The next few years in America are going to be full of predictable and self inflicted disasters such as these.

We’ve traded lives and well being for tax cuts and mass deportations.

Siiiigggghhhh!

Via Kyle Cheney:

Judge MOSS has grave concerns about facilitating the deportation of people to potentially life threatening circumstances in South Sudan, but he thinks his hands are tied by the Supreme Court's stay yesterday.

Still, he says the SCOTUS rulings were devoid of reasoning so it's not totally clear.

Sooooo... as a professor:

Under the new budget law's severe loan caps, I'm seriously concerned that a lot of universities are either going to have to radically cut like... everything, or they're just going to close.

A lot of people didn't notice, but going forward, undergraduate students are only going to be able to borrow a maximum of $20,000 a year, up to a lifetime cap of $65,000. I know that sounds like a lot, but the flagship public university near me runs a tuition of $31,700 *per year* before non-loan student aid, but also before housing, food, and so forth. Even mine, a midsized non-prestige university, runs $14k.

There's going to be a lot of Very Average students who don't qualify for Pell Grants (which were also cut) and who come from families that don't have a significant ability to support them financially. For them? The dream of college at a great school probably just died, especially at the best universities.

And before you mention athletics or academic scholarships: think about that flagship public university I mentioned. The only way that can realistically even survive in this system is to slash tuition. Where do you think that money is going to come from? Athletics. Academic scholarships. Dramatic cuts to staff and administrators.

I'm not an economist. I could very well be wrong.

But like

I cannot see how they make the math math.

The Netherlands is about to introduce a new law that makes helping supposedly illegal migrants/refugees a criminal offence. So yes. The Netherlands is reintroducing the Nazi law that made hiding Anne Frank illegal. As a Dutchie I am ashamed, angry and powerless (as I live in Germany). Geert Wilders, and every single Dutchie who voted for his PVV, may you burn in hell.

1/2

My son just yelled some angry random noise from his room, so I asked what's up.

"I'm trying to make up names for the gods in my D&D campaign but every time I come up with something I look it up and it's already the name of some weird medication."

A strange problem to have but I can see it.

I believe there is a very strong case to be made for the notion that when the other side is burning it all down, that we become even more idealistic.

Is desperately throwing ourselves in front of the machinery in order to save a mediocre, fucked up system really the best we can come up with?

#BeRealisticDemandTheImpossible