Anyone have a take on the wall and the imports tax? Hello protectionism.

Forget the wall, the real ongoing **** show is between USG (civilian and intelligence departments) and the new administration / Kremlin.

I can only imagine what 2017 must feel like for those working at the state department, CIA, NASA, USGS, EPA, etc., now with Admiral Harkov at the reins.

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18AMNwKjPFI

something something iron curtain

I think they're more representative than you may think, especially in certain areas of the country. I haven't been to church outside of my particular region, but I have never experienced anything similar to how you described your experiences. The congregation that I belonged to had a large compound in the country where their member churches from around the country would meet. There was always plenty of speaking in tongues, faith-healing, & hatred of The World. It wasn't quite Westboro Baptist Church, but it wasn't entirely dissimilar either. I doubt very much that my particular experience was unique or that these sorts of people are only on the news.

I know it's lazy whenever pro-life people suggest programs to help women choose alternatives to abortion. Lazy and really just anti-choice because obviously a program designed to help a woman carry a child to term that might otherwise choose to abort is really just a baby step towards banning all abortion. So of course any and every program or policy that doesn't promote abortion should be outright dismissed as a lazy and ignorant policy.

Let's not stop there. Since all of these children would be such a burden on society and it's generally so much better to abort rather than lazy pro-life people not help them after they're born, the real best alternative would just be some good old fashioned ethnic cleansing. Besides, these people are taking up valuable urban real estate that could be developed to resettle sub-urban and rural individuals lessening our national infrastructure burden.

No, it's lazy that they don't suggest these kinds of programs. Learn to read.

Care to offer some real examples?

It's an unwanted kid that the mother can't support or doesn't want to support, that the taxpayers aren't willing to pay to raise properly in a healthy environment. What's your alternative?

Municipal governments haven't accounted for infrastructure TCO. Municipal governments have built out using new construction permits instead of sustainable development based on tax revenue. Federal infrastructure grants are based on expansion rather than upkeep, and municipalities have been abusing those programs to spackle over the fact that they can't afford to maintain their old infrastructure. Most US cities are insolvent under GAAP, and once this **** starts falling apart they won't be able to afford to fix it. The people who live rurally and in suburbs have the most expensive infrastructure costs per capita, and when the government goes broke, those are going to be the people hit hardest by it.

None of this is opinion and none of this is my fault.

I love how butthurt you get about facts.

Ah, the old fashioned slippery slope argument from a social conservative. Color me suprised that you can't tell the difference from an adult and a fetus.

They do suggest alternatives all the time.



No.



Unwanted by whom? Most likely somebody wants the child or at least some of these children. My alternative? I think a progressive sexual health education program would be a good start and perhaps make contraception cheap and easy to obtain.



Screw 'em.



You think I'm butthurt? That's cute.

You do present some interesting points and they're worthy of discussion but then you insert your opinion in such an insulting manner that you even manage to get probably the easiest going person on the board perturbed. And I know you read 3 books per minute and type 4 wikipedias per minute but I don't have the time or energy for sprawling discussions like we used to do here but I do have a somewhat sincere question for you. Even at the great speed you read doesn't Reverend Jones' midnight suicidal sky is falling rants make your eyes bleed just a little?

Ugh, screw that strongtowns bull****. Like I mentioned earlier, a town near me bought into all that crap, cut down all the 4-lane roads into 2 lane roads, replaced all the traffic lights with 4-way stops, got rid of most of the parking, approved a whole bunch of high-density urban development, got rid of zoning laws that required N number of parking spots for X types of businesses, etc., and was left with a ghost town of a downtown area that nobody wants to go to. They had to discount all the condos because nobody wants to live there. All the businesses close up shop early and open late. The only reason anyone goes there at all is to catch a ferry and now they have such bad traffic congestion that it takes ~20 minutes every afternoon to go ~6 blocks. And since there are only single lanes going everywhere all the public transportation gets caught up in it as well. This has been going on for more than a decade. They now have nice walkable sidewalks, bike lanes, very few roads for cars, but no people. What a waste.

Why is American's first reaction to a failed implementation of an idea to turn around and pine for the exact opposite, rather than investigating what went wrong like any proper feedback loop?

Disliking one possible answer to a problem does not mean there is no problem.

I am beginning to think that all of conservative thought is based on some kind of logical fallacy that can be formalized somehow. It's like there's some kind of upper bound on the complexity of questions they will consider, and default to negation of the idea when it triggers something that feels bad (and inevitability will for any complex question). Leaving them with Mencken's simple but wrong solution to every complex / uncomfortable problem.

Their apparent lack of empathy doesn't hurt either.

The sky is perpetually falling in small ways, which isn't so entirely upsetting were it not for conservatives being perfectly okay with it, causing the rest of the world to lower its standard of living to match the ****hole they live in.

As we speak, the president is sending us back to the 19th century, which is perfectly fine for a political party that fantasizes about the 18th.

Also, for the record, Wookie, the Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than it's been in 60 years.

The ground state for the conservative mind: "Stuff happened in the world today, I didn't learn from it, and I'm still fine; now that's exciting!"

Since your so insistent on evidence, Jon, why don't you show us some actual examples of evangelical Christian pro-lifers who simultaneously oppose abortion while explicitly rejecting programs that would support the children that mothers would be forced to bring to term. And then show us why such views are representative of evangelicals.

The federal government provides support to orphaned children through foster care programs (as do state governments), and many orphanages throughout the United States are run by various different groups from various different Christian denominations and funded by donations from congregants. If all abortions became illegal tomorrow and more unwanted or orphan children didn't have viable homes, pro-lifers would likely insist on increasing support to them. (This article from the New Republic, for instance, suggests that evangelicals have made numerous mistakes with adoptions, because, in many instances, they were overzealous about helping.) You haven't given me or anyone else here a reason to believe otherwise, except by insulting large groups of Americans, which has been altogether unconvincing.

The problem is that even in the face of failed government programs, there is still insistence that we keep doing what failed. Over and over. While it keeps failing. It's moronic. Maybe this approach will work in some cities. Maybe it won't work in others. Let's spend the time to study the reasons why it works in some and not in others. I do see the problem. I do not like government programs that perpetuate themselves even in the face of utter failure.

And I'm sure you have total confidence that with a man like Mike Pence in the White House, we'll be seeing lots of federal support for contraception.

omg.

Which programs are you talking about here?

I'm not sure if you posted that why I think you posted that but I'm guessing/hoping so.

The trouble here is that evangelical is a poorly defined term describing very fuzzy categories. Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals were all reactions to mainstream liberal Christianity. All of them are pretty broad categories. "Evangelicals" is probably most descriptive of conservative Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran and non-denominational churches that comprise a sort of mainstream conservative Protestantism. Fundamentalists are pretty much gone at this point. Pentecostals are weird and have a broad set of beliefs that range from being very similar to charismatic non-denominational and Baptist churches, to full on unitarianism, which is way outside the pale of what could be reasonably considered evangelical. Many also ordain female pastors, which is pretty clearly against Biblical teaching, and kind of a litmus test of theological liberalism.

Mysticism like tongues and sometime even prophecy, is most often associated with Pentecostals, but is also found to varying degrees in mainstream Evangelical churches as well. The degree to which this is the case varies quite a bit. It's pretty common to see "tongues" especially at youth groups, but healing is a lot more controversial. Many people are technically charismatics in that they believe spiritual gifts are possible, in special circumstances, but that most exhibitions of them are fake.

Televangelism is sort of a liberal offshoot charismatic movement, where you'll see a lot of female pastors, and they'll generally deny really basic tenants of evangelicalism, such as the need for repentance and belief in Jesus. Where they don't specifically contradict core evangelical beliefs, they focus so exclusively on personal prosperity, that I'm not sure that they can really be called protestant. That emphasis alone creates a huge gulf between these guys and even charismatic evangelicals.

And of course there are always going to be a set of people who show up for the sake of cultural convention rather than any real conviction.

I also love how the Midas touch myth is used as a positive thing in America, while the whole point of the myth is that it is not and is a very bad thing. If I had a column I'd do a story on that.

OMG. Peaking at the twitter thread from which this image originates, we find this response:


???

A year or two ago my parents hometown repaved a 1.25 mile stretch of road, and modernized it, adding one stormdrain (to deal with the foot-deep flooding that can happen), and it cost the city some 13 million dollars. So much of the city is in disrepair, and nobody has the income for the city to tax. The suburban lifestyle is unsustainable.

Of course, given that the repaved section is the one good road in the area, it's heavily trafficked now, and will probably not last as long.

They are all equally suspect at this point.

Not sure what all of this talk about roads is about, we were headed back into 18th century levels of technology whether Tronald Dump won or not. Better than investing in roads and hip downtowns, people should be investing in sod houses, Lehman's catalog, and .45-70 brass reloading supplies. So that when everyone has to off themselves, it will get done in one shot.

Well, it's fair enough to say that they are all equally worthy of our suspicion. Still, I simply will not accept comparisons between institutions which still do actual investigative journalism to clickbait websites. They do not provide equal value to society, and to argue otherwise (in my opinion) is just another false equivalence of the kind we hear from conservatives.



I mentioned the 18th century because conservatives are obsessed with an 18th century document, existing in a time before the phrase "economic externality" had been coined.

I mentioned the 19th century because Trump is sending the international political order its pre-WW1 state, where the most powerful governments cut deals with each other, and human rights or idealistic notions of international cooperation were not up for consideration.

"Make America Great Again" basically means: cut off those overeducated UN overlords in order to save money to pay off my credit card debt.

What have the NATO-ans ever done for us???

What, you actually need evidence of this? How about evidence of the contrary. What? I feel like the three evangelical television christians that immediately come to mind are too easy to even mention. What? That's like the shtick.

I make the argument Jon'C made whenever I get the opportunity to speak to someone protesting abortion clinics. It's actually one of the few arguments about anything where I've found incredible success. If you honestly don't like abortions, figure out what the most effective way to reduce them is, and put your energy there.

Turns out that whole pretending people aren't going to **** doesn't work. God can't get you out of talking with your kids about banging.

There's an amendment process.

I am all for the rule of law. But when your entire political movement hinges entirely around an originalist interpretation at the expense of the utilitarian ramifications of your machinations, I am inclined to characterized this kind of fetish as religious in nature.

I recently had occasion to read a comment on a NYT editorial from a libertarian in New Jersey, who was perfectly happy to see the country go to hell as some kind of payback against liberals, so long as the conservatives got to pick an originalist supreme court justice.

The map is not the territory. Scripture is not more important than the life which it guides.

In 1000 years, nobody is going to give a **** whether or not some guy in a black robe ensured that your property rights weren't infringed upon just a little bit more.

For my part, I mentioned it because we are going to have a huge oil hangover in not too long without a civilization with any mechanism for the accompanying necessary degrowth.

We won't be making a glorious return to 18th century Jeffersonian political ideas though (even though that's not the 18th century the people you're talking about want to return to, which is basically what you are daying) but probably to something more resembling a 12th century horror show of feudalism. Or maybe even some real late bronze age style collapse. And then probably extinction. But maybe the urbanites who have moved to Jon's gulch will transform themselves and humanity will survive as homo transcendus and instead of silly documents written on hemp we will have javascript that prevents ugly scary stuff like what is happening right now.

Well, at this very moment, it so happens I am drafting a proposal for my startup to be presented to Y-Combinator, to re-write the constitution so that it runs on Node.js.

So don't worry.

I spend a lot of time keeping up to date on blockchain smart contracts and decentralized governance nonsense, so that statement was only half tongue in cheek.

Eventually our system will implode. The conflict between the government and the founding document will surely come to a head. The constitution was designed for a generally bottom-up system, not the top-down system we have now. Also, the Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

If by moral and religious you mean farmers, sure.

"Prove a negative." Yeah I think I'll pass.

Foster care is problematic to the point where people who have been fostered say "the system" with the same semiotics as a veteran saying "the War". The US domestic adoption system has basically the opposite problem, where it so aggressively filters prospective parents that it's an excessively long and expensive process that ends in heartbreak most of the time. Basically these systems don't work as they are today and I am very surprised that you would suggest they do.

More significantly though is the very evangelical opposition to Planned Parenthood, which offers reproductive health advice and inexpensive contraception. You know, folks who have been actually doing something to make abortion less necessary.

Fads. You spend a lot of time keeping up to date on fads.



lol. The people, Wilkie. The conflict will never be with the document, only with the people.

DAE internet is fad? its 1994 lol just use teevee