Trump clearly didn't refuse to his reveal taxable income and investment interests, just on intense privacy principles.

I can't disagree with you more.

What I see you saying here, is basically "too many people are doing this (politics in this case) wrong, so therefore we should all stop doing it altogether."


That's a very illogical and destructive principle to put forward.

Instead, I suggest a more positive alternative. Since so many people ARE making a mess of politics (on purpose, mostly), and since politics is how we collectively go about guiding our nation and our people and our future, we should all instead, dedicate ourselves to HONORABLE BEHAVIOR.

The reason why politics is so toxic, is because lots of political LEADERS, decided that they could more easily gain power, if they behaved badly. As long as people continue to reward such bad behavior, it will continue.

When honorable and thinking people opt to GET OUT of political discourse, it causes a relative INCREASE in the ability of those without honor, to control the debate.

Please STAY involved with politics.

Just do it RIGHT, and oppose those who do it WRONG.

In an attempt to defend her husband who was smoking in a prohibited area (in line to pay for items in a store), upon being told he was breaking the law, she actually said

"if it's against the law, then the law will take care of it."

And she clearly thought that was a valid final answer.

In my experience, there are three kinds of "people who say they are offended."

1. people who actually are upset about something;

2. people who think they SHOULD say they are upset about something, in order to try to please someone else who they owe fealty to;

and 3. people who LOOK for things to PRETEND to be offended about, as a dishonest way to promote their various personal agendas.

The last group include people such as racists, who try to hide their racism behind a false front of being "offended" by bad behavior; and political manipulators, who try to hide their goal of suppressing arguments they can't answer, behind a pretense of false civility.

When it comes to the exchange of religious or politically linked greetings, I think there's a special situation in play. Most people DO simply mean "hope you have fun" when they say such.

But it is also true, that some people use even friendly-sounding greetings and phrases, as purposeful efforts to establish social dominance over someone else. It's usually very similar to what we see regularly on forum sites like this one, where someone posts a demand that if they send someone a message, that that person MUST reply, no matter what, because it's "polite."

I do get offended by attempted manipulation, especially in the name of positive principles that I also support.

I see this whole subject a bit differently.

First, there's a big difference from my vantage point, between "being willing to take risks," and "being entirely ignorant of the risk you are taking." Most of the eagerness for adventure in youth, comes under the latter heading.

And when it comes to my decision making now, there is also a difference between "refusing or being afraid to take a risk," and "recognizing that it isn't a RISK, it's a near guaranteed failure."

When I was very young, I usually LITERALLY had nothing to lose. Risking all in a venture, doesn't take nearly as much "bravery" when "all" means fifty bucks, versus when it means your house, you ability to regain employment, your future income, and so on.

And in the area of romance and love, after learning what I did in my youth, it wouldn't be RISK, to take on another mentally ill mate, it would be emotional suicide.

I make the same one every year now:

"Try to find the bright side of what's happening, even if you have to carry your own flashlight."

One mistake I suggest no one make about this:

the fact that there are people and organizations that you see regularly, asking for donations for various people and creatures, does NOT mean that those people are being taken care of sufficiently.

I agree with those who are very upset that our veterans and injured military personnel HAVE to turn to charity.

That politicians of any stripe, pretend to honor them, and then repeatedly refuse to provide even enough funding to see to their injuries received while serving (and at such VERY low rates of pay).

Next time you hear a politician or pundit chant "thank you for your service," in their effort to get YOU to vote for them for being so "grateful," be sure to demand to know what they have done, OTHER than wear a flag pin, and chant a phrase.

It's not "in the blood."

A couple of suggestions:

If you want to know more about why people do one thing, be sure to learn why they do the alternative thing. The reasons for fidelity, are as revealing as the reasons for straying.

Many people end up straying, because they didn't arrange to be in a dedicated relationship for the right reasons to begin with.

The other suggestion, is to consider that the excuses and explanations people come up with after they are caught doing something wrong, are very rarely the complete truth.

Someone who has lied to begin with, is very likely to lie again, when they answer for the first lie.

To this day (I'm ancient now) I am terrified leading up to a first date or meet.

Best I can do, is (as suggested) keep my hopes and wishes at bay, bit that unfortunately doesn't reduce the panic level.

Good luck.

It is in my central nature to "go out of my way" to care for and try to bring joy to anyone I care about. It pleases me to please them.

However, whenever someone makes it clear that I have a list of things that I MUST do for them, in order to "prove my love," or to "win theirs," I rebel.

If I am "going out of my way," and the other person thinks it's "to be expected," I am unlikely to "go out of my way" for them again.

If, by "win her Over to like and appreciate him," you mean, behave AS himself, revealing his true self to her, then I agree with you. I think that's the way BOTH of them should figure things out.

Your point of view that "women who try to win men" are unsuccessful, I agree with.

I just know from my male perspective, that men, who try to "win" women, are EQUALLY unsuccessful.

I'm basically thoroughly opposed to the entire idea of "winning" someone.

It's not that I don't value the love of another person over all other aspects of life. It's that I DO value it so much.

It's just that I've been convinced, that if I have to...perform in special ways, or do some fancy dance, or in any way restructure my natural self, in order to persuade someone to like me....it means that they really don't like ME, after all.

Chris, I think you have some things right, and not others.

One thing I suggest for you to consider, is why central banks and others switched to the use of fiat currency. There is a good reason for that, and one that is more involved to change, than most opponents of fiat value recognize.

Basically, if we wait to make currency available until AFTER value/wealth has been created to support it, the overall economy will have to slow down to the point where wealth is not needed in order to sustain the lives of the people in the society. Birthrates in particular would have to be reduced to only a tiny bit above replacement levels, or there will not be enough wealth available to allow for cash to flow freely enough to pay for food for everyone.

Currency has to be created in ADVANCE of the labor performed to support it, because human beings have to be created to do the work, and that takes a very long time.

I quite agree with you, that a lot of entirely FAKE wealth is being permitted, but basic fiat currency policies are not the problem. The problem is more that too many people are allowed to "create" increased money by means of simple manipulation of fiat cash values, without ever creating any actual wealth in return. As you say, when banks receive cash to lend at very low rates, and then require vastly higher rates of return from those they lend it to, that puts the burden of creating that vast increase in wealth on those who can only create wealth through their labors. That is made vastly harder, by the simultaneous demand that all labor be paid for at extremely low rates, while non-productive shuffling of fiat values, is paid at a very high rate.

Exchange of currencies is a necessary task, but when it is done, no ACTUAL wealth is created in the process. Anyone who profits significantly from playing games with exchange rates, over and above the amount of work required to make the physical exchange, are adding to the problem of FAKE wealth.

The mess that came apart in 2008, was caused directly by a tremendous amount of FAKE wealth being bought and sold, by overvaluing both future labor, and worse, future value of property. When it was recognized that most of the wealth being used to fund the economies of the world was fake, it fell apart, and we suffered the near total collapse we all saw.

This is why the current Republican ideas of how to run an economy are so dangerous. They genuinely believe that wealth is created by investment, not by production. And even worse, they genuinely think that intelligent and logical businesspeople will expand their businesses, and produce more, regardless of whether or not customers buy anything that the businesses do produce.

Finally, as long as real costs of production are ignored, or shifted to future workers to pay, even more fake riches will be created, that will again end up vanishing in an instant. The real costs, however, will not vanish, they will increase the burdens on real production, until real production becomes impossible.

The solution is to require that all real costs be paid for, before profits are declared in any business exchange. There will be much smaller profits that way, but the production will sustain growth in a stable fashion, without the false booms, and the all too real crashes as the bills for the booms come due.

Holidays have changed for me over the years, as I imagine they do for everyone.

When I was a child, Holidays were a cross between fun opportunities for extra cake and candy, presents at Christmas, with stress and anguish over how to behave and how to prove I was a good human being by what I did during them. Mostly, I thought I had to figure out how to "do holidays right," as a part of achieving some official status as an equally respected and privileged human.

I eventually got over all that, and now they are just occasional break times, for the most part. I'm at the stage of life where my families are now shrinking rather than growing. When I was young, there were six of us: four kids and two parents; that grew dramatically when I married, and had two large families to attend to holiday duties with; after my divorce, the other family vanished instantly. And this last year, I lost two from the original six, with another about to go anytime.

In all that time, I've always been alone in some ways. Today, I'm going to visit with my ex and two of our three children, and then with the one of the original six, who is in the process of fading away.

After that, back to more of the same.

All I Want for Christmas is You, Mariah Carey's version.

It's simple, positive, energetic, and doesn't require anyone to know anything about Christmas lore.

Just a suggestion: negging CAN work, but it needs to be done correctly, or it backfires and has the opposite effect.

Just pointing that out.

For one thing, it doesn't work unless you make a positive impression for yourself FIRST. And THEN make challenging negative remarks.

Negging only works when the target person actually wants to prove you wrong.

But...the eight asterisk part is the most fun!

I've always been extremely uncomfortable with dating at any age, because it's so socially and psychologically confused and conflicted as a process.

Each person usually has several things they are doing at the same time with dating, and more often than not, they don't actually think through what they are doing or why. Instead, what I've found is that lots of people assume that "everyone knows what dates are," and then do whatever they personally want to do.

Most of all, early "dates" seem to have something to do with moving or removing the big invisible social boundary between people. It's like a complicated international negotiation between the leaders of two countries, where they meet officially and publicly, in order to discuss whether or not they want to meet again more privately, and of so, under what conditions.

All I want to do, is normal stuff, with the other person there for their own reasons. But my idea of such things isn't popular. And especially since I don't do most common "date stuff" just for fun on my own, it feels VERY stilted to do it after inviting someone along so that they can make a series of critical judgments and perform a variety of social tests on me as we do whatever it is.

I have many times, witnessed the exact same behavior by a male (most often myself) be declared by an observing female...

to be "romantic," if she was of a mind to like me;

to be "manipulative," if she was suspicious of my motives for any reason;

or "meaningless," when she considered it to be basic to her normal expectations.

I also wanted to mention that (again, in my observation) most people actually continually carry two independent definitions of "romance" in their semi-conscious minds.

One version of it refers to the various minor actions a person in love carries out just because they are in love.

The other refers to the much larger goal-oriented strategy they have for securing a long term mate.

In other words, I think most people have a VERY different internal idea about what ROMANCE means, and what ROMANTIC means.

A complete jerk of a "player" type can be said to be "romantic," because they play the love-games adroitly. But what they achieve by those machinations, is rarely considered to be a true "Romance," since it IS artificial.

In my experiences, accidental romance is always fun and exciting.

Crafted or "requested" romance is always destructive.

What I mean by that is, as soon as someone demands that the new person they are somewhat interested in, perform any "romantic" acts or tricks that they "always wanted their true love to do," it means that they don't really think of that new person as being a real human being at all.

Not very flattering to be told "sit up, okay, now roll over...okay dance!"

I've come to be very wary and careful when people propose taxes, or doing away with taxes.

One of the things I learned from watching how taxes come about, and how various things are funded, is how politics often ends up creating what are really false pictures in peoples' minds, about how things do and don't work.

Especially with taxes. At the time spending programs are launched, it's common for whoever is opposed to the money being spent, to try to stop it, and it's equally common for the people who support the spending, to claim that it will somehow pay for itself, or that the people who most benefit from it, will be the ones who pay for it.

When it comes to road systems, I don't know that the gas taxes are nearly as FUNCTIONALLY tied into the interstate highways and state highways as many people assume.

Here in Virginia, for example, we are still dealing with a political stunt that was pulled, where the property taxes on cars was greatly reduced. The main reason why the tax was onerous, was that it was a lump-sum tax that hit everyone once a year, rather than being taken out a little at a time, like sales taxes. A certain governor and a number of state representatives gained office by focusing on that SINGLE TAX, and ended up winning, and getting the property taxes sharply reduced.

The problem was, that nothing in government is EVER as neat and compartmentalized as the politicians claim it is. The property tax went into the general government funds, so taking it way affected EVERYTHING ELSE in the state negatively.

So I'm just saying, don't assume that the gas taxes are as directly tied to road maintenance as you've been led to believe.