I might make an exception, if I wasn't already in a relationship, that is......     Lol.

I did have a 22 year old Dutch girlfriend who worked in our Brussels office when I lived in Europe off and on. Well, I was 28  so....She spoke five languages.  Dutch, of course, English, German, French and Spanish.

My youngest “boyfriend” was 21 or so when I was 27.  I put boyfriend in quotes because we were more like just friends, but pretty entranced with each other.  The oldest age difference was when I was in my early twenties I went on one date with a forty something scientist from behind the iron curtain. He was an honest to God communist.  That was pretty trippy back then, going on a date with “the enemy” in the Cold War.  But he was just a good natured nut, taught me how to say “I love you” in Romanian.

What makes you say that?  I see a potential second term consisting of personal retribution, not governance.

But this is academic. No one here has made a good case as to how he will attract the middle in order to win a general election, which is a requirement to becoming president.

That’s one reason I like DeSantis over Trump. The second is I could get 8 years out of DeSantis. That matters greatly, given our ages.

He wanted a second term and being literally cheated out of it is the source of all his current rage.  If he gets his second term, I have no reason to think he won’t continue the same country building good policies he did the first time. No reason he can’t do that and get personal retribution; the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Climate change is a mythical religion deliberately designed to instill fear in order to control us.

Pence is the establishment.   Pence is obligated to tow the line for the UniParty.

He really is irrelevant. 

I’ll tell you what needs to be done about social security.  Stop sending money to Ukraine.  Get all the pork out of the budget. Dismantle the DEA, HUD, DOE and EPA, we don’t need any of them.  Fire 90% of the CIA, NSA and FBI and eliminate all the internal spying and harassment of our own citizens.  You set up a socialized retirement system so now you have to fund it.  Otherwise, trash the whole thing, slash taxes, get the fuck out of the way of the free market and let people actually build their own wealth.

At this point either Trump or DeSantis would be a zillion times better than the monsters in the WH right now.  But getting past election fraud is the problem.

Here is a wonderful deep dive into that rant.

It’s very enlightening and I don’t dispute anything he says. My only caveat is that he speaks as an anti-capitalist where I point out that his own argument demonstrates that it’s fascism, not capitalism per se, that is the problem.

Like all anti-capitalist leftists, he bemoans the profits made by private corporations and the big salaries of the upper echelon within, but seems totally blind to the fact that the entire middle class is also invested in and profting by these corporations to the extent they have retirement accounts, mutual funds, etc.  Corporate profits aren’t by themselves a bad thing.

The bad thing is when they mate with government interests to pervert and contaminate the natural process.  Diverting profits to undeserving parties, pushing ideological agendas, and prosecuting unneeded wars.  There is nothing wrong with maintaining a military industrial complex, in fact it is mandatory (peace through superior strength) but Brand demonizes it in entirety rather than drawing a distinction between basic readiness and malignant greed resulting in warmongering for the sake of excessive profit. 

I want the MIC to profit, I’m invested in it.  And I want it strong, I’d like to see it active on the southern border. But only to the extent of national self defense.  Brand is spot on about war-venturing on the other side of the world deliberately drawn out to bring an endless money stream, which while I profit a smidge, the wealthy and the corrupt profit immensely AND… my own profits are taxed to recycle some of them right back into the scheme, funneling ever more into the pockets of the elite.

This is fascism, not capitalism.  When will Brand come to that final realization?

Bob Denver was Gillian.

John Denver was a singer and pilot.

I’m sure jim would have been along to correct you by now, seeing as how his libertarian principles are so precious.

When I typed that I had not finished my coffee.  My brain got stuck on Bob for some reason.  Maybe it’s because my husband has Gilligan’s Island on the TV in the other room.