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Brisketexan

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Posts posted by Brisketexan

  1. 1 minute ago, Ghost of LL said:

    Jesus, dude-lay off.  RandomIdiot was fucking wrong.  We've all been wrong from time to time.  But to his credit he recognizes it and admits it.  And that's better than most Trump supporters, who refuse to admit that they've been scammed by a treasonous snake-oil salesman.

    When a man acknowledges and owns up to his mistake, you shouldn't be a dick about it.  You shrug your shoulders and move on.

    Welcome to the Resistance, RandomIdiot!

    Welcome indeed.

    But forgive me my incredulity.  I mean, I'm trying to process someone telling me that they didn't think water would get them wet.  I'm trying to understand how one reaches such a conclusion, being that water is, inherently, wet.  You know that I get stuck in such confusion loops.

    • Like 1
  2. Just now, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

    Whatever made you think he was smart enough to know that he should listen to his own intelligence agencies?  He hasn't listened to anyone his entire life.

    FIFY.

  3. Just now, RandomIdoit said:

    I thought he was smart enough to know that he should listen to his own intelligence agencies rather than the person they are investigating.

     

    1 minute ago, Huckleberry said:

    The issue is that he's not a narcissist in the sense that the term is often used against self-centered jerks. He is literally a full-blown narcissist who cares about nobody but himself. It doesn't matter if it was Putin or Chavez. The actual political leanings don't matter. Whoever got the dirt on him then told him they could help him consolidate power because he's super awesome was going to be able to control him.

    You and many others just thought he was a sort of off-putting ass. No, he has a serious pathology.

    What Huckleberry said.  Seriously, a few minutes of research -- well before the election -- would have told you that Trump has never listened to anyone but himself.  I mean, when asked about who he consults on foreign policy nearly 6 months before the election, he actually said these words:

    Quote

    “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things,” 

    He will not listen to anyone who tells him anything other than "you're awesome, whatever you say, Mr. Trump."  I am genuinely stunned that you didn't see that in plain sight.

  4. Just now, RandomIdoit said:

    I knew he was a narcissist and an asshole, but I thought he was an American first. 

    Seriously?  You seriously thought that?  And I really do promise you that I'm not asking this in a mocking way, I genuinely want to understand....what led you to that conclusion?

  5. Also, I know that so many of y'all think that my calls have been like this lately:

    Man-on-a-Ledge-photo-courtesy-Summit-Ent

     

    ....but it seems that a good number of y'all are coming around to the obvious truth.  There's no winning this, there's no fixing this.  We have an openly treasonous man occupying the White House, an entire political party willingly complicit in it for transitory power, and 40% of the population cheering it because as long as it upsets "the libs," it doesn't matter what it is, it must be good.  40% of our population would cheer Russian troops showing up in democrat-leaning jurisdiction and rounding up Americans, because "owning the libs."  And the president of the UNITED STATES would be fine with it, while the GOP congress would be "quite concerned," but secretly support it.

    That's where we are.  It's over.  There's no going back.  I have a LOT of scotch, but if a whole buncha you join, you're gonna need to bring some bottles of your own.  And this ledge may get crowded....

    • Like 3
  6. 2 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

     

    I like Will Hurd.  He's a good American, he served his country, and he continues to do so.  

    It's a damned shame that he's a member of the party of treason, and that he has to go because of that.  If he would disavow the current GOP and run as an independent, I would happily support him.  Time to choose, soldier.  Nobody said the choices in time of war would be easy.

    • Like 4
  7. 1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

    See, I absolutely loathe this line of thought.  No, it's not the best I could have hoped for.  The best I could have hoped for is that Trump would have woken from his feverish syphilitic dream and started to act like an American President.

    Fuck you for implying that those who are anti-Trump are rooting against him.  That's straight up bullshit.   I desperately want the man to start acting like he deserves the office he occupies. 

    100X this.  I would be THRILLED if we simply had a president with whom I disagreed with on some simple policy matters.  This country NEEDS a president who is actually capable of (1) acting in the capacity of president (2) of the United States.  I'd really, really prefer someone who won't wreck the whole fucking thing.

    1 hour ago, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

    Fair enough and agreeable. I guess I mean, reasonably speaking, he is who he is and the best that can be hoped for is not a miracle (that he snaps out of it) but that he does something to get voted off the island and relieved of the office. Right?

    Except that will never happen.  The GOP has chosen -- they are loyal only to their hold on power, and anything that will increase/strengthen that.  And if that "anything" is actions by an enemy state, they're happy to accept it.  The GOP is clear and present danger to our national security.

    48 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    People still don’t understand, Russia wins this battle NO MATTER WHAT.

    Seriously, take your best case scenario for how this plays out and think about how Russia can spin that outcome in their favor.

    Fortunately, the United States is still strong and Russia is still weak but this game is fucking already over.

    And this.  That's what pisses me off the most -- there is no winning here.  We've lost.  Every option is just another way to lose.  And then we have 40% of our country who is buttfuckingly stupid/evil enough to claim that losing is actually "winning!"

    48 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

    And yet you carry his water whenever you can because it owns the libs.

    Well, what you have to understand is, Johnny Sack is a Sack of Shit.  He'll happily tolerate any level of evil, harm to others, and betrayal of country, if it irritates anyone (who, by the very reason of them being irritated, are "libs."  Which is awesome, because Johnny thinks that guys like George Will and Krauthammer are/were "libs" (see their clear opposition to Trump, and calls for actual action in opposition to him)).

    47 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

    No. 

    A military coup would be an admission that our system has failed.  The civilians control the military, not the other way around.  Full stop.

    And this.  No coups.  Like I said, we've already lost, no matter what happens.  But completely surrendering the democratic apparatus of regime change would be a loss that we could never recover from.

    44 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

    Most of that is not due to gerrymandering.  It is because liberals are super concentrated in urban precincts.

    Yeah, someone was fucking stupid/dishonest enough to actually post this.  Plenty of rebuttal above (my first thought was to show my gerrymandered district in Austin, which was unquestionably done to fuck with party balance, but folks already did that).  In a board with plenty of colon-cleansing stupidity, this post makes the hall of fame.

    32 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

     

    Well, see, what you have to understand is, Cornyn possesses neither vertebrae nor testicles.  He is a neuter slug, feeding off of nutrients from Trump's spray tan that he absorbs through his slimey underbelly.

    8 minutes ago, lemonlime said:

    "My intelligence people" = Trump thinks he's king and the entire government and American people belong to him.

    Always.  Everything he says points to self over country.  There IS no country to him -- only Trump.  Yet his supporters claim to be patriots.  A world turned upside down indeed.

    • Like 3
  8. Had a leftover burger patty. Heated it, melted a slice of cheese on it, topped with some bbq sauce and pickles. Didn’t get a pic.

    But i got a shot of my next item..which was a lot like Senor Shank’s snack the other night. Except I put it on a nice fluffy tortilla.

    b737dea82dd79fdc6291a64a8374552c.jpg

    It was muy bueno.

    • Like 1
  9. 1 minute ago, Chrispy said:

    I’m not quite sure that you require my posting history to ascertain my position. I stated rather unequivocally, in the post that you quoted, that I disliked a bloated government. 

    "I dislike fire," said the poster who supports the "Burn baby, burn" party.

    I dislike bloated government, too.  Thus, I think it's important to punish the party that has spent the better part of 50 years lying about being against bloated government.  Because to do otherwise is to reward lies.  And all that does is get you more lies, and the lying liars who tell such lies.  But, you know, keep fucking that chicken. I'm sure that TOMORROW is the day they're going to decide "man, we probably need to change our ways."

  10. 18 minutes ago, lemonlime said:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/migrant-children-shelters.html

     

      Reveal hidden contents

    Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.

    Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.

    “You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.

    Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.

    The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.

    In response to an international outcry, President Trump recently issued an executive order to end his administration’s practice, first widely put into effect in May, of forcibly removing children from migrant parents who had entered the country illegally. Under that “zero-tolerance” policy for border enforcement, thousands of children were sent to holding facilities, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where their parents were being held for criminal prosecution.

    Last week, in trying to comply with a court order, the government returned slightly more than half of the 103 children under the age of 5 to their migrant parents.

    But more than 2,800 children — some of them separated from their parents, some of them classified at the border as “unaccompanied minors” — remain in these facilities, where the environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.

    Depending on several variables, including happenstance, a child might be sent to a 33-acre youth shelter in Yonkers that features picnic tables, sports fields and even an outdoor pool. “Like summer camp,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat of New York who recently visited the campus.

     

    Or that child could wind up at a converted motel along a tired Tucson strip of discount stores, gas stations and budget motels. Recreation takes place in a grassless compound, and the old motel’s damaged swimming pool is covered up.

    Imagemerlin_140135769_2d1a7359-7dae-4dc9-8116
    Migrant children in a recreation area at a shelter in Brownsville, Tex.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters

    Still, some elements of these detention centers seem universally shared, whether they are in northern Illinois or South Texas. The multiple rules. The wake-up calls and the lights-out calls. The several hours of schooling every day, which might include a civics class in American history and laws, though not necessarily the ones that led to their incarceration.

    Most of all, these facilities are united by a collective sense of aching uncertainty — scores of children gathered under a roof who have no idea when they will see their parents again.

    Leticia wrote letters from the shelter in South Texas to her mother, who was being held in Arizona, to tell her how much she missed her. She would quickly write these notes after she had finished her math worksheets, she said, so as not to violate yet another rule: No writing in your dorm room. No mail.

    She kept the letters safe in a folder for the day when she and her mother would be reunited, though that still hasn’t happened. “I have a stack of them,” she said.

    Another child asked her lawyer to post a letter to her detained mother, since she had not heard from her in the three weeks since they had been separated.

    “Mommy, I love you and adore you and miss you so much,” the girl wrote in curvy block letters. And then she implored: “Please, Mom, communicate. Please, Mom. I hope that you’re OK and remember, you are the best thing in my life.”

    The complicated matters of immigration reform and border enforcement have vexed American presidents for at least two generations. The Trump administration entered the White House in 2017 with a pledge to end the problems, and for several months, it chose one of the harshest deterrents ever employed by a modern president: the separation of migrant children from their parents.

    This is what a few of those children will remember.

    No Touching, No Running

    Diego Magalhães, a Brazilian boy with a mop of curly brown hair, spent 43 days in a Chicago facility after being separated from his mother, Sirley Paixao, when they crossed the border in late May. He did not cry, just as he had promised her when they parted. He was proud of this. He is 10.

    He spent the first night on the floor of a processing center with other children, then boarded an airplane the next day. “I thought they were taking me to see my mother,” he said. He was wrong.

    Once in Chicago, he was handed new clothes that he likened to a uniform: shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweatsuit, boxers and some items for hygiene. He was then assigned to a room with three other boys, including Diogo, 9, and Leonardo, 10, both from Brazil.

    The three became fast friends, going to class together, playing lots of soccer and earning “big brother” status for being good role models for younger children. They were rewarded the privilege of playing video games.

    There were rules. You couldn’t touch others. You couldn’t run. You had to wake up at 6:30 on weekdays, with the staff making banging noises until you got out of bed.

    “You had to clean the bathroom,” Diego said. “I scrubbed the bathroom. We had to remove the trash bag full of dirty toilet paper. Everyone had to do it.”

    Diego and the 15 other boys in their unit ate together. They had rice and beans, salami, some vegetables, the occasional pizza, and sometimes cake and ice cream. The burritos, he said, were bad.

    Apart from worrying about when he would see his mother again, Diego said that he was not afraid, because he always behaved. He knew to watch for a staff member “who was not a good guy.” He had seen what happened to Adonias, a small boy from Guatemala who had fits and threw things around.

    “They applied injections because he was very agitated,” Diego said. “He would destroy things.”

    A person he described as “the doctor” injected Adonias in the middle of a class, Diego said. “He would fall asleep.”

    Diego managed to stay calm, in part because he had promised his mother he would. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Diego be reunited with his family. Before he left, he made time to say goodbye to Leonardo.

    “We said ‘Ciao, good luck,” Diego recalled. “Have a good life.”

    But because of the rules, the two boys did not hug.

    Image
    merlin_140858913_8b49a12d-00b1-42cf-aced
    “Some of the girls said we were going to get out,” recalled Yoselyn Bulux, 15. “Others said they were going to deport us.”CreditRyan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

    Lessons in Math and Presidents

    Yoselyn Bulux, 15, is a rail-thin girl from Totonicapán, Guatemala, with long dark hair and no clear memory of how she summoned the strength to climb the wall at the border. What followed was even harder: two days in a frigid processing center known as the “icebox,” then a two-day bus ride to a large facility somewhere in Texas. Her mother stayed behind in Arizona.

    The new place had air-conditioning, but wasn’t as cold as the icebox, which had left her with a sore throat. There were windows, sunlight during the day. And beyond the perimeter, tall grass like the “zacate” you see along the highway.

    At the intake area of the facility, which seemed to accommodate about 300 girls — some of them pregnant — she was given some clothes and a piece of paper with a number on it. There were rules.

    “If you do something bad, they report you,” Yoselyn recalled. “And you have to stay longer.”

    The days had structure. Yoselyn took classes with other teenage girls in math, language — she learned “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “good night” in English — and civics, which touched on, among other things, American presidents. President Trump was mentioned, she said.

    For an hour every day, the girls went outside to exercise in the hot Texas air. It was not uncommon to see someone suddenly try to escape. No whispers, no planning — just an out-of-nowhere dash for the fence. No one made it.

    On Friday and Saturday nights, the girls watched movies. Also on Saturday, Yoselyn met with a counselor, whom she liked. They talked about her hope to be with her mother soon. She cried only twice.

    But it wasn’t easy. Although Yoselyn spoke occasionally by telephone with her mother — the first time a full 10 days after their separation — the gossipy chatter among the girls could be confusing, and upsetting. “Some of the girls said we were going to get out,” she recalled. “Others said they were going to deport us.”

    She made friends, and together they would paint their nails and make multicolored friendship bracelets out of yarn. She became especially close to a Guatemalan girl named Sofia. But one day, Sofia just disappeared.

    Finally, on July 1, it was Yoselyn’s turn to leave. She was flown to New York on her first airplane flight. She watched the movie “Coco” while in the air. And then the woman serving as her escort handed Yoselyn over to her father, who was so overcome at the sight of his daughter that he could not speak.

    A Birthday Passes

    Victor Monroy did not understand. It was Sunday, June 24. His birthday. He was now, officially, 11.

    But no one at this place where he and his younger sister had been sent seemed to know, or care. No one sang to him, the way his mother would have. Finally, Victor told the adults in this strange place of his personal milestone.

    “They said ‘feliz cumpleaños,’” the boy recalled. “That’s all.”

    Given all that was happening, the moment may seem small, even inconsequential. Then again, perhaps the quiet passing of his 11th birthday will, years from now, still evoke for Victor the 41 days he counted that he and his 9-year-old sister, Leidy, lived in a place called Casa Guadalupe, with no idea where their mother was for weeks.

    “She’s the one who had been watching over me,” Victor said. “My whole life.”

    Victor and Leidy had left Guatemala with their mother by bus, but reached the United States border in the back of a tractor-trailer. Almost immediately, they were taken to a crowded place with other migrants. Then, late one night, agents started loading them into a vehicle, as their mother, who was being left behind in Arizona, quickly tried to explain what was happening.

    Soon they were on their first airplane ride ever, on their way to some place called Chicago. They were taken to the shelter, given new clothes and separated: Victor to the boys’ area, Leidy to the girls’.

    For the next several weeks, the only time the brown-haired siblings saw each other was during recreation period outdoors. If he asked, Victor said, he could spend up to a half-hour with Leidy.

    Their daily routine was similar to what thousands of migrant children were experiencing around the country. Early morning wake-up calls, chores, classes. Victor and Leidy didn’t speak to their mother for a month. Where was she? When would they get out? Only once, Victor’s frustration got the better of him.

    In the play area one day, some boys stole a ball that Victor was playing with, and he became distraught. When it came time to go back into the house, he refused. “I didn’t want to go inside,” he said.

    Then, Victor said, two men, including one named Tito, grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into the house. “I told him he didn’t have the right to do that,” the boy said. “And so he said, yes, he had the right to do whatever he wanted.”

    Weeks later, Victor was still upset.

    But at least he had a trabajadora de caso — a caseworker — named Linda who helped him navigate his new world. “She did everything she could to find my mother,” Victor said. “She called every state.”

    Finally, there was a plan: Victor and Leidy would join their father, whom they hadn’t seen in a few years, in New England. The night before, Victor’s roommate and friend, a boy from El Salvador named Franklin, struggled to sleep.

    “I don’t think he slept all night because I was leaving,” Victor said.

    Sure enough, when the adults came for Victor in the morning, Franklin was awake to say goodbye.

    “He wished me lots of luck,” Victor said.

    Mischief and Melancholy

    The kids are just — kids. That is what it comes down to, according to an employee at Casa Padre, a shelter for 1,500 migrant boys that inhabits a former Walmart Supercenter in Brownsville, Tex., close to the Mexican border. Just kids, all being held in the custody of the United States government.

    Take the mooing, for example. The walls that separate the sleeping quarters do not reach the high ceilings, which means that sounds travel in the yawning spaces within the 250,000-square-foot building. One boy will make a loud animal noise, after which another will emit an animal-like response.

    “Someone will start mooing,” the employee said. “They just think it’s funny. They just do it long enough so everyone can hear, and then we all start laughing.”

    Casa Padre, which shares a parking lot with a gas station, a McDonald’s and other stores, is run by Southwest Key Programs, one of the largest migrant youth shelter operators in the country. According to the employee, its staff is overworked and a little stressed out by the 12-hour shifts and the considerable responsibilities.

    A 15-year-old boy from Honduras recently escaped by climbing a fence during an outdoor recreation period. Staff members conduct round-the-clock head counts, sometimes at 15-minute intervals, all while monitoring the constant flow of boys being received and discharged.

    During the day, the staff is required to maintain a ratio of one worker for every eight children. The ratio sets the tempo and culture at Casa Padre, the employee said. “It’s a big deal if we’re out of ratio.”

    If one boy in a classroom needs to use the restroom, then a staff member has to find seven others who also want to go to the bathroom. “They’ll all stand in a line and then we’ll walk to the restroom,” the employee said.

    Some of the boys at Casa Padre were separated from their parents at the border, but most were caught crossing without a parent or guardian. All seem to keep themselves entertained with soccer or movies or video games.

     

     
     

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    “If they get sad, it’s like a quiet thing,” the employee said. “You’ll see them sit on the floor and just kind of wrap their arms around themselves.”

    Some time in the evening is set aside for prayer. Boys can be found praying in a classroom, in a game room, in a bedroom. Some kneel. After that, many focus on creating intricately designed bracelets out of the huge supply of colorful yarn that seems always available. The bracelets become gifts, keepsakes, something to remember someone by.

    Lights out at 9. Then, depending on the night, a cavernous old Walmart in South Texas begins to echo with the sound of mischievous migrant children imitating the lows of pent-up cattle.

    624Comments

    The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise.

     
     

    624Comments

    The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise.

     
     

     

    Well, you see, the Jesuits are well-known globalist libtard cucks, so, MAGA!!!!

  11. Ah yes, now we’ve made it back to Rand Paul, Russian operative.  Hopefully Trump negotiated asylum for Rand along with him. 

    How about your boy identifying the EU as our greatest foe? Address that, sycophant.
  12. Doing Putin's bidding once again...

    Again, just for giggles...imagine what Fox and the Trumpkins would be saying and doing if obama had said that.

    Seriously, the POTUS, when asked about our greatest foe....identified a collection of our greatest allies. We have an enemy asset in the White House.
    • Like 7
  13. I live about 6 hrs from Austin. Unless I personally know someone or it’s gonna be a damn good matchup, fuck making that drive when it’s going to be hot on game day. Plus I hunt, so that fucks up the saturdays for me there. It’s gotta be worth the drive and lately, it hasn’t.

    I live in town, and the same issues keep me away often.

    Even living here, the all-in cost of a game is what a weekend trip to NOLA would cost. I only go when the tickets are free, and I don’t have something better to do (deer hunting with the boy).
  14. Every society, religion, and sociologist considers the family unit to be of utmost importance. It's rare in human history to find a society that does not highly value the family. The Soviets and Nazis attempted to elevate the state above the family and probably a few other totalitarian regimes. Orwell, drove home this point in 1984. Historically we look back on those times and shake our heads in judgment.
    Here we are in a situation where the state is treating families in a highly unethical manner so much that its been condemned by religions across the board. Yet, some of our political leaders with the power to stop it, ignore it and a big part of the electorate turn a blind eye to it. Shameful.
     
     

    But, it seems you didn’t get the memo. These folks running for their lives need to face consequences for breaking the law, and MAGA!

    Now that you have been reminded, I’m sure you’ll delete your unwise post.
  15. How the information was obtained is important - it was stolen. 
    If the information was then being made available for an interested party who knew it was about to be presented, whether it's made accessible on a public platform or on a secret thumb drive is kind of irrelevant.  What matters is if the information was collaboratively provided and obtained, and was then used for corrupt actions. 
    Roger Stone corresponded with Russian military intelligence around this very matter.  It appears certain US persons coordinated with a foreign power who levied war on our electoral democracy.

    Again, GOLL said it well: it’s like Nixon, but if instead of retired CIA guys, he used the KGB.
  16.  

    Yeah...I REALLY don’t know how to think about woke Walsh.

    But he’s fuckin’ right.
    Of course...because ethnocentrism. My point is it is awesome that the minor things, the nuanced stupid things that only are relevant when interacting with royalty and are designed to put the royalty above you and let you know your station, are being flouted. I’m not specifically talking about things you wouldn’t do for any 92 year old lady like hold open a door or help her up from a chair or something, but the stupid code of little things that the crown makes people do. That is awesome. It’s awesome because England is the country we revolted against and won as revels and it’s awesome because screw your sensibilities, we are peers at worst and can kick your butt if we had to. But we won’t, we like you. 
    I guess looking at how three people got butthurt, this is just me, I thought more people would feel the same. I’ve always been confused by the infatuation of women and weirdo guys who read people magazine and buzzfeed and the like and how they enjoy England’s royalty and weddinfs and think we should care , much less kowtow to their Queen and follow their rules that make them feel superior.
    and those reflexively “but obama’ing“ are no better than the “but Hilary’s” among us.

    I agree with this take more than the “but follow their rules because of their history!!!” type romanticism.
    Again, treat the lady with respect and be a gentlemen, but remember at worst you are her peer as the commander in chief of the U.S

    Look, I freaking LOATHE royalty. I’m serious, I have a visceral reaction when I see the trappings of ostentatious monarchs: I want to take their heads off. I’m only exaggerating a little bit.

    But your second post got to the ultimate point. If I was POTUS, I wouldn’t defer to “the Queen.” We kicked their royal asses out of this country. And we meant it. But I am a head of state. So is she. Of our closest ally. And she is a woman of manners and protocol. And I am a respectful gentlemen, of her as a refined woman, a leader, and an ally. So treat her as such.

    The fundamental problem here isn’t how Trump treated royalty, or a head of state, or our ally. It’s how he treats ALL human beings. He’s the most profound narcissist I’ve ever seen. He has zero regard for any human being other than himself. Queen, old lady crossing the street, his own wife, whatever - none of them matter. Only he does.


  17. Any discussions on the risk they pose in selling nukes or nuke related knowledge and technology to other problematic states?

    Why could only a Republican meet with Kim?


    Ok, some answers:

    The risk of them transferring nukes to other actors is low, but real. That’s a big reason behind our policy goal (again, maybe not the admin’s, but it’s long been a US goal, and Russia actually shares that goal) to get them to hand over fissile material and plutonium in particular; as I mentioned above, limiting them to a lower number of nukes (say the 10-25 they may have) keeps them in a certain range of actions. They can’t keep a large amount in reserve for a secondary counter strike. And they aren’t likely to give any of those away. If they have 150 nukes, and/or the materials for them, then it might be worthwhile for them to sell one.

    So, our goal should be to 1) keep them at the current number of weapons, and 2) get them to give up their bomb making materials that aren’t currently in weapons. My cousin was particularly annoyed that we blew an opportunity for option 2).

    As for why only a Republican can meet with Kim...political reality. Remember “only Nixon could go to China.” A dem president would have faced too much political heat for meeting with a commie bad guy; the GOP Congress would have made sure of it.
  18. Why didn't he brief Trump?

    Well, he’s not inside the admin. He did brief the higher-ups at the NSC and some specific folks in the admin (I can’t remember who). But as you know, you don’t brief Trump himself about these things.
  19. Good questions, and I actually have answers (we discussed the first two, and yes, he’s been one of our leading experts in the field for 20+ years, so he’s briefed both W and Obama as well, not to mention the relevant Senate committees).

    After our enchiladas y mas fix, I’ll follow up.

  20. The Republicans who complain loudest about the financial costs inflicted on taxpayers by illegal immigrants are happily replacing the free child care provided by parents with expensive, inferior taxpayer-funded child "care" in prison detention camps and centers. 
    It was never about the financial cost.  It was about the potent alignment of hate and greed. 

    And that is indeed quite the potent combo.
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