This is fascinating stuff. Either he is more Machiavellian than I am able to comprehend, he is VERY confident his job is secure, or he just messed up big-time. I have no idea which of those 3 is correct. This makes absolutely no sense. I can't think of a single reason why Steve Bannon would cold-call the American Prospect. It doesn't make any sense if he didn't have a motive.
Also a Rage Against The Machine fan here. They're still around sorta as Prophets of Rage with Morello and the basist from Rage and Chuck D and the Cypress Hill singer both as singers.
The transcripts of the jury selection in the trial of shit-bag Martin Shkreli are now available. It contains one of the greatest things I have ever read:
the court: All right. I’m going to excuse you. Juror Number 59, come on up.
juror no. 59: Your Honor, totally he is guilty and in no way can I let him slide out of anything because —
the court: Okay. Is that your attitude toward anyone charged with a crime who has not been proven guilty?
juror no. 59: It’s my attitude toward his entire demeanor, what he has done to people.
the court: All right. We are going to excuse you, sir.
juror no. 59: And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.
FOX News isn't any more dishonest than CNN or any other mainstream outlet. Funny that have the rep that they have, when it is deserved by all, because they don't lie in the acceptable direction.
For example, just around this time last year, CNN edited the video of a woman who they said was was "calling for peace" but instead said they should take the violence to the suburbs. Hey man, no need to denounce calls to violence or even tell the truth about calls to violence if it won't suit the narrative. There really isn't any room for plausible error here given that they cut off just seconds before. It was deliberate.
Zack was the emotion behind the band though. Without his vocals you had Audioslave. Still good with Cornell but definitely not the same.
Never been more disappointed in a band than Audioslave. It seemed like something that couldn't miss, but even Morello's guitar playing simply doesn't come across the same way when it isn't advocating for communist rebels in Central America. He was much better when he joined Bruce Springsteen for his Wrecking Ball tour, where he seemed to become a full member of the E Street Band. Bruce, of course, has always been explicitly political, but I feel like the characters in his songs are more like a myth of the working man in the 1950s than anything that resembles real life. Everyone seems to work at either a gas station, a car wash, or a factory, all of which aren't really jobs that exist anymore, at least not in the way they are described.
FOX News isn't any more dishonest than CNN or any other mainstream outlet. Funny that have the rep that they have, when it is deserved by all, because they don't lie in the acceptable direction.
For example, just around this time last year, CNN edited the video of a woman who they said was was "calling for peace" but instead said they should take the violence to the suburbs. Hey man, no need to denounce calls to violence or even tell the truth about calls to violence if it won't suit the narrative. There really isn't any room for plausible error here given that they cut off just seconds before. It was deliberate.
I actually despise CNN, as I gave up on them completely when, during the 2008 Election, they had celebrities checking in by hologram like Princess Leia asking Obi-Wan for help. I hate them for entirely different reasons, but they've been a joke for years, and haven't done anything actually worthwhile since the first Gulf War.
As for MSNBC, I WISH it was the liberal FOX News. Liberals NEED such an outlet, but MSNBC is not it. It's prime-time line-up is absolutely 100% biased toward a liberal viewpoint, but I defy anyone to show me a time when Rachel Maddow has deliberately lied to her audience. I have seen her come back from commercial breaks and correct something she said in the previous segment that would seem totally inconsequential to the story to 99% of the people watching. She is the one who a few weeks ago WARNED the rest of the media to check their stories about Trump and Russia very carefully because of suspicion the Administration might be planting fake stories so they could discredit the media. She is very liberal, but she is not a liar by any stretch of the imagination. She is not Sean Hannity.
That said, CNN is nothing but a parade of buffoons. Van Jones, the recently fire Jeffrey Lord, Gloria Borger. The whole lot of them. It's a clown show. Cable news is a puppet show. All those pundits are put on TV to play a role. Anderson Cooper plays the role of moderator. Van Jones plays the liberal, Jeffrey Lord played the conservative apologist. It's a freak show. Wolf Blitzer is one of the dumbest people on TV. Watch his celebrity Jeopardy appearance if anyone questions that statement.
I'll give the Alt-right one bit of credit, they also seem to hate FOX News. Since part of it's goal is tearing down "normie" culture, they have no real use for any established form of news consumption. It exists almost entirely on internet message boards and Youtube. Which is actually the precise reason their speech isn't being censored. The internet is the ultimate equalizer. Even the Daily Stormer, after literally calling for people to disrupt the funeral of Heather Heyer, after being dumped by GoDaddy and Google, was able to migrate to the dark web within days. Nearly anything goes on the internet. For that, thank Net Neutrality and the fact that the Obama White House and FCC responded to the public pressure.
If Maddow is that good, I might give her a view. I try to get a balance of information from political sides but i'm picky about who I trust to give minimal spin or at least be honest about the spin they are giving. I like Micheal Tracey from The Young Turks a lot as well.
If Maddow is that good, I might give her a view. I try to get a balance of information from political sides but i'm picky about who I trust to give minimal spin or at least be honest about the spin they are giving. I like Micheal Tracey from The Young Turks a lot as well.
What music do you like? Just wondering since @jjstraka34 brought up the topic...
If Maddow is that good, I might give her a view. I try to get a balance of information from political sides but i'm picky about who I trust to give minimal spin or at least be honest about the spin they are giving. I like Micheal Tracey from The Young Turks a lot as well.
The one Alt-right voice I listen to on a regular basis (even though it drives me up a wall) is a guy named Styxhexenhammer666. He is conspiratorial and mostly pseudo-intellectual garbage, but the idea that this Demonologist sits on his porch without a shirt on in his leather jacket opining about all manner of subjects is, at the very least, entertaining. His comment section is repulsive however. He thinks they are all trolls and joking. I don't think many of them are joking at all.
I can't possibly really recommend anyone on the left to someone. I would gather that Maddow would focus far too much on Russia for your taste, but she does her homework, extensively. At the top of her show she always places her top story in some sort of historical context. But she is not a liar. She is trustworthy.
I already know about most of the big names in conservative media, and even the Alt-right online brigade. Sargon of Akkad makes me want to rip my ears off. Dave Rubin is, to me, nothing but a cynical opportunist who smelled which way the wind was blowing in online media and slowly managed to morph over the course of a year from TYT host to Alt-right gateway drug, which I saw coming from a mile away.
VICE News, if you have HBO Now, is pretty damn good. I thought the piece I posted earlier on the events of this weekend was brilliant. That girl sat right in the middle of the whole thing, was not the least bit rude or condescending to the white supremacists she was following throughout the day, simply asking them legitimate questions and letting them dig their own grave.
Zack was the emotion behind the band though. Without his vocals you had Audioslave. Still good with Cornell but definitely not the same.
Never been more disappointed in a band than Audioslave. It seemed like something that couldn't miss, but even Morello's guitar playing simply doesn't come across the same way when it isn't advocating for communist rebels in Central America. He was much better when he joined Bruce Springsteen for his Wrecking Ball tour, where he seemed to become a full member of the E Street Band. Bruce, of course, has always been explicitly political, but I feel like the characters in his songs are more like a myth of the working man in the 1950s than anything that resembles real life. Everyone seems to work at either a gas station, a car wash, or a factory, all of which aren't really jobs that exist anymore, at least not in the way they are described.
I bought Audioslave's 1st album because of Cornell. I loved Soundgarden. From that perspective I really enjoyed it. I didn't learn until later that the rest of the band was from Rage. After I learned that, I just figured that Zack was the reason for the 'Rage'.
I see 39 new comments, I come in expecting that the thread has caught aflame with some horribly ugly, personal argument, and then I see @Balrog99 and @jjstraka34 chatting about music.
I see 39 new comments, I come in expecting that the thread has caught aflame with some horribly ugly, personal argument, and then I see @Balrog99 and @jjstraka34 chatting about music.
Thanks, guys.
I was going to play old-school Guild Wars tonight but that went down the tubes apparently.
I see 39 new comments, I come in expecting that the thread has caught aflame with some horribly ugly, personal argument, and then I see @Balrog99 and @jjstraka34 chatting about music.
Thanks, guys.
No prob. If either of you are in the Detroit area I'd love to meet you for a beer or cocktail!
Since I got charged again today, and I need to make more use of my HBO Now subscription than just watching Game of Thrones once a week, I am watching the nightly installment of VICE News, and I can recommend this program. It is, at least nominally, liberal. But it is not only immaculately produced, but is actually covering issues. There are no pundits and no frills. HBO doesn't produce crap, and VICE News seems to be no exception.
Since I got charged again today, and I need to make more use of my HBO Now subscription than just watching Game of Thrones once a week, I am watching the nightly installment of VICE News, and I can recommend this program. It is, at least nominally, liberal. But it is not only immaculately produced, but is actually covering issues. There are no pundits and no frills. HBO doesn't produce crap, and VICE News seems to be no exception.
When I switched my cable package to save money I gave up HBO and got Starz instead. I was quite annoyed until I discovered Ash vs. the Evil Dead and Spartacus. Losing Game of Thrones was highly annoying however...
Since I got charged again today, and I need to make more use of my HBO Now subscription than just watching Game of Thrones once a week, I am watching the nightly installment of VICE News, and I can recommend this program. It is, at least nominally, liberal. But it is not only immaculately produced, but is actually covering issues. There are no pundits and no frills. HBO doesn't produce crap, and VICE News seems to be no exception.
When I switched my cable package to save money I gave up HBO and got Starz instead. I was quite annoyed until I discovered Ash vs. the Evil Dead and Spartacus. Losing Game of Thrones was highly annoying however...
This season it is going WAY too fast because it now has to move towards a conclusion fairly soon, so it was inevitable. Still good, but the pacing is jarring. But the TV show has now superceded the books as canon in my eyes. I don't believe Martin will ever finish the series at this rate. There is at least a 50/50 chance this ends in a Robert Jordan situation. As someone who read the Wheel of Time for over a decade before one day looking at Yahoo news and seeing he had died, I'm not going in for that again. Thank god Sanderson completed the series, even though those books had the same pacing problems as the current Game of Thrones season.
Since I got charged again today, and I need to make more use of my HBO Now subscription than just watching Game of Thrones once a week, I am watching the nightly installment of VICE News, and I can recommend this program. It is, at least nominally, liberal. But it is not only immaculately produced, but is actually covering issues. There are no pundits and no frills. HBO doesn't produce crap, and VICE News seems to be no exception.
When I switched my cable package to save money I gave up HBO and got Starz instead. I was quite annoyed until I discovered Ash vs. the Evil Dead and Spartacus. Losing Game of Thrones was highly annoying however...
This season it is going WAY too fast because it now has to move towards a conclusion fairly soon, so it was inevitable. Still good, but the pacing is jarring. But the TV show has now superceded the books as canon in my eyes. I don't believe Martin will ever finish the series at this rate. There is at least a 50/50 chance this ends in a Robert Jordan situation. As someone who read the Wheel of Time for over a decade before one day looking at Yahoo news and seeing he had died, I'm not going in for that again. Thank god Sanderson completed the series, even though those books had the same pacing problems as the current Game of Thrones season.
Tbis is getting off topic but I've been checking out GOT from my local library for free. I'm waiting for season 6 at the moment. I'm going to read the books only after they've finished the TV series.
Ash vs. the Evil Dead is about the least politically correct show I've seen in a long time but it is absolutely hilarious. I wish other folks could see the humour but I'm not sure it's for everybody...
In regards to entertainment today being too politically correct, I don't really see it. Now, people will always point to something like "All in the Family", but the entire point of that show was that most intelligent people watching it knew that Archie was a bigot and was not, in that sense, someone to be emulated. Just look at the episode where he unknowingly ends up joining the KKK (which is actually quite relevant to what happened this weekend). Archie is answering their questions, and sympathizes with their views on the surface BEFORE he knows what he is signing up for. But when he finds out, it is a step too far for even him.
In regards to entertainment today being too politically correct, I don't really see it. Now, people will always point to something like "All in the Family", but the entire point of that show was that most intelligent people watching it knew that Archie was a bigot and was not, in that sense, someone to be emulated. Just look at the episode where he unknowingly ends up joining the KKK (which is actually quite relevant to what happened this weekend). Archie is answering their questions, and sympathizes with their views on the surface BEFORE he knows what he is signing up for. But when he finds out, it is a step too far for even him.
Seriously, check out Ash vs. the Evil Dead. The alt-right views are such parodies that it's really amusing.
If people have brains they can figure out the psychology of that way of thinking and see where it leads. I'm not sure most people have critical thinking skills any more though...
@Grond0 It's not quite that clear though. One side advocated slavery, and the other advocated slavery until it was inconvenient.
This seems to be the same sort of moral equivalency argument you raised before - neither side was perfect therefore they're both the same. I cannot understand that reasoning in general and, in relation to slavery, the distinction between the sides is huge: - as early as 1804 every northern state had a law in place to abolish slavery. Obviously this was not the case for the southern states. - the north continued efforts to abolish slavery throughout the US after 1804, but this was made difficult by the reality that, at that time, there were not two sides but one (i.e. the US as a whole). The south had the ability to vote as a bloc and prevent federal legislation being passed and, as a result, legal moves after that could only be made as a result of a series of compromises. There was though a major gain in 1808 when the import of any slaves anywhere in the US (including the south) was prohibited. - the difference in view about slavery was a continual tension between north and south for many years in the lead-up to the civil war with sides becomingly increasingly entrenched. That meant that legislation on slavery became ever more impossible to pass without making huge concessions to the south. One example of the problems was that the slave states didn't want any new non-slave states to be created (they were rightly concerned that such a process would ultimately lead to them losing power). Thus, in order to agree the creation of California in 1850, Congress also passed the Fugitive Slave Law requiring northerners to actively help return run-away slaves.
The fact though that northerners were willing to make compromises in the lead up to the civil war is not the same thing at all as saying they 'advocated slavery until it was inconvenient'. Of course there will have been individuals who did do that (just as there were individuals in the south who supported abolition), but in relation to the position of the north as a whole and the south as a whole there is an extremely clear distinction - one side advocated slavery and the other didn't.
I loved Army of Darkness and Evil Dead 2. I had high hopes for Ash vs. the Evil Dead but was not really entertained by it. I dunno it just kind of fell flat to me. The short episodes and writing didn't seem good to me. I don't know.
Game of Thrones is great but yeah pacing and travel seems a bit off now that we're way off books. Still if Martin never finishes the books, at least we got an alternative version by the show, it WILL resolve.
This is not to say anything, other than the fact that I'm fairly certain Carl Bernstein, of all people, probably has cultivated some pretty good sources over the years. This is pretty much unprecedented:
@Grond0 It's not quite that clear though. One side advocated slavery, and the other advocated slavery until it was inconvenient.
This seems to be the same sort of moral equivalency argument you raised before - neither side was perfect therefore they're both the same. I cannot understand that reasoning in general and, in relation to slavery, the distinction between the sides is huge: - as early as 1804 every northern state had a law in place to abolish slavery. Obviously this was not the case for the southern states. - the north continued efforts to abolish slavery throughout the US after 1804, but this was made difficult by the reality that, at that time, there were not two sides but one (i.e. the US as a whole). The south had the ability to vote as a bloc and prevent federal legislation being passed and, as a result, legal moves after that could only be made as a result of a series of compromises. There was though a major gain in 1808 when the import of any slaves anywhere in the US (including the south) was prohibited. - the difference in view about slavery was a continual tension between north and south for many years in the lead-up to the civil war with sides becomingly increasingly entrenched. That meant that legislation on slavery became ever more impossible to pass without making huge concessions to the south. One example of the problems was that the slave states didn't want any new non-slave states to be created (they were rightly concerned that such a process would ultimately lead to them losing power). Thus, in order to agree the creation of California in 1850, Congress also passed the Fugitive Slave Law requiring northerners to actively help return run-away slaves.
The fact though that northerners were willing to make compromises in the lead up to the civil war is not the same thing at all as saying they 'advocated slavery until it was inconvenient'. Of course there will have been individuals who did do that (just as there were individuals in the south who supported abolition), but in relation to the position of the north as a whole and the south as a whole there is an extremely clear distinction - one side advocated slavery and the other didn't.
Well put. One of the reasons Lincoln didn't want to emancipated the slaves right away was simply that he didn't want the South to equate the war as 'to the death'. If the North's army was better led in the early years who knows what would have happened? An early victory for the North may have been disastrous in the long run for the slavery situation.
I have to admit, I did not expect yesterday's impromptu news conference to move people off of supporting Trump. After the Access Hollywood tape, I had given up on that idea. But there does seem to be movement, not massive numbers of the base, but enough may have thrown up their hands yesterday. If you see his poll number drop to 32, 31, or 30%, Congressional Republicans are going to start shaking in their boots about 2018. They can't possibly hold the House now matter how gerrymandered it is with a President with those kind of numbers. There is a baseline to where they will simply have to cut bait. The tell seems to be that all 3 major cable networks today simply COULD NOT find Republican office holders to come on their shows today. None of them. This isn't the first time that has happened, but it is the most striking. FOX News has lockstep messaging, and as was mentioned before, many of their panelists simply either would not or could not defend him over what happened. Watch the polling. Because if Trump actually somehow manages to hit 30%, he is done. There is no way to recover from that kind of political abyss. If Mueller comes in with ANYTHING substantial with Trump polling at those numbers, they will be forced to drop him and take Mike Pence.
Don't discount the amount of people in this country who may have been children but still remember World War 2. The idea of people marching through American streets with Nazi flags will simply NOT be tolerated by them, and they also won't tolerate a President equivocating on that issue.
This was so easy. All Trump had to do (if he had wanted to), was say "These Nazis are scum. My daughter is Jewish, my grandchildren are Jewish. I won't stand for this, this has no place in our streets." I came up with that in 60 seconds. He has a team of speechwriters. How in the hell could a statement like that not have been made?? Does he have so little self-control and is so pissed at the media that he went out and stepped on his entire Monday statement which, if left to stand as is, would have at LEAST allowed him to weather this particular storm intact?? I posted a video yesterday of John Kelly as he was listening to Trump's diatribe yesterday. He looked like he wanted to leave his own body. It seems to me that it is only a matter of time before someone in a prominent position simply resigns to make a point. It is almost certain that people like Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster (who I doubt I agree with politically on much of anything) are only sticking around because they are scared to death of leaving the country in the hands of Trump, Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka. Tillerson never talks to the media and reports make it seem like he would rather be in jail than Secretary of State. I mean, look at this:
I HATE Erick Erickson and everything he stands for, but if a blood-red conservative like Erick Erickson is saying this, then there are even people who listen to talk radio everyday who are thinking the same thing. And, believe me, they will HAPPILY take a reactionary Christian zealot like Mike Pence if push comes to shove.
I said the exact same thing to some of my family members a few weeks ago when my grandmother was passing away and we were at the hospital late at night in the hospice family room. Keeping the nation at this kind of torque for 4 years just isn't possible. Something horribly bad will happen long before we reach that destination. This is exhausting. It's exhausting for those who oppose him, it's likely exhausting for those who support him to continue to have to excuse day after day of self-inflicted buffoonery. But another 1300 days of THIS?? How??
There will be a day when he's out of office, one way or another (impeach, quit, lose election or god forbid he somehow get's relelected and serves out another term). The rein of dumb will end. Despite his grand words (best ever, forever!) someday we will be rid of him and good riddance if the first 200 days are any indication.
American's didn't recognize how poor Republican Presidents can be when we had GW Bush. Hopefully they will learn their lesson after this. I don't think most americans are longing for Pence to pray North Korea away and sanction gay conversion therapy and be afraid of women attending dinners with him when his wife is not there. If they wanted that type of President, we would have had Ted Cruz be the Republican nominee but he couldn't even clear the Republican field.
This country is just slap-out great, really, just great Worst though, I feel like there is not even a side to stand with, 'cept maybe my own (and even that gives me pause to think at times). So much hate...
Comments
This is fascinating stuff. Either he is more Machiavellian than I am able to comprehend, he is VERY confident his job is secure, or he just messed up big-time. I have no idea which of those 3 is correct. This makes absolutely no sense. I can't think of a single reason why Steve Bannon would cold-call the American Prospect. It doesn't make any sense if he didn't have a motive.
the court: All right. I’m going to excuse you. Juror Number 59, come on up.
juror no. 59: Your Honor, totally he is guilty and in no way can I let him slide out of anything because —
the court: Okay. Is that your attitude toward anyone charged with a crime who has not been proven guilty?
juror no. 59: It’s my attitude toward his entire demeanor, what he has done to people.
the court: All right. We are going to excuse you, sir.
juror no. 59: And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.
For example, just around this time last year, CNN edited the video of a woman who they said was was "calling for peace" but instead said they should take the violence to the suburbs. Hey man, no need to denounce calls to violence or even tell the truth about calls to violence if it won't suit the narrative. There really isn't any room for plausible error here given that they cut off just seconds before. It was deliberate.
As for MSNBC, I WISH it was the liberal FOX News. Liberals NEED such an outlet, but MSNBC is not it. It's prime-time line-up is absolutely 100% biased toward a liberal viewpoint, but I defy anyone to show me a time when Rachel Maddow has deliberately lied to her audience. I have seen her come back from commercial breaks and correct something she said in the previous segment that would seem totally inconsequential to the story to 99% of the people watching. She is the one who a few weeks ago WARNED the rest of the media to check their stories about Trump and Russia very carefully because of suspicion the Administration might be planting fake stories so they could discredit the media. She is very liberal, but she is not a liar by any stretch of the imagination. She is not Sean Hannity.
That said, CNN is nothing but a parade of buffoons. Van Jones, the recently fire Jeffrey Lord, Gloria Borger. The whole lot of them. It's a clown show. Cable news is a puppet show. All those pundits are put on TV to play a role. Anderson Cooper plays the role of moderator. Van Jones plays the liberal, Jeffrey Lord played the conservative apologist. It's a freak show. Wolf Blitzer is one of the dumbest people on TV. Watch his celebrity Jeopardy appearance if anyone questions that statement.
I'll give the Alt-right one bit of credit, they also seem to hate FOX News. Since part of it's goal is tearing down "normie" culture, they have no real use for any established form of news consumption. It exists almost entirely on internet message boards and Youtube. Which is actually the precise reason their speech isn't being censored. The internet is the ultimate equalizer. Even the Daily Stormer, after literally calling for people to disrupt the funeral of Heather Heyer, after being dumped by GoDaddy and Google, was able to migrate to the dark web within days. Nearly anything goes on the internet. For that, thank Net Neutrality and the fact that the Obama White House and FCC responded to the public pressure.
I can't possibly really recommend anyone on the left to someone. I would gather that Maddow would focus far too much on Russia for your taste, but she does her homework, extensively. At the top of her show she always places her top story in some sort of historical context. But she is not a liar. She is trustworthy.
I already know about most of the big names in conservative media, and even the Alt-right online brigade. Sargon of Akkad makes me want to rip my ears off. Dave Rubin is, to me, nothing but a cynical opportunist who smelled which way the wind was blowing in online media and slowly managed to morph over the course of a year from TYT host to Alt-right gateway drug, which I saw coming from a mile away.
VICE News, if you have HBO Now, is pretty damn good. I thought the piece I posted earlier on the events of this weekend was brilliant. That girl sat right in the middle of the whole thing, was not the least bit rude or condescending to the white supremacists she was following throughout the day, simply asking them legitimate questions and letting them dig their own grave.
Thanks, guys.
Ash vs. the Evil Dead is about the least politically correct show I've seen in a long time but it is absolutely hilarious. I wish other folks could see the humour but I'm not sure it's for everybody...
If people have brains they can figure out the psychology of that way of thinking and see where it leads. I'm not sure most people have critical thinking skills any more though...
- as early as 1804 every northern state had a law in place to abolish slavery. Obviously this was not the case for the southern states.
- the north continued efforts to abolish slavery throughout the US after 1804, but this was made difficult by the reality that, at that time, there were not two sides but one (i.e. the US as a whole). The south had the ability to vote as a bloc and prevent federal legislation being passed and, as a result, legal moves after that could only be made as a result of a series of compromises. There was though a major gain in 1808 when the import of any slaves anywhere in the US (including the south) was prohibited.
- the difference in view about slavery was a continual tension between north and south for many years in the lead-up to the civil war with sides becomingly increasingly entrenched. That meant that legislation on slavery became ever more impossible to pass without making huge concessions to the south. One example of the problems was that the slave states didn't want any new non-slave states to be created (they were rightly concerned that such a process would ultimately lead to them losing power). Thus, in order to agree the creation of California in 1850, Congress also passed the Fugitive Slave Law requiring northerners to actively help return run-away slaves.
The fact though that northerners were willing to make compromises in the lead up to the civil war is not the same thing at all as saying they 'advocated slavery until it was inconvenient'. Of course there will have been individuals who did do that (just as there were individuals in the south who supported abolition), but in relation to the position of the north as a whole and the south as a whole there is an extremely clear distinction - one side advocated slavery and the other didn't.
Game of Thrones is great but yeah pacing and travel seems a bit off now that we're way off books. Still if Martin never finishes the books, at least we got an alternative version by the show, it WILL resolve.
Don't discount the amount of people in this country who may have been children but still remember World War 2. The idea of people marching through American streets with Nazi flags will simply NOT be tolerated by them, and they also won't tolerate a President equivocating on that issue.
This was so easy. All Trump had to do (if he had wanted to), was say "These Nazis are scum. My daughter is Jewish, my grandchildren are Jewish. I won't stand for this, this has no place in our streets." I came up with that in 60 seconds. He has a team of speechwriters. How in the hell could a statement like that not have been made?? Does he have so little self-control and is so pissed at the media that he went out and stepped on his entire Monday statement which, if left to stand as is, would have at LEAST allowed him to weather this particular storm intact?? I posted a video yesterday of John Kelly as he was listening to Trump's diatribe yesterday. He looked like he wanted to leave his own body. It seems to me that it is only a matter of time before someone in a prominent position simply resigns to make a point. It is almost certain that people like Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster (who I doubt I agree with politically on much of anything) are only sticking around because they are scared to death of leaving the country in the hands of Trump, Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka. Tillerson never talks to the media and reports make it seem like he would rather be in jail than Secretary of State. I mean, look at this:
I HATE Erick Erickson and everything he stands for, but if a blood-red conservative like Erick Erickson is saying this, then there are even people who listen to talk radio everyday who are thinking the same thing. And, believe me, they will HAPPILY take a reactionary Christian zealot like Mike Pence if push comes to shove.
I said the exact same thing to some of my family members a few weeks ago when my grandmother was passing away and we were at the hospital late at night in the hospice family room. Keeping the nation at this kind of torque for 4 years just isn't possible. Something horribly bad will happen long before we reach that destination. This is exhausting. It's exhausting for those who oppose him, it's likely exhausting for those who support him to continue to have to excuse day after day of self-inflicted buffoonery. But another 1300 days of THIS?? How??
There will be a day when he's out of office, one way or another (impeach, quit, lose election or god forbid he somehow get's relelected and serves out another term). The rein of dumb will end. Despite his grand words (best ever, forever!) someday we will be rid of him and good riddance if the first 200 days are any indication.
American's didn't recognize how poor Republican Presidents can be when we had GW Bush. Hopefully they will learn their lesson after this. I don't think most americans are longing for Pence to pray North Korea away and sanction gay conversion therapy and be afraid of women attending dinners with him when his wife is not there. If they wanted that type of President, we would have had Ted Cruz be the Republican nominee but he couldn't even clear the Republican field.
Worst though, I feel like there is not even a side to stand with, 'cept maybe my own (and even that gives me pause to think at times).
So much hate...