TRUMP - Just because.....................Naw, I just can't say it! by SHINYGOODGUY

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Please add this to your signature, Signym: Why is Trump being friendly toward Russia? What is Trump getting out of this? Because the USA is getting nothing. - SECOND

Well, you see SECOND, this is where your inability to even imagine "American interests" is a serious deficit, because I can imagine America getting a LOT of things out of reaching a detente with Russia. So you go toddle off and think about it some.

Oh by the way, I changed my signature to quote your anti-American statement.

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"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

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Sunday, December 18, 2016 12:30 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Taking a page out of SECOND's playbook, I'm going to start posting other people's articles. This will save me a lot of typing-time, and demonstrate to SECOND and other proto-neocons on the board that I'm not the only patriotic American who holds these opinions.

Quote:
Neocon Panic and Agony

There are clear signs that the Neocons running the AngloZionist Empire and its “deep state” are in a state of near panic and their actions indicate they are truly terrified.

The home front

One the home front, the Neocons have resorted to every possible dirty trick on the book to try to prevent Donald Trump from ever getting into the White House: they have

organized riots and demonstrations (some paid by Soros money)
encouraged the supporters of Hillary to reject the outcome of the elections (“not my President”)
tried to threaten the Electors and make them either cast a vote for Hillary or not vote at all
tried to convince Congress to refuse the decision of the Electoral College and
they are now trying to get the elections annulled on the suspicion that the (apparently almighty) Russian hackers have compromised the election outcome (apparently even in states were paper ballots were used) and stolen it in favor of Trump.

That is truly an amazing development, especially considering how Hillary attacked Trump for not promising to recognize the outcome of the elections. She specifically said that Trump’s lack of guarantees to recognize the outcome would threaten the very basis of the stability of the US political system and now she, and her supporters, are doing everything in their power to do just that, to throw the entire electoral process into a major crisis with no clear path towards resolution. Some say that the Democrats are risking a civil war. Considering that several key Republican Congressmen have said they do support the notion of an investigation into the “Russian hackers” fairy tale, I submit that the Republicans are doing exactly the same thing, that this is not a Democrat vs Republican issue, but a “deep state vs The People of the USA” issue.

Most experts agree that none of these tactics are going to work. So this begs the question of whether the Neocons are stupid, whether they think that they can succeed or what their true objective is.

My guess is that first and foremost what is taking place now is what always happens when the Neocons run into major trouble: they double down, again. And again. And again. That is one of the key characteristics of their psychological make-up: they cannot accept defeat or, even less so, that they were wrong, so each time reality catches up to their ideological delusions, they automatically double-down. Still, they might rationalize this behavior by a combination of hope that maybe one of these tricks will work, with the strong urge to do as much damage to President-Elect Trump before he actually assumes his office. I would never underestimate the vicious vindictiveness of these people.

What is rather encouraging is Trump’s reaction to all this: after apparently long deliberations he decided to nominate Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of Defense. From a Neocon point of view, if General Michael Flynn was bad, then Tillerson was truly an apocalyptic abomination: the man actually had received the order of “Friend of Russia” from the hands of Vladimir Putin himself!

Did Trump not realize how provocative this nomination was and how it would be received by the Neocons? Of course he did! That was, on his part, a totally deliberate decision. If so, then this is a very, very good sign.

I might be mistaken, but I get the feeling that Trump is willing to accept the Neocon challenge and that he will fight back. For example, his reaction to the CIA accusations about Russian hackers was very telling: he reminded everybody that “these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction”. I think that it is now a safe bet to say that as soon as Trump take control heads will roll at the CIA.

[Sidebar: is it not amazing that the CIA is offering its opinion about some supposed Russian hacking during the elections in the USA? Since when does the CIA have any expertise on what is going on inside the USA? I thought the CIA was only a foreign intelligence agency. And since when does the CIA get involved in internal US politics? Yes, of course, savvy observers of the USA have always known that the CIA was a key player in US politics, but now the Agency apparently does not even mind confirming this openly. I don't think that Trump will have the guts and means to do so but, frankly, he would be much better off completely dissolving the CIA. Of course, that could get Trump killed – messing with the Fed and the CIA are two unforgivable crimes in the USA – but then again Trump is already very much at risk anyway, so he might as well strike first].

On the external front

On the external front, the big development is the liberation of Aleppo by Syrian forces. In that case again, the Neocons tried to double-down: they made all sorts of totally unsubstantiated claims about executions and atrocities while the BBC, always willing to pick up the correct line, published an article about how much the situation in Aleppo is similar to what took place in Srebrenica. Of course, there is one way in which the events in Aleppo and Srebrenica are similar: in both cases the US-backed Takfiris lost and were defeated by government forces and in both cases the West unleashed a vicious propaganda war to try to turn the military defeat of its proxies into a political victory for itself. In any case, the last-ditch propaganda effort failed and preventing the inevitable and Aleppo was completely liberated.

The Empire did score one success: using the fact that most of the foreign forces allied to the Syrians (Hezbollah, Iranian Pasdaran, Russian Spetsnaz, etc.) were concentrated around Aleppo, the US-backed Takfiris succeeded in breaking the will of the Syrians, many of whom apparently fled in panic, and first surrounded and then eventually reoccupied Palmyra. This will be short lived success as I completely agree with my friend Alexander Mercouris who says that Putin will soon liberate Palmyra once again, but until this happens the reoccupation of Palmyra is rather embarrassing for the Syrians, Iranians and Russians.

It seems exceedingly unlikely to me that the Daesh movement towards Palmyra was undetected by the various Syrian, Iranian and Russian intelligence agencies (at least once source reports that Russian satellites did detect it) and I therefore conclude that a deliberate decision was made to temporarily sacrifice Palmyra in order to finally liberate Aleppo. Was that the correct call?

Definitely yes. Contrary to the western propaganda, Aleppo, not Raqqa, has always been the real “capital” of the US backed terrorists. Raqqa is a relatively small town: 220,000+ inhabitants versus 2,000,000+ for Aleppo, making Aleppo about ten times larger than Raqqa. As for tiny Palmyra, its population is 30,000+. So the choice between scrambling to plug the holes in the Syrian defenses around Palmyra and liberating Aleppo was a no-brainer. Now that Aleppo has been liberated, the city has to be secured and major engineering efforts need to be made in order to prepare it for an always possible Takfiri counter-attack. But it is one thing to re-take a small desert town and quite another one to re-take a major urban center. I personally very much doubt that Daesh & Co. will ever be in control of Aleppo again. Some Neocons appear to be so enraged by this defeat that they are now accusing Trump of “backing Iran” (I wish he did!).

The tiny Palmyra was given a double-function by the Neocon propaganda effort: to eclipse the “Russian” (it was not solely “Russian” at all, but never mind that) victory in Aleppo and to obfuscate the “US” (it was not solely “US” at all, but never mind that) defeat in Mosul. A hard task for the tiny desert city for sure and it is no wonder that this desperate attempt also failed: the US lead coalition in Mosul still looks just about as weak as the Russian lead coalition looks strong in Aleppo.

Any comparison between these two battles is simply embarrassing for the USA: not only did the US-backed forces fail to liberate Mosul from Daesh & Co. but they have not even full encircled the city or even managed to penetrate beyond its furthest suburbs. There is very little information coming out of Mosul, but after three months of combat the entire operation to liberate Mosul seems to be an abject failure, at least for the time being. I sincerely hope that once Trump takes office he will finally agree to work not only with Russia, but also with Iran, to finally get Daesh out of Mosul. But if Trump delivers on his promise to AIPAC and the rest of the Israel Lobby gang to continue to antagonize and threaten Iran, the US can basically forget any hopes of defeating Daesh in Iraq.

Our of despair and spite, the US propaganda vilified Russia for the killing of civilians in Aleppo while strenuously avoiding any mention of civilian victims in Mosul. But then, the same propaganda machine which made fun of the color of the smoke coming out of the engines of the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov (suggesting that she was about to break down) had to eat humble pie when it was the US navy’s most expensive and newest destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, which broke down in the Panama canal and had to be immobilzed, while the Kuznetsov continued to do a very good job supporting Russian operations in Syria.

Over and over again, the AngloZionist propaganda machine has failed to obfuscate the embarrassing facts on the ground and it now clearly appears that the entire US policy for the Middle-East is in total disarray and that the Neocons are as clueless as they are desperate.

The countdown to January 20th

It is pretty obvious that the Neocon reign is coming to an end in a climax of incompetence, hysterical finger-pointing, futile attempts at preventing the inevitable and a desperate scramble to conceal the magnitude of the abject failure which Neocon-inspired policies have resulted in. Obama will go down in history as the worst and most incompetent President in US history. As for Hillary, she will be remembered as both the worst US Secretary of State the US and the most inept Presidential candidate ever.

In light of the fact that the Neocons always failed at everything they attempted, I am inclined to believe that they will probably also fail at preventing Donald Trump from being sworn in. But until January 20th, 2017 I will be holding my breath in fear of what else these truly demented people could come up with.

As for Trump, I still can’t figure him out. On one hand he nominates Rex Tillerson in what appears to be a deliberate message of defiance against the Neocons, while on the other hand he continues to try to appease the Israel Lobby gang by choosing a rabid Zionist of the worst kind, David M. Friedman, as the next US ambassador to Israel. Even worse then that, Donald Trump still does not appear to be willing to recognize the undeniable fact that the US will never defeat Daesh as long as the anti-Iranian stance of the Neocons is not replaced by a real willingness to engage Iran and accept it as a partner and ally.

Right now the Trump rhetoric simply makes no sense: he wants to befriend Russia while antagonizing China and he wants to defeat Daesh while threatening Iran again. This is lunacy. Still, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but somebody sure needs to educate him on the geopolitical realities out there before he also end up making a total disaster of US foreign policy.

And yet, I still have a small hope.

My hope is that the latest antics of the Neocons will sufficiently aggravate and even enrage Trump to a point where he will give up on his futile attempts at appeasing them. Only by engaging in a systematic policy of “de-neoconization” of the US political establishment will Trump have any hopes of “making America great again”. If Trump’s plan is to appease the Neocons long enough from him to be sworn in and have his men approved by Congress – fine. Then he still has a chance of saving the USA from a catastrophic collapse, but only as long as he remains determined to ruthlessly crack down on the Neocons once in power. If his hope is to distract the Neocons by appeasing them on secondary or minor issues, then his efforts are doomed and he will go down the very same road as Obama who, at least superficially, initially appeared to be a non-Neocon candidate and who ended up being a total Neocon puppet (in 2008 the Neocons had placed their bets on McCain and they only infiltrated the Obama Administration once McCain was defeated).

One way or another, we are headed for a crisis, the only open question whether the USA will come out of this crisis liberated or doomed.

http://www.unz.com/tsaker/neocon-panic-and-agony/

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"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

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Sunday, December 18, 2016 1:58 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

REPOSTED:

SECOND, calm down. I can hear your head exploding all the way over here.

Paul Krugman, stawmanning his way through an entire article.

I don't know what "Trump voters" want, but I know what I want: Three things.

1) Stop trying to foment war with Russia. Come up with some sort of modus vivendi that allows each of us to have our essential interests respected. Restore national sovereignty over our foreign policy. End our pointless concocted wars for Saudi Arabia or Israel or the elite EU bankers.

2) Start solving the illegal immigration problem. Restore national sovereignty over our borders.

3) Get out of TPP/ TTIP, and tear up NAFTA as much as possible. Restore national economic sovereignty.

Three things. It looks like TPP and TTIP are already dead. It looks like Trump is serious about not being on a escalating ramp-up to war with Russia. The rest is to be demonstrated.

Everything else, I'm willing to fight Trump at every level of government. Now, let me explain my rationale for voting the way I did: It will be far easier to fight Trump and the Republicans than it would be to fight some secret international "trade tribunal" on environmental and economic issues. If you think fighting Trump is going to be difficult - and it will be - imagine what it would be like if your local or state regulations were overturned by the TPP or TTIP because they might interfere with normal or expected transnational profits. Where would you turn then? (The answer is: Nowhere. You'd be as fucked as a whore in a whorehouse.)

ETA: So stop bitching, whining, gnashing your teeth, and trying to overturn the elected government. Start planning how to enhance Americans' prospects. ALL Americans, not just your precious hyphenated-identity subgroups. (That is, if you can get over your disdain for Yankees.)

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"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

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Sunday, December 18, 2016 2:51 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
REPOSTED:

SECOND, calm down. I can hear your head exploding all the way over here.

Paul Krugman, stawmanning his way through an entire article.

Not that it will stop you, but you're not using "straw man" correctly: A straw man is based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent. Now I will erect a true "strawman" by reading your mind and writing your response for you: Signym replied that she was using "strawman" correctly.

Will Trump’s Fiscal Policy Really Be Expansionary?
By Paul Krugman, December 18, 2016 1:49 pm
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/12/18/will-fiscal-policy-really-
be-expansionary/

It’s now generally accepted that Trumpism will finally involve the kind of fiscal stimulus progressive economists have been pleading for ever since the financial crisis in 2008. After all, Republicans are deeply worried about budget deficits when a Democrat is in the White House, but suddenly become fiscal doves when in control. And there really is no question that the deficit will go up.

But will this actually amount to fiscal stimulus? Right now it looks as if Republicans are going to ram through their whole agenda, including an end to Obamacare, privatizing Medicare and block-granting Medicaid, sharp cuts to food stamps, and so on. These are spending cuts, which will reduce the disposable income of lower- and middle-class Americans even as tax cuts raise the income of the wealthy. Given the sharp distributional changes, looking just at the budget deficit may be a poor guide to the macroeconomic impact.

Given the extent to which things are in flux, I can’t put numbers on what’s likely to happen. But I was able to find matching analyses by the good folks at CBPP of tax and spending cuts in Paul Ryan’s 2014 budget, which may be a useful model of things to come.
www.cbpp.org/research/the-ryan-budgets-tax-cuts-nearly-6-trillion-in-c
ost-and-no-plausible-way-to-pay-for-it
www.cbpp.org/research/chairman-ryan-gets-66-percent-of-his-budget-cuts
-from-programs-for-people-with-low-or?fa=view&id=3925

If you leave out the magic asterisks — closing of unspecified tax loopholes — that budget was a deficit-hiker: $5.7 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years, versus $5 trillion in spending cuts. The spending cuts involved cuts in discretionary spending plus huge cuts in programs that serve the poor and middle class; the tax cuts were, of course, very targeted on high incomes.

The pluses and minuses here would have quite different effects on demand. Cutting taxes on high incomes probably has a low multiplier: the wealthy are unlikely to be cash-constrained, and will save a large part of their windfall. Cutting discretionary spending has a large multiplier, because it directly cuts government purchases of goods and services; cutting programs for the poor probably has a pretty high multiplier too, because it reduces the income of many people who are living more or less hand to mouth.

Taking all this into account, that old Ryan plan would almost surely have been contractionary, not expansionary.

Will Trumponomics be any different? It would matter if there really were a large infrastructure push, but that’s becoming ever less plausible. There will be big tax cuts at the top, but as I said, the push to dismantle the safety net definitely seems to be on. Put it all together, and it’s extremely doubtful whether we’re talking about net fiscal stimulus.

Now, you might think that someone will explain this to Trump, and that he’ll demand a more Keynesian plan. But I have two words for you: Larry Kudlow.

Kudlow is the darling of the right-wingers, who praise him as demonstrating “statesman-like character and resolve, who can promote an agenda of growth and prosperity. The need of the hour is Larry Kudlow.” That huge load of ring-wing bullshit actually got uploaded today on Forbes.com. Where money can be made, there are no lies too big to be published.

www.forbes.com/sites/davidbahnsen1/2016/12/18/larry-kudlow-has-a-ph-d-
in-making-the-left-hysterical/#587d112a4e7b

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, December 18, 2016 3:29 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Well, you see SECOND, this is where your inability to even imagine "American interests" is a serious deficit, because I can imagine America getting a LOT of things out of reaching a detente with Russia.

Perhaps you are thinking of a Russian Poodle? That would surely benefit the USA.

Donald Trump: The Russian Poodle
by Nicholas Kristof
www.nytimes.com/2016/12/17/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-the-russian-poo
dle.html?rref=opinion

In 1972, President Richard Nixon’s White House dispatched burglars to bug Democratic Party offices. That Watergate burglary and related “dirty tricks,” such as releasing mice at a Democratic press conference and paying a woman to strip naked and shout her love for a Democratic candidate, nauseated Americans — and impelled some of us kids at the time to pursue journalism.

Now in 2016 we have a political scandal that in some respects is even more staggering. Russian agents apparently broke into the Democrats’ digital offices and tried to change the election outcome. President Obama on Friday suggested that this was probably directed by Russia’s president, saying, “Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin.”

In Watergate, the break-in didn’t affect the outcome of the election. In 2016, we don’t know for sure. There were other factors, but it’s possible that Russia’s theft and release of the emails provided the margin for Donald Trump’s victory.

The C.I.A. says it has “high confidence” that Russia was trying to get Trump elected, and, according to The Washington Post, the directors of the F.B.I. and national intelligence agree with that conclusion.

Both Nixon and Trump responded badly to the revelations, Nixon by ordering a cover-up and Trump by denouncing the C.I.A. and, incredibly, defending Russia from the charges that it tried to subvert our election. I never thought I would see a dispute between America’s intelligence community and a murderous foreign dictator in which an American leader sided with the dictator.

Let’s be clear: This was an attack on America, less lethal than a missile but still profoundly damaging to our system. It’s not that Trump and Putin were colluding to steal an election. But if the C.I.A. is right, Russia apparently was trying to elect a president who would be not a puppet exactly but perhaps something of a lap dog — a Russian poodle.

In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely (and unfairly) mocked as President George W. Bush’s poodle, following him loyally into the Iraq war. The fear is that this time Putin may have interfered to acquire an ally who likewise will roll over for him.

Frankly, it’s mystifying that Trump continues to defend Russia and Putin, even as he excoriates everyone else, from C.I.A. officials to a local union leader in Indiana.

Now we come to the most reckless step of all: This Russian poodle is acting in character by giving important government posts to friends of Moscow, in effect rewarding it for its attack on the United States.

Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, is a smart and capable manager. Yet it’s notable that he is particularly close to Putin, who had decorated Tillerson with Russia’s “Order of Friendship.”

Whatever our personal politics, how can we possibly want to respond to Russia’s interference in our election by putting American foreign policy in the hands of a Putin friend?

Tillerson’s closeness to Putin is especially troubling because of Trump’s other Russia links. The incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, accepted Russian money to attend a dinner in Moscow and sat near Putin. A ledger shows $12.7 million in secret payments by a pro-Russia party in Ukraine to Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. And the Trump family itself has business connections with Russia.

It’s true that there will be counterbalances, including Gen. James Mattis, the former Marine commander who has no illusions about Moscow and is expected to be confirmed as defense secretary. But over all it looks as if the Trump administration will be remarkably pro-Putin — astonishing considering Putin’s Russia has killed journalists, committed war crimes in Ukraine and Syria and threatened the peaceful order in Europe.

So it’s critical that the Senate, the news media and the public subject Tillerson to intense scrutiny. There are other issues to explore as well, including his role in enabling corruption in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world. The same is true of his role in complicity with the government of Angola, where oil corruption turned the president’s daughter into a billionaire even as children died of poverty and disease at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world.

Maybe all this from Russia to Angola was just Tillerson trying to maximize his company’s revenue, and he will act differently as secretary of state. Maybe. But I’m skeptical that his ideology would change in fundamental ways.

This is not only about Tillerson just as the 1972 break-in was not only about the Watergate building complex. This is about the integrity of American democracy and whether a foreign dictator should be rewarded for attacking the United States. It is about whether we are led by a president or a poodle.

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Sunday, December 18, 2016 4:17 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
My guess is that first and foremost what is taking place now is what always happens when the Neocons run into major trouble: they double down, again. And again. And again. That is one of the key characteristics of their psychological make-up: they cannot accept defeat or, even less so, that they were wrong, so each time reality catches up to their ideological delusions, they automatically double-down.

That's you, SECOND.

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"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

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Sunday, December 18, 2016 5:18 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

That's you, SECOND.

Hell’s Angels was about left-behind people motivated only by “an ethic of total retaliation.” Sound familiar?

Most people read Hell’s Angels (1966) for the lurid stories of sex and drugs. But that misses the point entirely. What’s truly shocking about reading the book today is how well Thompson foresaw the retaliatory, right-wing politics that now goes by the name of Trumpism. After following the motorcycle guys around for months, Thompson concluded that the most striking thing about them was not their hedonism but their “ethic of total retaliation” against a technologically advanced and economically changing America in which they felt they’d been counted out and left behind. Thompson saw the appeal of that retaliatory ethic. He claimed that a small part of every human being longs to burn it all down, especially when faced with great and impersonal powers that seem hostile to your very existence. In the United States, a place of ever greater and more impersonal powers, the ethic of total retaliation was likely to catch on.

What made that outcome almost certain, Thompson thought, was the obliviousness of Berkeley, California, types who, from the safety of their cocktail parties, imagined that they understood and represented the downtrodden. The Berkeley types, Thompson thought, were not going to realize how presumptuous they had been until the downtrodden broke into one of those cocktail parties and embarked on a campaign of rape, pillage, and slaughter. For Thompson, the Angels weren’t important because they heralded a new movement of cultural hedonism, but because they were the advance guard for a new kind of right-wing politics. As Thompson presciently wrote in the Nation piece he later expanded on in Hell’s Angels, that kind of politics is “nearly impossible to deal with” using reason or empathy or awareness-raising or any of the other favorite tools of the left.

But though Thompson’s depiction of an alienated, white, masculine working-class culture — one that is fundamentally misunderstood by intellectuals — is not the only one out there, it was the first. And in some ways, it is still the best psychological study of those Americans often dismissed as “white trash” or “deplorables.”

Thompson’s Angels were mostly working-class white men who felt, not incorrectly, that they had been relegated to the sewer of American society. Their unswerving loyalty to the nation — the Angels had started as a World War II veterans group — had not paid them any rewards or won them any enduring public respect. The manual-labor skills that they had learned and cultivated were in declining demand. Though most had made it through high school, they did not have the more advanced levels of training that might lead to economic or professional security. “Their lack of education,” Thompson wrote, “rendered them completely useless in a highly technical economy.” Looking at the American future, they saw no place for themselves in it.

In other words, the Angels felt like “strangers in their own land,” as Arlie Russell Hochschild puts it in her recent book on red-state America.

More of the story here:
www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-predicted-the-rise-o
f-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/

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Sunday, December 18, 2016 6:21 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

SECOND

Just summarizing some of your posts with my response.

TRUMP WANTS BETTER RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA !!!
So? Or do you prefer to escalate tensions over things that don't materially affect the US in a 'game' of nuclear brinkmanship? Why?

REPUBLICANS NOW THINK BETTER OF PUTIN !!!!
And?

CHINA IS TWEAKED ABOUT TAIWAN !!!!
And? (fwiw the US drove China and Russia into each other's arms. This could be an opening to split them apart.)

No Americans care about Russia, but they do care that Trump is obsessed with Putin and Putin is sneaking stolen emails to Trump !!!!
That argument is as phony as a Nixon penny, and worth less. Apparently shillary thinks A LOT about Russia. So does obmanation. And so do you. And Thuggr, 'g', and krappo. The only people who really don't get all exercised about Russia are Signy and myself. As for Putin sneaking stolen emails to Trump - my god. You've disgraced yourself with that insanity.

THE NYT WROTE AN ARTICLE ABOUT MARCO'S SWISS BANK ACCOUNTS IN 1998 !!!
And?

PEOPLE SPECULATE ABOUT TRUMP'S POSSIBLE ECONOMIC PLAN AND THEN BLAST HIM FOR THINGS THEY IMAGINE !!!
They react to non-existent things as if they were real? That is the definition of insanity.

THE HELL'S ANGELS MIGHT BE BAD PEOPLE !!!
OMG. Who would have guessed?

In all of your posts, was there anything relevant? Useful? Interesting?

No.

And ...
... How DID your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Monday, December 19, 2016 2:28 AM

As our #1 prize idiot would say: "Cites please!"

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Obama doubled our national debt and the only "jobs" that were "recovered" in the last 8 years were part time, minimum-wage jobs now held by people who used to be able to support a family with real jobs, or people who just completely left the workforce like me and are no longer a statistic they track....

Nobody but the truly Privilged White people will revere Obama as a great president. Not even ANY black people. He did NOTHING for Black People or Latin People. He actually deported more illegal Latinos that GWB did. One thing I actually agreed with him on although nowhere near the amount that should have happened. The only "Legacy" he has is Obamacare that is crushing middle income people, and Trump will strip it to bare bones if he doesn't just renig on what he said to appease idiot lefties like you and destroy it altogether.

I say this knowing full well that I will no longer have health insurance in my current position. I'm okay with that. It's not right that I have insurance while my Niece's parents pay 6k per year more with twice the deductible to cover my free insurance.

I said 10 years ago here that GWB was the worst president we EVER had.

Not even considering how little respect any foreign countries have for us now, but just for how much he spent with such little results for the middle class. Not to mention that Race Relations have been set back 50 years under 8 years of Obama. Blacks and Whites have not lived under this much tension since the 60's.

Obama was so much worse. He makes GWB look like JFK.

Because he is Black, nobody will talk about him at all in school 30 years from now. He will be among the 30+ "invisible" presidents we never discuss in public school.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, December 19, 2016 2:32 AM

What the FUCK dude, Proto-neocons, what!? are you writing fucking science fiction?

And stop being such a stupid little bitch. Be different for once and actually post with some intelligence.

SGG

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Monday, December 19, 2016 2:35 AM

Quote:
Of course I don't want Russia to own us.

Too late, we already got it up the ass from our neighbors to the extreme right.

We are NOW Russia East!

SGG

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Monday, December 19, 2016 2:42 AM

GREAT FUCKING POST!!!

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Please, think long and hard what our AMERICAN interests are before you start getting all hysterical about "Russia".
When you use "our AMERICAN interests", who do think believes you are American? Your obsession, and 1kiki’s, with Russia makes everyone at Fireflyfans, except 1kiki and maybe 6ixStringJack, think you’re Russian. No Americans care about Russia, but they do care that Trump is obsessed with Putin and Putin is sneaking stolen emails to Trump. Is Putin blackmailing Trump? Although he never shuts up, Trump is so secretive about his business that we can only guess.

Trump can talk more about himself and say less than any other American politician. I do wish Trump’s accountant would talk about Trump’s tax returns or his foreign business dealings or his conflict of interest between what is best for the Trump family fortune and best for the USA, etc. because Trump is not talking.
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/156590/

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/156500/

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Monday, December 19, 2016 2:46 AM

Herr Tillerman's pick as SOS is just an enrichment scheme...guess who's NOT getting richer.

SGG

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Monday, December 19, 2016 2:50 AM

Quote:
Honey, I've been here longer than YOU have.[\quote]

Really!? It's come to this - FIRSTIES!

Ha!

sgg

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Monday, December 19, 2016 2:53 AM

Mark-time...march...HIGH Goose Step -

ALL Hail President Putin, the new RPOTUS!

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Please add this to your signature, Signym: Why is Trump being friendly toward Russia? What is Trump getting out of this? Because the USA is getting nothing. - SECOND
Well, you see SECOND, this is where your inability to even imagine "American interests" is a serious deficit, because I can imagine America getting a LOT of things out of reaching a detente with Russia. So you go toddle off and think about it some.

Oh by the way, I changed my signature to quote your anti-American statement.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

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Monday, December 19, 2016 6:26 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SHINY, you're having a breakdown in public, did you know that?

BUCK UP, dood! It's time you stopped feeling horrified and sorry for yourself, and started planning on how to fight Trump on SPECIFIC proposals and policies.

Here, let me give you a couple of examples:

Right before Obamacare, the Big Blue State of CA was contemplating (much more cost-effective) single payer. The State Legislature even had a model bill written. But with the advent of (much inferior) Obamacare, the State Senate shelved their bill. If Obamacare becomes too unwieldy under Trump, I'm going to fight that this bill be revived.

In addition, CA is going to keep on keeping on with its greenhouse gas reduction plan.

Dood, get your head out of the bottle, or the bong, or your ass, or wherever it's been located for the past year. Come on and fight the good fight.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

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Monday, December 19, 2016 7:48 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

If you're also not aware, factory workers in Indiana did not have much concern for the well-being of blacks in Texas from 1877 to 2016. Indifference runs both from the North toward the South and South to North. Please add that to your signature, Signym.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump tweeted:

We should tell China that we don't want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!
4:59 PM - 17 Dec 2016
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/810288321880555520

After seizing an American unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) operating in international waters in the South China Sea last week, China’s defense ministry has agreed to return the drone to the US—even if president-elect Donald Trump wants Beijing to keep it.

Beijing should not take Trump’s Twitter remarks seriously as no one really knows what he is thinking, said an op-ed (link in Chinese) published Monday (Dec. 19) on the front page of the top state newspaper People’s Daily’s overseas edition.

The author Hua Yiwen, identified as an international affairs expert, argued that the seized American drone was only “the tip of the iceberg” of the US’s military strategy on China. He wrote, the US’s increasing military presence in China’s claimed waters reflects its “doubts, and even hostility” to China.

The latest flare-up between the US and China adds to the rise in military tensions in the region in recent weeks. China may be flexing its military muscles in response to Trump’s recent remarks suggesting that the US could break with its decades-long policy on Taiwan and China, or to US Pacific Command chief Harry Harris’s comments last week that the US would confront China’s attempts to control the South China Sea.

http://qz.com/866303/that-underwater-drone-in-the-south-china-sea-that
-donald-trump-doesnt-want-back-china-says-it-might-have-valuable-information/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 19, 2016 11:03 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
If you're also not aware, factory workers in Indiana did not have much concern for the well-being of blacks in Texas from 1877 to 2016. Indifference runs both from the North toward the South and South to North. Please add that to your signature, Signym.

Three responses immediately spring to mind, n I don't know which is more apropos:

1) Cites? Links?

2) Silly girl, the answer is "no".

3) If Americans don't care about other states, then you have just made the best argument EV-AR for the Electoral College, because each state will have to look out for itself.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

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Monday, December 19, 2016 1:43 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
If you're also not aware, factory workers in Indiana did not have much concern for the well-being of blacks in Texas from 1877 to 2016. Indifference runs both from the North toward the South and South to North. Please add that to your signature, Signym.
Three responses immediately spring to mind, n I don't know which is more apropos:

1) Cites? Links?

2) Silly girl, the answer is "no".

3) If Americans don't care about other states, then you have just made the best argument EV-AR for the Electoral College, because each state will have to look out for itself.

The states don't help each other. Occasionally the Feds help states when their neighboring states won't. Signym, that date of 1877 was not picked at random. That was the year Reconstruction ended. In 1877, Hayes withdrew the last federal troops from the south, and the bayonet-backed Republican governments collapsed, thereby ending Reconstruction.

Over the next three decades, the civil rights that blacks had been promised during Reconstruction crumbled under white rule in the south. The plight of southern Blacks was forgotten in the north as they were segregated and condemned to live in poverty with little hope.

And in the years since 1877, not once in all recorded history did Indiana factory workers send aid to Texas or anywhere else in the South for the suffering Black workers living in poverty with little hope. If Signym can find an example where Indiana factory workers did send monetary aid, or even free hope, let me know.
www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/the-end-of-reconstruction/

Signym, you do know that Trump, in person, shook down Indiana Gov Pence for $7 million to save Indiana factory worker jobs at Carrier? Trump gave none of his own money and took all the credit for himself with none for Pence. Did you know that Indiana did not have enough money to save all those Carrier jobs? But Trump, with his $10 billion, could have. I will do the math for you: Trump's $10 billion is 1,428 times bigger than Indiana's $7 million. Trump had the money, but he only did what he does best: grab the spotlight for himself, run his mouth, and nothing more.

Where was Trump when these other Indiana factory workers needed his help, Signym? Nowhere. Trump left town.
www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Workers-at-endangered-Indiana-plant-fee
l-10787688.php

www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a20602

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 19, 2016 7:50 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
not once in all recorded history did Indiana factory workers send aid to Texas or anywhere else in the South for the suffering Black workers living in poverty with little hope. If Signym can find an example where Indiana factory workers did send monetary aid, or even free hope, let me know.

Why so restrictive, SECOND? Are you saying that no person from any northern, southern, western or eastern state crossed a state border to participate in the Civil Rights movement at any time? Are you saying that no person ever crossed a state border to help someone else? Are you claiming that no person ever donated to a mission or disaster in another state to help the people there? Because that would be foolish, if that's what you're claiming. (Good luck with convincing Americans to care about other Americans having factory jobs in another state.)

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Tuesday, December 20, 2016 7:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

1kiki, you won't find a line item in any state's budget in any year since the USA was founded for helping another state. For example, there is nothing in Texas' budget to help the welfare of unemployed Indiana factory workers.

There is nothing in any budget in any state to help any people in another state. And there never has been help. 1kiki, think about that kind of stinginess, which has gone on for centuries. The States of the USA are NOT good neighbors. States do NOT help other states.

It is the Federal government that includes money in its budget to help states in trouble. The states refuse to help, perhaps out of principle. Or maybe the states have always been run by Scrooge.

In the bad old days, before the Great Depression, a rich state such as NY or CA would let a poor state (Mississippi) and its people suffer and die. No help was ever coming, except private charity at erratic intervals. And Americans thought that was right and proper in 1926. There is a political party in 2016 that still thinks it is proper for poor people to suffer and die.

Does 1kiki know about that political party? That party does very well in state and local elections because Americans agree with its philosophy of everything for me and nothing for you out-of-state strangers.

I can see why that political party does well. It is appealing to know that your tax money will never go to people in another state. Or to people you don't like, even if they live in your state.

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Quote:
not once in all recorded history did Indiana factory workers send aid to Texas or anywhere else in the South for the suffering Black workers living in poverty with little hope. If Signym can find an example where Indiana factory workers did send monetary aid, or even free hope, let me know.

Why so restrictive, SECOND? Are you saying that no person from any northern, southern, western or eastern state crossed a state border to participate in the Civil Rights movement at any time? Are you saying that no person ever crossed a state border to help someone else? Are you claiming that no person ever donated to a mission or disaster in another state to help the people there? Because that would be foolish, if that's what you're claiming. (Good luck with convincing Americans to care about other Americans having factory jobs in another state.)

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, December 20, 2016 7:12 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The End Of The TV Illusion And The Coming Of Plain Old, Ugly Reality

Europe’s populist parties are actually populist; they pursue policies that really do help workers, as long as those workers are the right color and ethnicity. As someone put it, they’re selling a herrenvolk welfare state. Law and Justice, Poland’s ruling populist party, has raised minimum wages and reduced the retirement age; France’s National Front advocates the same things.

Trump, however, is different. He said lots of things on the campaign trail, but his personnel choices indicate that in practice he’s going to be a standard hard-line economic-right Republican. His Congressional allies are revving up to dismantle Obamacare, privatize Medicare, and raise the retirement age. His pick for Labor Secretary is a fast-food tycoon who loathes minimum wage hikes. And his pick for top economic advisor is the king of trickle-down.

So in what sense is Trump a populist? Basically, he plays one on TV — he claims to stand for the common man, disparages elites, trashes political correctness; but it’s all for show. When it comes to substance, he’s pro-elite all the way.

He managed to get away with this in the election. But that was all big talk. What happens when reality begins to hit? Repealing Obamacare will inflict huge harm on precisely the people who were most enthusiastic Trump supporters — people who somehow believed that their benefits would be left intact. What happens when they realize their mistake?

Given history, what we can count on is a massive effort to spin the coming working-class devastation as somehow being the fault of liberals, and for all I know it might work.

And the indicated political strategy is clear: make Trump and company own all the hardship they’re about to inflict. No cooperation in devising an Obamacare replacement; no votes for Medicare privatization and increasing the retirement age. No bipartisan cover for the end of the TV illusion and the coming of plain old, ugly reality.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/reality-tv-populism

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Tuesday, December 20, 2016 2:07 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

SECOND

"1kiki, you won't find a line item in any state's budget in any year since the USA was founded for helping another state."

This was your original claim: "Good luck with convincing Americans to care about other Americans having factory jobs in another state."

Do you see anything there are state budgets? No? Neither do I.

I'm sorry you're too dishonest to have a discussion with.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016 7:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
SECOND

Do you see anything there are state budgets? No? Neither do I.

I'm sorry you're too dishonest to have a discussion with.

“Dishonest” is probably not the word. “Tired” is probably the word you need as in the sentence “second is too tired to have a discussion with. Second won’t explain over and over with greater and greater clarity until the dumb 1kiki makes the connection.”

I’ve got one more example where American generosity ends at the state line. I think those state lines act as boundaries of Americans' willingness to help other Americans. Trump took advantage of that feature of America by making big promises that Congress will not allow him keep because a Congressman’s generosity also stops at his state line, whichever state he was elected from.

West Virginia versus Virginia. One is poor, the other rich. The two states were once The Same State. Does all that history of togetherness mean nothing? It means nothing. Virginia sends no aid to W Virginia. There is no generosity flowing across that state line. If government help is coming from outside the state, it will come from the Federal government. There will be no help from rich Virginia, other than sporadic charity from individual Virginians.

Once upon a time, the plantation owners in the eastern part of Virginia owned slaves, while the western portion of the state did not. So Virginia put an imaginary line on the map dividing it into east and west in 1861. That line became a wall that was worth killing to defend. Rich Virginia never looked back and it certainly never again helped poor West Virginia out of poverty.

Today the poverty line very clearly runs along the Virginia state line. Hot pink marks poor counties in America. Trump took advantage of the hot pink areas. He made promises that the Fed will fix what the neighboring states don’t want to fix:

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/raw-data-where-poor-are

There is an idea I am pitching to you to explain why Indiana factory workers aren’t getting all the help they need from Texas, why Republicans win a majority of governorships and legislatures, why Americans are always ready to listen to the ideas that Obamacare, Medicare and Social Security need to be “saved” by cutting back on expenditures to those programs. It even explains why the Presidency keeps switching back and forth between Democrats and Republicans.

What is my major idea, which 1kiki will shoot down as a lie? That the majority of Americans are neither caring nor generous to their neighbors in other states. That the majority of Americans will see disastrous problems in other states (even within their state) and will let those problems run their course to whatever awful destination. And the Republican party owes its success to letting that awful destiny happen without government stepping in, spending money, and stopping whatever doom is heading this way.

It is the Republican Party specialty to not see problems, not see solutions and not to help. Which is perfectly fine with most Americans who don’t see any problems but their own small and personal ones. Most Americans do not want their taxes spent to help someone other than themselves. That is the soil from which grows the local and state power of the Republican party.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016 10:24 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America

www.teenvogue.com/story/donald-trump-is-gaslighting-america

In this scorched-earth op-ed, Lauren Duca takes on Trump's systematic attempts to destabilize the truth and weaken the foundation of American freedom.

Gaslighting comes from a 1944 film called Gaslight, in which a husband attempts to drive his wife crazy. The husband (the trump in play) ends by being executed for murder and the wife, Ingrid Bergman, lives happily ever after.

Lauren Duca
Dec 10, 2016 11:40AM EST

The CIA officially determined that Russia intervened in our election, and President-elect Donald Trump dismissed the story as if it were a piece of fake news. "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," his transition team wrote in a statement. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again'."

It wasn't one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history, so presumably that's another red-herring lie to distract from Trump treating the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States like it is some rogue blogger to be cast to the trolls. A foreign government's interference in our election is a threat to our freedom, and the President-elect's attempt to undermine the American people's access to that information undermines the very foundation upon which this country was built. It's also nothing new.

Trump won the Presidency by gas light. His rise to power has awakened a force of bigotry by condoning and encouraging hatred, but also by normalizing deception. Civil rights are now on trial, though before we can fight to reassert the march toward equality, we must regain control of the truth. If that seems melodramatic, I would encourage you to dump a bucket of ice over your head while listening to “Duel of the Fates." Donald Trump is our President now; it’s time to wake up.

"Gas lighting" is a buzzy name for a terrifying strategy currently being used to weaken and blind the American electorate. We are collectively being treated like Bella Manningham in the 1938 Victorian thriller from which the term "gas light" takes its name. In the play, Jack terrorizes his wife Bella into questioning her reality by blaming her for mischievously misplacing household items which he systematically hides. Doubting whether her perspective can be trusted, Bella clings to a single shred of evidence: the dimming of the gas lights that accompanies the late night execution of Jack’s trickery. The wavering flame is the one thing that holds her conviction in place as she wriggles free of her captor’s control.

To gas light is to psychologically manipulate a person to the point where they question their own sanity, and that’s precisely what Trump is doing to this country. He gained traction in the election by swearing off the lies of politicians, while constantly contradicting himself, often without bothering to conceal the conflicts within his own sound bites. He lied to us over and over again, then took all accusations of his falsehoods and spun them into evidence of bias.

At the hands of Trump, facts have become interchangeable with opinions, blinding us into arguing amongst ourselves, as our very reality is called into question.

There is a long list of receipts when it comes to Trump's lies. With the help of PolitiFact, clear-cut examples of deception include Trump saying that he watched thousands of people cheering on 9/11 in Jersey City (police say there's no evidence of this), that the Mexican government forces immigrants into the U.S. (no evidence), that there are "30 or 34 million" immigrants in this country (there are 10 or 11 million), that he never supported the Iraq War (he told Howard Stern he did), that the unemployment rate is as high as "42 percent" (the highest reported rate is 16.4 percent), that the U.S. is the highest taxed country in the world (not true based on any metric of consideration), that crime is on the rise (it's falling, and has been for decades), and too many other things to list here because the whole tactic is to clog the drain with an indecipherable mass of toxic waste. The gas lighting part comes in when the fictions are disputed by the media, and Trump doubles down on his lies, before painting himself as a victim of unfair coverage, sometimes even threatening to revoke access.

Trump has repeatedly attempted to undermine the press, including such well-respected publications as the New York Times. He has disseminated a wealth of unsubstantiated attacks on the media, though this baseless tweet from April pretty much sums it all up, "How bad is the New York Times -- the most inaccurate coverage constantly. Always trying to belittle. Paper has lost its way!"

As a candidate, Trump's gas lighting was manipulative, as President-elect it is a deliberate attempt to destabilize journalism as a check on the power of government.

To be clear, the "us" here is everyone living under Trump. It's radical progressives, hardline Republicans, and Jill Stein's weird cousin. The President of the United States cannot be lying to the American electorate with zero accountability. The threat of deception is not a partisan issue. Trump took advantage of the things that divide this country, pitting us against one another, while lying his way to the Oval Office. Yes, everything is painfully clear in hindsight, but let’s make sure Trump’s win was the Lasik eye surgery we all so desperately needed.

The good news about this boiling frog scenario is that we’re not boiling yet. Trump is not going to stop playing with the burner until America realizes that the temperature is too high. It’s on every single one of us to stop pretending it’s always been so hot in here.

There are things you can and should be doing to turn your unrest into action, but first let's empower ourselves with information. Insist on fact-checking every Trump statement you read, every headline you share or even relay to a friend over coffee. If you find factual inaccuracies in an article, send an email to the editor, and explain how things should have been clearer. Inform yourself what outlets are trustworthy and which aren’t. If you need extra help, seek out a browser extension that flags misleading sites or print out a list of fake outlets, such as the one by communications professor Melissa Zimdars, and tape it to your laptop. Do a thorough search before believing the agenda Trump distributes on Twitter. Refuse to accept information simply because it is fed to you, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. That is now the base level of what is required of all Americans. If facts become a point of debate, the very definition of freedom will be called into question.

It will be far easier to take on Trump’s words when there is no question of what he’s said or whether he means it. Regardless of your beliefs, we all must insist on that level of transparency. Trump is no longer some reality TV clown who used to fire people on The Apprentice. He is the President of the United States.

The road ahead is a treacherous one. There are unprecedented amounts of ugliness to untangle, from deciding whether our President can be an admitted sexual predator to figuring out how to stop him from threatening the sovereignty of an entire religion. It’s incredible that any of those things could seem like a distraction from a greater peril, or be only the cherry-picked issues in a seemingly unending list of gaffes, but the gaslights are flickering. When defending each of the identities in danger of being further marginalized, we must remember the thing that binds this pig-headed hydra together. As we spin our newfound rage into action, it is imperative to remember, across identities and across the aisle, as a country and as individuals, we have nothing without the truth.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016 1:35 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

SECOND does a great job of 'moving the goalposts', which is a logical fallacy and dishonest argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Tell me, SECOND, which argument are you making? The one where Americans don't care about other Americans? The one where Texans don't care about anyone else? The one where Americans don't care about factory workers specifically? The one about states' budgets? Or what?

Quote:
Americans want cheap goods more than they want to help American factory workers get a job

Quote:
If Americans gave a damn about other Americans, they wouldn’t act as they do. To be more particular, I’d say there is plenty of empirical proof that Americans do not give a damn about American factory workers because Americans don’t check for the country of origin of their purchases

Quote:
Good luck with convincing Americans to care about other Americans having factory jobs in another state.

Quote:
If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians ...

Quote:
You best look at the ACE Hardware labels for Chinese goods.
1kiki, I thought you and Trump were deeply concerned about factory jobs?

Quote:
Does it disturb 1kiki's view of Americans that Texans don't feel that Trump voters in West Virginians are family? And Texans won't willing pay more to create jobs for people they never met in states that are far away?

Quote:
1kiki, you could just as easily ask why nobody did anything to protect Blacks after Southern Reconstruction collapsed in 1877. My answer would be that the vast majority of Americans after 1877 did NOT share the values of 2016's Democratic Party toward blacks.

After I countered with examples of people crossing state lines to participate in the Civil Rights movement, of crossing state lines to volunteer, and of donating to help people in another state after a natural disaster, SECOND post-edited it to read

Quote:
1kiki, you could just as easily ask why nobody did anything to protect Blacks after Southern Reconstruction collapsed in 1877 until 1964. My answer would be that the vast majority of Americans between 1877 and 1964 did NOT share the values of 2016's Democratic Party toward blacks.

Quote:
If you're also not aware, factory workers in Indiana did not have much concern for the well-being of blacks in Texas from 1877 to 2016. Indifference runs both from the North toward the South and South to North.

Quote:
The states don't help each other. Occasionally the Feds help states when their neighboring states won't.

Quote:
1kiki, you won't find a line item in any state's budget in any year since the USA was founded for helping another state. For example, there is nothing in Texas' budget to help the welfare of unemployed Indiana factory workers.

Quote:
I’ve got one more example where American generosity ends at the state line.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016 3:51 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

AT THE MOMENT, WHO is DOING SOMETHING to mitigate what Trump might do?

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/15/elizabeth-warren-leads-democrats-push-
to-block-donald-trumps-conflicts-of-interests-by-invoking-emoluments-clause-of-constitution/

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016 6:43 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

Tell me, SECOND, which argument are you making? The one where Americans don't care about other Americans? The one where Texans don't care about anyone else? The one where Americans don't care about factory workers specifically? The one about states' budgets? Or what?

These are all true without argument. Let's move on to your "Or what?"

I've heard it said that Trump may represent some approximation of Nietzsche's ubermensch, and I think that's deeply mistaken. But the reasons why it's mistaken can help us think about what Trump actually is. First, it's wrong because Trump represents everything Nietzsche hated. The philistinism, the mediocrity, the worshipping of money for its own sake — this is exactly the opposite of what Nietzsche advocated. By ubermensch, Nietzsche meant someone who could live beyond good and evil, beyond conventional values, who refused to appeal to herd instincts.

There's a passage in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra in which he talks about the ubermensch, and I think it's quite relevant. Zarathustra, the protagonist, comes down from his mountain retreat and tells the people in the town square that he's going to teach them about the ubermensch, about what mankind should become, and the people are having none of it. They don't want to hear that they’ve stopped believing in God; that life is chaos; that nothing lasts; that they’re living in illusion.

Zarathustra realizes the people are too decadent to hear this and so he decides instead to teach them about the "Last Man." And the “Last Man” is the kind of person who doesn't want to think, who fears progress, who is risk-averse and desirous of comfort, who just wants everything to stay the same. Of course, the people erupt in joy when they hear this because this is what they really want.

This is what Trump is to me. This is what he represents. He's a kind of "Last Man" demagogue, telling the people that he's going make things great again, which is to say simple and how they once were — and they love him for it.

For Nietzsche, the celebration of a man like Trump was the inevitable result of a democratic culture built on the virtues of ignorance and self-fulfillment.

Nietzsche spent a lot of time thinking about decadence and resentment, and how it manifests in society. For Nietzsche, culture has to do with overcoming yourself, and anything that is static and non-moving is the death of culture. All this nostalgia and looking back you see from Trump supporters is poisonous to culture for Nietzsche because it stunts any possibility of progress.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016 7:47 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Tell me, SECOND, which argument are you making? The one where Americans don't care about other Americans?" Is this true? These are all true without argument. I hope you realize your beliefs - or should I say propaganda - is irrelevant compared to the facts of the real world.

Quote:
Americans donated generously after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
9% of online users – or 13 million people – donated online for Katrina and Rita relief; The number of online donors is up 53% overall since January 2005
http://www.pewinternet.org/2005/11/24/13-million-americans-made-donati
ons-online-after-hurricanes-katrina-and-rita/

As another example, many people crossed state lines and race lines to participate in the Civil Rights movement.

I could also mention the many union organizers who crossed state lines to help others unionize for better pay and working conditions.

So this statement - Americans don't care about other Americans -is, by the evidence of historical facts, proven wrong.

That makes YOUR assertion - that all statements are true - equally wrong.

In any case, since you freely claim things that are obviously untrue, and that are also easily demonstrated to be untrue, I'm not going to bother continuing. Btw, I hope you realize that out of all your posts, I scroll past your regurgitation of other people's opinions, and when it comes to your personal posts, I only go up to the first lie. Which means I probably scroll past 95% of them at a minimum.

It's too bad you're too dishonest for adult, rational discussion. I'm just curious why, in this particular discussion, a presumably sane person such as yourself would hew to a line of thought so patently divergent from reality and so easily shown to be untrue.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016 11:35 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Other people pushing back against Trump

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/19/politics/tammy-duckworth-axe-files/i
ndex.html?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial

Duckworth cautions Trump: 'We're not a military junta'

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 2:24 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

While Trump has yet to be sworn in and become president, can we just stipulate that there are many things that could be negatives and move on from there? Because, honestly, I can't imagine what good endlessly wallowing in anti-Trump obsession is going to do. The question is, what to do next.

I've been thinking about what good the traditional mediators - like the Sierra Club - might do, if any, at the political level. The problem as I see it is that they got comfortable playing the political game. We give them money, they meet and schmooze with politicians, nothing significant changes, and life goes on. If that process wasn't broken before, now it truly will be.

From my perspective, the best results have come from the Sierra Club, Clean Air Coalition, and others filing lawsuits against the federal EPA or individual states to get specific action.

The one tactic that the NRA has used very successfully is the targeted phone-call campaign. That could be an effort worthy of support as well.

And, in general, it might be worth while to support Sanders, Warren, and Duckworth as the major contenders (to date) against the Trump agenda.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 3:31 AM

I actually don't know where to begin, so I'll dive right in.

Quote:
Obama doubled our national debt and the only "jobs" that were "recovered" in the last 8 years were part time[\quote]

Hmmm, let's see...the country handed over to him in 2008 in near financial collapse

+Since President Barack Obama first took office:
+Homicides have dropped 13 percent, but gun sales have surged.
+The economy has added more than 9 million jobs, and the jobless rate has dropped to below the historical median.
+The number of long-term unemployed Americans has dropped by 614,000 under Obama, but it is still 761,000 higher than at the start of the Great Recession.
+Corporate profits are up 166 percent; real weekly wages are up 3.4 percent.
+There are 15 million fewer people who lack health insurance.
+Wind and solar power have nearly tripled, and now account for more than 5 percent of U.S. electricity.
+The federal debt has more than doubled — rising 116 percent — and big annual deficits have continued.

https://www.factcheck.org/2016/01/obamas-numbers-january-2016-update/
by By Brooks Jackson
Posted on January 12, 2016

Apparently, facts comes around like Santa Claus. The name of the game for some "folk" is LIE YOUR ASS OFF; thems is the rules according to sick-O leadership. Hail Trump!

SGG

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 3:57 AM

"While Trump has yet to be sworn in and become president, can we just stipulate that there are many things that could be negatives and move on from there? Because, honestly, I can't imagine what good endlessly wallowing in anti-Trump obsession is going to do. The question is, what to do next."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, sorry...he doesn't get off that easy! No, fuck that. For 8 fucking years Obama has been scalded with unrelenting heat from the boobs in the peanut gallery. Especially from his Dick-head-ness. Fuck no, it's Trump's turn now. Fuck him if he can't stand the heat, the little fucking cry-baby. Trump hasn't been installed yet (the Kremlin spank) and he's already began his backpedaling campaign. Reneging on his campaign promises. Of course, that's what politicians do, and of course, he's doing exactly what he was claiming to be against and expel the corrupt. Ooops!

Why can't we do both. Put him into a political vise grip with the Dems who dare to dream big! Like Shumer, Sanders, Warren, Duckworth and Cummings, and publicly humiliate Drumpf with constant bombardment by calling him out on the different promises he made.

I'm not of the mind, like the Obamas, of going High when they go Low. I'm for beating him to a bloody pulp with a 2x4, like the mangy dog that he is, then going on to right the ship with true patriots. So, I'm for giving him a boot in the ass, a "git out the way bitch" and let the real professionals do the job. This idiot is playing monopoly with house money. This fucking guy is taking the helm of the Titanic, but thinks that he's steering with a PlayStation control (fucking moron). I say Fuck Him, ridicule his ass as harshly as possible, but make sure that the right people have the real control over the country (not these Neo-Fucking Nazis).

MacArthur and FDR are turning over in their graves.

SGG

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 4:10 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
For 8 fucking years Obama has been scalded with unrelenting heat from the boobs in the peanut gallery. Especially from his Dick-head-ness.

I'm not saying I disagree - or agree. I just have no idea what you mean. afaik the worst thing the repubs did wasn't name-calling, it was being the party of 'no'. So who is Dick-head-ness?

Quote:
Why can't we do both.

You seem to have WAAYyy more energy than I do. I'll stick with one. You'll have to forge on ahead with both.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 4:46 AM

I'm from the old school. You hit me, I don't go High, as the president has graciously shown. I hit you back twice as hard. That's how I've survived (funny thing about that, it's how Frump operates. Imagine that!) It's a New York thing!

Dick-Head-Ness...basically, the Grand Poobah, His Drumpfness, you know, the Great White Dope. For the next 4 years, I will be doing this no matter what.
Like I said - FUCK HIM!

Don't expect you to agree, or not. By the way, it's not about name-calling. It's about lack of respect for the office, and the man. A man who studied and worked to get to the Top Spot in the entire world. Nothing was handed to him by daddy. He was not afforded the luxuries the Donald was provided and yet became POTUS, despite the obstacles that face a man of color in this day and age. Let's set that aside.

Do you honestly, and I mean honestly, believe that THIS man is qualified?

The party of "No." To actually do nothing to advance the country that they supposedly serve. Name-calling is nothing compared to the concerted effort to embarrass and delegitimize the POTUS. Imagine...if the Dems would have done that to Reagan or Poppa Bush?

I am not speaking strictly in regards to race, only the most important and influential office in the world. Repubs embarrassed the country and themselves....and now we go a step further by allowing the fucking Russians
to run our country and hand-pick our next president.

That speaks volumes.

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Quote:
For 8 fucking years Obama has been scalded with unrelenting heat from the boobs in the peanut gallery. Especially from his Dick-head-ness.

I'm not saying I disagree - or agree. I just have no idea what you mean. afaik the worst thing the repubs did wasn't name-calling, it was being the party of 'no'. So who is Dick-head-ness?
Quote:
Why can't we do both.
You seem to have WAAYyy more energy than I do. I'll stick with one.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 6:41 AM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

Quote:
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
MacArthur and FDR are turning over in their graves.

Just turning over? They are spinning!

I hav Lincoln'z skeleton mounted to a generator. Free electrisity sins 1998! I coud probably add the founding fatherz and bekum a local power company!

I appreciate your riled uppedness. If the averaj Dem voter wuz 1/4 az enerjized az you, we woudnt be in this mess.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 7:24 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

1kiki, I am dishonest you say? Your example was not honest. You brought up 13 million contributing to Katrina and Rita victims. Would 13 million also vote in state and local elections? Yes, they would. That only leaves 310 million other Americans who did not contribute aid, even as little as 25 cents, to victims for whatever selfish or political reasons. Maybe that 310 million don't believe in charity toward others? Maybe they are simply indifferent toward people in faraway states? I'm just saying.

But perhaps some of the 310 million voted. Out of that 310 million who did NOTHING to help victims, the Republican party could very easily form a permanently ruling majority in many states to kill government aid for larger and more enduring problems than Katrina and Rita.

Hurricanes are now out of season until June 1st, but poverty is year round. It will take more than 13 million Americans to permanently solve poverty, especially if the other 310 million Americans object or simply don't help for whatever reasons.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, Scrooge 1kiki!

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

"Tell me, SECOND, which argument are you making? The one where Americans don't care about other Americans?" Is this true? These are all true without argument. I hope you realize your beliefs - or should I say propaganda - is irrelevant compared to the facts of the real world.
Quote:
Americans donated generously after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
9% of online users – or 13 million people – donated online for Katrina and Rita relief; The number of online donors is up 53% overall since January 2005
http://www.pewinternet.org/2005/11/24/13-million-americans-made-donati
ons-online-after-hurricanes-katrina-and-rita/
As another example, many people crossed state lines and race lines to participate in the Civil Rights movement.

I could also mention the many union organizers who crossed state lines to help others unionize for better pay and working conditions.

So this statement - Americans don't care about other Americans -is, by the evidence of historical facts, proven wrong.

That makes YOUR assertion - that all statements are true - equally wrong.

In any case, since you freely claim things that are obviously untrue, and that are also easily demonstrated to be untrue, I'm not going to bother continuing. Btw, I hope you realize that out of all your posts, I scroll past your regurgitation of other people's opinions, and when it comes to your personal posts, I only go up to the first lie. Which means I probably scroll past 95% of them at a minimum.

It's too bad you're too dishonest for adult, rational discussion. I'm just curious why, in this particular discussion, a presumably sane person such as yourself would hew to a line of thought so patently divergent from reality and so easily shown to be untrue.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 7:44 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
While Trump has yet to be sworn in and become president, can we just stipulate that there are many things that could be negatives and move on from there? Because, honestly, I can't imagine what good endlessly wallowing in anti-Trump obsession is going to do. The question is, what to do next.

...

And, in general, it might be worth while to support Sanders, Warren, and Duckworth as the major contenders (to date) against the Trump agenda.

I can see why 1kiki does not want "endlessly wallowing in anti-Trump obsession" thanks to 1kiki's selling the idea that Trump is no worse than Hillary.

Sanders and Warren and Duckworth won't be able to hold back the Republican tide. It will be the King Canute legend: No matter what Sanders and Company do, the tide will eventually go back out again without Sanders' help and the Republicans in Congress will lose some of their absolute control. In the meantime we are all getting wet thanks to people who were too disgusted to vote for either Trump or Hillary. Or who used their vote to send a message to Hillary. That would be 1kiki, would it not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_waves

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 7:45 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump is whining about Hillary getting 3,000,000 more votes than he did:

Quote:
Campaigning to win the Electoral College is much more difficult & sophisticated than the popular vote. Hillary focused on the wrong states! I would have done even better in the election, if that is possible, if the winner was based on popular vote - but would campaign differently

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/811562990285848576

Trump is apparently still chafing at critics' claims that he lacks a popular mandate. This is possibly because Trump has never acknowledged that FBI Director James Comey’s infamous letter on the 28th actually won the election. And the letter did it all by itself, without any help from Trump or his campaign.

I think Trump should honor Comey’s original letter by framing and hanging it in a prominent location in the Oval Office for all his guests to read.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3198222/Letter.pdf

A lot of people really did switch to Donald Trump at the last minute:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voters-really-did-switch-to-trump-
at-the-last-minute/

Quote:
While no one moved from Trump to Clinton, 0.9 percent of our respondents moved from Clinton to Trump....Trump also outpaced Clinton among people who were previously undecided or third-party backers, with 3.1 percent of respondents moving from those categories to Trump while just 2.3 percent did the same for Clinton. Clinton also saw 3.1 percent of her October supporters defecting to third-party candidates or becoming undecided. Trump lost just 1.7 percent.

Let's add this up:

Trump gained 0.9 + 3.1 - 1.7 = +2.3 percent
Clinton gained -0.9 + 2.3 - 3.1 = -1.7 percent

The October poll ended on the 24th. FBI Director James Comey released his infamous letter on the 28th. The November poll then showed Hillary Clinton with a net loss of 4 percent compared to Trump.

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Thursday, December 22, 2016 9:45 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by G:

I realize that communications professor Melissa Zimdars is full of great intentions, but she's just posted a list of what not to do for future misinformation/fake news sites. "If you want to be taken seriously, don't do these:"

That list would be
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53
V_81ZyitM/preview

Let's create some fake news to enrage Republicans: "I hear a rumor that Bernie scratched the initials DJT on bullets for his assault rifle." Critical thinkers would already know that did not happen, but Republican would not care. The GOP rage would know no limits, if they hear this fake news.
http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-gun-policy/

Republicans don't care about fake or true. They can't stop believing fake facts, even if a Professor recommends they stop. Even Democrats don't care enough to do anything beyond complain very softly and in a calm tone of voice about fake facts. The classic article explains in "Timid Liberals Blew the Election by Flinching at Hillary Clinton's Email Server"
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/timid-liberals-flinching-hillar
y-clintons-email-server

From start to finish, on every TV channel, there was misleading, call it fake, news about Hillary's email. After summarizing what was true and what was misleading, the article ends here:

Quote:
Liberals should have defended her with gusto from the start. There was never anything here and no evidence that Clinton did anything seriously wrong. And yet we didn't. Many liberals just steered clear of the whole thing. Others—including me sometimes—felt like every defense had to contain a series of caveats acknowledging that, yes, the private server was a bad idea, harumph harumph. And some others didn't even go that far. The result was that in the public eye, both liberals and conservatives were more or less agreeing that there was a lot of smoke here. So smoke there was. And now Donald Trump is a month away from being president.

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Friday, December 23, 2016 3:14 AM

Why? What American interests does this cross? I have asked over and what our AMERICAN interests are and yanno what?? NONE OF YOU KNOWS. But If you could figure our what our actual interests are, you'd be a lot less likely be be spun around by our elites and their fake news. Please, think long and hard what our AMERICAN interests are before you start getting all hysterical about "Russia".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You actually think that Drumpf has America's interests in mind when cow-towing to Putin & Russia? Yes, please do think long and hard about American, Russian, Putin and Drumpf interests. One thing is certain, kissing Putin's ass is in no way beneficial to the U.S. Drumpf's only interests are, like Putin's, lining his pockets with cash and liberated properties.

Do you really believe that Putin wants America to succeed? Drumpf is living in La La Land and Putin knows it. He's toying with him.

SGG

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Friday, December 23, 2016 3:40 AM

Here, here!

Just keeping this thread at the top. See, at least I admit it!

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by G:

I realize that communications professor Melissa Zimdars is full of great intentions, but she's just posted a list of what not to do for future misinformation/fake news sites. "If you want to be taken seriously, don't do these:"
That list would be
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53
V_81ZyitM/preview

Let's create some fake news to enrage Republicans: "I hear a rumor that Bernie scratched the initials DJT on bullets for his assault rifle." Critical thinkers would already know that did not happen, but Republican would not care. The GOP rage would know no limits, if they hear this fake news.
http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-gun-policy/

Republicans don't care about fake or true. They can't stop believing fake facts, even if a Professor recommends they stop. Even Democrats don't care enough to do anything beyond complain very softly and in a calm tone of voice about fake facts. The classic article explains in "Timid Liberals Blew the Election by Flinching at Hillary Clinton's Email Server"
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/timid-liberals-flinching-hillar
y-clintons-email-server

From start to finish, on every TV channel, there was misleading, call it fake, news about Hillary's email. After summarizing what was true and what was misleading, the article ends here:
Quote:
Liberals should have defended her with gusto from the start. There was never anything here and no evidence that Clinton did anything seriously wrong. And yet we didn't. Many liberals just steered clear of the whole thing. Others—including me sometimes—felt like every defense had to contain a series of caveats acknowledging that, yes, the private server was a bad idea, harumph harumph. And some others didn't even go that far. The result was that in the public eye, both liberals and conservatives were more or less agreeing that there was a lot of smoke here. So smoke there was. And now Donald Trump is a month away from being president.

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Friday, December 23, 2016 11:40 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
1kiki, I am dishonest you say?

Why yes, I do. And yes, you are.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Your example was not honest.

I was just responding to YOUR claim. YOU said AMERICANS don't CARE about other AMERICANS. I showed they do. Now you want to move the goalposts to. State budgets. Voting. Crossings state lines. Texans. You're constantly shifting the goal posts. Who DIDN'T contribute. Like here:

Quote:
Originally posted by second: Would 13 million also vote in state and local elections? Yes, they would. That only leaves 310 million other Americans who did not contribute aid, even as little as 25 cents, to victims for whatever selfish or political reasons.

THAT'S dishonest. (BTW, when you make a general statement - 'AMERICANS don't CARE about other AMERICANS' - even a small exception makes it false. But a 10% exception - for people donating specifically online - is a major exception.)

YOUR CLAIM IS FALSE.

Ethically, practically, and logically false.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Friday, December 23, 2016 11:48 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

The dissection begins. OBVIOUSLY, CLINTON DID SOMETHING WRONG. OBVIOUSLY, TRUMP DID SOMETHING RIGHT.
To deny that is to deny reality.

Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94% Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-23/top-white-house-economist-adm
its-94-all-new-jobs-under-obama-were-part-time
Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94% Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time
Just over six years ago, in December of 2010, we wrote "Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society", in which we predicted - and showed - that in light of the underlying changes resulting from the second great depression, whose full impacts remain masked by trillions in monetary stimulus … America is shifting from a traditional work force, one where the majority of new employment is retained on a full-time basis, to a "gig" economy, where workers are severely disenfranchised, and enjoy far less employment leverage, job stability and perks than their pre-crash peers. It also explains why despite the 4.5% unemployment rate, which the Fed has erroneously assumed is indicative of job market at "capacity", wage growth not only refuses to materialize, but as we showed yesterday, the growth in real disposable personal income was the lowest since 2014.

When we first penned our article, it was dubbed "fringe" tinfoil hattery, or in the latest vernacular, "fake news."
Fast forward 6 years, when a report by Harvard and Princeton economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger, confirms exactly what we warned. In their study, the duo show that from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans workers engaged in what they refer to as “alternative work” soared during the Obama era, from 10.7% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015. Alternative, or "gig" work is defined as "temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract company workers, independent contractors or freelancers", and is generally unsteady, without a fixed paycheck and with virtually no benefits.
The two economists also found that each of the common types of alternative work increased from 2005 to 2015—with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a janitorial services firm.

Krueger, who until 2013 was also the top White House economist serving as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, was "surprised" by the finding.
Quoted by quartz, he said “We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment.
While the finding is good news for some, such as graphic designers and lawyers who hate going to an office, for whom new technology and Obamacare has made it more appealing to become an independent contractor. But for those seeking a steady administrative assistant office job, the market is grim. It also explains why despite an apparent recovery in the labor market, wage growth has been non-existant, due to the lack of career advancement and salary increase options for this vast cohort which was hired over the past decade.
The decline of conventional full-time work has impacted every demographic. Whether this change is good or bad depends on what kinds of jobs people want. “Workers seeking full-time, steady work have lost,” said Krueger. He then added, perhaps sarcastically, that “while many of those who value flexibility and have a spouse with a steady job have probably gained.”
Yes, well, spousal support aside, it also confirms another troubling finding this website reported first earlier this month, namely that the number of multiple jobholders has recently hit the highest number this century.

Not surprisingly, the study found that young workers represented the largest growth of contractors who frequently do not receive any kind of benefits, even when they are working full-time. The issue is particularly frustrating to employees in the entertainment industry where media conglomerates rely on freelancers for long periods of time without offering benefits, an arrangement frequently referred to as “permalance.”
None of these "qualitative" aspects, however, matter to the outgoing president, who believes his administration was a net positive for workers.
"Since I signed Obamacare into law (in 2010), our businesses have added more than 15 million new jobs," said Obama, during his farewell press conference last Friday.
He did not delve into the details of just what those 15 million new jobs were. Now we know; and we also know why the Fed is making a huge mistake in thinking it can hike rates and tighten financial conditions, to reverse engineer wage growth, when corporations are guaranteed to not increase wages even in response to higher rates, as the data above confirms that the amount of slack in the economy is vastly greater than virtually all economists are willing to admit.

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Saturday, December 24, 2016 1:53 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

The dissection begins. OBVIOUSLY, CLINTON DID SOMETHING WRONG. OBVIOUSLY, TRUMP DID SOMETHING RIGHT.
To deny that is to deny reality.

The dissection from the other side:
As co-chair (with Ed Rollins) of the Great America PAC, OC political strategist Eric Beach had a key role in Donald Trump's stunning electoral win. And the PAC will continue to promote Trump's causes even after he takes office. Beach gives an insider's account of a wild election.
http://www.pbssocal.org/programs/inside-oc/pac-man-part-1/
http://www.pbssocal.org/programs/inside-oc/pac-man-part-2/

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Saturday, December 24, 2016 10:10 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

The dissection begins. OBVIOUSLY, CLINTON DID SOMETHING WRONG. OBVIOUSLY, TRUMP DID SOMETHING RIGHT.
To deny that is to deny reality.

How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumb
led-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html

How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?

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Sunday, December 25, 2016 10:04 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

The dissection begins. OBVIOUSLY, CLINTON DID SOMETHING WRONG. OBVIOUSLY, TRUMP DID SOMETHING RIGHT.
To deny that is to deny reality.

To deny 1kiki's assumptions is to deny reality? Now 1kiki has "The Truth"? [/sarcasm off]

A letter to historians of the future — the 2016 election really was dominated by a controversy over emails

by Matthew Yglesias
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/25/14037576/trump-won-because-
of-emails

To Whom It May Concern:

Sitting at my desk in the winter of 2016-2017, I have no way of knowing what the future holds for the United States under the administration of Donald Trump. I hope it will all turn out for the best. But I fear that it will not. The election of a man temperamentally unfit to the presidency and lacking in the basic qualifications to perform the job, backed up by congressional allies who seem determined to ignore his flagrant corruption, is an alarming situation. The odds that he will systematically corrupt American institutions and install an authoritarian kleptocracy or blunder into some kind of catastrophic war seem simply too high to entirely discount.

And if something big and awful does happen, I know from my own reading of history that the scholars of the future will be sorely tempted to look for causes that are big in proportion to the consequences.

Historians will write of a growing trend toward partisan polarization and a brewing sense of political crisis dating back to Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. They’ll note the projected end of America’s white majority, the geopolitical revolution induced by Russia’s reinvention of itself as an international beacon of cultural conservatism, and the corrosive effect of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. The “failures of neoliberalism” will come in for scrutiny.

All true and all important. But my message to the future is this. No matter how stupid it sounds, and no matter how much political and journalistic elites on all sides of America’s toxic politics began trying to ignore it as soon as the votes were counted, the dominant issue of the 2016 campaign was email server management.

The email story dominated the campaign

If that sounds far too boring and unimportant to have conceivably dominated the 2016 presidential campaign, then it is difficult to disagree with you. And yet the facts are what they are. Indeed, by September of 2015 — over a year before the voting — Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza had already written at least 50 items about the email controversy.

Email fever reached its peak on two separate major occasions. One was when Comey closed the investigation. Instead of simply saying “we looked into it and there was no crime,” Comey sought to immunize himself from Clinton critics by breaking with standard procedure to offer extended negative commentary on Clinton’s behavior. He said she was “extremely careless.”

Comey then brought the email story back to the center of the campaign in late October by writing a letter to Congress indicating that the email case had been reopened due to new discoveries on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. It turned out that the new discoveries were an awfully flimsy basis for a subpoena, and the subpoena turned up nothing.

This all still sounds unimportant, but it was not at the time:

The New York Times dedicated 100 percent of its above-the-fold space to coverage of Comey’s letter to Congress.

Throughout the campaign season, network newscasts dedicated more time to Clinton’s email server stories than to stories about all policy issues combined.

Donald Trump’s campaign rallies featured regular “lock her up” chants, centering the email server as the opposition’s main criticism of Clinton.

Across five television networks and six major newspapers, 11 percent of campaign coverage was stories about Clinton’s email server.

Critically, one useful function of email-based criticism of Hillary Clinton was to pull together the Trumpian and establishment wings of the Republican Party. That’s why it served as the central theme of the 2016 Republican Convention, allowing the likes of Scott Walker and Rick Perry to deliver on-message speeches rather than clashing with Trump’s message.

The email story made a big difference

Historians looking through the archives of stories published in November and December of 2016 will find billions of words published on the nature of Trump’s appeal to voters who liked him. These takes, whether accurate or not, are important pieces of sociological exegesis that shed light on the nature of our political debates.

But in terms of what actually drove the election result, people who liked Trump were not the key decisions-makers. Not only did he lose the national popular vote, but even in crucial swing states he was mostly viewed negatively.

In Pennsylvania, for example:

56 percent of voters said Trump was unqualified to be president.
62 percent of voters said Trump lacked the right temperament to be president.
60 percent of voters said Trump was dishonest.
56 percent had an unfavorable view of Donald Trump.

At the same time, Barack Obama had a 51 percent job approval rating in the state. A majority of voters were okay with the incumbent administration and a majority of voters took a dim view of Trump. But these marginal voters were also very skeptical of Clinton, and the email story that 65 percent of Pennsylvania voters said bothered them was a key reason why.

Indeed, research from Gallup indicates that emails dominated what voters heard about Clinton all throughout the campaign.

Research by Dan Hopkins of the University of Pennsylvania indicates that Trump dominated among voters who decided in the final two weeks of the campaign — a period in which Comey’s letters about Clinton’s emails dominated media coverage.

Big events sometimes have small causes

These events are at high risk of slipping out of view of the historical record for a variety of reasons. Republicans, for starters, had a vested interest in putting forward the idea that the election results constituted a sweeping public affirmation of their policy agenda. Competing factions of the Democratic Party, meanwhile, sought to use Clinton’s defeat as a rationale for advancing their own preferred substantive agendas.

More broadly, the further the email issue receded into the past the less credible it seemed that a major historical turning point could really have hinged on something so trivial.

And certainly one can imagine a variety of scenarios in which Clinton might have won the election despite her email woes. More successful economic policymaking from the Obama administration could have done the trick. So could a better campaign message or better targeting of resources. It was, after all, a very close election.

The crucial point, however, is that in broad ideological terms, the 2016 election happened at a time when the incumbent president was popular and the insurgent demagogue promising dramatic change was not popular. The unpopular insurgent managed to win, despite accumulating fewer voters than the popular incumbent’s designated successor, largely because she had become personally unpopular thanks to a massive onslaught of criticism largely focused on her email server.

Even at the time, some of us found it hardly credible that a decision as weighty as who should be president was being decided on the basis of something as trivial as which email address the secretary of state used. Future generations must find it even harder to believe. But the facts are what they are — email server management, rather than any deeper or more profound root cause, was the dominant issue in Donald Trump’s successful rise to power.

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Sunday, December 25, 2016 10:26 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
letter to historians of the future — the 2016 election really was dominated by a controversy over emails-SECONDHAND

Oh, is this spin-the-wheel-of-excuses? Again?

Racism
Misogyny
Deplorables
Hacked vote counts
Comey
Fake news
BUT PUTIN!!!

The problem with the emails isn't that they were leaked (not hacked, leaked) but that they showed the real DNC to the public: DNC mired in corruption.

Yanno, it's not like the DNC wasn't told. Hubby and I must have gotten at least five of those written "opinion polls" from the DNC (where I had to write in my top three concerns because they weren't part of their "push poll", and guess which ones they were?) and every time they called, which was at least six times, hubby or I gave them at least a 10-minute earful. The problem was, they weren't listening and they didn't intend to listen.

Jimminy crimminy, SECONDHAND. The DNC needs a new mission, aside from representing banks, neocons, and big pharma.

Oooh! oooh! I have an idea! How about representing working-class Americans???

So stop the grieving process, that time is over. Get on your phone, and start reforming the DNC.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake

"If you aren't aware, Texans don't have much concern for the well-being of Yankees or Californians, even Yankee factory workers in Indiana "- SECOND

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Sunday, December 25, 2016 12:28 PM