Prelude to the Apocalypse

[BryanM]

It's going to be great when Manafort gets his get out of jail free card and there's nothing to do about it but cry because that's how our corrupt system works. They take care of Their own.

Just hearing Timothy Geithner explain why the rich deserve to have their debts and losses forgiven and made whole, while the dirty poors don't...

As Trump pointed out, he can pardon even himself. And if it happens, this will be us after it happens:

[Mischief Maker]

What better way to distract from a bunch of kids being traumatized on the taxpayer's dime than with a Space Force?

A "separate but equal" Space Force!

[Specineff]

So, where are all those Trumpies who lauded his actions as something urgently needed to protect the country? Not so loud now that he makes the country look as barbaric as those towel-heads who don't worship Jeebus and must be destroyed, fuck yeah, huh? (And no, this is not about getting those kids immediate citizenship, so screw whoever thinks of a retort like that.) Guess they must be happy knowing them kids won't be bringing their drugs and their raping of fair maidens into Elysium, huh?

What better way to distract from a bunch of kids being traumatized on the taxpayer's dime than with a Space Force

No, no: He's going to staff the US Spacy with those kids after conditioning them; better get them used to the isolation of deep space from an early age. Now all we need are some VF-1 Valkyries to bring fire and fury to the Saturn Lizardmen who have been funding Hitlery's corruption all this time! Fuck yeah!

[ED-057]

he makes the country look as barbaric

The country doesn't just look barbaric, It IS barbaric. The sooner people stop fooling themselves, the better.

[BryanM]

Just a few days ago the Senate agreed the #1 problem facing this country is the defense contractor budget needs to be increased 13%. Which will either go toward armaments sitting in a warehouse, additional bombs dropped on penniless peasants, or as ramp up for our expansion from engagements in 76 countries to 77. When you spend that much money, it has to go somewhere and do something for someone.

Only 10 senators bothered to vote against it - 8 Democrats (or 7+1 independant, if you're a pedant) and 2 Republicans. Which is unfucking believable, since Booker and friends really want to be president one day. There was 0 consequence for them voting against something guaranteed to pass, besides fear that their donors might be really fucking stupid and not be able to understand what a posture vote is.

___

Paying attention to Elon Musk's tweeter meltdowns this week as it becomes more and more apparent Tesla is doomed, was okay. Some bizarre, nutty stuff. He then called himself a "technological anarchist, like Iain Banks". When it was pointed out to him that Banks was ardently pro-union and would have supported his workers unionizing, he just went "nuh uh".

Some more Elon Musk facts:

* His family moved to south africa after 1945 and left right when apartheid ended. Why? No reason, pure coincidence!

* He briefly had a low-skill job shoveling dirt in a boiler room for $28.15 an hour.

* He once told his wife "if you were an employee, I'd fire you."

* His loyal assistant of over 10 years asked him for a raise. He proposed that they "perform an experiment" where she stayed at home for two weeks, to see if she was actually necessary. When the two weeks were over, he summarily fired her.

* Once again, he was totally on the Trump train, even went to the trouble of being on one of his advisory committees, until he shockingly discovered that corporate politicians support his market enemy, the oil industry. "World's smartest man", people.

Moreso than Tesla going under, I think it's the people fighting against his cult's hero worship that really gets under his skin. These nerds love this man as their personal Jesus, I'm not kidding. Just try to read more than two paragraphs of this stuff without being deeply concerned about the author.

One trope this garbage billionaire shares with Trump is the need of his subjects to constantly lie and claim he was a self-made man. (Musk's family owns an Emerald mine in Zambia. He used to walk around with emeralds in his pocket for spendin' change. Most of his gushing bios leave this out and make him into the poorest peasant to have ever walked the earth.)

FYI, Tesla's market cap is $3 billion higher than GM's right now. GM produces around 250,000 vehicles a month. Tesla, is lucky when it hits ~3,000.

[Steamflogger Boss]

he makes the country look as barbaric

The country doesn't just look barbaric, It IS barbaric. The sooner people stop fooling themselves, the better.

Yep.

https://apnews.com/afc80e51b562462c89907b49ae624e79

[Mischief Maker]

Oh great, the chuds publicly cheered Trump's Space Force idea. Now it's here to stay.

I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

Now imagine a spacecraft built through some nakedly-corrupt Russian Mob-connected kickback-ridden incestuously-nepotistic no-bid government contract under Trump.

If you thought the Osprey helicopter was a widowmaker, you ain't seen NOTHING yet!

[Steamflogger Boss]

Just a few days ago the Senate agreed the #1 problem facing this country is the defense contractor budget needs to be increased 13%. Which will either go toward armaments sitting in a warehouse, additional bombs dropped on penniless peasants, or as ramp up for our expansion from engagements in 76 countries to 77. When you spend that much money, it has to go somewhere and do something for someone.

Only 10 senators bothered to vote against it - 8 Democrats (or 7+1 independant, if you're a pedant) and 2 Republicans. Which is unfucking believable, since Booker and friends really want to be president one day. There was 0 consequence for them voting against something guaranteed to pass, besides fear that their donors might be really fucking stupid and not be able to understand what a posture vote is.

It's awful, but I'd be lying if I said I was even remotely surprised.

[Zen]

Oh great, the chuds publicly cheered Trump's Space Force idea. Now it's here to stay.

U.S. Space Marines, when?

[Steamflogger Boss]

I'm worried about the Zerg invasion.

[BryanM]

I really wish it were that exciting, at least it would involve some new RnD.

Space power currently largely falls under the jurisdiction of the Air Force. As you may recall from Basic, they pound it into your head as one of the cringey calls used during PT: "Air Power! Space Power! A.E.F.!"

What it entails is the basic ho-hum satellite stuff mostly: telemetry - such as GPS, telescopes; communications etc. The only really weird stuff are experimental space planes, like the X-37B. In practical terms it'll never actually get used for anything (except perhaps one day leading to a much better space shuttle than the "space shuttle" ever was or could be. Though our very important friend Mr.Musk may have already optimized that about as far as you realistically can.).

Creating a Space Force would just uh, add more overhead and bureaucracy to the existing infrastructure. Thus being an expansion of "bullshit jobs" - George Jetson style jobs that should not exist but are created to ensure there's a cushy upper middle class that always aligns with owners. It's comparable to those "inner circles" that authoritarian State Communist countries usually have.

Having a Space Corps that operates within the Air Force like the Marine Corps operates within the Navy would be more efficient and would make a lot of sense. But sense and efficiency aren't the primary concerns when it comes to buying support.

... I'm saying I'd rather have Newt's moon base honestly.

For something much more zany, further reading on military research into the supernatural can be found in The Men Who Stare At Goats. The specific program alluded to in the title is about how to create "warrior monks" who can walk through walls and kill by stopping a heart via telekinesis.

[Xyga]

gotta stop those space latino invaders

[Zen]

Not a fan of Ronson, so haven't read the book. The film I loved though, despite the hate it received.
I love the paranoid logic behind these programs;

"wait! we cant do that! its ridiculous"

"but the other side might be doing it?"

. . . . "fuck! ok, lets do it!"


Then the noobs go drugging, torturing and freaking the shit out of each other

Of course this type of carry on, is not new to the military, as you probably know. Tip of the iceberg, BryanM, tip of the iceberg.

As for "Space Force", yeah, its just a Hollywood name for a money siphon.

[Steamflogger Boss]

gotta stop those space latino invaders

I love you xyga

[Xyga]

wait, someone quick tweet trump; tell him the earth is really hollow and the gobligan latino empire will invade from underground

[Steamflogger Boss]

I think he would beklieve athat

[Xyga]

Hah! who do you think already secretly funds The Boring Company ? remember he's a 3D chess champ, he sees the future.

Anyway people misunderstand the ultimate purpose of that Space Force, in fact Trump realizes if the latino aliens lay more eggs the US'r fucked, isolating their offspring can only be a temporary measure.
So if things go really bad as a last resort the Space Force can carpet-nuke the border from San Diego to Brownsville (from orbit)

Now there's one thing he hasn't considered and that might make even him flip: what if Canada made spanish their first language, tuned all their cars into lowriders, switched 'sorry' for 'pendejo', and crossed the border en masse on their week-ends ?

[Durandal]

we need a spacy to protect our donut supply against falling colonies of peace

[ED-057]

* He once told his wife "if you were an employee, I'd fire you."

* His loyal assistant of over 10 years asked him for a raise. He proposed that they "perform an experiment" where she stayed at home for two weeks, to see if she was actually necessary. When the two weeks were over, he summarily fired her.

Interesting. I wonder how many social-darwinist types, who assert that a human's value is no more than their market value, are aware that they don't also use this standard for people in their personal lives?

https://apnews.com/afc80e51b562462c89907b49ae624e79

Damn. Maybe that is where they send the sadist apprentices to gain experience before they get promoted to a black site somewhere.

[BryanM]

That he got paid more shoveling dirt as a kid than his line employees do today is classic Two Americas stuff.

Read a quote from Schumer today where he claimed they could have shoved through judgeships without Republican consent, but actively chose not to because of decorum. Which of course seems to be complete bullshit - they clearly actively wanted the Republicans to have those seats. I really don't know how much evil they'd have to support for Educated Internet People to understand they're the greater evil. Being for 37 new concentration camps or 38, you're still expanding the number of concentration camps and completely blocking the possibility of ever decreasing their sum total.

I find this clip of a different more honest guy interesting where he says the right wing propaganda people tried to first use school administrators as a scapegoat for why we need make cuts in public education and ultimately privatize it, but it didn't work. It was only until they went "fuck teachers!" that it worked.

I don't agree with him that it was envy that a teacher can, hypothethically, do something helpful and useful to society. I think it has more to do with visibility - like how the billionaires are invisible leeches, school administrators that do nothing are similarly invisible. While teachers are the type of person everyone's had at least one bad interaction with sometime in their lives.

[Mischief Maker]

Democrats are sellouts and we should totally be focused on that to the exclusion of all else even though they're not in power right now, buuuuuuut....

I love the fact that nobody in the Trump administration can eat in peace or even be served in a restaurant just because of a tiny little policy shift that disappears children.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders should be relieved that restaurant gave her the boot. Can you imagine how many different human bodily fluids from how many different individuals were added to Kirstjen Nielsen's Mexican dinner once the kitchen staff found out who they were cooking for? If there's one thing I've learned from Anthony Bourdain's writings, it's that you shouldn't go out to eat when you're a public face for the disparagement of Central Americans.

Maybe that's why Ann Coulter is so freakishly thin. She KNOWS she can't eat anywhere.

[BryanM]

Democrats are sellouts and we should totally be focused on that to the exclusion of all else even though they're not in power right now, buuuuuuut....

I kind of like how your "let's elect Hillary and try and fail to push her to be less awful" plan actually seems to be very slightly more effective with Trump.

Wouldn't be too surprised if the minimum wage was increased in 2019, to be honest. Like it was back in 2007. If the democrats do win this year despite their best efforts, the exact same conditions will be in place for it. The alternate timeline has that one delayed to 2023 at the earliest. 2027 at the latest.

[Mischief Maker]

...assuming the Gorsuch court doesn't declare the minimum wage unconstitutional.

And hey, there's even more tales of Trump staffer schadenfreude to be enjoyed:

When it comes to disclosing their affiliation with Trump, no ground is more fraught than courtship. “Trump supporters swipe left”—meaning “don’t even bother trying”—might be the single most common disclaimer on dating app profiles in Washington.

One beleaguered 31-year-old female administration official described at length her “very, very frequent” scraps with her matches on dating apps. “You do the small talk thing, and you have a very good conversation, and then they might say, ‘You didn’t vote for Trump, right?’” she says. “As soon as I say, ‘Of course I did,’ it just devolves into all-caps ‘HOW COULD YOU BE SUCH A RACIST AND A BIGOT?’ And ‘You’re going to take away your own birth control.’” In one recent star-crossed exchange, the official told a match she worked for the federal government. When he pushed, she revealed she was in the administration. He asked her, “Do you rip babies from their mothers and then send them to Mexico?”

Evasive answers will get you only so far, though, since many dating apps provide enough information for inquisitive users to sleuth out their matches’ identities. “I literally got the other day, ‘Thanks but no thanks. Just Googled you and it said you were a mouthpiece for the Trump administration. Go fuck yourself,’” says the official. It’s all enough to drive her and some of her colleagues away from at least some of the apps. “I’m no longer on Bumble,” she says.

Young staffers have had to develop a keen sense of just when to have “The Talk” with romantic partners. “I’ve still been able to hook up with women,” says a male former White House staffer. “But I know that I need to be careful about broaching the Trump stuff. I just know that going in, I need to be able to get it out at the right time and not get it out too early to the point where it’s like, ‘Hey, I worked for Trump, you should stop talking to me,’ but late enough in that eventually they know that there is this information floating out there that I worked for this guy and hopefully you have now seen that I’m not a horrible person and we can go further with this.”

That's a Lifetime original movie plotline just waiting to happen. Devoted wife and expectant mother finds out her husband has secretly been working for the Trump administration for years, follows him to work and sees him driving children into cages and screaming, "NO HUGGING!" What is she going to do?!

[BryanM]

We had a Gorsuchish court back in 2007.

It's really depressing that nothing has changed whatsoever since then, but the same entities have held power since then so it shouldn't be a surprise.

If there is to be a world of dignity, it will occur precisely when anything else is impossible. Where even the possibility of social dysfunction is removed. If will not be because people will have transcended into WokeLords, because that transformation is unsustainable

^ More and more I feel like this guy is right. I think younger people have already gone past that breaking point and will inherit control one day, but of course that could be a hopeful delusion. Boot stomping a face forever and all that.

Obsessively eyeballing every single forced rectal feeding our tax dollars bought 15 years ago has accomplished absolutely nothing so far. Which is why I'm so blatantly, thoroughly disinterested in tracking the exact same thing again. At some point, counting every single sin and cataloging it in a book of horrors becomes nothing more than a way to pass the time.

That's a Lifetime original movie plotline just waiting to happen. Devoted wife and expectant mother finds out her husband has secretly been working for the Trump administration for years, follows him to work and sees him driving children into cages and screaming, "NO HUGGING!" What is she going to do?!

If only these people could have been as angry about dating someone who voted for Forced Rectal Feeding and Mass Murder.

God bless Trump for making people care about politics again. It's been such a long time.

[Mischief Maker]

God bless Trump for making people care about politics again. It's been such a long time.

Counterpoint: One of the explanations I've heard for why Justice Democrats have had such a disappointing showing so far in the primaries is the same number of Berniecrats are actively voting now as in 2016, but middle-aged normies disgusted by Trump have massively increased in turnout. The normies have only one goal: to stop Trump by electing Democrats. Since they get all their news from MSNBC, they're going with either the Democrat with the familiar name, or the Democrat they've seen the most on TV.

If Hillary were president, the normies would be asleep and the Berniecrats would still be pissed off and active and consequently grab a much bigger portion of the primary vote.

It's fucking scary how much our country's fate lies in the constitution of elderly politicians, not just on the supreme court. If Bernie doesn't run in 2020, what progressive is going to have the name recognition necessary to beat a moneyed blue dog, especially with net neutrality dead and Sinclair Media gobbling up all the TV stations?

[BryanM]

It's somewhat of a post-facto rationalization, the kind the stock market "journalism" uses, to go into too deeply why someone with five bucks can't beat an incumbent with unlimited funds in a state that's bigger than most countries. Turnout for primaries in general isn't much changed (it's actively down versus Presidential years) - it's not like millions of Feinstein primary voters suddenly died or grew a heart. The electorate and the party can't change overnight, and it's a miracle if we can make any gains this year.

[BryanM]

Ocasio-Cortez wins, Jealous wins too.

It's not close to a maxed level republican like Manchin, Feinstein, Pelosi, Schumer or Cuomo going down in flames. But it's something.

[Mischief Maker]

Also, not as big a story, but an emotionally satisfying one:

TYT finally called out Dave Rubin for being on the Kochs' payroll.

[Steamflogger Boss]

https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1011973061829189632

sigh

[Mischief Maker]

https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1011973061829189632

sigh

And now Kennedy's retiring. The Supreme Court is lost for a generation. A GENERATION!

In addition to the terrible, terrible decisions that are coming (including the end to Roe v. Wade) it's going to be a shot in the arm for Republicans in November.

But don't worry, packing the court with additional justices is going to be so much easier than holding your nose and voting for the lesser evil!

Why wouldn't the Democrats be able to filibuster?