"..to get away from getting too bogged down in the details here.."

We're making great strides in combatting poverty worldwide:

http://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/

Also, Prince is dead.

Normally, I'd write a block text about how that's obvious globalist propaganda in a world with actual organizations trying to prevent people from dying of hunger and disease against the wills of their nation's leaders, but Prince died.

I just don't have the will now to drag out sixteen hyperlinks about Carter Foundation studies, quotes from scientists about how technology can't solve a 100% social problem, and how America only exists to increase and monetize human suffering.

I have to spend the day listening to Prince instead.

The world can fuck itself to death without me.

Hooray! Prince died!!

Jimmy Carter is an amoral fuckstick who speaks in the tones of a saint but actually delights in the deaths of innocents.

http://fair.org/media_criticism/jimmy-carter-and-human-rights- behind-the-media-myth/

Or, maybe it's not as simple as you, and FAIR, like to make it. Maybe the good men of this world are doing their best, but there are very few accomplishments that are unalloyed good.

To be sure, the improvement of conditions around the world thanks to globalization is at best an afterthought and at worst an accidental side effect, but you know what? It's still improvement for an awful lot of people. I'd like to see the multinationals held to better standards (which BTW is part of the TPP if anyone would actually bother to read it), but in the meantime, a lot of people have been lifted out of grinding poverty, and that's a pretty good thing.

Sure he can heal his _own_ brain of cancer, but will he heal yours? Not likely...

"absolute power bestowed on humans by critical thinking"

Meme, you're one of my favorites but I've got to call you out on this one. You're giving our species WAAAAAAY too much credit here, for both power and critical thinking.

If anything, our strength is in our complex language and especially in writing, since it allows us to work collaboratively across generations to figure stuff out that as individuals we can't even really comprehend. That and opposable thumbs are the main reasons the octopuses didn't kick our asses millennia ago.

Prince isn't dead. It was a hoax. My source: internet.

Chyna, however, DID die, and I am very very sad about that. :(

OW - my point was that anyone with any detectable degree of influence in this world can be interpreted as a monster, if that's the way you really want to go. Personally I don't think it's healthy, and from a practical perspective it also keeps the Left from ever getting their shit together long enough to get anything done. The Left is too fond of demonizing anyone with enough power to impact the world, but not enough power to guarantee perfect solutions.

I would want to see Bernie president just to see his supporters turn on him for not magically making everything perfect during his first term even faster than they did on Obama.

I don't know what would be funnier: Bernie being impotently unable to do all the things he promised, Bernie having the power to do all the things he promised and most of them blow up in his face, or Bernie having the power but then realizing some of his crowd-pleasers would be destructive and so refusing to do as his supporters expected.

Like, Wall Street prosecutions. We'd all like to see more of them, but then you start getting tripped up in the details, like: who exactly is culpable for which crimes? And how do you prove it? Bad business decisions aren't crimes in and of themselves, so how do you apply the law correctly? Last time Bernie was asked these type of questions, it seemed like he hadn't given them any serious thought.

But suppose Bernie gets into office: I can see him being told by the DoJ that they are still investigating, but without anything approaching smoking guns, there's no point in trying to prosecute. Or, imagine Emperor Bernie just locking up Wall Street execs at random like his fans would enjoy: that wouldn't be tyrannical as hell or anything, and it certainly wouldn't have all sorts of repercussions nationally and internationally.

Small side note, one of the lesser-known consequences of the Bush presidency is that Bush got rid of anyone who wasn't a pliant ideologue in the DoJ and in other executive agencies, so when Obama took office, he had to basically build them up from nothing. When Hillary takes office, she'll be lucky to inherit a DoJ that has at least a few years of institutional experience; that's more than Obama got.

(• ε •)

Oh Bort, don't ruin the moment. I was so tickled by your Carter line I felt compelled to rejoin it. It put me to mind of that old drunken reprobate Chris Hitchens and his eternal hate boner for Mother Theresa.

But hey, you've really drank the Koolaid if you believe people couldn't be put in jail today over the financial crisis of 08. If Hillary weren't such a corporate stooge, she'd split the difference and promote a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" as a resolution for the issue rather than criminal prosecution. Her cronies would probably go for it, thinking it a good get out of jail free card. I certainly thought so when I heard about these thing being used in countries where it was impossible to hold the guilty accountable. But look into them, and try to get your fellow Hillarites excited about the idea. I think it could be surprisingly effective in America and it would attract a lot of the disaffected Berners that your Queen has so badly riled and wrinkled.

I'd like to see her publicly renounce the support of David Brock.

"But hey, you've really drank the Koolaid if you believe people couldn't be put in jail today over the financial crisis of 08."

A vague sense that somebody is probably responsible and should pay the price is adequate for mob justice, but not our courts. Building criminal cases is hard; that's by design.

So: which people, what crimes, and what specific evidence can be produced?

Side note: aren't you the slightest bit troubled that Bernie has apparently never even given those questions a moment's thought? I would expect that from an 19-year-old with a belly full of indignation and a head full of mush, but this is a man who has been in Washington 25 of his 74 years, and is jockeying to run the show. That's like Dubya wondering why the Muslim Pope doesn't just tell the Shias and Sunnis to quit fighting.

Holy shit, Bort is scanning Sanders.

DON'T SCAN A SCANNER