Agiel

Maybe it's just me being some "college-educated littoral elite-type", but I never really got Trump's appeal to the "salt-o-the-earth" crowd since I found the act as transparently disingenuous as Clinton's attempt at a southern drawl. Every time Trump goes to one of those rallies I can't help but think back to Mayor Quimby at the beginning of a certain Simpsons episode: Except replace "drink" with "stiff Diet Coke".

Think of all the HMO administration jobs that will disappear overnight when you introduce single-payer healthcare.

Frankly Trump himself is to blame for sabotaging his own legislative efforts, if purely by negligence. He has neither the inclination nor energy to lobby members of congress, attempted to drive a wedge between red state democrats and the party leadership, or bothered to visit Maine, Alaska, or Arizona while AHCA and the Skinny Repeal was on the line. Hell, he doubled down on divisiveness on an issue that could have gotten bi-partisan support: Immigration (even Cesar Chavez, nominal saint of the left, came out as a hardliner against illegal immigration).

Just a lot of the usual "I'm back in college and I have to take a final for a class I hardly ever showed up for" nightmares.

Watching more of the beta videos of Kingmaker I don't know if there's much in the writing thus far that is identifiably in Chris Avellone's voice (i.e. deconstructions at every corner). Seems like it's more by-the-numbers, if largely inoffensive, fantasy writing to me.

Still astonishes me that there's young who people want these jobs back, in spite of having parents who told them they did the work so they could grow up not doing it.

I won't debate that, and arguably this approach is also part of Macron's vision for re-energising France's economy. However Trump talked up a big game that not one cent would be cut from Social Security and Medicare, a platform break from the GOP that likely clinched him the nomination. The goals of ensuring the solvency of entitlement programs for the future, cutting taxes on the wealthy, a proposed infrastructure program, and an increase in defence spending (the current budget was somewhat less than what many analysts were predicting) are tough to reconcile.

Since Trump is under the belief that Putin runs a tight ship, I'm curious if he'd be willing to take a page out of his playbook to MRGA, considering the crisis the US Social Security system is in: Hey, the MAGA crowd might give Trump a pass on it. The way some of them tell it the single issue that makes or breaks a candidate for them is whether or not he or she will be careful not to hurt Trump's feelings.

Considering that this had a Kickstarter campaign, and in light of the long-established tradition of Russian/Eastern-European game developers initially announcing hopelessly optimistic release dates I'm actually astonished that this is coming out reasonably soon after it was first announced.

Looked up an LP of the beta. While I will likely hold off until full reviews come in, from what I've skimmed through so far it looks promising enough I suppose.

Were you expecting your entire inventory cleaned out and your friends list in that game filled with machine-generated names with a long stream of random letters or numbers or ones in Chinese/Cyrillic characters?

Sums up both my hopes and my trepidations.

Few bemoaned the degradation of European capabilities and readiness in the period between 2000 and 2013 more than I, that said I've believed that things have been going in a positive direction since 2014 (for instance the Dutch deciding that perhaps they shouldn't sell _all_ of their Leopard 2A6es, even if it meant attaching their remaining armoured forces to the German Bundeswehr). But if you can't see how Trump's boasts ring hollow when he expresses such indifference (or even disdain) of constituent countries of NATO, especially its most vulnerable members like Estonia, then I guess I can't help you ("Hey, Trump, maybe it's not such a great idea ticking off the countries that have all the diesel-electric boats, stealth missile corvettes, and mine countermeasure ships, the capabilities the US Navy doesn't have.") lus, for all my misgivings about many European countries anemic defence budgets the 2% target was in my mind a poor measuring stick. The countries that do spend more than 4% on defence (Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, militaries plagued by graft, cronyism, and more besides) should _not_ be models for European countries on defence spending policy. My criticisms of Trump would perhaps have been tempered if he focused more on Mattis' 30-30-30-30 proposal rather than fixating on the 2% target. Too long; didn't read: _How_ countries spend is just as, if not more important than _how much_.

In light of stagnant wage growth, the tax cut, and the necessary Social Security and Medicare cuts that are unlikely to materialise in the foreseeable future such an increase is unlikely to happen (even in the depths of Operation Iraqi Freedom spending to GDP sat between 2.9-3.8%). And in any case given the United States' commitments in the Middle East and East Asia a distressing percentage of US spending is not directly related to the defence of Eastern Europe (and what is is at best towards tripwire forces that I imagine Trump himself is highly reluctant to keep in country).

Re: NATO Spending As Mackenzie Eaglen (who is about as hawkish on defence spending as it gets) points out:

Seaman Jones: Conn, sonar! Crazy Ivan! Capt. Bart Mancuso: All stop! Quick quiet! Beaumont: What's goin' on, Jonesy? Seaman Jones: Russian captains sometimes turn suddenly to see if anyone's behind them. We call it "Crazy Ivan." The only thing you can do is go dead. Shut everything down and make like a hole in the water. Beaumont: So what's the catch? Seaman Jones: The catch is, a boat this big doesn't exactly stop on a dime... and if we're too close, we'll drift right into the back of him.

In light of Trump's proposed Space Force, I thought I'd share a rather snazzy cover for a book on the topic:

Man asks friends and strangers to sketch what they remember a bike looks like, then renders the concept: https://www.behance.net/gallery/35437979/Velocipedia

I'd feel a lot better about the NRA being the defenders of the 2nd Amendment if they got citizens to seriously reassess whether or not they really are responsible gun owners (sort of like how if you polled motorists at least 75% of them would say they were an "above average" driver). Frankly the guys in tacticool gear that bring semi-automatic rifles to rallies are the types I wouldn't trust casting a fishing line sitting in the same boat, let alone open-carrying a piece.

Not here to change anyone's opinion of the overall quality of the Last Jedi, but...