Category: Uncategorized

Why the wall is a bad idea

When I first posted this it was just a list, but after reading and responding to a tweet from a friend, I felt a need to elaborate. There are a lot of people going without a paycheck now and the pain is getting real. Imagine being forced to choose between vital medicine and the electric bill. I’ve read some Trump supporters ( or perhaps Russian trolls ) belittling the struggle by pointing out that back pay will be coming, but there are some people in situations that can’t be put on hold. And not everyone can save three or four months in advance just in case the government doesn’t keep its promises.

But as terrible as the current situation is, it’s important to keep in mind what a terrible idea the wall is. The amount of long-term hardship that will be caused by funding the wall has to be balanced against the hardship of standing against it. It’s not just about Democrats showing backbone and it’s not just about appeasing the Democratic base.

Here are some reasons why the wall is such a idea.

1) The wall would require the seizure of land from thousands of property owners, many of whom will suffer significant property losses.  

2) The wall would divide communities such as the Tohono o’odham Native Americans in Arizona

3) The wall will cause disastrous environmental damage , such as habitat destruction and the disruption of animal migration patterns

 4) Trump can’t be trusted.  Repeatedly, Trump has offered deals in exchange for funding, and then changed his mind about those offers.

5) We don’t know how much it will cost, what it will look like, or how effective it will be.  Everywhere else in the world, and until now in America, big projects are planned first.  Trump wants his money first.  We don’t even have a working prototype.  

6) The people don’t want it.  Even among those who voted for Trump because they wanted the wall did so believing that Mexico will pay for it.  

7) It will encourage more hostage taking.  If we give Trump a win on this, he will only cause more damage the next time he doesn’t get what he wants.

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Absurd lies for all to see

The absurd lies that Donald Trump told the troops when he finally got around to visiting them in Iraq , about a 10 percent raise and about that raise being the first in 10 years, are on the White House’s website. That surprised me because the White House has edited transcripts to hide Trump’s failures in the past, but at least for now, these lies are there for all to see.


You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years — more than 10 years.  And we got you a big one.  I got you a big one.  I got you a big one.  (Applause.)

They had plenty of people that came up.  They said, “You know, we could make it smaller.  We could make it 3 percent.  We could make it 2 percent.  We could make it 4 percent.”  I said, “No.  Make it 10 percent.  Make it more than 10 percent.”  Because it’s been a long time.  It’s been more than 10 years.  It’s been more than 10 years.  That’s a long time.  And, you know, you really put yourselves out there, and you put your lives out there.  So congratulations.

There was no 10 percent pay raise, and the 2019 pay raise isn’t the first pay raise in 10 years. It’s not even the biggest. The military has been getting a pay raise every year for a long time, and the 2010 pay raise was much bigger than the one Trump is bragging and lying about.

Say what you want about lying politicians. We have never had a president lie like Donald Trump does, and we’ve ever had a president show such disdain for our troops.

Believing the Unbelievable

Why is Donald Trump president? Here’s an example of one reason.

Someone close to me, who might not want to be named here, posted an article about the U.S. tear gassing asylum seekers. He’s fine. I love him. He’s not the problem.

The problem is a friend who replied to him. The friend posted this very disturbing collage of pictures with the bizarre pizzagate-related story, along with his own absurd accusation that the kids who were among the crowd who were tear gassed were trafficked and sold to be used as props. He says they were sold for thousands of dollars each.

I don’t know how much effort anyone should have to put into debunking such nonsense, but I will point out two things that I didn’t even have to spend hours of googling to figure out:

1) In order to spend thousands of dollars a piece to place kids among asylum seekers so they could be tear gassed at the border, one would have to have confidence that they would, in fact, be tear gassed at the border. Otherwise, it’s a pretty risky investment for no gain that I can understand with a high degree of being found out. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was actually kind of shocked that we stooped that low.

2) It’s hard for me to imagine the labyrinth of twisted logic that connects pizzagate to migrants, but the photo of creepy guys in black robes? That was taking from an idea for a Halloween haunted house. You can see it on Pinterest.

Yes. Some guy spent probably less then 10 minutes lifting a bunch of creepy pictures from the internet to throw together a sick story about the Clintons, and some people – thousands, I imagine – are fucking gullible enough to believe it.

I didn’t spend time tracking down the other creepy photos. The one with the girl smiling with blood dripping from her mouth also looks like a Halloween gimmick to me, and the one with the tooth is probably from a dental website. Maybe later I’ll spend some time tracking down those photos too.

How do so many people believe this shit? Are we really this fucking stupid?