(05-18-2021, 07:30 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 18-May-2021 World View: Ashli Babbitt
(05-17-2021, 05:00 PM)David Horn Wrote: > ... of course violence ensued, both within and outside the Capitol
> building -- but a typical Fox News edit: ignore everything that
> disagrees with the "accepted" POV. I watched too much of this,
> both in real time and later, and by no means was this a peaceful
> assembly. People rarely die during a peaceful activity.
Typical. Make up a phony "fact," ant then make up a phony accusation.
It's just so disgusting constantly dealing with this stream of total
crap from you and Brower and other Democrats.
Some people obviously intended violence. Not the Capitol Police. Not Congress.
I heard Donald Trump's words. Were he not President he would have been busted for incitement to riot.
Quote:So I didn't say there was no violence, because there was property
damage. And your "typical Fox News edit" phony accusation is really
typical crap from you. You're thinking of state media CNN, which
"edits" every news item to conform to the orders coming from their
bosses, the Biden administration. My experience is that Fox News
covers both sides and is almost always "fair and balanced," a concept
completely foreign to Democrats and state media like CNN.
CNN is owned by Time-Warner. Time-Warner is not a state enterprise. To be sure, CNN is not a great news source except on breaking news.
Quote:What I DID say (not that you even care what I actually said) was that
no weapons were found except those of the Capitol police, that no one
was harmed or killed by the "insurrectionist" Trump supporters, and
that only one person was killed during the "insurrection," a female
Trump supporter who was shot dead by a Capitol policeman.
Capitol Police did die.
Quote:That person was Ashli Babbitt, a female, an unarmed veteran, and a
Trump supporter. She was presumably shot and killed by the Capitol
police for the crime of being a Trump supporter. Fox News and
Republican politicians have been demanding to know who shot and killed
Babbitt, and to get the details of the shooting, but the Democrats
have been adamently stonewalling, presumably because revealing what
happened would show Democrat complicity in the "insurrection."
She was aiding people committing a serious breach of national security. Maybe someone else was the intended target and she got hit instead.
Quote:I know you couldn't care less about Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt
being shot dead. I can just imagine what you're thinking, Horn: "A
Trump supporter? Shoot her dead! Pop! Pop! Shoot all the Trump
supporters! Bang! Bang! Bang! Better yet, kill as many Trump
supporters as possible. Then do what our pals the Chinese Communists
do. Round up the rest of the Trump supporters, enslave them, and use
them to build more mansions for Democrats!"
She was one of many. One of those things.
Quote:Nonetheless, if we were talking about a female antifa-blm fascist,
burning down or looting businesses, then shot dead by a policeman,
then you and Brower and other Democrats would be screaming that
policemen must be condemned and defunded. But no one would ever
accuse you or Brower or the Democrats of either consistency or
intellectual honesty.
Holding weapons or committing assault and battery? You asked for a violent (if defensive) action by the cops.
Even by your criteria, Antifa and Black Lives Matter are left-wing challenges to the Establishment. Black Lives Matter is is an amorphous, ad hoc group with no formal organization. Its apparent objective is limited to getting the police to be less trigger-happy with black suspects. It is not for helping people get away with a crime.
It would be wiser that some police departments change their ways in training and that more funds go to social work than to militarized cops. I have known of police departments that have used innovative means of reaching out to at-risk communities. Police can at times have juvenile delinquents as captive audiences; most adult offenders were juvenile delinquents. Maybe you lead the juvenile delinquent into vocational training and/or to drug rehab or the mental health system.
It isn't always simple. Crime is not simple. Do not expect rigid consistency from me in discussing law enforcement. Offenders are not a monolith.
Quote:So what are you going to do now? Oh, I know! Make up some new false
"facts" and some new false accusations. That will be your next
posting.
I'll let David Horn speak for himself. He does well.
Defending the Trump Presidency is about as pointless as defending the basic design of the Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, the attention given to icebergs on the deck of the RMS Titanic, or the sexual conduct of Harvey Weinstein.
Quote:How does any president’s reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.
Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties — Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush — have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures — an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/po...ry-192899/
What Sean Wilentz said about Dubya fifteen years ago applies even more harshly to Trump, who is even more corrupt than Harding and more devious than Nixon. But Harding corruption got exposed after he died and was largely undone and prosecuted by a more honorable successor (Calvin Coolidge), and nobody ever died as the result of the Watergate scandal. Trump may not have bungled America into a shooting war, but he got America the scale of mass death of a shooting war in his bungled response to COVID-19. Yes, Lincoln and FDR led America through particularly-deadly wars, bit at least Lincoln and FDR emancipated huge numbers of slaves. There is no heroic consequence from COVID-19, most of whose death toll in America was avoidable. Trump could have gone along with the smart people in medicine and Big Business, the latter generally conservative in their outlook, and told Americans to stay home, wash frequently, and wear masks. Instead he promoted high-risk behavior, which included participation in his campaign rallies. Trump did nothing to thwart aggression by Russia and China... and his anti-Muslim rhetoric may have suggested that the Chinese dictatorship could clamp down harder than they might otherwise have against the Uighurs.
But let's go one step further. Wilentz said nothing about the personal life of Dubya. Any businessman will engender controversy about his profit-and-loss decisions. So it was with Mitt Romney, and so it was with Dubya. But Trump's business model is close to a gangster model. He is closer to Al Capone than to Warren Buffett. What do you expect from someone with ties to organized crime? He hurts customers, lenders, and suppliers. But let us get to another aspect: he has a way with women that I would not want in a son of mine (if I had children) and I would not want to see in a son-in-law if I had a daughter (likewise). He treats women like bad employers treat staff (Draw and discard!). He has two divorced ex-wives of whom he tired, and a fling with a porn star. At the least, Dubya has been married to the same woman since he was a young man.
I may be old-fashioned about marital fidelity, but the examples of its lack are mostly hurtful. I know of the abandoned waifs, and perhaps even more damaging, children who begin their delicate lives in comparative privilege that borders on entitlement and find that they are inconveniences when Daddy leaves his 40-year-old wife for someone who resembles the Playboy Magazine Playmate of the Month. The children still have their materialistic view on what constitutes happiness but get cynical about human relationships. They see life as nothing more than money and what it can buy.
For good reason the vows usually offered at every marriage ceremony that I have ever attended include the words "until Death do us part". Not "until I find someone richer or more accomplished". Not "until I find someone sexier". Not "until one of us tires of the other". I have seen spouses who gamed this -- and children got hurt.
OK, I excuse divorce for infidelity, violence, and overall amorality of the other spouse.
Do you think of Donald Trump as a good role model for children? Do you see him as a model of a businessman? Do see him as a model of a good husband and father? Do you see him as a competent leader?
If Donald Trump were from the social background that I am from, then he would probably drop out of college and sell used cars -- with the aid of odometer fraud. If he were from the wrong side of the tracks he would probably be a drug trafficker or pimp.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
