This user has been banned.
I don’t see any point in arguing this with you any further.
I’m sorry. I did not mean to upset you or offend you.
I am happy to see that you at least apologize to some people. It shows that you’re not as cold as you sometimes make yourself out to be.
😃
I recently found a 1959 Grundig Majestic Stereo Console on someone’s curb, they were giving it away for no cost. A few hours ago I worked on it some more and I got the thing working, and surprisingly it sounds GREAT! It plays vinyl records and it has a working radio. My guess is that it’s worth at least $800, and I have it for free. I am so happy 😄
This is awesome. Keep it and treasure it. They don’t make them like this anymore and it looks great in your place.
😃
We have a stalker on our hands! 😮
😉
Though I don’t care for the reference, I understand you were kidding, no offense taken. These console turntables are like pieces of furniture and if taken care of they can make one’s living space a bit more elegant due to their age and construction. It’s even better if you like vinyl and have a working one. Vinyl rules!!!
😃
BTW, thank you for taking the little time it takes to make your comment clear so it would be understood. It’s more than most do. I appreciate it.
Today is one of the days I’d like to be in this guys shoes, LOL.
I recently found a 1959 Grundig Majestic Stereo Console on someone’s curb, they were giving it away for no cost. A few hours ago I worked on it some more and I got the thing working, and surprisingly it sounds GREAT! It plays vinyl records and it has a working radio. My guess is that it’s worth at least $800, and I have it for free. I am so happy 😄
This is awesome. Keep it and treasure it. They don’t make them like this anymore and it looks great in your place.
😃
Perhaps this thread and both b*tching threads should be merged into one.
A few pages back I suggested a name change for the thread. I did also think it should be locked.
Sorry.
^With all due respect to you warbler … It does not matter how many times you say it, those who’ve already made up their minds, will never acknowledge your position. I wish I could give you a reason why but it is an answer I simply do not have.
Just to make it clear to everyone, this is not an opinion that I share.
What does this have to do with anything?
I didn’t ask you to kiss the ring to prove your loyalty. I am not even the slightest bit concerned with your forum “loyalties”. You’ve stated your position at least 3 times in 3 different ways and you’ve gotten literally the same response. That doesn’t make you think that it’s time to move on?
yeesh
I stated this:
“Just to make it clear to everyone, this is not an opinion that I share.” just to make it clear to the others that I didn’t agree with you. I didn’t do it to offend/bother/annoy you.
Why would you care what anyone else thinks about what opinions you do or don’t agree with?
Because I do. I just didn’t want others to think I shared your opinion. It is that simple.
You don’t care any other time?
I don’t?
Your claim that you didn’t do it to offend/bother/annoy me contradicts why you said you did do it.
huh?
The fact that you felt you had to say it to prove to others you didn’t agree with me conerns me more and saddens me to think that it now comes down to such things on this forum.
I give up. This will be the last time I talk to you about this. I honestly don’t think I have done anything wrong or broken any rules in this case. Complain to Jay if you like.
And what would I say to Jay? Warbler feels he has to publicly let everyone else on the forum know he doesn’t agree with me? Do you realize how obtuse that is? LOL
I said nothing about you breaking any rules either. Wow, you really are something warbler, sad situation for sure.
^With all due respect to you warbler … It does not matter how many times you say it, those who’ve already made up their minds, will never acknowledge your position. I wish I could give you a reason why but it is an answer I simply do not have.
Just to make it clear to everyone, this is not an opinion that I share.
What does this have to do with anything?
I didn’t ask you to kiss the ring to prove your loyalty. I am not even the slightest bit concerned with your forum “loyalties”. You’ve stated your position at least 3 times in 3 different ways and you’ve gotten literally the same response. That doesn’t make you think that it’s time to move on?
yeesh
I stated this:
“Just to make it clear to everyone, this is not an opinion that I share.” just to make it clear to the others that I didn’t agree with you. I didn’t do it to offend/bother/annoy you.
Why would you care what anyone else thinks about what opinions you do or don’t agree with? You don’t care any other time? Your claim that you didn’t do it to offend/bother/annoy me contradicts why you said you did do it.
The fact that you felt you had to say it to prove to others you didn’t agree with me conerns me more and saddens me to think that it now comes down to such things on this forum.
https://counterpropa.com/obama-bombed-muslim-nations-trumps-travel-ban-without-protests/
Quite a good article for Trump/Obama comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzY_h6OpnoQ
Bernie Sanders gets cut off after making a joke about CNN fake news.
^With all due respect to you warbler … It does not matter how many times you say it, those who’ve already made up their minds, will never acknowledge your position. I wish I could give you a reason why but it is an answer I simply do not have.
Just to make it clear to everyone, this is not an opinion that I share.
What does this have to do with anything?
I didn’t ask you to kiss the ring to prove your loyalty. I am not even the slightest bit concerned with your forum “loyalties”. You’ve stated your position at least 3 times in 3 different ways and you’ve gotten literally the same response. That doesn’t make you think that it’s time to move on?
yeesh
Did Nordstrom actually drop Ivanka due to Trumps Immigration Ban by caving to the #GrabYourWallet adcovates?
^With all due respect to you warbler … It does not matter how many times you say it, those who’ve already made up their minds, will never acknowledge your position. I wish I could give you a reason why but it is an answer I simply do not have.
I said it earlier and I’ll say it again. All reports on this woman have clearly stated that the entire family knew she might get deported well before it happened, her case was pending. Even on the news when they interviewed the family, they said it openly.
Now, it sucks that they are separated, but it was no more a surprise than her being legally arrested for being caught with the forged legal documents that got her into the country and the job that she was working when ICE raided it.
The huge push towards a total digital future is unfeasible with how crap the internet is. The people who advocate for it clearly don’t travel much or live outside huge urban areas. The tech just isn’t ready.
Disagree. The tech is there, it’s just the telecom monopolies in the US don’t/aren’t willing to pay to lay down the infrastructure to bring it to everyone. Or really anyone.
^This is absolutely the case.
With the FBI still having 1,000 open investigations on the books (which has also been made public and mentioned by me numerous times) makes it just as tough and those were set up based on the previous administrations policy.
Don’t you think we should finish getting these investigations finished before creating a far bigger back log?
I looked for a while tonight and couldn’t find an article about thousands of open investigations at the FBI… on immigrants? On potential immigrants? If you have a link, I’ll take a look at it (bonus points if it’s from the FBI itself). But if the FBI is suspicious of someone, I assume the case stays open until they find solid evidence one way or another. It’s tough to close a case (and I’d say that’s a good thing), especially if the person you’re suspicious about hasn’t really shown up on the radar yet.
I can give you this …
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/us/fbi-terror-ahmad-khan-rahami.html?_r=0
I apologize for the late reply but it’s been a long few days and I wanted to give these articles a thorough read and good consideration.
The first article seems to more or less corroborate my point: it’s a very difficult task. A lot of these guys don’t show up on the radar until it’s too late, and even when they do (like Omar Mateen) it’s hard to gather the intel you need to actually make a move within legal channels before they carry out their attacks, and we can’t just go around arresting people for posting positive things about ISIL on the Internet because of our Bill of Rights. There’s a really fine line that the FBI and CIA walk between keeping people safe and overstepping our rights. Not to mention Omar Mateen was born in the US and was thus considered a citizen as much as you (assuming you were born in the US) or myself, and from all accounts his parents were model citizens who immigrated in the 80s (long before Obama was President). No humane or reasonable immigration law would have prevented this.
It also talks about how cases stay on the books until actionable data is obtained which leads to an arrest. I’m really okay with that. Let the FBI have thousands of open cases in my opinion, because it means that they’re watching people who they’ve deemed are risks. I would be angry if they watched a guy for a couple of years and then closed the case because he seemed okay, and then he blew up a school. That would be far worse to me than knowing they had an open book on him at the time of his attack and just didn’t have the evidence to make an arrest.
Sometimes they do get that evidence, though:
In May, the parents of a young man in Queens told the authorities that their 18-year-old son, Ranbir Singh Shergill, had threatened family members. After the parents gave officers consent to search the home, members of an F.B.I. terrorism task force found a handgun, several magazines and 118 rounds of ammunition. They also found a note that discussed killing police officers. The F.B.I. charged Mr. Shergill in June with buying a gun in Ohio using fake identification and transporting it to New York.
From what I can see, Shergill’s family are great Americans who should be lauded for having the guts to implicate their son as a possible terrorist, and it looks to me like that tip stopped what could have been a loss of life set off by a guy who wasn’t even on the FBI’s radar yet.And a blurb from it …
The threat has only grown since Sept. 11, 2001, and more recently with the rise of the Islamic State. In recent years, the F.B.I. has averaged 10,000 assessments annually, and 7,000 to 10,000 preliminary or full investigations involving international terrorism. In addition, the F.B.I. receives tens of thousands of terrorism tips. All of those have to be tracked down, as in the case involving Mr. Rahami. That does not include information the F.B.I. learns from foreign partners, war zones or American agencies. Most investigations never end in prosecution.
To address this, yes, it’s a dangerous world. And yeah, the FBI is probably overworked, but if there were fewer immigrants, would they be able to prevent more attacks? I don’t know if we can say that for sure. If the investigations don’t end in prosecutions, I assume they’re not finding actionable intel and thus cannot take the next step towards an arrest either because there isn’t any wrongdoing or because they can’t find it. From the sentence above your blurb:
Nobody expects the police to prevent every homicide in Chicago or Los Angeles, or to prevent public corruption or eliminate drugs. But the expectation among many Americans is that the F.B.I. should stop every terrorist attack. Former and current F.B.I. officials accept the reality that the bureau faces a different standard.
They’d have more time to work on specific cases, definitely, but we can’t say with certainty that it would lead to more prevention because, again, a lot of the time these guys don’t do anything illegal until they’re actively killing people. So it’s not so much a “backlog” of cases taking up resources, it’s more that they’re actively keeping an eye on possible threats and not ruling anything out until they have firm intel with which to make a move. Sometimes the cops stop the robbers, but sometimes the robbers get away with it. It’s the nature of law enforcement within the boundaries of American law: everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Is it wrong to deny rights to the majority because of the misdeeds of the few? As a pro-gun person, I think strongly that it is. Why should I lose my rights because certain other people would use them for evil? Why should we deny everyone from Syria because they have some evil people? Should Americans be denied from visiting other countries because we have hate groups and terrorists of our own?
In the meantime, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department have prosecuted more than 100 cases involving the Islamic State. Officials say those are the cases that the public tends to overlook, as well as all the other plots they have stopped.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/4/obama-administration-fails-to-check-immigrants-aga/
Obviously a failure for sure, certainly not malicious, though. Trusting computers is tough, and transitions from paper to digital records are always rife with these kinds of issues. Luckily they discovered the problem and I feel like it was handled well by halting all immigration until the proper checks had been applied. It looks like only 175 (out of 15,000 who were still working through the process) were actually fully approved before the issue was caught and of those 175 people, anyone who was flagged by the retroactive checks would have been stripped of their citizenship. Not a good thing to happen, definitely, but it seems to have been handled as well as it could have been.
What I’m getting from this article is that Trump is fear-mongering. Correlation isn’t always causation, but I feel that Trump would have us believe that it is. As the article says:
“Just because someone is being investigated for terrorism does not mean that the terrorism threat is up,” said Laura Dugan, a University of Maryland professor of criminology and criminal justice. “It just means that the FBI is increasing investigations.”
It also goes on to say that:
According to the New America Foundation, about 81 percent of individuals accused of jihadist terrorism crimes since Sept. 11 are citizens or legal residents and about 48 percent were born with U.S. citizenship.
And:
A New York Times analysis in 2015 found that half of the jihadist attacks since 2001 were committed by men born in the United States. Many others were naturalized citizens.
Other databases show some information related to tracking terrorism but didn’t reflect the full number of FBI investigations.
George Washington University collects data on the number of individuals charged with offenses related to the Islamic State. There were 61 individuals in 2015 and 33 individuals in 2016 charged with ISIS-related activity. The university reported that the vast majority were Americans.
[. . .]
The number of cases can rise if the FBI decides to make suspected terrorists more of a priority — but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is more terrorism. Also, not all terrorism cases carry the same level of threat. A charge against someone for material support is not the same as charging someone accused of carrying out an attack. Also, only some investigations lead to actual charges and then convictions.
American University professor Tricia Bacon, who worked in counterrorism for the State Department from 2003-13, said that only FBI headquarters could credibly measure whether the FBI is investigating more people than ever before for terrorism and why.
John Mueller, an adjunct political science professor at Ohio State University and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, said that the FBI has followed up on millions of terrorism leads since Sept. 11, 2001.
“Although scarcely any develop into anything, the FBI continues and is probably getting more efficient at it, made more so by the fact that so many would-be terrorists announce their intentions (or fantasies) on Facebook and Twitter,” he said.
And finally:
Max Abrahms, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the number of people under investigation by the FBI for terrorism is unprecedented. However, he noted some problems with attempting to ban people from certain countries.
“No nation has a monopoly on terrorists,” he said. “And no nation is exempt from producing them. Furthermore, the ban does not affect domestic terrorism, which is a growing concern, by not only Islamists, but also right-wing extremists.”
So I’m just not convinced that the FBI having un-closed cases is a bad thing, even if they had millions of them. It just means that they’re doing their job trying to keep us safe. Do they fail? Of course. As I said before, sometimes these guys don’t commit an illegal act or even show up on the radar until they’re actively killing people. Not every murder can be prevented, nor every bank robbery or car theft or jaywalk stopped. There are limitations placed on the system by our Bill of Rights. Even the FBI can’t see everything, and frankly I’m okay with that because it means they’re not explicitly impinging on our rights as Americans. I am happy to take my chances in a free world.
And looking at the data provided in the last article, I’m really not convinced that less immigration will mean less terrorism. The majority are people who made it through the grueling citizenship process without raising so much as a suspicion of doubt. Would looking super extra closely at them change anything about that? I’m not sure it would. Were they terrorists before coming in with the plan to destroy the country, or were they normal people who wanted a new life and were then radicalized? I can’t answer that, but maybe we should stop and ask ourselves if we’re doing everything we can to provide an accepting, trusting country where immigrants can feel at home and will want to assimilate into society, or are we providing a country where they feel hated, distrusted, discriminated against, and unwanted?
This is a holistic issue that requires a holistic answer. Even stopping all immigration completely won’t change anything, and would likely make things worse. Would walking across the street to invite your new Muslim neighbor and his family to your annual neighborhood BBQ (no pork of course!) instead of ignoring their existence help them feel more accepted and like they fit in? I can’t say that, either, but it sure can’t hurt.
Thanks for the well thought out and worded response. I know the system isn’t perfect. I don’t believe that they are considering making the “vetting” process itself any more vigorous, I believe they are looking at options we haven’t heard about yet. We may not hear about them either. The travel ban itself, as I take it, was meant and instituted as a warning to those hiding amongst the innocent refugees. When you can’t get information about someone because they aren’t from where they say they are and where they are from is a known bad place, they’re never going to make the right choice because someone is always going to oppose it.
Being creative and changing things up can put a damper on ill conceived plans because predictability has gone out the window. The harder they have to work to get in, the easier it becomes for them to make a mistake, which can technically make it easier for them to be caught before they get to their destination.
Their have been consequences to the meddling our Presidents have been doing, to de-stabilize regions in favor of democracy and there have been casualties, on all sides. American taxpayers lost millions of dollars when Obama and Clinton armed what they thought were rebels who then went to Syria and announced the formation of ISIL with all the American resources they received. Bush tore things up over there to and left a mess for Obama. Now Trump has whatever mess Obama left from the other messes. It’s not as easy, for me, to hate a President because they are trying to find different ways to clean up anothers mess while still getting done what they promised they could do for Americans.
If there is one thing that is certain, it’s that this is going to be a hard road, but I believe we can endure.
Can’t wait to see the Trump reaction.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-sears-idUSKBN15Q0Q2
Major U.S. retailers Sears and Kmart this week removed 31 Trump Home items from their online product offerings to focus on more profitable items, a spokesman said on Saturday.
The decision follows retailer Nordstrom Inc’s announcement this week it had decided to stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s apparel because of declining sales, prompting President Donald Trump to take to Twitter to defend his daughter. White House spokesman Sean Spicer characterized the Nordstrom move as a “direct attack” on the president’s policies.
Neither Sears nor Kmart carried the Trump Home products in their retail stores, a Sears Holdings Corp spokesman said. Kmart is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sears Holdings.
“As part of the company’s initiative to optimize its online product assortment, we constantly refine that assortment to focus on our most profitable items,” spokesman Brian Hanover said in a statement.
In Trump’s defense, Sears and Kmart are actually failing, though.
Yeah, they are failing, but they have attacked Trump depending on how one reads legalese. At this point, them removing Trump brand items could be seen in a number of ways, but they know the law enough to know how to publicly state why they’re doing it without incurring any lawsuits. This is the new way of doing business with the way the political landscape is reforming.
It all comes down to money no matter how anyone releases a statement.
That story was discussed some a ways back. Her fate had been decided before the travel ban and her family was already aware that she could face deportation depending on the decision.
^Maybe she is telling people in sign language that Trump gave her “the clap”?
😉
A well written article about the consequences of bad choices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html?_r=1
WIKILeaks brings information about refugees and asylum over the years.
Godzilla is great!!!
This post is not an attack on ANYONE nor is it a poke, jab, nudge, slam, backdoor insult, insinuation, or prod. I remember copying and pasting this sometime ago and find it relevant to some of the tension in this thread. Let me emphasize that when I say everyone, I am including myself, so I don’t wanna hear any moaning.
This was something created by Frink that I believe everyone has been guilty of at one time or another here. It’s something worth noting so that maybe we can all leave our egos at the door whenever we step in to this thread.
I’d like to thank Frink for creating it.
TV’s Frink’s Guide To Sensible Posting (Or: How Not To Be A Target)
Listen To What You Are Being Told
Don’t Be Ultra-Defensive
Listen To Constructive Criticism
Don’t Complain About How You Are Being Treated
Don’t Use Personal Issues As An Excuse For Poor Behavior
You are having a rough time lately. Maybe you’ve had a rough day, or month, or year. Heck, maybe you’ve had a rough life. We get it, and we sympathize. Really, we do. But life sucking is not an excuse for you to act like an idiot. So don’t do it.
And if you do it, don’t keep doing it. People will cut you some extra slack if you are going through tough times. But we all have our limits.
Don’t Create Massive Walls of Text, Especially If You Are Just Rambling
Limit Personal Attacks To Joking, And Be Clear About Your Intent
On the internet, it’s all too easy to make personal attacks. Unlike real life, there are few repercussions when you deliberately offend someone on a forum (although you might get banned). But if you stoop to this level, you will quickly get a reputation that is often difficult to shed: Big Jerkface Poopybrains.
You don’t have to agree with everyone on everything, but limit your firm-but-polite attacks to the subject at hand. Don’t go calling people names or talking inappropriately about their private parts or family members.
Of course, feel free to attack someone if you are only joking. But make sure your intent is clear. A “winky” emoticon or some similar gesture usually will help with this, but it’s often a good idea to limit personal attack jokes to people who will already know you are joking.
If your joke is taken seriously, just apologize, you big-eared jerkface. 😉
Don’t Treat Your Opinion As Fact
Have A Sense Of Humor About Yourself
Know When To Quit
Logical fallacies are not opinion. There is a defect in logic or there isn’t.
The fact that one might have them compared to another is opinion. That was my point.
Duracell, I apologize if you felt I was breaking your rules (though the examples given are subjective at best), I promise not to disagree with anyone or try to point out why or say anything good about Trump or any of his White House staff in your thread anymore.
They’re such horrible, scummy, repulsive, lying, don’t deserve to live and breathe, ego-driven, and money-driven POS’s. How we’re are not extinct after the 30 days he’s been in office is beyond me. I will hate him and hate him and hate him.
Is that enough hate or do I need more to make it feel genuine?
Do we need to lock this thread also?
If we do, political discussion is done in Off Topic for good.
This topic should really be locked at this point for good. It seems all of us cry babies, myself included, just can’t put aside our egos long enough to get along or even disagree.
I think at some point you’ll have to accept – and not just say you accept, but genuinely accept – that your political viewpoint is in the extreme minority here and that not agreeing with your politics shouldn’t be taken personally. Besides, most posts contradicting yours are in regard to logical fallacies or failure to comprehend your point and not political differences.
Between you and Frink, the next one to prod the other gets a timeout.
I can accept different opinions. I have as I’ve been having small discussions with other members I’ve disagreed with and nothing happened. Your idea of logical fallacies and failure to comprehend is an opinion you have a right to. If someone can’t argue the other side of the coin with out the only one here who has stated in the past he’d be okay if you were dead, then you should just lock the thread or rename it to reflect the actual content. There was no prodding on my part. My guess is he just doesn’t like his “opinions are facts” being challenged. That is my opinion of which I am entitled to as well.
They’ve got other stuff up that they probably grabbed from myspleen. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rifftrax-Star-Wars-Holiday-Special-DVD-Mystery-Science-Theater-3000-MST3K/282357001409
Best to just keep an eye on this person and report all their lame auctions. Obviously, this one isn’t as big a deal, as it’s the holiday special and Disney (Fox? Does anyone even pretend to own the rights to this one?) doesn’t sell it. Still, it’s someone trying to make money off a myspleen account, most likely.
This one should still be reported by all of us even if it’s a bastard child of Star Wars history.
😃
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=mimmers_closet&ftab=AllFeedback
Look at the fat change this bastard has made already. GRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …
I’d bet money the seller pulled it because either it’s someone here or on myspleen who saw the post.
