Prelude to the Apocalypse

[gameoverDude]

Corporations have turned voting into a game of picking the lesser evil. Their shit has invaded both parties. Wanna sway a politician to your side? No problem. Just brib... oops, ahem... I meant lobby. If only politicians weren't self serving, bribe-taking little shits.

Just the sound of Trump's voice or the sight of him on the TV makes me glare & scramble to go get the remote.
When Trump's State of the Union address was on, I refused to quit playing Mass Effect: Andromeda to go watch it.

[Specineff]

McCabe is out by order of Jeff Sessions. http://thehill.com/homenews/news/378971 ... washington

At this rate, it won't be long before the president is free from all the hurdles keeping him from Making America Great Again. (An eagle cried in the background as soon as I typed that, coincidentally)

Also: The wall will pay for itself, no need to trouble US tax-payers after Pena Nieto told Donnie "Hell, naw" back in January. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... c86e42f990

(I didn't know illegals had the power to suck money into themselves like a black hole just by being here)

[BrianC]

Forget all that shit, please, please PLEASE tell me everyone saw or heard about this absolutely pitiful exchange:

ROONEY: Now, I know some of my friends on the other side of aisle say that we can't just take people's testimony at their word—

BURNETT: Right.

ROONEY: —but I think, in this system, you have to assume that people are telling the truth.

If I didn't know better, I would almost think this was a comedy routine between Mickey Rooney and Carol Burnett.

[BulletMagnet]

The more time goes on the more I'm forced to equate this administration with the governor's in Blazing Saddles, complete with Harvey Korman. It's nothing short of terrifyingly prescient.

Of course, the House's abrupt conclusion makes the repeated insistence of Trump's supporters that the Mueller investigation be unilaterally disbanded even more puzzling: after all, the House conducted a thorough, good-faith analysis of all available evidence and found no collusion whatsoever (though they did happen to mention significant degrees of carelessness and poor judgement, even if none rose to the level of strict criminal behavior...which, I seem to recall, were presented as open-and-shut grounds for treason charges when a similar conclusion was reached about a different political figure, but, y'know, as always, never mind! ), so if they know that there's nothing incriminating out there, why wouldn't they take special care to stay out of the way and let Mueller and company comb through everything, only to inevitably come up empty and leave Daddy's detractors with egg on their faces and no one to blame but themselves? Guess they're just too many steps ahead for us mere mortals, yet again.

EDIT: BONUS! Not only are Trump staffers using private email accounts for official business, they're doing so via servers located in a foreign country. Again, though, not like they ever raised hell about anyone else under similar circumstances, especially not with a lot more free help from the Openly Hostile Media or anything...we are SO fucked.

In other news, rich people still aren't rich enough, and the deficit still needs to go a few trillion deeper before we're forced, oh so completely unavoidably forced by factors completely out of our control to slit the throats of Social Security and Medicare.

[BryanM]

Thank god Monica Lewinsky saved Social Security back in the 90's so Trump would have something left to destroy.

That woman deserves a statue of her put up in a park somewhere, seriously.

It's also pretty surreal we have the Tea Party to thank for saving Social Security back in the 2010's. We have one seriously fucked up oligarchy, man.

[dave4shmups]

The more time goes on the more I'm forced to equate this administration with the governor's in Blazing Saddles, complete with Harvey Korman. It's nothing short of terrifyingly prescient.

Of course, the House's abrupt conclusion makes the repeated insistence of Trump's supporters that the Mueller investigation be unilaterally disbanded even more puzzling: after all, the House conducted a thorough, good-faith analysis of all available evidence and found no collusion whatsoever (though they did happen to mention significant degrees of carelessness and poor judgement, even if none rose to the level of strict criminal behavior...which, I seem to recall, were presented as open-and-shut grounds for treason charges when a similar conclusion was reached about a different political figure, but, y'know, as always, never mind! ), so if they know that there's nothing incriminating out there, why wouldn't they take special care to stay out of the way and let Mueller and company comb through everything, only to inevitably come up empty and leave Daddy's detractors with egg on their faces and no one to blame but themselves? Guess they're just too many steps ahead for us mere mortals, yet again.

EDIT: BONUS! Not only are Trump staffers using private email accounts for official business, they're doing so via servers located in a foreign country. Again, though, not like they ever raised hell about anyone else under similar circumstances, especially not with a lot more free help from the Openly Hostile Media or anything...we are SO fucked.

In other news, rich people still aren't rich enough, and the deficit still needs to go a few trillion deeper before we're forced, oh so completely unavoidably forced by factors completely out of our control to slit the throats of Social Security and Medicare.

It makes me wonder where all those Tea Partiers are now who were up in arms over Obama’s spending.

[Specineff]

^^^ Furthermore, where are all those rabid "patriots" who sang his praises and hailed him as the redeemer we needed to deliver us from the madness that was the Obama administration? Why aren't they supporting him now the way they did, when even a simple reasonable objection to him being fit to the office was seen the same as having taken a wet shart on the flag? Not so proud of their president when he's firing cabinet members left and right, granting permanent tax breaks for the rich (as the tax breaks for everyone else are set to expire around the time a possible second term for him ends), hawking his wall as self-paid to the American taxpayer now that he can't get Mexico to pay for it (as if, lel), and with the FBI biting as his heels, huh?

Hope they enjoy the big pitcher of Shit-Aid in front of them; it may help the hook, line and sinker go down easier. The honeymoon is over, time to wake up and see the type of person they got in office: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/us/p ... ccabe.html

[BulletMagnet]

It makes me wonder where all those Tea Partiers are now who were up in arms over Obama’s spending.

Pretended to be up in arms. Big difference. As long as most/all of it is going to the rich conservatives couldn't give a rat's ass about spending or deficits, and they've marinated themselves in that fact countless times for at least a half-century now.

[Mischief Maker]

It makes me wonder where all those Tea Partiers are now who were up in arms over Obama’s spending.

See my sig.

[BulletMagnet]

It's just a matter of time until Bolton gets his turn again.

So yeah, where's the "Trump's obviously the only one who's determined to keep us out of unnecessary conflicts" gang at?

[Specineff]

How many of his original picks to the cabinet are even left by now?

[BryanM]

Stocks on track to be a flat line for the past two months. Today is the #5 biggest drop in raw points in one day for the Dow so far, though in percentage terms only cracks somewhere in the top 50.

Bad Dems in Illinois managed to largely hold their ground in yesterday's primaries, sometimes just barely, though they lost some seats in their important stronghold of Chicago.

Captain Moustache is back in the White House to finish exterminating that human species he hasn't managed to completely kill off yet. There is some speculation that he's a keter class object from a parallel dimension, who gets rewarded more points based on his number of total kills.

[Specineff]

And Trump signs the spending bill, despite veto threat:

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -from-veto

No money for the wall in exchange for DACA, beyond some more fencing.

Johnson Amendment not repealed.

NO CUTS TO THE EPA.

No defunding of Sanctuary Cities or Planned Parenthood. Or anything else Trump wanted to wipe out.

It's all the damn Dems' fault! Even when in the minority, they can keep the Republican majority from cutting domestic spending!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdOPBP9vuZA

[quash]

It's just a matter of time until Bolton gets his turn again.

So yeah, where's the "Trump's obviously the only one who's determined to keep us out of unnecessary conflicts" gang at?

https://youtu.be/kt6mx0k8tSo

When this is the alternative, you take what you can get. It does look like we're going to war on several fronts though, which is why the budget ended up passing. Don't forget about the 700 billion allocated to defense.

[BryanM]

Yeah, Hillary and Trump are the same person. They're both self-interested in their bank accounts and both financed by largely the same people. This was very cutting edge back in 2015.

Can you cleanly admit he's a neo-con finally?

[quash]

If we somehow end up only going to war with China and North Korea, I don't think he'd fit the definition of a neocon, strictly speaking. But seeing as it looks like we're going to be invading both Syria and Iran, I wouldn't be surprised to see the same old song and dance of invading, occupying and inviting, all while fighting Russia on up to four fronts.

Who knows, though. Maybe Bolton will be out of a job by the time you're finished reading this post. If nothing else, this administration is as unpredictable as it is inconsistent. There's no telling what's going to happen until it's too late.

[Mischief Maker]

Man, who could have predicted that Donald "bomb the shit out of them," "take the oil," "worse than waterboarding," "kill their families," "dip your bullets in pig's blood then execute the POWs" Trump would turn out to be somewhat hawkish?

[quash]

Don't get it twisted, war was inevitable either way. I said that before and I still stand by it. It's just that I was hoping Trump would focus on the wars that would secure the US' existence and position in the world, not detract from it.

China is absolutely an aggressor and definitely needs to be contained. North Korea as well, though to a lesser extent. But Syria? Or for that matter, Iran? Completely unnecessary from any standpoint that isn't realpolitik for the benefit of so-called allies in Europe and the Middle East.

[BryanM]

Lol "aggressors" lol

All these Chinese troops on our borders are terrifying man. They're like nazi Germany and imperial Japan all over again.

[quash]

It's totally normal to build Mother Base in the middle of the highest traffic trade routes in the Pacific. That definitely isn't a pretense for war or anything.

[EmperorIng]

Bad Dems in Illinois managed to largely hold their ground in yesterday's primaries, sometimes just barely, though they lost some seats in their important stronghold of Chicago.

This was disappointing, especially since I would have thought more people in a state like Illinois would be wary of "billionaire with a penchant for racist remarks" as political head-honcho. Chalk it up to the vote against Mr. Billions being split two ways between one of the not-charismatic Kennedys and Dan Biss who I thought would have been more successful. I guess when you can spend $70million of your own money to blanket the whole state with ads and mailings it doesn't matter if you are popular or not. Herd mentality alive and well. Chicago politics sucks as well; it is an institutional mafia. At least a few corrupt people lost their jobs - to make up for the thousands of normal people who did too!

[BryanM]

This was disappointing, especially since I would have thought more people in a state like Illinois would be wary of "billionaire with a penchant for racist remarks" as political head-honcho.

People really aren't that much different. The states don't differ so much as life in the city versus the countryside differ. A ton of city people are just republicans, except prefer to not be blatantly racist/revel in the blood feasts. They prefer to downplay that stuff as much as possible, as it makes them feel bad.

More of an issue is the matter of engagement. Primaries tend to attract older party loyalists, because why would you vote for something you don't like or if you have something better to do. And the current parties are terrible appendages of the ruling class.

TV media still sets the agenda and determines what people care about. Look at this thread for an example. In 2015 and 16, thread was on fire. Yet:

The primaries going down right now are more than 2,000% more important than the Trump/Clinton general election.

That is not hyperbole in the least - the primaries determine what your party is, what it will do as a unit, what it will not do, and how it will advertise itself. Due to the lower participation rate, a vote now carries more weight than later in the general. In most states it determines outright who'll be sitting in congress.

And no one's talking about it 'sides a couple of us.

[WelshMegalodon]

Idiots, the lot of them.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/f ... rs-w518323

[Specineff]

And now His Orangeness wants the military to pay for the wall because of national security risk reasons:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... f2132026fd

Damn, he really is onto us, you know... we were just about to rally our forces to march into the country, Born In East LA-style, and use our Benefits Absorption Field while forcing tacos down your throats. Foiled again...

[BryanM]

[ED-057]

Obviously fake news. There was no Facebook is September 1999 (ah, the good old days). And there were no blurry-ass fonts like that unless one was using an NTSC monitor.

[Bitter Almonds]

How do repiglicans and so-called "evangelists" rationalize:

- ¢hump's infidelities
- building a wall to keep people seeking help away
- the kleptocrats that infest ¢hump's cabinet
- tariff wars where the US comes out a loser (what ever happened to "free enterprise" and "laissez-faire"?)
- a trillion dollars siphoned from the poor and middle class by the ruling oligarchs
- bolstering military spending when we rethuglicans just passed a wealthcare plan
- censorship of the Internet by getting rid of Net Neutrality
- white supremacy
- etc., etc., et cetera

[BryanM]

Eh, watched a video about the fighting game genre, and when the pro-censorship hysteria of the 90's came up (with titles such as Mortal Kombat being chief scapegoats), I was reminded of how republican Joseph Lieberman was almost vice president. Under president Al Gore.

Thinking about it, Tim Kaine seems 1.32% better now. These alternate timelines sure do seem similar to one we're living in now.

Same shit, different decade.
__

(A funny factoid is when the polls said the people of his state hated his guts and he didn't have a prayer of getting elected again, Lieberman "retired" from office. So thoroughly disinterested in politics or power, he tried his best to become Trump's new FBI Director last year. Uh huh.

A lot (>24) of other politicians have been "retiring" in a similar manner this season, feeling it is better to collect their true paychecks now, instead of wasting time on an election they can't win.)

[Specineff]

How do repiglicans and so-called "evangelists" rationalize:

- ¢hump's infidelities
- building a wall to keep people seeking help away
- the kleptocrats that infest ¢hump's cabinet
- tariff wars where the US comes out a loser (what ever happened to "free enterprise" and "laissez-faire"?)
- a trillion dollars siphoned from the poor and middle class by the ruling oligarchs
- bolstering military spending when we rethuglicans just passed a wealthcare plan
- censorship of the Internet by getting rid of Net Neutrality
- white supremacy
- etc., etc., et cetera

They don't. They just don't have the balls to say anything about it, lest it further hurts their chances in November.

[quash]

You're clueless about at least half of those things, but whatever. None of it's going to matter if DC gets its way in Syria which is unfortunately looking more likely given current events.

I really do not see how anyone, let alone self proclaimed liberals or leftists, can condone military action in a country that did not provoke the US. But I guess if cable news can convince people that border security and immigration reform are in the best interests of Russian hackers, it can convince you of the same story it failed to this time last year.