America's Dumbest Congressman praises Egyptian dictator, still thinks Obama is a secret Muslim
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Actually Ben, quite a few people praised Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for what he said and did...I think some of those words deserved praise:
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/06/af...sident-speech/
Did you hear the one where an Idaho, Republican lawmaker walks into a committee and asks, "Where do babies come from?"
"At a hearing to discuss a bill that would bar doctors from providing abortion-inducing drugs through telemedicine, a doctor explaining telemedicine noted that colonoscopy patients can swallow a small device to help doctors monitor the gastrointestinal tube. To which Barbieri responded: "Can this same procedure then be done in a pregnancy? Swallowing a camera and helping the doctor determine what the situation is?"" http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/...nancy-pictures
Apparently a girl can get pregnant if she swallows. Don't swallow ladies.
Bachmann: Jesus Coming Back Any Minute Now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ehJGXPxd7M
I'm listening to the Holy Spirit as well
Was Ben Carson a Mediocre Surgeon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnJoEKoLOeA
In last night's FARGO episode, the cold blooded hitman "graduates" up the ladder in the syndicate, so they stick him in a little office with a window and a phone.
He sneers, then his new boss tells him that there is only ONE business anymore, the MONEY business.
He then advises him to get a haircut and get a new suit, and oh, learn how to play golf. That's where are the real deals are made.
Bush was an incredibly inept President, but if you see him as a businessman, he was incredibly successful!
This isn't going to surprise anyone, but politics is all about money, now more than ever.
Tonight's debate is just a bunch of guys who get off being rich and powerful.
Regardless of what you think of his politics, Carson was a Director of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins for close to 30 years. The hospital at Johns Hopkins is one of the best hospital in the entire world. This just reeks of butthurt. I am not a huge Carson fan, but trying to discount his amazing success in medicine is silly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
EDIT: The host of this show has apparently admitted to being a Democrat, despite presenting himself as an independent. Shocking.
Because of that ridiculously laughable remark one might easily think Hank Johnson was another dim-bulb republican and hence belongs in this list of other Republican nutjobs. Not so. Hank's a Democrat.
So the Republicans don't have a monopoly on stupidity! But the Republicans do have history
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnAHsZFhRdo
The above is actually from a the thread on what Brits think about Drumpf. I didn't want to turn it into a discussion between U.S. citizens.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
If Trump wins on the first round but is dealt out of the nomination by a backroom deal at the GOP convention, I think he would be effectively released from his obligation not to run as an independent (regardless of what the GOP might say).
I also expect party leaders to maintain the integrity of their party and what it stands for and that probably is the why the nominating process is designed the way it is (but I'm just guessing and agreeing here).
I'm not sure Trump is the worst of all the GOP candidates. In fact, I think Cruz is. All of them are far from being moderate in any sense of the word. Gov. Kasich is lauded among pundits as a moderate, but he just killed all funding for Planned Parenthood in Ohio. He's a complete ideologue, as is Rubio (although Rubio flaps in the political winds). Trump is too ignorant to be an ideologue and too impulsive to be trusted with the Nation.
I'd love it Trump if was denied the nomination in a back-room maneuver and ran as a independent. It would hand the election to the Democratic Party. On the other hand, Bloomberg promised to enter the race as an independent if it was between Trump and Sanders. Even though Bloomberg is a Republican, I can't help think he would draw more votes from Dems and Independents, then from Republicans.
If I was an American voter I would be looking at the field of candidates most likely to be nominated for the Presidency and wonder if there was a crisis in US politics, not just in the Republican Party. From what I can gather, Mrs Clinton will base her policy agenda on the 1990s, Sanders on the 1960s, and Trump on the 1930s. I am not sure about Cruz and Rubio who seem to base their world view on a mix of Bronze Age biblical texts and the late Roman Empire. I can't see any of these people being more than a one-term President, and it may be that the Republican 'establishment' has given up and decided that Trump will be their candidate and lead them to a crushing defeat in November, but that this will enable the party to re-define its identity and purpose and attract a strong and credible candidate to dominate the 2020s.
But where are the leading politicians who can offer a vision of the US in 10 or 20 years time, when it is estimated that over the next 30 years automation will replace up to 50% of the jobs currently being done by humans; when the global decline of population growth beginning around 2050 will thus see a a net and steep increase between now and then, not including immigration patterns. What are we to make of a country that cannot provide drinking water in the north, or water at all in the south? Crucially, where are the policies that will create jobs and grow the economy, and deal with these hugely complex issues?
You have a generation of politicians looking backwards, and it may be that the best minds in America have fled politics for the arts, the sciences, engineering and medicine, and that they will continue to innovate and grow while the political system atrophies in a stale Presidency and a rigid Congress. We have a similar range of problems in the UK, and on a wider scale in Europe, but the US has always been able to innovate its way out of a crisis and is still the country of the future, but you need politicians who believe in that future, and don't look back with nostalgia at some point in the past. The past is another country, they do things differently there.
Give us some hope, at least that!
You paint a frightening picture of our political scene. I must admit, I've been asking myself lately, "Who have I been living with? Who are these people who are coming out of the woodwork to nominate Trump? Could they possibly be my friends and neighbors? How could I have not seen them for who they are?" Although the Democratic candidates are old, I don't agree they're living in the past. They both believe in anthropogenic climate change; none of the GOP candidates do. The Democratic candidates believe the CDC should be allowed to study the relationship between firearm distribution and the public health; the GOP candidates do not.Quote:
...you need politicians who believe in that future, and don't look back with nostalgia at some point in the past. The past is another country, they do things differently there.
It is sad that there are very few young and sane politicians on the horizon. I might mention Cory Booker (he's already 46), but he's neither a nutjob nor republican and so an unsuitable subject for this thread.
Trish, I may be setting the bar too high, but I think that in mature democracies we have a right to expect the best of the politicians we elect, not a self-satisfied clique who award themselves pay rises beyond rates they would allow for bus drivers or doctors, who fiddle their expenses, and make pompous moral judgements about marriage while paying for sex or conducting illicit affairs of their own.
It is frankly a weak argument to endorse either Clinton or Sanders for believing in 'anthropogenic climate change' when climate change has been on the agenda since the 19th century along with environmental politics in the USA such as the Sierra Club, founded in 1892; the National Audubon Society, founded in 1905; and the Wilderness Society in 1935. It is not as if these have been somnolent societies of sandal clad fishermen and twitchers, they were instrumental in delaying the development of the petroleum industry in Alaska for the best part of five years, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Act which in turn created the Environmental Protection Agency, acts of a Republican -yes, a Republican- President that these days would be condemned by the GOP as socialism gone mad -and you think American politicians are not looking backwards for solutions when they are also identifying the past as the source of current problems?
While issues related to climate change are impossible to ignore and feed into a variety of policy issues, from environmental protection to water management to energy in general, fundamental to the future is the 'world of work' because capitalism continues to innovate its way out of crises of production, distribution and supply, but does not necessarily have the USA in mind as it goes on its merry way into the future.
One example of just how stupid a politician can be -allowing for one brief moment his aspiration to be a politician- is Donald Trump's claim that if he becomes President Apple will have to make its products in the USA not in China, which presumably will also apply to all other US firms who make products outside the country. Trump may have no faith in free trade, and I don't suppose he would accept a compromise from Apple to move its production from China to Mexico or American Samoa, but what is so outstanding in this position is the man's utter ignorance, or studied indifference as to why Apple and other computing firms make their products in China. With millions of Americans fed up with stagnant wages and rising costs, is Trump going to propose reducing the minimum wage to $1 an hour? Does he see his tariff barrier policies so depreciating the value of the dollar that it won't be long before it is cheaper to make computers in Michigan than it is in China? The mind boggles, even before you send this economic nationalism through the cheesegrater called Congress, not to mention the way it conflicts with trade deals the USA has been signing all over the place.
As I indicated in the previous post, automation is going to decimate jobs over the next 30 years unless someone or a new industry comes along that needs human labour. The revolution in communications does not just make it easier for people around the world to be 'connected' and, in a democratic sense, give everyone a voice, it is also part of a growing surveillance culture in government and industry that is leading governments, such as the UK, to introduce laws that would give the police the right to trawl though my email and browsing history in case I am a terrorist or a drug baron or maybe just don't like the Conservative Party and am not afraid to say so. Commerce now has facial recognition software in stores so that if someone is a regular in Saks they know which items in the store he or she tends to look at and buy, or steal if they are shoplifters -as in time the software will set off an alarm and a security guard will escort them outside; or prompt a sales assistant so sidle up and purr into your ear about a new range of underwear on special offer.
These examples might sound trivial, but I think the point is that capitalism seems to move so fast politicians are always playing catch-up, they are behind the curve not shaping it. The end result is that we have in Europe and North America lost a lot of the industries that used to employ millions of people, often low to unskilled workers; people in work have seen their wages rot while costs rise, with endless anxieties and arguments about health care, housing and education. In response you have the pathetic whining of Sanders and his designated enemy -the 'Bankers'- as if he had no idea where the money for old age pensions comes from, while Mrs Clinton doesn't seem to have a single answer to the question of jobs other than creating more and more federal funded jobs by expanding the remit of federal agencies -is this 'welfare to work' or 'work as welfare'? and raising the minimum wage which as many employers as possible will avoid paying anyway.
Maybe the Federal government, as with the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s, should permanently employ 25 million Americans to repair the physical infrastructure?
Or it could just be my age and that a younger generation sees the future containing greater potential than I can see. But are the candidates before you the ones to take you into a future that is not just different from, but better than the present?
Environmentalism may not be a new movement, but when it comes to whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring, there is a major partisan division. The GOP for the most part believes it is not a real phenomenon and that scientists are deviously plotting to slow production by faking meteorological data.
I think the argument that both parties are nostalgic is almost tautological. There is no platform under the sun that is not in some way derivative (the same issues arise over and over again until they are resolved and the solutions are finite). Sometimes previous generations get certain things right; I don't think it's less progressive to acknowledge that.
What separates a progressive from a traditionalist is that the latter believes the previous iteration was right simply because that's the way it's always been done. The progressive may support a previous proposal because it serves some value that is not currently being given enough emphasis and that no practice should remain in place simply because we don't have the determination to improve it.
What I like about Sanders is that he's willing to look at what other countries do and say, "we can use a little more of that". I don't like that he tends to be one-dimensional and has set himself up as the anti-establishment guy. This would end up being a role that would pigeonhole him. He would have to continuously re-establish his credentials or be accused of hypocrisy.
Sometimes you are more motivated by fear of bad proposals than hope. A Republican President would result in a very different supreme court (depending upon whether any liberal justice dies or retires; one spot is already vacant and awaiting replacement) and resulting changes in the legality of same sex marriage, abortion, and limitations on corporate campaign contributions, etc. It may also result in the repeal of our healthcare system which is a major part of Obama's legacy. This is motive enough for me to say that someone who is reasonable is good enough...not inspiring, but there you go.
Actually there's quite a bit more I don't like about Bernie Sanders than I stated but that's not the purpose of the thread I suppose. As long as the viable options result in two very different outcomes, I don't feel that bad about being motivated by fear of the nutjob...it's not ideal, but ideal would be that nobody would want to ban same sex marriage, would reject a well-founded scientific consensus, or think it's okay for people to go without health insurance.
Strongly agree. For anyone who knows anything about finance, Sanders condemnation of bankers and Wall Street is without any nuance...seemingly without any comprehension of the trade-offs legislators must consider in enacting financial regulations...and also what is required to prosecute someone for violating banking laws (a violation of a current law rather than an aspiration). I don't doubt that many more crooks could have been prosecuted post 2008 but if you were to listen to Sanders you would not really know who should be prosecuted and for violating which specific law.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I think you miss a critical point about nostalgia -the 'traditionalists' do not look back to the Reagan era and say 'why can't we be like that' because 'that's what America is', they resurrect the past as a replacement for a future they do not seem to comprehend -or to want.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
If it is true I set the bar too high for politicians as people then maybe in a capitalist society there is a limit to what politicians can -even should- achieve, just as people probably think a President can do more in the US system than he (or she) can.
But here are some sobering realities at a time when I have not heard candidates in the Republican Party saying jobs in the public sector should be transferred to the private sector.
The largest private employer in the USA (2015 figures) is Wal-Mart, with 2,200,000 employees. The next largest is McDonalds, with 420,000, followed by IBM with 412,000.
In the 'knowledge economy' and social media, Microsoft employed 99,000 worldwide (2013); Apple employed 80,300 worldwide (2013), Google 24,000 worldwide (2010) and Facebook 12,691 worldwide (2015).
The Ford Motor Co in 2014 employed 187,000 worldwide in 2014 with 48% of its workforce in the USA having employed 213,000 worldwide in 2008. But in the 1940s Ford employed 90,000 at just one plant in the Detroit area -River Rouge- while between 1948 and 1967 Michigan saw the loss of 130,000 jobs in the auto industry.
In 2014 the Federal Government employed 2,711,000 excluding non-civilian military and this was the lowest since 1966, the highest numbers being recorded in the 1980s.
In 2014, local government employed 14 million, and while the trend was downwards, in the 1950s local government rarely exceeded 4 million.
What this suggests is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans know what the future of work looks like, but it does seem that even with Ford hiring what it calls '5,000 hourly paid workers' in 2014, many jobs in industry are insecure, short-term, part-time, zero-hours or 'soft jobs' on the basis of which planning a family is very risky; or the new tech industries and social media can become global superstars but without employing vast numbers of people; and thus the largest source of jobs is either the Federal government, or state and country authorities. The money is all either in the hands of government, broadly defined, or corporate giants with access to global markets and billions of dollars of investment. Somewhere in the middle are small to medium firms overwhelmed with red tape, layers of tax and pressures on cost, but even if Trump promotes 'the little guy', what in reality can Trump do to give the 'little guy' a break, because there is not going to be an 'even break' with the way capitalism is at the moment. And no appeal to the 'small town America' of 1816 is going to work now, that nostalgia for the age of Jefferson and Adams is only going to work in Hollywood (or Netflix).
As for the Supreme Court, Obama must nominate Sri Srinivasan as soon as possible because the man has already been appointed without objection to his current post so for Republicans to deny him would look vindictive, but note too that nominees to the Supreme Court often vote on the law rather than by party line, and while Antonin Scalia might have been the exception (and Souter in the Roosevelt era), it has been mostly Republican nominees who drifted away from their party once they got on the bench.
Anyway, I still think there is a woeful lack of real depth to political debate in the USA and also here in the UK and more widely in Europe.
Lastly, is there any depth to the rumours that Marco Rubio is/was gay?
Great post. I am not sure what the government can do about these economic trends. I think automation would not be implemented if it were not more efficient in a macro sense, but in the short run it does terrible things to the average worker. When you look at vast restructuring like this and how it shakes up lives, I think it is essentially a problem of distribution...how else could technology replace human labor unless it did more and for cheaper? But its fruits are enjoyed by whom?
Do you think it is possible for the knowledge economy to employ vast numbers relative to total population? Or is it by its nature something that will only depend on the few and the specially educated to shepherd?
I agree with you that whether a judge is conservative or liberal should not matter very much. If they are principled, it is their judicial philosophy that will determine the decisions they make on the bench.
When it comes to interpreting the meaning of statutes, I believe political affiliation does not matter. When it comes to interpreting the bare text of our constitution and how it circumscribes the behavior or legislators at both the state and federal level, political affiliation seems to permeate most decisions. What one sees as fundamental right that legislators cannot legislate away, what one sees as the limits of the federal government versus state governments seem to always depend upon one's meta-view of what kind of society we have been and should be. A Judge evaluating an issue like abortion has no external reference except for the weight he gives to the rights of a woman versus the harm done to the unborn fetus and the right of the court to limit the sovereignty of state legislatures in order to protect some value.
Although I disagreed with many of Scalia's opinions and found some of his reasoning repellent, he did ask one very relevant question. If the Supreme Court can strike down laws to protect values that are not enumerated in the Constitution, what is to prevent them from being legislators in robes? As much as I think the Court has a role to protect fundamental rights and the equal protection of citizens, he has a point...in most systems I imagine Judges have a self-contained body of law to reference and not open-ended values they see as their job to protect.
I don't know the answer, but I suspect that small to medium firms face more pressure with cost and difficulty in efficiently reallocating their capital than red tape and layers of tax. Maybe the red tape they face is more burdensome for them only because they have not achieved the efficiency that comes with economies of scale.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Should the government provide incentives in the form of subsidies and tax breaks to maintain their viability or allow them to be crushed by corporations who benefit from economies of scale and efficient administration? Maybe the government should provide tax breaks and subsidies, but what is the next stage of their business development except to eventually become a behemoth...what is the tide we are fighting to ensure their viability?
It seems I am leading the questions against their protection, but only because the trends in favor of large entities seems strong and their advantages almost unavoidable. Distribution of wealth is important to me, but it can be achieved in other ways than bolstering failing businesses.
One of the curious omissions in the debate from both sides relates to the timid attitude they have to anti-trust strategies. Even in the case of Bernie Sanders, he wants to break up the 'big financial institutions' but if the overall intention is to create a more level playing field and give 'the little guy' with a small business a better chance of growing his business, why does nobody call for anti trust legislation to break up corporate giants like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Exxon and so on? Should Rupert Murdoch be allowed to own so much of the US media? Not even the 'free market' champions of the GOP seem interested in this, and certainly not Donald Trump who claims he is on the side of 'the little guy' but doesn't seem to have a policy to match the rhetoric. Yet giant corporations are at the heart of debate on globalisation and its winners and losers, because they can employ people to deal with red tape and every regulation thrown at them, while also using brilliant tax lawyers to pay as little corporation tax as possible.
The odd position that this puts the US in, rather like the UK, is one in which we have gone from an era of full employment, high rates of direct taxation, national prosperity and low deficits, to varying levels of higher or lower than unemployment, low taxation, lower rates of growth and national prosperity, and colossal debt. One explanation for these are unexpected costs, such as the $trillion or more spent on foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but another is the curious case of the way work has changed reducing productivity and with it the national wealth.
One of the consequences of the changes that has taken place along with de-industrialisation in the US and UK is that it is possible for Ford to hire 5,000 hourly paid workers, but not to add value at significant levels to the economy because part-time work or temporary contacts reduce productivity. This in turn means the government receives less revenue in the form of both taxes levied on workers and firms, and on their products, and has to make up the difference through borrowing, or savings on public spending, this position is put well here-
Creating jobs without improving productivity, however, will not result in sustainable employment that raises the nation’s standard of living. Rather than defining the sole goal as job creation, the U.S. must focus on becoming a more productive location, which will generate high-wage employment growth in America, attract foreign investment, and fuel sustainable growth in demand for local goods and services.
https://hbr.org/2012/03/the-looming-...ompetitiveness
The next time Kasich or Christie or anyone else says they have created more jobs in their state in a month than Democrat states, treat with caution. As for Trump, he promises to reduce the top level of tax, take out lower paid workers from direct taxation altogether, but also find the money to 'bomb the shit' out of Daesh in Iraq and Syria and build a wall across the Mexican border -even Trump I assume is not going to demand the money 'up front' (but this wall will never get through Congress anyway so it is just flannel). Trump, the man with a plan and the man for a deal, can't do his sums.
In the UK the gradual decline of the North Sea Oil and Gas industry has also taken a lot of productive value, as well as taxes out of the country's income but there are less visible losses too, such as the decline of the money spent in the UK on Research and Development in new industries, also true of the USA as worldwide the leaders in R&D are Israel, Korea, Japan, Finland, Sweden -even Taiwan spends more of its GNP on R&D than the USA.
You will look in vain for a policy on R&D in any of the candidates policy announcements, just as you will not find any intelligent comments on productivity, but you will find positions on tax because that is an obsession with Republicans and a 'businessman' like Donald Trump.
The difficulty with the social media phenomenon, taking Facebook and Google into account, is that they are not like Apple or Microsoft, companies that actually make things. Facebook, which generates about $1bn profit every three months, in 2014 paid the UK government £4,327 in corporation tax -around $6,158 with corporation tax in the UK being 20%. One reason is that Facebook's European HQ is in Ireland where corporation tax is 12.5% and money made from sales in the UK is routed through Ireland. But the key problem is that with a firm like Facebook there is a difference between profit and revenue, because corporate taxes are levied on profit, not revenue, and a firm without a tangible product like a car or a computer generates more revenue than profit, if that doesn't sound too arcane. But this is also why new industries are either able to become financially successful because they pay such little tax, or because the governments have yet to work out how to tax a business whose 'product' is, in effect, a 'presence' on the internet. Again, an example of how contemporary politicians are using last century's standards of measurement to extract their slice of the cake from an industry they appear not to even understand, and in Sander's case, for 'moral' rather than for sound financial reasons.
At least Mrs Clinton is not obscuring the debate. She can be lumped in with Wall St and the global giants as the 'sell-out' (why not the 'buy-in'?) candidate who promises more of the same, while the others promise little to nothing that connects with the way business is done. The key point about Donald Trump, in the end, is that he is not and has never been interested in 'the deal', but 'the percentage'. He doesn't walk into a board room to negotiate a compromise, as he would have to do with Congress -betraying the 'little guy' in the process- he goes in thinking 'what's my percentage?' Or, 'what's in it for me?'. And that is no way to shape economic policy in the USA, or anywhere else.
Trump's website has these 'Positions' -
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions
There is a checklist of candidates positions on a range of issues where they can be identified, here-
http://2016election.procon.org/view....mary-chart.php
Looks like fact is stranger than fiction and Trump will be IN next Tuesday, So be it Lord, in your infinite wisdom, you have checked and balanced all things so that Trump will not only lose the election, he'll destroy the GOP. They're losing spokespeople left and right. RIP
....As for Stavros' pile of corruption, back stabbing, theft, waste, moronic decisions, lost opportunities, hey man, that was one day at work for me. I used to embezzle as much money as I earned, and spend it on dancing girls, whores, alcohol, and drugs. The reason I could steal that much and get away with it was I did the books and I was also one of the best EARNERS we had. Some of my co-workers and one boss kinda knew, but there was such an entangled web of alliances, memories, fears, weaknesses, and strengths, I got away with it. In the USA, the WHEELER DEALER has an odd respect, lots of psychology in business.
As for all that bullshit piled up, I think it is worse than one can imagine, and possibly very dangerous. It's like physics, you have to look through your imagination to see it clearly. The USA can maintain that huge pile of shit simply because, we have the largest pile of MONEY the Planet has ever experienced. We have the most POWER the planet has ever witnessed.
Kennedy said we should do things not because they are easy but because they're hard. Jury is out. The aim is justice, but you end up with reality.
One of O'Bama's objectives is a roaring success: He did nothing WRONG enough to send peasants with pitchforks and torches flooding toward the White House. The Republican voters are hopping mad and their hatred is all directed at the GOP!!!!!!
KUDOS Barack Hussein O'Bama!
I give up predicting what Trump will do, but I am pretty confident that 51% of America will not vote for a Man whose main promise is to kick down the doors of 11 million homes and drag Mexican children down the street to waiting vans.
I'm voting for Kasich's daughter (the one on the right)
http://s14.postimg.org/gx06ou6ap/238...ura_kasich.jpg
forum image hosting
A Possible Course of Events?
The latest spate of childish tweets and spats have left Trump slightly more damaged than Cruz. It’s possible that neither of them will have enough delegates to win the nomination on the first round of voting at the GOP convention. If that should happen it’s pretty clear Trump would not have gained enough of the party trust to secure the nomination. Yet it would be difficult to award the nomination to any of the candidates who faired worse in the primaries than Trump, including Cruz. I think (should no one have the required delegate count) that the GOP would someone outside the pool of this year’s seventeen or so candidates and clowns. I think it’s likely that after the white smoke settles, Paul Ryan could surface from the convention hall as the newly crowned GOP nominee.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
All roads lead to FAIL:!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eJpWOY3r18
Thanks for the vid buttslinger; that was one-hundred and sixty very excruciating seconds for The Donald. But that's in the past:
It's springtime
For The Donald
In the USA;
Winter for Hispanics
And The Blacks.
(Don't be stupid, be a smarty come and join the border wall party)
Springtime for Hitler - time for a remake?
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-...-women-w200856
If I perform an illegal abortion on Trump, would I be punished?
Before the ink was dry on Johnson's Civil Rights Act the Republicans had a vision:
They could now become the WHITE Party of the USA.
But non-whites are a bigger percentage of the population now.
So tossing any white guy in a suit on the ballot (Mitt) isn't cutting it anymore.
Trump's inclusion in the Republican primary probably reshuffled the deck. I believe Marco Rubio would still be standing if it wasn't for that...could be the morning coffee talking though. To really project, I would say that if Rubio had won, Nikki Haley would have received a powerful cabinet position from him (her term is up 2019)...which of course may have eventually lined her up for a future presidential nomination. The irony of course is - I don't think a Trump or Cruz nomination will beat Clinton anyway (though this is the strangest of election years , so you never know), which means she could have an earlier shot at it, if that's what she really wants. Obviously this is all, over the top, speculation on my part cause I'm wired right now. Governor Haley would be an attractive nominee for all the obvious reasons, but what sours it is the 'Tea Party'.
Which may be okay, because if she ever got the nomination, my eyes would be tired from rolling them anytime some idiot would say "Why doesn't she go by her first name Nimrata? hmmm...answer me that'.
On an amusing note, I have to give credit to Trump for one thing: The Tea Party kills nominees by forcing them to spew shit you know they don't believe in...often based on previous performance. But here you have Trump, who so obviously doesn't hold ANY of their values it's almost laughable. It's almost like he's forcing that wing of the party to him, rather than vice-versa. Which exposes that portion of the party for what they are - haters who think the world should just think like them - or go to hell if they don't. People in need of anger management and drugs (other than Crystal Meth).
......I have to give credit to Trump for one thing: The Tea Party kills nominees by forcing them to spew shit you know they don't believe in...often based on previous performance. But here you have Trump, who so obviously doesn't hold ANY of their values it's almost laughable. It's almost like he's forcing that wing of the party to him, rather than vice-versa. Which exposes that portion of the party for what they are - haters who think the world should just think like them - or go to hell if they don't.....
When Trump said "THEY'RE all rapists and drug dealers" he sewed up the most votes, but nowhere near 51% he would need in a general election. It could be the GOP is upset that Trump represents a LOSING strategy more than being upset he represents an immoral one. Before this is all over with you will hear Trump tell the GOP to KMA. That'll be fun.
I'm sure there was an exact date and time when Trump first realized he had the business skills to run a hostile takeover of the entire Gop, fucking clowns in charge of millions and millions of dollars! Trump saw the Republican party as a warehouse full of Scrooge McDuck-Size piles of riches, and the only door had a sleeping John McCain with a rusty ole shotgun guarding it, and Sarah Palin with an American flag. Easy pickins. So Trump grabbed the flag and Sarah, that left McCain. (the loser)
Let me remind everyone that even after Trump loses, there will still be ..what, 75 million racists running free?
As Stavros and Trish will tell you- History and Physics are NEVER wrong, once you separate human error from the text.
It used to be if you lived in a small rural community, and you drove fifteen minutes to the next town for your job, people thought you had demons. Nobody locks their doors there. They all know each other. Feel an AMERICAN kinship with each other. Look out for each other. All the taxes they pay go to fix the city's problems. The Goddam drugs came from THE CITY!!!!
I kinda think the Republicans look to their President as a Father figure, because they're rural, like in olde Europe the villages looked to the village elder or wiseman to call the play in the huddle. While Democrats think all the players in the huddle should vote, and let the wiseman play his position. Everyone in Congress has paid civil service jobs.
And now that them country boys have krank and the internet and cable TV, we may be seeing lots of personality changes in the GOP. Look at Ashlyn Creamer!!!
Game of Thrones meets American Idol.
Well, this week I'm going to give the nomination to Trump......
What's the alternative, CRUZ?????????????
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politi...ppT?li=BBnb7Kz
Satire from "The Onion"...
http://www.theonion.com/graphic/how-...op-trump-52808
The Kennedy Assassination? Is the USA ever going to let go of it? What next, is Trump related to Davy Crockett, Paul Revere and George Washington? Or is someone going to talk about jobs, health-care, and education? And I thought Labour was losing it (all over again) with Ken Livingstone and Hitler....
Looks like Trump V Clinton Debates in the fall.........
The Democrats have said they wanted Trump and it seems like the Democrats are getting everything they want this year. Donald Trump has never been in a Debate with half the seats filled with Democrats.
It's going to sound like the Jerry Springer show.
I....cannot....wait.
Some really, really funny stuff...thanks for posting.Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
You know Stavros, at first I thought you were quoting something from "The Onion"...and then I saw this : http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...stic/83874972/Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
This is fucking ridiculous. Trump quotes a lunatic article from The National Enquirer. You know, the paper that talks about 'BatBoy" and the Devil coming out of a volcano.
I'm stunned.
Even if I had a delusional fever. Even if I simply wanted to watch a train wreck.
Even if I was going to do what a lot of voters are going to do - which is vote for anyone but Hillary.
I...C'mon really??!!
I can't . Really?!!
Is it okay to say every silly thing that comes to mind when running for President now? WTF?
How can you vote for someone who has less impulse control than a two year old?
Anyway read this article/editorial opinion about Labour this morning - http://nypost.com/2016/05/02/britain...anti-semitism/
....is it accurate?
It is partially accurate, but for a detailed, sometimes tedious sometimes shocking rebuttal of the claims the first link will help, but note too a rebuttal of the rebuttal in the second link for an additional view, though it may be too much reading on a subject alien to this thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred41
https://opendemocracy.net/uk/jamie-s...s-opponents-do
https://frankpodmore.com/tag/labour-party/
The sad fact of the matter is that there has been a persistent if muted anti-semitism in Britain which has been obscured because it became morally reprehensible after 1945 whereas before that making casual remarks about 'the Jews' was not uncommon, just as in more recent years people have modified the way they talk about the Irish, Black people and to a lesser extent Muslims owing to the feeling that at the moment they are 'fair game' because of the outrageous acts of violence committed by so-called radical Muslims. Such views are found in all parties, not just Labour, and for what its worth some of the views that have been expressed about women and the childish behaviour of some MP's in Parliament suggests that women remain the most likely social group to be on the receiving end of the most prejudice in public life. As to to reasons specific to Labour Party, this has a long history on which I will share my views if you are interested.
Note that we go to the Polls on Thursday so the results, for mostly local elections in England and Wales, the Scottish Assembly, and the Mayor of London will be the first elections of note since Corbyn became party leader.
Well I made it about two thirds through the first rebuttal article, when I realize it was pointless because the author seemed clearly biased and I'm being kind...but I will revisit and trudge through 'til finish in the morning, because the article may redeem itself with an unexpected piece of profound insight. It's supposed to be a rebuttal, but.....
The prejudice you speak of happens in all walks of life...but not always to the extent of being posted on social media by a politician. You'd like to think that a politician would be more 'aware'....unless of course that person thought their comments were part of the norm...or at least, part of a preconceived collective agreement amongst his audience.
I agree with you 100% on women bearing the most prejudice, at least on a global scale. That's a point that needs it's own thread...or at least another discussion someplace....any place.
...and I am always interested in hearing your views - so please share them...
(though you are often a bit stuffy or cranky when criticizing one of the Arts ...lol. [This can't be news to you])