Guard Dog

So, how did that work out in '16? Voting for the most qualified and admirable candidate? Did you just skip the Presidential box on your ballot? Write a name in? Because if you checked any box at all you screwed the pooch on that one.

When you keep throwing out his unsuitability for the office it made me wonder if you were getting why some people vote for hopeless candidates. I figured you understood but here comes the aleppo thing again and I wondered again if I'd misjudged. So... the dead horses are buried. You'll hear no more of that from me at least.

Can anyone recommend any good books about Alexander the Great and his campaign in Persia? There are enough of them to fill a library but none of them jump out at me a reviews are all pretty mixed. I'd appreciate any opinions if you have read one.

OK, I will repeat this for the final time. i'll try to make is as simple as possible. It does not matter if Gary Johnson would have been a good President or not. it was utterly irrelevant. The idea behind voting for him was NOT to make him President. We all knew... all of us... that was not possible. What WAS possible and what we were hoping for was to get the LP candidate 5% of the popular vote. IF that had happened the candidate in 2020 would have had automatic ballot access and be eligible for campaign funds. So please let this s--t about the aleppo remark go. Nobody gave a s--t. It-did-not-matter. He could have been a blithering idiot all the time it-did-not-matter. It was not about electing him. It was about 5% of the popular vote. Do you see? I cannot dumb this down any more than that. His self inflicted injuries may have cost us the 1.1% of the vote we fell short by. They may not have. He was not a terrible candidate. Just not a good one. Trump and Clinton were terrible candidates and each would have made terrible presidents. One certainly did. And here is the thing. In 2020 we're going to run someone else who will not win no matter what. And IDGAF about that or who it is I'm going to vote for them. Because no matter who it is I want to see other party candidates on debate stages and election polls that are not D or R. Hell we NEED that. Because it is impossible at this point to figure out which of those two is more f----d up. The only way those future other candidates get on the ballots and on the debate stages is when the candidates of today start getting votes. Gromnir , Hurlshot & myself at least can vote for whomever the f--k we please with a clear conscience because the outcome of our states is a foregone conclusion as far as the President goes. If you live in a state that a handful of votes might actually make a difference, like Florida, Ohio, etc, then do what you think is best. But in California voting for Clinton or Trump you could have walked down to the beach and shouted it to the f-----g seals for all it changed things. The D & R were already established for 2020 and beyond. But voting for a third party MIGHT have helped change something four years, eight years down the road.

He made a good point

Grom, he's not running. And, not to re-hash old and pointless arguments, a vote for his was not actually FOR him. As you well know. You know perfectly well voting for him, or any other candidate from the LP was not about getting THAT person elected. I really wish you would stop flogging that horse... it's dead. Or maybe you don't get it. I don't know. Some foreign entanglements are unavoidable. Three on my list certainly were. Korea, Gulf War & Afghanistan. The rest were unnecessary and some even self defeating. The point being political D & R change places but the actions don't change, maybe it's past time to look past the D & R. Edit: Grenada was also unavoidable

Korean War: Democrat Bay of Pigs: Democrat Vietnam: Democrat & Republican Dominican Republic (1965) Democrat Lebanon: Republican Grenada: Republican Panama: Republican Gulf War: Republican Somalia: Republican Haiti: Democrat Bosnia: Democrat Kosovo: Democrat Afghanistan: Republican Iraq: Republican West Africa: Democrat Libya: Democrat Syria: Democrat & Republican Had enough yet? Then stop voting for Democrats and Republicans.

Only every f-----g day.

Following this Alabama abortion mess. This law was, of course, passed to be challenged in court. I really hate that a legislature would pass a law they know is unconstitutional purely for the purpose of changing the constitutionality of the law in court. That is putting the cart before the horse IMO. I think they are far too optimistic this is going to work. This is how I see this playing out. Every lower court will rule against the State of Alabama. That is just going to happen. The precedent is clear and the lower courts are bound to it. So that means this will wind up in front of the SCOTUS (if they take it. There s a chance they won't want to touch it). There are five justices chomping at the bit to get this. Ginsburg, Kagan, Sotomayor, & Breyer to uphold it (Roe) and Alito to overturn it. Those five already have their minds made up I think. Thomas for sure and Goresuch I think will side with the State of Alabama. Not because they favor abortion but because both are likely to think Roe was decided on a fictional legal construct (right to privacy) and this is a State problem. So that leaves Kavanaugh and Roberts. There is no way to know where Kavanaugh is going to come down on this. He's new to the court and has been somewhat unpredictable. But I can bet you what Roberts will do. If it's 4-4 he is going to rule against Alabama. Roberts will not want this case and will not want to upset the apple cart with any decision that overturns Roe whatever he might think. Of course this all depends on exactly what the case ends up looking like. If there is room to do so they will likely prevaricate and come back with a very narrow decision. I don't think that is going to cut it this time though. All this is speculation on my part. But that's my wager. Any takers?

I got a guy that isn't even running:

Different times, different circumstances. In neither incident was the US already involved in two long term, expensive, destructive, and useless combat zones. I may be wrong but the only thing that leads to a confrontation is an actual attack by Iranian military units on a US vessel or ground unit in Iraq.

I wouldn't worry much about this Iran stuff. Unless they do something stupid like actually attack a US ship nothing will come of it. Just some saber rattling and two rooster strutting on opposite sides of a fence.

There was a pretty good article in the Atlantic this week about former justice John Paul Stevens and his biggest regret in his career being the Heller decision. It's worth a read: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-stevens-court-failed-gun-control/587272/ Obviously I completely disagree with his reasoning. A prefatory clause changes nothing about a subsequent operative clause IMO. People like Peanut Butter sandwiches, the right of the people to buy peanut butter shall not be infringed. Well, if bread were no longer available there won't be any more peanut butter sandwiches. But you still can't stop folks from buying peanut butter. There were three things I took away from this: If a judge realizes that X is legal and X is also bad, it's not just acceptable to overlook the legality of X and rule against it, it's a judge's duty to do so. That is so very wrong. He also says this in the same paragraph as he laments the courts intrusion into the world of the legislature. That is a bit of a conflict if you ask me. He is consistent. You have to give him some credit for that. In Heller, Kelo, Midkiff, and others he has always held that the legislature does no wrong (my words not his). Being Democratically elected they can take anything from anyone for any reason so to speak. I bet he has a framed portrait of Thomas Hobbes somewhere in his home. This one is the most ironic IMO. He laments the court did not find for the District of Columbia in deference to the precedent set in United States vs Miller. In that case the court decided a sawed off shotgun is illegal because the government CAN ban weapons that have no use in a "well regulated militia". The irony is an AR-15 is a weapon appropriate for militia use. As well as the many AK variants out there. Had he gotten his way is would be even harder to ban the weapons people seem to want banned the most. In the majority decision on Heller there is more wiggle room for legislative restrictions (short of prohibition) than there might have been if he actually swayed Kennedy or Thomas to his way of thinking. I've got to give his book a read. It might be interesting.

No actually the notion of banning is my own angst slipping in. I don't think the article mentioned it. When it comes to governmental bodies deciding "Thou shalt not read/watch/listen" it is rarer now than it has been in the past. No less insidious though. When it is done it is done from the same perverse sense of superior "morality" that got Salinger, Fitzgerald, Twain, and Joyce banned in the 50's & 60's. Only now the banned books are usually non-fiction and the bans are politically motivated. I remember before I left South Florida there was a big to do about the Broward County school board ordering a book removed from schools because it was about Cuban Refugees and painted Cuba in an "unflattering light". Now when I say "banning" obviously I'm talking about removing them from schools. No government in the US can "ban" anything (Thank God & James Madison). The kind of banning I was referring to was more of a "soft" ban when platforms like Youtube and Hulu refuse to host content for political reasons. Of course, that is their bandwidth, their sand box. They can show or not show what ever they like for whatever reason or no reason. Not that I think they should though. You know my take: nothing should ever be restricted from anyone. If I ever come into the possession of unlimited data storage and unlimited BW to access it and the rights to everything for all time I'd let any one watch/listen/read all of it. Something to look forward to right? You'll appreciate this one. I remember when I was in high school (or maybe middle school not sure) there was a big deal about certain school districts in Florida banning 1984 because it was "pro-communist". Before asking for a book to be banned maybe they should actually READ it first!

Interesting read on the angst of political incorrectness in old movies: https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/443282-will-political-correctness-kill-classic-movies I can see how the changing times might mar people's enjoyment of old movies and TV shows. The concern of course is that this leads to banning. It's a short step from outrage to elimination. And there is a history of that. Just ask Mark Twain. I remember a few years back you tube stirred up a controversy by banning and removing old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Not because of Warner and copyright issues but because to some they are offensive. It never fails to amaze me why people can't just shrug it off with "things were different then". If anything it's a opportunity to appreciate that things are better now. The problem is some people guard their anger zealously. They hold onto it tighter than money and never seem to want to give it up.

I likes all those ideas. TN's too. Why didn't they do this? I guess they figured they were too big to fail. People are naturally lazy when there is no incentive not to be.

I like American Horror Story's concept. Every season is a self contained storyline and every year is a new one. But I've only seen the first two seasons. So far they haven't screwed it up. It's not must see TV or anything but it's a tolerable time waster

Shady you and I would agree DS9 was the high water mark for Trek. It was never so good before or after. But didn't you just watch that last episode and think WTF? It was a great ride. Too bad it crashed on the landing. It sours the whole thing.

Exactly! They were only a problem when the plot needed the to be a problem. That is just plain lazy.

IC hit on a good point here. If we never heard of the books and this was just a TV show we'd be a lot more forgiving of all the plot holes, bad logic, and out of character stuff because the bar would just be lower. We EXPECT TV shows to be stupid and illogical. Duckman was ahead of his time (as he often was) in explaining how D&D are operating once the got off the leash of the source material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0N-kgMUbA&list=PLU5D41_64IxLx1cVxHp2a1RHaB1LE3uSW

Last week I found my DVD set of the HBO series Rome. I've been re watching it. I forgot how good it was. There are a lot of GoT actors on it too. Thanks God they were a bit more faithful to the source material in that one.