Donald Trump 2020

[yoladu 4094]

50 minutes ago, elfenix said:

Where my fiscal conservatives at?

[yoladu 4094]

2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Yep, it was quickly found out she was probably nuts and a disgruntled Bernie Bro (Sis?)

she appeared to have some credibility issues, former employers, landlords came forward. - there seem to be a pattern of borrowing money from people and then moving on, some delusions of grandeur if i remember correctly.

not that any of that means she wasn't sexually assaulted, but it certainly didnt help her.

[Neonmoon 38130]

 

[Blotto 23564]

Quote

According to CNBC, Oracle (ORCL) is going to own roughly 20% of the new TikTok entity, with Walmart (WMT) still in the fray. In keeping with a national security maneuver, President Trump is expected to rule on TikTok in the next 24-36 hours, reported CNBC, citing people familiar with the matter.

The issue of data collection, influence, etc... is an issue with all social media platforms not just TikTok and I would reign then all in regardless of what country the company is located. However the idea of this fucking idiot making a decision based on the technical merits of this case makes me laugh. I wouldn't trust Trump to properly use a 3 way selector switch.

Tik Tok is occupying more of his attention than the fucking pandemic. I'm guessing he saw that Sarah Cooper chick making fun of his fat ass, and instantly decided the platform had to go. 

[Hagbard Celine 10907]

2 hours ago, yoladu said:

KENT.  THIS IS GOD.

[Constant 6753]

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

1 minute ago, Constant said:

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

yeah, i feel like someone should look into this.

[Nope 3121]

45 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

 

Timing needs work, Brian 

[Dahobbs 17643]

10 minutes ago, Constant said:

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

Republicans went crazy when a black man got elected President. The end. 

[Constant 6753]

Just now, Dahobbs said:

Republicans went crazy when a black man got elected President. The end. 

That point is certainly hard to argue against. 

[Gooby 640]

54 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

 

Brian Karem got in to a fucking shouting fight with Sebastian Gorka in the Rose Garden, and now he's worried about decorum?

[Underdog 28765]

Apparently not covered in the Binder of Lies. 

[hayden_horn 11365]

4 minutes ago, Gooby said:

Brian Karem got in to a fucking shouting fight with Sebastian Gorka in the Rose Garden, and now he's worried about decorum?

well, gorka is a fuckhead, so...

[Guest Lobo]

I had a Trapper Keeper in 9th grade that had the logos of all the bands I was rhythm guitarist for and magazine cutouts of all the SI Swimsuit models I had totally banged.  

And even then, my binder had more integrity than Kayleigh's because mine didn't cover up murders.  Unless you counted slaying pussy.  

Edited September 17, 2020 by Lobo

[DigglerontheHoof 21210]

4 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

well, gorka is a fuckhead, so...

And Kayleigh isn’t?

[hayden_horn 11365]

3 minutes ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

And Kayleigh isn’t?

if you are interpreting that as some sort of defense for kayleigh, i'm not sure what to tell you.

[We’reTexas 1473]

20 hours ago, Jive Turkey said:

 

I’ve been mulling over this for a while and, as a corporate attorney, I think this is one of the most ridiculous things he has ever said. A few thoughts:

- Generally, this proposed arrangement often brings up acronyms like “FCPA” and “OFAC”.

- The US has an extensive regulatory apparatus governing corporate activity and securities transactions to protect the public. Nominal fees are often charged, as in the case of securities offerings or HSR filings, to support the strain on the applicable regulatory authority. The idea that the government should be entitled to the value of corporate activity for enabling it is just completely discordant with every principle of our state. It literally is corruption.

- Holy fuck - could you even imagine how Fox News would react if Obama proposed something like this?

 

[Brisketexan 105206]

5 minutes ago, We’reTexas said:

The idea that the government should be entitled to the value of corporate activity for enabling it is just completely discordant with every principle of our state. It literally is corruption.

At the lowest level, it's naked corruption.  At the extreme, it actually IS the exact definition of socialism (the state owning the means of production).  And to circle back, that kind of "socialism" usually ends up being corrupt because, while the "state" owns it, the "party leaders" always seem to end up benefiting personally.

So, for the record, we've definitively established that the Trump regime isn't just in favor of socialism, they are in favor of the kind of corrupt socialism you saw in the USSR, Venezuela, etc.  They literally wanted to do just that.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

The mega banks might be our biggest welfare queens. 

[Michael Knight 12990]

45 minutes ago, Constant said:

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

Letting the days go by

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13587]

16 hours ago, Pancho said:

 

Microwaving people is called thinking outside the box, libtard.

 

[Pig Bellmont 8719]

Never mind the gaslighting, the end result is that Eric Trump will produce documents and sit for deposition. 100% chance that evidence ultimately will be used by the AG to request the governor to sign off on turning this civil suit to a criminal one. 

[ChiTownDoc 21154]

1 minute ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Never mind the gaslighting, the end result is that Eric Trump will produce documents and sit for deposition. 100% chance that evidence ultimately will be used by the AG to request the governor to sign off on turning this civil suit to a criminal one. 

Donald will have Eric shoved into traffic before he lets him testify.  Although there’s a small chance he’s even dumber than I thought.  That’s a pretty low bar.  

[elfenix 34331]

1 hour ago, Constant said:

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

democrats shot themselves in the foot over vietnam and sirhan sirhan gunned down RFK in a hotel ballroom, helping nixon to the presidency.  that guy was as shithead of the highest order.  the republican party, despite knowing he was a shithead of the highest order, protected him until it became 100% politically untenable to do so. 

then we elected a nice guy as president, but he was too nice, so we went with smiling shithead saint reagan, who really united conservative economic fuckwadery with conservative social fuckwadery.  the former broke the social contract wrt the economy by knocking down unions, pushing the burden of taxation further down the income/wealth curve, and eviscerating much of the regulation that had been put in place to protect the public in the prior couple-few decades from the worst of capitalism, while the latter tried to cling to some 1950s whitewashed notion of social structure with the trigger being school integration. 

then conservative media really got underway using expertise in psy-ops public relations that the API had been perfecting for decades, even teaching the nazis a thing or two, to gaslight the public against expertise generally, but specifically governmental and scientific expertise, and to push libertopian ideology that essentially meant that there's no consequences for using the public as an open sewer, using the term 'personal responsibility.' that also tied into a backlash against social services - public health, public schooling, welfare, etc.  along the way we amped up the drug war, incarcerating (and often disenfranchising) mostly minority men. 

bill clinton, who was a bit rapey and a bit of a shithead, tried to embrace 3rd way politics, but that helped cost the democratic party the old blue collar base, while also failing at advancing public health and giving away social services.

then the supreme court decided to halt the counting, al qaeda flew planes into the WTC, shadow president cheney got us into a completely unnecessary land war in asia, and the 'personal responsibility' state allowed banks to become huge systemic risks and crash the economy. 

despite that, republicans were out of power for all of about 6 weeks in 2009, during which obamacare passed.  meanwhile, kansas billionaires were upset that a company they owned was held (fictitionally) personally responsible for spewing benzene in corpus christi, so astroturfed backlash against the first black president by some of those blue collar whites bill clinton hadn't paid enough attention to into the tea party.  thereafter, the republicans got a toehold of power back in the senate in a special election following the death of ted kennedy, took the house in 2010, and started gaslighting the public with phony investigations. 

conservative media kept celebrating idiocy and squawking about washington, mitch started refusing to fill judicial appointments (the party of wealth has always known of the power of the judiciary, see the Midnight Judges Act), and the idiots wanted one of their own in the presidency.  and one emerged: the birther in chief, donald j. trump.  they liked the fact that he appeared to say his mind, despite his mind being full of goo.  they liked that he wasn't a career politician.  they forgave the fact that he's the ultimate coastal elite, a supposed billionaire real estate developer from manhattan born with a golden spoon in his mouth.  even centrist media loved to show him because he was a rating bonanza compared to the rosencrantz and guildenstern of the 10 other completely interchangeable republicans who started running for the presidency in 2015 (or 13, c'mon ted). 

combine the idiotic fervor of the 'keep government out of medicare' crowd with the democratic party's choice to run the wife of the man who'd let working class whites get away, the 'but i can't vote for a democrat,' crowd, and the machinations of an electoral system put in place to placate white men who owned black men as their chattel property and and you have the election of a loud mouth idiot who plays up division and embodies all the worst facets of american conservatism since 1948 to the presidency.

Edited September 17, 2020 by elfenix

[tantric superman 4667]

4 minutes ago, elfenix said:

democrats shot themselves in the foot over vietnam, helping nixon to the presidency.  that guy was as shithead of the highest order.  the republican party, despite knowing he was a shithead of the highest order, protected him until it became 100% politically untenable to do so. 

then we elected a nice guy as president, but he was too nice, so we went with smiling shithead saint reagan, who really united conservative economic fuckwadery with conservative social fuckwadery.  the former broke the social contract wrt the economy by knocking down unions, pushing the burden of taxation further down the income/wealth curve, and eviscerating much of the regulation that had been put in place to protect the public in the prior couple-few decades to protect it from the worst of capitalism, while the latter tried to cling to some 1950s whitewashed notion of social structure with the trigger being school integration. 

then conservative media really got underway using expertise in psy-ops public relations that the API had been perfecting for decades, even teaching the nazis a thing or two, to gaslight the public against expertise generally, but specifically governmental and scientific expertise, and to push libertopian ideology that essentially meant that there's no consequences for using the public as an open sewer, using the term 'personal responsibility.' that also tied into a backlash against social services - public health, public schooling, welfare, etc.  along the way we amped up the drug war, incarcerating (and often disenfranchising) mostly minority men. 

bill clinton, who was a bit rapey and a bit of a shithead, tried to embrace 3rd way politics, but that helped cost the democratic party the old blue collar base, while also failing at advancing public health and giving away social services.

then the supreme court decided to halt the counting, al qaeda flew planes into the WTC, shadow president cheney got us into a completely unnecessary land war in asia, and the 'personal responsibility' state allowed banks to become huge systemic risks and crash the economy. 

despite that, republicans were out of power for all of about 6 weeks in 2009, during which obamacare passed.  meanwhile, kansas billionaires were upset that a company they owned was held (fictitionally) personally responsible for spewing benzene in corpus christi, so astroturfed backlash against the first black president by some of those blue collar whites bill clinton hadn't paid enough attention to into the tea party.  thereafter, the republicans got a toehold of power back in the senate in a special election following the death of ted kennedy, took the house in 2010, and started gaslighting the public with phony investigations. 

conservative media kept celebrating idiocy and squawking about washington, mitch started refusing to fill judicial appointments (the party of wealth has always known of the power of the judiciary, see the Midnight Judges Act), and the idiots wanted one of their own in the presidency.  and one emerged: the birther in chief, donald j. trump.  they liked the fact that he appeared to say his mind, despite his mind being full of good.  they liked that he wasn't a career politician.  they forgave the fact that he's the ultimate coastal elite, a supposed billionaire real estate developer from manhattan born with a golden spoon in his mouth.  even centrist media loved to show him because he was a rating bonanza compared to the rosencrantz and guildenstern of the 10 other completely interchangeable republicans who started running for the presidency in 2015 (or 13, c'mon ted). 

combine the idiotic fervor of the 'keep government out of medicare' crowd with the democratic party's choice to run the wife of the man who'd let working class whites get away, the 'but i can't vote for a democrat,' crowd and the machinations of an electoral system put in place to placate white men who owned black men as their chattel property and and you have the election of a loud mouth idiot who plays up division and embodies all the worst facets of american conservatism since 1948 to the presidency.

 

.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

1 hour ago, Constant said:

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

Greed as a virtue.  The concentration of wealth/power and lack of concern for the wellbeing of our fellow citizens and environment. Nation of fuck you, got mine. 

There is no single moment.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Biff Tannen 45702]

20 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Donald will have Eric shoved into traffic before he lets him testify.

[HenryJames 66150]

 

[4th&Five 41577]

It's a throw shit at the wall kind of afternoon.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

this dude want to make me puke

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

weird word flippage in that post

[RPM 26337]

nauslexia

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

She called him out; love those nasty women!

 

[Biff Tannen 45702]

Lulz

 

 

[elfenix 34331]

Kgb agents are following right behind the mail truck stealing ballots out of the mailboxes in Levitttown, NJ!

[Neonmoon 38130]

23 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

[Gap03 3310]

56 minutes ago, elfenix said:

democrats shot themselves in the foot over vietnam and sirhan sirhan gunned down RFK in a hotel ballroom, helping nixon to the presidency.  that guy was as shithead of the highest order.  the republican party, despite knowing he was a shithead of the highest order, protected him until it became 100% politically untenable to do so. 

then we elected a nice guy as president, but he was too nice, so we went with smiling shithead saint reagan, who really united conservative economic fuckwadery with conservative social fuckwadery.  the former broke the social contract wrt the economy by knocking down unions, pushing the burden of taxation further down the income/wealth curve, and eviscerating much of the regulation that had been put in place to protect the public in the prior couple-few decades from the worst of capitalism, while the latter tried to cling to some 1950s whitewashed notion of social structure with the trigger being school integration. 

then conservative media really got underway using expertise in psy-ops public relations that the API had been perfecting for decades, even teaching the nazis a thing or two, to gaslight the public against expertise generally, but specifically governmental and scientific expertise, and to push libertopian ideology that essentially meant that there's no consequences for using the public as an open sewer, using the term 'personal responsibility.' that also tied into a backlash against social services - public health, public schooling, welfare, etc.  along the way we amped up the drug war, incarcerating (and often disenfranchising) mostly minority men. 

bill clinton, who was a bit rapey and a bit of a shithead, tried to embrace 3rd way politics, but that helped cost the democratic party the old blue collar base, while also failing at advancing public health and giving away social services.

then the supreme court decided to halt the counting, al qaeda flew planes into the WTC, shadow president cheney got us into a completely unnecessary land war in asia, and the 'personal responsibility' state allowed banks to become huge systemic risks and crash the economy. 

despite that, republicans were out of power for all of about 6 weeks in 2009, during which obamacare passed.  meanwhile, kansas billionaires were upset that a company they owned was held (fictitionally) personally responsible for spewing benzene in corpus christi, so astroturfed backlash against the first black president by some of those blue collar whites bill clinton hadn't paid enough attention to into the tea party.  thereafter, the republicans got a toehold of power back in the senate in a special election following the death of ted kennedy, took the house in 2010, and started gaslighting the public with phony investigations. 

conservative media kept celebrating idiocy and squawking about washington, mitch started refusing to fill judicial appointments (the party of wealth has always known of the power of the judiciary, see the Midnight Judges Act), and the idiots wanted one of their own in the presidency.  and one emerged: the birther in chief, donald j. trump.  they liked the fact that he appeared to say his mind, despite his mind being full of goo.  they liked that he wasn't a career politician.  they forgave the fact that he's the ultimate coastal elite, a supposed billionaire real estate developer from manhattan born with a golden spoon in his mouth.  even centrist media loved to show him because he was a rating bonanza compared to the rosencrantz and guildenstern of the 10 other completely interchangeable republicans who started running for the presidency in 2015 (or 13, c'mon ted). 

combine the idiotic fervor of the 'keep government out of medicare' crowd with the democratic party's choice to run the wife of the man who'd let working class whites get away, the 'but i can't vote for a democrat,' crowd, and the machinations of an electoral system put in place to placate white men who owned black men as their chattel property and and you have the election of a loud mouth idiot who plays up division and embodies all the worst facets of american conservatism since 1948 to the presidency.

[Degenerate Gardner 4085]

3 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

It's a great day to be Lee Greenwood 

[Gap03 3310]

30 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

It's a throw shit at the wall kind of afternoon.

Sir, this is an Arby's ...

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

1 hour ago, elfenix said:

democrats shot themselves in the foot over vietnam and sirhan sirhan gunned down RFK in a hotel ballroom, helping nixon to the presidency.  that guy was as shithead of the highest order.  the republican party, despite knowing he was a shithead of the highest order, protected him until it became 100% politically untenable to do so. 

then we elected a nice guy as president, but he was too nice, so we went with smiling shithead saint reagan, who really united conservative economic fuckwadery with conservative social fuckwadery.  the former broke the social contract wrt the economy by knocking down unions, pushing the burden of taxation further down the income/wealth curve, and eviscerating much of the regulation that had been put in place to protect the public in the prior couple-few decades from the worst of capitalism, while the latter tried to cling to some 1950s whitewashed notion of social structure with the trigger being school integration. 

then conservative media really got underway using expertise in psy-ops public relations that the API had been perfecting for decades, even teaching the nazis a thing or two, to gaslight the public against expertise generally, but specifically governmental and scientific expertise, and to push libertopian ideology that essentially meant that there's no consequences for using the public as an open sewer, using the term 'personal responsibility.' that also tied into a backlash against social services - public health, public schooling, welfare, etc.  along the way we amped up the drug war, incarcerating (and often disenfranchising) mostly minority men. 

bill clinton, who was a bit rapey and a bit of a shithead, tried to embrace 3rd way politics, but that helped cost the democratic party the old blue collar base, while also failing at advancing public health and giving away social services.

then the supreme court decided to halt the counting, al qaeda flew planes into the WTC, shadow president cheney got us into a completely unnecessary land war in asia, and the 'personal responsibility' state allowed banks to become huge systemic risks and crash the economy. 

despite that, republicans were out of power for all of about 6 weeks in 2009, during which obamacare passed.  meanwhile, kansas billionaires were upset that a company they owned was held (fictitionally) personally responsible for spewing benzene in corpus christi, so astroturfed backlash against the first black president by some of those blue collar whites bill clinton hadn't paid enough attention to into the tea party.  thereafter, the republicans got a toehold of power back in the senate in a special election following the death of ted kennedy, took the house in 2010, and started gaslighting the public with phony investigations. 

conservative media kept celebrating idiocy and squawking about washington, mitch started refusing to fill judicial appointments (the party of wealth has always known of the power of the judiciary, see the Midnight Judges Act), and the idiots wanted one of their own in the presidency.  and one emerged: the birther in chief, donald j. trump.  they liked the fact that he appeared to say his mind, despite his mind being full of goo.  they liked that he wasn't a career politician.  they forgave the fact that he's the ultimate coastal elite, a supposed billionaire real estate developer from manhattan born with a golden spoon in his mouth.  even centrist media loved to show him because he was a rating bonanza compared to the rosencrantz and guildenstern of the 10 other completely interchangeable republicans who started running for the presidency in 2015 (or 13, c'mon ted). 

combine the idiotic fervor of the 'keep government out of medicare' crowd with the democratic party's choice to run the wife of the man who'd let working class whites get away, the 'but i can't vote for a democrat,' crowd, and the machinations of an electoral system put in place to placate white men who owned black men as their chattel property and and you have the election of a loud mouth idiot who plays up division and embodies all the worst facets of american conservatism since 1948 to the presidency.

This is a great post.  

If I wanted to isolate the most devastating idea that caught fire and put America on the fast track to shit hole nation it has to be trickledown economics, which still has ardent advocates despite 40+ years of proven failure.

[Continental Op 3934]

2 hours ago, Constant said:

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

Southern Strategy begat the Moral Majority which begat the Contract With America which begat the Tea Party which begat whatever the fuck you want to call what is going on now. 

[Rougarou 594]

1 hour ago, elfenix said:

democrats shot themselves in the foot over vietnam and sirhan sirhan gunned down RFK in a hotel ballroom, helping nixon to the presidency.  that guy was as shithead of the highest order.  the republican party, despite knowing he was a shithead of the highest order, protected him until it became 100% politically untenable to do so. 

then we elected a nice guy as president, but he was too nice, so we went with smiling shithead saint reagan, who really united conservative economic fuckwadery with conservative social fuckwadery.  the former broke the social contract wrt the economy by knocking down unions, pushing the burden of taxation further down the income/wealth curve, and eviscerating much of the regulation that had been put in place to protect the public in the prior couple-few decades from the worst of capitalism, while the latter tried to cling to some 1950s whitewashed notion of social structure with the trigger being school integration. 

then conservative media really got underway using expertise in psy-ops public relations that the API had been perfecting for decades, even teaching the nazis a thing or two, to gaslight the public against expertise generally, but specifically governmental and scientific expertise, and to push libertopian ideology that essentially meant that there's no consequences for using the public as an open sewer, using the term 'personal responsibility.' that also tied into a backlash against social services - public health, public schooling, welfare, etc.  along the way we amped up the drug war, incarcerating (and often disenfranchising) mostly minority men. 

bill clinton, who was a bit rapey and a bit of a shithead, tried to embrace 3rd way politics, but that helped cost the democratic party the old blue collar base, while also failing at advancing public health and giving away social services.

then the supreme court decided to halt the counting, al qaeda flew planes into the WTC, shadow president cheney got us into a completely unnecessary land war in asia, and the 'personal responsibility' state allowed banks to become huge systemic risks and crash the economy. 

despite that, republicans were out of power for all of about 6 weeks in 2009, during which obamacare passed.  meanwhile, kansas billionaires were upset that a company they owned was held (fictitionally) personally responsible for spewing benzene in corpus christi, so astroturfed backlash against the first black president by some of those blue collar whites bill clinton hadn't paid enough attention to into the tea party.  thereafter, the republicans got a toehold of power back in the senate in a special election following the death of ted kennedy, took the house in 2010, and started gaslighting the public with phony investigations. 

conservative media kept celebrating idiocy and squawking about washington, mitch started refusing to fill judicial appointments (the party of wealth has always known of the power of the judiciary, see the Midnight Judges Act), and the idiots wanted one of their own in the presidency.  and one emerged: the birther in chief, donald j. trump.  they liked the fact that he appeared to say his mind, despite his mind being full of goo.  they liked that he wasn't a career politician.  they forgave the fact that he's the ultimate coastal elite, a supposed billionaire real estate developer from manhattan born with a golden spoon in his mouth.  even centrist media loved to show him because he was a rating bonanza compared to the rosencrantz and guildenstern of the 10 other completely interchangeable republicans who started running for the presidency in 2015 (or 13, c'mon ted). 

combine the idiotic fervor of the 'keep government out of medicare' crowd with the democratic party's choice to run the wife of the man who'd let working class whites get away, the 'but i can't vote for a democrat,' crowd, and the machinations of an electoral system put in place to placate white men who owned black men as their chattel property and and you have the election of a loud mouth idiot who plays up division and embodies all the worst facets of american conservatism since 1948 to the presidency.

Well done!

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

 

 

[HenryJames 66150]

 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

19 minutes ago, Continental Op said:

Southern Strategy begat the Moral Majority which begat the Contract With America which begat the Tea Party which begat whatever the fuck you want to call what is going on now. 

 

[Player 4575]

2 hours ago, Constant said:

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

 

[4th&Five 41577]

 

[shakahorn 1645]

49 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

This is a great post.  

If I wanted to isolate the most devastating idea that caught fire and put America on the fast track to shit hole nation it has to be trickledown economics, which still has ardent advocates despite 40+ years of proven failure.

I have to agree.  I believe this is primarily responsible for bifurcation between the haves and have nots, shrinking the middle class on the way to its elimination, creating the 1%.  And that's a primary characteristic of a third world nation, no middle class.  The money never trickled down, it was given to the rich and they've done everything they can to hang on to it...not that I blame them, it's human nature.

[Bama Chick 28596]

democrats shot themselves in the foot over vietnam and sirhan sirhan gunned down RFK in a hotel ballroom, helping nixon to the presidency.  that guy was as shithead of the highest order.  the republican party, despite knowing he was a shithead of the highest order, protected him until it became 100% politically untenable to do so. 
then we elected a nice guy as president, but he was too nice, so we went with smiling shithead saint reagan, who really united conservative economic fuckwadery with conservative social fuckwadery.  the former broke the social contract wrt the economy by knocking down unions, pushing the burden of taxation further down the income/wealth curve, and eviscerating much of the regulation that had been put in place to protect the public in the prior couple-few decades from the worst of capitalism, while the latter tried to cling to some 1950s whitewashed notion of social structure with the trigger being school integration. 
then conservative media really got underway using expertise in psy-ops public relations that the API had been perfecting for decades, even teaching the nazis a thing or two, to gaslight the public against expertise generally, but specifically governmental and scientific expertise, and to push libertopian ideology that essentially meant that there's no consequences for using the public as an open sewer, using the term 'personal responsibility.' that also tied into a backlash against social services - public health, public schooling, welfare, etc.  along the way we amped up the drug war, incarcerating (and often disenfranchising) mostly minority men. 
bill clinton, who was a bit rapey and a bit of a shithead, tried to embrace 3rd way politics, but that helped cost the democratic party the old blue collar base, while also failing at advancing public health and giving away social services.
then the supreme court decided to halt the counting, al qaeda flew planes into the WTC, shadow president cheney got us into a completely unnecessary land war in asia, and the 'personal responsibility' state allowed banks to become huge systemic risks and crash the economy. 
despite that, republicans were out of power for all of about 6 weeks in 2009, during which obamacare passed.  meanwhile, kansas billionaires were upset that a company they owned was held (fictitionally) personally responsible for spewing benzene in corpus christi, so astroturfed backlash against the first black president by some of those blue collar whites bill clinton hadn't paid enough attention to into the tea party.  thereafter, the republicans got a toehold of power back in the senate in a special election following the death of ted kennedy, took the house in 2010, and started gaslighting the public with phony investigations. 
conservative media kept celebrating idiocy and squawking about washington, mitch started refusing to fill judicial appointments (the party of wealth has always known of the power of the judiciary, see the Midnight Judges Act), and the idiots wanted one of their own in the presidency.  and one emerged: the birther in chief, donald j. trump.  they liked the fact that he appeared to say his mind, despite his mind being full of goo.  they liked that he wasn't a career politician.  they forgave the fact that he's the ultimate coastal elite, a supposed billionaire real estate developer from manhattan born with a golden spoon in his mouth.  even centrist media loved to show him because he was a rating bonanza compared to the rosencrantz and guildenstern of the 10 other completely interchangeable republicans who started running for the presidency in 2015 (or 13, c'mon ted). 
combine the idiotic fervor of the 'keep government out of medicare' crowd with the democratic party's choice to run the wife of the man who'd let working class whites get away, the 'but i can't vote for a democrat,' crowd, and the machinations of an electoral system put in place to placate white men who owned black men as their chattel property and and you have the election of a loud mouth idiot who plays up division and embodies all the worst facets of american conservatism since 1948 to the presidency.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

3 hours ago, Constant said:

How did we get here? Is there a singular moment where something shifted that allowed such a terrible human being to infiltrate the presidency? Was it the Palin fiasco that normalized some of this? For all her faults, she at least had a civic mind and governmental experience. When did everything break down and go to shit?

rush limbaugh, then fox news. now we are here.