Disqus - Latest Comments for Joshua_Whalen

Re: The Canal Street 1 Train Platform Has A Bit Of A Blob Prob

Joshua Francis Whalen — Thu, 09 May 2019 20:51:22 -0000

Tricorder reading, Mr. Data? Is it a new form of life?

Re: Flashback 30 Years: Guns Were in Schools ... and Nothing Happened

Joshua Francis Whalen — Sat, 07 Apr 2018 18:43:07 -0000

JH, you have no IDEA what you are talking about. President Eisenhower was quoted as saying that in a free election, he was sure Ho Chi Minh would have won at least 80% of the Vietnamese people's vote. Diem staged a rigged referendum (our own govt acknowledges this) and faked a margin of 98% for himself, in what is now regarded as a coup detat. Our own govt was so frustrated with Diem's blatant autocracy and total lack of support, that our CIA assassinated him, and substituted the slighlty less corrupt Thieu. At no time in Vietnam's post-colonial history has there been any other legitimate govt. with the support of the overwhelming majority of the vietnamese people than the Viet Minh.

Now that having been said, the Vietminh suck, but so do most govts., our own included.

Re: Flashback 30 Years: Guns Were in Schools ... and Nothing Happened

Joshua Francis Whalen — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 19:28:37 -0000

That is not logical. BTW, it's MISTER Spock to you.

Re: Flashback 30 Years: Guns Were in Schools ... and Nothing Happened

Joshua Francis Whalen — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 19:28:09 -0000

Actually, the entertainment industry had been leftist UNTIL the 1950's, the HUAC and McCarthy hearings blacklisted all the leftists. You're talking about libertarians, PJ. Exact opposite.

All those family values-y movies from the 30's and 40's that were so moral and upright and all-american? All written a directed by communists. It was after they were PURGED that the period you're talking about begins. Get your facts straight.

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Take Down the Confederate Flag—Now

Joshua Francis Whalen — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 18:34:11 -0000

You're the idiot. Read the various confederate states declarations of independence. EVERY SINGLE one explicitly states the institution of slavery and white supremacy as the sole reason for secession. Every single one. You can spread your lies all you want., in the age of the internet, your lies shred like wet tissue paper.

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Get the tar and feathers ready, I’m going to talk about gun control.

Joshua Francis Whalen — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 17:03:07 -0000

Specifically, your "Constitutional rights" to keep and bear arms contains an explicit mandate for government regulation, which can include the imposition of an insurance requirement. Here is the exact wording as ratified by congress back in the 18th century:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free
state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed."

You will note the use of the phrase "Well regulated". In the majority of the several states, all able-bodied men ages 16 and up (some states had a cutoff of 56, others had other ages), were considered to be automatically members of the militia, therefor this applies to all citizens, not just those serving in the national guard, and grants the federal government the right to regulate what arms, how owned, how wielded, etc...

It's funny how a lot of the same people who think that firearm ownership is an unlimited right also somehow think there is an implicit limit on free speech and free expression, which explicitly DO NOT contain a mandate to regulate. Irony is just so ironic, isn't it?

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Get the tar and feathers ready, I’m going to talk about gun control.

Joshua Francis Whalen — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 16:57:53 -0000

So sorry, but it does seem to have worked quite well for, say, automobiles, which are orders of magnitude safer today than 50 years ago. Mandatory insurance in all but 4 states has had a LOT to do with that.

Re: Trump Promises ‘Insurance for Everybody’

Joshua Francis Whalen — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 14:55:58 -0000

His brain is ful of spiders, he's got garlic in his soul......

.....I wouldn't touch him with a thrity-nine and a half foot pole!!!!!!

Re: After Overheating, Hillary Clinton Emerges After 9/11 Ceremony

Joshua Francis Whalen — Sun, 11 Sep 2016 20:44:51 -0000

Bullshit. It was NOT hot in NYC today. YESTERDAY was hot. today most definitely was not.

see here:
https://www.wunderground.co...

and scroll down to the bottom for the hour-by-hour readings from central park. Then remember that ground zero is right on the hudson, with NYC's prevailing winds out of the northwest, and nothing to block them. At the time she "overheated", the ambient temperature would have felt like the low 70's. Humidity was 38%, very low for nyc, temperature was about 78.

Re: After Overheating, Hillary Clinton Emerges After 9/11 Ceremony

Joshua Francis Whalen — Sun, 11 Sep 2016 18:09:53 -0000

Just one problem ---- I'm in NYC right now, and it has been neither hot nor humid today. Actually kinda cool for this time of year.

Early this morning, it was in the low 70's, humidity about 38%, which waaaaaaay low for NYC. Normal hereis around 70%, and in july and august, 90% for weeks on end is typical. Nah. If she was wearing logjohns under her pantsuit, maybe. Otherwise, something is seriously wrong with her.

Re: Apple OS updates scare me

Joshua Francis Whalen — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 21:28:39 -0000

Debian 8. Runs on anything, does everything. Love. Unlike Ubuntu, it's stable as hell, fast as greased lightening (you'll feel like you just bought a new computer), and it's free! The UI is GORGEOUS, and highly configurable. If you worry about a dearth of available sodftware, just try DigiKam (https://www.digikam.org/), a photo cataloging tool, to get an idea of how nice the stuff coming out of the linux world has gotten. There's a Mac version, so you can try before you commit, under your current OS.

The world is going through changes. Everything I've relied on is corrupting before my eyes. Reality is we are all on our own, now, with our professional and political institutions dying before our eyes. Perhaps I'm stretching it a bit, but I think that a change of OS, which may seem like a minor thing, is a huge change in viewpoit. Debian is made by it's users, for it's users. It's a gorgeous piece of work, and the stuff that runs on it is just as gorgeous. It's a reminder of what we can do when we stop depending on institutions to do things for us and do them ourselves.

Just my .02, hope all is well otherwise.

Oh! You'll need the Apple dev tools installed to compile digicam. Once it's compiled, it works like any other mac app. Pull out a picture of someone or something you have lots of pictures of. Pick one picture, and ask it find all the other pictures of that person or thing. If you only get a few hits, set the tolerance below 50% and see what happens. It was able to sort through my mushroom pics by species, and very fast.

Re: OccupyYourBrain

Joshua Francis Whalen — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 22:34:24 -0000

ROTFLOL!!!!

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Let’s face reality, shall we?

Joshua Francis Whalen — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 13:41:01 -0000

Very good observation. I would say, Exactly. You've nailed it.

The one thing to keep in mind contrariwise, is that we still have yuuuuuuuge economy, and we also have a yuuuuuuuge military. Much of the reason Europe, especially Britain, France and Germany, remain in the alliance is because we basically ensure their fuel supply, and their supply of natural resources through our interventions in the middle east and sub-saharan africa. That is a big issue. If they dump us completely, they have to fight their own wars, basically.

This above is one of the main motivations for stuff like TPP and TIPP is to keep us in insure the size our markets and trade relations remain too big to jail.

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Let’s face reality, shall we?

Joshua Francis Whalen — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 17:35:26 -0000

Well, Jill Stein is who I'll be voting for, make no mistake, but she isn't someone the DNC would accept. I was making one last plea to the DNC, and of course I expect they will never even see it, but I wanted my "I told you so, I tried to be reasonable" post for when all hell breaks loose and the knives come out.

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Allow me to clarify for you….

Joshua Francis Whalen — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 23:33:24 -0000

Thanks! I hope I'll see you and everyone else in Philly!!!

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Allow me to clarify for you….

Joshua Francis Whalen — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 14:08:44 -0000

Don't give up on Bernie just yet. I still think he has an ace up his sleeve, and I'm still going to #SeeYouInPhilly but I agree with your attitude if my highly unlikely sequence of events doesn't play out. One thing about politics, though, is that patience is it's middle name.

Re: Robert Fisk joins 9-11 conspiracy vampires

Joshua Francis Whalen — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 19:20:27 -0000

Not if they have been specifically designed to collapse into their own footprints, as the WTC was. I asked about this with several people with relevant expertise in the field when I was a teenager in the 1970's, including both one of the architects who worked on the towers, as well as the Army's number one demolitions expert. Both told me they'd collapse into their footprints if hit by an airplane. That's what tey told me, and that's what happened.

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Allow me to clarify for you….

Joshua Francis Whalen — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 18:18:10 -0000

Thanks!

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Why Hillary Clinton must not be POTUS

Joshua Francis Whalen — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 15:09:31 -0000

You're quite welcome, Patricia! I hope I'll see you at the DNC in Philly!! We need to get a million people there to stop this. Please be one of them!

Re: vintage everyday: 50 Amazing Color Photographs of New York City in the 1970s

Joshua Francis Whalen — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 01:47:13 -0000

You mean late 1990's. We actually had quite a body of laws in those days to prevent large chains from taking up all our commercial real estate. Koch got rid of a few, but ti was really Guiliani that got rid of most of them and let the flood of Rite-Aids and Walgreens destroy the one thing that made NYC different from all the other old northeastern/mid-atlantic industrial cities, our wild diversity. No more, the last of them are dying as we speak.

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Take Down the Confederate Flag—Now

Joshua Francis Whalen — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 14:27:52 -0000

I love you, Bill! Thanks for the support! Q'plagh means Success in Klingon. Since Klingons are people of color and are also fierce, unconquerable warriors, I thought it a suitable way to sign off on this particular post.

Re: Obama Calls for Regulating Internet Like Phone Companies

Joshua Francis Whalen — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 02:05:58 -0000

Joseph, were you boirn this ignoraqnt, or did you suffer brain cancer and have to have part of your cerebral cortex surgically removed?

Liberalsim is the philosophy of John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and the founders of the USA. Marxism (as the name would imply) is the invention of Karl Marx, about 50 years AFTER the first liberal revolutions in the USA, France, and Poland.

I wish you good luck in your long-term recovery from whatever caused your obvious mental deficit.

Re: Reconsidering the Legacy of Bill Clinton: When the Democrats Turned Neoliberal

Joshua Francis Whalen — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 06:31:43 -0000

I have only one thing to say and that one thing is.....
......Bernie Sanders 2016 - Make it so!!!!

Re: First Police Report On Eric Garner's Death Doesn't Mention Chokehold

Joshua Francis Whalen — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 15:55:48 -0000

The double-standard in law enforcement is the direct cause of police misconduct. Who, after all bothers to restrain themselves when they are effectively immune from prosecution> More here:

http://tmblr.co/ZRbKYw1MLXuDH

Re: OccupyYourBrain - Cop Who Put Eric Garner In Chokehold Has Been Sued Twice For Civil Rights Violations

Joshua Francis Whalen — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 13:26:12 -0000

True enough, but our current mayor, Bolshevik Bill DeBlasio, is SUPPOSED to be some kind of socialist, not a conservative.