Prelude to the Apocalypse

[antron]

Fusion has more drawbacks than fission does.

Surely you must be joking Mr Feynman

[BryanM]

Damn straight it does. You think Hydrogen atoms go around carrying phat neutrons around? How you gonna fuse them hydros without some f00kinng neuts on their bones? Adding an additional step of "spend energy to create the fuel" is an added cost. A process which.... involves fission.

Of course I see something with a halflife of 100 years and sensibly think "holy shit that's fucking dangerous" and others would go "good"

Thorium breeder is the holy grail for energy in the short term. Fusion, if it ever proves worth doing, which it may not, is so far in the distant future that half of Ray Kurzweil's fap fiction will have came true.

The half of his speculative fiction that's feasible.

[antron]

Frynotsureifseriouspic

[BryanM]

I would also add not being usable any time soon if ever as a pretty damn big "drawback"~~~

Not as big of a drawback as attacking universal healthcare when 80% of the people you're trying to convince support it.

[EmperorIng]

Please stop responding with unfunny meme-speak. Bryan is right about water's volatility; as I understand it the reason the molten-salt reactor is a much safer alternative is because the salt compound's boiling temperature is higher than the nuclear core's 2000-degree F temperature. According to the article I linked the expansion of the salt under heat would slow the reaction down in case of a problem.

Sanders' drawback will be convincing people there can be universal healthcare and complete subsidized higher education without massive tax increases for everyone - including the middle class.

[BulletMagnet]

Sanders' drawback will be convincing people there can be universal healthcare and complete subsidized higher education without massive tax increases for everyone - including the middle class.

I can't speak on the higher education topic (off the cuff I'm tempted to say he's barking up the wrong tree on this one anyway), but when it comes to health care there are loads of numbers available from which he can draw the simple summary of "whatever extra you end up paying in taxes, it's a pittance compared to how much you'll be saving by cutting out all the administrative costs and allowing the government to negotiate drug prices, not to mention no longer being tethered to an otherwise piss-poor employer because you're afraid of losing your coverage." I'd have to dig it up, but I remember one estimate stating that if we switched to single-payer healthcare and saved as much as other countries have compared to us (most of them pay from half to a third as much per capita) we'd basically eliminate the annual deficit in one fell swoop.

[BryanM]

It would take a lot of work and time, but we can get there. The median person would pay thousands less than Obamacare per year, the top 5% would pay thousands (millions, in the case of the creme de la creme) more. The fear mongering of focusing on the costs versus benefits is kind of hard when people are aware Obamacare sucks in certain obvious ways.

Clinton and a really bad domestic attack on the level of 9/11 are the only potential obstacles in the old guy's way right now.

The typical "Bernie vs Trump would do more to activate Mexican-american participation in Texas more than anything else imaginable, turning it into a battleground state" still applies and all that. But what's really interesting is the way guys like David Brooks and Lindsay Graham are talking about Cruz and Donald.

It's possible we're on the cusp of a crushing on the scale of Nixon/Reagan/FDR/Eisenhower here. And... I guess that kind of makes sense since we'd have an election based on ideas, instead of sports teams, right?

[antron]

As for Brian's fear of something that won't be safe for 100 years (safe I'm reading elsewhere, not half life), what's the best case for the thorium breeder's waste? I'm reading bad things about half lives, and its volume compared to fusion, but maybe you know something different. I really thought you might be joking.

And I'll add that the deuterium and tritium thing appears to be a non-issue. The former is naturally abundant and the later is created in the reactor walls once seeded, and we already have a lot.

[Ed Oscuro]

On that talk about Cruz, Brooks had a real zinger recently:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/opini ... .html?_r=0

I thought it was a pretty sensible piece from the start, though Brooks has naturally been in for hellfire from both ends of the spectrum.

I think the people at Salon have a point in this rebuttal, which isn't really a rebuttal of Brooks' main argument, but instead a criticism of Brooks' belief that the Christian Right is redeemable. So...everybody knows what they think about that already. Either you think that Bush is basically a nice guy who made some bad choices, or you think that he doesn't care about black people (or most anybody else). This is why I'm a big fan of gauging peoples' actions, not their style.

A bunch of other people - from Judy Woodruff to all the usual conservative talkers you've never heard of and probably wish you hadn't - have attacked Brooks for becoming "unhinged" about Cruz. This is all totally on style, nothing on the substance of Brooks' commentary about the actual policies Cruz says he would support.

It's tough trying to be a centrist, I guess.

But overall, I think that Brooks is right to be starting with a talk about the tone here, since it's not as if we let candidates have trial runs with the nuclear football. How else are you going to judge a candidate? I do think it's totally appropriate to use terms like "satanic" to describe somebody who has said the things Cruz has. And...yeah, he's got a proven track record of being an asshole, too, so Brooks would be right there too. Brooks needs to get a spine. At the same time, he also needs to get off the fence: Is it the tone that matters, or the action? Or both? If he means to say that you shouldn't be running for President on the conservative platform if your policy is lighting up the Middle East - going abroad in search of monsters to slay as one person put it - then he should say that too.

[BulletMagnet]

I read that article this morning; if Brooks is really that concerned about the apocalyptic rhetoric of Cruz et al, he needs to take a good long look, just for starters, at his chosen party's utter refusal to accept the basic legitimacy of their opposition, or don any mantle other than "oppressed crusader for the real truth", under any circumstances. Obama's not really an American! He secretly hates white people and sympathizes with terrorists! He's planning to confiscate your guns! He's cooking the job numbers! The gays are plotting to take over your culture! The media is a liberal cesspool that's indoctrinating your children! So is every school and college in the country! Clinton ran drugs and killed people! Sesame Street is a communist screed! All the climate scientists are lying! So are all the consumer advocates! So are all the health experts! So are all the economists! The Social Security money you're counting on doesn't even really exist, it's just made-up government math! Anyone who says they disagree with how Iraq was executed is knowingly giving aid and comfort to the enemy! Sorry, when your primary tactic to remain relevant is to scare the hell out of voters and make them feel like the world is out to get them, this is precisely where you're going to end up, and it's WAY too late to suddenly wring your hands and mumble "oh, HOW did we EVER get here?!"

Brooks is a charlatan and a self-righteous, sniveling little weasel, and the Times should be almost as ashamed to keep him on staff as of the fact that they didn't deep-six Maureen Dowd two decades ago.

[Ed Oscuro]

I knew I was running a bit long there, so yeah, I can say: There's times when I like Brooks, just for being what he is, despite the other things he is - un-self-aware privileged guy speaking out from the tower to a constituency that probably doesn't exist. There's lots of times when I find myself just about ready to roll off the road in disbelief after hearing some stupid shit he's said on NPR.

But, y'know, I think here he's obviously sending out a message for the whole GOP. I do think it's pretty silly, as others noted, to make reverent remarks about the previous generation of failed leaders (Bush, Huckabee, and Santorum in this edition). But damned if he's not on to something about the tone shift you hear with Cruz. At least with Bush they knew to keep the talks with apocalyptic crazies, like Pastor Hagee, behind wraps, and I fairly well believe some realized it hurt their ability to govern.

So, I have to ask a simple question: As unhinged as Brooks gets sometimes, I wouldn't be at all surprised if more Americans actually agreed with him on these points - that Cruz doesn't represent anything of value to the American people.

I don't think that the Democrats, or the left in general, really have any reason to be enamored or deferential towards Brooks. But for this once I do think that a bit of focus would help: Is there any way to get his message, which I think is basically non-partisan given its source, to stick? I mean, once again: Cruz is an asshole, everybody knows this. Brooks isn't the perfect messenger but I think he's right here. Journalists who say "harrumph, Brooks isn't being a proper journalist" are completely blind to the fascist ideology of Cruz, and ditto to the "our satanist is better than their angel" right-wing blowhards who are going to keep, even more desperately than Brooks, to fight for a constituency that also doesn't exist in any meaningful sense.

At it stands, Brooks has made enough overtures, supposedly, to liberals that the GOP have him completely tuned out, so it probably doesn't matter any way. I hope somebody else picks up the argument and runs all the way.

Anyway, here's something different: Cool mayor of Ithaca guy. That's who should be running for President.

[BryanM]

Yeah Brooks has been a contemptible figure for not throwing his hands up years and years ago and saying "I can't fucking defend this shit anymore, vote democrat or 3rd party or don't vote." Disingenously trying to defend the indefensible, sheesh. But then I see him on the Newshour and go "ah he's a likable dude, he can stay." 96% of the fuckwits that pass for pundits can't even manage that much!

As for that story about Cruz wanting to send a kid to jail for >14 years for petty theft of a calculator... I don't think it was because Cruz was doing it for evil purposes.

I think the reason he tried to do it was because he was angry that a young person was trying to learn how to do math.

Sesame Street is a communist screed!

Right. All of the public children's programming isn't about educating kids per se, the #1 goal is to try to foster good psychological health.

From the beginning Sesame Street had a broad racial cast. So that when Jeb Bush denies black people the right to vote or whatever, it's not from some faceless entity, it's like he's fucking Chris, a cool older brother figure who was like the brother who didn't steal the coins your dead grandfather gave you to buy drugs. Or Gordon.

Similarly, gay people finally getting depicted as human beings in the media like Ellen or those guys on Modern Family finally convinced people to stop being assholes to them. It's kind of sad we live in the world in TV so much but that's how things are.

PBS kid's programming says "don't be afraid - try thinking things through a little". It's the absolute opposite of everything the modern GOP has morphed into. What's strange is they don't try to utterly destroy it more directly. It really is a huge enemy to them, and one of the reasons millennials are rejecting them wholesale.

Maybe they don't understand that its a threat. They're never been accused of being the brightest in the room - they did just spend 17 years and trillions of dollars of everyone's time attacking a woman who will probably never get the chance to run for president. Did you know some of them think Sanders would be harmless in the general election? SMDH.

[BryanM]

News headline today:

Clinton Spokesman Says Chelsea Went Rogue

I hope that made you laugh as hard as it made me laugh.

[BulletMagnet]

So, I have to ask a simple question: As unhinged as Brooks gets sometimes, I wouldn't be at all surprised if more Americans actually agreed with him on these points - that Cruz doesn't represent anything of value to the American people.

I don't doubt that a lot of Republicans outside the hardcore primary voter set feel that way, but thanks in part to mealy-mouthed apologists like Brooks (who also fancy themselves the "watchdogs" of the discussion) they'll vote for him anyway if he gets the nomination, because they've been repeatedly told that the main, perhaps even the only problem with him, is his tone, not the fact that none of the "mainstream" conservative positions he (and the rest of the field) champions have been proven repeatedly, disastrously wrong and a huge burden on all but a very small portion of the electorate. They say "yeah, Brooks is right, the guy's a jerk...but he's willing to cut taxes for rich people to make money magically appear from thin air, and the Democrat isn't, so I guess I'd better stick to the ticket again." On matters like that, supposed "ambassadors of reason" like Brooks and his ilk are completely and eternally silent.

That above all else is what absolutely fries me about self-declared "centrists" (aside from the fact that "centrist" means next to nothing when the discourse has been lurching rightward almost nonstop for 40 or more years); in their determination to remain ever "above the fray" they abjectly refuse to take a hard-and-fast position on almost anything of actual substance, no matter how overwhelming the evidence is in either direction. It's not that they'd even have to declare loyalty to a particular party or candidate, but they can't even bring themselves to say "on this particular issue, xyz is provably wrong" - instead, they tie themselves into knots cooking up half-baked "third paths" to national enlightenment that no silly-pants "mainstreamer" would ever think up (mostly because they're garbage). Convenient case in point: in today's NYT Brooks insists that "no no, the real problem is that we don't appreciate beauty enough"; he'd rather jump off a cliff than throw his weight behind something concrete, and in the meantime he gets to enjoy yet another big fat tax break for his bracket while acting like his hands are totally clean. And the NYT gets to act like it's bringing "balance" to its opinion page. Both, as far as I'm concerned, can go straight to hell.

What's strange is they don't try to utterly destroy it more directly.

Cutting public television funding enough that Sesame Workshop was forced to sell out to HBO is certainly a good start.

[BryanM]

Cutting public television funding enough that Sesame Workshop was forced to sell out to HBO is certainly a good start.

balls, foot in my mouth.

should've seen it coming but you can't track everything. this is how they fuck you, in the dark

they could never do this shit if someone (I don't know, maybe an Obamamamama-type kinda guy?) shone a flashlight on the slaughter house

[quash]

Once upon a time I thought I would find work as a laboratory scientist fulfilling and got a Bachelor's degree in Genetics. During this time right-wing attempts to get Biblical creation myths equal time in High School science classrooms as the theory of evolution failed, so they trotted out their new and improved concept Intelligent Design! Also known as, "creationism in a cheap suit." Seeing as the Theory of Evolution is central to the science of Genetics, I paid close attention.

There are plenty of conservatives that dislike this nonsense just as much, if not more than you do. This is a product of Reagan-era neoconservatism that seeks to make so-called "traditional values" compatible with modern society. It fails on so many levels that I don't even want to get in to it, but this is why we are seeing growing movements such as the alt-right that are against this kind of thing.

Now if you take a step back and look at the motivation for both sides in that debate, there is no incentive for a tenured science professor to back up a flawed but popular theory, that's the whole point of tenure!

I beg to differ. There's bad science coming from every angle imaginable these days, and tenure has become little more than a safety net for those who get caught. Conspiracy? Who knows or cares. All I care about is getting the agenda pushers rightfully ousted out of the scientific arena.

So call me prejudiced, but I see similar patterns with right-wing thought again and again. Tenured climatologists say we're causing man-made climate change, deniers with powerful profit motive from the fossil fuel industries say it's just an academic conspiracy. Deniers are unwilling or unable to produce scientific proof of their claims while the evidence continues to pile up in favor of academic science. Eventually the right-wing is dragged kicking and screaming into admitting the reality of the situation, but not before their obstructionism causes serious damage.

Part of the reason this has been allowed to manifest for so long is because of the alarmism that the left has been pushing on the subject. With each passing year we have more and more predictions that never came to pass to toss in the pile. On one hand, science is ever-changing and our models and perceptions of phenomena change accordingly. On the other hand, how many of these predictions were straight up nonsense to begin with, but were allowed to slide under the radar because they supported the popular narrative?

Being right for the wrong reasons is worse than being wrong for the right reasons; the former creates a negative feedback loop that prevents anything from getting done. Had there been more intense scrutiny on published research regarding AGW instead of the endless stream of doomsday scenarios where the polar ice caps would be entirely gone by 2012, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

So when people come up to me and say there's a vast academic Social Justice Warrior conspiracy, can you blame me for automatically rolling my eyes?

Conspiracy is the wrong word. This is simply the result of decades of demoralization via public education catching up to itself. The people running academia (more specifically, the people who own it), don't really care if students protest against the very people they are paying to receive higher education; they just want to keep the cash flow going and maintain their position. It's a matter of personal interest enabling mass resentment.

[quash]

So the corporate media is the left. Got it.

The left is America period lol. The right wing of America as we currently know it is little more than a reaction to the stranglehold the left has on the public arena.

Granted, the US government does things that the average American would likely not approve of, but that's something we'll get to later on.

Total cop-out from the poster who was just complaining about BS non-answers to questions.

"Cop-out", lol. Because you lack the perspective to discern on your own as to why this is, my answer is a cop-out.

Time to spell some things out for you, since you have clearly not done much research on the subject, or likely haven't cared enough about Gitmo since it was the center of attention a decade ago.

Gitmo was indeed the primary detention facility where hushed torture was going on. Some of the people we detained there ended up not having strong or any ties to terrorist organizations, but some of them did. Even so, we let the vast majority of them loose over time because we didn't have enough evidence to pin them with any specific crime.

This wasn't enough for human rights groups, who constantly advocated for the prisoners to be extradited to the US or set free entirely. Given the special nature of these prisoners, neither of these were a good option: either they would make the US a target by bringing them in to the country, or risk them reuniting with the very organizations we were supposed to be keeping them away from.

Amid all of the fuss over the facility, the US government did something unprecedented: they listened to the concerns of human rights groups and made Gitmo more humane. There's now a fraction of the amount of prisoners at Gitmo than there were when it opened, and they don't live in nearly as arduous an environment as they did before. One of the most prominent anti-Gitmo figures recognizes the complexities of the issue, and even concedes that keeping it open is the only solution for the immediate future.

More important than all of that though, is the fact that Gitmo is a rare commodity for the military: it's a forward operating base that is not bound by the laws of a host nation. What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means that we can harbor ships without offloading ammunition. Regardless of what you may think of the US government, we actually do go out of our way to accommodate most nations we're stationed in. I can tell you from experience that ammo offload is a long, difficult, and expensive process, not to mention it reduces our response capabilities. So having even one outpost outside of the country where we don't have to worry about this is an enormous advantage in a time of war.

Ultimately, this is why the government has been so accommodating to improving the conditions at the Gitmo prison facility; if they didn't do anything and allowed the public outcry to continue, the demands would no longer end at just closing the prison, but the entire base (since what would stop them from opening another facility?).

[BryanM]

Oh Donald, you zany bastard.

[BulletMagnet]

The left is America period lol. The right wing of America as we currently know it is little more than a reaction to the stranglehold the left has on the public arena.

Pardon my French, but give me a fucking break. If there's one blinders-on, what-me-worry "argument" out there that makes me want to punch someone, it's the "oh, the right's only so unhinged because the left's even more out of control!" circle-jerk. Let's run through a few of the fundamentals one more time:

Wealthy individuals and corporations control more resources and wield more power than at most any time in our history, the top tax rate is less than half of what it was under Eisenhower, businesses can claim all the country's protections while evading its taxes, labor is a shadow of its former self, wages and benefits are trash, everything is on the table for privatization, religious fanatics (and not Muslim ones) are determining what goes in our school textbooks and which departments receive federal funding, any degree of gun control is impossible, climate science is "in dispute", the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, anonymous cash equals protected free speech, and a Congressional leader (whose party dominates Congress, might I add, in case you forgot) can get up in front of the press and say with no reservation that his party's only goal is to make life hell for Obama, with no repercussions.

We've been sucking Reagan's dick non-stop for 40 years now, and that's apparently still not enough for you. Get the hell over yourself - take it from someone who was regularly called a traitor for nearly eight straight years for not "loving America enough".

[Hagane]

The left is America period lol.

What the hell.

[Ed Oscuro]

Schadenfreude, in a word

At least they pulled their heads out of their collective asses far enough to see that Fox fucking News wasn't going to be their savior. Progress!

[BulletMagnet]

Also, ironically enough, another jab in the eye of anyone who still thinks Trump doesn't, in the most essential respects (read: cut taxes for rich people, tell everyone else to screw off) represent the Republican "mainstream"; after they ran that issue, the RNC disinvited them from the next debate.

[quash]

If there's one blinders-on, what-me-worry "argument" out there that makes me want to punch someone

Feel free to punch me if you ever get the chance. I'll make sure you won't live to regret it.

it's the "oh, the right's only so unhinged because the left's even more out of control!" circle-jerk.

The right isn't unhinged, in fact it is undergoing a very predictable and stable evolution. The left is what you all should be worrying about; with the way things are looking right now, you guys could very well be split down the middle and end up losing elections for years to come as a result of your infighting.

Wealthy individuals and corporations control more resources and wield more power than at most any time in our history

Good, and I hope it stays this way. Preferably we keep said resources out of the hands of the Chinese, too.

the top tax rate is less than half of what it was under Eisenhower

Why tax more when you can restructure government spending? Don't tell me we don't need to do that, either.

businesses can claim all the country's protections while evading its taxes

A legitimate issue. I'm all for making American businesses play by our rules.

labor is a shadow of its former self

There's so much as to why this is that pinning the blame on those darn Republicans show just how little perspective you have.

wages and benefits are trash

Another legitimate issue, but this one's gonna take some time. A lot of advocates for raising the minimum wage accurately point out that many economists don't believe it would have any kind of effect on the economy whatsoever. The problem is that this is more an argument against raising the minimum wage than it is for it; if neither party stands to gain political ground from doing so, why would they prematurely pull the trigger? They're going to wait until economists are calling for a significant increase in discretionary spending and then pass a bill on the matter. They'll look like they're coming together on a landmark issue when they're just being the opportunistic windsails they always are.

religious fanatics (and not Muslim ones) are determining what goes in our school textbooks and which departments receive federal funding

And I'm the crazy conspiracy theorist. Right. At least you threw in your concession towards Muslims, wouldn't want to seem prejudiced.

any degree of gun control is impossible

LOL, you really want those guns gone, don't you? You should just move to California dude, it's right up your alley. Guns are reduced to 8 round pea shooters and virtually everything is taxed. Hope you don't mind the cost of living and generally awful public infrastructure.

climate science is "in dispute"

I've already explained partially why this is. Sensationalism on both sides (and particularly on the side for AGW) has obstructed the sound science being conducted on the matter. But I guess we should ignore the pile of failed predictions, since they all supported the theory that it is indeed real, right?

We've been sucking Reagan's dick non-stop for 40 years now, and that's apparently still not enough for you.

Reagan is not a conservative, dude, he is a neocon. There's a significant difference and you somehow fail to see it. People like myself are tired of the Reaganesque nonsense and want a Republican party that doesn't have to appeal to the bible thumpers, and Trump is the first step in achieving that.

Get the hell over yourself

Who's the one who can't acknowledge when someone else has a valid point? It is you who needs to get over yourself lol.

[Mischief Maker]

As Anna Sarkeesian later put it, “Gamergaters have called me a whore, slut, told me I should die, said I had abortions, and attacked my marriage. I win the Internet!” And no, Sarkeesian was not exaggerating. I witnessed it. Others involved in the project dealt with anti-Semitic and homophobic insults. The furor was similar to the one directed against Zoe Quinn months ago, after she dared to ask The Fine Young Capitalists a question they didn’t like on Twitter.

Man, those Social Justice Warriors need to stop being crybabies and stop taking internet trolls so seriously.

Oh wait, my mistake, this wasn't Sarkeesian and Quinn throwing themselves on the fainting couch after being harassed by pro-gg trolls, it was conservatives Dana Loesch and Megyn Kelly showing their strong conservative backbone after being harassed by Trump supporters. I suggest the National Review tell Trump to check his privilege.

[quash]

The left is America period lol.

What the hell.

I knew the people who would be most perplexed by this would be those who aren't from the US. To you guys, we're gunslinging cowboys. The reality is though that the vast majority of Americans today (and most importantly, the vast majority of young Americans) overwhelmingly lean left on most issues. The left-leaning tendencies have been slowly been pushed on to Americans since, by my estimation, the 60's. I have noticed that a good portion of those born in the 60s/70s ("Gen X"), while not nearly as indoctrinated as those of my age group, still fall back on various leftist ideologies, even when they are self-proclaimed conservatives.

Which brings me to my next point: the definition of American conservatism is changing. For the past thirty or so years, the only mainstream representatives of the Republican party have been basically neocons; recklessly cutting taxes, increasing defense spending, appealing to bible belt tendencies on domestic policy. Growing the government in the ways they seem fit (basically defense and nothing else lol) and ignoring most other functions of government (while conveniently falling back on the "small government" argument when it suits their interests).

To anyone who has even a stroke of actual conservatism in them, this is pretty deplorable. The platform of conservatism was originally based around a small federal government that only provides what cannot be provided on the state level. Granted, I don't entirely agree with this idea, but it's a hell of a lot better than the siphoning of funds the Reaganites have been doing since they've risen to power. Assuming we had state governments that could actually be self-sufficient with enough funding from the feds (something that we have seen is unfortunately not the case), this platform ideology could potentially work. Instead, we have a fed that gets off from burning money, state governments who won't be weened off their teat, and a broken government contracting system that exploits this to its advantage.

Believe it or not, I am actually all for cutting defense spending. It's incredibly wasteful and inefficient, and the military would actually be much better off for it, assuming they overhauled the defense budgeting system accordingly. Instead, we get forced, across the board cuts from "sequestration", that end up leveling out and continuing the upward trend of spending within a matter of a few years.

Anyways, back to my original point: most Americans, even the so-called conservatives, tend to lean left on many issues. We're already seeing significant changes in attitude regarding things like gay marriage, but it goes down to a much more fundamental level than that. Most people want good public infrastructure, for example; the issue is where the funding comes from and goes. But even then, most American conservatives just want it handled on a local/state level and want it to come from local taxes. They feel that the money trail is easier to audit and less likely to end up funding something else entirely. Which can be true, depending on how good your local/state government is. The problem is when the state ends up being a quasi-fed (California) and you end up with barely functioning everything that you pay a premium to keep barely functioning. It is this more than anything that allows for the privateers to jump in and capitalize on an opportunity to seize control of infrastructure; if the government is failing to keep things running, who else can you trust?

There is a lot more to modern "conservatism" and how it is basically just trying to enable certain interests within the overall left-leaning psyche of America, but hopefully I've made it more clear for some people.

[Ed Oscuro]

Wait a second.

National Review's woes have come from trying to paint itself as a defender of commonly held conservative values - and they may well be. However, the political elites and Trump enthusiasts definitely aren't tagging along, so in that sense it was a self-deception. That said, I would flatter NR enough that they may well be more in line with what the American people want. Americans, I am guessing, aren't fascists. Americans by and large aren't political, but they probably like at least a couple of the things National Review offers. This is, more or less, by accident, but any big organization like the Republican party is always at risk of riding fads and not really staying true to important values, like not being fascists.

By in the same way I don't see the sense of claiming liberal values were "pushed" (foisted?) onto Americans. The number of people still alive from the days of the New Deal or Great Society is pretty small, but it turns out that a lot of what has survived is pretty popular. Likewise, I think that not trying to micromanage other people's lives - what Justice Douglas called "getting government off the backs of the people" - was not "foisted" on the American people, it's popular, just good sense, and not being a fascist.

There is one thing I imagine that the National Review folks are finding out: Policy and principles are generally unpopular, if you're looking for attention at the circus, but they're still important. I hope nobody is fooled again: Getting the political establishment to blow you isn't a sign you're doing the right thing.

Oh wait, my mistake, this wasn't Sarkeesian and Quinn throwing themselves on the fainting couch after being harassed by pro-gg trolls, it was conservatives Dana Loesch and Megyn Kelly showing their strong conservative backbone after being harassed by Trump supporters. I suggest the National Review tell Trump to check his privilege.

haha, and I couldn't help but read that as "farting couch," multiple times. Ehh hyuk hyuk hayek.

[ED-057]

This wasn't enough for human rights groups, who constantly advocated for the prisoners to be extradited to the US or set free entirely. Given the special nature of these prisoners

WTF is so special about these prisoners? Do you think they can fire nukes out their ass or something? Maybe you need to stop being so paranoid.

If the US gov had had any moral standards left to lose, it certainly wouldn't have been worth it to trash them just for the sake of this handful of "bad guys." Not to mention, they could have simply shot them in Afghanistan and they would have become, at most, another statistic that nobody would have cared about. I'm gonna say that the only reason there is a prison at gitmo is for propaganda value.

Poor little America, and our ragtag military... everyone is out to get us! Forcing us to endure such indignities as having to unload piles of ammo from our massive ships that they don't even have any equivalent to. Oh, woe is us! Won't someone pass the Kleenex?

[quash]

As Anna Sarkeesian later put it, “Gamergaters have called me a whore, slut, told me I should die, said I had abortions, and attacked my marriage. I win the Internet!” And no, Sarkeesian was not exaggerating. I witnessed it. Others involved in the project dealt with anti-Semitic and homophobic insults. The furor was similar to the one directed against Zoe Quinn months ago, after she dared to ask The Fine Young Capitalists a question they didn’t like on Twitter.

Man, those Social Justice Warriors need to stop being crybabies and stop taking internet trolls so seriously.

Oh wait, my mistake, this wasn't Sarkeesian and Quinn throwing themselves on the fainting couch after being harassed by pro-gg trolls, it was conservatives Dana Loesch and Megyn Kelly showing their strong conservative backbone after being harassed by Trump supporters. I suggest the National Review tell Trump to check his privilege.

I somehow missed this. What's funny is that you see this as some sort of contradiction, when all it's doing is proving my point better than I ever could.

[BryanM]

I like how the republicans are trying to Obama themselves again. They're already running the Bernie is TOO LIBERAL ads to help him win Iowa, thinking he'll be a weaker opponent despite all objective evidence to the contrary (indeed, he may kill the GOP by changing who they're composed of).

Todd Akin, Bernie is not.

[quash]

Also, ironically enough, another jab in the eye of anyone who still thinks Trump doesn't, in the most essential respects (read: cut taxes for rich people, tell everyone else to screw off) represent the Republican "mainstream"; after they ran that issue, the RNC disinvited them from the next debate.

Liberals everywhere agree: Donald Trump must be destroyed.

Hold on, this guy's a conservative columnist? Well shit.