Not only did he abolish it, but it was one of the highest priorities of the GOP once Reagan came in. Haynes Johnson writes extensively about this in his frighteningly-prescient book 'Sleepwalking Through History'. The GOP was already following the lead of Roger Ailes (later of Fox News) after he polished the turd named Nixon and the GOP understood if they controlled the narrative, they could stay in power. Newt Gingrich, and the shitshow that followed, was the natural extension of Ailes's methodology. Abolishing the Fairness Doctrine will be studied for centuries as one of the single greatest acts of self-destruction in world history.

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)

Someone say Ministry?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXCh9OhDiCI

Fun Fact: A lyric from the spoken word intro ("Ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long") was used (without spaces) as a cheat code in the video game Sleepwalker.

Well that's pretty patronising. I'll disabuse you of your misapprehension: I'm a lifelong fan. I've seen all of the series and all of the films. I understand Star Trek pretty fucking well. I think that what you don't understand is that these things are subjective.

I think the TNG films are horrid. Tired, clichéd, uninspired revenge plots that don't represent the TNG TV series or Roddenberry's ethos at all, and as you say, with an emphasis on irrelevant space action and some pretty egregious plot holes. And they are boring, which Roddenberry-era Trek never was, even at its most talky. It's not just the writing and production - half the time the actors are basically sleepwalking their way through the films, and are often completely different characterisations from their TV show incarnations (particularly Picard in First Contact).

That I prefer this trailer over the TNG films isn't so much praise for Beyond as disdain for the lazy work presented from Generations onwards.

Of course. People always try to manipulate facts so that they fit their agenda.
History doesnt lie. Historians however... and history is written by the victors.
That doesnt make history meaningless, because sooner or later the truth gets out. It took a long while on WW2 and even WW1 (read The Sleepwalkers), but it happens. Also people, thanks to the Internet, get more and more informed from different sides. Common sense has been reformed. People actually understand cause and effect now, and dont just believe in what the news or some history books say that were written by PC or victor authors.

The problem with history is that it is taught fundamentally wrong. When it happened and who were involved are more or less unimportant. The real importance is that we learn from it, so we dont repeat historical mistakes and know what happens when we do this or that decision. People need to think for themselves when learning history, how that is projected on todays happenings, how we can avoid the things that happened so many times in history and always caused the same bad thing and how it all worked together to cause that. That should be taught. Instead names and dates are the most important thing to our society. No wonder history is so easily manipulated and repeated then!

Return to this breathtaking video again in 6 years with its brilliant colors and inspiring musical accompaniment once the skies above every major city in the world are buzzing with these puppies (outfitted with all-manner of state-of-the-art-up-in-your-shit technology), and re-elect the reptile you sleepwalked into office four years prior.

Enjoy the relative freedom we have enjoyed for some time now, and visit Beautiful Niagara Falls!

(Message paid for the cabal to re-elect Michael Bloomberg or he will buy another campaign.)

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

This is an email submission request by the creator - very cool video. More details:

The Ancestor is a collaboration between Chinese Takeout and Crazy Lake Pictures, both young production companies forged in the fires of speed-filmmaking challenges. Chinese Takeout members Timothy Hahn – Pixar employee by day, ruthless preditor (producer/editor) by night – and Abraham Dieckman, writer-director of the upcoming sci-fi feature Trash and Progress – recently made a splash on the festival circuit with the animated short film Cadaver, featuring the voices of Christopher Lloyd, Kathy Bates, and Tavi Gevinson. Crazy Lake Pictures accomplices Mike Lavoie, co-executive producer of the acclaimed film Sleepwalk with Me, and Keith Boynton, whose feature film Chasing Home was chosen as the opening-night premiere of the 2012 Gotham Screen International Film Festival, also collaborated on the well-received "Here We Go" music video for Brooklyn-based band The Spring Standards.

The Ancestor is Crazy Lake's second video for Darlingside (after the jaunty parable "Terrible Things"), and the first meeting of the minds between Crazy Lake and Chinese Takeout, though Hahn and Boynton have enjoyed the texture of each other's brains since their days doing improv comedy together at Amherst College. All four men are sensitive film nerds who look forward to many future collaborations.

*promote

The original video just got busted out of Beggar's Canyon

http://videosift.com/video/Son-Records-Mom-Sleepwalking

Sleep-walkings a trip, eh?

I go to work
Like a doctor
When I rock the mic
You got to like
The way I operate
I make miracles happen
Just from rappin'
I'm so lyrically potent
And I'm flowin'
And explodin'
On the scene mean
I got the potential
To make you go
Then chill
I got the credentials
That is of which I chose
To make a rhyme
And chill
Then you know
I will fulfill
To make a couple of mill
As I build a guild
For all the rappers and skills
And kill the weak rappers and no thrills
Hang 'em an ephigy
If he's a sucker
Hang 'em to the left of me
Cause my right hand man
Is my mic stand and
The microphone that I own
And my game plan
Is keeping at a steady pace
Ain't no need for a rush
It ain't no race
I'ma hit the top
Just when I wanna
And it's a matter of time
And I'm gonna
Cause I know when to
Go 'head enter
The classic Moe Dee rap
That sent ya
Runnin' around
Holdin' ya head
Askin' ya homeboy
Yo man
You hear what he said
Another funky rhythm
Look at ya man
And give him a high five
Cause I'm live
Runnin' around with him
Telling everybody
Hanging out on the block
It's time to wake up
And check the clock
Punch it
I go to work
I go to work
I go to work
Like an architect
I build a rhyme some times it climbs so erect
Skyscrapers look like atoms
Cars electrons rollin' in patterns
Writing out word after word
With each letter it becomes visably better
Cause my foundation built a nation of rappers
And after I came off vaction
I came to roam
The land I own
And stand alone on the microphone
Daddy's home
Open the door playtime is over
Time to go to work and show the
Suckers in the place who run their face
The base and a taste of who's the ace
Start the race
I'm coming in first
With each verse
I build a curse
So rappers can't capture Moe Dee's rapture
After I got ya
I have to slap ya
Senseless with
Endless rhymes don't pretned this
Is anything short of stupendous
And when this rhyme is done
Your mind will become
So trapped in the rap
You'll lust on another one
You gotta wait it takes time
I don't write I build a rhyme
I draw plans draft the diagrams
An architect in effect
And it slams
And if it's weak when I'm done
Renovate and build another one
I go to work
I go to work
I go to work
Like a boxer
Train the brain and aim
To out fox ya
Like a punch my rhyme knocks ya
Some times it rocks ya
So hard it stops ya
Dead in your tracks
So power packed
Before you can react
You're flat on your back
Down for the count
Get up and dismount
Cause I'm coming
With an endless amount
Of words in a hurry
Like a flurry
A collage to camouflage
The power punch but don't worry
Knowledge is an antidote
I got hand of smoke
Writing at the speed of light with insight
I wrote
Rhymes at a level
So you can't relate
Unless you're intelligent
So stay awake
Sleepwalkers
Slick talkers
This time a native New Yorker's
Riding a crescendo wave to save the mental
State of the fan so he can understand my pencil
Rhymes in its highest form
I'm a drop it on ya like a bomb
When it explodes I'll blow up
A few casualties but so what
If you're slow
You blow
You know you go
I flow
I throw all pro
I go to work
I go to work
To say rap is not work
Is ludicrous
Whoever said it
Must be new to this
When you hear me
You'll compare me
To a prophet for profit
Not merely
Putting words together for
Recreation
Each rhyme's a dissertation
You wanna know my occupation
I get paid to rock the nation
I go to work
I go to work
I go to work

My degree is in journalism. When I was in college, I won several awards for investigative reporting.

Y'wanna know where the whole Fourth Estate collapsed? When news became entertainment and when real journalists and real editors were made to kowtow to the marketing department of the networks. The second fatal blow was ABC losing the Food Lion lawsuit in '97. After that, the networks were far less willing to run investigative pieces if they thought there was even the slightest chance they can be sued for it. The third was the repeal of the Fairness in Broadcasting Act (read 'Sleepwalking Through History' by Haines Johnson for a very indepth look on why the repeal was the most important focus of the Reagan administration's early days and the poisonous dividends this historic mistake still pays to this day).

Real journalism will come back, but I believe it'll come back in a form closer to Stewart than Murrow.

Relatively well known comic Mike Birbiglia has RBD. He's told some pretty interesting stories about it. In fact I think his 1-man broadway show, Sleepwalk with Me, is mostly built around these stories.

http://sleep-medicine.advanceweb.com/article/feature-sleep-on-stage.aspx

Tags for this video have been changed from 'dog, sleep, happy, run, sleepwalk, bonk' to 'dog, sleep, happy, run, sleepwalk, bonk, dangle' - edited by sometimes

Tags for this video have been changed from 'dog, sleep, happy, run, sleepwalk' to 'dog, sleep, happy, run, sleepwalk, bonk' - edited by calvados

RE: A musical mind fuck

The one my friend posted on Facebook is slightly different. I'm just showing you her answers since I did yours instead. )

Cheers,
Leah


1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...

OPENING CREDITS: No Need to Argue - The Cranberries

WAKING UP: Rise - Flobots

FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL: Joy to the World - Three Dog Night

FALLING IN LOVE: Oh Lady Be good! - Ella Fitzgerald

FIGHT SONG: June - Pete Yorn

BREAKING UP: Sleepwalker - The Wallflowers

PROM: Halloween - Dave Matthews Band

LIFE'S OK: Somewhere I Belong - Linkin Park

MENTAL BREAKDOWN: All My Friends - Counting Crows

DRIVING: From Yesterday - 30 Seconds to Mars

FLASHBACK: Good Luck Charm - Elvis Presley

GETTING BACK TOGETHER: Peaceful Easy Feeling - The Eagles

BIRTH OF CHILD: Sofa Song - The Kooks

WEDDING: Helena - My Chemical Romance

FINAL BATTLE: I Won't dance - Ella Fitzgerald

DEATH SCENE: Joe Harper Saturday Morning - Van Morrison

FUNERAL SONG: Disenchanted - My Chemical Romance

END CREDITS: Seaside - The Kooks

1. Baptized Catholic.

2. Named after a relative who was killed in the Civil War, fighting for the North.

3. Ronald McDonald was my godfather.

4. Was in many musicals, commercials, radio spots, TV shows as a kid and had a small but visible part in a well known feature film. Notable non-imdb-able credit: You can hear me singing and laughing with other kids during the credits to Poltergeist. Shannon Doherty and Chad Allen were two of my childhood friends (no, I don't keep in touch).

5. Was elected president of my elementary school. My only presidential duty was to raise the flag every morning, which I passed off to my veep.

6. Used to write 'Weird Al' style parody songs. Unfortunately, the tape on which I recorded all of these songs was lost long ago.

7. Have wide feet.

8. My first car was a used 1988 Toyota truck which I kept until 2007. It was twice broken into and thrice stolen.

9. Studied percussion and composition at USC.

10. Was in the Disneyland Christmas Toy Soldier band for two holiday seasons.

11. Did not try drugs or alcohol until I was 20.

12. Used to sell my sperm for extra income.

13. Though atheist since high school, I've twice participated in a nude pagan ritual with strippers on an isolated beach under a full moon.

14. Sleep disorders. I get night terror when I'm extremely stressed. I also occasionally sleepwalk, talk in my sleep and get sleep paralysis.

15. Hiked to the top of Half-Dome in Yosemite twice.

16. Own a fully signed Mr. Bungle New Years 2000 poster.

17. Play Theremin.

18. I've performed at Carnagie Hall, Disney Hall, The Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, among other famous venues.

19. Went to the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 with a film that I scored.

20. Scored my first (and hopefully not last) commercial feature film in 2007.

21. Played in the pit for over 100 musicals. (wonder if I've worked with guessandcheck?)

22. Haven't had cable or shopped at a Wal*Mart in a decade.

23. If I had billions of dollars, I would design video games and theme parks.

24. VS is the only online community I've ever become a part of.

25. Six inches, but girthy.