Anyhoo, the stock market keeps going up, up, up! This is great--because stock markets *never* crash!

Another way to look at this is, you can make people fund things they specifically disagree with, as long as your request contains the right language.

I'm still taken aback by the suggestion that funding decisions are based on a ctrl+f search.

I thought they had an army of lobbyists, can't they read things?

The Buddhists say, when things that seem negative are happening, there are always positive things too, if we care to look at them. For example, when pussy grabber announced he could grab pussy it was horrible, but also, started a national* discussion* of agreement* that this was wrong*, and re-affirmed a set of values that one expects will last for generations.

And so, from that Buddhist perspective: if you don't like your reality, you have the power to change it. You can easily find the good within the bad. It is there all the time.

Without personal judgement, I say, you seem bent on the opposite approach, focused on mining the negative. We all are these days; it's how it works, now. The news is a concern engine, forging headlines that freak everyone the fuck out. Armageddon, just around the corner.

But I bet the Buddhists are having a good day.




*if you're quibbling with these words, you're not invested enough to get the larger point; step back, please.

I'll quibble with your face, buster.

Observation, perspective: All signs indicate that when Republicans get in power, they aggressively push for a certain agenda, but when Democrats get back in power, for all the lamenting about how the Republican agenda was going to ruin the world, they don't push back equally as hard. It's like they're not trying to win. Or...? The doomsday talk (about what Republicans are doing) was more about 'making the opposition look bad', and less about 'what they were actually willing to do about it'.

From this angle, it looks pretty similar to when the Republicans spent 8 years complaining about Obamacare, but actually had no plan whatsoever for healthcare. Like, all the doomsday talk about Democrats was about 'making the opposition look bad'. I say we disregard anything either one of them says about the other, unless they have a record of actually addressing that issue with equal intensity as their opponent did.

After applying the 'doomsday filter' --the issues that both parties fail at are the most legitimate issues. Unfortunately, this is a useless exercise, because there's only two parties, and the deluge of money pouring into politics ensures there will always only be two parties, endlessly quibbling about symbolic issues while the fundamental problems with our civilization go unaddressed.

You dismiss it as quibbling, but I find the more important problem is the necessity, or even the fear or belief of the necessity of this tactic.

That we, as a country, citizens, scientists, politicians, all, can't agree on certain terms where an objectively correct and precise term exists, is not a quibble.. It should be an alarm. Certainly no one can be nor should be forced to listen to certain words. But being a politician is in some ways a package deal. Opting for an alternate word for "fetus" is nonsense. Opt to leave the room instead of requiring everyone else to distort reality.

That sounds like something a snowflake would do.

The quibble words are the ones marked with an asterisk, biggie; it's a footnote.

A sensible approach sir.

Would it be safe to say, then, that 'climate change' is one of the legitimate issues?

I mention it, at the top of the list, because it meets the criteria (one side works very hard to address the issue, in concert with their admonishment of the other side for not acknowledging the issue), and because it does appear, if we have any faith in science (the originator of every major advancement to the civilization we, effortlessly, participate in), that it really is quite a critical, time-sensitive issue.

Critical for what now?

Principal: continuation of our civilization in its present form, without significant changes to baseline human habitability conditions/standards. Secondary: continuation of global ecosystem without significant changes to baseline habitability conditions for non-voting life forms.

Need more detail. How's that going to happen?

No. Not doing this.

I'm not doing gas-lighting performance art today.