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(11-13-2016, 09:25 PM)Odin Wrote: (11-13-2016, 08:20 PM)taramarie Wrote: (11-13-2016, 08:14 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The blue drama queens are so annoying yet so entertaining at the same time.
Even i have to think it is ridiculous. I want to know where they are getting their ideas. Does everything have to be so sensationalist over there?
I remember people doing the exact same Chicken Little "OMG THE SKY IS FALLING" thing when Bush was elected in 2000, and throughout his presidency there was paranoid ranting about Bush cancelling elections and making himself dictator.
CALM DOWN PEOPLE!!!
Yea, and you just want to gut the soul of the Dem party and become more GOP or populist or something or another.
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11-14-2016, 01:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2016, 03:04 PM by playwrite.)
Basically, the last few posters have told us not to worry, it will be just as if Obama had another 4 years.
Old enough to remember "passionate conservatism;" now we got "friendly fascism."
Keep it up though, again this is going to be the silver lining of coming back and laughing at you and watching the excuses and rationalizing. Thanks in advance!
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11-14-2016, 01:31 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2016, 01:32 PM by playwrite.)
Back to topic -
The Trump Trainwreck dilemma is already setting itself up.
We get Steve Bannon as closest WH advisor to represent "the evil" and with get Mr. GOP Establishment, Reince Priebus, as Chief of Staff to lead "the betrayals" (i.e., typical GOP trickle down to screw those White working class in the MidWest who went stupid).
Oh, instead of a big huge beautiful Wall, fences are going to be okay.
Trump admits wall he has vowed to build between U.S. and Mexico could be part fence
Less evil, more betrayal???
It's all going to be a horrific chronology but it will also be pretty damn amusing.
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11-14-2016, 01:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2016, 07:49 PM by Eric the Green.)
(11-14-2016, 01:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Don't get distracted by all the domestic stuff. Sure there will be things to fight. But the key item is geopolitics.
This has always been the long game here.
It is why the SCO supported Trump and why they support the "extreme" Right and Alt-Right world wide. Geopolitics is the only reason they supported him. And they will collect!
I'm feeling the opposite. With virtual or actual civil war here, the focus for me is what can we do to oppose the global warming that Trump, Pence and Ryan and co will be unleashing, if anything. What will we have to do in CA to replace the federal government which has disappeared, along with its funding sent to blue states and sanctuary cities? What can be done to stop Ryan from dismantling the New Deal and Great Society and turning the USA even more completely over to the robber barons? With our own nation to worry about, with Trump and Ryan at the helm, Trump is truly converting me into "America First!"
So, if Russia wants to invade Ukraine or Estonia, we can't stop him, so why try? The Syrian people are losing their country; we can't help them. Israel will not make peace with Palestine, so why try? ISIS; what's the big deal? If Iran gets nucs, let them. If NATO dissolves, the USA will save money. I don't care so much right now. When we have lost our own country, what does it matter of others are losing theirs? We can't help them.
Except that, if you are right that one of the ways we have lost our country, is that we have become vassals of Russia or the SCO, then that's just another reason to focus on America and defend ourselves against Trump, and defend California.
California FIRST!
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(11-14-2016, 01:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Don't get distracted by all the domestic stuff. Sure there will be things to fight. But the key item is geopolitics.
This has always been the long game here.
It is why the SCO supported Trump and why they support the "extreme" Right and Alt-Right world wide. Geopolitics is the only reason they supported him. And they will collect!
The fact that John Bolton is on the short list of anything let alone as SoS, shows just how much the world is in for a whole lot of pain.
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(11-14-2016, 01:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: (11-14-2016, 01:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Don't get distracted by all the domestic stuff. Sure there will be things to fight. But the key item is geopolitics.
This has always been the long game here.
It is why the SCO supported Trump and why they support the "extreme" Right and Alt-Right world wide. Geopolitics is the only reason they supported him. And they will collect!
I'm feeling the opposite. With virtual or actual civil war here, the focus for me is what can we do to oppose the global warming that Trump, Pence and Ryan and co will be unleashing, if anything. What will we have to do in CA to replace the federal government which has disappeared, along with its funding sent to blue states and sanctuary cities? What can be done to stop Ryan from dismantling the New Deal and Great Society and turning the USA even more completely over to the robber barons? With our own nation to worry about, with Trump and Ryan at the helm, Trump is truly converting me into "America First!"
So, if Russia wants to invade Ukraine or Estonia, we can't stop him, so why try? The Syrian people are losing their country; we can't help them. Israel will not make peace with Palestine, so why try? ISIS; what's the big deal? If Iran gets nucs, let them. If NATO dissolves, the USA will save money. I don't care so much right now. When we have lost our own country, what does it matter of others are losing theirs? We can't help them.
Except that, if you are right that one of the ways we have lost our country, is that we have become vassals of Russia or the SCO, then that's just another reason to focus on America and defend ourselves against Trump, and defend California.
Trump is the poster child for ISIS recruitment, particularly disenfranchised American Muslims.
When they lose their caliphate (and they soon will) and go completely global guerrilla, we're in for a whole lot of blowback.
Unfortunately, that will heighten both Trump's appeal and his crazy responses.
Trump is the ideal American patsy described in Naji's "Management of Savagery" which has been al Qaeda, ISIS and every other Islamic extremists main strategic war-making book since it came out during al-Zarqawi' rein of terror. Trump will make Bush look intelligent.
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John Oliver quotes the Orange Menace: "All I know is what's on the internet"
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(11-14-2016, 03:10 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: (11-14-2016, 03:07 PM)playwrite Wrote: (11-14-2016, 01:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Don't get distracted by all the domestic stuff. Sure there will be things to fight. But the key item is geopolitics.
This has always been the long game here.
It is why the SCO supported Trump and why they support the "extreme" Right and Alt-Right world wide. Geopolitics is the only reason they supported him. And they will collect!
The fact that John Bolton is on the short list of anything let alone as SoS, shows just how much the world is in for a whole lot of pain.
Bolton is probably too "normal" to fit in with the Alt-Right cabal. I'm expecting worse.
There is no worse.
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11-14-2016, 11:11 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2016, 11:12 PM by Eric the Green.)
(11-14-2016, 08:54 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: (11-14-2016, 07:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: (11-14-2016, 03:10 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: (11-14-2016, 03:07 PM)playwrite Wrote: (11-14-2016, 01:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Don't get distracted by all the domestic stuff. Sure there will be things to fight. But the key item is geopolitics.
This has always been the long game here.
It is why the SCO supported Trump and why they support the "extreme" Right and Alt-Right world wide. Geopolitics is the only reason they supported him. And they will collect!
The fact that John Bolton is on the short list of anything let alone as SoS, shows just how much the world is in for a whole lot of pain.
Bolton is probably too "normal" to fit in with the Alt-Right cabal. I'm expecting worse.
There is no worse.
No Eric, there are far worse. For example, Alt-Right operatives. If someone like that got in, you'd be craving someone like Bolton.
Eric and other Lefties - you really, really, really need to start understanding the actual composition of the Right and the faux "Right." Lumping it all together will only result in your ongoing deep confusion.
Bolton is a creep, and Bannon is a creep. They are all creeps of the worst sort. The enemy is within, and it's the Republicans. Organize. Fight back. Or just be depressed. All understandable.
I'm not confused at all. I know what the problem is. Possible 2 or 3 court appointments, so that our rights are taken away. The environment trashed. More and more mass shootings. The rich get richer. All based on the Reagan memes. It's YOU that is confused if you don't get that all of these problems are based on the Reagan memes.
A country in the hands of thieves and con men, is not a country worth defending. All that matters is to resist the coup as much as we can, so that the country we knew can survive, and someday, someday, move forward again. The only relevant enemy now is within the USA.
What Trump does abroad could be really screwy and dangerous, no doubt. But his source of power is here in the USA. The enemy is within. That is beyond any doubt at all. We the people elected a con man who will boost and protect all the wrong things.
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It strikes me that Trump created a whole laundry list of expectations among his willfully ignorant constituency.
I'm thinking that these are the sorts of folks who are dumb enough to actually expect him to come through on his many radical promises.
The difficulty lies in the reality of implementation. Ideas and concepts have always been a dime a dozen. Gary Johnson didn't invent this saying, but he said it a lot ... "The Devil Is In The Details!"
One can only wonder what the great unwashed mob will do when it dawns on them that lots may be getting wrecked through ignorance and incompetence, but the Steel Mills haven't opened up again, the Coal Mines still sit cold and dark, the factories still churn away in China, but NOT in Akron.
And ... the Illegals still haven't been rounded up. Hillary isn't in prison. Obamacare has become some other bullshit representation of healthcare financing through the insurance companies and premiums are way up, WAY UP, once again when they renew in December of 2017.
Most worrisome of course is the prospect of foolish, unnecessary wars, caused by chest-thumping cowards who don't mind sending Trump voters' kids off to die.
[font=Arial Black]... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.[/font]
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11-14-2016, 11:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2016, 11:45 PM by Eric the Green.)
Yes, all of that, to which is added the climate conditions. Global warming may not be irreversible and catastrophic. I say "may."
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The Obama Administration strengthened border detection for catching illegal aliens earlier and has rushed the deportation of criminal aliens. What he has not done is to break up families (with the caveat that if one is the illegal alien in the family who has been convicted of a crime, one does get deported, a consequence of crime and not of illegal-alien status. Tough luck id you are in MS-13, one of the worst gangs; you already betrayed your family).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(11-14-2016, 09:33 PM)taramarie Wrote: (11-14-2016, 08:54 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: (11-14-2016, 07:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: (11-14-2016, 03:10 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: (11-14-2016, 03:07 PM)playwrite Wrote: The fact that John Bolton is on the short list of anything let alone as SoS, shows just how much the world is in for a whole lot of pain.
Bolton is probably too "normal" to fit in with the Alt-Right cabal. I'm expecting worse.
There is no worse.
No Eric, there are far worse. For example, Alt-Right operatives. If someone like that got in, you'd be craving someone like Bolton.
Eric and other Lefties - you really, really, really need to start understanding the actual composition of the Right and the faux "Right." Lumping it all together will only result in your ongoing deep confusion.
Absolutely correct. Stereotypes are dividing people as it is easier to stereotype than to understand.
Gag me with a spoon.
Did your grandmother write letters to Auschwitz prisoners in the 1940s telling them to just play nice and maybe the guards won't gas them?
Must be so nice to live in Oz.
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There doing practice runs over in Jersey today for the Trump inauguration motorcade -
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(11-15-2016, 01:44 PM)playwrite Wrote: (11-14-2016, 09:33 PM)taramarie Wrote: (11-14-2016, 08:54 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: (11-14-2016, 07:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: (11-14-2016, 03:10 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Bolton is probably too "normal" to fit in with the Alt-Right cabal. I'm expecting worse.
There is no worse.
No Eric, there are far worse. For example, Alt-Right operatives. If someone like that got in, you'd be craving someone like Bolton.
Eric and other Lefties - you really, really, really need to start understanding the actual composition of the Right and the faux "Right." Lumping it all together will only result in your ongoing deep confusion.
Absolutely correct. Stereotypes are dividing people as it is easier to stereotype than to understand.
Gag me with a spoon.
Did your grandmother write letters to Auschwitz prisoners in the 1940s telling them to just play nice and maybe the guards won't gas them?
Must be so nice to live in Oz.
NZ and OZ, pretty close.
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I just so love the title of this thread.
There was never any good old days
They are today, they are tomorrow
It's a stupid thing we say
Cursing tomorrow with sorrow
-- Eugene Hutz
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11-16-2016, 08:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-16-2016, 08:35 PM by Eric the Green.)
TRUMP VOTERS WANTED "CHANGE." IS THIS THE "CHANGE" THEY WANTED? CLIMATE CHANGE?
Trump’s denial of catastrophic climate change is a clear danger
Ice floats in the Arctic near Svalbard, Norway, in 2009. (Dirk Notz/Associated Press)
By Katrina vanden Heuvel November 15
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...ff91790723
Donald Trump’s stunning victory has left millions in dread and moved thousands into the streets. Fear has spread among immigrants and Muslims. The 20 million who have received health insurance under Obamacare worry about Trump’s vow to repeal it. The media speculates about what he might do: Will he really tear up the Iran nuclear deal or order the CIA to start torturing people again? But it is Trump’s denial of catastrophic climate change — he has repeatedly said he considers it a “hoax” — and his vow to reverse all of the progress made under President Obama to address it that pose some of the most chilling and potentially irreversible threats.
Voters heard little about climate change in the endless election campaign. The contrast between the two candidates was night and day, with Hillary Clinton promising to expand on Obama’s climate initiatives and Trump vowing to repeal them. Yet not one question was posed about climate change in the presidential debates. The media gave more airtime to the size of Trump’s hands than to the scope of his climate delusion.
Yet the stakes are huge. Climate change isn’t a distant concern; it is a clear and present danger. Mr. Trump may not believe that, but the generals in the Pentagon have no doubts. A Pentagon report says that climate change is an “urgent and growing threat to our national security.” In January, Pentagon officials were instructed to include climate change in every decision, from readying troops for battle to testing weapons.
As environmentalist Bill McKibben pointed out last week, climate change is already here. The world’s global warming — and the melting of the Arctic ice caps — are now occurring at a much faster rate than scientists previously predicted. Most of the summer sea ice in the Arctic has melted. That’s enough heat, McKibben reports, that record-warm water swept across the Pacific this spring, killing “vast swaths of coral.” That’s enough heat to already cause steady increases in droughts and shocking downpours and floods in wet areas. It has already begun to raise the levels of the ocean. Scientists now suggest that, even with the Paris climate talks, we are on a trajectory to increase the Earth’s temperature 3.5 degrees Celsius or more. If we do that, many cities around the world will be underwater.
Under Obama, the United States played a leading role in getting China — and eventually India — to join the 2015 Paris agreement, with countries pledging carbon reduction commitments needed to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius. Many scientists believe that goal is not enough, but meeting even that level will require dramatic and immediate action. One-hundred-and-nine countries responsible for nearly eighty percent of greenhouse-gas emissions have now ratified the agreement, enacting it into international law. The United States represents about 20 percent of the pledged reductions of world greenhouse-gas emissions. Much of this will come from Obama’s Clean Power Plan, designed to enforce Environmental Protection Agency standards on carbon emissions, calling on the states to reduce power plant emissions by 32 percent by 2030.
In the campaign, Trump announced that he would seek to repeal the Clean Power Plan and withdraw from the Paris agreement. He has also pledged to go forward with the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, to slash investment in climate research and development in renewable energy and efficiency innovation, to open up leasing of oil, gas and coal on federal lands onshore and offshore and to revive coal. He has named Myron Ebell, a notorious climate-change denier and head of a think tank funded in part by the coal industry, to head his EPA and energy transition team. Conservative Republicans who dominate the majority in Congress have railed against Obama’s plans. Oil and coal barons — think the Koch Brothers, among the richest people in the world — wield big money and deep pockets on the Republican right.
There are limits on what Trump can do. The stock price of bankrupt Peabody Energy coal company rose upon Trump’s election, but coal is virtually dead, unable to compete in price with natural gas, production of which Trump plans to expand. More dangerous are reports that he’ll move to loosen regulation of gas pipelines. Methane leaks from pipelines are a far more potent contributor to global warming than even carbon emissions.
Elections do have consequences — often ones not intended by voters. Americans elected George W. Bush, who called for a more modest U.S. role in the world and got the president who drove the disastrous invasion of Iraq. A minority of Americans voted for Trump, largely because they wanted change — but few had any idea of the calamitous consequences that will follow if he carries through his know- nothing stance on climate change.
Trump’s efforts will be and must be resisted. 2014 saw the People’s Climate March — billed as the largest demonstration on climate ever in New York City. Another protest is being planned for Washington next spring. Civil disobedience helped stall the building of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and those protests will surely ramp up. The divestment campaign has removed trillions from oil industry investments and will continue to spread. Other countries will invest in renewable energy and efficiency innovations, winning global markets and jobs that the United States will forfeit. In this country, California and New York and other states will continue to push toward renewable energy and require higher efficiency and mileage stands, forcing manufacturers to respond. Democrats in the Senate and House will fight a long, rearguard action to limit the damage.
But time is not on our side, or on the side of civilization. McKibben noted that the real contest isn’t between Democrats and Republicans or Clinton and Trump, but between “human beings and physics,” and physics “is not prone to compromise.” If we don’t move quickly, very quickly, then any progress will be too late. We can’t afford to drift for four or eight years; we can’t afford to stall what little momentum has been created. Trump may think that it will be easy to reverse Obama’s climate measures. He is about to find out that millions of concerned citizens here and abroad will use every nonviolent means possible to stop him from accelerating the worst crisis humans have ever faced. That isn’t about politics; it is about survival.
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11-17-2016, 04:14 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2016, 04:43 AM by Eric the Green.)
Republicans also got control of all three in 1952, for 2 years, but the margins were narrow.
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(11-17-2016, 04:14 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:
You really do have a problem with causality. Try taking a look some economic statistics and you would realize the US has been or will be in a recession soon. This will happen no matter who is President because this so called recovery has been going on for about seven years now and the average length of an economic expansion since 1854 has been about four years. Take a look at a normal curve and do the math.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. -- H.L. Mencken
If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. -- Ludwig von Mises
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11-17-2016, 10:06 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2016, 10:08 AM by pbrower2a.)
(11-17-2016, 04:14 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:
Republicans also got control of all three in 1952, for 2 years, but the margins were narrow.
In 1952 they were rational enough to recognize that the common man had to have a stake in the system. One side of the Red Scare was the need for a consumer society in which such people as assembly-line workers had a stake in the system so that they would not fall for the great menace of the day to capitalism -- Communism. In the 1950s the Communists were largely people who had few connections to the proletariat -- like creative people and academics.
Donald Trump and other right-wingers may pretend to show love for the working class by praising vulgarity and under-education... but that is a con. I'm tempted to believe that many working-class people would find life richer if they turned off the idiot screen and the more witless part of the Internet and instead sampled some great literature and sophisticated music. Such can give some meaning in life even if it does not improve one;s vocational opportunities. It has kept me from suicide on occasions.
The short times in which I did factory work made me more crave intellectual sophistication. Maybe that makes me a poor match for factory work because certain jobs are made for certain cultures. I have never driven a truck, but you can just imagine what I would listen to on the radio to avoid falling asleep while driving through northern Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio ... something like this:
Could I convince my fellow truck drivers to listen to this? Probably not! Would I have credibility as a truck driver with other truck drivers? They would probably think me insane, if not snooty!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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