Top GOP Lies on Immigrants

Things unfairly blamed on immigrants:

"They are high crime": The immigrant crime rate is statistically lower than the regular population. Most come to work their way up, not rob and rape. If one craves robbing and raping, it's usually easier to pull off in one's original country because one is familiar with that nation's patterns. Immigrating would thus make no sense. 

"Draining welfare": Some of the hardest working people I know are immigrants. They often work long physical hours in bad weather for minimum wage. They pay taxes and often boost economies because since they typically arrive with very few possessions, they are avid consumers. Some are not allowed to work due to an immigration status that's in a limbo state, but that's our system keeping them from working, not their own doing. 

"Driving up housing costs": NIMBYists are biggest cause of scarce housing, not immigrants. Builders would happily build more apartments and houses if the NIMBYs didn't create local rules to make it very difficult. Even if our population started shrinking, NIMBYists would prevent rebuilding old houses such that they too would leave the market. Thus, shrinking wouldn't solve the problem either. Further, recent immigrants tend live in smaller houses or quarters. The wealthy are less judicious with space. 

"Importing illegal drugs": The vast majority of imported illicit drugs comes through via commercial traffic, typically commercial trucks or container ships. Pure fentanyl is quite compact, and thus easy to weld into a truck part, for example. There is no currently viable technology to x-ray an entire truck. Asking a migrant to transport it has at least these problems: 1) Migrant may dump it in the desert. 2) Migrant may not show up to the planned delivery spot. 3) Migrant is caught by border patrol and spills the beans on the crime boss. Thus, the shipper has better luck using commercial traffic. 

"They don't assimilate": I live in S. California, a place with many immigrants, so I'm a first-hand witness. While sometimes the first generation has difficulty assimilating, their children assimilate just fine. They usually know current US pop-culture better than me. 

"Ruin America's culture": If you are a white evangelical who believes your culture is special or beatified, you may feel this way, but most religions think they are special. Why is your special better than their special? Get over yourself, you are NOT special! Your group is collectively fluffing each other's ego via BS and exaggeration. Jesus preached humility; get some!

"Muslims are taught to take over society": Whether this is true or not is highly nuanced, but at about 3% of the US population they are not anywhere near a threat level. It's the evangelicals who are currently trying to take over, forcing their reproduction, book censorship, and gender laws down our throats while worshiping a twisted aggressive Rambo-like version of Jesus. I doubt most have read the New Testament even, they just hear cherry-picked scriptures from rightie media. American Evangelicals are a real and current threat to freedoms, NOT Muslims.

"They eat pets": There is zero reliable evidence of widespread pet-eating. The lady who triggered the Springfield rumor later admitted she was mistaken. If your pet disappears, perhaps my white citizen friend ate it. My friend now routinely eats MAGA pets as revenge for their bigotry. I don't condone it, by the way and told them that. (Disclaimer: I've never directly witnessed them in the act.)

"Biden had 'open borders'": Biden's border policies were similar to Obama's, yet there was no "surge" under Obama. Thus, the likely cause of the surge is Don's own mouth falsely advertising to the world, "Joe will just let you in!". Don often triggers problems, blames Democrats, and gets away with it among ill-informed voters. (Biden did say certain things that could be also interpreted as advertising, but frankly the world usually ignored Joe's statements. Don is a de-facto world celebrity, and he uses it to create chaos.) 

Flunk: Right-wing excuse to send troops to ICE riots

Right-wing pundits point to videos of rioters attacking cops saying it's "proof they are out of control and need Fed troops."

But those pundits are ignorant. Suppose cops are guarding blocks 1 through 5. Rioters will then try mayhem on say block 6. So cops add more forces on blocks 6 thru 10. Then rioters hit block 11 and the pattern repeats. 

You might say "just fill entire city with cops and troops", but then more extremists have access to more cops and troops to attack, INCREASING total attacks on cops/troops. 

There are more "passive" extremists than active extremists. Passive extremists only act when they encounter their perceived enemy directly. If there are cops/troops in their front yard, they are fairly likely to act when otherwise they wouldn't bother. 

Therefore, throwing quantity at the "problem" solves NOTHING, merely pours gasoline on the fire.

If and when local authorities believe they need Federal assistance, they will ask for it. 

Proposed Compromise for Transgender Athletes

I can understand how many cis-women (women born female) would be frustrated by transgender athletes (TA) in their competitions, but also feel that TA's should be able to participate in "normal" sports without having to surrender their preferred identity.

Going all one way or the other will just create see-saw national politics where 51% tell 49% what to do, and the party in power often swings back and forth like a pendulum. Thus, finding a compromise seems the better option than repeated political whip-lash. A compromise won't guarantee a given party will stick to it, but increases the chances.

Don't get me wrong here, I don't wish to offend anyone, but am merely trying to make both sides the least frustrated by balancing the tradeoffs. Absolutism and idealism will fail in practice; I'm just the messenger. Both sides will never be fully satisfied, but compromises can be found.

So here is a rough draft of compromises:

First, for sports that directly rely on size or weight, have an upper limit for size and/or weight for the transgender athlete (TA). The assigned weight class for say boxing would depend on lab tests of volunteers and tuning over time based on actual sports results. There would be a bipartisan evaluation committee.

Because male-to-female TA's (allegedly) have thicker bones and joints, a direct weight-to-weight conversion may not be realistic, but the charts can adjust for that. For example, a TA swimmer weighing 150 pounds may be slated to be equivalent to a 155 pound cis athlete based on the above scoring techniques, and may be bumped up a grade level or equivalent.

Since most adult-level sports don't have grade or weight classes, other techniques may need to be applied. For example, for sports that depend on speed, have a "handicap" delay, such as starting later. For track and field, their starting line can be drawn further back from the usual point. Maybe the delay time would depend on TA's size and/or weight. And I see no reason to handicap a TA who is small in stature; the adjustments would only be applied to larger individuals. Lab tests and actual results-based adjustments would determine the time delay tables.

For example, if TA's are 3% of weight-class X, then they should win X-class matches about 3% of the time. If the win rate deviates too much from 3%, then the TA class tables are adjusted.  (Since the actual quantities for any given weight class may be small, linear regression may be used across classes to "smooth the gaps".)

For team sports, perhaps larger TA's can be required to wear weights or flexibility restraints on their joints to slow down their reaction times.

Such will indeed take a while to tune, but is possible with time and patience. Very few perennial social conflicts have an instant fix such that time and patience may be our only option. It will probably also have to be led by blue states, as red states are highly resistant to such. 

Update: an interesting proposal has been put forth for track medals whereby two medals are given for the same level if a transgender athlete receives one. Also extra team slots are allowed so that no CIS-gender women are left out if a trans-athlete gets their spot. For example, if there are 12 slots allocated for each track team, but there is a transgender member, then 13 slots are allowed, at least for non-simultaneous events. People are putting on their thinking caps, like a good civilized society does. 

Names Jimmy Kimmel has called Donald J. Trump

• Trumple Stilskin
• Trumple Orangeskin
• Troompa Loompa
• Donny Boo Boo
• Cheeto Chief
• Unhappy Gilmore
• Commander in Beef
• Mar-a-Lardo
• Donny Bone Spurs
• Colludicris
• El Crappy-tan
• Hairy Poppins
• King Tutan-con-man
• Abra-scam-lincoln
• Douche-olini
• Typhoid Donnie (got staff sick)
• Flabbio
• Tangerine Twitter Machine
• Tandalorian
• Darth Tax Evader
• Jabber the Hutt
• Orange Julius Caesar
• Spready Krueger [Covid]
• Dingus Khan
• Putin's Pee Pee Pal
• Lie-ger Woods
• Tweety Gonzales
• Tanny Soprano
• Q-A-Don
• Dictator Tot
• Quid Pro Combover
• Prisoner-Elect
• Star Spangled Tanner
• Gaseous Clay
• Smellvis
• Yellvis
  
• Fibberace (pronounced fib-er-ahchee)
  
• Reich Tyson
• MAGA Teresa
• Pork Choppo
• Commander & Thief
• Tannie Oakley
• Magaroni & Cheese
• Scamburglar
• Gassolini
• Groper Cleaveland
• Mar-a-Cloggo
• Vladimir Gluten
  
• Carrot Bottom
  
• Tannibal Lecter
  
• The Tanchurian Candidate
  
• Kim Don Un
  
• Donye West
  
• Genghis Don
  
• Burger Jean King
  
• Julius Squeezer
  

From Others

• Moutholini
• Mango Mussolini
• Don Laden
• Don Qaeda
• Hitliar
• Agolf Shittler
• Fattler
• ADHDolf
• The Count of Mostly Crisco (from Colbert)
• Cheeto Corleone
• Don Snoreleone
• Dozo the Clown
• The Nod Father
• Flush Gordon
• Hannibal Leakter
• Tribble Top
• Mess-iah
• Sharticus
• Farticus
• Coupy McTintFace 
• King Tint-Uncommon
• Darth Vapor 
• Donvict 
• Flakey McCakey 
• Ferrel Pharaoh
• Mango Unchained
  
  

👃💦 Conservatives Are Society's Allergies

Conservatives actually crave boogeyman (boogeypeople?) according to some studies. Remember their terror over Hollywood "commies" (McCarthyism), early Rock, racial integration, rap, and any Muslims after 9/11? Now it's migrants and transgenderism.

It's sold to them via pundits and preachers as a slippery slope that MUST be stomped out to stop the anti-Christ social radiation ☢️ from mutating society into woke zombies, or something similar.

Their obsession is useful when one needs to keep vigil on real threats, but it also over reacts to fake threats, similar to the reason for allergies: the army gets distracted by some shiny new micro-object because they don't recognize it. Essentially, conservatives are human-nature's allergies.

Sayonara, Texas

Meme of the Month

Maher's theory on why GOP runs sociopaths

Maher gives a theory on why GOP elects morons like Herschel Walker.

MAGA's are essentially holding civilization hostage: "Tame your Social-Justice-Warriors or we'll put sociopaths in charge who crash civilization!" Rural Republicans don't value civilization enough to protect it, and so use civilization's very existence as a bargaining chip to threaten the rest.

Companies who have pissed me off bigly

• AT&T
• SiriusXM
• McAfee (Intel)
• Microsoft
• Oracle (sue happy)
• Google
• Geico
• Sears (Rest in Hell)

Russia collusion investigation was not a "hoax"

Just because it turned out the driver was sober does NOT make investigating a weaving car a "hoax". Don is just a careless driver. The difference between a "fan" and "agent" is often hard to discern without careful investigation.

And just because clear "collusion" wasn't found, obstructing the investigation is still not warranted. Don clearly tried to influence the investigation itself, and Mueller pretty much found him guilty of obstruction, but said he's not recommending charges (at the time) because a sitting President is likely legally protected from such during their tenure (based on legal analysis by another agency).

Interfering with an investigation is pretty dumb, actually: if you are innocent, there's little reason to attempt to thwart the investigation. Don is ornery out of habit and paranoia.

Are Conservatives Dumb?

If you asked me if I believe conservatives are "dumb", I'd first try to establish an agreed upon definition of "dumb". One can still have a high IQ and fall for common logical fallacies if not trained to recognize them, or if one lets preferential bias cloud logic due to emotion. Thus, one can be smart and dumb at the same time.

In general conservatives are less educated, and thus more likely to be unaware of standard logic fallacies as found in logic, debate, and critical thinking textbooks.

But, based on growing up among conservatives, I've learned that even with sufficient education, evangelicals are encouraged to trust their feelings above all else. Their common remedy to any situation is to "pray on it". That encourages intellectual laziness because meditation takes less brain calories than digging into details.

It's a belief that God or Jesus is guiding one's gut, so they listen to their gut without doing external "homework". If Jesus is real, I doubt he'd agree that's the way to go about life, but he's not here to zap sense into them. Prayer isn't intended to replace mortal brain-work. It's sometimes said, "An idle mind is the workshop of the devil", but so is a lazy mind.

I've tried to counter by asking, "Why do you assume your gut is more powerful than my gut?" Their reply is often something like, "because I pray daily for guidance, and you don't." Well, it's not working correctly, conservatives; you are suckers for BS, such as that found on Fox "News", OAN, Breitbart "News", etc.

They don't feel challenged to cross-check such news that tells them what they want to hear; because they trust their gut above logic, cross-checking, and research. I even challenge them to look deeper into specific news stories, and they mostly ignore me. They have summarily deemed their gut "good enough".

It's a kind of arrogance: "I have a special susbcription to the Jesus Fact Channel and you don't, so I don't have to do mortal brain-work! I'm special and thus get to be mentally lazy; now bug off!" They are letting their ego do their bidding.

They've made themselves non-curious on purpose. In short, if you pray hard enough, you don't need critical thinking skills, in their minds. Medieval thinking lives on, sadly.

These people want a civil war

Fox Addict

Pipeline Debate with a Conservative

Conservative: "Cancellation of XL pipeline means loss of 11k jobs."

Progressive: "No, it's countered by more truck & train jobs to move the oil. Fox downplayed that."

Conservative: "But trucks & trains pollute more."

Progressive: "That's why we need to eventually move away from fossil fuels."

Conservative: "Eventually? I told you progressives are slow and lazy."

Pack and Go!

Citrus Republic

OMG! Monster!

Prediction: Fox Watcher on November 4th

Calling it "Chinese Virus" is Childish

Trump claimed he calls it the "Chinese Virus" because of both an alleged virus origin coverup by the Chinese government, and their alleged propaganda campaign to blame the virus on the US military.

Perhaps the Chinese government indeed did do bad things, but two wrongs don't make a right. The mature way to punish is with sanctions and/or tariffs.

Further, it's not a good time to have a spat with other countries; we need to work together on combating the virus, not squabble with each other. Save the spankings for when after the dust settles.

Orange Zombie Kids Spotted at Trump Rally