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US Politics: Borrow And Spend Conservatism Marches On


Mr. Chatywin et al.

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31 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

:tantrum:Listen Birdie, I haven't gotten to make a title in a while and I actually had a good idea. Don't be mad that I :ph34r:'d you, even if I cheated in doing so. :P

If the market drops tomorrow like it did to day, would that qualify as a legit market correction over the course of the last 6 business days? 

It hit 10% with today's drop. So we are in correction territory, but you can bet there's more to come.

eta: it's ok, really! Just pulling your chain!

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Okay, so as if reality couldn’t get more surreal, Henry fucking Kissinger is being consulted on nuclear war. He sounds up for it. What. The. Fuck. Back in film school I studied old old parodies of him by a now dead director. The fact that he is actually back actually advising using the actual Doomsday Device is... Honestly, this is all some elaborate joke on my sanity, right? You can tell me. I promise i’ll still go nuts either way. 

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NPR News tonight three lead stories draws our attention to 1) the stock market corrections / drops; 2) missing 800 million that a single agency of the Pentagon has no idea where it is or went; 3) Kelly might be making trouble for himself by acting like a general instead of civil government servant re Rob Porter, saying he's a good guy and was given confidential material despite having only a partial security clearance BECAUSE of the reports of domestic abuse -- and then saying he knew nothing about such charges.

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56 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Okay, so as if reality couldn’t get more surreal, Henry fucking Kissinger is being consulted on nuclear war. He sounds up for it. What. The. Fuck. Back in film school I studied old old parodies of him by a now dead director. The fact that he is actually back actually advising using the actual Doomsday Device is... Honestly, this is all some elaborate joke on my sanity, right? You can tell me. I promise i’ll still go nuts either way. 

You mean, this shit?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5344473/Kissinger-Nuclear-strike-North-Korea-tempting.html

It's tempting to make another one of these jumanji jokes, but maybe those scientists back at the CERN did mess up the fabric of the universe with their fishy experiments.

In all seriousness though I'm starting to think the US is showing the world what happens when you neglect education for decades and keep promoting anti-intellectualism through a mix of twisted marketing techniques and bad political propaganda. Trumpism increasingly looks less like conservatism and more like the revenge of the stupid. Like "let's take all the dumbest, craziest ideas ever conceived by humanity, use them to take political decisions, and see what happens." Right-wing billionaires were so obsessed with tax cuts that they forgot they come with a price: you just can't use stupidity as a political weapon without nasty side-effects.

If he hasn't gone senile, maybe Kissinger isn't the worst advisor one can think of though. He allegedly protected the world from drunk Nixon, so maybe he can somehow protect us from Trump, who knows?
http://www.businessinsider.com/drunk-richard-nixon-nuke-north-korea-2017-1?IR=T

If we survive the next decade the Kubricks of tomorrow are going to love making movies about our time.
In the meantime, I think maybe I ought to have another whisky. Nothing makes much sense anymore, so might as well use whatever time we have left to join the insanity.

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4 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

I have to give CNN some credit, they actually showed a moment of journalistic worth today. I wondered if they and other major lowest common denominator news outlets might find some way to uncomfortably talk around and downplay the truth about Arthur Jones, the Nazi running for Congress in Illinois, but Alisyn Camerota bluntly and vocally confronted him and picked him apart in the space of a few minutes. If you can spare a few minutes watch the video of the interview.

 

Heard him on the radio. Apparently he uses the American First slogan. I wonder where we heard that before?

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The Democrats should be a certain bet.

I really cannot fathom why Americans tolerate gerrymandering, or excuse it. Seriously, even in this "slump" the Democrats are 6% ahead of the Republicans. There's discussion about how they'll need a generic lead of 10% or so to flip the house. How the hell is this not a cause for riots on the street? Your votes are so disgustingly ignored.

It's called the House of Representatives. It is meant to represent the population at large. You should be making this your focus, front and centre, until it is fixed. Stop making excuses about "urban packing" and other stuff - gerrymandering is the root cause of your huge disconnection between the needs of your people and the whims of your government.

This is an excellent interactive tool.

It shows potential ways districts could be redrawn. More importantly, it shows the outcomes of the new maps: far far faaaaaaar more districts could be competitive.

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Hasn't Kissinger been working with the Chinese these past decades? He seems a rather unprobable supporter for a first-strike against NK. Perhaps he just made the right noises to be back at the big table.
I fully expect Trump to go to war before the end of his term though. I'm just wondering if he'll do it to win the 2018 mid-terms or 2020.

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1 hour ago, Yukle said:

The Democrats should be a certain bet.

I really cannot fathom why Americans tolerate gerrymandering, or excuse it. Seriously, even in this "slump" the Democrats are 6% ahead of the Republicans. There's discussion about how they'll need a generic lead of 10% or so to flip the house. How the hell is this not a cause for riots on the street? Your votes are so disgustingly ignored.

It's called the House of Representatives. It is meant to represent the population at large. You should be making this your focus, front and centre, until it is fixed. Stop making excuses about "urban packing" and other stuff - gerrymandering is the root cause of your huge disconnection between the needs of your people and the whims of your government.

This is an excellent interactive tool.

It shows potential ways districts could be redrawn. More importantly, it shows the outcomes of the new maps: far far faaaaaaar more districts could be competitive.

Thanks for the 538 Link Yukle, it does a good job depicting the issue with district mapping.  However, if anything, it underscores that while gerrymandering may have an impact in house control in a very tight election, the bigger issue is tying land with electoral outcomes.  The 538 projections only have a 3 seat swing between the current districts and the compact district options.  (albeit with a larger number of districts in play). The rest of the options are not based in the legal framework or are partisan tweaks to influence a particular desired outcome. 

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8 hours ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Oh come on now, with these awesome of the awesomest tax cuts, we will soon have 142584356785466% growth and the tax cuts will pay for themselves and then some!  See, just think about how soon I'll get my pony! ..........    :bawl:

Neglect me at your own peril, bitch!  :smoking:

7 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

I have to give CNN some credit, they actually showed a moment of journalistic worth today. I wondered if they and other major lowest common denominator news outlets might find some way to uncomfortably talk around and downplay the truth about Arthur Jones, the Nazi running for Congress in Illinois, but Alisyn Camerota bluntly and vocally confronted him and picked him apart in the space of a few minutes. If you can spare a few minutes watch the video of the interview.

 

 

7 hours ago, Sword of Doom said:

I was just coming here to post about this. 

This is the only way that bigots should be handle if they are going to be interviewed. 

This is the total opposite of how they handled Richard Spencer, who's views are extremely similar to this old nazi fucks.

It's been pretty good lately, I'm tellin' ya!

I haven't always had an office, but I can tell you that CNN wasn't on it until pretty recently.

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29 minutes ago, horangi said:

Thanks for the 538 Link Yukle, it does a good job depicting the issue with district mapping.  However, if anything, it underscores that while gerrymandering may have an impact in house control in a very tight election, the bigger issue is tying land with electoral outcomes.  The 538 projections only have a 3 seat swing between the current districts and the compact district options.  (albeit with a larger number of districts in play). The rest of the options are not based in the legal framework or are partisan tweaks to influence a particular desired outcome. 

The difference is huge. The map is based on the current congress, so it's not going to chance who is in power now. All of the current votes would still stand. Rather, focus on the fact that it significantly boosts the number of competitive seats, which would be astronomically desirable. In that instance, the current 6% generic swing for the Democrats would be a landslide victory. If it goes back to 10% they'd have a super-majority.

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On Sunday CNN is doing a documentary on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. For those of you who either don't know who she is or only vaguely know, Hearst was the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, famous newspaper owner, yellow journals all, of the first half of the 20th century. The movie Citizen Kane was more or less about him.

The kidnapping was sensational, especially when after some time she was apparently "turned" by her kidnappers and took part in various criminal activities with them, including bank robberies. She was kidnapped by a domestic American terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. When she was eventually captured her defence was that she had been more or less brainwashed through deprivation and rape, being chained up in a closet and forced to be politically corrected by her captors. She eventually was convicted and sentenced to the maximum, 35 years. But before sentencing occurred the judge died and the new judge reduced the sentence to 7 years.

People were really divided about the case, which I followed closely because she was a few months older than me, just turned 20 when kidnapped. California Representative Leo Ryan was collecting signatures on a petition asking for her release, just before he flew to Guyana and was murdered by the Jim Jones cult group. Actor John Wayne famously commented that it was odd people could believe Jones had brainwashed 900 people to commit suicide but wouldn't accept that the SLA could brainwash a teenager.

President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence to the 22 months served at the time, and eventually President Bill Clinton pardoned her, on his last day in office. The Northern California prosecutor involved in the case had sent Clinton a long and passionate memo setting out the reasons why he should not pardon her, which memo Clinton chose to disregard.

Who was the prosecutor?  Robert Mueller.

Just an interesting historic tidbit for you all!

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4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

On Sunday CNN is doing a documentary on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. For those of you who either don't know who she is or only vaguely know, Hearst was the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, famous newspaper owner, yellow journals all, of the first half of the 20th century. The movie Citizen Kane was more or less about him.

The kidnapping was sensational, especially when after some time she was apparently "turned" by her kidnappers and took part in various criminal activities with them, including bank robberies. She was kidnapped by a domestic American terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. When she was eventually captured her defence was that she had been more or less brainwashed through deprivation and rape, being chained up in a closet and forced to be politically corrected by her captors. She eventually was convicted and sentenced to the maximum, 35 years. But before sentencing occurred the judge died and the new judge reduced the sentence to 7 years.

People were really divided about the case, which I followed closely because she was a few months older than me, just turned 20 when kidnapped. California Representative Leo Ryan was collecting signatures on a petition asking for her release, just before he flew to Guyana and was murdered by the Jim Jones cult group. Actor John Wayne famously commented that it was odd people could believe Jones had brainwashed 900 people to commit suicide but wouldn't accept that the SLA could brainwash a teenager.

President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence to the 22 months served at the time, and eventually President Bill Clinton pardoned her, on his last day in office. The Northern California prosecutor involved in the case had sent Clinton a long and passionate memo setting out the reasons why he should not pardon her, which memo Clinton chose to disregard.

Who was the prosecutor?  Robert Mueller.

Just an interesting historic tidbit for you all!

GET FUCKED!!!!

WOOOOOOW

I'm tuning in for that! And Toubin just sold it well on air.

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5 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

On Sunday CNN is doing a documentary on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. For those of you who either don't know who she is or only vaguely know, Hearst was the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, famous newspaper owner, yellow journals all, of the first half of the 20th century. The movie Citizen Kane was more or less about him.

The kidnapping was sensational, especially when after some time she was apparently "turned" by her kidnappers and took part in various criminal activities with them, including bank robberies. She was kidnapped by a domestic American terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. When she was eventually captured her defence was that she had been more or less brainwashed through deprivation and rape, being chained up in a closet and forced to be politically corrected by her captors. She eventually was convicted and sentenced to the maximum, 35 years. But before sentencing occurred the judge died and the new judge reduced the sentence to 7 years.

People were really divided about the case, which I followed closely because she was a few months older than me, just turned 20 when kidnapped. California Representative Leo Ryan was collecting signatures on a petition asking for her release, just before he flew to Guyana and was murdered by the Jim Jones cult group. Actor John Wayne famously commented that it was odd people could believe Jones had brainwashed 900 people to commit suicide but wouldn't accept that the SLA could brainwash a teenager.

President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence to the 22 months served at the time, and eventually President Bill Clinton pardoned her, on his last day in office. The Northern California prosecutor involved in the case had sent Clinton a long and passionate memo setting out the reasons why he should not pardon her, which memo Clinton chose to disregard.

Who was the prosecutor?  Robert Mueller.

Just an interesting historic tidbit for you all!

Specifically on Mueller, that's some fucking cray cray shit right there. It's like 'small world' but when you think about it with a little bit of American pride bias it's like 'good dude gonna be a good dude'.

Knowing no more than that, I'm suddenly pretty fond of Mueller. Maybe he should be fuckin' president.

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23 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Specifically on Mueller, that's some fucking cray cray shit right there. It's like 'small world' but when you think about it with a little bit of American pride bias it's like 'good dude gonna be a good dude'.

Knowing no more than that, I'm suddenly pretty fond of Mueller. Maybe he should be fuckin' president.

I'm not sure if you're sarcastic. Either way, I don't think her sentence was at all well-deserved and I think her sentence being commuted was fair. It's the same rationale as child-soldiers: I wouldn't hold them accountable either, and would much prefer a compassionate and rehabilitation approach.

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32 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Who was the prosecutor?  Robert Mueller.

My opinion of him has dropped from disinterest and neutral to uncomfortable and appalled.

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26 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

GET FUCKED!!!!

WOOOOOOW

I'm tuning in for that! And Toubin just sold it well on air.

I forgot to mention, it's actually a 6-hour series, 2 hours each on the next three Sundays.

I didn't remember it was Mueller, but I do remember how hard the prosecution went after her. As a 20 year old myself, I could see that I might have ended up the same as her.

When she was finally caught, her weight had dropped to 87 pounds, and doctors for the defence said her IQ had fallen from 130 to 112, and called her a "low-IQ, low-affect zombie".

If you want the basic outline of the case, the Wikipedia article is quite good, with lots of information I had forgotten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst

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8 minutes ago, Yukle said:

I'm not sure if you're sarcastic. Either way, I don't think her sentence was at all well-deserved and I think her sentence being commuted was fair. It's the same rationale as child-soldiers: I wouldn't hold them accountable either, and would much prefer a compassionate and rehabilitation approach.

Well...child soldiers are younger than 16, she was 20. 

As I said, people were really divided about the case.

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I just wanted to add that one thing I remember from the time of the trial was the fact that many people wanted to see Hearst convicted to prove a rich person couldn't buy their way out of a jail sentence. It was an attitude of fuck you, 'if I was kidnapped and raped and brainwashed I would never have done any of the stuff you did'.

And she was a rebel, she was a feminist! And before she got engaged to that nice white boy she had shocked and dismayed her family by dating a black man! Obviously a trouble maker!

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