Politics is Stupid

#1602

Alyssa Milano and a bunch of other sort of famous people have started the NoRA. No NRA organization. They have issues with private citizens giving their money to a civil rights organization. One that fought for minorities to have their rights before any other organization did. And oddly enough, an organization that has supported most of the current restrictions on firearms.

What happens if the NRA does fold and NAGR, or Pink Pistols, or any of the dozen or so second tier groups takes over, the ones that oppose every gun law in the last 50 years? You think it’s bad now, Wait till the most famous spokesman for gun rights isn’t a old white dude, but a lesbian black woman who’s been assaulted and defended herself. The NRA was a “gentleman’s” organization, willing to make deals and seems to be resigned to losing the battle eventually but trying to hold on to what they can as long as their wealthier hunting donors get to keep their guns. That’s changing recently thankfully.

Hell, even the NRA has Colion Noir, who I’ve been watching for years now, and Chris Cheng.

This is another case of rich people who can afford to hire armed guards and live in gated communities trying to tell those damn commoners who is really in control.

As a side note, what are the chances that if they did somehow eliminate an organization with 5+ million members that they would close their doors and donate the remaining funds to charity?

Meanwhile Great Britain is continuing to push their anti knife campaign that I was hoping and praying was a joke… Looks like I won’t be carrying a pocket knife when I go over there in June. Any lockback knife is illegal to carry, and I’m not carrying a knife that doesn’t lock back.

#1603

On the opposite side where politics might not be as stupid, Scott Adams recaps discussions on North Korea. The New York Sun took note of how close he’d been last month.

This is a particularly interesting quote at the end about what the New York Times wrote in February about President Trump having a “preoccupation with military action and refusal to seriously pursue a diplomatic overture to North Korea”, which they call “foolhardy”.

If anyone’s “foolhardy” here, it’s not Mr. Trump, but the Times editorial writers, who apparently hate Mr. Trump so much that they couldn’t see the truth of what Scott Adams had been writing for nearly a year. Part of the point of journalism is to explain to readers what’s really happening rather than stoking false, anxiety-provoking (if click-generating) fears or “foreboding.” By that standard, on the evidence so far, Mr. Adams has done a far better job on the North Korea story than the Times has.

This goes back to something else Scott Adams said earlier. Regardless of how people feel about President Trump’s methods or behavior, a lot of them are probably going to be saying as they look back on his term in the White House, “Well, he got the job done.”

#1604

After reading those two articles which point out how a lot of people missed the real goal of Trump’s actions surrounding North Korea, I realize that there’s another set of actions that we’re probably been missing the real goal on: the wall he wants built on the US-Mexico border.

I think it’s not going to happen, and it isn’t because of how impractical or costly it would be or because history has shown us that isolationism doesn’t work well or anything else that the media points to right now.

I think it’s not going to happen because it won’t be needed, and I think President Trump knows this. I think he knows that by continuing the drum beat of “we must build a wall to solve the immigration problem”, it’s going to get people to start thinking of better solutions. He is encouraging the world to change and work together to figure this out by giving them a topic to focus on that has serious problems about getting it to work.

My reasoning for this goes back three decades to when President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was nicknamed the “Star Wars” system. He knew that mutual assured destruction was wrong, so he wanted a way to destroy inbound missiles before they could re-enter the atmosphere. He told the scientific community, “You gave us nuclear weapons. Figure out how to make them impotent and obsolete.” (paraphrased)

If you read through the Wikipedia article, it has two main points: the technology to make this happen was going to be too costly and take too long to develop to be of any real use, and with the Cold War coming to an end in the 1990s, it wasn’t needed any more.


I don't know if President Reagan knew back in 1983 it wouldn't work and he had a different goal in mind by proposing it. But I'm getting the strong feeling that President Trump does know that building a wall along the border won't work and he does have a different goal in mind.
#1605

A lot of people are scoffing at the thought that Trumpn is playing 4D chess, and I kind of agree. He is playing poker though, and he obviously doesn’t care what the dealer, or the house say about his play style.

He’s already gone from “really Hitler”, to incompetent, to “ok, fine, but we don’t like how he did it” for a lot of people.

All the hyperbole has been just that. We aren’t the Handmaiden’s Tale, we aren’t apartheid, all the things he’s done that were the end of the world haven’t ended it. And the more digging on the 2016 election the worse the DNC looks.

Not my favorite person, spending is still a disaster, he shoves his foot in his mouth on the regular. But he’s killed the correspondents dinner, and shown how horrific some of these people in the media are. I’ve seen plenty of roasts, some of that carp is rough, but this was a bonfire.

#1606

Oddly enough, the Russian investigation also turned up a US link to the Skripal poisoning. Also a potential source of the BZ used in the attack. It’s kinda hard to get all the facts while our media is stuck under this bloody D-Notice.

Almost as if I was right about the whole thing not being Russian at all ~

#1607

Also, just look at this headline from the BBC (snipped, obviously).

03

Apparently gaining more than half the lost UKIP vote, while the Tories entirely fail to pick up the rest of it, is failing to make a decisive gain. Still 30-odd councils to declare though.

#1608

Malema throwing more oil on the fire with his land expropriation claims. Already so sick to death of this thing.

#1609

ÂŁ2,000 extra per year in tax per household to save the NHS.

M’kay. So 26mn households times £2k is £52bn

FIFTY TWO BILLION POUNDS PER YEAR

The Tories are bullshitting so hard I’m amazed the RSPCA aren’t arresting them for causing mass bovine anal prolapse. Considering the current NHS budget is £122bn, that’s more than a third of the current budget.

So what they’re actually saying, whilst trying to make it look like it’s so terribly unfair that the working class is taxed too little to support the country, is that they’re underfunding the NHS by over a third.

Meanwhile, Trident is going to cost another £72bn ish, HS2 is right on track to break the “no, that can’t be right, you’ve put the decimal point in the wrong place” territory, oh yeah and all the large manufacturing companies are fleeing the country.

#1610

wouldn’t it be times the number of households who pay taxes?

And frankly with as high of a tax burden as you guys have, plus VAT I’m surprised you have any heavy industry left. Not to mention easy access to cheap labor across the channel.

#1611

i.e., every household?

#1612

Ya, the guavamint here in SA also want to implement an NHI.

Problem is, too little funds. Also not enough taxpayers and too many people faffing around stealing other people’s stuff or doing sweet FA

An NHI is a noble goal, but it is not sustainable, and will bankrupt a country quickly enough.

#1613

Yeah, in the US there are quite a few people who don’t pay any taxes other than sales tax directly. As of 2017 almost half the country doesn’t pay income tax.

#1614

Yes, but I do pay over $2,000 in fuel taxes every year to help make up for it.

#1615

Trump doing a Corbomite Manoeuver?

#1616

Scott Adams has been recording a lot of video blogs lately but he finally got around to writing one again. The one from this morning goes over his concept that we’re we’re watching “two movies on one screen”. As he describes them:

  • In Movie 1, Trump is a monster with many flaws, racism being at the top of the list.
  • In Movie 2, President Trump ran on a platform of being a Republican who disdains political correctness, and the predictable outcome of that is non-stop accusations of racism.

Adams breaks down each point that is being used to say that Trump is racist and presents it in a logical, matter-of-fact way. Some of it is “Trump didn’t do (insert a specific action here) and that proves he’s racist.” Another was the interview where it was “will you disavow the KKK leader” that Trump countered with “you got a list of everyone I’m supposed to disavow?” but he fumbled it and that made it “he’s racist”.

When you’ve got a guy who won’t use politically correct language and doesn’t apologize for any of his actions or methods, he’s going to ruffle feathers. Personally, I’m not in favor of some of the ways he conducts himself and I said before he needs to put down the Tweet button.

Right now, those ruffled feathers are claiming racism. Will it be that way in the future? I’ve kind of lost track. Is there still “chaos in the White House” because staff is changing? And is Trump still The Next Hitler™? I just did a search for those two things.

For the first, there are a few articles from the past few months that say yes. That kind of died down in late 2017 but picked back up in February. Is it because he views the White House like it’s a business and is shuffling staff to meet goals that don’t line up with a traditional political viewpoint?

As for the second, for just over a year, a lot of people were convinced that it was the absolute truth and it would never change. But that seems to have died around February 2017. I guess they’ve switched to “he’s racist” as their absolute truth that will never change. Should we check back in July 2019 and see if their absolute truth that will never change has changed?

#1617

My feed is getting filled with “We have to get angry to win in 2018!” and “Why aren’t more people angry about what’s happening?”

And most simple reply is “The trains are running on time.” And it’s especially appropriate now since the trains weren’t actually running on time when that was said before, and they aren’t now.

Things, when you aren’t listening to the screamers, seem to be going pretty well. And the more the screamers scream, e.g. the Tonys, the more unhinged they seem. Trump is making some really interesting moves with his pardons, and this summit with Whoa Fat! is going well.

Running around screaming that the sky is falling will only work until people notice it’s not falling. And that goes double for the special prosecutor, as it should for any special prosecutor.

#1618

(Continued from What Made You Happy Today?, tagging @Ook )

Yeah, the Brexit thing is really starting to hit industries hard here. The crop shortages last year were just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce (sorry, couldn’t resist)). A majority of people who voted Leave did so because “oh muh gud, immugrunts!” - totally forgetting that our agricultural and manufacturing industries (ie, the fucking entirety of our labour industry) rely entirely on immigrants who take whatever job they can get… and the stupid thing is, this isn’t industry’s fault.

You’d think in a country with lots of farmland, that we’d have a lot of farmers. No. We have rather few, and they hire in help when needed, instead of keeping a permanent staff. This is also one of the biggest reason that our ‘green and pleasant land’ is now mostly weeds, collapsed drains, barren scrubland, unchecked water sources and quagmire, but I digress.

The help they hire is generally from Europe, because Europe has a large number of handily unemployed people - and Britain doesn’t.

Not because we all have perfect jobs, oh no. Because you’re not allowed to be unemployed. It’s not a legal restriction, yet, but if you stay on jobseekers for too long, suddenly you’re not on jobseekers and you’re homeless (see approx 400% rise in homelessness, 1600% rise in food bank use). The Tories invented these… things… called Zero-Hour Contracts (I’ve mentioned them before) where you are not guaranteed any work at all, but you cannot get work elsewhere because you can be called upon to come to work with only an hour notice.

What does this have to do with farms? Well, the way they’re run now (for profit) means that agricultural farmers hire people for the shortest period possible, and only during harvest. So come harvest, you suddenly need a couple dozen people for a couple weeks. This does not work with the Tory philosophy of YOU WILL WORK EIGHTY HOURS A WEEK EVERY WEEK FOREVER FOR NINEPENCE AN HOUR for some obvious reasons.

What needs to change? Well, stop farming for profit, obviously. Hire staff all year round and when they’re not harvesting they can be doing all the odd-jobs that are actually necessary for the continuation of agriculture as a whole. Managed farmland produces more and is better for the environment.

Will this happen? No. Farmers on the whole vote Tory. Tories don’t want change. Ugh.

And do not get me started on what’s wrong with our manufacturing industry, I only have two hours of battery left.

#1619

Ahh, now that is stuff you won’t see mentioned on newspapers.

Over here the guavamint is looking at land expropriation without compensation. Which means they can take your land away from you without compensating you for that.

First, they need to amend the Constitution. Then, they need to get past the bankers etc.

A lot of people will NOT give up their land without a fight, seems we will see civil war regarding this issue. Meh.

On the other hand, the hoi polloi all want land, and they claim the whites stole their land.

Nice mess.

What they don’t realize is that farmers are a neccessity, without farmers there are no food.

Also, without other people (policemen, firefighters, doctors [incidentally, most people who actually are working for, and have a house]) you’re back into the stone age, because who will give their hard-worked-for piece of land away for free? I’ll seriously consider emigrating to another country which does not do this kind of tomfoolery, and a lot of people will do the same. Drop everything and move out, or stay and fight.

We will have to see what happens, but it won’t be pretty.

And all this because the ruling party want to have votes in order to remain in power.

#1620

Did I mention our current government sacked 20,000 police, 15,000 firefighters, and that our paramedic staff are so overworked they’re planning a fucking ambulance drivers’ strike and the Government’s plan to keep ambulances going is to ask the fir…e…brig…ade… oh.

If the Tories can do it, I’m sorry to say that your guys will find a way too.

There is precedent for British Citizens of the queer community being granted asylum in New Zealand, which is our emergency GTFO plan.

This is what has us split. My partner wants us to move now, before the fascism starts verbatim. I want to fight - not for stupid things like Ingerlund or Britishosity or any of that bullshit. I want to fight because whatever this cryptofascist dystopia we’re sliding into actually is, I want to destroy it and all who support its immoral, hatemongering dogma.

Oh, most definitely. The only reason right now that Frau Kommandant, the Grand High Witch herself (not meant as an insult to witches, just a direct comparison between her and the GHW from the Roald Dahl books (yes I know, coded antisemitism, sorry, but the image itself is apt)), is still in power is because if she resigned, it would not only start a faction war within her own party (Victorian era freaks versus neoliberal haircuts) but likely cause an election which they know they will lose by almost 30 points.

#1621

snigger how apt a description to all such. Especially the one from Matilda.

Love Dahl and his books, but I digress.