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I'm haven't decided yet which candidate for US President I
think is worse and/or if there's any hope of voting for a 3rd
party, but if you combine some of their policies it could
get some interesting results.
An article I read about flip-flopping positions contrasted
two statements from Clinton:
“We have to send a clear
message that just because your child gets across the
border, that doesn’t mean your child gets to stay.” and
“the children themselves need to be taken care of. They
are children. They should be given every help that we
can.”
I disagree with the article that those two statements are
completely contradictory. Just because we're taking care
of the kids doesn't mean that we aren't reuniting them
with their parents in their country of origin at our soonest
convenience. However I haven't seen anything about what
she thinks we should actually do with these children and
how we can send a message.
Trump on the other hand does have a plan: make the
Mexican's build a wall. Now if that plan weren't entirely
half-baked, it might actually reduce illegal immigration.
So it's simple. Hold the children hostage until the parents
come to the border and perform 6 months of "community
service" working on the wall. Then give them their kids
back.
Message delivered.
Wall built by Mexicans.
Kids taken care of.
No possible holes in this plan...
[link]
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// Then give them their kids back. // |
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//Hold the children hostage// so... house, feed, clothe and educate them, while waiting for the parents to show up ? |
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^ it's really our only hope |
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// house, feed, clothe and educate them, while waiting for the parents to show up ? |
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Parents who think trebuchet delivery is cruel and inhuman
would be allowed to choose the aim point and launch force
themselves. Happiness all around. |
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Most kids would probably love to be thrown by a trebuchet - the first time, anyway. After that, maybe not so much. |
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It's amazing how this wave of anti-freedom is casting its long shadow over both Europe and the US. Here in the UK, we voted to strip people of their freedom to work and travel freely within Europe, and over there in the US, people are (presumably) planning to vote to limit the freedoms of people and their ability to pursue their own happiness. |
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There must have been some event or tipping point when the world, after all the pro freedom rhetoric and generally optimistic view of globalisation post WWII tied to the general anti-authoritarian stance against the USSR, pivoted back to the small-minded, protectionist, nationalistic, authoritarian world-view that pervades today - it's a distinctly marked change - what did I miss? |
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//what did I miss?//
2001 and 2008, I think. |
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You missed a failed economic recovery from a mini-
depression, [zen_tom]. |
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//planning to vote to limit the freedoms of people and their ability to pursue their own happiness. // Apart from in Chicago where people are busy exercising their right to bear arms then use them to kill each other. "Thirteen people were killed and at least 52 others, including a pregnant woman, were wounded in shootings across Chicago over Labor Day weekend, according to Chicago Police." Chicago.cbslocal |
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//Thirteen people were killed// That sounds like a prime case of limiting people's freedom to pursue their happiness [xenzag] |
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//2001 and 2008// Oh yeah, that (those). |
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//failed economic recovery from a mini- depression// I guess. |
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Depressingly, all this adds up to a replay of the early 1930's - a retreat from globalisation, economic drudge, unrest in the Balkans, cats and dogs living together. |
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Picking other analogs from the time, France invested a fair amount into their own wall (ok, the Maginot Line) not that it did them a lot of good. |
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//France invested a fair amount into their own wall //
*digs pit, fills it with sticks, covers it with armaments*
Also Hadrian
*waits for 8th* |
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" Not a suggestion: just a random concept that popped into my head " |
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" It didn't stop avacados " |
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Zombie Trump discussion has taken over nearly every other
social media outlet in existence and some that aren't even
fully developed yet. Can we not escape from it here? Did
someone knock a hole in the halfbakery wall? |
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How about a wall built by paralegals? |
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^ :waiting for [8th] to add pertinent quip about skeet
shooting: |
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How about a wall built OF paralegals ? |
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The electorate wising up to what all those lefty-pinko-liberal hand-wringing bleeding-heart socialists are up to, along with their quasi-Trotskyist crypto-Maoist fellow travellers, and pushing them back into the festering pit from which they crawled and rolling a big heavy rock on top. |
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The only people who describe societally disadvantaged folks as parasites had themselves a privileged upbringing. |
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Developed societies have supported infrastructures that create the weaker and more impotent members of that society.
You get what you screen for. |
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[zen tom] the masses, no matter how ignorant, even babies raised by wolves... know exactly when they are being used.
I don't know the moment when it started but it was the same day Wagon*Wheels began to shrink by increments and the Big Macs' hamburger patty was no longer wider than its bun. |
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When the money-lenders got control of the gold which was supposed to be held in trust for every piece of script handed out in its place, the balance tipped.
When the price of rent tripled while the minimum wage stayed the same, the scale tipped further.
When the constitution suddenly became something the people needn't concern themselves with... the fulcrum gained some speed. |
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I call it the WagonWheels effect. |
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I ate turkey for Thanksgiving last year. I also had it
several days after. After awhile I got sick of turkey.
Does that make me a hypocrite? |
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And for what its worth, Trump is thr biggest parasite
of all. |
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2 fries, most economists call it the law of scarcity. |
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I agree with almost everything you've just said except the feeling of guilt part.
The only guilt I feel is the occasional survivors guilt when I think about the people in my life who were not able to keep their sanity. |
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I totally get what you're saying about "losers syndrome" though.
It's a cycle that society fosters with hand-outs. It's the same reason that Socialism only works in small groups.
When it's more advantageous to be needy than productive, people will develop all sorts of reasons for others to wipe their asses for them. |
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But how many people have what it takes to develop a work-ethic and grit that allow them to accomplish whatever they set their minds to, despite any adversity, even when pitted against one another on a level playing field ?
...and should the adversity of a tilted field exist at all? |
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I believe that there should be a minimum standard of living beneath which no human being should be allowed to sink... and it has to start with children. |
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No infant is born with a Loser Syndrome mentality.
That mind-set is drilled into them by the adults in their life while growing and we are almost all hardwired to please our parents and follow-the-leader as children, so the fact that you and I and a handful of others had the chutzpah to not conform to that conditioning just makes us abnormal-to, not better-than. |
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I can't look down on the one's who weren't strong enough.
I still don't know how the hell I was strong enough to get through.
I didn't even know then that there was a "through" and you probably didn't know if you'd make it either. |
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When the majority of society get suppressed by a minority of society, the suppressed rise up, over, and over, and over again throughout history like a tide.
It does no good to tell the tide that it's being too needy and should just quit surging already. |
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// The cycle needs to stop. // |
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Stick a broom handle through the front spokes. Works every time. |
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Woops we were both annotating at the same time last night [bigsleep], I didn't see yours between [LimoNotes] and mine until this morning. |
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//I'm not sure what you are getting at.// |
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It's hard not knowing the words for the concepts I had to make my own words for.
Like Loser Syndrome, and WagonWheel effect. |
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When people are born, (to use your word), disenfranchised the people around them are almost all on the take for ways to work the system rather than be self sufficient.
That same mentality allows someone not disenfranchised like Trump to declare bankruptcy and then rebound from scratch to do it all over again.
I don't think that bankruptcy should expunge debts for any person, corporeal or corporate including banks, but defer that debt. |
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That minimum standard of living thing would cut both ways then.
Mr. Trump would not be allowed to sink any deeper than the minimum, but would not be allowed to rise above it until his debts are paid, and no one else would sink beneath that mark because of his past actions. |
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Yes I know that will never happen but it makes for a lovely visual doesn't it?
The Donald pacing his little one-room apartment muttering about how unfair it all is. |
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//I wasn't particularly talking about those in poverty, but the majority who feel they want change and they want it now. It's that majority I think who are disenfranchised, rather than have any real beef with immigrants or refugees.// |
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Well, those in poverty constitute more than 90% of humanity.
If that's not a 'majority' then I don't know what that word means. |
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//It shouldn't be unions protecting people from crap like this, it should be the laws of business or more to the point government taxation to clean up the mess.// |
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No.
People need to protect themselves.
There are many governments who seem to have their shit together and use tax money properly... you know, education, health care, maternity/paternity leave, vacation time... that whole quality of life chestnut. |
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When your country holds most of the natural resources on the planet and a majority of its people are struggling then that government is doing a piss poor job of managing its leverage properly. |
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Folks are getting more than pissed off.
Those folks constitute the majority, yet the talking-heads say otherwise. |
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Howabout a wall built by volunteers of people who think a
wall would be a good idea? |
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<Wonders how long before it's time to call "Godwin's Law !"> |
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//n Europe we see things as a team effort and struggle
to
improve things. // |
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Absolute nonsense. In Europe, which exists as it does
only because of America (double check with the
Ukranians, Latvians and the Poles if you're in doubt),
and
is
disintegrating in part of because of America's
disengagement, you revel in a perceived luxury of
depressed defense budgets and cheap immigrant labor
that is now driving immense nationalist pressures into
practically every European country, not to mention
terrorism. The fact that you have a committee of
obnoxious bureaucrats that seeks to mandate how
much
fish a Portuguese fisherman can catch, instead of
leveraging markets does nothing to ultimately "improve
things". I'll venture that AirBnB improved things for
them much more so than any government ever did. |
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Better pray that either malodorous US
Presidential choice finally kicks the world's economy
into
higher
gear, either through design, sheer luck or statistical
reversal to mean and pulls the rest of the planet up,
otherwise European disintegration, perhaps inevitable
in
any case, is certain to continue. |
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As to our values, this may be no country for old men (if
you assume living in a gated community with a pool
and a
golf course in Arizona or Florida is hell itself), but
I'll take Westworld over Melancholia any day |
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More accurately, business is just about to not need labor. |
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As to walls, they've failed many times even before
canons, from Jericho on down, but you know, the reason
they kept building them is though history books largely
talk about sieges that succeed, they were notable in
their deviation from the norm. |
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I'm the ultimate fan of free trade, but until we are under
a single fiscal government, open borders are inconsistent
with the welfare state. |
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Yes, they are - and whos fault is that ? Yours, [Limp], that's who. All your fault. You should be sent back where you came from, and made to build a wall to keep yourself out, too. |
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// I was talking about the majority in western countries re: the recent narrow-mindedness and right wing attitudes.// |
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That's not the tide though, that's just the froth on top. |
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//Would getting a competent government in be protecting yourself ? Or do you mean with a gun for when the right wing nuts really go nuts.// |
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Yes. Both of those things, and others besides. |
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//There seem to be way too many gravy trains in the US from medical care ($200 for a bandage), zoning, private schools and probably some more, but all seem like semi-legal excuses for vastly over-charging or embezzling huge amounts of money. By resources I assume you mean money as its probably price gouging from private companies that is draining the US of its resources. Energy and food are relatively small markets, although it doesn't stop the likes of Enron and Monsanto to try and stitch those up too.// |
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I'm talking about Canada selling itself and its resources piecemeal rather than as manufactured goods. We don't much need to trade for anything with the rest of the planet. We have the ability to get our own shit together without free trade... especially with countries which impose taxes and levies on anything its citizens purchase from us when there are no such deterrents in place to keep wealth from flowing steadily in a one-way direction, namely East. |
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// No mention of immigrants there. |
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I just wondered if people knew their wall building frustrations should actually lie elsewhere.// |
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This is Canada. No walls happening. We're all immigrants here other than the natives. If new immigrants want to shiver alongside us then we can use all the body heat we can get. |
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ps. I fixed your spelling mistakes. |
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It's called the Columbia Icefield. |
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//I'm the ultimate fan of free trade, but until we are
under a single fiscal government, open borders are
inconsistent with the welfare state.// |
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That is, if you can show that the resultant net
economic effect of an open border policy is a loss. |
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I would actually agree that there's some rising tide
effect, Ray. Nor am I against importing physicists,
nuclear or otherwise. |
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The problem is that with the ongoing restructuring of the
economy, which is accelerating, the net benefit of
cheaper labor is fast going to be replaced by the net cost
of carry. |
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The two coasts are already at a loss as to what to do
with the rest of the country. I can't imagine that's
continuing to import cheap labor will help. |
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When real estate values are so high on the coasts that
essential service workers can't afford to live there, the rest
of the country is something at a loss as to what to do with
the coasts as well. |
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Right, so while Rome and Byzantium strategize... |
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