some brains are more prone to 'rot' than others. belief is unlikely as a leading cause. EX: google: Nobel winner in 'racist' claim row

w/o other examples would point out some astrophysics theories resemble Hindu theology. some religious practices are supported by scientific studies in the area of psychology.

additionally, some poets were errorless when pointing out the truth of human behavior before there was scientific evidence to prove the stanzas.

seemly, there are diamonds and ore in the mines of all people. (note the prior source for verification)

humility can keep all on their toes.

we all make mistakes...hell! voted for reagan once!

being wrong is the only thing most folks can count on. don't know anyone hasn't done this kinda thing ->please Google: Steve Earle & The Dukes - "If I Could See Your Face Again" and listen to one of the world's greatest regrets

listening to that, thinking of covid and the potus' ultimate 'success' rate, hard to miss the truth of it all

"Nobody thats a leader would not do what i did."

Sums up the whole presidency nicely. He is just not as good an actor as Reagan was, and the directors suck or have given up on the movie.

There Is No Art In This White House


By Elayne Griffin Baker

There’s no literature or poetry in the White House. No music. No Kennedy Center award celebrations. There are no pets in this White House. No loyal man’s best friend. No Socks the family cat. No kids’ science fairs. No times when this president takes off his blue suit-red tie uniform and becomes human, except when he puts on his white shirt-khaki pants uniform and hides from Americans to play golf. There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation. No Obamas on the beach in Hawaii moments, or Bushes fishing in Kennebunkport, no Reagans on horseback, no Kennedys playing touch football on the Cape.

I was thinking the other day of the summer when George H couldn’t catch a fish and all the grandkids made signs and counted the fish-less days. And somehow, even if you didn’t even like GHB, you got caught up in the joy of a family that loved each other and had fun. Where did that country go? Where did all of the fun and joy and expressions of love and happiness go?

We used to be a country that did the ice bucket challenge and raised millions for charity. We used to have a president that calmed and soothed the nation instead dividing it. And a First Lady that planted a garden instead of ripping one out. We are rudderless and joyless. We have lost the cultural aspects of society that make America great. We have lost our mojo, our fun, our happiness. The cheering on of others. Gone. The shared experiences of humanity that makes it all worth it. Gone. The challenges AND the triumphs that we shared and celebrated. The unique can-do spirit Americans have always been known for. Gone. We have lost so much in so short a time.

Vote Democratic all the way down the ballot on November 3rd.

This looks like pure shit. On-a-rail gameplay and quick-time events? Yeah, naw!

On the other hand, Reagan in CG looking not unlike the Joker in the Batman games is good for a cheap laugh.

Reagan happened.

That's when Republicans became the party that worked to serve the interests of corporations and wealthy individuals. To do that they needed to get people to vote against their own interests. To accomplish this, they've resorted to increasingly extreme methods to attract votes from easily manipulated people.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

Yet the Dems run the most insipid candidate since Dukakis and not because he's the best candidate, but because it's his turn.

The worst part is the DNC is looking at a truly momentous election where they could lay the foundation for a generational political shift in the US the same way Reagan did in 1980, but they utterly fail to understand why some of the same people who voted for Trump in '16 voted for Obama two elections earlier and have decided to play party politics instead.

The worst thing that could happen to the Dems right now is to win this election. The GOP is going to blame them for the wreckage left by Trump, pile on Biden every chance they get, and exploit the DNC's blindness to push the Dems into political oblivion.

Trump's dementia is even greater than Ronald Reagan's.
FTFY

Trump even greater then Ronald Reagan.
Landslide 2020

So.. Reagan sold the world a pack of lies? Or is Reagan no longer fit to be the God that today's Republicans worship?

List of people in Trump's administration that have quit or been fired. The Trump Administration has seen the highest rate of turnover among White House staff in decades.

During the president’s first year, the administration saw a 34% turnover rate. This is the highest of any recent White House, according to a Brookings Institution report that tracked departures of senior officials over the last 40 years.

The next-highest turnover rate for an administration’s first year was Ronald Reagan’s, with 17% of senior aides leaving their posts in 1981.

Former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton saw much lower turnovers during their first year in office—9%, 6%, and 11%, respectively.

------

John Kelly – December 2018. The retired Marine Corps general was hired in July 2017 to bring order to the White House.

Matthew Whitaker – December 2018. Named acting attorney general in November this year, replacing Jeff Sessions. Immediately came under scrutiny over past remarks about the investigation into possible Russian collusion with Mr Trump's presidential election campaign.

Nikki Haley – December 2018. Stepped down as US ambassador to the UN at the end of the year.

Jeff Sessions – November 2018. After months of being attacked and ridiculed by the president, the former senator was forced out as attorney general.

Don McGahn – October 2018. Mr Trump revealed in August that the White House counsel would leave following strains between the two over Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Scott Pruitt – July 2018. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief quit after he came under fire over a series of ethics controversies.

David Shulkin – March 2018. He left his position the Veteran Affairs secretary, telling the media he had been fired rather than resigning.

HR McMaster – March 2018. Mr Trump’s national security adviser was replaced by John Bolton.

Rex Tillerson – March 2018. The secretary of state was fired by the president on after a series rifts.

Gary Cohn – March 2018. The National Economic Council director and former Goldman Sachs president said he resigned his advisory role.

Hope Hicks – February 2018. The White House communications director, a long-serving and trusted Trump aide, decided to resign.

Rob Porter – February 2018. The White House staff secretary stepped aside following accusations of domestic abuse from former wives.

Omarosa Manigault Newman – December 2017. The former star of The Apprentice was fired as assistant to the president.

Richard Cordray – November 2017. The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s first director quit his administration role.

Tom Price – September 2017. The Health and Human Services secretary quit under pressure from Mr Trump over travel practices.

Stephen Bannon – August 2017. Mr Trump’s chief strategist was fired in after clashing with other top White House figures, including the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Anthony Scaramucci – July 2017. The White House communications director was fired by Mr Trump after only 10 days on the job. Mr Scaramucci had openly criticised Mr Bannon.

Reince Priebus – July 2017. Replaced as chief of staff by John Kelly, Priebus lost Mr Trump’s confidence after setbacks in Congress.

Sean Spicer – July 2017. Resigned as White House press secretary, ending a turbulent six-month tenure.

Walter Shaub – July 2017. The head of the US Office of Government Ethics, who repeatedly clashed with Mr Trump.

Michael Dubke – May 2017. Resigned as White House communications director.

Katie Walsh – March 2017. The deputy White House chief of staff was transferred out to a Republican activist group.

Michael Flynn – February 2017. Resigned in as Mr Trump’s national security adviser. Mr Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. He is set to be sentenced later in December.

Sally Yates – January 2017. Mr Trump fired the acting US attorney general after she ordered Justice Department lawyers not to enforce is immigration ban.

Ronald Reagan brought down a wall with just 4 words.

"Tear down this wall!"

You remind me of the guy in a hostage situation. "Do what you want with the women and children, just leave me alone"

Some day, your dream will come true.

Do the "masculine" thing. Face your fears.