Re: Immigration
 

You know, we do often wonder where you are and what you do.


It's nice that we can be unified in our hatred of stupidity. Kumbaya, Namaste, Cheers!

Re: Immigration
 

Sounds about right - so over 20 years. Before that I think you're back to Iran-Contra.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

The hearing film, then the press conference, I am so impressed by this family. I mean we were stupid drunk guys in college, then friends in social situations, but never see each other professionally. he is an electrician and handled those statements perfectly. And the daughter(s) were killer.

Re: Nunes Memo
 

Nothing burger for which it was offered. But it's also a public confirmation that the FBI found enough in its surveillance of Page for Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee, to continue that surveillance. That's pretty darn close to an admission of collusion.

The only reason it's not is that Page could have been doing spying independent of his work for Trump.

Re: Nunes Memo
 

An out of control two-car Trolley is speeding toward Devin Nunes. You have the ability to pull a lever and send it toward Donald Trump. Do you try to unhook the second car and hit them both?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This could also apply to the Right. There's a lunatic fringe. But then there are the other 80% of people on the right who are on a continuum. Some quite conservative, some not so much.

The hard Left and hard Right are equally deluded and frivolous.

I have an immediate revulsion to anyone calling fouls, for anything. I even hated it when I was a kid playing basketball. It's a lizard brain thing.

I hated doing plaintiff's work and have a suspicion of law enforcement for this reason. My inclination is to let things work themselves out. I'd rather see people take up arms in revolution, or do it non-violently (whatever works) than go through the political or legal processes.

Sure they do. I even identify as Left. My social policies and support for a universal wage (even just out of practical necessity) and environmental regulations exile me from the Right tent.

It's people who seek redress through the systems. I'm of the opinion that taking direct negative action against something, including sabotaging, subverting, and refusing to participate in the system that's screwing you is preferable to working within it.

Neither party gives me in excess of 60% of what I want:

1. Pro-choice
2. Anti-religious liberty
3. Pro-environmental conservation
4. Pro-justice reform (incl. drug war)
5. Anti-govt redistribution schemes
6. Pro-direct redistribution (universal wage)
7. Anti-non-essential regulation (Pilots? Yes. Banks? Less.)
8. Pro-shrinking govt (it's too involved)
9. Moderate on taxes
10. Absolutist on free speech
11. End license leveraging schemes (lawyers, CPAs, almost all licenses save those involving dangerous work [pilots, docs, etc.])
12. Moderate on gun control
13. Anti-interventionist (Bush Doctrine)

I'll never find an adequate politician.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It is literally true that there are similarities between the Left and the Right. But when the asymmetries are so important to understanding what is happening in this country, your emotional commitment to ignoring them -- to downplaying the importance of the far right and exaggerating the importance of the far left -- is remarkable. By your own description here, the lunatic fringe of the Right is 20%. Have you not noticed that this lunatic fringe punches far above its weight getting its way, both within the GOP and in the country. Many of them have an awful lot of money, which is key, but also there is a culture in the GOP that tolerates extremism but not moderation. On the other side, none of this is true. There are no leftie Koch brothers. The Democratic Party is fundamentally prepared to compromise, which always means moving to the center. Democrats and the left make their own mistakes and have their own pathologies.

Your both-sidesism is a form of myopia.

Basketball sucks when people play rough and dirty because nothing's getting called. To play and to watch.

Why?

Those things don't make you Left. Sorry.

Why?

Well, sure -- that list is incoherent. Most of the items make sense on their own, but they do not cohere in any meaningful way that I can see.

Re: Sebby being recockulous again
 

Since the Bush Doctrine generally refers to the view that the use of pre-emptive force is justified by a major power, including unilateral action where no casus belli against a state exists, it's going to be real hard to find an anti-interventionist who ascribes to the Bush Doctrine.

Just the idea that you're associating a President who got us into two wars of choice with anti-interventionism is kind of asstounding.

Re: Sebby being recockulous again
 

I meant I was against the Bush Doctrine. I put it in parentheses because I’m generally anti-intervention, but particularly anti-Bush Doctrine.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

In 10th grade Thurgreed grew out his afro, it was like a foot and a half out. And if you touched his hair he called a foul. Your hand couldn't go anywhere near him without almost touching it, so you couldn't guard him. Once we were playing outside and he called a foul on a gust of wind.

We were all glad to see him going bald start of 12th grade.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I used to play pick-up against a bunch of guys on the school's (national-championship-winning) hockey team. Boy was I careful not to foul them too hard.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Do your stories at The Moth ever contain humor?

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I was trying to remember if hair touching was a foul. When I was early college there were a couple of guys with really big afros. I can't remember how to guard them. Then I tried to raise the question in a board-centric way.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I agree Ds are willing to compromise and Rs are not.

I prefer working outside the system because the system is sclerotic, and designed to preserve the current status quo (all established systems do this, of course). If the system is built to fuck you, or is regularly fucking you, you don’t benefit from fighting within it. You need to disrupt it. Or destroy it.

All great and important change is created by challenging, sabotaging, or subverting systems. What’s tech but a giant system disruption?

Grieving your issues within the redress procedures of a society won’t change that society quickly and in any significant fashion. If you’re being screwed unfairly under the current governing structures, the only real redress is to seek to avoid, destroy, or render ineffectual those structures.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm not really sure what you mean by working outside the current status quo. Because of where I live and what I do, I am surrounded by people extolling "disruption" 24/7 and the word no longer means anything. How do you think the political status quo should be "disrupted"? And don't even talk about destruction, or rendering politics "ineffectual." You don't really mean it, and you don't want to live in Somalia. Those are just empty buzzwords.

eta: Also, not also "disruption" is good. Mitch McConnell disrupted traditional norms by refusing to give Obama's pick for the Supreme Court a vote. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is disrupting the traditional role of the press secretary by lying from the White House podium. Trump is disrupting the traditional role of DOJ by attacking it. I'm guessing that you don't like these changes, even though they are disruptive.