labrador

I'm having flashbacks to when I was in high school in the 1970's while Nixon was at the height of his powers.

The difference is Nixon had real domestic enemies to worry about: The Weather Underground were bombing buildings, heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the "Symbionese Liberation Army", the Black Panthers were making demands which conservative America found frightening, mass protests were going on about the war in Vietnam on college campuses which resulted in the deaths at Kent State. Nixon believed these protests were driven by Chinese and Soviet influence to support North Vietnam in the war. The CIA’s Operation CHAOS spent years looking for foreign control of the antiwar movement and reported back that there wasn’t any.

What domestic enemies does Trump have? Antifa is a philosophy, not an organization. Black Lives Matter protests were his last administration. There have been a few lone wolf attacks like the Dallas ICE sniper, but the domestic threat is no here near what Nixon faced.

Under the Trump's White House directive NSPM-7, which defines a potential domestic terrorist as anyone expressing “anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, or anti-American” views, DHS launched an operation to find a “network of conspirators” against ICE.

The surveillance op in the Wired article targeted labor unions, a climate change group and socialist collectives — the SEIU had three years of wire transfers investigated, and the AFL-CIO, DSA and Showing Up for Racial Justice were also investigated. That’s the mismatch: a 1970s-scale dragnet for a threat that isn’t 1970s-scale.

Trump appears to be grabbing power for the sake of grabbing power.

Are we going to prosecute these people or what?

Big deal. I could put bombs in things to kill people but I'm not a murderous person.

Dolly Parton was a beautiful spirit and my life was measurably improved by reading as a child so I donated $50 on her death. It's not much but I'm retired on a fixed income. I had to do something.

They usually steal the weed and shrooms out of your backpack because you weren't using them at the moment.

I learned of an interesting case of this in the film "The Sunshine Makers" about LSD production in California in the 1960's. Billy Hitchcock was a wealthy heir to the Gulf Oil fortune who financed the labs but eventually went back to being a protected rich guy by betraying his chemists.

I agree. I should have said shrooms!

It's fascinating to me that the upper classes find Holmes interesting. In the working class world I grew up in, chicks like her are a dime a dozen and can usually be found at Grateful Dead tribute concerts espousing the benefits of crystals and channeling her alien guide who she discovered while chanting an invented baby talk language high on molly and nitrous oxide.

A lot of women want it along with the ability to order Uber/Lyft from women drivers only.

I was in a similar position as a highly successful programmer after the dotcom crash in the early 2000's. Like George Bailey in "It's a wonderful life" I stood on the bridge looking down.

I had $300,000 in the bank. The thought occurred to me "What kind of idiot kills himself with that much money in the bank? Thus I started adventuring around the country looking for something to do.

I ended up driving a city bus in Las Vegas, mostly the double decker bus on The Strip. It was the most fun I ever had on a job. No regrets.

We're about to revive the Apple vs Microsoft lawsuits of the 90's over "look and feel"

Lispers never give up. I admire that.

I can finally relax and let a random number generator make my decisions for me

I sold my Sun stock at the internet bubble top for $70 a share. A few months later it was $7. I think of that when I see PE ratios in the hundreds for Tesla, SpaceX and other AI stocks.