"Never underestimate the stupidity of American blowhards."

Y'all approproated that from H. L. Mencken.* Thought of that too. But sometimes, folks can surprise a body.

EX: mininum wage ballot ininitive, a few election cycles ago, came up in 5 RED red states and they passed easily. even when the state govenments wouldn't do so at gun point. sometimes folks know what's what and go w/it.

just saying things can go so bad for so long, good things can slip in w/o anyone noticing. progress in america has never came in waves but in sporatic pulses.

heck. the GOP was a progressive movement at conception. some of that progressness flowed into the turn-of-century. got nat'l parks from teddy. (think of that? a Republican supporting land - for everybody - just to look at and not exploited? it's true!)

hope for hope's sake, s'all.

'Lightn' Hopkins said (or close to), "If'n your first though is 'I can't'; then don't even try". I say we should try. It can be done.


*he also said, "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." spot-on.

Oh no.....say it ain't so.....

A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to three officials briefed on the investigation and a statement from a House congressional committee.

Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy.

But on Monday, Hopkins, 32, told investigators from the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General that the allegations were not true, and he signed an affidavit recanting his claims, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee tweeted late Tuesday that the “whistleblower completely RECANTED.”

Hopkins did not respond to messages seeking comment.

This liar was cited in numerous Trump lawsuits as the best most direct evidence of fraud....they've got nothing.

Surprise surprise surprise. 🤦‍♂️

Edit: and more "evidence" turns out to be fake....a video claiming to show poll workers stuffing a ballot box turned out to be in Russia. At what point can we bar the Republicans and Trump from filing more lawsuits? After 20 frivolous lawsuits using fake evidence? We are past that point. Even these cost money to try, how about they pay 100% of court costs up front for any future cases? They're broke, so that would end the farce.

The video I agree....my calculations show his newest stated plan, herd mentality (immunity), "that's going to happen", leads to 7-8 million dead at a best case miraculously perfect execution, and in reality more likely >40->50 million due to an overburdened medical system. I don't have a clue where they get such a lowballed estimate as 3 million. I'm with you there....Shame.

The data for what I sent is at John Hopkins university, the NPR data source is listed, statistica requires a free account, but their data matches Hopkins.

You told me, don't you remember?! You don't support me so that can't be it, and no...no pedo....who do you support? That guy who hollas at 10 year olds in public, lusting hard. Who was that guy again? He raped a 13year old at least once....it's on the tip of my tongue...help me out...who is that?

So, if I were a pedophile, that would explain how I know you support them. No denial though. Hmmmm. That's a public admission Bobby, Duh.

Reminds me of Fracture, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Larry Mitchell Hopkins was arrested on Saturday in New Mexico.

EDIT: This video infuriates me. If you are setting type and want to make it flush right and flush left, (Justified) you must use a smaller font. If you want to keep the larger size type then just make it flush right (Rag Right) OR flush left (Rag Left). The overlay text just ripped my eyes out! There ought to be a law!

GOD! What's this world coming to?

Sir Anthony Hopkins!? Oh dear... how far have you fallen since you appeared in Transformers: the Last Knight.... I understand no career can recover from that, but damn...

LOL, that resemblance is a bit uncanny.

You keep saying that, but have never offered a single example where I misunderstood or misrepresented anything, just a mistaken accusation that I added my own term "hypersensitives" out of bias, but it was actually in the title AND the paper.
Present one. What, exactly, am I misrepresenting? Use quotes and be specific.

I think you must not understand plain English then, because that Hopkins synopsis is in plain English and contradicts your original blanket contention I took issue with-"rheumatoid arthritis is a flare up caused by dairy and certain meats".
That might be true in some cases of patients with food hypersensitivities, the science isn't yet clear, but it is clear that your original all encompassing statement is just wrong in most if not all cases and overreaching exaggeration in the extreme as written, something which is specifically warned against in the paper itself. ( "the science is not able to reliably identify specific triggers for individuals." , "These studies are few in number and should be interpreted and extrapolated to real life only with careful thought and caution.")
I personally know 2 long term (over 30 years) vegans in my family with active rheumatoid arthritis, and know of many more. If your statement was correct, that would be impossible.

Edit: had you said 'it appears that, in some people, RA flare ups can be caused by meat and/or dairy.' instead of "rheumatoid arthritis is a flare up caused by dairy and certain meats" you would not have been contradicted. If you could accept that the exaggeration makes your statement unsupportable instead of defending it blindly and zealously with mistaken assumption and misplaced insult, this would have been a single post instead of a whole thread.

I'm waiting for my apology from you for all the misplaced accusations made here.

I have now shown you unequivocally that I did none of what you accused me of...there was no exaggeration, nothing out of context, absolutely no lie told (by me)... and I actually quoted the medical paper from Hopkins, I did not tailor anything to my agenda (hilarious accusation coming from you, who does that with every bit of data you post) and did not add anything of my own.
Your post, on the other hand, is in no way in line with their synopsis, they actually clearly say so in it and warn against jumping to conclusions, a warning you ignored.

Waiting. ;-)

What you've quoted is that's the same thing I said in my OP -JH acknowledges that changing diets helps. They specifically say meat and milk are the prime allergy suspects.

There isn't any disagreement here :-)




But..........I do have a bone to pick with Hopkins. The fish oil study they reference on the Hopkins site, is a bit sus when you dig deeper.
Everyone in the study was also given disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs along with the fish oil..... so Hopkins isn't really giving us the full story here, which is: Fish oil helps remission in people on RA drugs.

Great, now RA sufferers have to buy toxic liver destroying drugs, and also buckets of fish oil supplements too(the doses were 10x the daily recommended amount of fish oil).... I guess they're line of reasoning is that you make more money if you can sell them two pills for the same disease.

They even try to hide the drugs part by calling it "DMARDs" after the references (which people don't usually read). Technically it's not lying I suppose, but it's very unethical. If I didn't go all the way through and find the research it'd have never figured that out. Turns out John Hopkins is largely industry funded, which doesn't surprise me now that they're approach is to push more pills, instead of less.

Sincerely, I have to thank you for bringing that to my attention. I like to keep a list of this misleading stuff.

You weren't wrong when you said there are some scummy misleading people in the medical field.

My OP wasn't wrong. It's inline with the John Hopkins quote you provided. But you then decided to tailor the quote to your agenda by adding your own "hypersensitive people" bit onto the end.

If you had perhaps made a measured rebuttal, I'd happily discuss this with you. But you take things out of context, you exaggerate, you lie - whatever you deem necessary to make you "right" or "win".

You always do this, regardless of the topic. Why do you even bother discussing anything?

But it's not ALL you said, as you preceded that reasonable suggestion with some totally wrong medical information, as I said.
Gotta learn to read the entire sentence there, mate.

You don't know if I have or have not read them. Truth is I don't need to read the studies in their entirety to know he's consistently misrepresented them, I can read a synopsis and understand scientists and or doctors when they delineate the limits and implications of their own studies, but that still doesn't mean I haven't read them. Even if I were unable to understand a study and it's limitations, I would still take the clear words of the doctors at Johns Hopkins who did the studies on arthritis and diet over hyperbiased diet guru McDougal every time.

So, no vegan has arthritis, but the entire medical community just missed that fact? Not true.
One more total misrepresentation of the science by your guru....the ACTUAL science, from Hopkins, says....
"In some patients, specific foods have been shown to exacerbate the symptoms of RA.(ref 5) Avoiding these foods or food groups has been shown to have limited, short term benefits but no benefits long term. Even though different forms of dietary modification have reportedly improved symptoms in some patients, people with RA may have spontaneous temporary remissions. Therefore, it is important to perform double-blind, placebo controlled trials to differentiate diet effect from spontaneous remission. You may identify a food that is a particular trigger for you, and this phenomenon is real. However, the science is not able to reliably identify specific triggers for individuals."
So only in hyper sensitive patients that have allergies to dairy, meats, or processed foods has this appeared to be somewhat effective temporarily, not long term, not for everyone....and it seems only anecdotally at this point (they imply that there have not been double blind, placebo controlled studies yet).
Fish oils are FAR more effective, but, you know, that's an animal product, so McDougal (as he is want to do at every turn) dismisses it in favor of false claims about miraculous veganism and misrepresentation of the science.

I downvoted your comment for using misrepresentational propaganda and unverified anecdote masquerading as scientific data from a known liar with undeniable bias to support your unsupportable position(s), that veganism cures everything including cancer.

What kind of balance are you speaking of? For the sake of argument, I'll assume that you mean spending somewhat equal time and effort on different sides of an argument.

That kind of balance can be expected from a news outlet. Many of them, especially American ones, overcook is massively by refusing to make judgements on the validity of opposing arguments. If argument A is backed by empirical evidence and argument B is smoke and mirrors, argument B should receive ridicule, not the same kind of respect that A receives.

Now, applying this kind of balance to individuals strikes me as wierd. They are not obliged to give a balanced view: they are obliged, as journalists, to present facts, and offer interpretations. The issues we're talking about here are not disputes between neighbours. We are talking about the war on terror, macroeconomics, propaganda, things of the utmost importance. And the media is doing a woeful job at presenting any dissenting view.

Thing is, you can get the major consensus narrative from countless news outlets out there. Want to here about the supposed benefits of multinational trade agreements? The NYT and the WaPo have dozens upon dozens of articles with praise of TTIP and TPP. If, however, you would like to hear about the consequences of previous trade agreements, or just some hard math on the numbers they like to throw in there, you won't find any. You'll have to go to Dean Baker at the CEPR, to Yves Smith at NakedCapitalism, you'll read Rick Wolff's take on it.

These people do everything in their power to restore the balance that the media drowned in buckets of party-line puff pieces. People recognise RT for propaganda, but somehow think propaganda stops when ownership is private.

Try to find proper articles about the global assassination program (drone warfare) and its effect on sovereign people abroad -- won't find anything in the media, you'll have to go to Jeremy Scahill.

Try to find proper articles about the desolation brought to communities in the developed world by (the current form of) capitalism, the epidemic of loniliness, the breaking apart of the social fabric, the monetarisation of every aspect of life -- silence. What about the slavery-like conditions it creates through indebtedness? The absurd inequality? Nothing.

What about the massive atrocities in Jemen? There was plenty about the atrocities committed by Russia in Syria, but when Saudis use US weapons to destroy an entire country, mum's word.

There is no balance in the media. They are the gatekeepers of knowledge, and anything outside the establishment's agreed upon consensus is ignored, marginalised, ridiculed, or straight up demonized.

CJ Hopkins had a great piece at Counterpunch the other day, titled Why Ridiculous Official Propaganda Still Works. He puts it more succinctly than I ever could. Reality doesn't matter, not for the mainstream media. The narrative matters.

And that's why I listen to dissenting voices like Chris Hedges, Abby Martin or Thom Hartmann, even when they are employed by a state propaganda outlet.

Nailed it.

This entire franchise has been awful from the start. It's like watching someone wearing a deceased relatives skin.... there's some superficial resemblance to your loved one, but the flesh is rotten, it looks horrific, there's no soul and it has all the wit and intelligence of a particularly stupid sack of hammers.

Fuck this, fuck Michael Bay and god help me, fuck you Anthony Hopkins for sullying your god name in association with this shit.