Prelude to the Apocalypse

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Iran War. When.

2021
3
6%
2022-2025
15
28%
2026-2030
7
13%
2031-2040
3
6%
2041-2050
0
No votes
Never
25
47%
 
Total votes: 53

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BryanM
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by BryanM »

An okay commentary on Barnes and Noble being fed to vampires.

MBA's. Worst kind of people in the world.
I would like to get past giving people only a choice between ideologies
You'd like a direct democracy instead? That's great, but to get there you have to have the power to make it happen. To get that power, you need to create a product that other people will buy.
ED-057 wrote:Why would anyone want to join with the Democratic party and be complicit in their crimes?
Uh... to replace the criminals and then vote against doing shitty things?

How is taking power away from criminals "being complicit"?
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by BulletMagnet »

ED-057 wrote:No, they just implied it over and over with their coordinated onslaught of misleading headlines.
Christ almighty, you want a real "too many disposable chopsticks" situation - and even that's too generous, since we can't even talk "implying" here (which is still, frankly, a stretch), we're entering the realm of direct, repeated, on-the-record assertation - start with the whole "three million phantom illegals are responsible for the entire popular vote gap" line that's oozed without pause from the very highest levels of government, including the guy who won. Not to mention the embarrassing Pee-Wee Herman-esque "I know you're conspiring with Putin, but what am I?" meme. :lol:
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by ED-057 »

MBA's. Worst kind of people in the world.
QFT (despite questionable apostrophe usage)
You'd like a direct democracy instead?
Not necessarily. It's not about who is making the decision, but about how the decision is made. Voting based on ideology is the same thing as saying "Regulation is bad. This is a regulation. I vote nay" without reading the bill.
How is taking power away from criminals "being complicit"?
Because FPTP. If you're not against the "two" party system, then you are for it. Basically. How are you going to take power away from criminals by playing their game? You think you can get a non-evil candidate on the ballot with a "D" next to their name? You will have to play by their rules, and if it looks like you have a chance, they can change the rules.
Christ almighty, you want a real "too many disposable chopsticks" situation
Hypocrisy is a thing that tends to discredit an argument. However it does not, in doing so, support opposing arguments.

Only in the world of brainwashed "two" party politics would the practice of Repubs peddling BS be the explanation as to why Dems are also peddling BS.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by ED-057 »

Bernie (whether you consider him to be the Mesiah or just another Dem) was cheated. The public found out. What happened? The same thing that happened when Snowden blew the lid on mass surveillance. And when banksters caused the financial crash. The criminals got away with it. It seems to me that the scale of crimes happening right under the public's nose is increasing, not decreasing. TPTB are resorting to more extreme measures, bigger and louder circuses, and more blatant censorship to keep order, but they are not losing power (domestically, at least)
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

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ED-057 wrote:Hypocrisy is a thing that tends to discredit an argument. However it does not, in doing so, support opposing arguments.
Kinda kills the point, unless you're a nihilist (or, to be politically correct, "centrist").
Only in the world of brainwashed "two" party politics would the practice of Repubs peddling BS be the explanation as to why Dems are also peddling BS.
Wait, wait - your previous post singled out "misleading headlines" (by the by, got any specific ones you could point to which suggested that the actual vote tally was directly tainted? Or is this just a "some have said" or "it's conventional wisdom" kind of situation?), which brought to mind the spectacle-chasing press, not the Democratic party - please, please tell me that someone so seemingly "onto" the billionaires and how they intrude on our lives doesn't buy into the "rabid liberal new world order media" narrative.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by quash »

Gotta love those proverbial Wonder Woman gauntlets BM has on. They protect him from ever having to confront anything that may conflict with his worldview and steer the discussion into something tangentially related at best.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by BulletMagnet »

quash wrote:Gotta love those proverbial Wonder Woman gauntlets BM has on.
You mean the mystical power of Not Instantly Assuming Every Single Plutocratic Conspiracy Theory Must Be Absolutely True? :lol: (By the way, did Hephaestus also forge your own signature Shield Against Any and All Indications The Administration Might Not Be Acting In Anyone's Interests But Its Own?) When someone posts shit like this...

You know, some weirdos ran into the NSA compound entrance three years ago, too. Looks like we found a new glitch in the matrix.

...and still expecting to be treated as if they're making a serious, good-faith argument, as opposed to openly trolling the hell out of anyone who's trying, I prefer to entwine myself in my own lasso, which has the power to compel its captive to say fuck off. :lol:
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by ED-057 »

Wait, wait - your previous post singled out "misleading headlines" (by the by, got any specific ones you could point to which suggested that the actual vote tally was directly tainted?
I entered the phrase "russia hacked election" into Google and it returned 1.2 million results. On the first page:
Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, top U.S. official says - NBC
Russia successfully hacked into voter rolls during 2016 election
Russian hacking: States boost efforts to protect their voting systems
Russian Group Linked to 2016 U.S. Election Hacks
Could Russia Hack The 2018 Election?
states may still be vulnerable to future cyber attacks that could again allow meddling in upcoming elections
How Russia hacked the election - CBS News
the spectacle-chasing press, not the Democratic party
There's the narrative, and then there are the headlines. Who specifically wrote the headlines? I guess there's a slim chance that it was never a party official or Clinton campaign staffer, and that corporate media "journalists" came up with this particular flavor of baloney entirely on their own. But as for the narrative, it is widely shared by both, unlike Trump's voter fraud narrative which you brought up out of nowhere. (BTW, it's a little funny how quickly they dismiss Trump's voter fraud claims one minute, and then pretend to be worried about it again the next minute when it could be caused by Russians.)
the "rabid liberal new world order media" narrative
The corporate media as a whole is a tool of the one (bankster/oligarch/NATO) party. Maintaining Russia's boogeyman status and limiting the power of a loose cannon like Trump are definitely in the one party's interest. On this occasion, Democrats decided to take up their cause (not the other way around).

Certainly the corporate media would never unite on one side of the partisan divide, because the illusion of choice would come to an end.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by ED-057 »

Pop quiz: What's the difference between an H1B and an indentured servant?

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ics-216968

When it's people exploiting people instead of corporations exploiting people, it doesn't sound too good anymore eh?
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

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ED-057 wrote:I entered the phrase "russia hacked election" into Google and it returned 1.2 million results. On the first page:
Ignoring the fact that three of the headlines you listed don't even refer to the topic you say they do, I took your challenge, and put that exact same phrase into Google - for whatever it's worth, I only spotted two of the same first-page headlines you did. In one of them, if you scroll maybe a quarter of the way down the page you find this, as its own paragraph:

There is no evidence that any of the registration rolls were altered in any fashion, according to U.S. officials.

And in the second one, maybe halfway down, again its own paragraph:

US officials told NBC that there is no evidence that any of the rolls were altered.

Could you accuse the headlines of being sensationalist? Sure, I could understand that. Of course, the point of such eye-grabbing headlines is to try to lure people into clicking the links and reading the articles - if said articles omitted such relevant information, or even just hid it deep within a mess of text to make it hard to catch, I might see your point, but sorry, this, like most such "look! look! see? see? right there, don't you see it?" moments, is as much of a "bombshell" as the Nunes memo (whose overnight journey from white-hot hype to "we don't want to talk about this" I still find both sadly telling and absolutely hilarious on a grand scale :lol:).
Who specifically wrote the headlines? I guess there's a slim chance that it was never a party official or Clinton campaign staffer
:lol: I swear, is there a single person on here - or hell, anywhere - who can provide a viewpoint from the right without the baseline assumption that everything can be somehow traced back to a Soros/Clinton/etc. panopticon device in a secret volcano base somewhere? If the media really were at the DNC's beck and call, they could have started by laughing the ludicrous cheerleaders of Whitewater, Benghazi, and Uranium One off the stage (or at least stop inviting them back, year after year, as well-paid "contributors"), and they wouldn't have even had to do anything besides actually report what a farce they all were/are.
BTW, it's a little funny how quickly they dismiss Trump's voter fraud claims one minute, and then pretend to be worried about it again the next minute when it could be caused by Russians.
...also, I'd someday like to be referred to a conservative/libertarian/whatever voice that doesn't reflexively play dumb. There's no way you're not aware that in-person voter fraud, by illegals or anyone else, is exceedingly rare, nor that the right's nuke-the-mosquito "just in case" efforts to prevent it, even on the rare occasions that they don't assert that all those statistics are made up by The Deep State to throw everyone off the trail, do infinitely more to disenfranchise legitimate voters than discourage illegitimate ones, and that's the point. Don't patronize me.
Maintaining Russia's boogeyman status and limiting the power of a loose cannon like Trump are definitely in the one party's interest.
Yup, slashing their taxes, gutting their regulations, keeping the immigration issue focused exclusively on the immigrants themselves rather than what lures them here in the first place, keeping everyone on edge so the military-industrial complex can gobble up even more of the economy than it already was, skyrocketing the debt and making everyone but the rich pay the price for it...this administration's got The Establishment (which Trump and his enablers, of course, have no part whatsoever in, and benefit not one jot from the status quo) quaking in their boots. :lol: Seriously, how the fuck are people still saying this? :lol: You're acting like there's some other, completely different administration than the one whose documented actions are being criticized that's actually running things, but only you know about it - but to even question that notion, of course, means that the questioner is just being closed-minded, if not brainwashed beyond repair. :lol:

Again, the fact that in this day and age I'm apparently supposed to treat this shit as a serious argument worthy of a serious response - and the fact that, against my better judgement, I too often do just that - is about the best case you could make that my posts in this thread are indeed made by someone completely out of his fucking mind. :lol:
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Ask Daddy, not me.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by quash »

BulletMagnet wrote:I swear, is there a single person on here - or hell, anywhere - who can provide a viewpoint from the right without the baseline assumption that everything can be somehow traced back to a Soros/Clinton/etc. panopticon device in a secret volcano base somewhere? If the media really were at the DNC's beck and call, they could have started by laughing the ludicrous cheerleaders of Whitewater, Benghazi, and Uranium One off the stage (or at least stop inviting them back, year after year, as well-paid "contributors"), and they wouldn't have even had to do anything besides actually report what a farce they all were/are.
This just goes to show how poor your understanding of modern day propaganda is. You can't beat people over the head (as is happening right now), otherwise they'll stop listening to you. You have to appear impartial. "The most trusted name in news", "Fair and balanced", etc.

From there, you attempt to push your views through the method of trying to make the other side look unqualified. Kinda like you're doing right now.

Also, http://observer.com/2016/11/new-dnc-ema ... collusion/

You can always just go on Wikileaks and search for this yourself, if you'd like.
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by Mischief Maker »

“Hey Don. We have an unusual idea,” WikiLeaks wrote on October 21, 2016. “Leak us one or more of your father’s tax returns.” WikiLeaks then laid out three reasons why this would benefit both the Trumps and WikiLeaks. One, The New York Times had already published a fragment of Trump’s tax returns on October 1; two, the rest could come out any time “through the most biased source (e.g. NYT/MSNBC).”

It is the third reason, though, WikiLeaks wrote, that “is the real kicker.” “If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality,” WikiLeaks explained. “That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won’t be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source.” It then provided an email address and link where the Trump campaign could send the tax returns, and adds, “The same for any other negative stuff (documents, recordings) that you think has a decent chance of coming out. Let us put it out.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ks/545738/
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An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

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quash wrote:From there, you attempt to push your views through the method of trying to make the other side look unqualified. Kinda like you're doing right now.
If you were truly this incapable of following a conversation (to use the term incredibly loosely) you'd need somebody standing by to regularly change your trousers for you. :lol: The ones attempting, constantly and unapologetically, to paint "the other side" - aka any and all media, science, education, entertainment or anything else that dares to not submit a sufficiently gaudy float for the upcoming military parade - as compromised and unqualified are Trumpskis like you, and when some goober like myself deigns to put forward evidence that whatever slights any such entity might have visited on the administration might not be part of an overarching conspiracy involving the whole lot, I'm the one striving to muddy the waters and kill the messenger (and seriously, still with the "if it's too self-evidently incriminating to reasonably interpret any other way, it must be a red herring" shit? :lol:)?

You're a joke. Fuck off.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by quash »

Mischief Maker wrote:
“Hey Don. We have an unusual idea,” WikiLeaks wrote on October 21, 2016. “Leak us one or more of your father’s tax returns.” WikiLeaks then laid out three reasons why this would benefit both the Trumps and WikiLeaks. One, The New York Times had already published a fragment of Trump’s tax returns on October 1; two, the rest could come out any time “through the most biased source (e.g. NYT/MSNBC).”

It is the third reason, though, WikiLeaks wrote, that “is the real kicker.” “If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality,” WikiLeaks explained. “That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won’t be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source.” It then provided an email address and link where the Trump campaign could send the tax returns, and adds, “The same for any other negative stuff (documents, recordings) that you think has a decent chance of coming out. Let us put it out.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ks/545738/
Even if this is all true, that doesn't make what they released more or less valid. There's a reason nobody dares call Wikileaks on their bluff, and that's because they know they have more damaging stuff than what they're currently putting out.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by quash »

BulletMagnet wrote:
quash wrote:From there, you attempt to push your views through the method of trying to make the other side look unqualified. Kinda like you're doing right now.
If you were truly this incapable of following a conversation (to use the term incredibly loosely) you'd need somebody standing by to regularly change your trousers for you. :lol: The ones attempting, constantly and unapologetically, to paint "the other side" - aka any and all media, science, education, entertainment or anything else that dares to not submit a sufficiently gaudy float for the upcoming military parade - as compromised and unqualified are Trumpskis like you, and when some goober like myself deigns to put forward evidence that whatever slights any such entity might have visited on the administration might not be part of an overarching conspiracy involving the whole lot, I'm the one striving to muddy the waters and kill the messenger (and seriously, still with the "if it's too self-evidently incriminating to reasonably interpret any other way, it must be a red herring" shit? :lol:)?

You're a joke. Fuck off.
If only you could ever acknowledge that your shit does in fact stink.

You know, I saw something recently that seems pertinent to this thread.
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by Mischief Maker »

Wow! A website called Reason.com! Well that sounds like something right up my alley. Oh wait, what's their tagline?

"Free Minds and Free Markets"

Hoo-boy!

The funny thing is, I had a related conversation way back in high school. One of my friends had just read "Atlas Shrugged" and like most teenagers after reading the book, turned into an insufferable prick for a month before growing out of it. Not being fully-trained in libertarian long-windedness, my friend summed up the whole point of that aggressively boring article in a single pithy sentence, "You don't want to help people because it's the right thing to do, you just want to help them because it makes you feel good!"

My response then is the same as my response to your article now, "Why can't it be both?"
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by ED-057 »

I swear, is there a single person on here - or hell, anywhere - who can provide a viewpoint from the right without the baseline assumption that everything can be somehow traced back to a Soros/Clinton/etc.
We already know that the Clinton campaign was collaborating with "journalists." Evidence was in the leaked emails.
There's no way you're not aware that in-person voter fraud, by illegals or anyone else, is exceedingly rare
I am aware of it. You just failed at reading comprehension.
Yup, slashing their taxes, gutting their regulations, keeping the immigration issue focused exclusively on the immigrants themselves rather than what lures them here in the first place, keeping everyone on edge so the military-industrial complex can gobble up even more of the economy
Yes, the establishment continues to get what they want. I didn't say otherwise. What I did say is that Trump was perceived as a threat. At least, that is how it appears. You can choose to believe that Trump is 100% loyal to the establishment, and that he had it all planned out like this from the beginning, if you want to give him that much credit.

I would also like to point out that the President is not part of the legislative branch, Congress is. So all that other stuff that you just credited to Trump should really be credited in equal or greater part to Congress.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by BryanM »

Paying attention to the news media is a quick way to completely lose your mind. Saw someone say this today.
Some Dude wrote:old people living on their own and replacing human contact with television shows that lie to them nonstop is how the boomers became what they are now in the first place
It's really sad as hell.

If only the democrats who are allowed on this "television" thing for dozens of hours every week, would try to counter-program against some of the more exceptional bullshit. Like the bullshit of calling this billionaire tax cut a "middle class" tax cut. Wouldn't that be amazing.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

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ED-057 wrote:We already know that the Clinton campaign was collaborating with "journalists." Evidence was in the leaked emails.
If you're talking the Brazile thing, with the heads-up about possible topics for one of the town hall debates, go ahead, take it - thereafter, of course, Hillary was thoroughly and deservedly raked over the coals and Brazile was fired, but short of the whole "lock her up" meme what more would you want done to address concerns (and "concerns") that this was just the tip of the iceberg of some huge media-wide conspiracy? Hell, if you want to stick with CNN while we're here, could one just as easily point to, just for starters, the inexcusable hiring of Corey Lewandowski as evidence of unethical, institutional bias in the other direction? Or, if that one was just "one bad decision", what precisely is the key difference that somehow doesn't point directly down the rabbit hole?
I am aware of it. You just failed at reading comprehension.
Try again - the whole reason you brought it up was to say to me "you put some manner of stock in the Russia hacking thing, why not do the same for the buses full of illegals?" Because one of them has enough evidence behind it to at least be worth pursuing to a conclusion, and the other doesn't even have that. Not that that factor even comes into consideration whilst in pursuit of no-crackpot-left-behind "fundamental fairness" these days. :lol:
You can choose to believe that Trump is 100% loyal to the establishment, and that he had it all planned out like this from the beginning, if you want to give him that much credit.
I really don't think you need to, or frankly should, "give credit" to someone who, at the time and even more obviously in hindsight, openly intended to act exactly the same way and pursue exactly the same goals (i.e. the furtherance of himself at everyone else's expense, which happens to line up perfectly with contemporary conservatism) as he had been doing his entire fucking life.
I would also like to point out that the President is not part of the legislative branch, Congress is. So all that other stuff that you just credited to Trump should really be credited in equal or greater part to Congress.
But wasn't he specifically elected on promises (or, more accurately, insinuations) to rock the boat and (even more hilariously :lol:) drain the swamp? Wasn't he the only one bold enough, brash enough, to save us from The Establishment? Aside from dropping Twitter bombs on the very, very few efforts his party has made to get the opposition involved enough in the process to pass a half-assed bill or two, what exactly has he done besides display, as you put it, total loyalty to The Establishment, i.e. himself?
If only you could ever acknowledge that your shit does in fact stink.
You've been saying this for literally years, directly in the face of every bit of inward-focused criticism that I and others have offered of Trump's opposition: what you really mean, by all indications, is "adjusting one's perspective based on available empirical input is not enough; that's what they want you to think. You need to use your imagination and believe all the hazy New World Order shit too, or you'll be summarily dismissed as compromised."

Sorry, I'm not in kindergarten anymore. :lol: Fuck off.

(By the by, still waiting. As I will be until the sun burns out when dealing with po-faced trolls. :lol:)
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by Mischief Maker »

ED-057 wrote:We already know that the Clinton campaign was collaborating with "journalists." Evidence was in the leaked emails.
And the Trump campaign openly admitted to having a deal with local media behemoth Sinclair Media for positive coverage, then directly paid them back once in office by having Ajit Pai's FCC stretch UHF channel rules beyond the breaking point to let Sinclair gobble up even more local channels in a move so blatantly quid pro quo that he's currently under investigation.

Please don't make me defend Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment issue-by-issue. Hillary Clinton was horribly corrupt compared to Bernie Sanders but a goddamn saint compared to what the Trump administration has predictably done in a single year.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by quash »

BulletMagnet wrote: You've been saying this for literally years, directly in the face of every bit of inward-focused criticism that I and others have offered of Trump's opposition
Ah, yes, I'm sorry. You have indeed bemoaned that Hillary is not liberal enough for your tastes.
what you really mean, by all indications, is "adjusting one's perspective based on available empirical input is not enough; that's what they want you to think. You need to use your imagination and believe all the hazy New World Order shit too, or you'll be summarily dismissed as compromised."


It seems you're still caught in the simplistic patterns of recognizing propaganda. I have to say, it is an interesting phenomenon where people such as yourself can easily identify propaganda from the past, but utterly fail to apply the same level of scrutiny to what you see every day.

Some of you may remember the "Feed the Pig" campaign a few years back. It certainly wasn't for your sake that the government was telling you to save money, and if you think it was benevolent, you should do some research on savings tax.
Sorry, I'm not in kindergarten anymore. :lol: Fuck off.
I'm not immature, now I'm going to use an emoticon and tell you off with an insult.
(By the by, still waiting. As I will be until the sun burns out when dealing with po-faced trolls. :lol:)
And I'm still waiting for proof of collusion; you know, for that Russia stuff you don't really keep up with but conveniently use as a smear when you see fit.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by quash »

Mischief Maker wrote:And the Trump campaign openly admitted to having a deal with local media behemoth Sinclair Media for positive coverage


Again, I really don't like to do this because it's almost universally used as a lazy silencing tactic, but did you actually read that article?
But Sinclair and other networks said such a deal is nothing nefarious or new - just an arrangement for extended sit-down interviews with both candidates, one many campaigns have done in previous years to get around the national media and directly to viewers in key states.

A Trump spokesman said the deal included the interviews running across every affiliate but that no money was exchanged between the network and the campaign. The spokesman said the campaign also worked with other media outlets that had affiliates, like Hearst, to try and spread their message.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said they had nothing to add to Sinclair’s explanation.


The headline sounds like a smoking gun, whereas the article sounds like typical campaign fare. If this account of the deal is accurate, I don't see how this could be grounds for an investigation of an FCC chairman that had nothing to do with his campaign. I guess we'll wait and see, but if these other investigations into Trump's administration are any indication, we're going to be waiting some time.
Please don't make me defend Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment issue-by-issue. Hillary Clinton was horribly corrupt compared to Bernie Sanders but a goddamn saint compared to what the Trump administration has predictably done in a single year.
While it does look like we're back to our regularly scheduled legally dubious regime change in the Middle East for the benefit of countries other than the US, we would already be there if Hillary were in office.

Also, Bernie is hardly a Saint himself; if for no other reason, that he was in on the fix during the primaries.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by BryanM »

And maybe we wouldn't be any further along than we are now - maybe John Kerry closed the window when he bungled things up and let the Syrian government surrender their biological weapons. Now that ISIS is defeated, and the civil war over, there's scarce grounds to build a pretense on getting that oil pipeline built.

The regular quid pro quo thing the Trump team is indeed par for the course these days. They are of course terrible at being opaque about it, but I think that's actually better for democracy, not worse.

How many Americans know that the Obama administration was selected by Citigroup? It's the most basic fact of our government from 2008 to 2016.
quash wrote:I'm not immature, now I'm going to use an emoticon and tell you off with an insult.
It does seem easier to yell at people instead of doing something constructive or criticizing oneself. You guys seem to like one another quite a bit.
_

One thing I changed my mind slightly on this year was on Obamacare. Just from one off hand observation I read last week:

There's supposed to be a cost control measure in the bill. A certain % of all money spent on premiums has to go to actual care. Sounds fine if you just glance at it - you've got other things to worry about so it's easy to let things go if they're framed in incorrect terms.

What this provision does, is directly link the amount of profit an insurance company is allowed to make with the costs of healthcare. So there's no entity trying to pressure prices downward - not the doctors, not the pharmaceutical industry, not the insurance company, and not the powerless consumer who can either buy the product or die. Every entity with power is actively making it more expensive, because it is in their interest to do so.
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ED-057
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by ED-057 »

Mischief Maker wrote:
ED-057 wrote:We already know that the Clinton campaign was collaborating with "journalists." Evidence was in the leaked emails.
And the Trump campaign
By all means, gentlemen, don't feel like you have to quote some tangentially related text from my post before proceeding with yet more righteous truths about how all misdeeds are really Trump's misdeeds. In fact, don't even wait for a post from me, or even read one, lest it distract you from your duty. I would love to read more about the good old days when Democrats ruled. Oh, how I wish I could remember more clearly! That was when the people were pure, innocent, and honest, before they were tempted by the evil Russians and their farcebook ad, and before Trump single-handedly brought on the downfall of civilization. I need to know what our guardian angels in the totally unbiased corporate media want us to do and think, for that we may one day return to the pre-Trump utopia of two years ago.
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Zen
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by Zen »

BryanM wrote:One thing I changed my mind slightly on this year was on Obamacare. Just from one off hand observation I read last week:

There's supposed to be a cost control measure in the bill. A certain % of all money spent on premiums has to go to actual care. Sounds fine if you just glance at it - you've got other things to worry about so it's easy to let things go if they're framed in incorrect terms.

What this provision does, is directly link the amount of profit an insurance company is allowed to make with the costs of healthcare. So there's no entity trying to pressure prices downward - not the doctors, not the pharmaceutical industry, not the insurance company, and not the powerless consumer who can either buy the product or die. Every entity with power is actively making it more expensive, because it is in their interest to do so.
I would have thought that someone with your degree of cynicism with regards people farming, would have perceived this to be the end game from day one?
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

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quash wrote:I'm not immature, now I'm going to use an emoticon and tell you off with an insult.
I see we're continuing to plumb new, ever more slapdash depths of the "which way did he go, George" school of circular conversation...wonders truly do never cease. :lol:

And sure, you're absolutely excused from responding to queries you specifically said, unprompted, you'd intended to respond to until I prove Russian collusion in a way even you would somehow believe, fair's fair. :lol: I'll get on that as soon as I finally learn to conflate "based on objective evidence" with "propaganda", and learn to trust our shadiest fly-by-night snake oil salesmen over all of recorded history and established science, as doing so has never failed us before. :lol:

Yeah, methinks the bells on my hat have jangled more than enough for the time being. Have fun, folks.
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Zen
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by Zen »

BulletMagnet wrote: our shadiest fly-by-night snake oil salesmen
From the article you linked;

"Mr. Hogg, the high school’s student news director, has become a sensation among many liberals for his polished and compelling television interviews,
in which he has called on lawmakers to enact tougher restrictions on guns."

Who, along with his confederates, is receiving some push-back along the lines of;
"They have been portrayed as puppets being coached and manipulated by the Democratic Party, gun control activists, the so-called antifa movement and the left-wing billionaire George Soros."

The following video is perhaps one of the reasons? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiGxqtlRdyE

Is it relevant to mention Mr. Hogg's father, "whom Mr. Hogg has described as a retired F.B.I. agent"? Dunno.

"By Tuesday, that argument had migrated to CNN. In an on-air appearance, Jack Kingston, a former United States representative from Georgia and a regular CNN commentator, asked,
“Do we really think — and I say this sincerely — do we really think 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?” (He was quickly rebuked by the anchor Alyson Camerota.)"

Thank you, miss Camerota, for correcting the hateful wrong-think displayed by the United States representative from Georgia.

edit; here is another link to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPe0SPf8j2M
edit 2. aaand . . . . its gone! Here is another link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8t0ydtHKkY
Last edited by Zen on Thu Feb 22, 2018 7:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by brokenhalo »

Try saying this one out loud Zen, "one person can be in two different places at two different times".

You can tell Alex Jones et al are so completely full of shit just simply based on the fact that they go along with EVERY conspiracy theory that comes down the pike. If they ever got on the air and said "you know that batshit insane conspiracy theory making the rounds? it isn't true and here's why it doesn't make any sense...." i might give them the benefit of the doubt. Lots of suckers out there, unfortunately.
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by Zen »

brokenhalo wrote:Try saying this one out loud Zen, "one person can be in two different places at two different times".
What? How does this relate to my post?
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Re: Bush: 2017 Edition

Post by Mischief Maker »

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Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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