Obama: Worst president in the last 100 years

[xrayy]

@ perraine "you are forgetting that perhaps 75,000,000 plus other Americans DID vote for Trump!"

are you serious claiming this ?

just because i reminded MrJose that there is a majority of 82 000 00 people he just ignored ?

we are in a very stupid part of this debate here. trumpists are riding here on a "let us ignore the majority of our country" wave, still spreading conspiracy and without answering simple questions or delivering any evidence or debate relevant arguments

can we return to the debate or should we better close it?

[MrJoseCuervo]

Your ignorance is showing.

 

Our country is not run by Majority rule. We have an election system designed to not allow smaller states to be dictated to by large population areas. So you're the one being irrelevant and obtuse.

[HackWithTHeJacket]

Your ignorance is showing.

 

Our country is not run by Majority rule. We have an election system designed to not allow smaller states to be dictated to by large population areas. So you're the one being irrelevant and obtuse.

And Trump lost BOTH of those, and all voter fraud found has been voter fraud done to support Trump.

 

So, Trump lost the popular vote, AND the electoral College, AND he only got as high as he did because of cheating, both by Republican lawmakers engaging in shameless suppression, and his cult like followers committing voter fraud to support him.

[DanteRedfield]

Wait a minute I heard the democrats were the ones cheating, they even had this article about it https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

[Perraine]

Don't bite :cool:

HackwithTHeJacket is just trolling as they are always posting the exact opposite of reality and have already had a post deleted for being excessively offensive. Either that, or I'm truly concerned for their state of mental health.

[ScytheBearer]

Obama isn't the worst president by a fairly large margin. Nor is he the best. Obama was a mediocre president, and mostly because he was rendered ineffectual when Democrats lost control of the Senate.

[colourwheel]

The Irony of this thread is just recently Historians ranked Donald Chump near the very bottom of U.S. Presidents making him one of the top 10 worst Presidents in history. While Obama came in on the top 10 Best Presidents in history.

[HadToRegister]

Your ignorance is showing.

 

Our country is not run by Majority rule. We have an election system designed to not allow smaller states to be dictated to by large population areas. So you're the one being irrelevant and obtuse.

 

 

It's run by Minority Rule, thanks to the Racist Electoral College, and encourages candidates to ignore FORTY STATES, because they only need to focus on a handful to win

 

Instead of every vote counting, it has just become a game of "Win these certain states and you win the Presidency" and it's no secret why the Republicans are making very suppressive voting laws in those Key States that Trump lost.

Because Republicans have no platform, they're only working for Corporations and the 1% now, and their philosophy is so unpopular they need to rig elections, gerrymander and try and legislate Democrats completely out of the Government.

 

They've turned the US Map Red, because they've spread to the lower legislature in all the states like a slow spreading cancer, and gerrymandered the maps so only they can win, (Wisconsin, where Democrats won, yet Republicans STILL picked up 6 seats), they strip any Democratic Governor of Power, just like they did when I Democrat became Governor in Michigan, and Wisconsin, the first thing Republicans did was strip them of Power.

Republicans are only interested in a ONE-PARTY, Minority Controlled Authoritarian Oligarchy

 

They prove it time and time again, with their gaslighting with tactics straight from Orwell's "1984"

 

Republicans want Minority Rule, and a one party system, and if they get all three branches of Government in 2022 and 2024, it's the end of Democracy, especially if they manage to get that Dictator Wannabe Trump back in.

 

Here's the Republican plan in a nutshell...

 

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.

They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

 

― George Orwell, 1984"

[HeyYou]

 

Your ignorance is showing.

 

Our country is not run by Majority rule. We have an election system designed to not allow smaller states to be dictated to by large population areas. So you're the one being irrelevant and obtuse.

 

 

It's run by Minority Rule, thanks to the Racist Electoral College, and encourages candidates to ignore FORTY STATES, because they only need to focus on a handful to win

 

Instead of every vote counting, it has just become a game of "Win these certain states and you win the Presidency" and it's no secret why the Republicans are making very suppressive voting laws in those Key States that Trump lost.

Because Republicans have no platform, they're only working for Corporations and the 1% now, and their philosophy is so unpopular they need to rig elections, gerrymander and try and legislate Democrats completely out of the Government.

 

They've turned the US Map Red, because they've spread to the lower legislature in all the states like a slow spreading cancer, and gerrymandered the maps so only they can win, (Wisconsin, where Democrats won, yet Republicans STILL picked up 6 seats), they strip any Democratic Governor of Power, just like they did when I Democrat became Governor in Michigan, and Wisconsin, the first thing Republicans did was strip them of Power.

Republicans are only interested in a ONE-PARTY, Minority Controlled Authoritarian Oligarchy

 

They prove it time and time again, with their gaslighting with tactics straight from Orwell's "1984"

 

Republicans want Minority Rule, and a one party system, and if they get all three branches of Government in 2022 and 2024, it's the end of Democracy, especially if they manage to get that Dictator Wannabe Trump back in.

 

Here's the Republican plan in a nutshell...

 

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.

They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

― George Orwell, 1984"

 

I am curious how that is any different than what the dems do when they are in power.......

 

Neither party has the best interests of the country in mind when they pass their laws. They only want what is best for THEM, doesn't matter which party they belong to. There are a few planks in their respective platforms that differ, but, there is much more in common than you would think. Please note, that a fair few republican policies are still continuing, even the the dems control a good chunk of the government. Also note, the dems like to portray themselves as 'anti-war', but obama got us involved in two more while he was in office, even though one of his stated goals was to get us out of them.... Biden actually pulling us OUT of Afghanistan is most certainly a vote in his favor, but, he still pushes policies that I vehemently disagree with. :D

[Madrias]

When it comes to presidents, I have to admit, I treat them all like the politicians they really are. I don't like politicians. I believe that a politician is simply a lawyer who sucked at their job and decided making laws would be easier than arguing those laws in court. Yes, I know there are exceptions, I know that there can be occasional good ones, but for the most part, I paint all politicians with the same brush.

 

I don't have, as a result, a problem with Biden, Trump, Obama, or Bush. I have a problem with the lack of positive action.

 

Now, I'm not gathering data from sources, not seeking to prove a point, merely putting an opinion out there as someone who doesn't favor either side. I believe there are good points and bad points to both the Republicans and the Democrats, but in the last 20 years or so, they're doing more bad than good at the end of each 4 year term.

 

Let's hit the major talking points, then, and get on with it.

 

Climate Change.

 

It's inevitable. History shows that the Earth's climate runs in cycles, hot, then cold, then hot, and cold again. We're in a hot phase. Do I believe we're contributing, as humanity, to the problem? Yes. What solutions would I propose? Well, we need clean power, and we need businesses, factories, etc. to be held accountable for their fair share of the pollution.

 

Average Joe and his car isn't the enemy here. It's MegaCorp's office building with all of the office computers left on 24/7/365, even though they only run two 8-hour shifts five days a week. It's coal, oil, and gas being burned to generate power. It's the creation of solar panels and batteries tearing up the planet and creating massive amounts of pollution. It's the companies that promote the 'Disposable Society' instead of making products that last and that people want to keep for several years.

 

So, how should we fix this? First, we need nuclear power. Yes, I know, it's not a perfect solution, it creates waste products that stay hazardous for thousands of years, but it's better than doing nothing. Plus, we've had at least 60 years of technological development on nuclear reactors that should, at least in theory, be able to make a reactor that can reuse a lot of its own waste. That gives everyone access to relatively clean power. As the mechanism of power generation is much the same (burn fuel, heat water, make steam, turn turbines, spin generators), it could even be possible to use smaller reactors to create that heat and thereby retrofit already-existing power-stations with a cleaner way to boil water. What do we do with the waste? Unfortunately, I don't really have an answer for that, but then again, I'm not a politician, a scientist, an engineer, I'm just someone with a head full of ideas who, occasionally, likes to write a little bit of sci-fi for fun.

 

To solve the Disposable Society problem, however, we have to solve other deeper issues. Namely, cost of living. While Right-to-Repair is an excellent start, it's a band-aid on a bullet wound. Unfortunately, we were screwed from the start with the Dollar breaking away from a Gold Standard. Now, our Dollar is worthless. We have corporations who want more work from less people at lower pay, clashing with employees who want less work from more people at higher pay. Two ideologies that end up being polar opposites that will, unfortunately, have to compromise somewhere in the middle, and a perfect compromise has everyone walking away from the negotiating table feeling like they just got screwed.

 

Tribalism (the Great Divide).

 

Put any assorted, random group of humans into a room and wait a while, and you'll eventually see that they'll break up into groups with similar features, ideologies, etc. We are, by nature, a social species. We also have, to a certain degree, an expected level of intelligence, mixed with pattern recognition, memory, color vision, and personal bias. It's impossible for someone to not notice a difference between themselves and other people, nature programmed us that way. I guess, back in the cave-man days, being able to see these differences led to natural selection favoring those who could tell an outsider from their own tribe, those who could tell someone in their tribe looked sick, and as a result, we are biologically tuned to see anyone who doesn't resemble us as being different.

 

This is not inherently a bad thing.

 

The problem comes from the fact that society hasn't changed at its core. Whether it's 50, 100, 200, 500, 1,000, or 10,000 years ago, we still see 'Different' as 'Outsider' and thereby 'Dangerous.' Worse, society hasn't changed at its surface enough to have people accepting that sometimes 'Different' really is just superficial. It doesn't matter whether it's skin color, political preference, geographic location, favorite sports team, or choice of clothing, we still categorize people even when we don't really intend to do so. It's biologically hard-wired and hard-coded in how our brains work, because our genetic ancestors needed this to survive, just like the rest of our survival instincts.

 

This is a "people problem" and unfortunately, both political parties are trying to keep the United States divided. Because they know, if we focus on each other and throw hate and vitriol among ourselves, we're not focusing on them. If we're not focusing on them, they can continue what they've been doing for the last 20, 30, 40+ years: Doing nothing for the People of the United States while lining their own pockets and telling us, "We are working on improving the quality of life for all people who live here."

 

If we focus on the politicians, we would see that both the Democrats AND the Republicans have major problems. Neither side really fights for The People, they are merely in it for as much money as they can print for themselves. Just look at how little progress has been made in, say, 20 year time gaps. So, working backwards, 2020 to 2000, 2000 to 1980, 1980 to 1960, 1960 to 1940. Technology marched forward and evolved. Politics, however, remains the same. People remained the same, even though large leaps and strides were made for human rights. Women getting to vote, breaking up segregation and allowing those who were under it to vote as well, the 60's that were split between warmongers and hippies, the 70's through the 90's Computer Revolution, the 00's Internet Age, all the way up to today, people really haven't changed that much. We still see ourselves as different groups of people to be categorized, because that is what our parents taught us. Because their parents taught them. Because their parents taught them that way, too, and so on and so forth.

 

Unfortunately, I don't see this changing for the better without a second Civil War, and that is something I hope I never see in my lifetime, though as I'm about half-a-year shy of 30, it might be within the years I have left. People are too keyed up on 'racial politics' to see the real threats that exist, and would rather see their black/white/brown/native neighbors as being 'the enemy' because "(Celebrity) said so, so it must be true."

 

Education (or, the lack thereof).

 

We have an education crisis here in the United States. We spend astronomical amounts on education, yet routinely score poorly when compared to other countries. Why?

 

I believe there are a lot of parts to this problem. First, we have that ridiculous No Child Left Behind problem, the one that bumps kids forward a year even when they're failing their classes because it's a social stigma to fail. Second, we have teachers who don't care enough about teaching, they'll show up so long as they get paid. Third, we have 'historians' rewriting history to hide the bad things and the evils of our past, failing to realize that the only way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past is to know your true history. Fourth, we have too many people trying to push their politics, religion, thoughts, and ideas upon other people's children, rather than teaching those children the real events of the past.

 

How do we fix these issues, then?

 

Instead of No Child Left Behind, which was a band-aid on an amputated leg, we need a different solution. Children should be able to fail and learn about consequences. Teachers should be trying to help the students who are struggling, not just praise those who do well and condemning the rest under the guise of "I don't know what I did wrong, these three passed just fine, and she aced her midterms. I don't know why these ten students failed."

 

Teachers who no longer care about teaching, just their paycheck, create a lot of these problems. They're the ones who believe it's acceptable to give a student an hour of homework and expect them to find the time to get it all done. They're also the first ones to call a student lazy when that work doesn't get turned in. They don't care that the four other Lifers on the student's schedule also assigned an hour of work each, lumping some poor kid with five hours of make-work. These teachers also end up being responsible for a lot of the crippling social issues out there, because a child stuck at the kitchen table for several hours with their nose jammed in a text book and their hand cramped around a pencil isn't socializing with their friends. Friends who, also, are likely stuck doing homework. Children who sit around doing homework also don't get to be active, so they sit on their butt and scribble with a pen or pencil, then after 5 hours of tedious make-work, a brief dinner, now they get an hour or two, at best, of personal free time, and it's off to bed. When did it become socially acceptable for a child to wake up at 7 AM, sit in school from 8 AM to 3 PM, sit at a table at home from 3 PM to 8 PM? These kind of teachers make students who resent school, who hate it, and who then get in trouble for skipping it. (Source: I was one of those students once. My Sophomore year of High School, I had 5 "lifers" who believed the best way to teach was to drone on in a monotone voice for an hour, then assign an hour of homework. The only thing that made my day bearable at all was study hall and the fact that I could write fast, yet barely legible, so I could shave that time down. I also had the truancy officer on my butt for most of that year, and my Junior year, because I hated school so much that I'd rather play sick, lay in bed with nothing to do, and get chicken soup for dinner. Part of it was an overload of work, part of it was bullying, but that's a different story.)

 

Rewriting our history to cover up the dark deeds of the past is an insult to everyone who suffered through that time. We should be teaching history so the latest generation can learn from the mistakes of those before them, not covering up the facts that neither side of any war has ever been the 'good guys.' We were terrible to the Natives who lived here in this country, and they, in turn, were terrible back to us. We were terrible when we dragged ships full of African slaves over here to put them to work, but we must not forget that often times, they were sold by their own people. We may have fought a war for our own independence from the British, but we must not forget that it was due to being taxed and not having a voice in the British Government. We must not forget that America, in both World Wars, tried to remain 'neutral' by supplying both sides on occasion, and that, in both cases, that bit us hard. We Must Not Forget, but so many people believe the best solution to these problems is to make them disappear, not realizing the rest of the world still remembers.

 

Pushing one's personal ideology onto someone else's children is just wrong. It's okay if you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you're any of the various flavors of Religion or happen to not believe in any of them, if you believe that one person or another is a complete and total moron, or that I should rightfully take over the world because I'd make it a much worse place to live and yet we'd all remember happier times. On the other hand, it's not okay to push those things onto others. It's definitely not okay to inflict those beliefs on a captive audience who, by law, must attend your lessons. Why? Well, anyone who's ever accidentally let slip a bit of profanity around an impressionable young child, say around 3 to 6 years old, knows just how much fun you'll have trying to stop little John or Susan from running around belting out the unfortunate four-or-five letter word you invoked. Now, I'm going to go ridiculous here to avoid implicating either political party, because they are both guilty of this to a degree through teachers, but imagine this. If your child were to go to school and suddenly come home believing that the sky is green, that all women are aliens from Venus and men are aliens from Mars, that Pluto is the center of the Universe, and that Mathematics is a construct of the Devil designed to drive people insane, how quickly would you be pulling your child out of that school?

 

I'm sure most of you would be furious at the bare minimum.

 

Minimum Wage (Minimum Effort, Maximum Rage).

 

I hear it said so often, "Raise the minimum wage, it'll make everything better," that I have to counter that, and counter it hard.

 

All raising the minimum wage does is buy a year, at most, and raise the bottom level of the poverty scale another notch higher, while driving down everyone else's purchasing power.

 

Why? Because raising the minimum wage doesn't raise the wages earned by people in other jobs.

 

Now, that said, I believe the minimum wage should be a living wage, one high enough to support food, rent, utilities, etc. in the local area. Note the key-word, "Local." I also believe restaurants should be paying their waiters / waitresses / kitchen staff minimum wage, and tips go on top of that, untouched by those who did not earn them!

 

That said, I also believe that raising wages isn't the answer. We need to fix the inflation problem, because as it is, things are getting out of hand. I can't get out of the damn grocery store with less than $50 and more often $100 in a basket for a week's worth of food for myself and my 63 year old father. I've already accepted that I will never own my own home, that I will never open my own business, and that the American Dream is more of an ongoing American Nightmare at this point.

 

Unfortunately, some bright spark thought it was a great idea to unlink the Dollar from the Gold Standard and single-handedly flushed our economy down the toilet many decades later. We're the floaters circling around the toilet bowl, refusing to go down after a bad Taco Tuesday, wondering whether this is it and the bowl will rise (inflation falls, economy recovers, minimum wage = living wage) or whether the plunger comes out and we all go down (inflation rises, economy falls, living wage ends up exceeding minimum wage by a factor of 2 or more) and the country falls into chaos.

 

Also unfortunately, there is no easy fix for this. As of this time, I am unaware of a single denomination of currency being used that is still backed by Gold, Silver, or Platinum. Would now be a good time to push for laws to make the Earth's united currency the Galactic Standard Credit? (Sorry, bad sci-fi writer's joke there.)

 

The other half of the wage problem is the worker problem. Companies, for the last few decades at least, have been treating workers as disposable items. "You will do this or you will be fired" being a common favored threat in the Employer's Market. Unfortunately, the turns have tabled and we're now in an Employee's Market. COVID (and yes, I believe in how dangerous it is, Dad got it and nearly died, I had it and it was the most miserable week of my life) smacked the reset button for many of us in 2020. Suddenly finding ourselves let go for weeks, months on end, forced to go seek government assistance to keep a roof over our heads and the lights on, and food on the table, a lot of people suddenly were freed from their Wage-Slave job for several months. When jobs reopened, a lot of people evaluated their current conditions.

 

For some, they returned to their old job, like my father did, because the pay was good enough to deal with the crap being thrown around.

 

For some, they realized they could make it work with one income, and so someone became a stay at home parent while the other worked.

 

For some, they used the time COVID provided to better themselves, and jumped into a newer, better, higher-paying job, or a lower paying job that they absolutely love.

 

For others, they stayed on unemployment, occasionally throwing out a job application to places they know will never accept them in a desperate bid to keep money flowing in for free.

 

Now? Companies are finding out that the 30 years of "We demand your total compliance and loyalty, while expecting you to know you are expendable and replaceable at any time" has now turned into, "If I'm going to work for you, you need to pay me what I'm worth. This is an insult."

 

Terminating unemployment, while it sounds like it would fix the problem, will actually make it worse. The worst thing in the world is someone who is desperate. People who have gotten used to not working for a living will continue to find ways to maintain not working for a living. If that means they take to sawing catalytic converters off of "those moronic wage slaves'" cars, they'll do it. If it means going on daring daylight robberies to steal and pawn items from hard-working people's houses, they'll do it. If it means robbing convenience stores with a stolen handgun, they'll do it.

 

So, how do we fix unemployment? We make it something you don't want to stay on for an extended period of time. How do we do this? Well, I'm not a lawyer or an accountant, but I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to have an "adjustment" after a reasonable period of time, like about 6 months, where after that time period, your unemployment drops to the state's minimum wage. If the above concept (living wage = minimum wage) is adopted, then you subtract, say, 15% from the minimum wage and use that for unemployment. You also make unemployment something that you need to work a minimum amount of time in between uses, so you don't get someone 'finding a job' every six months, working a week, and getting fired / let go / quitting in order to get full benefits back.

 

Healthcare and Insurance.

 

Would it surprise you to know that I hate "Obamacare" but like the idea of a proper Government-Provided Healthcare System?

 

There's a few reasons, and I'll get to them in a bit, but "Obamacare" hurt everyone more than it helped.

 

Firstly, everyone working full-time was supposed to be provided healthcare under the (Un)Affordable Care Act. What happened? A lot of people working 40 hours a week got cut back to 35-39 hours. No big deal for those making enough to afford a healthcare plan and insurance, not a huge deal for those who were already scraping by to lose a few hours a week.

 

Someone saw that loophole and whacked it down to 25 hours = full time in the eyes of the law. People were laid off left and right, suddenly people who had been exempt from the ACA were suddenly under the gun and had to add another unaffordable bill to their pile. Businesses decided a flock of 20-hour-a-week people was better than a handful of well-trained full-time employees.

 

Secondly, threatening people with fines for not having health insurance is not the right answer. If you can't afford the insurance, you can't afford the fine, after all. Not that the Government ever needs to make sense.

 

Thirdly, it's just downright criminal and immoral to force people to buy a product from a private company under threat of the law. Especially when the plans created for people who can't afford healthcare and insurance are almost worse than not having insurance at all.

 

So, how do we fix the current system?

 

We keep the hospital system as it exists, because for the most part, it works. We keep the Private Health Insurance system as it exists, because for those who can afford it, it works. We add to it a Government Sponsored health-insurance system designed around those who work for a living, intended to be used by everyone, paid for out of your taxes (perhaps by diverting some of those military funds toward healthcare), used after any Private Insurance gets the bill, and does not bill the user in the end.

 

How would this work in a theoretical situation?

 

Let's say for an example that you get the Big Nasty and end up in the hospital with The Cough and some pneumonia as a result. You get a nice big hospital bill at the end of it all that, if you had no insurance, would cost you, say, $15,000. The bill, however, has been passed through your Primary Insurance, who decides to pay $12,000 and leave you with about $3,000 to pay on your own. This $3,000 bill gets sent to the Government Insurance, who decides to pay $2,000 out of it and sends it back to the hospital, leaving you with $1,000 left to cover.

 

Now, let's say you get the same treatment, the same $15,000 "No Insurance" bill, but you don't have private insurance. The Government Insurance thereby gets that full $15,000, a note from the hospital that you have no other insurance company helping you out, they check your tax records from last year to get an idea of your income, and then send back the bill after paying a fair-and-reasonable amount, similar to what a Private Insurance Company would do. You get a bill around $3,000 and the hospital helps you set up a payment plan that you can afford.

 

Closing Remarks.

 

In the end, it's not really a battle to see who is the worst President. Both sides have had their problems, both sides have kicked far too many cans down the road for someone else to deal with, and both sides would much rather continue to play the game of "Hot Potato" with these issues in front of the public instead of knuckling down and doing something actually useful for the public good. Both sides target hot-button issues like the Second Amendment, Immigration, Wars, Climate Change, and the Great Human Divide, but without actual plans to do anything helpful.

 

What are my beliefs on these five hot-button issues?

 

The Second Amendment is there for a reason. While both sides routinely twist the words of the amendment to suit their needs, it is 200+ years out of date. It was created to keep a civilian militia armed in case of invasion, and in case of corruption. It was created in the wake of the blood-soaked American Revolution of 1776 when we were still feeling the wounds of British Occupation and reeling from British taxes. That said, I believe that guns are not the great evil the media tries to make them out to be. We only have to look outside of our country to see this: Where guns have been banned for long enough that they're inaccessible to the general population, the criminals use knives, tools, chemicals, and bombs instead. Gun Violence is a SOCIAL problem and needs to be fixed at the core. Less prisons, more mental-health facilities to find, diagnose, and treat the issues that cause people to pick up a gun and shoot other people.

 

If you want to immigrate to the United States, I have no issues with that. Go to a border crossing with your passport, get your visa, pay your fees, apply for citizenship. Don't come over here illegally, take an under-the-table job, and use it to mail all of your earnings back home. Don't come over here and then start committing crimes. Don't be surprised if, after committing a crime, we decide not to throw you in one of our over-crowded prisons and instead ship you back home. Remember, you are a guest in our home. Treat our country like it's someone else's home, and treat it like you would want your home, your country to be treated. Don't throw trash everywhere, don't cause problems for those of us who live here. Please, try to pick up the English language while you're here, it'll make your life easier and the rest of us Americans will be less frustrated and more polite if we speak the same language. Yes, I know, we don't have a nation-wide defined language like everyone else, and I believe that was a mistake, we should have made our primary native language English. Why? Because if you go to France, you're expected to know French, if you go to Germany, you should know German, if you travel to Russia, you should be able to speak Russian, and if you go to Britain, you should know English. America is Great Britain's younger brother, and we had a fight a long time ago, but we're both over it now, and like any family, we should stick together.

 

War is hell. I understand that humans are basically built for war, but at the same time, we should be civilized enough to settle our disagreements without requiring violence. Why is it that when two people disagree, fists get raised? Because that's how we're taught, unfortunately. We glorify war. We don't measure time by the lengths of peace, we count the wars. At our core, we are violent animals, but perhaps in the future, we could find a way to make peace between the countries. No more old men sending the young out to die for their country, for glory, for oil and land. No more holy wars, either, please. It's okay to believe a different sky-person put the world together, it's okay to believe that the universe was created in a massive explosion, and it's okay if you favor the old Greek or Roman or Egyptian gods instead. No, I won't tell you which I believe in.

 

Climate Change is real, but we're looking at the wrong end of the problem. Volcanoes produce far more greenhouse gases than we do, businesses and factories create a lot more pollution and waste more resources, other countries need to get their act together, and we need nuclear power, not solar panels. We should focus on restoring and refreshing our aging power grid, and while they're at it, get the damn systems OFF of the INTERNET! Mission critical systems should not be easily accessible on the network! With nuclear power, we could then focus on things that make more sense to clean up and reduce pollution. Lay down new rail lines and hang up some electric cables to replace aging, highly-polluting diesel locomotives with electric ones that run off of the overhead lines. Electric buses with large batteries to overhaul mass transit, and make them something people want to use instead of trying to stuff everyone into a plastic electric shoebox. Look into alternative combustion fuels for cars, but do it seriously and not just 'how can we convert a gasoline engine to run on cow farts?' Humans have been making alcohol for millenia. We can't drink Methanol, but we can certainly make the stuff. Get emissions equipment set up to offset the byproducts of burning methanol as a fuel, and we might have an option for an alternative renewable fuel that doesn't compete with food crops, can be used as a long-term stop-gap during the long conversion towards electric vehicles, and will remain as a viable fuel source long into the future for people to enjoy older cars with a little modification. Quit throwing out electronics because they were 'so last year' and embrace using something until it no longer works. I have a hand-me-down Galaxy Note 8 that replaced a hand-me-down Galaxy S5. I see no need to upgrade any time soon. I'm using a laptop from 2015 because it's a design I always wanted, it was for sale used on Amazon, and so I'm the proud owner of a Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 (MK5). It's already survived coffee and being knocked off of the table twice. We need to build an alternative charging system, something that every manufacturer can agree on, that can charge non-Tesla electric cars quickly enough to compete with Teslas, because a monopoly on the electric car market is bad for everyone else.

 

The Great Human Divide is something I would love to see be resolved in my lifespan. How hard is it to accept that men and women (and those somewhere in between) can be equals, even if there are physical limitations? How hard is it to accept that, no matter our skin color, we're all Homo sapiens at our core? How hard is it to accept that one person might believe in a different religion, might believe a different baseball / football / basketball / soccer team is the best, might think the color purple is nice, might be color-blind, might have a disability, and yet is still equal? How hard is it for us to be nice to one another? To accept one another for who we really are? To look past petty tribal garbage and realize that this person over there might be a potential new friend instead of instantly calling them an enemy?

 

Either way, I've spent way too long writing this (we're going on about 2 hours or more at least), and it's a tiny bit off topic, but I believe it's more relevant to 'worst president' than all the monkey poo I could throw at the wall to carpet one president or another as being the worst.

 

And, let's face it, I know I'd be the worst, so I'm never running for election. I mean, let's face it, who would want someone who's overweight and only claim to politics was winning the yearbook award for being "Most likely to take over the world" as their president? I sure as heck don't want the job.