winsor

Again, he's a buffoon, but she's evil.

Why are planting seeds of doubt? Just what are you digging at? "I'm not a spy, but I played one on TV."

I bet a stint in the Gulag will change his tune!

I read an interview with Le Carre recently about adaptations of his books. The first one to be made into a film was 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold' and he was worried that the screenplay would lose his gritty, low key spycraft and introduce lots of unrealistic cliches... Turned out the screenwriter had trained SOE operatives during WW2 and knew more about genuine undercover work than he did! David Cornwell didn't become a spook until the Cold War. I concluded that he was on the job when a number of scenarios turned up in his stories that turned out to have been classified at the time. Given the Official Secrets Act (a rather unforgiving bit of legislation), the only way he could have published the work without being 'disappeared' is with official approval, which is only afforded to employees.

Rubio's rather lame attempts to out-Trump Trump didn't work out so well. I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. George Bernard Shaw

Whenever someone claims to be a CIA employee, I take it as a given that they are bullshitting. The number of people who work directly for the CIA is vanishingly small, mostly administrative types; honest to god spooks always have a very legitimate cover. Ninja are routinely depicted as black-clad types that lurk in the shadows, but are actually very innocuous looking. When the Master of the household is killed and the gardener is trembling in fear, giving an account of ghostly assassins who came and left without a trace, that furthers the myth - and takes the heat off the gardener, who is the real ninja. Similarly, the only people I would guess were spooks always had a very legitimate job, one that put them where they could pick up on key details of what is going on. They had a perfectly normal existence for all intents and purposes, and would vociferously deny being an intelligence operative if asked. As a matter of survival, even hinting at having been a spook would be out of the question. In any event, I doubt the credentials of anyone touted by media as being 'ex-CIA,' and expect that the people in Langley are quite happy to have as much disinformation out there as possible, which takes the pressure off their own 'ninja/gardener' types. The fact that an 'expert' of any stripe was revealed to be a charlatan is hardly surprising. BSBD, Winsor P.S.: "Travels With My Aunt" nails it. Greene was a spook.

He's a buffoon. She's evil. The Mormon is looking pretty good at this point.

You're right, Trump has merely talked about it. Absolutely ghastly excesses, the likes of which have routinely resulted in responsible parties being hanged or shot, have taken place under various other administrations. Some Hudson High graduates who wound up in the Oval Office were absolute butchers during their time in service (Grant comes to mind). The worst thing Trump has done in practice is tell someone "you're fired."

So he's a bigoted, self promoting windbag, lying charlatan. Absolutely none of this matters to his core supporters. Your descriptors apply to some of our favorite Presidents. He's in good company.

Anti-liberal education is the correct sentiment. "Liberal Education" is an oxymoron. Boeing, NASA et al. don't hire a lot of BAs to design their equipment.

At the end of AIT the DIs announced that there would be a shakedown inspection to find contraband in the barracks. They said that there would be a grace period during which anyone could put extra gear, intoxicants and whatnot in the middle of the hall and, if they deemed it sufficient, the shakedown would be skipped. Having made friends with some of the cooks and medics, I came up with a collection of used hypodermics, white powders (baking powder, confectioner's sugar, etc.), various tablets (aspirin, vitamins, etc.), and green, leafy stuff (parsley, oregano, etc.), and salted the limited assortment of legitimate contraband with quite a few of these props. As we stood at attention in front of our doors, our instructional cadre ignored all of the real contraband and showed a combination of shock and horror at the "drugs/paraphernalia" that was evident. I thought it was pretty funny, but have since learned that the appearance of misbehavior is often as bad as, or worse than, the real thing.

So? Nothing has changed since 1787. Read Federalist Paper #68 on the reason for the Electoral College. I agree that the electorate is largely incompetent. It is, however, from the electorate in general that our 'leaders' are culled, and the scum rises to the top.

Have faith, Grasshopper - the supply of stupidity amongst the electorate is limitless.

Bingo. The issue is not so much agreeing on what constitutes a problem as it is what constitutes a solution. We might all conclude that Saddam Hussein was a Bad Man (tm), but some of us contended that attacking Iraq to address this 'problem' was lunacy at best. Okay, so everything worked out for the best, and we have entered an age of peace and prosperity, but you get the drift. Our legislators are largely Attorneys, and are subject to the principle that, when one's only tool is a hammer one tends to see every problem as a nail. The legal system is one of brute force and ignorance, poorly suited to elegance and finesse. There is a patina of bullshit, whereby one wielding a cudgel thinks of its use as a caress. I think that Sanders' long suit is that he does not appeal to the intellect. Taylor Caldwell's contention that 5% of the population think, 5% think they think, and 90% would rather die than think provides the kind of numbers whereby Sanders may prevail. Remember that elections are won by those that appeal to the lowest common denominator amongst the electorate, and I suspect Sanders may have hit the jackpot. No big deal, the rest of the candidates are like the Special Olympics coming out of the Pet Cemetery. If there is nothing else exceptional about our country, the ability to put forth such an assortment of cretins is truly amazing. BSBD, Winsor

Plenty of those in Louisiana. Illinois residency automatically qualifies one for Mensa.

Kumbaya.

Such prominent climate change "alarmists" must have written these things down. Perhaps you can cite one or two examples. Or do you really want us to just believe that they only said these astounding things in a couple lectures where you happened to be present? From Dr. James Hansen: "Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now [with climate change], yet we dither." "We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption." "Planet Earth, creation, the world in which civilization developed, the world with climate patterns that we know and stable shorelines, is in imminent peril." "The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death" "We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions." (He said ten years ago) Rajendra Pachauri, the former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 that if “there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.” We must all be dead. Is this heaven?

Wrong. It happens all the time. If someone has a high enough clearance, they are effectively forbidden to discuss potentially subjects, except with similarly cleared personnel who have a defined need to know. I have friends who cannot discuss articles that appeared in print, since any opinion they might voice in the matter is privileged information. People can, and do, get burned all the time for seemingly minor infractions. Anyone but HRC would already be doing hard time in prison. BSBD, Winsor

It's the American way. How else can we Make America Great Again (tm)?

Article 2; S 1: That is not applicable unless the courts say it is. Article 2; S 2: I see no conflict here. Amendment 1: I see no conflict here. Amendment 8: Not relevant at all. Looks like you are shooting in the dark. I have to choose one candidate. If Cruz does not make the nomination, rest assured I will cast my final ballot for Trump... or Rubio. I think Kim Jong Un is a better choice than Hillary. At least everyone would do whatever it takes to keep him on a leash, but HRC is given way more credit than she has, in fact, earned. Anyone but Hillary is going to be 'hold your nose and vote,' simply to keep her out of power. The alternatives all suck out loud (Cruz is 3% better than HRC at best). Who do you like thus far in this drama? I find any and all of them nauseating, for various reasons and to different extents. I think Hillary is evil. I think Sanders is both naive and arithmetically illiterate. I think Cruz is just another extrusion from Harvard Law. I'm underwhelmed by Rubio. I found him so unimpressive right out of the gate that I have not seen fit to reexamine his potential. I was impressed that Bush was the person to have in charge when hurricanes Frances and Jeanne went overhead, but I sincerely doubt that he has the skillset to do well on the world stage. His brother seemed to be reasonably competent when Governor of Texas, but he was out of his league in the Oval Office. Kasich, similarly, seems quite competent as Chief Executive of Ohio, where getting results is akin to herding cats. I am unconvinced that he has the combination of global and historical perspective, economic system understanding, charisma, humor, managerial skills, credibility and raw cunning necessary to pull it all together in the White house. Trump is the worst kind of political joke. The only saving graces of his that come to mind are that people who view Obama as a pussy could worry that Trump might summarily rain on their parade, and, should he decide to do so, he might turn a profit in doing so. He seems like the kind of person that gives Americans a richly deserved bad name, but it would be nice to have someone in charge who understood how to generate wealth (at least for himself). The idea that you can get rich by spending other people's money works if he would fund our hegemony with other countries' treasuries. If he viewed the U.S. Government as being simply one more organization that he could bankrupt while retaining his own golden parachute, not so good. We find ourselves like being in an aircraft descending at 12,000 fpm through 1,000 feet, where who takes the controls basically changes only the angle of impact. Our economy has such downward momentum that 'recovery' as we understand it is not a viable option. If we had elected the Mormon in the last go around (boy, is that guy charismatic!), we might have had a chance to limit the damage. I do not think we have anyone this time with the skills and chutzpah to pull it off, and I think we are too far gone in any event (run the numbers). I wish I was wrong, but see no indication that that is the case. It was fun while it lasted. BSBD, Winsor

Article 2; S 1: That is not applicable unless the courts say it is. Article 2; S 2: I see no conflict here. Amendment 1: I see no conflict here. Amendment 8: Not relevant at all. Looks like you are shooting in the dark. I have to choose one candidate. If Cruz does not make the nomination, rest assured I will cast my final ballot for Trump... or Rubio. I think Kim Jong Un is a better choice than Hillary. At least everyone would do whatever it takes to keep him on a leash, but HRC is given way more credit than she has, in fact, earned. Anyone but Hillary is going to be 'hold your nose and vote,' simply to keep her out of power. The alternatives all suck out loud (Cruz is 3% better than HRC at best).

Middle east politics is troubling. Sometime in the mid 70's my source of red Lebanese hash dried up. Even the blonde and the Moroccan stuff was gone. All because of those confusing civil wars. I never did like the black Pakistani stuff nearly as much. Even if some of it did have opium streaks in it. Opium content in the double gold seal Paki black was/is an urban myth. Nobody with opium would waste it on hashish. The streaks were/are the result of processing.

Be advised that Ted Cruz is a product of Harvard Law. Saying what you want to hear is his stock in trade. The principle of doing the same thing and expecting different results applies here. I have no argument there. Cruz is the only candidate campaigning on upholding the U.S. Constitution. The others are authoritarian, socialist/progressive and status quo. You should include 'batshit crazy' to cover the bases.

Be advised that Ted Cruz is a product of Harvard Law. Saying what you want to hear is his stock in trade. The principle of doing the same thing and expecting different results applies here.

A long time ago I was leaving a class on War Crimes ("War Crimes are bad, m'kay?"), and discussing the issue with a colleague with a C.I.B.. His response was to the effect of "we did it as a matter of survival." Stunned, I asked him if he was for real, and he assured me that he was entirely so. His point was that our guys pounding through the bush had an average of less than 6 months in country. The Opposition had an average of 25 years. He contended that the Viet Cong and NVA were very smart, very capable and quite patient, and generally would not engage unless they had an overwhelming advantage, as well as a solid plan B, C and occasionally D. According to him, the only time our guys had an even chance was if we could piss the opposition off enough that they made mistakes. The way to do that was to figure out what motivated them and to screw with it severely. By desecrating the bodies of the dead, they were not able to 'move on.' This engendered enough fear and anger among the comrades of defiled dead that they were no longer satisfied to wait until the time was right - they wanted to go out and kill the sonsofbitches who had done such Bad Things. They would then set off booby traps of either side, walk into ambushes and so forth. My take away from this is that anger and fear are the flip sides of the same coin, and angry and/or frightened people are given to bad and self-destructive decision making. in general, angry/fearful people become retarded assholes. I have seen examples of this numerous times over the years. Similar to the advertising adage that, if you get over an 8th grade level, you have lost half your market audience (I think that's optimistic), if you appeal to the intellect of the voting public, you will reach a very bright minority at best. If, OTOH, you play on the fears of the voting public, the stupid people are yours to begin with, and rather a few of the otherwise bright voters will find their inner idiot and join the baying mob. There is a real knack demonstrated by effective demagogues, a kind of perverse genius. Lesser talents can do badly enough that a real threat seems sympathetic. The House Unamerican Activities Commission was so unamerican, for example, that Tailgunner Joe McCarthy made Communists look good by comparison - a real accomplishment, as my time in Socialist Workers' Paradises indicates that Communists suck out loud. I'm not a big fan of religions in general, and Communism is one of my least favorite. One thing to note about demons is that many of them are very real, and very nasty. The most effective way to whip the populous into a frenzy is to cherry pick the most particularly nasty realities that present themselves, and to promise to lead the fight against them. History is rife with cases of one charismatic leader or another who successfully played on the fears of a population that one would expect to be too sophisticated to fall for such a ploy, and the results are rarely good. According to Henry L. Mencken, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." On the whole I tend to agree with him, and I think this election cycle is but a case in point. The key difference between the candidates is their choice of hobgoblins. BSBD, Winsor