US Politics Thread |OT| SAD TRUMP

[Joe Molotov]

(Image removed from quote.)

gotta shoot your shot 

I knew that dude's name was familiar, he was the knob that said that back in his day contraceptives were cheap because "gals put an aspirin between the knees." 

I member of the "Distinguished Americans", indeed.

[team filler]

[CatsCatsCats]

Oof. Guess it’s back to the Yang Gang

[BikeJesus]

Potatoe O'Rourke.

[agrajag]

So long Bootyguy, we hardly knew ye

[team filler]

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/HowardSchultz/status/1113935769633058816

This might be the first guy to get negative votes in a general election.

[benjipwns]

Oof. Guess it’s back to the Yang Gang

So long Bootyguy, we hardly knew ye

shhhh, ignore the negative agenda of the angry Bernard/Tulsi-bros, focus on this charismatic, super progressive, exciting, young, energetic, and diverse information instead:

Bookseller One Grand Books has asked celebrities to name the ten titles they’d take to a desert island, and they’ve shared the results with Vulture. Below is South Bend, Indiana, mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s list.

Ulysses by James Joyce
The greatest work of modern English literature. It’s known for being complex and difficult, but in a way it’s very democratic: a story about what it is to be human as one middle-class guy goes about one day of his life in Dublin.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It’s touching, it’s about innocence and exploration, and it’s sad but also uplifting.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
A brilliant take on politics through historical fiction about Thomas Cromwell in the time of Henry VIII. And it explores what it means to live by a code when you are at political and personal risk.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
It’s a short book, or a long poem, by Dylan Thomas, which achieves the remarkable feat of making me nostalgic about someone else’s childhood. Some of the best writing ever about snow.

The Odyssey by Homer
Homer’s epic isn’t just a foundational text in Western literature, it also makes me feel connected to my Mediterranean (Maltese) roots. The Maltese island of Gozo, where my people probably originated, claims to be the locale of Calypso’s cave.

Naive. Super by Erlend Loe
This is the book that every searching 20-something needs. The sense of humor is spot-on, and the book turned me on to Norwegian literature as a whole, though unfortunately not much of Erlend Loe’s work has been translated.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene
I wrote my thesis on this prophetic Graham Greene novel about the dangers of American involvement in Vietnam, set in the 1950s before most people knew we were operating in Vietnam at all. In a very jaded, British way, Greene points out the dangers of well-intentioned interventions.

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
Part of the Cairo trilogy by Mahfouz, this novel is like Ulysses in its focus (everyday life), but instead of a day, it covers a family moving through generations. It, too, views politics not through the excitements of politicians but what it means for our lived experience.

Armageddon Averted by Stephen Kotkin
I’ve recently returned to this very readable history of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Published soon after 2000, it now seems ahead of its time in pointing out how the seeds of oligarchy were sown through the unmanageable end of communism and the arrival of capitalism without democracy.

My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
A murder mystery set in 16th-century Istanbul, this gripping novel is about art and religion, the encounter of East and West, and above all the question of how we deal with modernity.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

No, no one in the series has taken any books about how to escape a desert island. Thomas Keller is taking a bunch of cook books including his own.

[close]

[team filler]

boogie you rascal 

[benjipwns]

Mayor Pete also announced that the announcement of his campaign will be the same day that Eric Swalwell scheduled his.

Annihilated by a dude who's been running for two months re-announcing he's running.

[nachobro]

is bloomberg running yet? that's a dude that will get negative votes

[benjipwns]

Assuming Biden and Bennett are coming as promised, Dems still need two candidates to keep out Williamson and Yang from the debates by the stated rules allowing 20 candidates if their donors are legit.

Three if that Gravel scam pulls it off.

I would project the most likely situation is they get McAuliffe and are forced to temporarily accept Williamson. Maybe they get lucky with this whole Bloomberg has no faith in Biden cover story getting worse. Ideally, they'd get continually proclaimed Governor-elect Stacey Abrams to be the last one needed to keep the illegitimates outside the wall.

[benjipwns]

Imagine how much the world would respect us if our election was Donald Trump vs. Michael Bloomberg vs. Howard Schultz (vs. John McAfee)

[nachobro]

20 candidates

[Kunai With Chain]

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1110035/Julian-Assange-news-WikiLeaks-Ecuador-embassy-london-expelled-INA-paper-edward-snowden

Is Trump admin about to score another win?

[team filler]

[Joe Molotov]

Time to have a serious conversation about socialism.

[team filler]

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/StephMurr_Jour/status/1113529957005889536

Of course his dad taught him Italian

[benjipwns]

Donald Trump Is Trying to Kill You

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

There’s a lot we don’t know about the legacy Donald Trump will leave behind. And it is, of course, hugely important what happens in the 2020 election. But one thing seems sure: Even if he’s a one-term president, Trump will have caused, directly or indirectly, the premature deaths of a large number of Americans.

Some of those deaths will come at the hands of right-wing, white nationalist extremists, who are a rapidly growing threat, partly because they feel empowered by a president who calls them “very fine people.”

Some will come from failures of governance, like the inadequate response to Hurricane Maria, which surely contributed to the high death toll in Puerto Rico. (Reminder: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.)

Some will come from the administration’s continuing efforts to sabotage Obamacare, which have failed to kill health reform but have stalled the decline in the number of uninsured, meaning that many people still aren’t getting the health care they need. Of course, if Trump gets his way and eliminates Obamacare altogether, things on this front will get much, much worse.

But the biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump’s agenda of deregulation — or maybe we should call it “deregulation,” because his administration is curiously selective about which industries it wants to leave alone.

...

So if you eat meat — or, for that matter, drink water or breathe air — there’s a real sense in which Donald Trump is trying to kill you. And even if he’s turned out of office next year, for many Americans it will be too late.

the benefit of NYT comments is not just their verbosity but also their illustration of the non-necessity of the actual column along with the dichotomy between the Readers and NYTimes picks

Samuel J. Schmieding
Eugene, OregonApril 4
We obviously have not all read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which even upon a quick perusal, will turn one off from ever eating sausages and pork products again, perhaps even making one want to become a vegetarian.  The book and the uproar that followed led to creation of the FDA and was a big boost to the momentum of a state that started to see its  social responsibility as being something more than just protecting the capitalist class.  Would Trump still want to eat his sacred KFC if the food inspectors were permanently sidelined?

Yum! Brands shaming

A Bird In The Hand
AlcatrazApril 4
Along with all the environmental issues, food safety, no health insurance, etc. - I think he’s trying to kill all of us who have a brain - from constant and unrelenting ANXIETY.  I would be willing to bet that the psychiatric field is totally overwhelmed.  I know I am, just from the day in and day out, stream of consciousness bad news emanating from Pennsylvania Avenue.  My nerves are shot.

SMB
SavannahApril 4
Times Pick
One driving emotion from Trump and some of those who support him seems to be malevolence towards other Americans. 

Us vs. them thinking has shifting targets.  Upsetting elites or liberals or blue state citizens or the educated or whatever collective Trump determines to be his enemy seems to be as strong a motivation as pleasing polluters and the 1%. 

That the consequences won't be seen immediately is a positive.  Children or older people with respiratory illnesses?  Let them breathe the dirty air.  Residents whose water is poisoned?  Let them drink bottled water.  When cancers develop, those suffering can comfort themselves with knowing there are oases you can pay for like Mar-a-Lago.

By the time the Trump chickens come home to roost, he and his generation including the Kochs, Adelson, the Mercers, will be gone.

They don't care.  Obamacare lets people visit their doctors, have preventative medicine, receive cancer screenings and then get needed treatment such as surgery (my brother a case in point for life-saving ACA cancer treatment).

I don't think the word evil is too strong.

Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
BostonApril 4
This is not the whimsical column that some readers may take away from the title; the 45th president of the United States absolutely wishes to kill many of us as we read here, by this or that policy or by, to quote Richard Nixon, “benign neglect.”

Perhaps it’s just me but I thought one essential cornerstone of the president’s duties was to protect American lives. He (or she, whenever we get around to it) has responsibilities that are less precious than the prolongation and preservation of life.

In the matter of healthcare, he, as a kind of neo-conservative, is a follower of the Republicans as they stand on the sides of the road of the great American death march, whips in hand and grins on faces, hurrying us along toward our long home.

gmgwat
NorthApril 4
Times Pick
The people most adversely affected by Trump's frenzy of deregulation will most likely be the poor and economically disadvantaged, who have little choice in what they consume or where they live. The hideous irony in this, of course, is that a good many of them voted for Trump in the mistaken belief that he would materially improve their lives. Instead he's endangering them. I'm sure Trump sees this as a win-- it's certainly a (admittedly inefficient) way of reducing the number of Americans at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, and Trump did promise to do that. But the survivors may want to remember his methods come 2020.

Charles Dodgson
in AbsentiaApril 4
This damage this "president" has caused the country - in just two short years - is breathtaking. But his supporters love all of it. Trump voters don't care that he may plunge this nation into the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. They don't care that we no longer have any international allies, and that we are a literal pariah on the world stage. And they don't care that they're destroying their children's future, either.
Concern about the climate? Not even on their list.

But why does 40% of this country still love a president who is single-handedly destroying our nation? Because Trump supporters are very much like him. They blame others for their own failings. They believe they should be rewarded for their selfishness and ignorance. They would rather have things handed to them, than have to work hard for them, themselves. They refuse to take responsibility for their own shortcomings. They don’t want to educate themselves. They believe that anyone who tries to better himself or herself is an “elitist". Trump is custom made for these voters.

The one thing Trump has delivered on to his base? Racism. And for this they'll trade away good jobs, a clean environment, affordable healthcare, and their children's future. Because this is what really motivates Trump voters - hatred for brown-skinned people in this country.

But one thing Trump voters should know about the rest of us: our patience with them is wearing very thin.

Yuri Asian
Bay AreaApril 4
Legacy?  You mean the trail of wreckage from the battered American Dream?

Mr. Krugman's list of casualties and collateral damage is woefully incomplete.

Let's start with his sabotaging global cooperation to ameliorate Climate Change. That alone insures the Trump name will be forever etched on the wall of infamy.

Abandoning fuel efficiency for cars, subsidizing coal mining and making electric utilities pay for it, opening up protected wilderness for oil drilling, loosening regulations against wellhead emissions, fast-tracking oil and gas pipelines, appointing oil company executives to enforce environmental regs, privatizing industrial hygiene to allow regulated companies to inspect themselves (like Krugman's example of hog farming).  Together this constitutes an all-out assault on decades of progress against toxic pollution and worker health and safety.

While increasing the risk of corporate harm, Trump by packing federal courts with business-friendly judges blocks legal redress of corporate actions that endanger consumers and communities. Blocking legal remedies to flagrant corporate crimes will only embolden corporate bad actors.

Ignoring investment in infrastructure guarantees calamities that claim innocent lives.

Most of all Trump, like a contagious disease, debilitates  rationality -- both among his supporters as well as detractors -- and poisons American optimism and hope.

Trump isn't trying to kill us.  He is killing us.

Nancy
WinchesterApril 4
I buy and use all kinds of Chinese products with the exception of  food items. Remembering all the contaminants and substitution scandals that have been in the news, I just don’t feel safe ingesting them. The other day I needed water chestnuts for a recipe and the grocery store had three separate brands. But when I read the labels they were all packaged and shipped from China. I used thin celery instead.
I wonder if other countries will soon be doing the same with made in USA food?

[close]

[benjipwns]

on a more positive note, I saw it recently re-pointed out that the Democrats primary setup is not well conditioned for tons of candidates because of the 15% cut-off*. As a hypothetical, if Biden tanks under it, while nobody else rises over 15% across the board, Bernie's near locked-in ~25% could (like Trump similarly watched all his opponents box themselves out) win majorities of delegates with some pretty low vote counts through the two sweetest words in the English language: default.

while the current media-campaign system, which Trump similarly used to his advantage, means you can run a shoestring campaign for far longer off just free media and the debates with little reason to drop out before Super Tuesday in case you catch temporary fire (is not guaranteed to work even if you run an ad proclaiming your eventual convention victory like Kasich) especially if most of your campaign is Twitter and media profiles and standing on things anyway

i'm sure there's probably a old bylaw that allows the party to force all these young white dudes to fight Amy Klobuchar for the right to remain in the race

*only one candidate has to exceed 15% to claim all of the delegates in Democratic Primaries, anyone below 15% gets nothing

edit: the GOP finally took away some of these rules from the states last cycle (they used to let the states decide everything) and tried to create a system in which >1% = 1 delegate (best as possible if there were enough delegates) with some "traditional exceptions" through Super Tuesday and then the thresholds started increasing and eventually included winner-take-all states...this was why Trump's delegate lead got more insurmountable even though his % didn't go up too much above 40% until everyone dropped out...it worked pretty much as the party elites intended to force a slow coalescence around the lead candidate except for that whole thing with who that lead guy was

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1114121687530909696

[Great Rumbler]

Gotta respect their hustle, tho.

[agrajag]

It is our very institution of Democracy that affords us the hope to fulfill the promise of liberty, prosperity and opportunity to share the vision of tomorrow, today. These axioms, the truisms that we hold so dear, must not be diminished by small fears, but rather emboldened by big dreams. If I am elected President, I pledge to serve the foundations of human dignity to ensure the equity of opportunity to all, whatever side of the ideological continuity your convictions may lead you upon.

[Great Rumbler]

Okay, Howard Schultz.

[agrajag]

that was Beta 


https://twitter.com/politico/status/1114123023873925120

[Great Rumbler]

What's the difference?

[agrajag]

Beta's verbal diarrhea is more unbridled

[agrajag]

alternate answer: Schultz is too old to jump on counters

[benjipwns]

wow, Barr is finished: https://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/barr-memo-mueller-report-20190404.html

The attorney general of the United States has just executed a cover-up so brazen, so grotesque, so audacious, that it was done in plain view. Right under our noses.

He put two spaces after his periods. And then he fully justified — instead of left-justified — his paragraphs to try to hide it.

To wit: The March 24 summary of Robert Mueller’s nearly 400-page report that William Barr sent to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees came in at four pages. Without the extra spaces, it might have been just 3½.

Or Barr’s March 29 letter to the same committees, in which he said members of Congress will have to wait a few weeks before they can read Mueller’s report. Again: two spaces after every period.

Look between his words. The extra space is clear, and it’s criminal.

How many spaces does Mueller use? Is Barr simply following the special counsel’s example? We won’t know till mid-April, at least. Though we might have Barr’s redacted version of Mueller’s report a week earlier if Barr didn’t waste so much time typing unnecessary spaces.

If you learned to type two spaces after every period, it’s because you were taught to type on a typewriter, or you were taught to type by someone who was taught to type on a typewriter. Long before they were de rigueur for artistic hipsters broadcasting to the world that they are Serious Writers, typewriters were the standard in which each character — letters, punctuation, and spaces — took up the same amount of room on the page. In this sad, monospaced world, two spaces were necessary after periods to give the eyes a break every time your sentence ended. They made reading easier.

But word processors are a lot smarter than typewriters. They can handle proportional fonts, like the one you’re reading right now, in which a petite little i takes up way less space than a sprawling, double-wide w. Knowing that the eye (and your thumb) needed a break, word processors began inserting tiny extra spaces, measured in points and pixels, after each period. Just a fraction of a character — not a full extra space.

Now, hitting the space bar twice, instead of producing a helpful visual respite, leaves a cavernous sinkhole of white space that is distracting to the eye rather than helpful.

Double-spacers are usually easy to spot. But when they use full-justified text instead of left-justified, the spacing is uneven everywhere, making their crimes harder to detect.

Full justification presents its own readability problems. If you’re reading this column in print, this text is full justified, whereas if you’re reading on the web, it’s left-justified. Full justification might be more attractive, as it creates a consistent right margin. But for readers who suffer from dyslexia, the extra white space can distract from the words themselves — the eye is drawn to the white space rather than to the words — making reading an additional challenge. Adding an extra space after each period only compounds the problem.

Low-vision readers have their own difficulty with full justification. When reading on the web, they will often increase their browser’s font size. If the right text edge is ragged, as it is in left justification, lines don’t all end in the same place, making it easier for readers to find the next line. In full justification, it’s easier to get lost.

The fewer typographic obstacles you give your readers, the more they’ll persist in reading, and the more they’ll comprehend. That’s always the goal.

Unless you’re the attorney general writing about an investigation into the guy who appointed you, and you’d rather the public not actually read and scrutinize what you’ve written.

[Great Rumbler]

 

[benjipwns]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/nyregion/bill-de-blasio-2020.html

Is Bill de Blasio Running for President in 2020? Sure Looks Like It

okay sure why not, let's get nuts

His potential candidacy has not caused much enthusiasm, even in New York. A poll released this week from Quinnipiac University found that 76 percent of New York City voters believe the mayor should not run for president. Another 47 percent of voters surveyed said they think a de Blasio presidential run would be bad for the city, including 43 percent of Democrats.

None of that seems to be deterring Mr. de Blasio.

“I’m glad I could unify the people of New York City,” the mayor said at a news conference on Thursday when asked about the Quinnipiac poll.

[Boogie]

boogie you rascal 

(Image removed from quote.)

Funny, but alas, fake.

Trump didn’t motorcade to the G7.   He arrived via helicopter right to the summit site. 

[benjipwns]

Trump didn’t motorcade to the G7.   He arrived via helicopter right to the summit site. 

great, the Canucks have cracked our codes

[Nintex]

Trump has pinned the creepy Joe meme on his Twitter wall and it now has 17.8 million views.
The original apology only has 6.7 million views.

absolute beast mode.

[Nintex]

Biden needs to get back on the offense.

Yang understands meme culture better. Maybe it should be Biden/Yang.
Both the power of the boomer and the memes.

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/StephMurr_Jour/status/1113529957005889536

Of course his dad taught him Italian

[kingv]

Beto.

He/Him.

[Nintex]

This guy

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1114170467336761347

[team filler]

https://www.mintpressnews.com/deal-of-the-century-to-hand-palestine-to-israel-along-with-whole-set-of-new-problems/256978/

Netanyahu’s problem is that when you ask Palestinians in the diaspora where they are from, they say Yaffa, Haifa, Ramle, and so on. When you ask Israelis where they are from, they say, Poland, Russia, Morocco, Yemen, and so on.

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1114196510034550784

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1114197823204016129

 

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1114205442752774144
President Twitter vs. President Instagram

The book to end all books
https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1114139196837511169

[agrajag]

I bet Nintex can't wait to read this moron's flowery prose 

[Nintex]

I bet Nintex can't wait to read this moron's flowery prose 

Benji told me to step up my game

It started as a great day, a beautiful day a tremendous day. I had just finished writing my speech, ordered the cheapest cake I could find and told my sons to grab the last few remaining MAGA hats from the plane and put them under glass. This would be the launch of a new television empire and I could finally pay off my debts and avoid bankruptcy.

I had just hung up the phone with Vladimir Putin to discuss Russian funding for Trump TV and completing Trump Tower when Steve Bannon and Ivanka walked in.
"It's ok guys", I said at them. I know I failed you but believe me I... "SIR YOU WON!!" Bannon shouted with glee. Ivanka noticed the horror on my face as Conway started hugging me. Ugh, the witch.
"What's wrong daddy? I'm going to be the princess of the United States! Aren't you happy!" I said I cried from joy. "YOU WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" the staff said. Fucking idiots.

SHIT I was shocked, this was not supposed to happen. I was completely fucked and had to actually be President. Something I had no interest in doing and I had no idea what a President actually did.
Also I was nearly broke and they had actually invited people to my winning speech which were no doubt expecting 'free drinks'. Manafort was right, we should've dive dombed this thing into a crater right after the convention.
I had kept at it far too long and had too much fun teasing Hillary Clinton. Who I actually thought would be a good President. How could she possibly lose?

Flynn looked at me with a side eye. He knew it was bullshit. He had confronted me a few days prior to election night. "WE NEED A FOREIGN POLICY PLAN!" he shouted. He started rambling about Iran, North Korea and even Russia.
I told him he didn't need to worry about any of that but that I did need him for a prime time show. He was the first that had to go but first a victory speech. I instructed Don Jr. to select a nice upbeat song to 'inspire America' and that I would be down within 30 minutes to deliver my speech. I had written no speech and could not tell my staff so I did what any puppet ruler would do. I tweeted the party bureau in Moscow. Of course they had written a speech, a pretty good one about coming together as a nation and healing the divide. I thought to myself, well at least I'll have some good coaching when I'm doing this whole presidential thing.

[close]

[team filler]

 

[TakingBackSunday]

nintex be honest, when's the last time you got your dick wet

[CatsCatsCats]

So we’re ready to write off Biden, ya? Guess that means it’s time to rally behind the clear candidate Bernard Sanders, right everyone who said we should do the same last time?

[shosta]

I just reserved my spot at a Yang rally this month, sorry Cats

[CatsCatsCats]

Omg you’re destroying the party he’s not even a real democrat

[team filler]

 

[agrajag]

Omg you’re destroying the party he’s not even a real democrat

you talking about Yang or Bernie?

[CatsCatsCats]

Yes, that’s the only choice, you’re right

[shosta]

you talking about Yang or Bernie?

biden

[agrajag]

you talking about Yang or Bernie?

biden

biden, sadly, is a Real Democrat

[CatsCatsCats]

nintex be honest, when's the last time you got your dick wet

Be honest, you had that thread deleted to hide your misogynistic past

[Mandark]

And coming out of nazbol field with the dumbest take of all time is..... David Brooks!!!! He's done it again folks!

https://twitter.com/nytdavidbrooks/status/1114172142495526912

A piece from the American Conservative romanticizing the era of slavery and indigenous displacement? Now I've seen everything!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kind of funny that the author specifically praises Pete Seeger for maintaining his antiwar cred, then David "we invade countries for a sense of national purpose" Brooks approvingly tweets the article. Guy has the attention span of a goldfish.

[close]

[team filler]

https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-mission-creeps-into-latin-america-as-unholy-alliance-turns-70/257012/

“Vladimir Putin harbors dark dreams of imperialism,” Pompeo said with his usual lack of self-reflection.

[team filler]

https://www.rt.com/news/455691-us-iran-revolutionary-guard-terrorist/

The Trump administration is preparing to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization, the first such designation of another country’s military.

The designation might come as early as Monday, three US officials told Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, speaking on condition of anonymity.

 

[team filler]

 

[shosta]

https://www.rt.com/news/455691-us-iran-revolutionary-guard-terrorist/

The Trump administration is preparing to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization, the first such designation of another country’s military.

The designation might come as early as Monday, three US officials told Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, speaking on condition of anonymity.

 

really feeling like the bad guys right now