Tuesday Reads

 Yes, "defund the police" is indeed a bunch of nonsense.

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Amazing this article ever saw print.  It is literally insanity on parade.

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We understand that men like you are toxic to society, and we don't want you in our spaces and taking our rights away from us.

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Obituary:  Another sexist jerk bites the dust.  E.O. Wilson, who did accomplish a lot in science but unfortunately is the culprit who started the pseudoscience of "evo psych," then called "sociobiology," died at the age of 92.  "Evo psych" was little more than white male academic pushback against affirmative action, especially among women who were making inroads in academia.

The bad outweighs the good with this dude:

Dr. Wilson got in trouble for extending sociobiology to humans. He had invited his readers to consider how human nature might be shaped by evolutionary pressures. He warned them that this would not be easy: It would be hard to tease apart the effects of human culture from those of natural selection. Making matters worse, no one at the time had linked any genetic variant to any particular human behavior. “There is a need for a discipline of anthropological genetics,” he wrote.

Nevertheless, Dr. Wilson argued that our species had a propensity to behave in certain ways and form certain social structures. He called that propensity human nature.

Natural selection could help explain psychology, in other words. Human aggression, for example, may have been adaptive for early humans.

“The lesson for man is that personal happiness has very little to do with all this,” he wrote. “It is possible to be unhappy and very adaptive.”

It was not surprising this crackpottery got promoted at around the same time the "bell curve" bullshit started getting hold in academia.  It really was about preserving white male privilege.

However, reading further about this guy, he seemed to think the world would be a better place if more women were running it.  He got a hell of a lot of criticism trying to extrapolate what he observed in the animal kingdom, mainly ants, to the human population.  

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Another obit:  John Madden, 85, former football coach of the Raiders when they were in Oakland and noted as a sports commentator with his chalkboard and other props, has died:

The NFL says Hall of Fame coach and beloved broadcaster John Madden has died at the age of 85.  

Roger Goodell, NFL commissioner, confirmed the news. 

'On behalf of the entire NFL family, we extend our condolences to Virginia, Mike, Joe and their families,' he said. 

'We all know him as the Hall of Fame coach of the Oakland Raiders and broadcaster who worked for every major network, but more than anything, he was a devoted husband, father and grandfather.

'Nobody loved football more than Coach. He was football. He was an incredible sounding board to me and so many others. 

'There will never be another John Madden, and we will forever be indebted to him for all he did to make football and the NFL what it is today.' 

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The deaths just keep coming:  Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid, 82, has died after a battle with pancreatic cancer.  I met him several times when I was living in Nevada and had volunteered for the Washoe County Democratic Party.  He was a representative for Nevada, then defeated Jim Santini for the US Senate seat, and then served for years, ultimately being Senate leader, until he retired.

Reid with former president Bill Clinton, in 2008

Snip from the article:

Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the political pugilist who rose from a one-room Southern Nevada shack to become the third most powerful person in the world, died Tuesday. He was 82. 

Reid was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in early 2018.

Reid was a revered and reviled force in Democratic politics for more than four decades, gaining a reputation for soft-spoken ruthlessness as he clawed his way from Nevada’s lieutenant governor’s office to the very pinnacle of the U.S. Senate. 

The stooped, bespectacled Senate strategist was, by his own admission, “kind of a strange guy.” Reid was a pro-gun, pro-life Democrat and a devout Mormon who opposed prostitution, but, later in life, endorsed same-sex marriage.

As the article notes, you didn't mess with Harry.  He even got into a fist fight with his future father-in-law.  He married Landra anyway and they stayed together for ages.

No Surprise Here

Nevada senator Harry Reid announced he will not be running for re-election in 2016. He is about 75 or 76 now, so he's about done anyway.

I fully expect Governor Brian Sandoval to run for the job and get elected. The Democrats don't have anybody I can see who would beat him, provided, of course, he wants the job.

Sandoval has been a shitty governor, but that has never stopped anybody from seeking a higher office. After all, they are like school administrators: the worse they are, the better they do.

We Have Nowhere to Go But Up

Of course Harry Reid thinks Obama is doing just fine, and that's why he thinks Hillary Clinton could do better, but the truth is it would be very difficult to find a worse president than that fake Democrat in the White House. Doing better than Obama would be like taking candy from a baby.

I honestly don't see Hillary Clinton even running for president. By the time 2017 rolls around, she will be pushing 70 years old, and she is TIRED, worn out now thanks to her stint as secretary of state.

I am sure she's just as big a globalist as her glad-handing husband is, and we don't need anymore of those, but I just don't think the financial elites want her. They want a puppet just like ol' Barry, and people like Cory Booker or Andrew Cuomo are more palatable to them.

I have written that if some outright fraud like Andrew Cuomo or Cory Booker is on the presidential ticket, I am ditching the Democratic Party and changing my voter registration.

Etc.

Senator Reid puts Mitt on the defensive. Stay tuned for the fireworks:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has what he says is an informed explanation for why Mitt Romney refuses to release additional tax returns. According a Bain investor, Reid charged, Romney didn't pay any taxes for 10 years.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Huffington Post from his office on Capitol Hill, Reid saved some of his toughest words for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Romney couldn't make it through a Senate confirmation process as a mere Cabinet nominee, the majority leader insisted, owing to the opaqueness of his personal finances.

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I probably won't have a link tonight, but it was just announced that writer Gore Vidal, 86, has died.

I'll have links tomorrow.
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It Isn't Just That Legal Prostitution

is bad for Nevada's image. It is the fact that prostitution in ALL of its forms is a human rights violation and is NOT acceptable in any society.

We need to move past the lies pushed by the tabloid media in the seventies and eighties this is a lifestyle choice and the current glamorizing of this on cable television, as the Moonlite Bunny Ranch was on HBO. The owner of this brothel should be jailed on human rights violations, not be glamorized.

Reid is right legal brothels should be gone, but it isn't just a matter of luring businesses. It's the exploitation, stupid.

News, Etc.

Harry Reid's re-election campaign should be the gold standard for other campaigns to emulate.
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Pompeii's "House of the Gladiators" has collapsed thanks to governmental neglect.
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I Totally Agree

with this blog post saying Harry Reid's campaign should be a model for not just Obama but for every Democratic candidate.

Reid may look like a wimp and be overly obsessed with the arcane and obsolete Senate rules, but he KNOWS how to run a campaign. Reid fired up his base and didn't try to kowtow to the elites just because they have money to contribute.

It also didn't hurt that Reid no doubt had many Republicans cross over and vote for him, horrified as they were at the prospect of a Senator Angle.

Actually, Senate Democrats

should pick somebody other than my former senator Harry Reid for the majority job; some of the reason he was in trouble this last election cycle was because he was a lightning rod as majority leader. I'd prefer somebody else, but apparently nobody wants it.

Sign of the Times

Nevadans have a momentous decision to make by Tuesday night in the United States Senate race: Will voters re-elect an unpopular but greatly experienced politician who, as this article notes, looks like an undertaker in a funeral parlor rather than a politician who sometimes undertakes unpopular programs, or will voters continue the recent Nevada tradition of electing laughingstocks and continue being sources of material for standup comics?

If the option of "none of the above" actually held weight, it would win in a landslide.

Big Time Politics

Sharron Angle can rest assured she has made the big time when the New York Times of all things runs an editorial about her and the "politics of fear."

Because of his high profile, Harry Reid is a lightning rod in the state and is widely disliked. That is understandable. However, what is being proposed as an alternative is truly scary. Whether voters are that stupid to throw out somebody who has served the state many years and is the most powerful person in Washington outside of Obama in favor of a race-baiting idiot who makes Chic Hecht look like Einstein is the pressing and depressing question.

Nevadans have fucked up before with Hecht, Gibbons, and Ensign, to name just a few examples of wingnuttery gone apeshit. Are they willing to continue this shameful tradition with the election of Angle? If they are, this country has indeed hit rock-bottom.

The Times:

Ms. Angle said last week that every state should have a sheriff like Mr. Arpaio, and he returned the compliment, in his own particular, chilling way. “You guys have got a desert here,” he told the cheering, foot-stomping crowd. “Why don’t you put up some tents?” The laughter of his audience of about 2,000 people, most wearing free Angle T-shirts or buttons, practically shook the walls of Stoney’s Rockin’ Country nightclub, where hand-held signs proclaimed Mr. Reid, the Senate majority leader, a traitor, a socialist and garbage.

Mr. Reid’s campaign had once looked forward to running against Ms. Angle, figuring that her extreme positions would quickly marginalize her in the minds of voters. But he somehow failed to recognize just how attractive those positions would be in a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate and highest rates of foreclosure and bankruptcy. And he was lifeless in last week’s debate instead of making the forceful, animated challenge to Ms. Angle’s radicalism that might have motivated his supporters.

Nevada has had a long tradition of libertarian idiocy, which Sharron Angle is peddling and pandering. It infected the GOP in all kinds of ways. When I moved there 26 years ago, it was like being on another planet, and I came from--and returned to--a part of Oregon which is largely red. Over the years this right-wing idiocy was increasingly marginalized as more people from other states migrated to the Silver State. Despite Nevada going into the gutter economically and despite many people having left the state, including yours truly, political attitudes aren't as stupid as they were when Reagan was president (and almost deified there).

This commenter has it right and knows what he is talking about:

Nevada has been a libertarian anti-tax structure state for many years. The majority of the country changed with this past Presidential election, the most pivotal change since 1980. Education is now a must.
Regional transportation infrastructure is now a must. Healthcare reform became a must. Financial regulations for Wall Street and mortgage lending became a must. It wasn't socialism, Senator Reid or the Obama Administration which built all those vacant homes in Southern Nevada during 20 years of supply side frenzy. It was all the customers-partners of gaming who too the appreciation and flips to the tables, where the gaming gated communities gladly took it. When the bubble busted in September 2007 and the party ended, all the money fled, with losses protected by the words LLC in other places. The big losers were Clark County residents with homes still remaining 40-60 percent underwater 2004-2007 prices. Ironically, the gated community now needs Senator Reid's seniority in Washington to bring home the bacon for economic and energy diversity. In a strange twist of fate, not assigning the proper amount of funding for two decades into quality of life and education has left the gated communities surrounded by retired people who do not want to pay any taxes and many of those who work lacking the education to make an educated choice for Senator. They are simply mad and looking to assign blame to an elected official. Meanwhile, the energy sector of the US economy fears cap and trade legislation, and through Karl Rove is funding candidates such as Angle to purchase the kind of opposition they are buying to block legislation that reaches too far. Republicans want power back, and oppostion to cap and trade is their issue. Uninformated or undereducated Nevadans thinkg they are voting Angle for jobs, in fact they are voting Angle for no new job diversity.

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I still expect Harry Reid to eke out a victory, even if it ends up being a few hundred votes.

Senator Harry Reid

told Ed Schultz the truth about challenger Sharron Angle, but will Nevada voters wake the hell up and realize they are about to turn the state into a further laughingstock should they elect her?

Another Prominent Person in the GOP,

this time former GOP chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, has endorsed Senator Harry Reid for re-election rather than that kook Angle.

At least Newt likes her.

If she wins, I guess Nevadans don't give a shit about looking stupid.

Speaking of Reid and Nevada, Vice President Biden was in Reno stumping for the senator.

If I were still living in the state, I would have attended the rally.

Reid-Angle Debate for Those Lucky Enough to Miss It

Part One:



Part Two:



Part Three:



Link to the YouTube channel nice enough to put this excrement on the internet:

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Does Harry Reid Deserve Nevadans?

We will find out November 2 if voters in the Silver State are stupid enough to elect a bona fide idiot to the United States Senate and thus lose a lot of power in the process.

As the editorial notes, Reid is the most powerful person in Congress, or at least the top figurehead in the legislative body.  Angle is nothing but a laughingstock.

If she actually gets elected, nobody will be laughing, except people like the Koch brothers who hold the average person in contempt.

News, Etc.

The Elko Daily Free Press, which endorsed John McCain for president two years ago, has decided to endorse Senator Harry Reid for re-election.

As if there were really a choice.

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Obama has probably signed his political death warrant by refusing to put a moratorium on foreclosures.

If there had ever been any doubt whose side he is really on, there shouldn't be now.
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Reid-Angle Debate

In case you are bored, here is the "debate" of the year, whereby the moron Angle doesn't even bother to answer the questions:

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Nevadans deserve what they get if they put this moron in there.

"I'm Sharron Angle, and I Approve This Message."

Sharron Angle strikes (out) again, and this ad is low--even for her:




If Nevadans vote her in, they get exactly what they deserve.

Luckily for Sharron Angle,

"scheduling conflicts" make it impossible for her to debate incumbent Nevada senator Harry Reid.

Fewer lines for comedians to seize upon, surely.

Although I Have Left Nevada After 26 Years

(while my possessions still remain in two places in Reno: the apartment and a too-small storage unit in a high-crime area), I, like millions of other people, have an absolutely morbid curiosity over the Nevada Senate race.

Sharron Angle continues to be discussed on the internet, with over 1,000,000 references when one does an advanced Google search.

Because the Senate passed some kind of immigration "reform" instead of worrying about those of us who are destitute, Angle decided to cancel an Arizona event.

No problem for her: She is going around Nevada talking about all kinds of issues she knows nothing about, including Social Security (which celebrates its 75th anniversary Saturday). Incumbent senator Harry Reid, speaking in front of a group of Reno seniors, reminded them how batshit crazy extreme this woman is, whether she wants privatization of Social Security or wants to "personalize" it. No matter what she calls it, she wants to get rid of it, just like the typical Republican politician who has no clue how bad it was for seniors before Social Security existed. Before then, if seniors didn't have family to live with, they simply went to poorhouses.

Not That in the End It Will Matter,

but Sharron Angle is trying to get all the help she can.

Even so, she still has problems with diarrhea of the mouth.

There is no cure for that ailment.