US Politics: There's No Morning After Pill

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

3 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Here's the World Herald story about the rallies in Omaha and Lincoln yesterday. Even in Nebraska far more people that expected turned out:

http://www.omaha.com/news/politics/at-least-people-fill-the-streets-in-women-s-march/article_5de6469e-58ff-5e39-b4de-290a99e01a26.html#utm_source=omaha.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletter%2Fdaily%2F&utm_medium=email&utm_content=read mor

Now the task is to keep this up and transfer the enthusiasm to other actions such as contacting congresspeople and voting in elections at all levels. Trump's personality itself will help this -- his kneejerk narcissistic reactions will keep people energized who wouldn't be by a Republican president with a less inflammatory style, even one with policies similar to his.

Yes, that is the big thing, to make sure sure we follow up.   I hope things continue.

[LongRider]

8 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Now the task is to keep this up and transfer the enthusiasm to other actions such as contacting congresspeople and voting in elections at all levels. Trump's personality itself will help this -- his kneejerk narcissistic reactions will keep people energized who wouldn't be by a Republican president with a less inflammatory style, even one with policies similar to his.

This where the work really lies.  The Indivisible Guide been floating around the web the last couple of weeks and looks to be a good framework for basic activism.   https://www.indivisibleguide.com/web

A suggestion for calling Congress is to put their phone numbers in your phone so contacting them is easy.  Put your state reps in there as well.  We have to speak up, not just millions at a time, but one at a time too.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Does anyone think we should have a thread about the European response to Trump (and Brexit maybe)? And let this thread be for more specifically American stuff. Will start it if people interested.

No.  Because it is all connected via conscious strategy and objectives of all the so-called alt right political parties concerned.  These aren't vacuum parties, but parties of international coalition.  Until, of course pooterpoot no longer can resist sneering at little hands' virility and then ka-boom.

Little hands is declaring war on everyone at the same time, from medicare, social security, health insurance, people with mortgages on properties the little hands' ilk just can't wait to get into their own hands, public lands and the lands belonging to Native Americans, sustainable energy, his own country's intelligence agencies and government, the environment, NATO, the UN, China, the Middle East, Mexico and probably all of South America, immigrants, and most certainly women, African Americans, Muslims cities,  intellectuals and artists and students (while constantly stealing what they create and plagerizing their work!) and the media (and o has Murdoch, little hands' palsy walsy, been salivating to get hold of PBS for years!.  Plus a whole bunch more that I am not thinking of just at this moment.

I've never seen an historian's account of anyone succeeding with a war on multiple fronts simultaneously who ultimately won.  This includes Napoleon and Hitler -- and both times, coincidentally, it was Russia 'going along" until they felt strong enough and otherwise well connected, to turn on them both and substantially assist in taking them out.

But we gotta keep up the presha at all times on all fronts!  And -- think hard about the meaning of militias in the histories of independence and revolution.

 

[Chaircat Meow]

3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

No.  Because it is all connected via conscious strategy and objectives of all the so-called alt right political parties concerned.  These aren't vacuum parties, but parties of international coalition.  Until, of course pooterpoot no longer can resist sneering at little hands' virility and then ka-boom.

Little hands is declaring war on everyone at the same time, from medicare, social security, health insurance, people with mortgages on properties the little hands' ilk just can't wait to get into their own hands, public lands and the lands belonging to Native Americans, sustainable energy, his own country's intelligence agencies and government, the environment, NATO, the UN, China, the Middle East, Mexico and probably all of South America, immigrants, and most certainly women, African Americans, Muslims cities,  intellectuals and artists and students (while constantly stealing what they create and plagerizing their work!) and the media (and o has Murdoch, little hands' palsy walsy, been salivating to get hold of PBS for years!.  Plus a whole bunch more that I am not thinking of just at this moment.

I've never seen an historian's account of anyone succeeding with a war on multiple fronts simultaneously who ultimately won.  This includes Napoleon and Hitler -- and both times, coincidentally, it was Russia 'going along" until they felt strong enough and otherwise well connected, to turn on them both and substantially assist in taking them out.

But we gotta keep up the presha at all times on all fronts!  And -- think hard about the meaning of militias in the histories of independence and revolution.

 

Yeah ... wise words. Thanks so much for this.

Here is the thread I suggested anyway.

 

[LongRider]

11 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Little hands is declaring war on everyone at the same time, from medicare, social security, health insurance, people with mortgages on properties the little hands' ilk just can't wait to get into their own hands, public lands and the lands belonging to Native Americans, sustainable energy, his own country's intelligence agencies and government, the environment, NATO, the UN, China, the Middle East, Mexico and probably all of South America, immigrants, and most certainly women, African Americans, Muslims cities,  intellectuals and artists and students (while constantly stealing what they create and plagerizing their work!) and the media (and o has Murdoch, little hands' palsy walsy, been salivating to get hold of PBS for years!.  Plus a whole bunch more that I am not thinking of just at this moment.

I haven't thought of Prez Orange Shit Thing quite like this, but you're right.

Quote

I've never seen an historian's account of anyone succeeding with a war on multiple fronts simultaneously who ultimately won.  This includes Napoleon and Hitler -- and both times, coincidentally, it was Russia 'going along" until they felt strong enough and otherwise well connected, to turn on them both and substantially assist in taking them out.

But we gotta keep up the presha at all times on all fronts!  And -- think hard about the meaning of militias in the histories of independence and revolution.

 

[Dr. Pepper]

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

This interview between Chuck Todd and Kellyanne Conway is worth watching.

Omg.  Oh my god.  Like, what the fuck else am I supposed to say about this?

"We'll have to rethink our relationship with you...."  "Alternative facts"  These people are terrifying.  I now think I wasn't scared enough about the election results.  

[protar]

7 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Omg.  Oh my god.  Like, what the fuck else am I supposed to say about this?

"We'll have to rethink our relationship with you...."  "Alternative facts"  These people are terrifying.  I now think I wasn't scared enough about the election results.  

I'm not even American and this terrifies me. Stuff like Trump have one of his advisors make a statement claiming that his inauguration was the largest in history and that there would be repercussions for the press for reporting otherwise. This is the start of the suppression of freedom of speech.

[Zorral]

11 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

I haven't thought of Prez Orange Shit Thing quite like this, but you're right.

 

These people are not even politicians much less military strategiest.  They are corporate billionaires who got to be billionaires by looting and disaster capitalism.  They are taking a sledge hammer to every possible institution and organization that provides civic stability for the vast majority of this nation's and even other nations' citizens for the only purpose of profiting financially from the destruction.  This is the heart of capitalism, lacking any goal but short term profit for the individual / few and disaster for everyone else.  They think not at all beyond this.

They are like the Hansa, that league of commercial families that dominated the economic structures of northern Europe, for whom there was no good in the world at all but profit.  There are numbers of accounts of how they would allow the murder or commit the murder of even their own children, if there was profit to gotten from it.  Their brutality and ruthlessness were legendary, and so was their oppression.

Nothing could rein the Hansa families until the rise of the nation state with more revenue than even they could extract because the european nation state (and the Ottoman, too, for that matter) had a strong tax base that allowed the state to finance a standing army.  Notice how determined the wars made on the state have been by neocon etc. contingents since Nixon -- and their two strongest deployments were the religious right and white supremacy -- followed by the haters of women having reproductive rights.

 

 

[Mexal]

1 minute ago, protar said:

I'm not even American and this terrifies me. Stuff like Trump have one of his advisors make a statement claiming that his inauguration was the largest in history and that there would be repercussions for the press for reporting otherwise. This is the start of the suppression of freedom of speech.

He can try but he's going to have a hard time with a media that's guaranteed those freedoms. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Crowd estimates for the US ranges from the low end at 3.7 million to the high end at 4.6 million. 

It looked pretty damn impressive as a whole.

 

[Einheri]

The other thread was closed, so...

 

That might be true for everything west of Poland (or Germany), but they can still roll over the Baltic countries, Norway & Sweden, and several of the other Eastern Euros, and unless you’re willing to use nukes, there is little NATO (minus the US) could do about in its current state as even the larger European powers like the UK, France and Germany struggle with deploying battalions of troops, let alone brigades to other parts of Europe. I mean just look at their number of tanks. France, the UK and Germany have something like 200-300 tanks each, while Russia has 2700 active tanks and another 10 000 tanks in reserve (and that's just T-72s, T-80s, T-90s and recently introduced T-14s i.e. they have older tanks stored as well).

[Dr. Pepper]

Just now, Mexal said:

He can try but he's going to have a hard time with a media that's guaranteed those freedoms. 

But how much damage can be done here?  It seems a lot.  He has entire base whipped into this frenzy of thinking the media only tells lies.  He's withdrawn press privileges before (it was WaPo, iirc), he doesn't take or answer questions from certain press he doesn't like, he has his press sec going out for the first time to tell a petty dumb lie. To me this is all really scary.  Plus where does it end?  I mean, a few days ago even I would have accused someone of being needlessly hysterical for saying this, but do we start seeing reporters mysteriously disappearing or being killed?  What about comedians?  Satirists? 

Threatening the media for not also reporting on these "alternative facts" is very terrifying to me.

[mormont]

Quite a lot of damage can and will be done. As I've noted before, if there is one thing Trump has been convincing and consistent about for decades, it's his view that the press should be much, much more tightly regulated.

He can't do away with the First Amendment but he can, and will, do whatever he can to limit its power. That is not going to stop with bullying the press corps. He's going to make attempts to alter the libel laws, radically expanding their scope and reducing the available defences. The aim will be to put more media out of action in the manner of the Gawker trial. You can't overturn the First, but you can make media owners too scared of being sued out of existence to print anything controversial - at least, anything controversial about rich people.

[protar]

12 minutes ago, Mexal said:

He can try but he's going to have a hard time with a media that's guaranteed those freedoms. 

That's the hope but who knows how guaranteed those freedoms will be by the end of his term. I'm seriously worried that we're going to start seeing sanctions and red tape for any news organisation that doesn't conform to the narrative trump wants.

The fact that he felt the need to lie about the inauguration turn out specifically is worrying in it's own way, because it is a mostly inconsequential thing which lying about serves no purpose save to stroke trump's own ego. It's the same kind of narcissistic behaviour dictators do, broaching no slight against them. 

[LongRider]

Conway kept squawking 'we allowed the press in' when Trump signed his first actions.  'we allowed the press in' 'we allowed the press in'.   Wow, that says alot right there.  That woman can lie so fast it's unbelievable.

[Rippounet]

11 minutes ago, protar said:

I'm not even American and this terrifies me. Stuff like Trump have one of his advisors make a statement claiming that his inauguration was the largest in history and that there would be repercussions for the press for reporting otherwise. This is the start of the suppression of freedom of speech.

I'm with you on this one.
I expect ugliness and bad faith during an election campaign, but the fact that it's not stopping is really worrying.

[QuietColours]

1 hour ago, kairparabola said:

Seriously. We were all jammed together unable to move but inches at a time for some of it, and I heard nary an ill word or complaint. I did have one woman trying to get around me to her friend but trying to get around me to my right where there was maybe an inch gap (poor plan) instead of to my left where there was a foot of space (better plan). So after I tired of her jamming into my right shoulder I politely suggested she go to the left. Which she did. That was probably the most irritated I was and in the end it was NBD. And I'm sure many people experienced things like that. A slight inconvenience in the bigger picture.

Same. We were so tightly packed it was impossible not to jostle people a little, but the crowd was full of the most patient people I'd ever seen, despite being cold and claustrophobic. There was some impatience (there were multiple reasons behind Denver chanting "March!"), but the focus really was on supporting each other.

And in terms of real-world stuff going on at the same time, there were also a lot of people wearing sandwich boards with representative phone numbers and a lot of exchange of information--about reaching out, about the issues, about different ways to be involved. It gets frustrating, sometimes, calling your representatives over and over and just getting full mailboxes, day in and day out, and it's isolating. Being surrounded by a crowd of people who can tell you they're doing the same things, or sometimes they even get through to an actual person--it's a major motivation boost. There were also crowds of children marching, who were all incredibly focused and positive. They aren't voting yet, but they're building a positive framework for activism and civic involvement.

Bennett and Gardner haven't issued any statements on the march yet that I can find, but I do hope that this, in addition to their absolutely swamped offices, is registering with them.

[Altherion]

The press has been losing the trust of the people for decades. Trump did not create this trend, but he is exploiting it and in a way his claims about the crowds are a low-cost, low-risk strategy: the media have been against him the entire way and fighting back is unlikely to harm him.

[Rippounet]

18 minutes ago, Einheri said:

That might be true for everything west of Poland (or Germany), but they can still roll over the Baltic countries, Norway & Sweden, and several of the other Eastern Euros, and unless you’re willing to use nukes, there is little NATO (minus the US) could do about in its current state as even the larger European powers like the UK, France and Germany struggle with deploying battalions of troops, let alone brigades to other parts of Europe.

I really doubt Putin is crazy enough to start a major war that might compel even Trump to commit the US to the fray. And even assuming the US under Trump is willing to break its own alliances with Europe for some reason, all major world powers including the US would still have to ask themselves whether it's in their best interests to let Europe be slowly conquered by Russia.
This is nothing less than a WWIII scenario. With at least three nuclear powers involved (Russia, France, the UK).

[Zorral]

5 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Conway kept squawking 'we allowed the press in' when Trump signed his first actions.  'we allowed the press in' 'we allowed the press in'.   Wow, that says alot right there.  That woman can lie so fast it's unbelievable.

The language of people who believe in themselves as rulers, not governors.

Which is why the war against the Public Broadcasting System, the media sources they don't control and desperately want to.  While other media has significantly pulled back any real reportage of anything that could be considered real news, whether local, national or global,  public radio in particular has vastly increased its reporting and investigative journalism locally, nationally and globally.

There's little money coming to individual stations from whatever little of public funding of public broadcasing already.  The very small ones in more isolated communities are the only radio stations that provides weather and disaster information as it is approaching. No tornado warnings at all on the media up in the northern midwest a couple of summers ago which caused so much loss of life because almost all the media only provides the tabloid version of 'news' -- meaning so-called little hands' ilks of celebrities and their goings on. The rest of the radio stations all belong to rabid religious ilks -- who when allowed broadcast licenses and band width back in the 70's began opening the wedges to the rushes, etc. and -- what we got on January 20 in the Oval Office.

I cannot express how alarming it was to be driving along with my midwestern relatives on summer school vacations and hearing the horrors coming out of the radio spit out by so-called men of god -- all kinds of hatred, particularly of women, people who go to college, read books, interracial marriage, and the horrors of satan running Washington -- as pawns of the Soviet Union in the goal to make us all Russians and  commies -- -- remember that?

These radio stations have been spewing this rubbish since the 1970's.  In the meantime all the local newspaper closed and instead what they have are privately owned chains of something they call a newspaper but has no news in it, other than what the right wing local publisher wants said. The letter columns are nothing but spewings of the sort from the religious right radio stations.

In the 70's began the dismantling of separation of church and state here, and this is what we got.  It worked so well for the shock and awe  capitalists!  This has been going on all around the world too.  Look at the witch burnings by the evangelical protestants in various African nations of people still practicing their traditional spiritual expressions, for a single example.  The constant expression of hatred for gay people for another example.  There are many more, and they are allied with the corporate interests plundering the local resources.

Yah, this is global and it has been a half century in the making.  We can't dismantle it in a day -- but can the planet survive the time it will take to fashion our own long game, much less implement it?  Once again it does seem the greatest burden and the most effective method in the short run is local activism and action.  And don't forget these people are very very very armed . . . .