[QuickTidal]

Tsundoku, on 27 September 2020 - 01:27 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 26 September 2020 - 04:01 PM, said:

She’s fucking The Handmaids Tale come to life...she’s a disastrous choice. A religious fundamentalist gone insane.

She literally thinks that the man in a marriage should make all the decisions without argument.

She’s fucking cancerous.

In that case ... why is she in a job where she gets to make very important decisions? If the man in the marriage makes the decisions because (religion), then surely the logic follows that it's the same in the rest of society?

Dun dun dunnnnnnnn ...

Or am I being silly by using logical extension, especially when it comes to the USA and religion?

I feel you, it makes no sense...but here we are.

Man, I thought Kavanaugh was a bad choice,,,

[Primateus]

Tsundoku, on 27 September 2020 - 01:27 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 26 September 2020 - 04:01 PM, said:

She’s fucking The Handmaids Tale come to life...she’s a disastrous choice. A religious fundamentalist gone insane.

She literally thinks that the man in a marriage should make all the decisions without argument.

She’s fucking cancerous.

In that case ... why is she in a job where she gets to make very important decisions? If the man in the marriage makes the decisions because (religion), then surely the logic follows that it's the same in the rest of society?

Dun dun dunnnnnnnn ...

Or am I being silly by using logical extension, especially when it comes to the USA and religion?

Why is she in that position? Uh, because the republican evangelical base agrees with her. They want this.

[Cyphon]

As Prim says, maybe its the distinction of someone who will fight for their viewpoint even if they don't completely embody it, same deal with Trump. I think someone made that point up thread somewhere, applies here too.

[Aptorian]

Is it really their viewpoint or have they been massaged politically, so thoroughly, the past 50 years that they can't see past it? It's hard to believe that somebody who would truly call themselves "evangelical" would be so obsessed with abortions that they're willing to vote for a man like Donald Trump who more or less embodies most deadly sins and mortal vices you can think up.

If I was a believer in Christianity it's hard not to see Trump as the actual Anti-christ these people worry so much about.

[Primateus]

It doesn't really matter if it is actually their viewpoint, or not, when the result remains the same. They support this, seemingly without question.

[Tsundoku]

I read somewhere something along the lines of it's the mark of the truly indoctrinated moron who can hold multiple seemingly contradictory beliefs and not have a problem.

I think there's even a name for this phenomenon but stuffed if I can think of it at the moment, sorry.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 27 September 2020 - 12:50 PM

[Primateus]

Tsundoku, on 27 September 2020 - 12:49 PM, said:

I read somewhere something along the lines of it's the mark of the truly indoctrinated moron who can hold multiple seemingly contradictory beliefs and not have a problem.

I think there's even a name for this phenomenon but stuffed if I can think of it at the moment, sorry.

Is that the Cognitive Dissonance thing?

[QuickTidal]

There is a word for it...it’s seemingly came about because of cults...and they talked about it on an episode of 99percent invisible...but I can never remember the word. Starts with. P or a k.

[Cause]

People picking those parts of religion they already agree with and discarding those they don’t isn’t new.

She wants to save babies and uses religion as the motivation and she wants prisoners to be punished and doesn’t mind that they don’t align.

Also as for the women in a position of power, it’s not a coincidence but a carefully planned optic to make sure there is a female justice who may overturn roe v wade. If not her there must be hundreds they could have chosen.

[Malankazooie]

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Malankazooie, on 27 September 2020 - 11:45 PM, said:

'Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

[...] his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed.

[...] Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

[...] Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.

"The Apprentice," along with the licensing and endorsement deals that flowed from his expanding celebrity, brought Mr. Trump a total of $427.4 million[...] He invested much of that in a collection of businesses, mostly golf courses, that in the years since have steadily devoured cash — much as the money he secretly received from his father financed a spree of quixotic overspending that led to his collapse in the early 1990s.

[...] The picture that perhaps emerges most starkly from the mountain of figures and tax schedules prepared by Mr. Trump's accountants is of a businessman-president in a tightening financial vise.

Most of Mr. Trump's core enterprises — from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington — report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.

His revenue from "The Apprentice" and from licensing deals is drying up, and several years ago he sold nearly all the stocks that now might have helped him plug holes in his struggling properties.

[...] His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favor[...]

[...] in his first two years in the White House, his revenue from abroad totaled $73 million. And while much of that money was from his golf properties in Scotland and Ireland, some came from licensing deals in countries with authoritarian-leaning leaders or thorny geopolitics — for example, $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey.'

https://www.nytimes....G8NoIr6P_OUBOTs

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 28 September 2020 - 01:22 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'A federal judge issued a last-minute ruling against President Trump's executive order banning new TikTok downloads, which would have taken effect Sunday night.'

https://www.thedaily...f=home?ref=home

Did my patriotic duty today and downloaded Tik Tok before the ban would have gone into effect. Obviously Trump's ban is likely to make it (even more of) a site for anti-Trump videos (especially among young people). Quite a few anti-Trump videos (many mocking, others just giving the finger to Trump supporters or properties) in my first scroll through. Still skeptical about its potential for politics or organizing, though I'd suppose it has effectively spread many dances and potentially dangerous physical 'challenges'....

[Edit: '[TikTok is] a space where people can be gathered and pressed into action quickly.

TikTok was instrumental in the organization of a mass false-registration drive ahead of a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla., where many seats were unfilled. It has amplified footage of police brutality as well as scenes and commentary from Black Lives Matter protests around the world, with videos created and shared on the platform frequently moving beyond it. They carry TikTok’s distinctive and wide-ranging audiovisual vernacular: often playfully disorienting, carefully edited, arch and musical. It has been suggested by many, including The New York Times, that TikTok teens will save the world.

The truth is more complicated. A team of researchers has been analyzing political expression on TikTok since, well, before it was TikTok. While nonusers of TikTok may think it’s bursting onto the political stage rather suddenly, and that it has something like a collective political identity, the research gives a different picture.

It depicts a diverse, diffuse and not nearly united community of millions of young people discovering the capabilities and limits of a platform that is, despite its many similarities with predecessors, a unique and strange place.

[...] Dr. Literat: In terms of youth political expression, while there’s a dynamic and influential liberal activist community on TikTok, there’s actually plenty of conservative political expression, and pro-Trump voices definitely find an audience on the platform.

[...] you can find powerful political statements and activist organizing. You can find young people lip-syncing speeches by Trump or Obama (both earnestly and sarcastically). You can also find plenty of racist and sexist content, conspiracy theories and misinformation, and kids showing off their gun collections and posing with Confederate flags.'

https://www.nytimes....tics-gen-z.html

]

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 28 September 2020 - 01:44 AM

[Aptorian]

I would love more insight into what kinds of loans Trump has abroad.

I've often speculated that Trump is in fact not even a millionaire but rather one of the poorest people in America, owing billions to various financiers.

It would fit into Trump's pattern of saying the opposite of the truth and accusing people of what he himself is guilty of.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 28 September 2020 - 03:44 AM

[Aptorian]

I can see that the media are already starting to pick out individual expenses from Trump's tax return and making news stories out of it.

I don't know what to think about that. A year ago? Sure. Go nuts.

But this bullshit is just going to drown out Trump's corona response and the subversion of America's election system.

[Cyphon]

Also, is it actually going to change anyones mind on how they vote? I doubt it.

[QuickTidal]

Cyphon, on 28 September 2020 - 07:42 AM, said:

Also, is it actually going to change anyones mind on how they vote? I doubt it.

It won’t. Trumpeters are already like “ if you had the chance to do this, you would too!” Or “corporations do this all the time, grow up”

It’s exhausting

EDIT: What blows my mind is that this numpty fuck is 421 MILLION dollars in debt to the IRS...so when his base defends him for this, people really need to start throwing it in their face "How do you like your taxes paying for Trumps massive debt instead of things for you and your family?" Because let's face facts that's what this is. His base, many of whom are by no stretch of the imagination wealthy (or even well-off) are paying for his debt with THEIR taxes.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 28 September 2020 - 12:00 PM

[QuickTidal]

Also this (hoisted from an news article):

One fact stands out far above all the others in its staggering implications: Donald Trump is personally responsible for $421 million worth of loans coming due in the next few years. Not his business. Him. Personally. He has no means of repaying them. He already refinanced his few profitable properties, and sold off most of his stocks to stay afloat. He appears short on liquidity. And we still don’t know to whom he owes the money.

This fact has frightening implications for public policy and national security. Even minor debts are a frequent reason for the government to deny a security clearance, for the obvious reason that indebted and financially desperate public servants make easy marks for bribery, blackmail and potential treason. The potentially destructive power of that sort of hold on a President of the United States is beyond comprehension. It is the stuff of nightmares, bad spy movie plots and otherwise outlandish conspiracy theory. Imagine if a president owed millions to the mob or to those with close ties to a foreign government, and those individuals both controlled the president’s financial future and knew of corrupt criminal activity. The president might act with otherwise strange deference to said mobsters and those connected to them, and bend public policy on their behalf. If they were tied to fossil fuel interests, the president might set the globe on fire rather than cross them. If his creditors were simply a wealthy set of Wall Street tycoons, he might rig all financial policy on their direct behalf.

What we do know is that beginning in the late 2000s, no one would lend to Donald Trump. His history of bankruptcies, combined with whatever horrors were on his personal and organizational financial statements, clearly made every bank run the other direction. Every bank but one, that is: Deutsche Bank. Donald Trump’s history with Deutsche Bank has always merited special scrutiny, but never more than now. The head honchos at Deutsche would have known just how desperate Trump’s financial position was. But they lent to him anyway. Why? It certainly looks even more ominous that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son was managing the real estate division at Deutsche that lent to Trump, and that Justice Kennedy unexpectedly retired to ensure Trump could seat his replacement. And it looks triply suspicious that Deutsche Bank has been fined and sanctioned over multiple money laundering scandals, including $20 billion from Russian kleptocrats.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 28 September 2020 - 01:48 PM

[Gorefest]

I like how they put 'Imagine if...' and then describe a most likely factual overview of the current state of affairs.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 28 September 2020 - 01:48 PM, said:

Also this (hoisted from an news article):

One fact stands out far above all the others in its staggering implications: Donald Trump is personally responsible for $421 million worth of loans coming due in the next few years. Not his business. Him. Personally. He has no means of repaying them. He already refinanced his few profitable properties, and sold off most of his stocks to stay afloat. He appears short on liquidity. And we still don’t know to whom he owes the money.

This fact has frightening implications for public policy and national security. Even minor debts are a frequent reason for the government to deny a security clearance, for the obvious reason that indebted and financially desperate public servants make easy marks for bribery, blackmail and potential treason. The potentially destructive power of that sort of hold on a President of the United States is beyond comprehension. It is the stuff of nightmares, bad spy movie plots and otherwise outlandish conspiracy theory. Imagine if a president owed millions to the mob or to those with close ties to a foreign government, and those individuals both controlled the president’s financial future and knew of corrupt criminal activity. The president might act with otherwise strange deference to said mobsters and those connected to them, and bend public policy on their behalf. If they were tied to fossil fuel interests, the president might set the globe on fire rather than cross them. If his creditors were simply a wealthy set of Wall Street tycoons, he might rig all financial policy on their direct behalf.

What we do know is that beginning in the late 2000s, no one would lend to Donald Trump. His history of bankruptcies, combined with whatever horrors were on his personal and organizational financial statements, clearly made every bank run the other direction. Every bank but one, that is: Deutsche Bank. Donald Trump’s history with Deutsche Bank has always merited special scrutiny, but never more than now. The head honchos at Deutsche would have known just how desperate Trump’s financial position was. But they lent to him anyway. Why? It certainly looks even more ominous that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son was managing the real estate division at Deutsche that lent to Trump, and that Justice Kennedy unexpectedly retired to ensure Trump could seat his replacement. And it looks triply suspicious that Deutsche Bank has been fined and sanctioned over multiple money laundering scandals, including $20 billion from Russian kleptocrats.

Full article:

https://washingtonmo...ng-the-country/

[Cause]

I guess if there was a law his tax documents would be already been mandatory but there really should be a law about a president having to be financially stable.

The former president of South Africa lived above his means, 20 children 5 wives and spent his entire presidency in the pocket of shady business people who would bail him out. It’s not hypothetical bad, there are examples in history.