h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The irony is that if Trump's father had been denied this right then the Donald wouldn't have become POTUS.

"An overgrown child who's infamous for his political bluster makes some blustering threats and then doesn't follow through on them"

"Did you miss the bits where they successfully tested ballistic missiles and a functioning nuclear weapon? I don't think that counts as not "following through" unless the only thing that would satisfy you is an actual war."


No, I didn't miss them. But I'm not surprised they didn't use them either.

That being said -- don't get me wrong -- I would be thrilled to hear that North Korea's government had been deposed and replaced with a rational, functioning democracy that decides to eliminate the nuclear weapons because HOLY CRAP everybody should get rid of those things.

Hence what I said earlier: I don't think the world is any MORE dangerous than it was, but I certainly don't think it's safer.

And neither do I believe that President Doofus-Head swayed that particular matter in either direction. Albeit he and his cohorts have been damaging in other areas.

Frankly I worry more what 'his cohort' are up to whilst he is grandstanding on how he hates Taylor Swift just this little bit more today or whatever other triviality he bangs on about.

Whilst he takes the headlines and keeps the focus on himself... what are they up to....?

Just between Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, they're stealing the country blind.

"I'm not surprised they didn't use them either"

They DID use them. Just not for what people were thinking they might. DPRK nuclear weapons have achieved their function - they got the USA's attention, and dissuaded them from invading. It's one of the ironies of the previous decade that we were taken into Iraq on the false pretence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, when it was the very fact that he *hadn't* that meant the invasion could safely go ahead.

I do think it naive to believe that the President of the USA's actions - whatever you may think of them - had *zero* measureable effect on the situation on the Korean peninsula.

Kim Jong Un got exactly what he wanted. He got the leader of the US to agree to meet with him on equal footing. And he got more than he expected when that American leader slobbered all over him like a puppy.

" It's one of the ironies of the previous decade that we were taken into Iraq on the false pretence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, when it was the very fact that he *hadn't* that meant the invasion could safely go ahead." [Hoovooloo]

That's extremely well put.

I haven't voted in the midterms yet, but I will soon do so. 36 million people voted early.

"Kim Jong Un got exactly what he wanted. He got the leader of the US to agree to meet with him on equal footing. And he got more than he expected when that American leader slobbered all over him like a puppy."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae8t-QKPVY4

Here, I said this, in 2017:
" I hope that Trump putters on for another three years, then gets ground into the dirt by Elizabeth Warren. "

Well, he puttered on. And Warren got ground into the dirt by Biden, who then, let's be honest, fairly narrowly beat Trump (compared the margin of victory he should have had, given Trump's record).

Who would have thought nearly half of US voters would have such an appetite for authoritarianism, groupthink, cognitive dissonance, anti-intellectualism, Christian and white nationalism, toxic masculinity and partisan loyalty and orthodoxy over truth, evidence, and reality.



Trump is just a symptom of a much deeper problem.

Politics can be unpredictable.

At this time a year ago, I had no clue that Biden would get the nomination. Elizabeth Warren has many connections within Biden's administration, and she seems happy to have such an outsized amount of influence.

Yes, the top of the ticket matters, but Warren's influence is at the roots.

Given Biden's age and the lack of enthusiasm he inspires, I give him high marks for doing as well as he did. As Baron Grim says, the electorate has some deeply worrying traits. And yet Obama did well twice.

Obama did well against some pretty uninspiring opposition.

Quite a lot of recent elections, in the UK as well as the US, have looked to me like the winners didn't really try hard, it's just that the losers looked like they were actively trying to lose. (e.g. nominating the ultimate "business as usual" candidate in Clinton, having Jeremy bloody Corbyn as Labour leader, and so on).

I think you've done a good job of analyzing.

Whether Biden will be up to the task of governing remains to be seen. We know, in retrospect (and many of us knew ahead of time) that Trump didn't have what it takes. Trump's incompetence reduced the amount of damage he could do. Or maybe the people around him countered him somewhat. The government is enough of a closed system that it's hard to tell for sure. Nevertheless, many books were written by Trump insiders (sometimes anonymous, sometimes under the actual names) with damaging allegations.

Obamacare has survived surprisingly well by some accounts.

Obamacare needs to go away.

Not for the reasons most folks whine and scream about Obamacare, but basically for opposing reasons.


Obamacare is a great example of why striving for bipartisanship is not ideal. Obamacare IS a republican healthcare plan. It does nothing to control ever rising healthcare or drug costs. It's a plan that directly benefits large hospital corporations, "big pharma", and insurance conglomerates. For these boons, they agree to cover more people and not toss folks off their ledgers for pre-existing conditions. The reason Republicans failed to offer an alternative to Obamacare for a decade is Obamacare was their plan, offered up to them by Obama on a plate and their craven partisanship demanded they try to block it.

We're still paying way more for healthcare than any other nation and costs are still rising. Healthcare needs to be truly universal, divorced from employment and costs need to be controlled. There is room for debate about how we accomplish this, whether insurance remains part of the system or not, but Obamacare will come crashing down sooner or later. My insurance and out of pocket healthcare costs are getting out of hand already. At least one coworker has mentioned moonlighting just to keep up with her family's healthcare costs and we're paid well above minimum wage.


Anyways,... sorry for the interruption

I wouldn't bet on when it will come crashing down.

I don't bet much any more anyway.

With Trump fading gently away into history (at least for now), I'm running, again, the comparison in my head of him - a real life actual President - with Zaphod Beeblebrox.

The parallels are many, and the differences few and ALL in favour of ZB. ZB isn't, for instance, actively evil, just incredibly narcissistic and self-involved. And ZB was an unwitting puppet, whereas Trump appears to have been nobody's puppet, but nevertheless mind-bendingly unwitting.

But the parallels - attracting attention away from power rather than actually wielding it, dressing appallingly, hanging around with literal whores (Eccentrica Galumbits/Stormy Daniels), cheating at sports, being a massive physical coward, being incredibly concerned with how what he does LOOKS, distracting attention from his most recent howler by committing an even bigger one, and on and on through his whole Presidency... it's like Adams was writing him from the grave.

Beeblebrox was allegedly based on someone real: Richard Branson, who seems to have looked like the man who portrayed Beeblebrox in the H2g2 movie.

http://cheezburger.com/6785325056/richard-branson-totally-looks-like-zaphod-beeblebroxovie

There's also the angle that Branson wanted to pioneer human spaceflight.

Branson only has one head, as does Trump.

Who is Trump based on? Not Branson. Nor does he need to be based on anyone else. I'm just making the point that Beeblebrox, a fictional character (loosely based on a real person) in a comic series of books would send the books' tone into tragedy were he to act like trump.

Was Branson a notable celebrity in the late '70s?

I suppose he might have been known in the UK, but we in the States didn't hear much about him until later so I never would have associated him with ZB, but looking back on it, I can definitely imagine Branson in the scene that introduces Zaphod, stealing the HoG at the beach.