Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2006, 05:21:09 PM

Title: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2006, 05:21:09 PM
Woof All:

The rules of the road around here are pretty simple:

1) Good manners: we speak to each other as if we were face to face.

2) Genuine content:  Please limit your posts that really have something to say.  If you are pasting something from elsewhere, please be sure to specifty the source (name, URL, that sort of thing).  If you do not have the source, please explain why.

3)  WE SEEK TRUTH.  Not to profit or be a prophet, but to seek the truth.  If the facts prove us wrong, we change our minds.

4)  Given the nature of WW3 and the generally low level of understanding of Islam in our culture, it is natural that there will be many pieces about Islam.  Some of them will be negative.  Some of them will be positive.  ALL of them are to be in search of truth.  If you disagree with something that someone else prints, the answer is to persuade with Reason and Reality. 

5)  Before starting a new thread, please look to see if your post logically fits in an existing thread.  The more we maintain thread coherence, the more these threads become valuable as repositories of info and intel.

No doubt I well be editing and amending these rules as time goes by, but for the moment these will do.

The Adventure continues,
Marc (Crafty Dog)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2006, 04:00:51 PM
6)  If you are cross-current or even against the general currents of thinking around here, we encourage you to participate.  Remember, the mission here is to search for TRUTH.  Chattering class shoutfests on TV are NOT the model here.  The model is that of gracious conversation after dinner where everyone at the table is assumed to be bright, educated and thoughtful and Reason is the mode of discourse.
Title: Our new forum name
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2006, 04:41:42 AM
Woof All:

We will be re-naming the forum to something reflects the true range of our interests.  My friend from OP Gene suggests "Culture, Economics, Investing, Politics, Religion, Science, Technology, and More" which, although a tad unweildy, does communicate the gist of it  :-D

Anyone have something to suggest which would convey this a bit more concisely?

Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road
Post by: G M on October 22, 2006, 04:50:59 AM
Omnology?

http://bigbangtango.net/website/OmnologistManifesto.htm

The Omnologist Manifesto
by
Howard Bloom


We are blessed with a richness of specializations, but cursed with a paucity of panoptic disciplines-categories of knowledge that concentrate on seeing the pattern that emerges when one views all the sciences at once. Hence we need a field dedicated to the panoramic, an academic base for the promiscuously curious, a discipline whose mandate is best summed up in a paraphrase of the poet Andrew Marvel: Let us roll all our strength and all Our knowledge up into one ball, And tear our visions with rough strife Through the iron gates of life.

Omnology is a science, but one dedicated to the biggest picture conceivable by the minds of its practitioners. Omnology will use every conceptual tool available-and some not yet invented but inventible-to leapfrog over disciplinary barriers, stitching together the patchwork quilt of science and all the rest that humans can yet know. If one omnologist is able to perceive the relationship between pop songs, ancient Egyptian graffiti, Shirley MacLaine's mysticism, neurobiology, and the origins of the cosmos, so be it. If another uses mathematics to probe traffic patterns, the behavior of insect colonies, and the manner in which galaxies cluster in swarms, wonderful. And if another uses introspection to uncover hidden passions and relate them to research in chemistry, anthropology, psychology, history, and the arts, she, too, has a treasured place on the wild frontiers of scientific truth-the terra incognita in the heartland of omnology.

Let me close with the words of yet another poet, William Blake, on the ultimate goal of omnology:


To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Title: Re: Our new forum name
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 22, 2006, 08:57:16 AM

Anyone have something to suggest which would convey this a bit more concisely?

Marc

Sounds like you're aiming for classic liberal studies which, alas, have to be diffentiated from most liberal curriculums as currently practiced.

Been rereading Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, which brought this quote to mind:

ACADEME, n.  An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

ACADEMY, n.  [from ACADEME]   A modern school where football is taught.

To which I'd add:

UNIVERSITY, n. A postmodern school where identity politics are taught, though "taught" is the wrong paradigm as it is based on Western patriarchal vestiges.
Title: Martial Arts v. Martial Mindset?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 22, 2006, 02:08:41 PM
Now that I've mulled things a bit it strikes me that things around here boil down to "Martial Arts" and "Martial Mindset." One is about the actual application of martial arts, while the other is about the foundation from which those arts are applied. Perhaps there is a better term, and I may be presuming that the powers that be do want posts that aren't about martial arts to be about their intellecutual foundations to some degree, but that's how things break down as I see it.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2006, 04:02:58 PM
Rule #7)? When your post is a "cut and paste" please introduce it with a couple of sentences of your own as to why you are sharing it here.  Also, it would be nice if you took a moment to put the title of your post in the Subject header as well, so as to facilitate someone searching for it down the road.

This matter of facilitating searches is why we look for thread coherency around here.  There's a lot of quality posts and we aspire for this forum to become a bit of a research resource. 

yip,
CD
Title: Re: Rules of the Road
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2006, 04:48:09 AM
8) If there is something you wish to bring to our attention about the website, please contact us at info@dogbrothers.com   All such emails reach both Cindy and me.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 06, 2007, 07:20:38 AM
Woof All:

Buzwardo has emailed me to let me know he has had a big job promotion and likely will not be as posting as much for a while. 

Congrats on the promotion  :cry: :lol:

The Adventure continues!
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on January 06, 2007, 01:27:31 PM
Cool. The same thing just happened to me, and i'm not able to post much these days as well. :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on January 26, 2007, 06:15:09 PM
I like this board having come from Ourpiazza.  I am disappointed I don't (appear) to see others from there as well.

One difference is that the posts on this board are very long.  Many are posts of long pieces or lectures. They are extremely informative but take a long time to read.  I wonder if some of the old posters from ourpiazza miss the more succinct posts there.

Nonetheless, I find it educational to read many of the posts here and appreciate the opportunity.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on January 26, 2007, 09:47:41 PM
We lost a few people in the move. (

I tried to recognize the initials.  Is that you Doc?

I agree to some extent. The format is a little hard for me to adjust to.  Clicking on the '10 most recent posts' seems to give a glimpse of the current discussion.  I have been reading, but slow to dive in.  I started that way on OP as well. 

Many posts here are worthwhile readings.  The best to me are the personal exchanges on the issues of the day. 

Hang in there.  Maybe we find a few other familiar faces and get to know the rest better as well.

    - Doug
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on January 27, 2007, 10:18:08 AM
Hi Doug,

Glad to "see" you.  ~ ))

I like the exchanges too.  I like the opinions and thoughts of the posters a lot.  A few opinions from Muslims on the board which we never had on OP gives us a new view IMHO.

I will try "most recent posts" - thanks ~ ))





Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2007, 10:08:42 PM
Just ta quick yip at the end of a long day of teaching (and another tomorrow) to say that I'm glad to see some OPers starting to dip their collective toe in the water! 


Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 12, 2007, 08:02:37 AM
All:

We get hit several HUNDRED times a day with spambots trying to register so they can spam up the forums.  As part of deleting all this, sometimes real humans get deleted too.  So if you are having trouble getting registered, please email Cindy at info@dogbrothers.com

TAC,
Marc/Crafty Dog
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2007, 10:41:50 PM
Woof All:

  A most pleasant surprise today at my seminar in Manassas VA-- Buzwardo came by to say hello  8-)  He is a really big guy! Maybe 6'6" and built like a football lineman :-o

Tres cool to have a human being to connect with the posts here.

TAC!
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 19, 2007, 09:00:14 AM
Yeah, perhaps a little warped, but I'm glad I got to hear you speak as it provides a point of reference as I read your posts. Before we met you sounded like Sam Elliott. . . .
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on March 19, 2007, 08:18:36 PM
Crafty sounds too northeast (NYC?) to be Sam Elliott. :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2007, 12:18:06 AM
Born and raised a New York City Jew , , , and now look at me  :evil: :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on March 20, 2007, 07:29:47 AM
Aha! The stereotypical New York Jewish full-contact martial artist. :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2007, 08:21:45 AM
Lawyer too-- in the year 1982 :roll:  As I like to joke, I went from one form of aggression to another.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on March 20, 2007, 03:13:28 PM
There has to be a great story here....
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2007, 06:46:18 PM
How about a joke instead?

Man suggests anal sex to his wife.  Vociferously she turns him down. 

"Why not? After all, we're married"

"You wouldn't want to have a lawyer, would you?!?"
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on March 20, 2007, 08:26:35 PM
Wow, a lawyer joke I hadn't heard. I really thought I knew them all.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2007, 03:17:35 PM
Guy calls up a lawyer and says "I have two questions to ask, but only $500.  Can you help me out?"

"Sure!  What is your other question?"

======================

Q:  What do you get when you cross a crooked lawyer and a slimy politician?


A:  Chelsea.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: LawDog on May 01, 2007, 08:20:09 PM
Hello, all. I am here at the invitation of Marc/Crafty Dog. I am new and I just thought I should give an explanation of my name. I selected the name LawDog after my law school intramural sports team. I have been using it in another forum, and just kept it here for consistency, not because I am part of the Dog Brothers. Based upon the quick skimming I have done, I am looking forward to some good reading.

Virtute et Armis,
J. Bradley
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2007, 05:40:39 AM
Glad to have you hear LawDog!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2007, 03:54:18 AM
Folks:

When possible please lets remember to use existing threads instead of starting a new one.

TIA,
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 17, 2007, 03:13:09 PM
I proudly note that our Poltical Rants thread passed 60,000 reads today!

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2007, 11:18:25 PM
A quick yip just to say that at the moment I am in Bern, Switzerland with Lonely Dog.  In a few hours will be the S
second DB Euro Gathering and then a few days of teaching.  I return on Wednesday.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 18, 2007, 10:02:08 PM
Busy, busy, busy.  After four days in Mexico City last weekend, I leave in the AM for three days in Manassas VA.
Title: Subject Headings
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 20, 2008, 07:51:28 AM
Woof All:

I'd like to remind everyone to please put in a subject heading for each post-- this greatly facilitates ease of the use of the search function and thus the value of this forum as a research resource. 

Thank you,
Crafty Dog
Title: Gone Camping
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2008, 03:03:31 PM
Woof All:

I will be camping with my son through Sunday, so in my absence please carry on.

TAC,
Marc
Title: A Secret Gathering: It was 20 years ago , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2008, 11:07:56 PM
Woof All:

As we complete our 20th year of the Dog Brothers, on April 4, 5, and 6 some 20 odd members of the Tribe plus a few friends will be getting together at a secret location to re-enact the Creation of the Dog Brothers, known in our lore as "The Rumble at Ramblas" wherein those there fought for three days.

I have no idea how much posting I will be doing here during this time.

The Adventure continues,
Crafty Dog
Guidiing Force of the Dog Brothers

PS:  We are shooting this with an eye to making a movie along the lines of "Pumping Iron meets Tao of the Dog Brothers"
Title: On the road
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 28, 2008, 10:28:55 PM
Woof All:

I leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning for one week in Manassas VA.  While I am there I will be limited in my internet access, so my  level of posting may be less than usual.

The Adventure continues
Marc/Crafty Dog
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2008, 01:56:44 PM
Woof All:

I will be leaving in a couple of hours to take the family for a weekend of Cub Scout camping and probably will not have internet access until Sunday night.

The Adventure continues,
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2008, 10:02:44 PM
Leaving tomorroa AM for 6 day trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina:

November 1 - 2, 2008
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Contact: Nicolás Wachsmann
Phone: 54 11 4741 1864
Email: dbma.argentina@gmail.com
Website: www.dogbrothers.com.ar
Title: PLEASE USE SUBJECT HEADINGS
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 26, 2009, 04:28:33 PM
Folks,

The value of the search function is tremendously improved when we bother to use the Subject heading when we post.  Lets do better with this please.

Thank you,
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2009, 09:00:06 AM
Welcome back Rachel!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2009, 01:39:31 PM
I will be at the DB Tribal Gathering through Sunday.

TAC!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 22, 2009, 12:57:25 PM
Woof All:

I would us to remember the rule of the road about friends having a good conversation after dinner.   IMHO recently most of us (including me) have tended towards pasting articles of interest.  We have a good crew here and these articles of interest indeed are interesting, but I would sure like seeing more commentary and conversation as part of the mix.

TAC,
Marc
Title: We have lost a player
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 18, 2009, 02:46:08 AM
Woof All:

We have lost JDN as a player here due to a lack of the "after dinner" tone of some recent comments.

I know he irritated some, but this bit about the after dinner tone matters, regardless of the POV and whether responses are  , , , responsive.   

TAC,
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on July 17, 2009, 10:06:30 AM
I don't know if I irritated him but I appreciated his opinions.
The diversity of opinions is better.
Hopefully he will reconsider and return.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2009, 03:55:49 AM
Me too.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on July 19, 2009, 04:21:03 PM
Funny, I recall JDN dishonestly smearing Michelle Malkin, the US military and being an uninformed buffoon at best. No loss in my book.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2009, 04:35:22 AM
Out of town for a seminar until Tuesday night.  Don't know how much posting I will be doing in the meantime.

TAC!
Title: Care and Feeding of Trolls
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on July 31, 2009, 01:10:34 PM
Hope I'm not poaching posting this here:

July 31, 2009
Caution: Trolls at Work

By Jeanette Colville
Construction sites warn drivers of danger ahead, proceed with caution. Cyber sites have now become hazardous terrain at reader forums, and it bodes well for readers at American Thinker to be aware of the often elusive pitfalls of Trolls at Work.

What is a Troll, you ask? According to Scandinavian folklore,

"... a Troll is ‘an obnoxious creature bent on mischief and wickedness' who lives in hiding under a bridge, ready to strike fear and chaos is the hearts of innocents passing by."

Transplanted from a home under a bridge to the cyber world, a Troll

"is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum... with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response, or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."

And in the case of a politically conservative web site like American Thinker, the goal is often to "to attempt to disrupt the dissemination of a story, and to demoralize the people who wish to see the story disseminated," in the words of AT reader Lucius Vorenus.

Hmmm? Starting to ring a bell? Modern day Trollism reveals an amazing cast of characters in the World of the Troll. Researchers point out that the virtual world of the Internet frees the Trolls from earthly bonds of body and identity, giving them the power to fly like Peter Pan from the crack of dawn to the Witching Hour. There are no restrictions of time or place. Armed with a laptop and Wi-Fi, an array of Trolls appear around the clock, stealthily plotting to disrupt, disorient, irritate, insult, fool, deceive, and trick the minds of innocent victims in reader forums. Beware, Trolls at Work.

American Thinker articles and blogs invite readers to join the discussion. The accepted mindset is one of a civil, open, and honest exchange of opinions and thoughts. And yes, this is what the majority of readers believe without a second thought. Ah hah! Try telling that to the Trolls. And who are these creatures?

Researchers identify one strain of Troll as the "Internet personality disorder Troll,"which is

"characterized by attention-seeking and disruptive behavior in anonymous places. This Troll is easily identified by a variety of traits including a high rating on the charisma score that demands attention from all other forum participants, and establishes dominance in a thread." In other words, the forum is "all about me - I am the center of the universe and the discussion." 

Another strain of Troll is the individual seeking the illusion of power.  A guide to Trolls on flayme.com states:

"trolls are sad people, living their lonely lives vicariously through those they see as strong and successful. Disrupting a stable newsgroup gives the illusion of power... and allows them to think they are strong, too. For trolls, any response is recognition; they are unable to distinguish between irritation and admiration; their ego grows directly in proportion to the response, regardless of the form or content of that response."

Other red flags for the novice Troll hunter are: off topic posting, never answering a direct question, and posting extreme pedantic comments. Watch also for the presentation of irrelevant facts to disrupt the discussion flow, and the ruthless targeting of new forum participants.

American Thinker is a magnet for another strain of Troll, the finely tuned and highly skilled political opposition infiltrator. No psycho basket case here -- this is the high-stakes, professional Great White Troll shark, sometimes a volunteer opposition advocate and other times (I strongly suspect) on the opposition payroll. The goal: search and destroy. How? With sweet words of "concern," with knee-cap crushing attacks, or with a strategy of "I'm one of you, but... "

Forewarned is forearmed - know your enemy. Tolls come in many forms. The "Concerned Troll" hopes to "sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group. Others speak in reasoned and dulcet tones in the hope of shifting the discussion from inflammatory issues about the Obama administration and Congress. Some come like snow-white sheep, introducing themselves as a conservative friend, or a newborn convert.

A few examples of various troll types:

The Concerned Troll

"I feel bad for Sarah, really. She does have promise but she was thrust into the spotlight way too early and she simply wasn't ready..."
"There's no denying Sarah was dealt some tough cards. She had a left-leaning MSM that was out to put a dagger in her candidacy from day one. Instead of playing the hand she was dealt, she folded. Sarah couldn't stand the heat and so she left the kitchen... we absolutely need fresh moral leadership. We'll never get it from a quitter."
Speak Softly While Manipulating a Change of Focus

I don't like Obama's policies anymore than you do, but as an undergrad law student I have to tell you that this case has had its day in court and the court has ruled that Obama is a US Citizen. I think it's time for us to move on to more substantive issues.

I'm One of You

As one of the newly reformed liberals who finally left all the hate I recently found in Obamaland, I feel forced to remind you all of all the hatred and fear of terrorism Bush exploited... driven by the conservatives finding a way to exploit hate."
Great article! The only answer to the problem is for more conservatives like us...
Trolls have no desire to stimulate or further a discussion, but only to manipulate and control it. Attention is what fuels the garden variety of Trolls. The more they get, the harder it is to eradicate them from an honest debate. They are short on facts, and long on mind control and the dissemination of misinformation, i.e. lies.

The consensus among experienced victims of the Troll flu in defending the integrity of a web site from an epidemic invasion is to ignore the Troll. For a Troll to be ignored is equal to not watering your avocado plant in your kitchen window. Eventually, it will dry up and wither away.  Wisegeek.com advises us, "Trolls often use fallacious arguments or attack the members of the discussion thread when they attempt to defend themselves" from the Troll's ad hominem attacks. This is another reason not to feed the beast with a response.

American Thinker readers are alert and experienced at Troll detection. Many identify a Troll by name and advise others in the discussion to ignore this infiltrator who actively tries to hijack the tread and break the flow of discussion by initiating a cross-fire dynamic with one other participant, affectively shutting others out who fear getting "in the middle" which is the goal of the Troll. When this happens, the Troll has succeeded in their strategy.

Why does it bode well to be alert for Trolls in your cyber neighborhood? To survive we must protect the perimeters of our conservative thinking and web site community. We must make sure that the clever and devious individuals whose goal is to create disorder and to block the dissemination of facts, information, and truth do not pollute and shackle our thinking.

If you are a naturally trusting person and fear that an unconscious slacking off of Troll awareness may sneak over you, try posting a small banner at the top of your computer screen with the warning: "Please do not feed the Trolls."

Jeanette Colville is a comment moderator for American Thinker.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/caution_trolls_at_work.html at July 31, 2009 - 04:05:26 PM EDT
Title: On the road
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 21, 2009, 07:42:44 AM
I'm leaving shortly for the DBMA Camp in Toronto and family time and will return Wednesday night.   Don't know how much internet access I will have.
Title: BBG
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2009, 06:31:01 PM
Woof All:

I am very proud to announce that our own BBG is under consideration for a pundit job at a newspaper of international reknown.  Of course there are many, many other folks under consideration and the process is long.  Therefore we will not be seeing much of him around here for a number of weeks.

Remember us after you hit the big time!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 22, 2009, 07:13:01 PM
Best wishes, BBG!

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 22, 2009, 07:55:23 PM
Eh, gotta make the first cut first. Just storing up my scribbling juices in case it happens.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: rachelg on October 23, 2009, 05:01:31 AM
Best of luck-- BBG!
Title: Rachel?
Post by: G M on October 24, 2009, 12:48:51 PM
Since Pat Buchanan is so offensive to you that you advocate that nothing written by him be posted here, where do you place Rev. "Them Jews" Wright in your moral hierarchy?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2009, 12:57:56 PM
I think the question presented by Rachel is a worthy one:    At what point is someone beyond the social pale for all areas because of the views held in some areas?

Concerning the not so right Rev. Wright, no one here has found anything he has ever said worthy of consideration-- so what is the point of the question to Rachel?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 24, 2009, 01:24:34 PM
I'm curious who aside from PB and Farrahclown make her list. Since Obama's pastor of 20 years has made worse statements that anything Buchanan has said, to my knowledge, i'm curious who her list would and would not include.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2009, 01:34:24 PM
May I suggest we begin with a discussion of the question presented?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on October 24, 2009, 06:37:45 PM
The question: "At what point is someone beyond the social pale for all areas because of the views held in some areas?"

Discuss that, but my view is that CCP should decide what goes into CCP posts until HE crosses the line - and he hasn't!  Same goes for the right of anyone here to criticize any quote or person quoted. 

Alleged or implied of Buchanan was: "diminished the Holocaust and made somewhat supportive  statements of Hitler and made antisemitic and anti Israel statements."

I think I was the only one to actually back that up with this link to the anti-defamation league: "search the anti-defamation league website for 'Buchanan' at website http://www.adl.org/search/query.asp".  There are a bunch of over the top quotes there especially from his books.  In and amongst the real objections are many quotes that are not so objectionable but just different than their own viewpoint, for example Buchanan opposes gay marriage which makes it harder to sort out the context where he made  bonehead remarks like not knowing the CO levels of diesel engines.

Interestingly we just had Rush Limbaugh have his liberty taken due to quotes originating from a blog, picked up by the St. Louis Dispatch and CNN.  Pretty good sources.  Happened to be patently false.  Same goes for context on the rest of what he says.  The NY Times quotes him without noting that he points out absurdity by using absurdity; it is one of his techniques, so the quotes are real while the meaning and the context is lost.  No one who listens regularly thinks he is racist or wants America to fail but every liberal who gets his words from elsewhere thinks exactly that.  So he was denied a right within our economic system - to buy into a business of his choosing.

Crafty, recall also that Jude Wanniski was not exactly a friend of Israel.  He was a defender of Saddam - one who paid people to kill Israelis, a denier of gassing the Kurds, but brilliant on  economics.  Off the board??

Back to the question, no one Muslim and certainly not Ahmadinejad could be posted if we ever took the wider and longer view.  Nothing from Obama on this board it follows because he is on a quest to sit down with the guy, etc.

Of course I should have stopped there, but it was Rachel who wrote the most offensive view I've read here, and in return I'm sure vice versa.  She basically said tough luck to the consequence of her abortion view which is current law, (like the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany) that nearly cost my daughter her life, defending the complete right of the mother to kill her unborn for any reason, in this case during a bipolar mood swing with the motive of spite, and that all men, the father in particular and the other relatives should have no say whatsoever in the process or in setting the law.  Please correct me if wrong; I have no intention of overstating that point.

The silence of others here on abortion is deafening but the analogies to Hitlerisms never end - a primitive life form of lower value, not worth preserving.  Where have I heard that before?  'Diminished the tragedy and made somewhat supportive statements of [those who choose to kill] and made anti-fetal statements' - 'not much different than a sperm and so what if it is alive with unique DNA', etc.

Yet I find her views on other subjects and other posts here extremely valuable and worthwhile.  For example, I find this contribution yesterday brilliant, and not something I would run into elsewhere during my typical day: "According to the Midrash, the Third Commandment, "You shall not take G-d's name in vain," and the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not steal," are one and the same. Indeed, the Torah (in Leviticus 5:20) refers to financial fraud as "a betrayal of G-d." "Because," explains the great Talmudic sage Rabbi Akiva, "in defrauding his fellow, he is defrauding the Third Party to their dealings."

I wouldn't want my previous disagreement to prevent me from learning this kind of insight.   - Doug
----
And since this is the fire hydrant, will someone tell me why we call God "G-d"?  I think he knows we're talkin' about him.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 24, 2009, 07:53:42 PM
http://www.adl.org/NR/exeres/AF8DD36D-7995-443D-847F-4AAA7DEF18B1,DB7611A2-02CD-43AF-8147-649E26813571,frameless.htm

Jeremiah Wright: Messenger of Intolerance
 



Introduction

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jeremiah Wright, the pastor emeritus at Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) in Chicago, is once again at the center of a controversy after making inflammatory statements about Jews and Zionists.

 

Wright blamed Jews for the fact that he has been out of touch with President Barack Obama in an interview with the Daily Press, a Newport News, Virginia-based newspaper, on June 9. Wright noted that "them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me."

 

In the same interview, Wright asserted that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza, which he described as "a sin and a crime against humanity," and expressed his belief that the Obama Administration would have sent a U.S. delegation to the 2009 Durban Review Conference in April if not for fear of losing "the Jewish vote, the A-I-P-A-C vote, that's controlling him."

Wright later stated that he misspoke and that he did not mean to refer to Jews, but rather Zionists. "I'm not talking about all Jews, all people of the Jewish faith, I'm talking about Zionists," Wright said. 

Wright's initial comments and subsequent effort to distinguish between Jews and Zionists is reminiscent of his past inflammatory comments, which propelled him into the spotlight during Obama's primary run, and which he maintained had been taken out of context by the media and others.




Background

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wright was thrust into the national spotlight in early 2008, at the height of then-Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign. As the media investigated Obama's longtime membership at TUCC and his relationship with Wright, at the time TUCC's pastor, several of Wright's sermons and writings became the focus of attention.

 

In his statements, Wright expressed support for Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam; accused Israel of committing state terrorism; asserted that the U.S. brought the 2001 World Trade Center attacks upon itself; and charged that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus as a means of "genocide against people of color."

 

The media's focus on TUCC raised questions reaching beyond Wright's views on domestic and foreign policy issues. Themes of white supremacy and black repression in Wright's sermons and in the church's guiding principles, along with TUCC's motto "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian," compelled some critics to charge that the church promoted divisive, separatist views.

 

Though Wright refrained from responding to criticism and making public appearances throughout much of the election year, he did conduct a round of appearances in response to Obama's March 18, 2008 speech on race relations in the U.S.  In Obama's speech, titled "A More Perfect Union," he distanced himself from Wright and some of his past statements.

 

During interviews, sermons, and televised speeches held over the course of one week in April 2008, Wright addressed issues surrounding religious and racial diversity, emphasized that his sermons has been distorted by the media for political purposes, and portrayed the controversy surrounding his past sermons as an attack against the Black church.

Wright also denied accusations that he is divisive when discussing race relations, stating, "I am not one of the most 'divisive'… the word is 'descriptive." He claimed that real-world conditions, not his commentary, are responsible for the nation's ills.

Under scrutiny for the inflammatory comments about Israel and Zionism that had marked some of his past speeches, Wright was repeatedly questioned about his views on the subjects during these April 2008 talks.

 

At an appearance that same week at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Wright refused to denounce Farrakhan's comments about Zionism being a gutter religion when asked about them during the question and answer session. Wright emphasized that Farrakhan made the comment about Zionism, not Judaism, and stated, "He was saying the same thing UN resolutions say, same thing Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu are being vilified for." (Former U.S. President Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu frequently compare Israel's treatment of Palestinians to South African Apartheid).

 

He further said he would not denounce Farrakhan, adding that "Farrakhan is not my enemy, he didn't put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and didn't make me this color."

 

When asked about his own views on Israel, Wright challenged the questioner's assertion that he has likened Israeli policy to apartheid ("Where did I liken them?... Jimmy Carter called it apartheid; Jeremiah Wright didn't liken anything to anything"). He stated, "My position on Israel is that Israel has a right to exist, that Israelis have a right to exist." However, he then cited The Link, an anti-Israel publication from Americans for Middle East Understanding, posing the question, "Have you read the Link?"

 

Wright also addressed Israel and the Israeli-Arab conflict during an appearance at Michigan State University a few months earlier. During his talk on February 7, 2008, Wright described the creation of the state of Israel as "a political decision made in 1948 to solve a European problem of European Jews by putting them in somebody else's country."

 

He said he identified with Carter, Tutu and Jim Wall of Christian Century, saying that like them he would be "labeled as anti-Semitic" for citing U.N. resolutions and international court findings pertaining to Israel and the Palestinians.

 

Wright served as the pastor at TUCC from 1972 until he retired in 2008.




In His Own Words

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Them Jews aren't gonna let [Obama] talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office."

 

"The Jewish vote, the A-I-P-A-C vote that's controlling him that would not let him send a representation to the Darfur [Durban] review conference that's talking this craziness because the Zionists, they will not let him talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is.  Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. The ethnic cleansing of the Zionists is a sin and a crime against humanity. They don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel."

An interview with Newport News, VA-based

newspaper The Daily Press June 9, 2009

 

"Part of the fight going on now in terms of the religious arguments and tension and polarization and hatred among the fundamentalists especially in each of the major world religions has to do with the political [rather than religious], especially as it pertains to the political decision made in 1948 to solve a European problem of European Jews by putting them in somebody else's country."

                                                                                                      From a lecture at Michigan State University,

February 7, 2008

 

"We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against them as being anti-Semitic."

From a sermon at Howard University in

Washington, D.C., January 15, 2006

 

"The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community up concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism. The Divestment issue will hit the floor during this month's General Synod. Divesting dollars from businesses and banks that do business with Israel is the new strategy being proposed to wake the world up concerning the racism of Zionism."

From Wright's Pastor's Page message

Trumpet Newsmagazine, July 2005

 

"Last year's conference in Africa on racism, which the United States would not participate in, because somebody dared to point the racism which still supports both here and in Israel. I said that dirty word again. Every time you say Israel, Negros get awfully quiet on you, 'cause they scared. Don't be scared. Don't be scared. You don't see the connection between 9-1-1-0-1 and the Israeli-Palestinian? Something wrong, you wanna borrow my glasses?"

From a sermon, September 1, 2002

 

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye…We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done oversees is now brought right back into our own front yards. Americans chickens are coming home to roost.'"

From a sermon, September 16, 2001

 

On Louis Farrakhan

 

"Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. Everyone wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago… Louis and I don't agree on everything….He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st centuries, that's what I think about him…Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy, he didn't put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and didn't make me this color."

From an appearance at the National Press Club

in Washington DC, April 28, 2008

 

"… Farrakhan is not my enemy, Farrakhan did not enslave Africans. He never raped a black woman, and Farrakhan didn't make me this color. Let's be clear."

 

"[Farrakhan] made some anti-Semitic remarks. Well, you all got water boarding you say is fine, you're killing folk… in Guantanamo there's a secret part of that camp where you been torturing folk… let's talk about that! We're not talking about that, what we keep up in the public is, oh you know Jeremiah Wright… in 1984 I went to… Tripoli and got to know Farrakhan."

 

From a lecture at Michigan State University,

February 7, 2008

 

"Everybody may not agree with him, but they listen…His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest."

 

"Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience. His integrity and honesty have secured him a place in history as one of the nation's most powerful critics. His love for Africa and African American people has made him an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose."

 

From Trumpet Newsmagazine's cover story on

Farrakhan, who received the magazine's annual "Lifetime Achievement 'Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter' Award," November/December 2007





The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

 
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 24, 2009, 07:56:22 PM
I'm sure that Obama was just shocked to learn of his pastor's opinions. 20 years and this just flew under his radar....

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: rachelg on October 24, 2009, 08:35:32 PM
For me deciding someone  is beyond the pale is somewhat like deciding if something is pornographic or not. I know it when I see it.

We can add Rev Wright to the list of those beyond the pale . Glen Beck  and Rush Limbaugh are not on the list though I personally  am not interested in their views.

I wouldn't put CCP on the list  for posting articles by  Buchanan so I wouldn't need to put Obama on the list for belonging to  Rev Wright's church.

 I am somewhat hesitant to  post this because I  am the one posting most of the religious articles on the site but I personally have  some issues with Christianity period so not liking Obama's pastor was not a big deal to me.  Clearly some Pastors are a million times better than others and I should have paid  more attention to that. I am not interested in discussing whose religion is better or in discussing my personal issues with Christianity.  If your  Christianity  makes you a better person then I support it.  Judaism is the right path for me but I don't think it is the right path for everyone.

"The secterian thinks that he has the sea ladled into his own private pond"-  Rabindranath Tagore
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 24, 2009, 09:16:22 PM
I'm pretty sure that posting an article is somewhat different than attending religious services for 20 years. Louis Farrakhan was the only person to appear on the cover of Wright's church magazine as many times as Obama.

I guess all those issues got lost in the mail.


So Rachel, if your rabbi started doing/saying anything like Wright did, how many decades do you wait until you find another place to worship?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: rachelg on October 25, 2009, 05:13:03 AM
GM

One service which I'm sure was your point.  We pray for our Country our Leadership and  our Troops in my synagogue.   I have certainly been very uncomfortable  by comments made by Rabbis of places that I would occasionally attend.  I think it is not rational to think every member of Trinity  is an anti-semite and anti-american  or that Rev Wright only spewed hate  for 20 years.  Do you know other members of Trinity besides Obama because I do.   I take the good with the bad in my religion.  I care much more about peoples actions their beliefs.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 25, 2009, 07:02:51 AM
Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
By: Kathy Shaidle
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, April 07, 2008



Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became a household name last month when ABC News reported on some of Wright’s inflammatory sermons. As his applauding congregation cheered him on, the former leader of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ condemned the U.S. government for “killing innocent people” and for treating American citizens, especially blacks, as “less than human.” “God Damn America,” Rev. Wright preached.

These sentiments were entirely consistent with comments Wright had made many times during his long pastoral career. From the pulpit, Rev. Wright also has taught that AIDS was concocted by the federal government as a genocidal plot against blacks. On another occasion, he declared, “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run! ... We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

Millions of Americans were shocked to hear such vituperative rage and unrestrained anti-American hatred. They need not have been surprised. Rev. Wright’s passionate disdain for his country, and his belief that black Americans are still singled out for persecution, is entirely in keeping with the political philosophy that underpins his religious views: Black Liberation Theology.

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to “Black Liberation Theology,” and to the name of one of its leading mouthpieces, James Cone, a professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary and an iconic figure venerated by Rev. Wright.

Until ABC News picked up the story months later, Black Liberation Theology remained a rather obscure discipline, confined to the syllabi of liberal seminaries. But after Wright’s sermons were broadcast again and again on the news and the Internet, Black Liberation Theology once again commanded popular attention. After all, Barack Obama had joined Trinity twenty years earlier, had been married in the Church, and had his daughters baptized there. Obama and his wife had donated $22,500 to Trinity in 2006. The presidential hopeful even took the name of his memoir, The Audacity of Hope, from the title of one of Wright’s sermons. The beliefs held by a presidential candidate’s longtime pastor and spiritual advisor are therefore of great national interest.

And what are those beliefs? Like the pro-communist liberation theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of “salvation” in the afterlife is superseded by “liberation” on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.

The leading theorist of Black Liberation Theology is James Cone. Overtly racist, Cone’s writings posit a black Jesus who leads African-Americans as the “chosen people.” In Cone’s cosmology, whites are “the devil,” and “all white men are responsible for white oppression.” Cone makes this point without ambiguity: “This country was founded for whites and everything that has happened in it has emerged from the white perspective,” Cone has written. “What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

If whiteness stands for all that is evil, blackness symbolizes all that is good. “Black theology,” says Cone, “refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” Small wonder that some critics have condemned black liberation theology as “racist idolatry” and “Afro-Nazism.”

Furthermore, according to Cone, “black values” are superior to American values. Sure enough, the “About Us” statement on Trinity’s web page includes the following Cone-inspired declaration: “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”

It is troubling that Barack Obama’s closest friends and allies subscribe to an explicitly racist doctrine. Even more worrying is that the main exponent of Black Liberation Theology sees Obama as a kindred spirit. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Obama’s pastor and Church, Cone said: “I’ve read both of Barack Obama’s books, and I heard the speech [on race]. I don’t see anything in the books or in the speech that contradicts black liberation theology.”

It’s tempting to see figures like Cone and Wright as fringe actors with no constituency in the wider black community. Yet Cone considers himself to be the natural successor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and not everyone finds the comparison jarring.

Similarly with Rev. Wright. At a summit of black pastors held shortly after the recent controversy broke, many defended Wright’s sermons as part of the “prophetic preaching” tradition embodied by the assassinated civil rights leader.

Said Rev. Frederick Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship West Baptist Church: “If Martin Luther King, Jr. were pastoring a church today, it would look very much like Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, and the sermons you would hear him preach would sound very much” like Wright’s.

Stacey Floyd-Thomas, who teaches ethics and serves as Director of black church studies at Brite Divinity School in Texas, explained that King, foreshadowing Wright, had once called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Moreover, said Floyd-Thomas, King was assassinated before he could deliver his scheduled Sunday sermon entitled “Why America May Go to Hell.”

Black Liberation Theology, in short, cannot be dismissed as a minority view. Americans are thus left with the troubling knowledge that millions of their fellow citizens consider them to be “devils,” having been taught to think this way by their religious leaders. They must wonder, too, why they should entrust the presidency to a man who has surrounded himself with those who actively despise the very country he seeks to lead.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new book exposing abuses by Canada’s Human Rights Commissions, The Tyranny of Nice, includes an introduction by Mark Steyn.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 25, 2009, 07:05:30 AM
Rachel,

Ask those members of Trinity about black liberation theology and what was taught at Trinity.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: rachelg on October 25, 2009, 07:10:35 AM
GM,
Do you think that you ever  given me  information about Rev Wright, Samantha Powers,Bill Ayers  or any of Obama's friends and associates  etc that I didn't  already have?   If you are just making points that is fine but please stop us me as your object lesson I'm not interested. If you feel like my problem is lack of information its not.  I just look at the exact  information  and come to different conclusions.

I have absolutely no interest in discussing  any form of Christian theology at all.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 25, 2009, 07:23:52 AM
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC18Aa01.html

SPENGLER
The peculiar theology of black liberation
By Spengler

Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.

What played out last week on America's television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of "black liberation theology" and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.



One of the strangest dialogues in American political history ensued on March 15 when Fox News interviewed Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago's Trinity Church. Wright asserted the authority of the "black liberation" theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins:

Wright: How many of Cone's books have you read? How many of Cone's book have you read?

Sean Hannity: Reverend, Reverend?

(crosstalk)

Wright: How many books of Cone's have you head?

Hannity: I'm going to ask you this question ...

Wright: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read?

Hannity: You're very angry and defensive. I'm just trying to ask a question here.

Wright: You haven't answered - you haven't answered my question.

Hopkins is a full professor at the University of Chicago's Divinity School; Cone is now distinguished professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary. They promote a "black power" reading of Christianity, to which liberal academic establishment condescends.

Obama referred to this when he asserted in a March 14 statement, "I knew Reverend Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago." But the fact the liberal academy condescends to sponsor black liberation theology does not make it less peculiar to mainstream American Christians. Obama wants to talk about what Wright is, rather than what he says. But that way lies apolitical quicksand.

Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the "Chosen People" of God - French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.

During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:
Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.
Theologically, Cone's argument is as silly as the "Aryan Christianity" popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people". Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.

Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God's purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1]
In the black liberation theology taught by Wright, Cone and Hopkins, Jesus Christ is not for all men, but only for the oppressed:
In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors ... Either God is for black people in their fight for liberation and against the white oppressors, or he is not [Cone].
In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a "drop of the bucket" and "dust on the scales", in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the "Chosen People".

That is the "biblical scholarship" to which Obama referred in his March 14 defense of Wright and his academic prominence. In his response to Hannity, Wright genuinely seemed to believe that the authority of Cone and Hopkins, who now hold important posts at liberal theological seminaries, was sufficient to make the issue go away. His faith in the white establishment is touching; he honestly cannot understand why the white reporters at Fox News are bothering him when the University of Chicago and the Union Theological Seminary have put their stamp of approval on black liberation theology.

Many things that the liberal academy has adopted, though, will horrify most Americans, and not only "black liberation theology" (Queer Studies comes to mind, among other things). It cannot be in Obama's best interests to appeal to the authority of Cone, whose unapologetic racism must be repugnant to the great majority of Americans, including the majority of black Americans, who for the most part belong to Christian churches that preach mainstream Christian doctrine. Christianity teaches unconditional love for a God whose love for humankind is absolute; it does not teach the repudiation of a God who does not destroy our enemies on the spot.

Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago's black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church.

Obama views Wright rather at arm's length: as the New York Times reported on April 30, 2007:
Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through," Mr Obama said. "He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality.
Obama holds his own views close. But it seems unlikely that he would identify with the ideological fits of the black-power movement of the 1960s. Obama does not come to the matter with the perspective of an American black, but of the child of a left-wing anthropologist raised in the Third World, as I wrote elsewhere (Obama's women reveal his secret , Asia Times Online, February 26, 2008). It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.

Note
1. See William R Jones, "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2009, 07:38:54 AM
I'm missing the point here about the Not so Right Rev. Wright.   Why are we discussing him at all GM? Has anyone been quoting him? 
Perhaps I am missing the point here, but I sense us drifting off point from the question presented-- the use of lucid views by persons who hold views on other subjects that we consider beyond the pale.

FWIW in my own life I have had to wrestle with this three times.  In no particular order:

a) Jude Wanniski:  Author of the utterly brilliant "The Way the World Works", considered by the WSJ to be "one of the one hundred most important books of the 20th Century", in his later years Jude became quite an anti-semitic crank (e.g. hung out with Farrkhan) and apologist for Saddam Hussein;
b) Carl Jung:  Only after years of random study in admiration of Jung did I discover that, at the least, apparently he had dalliance with the Nazis to the point of attacking Freud for his "Jewish science" or something like that;
c) Konrad Lorenz:  An Austrian scientist whose influence on me is so great that I named my son Conrad after him, apparently had his Nobel Prize removed because of some things he said in the 1930s-40s.  I'm not really clear on what they were or what happened.

In all three cases I have decided to bifurcate the good and the bad.  Where the anti-semitism question arises, I address it openly and when it doesn't, I don't-- though I have prefaced quoting Wanniski by prefacing it by saying something like "Though in his later years JW became quite a crank, including anti-semitism, here I find his thinking quite sound. etc."

In the case of Pat Buchanan, in my opinion he is a anti-Jewish bigot.  He also holds lucid opinions with which I don't agree, and he holds some lucid opinions which I am willing to entertain.   As a Jew, like Rachel, I do tend to wince a bit to see his name pop up, but I am not ready to call for banishing any and all use of his writings.

Perhaps the solution with quoting such person is to note from time to time, the dubious nature of some of this person's views and that quoting them here should not be taken as thinking all his views respectable?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 25, 2009, 08:11:31 AM
Rachel,

BLT isn't anywhere near mainstream christian theology. Judging christianity  by BLT is like judging judism by Kahane Chai.

If you really understood Black Liberation Theology, how could you knowling vote for one of it's adherents?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2009, 01:18:15 PM
To quote myself  "I sense us drifting off point from the question presented-- the use of lucid views by persons who hold views on other subjects that we consider beyond the pale."

Folks, please let us address this point specifically with specific suggestions. 

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on October 26, 2009, 07:45:26 AM
FWIW,
I reiterate one of my points earlier.
I do not love buchanan that much that I must post his writings.
I value Rachel's interesting posts and points of view more than I value buchanan.

So with that said I won't Buchanan anymore.
Not a big deal to me.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2009, 04:40:36 AM
Harmony is a matter of emphasis:

Let dissonance slip by.

Celebrate beauty.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: rachelg on October 29, 2009, 07:36:16 PM
CCP,

Thank you for your kinds words.   I greatly appreciate you not posting any Buchanan's articles .


I don't agree with Marc's reasonable argument about  taking the good and noting  the bad because Buchanan is still alive and  he could be supporting (including monetarily)  his more problematic ideas.

I have no problems problem bifurcating  for someone who is not around to cause harm.   I think it would be a grave error not to read the founding fathers because they owned  slaves even though that is a much  worse act than anything Buchanan has ever done.

I am not wishing Buchanan dead. I would be perfectly happy if he dropped his morally repugnant ideas or barring that wanted to go live in a yurt somewhere with  no communication to the modern world.

BBG,  I was  looking for bottom  up action not top down censorship.  This forum has certainly made its feelings known when  there  were un-agreed with left wing wing  views.   I was looking for more of those kind of feelings relating to Buchanan.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 30, 2009, 05:55:24 AM
Quote
BBG,  I was  looking for bottom  up action not top down censorship.  This forum has certainly made its feelings known when  there  were un-agreed with left wing wing  views.   I was looking for more of those kind of feelings relating to Buchanan.

Though I'm one of the folks who has been dissing Buchanan all along, as a rabid Libertarian just about any sort of prior restraint, be it administrative censorship or self-censorship, brings on a queasy sensation. I think one should be able to defend a piece or author one agrees with, or, if posting an interesting piece from an unknown source say as much as I often do, or post horrible pieces by horrible people and point out that you are using that as an example to argue the antithesis. And if someone blithely posts something by a noxious person they ought not be surprised if they get slapped around a bit for it.

As you may have noted, I often post pieces that dispute AGW in the most ardent of terms, a habit that causes many to label me a "denier;" those same folks would have you ignore everything that comes out of my mouth and perhaps haul me before some sort of AGW tribunal for having to temerity to speak directly to the many holes in their article of faith. Though I certainly don't think PB's instance is precisely congruent, my experience of being on the shouted down side of the question leaves me erring on the side of sharing, and being expected to intelligently defend, views.
Title: Passed by Punditry
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 30, 2009, 05:24:54 PM
Ah well, didn't make the cut in the pundit contest so I'm back in the fray. . . .
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2009, 05:55:26 PM
Well, its our gain.  Welcome back.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2009, 07:57:43 PM
Reminding everyone that I leave in the morning and return on the 12th.

My participation during that time will probably be less than usual, though I look forward to the usual quality of this forum being maintained during this time.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 03, 2009, 06:47:58 PM
Yip from North Carolina!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 19, 2010, 10:23:45 PM
Greetings from the SHOT show in Las Vegas.  Good times! 8-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 20, 2010, 11:41:47 AM
Coolness, Crafty. I'm envious. Expect to hear about all the toys.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2010, 09:10:33 PM
Rum Int today that there were 22 FBI arrests on Day One of people who accepted an undercover FBI agent's offer to greae the palms of the decision maker in a certain African govt  :-o

Naturally the coolest toys were in the military area and rather than mistakenly speak of something best left unsaid in a public forum I will wait until we next speak directly.
Title: Toronto
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2010, 09:56:54 AM
Off to Toronto until Monday night.
Title: Road Trip
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 15, 2010, 02:25:56 PM
Woof All:

I will be leaving this evening for seminars in New York City and Slovenia.  I will have internet access while I am gone.

The Adventure continues,
Marc
Title: live on the net
Post by: ccp on July 22, 2010, 12:11:08 PM
Just thought I would serve notice that our posts here go *right* to the internet courtesy bing search though I don't get it with google or yahoo search.

Do a search on bing on your user name

for example:

"latest post crafty dog" and see what comes up.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2010, 12:51:33 PM
what is the URL for that?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on July 22, 2010, 12:57:24 PM
This has been my default search.  I was doing a search "CNN and Bobby Seales".  I was trying to find out who was the CNN anouncer who told Seales it was a "privilege" to have him on the show.  I posted this last week.  I noticed O'Reilly literally that evening then had a 30 second shot of her saying this on the show I saw and commented rather sarcastically "a privilege, really?'

When I did the serach it says "latest posts by ccp" and there is my post on the issue from the board.  I tried to do latest posts for others from the board and some of them also come up.  I get to bing from the msn site:

http://www.msn.com/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2010, 07:10:22 PM
"to bing"   :?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on July 22, 2010, 07:16:04 PM
bing.com is a search engine, like google.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2010, 09:07:46 PM
Ah ha!

Thank you.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2010, 12:00:13 AM
I leave in the AM for a two week trip (NY and Switzerland) and return on the 19th.  I will be here intermittently during that time.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2010, 03:37:25 PM
Finally have internet connection and hope to be able to post a bit tomorrow.

The connection and the keyboard are really lousy so my posts will be very brief.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2010, 02:40:00 PM
Have had no internet connection for two days, and don't know how long this connection right now will last.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 11, 2010, 02:42:54 PM
What, you in Detroit or something?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2010, 03:16:11 PM
Actually, here at home. Cindy's computer is extremely intermittent as well.
Title: Welcome CanisLatrans!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2010, 03:20:13 PM
Good to have you aboard. :-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 19, 2010, 05:39:43 AM
I return late tonight from Bloomington IL.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2010, 12:01:20 PM
Sorry, having LOTS of internet connection problems.  Right now I am on the neighbor's connection.  In that Cindy is out of town and she is the geek in our family, it is hard to predict when all of this will get straightened out.
Title: Rarick
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 28, 2010, 08:59:33 AM
Woof Rarick:

There is a glitch on the PMs of the forum that prevents me from answering your PM.  Would you please email me at craftydog@dogbrothers.com ? 

thank you,
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Freki on December 25, 2010, 06:54:01 AM
Merry Christmas to all.  Wish you all the best and a Happy New year
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 25, 2010, 08:28:49 AM
Thank you and to you too Freki-- and thank you very much for keeping the Founding Fathers thread going; it is greatly appreciated.
Title: Subject headings
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2011, 09:27:41 AM
Woof All:

A friendly reminder to please make use of the Subject heading when posting. When someone wants to find something that they read here, it will be nearly impossible without a subject heading whereas having a subject heading will greatly empower the use of this forum as a research tool.

Thank you,

Title: SHOT Show
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2011, 09:24:42 AM
I will be leaving later today for the SHOT show and will return Wed. night.

Title: Will not post on link
Post by: ccp on January 21, 2011, 07:46:42 AM
Crafty,
I tried to move the post over as you requested but I cannot seem to do it.
In addition I tried to find the topic under heading you have but cannot find that either.
ccp
Title: Welcome to Ya
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2011, 08:40:13 PM
Woof All:

A hearty woof of welcome to my friend who is posting under the name "Ya".  I think we will find him an interesting and knowledgeable contributor on a wide range of subjects.  His first post in on the Afg-Pak thread-- a post of a mere 206 page book.  GM, you may have met your match :lol: in volume, though I suspect you will find considerable overlap in your lines of thought.

TAC!
Marc
Title: Highly recommended
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 25, 2011, 08:24:05 AM
I subscribe to this free newsletter and recommend it highly.  Also, I make an annual donation.

http://patriotpost.us/promote/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on March 08, 2011, 11:32:31 AM
Does anyone recall which thread Kostas posted on?

I wanted to ask if he would please clarify his mention of Greeks not liking Bill Clinton.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: JDN on March 08, 2011, 07:46:21 PM
I don't remember, but he said the Greeks liked Obama!   :evil:
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on March 09, 2011, 11:48:49 AM
I think he said they preferred him to Bush and Clinton both of whom they saw as more aggressive.

I was just thinking again about his comments about Clinton.

Never have I heard any group not be happy with Clinton for bombing of Serbia.

Listening to the US MSM Clinton is made out to be the equivalent of a Greek adonis (at least with regards to politics) whose bombing of Serbia was a stupendous success.

There are always two sides to every story and I wanted to hear more of the other side from Kostas if possible.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on March 09, 2011, 01:48:00 PM
I don't remember, but he said the Greeks liked Obama!   :evil:

Same mad financial skillz!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on March 10, 2011, 11:11:30 AM
Kostas,
Look forward to your insight.
Thanks,
ccp
Title: Into the Breach, Sorta
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 29, 2011, 07:49:12 AM
I've been pushing rocks up various hills of late at work and in other places and so had abandoned energy sinks that don't include some sort of tangible reward. Alas, I've been marking pieces I've been meaning to post in the interim and have gotten to the point where I need to either clear all the bookmarks or get this stuff linked in a place where I'll find it again. As such forgive the coming data dump and I trust you'll understand if I take a pass on the circular arguments.

With that said, my return will likely be sporadic. My eldest turns 18 in a couple weeks and wants to celebrate by backpacking 60 miles or so of Appalachian Trail, followed by a two man tactics pistol course. Can't think of a better way to spend spring break. Earned myself a couple more instructor certs of late and so have been doing my share of teaching and/or learning, too. Indeed, have converted a lot of my keyboarding time into teaching and training time and so expect to be doing more boomstick warrioring than keyboard warrioring this time around.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 29, 2011, 08:17:24 AM
We are delighted to have you with us once again.

Enjoy your time with your son.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on March 29, 2011, 08:19:24 AM
What class are you taking?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 29, 2011, 08:25:43 AM
Local instructor I've been training w/ a bunch. He is an ex-Marine, does something or another for some agency or another somewhere around DC, and is very much of the opinion that everyone should know how to pick up an AK and make it run, and ought to carry a pistol with which they can inspires someone to drop an AK. He's running a one day two-man tactics class for the first time; my son has been through 2 of his classes, think it will be fun to learn two man stuff with him.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on March 29, 2011, 08:26:58 AM
Cool, have fun.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on March 29, 2011, 08:45:34 AM
Welcome back BBG!!!  :-) 
Title: BBG
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 30, 2011, 01:10:24 AM
An awesome cornucopia of stellar posts yesterday from BBG!
Title: Glitch on the forum
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2011, 04:06:50 PM
and how to avoid it

http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2185.0
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 05, 2011, 03:41:34 PM
We are having serious internet problems so I will be posting less for a day or three.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2011, 06:44:43 AM
I'm back!  Great trip.

PS: Never fly Iberia Airlines!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on May 10, 2011, 08:14:24 AM
Should have flown El Al.  :wink:
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2011, 11:45:19 AM
No doubt!  But my Israeli host booked me on Iberia  :cry:   There is already discussion about my next trip and I have requested no more Iberia.

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on May 10, 2011, 11:48:18 AM
I'm hoping at some point for a TSA/Israeli aviation security AAR.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 11, 2011, 03:08:13 PM
Yip from , , , a secret location.   :lol:  I am on the road for an oof-the-radar-screen seminar.  Will be back on Monday.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on June 11, 2011, 03:14:41 PM
Give all the secret squirrels my regards!  :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2011, 08:59:08 PM
I'm off to Switzerland in 9 hours for one week, but should be able to post here from there.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 14, 2011, 10:11:39 PM
Back home :-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 02, 2011, 10:11:34 PM
Woof All:

This forum's north star is pro-Freedom, pro-US Constitution, pro-American Creed.

That said, we are not interested in an echo chamber-- as is evidenced by some of the people who come to play here (e.g. a Communist Euro Professor)

However, what is required of EVERYONE here is that they be lucid.

Who defines "lucid"?

In that this is my house, I do.

Life is to subtle and too complicated for me to assay a definitive definition, but I will give an example of what lucid is not.  Lucid is not anything having to do with "Truther-ism".

TAC,
CD
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 06, 2011, 04:59:55 PM
On road for next six days.  Minimal presence here. 

Carry on!

TAC!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: maija on October 07, 2011, 09:53:26 AM
I should mention that the posts just now under Maija's name are from me, Marc
Title: Google Fu help request
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2011, 04:36:28 AM
Can someone find the youtube or other URL for last night's "60 Minutes" segment on Steve Jobs' I-Pad helping autistic people?

I know someone with a very autistic child and heard that the segment was quite good.
Title: Re: Google Fu help request
Post by: G M on October 24, 2011, 05:09:42 AM
Can someone find the youtube or other URL for last night's "60 Minutes" segment on Steve Jobs' I-Pad helping autistic people?

I know someone with a very autistic child and heard that the segment was quite good.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385686n&tag=mncol;lst;3

This?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 01, 2011, 06:22:42 PM
I'm back, sorta.

I've started a Masters program that is the focus of most my thoughtful keyboard time these days, while at the same time doing a lot more shooting instruction and range safety work. As such I don't have a lot of time left over for internet meanderings, particularly ones that devolve into circular discussions. Don't be surprised, therefor, if "I don't have time to do another lap around this track" becomes a common refrain where I'm concerned.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2011, 07:50:44 PM
The legend returns from the mists of elsewhere!  8-)
Title: Place nicely children while I'm gone
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 11, 2011, 11:06:55 AM
Off to Mexico City until Tuesday.  I should have internet access while I am there.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 15, 2011, 10:27:34 PM
Well, no internet connection while I was there (so a plethora of threads upon which I need to catch up) but I am back safe and sound.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 18, 2011, 08:55:18 AM
Off to Chicago.  Back Monday night or Tuesday.
Title: Welcome to Belisaurius
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 23, 2011, 03:31:13 PM
Woof All:

I would like for all of us to welcome my good friend with the sobriquet of "Belisaurius" (look it up :lol:) to our forum.

No doubt I will embarass the hell out of him by saying the following, but , , , too bad  :-D :  

Bel has been of outstanding service to our nation, has a PhD in Decision Sciences (I think that means computer stuff :|  :lol:) from Oxford and currently is a hedge fund trader and a college professor.  

The Adventure continues!
Marc
Title: Re: Welcome to Belisaurius
Post by: G M on November 23, 2011, 03:36:06 PM
Woof All:

I would like for all of us to welcome my good friend with the sobriquet of "Belisaurius" (look it up :lol:) to our forum.

No doubt I will embarass the hell out of him by saying the following, but , , , too bad  :-D : 

Bel has been of outstanding service to our nation, has a PhD in Decision Sciences (I think that means computer stuff :|  :lol:) and currently is a hedge fund trader and a college professor. 

The Adventure continues!
Marc

Very impressive. Good to have him aboard.
Title: The URL stands alone
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 07, 2011, 09:06:07 AM
Folks:

Let remember to put something useful in the Subject line of our posts so as to facilitate finding it down the road.

When we are posting a URL, lets remember to post a sentence or three about the contents to help people know whether they want to go to the site or not.

Thank you,
Marc
Title: Take Two
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 16, 2011, 10:54:31 PM
Let remember to put something useful in the Subject line of our posts so as to facilitate finding it down the road.

When we are posting a URL, lets remember to post a sentence or three about the contents to help people know whether they want to go to the site or not.

Thank you,
Marc
Title: GM
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2012, 02:28:37 PM
FYI, GM is on the road for a week or two.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 03, 2012, 06:39:02 AM
Off to TX.  Back Monday.  Play nicely now  :lol:
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 05, 2012, 02:14:13 PM
Woof All:

When posting the URL of a piece, please take the time to write a few sentences as to what it is about and why you are posting it.

Thank you,
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2012, 09:29:22 AM
Off to Toronto for the first Canadian DB Gathering.

Play nicely while I'm gone!

TAC!
Title: This forum as a resource and record vs. copyright questions
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2012, 06:31:22 AM
JDN wrote: "I can't read the link.  For those of us poor people who read your forum and don't subscribe and pay for the WSJ (I read it elsewhere); may I suggest you post the whole article rather than a link?  Otherwise, many of us, and many in the future will not be able to read it.  This is an issue that is becoming more and more relevant."

I have received a couple of polite and respectful comments on the side about my posting of copyrighted materials, particularly in light of my feelings on the subject of my DVDs being pirated but I too share your concern about the value of this forum as a resource and record in the future.  For example, just this morning, GM posted a flagrantly wrong prediction by Wesbury in 2008.  Somehow I doubt were we to go to Wesbury's site that we would be able to find it.  In a similar vein even I as a subscriber of the WSJ it might be hard to get my hands on this article years down the road in contrast to what GM did today with Wesbury.  Having it here on this forum is what made it possible.

As a legal matter, I forget the name of the case, but a four prong test was established for quoting material:

1)   Was percentage is it of the work as a whole?   
2)   Does the citation decrease the likelihood that someone would purchase the product as a whole?
3)   What percentage is it of the new work?
4)   What damages are there?

IMHO a complete citation of this WSJ piece is a de minimis % of an issue of the WSJ and is not likely to affect whether someone would buy the WSJ or not, thus no damages.  Its citation here is a small percentage of what this forum is.



Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Rachel on March 01, 2012, 07:09:05 AM
Publishing a full article is clearly an infringement of current copyright law. The article is the body of work not the entire paper.  If you don't believe me ask a current IP lawyer.

To get old articles that have been removed from sites go here--- http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

WSJ is available for free at your local library.  

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant - protected material discussion
Post by: DougMacG on March 05, 2012, 09:08:35 AM
From Media Issues, edited and added here.  The gist of it is that we are being careful not to harm or damage them as we promote their product.  From the comments above, I often only put only passages of interest in my post, but putting the entire column in protects the context and integrity of the piece. There is a tradeoff between protecting content and getting the word out so that there will be awareness and demand for their content.  A couple of my own thoughts to add using the Wall Street Journal as an example:

a) There is an expectation when you subscribe that you will share content with a small or reasonable amount of people such as their eagerness to have it in the waiting room of the dental office - or the public library.  Granted that the online world is more complicated and they write rules starkly to protect them when necessary, but there is no indication that people come here for the purpose of getting around that subscription cost they otherwise would have paid themselves.  If anything the random promotion and discussion of stories and columns makes people more likely to subscribe.

b) Their own promotional strategy is to give away a mixture of free and protected content to draw attention, praise and subscriptions.  Often times my own awareness of a good column comes from their own efforts to submit material to other best of the web sites like Real Clear Politics for widespread dissemination to non-subscribers across the internet.

c) I post some things because they are expressing my own viewpoint, but give credit to the source as a matter of honesty.  Pulling out just the passage that supports my view may not preserve the context or meaning intended by the author.

d) I often suggest people subscribe and include subscription links as Crafty has done for various publications.  Here's one (save over 80%!): https://services.wsj.com/Gryphon/jsp/retentionController.jsp?page=10129

e) The content is intentionally mixed to get non-subscribers lured part way in, but as you read signed in as a subscriber there is no indication provided as to what is or is not protected.  Note that this discussion started as a reader was pulled part way in requesting more.

f) My own awareness of the WSJ editorial page began after my economics professor passed photocopies around of his own contributions.  My copy got lost or damaged.  I replaced it at the library and found out that he was only being published for his opposing view and that the lead editorials (opposite view) made far more sense.  While the liberal universities were pushing Keynesian economics as the only way to proceed in macroeconomics, the WSJ lead editorial was writing that "Keynes is Dead" in the late 1970s with simultaneously exploding inflation and unemployment.  Former editor Robert Bartley was a genius at putting a team together and current editorial page editor, Green Bay Wisc. native Paul Gigot, is one of the most insightful people in Washington IMHO.

g) Besides reading and subscribing, I have contributed material to the editorial page that they had no hesitation in using.  They credited me but forwarded no payment.  Other times it appears that they have been reading the forum before writing - without credit.   We have rules here too!  "© 2011 Dog Brothers, Inc. Martial Arts"  I don't think they want to risk having a cease and desist order be mutual!    :wink:

"The adventure continues."
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 05, 2012, 02:51:20 PM
I would add that Stratfor is OK with postings, as long as they are attributed.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 07, 2012, 06:12:55 AM
When I have a clear stretch of time, there are some materials I want to look up and bring to this conversation here concering the Fair Use doctrine and related matters.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Rachel on March 08, 2012, 06:20:47 AM
You may rationalize or justify your behavior any way you would like. There is no question that posting the whole article is copyright infringing unless you have permission of the copyright holder.  Copyright in classroom and copyright on a website are  very different. There are built in exceptions for classroom use. 

If you choose to infringe copyright for "the greater good" of the forum please be honest about that and don't justify your behavior as legal.   

Regardless of the legality I actually personally have some issues with the way you use content.  If you only publish excerpts you would drive traffic to the websites and blogs that  post content that you find of value.  By posting full length articles you are taking away advertising dollars ( by removing traffic and page views)  from content creators and interfering with their right to be paid for creating content.   




Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 08, 2012, 11:15:21 AM
Rachel:

Not sure that I agree with all of that.

I think you can already see an evolution around here with regard to this subject.  

As I just posted the other day in this thread, there are additional materials, including legal materials/decisions etc, that I wish to bring into this ongoing conversation but to do so will require some time where I can bring undivided attention to it; this I do not have right now.

Marc
Title: POTH: A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2012, 01:10:59 AM
Tossing this into the mix while I dally and dawdle in getting to certain legal citations and expressions of my thoughts:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/business/media/guidelines-proposed-for-content-aggregation-online.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120312
A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators
By DAVID CARR
Published: March 11, 2012
   
As words and articles became digitized over the last 15 years, they began to float, there for the plucking and replication elsewhere. Words like “curation” and “aggregation” became the language of the realm, sometimes used as substitutes for describing the actual creation of content. What had once been a craft was rapidly becoming a task.
Traditional media organizations watched as others kidnapped their work, not only taking away content but, more and more, taking the audiences with them. Practitioners of the new order heard the complaints and suggested that mainstream media needed to quit whining and start competing in a changed world, where what’s yours may not be yours anymore if others find a better way to package it.
So where is the line between promoting the good work of others and simply lifting it? Naughty aggregation is analogous to pornography: You know it when you see it.
As custody of content becomes more tenuous, there’s a risk that we may end up passing around and putting topspin on fewer and fewer original works. This has created a growing sense of unease among both digital immigrants and natives that the end of “ownership” could eventually diminish the Web’s value.
Two approaches to giving credit where credit belongs were announced at the South by Southwest Interactive festival here in Austin.
In one instance, an ad hoc group is using a kind of trade association approach to articulate common standards. In the second, someone who makes a living by mining the Web is deploying symbols to create a common shorthand for attribution.
Last July, Simon Dumenco wrote a column for Advertising Age noting that the death of Steve Jobs was competing for digital attention with the salacious story of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman.
Given that the piece was about what was trending on Twitter at that very moment, his column was immediately picked up by traffic-seekers like The Huffington Post and Techmeme. The Faustian bargain of the digital news ecosystem suggests that people get to pick your pocket a bit and then send back traffic in return. But Mr. Dumenco noticed that The Huffington Post, a huge site with many readers, returned very little traffic, while Techmeme, a much smaller site, kicked up plenty.
He went on something of a rant about it, writing that The Huffington Post’s overly aggressive approach to aggregation at the time — in which content is rewritten, links are buried, and very little is added — yielded all of 57 page views for the original item.
The Huffington Post suspended the writer involved and apologized to Mr. Dumenco. He responded by saying that the site was “singling out — indeed, scapegoating — a young writer for engaging in a style of aggregation long practiced, condoned and encouraged by Huffington Post editorial management.”
After getting an in-box full of examples from other writers who felt similarly aggrieved, Mr. Dumenco decided to pull out the big guns: He has formed a committee aiming to establish standards for aggregation. Buckle up, here comes the Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation.
O.K., you can almost hear the digerati seizing with laughter at the idea that a pew full of journalism church ladies is somehow going to do battle with the entire Internet. But Mr. Dumenco compares his effort to the editorial rules promulgated by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which have come to shape how magazines distinguish editorial from advertising. It’s an imperfect system with a fair number of outliers, but over time the magazine group devised guidelines that had significant influence and at least set standards that people could argue about.
An august list of names has signed on to the effort: David Granger, the editor in chief of Esquire; James Bennet, editor in chief of The Atlantic; and Adam Moss of New York magazine. Of course, all three oversee robust Web sites that do a fair amount of aggregating themselves.
The committee includes digital media natives like Elizabeth Spiers, editor in chief of The New York Observer; Mark Armstrong, a founder of Longreads.com; and Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor in chief of Slate. All of them believe there is value in looking at what might be called best practices when it comes to linking, summarizing and aggregating.
“This is not an anti-aggregation group, we are pro-aggregation,” Mr. Dumenco told me. “We want some simple, common-sense rules. There should be some kind of variation of the Golden Rule here, which is that you should aggregate others as you would wish to be aggregated yourself.”
Kerry Lauerman is the editor in chief of Salon, a site that has been around since the dawn of the consumer Web and has been on both sides of the aggregation equation. He says adopting rules is more than just a way of protecting legacy franchises.
“Increasingly, when people go online, it’s like stepping through the looking glass,” he said. “Whether you follow a link from Twitter, an e-mail, or Pinterest, you wind up on a site where you really don’t know where you are. It would be nice if there was a way of signaling what the standards are and how trustworthy the information is.”
Page 2 of 2)
Mr. Dumenco, who presented some of his ideas at a panel discussion this weekend in Austin, said the committee would grind its way to a set of standards and promulgate them over time. The group will have neither carrot nor stick, but could end up with a kind of Good Housekeeping seal, a signal that the consumer has landed on a site that adheres to a common industrial standard.

 “We are not some tight little group of scolds,” he said. “This is a conversation that many people from all parts of the industry want to have, and this seemed like a good place to start.”
On another panel in Austin, one in which I participated, Maria Popova, better known as brainpicker on Twitter, suggested that the failure to give credit was growing endemic. On Friday, she and her collaborator, the designer Kelli Anderson, announced the Curator’s Code, a site that offers a way of expressing where things come from.
The Curator’s Code will use a symbol resembling a sideways S to express that a piece of content came directly from another source, and a different figure — a curved arrowlike symbol — to signal what is commonly known as a “hat tip,” or nod to a source that inspired a further thought. The Curator’s Code supplies the appropriate symbol and then the blogger or writer simply puts in a hyperlink behind it as they normally would.
Ms. Popova, who spends hours a day scrounging the Web for remarkable artifacts, has noticed that many idiosyncratic discoveries suddenly become ubiquitous once unearthed. And the source of that little gem, or the credit for someone else who dug it up, often disappears when it is reposted.
“Discovery of information is a form of intellectual labor,” she said. “When we don’t honor discovery, we are robbing somebody’s time and labor. The Curator’s Code is an attempt to solve some of that.”
By creating a language signified by two so-called Unicode characters, they hope to make the business of attribution more standardized and routine.
“What makes the Internet magical to me is that it is a place of radical discovery,” said Ms. Popova, who describes herself as a “curator of interestingness” on the Web. “You can click your way through a chain of attributes and links and find amazing things.”
She is careful about attribution and thinks others should be mindful as well. The Curator’s Code is a shorthand tool to signify that on the Web, most things come from somewhere else.
Neither of these initiatives seems intended to serve as a posse to bring justice and order to the digital Wild West. In a sense, they are an effort to bring back the promise of the consumer Internet, creating visible connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information. It’s called the Web for a reason, after all.
Title: Judge orders failed copyright troll to forfeit "all" copyrights
Post by: G M on March 13, 2012, 07:09:35 PM
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/judge-orders-failed-copyright-troll-to-forfeit-all-copyrights.ars

Righthaven, a copyright-troll law firm that failed in its attempt to make money for newspapers by suing readers for sharing stories online, was dealt a death blow on Tuesday by a federal judge who ordered the Las Vegas company to forfeit "all of" its intellectual property and other "intangible property" to settle its debts.

The order is an ironic twist to a copyright trolling saga that began in 2010, when Righthaven was formed with the idea of suing blogs and websites that re-post newspaper articles or snippets of them without permission.
 
U.S. District Judge Philip M. Pro of Nevada ordered Righthaven to surrender for auction the 278 copyrighted news articles that were the subject of its lawsuits.
 
"The copyright registrations to more than 275 works are in Righthaven’s name, can be transferred by this court, and can then be auctioned," the judge ruled. (.pdf)
 
The Righthaven.com domain was auctioned for $3,000 last year to help satisfy the legal bill the firm must pay to one of its defendants that prevailed in a copyright suit brought by Righthaven itself. The tab is more than $60,000 in the case before Judge Pro, and in total Righthaven owes about $200,000 to various defendants.
 
U.S. copyright law allows for massive damages — $150,000 per infringement — which leads many people to settle copyright cases, rather than risk a massive payout. But if someone does defend himself, the law allows the prevailing party in an infringement case to be awarded its legal fees and costs, even if it were the defendant.

Righthaven initially won and settled dozens of cases as defendants paid a few thousand dollars each to make the cases go away. But the firm, which has ceased filing new suits, has never prevailed in a case that was defended in court.
 
Ironically, Righthaven sought the domain names owned by the people it was suing as payment, and now it has lost its own domain name and any other available assets in the process. The company has threatened to file for bankruptcy protection.
 
The domain auction and the unscheduled auctioning of Righthaven’s copyrights is to help pay Las Vegas lawyer Marc Randazza for successfully defending Vietnam veteran Wayne Hoehn against a Righthaven copyright lawsuit seeking large damages for posting the entirety of a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial to a small online message board.

The lawsuit against Hoehn, one of hundreds of Righthaven’s lawsuits, accused him of unlawfully posting all 19 paragraphs of a November 2010 editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Hoehn posted the article, and its headline, "Public Employee Pensions: We Can’t Afford Them" on medjacksports.com to prompt discussion about the financial affairs of the nation.
 
Judge Pro ruled that the posting was fair use of the article, an issue that is on appeal. Whether Righthaven retains the financial wherewithal to litigate the appeal was not immediately known. Righthaven’s chief executive, Steve Gibson, did not immediately respond for comment.
 
Righthaven’s first client, Stephens Media of Las Vegas and operator of the Review-Journal, invested $500,000 into the Righthaven operation at its outset. With Judge Pro’s ruling, the media company is losing financial control of hundreds of articles and photos.

"The irony of this? Perhaps those who buy the copyrights could issue DMCA notices to the Review-Journal stopping them from redistributing them?" Randazza said via an e-mail, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Title: Righthaven Loss: Judge Rules Reposting Entire Article is Fair Use
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2012, 08:55:53 AM
One of the things I try to accomplish with this forum is for it to become an easy to use research tool.  A great concern is that when we go back to some URL we find it is no longer there.  With the great tendency of inconvenient facts to disappear down the memory hole of the pravdas, (e.g. matters pertaining to Operation Fast & Furious) we who search for Truth cannot let this happen.  

This decision and its holding seem to me of great importance.

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http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/fair-use-defense/

Righthaven Loss: Judge Rules Reposting Entire Article Is Fair Use
By David Kravets Email Author June 20, 2011 |  4:54 pm |  Categories: intellectual property, The Courts
 | Edit
A federal judge ruled Monday that publishing an entire article without the rights holder’s authorization was a fair use of the work, in yet another blow to newspaper copyright troll Righthaven.

It’s not often that republishing an entire work without permission is deemed fair use. Fair use is an infringement defense when the defendant reproduced a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, commentary, teaching and research. The defense is analyzed on a case-by-case basis.

Monday’s ruling dismissed a lawsuit brought by Righthaven, a Las Vegas-based copyright litigation factory jointly owned with newspaper publisher Stephens Media. The venture’s litigation tactics and ethics are being questioned by several judges and attorneys, a factor that also weighed in on U.S. District Judge Philip Pro’s decision Monday.

Righthaven has sued more than 200 websites, bloggers and commenters for copyright infringement. More than 100 have settled out of court.

The lawsuit decided Monday targeted Wayne Hoehn, a Vietnam veteran who posted all 19 paragraphs of November editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which is owned by Stephens Media. Hoehn posted the article, and its headline, “Public Employee Pensions: We Can’t Afford Them” on medjacksports.com to prompt discussion about the financial affairs of the nation’s states. Hoehn was a user of the site, not an employee.

Righthaven sought up to $150,000, the maximum in damages allowed under the Copyright Act. Righthaven argued that the November posting reduced the number of eyeballs that would have visited the Review-Journal site to read the editorial.

“Righthaven did not present any evidence that the market for the work was harmed by Hoehn’s noncommercial use for the 40 days it appeared on the website. Accordingly, there is no genuine issue of material fact that Hoehn’s use of the work was fair and summary judgment is appropriate,” Judge Pro ruled.

Marc Randazza, one of Hoehn’s attorneys, said he would petition the judge for legal fees and costs.

The judge also said he took into consideration that only five of the editorial’s paragraphs were “purely creative opinions” of the author.

“While the work does have some creative or editorial elements, these elements are not enough to consider the work a purely ‘creative work’ in the realm of fictional stories, song lyrics, or Barbie dolls,” he wrote. “Accordingly, the work is not within ‘the core of intended copyright protection.’”

Judge Pro, in his fair-use analysis, also found that the posting was for noncommercial purposes, and was part of an “online discussion.”

That said, Pro did not need to decide the fair-use question.

That’s because he also found that Righthaven did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit, a hot-button topic in the Righthaven litigation.


Pro’s decision came a week after a different Las Vegas federal judge threatened to sanction Righthaven, calling its litigation efforts “disingenuous, if not outright deceitful” when it came to standing. Standing is a legal concept that has enabled Righthaven to bring lawsuits on behalf of the copyrights owned by Stephens Media.

That blistering decision by U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt, the chief judge in Nevada, places into doubt Righthaven’s year-old business model, which is also under a Colorado federal judge’s microscope.

Hunt gave Righthaven two weeks to explain why he should not sanction it for trying to “manufacture standing.” Judge Hunt suggested Righthaven never had standing in any of its cases because Righthaven and Stephens Media had agreed to share the proceeds of any damages awards or settlements, yet Stephens Media kept ownership of the copyright.

Righthaven must own the copyright to sue on its behalf, Hunt ruled in a decision echoed by Judge Pro on Monday.

What’s more, in each of the 200-plus cases Righthaven brought on behalf of Las Vegas Review-Journal articles, Righthaven never disclosed, as required, that Stephens Media had a “pecuniary interest” in the outcome, Hunt wrote.

Many bloggers who settled are mulling their legal options.

Illustration: Electronic Frontier Foundation

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on March 19, 2012, 10:39:38 PM
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/03/19/who-keeps-404ing-stories-about-malia-obamas-spring-break-trip-to-mexico/

Who Keeps 404ing Stories about Malia Obama’s Spring Break Trip to Mexico?


This is very curious. Stories about first daughter Malia Obama’s spring break trip to Mexico with 25 Secret Service detailed to protect her and her friends keep returning 404 errors or redirects.
 
Here’s Huffington Post’s link to its story about the spring break. Click on it and see where it goes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/19/malia-obama-mexico-spring-break_n_1364063.html
 
Yahoo! ran a story about it. But it has since been run off. http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-daughter-spends-springbreak-mexico-145031176.html.
 
That Yahoo! link is redirecting to a story about something entirely unrelated.
 
Essence had the story. Emphasis on the past tense. http://www.essence.com/2012/03/19/malia-obama-travels-to-mexico-for-spring-break/
 
Even the UK Telegraph story is now off the grid. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9152796/Malia-Obama-guarded-by-25-Secret-Service-agents-on-spring-break-in-Mexico.html. That’s the version that Drudge was linking to.
 
Drudge linked to a different version, at the International Business Times, and now that story is down the 404 hole: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/316249/20120319/malia-obama-mexico-spring-break-travel-warning.htm
 
The spring break trip really happened. This blog post about it hasn’t gone 404 (yet), and has several pics of Malia with her friends.
 
What is going on here? Is the White House trying to scrub the Internet of all stories about the first daughter’s spring break trip to Mexico?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 20, 2012, 04:00:07 AM
I can readily understand the desire of the SS to keep this knowledge off the grid.  I might tangentially note that as a taxpayer I note that the extrordinary expenses of the extraordinary security required for Mexico.  As a father-- especially if I were President!-- I would not be allowing my daughter to travel to Mexico.  Surely the local authorities werever she may be must know, which is to say that there is a not insignificat risk of local narco operations knowing and launching a military level kidnap.  As an American left realizing just how dark and cynical his doubts about this administration have become, I realize that it crosses my mind to note that her kidnapping would probably be used to justify our signing away our Second Amendment to the upcoming UN Small Arms Treaty.

And for the purposes of the copyright conversation of this thread, I note the proof hereof of the State's power, and the will to use that power, to disappear inconvenient truths.
 
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2012, 06:39:14 PM
Off on my Euro tour in the morning.  I should have internet most of the time I am on the road, but may be posting a bit less.  Hold down the fort for me!  God bless America!

The Adventure continues!
Title: PLEASE MAKE GOOD USE OF SUBJECT LINES!!!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2012, 10:06:18 AM
That way, it will be possible to use the search function to find the material posted in the future!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 30, 2012, 05:53:11 PM
My computer is back from the shop-- YAY!
Title: Welcome Russ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2012, 06:35:00 AM
Gents:

A warm welcome to Russ, a.k.a. C-Bad Dog, who has posted on the China-South China Sea thread this morning.  Russ is fluent in Mandarin and has recently returned to the US after living in China and Tibet for the last several years.  There's much more (e.g. he's an attorney) but I will leave it to him to tell us about himself.

Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Russ on July 18, 2012, 06:59:45 AM
Thanks Guro C.!

Before I moved to the Tibetan Plateau in 2009, I was living in Kunming, Yunnan, teaching International Law to international business majors from the EU, CH, North Africa, and China, of course!  We also had a DBMA Kunming group, and Guro C. allowed me to represent DBMA for a seminar in Beijing in 2006.

Before that I was living in NYC, working as an attorney at a firm, and running Manhattan DBMA (2003-2006).  While a law student, and intern at the San Diego DA's Office, I attended Guro Crafty's DBMA classes at Inosanto Academy in Marina Del Ray in 2001.  I was also a student of Raw Dog's in NYC during this time (1999-2004), and taught DBMA classes at his school, Progressive Martial Arts Academy, after my certification by Guro Crafty as an Apprenctice Instructor in 2002.

As for Tibet, here is what I was really doing over there:

igertrekking.webs.com (http://igertrekking.webs.com)
blackpotterycoffee.webs.com (http://blackpotterycoffee.webs.com)

Take a look when you have a chance.

We are back in Connecticut now, and eager to start up DBMA training here again.  So anyone in the area, please get in touch.

I look forward to many fine discussions here!

Woof,
Russ
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: JDN on July 18, 2012, 07:19:12 AM
Welcome Russ!

I'm looking forward to reading about what you were doing in Tibet, but your links don't seems to work....

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Russ on July 18, 2012, 09:51:14 AM
The links seem to work now.

Here they are again just in case:

http://igertrekking.webs.com/ (http://igertrekking.webs.com/)

http://blackpotterycoffee.webs.com/ (http://blackpotterycoffee.webs.com/)

Before China, I also lived in Japan (96-99') and Vietnam (95'/00').  Good times, and some interesting martial arts training there as well.  Somehow I got coaxed into being the assistant coach of a high school Judo team.  We had one real hot shot who could throw anyone, or pin them mercilessly to the mats.  The training I had there stands up well in BJJ training much to many people's surprise (not to mention in real fighting).  In Vietnam, we just learned "boobytraps."   :mrgreen:

Woof,
Russ
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: JDN on July 18, 2012, 10:42:43 AM
The new links do work; thank you.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2012, 07:19:48 AM
Arrived in Bern a few days ago.  Internet access situation not good, but should be able to make a few brief posts occasionally.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 28, 2012, 07:51:18 PM
My computer is out of order until Thursday.
Title: Another 100,000 thread!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 16, 2012, 08:21:46 AM
I note that our "Founding Fathers" thread on the SCH forum has now surpassed 100,000 reads!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on September 20, 2012, 09:08:09 AM
GM.

Come back you are missed.

ccp
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 20, 2012, 09:33:53 AM
Amen!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on September 23, 2012, 11:14:47 AM
GM.

Come back you are missed.

ccp

Ditto!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2012, 03:18:56 PM
Welcome home GM!
Title: Re: JDN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2012, 09:21:18 AM
At JDN's request, I post the following.

"NOTICE; AT THE INSISTENCE OF OTHER MEMBERS ON THIS FORUM I HAVE BANNED JDN FROM POSTING OR SENDING PERSONAL MESSAGES."

In that this request came to me via PM I'm not sure about the PM thing, but anyway there it is.  Anyone who wishes to PM me about this you know where to find me.

TAC!
Title: Stephen W. Browne, new member
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 04, 2012, 10:43:04 PM


Hi, I'm a new member here, at the kind invitation of Marc Denny.

My name is Stephen Browne, I'm 61 years old. I am first and foremost a father to two children Jerzy Waszyngton Browne, age 11, and Judyta Ilona Browne, age 6. Unfortunately a single father trying to do best by my kids.

My son's name is Polish, he was born in Warsaw two weeks after 9/11, which is how he came to be named "George Washington Browne."

My daughter is named for Jerzy's godmother, and her namesake, Judith Hatton, now sadly deceased, and a dear friend in Lithuania, Ilona Daukene, who died in the mushroom poisoning epidemic that hit northern Europe some years back.

Judith Hatton was an Englishwoman, the wife of a KGB agent (from SMERSH no less) who defected to the UK after WWII.

Martial arts-wise, I am ranked Dai saam (3rd degree black sash) in Wu-Wei Gung Fu, Recognized Instructor in Pekiti Tirsia Kali, and intermediate to advanced ranking in about a half-dozen others.

In the years 1991-2004 I lived in Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Saudi Arabia, and traveled throughout Eastern Europe quite a lot.  I was elected Honorary Member of the Yugoslav Movement for the Protection of Human Rights in 1997.

I returned to the States to get formal training in journalism after getting some really great stories as an amateur. I interviewed the wife of a murdered dissident in Belarus, and covered the election that brought down Milosevic from the streets of Belgrade.

I'm now paying my dues, starting from the bottom again and a rural daily newspaper in Minnesota.

I love the martial arts, but have not had the opportunity to train as much as I'd like, nor am I 25 anymore, but determined to "walk as a warrior all my days."

Very pleased to meet you all
Title: Re: Stephen W. Browne, new member
Post by: DougMacG on October 05, 2012, 08:18:06 AM
Welcome aboard!  Very interesting background.  Jump right in on any and all topics! 
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2012, 10:00:49 PM
Welcome home BBG 8-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 12, 2012, 11:12:59 AM
I expect my appearances will be fairly erratic as I've pretty much sold out on internet argument. With that said, 'tis nice to be back.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2012, 11:32:02 AM
Working on memorizing my lines for an audition this afternoon so I won't be around much until tonight.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 06, 2012, 08:56:36 AM
Apparently we are changing servers today or something like that.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 08, 2012, 09:15:51 AM
Off to IL for a seminar for C-Shadow Dog.  Back Monday night.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2012, 07:35:05 PM
Having a good time with Big Dog and other friends here in IL.
Title: Our first 200,000 read thread!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2012, 08:58:51 AM
I confess that it is with a goodly amount of pride that I note that we now have our first thread, the Political Rants thread, with over 200,000 reads  8-) 8-) 8-)
Title: Thanksgiving 1789
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2012, 07:43:43 AM
"I do recommend and assign Thursday ... next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be." --George Washington, 1789
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2012, 08:50:34 PM
Merry Christmas to all!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2013, 12:41:03 AM
I ain't as young as I once was, but I'm as young once as I ever was!
 
Happy New Year!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 14, 2013, 12:37:22 PM
Off to the SHOT Show in Vegas!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on January 14, 2013, 02:00:58 PM
Off to the SHOT Show in Vegas!

Lucky dog....
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 15, 2013, 10:18:13 PM
What wonders to behold!

I fear what tomorrow brings with the announcement Baraq's proposals , , , :cry: :cry: :cry:
Title: Gun Appreciation Day
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 20, 2013, 06:25:40 PM
Woof All:

I just wanted to take a minute to comment on why no attention was paid around here to "Gun Appreciation Day".

IMHO Martin Luther King was a great man and a great American.  Indeed, some of you may have noticed that I have quoted him in the  Founding Father thread over on the SCH forum.

IMHO not only was it disrespectful to call for a Gun Appreciation Day on his birthday/this national holiday, it was politically stupid.

TAC,
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 11, 2013, 08:22:16 AM
My computer has a virus; I'll be taking it into the shop shortly.  My only access for the next few days may be uneven.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 11, 2013, 07:54:50 PM
At the moment, it appears that I am back in action.  :-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2013, 08:55:44 AM
Off to Montreal for the Second Annual Canadian Dog Brothers Gathering of the Pack!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2013, 10:25:11 AM
Off to Central PA for seminar for Ryan "Guard Dog" Gruhn!
Title: Welcome to my friend Donald
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 25, 2013, 07:18:34 AM
Woof All:

My friend Donald was a roommate in college (my first one, Sarah Lawrence).  We shared many Jefferson Airplance concerts together  :-D 

We've reconnected through FB and have had some sidebar conversations about various political matters.  He is a doctor now in MA and is a self-described "anti-abortion pro-gay marriage redistributor of wealth".  Nonetheless his way of conducting himself in these conversations has persuaded me that he can be a good member of the forum here.  He brings to health care issues an understanding of a doctor in the trenches every day and has shown himself to be someone who recognizes fair points on "the other side"-- a rare quality indeed.

He knows he is stepping into the lion's den here, but let's give him a warm greeting and a fair chance :-)

Marc
Title: Re: Welcome to my friend Donald
Post by: bigdog on April 25, 2013, 10:21:08 AM
Any friend of yours, sir, will be greeted with respect.

Welcome, Donald, and thank you for joining our ongoing conversations.

Woof All:

My friend Donald was a roommate in college (my first one, Sarah Lawrence).  We shared many Jefferson Airplance concerts together  :-D 

We've reconnected through FB and have had some sidebar conversations about various political matters.  He is a doctor now in MA and is a self-described "anti-abortion pro-gay marriage redistributor of wealth".  Nonetheless his way of conducting himself in these conversations has persuaded me that he can be a good member of the forum here.  He brings to health care issues an understanding of a doctor in the trenches every day and has shown himself to be someone who recognizes fair points on "the other side"-- a rare quality indeed.

He knows he is stepping into the lion's den here, but let's give him a warm greeting and a fair chance :-)

Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 21, 2013, 10:20:33 PM
Leaving in the morning for Argentina, Brazil, Germany, and France and will return June 18.

You guys will be my lifeline to my political junkie fix!!!

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 22, 2013, 08:02:01 AM
Out the door!  Next stop, Buenos Aires!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2013, 10:06:36 AM
Tough red eye flight (bumpy air for hours over the Andes) but have arrived in Buenos Aires.  Host Guillermo has me in a very nice hotel.  TAC!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 01, 2013, 07:43:04 AM
Looks like I was on a rampage this morning!
 :lol:
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 11, 2013, 08:51:01 AM
Woof from Loreley Germany.  AWESOME time here.  On to Paris at dawn!
Title: Welcome to Walter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2013, 05:55:18 PM
Woof All:

A hearty welcome to my friend Walter.  We first met at U. of PA back in the mid-70s and reconnected in the late 80s at the Inosanto Academy where we took Silat together and trained together outside the Academy as well.   He even has a brief cameo in our Real Contact Stickfighting series.  Amongst his athletic talents is a strong game of tennis.

TAC!
Marc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on July 23, 2013, 09:15:59 PM
Hey Crafty,

Would it be possible to change my nick to "Carlos Danger"? It's the coolest nick ever. I promise not to do anything disgusting, I'll leave that to  guys running for mayor in NYC.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2013, 04:39:00 PM
Just finished a seminar in Chicago (good times with Pete, Carlos, and friends 8-) )  On to visit my mom tomorrow in upstate NY, then to Bern for the Euro Gathering.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 07, 2013, 12:38:59 PM
There is an official foto of Obama taken just before he takes the oath of office for the first time wherein the hubristic an narcissistic expression on his face is something to behold.  I've looked for it on the Glibness thread and the 2008 Presidential thread.  Help please!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on September 07, 2013, 06:02:34 PM
There is an official foto of Obama taken just before he takes the oath of office for the first time wherein the hubristic an narcissistic expression on his face is something to behold.  I've looked for it on the Glibness thread and the 2008 Presidential thread.  Help please!

I'll try to find it after my tactical shotgun class.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2013, 07:16:36 AM
On the road this week.  Will do what I can to contribute.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on September 23, 2013, 01:06:02 PM
There is an official foto of Obama taken just before he takes the oath of office for the first time wherein the hubristic an narcissistic expression on his face is something to behold.  I've looked for it on the Glibness thread and the 2008 Presidential thread.  Help please!

(http://wizbangblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Arrogant-Obama-e1312036400292.jpg)

This?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2013, 07:26:45 PM
A classic shot no doubt, but the one I am thinking of is of him looking at himself in a mirror with a remarkably smug look on his face (on the day he was to take the oath of office for the first time?)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on September 24, 2013, 07:33:27 PM
A classic shot no doubt, but the one I am thinking of is of him looking at himself in a mirror with a remarkably smug look on his face (on the day he was to take the oath of office for the first time?)

Ok, I think I know that pic.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2013, 06:45:54 PM
Body by Guiness came by this evening and joined Antone and me for dinner  8-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on September 30, 2013, 04:50:50 PM
A classic shot no doubt, but the one I am thinking of is of him looking at himself in a mirror with a remarkably smug look on his face (on the day he was to take the oath of office for the first time?)

Ok, I think I know that pic.

(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2690/4308181260_6c6f446e7e.jpg)
Title: Narcissus
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 30, 2013, 07:29:33 PM
Though I remember it as a full body shot this may well be the one  8-)
Title: Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Hanakah!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2013, 07:33:00 AM
Thanksgiving Proclamation
President George Washington
City of New York, October 3, 1789

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 27, 2014, 03:11:16 PM
Leaving for Switzerland and France in a few minutes.  Will have internet while I am there.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 09, 2014, 12:03:51 PM
Woof from Paris. Heading home tomorrow.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on March 15, 2014, 09:44:22 AM
I cannot reply to the Putin thread.  No "reply" link comes up. 
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2014, 10:25:02 AM
Try now.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on March 15, 2014, 10:43:38 AM
Still only get "notify"
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2014, 10:48:26 AM
Try again.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 18, 2014, 10:44:32 AM
To all my good friends of that break-away faction of Judaism known as Christianity my warmest good wishes and prayers on this Good Friday-Easter weekend.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on April 20, 2014, 09:03:47 AM
To all my good friends of that break-away faction of Judaism known as Christianity my warmest good wishes and prayers on this Good Friday-Easter weekend.

Your kind words are well-received from the break-away faction and the wishes go both ways!  I get to celebrate with family and pray in the Christian church this weekend.  During the past week enjoyed Passover leftovers with friends.  With all of that I feel doubly blessed - and then some.   :-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 20, 2014, 09:07:51 AM
 :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 12, 2014, 12:23:05 PM
I'm looking for a relatively recent piece by Mitt Romney which begins with a quote from Shakespeare about "moments in the tides of men" , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on June 12, 2014, 03:09:44 PM
I'm looking for a relatively recent piece by Mitt Romney which begins with a quote from Shakespeare about "moments in the tides of men" , , ,

http://www.redstate.com/2014/03/18/mitt-romney-foreign-policy-oops-reset-button/


That it?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 12, 2014, 04:50:58 PM
A nice find but Big Dog just popped the exact one I had in mind in my email box:  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304747404579445170801186310
It uses the same Shakespeare quote.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: MikeT on June 19, 2014, 12:03:01 PM
Hi, my name is Mike, Crafty asked me to come by and introduce myself here...  I am a nearly 30 year practitioner of various martial arts; including Shorin-Ryu karate; Matayoshi Kobudo; Yamashita Suikendo; and to lesser extents; kali, judo, boxing/kick/ thaiboxing and jiujitsu.  Although I have followed and admired DBMA ‘from afar’ for some time, I was invited here by Marc after making his acquaintance on FB.

As my connection to Marc was primarily a shared interest in ‘things political’, I suppose maybe I should ‘declare’ or introduce myself in that regard, as well...  I’m a fairly staunch conservative who believes that almost above all things the US needs to ‘reground’ itself back closer to founding principles;  I.e. that what we need in the US regardless of personal party affiliation is a ‘Constitutional Reformation’ of sorts (in the sense that the latter word is typically applied to religion).  Socially I’m a mostly-libertarian, but fiscally and defense wise I’m a pretty arch Reagan-conservative who believes strongly in small government, a strong military, equality with responsibility for everyone, and in the US looking out for both our own interests and the interests of our allies where it needs to.

I also fashion myself to be somehwat a student of history; of late focused especially on events surrounding the US Colonial period; and martial arts wise, I'm fairly well versed in the history of Okinawan martial arts in particular and in some of their roots in SE Asia.  Trainig wise, my interests for the last five to ten years have been on 'improving' traditional training via the application of 'modern' methods more closely associated with sport and RBSD training.  Looking forward to some good discussions, I hope.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2014, 12:06:20 PM
Mike's posts on my FB page on the Mideast FUBAR impressed me enough that I pasted some of them here and invited him to join us.  I think we will be glad.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on June 19, 2014, 03:03:03 PM
Welcome!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on June 19, 2014, 03:20:14 PM
Cool. Glad to have you here.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 20, 2014, 07:41:09 AM
Off to Illinois.  Back Monday. TAC!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 08, 2014, 07:43:07 AM
I am having trouble finding a surprisingly thoughtful piece by the former mayor of NYC (Blumenthal? Bloomberg?) on fracking
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on July 08, 2014, 08:38:04 AM
I am having trouble finding a surprisingly thoughtful piece by the former mayor of NYC (Blumenthal? Bloomberg?) on fracking

 http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1096.msg80668#msg80668
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2014, 12:45:10 PM
That's the one-- thank you! I have no idea where my search commands did not find it.

Now, another one if I may.  I am lookng for my posts of my 1992 Congressional campaign.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: RSB on July 28, 2014, 05:03:05 PM
Hi, my name is Robert, and am friends with Guro Marc, and Carlos Flores on facebook, where I "talk" politics with Marc, and workouts with Carlos :)
I'm 43, and have been practicing martial arts of various forms since I was 6, when I started Boxing. I've never stuck with any one thing, as I've always been interested in everything. The arts that have stood out the most for me, have been Boxing, Wing Chun, Judo, Aikido, and Hung Gar, but what the body can do in defense of itself, has always been ahead of ranks in styles. I have found myself loving FMA in general though, especially Panantukan.......Go figure, I started with Boxing :P
I'm a Christian Conservative Republican, along the lines of Reagan, and George Washington, if I had to choose. I believe in limited government, as they are only supposed to be there to create a safe environment for the purpose of our individual growth, to the benefit of us all. Strong individual States......United. Just the way I see things. I look forward to sharing and learning with and from you guys. Thank you Guro Marc for inviting me, and thank the rest of you for having me :)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 28, 2014, 06:11:29 PM
Welcome aboard RSB!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on July 28, 2014, 06:37:55 PM
Welcome RSB.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on July 28, 2014, 06:39:21 PM
Yes, welcome Robert!.
"I'm a Christian Conservative Republican."
There aren't many places where you can say that anymore, lol.

"along the lines of Reagan, and George Washington, if I had to choose. I believe in limited government, as they are only supposed to be there to create a safe environment for the purpose of our individual growth, to the benefit of us all. Strong individual States......United."

Very well put! That is a message I wish we could share with the tens of millions of people who have recently become disillusioned with the false promises of big government liberalism.

Imagine for a second that we allowed, even encouraged people to prosper without limit instead of stomping out success,  And then in a Judeo-Christian spirit, the people who succeed help others who actually need and deserve help.  Those who achieve and give back would feel rewarded instead of robbed and those receiving help would feel thankful, instead of entitled.  It is a debate or question I call tax vs. charity.  I would like to hear a liberal explain why that wouldn't work in place of the all-powerful government system that is failing so badly.  The liberal argument comes down to condescension; people are too greedy to help others without coercion, but that isn't true.

Anyway, welcome and see on the other threads...
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: RSB on July 28, 2014, 07:48:50 PM
"I would like to hear a liberal explain why that wouldn't work in place of the all-powerful government system that is failing so badly."
I'm sure we've all heard them explain it before. They call it the "good ole' boy system", "where the rich only help their friends". Reality of course, is they choose to help ones that actually try, as you say. But not everyone wants to try. Some want success to be instant and worry free, like on TV, and they don't really care if they take it, and live off the efforts and sacrifices of others. So long is it doesn't mess with their fairies and unicorns :P
Thanks for the welcome! I'll check things out :)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 28, 2014, 07:53:57 PM
Notice that we strive for "thread coherency" i.e. look to use existing threads.   Take a few minutes to scroll through some pages of subject headings and you will begin to get an idea.   Notice that many threads are many years old.  Notice the number of reads that various threads get and the ratio of reads to threads.   Having things organized this way makes this forum a very valuable research tool in my opinion.  Also, make good use of the Subject line-- this facilitates search commands.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: RSB on July 28, 2014, 08:51:54 PM
Yes sir. It's amazing at just how many posts there are :O
I think I will take a few days of reading to get a feel for the flow.
Thank you once again :)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 13, 2014, 09:10:41 AM
Off to Japan.  Back on Monday.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on August 13, 2014, 10:35:43 AM
Off to Japan.  Back on Monday.


Be sure to avoid the self cooking sushi.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on October 06, 2014, 04:17:55 PM
I am receiving some holocaust and WWII information from a war buddy of my Dad.  Can you please suggest a topic for posting these.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2014, 06:51:31 PM
On SCH there is History, American History, and Totalitarianism.   Does your material fit in any of these?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2014, 10:43:03 AM
Off to Mex City in 90 minutes.  Back Monday night.  Don't know how much internet I will have while there.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2014, 09:12:36 AM
Off to Alberta, Canada!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 24, 2014, 02:18:48 PM
The Cognitive Dissonace thread now has 200,000 reads!  Well done gentlemen!

PS:  Political Rants is closing in on 300,000  8-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2014, 05:44:48 PM
Looking for a post along the lines of "What if the Palestinians had chosen peace?" but not finding it so far.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on December 12, 2014, 07:30:31 PM
Looking for a post along the lines of "What if the Palestinians had chosen peace?" but not finding it so far.


Who posted it? When?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on December 12, 2014, 10:35:09 PM
http://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/israel-shield/what-if-the-arabs-had-chosen-peace-over-war/2014/09/10/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 13, 2014, 08:36:48 AM
Thank you Doug.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2015, 09:18:12 AM
In a FB debate I asserted that average federal pay is about $70k and private sector pay about $50k and have been challenged by someone to back it up.  I know we have it somewhere here on the forum but I can't think of where.   Also, I know we have data here about the great increase in federal earners above $100k.

Help on finding this and related data would be appreciated.  I'd really like to stuff this guy on this one.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2015, 07:41:55 PM
My fifteen year old son Conrad is now registered on the forum.  I'm hoping he will actually show up  :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on January 05, 2015, 07:08:44 AM
My fifteen year old son Conrad is now registered on the forum.  I'm hoping he will actually show up  :-D

Welcome Conrad!  Jump in with your viewpoint or ask questions on things that don't make sense to you.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2015, 08:58:05 AM
I confess to considerable fatherly pride at the reading he has been doing and the posts he has written on some other forums.

He just returned to school today after Christmas vacation, and as such probably won't appear here until the weekend.


Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 26, 2015, 11:40:23 PM
Back from Montana  8-) 8-) 8-)
Title: In God we trust
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 30, 2015, 12:32:52 PM
When did motto "In God we trust" originate?
Title: Re: In God we trust
Post by: DougMacG on September 30, 2015, 01:08:47 PM
When did motto "In God we trust" originate?

Don't know but a pretty good explanation here:
http://www.treasury.gov/about/education/Pages/in-god-we-trust.aspx
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 30, 2015, 01:33:19 PM
That is what I needed, thank you!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 04, 2015, 11:10:21 AM
The Hillbillary Clinton thread has now reached 100,000 reads.  Nice work gents!  8-) 8-) 8-)
Title: Help! Trying to find
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2015, 03:29:12 PM
Trying to find post of a REALLY good CT Supreme Court decision on right to bear arms.

Help please!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on October 11, 2015, 08:58:40 PM
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-supreme-court-military-weapons-1217-20141216-story.html

Trying to find post of a REALLY good CT Supreme Court decision on right to bear arms.

Help please!

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2015, 09:30:25 PM
Thank you.  It prompted me to think of looking for it in the Knife Law thread where I found it:

http://jud.ct.gov/external/supapp/Cases/AROcr/CR315/315CR113.pdf
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2015, 07:37:25 AM
Help please:

Looking for citations (here or elsewhere) concerning inter-religion marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims and the consequences thereof.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 21, 2015, 07:53:21 AM
Help please:

Looking for citations (here or elsewhere) concerning inter-religion marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims and the consequences thereof.

http://www.askimam.org/public/question_detail/24383
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on October 21, 2015, 08:04:57 AM
Help please:

Looking for citations (here or elsewhere) concerning inter-religion marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims and the consequences thereof.

The Huma-Weiner marriage?  Keith Ellison's marriage: http://www.citypages.com/news/keith-ellison-and-wife-kim-file-for-legal-separation-6566107

It would seem to me that you aren't a pure, practicing Muslim if you marry outside the faith.  (see GM's post: "Simply put, a Muslim woman cannot be with a non-Muslim husband.")
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 21, 2015, 08:13:59 AM
Help please:

Looking for citations (here or elsewhere) concerning inter-religion marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims and the consequences thereof.

The Huma-Weiner marriage?  Keith Ellison's marriage: http://www.citypages.com/news/keith-ellison-and-wife-kim-file-for-legal-separation-6566107

It would seem to me that you aren't a pure, practicing Muslim if you marry outside the faith.  (see GM's post: "Simply put, a Muslim woman cannot be with a non-Muslim husband.")

It has been suggested that Weiner may have quietly said the shahada to cater to Huma.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2015, 09:35:37 AM
Thank you.  My debate with a certain crew of Euros now continues , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on October 21, 2015, 09:41:45 AM
Thank you.  My debate with a certain crew of Euros now continues , , ,


You might ask them about zina, since they will soon be living under sharia law soon.
_____

http://www.aina.org/news/20081117111817.htm

How Sharia Law Punishes Raped Women
Posted 2008-11-17 16:18 GMT

On October 30, 2008, the United Nations condemned the stoning to death of Aisha Duhulowa, a 13-year-old girl who had been gang-raped and then sentenced to death by a Sharia court for fornication (Zina). She was screaming and begging for mercy, but when some family members attempted to intervene, shots were fired by the Islamic militia and a baby was killed.

Local Sharia courts in Bangladesh regularly punish raped minor girls and women by flogging and beating them with shoes.[1] Similar cases of punishing raped women are Mina v. the State, Bibi v. the State and Bahadur v. the State.[2] Sharia courts in Pakistan have punished thousands of raped women by long term imprisonment.[3]

You might think that such horrific barbarity cannot be the real Sharia law; that it is a misapplication of the law by ignorant clergy. Sadly, neither is true.

There is a traceable dynamic in Sharia Law that is bound to lead to this barbarity. And unless we abandon these laws we will never be able to emerge from this barbarity. It was a blunder that Muslim jurists included rape in the Hudood section of Sharia Law that deals with murder, bodily harm, apostasy, drinking, defamation, theft, adultery and highway robbery. But anyone who tried to change these laws ended up banging their heads against the wall.  Mawdudi, the founding father of modern Political Islam, claims that even if all the world's Muslims together wanted to make the slightest change in these laws, they would not be allowed to do so.[4]

But change is necessary.

Another key element of these laws is that only eye-witnesses are acceptable and no circumstantial evidence can be accepted.[5] Rape is included in the Dyat (monetary compensation for bodily harm) section of Sharia Law because it is considered as "Bodily Harm" or "Robbing Property" (chastity). This classification led jurists to create these laws:

* A rapist is obliged to pay the victim the amount typically received as marriage payment to similar brides.[6]

* "If the rapist cannot be punished for any reason he will pay the victim the amount equal to bride-money."[7]

As no other punishment is mentioned, the punishment of rape can be only financial compensation. But Jurists missed the point that rape is a crime of its own kind. It has a devastating psychological and social impact on raped women. They are shamed to death, socially outcast, unsuitable for marriage, bring shame on the family and in some countries become the victims of honor killing. Many raped women commit suicide in Muslim countries.

The Quranic word "Zina" means sexual relation between a man and woman not married to each other. It is called adultery for married persons and fornication for unmarried ones. The Quran severely prohibits Zina. Muslim jurists also included rape in the category of Zina because in rape cases such sexual relations "between a man and woman not married to each other," even though forced on the victim, have taken place. As rape is not mentioned in the Quran, the death sentence for rapists originated from the Prophet's example:  "Narrated Wa'il ibn Hujr: When a woman went out in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) for prayer, a man attacked her and overpowered (raped) her. ...he said: Stone him to death".[8]

The laws are so clear about defining rape and the requirement for proof of rape that a judge has no option but punish the rape victims.

When rape is caught or reported, "sex between a man and woman not married to each other" can be proven by testimony, physical evidences of bodily scars/bruises, torn clothing or pregnancy of the victim. Then the Sharia laws are enforced.Â

Sharia Law:  The rapist will be punished to death if force on the victim is proven.[9]

Clear enough. But exactly how can "force on the victim" be proven?  The answer must surely rank as one of the most insane and sexist laws in human history.

(A)  "Proof of Zina (adultery) or Zina Bil-Jabr (rape) liable to Hadd shall be one of the following:

        (a) The accused makes confession or

        (b) There are at least four Muslim adult male witnesses"[10]

(B)    "Proof of adultery or rape liable to Hadd shall be one of the following:

         (a) The accused makes confession, or

         (b) There are at least four Muslim adult male witnesses."[11]

(C)    "Punishment will take place when Zina or rape have been proved by witness."[12]

(D)    Sharia Law rejects the witness of women in Hudood cases.[13]

(E)    "The evidence of women is originally inadmissible on account of their weakness of understanding, want of memory and incapacity of governing."[14]

Because such "proofs" are almost impossible to obtain and because circumstantial evidence is not accepted, a rape cannot be proved as rape in a Sharia court. Instead, "sex outside marriage" is proved for the woman by her complaint or physical scars or torn cloths or pregnancy etc. Then the law of "Punishment for Sex Outside Marriage" i.e. stoning to death for married adulterers and flogging and exile for unmarried adulterers are applied to the rape-victims.[15] On the other hand, a rapist has simply to deny the crime and go scott free. As the New York Times reports: "Ms. Lawal, a divorced woman, identified a man as the father of her child. The man denied the charge, swore on the Koran, and was deemed innocent by the trial court. No one suggested DNA tests."[16]

But DNA tests have no place in Hudood Laws either. The BBC reported that Zafran Bibi of  Pakistan "went to the police to register a case of rape, but she herself was instead sentenced to death for having an adulterous affair."[17] About conducting a DNA test to identify the rapist, the Dawn reports: "Justice Ali Nawaz Chauhan of the Lahore High Court has observed that the DNA test is not acceptable as evidence to establish the offence of Zina under the Hudood laws which require a direct testimony in such cases.."[18]

This is how Sharia Law punishes raped women. The sources of these laws span the period from the 7th century to recent times. Some Muslim countries have withdrawn from the application of these laws, but these laws are still alive and active in many Muslim societies. Many Muslims talk about it, but there has never been a concerted effort to end this barbarity. It is true that many, including the UN's Children Fund, have expressed  alarm over the plight of Aisha Duhulowa, but history tells us that merely condemning these acts or calling on the humanity of the perpetrators has never stopped the violent soldiers of God. The solution can only been found by raising the awareness and opposition of the entire world, irrespective of religion.

Muslims must reject this barbarity or risk Islam being seen as the criminal. The screams of little Aisha Duhulowa will echo around the world until this is done.Â

NOTES:

[1] The Daily Star on 04 April 2006

[2] "Rape Law in Islamic Societies" by Julie Norman, CSID 6th Annual Conference

[3] Annual report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, May 2004 - Ref - National Commission on the Status of Women in Pakistan.

[4] Islamic Law and Constitution - page 140.

[5] Codified Islamic Law Vol 2 page 600

[6] Shafi'i Law Reliance of the Traveler -# m.8.10

[7] Codified Islamic Law Vol 1 page 301 Â

[8] Abu Dawood Book 38, Hadis# Number 4366

[9] Codified Islami Law Volume 1 Law#134, Shafi'i law Reliance of the Traveler - o.7.3

[10] Pakistan Hudood Ordinance VII of 1979 amended by Ordinance XX of 1980

[11] Codified Islami Law Volume 1 Law#133

[12] Ibid Law #135

[13] Hanafi Law-Page 176, 353, Shafi'i Law- page 638 Law#o.24.9, Criminal Law in Islam and the Muslim World -page 251, The Penal Law of Islam - Kazi Publications Lahore- page 44, 45, Tafsir of Translation of the Qura'an by Muhiuddin Khan pages 239 and 928

[14] The Penal Law of Islam - Kazi Publications Lahore- page 44 - 45

[15] Hanafi Law Hedaya 178, Codified Islamic Law#129 Vol 1, Sunan Abu Dawood Book 38,4451& 4423

[16]
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9900E0D9153DF935A1575AC0A9659C8B63

[17] http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/03_06_02/thursday/info1.shtml

[18] http://www.dawn.com/2005/05/21/top4.htm

By Hasan Mahmud
FrontPageMagazine.com

Hasan Mahmud is the Director of Sharia Law of the Muslim Canadian Congress. He played a vital role in the successful movement against the Toronto Sharia Court. The court had been established in 1991 (and functioning since then) with the blessing of Ontario law and was banned in 2003 when the Ontario Government enacted a new law banning all faith-courts. He has authored books, debates, 2 docu-dramas and a docu-movie on Sharia. He has also spoken on Sharia in various conferences in Europe and North America.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2015, 10:00:22 AM
Very helpful-- thank you!
Title: Introducing myself
Post by: SWBrowne on November 16, 2015, 08:50:58 AM
Hi all, very pleased to meet you and a special thanks to Marc Denny for inviting me to this forum.

I'm Stephen Browne. Live in Oklahoma where I'm raising my two children alone. Journalist by profession, right now taking time off to write my own stuff before I run out of funds. My current projects are: "Contrarian Libertarian," and "Thinking Like a Journalist."

This is the bio I use for my self-syndicated column (which so far has one subscriber in a farm journal in the upper Midwest).

Stephen W. Browne is an award-winning reporter and columnist, famous in rural newspapers of the Midwest where he's known as, "Steve who?" He entered journalism by accident while living and working in Eastern Europe from 1991 to 2004, when he met a decayed Austrian count in a bar who said, "Gee Steve, you sure can talk, can you write?"
His very first published and paid for article about Polish health services provoked a call from the then-Minister of Health demanding to know, "Who is this Steve Browne guy and why is he saying these terrible things about our wonderful Polish hospitals?"
He is the author of two books for English students: "Word Pictures: English as it is REALLY Used," published in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and Novosibirsk, Russia, and "English Language Humor: Puns, Play on Words, Spoonerisms, and Shaggy Dog Stories," privately circulated among English teachers and students in brown paper bags around the world.
He possesses a constitution inability to stay out of trouble which resulted in him being elected an Honorary Member of the Yugoslav Movement for the Protection of Human Rights in 1997.
He is currently living with his two children in his native Midwest, which he considers "the most interesting foreign country I have ever lived in." (He stole that line from Kipling, he loves to kipple.)

His blog “Rants and Raves” appears regularly on newspaper websites across the Midwest but doesn't pay. He publishes for Kindle on Amazon, or at least will when he figures out how to download, and teaches martial arts out of his garage, backyard or basement as the case may be.

I also have two video presentations available on Youtube.

"The Progressive Mind" an analysis of why the most affluent and educated people in the West hate the civilization that made them the most fortunate individuals in the history of mankind, and want to destroy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqk7_e5Pv4c

"Let's Have a Kipple" readings of selected poems of Rudyard Kipling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04CXO0_qwS4
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 16, 2015, 08:54:42 AM
Welcome aboard Steve!

Gents:  I first got to know Steve in the internet sense on FB and am sure we will appreciate his contributions here.

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2015, 03:07:32 PM
Looking for the pictures of Baraq bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia and various other people.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on December 05, 2015, 03:22:28 PM
Looking for the pictures of Baraq bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia and various other people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/5128171/Barack-Obama-criticised-for-bowing-to-King-Abdullah-of-Saudi-Arabia.html

Saudi Arabia officially outlawed slavery in 1962. So Obama is bowing to someone who owned slaves.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on December 05, 2015, 03:29:15 PM
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/167540/saudi-offers-castrated-african-slave-sale-facebook-daniel-greenfield

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2015, 03:35:04 PM
Thank you.

There's more bows too IIRC:

Chinese leader
some Asian-American woman who was mayor of some town in FL
and?

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on December 05, 2015, 03:43:54 PM
Thank you.

There's more bows too IIRC:

Chinese leader
some Asian-American woman who was mayor of some town in FL
and?



http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2012/06/20/obama-bowed-eight-times-president/

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2015, 04:53:09 PM
GM is the GM (Grand Master) of Google Fu!  :-D :-D :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on December 06, 2015, 07:21:12 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/5128171/Barack-Obama-criticised-for-bowing-to-King-Abdullah-of-Saudi-Arabia.html

Saudi Arabia officially outlawed slavery in 1962. So Obama is bowing to someone who owned slaves.

Amazing.  Leftists don't fear being caught up in hypocrisy, do they?

In order to bow to the Saudi slave owner in London, he flew a giant CO2 emitting jet - built off the spoils of capitalism - in order to reach a wider audience with his message that we need to move more quickly to "fully apply the brakes".
Title: To guru Crafty
Post by: ccp on January 13, 2016, 10:37:26 AM
Crafty,
A little late for New Year but I would like to thank you for keeping this forum going for so long.
I really enjoy it, learn from it, and appreciate all your hard work that goes into it.

Happy New Year to you and all those who participate who make this a great hobby, sounding board, and social event for me.
Title: Re: To guru Crafty
Post by: DougMacG on January 13, 2016, 11:34:48 AM
Crafty,
A little late for New Year but I would like to thank you for keeping this forum going for so long.
I really enjoy it, learn from it, and appreciate all your hard work that goes into it.

Happy New Year to you and all those who participate who make this a great hobby, sounding board, and social event for me.

Hear, hear!  Best host-moderator on the world wide web!

I have seen comment boards on left wing, right wing and centrist sites and they are almost always destructive and horrible.  Crafty sets a tone and enforces it.  That isn't easy and I think we all appreciate it.  I might not appreciate it as it happens but what I like best about this format is being corrected quickly when wrong and knowing the weaknesses of my own arguments.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 13, 2016, 11:51:17 AM
Your kind words put a wag in my tail gents.  :oops:

Perhaps I fool myself, but when I look at the read-to-posts ratio on the various threads I imagine this forum being a regular source for many people and that given what I believe to be the level of this forum (thanks to all of you) I imagine our readers to be serious people and likely to be of influence beyond their numbers. 

There is a reason we joke about "famous people caught reading this forum'!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2016, 12:59:32 AM
Woof!

Back from Memphis  8-)

TAC!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2016, 10:25:25 AM
Looking for the post of an article on why technically speaking Hillary is not "being investigated"  (roughly FBI needs DOJ on board for it to be called such)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on January 30, 2016, 07:40:51 PM
Looking for the post of an article on why technically speaking Hillary is not "being investigated"  (roughly FBI needs DOJ on board for it to be called such)

If the FBI is investigating you, it's called an investigation. If 150 + FBI special agents aren't investigating, what are they doing ?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2016, 07:56:15 PM
In English yes, but here the language is Washington Legalese.  I KNOW someone (me?) posted the article I am describing , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on January 30, 2016, 08:14:28 PM
In English yes, but here the language is Washington Legalese.  I KNOW someone (me?) posted the article I am describing , , ,

So, this is more Clinton liespeak? Depends on what the definition of is is?

From my experience with working with ICE/HSI and the USMS, they use the term investigation the same way we local yokels do.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2016, 09:45:12 PM
Looking for the post of an article on why technically speaking Hillary is not "being investigated"  (roughly FBI needs DOJ on board for it to be called such)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on January 30, 2016, 10:19:22 PM
Looking for the post of an article on why technically speaking Hillary is not "being investigated"  (roughly FBI needs DOJ on board for it to be called such)

They need the DOJ to indict, not investigate. A grand jury should have already been assembled, but hasn't.  We all know why.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on January 31, 2016, 03:25:19 AM
Looking for the post of an article on why technically speaking Hillary is not "being investigated"  (roughly FBI needs DOJ on board for it to be called such)

I don't know about that article, but the way of Clinton surrogate put it, she is not the target of the investigation.  Good luck with that.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2016, 11:06:22 AM
With Scalia's death in mind, I'm looking for some deal that was cut between Reps and Dems over circuit judges about 1-2 years ago-- there may have been something about majority or supra-majority criteria  involved too , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on March 03, 2016, 09:06:01 AM
Crafty, 

Do you think Big Dog would have an opinion or be willing to give his thoughts on the Hillary email scandal?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2016, 09:28:02 AM
I'll see if I can get him to swing by.
Title: Our first 400,000 reads thread!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2016, 01:49:40 PM
Woof All:

Our Homeland Security, Border Protection, and American Freedom thread now has over 400,000 reads!

Well done gentlemen!  
Title: Crafty says hi from Germany
Post by: G M on April 12, 2016, 10:59:07 PM
Would like to encourage all to keep adding to the forum until he get back.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2016, 10:45:17 AM
Thanks for the good work in my absence gents.  I'm back-- the Adventure continues!
Title: An introduction.
Post by: Lloyd De Jongh on April 21, 2016, 09:10:48 AM
Hello all

I live and work in a sensitive part of the world within the defense industry. My work entails protection of critical infrastructure, military assets and borders using cutting edge technology. This takes me to interesting places across the Middle East. I am exposed to culture, language, people and places in my travels to the US, Europe, Africa and occasionally Asia.

I have training in Information Technology, security and education. History and modern military strategy is an interest that is incredibly relevant now.  From a combative standpoint my expertise leans towards simulating and dealing with Criminal Use of Force, most especially ambush and edged weapons attacks.

Having long experience in the Middle East I have over time developed an educated understanding of Islam. There are many fine Muslim people that I like and admire, however I have deep concerns regarding the political religion and relentless conquest ideology that is Islam. Recent events in the West have given me pause for concern and made me research and embrace the faith of my childhood more, to provide an anchor, a counterweight.

There are dangers here that the West is too slowly coming to realise. There is a storm coming, of this I have no doubt. Unless we discover the common values that we stand for as inheritors of Western civilisation, I believe we are in danger of being overrun.

If we do any less we bring shame on the ancestors who lifted us out of tyranny and gave us the freedoms we have today.
Title: Re: An introduction.
Post by: G M on April 21, 2016, 09:21:11 AM
Glad you are here. I look forward to your insights.

Hello all

I live and work in a sensitive part of the world within the defense industry. My work entails protection of critical infrastructure, military assets and borders using cutting edge technology. This takes me to interesting places across the Middle East. I am exposed to culture, language, people and places in my travels to the US, Europe, Africa and occasionally Asia.

I have training in Information Technology, security and education. History and modern military strategy is an interest that is incredibly relevant now.  From a combative standpoint my expertise leans towards simulating and dealing with Criminal Use of Force, most especially ambush and edged weapons attacks.

Having long experience in the Middle East I have over time developed an educated understanding of Islam. There are many fine Muslim people that I like and admire, however I have deep concerns regarding the political religion and relentless conquest ideology that is Islam. Recent events in the West have given me pause for concern and made me research and embrace the faith of my childhood more, to provide an anchor, a counterweight.

There are dangers here that the West is too slowly coming to realise. There is a storm coming, of this I have no doubt. Unless we discover the common values that we stand for as inheritors of Western civilisation, I believe we are in danger of being overrun.

If we do any less we bring shame on the ancestors who lifted us out of tyranny and gave us the freedoms we have today.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 21, 2016, 09:35:39 AM
Folks:

Martel is known to me and I am very glad to have him here with us. 

The Adventure continues!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 01, 2016, 11:42:35 PM
Back from SLC, UT.  TAC!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on May 04, 2016, 08:51:22 AM
I posted Bernard Kerik under Crime and Punishment and it went to the martial arts side.  It may be ok there but it fits on this side too I think
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 05, 2016, 01:24:26 PM
Gents:

Let's remember to use the Subject line please so as to facilitate the Search function.

TIA,
M.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2016, 09:24:48 PM
See my previous post of May 5, 2016 please.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2016, 10:33:05 AM
Gents:

I have taken the liberty of filling in subject lines.  I'd rather not have to-- it gives the appearance of me trying to put words in your mouth, but I am just trying to make the posts more findable through the Search function.

Please take a moment to make the subject lines to your posts more findable.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2016, 06:48:48 AM
BTW gents, I see our Media and Rants threads have crossed the 400,000 line!  Well done!

 8-) 8-) 8-)
Title: Help please
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2016, 07:21:12 AM
Looking for the various photos of Obama bowing

Saudi Arabia
Japan
China
Some Florida mayor who was Asian-American.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on November 21, 2016, 09:33:02 AM
From CD's post on another thread that will not let me reply:

As Woodrow Wilson, progressive president of Princeton University before becoming president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible."

Sad that he detested his own father rightly or wrongly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ruggles_Wilson
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2016, 10:57:50 AM
Which thread?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: ccp on November 21, 2016, 11:33:12 AM
   Progressives and subversives have absconded the education system
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Andy55 on February 10, 2017, 01:50:29 AM
hello mates! Andy's here. i've done karate, kendo and a bit of capoeira  :mrgreen: really enjoying the community, amazing support and the company of awesome and interesting dog brothers. and it is inly the beginning! thanks so much, really. so glad to be here
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on February 10, 2017, 07:28:57 AM
hello mates! Andy's here. i've done karate, kendo and a bit of capoeira  :mrgreen: really enjoying the community, amazing support and the company of awesome and interesting dog brothers. and it is inly the beginning! thanks so much, really. so glad to be here


Welcome.
Title: Concerning Breitbart:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2017, 06:00:04 PM
I have been burned a number of times by citing Breitbart.  Though often it goes where the pravdas fear to tread, its' headlines are often disingenuous and deceptive.  I'd like to ask that it be used as a source around here with care.  Please click on the background sources it cites AND READ THEM before citing it here.  Where possible CITE THE ORIGINAL SOURCE INSTEAD OF BREITBART.

Thank you.
Title: Re: Concerning Breitbart:
Post by: G M on February 23, 2017, 07:56:15 PM
I have been burned a number of times by citing Breitbart.  Though often it goes where the pravdas fear to tread, its' headlines are often disingenuous and deceptive.  I'd like to ask that it be used as a source around here with care.  Please click on the background sources it cites AND READ THEM before citing it here.  Where possible CITE THE ORIGINAL SOURCE INSTEAD OF BREITBART.

Thank you.

I agree.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2017, 08:55:21 AM
Looking for:

a) pregnancy rates among US women serving in "former Yugoslavia" during US intervention there in the '90s.

b) pregnancy rates on a certain US ship in the Gulf around the time of the Gulf War.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: DougMacG on March 03, 2017, 09:33:40 AM
Looking for:

a) pregnancy rates among US women serving in "former Yugoslavia" during US intervention there in the '90s.

As of late June[1996], 62 pregnancies were reported among the 2,000 or so women serving in Bosnia. That is something else doctors say they did not expect, although the pregnancy rate does not exceed the average for women in the Army overall.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/03/world/bosnia-s-a-safe-and-healthy-place-for-the-gi-s-anyway.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/07/23/pregnancy-rate-of-unit-in-bosnia-hits-army-average/018879d2-4fe8-4850-a332-de37ab2cb41c/?utm_term=.5f08c49d6c14
Whether in peace or war -- or Bosnia -- the U.S. Army is discovering that about 5 percent of its female soldiers tend to get pregnant.

Latest statistics from Tuzla, headquarters for U.S. forces in Bosnia, show 68 of the 1,500 Army women deployed in the peace enforcement operation dispatched back to bases in Germany because of pregnancies.


b) pregnancy rates on a certain US ship in the Gulf around the time of the Gulf War.
[/quote]

http://militarymedicine.amsus.org/doi/full/10.7205/MILMED.172.5.511
Looking at the Navy during the Persian Gulf War, the repair ship Arcadia had 36 of its 360 women redeployed secondary to pregnancy during the first Persian Gulf War.3 In other conflicts such as Somalia, there were 72 women that became pregnant while using prophylactic mefloquine. They suffered an unexpectedly high rate of spontaneous abortion.10 And in Bosnia, it was reported that one female was evacuated every 3 days for pregnancy.
Barry J, Thomas E: At war over women. Newsweek, May 12, 1997, p 48
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2017, 10:12:25 AM
Perfect- thank you!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 09, 2017, 12:20:01 PM
Trying to find a relatively recent post wherein I listed all the ways Obama was soft on the Russians , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2017, 03:14:09 PM
Leaving tomorrow for one week in Germany: DB Gathering, seminar, friends, etc.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant
Post by: G M on April 02, 2017, 04:23:11 PM
Trying to find a relatively recent post wherein I listed all the ways Obama was soft on the Russians , , ,

Any idea of the source? I can't find anything recent.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2017, 04:42:33 PM
Thank you for looking--  I was "the source", working off the top of my head.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2017, 10:51:59 PM
Back home after two weeks on the road.

Things sure have been lively in my absence!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 08, 2017, 07:39:01 AM
On the road until Tuesday AM.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 26, 2017, 03:58:27 AM
I'm back!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2017, 07:05:06 PM
Looking for proper article on court ruling Obama's Dream/DACA EO unconsitutional.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 13, 2017, 07:33:33 PM
Looking for proper article on court ruling Obama's Dream/DACA EO unconsitutional.

http://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/daca-unconstitutional-obama-admitted
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2017, 09:11:04 PM
Thank you GM GM (i.e. Grand Master GM) I think we are going to have to upgrade your title in Google Fu to something really high falutin'.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 14, 2017, 01:02:59 PM
Thank you GM GM (i.e. Grand Master GM) I think we are going to have to upgrade your title in Google Fu to something really high falutin'.

You'd think I do this for a living...  :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2017, 09:12:49 AM
Gents:

We here are bright enough and strong minded enough to glean value from Breitbart, but it is regarded by many as a scurrilous publication-- and not without reason! 

One of the things we look to accomplish with this forum is to have it  as a repository of "the record" so that it may serve as a vehicle for research and source material to use against the Pravdas and the Ministry of Truth.

Breitbart just does not cut it for that.

Please use it only when there are not other sources and please take a moment to scan for irresponsible bullshite.
Title: Another 500,000 reads thread!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 17, 2018, 07:35:05 AM
500,000 reads on our Israel thread!!!

Well done gentlemen!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2018, 06:11:37 AM
I have an idea.

How do I get in touch with the right folks at FOX about appearing on either Tucker Carlson or "One Lucky Guy"?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2018, 02:41:19 PM
Looking for an iconic photo out of the floods after the Houston hurricane;  Manly man, carrying a woman holding a baby through flood waters.  Some urgency on this, looking to use it as part of applying myself to be a guest on Tucker Carlson.

Speaking of which, my previous post remains front and center. 

Time of the essence here.
Title: Man, Woman, & Child: The true nature of things
Post by: DougMacG on March 04, 2018, 03:34:50 PM
Looking for an iconic photo out of the floods after the Houston hurricane;  Manly man, carrying a woman holding a baby through flood waters.  Some urgency on this, looking to use it as part of applying myself to be a guest on Tucker Carlson.

Speaking of which, my previous post remains front and center. 

Time of the essence here.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/weather/2017/08/28/felt-relief-story-behind-touching-photo-baby-asleep-harvey-rescue

https://dallasnews.imgix.net/1503963561-NM_27floodinghoustonrescueLD08.jpg?auto=format&q=50&or=0&w=800

(https://dallasnews.imgix.net/1503963561-NM_27floodinghoustonrescueLD08.jpg?auto=format&q=50&or=0&w=800)

Before the photo that would make her the face of the Hurricane Harvey rescue effort, Cathy Pham was trapped on the second story of her southwest Houston home, watching the floodwaters rise. 

She; her husband, Troy Pham; their 13-month-old son, Aidan; and a 73-year-old neighbor had sought refuge in a loft bedroom in the early hours of Sunday as Hurricane Harvey drenched the city.

Water on their street was chest deep as Brays Bayou overflowed, something that the family has never seen in seven years of living there. The first floor of their home filled with 2 feet of water.

Houston SWAT officer Daryl Hudeck carried Catherine Pham and her 13-month-old son, Aidan, to safety after they were rescued Sunday.(Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer)
Houston SWAT officer Daryl Hudeck carried Catherine Pham and her 13-month-old son, Aidan, to safety after they were rescued Sunday. (Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer)
“We were waiting for daylight to try to get out, but by that point the water kept rising and rising and it was unsafe to even try to get out [by truck],” Troy said by phone on Monday. It wasn’t going to be possible for them to leave without help.

Then, they heard helicopters and voices. Troy decided to see whether the sounds were rescue crews.

Troy took his kayak about 400 yards down the street, where he  found members of the Houston SWAT team and a volunteer civilian and son helping people get out of the Meyerland neighborhood. The crew of six used their motorized boat to help ferry the family from their home.

During the rescue, Aidan fell asleep cradled in his mother’s embrace as Houston SWAT member Daryl Hudeck brought them to dry ground off of Interstate 610 , where Dallas Morning News photographer Louis DeLuca had been waiting. The image he captured ran on the front page of Monday’s print editions and was carried around the world.

How is it possible that a baby could sleep during such chaos? His father thinks that Aidan knew he was safe.

“The wind was blowing, he felt comfortable and he fell asleep. I have to say he felt some relief, too, because we weren’t as anxious,” Troy said.

The rescue happened so fast, the Phams were unable to get Hudeck’s contact information. He asked Cathy her son’s name and age as he carried them, and then was off to help more people.

“I would have liked to say ‘thank you’ and somehow get his contact info get the whole crew together to say thank you and repay them for rescuing us,” Cathy said.

The family is safe now, just 4 miles away from their home at a friend’s house. They don’t expect to be able to get into their home for several days.

The Phams' home hasn’t been assessed for damage, but the only thing that matters to Cathy is the box she put in the highest spot possible in the home. It has the outfit he wore home from the hospital, a hat from his first birthday and other precious mementos. The other material items can be replaced.


She said that the family has been moved by the kindness of first responders and regular Houstonians volunteering to help people, like the stranger who offered to give the family a ride to their friend’s house after the rescue. That moment was not captured on photo, but is equally as heartwarming for the family.

“It’s hard to put the feelings of gratitude into words for their efforts and putting their lives in danger,” Troy said.

CORRECTION, 8:56 a.m., Aug. 29, 2017: In an earlier version of this story, the name of the 13-month-old boy being carried to safety in the arms of his mother was misspelled in the photo captions. His name is Aidan Pham, not Aiden.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2018, 08:46:40 PM
That IS the picture- thank you!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Cruces on April 05, 2018, 06:59:31 PM
First post/Introduction. 

My wife had an opportunity to study under Fu Dog as he transitioned from East Wind toward his eventual establishment of The Training Mat.  I had the privilege to benefit from some of his teaching despite my travel and work schedules.  I've made light study of some areas hand-to-hand martial arts, but I've most enjoyed the teaching I've received in Kali and Japanese sword (Kendo/Iaido). I have always been more of a book-worm by constitution and disposition than a martial artist, yet one of my passions however is military science and weaponry.  My employment involves weapon system design and strategic study while my spare time activities include, besides raising a family which takes up the lion's share, study and practice of modern gun fighting technique and rhetorical pugilism (typically in the political arena). 

I have great respect for the Dog Brothers and admiration for Crafty Dog and the others who have worked with him to forge this particular innovation in the history of martial arts in America.  I look forward to sharing with you.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on April 05, 2018, 08:20:46 PM
First post/Introduction. 

My wife had an opportunity to study under Fu Dog as he transitioned from East Wind toward his eventual establishment of The Training Mat.  I had the privilege to benefit from some of his teaching despite my travel and work schedules.  I've made light study of some areas hand-to-hand martial arts, but I've most enjoyed the teaching I've received in Kali and Japanese sword (Kendo/Iaido). I have always been more of a book-worm by constitution and disposition than a martial artist, yet one of my passions however is military science and weaponry.  My employment involves weapon system design and strategic study while my spare time activities include, besides raising a family which takes up the lion's share, study and practice of modern gun fighting technique and rhetorical pugilism (typically in the political arena). 

I have great respect for the Dog Brothers and admiration for Crafty Dog and the others who have worked with him to forge this particular innovation in the history of martial arts in America.  I look forward to sharing with you.

Welcome!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 06, 2018, 11:42:56 AM
WWWOOOFFF!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 16, 2018, 04:43:18 PM
Some time this week (Wednesday?) on the Hannity show, perhaps in the opening segment, there was a graphic citing all the statutes which Hillary broke.  Would love it if someone could track this down , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on June 16, 2018, 07:35:00 PM
Some time this week (Wednesday?) on the Hannity show, perhaps in the opening segment, there was a graphic citing all the statutes which Hillary broke.  Would love it if someone could track this down , , ,

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5797769954001/?playlist_id=930909813001#sp=show-clips
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2018, 12:24:54 PM
Thank you VERY much GM!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 26, 2018, 09:59:24 AM
Would love to see this one too , , ,

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/the-neuroscience-of-pain?mbid=nl_Magazine%20Daily%20List%20062518&CNDID=50142053&spMailingID=13757973&spUserID=MjAxODUyNTc2OTUwS0&spJobID=1422307408&spReportId=MTQyMjMwNzQwOAS2
Title: venezuela thread?
Post by: ccp on July 04, 2018, 02:45:47 PM
what happened to it?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2018, 03:08:21 PM
Both English and Spanish versions are coming up for me.
Title: Little help please
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2018, 10:07:31 AM
Need a citation to a factual article on Obama's interference in Israel's election.
Title: Re: Little help please
Post by: G M on July 19, 2018, 12:44:39 PM
Need a citation to a factual article on Obama's interference in Israel's election.

https://nypost.com/2018/05/23/the-hypocrisy-of-american-election-investigations-into-israel/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2018, 02:39:25 PM
Our Grand Master of Google Fu comes through again!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 24, 2018, 09:55:21 AM
Headed out on a road trip.

My good friend Bill McGrath will be joining us.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 06, 2018, 03:54:49 PM
Woof All:

I'm looking to gradually disentangle the "Politics and Religion" forum and the "Science, Culture, & Humanities" forum from the DBMA page.  Of course I don't want to lose anyone who finds us via dogbrothers.com as we do so!

One reason is that I'm thinking this can be an opportunity to reach a much bigger audience.

Should we keep the same name or come up with a new one?

Any other ideas, suggestions, cautions, etc?

Marc/CD
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on September 06, 2018, 04:39:28 PM
Woof All:

I'm looking to gradually disentangle the "Politics and Religion" forum and the "Science, Culture, & Humanities" forum from the DBMA page.  Of course I don't want to lose anyone who finds us via dogbrothers.com as we do so!

One reason is that I'm thinking this can be an opportunity to reach a much bigger audience.

Should we keep the same name or come up with a new one?

Any other ideas, suggestions, cautions, etc?

Marc/CD

Is it broken?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on September 07, 2018, 06:46:21 AM
moving the forum out of the DogBrothers website may be more alluring to a larger audience.

I am fine with the page.  But some may be confused about the forum's purpose when they see it combined with the martial arts.

I know I once referred someone to the forum and they thought the martial arts portion confusing.

Another format for both "politics and religion" and "science, culture and humanities" may be able to grab more eyeballs more quickly.

Perhaps merging with say PJ media ......
I would not recommend merging with Sparta though , though we have an 'in' with them (PP).

Maybe even NR might have some interest .  Any body hear know VDH, JG?

Somehow I agree with CD that this site has potential way more then we are seeing .  There are only 4 regular posters and about half dozen who come on occasionally
A few have left altogether  for different reasons.  Probably over politics.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 07, 2018, 06:54:49 AM
Concerning our posters and their number:

In a sense, it is a big part of our strength-- by keeping out the riff-raff, the quality of our postings is pretty high IMHO. At the same time, we are not an echo chamber.  In our Search For Truth, we questions ourselves.

I am always scanning for new worthies.

I sense where this is going is to sever these two forums altogether from the Dog Brothers site.  Of course this must be done in a way that keeps our current readership!!!

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on October 17, 2018, 09:04:54 AM
I'm looking to gradually disentangle the "Politics and Religion" forum and the "Science, Culture, & Humanities" forum from the DBMA page.  Of course I don't want to lose anyone who finds us via dogbrothers.com as we do so!
One reason is that I'm thinking this can be an opportunity to reach a much bigger audience.
Should we keep the same name or come up with a new one?
Any other ideas, suggestions, cautions, etc?
Marc/CD

I agree with the idea of a new entry point to the latest posts to the forum and perhaps a slight format change with that where there are lead posts and then updates and comments on those. 

The tie to the forum's origin in martial arts should be kept along with all the expertise in areas related to that. 

For names, I had two ideas:

AmericanCreed.US

https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1736.750
"American Creed= Free minds, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of contract, right of self-defense (hence guns and knives, etc) property rights, privacy, all connected with responsibility for the disrespect for the rights of others.   All this from our Creator, not the State nor majority vote."

Wikipedia:
The American Creed is a statement of the defining element of American identity, first formulated by Thomas Jefferson and elaborated by many others, that includes liberty, equality, individualism, populism, and laissez faire.

Sorry, I forgot my other idea for a name.  Hopefully will update.

Accept submissions for articles.  May find good new participants that way.

Try to get our best material linked on other sites.

Accumulate links of interest as a resource.  Also connect to our threads and archives for reference.

Perhaps just slightly higher pay for our writers once we get the readership and sponsorship up.  )
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 17, 2018, 09:35:04 AM
Much good thought there Doug-- thank you.  Taking it under advisement.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2018, 11:08:25 AM


How do we get to see the content of this?  How much will it cost?  Looking for volunteer(s) , , ,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379414000973?fbclid=IwAR1utmCazLYQn4gp1Z_eqRX9_j9gRqY-ysG307_8ZdrESezys3TlZyarHNQ
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on November 17, 2018, 11:19:25 AM


How do we get to see the content of this?  How much will it cost?  Looking for volunteer(s) , , ,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379414000973?fbclid=IwAR1utmCazLYQn4gp1Z_eqRX9_j9gRqY-ysG307_8ZdrESezys3TlZyarHNQ

https://ww2.odu.edu/~jrichman/NonCitizenVote.pdf
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2018, 11:27:34 AM
You are fg awesome.  Period.   :-D

Please post on Electoral thread!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2018, 06:52:35 PM
IIRC Obama merged together the numbers for those turned back at the border with those deported from the interior so as to dishonestly claim he was making record deportations.

I need the citation!

===================

A high ranking friend at Border Patrol writes:

yes, under the previous administration both VRs (Voluntary Returns) and formal deportations were figured into the math...keep in mind that in some areas of operation people (absent serious criminal history or being engaged in the coordination/organization of smuggling activities) were VR’d multiple times before formal deportation processes would occur.

==============

That said, I still want/need a proper citation.

==============

From the Left we have this-- is this correct?

https://www.google.com/.../obamas.../story%3fid=41715661


Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on November 22, 2018, 09:17:04 PM
IIRC Obama merged together the numbers for those turned back at the border with those deported from the interior so as to dishonestly claim he was making record deportations.

I need the citation!

===================

A high ranking friend at Border Patrol writes:

yes, under the previous administration both VRs (Voluntary Returns) and formal deportations were figured into the math...keep in mind that in some areas of operation people (absent serious criminal history or being engaged in the coordination/organization of smuggling activities) were VR’d multiple times before formal deportation processes would occur.

==============

That said, I still want/need a proper citation.

==============

From the Left we have this-- is this correct?

https://www.google.com/.../obamas.../story%3fid=41715661



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/21/lies-damned-lies-and-obamas-deportation-statistics/?utm_term=.d32596839641


Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 23, 2018, 05:51:12 AM
Thank you!

But Pravda on the Potomac will not let me see that without my giving them money.  May I ask you to paste the article here?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on November 23, 2018, 05:57:38 AM
Thank you!

But Pravda on the Potomac will not let me see that without my giving them money.  May I ask you to paste the article here?

Monkey Cage
Lies, damned lies, and Obama’s deportation statistics
By Anna O. Law April 21, 2014
 
CALEXICO, CA – NOVEMBER 15: A U.S. Border Patrol agent looks for tracks along the U.S.-Mexico border fence on November 15, 2013 in Calexico, California. The fence separates the large Mexican city of Mexicali with Calexico, CA, and is a frequent illegal crossing point for immigrant smugglers. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Lies, Damned Lies, and Obama’s Deportation Statistics

This is a guest post from Anna O. Law, the Herbert Kurz Associate Professor of  Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties at CUNY Brooklyn College. She is the author of The Immigration Battle in American Courts.

What is the trend in deportation of immigrants under the Obama administration? This seemingly simple question is proving very hard to answer. Consider three characterizations from recent media reports. Here is The Economist in February 2014:
America is expelling illegal immigrants at nine times the rate of 20 years ago; nearly 2m so far under Barack Obama, easily outpacing any previous president.

In April, the Los Angeles Times wrote:
A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data. Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.

And last week, Julia Preston of the New York Times reported that in the fiscal year 2013, the immigration courts saw a 26 percent drop in the number of people who have been deported, thereby producing:
… a different picture of President Obama’s enforcement policies than the one painted by many immigrant advocates, who have assailed the president as the ‘deporter in chief’ and accused him of rushing to reach a record of 2 million deportations. While Obama has deported more foreigners than any other president, the pace of deportations has recently declined.

Somehow, the Obama administration is simultaneously responsible for the highest rate of deportation in 20 years and a 26 percent drop in deportation. What is going on here? As it turns out, changes in immigration law, terminology and classification are causing this confusion.
One problem is the continued use of “deportation” in virtually all media reporting. In actuality, that category has been obsolete in immigration law since 1996. Prior to 1996, immigration law distinguished between immigrants who were “excluded,” or stopped and prevented from entering U.S. territory, and those who were “deported,” or expelled from the United States after they had made their way into U.S. territory. After 1996, both exclusion and deportation were rolled into one procedure called “removal.” At that point, the term “deportation” no longer had any meaning within the official immigration statistics. Its continued use in media reports is part of the confusion.
The large number of immigrants who are apprehended, usually but not exclusively along the southwestern border, and prevented from entering the country were part of a category called “voluntary departure” before 2006. Now that is called “return,” which also includes the subcategory of  “reinstatement.”  There is also a large category of “expedited removals” of persons that do not appear before an immigration judge but the procedure carries all the sanctions as a judge ordered removal.

These would-be immigrants accept this sanction that forgoes a court appearance before an immigration judge because formal removal — in which the U.S. government runs them through legal proceedings and pays for their return to their home country — would result in a multi-year bar (five to 20 years) on their eligibility to legally reenter the United States. Critics deride this policy “as catch and release.” The consequences of a return are much less harsh than a formal removal because the returned immigrant could come back legally, and presumably illegally, at any time.

Thus, comparing the deportation statistics across different presidential administrations is dicey because it is unclear what categories of people are actually being counted and categorized. Moreover, different administrations choose to emphasize different statistics. Dara Lind notes that the Bush administration seems to have reported removals and returns together, but Obama’s administration has emphasized only its number of removals.
Meanwhile, many media reports continue to use the term “deportation” when they mean either return or removal or some subset of those. The Department of Homeland Security that issues official statistics must now try to retrofit new legal categories to old data, and even it cannot excise the term deportation altogether because pre-1996, there were, in fact, deportations.
Confusion about terminology helps explain the conflicting accounts cited above.  The aforementioned New York Times article focuses on return numbers. But the Economist is also right, because if you combine the Obama’s return and removal numbers, he is well over the controversial 2 million mark.
This confusion enables political spin, too. If you want to portray Obama as weak on enforcement, use the removal numbers, which, compared to his predecessors, are lower. If you want to make Obama look tougher on enforcement, combine the return and removal numbers (like George W. Bush apparently did) or use the now meaningless “deportation”; both moves would conflate return and removal — and boost the overall number of expulsions.
But don’t expect these nuances to make it into political discourse anytime soon.  Way back in 1987, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit described immigration law as “second in complexity only to the internal revenue code.” It would appear little has changed.
CORRECTION: The original post claimed that Obama had de-emphasized removals and concentrated on returns and that the ratio of his removals to returns was skewed toward returns compared to his predecessors.  That claim is not correct because based on DHS’s data, (Table 39:  Aliens Removed and Returned, FY 1892-2012)  his cumulative numbers since taking office show Obama has removed a total of 1,974,688 people and returned 1,609,055 others.  There have been more returns than removals only in FY 2009 and 2010.  Moreover, comparing across administrations is not wise given the changes in law and counting procedures.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 23, 2018, 06:29:08 AM
Thank you very much!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2018, 06:44:06 PM
Woof from NY!
Title: Crafty says hello from Vegas
Post by: G M on January 21, 2019, 07:29:23 PM
He just finished a 4 day tactical shotgun course and now will be at SHOT Show.
Title: Home again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 25, 2019, 05:53:38 AM
After all these years of internet friendship in was awesome meeting you in person GM and your wife as welli (you married up haha).

Got back in late last night.  Charging into a hugely backed up email box now!
Title: Re: Home again
Post by: G M on January 25, 2019, 04:36:57 PM
After all these years of internet friendship in was awesome meeting you in person GM and your wife as welli (you married up haha).

Got back in late last night.  Charging into a hugely backed up email box now!

I certainly did!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2019, 05:09:18 PM
We're back!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 12, 2019, 08:33:43 AM
I had my call (first time too) yesterday to the Dr. Sebastian Gorka radio show (12:00-15:00 here in LA) taken by Dr. Gorka.

I expressed my divided feelings about our withdrawal, the prospects for an Iranian Land Bridge, the implications for Jordan, and related matters.

He liked my question and interacted with me quite a bit and at the end complimented me with "Excellent question."

 8-) 8-) 8-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on February 12, 2019, 03:16:31 PM
I had my call (first time too) yesterday to the Dr. Sebastian Gorka radio show (12:00-15:00 here in LA) taken by Dr. Gorka.

I expressed my divided feelings about our withdrawal, the prospects for an Iranian Land Bridge, the implications for Jordan, and related matters.

He liked my question and interacted with me quite a bit and at the end complimented me with "Excellent question."

 8-) 8-) 8-)

This is great.  Let's get the audio!  You should be an invited guest, not a caller.  )
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on February 12, 2019, 06:35:59 PM
I had my call (first time too) yesterday to the Dr. Sebastian Gorka radio show (12:00-15:00 here in LA) taken by Dr. Gorka.

I expressed my divided feelings about our withdrawal, the prospects for an Iranian Land Bridge, the implications for Jordan, and related matters.

He liked my question and interacted with me quite a bit and at the end complimented me with "Excellent question."

 8-) 8-) 8-)

Crafty Dog talk, with your host, Marc Denny


This is great.  Let's get the audio!  You should be an invited guest, not a caller.  )
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 12, 2019, 07:02:58 PM
I confess that I do think I could do a good job with talk radio. 

How would one go about looking into this?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on February 12, 2019, 07:18:01 PM
Start a podcast. You could host it on this website and see if you can market it.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 12, 2019, 07:19:15 PM
Simple.  Direct.  I like it!

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on February 12, 2019, 07:31:04 PM
Simple.  Direct.  I like it!

https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/tutorials/start-podcast-pats-complete-step-step-podcasting-tutorial/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on February 13, 2019, 06:51:57 AM
I found it:
https://www.sebgorka.com/broadcast/25793/
Seb Gorka Mon Feb 11, 2019
Hour 3 starting at 38:45.

Great questions and comments.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2019, 08:16:12 AM
Far out-- thanks for that!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2019, 09:18:23 AM
Regarding the podcast idea:  As I mull it over it seems like I need to get clear on the underlying structure:

a) I am interviewer/conversationalist with interesting guests.  As the egomaniac and New Yorker that I am there is risk I will be too aggro in my interactions; or

b) I pontificate, either with interviewer or solo.

c) or?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on February 13, 2019, 09:43:30 AM
Far out-- thanks for that!!!

My pleasure!  )

"How would one go about looking into this?"

I agree with GM, start with a podcast and publish it here.  Put a 'front door' on the forum and the podcasts to get new visitors in more easily.  [By the way, I like the recent upgrades here.]

Get the right equipment to put out high quality.  Rush talks about his golden microphone.  When the hosts call in from a phone they sound tinny and ordinary like the rest of us compared to the clarity of the host in studio. 

Use the format of talk radio on the podcasts for practice and for demo recording.  Time their segments and get used to working the clock.  Rush had experience in radio before he was expressing his own views.  Plenty of others never adjust to the format. 

Your experience on video and documentaries is a great help.  Audio has its own challenges like having no time to breathe or gather a thought.  On video there are things to see during a pause in conversation.

After podcasts, produce a local show somewhere (maybe not Calif).  If the station is on iHeart radio or have a listen live button and you have an instant national or worldwide potential audience.  Start late night or overnight hours where they lack good content and get better times and markets as the show gets appreciated. 

Guest hosting is a gateway. 

Consider a video format but the prep time and production is way more demanding.

If the stations won't hire you, buy a half hour or hour slot on a station like the financial and home improvement guys do to get exposure and experience and recover the money  with sponsors.

Have demo tapes ready and published when you contact the agents and stations.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on February 13, 2019, 10:15:49 AM
Regarding the podcast idea:  As I mull it over it seems like I need to get clear on the underlying structure:

a) I am interviewer/conversationalist with interesting guests.  As the egomaniac and New Yorker that I am there is risk I will be too aggro in my interactions; or

b) I pontificate, either with interviewer or solo.

c) or?

Listening to WSJ opinion podcasts, Potomac Watch, Paul Gigot is both analyst and questioner.  On tv shows he would try to be the questioner only and the audience missed out on his strength as an observer-analyst.  I think you need to mainly pontificate but interactions can give it a flow and bring in more perspectives. 

Another podcast I would recommend for guidance is Powerline with mainly Steve Hayward and sometimes John Hinderaker:  https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/category/podcasts
Hayward does a great job and probably makes nothing doing it.  Sometimes he does interviews and occasionally he posts his college lectures.  He is a very experienced lecturer.  Getting great guests on the right subjects is hard starting out. 

Notice how few calls the big shows take, even in 3 hours.  Opening the talk show to the public is partly great and partly a recipe for disaster.  CCP and I and Mrs. Crafty Dog can be your callers on podcasts, but I think GM in studio would keep you on track without taking up all the airtime.

Consider youtube instead of podcast for the format.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 18, 2019, 02:06:08 PM
Somewhere on this forum (or SC&H) there is a clip of a EU parliament speaker or something like that going through over 50 genders.  Glorious snark.  Can someone help me find it?  I just went through every page of the Gender thread , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on February 18, 2019, 02:36:01 PM
Somewhere on this forum (or SC&H) there is a clip of a EU parliament speaker or something like that going through over 50 genders.  Glorious snark.  Can someone help me find it?  I just went through every page of the Gender thread , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR4uyMjUnDI

--------------------

2/2/21  No longer available.  Fk!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 18, 2019, 02:54:44 PM
 8-) 8-) 8-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on February 18, 2019, 03:25:46 PM
Somewhere on this forum (or SC&H) there is a clip of a EU parliament speaker or something like that going through over 50 genders.  Glorious snark.  Can someone help me find it?  I just went through every page of the Gender thread , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR4uyMjUnDI

Well done. Also, I am glad to see that my hair from the early 90's has done so well in european politics.

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2019, 03:54:57 PM
Looking for, unsuccessfully so far, the URL about a military sound wave ray gun that non-lethally drives people off.  Range of 100 yards or so.  Help please.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 11, 2019, 04:47:16 PM
Still hoping for help on this , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2019, 07:25:02 AM
Do we have a list of the various false accusations of hate crimes and rape?  Or, if not, could someone put such a list together?

And into which thread should it go?  SJW?
Title: Hoax Hate Crimes
Post by: G M on April 02, 2019, 07:41:09 AM
Do we have a list of the various false accusations of hate crimes and rape?  Or, if not, could someone put such a list together?

And into which thread should it go?  SJW?

https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/18/hoax-hate-crimes-list/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2019, 07:49:09 AM
PERFECT!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2019, 01:52:23 PM
I've used up my freebies on this site-- would someone please send me this article or post it suitably here?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/1/john-huber-fbi-probe-shrouded-secrecy-18-months-la/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=20171227&utm_term=newsletter&utm_content=morning&bt_ee=jMNM90mmA%2BOvZ7IlkfESgSs9NaiLVuTWD3zm9jwXCuiPPDtsou81%2BpTF5QY1%2FP80&bt_ts=1554206862717'
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 07, 2019, 03:37:04 PM
Back during the Iraq War there was a story of an El Salvadoran bravely killing the enemy with his knife.  Please help me find.  The obvious search commands are not working for me.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on April 07, 2019, 06:29:30 PM
Back during the Iraq War there was a story of an El Salvadoran bravely killing the enemy with his knife.  Please help me find.  The obvious search commands are not working for me.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/may/3/20040503-115511-7092r/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 07, 2019, 08:29:44 PM
Thank you-- as always, you are awesome.

I've used up my freebies with them.  May I ask you to post the article here?

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on April 07, 2019, 10:08:00 PM
Thank you-- as always, you are awesome.

I've used up my freebies with them.  May I ask you to post the article here?

Salvadoran soldiers praised for Iraq role

By - The Washington Times - Monday, May 3, 2004

NAJAF, Iraq — One of his friends was dead, 12 others lay wounded and the four soldiers still left standing were surrounded and out of ammunition. So Salvadoran Cpl. Samuel Toloza said a prayer, whipped out his knife and charged the Iraqi gunmen.

In one of the only known instances of hand-to-hand combat in the Iraq conflict, Cpl. Toloza stabbed several attackers swarming around a comrade. The stunned assailants backed away momentarily, just as a relief column came to the unit’s rescue.

“We never considered surrender. I was trained to fight until the end,” said the 25-year-old corporal, one of 380 soldiers from El Salvador whose heroism is being cited just as other members of the multinational force in Iraq are facing criticism.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said recently that the Central American unit has “gained a fantastic reputation among the coalition” and expressed hope that the Salvadorans will stay beyond their scheduled departure.

Phil Kosnett, who leads the Coalition Provisional Authority office in this holy Shi’ite city, says he owes his life to Salvadorans who repelled a well-executed insurgent attack on his three-car convoy in March. He has nominated six of them for the U.S. Army’s Bronze Star medal.

“You hear this snotty phrase ‘coalition of the billing’ for some of the smaller contingents,” said Mr. Kosnett, referring to the apparent eagerness of some nations to charge their Iraq operations to Washington. “The El Sals? No way. These guys are punching way above their weight. They’re probably the bravest and most professional troops I’ve every worked with.”



The Salvadorans are eager to stress their role as peacekeepers rather than warriors, perhaps with an eye toward public opinion back home. Masked protesters last week seized the cathedral in the capital, San Salvador, demanding that President-elect Tony Saca pull the troops out of Iraq.

Mr. Saca, who takes office June 1, has said that he will leave the unit in Iraq until August as had been planned, despite the early departure of Spanish troops, under whom the Salvadorans were serving. The other three Central American contingents — from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras — have returned home or are scheduled to do so soon.

“We didn’t come here to fire a single shot. Our rifles were just part of our equipment and uniforms. But we were prepared to repel an attack,” said Col. Hugo Omar Orellana Calidonio, a 27-year-old who commands the Cuscatlan Battalion.

The troops, El Salvador’s first peacekeepers abroad, have conducted a range of humanitarian missions in Najaf. They have provided books, electricity, playground equipment and other supplies to destitute schools and have helped farmers with irrigation works and fertilizer supplies.

“Our country came out of a similar situation as in Iraq 12 years ago, so people in El Salvador can understand what is happening here,” said Col. Calidonio, referring to the civil war between the U.S.-backed government and leftist guerrillas that left about 75,000 dead. The military was held responsible for widespread abuses.

“We came here to help and we were helping. Our relationship with the people was excellent. They were happy with what we were doing,” Col. Calidonio said.

Then came April 4, when armed followers of Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shi’ite cleric, seized virtual control of the city and staged attacks on two camps — Baker and Golf — near bases on the fringes of Najaf occupied by the Salvadoran and Spanish units.

When Cpl. Toloza and 16 other soldiers arrived that morning at a low-walled compound of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, about a mile from their camp, they found that its 350 occupants had melted away. They also found themselves trapped by Sheik al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Lt. Col. Francisco Flores, the battalion’s operations officer, said the surrounded soldiers held their fire for nearly a half-hour, fearful of inflicting civilian casualties, even as 10 of their number were wounded by rocket-propelled grenades and bullets from assault rifles and machine guns.

After several hours of combat, the besieged unit ran out of ammunition, having come with only 300 rounds for each of their M-16 rifles. Pvt. Natividad Mendez, Cpl. Toloza’s friend for three years, lay dead, shot twice probably by a sniper. Two more were wounded as the close-quarters fighting intensified.

“I thought, ‘This is the end.’ But, at the same time, I asked the Lord to protect and save me,” Cpl. Toloza recalled.

The wounded were placed on a truck while Cpl. Toloza and the three other soldiers moved on the ground, trying to make their way back to the base. They were soon confronted with Sheik al-Sadr’s fighters, about 10 of whom tried to seize one of the soldiers.

“My immediate reaction was that I had to defend my friend, and the only thing I had in my hands was a knife,” Cpl. Toloza said.

As reinforcements arrived to save Cpl. Toloza’s unit, the two camps were under attack, with the Salvadorans and a small U.S. contingent of soldiers and civilian security personnel trying to protect the perimeter and retake an adjoining seven-story hospital captured by the insurgents.

The Spaniards didn’t fight and only after a long delay agreed to send armored vehicles to help evacuate the wounded. Col. Flores said he cannot question the Spanish decisions that day, but added that the Spaniards “could have helped us sooner.”

U.S. troops have replaced the Spaniards. Salvadoran officers, many of whom were trained at military schools in the United States, say they’re pleased to be working with the Americans.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 07, 2019, 11:56:50 PM
I know the man presenting the knife to Toloza in this clip.

I would add that he has attended a Dog Brothers Gathering and that we stay in touch.

===================

https://www.facebook.com/benjamindthomas3/videos/10156238368077263/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on May 18, 2019, 01:04:43 PM
we have so many threads
and I have noticed the search box to look for threads does not seem to work well since the site was down.
any way to fix?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 18, 2019, 01:20:48 PM
I will bring this to Webmaster Bob's attention.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Admin on May 20, 2019, 05:45:26 AM
Hey Guys,

I re-indexed the database and the search function is working again. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on May 20, 2019, 06:49:31 AM
Bob,
thanks for the very prompt attention
to my favorite message board
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2019, 11:12:36 AM
Bob is awesome!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2019, 05:59:24 PM
Looking for but not finding citation about Hillary charging the Secret Service rent for place to stay on her estate.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on May 23, 2019, 09:17:09 PM
Looking for but not finding citation about Hillary charging the Secret Service rent for place to stay on her estate.

That doesn't appear to be the case.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2019, 10:30:43 PM
 :-o

I could have swore I remembered such , , , Memory hole?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on May 23, 2019, 11:16:44 PM
:-o

I could have swore I remembered such , , , Memory hole?

There were emails that made the claim. They were debunked by the usual leftist “fact-checking” sites. However, I cannot find anything to contradict them.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 24, 2019, 08:30:48 AM
OK, thank you.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 21, 2019, 01:53:17 AM
Back from my road trip to the East Coast!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on June 21, 2019, 02:03:09 AM
Back from my road trip to the East Coast!

I learned that the parts of the east coast that are culturally southern states take great offense at being called the east coast, despite actually being located on the east coast.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 21, 2019, 10:48:33 AM
So noted!  :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2019, 06:25:16 AM
Heading out for the Canadian Dog Brothers Gathering of the Pack (r).  Back Sunday night.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 31, 2019, 06:11:03 PM
Off to DB Gathering in Bern and then Warsaw.  Back in one week!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2019, 11:56:58 PM
Home!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 12, 2019, 04:27:17 PM
Looking for that speech the Mexican president gave to our Congress during Obama years , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on August 13, 2019, 05:29:20 AM
Looking for that speech the Mexican president gave to our Congress during Obama years , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpufkAdpOv8

Mexican Pres Felipe Calderon addresses joint session of Congress
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 13, 2019, 09:20:12 AM
That's what I needed for a post elsewhere.  Thank you.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/forum traffic
Post by: DougMacG on September 10, 2019, 05:52:16 AM
"bots accounted for 37.9 percent of all online traffic during 2018"
https://thenextweb.com/security/2019/04/17/bots-drove-nearly-40-of-internet-traffic-last-year-and-the-naughty-ones-are-getting-smarter/
[62% of traffic is humans clicking, reading content.]
Is the forum any different?

Sometimes we wonder if we are writing to each other or if others are reading.  The number of reads tracked is very large, millions in total.  If it is 40% 'bots', the number is still huge.  The stats we see show totals by thread.  Crafty, do you know what the totals and subtotals are for the different boards?

The number of reads per reply is vastly different in different thread subjects.  Is there any way to rank the threads to know what draws the most interest?

If it was just bots randomly combing content, wouldn't those ratios be more even?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2019, 11:27:39 AM
Great questions, the answers to which are well outside the ken of this tech troglodyte.

I would note that the longer a thread, there is a mathematical dynamic that drives up the reads per post dynamic.

And yes, regardless, our numbers are pretty fg awesome!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2019, 07:19:20 AM
Looking for citations on the Clinton campaign going to the Ukrainians for dirt; e.g. dirt they got on Manafort.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2019, 07:10:34 AM
Looking for the name and citations of that woman who blabbed about Obama expanding access to raw intel from 3 to 17 agencies to make finding leakers harder
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on October 01, 2019, 08:28:53 AM
Looking for the name and citations of that woman who blabbed about Obama expanding access to raw intel from 3 to 17 agencies to make finding leakers harder

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/obama-expanding-nsa-powers/513041/

Not sure if this helps.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 01, 2019, 08:38:44 AM
Definitely on the right track, but the article is an Obama smokescreen.

There was some mid level woman who in the December before Trump took office spilled the beans as to what this was all really about but I am drawing a blank.  Not too long ago she was on the Bill Maher show.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 10, 2019, 04:44:15 PM
Looking for a reference here to our being unhappy that Sec Def Mattis had promised the Turks we would be disarming the Kurds when the fighting with ISIS was over.  Hope someone (hint hint GM) can find it for me!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on October 10, 2019, 07:56:07 PM
Looking for a reference here to our being unhappy that Sec Def Mattis had promised the Turks we would be disarming the Kurds when the fighting with ISIS was over.  Hope someone (hint hint GM) can find it for me!

Sorry to cut in... [Stratfor]
unnamed Turkish officials have been telling any reporter who will listen about how Mattis pledged to help Turkey fight the Kurdish PKK militant group and how American support for Syrian Kurds is limited to the duration of the fight against the Islamic State. That Mattis came out publicly against the KRG’s independence referendum probably didn’t hurt either. For the moment, Turkey seems more publicly comfortable than it has been with the U.S. in months, so whatever Mattis promised in Ankara had the desired effect.
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1360.msg105837#msg105837
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2019, 10:52:19 AM
You are awesome!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 15, 2019, 01:54:12 PM
Well done!


Looking for a reference here to our being unhappy that Sec Def Mattis had promised the Turks we would be disarming the Kurds when the fighting with ISIS was over.  Hope someone (hint hint GM) can find it for me!

Sorry to cut in... [Stratfor]
unnamed Turkish officials have been telling any reporter who will listen about how Mattis pledged to help Turkey fight the Kurdish PKK militant group and how American support for Syrian Kurds is limited to the duration of the fight against the Islamic State. That Mattis came out publicly against the KRG’s independence referendum probably didn’t hurt either. For the moment, Turkey seems more publicly comfortable than it has been with the U.S. in months, so whatever Mattis promised in Ankara had the desired effect.
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1360.msg105837#msg105837
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2019, 09:53:43 AM
WaPo has an article "The principled, righteous Tucker Carlson".  I would love to read it without having to subscribe WaPo , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 28, 2019, 05:37:28 PM
This site seems to be dubious https://newspunch.com/declassified-documents-obama-ordered-cia-to-train-isis/?fbclid=IwAR3oP7FHNZDHx8glwYScR5f6NYR31HdZnZbCMPs5XbAIuT5_umRi9CeM79s

but the premise echoes of our postings here.  This would seem to be a REAL good moment to drag up from the memory hole things of this nature, e.g.

Picture of Sen. McCain with men who turned out to be jihadi scumbags
our money and arms winding up in Al Nusra's hands
anything else of this nature.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 29, 2019, 11:43:06 AM
REALLY hoping for some help on this.  The gist of it would seem to be that Obama-Hillary-McCain & Gramham, and the geniuses at Foggy Bottom started the whole shit show in Syria by backing nasty jihadis against Assad.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2019, 01:55:41 PM
Persisting , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 30, 2019, 07:22:44 PM
REALLY hoping for some help on this.  The gist of it would seem to be that Obama-Hillary-McCain & Gramham, and the geniuses at Foggy Bottom started the whole shit show in Syria by backing nasty jihadis against Assad.

This?

https://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-emails-show-u-s-allies-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-supported-isis/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2019, 08:50:10 PM
Good start!

But I'm remembering something about a large sum of US money and guns that wound up in all sorts of bad hands and produced a ridiculously small number of moderate fighters (50?) that came to a cost of something like $50K each.

I'm vaguely remembering our having a lot to do with helping the Syrian Civil War get going, generating the fustercluck we now have, , ,
Title: Up from the memory hole: Big US money only trained 5 fighters against ISIS
Post by: G M on October 30, 2019, 10:12:37 PM
Good start!

But I'm remembering something about a large sum of US money and guns that wound up in all sorts of bad hands and produced a ridiculously small number of moderate fighters (50?) that came to a cost of something like $50K each.

I'm vaguely remembering our having a lot to do with helping the Syrian Civil War get going, generating the fustercluck we now have, , ,

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/16/us-military-syrian-isis-fighters

Title: Pentagon vs. CIA fustercluck in Syria
Post by: G M on October 30, 2019, 10:17:43 PM
Good start!

But I'm remembering something about a large sum of US money and guns that wound up in all sorts of bad hands and produced a ridiculously small number of moderate fighters (50?) that came to a cost of something like $50K each.

I'm vaguely remembering our having a lot to do with helping the Syrian Civil War get going, generating the fustercluck we now have, , ,




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/16/us-military-syrian-isis-fighters

https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-isis-20160327-story.html
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 30, 2019, 11:46:14 PM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/07/joe-biden-is-the-only-honest-man-in-washington/

Dementia Joe accidentally says too much.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2019, 11:49:06 PM
Excellent work GM!  Pasting these in relevant threads.
Title: McStain and Miss Lindsey's contribution
Post by: G M on October 31, 2019, 04:16:21 PM
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-saudi-arabia-iraq-syria-bandar/373181/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 31, 2019, 09:51:05 PM
Looks awesome, but I've used up my freebies.  Any chance you could paste it on the relevant here?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2019, 11:35:29 AM
I could have swore we have a Glen Beck thread but Search is not finding it for me , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on November 25, 2019, 09:09:18 AM
what thread best to post crime or prisoner reform?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2019, 10:03:37 AM
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1443.150
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 15, 2019, 09:30:44 AM

Welcome back to Objectivist!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2019, 08:24:27 PM
Looking for citations for Pelosi's son, Romney's son, Kerry's son making money in Ukraine.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on December 19, 2019, 08:44:21 PM
Looking for citations for Pelosi's son, Romney's son, Kerry's son making money in Ukraine.

https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2019/10/04/amazing-coincidence-nancy-pelosis-son-also-business-connections-ukraine/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/john-kerrys-son-cut-business-ties-with-hunter-biden-over-ukrainian-oil-deal

https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/inside-the-shady-private-equity-firm-run-by-kerry-and-bidens-kids/

https://sharylattkisson.com/2019/10/us-intel-figure-joined-board-of-ukraine-gas-company-burisma/

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

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/hunter-biden-comprehensive-timeline/






Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 22, 2019, 11:48:20 PM
Looking for our posts on the subject of civil and/or criminal forfeiture-- posts which I know we have made.  I have used the Search function for both Subject line and Message without success.  Weird.

At the moment I am looking to post this:

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/musician-has-life-savings-stolen-during-police-traffic-stop
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro, forfeitures
Post by: DougMacG on December 23, 2019, 07:14:03 AM
See also 'seizures'.  I see it come up under Legal Issues, Constitutional Law, Govt programs, Libertarian Issues.
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=988.msg96093#msg96093
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1134.msg32890#msg32890
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1847.msg92955#msg92955
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=73.msg53306#msg53306
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1850.msg92915#msg92915
https://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=1850.msg95212#msg95212

There is something wrong in the search function; some of these should come up in subject searches.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 23, 2019, 09:53:06 PM
Thank you.  Webmaster Bob is dealing with family members in the hospital at the moment.  Prayers for all concerned.
Title: Happy New Year
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2019, 08:33:27 PM
To my comrades in cause of America and the American Creed:

I want to thank you all for another fine year-- I think we can be proud of the work we do here!

Our Adventure continues!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2020, 03:19:29 PM
My high school senior daughter has a homework assignment about rent control.  She is looking for article with some good data about it.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on January 04, 2020, 03:35:37 PM
My high school senior daughter has a homework assignment about rent control.  She is looking for article with some good data about it.

https://reason.com/2019/09/27/how-rent-control-hurts-tenants/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2020, 06:36:38 PM
Thank you  8-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2020, 12:10:07 PM
Looking for the info on the background of the head of the WHO (Somali?) having a terror background
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on March 15, 2020, 07:20:11 PM
Looking for the info on the background of the head of the WHO (Somali?) having a terror background

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2020, 10:07:01 PM
I could have swore he had something shady in there.

Thank you any way.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on April 11, 2020, 07:21:55 AM
I notice the "modify " choice is gone.

I can't correct my posts for spelling or other fixes .etc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 11, 2020, 11:03:59 AM
I'm still seeing it for me.

Weird.  Let me check with Webmaster Bob.

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on April 11, 2020, 12:08:37 PM
strange

now I see it too

I could swear it was not there earlier today .

I know I am fryed from doing overtime and seeing as many patients as I can
but am not yet hallucinating.
  (I don't think)

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on April 11, 2020, 06:42:21 PM
So you have been correcting the spelling in your posts all these years??

 :-D


I notice the "modify " choice is gone.

I can't correct my posts for spelling or other fixes .etc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 14, 2020, 11:01:26 AM
Looking for Tucker's very strong opening statement last night. 
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2020, 10:37:24 AM
I'm remembering that we had some posts about Obama systematically replacing generals and admirals to political purpose , , ,
Title: Obama's purge of generals and admirals
Post by: DougMacG on June 09, 2020, 01:59:23 PM
I'm remembering that we had some posts about Obama systematically replacing generals and admirals to political purpose , , ,

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/197-military-officers-purged-by-obama/
What the president calls "my military" is being cleansed of any officer suspected of disloyalty to or disagreement with the administration on matters of policy or force structure, leaving the compliant and fearful.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/18/president-obama-wary-of-generals-admirals-commandi/
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/obama-vs-the-generals-099379
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/09/obama_purged_military_of_those_who_sought_victory.html

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2020, 06:44:29 PM
THANK YOU!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 16, 2020, 10:00:46 AM
Looking for proper citations on the Congressional seats stolen in Orange County CA (five of them?)in 2018 due to ballot harvesting.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2020, 04:51:32 AM
Going dark for a few days , , ,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2020, 06:03:45 PM
The Dennys are now North Carolinians!

At the moment my participation here is frustrated by a poor connection and a crappy, clogged up laptop, but I am back!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on October 25, 2020, 05:28:22 AM
The Dennys are now North Carolinians!

Wow!  Big move!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 25, 2020, 11:18:59 AM
It's like the action movie where people get out just as something explodes in the background.

When are you escaping from Minnetroit, Doug?


The Dennys are now North Carolinians!

Wow!  Big move!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on October 25, 2020, 02:28:45 PM
"It's like the action movie where people get out just as something explodes in the background."
  - That is funny - if we're still able to laugh about these things.

"When are you escaping from Minnetroit, Doug?"

   - Not a simple matter.  Family, friends, sports, investments here, pretty good lifestyle...  )   If I move to the moon I am still taxed here.  Trying to get some things sold or insured before the next riot. Long process. 

If the US goes the Bernie-Omar-apolis way Nov 3, moving to another state is not escape and I don't have a leave-the-country plan.  Alternatively, the nation including MN could go conservative, and Colorado, my easiest move, could fall permanently blue (The MinnColo flip?)  Colo could become the next Minntroit.  Looks like Denver already fell. 

This election will affect my priorities.  I hear guns and ammo are already sold out.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 25, 2020, 03:45:48 PM
"It's like the action movie where people get out just as something explodes in the background."
  - That is funny - if we're still able to laugh about these things.

"When are you escaping from Minnetroit, Doug?"

   - Not a simple matter.  Family, friends, sports, investments here, pretty good lifestyle...  )   If I move to the moon I am still taxed here.  Trying to get some things sold or insured before the next riot. Long process. 

If the US goes the Bernie-Omar-apolis way Nov 3, moving to another state is not escape and I don't have a leave-the-country plan.  Alternatively, the nation including MN could go conservative, and Colorado, my easiest move, could fall permanently blue (The MinnColo flip?)  Colo could become the next Minntroit.  Looks like Denver already fell. 

This election will affect my priorities.  I hear guns and ammo are already sold out.

Guns and ammo are available, although at increased prices. I would get my hands on something ASAP.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 25, 2020, 04:26:37 PM
"It's like the action movie where people get out just as something explodes in the background."
  - That is funny - if we're still able to laugh about these things.

"When are you escaping from Minnetroit, Doug?"

   - Not a simple matter.  Family, friends, sports, investments here, pretty good lifestyle...  )   If I move to the moon I am still taxed here.  Trying to get some things sold or insured before the next riot. Long process. 

If the US goes the Bernie-Omar-apolis way Nov 3, moving to another state is not escape and I don't have a leave-the-country plan.  Alternatively, the nation including MN could go conservative, and Colorado, my easiest move, could fall permanently blue (The MinnColo flip?)  Colo could become the next Minntroit.  Looks like Denver already fell. 

This election will affect my priorities.  I hear guns and ammo are already sold out.

Guns and ammo are available, although at increased prices. I would get my hands on something ASAP.

(http://ace.mu.nu/archives/JT%2010252020%20scaled.jpg)

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2020, 09:13:24 PM
The Dennys need to find a new family doctor, one with admitting privileges to a good local hospital.  Any suggestions as to how best to go about this?
Title: Serious Read: Fragility
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2020, 06:49:27 PM
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/11/put-societal-resilience-center-defense-planning/170174/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 31, 2020, 07:12:34 PM
One of the things that we need to keep from sliding down the memory hole is all the stores and businesses that were boarded up on Election Eve in fear of the response to a Trump win.  May I ask that we team up and track a bunch of these down for future reference/evidence of the intimidation that was in the air as various political and judicial players made the choices that they did?

Please post in the Electoral thread and any relevant ones as well.

Thank you.
Title: Migration
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 20, 2021, 09:25:49 AM
Sometimes between now and Friday this forum will be migrating to its new address.
Title: Re: Migration
Post by: DougMacG on January 20, 2021, 10:38:57 AM
Sometimes between now and Friday this forum will be migrating to its new address.

Maybe the front page should be the recent posts page?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 20, 2021, 02:15:49 PM
Good idea.  First I am going to let Bob handle the logistics, then we can tinker.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ppulatie on January 21, 2021, 09:26:13 AM
SpartaReport closed down on Jan 6. We were too high profile for some of the mods who either worked for the government or else had contracts with it. A couple of others had businesses that they feared could be targeted by the Left.

New site opened by one commenter where Spartans and others can play.  www.cafe76.org.  Been doing a few articles there to get started.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2021, 07:31:16 AM
WWWOOOFFF!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 22, 2021, 02:32:47 PM
Bob says the forum migration will take a few more days.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2021, 12:35:41 PM
Heads up!  Looks like our migration to our new location is underway!
Title: Re: Migration TTT
Post by: DougMacG on February 01, 2021, 06:58:17 PM
quote author=DougMacG
Maybe the front page should be the recent posts page?

Maybe 'recent posts' could be a link in bold on every page?

I wonder if readership dropped with the move or if google and ChiCom bots can find us anyway.


Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Admin on February 03, 2021, 02:42:06 PM
I made an adjustment to the homepage to show recent posts in the notification center under the boards.

Let me know if that works.

The bots have not found this forum yet, but they will. I cleaned over 15,000 bot registrations from about two months in the other forum.

Marc, please make sure you notify me if you need someone approved for registration. Check the top left of the forum to see who is waiting for approval. I can also show you how to do it yourself. You are an admin.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 10, 2021, 03:41:44 AM
Looking for articles on Google employees rejecting doing AI contract for US military or something like that
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on February 10, 2021, 08:21:17 AM
Looking for articles on Google employees rejecting doing AI contract for US military or something like that

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-google-military-contract-dilemma/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 10, 2021, 10:40:08 PM
TY!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2021, 09:16:45 PM
Looking for footage of Obama being interviewed by Colbert (in October?) where he expresses the desire to have a puppet-- not in those exact words, but pretty damn close.
Title: Obama fine with leading from behind
Post by: G M on March 24, 2021, 09:21:31 PM
Looking for footage of Obama being interviewed by Colbert (in October?) where he expresses the desire to have a puppet-- not in those exact words, but pretty damn close.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/former-president-obama-said-fine-running-front-man-woman-president-earpiece-basement/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2021, 10:58:26 PM
That is it!  Thank you!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2021, 08:53:49 AM
I've signed up for NRO but for some strange reason it does not kick in until May.

Could someone please paste this article here?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/the-supreme-thuggery-of-democrats-court-packing-scheme/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on April 17, 2021, 10:37:07 AM
I've signed up for NRO but for some strange reason it does not kick in until May.

Could someone please paste this article here?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/the-supreme-thuggery-of-democrats-court-packing-scheme/

The Supreme Thuggery of Democrats’ Court-Packing Scheme
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
April 17, 2021 6:30 AM

From left: Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) introduce the Judiciary Act of 2021 aimed at expanding the Supreme Court from nine to thirteen justices outside the court in Washington, D.C., April 15, 2021. (James Lawler Duggan/Reuters)
The sponsors of this plan are gaslighting the nation with nonsensical explanations.

That settles it. Henceforth, for baseball, we need 13 on the field. You know, for “balance.” After all, when the big leagues started playing the World Series in 1903, there were only 16 teams. Now there are 30. If you’re going to have 30 teams, there should be at least 13 players on each side, right? Maybe even 30!


Okay, okay, it’s a stupid idea. But you’ll have to forgive me: I watched Thursday’s Rockin’ Jerry & the Wokes show on the steps of the Supreme Court, and ever since, I’ve felt much stupider.

According to Congressman Nadler (D., N.Y.) and his progressive posse, the high court must be expanded, from the nine-member body it has been for over 150 years to the 13-member tribunal they say we urgently need it to be, because there are now 13 federal circuit courts of appeal. There were only nine circuits when the Supreme Court was set at nine justices in 1869.

This is nonsense, but that is par for the course, because it is not meant to be taken seriously as an argument.

The Dems’ Court-expansion-and-packing project is not a public-policy proposal. It’s thuggery. That explains the zany rationales Nadler et al. offered for it at their presser. Maybe the number should be 13 because that’s how many times they said “racism” (though I could be low-balling here). Or maybe expanding the Court is infrastructure, or part of the existential climate crisis. Makes total sense. See, the less this has to do with logic, the more the justices will have it in the front of their minds that the Left is crazy enough to do anything at this point, so they’d better be careful how they decide these cases — and even about what cases they decide to decide.

The size of the Supreme Court has nothing to do with the number of circuits — no more than the size of the Ninth Circuit bench (29 judges) has to do with that of the First Circuit’s (nine judges), or than the geographic jurisdiction of the Eighth Circuit (seven states) has to do with that of the Federal Circuit (nationwide for limited categories of cases), or of the District of Columbia Circuit (just the city of Washington).

When constitutional governance began, the Supreme Court had six members, covering three circuits. The lower federal courts — today’s 13 circuit courts of appeal and 94 district courts, in their majestic courthouses — did not exist as we know them today. Supreme Court justices used to “ride circuit” on horseback or in carriages over the rough terrain of our growing country. In the circuits, they’d hear cases with a local district judge. It was a time-consuming, physically demanding, mentally exhausting job.

Congress did not create circuit judgeships — not courts, judgeships — until 1869. That’s the same year it set the high court’s size at nine justices. No less a liberal icon than Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — who just might have known a tad more than Jerry Nadler about how the Court works — believed nine was just the right number.

Prior to 1869, the size of the Supreme Court bench had varied, from as many as ten justices to as few as five. The numbers were driven by politics, not a perceived need to correlate to the number of circuits.

Yes, when Congress set the number at nine, there were also nine circuits. But that was because Supreme Court justices were still riding circuit. That practice was largely phased out with the Evarts Act of 1891, which established the U.S. circuit courts of appeal. It was completely ended in 1911, when Congress abolished the circuits, transferring their jurisdiction to the district courts.

That is to say, the circuit system that Democrats claim calls for an overdue expansion of the Supreme Court has not existed for more than a century. And when Congress created the system we’ve now had for a very long time, lawmakers concluded, much as Justice Ginsburg concluded, that nine was just the right number of Supreme Court justices.

The woke Left’s circuit-court argument is no more sincere than its laugh-out-loud “balance” argument. If the complaint is that the Court now has a 6–3 conservative majority, why would “balance” require adding four progressives?

But Jerry & Co. were on a roll. The unbalanced conservative majority has ushered in the era of dark, icky corporate campaign money! Yes, that would be the era whose most recent campaign has given Democrats control of the White House and both houses of Congress. The conservative majority is the grossly illegitimate handiwork of, yes, Donald Trump, who also “packed” the lower federal courts. Right. The Court “packing” (a.k.a. filling vacancies) worked so well for Trump that these cat’s-paw jurists rejected each and every one of his challenges to the 2020 election — ensuring Democratic control of Washington, including two years of conveyor-belt judicial confirmations of young progressive firebrands.

The only authentic part of Thursday’s performance came when a reporter asked Nadler why Speaker Nancy Pelosi had not committed to taking up the progs’ Court-expansion proposal. The Judiciary Committee chairman replied that the speaker is wisely monitoring how things develop over the coming months. Right . . . just like Biden’s similar theater, the “Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.” Just like Obama’s 2012 warning that the justices had better not invalidate Obamacare. (Mission accomplished!) And just like the “amici curiae” brief that Democratic senators filed with the high court in a 2019 gun case — the kind of “friends of the court” whose advice is, “Nice place you have here, it’d sure be a shame if anything happened to it . . .”

Democrats are not really going to expand the Supreme Court. They are going to extort the Supreme Court.

What’s today’s favorite conservative talking point in Washington? “Court-packing is so beyond the pale that even FDR couldn’t get it done at the height of his power, with far bigger congressional majorities than Joe Biden will ever have.” Well, as Paul Harvey used to say, there’s a “rest of the story” that we prefer to forget: Court-packing was actually a smashing success as a threat. The Supreme Court felt FDR’s heat and changed its jurisprudence. As progressives browbeat conservative justices and gradually filled vacancies with liberals, the Court abandoned its defense of the Constitution’s limits on federal government power, laying the groundwork for the imperial presidency, a Congress that concedes no boundaries, and the administrative state.

Do the Democrats really have their eyes on four Supreme Court seats? Yeah, I suppose they do. You can call those seats Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of BALL OF COLLUSION: THE PLOT TO RIG AN ELECTION AND DESTROY A PRESIDENCY. @andrewcmccarthy
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2021, 03:52:28 PM
Thank you.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 20, 2021, 07:46:47 PM
Would like to see these three as well:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/the-end-of-history-chinas-1921-project/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202021-04-20&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/derek-chauvin-convicted-but-what-comes-next/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/derek-chauvin-convicted-but-what-comes-next/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MJ_20210421&utm_term=Jolt-Smart
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on April 29, 2021, 03:28:51 PM
Taking time off. Posting will be little to none for a while.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 29, 2021, 08:14:52 PM
You will be missed.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on April 30, 2021, 06:16:04 AM
Your perspective is needed here.    )
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 30, 2021, 09:12:16 AM
Amen!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 16, 2021, 09:28:29 PM
Note to self:  Looking into Dr. Wilfred Reilly.  Just watched him do a one hour interview/conversation with Tucker.  This guy is seriously bright and thoughtful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Reilly
Title: VDH: Anatomy of the Woke Madness
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 13, 2021, 08:14:17 PM
https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/13/anatomy-of-the-woke-madness/
Title: PW question
Post by: ccp on June 30, 2021, 04:56:59 AM
Is there a way to change my PW to the site?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2021, 07:04:55 AM
I just notified our webmaster to get in touch with you.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on July 08, 2021, 06:13:34 AM
CD
never heard from webmaster
just want to change PW for security purposes

thank you
ccp
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Admin on July 08, 2021, 08:36:38 AM
(https://dogbrothers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/change-password.png)

You can change your password in the account settings menu. See screenshot above.
Title: Where is the Tucker NSA thread?
Post by: G M on July 18, 2021, 10:19:29 AM
You'd think "Tucker NSA" or "Tucker surveillance" would bring it up....
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2021, 05:03:05 AM
I set Search for "Tucker" in the body of the post for the last 99 days and came up with this:

https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=1872.msg136031;topicseen#msg136031
Title: AGAIN looking for that Conn. Supreme Court Gun Rights decision!!!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2021, 08:56:50 AM
Diving deep into prepping my Const. Law class and having trouble AGAIN finding this.  Apologies!  Gratitude for help!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2021, 09:32:34 AM
SUPER busy at my end for the next several days.

Could someone assemble some well chosen URLs of ISIS rolling up US arms taken from fleeing Iraqi army after Baraq-Biden precipitously pulled us out of Iraq?

Title: ISIS rolling up US arms taken from fleeing Iraqi army
Post by: DougMacG on August 18, 2021, 03:43:00 PM
You can take a look at some of these, a range of sources:

https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/politics/amnesty-international-isis-weapons-u-s-/index.html

https://www.newsweek.com/how-isis-got-weapons-us-used-them-take-iraq-syria-748468

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/05/20/isis-captures-hundreds-of-us-vehicles-and-tanks-in-ramadi-from-i.html

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/heres-how-isis-gets-its-guns/

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/12/8/most-isil-weapons-seized-from-iraqi-army.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15467931/afghanistan-isis-taliban-seize-us-military-vehicle/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/mosul-isis-gunmen-middle-east-states

https://www.ibtimes.com/iraq-crisis-isis-shows-its-war-spoils-massacring-shiite-soldiers-1601522

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/isis-captured-2300-humvee-armoured-vehicles-from-iraqi-forces-in-mosul

https://www.rt.com/usa/261681-carter-iraq-fight-isis-ramadi/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/isis-spreads-terror-with-plundered-us-weapons-jmsn72nbbxd
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 18, 2021, 06:48:05 PM
THANK YOU.  I WILL PUT THESE TO GOOD USE!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2021, 04:13:33 PM
Is there a WayBackMachine that can dig this up out of the Memory Hole?

https://www.youtube/watch?v=Cr98gE88W60

Evil Chinese Scientist
Title: Chi Com Bio War coming
Post by: G M on October 08, 2021, 05:29:02 PM
Is there a WayBackMachine that can dig this up out of the Memory Hole?

https://www.youtube/watch?v=Cr98gE88W60

Evil Chinese Scientist

The original is probably buried deeper than the Chinese subject that came up with the Winnie the Pooh meme.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=biNxl7tiVSY

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2021, 06:45:58 PM
Very much on point!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on October 21, 2021, 07:55:10 PM
Playing in the USTA 55 and over national championships in Orlando this weekend.  )


https://images.app.goo.gl/jF4YF9yAoiT7zvKF7
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2021, 08:09:06 PM
FAR OUT!!!

THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on October 21, 2021, 08:32:37 PM
Playing in the USTA 55 and over national championships in Orlando this weekend.  )


https://images.app.goo.gl/jF4YF9yAoiT7zvKF7

Best of luck!
Title: Alex Berenson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 21, 2021, 09:38:08 PM
https://alexberenson.substack.com/

Has appeared many times on Tucker.  Brave and solid on the Wuhan Virus and other things too.  Banned by Twitter.  Glad to have finally signed up here for info from him.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2021, 05:02:13 PM
I've run out of freebies with Atlantic.  Can someone please paste this on the Michael Yon thread?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/michael-yons-war/57483/
Title: where is GM?
Post by: ccp on December 18, 2021, 01:19:56 PM
is he ok?
or just needing a rest from the board?

 :-o
Title: Re: where is GM?
Post by: DougMacG on December 18, 2021, 04:09:05 PM
is he ok?
or just needing a rest from the board?

 :-o

Some G M wisdom is needed around here.  C'mon back.   )
Title: TAC!!!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2022, 12:15:36 PM
As we commence a new year in these so very interesting times, I would take a moment to say how grateful I am for you guys on this forum and the work we do together.  The number of reads per post tells me that there are people out there who follow this place where we search for truth, and that is deeply gratifying.

The Adventure continues!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2022, 11:33:35 AM
Big ice storm here in NC on Sunday.  Lots of falling branches, including some substantial ones on our house-- apparently it is quite the thing around here with the pine trees.  No electricity for five hours, no internet for thirty hours.  Just went to the hardware store and bought an axe for the small tree that fell out back.  We now have quite a bit more firewood!  Feeling manly! :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on January 17, 2022, 11:35:11 AM
Big ice storm here in NC on Sunday.  Lots of falling branches, including some substantial ones on our house-- apparently it is quite the thing around here with the pine trees.  No electricity for five hours, no internet for thirty hours.  Just went to the hardware store and bought an axe for the small tree that fell out back.  We now have quite a bit more firewood!  Feeling manly! :-D

It's a good test run for when the grid goes down for...longer periods.

Plan accordingly.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on January 17, 2022, 12:35:38 PM
Big ice storm here in NC on Sunday.  Lots of falling branches, including some substantial ones on our house-- apparently it is quite the thing around here with the pine trees.  No electricity for five hours, no internet for thirty hours.  Just went to the hardware store and bought an axe for the small tree that fell out back.  We now have quite a bit more firewood!  Feeling manly! :-D

We call it God's tree trimming service.  They come through every once in a while.
Did cell phones and cell phone internet go down as well?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2022, 01:56:05 PM
Yes, a very good test run.  Many things were in place and functioned as intended, but one gap was revealed and we will be rectifying it this week.


Cell phones worked, cell phone internet (I have no idea what that is, but Cindy and the kids do) continued to function.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2022, 11:10:42 AM
What was that Time or Newsweek article in the aftermath of the 2020 election openly describing what they did to fix the election?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on February 22, 2022, 02:54:35 PM
What was that Time or Newsweek article in the aftermath of the 2020 election openly describing what they did to fix the election?

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2022, 04:45:42 PM
Thank you.  May I impose further and ask you to paste it here?

1) I don't want my email address cluttered with their spam by having to sign up, and

2) To have it here as a permanent record.

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on February 22, 2022, 04:48:59 PM
Thank you.  May I impose further and ask you to paste it here?

1) I don't want my email address cluttered with their spam by having to sign up, and

2) To have it here as a permanent record.

It may be a bit before I can get to it.
Title: How 2020 was stolen
Post by: G M on February 22, 2022, 06:19:37 PM
Thank you.  May I impose further and ask you to paste it here?

1) I don't want my email address cluttered with their spam by having to sign up, and

2) To have it here as a permanent record.

It may be a bit before I can get to it.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/05/delingpole-presidential-election-wasnt-rigged-it-was-fortified-says-time-magazine/

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/02/time-magazine-well-funded-cabal-of-powerful-people-secretly-conspired-to-defeat-trump/

https://archive.is/CRSYG

Archived article above.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2022, 06:30:03 PM
Pretty please paste the article here :-)
Title: Secret History of the Shadow Campaign
Post by: G M on February 22, 2022, 06:32:35 PM
Pretty please paste the article here :-)

https://archive.is/CRSYG



The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
Molly Ball @mollyesque Feb. 4, 2021    

Illustration by Ryan Olbrysh for TIME
The secret history of the shadow campaign that saved the election

A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.
The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.
Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.
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A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”
In a way, Trump was right.
There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.
Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.
For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election. The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics. Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.
The democracy campaigners watched with alarm. “Every week, we felt like we were in a struggle to try to pull off this election without the country going through a real dangerous moment of unraveling,” says former GOP Representative Zach Wamp, a Trump supporter who helped coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. “We can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case.”
Biden fans in Philadelphia after the race was called on Nov. 7
Michelle Gustafson for TIME
Biden fans in Philadelphia after the race was called on Nov. 7
This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”
That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
THE ARCHITECT
Sometime in the fall of 2019, Mike Podhorzer became convinced the election was headed for disaster–and determined to protect it.
This was not his usual purview. For nearly a quarter-century, Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union federation, has marshaled the latest tactics and data to help its favored candidates win elections. Unassuming and professorial, he isn’t the sort of hair-gelled “political strategist” who shows up on cable news. Among Democratic insiders, he’s known as the wizard behind some of the biggest advances in political technology in recent decades. A group of liberal strategists he brought together in the early 2000s led to the creation of the Analyst Institute, a secretive firm that applies scientific methods to political campaigns. He was also involved in the founding of Catalist, the flagship progressive data company.
The endless chatter in Washington about “political strategy,” Podhorzer believes, has little to do with how change really gets made. “My basic take on politics is that it’s all pretty obvious if you don’t overthink it or swallow the prevailing frameworks whole,” he once wrote. “After that, just relentlessly identify your assumptions and challenge them.” Podhorzer applies that approach to everything: when he coached his now adult son’s Little League team in the D.C. suburbs, he trained the boys not to swing at most pitches–a tactic that infuriated both their and their opponents’ parents, but won the team a series of championships.
Trump’s election in 2016–credited in part to his unusual strength among the sort of blue collar white voters who once dominated the AFL-CIO–prompted Podhorzer to question his assumptions about voter behavior. He began circulating weekly number-crunching memos to a small circle of allies and hosting strategy sessions in D.C. But when he began to worry about the election itself, he didn’t want to seem paranoid. It was only after months of research that he introduced his concerns in his newsletter in October 2019. The usual tools of data, analytics and polling would not be sufficient in a situation where the President himself was trying to disrupt the election, he wrote. “Most of our planning takes us through Election Day,” he noted. “But, we are not prepared for the two most likely outcomes”–Trump losing and refusing to concede, and Trump winning the Electoral College (despite losing the popular vote) by corrupting the voting process in key states. “We desperately need to systematically ‘red-team’ this election so that we can anticipate and plan for the worst we know will be coming our way.”
It turned out Podhorzer wasn’t the only one thinking in these terms. He began to hear from others eager to join forces. The Fight Back Table, a coalition of “resistance” organizations, had begun scenario-planning around the potential for a contested election, gathering liberal activists at the local and national level into what they called the Democracy Defense Coalition. Voting-rights and civil rights organizations were raising alarms. A group of former elected officials was researching emergency powers they feared Trump might exploit. Protect Democracy was assembling a bipartisan election-crisis task force. “It turned out that once you said it out loud, people agreed,” Podhorzer says, “and it started building momentum.”
He spent months pondering scenarios and talking to experts. It wasn’t hard to find liberals who saw Trump as a dangerous dictator, but Podhorzer was careful to steer clear of hysteria. What he wanted to know was not how American democracy was dying but how it might be kept alive. The chief difference between the U.S. and countries that lost their grip on democracy, he concluded, was that America’s decentralized election system couldn’t be rigged in one fell swoop. That presented an opportunity to shore it up.
THE ALLIANCE
On March 3, Podhorzer drafted a three-page confidential memo titled “Threats to the 2020 Election.” “Trump has made it clear that this will not be a fair election, and that he will reject anything but his own re-election as ‘fake’ and rigged,” he wrote. “On Nov. 3, should the media report otherwise, he will use the right-wing information system to establish his narrative and incite his supporters to protest.” The memo laid out four categories of challenges: attacks on voters, attacks on election administration, attacks on Trump’s political opponents and “efforts to reverse the results of the election.”
Then COVID-19 erupted at the height of the primary-election season. Normal methods of voting were no longer safe for voters or the mostly elderly volunteers who normally staff polling places. But political disagreements, intensified by Trump’s crusade against mail voting, prevented some states from making it easier to vote absentee and for jurisdictions to count those votes in a timely manner. Chaos ensued. Ohio shut down in-person voting for its primary, leading to minuscule turnout. A poll-worker shortage in Milwaukee–where Wisconsin’s heavily Democratic Black population is concentrated–left just five open polling places, down from 182. In New York, vote counting took more than a month.
Suddenly, the potential for a November meltdown was obvious. In his apartment in the D.C. suburbs, Podhorzer began working from his laptop at his kitchen table, holding back-to-back Zoom meetings for hours a day with his network of contacts across the progressive universe: the labor movement; the institutional left, like Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace; resistance groups like Indivisible and MoveOn; progressive data geeks and strategists, representatives of donors and foundations, state-level grassroots organizers, racial-justice activists and others.
In April, Podhorzer began hosting a weekly 2½-hour Zoom. It was structured around a series of rapid-fire five-minute presentations on everything from which ads were working to messaging to legal strategy. The invitation-only gatherings soon attracted hundreds, creating a rare shared base of knowledge for the fractious progressive movement. “At the risk of talking trash about the left, there’s not a lot of good information sharing,” says Anat Shenker-Osorio, a close Podhorzer friend whose poll-tested messaging guidance shaped the group’s approach. “There’s a lot of not-invented-here syndrome, where people won’t consider a good idea if they didn’t come up with it.”
The meetings became the galactic center for a constellation of operatives across the left who shared overlapping goals but didn’t usually work in concert. The group had no name, no leaders and no hierarchy, but it kept the disparate actors in sync. “Pod played a critical behind-the-scenes role in keeping different pieces of the movement infrastructure in communication and aligned,” says Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. “You have the litigation space, the organizing space, the political people just focused on the W, and their strategies aren’t always aligned. He allowed this ecosystem to work together.”
Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. As 2020 progressed, it stretched to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy.
SECURING THE VOTE
The first task was overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure–in the middle of a pandemic. For the thousands of local, mostly nonpartisan officials who administer elections, the most urgent need was money. They needed protective equipment like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer. They needed to pay for postcards letting people know they could vote absentee–or, in some states, to mail ballots to every voter. They needed additional staff and scanners to process ballots.
In March, activists appealed to Congress to steer COVID relief money to election administration. Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, more than 150 organizations signed a letter to every member of Congress seeking $2 billion in election funding. It was somewhat successful: the CARES Act, passed later that month, contained $400 million in grants to state election administrators. But the next tranche of relief funding didn’t add to that number. It wasn’t going to be enough.
Private philanthropy stepped into the breach. An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chipped in $300 million. “It was a failure at the federal level that 2,500 local election officials were forced to apply for philanthropic grants to fill their needs,” says Amber McReynolds, a former Denver election official who heads the nonpartisan National Vote at Home Institute.
McReynolds’ two-year-old organization became a clearinghouse for a nation struggling to adapt. The institute gave secretaries of state from both parties technical advice on everything from which vendors to use to how to locate drop boxes. Local officials are the most trusted sources of election information, but few can afford a press secretary, so the institute distributed communications tool kits. In a presentation to Podhorzer’s group, McReynolds detailed the importance of absentee ballots for shortening lines at polling places and preventing an election crisis.
The institute’s work helped 37 states and D.C. bolster mail voting. But it wouldn’t be worth much if people didn’t take advantage. Part of the challenge was logistical: each state has different rules for when and how ballots should be requested and returned. The Voter Participation Center, which in a normal year would have deployed canvassers door-to-door to get out the vote, instead conducted focus groups in April and May to find out what would get people to vote by mail. In August and September, it sent ballot applications to 15 million people in key states, 4.6 million of whom returned them. In mailings and digital ads, the group urged people not to wait for Election Day. “All the work we have done for 17 years was built for this moment of bringing democracy to people’s doorsteps,” says Tom Lopach, the center’s CEO.
The effort had to overcome heightened skepticism in some communities. Many Black voters preferred to exercise their franchise in person or didn’t trust the mail. National civil rights groups worked with local organizations to get the word out that this was the best way to ensure one’s vote was counted. In Philadelphia, for example, advocates distributed “voting safety kits” containing masks, hand sanitizer and informational brochures. “We had to get the message out that this is safe, reliable, and you can trust it,” says Hannah Fried of All Voting Is Local.
At the same time, Democratic lawyers battled a historic tide of pre-election litigation. The pandemic intensified the parties’ usual tangling in the courts. But the lawyers noticed something else as well. “The litigation brought by the Trump campaign, of a piece with the broader campaign to sow doubt about mail voting, was making novel claims and using theories no court has ever accepted,” says Wendy Weiser, a voting-rights expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. “They read more like lawsuits designed to send a message rather than achieve a legal outcome.”
In the end, nearly half the electorate cast ballots by mail in 2020, practically a revolution in how people vote. About a quarter voted early in person. Only a quarter of voters cast their ballots the traditional way: in person on Election Day.
THE DISINFORMATION DEFENSE
Bad actors spreading false information is nothing new. For decades, campaigns have grappled with everything from anonymous calls claiming the election has been rescheduled to fliers spreading nasty smears about candidates’ families. But Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories, the viral force of social media and the involvement of foreign meddlers made disinformation a broader, deeper threat to the 2020 vote.
Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it. One component was tracking dangerous lies that might otherwise spread unnoticed. Researchers then provided information to campaigners or the media to track down the sources and expose them.
The most important takeaway from Quinn’s research, however, was that engaging with toxic content only made it worse. “When you get attacked, the instinct is to push back, call it out, say, ‘This isn’t true,'” Quinn says. “But the more engagement something gets, the more the platforms boost it. The algorithm reads that as, ‘Oh, this is popular; people want more of it.'”
The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place. “The platforms have policies against certain types of malign behavior, but they haven’t been enforcing them,” she says.
Quinn’s research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line. In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others. (Gupta has been nominated for Associate Attorney General by President Biden.) “It was a struggle, but we got to the point where they understood the problem. Was it enough? Probably not. Was it later than we wanted? Yes. But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.”
SPREADING THE WORD
Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. It was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night.
Dick Gephardt, the Democratic former House leader turned high-powered lobbyist, spearheaded one coalition. “We wanted to get a really bipartisan group of former elected officials, Cabinet secretaries, military leaders and so on, aimed mainly at messaging to the public but also speaking to local officials–the secretaries of state, attorneys general, governors who would be in the eye of the storm–to let them know we wanted to help,” says Gephardt, who worked his contacts in the private sector to put $20 million behind the effort.
Wamp, the former GOP Congressman, worked through the nonpartisan reform group Issue One to rally Republicans. “We thought we should bring some bipartisan element of unity around what constitutes a free and fair election,” Wamp says. The 22 Democrats and 22 Republicans on the National Council on Election Integrity met on Zoom at least once a week. They ran ads in six states, made statements, wrote articles and alerted local officials to potential problems. “We had rabid Trump supporters who agreed to serve on the council based on the idea that this is honest,” Wamp says. This is going to be just as important, he told them, to convince the liberals when Trump wins. “Whichever way it cuts, we’re going to stick together.”
The Voting Rights Lab and IntoAction created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by email, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, urging that every vote be counted. Together, they were viewed more than 1 billion times. Protect Democracy’s election task force issued reports and held media briefings with high-profile experts across the political spectrum, resulting in widespread coverage of potential election issues and fact-checking of Trump’s false claims. The organization’s tracking polls found the message was being heard: the percentage of the public that didn’t expect to know the winner on election night gradually rose until by late October, it was over 70%. A majority also believed that a prolonged count wasn’t a sign of problems. “We knew exactly what Trump was going to do: he was going to try to use the fact that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans voted in person to make it look like he was ahead, claim victory, say the mail-in votes were fraudulent and try to get them thrown out,” says Protect Democracy’s Bassin. Setting public expectations ahead of time helped undercut those lies.
Amber McReynolds, Zach Wamp and Maurice Mitchell
Rachel Woolf for TIME; Erik Schelzig—AP/Shutterstock; Holly Pickett—The New York Times/Redux
Amber McReynolds, Zach Wamp and Maurice Mitchell
The alliance took a common set of themes from the research Shenker-Osorio presented at Podhorzer’s Zooms. Studies have shown that when people don’t think their vote will count or fear casting it will be a hassle, they’re far less likely to participate. Throughout election season, members of Podhorzer’s group minimized incidents of voter intimidation and tamped down rising liberal hysteria about Trump’s expected refusal to concede. They didn’t want to amplify false claims by engaging them, or put people off voting by suggesting a rigged game. “When you say, ‘These claims of fraud are spurious,’ what people hear is ‘fraud,'” Shenker-Osorio says. “What we saw in our pre-election research was that anything that reaffirmed Trump’s power or cast him as an authoritarian diminished people’s desire to vote.”
Podhorzer, meanwhile, was warning everyone he knew that polls were underestimating Trump’s support. The data he shared with media organizations who would be calling the election was “tremendously useful” to understand what was happening as the votes rolled in, according to a member of a major network’s political unit who spoke with Podhorzer before Election Day. Most analysts had recognized there would be a “blue shift” in key battlegrounds– the surge of votes breaking toward Democrats, driven by tallies of mail-in ballots– but they hadn’t comprehended how much better Trump was likely to do on Election Day. “Being able to document how big the absentee wave would be and the variance by state was essential,” the analyst says.
PEOPLE POWER
The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives.
The best way to ensure people’s voices were heard, they decided, was to protect their ability to vote. “We started thinking about a program that would complement the traditional election-protection area but also didn’t rely on calling the police,” says Nelini Stamp, the Working Families Party’s national organizing director. They created a force of “election defenders” who, unlike traditional poll watchers, were trained in de-escalation techniques. During early voting and on Election Day, they surrounded lines of voters in urban areas with a “joy to the polls” effort that turned the act of casting a ballot into a street party. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities.
The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
About a week before Election Day, Podhorzer received an unexpected message: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted to talk.
The AFL-CIO and the Chamber have a long history of antagonism. Though neither organization is explicitly partisan, the influential business lobby has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, just as the nation’s unions funnel hundreds of millions to Democrats. On one side is labor, on the other management, locked in an eternal struggle for power and resources.
But behind the scenes, the business community was engaged in its own anxious discussions about how the election and its aftermath might unfold. The summer’s racial-justice protests had sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder. “With tensions running high, there was a lot of concern about unrest around the election, or a breakdown in our normal way we handle contentious elections,” says Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer. These worries had led the Chamber to release a pre-election statement with the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based CEOs’ group, as well as associations of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, calling for patience and confidence as votes were counted.
But Bradley wanted to send a broader, more bipartisan message. He reached out to Podhorzer, through an intermediary both men declined to name. Agreeing that their unlikely alliance would be powerful, they began to discuss a joint statement pledging their organizations’ shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election. They chose their words carefully and scheduled the statement’s release for maximum impact. As it was being finalized, Christian leaders signaled their interest in joining, further broadening its reach.
The statement was released on Election Day, under the names of Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network. “It is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” it stated. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual.” The groups added, “Although we may not always agree on desired outcomes up and down the ballot, we are united in our call for the American democratic process to proceed without violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.”
SHOWING UP, STANDING DOWN
Election night began with many Democrats despairing. Trump was running ahead of pre-election polling, winning Florida, Ohio and Texas easily and keeping Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania too close to call. But Podhorzer was unperturbed when I spoke to him that night: the returns were exactly in line with his modeling. He had been warning for weeks that Trump voters’ turnout was surging. As the numbers dribbled out, he could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.
The liberal alliance gathered for an 11 p.m. Zoom call. Hundreds joined; many were freaking out. “It was really important for me and the team in that moment to help ground people in what we had already known was true,” says Angela Peoples, director for the Democracy Defense Coalition. Podhorzer presented data to show the group that victory was in hand.
While he was talking, Fox News surprised everyone by calling Arizona for Biden. The public-awareness campaign had worked: TV anchors were bending over backward to counsel caution and frame the vote count accurately. The question then became what to do next.
The conversation that followed was a difficult one, led by the activists charged with the protest strategy. “We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street,” Peoples says. As much as they were eager to mount a show of strength, mobilizing immediately could backfire and put people at risk. Protests that devolved into violent clashes would give Trump a pretext to send in federal agents or troops as he had over the summer. And rather than elevate Trump’s complaints by continuing to fight him, the alliance wanted to send the message that the people had spoken.
So the word went out: stand down. Protect the Results announced that it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.” On Twitter, outraged progressives wondered what was going on. Why wasn’t anyone trying to stop Trump’s coup? Where were all the protests?
Podhorzer credits the activists for their restraint. “They had spent so much time getting ready to hit the streets on Wednesday. But they did it,” he says. “Wednesday through Friday, there was not a single Antifa vs. Proud Boys incident like everyone was expecting. And when that didn’t materialize, I don’t think the Trump campaign had a backup plan.”
Activists reoriented the Protect the Results protests toward a weekend of celebration. “Counter their disinfo with our confidence & get ready to celebrate,” read the messaging guidance Shenker-Osorio presented to the liberal alliance on Friday, Nov. 6. “Declare and fortify our win. Vibe: confident, forward-looking, unified–NOT passive, anxious.” The voters, not the candidates, would be the protagonists of the story.
The planned day of celebration happened to coincide with the election being called on Nov. 7. Activists dancing in the streets of Philadelphia blasted Beyoncé over an attempted Trump campaign press conference; the Trumpers’ next confab was scheduled for Four Seasons Total Landscaping outside the city center, which activists believe was not a coincidence. “The people of Philadelphia owned the streets of Philadelphia,” crows the Working Families Party’s Mitchell. “We made them look ridiculous by contrasting our joyous celebration of democracy with their clown show.”
The votes had been counted. Trump had lost. But the battle wasn’t over.
THE FIVE STEPS TO VICTORY
In Podhorzer’s presentations, winning the vote was only the first step to winning the election. After that came winning the count, winning the certification, winning the Electoral College and winning the transition–steps that are normally formalities but that he knew Trump would see as opportunities for disruption. Nowhere would that be more evident than in Michigan, where Trump’s pressure on local Republicans came perilously close to working–and where liberal and conservative pro-democracy forces joined to counter it.
It was around 10 p.m. on election night in Detroit when a flurry of texts lit up the phone of Art Reyes III. A busload of Republican election observers had arrived at the TCF Center, where votes were being tallied. They were crowding the vote-counting tables, refusing to wear masks, heckling the mostly Black workers. Reyes, a Flint native who leads We the People Michigan, was expecting this. For months, conservative groups had been sowing suspicion about urban vote fraud. “The language was, ‘They’re going to steal the election; there will be fraud in Detroit,’ long before any vote was cast,” Reyes says.
Trump supporters seek to disrupt the vote count at Detroit’s TCF Center on Nov. 4
Elaine Cromie—Getty Images
Trump supporters seek to disrupt the vote count at Detroit’s TCF Center on Nov. 4
He made his way to the arena and sent word to his network. Within 45 minutes, dozens of reinforcements had arrived. As they entered the arena to provide a counterweight to the GOP observers inside, Reyes took down their cell-phone numbers and added them to a massive text chain. Racial-justice activists from Detroit Will Breathe worked alongside suburban women from Fems for Dems and local elected officials. Reyes left at 3 a.m., handing the text chain over to a disability activist.
As they mapped out the steps in the election-certification process, activists settled on a strategy of foregrounding the people’s right to decide, demanding their voices be heard and calling attention to the racial implications of disenfranchising Black Detroiters. They flooded the Wayne County canvassing board’s Nov. 17 certification meeting with on-message testimony; despite a Trump tweet, the Republican board members certified Detroit’s votes.
Election boards were one pressure point; another was GOP-controlled legislatures, who Trump believed could declare the election void and appoint their own electors. And so the President invited the GOP leaders of the Michigan legislature, House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate majority leader Mike Shirkey, to Washington on Nov. 20.
It was a perilous moment. If Chatfield and Shirkey agreed to do Trump’s bidding, Republicans in other states might be similarly bullied. “I was concerned things were going to get weird,” says Jeff Timmer, a former Michigan GOP executive director turned anti-Trump activist. Norm Eisen describes it as “the scariest moment” of the entire election.
The democracy defenders launched a full-court press. Protect Democracy’s local contacts researched the lawmakers’ personal and political motives. Issue One ran television ads in Lansing. The Chamber’s Bradley kept close tabs on the process. Wamp, the former Republican Congressman, called his former colleague Mike Rogers, who wrote an op-ed for the Detroit newspapers urging officials to honor the will of the voters. Three former Michigan governors–Republicans John Engler and Rick Snyder and Democrat Jennifer Granholm–jointly called for Michigan’s electoral votes to be cast free of pressure from the White House. Engler, a former head of the Business Roundtable, made phone calls to influential donors and fellow GOP elder statesmen who could press the lawmakers privately.
The pro-democracy forces were up against a Trumpified Michigan GOP controlled by allies of Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chair, and Betsy DeVos, the former Education Secretary and a member of a billionaire family of GOP donors. On a call with his team on Nov. 18, Bassin vented that his side’s pressure was no match for what Trump could offer. “Of course he’s going to try to offer them something,” Bassin recalls thinking. “Head of the Space Force! Ambassador to wherever! We can’t compete with that by offering carrots. We need a stick.”
If Trump were to offer something in exchange for a personal favor, that would likely constitute bribery, Bassin reasoned. He phoned Richard Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan, to see if Primus agreed and would make the argument publicly. Primus said he thought the meeting itself was inappropriate, and got to work on an op-ed for Politico warning that the state attorney general–a Democrat–would have no choice but to investigate. When the piece posted on Nov. 19, the attorney general’s communications director tweeted it. Protect Democracy soon got word that the lawmakers planned to bring lawyers to the meeting with Trump the next day.
Reyes’ activists scanned flight schedules and flocked to the airports on both ends of Shirkey’s journey to D.C., to underscore that the lawmakers were being scrutinized. After the meeting, the pair announced they’d pressed the President to deliver COVID relief for their constituents and informed him they saw no role in the election process. Then they went for a drink at the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. A street artist projected their images onto the outside of the building along with the words THE WORLD IS WATCHING.
That left one last step: the state canvassing board, made up of two Democrats and two Republicans. One Republican, a Trumper employed by the DeVos family’s political nonprofit, was not expected to vote for certification. The other Republican on the board was a little-known lawyer named Aaron Van Langevelde. He sent no signals about what he planned to do, leaving everyone on edge.
When the meeting began, Reyes’s activists flooded the livestream and filled Twitter with their hashtag, #alleyesonmi. A board accustomed to attendance in the single digits suddenly faced an audience of thousands. In hours of testimony, the activists emphasized their message of respecting voters’ wishes and affirming democracy rather than scolding the officials. Van Langevelde quickly signaled he would follow precedent. The vote was 3-0 to certify; the other Republican abstained.
After that, the dominoes fell. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and the rest of the states certified their electors. Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia stood up to Trump’s bullying. And the Electoral College voted on schedule on Dec. 14.
HOW CLOSE WE CAME
There was one last milestone on Podhorzer’s mind: Jan. 6. On the day Congress would meet to tally the electoral count, Trump summoned his supporters to D.C. for a rally.
Much to their surprise, the thousands who answered his call were met by virtually no counterdemonstrators. To preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was “strenuously discouraging counter activity,” Podhorzer texted me the morning of Jan. 6, with a crossed-fingers emoji.
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Trump addressed the crowd that afternoon, peddling the lie that lawmakers or Vice President Mike Pence could reject states’ electoral votes. He told them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Then he returned to the White House as they sacked the building. As lawmakers fled for their lives and his own supporters were shot and trampled, Trump praised the rioters as “very special.”
It was his final attack on democracy, and once again, it failed. By standing down, the democracy campaigners outfoxed their foes. “We won by the skin of our teeth, honestly, and that’s an important point for folks to sit with,” says the Democracy Defense Coalition’s Peoples. “There’s an impulse for some to say voters decided and democracy won. But it’s a mistake to think that this election cycle was a show of strength for democracy. It shows how vulnerable democracy is.”
The members of the alliance to protect the election have gone their separate ways. The Democracy Defense Coalition has been disbanded, though the Fight Back Table lives on. Protect Democracy and the good-government advocates have turned their attention to pressing reforms in Congress. Left-wing activists are pressuring the newly empowered Democrats to remember the voters who put them there, while civil rights groups are on guard against further attacks on voting. Business leaders denounced the Jan. 6 attack, and some say they will no longer donate to lawmakers who refused to certify Biden’s victory. Podhorzer and his allies are still holding their Zoom strategy sessions, gauging voters’ views and developing new messages. And Trump is in Florida, facing his second impeachment, deprived of the Twitter and Facebook accounts he used to push the nation to its breaking point.
As I was reporting this article in November and December, I heard different claims about who should get the credit for thwarting Trump’s plot. Liberals argued the role of bottom-up people power shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly the contributions of people of color and local grassroots activists. Others stressed the heroism of GOP officials like Van Langevelde and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who stood up to Trump at considerable cost. The truth is that neither likely could have succeeded without the other. “It’s astounding how close we came, how fragile all this really is,” says Timmer, the former Michigan GOP executive director. “It’s like when Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff–if you don’t look down, you don’t fall. Our democracy only survives if we all believe and don’t look down.”
Democracy won in the end. The will of the people prevailed. But it’s crazy, in retrospect, that this is what it took to put on an election in the United States of America.
–With reporting by LESLIE DICKSTEIN, MARIAH ESPADA and SIMMONE SHAH
Correction appended, Feb. 5: The original version of this story misstated the name of Norm Eisen’s organization. It is the Voter Protection Program, not the Voter Protection Project. The original version of this story also misstated Jeff Timmer’s former position with the Michigan Republican Party. He was the executive director, not the chairman.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 22, 2022, 06:51:13 PM
THANK YOU!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2022, 07:37:02 AM
Looking for that article about how the Biden White House is on a Wag the Dog play here.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on March 03, 2022, 07:41:13 AM
Looking for that article about how the Biden White House is on a Wag the Dog play here.

There are more than a few on that topic.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 03, 2022, 07:57:05 AM
It mentioned how the White House had this in mind.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2022, 08:43:30 AM
I forget the name of the thread, but we have a thread where we share the URLs of sites useful for finding things and related matters.  Does anyone remember the name of the thread?

With the betrayal by DuckDuck, here is one I am told is worth considering.

https://www.qwant.com/?l=en&fbclid=IwAR3nOflLtXAYdsG6WE7NkDJo-lBJwGYyz9v3dqf57_oYuCiBi82izSl8ugc
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2022, 03:02:31 PM
Anyone have access to this?

https://dailycaller.com/2022/06/25/secret-racist-history-pro-abortion-choice-movement-margaret-sanger-planned-parenthood/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=recaps&tpcc%3D=recaps&pnespid=6aJiGXtcJKwRgvLD.zq9HJOXtBD0VJEpNeSg2Oxn.kxmvo6zfeGw2HD22k04nJu8NmY5mh2r

I used to pay, but have been trimming back for budgetary reasons-- I had entirely too many monthly charges!
Title: Patting myself on the back
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 13, 2022, 07:58:46 PM
I was talking about this here back in 2008 around the Russian invasion of Georgia
Title: Intro Valerick
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2022, 01:38:43 PM
Woof All: 

Expanding here from the DBMA Association, where he is a Group Leader, is Valerick.

Tell us about yourself V.

CD
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Valerick on September 01, 2022, 01:55:58 PM
Woof! Hello all :-). Thank you P.G.Crafty for the introduction.

From Florida originally but I've lived in a few other places. Former Law-enforcement/P.I. and have done a lot of online investigation/looking for people/info work.

Been doing martial arts on and off for awhile and am most interested in weapon arts/knife and fighting psychology. Huge fan of strategy discussions, World History, War History, Miyamoto Musashi and other Soldier Saint figures. Have a bachelors in Criminal Justice and still have a lot of fun studying prison cultures and fighting systems (Folsom/Pollsmore). Also a big fan of martial philosophy (Aforementioned Musashi's works, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, 48 laws of power/war etc.) also made me excited to read those things and see them sometimes "in the real world."

Mostly here to read the updates, share some political insights from various groups and learn more strategy/culture and political insights. Big believer in "know the enemy/know thyself...etc" idea. I'd say I'm pretty conservative, more so than most I meet. Browse the news a lot and have access to wildly different political spheres that helps me get some good info (imo). Going to be an interesting Winter!

Thanks again for letting me come lurk and interact :-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on September 01, 2022, 09:09:38 PM
Welcome!

It sounds like we have a lot in common.


Woof! Hello all :-). Thank you P.G.Crafty for the introduction.

From Florida originally but I've lived in a few other places. Former Law-enforcement/P.I. and have done a lot of online investigation/looking for people/info work.

Been doing martial arts on and off for awhile and am most interested in weapon arts/knife and fighting psychology. Huge fan of strategy discussions, World History, War History, Miyamoto Musashi and other Soldier Saint figures. Have a bachelors in Criminal Justice and still have a lot of fun studying prison cultures and fighting systems (Folsom/Pollsmore). Also a big fan of martial philosophy (Aforementioned Musashi's works, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, 48 laws of power/war etc.) also made me excited to read those things and see them sometimes "in the real world."

Mostly here to read the updates, share some political insights from various groups and learn more strategy/culture and political insights. Big believer in "know the enemy/know thyself...etc" idea. I'd say I'm pretty conservative, more so than most I meet. Browse the news a lot and have access to wildly different political spheres that helps me get some good info (imo). Going to be an interesting Winter!

Thanks again for letting me come lurk and interact :-)
Title: Crafty w/out grid
Post by: G M on December 04, 2022, 08:35:22 PM
He asked that I let you all know that he may not have power until Thursday, and thus no internet.
Title: Re: Crafty w/out grid
Post by: DougMacG on December 05, 2022, 06:58:23 AM
He asked that I let you all know that he may not have power until Thursday, and thus no internet.

Welcome back G M.   )
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on December 05, 2022, 07:09:05 AM
hey GM,

windmills down in your area ?

or just very cloudy and solar panels do not work?

 :wink:
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: G M on December 05, 2022, 07:35:53 AM
Unfortunately, I am not back as I am not ok with being censored.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 07, 2022, 11:18:03 AM
I'm back on online!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on December 08, 2022, 06:19:46 AM
I'm back on online!

Hope to hear your thoughts on future prepping priorities coming out of this experience.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 09, 2022, 06:23:55 AM
Will do.  Right now getting ready to drive 6 hours from VA lowlands to the Bronx, NYC.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2022, 06:43:33 AM
Back from my trip.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on December 14, 2022, 07:16:53 AM
Back from my trip.

Looking forward to learning insights from the extended power outage.  Prep or energy thread?

I'm in a colder climate.  Heat is the first concern.
Title: If I leave the country on a business trip,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2023, 09:36:38 AM
do I need to vaxx to get back in?
Title: Re: If I leave the country on a business trip,
Post by: G M on March 12, 2023, 09:38:49 AM
do I need to vaxx to get back in?

Just walk in through Mexico, you'll get a free cell phone!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2023, 05:48:35 PM
Haha , , , ha.

What about my return from Denmark?  I'd rather fly to America than Mexico and then take a bus and then deal with narcos wondering WTF I am doing there.
Title: In Search of George Friedman's Mind
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2023, 07:03:20 PM
March 21, 2023
View On Website
Open as PDF

    
In Search of a Mind
By: Meredith Friedman
Tuesday is normally the day George publishes his weekly analysis, but that will not be happening this week. After three years of managing to avoid COVID-19, George came down the week before last with what we thought was the flu, but a few days later he tested positive for COVID-19. On March 11, after several days of fever and not eating, he agreed to go to the local ER. After an afternoon of tests, they admitted him and kept him for a couple of nights for monitoring.

The symptoms that worried me were signs of confusion and delirium, where he thought he was a best-selling author and geopolitical forecaster … oh, that part may be true, but there were other parts that were not. He was not sure where he was, why he was there or who had put him there. Paranoia is part of every Eastern European’s heritage, but in this case escaping from the hospital became George’s main obsession. It did not help that I tested positive for COVID-19 as well and was not allowed to visit him even though I had very minor symptoms.

He’d also lost his cellphone somewhere in the transfer between the ER and the hospital room, so I couldn’t call him or vice versa, and going through the hospital operator and then the nurse’s station to his room phone was something I haven’t done in more than 20 years. He couldn’t remember my phone number, and when I finally reached him and told him to write it down he tried to get out of bed to find a pen, setting off all sorts of alarms from the monitors hooked up to him and creating minor chaos among the nursing staff in his hospital wing.

Our great team of analysts has been writing and publishing as normal, and we have appreciated their support in filling in for George. He has been home for almost a week and is recovering nicely. He was eager to write an article for today. I realized he was no longer suffering from confusion and is back in touch with reality when he said, “This is really bad. Let me start over.” However, by then he was very tired, so I suggested he wait a little longer to begin writing again and made him rest. Unfortunately, George has never been good at taking orders, and I’ve had to hide his laptop.

He will be back soon.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 29, 2023, 07:25:27 PM
Gents:

Let's remember please to use the subject line when the post may be of future significance so as to facilitate being able to find it with a Search command.

Thank you,
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2023, 09:29:38 AM
It may take him a few weeks to get here, but I have just recruited a good friend and intellectual comrade in arms for the forum.  See something by him that I posted recently on the rant thread.

Stay tuned!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2023, 06:53:21 PM
I have someone of good skills and political awareness who wants to score a gig with the DeSantis campaign.

Any thoughts on how to get to the right people to discuss this?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2023, 01:06:47 AM
Looking for a fairly recent post of US defense experts warning against US expanding into East Europe.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2023, 06:22:50 PM
Woof All: 

I want to introduce my good internet friend SWBrowne to everyone here.  I will leave it to him to describe the interesting life he has led which is part of why he has a lot to bring to our conversation here. 

TAC!
CD

His book (see thread presently nearby) is well worth the time and money!


Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2023, 08:20:16 AM


Woof Gents:

As we all know, the Goolag sends a lot of highly relevant footage/evidence down the Memory Hole.

I would like to ask all of us when we see something that someday we will want to have as proof/evidence down the road to SAVE IT before it gets Memory Holed.

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 12, 2023, 11:24:08 AM
Will be rather intermittent the next five days.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2023, 12:33:29 PM
I have distinct memory of Trump's second impeachment and trial being full of procedural skullduggery which we noted here but am not finding it.

=============

See Reply 381:  Is there a wayback machine through which we can find this?

https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=2748.msg132816#msg132816
Title: National Guard troop issues on J6
Post by: DougMacG on August 06, 2023, 05:47:34 PM
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2467051/planning-and-execution-timeline-for-the-national-guards-involvement-in-the-janu/

https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jan/11/2002563151/-1/-1/0/PLANNING-AND-EXECUTION-TIMELINE-FOR-THE-NATIONAL-GUARDS-INVOLVEMENT-IN-THE-JANUARY-6-2021-VIOLENT-ATTACK-AT-THE-US-CAPITOL.PDF

https://mynbc15.com/news/nation-world/trump-admin-was-ready-to-deploy-national-guard-on-jan-6-capitol-police-timeline-shows-january-donald
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2023, 06:54:44 AM
Thank you very much!
Title: Welcoming Objectivist back to the Forum!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 03, 2023, 02:18:30 PM
After a few years away, we are rejoined by Objectivist.  I will leave it to him to intro himself as he sees fit  :-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on September 22, 2023, 06:02:17 PM
In BWCA for a few days.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/visit/destination/boundary-waters-canoe-area-wilderness
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2023, 10:50:32 PM
Far out.

Great day today at the American Open DB Gathering!

Return to NC tomorrow.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: ccp on September 25, 2023, 11:11:30 AM
To Doug,

the scene is nice peaceful - green - nature  :-D

reading the chapter in Kaku's book on photosynthesis was illuminating to me
we know the general chemical equation of photosynthesis: water + CO2 + photons ===> O2 + sugar.

But apparently we have no idea how the plants do this and must be doing so on the quantum level.

We are able to achieve some level of quantum computing but only at near absolute zero under enormous pressures .
Due to the need to block any interference.

Plants can do this @ near 100% efficiency at normal temperatures and atmospheric pressures with photosynthesis.

If we can unlock how they do this we maybe able to unlock real quantum computing at a practical marketable level.

We will be able to make solar panels 100% efficient like plants.
We be able to make batteries with vastly more efficiency and lifespan.

So when out in the woods marvel at photosynthesis and pray we can unlock nature's secrets of billions of years of evolution so we can harness them too.

(No MSLSD, CNN, ABC , NBC , CBS, PBS, NPR, Slate, Politico, DNUZ, She knows, WP , NYT, WH propaganda press conferences)

Enjoy!

ccp
)
Title: What I Did on my Listserv Vacation
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on October 11, 2023, 04:58:30 PM
Tap, tap, tap, is this thing on?

As some may recall, four years or so ago I was regularly underfoot, but departed due to one too many ad hominem, unresponsive, and iterative laps around the same track. One of the attractions of posting here is that the level of discussion, even when disagreeing with someone, is more than a step above most forums or whatnot. Generally at least, though there was a topic that regularly led to emotive rather than reasoned exchanges. No longer worth the squeeze, after many laps around a non-responsive track I opted to forgo the juice and left.

The topic in question was the WOD; ironically in the intervening years I gained a unique perspective where that topic is concerned. Towards the end of 2019 I hit the ER due to some GI pain. Having dealt with pancreatitis over a decade earlier, I assumed I was dealing with a return bout and told the ER MD as much, which got the morphine flowing. Bloodwork came back negative, however, which earned me some drug seeking eyeballing.

I was trundled off for an ultrasound nonetheless, with the MD being coy about the results, telling me I needed a CT and to see an endocrinologist, providing a referral for both. Somehow managed to get right in for them, and was referred to yet another practice that specialized in pancreatic issues, and they referred me for an MRI. Elapsed time was about 3 weeks.

Then came the grim conversation: “there is a growth on the head of your pancreas that very well could be cancer, and the best way forward would involve going in, taking a look, and then proceeding accordingly,” once they had a good look. I was scheduled for surgery Xmas eve, though begged of as a nurse I trusted told me holiday surgical crews were more likely to have picked up long shifts and might not be at the top of their game. As such we rescheduled for mid-January, which gave me more time to get all my end of life planning handled as, let’s face it, pancreatic cancer is a DX few have to wrestle for long.

They went in, concluded it was indeed cancer, so I spent about 14 hours on the table having a “Whipple procedure” performed, losing my pancreas, gallbladder, spleen, some intestine, some stomach, as well as my appendix for grins and giggles. I could not have drawn a better surgeon: he’d performed thousands of Whipples, didn’t cherry pick patients for ones that wouldn’t gum up his stats, had a low mortality rate (some surgeons lose up to 10% of their Whipple patients), and was very straightforward, too boot, not varnishing what surgery might bring me while making it clear how well I recovered was up to me.

Earned some impressive scars while on the table & then woke up in GI surgery recovery ward. The surgeon told me the faster I start moving around, the faster I could get out of there, so me and my trusty IV hanger took our first lap around the ward—a large square likely of 300 feet or so—about 6 hours after I came to and continued doing so every couple hours (there was not much sleep to be hand between the poking, prodding, beeping of medical accoutrements, and such), increasing the number of laps with each outing. Pain meds were a prominent element of the poking, though on day 3 when I started eating solid food I was also switched over to oral pain meds. On the fourth day post-Whipple I was released.

Won’t bore you all with further recovery details, but will note pain meds were a prominent feature. I’m told as surgery goes a Whipple’s complexity is just shy of that of a heart transplant and indeed there aren’t many surgeries that require more than a half day of being cut on. Trust it goes without saying that having one’s plumbing rearranged in so major a fashion brings its share of pain along for the ride, everything from topical pain where my hundreds of internal and external staples and stitches were concerned, to deep belly pain as sundry rearranged organs got used to the new order of things.

Alas, three weeks seems to be the max most surgeons are comfortable prescribing narcotic pain meds for, with some outright stating that the feds look over their shoulders, hence the hesitancy. Due to some other pending and already addressed boo-boos I already regularly visited a pain practice—during my hardcore martial art days I ate Ibuprofen 800 mg at a time more than several times a day, which lead the nephrologist to order me to avoid NSAIDs henceforth—and so was already on a low-grade narcotic regimen for chronic pain, with that regimen adjusted post-Whipple.

That pain practice was my then second one. The first was something of an analgesic-dispensing low rent factory: eight curtained exam “rooms” where you could clearly hear other patients describing their woes, as their doctors, or more commonly nurse practitioners (NP), sternly guided their putative patients towards the least amount of relief they could offer lest the feds or whomever swoop in and call them a pill mill. It was a very disheartening scene, but the only pain practice in my corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My NP seemed manic depressive, sometime happily trading martial arts stories with me, and the next intimating I was overstating my needs. The waiting room there was often Dantesque, and always depressing.

As such I sought to step up and did what I usually do: sought a practice halfway between home and Washington DC in the hope I’d find a better MD serving the DC exurbs. And the one I found was indeed a step up: the waiting room was less grim, the clientele look less like Walking Dead bit players, the NP didn’t have a switch that flipped into inquisition mode, and so by contrast if nothing else it was the better choice. Still, there was always the sense you were suspected of drug seeking, particularly by the front desk staff, and I did note several incidents that just didn’t sit well.

Once the waiting room was packed, they were running way behind, and there weren’t enough chairs. I offered mine to a woman with a cane, then waited in line at the window to ask if there were any chairs in back that could be used, but was coldly rebuffed. As such I went to roam the halls looking for chairs, found one, only to be snootily told by the desk staff that they had called for me while I was absent. Second time there was a guy in a wheelchair who seemed unresponsive that was accompanied by a couple sixty or so olds that I took to be his kids or similar. An RX form needed signing and the desk woman had come out from behind the glass—that barrier was not particularly wheelchair friendly—and insisted that he sign it. He couldn’t find the acuity to grasp the clipboard, much less the thrust pen, so one of his aides offered to sign the form for him. No can do, the imperious desk jockey declared, he has to sign it or he can’t get his meds.

There were more innings to that one, which finally resolved when one aide held the clipboard while another grasped his hand and pen, forcing it to “sign” the paper, but that was the last straw for me. The desk staff clearly had no customer service skills. They didn’t have to: pain relief was a sellers market and patients could either put up with their shit or go without. I transferred my care to a sister practice closer into DC and did find them far more friendly, but I was still annoyed by the ethics of this pain chain practice and so kept seeking.

As I was sorting that out I began a course of prophylactic chemotherapy. The cancer wasn’t found in my lymph nodes, which would have pretty much been game, set match, so the plan was to do 16 weeks of chemo in case a wan cancer cell or two was missed. Well guess what: chemo sucks. I had to go in weekly to sit in a chair for an hour or so to have poison pumped into me, then had to stick a 3 inch needle in my belly weekly to inject something that encouraged white blood cells to regrow after having been poisoned, all while daily eating a nausea inducing pill a couple times daily, losing A LOT of weight along the way.

Spoke to my oncologist about this; he asked if I had a pain MD. Told him my tale of woe there; he asked if I had tried a practice just up the street from the hospital. Indeed I had prior to the Whipple when dealing with post rotator cuff surgery and other lingering MA injury pain, but had been told that they “aren’t that typed of pain practice,” which I took to mean they didn’t treat random folk off the street lest they turn out to be drug seekers. My oncologist rolled his eyes, picked up the phone, and got me an appointment with them.

Orders of magnitude better, with the downside being this practice was over an hour from home, while our friendly neighborhood feds don’t allow telemedicine for pain treatment, particularly as pissing into a cup is a regular indignity that just can’t be replaced by pissing on the phone. As that may be, eating is nice and sleeping is too so I made the trek and indeed started getting some effective relief. Medical THC is legal in my state, the new pain MD stated many chemo patients get relief by using it, so I jumped through the numerous hoops and got a script.

Oh. My. Goodness. Have you any idea how good food tastes after you’ve lost 50 lbs. and even thinking about eating makes you want to toss cookies? Yeah, THC fixed that. And then sleep! Prior to medical marijuana I slept in 90 minute segments and felt lucky if a night brought me more than four and a half interrupted hours. Eat some THC and I could chow down, catch four hours sleep, wake hungry, eat again, and fall back asleep for a couple hours or more. It was amazing! The dope wasn’t the ditch weed of my misspent youth—learned the hard way that old metrics don’t apply to this generation of weed, with staring off into space and drooling being the major downside—but sheesh, chemo became more than endurable and I was able to cut back on narcotic meds due to the relief THC brought.

The feds, of course, had tossed a fly in the ointment. Though legal in my state, and though dispensaries operated without the DEA crashing through their doors, THC was still on the schedule as a narcotic. No one bothered to mention that as I jumped through the various hoops, but I had occasion to help a friend by a gun and as she filled out the BATFE’s form 4473 there’s a yes/no question about being the user of an illegal narcotic. Hadn’t even thought of that when it came to medical treatment and so researched the topic further and discovered indeed, in the fed’s view if you were undergoing chemo or whatever and had been prescribed THC you nonetheless lost your second amendment rights. Fortunately my guns are in a trust—set up as part of the end of life prep I did—so I could keep kosher by ceding them to a trustee, but that was a temporary fix at best were I to continue my various firearm pursuits.

Won’t belabor things; where I live you have to be annually qualified to continue THC treatment, chemo ended about eight months after it started, leaving me the choice or renewing or not. To put it more starkly I had to choose between sleeping or ceding second amendment protections and rights. I opted to surrender sleep and have asked more than one drug warrior to explain what justifies being put in such a bind. No answer has been forthcoming. I’m not surprised. I’ve been asking a similar question of someone generally able to frame cogent arguments here to name a single criteria by which the WOD can be measured a success, only go earn the full gambit of fallacious “argument” in return. I’ve noted over the years whenever a response hits too close to home this player abandons reasoned discourse in favor of snark and name calling.

Indeed I’ve noted in my absence a couple of posts containing straw elements, generally to the effect that some absent “loonatarian” assured the list this or that ill effect of drug decriminalizing couldn’t possibly occur. Were those comments indeed pointed at me I’d respond by making clear I did no such thing. Rather I stated that, as the WOD has failed by any rational measure, perhaps it’s time to try things other countries have had success with as the trillion dollars spent, the millions of American’s warehoused in prison, the generations of children that have grown up without fathers, the drug lords that have grown rich due to our folly, along with all the dysfunction and perverse incentives this prohibition retread spun off et al and all the unintended consequences that have resulted point to nothing but abject failure. One could hardly do worse.

My cancer journey certainly has shown me that drug warrior interference substantially impacts pain management both post operatively—also had a titanium plate installed in a foot post Whipple that laid me up worse than that major surgery—and where chronic pain is concerned, particularly as I’m no longer allowed to eat vitamin I, as we called ibuprofen where I trained, by the fistful any longer. Moreover it seems every MD now lives in fear of showing up on some DEA list or whatever, and so prescribe pain meds in a manner that seeks to avoid federal entanglements rather than as best serves the patient’s needs. Meanwhile should one find that THC addresses pain and reduces the need for narcotic relief one can indeed get it prescribed, so long as they are willing to cede second amendment rights. All in all it’s pretty freaking silly and utterly par for the drug warrior course.

I can still rattle on, eh? Bottom line is since I’ve departed I’ve had first hand experience where WOD folly is concerned, with that folly impacting me significantly. I’m now 3.5 years post Whipple, get a CT every six months that have been coming back clean, and will be declared cured assuming I make 5 years. I ‘spose it’s also worth noting that if I had gotten on the table a week or two later I likely wouldn’t be here to write this as Covid madness then swept the country, with most hospitals including the one I had surgery at closing down for all “elective” surgery. Pretty good chance that if I had gone an additional six months the cancer would have spread and hence been a lot harder to beat, to name just one element of Covid insanity and how those folks from the government are here to help.

Anyway I’m back and, assuming there’s still little social media asshattery to endure around here, expect I’ll stay. I’ve certainly missed this forum and many of you and hope to hobnob with you all soon.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 11, 2023, 05:55:39 PM
WELCOME BACK!

Quite a fine post to kick off your new era here!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on October 12, 2023, 06:33:44 AM
Welcome back!  What an ordeal!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2023, 03:07:23 PM
Welcome back to  Objectivist!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Admin on November 17, 2023, 08:27:01 AM
Quick note regarding a nefarious link recently posted. This appears to be an honest mistake. No need for any panic. The link referred to another website that appears to have been compromised. I have removed the link to avoid any further exposure to the members. I see no evidence of any issues on our server. I have spoken to Marc, and everything looks good. No need to circle the wagons at this time.  :-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2023, 09:32:37 AM
Gratitude Bob!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 17, 2023, 07:17:20 PM
Quick note regarding a nefarious link recently posted. This appears to be an honest mistake. No need for any panic. The link referred to another website that appears to have been compromised. I have removed the link to avoid any further exposure to the members. I see no evidence of any issues on our server. I have spoken to Marc, and everything looks good. No need to circle the wagons at this time.  :-)

Any web hygiene changes we need to make Bob?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 17, 2023, 07:35:29 PM
Entirely possible that the glitch was mine by my being clueless when it comes to updating the security of my browsers. 

If I understand correctly what Bob told me we should be good to go, but to play it safe I have PM'd him the link for this thread so he will know to come and answer your question. 

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on November 17, 2023, 08:09:04 PM
Entirely possible that the glitch was mine by my being clueless when it comes to updating the security of my browsers. 

If I understand correctly what Bob told me we should be good to go, but to play it safe I have PM'd him the link for this thread so he will know to come and answer your question.

Sounds good. Want to make sure I didn’t post something from a malicious source.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Admin on November 26, 2023, 12:04:37 PM
Quote
Any web hygiene changes we need to make Bob?

I didn't see any bad activity here. There was just a link to another website that may have had some compromised material on it. You are good to go.
Title: Wanna Play in a Big Freaking Cave?
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on December 05, 2023, 10:12:03 AM
No, the question ain't a metaphor, and pardon the wide net I'm casting....

As Crafty knows I'm a Fellow with an org chartered to explore caves in national parks and other federal land and have been caving with this org since the mid-80s. Working as a chef back in the day, I've contributed to this effort in various ways beyond bopping around underground such as proving that all meals don't have to be prepared in cast iron skillets using reserved bacon grease to fry copious quantities of starch, among other concepts considered heterodox back in the day.

As that may be, I managed camp for the Thanksgiving expedition--something I've done with an interruption or two for 35+ years--and confess feeding 32 cavers across five days among other support needs kicked my 66 year old ass. What can I say, 16+ hour days don't come as easily as they used to, particularly while nursing sundry boo boos. As such I'm putting out the word: if you'd like access to unique resources few get to see beyond the tourist trails, give me a shout. I'll use and abuse you in the kitchen for a meal or two, handle your room and board, equip you, get you on a basic cave trip or two, perhaps get you into some virgin cave, and otherwise immerse you in an environment where the person that wrote the geologic, hydrologic, biologic, archaeologic, etc. treatise or text might be wolfing down dinner at the seat next to you, or perhaps even conducting your trip. Oh, and I smoke a mean freaking turkey or three....

If interested give me a shout and I'll provide details, answer questions, et al. Indeed, let me give you a sage piece of caving advice: the answer to the question "did you bring your wetsuit to camp?" is always "no," lest you get suckered into some cold, tight, muddy, trip well beyond what is generally considered fun. Only cop to having a wetsuit in hand if YOU or someone you trust know where you are going.

See how easy it is to learn about caving?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 05, 2023, 10:25:01 AM
Welcome back!

Great post!
Title: All Part of Our Permanent Record
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 21, 2024, 06:24:47 AM
In view of a post earlier today noting various predictors suggesting the 2024 election could lead to civil war, perhaps it’s time to state what ought to be obvious loud and clear: many of the posts here are ones Deep State denizens and their fellow travelers would rather not see circulated, this site is likely surveilled to one degree or another (and I’d err on the side of more, rather than less), those doing the surveilling carry Deep State water a couple of Jerrycans at a time, despite our nom-de-plumes know who we are down to our dental records and, given the Progressive left’s utter willingness to disregard reality as most experience it and instead warp all facts of the matter to serve the narrative need of the moment, perhaps it’s prudent to post as though a vindictive Deep State awaits us come 2025.

Not that prudence instituted today will seriously impact any thought crimes already committed, but given FBI fondness for launching schemes that entrap Americans—shooting fish in a barrel beats hell out of doing real work involving actual violent criminals—it might be worth bearing in mind, particularly should some kindly list member reach out offering to help plan the kidnapping of, say, Michigan’s governor or something that ought to sound absurd, but history has shown isn’t.

Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 21, 2024, 08:59:56 AM
Your thought is well shared here.

"should some kindly list member reach out offering to help plan the kidnapping of, say, Michigan’s governor"

No one here of that sort!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 21, 2024, 10:07:58 AM
Your thought is well shared here.

"should some kindly list member reach out offering to help plan the kidnapping of, say, Michigan’s governor"

No one here of that sort!!!
My smart assed way of saying beware of people reaching out to you feigning your politics after availing themselves upon open source intelligence and then trying to suck you into some harebrained scheme.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 21, 2024, 11:22:31 AM
You have PM. :-D
Title: suggestion
Post by: ccp on January 26, 2024, 07:07:29 AM
"intelligence psychology and AI" thread does not make sense.

I think this an example of what BBG was talking about with thread titles that are confusing.

how about "AI and Quantum computing"
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2024, 10:16:36 AM
Progress towards clarity is a good thing!

I do think that Human Intelligence belongs in there as well.

How about :

"Human Intelligence, AI, and Quantum Computing"?
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2024, 07:04:39 AM
"Behind an educrat paywall so pasted in full below."

I get and respect the logic here AND I would like to add that sometimes there is an additional, and countervailing consideration.

Some links allowed to expire for whatever reason, but all too often they are deleted by the Controligarch forces of the Goolag.  Try finding now that footage of the Capitol Police waving in the J6 protestors for example!  I had a link of a subtitled evil Chinese scientist talking about developing viruses that could target particular ethnic/racial groups-- but it is now gone down the Memory Hole.  Also, sometimes links are allowed to expire for whatever reason.

To protect against such and to further the purposes of this forum, I would ask that whenever the contents are such that they should not be lost to posterity, to paste in full.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 29, 2024, 10:20:49 AM
"Behind an educrat paywall so pasted in full below."

I get and respect the logic here AND I would like to add that sometimes there is an additional, and countervailing consideration.

Some links allowed to expire for whatever reason, but all too often they are deleted by the Controligarch forces of the Goolag.  Try finding now that footage of the Capitol Police waving in the J6 protestors for example!  I had a link of a subtitled evil Chinese scientist talking about developing viruses that could target particular ethnic/racial groups-- but it is now gone down the Memory Hole.  Also, sometimes links are allowed to expire for whatever reason.

To protect against such and to further the purposes of this forum, I would ask that whenever the contents are such that they should not be lost to posterity, to paste in full.

Are you worried about getting hit with a copyright/takedown notice? Has it occurred before?

I confess I minimize my full cut and pastes due to the fear, but I’ve managed college computer labs were “quit downloading and sharing our music” notifications were a regular issue.

With that said, moving forward I’ll try to do a full cut and paste if a site seems like it might be fleeting.

And hey, while we are at it … is there an easy way to upload images here that I’ve missed? While going through old posts I often find the words still there, but the linked images have fled.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2024, 04:47:32 PM
Frankly not too worried because:

a) We woud respect a cease and desist letter;
b) We're not making any money and/or it would be really hard to prove damages;
c) their lawyers would cost more than I am worth haha
d) a bit more seriously, there is the fair use doctrine combined with the gneral nature of this forum.
e) we have a valid purpose in protecting content from the Memory Hole.
 
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 29, 2024, 05:53:58 PM
Frankly not too worried because:

a) We woud respect a cease and desist letter;
b) We're not making any money and/or it would be really hard to prove damages;
c) their lawyers would cost more than I am worth haha
d) a bit more seriously, there is the fair use doctrine combined with the gneral nature of this forum.
e) we have a valid purpose in protecting content from the Memory Hole.
Kewl! I won’t worry about complicating your life, though reserve the right to forgo full posts off sites that toss in all sorts of erratic formatting to forestall doing so.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 29, 2024, 06:49:34 PM
I delete the extraneous stuff so as to have a smooth read.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on January 29, 2024, 07:57:01 PM
I delete the extraneous stuff so as to have a smooth read.
Easy to do on a laptop or desktop. iPad? Not so much.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2024, 05:10:07 AM
 :-D
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: DougMacG on January 30, 2024, 07:45:02 AM
My thoughts (and excuses) on copyright. Maybe the discussion if any should be off the board.

Leave something out and put 'more at the link'. When i've really pushed the envelope I sometimes put 'subscribe at ... .com', meaning we are using their material to promote their site. Mostly it is sharing among friends which is ususlly, partly ok, we give credit to the source, we aren't promoting our site, and as Crafty already said, we are not making money off of it. Almost everything I post they already put out in the public domain. And like material spread over twitter, facebook, google, don't authors and publishers like their writings and works spread and 'retweeted over the internet'?

Like music, there is balance between some free listening in order for the paid stuff to happen. You don't buy an 'album' or go to a concert of a band you never heard.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 30, 2024, 12:39:52 PM
Well said.

When pasting here where possible probably a proper courtesy to post the link as well.

Title: On the Road
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 14, 2024, 08:57:38 AM
In KY supporting the 75th anniversary of a caving expedition that lead to the formation of the cave org I’m a Fellow with. Won’t be posting much until home.

The story of this expedition an interesting one. There was an “inholder” family that had a famous (infamous) cave surrounded by a national park. Back in those days the National Park Service (NPS) was not a fan of inholders, with things coming to blows, access roads intentionally left in disrepair, and all sorts of general harassment.

This lead to the manager of the inholder cave to set up an expedition covered by True magazine and others, meant to publicize the inholder cave, hence raise its value, and thus allow the cave to be sold to the NPS at a higher price.

One of the bits of fallout from all this is those cavers that attended the expedition (which was pretty unproductive by today’s standards) went on to form the cave group I cave with. Back then they were basically a bunch of anarchists that also had our share of issues with the NPS, though these days we all hold hands and skip.

Anyhoo, I’m in the wind until next week.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 14, 2024, 01:25:37 PM
Far out- and good Adventure to you!  8-)
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2024, 11:36:22 AM
I forget how we have it posted here, but there is some way to pull things up from the youtube memory hole.

Looking to get my hands on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBX_g8MyS7U
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: BlueLight on March 08, 2024, 05:17:29 PM
Hello everyone, a friend of Crafty. Recently got to speak to him for the first time, but the first time I became aware of him was seeing a "gathering of the pack" video and saying "this is the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen." Followed the group for about 10 more years. Crafty is a hero of mine because of all the times he went out of his way to look out for our US servicemembers and selflessness he showed in doing so. If you knew me, you'd know the safety and prosperity of those who serve-especially military- come first in my life, and I'd do anything to protect them. If you look out for them, I will have the utmost respect for you.

I'm what you would call a radically free thinker, and have friends from all sides of the political spectrum because I think it's the best way to understand the world as a whole. In regards to the political side of things, I prefer not to attach my identity to any side, to avoid any in-group biases that emerge. However I love to hear others opinions without judgement because it helps me form a more complete version of the world.

That said, my favorite people in the world tend to be libertarian because they tend to be very open to new ideas and are quite intellectually flexible. But really, regardless of what you believe, if you are a "think outside of the box" kind of person, and display a high level of intellectual flexibility and free thinking that goes beyond party lines I'll probably be very fond of you, regardless of ideology. The way I approach the world is rather non-partisan and perhaps something akin to Smedley Butler or Jim Mattis.

I'm a linguist for a section of the US government (DoD, various military branches), and work as an advisor when people need cultural expertise or Kurdish speaker. Haven't done anything particularly special or exciting besides for wait around.

A little background on how this adventure started, I witnessed the Yazidi genocide over the news in 2014 and (due to family members working in Government) felt a sense of responsibility for what played out and dedicated my life to preventing something like that from happening again. A year or two later, I heard about some volunteer groups of former US military and medical experts who were traveling to join the Kurdish forces in the fight against ISIS as well as provide medical support and assistance (similar to what US citizens are doing in Ukraine atm). I had some medical experience so I volunteered to go myself. Knew if I could keep even one of our guys safe, it would be worth my life.

Long story short I couldn't go because it put my family member's security clearances in jeopardy (gov doesn't look lightly on foreign volunteers), so I stayed in the US for their sake. But I guess I caught someone's attention at some point because I'm a linguist/advisor now. As crafty recently told me: The adventure continues.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 08, 2024, 05:37:14 PM
Welcome aboard Bluelight! Pleased to have a fellow “loonitarian” in the mix.
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 09, 2024, 05:06:08 AM
WWWOOOFFF!!!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 09, 2024, 08:48:31 AM
The general idea is to have threads that follow identifiable themes so that they serve as resources for someone to be able go to that thread and follow its development over time.

I readily grant that sometimes the Subject lines could be written better.  The solution is to edit them so they become easier to find with a Search campaign.

I'm always open to suggestions as to how to improve them.

=================

Bluelight:

Great intro!  A life full of Adventure!  We are glad to have you join ours here!
Title: Re: Rules of the Road/Fire Hydrant/Self Intro
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on March 09, 2024, 10:56:14 AM
The general idea is to have threads that follow identifiable themes so that they serve as resources for someone to be able go to that thread and follow its development over time.

I readily grant that sometimes the Subject lines could be written better.  The solution is to edit them so they become easier to find with a Search campaign.

I'm always open to suggestions as to how to improve them.


As I think I mentioned elsewhere, these days hashtags are the standard workaround, though I’ve no idea if SimpleMachines supports them.

I have trouble with tasks requiring rote memory as I have little capacity for it. Looks to me there are 16 pages of up to 50 topics each making for up to 800 topics one needs to navigate seeking the most appropriate. My usual habit is to try to divine the most logical search terms, if they don’t turn anything up (and often what they turn up seem tangential to the piece at hand, equidistant enough from each other to justify a new topic) I’ll scan the first couple pages often going with the first topic appearing to make sense or, failing to find something that seems sensible, starting a new topic.

I’ll note this process often leads to being pointed toward a different topic, with the suggestion befuddling me, or for the sake of time starting a new topic. Likely about a half dozen times of late I’ve done the searches and the scans and, finding nothing, just say never mind just to avoid complications.