Given the choice, I would prefer that the government function rather than die. For all my grievances with the status quo, I do not view its destruction as a moral good. Some folks think that you have to first destroy something flawed in order to replace it with something better, but they very rarely know what that "something better" is, or how it could actually be achieved. There's this vague assumption that because our world is bad, any kind of radical change in our world would have to be a good thing.
If you burn down a building, you will be left with ash. I'd rather not burn down any buildings until we know exactly what's going to replace them.
The Republican Party is very quickly morphing into a cult centered around Donald Trump's ability to make manifest a segment of the population's hatred of liberals, or, to be more accurate, a caricature of liberals. The Bannon wing is now ascendant, and seems interested in little else but exerting their will over those who oppose them.
Edit: Flake is giving a speech on the Senate floor that is a direct repudiation of Trump without saying his name. He essentially called him a threat to democracy,
I'm just waiting for the equivalent of the Reichstag fire and Hit-, er, Trump's call for martial law.
"The day after the fire, Hitler asked for, and received, from President Hindenburg, the Reichstag Fire Decree, signed into law by Hindenburg using Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone. These rights were not reinstated during Nazi reign. The decree was used by the Nazis to ban publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause. Despite the fact that Marinus van der Lubbe claimed to have acted alone in the Reichstag fire, Hitler, after having obtained his emergency powers, announced that it was the start of a Communist plot to take over Germany."
Given the choice, I would prefer that the government function rather than die. For all my grievances with the status quo, I do not view its destruction as a moral good. Some folks think that you have to first destroy something flawed in order to replace it with something better, but they very rarely know what that "something better" is, or how it could actually be achieved. There's this vague assumption that because our world is bad, any kind of radical change in our world would have to be a good thing.
If you burn down a building, you will be left with ash. I'd rather not burn down any buildings until we know exactly what's going to replace them.
I'd rather not burn them down until the replacements EXIST.
Pence cast another tie breaker vote. Of course he's on the wrong side again. Pence and Republicans voted to allow big banks to force people into arbitration so that they can avoid class action lawsuits.
Wiping out the rule would affect tens of millions of Americans who are covered by arbitration clauses when they sign up for a credit card, checking account or prepaid cards.
Here's a couple ways that this screws the average consumer. First of all the banks generally get to appoint the arbiters. They rule in favor of the corporations like 80% of the time. If a company rips off millions of people for 50 bucks each, it is totally not worth it for that one person to hire a lawyer and try to recoup his 50 bucks. So the corporate masters win again thanks to Trump and Republicans.
Corporate America's New Way To Steal From You: ARBITRATION https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DZePsSPUWI EDIT: The call your Congressman bit at the end is what Pence and his Republican corporate enablers did away with.
Pence cast another tie breaker vote. Of course he's on the wrong side again. Pence and Republicans voted to allow big banks to force people into arbitration so that they can avoid class action lawsuits.
Wiping out the rule would affect tens of millions of Americans who are covered by arbitration clauses when they sign up for a credit card, checking account or prepaid cards.
Here's a couple ways that this screws the average consumer. First of all the banks generally get to appoint the arbiters. They rule in favor of the corporations like 80% of the time. If a company rips off millions of people for 50 bucks each, it is totally not worth it for that one person to hire a lawyer and try to recoup his 50 bucks. So the corporate masters win again thanks to Trump and Republicans.
Corporate America's New Way To Steal From You: ARBITRATION https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DZePsSPUWI EDIT: The call your Congressman bit at the end is what Pence and his Republican corporate enablers did away with.
All Democrats voted against allowing this. Only two Republicans crossed over, and Pence cast the tie-breaker. Both sides don't. Just like with selling your information to telcom companies. Just like taking away health insurance. Dems have held the line against all of it. There are no defections from Schumer's camp, no blue dogs are crossing over to vote. All of this is Republicans. They have allowed CHIP (children's health insurance covering millions of kids) to expire, and states are as we speak running out of money for the program, and there isn't any indication they will renew it. They are making it nearly impossible for the average person to sue a bank for misconduct or fraud, while at the same time gearing up to give the CEOs of those banks massive tax breaks. And remember the plans being floated by the GOP to "pay" for those tax cuts have ranged from getting rid of the mortgage deduction to taking away the tax-free status of your 401k.
Puerto Rico is still essentially without power. Doctors are seeing patients by lamp light. I saw a video a few days ago of the San Juan mayor opening a box of food supplies they were sent. It was full of gas station-style beef jerky and Cheez-it crackers. 55 people were killed by a gunman in Las Vegas just a couple weeks ago, and the talk about even the bump stock regulations disappeared into the wind. California was on fire for a week and as far as I can tell the President never mentioned it or sent any aide whatsoever.
Even if you think Dems are too close to Wall Street, the consumer protections they DID manage to put in after the financial crisis to protect consumers are disappearing like the people at the Roanoke colony. Goldman Sachs has been handed the keys to the kingdom. They may be draining the swamp, but only if you consider that we are all sitting in a large vat with a pipe pushing the flow of piss, shit and bile right onto all of our heads. And again, it's been 9 months.
And the scariest part is that Trump, if he understands one thing, is what Hitler said about the big lie:
All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
It's worked countless time before. It's now working here. Not with everyone, not with the majority, but with more than enough to put everything in peril. We are in trouble. No getting around it. Saddle up. For now the stock market and it's casino of nothingness and fairy dust continues to go up and unemployment seems as static as it has been for the last couple of years. We all know that isn't going to last forever. The market can't go up in perpetuity, and job creation will eventually stall and revert. Then what?? This is all happening in a period of relative economic stability (if not prosperity). Will an economic downturn that is surely coming sooner than later be a match that lights a uncontrollable fire??
The fun and games are about to come to an end. We proved we'll elect a malignant narcissist, self-professed sexual abuser snake-oil salesman President because we, collectively as a country, are dumb as shit. It's been cute. But it's high time we jump off this train, because the end of the tracks aren't far off, and there is a big chasm waiting when they run out.
@jjstraka34 Careful, you're starting to sound like all the folks on the right who thought Obama was somehow the Anti-Christ while also being a Muslim. They were flabbergasted that we actually survived 8 years of him!
Making caricatures of the 'enemy' doesn't help. It only hardens the bad blood. I don't think Trump is Hitler any more than Obama was the Anti-Christ. I've seen far too many of these 'gloom and doom' prophesies on both sides to believe any of it anymore...
@jjstraka34 Careful, you're starting to sound like all the folks on the right who thought Obama was somehow the Anti-Christ while also being a Muslim. They were flabbergasted that we actually survived 8 years of him!
Making caricatures of the 'enemy' doesn't help. It only hardens the bad blood. I don't think Trump is Hitler any more than Obama was the Anti-Christ. I've seen far too many of these 'gloom and doom' prophesies on both sides to believe any of it anymore...
That's true but you have to admit their actions are totally different. And their personalities, their ways of going about business, and their objectives.
Just because they're have been hysterics on both sides doesn't mean one side or the other is unfounded. As I said a couple pages ago ..
Putin, a lot of Russia scholars argued at the time, should be understood as a technocratic modernizer from the comparatively liberal city of St. Petersburg. Erdogan, a lot of Turkey scholars kept insisting, was on the way to reconciling Islam and democracy by following the path blazed by Christian Democrats in countries like Germany and Italy. Orbán, a lot of Hungary scholars believed, was a moderate conservative whose tough talk was belied by his Oxford education and his past as a liberal politician.
As it turns out, all of these experts were wildly, disastrously wrong. Today, Russia and Turkey are dictatorships with a thin electoral veneer. Hungary is well on its way toward joining their autocratic ranks.
So it's true people can be crying wolf... Until they're not.
Here's the GOP tax reform in a nutshell: You give one rich guy 10 bananas, and nine poor families zero bananas. Then you say the average family gets one banana.
Just tax cuts for the rich. They're going to explode the deficit and they're going to gut social safety nets such as Medicare and Medicaid at the same time.
@jjstraka34 Careful, you're starting to sound like all the folks on the right who thought Obama was somehow the Anti-Christ while also being a Muslim. They were flabbergasted that we actually survived 8 years of him!
Making caricatures of the 'enemy' doesn't help. It only hardens the bad blood. I don't think Trump is Hitler any more than Obama was the Anti-Christ. I've seen far too many of these 'gloom and doom' prophesies on both sides to believe any of it anymore...
I'm not really comparing him to Hitler, it just happens to be the case that Hitler happens to have explained why people fall for the "big lie" better than anyone else. No one would deny Trump is using the tactic Hitler described. It doesn't mean he is Hitler, but he is a member of what Hitler called "those who conspire in the art of lying". Trump lies as a strategy and tactic.
Also, as for the Obama/Anti-christ vs Trump/Hitler, I would argue one is a real person who existed and ruled a country less than 75 years ago, and the other is a mythological figure who will likely never exist. We have a historical record of a supposedly civilized country being taken over by fascist demagoguery in the last century. The Anti-christ might as well be Vecna from D&D.
It's worked countless time before. It's now working here. Not with everyone, not with the majority, but with more than enough to put everything in peril. We are in trouble. No getting around it. Saddle up. For now the stock market and it's casino of nothingness and fairy dust continues to go up and unemployment seems as static as it has been for the last couple of years. We all know that isn't going to last forever. The market can't go up in perpetuity, and job creation will eventually stall and revert. Then what?? This is all happening in a period of relative economic stability (if not prosperity). Will an economic downturn that is surely coming sooner than later be a match that lights a uncontrollable fire??
The fun and games are about to come to an end. We proved we'll elect a malignant narcissist, self-professed sexual abuser snake-oil salesman President because we, collectively as a country, are dumb as shit. It's been cute. But it's high time we jump off this train, because the end of the tracks aren't far off, and there is a big chasm waiting when they run out.
We--the collective we, not necessarily only you and I--have been choosing this path for at least 25 years, going back to when revenge politics was developed in the 1990s. Why worry now when we are living the life we chose?
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that led to the now-infamous dossier of allegations about President Donald Trump and Russia, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. The source said the law firm Perkins Coie, as part of its representation of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained the intelligence firm Fusion GPS and entered "into an engagement for research services that began in April 2016 and concluded before the election in early November." The Washington Post was first to report the news Tuesday.
The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, said a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC hired Fusion GPS, which in turn hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, whose research makes up the document. The Post said Perkins Coie lawyer Marc Elias retained the research firm in April 2016 as the GOP primary was winding down and Trump was increasingly likely to clinch his party's nomination. CNN previously reported Fusion GPS's anti-Trump research was initially funded by anti-Trump Republicans during the GOP primaries, and Democrats began paying the research firm later on, after Trump became the presumptive nominee. The Washington Post reports that Fusion GPS hired Steele after the Democratic funding began and the general election picture grew clearer. Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign's national press secretary and now a CNN political contributor, tweeted Tuesday that he wasn't aware of the connection between the campaign and the dossier authored by Steele, but "if I had, I would have volunteered to go to Europe and try to help him." "I have no idea what Fusion or Steele were paid but if even a shred of that dossier ends up helping Mueller, it will prove money well spent," he tweeted. DNC communications director Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement Tuesday: "Tom Perez and the new leadership of the DNC were not involved in any decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins Coie was working with the organization. But let's be clear, there is a serious federal investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, and the American public deserves to know what happened."
What this information does is convert a legitimate investigation about questionable activity into a politically-motivated character assassination attempt. Even other Republicans were trying to dig up dirt on him before the national convention because they didn't want him, either. You don't have to dig up dirt on Trump to make him look bad; instead, all you have to do is let him speak for himself.
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On a completely unrelated topic I have always really liked the name "Xochitl"--I use it for female characters in games quite often. One of the guys who worked for my grandfather had a daughter named Xochitl (recall that they used to come to my grandfather's house quite often for get-togethers, so she and I would listen to records or play board games while the adults were talking among themselves).
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As far as the NAACP issuing a "warning" to caution travelers against booking flights on American Airlines...sometimes people cry "racism" when that isn't the case. Example: A friend of our daughter's works for Walgreens. The store's policy was "customers with more than 3 items are offered a bag; customers with 3 or fewer items are not offered a bag". So, when customer A (buying a lot of things and is white) is offered a bag but customer B (buying only 2 items and is black) is not offered a bag she threw a fit and complained to the store manager that "your employee is racist". *sigh* Get over yourself, lady.
caveat: the story does cite one example of a person being bumped from first class to coach even though the traveling companion, who was white, was not bumped. *That* is a legitimate problem which the airline needs to address.
I have no idea why this is suddenly news. This has been common knowledge for over 10 months. David Corn, a decidedly left-wing journalist (he is the guy who obtained the audio that sunk the Romney campaign) of Mother Jones was one of the first DC reporters to get serious info on the dossier, and he said then that it was a result of Republican primary and then Democratic opposition research. The Washington Post and New York Times are acting as if they just broke a story. That would be like me renting out my local theater and showing a screening of "The Force Awakens" this Friday and claiming it was a world-premiere.
It's crystal-clear to me what Trump's plan is when Mueller returns his findings: he is going to order his DOJ to prosecute Hillary Clinton, at which point we will become a banana republic.
jjstraka34 Careful, you're starting to sound like all the folks on the right who thought Obama was somehow the Anti-Christ while also being a Muslim. They were flabbergasted that we actually survived 8 years of him!
Making caricatures of the 'enemy' doesn't help. It only hardens the bad blood. I don't think Trump is Hitler any more than Obama was the Anti-Christ. I've seen far too many of these 'gloom and doom' prophesies on both sides to believe any of it anymore...
Here is the difference:
In Obama's first year in office he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In Trump's first year in office, he ran around and kicked all the hornet nests.
There are perceptions (this person will bring stability/this person will create tensions both locally and internationally) and then there are flat out lies in a hope to change that perception for the worse (Obama is Muslim born in Kenya).
Perception can be wrong sometimes but are based off of history and facts. Flat out lies are wrong all the time and based off of a malice to do harm.
When we've had a decade of flat out lies, it is easy to tune out the perceptions of a new leader and think everything being said is the new "doom and gloom." That is a dangerous thing to do.
So the DNC funded opposition research after a GOP primary opponent started the process. That doesn't make the pee dossier any less true and several items in the dossier have been proven to be true.
At least they are using their own funds and not government tax dollars on their opposition research unlike the, what is it 9 now, investigations into trying to find anything on Hillary Clinton.
@deltago I like Obama but you could argue he didn't really deserve the peace prize.
Obama himself said he didn't deserve it, and I'm also fairly certain he was annoyed he had to deal with the media and politcal fallout of it being awarded to him when he hadn't done anything yet. He got it for not being Bush. In the current climate, it's easy to forget just how bad the Bush Administration was from 2003-2008. People shouldn't.
It's one of the reasons I know he was a good leader. I remember reading a story at the time that he was told about the win when he thought it was a joke, and was not thrilled when he found out it wasn't. Because he had enough sense to know he didn't deserve it and that with the way the American military is embedded around the world, he could never live up to it.
So then why would you argue that Obama was so much better because he got the prize.
He didn't deserve it, but that doesn't mean he got it for no reason. Obama's demeanor and rhetoric still stands as a polar opposite to the Bush Administration and the current one. You can argue about his specific policies and accomplishments, but it is impossible to deny he was a gentleman and respectful to the country for his 8 years. He took the office seriously. He was sober, calm, and deliberate. Which reflects his 8 years when not viewed through the lens of right-wing media. A steady, slow recovery and then maintaining that progress. He kept his finger in a broken dam.
************* It is beginning to look like Trump's legacy might actually be to split the Republican Party--those who are with him and those who are not. *************
Besides stick together for their party they are all inclined to be with him anyway. He's fighting for their donors and those sweet millions the Republican politicians are getting in exchange for the billions they are saving their donors.
Once the few holdouts all roll over and do whatever Trump says, and we have a Republican senate, House and Supreme Court, who's to stop them? I kind of doubt anyone or anything will matter anymore. There will be no need for elections and no legal challenge or protests will matter at that point.
Since running for office Trump ever admitted defeat or shown remorse? Even when it's been plainly obvious he's wrong? Why would he start doing that once the cards are all stacked behind him with yes men?
Lose an election? Appeal to your Supreme Court. Toss out voters you don't like for whatever reason, no one will stop it. People protest and see through your lies? Arrest them.
Problem solved, single party Government and everyone is happy.
@deltago I like Obama but you could argue he didn't really deserve the peace prize.
Yes, of course. He won it on perception alone. After the hostile years of Bush, it was percieved Obama would usher in a time with less hostility.
It was my point of perceptions can be wrong, but he was percieved that for a reason.
There was no reason why he was being called a Muslim that was born in Kenya having his political funding coming from Hamas besides discrimination and malice.
Compare that to Trump being compared to Hitler. There are reasons, based in the history prior to WW2 that those comparisons are being made. There is/was a perception that Trump would become or attempt to become a fascist leader. That perception can be wrong (as it was in Obama's Nobel win) but it is there for reasons beyond malice.
The difficulty with it though, is that it is easy to turn the comparison into a caricature to scoff at it. That is the dangerous part. If there are warning flags all over the place, it is best to heed them.
Besides stick together for their party they are all inclined to be with him anyway. He's fighting for their donors and those sweet millions the Republican politicians are getting in exchange for the billions they are saving their donors.
Once the few holdouts all roll over and do whatever Trump says, and we have a Republican senate, House and Supreme Court, who's to stop them? I kind of doubt anyone or anything will matter anymore. There will be no need for elections and no legal challenge or protests will matter at that point.
Since running for office Trump ever admitted defeat or shown remorse? Even when it's been plainly obvious he's wrong? Why would he start doing that once the cards are all stacked behind him with yes men?
Lose an election? Appeal to your Supreme Court. Toss out voters you don't like for whatever reason, no one will stop it. People protest and see through your lies? Arrest them.
Problem solved, single party Government and everyone is happy.
Wild conspiracy theory is wild. Remember when Obama was going to have the military start rounding up people to put them into FEMA camps?
It didn't happen in 2009-2010 when Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House; it won't happen now. My own irrational desire for statistically anomalous events notwithstanding, statistically anomalous events generally do not occur (hence their status as "anomalies"). On the other hand, if those truly are concerns which others hold then perhaps those people need to reconsider their position on the Second Amendment.
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The real problem if Russiagate collapses into nothingness is that we will then have to put up with Trump patting himself on the back and telling us about himself patting himself on the back every chance he gets.
You'll recall a few months back when it was reported that Trump was going to delegate all military operations to the Generals, and I said at the time it was nothing but a pre-made excuse to not take responsibility for botched military action. Lo and behold.
News flash: if he gave the Generals the ok to act on their own, he still de facto ordered the raid. Otherwise we are in the midst of a military coup. It's one or the other.
Well a coup is a take over of power nationally. If Kelly appoints himself as Trump's mouth piece while locking the president in a gold tower, that might be considered a coup.
And yes, technically Trump didn't order the raid. He is still Commander and Chief and should be held responsible for what those under him do.
Forget all those dramatic TV shows and movies--the President almost *never* gives a direct order for any specific action. Bush opened the door for Niger, as did everyone else who voted to support the never-ending War on Terror, for which we gave ourselves the ability to pursue "terrorists" wherever they may be found. In this instance, some IS fighters were in Niger. (I thought it was Boko Haram but it wasn't even though the two groups are linked by philosophy and goals.)
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Whitefish Energy, a small energy company (we'll get back to that in a second), was awarded the $300 million contract from PREPA (Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority) to restore the grid to functionality; the firm is based in Whitefish, Montana (hence the name). How small? Well...on the day Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico it had precisely *two* employees. That seems to be fitting, given that the power company has been in business for only two years. Anyway, Whitefish won the contract because it did not require a large cash deposit in order to begin operations.
Did I mention that Whitefish, MT is the hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke? What are the odds? The town has a population of about 6,000 and IntSec Zinke and Whitefish CEO, Andy Techmanski, know each other personally. What are the odds?
Apparently, PREPA could have gone through the American Public Power Association, a group which helps utilities recover and rebuild after large outages but chose not to do so.
Anyway, the CEO describes the company as specializing in "difficult and mountainous terrain projects". With only two people, I guess the CEO mans the crane and the other guy works the line? *shrug* Maybe the other way around? *shrug*
This seems like a very obvious case of corruption, using political power to give a lucrative contract to a crony.
A case of corruption that is going to make Puerto Rico getting power back on infinitely more difficult, and could cost lives. No way these people are qualified to handle this level of operation. It's called disaster capitalism, and Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" is the definitive book on it, and one of the most important books of the last 20 years period.
I just read a story that they have 44 people on the island. They were handed a 300 million dollar contract. That means Whitefish energy is getting 6.8 million dollars for every worker they have in Puerto Rico. Electrical workers get paid well, but not that well. Not even remotely.
This seems like a very obvious case of corruption, using political power to give a lucrative contract to a crony.
A case of corruption that is going to make Puerto Rico getting power back on infinitely more difficult, and could cost lives. No way these people are qualified to handle this level of operation. It's called disaster capitalism, and Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" is the definitive book on it, and one of the most important books of the last 20 years period.
I just read a story that they have 44 people on the island. They were handed a 300 million dollar contract. That means Whitefish energy is getting 6.8 million dollars for every worker they have in Puerto Rico. Electrical workers get paid well, but not that well. Not even remotely.
I assume they will be buying the materials needed for repairs. That's part of the contract normally...
Why restore power cheaply on Puerto Rico when you can subcontract the job, make a huge profit and keep the overhead, and have someone else do all the work.
Comments
If you burn down a building, you will be left with ash. I'd rather not burn down any buildings until we know exactly what's going to replace them.
"The day after the fire, Hitler asked for, and received, from President Hindenburg, the Reichstag Fire Decree, signed into law by Hindenburg using Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone. These rights were not reinstated during Nazi reign. The decree was used by the Nazis to ban publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause. Despite the fact that Marinus van der Lubbe claimed to have acted alone in the Reichstag fire, Hitler, after having obtained his emergency powers, announced that it was the start of a Communist plot to take over Germany." I'd rather not burn them down until the replacements EXIST.
Wiping out the rule would affect tens of millions of Americans who are covered by arbitration clauses when they sign up for a credit card, checking account or prepaid cards.
Here's a couple ways that this screws the average consumer. First of all the banks generally get to appoint the arbiters. They rule in favor of the corporations like 80% of the time. If a company rips off millions of people for 50 bucks each, it is totally not worth it for that one person to hire a lawyer and try to recoup his 50 bucks. So the corporate masters win again thanks to Trump and Republicans.
Corporate America's New Way To Steal From You: ARBITRATION
EDIT: The call your Congressman bit at the end is what Pence and his Republican corporate enablers did away with.
Puerto Rico is still essentially without power. Doctors are seeing patients by lamp light. I saw a video a few days ago of the San Juan mayor opening a box of food supplies they were sent. It was full of gas station-style beef jerky and Cheez-it crackers. 55 people were killed by a gunman in Las Vegas just a couple weeks ago, and the talk about even the bump stock regulations disappeared into the wind. California was on fire for a week and as far as I can tell the President never mentioned it or sent any aide whatsoever.
Even if you think Dems are too close to Wall Street, the consumer protections they DID manage to put in after the financial crisis to protect consumers are disappearing like the people at the Roanoke colony. Goldman Sachs has been handed the keys to the kingdom. They may be draining the swamp, but only if you consider that we are all sitting in a large vat with a pipe pushing the flow of piss, shit and bile right onto all of our heads. And again, it's been 9 months.
And the scariest part is that Trump, if he understands one thing, is what Hitler said about the big lie:
All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
It's worked countless time before. It's now working here. Not with everyone, not with the majority, but with more than enough to put everything in peril. We are in trouble. No getting around it. Saddle up. For now the stock market and it's casino of nothingness and fairy dust continues to go up and unemployment seems as static as it has been for the last couple of years. We all know that isn't going to last forever. The market can't go up in perpetuity, and job creation will eventually stall and revert. Then what?? This is all happening in a period of relative economic stability (if not prosperity). Will an economic downturn that is surely coming sooner than later be a match that lights a uncontrollable fire??
The fun and games are about to come to an end. We proved we'll elect a malignant narcissist, self-professed sexual abuser snake-oil salesman President because we, collectively as a country, are dumb as shit. It's been cute. But it's high time we jump off this train, because the end of the tracks aren't far off, and there is a big chasm waiting when they run out.
Careful, you're starting to sound like all the folks on the right who thought Obama was somehow the Anti-Christ while also being a Muslim. They were flabbergasted that we actually survived 8 years of him!
Making caricatures of the 'enemy' doesn't help. It only hardens the bad blood. I don't think Trump is Hitler any more than Obama was the Anti-Christ. I've seen far too many of these 'gloom and doom' prophesies on both sides to believe any of it anymore...
Just because they're have been hysterics on both sides doesn't mean one side or the other is unfounded. As I said a couple pages ago .. So it's true people can be crying wolf... Until they're not.
You give one rich guy 10 bananas, and nine poor families zero bananas. Then you say the average family gets one banana.
Just tax cuts for the rich. They're going to explode the deficit and they're going to gut social safety nets such as Medicare and Medicaid at the same time.
Also, as for the Obama/Anti-christ vs Trump/Hitler, I would argue one is a real person who existed and ruled a country less than 75 years ago, and the other is a mythological figure who will likely never exist.
We have a historical record of a supposedly civilized country being taken over by fascist demagoguery in the last century. The Anti-christ might as well be Vecna from D&D.
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Meanwhile, in Russiagate news...when you are trying to air dirty laundry for all to see make sure that you don't accidentally air your own dirty laundry. What this information does is convert a legitimate investigation about questionable activity into a politically-motivated character assassination attempt. Even other Republicans were trying to dig up dirt on him before the national convention because they didn't want him, either. You don't have to dig up dirt on Trump to make him look bad; instead, all you have to do is let him speak for himself.
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On a completely unrelated topic I have always really liked the name "Xochitl"--I use it for female characters in games quite often. One of the guys who worked for my grandfather had a daughter named Xochitl (recall that they used to come to my grandfather's house quite often for get-togethers, so she and I would listen to records or play board games while the adults were talking among themselves).
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As far as the NAACP issuing a "warning" to caution travelers against booking flights on American Airlines...sometimes people cry "racism" when that isn't the case.
Example: A friend of our daughter's works for Walgreens. The store's policy was "customers with more than 3 items are offered a bag; customers with 3 or fewer items are not offered a bag". So, when customer A (buying a lot of things and is white) is offered a bag but customer B (buying only 2 items and is black) is not offered a bag she threw a fit and complained to the store manager that "your employee is racist". *sigh* Get over yourself, lady.
caveat: the story does cite one example of a person being bumped from first class to coach even though the traveling companion, who was white, was not bumped. *That* is a legitimate problem which the airline needs to address.
It's crystal-clear to me what Trump's plan is when Mueller returns his findings: he is going to order his DOJ to prosecute Hillary Clinton, at which point we will become a banana republic.
In Obama's first year in office he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In Trump's first year in office, he ran around and kicked all the hornet nests.
There are perceptions (this person will bring stability/this person will create tensions both locally and internationally) and then there are flat out lies in a hope to change that perception for the worse (Obama is Muslim born in Kenya).
Perception can be wrong sometimes but are based off of history and facts. Flat out lies are wrong all the time and based off of a malice to do harm.
When we've had a decade of flat out lies, it is easy to tune out the perceptions of a new leader and think everything being said is the new "doom and gloom." That is a dangerous thing to do.
At least they are using their own funds and not government tax dollars on their opposition research unlike the, what is it 9 now, investigations into trying to find anything on Hillary Clinton.
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It is beginning to look like Trump's legacy might actually be to split the Republican Party--those who are with him and those who are not.
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I normally don't care when celebrities die, but Fats Domino isn't just a celebrity--he was an instrumental figure in shaping very early rock and roll.
It's one of the reasons I know he was a good leader. I remember reading a story at the time that he was told about the win when he thought it was a joke, and was not thrilled when he found out it wasn't. Because he had enough sense to know he didn't deserve it and that with the way the American military is embedded around the world, he could never live up to it.
Once the few holdouts all roll over and do whatever Trump says, and we have a Republican senate, House and Supreme Court, who's to stop them? I kind of doubt anyone or anything will matter anymore. There will be no need for elections and no legal challenge or protests will matter at that point.
Since running for office Trump ever admitted defeat or shown remorse? Even when it's been plainly obvious he's wrong? Why would he start doing that once the cards are all stacked behind him with yes men?
Lose an election? Appeal to your Supreme Court. Toss out voters you don't like for whatever reason, no one will stop it. People protest and see through your lies? Arrest them.
Problem solved, single party Government and everyone is happy.
It was my point of perceptions can be wrong, but he was percieved that for a reason.
There was no reason why he was being called a Muslim that was born in Kenya having his political funding coming from Hamas besides discrimination and malice.
Compare that to Trump being compared to Hitler. There are reasons, based in the history prior to WW2 that those comparisons are being made. There is/was a perception that Trump would become or attempt to become a fascist leader. That perception can be wrong (as it was in Obama's Nobel win) but it is there for reasons beyond malice.
The difficulty with it though, is that it is easy to turn the comparison into a caricature to scoff at it. That is the dangerous part. If there are warning flags all over the place, it is best to heed them.
It didn't happen in 2009-2010 when Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House; it won't happen now. My own irrational desire for statistically anomalous events notwithstanding, statistically anomalous events generally do not occur (hence their status as "anomalies"). On the other hand, if those truly are concerns which others hold then perhaps those people need to reconsider their position on the Second Amendment.
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The real problem if Russiagate collapses into nothingness is that we will then have to put up with Trump patting himself on the back and telling us about himself patting himself on the back every chance he gets.
You'll recall a few months back when it was reported that Trump was going to delegate all military operations to the Generals, and I said at the time it was nothing but a pre-made excuse to not take responsibility for botched military action. Lo and behold.
News flash: if he gave the Generals the ok to act on their own, he still de facto ordered the raid. Otherwise we are in the midst of a military coup. It's one or the other.
And yes, technically Trump didn't order the raid. He is still Commander and Chief and should be held responsible for what those under him do.
Why are there soldiers in Niger anyway?
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Whitefish Energy, a small energy company (we'll get back to that in a second), was awarded the $300 million contract from PREPA (Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority) to restore the grid to functionality; the firm is based in Whitefish, Montana (hence the name). How small? Well...on the day Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico it had precisely *two* employees. That seems to be fitting, given that the power company has been in business for only two years. Anyway, Whitefish won the contract because it did not require a large cash deposit in order to begin operations.
Did I mention that Whitefish, MT is the hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke? What are the odds? The town has a population of about 6,000 and IntSec Zinke and Whitefish CEO, Andy Techmanski, know each other personally. What are the odds?
Apparently, PREPA could have gone through the American Public Power Association, a group which helps utilities recover and rebuild after large outages but chose not to do so.
Anyway, the CEO describes the company as specializing in "difficult and mountainous terrain projects". With only two people, I guess the CEO mans the crane and the other guy works the line? *shrug* Maybe the other way around? *shrug*
I just read a story that they have 44 people on the island. They were handed a 300 million dollar contract. That means Whitefish energy is getting 6.8 million dollars for every worker they have in Puerto Rico. Electrical workers get paid well, but not that well. Not even remotely.
Capitalism at work.