u.s. politics: a cruel and unusual government

[Zorral]

12 hours ago, Nasty LongRider said:

My basic argument is Trump isn't waiting for indictments to strike out as I think he taking the probe personally now.

....…………

Zorral I relate to your phrase 'climate destabilization'.   No Calif went from very heavy rains with a near broken dam chasteophe, to a very fast drying out of the landscape with devastating fires.  My area was covered in smoke, something new to the locals.  

We have lots of fire season left, alas, and too much cheat grass waiting like tinder for a spark. 

One thing we the voters need to do is agitate constantly for high speed rail, and lots of it.  Because any kind of legitimately organized and effective evacuation cannot happen in most high density regions without it.  We see how people couldn't really get out of Houston ahead of the flood waters.  We see that the size of both Harvey and Irma covered too much of the regional landmass to evade them -- and this is particularly so for long, narrow Florida and the girth and power of Irma.

People like to blame the victims of these storms for not evacuating.  But 1) the evacuation advisories started way too late.  They should have been going out days and days ago.  2) Assholes of the alt right like Limbaugh said this was all bs, manufactured by the libuuurals to drum up support for the ideology of climate change. (Shouldn't he be prosecuted for this?  Fark free speech here, he's killed people.) 3) That we do so little to make shelters and evacuation possible from these catastrophes is really that dyed in the wool USian ideology of the lone wolf and let 'em all die and god will sort it out, i.e. those with the resources get away safely and early, and everyone else can die and / or lose their homes and livelihoods.  Society has no role in having things work out otherwise.  Which is 100% different from how things work in places like Cuba.

Hell yes, these catastrophes are politics.

Hmmm.  Has anyone else speculated that dmc515 is really David Brooks? He's sure got the tone and attitude pitch perfect! 

 

[LongRider]

An evacuation in my area would result in instant gridlock for hundreds of miles.  Scary thought. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

An evacuation in my area would result in instant gridlock for hundreds of miles.  Scary thought. 

Yeah, that could get really ugly, pretty quick. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Paul Ryan Opens His Mouth and Ridiculous, Sycophantic Bulllshit Falls Out of It

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ryan-on-trump-siding-dems-perfectly-reasonable-rationale?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

4 hours ago, Nasty LongRider said:

???

Silly joke on my part. Spark as a screen name for Tinder. Punch line no Tinderellas for me.

 

[Morpheus]

40 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Paul Ryan Opens His Mouth and Ridiculous, Sycophantic Bulllshit Falls Out of It

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ryan-on-trump-siding-dems-perfectly-reasonable-rationale?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

 

This Ramsay/Reek thing they have going is hard to watch

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

This Ramsay/Reek thing they have going is hard to watch

Yeah, it's absolutely shameless and spineless. I can't help but draw a similar line between him and John Boehner much the same way we often compare Dubya and Trump. As bad as we thought that administration and speaker were, this is like that cubed. What a fucking shitshow our supposed "leadership" has become.

[LongRider]

34 minutes ago, Notone said:

Silly joke on my part. Spark as a screen name for Tinder. Punch line no Tinderellas for me.

 

Ah, don't cry. Here, have a cold one on me.     

[Martell Spy]

Republicans Claim That Their New Plan to Repeal Obamacare Is a Moderate Compromise. LOL.

https://slate.com/business/2017/09/the-new-republican-plan-to-repeal-obamacare-is-even-more-vicious-than-the-old-plan.html

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

7 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Republicans Claim That Their New Plan to Repeal Obamacare Is a Moderate Compromise. LOL.

https://slate.com/business/2017/09/the-new-republican-plan-to-repeal-obamacare-is-even-more-vicious-than-the-old-plan.html

Jesus Christ, will this dog ever let go of this bone? I thought we were done with this. Aren't they past the point where reconciliation is possible? 

[lokisnow]

9 hours ago, Zorral said:

One thing we the voters need to do is agitate constantly for high speed rail, and lots of it.  Because any kind of legitimately organized and effective evacuation cannot happen in most high density regions without it.  We see how people couldn't really get out of Houston ahead of the flood waters.  We see that the size of both Harvey and Irma covered too much of the regional landmass to evade them -- and this is particularly so for long, narrow Florida and the girth and power of Irma.

People like to blame the victims of these storms for not evacuating.  But 1) the evacuation advisories started way too late.  They should have been going out days and days ago.  2) Assholes of the alt right like Limbaugh said this was all bs, manufactured by the libuuurals to drum up support for the ideology of climate change. (Shouldn't he be prosecuted for this?  Fark free speech here, he's killed people.) 3) That we do so little to make shelters and evacuation possible from these catastrophes is really that dyed in the wool USian ideology of the lone wolf and let 'em all die and god will sort it out, i.e. those with the resources get away safely and early, and everyone else can die and / or lose their homes and livelihoods.  Society has no role in having things work out otherwise.  Which is 100% different from how things work in places like Cuba.

Hell yes, these catastrophes are politics.

Hmmm.  Has anyone else speculated that dmc515 is really David Brooks? He's sure got the tone and attitude pitch perfect! 

 

I like rail, but it shouldn't be built as an evacuation backstop. Sure a ten car train can carry a lot of people, but the most trains you can send per hour is 14 (for one line in japan), most HSR has headways more like 6-10 per hour.

And you can't just add trains, because there are only so many available for normal service.

a freeway with cars is also a terrible evacuation strategy, as a lane of freeway can only carry 2700 vehicles per hour.

but a fleet of buses coming in are versatile and a valid evacuation strategy. If you close the freeway to cars and run 2700 buses per lane an hour with 60 people per bus that is 320,000 people evacuated per hour . 

School buses, a FEMA fleet or just volunteering together from across the country, buses are a distributed resource hat can be deployed from anywhere to anywhere. We could evacuate in a day most major cities  if anyone had the political will to close freeways to cars.

[Zorral]

John Le Carré speaks the F word in public:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/07/john-le-carre-on-trump-something-truly-seriously-bad-is-happening

Quote

 

. . . . “These stages that Trump is going through in the United States and the stirring of racial hatred … a kind of burning of the books as he attacks, as he declares real news as fake news, the law becomes fake news, everything becomes fake news.

“I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it’s contagious, it’s infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There’s an encouragement about.”

Even today, Le Carré said, Ang Sang Suu Kyi is speaking of “fake news” in Burma. “These are infectious forms of demagogic behaviour and they are toxic.”

Le Carré was speaking at an event in aid of the charity Médecins Sans Frontières and which was also beamed to cinemas – to mark the publication of his latest book, A Legacy of Spies, which features the return of his fictional spymaster George Smiley.

The audience, which included Tom Stoppard, Nigella Lawson, Frank Skinner, Jarvis Cocker, Richard Osman and Robert Winston, listened as Le Carré looked back on his life and work and answered tweeted questions from the public . . . 

 

 

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, lokisnow said:

I like rail, but it shouldn't be built as an evacuation backstop. Sure a ten car train can carry a lot of people, but the most trains you can send per hour is 14 (for one line in japan), most HSR has headways more like 6-10 per hour.

And you can't just add trains, because there are only so many available for normal service.

a freeway with cars is also a terrible evacuation strategy, as a lane of freeway can only carry 2700 vehicles per hour.

but a fleet of buses coming in are versatile and a valid evacuation strategy. If you close the freeway to cars and run 2700 buses an hour with 60 people per bus that is 160,000 people evacuated per hour . 

Both?

[Centrist Simon Steele]

20 hours ago, Shryke said:

It will be everyone's problem. And "should" means jackshit. A lot of separate things put Trump in power in the first place. There's no reason to stack another thing in his favour. Or ya end up with a 2nd term Trump "shouldn't" have and then it is, again, not just the Democrats problem.

 

/looks at GOP

Uh, you might want to re-evaluate these ideas.

And no, what's wrong with the US is, in large part, the right-wing. Trump needs to be ditched as fast as possible. There is absolutely no reason to give him anything he can use to gain popular support. The Democrats should be getting their priorities passed and not giving Trump what he wants.

Schumer and Pelosi angered a lot of Dems showing the divide in their own party. I agree with you that they shouldn't be dealing with Trump at all. Likely, all they've accomplished is forcing some Republicans (like McCain, who spoke out and said the whole thing befuddled him) to reevaluate taking moral stands against Trump. If they can't take their little stands and tank shitty Repeal and Replace and risk pissing off Trump while KNOWING the Dems would never deal with Trump, then they have a problem on their hands. Trump did this to make the Republicans easier to deal with when it comes to budget negotiations. "You want to stonewall me? I might sneak a backdoor deal with the Dems and make you look like smiling idiots again."

It was a move by Dem leadership that could have disastrous future implications. 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Jesus Christ, will this dog ever let go of this bone? I thought we were done with this. Aren't they past the point where reconciliation is possible? 

Technically no, they have a few weeks. No one seriously thinks they will pull it off though with everything else going on. It's interesting that Republicans seem constitutionally unable to craft a healthcare plan that isn't a horror show for the working class. They'd rather fail to pass a bill than give up on the dream of inflicting mass harm on the US.

George Clooney Doubles Down on His Burns About Steve Bannon’s Hollywood Failures

http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/george-clooney-steve-bannon-is-a-failed-bad-screenwriter.html

 

 

 

 

[Zorral]

Our Civil Defense really is for shyte.  Compare it to countries who actually do do civil defense, such as Germany or Cuba.

In Florida, tourists, for instance, are just left to figure it out for themselves.  This would never happen in Cuba.

For that matter, pets aren't left behind in evacuations either, or cattle or chickens.  Not even dolphins.  See the photo:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/dolphins-airlifted-cuba-hurricane-irma-article-1.3482149

We as a nation really have to get up to evacuation speed -- particularly these areas where so many retired and elderly go to retire, people who are frail and ill, bringing all their money with them.  They deserve more than trying to get out on gridlocked interstates, or left behind to cope -- or not.

[Martell Spy]

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox Is a Donald Trump Super Troll

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/09/09/watch_former_mexican_president_vicente_fox_roast_donald_trump.html

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

19 minutes ago, Triskan said:

I've seen a lot of headlines suggesting that the Dems maintain some leverage down the line based on this move.  I'm torn.  I hate Trump as much as anyone, but I hate the debt ceiling nonsense and hate the idea that we again have a minority party that must be in 100% total opposition to the President.  Now given that the President is Trump, I can understand that circumstances might just be that dire that total opposition is the answer.  

I'm with you--at first, I thought this was a good move. But now I think the Republicans may feel backed in a corner/unified by this move. Which is a problem. The best thing America has going for it right now is that Republicans are dysfunctional--and Trump, for all his faults, is a business man. If he can get them unified, we more problems on the horizons. Hopefully I'm wrong.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox Is a Donald Trump Super Troll

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/09/09/watch_former_mexican_president_vicente_fox_roast_donald_trump.html

 

I saw that vid, Fox really is a troll to Trump.  A former President from another country making that video to insult Trump is pretty remarkable.  

While in some ways the video was funny, Fox did a good riff on Trump's MAGA hats, for example I still thought it was a bit bazaar.   YMMV of course. 

[lancerman]

5 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Jesus Christ, will this dog ever let go of this bone? I thought we were done with this. Aren't they past the point where reconciliation is possible? 

Why would they? Repealing Obamacare has been a winning issue for them for years and they got Congress, the Presidency, and likely the Supreme Court all in part to that momentum. 

Obamacare was successfully branded as a bad thing and Democrats failed to defend it. This happened since before it passed. Now we are at a point where there's actually real problems with it that need to be addressed and Republicans are allowing it to fall apart so it's becoming more unappealing. It was always intended to be backed up by more legislation, but they aren't going to give the Democrats any victories. 

It would be repealed already if the Republicsns were capable of crafting a replacement that didn't knock millions of people off their insurance and look like a blatant tax break for the rich at the same time. Not that they care because they can keep running against it.