Troy

Is that a quote, 'cause she did not say that in the 40 sec statement I shared? Hate speech would of course, by definition, be encompassed it free speech. Speech in American isn't free either. We enjoy more liberties than some other countries, but folks are cancelled all the time for something the said. Mark Lamont Hill was cancelled for saying "from the river to the sea." As a PhD I have to believe he knew was that phase connotes. Now he is on Al Jazeera, where the "free Speech" isn'tcomplete free, just different.

@ProfD playing games is just another way of providing entertainment. Who are the strong, positive Black men, whose main role is NOT providing entertainment for the masses of white folks and that are held up in this culture? Al Sharpton, Barack Obama,...

I simply don’t know. i know if if we did not kill each other as much we would collectively be better off but by what percentage I have no way of knowing. No one does. again you think monopolies are not a problem. if I pulled some percentage out of thin air it would make no difference to you, so why ask?

Lol, where do you find this stuff! i can’t imagine how Google’s algorithm has manipulated your YouTube feed. I can only watch a couple of minutes of this video I wouldn’t put his experience in the realm of the miraculous. I have dreams that I can fly from time to time, but I wouldn’t try to explain it by saying that I went to a different dimension where I can actually fly, and I certainly wouldn’t call it miraculous.

The people causing poverty are obviously not bothered by its presence. I think it is irrational to say that people in poverty want to be in poverty. over the course of my life. I’ve been upper middle class and in poverty I don’t know anyone who was in poverty that actually wanted to be in that situation, and I definitely didn’t know anyone who is upper middle class that would rather be impoverished, that should be common sense. The fact that I have to say it is telling. Man, there is no gray area with you huh? No, I do not think that eliminating monopolies would Eliminate poverty. However, I do believe it would help a great deal. I also believe that the same companies currently holding monopolies if they paid their fair share of taxes, that would also help and if the government use those taxes in ways to directly address poverty, all of that would help. But these things were addressed in the video why they don’t resonate is interesting. I do believe a better understanding of why monopolies are indeed bad would help. I also think understanding how the wealthy and corporations avoid paying their fair share of taxes and how the tax code actually benefits them should make anyone angry with the way our tax dollars are extracted and used. The people who think this way are victims of a poor education system, propaganda, and I probably of below average intelligence. there are too many productive people in our country without adequate healthcare, the numbers of people with healthcare is misleading because much of what we have is terrible or expensive. The only time I had decent healthcare was when I worked in corporate in America If you consider the fact that Premium healthcare is tied directly to working for some corporation who does that benefit? Why is it like that?

I’m not surprised. there are plenty of intelligent people who are, but the reasoning is nonetheless flawed. It is the same mechanism by which we are so easily fooled by magicians and scammers. The fact that vaccines have proven to save the lives of many millions of people does little to dissuade people from being against vaccines… {sigh} this has nothing to do with believing vaccines are bad or that the earth is flat. It us just an attempt to protect us from people who would work together to do others harm i.e. conspire. perhaps, but the guy who claims he has an eaten or drank for 70 years should be obvious to anyone that is false. Anyone seemingly can post anything on the web and others will believe it no matter how outrageous. People will believe someone has not eaten or drank for 70 years nor has excreted liquid or had a bowel movement for the same amount of time, and these same people will not believe vaccines work or are even designed to kill us. Humans are fascinating creatures. AI will have no problem ruling over us.

you didn’t notice that the video was two white men talking to each other? there is no reason to believe that there is a genetic basis for racism. Now clearly, there’s a psychological one why people are racist based upon cultural propaganda. OK, for the sake of clarity, let’s just pick one question editor raised that I’ve addressed; what makes the United States of America is the richest nation in the country? Is that truthful? What are the multiple acceptable answers? This strikes me as binary, either we are, or we are not. @ProfD you watched the video of white men talking. it is unclear to me how you can believe what you wrote. Are these two white boys “on code.” Of course where men have advantages, of course Black people have suffered hundreds of years of oppression in this country. Obviously, those differences have made it much more difficult for Black people to achieve the gains that white people have. Of course, there are individual exceptions. There are white people who are poorer than the average black person, and there are Black people who are wealthier than the average white person. but the real problem in my opinion that has prevented Black people, and even white people from enjoying the benefits of a nation’s wealth is unfettered capitalism. another reason of the problem is a poorly educated population. There are some people (looking at Pioneer) for example, who believe that monopolies are good for society this is not a question of multiple acceptable answers. Monopolies are bad. The idea that this is now up for debate is why we find it difficult to solve the problems of poverty. We are completely confused about poverty’s causes, so solutions will naturally evade us.

If not now, I'm confident Amazon will eventually be forced to break up their monopoly.

See that is the same reasoning the use with us. if you listen to the video, you will get some insight into why this is not true -- unless of course you actually believe that millions of people want to live in poverty. Generally, this is measured as a function of GDP, but you can use the wealth of the population. I'm not understating the reasoning behind your inquires. Most of the question you asked can be looked up. @richardmurray do you think (or anyone) feel that anyone in the good 'ole US of A be without running waler, a toilet that flushes, or health insurance, and if they don't have these things it must be completely their fault?

I learned today that at least two sponsors pulled out of this event, because they got advance notice that the authors were planning to make an "antisemitic" statement during the event. One of the sponsors described the reasoning on Subsdtack (worth reading). Interestingly, the boycotter, Zibby Ownes wanted to prevent the authors from saying anything is the daughter of a Billionaire, Stephen Schwarzman CEO of the Blackstone Group! The statement was almost milquetoast -- far from antisemitic. Maybe being delivered by a Black Muslim woman (Aaliyah Bilal) -- made it scary. I hope Zibby saw fit to admit she overreacted. Hear is Aaliyah (with her mom) the evening she delivered her "antisemitic remarks."

If this site were not solely fixated on Black books I would promote Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond (Amazon is discounting the book by 37%) “The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?” Desmond also wrote another critically acclaimed book, Evicted (which Amazon is selling for 42% off--less than my wholesale discount!). This is not a "Black" problem as many would portray, but an American problem. Black folk just catch pneumonia when white America catches a cold... But increasingly we are all are getting Covid. White man live in a country that has provided them with benefits due to their race and gender, but they are living in poverty in alarming numbers. Black folks of any status call this a waste of white skin. It is no wonder that white men are angry and killing themselves and overdosing in record numbers. They, like everyone else, is poorly educated and targets of propaganda. They are led to believe they are lacking in some inherent way or worse it is some other group like the liberals, the Blacks, Mexicans, the non-Christinans or some other group that is also being victimized by the same forces

@Pioneer1 so you would not take me at my word, but given my word is all you have to go on, it does not seem like you ultimately believe me —or anyone.

@Stefan That was an impressive summary. Did you write the entire thing?

History and common sense. The media keeps talking about how old Biden is and how any democratic candidate would be preferable. This is turning people off, meanwhile Trumps supporters are fired up. The media misreports on Trump normalizing his behavior, minimizing just how bad he is… not even if it is not Trump off we’ll be someone else—probably worse! that nut Mike Johnson would literally eliminate the separation of church and state! The republicans are off the rails… where is Mitt Romney when you need him… @aMhayes I agree, but the more time we spend on social media the less hope I have for this election.

Really, what came across snippy? Was it my reaction to your incorrigibly check out this podcast, I’m sure it will not chance @Pioneer1’s mind but it will give you some insight into Amazon’s monopolistic practices. These are things that the general customer would be oblivious to, but that does not mean no is is being done. I’ll only aware of singer of these issues because I’ve been dealing with Amazon for more than 20 years. On the Media: FTC chair Lina Khan is Kicking Ass and Taking Names Amazon has slowly been inserting itself into seemingly every facet of our lives. All the while using its status as a monopoly in the market to squash competition, take advantage of its users and skew prices for everyone. At the end of our series Doctorow described how he has hope in among other people, Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Says Khan; “Amazon has actually quietly been hiking prices for consumers in ways that are not always clearly visible but at the end of the day can result in consumers paying billions of dollars more than they would if there was actually competition in the market.” In this midweek episode, we are airing a conversation our colleague and host of the New Yorker Radio Hour, David Remnick had with Lina Khan about her plan to sue Amazon for violating antitrust laws.

Has his campaign financing been a problem all along? Wow…

the nerve

we know you did not spend any time in the church do the notion that modesty is considered a virtue may have escaped you. Dressing well is one thing, but going around talking about yourself constantly is not only boring but bad manners. Today it is how you “work” social media. speaking of dressing compare the brothers who sag their jeans exposing their drawers to the ones that made sure they were pressed and fit well. Who is more modest? ;-)

This is an old story I wrote about it a decade ago:

I see this from time to time. There is something about you IP address that GoDaddy's firewall found fishy. Did you make the failed blog post from a different location? If you can post a screen shot of the error from location that would be helpful.

@Pioneer1 if I told you I had a direct conversation with God (or green little man), choppin; it up the way I would with one of my homeboys, would you really believe me?

@Stefan unfortunately Google has decided to rank Wikipedia very high in search, so it has become the default for the source of information. The content is demonstrably biased against Black people -- Black women in particular.

@Chevdove that photo was taken a few years ago before I could have conceived of being a new father @Pioneer1 it would have cool if you popped in and asked a question without me knowing who you were. I don't self-promote very much and am trying to get better at it. I'm from a generation where modesty was considered a virtue, and I still think it is--even if social media incentives tell us something different. Besides you can ask me anything anytime

Yeah, I heard of them I just had no idea how many there were I find it hard to believe such patterns, could be carved in fields, all over the world, for hundreds of years, and no one has done a serious study to understand how they were created. Where is 60 minutes? this is the stuff for the national inquirer used to cover. Where is The New York Times on this subject? what is serious journalistic entity covers this I’ll pay attention.