[Cause]

Are you saying Obama was a nerd or that he also beat up nerds?

[worry]

Obama is definitely a nerd.

[MTS]

Lady Bliss, on 26 January 2017 - 09:03 PM, said:

I wonder if Trump will notice that Theresa May is getting more applause than him at the GOP retreat.

Pfft, Theresa May is overrated.

Cue Sean Spicer tomorrow morning: 'President Trump got the most applause out of any world leader ever. Period.'

death rattle, on 26 January 2017 - 11:31 PM, said:

Obama is definitely a nerd.

'Live long and prosper' seems like a pretty dim prospect in this adminstration...

[worry]

Yeah, one might say coining the phrase "death panels" during Obama's first term was a stroke of genius. It got it out of the way, so now nobody can use it on the real ones.

On another note, they really, truly are going with the voter suppression push: http://thehill.com/b...uation-on-voter
Pence said there will be an evaluation of "voting rolls in the country and the overall integrity of our voting system this past election."
“We’ll be looking at ways to work with you and follow the facts and see where the facts go," Pence reportedly told (Alabama Congressman) Brooks.

Talk about couched language. This is the nationwide version of pretending routine voter roll purges find massive voter registration fraud, and then conflating voter registration fraud with widespread voter fraud (aka the imaginary 3-5 million "illegal" votes). They're gonna try to cut as many non-GOP voters out of the system as possible.

But, some might say, Trump may be a raving loony but Mike Pence is a straight-laced, by-the-book conservative w/ integrity to spare. There's no way that straight shooter meant anything else by that.
Except, of course, he's done it before. Just a few months ago: https://www.washingt...ram-in-indiana/

[worry]

For the record, the system they use to do this in numerous states already is called Crosscheck (or Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program), and was started by literal white supremacist and -- you guessed it -- Trump advisor Kris Kobach. Yes, the same Kris Kobach behind the disastrous, reprehensible, anti-Latino SB 1070 "Papers Please" law in Arizona. Yes, the same Kris Kobach who's been Secretary of State of Kansas under Sam Brownback, a pristine model of how unchecked GOP policy absolutely dismantles a region. Yes, the same Kris Kobach photographed standing alongside Trump and, hilariously, holding the template for Trump's anti-brown people strategy outside his briefcase like a total dumbass. (http://www.politico....ity-plan-231712)

Here's a great breakdown of Crosscheck's methodology: http://www.rollingst...-voters-w435890

[Nicodimas]

God damn... This is truth and why Trump will get 8 years

https://www.axios.co...2217171890.html

[worry]

It's true that many in the media (and millions of people outside the media) didn't understand how Trump won. That's why we got a couple months of people talking back and forth about 'bubbles'. The whitebread liberal bubble -- which includes the D.C. Beltway -- obviously involves the presumption that racism is a Southern/Redneck/Flyover country thing, when in fact white entitlement thrives and white resentment seethes everywhere in America. That's an overlapping but different animal than the Democrat's bubble though. The media is non-partisan, ever-increasingly driven by the profit motive -- we know they gave billions of dollars of free airtime to Trump, after all. They were never pro-Hillary so much as Trump-is-a-laughing-stock -- and they were right, he is, but enough voters said "he's our laughing-stock" to knock the media back a step.

I wish the media were the opposition party -- they should be to some degree with every administration -- but especially now, since Nazis and fascists demand opposition.


As a side note, I still hate thinking of "media" in the singular, but I've given up.

[Mentalist]

I'm pretty sure that in Trump-speak, "the media" is just part of "the Establishment" that he supposedly "beat".

Basically another step in trying to convince his base that " everyone sucks but me", to quote H. J. Simpson.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 27 January 2017 - 09:03 PM

[Cause]

Nicodimas, on 27 January 2017 - 05:43 AM, said:

God damn... This is truth and why Trump will get 8 years

https://www.axios.co...2217171890.html

He will get 8 years because the media was wrong?

Trump is caught in a lie once a week.

[Vengeance]

Cause, on 27 January 2017 - 08:20 PM, said:

Nicodimas, on 27 January 2017 - 05:43 AM, said:

God damn... This is truth and why Trump will get 8 years

https://www.axios.co...2217171890.html

He will get 8 years because the media was wrong?

Trump is caught in a lie once a week.

He has only been in power for a week. About 5 a day at this point.

[Cause]

I included the campaign

Speaking off his short stay in office so far, it seems he is off to a blistering pace. Is it unusual for a new president to move like this? Or is he just getting a lot of media attention? Seems like he is using executive powers to make a lot happen in a short space of time. Restricting Obamacare, gagging scientists and now the wall.

[MTS]

Cause, on 27 January 2017 - 11:56 PM, said:

I included the campaign

Speaking off his short stay in office so far, it seems he is off to a blistering pace. Is it unusual for a new president to move like this? Or is he just getting a lot of media attention? Seems like he is using executive powers to make a lot happen in a short space of time. Restricting Obamacare, gagging scientists and now the wall.

I seem to remember Obama moving fairly quickly on key measures, like stopping torture and laying the groundwork to (lol) close Guantanomo.

Once they start working on actual legislation (like providing funds for the stupid wall) then I imagine the pace will slow down.

[worry]

The # isn't large compared to Obama's pace, and also a lot of things that aren't technically "executive orders" got lumped in. As WP put it, "Through his first seven days, he has signed six executive orders (along with eight memorandums and one proclamation)." https://www.washingt...rumps-stack-up/

The difference I suppose is in that Obama's tended to be reversals of some of GWB's egregious moves (like Guantanamo Bay, presidential secrecy, etc.), while Trump's tend to be reversals of much more long-standing American policy, as his are rooted in isolationism. It's definitely more of a quality than a quantity factor.

[Vengeance]

you know that things aren't going well when the red state (a conservative web news site) starts to think you an idiot.

https://www.reddit.c...G3L&sh=d57462ce

[worry]

I kinda get the feeling Sean Spicer keeps getting notes like "be tougher" or whatever and feels like his job is on the line every time he speaks.

On another note, here's something heartbreaking: http://www.cleveland...mp_acts_to.html



The fact that Trump's signing came on Holocaust Remembrance Day didn't escape Drake's attention.

"That this can happen on this day is disturbing on so many levels," she said.

"All those times that people said 'never again,' well, we're doing it again. We're turning people away again," she added, referring to U.S. rejection of Jewish refugees prior to World War II.

"Have we not learned from the past?" she said. "It's unreal."

[EmperorMagus]

LOL

As if Syrian moozlims are people.

/s

I always feel guilty about being so privileged after reading stuff like this. There are so many people that deserve so much more than I do, but they have less than me just because luck was on their side.

[EmperorMagus]

https://apnews.com/f...r&utm_medium=AP


While Christians and Jews are not that bad off in Iran (at least afaik), the Baha'i people really get the short end of the stick. They can't enter universities(which is free for everyone in Iran, so a person who doesn't have a bachelor's has literally zero chance of getting a job that pays one rial more than min wage = $6 a day). They cannot work for the government which is the largest employer by far in Iran, as almost all of the oil industry and a lot of other industries are nationalized. They cannot practice their religion in any way, shape, or form that can be called dignified. Baha'is are heavily discriminated against in almost all facets of their lives. While they are probably better off than people in Syria, that is the best I can say about their situation.

Of course, Donald fucking Trump decides that they are the people that should get fucked again because fucking terrorism.

When was the last fucking time and Iranian conducted a terror attack in the US? When was the last time a Baha'i terrorist was convicted anywhere in the world, and what the fuck happened to not discriminating based on people's religions and nationalities?

Right, altfacts happened.


Disclaimer: I'm not a Baha'i and I don't even have any Baha'i friends. In fact, I was under the impression that Baha'ism was a religion started by western states to weaken the Iranian national identity (this is literally written in the high school history books that every student in Iran reads, think about the Baha'i student who has to read that). I mentioned my belief in the ISIS thread a few years ago and Morgoth asked me for a source, my current indignation is caused by me reading up on the actual history of that religion and their treatment right now.

This post has been edited by EmperorMagus: 28 January 2017 - 04:40 AM

[worry]

Think of it more like everybody deserves a basic standard of living that provides the 'normalcy' of comfort and mitigates desperation. Civilization can provide that, and it's a sin that it doesn't. At the risk of not sounding like a raving socialist, we don't have to destroy all class stratification; just provide a humane bottom rung. I don't think you have to feel guilty, as long as you're cognizant, do a pretty good job of not adding to misery, and do a pretty good job of lessening misery when you can. Appreciate what you have, be decently generous, and try not to be wasteful.

And, of course, pray for the day the 1% get led to the guillotines.

[EmperorMagus]

death rattle, on 28 January 2017 - 04:46 AM, said:

Think of it more like everybody deserves a basic standard of living that provides the 'normalcy' of comfort and mitigates desperation. Civilization can provide that, and it's a sin that it doesn't. At the risk of not sounding like a raving socialist, we don't have to destroy all class stratification; just provide a humane bottom rung. I don't think you have to feel guilty, as long as you're cognizant, do a pretty good job of not adding to misery, and do a pretty good job of lessening misery when you can. Appreciate what you have, be decently generous, and try not to be wasteful.

And, of course, pray for the day the 1% get led to the guillotines.

I don't even want the 1% to go the the guillotines. I don't care about them at all.

What I want is everyone being fed in world where doing it would not be hard at all if someone cared enough to optimize and stop all the food going to waste. I want the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and all the other colonial powers and wannabe colonial powers to stop fucking funding and arming a bunch of idiots murdering each other and innocents in Syria. I want medicine as a nonprofit industry - and no one giving me that crap about the profit motive being important for new medical discoveries, doctors and chemists working for universities do it far more reliably than the private companies.

Of course, we're all a bunch fucking idiots who are either going back to stone age by the way of sweat sweat nukes by the end of century, or we are going to be starving to death because all of our fertile ground has been salted by seawater.

/rant
I'm just pissed at Trump, the idiotic things he does, and the shortsighted and stupid ideology he represents.

[worry]

http://www.nydailyne...ticle-1.2957910

Following President Trump’s executive order green card, visa holders already blocked by airports
Within hours of President Trump’s executive order limiting immigration from Muslim countries, green card and visa holders were already being blocked from getting on flights to the U.S.

The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee said people who had already landed were being sequestered at airports and told they have to return to their point of origin.