The difference is, that the percentage of idiots amongst Democrats (or at least amongst the ruling echelon of Democrats) has become vanishingly close to 100%.
0 Replies
gungasnake
-3
Sun 12 Aug, 2018 07:43 am
Democrats and Democrat sponsored organizations fanned the flames of Charlottesville.
You too can #walkaway. Walk away from the crime syndicate of the Demokkkrat party. Walk away from George Soros and trans-national gangsterism. Walk away from the KKKlinton machine. Walk away from criminality, stupidity, and mindless hatred. Stop being a Demokkkrat. Just wall away.
Again, the Russians I was talking to in 2016 weren't really interested in the election but I suppose you could say I colluded with them. There was this one really hot blond Russian spy chick, a Spetznaz lieutenant of some sort who wanted to know where to buy JagerPro hog traps to catch demokkkrats with, I might have mentioned that previously, and I did show her the way to the Bass-Pro outlet in Katy Tx. She made it worth my while…
0 Replies
neptuneblue
5
Sun 12 Aug, 2018 08:19 am
It's Hard To Miss The Historical Weirdness Of Trump Embracing A 'Red' Wave
August 10, 20185:00 AM ET
Ron Elving at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 22, 2018. (photo by Allison Shelley)
RON ELVING
President Trump has been pushing back on the notion of a "blue wave," and embracing the idea of a "red wave." But the adaptation of "red" is a popular culture shift from the Cold War.
Renee Klahr/NPR
If you're a Republican or a conservative from the old school, it's a little hard to relate to President Trump shouting, "Red Wave!" at his rallies, or tweeting it out in all caps, as he has done this week.
Literally, he tweeted just those two words in all caps.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
RED WAVE!
2:51 PM - Aug 8, 2018
133K
It should be lost on no one that the president is countering the talk he hears about a "Blue Wave," which is media shorthand for Democrats' promising prospects in the coming November elections.
But somehow the phrase "red wave" does not quite feel comfortable. It's probably better than "red tide," which connotes the kind of toxic algae bloom that is now devastating some beaches in southwest Florida.
But there's a larger problem.
Not so long ago, red was universally the color of communism. The Soviet army in Russia was called the Red Army. China was routinely referred to as "Red China" in the U.S. for decades after the communist takeover there in 1948.
Fear of communist infiltration led to "Red Scares" after both world wars, and generations of American youth were taught in school about the "Red Menace." People regarded as having even mildly socialist sympathies were referred to as "pinko."
In the 1980s, popular movies about communists or Soviets or Russians had the telltale color in their titles (Red Dawn, Red October and just plain Reds).
Much of this usage fell away with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which signaled the end of the Cold War and the rise of a post-Soviet era in Russia. But the sense of the color red being leftish never entirely left the culture. London's mayor a decade ago was a socialist named Ken Livingstone who was often called "RedKen," and Jennifer Lawrence's latest release is a spy pic called Red Sparrow.
So how did the political meaning of the color red in our country get ... confused?
Well, it didn't start with Donald Trump. But it did have a lot to do with television.
NBC was the first all-color network, and on Election Night 1976, NBC's John Chancellor had an illuminated map that turned states blue when they were called for the Republican candidate, incumbent President Gerald R. Ford, and red if they went for the Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter.
(One of the best resources for historical election results is Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, and, for consistency from that period, Leip still labels Republicans blue and Democrats red.)
That's not an error. The GOP was blue; the Democrats were red. And the same color scheme prevailed four years later when the Republican nominee was Ronald Reagan, who turned most of the map blue before the West Coast got home for supper.
That is, the TV map turned blue if you were watching NBC or CBS. If you were watching ABC, Reagan's landslide was blood red. So if you were a channel flipper, it was a real head spinner.
Graphic artists at the networks experimented — orange, yellow, green — but let's face it, Election Night maps in our country need to be red, white and blue.
Blue made sense as the Republican color. It is typically associated with the more conservative parties in Europe (and elsewhere) and had been used in this country in textbook and reference maps to indicate states voting Republican. Blue was, of course, the Union hue in the Civil War, the struggle that gave rise to the GOP (which stands for Grand Old Party, a reference to the Grand Army of the Potomac).
Not surprisingly, many Democrats disliked the communist implications of being the red party and objected to being so designated for millions of TV viewers and voters. And besides, the historic expectation of Northern states voting Republican and Southern states Democratic was no longer operative by the late 1900s.
In any event, the confusion between the networks' Election Night color choices persisted until the fateful year 2000, when all three broadcast TV networks and CNN finally settled on a common color scheme. Democrats were blue on all channels, Republicans red.
No one seemed to think that meant that the party of Reagan had gone soft on communism.
Of course, the outcome of the 2000 election remained in dispute for the next five weeks, meaning the colored map was seen on the air night after night. Talking heads started using the "red state" or "blue state" labels as part of the national conversation, reinforcing this sense of our political geography. And it stuck.
The keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic convention objected to the red-state, blue-state paradigm and called it false. His name was Barack Obama, and he would go on to serve two terms as president.
But the use of blue-and-red labels survived his keynote — and became all the more common.
Back then, Donald Trump was more likely to pop up in People or in the tabloids or on other Access Hollywood videos with Billy Bush — talking about his preparedness to be president or trying to find his polling place with no success — than on a serious political program.
Donald Trump signs an autograph for a young man wearing a Make America Great Again hat during a rally in Millington, Tenn.
Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty Images
Trump had briefly sought the presidential nomination of the Reform Party in 2000, leaving the field after a matter of weeks. (That nomination eventually went to Pat Buchanan, who ran that fall on a platform of "America First.")
When Trump returned to politics with a vengeance in 2015, he did so as a Republican and embraced the color red with gusto. The "Make America Great Again" hats that symbolized his campaign came in various colors, but Trump seemed fond of the red one, which came to the heads in his rally crowds.
Red is a primary color, striking and radiating in its strength. Its value in these respects is reinforced by the great many sports teams — professional and amateur — that have worn it proudly for years.
But it is hard to miss the historical weirdness of a Republican president who so proudly waves the symbolic color of communism, even as he tries to remake America's attitude toward Russia — the country where communism first came to power.
0 Replies
coldjoint
-3
Sun 12 Aug, 2018 10:40 am
@izzythepush,
Quote:
Finally, a rare bit of backbone, it's about time we stood up to bullies.
Yeah, you missed your chance to stand up to Islamic rapists and you talk about backbone? You are just appeasing Islam again it does not require backbone to do that.
Critics’ reaction to "Death of a Nation" prove D’Souza’s right
0 Replies
hightor
6
Sun 12 Aug, 2018 11:29 am
I find it troubling that Trumpism has so dominated the news cycle since 2016 that there's barely enough oxygen left in the room to discuss the ominous environmental trends that can be seen in this country and around the world. I mean, does anyone even care about water?
Attracted by lax regulations, industrial agriculture has descended on a remote valley, depleting its aquifer — leaving many residents with no water at all.
(...)
Water is so crucial to so many aspects of our lives that it can be difficult to grasp just how much we use. The standard unit in farming, for instance, is the acre-foot — the amount it takes to cover an acre in a foot of water — which can seem like a huge quantity or not much at all, depending on how it’s used or what comparison you make: 325,851 gallons, half an Olympic pool or 50 bushels of corn. The problem is even thornier below ground. Buried deep within the earth, groundwater is a largely hidden resource but one that supplies 25 to 40 percent of global drinking water. Still, agriculture uses the bulk of it; about 70 percent of water withdrawn from aquifers is consumed by this one industry. Nearly all the planet’s freshwater reserves not stored in polar ice lie at depths below 3,000 feet. Together they form one of the planet’s largest waterways, a six-quintillion-gallon supply of Ice Age rain and snow that is almost entirely uncharted.
Most North American aquifers lie beneath the Western United States and date back to the beginning of the continent as we know it. Six million years ago, as the Rocky Mountains thrust upward, rivers gashed deep channels in the crust, separating ranges with basins that gradually filled with eroded rock, trapping water beneath it. One of the largest aquifers in the world, the Ogallala, which runs through eight Plains states, is not a vast subterranean lake, as one might imagine, but a 174,000-square-mile layer of waterlogged earth, moving and twisting through strata of dry rock like a wet article of clothing in the laundry bin. Subject to eons of pressure, every aquifer arranges itself differently, forming vast networks of coves and seams of water, some a thousand feet thick but others just a thin vein. Aquifers are unimaginably complex and incredibly fragile; once tapped, they can take more than 6,000 years to replenish.
Mr. Trump goes around like a bull in a china shop, upsetting relationships which have held the peace, more or less, for the past 70 years, picking fights with old allies, cozying up to dictators, and undermining the US electorate's faith in the rule of law and in democracy itself. I see very little effort being made to address developing problems such as the future effect of automation on the work force — no, let's talk about the "Space Force".
Rolling back environmental regulations will definitely result in dirtier air and water — leading to a less healthy population even as we dismantle the barely adequate remnants of the ACA and offer nothing in its place. If we believe there's a refugee and immigration problem now, just wait until coastal plains, teeming with people, are swallowed by rising sea levels.
Yeah, I know — the worst effects won't be felt for another 25 - 50 years, so it is said. That's all the more reason to address them now. It's been pointed out that we bungled the chance to act on the crisis 30 years ago. This is so typical of our species, the preoccupation with short term gains as opposed to long range planning. We never seem to learn. Gotta have it all, right now.
NBC News Ignores Antifa Attack On Their Own News Crew In Charlottesville
I wonder why? Maybe it is their way to hide the fact these people are violent fascists now Democratic tools aided by a complicit media. Yeah. that's it. http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=58864
violence asgainst their equipment, maybe. Not violence against the newspeople themseves. The guy apparently tried to shut down a camera. //A far cry from intentionally driving a car into a group of counterprotestors and killing one.
0 Replies
hightor
4
Sun 12 Aug, 2018 12:56 pm
@coldjoint,
Quote:
The MSM did that, not Trump.
Well yes, the media report the news, and the candidates (what they say and do and how they are perceived) make the news. I said "Trumpism", not Trump himself. Trump's candidacy was worthy of notice. Don't be so defensive.
0 Replies
Real Music
2
Sun 12 Aug, 2018 12:56 pm
CNN's Anderson Cooper takes a look at racially-charged statements made by President Donald Trump
following his claim that he is the "least racist" person.
Rising sea levels may be a problem sooner than had been thought, even a few years ago. Beginning about ten years ago, climatologists warned that the Antarctic ice sheets would begin breaking up in 50 to 100 years. That turns out to have been wildly (although unintentionally) optimistic. Just over a year ago an iceberg the size of the State of Delaware separated from Antarctica.
Oh . . . silly me--conservatives don't like to hear such things, so it must be "fake news." Yeah . . . right.
It is idiots like Cooper who say they are racially charged statements. He creates a lie and elaborates on it.
I obviously disagree with you, but you are entitled to your own opinion.
Everyone has the opportunity to watch the video and judge it for themselves.
0 Replies
coldjoint
-2
Sun 12 Aug, 2018 03:36 pm
Quote:
EU WARNED: Salvini issues STERN warning to Brussels – 'Rights of Italians come FIRST!'
What Trump has is contagious. Hopefully more Europeans will contract this wonderful condition.
Quote:
Eurosceptic leader Matteo Salvini insisted Italy's coalition Government would put the needs of Italians before the commitments made to the European Union.
The Lega leader told Il Sole 24 Ore he would make sure to deliver on the pledges of his manifesto "whether the European Union likes it or not".
Mr Salvini said: "We will also commit economically to kickstart in that sector the same revolution we started on immigration policy. I remember what we promised to do, whether the European Union like it or not.
"We’ll do anything to respect the European obligations with the new budget but the rights of Italians come first. Right to work, to pension, to health."
