foxbat

And the lying on the wall starts/continues. This segment of the wall in New Mexico was completed in September of 2018. And it's not new wall, it's a replacement segment. Trump does realize that he was given 1.3 billion last year that he never really got around to spending and, his recent power grab "national emergency" has resulted in no dollars at this point and may never depending on whether Congress has the spine when they vote this week to put up enough votes to override a veto by Trump. This posting is fairly telling about the President ... if he's JUST NOW finding out about this, since it was "finished" three weeks ago, then he really could care less about the wall as he's not at all tracking his pet project. If he actually knew about it and believed it to be new wall, then again he's being disingenuous in that he held off talking about the "January 30 completion" while the end of the shutdown was basically a week old. He didn't need folks riled up over him shutting down the government if indeed part of the wall was "being built" and he also needed to make it seem like an emergency and seeing building on a wall would have dampened the urgency of said "emergency." If he knew when he tweeted this that it was replacement wall, then the info in the tweet is deceptive in at least two different ways ... again, bringing us back to the fact that the President is lying. I guess folks can take their picks, but I'm not sure that any of the alternates works for the President ... [edit: except purely with his base.]

Is Robert Kraft cutting commercials for these folks? 😄 Lord, I apologize for that.

An advantage is they don't have to worry about contraction. 😃

Actually, they estimate that some may be admitted with an SAT score LOWER than 1455 based on your graphic. Under 2% of them. If you were talking about just any average admission doc, you'd probably be right, but we aren't talking about an average student, are we? We're talking about a kid who has become an author, founded a non-profit, has been on TV lots of times, who has helped organize a movement ... whether you like the movement or not ... helped create a boycott movement that took out advertisers from an adversary's show, etc. He became a national name and isn't done yet. You may not like what he's doing, but the kid got in. You have a conspiracy theory, why not prove it instead of just toss the mud out there and see if it sticks. The kid's in the under 2% that get in. The fact that Harvard sends mailers to folks in Montana and Nevada with 1310 means that they consider those scores. May not admit a lot of them, but they have a policy that says target these kids. Given that they are willing to "waste" their targeted application inquiries on kids with 1310 when 1455 is the supposed floor ... the reason is because they DO admit folks in that range. And if they admit general folks from Montana with a 1310, then why wouldn't they consider and even admit a national profile kid with a similar score? Yes, I know the narrative is to make him unworthy, but frankly, that 2% is about diamonds in the rough. Something that's seen as worth taking a chance on. This kid took on Laura Ingraham and held his own. He's taken on the NRA and held his own. He's weathered a lots of folks attacking him and physically threatening him and hasn't backed down. He had the awareness, during the shootings, to record the equivalent of last testaments so that if he and his fellow students didn't survive, they could at least leave their last messages. He wrote a book. He's founded a non-profit. And he's still at it. Tell me again why Harvard wouldn't want to have him? If you've done admissions in a university setting, while there's lots that tied to the numbers, there are also windows for more holistic evaluation. Admissions will see out diamonds in the rough and this kid fits that idea whether you like his politics or not. Again, I don't see folks complaining about Bush's 1200 or so getting into Yale or Kushner's grades/scores not being in the Harvard ranges. That's definitely a couple of conservatives there with lower-than-expected performance getting into Ivy League schools.

Mom records heartwarming video of police officer playing with dolls with girls who 'were afraid of cops' https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mom-records-heartwarming-video-police-officer-playing-dolls-girls-afraid-cops-180026210.html FTA: Roper-Boswell said Fleming and the children first became acquainted when emergency crews responded to a gas leak at her apartment complex. Once the leak was declared not a threat, and Fleming realized everyone was safe, he started talking with the residents of the complex as he often does. “I was telling him that my daughter, my niece and some of the other children here were afraid of cops,” Roper-Boswell told WTVR. So when Fleming spotted the kids playing outside — and after getting their parents’ permission — he went over to them, got down on the ground and started playing too. First he joined a group of boys who were coloring, and then with the girls who were playing with dolls. Surprised by the sight of the 42-year-old officer making himself comfortable on his belly with his legs crossed like a kid, she grabbed her phone and started recording a video — which happened to take place on Valentine’s Day. But it was all in a day’s work for Fleming, who told Yahoo Lifestyle, “I’m a dad of three girls. I’ve gotten toes painted, exfoliated with mud masks, danced in princess dresses with makeup, tea parties, etc. Doll babies are like second nature to me. So me and the girls were having a blast.” The little boys, he said, reminded him of his 4-year-old son, a SpongeBob SquarePants fan. “When I noticed the young men coloring pages filled with those particular characters I just asked if I could join in because my son was in love with these characters,” he said. “They allowed me to choose one to fill in the color, and while we did that we ended up singing the theme song together. It was the best part of my day, hands down. All of these children were so polite and kind and compassionate with me and with each other. They shared their toys, their crayons, their laughs with me.” ... But Fleming has been humble in the face of all the attention he’s received since the video went viral. “Y’all give me more credit than I deserve, but I do appreciate the love,” he replied to the well-wishers. “Plus who doesn’t like playing and coloring with kids?!? It’s probably my favorite thing to do. They were so kind to me, and I’m so thankful they allowed me to play with them today.” Though he takes the praise in stride, Fleming does realize the gravity of his actions. “For me to be a catalyst for young people, regardless of race, color, creed, religion,” Fleming said. “I feel that I could be a positive change.”

Looks like he's got less grey hair now. Does he or doesn't he? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

I'm assuming we won't be seeing any tweets from Trump or announcements from Kris Kobach about election fraud in North Carolina ... other than to try to pretend that the election was "stolen" from Harris. https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-board-votes-to-hold-new-house-election-over-absentee-ballot-fraud-213703280.html FTA: The North Carolina Board of Elections voted unanimously to hold a new election in the state’s Ninth District after overwhelming evidence of vote tampering. ... After hearing testimony all week, the board — which consists of three Democrats and two Republicans — ruled that absentee ballots were illegally collected by Harris staffers. A spokesperson for state Republican Party told Yahoo News that candidates would file to run in a new primary prior to the special election. Republicans initially objected that Democrats were trying to “steal” the election with claims of fraud, but over the last several months evidence accumulated that a Harris consultant had sent workers to collect absentee ballots and destroy them or fill them in for the Republican.

Don't know, but you get recruitment letters from Harvard if you live in Montana and Nevada and have SAT scores of 1310. 1270's not far off. Heck, George Bush had around 1200 and got into Yale.

https://news.yahoo.com/ex-trump-adviser-stone-tells-u-judge-abused-201322232.html Looks like Stone wasn't nearly the wisea$$ that he usually is while appearing before the court today to explain his most recent post. I have to imagine though, given his persona, that he regained his bravado as soon as he left the courthouse. FTA: "I abused the order," Stone told U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson during a hearing to examine whether he violated his bond conditions or should face greater restrictions on discussing the case in public. "I am kicking myself over my own stupidity," Stone said. "Your honor, I can only beseech you to give me a second chance," Stone said. "Forgive me the trespass." He apologized to the judge.

So then you do agree, at a minimum, that some of their groups are hate groups. I would take their designation for those that I also feel are hate groups for the same reason that you would consider some of them to be.

So if you question some, then I suspect that you don't question others that they identify as such? If that's the case, then why all the rigamarole earlier?

Kind of like with polio eradicated, doctor's had to find other sources to get paid right? Or with one gang eradicated out of an area, the police had to find another one? You make it sound like these various terror groups are made up. My guess is that victims of a synagogue bombing don't really care whether the bomb was from a neo-Nazi, a Klansman, or an ISIS-claimed vest-bomber. Similarly, a person like James Byrd really would have cared less whether his attackers were Klan, Aryan Brotherhood, CKA, or any other dozen white-supremacist groups. Along those lines, anti-abortionists and politicians that cater to them really don't want Roe overturned because it'd be bad for the movement and some re-election campaigns.

Please feel free to discuss the content.

So you are agreeing that the numbers were gamed? The number's not all that important ... just interesting that someone obfuscating story content by going after the source would be so "comfortable" with sporting a less-than-honest accounting of "reputation" ... whether gamed personally or not.

Salary? Most crime comes down to a couple of big buckets ... money and passion ... and money's the bigger bucket.

Yep ... it's in the Saggy Bottoms strip mall ... although to make it sound classier, they refer to it as a dance mall. 😀

No need to enlighten you my good man. Yep ... so meaningless that you found a way to game them.

Obfuscation. Kind of like those uptick counts, eh?

Yes, by all means, let's ignore the FBI stats or the input from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino in the article to take a shot at the SPLC. If you've got contradicting/contrary numbers, then by all means please post them.

Just in yesterday evening ... https://www.voanews.com/a/us-hate-groups-hit-record-number-last-year-amid-increased-violence/4797147.html FTA: American hate groups had a bumper year in 2018 as a surge in black and white nationalist groups lifted their number to a new record high, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a report issued Wednesday. The Alabama-based legal advocacy organization recorded 1,020 active hate groups last year, up 7 percent from 2017. The previous record tallied by SPLC was 1,018 in 2011 amid a white extremist backlash against the presidency of Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American president. The increase was driven by growth in both black and white nationalist groups, the SPLC said. The number of white nationalist groups jumped from 100 to 148, while the number of black nationalist groups — typically anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and anti-white — rose from 233 to 264. ... Hate crimes have followed a similar trajectory in recent years. After falling for three consecutive years, attacks on blacks, Jews, Muslims and other minorities increased by 30 percent in the three-year period ending in 2017, according to the latest FBI data. The uptrend continued into last year, with hate crimes in America's 30 largest cities surging by an additional 10 percent, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. The majority of hate crimes are nonviolent, but some incidents were deadly. White supremacists in the U.S. and Canada killed at least 40 people last year, up from 17 people the year before, according to the SPLC's tally. While most bias-motivated offenses are not committed by members of hate groups, the perpetrators of hate crimes draw inspiration from ideas put out by hate groups, said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project and author of the report. [emphasis in last sentence of the article is mine]

It's right next to the Happy Endings lotion store.

That's the part that I'm trying to figure out. I'm not trying to stereotype or tie any particular group to this guy's speech. I'm trying to gauge how much he represents a canary in a coal mine or just a lone cuckoo. I think he's much more in the realm of the former rather than the latter. As for the 20,000 out of 350M. In a Night At The Garden, that was 20,000 that showed up and, as the director pointed out, if you have that many in plain sight, there's clearly plenty more behind the scenes and in support. The question is what might they be willing or able to put in action. In 1926, only 50,000 Klansman marched through the streets of DC in an organized parade, but it's estimated that the Klan had a membership of between two and five million at that time ... up from roughly a million three years earlier and 100,000 four years earlier. Those 2-5 million members had millions of non-member sympathizers too and it's readily apparent what that kind of membership/non-membership was able to do in the following years. Perhaps there's nothing to his rhetoric, although I'm frankly not willing to take that kind of chance given that I've seen first-hand what it leads to.

I'd consider it much less of a risk economically and more of a concern politically. All kinds of jokes about AOC and Sanders turning the country into Venezuela, but these kinds of actions, tied to national emergencies, potentially take us closer and closer to state-owned oil, state-owned manufacturing, etc. Historically, we looked back at Truman's failure to have the government take control of the steel mills with a sign of relief and an assurance that the balance of power works. I'm feeling a bit less confidence nowadays with Congress seemingly willing to abdicate many of its powers and a potential for weakened confidence in the judiciary.

??? This kind of stuff has been happening quite often. Two or three years ago, two kids were skipping elementary school in South Carolina and blamed it on a Black man who tried to kidnap them on the way to school to throw police off of the fact that they skipped. The man of course didn't exist. Remember Susan Smith drowned her own two sons and then blamed it on a Black man who she said carjacked her car with her kids in it. Remember the Pitmans who were shot to death in their house and then their house was burned down? Their grandson said that he'd escaped from the Black attacker ... except that he'd killed his grandparents himself. Remember during Obama's first election campaign against McCain when one of McCain's campaign volunteers claimed that she'd been assaulted by a Black man who carved a "B" in her face and told her that she was now going to be a "Barack supporter." Of course, there was no attacker. There was also the guy with the pregnant wife that claimed that a Black man jumped in the car and shot his wife to death while he was driving the car. Turned out that the husband killed his own pregnant wife for the insurance money. The lady who claimed that she and her kid were kidnapped by two Black men turned out to have taken her kid to Disneyworld having swindled her company out of over half a million dollars. These are just the quick ones that I recalled, but there are lot more that happen like this, but I just don't recall the details off the top of my head. This kind of thing is pretty much cliche' at this point.

Most may, but unfortunately it's folks like this guy that don't ... https://www.yahoo.com/news/coast-guard-lieutenant-accused-murder-plot-scale-rarely-seen-country-223900168.html FTA: In a motion filed Tuesday, U.S. attorneys said Christopher Hasson, a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard who has served at the service’s headquarters in Washington since 2016, had a hit list of targets, a cache of guns and a series of communications with white supremacists. The first sentence in the motion imploring the court to detain Hasson pending trial: “The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.” ... On Jan. 17, Hasson allegedly compiled a list of targets including a number of Democratic politicians and left-leaning political commentators. The names on the list include “Sen blumen jew” (presumably Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.,) and “poca warren” (presumably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.). There are also references to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a long list of additional Democratic senators, including Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Tim Kaine, D-Va. The list also includes likely references to a number of House members (Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.), television hosts (Joe Scarborough and Chris Hayes of MSNBC, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo of CNN), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas and the Democratic Socialists of America. On the same day he finished the list, the court filing says, Hasson completed the following Google searches over the course of three hours: “what if trump illegally impeached,” “best place in dc to see congress people,” “where in dc to congress live,” “civil war if trump impeached” and “social democrats usa.” Hasson’s alleged online searches for pro-Russian, neo-fascist and neo-Nazi literature, along with draft emails recovered from his email offer insight into what prosecutors describe as extremist views. “I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth,” Hasson allegedly wrote in a draft email to “acquaintances” last June; in the email, he appears to outline a stream of possible ways — ranging from biological attacks to bombing/sniper campaign” — to violently fight back against “Liberalist/Globalist ideology is destroying traditional peoples esp white.” “It seems inevitable that we are doomed,” the email continues, with Hasson soliciting ideas for how he might “enlist the help of another power/country,” such as Russia “or any land that despises the west’s liberalism. Excluding of course the muslim scum,” conceding, “I don’t think I can cause complete destruction on my own.”