Political Roundtable Part XXII

[dckingsfan]

So Jamaaliver - do you support Trump's move of moving the trade deficit to other countries - I don't have a problem with it and like that the Chinese are going desperate... doesn't bother me in the least.

Meanwhile...

US, China clobber each other with biggest sets of tariffs yet

The commercial battle between the United States and China heated up Monday as the economic powerhouses slapped each other with the largest rounds of tariffs yet, unleashing punitive duties now on roughly half of their traded goods.

President Trump imposed fresh levies on $200 billion in Chinese imports, prompting Beijing to respond with tariffs on $60 billion in American goods, approaching the point of running out of U.S. products to target.

Neither of the world’s two largest economies showed signs of backing down, and there are no further trade talks scheduled to resolve the dispute.

China has refused to cave amid Trump’s escalating threats. Officials on Friday canceled trade negotiations that were scheduled this week in Washington and then scrapped military talks with the United States that were supposed to start in Beijing on Tuesday.

Beijing has launched efforts to influence the conversation in the US Midwest, as well.

[Chinese] State media purchased a four-page advertisement in Iowa’s largest newspaper this week warning American soybean farmers that Trump’s trade war would shift business to South America. A coalition of more than 80 industry and agricultural groups in the United States, meanwhile, also protested on Monday the intensifying economic conflict.

Washington Post

[pancakes3]

from a purely economic standpoint, i don't have a problem with it.

from a geopolitical standpoint, weakening US/China economic interdependence is a bad thing.

[dckingsfan]

from a purely economic standpoint, i don't have a problem with it.

from a geopolitical standpoint, weakening US/China economic interdependence is a bad thing.

From my standpoint - there would still be enough interdependence not to matter. But for it truly to do good he would need to target areas for development - say, South America.

Then the jobs would flow in and we wouldn't have the terrible migration problem (that is a truly awful trip to make).

It is the reason that NAFTA was so good (with respect to Mexico). We had a net negative migration back to Mexico.

What I was fishing for was: It is one thing to redirect trade another to actually have the plan in place.

[doclinkin]

Now as a lefty kid who grew up on "question authority" buttons and protest marches and watched the Watergate hearings in my hippie co-op daycare

Wait. Your parents worked!!? Don't even tell me you had a phucking dirt bike!!!

Divorced single mom on food stamps, with three kids under the age of 7, put herself through Wesleyan University via government grants and loans and got a dual major in social work and biology. I ate government cheese. Powdered milk. I did not starve, because public policy was sensible. No hippie herself, a little older than that generation, but she lived in communal housing to save money, so I grew up learning my values from smart graduate student activists.

She graduated and worked in social work, eventually managing halfway houses for dually diagnosed clients (schizophrenia and developmental delay) funded by federal and state grants. These were barely functional individuals who learn slow and could not find work normally and would have starved or been neglected if left to their families to care for them. Government money gave them a place to live and food and health care and simple job training and activities and life skills and a routine. AND THEN they'd have a schizophrenic break and lose all progress and have to start over from the beginning. Not their fault, they were born broken. Or suffered accidents and brain damage.

Then she taught courses in psychology and childhood development at a community college in the state system in an inner city urban area in one of the first American cities ever to try to declare itself bankrupt. She taught hard working poor people who desired to better themselves and make a decent life. Many of whom were immigrants. Only about 40% graduated, but of those few, most went on to jobs and being productive members of society.

And as for me. I didn't starve. My mom earned enough in her life to buy the communal house I grew up in. (Twice actually, once with my steppop, then once from him. And one house in between). And now is returning to communal living, retiring with two other old biddies who want to have friends surrounding them while they age. She was smart, she worked damned hard, but my life was irrefutably saved by government 'handouts'.

So, yeah, I believe in tax and spend, harnessing capitalism to pull the sled of civilization. Social democracy. Government works. Public schools and libraries and garbage collection and street repairs.

And no I didn't have a damn dirt bike. I rode BMX and skateboards. No BB gun. A black and white TV with those 3 channels and were only allowed to watch an hour a week. So I built my own wrist rocket with bent metal rod and surgical tubing. And bow and arrow. And my brother and I made armor out of duct tape and carpet remnants and beat the hell into each other in the back yard with wooden weapons.all manner of fun delinquencies. It was the 70's and 80's man. Yes there were fewer regulations. But before Reagan, government cared for the people who needed it most. There were occasional vagrants. But it wasn't until he killed off the public mental health system that this country had a homeless problem.

Government exists to keep civilization intact. Smart government looks out for its citizens and gives them a hand up, not just hand out. And as a kid, I was one of those people who needed it most.

[dckingsfan]

doc, do you mean the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963? I guess that was the start of what "didn't happen". I think that was from the Kennedy era. Carter started moving things forward with the Mental Health Systems Act which was never implemented - Reagan and all subsequent administrations were happy to let it die. I think this is because of the problems with public mental healthcare in the past (mostly around involuntary hospitalization).

[JWizmentality]

Now as a lefty kid who grew up on "question authority" buttons and protest marches and watched the Watergate hearings in my hippie co-op daycare

Wait. Your parents worked!!? Don't even tell me you had a phucking dirt bike!!!

Divorced single mom on food stamps, with three kids under the age of 7, put herself through Wesleyan University via goverment grants and loans and got a dual major in social work and biology. I ate government cheese. Powdered milk. I did not starve, because public policy was sensible. No hippie herself, a little older than that generation, but she lived in communal housing to save money.

Graduated and worked in social work, eventually managing halfway houses for dually diagnosed clients (schizophrenia and developmental delay) funded by federal and state grants. These were barely functional individuals who learn slow and could not find work normally and would have starved or been neglected if left to their families to care for them. Government money gave them a place to live and food and health care and simple job training and activities and life skills and a routine. AND THEN they'd have a schizophrenic break and lose all progress and have to start over from the beginning. Not their fault, they were born broken. Or suffered accidents and brain damage.

Then she taught courses in psychology childhood development at a community college in the state system in an inner city urban area in one of the first amerciam cities ever toi try to declare itself bankrupt. She taught hard working poor people who desired to better themselves and make a decent life. Many of whom were immigrants. Only about 40% graduated, but of those few, most went on to jobs and being productive members of society.

And as for me. I didn't starve. My mom earned enough in her life to buy the communal house I grew up in. And now is returning to communal lviing retiring with two other old biddies who want to have friends surrounding them while they age. She was smart, she worked damned hard, but my life was immeasurably saved by government 'handouts'.

So, yeah, I believe in tax and spend, harnessing capitalism to pull the sled of civilization. Social democracy. Government works. Public schools and libraries and garbage collection and street repairs.

And no I didn't have a damn dirt bike. I rode BMX and skateboards. No BB gun. A black and white TV with those 3 channels and were only allowed to watch an hour a week. So I built my own wrist rocket with bent metal rod and surgical tubiing. And bow and arrow. And my brother and I made armor out of duct tape and carpet remnants and beat the hell into each other in the back yard with wooden weapons.all manner of fun delinquencies. It was the 70's and 80's man. Yes there were fewer regulations. But before Reagan, government cared for the people who needed it most. There were occasional vagrants. But it wasnt until he killed off the public mental health system that this country had a homeless problem. And as a kid, I was one of those people who needed it most.

I want to be like you when I grow up.

[stilldropin20]

Now as a lefty kid who grew up on "question authority" buttons and protest marches and watched the Watergate hearings in my hippie co-op daycare

Wait. Your parents worked!!? Don't even tell me you had a phucking dirt bike!!!

Divorced single mom on food stamps, with three kids under the age of 7, put herself through Wesleyan University via government grants and loans and got a dual major in social work and biology. I ate government cheese. Powdered milk. I did not starve, because public policy was sensible. No hippie herself, a little older than that generation, but she lived in communal housing to save money, so I grew up learning my values from smart graduate student activists.

She graduated and worked in social work, eventually managing halfway houses for dually diagnosed clients (schizophrenia and developmental delay) funded by federal and state grants. These were barely functional individuals who learn slow and could not find work normally and would have starved or been neglected if left to their families to care for them. Government money gave them a place to live and food and health care and simple job training and activities and life skills and a routine. AND THEN they'd have a schizophrenic break and lose all progress and have to start over from the beginning. Not their fault, they were born broken. Or suffered accidents and brain damage.

Then she taught courses in psychology childhood development at a community college in the state system in an inner city urban area in one of the first American cities ever to try to declare itself bankrupt. She taught hard working poor people who desired to better themselves and make a decent life. Many of whom were immigrants. Only about 40% graduated, but of those few, most went on to jobs and being productive members of society.

And as for me. I didn't starve. My mom earned enough in her life to buy the communal house I grew up in. (Twice actually, once with my steppop, then once from him. And one house in between). And now is returning to communal living, retiring with two other old biddies who want to have friends surrounding them while they age. She was smart, she worked damned hard, but my life was irrefutably saved by government 'handouts'.

So, yeah, I believe in tax and spend, harnessing capitalism to pull the sled of civilization. Social democracy. Government works. Public schools and libraries and garbage collection and street repairs.

And no I didn't have a damn dirt bike. I rode BMX and skateboards. No BB gun. A black and white TV with those 3 channels and were only allowed to watch an hour a week. So I built my own wrist rocket with bent metal rod and surgical tubing. And bow and arrow. And my brother and I made armor out of duct tape and carpet remnants and beat the hell into each other in the back yard with wooden weapons.all manner of fun delinquencies. It was the 70's and 80's man. Yes there were fewer regulations. But before Reagan, government cared for the people who needed it most. There were occasional vagrants. But it wasn't until he killed off the public mental health system that this country had a homeless problem.

Government exists to keep civilization intact. Smart government looks out for its citizens and gives them a hand up, not just hand out. And as a kid, I was one of those people who needed it most.

That is an amazing american success story. Congrats to you and especially your moms for doing such a great job and working so hard! It speaks to many things. Some of which you might be selling short as you seemingly praise big government programs. I mean this IS a bootstrap story. Your story. Your moms story. Its a bootstrap story. Was there a few social programs or rather (opportunities) that your mom saw as an avenue to facilitate her goals? yeah. And something tells me that if these social program (or opportunities) did not exist for your mom she is the type of person both smart enough and with a strong work ethic to find another opportunity to use to catapult her to achieve her version of the american dream and raising her 2 young boys. I think so. And good for her. And good for you.

My mom really was a crack addict and drug dealer. And lazy. For 5 decades! Too lazy to work or finish school or finishing anything really. I too remember the embarrassment of standing in the free cheese line and using foodstamps at the local grocery stores. My mom basically never got a job until she was almost 45 years old and I was 19(too old for her to get a monthly check so she had to get a job) and already in the military (yes, because i thought i had nowhere else to go)......So i get it........... Believe me..... i get it.

I was forced to "get it" at a young age. Its funny when your house that you grow up in is the local crack house, and your parents the local dealers/users... and when you are in line at school for the free lunch(cuz your parents dont work for any given consistent time) or when you are in line for the free cheese at the local church in my case...and you look around in those lines and you look around in your own living room...and see the same people in all of those lines and also in my living room.....doing crack (yes, right in front of me)...and you get older...and you begin to put it all together...you kinda lose (a lot) of sympathy for the programs that give out the free cheese. You lose sympathy for the people who bring a booklet of $120 of food stamps given to them to buy food for their children and instead buy $50 worth of drugs. Then others come around and buy those $120 booklets of food stamps for $70 cash...and they are local bar owners with cash. local construction workers and owners.... and years later...you take it all in and think about it all....and you say to yourself, "what a waste of the american tax payers money!!" And that is my personal childhood experience with government welfare programs. A complete waste! That's the truth!

Whenever my parents ran out of money? (and they did almost every single month) the family came to the rescue. My grandparents paid our mortgage. often. Even paid for me to go to private high school. The safety net programs didn't work for my family. At all. IN fact it was the abuse of the safety net programs that provided the currency for all of those crackheads to sit around and do crack in my living room. And thats the phucking the truth!!

sczizofrenics and other poeple with mental disorders, like psychopaths...who.......yeah...they got problems. but sometimes. often actually. They ARE the problem. Often really. And because my parents lived this "lifestyle" i ended up knowing everyone in town that also lived that lifestyle. Everyone. These phuckers comiserate like no other group on the planet. So...In grade school, it was the children of the other drug addicts and alcoholics that were mean and picking fights or acting up in class. In high school, it was the children of the local drug addicts and drug dealers that sold drugs to the local high school students. And these same kids couldn't stand me because i didn't want to be their friends.

By some phucking miracle and even maybe by the grace of God, and really....I can probably thank that same Ronald Reagan (of whom you spoke above) and his wife Nancy and their extreme campaign to say no to drugs that saved me. When brooke shields told me not to smoke? I believed her! Really! I did. I never touched a cigerette for more than a puff but once or twice in my life. When that egg (my brain) fried on that pan (drugs) I believed it. But really, I just looked at all the crack heads as phucking losers. I saw drugs as the devil. The most evil thing on the planet. And I was surrounded by it. And some of the addicts were charming...ever been around an intelligent chatty cathy all cooked up on coke? <-- they can be funny, thought provoking, perhaps even interesting. They might even be learned and take the time teach you something, all coked up as they are. And I saw it all......right up close and personal in my living room. Former High school star athletes. Some that even played in college. Was it cool that they would shoot hoops with me? yeah? and they weren't nice at times. Often. Drugs can do that...I was 12 years old playing tackle football with grown men who thought it was ok to tackle me like a grown man. Did i end up running for over 1200 yard as a sophomore on varsity? yeah i did? Did i play 2 sports in college? yeah i did. But could have easily been hurt physically in those games...i mean they tackled me like a grown damn man. One crazy nut lit off a pipe bomb in the front yard( a dud but it made a big flash) because his GF was doing crack without him. He broke the door down another day and dragged her out by her hair...only to chill out and do drugs with all of them 10 minutes later. yeah...fun stuff! i know.

I aint crying about none of it. In fact i'm damn proud of it. all of it. And I often tell people that sometimes you learn about yourself in ways and life and grow as an amazing human being by the least likely of parents. And I know what I saw. Widespread abuse of "safety net" programs and little to none of that safety net money makings its way to the children. Not me nor the kids of the other addicts. I had shoes on my feet because my grandmother bought them. A tennis racket because my grandmother bought them. Yes...the same grandmother that made sandwiches in a local bar for $5 per hour until she was 75 years old. She never took a single vacation in her entire life. I ended living with my grand parents when i was 16 because my mom eventually lost everything. A decade later When my grandmother died...the last of her sisters and after my grand father she had over $700,000 in equity in multiple buildings and $200,000 in cash in box in the ceiling. She didn't need to work. But she chose to anyone to leave my sister and I as much as possible knowing my mom couldn't even help herself let alone the two of us. By that time, I was already finishing up dental school and my sister was a regional manager for walmart so we ended up not needing it. S we spent large chunks of it putting my mom through various programs. <--waste of money. None of them worked. We put the rest in a trust. I invested it all very well. The entire family is now set for life. And no one gets a dime unless they meet certain criteria like finishing high school in the top 25%. Attending college. Finishing college. very low interest loans to start up a businesses and demonstrating success. etc.

My grandparents came here in the early 1900's at a time when almost no social programs existed. they arrived as completely broke immigrants. And worked. No free cheese for them. No food stamps. Nothing. They knew they had to work to have anything (like even food) so that is exactly what they did.

Everything i just wrote is the truth. and i could tell so much more.

Fact is sometimes the safety net is nothing more than crutch that doesn't allow people to grow. and sometimes its nothing more than a waste of money abused by fraud. and sometimes (rarely in my experiences) it works. Seems to have worked for you, but i would argue is that it was your mom who worked her butt off for you and your brother and all she needed was to identify and opportunity. IN her case she identified the co-op as her path and some safety nets stuff seemed to help. If there was no co-op? I think an amazing hard worker like your mom simply finds another pathway and makes it work just as well.

[doclinkin]

My mom had a work ethic and still does. But that free and reduced lunch program made it possible I ate. Those schools actually had an arts magnet program that made me want to go to class. I myself got government loans and grants to graduate college. Have worked in libraries. Taught. Worked for Unions. Worked in local government. I intimately know how critical it is to get the right help you need at the right time. That's not just food stamps, but assistance. And have throughly benefitted from good government policies. My mom worked in social work. Some people take advantage, some people take _full_ advantage. You do need smart programs and good incentives, and our country does need a smarter policy on drug addiction. I've visited Amsterdam and they seem to do it right. Legalize and treat. A best friend and woman I will always love is in a shelter right now, in part behind some addiction issues, and abuse issues in her life that made her seek out escape. But some of the best help and training she got on how to improve her situation was from inmates when she was caught behind some stupid stuff. Seems like there should be a better life skills program than lock up. This is someone who is super smart, and also damaged. Not everybody is lucky. Not everybody has the same reaction to trauma. You did, but you also had help. How? From the government.

You took full advantage of one of the only government programs that lets people escape their background and bad habits and develop an intensive jobs training program surrounded by people with different values. The military has job training, food, shelter, exercise program, travel to new culture etc etc etc. Why should that be only available to able bodied young people with natural good physical health? You make clear the military saved your life and made you a productive citizen. Seems to me there should be more opportunities than the armed forces. Bill Clinton floated the idea of a national Police Corps, like the Army National Reserve etc. You go to school for a few years then work as a police officer for an equal number of years in an underserved community. Then you might have better community oriented policing and educated officers who have had exposure to diverse ideas and people of different backgrounds. And it would be an opportunity for neighborhood kids to pick up job training on something that is not a limited area of military specialty.

Nice idea but we spent the surplus on a pointless war that only enriched people in the various defense industries. Part of the problem. Now we have constant contracts for military equipment that is unnecessary, and the surplus decommissioned ordnance is getting fed to local police departments. If you have a tool you will find a use for it. If you have a tank you will be itching for a reason to drive it through a neighborhood.

But the community oriented policing Police Corps concept would have demilitarized our police forces. Some part of the problem that is highlighted by Black Lives Matter et al, is that one of the few careers available after the military is as a police officer. Bad idea. In the military you are trained to protect the guy who wears your uniform, and everyone else is suspect or a possible enemy combatant. You are taught to kill by dehumanizing anyone not in your squad. Not great training for real police work, to protect and serve. Us vs Them. The attitude is pervasive. If you knew the dudes in your community there would be no 'them'. Not at that level of institutionalized armed paranoia. Beat cops who were from that neighborhood or a hood like it and knew the characters and bad actors and how to talk to people and who to talk to to deescalate stupid situations. Seems like a smart idea to me.

Decriminalizing drugs would snuff the blackmarket and thus the need to arm and defend turf. Yes. There will always be people who slip through the cracks. So to speak. Always be people who use drugs. How do we treat that? Because now its claiming rich suburban white kids, who are ODing on things from the pharmacy. Money being made for corporations on the death of our people.

But colorado and marijuana legalization have showed how much money is available for public programs if you are able to tap into that urge and make it work for you. Because whatever we are trying right now, we are failing. Unless the objective is to create (the perception of) a villainous underclass so that we have an excuse to keep buying military ordnance and prop up police budgets and find scapegoats for societal ills and point fingers to pit working people against each other. Because otherwise we might be looking at that imbalance of rich vs poor and saying wait a minute. The central american who is working in that restaurant til 5 in the morning is not the damn problem. And we just had a black president, can we get over the idea that all brown people are criminals? Its not a useful narrative.

Rat park. There was a study of rats that were given the option of two water bottles. One with drugs one without. Naturally the rats who tasted the drug water preferred the drugs and would drink themselves dead. However. The researchers then built Rat Park. Where they still had the drug water, and still had the regular water, but instead of going to the cage with the drug water the rats had the option of going to a utopia of ratdom. It had other rats, it had plastic balls to play with, it had puzzles to solve and tunnels etc. And wouldn't you know, there were suddenly zero overdoses, rats instead chose to go play and have sex and solve puzzles and live happy rat lives.

Point being. Yeah it sucks that people use and die and waste their lives. But locking them up for being addicts hasn't seemed to work. Maybe we can tax that blackmarket industry and use the energy of all those hardworking hustlers to provide options for lives that are less shxtty. Counseling. Good work. A new viewpoint. Travel. A way out. The same way you were able to transcend your background by joining the largest government program for giving opportunities to young poor men and women.


We need good policy. We need good programs. We do need better government, and better priorities than enriching corporations.
Instead of scrapping everything and giving rich people more money, and packing the courts that will protect corporations more than individuals, and instead of sneering at the disadvataged and telling them to either get their own advantage or telling suffer, starve or die, lets just hire smarter managers and people with thoughtful plans and see what kind of thing works and make America into a better kinda Rat Park.

No?

[doclinkin]

Oh and as for my mom working her butt off. Yeah she did. She also had societal support. I know plenty of people who work their butt off but don't get hired for the job, so they work their butt off hustling whatever opportunities are available to them. Even the kid slinging crack, economists show they work harder and for less per hour than a McDonalds manager. They working. Steady working. They just don't see the other opportunities available to them. Because who shows them. Who teaches them.

It is useful I guess not to show them life could be different. So popular culture and media cast them in the role of villain. Who benefits? (What are we down to now, 4 media corporations that own all the radio stations? 2 or 3 companies that own your cable TV?) basically say: if you are black or brown you can be an athlete or a gangster or a rap artists. Because it is useful for budgets that we have a criminal underclass. And skin color determines who gets nominated to play that role. I went to the same inner city schools, as a minority white kid, I just was surrounded by educated people, and my vocabulary meant that school administrators treated me different than the black kid who was just as smart. Even when we were both skipping class together. He'd get detention, I'd talk and walk. Even with black school administrators. Privilege is self-fulfilling. Why Affirmative Action exists. People tend to hire people who look like them or talk like them. So it is useful to seed organizations with bright and hardworking people that are counter to that bias.

I dunno. I got two sons with brown skin. The asian one gets offered jobs all the time. The other is smart thoughtful hardworking and hits that wall of bias all the time.

Anyway. I guess I'm done with this thread for a while again. Even thinking about how divided we are from common sense depresses me.

[stilldropin20]

Oh and as for my mom working her butt off. Yeah she did. She also had societal support. I know plenty of people who work their butt off but don't get hired for the job, so they work their butt off hustling whatever opportunities are available to them. Even the kid slinging crack, economists show they work harder and for less per hour than a McDonalds manager. They working. Steady working. They just don't see the other opportunities available to them. Because who shows them. Who teaches them.

It is useful I guess not to show them life could be different. So popular culture and media cast them in the role of villain. Who benefits? (What are we down to now, 4 media corporations that own all the radio stations? 2 or 3 companies that own your cable TV?) basically say: if you are black or brown you can be an athlete or a gangster or a rap artists. Because it is useful for budgets that we have a criminal underclass. And skin color determines who gets nominated to play that role. I went to the same inner city schools, as a minority white kid, I just was surrounded by educated people, and my vocabulary meant that school administrators treated me different than the black kid who was just as smart. Even when we were both skipping class together. He'd get detention, I'd talk and walk. Even with black school administrators. Privilege is self-fulfilling. Why Affirmative Action exists. People tend to hire people who look like them or talk like them. So it is useful to seed organizations with bright and hardworking people that are counter to that bias.

I dunno. I got two sons with brown skin. The asian one gets offered jobs all the time. The other is smart thoughtful hardworking and hits that wall of bias all the time.

Anyway. I guess I'm done with this thread for a while again. Even thinking about how divided we are from common sense depresses me.

look ive got a unique life experience. Ive done too much. Seen too much and I now know more than i should. Because no kid grows up in a real crack house and becomes a doctor and surgeon. No kid grows up in a real crack house and joins the US navy and ends up granted a TS SI SCI scurity clearance and doing some of the most interesting spy stuff the military has to offer on the greatest spy boat and most decorated vessel is US naval history. No kid grows up in a crack house and goes all conference in 3 sports and plays 2 in college. No kid grows up in a crack house, gets shuffled around to 6 high schools 1 of which was extremely prestigious and another in the ghetto one in a nice suburb another in a poor suburb and one in a small town in the middle of no were. No crack house has a benz 450 SL in the garage and a 15,000 mcintosh stereo in the 70's and end up evicted out of a crumby rental in the 80's. Children ofdont crack heads usually have the access i had and ended up having later in life. But i did. I was that kid. I ended up with a lot of friends from all kinds of backgrounds. Poor kids. well to do kids. And even some really wealthy kids. Kids like me dont get straight A's in college and dental school. Kids like me dont become code breakers and intel officers for the US navy. My crackhead parents also had the biggest yard. crackheads that they were there was minimal landscaping so all the football games were played in my yard. Surprisingly i had a lot of friends through it all. Or at least people that wanted to hang around. And i was the kid that needed to leard about people. I needed to connect. I needed to talk to people on deeper levels. I learned how to pry and i learned how to share.

So I have probably covered too much ground for my own good before i was 30. But My real education in life didn't start until i was 35, already worth millions and investing both the family trust and my own money in the chicago real estate market. I also owned a large bar for a brief period as part of a real estate transaction. I Still own a construction company. Still own a few dental practices. I still am a licenseed realtor. I have dozens of employees that earn $15 per hour. Dozens more that earn 50-70K per year. And a handful of employees that earn over $300,000 per year. I just have done too much. seen too much. People tell you more when you are the boss. A LOT more. People tell you more when they are high on crack. People ask more of you when you have money. A lot more. People try very very hard to get close to you when you have money.

So i ended up learning even more about human nature both than i ever imagined. I know what works for people and what doesn't work for people. On any given day I conduct high dollar financial transaction with 50-120 people. On any given day I take people thorugh surgery as the surgeon. I take people's mothers through surgery. Their young children through surgery. I listen to them. All of them. Intently. Lots of them. Daily. Just like i used to listen to the crackheads that were always hanging around my living room as a child...I learned to listen and observe intently as a child as a survival technique. So its second nature to me now. I have just seen and talked to too many people about important things. I'm like a lawyer that has 10,000 annual clients. So My personal life experience and human interactions levels are off of the charts. A guy like me is rare. I used to race motorcycles just to keep from being bored to death. breaking deep into a hairpin turn from 140 mph to 30mph in a second and dragging my left knee through a turn was fun. I mean i would be bored to death if i didn't do it. After the race i would hit the waves and boogie board in 12 foot waves and rough coral reef all around. I not only didn't fear death i didn't even consider it. Then go dancing all night. meet a girl. wake up on the beach. and then leave town for a month of navy "spy" work. That was me in the Navy...the kid that grew up in a crack house.

i bring all of this up only to set up something that i consider the most important bit of knowledge that i can impart to anyone. Simply: Every single human from the crackheads in the living room to the goldman sachs investment bankers and the google and amazon algorithm coders to the established wealth real estate clients...all of them!!...they all do what they feel they need to do to keep themselves going. Some people need excessive thinking and planning to bring themselves to action. Others need to anger themselves into action. Others absolutely must have a villain to "fight". Others need to (metaphorically) set everything around them on fire and watch it all burn to the ground and almost be on fire before they can get their azz off the couch. We all do what we need to do to motivate ourselves into "action." We tell ourselves "stuff." And we tell each other stuff. But all that stuff we say to ourselves and to each other and all the stuff we do or dont do is nothing more than what we need to do, say, or hear in order to get ourselves going. Sometimes its real. And sometimes its nothing more than an illusion. a trick we play on ourselves to act. But...whatever it takes...and however long it takes...we all eventually move or act...some of us just move or act much slower or much smarter or with more purpose than others. No way is right. No way is wrong. So what i'm trying to say is that those crackheads in my living room growing up, they weren't necessarily "wrong" or bad or evil. They were simply doing what they needed to do for themselves at that time in their lives to get to where they were eventually trying to go. We can argue technique. We can argue strategy. We can argue influence. We can argue many things. But i dont want to live in a world where we argue the autonomy of the individual. Because its an argument no one can win and whatever we say doesn't matter anyway. They are still going to move at their own pace. My mom eventually got off drugs. Or bored with them. Or tired of them. Whichever and whatever. And when she was good and ready.

So when you say something like, "Anyway. I guess I'm done with this thread for a while again. Even thinking about how divided we are from common sense depresses me." You must understand that to me you are simply just choosing to feel a certain way and then saying what you need to say both for yourself and to others because that is what you feel you need to say or do to get yourself going to do whatever it is you may or may not get done. Ya dig?

[queridiculo]

Like talking to a wall, even when an attempt at dialog is made.

Some people just are too busy hearing themselves talk.

[doclinkin]

look ive got a unique life experience. Ive done too much.

You sound lonely. Are you okay man? Do you need to talk? Must be hard.

[JWizmentality]

look ive got a unique life experience. Ive done too much.

You sound lonely. Neglected. Still. Are you okay man? Do you need to talk? Sounds like you need some attention.

My god....what have you done.

[doclinkin]

look ive got a unique life experience. Ive done too much.

You sound lonely. Neglected. Still. Are you okay man? Do you need to talk? Sounds like you need some attention.

My god....what have you done.

I just may open the therapy and "working out your shxt" thread. There's a lot of dysfunction up in this piece.

[TGW]

Doc, you sound like a progressive sir. My end of the spectrum.

TALK.

[gtn130]

Yes TGW is the gatekeeper of all things progressive. Basically the Harry Potter sorting hat of who is a true and pure leftist

[Ruzious]

Yes TGW is the gatekeeper of all things progressive. Basically the Harry Potter sorting hat of who is a true and pure leftist

Why is it that nobody labels themselves a regressive? That'd be the perfect label for Trump, yes? Head of the Regressive Dysfunction Party - no relation to the musical group Malfunkshun - fronted by Andrew Wood, who was the inspiration of Temple of the Dog - which kind of spawned both Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. And Pearl Jam was originallly called Mookie Blaylock. Call it the Mook Party - that works... maybe. Sorry for the edits - my PC keeps konking out in mid sentence.

[doclinkin]

I don't really care about labels. Just kinda gets in the way. I've known lefty rednecks. Had good conversation with military intel types. We can disagree. And still work together to make this country work. One thing I do like about this board is that metaphor. I can thoroughly rage at some idiocy in this thread, but then when I take a step back I realize we are all on the same squad cheering for the same uniform and the red white and blue.

[doclinkin]

Yes TGW is the gatekeeper of all things progressive. Basically the Harry Potter sorting hat of who is a true and pure leftist

Why is it that nobody labels themselves a regressive? That'd be the perfect label for Trump, yes? Head of the Regressive Dysfunction Party.

How about Aggressive. I'd join the Aggressively Functional party.

[verbal8]

This is pretty entertaining:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-smell-a-rat/2018/09/24/0b242042-c032-11e8-be77-516336a26305_story.html?utm_term=.23fb79b81472

I wonder if Nunes is disappointed that he didn't get one.