I engaged the Right-Wing. Space Billionaire farce? Disregard pundits! Register: Ask Egberto Anything
A Right-Wing caller called with an attack and left a friend. Let's end our gullibility towards billionaires. Media pundits were wrong then and now.
Right-Winger cussed out Progressive talk show host, and they ended the conversation as friends.
Ali Velshi urges Dems to disregard media pundits: Wrong then & now! Go hard on the Jan 6th investigation.
Register: Ask Egberto Anything
Rep. Ro Khanna justifiably slams the new billionaire space travel. Let’s end our gullibility!
Mehdi Hasan on GOP select committee dust-up: We do not want insurrectionists, truthers, or 9-11 deniers on it anyway.
Angry racial-slur-obscenity-shouting Right-Winger called Progressive talk show host. Friends now?
I knew I needed to pick up the call. And after the conversation, I was happy that I did. Afterward, this Right-Winger viewed Progressives in a different light. Please watch the entire video? It will make a difference.
I got a call from a restricted caller. Usually, I do not take those. I took this one.
"Is this Egberto," the caller asked with a calm voice.
"Yes," I responded. "This is Egberto"
"You are a f*cking nigg$r," the Right-Wing caller said belligerently. "Trump is not dumb, you dumb ass."
The caller was reacting to a blog post that got quite a bit of traction titled "Congressman: “Donald Trump is a very dumb man. He could not have done this on his own.” EXACTLY!" that I posted earlier this week.
I do not take name-calling, not even racial slurs, personally. Why? (1) It comes with the activist journalism that I do. (2) I have disallowed words to affect me, given that I fully know who I am and am secure in my skin. Vibrating warm air does not affect me. That gives me the ability to engage without any negative emotions. It also means one can always stay in a deescalating modal.
I wrote my book "It’s Worth It: How to Talk To Your Right-Wing Relatives, Friends, and Neighbors" to promote this type of dialogue. The changes in our country require more than 50%+1. We need most of America to understand that only Progressive policies can bring us the respect, independence, and financial freedom we all want.
My biggest fear was that the caller would hand up. I wanted to engage with this man. Ultimately, the caller and I got to a good place. In fact, he is intent on staying in touch with me. He said he would be calling me regularly. The caller will make a better ambassador to truth in his community than I ever could. Please watch the entire clip.
Ali Velshi urges Dems to disregard media pundits: Wrong then & now! Go hard on the Jan 6th investigation
Too often media pundits have undue influence on politicians. They are often wrong. Ali Velshi pointed out that they were wrong on impeachment and with their Jan 6th caution.
Ali Velshi was the Professor/Historian-In-Chief in this one. He reminded the audience that after a corrupt Trump tried to bribe the leader of Poland, that many thought impeaching him would have been electoral sabotage for the Democrats Many pundits believed it would so rile up the Trump's base that it will sail him to victory. Of course, Donald Trump lost resoundingly in 2020. Democrats did the right thing.
Velshi then articulated what Democrats should do.
"Here's the lesson," said Ali Velshi. "Democrats should take the same approach to investigating the Capitol Insurrection. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, a possible witness in the investigation, wants to undermine the January sixth select committee. He picked unserious undemocratic Republicans who should have been rejected from the committee, and then when speaker Pelosi followed through and rejected some of them, Kevin McCarthy pulled all of his picks from the process. Pundits and reporters might cast these developments in terms of winners or losers or optics. The lesson, Democrats should ignore that trash. This is about democracy. This is about a serious thoughtful investigation of a serious domestic terror incident."
Velshi then told Democrats to ignore the doubters and news media.
"Kevin McCarthy doesn't win because Speaker Pelosi looks partisan," Velshi continued. "It's not the how. That's not how it works. The news media should know better than that. And Democrats must ignore anything that harkens back to the doubters of the first impeachment investigation. The same people who were wrong then are wrong now. And it seems Speaker Pelosi for one might already know this lesson."
Nothing else needs to be said.
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Rep. Ro Khanna justifiably slams the new billionaire space travel. Let’s end our gullibility!
Rep. Ro Khanna was on point about these billionaire astronauts being parasites to us all. And it is much deeper and exploitative.
MSNBC Hallie Jackson got one dissenter from the gullible and programmed euphoria surrounding newly minted billionaire astronaut Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin team successful 10-minute roundtrip to space. Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna hit the nail on the head.
"I don't think I have heard of a bigger oxymoron than talking about billionaires going up into space and then using the word "democratizing," Rep. Ro Khanna said. "Here are the facts. Amazon has refused to pay any tax in 2017 or 2018. Jeff Bezos didn't pay tax two of those years. And now they are spending millions of dollars that could have been taxed, using that to go up into space."
The congressman addressed a deeper problem. He implied that billionaires' views on the social good are skewed by their view that good only emerges from that which can be capitalized.
As I watched the media exhilaration for something we accomplished 60 years ago with a few bells and whistles, a wave of controlled anger for our willful gullibility to constant fraud perpetrated by the parasitic class came over me. I sent the following Twitter story.
POOPER ALERT: As the media teaches us how to hyperventilate with excitement over something we did 60 years ago with taxpayer dollars, I cannot help but get upset of our programmed gullibility. @VirginGalactic@BlueOrigin
Note that @BlueOrigin and @VirginGalactic were privy to technology we all developed. All enhancements to our composite knowledge that should be in the public domain is now the property of these private companies to be used at their will and for profits to the few millionaires and billionaires.
Let’s be clear, @VirginGalactic reached around 53 miles and @BlueOrigin reached around 65 miles. The Space Station that has been flying for decades with public dollars is orbiting the earth at 240 miles or so. Neither company has yet reached the real space goal but is receiving an inordinate amount of free advertising.
There is one good thing out of this moment. A wrong has been righted. After doing the work, Wally Funk found out NASA was not sending women to space. At 83, she got her opportunity to at least cross the Karman line into space. @VirginGalactic @BlueOrigin
And then it happened. Stephanie Ruhle, whom I respect for her excellent journalism, said. She said the launch was a display of American Exceptionalism. It absolutely was not. In fact, it is all that is wrong with America right now. I sent her the following tweet.
@SRuhle Love your great reporting and vibrancy, but @BlueOrigin 's achievement of the already achieved is not American Exceptionalism. It is gullibility. If billionaires paid their taxes, NASA would do this work where the intellectual property is all ours.
Many give kudos to billionaires for using their money to build things or invest in technology, albeit to make a buck. Many contend that we should give them a break as they are responsible for the genesis of many technological advances. Many say if we cripple their ability to hoard money, that they would curtail innovation. These statements do not hold up to reality.
As an engineer, I can say categorically that the products I created innovated did not come out of wanting to become a billionaire but because I wanted to innovate. That is how it is with most innovators. That is why innovations come out of citizens from all over the world. The capitalization of innovation is a different thing. Unfortunately, our economic system gives those who capitalize on the innovation of others the spoils. It creates parasites. We then glorify them.
Mehdi Hasan on GOP select committee dust-up: We do not want perpetrators of Jan 6th on it anyway.
Mehdi Hasan cuts to the chase. It really is not all that complicated. The committee is more credible without Jim Jordan and others.
Mehdi Hasan nails it.
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