Boy, it's been a bit since I've had to dissect one of these monstrosities...happy Presidents' Day, everyone.
quash wrote:The missile test is significant, but I seriously doubt you understand why that is.
Well, how
can a pleb like me comprehend such a thing unless an
insider like you humbles himself and enlightens me, as opposed to dismissing me outright as a hopeless drone, as Team Trump always complains about when it's done to them?
It's a canned response. When you make a statement as a representative of the military, you have to always be
"deeply concerned".
Do you think that there's
any possibility that someone "in the know" actually
is concerned about stuff like this to some degree, even if it does "happen all the time"...heck, perhaps the cause for concern could be that it
does occur so frequently, and it
shouldn't?
He just got into office. And for fuck's sake, an established status quo of over 50 years doesn't just end overnight.
No, but Trump's entire sales pitch was based on the notion that the
real problem in our foreign policy wasn't actually
policy, it was
character, i.e. it doesn't matter
what position we take unless the
guy in charge is willing to be bold and follow through on it, to earn RESPECT. He went on and on about how much every world leader (except whichever ones he's badmouthing at the moment, anyway) loved him, wanted to work with him, was
so happy to see him in office instead of Wimpy Obama. And his
concrete foreign policy proposals other than "be RESPECTED" are...? Heck, he's already gone back on his possibly-unintentional endorsement of an independent Taiwan that his followers were swooning over, and The Wall That The Mexicans Will Totally Pay For is a screaming joke (not that anyone saw it coming a mile away or anything!), just for starters.
As you and everyone else have been crowing, if the electorate was all that concerned about hard numbers and laid-out plans, they would have elected Hillary in a rout; instead, they opted (well, electoral college-wise, at least) for the guy who wasn't selling his
platform, he was selling
himself, and you've praised him to the heavens as a genius for doing so. So when, in your estimation,
do we declare ourselves past the point where it's clear that the rest of the world
wasn't just going to line up to kiss his ring just because of how awesome he is, and that we
might just need an
actual plan on some of this stuff? Trump himself certainly doesn't seem in any big hurry on that front.
PROOFS
To the best of my knowledge there's nothing definitive, hence the "likely" disclaimer in my statement, but it doesn't matter either way because...
There's
way too much compacted in this one for me to even
attempt to shovel out without my fingers falling off, but I will reiterate one thing that still doesn't seem to be gaining much traction on your end:
criticism does not always equal conspiracy. Oh, and by the by...
There's a fine line between focus and hysteria. You fall squarely on one side of that, and it's probably not the one you think you're on.
...dude, you and your cadre, Trump himself included,
don't even want to try to clarify the matter in any capacity. And as long as enough of his supporters are convinced that
anything outside of unreserved praise for
anything Trump does is "proof" that Everyone Is Out To Get Me - and, perhaps more importantly, his enablers are willing to sit by and exploit that mindset to their own advantage - he won't have to, and yeah, sue me, I find that state of affairs
concerning.
"Suck up" lol. More like cease to arm terrorists in a hotly contested region and maybe put an end to this mess.
At this point the "end" seems to be Putin and Assad indiscriminately slaughtering everyone who's breathed the same air as any suspected rebel (which, of course, even if you really don't care who dies,
never leaves the remaining population utterly
ripe for terrorist recruitment or anything), so I'm not really sure what kind of "victory" we can claim here unless you're still sticking to the "Putin sleeps with his finger on the nuclear trigger, so we should
totally be pals" theory - which, as it happens, you
completely failed to address, by deflecting to:
...so yeah, try that one again, Kellyanne.
But while we're here, why not take a moment to remind everyone that, despite most of the 9/11 terrorists being from there, its horrendous proxy war in Yemen, etc. Trump's travel ban didn't bother to finger Saudi Arabia as a place meriting enough concern to lock the proverbial door...
quite the contrary, in fact! One can
only wonder
why.
Secondly, cooperating with Russia in Syria is far from "total capitulation".
Trump's position goes WAY beyond "cooperating" solely in the interest of anti-terrorism and you know it, so why all the kissy-face bells and whistles, if all we really intend to do is oppose ISIS? Y'know, purely
business? And God knows he's treated his business partners a
lot worse than he's treating Putin.
For example, we won't be backing off from China any time soon
Steve Bannon would
certainly agree with you:
“We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years,” Bannon said last March. “There’s no doubt about that."
But somehow
that increasingly aggressive nuclear power
isn't worth the never-ending handjob treatment, and I've yet to hear anyone even
attempt to explain why.
It'd just be nice if we finally decided to put a halt to a crisis that we manufactured for political ends.
...nope, someone else already got to both Bowling Green and Sweden, guess I missed my moment.
Though one can always pull up the "record high" crime and unemployment rates, among many,
many others, in their stead, and declare irony thoroughly dead.
Y'know, as we get ready to take home all that ISIS oil. Or
maybe not.
Why should any measure of legitimacy be granted to you or anyone else?
Because some folks have the (non-alternative) facts on their side, and others don't - believe it or not,
it does happen!
There's a few ways to interpret "showering the rich".
...but somehow
every single one of them does so at the
direct expense of the rest of the population, and
never grant
any of the benefits they promise, except the ones that go directly to themselves (hence why any economic "boom" under conservatives happens almost
exclusively to those at the top, while the rest stagnate or worse).
Never. It has literally
never happened, and I would
love to hear you or anyone else argue otherwise.
I'd have to disagree and say that over-regulation is one of the biggest economic burdens in the US right now.
It always cracks me the hell up how apologists for corporate plutocrats praise the private sector as the most resilient, creative, trailblazing entity mankind has ever known,
right up until the government has the gall to tell them "don't dump toxic waste in drinking water" or "don't have your entire company's portfolio tied up in high-risk funds even you say you don't understand"; then, quick as you can blink, they're all helpless babies who must be freed, ever so gently, from the darkening shadow of
tyranny (forget, y'know, actually making a cogent argument for your position, it's always somehow a matter of ever-vague
principle). Is every regulation well thought out? Of course not. But enough to justify Trump's third-grader-caliber "for every new regulation passed two old ones are scrapped" order? Come the fuck on.
Off to the side, I would
also love for you to explain to me what the benefits of
repealing the "fiduciary rule" would be for most of Trump's supporters.
Now, I doubt this is something you actually want to have a conversation about, but if you do, then all I ask is that you keep this on for background noise:
Ah, yes, the "if you oppose stuffing cash directly into the 1%'s pants then you're a lazy, stupid freeloader who expects to get everything for free as long as you scream loud enough" view of
people who don't know how to make money, as you memorably labeled them. It never quite made sense to me how the same folks who claim to love and speak for "the hardworking common man" instantly turn on them as a bunch of worthless layabouts as soon as they start wondering why they can't afford basic necessities - "obviously you morons aren't working hard enough" (or, alternatively, "regulations are preventing us from working you hard enough")! Somehow the people suffering the most are somehow simultaneously, and inevitably, the most mollycoddled; it's literally
never anything else. Weird that some people, especially after repeated efforts to invoke "trickle down" have failed them
spectacularly, are slightly skeptical of that notion, eh?
And yeah, shared wealth is a poor way to describe an overall richer society and higher quality of living. I don't know if that's what someone tried to argue to you, but it's not really the case.
It's sure as
hell the proverbial car Trump was selling: cut upper-end taxes and lower regulations and all the rich people will do so much investing, so much hiring, all the good jobs will come back overnight, it'll be amazing, so much winning
yeeaaahhh. Hence why shills like you can still pretend to call him a populist.
As if Drumpf and fake news weren't enough, now you've taken the alternative facts bait.
It's a legal term, and Conway went to law school.
Oh man, did I get a
massive laugh out of this one: it seems you embed links largely for appearance's sake, in the hope that nobody ever actually clicks them. Guess I "took the bait", all right!
Well then, let's go right to the summary at the top of the page you linked:
Alternative facts is a term in law to describe inconsistent sets of facts put forth by the same party in a court given that there is plausible evidence to support both alternatives. The term is also used to describe competing facts for the two sides of the case.
So first off, both accepted definitions refer
specifically to facts presented during a legal argument, which means the term doesn't apply to
anything she, Spicer, or anyone else have said outside of a courtroom, but hell, we can - nay,
must! - still take the next step: both definitions assume that
plausible evidence is being presented on both sides of an argument (hence the term, y'know,
facts), but in Team Trump's case we're talking
proven facts versus
proven falsehoods: there's no "argument"
whatsoever to be had on their merits. So we have two possibilities here: 1) Conway is completely incompetent when it comes to legal terminology, or 2) There's no way in hell that this was what she was referring to. And there's no way in hell you didn't already know which it was when you posted this.
More importantly, you - surprise! - never addressed the crux of my question:
how is this an even remotely acceptable way to run a government? Try again, Kellyanne.
Still waiting.
I somehow doubt this would have faced a fraction of the scrutiny it has had it come from Elizabeth Warren or whoever else.
Oh fuck off.
For all the criticism the left gets for "bad optics" even when there's nothing actually going on (and oh yes, we
will be coming back to that), you still can't quite seem to acknolwedge that your side of the aisle (though somehow you still like to present yourself as all but completely removed from it
), and
especially Trump, have been graded on an
enormous curve when it comes to asking "does this make
any sense" (see following item)? Not only this administration but the modern right as we know it wouldn't
exist if you weren't.
Some of the things he's said have been blatantly false, others have sounded crazy but are actually true.
Nononono, you've been slithering around this thread
more than long enough to have access to
myriad "examples" of
precisely the manner of blatant bullshit you keep requesting (y'know what, fine: go back
but a handful of posts to his "faulty recollection" of how many electoral votes he got...freakin' unbelievable
); on this one,
you find
me an example of something that "sounded crazy but turned out to be true". I can't freakin' wait.
But don't try to take the moral high ground when that same administration's response to an attack on an US embassy was to blame it on a YouTube video.
Aaaaand Benghazi - the ultimate in "bad optics" - makes its own inevitable appearance, stage right.
News flash to you, not to mention most of the rest of the country (you want to talk about under-reported items? Take a poll and see how many people were even
remotely aware of
this one): when Susan Rice invoked that video on TV, she was 1) Accurately reporting what the intelligence community believed at the time, and 2) Was careful to state that at that point nothing had been completely investigated and that further investigation might change the outlook.
Seriously. Not that folks like you care either way; no matter what's unearthed or not, no matter how many inquiries turn up completely empty, you will
never abandon an easily-spammable sucker punch.
You can say whatever you want about how the Republicans prevented a new nominee from taking a seat on the court, but be honest with yourself: in their shoes, the Democrats, the Greens, the Libertarians, or whoever the fuck else would have done the exact same thing.
Nononono, no fucking
way you get to play the "both sides do it" card, not here: as has fallen upon deliberately deaf ears a million times by now, Congress has had
plenty of opportunities to cook up the current GOP's asinine "nominating in an election year is just
distasteful" excuse for their refusal to do their job (and, more importantly, go on the record for their actions instead of hiding and covering their eyes in hopes nobody notices them),
including during Reagan's final term, and
they didn't fucking do it.
You assholes did, and only you assholes did. Own it, criticize it or even just take the John Roberts route and just shut the hell up.
Again, for all this bitching about the Republicans in Congress, I see little to no introspection from those on the left as to how they got there.
I'll quote myself, from two whole pages ago:
Conservatives have, for decades on end, with little real pushback from either the left or the center, turned outright falsehoods about the way the country works into "conventional wisdom" (tax cuts for rich people increase revenue! for-profit healthcare is the best in the world!), and moreover have insisted, again and again, that running a government is easy, it's all a sham, any idiot can do it, all you need is to unfailingly kowtow to the interests of the very wealthy while still somehow being an asshole to "the establishment", which generally includes anyone with relevant expertise pointing out that their numbers never add up; the latter, of course, serve as "proof" that everyone else is always biased and out to get them, which in turn justifies their most bizarre and extreme actions as "balance" to the overwhelming opposition they face.
Same as it ever was.
Are you talking about back in 2012?
Nope, I was talking about 2016, when a handful of silly people got the idea that yeah, maybe the fact that this guy (as even
you are forced to admit) openly slandered the current President and never offered any explanation (let alone an apology) for his actions, and that this
might be something worth noting. And no, they
never bothered to actually demand a straight answer from him, and never will. Aaaand right on cue:
And seriously, stop denying the inherent bias in the media. At this point, it's destroying whatever credibility you have.
And once again we witness the power of the "everyone's out to get me" mindset - I especially love the list of newspaper endorsements you repeatedly trot out, because obviously
none of them
actually thought that Clinton was the better choice, and every single one only said so because they didn't want to be ridiculed at the next New World Order luncheon.
So here we go again: does legitimate bias exist? Duh! Is it
so pervasive and
so tilted against Team Trump that you get to "play the victim card", as you always love to criticize "the left" (however you care to define it) for supposedly doing? Tell that to Al Gore. Or hell, Hillary Fucking Clinton and all
three of her mislabeled emails.
Oh, and to finish up, you never bothered to acknowledge the last part of my post:
So when does [Trump] plan to quit trolling people who prefer their leaders say things which are true and maybe actually say things that are true and maybe even act upon them? And when do his followers plan to actually press him on this in some fashion?
And while I'm at it, I'll tack on an addendum, just for giggles: what exactly
are the "other things" Trump is deliberately distracting everyone from, and just why doesn't he want them discussed?
That integrity
At least they actually state it openly,
unlike Team Trump.
