.
E.J. Dionne, at the Washington Post:
… [P]hony claims and nasty innuendo built around imagined sins against patriotism and our veterans predate President Trump. But Trump’s attacks on NFL players who have knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice represent a particularly vile effort to mobilize political support by implying that the dissenting athletes, most of them black, lack a devotion to country.
The privileged NFL owners chose to capitulate to this divisive propaganda. The anthem at the heart of this discussion celebrates our country as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Yet the owners’ action is the opposite of bravery and a blow to freedom. Many on the right have spoken out forcefully for free speech on college campuses. But do they now propose to turn stadiums into “safe spaces” where conservatives deny others the liberties they claim for themselves?…
Democrats fret that even engaging with Trump on all of this risks placing progressives on the wrong side of patriotism. But the history of Memorial Day should teach us that the meaning of our patriotism has long been a matter of necessary struggle.
We should not let the divider in the Oval Office keep us from joining together in profound appreciation of our fallen. They perished under a flag that represents “liberty and justice for all.” The living cannot surrender either of these commitments.
What chaps my ass about this is that once again he co-opts somebody else's sacrifice for his own glory.
This guy has never actually ever done ANYTHING himself. He's the ultimate parasite. The Tapeworm President. https://t.co/2ZwvdSuUZU
— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) May 28, 2018
Just something to keep in mind next time we have some dumb fight about statues. Our most important monument to those who wage and endure violence in our name was deliberately located in a place where it would forever overshadow the legacy of a treasonous slaver.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 28, 2018
Baud
Elizabelle
The Tapeworm president.
That’s good. Fits on a bumper sticker too.
Chet Murthy
@Baud: Mr. Khizr and Mrs. Ghazala Khan, right? Parents of American patriot Humayun Khan.
hilts
h/t https://wcbs880.radio.com/articles/news/giuliani-gets-booed-he-attends-yankees-game-his-birthday
Barbara
And because we are a nation of laws, Lee’s son was actually able to demand and receive just compensation for the property under the takings clause of the Constitution. The decision to use the grounds of Arlington House as a cemetery was made by General Montgomery Meigs, whose own son was killed in the war. Like many other generals he considered Lee to be a traitor and was furious that he fought on the side of the Confederacy and made the war longer and bloodier than it otherwise likely would have been. Whenever someone tells me that times were different, and states were more important, I respond that Lee had a third choice, and that was not to fight at all. My husband told me that was probably unthinkable to Lee, to which I said, that means he wasn’t truly great, because a truly great man would have reached beyond what the conventional understanding of the day demanded. As I once told a member of my husband’s family regarding the owning of slaves, people aren’t celebrated for being no better than average.
Ruckus
@hilts:
His giving drumpf blow jobs on TV doesn’t seem to have helped his stature.
In the least.
Wild Cat
@hilts: The Yankees don’t allow beards in their dugout, but with Rudy and Ari, there’s plenty in their moat.
Mary G
Reposting from end of last thread, where it languishes in moderation. RIP Gardner Dozois from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing:
Had to change one letter in one word for obvious reasons.
SiubhanDuinne
I love Stonekettle.
Beyond perfect.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Jim is good people.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chet Murthy:
The Khans are 10000x more American than Donald Trump could ever hope to be.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ruckus:
Yes indeed he is. I’ve followed him since sometime in the GWB administration, can’t recall just when. He is a wise person and takes no guff.
Adam L Silverman
@hilts:
Fixed it for you!
hilts
Chet Murthy
Did anybody see how the Dems in Congress are inviting the Parkland student leaders to intern this summer? I thought that was *brilliant*.
Jeffro
@Baud: @Chet Murthy: @SiubhanDuinne: Reading Mr. Khan’s book made me 100x more offended (and I didn’t think that was possible) at Orange Crash’s attacks on him, and 1000x more appreciative of immigrants to this country – their sacrifices and hard work and overt commitment to the ideals that have made this country great.
I’ll take them over “very fine people” every day and twice on Sundays, no reservations, full stop.
Steve in the ATL
@hilts: the “pro-life” Catholic Church is opposed to gun control. Sure, whatever.
Jeffro
@hilts: @Adam L Silverman: Oh so THAT’s what they have in common…other than the cruelty thing, that is…
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro: my wife just spent three weeks in the hospital at Emory. Not one—as in “zero”—of the many doctors who treated her was born in America. God help us if we close the borders. On the other hand, lots more medical school slots for white men with 2.5 GPAs!
Chet Murthy
@Steve in the ATL: Three thoughts: (1) and it’s been this way my entire life (it’s how I got here — age 4, when my parents came, b/c my father was a cardiologist). (2) it’s not just doctors — we don’t train enough nurses either. (3) wiser heads than mine have noted that the problem is *less* that we don’t have enough smart folks, and *more* that our incentive system is skewed, so they go to finance and business (school) where (arguably) many of them end up subtracting value instead of adding it. This writer pointed out much the same problem when it comes to engineering, manufacturing, and operations more generally.
We’ve got some fucked-up incentives in our country. [which doesn’t take away from the fact that, yeah, like the UK we couldn’t keep operating our medical system without this massive flood of foreign-trained talent.] [Oh and I forgot about our I/T & high-tech sectors, for which the same is true.]
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
I worked for a Marine Staff Sergeant in the Shore Patrol for a short time while on temp duty. Jim Wright strikes me as being like that guy. No nonsense, very clearheaded, very concise, very knowledgeable. I was not big on the war, to say the least, but I’d have followed this guy anywhere. Because I know he’d never have put me in danger over himself, that he would do for me whatever was necessary. He earned respect not by his uniform but by being himself. I hope I could have given him the same as I think he’d have given me.
Chet Murthy
@Chet Murthy: I shoulda added “got here in 1969 at age 4”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL:
Maybe I should apply to medical school.
GxB
At least a tapeworm can trim down the recipient and be passed with some crude medication. I can’t see an upside to Chump other than the blinders falling from a few idiot’s eyes. I wish I could say that’s a positive but the damage done will take generations to fix, and I don’t think we have that luxury.
opiejeanne
@Mary G: One of my friends said Dozois met him, Adam, at a convention a few years ago and told him he’d read a short story Adam had written years before and made encouraging remarks about his writing. Adam was so starstruck he does’t remember a word of it.
Adam’s first novel was published a couple of years later and was a hit.
Chet Murthy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: In “Further Adventures in Messed-Up Incentives”: A former colleague (he and I are both South Asian) at Very Large I/T Company told me that his friends (South Asian and Jewish were mentioned) with pre-college kids were encouraging them all to go into computer science, in the same way that 10-30 years ago, parents encouraged their kids to become doctors.
We don’t need thousands more “it’s like Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Uber/Instacart, but with a twist”.
Lapassionara
@Steve in the ATL: Hope this will work out ok. I can’t imagine being in this kind of health care limbo?
Steve in the ATL
@Chet Murthy: more webmd.com?
Steve in the ATL
@Lapassionara: thanks, it’s been difficult. Maybe some homegrown American doctors would have solved it by now!
opiejeanne
@hilts: I’m surprised they stopped him from speaking since he also praised his classmates who were involved in an anti-abortion protest. That would seem to be on point for a Catholic school.
GxB
@Chet Murthy:
Never a more true statement made. I’ve met some scary smart/ambitious (and usually ambitious is enough) people in my time, but with few exceptions they were honing in on MBAs and “sales oriented” professions cuz that’s where the money is at and there is minuscule if any liability.
We should do something about that.
opiejeanne
@Steve in the ATL: I’ve been very frustrated on your behalf, reading about this long slog and no definitive answers. I hope a solution is found soon and she can heal.
Ruckus
@Lapassionara:
I can.
A different limbo for sure. But still seemingly stuck in it.
@Steve in the ATL:
Hope your wife is doing better and can find some relief. Go Mayo.
MobiusKlein
Obligatory nag:
REBOOT YOUR ROUTERS!
At my day job, I see evidence that malware like that attacks the financial infrastructure routinely.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/fbi-tells-router-users-to-reboot-now-to-kill-malware-infecting-500k-devices/
If you have not rebooted your router, you are objectively PRO-PUTIN
Corner Stone
@MobiusKlein: I ain’t rebootin’ shit.
MobiusKlein
@Corner Stone: Seriously?
All you need to do is unplug it for 30 seconds, plug it back in.
Assuming you don’t have a battery backup inside it.
And yeah, taking advice from randoms on a web site is … dubious.
but seriously, do it.
Chet Murthy
@MobiusKlein: @Corner Stone: Just to add to MobiusKlein’s good advice: if your home IT can’t withstand a power-cycle, maybe you should think carefully about depending on it in any way, shape, or form. And furthermore, in every (and I mean *every*) I/T org I’ve ever worked, it was *policy* to power-cycle the entire site at least once a year.
There’s a good apocryphal story about that (out of MIT). Seems that MIT back in the early 80s (or late 70s) had a rather well-developed campus network. Lots of routers, and these routers downloaded their control code from home servers over the network, using firmware ChaosNet (or TCPIP, I forget) bootstrap code. So each router was programmed-in with its home server’s address. And for the longest time, routers would power-cycle (say, when a building’s power was cut) and when the power came back on, it would find its home server, get its code, and start working again. Until the day came, when the entire campus took a power-cut, and it turned out that two routers’ home servers were on the opposite sides of each other. The story is, someone had to hand-load the code into one of the routers to get it up and running.
Moral: never assume your network will survive a power-cycle; test that out regularly.
Platonailedit
A tapeworm president.
Jim nailed it.
Platonailedit
@hilts: First amendment. Only rwnj’s need apply.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: 3 marriages each too.
Adam L Silverman
@MobiusKlein: I run a cable company issued modem with built in wifi router through my Apple Time Machine with it’s own wifi router. I don’t use the cable modem’s router/cable modem as a router. Just the Time Machine. Do I need to unplug both? Neither? Just the cable company one?
Thanks!
Chet Murthy
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, unplug ’em all. It should be enough to do that one-at-a-time, not all-together. There’s a list of affected devices, but (a) easier to not bother checking and just do it to every device you have, and (b) quoting the notice:
so I wouldn’t assume that they actually know which routers AREN’T possibly affected just yet.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Steve in the ATL: More holographic doctors!
MobiusKlein
@Adam L Silverman:
There is a specific list of routers that are known to be affected. I don’t expect non-tech folks to know what is in the blackbox, so don’t bother differentiating. Unplug them all.
The malware has 3 parts, only the first is on the device, and connects to specific sites to get the remaining two parts.
The FBI / Govt has taken over or blocked those sites, so part 2 & 3 won’t be loaded again.
If your device is actually infected, then performing a factory reset would be required.
MobiusKlein
This was a good resource:
https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/05/VPNFilter.html
Note the section: Known Affected Devices for good info.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Adam L Silverman: @Chet Murthy: I echo Chet, unplug them all. And make sure your Apple router has the latest code. You probably can’t do anything about your cable modem/router, they generally have the firmware locked down for their network.
geg6
@GxB:
At my university, these are the engineering students. They are so good, I pray to the FSM that they decide to use their powers for good.
Adam L Silverman
@Chet Murthy: Will do later this evening. Thanks!
Chet Murthy
@geg6: I’m an engineer. CS PhD, but still, an engineer. The vast majority of engineers are merely tools in the hands of business types. The Silicon Valley elite, as in all technical sectors of the economy, might get technical degrees, but typically that’s not a prereq: what *is* a prereq are two things: (a) sales ability, (b) vague understanding or ability to fake same, of the tech. And #a is what matters. I’ve seen it over and over: even with guys who got PhDs right alongside me, and they don’t actually *understand* anything of the tech or its effects on anything around it. B/c frankly, they don’t care — they know that what matters is sales and politics.
Change the incentives of the business class, change the behaviour of the sector. So I wouldn’t worry too much about the engineers (at least, them as don’t go to business school). I’d worry about the business school students.
satby
@MobiusKlein: Haven’t the cable companies remotely rebooted routers for their customers? I thought that was one of the recommendations.
MobiusKlein
@satby: I don’t know. I would guess the answer is ‘There are no guarantees in the world. So both channels will get higher coverage’
jc
Has there ever been a bigger *divider* in American politics than D. Trump? Maybe the Democrats should run on a “united” states platform. There’s a novel concept.
Trump plays his base like a maestro. If they weren’t so pathetically gullible, business-crooks-turned-political-crooks like Trump couldn’t keep getting away with the cheap tactics he pulls at his cult rallies.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I was watching this on Woodrow Wilson, the Most Overrated President ever,
https://youtu.be/Hm0Gzz53YJo
https://youtu.be/3hRd8B_vZiA
I was struck by the parallels between Wilson and Trump ; blowhards, racists, whose claims with leadership experience were dubious at but and who think the dictatorships are the way to go. I think it’s safe to say all the Neo-Confederate and Dewy Eyed American Exceptionalism and Democracy means you shut up and do what dear leader says is a long running strain in American politics.
Original Lee
@hilts: At the Catholic high school graduation I attended this past weekend, the class president called for everyone to act for social justice and both the principal and the CEO praised the walkout in support of Parkland. I guess my diocese is ok with a Holy Cross school following Holy Cross principles.
JustRuss
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I started reading Lies My Teacher Told Me last night. The author starts in on Wilson on page 1.