Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

@AntV,

Cronyism, a la Jackson, is simply hiring or engaging cronies aka friends, buddies, "good ol' boys" etc. at the expense
of competent professionals who might not always have their boss' ear, yet are willing to engage in serious, heaven forbid intellectual, discourse
on vital topics, even at the risk of intense disagreement! This is how civilized people interface.

Ted Sorensen, Bob McNamara, Dean Rusk, and WIlliam P. Rogers may indeed come across to the present era as a bunch of useless, haughty
stuffed shirts. Perhaps this is because they were well-spoken, literate, if on occasion misguided, men, who at least were able to intelligently articulate
their feelings, without resorting to the kind of vulgar chat emanating from the current White House. If one listens to Pete Hegseth for example unscripted
in front of reporters, one wonders whether the man ever graduated high school or read a conventional work of literature.

Again people, the gutter reached the penthouse long ago and has at last invaded the White House.

Donald Trump isn't G-d and must be made to realize by his electorate that without discussion, back-and-forth debate during which he
is allowed to be criticized, he is no longer president of once the greatest democracy on earth, but rather is a dictator who needs to be
removed from office.

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

I wrote "were once", Milo. This means to me that the term is no longer valid. Their ideals
though are still worth looking into.

The problem is that the US is a country of some 250 million people, whereas Sweden is
roughly 30 million strong and contained within a landmass about as sizeable as the entire
state of Maine! Therefore, expecting cradle-to-grave security for every single American, a
completely regulated social order as exists in such a small Scandinavian society, guaranteed,
paid six-to-eight week vacations once a year plus medical benefits etc. is obviously unrealistic,
to put it mildly. All this sounds proverbially too good to be true, because in the end, it probably is.
It would need to be tempered to fit the capitalist foundation of the United States.

However, the New Deal was close in nature to the (former) Nordic model and naturally garnered
the same hatred by the Republicans back then as by cynical, dyed -in-the-wool Trump followers
today.

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

@AntV,
I'm referring to cronyism vs. competence, a hallmark of the Trump Era
in particular! No surprise is it that his favorite president was among the most
corrupt and who even bragged was meanest to his slaves, Andrew Jackson,
"Old Hickory" himself.

Can you honestly compare the likes of Peter Hegseth, a loutish bully, with the
likes of a William P. Rogers, Dean Acheson among others under JFK? These two
men were well born as well as central casting characters for their respective roles.

Trump's cabinet picks are not too different from Jackson's "kitchen cabinet", if one
stops to think of it.

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

Things are rarely so quick or easy as you make them out to be, Rich!
If you didn't understand my post, for heaven's sake just say so and I'll
translate it for you into Polish.

It might take me a while though:-)

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

Obviously, that unbridled, crony capitalism too has her severe limitations,
no less than either Communism or socialism!

Beginning with the onset of the Reagan Era, the age-old gap between rich and
poor became more extreme than at any time in our history since the Great Depression.

Popular culture mirrors everyday life and everyday life under Reagan, a vague blueprint
of what Trump has in store, was pretty awful unless one either belonged to the protected
wealthy class of America's upper crust or the Church and was able to bribe successfully in
order to secure even decent employment.

Much of America wasn't as fortunate.

Fast forward to the present, imagine an American president cancelling a popular US TV-show
simply because he doesn't like the message. Imagine further if the likes of a J. Edgar Hoover
had become president. America didn't re-elect a first Hoover, aka Herbert aka "Shantytown Hoover" or
"Hooverville" because they wanted something better in their lives before became either too old or too
sick to enjoy it.

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

For several generations, Sweden was to be sure dubbed "The Nordic Model" by
an envious world, usually by the US rather than Canada.

Germany and Sweden in fact have encouraged private enterprise, look at Ikea,
Mercedes, Bosch etc.

When the US lost control of her New Deal heritage under Reagan, this is when
the mass shootings and random violence here escalated with a frightening vengeance.

And yet people refuse to take the hint.

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

@Milo et al,
Hate to disappoint you folks, but socialism as it was conceived is NOT nor has it
ever been the same as Communism, that's the first slander I wish to dispel.

Secondly, while Communism is technically a type of dictatorship as practiced
by every country which has tried it, the only way in which socialism is a
dictatorship aka anti-democratic is that it requires of the government, therefore
the society at large, to take care of her fellow citizens and make basic human services,
medical, psychological and the like, affordable to all in need.

This is not being somehow "mired in the New Deal Era" as Joker, Rich, Milo along with
others here on PF have the temerity as well as the sheer ignorance to blithely suggest.
Instead, it should be a clarion, indeed a wake up, call to our current administration (more
a regime) that if Trump's chronic infantility, toxic greed, selfishness, and raw indifference
to the suffering of those not given the wealth into which he was born, is not reversed by
the powers that be, namely, the Supreme Court, we will see throughout the US a violent
backlash such as America hasn't witnessed since we tossed out the Redcoats over two-hundred
-and-fifty years ago.

This is a promise, my friends, not merely a prediction! The present flap over the late, unlamented
Jeffrey Epstein, ought come as no surprise.

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

Right on, jon! Every normal person knows it...except for our president.

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

Perfect, Lazarus!

In such situations chess analogies are most fitting indeed. "Schachmatt!" above all LOL

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

@Rich,achrichten, et al.

CHEAP LABOR!!! This is the reason for run-away immigration.

Life / A warning to Poland: Germany's catastrophic immigration policy: 80-90% criminal manhunts are ARABS / foreigner [83]

As I've said time and time again, Germany, Sweden as well, is making many of the same mistakes
made here in the US. While we all realize Germany is desperately trying to overcome her WWII past
by bending over backwards to accomodate non-Germans, indeed, non-Caucasians, in their midst by
making nice to any and all from the Third World, sooner or later, this experiment, however well intentioned,
will fail.

By all accounts, it already has, only the government refuses to face facts because Merkellites are in denial....
again!

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

@Joker, I never intimated I'm a "convert" to Trumpism, heaven forbid
and may the sky fall in on me!!

However, I am becoming strained to the near breaking point of untrained
foreigners telling me where I can work and where I can live.

My German-born grandparents thought of nothing more than learning
to speak SOLELY the language of their adopted country twenty-four seven,
never as much as allowing a syllable of any language other than American English
to be spoken at the table. Sure, they enjoyed speaking German amongst their
close friends at home. On the street though, it remained English and only English
or risk their ire.

Where has that spirit of conformity gone?

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

Newsome would be terrible for the US, should he by some miracle ever get elected president!
Much as with that Brandon Johnson of Chicago, Newsome's policies are way too liberal for my
tastes.

While I respect the individual rights of trans students, office workers etc., I think that over the past
forty or so years, education has been woefully ignoring certain basic facts of American history in favor
of a frankly anti-European approach to our shared past, rather than giving if you will "equal time" to
both traditions. For example, certainly don't belittle or downplay the accomplishments of Mathew Henson,
however, don't ignore the contributions of Commodore Perry either:-)

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

@Rich, your argument is equally fallacious.

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

@Rich, post a link yourself which says they don't:-)

Ya see? I gotcha that time!

News / France and Germany plan to flood Poland with illegal migrants. [199]

Obviously, you can't be reasoned with and all you do is make yourself look
idiotic with your persistent, crackpot rhetoric!

You were an immigrant yourself once upon a time. How would you have felt
if somebody suggested that you be shot on sight as soon as you and your
family arrived in this country??

Oh, I forgot, your proviso only goes for brown people, sorry LOL

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

I'd forgotten that one, considering I ever knew it.

@Rich, while we don't say "Who is the president of the States?"
people often refer to the US as either the United States or the States, the latter
in casual conversation.

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

How d'you feel about Pawlikowski or Agnieszka Holland?

News / France and Germany plan to flood Poland with illegal migrants. [199]

Not certain I see your point here.
Once again, short-sighted thinking on the part of various governments
such as The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Austria is the root
cause of many of the social problems of foreigner integration among
the wealthier European countries!

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

Ridiculous!! Americans abroad always say they're from the States.

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

Thanks again for the heads up there, amiga!
Think though I'll stick with the ol' black & white classics
for plain comfort viewing, you know, Wajda, early Polanski,
Andrzejewski.

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

Thanks for the link.

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

Ever seen the film version of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" w/ Dick Burton and Claire Bloom??
WOW!

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

You're just playing the Devil's Advocate,
purposely nit picking for sheer effect....or, your American
is still not perfect after some forty years in the States:-)

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

Huxley was a certain class of English intellectual, not
of a type appreciated much these days!

Graham Greene seems to hold up far better.

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

Intelligent, sentient beings are smart, heaven forbid enlightened, enough
not to have to hit someone over the head with something, if subtle suggestions
do the trick just as easily!

'Course if you're not smart enough to catch on, Rich, that's scarcely my/our problem now,
is it!

@jon,
Can't entirely agree, especially about "Brave New World".

Off-Topic / USA News and Poland - part 16 [1071]

@Rich, First Amendment freedoms guarantee the right of any free speech nut to
talk like a jerk. You seem to have taken liberal advantage of that freedomLOL

News / France and Germany plan to flood Poland with illegal migrants. [199]

As I posted privately, short-term, really just plain myopic. thinking
among liberal European governments is what has led to the migrant mess
throughout much of the Continent. Wouldn't you agree?

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

@Rich,
The late Jerzy Kosinski of BEING THERE fame too spoke and wrote "American" fluently,
albeit with a decided Polish accent!

The differences though between you and Kosinski, apart from the obvious, are that
his accented American English was beautifully articulated, erudite, clever, and learned.

Take a hint?

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

Yep, yepski! That's tellin' him:-)