Political Roundtable Part XII

[AFM]

Speaking of the ass end of Brazil, we should be importing as many South Americans as possible. They have the best asses. I just spent the last hour watching twerk videos on YouTube, by far the best is this Chilean twerk team.

Nate lives in Ohio and has never grabbed a beautiful light brown ass and had the booty go up between his fingers

I used to live in the Midwest, and about half the women there ride those scooters around Walmart, and are too big to wipe properly, I'm sure of it.

[tontoz]

Well again, I just showed you a study of over 65K people debunking your sweden claim. But the fact remains there wouldn't be a refugee crisis without this virulent strain that has taken hold.

Regarding concern for women's rights, I couldn't be more concerned for the plight of discrimination against women in Muslim countries and across the world, including gender-based violence, Female Genital mutilation, and most horrifically, sexual violence as a tool of warfare, as is happening in South Sudan right now. I've worked on all of those issues, including in a number of Muslim countries, and know most of the gender experts working on these topics, as well as those working on harrassmap.org in Egypt and Morroco, and Safecity in India. A fatwa against riding bikes is really not the issue to be focused on.

But I'm really thrilled to hear your concern for the plight of Muslim women. Hopefully you'll feel some sorrow for Muslim American women. I literally had one tear up a few hours ago when I told her forcefully this country belonged to her as well.

If you are concerned about discrimination against Muslim women, I'd suggest there's a country much closer to home where this is a serious and growing problem.

First of all your link did nothing of the sort. It was looking at all crimes, not sexual assault specifically which most likely is a small percentage of all crimes.

By all means please explain how becoming a refugee turns someone into a sexual predator.....

*****crickets******

True it is a shame that so many Muslim women in the US are forced to cover themselves head to toe when going out in public. But our government isn't making them do it and neither are white men. If they dressed the way everyone else does then strangers wouldn't know they are Muslim in the first place.

They could easily blend in if they chose to, or if they were ALLOWED to I should say.

[dckingsfan]

On this we can agree. There are programs that have been tried and failed...and those should be discarded or cut, and the funding for them applied elsewhere.
Then there are programs that have proven effective in improving educational outcomes like Community Schools with wraparound services (e.g. Cincinnati Public Schools), Career and Technical Education (e.g. NYC); and school infrastructure upgrades (DC public schools have done a good job with this and as a result more middle-class DC families are keeping their kids in those schools).

No disagreement - but all of those should be done on a local level not the federal level. If you want to kill those programs get the federal government to demand transparency and reporting.

My biggest problem with those who advocate for school vouchers or more competition is that's all they'll consider for improving public education.

By and large that has been the mantra but not the fact. Actually, it has been the public school advocates and the associated unions that do not want ANY kind of competition. No competing public schools, no charters, no vouchers.

Most of them refuse to even look at those successful initiatives that are taking root in some urban public school systems. And, yes, there are some success stories...in both traditional public schools and publicly funded charter schools. Let's learn from them and replicate.

Agreed. Let's let them all go to town and use best practices.

IMO, those people who support ONLY vouchers and competition are more interested in destroying public education and privatizing schools than they are in really fixing what's wrong.

Zards, if you really look into it at a local level - even those that want vouchers and charters still want public schools - they want choice. But think about the argument. Public educators don't want charters, alternate public schools, vouchers or any other types of education. And they make that argument on the backs of failing public schools. Tell me who that hurts most? As Doug would say, "not my kids".

[dckingsfan]

If I wasn't cloud-based on AWS it would be a problem.

Looks like it is going to apply to SaaS and double SaaS products if they have their way

[dckingsfan]

The US is generally in horrible shape mostly due to an inability to pivot on education. Until science/math makes huge leaps in the US education system there really isn't a fix.

Plumbers, and general contractors are going to be updating ROMs and editing .conf files. I've already had an issue as a landlord where I had to ditch a thermostat for an old school one as I couldn't find a repair guy remotely who could reset/reconfigure a simple iOT device.

The solution was installing some ancient thermostat, and setting it to 72 degrees. But I can still connect to my now disconnected nest to see the temperature in the home to see if tenants remembered to set the thermostat to 72 when they check out.

There are two fixes - fix our education system or import trained labor. It is funny (in a weird way) that our two parties are complicit on fixing neither.

[sfam]

Well again, I just showed you a study of over 65K people debunking your sweden claim. But the fact remains there wouldn't be a refugee crisis without this virulent strain that has taken hold.

Regarding concern for women's rights, I couldn't be more concerned for the plight of discrimination against women in Muslim countries and across the world, including gender-based violence, Female Genital mutilation, and most horrifically, sexual violence as a tool of warfare, as is happening in South Sudan right now. I've worked on all of those issues, including in a number of Muslim countries, and know most of the gender experts working on these topics, as well as those working on harrassmap.org in Egypt and Morroco, and Safecity in India. A fatwa against riding bikes is really not the issue to be focused on.

But I'm really thrilled to hear your concern for the plight of Muslim women. Hopefully you'll feel some sorrow for Muslim American women. I literally had one tear up a few hours ago when I told her forcefully this country belonged to her as well.

If you are concerned about discrimination against Muslim women, I'd suggest there's a country much closer to home where this is a serious and growing problem.

First of all your link did nothing of the sort. It was looking at all crimes, not sexual assault specifically which most likely is a small percentage of all crimes.

By all means please explain how becoming a refugee turns someone into a sexual predator.....

*****crickets******

True it is a shame that so many Muslim women in the US are forced to cover themselves head to toe when going out in public. But our government isn't making them do it and neither are white men. If they dressed the way everyone else does then strangers wouldn't know they are Muslim in the first place.

They could easily blend in if they chose to, or if they were ALLOWED to I should say.

Perhaps you should ask them if they were forced to wear it? What's truly a shame is you may actually believe what you say.

Personally, I'm more disgusted by all those Christian women who are forced to wear crosses around their necks. Really horrific making them wear slave necklaces like that Someone should make a law against that.

Regarding the refugees, I've stated as clearly as I can. Someone going through horrific and violent situations, where in many cases, most of those they know have died, is bound to do pretty violent things. This is not unlike PTSD that many soldiers deal with, but with the added part of having all your belongings and family members killed, and having to travel half a continent in a horrific journey, before finally arriving at some strange country. Sorry if that doesn't resonate with you. But for the third time, they wouldn't be in Sweden if it weren't for Salafi Jihadism. They would be happily living in their own country.

EDIT: The key quote to ignore again

they are no more likely to commit crimes, including rape, than ethnic Swedes of the same family income

[gtn130]

So are the Trump acolytes on board with scaling back Dodd-Frank and the fiduciary rule regarding financial advisors? Trump working alongside Jamie Dimon (seriously) to deregulate Wall Street- this is populism as Trump acolytes envisioned?

[Induveca]

If I wasn't cloud-based on AWS it would be a problem.

Looks like it is going to apply to SaaS and double SaaS products if they have their way

Considering most are incorporated in US and just use some foreign labor, it's messy at best.

I currently save 200% on engineer outsourcing vs the US hiring legal loopholes and excessive salary/legal costs for mostly inferior engineers, and no HR drama.

SAP is a company that could be hit hard by this, smaller companies not so much.

[Induveca]

So are the Trump acolytes on board with scaling back Dodd-Frank and the fiduciary rule regarding financial advisors? Trump working alongside Jamie Dimon (seriously) to deregulate Wall Street- this is populism as Trump acolytes envisioned?

We shall see. We're all of two weeks into the administration. Judging results prior to execution is pretty illogical.

[AFM]

My understanding is that some portions of Dodd Frank were pretty hard on small local banks, but I don't understand repealing the fiduciary rule at all.

[AFM]

It's really weird because I thought Trump was one of the common people, just like you and me.

[DCZards]

True it is a shame that so many Muslim women in the US are forced to cover themselves head to toe when going out in public. But our government isn't making them do it and neither are white men. If they dressed the way everyone else does then strangers wouldn't know they are Muslim in the first place.

They could easily blend in if they chose to, or if they were ALLOWED to I should say.

You can't really believe that all--or even most--Muslim women in the US cover themselves from head to toe. There are Muslim women--and men--that many of us come in contact with everyday (at work, in stores and restaurants, etc.) who we likely don't even realize are Muslim. Because most Muslims in the US don't dress or particularly act any differently than Christians or other non-Muslims.

While I won't pretend to speak for sfam, I seriously doubt that he was talking about what Muslim women wear as their chief concern. The primary fear or concern is more likely to be along the lines of what I'm hearing from a friend and former college classmate who is both African-American and Muslim. He says he feels as though the country in which he was both born and raised is now led by a man (Trump) who treats him like a second-class citizen and treats his religion like it's responsible for worldwide terrorism.

Based on the Muslims I know personally, Islam is not the problem. The problem is those bad guys who want to terrorize and create havoc in the name of Islam. Personally, I don't consider them Muslims.

[gtn130]

So are the Trump acolytes on board with scaling back Dodd-Frank and the fiduciary rule regarding financial advisors? Trump working alongside Jamie Dimon (seriously) to deregulate Wall Street- this is populism as Trump acolytes envisioned?

We shall see. We're all of two weeks into the administration. Judging results prior to execution is pretty illogical.

Yeah, we should probably all log off our computers realizing that speculating on the internet is illogical.

[tontoz]

Well again, I just showed you a study of over 65K people debunking your sweden claim. But the fact remains there wouldn't be a refugee crisis without this virulent strain that has taken hold.

Regarding concern for women's rights, I couldn't be more concerned for the plight of discrimination against women in Muslim countries and across the world, including gender-based violence, Female Genital mutilation, and most horrifically, sexual violence as a tool of warfare, as is happening in South Sudan right now. I've worked on all of those issues, including in a number of Muslim countries, and know most of the gender experts working on these topics, as well as those working on harrassmap.org in Egypt and Morroco, and Safecity in India. A fatwa against riding bikes is really not the issue to be focused on.

But I'm really thrilled to hear your concern for the plight of Muslim women. Hopefully you'll feel some sorrow for Muslim American women. I literally had one tear up a few hours ago when I told her forcefully this country belonged to her as well.

If you are concerned about discrimination against Muslim women, I'd suggest there's a country much closer to home where this is a serious and growing problem.

First of all your link did nothing of the sort. It was looking at all crimes, not sexual assault specifically which most likely is a small percentage of all crimes.

By all means please explain how becoming a refugee turns someone into a sexual predator.....

*****crickets******

True it is a shame that so many Muslim women in the US are forced to cover themselves head to toe when going out in public. But our government isn't making them do it and neither are white men. If they dressed the way everyone else does then strangers wouldn't know they are Muslim in the first place.

They could easily blend in if they chose to, or if they were ALLOWED to I should say.

Perhaps you should ask them if they were forced to wear it? What's truly a shame is you may actually believe what you say.

Personally, I'm more disgusted by all those Christian women who are forced to wear crosses around their necks. Really horrific making them wear slave necklaces like that Someone should make a law against that.

Regarding the refugees, I've stated as clearly as I can. Someone going through horrific and violent situations, where in many cases, most of those they know have died, is bound to do pretty violent things. This is not unlike PTSD that many soldiers deal with, but with the added part of having all your belongings and family members killed, and having to travel half a continent in a horrific journey, before finally arriving at some strange country. Sorry if that doesn't resonate with you. But for the third time, they wouldn't be in Sweden if it weren't for Salafi Jihadism. They would be happily living in their own country.

EDIT: The key quote to ignore again

they are no more likely to commit crimes, including rape, than ethnic Swedes of the same family income

I didn't ignore anything. The quote is self explanatory. They weren't look specifically at sexual crimes, they were looking at all crimes. Sexual crimes are likely a pretty small percentage of all crimes.

I can't tell someone's religion just by looking at them. Can you?

The only way I would know a stranger's religion is by how they are dressed. If Muslim women don't want to be harassed by random strangers all they have to do is change their clothes. I don't see this as a hardship, just an inconvenience.

If I went through the refugee ordeal and was welcomed into another country with open arms I would like to think I would be relieved and grateful, not looking for women to assault.

The lengths people like you go through to rationalize Muslim behavior is no different than what Trump's press secretary has been doing.

[DCZards]

The only way I would know a stranger's religion is by how they are dressed. If Muslim women don't want to be harassed by random strangers all they have to do is change their clothes. I don't see this as a hardship, just an inconvenience.

That's an utterly ridiculous statement. Isn't this still America? Isn't there still freedom of religion? Why the hell should these women hide their religion to avoid being harassed? Why would we, as a society, accept or condone these women being harassed by "random strangers" simply because of their religion?

These women who happen to be Muslim are not the problem. They're the victims in this situation. The problem (and villains) are the people who harass them.

I guess you would also suggest that women should not dress provocatively to reduce the risk of being raped by a random stranger.

[tontoz]

The only way I would know a stranger's religion is by how they are dressed. If Muslim women don't want to be harassed by random strangers all they have to do is change their clothes. I don't see this as a hardship, just an inconvenience.

That's an utterly ridiculous statement. Isn't this still America? Isn't there still freedom of religion? Why the hell should these women hide their religion to avoid being harassed? Why would we, as a society, accept or condone these women being harassed by "random strangers" simply because of their religion?

These women who happen to be Muslim are not the problem. They're the victims in this situation. The problem (and villains) are the people who harass them.

I guess you would also suggest that women should not dress provocatively to reduce the risk of being raped by a random stranger.

Indeed this is America and Muslim women HAVE A CHOICE as to how they dress in public, assuming their religion gives them a choice. They certainly don't have a choice in many Muslim countries.

Does Islam dictate how women should dress 24/7?

If they are genuinely afraid of being harassed by strangers during this Trump's mania they can change their clothes to avoid it completely, or they can call the cops and report it. They have options here that they don't have in Saudi Arabia.

[JWizmentality]

The only way I would know a stranger's religion is by how they are dressed. If Muslim women don't want to be harassed by random strangers all they have to do is change their clothes. I don't see this as a hardship, just an inconvenience.

That's an utterly ridiculous statement. Isn't this still America? Isn't there still freedom of religion? Why the hell should these women hide their religion to avoid being harassed? Why would we, as a society, accept or condone these women being harassed by "random strangers" simply because of their religion?

These women who happen to be Muslim are not the problem. They're the victims in this situation. The problem (and villains) are the people who harass them.

I guess you would also suggest that women should not dress provocatively to reduce the risk of being raped by a random stranger.

Indeed this is America and Muslim women HAVE A CHOICE as to how they dress in public, assuming their religion gives them a choice. They certainly don't have a choice in many Muslim countries.

Does Islam dictate how women should dress 24/7?

If they are genuinely afraid of being harassed by strangers during this Trump's mania they can change their clothes to avoid it completely, or they can call the cops and report it. They have options here that they don't have in Saudi Arabia.

Holy fascism batman.

[tontoz]

That's an utterly ridiculous statement. Isn't this still America? Isn't there still freedom of religion? Why the hell should these women hide their religion to avoid being harassed? Why would we, as a society, accept or condone these women being harassed by "random strangers" simply because of their religion?

These women who happen to be Muslim are not the problem. They're the victims in this situation. The problem (and villains) are the people who harass them.

I guess you would also suggest that women should not dress provocatively to reduce the risk of being raped by a random stranger.

Indeed this is America and Muslim women HAVE A CHOICE as to how they dress in public, assuming their religion gives them a choice. They certainly don't have a choice in many Muslim countries.

Does Islam dictate how women should dress 24/7?

If they are genuinely afraid of being harassed by strangers during this Trump's mania they can change their clothes to avoid it completely, or they can call the cops and report it. They have options here that they don't have in Saudi Arabia.

Holy fascism batman.

Please spare me. If the harassment of Muslims is as bad here as people are claiming, I don't think a change of clothes is major price to pay for the sake of personal safety.

Is dressing like a typical American some kind of heresy in Islam?

Or maybe the stories of harassment are being exaggerated.

[AFM]

Trump MUST stop these immigrants from stealing our jobs!!

Watch on YouTube

This will put 90% of arts majors out of a job. TRUMP DO SOMETHING!!

[tontoz]

True it is a shame that so many Muslim women in the US are forced to cover themselves head to toe when going out in public. But our government isn't making them do it and neither are white men. If they dressed the way everyone else does then strangers wouldn't know they are Muslim in the first place.

They could easily blend in if they chose to, or if they were ALLOWED to I should say.

You can't really believe that all--or even most--Muslim women in the US cover themselves from head to toe. There are Muslim women--and men--that many of us come in contact with everyday (at work, in stores and restaurants, etc.) who we likely don't even realize are Muslim. Because most Muslims in the US don't dress or particularly act any differently than Christians or other non-Muslims.

While I won't pretend to speak for sfam, I seriously doubt that he was talking about what Muslim women wear as their chief concern. The primary fear or concern is more likely to be along the lines of what I'm hearing from a friend and former college classmate who is both African-American and Muslim. He says he feels as though the country in which he was both born and raised is now led by a man (Trump) who treats him like a second-class citizen and treats his religion like it's responsible for worldwide terrorism.

Based on the Muslims I know personally, Islam is not the problem. The problem is those bad guys who want to terrorize and create havoc in the name of Isla m. Personally, I don't consider them Muslims.

It doesn't matter whether you consider them Muslims or not. That sounds like something Trump would say.

If your AA friend was born and raised in this country and is over 40 he probably would have some experience feeling like a second class citizen.

We just had a black president. Did you think 30 years ago that you would live long enough to see that?