Florida State Seminoles

[eCat]

you a fan of Antifa, Tree?

[Tree]

Nope. MLK had it right. It has to be nonviolent, esp in this day and age. Still though, anyone who thinks Antifa is a real problem needs to take a history lesson.

[hedge]

It takes a homo to know a homo? That doesn't even make sense....

[Tree]

and yet you stick up for bungle drat, thereby proving my point.

[Jungle Rat]

What is this, second grade? Oh wait..

[Jungle Rat]

[crotch]

[crotch]

Hard to understand how an 'educated' voter could support this clown......

[eCat]

if true, that was a mistake

its a desperation move

[Jungle Rat]

Jobs? You've got to be kidding me.

[hedge]

I'd prefer mobs to 4 more years of this shit show...

[hedge]

[sardis]

That’s cultural misappropriation.

[Jungle Rat]

I'd prefer mobs to 4 more years of this shit show...

Agreed.

[hedge]

I never knew that Trump's covid czar, "Admiral" Brett Giroir is not really an admiral. Or, well, I guess technically he is, an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, but goddamn, have you got to sport the uniform that everybody associates with the navy or other armed services?

[bluetick]

A poll of thousands of Europeans has found that the majority have an increasingly negative view of the U.S. as a result of the coronavirus crisis, with just 2% of Europeans surveyed expressing the view that the U.S. was a “helpful” ally in the fight against Covid-19.

The poll of 11,000 respondents across nine European countries, commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), showed that in almost every country surveyed, there was an increasingly negative perception of the U.S.

In Denmark, Portugal, France, Germany and Spain, around two-thirds of people surveyed said that their view of the U.S. had worsened during the health crisis, the ECFR think-tank, which provides research on European foreign and security policy, said Monday.

My dad (crewman on a B-29 in the Pacific theater) had an older brother who survived the landing at Anzio, got a Purple Heart, only to get murdered by a mugger in NYC in '51. He'd just come back from a tour of Italy and France - the letters he sent home described how he was treated like royalty everywhere he went. To the point he was embarrassed by the constant "fuss", but he knew it was genuine. Americans were heroes, period.

Yeah, the point being they loved us then but they don't love us anymore. But then I got to thinking about all the sacrifices people made back then. Probably the last time Americans were totally united in a common goal. Before we came along for sure - but we've heard the stories.

[eCat]

that's true in a sense, one of the first things I notice when going looking at the WWII era was the united effort of Americans. They truly believed their way of life was in peril and they banded together - victory gardens, rationing, rubber drives, scrap drives, buying bonds - we'd never do that today for a war on foreign soil. Vietnam was a watershed war in that regard.

but this idea that its a new thing that Americans are disliked for whatever reason didn't start under Trump. I can remember getting tips on going to Europe when Dubya was president on how to say you were Canadian just so you wouldn't be treated badly. Don't wear white sneakers, North Face jackets or Levis

And I don't think its the ugly American, its the reality that we control the worlds economy. If we go into a recession, the world goes into a recession, but at the same time, if China or Europe goes into a recession, often we don't feel the full extent of it and we survive.

We essentially collapsed the world economy in 2008, we drove up world oil prices in 2003, and currently we're screwing up the commodities market with our tariff war .

I'd be sick of Americans too if I were European, but at the same time, fuck those guys - they don't think twice about putting themselves first over the U.S. when it suits them. They subsidized Airbus for years in an effort to take down Boeing's dominance in the global economy, hell the EU was created in part to leverage influence in the global economy.

And finally, they get to exist with their socialist utopias where all their tax dollars go to health care and economic security because they don't have to be the worlds police and dump 1/3 of their tax revenue into their military. They tend to forget that when they sit in judgement of America and how we're behind them in whatever they profess to be morally, ethically and socially superior at.

[Jungle Rat]

9/12/01 was the last time America was united.

[eCat]

was listening to NPR this morning about systemic racism in housing.

They had a number of speakers on but the crux of what they were saying was that the fair housing idea of LBJ in 1968 has failed due to racism.

Their example was that blacks pay and average of 13% more in property taxes on housing than whites, housing that is typically lowered valued housing.

Now mind you they aren't saying that a black family living in a white neighborhood pays more than the white family, they are saying % wise, people that live in lower value housing pay more .

So lets think about that for a moment - if it costs $6000 to send a kid to school for a year and you have 1000 kids, then you need $6m in revenue. That is a static cost.

Lets say we set the same percentage on property tax between the predominantly black neighborhood versus the white - some random number 2% and each neighborhood has 5000 homes. The predominantly black neighborhood has an average home value of $150,000 and the average home value of the white neighborhood is $300,000

you see where I'm going with this? The black neighborhood brings in a revenue of $15m where as the white neighborhood would bring in $30m with the same tax rate. So of course the white neighborhood is going to have lower tax rates, but at the same time, per capita they are paying more in tax dollars than the black neighborhood.

That isn't systemic racism, that is basic math. Now you want to talk about why the black community can't buy into the $300K neighborhood - legitimate discussion, but taxation is not racist. I see the exact same thing here. My community butts up against the most expensive part of town to live in - several multi-million dollar homes and even the shabbiest shack they have is gonna run you $500K. Their tax rate is half of mine at least. Its not a black and white thing. At the end of the day however, I may pay $7k a year in property tax and they'll be paying something around $16K.

So the NPR interviewer says to the guy "so if the black neighborhoods are paying more in taxes, why aren't they seeing more money coming back to the schools?" and the guy says that the distribution is racist - that the people who distribute the funds are giving more to police, firefighters, etc and not the predominantly black schools.

so 1. They aren't paying more in taxes. They're just paying a higher percentage because it takes a higher percentage to cover the costs since local communities can't operate on a deficit, and two, even if what he said were true, you think these predominantly black communities are electing white officials to govern them and make decisions about how much they should pay in tax and where the money will be distributed?


Everything is racist today, and you can't have an honest discussion about pushing back otherwise you are racist as well. We just have to accept that the entire nation gets up every day and plots against the black man to keep them in their place.

[eCat]

not sure how that plays out in the nation. Alabama is clearly going to be a Trump state.

But I read that Session lost to Tommy Tuberville, and on paper, Sessions should have been a stronger candidate for Alabama, but many feel he failed Trump by recusing himself on both the Mueller investigation and enforcing real change in immigration policy.

Bama told him to move on.