Clear Distinction

          Given the insanity of not having the league of women voters conduct a meaningful debate, it is astounding that Pete Buttigieg produced such a well crafted sound byte defining the difference between Trump and Sanders.

          Trump really does want to send me back to the 1950s nightmare I lived while, on the other hand, Sanders wants to build on the energy generated in the 1960s by people working to actually address societal issues.

          Pete Buttigieg is, of course, an idiot, and states this all as a bad thing, but even an idiot …

          And, for the naysayers, it's not about having solutions, it's about working toward solutions. It seems as if most naysayers have never been involved in solving systemic problems in real life.

RIP

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@Raggedy Ann
and her strategy owes her a big fucking refund, because it should have been explained to her, very clearly, and before the first such incident, that this would play well only with people who were already her committed supporters, or with some Never Bernie types who supported other candidates. The few such of the latter whom she might stand to gain would be far outnumbered by voters who see this for the childish and spiteful behavior that it is, and react intuitively against it.

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10 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@Cassiodorus
High priced, fancy college degrees produce plenty of idiots. This scene from Good Will Hunting is very real to those that have met and not been intimidated by such people in real life:

[video:https://youtu.be/LMD2vUErcYU]

Was once on a project and two Mckinsey MBA's were hired as consultants. They were idiots.

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PriceRip's picture

@Marie

          Thanks, for the memories! This is so very true to life, I have been in that scene so very many times. Hum, and they always involved the consumption of alcohol.

RIP

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8 users have voted.

@PriceRip

But I don't have any tolerance for those that repeat the latest buzzwords because they think it makes them look smart, but only reveals no thought on their part. Often because they don't even understand the buzzwords. (Remember when 'paradigm shift' was everywhere -- and in reality nowhere?)

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ggersh's picture

@Cassiodorus Then again the water in NYC ain't what it used to be either

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1232480499588681728

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4 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Cassiodorus's picture

@ggersh of what I read about Pete Buttigieg because the long version is more time-consuming. You all can do more research if you want; I don't really see why I should repeat what I read here.

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3 users have voted.

"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

PriceRip's picture

@Cassiodorus

          An important aspect of my professional life was vetting people considering graduate work. The best compliment I have ever received was from a student that told me I had inspired him to go to grad school and study elementary particle physics. Not long ago I checked and he was working on his fourth publication grounded in data from CERN.

          On the other end of the scale: I had a conversation with a woman about her daughter's stellar educational credentials. I outlined the barriers her daughter would face if certain deficiencies were not addressed. That particular conversation did not end amicably.

          With respect to Pete Buttigieg, I see red flags, that may not be apparent from another perspective.

RIP

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mimi's picture

@PriceRip
for whom I ended up writing my diploma thesis (in Physical/Theoretical Chemistry). He brought us (the students in his department, who worked for him as student assistant tutors for the other students in their first years) to CERN. I remember this trip well, listened to a scientist's talk at CERN (which I found easy to understand because of the clarity of his thoughts). I have a photo of myself listening to that guy ... which brings up memories to me 46 years later. I still can't believe my own life story.

My prof was also a guy, who understood that, as a single mom of a baby, I needed my kiddo near me while working on my thesis. So he emptied out his darkroom in his department and let me put a baby cradle in it and I had my peace of mind sitting in the next door room to the darkroom.

I was kinda better in math than in physics or chemistry and became a student in theoretical chemistry only because my highschool grades were not good enough to allow me go into medical school. (That is all related to the German University regulations at that time in the late sixties).

So, for lack of money, I pulled myself through, working on night shifts as a nurse assistant in a huge hospital in Berlin at the department for the end stage cancer patients of that hospital ... It was a good education on these nightshifts for me, I knew I couldn't have made it as a medical doctor, the pleas of the patients to give them more pain killers than were officially prescribed and allowed, haunt me til today. I had to wash these extremely sick men at 3:30 am at night time hours. It's hard to forget that. If they only had allowed to change the nightly schedule to wash them at more humane hours, let's say at 6:30 in the morning. After the night shifts in the hospital I worked in the (old, stinky, unsafe) chemistry labs at my University. On the long run, it was too much. One night I collapsed at the night shift in the hospital. It caused long-lasting minor physical damages. But as the saying goes - what doesn't kill you, makes you strong(er).

Later on I went with the father of my baby and gave him reluctantly and silently my 'yes' word and then followed him to Italy and the US to be a good wife... which meant whatever German academic credentials I had, were good only for the trash can thereafter. Huh? A German woman in her early thirties with some weird knowledge of Technical Chemistry? No Italian was interested in such a thing, even if blonde. Wink

And then in the US, they let me into a PH.D. program at GU in DC, but they asked me to put some absurd amount of money on the table to just listen in to some (partly even mediocre classes) upfront. (That was unheard of in Germany, so I was pissed and shocked what they were asking for. - Well, you get the picture, why I would vote for Bernie, if I were allowed to vote at your side of the pond)) On top of that I had no greencard yet, which meant I had to ask the US State Department to get a work permission in the US and they said, I would be only allowed to work only in the field of my educational background, which meant Theoretical Chemistry. At that point I a just said 'Duhhh, forgettaboutit'. The American employers had no interest in such a weird woman, even if I had been a hot blackhaird one with huge eyes. Wink

Too much time had passed between my degree graduation time and my living in the US. I could have dropped out of my University program in Germany as well. My degrees were nothing more worth than some greasy lunchtime paper wrap.

So, I became a bookstore's employee in a scientific bookstore in the US in Washington DC and worked for pennies there. I admit I like books and like most booksellers seldom read them...
(I still have all I bought back then). Later on some German employers in DC took me in and I made a very humble living.

Whatever, I just want to say, it's the fact that my prof was smart enough to empty out his darkroom, that made all the difference in life for me.

This thread's discussion is hard to read through for me. Somehow petty. I know I am not smart, and I know that educational credential are good to have to get a decent salary and probably a more secured job at a University, but imho it has little to do with either being highly intelligent or being a stupid master in self-absorbing narcicist love.

Stay put firmly on the simple things necessary for survival in your lives. That's all.

Be a human before being a prof. Or both at the same time. I have no clue why I really write this out. Sorry, lots is going on my nerves these days.

Just be a good prof. Smile Don't forget to be a decent human too.
Bye

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@mimi

Without any background in science/physics etc, I became a docent at Fermilab for 5 years. One of the physicists decided to write some books about CERN and asked me to be an editor to give a layman's perspective. So I did and am in the acknowledgements. He works now both at CERN and Fermilab. I would LOVE to visit CERN some day.

That job opened a whole new world for me.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

mimi's picture

@Fishtroller 02 @Fishtroller 02 @Fishtroller 02
to Switzerland and visit the CERN facilities. I mean I was there in a little group of four students for a couple of days and it's over 45 years ago. So, I just talked about this little 'story about my life' because I found it amazing in hindsight what a little guesture of kindness of my prof has meant to me in being able to finish my thesis and make a trip to the real scientists at CERN (to illustrate the humanity necessary to have embedded in all those very intelligent educators).

Some article about the CERN’s American sibling Fermilab. A look back at fifty years of Fermilab’s history, as it celebrates a half-century of scientific achievement today FERMI Lab

There are some interesting details in that article. Of course, me, I liked the buffalo with the baby buffalo best, and that about it for right now... aside from this bit which only could have been said by an American.

Science dedicated to human rights

“The formation of the Laboratory shall be a positive force…toward open housing…[and] make a real contribution toward providing employment opportunities for minority groups”
Robert Wilson, Director of Fermilab

... A few good men .... etc. etc.... Tell me where have all the good men gone? (to the melody of where have all the flowers gone. All that was at times when I adored Joan Baez. Times bygone.

[video:https://youtu.be/sKvdPsnkPC0]
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@mimi

Ask me anything about bison!

In the process of my life being linked to Fermilab, my daughter was chosen in HS to work with Dr. Leon Lederman on a book written by students on various scientists. It was published. She thought she was going to go into physics, but ended up as a city planner. The physicist that tapped me to edit his books is Don Lincoln. Very active on Facebook in an effort to educate about physics etc. I met Lederman many times. The last time I saw him, I went to his office to ask for a book autograph. It was the end of the day, so we walked out together as he told me jokes. What a character and what a memory for me.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

@ggersh
Forty years ago, I made a comment to my smart but non-college graduate boss about the field manager that stood out as the dumbest (and many weren't all that swift). My boss agreed before revealing, Harvard Law, so we're stuck with him.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@Cassiodorus

Entered the army as a lieutenant sans boot camp, worked the lucrative Heroin run out of Afghanistan where he picked up the nickname, Poppy Pete. Later, White Powder Pete. He was Navy Intel, so he worked a lot of places, with a lot of people. Even Peter Strzok of Mueller fame. Connected to chemical weapons in a covert way. Fluent in Farsi. Lots of info out there via FOIA. He is a dream embed for the Intelligence Community. Another Poppy Bush.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Roy Blakeley's picture

@Pluto's Republic A lot of the thread in this essay is an unhelpful repetition of anti-intellectual stereotypes. Buttigieg is not an idiot. He is malevolent. He is a security establishment candidate. He is not just pro-CIA. He is CIA. That's why he has been taken seriously as a candidate even though he is less qualified than Sarah Palin. That is why Obama talked him up so early. Russia did not hack the 2016 Presidential election, but the security establishment (Brennan, Clapper, Comey, etc.) tried to, and in Buttigieg they are trying to install one of their own.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@Pluto's Republic Kind of like the nonfiction version of Darth Sidious.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

I'm not yet seeing any nostalgia in Trump or ordinary Republican voters for the 1950s Cold War and McCarthyism. But it's florid among the IC and Cllintonistas.

wrt to the 1960s -- Damn right I'm nostalgic for all the major progressive public policy advances in that period -- a very long list - Civil Rights Act, Medicare/Medicaid, implementation of Brown v. Bd of Ed, the legal and judicial legislation and decision that removed bans on contraception, the ERA (came too late in the period to be ratified). It was FP that was huge mess at that time, one that Republicans and conservadems have continued to replicate in the subsequent decades.

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PriceRip's picture

          I think I see a pattern here. I think this is a feature that needs to become a thing of the past.

RIP

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25 users have voted.
mimi's picture

@PriceRip
on BS.

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13 users have voted.

Buttigieg is just Bill Clinton without the horndog part(Harvard, Oxford and Rhodes scholar) . This is just the great neoliberal hope, another chance to capture triangulation and three dimensional chess in a bottle. F' em.

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Bollox Ref's picture

@Snode

On the plus side, he has the personality of a whelk.

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15 users have voted.

Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

@Bollox Ref

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Bollox Ref's picture

@Marie

The piano-playing gastropod is quite loquacious about his symphonic performance.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Bollox Ref

...... would that make him Lawrence Whelk?

[ducking]

Wink

He's missing a tenor sax also... too On the plus side, he has the personality of a whelk.

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Bollox Ref's picture

@thanatokephaloides

That would be a 'yes'

Aged persons across the nation can rejoice.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Roy Blakeley's picture

@Snode Clinton through the CIA gun and drug trafficking through the Mena, Arkansas airport. Petey through his time at McKinsey, a CIA contractor, and through his time as a naval intelligence officer (in Kabul, no less,--not a lot of ships, but a lot of drug smuggling).

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6 users have voted.

I'm so verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves.

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2 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@UntimelyRippd

There are also bigger fish that need frying.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic
original comment, because it was in the wrong place.

But as soon as I posted it, I realized it carried the second meaning -- the one you inferred -- and I thought ... yeah, sure. That works too.

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3 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Are you talking about Brooklyn Yiddish vs. Saturday Night Live Yiddish? Or did I swing and miss again?

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3 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
PriceRip's picture

@Pluto's Republic

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