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There's too many transgenders!! There's too many Muslims!! There's too many FUCKING BROWN PEOPLE!!! *sniff* *sniff* An' they're all comin' a'git me in my sleep!!

Straw man much?

I don't give a crap about the races of the characters, but I do care when every character that doesn't belong to some minority group is either evil,

I hope that IS a minority....

I don't want to see a gay couple making out in an SF series, but I don't want to see ANYONE who should rather get a room there either. Even the decontamination gel fan service in the Enterprise pilot was unnecessary and misplaces. as are the space mushrooms.

Benjamin Sisko was an awesome protagonist, but apparently somewhere along the way the writers forgot how to write engaging characters and now only make a checklist of diversity requirements without actually making the characters interesting. Diversity is fine, but when that's all that a character has that character becomes a one-dimensional uninteresting caricature.

Yes, but no ST series got that right in a first season. Worf was nothing but aggressive, Q nothing but annoying, Data was the oblig Spock copy. They all started with exactly one character trait Deana Troy even with just one single line: ("Captain! I can sense something here") And in all series they got more complex and interesting. (DS9 mastered this, VOY not so...) so there is still hope for Discovery. What's interesting that they are already bringing their 2nd line of characters into position. Lt. Owesoku and that red haired girl with the metal face implant are ready to replace whoever they killed of in the first season trying to get the G.R.R. Martin Memorial Award

There's too many transgenders!! There's too many Muslims!! There's too many FUCKING BROWN PEOPLE!!! *sniff* *sniff* An' they're all comin' a'git me in my sleep!!

Straw man much?

I don't give a crap about the races of the characters, but I do care when every character that doesn't belong to some minority group is either evil, a fuck-up, or both. Benjamin Sisko was an awesome protagonist, but apparently somewhere along the way the writers forgot how to write engaging characters and now only make a checklist of diversity requirements without actually making the characters interesting. Diversity is fine, but when that's all that a character has that character becomes a one-dimensional uninteresting caricature.

And fucking hell, was it really necessary to make the Klingons sound so retarded by having them speak with a pause between each word? And don't get me started of space mushrooms.

You're a caricature of a young, rich white neo-liberal.

When you grow up and get a job (assuming daddy isn't covering the rest of your life) you're going to look back at this time in your life and say, "Jesus Christ.. I was fucking retarded."

And you won't be wrong.

Unfortunately for liberals - whatever its cause, that caravan is a real crisis.

Best summed up by David Frum: "If you define 'enforcing the border' as fascism, then the American public will hire fascists to do the job liberals won't do."

I know, you don't adhere to that definition and wouldn't try to defend it, but that's not the point. The point is that as long as there is anyone on the left whose position can be caricatured as that, then that is the position that Trump will run against. You need to not only phrase your own position very carefully to make it clear you're in favor of enforcing current law, but also very quickly disown anyone who hesitates to do the same.

You don't get it because there's a lot of misconceptions in your post.

If you are here in this country illegally, you have criminally trespassed. You should be deported.

That is the current law.

The big stories about things like the kids being caged at the border are people requesting asylum that were arrested before they could make their formal request.

This happens because the "it's illegal to enter the US without permission" and "you can enter the US to request asylum without permission" are both on the books. And there are several other contradictions in immigration law which allows people to either stay or be deported based on what ICE feels like at that particular moment.

Law enforcement based on what ICE feels like at that particular moment is not a good system.

I think we could look to encourage more immigration from those that are educated and can come to the US and help the workforce and economy right away.

There's actually a large shortage of farm workers. US people won't do the work for the wages farmers want to pay. So poorly-educated and impoverished Central American farmers can help the workforce and economy right away.

And this is actually the way farming has been done in the US for more than a century. Farmers import undocumented labor and they work the harvests, moving Northward as the year moves on, including into Canada. Then they went back home for the winter. As we ramped up anti-Latino immigration as a campaign tactic, we made it harder to re-enter the country like this. So the workers started staying in the US for the winter.

Long story short, our economy and food supply have always relied on undocumented workers. There is not a sudden crisis. There is the need to turn out angry white voters for one political party.

There will be some lower educated types too, as that all levels are needed, but the ratio needs to be controlled.

Why? Immigrants (from all education levels) end up making far more money and die far wealthier than equivalent US people.

Think about it: You are willing to leave everything at home and walk 2,000 miles, much of it through desert that will try very hard to kill you. If you are so driven that you do that, you are driven enough that you will bust your ass at any job you get once you arrive. You aren't going to say "Ok, that's done. Time to sit on the couch forever". Because if you're the kind of person who would plop on the couch forever, you won't make it through that journey.

The thing that made the US great was that we imported all of the driven people who didn't happen to be born well off, and then waited for those people be successful.

So no, we don't need to control that ratio. The people that are able to make it here will do just fine.

But I just don't get these seemingly increasing number of folks in the US promoting full blown open borders, with no control of who gets in here.

That's because it's a caricature designed to turn out votes for Republicans. It doesn't really exist. The proposals that are the most "open border" still require background checks and investigations of immigrants, rejecting the "bad hombres".

You don't get it because you are not supposed to get it. None of the rhetoric makes sense or is internally consistent. "Those 2-year-olds have to be kept in cages because they're stone cold MS-13 killers who are going to invade your town and kill you in your sleep....while sitting around doing nothing and mooching off public services" (which, btw, they can not get because they can't qualify without an SSN).

It's designed primarily to make you afraid and get you to pull the lever for anyone with an R after their name on the ballot.

The secondary goal is to stifle debate on the issue, so that any attempt to discuss reforming this horrific dystopia of contradictory laws where children who can't read yet are suppos

That is, we have become our own caricature of 1984.

We have become our own caricature of the Soviet Union.

> I am not Japanese nor have I been there but I know people who've worked and lived there.

It's easy to pontificate from afar, but you are basing your opinions on caricature and hearsay. Ideas that sound plausible and true don't always play out that way in real life. There's a lot of nuance in reality

You shouldn't be speculating on reasons for the Japanese situation without having lived it at least in part.

Musk is at best a caricature of Jobs, and not a very good one.

He can't do the three things that make Jobs stand out: shut up, execute and deliver.

Musk is a loud wanker with a disproportionately large ego and a bit of good luck, that's all.

I hate that the lynch mob mentality of the left (also evidenced in the Duke Lacrosse case). I am liberal on some issues and conservative on more but I also hate the fact that we have elected a president who so pushes the buttons on the left. He is a living caricature of just about everything they hate and so easily mocked.

They can already get away with blatant lying and fool 51% of voters. We are seeing just how extreme 1 side can go with it already.

Profound affects on everybody's lives are already happening. It's so fast that the majority are aware of the shift; but as it becomes the new normal it'll be hardly any different over time than the gradual slide we've had since WW2; when weaponized psychology became widespread.

It'll probably take another horrific shameful war before "Lying Press" becomes a taboo phrase in this culture like it did in Germany. They know what that helped create; people here do not-- hell, we named our unified federal police Fatherland Security - some neo-nazi must feel great having slipped that one bye everybody.

I don't know that they fooled 51%. Thanks to voter rolls purges, gerrymandering, denying rights to vote to people who do certain things that a populace presumed to vote a particular way get caught and successfully prosecuted for WAY disproportionately creates a situation that can only be called a democracy (or a republic) sarcastically. HOWEVER, I think even among those who DID vote for the End of Civilization As We Know It, (if I can borrow a turn of phrase, from whom specifically I regrettably cannot recall,) a lot were probably NOT fooled. They knew who and WHAT, more to the point, they were voting for, and I think of THOSE people, some portion were looking for payback for all those who voted for or supported Barrack Obama, for America having had a black President.

I think some of them looked at the options, and said via their votes, "oh YEAH? well, I'll see your black," (he was half white too*,) "Muslim," (he wasn't, not that that does or even should matter,) "foreign-born," (again, he wasn't, but you can't force knowledge into a closed mind,) "President, and raise you a crazy, stupid, incompetent, Russian-Mafia-backed/controlled 'president'! HA! Now what, huh?!?"

The rest of the ones who supported him and weren't fooled, (I'm sure some WERE absolutely fooled, but again, some were not,) knew who and more to the point, again, WHAT they were voting for, and didn't care... they just wanted to heave a giant, stupid, orange BRICK through the window of American politics, and honestly, it's hard for me to blame them at least for WANTING to do that. They saw the system as wrong, as rigged, as being only a sad caricature of a democracy or representative republic or whatever you wanna call it, and they wanted to give the people who have been rigging the system and ripping them off and expecting their loyalty a big, fat, orange middle finger. That's Donald Trump, I think, to some of them, (note THEM, not US; I didn't vote for that pathetic fucker,) Trump was their big, fat, fully extended, lone middle finger. Again, I can totally sympathize with the DESIRE even if I disapprove of the action. The system certainly seemed to NEED a brick heaved through its window, and for ME, that brick was an independent (or so I believed him to be,) Senator from the Great State of Vermont. A brick that would not only have broken the window, but then CLEANED FUCKING HOUSE. Instead the so-called "Democratic" (hahaha) party tried to shove Hilariously Rotten Clinton, (who can't be TOO upset with how things turned out, after all, it's not like all those people who paid her legalized-bribes had to be repaid, so she got to keep all those nice "speaking" fees... from Gold Man Sacks and whoever all else paid her whatever other money she took, to screw us over if she managed to slither her way into the White House,) down our throats, and we, many of us, refused.

(I voted instead for the only person running in the 2016 US General Election who had any qualifications for the office at all, even if I disagreed with him on a lot of things, and was embarrassed by how he'd apparently not bothered to keep up with current events he might be asked about. I WANTED to vote for Jill Stein, but unfortunately I can read, and I take the responsibility that comes

The graph shows debt as percentage of GDP; the graph slopes downward not because any debt was paid off but because of economic growth.

We could go on a tangent about whether GDP percentage or absolute dollars is a better measure, but no need. You are still wrong: https://www.brillig.com/debt_c...

What makes you think that Jim O'Sullivan is a Keynesian? Plenty of people who reject Keynesianism build mathematical economic models (I do).

Anybody who uses mathematical modeling is not an Austrian economist, because Austrian economists eschew quantitative methods on philosophical grounds.

Furthermore, O'Sullivan may simply have been lucky.

MarketWatch explained that the chances of O'Sullivan being this successful is less than 1 in 37 million. He's been the best economic forecaster, far and away, for several years running. He's had to get lucky hundreds of times a year (that's how often he beats the consensus estimate) and do it many years in a row. That's not luck - he's using state-of-the-art quantitative analysis, which is explicitly rejected by the Austrian school.

But Austrian economists continue to put hyperinflation predictions out there that are easily proved wrong when said hyperinflation fails to materialize over and over.

You obviously are only familiar with a caricature of Austrian economics.

No, I'm citing the Austrian economists that claimed Obama's economic policies would cause hyperinflation. This was a common claim. If you think those are unrepresentative, show me an economist who is making good predictions without using mathematical models, like a good Austrian.

At the end of the day, something like economics is only useful to the extent that it has predictive power

Austrians don't dispute that economics is useful, they dispute that it is a science.

I never said that economics is a science - you are just distracting from the main point. Since you didn't respond to it earlier, I'll repeat my basic contention:

Either economics can make useful predictions, in which case it makes claims that are falsifiable, or it doesn't make useful predictions, in which case it's completely pointless.

So which is it?

It shows debts being paid off after the War of 1812, Civil War, WWI, Great Depression, and WWII. Only in the 80's did we start to charge up debt without paying it down.

I'm sorry, I thought you could figure it out. The graph shows debt as percentage of GDP; the graph slopes downward not because any debt was paid off but because of economic growth.

Keynesians use state-of-the-art mathematical modeling to make predictions. And some of them are damn good at it

What makes you think that Jim O'Sullivan is a Keynesian? Plenty of people who reject Keynesianism build mathematical economic models (I do). Furthermore, O'Sullivan may simply have been lucky.

But Austrian economists continue to put hyperinflation predictions out there that are easily proved wrong when said hyperinflation fails to materialize over and over.

You obviously are only familiar with a caricature of Austrian economics.

At the end of the day, something like economics is only useful to the extent that it has predictive power

Austrians don't dispute that economics is useful, they dispute that it is a science.

The media is going to make any GOP person (even an outsider in this case) as an imbecile.

They did the same thing for Raegan, McCain, George W, Palin, and Romney. Among others.

The economy is roaring according to many Democrats and voters don't care about caricatures on beltline snob-aganda.

This latest controversy is proof that Mueller has nothing. Many people were relying on Mueller to release a report by labor day and put in motion the removal of Trump. I am sure the Woodward book release was timed to add flames to the fire of the Mueller report. Oops no Mueller report now we have a book that is 100% hearsay with nothing to back it up. So NYT releases a hearsay op-ed that backs up the book. The op-ed reads like a caricature of how someone with TDS assumes the administration works. I don't buy it.

And I assume by "average" you mean "typical", which is actually way below the average. But moogule is definitely aiming even lower, with that human caricature of a presenter and his "special needs children" intonation.

All that was missing was the background YEEEs, naturally cued by a big flashing sign, because otherwise how do then know when to cheer?

True... in fact, if I ever met somebody who tried to present this rationale, I would ask why they are wearing clothes right now.

This is one aspect I've always wanted to see actually done in science fiction: trying to demonstrate what a would would be like if there really was no privacy and people just had to accept it. I don't know if the "required nudity" was the big thing stopping people from going through with it or merely that it's so impossible to even imagine a world where privacy was so irrelevant and secrets so unreal that people would have no shame nor consideration for a thing that was incidentally private.

It's like "The Invention of Lying". I like the premise. But if you really start playing it out instead of being a caricature trying to point out all the absurdities of our society, it becomes incredibly hard to actually imagine what life would be like. It's also quite possible that it wouldn't "lead" anywhere and so wouldn't be engaging enough to watch (or sensical enough to really understand). We need another Philip K Dick, although I'm not sure if even he would be up for the challenge.

In Western media indeed you have quite the circle jerk sometimes, first with the original iPhone, then the iPad, but also other things like the Wii, certain high profile movies and series (remember Lost, Prison Break, Game of Thrones) and even season finale (Breaking Bad).
I can tell you all of this happened in France.

Note that with just a few Western European languages you're covering several continents (both Americas, much of Europe at least the wealthy parts, much of Africa, Oceania), many hundreds millions people. This gets a media circle jerk going, fast. Add Chinese, Japanese, Korean, the other European languages and Arabic and Russian then you've got global bullshit going (your product is in ads, or even makes the fucking news)

India? for some reason it's always seemed so remote to me. Take no offense. Like Turkey or Iran their language seems not global at all (in fact, what is India's language? er, Hindi but how many do speak it there?). The country seems so culturally independent and alien to me. The caricature is a thousand people in the streets, self-employed and working in the streets, famously bathing in the river or having colorful ancient-looking lives. I just don't see how reading news articles that masturbate about iPhones fits in there.

No, my definition of non-asshole does not include your misogynistic caricatures.
Odd that you can't seem to get a grip on the whole non-asshole thing.
Is it really that slippery a concept?

Oh, then you should not read the caricatures of Klaus Stuttmann.

It's German, but even without Google translate most of it makes sense.