Young lady, just keep doing what you're doing. You don't need to change a thing. That inner ugly permeates everywhere.
Some others:
Kinda cute, even for an atheist
aka: Affluent White Female Urban Liberals. AWFULs.
Cruel? Yeah, I guess. But not as cruel as the Left labelling anyone to the Right of them as Nazis, Fascists, Dictators, Authoritarians, White Supremacists…. Or, if they’re conservative and Black, they’re smeared as “Uncle Toms” or “house negroes”. How dare they?
It’s some ultra-woke women who have ruined legendary companies. Bud Light, Harley Davidson, Cracker Barrel. All of a type. You can really tell them just by looking. Their Rachel Maddow-type glasses, heavy black frames. Blue hair. Nose ring.
"On the Stoop" channel, from the delightfully named Larone Koonce. Who I've never heard of before today.
He strikes me as a thoughtful man, careful in speech and fair with his comments.
I learn that he's a "happily retired Corrections Officer". A retired prison guard. He wrote a book aimed at helping new CO's manage their jobs better. I can't imagine being a CO. But we need prisons, so we need prison guards. Better to have them be good at their jobs, to be decent human beings for themselves and for the prisoners.
I'm sure that most -- not all, but most -- of my friends and relatives, here and around the world, are anti-Trump. They probably see me as the "crazy daddy", the "crazy uncle" who lives in Hong Kong and has gone loop-the-loop bananas.
Because I prefer a Quixotic Donald Trump to a Cackling Kamala Harris. Because I'd vote for a provenly competent Trump (viz: T45) to a manifestly incompetent Kamala (viz: her CA record and her campaign).
So I have the same issue Larone has in the vid above. How do deal with your dear ones who have Trump Derangement Syndrome?
The way I play it is pretty much to say nothing. Which is how a lot of the commenters at "On the Stoop" play it too.
Larone says he plays it different ways depending on the person. With some, he just ignores the issue. With others, he might touch lightly on it, if raised. And with others he goes "all-in". Which is also a good approach.
It's also true that: "you can't use logic to talk someone out of position they reached without logic". Which, tbf, is how many got to their TDS states in the first place. By their feelings. Not liking the man and his rude tweets, for example. By believing every ipse dixit claim that he's a "racist" (he's not), or a rapist (he's not), or a felon (which is one of those things that's factually correct, but not true... ).
In my own case, I'm far from a "Always Trumper". But I'm not a "Never Trumper" and most certainly no TDS.
In 2016, had I had the vote in America, I would have voted for Hillary. May god forgive me. But by the time of the 2024 elections, it was a no contest. I'd seen Kamala Harris for some years. It was clear to me that as a prosecutor in California she was ineffective. As an Attorney General for the whole state, she left it in worse shape than she found it. As Vice President, she caused no harm because she did nothing. Sent by Biden to deal with the border, she sat on her hands. Asked about it on CNN, she admitted she'd not even been to the border and countered with ".. and I haven't been to Europe either". Huh?
Her book is "107 days", the length of her campaign. The suggestion is that had her campaign been longer, she'd have done better. The opposite is the case. The more we saw of her, the more we were turned off.
As long as all we saw of her was rushing the Veep jet to the Veep limo, ear glued to her iPhone, rushing from Veep limo to her next scripted event, ear still glued to her phone, as long as that was all we saw, then all was well. Sort of. But as soon as she was in front of the cameras, she fell apart. Or served us her infamous "Word Salads". Remember her disastrous interviews with CNN, together with her companion dog, Tampon Tim. Or her disastrous 60 Minutes appearance. Where they had to massage her response so much it was successfully litigated by Trump. Or her time on The View, where she couldn't even handle Sonny Hostin's softball question "what would you do differently", and Kamala answered "Ahhh.... Nothing". An appearance so disastrous it pretty much sank her candidacy on the spot.
Meantime, remember Trump. Going on all shows, Left or Right, answering all questions, talking to podcasters for hours at a time, going into hostile town hall events, tearing up the hustings. The man was everywhere all at once, everywhere giving the same message, one the people clearly liked.
I'll summarise Trump's campaign message as A,B,C,D,E:
A is for America First. Not a "fascist dog whistle" as the Dems claimed, but a slogan first used by the Democratic president Woodrow Wilson in 1916. Meaning no starting wars and no boots on the ground. Which after Vietnam, Iraq, and so on, you'd think most people would be signed onto.
B is for Border. As in Border security. Which Trump achieved in lightening record time. There are now the fewest illegal crossings on the southern border in American history.
C is for Crime. As in needs control. Which we see now playing out on the strets of DC.
D is for Deportations. Which is happening and has the support of 70-80% of the American public, whatever the legal injunctions the Dems keep throwing up, via their "Lawfare V 2.0".
E is for the Economy, which is a strong focus. As it was in Trump 45. Tariffs are controversial, but their ultimate effect is still to be played out. E is also for Energy, as in take steps to make sure that Americans and American industry has the cheapest energy in the world.
Stack that clear message up against the Kamala message. Which was ... what, exactly? "Joy"?? "Brat"?? Vote for me coz Opera likes me? Vote for me coz George Clooney likes me? Hells Bells, vote for me coz the Whole of Hollywood goes gooey over me? Or... vote for me coz I demand government-funded trans operations to any imprisoned illegal immigrants who want it? Coz I want the US to play weak and feckless on the international stage? Coz I plan to keep allowing in millions of unvetted illegals to enter the country?
Those messages? I mean, just stack one up against the other. It's common sense vs..... I dunno, hopes and wishes and fairy tales. "You too can vote like your Hollywood Heros and Honeys".
In the end, come November 2024, I thought the choice between a Trump who we knew from 2016, and who'd been pretty good the first time around, and a Kamala who was feckless and unconvincing, was pretty easy. Trump all the way. But of course, not so for all those with TDS.
"Elon Musk is not an engineer!" screams Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC). "He's just a fraud." In the clip above.
It's Look-in-the-Mirror time, AOC.
AOC has never created a single job in her life. In fact, she's denied people jobs. Her signature move as a Rep of New York City was to deny entry to Amazon, who wanted to build a fulfillment centre there, creating thousands of jobs. AOC was against it, "successfully", because the deal included some tax breaks for Amazon.
Not full tax breaks for Amazon, just some.
But to AOC, she would rather have 100% of NOTHING, than 80% of Something. Something pretty good at that. Well done AOC. You go, Girl!
No wonder Steve Mark Ryan in his above vid calls her Alexandra Occasional Cortex. Heh!
Today Musk's companies employ nearly 250,000 people, in skilled, high-paying jobs. All his companies are set to grow even further. To change and improve the world. Perhaps even to change the Solar System, if he plants Homo Sapiens on Mars.
In his very first company, Zip2, Elon invented the online mapping technology that we now use everywhere: you know, the one where you have a map, you zoom in, and it not only gets bigger but reveals more and more detail as you zoom in. We all know it on our Google Maps. Elon invented that technology at age 28. Sold it off, used the money to invest in what became e-Bay, sold that, and invested in Tesla and SpaceX. And the rest is history.
What have you done in the last week, AOC?
Yet this gormless woman has the nerve to claim that "Elon Musk is not an engineer".
"Oh, yes he is!" say a bunch of engineers. Heavy hitters all, in programming, space engineering, Aerospace, Astronauts.
I refer here back to my first and so far only post on the sometimes abstruse subject of "Gerrymandering".
Which is much in the news lately because Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, plans to "Redistrict" its Congressional Districts, to give the Reps up to five more seats in the State. Which has led the oleaginous Gavin Newsom of California to threaten, and now to try, to match Texas, vote by vote, gerry by gerry, mander by mander. So it's all a big tussle, and consequential. Congressional majorities depend on it.
In a way, the future of America, depends on it.
So, below a summary of my recent understanding of the Redistricting issue, aka "Gerrymandering", when it's done to extreme and to favour one party over the other.
This is pretty dry. So dry you could print it out and use it to towel down after a swim. For nerds, iow.
The average number of people who make up one Congressional District in a State: 700,000.
Imagine a typical state with a population of 7 million. Therefore the number of Congressional Seats it will have is 10. That is, ten representatives will be sent to the House of Representatives at the Congress in Washington DC.
If we assume the popular vote Dem/Rep in that state is 50/50, then all things being equal, you'd expect each party to elect 5 out of the 10 seats. Equal.
This gives a "Seat to Vote ratio" (S/V Ratio) of 1. That is: Seats won 5/10 = 50%. Vote = 50%.
The RATIO of 50% Seats divided by 50% of the Vote = 1.
Anything above 1, means that one party has won more seats relative to the overall vote it had in the state.
Say the Dems win 7 out of the 10 Congressional seats in our "typical state". That's a Seat percentage of 70%. That gives a S/V ratio of: 70%/50% = 1.4. And a Reps S/V ratio of 30%/50% = 0.6.
There may be factors other thanGerrymandering that account for unbalanced S/V ratios. For example, the movement of the population in between the decadal national census, when any Redistricting is normally done, can lead to losses or gains, based on those movements and not on any shenanigans with Redistricting.
But manipulation of the Redistricting, aka Gerrymandering, is often a key reason for the S/V ratio benefiting one party or the other.
How does it work out for California and Texas?
The S/V ratios are: CA Dems: 1.42 and TX Reps: 0.86.
Thus California (1.42) has already Gerrymandered to a level that is second highest in the country (only after Massachusetts at 1.47, where not a single Republican has won a Congressional seat).
Whereas in Texas, the Republicans (0.8) are clearly UNDER-represented relative to their overall vote.
By the way, the "S/V ratio" is something I came up with. I asked Grok if it, or something similar was already used, and it said, no, and that my ratio "is novel and interesting". Huh! Weird.... I offer it to the commentarian, foc. It has the benefit of being instantly understood. Anything over 1 for any one party means that party is overrepresented. And anything under is underrepresented.
Megyn Kelly has a choice right now. She can either keep her credibility or she can follow the path of right-wing grifters who've made it their mission to bash Israel without logic or facts.
Her interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) was full of blatantly false claims that
My comment: Not mentioned by Yehuda Teitelbaum below is the contributions to the United States, to the world, by inventions of Israel. Which are many and which I listed here.
Also doesn't mention the fact that when the US military equipment Israel buys using US "aid" is improved by Israel, those improvements are transferred to the United States. This happens often. Most notably with the Iron Dome missile defence system, of which Israel has had the most practical experience of any country.
Megyn Kelly has a choice right now. She can either keep her credibility or she can follow the path of right-wing grifters who've made it their mission to bash Israel without logic or facts.
Her interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene was full of blatantly false claims that collapse under the slightest scrutiny. I won't be sharing it but here are some of the points they mentioned.
1. "AIPAC controls Congress."
This is an old conspiracy theory repackaged as fact. AIPAC is an American membership organization. It isn't registered under FARA because it isn't a foreign agent. It's made up of U.S. citizens who care about Israel. Their lobbying budget in 2024 was around $50 million. For comparison, Big Pharma spent over $350 million. Tech and telecom spend hundreds of millions more. If AIPAC "controls" Congress with $50M, what does that mean about the industries spending ten times that amount?
My comment: Qatar -- a double faced "ally", which supports the Muslim Brotherhood -- donates huge amounts direct to US Institutions, mainly US universities. Some $28 billion in the last decade has been identified. This influence money dwarfs by orders of magnitude the modest amounts spent by AIPAC. We can see its results in the elite universities' pro-Hamas, anti-Jew demonstrations since October 7.
2. "Congressional trips to Israel prove influence."
Members of Congress travel abroad constantly. They visit Ukraine, Taiwan, NATO countries, Japan, and South Korea. They are exposed to allies because America's global security depends on alliances. Israel is not unique here. The idea that a congressman is "brainwashed" by visiting a country is ridiculous. It's called diplomacy. Israel is making its case for why it is a strong ally. That is what every country does.
This news is not really news, but olds. It's from March this year, but I've only just learned of it.
Media Matters who did the study is a very left of centre outfit.
I did not know, and would not have guessed that the Right dominates on the Social Media platforms. But so it seems. Whereas in the past, influential Legacy Media -- the CNNs, the MSNBCs, the New York Times, the Washington Posts -- the leaning is very much to the Left.
/Snip:
As Americans increasingly get their news from online shows and streamers, the influence of this media ecosystem becomes more prominent — and Media Matters has found that the most popular of this content is overwhelmingly right-leaning.
In a new study, Media Matters assessed the audience size of popular online shows — podcasts, streams, and other long-form audio and video content regularly posted online. To do so, we gathered data on the number of followers, subscribers, and views across streaming platforms (YouTube, Spotify, Rumble, Twitch, and Kick) and social media platforms that are used to amplify and promote these shows (Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok). Apple Podcasts does not publicly provide follower counts on its platform, so it was not included in the audience data.
This analysis was based on 320 online shows with a right-leaning or left-leaning ideological bent. We found that right-leaning online shows dominate the ecosystem, with substantially larger audiences on both politics/news shows and supposedly nonpolitical shows that we determined often platformed ideological content or guests. Read on...
Putting below for reference a chart of the ideological leaning of various media. I think they all ought to be shifted left a bit (eg, I don't know too many who'd agree BBC is "Center"), but it's good enough for a relative positioning:
No, religions are NOT "all the same". Islam is worse than all the rest, because it’s supremacist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, intolerant and anti free-speech. It is so in its doctrines and as manifested by the actions of its votaries.
But there is at least ONE way they are all the same: they’re all illogical. Like above.
