Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

As a non-American I fully endorse Donald J. Trump for president even if just for the comedy and reduced likelihood of WWIII with the Russians. I would sleep with his daughter too.

[quash]

And the Trump Putin narrative is propelled.

By a media establishment that less and less people are trusting as the sophistry surrounding it becomes exposed.

Funny how the narrative did a turnabout on this, too. Months ago it was "Trump is a madman who'll start WW3! He won't negotiate with anyone!", now it's "Trump is in Putin's back pocket!".

Even if that is true, I'll take someone in Putin's sphere of influence over the Saudi's any day of the week.

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

I think that Donald J. Trump has the potential to be the third greatest president after Ronald Reagan and second-term Ronald Reagan.

Come on guys American politics is a joke and this topic should be funnier. The result of the election will be the same regardless of who anyone votes for. My advice is to renounce your citizenship for tax reasons, move to Argentina and live in that town that looks like an early 20th century Bavarian villiage. That's what Astraea would do.

[BulletMagnet]

If for no other reason, you should do your absolute best to avoid getting your information from those who frame it to fit their narrative (even, and especially, if it's disguised as "comedy").

This from the guy who, without fail, whenever any news outlet says anything positive about Clinton, it's only because she's bought them off, but when Trump gets positive coverage it's always because of his masterful manipulation of the narrative? Speaking of "comedy infusions"... I want you to show me what, precisely, Oliver is being dishonest about in the video I linked, and - this is important - "he makes fun of Trump" doesn't count.

What are you grasping at here?

What I was talking about had absolutely nothing to do with the DNC leaks, you're only inserting that here because it makes for an easy dodge from everything else you might have to comment on, same as how Chicago and Syria seem to always sneak their way into every back-and-forth you have as soon as rubber starts to meet road. Focus, for once.

As for the "feelings" argument, I only see one side calling for "hate speech" laws to tighten down while simultaneously claiming to be advocates for free speech.

Oh come off it, Trump Nation is the one that not only demands the right to say whatever it wants to whomever it wants, but the right to do so without ever being criticized for it (that'd be "reverse racism"), and to start throwing haymakers to shut the opposition up if shouting down doesn't work.

If there's a shill on this forum, it's you. You've shown all of the signature marks of a shill and don't bother defending any position past claiming that nobody else "makes sense", conveniently ignoring that the vast majority of your stated positions are also rooted at least partially in emotional appeal.

I have spent way too much time attempting to engage you and others here at length, including directly responding to demands to logically justify a bunch of my positions, which were summarily ignored in favor of a litany of increasingly improbable conspiracy theories ("took a bullet for democracy!"), to sit here and continue to assume that you're even pretending to discuss these matters in good faith, and be called a "shill" at the end of it all. You're a joke.

I can at least A) understand where opposing views come from

Yeah, from being bribed and/or threatened by Clinton goons!

and B) acknowledge that there is room for emotional appeal in politics. Funnily enough, Dilbert guy wrote a short piece on this recently.

The second I saw Rand Paul praised for his "command of the issues" I just about lost it. Not to mention the "I endorsed Clinton for my own safety" and "it's impossible to actually make facts matter" bullshit...if anyone "framed the narrative" in such a way to speak in Clinton's favor you'd be calling him a "shill" too. And that'd be if he actually had something of insight to say, which Adams (how you manage to wail about how the "Skynet" people act so superior to everyone else, and then regularly cite this guy, is once again beyond me) doesn't.

I'll say it for the umpteenth time: nobody has said that emotional appeals aren't effective, for better or worse, in getting what you want out of people. The problem is, as even Adams acknowledges, that when it comes to actually governing, you do need to pull those pesky things out every once in awhile, and Trump has shown zero sign of having any interest in ever doing that, and his supporters really don't seem to care ("there's no such thing as pure objectivity, maaan!").

At this point, Trump has taken both sides of so many issues that he can almost be considered two candidates in one, and his supporters can be split into two factions, one that supports what he says with Mask A on while opposing the Mask B material, and the other going in the opposite direction. Ask either side how they manage to reconcile the stuff they like with the stuff they don't, and both of them unfailingly insist "oh, Trump's just saying what he has to say to get elected, once he's in office he's totally only going to do the things I like, and completely trash the rest. Oh man, won't the clueless suckers on the other side be surprised!" In otherwords, every single Trump supporter is banking on the notion that Trump is openly lying about half of what he says, but only the half they don't want - even if you ignore the irony of how often they like to call anyone in opposition to Trump "corrupt" or "crooked", does this strike you even a little bit as wishful thinking? Could, heaven forbid, all that emotional appeal have overshadowed something both obvious and important at work here?

...screw it, why am I still wasting my time here? Guess I'm just too in thrall to my own self-hatred.

[quash]

Normally I'd give you a point by point response, but today we bore witness to something truly horrifying.

This is dystopia, friends. We've reached it. It's time to learn to ride a motorcycle and get good with a mace.

[BryanM]

It was pretty beyond the pale that she couldn't even bother to fuckin' be there.

Just like she won't be there after Mike Pence is president.

[EmperorIng]

The second I saw Rand Paul praised for his "command of the issues" I just about lost it.

Your credibility?

Or is "command of the issues" advocating for expensive blanket federal mandates (higher minimum wage, free public college, etc.) regardless if an economic region can afford to implement these or not (rural regions, poor South, gutted cities)? For a guy who doesn't shut up about "making sense", you sure seem to err on the side of how things make you feel when it comes to whether you support them or dismiss them. Or does "making sense" mean "can be feasibly seen to be jammed through a 51% majority"?

And lol go ahead with the retort of "Trump doesn't make sense!" but before you do please try to note the other times I've mentioned Trump's name in this post.

[BryanM]

Or is "command of the issues" advocating for expensive blanket federal mandates (higher minimum wage, free public college, etc.) regardless if an economic region can afford to implement these or not (rural regions, poor South, gutted cities)?

The economic region in question when it comes to college tuition would ideally be the entirety of the united states as a hole. I guess we've seen what a disaster state-level funding has been for primary tuition. Property tax for tuition, great plan guys...

Though I will agree with you on the minimum wage. Your idea to abolish it and replace it with a basic citizen's dividend is great. Let us get it done.

Oh wait fuck Pence is president well I guess I'll see you in 14 years.

[BulletMagnet]

Your credibility?

Just in case his own chumminess with the likes of Alex Jones (taking right after dear ol' Dad) wasn't enough of a warning siren (among other things, Paul openly agreed with his assertions that the government wants to use vaccinations as an excuse to declare martial law, confiscate ammunition, and arm EPA agents to enforce climate regulation), he's stated that what really killed Eric garner was cigarette taxes, that parts of the Civil Rights Act relating to businesses should never have been implemented, and supported both the incredibly regressive "flat tax" and the near-elimination of the Department of Education (among others). This is seriously the best example of an "issues guy" Adams could come up with (before you even get into his infamous repeated "shush"-ing of female reporters)? He's just as "out there" as any other Tea Party stooge.

And lol go ahead with the retort of "Trump doesn't make sense!" but before you do please try to note the other times I've mentioned Trump's name in this post.

Benghazi!

...am I doing it right?

This is dystopia, friends. We've reached it. It's time to learn to ride a motorcycle and get good with a mace.

They're coming for your guns, speech, and right to produce testosterone, quash! Run, hide, before it's too late!

[quash]

Please defend that. I'd love to see what level of rationalization could spin Hillary in a chairman Mao outfit accepting her nomination from a 20 minute flight away as a good thing.

These debates are going to be a spectacle; assuming, of course, that she can be assed to show up.

[BryanM]

Fuck me with a candlestick, I can see them now:

Hillary: Conservative white people, vote for me! I'm your boo~!

Trump: Conservative white people, I will make all your dreams come true. And liberals? This bitch is going to turn all your dreams into nightmares.

Yeah. That's.... really hard to figure out who's going to win this one. An enigma wrapped in a rubix cube.

[antron]

Yeah. That's.... really hard to figure out who's going to win this one.

The one who is not going to turn type-2 diabetes back into a pre existing condition? That's it right?

[Bitter Almonds]

Whatever missionary work tim cain did in Honduras was shat on by shrillary's support of the coup d'etat.

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/16121

Vete a la verga, shrillary

[Ed Oscuro]

Just reflecting on the anti-Hillary comments, I think it's safe to say that most of them are just upset with US policy. Would you vote for Obama again? 'nuff said.

This time a lot of the speeches are actually fun to watch, and I'm usually not that big on watching speeches. There's too much juicy stuff to chew on this time around. Joe Biden's was actually quite somber, though he tried to make up for it with the "we own the finish line" line...Bill did a damn good job trying to re-introduce his wife to the country, but it probably won't affect very many people. I've always been pretty skeptical about the stuff that fills the void she left by simply not trying to fight every last charge, but I still have to square some things.

Or I would if I felt that this was an important issue this cycle. Speaking to Hillary's unpopularity problems, I have to point out there's a difference between not liking her because of things she did as SecState, and not liking her because she's not in the kitchen. It should register with some of my fellow white males that the campaign has picked Kaine and won't be showing a nice video tying her in to the history of the women's movement in the US (i.e., Harriet Tubman)...because white guys like us are being crybabies about representation. At the same time, Bill's speech presents her in a very different light than the two-dimensionally "tough" image her campaign sought to project in '08.

Instead I wanted to make a comment about Bernie: I voted for him (in one of the states where he won the primary...though the superdelegates still gave Hill more votes) and I generally wanted his policies as they were clear and, despite what the media was bitching about, it was very easy to be informed about what mattered to him: He made the same speech every time. However, now that he's bowed out graciously (for now, he's back to being an independent, lol) I think we might get even a better deal, assuming she gets elected: After the compromises at the Democratic Platform Committee, we've probably got some policies in there that not only prove that Hillary isn't moving to the right, but they're probably more likely to get enacted given that at least some Democratic party members onboard with carrying them on. We got a reminder of this with the disagreement (or maybe confusion) between McAuliffe and Clinton on TPP, when he suggested (or, as he says, was confused and wrongly seemed to suggest) that Clinton would back TPP once safely elected. That's been refuted now and while any elected Prez could certainly do that, I don't see it happening here. Of course it'll be a struggle to get anything done and I still have a healthy dose of "throw the bums out" coursing through my veins too, but at the end of the day you have to take progress where you can get it. Not everything is going to be a slam dunk like Obamacare was - and Bernie knows that too, which is why he fought to keep moving the ball forward towards the next healthcare insurance goal of single payer.

[Mischief Maker]

Speaking to Hillary's unpopularity problems, I have to point out there's a difference between not liking her because of things she did as SecState, and not liking her because she's not in the kitchen. It should register with some of my fellow white males that the campaign has picked Kaine and won't be showing a nice video tying her in to the history of the women's movement in the US (i.e., Harriet Tubman)...because white guys like us are being crybabies about representation.

That's not fair. Though I still don't like Hillary and consider her the lesser evil at best, and I also agree that her unpopularity isn't totally deserved, it's not because we're all sexist pigs, it's because of a nonstop coordinated campaign of character assassination against her by the Republican party for more than a quarter century. Every time she so much as farts Republicans set fire to $10 million on a wild goose chase investigation. The Benghazi report came out, but it's not the Benghazi report, it's the ninth Benghazi report and they still came up snake eyes. That vast right-wing conspiracy she talked about was real.

But like I said way earlier in this thread, her problems started when she said she put career ahead of cookies and ever since she's learned not to speak her mind and only to go out in public wearing the thickest mask possible and say only what the polls tell her are safe. Which is a damned shame because it's not 1992 anymore and I think the authenticity of "fuck your cookies" Hillary would actually resonate positively with Millennial voters the same way grumpy old man with crazy hair Bernie did.

[Ed Oscuro]

That's true, and thanks for catching that before it got rolling. I do agree, there's been a lot of talk about "is Hillary private and unknowable because she's a private person, or because her very first public speeches as First Lady were criticized from all sides, and after that came the years of sub-scandals?" (Insightful show on today's Fresh Air about Clinton from a long-time political reporter of her campaigns - the Wednesday, July 27th show.) However I think we do at least need to acknowledge that the Clinton campaign is taking some steps not to push us thirtysomething+ white males further from the campaign, though from all I can tell there seems to be very little evidence to me that she could do much to start making inroads in that demographic. Ultimately this isn't a demographic challenge just for her, or for the party, but it's really a challenge for Trump and whatever will come after the GOP. (On the Republican side, that "revolution" hasn't been all about kicking the bums out, it's been about installing new bums with less education and more prejudices.) I know I'm not doing much to steer away from my initial point of view, but there you have it for now.

Is it fair to point out that apparently it's important to cover Bill O'Reilly saying some slaves had it OK (not-so-unusual white reaction: almost all slaves had it pretty good, didn't they?) as a natural journalistic consequence of Michelle Obama's very good speech? We have to admit: The fringe is there, and it's growing, and it's pretty white. I think every Dem must sometimes almost envy Trump his ability just to spout pure shit because it's so easy to provoke fear and pander that way. We'll see how far fear of Trump goes in this election, though it seems as if the Brits already had no luck going the "scary, irresponsible change is a bad bet" route, I guess.

[Rob]

Just in case his own chumminess with the likes of Alex Jones (taking right after dear ol' Dad) wasn't enough of a warning siren

Says a man who has never downed a bottle of DNA Force.

[Bitter Almonds]

And it's not a big surprise the dnc e-mail fiasco is being blamed on "Russian hackers" even though they have no evidence of this... just like when shrillary voted to invade and occupy Iraq on zero evidence. It's funny that she's now getting a taste of her own medicine since she also voted to spy on US citizens. It would be a bigger treat to read the transcripts of her goldmansacks speeches; I don't believe for a second this lowlife rat has anyone's interests other than maintaining the status quo of crony capitalism.

[Ed Oscuro]

And it's not a big surprise the dnc e-mail fiasco is being blamed on "Russian hackers" even though they have no evidence of this... just like when shrillary voted to invade and occupy Iraq on zero evidence.

Oh, come on, man. Here I was thinking you were a pretty decent poster...guess you get placed in the special souls bin with austere as far as topics like this go

Still, my challenge to you remains: Would you vote for Obama?

One thing I'll say for Trump: Reading his amazingly unfocused and narcissistic comments the "Russia" thing seemed like an obvious joke, to me, skewering the media along with Hillary, while NPR's commentators claimed he "conflated" the DNC hacking with Clinton. No, he's tying the two together. Somewhat dishonestly, but then again, Hillary's opened herself to attacks like this by having that damn email server in the first place, and here we are. That said, joke or not it was an awful thing to say with a straight face and an awful thing to pretend you'd not want to happen when in fact we know that he very much does want Russia to dig up some dirt on Hillary.

Even fucking Hitler said "may God grant that it was the Communists"[/url] when it came to a certain fire. Trump, like the Russians, just doesn't give a fuck. I'm not sure how much to admire or be amazed by this brazen show, but I do know it's also dangerous.

On the other hand, something from The Donald's great Wednesday Florida conference which I think has absolutely no hypothetical defenses is his strange one-man hate-fuck contest with a Cruz blow-up doll. You know, that creepy guy who almost got booed off the stage in Cleveland, who's going to be painted as a martyr for Conservative Values forevermore just for having the balls to walk in front of the Trumpites and smack them around a bit? Trump's apparent obsession over having a dick measuring contest with Cruz just flies off the transcript page and it's just obnoxious, disgusting, and also pretty silly and hilarious. And sad.

Oh well, at least sometimes I laugh with you, Trump.

[Bitter Almonds]

I did not vote for obama back then. I sure as hell wouldn't vote for him now. To vote for shrillary is to vote for crony capitalism and the military industrial complex we were warned about... by a military guy!

[rapoon]

And it's not a big surprise the dnc e-mail fiasco is being blamed on "Russian hackers" even though they have no evidence of this... just like when shrillary voted to invade and occupy Iraq on zero evidence. It's funny that she's now getting a taste of her own medicine since she also voted to spy on US citizens. It would be a bigger treat to read the transcripts of her goldmansacks speeches; I don't believe for a second this lowlife rat has anyone's interests other than maintaining the status quo of crony capitalism.

there's strong evidence suggesting 'Guccifer 2.0' is Russian. what there is no evidence of is that Guccifer 2.0 has ties to Russian intelligence services (GRU). Rid's Article which keeps getting tossed around, relies heavily on the 'investigatory' work of 3 InfoSec firms (CrowdStrike was employed by the DNC).

[quash]

Still, my challenge to you remains: Would you vote for Obama?

Nope. And most people who say they would are doing so out of hope that nothing would change if they did (funny how things come full circle).

Between the anemic economic recovery, the various blunders in foreign policy and the levels of civil unrest we're seeing right now, Obama is looking to become a four letter word in politics.

[quash]

That vast right-wing conspiracy she talked about was real.

There is more evidence than any one person could ever care to dig through that proves that a good portion of the media was actively corroborating with the Democratic party, and here you are not only conveniently ignoring it, but trying to deflect it by pinning the blame on the side whose primary media outlets for years consisted of one cable news channel and radio talk show hosts (which has now been reduced to Breitbart and a handful of Twitter accounts).

Maybe there is a vast right wing conspiracy; I wouldn't know because I'm not that involved with right wing politics. What I can tell you is that there is a hell of a lot of infighting within the right wing (dating back to at least Bush's second term, which birthed the Tea Party and other movements), and that their influence on the media, while not insignificant, has been mostly segregated to a few choice outlets.

What I'm getting at is that the Republican establishment as we know it is frankly too unorganized and inept to carry out anything on this scale. Unless we've all been played the fool and Sarah Palin is actually an undercover psyop, I seriously doubt they would be able to pull off anything coordinated enough to remotely qualify as a conspiracy.

[BulletMagnet]

And most people who say they would are doing so out of hope that nothing would change if they did (funny how things come full circle).

Not wanting things to change in the way Obama's opposition wants to change them does not equal wanting nothing whatsoever to change. Not that you didn't know that...and not that it stopped you from saying it anyway.

their influence on the media, while not insignificant, has been mostly segregated to a few choice outlets.

In case you forgot (you didn't, but again, who cares?), this goes at least back to the joke that was Whitewater, and hasn't let up a bit since then. "Conspiracy" isn't really even the right word, it's simply the way things are done; if a Clinton is involved, there must be more, and until it is found, never stop. And never, ever acknowledge that your accusations were wrong, just come up with an even crazier-ass theory as to how those slippery Clintons managed to corrupt the entire system to get away with it.

[Xyga]

Does it matter anyway ? I think R. Cohen has a clear-enough analysis of the situation; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/opini ... .html?_r=0
He's right, it's unstoppable. Whatever we say it's too late.

[Jonathan Ingram]

Does it matter anyway ? I think R. Cohen has a clear-enough analysis of the situation; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/opini ... .html?_r=0
He's right, it's unstoppable. Whatever we say it's too late.

A pretty unexceptional piece of liberal diatribe choke-full of fearmongering, false narratives and unscientific terms and definitions(e.g. "totalitarianism", fascism being a "backlash against dysfunctional democracies"). Just about what you'd expect from a shit-level bourgeois rag like New York Times. They've certainly been going the extra mile recently in regards to their attempts to vilify Trump: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07 ... e-j28.html

On a semi-related note, I love how liberals continue to casually pepper their texts with quotes by that sack of human feces George Orwell even after the documents released by the Foreign Office revealed him to be a snitch and a racist.

[Xyga]

Yes I read your comment on twitter, Stone Guest, I expected you'd post that lol, it's your job after all.

[Jonathan Ingram]

What the hell are you talking about?

[Xyga]

Your obvious propaganda twitter account, but you're going to deny it anyway.

[Jonathan Ingram]

It seems that the recent wave of violence seeping from the third-world into your own, gradually twisting it, eroding the certainties and "values" your philistine self has grown accustomed to, has affected your mental state in a very negative way. Get a grip, dude. I do not have a Twitter account of any kind. If I did, I'd state it plainly and clearly.