Picaro
Picaro's JournalAt the heart of every problem we face lies overpopulation.
It doesn't matter which problem you look at, global warming, deforestation, environmental degradation of all types, the chaos and bloodletting in the Middle East, the 6th major extinction--it all ties back to overpopulation.
When I was in college back in the 70s a lot of us talked about it and read books about it and tried to figure out how to address it. China even tried to do something about it. India chose to do nothing. So, now India is the most populous planet on the globe and China has dropped their one child policy ( The one child policy was a very dictatorial ham-fisted approach to spiraling overpopulation that had some very strange side effects in their society).
The truth is staring us in the face is that there are just too damn many of us. The problem of overpopulation is absolutely unsolvable when you couple that with fundamentalist religions that demand their followers breed without restraint.
Scientists are warning us that the system is blinking red. We are on unsustainable path. We are using far more resources than the world can supply and we're doing it in a very very short period of time.
Huckabee confirms (again) that he is complete fool and anti-American
His lovely daughter didn't fall far from the tree. Ole Mikey is always a blathering idiot. I'm surprised that Trump hasn't given him a job too.
Think I predicted this yesterday
Trump will now start hammering on the filibuster. Even though, in this case, the filibuster didn't cause the defeat (it was a straight up loss).
However, avoidance of the filibuster, is what led to the structure of the bill (whatever it was called in its final iteration).
McConnel really doesn't want to give that up though. I don't think Trump has much stroke with the Senate right now.
This is another example of his dysfunctional leadership style
Trump's leadership style comes from running a private operation where he could rule in anyway he liked.
No one has ever told him 'no' to his face (I'm sure people found ways to thwart him indirectly).
He has never developed the skill set to do this job. As Hillary (and many others) said he is completely unsuitable for the job in temperament, backgiround, and life experience.
He thinks he's a god king and everyone is working for him and can't understand that the loyalty is to the nation and the Constitution.
I hope he does fire Sessions
I think it is inevitable that Trump fire Mueller. Firing Sessions is the step before that.
I don't know if the Republicans are capable of waking up and realizing that Trump is their disaster.
If they continue to follow him they are signing their own death warrants. If they pull up and start using the power of their branch of government they have some hope of survival.
I want Trump fully paralyzed and unable to get his judicial appointments done.
This is why some are not calling for Trump's impeachment
If Trump goes then we have Pence. If
Pence goes then Ryan. If Ryan goes then Hatch.
Having someone as President that thinks like this is truly horrifying to contemplate.
Using this reasoning if are not able to afford water, food, Healthcare...then you are free to die. The blessings of liberty I suppose. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose (Me and Bobby McGee).
There are so many in the Republican Party that think this way... Is it a virus? A worm from outer space that has infected their brains?
They call themselves Christian, but in their hearts they would be at home with the worshippers of Baal.
Wish it was that simple
An edifice the size of the U.S. government doesn't just collapse and pieces of it reform into separate independent provinces.
There's a lot of people with a lot of guns, but aside from a few militias there's no organization out there to fill the vacuum.
We'll stay together but I'm afraid that it will be as a totalitarian autocracy with the families like the Trumps, the Kochs, the Gates, the Buffets, the Waltons becoming our aristocracy.
The Constitution will continue to be given lip service, but not really obeyed in any real sense.
I see a more extreme version of today emerging. It can all be traced back to a collapse of civic virtue in the rich and the death of shame.
They are trapped by the reconciliation process
This didn't look doable at the outset due to what the Senate Republicans cannot do via the reconciliation process limitations (if they deal with anything in the bill that is not revenue/tax impacting such as getting rid of pre-existing condition protections then the bill becomes vulnerable to the filibuster.)
So, that leaves only one thing. Going with the nuclear option and eliminating the filibuster for anything.
Is McConnell that desperate?
I'm thinking no, but Trump is going to make life really uncomfortable for his own McConnell and his own party.
Trump just wants a bill to sign. He doesn't seem to care what this does to his putative party and what impact this could have on the 2018 mid-terms. He may be thinking he'll have the game so rigged by that time that it won't matter what happens in 2018 and beyond.
John Bolton continues to confirm that he is an idiot
Wow. You gotta hand it to him. He is nothing if not consistent.
Bolton is the one that in the immediate post-Clinton days when Bush had come up with the "Axis of Evil" decided that rather than continue to maintain the Clinton sanctions/reward method where the North Koreans were actually allowing the AEC to install and monitor cameras inside the North Korean nuclear facilities that we would cut off all contact with them and impose even harsher sanctions.
So, the North Koreans turned off all the cameras and now 17 years later North Korea is a bonafide nuclear power that is now testing ICBMs. Most experts don't think it will be that long before they have the capability to hit mainland US.
While you can't definitively lay the blame at Bolton's feet (there was Cheney, Bush, and others that actively supported Bolton--indeed this is why he was made US Amabassador to the UN) this general approach was hands down the least effective of all the methods that had been tried in attempting to find some rapprochement with the North Koreans. While they were extremely difficult to negotiate with they did respond to a basic carrot/stick approach. Whether that, long term, would have kept them from developing nuclear weapons is unknowable. They always cheated on every agreement. This was why the Bush administration decided to punish them by shunning them. Kind of a national time out. They used that time out to work ever harder at developing a nuclear capability.
Once Kim Jong Un took over, not having the temperance that comes with age, he set the weapons/missile efforts into overdrive.
It can be safely concluded that at the minimum John Bolton helped the make a bad situation even worse.
This latest suggestion is simply insane. How exactly would China go about "elminating" North Korea? The methods available to China are available to us (invasion or a nuclear decapitation strike). I can only suppose that he is suggesting a nuclear decapitation strike which the US, South Korea, Japan, Russia might well take exception to...and would be far more complicated and problematic than he seems to think.
It is comforting to know that John Bolton continues to be the idiot that he has always been. Of course, we have someone in the Presidency that makes Bolton look measured, calm, and judicious so the comfort is small at best.
What a turd
Still on the campaign after all this time.
The man is utterly mad.
To make these kinds of comments to a crowd of boys and parents and turn it into some sort of fascist youth rally.
Every day he shows us that he has zero sense of propriety, of good and evil...
How he disgusts me.
Profile Information
Name: Ernie FergusonGender: Do not display
Hometown: Plano, TX
Home country: USA
Current location: Plano, TX
Member since: Thu Apr 30, 2009, 11:22 AM
Number of posts: 1,520
