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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 5, 2024 10:42:52 GMT -8
Neither do I. In fact, I believe it is vital to point out the actual state of things in our world. For too long, too many have been walking around with their heads in the clouds oblivious of the horrible situation which has developed in our country. I take a back seat to no one when it comes to trying to get people's heads out of the clouds. For decades, I have been warning about the course the country is on. But that was not the discussion. The discussion was about the attitude represented by the statements, We are done. Or all but done, and My friend, we lost the war generations ago. Those are not pointing out reality, they are dispiriting, defeatist exclamations. Might as well be propaganda from the other side. Something like Tokyo Rose.
We have suffered defeats in numerous battles, but that is the nature of war and we are at war. It is a war that never ends and God only knows how it will progress. Frankly, most people did not even know we have been at war. Leftist termites and woodworms have been quietly gnawing away at the structure of our civilization for decades, if not centuries. The inhabitants of that civilization were not paying attention to this slow moving damage. Yet, many are finally waking up to the peril facing us and that is a major step in the right direction. The exterminators have been called in to rid the edifice of the vermin. The odds may be against us, but we are only finished when we are dead or give up. I am not there yet.
We need to take a lesson from this man.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 5, 2024 18:28:09 GMT -8
In the latest Charles Lenox book, there is mention of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. It took 15 to 20 years or so, but they almost single-handedly ended slavery in the British Empire. It's certainly possible that some major moral shift could happen. We'll see.
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Post by artraveler on Apr 6, 2024 9:03:39 GMT -8
William Wilberforce Less known but at least as influential was John Newton author of Amazing Grace. Before he became a preacher Newton was a slaver working the leg from Africa to the Americas and was actually enslaved himself. As the hymn proclaims, there is power in redemption. It could be mans natural morality, or the power of G-d.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 6, 2024 10:57:51 GMT -8
Being well acquainted with man, I will go with the power of God. Perhaps the greatest theme in literature is redemption. Man knows he is broken and tries to atone for it.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 6, 2024 11:01:04 GMT -8
If it is done, I fear it will take far longer than 15 to 20 years to get the country on a better course. But it might be possible to slow down the slide rather more quickly.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 6, 2024 11:01:04 GMT -8
That's a, well . . . amazing story. He definitely met someone on the road to Damascus. I think in the backs of our minds (and fronts...and sides) we expect the mass of people out there to have their come-to-Jesus moment. We expect that some kind of light will hit them and they realize, "Gee...chemically or surgically castrating children is wrong."
But no matter how ridiculous things get . . . No road. No Damascus. No light that strikes them blind for three days. And we wonder what the hell the Almighty is waiting for. If this isn't a good time to throw around some lightening bolts, tell me when it would be.
But change can happens fast. Usually bad change happens very quickly and good change takes time.
Paul is one of my favorite Jews, by the way. He was arguably the first to have a real and genuine come-to-Jesus moment.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 6, 2024 12:58:21 GMT -8
This doesn't quite signify the end of civilization, but I've had a running discussion with my younger brother about why some people (usually trucks, but not always) back into parking spaces. I spent a week backing into parking spots to see if it made any sense. Here is what I discovered.I agree with this guy. It's something mental. Or it's a control issue. I don't know. Long story short, when people try to back in, they can hold up other cars. And whatever time is saved on the way out from having backed in already is more than wasted by the time it takes to back in. And, frankly, pulling straight in is fast and efficient and then backing out is fast and efficient. Unless I was specifically about to load my car with 20 bags of dog chow and wanted it pointed in a convenient way (there are a few stalls on the side of Winco that butt up to the store), I just don't get it. I've thought to stop and ask someone when I see them doing that. But I'm not sure I can do it in a kind way, so I just don't. No one wants to hear, "Hey, idiot. Why are you holding everyone up by backing in when you could just pull straight into the parking spot?"
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 6, 2024 17:37:13 GMT -8
Backing into parking lots is very common in Singapore. I have heard the reasoning that when someone is finished shopping or working, they want to be able to get away as soon as possible. Perhaps they don't have the same urge to get to work or go shopping. I sometimes joked that it might have something to do with the felonious stirrings in the hearts of many Singaporeans. They instinctively need the car facing out to make a quick getaway after knocking off a bank or store.
I rarely back into a parking lot. I might do so if doing so would give me more space to open my driver's-side door than driving straight in. I did back into a space recently, but I can't recall why. It was the first time I had done so in some years.
Frankly, having had a woman run into my car when she was backing out of her parking lot, I think I prefer women to back into their parking lots. Then they can see more clearly what is in front of them when they drive out.
That is precisely why I have no problem with people backing into their lots. Backing into a stationary lot, where the cars on either side are stationery, or the lots are empty, is much easier and safer than backing out into a lane in which hard-to-see oncoming traffic from both sides might be awaiting to greet your fender.
If I had to bet, I would bet this guy is a real piece of work. Clearly, he knows it all. He knows so much that he has the temerity to tell all of us to stop backing into parking lots unless we are bank robbers, Patriot fans or women who hate their work. Yes, I know it is an attempt at humor. I might add a very weak attempt, but he is only half (1/4) joking.
He reminds me of a German friend I had who could not understand why I would put more that one item on a sandwich. It drove him crazy that I would put meat, cheese, pickles and tomatoes on a sandwich. To his mind a sandwich was to consist of bread and one item, not more. If I wanted to have meat, cheese, pickles and tomatoes then I should get myself four slices of bread. Of course, the more he ranted about this, the more Dagwoodesque my sandwich would become.
Let me wander a little and go somewhat deeper than the author of this piece did.
There is something about the mind of certain males that is constantly looking for efficiencies. I know this very well, as my mind works this way in many things, for example as regards washing dishes.
I will wait to get enough dishes together to warrant running the hot water. While waiting for the water to get hot, the cold water is wasted so the more units I have to wash, the less cold water is wasted per unit. Don't worry, I am ever efficient as I use the cold water, which would otherwise go down the drain, to fill up my water filter container. Little water is wasted before it gets hot enough to wash the dishes. But I don't have the gall to tell the world how to wash dishes and efficiently use water that would otherwise be wasted waiting for it to get hot.
I suggest the guy who wrote the piece lighten up. Life is complicated.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 10, 2024 6:35:28 GMT -8
This could go in the AI thread or any number of places. But let's put it here.
This is interesting:
In case you don't want to watch the entire thing, I'll summarize: Fil is alerted by a viewer to a strange thing. The vocals from two "live" performances of The Eagles (one from 2023, one from 2024) sounded exactly the same.
Fil runs the vocals through his analyzer and finds that Don Henley has not been singing live at "live" concerts but instead has been selling high-priced tickets so fans can listen to recordings that he then mimes onstage.
It wasn't completely clear on whether they were playing their instruments or not. I think Fil was just comparing the vocals and saying that they are pre-recorded.
Reading the comments to his video, it seems that Don Henley has always been sort of a butt-head and has a reputation for being litigious and avarice.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 10, 2024 8:34:55 GMT -8
I am a little surprised that Fil is "surprised" at this practice. This type of thing has been going one for a long time. Others have been called out on it as well. I can't recall all those singers who have availed themselves of such electronic technology, but I believe it has even been done at Super Bowl half times.
Back in the 1990s, I would sometimes point out to a friend that different singers on various TV programs or recorded concerts were lip syncing. He didn't believe I could possibly know that, but I could often see slight misses on their timing, as well as the lack of physical effort required to sing certain phrases/notes/etc. I pointed out that it was virtually impossible to sing properly and bounce around on stage constantly as types such as Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson did. I can't recall if Gloria Estevan was in this crowd, but it wouldn't surprise me.
P.S. Back in the mid-1960s, I believe the BBC or British government changed the rules on musicians performing on TV. Up to that point, it had been allowed for bands to come out with full equipment and pretend to be playing live, even though a recording was being broadcast. After the rule change, a band actually had to be playing to be shown to be playing on TV.
I recall this because it was mentioned on a TV program I was watching which showed the latest Beatles video. They weren't with their equipment. It was more like an MTV clip of the 1980s.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 10, 2024 9:32:22 GMT -8
Yes, I'm pretty sure that's been something done more than once.
Fil (if memory serves) sort of muses and wonders if this is fraud. Well, of course it's fraud. You're paying for a live performance and are not getting one.
It will be interesting to see if this even matters to those who pay hundreds of dollars for the tickets. I don't think it will. We now live in a Teleprompter society where nearly everything is rehearsed, prerecorded, or otherwise fake.
Fake news. Fake education. Fake social justice. Fake racial grievance. Fake money. Fake images. Fake AI facts. So is anyone really going to get up in arms over Don Henley faking his performances? I don't expect so.
Still, to have the balls to take people's hard-earned money and give a fake vocal performance takes some kind of moxie. But then, the music industry isn't apparently known for its high morals.
Whether Fil was surprised by this, I don't remember him saying one way or the other. I guess I would have to go back and watch the video.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 10, 2024 9:47:22 GMT -8
I didn't watch the video so I perhaps I shouldn't say Fil was surprised. That said, I would have thought that there must have been some degree of surprise for him to make such a video. Perhaps I am mistaken. Maybe he was just trying to expose a common fraud perpetrated in the music industry.
Listening to live music should be a unique and special experience. It is genuine music, not music which has been run through a multitude of takes before putting various different parts together to come up with a "perfect" product. I understand that many in modern music disagree with this.
The Beatles got to the point where they had almost no interest in performing live and spent huge amounts of time repeating phrases and tweaking minutia in the studio in order to achieve their desired result. This type of practice is one reason live concerts by pop musicians are generally nothing like as technically excellent as their recordings. A lack of actual musical talent might also be part of the problem.
I just watched some of Fil's video and it is interesting that both Henley's and Fil's voices are run through some sort of reverb to make them sound fuller. Just another miracle of modern technology. A Pavarotti could sing live and still be good, (I saw him perform in Dallas around 1971/72) a Don Henley, um not so much.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 16, 2024 8:32:34 GMT -8
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 16, 2024 9:18:38 GMT -8
You're black. You're a woman. (I assume that's a woman...could be a cross-dresser.) I would thus imagine that 'systemic incompetence' doesn't begin to describe her level of incompetence.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 23, 2024 16:13:40 GMT -8
This is presented for your amusement. It is not for informational purposes: 13 Reasons Why Baby Boomers Are The Toughest GenerationI had a front-row seat to "the toughest generation." This is the generation that birthed "safe spaces," climate hysteria, promiscuity, heavy drug use, and most of all anti-Americanism. And don't bother telling me that the X, Y, or Z generation is really responsible. The Boomers set the table for all this stuff. There is nothing tough about them. Toughness is precisely the ingredient they are missing.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 23, 2024 17:18:06 GMT -8
I wonder if this was meant to be ironic/tongue-in-cheek? There were several clips from the movie "Stand By Me" which made me wonder about the seriousness of the video.
The rest of what I saw, I admit that I could only stand the first 6 minutes, was generic and repetitive. I thought the constant stress on "bullying" was over the top. The only bullying I experienced as a kid was from my older brothers. I can't recall any in school. Of course, there were occasional fights, but they had to do with all types of things.
While I don't condemn the whole generation as pussies, I do think a very significant percentage of them were/are rotten to the core. They lacked introspection, which is different from being self-absorbed, and seemed to latch on to the idea that they were much smarter than those who came before them, thus they could change the world for the better. I attribute this delusion to gargantuan arrogance, and as I say, "arrogance breeds stupidity." When stupid people are in charge, as is now the case, we are all in danger.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 24, 2024 6:23:56 GMT -8
I think you caught the essence of it. It does seem like a parody. In essence, it strikes me as a perfect example of that generation. It was the "self-esteem" movement writ large. Read the comments to that video. They clearly have a need to bask in self-approval with that home-on-the-range attitude where never is heard a discouraging word. This was the beginning of the un-reality movement. Any generation is going to have good and bad points. But my position is that the Boomer generation didn't meet a bad idea that it couldn't take to the extreme...including "self-esteem." They require this constant reinforcement of how supposedly good they are...the direct and immediate ancestor of "safe spaces." They have the inability of self-critique, a decidedly Christian value. They couldn't have written anything like that. Instead, this was the generation that started blaming their parents or "America" for all their problems. They were utopian in mindset. And as Paul Harvey strikingly put it, as one commenter paraphrased at American Thinker: "Do as you please" is the take-away from that. The flag of the Boomers was sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. They lived in a utopian reality (or wanted to) where one could "make love, not war" without bothering to ask what to do if the other guy wants to make war on you. To my mind, it was the most indulgent generation of Snowflakes (yep, they birthed those too) that America has ever seen. And most of the social ills we have are due to their inability to self-critique, to moderate their passions, to truly gain wisdom. This is the generation that birthed the protection of baby-killers and their supporters, in the form of the evils minions at Columbia University. They birthed the idea (and still hold to it today) that "protest" was an inherent good without any thought about what was being protested. In this case, the protests at Columbia (and elsewhere) are about resistance to those who oppose Jews being raped, tortured, humiliated, and murdered just because they are Jews.
In short, the Boomer generation was the first to infantilize themselves. They made and make an enemy of adulthood and idolize yute movements of any kind.
The moral vacuum we see today was birthed by the Boomers. And all they can do now is try to bask in self-esteem about how supposedly good their generation was. That is as absurd as they are.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 24, 2024 15:43:56 GMT -8
There is a very significant irony that left-wing Jews did much to bring on this insanity. From Herbert Marcuse to that stupid leftist Jewish professor at Columbia complaining he was being bared from the campus for speaking out against the pro-Hamas "rallies" at Columbia, "liberal Jews," particularly in the northeast, have manically pushed progressive ideas, (let's call it what it really is, Marxism) and now they are reaping what they, in a major way, helped sow.
Prof. Dershowitz, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman and many many other Jews have been funding the leftist destruction of America for decades. It is amazing that they are just now beginning to understand (and that only because they are directly experiencing) the rotten fruits of their actions. They all seemed to be surprised, but why this is the case, I can't understand. The left does not respect rules, it does not respect established order. It does not respect law. It respects only power. One doesn't have to be a genius to understand this.
As I have observed in the past, Jews can be brilliant in many ways, but all too often, they are dumb as rocks when it comes to seeing reality, which doesn't much care about their harebrained pie-in-the-sky leftist ideology. That reality is that leftists will turn on them, conservatives will stand up for them.
This is how violent, law-breaking protestors are handled in Texas.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 24, 2024 17:58:55 GMT -8
The one guy who allowed me to understand this, even a sliver's worth, is Dennis Prager. I've heard him note his own history. Jews are bred to be afraid of and despise anything listed as "conservative" or "right wing" as much or more than they are afraid of eating bacon.
This has obviously thrown most of them into a moral vacuum and blinded them to the reality. It's bizarre to see. But it's so 100% true. Yes, it makes them dumb as rocks as far as seeing reality. They have farmed out their morals to "not-that," a simplistic view that makes quartz crystals looks smart in comparison.
Probably these Jews suffer from the same lack of introspection, self-critique, and wisdom that all liberals do. And ego. Lots and lots of smug ego. These people think they are the epitome of good because of who their enemies are. And if there enemies are the Devil, then whatever they are doing, however absurd at times, to thwart the enemy is seen as a good. Not-that-ism. We don't have to sell each other on the clear lack of discernment by those on the Left. They have ceded all good judgment to mob-politics.
So we're talking about some serious brainwashing. This isn't mild or even medium partisanship. This is outright mind-losing brainwashing, and right from the cradle.
But Jews aren't the only people to have been (from one perspective) abused by this ideology. Yes, women sign on to feminism willingly. But there is also a certain perspective whereby you can see that they have been abused and used by others for sheer power and perverse motives.
The same with what has been inflicted on "transgender" children. And, of course, what makes that worse is that we adults have a duty to protect them from that, and children don't know better, etc. And we don't feel inclined to give much of a pass to adults who have taken part in, no matter how useful-idiotly, the Left's agenda. But there still is that perspective when otherwise healthy (not to say "good") people are corrupted by foul doctrine.
Brand those lousy em-effers with a cattle prod. That will make them disperse soon enough.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 24, 2024 18:10:03 GMT -8
That is exactly the thought that came to my mind when I saw a video of "students" assaulting police at Humboldt University yesterday.
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