US Politics: On Tear and Blood shed. A beautiful picture of a man with a Bible.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

So it finally happened, you've gone full Beto, eh?

But unlike @DMC I am not going to chide you for the oversharing. Instead I am going for an encouraging song (anybody who guessed where this is going, shame on you. you are horrible people).

Tell me more, tell me more. Was it love at first sight. Tell me more, tell me more. Did she put up a fight.

On a second thought, this might not have been the best of ideas. But I guess it's too late to pull out now.

I thought being honest here was everything. Perhaps not.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

5 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

The Pacific Northwest, while heavily weighted towards left wing politics, is also incredibly white, and frankly, a lot of folks here do not understand a lot of the issues around race because it is not as in their faces. Also it has a long history of skinhead and neo-nazi history, in part because it is so white.

Timely reading below, if you want to know about the rural PacNW - my parents told me about this last weekend but apparently hit the national news recently.  My hometown, folks...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/klamath-falls-oregon-victory-declared-over-antifa-which-never-showed-n1226681

Lots of echoes of drastic red/blue country divide in attitudes, and “Jesus wept” moments in that article - but I still can’t grok any adult with common sense thinking a 5 hour bus ride to riot in what used to be the west coast meth manufacturing hub to be a credible rumor.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

On a second thought, this might not have been the best of ideas. But I guess it's too late to pull out now.

The quintessential dad joke.

[A True Kaniggit]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

The quintessential dad joke.

Apparently @Tywin et al. better start learning those.

 

Hey. I just looked. Less than 150 days until the election.

1234 days into President Trump's term. Please let next January not be the halfway point.

[James Arryn]

6 hours ago, Triskele said:

Just happened to see this 538 piece saying that if the GOP would ever abandon Trump this is the time:

 

 

but yeah, probably not.

Which is too bad because I was also just reminded of Eco's ur-fascism and how much of it we're seeing.   

I think there was a time early on when many were actually on the fence about supporting him when he did something egregious , but it seemed like in every instance when they started to create a bit of room to flex the public support (amongst their constituents) heavily backed Trump, and they had to tuck tail and get on board and at some point they either decided he had some special voodoo understanding of the base or they increasingly didn’t want to be the first one to get shot by rushing the shooter. By now I think it’s boiled in, but I’ll bet there are still tons of GOP hacks who sleep at night telling themselves how much they don’t really agree with him but have to play the hand they were dealt.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Apparently @Tywin et al. better start learning those.

 

Hey. I just looked. Less than 150 days until the election.

1234 days into President Trump's term. Please let next January not be the halfway point.

Thought the point was, it's too late to learn them now.

8 hours ago, Triskele said:

I saw something on NYT suggesting that GWB won't vote for Trump after all.  Will he come out and endorse Biden?  Would it even help if he did?

Doubtful. He was electorally toxic as we has was leaving office. McCain wanted to keep as much as distance from him electorally as possible. He campaigned as The Maverick. The lamest political action drama in history.

He was a senator, and from Arizona, but he committed the ultimate sin—and did vote against his party gone bad (occasionally). Senators that almost tried to silence him, but got the country he loved instead. Framed for breaking ranks, now he prowls the badlands...a Senator chasing votes in the badlands...a conservative...a maverick. (Starring Lorenzo Lamas, I believe).

Anyway, afaik the Bush family didn't vote for him four years ago either. Didn't help Hillary that much either. Point being, I wanted to sneak a bad 1990s TV show into this thread.

9 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

Today is the anniversary of one of the most violent Antifa invasions ever, numbers on how many people were murdered by the Antifa terrorists, but it numbers in the thousands, and all for defending their country. Even today, we have have people who defend these horrific actions including subversive musicians who are targeting our beautiful innocent children. Look at this monster

Pretty crazy that on the 76th anniversary of D-Day we are once again faced with resisting the insidious grasp of fascism. It is remarkable how this is mirroring the post WWI rise of the fascism across the world, with strongmen stoking the resentment of the privileged class against those less powerful, while there is also a surge in left wing sentiment as well. Unfortunately, many of those left wing institutions such as unions do not exist, or are greatly weakened in this country, which means we are fighting on uneven ground.

The Pacific Northwest, while heavily weighted towards left wing politics, is also incredibly white, and frankly, a lot of folks here do not understand a lot of the issues around race because it is not as in their faces. Also it has a long history of skinhead and neo-nazi history, in part because it is so white.

I actually was just having a conversation with a good friend who is just now waking up to the reality of what has been going on, this is what he sent me out of the blue the other night.

This is the same guy who was relatively moderate, disliked Trump, but still would argue that race wasn't a big deal anymore and that folks were just being too sensitive. For a lot of folks up here, the racism is an abstraction that happens elsewhere, and are now having to come to grips with the fact that even in hippy Portland it is still something that we are dealing with and need to stamp out.

You are so far behind the best (most ridiculous Antifa) theories. Here we have reached the point where a more or less (in-)famous vegan chef is claiming that they are getting paid 350 € or so from the Goverment and are cooperating with the police. Point being. You can apparently get Mad Cow Disease from Tofu.

[mormont]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I thought being honest here was everything. Perhaps not.

I mean, honesty is great. But it is perhaps time for a general reminder to everyone from your friendly moderator that this forum is absolutely public. You may feel like you're just chatting with your regular friends/sparring partners on a thread. But anything here can be and, sometimes to the distress of users, has been seen by their partners, employers, parents, or other people who maybe shouldn't have seen it, and definitely shouldn't have seen it here first. And yeah, yeah, no one knows it's you - until they do, that is.

Anyway, back to the US Politics.

[Reny of Storms End]

Does anyone know why recently Trump has been claiming that he saved healthcare?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Because he couldn't repeal Obamacare?

Why does a bear crap in the woods, why does a dog lick his own balls?

Stop bothering with trying to attribute some sort of deeper meaning to what your President says. There's no there there. He is just making things up as he goes along and says things. The best explanation is him trying to pander to elderly voters, so him making things up saving healthcare looks like a perfectly fine explanation.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Umair Haque on America's forthcoming authoritarian nightmare (Medium, limited clicks):   Here's a sample:

 

 

 

 

 

I saw an article recently (can't recall where) arguing that, given the amount of power a President has, U.S. voters need to become much better at assessing tail risks.

[Rippounet]

Quote

When Trump was elected, pundit after pundit, intellectual after intellectual proclaimed something between: “Everything will be fine!” to “There’s nothing to worry about!” to “Lol!”

No. Quite the contrary, there were tons of people who saw it coming before Trump was even elected. There were tons of pundits, intellectuals, or random joes (like here on this forum) who saw exactly how dangerous Trump was, and many who predicted something very similar to what is happening now. It was very obvious from the start that Trump was a racist mysoginist half-senile machismo with authoritarian tendencies ; any lingering doubts were dispelled after Charlottesville.

The issue of "peaceful transition of power" was first raised in 2016 when Trump refused to clearly state he would concede the election to Hillary if he lost. When he was elected, anyone with a few neurons thus wondered how it might play out in 2020 if he didn't get re-elected and had the powers of the presidency at his disposal.

Anyone who writes that everyone was thinking "everything will be fine" in 2016 is actually talking about themselves.

[Martell Spy]

1 minute ago, Triskele said:

This is all true, but in that piece I think the author was more specifically targeting the media voices saying "when will Trump pivot to being presidential?" of which there were many.  

That was so surreal, when so many of the media cheered after Trump read a speech near the start of the Trump Presidency. I think part of it was they thought they were training Trump to be a good dog by rewarding him with plaudits.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

That was so surreal, when so many of the media cheered after Trump read a speech near the start of the Trump Presidency. I think part of it was they thought they were training Trump to be a good dog by rewarding him with plaudits.

I created a drinking game around all the "gravity of the office" takes.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I created a drinking game around all the "gravity of the office" takes.

We will notify your family of your swift and tragic death. 

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We will notify your family of your swift and tragic death. 

It was touch and go for a while.

[Kalbear]

There were a lot of people afraid, but there were far more that called Trump just a standard republican no more dangerous than any other. On these boards. Others on these boards, including a moderator, felt that trump was at least less dangerous than Clinton. 

Havent heard much from them.

If I can impart one thing to my children it is this: it is not enough to be right - you must be convincing. 

[Guest]

James Bennet, the editorial director at the New York Times, has resigned.

It's been epic to behold the fallout over the Times' own-goal by publishing the Cotton dreck.

[KingintheNorth4]

Protesting works.

 

 

[DMC]

48 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

called Trump just a standard republican no more dangerous than any other.

Nobody serious referred to Trump as just a standard republican.  Hell, I recall HuffPo put up a disclaimer by the time of the general election every time they made a post referring to Trump.  The other side too, they didn't think he was a standard republican.  His "outsider" appeal is what fueled his candidacy in the first place.

4 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

It's been epic to behold the fallout over the Times' own-goal by publishing the Cotton dreck.

Yeah that's another predictably dumb old mess from the grey old lady

[Zorral]

Quote

 

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) joined a group of nearly 1,000 Christians marching toward the White House on Sunday.

What they're saying: Asked why it was important for him to be out protesting, Romney told NBC News: “We need a voice against racism, we need many voices against racism and against brutality. And we need to stand up and say that black lives matter."

 

https://www.axios.com/mitt-romney-black-lives-matter-6ba2262b-59d2-43b6-863e-41fd163a2aa9.html

Does this make him the second prominent national political personage to join the D.C. Protesters?