Monday’s Forum
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FILED UNDER: Open Forum
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
Troubling stuff not directly attributable to Trump:
It seems Iran mastered implosion technology some time ago. If true, it would mean they could move to a usable nuke as soon as they have enough enriched uranium. Does this push Israel to attack? Does the US help?
India is restricting water to Pakistan and the speculation is that Pakistan will have to hit back hard, maybe even try a ground invasion to gain control of the upstream dams.
France is tasking Renault with cranking out drones for Ukraine, which is excellent of the French. Ukraine has pulled off Spiderweb 2.0 by launching drones from concealment on a train carrying tanks and armored vehicles. The drones took out the locomotive then took their time destroying tanks.
Ukraine has shown that a militia nut in, say, North Dakota, armed with an over the counter drone and an IED could destroy a B52.
Gaza remains Gaza. Ditto Sudan.
We have five nuclear-armed states, Pakistan, India, Israel, Russia the US and a near-nuke power, Iran, with fingers on triggers. Have a nice day!
Here is a piece that makes a case that people today, especially young people, are really stupid compared to their elders. The claim is that reading books develops reasoning ability in ways that looking at screens (smartphones, TV, computers) does not as most of the cause – kids just do no longer read much. (Other minor factors also, like No Child Left Behind teaching to the test).
Idiocracy is here now.
“Brink Lindsey”
I would be curious what our hosts think of the claim that college students today are pretty dumb.
@charontwo:
Well, that was depressing.
@Michael Reynolds:
Greta Thunberg was thwarted from trying to land there. Has Gaza changed or has another activist gone awry?
Doesn’t France and G Britain also posses nuclear weapons? Before I forget them, how about Grand Fenwick?
For our aviation aficionados out there-
Would the bigger wingspan be a reason for the plane being unable to land at Naples or are there other factors?
BTW when Dear Wife and I travel to Italy in September, we’re flying Atlanta to Naples.
Re: deployment of the national guard to LA.
If you want a picture of our future, imagine a flap of fake blond hair slapping on a human face — forever.
Mark me. It 2029, Trump will not go gentle into that good night, but will riot, riot against the electoral defeat of the Right.
Or he might be dead by then. I ain’t no gerontologist. He’s already passed the factory label Best Used By date. Might be tomorrow, might be 20 years from now. Tf do I know?
In which case, imagine JD Vance’s beard scratching a human face — forever.
The California National Guard deployment is a test case, an experiment. Next step is active duty troops. If the Supreme Court backs him up, we’re cooked.
Again, mark me. There will be a constitutional crisis late 2028. He will not go gently.
@Bill Jempty:
Another possibility is ground maneuvering. If the tail’s taller, are there places (eg, walkways between terminals) that it won’t fit under? If the wingspan is wider, does it interfere with planes at adjacent gates? If the body is longer, does it interfere with other arriving and departing planes passing behind it? I don’t know if Naples is subject to high-congestion restrictions, but if so, everything from the landing slot to ground traffic to gates is very tightly scheduled so “We’ll just send it to a different gate” may not be feasible.
@charontwo:
I tend to think in terms of textbooks, particularly for technical subjects. For me, reading is a different process than watching video. Books are easily manipulated, like flipping between two pages in different chapters while making comparisons. Video is hard to index. I know that repeated studies have found that taking notes matters, and taking them longhand provides greater memory retention than taking notes on a keyboard. I’m an applied mathematician by original training, and taking notes by hand can be enormously faster than trying to type.
@de stijl:
Optimist. He’ll ignore the Supreme Court on something significant this year. Next year he’ll ignore Congress on the budget, spending money that hasn’t been appropriated. Crises will be a regular thing by late 2028.
Here is an interesting account of a visit to Israel:
“Julie Roginsky“
@charontwo: I own a first-generation iPad, which I won in some kind of online drawing. I’m a big reader, and was intrigued by the idea that I could load dozens of books on this slim device, taking it instead of my normal 5+ books on vacation.
I learned very quickly that reading on a digital device wasn’t for me. I read slower and retain far less. Obviously n=1 here, but I guess I am not surprised at these results.
@Bill Jempty:
The aviation blogs didn’t say, but it might have been weight restrictions. Airports do have limits on how heavy an aircraft can land or take off.
The odd part is the 787 isn’t that big for a wide body. Both the B777 and A350 are bigger.
Atlanta to Naples means Delta. they operate the A350, but also have some leftover B767s. Given the above info, and assuming I’m right, you’ll probably get one of the latter.
Former DOGE engineer says federal waste and fraud were ‘relatively nonexistent’ (NPR)
Elect clowns, expect a circus.
@Jen:
I’m with you. I bought a Kindle a while back, but I never cottoned on to it. It sits in a drawer now.
I much prefer a physical book. I can’t exactly say why. I read a book new to me every 10 days/two weeks (well, a quarter of them are re-reads). I don’t know if it’s retention or tactility, or hide-bound prejudice. I prefer physical books.
I live three blocks from the downtown library, so I’m blessed and life is easy and good. My third favorite place in the world.
@Kathy:
Kathy,
Based on your past history around here, I guessed correctly you may have some insight into what may have occurred last week.
I wasn’t concerned about my own travel plans but did out of curiosity check what aircraft Delta uses. Delta has us on a A330. DW and I will be traveling Milan to PBI via JFK on the way home.
You were thinking maybe they would stop at Roe v Wade?
@Bill Jempty:
I hope that’s a mistake. the A321 is a single aisle plane. It’s trendy to fly them on short, thin, transatlantic routes, though usually in the long or extra-long range variants. Atlanta to Naples is a longer flight. It seems to be almost 10 hours. I don’t think any A321 variant can fly that far.
@Rob1:
Not against interracial marriage as well?
@Rob1: Baptists have historically stayed out of church-state issues, but you can only push people so far. So why shouldn’t an organization promote laws it agrees with? Someone posted a video over the weekend of a leftist yelling at a Texan while acknowledging his side was going to keep pushing everything it could think of. He couldn’t even guess what his side would be endorsing in 40 years.
The article said that Southern Baptist positions are more politically viable today. Nonsense. Forty years ago the US would never have accepted widespread pornography and gambling. Now we’ve accepted it as a default. Why does the Left think the Overton Window can only shift in one direction?
@DK:
I was a wandering IT consultant for years. Most companies and organizations beyond a certain size are fairly well optimized and quite organized. They sort of have to be to survive and compete in the marketplace. But they are staffed around their current workload – which is entirely smart and appropriate. If they want to, or are forced to do a new thing, they have to bring in outside hired help. They run lean as a rule – every manager has to justify their budget.
I was the hired help.
I think people get their impressions of government inefficiency by visits to the DMV. One, that’s state, not federal. Two, they underpay front line folks and saddle them with shitty conditions. Three, the rules and regs are harsh and apply to all of their customers so whining and bitching and asking to speak to the manager won’t get you shit except for forcible expulsion from the office. You can’t Karen a government front-liner. Doesn’t work.
I needed to get a new Social Security card. The office was just outside of downtown in the world’s largest and stupidest strip mall. I expected it to be a hassle, and I’d be there all day. Went through security, checked in at the computerized kiosk, sat for maybe seven minutes. Interviewed with a live staffer for about ten minutes who asked weird questions about my parents and birthplace I had to dredge up from deep memory. I stood and spoke into a speaker; she was behind like three inches of safety glass.
I was in and out in maybe a half hour. Brisk and professional. I was super impressed. I came in expecting a shit show.
Large organizations are as efficient as they need to be.
@Michael Cain:
Trump excels at making crises and at exacerbating a bad situation into crisis. Solving a crisis, not so much.
Every day the purely news sites I visit, tend to have one or more Trump flaps dominating the headlines space at the top of the page. With Biden and Obama, not so much.
People offer up all kinds of conjecture as to why MAGA has such a viral and durable nature, pointing to things like economic factors and demographic shifts. But I’m beginning to consider a simpler possibility: that Trump has mastered the same algorithm of the streaming series “we” binge on leaping from one episode to the next in a marathon video glutfest —- the cliff hanger at the end of the episode, with a lot of clickbait novelty thrown in throughout.
People are rivited by the stimulation wherein they are invited to participate in real-time roleplay. Their personal stakes are elevated by titillating nonstop disinfo. Adrenaline flows. Endorphins wax and wane. This is real life “much watch TV.” We have already been programmed “to watch.” The roots of our compulsion is preexisting.
Trump’s time in and around the World Wide Wrestling soap opera ethos likely provided plenty of modeling. And he is aided in his endeavor to broadly “infect” his malignancy, by a brain wired to produce nonstop spew in epic droning sessions. He is the original FPV drone.
(* all use of “we” and “our” here is in the collective sense.)
The Archbishop of Santa Fe is not a fan.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2025/06/03/trump-big-beautiful-bill-catholic-250830
@Kathy: I mistyped my original reply to you. We’re on A330 for the international legs of our travel and a A321 for domestic parts.
DW and I are flying First Class.
@Fortune:
Well, not from my experience. Pat Robertson–a prominent Southern Baptist–was also the son of a US Senator (Willis Robertson), and spent a lot of time perfecting how to get right up to the line of where a religious institution would get involved in politics without actually crossing it. One of the things they’d distribute in churches on Sundays before an election were “voter’s guides” that would feature a grid with the photos of the candidates at the top, then big check marks and x’s to indicate which candidate supported which policy. The message was clear (vote for the one with the check marks, not the x’s), without ever saying “Vote for,” which would have tipped the piece from “information” to “advocacy.”
How do I know this? I worked in Republican politics, and saw an awful lot of these voter’s guides distributed. In churches.
@Jen: Historically, like going back to Zwingli.
@Fortune:
Were trans people living their lives at these Baptists? Did some faggots get married at them? Did a species evolve at them? Are harlots having non-reproductive sex at them?
They aren’t being pushed for shit by the left, they’re marinating their little brains in right-wing hate and bigotry because they’re dopamine addicts getting off on the hate and anger.
What can you expect from a church that was founded because they liked slavery and thought people were getting too radical with ideas about abolition and emancipation?
Maybe they should focus on getting their priests to stop fucking children before they get up in anyone’s business about their lives. I think Jesus or someone said something about it — logs, specks, eyes.
@Gustopher:
Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come onto me.
Some things don’t age well as language evolves.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/florida-republicans-criticize-trump-immigration-arrests
This is exactly what they voted for. It was not a big secret that Trump carefully avoided talking about on the campaign trail. It’s not even like he didn’t try to do it last time he was in office.*
I hope she is detained by ICE when someone decides she doesn’t look enough like a citizen and that her id must be fake.
*: last time he ended up filling up all available immigration court time, and that was a limiting factor. This is why so much of what is happening is trying to avoid all courts.
@Bill Jempty:
That makes a lot more sense.
@de stijl:
When my wife went into memory care, I inherited her iPad. It is slowly displacing a bunch of the paper in my life. First thing was I started drawing again, for the granddaughters. The iPad and an Apple Pencil take care of the age-related problems I was having with ink-on-paper: near vision isn’t what it used to be for fine detailed work, and my hand is unsteady. I’ve taken to reading on it, but I’ve read on screens for decades so that was no big deal. I’ve always kept my calendar on paper using my own format. The Notes application will embed my calendar PDF and I can print on it (again with the Pencil, not letting it turn it into computer text). When I have to fill out a PDF document of some sort — recently, the paperwork to donate my body to the state medical school — the iPad is great for that. While it’s not Apple’s plan, Freeform is a great substitute for a pad of paper.
30+ years ago I was doing paid research work on multi-party multi-media real-time communications over internet transport. One of the results of that work is that for many use cases a “smart pad of paper” media was critical. If someone had offered me the equivalent of an iPad and Apple Pencil just for that purpose at the time, I would have just asked who they wanted killed. Wouldn’t have hesitated.
@de stijl: Everyone uses the DMV as the bad example. Over the years I’ve dealt with DMVs in at least five states and found them to be courteous and efficient. More so than many private companies. Even the cop in TX who checked my VIN turned out to be making a joke when he said it didn’t match my title. A B had been read as an 8 or some such and he didn’t really care. No one even mentioned I was turning in’69 IL plates in ‘71.
@Fortune: Wasn’t he a Protestant reformer, not a Baptist?
IIRC, the Baptists emerged circa 1600’s in England, Zwingli was earlier and Swiss.
At any rate, Southern Baptists split from the rest of the lot over the issue of slavery, so they’ve always been sort of on that line with political issues.
@Fortune:
Lol. In a lot of communities the Southern Baptists were the enforcers. Stamp out all heretical thought. De facto government.
I had a Foursquare room-mate in college who literally thought it so and told me that fossils were made by Satan to test our faith. Evolution is evil. IN COLLEGE!
Most weasel sumbitch ever. Cheated on his gf as often as he could, and partook of unlawful carnal experience as often as he could. I felt bad for the women; why would you couple with this atrocious shit-bag?
His favorite expression was “Why ask for permission when you can ask for forgiveness later?”
Fossils=Satanic
Pre-marital sex banned by my religion=why the fuck not?
@Fortune: your first paragraph clause was an absolute lie. Go on though. Say some more stupid shit. That seems to be your job here.
@Jen:
I read a great deal on my cell “phone”.
These days mostly email (3 substacks), but I can and have read whole books on it. Albeit in short snatches throughout the day while taking a break. before my Nexus 7 (2012) tablet was bricked by incessant OS upgrades, I read a few books on it. I notice no difference when reading on a screen as opposed to paper.
But by far, most of my reading these days is audiobooks while driving and cooking. I guesstimate 40+ books per year read that way.
What I’ve noticed lately when reading a paper book*, is that I sometimes have to suppress the impulse to tap a word to get a definition. More than once I’ve swiped to turn the page, then I remember paper doesn’t work that way…
*I got into the habit of reading a paper book from my collection for a few minutes before going to bed. Mostly this means re-reading books, but right now I’m reading a new one: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, by Chris Kempshall.
IMO, Lucas’s uneven plotting benefits from being treated as serious history. Fiction has to make sense and be consistent, real history does not.
@Jen: @Gustopher: @de stijl: @Thomm:
Why bother replying?
@CSK:
I got to relay an anecdote about my actively evil room-mate who’d preemptively claimed the moral high ground.
The most morally shitty person I’d ever known at that point in my life was also the most performatively religious.
@Barry:
100%. And most of them are too cowardly to admit or even acknowledge that they might have been wrong. We are probably days away from the American military being used against American citizens, and there are still people who refuse to acknowledge the descent into fascism.
@Rob1:
Smells like overreach. But I’m sure the Republican Party of “less government” (lol) will be happy to oblige the dominionist right’s ongoing attempts to meddle in people’s bedrooms and control every aspect of Americans’ private lives.
The marriage between conservatives and podcast dudebros is fragile enough, as seen in the nepo baby fued between drug addict Musk and Epstein-bestie rapist Trump. Please proceed.
Maybe we should make every January 6th a national Purge Day.
Punch a cop, mace ’em, violently riot, invade the Capitol complex, whatever. It’s all cool, dude, legal. You don’t even need to get a Trump pardon anymore. This is totally not creeping dystopia.
@Fortune: I was brought up in the Baptist church. Two of my brothers are Baptist ministers, one part time. My extended family is ver large having had 13 aunts/uncles on both sides of the family. Among the extended family about half are Baptist. Bob Jones daughter was my Sunday school teacher for years.
So from my POV if you go back to the 60s-70s the majority of Baptists weren’t any more or less political than anyone else. Among the organized Baptists, they have lots of independent churches, their political activity was not heavy. However, even back then there were groups that were very political. My father was a very, very conservative evangelical Baptist while also an active John Bircher and a lot of Baptists were involved with that group.
More recently over the last 25 years the Baptist church has been very active in politics. A lot fo the credit for that goes to Bush II and his outreach program. Highly recommend David Kuo’s (he helped run Bush’s outreach program to religious groups) book Tempting Faith if you want to follow up on it. A lot of stuff they did was probably actually illegal but the media in general dont follow religious stuff much so they got away with it. Anyway, visit a random Baptist church on any random Sunday and there is a good chance you will hear the preacher actively supporting the GOP/Trump. Less likely at independents AFAICT as the larger organized groups of Baptists, most of them, are very political.
On the faith/religious level I think most people recognize that when politics and religion mix its religion that loses. That has lots of historical examples, but evangelicals in general and Baptists in particular have decided to try to use the power of the state to try to impose their political will on everyone else. They do this while hiding under protective blanket of religious liberty.
Steve
@Gustopher: Oh, those Baptist priests!
@Fortune:
How are they being “pushed” exactly? Are they being forced to be gay? Forced to get abortions? Forced to make a bet? How are they being pushed?
They are not. What they are doing is trying to interfere with other people who are exercising their right to peruse happiness. And people like the Southern Baptists want to interfere with that.
You have an odd sense of grievances and so does the SBC. They would be better off doing a better job of protecting children from the abusers in their own organization before making comments about the culture at large.
@Gustopher:
One would think the Bible can be summarized as “loathe your neighbor as, I don’t know, something really loathsome.”
@steve:
It goes back further than that, to Reagan. Those voter’s guides that got passed around churches…I worked in politics in the early ’90s, and they’d been around for a bit even then.
@Gustopher:
That’s the key point that seems to escape attention. No one’s been forced to gay marry. No one’s been forced to have an abortion. Contra RW myth, children aren’t being pushed into sex change surgery at school. Everything seems to devolve into a question of morality. The real question is not is abortion evil or not. The real question is, given people’s beliefs differ, how do we deal with it legally.
Or, to phrase it differently, why should Baptists (who Cookie says don’t engage in politics) be allowed to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us? (A belief Baptists didn’t hold until it became politically and financially useful to their leaders.)
@gVOR10:
If you mean me, I said they historically haven’t then discussed why they are now. It wasn’t even complicated.
@Fortune:
Hah! There you go displaying your usual triviality. Your initial comment on Southern Baptists has been eviscerated, flayed and freeze dried in multiple comments and all you’ve got is, ‘Baptists don’t call them priests.’
Stick to sniping irrelevancies from the sidelines, sonny, when you try to say anything more complex than a snark, you demonstrate just how ignorant you are.
@gVOR10:
Now, now, how is a basement-dwelling incel gooner with an exaggerated idea of his own specialness going to rationalize being a loser unless he can play victim. Imaginary victimhood is all the rage.
@Bill Jempty:
Turns out it was a legal technicality related to fire fighting services.
I was going to say that the pilot would be on the hook (and still technically is…but no way they are going to be held accountable for something like this) because the regs state the pilot must make himself or herself fully aware of ALL factors that affect a flight. However this is in Dispatch’s bailiwick, and those guys need a license for that job too. Dispatching a type of plane to a place which is not in ALL ways capable of handling it was their mistake.
I’ll speculate either Dispatch or the pilot (more likely Dispatch) discovered this error while the plane was enroute. The odds that anyone in ATC or the airport tower would’ve caught it are vanishingly small.
Amidst all the chaos that’s going on I remain interested in the Trump-Epstein connection, the effect of Trump tariffs, and the deficit that is explicit in the BBB. On the Trump tariffs I think that cranking up the price of aluminum is going to make an impact. I dug around in my basement and found a refillable growler so my beer is safe.
Frederick Forsyth, 86, who wrote The Day of the Jackal, has died. RIP.
I don’t trust any religion that forbids you from dancing.
—–
When I was going to university there was this Baptist school in one of the weird northern suburbs. Bethel.
They had an honor code. No drinking, no smoking, no dancing, no gambling. Struck me as the dumbest thing ever – I felt bad for the kids that went there at their parents’ wishes/behest. No boys in the girls’ dorm, no girls in the boys’. Not even just on campus, but off, too.
The parents were paying premium private school tuition for a shitty, subpar education so their spawn wouldn’t get exposed to heretical thoughts or behaviors. (Do they even offer Biology there?)
The ones I met were repressed as hell and dying to rebel. If you met a Bethel girl at a party, club, bar and took a shine to each other chances were extremely high things would get very interesting that night.
Trying to suppress / repress the entirely natural curiousities and urges of young adults doesn’t work. Guaranteed way to create fucked up adults, and the only ones who remain faithful and true are too stupid or timid to rebel.
Who wants a generational group whose only members won’t question authority?
@charontwo: There were studies done years ago hinted that the refresh rate of computer screens combined produces a hypnotic state in the viewer that was counter productive to learning and deep though. The brain state was worse when viewing video on a computer screen than viewing video on, say, a movie or TV screen. The brain frequency induced by viewing material on computers is counter to the brain frequency most conducive to learning and, which, the brain would normally be in if the person were, say, reading the same material in a book.
@CSK: As someone who has loved his books, I am sad to hear of Forsyth’s death.
The Day of the Jackal was his best. Other books of his I really enjoyed were- The Deceiver, The Dogs of War, The Negotiator, and The Fist of God. Other than The Afghan, I wouldn’t label any of his books as bad. The plots of The Avenger and The Cobra were a little too fantasy plot-wise but they were page turners that kept you wanting to read what happened next.
Forsyth has a new book coming out in a few months. A sequel to The Odessa File. TOD I always considered Forsyth’s most over-rated book. For the sequel, Forsyth has a co-author which leaves me wondering how much of the book is Forsyth’s work. No matter what, I am sad to hear of his passing. RIP.
@dazedandconfused:
Thanks. I didn’t know about that one.
I wonder if any airports chose not to allow allow A380 operations entirely due to the need to upgrade their emergency systems.
Greta, et al, to be forced to face reality
@Jen: I think that’s fair. As I noted there was always a sizable faction engaged in politics. It probably did increase with Reagan but as far as I can remember Reagan didnt do a lot fo outreach to them. Bush very actively promoted the image that he was a Christian and actively worked at pulling in religious leaders to come meet with him. To be sure I have never actually seen a study on it but just knowing the history and watching how my family and their churches politicized, it was really accelerated with Bush.
Steve
My fave:
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love thy neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”
Leviticus 19:18
I love that it exits with “I am the LORD”. Do not fuck with me or there will be consequences, I can read your thoughts!
Pretty sketchy on the definition of “your people”. As in, within the tribe? (IANAR. R stands for Rabbi.)
Recapped the OG/OT version in Matthew 22:39 – Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself
You need to read 36 through 40 to get the full gist, but Jesus said love God, and don’t be a shit-bag to your neighbors.
Not my religion, but the second bit is solid advice. Ya gotta love the King James Version – so stilted and quirky.
@Michael Reynolds: It’s not just terminology, it’s an understanding of history and beliefs. Liberals think they can understand today without understanding yesterday.
Trump says he’s OK with arresting Gavin Newsom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeJCrSyEMyk
@Fortune:
I understand June 8 2025, Dottie.
I lived it!
—–
I really need to watch PeeWee’s Big Adventure again.
@Kingdaddy:
Newsom’s response: “He knows where to find me.”
Had it been me, I might have said: “Go ahead; make my day.”
Sly Stone has died, age 82.
@Kathy:
Good question. I’d guess not many. The 747 carries the same IACO category, “10”, the highest there is. In the area of fire-fighting capability any airport that has been set up for 747 ops is ready for A380s.
@Rick DeMent: I love this concept. I am stealing it.
Apparently, you can fly to California for $2.
Less than a banana!
@steve: I suspect it was simply a natural move under Lee Atwater’s Southern strategy. All those southern Baptists were solid Democrats…then LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act.
“Sunday morning at 11AM is the most segregated hour in America.” -MLK (among others)
@Jen: Sort of below the point, but what does high speed rail in California have to do with flying to California?
@Jen:
Even when Spirit did the loss leader fare sales, it was like $10. Not counting all sorts of fees.
BTW, I caught a Youtube video the other day of a guy who took a Spirit flight from Houston to Chicago and paid all the fees. So, after the low low fare, plus fees for, if memory serves: carry on (with priority boarding included), checked bag, seat selection (the big front seat, which is the most expensive), WiFi, travel insurance, fare flexibility (ie changes, refund, etc.), and a coffee and muffin combo, the guy paid more than if he’d booked United in first class for the same day.
The domestic first class ticket would have included a similar seat, a carry on, a checked bag, flexible fare, WiFi, and a meal onboard. I’m guessing not the travel insurance, but also it might have included use of a lounge at Houston.
Ultra-low cost does not mean ultra-low, or even low, prices for consumers.
@Joe: Absolutely nothing. His brain is misfiring ever more frequently.
@Fortune:
Without a doubt the most boring form of political gotcha is to accuse the other side of “not paying attention to history” (or any other nebulous term) while implying your side does. And more importantly that the ONLY way to really understand something is to do what your side does.
In my experience EVERYONE embraces some history when they think it enhances their argument and ignores other bits of history when they think it undercuts them. It’s not endemic to one side or the other.
That’s before we get into specific interpretations of history and to what degree nuance is brought into those discussions.
To that point, I’ll note that @steve’s posts are dealing with a lot of key modern historical issues (and include citations). And for whatever reason, you appear to have passed over them. I appreciate that the last 20 years might not seem like much in the history of a denomination that formed in 1845. Then again, if we’re talking about history and politics, it’s worth noting that the Southern Baptists separated from the American Baptist church because of the Southern Baptists’ alignment with the continuation of Slavery and ultimately the Confederacy.
Which feels pretty political to me (and an important historical moment to recognize in order to understand the present). I mean, it only took them to 1995 to finally issue a formal apology for their pro-slavery position. But YMMV.
@Jen:
Son if a gun. I’m buying my ticket right…this…minute.
@Kathy: I’m guessing you clicked the link? He has no idea what he’s talking about, as per usual. Thus my joke about the banana.
@Jen:
Sly Stone wants to thank us for letting him be himself.
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
Per CNN, Trump is sending 700 Marines to California.
@CSK:
I estimate he’ll declare martial law this month.
@Jen:
I did. Good thing my laptop is set to mute at work. I’d rather pierce my eardrums than listen to El Taco.
The White House will have to rehire thousands of fired federal workers just to edit the ideos they put up instead of his speech transcripts…
@Kathy:
The MAGAs seem to be happy about this.
I’m two eps away from finishing Pantheon.
I won’t say I like it, exactly. I find much about it rather disturbing. From the amoral, the end justifies the means* characters, to matters of self and identity, it pushes all the wrong buttons.
Anyway, I’ve a question: was Holstrom like an amalgam of tech bros, or was he supposed to be Steve Jobs?
@CSK: Trump slaves are happy about everything Trump says or does. Bootlickers gonna bootlick. So, of course.
@Fortune: “Baptists have historically stayed out of church-state issues,………..”
RIGHT
@CSK:
Many thousand Marines are already there. Miramar, Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms. San Diego depot. Wtaf?
What does the UCMJ have to say about this?
It’s like taking coal to Newcastle. There are plenty of Marines in CA already.
@Jen:
Potentially a lot less than a banana, since we’re going to be paying more from them thanks to Trump. Howard Lutnick believes high tariffs can drive banana production into the US.
@Barry: Separation of church and state doesn’t restrict activism by citizens.
@CSK: sometimes you just want to tell someone they’re a dumb ass motherfucker.
Ima firm believer in “don’t reply to the troll unless it amuses you to do so,” and honestly, telling someone who is playing the “look what you made me do” game to go fuck themselves amuses me.
I hope everyone that engages Monsieur Cookie does so for their own amusement — playing games with him rather than playing his games — but sadly I know a few people have been trying to engage him in a dialog.
Anyway, let me state equivocally (something Cookie will never do on any subject) that no one is forcing anyone to be a filthy and disgusting bigot and busybody, trying to police everyone else’s lives, and Cookie is being disingenuous when he suggests otherwise. And dumb. Really, really dumb.
@de stijl:
Looked it up for you. Yes, Bethel offers 6 different BS degree tracks in Biology.
@Fortune: Priests, preachers, pedophiles… I don’t know, I get those p-words confused. Porcupines? Pangolins?
An important part of ACAB is that it also means the Cop in your heart s a bastard. That feeling you have when you see someone on food stamps buying a treat, without knowing how much they have scrimped, saved and sacrificed to get that treat.
The Southern Baptists should work on the pedophiles in their house before they start lecturing the people living their lives harmlessly outside their community. And maybe come to terms with how they were founded explicitly because of white supremacy.
@de stijl: Maybe they want Marines from outside the community, who don’t interact with the people of LA on a regular basis?
Part of splitting people into Us and Them is making sure they don’t see the nice man down the street who plays Honduran ballads on his guitar on his front porch on cool mornings. Things like that really mess with depersonalizing and othering.
@Fortune:
Non sequitur.
You broach the subject and declaim as if you know WTF you’re talking about, and this is what you’ve got. Critically you lack the confidence or honesty to admit you’ve been schooled. This is insecurity, which I assumed, but it’s nice to have it proven.
Stop acting. I’m giving you good advice. Dedicate yourself to truth, it’s the most worthwhile goal. Without truth you have nothing. With it, everything. The confidence you lack, the fragile sense of self, I am not bullshitting you, I’m dropping some life wisdom on you. The truth shall set you free. I don’t think JC was divine, but he was a very far-seeing rabbi. Listen to the J-Man.
@Jen:
@Scott F.:
Remember when the taco said health insurance cost $20?
I may just renew my US visa so I can take $2 flights to CA and smuggle bananas in my luggage.
https://www.wired.com/story/chlorine-dioxide-bleach-mms-autism-rfk-fda-warning/
How the hell are there “bleach communities”? This type of idiocy should be self-correcting if they’re doing it right.
More bleach! More! Guzzle it down! The burning means it’s working!
My God, there are going to be so many needlessly dead.
RFK Jr. ousts entire CDC vaccine advisory committee
@Jim X 32: @charontwo: I think a significant portion of what people are looking at and reporting on is as much an effect of larger sample pools flattening curves and propelling gravitation toward the mean as anything else. And if said flattening of curves leads to aggregate degree holders having lower aggregate levels of skills–and correspondingly lower aggregate commercial value leading to lower aggregate wages–so much the better for bottom line ROI (in aggregate).
That similar phenomena happen across various school cohorts may be related to higher aggregate graduation rates. (But I’m cynical and so likely to attribute the phenomenon being discussed as anecdote being transmogrified into data and that the phenomenon isn’t happening across various cohorts equally.)
@Mikey: This may be the administration’s most effective approach to remedying the housing crisis.
I would have approached the supply side before the demand side, but what do I know about governance?
@Joe: Isn’t it obvious? If it only costs two dollars to fly to Cali, flying within Cali has to be virtually cost-free. It’s simple math.
@Gustopher: I’ve been inclined to follow your precept about trolling trolls as my own policy. Cookie hasn’t said anything worth trolling in weeks. (But I was sorry to see MR backslide on his policy of interacting with the troll by announcing that he wasn’t going to and reverting to full on trollsplaning today. 🙁 )
@Gustopher:
Bleach Banket Bingo!
@CSK: Leaving aside the issue of using the military against its citizens, this is a really bad idea. A Marine infantry battalion has no training in policing or crowd control. What they are trained to do and may do better than anyone else in the world is to shoot and kill. What could possibly go wrong?
@Fortune: Because of course pornography and gambling are left-wing issues. Never see any of that in the South.
Putz.
@just nutha: I’m really sorry to hear you had to page down. Can we donate to a charity in lieu of sending flowers?
@just nutha:
Did you maybe not follow the link to the PDF, lots of what looks like hard observed data there:
here is the paragraph that contains the link:
Here’s the basic equation: the quality of our thoughts is a function of the quantity of demanding reading we undertake. The reason is that written language enables levels of cognitive complexity that are simply unattainable in oral communication. Look at the chart below from the fascinating article “What Reading Does for the Mind” by Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich. To compare the complexity of written versus spoken language, words were ranked according to the frequency of their appearance in a large selection of texts: it was then possible to look at the median frequency of words used, and the appearance of rare words per 1,000 words encountered, in various different forms of oral and written communication — in particular, printed texts, television programs, and adult speech.
(I tried to just post the link, but not worky)
@dazedandconfused:
There was the mater of having adequate gates for boarding and deboarding, wide enough taxiways, enough runway clearance, and being able to support the massive weight.
Air France flew the A380 to Mexico City for a while (prior to that they flew 747s). I saw it flying overhead now and then, and was impressed by how effing large the wings are.
No other airline has flown it here. Emirates flies a 777, Lufthansa a 747-8, all others A350s or B787s.
@Fortune: I have no idea of what you’re talking about, but any money you donate to any charitable cause is probably better spent that whatever you spend money on otherwise. 😉
@charontwo: I read some of the linked source from your lead post, but it seemed to me that it was just every “what’s wrong with…” essay I’ve ever read, so I must have given up early. Oh well…
@Gustopher:
I suspect that’s the underlying factor here:
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I mean, why else was the Marshal grabbed in the lobby? Maybe just a random co-inky-dink?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-mistakenly-detain-us-marshal-rcna211599
@a country lawyer: From the look of it the National Guard unit subordinated themselves to the LAPD, as they should. Hegseth would not have allowed that if he had plans for them to do something stupid, so this is all about posturing.
Likely the commander of the Marine unit will be given the same lack of instruction. The LAPD will ask him if his boys have riot gear. Nope? Stand by and waaaaay the eff back.
@dazedandconfused: James noted earlier that these national guard troops are activated pursuant to article 10 of the U.S. Code. That means that they are commanded by the active duty Army and the Governor of California has no control over their actions. If they are subordinated to the local police are even coordinating with them it is only voluntary. Had they been activated under article 32 at the request of the governor they would be under the actual command of the Governor through his adjutant general. Coordination would be mandatory and there would be clear unity of command. The Marines are not and cannot be under the Governor’s command. This is a recipe for disaster.
Forty years ago the US would never have accepted widespread pornography and gambling.
Playboy came out in 1953. By the time I was old enough to buy beer in a liquor store, 1969, Playboy was one of dozens of skin rags on the magazine racks. Just a few years later in the 70s Illinois started selling lottery tickets. By 1985 (40 years ago) 20 states sold lotto. Residents of states that did not have gambling games crossed state lines into states that did to buy chances.
@a country lawyer:
Technically true, they could legally not obey the local authorities, but apparently the commanders are, so far, subordinating to the LAPD, which is operationally just common sense. The LAPD will be upset if these troops did not coordinate with them, so we would hear about it.