Yeah you can. It is like free speech. You can say shitty, shitty, despicable things to everyone on the street, but you can't yell "fire!" in a theater. Real issues can't be decided with absolutes.

That is just the thing about the whole immigration debate. The science says that immigration, legal and illegal, is a net positive for the country. The science also says that the enforcement measures already in place at the Mexican border is sufficient. (We could totally crack down on visa jumping, but that isn't what Republicans talk about, is it?) Border crossings are way down too. There isn't a lot of noise about Canadian border crossings either. If it isn't racism that is driving the animus towards illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border, what is it?

Skipped right over the issues and went with condemnation. I'm sure that helps the situation.

Totally is okay. What isn't okay is buying into the narrative that paints the media as the enemy of the people.

This story just came up for me and the first (chronologically) 20 posts are about how we can't trust the mainstream media and how the Republicans deserve a voice. I guess this is how a country ends, in a tidal wave of propaganda screaming about "both sides!"

No. None of what you said is true. Even "Let the GOP have one too." Fox News is a prominent "news" source, wholly run for the Republican party. You have got to be troll to claim to be unaware of Fox. You might not know of Sinclair, which is also a conservative news organization, that has been buying up local stations. They are converting local news programs into propaganda machines for the Republicans. So the right is not hurting for "news" outlets.

Is there a difference? Republicans seem to be willing to go to any lengths for power, so if the Russians offer help winning elections...

I agree with you there. Weirdly, I discounted the military as a government program, as if it was its own entity, but it is a government program.

The military funding bothers me too, because I have seen the conditions that the enlisted live in and it isn't that great. Where is that money going?

Another example, now that you have set me on this track, is all the intelligence agencies. There is something like 17 intel agencies.

I've read your comments going back 6 months. I'm hurt by your comments about my sig (don't worry, I'll survive) and I don't see a point in rebutting you on the examples I'm familiar with or researching the examples that I'm unfamiliar with, made by someone who gets their kicks from being nasty to other people. By engaging with you, even by this comment, I am nearly guaranteed to receive back something low on information and high on personal attack. So, I can only present you with this conversational cliff. Good night.

Everyone talks about wasteful government programs. What are these programs?

Death, maintenance, and art. A shit-ton of people are going to die in poverty because they are unnecessary (and the elimination of service jobs is happening suddenly with no time to adapt) and the ones that don't die will maintain the machines the rich need to be rich or will make art (TV, movies, music) the wealthy consume. I would hope that the ability to create things like food and shelter would experience some democratization, but I doubt it.

Something like 95% of his tweets are sent from an iPhone. Do you think that he keeps it just for tweets?

Eh, I find that the most persistent delusion that humans nurture is that they are "good." Yeah, maybe they did that kind of unethical thing, but really they had no choice. (Except suffer consequences or not be as successful or be slightly inconvenienced.) My personal favorite was a woman who told me that Jesus spoke to her and that Jesus conveniently wanted all the things her id wanted.

I support your statement brickhouse. I want to add that the GP is jumping to conclusions. IMHO the "cloud" is a bad place to keep secure information. This JEDI project is a dumb idea and probably comes with some ridiculous onerous conditions, particularly for a multinational company. If I were Google, I simply wouldn't want the project and I could burnish my "Do no evil" credentials at the same time by acting like my hands were too clean to touch it.

Why shouldn't you expect to be rewarded all the time from automation? The company pays you to do X. If you weren't able to automate X, you would still be doing X. It is your work doing the work (lol), you should receive the benefits of the results. Fairness is a concept used to exploit the naive.