President Donald J. Trump

[Dr. MD MD]

I'm not here to amuse you.

Good because that would be just something else you failed at.

[136 or 142]

Good because that would be just something else you failed at.

Such a shame.

[ACE of CLUBS]

U.S. population of 325 million .....
Hillary & Trump are the choices for the American citizen.
The world laughs ....

[136 or 142]

U.S. population of 325 million .....
Hillary & Trump are the choices for the American citizen.
The world laughs ....

Canada should run the United States until you can figure out what the hell is going on.

[Jackstar]

Canada should run the United States

One word, just one word: Poutine.

you can figure out what the hell is going on.

Who killed Kennedy?

[Dr. MD MD]

U.S. population of 325 million .....
Hillary & Trump are the choices for the American citizen.
The world laughs ....

Fuck you, world! Stupid faggots! Get your shit together and try to be great like us. 

[PaulAtreides]

It’s a universal trait among leftist along with their bed-wetting into their late teens.

As opposed to Trumpers who consider 6th grade to be their senior year and who live in their mother's trailers until they're 35. 

[136 or 142]

Who killed Kennedy?

I've answered this for you already:  The Dulles Brothers killed JFK.

[Jackstar]

I've answered this for you already:  The Dulles Brothers killed JFK.

Your answer is not the most correct answer. You are disqualified.

[Kidnostad3]

Your answer is not the most correct answer. You are disqualified.

Col Mustard in the library with a strychnine-laced cheroot?

[Gd5150]

Col Mustard in the library with a strychnine-laced cheroot?

Col Kelly in the conservatory with checkbook.

Oh my bad I thought we were talking about the collusion fantasy.

[ACE of CLUBS]

Fuck you, world! Stupid faggots! Get your shit together and try to be great like us.

Are you embarrassed ?
Is the voting U.S. citizen embarrassed ?
U.S. elections are a game show.
Tweet, tweet .....

[Dr. MD MD]

Are you embarrassed ?
Is the voting U.S. citizen embarrassed ?
U.S. elections are a game show.
Tweet, tweet .....

Where are you from? Canada? 

[Gd5150]

Where are you from? Canada? 

Judging by that avatar it’s safe to say schlub boy is from the tool shed.

[136 or 142]

Your answer is not the most correct answer. You are disqualified.

Hrm. So what do you believe is the most correct answer then?  (Genuinely curious)

[Jackstar]

Try using the Search tool.

[136 or 142]

Try using the Search tool.

You have 556 pages of posts.

[paladin1991]

Since MV has demurred from preventing Sissy Pants from using BellGab as his personal shit-house wall, it would probably be a good idea if everyone just ignored his insane blathering and leave him to his usual occupations of blowing bubbles with his spit and picking his nose.

I'm almost in position.  He will only be a bad memory.

'Roscoe.'  I say again, 'Roscoe.'

[Jojo]

Since around 2005, the following things have happened:. The stock market crashed, jobs were off-shored, foreclosures ran rampant, over 550 banks went belly up, the feds bailed them out, there were a lot of layoffs, prices for basic goods kind of tripled, and national health care was implemented. Many people with strong families and good support systems managed.  Young people in the market for foreclosed homes got great deals.  Retirees did alright, although property taxes and inflation have been bad.

On the other hand, people without good support systems did not fare so well.  Widows, spinsters, people from small families, people with new high health insurance rates, people living on the financial edge...My mom had been set to retire right before the stock market crashed.  She had to work an additional five years.  She couldn't find a job here, so she camped in a hut in Mexico, where ahe was a teacher for those five years.  The stock market crash reduced my investment to less than half of what it had been, right before a workforce reduction in a field where off-shoring took over.

My area lacks available, affordable housing.  I think the lack of housing started back when foreclosures were rampant due to predatory balloon loans.  Zillions of people lost their homes.  And layoffs around 2007.  And property taxes have pushed seniors out of their homes.  So, vacant homes are everywhere, meanwhile everyone who fled their losses are huddled together, "staying" with relatives, friends, like 8 cars per residence, even parking on the grass.  When I drive by apartment buildings, their parking lots are overflowing and the cars of people who "stay" there with friends line the street for blocks, and cars are parked on one thing which really is a median.  In an area of parkways and greenbelts.  The cars just go on forever, and truly, they are in ditches, because there is nowhere else.

People are, per Craigslist, doubling up in bedrooms, renting rooms just for one month (not bnb's!), making rules like renters cant be home at certain times or on certain days, walling off living rooms from renters completely, making renters keep food in basements or boxes on the floor, and with all the extra people crammed into homes, fuses are constantly going off.  Even if you have air conditioning, the overcrowded homes' electrical networks can't manage the electrical load, since everyone is living like rats with fridges and microwaves in rooms.

As you might imagine, there is a lot of subletting going on.  Amateurs with no leasing experience are cashing in on these opportunities to exploit working people as well as people with guaranteed income.  So, renters deal with people in charge who dont care about smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, or other aspects of home safety.  And they all demand "a renter who is never home", lol.  Good luck with that!  Many of those people, the lease holders, too, are barely hanging on financially.

Where I live, the government is now paying landlords to build huts on their property to house people.  The government is encouraging huts the size of espresso stands.  Other tenants pay $900 (in all) for tiny hot rat-infested non-furnished attics with no amenities up there, no air, and a teeny window.  Landlords charge whatever they can get, and they can pretty much get near 100% of the renters' incomes, because there is not enough affordable housing.  Over-priced and scarce housing is such a crisis that Bill Gates has gotten involved, actually though, in a way that will only make housing more scarce for working people.  The mayor declared lack of affordable housing to be a crisis.  Wherever i go, i see people camping out.  Sure, some are druggies or weirdos, but two of the people living out of their cars have been coworkers of mine.  One had a cat and it was summertime.  Even storage units have waiting lists. For a month, a makeshift hut made out of a Costco grocery cart and plywood/cardboard has been in plain view on a main sidewalk, and no one even seems to mind.  At many grocers, the library, and behind banks, especially at night, there are encampments, with tenting, on the sidewalks.  Often, I decide not to get out of my car, so i go find another grocer.

In 2013, every shelter I called was full.  Anyone who gets in has to pre-arrange it early in the morning.  Walk-ins are not taken.  And, the definition of homeless here means living on the streets or in a vehicle.  Staying on someone's couch does not qualify a person to get into most shelters.  The other day, a man bought my mylar windshield cover because he and his girlfriend needed privacy to sleep in his vehicle on a cold night in a strip mall fast food parking lot.

Property owners ask for deposits two and three times the monthly rent, in flagrant violation of law.  Organizations are sprouting up as untrustworthy "rental finders", charging fees in advance.  Some unreputable "businesses" are preying on people in the recovery community, by marketing housing as "recovery homes", when actually they dont so anything to encourage recovery, and actually decorate the homes with wine and beer patterns, hoping the tenants will relapse, so the business owner can throw them out and keep their huge deposit.  I saw one place for 8 people actually turn over about 14 people in three months, and each time, the "business" gets to keep the deposit and final months' rent.

Property owners are eliminating oven ranges in order to save space so that one home can be converted into more apartments.  One landlord did it just so there would be room for various microwaves available to renters at any given time.  Homes have become very busy places.  If there is any range, it might be in a tiny locked room with no windows, on a different floor, shared among all apartment dwellers the way basement washers are shared.  Even for-profit organizations loosely affiliated with churches are getting in on it, requiring renters to pay market rate, on the high end, but also requiring them to attend certain weekly services at churches that provide funeral services for active gang members.  Gang graffitti everywhere, shoes over power lines.  Even in some of the nice areas.  A lot of predatory renting.  Most landlords keep it all verbal, leaving tenants with no legal rights at all.  Contrary to law, some residents arent allowed heat over 50 degrees in the winter, 60 if you're lucky.  Last winter, I saw and heard a strong young man cry from lack of heat.  (Not everyone is smart enough to follow complicated heat rules or to sneak a quiet heater or heated blanket in).  Sublessors themselves are sleeping on couches in order to maximize room tenancy, so they can make the real rent payment to the landlord.  Homes are being rented where mold and condensation are literally eating away the walls and clouding the windows even in summer.

Rents went up about 20% not too long ago in general.  I paid the fees to get into an apartment, only to be told later that i would not be allowed to have a bed in there!  It is "landlord market", they can be as arbitrary or deranged as they wish. Most places with reasonable openings are being run by regular folks cashing in on exploitations, with no training or experience in leasing.  Of course, I moved out.  The landlord was proper about refunding all, but what would I do if he had not been?  Volunteer legal aid is booked out solid for weeks, and with so many property owners or sublessors refusing to provide written contracts, tenants have no more rights than a guest.

"Rooms" are being rented expensively, even rooms without closets or windows.  It is common when viewing a place for rent, that the prior tenant still has all there stuff in there.  Rooms smaller than jail cells are occupied, like utility rooms, or baby rooms.  Homeowners install extra walls in attics to make a two-bedroom low-ceiling hot apartment.  In one apartment, I was told that if I wanted to sit on the living room couch, I would have to pay for it.  So I did, until I could find a better place.

Perverts benefit from these desperate situations.  Places I've checked have cameras mounted low on walls and windowsills to capture crotches, rumps, and breasts in common areas.  The police said it is legal, but I know by the exterior wiring that hidden cams were in some bedrooms.  The cops refused to investigate.  Landlords like that are preying on international students through community college bulletin boards.  Students and workers are just so relieved to finally find a room, that they have to accept.  At one of those homes, the unfinished, infested garage was rented out. And the kitchen pantry had been converted to a "camera room".  How could the police not care?

Sheds are rented out, which i mentioned the government is subsidizing. Electrical panels end up in locked, private rented quarters, since garages and utility closets are rented out.  So, people go without power until so-and-so gets home.  Often, not only a fuse has to be flipped, but it has to coordinate with someone resetting a GFI in an entirely different area, so sometimes you have to wait on two residents to get home before the electricty can be reset.

You can imagine how grimy common areas get when people are packed in like this.  Garbages overflowing, more garbage inside than out.  At one rental home, just to get in and squared away, I removed over 100 gallons of interior garbage.  Most of which I took to a nearby dumpster, until I realized people camp all over the bushes there, and park there to sleep in their vehicles.  The trash situation was futile, as the owner refused to pay for more trash cans outside.  So,  if we took the trash out, neighbors complained about the piles but keeping it indoors is unhealthy. I dont know how strapped that property owner was, but twice in three months, he came and put the excess garbage in his fancy suv and drove it away.  The other 10 weeks the trash just remained inside and outside, drawing ants even up to my second floor room nowhere near the kitchen, over the den (which was rented out, of course).

Something really bad happened in the greater county area, because of the homeless situation.  I won't go into the details because I dont want to traumatize anyone, but a man who has not been caught did something terrible at an animal shelter at night, because the homeless pets were being treated better than him and had better digs.  I get tears in my eyes and my stomach still turns when I remember his actions.  All i can do is hope he did it quickly.  His actions were so heinous that he could have made the same effect on the community if only he had merely threatened to do what he did.  That alone would have gotten the message across.  But he didnt threaten; he actually committed horrors. 

Microhousing is really happening in this county, and it is done of necessity, not fashion sense.  It is expensive.

In (verbal) subleases, several sublessors have monopolized the kitchen, basically trying to bully renters out of it, as well as faunting fancy platters of food, bringing home and displaying restaurant food and desserts, hosting parties, not putting away leftovers for a couple days, and yet forbidding renters to use the counter space or touch the food.  Like monopolizing resources by leaving things out, whether or not the space is really being used.  I had to really sweet talk and wheedle one PIC, just so I could keep creamer and a head of lettuce in the fridge.  Meanwhile, every week, he took up an entire shelf for a huge weekly salad!  Let alone hogging the rest of the fridge and freezer.  I needed ice packs for my back, too, but at 4 places, I haven't been able to store them, due to overcrowding and landlord selfishness.  So i will probably get a "dorm freezer" but that will just add to the load in the house, so more fuses will flip.

There is an official housing shortage.  The places that open up are undesirable, because the good ones stay occupied.  I paid my way, have no evictions, yet not too long ago I moved every two and a half months about six times.  Because the only places with vacancies are horrible.  The first few times, I hired movers, but after a certain point, with deposits and rents being so high, I no longer hired movers.

There are predatory movers, too.  At the high end as well as the low end.  Unbelievable.  But it is important to keep moving in these overcrowded accommodations, for personal safety.  When people are that crammed in, they don't have the same values regarding locks, sanitation, air quality, nudity, substance use, pet safety, outdoor burning materials, parking hacking into shade trees, vermin control, food safety, use of space, etc...  At one place, a renter liked to leave a 500 degree electric grill on 24/7.  The fire dept finally spoke to him about "criminal negligence".  But you have to take rentals you can get, and keep looking for something better.

I see poverty everywhere i turn.  Beggars everywhere.  Even employers being really stingy, demanding, and inconsiderate.  Layoffs happening year after year right before Christmas.  Peoples' TV and web getting cut off for non-payment all the time.  My coworkers in 2013-2014 had stomach aches from not getting enough food, in a minimum wage business.  It broke my heart.  Sometimes I could share, but not much and not often.  Hard to get to the food bank when you are working, and hard to buy food when rent takes all your money.

When I first came here in 2012, I thought it was a travesty that two people working full time for minimum wage could not even financially qualify for a reputable apartment.  But I knew they qualified for food stamps.  However, the last year or so, food stamps were reduced.  A family with two full time minimum wage workers no longer qualified for food assistance, even though their incomes were too low to qualify for a reputable apartment!  Huge groups of hungry families were cut off and food did run out at food banks.  Of course, the food banks have some reserves, but the reserves were not presented.  Some "clients" did not get much food that year. The lines were a lot longer.  The food banks have been robbed, and I personally witnessed graft and evidence of additional, unrelated graft at a food bank.  Recently, food stamps finally resumed serving families with two full time low wage earners.  The food stamp qualifications seem to change arbitrarily, with no public warning or education about the methods used for determining changes, leaving people uncertain and wary.  I wonder how many people who were cut off dont realize that they now qualify again.  I found out through happenstance.  There were no announcements.

One of my sublessors doesn't notice the poverty.  But, she is a commuter, and she shops at higher end stores in higher end neighborhoods.  She does all her business 10 miles away.  She, like many PIC's here, are able to get around pretty well, with union jobs or professional education.

Three of my recent male and female sublessors/landlords gloat about how clever they are because they shop at Costco for bulk rates.  Then they come home with their hoards, and they crowd all of the common areas, so renters are forced to store food in their rooms.  In all my life, I have never seen such greed and selfishness as the greed I have seen as a result of low wages and impossibly expensive housing here.  I would have thought home dwellers would collaborate, maybe go together on Costco membership or whatever, but in our culture where individuality and independence rule, very little household resource cooperation is happening in shared households.  And every household I know of is shared!

Some homeowners facing imminent foreclosure are nonetheless charging high rents, and not telling renters that their tenancy will be short term.  Those owners do not use the rent payments to pay the mortgage at all, but are just running the mortgage into the ground.

I'm not necessarily complaining.  It is a miracle that in this type of economy, I was able to find compassionate landlords and sublessors so that i was able to keep my longtime pets until they passed away at ages 19, 15, and 12.   For the most part, even though I couldn't make any profit, at least I was able to sell what I needed to, so my sacrifices were not as bad as they could have been.  If anyone needs tips on how to live in small spaces, find me in the Random thread where I can outline solutions for small-space living and perhaps even ways to get your needs met while working around your landlord!

[Jojo]

I'm almost in position.  He will only be a bad memory.

'Roscoe.'  I say again, 'Roscoe.'

Ok.  Except when he does good?

[Jojo]

Try using the Search tool.

The search function?  You KNOW it doesnt work!

[21st Century Man]

I'm fully aware he was a law professor, what is your basis for saying he was 'great.'? 

As a 'television lawyer' I refer to, of course, that he became increasingly interested in his celebrity and, so, over time started to give 'dumbed down' replies as well as making sensationalist comments that he knew would generate attention.

He also, for instance, claimed that without his personal endorsement that, according to him, swayed millions of Jewish Americans, Barack Obama would never have been elected President in 2008. 

He may have been impressive at one time, but for the last number of years he's been a delusional bullshitter.

He's far from the first person who let fame go to his head.

Just because he is in the news sometimes like with the Klaus Van Bulow case and sometimes gives his views on stations like Fox or CNN doesn't disqualify him.  He is an expert in his field and should be on those shows.   He has been an emminent lawyer and perhaps one of the best during the last 50 years and for you to disregard that makes your opinions worthless.

[Jojo]

I've answered this for you already:  The Dulles Brothers killed JFK.

I have no idea, but Jackstar could be referring to something along the lines of http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm

[Kidnostad3]

I'm almost in position.  He will only be a bad memory.

'Roscoe.'  I say again, 'Roscoe.'

Be aware that the evil bastard carries the dreaded combination gun/knife/church key/dog whistle/swizzle stick and curling iron.  Amongst other heinous acts he’s been known to sneak up and open every beer bottle in the immediate vicinity and then get busy with the curling iron while the victim sleeps leaving him to awaken to cases of flat beer and a head of curly locks a la Shirley Temple.  Tread carefully my friend.

[136 or 142]

Just because he is in the news sometimes like with the Klaus Van Bulow case and sometimes gives his views on stations like Fox or CNN doesn't disqualify him.  He is an expert in his field and should be on those shows.   He has been an emminent lawyer and perhaps one of the best during the last 50 years and for you to disregard that makes your opinions worthless.

And the law professors who I sourced are also experts in their field.  The difference is Dershowitz is now a laughable egomaniac who continues to seek the spotlight and, presumably, they aren't.

Of course, if you claim that he's been an emminent lawyer for 50 years and, therefore, only his views should be regarded, I could go back to about 20 or so years ago before Dershowitz got caught up in his celebrity and quote when he criticized the rulings of the Renhquist Court.  I know your reply would boil down to "Dershowitz is correct when he defends a Republican or bashes a Democrat, but is not correct any other time."

Since this is a partisan source, it doesn't really add anything, other than it shows that I'm far from the only person who regards Dershowitz as nothing more than an egomaniac these days, however, I thought I came up with the pejorative of 'television lawyer.'  I actually first used that myself to describe the laughable and wrong about everything Larry Kudlow as a 'television economist.'

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029100204

7. Very disappointing.

Any way he is one of many tv lawyers.

[136 or 142]

Be aware that the evil bastard carries the dreaded combination gun/knife/church key/dog whistle/swizzle stick and curling iron.  Amongst other heinous acts he’s been known to sneak up and open every beer bottle in the immediate vicinity and then get busy with the curling iron while the victim sleeps leaving him to awaken to cases of flat beer and a head of curly locks a la Shirley Temple.  Tread carefully my friend.

You're hardly any different than swishypants.

[136 or 142]

I have no idea, but Jackstar could be referring to something along the lines of http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm

Thanks for the link

[Jackstar]

Other tenants pay $900 (in all) for tiny hot rat-infested non-furnished attics with no amenities up there, no air, and a teeny window.

Still--superior to a Clinton presidency.

[136 or 142]

Still--superior to a Clinton presidency.

[136 or 142]