Melinda Gates: A Shrewd Observer of the Human Condition

Ms. Gates discusses sexism in tech and notes an intriguing inflection point:

Gates said the industry's gender problem is clear just by looking at the numbers.

When she was in college, 37% of computer science graduates were female. Now it's 18%, she said.

Things got worse when games started to become more "genderized," with a focus on sports and killing, she said.

"[A]ll the sudden, when games started to become very genderized, you started to see the downtick. This huge falling off of women wanted to go into computer science," she said.

Sounds plausible but... this hypothesis is begging for a Nate Silver wanna-be to research best-selling games by year and try to map that to credible measure of women in tech, or STEM.

That said, I have made a related observation: think of the growth of fantasy football and baseball leagues. Generally a male audience, yes? And to be a playa one must be comfortable with crunching all sorts of statistics.

Does this spill over into a general familiarity with computers, stats and numbers? And does this give fantasy league players (mostly guys) a boost in math and computer related classes? Does number crunching as a hobby just boost the "males in science" outcomes so troubling to some? One might think so, but again, how could that be measured?

Comments

[Captain Hate]

When she was in college, 37% of computer science graduates were female. Now it's 18%, she said.

Lots of people in IT weren't computer science grads. Like me and I'd wager others here too.

[maryrose]

Vietnam story on PBS is an excellent presentation.
I am learning a lot.
Tom Bowler:
I remember Hop-a-Long Cassidy.

[rich]

doubtful. I'd put money that it was the expansion of student visas at the graduate and undergraduate level ... creating the H1 feeder scam.

>>>The number of foreign students on F-1 visas in U.S. colleges and universities grew dramatically from 110,000 in 2001 to 524,000 in 2012. The sharpest increases occurred among students from emerging economies such as China and Saudi Arabia. Foreigners studying for bachelors and masters degrees and English language training accounted for most of the overall growth.<<<

>>>Foreign students disproportionately study STEM and business fields. Two-thirds of foreign students pursuing a bachelors or higher degree are in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) or business, management and marketing fields, versus 48 percent of students in the United States. Both large (San Jose, Calif.) and small (Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas) metro areas figure among those with the highest shares of their foreign students in STEM disciplines.<<<

[RohanV]

Ms. Gate's comparison is misleading. She's using percentages, but they're not actually comparable.

Look at the raw numbers, and you'll see what I mean almost immediately. The actual "events" which caused the disparity are the tech boom/busts in the early 80s and late 90s.

See: https://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2014/10/women-in-computer-science.html

[DebinGA]

Ms. Gates is 53 per Wiki: "She graduated as valedictorian from Ursuline Academy of Dallas in 1982. She earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics from Duke University in 1986 and an MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business in 1987."

[mad jack]

her bleepin husband didn't graduate and he did ok in IT.

[Janet 🚬]

from FB - Comment on web: "Awan was treated better than Mrs. Manafort who was patted down for weapons while in her nightgown."

[Manuel Transmission]

Having spent the equivalent of an hour in a locked closet with Ms Gates and observed her handling of their two younger kids (while Billg ignored them all with his nose in a book), I would say she has not a fucking clue how to encourage brain development.

[henry]

I took exactly zero computing classes in my entire life. I do OK.

I learned by getting dragged into the data center my mom ran when I was in junior high. Keypunch, reorg program stacks some idiot dropped. Then screw around with the club of Rome world sims (inserting my own cards) and the lunar lander game once the early cromemcos came out.

I'm not sure all this IT stem stuff is helpful -- it's out of date by the time the curriculum is developed.

[DrJ]

I took exactly zero computing classes in my entire life.

Well! (nose in air...) I had a two-unit FORTRAN course in my freshman year -- yes, using punch cards.

:)

[henry]

Mmmmmmm. FORTRAN!

[rich]

why are girls not interested in sport and shooting games?

yeah buy your cute 5 year old sweet pea Halo5 and make her like it ...

(this seems like reopening gamergate)

[Beasts of England]

Happy Birthday, James D!!

[Strawman Cometh]

Is it possible to simply nuke NK to the point that they cannot reply?
Jane, Your evolution over the last few months has been noted. We're loving it.

[Strawman Cometh]

I'm a BS Biology grad that ran a somewhat successful software company 1986-1998 (pre-internet)

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article174488221.html

Headline: Exclusive: Trump team drafting plan to deport more young people — Central American teens

Written in a bleeding heart mode. Since many of these were not under 18 when they arrived, I am ok with this.

[Barbara]

Happy Birthday, James D.!

[jaed]

GRAAAHHH this is not difficult.

1. A degree in CS requires higher-than-average-for-college abilities in mathematics and logic. It's a difficult major.

2. A high percentage of males who have that level of math ability, have it because it's a special talent. Their IQ generally is not low, but their verbal abilities often are not at the same level. Their best career match will be in math-heavy fields such as CS.

3. Most females, OTOH, who have that level of math ability have it because their IQ is high. Their verbal ability level is also high. Their best career match can be in pretty much anything.

4. Plus a smaller percentage of females have that high ability in the first place. Not too much smaller, but enough to influence.

5. Most people want a career that promises steady work, money, and status, if possible.

6. During and slightly before the tech boom, a CS degree promised money and status. Smart people who could do a lot of different things went into CS.

7. Since the tech bust, a CS degree no longer promises steady work, money and status, between the Sarbanes-Oxley changes to startup compensation and the H1-B expansion and the general disillusionment with tech. Programming is noticeably lower status and there's a good chance you'll be turfed out of most work by age 40.

8. Smart people are capable of noticing this change and acting on it.

9. Smart women with high overall ability, and without a marked preference for CS, went into CS when it promised steady work, money, and status.

10. This subset no longer goes into CS now that it does not promise steady work, money, and high status. Law school is a better bet. A lot of things are a better bet.

11. Therefore, the percentage of women in CS has dropped since the tech bust. The percentage that remain are those with either a special talent in math and logic or those who have a marked preference for CS, but the rest are quite rationally choosing other majors.

12. The End.

[Ralph L]

I don't understand this fantasy sport stuff at all, and I'm so happy not to.

Did Italy try to stop the Libya intervention? Bet they wish they had. I forget how much we were involved, except that O led from behind, as usual.

Did Trump bring up the aborted Green Rev. in the campaign?

I was offline for 4 years. I don't know if any of you appreciate how little of what we learn everyday gets to 95% of the people.

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

I am heading to bed. May check in later if my sleep gets disrupted.

Nytol!

[rich]

the braves bullpen in total melt down, 3 straight walks with the bases loaded. Went from winning to down 2.

[anonamom]

Ralph L, why were you offline for four years?
Mission work? Prison? Monastery?

[RattlerGator]

That's a damn good write-up, jaed.

[rich]

seconded RattlerGator. pretty much the last word.

[Ralph L]

Step-Monster died!! Mem. Day 2013. Computer crashed 2 weeks later. Had to get Dad's condo emptied, fixed up for sale, and Dad moved in with me. Plus boss's father had died so I had to work 5.5 days a week. Finally decided to pay for ATT in May.

[rich]

6 run 8th ... The Nats MVP for this game is the Braves Bullpen! Thanks.

[RattlerGator]

(from a day or so back)

Anyway, I blocked both women this evening and that should be the end of the problem.

Posted by: Miss Marple the Deplorable | September 19, 2017 at 08:20 PM

Ohhhhhh . . . okay. Good for you, MM. Life's too short for you to carry around the craziness baggage of some embittered soul.

[DebinGA]

Excellent explanation, jaed.

[Janeprobably about 10 minutes after getting there]

Do tell ManTran.

You see it as an evolution Strawman? Interesting.

[narciso.]

Does he mean mire groveling or less:

https://mobile.twitter.com/AFP/status/910656130774216705

[mad jack]

jaed: my only quibble is that law school as a better option is very debatable;-)

[rich]

>>>Did Italy try to stop the Libya intervention? Bet they wish they had. I forget how much we were involved, except that O led from behind, as usual.

Posted by: Ralph L | September 20, 2017 at 09:47 PM <<<

They were for it before they were against it. They committed air and navel assets to the effort.

[rich]

naval ... crud.

[Stephanie Nene Not your normal Grandma]

Agreed RG. Nailed it for me. Especially the drumming out of the field at 40. Nothing like showing up for an interview and the snot nosed dweeb announcing he only hires "young lions."

Put Fortran or COBOL on your resume now and it's the kiss of death. Or it used to be.

Interestingly, COBOL is coming back in vogue and demanding premium hourly $$ as the snot nose dweebs that won't deign to learn that dinosaur are having issues with their legacy software that is still in use, and they can't program it and neither can their young lion hires.

I'd laugh all the way to the bank, but I don't want the high pressure BS the "young lions" like to work in. I don't do cheetos and Mountain Dew and 36 hour programming jams. I'm content with my little gig and the freedom and lack of pressure it affords. "I'm heading to Biloxi next week" Office: "Ok cool. Have fun."

[Ralph L]

My brother wanted to be a surgeon but bogged down in Chem and beer at Chapel Hill, barely got a BA in chem and psych and fencing. One class with punch cards put him off computers for 10 years until a friend dragged him to a C course. He maintains data bases for a yuge German shipping/warehouse company.

I was a math major and did some ad hoc Fortran programming in the late 80's. Interviewed with IBM in 82. They wanted to make me a programmer, which I thought might be boring, so I got a shitty beltway bandit job.

[DrJ]

The irony is that programming skills actually are useful. Over the last couple of weeks I wrote a complement of Unix shell scripts to reduce my next-generation sequencing data.

They are all gzipped, but other than that those files are simple text. So all the standard Unix text-processing tools work well. I like awk, in particular.

[Bubarooni]

Sounds like you might be familiar with using 'visual notepad'

[narciso.]

Good grief and I though obamas nattering as related by rush, were the stupidest thing are that conference.

How about were competing against potentuonal w.5 bullion people In China and India alone

[DrJ]

If that is directed to me, I have no idea what "virtual notepad" is.

[Ralph L]

DrJ channels narciso.

[Another Bob]

Melissa Gates is a SJW moron despite her half-a-CS-degree.

As a holder of two computer science degrees, I would judge jaed is almost completely correct.

I would quibble with points 3, 4 and 9; women were being talked into the major in the '80s and aren't anymore. And the work environments have become much more overtly competitive and dog-eat-dog.

I would violently agree with point 7 which is why I've been in management for the last fifteen years.

I would add that there has been a rise in the number of software/computer related majors like "computer engineering", "software engineering" and "information technology". These have sliced some share out of "computer science" that I think is now considered a bit more of a 'theoretical' major.

YMMV

[Sue]

Ralph,

I can understand Narciso. DrJ lost me.

[rich]

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/19/flippy-the-hamburger-cooking-robot-gets-its-first-restaurant-gig/

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

[narciso.]

25 billion people say only 1 % goes into computer sciences that 25 million.

[narciso.]

In my less charitable days I see that scene in the Bourne ultimatum at heathrow as satisfying:

http://freebeacon.com/culture/buzzfeed-hires-former-cnn-reporter-resigned-unverified-story

[Bubarooni]

I write almost everything I do in Notepad or Notepad'++.

Then I copy and paste it into whatever IDE I' m working in.

[DrJ]

:)

It's Unix-speak. grep (and friends), sed, awk, sort, wc, and many others form a wonderfully-rich programming environment that can be executed from the Unix shell.

Unix is an operating system originally written at Bell Labs that was popularized at Berkeley when I was there. It has an exceptionally ppwerful shell programming language; cmd.com in Windows or DOS is sort of related.

Linux is the red-haired bastard child of Unix.

[narciso.]

How many lone wolves are needed for a pack

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-probe-into-whether-london-tube-bomb-suspects-met-overseas-a3637221.html

[Another Bob]

Stephanie, I had one term of COBOL, and at one time thought I'd be happy writing accounts payable programs (though data divisions weren't my fave). Six months later had a manager at a Fortune 50 R&D lab ask if I wanted to come work for them. Best job I've had or will have.

Little did I know.

[narciso.]

So what form of cuneiform does citrix and oracle use?

[Stephanie Nene Not your normal Grandma]

I haven't had to do anything in Unix since 2000. I still have all my instruction manuals on the Unix platform from that Legacy system that was bolted on top of that that we used at Arris. GrowthPower for anyone keeping score at home. Still used by WalMart and several other really large corps. GP is only 40ish years old. Still used by lots of companies that run Oracle as the 'face' of their software. Still indispensable.

[Bubarooni]

My first intro to Unix was ScoUnix. Ugh...

[Bubarooni]

I will say, in regards to COBOL, I miss GOTO.

they don't let me do that anymore...

[squaredance]

Disparities in verbal abilities between the sexes in the same IQ segment is a myth.

High IQ males have at the very least the same verbal ability, and it is an absurd claim given the intellectual standards of the STEM/CS world.
(and given the sort of prose we see out of our English departments, MBA programs, and etc. I should say it is rather obvious that the STEM folks win here too on verbal abilities irrespective of gender). It is a particularly bizarre claim to make about Computer Science disciplines/degrees given that CS is really all about software (hardware generally being taught in EE departments), and software rather obviously deals with language-like issues. In fact, these "language" issues are probably more prevalent in the daily work of CS people than is higher mathematics. (and, as a matter of fact, CS rarely uses the sort of advance mathematics that say a Physicist or and Electrical Engineer might use, excluding those CS folks that support such people.)

This is a constant myth that is perpetrated by leftists/feminists, and is based on a willful misuse (and often misreading) of psychometric data--yes, you will find it in many an actual research paper--probably most--but it is a fraudulent as "Climate Science".

If fact, it is quite difficult to get the raw data for such "studies": data that is not "normed" and has meaningful explanation/parameters about the sample populations/conditions (native language vs language of the test, for example). I know this for a fact for once, when I was working in the Research division of one of our major tech companies, one with one of the best scientific library/archive systems in the world, and with the strongest academic connections, the hoops I had to jump through just to get the data was beyond belief. I can only conclude that there is strong pressure not to have this data out there, and I imagine it started with affirmative action, but has since moved to women. (And my suspicions are affirmed by the way Shockley and Watson were treated once they tried to take an objective look at the real psychometric data.)

In fact in all IQ "vectors", including verbal ability, females cluster closely around a mean, while males are much more widely disturbed around a mean (and, BTW, that male mean is higher than the female mean). As one goes further out from those means on the high side, female scores become a statistical anomaly.

.
This pretty much guarantees that should one go to the top three tiers of CS programs and looked at the top 20 percentile the higher scores/achievers will be male, and that includes verbal scores, and that there will not be parity in numbers unless there is some sort of AA policy limiting male entry and/or achievement.

That is not to say that there are not high scoring and high achieving females; it is to say that, given the data we have, there will not likely be parity in numbers here, and this fact has nothing to do with "verbal ability" difference between the sexes.

[DrJ]

I haven't had to do anything in Unix since 2000.

Many scientific software tools these days are written for Linux. So Unix does live on.

I miss GOTO

How about the computer GOTO? For example,

goto (20,30,40) i

I don't miss those either.

[Another Bob]

Bubarooni, coding standards and software process have sucked all the life out of the programming craft. It always was more art than outsiders gave it credit for.

[Stephanie Nene Not your normal Grandma]

My first exposure to computers was the first computer class offered in our county running not punch cards but cards that look like the ones you used on tests in HS. 7500 Baud dial up that half the time didn't read your cards so you spent 1/3 of class running them through the system multiple times just to get the computer to count from 1-10 in BASIC.

COBOL was my senior year in HS but drove over to the Community College to take the college course on Univax systems. Got hired out of that class spring quarter to work for a local large software company at the recommendation from my prof and stayed until the 1st computer bust. That was painful as I was addicted to the $$ and my 79 450 SL. Didn't get back into programming until the late 80s.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--Things got worse when games started to become more "genderized," with a focus on sports and killing, she said.--

What the hell is this unwoke, cisnormative, fascist dinosaur talking about?
Doesn't she know gender is a social construct and is completely fluid?
What gall to just assume those who identify as one of the many female-ish genders wouldn't like sports and killing, especially if it was the sport of killing cisnormative fascist dinosaurs, especially rich white ones.
I'm guessing the white, heterosexual wife of the richest dude in the world has got some serious flaggelatin to do to work off $90 billion in privilege.
Get to floggin bee-yotch.

[Another Bob]

Squaredance, good points.

Most (all?) CS majors get training in formal grammars, and Amir amount of software work is parsing streams of tokens where order (syntax) and content (semantics) is key. All of which plays directly into language.

[Another Bob]

What? "Amir" = "a fair". I hate autocorrect.

[Another Bob]

Ignatz, speaking of cis, a tweet I saw today:

"I sexually identify as an A-10 Thunderbolt II. My preferred pronouns are brrt and brrrrrt. If you don’t agree with this you’re acrophobic."

[Bubarooni]

Amen, A Bob.

On the ' sucked the life out of it...'

I'm expected now to document what I write.

As tho anyone in the future couldn't decipher my logic???

[Another Bob]

Documenting is one thing, having half the capabilities of the language put out-of-bounds is another.

The flip side is not getting into a religious war over how many spaces in an indent or curly-bracket placement is kind of nice.

Especially when I write the coding standard... ;-)>

[lyle]

It was FORTRAN that forced me into a music degree!

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Butthead Bono riding his perpetual high hobby horse, frettin whether everyone else, or anyone else for that matter, is up to his high falutin moral standards.
Witness the power of Trump as he "bends the moral arc of the universe".
The voice of tolerance;
" the return of hard right views is not to be tolerated"
Sanctimonious shitbird.

[Bruce]

"Women earned majority of doctoral degrees in 2014 for 6th straight year, and outnumber men in grad school 136 to 100"

http://www.aei.org/publication/women-earned-majority-of-doctoral-degrees-in-2014-for-6th-straight-year-and-outnumber-men-in-grad-school-136-to-100/

They won't be happy until the drive men out of University and STEM jobs.

[narciso.]

Good grief, singes stole their brains (I know I crossed metaphors but still) I saw that vanity air before graydin carter jumped ship, summoned the ghost of Gary wills, no matter on incohrently

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--My preferred pronouns are brrt and brrrrrt.--

That is LOL funny, ABob.

[GUS]

Maybe Bono can fly to NK and provide KIM with Autographs, basketballs and Kit Kat bars.
He can convince Kim to stop the madness..IN THE NAME OF LOVE...AND they can dance to SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY.
Or JAMES TAYLOR could......................

[GUS]

Bruce, when you say WOMAN/WOMEN, which of the 57 GENDERS of FLUIDITY are you referring to.

Please be specific.

[cathyf on iPad]

A quibble, squaredance: you don't have to be that smart to be a programmer. (I'm a programmer married to a theoretical physicist. He's much smarter than I am. He is, however, a crappy programmer. He whines continuously about object-oriented programming. And programming in lower-case. He'd be a much better programmer if he'd just shut up and think about why we use these techniques. And don't get me started on packing the dishwasher, sorting laundry, and solving sudokus.)

Factoid #2: back when I was a video game programmer the second time, I worked on casual games. That was back in the day when such games were sold on CDs, on racks in the Walmart. The average customer of casual games was a woman in her 40s, married, with several children. She would throw a $5 or $10 CD in her cart based upon the shine and bright colors of the box-- the eGames cover artists were the most valuable members of the team. (By the way, video games are a collaboration between programmers, writers, and artists. The terminal degree is just as likely to be an MFA as a PhD.) Casual PC games as a market were destroyed by software piracy and the rise of free games on the Internet, where they are still very much alive. Not much first-person-shooter action in FarmVille... Also, a lot of women play Sims. Their are two strikingly different groups of women Sims players, with almost no overlap, and a dividing line at about 25. Under 25, women decorate their homes and gardens in Sims. Over 25, they create characters who closely resemble ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands, who they then torture and murder gruesomely. So in other words, a single game which covers the Barbie dream house market and the depraved serial killer market at once. It's kind of hard to duplicate that success...

A final intriguing thought, which is a claim by my husband's former department chair, who is Indian, and who was in secondary education in India for awhile. He and his wife claim that in India -- 1/7th of the human race-- there is no difference in interest and aptitude in physics between Indian girls and Indian boys. Unlike in the west, where there is a huge and persistent disproportion. A disproportion which is much larger than in math, engineering, chemistry, biology, or classics, which are the other fields which attract the most intelligent students. (Note that computer science is not on that list.)

A post-final thought... There are lots of women who are, if not repelled, certainly exhausted at the prospect of spending an entire career sharing an office with Sheldon, Leonard, et al. There are certainly some Pennys in the world, but that variety of patience-of-a-saint is not universal. Not to mention the prospect of having to educate a stream of 3rd-world male colleagues who consider ordinary western pleasant behavior by women to be an invitation to sexual harassment if not rape. Much easier to go to med school or vet school...

[GUS]

Cathyf. Smart.....is somewhat like beauty. It is in the eye of the beholder. My son is EXTREMELY SMART....heh heh, kind of like his Daddy.
PROBLEM SOLVING AND LOGIC. HALF OF OUR WORLD TODAY, is fixing problems that do not exist.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Perhaps OL or someone can help me with this;
The Feds tax the various people of the various states, all of whom can tax their own citizens as they see fit, and then after taking their substantial vigorish off the top send the money back to the states in the form of blockgrants for the states to spend as they wish.

The purpose of the Fed middle man and his substantial vigorish is?

[Man Tran]

Buford Gooch,

We are trying to track you down, but your old addy is busted. Trying to meet up on 10/1.

[GUS]

IG, it's called PORK CONTROL.
Congresspeep Lispy Graham creates a Bi-Polar/Bi-Partisan BILL, where MISS GRAHAM is the HERO/HEROINE. The extreme LIV idiots, find this honorable/laudable.
NOTHING GETS FIXED. MIZZ LINDSAY GETS REELECTED AND IS A PALLBEARER at John McLame's BIGLY FUNERAL.

[Man Tran]

I've always been intrigued by what makes a good coder. My brain is completely incompatible with the structure and rules of coding, but I can create complex mechanical systems and express them in CAD (after doing it on a drafting board for years). Same for electrical circuits and transforming them into circuit boards. Of course the intersection of those two realms is creating measurement systems that extract physical reactions of structures reliably.

[Ralph L]

Ignatz, any state that creates a generous system gets swamped by the poor and sick (and loses more business). That's why CA won't go single payer on their own.

[GUS]

Ralph, no State can go to COMMIE CARE on their own.
If you BUILD IT, they will come.
We've been lead down the path of COMMIE/SOCIALIST SINGLE PAYER rammmed down our throats.
No debate, no compromise, a MASSSSSIVE FREEBY ENTITLEMENT was PASSED, and then ALLOWED by our SUPREME COURT.

Why are we NOW negotiating with THOSE who SHIT on US???

[daddy on iPad]

So I read somewhere today that Kim Jun Un was most persuaded to step up his nuclear program after he saw what happened to Qadaffi once he gave up his.

We came, we saw, he died.

Who could blame anyone but that bitch and Obama for whatever happens next?

Posted by: Extraneus | September 20, 2017 at 06:01 PM

18 hours late, but helluva great comment Ext!

[FTL]

Pols don't rob Peter to pay Paul.

Paying Paul is just the excuse to rob Peter.

[anonamom]

Has anyone read Out of Ashes?
Recommended by a commenter at Powerline.

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 9h9 hours ago

The NRA strongly endorses Luther Strange for Senator of Alabama.That means all gun owners should vote for Big Luther. He won't let you down!

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Senator (Doctor) Bill Cassidy is a class act who really cares about people and their Health(care), he doesn't lie-just wants to help people!

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 7h7 hours ago

Governor @RicardoRossello-
We are with you and the people of Puerto Rico. Stay safe! #PRStrong

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

CNN has hired Preet Bharara. Not surprising.

Every GOP person he interviews should ask him why he granted a visa to that Russian gal who was at the Trump Tower meeting.

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/james-clapper-its-possible-that-trumps-voice-was-picked-up-by-manafort-wiretap/article/2635118

Accidentally, of course.

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/20/like-a-slave-three-muslim-women-at-least-one-of-them-bloodied-called-police-on-imran-awan/

[Clarice Feldman]

I thought Preet had joined the Mueller team of anti-Trump Special counsels.

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4906182/Hundreds-flee-homes-fear-massive-Bali-tsunami.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline

[Ralph L]

I've had it in my head for years that ValJar was of Iranian descent, but I saw today at Frontpagemag that she's a Chicago commie. Who was I thinking of?

[Ralph L]

Daniel Greenfield seemed to think a year ago that Trump would win.

[Janeprobably about 10 minutes after getting there]

I think she was born in Iran Ralph, or lived there as a kid with her commie parents.

[Buckeye]

ValJar's parents moved to Iran when she was young

[Jane (Stand against the Coup)]

Could one of you fabulous programmers come here and set up my Amazon echo?

Thanks

[Ralph L]

So I haven't totally lost my mind. That's good to know.

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

ChiTown Lurker says ValJar is a Black Separatist crony, but her mother is a real Communist.

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/robert-mullers-congressional-liaison-revealed/article/2634989

[narciso.]

Wonder what nationality he was:
https://mobile.twitter.com/TerrorEvents/status/910811316536987648?p=v

[henry]

Jane, I just upgraded my phone to iOS 11 last night. I hate Apple now.

[henry]

Miss M, another Leahy staffer in the mix (along with the judge).