Non-tennis forum

A page on which to interact with and get to know fellow “Grandstand” users.

54 Comments on Non-tennis forum

    • So much for draining the swamp! Trump’s administration IS the swamp!

      Bernie Sanders said that Trump is already going back on his promises by getting lobbyists and insiders connected with the Koch brothers in positions of power.

      I still cannot believe that people bought Trump’s lies! Putting one of the one percent in charge is simply insanity!

      Whatever lies Trump told everyone, they just followed along like sheep!

      • It’s evident that those who supported Trump didn’t care what he said, promised, or intended to hold him to a standard of anything! He’ll do what’s best for himself…that’s Trump — because of course what’s best for himself is best for the world. He’ll appoint a cast of characters to suit his perverse and twisted needs. Can’t really expect anything else from this… guy. Expect the unexpected – he’s too thin skinned anyway. If someone close to him slips up or Trump changes his mind about something – poof! they’ll be gone – Henry the VIII style.

  1. And some would falsely equate THIS to an e-mail server….

    TRUMP TEAM OUTLINES PLANS TO TURN AMERICA INTO A RACIST POLICE STATE
    One of the president-elect’s most concerning campaign suggestions could soon become a terrifying reality.

    hen asked how it would differ from the forced registration of Jewish people, Trump’s response similarly came up short. β€œYou tell me,” he repeatedly told reporters. But now, as Trump prepares to take over the White House, the president-elect is assembling a team of immigration hardliners and extremists who canβ€”and want toβ€”turn the billionaire’s most terrifying ideas into reality.

    Even at this early stage, we are likely catching a glimpse of what life will be like under President Trump. With the president-elect already showing signs of waning interest in the job, it is safe to say that advisers like Kobachβ€”who, according to New York, is rumored to be a top contender for attorney generalβ€”will play an expanded role in policymaking and have unrivaled influence over the executive branch. And Kobach is already putting his mind to work on proposals to keep the future president happy. Confronted with the possibility that Congress could hamper Trump’s plans for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Kobach has devised a strategy to circumvent Capitol Hill, employing an executive order to direct funds from the Department of Homeland Security’s budget to pay for its construction. Checks and balances, after all, are no match for a good loophole.

    http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/donald-trump-kris-kobach-muslim-registry

    #DumpTrump
    #PuppetPresidentForTheAltRightAmericanNaziParty

    • I have nightmares of what is to come. Will the Trump administration ultimately make immigrants wear yellow stars the way they did in Nazi Germany with the Jews?

      Seeing graffiti like – Heil Trump – is not reassuring!

      The GOP is talking about privatizing Medicare! They will get rid of Obamacare.

      Then we have Trump going out for dinner in New York the other night with video of him telling the other wealthy patrons – tax cuts, tax cuts! Music to their ears! Tax cuts for the rich!

      As has been said, there is no fixing stupid! The people who voted for him so recklessly, will also bear the brunt of it. That’s what happens when you elect someone who won’t release his tax returns!
      ?

      • Don’t believe his tax returns would have made any difference slowing this hate train nny.

        The 47% that were healthy and capable of voting and didn’t bother plus the 24% that voted Orange Hitler are too stupid to understand actual facts. They are either basically too ignorant, selfish, full of hate or all of the above.

  2. I heard this on the news this morning…

    My favourite lines:

    “I am embarrassed by the reaction of the Irish government to what has happened in America. I can’t believe the reaction from An Taoiseach and from the government.”

    “I don’t use the term fascist lightly. What else would you call someone who threatens to imprison his political opponents. What else would you call somebody who threatens to not allow people of a certain political faith into their country. What would you say, or what would you call somebody who was threatening to report 10 million people.”

    “I am appalled that a member of this house – a female member of this house – went on social media to congratulate this man.”

    “When are we going to have the moral courage to speak in terms other than economy all the time and to realize what is happening.”

    WATCH: Senator launches stinging attack at government’s reaction to ‘monster’ and ‘fascist’ Trump

    http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/watch-senator-launches-stinging-attack-at-governments-reaction-to-monster-and-fascist-trump-35207286.html

    #DumpTrump

  3. Comment written well before #OrangeFuhrer announced his candidacy…

    “We want to believe an entire society cannot be kept in the dark about a secret so horrific.
    None of this is meant to deny the collective guilt of the German people for the Holocaust. The entire German nation accepts the blame for what happened in their name, because they knowingly elected a leader who had hatred as part of his agenda and allowed themselves to swear allegiance to a single person. They accept that German persons committed these actions. But it is not something the German people by and large gave implicit and knowing consent to, rather a tacit and largely ill-informed failure to act to the contrary that allowed this evil the fertile soil in which to grow.

    There are lessons here for today if we care to or dare to look. If we choose to believe it cannot happen here, that we are sophisticated enough to recognize the truth and the propaganda, we fool ourselves. We are always as close as one election cycle from electing the sorts of persons who would take actions as radically contrary to our spiritual beliefs as the full extent of the Holocaust was to the majority of Germans in their time. If we do not truly understand the propaganda machine, how it operated to keep Germans patriotic and motivated to continue a hopeless war to the bitter end, then we are putting ourselves in a position to be victimized by that exact mechanism. We believe such a unified and controlled message impossible to achieve, yet growing percentages of our populations are split into ideological camps who accept only the spoon-fed version of events: WMD, homeland security, torture, mass surveillance, some mysterious “them” who are against a monolithic “us” and if you don’t agree then you are stupid at best and a traitor most likely, a danger to society, perhaps we should re-write or laws on euthanasia… These are current day to day headlines, eerily similar to what happened in Hitler’s Germany.”

    https://www.quora.com/Nazi-Germany-To-what-extent-were-average-German-citizens-aware-of-or-involved-in-the-Holocaust

    • Hawkeye,

      I wrote a post last week about my father’s experience during WWII. He would eventually tell me about how he and his fellow American soldiers marched to the concentration camps and how re could smell the stench of burning flesh. The Nazis knew the Allies were coming and started killing even more people. They also tried to destroy evidence of their war crimes. I will never forget the look in my father’s eyes as he spoke about it. I realized that he was looking off in the distance because he was reliving it. I have never seen a look like that in his eyes.

      What he and the other soldiers saw when they liberated the concentration camps, was something that they never could have been prepared to see. Some soldiers were so outraged that they executed Nazi officers on the spot. My father did not do that.

      However, there were German towns near the concentration camps and they could smell the carnage. They knew what was going on. One story my father told me was how his commanding officer had his men go to the nearest town and round up the citizens and march them to the concentration camp. They made them walk through and forced them to look at the atrocities. My father only told me this story once and it took him 40 years to tell it. I did see a documentary a few years ago and it was just as my father said .

      The German people did know what was going on. Those concentration camps were not in the middle of nowhere where. There were towns nearby.

      My father had to stay behind with the occupation forces for about a year. He came himself be with a deep hatred for the German people. I know that all of them did not know, but many did.

      I remember another story my father told me about how they were in this village and his commanding officer went to a house and wanted to get breakfast. My father had learned to speak fluent German and he ordered this woman to make him breakfast. Then his commander was going to eat it and my father stopped him. Then he pointed his gun at the woman and told her to eat it first. he did not trust her. So he wanted to make sure that she would not poison his commander. That is he felt about the German people. He would never set foot in Germany again after he was finally sent home. Rightly or wrongly, his experiences left him with a deep contempt for the German people.

      Of course, he despised Hitler and his fellow Nazis. He never forgot.

      • Thanks for those stories from your father nny.

        I was looking for information today about what was known in Germany at the time.

        I’m very concerned for the world today.

        I still cannot believe what is happening in the US. Troubling and very uncertain times ahead and most with their ignorant heads in the sand.

        • hawkeye,

          This is something that I would not normally discuss. It’s intensely private and emotional for me. My father’s experiences in WWII really affected my life. I could see what it had done to him. How hard it was on the rare occasions when he would even talk about what he had seen.

          I know that if my father was alive, what is happening in this country would have made him sick. He always worried about fascism coming back in Germany. But I don’t think he ever thought it would come here.

          I am with you in being concerned for the world. This neo-fascism seems to be spreading. Each day seems to bring a new horror in this country. The rise in hate crimes and the graffiti with swastikas and racist words. It’s quite scary.

          There seems to be so much fear now in this country. It’s painful to see. The election of Sessions to be the next Attorney General is sending shock waves. What a cast of characters!

          I thought Bannon was the worst, but I fear there is more to come. All I know is that this country has always stood for something in this world. People should remember the words on the Statue of Liberty. Weren’t we a country who once welcomed the tired, the poor, those yearning to be free? Aren’t those the words there? So what happened?

          Just when I think I might be okay, it just hits me all over again. I want to cry, but I can’t.

          I appreciate your sentiments and the things you have posted, along with others. It helps to know that there are people who care and who see what is happening and are not okay with it.

          Thanks.

      • You’ll like us – Just think Hawaii will be part of Canada and other new provinces California, Cascadia, New England and Great Lakes πŸ™‚ We want Parlimentary Democracy and Trudeau. We’ll build a wall to keep out the Orange Fuhrer. We come in peace. Oh Canada! New hockey teams…

        • OK we can be bought. Welcome to our apologetic shores.

          Just no rust belt fly over state 1% types.

          Also, no people who didn’t vote or voted #OrangeFuhrer.

          #DumpTrump
          #BanBannon

          • Great Lakes, the new name of the Canadian Province of Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois. πŸ™‚ Maybe not all of Illinois. Chicago and and lakefront property tho. Also might need to carve up part of Minnesota, too. And Washington, and Oregon would be sliced off East of the Cascades in each case.

            Kei’s mind is elswhere…not sure he can pay attention long enough to win this match.

          • I think most of population of Nevada (Las Vegas and Reno) wants to come along too. And on that Daily Kos blog, the there were some Coloradans making a case to come along. πŸ˜€

  4. Nny,
    Thank you for sharing your father’s story. It’s also personal and emotional for me. Had I been in Germany in those times, I’m sure I’d have been sent to an extermination camp.
    I’ve begun following this site https://theintercept.com/ now and then and followed my way from there to this link:
    https://thecorrespondent.com/5696/were-heading-into-dark-times-this-is-how-to-be-your-own-light-in-the-age-of-trump/1611114266432-e23ea1a6
    Though I might disagree on a couple points, the journalist has simple powerful and relevant message for these times.

    • rc,

      Thanks for your kind words. I struggled over whether to post about my father’s experience during the war. It is intensely personal for me. I am grateful that my father was able to tell me about the atrocities that he saw and documented. I was always aware of how painful it was for him to relive those memories. I remember the time when hex was finally ready to talk about what he photographed and documented, the actual horrors that he saw. How the people were told that they would be taking a shower and they were all herded into these chambers and gassed to death. He told me im detail how they died. The Zyklon B gas that made them die an agonizing death. He would talk about it as if he still could not believe that it happened. I could see the look in his eyes, the horror as he spoke about men, women and even children herded into those chambers like animals. Then he slowly and in a very low voice, he described in detail the atrocities. I can’t recount them here. It was so horrifying to hear it and I can’t bring myself to write it down here.

      After my father has told me what he saw, he looked off in the distance and just said – I’ve seen too much, in the saddest voice I ever heard. He kept repeating it over and over. Then I walked into another room and broke down and cried,

      He wanted me to know so that I would remember and tell people. He did not want it to ever happen again.

      I am not saying that this will happen in our country. But Trump getting elected and the rhetoric from him and those close to him is classic fascism. There is simply no getting around it.

      I am trying to stay strong and ready myself fir the battles that lie ahead. This is a dark time for us. We must NOT normalize Trump and his words of hatred, bigotry and misogyny!

        • just to echo what rc said nny. i read back a long way through the comments on this thread and saw you had left a post for me on the same subject. am really sorry that i haven’t read it before as i haven’t been on site for a while and only commented on the match yesterday while not reading here.
          it’s immensely generous of you to let us hear these personal stories to do with your father and i am very moved by them. thanks so much!
          a light in this awful darkness….xxxx

          • i am half english half czech. one of my czech relatives was murdered by the nazis for trying to help someone who was jewish and who was being herded up like cattle by the gestapo.

          • Amy,

            Thanks again for your wonderful words. I have been thinking about my father a lot since the election. In some ways, I feel that I should share his experiences, because that was part of his reason for deciding to share what he saw. He wanted people to never forget.

            My maternal grandmother’s family had to get out of Russia before the revolution. She vine from Kiev. They were being persecuted and it was getting dangerous. She had a big family, with eight brothers and sisters. One brother decided to stay behind in Russia with his family. He was a pianist. When I was little, I remember hearing my grandmother talking about trying to find him. They didn’t know if he survived the war. Finally she did find out that he and his family were killed. It was devastating for her. My mother told me years later about what happened. It was Babi Yar, an infamous massacre of people in the Ukraine. The Nazis just rounded them up and killed them all, men, women and children. My grandmother couldn’t talk about it.

            The Nazis killed 34,000 people there. They rounded them up and brought them to these ravines and shot them and then they would fall into the ravine and pile up on each other.

            I tried once to watch a YouTube video of it, but I was overcome and had to stop. Somehow there was secret footage that was taken and smuggled out. It was just too much.

            I am grateful that my grandparents got out of Russia before it was too late.

          • nny, i am pretty sure i have seen the footage from babi yar…there was an incredible documentary series here on the war a while ago and there was footage from just about everywhere. it was utterly gut-wrenching. i will never cease to be amazed at man’s inhumanity to man.
            thank you so much again for sharing these memories…as i said before they are very moving and a source of strength.
            #we shall overcome
            thinking of you in these dark times xx

          • Ancestors on my mom’s side came over from England and France; were early American settlers, some of whom apparently lived with native Americans and survived traumatic times on the East Coast, moved to the wild west of Kansas, then Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. They were sailors, cooks, bartenders, shopkeepers, minors, saloon ladies, railroad workers, teachers, WW1 vets, WW2 vets who came back from the trenches “shell-shocked” and addicted (I relate most to the story about a thrill-seeking, adventurous great, great aunt from Billings, Montana). Many of them ended up in Rehab, but some (both parents) were smart enough to get college degrees, two brothers, one sister, an uncle who has a doctorate in Art History, a cousin who teaches sociology at Washington State University. All my life I’ve felt moved and connected to the stories of the Nez Perce Indians. No doubt in some part, I’m a descendant of Chief Joseph and carry DNA which instructs me to treasure and protect the planet, fight the white man’s oppression, perpetual need for war, and definitions of justice in society πŸ™‚

            Dad’s side is completely different – the stories are from the Volga river, fiddler on the roof sorts of peasants, farmers, musicians, philosophers and immigrants from Russia – Saratov Oblast. That side of the family got the heck out of Russia in hopes of a better life in the early 1900’s. They owned land, farms and settled in the Palouse country of Washington state. My favorite nephew has moved to Maui – but most of us prefer bad weather and remain in Idaho, Portland, Bend, or Seattle.

          • “The Part You Throw Away”

            You dance real slow
            You wreck it down
            You walk away, then you
            Turn around

            What did that old blonde
            Gal say?
            That is the part…
            You throw away

            I want that beggars eyes
            A winning horse
            A tidy Mexican divorce

            St. Mary’s prayers
            Houdini’s Hands
            And a Barman who always
            Understands

            Will you lose the flowers
            Hold on to the vase
            Will you wipe all those teardrops
            Away from your face
            I can’t help thinking
            As I close the door
            I have done all of this
            Many times before

            Well the bone must go
            The wish can stay
            The kiss don’t know
            What the lips will say

            Forget I’ve hurt you
            Put stones in your bed
            And remember to never
            Mind instead

            Well all of your letters
            Burned up in the fire
            Time is just memory
            Mixed with Desire
            That’s not the road it is
            Only the map…I say
            Gone just like matches

            From a closed down cabaret

            In a Portuguese Saloon
            A fly is a circling around
            The room

            You’ll soon forget the
            Tune that you play
            ‘Cause that is the part
            You throw away

            Oh, that is the part
            You throw away

      • Nny,

        Baba Yar -So sorry you had relatives there. I’ve heard of it — maybe have seen a documentary. It’s too hard to look at those scenes. For me – they are all family. I’ve started but never made it through Schindler’s List. I could barely make it through, Life is Beautiful!

    • Hawkeye,

      I was watching the AMA’s last night and saw Green Day’s performance. My ears perked up when I heard those words!

      Right on!
      ?

  5. Live last night…Should be your new national anthem…

    “…the subliminal mind-Trump America…”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6rX8y0FKM

    Don’t wanna be an American idiot
    Don’t want a nation under the new media
    And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
    The subliminal mind-f*** America
    Welcome to a new kind of tension
    All across the alien nation
    Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
    Television dreams of tomorrow
    We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
    For that’s enough to argue
    Well maybe I’m the fa**ot America
    I’m not a part of a redneck agenda
    Now everybody do the propaganda
    And sing along to the age of paranoia
    Welcome to a new kind of tension
    All across the alien nation
    Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
    Television dreams of tomorrow
    We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
    For that’s enough to argue

    #DumpTrumpAndTheRepublicanNaziParty
    #WakeUp

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