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Post by casualplayerpaul on Sept 24, 2017 17:59:37 GMT -5
When the states start running everything, Scott Walker will be able to use the block grants to bribe more Chinese companies like Foxconn to come to WI. That will be great for health care.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Sept 22, 2017 15:23:07 GMT -5
Randy Newman! That's pretty cool.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Sept 21, 2017 9:04:35 GMT -5
Beautiful.
I saw a Harmony (a couple cracks, a few chips, average condition at best) with really high action at a garage sale last week. Not a Sovereign, but the smaller Harmony from the 60's. Nothing fancy. Less detailing, I think, that what you're working on now. I offered $25, but the seller wanted $50. I told him that was fair and that I figured he should get that, but that the buyer would not be me.
How do you decide whether a Harmony/Stella is worth the work you put into it?
(I know that probably is not a black and white question.)
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Sept 8, 2017 15:51:33 GMT -5
I've seen him, like him very much, but he is unusual in so many ways. IMHO his Charley Poole project is his best work. I love those CDs. Well... Dead Skunk may be a tiny bit better. He won his Grammy for that one. He anticipated that Grammy years before, in song: Last night I dreamed that I won a Grammy It was presented to me by Debbie Harry. I ran up on stage in my tux I gulped and said, "Aw, shucks" I'd like to thank my producer and Jesus Christ The audience gave me a standing ovation I shed tears of joy, I shed tears of elation. Behind the podium there Debbie grabbed my derrière I like to thank my producer and Jesus Christ I took my Grammy and Debby and walked offstage We made the cover of Cashbox and the Random Notes page
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Sept 8, 2017 13:01:13 GMT -5
I didn’t know about this. Will listen to the podcast, then buy the book.
I first tried to write songs in college. Loudon was one of my heroes, and I was heavily influenced by him.
The songs were, for the most part, not great. I realized later that LWIII’s heart-on-the-sleeve confessional mixed with acerbic humor was wonderful from Loudon, but not very artful in my hands.
Eventually I got better at songwriting and found a style more my own. But I still look forward to new releases from LWIII. He’s not the most consistent writer, but every release has at least a small handful of gems. Though known for his humor, his stuff can also make you cry.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Sept 7, 2017 14:40:59 GMT -5
The great dealmaker has now made one deal, getting played by the Democrats like a cheap fiddle.
(Installing Robert Mercer’s pick into a stolen Supreme Court seat in a GOP controlled Senate does not count.)
It’s easy to see why Republicans like to demonize Nancy Pelosi. She’s smarter and meaner than Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan put together. It’s mystifying why some on the left wing of the Democratic party can’t see this as clearly as the GOP can.
Even more than Pelosi and Schumer, the best friends that the Democrats (and thus the future of the Republic) have is the utter ineptitude of Trump and the Congressional GOP.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Sept 6, 2017 11:17:00 GMT -5
"I don't understand why US News sources don't cover this type of stuff. I think we'd be in a world of hurt in a conflict with China." The U.S. media is too busy convincing us we have nothing to fear but Donald Trump to allow reality to become known. When I Google News "Korea danger China," I get 149,000 hits.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 26, 2017 8:26:43 GMT -5
You say that as if I am under some obligation to justify my views to you. If that isn't the height of arrogant condescension. You type several paragraphs and hundred of words, largely rage and nonsense, and accuse me of bloviation. Coherence is not your friend, is it?
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 25, 2017 18:35:14 GMT -5
What -specifically -happened between 2008 and 2016 that made some people sufficiently angry that they are now willing to pretend Trump is anything but a corrupt, rudderless, maniac? ''Tis a deep mystery to the reality based community. The reality based community (those with actual skin in the game as opposed to the "bloviating from afar" community) already know the answers. Was chatting with my neighbor the Virginia State Trooper last night and he told an interesting story. He gets called to support all kinds of things from tracking down a local autistic man who wandered off to providing Presidential motorcade accompaniment (he was at Charlottesville but that's another story). He said that when they'd accompany Bush, there was always a follow up letter of thanks for the officer's service. Yes, it was a form letter printed in bulk and personalized by some local administrative person, but it was always a nice gesture that could be placed in your personnel file for reference, etc. Obama never did anything, period. Now that Trump is in office that common courtesy is back. Along with sneaking out to privately meet the families of fallen soldiers when the plane carrying them lands. Those simple things explain a lot of the Trump phenomena. So what happened between 2008 and 2016? Obamacare with it's built in employment limits and increasing costs. Abysmal unemployment (spare me the story about how great unemployment is now. What did it take, 6 and a half years to get there?). Record low labor participation rates. Financial regulations that choked any form of legitimate lending or investment. EPA granting itself the power to regulate CO2. One of, if not THE, slowest economic recoveries on record (we should have been where we are now 5 damn years ago). Stimulus spending that did nothing. No wage growth. Open contempt for fossil fuels or any energy intensive industry. CPP. Volumes of more regulations. The death of the incandescent light. Morbid GDP growth. Ferguson. Record debt. Free federal funding for the finance industry (who should have been in prison) that had nothing better to do than spend on stocks and reap the bonuses. Sequestration. Not a single budget. The Paris Accord. 7 or 8 more wars to fight. Etc. And we got all of it without any generalized agreement or bipartisan support. Just that haughty Nobel prize winning Obama condescension. And the system is so broken that when we tried to change it through the power of the ballot, it just got worse. From that perspective everything about Trump makes complete sense. The Republican party needs to grow some stones and start doing what they've been bitching about for most of the last decade. Or they can be replaced in the primaries. Yeah, the press is a pompous enabler of the status quo. They deserve to be demonized. We've all gotten used to the fact that a government shutdown doesn't mean anything outside the beltway. Go ahead, shut it down again. This time don't pay the ones who get the time off when they get back. Welcome to our world. For me personally the Obama nightmare included 4 job losses and a bankruptcy. My wife still jumps if I come home from work 15 minutes early. To me it's amazing how much Trump is doing for me and to historically fix a system that has run completely out of control of the citizenry. And my employer is having a hard time keeping up with demand and hiring and retaining employees. I got a 3% raise for the first time in a decade. Go Donald! The revolution is alive and well. Even if one believes every word you typed as far as the evil Obama goes, it does not begin to justify having this corrupt, rudderless, blowhard coward in the Oval Office. I didn't like George W. Bush very much and could type thousands of words as to why. But that would not have justified voting for Pee Wee Herman in 2008. Skin in the game, by the way? Spare me that particular condescension.
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The Rally
Aug 24, 2017 9:15:18 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 24, 2017 9:15:18 GMT -5
What -specifically -happened between 2008 and 2016 that made some people sufficiently angry that they are now willing to pretend Trump is anything but a corrupt, rudderless, maniac?
''Tis a deep mystery to the reality based community.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 17, 2017 15:50:37 GMT -5
(A quick comment, though: It takes a special kind of blindness to see the switch in Southern voting through a racial prism. The most important factor was that, up until the post-WWII economic boom, the South was a profoundly poor "country". We tend, it would seem, to forget that. The South getting rich(er) is a much more significant factor than anything else.) Actually, I have pretty good vision.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 17, 2017 15:28:40 GMT -5
You must have been a really good student in indoctrination class. You have all the talking points down pat. Yes every one has been told that Lincoln was really a Democrat and the Democrats who didn't vote for the civil rights act were really Republicans. Now write it on the chalk board 100 times, read it aloud to the class 100 times. It's still wrong. "Indoctrination class." That's a good one, comrade. I'd invite you tell tell me all about how I am incorrect (excluding what you typed, which is not what I said). Perhaps in doing so you could explain to the class the difference between the electoral maps of 1960 and 1968. And pretty much every national election since then. Hint: Google Nixon+Southern+Strategy
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 17, 2017 13:28:43 GMT -5
The brouha over statues aside, if you believe that Robert E. Lee painfully decided to fight for his Virginia homeland because he wished to "split the nation down the middle and continue to own human beings" you have fallen prey to a very simplistic and distorted view of both history and a man. Lee loved both his home state and the nation and did not wish to see either wracked by war or split asunder. His views on slavery were conflicted but he came to regard it as a moral evil. His views on blacks were virtually identical to Abraham Lincoln's. History books aren't nearly as satisfying as comic books. I have no doubt that the fellows waving Swastikas and Confederate flags last Friday were giving deep thought to Lee's biography. Speaking of which: www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 17, 2017 11:33:58 GMT -5
Got a theory on why the left is trying to destroy the historical statues. They don't want kids to Google those people on the statues and find out they were all Democrats. They're destroying the history of the Democratic party. The history of the Democratic party, like the Republican party, is long, but not all that complicated. The Republican party that helped LBJ pass Civil Rights is no longer the party of Lincoln. Most southerners slowly left the Democratic party for the GOP in the mid-60's after Civil Rights, just as LBJ predicted they might, forever changing the GOP as it became the dominant party of the white South. (It was the last straw for them, having begun to split after HHH forced a civil rights plank in the party platform in '48.) That said, I am curious why today's Republican party is so attached to the idea of statues honoring soldiers fighting to split America down the middle so that they might continue to own human beings?
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 16, 2017 16:46:30 GMT -5
The expression identity politics has been around since, maybe, the 1970's. Nazi's have claimed to be about Nationalism since the 1930's. A distinction without a difference, maybe, but imo, worth noting. Their evil runs deeper and is larger than any of the other groups that might be put under the umbrella of identity politics. . In any case, you are still avoiding the question: By what moral standard do you judge Nazi ideology to be evil? You've said it is "obvious", and that it "runs deeper and is larger", but I (really) don't understand either of those. I'm certainly not suggesting that it is a difficult question. I've already explained the basis of my opinion that Nazi philosophy is immoral. What I do not understand is the grounds upon which Nazism can be deemed immoral while other forms of racial/identity based ideology are not. The Civil Rights movement of the 60's has been identified as racial/identity based ideology. As is, today, Black Lives Matter.
You can disagree with the morality of either group, as you wish.
But if you can't see the difference in morality between a group fighting for voting/equal rights for African Americans, or a group that protests unfair treatment of its race by police officers, with a group which still waves the symbols of a political party that created the Holocaust, it is not because I am dodging any questions.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 16, 2017 15:25:23 GMT -5
I reject the idea that Nazism is a form of identity politics. It is a political movement, inspired by a political party that killed millions of Jews. Black Lives Matter, to use one example of what I guess you call identity politics, was started as a reaction to violence and systemic racism towards black people. The moral principles that separate the two are obvious. I confessed earlier that I have no real knowledge of the current state of Nazism, but the little I think I know is impossible to reconcile with that statement. Nazism is inherently grounded in racism/identity/etc. The expression identity politics has been around since, maybe, the 1970's. Nazi's have claimed to be about Nationalism since the 1930's. A distinction without a difference, maybe, but imo, worth noting. Their evil runs deeper and is larger than any of the other groups that might be put under the umbrella of identity politics.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 16, 2017 13:53:55 GMT -5
I think we all know the core principles of what the Nazis believed and what they did. Don't we? If you want to name Nazism as just one more bit of identity politics, it is incumbent for you, not I, to explain how, for instance, Black Lives Matter belongs in the same category as Nazis. I just did (explain it, that is). Now I'll put the shoe on the other foot: Tell us what neutral moral principles you apply that cause you to reach the conclusion that Nazism is bad, but other forms of identity politics are not. I reject the idea that Nazism is a form of identity politics. It is a political movement, inspired by a political party that killed millions of Jews. Black Lives Matter, to use one example of what I guess you call identity politics, was started as a reaction to violence and systemic racism towards black people. The moral principles that separate the two are obvious.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 16, 2017 12:46:46 GMT -5
Different how? We fought at least two wars over the Communist. And while my dad wasn't in that one I was. I appreciate your service. I am not carrying pictures of Chairman Mao. I'm not sure who is anymore. Back in the 60's and 70's when some people were doing so, I suspect that Nixon condemned that, and rightly so. Hell, John Lennon condemned it. And yet Trump appears to be in physical pain when dragged to the microphone to denounce Nazis. It's a disgrace. Period.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 16, 2017 12:41:44 GMT -5
To blur modern day Nazism with garden variety identity politics I see no distinction. One either views people as independent, autonomous agents, or one doesn't. There is nowhere in the middle. In that way, I see no philosophical distance between most of "postmodernism", all of "intersectionalism" and Nazism. They are all based on the same primitivist, irrational tribalism. Similarly, I frequently read comments (on Facebook, for example) in the form "As an 'X', my view is this or that..." where 'X' is some preferred identity politics group and the author's self-declared membership in that group is intended (ostensibly) to convey moral authority, but is really an expression of political power. I reject all of that, root and branch, precisely because it always gets to the same irrational and dehumanizing place. Why is Nazism bad? If one answers that honestly, the "badness" must derive from core principles. You can't just say it's bad because it's bad. It then becomes incumbent on the observer to universally apply those principles in a logically coherent and neutral manner. Unwillingness to do that...to take those core principles wherever they may lead...puts you in a place where you are making a profound moral error...ironically, one that is very similar to that made by the Nazis. I think we all know the core principles of what the Nazis believed and what they did. Don't we? If you want to name Nazism as just one more bit of identity politics, it is incumbent for you, not I, to explain how, for instance, Black Lives Matter belongs in the same category as Nazis.
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 16, 2017 12:14:23 GMT -5
To blur modern day Nazism with garden variety identity politics is to deny the unique ugliness that took place in Virginia, and the disease that has now been folded into our country's White House. "Unique ugliness"? Nazi's have been holding protests in parks my entire life. The only thing unique about last weekend is that another group of assholes showed up looking for a fight. And they both got one. Last time it made much of a splash in the news was 1978. Here is what the President had to say at the time: Q. Mr. President, there's a group of American Nazis in Skokie, a suburb of Chicago, which is contemplating a march that's in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, and there might be victims there of the Nazi concentration camps from World War II. Do you have any plan to use the moral weight of your office to try to discourage this kind .of a march?
THE PRESIDENT. I deplore it. I wish that this demonstration of an abhorrent political and social philosophy would not be present at all. This is a matter that is in the American Federal courts, as you know, and under the framework of the constitutional guarantee for free speech. I believe under carefully controlled conditions the courts have ruled that it is legal and that they have a right to act this way.
"Abhorrent." Yet defending free speech. Why was that so easy for Carter and so hard for Trump? The answer is as uncomplicated as a game of rocks, paper, scissors.
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