monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

It's not challenging to read Finn. It's that my interest in what you have to say only lasts about 2 paragraphs. It's not that you're an uninteresting person, it that I'm reading A2K on my iPhone in small chunks of time.

It's fine, it appears that at least a couple people read what you have to say. But I work and live in a pretty fast paced environment. Brevity is critical in my world and you sir, are anything but.

When I have time to sit down and read a novel, it certainly won't be from some anonymous internet guy on some website. No offense, but you're just not worth that precious time. You're worth some brief amount of time, and here I am giving you some of mine in response, but you're not worth the 10 minutes it'd take to read your screeds.

Finn, I like you and I think you're valuable to this forum. When you made the joke the other day about having heart surgery, before I knew it was a joke I was honestly hoping that you were going to be ok (I would have sent well wishes, but I read the following responses about it being a joke and didn't want to make you explain yourself again) . A guy I've never met and never will...and that's because you're valuable to this forum. I read a lot of your stuff, truly, but sometimes I just can't. I wish you'd focus some of your intellect on being concise and brief with your words. I don't know if it's a generational thing, but that type of writing isn't effective on message boards.

You'd be 100 times more effective if you were more brief.

Interesting point. Different sites have different functions and audiences. I prefer Twitter for most of my online activity - partly due to the 140 character limit. Set's become a bit of a superstar on Quora, which seems to prefer the essay approach to posting.

For me, A2K falls in between. I use political threads like this primarily as sources of information. I come here to pick up links to articles to read. I read comparatively little of the opinion/commentary stuff. I routinely thumb down non-information/non-fact posts to get them out of my way. I keep the posts with potentially useful links visible so that when I go back to a thread I can pick up more links without having to wade through the rest of the stuff again.

I don't mean to suggest Finn drop down to 140 characters. I don't use Twitter because I don't like that limitation. And I've never heard of Quora and likely will never visit if that's the format there.

But if I can't read it and respond to it in about 2-4 minutes, I usually have to pass it up. I've got a few hours a week set out where I can read lengthy works, but that for sure isn't what I figure most people use a2k for. The threads here move way to fast for that.

I have watched Maher show a time or two, I am offended by him on several levels and I don't even agree him as much people might think considering I am a leftist. On the other hand, I have not listened Jones but I have read about him and his views. Perhaps the reason the author of the piece disclaims (I didn't read the piece) equivalency is because Maher is really just a political comedy entertainer, nearly everything he says is said in a snarky joking way. I don't think Jones is an entertainer, but a serious political talk radio host.

Why American politics is all about whom you hate, in 3 charts
By Aaron Blake June 22, 2016

[…] Americans in general have become increasingly, hopelessly partisan -- like, so partisan that even they admit their votes are more against the other side than for their own. Witness these three charts from a just-released Pew Research Center study on American polarization. The main takeaways here: It just keeps getting worse, quickly. And no end is in sight.

First, here's how the two parties view each other. Note the steadily increasing "very unfavorable" ratings that Republicans have for the Democratic Party and Democrats have for the GOP. Both are on the upswing and have increased about threefold since 1994. Today, a clear and sizable majority of both parties regards the other party with disgust -- something that simply wasn't the case before the turn of the century or even when Barack Obama was elected in 2008.


Next, Pew asked people about the "major reasons" for their membership in their chosen political party. Majorities of both Republican- and Democratic-leaning voters said a major reason for their party membership was that the other party's policies were bad for the country. In both cases, significantly fewer people cited their belief in the goodness of their own party's principles -- only about one-third in each case.

I like it because I want the links ... not the accompanying opinions

Don't twitter users do both? Just more concise. Concise is not always good, take Trump for example.

Wonder if he has twitted anything about the Finsbury Park attack yet?

some do
I just want the links without the 'stuff'

#45 doesn't tend to post links - he's all 'stuff'
I have responded to him with links on occasion
you know he's not going to read it but it still feels good

Roughly equal as expected.

The results of this polling may have been reflected during some period in pre 1950's America (I imagine the divide was pretty wide during the Civil War), but it's worse now than at any other time in my life and has been steadily growing worse ever since the 60's.

The obvious question is: "Where will it end?"

No one can predict with certainty the full arc of this unfortunate trend, but I think its going to get worse before it gets better. I sure hope I'm wrong.

Without a catastrophic upheaval of one sort or the other, it's difficult to image a conflict resembling the Civil War breaking out. Whatever side controlled the power of the US military would overwhelm the other with complete ease. It would require a split along State lines to create anything like the Confederacy that would have, at least, some resources and capability to create something that looked like a rebel army, and even then, if the US military remained essentially loyal to the Union, which I believe would likely be the case (at least initially) there would be no protracted war like we had in the mid 1800's. There might be a few "battles" but in all of them the US military would easily win.

Much more likely would be a guerilla fought insurgency in which relatively casualty free attacks on government institutions and installations would eventually give way to acts of violent terrorism, but even this is, in my opinion, unlikely to occur.

I do expect acts of politically motivated violence to increase, but if they ever reached a critical mass that suggested that an organized and determined insurgency (whether carried out by a single group or a network of groups) was at work and not going to be stopped by "normal" criminal justice enforcement efforts, whatever government is in power at the time will, to one degree or the other, abandon the Constitution in an all out effort to restore the peace. Here again, the unrestrained or even less restrained power of the federal government will eventually overwhelm the opposition. We will have lost many of our freedoms (perhaps for a very long time), but peace will have been restored.

I'm not even predicting this as an eventuality though. The divide is very deep and very wide, but I still have faith in the great majority of American citizens, regardless of their ideology. Acts of politically motivated violence will increase, but not, I think, much beyond a point where Americans will say "enough is enough" and will not only demand change, they will participate in it. At that point "normal" criminal justice enforcement will be sufficient to put an end to any even loosely organized insurgency.

(Of course I'm feeling optimistic today. Just spent a long weekend with my grandson. Now that he's gone, my hope for a better tomorrow may recede, and I'll be back to predicting a break up of the Union)

This may not sound like a big deal, but look at what actually happened.

1. This guy saw a report (a routine WH pool report) of a (erroneous) report from a guy (Spicer, who talked to them) who said he was not there.

2. The Acosta makes up a" verbatim quote" attributes it a "WH official" and tweets it. The report didn't even say that Spicer said that Trump didn't see Scalise. It just said that Spicer said that it didn't "appear" that he did.

What does that tell you about CNN's "sources," and the source of them, eh?

Hearsay of false hearsay gets turned into a totally fictitious quote from a ficitious person stating a "fact."

Just the way the cheese-eaters like it, eh?



Go figure, eh?

Not sure if you're into podcasting, but Dan Carlin just released an episode of Common Sense with Dan Carlin that hit some of these points pretty well too.

And if Hillary had walked in do you in your Absolute ridiculousness believe they would have strung her up?

Dont be so simple-minded.

Well, to be honest, John, yeah, maybe. I would have.

Of course that would be with or without the chants.

Good ole Big Joe Turner had a tune where he spoke of "the devil in nylon hose." At least that's more attractive than the devil in a Mao pantsuit, eh?

They were shouting "lock her up", not "string her up", it's that sort of deliberate lying which forces me to keep monkeyjerk on ignore.

Does it feel, I don't know odd, to be tweeting with a US president? I couldn't imagine it. I would be afraid of what I would say in a tweet to him.

I mean, like, just one look at that sorry mug and ya know from jump street that you're dealin with a big heap of evil, eh? Looks just like Hitler givin a speech, don't it?