Well, there's no blue turban, if you take any stock in Nostradamus.

The way things have been going for me (being further led by the nose by doubting just about everything I see and hear), I wouldn't be the least surprised to see an ad on Facebook showing a news-link to a picture of The Don in a blue turban. My thread in the "kiddy pool" (as I heard someone named after an angel refer to it) had 1,666 views for a few hours, and I about freaked. But Spinoza clicked it, making me the neighbor of the beast. (That was a joke! Sort of...)

Nothing surprising at all in Charlie being in the Right ballpark. He's outstanding in his field (more puns for ya, Charlie!).

Sorry, Charlie. :D

**okay that's more puns.

I'll PM one or two of you with something personal. I might have to go to work, so it could be in a few hours.

I don't believe in the devil (so I guess I don't CAP it). I believe in ignorance, willful or otherwise, but I don't believe in the devil.

You may not believe in God, James, but everybody should believe in the Devil.

"Let the refugees eat cake." Or maybe "L'état, c'est moi." Or both.

Julie -- Let's hope for Humpty Trumpty.

Here's a good look at the world as it sees Trump and by extension (gulp) us?

http://www.attn.com/stories/14690/ho...ampaign=shares

He Wants a War, and Soon
 

Believe in the Devil. His name is Bannon and his avatar is the Honey Badger, which eats constantly, through everything, and doesn't give a shit. His right hand is Lenin and, like him, he avows total destruction of the establishment. That worries me.

For openers, see last week's Time with his evil mug on the cover.

Every day the Trumpkins find a dozen new ways to be vile. Just saw this on Twitter. Scroll down to watch a CNN interview with Kellyanne Conway in which she lies about Trump's turning a blind eye to the attack against Muslims in Quebec. (It's at about 4:50 on pt. 1 of the interview.)

Bannon ain't the devil.

Keep your eyes on the man in the expensive suits, though.

(Just kidding, kind of...)

On a positive or at least an active note, I find this website (operated by a retired librarian) helpful for ideas on what to do about this fu#@]ing mess.

ALL American Presidents wear/wore expensive suits. Not Abe Lincoln maybe. Obama wears VERY expensive suits.

Donald Trump is your President. He will be for the next five years. Don't make yourselves miserable. You survived Dubbya didn't you? Millions of predominantly Muslims didn't, though. How many muslims has Trump killed?

Why do you let a really wicked man (I mean Tony Blair) escape with his millions, money made predominantly by siding with rich muslims against poor muslims. Dubbya is stupid. Blair is wicked. Trump is unsavoury.

Poetry, John. Stick to poetry. Don't embarrass yourself.

**Edited. Too much beer.

What is it in my post that you object to, Michael? I cannot believe you are an apologist for Dubbya and Blair who killed muslims by the hundred thousand. Has Trump killed a single one?

Dubbya and Blair of course killed thousands of their white countrymen too, if that counts.

Oh, and this morning brings the news that I was right about Brexit too. We are out, out, out!

You are indeed going to be 'out' - and we, John, are going to stay 'in'. The polls here, run for extremely anti-independence clients, can no longer disguise the rise in the YES side.

However, one thing that puzzles me about you 'Brexitanians' is why your love for parliamentary sovereignty is expressed by cheering for a bill which will 'give' - itself a revealing word - your sovereign parliament only a vote on whether to accept a previously completely unknown 'deal', or the extreme alternative of seeking to gain membership of the WTO in order to trade under the harshest terms in the world.
Last night, your government voted down every amendment that would have 'allowed' - revealing term again - the vote on the yet to be negotiated 'deal' be be a real choice, rather than Hobson's.

Now why is this protecting, let alone regaining, the sovereignty of parliament? - or is that not at all what your lot meant by "taking back control"?

I don't give tuppence for the sovereignty of Parliament, Nigel. MPs everywhere can be bought. It is the sovereignty of the people I care about. If you wish to be independent, the best of luck to you.
Oh, the word is Brexiteers. As in Musketeers. We delight to swashbuckle.

That is refreshingly frank, John.

On which principle, I assume that you would be happy to see any 'deal' being put to a popular vote in a referendum - with the real alternatives of EITHER voting for it OR by voting against it, retaining the staus quo, i.e. membership of the EU?

Now that would be a real exercise of popular sovereignty, would it not?

Things are going very well as they are, Nigel. Why would I meddle with it? You want to do the old EU trick of getting people to vote and vote again until they get it right. No thanks. We are finished with that. You aren't of course. But you trust those ole commissioners, don't you? Don't you?

Ah - you have limits to the popular will when it comes to discovering the full facts! I thought you had more confidence in the outcome of your 'Brexit'. You should approve of such a vote - that is if you really meant that the people should "take back control".

After all, if your May, Boris and Farage are as wonderful as you led us to believe, what could possibly go wrong? Surely you are not suggesting that their 'deal' would be so dreadful that the 'people' would prefer the EU membership that they - in provincial England and in Wales - spurned in June. So surely a new poll on the new 'deal' would not only be the fulfillment of your principles but a dead cert for your viewpoint to win.

Wouldn't it?

As I said, why meddle with something when it's going your way. There IS another vote quite soon but we will win it just as we won the last. I think Labour will have lost a couple of by elections by then and there will either be two more Tories or one Tory and one Ukipper. So we will win even more easily.

Let me get this straight. You vote a government in for five years and after one of these years you ask the people then whether they still like it? Is that your system?

Suppose Scotland voted for independence. Would you have another vote a year later to see if the people still liked it? Would you?

In 2013, the Scottish Government published their proposals for Independence in a White Paper of enormous detail - a book of 670 pages.
That is the kind of detailed prospectus which does not require there to be any second vote to legitimise a referendum majority.

So, John.... if the Scottish Government had produced a White Paper on independence as flimsy and insultingly vacuous as that produced by May, fewer pages (49) of actual text than even the piddling number of words in the only operational clause of the Article 50 Act - and do it, like her, after the vote - then in circumstances of such manifest government irresponsibility, I would have favoured a second referendum in order to confirm or reject what had been subsequently negotiated.

If your 'Brexit' ideologues were the democrats they pretend to be, they would not now proceed to conclude any Brexit negotiation until it had been properly presented in a similarly full White Paper for democratic consent - or, if rejected, accept a return to the status quo ante. The truth, however, is very clear to see. The 'Brexit' vote in provincial England and in Wales is being used as a very thin disguise for an undemocratic right-wing coup. The only people "taking back control" in England now, are the extreme right-wing of the Tory Party and their jackals in the unpleasantly xenophobic ranks of Ukip - a combination whose democratic legitimacy is vanishingly small.

Somebody should start a Brexit watch thread. Ha! Otherwise, more prescient analysis from David Brooks at NYT, IMO. I'm always a sucker for literary analogies.

Cheers,

Greg

Gregtory, that's all too clever for me. I don't understand the point that is being made. Never mind.

It appears, Nigel, that the 670 pages had no effect. You voted to stay. Perhaps you didn't believe it. Under your system Justin Trudeau, who came in as the Saviour and son of God, would now be unhorsed, since he is down tom48% on the ratings. All governments suffer reverses during their first year of office.

Actually I am reasonably confident we would win again but your system is asinine.

Michael, not a peep in defence of Dubbya and Blair? Perhaps you are wise to stick to poetry.

Gregory, what an aptly Faustian link. Apologies to doubltess wearied American, and other non-UK, members. I wish I could defend these 'Brexit' exchanges as offering you light relief from your own dystopian agonies - but, I'm afraid these seemingly arcane matters are every bit as serious this side of the pond and north of the border more serious still.

For light relief - or at least for a carnival of the ridiculous - you could try watching the Article 50 circus, sorry 'debates', on BBC Parliament, but on second thoughts I doubt if that would cheer you up very much. It certainly doesn't do it for me, though the Western Isle's MP, Angus McNeil asking the Chamber if any of them knew how many countries in the world had absolutely no membership of any regional trade agreements was a moment that stood out as a kind of high/low point of political comedy. The answer is only six - and that number does NOT even include North Korea. After 'Brexit', May's UK will be "going boldly" where even the "dear leader" has not dared to tread. Laugh if you can!

Gregory, the Faustian bargain is exactly what I think is going on. And, just as Faust found out, it will surely be their ruin (at least in the earlier versions of the tale). Many politicians take that route in lesser ways every day (bribes, cronyism, patronizing, lobby dollars, etc.) but this is the real deal. Politics oftentimes is the Art of the Faustian Deal.

Trump himself has made a Faustian bargain with Narcissus. In fact, many have gone the way of Narcissism in western societies. To paraphrase the Pope: Self-absorption is the gangrene of civilization.

North of what border, Nigel? There is no border. The UK is one. Borderless. The scenes in the House of Commons look OK to me. Nobody is hitting anybody anyway. Those who find this tedious have no need to join in, have they?

But you don't find it tedious. You return for more.

Oh, Jim - Trump making a Faustian bargain with Narcissus is wonderful. Respect!

I hear what you're saying, Jim. But politics is the art of compromise. One does not need to sell his/her soul to compromise in the service of the greater good. That's the rub, isn't it? We don't think in terms of the greater good anymore. It's win or lose and we have elected the ultimate win or lose president.

We are living in a necrophilous age, that is, the only approach to politics is destruction. I was reading an article from a conservative ezine recently in which the author claims that Abraham Lincoln and FDR were the worst presidents in our history. At some point, you will see dynamite taken to Mount Rushmore in the same way ISIS is destroying Palmyra. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed Julie's post #149 so much. The folks on the right that I talk to believe in annihilation at all costs. The thinking is, "If I can't win, you can't win." Destruction is all that's left.

Now maybe this has always been the way of conquest. The ONLY difference now is the existence of nuclear weapons. When stupid is as stupid does, we are all in danger of losing our lives.

Greg

Looks like Narcissus shysted him, if the fate of Ivanka Trump ads is any indication.

Here's what civil dialog gets you in the age of Trump. Maybe the most relevant paragraph from the piece for the sphere:

"But it hit something else, too: all the notes that allow shared words to swell into shared emotion. You couldn’t have designed better fodder for a meme had you tried. “Nevertheless, she persisted” has, on the one hand, the impish irony of a powerful person’s words being used against him. It has, on the other, words that are elegant in their brevity, making them especially fit for tweets and slogans and mugs. And it has, too, words that are particularly poetic, rendered in near-iambic pentameter, with the key verb of their accusation—“persisted”—neatly rhyming with that other key verb: “resisted.” The whole thing was, for Warren, a perfect storm. It was, for McConnell, a decidedly imperfect one."

On a positive note: Senators are not beating each other over the head....yet.

Greg

No. It is in the Dail (Ireland) where they beat each other over the head. I should have made that clear.

The second vote was taken today.You will all be delighted to know that on March the 7th we begin a process that nobody, not even the remoaners, can stop. Isn't that nice?

Perhaps we could give Mr Trump an honorary knighthood. Or we could make him an Earl. Earl Trump. It has a ring to it.

John,

I was actually referring to the Caning of Senator Sumner back in 1856. He was nearly beaten to death on the floor of the United States Senate. Now there's a tunnel in Boston dedicated to him.

Cheers,
Greg

So, negative stuff can be said on the Senate floor about all potential cabinet nominees except those who happen to be current Senators, because they're protected by Section 2 of Senate Rule XIX? Give me a break.

Julie, Alabama used to elect primarily Democrat Senators. You know, the ones who went tear-assing around in white sheets and pointy hats, burning crosses. Republicans in Alabama love Sessions. He's a good man. I don't think he should be taken apart like his Democrat colleague Fauxcahontas tried to do.

Get a life, Charlie.

Charlie's got a splendid life, from what I can tell, Catherine.

Charlie,

I reserve judgment about Sessions.

Briefly, I know all about how difficult it is for a person without money to come to the US legally. I experienced the whole tangle of red tape and ridiculous questions. I sat for hours in Phoenix with my then wife, getting her through the process of achieving her citizenship. She came to the US as a girl of 12, scared out of her mind because of the "coyotes", who insisted on getting money and, occasionally, sexual favors.

We received a letter from the department of immigration in Phoenix, during this long process, telling us that we must arrive at such and such a day, for such and such an interview. If we did not arrive on that day, our chances of making it through the process would be threatened. The date of this interview was about a week before the letter arrived. We set up another appointment, and paid a lot of money because we had missed the appointment we had no chance of getting to.

I have much more, but back to Sessions. I'm not saying he's not a good man. I always thought we're not supposed to make that kind of a judgment?

Edited in: I should add that my ex-wife is now a citizen, not just legal. She's a notary public, a certified Nurse's Aide (CNA), and makes her living caring for the elderly. We are the happy parents of two great boys, and are good friends, despite the years of pain we gave each other.

I think we need to radically change the current immigration laws, to make it easier (not more difficult) for people to come to the US legally. A big wall on the border won't change a thing, just cost a lot of money and create a bigger challenge for destitute people from all over. < I mean under. D'oh!

I say we build a wall up north, to keep those dang Canadians away! I mean, who needs more people who say 'aboot' stealing all those housekeeper and dishwasher jobs?

Blame Canada!

(Just joking, of course!)

Well, he is a Believer, so I'd go with that first. He loves his family, his God, his church, his guns, his country. I'd rather say that he will go after crooked politicians, corporate cronyism, white collar crime, crooked politicians, gangs, big drug dealers like El Chapo, terrorists, crooked politicians, before he goes after illegals from our southern border. He could be a terrible A.G. but he would still be a step up to the last several we've had.

- from Wikipedia article on Jeff Sessions.

Yikes. Anyone with a gun to their head will say anything to make the person with the gun happy.

Torture does not work when it comes to getting the truth from people.

It didn't work for the lunatics of the Inquisition, and it won't work for the peeps at Gitmo. Or whatever the hell that place is called.

You're not going to change someone's mind by putting a gun to their head, and you're not going to accomplish much of anything besides getting your own rocks off.

I wish with all my heart that I was there when Christ wrote on the ground and prevented a pack of thugs from stoning a woman.

Sorry all, for these sometimes meandering thoughts of mine.

Certainly. But there are lots of Believers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity

- emphasis mine.

Andrew M,

I am re-reading the thread and I caught the above.

No, no, no. There are no classes of people. There are only individuals. Universals don't exist. They are not real entities.

I said the same thing (or nearly) to Andrew F, in a prior post.

I'm a lyricist, nominalist, secularist, New York Jets fan [insert laughter here :D], and Christian. The only title there that matters to me at the moment is the last one.

The Jets will win the Super Bowl again, at some point! I gua-rant-ee it!

(Just kidding about that last prophecy. I'm no prophet, or at least, I don't think I am.)