Bluetooth 5.0: What's Different, and Why it Matters

Click here for an article at How-To Geek, by Chris Hoffman, entitled "Bluetooth 5.0: What's Different, and Why it Matters."

Print or Save a Directory Listing to a File in Windows

Click here for an article at How-To Geek, by Walter Glenn, entitled "How to Print or Save a Directory Listing to a File in Windows."

Edward R. Murrow On The Future Of Television (3:15)

"We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information."


Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information."

Oh, Crap! It's A Thesaurus.

Click here for an article by Frances Langum (Blue Gal) at Crooks & Liars entitled "Open Thread: Watch Out For His Monsterous [get it?] Vocabulary."

The accompanying cartoon depicts a T-Rex saying "Your Retardation is Disadvantageous. I propound you all vamoose with great importunity." A spear-wielding caveman is saying "Oh, Crap! It's a thesaurus."

Democrats Dominate Popular Vote Since 1988

In 2004, George W. Bush won the presidency by a razor-thin margin, the lowest winning margin in U.S. history. It's an interesting fact that that was the only time since 1988, the election of Poppy Bush, that the Republican candidate won the popular vote. 

Clinton won it in 1992 and 1996; Gore  won it in 2000, though he lost in the electoral college. After W.'s narrow win, Obama won the popular vote again in 2008 and 2012, and Clinton won it by 3 million votes in 2016.

Put that next to another interesting statistic: The winner of the popular vote has lost the presidential election twice in modern U.S. history -- and those losses resulted in the election of first W. in 2000, and then Trump in 2016. Disastrous anomalies.

Two Rebuttals To Trump's "Arm The Teachers"

 Click here for an article at Hullabaloo by Tom Sullivan, entitled "Learning to Fight."

Click here for an article at Crooks & Liars by Jenn Budd, entitled "Arming Teachers Is A Stupid Idea."

Little Bill Daggett, in Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven":

It ain't so easy to shoot a man anyhow, especially if the son-of-a-bitch is shootin' back at you. I mean, that'll just flat rattle some folks.

Both of these articles emphasize the necessity of intensive, ongoing training for anyone who is going to be expected to shoot at a person -- while being shot at. As Sullivan says:

Learning to shoot is one thing. Learning to fight is something else, especially when the target isn't paper and is shooting at you.

Budd says:

I can always tell when someone has little to no firearms training. Like Trump, they say stupid things like, "Just arm the teachers with guns to stop the shooter." People like this have watched too many movies. It is not that simple. It is not that easy. Most rounds that cops fire in a shootout fail to stop the perpetrators. And those cops are trained. A defensive shooting class doesn't make you an sharpshooter. If you think does, you are woefully mistaken.

Trump's idea of teachers-as-Rambo is not a good one; fortunately, it'll never happen.

"The Gunshine State" - Florida's Preposterous Gun Laws

Click here for an article at The Washington Post by Catherine Rampell, entitled "Is anywhere in Florida truly safe?"

It's about Florida's ridiculously lenient gun laws, starting with the "Stand Your Ground" law, "the 2005 NRA-backed gun law that said a person who feels threatened has no duty to retreat before engaging in deadly force, even outside the home. The law likely contributed to the exoneration of the man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and has been linked to an increase in homicides."

There are several more examples: Florida has some truly terrible gun laws.

Mitch McConnell: Party Before Country (Again)

Click here for an article at Washington Monthly by John Stoehr, entitled "The GOP’s Dangerous Pattern of Putting Party Over Country."

In September of that year [election year, 2016], Obama had the clearest picture of what Russian operatives connected to Vladimir Putin were up to, but he did not want to come out with the information on his own, for fear of appearing to use classified intelligence to sway voters against Trump. So he sought common ground with the Senate majority leader to create a patriotic united front against the Russians.

But McConnell refused to cooperate. Instead, he questioned the underlying intelligence informing Obama’s decision to reach out to him. He later threatened to publicly accuse Obama of doing precisely what Obama had tried to avoid: using classified intelligence to sway voters against Trump. Obama could have acted alone at that point, but decided, to his eternal regret, to remain silent.

Stoehr says:

I’m not talking about policy differences, like whether the Republicans should have supported the Affordable Care Act (a law that has improved the lives of millions). I’m talking about objectively clear and historically pivotal moments in which the GOP literally chose party over country. McConnell’s inaction while the Russians attacked the integrity of the presidential election is a feature of the modern Republican Party, not a bug.

Stoehr then goes on to give examples of such moments in the past, and says:

In strictly partisan terms, playing hardball with the Democrats while a massive crisis unfolds makes sense: when the opposition needs your help, it means the opposition is bargaining from a position of weakness. For a partisan, that’s a moment you’ve been waiting for.

But in terms of patriotism, such behavior is vile. Republicans not only refused to do the right thing; they punished the Democrats for doing so. In many ways, this was Obama’s fundamental flaw, a flaw that the Republicans identified and exploited right away. He truly believed that country comes first and could not fathom a political party that did not believe the same. The Republicans played him like a song, blocking everything he wanted, even if what he wanted was what the Republicans had formerly wanted, and even if what he wanted would have helped America.

Trump On Guns And The Second Amendment, September 2015

This is a speech Trump gave in Nashville, Tennessee, ten days after there was a mass shooting at an Oregon college, where ten were killed and many others wounded:



He loves the Charles Bronson movie Death Wish.

"Chain Migration" Is A Poisonous Term

It has always been called "family reunification"; "chain migration is a demeaning, derogatory term meant to put its proponents in a negative light.

Click here for for an article in The Washington Post by Andrew Haile, entitled "The way Trump talks about ‘chain migration’ is spiritually bankrupt." It explains the process of family reunification for refugees, for green card holders, and for immigrants who have become citizens.

Our system allows immigrants to bring over only a narrow class of relatives. Refugees may petition only for spouses and minor children. Green-card holders may also petition for adult children. And immigrants who become U.S. citizens, a process that usually takes at least five years, may petition for parents and siblings as well.

The article explains the difficulties involved in bringing relatives. It takes a long time -- years. It's a complicated system, but here's one astonishing fact:

If a U.S. citizen [not a refugee or a green card holder] wants to bring over a sibling, the wait is currently about 14 years. And if that sibling is from the Philippines, the wait is 23 years. Twenty-three! (Each country has a quota, and there are a lot of Filipinos in line.)

Not only that, but relatives are not allowed automatic access: They are subject to background checks, medical checkups, and consular interviews.

So when President Trump claims that “chain migration” allows a “single immigrant” to bring in “virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives,” that claim is false. Directly and disastrously false.

Trump, of course, doesn't know anything about the immigration process -- he simply parrots what his poisonous right-wing anti-immigrant advisers, like Stephen Miller, tell him.

Bill Maher, Dictator's Checklist

On February 10, 2108, Bill Maher (on Real Time) said that a year earlier, they had compiled a 10-point "dictator's checklist." At that time, Trump had checked eight of the boxes on the list. This year, he can now check #9. The only one left is #10.

You're a dictator if:

1. You're a narcissist who puts his name on buildings
2. You appoint family members to positions of power
3. You hold political rallies before crowds of adoring followers
4. You hate the press and use your own propaganda outlet (Fox News)
5. You use your office for personal financial gain
6. You align with other dictators and strongmen (in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the Philippines)
7. You scapegoat minorities as the cause of the country's problems
8. You lie so frequently people can't tell what the truth is anymore
9. You hold military parades with missiles and tanks and fighter jets
10. You wear unearned military costume with plenty of braid, stars, and medals



Maher says if Trump appears one day in military get-up, Real Time will start broadcasting from Vancouver.

On a serious note, I think he's left one biggie off the list. This is just a funny Real Time shtick, but it stops being a joke if, #11, you have a force of paramilitary thugs who beat political opponents, like Hitler's Brownshirts. If that day ever comes -- and it may take a Reichstag fire to bring it about -- the American experiment has ended in failure. All hail Trump the Magnificent, Dictator for Life! (Hey, Mugabe stayed in power into his 90s.)