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The White House Correspondents' Dinner


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Just now, Chad Fuck said:

Trump, along with his sycophantic followers, is a gaping vagina who can dish it, but not take it.

I was incredibly critical of that.  In fact the performance convinced me to write in Jeb Bush.  It was the first time in about 400 votes I had not voted for the R on the ballot.

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It's about not being servile to one who is supposed to serve.  It's his turn to sit in the hot seat, and the coward can't take the heat.  

He sends his lackeys to take the heat for him, then complains.  He could've shown up and made his own jokes, but he didn't.

 

 

Edited by Chad Fuck
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There's no reason for any of them to attend. The press have a job to do and improving relations with the White House is very low on their list of responsibilities. If the press is properly doing their job, almost any administration should spend a fair portion of the time pissed at them. 

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3 minutes ago, Pods said:

There's no reason for any of them to attend. The press have a job to do and improving relations with the White House is very low on their list of responsibilities. If the press is properly doing their job, almost any administration should spend a fair portion of the time pissed at them. 

that's the thing. the press should be up any administration's ass all the time. that's their job as the fourth estate. the administration should not take the press enema personally, either. putting up with pesky things like facts and questions about policy and statements made is part of their job. they fucking work for THE PEOPLE.

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41 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

I thought it was a crack at how she forces reporters to play little games.  Like when she made everyone say what they were thankful for before they could ask a question.  

I think some of these outraged takes say more about the person who is making these offensive interpretations. 

Of course. The whole thankful game that one time. Maybe Wolf is just smarter than everyone else. You could pen denials for Joy Ann Reid.

 

I agree about comedy being in eyes of beholder. I thought the butch dyke softball voice/joke was pretty funny.

Edited by woohorn
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42 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

I thought it was a crack at how she forces reporters to play little games.  Like when she made everyone say what they were thankful for before they could ask a question.  

I think some of these outraged takes say more about the person who is making these offensive interpretations. 

Yes it certainly does 

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23 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Lulz brisket has called me personally all of the following since trump has been elected: traitorous, spineless, nutless, and now a concern troll. He has changed alright

Welll, you lament the path we go down...yet all of your criticism and concern is reserved for those who have sounded the alarm about it.  Oh, of course, you are sure to throw in a "no excusing Trump, though, he's not good."  Quite powerful and passionate there.  If you used half the energy criticizing the man and movement who have led us down this path as you do for those saying "this is really shitty, not normal, and we never should have done it and we should stop it," well, you might have some credibility.

We invited a deranged narcissist into our house, and we are getting exactly what any sane person would expect.  And as some of us follow behind him in our house, shouting "stop breaking all of our shit!"....your concern is reserved for....the "unhinged folks" who want him to stop breaking shit.

If you can't see how that contrast if comically appalling, I can't help you.

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25 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Lulz brisket has called me personally all of the following since trump has been elected: traitorous, spineless, nutless, and now a concern troll. He has changed alright

All of which has zero to do with his political views, which have mostly not changed and were the subject of my post. Brisket still has conservative political positions. The GOP is the one that has changed and you have gone along with them.

The animus you are detecting is because you, and other voters like you, are enabling the GOP that Brisket has supported his entire life to be hijacked by a transparent, two-bit conman. 

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26 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

The dinner is a case of people confusing the means and the end.  The objective of the meeting is to foster better relations between the White House and the press corps.  Jokes are a means of having a good timer and improving relations.  Jokes are the means to an end, not the end.

I am reminded of speeches at a wedding reception where the best man gets carried away in his speech telling "funny" stories about the groom.  His frat brothers think it's hilarious. The bride's mom is pissed.  Or the softball game designed to improve relations between the police and the fire department, which ends in fights, players trying to injure the opponent and mass cheating.  People lose sight of the objective.

The objective of the dinner has changed.  It is no longer designed to improve relations between the White House and the press corps.  The hosts don't know how to run the thing.  They've lost sight of their purpose and created a new purpose - create entertainment for the liberal press corps.  I think the White House should, and will, opt out.

It's not the dinner that changed.  It's the relationship between the White House and the press that has changed.  That's why the old objective no longer makes sense and a truthful comedian is obligated to do what she did.  

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I am not a GOP voter. Never have been a member of a political party. I voted for the same guy brisket voted for. I am nothing but critical of trump. It is absolutely amazing that anything other than rabid, foaming at the mouth rhetoric is seen as some kind of support or enabling of trump.  

 

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Just now, Sawbonz said:

I am not a GOP voter. Never have been a member of a political party. I voted for the same guy brisket voted for. I am nothing but critical of trump. It is absolutely amazing that anything other than rabid, foaming at the mouth rhetoric is seen as some kind of support or enabling of trump.  

 

Your concern is one sided. That's why you are called a concern troll. One plus one equals fucking two, get it through your thick skull.

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Just now, Brian Fantana said:

Your concern is one sided. That's why you are called a concern troll. One plus one equals fucking two, get it through your thick skull.

Where is my concern one sided?  Show your work

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20 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Of course Tahoe would defend the traditional White House Correspondents Dinner. ...

I'm not advocating the traditional dinner.  I'm noting that we no longer have the traditional dinner.  I think the hosts should be free to have whatever kind of dinner they want.  I do think, though, that they should be honest about the objective.  Whether it's  (1) a "truth to power"/fun for liberal journalists dinner,  (2) a nerd prom or (3) a party designed to improve relations between the White House and the press corps they should be upfront about their objective and work to make the event comport with the objective.  They shouldn't let their event get hijacked.  Nut it's their event to do with as they choose, or even to let it get fucked up because they can't exert the right kind of leadership.

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5 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

It's not the dinner that changed.  It's the relationship between the White House and the press that has changed.  That's why the old objective no longer makes sense and a truthful comedian is obligated to do what she did.  

They were mean to GWB too.  Not as much. 

The press corps does not like GOP Presidents.  Any of them.  But that's their choice.  I think the White House should deal with them accordingly.  And I have no doubt this White House will.

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26 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Typical for a schoolyard bully. 

yep

learned long ago to never trust

1) people who talk to fucking much

2) people who tell other people how to live their lives

ergo politicians. current POTUS is just a fucking glass jawed rube. ideal representation really of 'merica

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I think trump will go down as the worst president in history  I think he is a horrible human and a completely incompetent leader 

I think he will resign in disgrace ahead of mueller releasing evidence that would guarantee impeachment success regardless of the political makeup of the house and senate

If that happens I will be as happy as brisket

 

Where we differ is that, if that doesn’t happen, I don’t think it’s an existential crisis for our country. I think, no matter how it comes about, we have a new president after the  2020 election. I’m not sure how calling people spineless and gutless and trolls on an Internet furthers any of that along, but whatever

 

 

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4 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

They were mean to GWB too.  Not as much. 

The press corps does not like GOP Presidents.  Any of them.  But that's their choice.  I think the White House should deal with them accordingly.  And I have no doubt this White House will.

Wolf wasn't particularly mean to Trump.  It was her comments towards his underlings that is drawing the complaints.  I don't recall anyone going to town on Ari Fleischer or Dana Perino like that.  It has nothing to do with GOP, and everything to do with the way the GOP is disgracing itself.  And the fact that the GOP is in total power right now. 

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28 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

I'm not advocating the traditional dinner.  I'm noting that we no longer have the traditional dinner.  I think the hosts should be free to have whatever kind of dinner they want.  I do think, though, that they should be honest about the objective.  Whether it's  (1) a "truth to power"/fun for liberal journalists dinner,  (2) a nerd prom or (3) a party designed to improve relations between the White House and the press corps they should be upfront about their objective and work to make the event comport with the objective.  They shouldn't let their event get hijacked.  Nut it's their event to do with as they choose, or even to let it get fucked up because they can't exert the right kind of leadership.

What if they served donuts?

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15 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Where we differ is that, if that doesn’t happen, I don’t think it’s an existential crisis for our country. I think, no matter how it comes about, we have a new president after the  2020 election. I’m not sure how calling people spineless and gutless and trolls on an Internet furthers any of that along, but whatever

I think it essentially boils down to a Pascal's wager of sorts for Brisket and others like him. Maybe this is a blip that will revert to normal, in which case Brisket is overreacting. But, what if it isn't? I think his point is that the destruction of norms is a portent of things to come and that it will continue to get worse.

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6 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

If you stand in front of the press corps on a daily basis and tell lies, and frankly do so in a snarky condescending manner, then you deserve what you get when you don't have the podium.

And call real reporting "fake news."  And float jailing journalists.  You cannot have a friendly dinner when neither side respects the other. 

Edited by Mojo Hand
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5 minutes ago, VRHorn said:

I think it essentially boils down to a Pascal's wager of sorts for Brisket and others like him. Maybe this is a blip that will revert to normal, in which case Brisket is overreacting. But, what if it isn't? I think his point is that the destruction of norms is a portent of things to come and that it will continue to get worse.

Is it more likely that 2016 was a sea change in American politics or rather a perfect storm where we had 2 candidates that 2/3 of the country didn’t like? Maybe I’m too much of an optimist but I sincerely believe it’s the latter. 

 

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13 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

I am not a GOP voter. Never have been a member of a political party. I voted for the same guy brisket voted for. I am nothing but critical of trump. It is absolutely amazing that anything other than rabid, foaming at the mouth rhetoric is seen as some kind of support or enabling of trump.  

 

That may be how you view yourself, but it is not what your posting history reflects. 

I voted for the same guy brisket voted for.

That helps make the point I'm trying to make. Brisket is still a conservative leaning person. My entire family was Republican growing up, all but one of us left the party over the Iraq war and pandering to the religious right and anti-science lunatics. The one has now left it because of Trump. 

Brisket, Ghost of LL, longhornmatt and many others on here were all GOP and still all have conservative views on lots of issues. The GOP is the one that no longer gives a shit about fiscal responsibility. The GOP is the one that no longer gives a shit about free trade. The GOP is the one that no longer gives a shit about international agreements and responsibilities.   

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2 minutes ago, Pods said:

 

That may be how you view yourself, but it is not what your posting history reflects. 

 

 

That helps make the point I'm trying to make. Brisket is still a conservative leaning person. My entire family was Republican growing up, all but one of us left the party over the Iraq war and pandering to the religious right and anti-science lunatics. The one has now left it because of Trump. 

Brisket, Ghost of LL, longhornmatt and many others on here were all GOP and still all have conservative views on lots of issues. The GOP is the one that no longer gives a shit about fiscal responsibility. The GOP is the one that no longer gives a shit about free trade. The GOP is the one that no longer gives a shit about international agreements and responsibilities.   

Post anything I have said in support of the current GOP

 

I have said plenty that is critical of trump. what you seem to think is that any criticism of someone critical of trump represents support of trump. I guess if you’ve never taken a logic course you might draw that conclusion 

 

 

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Just now, EMAWesome said:

You have just described every press secretary that has ever been employed by any president ever.  

Nice equivocation.  Regardless, who cares?  If your daily job is to lie and slander people, don't be surprised when it comes back in spades.

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19 minutes ago, VRHorn said:

I think it essentially boils down to a Pascal's wager of sorts for Brisket and others like him. Maybe this is a blip that will revert to normal, in which case Brisket is overreacting. But, what if it isn't? I think his point is that the destruction of norms is a portent of things to come and that it will continue to get worse.

This.

Look, in my young and stupid days, I got in a car with a drunk driving, and we went 100 mph on winding roads (what a dumbass I was).  The chances of us ending up in a fiery death were unacceptably high.  It was inexcusable.

Nonetheless, we survived.  And probably the majority of times we do that, we survive.

You are telling us that "relax, we'll probably get there okay."  And you are RIGHT.  There's a GOOD chance this is just a blip.

But there's an unacceptably HIGH risk that this is more than a blip, and things are headed to utter shit.

Every time I see those drunk guys get in a car and peel out to hit 100 mph on 2222, I'm going to scream bloody fucking murder.  I'm going to want to see them pulled over ASAP.  I'm not going to relax until the trip is over.  I care about this country and the people in it.  I see an unacceptable risk to their future, and I want to end that risk.  As soon as possible.

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14 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Is it more likely that 2016 was a sea change in American politics or rather a perfect storm where we had 2 candidates that 2/3 of the country didn’t like? Maybe I’m too much of an optimist but I sincerely believe it’s the latter. 

 

Here's a crazy thought: the answer to that question depends on how people react to Trump now. When people act like everything is still mostly-normal and that shit will just return itself to normal, they make the possibility that it will end up being a sea change much more likely.

The appropriate time for Germans to begin freaking out about the Nazis wasn't when they started rounding up the Jews.

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3 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

You have just described every press secretary that has ever been employed by any president ever.  

Not true.  There's a difference between spin or the occasional lie and outright, baldface, demonstrably false lies every day. 

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19 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

And call real reporting "fake news."  And float jailing journalists.  You cannot have a friendly dinner when neither side respects the other. 

Real reporting like reporting that the NRA has banned guns from it's convention when in reality it is the Secret Service banning the guns due to the presence of Mike Pence at the convention? Real reporting like claiming that the MLK bust went missing in the White House when Trump took over?  Real reporting like Brian Ross claiming Trump met with Russian officials before the election when he actually met with them after the election?  Real reporting that has inaccurately reported stories involving Trump every fucking week since he became president?

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um, of all places, deadspin fucking nails it:

https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/you-cant-bully-these-motherfuckers-1825648283

Quote

When I write that CNN politics writer Chris Cillizza is the rankest assbrain in the Western Hemisphere, I am not being nice to him. When I write that God clowned Chris Cillizza before he was born by making him Chris Cillizza instead of a shit-eating maggot, I am being unkind. When I say that Chris Cillizza himself is the punchline to the cruelest work of absurdist comedy in the history of the fucking universe, and that the title of that work is On the Origin of Species, I am being mean. Likewise it probably is downright nasty for me to write that on the whole American society would benefit greatly by Chris Cillizza being fired out of a large cannon into an even larger cliff face. But I am not bullying Chris Cillizza. Categorically, I cannot do that.

“Wolf’s treatment of Sanders was bullying,” Cillizza wrote on CNN’s website yesterday, because he is an obsequious slimeball even more slovenly with language than his forebears were in the dispensation of their chromosomes. He’s referring to the standup set Michelle Wolf, a comedian, performed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night, somewhat at the expense of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a brazen, knowing, and hugely powerful enemy of the free press and deceiver of the public by trade. As you’ve surely read by now, Wolf joked that Sanders’s makeup—her “perfect smoky eye”—is made of the ashes of the facts she burns.

That’s about as gentle a way as anyone could come up with to lampoon the single most relevant fact about Sanders and what brought her to a station in life that would make her a reasonable subject of lines in a White House Correspondents’ Dinner monologue in the first place. A frank and honest description of who she is and what she does would be much more harsh: Every day, Sarah Huckabee Sanders plants herself, by choice, between the public and the facts of what’s being done at the very highest levels of American executive power, and does her damnedest to break and delegitimize the means by which the two are brought together. She is one of the most visible and powerful people in American civic life, and she uses her visibility and power—she chooses to use her visibility and power—to confuse the public and degrade its grasp on the truth, rather than to inform or empower or serve it. Her willingness to do this on behalf of Donald Trump, day after day, and the unmistakable teeth-gnashing relish with which she does it, are the substance of her power, and the reason why anybody knows who the fuck she is at all. What history will remember about Sanders is that she is the scum of the fucking earth, and not the jokey means by which one comedian pointed out this inarguable fact—and that’s only if the senile rageaholic pissbaby moron on whose behalf she shames herself on television every day doesn’t annihilate the human race, first.

It should surprise no one that Cillizza, an amoral rat whose professional existence, like Sanders’s, is predicated entirely on cynical indifference to truth or fact or consequence, would recoil at that indifference being the subject of vocal scorn, or at the possibility of that scorn receiving praise from any sector of the public. The possibility that there might be even as mild a social tax as a hired comedian firing a few acerbic but harmless owns in your direction attached to the business of cosseting and flattering entrenched power must be scary for him, because he is a coward and because, if the well-earned opprobrium of actual real human beings can penetrate the social strata he’s spent his life sliming his way into, it implies he might get his literal fucking head chopped off somewhere down the line, and that people will be broadly okay with that. But it isn’t bullying. Michelle Wolf can’t bully Sarah Huckabee Sanders any more than I can bully Chris Cillizza.

Bullying happens along a gradient of existing power and reiterates it. That’s the difference between bullying and a fair fight: The bully is bigger and stronger and safer, and wields those advantages over someone smaller and weaker and more vulnerable. Michelle Wolf got off some zingers at Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s expense at an ultra-exclusive social event entirely filled by people whose livelihoods Sanders holds in her hands. Beyond that, as a basic function of her job, Sanders enjoys access to the water main of American political consciousness unmatched by pretty much any living person not named Donald Trump—a privilege she uses only and entirely for the purpose of pumping poison into it, aided by a healthy plurality of the people in that room but not by Michelle Wolf. I doubt there is a forum in existence in which Wolf could do anything that would qualify as “bullying” the press secretary of the President of the United States, but even if there is, the fucking White House Correspondents’ Dinner isn’t it.

This isn’t only a semantic point. It gets right to the heart of what makes Chris Cillizza an almost inconceivably atrocious and failed human being. Bullying is a real thing with real consequences; by definition, its victims need help from those with the power to give it. Arranging the events of Saturday night’s awful scumbag party such that the relatively unknown truth-voicing comedian is the bully and the vastly powerful press secretary is the victim provides a rhetorical basis for Chris Cillizza, himself the holder of an exclusive and relatively powerful station in American political life, to do what he always does and always has: give aid to the powerful at the expense of the weak. That it’s a false and dishonest basis matters less to Cillizza than to perhaps any other living person. To even accuse him of knowing it’s bullshit would be to grant, in the absence of any evidence, that he has any concept of truth in the first place.

You can’t bully these people. It’s simply not possible. You can only smash and annihilate every trace of the structures that empower them.

 

Edited by hayden_horn
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3 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

Real reporting like reporting that the NRA has banned guns from it's convention when in reality it is the Secret Service banning the guns due to the presence of Mike Pence at the convention? Real reporting like claiming that the MLK bust went missing in the White House when Trump took over?  Real reporting like Brian Ross claiming Trump met with Russian officials before the election when he actually met with them after the election?  Real reporting that has inaccurately reported stories involving Trump every fucking week since he became president?

Yes, real reporting has an occasional error.  MLK bust story = corrected.  Brian Ross story = corrected.   Corrected because the goal of real media is not to report falsehoods.  I couldn't have come up with a better contrast to the WH than your examples. 

And whose NRA story are you referring to?   The Washington Post story I read about it goes into the Secret Service aspect with great specificity: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/04/29/the-nra-said-guns-will-be-banned-during-a-pence-speech-parkland-students-see-hypocrisy/

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13 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

This.

Look, in my young and stupid days, I got in a car with a drunk driving, and we went 100 mph on winding roads (what a dumbass I was).  The chances of us ending up in a fiery death were unacceptably high.  It was inexcusable.

Nonetheless, we survived.  And probably the majority of times we do that, we survive.

You are telling us that "relax, we'll probably get there okay."  And you are RIGHT.  There's a GOOD chance this is just a blip.

But there's an unacceptably HIGH risk that this is more than a blip, and things are headed to utter shit.

Every time I see those drunk guys get in a car and peel out to hit 100 mph on 2222, I'm going to scream bloody fucking murder.  I'm going to want to see them pulled over ASAP.  I'm not going to relax until the trip is over.  I care about this country and the people in it.  I see an unacceptable risk to their future, and I want to end that risk.  As soon as possible.

I’m glad you are off your nonpilot flying the plane into the ground analogy. 

What if I don’t buy the drunk driver on 2222 analogy? What if it’s really drivers ed, and a moron is driving, but the instructor is hitting the brakes and about to make him pull over and kick his ass to the curb?  If that’s what’s happening here can you see how crazy you look to the other backseat passengers when you’re screaming we’re all going to die?

Edited by Sawbonz
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3 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

I’m glad you are off your nonpilot flying the plane into the ground analogy. 

What if I don’t buy the drunk driver on 2222 analogy? What if it’s really drivers ed, and a moron is driving, but the instructor is hitting the brakes and about to make him pull over and kick his ass to the curb?  If that’s what’s happening here can you see how crazy you look to the other backseat passengers when you’re screaming we’re all going to die?

Who's hitting the fucking brakes here?  Seriously, who?  The House -- Devin Nunes and his caucus say different.  The Senate?  McConnel says different.

We have HOPES that someone will do so (Mueller)?  But it all comes down to Congress.  Who have proven to by sycophantic spineless sellouts.  Forgive me if I don't look to them to be heroes and hit the brakes.

Trump is driving like a fucking deranged madman, and there is NOBODY who matters who is stopping him, or shows any signs of wanting to stop him.  So, yeah.   I'm flipped out about the nutbar driving at driver's ed.  And I'm flipped out by the fact that the instructor has given us every indication that he isn't going to do shit, no matter what.  I mean, MAYBE after we crash into a tree, the instructor will fail the student driver.  Yay.

You count on our institutions saving the day. I am observing that institutions are incredibly fragile.  What takes centuries to build can be wiped away in almost an instant.  Our institutions are only as effective as the people running them.  Congress is our instructor who can hit the brakes.  Congress.  I presume that you can see why I think we're fucked.

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Yes I am counting on a system that has withstood the war of 1812, the civil war, several economic panics, the Great Depression, 2 world wars, and which has mechanisms in place to deal with situations just like this, as well as man of integrity in charge of investigating trump. You should try it

Edited by Sawbonz
And we the people are manning the breaks.
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1 hour ago, Sawbonz said:

Where is my concern one sided?  Show your work

Brisket laid it out for you. It's not my fault you didn't read his post, and I'm not going to repeat what he said just to humor you.

3 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Yes I am counting on a system that has withstood the war of 1812, the civil war, several economic panics, the Great Depression, 2 world wars, and which has mechanisms in place to deal with situations just like this, as well as man of integrity in charge of investigating trump. You should try it

This is such a quintessentially stupid American thing to say. It's like the teenager who thinks they're immortal.

"Hey guys, we've made it a couple hundred years and change. We're INVINCIBLE. Fuck it."

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11 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

If only I were as smart as you and brisket I would know how scared to be!

Well, "have faith in our system" isn't exactly a comforting solution.  That system shat out Donald J. Trump as POTUS.  Can what fucked us, unfuck us? Doubtful. 

 

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3 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Well, "have faith in our system" isn't exactly a comforting solution.  That system shat out Donald J. Trump as POTUS.  Can what fucked us, unfuck us? Doubtful. 

 

Yeah, that "win the popular vote lose the Electoral College" detail definitely carries some risk.  But sure, let's trust the system.

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