It’s both. But there are only two ways to live within your means: make more money than you spend or spend less money than you make.

Yeah, this is seriously irresponsible, especially the focus on one small expense. This is like handing a carte-blanche rationalization to anyone struggling with financial discipline:

I can’t disagree with that—I just think it is a bit strong to imply that is the guaranteed difference between winning the championship or not. Even if Cleveland had the optimal personnel and best coach they could have, they can still lose.

Fair enough. I’m not here to defend him, really, it just seems like if there are a hundred factors that you need to hit on to win a championship, half of which are luck/circumstance, and you miss on 5 out of the remaining fifty, most people would call that a competent or even commendable shot. No one is guaranteed a…

“This doesn’t exonerate LeBron, either! As the New York Times’ Harvey Araton detailed today, LeBron pretty much assembled this team.”

Can’t argue with that.

“These relationships breed a familiarity. Familiarity gives the perception of likeness. The perception of likeness obscures the perception of Otherness. This blinds us to our tendencies to treat women differently than we treat one another, which leads us to develop rationalizations for said treatment when it is…

Well, we agree on that (admitting that gender influences the opinions we form) and also that they are nearly never overt. I just don’t understand what to do with it.

That’s too clean, I think. If I question Clinton’s integrity and give examples that would support that, we’re talking character and not policy right? I would think the same examples I gave would apply.

I guess that’s your experience, but it just isn’t mine, which is why I questioned it. But who knows, there may be truth to it. I could see different populations and cultures having different experiences in that regard. I work in a highly integrated field and organization so perhaps I’m just insulated.

No, I’m just trying to understand—apologies if I’m misrepresenting your points.

I see what you mean now, and yes patriarchy is buried deep in nearly all cultures. But I still think you’ve made a rather sweeping assertion that a bias towards patriarchy = “men are far less conscious of their own sexist assumptions”

I can’t accept that—I think she lacks integrity, as evidenced by her inability to be accountable for anything, including her fabrications, and her proven mistakes. But I guess I only think that because of her gender? I think the same thing of the entire field of GOP candidates.

You’re right, of course, but the immediate issue once you bring it into the conversation is how to figure out how much of the dislike is gender. And because that will be basically impossible to define, it will be then hard to treat the two factors independently.

“The fact of the matter is that men are far less conscious of their own sexist assumptions than they are their own racist assumptions.”

That’s a legitimate observation, but as I read it, it seems like they are saying that while it has been lucrative, there was too much *future* uncertainty/risk—and they realized the risk with the hit they took for overproduction of toys during version 2.0.

“ALL bigotry is ignorance.” Absolutely—I hope I didn’t indicate otherwise.

In the extreme sense, you’re right of course. The problem is that people’s behavior and opinions are on a spectrum and people can change and grow, even parents that grew up in a culture that reinforced their ignorance.

Fair enough.

I’m not sure I disagree and I possibly just expressed myself poorly.