I think if they tried to legally leave the union, we should let them. It would save trillions in welfare and other federal funding that comes from places like New York and California and is redistributed to the southern states that never pay as much in taxes as they take.
I would like to see all American assets pulled like military and federal properties sold to those states at current market value, then let them try being a nation. It would be like divorcing cousin Eddie, a clear win for America.

If they get their way Texans better learn Spanish, Mexico wants their land back and without the army to stop them, they’ll get it. The rest should learn Mandarin.

Thanks for the support.

My problem is, more often than not, children playing with matches burn other people and, because they lack empathy, they learn nothing and do it again.
If there was a way to isolate the mini arsonists, I could go along. Unfortunately, we live in the same house, and when it burns down we all lose. That's why when you catch children playing with fire the responsible thing to do is douse them with accelerants so the next time is the last.

I don't hate Bob, I'm on the fence on the question of his existence, it seems at least as likely he's multiple actors playing Bob the American.
I do hate his lies he tells with certitude and vitriol, his snide little quips and cheering for Trump totally divorced from reality, his reveling in lawless governance if it triggers some libtards, and his bat shit crazy racist insistence that racism doesn't exist in America and Democrats are all racists. How can you refrain from ridiculing that? I'm not capable of such restraint.

When he does burn, are you standing by ready to fill the room with halon and lock the doors? I don't want that job, it's long and thankless.

Yes, especially since I just found out how, I do need to 🤦‍♂️ ;-)

Thanks again, and love you too, but you still aren't getting my last bud light.

https://youtu.be/t9VxYfHfz-Q

There was an article a few days ago about Trump floating a plan to let Democratically led cities and states languish with zero federal funds or assistance, not only through Covid but as a, let's call it final solution to the problem of Democratic leadership.

Sounds like he is looking to dissolve the union himself.

I, for one, support Wexit. California, Oregon, and Washington would likely have a bigger, definitely more robust economy than those lesser 47 states (or fewer if there's an Eastxit), and our population of insane right wing nutjobs is a manageable size, and would likely shrink fast.

Can we just do a trial run....we can wait until November 4 to decide if it's still necessary, but we could start ignoring DC now....and stop sending them our money. No need for fighting, just an amicable divorce.

A newt can dream

Met a blonde woman the other day. She was in the middle of a messy divorce. She found out her husband was cheating on her. She started to suspect something was amiss when she noticed neither of their children looked like her.

I'll grant you that the name flub, by itself, is nothing....infantile even to bring up....but when paired with his increasingly rambling, incoherent, irrational speaking style and total divorce from reality, it might be another indicator of dementia. If you forget where you park once, it's nothing....if you forget where you put your keys, where your car is parked, and what kind of car you have more than once a week, that's something.

To be fair, he went on to lie about it in short order, claiming he said Tim Cook Apple fast and the microphone just didn't pick up "Cook", so it's important to him enough to create a dumb public lie to cover it instead of admitting or ignoring a normal mistake....too bad there's video proving that's false....also too bad tens of millions will either believe Dumb Donald's obvious lies over their own eyes and ears, or cheer him for covering a nothing mistake with a dumb lie.

Yes, he gets between them, and the kids then close in and surround him....in a group.....hi-ya-hi-ya-ing, woo-boo-boo-boo-boo-ing and tomahawk chopping.
He is also on multiple video interviews saying they did block his ceremony, which was permitted, and it's undeniable that the kids and black Israelites interrupted the ceremony that started at the reflecting pool and was supposed to end at the top of the steps the kids took over. That said, he didn't get between the other two groups to continue the closing ceremony, he did it to separate and distract them and instead became the target for both groups.

I disagree 100%. Sane people did this to stop the rapidly escalating anger between the kids and (disgusting) black Israelites before the kids attacked the Israelites, which seemed inevitable because no one was controlling the kids (or the small group of Black Israelites) and the kids were getting more and more rowdy. A few insane people say the kids weren't being racist or insulting, and that's absolutely asinine and completely divorced from reality. They were intentionally insultingly racist....and towards a different group than the group that insulted them.

Watched the long version from 1:11-3:11, no shoving into the kids, no Phillips, that's the black Israelites screaming their nonsense at natives, disrupting their ceremony.
So I checked 1:11:00-1:13:00....when he comes in.....and note smirk boy is not there, he gets into the stationary elders face later. It's bears mentioning that his tactics worked too, he instantly calmed the situation and diverted the hopping mad boy's attention from attacking the Israelites to deriding the natives. Even the Israelites are impressed. Not sure what point you thought that makes, but it's not yours.

He was absolutely not aggressive in the least, and did not push or even touch a single person that I saw, and stopped in front of the kids who quickly surround him. Why are you lying?

Smirk boy might have an argument if he was alone, but smirking in the man's face for nearly 10 minutes while hundreds of your friends dance around you shouting insults and laughing derisively is not an attempt to defuse, it's a clear and obvious power play he thought he won until the shit storm hit....now he's trying to claim he wasn't being disrespectful....I call bullshit. He knew exactly what he was doing, and expected to be big man on campus for it....probably is. Do you think he would find it respectful if a black kid smirked inches from his mother's face as she performed (or any time) while his friends taunted her incessantly? Doubt it.

The next March for life is probably going to end with thousands of blm activists, possibly claiming they were just insulted by white supremacists, so any disruptions, insults, or rudeness towards the anti choice March will be ignored. Turnabout is fair play, and rapid escalation is the MO of this century.

Too bad the adults in the church group decided to egg the kids on rather than turn the other cheek. No surprise, the school and republicans claim the kids did nothing at all wrong. 100% certain they would think it's wrong if aimed at them, or done by non white non Christians, or even white kids in Hillary hats.

Worst for these kids, they are now poster children FOR PRO abortion groups.....their new commercial could be any portion of these videos captioned "your unwanted kid could be one like these, with their public actions drawing death threats, property threats, and unending verbal assault to your family and communities".

So much for helping their cause by attending the march. All they've done is expose the utter disrespect Christians accept from their children towards others, even defend. My parents would have skinned me alive and offered the pelt as contrition if I acted that way towards an adult, and we don't believe in Jebus.

I disagree that there is net benefit from illegal immigrants.

Yes, they do pay taxes. They do not collect retirement benefits.

They also tend to not pay for medical insurance and their jobs do not provide it (for the most part). Generally when they have medical issue, they either go to a free clinic that is there for poor people or they go to a non private hospital emergency room. They cannot be turned away. This cost gets passed on to people paying for their insurance and hospital costs because Hospitals hike up insurance costs to make up the difference. It also causes massive delays at the ER, making it harder for them to deal with people really needing emergency care.

They do utilize public schooling without paying similar amounts of costs. For example, here in Austin, most of the areas that are predominantly Hispanic do not have to pay the same level of property and school taxes as I do. I don't even have kids, but if I lived in East Austin, my taxes would be significantly lower. It has led to East Austin starting to have a Gentrification problem as people/businesses move their to exploit the lower taxes.

Many illegal immigrants carry the minimum or no insurance. My wife's car was totaled some years ago, almost killing her, by an illegal immigrant who had no insurance. We had to use our insurance for her treatment and for the replacement of her vehicle. The man who hit her disappeared.

They utilize fake id and ssid to get welfare benefits. They do get caught now and then, but they flee the area and get new info.

They also do get married to citizens and then, if they get divorced, they flee to avoid child support/alimony. I know of at least 3 friends/acquaintances that had this happen in the last 10 years.

I don't think they are more likely to commit crime than anyone else, but they are more likely to flee the country if caught.

The money they do earn is, in many cases, spent at local ethnic shops that usually are also owned by illegal immigrants. It has become so prevalent that many local stores have tried to modify how they are setup to attract illegal immigrants.

It has been shown that they save and send money out of the US, many times doing their best to avoid any custom duties that would be attached to larger sums.

Because they are violating the law and crossing the border, we spend a massive fuckton of money trying to stop them. This is probably the largest outlay of cost and the one everyone feels, even people living outside of a state affected by illegal immigration.

To be fair, maybe I am getting a skewed picture as I live in a city that has basically said "Fuck the laws, ya'll c'mon in and live here!"

Honestly, if we aren't going to stop them or deport them, then just fucking give them legal status so they are treated like everyone else. At least then they can be hounded by bill collectors too.

I took it as commentary on the idea that, if there is an omniscient, omnipotent god, it must be wholly uninterested in our well being and completely divorced from our idea of morality and decency or it would use it's powers in a far more beneficial and instructive way.

Movies didn't influence divorce rates. There were a series of events that led to them skyrocketing.

1. Birth Control pills. Women and Men were no longer forced to remain in marriages because of children.

2. Due to economic change and because of WW2, women became more acceptable in the workforce. This increased year after year due to varying factors and after a while, many women became less dependent on their spouses to support them. With this economic independence, women who were in unhappy marriages no longer HAD to stay in them. This also led to....

3. The rise of Feminism. With economic independence, women could start fighting for their rights. Rights that had been withheld from them for many years.

4. The Baby Boom after WW2. Most countries experienced it at some level and with a much high population, more people are going to divorce.

5. The importing and mainstreaming of new ideas in regards to relationships, spirituality, and sex. This didn't come from Hollywood, but from the East. The Kama Sutra, Mysticism, and more worldly takes on relationships.

6. Changes to existing laws, possibly one of the biggest reasons. Prior to the time period listed, divorce was a PAIN IN THE ASS to accomplish. Fault was usually required - one of the spouses must have committed a crime or 'sin' that justified the divorce. A long separation before the divorce used to be mandatory. Around the 50's, states began relaxing many of these laws, swapping to a no-fault style divorce and decreasing the separation period. By 1970, almost all states had laws allowing no-fault divorces. These laws had a great effect on the divorce rate. From 1940 to 1965, the divorce rate remained near 10 divorces for every 1,000 married women. By 1979, the rate had doubled.

7. Divorce also became more acceptable. The guilt and fault of the old divorce laws were gone. As more couples separated, divorce gradually became a normal part of life.

8. Children of divorced parents are more likely to get divorced. As the number of divorced parents increases, so will the number of their children that get divorced.

These are the root factors, not movies. If you believe movies lead to divorce, you probably also think video games lead children to violent acts. We all know how wrong that is.

99 percent of the time, the man gets screwed in a divorce. This time he won.

Considering the topics and images in the Mr Rogers Trailer one would wonder how is it worthy of the Kids Channel. Death, Divorce, Racism... I'm still wondering what was that stuff the guy was dumping in the pool while the black kids swimming?

https://videosift.com/video/Wont-You-Be-My-Neighbor-Official-Trailer

The last comment about 'be a nice guy' is interesting.

I was listening to Joe Rogan Experience, and they mentioned something about how the genesis of the 'woman hater' is actually the forever-friend-zoned-nice-guy who gets so fed up with being 'taken for granted'/'shot down' that his niceness turns into hatred

It made sense to me. Essentially, the woman hater is what becomes of a boring nice guy who lacked the patience/endurance to wait for women his age to make their way through all the exciting unreliable men before being satiated (or just getting too old to fetch the interesting men's attention) and finally settling for the nice guy that was boringly always available.



And I get it. It plays into the human natural value system, where things that are scarce are more valuable.

The ahole is fleeting. You can't always have him, and if you do you can't hold him, so he has an element of scarcity, which creates value.

The nice guy will reliably stick around if you go with him, so he is less scarce, so he is less valuable. The lower value in turn makes him more likely to be single and always available, further reducing his scarcity, and further devaluing him, and further increasing his chances of being single. A feedback loop.

I suppose that there is also a 3rd path - the element of nice guys that just stop giving a crap before turning into haters, which makes them more scarce, which actually finally gets them attention, and they stop being single.

(And a 4th path - nice guy finds 'a girl who wants a nice guy from the start'. In my observation this isn't the typical case.)



Cases like this (forever alone nice guy, not specifically Mr Van Driver) are when I think 'arrangement' web sites create a good solution. The guys get to not be lonely anymore, and the women gets taken care of. Kind of plays into the nice guy natural instinct, too.

Amusingly, 'arrangement' may be a better fit for the forever-alone nice guys than 'waiting it out'.
In both cases (waiting vs arrangement) the women are mainly after stability/support.
The older women 'nice guy' matches with by 'waiting it out' would not have picked 'nice guy' if they still had the looks to keep pulling exciting men.
So, if you're gonna be with someone because they want you for support, why not just go with a younger woman and be up front about the situation. If it doesn't work out, either party can walk away. No messy divorce. Seems like a safer and more practical option.

(Not picking on older women, just observing that : as people get older, the single scene becomes more and more 'leftovers' that are 'left over for a good reason'. The odds of finding anyone worth while diminish with time, because the highest quality individuals get retained first. Wait long enough, and you're left with over the hill jaded pragmatists who once may have had looks but now have nothing left to offer. At which point, both 'arrangement' and 'being single' are legitimately better options.)



Regarding Mr. Van Guy specifically, I'm not sure if he had a chance. He had some social anxiety that made him unable to talk to people. So he was likely not gonna get a partner naturally, and was unlikely to succeed among professional peers well enough to get the financial security necessary to be some sugar daddy.

So, yeah, dude was likely a romantic dead end. Possibly even the same mental (brain developmental?) issues that made him unable to talk to people also made him susceptible to getting the sort of crazy tilted that allowed him to run people over. The dude could have actually been fated (circumstantially) to end up in tragedy. Just speculating, wouldn't shock me.

-scheherazade

1)I considered that argument, I just disagree. Women under some religious laws can't initiate a divorce at all, but I doubt you would argue the lower, near zero divorce rates are evidence that it's a better way of life or leads to better outcomes for those powerless women than normal current American Christianity, would you? I think women who stay in bad marriages for their religion don't usually find it to be a better way of life, they often find it an inescapable trap of hopelessness.

2) you would be hard pressed to find men living up to that ideal and or not taking unfair advantage of their religion given position of dominance. As I recall, the bible also tells you various reasons it's your duty to murder people with rocks, so it's not a bad thing to be a bit loose in your interpretations, but perhaps not that particular instruction.

3)but, if I am created by the creator with reason enough to believe only in things that are at least either logical or verifiable, and God is neither without revealing himself to be more than fable, and he doesn't, it's his decision not mine. If he exists and has miraculous powers including revelation, he chooses to have me not believe by choosing to not prove his own improbable existence, meaning he chooses to create me just for inescapable eternal torture.

When you're talking about something that clearly skews the stats, like hyper religious people thinking divorce is totally a slap at God, that's not confirmation bias, it's statistics.

It's also evidence that it is a better way of life, but that is something you apparently refuse to consider. That is why I am calling confirmation bias.

Do you feel the same about those who imprison women, force their silence with abuse, and treat them like abused pets because their religion says that's proper? What if they're Christians?

The bible says that husbands should lay down their lives for their wives, like Christ loved the church and died for it.

What say you about those God has chosen to be non believers? According to you, God created them with no purpose besides eternal torture in hell, because according to you they have no alternative since God never revealed himself to them so heaven is barred to them. Pretty fucked up God imo. I prefer Mt (Mot, Mewt, etc). He's older than Yahweh and far more honest and stable.

It's not that God wouldn't reveal Himself to them; a lot of ex-christian atheists simply inherited the faith of their parents, and when they got turned loose in the world, they fell away because they didn't really know God. They need to have their own faith that is wholly theirs. No one can make you or by proxy give your life to Christ. That is a decision each individual person has to come to on their own.

I don't know, it seems pretty arbitrary to me either way. Actually the best argument for it IMO is that if you only have sex with one person, you aren't going to know if it's good or terrible. You won't have anything to compare it to and therefore something to make your life more unhappy if you think it's bad; one less issue to divorce for as well. Similarly, maybe if you were poor and couldn't afford fancy food, consciously avoiding ever trying the things you couldn't regularly afford so you would never be unhappy with not having it. It would be a question in the back of your mind, but not a source of unhappiness.

It would also have been nice to have some interview questions about how the sons are taught and treated by the same parents.