leh-nerd skin-erd

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure how old you were! BTW-Woody G was a national treasure, warts and all. Maybe Ollie is on to something.

This might be the time and place for a quick reminder of the irony--Harv Weinstein partnered with studios, major actors and actresses in pursuit of getting starlets to take their shirts (and more) off.

You knew Woody Guthrie?

I don’t think Tuberville is an agent of Russia, that’s your game. How that factors into your obsession with Putin’s nads is beyond me. But…be productive. Take your allegations of treason directly to the Senator and the White House. Email. Drive by looking for Vlad. Go through his garbage. You’re wasting time here, Patriot.

Power and money appeal to these types of people, and illegal immigration is a godsend to them.

Seems reasonably argued, but then again the author might be “a Russian agent!”.🪆🪆🪆

“A Russian agent”…my goodness. 🤣

No, I’m quite certain l am me.

I think you’re a reasonable poster in most cases, a little less so in others, and the Jamesish Caan in a few others. That said, I didn’t second guess law enforcement here, I asked John a question given his position on the Utah shooting. I provided the facts well-established from the Babbitt case, the issue of use of deadly force against a person who was unarmed, and asked what he thought. He’s opted not to answer, which is fine. Cle, I am neutral on whether or not you’re a reasonable poster, I haven’t read enough one way or the other. I will say, however, that ignoring orders to stop, climbing through a busted window, and uncertainty as to whether an individual is armed or not is not justification to shoot to kill. We know the officer did not see a gun, a knife or anything else because she was unarmed. My question for John was based on his parameters. BillSy, I think you’re an unreasonable poster generally, but the few times we’ve communicated openly and honestly are times I cherish. I asked John a specific question because I was interested in his thoughts, but I will tell you that a law enforcement officer typically does not shoot to kill when an unarmed person is in a group greater than one.

But John, you said a couple pages back that the police are shooting unarmed men on the street every day. What’s more believable, roving assassination squads gunning down innocent civilians or the fact that each situation should be judged on facts of the case? Again, I asked about Ashli Babbit being unarmed and shot by a Capitol Police officer. Does that fall into the category of justified shooting, though she was unarmed and extremely unlikely to pose any threat to a well-trained male police officer more than a few feet away? This situation can be addressed calmly and rationally by those in control of the decision-making, a full accounting of their actions and video that is surely available. A neighbor has suggested they witnessed the FBI breaching the door with a battering ram, and pierced the front window of the home with a tactical vehicle. If that’s true, it’s much more complicated than they engaged in a nice peaceful conversation and the guy drew his weapon. The lack of transparency at this point is a bit concerning, the lack of questions for seekers of truth in the media even more so. This comes from the perspective of someone who aligns more with @The Frankish Reich than anything else.

I really don’t think he is. I think his intentions are good, but we seem to have this weird emotional bottleneck on this immigration issue. By “we”, I mean the populace, not Washington. I think our political leaders know exactly what they are doing, and benefit tremendously from the chaos. I think it’s likely that if a group of 12-15 people showed up at John’s door tomorrow, on a regular night with no catastrophic event ongoing, and asked/told him they were moving in for a while, he would politely decline. He’d say he couldn’t help, close the door and get back to bingeing on Gilmore Girls or get back to reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone. If someone in a position of authority was with the group, told him they understood his desire for alone time, but told him he had plenty of room and directed him to let the group in, he would be concerned and decline. When finally, his options for the night exhausted, sharing his home with a dozen people, he would rightly be concerned with who they were, what the night might look like, and how the heck he was going to get ready for his 5:30am Spin class with everyone needing to use the bathroom. Again, there’s nothing wrong with feeling that way. We know, too, that all other things being equal, the local mayor is not being visited in a similar fashion, asked to house guests for an extended stay any more than the wealthy folks on the Vineyard are inconvenienced for any length of time. It’s long past time to solve the problem, and as John said, it won’t be perfect. How many people have to be victimized before good intentions and enablement are replaced with sensible solutions we can all agree on?

John, it’s not that it’s “not perfect”, it’s the perpetual victimization of an incalculable number of people on both sides of the border. The trafficking on one side of the equation, with people/groups/governments making extraordinary amounts of money moving people, not to mention assault, sexual assault, murder to children, women and men. It’s a predator’s playground. On this side of the border, it gets better for some. However, all the elements remain in place for most. This has been a political talking point for decades (including our current President) and yet here we are, chaos at the border and multiple generations of victims to show for it. Then, of course, we have the imported crime and the victims that follow. It’s a problem, John, and one only look at the numbers from the govt to understand that. We hardly need to import crime, and a sensible immigration policy would go a long way toward knocking that back.

Yikes, what a horrible thing to say.

You think…or you know!! I think you are The Jamesish Caan!

A guy I know reasonably well was in for about 10 years. I believe it was Dannemora, upstate NY, for drug conspiracy. Interesting guy—-told me he was guilty of many things, but in that case was set up by the local PD (also known for corruption, historically). Told me he hung out with Gotti Jr while there, and said it was all about survival and hanging together with like/kind people. He said it was mostly boring. The closest I came to going to the big house was sneaking some contraband candy into Money Heist with Ben Stiller. I never felt so alive.

You too?

Z is the most infrequently used letter of the alphabet, Q is second. Yet, Q precedes Z, and while Z is extraordinarily efficient (line line line), Q is artistic (ringlet with line pointing to center) and never ending. There’s something here, of this much I am certain. Keep your head on a swivel. Never sit in a well-lit room in the heavy darkness of night without the shades drawn tight. Think people, not systems.

I’m reading a book on brain/mood well-being and the author suggests that “I am” and the words that follow set the stage for what follows in minutes, days, weeks and months thereafter. I realize it’s kind of cheesy and very superficial, but it makes an awful lot of sense.

I guess I can understand that. I hope they respond.

I open up the line to gen pop on Free Phone Friday, which is every other Thursday. Nonetheless, thank you.

No, last night I worked a bit, considered changes to I might want to make to my business, spoke with my youngest son about some real estate investments we’re considering and some that he’s interested in, spent time with my wife and went to bed. Thank you for sharing your point of view. I hadn’t seen you over there, trying to get my attention, yelling about how stupid people are. I appreciate you.

It’s not really that complicated, Doc. People don’t trust government and government officials, generally. That pre-dates Trump by decades, and is one of the reasons people supported Trump. During the Trump years, people who don’t trust government were whupped into a frenzy over claims his election was illegitimate, that he needed to be expelled from office over two silly charges that were false and defamatory. Those people exhibited the same type of paranoia and were as easily manipulated as any we see today into assuming victim status. During the Trump years, Trump supporters correctly realized—-and this is important—-that democrat voters and leaders did not care one iota about the notion of fair outcomes to legitimate elections, and would support anything necessary to remove the legitimately elected President. When Biden won the election, and Trump launched his version of stolen elections, suddenly the masses were told that daring to question our elections is unpatriotic, egregious, wrong and cult-like, often by the same people who exhibited unpatriotic, egregious, wrong an cult-like behavior during the 4 years Trump was in office and the year he was running. I would think Trump supporters fall into a couple categories, generally. There are those who believe the election was illegitimate, that voter fraud, and political manipulation lead to an unfair outcome in 2020. There are those who do not believe they have seen sufficient evidence of fraud and stolen votes, but believe that there are people and organizations that likely have acted inappropriately/illegally and will vote accordingly. There are those who don’t care, know they can’t trust government generally, know what the Dems did in 2015-2023, and will vote for the agenda they support. Finally, there are those who want to move on. As for the litigation, it will be interesting to see what happens. When viewed as a collective, we’ve seen a manufactured allegation of Russian conspiracy/impeachment, a manufactured allegation of wrongdoing involving Ukraine/impeachment, allegations that Trump supported bounties in US Troops, allegations of xenophobia as Trump attempted to secure a border that’s an absolute disaster, a novel attempt to reimagine charges in NYC for a previously deceased investigation, a very difficult to comprehend sudden interest in classified documents where Thunderdome management seemed to be the order of the day for the protected class, a DOJ that selectively leaks to damage one guy’s reputation while locked down like Attica for the other, intelligence agents (those one of the highest ranking dem Senators assured the people would find six ways from Sunday to do a person in) interceding to shape an election, and so on. The lack of trust in government is well earned, however you view it. One thing is certain—it’s going to be an interesting next couple years.

He may have been thinking about the war in the Pacific, circa 1945. Hard to say.

Frig it. Unless @John from Riverside claims it, this may be my new screen name. Lawn Forssman is awesome.

The best ROI will come from forgiveness of the debt, which is why it's so popular. On the other hand, one could question whether or not the ROI was adequate when it doesn't provide sufficient funding for the coursework. Oh yeah, that too. My list wasn't all-inclusive.