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What Does Trump's Budget Mean for the Environment?
His proposal would gut federal enforcement and effectively halt many Superfund cleanups.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/trump-epa-budget-noaa-climate-change/527814

Readers here may recall that Trump's budget director Mick Mulvaney published a budget that had a $2 Trillion dollar math error.

Republicans (think Paul Ryan) often (always?) produce budgets that contain all sorts of tax cuts for upper brackets and then a "magic asterisk" that gives no detail but says the shortfall will be made up by a) economic growth stimulated by the tax cuts and b) cost savings from cutting government waste.

So my take is the bad optics of all this finally bubbled up to Trump (I guess Fox News couldn't filter it out totally) and he gave the command to his minions to find trillions of dollars of "government waste and inefficiency" to save the budget. So they came up with this.

It doesn't have to make sense. All he wants to do is get headlines out there that proclaim Trump Saves Us Trillions and for most of his base and way too much of the swing voters that is all they will see. It is ideal for this media purpose. If the topic gets the slightest bit technical he can count on the talking airheads to gloss it over and he'd up with "opposing views on this story" in the worst case.

What that means: enough voters will think have this view: Trump and Republicans produced a budget that will save our economy and Democrats are Fighting It. . They don't have to be right. They just have to throw up enough chaff to confuse the voter and Republicans win the mid-terms again.

Ah, the Foxconn Housing Model, with an American twist - how "inventive".

Explain how a Jr, Senator of the minority party caused a shut-down.

In this case, the procedural process called unanimous consent. Not to mention their own words and testimony. THEY CLAIMED THEY WANTED TO DO IT. And then they did it.

Perhaps you fell asleep?

Answer he didn't, neither did Utah's Mike Lee. In fact the actual blame for the shut-down if it can be assigned to any one person would be to Sen Harry Reid (D), the Senate Majority leader at the time.

Nope! He wanted to pass a bill to continue spending. But not the reckless, insane, moronic, House version.

And they wouldn't back down.

He refused to let any house budget bill he didn't like even be debated. Yes the House's first budget, demanding total recall of the ACA was too extreme. But that's negotiating, you start out asking for everything knowing that you'll compromise.

Nope, that's insanity. You start out with an extreme position, you put the other person in a position where they think less of you, since you're so outrageous. Then when they say no, and you redouble your efforts, as the House, actually did, twice, you convince them that you're further beyond the pale.

Real negotiations recognize the perils of such demands as you make, as you convince the other side that you are crazy.

The House then did compromise, passing multiple replacement budgets gradually diminishing their demands, Reid refused to let any of them be debated let alone voted on. He forced the shutdown and maintained it until the house leadership caved in.

Nope. The House multiple times, kept adding back in their demands, and even increased them. The Republicans in the House, even REFUSED to let anyone other than the Majority Leader in the House, Eric Canton(or someone Cantor said was his designee), offer a compromise. They changed the rules specifically to prevent any other group from coming together.

Cruz and Lee had NOTHING to do with any of that process. They had zero say in any of the Budget bills passed by the House, and zero say in what Reid let onto the floor of the Senate for debate.

Well, that means you're calling Cruz and Lee liars. Which I admit, they are, but they did claim they were responsible for the shut-down, that it was their purpose and intent. They weren't lying about that.

They put it in writing.

And they weren't the only ones.

Sorry, but the GOP picked up the Shutdown gun, and waved it, in their attempts to force their demands on the rest of us.

Guess who the real cancer on efficiency is. it's not the Republicans.

Sorry, but your completely "alternative" facts, doesn't pass the whiff test.

Shutdowns are Cruz's bread and butter. Yet he avoids responsibility

I get it though, the GOP doesn't want to admit to its own faults, so you try to blame anybody else. You did it for Trumpcare. You did it for the Iraq Withdrawal. You did it for Newt Gingrich's adultery.

Look, I get it, you're used to tweeting whatever you want, and nobody questioning it, but just like the Muslim Ban, what you say matters, and not everybody has the attention span of a goldfish.

In fact, in 1792, constitutional gun control meant requiring able-bodied men to purchase a gun and present it for inspection.

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

you were saying????

All the campaigns had contact with the Russians.

Yes, people forget what the "facts" are supposed to prove, partly because I don't think we ever knew. It is just "blah blah Russians."

If you started out with, "He promised Russia diplomatic concessions in Syria/Ukraine in exchange for hacking the DRE voting system in Pennsylvania to tip the state for him," then that is clearly serious but "facts" don't support it. "Contact" is clearly not, yet is made to seem so by words like "collusion" which are then supported by facts that show contact.

Delivering facts that actually mean something on this issue is an incredibly heavy burden, and Democrats have delivered hysteria instead. For example, the NSA leak that Russians did in fact attempt to hack electronic voting, which is closer than we've ever got before and as close as we can expect to get, is still way short:
  - was it directed by Russian government or random hackers doing it because as American and German hackers have been saying for so long, it's incredibly, egregiously easy?
  - was it successful? "Days before the election" seems too late to phish a voting machine vendor's office and get results; you should start earlier, or go directly for the installed machines in the field.
  - was the aim to tip an election for Trump? for Hillary? to get the result early and speculate on stocks?
  - was it done as a quid-pro-quo with a candidate, or because they felt it in their independent self-interest? Even if they did hack the election, the actual voting machines not just propaganda drops, the fact Russia likes one candidate more than another isn't a strike against him.
  - is the NSA release "fake news"? Deep state influence undermining democracy scares me more than Russian influence because it means we are becoming a country run the way Soviet Russia used to be run, which is scarier than having a close election tipped by a foreign power.

so I sympathize that it's hard to deliver "facts" even if something terrible is at foot, but they still need to be delivered, and the bar still needs to be set in a rational way, not a vague cheerleading character-assassination way.

I'm not saying stuff on this list is ok, just they aren't equivalent to "Trump colluded," whatever that means. "Colluded" only feels like it means something if you hate Trump and are sloppy. If you like Trump, you will say, "wat," and if you are not sloppy but hate Trump you will say what Greenwald says. While there are reasons to hate Trump, he should be hated for those reasons. This news cycle is about the level of birtherism.

Acutally that isn't true. Historically the weather on the exact days planned for the invasion of Japan would have sunk the US troop carriers and quite a few destroyers. That would have been a new kamikaze in the traditional sense of the typhoon that saved Japan from the Mongols. The other pathway if they had not surrendered would have been problematic as while the US had a third nuclear weapon almost ready, the remaining dozen planned were delayed for a year or so by production problems.

Scalia was pretty good about the 4th Amendment, but he still ended up supporting some pretty shaky anti-4th Amendment positions: https://www.theatlantic.com/po...

In particular, he often sided with police on "fruit from a poisoned tree" arguments.

in English, if you fail to understand something because it was not communicated properly, it's still proper to say that you misunderstood.

Are you aware of this story, wherein an advisor was asked if an email was legitimate, and instead of saying it wasn't legitimate, as he intended, he instead actually said it WAS legitimate. Was the advisor responsible for the typo, or was Podesta responsible for misunderstanding what the advisor tried to communicate, but failed to?

The data disagrees with your just world fallacy.

If you are making it on your own, great. If you're making it because you have rich parents, great. If you're making it because you have rich parents but are fooling yourself into thinking it's because of your own hard work... well, gear up to be president one day, you fucking moron.

>"Congress never ratified the Paris Agreement. In fact, Obama never sent it to Congress for ratification. there is nothing to "withdraw" from...we were never in it."

Don't try to use logic or reason here with any topic in which the word "Trump" is injected. It apparently doesn't work...

Agreed.

But Trump did do exactly what he promised the voters in his election campaign promises.

Disagree. Almost everything he promised on day one hasn't even been done yet - 100+ days out.

Had he not, then the same people would be complaining that he was a liar or didn't do what he said he would do.

If you actually look at the previous link or probably find any other metric, compare by numbers with Hillary or *any* other president (potential or not), you find the difference astounding. The man is, by all unbiased metrics, the biggest liar we've ever seen at this level, by (very) far.

I don't like Trump, nor some of what he does, but the alternative was not any better (just in different ways). I think South Park put it the best- we had a choice between a turd sandwich or a giant douche.

Hillary was attacked by the right for decades, Russia added a ton more propaganda to make the country believe in crazy conspiracy theories. Pizzagate is not a thing. The FBI said her crimes were piddly and would be laughed out of court. You can't compare running her own email server to the possibility of perjury, espionage, and treason that the current Administration is under investigation for. The current topic of Paris agreement is an economic no-brainer. Those are oil & gas companies saying we should go forward with it because there is money to be made in leading the world in technology. If you believe the scientists, this is a huge moral issue with millions of lives at stake. Secretary of Defense James Mattis sees climate change as a national security threat. This choice is a ridonculous one, and you can't compare this Administration to the boringness of what Clinton's would have been.

The only demographic that voted leave were pensioners, while every other worker voted remain

Stipulating your unsourced statistics is true, you are, once again, exposing yourself as undemocratic. Because, in your "sophisticated" opinion, pensioners are less equal than other voters.

I get it — screw the elderly and their outdated opinions... Living beyond 75 is unethical anyway...

This is 2017 and the corruption is in our face..not only cops, cbp but mayors and governors and presidents all on the take draining the coffers of the people and in bed with the narcos
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...

And yet, the narco bigs, the mass killers, brutal leaders and true kingpins, cut favorable deals.

If he is no longer in prison, where is Serafin Zambada Ortiz?
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...

Osiel Cardenas Jr. Sentenced to 10 months in Supermax
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...

Osiel Cardenas Nephew sentenced to 20 years in Texas
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...

Sentenced 5 years in 2014 but Queen of the Pacific is ordered released
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...

Daniel Barrera: Colombia "last of the great capos" gets 35 years in N.Y. sentencing
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...

Life Sentence Slashed: Francisco Javier Arellano Félix becomes a "cooperating witness"
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...

A life sentence is rare in drug trafficking cases, having been imposed in less than one-third of one percent of all drug trafficking cases
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/...

Why? That wasn't news, we already heard about it under Bush.

You're like the parent who confronts his kid's drug use, and then they say they learned it from you.

Who never had to teach grandpa to spy on Americans, let alone suck eggs.

Look, you want to convince me you give a rat's ass about privacy, and aren't just grinding a partisan axe? Show some concern beyond the previous administration, the one that's out of office. Take a gander overseas, or in the boardrooms. Then maybe I'll think it is something other than an irate pretense that you'll drop as soon as somebody else is in office.

That is not how you "fight poverty." Nearly all the millennials buying houses have rich parents. If you're in a financial position to help your kids buy houses today, your kids cannot in any meaningful sense be considered to be at risk of poverty (unless they have mental illness).

How you fight poverty at a societal level is... actually fuck it, we all know the country is going to run as fast as it can in the exact opposite of the direction of that for the next few years, no point in actual solutions.

How you fight poverty is "1. Don't be poor 2. Have a lot of money 3. Don't get sick."

You do know that the welfare queen was invented by Reagan, used by conservatives since then, and has never been true, right?
 
And who are you to tell people what they spend their UBI on? What makes your judgement better than theirs?

To most successful (where success is having a job, a house, and can afford food) people...

Aaah, got it. If you currently have a job, you're successful, but if not, you're stupid, lazy, and criminal, and zbobet2012 needs to tell you how to live your life, and police your life choices? That speaks far more poorly on you than it does on them.
 
What your authoritarian response misses is the basic reason we're even talking about UBI: We're very quickly running out of jobs for people to do. Agriculture used to employ 50% of the population, now it employs 2% and produces more food than we can consume in this country. Manufacturing is increasingly automated, and it looks like a couple million driving jobs may be up next for automation. Warehouses are becoming very automated, and shipping is getting very automated. Our service industry is falling to automation as well, with the rapid rise of self-service kiosks, checkouts, websites and phone trees.
 
The point of UBI is because we don't think there are going to be enough jobs in the near future. You can no longer call success having a job when there aren't enough jobs to go around. It's not laziness at that point, it's that it's cheaper and better to automate so much that some sizable amount of the population literally has nothing to offer society in exchange for food and shelter. At that point, there are two options: Provide for those people, or let them die.
 
We've decided already that we're going to provide for our elderly. We've got Social Security and Medicare. This is just extending that decision to everyone, replacing our current nightmare of patchwork supports, while providing an incentive to actually work for those who can. That incentive involves material goods, vacations, and overall nicer stuff. It involves scratching a creative itch, making meaning of their life, and producing things that will make them happy. I really don't share your pessimism that some significant amount of the population will just starve in the street because they can't manage their money. If that's the case, that's more of a case of them needing a legal guardian than a need to recreate the wasteful bureaucratic snarl that is our current welfare system.

if they look like criminals

Italy just let this guy in, so go figure.

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/as...

Brennen Center, Washington Post, Atlantic, Mother Jones, UCSD, UW, Cornell, Cambridge. There is a mix a academic original research and easily accessible, but thoughtful articles in that list.

Like sanctuary cities that think they're above the law?

Actually, the vast majority of sanctuary cities are within the law, even by Trump's standards.

Like the federal government under Obama not enforcing immigration laws on the books.

It is well within the powers of the President to prioritize law enforcement, especially immigration. It's not like deportations dropped suddenly under Obama. Would you rather deport X felons or X/2 felons + X/2 otherwise innocent people? This kind of thing happens all the time at every level of government. District Attorneys don't prosecute every case that comes in front of them, they have to prioritize. Would you claim a cop is "not enforcing the traffic laws" because they choose not to pull over a speeder while on their way to a homicide? Probably not.

The Trump administration has done nothing counter to Constitution.

Well not successfully at least. Federal judges from all over the country found enough of a Constitutional issue in Trump's travel bans to warrant indefinite injunctions until the cases are settled (assuming the Administration still intends to fight them at all).

Keep in mind, the Administration didn't try to justify the bans in court, but instead claimed that they didn't have to provide justification. From the 9th Circuit Ruling (source):

[T]he government has taken the position that the president’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections. ... There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.

story
Where Obamacare did the EXACT same thing. I remember being called a racist when I pointed it out at the time, so I guess its my turn...

You are a racist.

Except it's not since the dimming has started again.

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

So, how many more vacation days have USA people now than in the seventies?

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

How that's possible?

Easy; in my home of Phoenix the cost of living index is 99, which means it's roughly the national average whereas in SF it's about 192, which means dollar for dollar, I can do nicer things and have nicer things, meanwhile most of their money is going to their rent or their mortgage. It's bad enough that $100,000 a year is considered low income there, whereas here that's quite a good wage.

Those techies at San Francisco have access to much more "technology"... heck, they are the ones inventing it!

Some of them, but not many. What kind of technology are you referring to? I personally have everything I want in that regard, and I work in IT.

In case you didn't catch what I meant, you were talking about a *possible* outcome, not about that outcome to necessarily become true and, in fact, by your very examples, that your expected outcome will *not* become true.

I'm not talking about possible, I'm talking about reality. Out there it's so expensive to live, that it's quite common for multiple families to live in a smaller single family house. Pretty much the only way that happens here is if the families are all related and they all pitch in for a big sprawling mansion.

Or has the tone switched, because Musk is a Trump-administration supporter (sort of) — and there is a well-organized smear and boycott campaign against him as a result?

Anyone who thinks the tone switched only recently hasn't been paying attention. People started grousing about Musk long before "The Donald" became a serious presidential contender.

For a few years I was annoyed about the uniform adoration Mr. Musk was getting on Slashdot and in other circles. Then hit-pieces like this one started appearing...

Would the insufferable conditions described in TFA have been described at all — or described using the same terms — if he were still the Progressives' darling for championing "green" causes?

Or has the tone switched, because Musk is a Trump-administration supporter (sort of) — and there is a well-organized smear and boycott campaign against him as a result?

There is a lively discussion on whether or not Musk is a "Trump enabler" — but people, who've already concluded, that he is, will stop at, literally, nothing. Even poisoning the "haters" is becoming a thing — online smears are child's play...

I support a more limited, less intrusive federal government. Trump is proving quite ineffective at making real change, and the minor changes he has made mostly do reduce the role of the feds. OTOH, Hillary has widely expressed a desire to expand the fed's role, and has the experience to do so. Government is best which governs least, and Trump is proving good at doing not much.

This "current clusterfuck," as you call it, is just a manufactured partisan brouhaha. Although he's a buffoon and half the country is going to disagree with anything he does politically, the worst Trump has done in a non-political sense is making bad choices for staff, which he has every right to do.

The whole "Russia tried to influence the election" thing is bullshit. Hell, every candidate, PAC, political party and media outlet tried to influence the election. The US regularly tries to influence foreign votes.

I understand that innovation for innovation's sake is not necessarily what this specific market calls for, but there's no way that the hardware they are selling should cost what they're charging.

You don't understand as well as you think you do.

Maintaining this tired, obsolete technology in long-term stasis is a feature not a bug, and it's priced accordingly.

Whether this remains the right testing methodology is another question entirely.

Malcolm Gladwell on Why We Shouldn't Value Speed Over Power — 13 April 2017

Adam Grant interviews Malcolm Gladwell on why we shouldn't value speed over power — 1 May 2017

Malcolm Gladwell interviews Adam Grant on how nonconformists move the world — 2 March 2016

Barry Schwartz: Lotteries for College Admissions — July 2012

I'm not the biggest Gladwell, but I thought he was fine in these clips. It was high-flyer Adam Grant who quivered like a little girl when probed about his personal life (this becomes less annoying further in).

First of all, post with your real name to undo the downmod you've just done to my post. You can either participate in a discussion or moderate it — doing both is dishonest.

The NSA has violated the Constitution.

Following the same logic, NSA should be left alone until much larger offenders — like city and state governments — are prosecuted for violating the Second Amendment and the damage done by the violations is undone. Forget "assault rifles" — one can't carry a freaking knife or a slingshot in some locales.

Also, NSA has not obviously violated the Constitution — only someone's understanding of it. For example, there is a seriously put forth line of reasoning, that the above-mentioned Second Amendment only covers arms contemporary to its approval: muskets, single-shot pistols, swords (never mind that many places ban even those). Under that logic, electronic communications are not protected by the Fourth Amendment at all. Perhaps even more importantly, even if we stipulate NSA is breaking it, the Constitution prescribes no punishment for violations. There is no law, under which a "reasonable prosecutor" (wink-wink) can prosecute them.

For all intents and purposes, NSA are allowed to do, what they are doing. It may have been Reagan's executive order, that started it, but neither Carter nor Obama (much less Clinton) has repealed it since.

USMC and other military branches are similarly allowed to kill people — no judge, no jury. Hence my analogy...

they have less reason to fear the police.

Yeah, it's the army they have to deal with...

I kid! I kid! I'm sure they had a perfectly good reason to.... what did they do to that guy?

The Atlantic isn't really a bastion of conservatism, and now they are one of the most respected news sources: not because they've changed, but because the quality of almost everything else has dropped dramatically.

As for the FBI, I don't trust them, period lol. Add the NSA and CIA into that category. You can add Trump into it, too.

And how about if he fired a FBI director that has publicly said on at least three different occasions that he isn't under investigation for anything at all?

When Donald Trump claimed that Comey "has publicly said on at least three different occasions..." he apparently hadn't seen the news.

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

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

All three of those citations have links to video of Comey stating, in English, that Trump is indeed under investigation. If you need a Russian translation, we can probably find one for you.

Yeah, the right wing spent eight years claiming that Obama was flashing secret Muslim Gang Signs and Coded Messages, that the Color of the Drapes was part of the conspiracy, that bit about bowing, and some photographs where they claimed he was using the wrong hand over his heart, but now, now, you want us to give a shit?

Tell you what, you get the GOP to stop believing satirical articles from the Onion are true, and then you can complain. And then there is Sharia law, no-go zones and whatever O'Keefe lied about lately.

Clinton also traveled more than any other SoS, which seems to be a big part of State's job (**cough** Tillerson).

Of course they know you use an ad blocker. That's one more data point they have about you ...

It lumps you into the bucket of people with enough initiative to change the default settings on any aspect of their daily existence. You're probably an educated technocrat.

People Who Use Firefox or Chrome Are Better Employees

Michael Housman ... said that while the company's research hasn't identified anything to suggest causality, he does have a theory as to why this correlation exists. "I think that the fact that you took the time to install Firefox on your computer shows us something about you. It shows that you're someone who is an informed consumer .... you've made an active choice to do something that wasn't default."

Okay, you're harder to neutralize with micro-disinformation.

So they suck you into pointless debates about SpaceX, colonising Mars, medical nanotechnology, life extension, the AI singularity, Hayekian economics, Objectivism, or liberal save-the-world TED porn.

Effectiveness: what you know times what you do.

Wolowitz syndrome: able to configure an ad-blocker, but not exactly picking the right fight.
____

I've already got a bit of file on Robert Mercer.

Yachts seen close together — March 2017

As Rene Magritte would say, "this is not a smoking gun." Not yet, anyway. Hey, that reminds me, has anyone here got a match?

Rachel Maddow Explains "The Money Man" — August 2016

Kellyanne Conway, who ran Robert Mercer's Super PAC, she's a very familiar figure in Republican politics.

What Kind of Man Spends Millions to Elect Ted Cruz? — January 2016

Working with his daughter Rebekah, he's spent tens of millions more to advance a conservative agenda, investing in think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the media outlet Breitbart.com, and Cambridge Analytica, a data company that builds psychological profiles of voters.

Groups he funds have attacked the science of global warming, published a book critical of Hillary Clinton, and bankrolled a documentary celebrating Ayn Rand.

In Japan, pedophiles can buy child sex dolls that appear to reduce harm.

That is easily the most unexpected sentence I have read this year. Having been locked up with many pedophiles and several people I believe to have been falsely convicted of it, I am surprised that I have never heard of this. Wow.

The end justifies the means is a rather dangerous attitude.

Especially since it isn't clear that the means leads to the end. The presumption is that viewing child porn leads to violence against children. There is very little evidence to support that hypothesis, and quite a bit more that contradicts it. Over the last 20 years, access to porn has skyrocketed because of the Internet, but sexual violence has gone down by 55%. Perhaps mastrubating to porn functions as an alternative to "real" sex.

The argument that child porn hurts children during its creation is bogus. This is true because of the illegality. If it was legal, and regulated, it could be created with EFX that avoided the use of actual children, so the harm would go down.

Other countries have taken a more enlightened approach. In Japan, pedophiles can buy child sex dolls that appear to reduce harm. Yet those dolls are illegal in most other countries, including the US and Canada. It is hard to justify that by claiming that it "helps children".

Your audacious assertions aside, they must be doing something right since California is the 6th largest economy in the world and a net tax contributor. The states that are antipodes of California tend to skew towards absolute s**tholes, have the poorest, least educated citizens and receive the lion's share of federal supports.

No one complained one bit back then

Apollo hovered around 50% support back then. Plenty of people complained. I'm honestly surprised to here you say, that no one complained, given I've never seen a single thing you can't find people complaining about.

Most music these days is without DRM, and we still have music being produced. So your prediction bears no relation to reality.
If these stupid media companies would have figure out that embracing the internet is the key to making money rather than trying to slow adoption maybe they would be richer today:

Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America broke good news for the sector it monitors: Music revenues in 2016 were the highest they’ve been in eight years, and year-over-year gains of 11.4 percent were the largest percentage increase seen since 1998. This growth has been almost entirely driven by the rise of streaming, the technology long discussed as the potential savior of the beleaguered music business and that’s now, finally, maybe making good on its potential.

If he was so stressed out that he committed suicide, it means he wasn't a good match for the job. But he must have been quite a bit above average to even make it that far and he could easily have found a well-paying job elsewhere.

It seems likely, given the nature of Uber, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco, that diversity goals may have played a role in his hire. We know from academic environments (where this is easier to study) that this kind of mismatch harms its intended beneficiaries. Success at technical jobs is, after all, not just a question of privilege and knowing the right people.

this site. California's below $1 on the chart, meaning they pay more than they get back. That makes sense. Not a lot of natural disasters, not a lot of military bases, lots and lots of productive industries.

I rate your post 4 Pinocchios. Fake News.

House Intelligence Committee Republicans wouldn't be dragging their feet on the Russia investigation.

Phlease, there is nothing to "investigate" there. I'm yet to hear even a coherent accusation — much less any evidence, however circumstantial or otherwise unreliable.

He actually WAS working on closing it down, by transferring detainees out of Guantanamo

He-he... Much comfort that is — from the loving care of MPs to the gentle mercies of civilian wardens. More importantly, perhaps, Obama also changed the entire doctrine from capturing suspected terrorists to outright killing them. That's actually bona-fide evil, but with media airbrushing it, he was given a pass — even the unwarranted killing of Osama bin Laden was celebrated with only a few people asking, why he was ordered killed, not captured.

To recap, the folks, who roasted Bush alive for detaining suspected terrorists, were perfectly fine with Obama murdering same. And still he has not fulfilled his promise to drain Guantanamo...

until Republicans took over congress under his watch

Two years... Two years was not enough for him to disperse a few hundred prisoners... Trump's been in office for less than 100 days and you are already trumpeting his "failures"...

Cinema is a way for TED to preach its peach-and-civility message to the middle and upper-middle classes. However, it will not reach the mostly-white, poor and unchurched mob (read the Atlantic article for this: Breaking Faith) who fuel the angry political screaming, who ensured Trump's victory, and who neither go to theaters nor will listen to TED. In that way, TED's mission is futile.

House Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, refused to endorse or defend Trump

Oh, really

But back to my central point, which you diverted me from. What I think you understand by "limited government" is not the objective of the wealthy backers of the Republicans: instead, their objective is a government that is hobbled and unable to perform its primary mission. Without sufficient funds, the government cannot collect taxes allowing people (primarily the wealthy) to cheat on their taxes. Without sufficient funds, the government cannot enforce laws designed to protect the environment, to protect employees, to protect the weaker members of society, etc..

Their idea of limited government is one that is incapable of anything except waging war and putting more money into the bank accounts of the wealthy.

If you ran a business where you knew with absolute certainty that, if you hired more people, you would make an additional profit of 6 times the cost of hiring those people, would you hire them? If so, why does the IRS not have sufficient inspectors?

The only scam involved there is the right-wing demagoguery that has led you to believe that people like being poor and unemployed.

Seriously, the majority of the people blabbering about 'welfare queens' and 'moochers' haven't a fucking clue what it is like to be part of the 'non-working poor' (the time you were in college "living off only ramen noodles" does not count). People actually feel like shit due to lack of societal status. Due to the stress involved with not being able to pay bills they have a scientifically proven harder time making decisions. See for instance: https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

Listen, again: please focus on the actual problem. We all know shit flows downstream. If you're middle class, guess whose shit is in your drinking water?

I grew up poor and have seen this first hand. My mom was the working poor during my growing up years so I was side by side with the non-working poor. The non-working poor complain mightily but are easily the laziest people around. Ever notice that poor neighborhoods are full of trash despite everyone having endless time? It's not because of their work ethic. My one childhood friend that I've tried to help will always be "too busy" (his words) for anything productive yet wonders why nothing ever improves for him. To you he must be a victim of society. To me he's simply lazy. The difference is that I know him personally and have seen his "efforts" first hand.

The middle class suffers from 2 scams: the non-working poor

The only scam involved there is the right-wing demagoguery that has led you to believe that people like being poor and unemployed.

Seriously, the majority of the people blabbering about 'welfare queens' and 'moochers' haven't a fucking clue what it is like to be part of the 'non-working poor' (the time you were in college "living off only ramen noodles" does not count). People actually feel like shit due to lack of societal status. Due to the stress involved with not being able to pay bills they have a scientifically proven harder time making decisions.
See for instance: https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

Listen, again: please focus on the actual problem. We all know shit flows downstream. If you're middle class, guess whose shit is in your drinking water?

Actually there was never a formal declaration of war with Korea so it would be hard for Trump to use this non-existent declaration to justify going into North Korea. The Korean war was a UN action that Truman sent US troops to support.

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

So far as I'm concerned, Rotten Tomatoes has for years done a far better job ...

Although Rotten Tomatoes probably has the best movie rating system on the web, it can still be highly inaccurate. For example, the 2014 film Lucy received overwhelmingly positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, despite being one of the most poorly-conceived and totally inane films I have ever seen. See the review by Christopher Orr

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/07/life-is-futile-so-heres-what-to-do-with-it-according-to-lucy-a-spoilereview/375006/

for a detailed accounting of the elements that make this film so horrible. (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was like Shakespeare in comparison.) It boggles my mind that Lucy could be so highly rated on Rotten Tomatoes.

On the plus side, illegal immigration is at the lowest it's been in 2 decades

Not just illegal immigration, people are avoiding traveling to the US in general (Interest in travel to the US has "fallen off a cliff" since Donald Trump’s election - https://www.theguardian.com/tr...) Good! There are enough people here, we don’t need anymore, we’ll make that tourist money up in other ways. Silicon valley tech companies are avoiding letting employees travel to outside the US for fear they won’t be able to get back in. Good! show them with actions it’s better to only hire US workers. I mean what have immigrants ever done for silicon valley and the US anyway?! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

the economy is up by 20%

%20? sure, I follow you brother no citation needed. Either way, great, nothing wrong there. ("Any improvement for the consumer will be balanced out by the higher value of the dollar," Mr. Payne forecasts. http://www.csmonitor.com/Busin...)

and we made a strong-but-measured move in Syria which has garnered praise from many world leaders.

Yes, strength! (Trump's Syria Strike Was Unconstitutional and Unwise - https://www.theatlantic.com/po...)

Hey don't forget it's not just Syria, we are showing our strength all over the world! (civilian deaths - more than 1,000 in March alone - that have come directly as the result of the Trump administration’s other reckless military campaigns across the Middle East over the past few weeks. - https://www.theguardian.com/co...) Yes, this is great! The heavy handed tactics accusations thrown at Hillary which would lead us into war, well now Trump has done them so it’s ok, yeah! We’re #1 we’re #1!

positive effect on relations and negotiations with Iran, N. Korea, and China.

Yes, for sure because they respect a useless reckless show of force over keeping their trade deals in tact.

Limiting illegal immigration should eventually bubble up into more jobs

Yup, I’m pretty psyched, I’m preparing for my new job! It’s at a nice outdoor location in sunny fields actually. Purportedly it reaches about 100F so I should get a good tan out of it to boot! The hours will be refreshing, I will be working from 5AM to 6PM and I’m working with nature, picking fruit, I think I can have a radio with me and I’m making $15 per hour! Great, looking forward to it! The other benefit is I'll be able to take some fruit home in my bag since I won't be able to afford it anymore at the supermarket.

Or is it just another example of government waste?

Yeah, i think it was one of those stupid "Obama liberal biased" attempts to help brown people not get railroaded by local law enforcement practices, good riddance I say!

Yes. Laws, not yet. Actions, there are many already:

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

(it will annoy you about ad blockers is you go down any of the links, but they are touched on in the article)