U.S. Politics: Covfefe Boys

[Martell Spy]

26 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It's really not surprising the Mollie Tibbetts is getting so much attention.

Breitbart has been publishing this kind of story every few months at least.

Here's a few:

The despicable campaign has been going on for a while now. Mollie Tibbetts is the ideal victim, and the fact that her case had already received a measure of media attention before it was known to be a murder by an undocumented immigrant makes it ideal for electoral purposes. I've counted more than two dozen articles about her on Breitbart in the last few days.

Of course, it will not come as a surprise that the crime rate for undocumented immigrants seems to actually be lower than that of American citizens. There is little specific data and few studies on the issue, but it makes sense that these are people who will mostly want to keep out of trouble. The right-wing media however, will use the most horrific cases available to give its public the impression that the US is under constant attack.

 

It's a time-honored racist propaganda technique. I'm just pretty fucking amazed/disgusted to see it still going on in 2018. One of the favorite tactics of the old-school American racists was to talk about black men raping white women. I guess everything comes full circle. I wonder how long until the lynch parties form.

[OldGimletEye]

6 hours ago, Frog Eater said:

well, if the vote comes down to TRUMP vs, a candidate that supports open borders, baby murder, gun grabbing, increased entitlements, SOCIALISM, and an agenda of IMPEACH!!! Well, I guess TRUMP will get my vote again. 

Its not that I'm voting For TRUMP, I am voting against the "common sense gun control, fair share of taxes, democratic socialism" agenda. 

 

Two quick points:

1. I'd like to get a clarification on what you actually mean by "Socialism". Do you mean, Socialism as in the actual public ownership of capital? Because I don't think that is exactly where most of the left is at. Yes me personally, I'd like to see unions strengthened, better minimum wage laws enacted, universal healthcare, better fiscal and monetary policy to achieve full employment, and yes more money spent on things like TANF and more progressive taxation.

Does this make me a socialist?  Well according to Republicans it sure does. But you know I'm fine with the socialist label because like many others I simply don't give a fuck when Republicans call something "socialist". They simply just can't use that line anymore when we are having debates over economic policy. It simply does not cut it. And probably people hearing Republicans calling everything socialist that doesn't fit their views is probably why many people are identifying as socialist. They simply just don't give a fuck about that old Republican bogeyman anymore.

2. When you say "entitlements" what exactly do you mean? Please tell me you're not one of those conservative sorts of people that think we spend about a trillion dollars on SNAP. And if what you mean by "entitlements" are things like Social Security and Medicare, then so state, clearly and precisely. See the thing is Republicans have long played this game about "entitlements" when they mean Social Security and Medicare, but are too cowardly to say Social Security and Medicare because they know they would get hammered over it.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Family of Mollie Tibbetts Condemns Racist Fear-Mongering About Her Alleged Killer

https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/mollie-tibbettss-family-condemns-racist-fear-mongering-against-alleged-killer.html

 

Much as I can understand their desire to stop having their tragically murdered family member used as a political weapon, I think it would actually be better for the family sanity and safety if they didn't speak out. I'm thinking of the all out attacks that the right wing propaganda machine made against 9/11 survivors and families of victims if they dared to speak out against anything to do with Bus's war on terror. And if anything the right wing attack machine has become more rabid and dangerous.

Won't be long before some conspiracy comes out that Mollie's family hired this guy to kill her, because she was pregnant and refused to get an abortion. Or Mollie's cousin is having a gay love affair with the murderer.

[OldGimletEye]

7 hours ago, Sour Billy Tipton said:

The main reason being my bias towards him allowing our military freedom to drone strike ISIS consistently to where they are no longer a threat.  I also hope he delivers on his promises to work with the Kurdish people.  I have much respect towards the Kurdish people and hope their state will be recognized by the UN sooner rather than later.  Fun Fact; I actually joke about Trump doing more for women's right than any other president in my lifetime with one of my friends from college who leans to the left and is a feminist from Sweeden.  The reason being, Trump has publicly supported the Kurds and the Kurds actually have fearless female warriors fighting against ISIS.  It could be a pipe dream but hopefully 100 years from now there is a Kurdistan.  They would be a nation that doesn't practice hate against gays, antisemitism, and misogyny.

There are other reasons that I currently don't have time for at the moment.  Real quick though.  In my opinion, Obama's "Red Line" incident was an egregious display of weakness by the commander-in-chief.  I don't like double standards so I do believe Trump deserves the ridicule he receives.  The man took office because of his campaign against "fake news".  However, all must admit what happened at the border this summer was a far cry from what Obama displayed a few years ago with Syria.  Children died, they were separated forever from their parents because of nerve gas destroying their little bodies.  AND, Trump on two occasions has attacked Syrian airbases because of al-Assad trying to repeat the same decisions during this new administration.  I wonder what gave him the idea of America being weak and making empty threats...

P.S. The border situation has been fucked for years, everyone in D.C. deserves blame on that one.  I've worked with over a dozen illegal aliens.  When I worked at a pizzeria for three years, I befriended two Guatemalans that came over illegally.  I loved the guys, we talked about everything.  They worked their asses off each day.  They had tremendous senses of humor.  Above all, none of us were sensitive.  It was not a politically correct environment when customers weren't there.  We busted balls like crazy and it made time go by because it was hilarious.  I completely understood why they came to this country illegally.  Had I been in their shoes I would have done the very same.  However, I still want action taken at the border to stop this epidemic.  A law is a law.  It shouldn't be portrayed as a race issue.

These have to rank as some of the bizarrest reasons to support Trump, I've ever seen.

A few points:

1. Obama should not have made the red line comment. That said, it would have been a mistake for him to have actually followed through with it. After doing something unwise, you don't then double down and then do something stupid. Better to just cut your lossses.

2.  A couple of cruise strikes aint' going to do shit to stop Assad. Its nothing but a big fuckin' dog and pony show. That is about it. If you want to stop Assad, then you probably likely have to commit ground combat troops. And after the flaming disaster that was Iraq, I don't think anybody in their right mind is real high on regime change at this juncture.

3. The border being out of control is pretty much a figment of the conservative imagination. It's largely baseless. It's hardly the most pressing issue this country is faces. For one, there is about zero evidence that immigrants engage in more crime than natives, even if Trump says so.  Now as somebody who sits to the left, I'd worry about immigrants causing a negative impact on native workers wages. But pretty much the majority of evidence seems to be that immigrants impact on native wages is pretty small. Immigrants also help economic growth. I know you say a law is a law. But really, the law likely should allow more legal immigration.

[Martell Spy]

28 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

These have to rank as some of the bizarrest reasons to support Trump, I've ever seen.

A few points:

1. Obama should not have made the red line comment. That said, it would have been a mistake for him to have actually followed through with it. After doing something unwise, you don't then double down and then do something stupid. Better to just cut your lossses.

2.  A couple of cruise strikes aint' going to do shit to stop Assad. Its nothing but a big fuckin' dog and pony show. That is about it. If you want to stop Assad, then you probably likely have to commit ground combat troops. And after the flaming disaster that was Iraq, I don't think anybody in their right mind is real high on regime change at this juncture.

3. The border being out of control is pretty much a figment of the conservative imagination. It's largely baseless. It's hardly the most pressing issue this country is faces. For one, there is about zero evidence that immigrants engage in more crime than natives, even if Trump says so.  Now as somebody who sits to the left, I'd worry about immigrants causing a negative impact on native workers wages. But pretty much the majority of evidence seems to be that immigrants impact on native wages is pretty small. Immigrants also help economic growth. I know you say a law is a law. But really, the law likely should allow more legal immigration.

Law is law is a meaningless response. Laws change. It is similar to me saying Obamacare is law, bitches.

See since I evoked law, conservatives must accept all parts of Obamacare for the next 1000 years.

[Martell Spy]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/watergate-on-steroids-michael-cohen-pleads-guilty-and-implicates-trump?ref=author

‘Watergate on Steroids’: Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty and Implicates Trump

Quote

Right now, the president of the United States is an unindicted co-conspirator in two separate counts of conspiring to violate the Fed Election Campaign Act,” he said. “Nixon didn’t become an unindicted co-conspirator until he was in his second year of his second term. It’s Watergate on steroids. We’re going to do everything much faster.”

 

[Bonnot OG]

He is a white supremacist. If you support him and vote for him, you are too.

White supremacist / neo nazi groups are loving this tweet.

[Bonnot OG]

 

[Darth Richard II]

41 minutes ago, Bonnot OG said:

He is a white supremacist. If you support him and vote for him, you are too.

White supremacist / neo nazi groups are loving this tweet.

Hey now, some people who support Trump are just really, really, really, really stupid.

[The Anti-Targ]

56 minutes ago, Bonnot OG said:

He is a white supremacist. If you support him and vote for him, you are too.

White supremacist / neo nazi groups are loving this tweet.

Whatever the truth is about these land seizures, I think most people will agree we don't really want South Africa turning into a Zimbabwe 2.0. In the very least land takeovers need to be undertaken in a manner that allows the new landowners to maintain current production.

[Bonnot OG]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Hey now, some people who support Trump are just really, really, really, really stupid.

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

Yeah, because Zimbabwe and Venezuela are such success stories, South Africa is surely on the right track.

[Serious Callers Only]

Pretty cool extension to identify the crypto-nazis on reddit. They'll at least have to create a new account for the sealioning and concern trolling.

 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-masstagger/

[Regular John Umber]

1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Yeah, because Zimbabwe and Venezuela are such success stories, South Africa is surely on the right track.

 Please tell me what you know about the South African land situation?

[Regular John Umber]

4 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

He is a white supremacist. If you support him and vote for him, you are too.

White supremacist / neo nazi groups are loving this tweet.

 He's since deleted it, apparently. But not before it got all the way to the South African presidency. It's a diplomatic issue now. 

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

44 minutes ago, Regular John Umber said:

 Please tell me what you know about the South African land situation?

More than enough to participate in this thread. Enough to know that the average South African is currently vastly better off than the average Zimbabwean or Venezuelan, with millions of Zimbabweans in fact having fled to South Africa after Bob Mugabe’s disastrous land expropriation policies, to find work to support their starving families back in Zimbabwe.

Sadly, the South Africans will have nowhere further south to flee to when their own economy collapses after their government immitates Mad Bob’s policies.

[mormont]

10 hours ago, James Arryn said:

No, you are misunderstanding my point, and inverting it. My point is not that everyone believes most people are good, but rather that everyone knows that no group is entirely good. Even racist KKK types will admit that in a basket full of Aryans, you’ll still get some bad apples. 

This is very much not my experience of how people think, I'm afraid.

I've encountered many, many people who believe that some groups, the ones to which they belong, are entirely good. Indeed, one can point to Trump supporters as a prime example: their support is predicated on the notion that their man is entirely good. 

It comes down to, not whether one admits that one's own group does wrong things, but how one explains that. In-group misdemeanours are justified: we were provoked, we had to do it, it wasn't really wrong, you need to understand the circumstances. Outgroup misdemeanours are explained as entirely caused by the bad character of 'people like them'. That's how people resolve the cognitive dissonance of believing that their group is entirely good.

10 hours ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

The thing I can never get past with the crowd that is fervently anti-choice is do they understand two things, (i) abortions will always exist and (ii) that their policy preferences will lead to a spike in unwanted pregnancies, especially among younger people? Furthermore, do they understand how much damage they do to women, particularly young women, and the poor? Their policies, at the end of the day, will produce extremely cruel results all to, as you said, deny women autonomy over their own bodies. 

Again, this is to miss the point. These people want to use the law to send a message that abortion is wrong. They want those who contemplate abortion to be in fear and in hardship. For many of them, whether pregnancy is 'wanted' is irrelevant, because pregnancy is good, in and of itself.

1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

More than enough to participate in this thread. Enough to know that the average South African is currently vastly better off than the average Zimbabwean or Venezuelan, with millions of Zimbabweans in fact having fled to South Africa after Bob Mugabe’s disastrous land expropriation policies, to find work to support their starving families back in Zimbabwe.

Sadly, the South Africans will have nowhere further south to flee to when their own economy collapses after their government immitates Mad Bob’s policies.

Surely the issue for this thread, though, is not whether the SA government's policies are good or bad for SA, but why Trump has suddenly, out of nowhere, discovered an interest in them and decided to tell his followers about it. 

[SweetPea]

11 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

They don't care about facts. Challenging them with facts does nothing. They cry fake news and say it's made up etc.

Very ironic coming from you after you made a claim and failed to back it up with any evidence. If there's any truth to the story that the criminal used a fake ID, then your claim is actually proven false. But how dare people say fake news?

10 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

I would say they understand and that is a bonus to them. Just as they are strangely excited at sick people losing access to healthcare. It is hard to demonize actual demons.

Another example of strawmanning. I'm pro choice, but I would never claim that people who oppose abortion do so because they hate women and enjoy seeing them hurt, instead of caring for the life of the child.

[Bonnot OG]

2 hours ago, Regular John Umber said:

 He's since deleted it, apparently. But not before it got all the way to the South African presidency. It's a diplomatic issue now. 

 

He deleted one because he tagged the wrong Pompeo.

He then tweeted agian with the right person he was looking to tag.

Unless he deleted the second one and I missed it. 

Yea, he is daft as all hell, but it's not a shocker he would tweet this out given the white supremacists he surrounds himself with that only fuel his own racism.
 

[Free Northman Reborn]

26 minutes ago, mormont said:

This is very much not my experience of how people think, I'm afraid.

I've encountered many, many people who believe that some groups, the ones to which they belong, are entirely good. Indeed, one can point to Trump supporters as a prime example: their support is predicated on the notion that their man is entirely good. 

It comes down to, not whether one admits that one's own group does wrong things, but how one explains that. In-group misdemeanours are justified: we were provoked, we had to do it, it wasn't really wrong, you need to understand the circumstances. Outgroup misdemeanours are explained as entirely caused by the bad character of 'people like them'. That's how people resolve the cognitive dissonance of believing that their group is entirely good.

Again, this is to miss the point. These people want to use the law to send a message that abortion is wrong. They want those who contemplate abortion to be in fear and in hardship. For many of them, whether pregnancy is 'wanted' is irrelevant, because pregnancy is good, in and of itself.

Surely the issue for this thread, though, is not whether the SA government's policies are good or bad for SA, but why Trump has suddenly, out of nowhere, discovered an interest in them and decided to tell his followers about it. 

Agreed. That topic is better discussed on the international thread.