Voltaire

If a dude is over 100, you score negative points for him.

I'm thinking of getting a machine gun on my forehead and $ signs on my cheeks but what's been holding me back thus far is the worry that I might regret it later.

I guess it depends on how I'm being treated. If he's an entitled a$$hole making demands with a chip on his shoulder, no I won't use the pronouns. If he acts like an otherwise normal decent person who wants to be friendly and get along and treats me well, I may. I dunno. The only time I've been in a similar situation is with what seems to be a trans-person at the grocery store checkout lane. my personal default setting is friendly, hopefully that's reciprocated, at the checkout counter it was. Later, on the way to the car, I talked about this seeming trans person with my wife and we called him 'him'. I didn't do it to disparage the person, we'd been treated well. I respect the person's dignity, it just occurred to us it was probably a 'him' we'd been dealing with. We don't avoid him, we always go in the shortest line, which sometimes is his and sometimes isn't. Also, it's not a for sure thing that this person is a man. We're kind of guessing; one of the worst outcomes of all this trans stuff has made it really hard for fugly women, whom this might me, and who back in the day would have gotten the benefit of the doubt.

My wife is on the phone right now with a Chinese friend urging her not to let her daughter go to school in California.

You're talking about eugenics and stuff that fringe racist right wing figures propagate. How us and various Asian cultures have spent the last 3000+ years of civilization culling the sociopath gene from our DNA while the reason other races are more prone to violence is that they never did so. I'd as soon leave such thinking in an unopened box and just deal with the fallout of having evil turds arrive every so often because trying to fix it by searching out certain DNA factors will lead to a worse place. Also, its not just the fringe right. Look at how loosely the fools on the mainstream left are at labeling everything Nazi and fascist that they disagree with. Who's going to be the ones making these decisions?

If the GOP had actually wanted to defund SNAP, they could have done so. They had full control of the budget after all, as even you must surely have noticed. Instead, those of us that aren't fed lies constantly, are able to correctly point out to the braindead observers on the other side that money for SNAP was fully funded in the bill which the entire GOP voted for and the Dems rejected. But keep believing and regurgitating lies. Its par for the course.

Well they're trying to save some bucks and shorten waiting lines by cutting off illegal immigrants as well as able-bodied useless people dedicated to sitting on their ass rather than look for work.

I don't understand the Democrats who think they were winning the shutdown and were undermined by the eight. Right wing commentators had been saying the exact opposite the entire time. IMO, nobody was winning the shutdown, it was a stalemate until the end, and nobody won in the end. Also, I don't think the eight Dems caved nor do I think they lost but whatever. I dunno. It seemed like a perfectly evenhanded deal to me; I wasn't exactly thrilled with the concessions offered the Dems to make the deal either but I'm glad its done. Its for the Dems to figure out how they want to react to the compromise. Seeing Rachel Maddow as spokesperson for those who think they were winning and lost. It wasn't my take at all, neither side was winning and neither side won, but do I like seeing them piss and moan about it and thinking they lost. If they want to engage in a circular firing squad, I should support anything that weakens their party, but seeing the sane eight punished by the freak show fanatics for doing the right thing isn't bittersweet, it kinda sucks actually. Its better to have Democrats who reject the Borg implants the rest of them have.

The entire Democratic Party encourages men with a fetish for being in the proximity of pooping girls to get their jollies off by buying a dress, some mascara, and moving to a blue state. It's a hill they're willing to die on.

A lot of top teams clashing this week.

Aldol may not be the future of robotics, but if Lifecall offers to fork over $20 for it, it can be avoid the scrap metal junkyard and be salvaged as a spokesman for their commercials.

You take out a loan when you're 25 and don't pay it off until you're 75? Brilliant. Well, I'm 53 so.... let me see here...

The Dems healthcare plan may suck but at least they have one. The problem for the GOP is even after all this time, they have never have come up with a plan to replace it. Or maybe they have and its on me since I've not seen it. I'm talking from the lead up to McCain's thumbs down up through today ... maybe I'm missing something. If so tell me. If Obamacare gets tossed, what happens the day after to replace it? I genuinely don't know.

Everyone hates Hitler for reasons that have nothing to do with his pen1s nor his sex life, which was something private was for him and Eva Braun to deal with. LGBTQ activist historians are already going through history claiming a bunch of people were gay, which the vast majority probably weren't, because it was frowned upon, but it maks the "researchers" feel special like they found something lurid. Ask yourself this question. Suppose a perverted fake LGBTQ activist historian, known for making up sh!t, who has access to and inclination to rewriting the sex life every person in history based on shoddy evidence, who in all of history would they most desperately want to paint with the micropen!s label?

Don't come to anyone else for affirmation of their lifestyle or demand we change for them. It would be nice if the social contagion weren't promoted everywhere and were again limited to the sex shop, bookstore, and club on the gutterboy side of town. People didn't have much issue with it back in the day.

Why does/should anyone care about Hitler's or anyone else's sex life? The only time people should be publicly proclaiming and seeking out their niche fetish is on dating app searching for (whatever). Most of us don't care about Hitler nor anyone else's sex life, espcially with all this LGBTQ Alphabet bullsh*t going around, we don't want to hear about it or perverts advertising /proclaiming it from the rooftops. Seek it out on the downlow in the channels available for the sort of thing you like, leave everyone else alone, and have enough decency to act like a mature person in public.

Um ... I don't understand your point. When a boy who identifies as transgender wants to compete against girls, we as society at large, need to stand up for the girls and tell him 'no'.

He's a hero of mine. I think MLK's dream is and ought to be treated as the true north guiding star for race relations. I'm glad we''re finally realizing it in 2025, although we are still divided along other lines..

Put me down as wishing Mamdani every success in getting all his policies implemented. Personally, I think 92.8% of New Yorkers deserve Mamdani's leadership (Silwa got 7.2%). The younger generation needs to see firsthand what happens when you elect Pennywise the Dancing Clown and many of the rest of us could use a reminder as well.

Having taught in both, I do think Chinese school are better than US ones overall but there are things Chinese schools get wrong too. Those great academic results come at a cost of long school hours, combined with excessive homework. Low achiving kids are shamed which leads to stress and suicides and even high achievers experience burnout. Plus there is far more memorization than deep understanding and its regimented with everything taught from the same sources o there isn't much diversity of approaching problems. On a personal level only two of my three kids excelled in the pressure cooker over there, but all three are top students over here, including my son, whose confidence was shattered. The kid's getting straight As here, like his sisters are, but China is willing to throw kids lie him to the wolves. They use brutal shame and humiliation tactics. The parents have the equivalent of a facebook group and with my girls' classes : who did great on the test, who got everything right on their math homework, who are the class leaders who keep the kids in line and pass out papers and wear the little Young Pioneers badges (a pool that identifies future potential Communist Party members) and my two girls were often in this group. The flip side of that is we also learn... who didn't turn in homework, who was talking in class, who forgot their pencil, who failed the test... and there's the always same moping 8-10 dejected kids including quite frequently my son. It's why I pulled him out, put him in that accredited online school out of Kansas City, and became a homeschool dad for the last two years in China. Since the girls were temperamentally suited to dong well, I left them in the Chinese system. The shaming doesn't end with school. Two people infected with COVID had fled Hunan and arrived in Panzhihua as the COVID crackdown was being put in place. One turned himself in to the authorities. The other evaded them, went shopping at the local mall, and eventually she infected nine other friends and family before they were all rounded up. The names and addresses of all eleven were posted online and known to the whole community. There was fear but also some sympathy for ten of them, but the college girl super spreader... such venom and rage.

Today is Veterans' Day 2023. It's my first one stateside in 22 years. This morning, a brisk but pleasant Michigan November, I went to my youngest daughter's elementary school because the school invited veterans for a special event. During the Gulf War, my sister had been in elementary school herself, now her and my wife were parent volunteers. A good fifty or so veterans showed up, all of us were given thank you cards and a paper poppy, my card was from Adelyn- no last name or grade. My coat is unzipped because the weather is decent and I stick the poppy into the least bad place I can, my shirt pocket where it sits rather awkwardly. We all sat in a folding chair and the kids came outside, the K and 1st graders to our left, the 2nd and 3rd graders to the right, the 4th and 5th grades straight in front. For me a niece to the left and another to the right with my daughter straight ahead, but hard to see because she was standing behind a boy bigger then her. The principal at the High School my two older kids attend is there too, his daughter and mine are classmates, and today I learned that he's a Navy vet. The principal made a brief statement, remembering the dead, so I thought of the eight names that needed remembering although none that I knew in life: two guys Jeff Middleton of Kansas and Robert Talley of New Jersey, the two guys who'd died when this BS friendly fire story occurred. We'd go on to lose six more that would die in actual combat: Anthony Kidd, David Crumby, Manuel Davila, David Kramer, Tony Applegate, and James Murray, They had been in my brigade (2nd Armor Division (Forward) out of Garlstedt Germany. Seven of our death were from 1/41. the other, Murray, from 3/66, was also a friendly fire. I was in B Co. 498th Support where we'd lost no one.) The principal invited the music teacher out, and we were treated to a patriotic song and dance performance from each class. It lasted about a half hour or so, my wife was armed with her phone's camera taking photos. When it was done, kids who knew a veteran were invited to stick around a bit longer, the rest would file into the school, so my 3rd grade niece runs up, my daughter comes forward, my kindergarten niece oblivious does not, she walks right back past us and returns into the gym with her class. As we line up to enter the gym as well, I learned that the 5th graders made the paper poppies in art class and that there are a few Adelyns at this school. We entered the gym and there were eight moms volunteering passing out coffee, tea, juice fruit, and donuts... the last two being my sister and wife at the donut station. We gather our goodies and when we get to the end of the line, my sister is upset that only 2/3 of the children are present, and so dispatches her elder daughter to go retrieve the younger one. I take my strawberry donut, orange and both a coffee and apple juice and go sit down with my daughter while my niece puts her stuff down and runs off to gather her sister who comes back and cuts to the front of the line and joins us. She asks about the flower and I begin to tell her it's a poppy and about a great WWI battle that took place in a poppy field in Belgium and how... but she lost interest, so I struck up a conversation with the Vietnam grandpa sitting across from me instead, a man who walks with a cane and takes great effort to stand up. So things wound down, the kids returned to class, there's a large quantity of extra donuts so I get an apple fritter this time. The volunteers have switched gears to cleanup mode. Soon thereafter the gym is turned over to the school staff so they can get started on lunch and we were out of there. Anyway, I wanted to share my Veterans Day experience with you guys on behalf of the Middleton, Talley, Kidd, Crumbly, Davila, Kramer, Applegate, and Murray families. 32 years gone now. In their sacrifice, this is the sort of things they miss: kids, grandkids, song and dance performances, conversations with other veterans, handmade cards and paper poppies, coffee, and donuts. We've got wars waging in Ukraine and Israel right now, lots of other families are going to feel it, but these eight are mine.

1) Los Angeles Rams 7-2 2 2) Seattle Seahawks 7-2 3 3) Philadelphia Eagles 7-2 4 4) Detroit Lions 6-3 6 5) Kansas City Chiefs 5-4 7 6) Green Bay Packers 5-3-1 5 7) Indianapolis Colts 8-2 8 8 ) Buffalo Bills 6-3 1 9) Los Angeles Chargers 7-3 10 10) New England Patriots 8-2 12 11) Denver Broncos 8-2 11 12) Tampa Bay Buccaneers 6-3 9 13) Baltimore Ravens 4-5 17 14) Chicago Bears 6-3 18 15) San Francisco 49ers 6-4 13 16) Minnesota Vikings 4-5 14 17) Pittsburgh Steelers 5-4 15 18) Carolina Panthers 5-5 16 19) Houston Texans 4-5 21 20) Jacksonville Jaguars 5-4 19 21) Arizona Cardinals 3-6 22 22) Dallas Cowboys 3-5-1 23 23) Atlanta Falcons 3-6 24 24) Miami Dolphins 3-7 27 25) New York Giants 2-8 25 26) Washington 3-7 20 27) New Orleans Saints 2-8 30 28) New York Jets 2-7 31 29) Cleveland Browns 2-7 26 30) Las Vegas Raiders 2-7 28 31) Cincinnati Bengals 3-6 29 32) Tennessee Titans 1-8 32

Bengals have been getting decent QB play, that defense is atrocious,

It's been a brutal injury year for all of them. I moved the Ravens back up to 13.

Are you delusional? The Rams outplayed the Eagles more like it. The clearly better team lost that day. A bunch of flukes went Philly's way to extract a win out of their asses. Also, Philly hasn't smoked a single team all year.