I'm not too worried about it.

I hope these people have a good idea as to what might take place!!!!!!

who was tricked by ICE agents into thinking he was going to a meeting, & they arrested him. He’s been in jail for 10 days, & on a hunger strike. He is a business owner in Youngstown, and many people are fighting for his rights. He’s been here for 30 years, has a wife, & three daughters. It makes me sick to even read about it anymore. He’s being treated as a convict, and he really does not deserve it.

would try to stop this shit! GL to all there

but ICE is acting as if he is a criminal. They wouldn’t even allow him to see his family until just the other day. They have denied his request for a stay, and will be deported...eventually. They won’t tell the family when. It’s just blowing my mind that this is happening in our country!

the world has certainly change, and never before have i had the helpless feeling i have today!!!!! Scary times ahead i'm afraid

I know people who know this man and his family. They are the nicest family you'd ever want to meet. He has a wife and four daughters. This man owns a store and works hard and pays taxes and does not even have a traffic ticket to his name. He is being treated like a criminal. There is much community support for his release and our rep Tim Ryan has been helping him as much as he can, but it's not looking too good for his future right now. Of course you're got the diehard anti immigrant faction here as well, who only see one side to every case.

I get that some people who are not citizens should leave, if they've committed a crime, etc. but why do they go after good people and good citizens? Why can't each case be judged on an individual basis? Why not give people like this man a path to citizenship? He is already proving that he is law abiding and self supporting. What good does it do to rip him away from his family? It makes me sick.

this story is so difficult for me to watch. I can’t believe I’m in America anymore. I am heartbroken for his wife, & daughters...for the entire family & friends so closely connected to him. This man does not deserve this, and yet, here it is, another victory for tRump, and an assault against our freedom.

So the net result probably won't be as effective as we hope.

I was hoping some of the House members would escort one of the Trump sexual abuse/harrassment victims. He probably wouldn't recognize them, or understand the irony-- but still, they might be available for comment to the media after the sideshow SOTU address concludes.

unexpected twinge there.

Last edited Fri Jan 26, 2018, 09:53 PM - Edit history (1)

Now, full stop, then reverse. Geez, I love that picture of Michelle. This sounds goofy and unrealistic, but I felt like we finally got our 8 years of Camelot.

Now we have a daily horror show.

are involved I never expect Camelot, and I never see it.

I think, because of the very hostile political environment (and what we now know was growing danger), what could have been a great presidency was a good period with one great and one very large advance--electing our first black male president and creating the ACA. Our administration was overall honorable and competent, restored the economy, and rather amazingly managed some other advances considering their tremendous disadvantages. I'm proud of us looking back and I miss it too, and the Obamas and their decency.

But all this while, a big, wealth-multiplied backlash to huge changes, which a lot of conservatives especially are inevitably reacting very poorly to, was already happening. A very illusory Camelot.

The explosive growth of enormously powerful and dangerous international billionaire classes, the weaponizing of the internet that can be mostly blamed on their greed for more, and the climate change that's not been stopped also mostly because of misused wealth had all been accelerating for more than 30 years. Including in Russia.

Scary times, daily horror shows. It turns out it's not time for Camelot yet. On the bright side, bad times are the usual catalysts for big changes. And encouragingly, when we elected Obama we did so in the middle of all this--against opposition that was already much larger, stronger, more organized and ruthless than we realized at the time. And lost with Hillary for the same reason, Obama's victories over them and the promise that she would continue only making them more ferociously ruthless.

So, we're in a bad spot, but I think we should be proud of ourselves for the enemies that our (general) decency and (mostly) adherence to principles have earned us. This fine collection is proof positive that we've been doing a lot more right than, from the middle of it, we tend to realize.

At least that's my view. We're in the middle of a war we missed the declaration of, of course.

America has always been backwards except for a few short bursts of enlightenment. Hanging on to slavery and then aparthied for the majority of our exisistence, we've only just begun to recognize what the promise of America actually should be.

We've had some brilliant and amazing leaders rise up from our very unequal society, and some who came from the ruling class of elites themselves. I hang my hopes on those leaders who will continue to fight for what's right and good.

I will continue to register voters, go to marches, knock on doors, attend meetings and do what one person can, because when all of us "one persons" get together, we can be a force. But, I have to admit, I'm getting too old for this shit.

After, as I thought of how Obama's Democratic administration felt compared to now, it DiD seem camelotish to me also.

I'm a lot more sympathetic to how America has come along because I am grateful when we are as good or better than other advanced nations, not expecting it. All of the European colonial nations made viciously exploitive and murderous colonial masters and most are still exploiting through possessions retained in former colonies. The only reason imported slavery never developed there is that their vast impoverished peoples provided sufficient forced labor.

Our intransigently conservative, or backward, regions became somewhat more understandable -- and worrisome -- when I learned that people and cultures in hot and other life-challenging climates (very cold or waterless for instance) tend to be more conservative than those from cooler, moister, gentler. A glance at any political map verifies that.

And now climate change, vast migrations of peoples, robots. Anxiety also makes whole peoples more conservative, even liberals, and even liberal democracies.

On the plus side is that tremendous explosion of relative wellbeing around the planet. It's creating billions of people who have whole new expectations for what they can and should have.

All in all, though, seems to me it's only reasonable to expect the major challenges to our cultural progression that are already occurring and not despair.

Blathering on again, I see. Please don't feel a need to answer. No work today, and I was just enjoying a captive screen.

Proven by the Repug's 60s Southern strategy and it was already working out West. I think religion also plays heavily in that song and dance, both here and abroad. It was after that when I had to watch my traditionally solid blue Tennessee drift to red.

In essence, "conservative" for the common man means "in fear".

It didn't take a genius back in the 60s to be frightened by the sudden influx of imported products in the very first big box stores (Big K - well before Walmart). I was early in college and saw hand tools on the shelf for one-third the price of American-made goods, and it was then I knew our standard of living was on the way down. It's happening (as planned) slowly but surely. We're seeing a very gradual leveling of the standard of living across the globe but most Americans don't want to hear it.

Climate change, exhausted resources, worsening inequality and mass migration are going to make for some big bumps in the road.

QED...............

in living standards. 40 years later a majority of Americans had finally faced that reality, even if it took the crash of 2008 to force awareness. In spite of his limited power, Obama was able to start to reverse that trend, but the people in their deza-acquired wisdom transferred power to the party controlled by centimillionaire/billionaire white men. And here we are.

And yet, ...

Planetary wealth has quadrupled in the past 30 years, and much more still to come. A function of new technology. Unfortunately, of course most of that new wealth to date was channeled to development of new international centimillionaire and billionaire classes, many of whom have nothing but contempt for the democracy that would make our votes equal to

President Truman, without being able to foresee the coming technology revolutions, left office believing he had secured a prosperity that would double our actual incomes by the end of the century. By more equitable distribution of the fruits of labor.

Unfortunately, the plot to overset this plan for widespread prosperity had begun took national power with Reagan at the end of the 1970s. Not content with accumulating the new wealth, greed has "required" picking the pockets of the working classes. People would work for less. Yes.

As a nation we have been distracted from dangerously dropping incomes by housing equity inflation and by newly affordable...dishes and fishing rods. But half of us can't afford to take a vacation or dine in any of the nicer restaurants in town. Thrift shops are booming, and malls are closing. And if loan rates rise to normal levels, most will no longer be able to afford to own their own home.

We can and will redeal these stacked cards. Most Americans do want that, but... As you say. We may have to crash dreadfully before more are angrily forced to do what responsible people would have done long ago.

We're allowing the international corporate world to slowly take complete control of our lives, and I have trouble seeing how we can re-stack that deck. Money begets money and money begets power! Therefore, wealthy people's power has increased exponentially by their own hands using our earnings. Something seems horribly wrong with that picture!

Not only did those cheap imported tools wake me up, but when I saw thousands of local family-owned stores closing due to Walmart and other mega-outlets moving in, I began to fear for us as a society. All those little stores gave us much of our face-to-face human contacts, and also kept us closely linked to our local economy. That metric has changed so drastically now, so that numerous foreign economic powers could bring us to our knees at will.

As you said, it's becoming a rent-only world. Billionaires are using funds from our pockets to buy up every piece of real estate they can to turn them into rental properties. Countries like China are also using funds from our pockets to buy control of natural resources. Exactly when and how does this process of ever-increasing inequality end?

was smart enough to decline an invitation from Trump to join him and Stormy for a threesome (Sorry I know it is a sickening thought of Trump chasing Stormy around the hotel room in his tidy whities).

Blowback from this would potentially be catastrophic for the victims.

I'm also hoping very hard for the walkout in Davos.

Trump hates to feel pushed into anything. Sure, he'll listen to the last person he talks to and thinks he's the one who made up his own mind, but that's the thing... he needs to think he's the one who made up his mind.

He's also extra resistant to looking weak. He'll think that doing anything positive for DACA will look like Pelosi et al forced his hand, so he'll do the opposite.

I think this is a big mistake, considering his psychological setup.

He's showing signs of actually wanting to solve the issue. Let it look like a solution to DACA came from his merciful heart, not Schumer and Pelosi. Or his base will whinge and moan, and it won't happen.