There’s not a strict definition I’m aware of in common English…but “in sunlight”, in my mind, implies DIRECT sunlight….since that’s not what they mean I find it easily confusing if not deceptive.
“In visible sunlight” is more aptly descriptive, but granted, loses some of the punch.

Also…I see the moon in full daylight, sometimes at noon on sunny days (then I might see an eclipse), and sometimes planets rise just after sunrise or just before sunset…in full sunlight. Come again?

aptly named.

1 Harriet Tubman = $1,620.00

Mr engineer, when there are two parties, sentence structure demands you use plurals….both sides have THEIR share of undesirables. An engineer should see grammar as a clearly defined structure that follows simple rules and just get it. Spelling is different, but grammar should be a no brainer….why is it so hard for you? Have you never seen it that way, or was engineering incredibly difficult for you too?

The difference being one side is all undesirables, and the level of undesirability. One side openly calls for an end to American democracy, death for their political rivals, death for anyone who disagrees with today’s talking point. One side has no party platform, no stated goals, and exists solely to stop any legislation the other side puts forth, even when it was something they want or that would benefit them. They are the same side.

We found another point of agreement.

Term limits are a must, and will never happen because our system does put the regulatory onus on those who need regulating….absolute insanity. It also lets them set their own salaries, ethics, and benefits.

Divestment is another must. Perhaps a bigger must. Total divestment across the board. Not just blind trusts that aren’t really blind, and absolutely not what we have now…the “honor” system run by the honorless. Allowing legislatures to write horrific laws because they can personally financially benefit is a recipe for disaster. That should (but never will) change.

Campaign finance is a third must. Corporations should have the same donation limits individuals have, which should be more like $100 each so every person can afford to have a voice, and we should return to an equal time on broadcast tv for free situation and deny the media as a political platform to give candidates a boost….no more Fox News interviews indistinguishable from campaign commercials, no more media smear campaigns, with severe penalties for violations, like $10 mil the first time, $25 mil the second, loss of fcc license the third. Another non starter….but needed badly.

PACs should be outlawed, or regulated into obscurity.

Some reasons often brought up in opposition to term limits can be traced back to Maddison who wrote "[A] few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them,"

I think we have proven at this point the cons of self serving representatives legislating for personal gains outweigh the benefits of professional legislators, especially seeing as we have the internet and huge staffs to ostensibly level the playing field of knowledge.

One fix would be the creation of an ethics branch, completely non partisan, not self regulatory, with rules against former candidates (winners and losers) and lobbyists too from serving and strict rules about how they operate, and bans from running for office or being a lobbyist afterwards so it doesn’t become a campaign platform or tool for industry. Maybe even ban close family members from the same. Won’t happen, only the best people intentionally limit their powers, and they are few and far between in Congress….all but absent on your side.

The first time I flew to Iceland on the aptly-named Iceland Air, the "entertainment" consisted of the entire catalog of Sigur Ros and Bjork. The seat-back screens in the cheap seats had a list of movies that an old UHF channel would have turned its nose up at, and an endless loop of four commercials for wonderful Iceland -- in Icelandic -- that you couldn't turn off. They also insisted in asking people to pay in isk for Icelandic food, which was both a novelty, an annoyance and a source of nausea all in one.
That said, it was better than Air France by a long shot.

Apt.

Many children get cancer, and many survive. I know several. Anyone in that category is lucky, but unlucky to have had cancer in the first place. But none of the survivors I know have featured in the videos of prominent Youtubers (or any other celebrities), or received gifts of absurdly spectacular birthday parties.

I dunno. "Variably lucky" felt apt.

Our health care system was stretched beyond it's limits with under 2% of Americans infected over a 9 month period, and even so 200000 died (likely more), some from lack of access to hospitals because they had zero beds available in entire states.
His plan is now to allow 35-40 times that many people to get infected in the next few years, which would lead to 7.3 million dead if we could give them the same treatment and mortality rate, but we simply cannot. 15-20% need ICU beds and equipment, in Trump's plan 9/10 won't get it at best, all those people will die, bringing the mortality rate up to as high as 20% +-.

.70 (expected minimum effective infection rate) x 350000000(population) x .20 (probable mortality rate without ICU care) = likely 49 MILLION +- expected dead if all goes to plan under Trump's herd mentality plan....an apt name since he's lining up Americans and sending us to the killing floors.

So somewhere between an optimistic 7.3 million and a pessimistic 49 million dead sacrificed Americans is his best idea (he knows tested widespread vaccines are years off and only good until the virus mutates, which it has already), plus any collateral damage from no functional health care and other factors. I can't fathom where this 3 million number that's being tossed around comes from, it seems insanely optimistic and not based in reality.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

Can be misleading, or can be apt. In this case, this is just one of many times Israel intentionally attacked Americans, so it's not misleading.
Also, there was only one combatant here. *facepalm

This is about how someone we call allies have acted undeniably criminally by committing multiple war crimes against us that we conspired to hide for decades, not how we treated actively aggressive enemies that attacked us and our allies first. Also, we're talking about crimes delineated in the 1949 revision and ratification of the Geneva Convention, so WW2 isn't covered. Duh.

Facts, like multiple undeniable war crimes against America, crimes that directly led to American murders, you mean?
If I find you on my street and cover you with a tarp before I beat you to death to footloose at 120 db so you can't protest, "I thought it was a known terrorist....i didn't see or hear anything to indicate it wasn't besides my friends who told me it wasn't." isn't going to work as an excuse. That's basically what we have here.

Your"illustration" is not a bit on topic, and seems like floundering excuses for the indefensible war crimes of Israel.

More aptly titled, "Sheep are stupid".

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by eric3579.

How were you able to ascertain that race played no part in him being pulled over and then charged after being assaulted by a white corrections officer Bob?
Just curious.
If it were a clean shaven white dude (and not a hooligan as you are apt to describe him) the same age I have my doubts it would have played out the same way.
He said he was on his way to a friends house not racing up and down the road but in your mind you already know more than what was stated.
I think race age and sex and connections are too many times the factors whether we want them to be or not.
Not positive race was an issue but it may have been a factor.

An apt summary of his entire life.

Act like an entitled arse and then look down on everyone you fucked over to get there.

Are you really blaming the debacle that is Trump on a small sect of the left wing, cos like, maybe its contributory...but you know, the straw that breaks the back is, afterall, still only a piece of straw.

Have you actually, personally, been pepper sprayed for just trying to speak?

If not...faux outrage? Irony detected.

Idk. I'm white, I'm male, I'm straight, but we clearly swim in different circles. The only person censoring me is me. I think the white, male, straight demo is heard from quite enough. He IS President afterall.

Not that I don't think there has been a tendency to stifle discussion through the abuse of "poltical correctness", but honestly, sometimes the "precious snowlflakes" thing seems like a more apt to description of the anti-SJW crowd that seem more butthurt that some people disagree with them than the people they offend.