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It was also gerrymandered up the wazoo when Democrats were in power.

Yes. Reynolds v. Sims and Baker v. Carr. Of course, those Democrats were often entirely different in politics. Such is history.

Gerrymandering simply strengthens whoever is currently more popular.

Wrong. In some cases, actually weakens those who are more popular, as shown in Wisconsin and North Carolina.

If congressional districts were assigned rationally, Democrats wouldn't do very well anyway

Yes, but that's because your definition of rational which is 100% Republican Agenda. You do realize your biases, however, are not supported in actual math that is independent of your partisan bias.

The only way Democrats could do well if the US went to strict national popular majorities, but that is utterly unacceptable and incompatible with federalism.

Or you know, actually voting. Of course, that is utterly unacceptable to the Republican agenda which relies on voter suppression.

In actual fact [people-press.org], liberals only make up about 17% of the US political spectrum and California is thoroughly unrepresentative of the country.

Actually, California is highly representative of the country, and it's only because of zealots like you that it gets demonized as some outside nemesis.

The reason Republicans are so strong is because Democrats have fallen out of favor with the political center: moderates and independents.

Also untrue, the truth is quite contrary.

It is actually the Republicans who have become more extremist, but they rely on moving the perceptual concept to turn the tables instead of embrace reality.

I'm a good example of that: I used to be a registered Democrat but loathe what the Democratic party has become over the last decade. I won't vote for Democrats again until they clearly disavow people like Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Corey Booker, and Elizabeth Warren.

You're actually a good example of the lying fraud of the GOP, as you vacuously and repetitively pretend to claim to be a Democrat and a moderate, yet entirely espouse the hard-core right-wing agenda, and blame Obama for creating conflict.

Tell you what, maybe people will believe you when you disavow individuals like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thoma

(Yes, I know, this case was in London, where there is no Constitution, much less the Bill of Rights. That's irrelevant to my point.)

If, as we've held for decades, the First Amendment protects the right to publish even state secrets — however illegal their divulging by the original sources may have been — it certainly covers the right to publish everything and anything else one knows and has not promised not to divulge.

The Atlantic's troubleshooting guide deliberately treats users of tracking blockers the same as users of ad blockers, insistently referring to "ad or tracking blockers" in the same breath each time. The wording appears intentionally constructed to dodge "I want the ads, just not the tracking." My first guess is that ads that are not based on tracking users, such as those seen on Daring Fireball and Read the Docs, have a CPM much lower than ads that are based on tracking users, and this lower CPM is lower than the lowest CPM that will fully fund both the writing and the hosting of The Atlantic.

They knew FOR SURE what they'd get with Hillary and rejected her.

Today's NYT Editorial Board:

Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he's gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado.

There's not a word in here that couldn't have been written in 2015.

How Trump Channels the 1970s

For President Trump, it's all about the 1970s. That bleak decade saw the nation turn against most of the institutions that had been central since World War II.

The quagmire in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon's resignation turned many Americans, on the left and the right, against the federal government.
...
The number of Americans who trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time declined from almost 80 percent in 1964 to 25 percent when Reagan took office in 1981.

Trump didn't invent this, but he's sure taken it to the next level. By "drain the swamp" what he means is "leave no institution in good standing".

When you read the global aid literature, what you discover is that the biggest difference between the wealthy and the poor (at the country level) is the strength of the country's institutions. Shithole countries with tinpot dictators seem to invariable fall prey to the resource curse.

Countries with liberal democratic governments dating back to the Scottish Enlightenment, not so much. (The definition of a "classical liberal" is more or less the right of the individual to pursue happiness, subject only to the rule of law. This equation also subsumes many ideas about the sanctity of personal property, and drawing the appropriate box around the powers of state.)

People are prone to unreasonable cynicism. America, with a modern constitution, and what used to be a very strong moral compass concerning right and wrong (which tended to surprise visiting Europeans), had some of the best institutions the world has ever known.

Trump shits on America's institutions as a routine act. It's a "disgrace" when the FBI follows due process (as it so far appears) in the pursuit of evidence of criminality. The internal paperwork on that is probably stacked a mile high, and will come to light in due time (they could publish it today, if they didn't give a shit about Cohen's presumption of innocence and his right to a fair trial). If there was no justification for this seizure, heads will roll (when Al Franken resigned, I didn't cry a single crocodile tear; there was no defense as a public figure for his frat-house misdemeanor).

Yes, we knew FOR SURE what we were getting with a Trump administration: all our fine institutions ripped a new one. The problem here is that people who don't read history don't fully appreciate that a glass half full is social capital beyond measure.

There are two kinds of country in this world: those that sometimes manage to hold their scum and villainous to account (mostly the rich countries), and those that rarely manage to hold their scum and villainous to account (mostly the despotic, poor countries).

Trump is angry about Syria employing lethal chemicals weaponized. Meanwhile, Trump installed Pruitt at the EPA, which once safeguarded Americans from lethal chemicals, unweaponized, and discharged with callous profit motive into any old brook or stream.

Institutions: can't live with them, can't live without them. But mostly, can't live without them, if you've ever examined the world through a large lens.

There's one institution in America that I despise, and that's the financialization of the America

What these companies do is analogous to stalking.

No, it is not.

what IS being suggested is that maybe he shouldn't be looking in your window in the first place without your explicit consent.

First of all, so long as the stalker does not trespass on my property, he is entitled to watch — and record — anything he can see, hear, or otherwise perceive.

Second, unfortunately, you are 100% wrong. The proposed law, according to both TFA and the write-up, would ban just that — sharing, not collecting:

Two Democratic US senators today proposed a "privacy bill of rights" that would prevent Facebook and other websites from sharing or selling sensitive information without a customer's opt-in consent.

There is nothing about collecting data in the proposal, other than informing the customer about the fact of collection.

There are still such things as trade secret laws, NDAs, libel laws, copyright and public safety laws

Trade secrets only lower in importance than state secrets — and newspapers are allowed to publish those. NDAs are entered into voluntary — and that's why they have an effect. "Public safety" is bullshit in this context — your very example about "shouting fire" comes from the 100 year old case of a man convicted of arguing against US participation in the WWI! Obviously, if we allow the government to ban speech based on "public safety", we may as well abolish the Amendment entirely.

So, no, for better or worse, the Amendment does cover "sharing" any and all information a company has with whoever it pleases... Unless, maybe, we are willing to revise that earlier decision...

This is, quite literally, an attempt by Congress to make a law limiting the Freedom of Speech: prohibiting them from telling others something they've learned... Learned without any prior promise not to tell others...

If the Amendment protects the right of newspapers to publish state secrets , why wouldn't it also protect "social media" companies' right to publish our private little ones?

Not quite. What these companies do is analogous to stalking. They follow you around as you live your (online) life and note down everywhere you go and everything you do. No one is suggesting preventing the stalker from talking about what he leaned while peeping in your window, what IS being suggested is that maybe he shouldn't be looking in your window in the first place without your explicit consent.

This is, quite literally, an attempt by Congress to make a law limiting the Freedom of Speech: prohibiting them from telling others something they've learned... Learned without any prior promise not to tell others...

If the Amendment protects the right of newspapers to publish state secrets , why wouldn't it also protect "social media" companies' right to publish our private little ones?

Yes, but then there are also all of the unshared bikes...

Yeah, it's changing. But what are they about anyway?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ph...

I'm not sure just what this says about where China is or is going but at least they put some muscle into it.

No, but they did create moss that smells faintly like patchouli.

https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...

Wrong.

https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

Fake news asshole. Mod this guy down folks.

Wrong.

https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

So we tailor their class times to their biological rhythms and they turn into adults with juvenile biological rhythms. Will they ever really grow up?

I've had N24 for the last thirty years, so I can officially blow this smoke back into your face.

Juvenile:

* A prepubescent child.
* A person younger than the age of majority.
* A person younger than the age of criminal responsibility.
* An animal that is not sexually mature.
* A mindless insult that all-too-often passes itself off as intelligent discourse.

Last I checked, college students fuck like rabbits, so we'll dispatch item #1 with extreme prejudice.

Age of majority

Most countries set the age of majority at 18.

What is the normal age for college freshmen in the U. S.?

If someone goes straight to college campus from high school, the typical age of the incoming freshman in a U.S. college is 18 or 19.

So, by sophomore year, juveniles (as defined by a minority criteria) are already a distinct minority.

So what we have here is a juvenile-onset biological rhythm shift which persist well into young adulthood.

Young adulthood having recently become the age during which a majority of the population struggles to acquire a remunerative skillset among the top-three quartiles of career prospects and life outcomes.

Fewer U.S. Graduates Opt for College After High School — April 2014

Last October, just 65.9 percent of people who had graduated from high school the previous spring had enrolled in college, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said this week.

(The large chunk of the college admission population enrolled in the humanities starts the race a full quartile back, many drop-outs return to the fray later, and some high school dropouts have intrinsic skills, so even the dismal quartile from 25–50th percentile is by no means guaranteed merely by showing up.)

A really good example of the indirect path was in the news cycle this week:

Wylie was born to parents who were both physicians. At age 6 he was abused by a mentally unstable person, and the school tried to cover it up. In 2000 his father and he won a settlement of CA$290,000 against the school district. As a child he was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD.

He left school at 16 without a qualification, but by 17 was working for the Canadian opposition leader Michael Ignatieff. He taught himself to code at age 19. At 20, he began studying law at the London School of Economics.

In 2013 he was introduced to SCL Elections which would later create Cambridge Analytica.

Ignatieff was a catastrophic political leader, but the rest of his bio reads like a Who's Who entry (recent Order of Canada, and back to full professorship at Harvard).

Speaking of physicians, that's surely one profession that's never strayed into sparing the whip.

* How Much Do 30-Hour Shifts Suck for Medical Residents? — 8 March 2017
* No Doctor Should Work 30 Straight Hours Without Sleep — 15 December 2016
* Marathon 24- to 26-hour doctor shifts may be unsafe for patients: experts — 19 February 2016
* A Dangerous Study of Medical Resident

https://www.theatlantic.com/po... truth on the ground shows the libertarian approach is let them starve *slowly*. I suggest we live up to the libertarian ideal of the second amendment. Give all those without work a rifle and all the ammo they can use. Let them use firearms to supply themselves with food and money as well as defend themselves against rich and powerful.

The article neatly outlines the problem. Can you retrain thousands of older, high school educated factory workers to become coders, creative types, etc.? Even if you theoretically could, would they want to, or do we have the systems in place to do it? In the United States at least, worker retraining has not proven that effective. Finally, even if you could retrain them, how can they afford to go where the jobs are? Can a retrained air condition factory worker afford to move to Silicon Valley, New York City, or some other high cost area to leverage those shiny new skills? Even if they get there, would companies even want to hire a middle aged, retrained worker especially with existing age discrimination?

Is everyone supposed to die at 64?

Yes, though the Individual — cantankerous and selfish — may feel different, that's the preferable turn of events from the point of view of the Glorious Collective.

At 64 you'll stop getting the subsidy and living beyond 75 is unethical — end of life counseling is all the health care you should be getting then.

This. People need to pay attention. Trumpers will almost admit they favor authoritarianism. Ask them if they think it's ok that Trump does X thing that's traditionally outside of classical presidential power. Nepotism, back room deals, emoluments, willful blindness, constant open about-faces/outright lying, etc. The answer is always deflection or denial.

There were some oddities earlier in the Syrian war where ISIS and America seemed to go out of their way to not conflict with each other

Fixed your autocorrect fail. Just letting you know so you can check your device settings.

he's waged a brutal campaign in his fight for survival

If foreign governments were literally arming, funding and training jihadists and terrorists to overthrow your nation, how hard would you fight to defend it?

As for why Assad would use chemical weapons, there is a twisted bit of dictator and civil war logic that makes it make sense: it ensures that his underlings and army cannot surrender. If he was about to lose, there's a chance that Assad himself could hop on a plane and escape to Iran or Russia

Except that doesn't make sense. It's the opposite of making sense - in fact it's complete dumbfuckery. Why would Assad use gas after the U.S. had been braying for a year about "red lines" and when Syria was winning the war? If he was going to use chemical weapons, why didn't he do it a year beforehand when your CIA backed head choppers and organ eaters were starting to overrun the country? And why would he use chemical weapons the day inspectors arrived in the country? Dumb. Fuck. Er. Eee. Moreso now that even the SecDef that loves shooting Arabs admits there's no evidence Assad used gas.

From earlier in the year: Why Toys “R” Us Is Closing One-Fifth of Its Stores

But its collapse has been especially acute, due to terrible mismanagement by private-equity firms. After Toys “R” Us was taken private by KKR, Bain, and Vornado in 2005, it took on a lot of debt, leaving the company with repayments that have crippled it in a period of declining sales. Toys “R” Us has spent more than $250 million annually to pay back $5 billion in long-term debt. These repayments became unsustainable once revenue started to decline consistently, as it has each year since 2012. That left one option: for the company to declare bankruptcy and renegotiate the terms of its debt.

Reported earlier last year: Bain, KKR, Vornado Suffer Wipeout in Toys ‘R’ Us Bankruptcy

The three firms and their co-investors sank $1.3 billion of equity into the takeover of the Wayne, New Jersey-based toy company, financing the rest with debt, according to company filings. The debt included senior loans in which they held a stake.

Partly offsetting the loss is more than $470 million in fees and interest payments that Toys “R” Us awarded the firms over time. ...
KKR and Vornado, which are publicly traded, had previously written their investments in the company down to zero. As a result, the bankruptcy won’t affect their earnings going forward.

;TLDR
Bain and Co financed most of the purchase cost of Toys R Us with Debt, have made half a billion dollars in fees since then, and will suffer nothing from the closure of Toys R Us, unlike everyone that actually works for Toys R Us.

Shanghai had a lot of jews, and Nanjing - just a few hours NW - did as well. There are some very good Jewish museums there in both cities, and the museums and artifacts are held in pretty high regard by the locals, and even the Government (which funds the majority of these museums), because of their willingness to shield so many Chinese lives while the Japanese rampaged through the area.

And CNN, MSNBC, et al. haven't trained their viewers too, for the bigots and falsifiers on the opposite side of the spectrum?

Even when CNN leaks debate questions to a presidential candidate? https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Or Don Lemon says mostly anyone can go out and buy and automatic weapons? http://www.politifact.com/pund...
When three "investigative journalists" from CNN lie so badly they resign over a false story about Scaramucci? http://www.latimes.com/busines...
Or when it deliberately writes a misleading headline to make Trump look uninformed: "Trump asks Japan to build cars in the U.S. It already does" by using a partial quote that deflects the reality of his statement: http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/0...
Or when NBC doctors a 911 tape to make Zimmerman sound like he's explicitly following Martin just for being black when in truth he was asked by the operator to describe the person's race? https://www.theatlantic.com/en...
Confirmation bias is a two way street; it's amusing but not unexpected to see it at work on a person who, in an echo chamber of their own, believes it only exists on the other side.

You are overstating the case. Given all the objects we've had on Mars, it's probably too late to prevent contamination.

The Viking landers of the 1970s were the only missions to Mars ever to be completely cleaned to the highest standards of planetary protection. They were baked in a purpose-built giant oven, and the cost of doing so is thought to have been roughly 10% of the mission. Ever since then, says Conley, researchers have complained about the office, as if it exists solely to burden them and make their missions impossibly expensive. “People like to have a villain,” she says.

I'm skeptical that truly decontaminating a probe of all spores may be a pipe dream

But like Smith’s microbes, the samples that were subject to direct U.V. radiation were mostly killed. The few that managed to survive the vacuum of space for 18 months had undergone changes to the proteins associated with genetic expression. Their offspring also showed an even greater resistance to UV-C exposure, the most harmful category of U.V. radiation, than those in the control group on Earth. Nine years later, Venkat and the team are still trying to make sense of the data. “And what’s particularly interesting,” Smith says, “is that those that were alive from the ISS experiment also ended up showing a resistance to antibiotics.” The type of SNPs that changed the survivors from E-Mist were varied. Some experienced an A to a T swap, others a C to a T, and some of those were in cartridges that were exposed for different lengths of time to the sun. While both teams aren’t exactly sure what the genetic changes mean in either of the experiments, they suspect that they may be playing a role in their survival.

This isn't a race to the bottom. For those of you who aren't old enough to remember air travel before deregulation, prices were about twice as high back then.

I notice that the data graph in the article STARTS with the date of deregulation. As I recall from a Consumer Reports article a decade or so back, the rate of price dropping actually was HIGHER before deregulation, which might make someone think that things would be cheaper if we had just continued that.

I like this quote: "The most rigorous analysis of the impact of deregulation was done by David B. Richards, formerly of the CAB and FAA. His research concluded, “This paper makes clear that the grant of pricing freedom to the airline industry has generally resulted in average prices being higher than they would have been had regulation continued...”" from https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

This isn't a race to the bottom. For those of you who aren't old enough to remember air travel before deregulation, prices were about twice as high back then.

If you want as much service and frills as we had back then, you can still get them by paying extra for them. The only thing that's changed is that you have the option of paying less if you're willing to give up the frills and additional service. If you choose to pay less for worse service, then that's your decision. Not the airline's.

Ignoring science in this debate is common on both sides. For example the AR-15 being no more lethal than other semiautomatic rifles that are not part of anyone's "assault weapon" list.

It would be helpful if you named these other rifles because maybe the reason they are not on anyone's list is because people just don't know about how deadly they are. You know, name recognition.

Here's a description from a doctor who has treated gunshot wounds nearly every day for the past 13 years on how AR-15 wounds are significantly different from the typical gunshot wounds he sees.

With an AR-15, the shooter does not have to be particularly accurate. The victim does not have to be unlucky. If a victim takes a direct hit to the liver from an AR-15, the damage is far graver than that of a simple handgun shot injury. Handgun injuries to the liver are generally survivable unless the bullet hits the main blood supply to the liver. An AR-15 bullet wound to the middle of the liver would cause so much bleeding that the patient would likely never make it to a trauma center to receive our care.

Put a low capacity hunting magazine into an AR-15 and how is it different from the semiautomatic hunting rifles?

You've just made the argument for restricting high-capacity magazines, which is one of the top gun-safety proposals for cutting down the number and lethality of mass-shootings.

Just to add to the sentiment shared by Uberbah: Life Without Retirement Savings. I haven't been able to save enough for retirement even if I'm well above the median savings of $15,000, and I sure as shit don't want to end up like these folks when I'm old and tired. And I live below my means also, so I don't want to hear any of that judgmental shit people like to say as if I was spending $5 for a cup of Starbucks. I don't do it. And yet we'll all be guilted for some caricature of modern-day spendthrifts that will totally ignore the fact that I live on the outskirts of town and my mortgage is still $1800/mo and my health insurance costs are over $9000/year for my spouse and I (and that's on a college-offered student plan which is leaps-and-bounds better than the similar costing Marketplace plan available to us). And it's not like that's a socialized medicine system either, because heavens forbid I need to actually seek medical treatment for any condition.

And in that time, the number of terrorist attacks by foreigners sneaking into the country is...zero.

Maybe that "foreign terrorist" threat isn't nearly as bad as we were told? Maybe we have more to worry about from other Americans than we do foreign terrorists?

It isn't zero... "Six Iranians, six Sudanese, two Somalis, two Iraqis, and one Yemeni have been convicted of attempting or executing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during that time period"

According to this article arguing against the travel ban: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/trump-immigration-ban-terrorism/514361/

Also, this issue isn't just about terrorism, but also more likely criminals coming to the US. The numbers of criminals coming to the US is well above 0.

This isn't about fixing the problem, it's and trying to distract you from the issue they won't deal with.

Of course it's distraction.

What is the Trump administration distracting us from? Let's dig into the five DIStraction CONdition levels:

DISCON1 — Florida shooting
DISCON2 — Rob Porter
DISCON3 — DACA path to citizenship
DISCON4 — Russian IRA indictments
DISCON5 — Shall we play a game?

Lindsey Graham: There's a 30 Percent Chance Trump Attacks North Korea — 14 December 2017

Unlike Wargames, all five DISCON levels are played simultaneously as a Django five-note chord.

Numerous recent studies show that in the most gender equal countries, far fewer women pursue careers in science or mathematics. https://www.theatlantic.com/sc... Given the choice, women prefer different things than men. Wow, what a revelation.... Now just waiting for the SJW's to counter this with more pseudoscience.

This should be an easy issue. Libertarian publications like Reason https://reason.com/archives/2018/01/19/barber-cops-bust-high-school-dropouts, and center-left publications like The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-obama-occupational-licensing/536619/ agree that this is a problem. Heck as The Atlantic article points out, this is even an issue where Donald Trump and Obama seem to agree. Unfortunately, as long as lobbying can occur by licensing groups and professional association at state capitals, they'll do an effective job of protecting themselves from the sort of serious reform that is needed.

Just look at Meredith Baker and Tom Wheeler. Two industry stooges of the worst kind.

Er nope. Despite the public worry about Tom Wheeler, his actions while in the job proved he was the right guy. He was the guy who instituted the return to net neutrality principles* and he did other pro-consumer things like force cablecos to accept 3rd party, privately-owned set-top boxes (another policy that idjit pai reversed).

* Yes I said return because up until 2005 when FCC chairman Michael Powell (Colin's son) took the Brand X case all the way up to the SCOTUS, net neutrality was the law of the land.

No, you're wrong. "Blue" states definitely subsidize "red" states. In other words, California subsidizes your bullshit.

http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

lets you get good products like your smartphone and good customer service, at least where there is competition and where you have the right to sue if you have an unresolved issue

When I think of good products and good customer service, I naturally think of airlines!

It still exists, but you have to pay for it. If you fly bargain basement economy, then you get what you pay for, which is as low a price as the airline can manage. Try flying first class if you want customer service.

It is almost comical how our society now takes for granted being able to buy a round trip ticket for under $100, jump on a plane and be hurtled to your destination at 400mph, arrive safely, do business and then take the return flight that evening. Our grandparents spent 3 months salary to take a flight and this kind of travel was unimaginable by our great grandparents.

https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

Voter ID laws are racist because they (particular race) don't know where to DMV is. They don't have the knowledge. They aren't aware or uninformed. They don't have ID. They ....

In and of themselves, voter ID laws aren't racist.

But if you combine voter ID laws with closing DMV offices in areas with high minority populations, then it starts to look a bit racist:

https://www.theatlantic.com/po...

Yes, there are other ways to get acceptable voter ID aside from going to a neighborhood DMV office, but human nature being what it is, if you close a local office to get ID, people living nearby are less likely to have ID.

Many will still drive to the nearest office, but by selectively closing some offices it will have a disproportionate impact on people (regardless of race) who live close to those offices.

Consultant psychiatrist Louise Theodosiou says one of the clearest indications children are spending too long on their phones is their behavior during a session with a psychiatrist.

Do I even need to explain why that's a conclusion leading its premise?

What actually happened is that they felt like their time was being wasted so they answered their phone, and she felt slighted so she said cellphones were bad. It's a fit of pique, which is the kind of thing we expect from psychiatrists and psychologists. People overwhelmingly get into the field because they have their own problems they're trying to cope with. Everyone I've known who's been in a psych program has said that you'll never see a more fucked up group of individuals. It's not surprising when they act like children with their psuedoscience.

are you suggesting Kratom is killing folks, because it's not. The FDA says that the deaths were caused by mixing Kratom with other substances, but don't really go into details and their own data seems to prove otherwise.

This is more shitting on poor people and another extension of our racist drug policy. The goal is to fill the private prisons (which are now a convenient source of slave labor that _you_ compete with) while allowing roundabout institutionalized racism and segregation. There is literally nothing good about this.

Bernie was a fantastic speaker but he had three big flaws. First, his ideas were far-left, even for the Democratic party, that really can scare off voters.

You're engaging in the same quality of thinking as the Democratic party. His far-left ideas were precisely the reason why people wanted to vote for him. It's why many of us who have been independents for years bothered to register so that we could vote in their primary. It's why he could have beaten Trump, like the polls showed. And the polls showed that Clinton couldn't. There were literally people who wound up voting for Trump because they want to crash the system, or at least shake it up, who would have voted for Sanders. I'd love to know what percentage of the vote they were; the anecdotes stacked up to the point that I suspect it was measurable.

Two, he was naive in the sense that he oversold how much he could get accomplished.

What? That's what presidential candidates do. Trump did it. Was he naive, or playing to the crowd? Clinton didn't do it. She basically told coal miners they were fucked. Sanders told us we could all not be fucked. Trump told them they could not be fucked. Only one of these things is not like the others for people like coal miners.

Three, a lot of his policy was very hand-wavy, now some of that was Clinton denying him top-end advisors, but he didn't have the same policy chops.

That's really part of #2. But even if we take it as a separate point, as president he would have been in position to hire a lot of people who were working for Clinton; they wouldn't be working for her any more, after all.

The Democratic party really did shoot itself in the ass by intentionally hamstringing Bernie.

This was a big mistake, I don't know if Bernie would have won,

The polls said he would.

but Clinton never really learned how to win a competitive race. She played defence the whole time against Bernie instead of defining herself or establishing a vision, and bringing that to the general election is what cost her.

She didn't need to define herself, because we all knew what she was: the "business as usual" candidate. The problem is, most people want change. You can't run on the "we will keep doing what we are doing" platform and expect to win. That is a losing game unless everyone is happy. Maybe you can get away with it in one of these Nordic countries with high levels of happiness and life satisfaction, but not here.

I forget what the exact numbers are, but ISTR that something like 75% of the US population claims to want change, but we re-elect the incumbent about 95% of the time. (Maybe more?) Presumably, this is mostly due to partisan politics, at least where it is not the result of gerrymandering.

Republicans (and Russians) were rooting for Bernie because they thought he'd be the weaker candidate in the general election. They may have been wrong, but it's not obvious they were.

Again, I don't know what percentage it actually was, but a vocal segment of registered republicans wanted Sanders for president. When he did not appear on the ballot, it's safe to assume most of them voted for not-Clinton.

TL;DR: Polls said Sanders could beat Trump, and polls said Clinton could not, and the DNC decided that (against the wishes of registered democrats) they would run Clinton. The rest is the horrifying present.

Left-wing fake news does indeed have higher production values.

It's so well funded (by Soros? The Jews? the illuminati? The Lizard people?) that they actually get reality to manufacture the fake news. Disgusting.

How about the CIA?

CIA pays Amazon $600 million for cloud services in 2014

Bezos buys the Washington Post in 2016

Yes, as long as you reside in a nation where corruption is nor pervasive.

An interesting take on Piketty's equation:

To channel Piketty, inequality will continue to rise in societies where “c > h.” Here, “c” stands for the degree to which corrupt politicians and public employees, along with their private-sector cronies, break laws for personal gain, and “h” represents the degree to which honest politicians and public employees uphold fair governing practices. Corruption-fueled inequality flourishes in societies where there are no incentives, rules, or institutions to hinder corruption. And having honest people in government is good, but not enough. The practices of pilfering public funds or selling government contracts to the highest bidder must be seen as risky, routinely detected, and systematically punished.

Clinton was never indicted for any crime other than obstruction of justice.

When debating whether or not to impeach him, Congress considered four accusations: two independent perjury charges, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power. Of these four, two had enough votes to impeach:

• the nature and details of his relationship with Lewinsky
• prior false statements he made in the Jones deposition
• prior false statements he allowed his lawyer to make characterizing Lewinsky’s affidavit
• his attempts to tamper with witnesses

• encouraging Lewinsky to file a false affidavit
• encouraging Lewinsky to give false testimony if and when she was called to testify
• concealing gifts he had given to Lewinsky that had been subpoenaed
• attempting to secure a job for Lewinsky to influence her testimony
• permitting his lawyer to make false statements characterizing Lewinsky’s affidavit
• attempting to tamper with the possible testimony of his secretary Betty Curie
• making false and misleading statements to potential grand jury witnesses

I urge you to read up the Wikipedia article on the matter...

You're also incorrectly assuming that I am a democrat, it seems. I don't care whether Harry Reid or Schumer wanted Comey fired.

Whatever you personally think, my point stands: when the President faces calls — from both supporters and the opposition — to fire an official, his actually firing the official can not reasonably be suspected of being criminal.

Yeah, he may have done it to better obstruct justice, but that's unlikely. And, most importantly, you still don't have anything to accuse him of in the first place — what crime was he trying to prevent uncovering by this obstruction you allege?

It is evident that Trump tried to get Comey to stop the investigation into Manafort and other members of the Trump campaign

Manafort quit Trump's campaign in August 2016. You need something better than an unsupported claim of it being "evident", that Trump still cared about him in June 2017 — cared so much, he fired head of FBI over it.

And yet we can see that many people are trying to undermine that investigation too

You keep bringing up Clinton, as if that case was the same — it was not. With Clinton the primary charge was obvious and well-known — he was credibly accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and outright rape. What, I ask you for the last time, is the primary accusation against Trump?

Or, maybe, your very premise is incorrect and Trump does not, actually, want to be an authoritarian despot?

Who you gonna believe, mi, or Trump's own words.

https://www.independent.co.uk/...

https://www.theatlantic.com/po...

The rest of the states will be bailing california out. California has never bailed anyone out.

That's just not true. California bails out all but 13 other states, every year. It's what's known as a "donor" state because we pay more in taxes to the federal government than we receive in federal spending. By contrast, South Carolina receives almost $8 from the federal government for every $1 it sends to them in taxes. California receives less than $1.

https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

I suppose that is more an answer to 'what would you do' while I was talking about 'what would a lot of these people do' and if they're conservative and they know Clinton's warmongering then it's reasonable that a lot of people would gamble on Trump.
I do think it's not an easy choice and your argument is reasonable. I'm more pessimistic in general I think. Obama in his interview talks about the Washington Playbook ( https://www.theatlantic.com/ma... ) and it indicates the militarism runs all through the system. It even runs so much through the system that the people I take seriously are absent from the mainstream.
I think Clinton is a very bad case but she's predictable and competent and that has value in avoiding disasters. You hope she will step back from the abyss if it comes that far. And avoiding disasters is at the moment what bothers me most. I don't see how we're going to last to the end of the century like this.

We physicists have been quietly mortified by his crackpottery for decades. He squanders the capital of credibility built up by so many careful researchers, and to what end?

You never had credibility to anyone but the credulous. Get over it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...
https://www.npr.org/sections/t...
http://www.michaeleisen.org/bl...

Science and philosophy aren't improved by the adulation of laymen who are merely seeking a replacement for their black-cassocked hierophant in a white-coated scientist. Don't promote attribution of trustworthiness to your field, that's exploitative pseudoscience, instead be trustworthy as an individual.

Way to wish away the reality of the situation. Yes, extremists - like crazy lefties who want to silence speech

You appear to have an extreme case of irony deficiency. You should get that looked at.

"Crazy censoring lefties" is a talking point of your particular tribe of extremists who are desperate to accuse everybody else of your own crimes.

Rapper Common Disinvited By University As Commencement Speaker Over Song Lyrics
Vanderbilt puts Duke Med alum on leave after complaint about kneeling to protest white supremacy - The Chronicle
CBS Fires Jewish VP for Anti-White Comments Follows Las Vegas Shooting – Occidental Dissent
Drexel censures professor for white genocide tweet.
Firing of Shirley Sherrod - Wikipedia
After news reports on tweets, queer advocate fired from Claremont Colleges
Two Liberal Professors Fired after Making Controversial, Anti-White Remarks |
Texas State Student Who Wrote Anti-White Op-Ed Fired Off School Paper
L'Oreal Drops Transgender Model After 'All White People' Racism Post
Texas State newspaper fires anti-white column's author as backlash escalates | Fox News
Nurse fired for post suggesting sons of white women be ‘sacrificed’ | New York Post
Lawmaker pushing legislation to refund fans angered by anthem protests
Good News: Trump Protestors Accused Of 'Hiding Behind The First Amendment' Acquitted | Techdirt
Fox refuses to air tax ad with Trump impersonator - POLITICO
Profane anti-Trump sticker sparks free-speech debate in Texas | Fox News
Tennessee Baptist church that hired female pastor can't vote - WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather & Sports
Why I was banned from the campus of Liberty University | Religion News Service
Why Liberty University Kicked an Anti-Trump Christian Author Off Campus - Th

Remember that the Democrats literally nominated a cable company lobbyist to head the FCC when they had the chance

Gaslight for the fail.

During the Bush years, under Chairman Michael Powell (Colin's son) the FCC went to the Supreme Court in order to kill net neutrality (and succeeded in 2005).

Then Obama appointed, Tom Wheeler, former lobbyist turned Benedict Arnold who not only brought back net neutrality but also pushed for a bunch of other consumer freedoms like killing the Comcast/Time-Warner merger, and forcing cable companies to let customers use their own set-top boxes to save on rental fees.

As for Idjit Pai being an "Obama appointee" not so much. By law the 5 member comission can only have 3 members from the same party. Idjit Pai was one of the two non-democrats during Obama's term. The way it works is that the senate minority party comes up with a list of acceptable candidates, in this case Pai was Mitch McConnel's first choice. Maybe Obama should have fought harder, but it didn't really matter since the 3 people he did pick could always overrule the Idjit. Now that the banana republicans are in charge, who Obama appointed is moot because killing NN was always a republican goal and they would have done it one way or another - since that is what they did back in 2005.

You don't get mass shootings at gun shows, police stations, or sportsmans clubs.

Gun shows have had 4 mass shootings since 1987. However, there are a multitude of other shootings at gun shows.

As to police stations, 2016 mass shooting in Dallas, 2011 in Detroit, and 2012 in New Jersey where an inmate caused a mass shooting, 2012 again in New Jersey though this more a domestic issue. There have been numerous shootings of and at police stations, though they are not considered mass shootings.

https://www.theatlantic.com/po...

“You also had some very fine people on both sides,” he said.

Collapse of U.S. society? More details of the collapse:

Links about Trump
from 18 different organizations

Trump moving toward starting a nuclear war:

> Trump Says His "Nuclear Button" Is "Much Bigger" Than North Korea's (Jan. 2, 2018, New York Times)
Two unstable people threaten each other.

> How Does Trump Trump Trump? Start a War. (Jan. 6, 2018, Huffington Post)

> Cartoon: "My nuclear button is bigger than yours!"" (Jan. 4, 2018, Gary Varvel at ArcaMax.com)

Trump's lies:

> In 298 days, President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims. (Nov. 13, 2017, Washington Post)

> President Trump's Lies, the Definitive List (Dec. 14, 2017, New York Times)

> In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims. (Dec. 29, 2017, Washington Post)

> 10 Falsehoods From Trump's Interview With The Times (Dec. 29, 2017, New York Times)

> Trump takes credit for zero aviation deaths worldwide. (Jan. 2, 2018, Trump's Twitter account)
Replies:
"I'm gonna take credit for puppies being cute..."
"Guess who's responsible for designing the cute kangaroo pouches that keep little Joeys safe? That right, it was Me. ME. ME!"
"That's a job well done, thank you, but don't forget I gave dolphins their blowholes! Without me, they would've drowned!"

Books about Trump:

> Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Published Jan. 5, 2018)
Four days after publication, there were 1,432 customer reviews; 82% were 5-star reviews.

> Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic by David Frum (Published Jan. 16, 2018)

> Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green (Published July 18, 2017)

> Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win by Luke Harding (Published Nov. 16, 2017)

> It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America by David Cay Johnston (Published Jan. 16, 2018)

Sexual abuse:

> The 19 Women Who Accused President Trump of Sexual Misconduct (Dec. 7, 2017, The Atlantic.com)

Trump is said to have paid to avoid publicity:
Lawyer paid $130k to silence adult-film star over sexual encounter with Trump: report (Jan. 12, 20

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