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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[barton]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55299779

(thr guy who found himself standing in the dark in his child's room...yes,  I'd be rethinking things,  too)

Then, from The Register....

https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/14/solarwinds_fireeye_cozybear/

News of the SolarWinds hack was broken by newswire Reuters, which also reported that US government agencies, among them Treasury and the Department of Commerce, have been hit with a hack so serious that the National Security Council met to discuss it on Saturday.

The Washington Post has reported that the government hacks were made possible by flaws in SolarWinds products and that the attack was perpetrated by Russian hacking group APT29, aka Cozy Bear. US government officials have acknowledged the incidents, but have not offered further details.

This situation is properly scary because a supply chain attack that poisons product updates issued by a major security vendor suggests that Cozy Bear could be deep inside all sorts of systems and vendors....

[barton]

We got Ann Landers and her sister Dear Abby
Harrison Ford's a quarter Jewish - not too shabby! 

-- Adam Sandler, "The Chanukah Song"

[Hamilton Samuels]

Out of the totality of written literature are those the very best books to teach people about the times and places they are set in?

The voice is not eliminated. No longer required and eliminated are not the same thing.

Reading lists get updated and toothless geezers winge about it. This has always been and probably will always be the case.

While I'm not yet toothless, according to this article from the LA Times re the Burbank 5, the books have been quarantined until further notice.

In essence, they have been effectively eliminated.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-11-12/burbank-unified-challenges-books-including-to-kill-a-mockingbird

During a virtual meeting on Sept. 9, middle and high school English teachers in the Burbank Unified School District received a bit of surprising news: Until further notice, they would not be allowed to teach some of the books on their curriculum.

Five novels had been challenged in Burbank: Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” Theodore Taylor’s “The Cay” and Mildred D. Taylor’s Newbery Medal-winning young-adult classic “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”

I've read 3 of the 5, and it was a long time ago, IIRC Huck Finn and of Mice and Men were assigned reads in 7, 8 or 9th grade. To Kill a Mockingbird was in high school.

But whether they are the best teaching materials I supposed depends on what is being taught. We are led to believe that racism and prejudice might have been the lessons here. and the teachers thought they were effective teaching tools in discussing the issue. perhaps greater sensitivity can be employed and giving the kids some context and spoilers as to what they might find offensive.

But banning books that some find offensive is the real offense.

And as the LAT article details many teaching orgs were firmly and loudly against the books being in lock-down.

No doubt they are toothless geezers.

That some in the community are offended by certain words or themes presented in the books is unfortunate. But the remedy to racism should be trying to understand it, discuss it, expose it, or read about it to see how it affects us today. Pretending it doesn't exist and we should not talk about it as it might offend someone or a lot of someones seems counterproductive to the presumed goal.

I'm squarely in the free speech camp and think the recent movement to restrain offensive ideas on college campuses is dangerous and stupid and somrthing the left should not remotely embrace.

the woke generation, like some of us geezers,  should take a nap from time to time, as their brains could probably benefit from some sleep.

The problem is these books teach lessons as if racism is a relic of the past of the bulk of these times are written from a white perspective.

Usually being the one of the few blacks in “A track” I can attest to feeling targeted when in discussing these books in the classroom.

But hey... I have everyone of those books on the shelf... except for the Cay. I hated that book.

The problem is these books teach lessons as if racism is a relic of the past of the bulk of these times are written from a white perspective?

And? So?

What they teach is that racism is an integral part of the past, and that there were white people who recognized this wrong and wrote books to bring that wrong to light.

That you wish to silence that white perspective of the past reflects your own current bigotry towards white people.

Teachers don't teach books. They don't choose books to preach a point if view. They use them to teach students how to examine a perspective. Those books reflect varied and relevant points if view when placed within the context of when they were written.


Any of these books can be used to teach reading, writing, and critical thinking about society then, and the challenges facing society now.

Think your Jewish Grandma would work to ban "Number the Stars" because it tells a Holocaust tale as written by a gentile?

Your argument here is weak.

No. Im not a big fan of Magical Negro classics being extolled just because they make white people feel better about themselves.

My maternal grandfather was Jewish.

Fuck you very much.

Oh, well that would be your failure to comprehend what you were challenged to read.

Then again, when you approach everything the way you do, as though you already know everything there is to know, or already have experienced all that can be experienced, it's what we can expect.

Small minds like yours yield few wonders.

And thank you for confirming your bigotry and hatred for all to see. Again.

 

[barton]

The graphic underscores two misguided notions implying government activity in any part of of society is considered socialist or that private activity could be considered socialist if it produces a result of which socialists approve.

None of the graphic examples are socialism.
As in NONE.

So once SS became untouchable, the conservatives decide it isn't socialism.

It is welfare, not socialism.

I'd say the government collecting money,  then controlling the distribution of that money as pensions to workers, is socialism.

f it makes you happy to do then then party on.

So is public education -- government produces a thirteen year course of training for children,  mandates everyone pay into it,  and controls every aspect of its operation.   Once most people decided that was an essential system,  conservatives decided "not socialism. "   

Well, except there is no “ public 13 year course” mandated by the Government. Each state is broken down into school districts run  by locally elected boards of education.  That fact alone destroys your argument.

Nowhere in his post did Oil specify federal govt.   So you have a Strawman argument there.   School districts (following many state and federal guidelines btw) are still government.   The deeper point is,  it's pointless to equate a pejorative use of a word with an actual argument against something.   

[Hamilton Samuels]

Joe Biden will be removed "one way or another," said Alex Jones to the crowd:
https://www.newsweek.com/alex-jones-million-maga-march-trump-supporters-joe-biden-removed-1554361

I believe that is called sedition.

[barton]

Though the sedition part is,  in his case,  vastly outweighed by gibbering idiocy...

  Jones also seemingly suggested that Biden is actually an undead entity.

"We will never back down to the Satanic pedophile, globalist New World Order and their walking-dead reanimated corpse Joe Biden, and we will never recognize him," he said. 

[Hamilton Samuels]

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal printed a piece mocking the new First Lady for being so highly educated that she uses the titled "Dr. Jill Biden". The response was tremendously averse to that opinion. Today, the WSJ tried to defend itself from the slings an arrows of the press, who they believe are all in it for the Bidens.

Here's a good response to the piece that was written by an "academic" who, um...has no doctorate of any kind. Not EdD, or PhD, or JD, or...

Well, you can read all about this faux controversy, wherever you wish, but I like this piece best:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/jill-biden-and-joseph-epstein/617377/

(Little Larry, don't bother reading it. You will discover it's all about people whom you cannot begin to comprehend, as evidenced by your own "research" that was dropped on this site.)

[Oilcan]

Could we dial down the personal attacks?   

[REDSTATEWARD]

The graphic underscores two misguided notions implying government activity in any part of of society is considered socialist or that private activity could be considered socialist if it produces a result of which socialists approve.

None of the graphic examples are socialism.
As in NONE.

So once SS became untouchable, the conservatives decide it isn't socialism.

It is welfare, not socialism.

I'd say the government collecting money,  then controlling the distribution of that money as pensions to workers, is socialism.

f it makes you happy to do then then party on.

So is public education -- government produces a thirteen year course of training for children,  mandates everyone pay into it,  and controls every aspect of its operation.   Once most people decided that was an essential system,  conservatives decided "not socialism. "   

Well, except there is no “ public 13 year course” mandated by the Government. Each state is broken down into school districts run  by locally elected boards of education.  That fact alone destroys your argument.

Nowhere in his post did Oil specify federal govt.   So you have a Strawman argument there.   School districts (following many state and federal guidelines btw) are still government.   The deeper point is,  it's pointless to equate a pejorative use of a word with an actual argument against something.

You should heed your own words.

[barton]

 To what are you referring?

[barton]

From Reuters this morning....

The cyber spies are believed to have gotten in by surreptitiously tampering with updates released by IT company SolarWinds, which serves government customers across the executive branch, the military, and the intelligence services, according to two people familiar with the matter. The trick - often referred to as a “supply chain attack” - works by hiding malicious code in the body of legitimate software updates provided to targets by third parties.

In a statement released late Sunday, the Austin, Texas-based company said that updates to its monitoring software released between March and June of this year may have been subverted by what it described as a “highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state.”

The company declined to offer any further detail, but the diversity of SolarWind’s customer base has sparked concern within the U.S. intelligence community that other government agencies may be at risk, according to four people briefed on the matter.

SolarWinds says on its website that its customers include most of America’s Fortune 500 companies, the top 10 U.S. telecommunications providers, all five branches of the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Agency, and the Office of President of the United States.

The breach presents a major challenge to the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden as officials investigate what information was stolen and try to ascertain what it will be used for. It is not uncommon for large scale cyber investigations to take months or years to complete.

“This is a much bigger story than one single agency,” said one of the people familiar with the matter. “This is a huge cyber espionage campaign targeting the U.S. government and its interests.”   

[LarryBnDC]

We got Ann Landers and her sister Dear Abby
Harrison Ford's a quarter Jewish - not too shabby! 

-- Adam Sandler, "The Chanukah Song"

[josh]

Biden 156, Trump 106, so far.

No electors have strayed thus far. Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have all cast their EVs.

I wonder who will win!

[kidcarter8]

Abrams wins.

Should have been TIME Person of the Year, though how Fauci missed such a tipin is beyond me.

[kidcarter8]

Could we dial down the personal attacks?

heh