Okay --- so WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS?

a reply to: Annee

I hear ya! Buzzy mentioned reuters and npr. Those are good.

Hey, just wait till Trumpa has his cabinet. All those old neocon and corporate faces that we thought would go away. Rising like zombies from the grave, they are. So, I have stopped watching tv for the same reason; and with tv one gets visual and audio!

I'm with you, though. I still will have to get some news, if just to watch all the pushback. And there sure as hell better be! Below is the concession speech that should have been given....

“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”

Autocracy: Rules for Survival

a reply to: TheRedneck
"

, if I want to stress that I am basing my response on a fact or attitude, I tend to use "you have to understand that..." It's not intended as a dismissal, but rather an indication that this is a prerequisite to understanding what I am about to say.

It is a good example of how easily words can be twisted from their intended meanings simply by misinterpretation and/or different contextual thinking between the speaker and the listener.

Exactly!

To some ears that comes across as dismissive. My own husband does that often. When we met, his response to "Thank You" was a sort of bland "It's fine." or "that's fine."

Which, to my ears sounds like It's no big deal whatever. Like when I woke this friend up the other day, and I apologized, and he said, "It's fine." So, I asked Mr Wigs to please say "You're welcome." He was kinda reluctant but he did make the switch, and the last time he saw my father, Daddy was lying in a hospital bed with watery eyes and looked at him and said, "Thank you."

Mr Wigs smiled back at him and said, "You're welcome."

I get all weepy now even remembering it.
I'd love to work on that project angle with you! Have you seen my thread The English Language over in chitchat?
We have fun with language and phraseology, nuance and derivations, etymology and puns, cliche origins, new words we make up or discover over there. Come on over!

originally posted by: desert
a reply to: windword

Hey, that is very good news!! I wondered about being on the "state ballot", because I thought, "What did I miss??", but then I looked at their website and found out that it was a local initiative so was not on my area ballot. You know, it's a start. Good for SF!!!

To be honest, I've refused to look at any news this week, because it's all been so out of whack for so long, but I may need to at least look for things that are positive and good, like what you just shared with us.

It's been about as much fun as going out to clean the pus out of the festering leg wound on my favorite mare and rinsing it out only to bandage it again. But I've kept up, as awful as it's been.


My mother nearly fell to pieces, and her friend told her to back off the news for a while. She cut it down to 3 times a week for one hour, limited to PBS and CNN.

She's severed a long-standing friendship with a different friend who was a sycophantic Brownbacker who loves Trump. Mom just couldn't stomach it anymore. I managed to avoid most of the FB stuff - and early on I let people know that if it got ugly, I would remove them from my feed.

Meanwhile my closest and longest-standing friends were to a one in agreement with me and my thinking....some of my family not so much. It's been dreadful, and hellish. Hellish.
And for what?

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Sometimes it gets a little awkward having this disability. There's been a few times when someone says "thank you" and my brain apparently takes too long to come up with the appropriate response. My mouth gets tired of waiting and I say something like "same to you."

Notice the right response. I know that. But I'm just handicapped in that area. It seems to happen more when I'm thinking consciously about a problem on a project.

I do something mentally that I am coming to think is unique. I don't multitask like most people do. I have termed how I think as "simultasking." Multitasking is being able to switch back and forth rapidly between mental tasks. I don't switch; I keep multiple trains of thought going on at the same time. For instance, right now I am composing this post, watching a football game, and trying to determine the best method to use a differential of a waveform instead of amplitude to compensate for amplitude variations and eliminate noise without missing near-simultaneous occurrences.

A few minutes ago I was also talking on the phone with a friend.

All of this is happening simultaneously in my head... which conflicts with the fact that I have only one visual input and only one vocal output.

Anyway, I think we're getting way too far off topic. I'll check out the thread. Thanks!

TheRedneck

originally posted by: desert
a reply to: Annee

I hear ya! Buzzy mentioned reuters and npr. Those are good.

Hey, just wait till Trumpa has his cabinet. All those old neocon and corporate faces that we thought would go away. Rising like zombies from the grave, they are. So, I have stopped watching tv for the same reason; and with tv one gets visual and audio!

Oh, groan!!!!

I don't have TV. My daughter had the King's game on the radio the other day, there was a news break and they started talking about Trump. I wanted to throw something at her radio.

Dominionism - - American Christian Taliban - - is what scares me the most. It's no different then ISIS in the way I perceive it. NO ONE should be forced to live by the belief of others. Especially, not commanded to by the ruling party.

Putin is using Christianity. I don't know how religious he is himself, but he's sure using Christianity in his rule makings.

a reply to: TheRedneck

okay wow. That is really weird.....because Mr Wigs and I just had a brief conversation about how he tries to "multitask". I said it seemed he was poor at switching from stream to the next....

such as keeping track of an ongoing conversation that has been evolving like a sit-com or drama series.

He acknowledged that he can "absorb" all of the different inputs, but it's "context switching" that trips him up.
I've asked him often to please listen to me and give me eye contact instead of fiddling with his computer while his eyes flit all over the screen and when I say something he says: Hm.

That's it.

hm

So I stop talking. I do the same when my mom and I are talking and she gets up and walks out of the room. If I can't tell that a person is engaged when we're sitting four feet away from each other, then I stop talking.

He said, "well, it's not that I don't hear you, it's that I have to split my attention, and so I give the one (he pointed at his computer) eighty percent of my attention, because I'm absorbed in that, but still twenty percent to the other, because it's not that interesting at the moment."


You tell me what that means. I said. He then switched it to, "Well, no - I meant I give YOU eighty percent." To which I was able to respond, no, that is not what you said, nor is it what you do.

Anyway -- we're still sitting here getting along. So - yeah. I know what you mean. And it's not really that "off-topic". It's about communication, and being an active listener, a willing and fully engaged participant.

I want someone around who I can run up to and say: "Hey! I just had this idea!" and when I begin, they will know what project I am addressing. Having to remind someone again and again is difficult when I'm such a spontaneous idea-spewer and improv type.

sigh.

anyway - yeah - so

COMMUNICATION SKILLS is one of the very FIRST things we need to address, in my opinion.


Thank you.

Term limits and an end to lobbying should be first. We have had our government bought and paid for too many times by private interests. This may not completely resolve the issue but will go a long way toward a solution.

Short term - smack down the rioters. Not protesters, rioters. Peaceful protest will always have a place. It is a right. Rioting, violence, theft, vandalism, domestic terror, are not rights. They are crimes, and should be treated as such. No tolerance.

Long term, Trump would do well to replace monies taken from Social Security. He would be helping ALL Americans by doing so. No one, even liberals, could complain about such a noble and necessary goal. Government has stolen money from SS for far too long. It is nearly bankrupt. The time to act is now, and I can see no President other than Trump even willing to try to save it. Regardless of what else he did or didn't do, if he saved SS he would be remembered as a great President whose administration benefited the people of this great nation.

Providing incentive for business to bring jobs back to the US is paramount. If a company is going to save 1 Billion by offshoring jobs, tax them 2 Billion to sell their products here. Only when it is financially unattractive will businesses change their way of thinking. As long as we continue to let them profit at our expense, they will continue to do so.

Legalize and tax marijuana. If Colorado can be used as an example, this will go a long way to fiscal solvency. When you add up all the money spent enforcing these laws, incarcerating these so-called criminals, denying the medical benefits (including reducing opioid addiction, etc), and ignoring the revenue, it is a staggering number. Colorado made more money than it thought it would on marijuana. When is the last time you heard a state say something like that? Never?

And of course, closing the borders to illegal immigration. I have been doing research, and will start a thread when I am finished, regarding the true number of illegal aliens in this country. Without going in to too much detail now, the true number of illegals in the US at this moment could be 23% of the total population of this country, most likely more since the actual population is unknown. Imagine what removing 23% of the population who pay little in to the system would do for social programs alone. When you factor in that large a number it is no wonder why the programs always seem to run out of money. The actual number of people taking from the program is always far greater than anticipated. The secondary costs are staggering as well, but I digress.

These are all things that have multiple benefits beyond the initial and observable direct cause/effect relationship. For example, legalizing marijuana. Its not just the resources freed up to fight other more serious crimes. It is the number of people who will be released from prison, lowering the cost of incarceration, putting more families back together, which in turn may result in more people working and less dependence on social programs, and so on.

We have an incredible opportunity to do something wonderful for this nation. If we could just get the party of tolerance, respect, and acceptance to do as they say, we would all benefit from this amazing opportunity.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

This is an excellent platform. I agree with you. It is a bit far reaching, however, for the purposes of the next, say, week. Eight weeks.

Put down the rioters then. That's #1.

Okay - where are you going to put them once you've arrested them and stopped them? They are criminals, you are correct. There's nothing "peaceful" about the type of crap that happened at Ferguson.

But, but, but you send out police in riot gear, and then they say it's martial law and whine that it's overreacting. While molotov cocktails fly by WHizzz!!!


Item #2. The estimate of %25 of our population being here illegally needs some well-vetted and very serious sourcing and statistical backing up, as well as clear methodology, real numbers, and anything else except pure conjecture. Like -- before you say this again.

Best estimates right now are about 10 million, give or take. You DO realize many of them have gone back south, right? When the thing in 2008 that W oversaw --- yeah - lots of them left. The ones who stayed have kids now, and are running households, paying sales taxes, working for wages, providing services, raising your kids, cooking your food. Those CHILDREN are citizens. You want what - to strip them of their citizenship retro-actively? NO.


And anyway, closing the border? Really? So - a wall then....right? Because, we already have border patrols. So which is it first? Round up 80 million people on suspicion of inappropriate documentation and toss them in the slammer or send them back to Guatemala? Who will clean the hotel rooms? Who will cook your food or mow your lawn? (This I mean in the general sense of how much you, as a citizen, depend on them, whether or not their "papers" are in order. For heaven's sake, they're not spaniels!)

Okay - so - yes. Marijuana absolutely legalize and let it go.
Rioters - arrest and detain for disturbing the peace. Good. Yes.
Search door to door and business to business for people who look brown or speak Spanish, round up 80 million of them, and do what?

The rest of your post is great.

Thanks for contributing! So - day one. What should it be?

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Step one is smack down the rioters. They to be arrested and processed. The way to do it is simple. You make the announcement that arrests are imminent. That means go home NOW. Then proceed. You gave the warning. There are no excuses left. Riot gear is exactly what you wear to a riot. It looks menacing for a reason. If you cant stand the heat, get your riot out of the kitchen. Liberals are going to whine no matter what Trump does. Turn on the white noise and proceed.

The wall, or fence, in its present form is only on a small portion of the border. According to Border Patrol only about 40% of the border is actively guarded at any given time. And we are also not just talking about the US-Mexico border. As has been noted many times here at ATS, illegals come from all borders and coasts. We already have a very large database of amnesty applicants who are here illegally. It won't be as far reaching as going door to door looking for anyone with brown skin. However, you will need to show a valid ID when asked. Its not racist. I have to show my ID when asked too.

As for anchor babies retaining citizenship, that is touchy. There is a thing called the "spirit of the law" which is meant to characterize the law when it appears an act may fall in to a gray area. Clearly our founding fathers did not intend to grant immediate permanent citizenship to anyone who was able to sneak across the border and have a child.

Regarding the estimate of the number of illegal aliens, you might be surprised when I create that thread. And as you indicated, it does include things such as anchor babies which in my opinion should not be granted citizenship, nor to their immediate families, which is currently the case.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Think of it this way: I have all those things going on in my head, but I only have one mouth and one set of eyes. Those are multitasking, switching back and forth as needed. So when I'm concentrating on one thing and my wife says something, I have to shift focus... and that sorta slows everything down while I shift focus.

He's not ignoring you; he's just having to switch to a section that runs slower than yours. You're seeing the reason why nerds are nerds. It's the same thing that makes others have so much trouble with math.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS is one of the very FIRST things we need to address, in my opinion.

How would you feel if I said...

CALCULUS SKILLS is one of the very FIRST things we need to address, in my opinion.



TheRedneck

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Think of it this way: I have all those things going on in my head, but I only have one mouth and one set of eyes. Those are multitasking, switching back and forth as needed. So when I'm concentrating on one thing and my wife says something, I have to shift focus... and that sorta slows everything down while I shift focus.

He's not ignoring you; he's just having to switch to a section that runs slower than yours. You're seeing the reason why nerds are nerds. It's the same thing that makes others have so much trouble with math.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS is one of the very FIRST things we need to address, in my opinion.

How would you feel if I said...

CALCULUS SKILLS is one of the very FIRST things we need to address, in my opinion.

TheRedneck

LOL!!

Right?

I have been married to this man for a decade. He JUST NOW has started to trust me to do the bookkeeping and bill-paying. It proved too much for him. He can go to work, come home, and then there's only so much more of him to be doled out. I'm used to it now.

I understand, I really do. It takes a long time, and it's a lot of work to get to a point in marriage where you just accept and acknowledge what the other person is going through and how their brain operates. Getting bent about it is no use.

I'm just glad to not have to start over with anyone else right now.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

you just accept and acknowledge what the other person is going through and how their brain operates. Getting bent about it is no use.

Now remember that when you hear Trump say something and the pundits start trashing him for it.

(Wow, I turned it back to topic. Redneck do good. )

TheRedneck

a reply to: Annee

Anyone know of a good news site (Centrist if possible) that doesn't use pictures?

The Guardian is my first choice - and I still have a fair amount of affection for WashPo

Can't promise about the pictures - those are everywhere

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
These are the things we need to address:

Popular Vote vs Electoral College (Hillary is winning popular vote, folks)

That means nothing.

The USA Presidential Election is a collection of 50 distinct popular votes. Each one matters, each one contributes.

Clinton lost.

Trump won.

The next steps are to chill out and see what Trump actually does.

If you disagree with that, protest. Petition your politicians.

But for now, stop with the temper tantrums.

I copied and pasted what I just posted in another thread as a reply, but I thought it may also fit here, since we're discussing areas to address in the new administration. .....

We are in uncharted territory with this election.

Normally, yes, we all lend our support to the new POTUS. You and I have been through many elections, and we have always seen a "coming together". Of course, starting in 2000 there was a contentious election, which didn't bode well for support, but, regardless, people came together in the end (the "Bush bashing" began in earnest over his war policy). And, most important, Congress did its job (first more than second term) and compromised.

Unfortunately, what we have had is a creeping factionalism since 1990s, which has now resulted in the look and feel of a parliamentarian system but without the benefits of one. We have a defacto faction elected to govern (control of all three branches). There is nothing wrong with a faction, in a parl system. But America has had "parties" not factions for over 150 years, with expectations of compromise built into our system.

Dems have stated they will compromise where their values match those of the RP, but not where their values are compromised (i.e. there will be no compromise, as we've seen done the last eight years by Congress). Because the Dems have no power in this new system, we will have to wait and see what is presented to see if there will be anything on which to compromise.

In a parl system the faction out-of-power is expected to criticize and oppose the opposition, to declare how it would run the country instead, and to explain to the public why they should vote them in and the current faction out. IOW they vigorously voice and oppose the power of their opposition.

What I see happening now with the public display of opposition is the public acting as this opposition, which should happen in "parliament" (congress). They have the right to do this, but I have never seen it done before like this. In truth, we are seeing the breakdown of our democratic institution.

We have a faction in power, and a faction out of power with what may be little on which to compromise but with no experience as a parl opposition (expected to do those three things above). Instead, the public is acting as if they were the parl opposition.

These are strange times in American history. I'm beginning to see the need for continued opposition, but I am willing to "cut him slack" for those 100 days. This is crazy.

originally posted by: Spiramirabilis
a reply to: Annee

Anyone know of a good news site (Centrist if possible) that doesn't use pictures?

The Guardian is my first choice - and I still have a fair amount of affection for WashPo

Can't promise about the pictures - those are everywhere

I like WashPo. But, isn't that subscription?

There's the Drudge Retort: www.drudge.com...

I'm going to close the initial wave of this thread now, with a consummately important commentary by John Oliver.

I encourage ALL OF YOU to watch it. All the way through.





F U 2016! F U!

originally posted by: desert
I copied and pasted what I just posted in another thread as a reply, but I thought it may also fit here, since we're discussing areas to address in the new administration. .....

We are in uncharted territory with this election.

Normally, yes, we all lend our support to the new POTUS. You and I have been through many elections, and we have always seen a "coming together". Of course, starting in 2000 there was a contentious election, which didn't bode well for support, but, regardless, people came together in the end (the "Bush bashing" began in earnest over his war policy). And, most important, Congress did its job (first more than second term) and compromised.

Unfortunately, what we have had is a creeping factionalism since 1990s, which has now resulted in the look and feel of a parliamentarian system but without the benefits of one. We have a defacto faction elected to govern (control of all three branches). There is nothing wrong with a faction, in a parl system. But America has had "parties" not factions for over 150 years, with expectations of compromise built into our system.

Dems have stated they will compromise where their values match those of the RP, but not where their values are compromised (i.e. there will be no compromise, as we've seen done the last eight years by Congress). Because the Dems have no power in this new system, we will have to wait and see what is presented to see if there will be anything on which to compromise.

In a parl system the faction out-of-power is expected to criticize and oppose the opposition, to declare how it would run the country instead, and to explain to the public why they should vote them in and the current faction out. IOW they vigorously voice and oppose the power of their opposition.

What I see happening now with the public display of opposition is the public acting as this opposition, which should happen in "parliament" (congress). They have the right to do this, but I have never seen it done before like this. In truth, we are seeing the breakdown of our democratic institution.

We have a faction in power, and a faction out of power with what may be little on which to compromise but with no experience as a parl opposition (expected to do those three things above). Instead, the public is acting as if they were the parl opposition.

These are strange times in American history. I'm beginning to see the need for continued opposition, but I am willing to "cut him slack" for those 100 days. This is crazy.

Bumping for truth.

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: BuzzyWigs

you just accept and acknowledge what the other person is going through and how their brain operates. Getting bent about it is no use.

Now remember that when you hear Trump say something and the pundits start trashing him for it.

(Wow, I turned it back to topic. Redneck do good.

)

TheRedneck

Exactly. And - I assume that maybe you weren't telling me to remember that, but meant that everyone needs to continue thinking like that.

Because it sounds like you think I need to be told that, when clearly I'm doing my level best.
But I take your word for it that you don't mean to sound dismissive.....

nice topic-turn, btw.