The Watering Hole, Tuesday November 17, 2015.

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I can’t bring myself to post about the environment or food politics.

The events in France just overwhelm. Can’t think of one fundamentalist religion that has ever done the world one bit of good, ever. It’s the 21st Century. You would think people would be beyond this now. It has been quite evident for some time that people can act morally and humanistic-ally without religion. I just don’t see the draw.

Open thread

80 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Tuesday November 17, 2015.”

  1. In Amurkkka, some 30,000 people die each year, thanks to her embedded terrorist “religion” — guns. Oddly enough, the vast majority of gun advocates are descendants of immigrants. Republicans are invariably pro-gun and anti-immigrant. I think I’m finally getting a grip on their ‘religion,’ and it’s not a hell of a lot different from the defining details of what happened in Paris.

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  4. A Spanish court issued a warrant concerning the 2010 attack on the Gaza-bound aid ship Mavi Marmara against Bibi Netanyahu and seven current and former government officials.

    Hasta la vista, Bibi.

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    • The investigation into what are becoming ‘no-go’ areas in major European cities, like the section of Brussels, where most of this attack was planned, will become a more interesting conversation. I stayed one night on my last trip in London is what looked like ‘little Pakistan’ out by the Olympic Stadium. It was well over 75% Pakistani shops and people on the street outside the pub where I stayed.

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  7. It is highly likely that a crowd of 80,000 English football fans will sing La Marseillaise today in Wembley stadium as England play France in a friendly football game … they have been practicing I hear.

    The meaning of La Marseillaise “the greatest anthem in the world… ever”

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    • You can’t go after Obama on his approach without going after the Congress for hamstringing him on airstrikes and Boy Bush on fucking the whole place up to being with…..

      … haven’t herd anyone talking about how it’s “better without Saddam” this week – anyone?

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    • I was part of an online group of chat whackos on AOL waaaay back in the early 1990s and we called ourselves Pasta-farians. And yes, we all had pics of ourselves with colanders on our head.

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  12. We create terrorists when we destroy their country, kill their families, and leave them hopeless. I’d bet a large percentage of these ISIS fighters aren’t in it for the Islam. By fanning the flames of fear and anger, the RWNJs are guaranteeing we will create more disaffected young men, some of them perhaps our own homegrown killers.

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    • I agree with Maher that they hate us because we’re there. And ISIS/L fighters are paid $700/month, which is YUUGE money in that area.

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    • I think OMIF is closer to it than Maher. I found something in the Spectator yesterday which was very intuitive. The majority of ISIS fighters lost their adolescences between 2003 and 2013 in the invasion of Iraq and the Shia led crackdown on Sunnis under the US backed Malawki government. These are kids who never had a childhood, and this is the only way they have to any kind of personal dignity….. they are not there for the jihad and the virgins for the most part…. and I think given an alternative, the real killers will be ieft alone and isolated.

      I remember reading an Economist year in review, back in early-mid 90s…. which looked at the demographic timebomb of the Middle East – millions of under franchised, under employed, over sexed but religiously repressed young men – they said it was a timebomb coming…. and here it is. I will try and find it somewhere – I kept many of those yearly editions.

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  17. NYT headline:

    Carson Is Struggling on Foreign Policy, His Advisers Say

    The candidate’s remarks on the Middle East and national security have raised questions about his knowledge of the subject, and advisers say tutoring is having little effect.

    Know why it’s having little effect? Cuz Carson idiot savant, accent heavy on the “idiot.”

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  19. I awoke this morning to discover I had no water. Fortunately the toilet tank flushed, the failure to refill was my clue. After several calls to the utility department, a serviceman arrived at 2:30 PM. The reason I had no water is because the meter was missing, it was stolen last night! đŸ˜¯

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      • That sounds like a good guess. Last year some thieves stripped all the wire they could reach out of the lights at the local park/football field/baseball field. The guys replacing it were amazed at the job they did and figured that they must have designed special tools for the job. They also seemed inclined to add some booby traps for the next gang of thieves. My guess is that anyone who can build a tool that will cut wire inside a post 50 feet above the ground would probably bypass said traps with ease.

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      • The meter is part of a hefty chunk of brass. The serviceman said it worthless as scrap while intact but will be accepted at local yards when broken into pieces.

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  21. I got an email from our local NYS Assemblyman today. I couldn’t even read it past the first line:

    “Contact Gov. Cuomo by phone at (518) 474-8390 or email him and tell him to take a stand against accepting Syrian refugees because it is not possible to properly vet them and screen out terrorists.”

    My response:

    “NO. It’s not possible to properly “vet” Americans and “screen out terrorists” who buy guns, whether legally or illegally. The Syrian refugees are fleeing their own homeland, with little more than the clothes on their backs, because of actual terrorists. If Americans were doing the same and trying to get in to Mexico or Canada, I’m willing to bet that there will be frightened conservatives in both countries who would say, “Let those crazy gun-nut Americans into our country? No way!” However, I’m also willing to bet that the governments of Mexico and Canada would STILL accept American refugees.

    Are you going to be like Jeb! Bush, and say that only “Christian” refugees should be allowed in? Shame on any so-called “Christian” who cannot even find it within themselves to be a Good Samaritan. And shame on you for being such an insular, bigoted chicken.”

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