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It was also the name of the spy organization on "Archer." It stood for International Secret Intelligent Service. After four seasons, the show had to come up with an excuse to change the name. It's ridiculous. Although I admit part of my issue is that when I was in the Girl Scouts I knew a little girl named Isis. I can't imagine what that woman's life has been like for the last few years.

 

Personally, I prefer the term Daesh because apparently the group hates that name. It's like using the the term "teabagger" for members of the tea party.

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Downton Abbey claims that ISIS the terror group had nothing to do with there decision but they failed to offer any explanation as to why they killed off the dog.  

And ISIS was the name of an Egyptian goddess long before it became the name of a terrorist group, so I prefer Daesh, mainly because it almost sounds like the pejorative Arabic name.  People and businesses had the ISIS name and are being harrassed daily now because of this group.

 

I actually have friends and some family who are Muslim, so I knew from jump not to prounounce Muslim as if it were muslin, the name of the cloth.

 

I am fortunate to have a pretty global upbringing so pronouncing certain words like Pakistan and Iraq never fazed me.  It kind of makes my teeth itch when someone prounces Iran as if they are saying "I ran...to the store".  Yeah, I'm one of those fuss-budgety people who insist on prouncing names as closely as possible to the way a native speaker would.  

I remember a co-worker from Japan telling me, I was the only non Japanese person she'd ever met who pronounced her name correctly.  I'm a word-nerd, so of course that made me happy.

Edited by DramatistDreamer
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Agreed.

 

The timing is so dramatic it's almost like fiction - right as we prepare for a vitally important Presidential election, and with a Democrat in the White House and a GOP Senate. I have a feeling they may try to block any nomination Obama makes in hopes that a Republican will win in November.

 

Now that people are going to be reminded of how serious this election is, I won't be surprised if Trump's numbers drop and the others, especially Cruz, benefit. Maybe Rubio if he can convince people he isn't just a blathering idiot. 

 

Scalia was hugely influential in far right legal society circles. They're going to fight like hell to get someone even more extreme in his place. It won't be pretty.

 

Yep - Ted Cruz is already saying no one should be chosen until a new President is elected. I wonder how long it will be before the GOP - and the media they control - push this as the only acceptable choice.

 

Edited by DRW50
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We've got 341 days left for the current commander in chief to nominate a new Supreme Court justice.  People like to think Obama is a lame duck, but he is actually far from it.  Many nomination processes have taken half that time, so anyone who thinks that the nomination process should be left until 2017 clearly thinks the obstructionist ways of the GOP are acceptable.  

 

Those same GOP activists screaming for observing the Constitution and who would otherwise want want a Republican president to immediately put forth a nominee, will now want to bend policy even if that means obscuring that same Constitution just to ensure that the current Democratic president doesn't exercise his executive duty?  Puh-lease.  I hope Obama tells them to stand down and have a seat.

Edited by DramatistDreamer
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I'm sure Obama will try to shame the Republicans into letting his nominee come to a vote, but these are a bunch of shameless zealots who are going to use every possible tactic to delay. This really makes my blood boil. I hope every reasonable citizen will contact their members of congress and demand that they do their damn jobs.

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Sadly, I doubt most people give a damn. They will just assume Judge Judy will call Judge Wapner out of retirement to help for the time being.

 

Obama would be better off using this to drum into heads why voting is so important, especially for those frou-frous who insist everyone running is the same and nothing matters.

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I don't blame people for being cynical about politics. There are a lot of people in this country just struggling to make it through the day. I remember the summer during college I worked in a grocery store. Every day my feet hurt so much I sure as hell wasn't spending much time worrying about politics and I didn't even have kids to take care of. I think a lot of people forget how hard he daily grind can be if you are doing a blue collar job.

 

Also, yes it makes a difference who is elected, but we've had a democrat in the white house for the last 8 years and economic inequity is at an all time high, so if people think the very structure of our system is rigged, I'd say they have a point. I think it matters more in terms of social issues than in economics and poor people are not monolithic in terms of social issues. I often hear people say "why don't these people vote their interests?" They do, it's just that they have interests other than economics. This is still a deeply religious country no matter how much that frustrates some of us (myself included).

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I don't disagree that the structure of our system is rigged, but people who don't vote just make that even more of a guarantee. I also think that most of the people in power who are hard right on social issues are at this point the worst out there on economic issues, and are also heavily racist, so while social issues aren't a monolith, they are a smokescreen. For instance, Republicans in states like Kansas who campaigned in large part on "family values" have spent years ardently working to stop minority voters from being able to go to the polls and also spent years wasting money on garbage like drug tests for welfare. 

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I think in a great many cases they are not at all a smokescreen. I find educated liberals vastly underestimate the influence of religion on this society. There are a ton of people out there who truly believe life begins at conception and that's how Jesus wants it. If you hold that belief of course it's going to be a litmus test, how could it not be? On top of all that he entire state of Kansas is basically owned by the Koch brothers and is quickly going to hell in a hand basket thanks to that fact.

 

There are also a ton of poor working class white people who resent welfare. Scared to death that a neighbor one wrung lower on the economic ladder will get something for free. Obviously, they should be worried about corporate welfare and the billionaires not paying their fair share, but they don't see that. They see poor kids getting the proverbial skittles and resent it. That's suck a backwards ingrained mentality that I don't know how anyone can break through it, tbh.

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They're a smokescreen to the people in power.

 

I don't think people really underestimate the influence of religion, but there's nothing that can be done about it. Educated liberals spent the '90s and most of the '00s basically telling Democrats if they couched talk of gay rights and abortion and so on in the right terms, or if they were ardently anti-gay and anti-abortion and so on, they'd get votes - other than Bill Clinton, who ran against two extremely weak Republican nominees for President, they generally didn't. So that means waiting for people who do vote exclusively on social issues to realize that unless they're very wealthy, the vote they cast is more likely to leave them destitute than it is to strike some type of blow against heathenistic liberals. Whether that will ever happen, I don't know.

Edited by DRW50
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