June 2018

There were 7 posts published in June 2018 (this is page 1 of 1).

The peddlers of fear and outrage

Trash your TV

Two things took place during my hospital visits with my Dad this week. One was becoming captivated with an unlikely Trump voter. The other was gaining some insight into how he got that way.

I visited my Dad when the nightly news was on. Our local ABC affiliate, WTVD, was ticking through its top stories from around the country. Dad soon changed the channel and offhandedly stated his reasoning.

It was all about crime. Robberies, murders, carjackings, shootings. For some reason, our local affiliate thought it important to alarm us with news of misfortunes that took place hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of miles away, far from any possibility of them affecting us.

Why was the news doing this? Was it just laziness, being that chasing a cop or an ambulance is an easy way to a story? If there was airtime to fill, why weren’t there more local stories to fill it? Why fill viewers’ heads with stories that have no practical value?

Unless the point is to … stoke fear?

I’d been thinking lately that many Trump voters seem to be under some sort of spell. That’s one way I can account for the cognitive dissonance. Why do these folks seem so fearful all the time, thinking the boogeyman is at their door?

The answer was staring me in the face. It’s the television coverage.
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Bernie bashers, let it go

With yesterday’s announcement of the retirement of Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, some Hillary Clinton supporters are trotting out the tired old blame game, saying this is the fault of voters who thought Hillary wasn’t progressive enough. Bernie Sanders supporters, in other words.

These people blaming Bernie can kindly fuck right off.

Clinton was a hugely flawed candidate. She managed to lose the biggest shoo-in election in history. Aside than that, she’s a big girl who is fully capable of accepting responsibility for her own loss. Indeed, accountability is one of the key parts of the job of being President. To point fingers anywhere else is shirking responsibility. As the great Democrat Harry S. Truman said, as President the buck stops here.

As this week’s encounter with a Trump supporter showed me, the Democratic Party has a lot of work to do to bridge the gap between it and working voters. Trump offers us a silver-platter opportunity but we will absolutely fuck this up if we continue to highlight differences in our own party rather than those in the opposition’s party.

Don’t be a fool like Trump. Let go of the last election. The only one that ever matters is the next one.

The working-class votes that got away

I was in the hospital today for my dad’s lung surgery where I rode the elevator with a guy wearing a Trump hat. He was elderly and skinny as a rail, probably weighing not much more than a hundred pounds, and wore coveralls that swallowed him up. In his hand was a beat-up canvas bag holding the oxygen tank that fed the tube on his face. The guy looked like he didn’t have two nickels to rub together, like he’d had a hard life working hard somewhere – maybe as a farmer.

After he stepped off the elevator I couldn’t help but wonder what would make a guy like this, seemingly a proud working man, think that he had more in common with a thieving con artist like Trump than with anyone the Democratic Party had offered up.

If ever there was a sign of just how broken the Democratic Party is, this was it.

Oh noes! The webcams saw my pee-pee!

Another lame scam email…

From: “Cailyn_Demott” order@tonyromo.com
Organization: rdoewnwl
To: [redacted] markturner.net
Subject: [redacted] Read_this_carefully
Details: LEU-755-[redated]
Email: [redacted] markturner.net
Camera ready,Notification: 21.06.2018 01:00:33
Status: Waiting for Reply 96xuKaOy1A8htbnNmUkD4kn4qDy96Iu3_Priority: Normal

–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*–*
Good day.

If you were more careful while caress yourself, I wouldn\’t write dis message. I don\’t think that playing with yourself is very terrible, but when all colleagues, relatives and friends receive video of it- it is terrible news.

I seized malisious soft on a porn web-site which was visited by you. When the object tap on a play button, device starts recording the screen and all cameras on ur device begins working.

Moreover, soft makes a dedicated desktop supplied with key logger function from ur system , so I was able to save all contacts from ur e-mail, messengers and other social networks. I\’m writing on this e-mail because It\’s your working address, so you should check it.

I think that 490 usd is pretty enough for this little false. I made a split screen vid(records from screen (interesting category ) and camera ooooooh… its awful AF)

So its your choice, if u want me to destroy ur disgrace use my bit?oin w?llet ?ddr?ss: 17Q… [redacted]
You have one day after opening my message, I put the special tracking pixel in it, so when you will open it I will see.If ya want me to show u the proofs, reply on this message and I will send my creation to five contacts that I\’ve got from ur contacts.

P.S.. U are able to complain to cops, but I don\’t think that they can help, the investigation will last for several months- I\’m from Ukraine – so I dgf lmao

Accelerating the throw-away society

Massive insulated bag for a bag of candy

Watched as a UPS driver wrestled with a heavy “meal delivery” box last week. Then today this bag of candy got delivered to the office. I was aghast. In both cases, 99% is wasteful packaging, ice packs and insulation blankets that go in the trash so here’s what I suggest:

1. Want a fancy meal? Cook it or eat out.
2. Want candy? Buy it at your local store.

Convenience is killing us, y’all.

Was Josh Schulte compromised by the Russians?

Remember when I wondered why CIA leaker Josh Schulte was found with kiddie porn on his computers? A tweet by the US district attorney’s office in New York spawned a comment that makes it all make sense:

Of course this is what happened. Even so, I’m surprised Schulte’s dirty little secret didn’t derail his intel career much sooner than it did.

Skier’s disappearance, return may stay a mystery – Times Union

More than 100 days after Constantinos “Danny” Filippidis went missing from Whiteface Mountain, State Police and Filippidis’ family are no closer to understanding what led the skier to end up in a rental car section of the Sacramento Airport.

State Police said Thursday they considered the case still open but had no new information on Filippidis’ disappearance.

Filippidis was on a ski trip with some fellow Toronto firefighters. At around 2 p.m. Feb. 7, he decided to go on one last ski run while his friends returned to the lodge. When he still hadn’t returned by 4 p.m., they began to look for him.

Searchers eventually found his identification in his car but no sign of him. The disappearance sparked a massive search effort, involving more than 130 members.

Six days later, Filippidis’ wife received a call from a number she didn’t know. On the other line was Filippidis. He called her by a nickname he used for her but sounded lost and confused. After calling him back, she was able to convince him to call 911.

Source: Skier’s disappearance, return may stay a mystery – Times Union