Exactly!
When Trump announced his first run for the Presidency, I knew almost nothing about him and was concerned he'd be another war-monger.
Boy, was I wrong.
His response to moderator Kaitlan Collins at the CNN Town Hall when she tried to get Trump to say whether he wanted Ukraine to Win the War was perfect:
He said he wanted people to stop dying. He said it again when she continued pressuring him to take a side in the war.
Years ago (during the Vietnam War for example), STOPPING THE WAR was the biggest and most emotional point for the Left. Even with the confusion being sown by the Cabal and the Commies, the purposeful mass-murder of war remained an obvious evil that anyone with an intact soul on the Left vehemently opposed.
I'd Love to Change the World by Ten Years After is an excellent example (of both anti-war sentiment and twisted socialist thinking, among other things), and a song that grabs me by the feelings to this day. Also: fabulous guitar work.
Addendum: I did a search for the song's lyrics, and was disgusted to learn that every site I checked LEFT OFF ONE OF THE KEY LYRICS in the song (you'll hear these words CLEARLY in the video above, near the end):
SENATORS, STOP THE WAR
Either the words are left out completely or they're changed and at the very least, leave out "Senators". Examples:
https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/34580928/Ten+Years+After/I%27d+Love+to+Change+the+World
https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858507037
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tenyearsafter/idlovetochangetheworld.html
Boy, THAT hits the nail on the head. And your explication of Rand's comment is perfect.
Compromise, like democracy itself, is for non-essential details -- never for fundamentals. That's why America is a Republic, with enumerated rights (and others, as called out in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) of the PEOPLE.
You can compromise on which particular day elections will be held; you must NOT compromise on whether elections or elected officials are allowed to violate citizen's rights.
You're right; most aren't monsters and can't really conceive of how cruel and inhuman people can be.
And thank god for that, really.
But they're waking up in droves now. The Great Awakening is near its exponential end stage.
I wonder what things will look like on the other side; I've really no idea. It feels like a singularity to me; an infinite number of possibilities, most unexpected at least in detail.
It's a question of malice.
Being gay in and of itself isn't malicious; a certain percentage of humans are oriented to same-sex-attraction (in part because brains form in the womb on somewhat different pathways than the rest of the body, and one can develop a largely-female brain in a male body or vice-versa). This even serves a purpose in nature; if one parent in a small tribe dies and there happens to be another adult who is NOT creating and having to support new babies -- a gay uncle or aunt, for instance -- there's a natural back-up parent to help take over care of and provide food for the affected children.
Even being trans isn't in and of itself malicious, and there really are a small number of people who feel, without being brainwashed into it, that they are "in the wrong body." On their own, they're harmless.
Insisting on being IN-YOUR-FACE about such things and especially pushing the young to adopt such behaviors -- now THAT's malice.
Likewise, being black isn't malicious (of course), but Black Lives Matter IS malicious -- because BLM is specifically about hating and destroying other races -- and, ironically, its actions destroy a great many BLACK LIVES in particular. Black Lives Matter is the KKK for black people (and more importantly, for Woke-damaged Whites). It substitutes hatred and anger, and a sense of both victimhood and entitlement for simple humanity, brotherhood, and the healthy sense of connection with other life.
The Enemy has always used the injection of MALICE into society (usually disguised as "compassion" in the last century or so) as a way to break society down so that tyranny can be more fully implemented.
I don't follow the market, and shorts in particular, the way Rob does and not even the way many non-professional pedes here do, but Rob studies the market for a living and apparently sees a lot of shorting activity that is NOT driven by people trying to take down a company.
The book and movie "The Big Short" is a good example of why someone might do that. You see a situation where something -- the mortgage bond market, a tech company, whatever -- is hugely over-leveraged, dramatically under-capitalized, and bizarrely over-valued (not really so uncommon, is it?), and you figure it's heading for big losses -- so you short it. That's a dangerous play -- you can lose your ass -- but if you've really done your research, it can pay off big time.
I know that many people on this board (or at least a number who have posted here) have been impacted by people or companies shorting a stock maliciously in order to CREATE a situation they can benefit from. I've read about such things elsewhere than on this board as well.
I have no idea what the proportion of malicious short activity is to the what I'll call honest short activity, but I think Rob's point makes sense in either case: Betting against those who are heavily shorting a stock is potentially dangerous, so make sure you know what you're doing.
From the column:
I have great respect for short sellers and consider them among the smartest of the Smart Money. That's because their maximum potential profit is 100%, but their maximum potential loss is theoretically unlimited. Also, if the stock they borrowed pays a dividend, they have to pay those dividends to the owners from whom they borrowed the shares. And making profitable trades as a short seller can be even harder during a period of high inflation when nominal stock prices tend to rise simply due to inflation. So to survive as a short seller, you really need to do good research and be confident in your conclusions. I assume that short sellers know what they're doing, and don't trade against them. So if the percentage of shares held by insiders is less than the percentage sold short by short sellers, I don't buy the stock.
He's not suggesting you respect them as paragons of virtue . . . only that you consider that people who survive and prosper as short-sellers KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING and you'd be wise not to bet against them in the market.
Very different. And yes, one reason a particular short-seller may be doing well is that he or she has inside information and/or is working (perhaps illegally) to tank the stock he or she is shorting -- none of which changes the advice to not bet against them in the market.
Well, my comment is: "That’s loser talk." It's like being concerned that the CNN Town Hall with Trump would be bad because CNN is a woke shite-hole. But how'd it turn out? GREAT, that's how -- not because Kaitlin was MAGA or even fair, but because the CONTRAST between her and Trump showcased how dishonest and harmful the Establishment's woke, pro-tyranny stance really is.
When sane voices are allowed to respond to Woke bullshit, red-pills happen.
I believe we'll see exactly the same thing here. I expect Linda to be every bit as establishment, Woke, and pro-tyranny as she seems to be -- and I expect a zillion voices on and off Twitter to point that out. In the end, I expect this to be a major red-pill machine.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. We'll see.
You know how Trump puts people in the spotlight so they can show the normies how (evil, corrupt, stupid, whatever) they really are?
^This.
Linda Yaccarino be posting on Twitter (not just "running" it) -- where Tucker and James Woods and Elon himself and thousands of other sane, non-Woke people will also be posting and, in some cases, hosting actual shows -- like Tucker's.
She will be increasingly seen, by millions including by current normies and lefties, to be exactly as Woke-headed and pro-coercion and harmful as she really is.
I'm not worried about her becoming CEO at all; Musk will still own Twitter and be involved as executive chair and chief technology officer. I don't expect Twitter to devolve back into a cringe-worthy hellscape of censorship and Wokeness; I expect any censorship and Wokeness to be eviscerated by people who are sane and compassionate and actually awake to reality, and for that to help build the avalanche of awakening we have already begun.
This is just another brilliant move by Elon and the White Hats, IMO.
If I'm wrong . . . well, shite happens. But I don't think it'll go that way.
I was wrong. Trump got to speak at some length repeatedly, and (of course) did GREAT.
Early on, he made the BIG, IMPORTANT POINTS -- HIS extremely positive effects on the USA and the world when HE was in the White House, versus what's happened to the nation and the world since then.
Who GAF about anything else?
The moderator constantly insisted there was NO ELECTION FRAUD in 2020 and went after Trump for various ho-hum Deep State distractions (Trump and the Classified Docs! Trump and the SORTA-RAPE in the Department Store! Trump not Doing Enough in Time to Stop the J6 INSURRECTION!).
As I said, who GAF? Certainly not Americans who've lost their homes, who can't afford groceries, gasoline, or much of anything else, and who are sick to death of how wokeism and Communism are wrecking the country and the world.
Trump also made the point, when the Moderator was trying (always trying) to get him to say (in this case) whether he wanted Ukraine to "win the war", that what he WANTED was for all those thousands of people to STOP DYING. I remember when the Left actually showed some compassion for people who were dying in war; only TRUMP seems to have any concern for those victims today, and he made his feelings on the subject very clear.
He also pointed out that A) the war never would have started if HE'd been in office, and B) if he gets returned to the White House, he'll END THE WAR IN 24 HOURS.
This was the best campaign ad for Trump I've seen so far. Thanks, CNN!
White Hats at work?
The Communist News Network making a huge unforced error?
Who knows, but I love it.
"I identify as black!"
"Trans-black people are REAL black people!"
"Discrimination against the trans-black must be criminalized, with heavy penalties!"
Also: The medical industry would like to announce "black-affirming surgery" and other "black-affirming medical care" for those racial-transitioning to Black.
Woke-world is like a board game of insanity.
Detail: The words SENATORS, STOP THE WAR are in the stanza that begins at 2 min 40 sec.