Hawaii

And for something similar in its insanity, there’s also Santa Claus, a product of Mexico that I can only assume was fueled by product from Columbia.

“I wonder if there’s beer on the sun”

The Canada Song lives rent free in my head.

“We put our faith in BLAST HARDCHEESE.”

Final Sacrifice.

He’s probably just confused because he doesn’t understand what they mean by eating pussy.

Democrats have been struggling in Florida for a while now, and most predictions have been assuming it would be going to Trump. That’s why all the focus is on Pennsylvania and far less is on Florida.

If it were to go blue again this year, that would radically alter the electoral math, and probably turn a close race into a massive blowout.

Yes, polls are flawed, the only poll that matters is the actual election, everyone needs to vote no matter what the polls say.

But Florida steadily slipping towards swing state status is worth noting. And this is a much larger poll with a much smaller margin of error than some of the recent polls which have claimed to show Trump suddenly gaining ground.

I want Trump off the ballot (and planet) but I do think that another GOP candidate would have been much more likely to win.*

Public opinion on the current administration and the economy is negative to the point that one would expect the incumbent party to be facing an extremely uphill battle. But Trump is even more unpopular, brings a ton of baggage, energizes his opposition and alienates his allies by threatening democracy and the rule of law, says crazy nonsense that drives away independent voters instead of focusing on issues, and sabotages his own campaign through mismanagement.

* Of course, that would only have happened if Trump hadn’t run, since he would almost certainly have caused chaos and infighting if someone beat him in the primaries.

The problem is that declaring the debt gone doesn’t make it gone if the court blocks the executive order. It’s not like they can just hit a button and set all accounts to 0. There isn’t a paper ledger they can toss into a fire.

If we’re getting creative about it and want to use some existing legal authority to take actions that might actually be able to stick, the president does have the near limitless power to order the minting of coinage. As I understand it, he could order the treasury to pump out commemorative student debt coins in denominations ranging from $100 to $50,000, and send them out directly to student loan holders, or maybe to student loan servicers on their behalf. This would carry huge political downsides since printing money to pay for things is pretty well known to lead to inflation, and even if this had no real world effect, the attacks tying the forgiveness to inflation would be relentless and likely persuasive to a lot of voters. But once done, it couldn’t really be undone.

As with so many things, a realistic long term solution will require legislation. If the Democrats take the House and hold the Senate, that’s a possibility. But the current deadlock makes it impossible, because even if a bipartisan solution were to be negotiated, the leadership of the House will not allow anything to go through that might be good for the people or the country, because that could also be good for Democrats.

“No you don’t.” -SCOTUS

Being immune to prosecution doesn’t mean that any executive order can’t be overturned. He just can’t be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of an official act. He could execute the conservative justices that are blocking the plan, but he can’t just make any proclamation he wants and expect it to carry the force of law.

The Court granted immunity to prosecution (which is fucking insane) but that doesn’t actually give him the ability to forgive all debts. If a court says “no, the debt isn’t canceled” and the debt is still on the books somewhere, the problem remains unsolved. About the only way he can use presidential immunity to fix the problem would be to take out the judges that are blocking it.

I remember hearing about IT from other kids, and them describing all these horrific things that happen. When I watched it as an adult I couldn’t believe how tame it was. Everything had been exaggerated, and some of it was probably being confused with things from other movies.

Thanks, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.

Gerrymandering.

Senate seats can’t be altered much shifting the lines on the map because there’s two per state, what you take from one you give to the other because they are statewide. The House however can be radically altered by shifting districts around. This leads to fewer competitive districts, which means that in many districts the only part that matters is getting the nomination. That incentivizes running to the political extremes to get the support of your base, and appeasing the influential people since their support or opposition can make a big difference. There’s also an entire ecosystem of friendly propaganda outlets and social media platforms that allow politicians to gain attention (and donations) nationwide, and those echo chambers incentivize the most extreme attention grabbing behaviors.

The result of all this is that a large portion of the house was elected because they were the loudest and most extreme candidates in the Republican party. Many prefer dysfunction and even government shut downs if the alternative is bipartisanship (even for nonpartisan legislation or bills from their own agenda). They also like to target anyone in their own party who dares to be less extreme than them, even when doing so may weaken the party as a whole. The already tiny margin they held in the House has shrunk because of their own in fighting. But as long as they hold a majority, they can still control the agenda and prevent anything useful from being done.

Edit: Corrected idiocy about the senate.

It does indeed.

And even if these cruise missiles were completely undetectable, it would still fail unless the strike takes out 100% of the enemy nukes. If even one is able to survive, you risk a nuclear holocaust.

Being able to theoretically wipe our all the enemy nukes without using any of your own is strategically nice to have, but on its own it isn’t enough to negate the threat of a nuclear exchange. At best, it should make your enemy more reluctant to retaliate with a nuclear launch, assuming they realize that they aren’t getting nuked and that a launch would potentially change that.

The first Mission Impossible movie is a fun time capsule in many ways. It has some fun stuff with early 90s depictions of computers, hacking, the internet and email, back before anyone knew what any of that actually looked like.

But it’s also a great example of the 90s naivete that the US had about conflict and global politics. There’s an entire monologue about how intelligence agencies are obsolete because the cold war is over. There was this vague notion in the 90s that world peace had broken out and things were just going to get better and better. And Hollywood sometimes struggled to come up with villains now that they no longer had soviets for that, so you don’t see it reflected as much in films, especially since optimism doesn’t make for good popcorn flicks, but Mission Impossible captures the thinking if not the warm and fuzzy feeling.

My other suggestion would be Contact. My theory has always been that 2001 A Space Odyssey, Contact, and Interstellar are really the same movie made in different times. As the 90s incarnation, Contact has no international conflict, only internal politics. It’s got that I’m spiritual but not religious" vibe that was everywhere in the 90s. It has a vague message about hope, and belief and trying to understand the universe and what’s out there in order to understand ourselves… it’s hard to put it all in words, it’s just the whole tone and vibe of the thing, it’s all just so sincere and idealistic.

(For a great big dose of 90s optimism and hope for the future, I highly recommend watching the Adventures of Brisco Country JR. I’d have nominated that, but it isn’t a movie)

Ultraviolet. It makes other colors that much more cool just by being there. And it kills things.