192
   

monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

 
 
Builder
 
  0  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 07:21 pm
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:
I guess we just have to put up with how Americans vote for a racial bigot, scammer, and liar.


They had no other choice.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  2  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 07:21 pm
@georgeob1,
Quote:
So what is your point?

Re-read the exchange.
0 Replies
 
Baldimo
 
  -1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 07:23 pm
@Debra Law,
Quote:
You don't know me at all. Pretending you do is just that: pretending.

I never claimed to know you, I'm just saying that being a lawyer does not make you a normal American.

Quote:
And mocking and devaluing education is a problem. Defunding education is a problem. An uneducated electorate, however, is much easier to manipulate. The uneducated, whom Trump proclaims to love, gobble up propaganda and serve as useful idiots.

I didn't mock education, I mocked you being an intellectual elitist. Only a elitist would mix up the difference. Can you seriously look at some of the people coming out of college and say what you said with a straight face? It's today's colleges that are producing the people who say they want an education but don't want to pay for it. They don't understand what it means to earn something. Some of and their teachers were asking to be let loose from their mid-terms/finals because Trump won the election and they were depressed and needed their safe spaces... pussies. They might have an education, but they have no idea how to act and behave like adults.

Quote:
No cake for decades. If you believe the proverbial cake only went missing over the last 8 years, then you might be among the uneducated. I hope you're not among those people who gobble up propaganda with a voracious appetite.

Tell me all about it college educated Lawyer... tell me about the lack of cake. The only propaganda being spread is the lie that the American Dream is dead by intellectual elitists who already have their slice of the pie. People like you who want the govt to take control and tell us what's best.

Quote:
You say Obama didn't fix anything while acknowledging that obstructionists stood in the way of progress.

Call them obstructionists all you want to but Obama had a majority his first 2 years in office and wasted it. He went extreme and the American people told him what they thought of that in every election since. The DNC has lost seats in Congress since 2010.

It's curious that you call the check and balance system obstructionist. For a lawyer you sure don't believe in the Constitution.

Quote:
Why didn't the obstructionists do some fixing then? Who were obstructing the obstructionists?

I guess you missed the part where Harry Reid did everything in his power to make sure nothing left committee to get voted on by the Senate. At one point there were over 200 bills that had passed The House but died in Reid's Senate.

Quote:
I think Obama tried to mend relations between the races, but I believe it was the racists who were offended that a black man was sitting in the White House and had the audacity to criticize a cop. There are far too many racists in this country who have done nothing but tear President Obama to shreds. That is troubling.

There it is again, more claims of unfounded racism against a President who elected mostly by white people. He commented on a case that was not really a case except that he made a deal out of it and called the police stupid. Then to fix his stupid comment, he invited them both over for a beer. Lame! This false cry of racism at every corner is part of the reason Trump won, you guys beat that drum too many times.

Quote:
It's the people occupying positions of power in the executive branch that execute laws or fail to execute the laws.

You mean Obama?

Quote:
Bureaucrats and heads of agencies wield enormous discretionary powers.

They should hold almost no power as they are not authorized via the Constitution to hold power. They pass laws that end up getting overturn by the courts because they overstep their bounds. The only people who should be creating law are those in the Legislative branch. Under Obama, he bypassed the Legislative branch and allowed those with no Constitiutional power to make the laws. Check the court decisions on his EPA and other depts that were overturned.

Quote:
When the regulations change as you say they will, then I'm sure that an abundance of money will flow into the pockets of the richest of rich. Maybe some of that money will trickle down to you. More likely not. More likely you and your children and grandchildren will suffer grave harm caused by deregulation and the lack of oversight. There's no question that our environment will also suffer grave harm, and what will people do when our environment can longer sustain life? I suppose you're okay with toxic waste in your back yard and contaminated drinking water?

Well according to people like you and the intellectual elites it is already that way. You were the one who said Decades of no cake... You claim the American Dream is dead.
Frugal1
 
  -2  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 07:27 pm


All Americans should be alarmed by 0bama's actions.
0 Replies
 
catbeasy
 
  1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 07:56 pm
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:
I'm not even sure if my vote means anything any more. Even writing to our congressmen is useless.

Hey CI, cheer up, things are much better in the US than they were 20, 30 40 years ago. We still have a long way to go and obviously there are active groups trying to reverse the gains made, but social change is here. Bosses can't grab their female secretary's ass with impunity (unless of course you're Trump!) and the govt can't just go to war anymore like they did in the 50's and 60's with Korea and Vietnam. They now have to make an appeal to the public to go to war. Sure they lie, cheat, suppress, etc. to get to go, but at least they have to make the case - a far cry from yesteryear.

This and other stuff came from people fighting for rights that had been routinely trampled on since the inception of the country.

I believe what we are seeing now is the positive results of civil rights laws. Those laws are starting to bear fruit on a mass scale - this train has been building speed since the laws were enacted. The internet has probably sped things up.

Probably this has come to this point now because the first few decades - say up to the 90's, those laws effects were starting to be seen - there weren't so many 'upity' people at that time, so the push back wasn't so relatively large. Now there are exponentially more upity people and the other side just can't tolerate that. There numbers have grown relatively smaller, but they have become more virulent precisely for that reason - their existence is threatened.

This is an ongoing fight. I think we are seeing now that it will get worse before it gets better and its too bad its easier to destroy than create. There are no guarantees. That's why we have to keep fighting. No guarantee that we'll keep what others and ourselves have worked so hard for..
catbeasy
 
  1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 08:07 pm
@giujohn,
Quote:
his is evidenced by you swallowing hook line and sinker the MSM narative that Trump is a freind to Russia. I know it's hard to be objective if you won't stop drinking the Kool-Aid. If you did just a little bit you might be able to see past your bias.

I think maybe just the hook, not the sinker..

But what the hell does Russia have to do with what I posted about wanting to cut help to mothers and their children? Were you responding to something else?

btw, whatever you were responding to, you might want to make you case a little clearer. I fully accept that I could be wrong, but you telling me that I'm wrong because of my bias and drinking kool aid is callow and lazy..this is a forum for ideas, not short cuts to thinking..
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 08:11 pm
@catbeasy,
You are right, of coarse. Just a grumpy day for me.
Actually, my life has been pretty good. Good jobs, world travel, and retired early. Visited over 80 countries, and we live in Sunnyvale, CA, rated the number 1 city in the US by some outfits that looks into these things.
Have friends in many countries, including Moscow, Germany, England, Singapore, Mexico, Cuba, and all across the US.
I guess we're allowed a grumpy day once-in-awhile.
0 Replies
 
Debra Law
 
  5  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 08:13 pm
@Baldimo,
Baldimo wrote:

Quote:
You don't know me at all. Pretending you do is just that: pretending.

I never claimed to know you, I'm just saying that being a lawyer does not make you a normal American.

Quote:
And mocking and devaluing education is a problem. Defunding education is a problem. An uneducated electorate, however, is much easier to manipulate. The uneducated, whom Trump proclaims to love, gobble up propaganda and serve as useful idiots.

I didn't mock education, I mocked you being an intellectual elitist. . . .


OMG! What is wrong with you? You don't know me. What makes you think you can declare that I'm not a normal American?

And yes you are mocking education. According to you, my law school education renders me abnormal and an "intellectual elitist", whatever the hell that is, but nothing good in your book.

You make many assumptions about me, but you don't know me. I don't need to address you further.
georgeob1
 
  -1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 08:53 pm
@Debra Law,
I don't claim any knowledge of your character beyond the little that can be inferred (and that only crudely) from what you write here, and I don't believe that education itself makes you or anyone an elitist. Indeed my experience has been that those I know with the greatest intellectual accomplishments tend to have a greater awareness of the limits to their understanding than those in the middle.

That said, elitism in various forms has been around and with us for a long time. The USSR and Mao's China were nominally ruled by an intellectual/doctrinal elite, though both quickly degenerated into authoritarian tyrannies. After overthrowing the Tarquins Rome was ruled by a Senatorial elite, but survived by various devices including temporary Consuls and later Tribunes of the Plebs who could veto senatorial enactments. After a few centruies that too degenerated to Empire, though with just enough internal mobility to survive and assimilate the Goths, ... for a while. Everything decays.. including elites.

The elites of the modern era all appear to be in search of, or at least to promise, a more perfect orgaanization of society. So far they have delivered only tyranny -- I am very skeptical of all of them. I believe the best we can do is to lurch within tolerable bounds between the left and the right in the ongoing tumult between those who seek to lead and create and those who wish to be left alone (but saved in an emergency).
0 Replies
 
RABEL222
 
  1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 09:12 pm
@blatham,
Has it occurred to you that the ones on this site that praise tRump for backing Putin might be paid communist plants?
Builder
 
  0  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 09:19 pm
@RABEL222,
You'd be an unpaid HRC shill, so who's the mug?
RABEL222
 
  1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 09:54 pm
@tony5732,
Quote:
here's proof.


Where is proof?
0 Replies
 
RABEL222
 
  1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 10:03 pm
@Builder,
Hillary isent president elect so who is presenting the strawman argument here? tRump is the subject. Try to keep up.
Builder
 
  1  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 10:11 pm
@RABEL222,
Finally woke up that she's never been president?

Even the MSM is waking up to the fact that she lost this election, and why.
RABEL222
 
  2  
Fri 30 Dec, 2016 10:44 pm
@Builder,
More strawmen bs? Get real.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  1  
Sat 31 Dec, 2016 06:20 am
@catbeasy,
Quote:
the govt can't just go to war anymore like they did in the 50's and 60's with Korea and Vietnam.

Chomsky made an interesting point during the arms to Iran era. He suggested that such secrecy wouldn't have been required during the fifties/early sixties because citizens (and press) trusted government more and so were less engaged in monitoring what was going on.
blatham
 
  1  
Sat 31 Dec, 2016 06:43 am
@Debra Law,
Quote:
an "intellectual elitist"

This might be my very favorite right wing cognitive black hole. It's now boiler plate in their rhetoric and "thinking". The best examples are where someone like Ted Cruz or George Will wields it.

Quote:
Primarily it was McCarthyism which, aroused the fear that the critical mind was at a ruinous discount in this country. Of course, intellectuals were not the only targets of McCarthy s constant detonations he was after bigger game but intellectuals were in the line of fire, and it
seemed to give special rejoicing to his followers when they were
hit. Hjs sorties against intellectuals and universities were emulated
throughout the country by a host of less exalted inquisitors. Then, in
the atmosphere of fervent malice and humorless imbecility stirred up
by McCarthy s barrage of accusations, the campaign of 1952 dramatized the contrast between intellect and philistinism in the opposing candidates.
(page 3, Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter)

There's a very rich and long history in all of this and Hofstadter's book really ought to be required reading. Unfortunately, the people least likely to read it are the ones who should read it.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  1  
Sat 31 Dec, 2016 06:49 am
@RABEL222,
Quote:
Has it occurred to you that the ones on this site that praise Trump for backing Putin might be paid communist plants?

Not even once. This (paid plants) is a thesis that gets tossed up every now and again on every site where I've been involved. I couldn't count the number of times I've been accused of it myself. There is one poster on this site who I suspect is an outright liar (about self and true beliefs, in aid of forwarding political notions) but I'm not even sure about this. Otherwise it seems to me we are dealing with folks who are often poorly educated and/or who have been effectively misinformed about a lotta stuff.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  0  
Sat 31 Dec, 2016 07:09 am
This is interesting...

Quote:
A week after Stephen K. Bannon helped engineer the populist revolt that led to Donald J. Trump’s election, Buzzfeed unearthed a recording of him speaking to a Vatican conference of conservative Catholics in 2014.

In his presentation, Mr. Bannon, then the head of the hard-right website Breitbart News and now Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, called on the “church militant” to fight a global war against a “new barbarity” of “Islamic fascism” and international financial elites, with 2,500 years of Western civilization at risk.

...As the Trump administration prepares to take office, the use of Church Militant theology has gone well beyond its religious meaning and has taken on a political resonance. To fully grasp what “church militant” means in this highly politicized atmosphere, it helps to examine the broader movement and the role of a traditionalist Catholic website called — to no surprise — ChurchMilitant.com.

The site’s right-wing stances against globalism, immigration, social-welfare programs and abortion, as well as its depiction of an existential war against radical Islam, mesh with many of the positions espoused by Mr. Trump and his inner circle. (Mr. Bannon did not respond to questions submitted to the Trump transition office.)
more here
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  0  
Sat 31 Dec, 2016 07:20 am
Quote:
Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say
LINK
This is the one that scares the bejesus out of me. Dams, nuclear energy plants, etc.
0 Replies
 
 

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