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A snippet of commentary heard on the radio this morning:

"Democrats are turning out for the primaries in Texas in record numbers, for this mid-term election. But, they still have nowhere near the numbers that Republicans enjoy."

Got home, and took a look for myself. https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/texas/

Isn't that special? The Republican primary winner has 1.3 - almost 1.4 - million votes. The total of democrat votes is 1.01 million. The total of Republican votes is 1.54 million voters.

Abbot is another Trump, IMO. I don't like him. But, it looks like he has this election in the bag, already. Ted Cruz appears to have it for the Senate, as well.

Congress critters - not so much. They all show big fat zeroes right now. I clicked on a few other states, no one has results to show. I don't even know when primaries happen in most other states.

Anyway - if Dems are turning out in record numbers, and they STILL make such a poor showing - well - Texas is going to remain red, red, red.

Hmmmmm - link doesn't appear to show up as a hyperlink? Let's try again - https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/texas/

Which VPN Services Keep You Anonymous in 2018?

Which version of XKeyscore are we running on?

Exclusive: Florida Public School Teacher Has A White Nationalist Podcast

Crystal River teacher hosts white nationalist podcast, HuffPost reports

Meanwhile:

Here Are 911 Transcripts of Some of the Times Apple Employees Walked Directly Into Glass Walls

Friends, I know a lot of you have been worried about me. Some beautiful DMs. And I can almost hear your prayers, thank you for those. And I'm sure you're worried about our beautiful, beautiful White House in Washington. It wasn't beautiful, it's becoming beautiful. Because Melania and I are working very hard, fixing it up. My predecessors left it very dirty, we're cleaning up a lot of messes. And covering up so much. But I wasn't at the Washington White House today. I'm at my Southern White House, Mar-a-Lago, in beautiful Florida (why does President Putin hate Florida so much?). Not in Washington. But our thoughts & prayers are with the family of the late Shooter, RIP!!!! And with everybody who got spattered. The guy wasn't a bad dude, maybe sick. Probably sick, nobody was in danger. Can we call it suicide? Why not, right? But let me tell you, he left a terrible mess. Not as bad as the mess Obama left me with, nowhere near as bad as that one. My Secret Service, as always, did a great job! Thank you and thanks to our wonderful first responders, our Police & EMTs. And our Coroner, very tough job, you have to be a very tough cookie to do that one, am I right, folks? If Crooked Hillary had won, she'd be keeping our Coroner very busy. And maybe she is anyway. Seth Rich, so tragic, he was a true patriot. As everybody knows. I'm having a fabulous weekend and I wish the same to every American. God bless! secretservice.gov/data/press/releases/2018/18-MAR/GPA_Secret_Service_Statement_Regarding_March_3,_2018_Shooting_Incident_Near_the_White_House.pdf

Hi-Rez president compares new ‘Overwatch’ hero to a ‘Paladins’ protagonist

Just bookmarking so I can check out the videogamedunkey video later.

Nintendo Holds Off on Switch 2.0, Looks to Peripherals for More Sales

It would be bizarre to release a new version of Switch so soon. They talk about a slimmed down version (rather than a mid-cycle upgrade like PS4 Pro or Xbox One X). Compare to PS4 (Nov 2013) and PS4 Slim (Sep 2016), and Xbox One (Nov 2013) and Xbox One S (Aug 2016). In fact, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X didn't come out very long after the slimmed down versions.

What they could do is drop in newer ARM CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. Even if they underclock and keep performance almost the same, the console would benefit from lower power consumption since it is battery-powered in handheld mode.

The opioids have turned into a very big problem for our Country. It’s been going on too long. So I'm listening. I'm holding a Summit. Watch it LIVE at 1 pm EST, noon central, 11 am Mountain, 10 am Pacific, 8 am in Hawaii -- they're part of our Country now. youtu.be/C15wK65Luvs #TrumpTV

My wife had her surgery today: everything went well and she'll be in the hospital for a day or two or more.

Now that all is fine, I'm left wondering how much it would have cost us if our health care wasn't free. Enough to bankrupt us? Huh.....

As an aside, while waiting (we got up at 4am to be there for 6am for her surgery at 8am and she was in her room at 2pm) I was reading Isaac Asimovs 'study' of the old testament.

According to him, In The Beginning the Bible talked about, basically, polytheism:

"God
The Bible centers about God, and God is brought into the tale at once:
Genesis 1:1
  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Hebrew word, translated here as God, is "Elohim" andthat
is a plural form which would ordinarily (if tradition were defied) -be
translated "gods." It is possible that in the very earliest traditions on
which the Bible is based, the creation was- indeed the work of a
plurality of gods. The firmly monotheistic Biblical writers would carefully have eliminated such polytheism, but could not perhaps do any-
thing with the firmly ingrained term "Elohim." It was too familiar
to change.
. Some hints of polytheism seem to have survived the editing. Thus,
after the first created man disobeys God's injunction not to eat of the
tree of knowledge, God is quoted as saying:
Genesis 3:22. . . . Behold, the man is become as one of us, to
know good and evil.. . Then too, still later, when God is concerned over mankind's ar-
rogance in attempting to build a tower that would reach to heaven,
He is quoted as saying:
Genesis 11:7. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their
language . . . It is possible to argue that this is not true evidence of early poly-
theism. God might be viewed as using the royal "we"; or as speaking
to an angelic audience; or even, in the Christian view, as speaking in
the persons of the Trinity.
Nevertheless, as far as we know the history of religion outside the
Bible, early beliefs were always polytheistic and monotheism was a
late development in the history of ideas."

I didn't know this. Interesting. (Copy/pasta from pdf is problematic: it seems to go through OCR which is not perfect. Hoping I didn't miss any fixes).

To me, the only 'true' word of God we have are the ten commandments. Why would anyone try to seek the word of God(s) in the Bible (written by imperfect people long after the events) when you just have to look at the Ten (taken down by an imperfect person and translated by imperfect people).

To me, the Bible just boils down to "be a good person". The ten commandments lay out a guide how to do that.

My wife's surgeons and anaesthesiologists were good. Very good.
Or, at least, good enough, thank god(s).
;)

I saw this the other day and found it quite interesting, given a lot of the 'arguments' being put forward here on SN.

what strikes me about the reaction to this growing backlash is not just its vileness, but its lameness. Trump’s response to Parkland — let’s arm teachers! — wasn’t just stupid, it was cowardly, an attempt to duck the issue, and I think many people realized that. Or consider how the Missouri G.O.P. has responded to the indictment of Gov. Eric Greitens, accused of trying to blackmail his lover with nude photos: by blaming … George Soros. I am not making this up.

Or consider the growing wildness of speeches by right-wing luminaries like Wayne LaPierre of the N.R.A. They’ve pretty much given up on making any substantive case for their ideas in favor of rants about socialists trying to take away your freedom. It’s scary stuff, but it’s also kind of whiny; it’s what people sound like when they know they’re losing the argument.

(Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/opinion/the-force-of-decency-awakens.html )

I see it over and over again here. Something's going on? It's George Soros' fault, of course! Don't like the argument someone makes, they're "socialists" who hate America, want to take away all your rights, and are worse (or at least as bad) as Stalin.

Care about your fellow humans or sick of crony capitalists, regulatory capture or xenophobic trashing of anything that's different? You're a Marxist who hates capitalism and pines for a land of gulags, collectivized everything and iron-fisted suppression of speech and expression.

It's pretty sad. If there's an argument to be made for/against stuff like municipal FTTP, single-payer healthcare, civil rights for all, gun control, women having control of their bodies, etc., etc., etc., then make a relevant argument.

"You're a socialist/marxist/anti-capitalist/SJW who wants to destroy $X and are just like Stalin." and other semantically null bullshit aren't arguments. It's just posturing and value-free (although apparently quite satisfying) name calling.

I'm not suggesting that folks not be allowed to spew whatever crap they wish to spew, rather I'm wondering aloud if there aren't more folks who, if they think about it (or at all), might opt for actual arguments rooted in logic and evidence rather than semantically valueless name calling.

He livestreamed his own murder on Facebook in a North Carolina town

Man fatally shot on Facebook Live had been outing suspected drug dealers, sources say

LiveLeak.

Melania Trump re-emerges amid marriage scrutiny

Can Trump succeed where FDR and Bill Clinton failed?