http://youtu.be/tYXOfYAG9fU

I never realized until now that song was sung from Mr. Belding's perspective. He even says "hey-ey-ey-ey" a few times, and the part about "I try all the time in this institution" makes more sense now.

It's a sober and well thought out suite of policies, to be sure. But with all due respect, it's missing the one essential step of gathering all the loose underwear into one massive pile. How could such a successful businessman miss that step?

I don't see Mexico paying for the wall. Spraypainting it, maybe.

I find myself going back on forth on Syrian refugees. I feel bad because Obama should never have gotten involved in supporting rebels there (which he did without the support of the American public) and now their country is well and truly fucked. If there are any intellectuals left, like the historian who was an expert on Roman ruins that got beheaded, I say maybe let some of them in. Anyone with Western ties or sympathies especially that could really be in danger there.

I think that immigration should be dependent on a country's economy and the ability to absorb them. We have a massive problem with wealth inequality, so the answer is to bring in literally a million people every year? It doesn't seem like much is being done to better the lives of people already here when it comes to the real value of money and the ability to earn a sustainable living. The danger I see is in ten immigrants sharing a house becoming the norm, and that supplanting people who can't afford to buy a house on their own, and the economy not allowing this as an average. I'm not kidding about that or being facetious. Look at real estate prices anywhere along the coasts and you'll see that the majority of citizens cannot afford to buy their own home. Many with full time jobs can't even afford to rent their own place. What happens when wages are driven down because more people are willing to accept far less is that becomes the reality for people who aren't as willing to do so and that is creating a massive schism right now.

I also don't want to be a hypocrite because I intend on leaving the US by next month to go teach ESL again, and I don't want to say "no immigrants where I come from" but the truth is I can make a better living outside the US. Which is why so many immigrants come here.

I hope whoever gets in office sets up a policy that looks at what we have, and looks at real economic models of what will happen to the population already here as population increases. It feels like nobody ever does that, and that is why the living standard has dropped so much.

OMG, can you imagine the kind of martyr he would become? And the kind of people he would become a martyr to? the mind boggles with the unforeseen consequences of such an act.

"starting with Snake Plissken"

Bankruptcy 1: The Trump Taj Mahal, 1991
Bankruptcy 2: Trump Plaza Hotel, 1992
Bankruptcy 3: Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts, 2004
Bankruptcy 4: Trump Entertainment Resorts, 2009

And not a very good one, it seems.

Not at all! He (personally) lost very little money on those projects.
Gotta know when to fold 'em.

I don't see why people have a problem with that, either. Remember, one of the hard realities of sustainable development is that the average American *needs* to see a severe decrease in her quality of life. Tiny houses and communitarian land reform won't just happen magically overnight; one way or another, Americans need to be driven into bankruptcy, and Trump is more than qualified to do this.

Heh.. I don't know if you read Huffington Post, but Ariana Huffington wrote an open letter to Trump saying that stories about him would not be in the "Entertainment" section anymore but instead in "Politics" after his Islamophobic remarks, that they were finally going to take him seriously. I dunno if Huffington Post has a "Kids" section, but that's where it should've gone.

A history of ceasing to laugh:

July 17: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/a-note-about-our-coverage-o f-donald-trumps-campaign_55a8fc9ce4b0896514d0fd66?ncid=tweetlnkush pmg00000067

August 17: http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/huffpost-on-trump-were-still-not-ta king-the-bait/269808

December 8: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/a-note-on-trump_b _8744476.html?ir=Australia

I normally would want to quibble with the word "Islamophobic", since it gets used to mean total bullshit, but not with Trump.

I think that the Democrats are able to get away with being The Diet Coke of Evil because of shit that GOP candidates actually believe and would like to make law. The other fucking problem is that more heat than light makes it hard for people reacting to Trump to see that our problems are real, because it's too easy to just hate on Trump and want to do the 1000% opposite of what he wants.

We're living in motherfucking dark times, my homies.

The irony is that ISIS et al thinks that our country won't slide warhawk right if ISIS sympathizers keep doing shit inside our borders?? Surely they can't expect to get what they want out of that? Or are they too insanely evil/religious/ideological to want anything realpolitik/practical out of this shit?

ISIS want to bring about the end of the world which includes killing every member of ISIS.

True story.

Sorry that was meant as a reply to that guy.

thank you fedex

Well, ok that clarified A LOT.
The Atlantic is often excellent.

I think that answered my question about whether they're too evil/religious/ideological to want anything practical.

Well, hopefully the US Special Operations Command, who apparently "do not even understand" ISIS, will read The Atlantic's hard-hitting expose and figure out a way to bomb those medieval savages into submission, before ISIS can bring about the end of the world (that is what they want, you know). As The Atlantic so concisely points out, ISIS is a group who represents Islam - only hang on maybe it doesn't (discuss amongst yourselves!) - and nobody knows where they came from or why they just emerged suddenly over the last fifteen years. What we DO know is that they are nothing like us civilized Western liberals (including the civilized Western liberals of Al-Qaeda, such as our old friend Mohammad "Walmart" Atta), and (as the article's not-at-all-ironic conclusion makes clear) they will stop at nothing to realize that most-romantic and tantalizing of political movements: fascism.

I mean, those ISIS extremists don't even like to spend their evenings watching Hollywood movies! It's madness.




Or, maybe Major General Nagata and the SOC could have talked to the CIA, State Department, and Amy Goodman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqtSaIikQ-o

US military intelligence and the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/0 9/AR2006040900890_pf.html

And any one of the various people who, during the 1980s, were involved in the US-backed effort to undermine the Soviet war effort in Afghanistan. I'm sure Gen Nagata knows many of these folks; as the head of the US military's counter-terrorism force (recently promoted to the National Counterterrorism Center, one of the primary organizations spearheading total information awareness), Nagata could have perhaps talked to these employees of his PRIOR to his interview with The Atlantic, to give him a better idea of, and help him to better explain what, his own damn job is.



... or perhaps he didn't check his facts with Amy Goodman, because he still resents her for running this?
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/3/who_is_gen_michael_nagat a_the