politics

Dude a cracker box built in the 1960s in my hood is like 1.2m.

Housing prices are just insane right now. Over the last two years, my parent's house went from ~$450k (already laughably unreasonable) to $1.1 million. Figuring out how to afford the property taxes has been incredibly stressful, and several other homes in the area have already been sold (to, predictably, huge corporations) by their owners because of the financial strain. Our local laws are a little backwards about that, but only a little. This shit is getting ridiculous.

What? Are you suggesting a "fascist tyranny" is better than other kinds of tyranny?

Invading Canada would be a quagmire and a terrible idea.

• Canadians look just like US Americans.
• Canada is huge and outside of a few cities is mostly empty.
• Lots of families are spread across both sides of the boarder. Bombing Canadian cities would cause a rebellion within the USA.
• The boarder is huge and nearly impossible to secure. Canadian rebels could easily slip into the USA to carry about bombings.
• Canadian sleeper cells are already in place. (Over 800K Canadians are known to live in the USA.)

McMansion

I don't doubt that it will eventually turn out to be arson, I'm just cautioning against making snap judgements, and more importantly, acting on them before we know the actual facts.

Immediately after the Oklahoma City Bombing, EVERYBODY blamed Muslims, from the average citizen to national news reporters. It was just ASSUMED. Who else would it be? The first recent Twin Towers attacks were Muslims, and everybody was sensitive to Muslim terrorism.

But my first impression was that it didn't sit right with me. Why Oklahoma City? Why would Muslims choose there to send their message? Most Muslims have never even heard of Oklahoma City. They would pick a bigger target to send a bigger message, and their history shows them attacking the Olympics, the World Trade Center, Airports, etc., not some random mid-size city in a small state that 99% of Americans will never visit, and know nearly nothing about.

Oklahoma City? That sounded home-grown to me. That's a target that was picked because of its close proximity. They chose a very volatile bomb, that wouldn't handle a long trip to a better target, where it could spontaneously explode from hitting a pothole. It had to be deployed close to where it was made, and at that point in time, most Muslims were living in larger cities. Oklahoma City was not the sort of city where there would be a large, activist Muslim community.

And sure enough, when they were caught, they were All-American super right wing ex-military losers, who had some nebulous beef with the government.

MAGAs immediately blame EVERYTHING on the Left, without knowing a single fact, then look stupid when it turns out to be another one of their own, AGAIN. The rest of have to better than that, and be patient and wait until the facts are in.

Frankly, it could just as easily be a lone weirdo, with his own motivations that make absolutely no sense to anybody else. Insane justifications make up probably half of these incidents, and even contribute heavily to our rising politically motivated violence. When MAGA politicians engage in Stochastic Terrorism ("Someone should do something about all these...), they should be aware enough to know that the people who are most likely to answer that call are going to be the most deranged ones from their ranks.

But make no mistake, they are from the MAGA cult. MAGAs can't point to their mental deficiencies, and claim that's the real issue. The real issue is that they know these people are among them, they've invited them to join, and bring their hate/racism/guns, so when there is a call to action, those are logically going to be the first volunteers. MAGA can't act so surprised, or disavow the violent actions that they invited and encouraged.

I used to work fire damage jobs, and i can say in 6 years there three people had house fires started by random chemical buckets in their garage. So it does happen, and they were all rich white idiot.

That shit happens all the time. My folks were insurance people. Dinner conversation was pretty boring. I'll never forget the appetizing story about the girl on the snowmobile being decapitated by an old strand of barbed wire in the woods. I wasn't allowed to ride on snowmobiles.

Don't talk about his wife like that.

I'd like both things to be true. I'll start with what I can control today, since my party lost the last national election.