76 Republican staffer and long-term director of financial operations for Seattle Republicans Larry Corrigan pleaded guilty for attempted rape of a 13-year-old girl

77 Republican talk show host Scott Eller Cortelyou plead guilty on charges of using the Internet to try and lure a child into a sexual relationship with him

78 Republican constable Joshua Dickens sentenced to five years in prison for torture-related activities against a young woman.

79 Republican spokesman Brian Doyle arrested for trying to seduce a 14-year-old girl over the Internet. He was later sentenced to 5 years in prison

80 Republican campaign official and former Romney staffer Matthew Joseph Elliott convicted of sexual exploitation of a child Got a great deal, but really went astray, ending up murdering a child.

81 Republican party chair Donald Fleischman was charged with two counts of child enticement and one count of exposing himself to a child

82 Republican Michael Flory, former head of the Michigan Young American Foundation, raped a colleague at convention

83 Richard Gardner, a Nevada State Representative (R), admitted to molesting his two daughters and 34% of voters still voted for him. That 7 over the Keyes Constant!

84 George Roche III resigned as president of conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan after accusations of a quasi-incestuous relationship with his daughter-in-law, Lissa. This is an exception to my no adultery rule because yuck, his daughter-in-law. How could he do that to his son?

85 Bishop Paprocki is not a sexual predator, but he protects them. He protected and enabled pedophile priests. He engages in partisanship to order Democratic politicians be denied communion by all priests in his diocese, including Dick Durbin

86 Republican high-level Bush appointee Dr. David Hager sodomized his wife while she slept. She divorced him for it.

87 Republican sheriff Don Haidl used his office to try to smear the victim that was gang raped. The main perpetrator was Haidl’s son, who poisoned the victim. Sheriff Haidl claims that the girl deserved it because she was a "slut." The original story I linked is now 404, but here is another one.

88 Republican activist Neal Horsley admits to having had sex with a mule. Horsley also wants all homosexuals arrested and solicited murders of abortion providers on his Nuremberg files site.

89 Conservative Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston covered up thousands of instances of sexual molestation by fellow conservative members of the clergy.

90 Republican congressman Joseph McDade charged with exposing his genitalia to two women on a public beach

91 Republican delegate Robert McKee resigns after police seized two computers and videotapes from his home pertaining to child pornography

92 Republican blowhard TV personality Bill O’Reilly paid several million dollars to settle a sexual harassment suit with Andrea Mackris.

93 Republican mega-preacher Marshal Seymour arrested on charges of having sex with underage boys. Seymour had been jailed almost a decade earlier for similar charges in a different state

94 White supremacist National Vanguard leader Kevin Alfred Strom arrested and charged with child pornography

95 Daniel Dean Thompson founded a family-values film company that removed all the "bad parts" from films to make them family-friendly front for child porn, arrested for having sex with 14-year-old

96 Wharton prof & conservative consultant on media effects on children Lawrence Scott Ward had video of himself having sex with children. Sex tourist

97 Spokane Republican homophobic mayor Jim West recalled after evidence surfaced that he molested little boys

98 Focus on the Family's Steve Wilsey - molesting an 8-year-old boy

99 Republican Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Paul Williams faces charges of molesting his son

100 Chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, Glenn Murphy Jr., from Indiana was busted for assaulting another man. Not the first time it's happened.

Also,

Matthew Reilly, Cranston City council member and chairman of the Cranston Republican Party caught passed out in the drivers seat of his car after smoking crack. He had cocaine, fentanyl, and crack all over the open car where anyone including children could grab it.

Let me guess, your answer will be some random person’s tweet having nothing to do with republicans smoking crack and fucking children.

More Trump officials directly physically involved in Jan 6 convicted.

This time Frederick Klein, a Trump administration official, now convicted of 12 charges for being part of the violent vanguard attacking police to gain access to the capitol building.
Found guilty of, among other violent seditious acts, charges of assaulting, resisting, and impeding police officers. He hit multiple officers, shoved them out of the way, and used a stolen riot shield to block police from closing the doors he and his cohorts had forced open.
This man had top secret security clearance, and remained at his position in the administration after he violently attacked democracy on Jan 6. He was not fired, he quit Jan 19.
😂

How you like Bidenomics now that, contrary to every MAGgot’s prediction including yours who said inflation and unemployment would explode, wages fall, and a recession was a certainty, unemployment remains at record lows, wages are rising from the bottom/middle (not just CEOs), inflation dropped at record rates, and the economy is strong?
While you Cartman-like morons attacked a private citizen for being attractive to women, Dark Brandon has quietly repaired the horrific damage to the economy Trump did (massive deficit and debt explosion, double digit unemployment, and negative GDP!?!) and then some. 😂

Need another 25 high powered Republican child fuckers? I’ve got a truckload ready for you, and I mean an Australian road train size truckload! Just ask.

We called it "drum and bugle corps" when I did it (Santa Clara Vanguard, DCI '98). Basically a military-discipline civilian marching band competition tour across the US.

Good point. I admit I'm mostly quoting The Economist's recent article on it, since I haven't compared them myself:

"Meanwhile, fees as a percentage of assets under management have dropped from 0.68% in 1983 to 0.12% today (see chart). This compares with an industry average of 0.61% (or 0.77%, when excluding Vanguard itself). Fees on its passive products, at 0.08% a year, are less than half the average for the industry of 0.18%. Its actively managed products are even more keenly priced, at 0.17% compared with an average of 0.78%."

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21700401-vanguard-has-radically-changed-money-management-being-boring-and-cheap-index-we

Also: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21700390-rise-low-cost-managers-vanguard-should-be-celebrated-slow-motion-revolution

Totally agree with you on diversifying across index funds (as safe as fund managers are in theory compared to other financial institutions, I would never assume any financial company is 'safe') and of course staying under $250K FDIC insurance level.

In fairness, Vanguard funds are not almost always the lowest. I'd say they often are, but Fidelity beats them enough of the time that it's close between them.

With that said, I am in agreement with you that I would prefer Vanguard because of their ownership model. But as I accrue assets in my IRA's, I may open IRAs with Fidelity as well, as each of your retirement accounts' balances are ensured per account for up to $250,000. I would trust Fidelity as well, so I might diversify my index funds between fidelity and Vanguard for the insurance and other reasons.

I never paid much attention to my employer's 401k administrative fees until they recently changed 401k providers. I was blown away that our new CFO with the company for the last year, not only fought to introduce Vanguard funds as investment choices, which offered significant cost savings, changed our 401k provider. When I looked into the paperwork to try to figure out why, it became abundantly clear - he saved 1% in annual administrative fees on the plan.

Kudos to him! I sent him an email immediately thanking him for doing an awesome thankless job hardly anyone will likely appreciate.

On an investment manager company level, out of the majors Vanguard index funds are almost always the right way to go. Unlike their rivals (BlackRock, Fidelity etc ...) they are fully owned by their investors rather than listed companies.

Listed companies have the conflicting interest of needing to manage their share price and pay dividends, whereas they do not. This and their scale is what allows them to often have the lowest fees*.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'High school, basketball, sportsmanship' to 'High school, basketball, sportsmanship, gainesville, tornados, vanguard' - edited by lucky760

Also, note that nobody in the video explicitly claims that vaccines are the vanguard effort of a reptilian infiltration of the highest echelons of power, even though that's self-evident. Unless of course you're a statist reptilian tool.

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

It's from late 2010, when Merkel's party felt it neccessary to regain a more distinct profile with regards to the then surging Green party, who pride themselves as the vanguard of multiculturalism.

All this right wing nonsense about the unregulated free market being our savior is just downright laughable. Especially when you consider the content of this very video.

These people aren't greedy, they are passionately recognizing that the interests of the people of the state are not being represented or sought by the government of that state.

To bring up the tired old neo-classical bullshit about "efficiency" is absolutely uncalled for.

Entertain the following scenario: The most efficient market processes are adapted, do we now live in a utopia? Or do we realize a society where joblessness is at all time highs, corporate profits are through the roof, and a crumbling social infrastructure and middle class threatens nations' abilities to pay their debts.
Sound familiar?

I would suggest that the neo-classical free(est) market mantra is about efficiency only, and ignores the human side of economics. Economics should not rule us, it should serve us. This is currently not the case, and the 99% are waking up to this nightmare.

Finally, I would note that judging by the unfolding ecological crisis, and the crippling of economies by outdated, overpriced, low EROEI energy sources, the movement to change economic theory and purpose will only grow stronger. If occupy falters now, it won't be long before it bubbles to the surface once again (without vast changes to our democracy and economic practices). Don't be fooled by the mainstream media, history doesn't always repeat itself, the youth and disenfranchised will be the vanguard and protectorate of a new era. It would seem to be inevitable.

>> ^Peroxide:

http://www.newscientist.com/articl
e/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html


According to this study...
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf

An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. These are those top 50 Companies

Table S1: Top 50 control-holders. Shareholders are ranked by network control (according to the
threshold model, TM). Column indicate country, NACE industrial sector code, actor’s position in
the bow-tie sections, cumulative network control. Notice that NACE code starting with 65,66,67
belong to the financial sector.

Rank Economic actor name Country NACE code Network Cumul. network
position control (TM, %)
1 BARCLAYS PLC GB 6512 SCC 4.05%
2 CAPITAL GROUP COMPANIES INC, THE US 6713 IN 6.66%
3 FMR CORP US 6713 IN 8.94%
4 AXA FR 6712 SCC 11.21%
5 STATE STREET CORPORATION US 6713 SCC 13.02%
6 JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. US 6512 SCC 14.55%
7 LEGAL & GENERAL GROUP PLC GB 6603 SCC 16.02%
8 VANGUARD GROUP, INC., THE US 7415 IN 17.25%
9 UBS AG CH 6512 SCC 18.46%
10 MERRILL LYNCH & CO., INC. US 6712 SCC 19.45%
11 WELLINGTON MANAGEMENT CO. L.L.P. US 6713 IN 20.33%
12 DEUTSCHE BANK AG DE 6512 SCC 21.17%
13 FRANKLIN RESOURCES, INC. US 6512 SCC 21.99%
14 CREDIT SUISSE GROUP CH 6512 SCC 22.81%
15 WALTON ENTERPRISES LLC US 2923 T&T 23.56%
16 BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON CORP. US 6512 IN 24.28%
17 NATIXIS FR 6512 SCC 24.98%
18 GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC., THE US 6712 SCC 25.64%
19 T. ROWE PRICE GROUP, INC. US 6713 SCC 26.29%
20 LEGG MASON, INC. US 6712 SCC 26.92%
21 MORGAN STANLEY US 6712 SCC 27.56%
22 MITSUBISHI UFJ FINANCIAL GROUP, INC. JP 6512 SCC 28.16%
23 NORTHERN TRUST CORPORATION US 6512 SCC 28.72%
24 SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE FR 6512 SCC 29.26%
25 BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION US 6512 SCC 29.79%
26 LLOYDS TSB GROUP PLC GB 6512 SCC 30.30%
27 INVESCO PLC GB 6523 SCC 30.82%
28 ALLIANZ SE DE 7415 SCC 31.32%
29 TIAA US 6601 IN 32.24%
30 OLD MUTUAL PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY GB 6601 SCC 32.69%
31 AVIVA PLC GB 6601 SCC 33.14%
32 SCHRODERS PLC GB 6712 SCC 33.57%
33 DODGE & COX US 7415 IN 34.00%
34 LEHMAN BROTHERS HOLDINGS, INC. US 6712 SCC 34.43%
35 SUN LIFE FINANCIAL, INC. CA 6601 SCC 34.82%
36 STANDARD LIFE PLC GB 6601 SCC 35.2%
37 CNCE FR 6512 SCC 35.57%
38 NOMURA HOLDINGS, INC. JP 6512 SCC 35.92%
39 THE DEPOSITORY TRUST COMPANY US 6512 IN 36.28%
40 MASSACHUSETTS MUTUAL LIFE INSUR. US 6601 IN 36.63%
41 ING GROEP N.V. NL 6603 SCC 36.96%
42 BRANDES INVESTMENT PARTNERS, L.P. US 6713 IN 37.29%
43 UNICREDITO ITALIANO SPA IT 6512 SCC 37.61%
44 DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION OF JP JP 6511 IN 37.93%
45 VERENIGING AEGON NL 6512 IN 38.25%
46 BNP PARIBAS FR 6512 SCC 38.56%
47 AFFILIATED MANAGERS GROUP, INC. US 6713 SCC 38.88%
48 RESONA HOLDINGS, INC. JP 6512 SCC 39.18%
49 CAPITAL GROUP INTERNATIONAL, INC. US 7414 IN 39.48%
50 CHINA PETROCHEMICAL GROUP CO. CN 6511 T&T 39.78%

Thanks for the clarification.

We seem to be circling the same point. But I can tell we won't ever agree.

Except we can agree to drop it!

I am always happiest when I can find agreement. Means we really listen to each other, on however small a point.


In reply to this comment by Yogi:
In reply to this comment by bareboards2:
I'm moving to here so we don't bore anybody.

Look, your main point seems to be that if you don't agree that Assange approached this whole wikileak business exactly the way he did, then the person who disagrees with you automatically is a shill of corporations. That is the only thing that I am arguing with.

I am very tired of the ascribing of motivations to people that happens quite a bit on the sift. This is just another example of it. Maddow had a reasoned position for her point of view, that was somewhat complex. One word was pulled out of her reasoned position -- "minor" -- and all holy hell was brought down to refute that one word, while ignoring the whole of her argument, and this somehow became proof that she is Corporate Monster.

I really am not interested in defending her argument. I thought it was reasonable. I have other issues with the way Assange has gone about doing what he purports to want to do. I understand your point of view, I have had this conversation with other people who believe passionately in what Assange is doing and think of him as fighting the good fight. I have heard the arguments, and so far I am not swayed. I have wavered -- and the bullet point list certainly gave me pause -- however I always come back to about where Maddow is. I may yet change my mind as more information becomes available to me.

So what does all this mean? It means I truly am listening, and I just don't agree with you.

That doesn't make me a shill of corporations.

Can we agree on that? That a difference of opinion doesn't make me -- or Maddow -- some corporate monster?

In reply to this comment by Yogi:
>> ^bareboards2:

Yeah, I read it. Doesn't change my opinion that she has a valid point of view.
I disagree with you. I agree with her. That doesn't make us a scourge of humanity. Nor a shill of corporations.
Just two people who have a different opinion than you.

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^bareboards2:
I admire Rachel. She is often the voice of reason. No exception here, in my opinion.

Did you not read all that stuff below the video? This basically exposed Maddow to all those people who thought that a "Free Thinker" got their own show on an American News network. What did you guys think that she was special or something? That the public relations industry wouldn't notice her challenging their power and just let it slide?
She's funded by corporations...she would not be in the position she is unless she knew the rules...she's a vanguard there to stifle debate. It's always going to be just like NPR THIS FAR and no further because you can't say and do certain things...such as challenging power.



Really? You think that playing the "It's just a different opinion card" works in this situation rather than refuting the evidence against your argument that has been presented?

Possibly you have an opinion on any of the bullet points at the top of this page?

I guess I didn't make it all that clear. I was pointing out that this reveals to those who think Maddow is somehow special that she's not...she'll attack Wikileaks just like any member of the American media. Now you could defend her opinion that's fair I'm not going to sit here and discuss the strategies of Wikileaks or her opinion of them.

I am going to say though that she would not have her job if she hadn't already been indoctrinated sufficiently and wasn't already a corporate shill. Maybe she's less so than other people but I'm tired of having this argument with some liberals who say that Maddow is smashing the system. She isn't she's a part of it, you don't need to dissect all of her arguments and opinions to know that. She has her own show on MSNBC...she is funded by GE and Microsoft and several other corporations, these are huge bastions of power in the US.

We're not really arguing about the same things though, so we might as well drop it.

I'm moving to here so we don't bore anybody.

Look, your main point seems to be that if you don't agree that Assange approached this whole wikileak business exactly the way he did, then the person who disagrees with you automatically is a shill of corporations. That is the only thing that I am arguing with.

I am very tired of the ascribing of motivations to people that happens quite a bit on the sift. This is just another example of it. Maddow had a reasoned position for her point of view, that was somewhat complex. One word was pulled out of her reasoned position -- "minor" -- and all holy hell was brought down to refute that one word, while ignoring the whole of her argument, and this somehow became proof that she is Corporate Monster.

I really am not interested in defending her argument. I thought it was reasonable. I have other issues with the way Assange has gone about doing what he purports to want to do. I understand your point of view, I have had this conversation with other people who believe passionately in what Assange is doing and think of him as fighting the good fight. I have heard the arguments, and so far I am not swayed. I have wavered -- and the bullet point list certainly gave me pause -- however I always come back to about where Maddow is. I may yet change my mind as more information becomes available to me.

So what does all this mean? It means I truly am listening, and I just don't agree with you.

That doesn't make me a shill of corporations.

Can we agree on that? That a difference of opinion doesn't make me -- or Maddow -- some corporate monster?

In reply to this comment by Yogi:
>> ^bareboards2:

Yeah, I read it. Doesn't change my opinion that she has a valid point of view.
I disagree with you. I agree with her. That doesn't make us a scourge of humanity. Nor a shill of corporations.
Just two people who have a different opinion than you.

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^bareboards2:
I admire Rachel. She is often the voice of reason. No exception here, in my opinion.

Did you not read all that stuff below the video? This basically exposed Maddow to all those people who thought that a "Free Thinker" got their own show on an American News network. What did you guys think that she was special or something? That the public relations industry wouldn't notice her challenging their power and just let it slide?
She's funded by corporations...she would not be in the position she is unless she knew the rules...she's a vanguard there to stifle debate. It's always going to be just like NPR THIS FAR and no further because you can't say and do certain things...such as challenging power.



Really? You think that playing the "It's just a different opinion card" works in this situation rather than refuting the evidence against your argument that has been presented?

Possibly you have an opinion on any of the bullet points at the top of this page?