @NOS4A2 over someone else, I feel they can just instantly be disregarded as a thinker with any possible merit.

Though I can understand the insult as a means to remind everyone of your bona fides, I’m sure we agree on much more.

It doesnt even make sense

It is pretty absurd for the reasons you stated. But also the idea that the KKK or neo-Nazis are not racist because they lack power is morally repugnant. It makes no sense.

I myself have always thought that you can judge individuals, but never larger groups of people especially by their nationality, ethnicity, or race (whatever that means), but perhaps that's not the politically correct way to think about things now as denying the importance of race is racism itself.

That isn’t only an ethical, but also the reasonable way to go about treating others. One cannot derive any important information about an individual from levels of melanin, beyond what his parents may have looked like. It is better to learn from someone rather than make such assumptions. I’d stick with it if I were you.

That being said, this post-modern, critical theory stuff is a blight on the history of knowledge, and will go the way of all racial superstitions.

Right, forgetting your passcode is "stupid". But I don't think I know anyone who hasn't forgotten a passcode now and then. I guess we're all stupid. How about you NOS, ever forget a passcode?

Anyway, why is wiping your phone clear, before it was requested for examination, an example of corruption? I can see how wiping it after it was requested is corruption, but I think many people commonly wipe their phones.

I’ve never forgotten the passcode to my phone, and I’ve never typed a wrong passcode numerous times (a process that would take over an hour given the timeouts on an iPhone).

The fact that numerous people on the same team “accidentally” wiped their phones in such a fashion is a sign of a prevailing stupidity or of corruption in my opinion. At the very least it is worthy of investigation.

Racism is in such short supply these days that those who profit off its existence have relegated it to the invisible and nowhere, or in fact have become racists themselves. It’s like St. George forgetting to retire after slaying all the dragons. Pretty soon he’s just there, all alone, swinging his lance in the wind.

It looks like the Mueller team wiped their phones before the OIG could review their devices.

The records show at least several dozen phones were wiped of information because of forgotten passcodes, irreparable screen damage, loss of the device, intentional deletion or other reasons -- and came before the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) could review the devices.

The documents show that Mueller deputy Andrew Weissman "accidentally wiped" his phone twice after entering the wrong passcode too many times in March 2018. Lawyer James Quarles’ phone “wiped itself” without his intervention, the records say.

The records indicate Attorney Greg Andres phone was also wiped due to a forgotten passcode. And they say the phones of both Mueller deputy Kyle Freeny and Rush Atkinson were wiped accidentally after they entered the wrong passcode too many times.

The records say that a phone belonging to FBI lawyer Lisa Page – whose anti-Trump texts with FBI agent Peter Strzok were of interest to investigators -- was restored to factory settings when the inspector general’s office received it.

Other officials, whose names are redacted, claim to have unintentionally restored their phone to its factory settings, deleting all records of communication.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-records-mueller-team-wiped-phones

The Mueller team was either stupid or corrupt or both, but either way, by applying Clintonian destruction of records, they’re going to get away with it.

CNN telling people to commit voter fraud.

Most states, with help from USPS, give your ballot a code. After you've requested it, you can go to the Secretary of State's website and see where you are in the process.

It looks sort of like ordering a pizza from Domino's and being able to see on your phone when it comes out of the oven. Or filing your taxes! The federal government notifies you about that, too.

But not all states offer this feature. And they're not all Southern states opposed to mail-in voting you might suspect. You might expect Texas to require an excuse for voting by mail and not offer a tracking system. But New York also requires an excuse and also does not track your ballot. Connecticut is an example of a Northeast state temporarily allowing absentee voting by mail, although they do not track your ballot.

If it doesn't arrive, you might want to head to your polling place and explore your options, which are probably filling out a provisional ballot.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/politics/what-matters-august-14/index.html

While Trump’s opponents play “trump said”, more progress in the Middle East, this time between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

Afghanistan’s government and the Taliban are set to begin their first-ever direct talks next week toward ending nearly two decades of fighting, after the U.S. signed a deal with the insurgent group to extricate America from its longest war.

Representatives of the warring factions are expected to convene as early as Monday in Qatar’s capital to agree on a road map for reconciliation, officials said. Doha was also the venue for the signing of the U.S.-Taliban accord in February,

The Afghan government is prioritizing an immediate cease-fire, while the Taliban is likely to focus on a power-sharing arrangement and a transitional government.

The talks reflect a concerted push to end a war that began with the U.S.-led invasion in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that al Qaeda orchestrated from Taliban sanctuary in Afghanistan. The conflict has claimed more than 90,000 Afghan lives, displaced tens of thousands of people and destroyed schools, hospitals and other vital infrastructure. About a third of Afghans need urgent humanitarian aid, the United Nations has said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistan-and-taliban-begin-first-ever-direct-peace-talks-11599892222

The reconciliation is tenuous at best, but progress is being made. So much for the world’s police. America is quickly becoming the world’s peace-keepers.

The senses, too, have a boundary. The eye has the cornea; the the tongue has a mucosa; and so on. Direct contact between the boundaries of the self and the world is a necessary condition for perception, without which we would not perceive anything. Perception, as much as "experience", "identity", "memory", occur at and within the boundary and never outside of it. As such, the self begins and ends at the boundary, as finite as it is transient, as individual as it is particular.

1.1

But I have a lot of haters.

If I recall that Bahrain or UAE never submitted forces to fight Israel. Saudi-Arabia contributed troops only during the Israeli war of Independence, if I remember correctly. Those who have fought Israel apart of it's neighbors have been Iraq, Libya, Saudi-Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, that I know.

Bahrain is a member of the Arab League, which in 1967 issued the Khartoum Resolution: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it”.

In 2002, the Arab League declared the Arab Peace Initiative, which Prince Abdullah said was based on two issues: “ normal relations and security for Israel in exchange for full withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories, recognition of an independent Palestinian state with al-Quds al-Sharif as its capital, and the return of refugees.”

I’m not saying the end of some imaginary war is over, but that progress is being made in a voluntary, diplomatic process between the Arab League and Israel, the likes of which could offer economic and diplomatic stability to the entire region, and in my opinion throw water on an ancient sectarian and racial feud.

That in no way addresses my question. Was Israel at war with either of those nations, or at least military conflict of some kind? If not, it can hardly be considered making peace.
It seems like a symbolic gesture, which isnt a bad thing but its not really due the framing of making peace you have given it. (But I may be ignorant of certain facts that make this a more significant move towards a peaceful middle east, hence my question).

You never asked if Israel was at war with Bahrain. You asked if the move was symbolic. It isn’t. It’s official.

Have you heard of the Arab-Israeli conflict? It’s a long and bloody one.

Isreal had formal diplomatic relations with only two Arab states, neighboring Egypt and Jordan, established in 1979 and 1994 respectively. Now we can include UAE and Bahrain.

More peace in the Middle East. A bunch of know-nothing, inexperienced rubes did more to secure peace in a few years than decades of smooth-talking intellectuals.

Bahrain has become the latest Arab nation to agree to normalize ties with Israel as part of a broader diplomatic push by President Donald Trump and his administration to fully integrate the Jewish state into the Middle East.

Trump announced the agreement on Friday, following a three-way phone call he had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The three leaders also issued a brief six-paragraph joint statement, attesting to the deal.

Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner noted that the agreement is the second Israel has reached with an Arab country in 30 days after having made peace with only two Arab nations — Egypt and Jordan — in 72 years of its independence.

https://apnews.com/e21e371f1b406b209f93df5973d1fa46

Unemployment is down to 8.4%, 1.4 million jobs were added to the economy in August, so all his opponents are left to play is “Trump said...”.

But Trump said the right things according to a gold star husband whose wife was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria.

That voice from the doorway, though, was familiar because it belonged to a man I had seen on television countless times: President Donald Trump. As he approached me, he extended his right hand to shake mine, placed his left hand on my shoulder, looked me in my eyes and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss. Shannon was an amazing woman and warrior.”

I still have no idea what exactly I said in response. The days after my wife, Shannon Kent, was killed by a suicide bomber during a mission to fight ISIS in Syria in January 2019 had been such a blur and, anyway, I’d never met a president before.

But (I am told) I thanked President Trump, and I remember he held eye contact with me. And in his eyes, I could see — unmistakably — the same pain I’d seen in the eyes of other senior leaders who ultimately bear the responsibility for sending men and women to their deaths in combat.

As we unclasped our hands, the president said to me, “Shannon was the real deal, we are lucky to have people like her willing to go out there and face evil for us.” He kept his arm on my shoulder.

Together, as we waited for the plane that would bring Shannon home, we spent another 20 minutes talking about my wife, our children and what an amazing mother, wife, and soldier she was. It was clear to me that President Trump truly cared — not just that Shannon and three others had been killed in Syria, but about who Shannon and the three others were as people.

Then the president did something that I did not expect: he asked me what I thought about Syria and what we were doing there. He talked to me — a Green Beret and a combat veteran, not some expert at the Pentagon or a think tank — about the wisdom leaving troops in harm's way once ISIS’s territorial caliphate had been destroyed. It was clear to me that he was deeply conflicted about whether staying in Syria was worth the lives lost — Shannon and her three colleagues — on that day in January.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-came-dover-after-my-wife-was-killed-fighting-isis-ncna1239425

Credit to NBC for even allowing the op-ed, but it shows a man brave enough to stand by his story while the military industrial complex feeds cowardly gossip from the shadows.

First, let's hold off on talking about free will here. I'm requesting that someone, anyone respond to the issue of "control of desires". I'm denying that we don't have control of our desires. Do we or do we not have control of our desires. Please answer this.

We certainly do for the simple reason that nothing else controls our desires. Your desires are produced, regulated, and controlled by only one being. Even the seemingly automatic movements, such as the heart beat, are produced, regulated and controlled by the same being.

One can frame all the social sciences as "pseudoscientifc", but that doesn't mean social sciences shouldn't be taught.

That doesn’t mean it should be taught, either. But I was speaking of critical race theory in particular, which largely rejects the idea that scholarship should be or could be “neutral” and “objective”.

Framed as "divisive, anti-American propaganda".
It boggles the mind to think of what this guy's concept of "American" might be.

He should have thrown in “pseudoscientific nonsense”, as well.

Critical race theory extirpated from federal training from here on out, according to a new memorandum. Good riddance.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/M-20-34.pdf

First the UAE and Isreali peace deal, now the Belgrade–Pristina deal, and the anti-Trump brigade can’t get past the gossip, palace intrigue, and other deep-state dinner theater. Love it.

I like the quote often attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

I think this is true, at least in the common sense of the term “evil”. Though I suspect some philosophers would justify their waffling and inaction with a stern analysis of what evil means, by then the evil would have prevailed.

But in this administration, that is his job, to protect the President of the US from legal charges, indictments and from impeachment etc.

The problem is Barr was right, Blitzer was wrong, the Twitter user was wrong, as were those who drank that Koop-aid.

As a matter of federal law the US offers provisional ballots. Depending on the state, if an absentee or mail-in vote does not arrive and is thus not counted, a voter can request a provisional ballot instead. None of this is illegal.

Can someone who requested an absentee ballot vote on Election Day?
State law dictates whether voters who were issued an absentee ballot are permitted to vote at a polling place on Election Day. In some cases, such as when the absentee ballot did not arrive and therefore was not counted, a provisional ballot may be available.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/lb-provisional-ballots.aspx

Track your ballot

Most states, with help from USPS, give your ballot a code. After you've requested it, you can go to the Secretary of State's website and see where you are in the process.

It looks sort of like ordering a pizza from Domino's and being able to see on your phone when it comes out of the oven. Or filing your taxes! The federal government notifies you about that, too.

But not all states offer this feature. And they're not all Southern states opposed to mail-in voting you might suspect. You might expect Texas to require an excuse for voting by mail and not offer a tracking system. But New York also requires an excuse and also does not track your ballot. Connecticut is an example of a Northeast state temporarily allowing absentee voting by mail, although they do not track your ballot.

If it doesn't arrive, you might want to head to your polling place and explore your options, which are probably filling out a provisional ballot.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/politics/what-matters-august-14/index.html

“B-b-but muh banana republic”

There is too much zero-sum thinking in McIntosh’s argument. The idea that racism against a dark-skinned person is a benefit to a light-skinned person is seemingly born from this bias. Comments such as “In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable and alienated” is further evidence of this.

If this were true, it goes to follow that “decreases in perceived bias against Blacks over the past six decades are associated with increases in perceived bias against Whites”. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41613491?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents).

But since zero-sum situations are rare the existence of “white privilege” can be seriously questioned. I cannot see it as being true that resources gained by light-skinned people are matched by a corresponding loss to dark-skinned people, just as decreases in the bias against dark-skinned people cannot be shown to lead to increases in bias against light-skinned people. I think the opposite is the case. Emancipation, civil rights, justice, have expanded in tandem with the expansion of wealth, safety freedom and opportunity of our fellow citizens.

To me, it would have made more sense to argue the opposite: that no one benefits from racism, that it is pernicious not only to the victims of it, but also to it’s self-proclaimed beneficiaries.

We are all subject to zero-sum thinking, and I think this reflects in the notion of knowledge as privilege, specifically the idea that one man’s inability to access information (the Syrian), is another man’s privilege (the westerner).

We should indeed champion universal free thought and speech for everyone, but I do not think it is a privilege that another is denied access to such information, because it robs us all of the chance to get his opinion of it. This is true of all injustice and ill-treatment. We are all worse off, not privileged, because of another’s lack of access to information and education.

Twitterati are trying to say that verifying the tabulation of your vote, re-voting if necessary, is voting twice, as if it will count as two votes. They are blaming Trump for encouraging voter fraud when in fact he’s encouraging us to make sure our vote is counted. It’s hilarious too because they are now admitting the potential for fraud after months of claiming there was none.

In some states you can vote numerous times, for instance if one wants to change his vote. Of course, they only count as one vote.

Trump goaded them into adopting a desperate dumpster fire of a narrative.

A nice read, thanks.

Tacitus wrote of Nerva and Trajan’s rule:

“I have reserved for my old age, if life is spared to me, the reigns of the sainted Nerva and of the Emperor Trajan, which afford a richer and withal a safer theme: for it is the rare fortune of these days that a man may think what he likes and say what he thinks.”

I think, from this account, we can see the genesis of liberty.