trump donates his salary to the NPS

[Tom_H]

Sheesh, let the damned snow melt so these wannabe philosophers can escape to the place that restores their minds to sanity.

[Hobbes]

But who's to say this isn't discussed around the campfire? Seriously, you can't make this sh!t up. And hey, thanx for the pejorative - apparently Dunning–Kruger is in full effect:

On Not Being Able to Sleep
After the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election
Ronald J. Peliasf

Abstract

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I find myself struggling, wanting to find a narrative that will let me sleep, but I am unable to find any comfort in the current political landscape. I call upon a fragmentary structure in this autoethnographic essay to display the troubling thoughts and incidents that have assailed me since the election, to point toward a frightening right wing agenda, and to demonstrate why I cannot sleep. Each numbered section offers evidence that the moral core of the United States has been deeply damaged by the election of Donald Trump.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10. ... lCode=qixa&

Instructor of Theatre
BA, Southern Methodist University
MFA, Southern Methodist University
PhD, University of Illinois

Ronald J. Pelias attended Southern Methodist University for his B.A. (1968) and MFA (1971) and received his doctorate in performance studies at the University of Illinois (1979). He taught performance studies from 1981-2013 in the Department of Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He works on the stage primarily as a director and on the page as a writer committed to non-traditional forms of scholarly representation. His most recent books exploring qualitative methods are Leaning: A Poetics of Personal Relations (2011), Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing (2014), and If the Truth Be Told: Accounts in Literary Forms (2016).

[rlown]

Nice. I saw this headline today "UC Berkeley calls off Ann Coulter talk for security reasons" and I had to look up who she even was.. I admit I'm not that deep, but I do have beliefs in what is right and wrong, esp in a nation of laws. I don't always get my way, but that's ok. It's the way it should be, unless either side becomes a bully. Both sides are doing it a bit at different times.

[Jimr]

My whole point is non-partisan in it's approach. What I am saying is that whatever political ideology (or particular mix) is best for this country is secondary to the issue I'm pointing to. We have a government that has evolved into a fairly incompetent machine. One of the main functions of government is that of administration and governments on every level are not doing a very good job IMHO. We have an appropriation system that encourages waste. We have processes that are so convoluted and so compartmentalized that it takes forever for anything to get done and nobody can be held accountable for mis-management. There are numerous holes in the process that allow malfeasance in shocking abundance. We have sections of law that overlap to a point that no business in this country can possibly comply no matter how much money they throw at compliance and/or training. The tremendous waste, redundancy and apparent disregard for the care of the peoples money is for me, the biggest issue we face. Far more of our hard earned money is wasted or stolen annually than the dollars this thread started talking about. Fix that and we would be having a different discussion.

You can't fix this by merely dumping more money in, or taking money from the machine. You have to fix the machine.

Give or take a quart

[rlown]

ahh, so you saw the 17 page flow-chart that Trump displayed as well, when pointing to getting stuff permitted.

[Jimr]

No. Ross Perot bored me enough. I do have personal experience though. I was informed by a company in Indonesia that we needed a certificate of residency stamped by our government so they could move goods (that were not ours, because we are customs brokers) from Indonesia to the U.S. under the trade agreement we have with that country. It took me at least, 40 hours to find the right forms (two of them), fill them out and receive the documents. The forms are so convoluted that I had to call the Treasury department twice to get them filled out properly. They were helpful and I did get through to a live person fairly quickly, which tells me that there isn't much demand in that department. My application for a certificate of residency was denied the first time. That's why I had to call. And, I dreaded that I would have to call any government agency. But, he was helpful. I faxed the revision over and waited. No response. Then, I receive that certificate in the mail, but one of the two shareholders is not listed. I call again and I'm told that they could not confirm that the other shareholder had filed form 1040 in the past. ARE YOU KIDDING? He's been paying taxes since he was 18 and he is now 50!. They have his SSN on the original form as well as an attestation signed by him, and yet....AND YET, they can't figure it out, so I send a copy of the first page of his 2016 tax return as proof. Now, they send me a new certificate with both names on it, but both times, they refused to stamp the official GST form from Indonesia because it doesn't conform with what they usually see. This is the official Indonesian government form! WTH! Fortunately, the company in Indonesia let it go and didn't deduct the 20% GST tax, but I will have to do this every year or tell our valued customer to pound sand. On my second conversation with the Treasury department, I mentioned that their form required signature from an authorized person to represent us in front of the IRS. I asked him why we had to get our CPA involved at $300/hour just to get this done. We've been incorporated since 1961 and been paying taxes and, btw, are registered customs brokers with the Department of Treasury, who deal with customs duty since 1948, and yet, they cannot attest to the fact that we are a U.S. Corporation without this convoluted system.

Our whole industry exists because the import/export laws and Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S. is so convoluted that it is much cheaper for a company to outsource it than it is to train a whole department just to import goods into the U.S.



Whew.

[rlown]

Oh... The Vogons.. nice..

[Jimr]

That went shooting right over my head dude!

[rlown]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogon

Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders – signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.

Vogons are roughly human-sized, although much bulkier, with green or grey skin. Their noses are above their eyebrows, which are either ginger (in the television series) or white (in the film). The film's commentary states that the idea behind the high flat noses was that they evolved both the noses and the severe bureaucracy from being repeatedly whacked by the paddle creatures under the sand on Vogsphere whenever they had an independent thought (in the film, the Vogon bureaucracy is centred on Vogsphere). In the radio series it is said that "Their highly domed nose rises above their small piggy forehead".

Well, the PBS series was better than the movie.

[Jimr]

Nice. I saw this headline today "UC Berkeley calls off Ann Coulter talk for security reasons" and I had to look up who she even was.. I admit I'm not that deep, but I do have beliefs in what is right and wrong, esp in a nation of laws. I don't always get my way, but that's ok. It's the way it should be, unless either side becomes a bully. Both sides are doing it a bit at different times.

Yup! I believe we all (few exceptions) want what is best for this country. We may have different ideals and different mixes that suit what we think is best, but nobody, NOBODY really knows for sure. That is why we experiment and expand on what works and discard what does not. I have no desire to judge or persuade another that their politics is wrong or should be changed. I have no answers, only ideas. I will defend anyone's right to free speech and expression as long as it does not repress another's rights. I will defend anyone's right to petition their government. But, I do think our governments waste our hard earned money. Just sayin'