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LOL! One of the better metaphors/similies posted in recent months.
Helpful talking points for when we are labeled Socialists - Paul Krugman explains
11. and they want to socialize costs of business while privatizing profits
Repukes want the worker drones to pay for the highways, bridges, airports, shipping ports, water lines, electricity infrastructure, police, firefighters, hospitals, military, and clean-up after corporate disasters, but keep those profits for the rich "job creators". They want the rich tax-free.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212336787
You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/significant-digits-for-wednesday-july-31-2019/
Thursday, August 1, 2019
By Oliver Roeder
10 percent of recipients
The Trump administration’s trade-war aid for farmers is not being distributed evenly. Ten percent of the recipients have received more than half the money, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and the president of the National Farmers Union, among others, criticized that imbalance, suggesting that they’ll help large farms get larger and not assist the smaller farms that need the aid.
[Bloomberg]
$100 million extension
Michael Thomas has agreed to a five-year, $100 million contract extension — a 1,700 percent raise — with the New Orleans Saints, according to league sources. That makes Thomas the highest paid wide receiver in the NFL. [ESPN]
65 percent of cigarettes
An estimated 65 percent of cigarettes smoked in America are littered. Figures, since cigarettes are the single most littered object in the world. This has made cigarette butts, which are made from a potentially toxic plastic called cellulose acetate, an object of sharp focus for environmental regulators. Some tobacco companies are testing biodegradable filters, others portable ashtrays, and others still are turning to behavioral psychologists to understand why smokers litter. [The Wall Street Journal]
20 percent of funeral homes
The mortuary industry is not, as a general rule, known for disruptive innovation. But the practice of live-streaming funerals has “recently exploded in popularity” and the president-elect of the National Funeral Directors Association estimates that 20 percent of funeral homes now offer the service. The service caters to those loved ones unable to travel on short notice to pay their respects, and cements my plan to become an influencer not only in life but from beyond the grave. [Wired]
21 Tony awards
Harold Prince, the prodigious Broadway director and producer, died at the age of 91. During his career, he won a remarkable 21 Tony awards — a record — including statues for “Damn Yankees,” “Cabaret,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Phantom of the Opera.” [Associated Press]
10-day sentence
A magistrate judge in a place called Garfield Heights has sentenced a woman to 10 days in jail for feeding stray cats in apparent violation of a Garfield Heights ordinance. “The cats keep coming over to my house,” Nancy Segula told Cleveland.com. “I just feel bad so then I will give them something to eat.” #FreeNancy. [Cleveland.com]
I'll address just one of your misleading statements.
I've established the point in many of my posts that the redistributive nature of our tax system is responsible for many Red States not sliding further down the rankings for health, education and the need for SNAP benefits, Medicaid, SSDI and more recently, unfortunately, farm subsidies to mitigate the effects of Trump's tariffs.
Since many of you like to crow about low taxes in your States the question should follow 'where does the money come from?'
Very specifically it come from the higher GDP and more highly taxed Blue States and metro areas. If not for that redistribution you might need to spend more time handing out sandwiches.
10 red states that mooch off the federal government
Republicans claim they've had it with American socialism. Maybe they should return the tax dollars subsidizing them
Alex Henderson
September 20, 2014 4:00PM (UTC)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
https://www.salon.com/2014/09/20/10_red_states_that_mooch_off_the_federal_government_partner/
AlterNet
One of the most hilarious talking points coming from far-right Republicans and the Tea Party is that when “red states” like Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana are asked to bail out California or Massachusetts, that’s when they will finally become “fed up with socialism” and secede from the Union once and for all.
The problem with that meme is that it has no basis in reality: the more prosperous and Democrat-leaning areas of the United States are likely to be subsidizing dysfunctional “red states,” many of which are suffering from insufficient tax revenue and an abundance of low-wage workers who don’t have much to tax.
Tea Party Republicans like to point out that poor cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Camden, New Jersey are run by Democrats, but they neglect to mention that some of the most affluent parts of the United States—from Manhattan to the Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area to Cambridge, MA to Seattle to Chicago’s North Shore suburbs—are dominated by the Democratic Party. People in those heavily Democratic areas pay a lot of federal income taxes, and quite often, their tax dollars go to red states.
Earlier this year, the personal finance website WalletHub.com conducted an in-depth study of the amounts individual states are paying in federal taxes compared to the amounts they are receiving. WalletHub analyzed data from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Commerce Department and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
WalletHub’s research demonstrates that, as a rule, the states that are the most likely to rail against “big government” are the most likely to be benefiting from it.
A few of the states in WalletHub’s study that were receiving the most tax revenue from the federal government are states that President Barack Obama won in 2012 (most notably, New Mexico and Hawaii), but most were hardcore “red states.”
And most of the states that, according to WalletHub, are taking less from the federal government than they are paying in are “blue states” that Obama won in both 2008 and 2012, including California, Massachusetts, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Minnesota.
WalletHub’s research bears out comparable figures released by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation in the past: analyzing IRS data, Tax Foundation has found, more than once, that red states are likely to be the biggest recipients of federal tax money.
Below are 10 red states that take full advantage of the federal government and would be much worse off without the “coastal liberal elites” they love to complain about.
1. Mississippi: Mississippi is one of the most Republican states in the U.S.: Republicans dominate the state government, and not since Jimmy Carter’s victory in 1976 has a Democrat carried Mississippi in a presidential race. “Fiscal responsibility” is a recurring theme in Mississippi politics, where Democrats are often characterized as people who couldn’t balance a budget if their lives depended on it.
Yet the reality is that Mississippi is one of the most blatant examples of a state receiving more federal tax money than it gives: WalletHub finds that for every dollar in federal taxes Mississippi pays, it receives $3.07 from the federal government. A 2007 report from the Tax Foundation found that Mississippi was receiving $2.47 from the federal government for every dollar it was paying in.
Putin's Mitch....
10. Kentucky: Kentucky, despite having a two-term Democratic governor (Steve Beshear), leans Republican: although Bill Clinton won Kentucky’s electoral votes in 1992 and 1996, that state has gone Republican in every other presidential race since 1980. Mitt Romney carried Kentucky by 22% in 2012, and many of the Democrats who hold office in the Bluegrass State are center-right Blue Dogs. But as widespread as talk of “small government” and “fiscal responsibility” are in Kentucky, WalletHub’s research shows that Kentucky receives $2.39 from the federal government for every dollar it pays. According to WalletHub, 35% of Kentucky’s revenue comes from Washington, DC. And the Tax Foundation found that Kentucky was receiving $1.75 from the federal government for every dollar paid.
4. Louisiana: In Republican-dominated Louisiana politics, it is fashionable to bash “big government liberals” who live in San Francisco or New York City. But when Louisiana Republicans do that, they are biting the hands that feed them. According to Wallet Hub’s research, Louisiana receives $3.35 from the federal government for every dollar it pays in; 44% of Louisiana's funding, WalletHub says, comes from Washington, DC.
Louisiana, under Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, is another “right-to-work” state, and a state with so many underpaid workers is naturally going to have a lot less income to tax. So instead of hating the “limousine liberals” in Seattle or Boston for voting Democrat, Louisiana Republicans should thank them for all the federal income tax revenue they are getting from them.
Hey asshole, is Nov of '18 too far behind for your failing memory?
Biggest margin of vote defeat for the Party in power since 74.
Total repudiation of the morons who supported Trump.
I could go to Lincoln Park Zoo and have a more intelligent give and take with the residents of the Great Apes House than I can have with you here.
Same poo flinging that I read from you here, too.
6 Democrats would beat Trump if the election were held today, according to a new national poll
Dropdead, you're really a fool to think that Trump would win simply because YOU don't like the Dem candidates.
Whomever emerges will have the advantage over Trump for the simple reasons that he is a lying, conniving, insulting, embarrassing, criminal POS.
Grace Panetta
Jun. 11, 2019, 5:03 PM
And no, nothing has changed since this poll. Trump is still a dick.
https://www.businessinsider.com/six-democrats-beat-trump-if-election-held-today-new-poll-2019-6
Six 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would defeat President Donald Trump in a one-on-one general matchup, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
If the election were held today, former Vice President Joe Biden would beat Trump by a margin of 53 to 40%, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would beat Trump 51 to 40% and California Sen. Kamala Harris would come out ahead of Trump by 49 to 41%.
The poll found that Trump's national approval rating has slightly improved over the past month but is still underwater at 42% approval and 53% disapproval.
Trump and Biden have quickly become each other's biggest foes and ramped up the intensity of their public insults and jabs at each other.
all hail the sandwich man!!!!
Little know fact, that was the working title for the Spinners before they settled on...
Truth squad. Proud to serve with you.
Will pale by comparison with the birther loons, teabagger economic illiterates, deficit chicken hawks and free range conspiracy theorists who lost their shit in '08 and again in '12.
Your inability to accurately recall even recent history, or look at matters from both sides, objectively, largely accounts for the lameness of your posts and for why you get your ass handed to you with such regularity on this board.
Not surprisingly, you're simply not a good learner. Also self-evident from your posts.
So THAT'S what posting after taking a hit from a mix of crack and meth look like. Please don't operate any heavy machinery or run with a sharp object.
More to the point don't post anymore either, until you come down.
Most & Least Federally Dependent States
Mar 19, 2019 | John S Kiernan, Senior Writer & Editor
Most Federally Dependent States
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/
Rank (1 = Most Dependent)
State Total Score
‘State Residents’ Dependency’ Rank
‘State Government’s Dependency’ Rank
1 New Mexico 85.81 2 3
2 Mississippi 81.46 7 1
3 Kentucky 78.76 6 5
4 West Virginia 72.34 4 12
5 Alabama 71.65 5 11
6 Arizona 67.03 11 4
7 Alaska 64.30 8 9
8 Montana 63.88 15 6
9 South Carolina 61.31 3 33
10 Indiana 59.74 9 14
11 Louisiana 58.11 27 2
12 Tennessee 52.21 21 7
13 Maine 50.89 12 19
14 Wyoming 50.39 22 8
15 North Dakota 46.99 1 47
16 Vermont 46.46 18 17
17 Oklahoma 44.24 19 21
18 Missouri 43.76 36 10
19 Oregon 43.44 25 15
20 Pennsylvania 42.94 17 28
21 Maryland 41.38 14 37
22 Arkansas 40.78 40 13
23 Idaho 40.69 20 27
24 South Dakota 39.94 24 20
25 Florida 37.96 26 24
26 Georgia 37.58 32 18
27 Michigan 37.33 28 23
28 Ohio 35.34 46 16
29 Texas 34.27 42 25
30 Rhode Island 33.88 39 26
31 New York 33.05 45 22
32 New Hampshire 31.58 38 30
33 Iowa 31.21 31 31
34 Nevada 31.14 30 32
35 California 30.57 43 29
36 Wisconsin 29.57 16 45
37 North Carolina 29.46 33 34
38 Colorado 28.94 34 35
39 Washington 27.88 37 38
40 Hawaii 26.93 10 49
41 Connecticut 26.67 23 42
42 Nebraska 25.45 44 36
43 Virginia 20.76 13 50
44 Massachusetts 20.64 47 39
45 Minnesota 20.12 34 44
46 Illinois 19.92 48 40
47 Utah 18.56 29 46
48 New Jersey 17.67 49 41
49 Delaware 14.44 50 43
50 Kansas 10.70 41 48
'Serving under Trump is embarrassing': Fifth Republican congressman retires in just two weeks as GOP
Really? How about being governed under him you too late woke ass-hat?
Source: The Independent via yahoo news
'Serving under Trump is embarrassing': Fifth Republican congressman retires in just two weeks as GOP fears more exits
The fifth Republican congressman in two weeks is set to step down as the GOP reportedly fears a wave of retirements amid ongoing tension in the party over Donald Trump’s presidency.
Representative Mike Conaway will not seek re-election to his Texas seat in 2020, according to Politico, but has not confirmed his decision or his reason for retiring.
However, House Republicans are reportedly worried that the difficulties of serving under Mr Trump and working with a Democratic majority in Congress will lead to more exits.
“Serving in the era of Trump has few rewards. He has made an already hostile political environment worse,” Tom Davis, a former senior Republican congressman, told The Hill.
“Every day there is some indefensible tweet or comment to defend or explain. It is exhausting and often embarrassing.
Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/serving-under-trump-embarrassing-fifth-104531664.html
Body of slain 1930s gangster John Dillinger to be exhumed in Indiana
By RICK CALLAHAN
Associated Press |
Jul 30, 2019 | 8:03 PM
INDIANAPOLIS
http://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-john-dillinger-body-exhumed-20190730-fs5z2fizvzaznmnthxmjcsh4cq-story.html
John Dillinger, circa 1933. (Chicago Tribune / Chicago Tribune)
The reason for the concrete-encased grave was to thwart would-be vandals, she said, citing "Crown Hill: History, Spirit, and Sanctuary" a 2013 book the historical society published about the cemetery's history.
“The main fear was that someone would come in and dig up the grave and either desecrate the corpse or steal it," Sutton said. “The Dillingers had actually been offered money to ‘lend out’ his body for exhibits, so they were concerned.”
The Indianapolis-born Dillinger was one of America's most notorious criminals. The FBI says Dillinger's gang killed 10 people as they pulled off a bloody string of bank robberies across the Midwest in the 1930s.
Dillinger was never convicted of murder and he was lauded by some for robbing banks during the Great Depression as many Americans lost their homes and farms to foreclosure, Sutton said.
“So somebody who had, as maybe people would say now — ‘Stuck it to the banker’ — would easily become a folk hero," she said. “He was also known by some people to be very polite even while he was stealing. It’s an odd combination.”
Dillinger was awaiting trial in the slaying of an East Chicago police officer when he escaped from jail in Crown Point, Indiana, in March 1934 with a gun carved out of wood. While on the run, he underwent plastic surgery to alter his face and was said to have tried to remove his fingerprints with acid.
Dillinger, who was portrayed by Johnny Depp in the 2009 movie “Public Enemies,” was fatally shot in July 1934 by FBI agents outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago after he was betrayed by a woman who became known in the papers as the “Lady in Red.”
Crown Hill Cemetery spokeswoman Crystal King said the cemetery has no information about the plans to exhume Dillinger, whose tomb is an attraction at the hilltop graveyard on Indianapolis' near north side.
Messages seeking comment were also left Tuesday for Jeffery Scalf, whose grandmother was Dillinger’s half-sister, and for Savanah Light, the funeral director whose name is listed on the permit.
Betty and Rosella Nelson, along with a crowd of people, view the body of John Dillinger, 32, at the Cook County morgue, at Polk and Wood Streets, in Chicago in 1934. In the days after Dillinger was killed on July 22, 1934, massive crowds lined up outside the morgue to get a glimpse of the notorious public enemy. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
Nope, the problem has always been operator error. From a scrawl on a cave wall that sent one of the earliest and most easily confused dumb-asses off in the wrong direction looking for game to the inadequate software between the ears of the most credulous, most easily misled and misinformed among us today.
Like the poor the nitwits have always been with us.
Letting Foreign Governments Influence an 'America First' Speech Is the Quintessential Trump Scam
His advisers peddled advance drafts to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
By Jack Holmes
Jul 30, 2019
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a28550751/donald-trump-america-first-speech-uae-saudi-arabia/?source=nl&utm_source=nl_esq&utm_medium=email&date=073019&src=nl&utm_campaign=17636116
Donald Trump is perhaps the most successful version, ever, of an American archetype: the snake-oil salesman, the confidence man. He jumps from scam to scam, patching over the previous with a new one, avoiding accountability through shamelessness and belligerence.
He claimed to be a self-made tycoon and an Artful Dealmaker, which people seemed to believe, despite the fact he could frequently be found hocking shitty steaks or swill vodka, until we learned he lost a billion dollars of his daddy's money over 10 years through terrible business deals and owes much of his standing to a multi-generational tax fraud scheme.
Maybe we all should've internalized the message when we learned the famous Trump Tower boardroom from The Apprentice was built just for the reality show.
But, of course, the scams have continued in the White House. I'm old enough to remember when Mexico was going to pay for The Big, Beautiful Wall. Now, the president has seized American taxpayer money earmarked for the Pentagon in order to pay for it, an assault on the Constitution's separation of powers that has secured the blessing of the five guys on the Supreme Court who decide what the law is.
The president rails against illegal immigration in dangerous terms, yet seemingly every week we learn more about just how many undocumented people he employed at his properties—or still does. During the campaign, he promised to balance the budget within five years.
Instead, the deficit has ballooned to over $1 trillion in each of the last two years—close to double the $587 billion in President Obama's last year in office—thanks in part to a Republican tax bill that also turned out to be a gigantic scam.
But there is no scam quite like one of Trump's core slogans: "AMERICA FIRST!" The most essential fraud of it is that the president's governing principle throughout his entire life has been TRUMP FIRST, an arrangement that frequently led to, say, stiffing hundreds of contractors and small businesses who did work for him. As president, it has led to him pursuing a sprawling web of foreign business ventures while making foreign policy on behalf of the United States, a blatant conflict of interest that could allow other governments to make American policy through his wallet.
The list of countries in which Trump reportedly has interests includes Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Panama, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, South Korea, St. Martin, St. Vincent, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Uruguay.
But courtesy of a House Oversight Committee report, commissioned by Democratic Chair Elijah Cummings and examined by ABC News, we have an even more clear-eyed view of the scam that is America First.
When candidate Donald Trump prepared to give a major energy speech during the 2016 campaign, one of his closest advisers provided a pre-speech review to senior United Arab Emirates officials...
Two weeks before Trump was scheduled to deliver the energy policy speech, Thomas Barrack, a California investment tycoon with extensive contacts in the Middle East and who later helped oversee Trump’s inauguration, provided a former business associate inside the United Arab Emirates with an advance copy of the candidate’s planned remarks.
The associate then told Barrack he shared them with UAE and Saudi government officials, after which Barrack arranged for language requested by the UAE officials to be added to the speech with the help of Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort.
“This is the most likely final version of the speech. It has the language you want,” Manafort confirmed in an email to Barrack on the day of the speech, according to the report. Manafort has since gone to prison for financial crimes unrelated to his campaign work...
Trump traveled to North Dakota in May of 2016, having just clinched the Republican nomination for president. He intended to give a policy speech that would solidify his position on oil, gas and coal – an energy speech that would make clear he would prioritize American energy jobs over grand multi-national environmental pacts like the Paris climate agreement.
Trump called his approach an “America First” energy plan that would “make America wealthy again.”
ABC notes that the Saudis and Emiratis failed to get all the language they wanted in the America First speech, but they did get some: "We will work with our Gulf allies to develop a positive energy relationship as part of our anti-terrorism strategy."
The investigation also did not establish that Trump was aware that his advisers were peddling his speech to foreign business contacts to influence. But why did they get input in the first place, particularly on a speech meant to tout America's coming energy independence from those very countries?
The most straightforward explanation is that America First is a lie, and that corruption pervaded the president's campaign, where advisers were working on behalf of foreign powers—in eventual National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's case, at least one—and everybody seemed to be trying to siphon cash off the venture.
Flynn is now set to go to prison. Trump's lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, appeared to be running an unregistered lobbying shop selling access to the president. He's also now in jail, albeit for separate crimes. The deputy 2016 campaign chairman, Rick Gates, has also pled guilty. And of course, there's Paul Manafort.
The undercurrent of all this, one that few seem willing to grapple with, is that Trump has always run organizations that resemble a criminal syndicate and that he has brought this model to the White House.
He does not attract ethical people because he has no use for them. He papers over his blatant monetization of the office with rhetoric like America First, a slogan favored by racists and xenophobes throughout the history of this country.
In recent weeks, he has ramped up the attacks on various Enemies of color, because racial division is another essential instrument of the white plutocrat. What we'll all have to grapple with, assuming we survive this frontal assault on the republic, is that so many millions of our fellow citizens were ready, willing, and able to get conned.
Significant Digits For Tuesday, July 30, 2019
By Oliver Roeder
Filed under Significant Digits
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/significant-digits-for-tuesday-july-30-2019/
$460,000
Just as Alexander Hamilton surely envisioned it, President Trump’s reelection campaign has raised $460,000 in a week selling plastic straws. The campaign appears to be in reaction to some environmentalists’ efforts to move toward paper straws. Ten Trump-branded, “laser-engraved,” own-the-libs straws go for $15. [The Guardian]
1,022 nouns
Chaser, a Border collie known as the world’s smartest dog, has died of natural causes at the age of 15. Chaser’s owner, a psychology professor named John Pilley, used “800 cloth animal toys, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees and an assortment of plastic items” to teach Chaser 1,022 nouns.
Chaser is also said to have understood sentences including a prepositional object, verb and direct object. Rest in peace. I’m gonna go figure out how many nouns I know. [The New York Times]
What is behind the decline in UFO sightings?
In an age of wild claims churned out by politicians, media and advertisers, perhaps people don’t care as much any more
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/21/what-is-behind-the-decline-in-ufo-sightings
Philip Jaekl
Fri 21 Sep 2018 07.00 BST Last modified on Tue 25 Sep 2018 14.03 BST
A UFO over the Mojave desert, California.
Are aliens deserting us? Or do we simply not care any more? Photograph: Joe McBride/Getty Images
This month, the two major online sites for reporting UFOs – the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network – both documented steep drops in worldwide sightings. The declines started around 2014, when reports were at a peak. They have since reduced drastically to 55% of that year’s combined total, many UFO interest groups have folded, and numerous previously classified government documents have been disclosed.
Do these declines reveal that UFO interest is becoming a blip on the human cultural radar? Perhaps UFO and alien lore is seeming more like a reflection of human culture, tied to the space age, motivated by conquering new existential frontiers.
It might not be a coincidence that the term UFO (unidentified flying object) and some of the phenomena that surrounds it – abductions and impossible technologies – are relatively recent. Before the 1940s, reports of sightings of objects in the sky were extremely rare.
Centuries of recorded history give no clear indication of any such activity. Then, at the predawn of the space-age, around the time of the Roswell conspiracy, UFO culture was born, giving rise to everything from Space Invaders to The X-Files.
Possible answers as to why sightings are decreasing are varied. A key factor, however, may be that more people simply don’t care any more. As we are accustomed to being inundated with wild claims churned out by politicians, media and advertisers, the next report of a UFO is no more believed than the long-range weather forecast.
Before home video, photographs were the staple of UFO evidence. Video evidence, during the height of the 1990s UFO mania, was regarded by many as even more substantial. Amateur footage of glowing objects in the sky, as mysterious as they seemed real, made the cut for appearing on television – they were meant to be taken seriously and they fed an audience hungry for amazement, helped by a healthy dose of conspiracy theorising.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conspiracy-Nation-Politics-Paranoia-Postwar/dp/0814747361/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535969020&sr=1-1&keywords=9780814747360
According to the cultural historian Stuart Walton, “Belief in UFOs is definitely in a state of decline, along with much else that could be classed as paranormal. Part of the reason is that the technology for providing documentary evidence of such matters is now widely available to everybody with a smartphone, and such purported evidence as there is on YouTube looks extremely threadbare.”
He adds: “It isn't so much that belief can exist without proof; it's that it must emphatically avoid proof to remain belief. We are in the process, paradoxically, of proving a negative hypothesis with UFOs: there never was any such thing.”
Indeed, indisputable evidence of intelligent life coming to Earth could be the greatest news of all time. Yet, after thousands of anecdotal, photo, and video reports have accrued over decades, what are we to conclude? With the greatest balance of scepticism and “wanting to believe”, all that can confidently be asserted is that some objects, appearing in the sky on film or video, seem unidentifiable.
Furthermore, government disclosure of its own video footage isn’t helping to maintain belief. Joseph Baker, sociology professor at Tennessee State University, says: “It’s actually better for UFOs when ufologists can claim that ‘the powers that be know everything and are hiding it from us’ rather than seeing that the government appears to have basically the same info about UFOs as the public: namely grainy, inconclusive visual evidence.”
No time for aliens: how the MoD tried to prove no one's out there
Perhaps though, the declines in reported sightings may signify only an end to current trends in ufology. After all, from the 1940s aliens were originally characterised as saviours who could help humans transcend the cold-war paranoia of nuclear annihilation; especially marked at the time, after two world wars.
But after events like Watergate and the Vietnam war fueled distrust in government, UFOs came to be viewed more as a possible threat, and some came to believe their existence was verified in secret military documents.
Enter free range stupidity in the form of conspiracy theories about chemtrails, DEW tests causing fires in CA, false flags, building 7 and Obama's birth certificate.
Sharon Hill, a researcher on the paranormal and pseudoscience, says: “The ideas about UFOs and aliens continue to evolve as we project our social and cultural ideas on them. Since we have no single easy explanation for all these claims regarding the decline in sightings, the future vision of ufology seems rather open-ended. I don't think it's dead, just changing.”
Your inability to comprehend my point, makes my point.
I'm the one who stated 'in either party'. And I'll go further, it's a matter of degree.
'Snowball man' is, well, the tip of an iceberg of GOP anti-science stupidity.
Throw in the deep state, NWO, false flag conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and 'young earth' intelligent design nitwits for good measure. The right owns them.
'Usually'? Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Empire of Japan and most of human history contradict your claim,
Don't overthink it. Help I do not need.
Yoda.
The 'race' is tongue in cheek and my every post was organic to the demand and to my own interests, narrations and humor.
Shitty Orwell Theatre Presents: We Have Always Been at War with Baltimore, and Other Tales
Monday, July 29th, 2019
by Shower Cap | American Madness Journal | 0 comments
http://showercapblog.com/shitty-orwell-theatre-presents-we-have-always-been-at-war-with-baltimore-and-other-tales/
I don’t know why I do this, y’all. Every damn day is the same, reading the news is like biting into a donut, hoping for raspberry filling, only to wind up with a mouthful of cat litter and broken glass.
Oh well, I’ve built up some calluses on the roof of my mouth by now, might as well do this shit.
Turns out there are some limits to the economic strategy of Watching TV All Day Like an Indoor Kid on Summer Vacation While Hitching a Free Ride on the Last Guy’s Prosperity Train, as the Commerce Department woke Wilbur Ross up just long enough to deliver disappointing growth numbers, including a downward revision of 2018 estimates. Look, at Donnie Dotard’s age, 2.1% growth is actually really impressive*.
Congratulations, taxpayers! It’s time for YOU to foot the bill for another multi-billion dollar round of Dipshit Trade War farmer bailouts!
For a guy who rails against socialism all the time, the Carcinogenic Creamsicle sure does love socializing his fuckups! Anyway, I suppose the next logical step is to bail out all the families who lost an income or two in an ICE raid, right? RIGHT?
In the latest example of his all-consuming fixation on his predecessor, President Crotchvoid launched, totally unbidden, a deranged little rant blaming Obama for his own inability to hire a single staffer competent enough to operate a fucking thermostat.
Imagine thinking something that petty, let alone saying it out loud to a room filled with reporters. Of course, you know there are tens of thousands of thoroughly brainwashed MAGAdrones all over this country, who hear that shit and shout ethnic slurs at their screens over the deep state conspiracy to make their beloved Turd Emperor slightly chilly at work.
Oh, and Fuckhead also called for an investigation into Obama’s book deal. And that might seem absolutely nucking futz to you, but you have to look at it from his perspective. Put yourself in his gout-warped shoes.
“Look, in my experience, the President of the United States is a sub-literate, gibbering, fool. I’m so fucking stupid, I have to hire ghost writers to sign my fucking checks. Write a whole book? No chance.”
Jaggy MAGA Teen Nick Sandmann will not, alas, be handed a large stack of the Washington Post’s money, because his funny little lawsuit, which tried to hold WaPo accountable not for content of their article but for his lawyer’s third-rate fanfic extrapolations from it, has been dismissed. Oh well, he’ll always have his throbbing sense of victimhood, which is more precious to a young conservative than fucking oxygen.
Government Cheese Goebbels is understandably concerned about his reelection prospects, what with all the failure and atrocity and whatnot. After his shockingly-racist-even-by-his-standards-and-those-standards-are-LOW-y’all attacks on the so-called Squad failed to rescue his approval ratings from the bottom of the Lollapalooza Port-a-Potty where they’ve been dwelling, he convened his brain trust to craft a new set of policy proposals designed to appeal to the American voter. JUST KIDDING he picked another enemy, and you’ll never guess what color that enemy’s skin is.
Yes, it’s Fuck Elijah Cummings and Fuck Baltimore for Electing Him Week at the Shart House, because that’s more fun to talk about than the anemic growth numbers. Congressman Cummings just subpoenaed some of his senior officials’ private communications, y’see, so it’s time to sic the white supremacist hate mob, excuse me, the “Trump coalition” on him. If Lil’ Donnie Two-Scoops prays at night, it’s for the stochastic terrorism to work quicker.
Like, I know we’ve been boiling this frog for a couple years now, but I admit I’m still not used to watching a politician openly proclaim his naked, unashamed, hatred of so many of his constituents.
“No human being would want to live there,” he said, referring to a major city in the country he happens to be President of. That’s several hundred thousand non-humans, for the record…around 3 million, if we count the metropolitan area.
I don’t want to seem controversial, but I kinda believe that Dehumanizing People is Bad and the President Should Stop Doing It. There, I said it.
Furthermore, the ease and speed with which he’s transferred the target for his dehumanizing hate speech from immigrants to American citizens is not exactly the bee’s knees, and I have to wonder if the inevitable “My Democratic opponent is a cockroach who must be exterminated” ads will be found to violate Facebook’s terms of service….
Anyway, it’s weird that this totally-not-about-race-how-dare-you beef with Charm City** has expanded to encompass Al Sharpton, but not, for whatever reason, Mobtown’s*** own pasty-white slumlord presidential son-in-law.
(Incidentally, Baltimore slaps back, and if you haven’t read this Sun editorial yet…treat yourself.)
Brad Parscale’s entire 2020 plan seems to consist of Strawberry Shartcake personally attacking every single African-American citizen, one by one, on Twitter, in the hopes that there are hidden enclaves of white folks who stayed home in the midterms because he just wasn’t quite racist enough, and if I had nickel for every horse race pundit breathlessly praising the brilliance of this “strategy,” my beer fridge would ne’er go unstocked again.
Mitch McConnell, in an uncharacteristic departure from his traditional posture of smug hypocrisy, is suddenly mega-pissy that everyone’s calling him out for blocking election security bills, calling him a “Russian asset” JUST BECAUSE he’s behaving exactly like a Senate Majority Leader would if he were a fucking Russian asset, in that he is BLOCKING ELECTION SECURITY BILLS.
Honestly, what would a Russian asset do any differently? Jam a funnel in Chuck Schumer’s mouth on the Senate floor and pour borscht down his throat?
Wrinkly Gamera claims the bills are “partisan.” That’s right, folks. Defending the United States of America from a foreign enemy, which has attacked us, will attack us again, and according to Rugged Robert Mueller, is attacking us even as you read this hilariously juvenile blog, is PARTISAN.
I mean, I was already a proud Democrat, but now that we’re the only team who thinks national security is a good thing, I may just set up automatic monthly donations.
And golly gee, it looks like Vlad Putin may have to interfere in his own country’s elections for a change, judging by his violent authoritarian crackdown on demonstrators over the weekend. By the way, you know Hairplug Himmler watches footage of Russian cops beating up protesters like Paula Deen peering through the window of a butter factory.
Dan Coats stood out like the sorest of thumbs in the Shart Administration, not only was he qualified for his post, he actually wanted to do his job and protect the U.S. from Russian interference rather than inviting our enemies over for scones and Mr. Pibb.
So naturally, he’s been forced out, to be replaced by some random haircut called John Ratcliffe, who apparently landed the gig when Il Douche saw him babbling like howler monkey jacked up on bath salts on his magic teevee box.
You may remember the last fellow who successfully auditioned for a cabinet-level post via televised Hannity-style monologue was the “masculine toilet” guy, and I can’t tell you how I pleased I am to realize that I have totally forgotten that particular twit’s name.
Anyway, the last grown-up has officially been kicked out of the slumber party, the kids have used daddy’s credit card to order 80 pounds of Sour Patch Kids on Amazon, and they’re taking a crowbar to the lock on the liquor cabinet. Hope my country survives. Tune in next week.
Signing the 9/11 First Responders bill his party had to be publicly shamed (for weeks) into passing, the Velveeta Vulgarian seized the opportunity to move on the spotlight like a bitch, hogging the credit for himself, refusing to invite any Democrats, even prominent co-sponsors, to the signing.
Rand Paul wasn’t onstage, but that was only because he was lurking in the crowd, picking those filthy taker first responders’ pockets, muttering “job creators are the REAL heroes” under his breath.
And because he never met any valor he didn’t want to thieve, the Bonespur Buttplug revisited a favorite old lie, that he came down to ground zero himself, digging through the rubble with his normal, adequate, big boy hands, and certainly not bragging about how he now owned the tallest building in Manhattan thanks to Osama bin Laden taking out the competition, which of course is something only a complete psychopath would do.
Anyway, expect him to apply for a chunk of these funds. He’s done it before, after all.
Just to put the What the Fuck is Wrong with You cherry on the tackiness sundae, Shart-O actually made a joke about the stage collapsing. To the the 9/11 first responders. Never has one room been so utterly misread.
I bet you’re awfully proud to live in the land of free, right? We’ve got so much freedom here, any 19-year-old kid, warped by racist far-right “literature,” can wander over to a state with lax gun laws, get his hands on an assault rifle, and start slaughtering strangers at a festival!
What’s that you say? What about the rights of the people he killed? Didn’t the two children he murdered have the right to decades of all the infinite sorrows and joys life has to offer? Don’t all of us deserve the right to walk around free from the fear that some heavily-armed maniac can, at any moment, turn any corner of this country into a war zone, on a whim?
WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KINDA HIPPIE?
Well, FUCK YOU, HIPPIE! This is MURICA, dammit, and why’re you wailing and moaning and lamenting the tragic loss of life, when you could be PROFITING OFF IT?
That’s what demented cartoonist/sanctimonious conservative internet troll Scott Adams did! When opportunity knocks, you don’t wait for the bodies to cool, you PIMP YOUR SHITTY APP. (Sociopathy is a conservative value now. Alongside racism, ignorance, greed, and the Unforgivable Overcooking of Perfectly Good Steaks.)
And I better not hear any bleeding heart (GET IT HAW HAW HAW) whining about the synagogue shooting last night, either! Or the shootings in Wisconsin! Bullets have rights, flesh doesn’t, that’s in the Constitution!
Hey look, it seems Captain AmericaFirst runs his speeches by his foreign paymasters before delivering them, how thoughtful! Yup yup, back during the 2016 campaign, his plutocrat chum, Tom Barrack, served as a dutiful little errand boy for the government of the United Arab Emirates, who apparently paid for the privilege of sliding a few lines into a big energy speech, fun! Whelp, enjoy your federal investigation, Tommy Boy!
Anyway, the same team that outsources energy policy to Mid East oil barons wants to boot half a million needy kids off free school breakfast and lunch programs, because American greatness seems to be directly correlated with the suffering of children, at least in the eyes of the Clowncar Full of Rectums currently governing our country.
Goddammit, I insist on leaving y’all on a high note after wading through all this shit with me tonight. “But Cap, what possible good news could there be, here in the Gurgling Sewage Swamps of Shitty Wonderland?”
You remember Jason Kander? Well, it seems he’s made significant strides in his battle with PTSD, and while he’s not yet ready to leap back into electoral politics, he’s returned to public service, working to expand the Veterans Community Project, the very nonprofit that helped him when he needed it most.
Now, I can’t speak for you, but I find that inspirational as fuck. Jason’s just one of the tens of millions of good, good, people on our team, fighting to win our great country back from the grifters and the hate-mongers. Draw strength from his story, if you need it. I’ll see you soon, Resisters.
*Yes, this is a dick joke.
**Yes, I googled “Baltimore nicknames,” do you want me to just write fuckin’ “Baltimore” over and over?
***See above.
Poster Summary For: Tornado Alley (PROG)
Milestone Alert.....I arrived here in early Feb of this year and maybe by 11:00 p.m. CDT, tonight, I will post past one of our more irritating adversaries in # of posts.
conix……... 07/29/2019 08:30:39 PM 3146
blackhawks 07/29/2019 10:00:10 PM 3133
I think I'll save if for tomorrow though.
Man how time flies, and posts accumulate, when you're working the righty speedbags and yucking it up with the like minded, the fully functioning minds.
Anyway only two dormant posters 'till I reach Susie, sometime in Sept I estimate; maybe 2-3 weeks into the NFL season.
LOL! And I mean a LOT of 'em.
Ah well the Con 'done gone' and make folks dig up the stories about
Kushner's rat infested properties in Baltimore - Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah Go Chris Hayes!!!
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-beleaguered-tenants-of-kushnerville
The Beleaguered Tenants of ‘Kushnerville’
Tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes complain about a property owner who they say leaves their homes in disrepair, humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out. Few of them know that their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.
by Alec MacGillis May 23, 2017, 5 a.m. EDT
This story was co-published with The New York Times Magazine.
The Townhouse on High Seas Court in the Cove Village development, in the Baltimore suburb of Essex, was not exactly the Cape Cod retreat that its address implied: It was a small unit looking onto a parking lot, the windows of its two bedrooms so high and narrow that a child would have had to stand on a chair to see out of them.
But to Kamiia Warren, who moved into the townhouse in 2004, it was a refuge, and a far cry from the East Baltimore neighborhood where she grew up. “I mean, there were bunny rabbits all hopping around,” she told me recently.
In the townhouse next door lived an older woman with whom Warren became friendly, even doing her grocery shopping once in a while. But over the course of a few months, the woman started acting strangely. She began accosting Warren’s visitors.
She shouted through the walls during the day. And at night she banged on the wall, right where Warren kept the bassinet in which her third child slept, waking him up.
Warren sent a letter reporting the problem to the complex’s property manager, a company called Sawyer Realty Holdings. When there was no response, she decided to move out. In January 2010, she submitted the requisite form giving two months’ notice that she was transferring her Section 8 voucher — the federal low-income subsidy that helped her pay the rent — elsewhere.
The complex’s on-site manager signed the form a week later, checking the line that read “The tenant gave notice in accordance with the lease.”
8. See, this is why the whole idea that there's strategy here falls flat
Dotard is a feral animal with an instinct for survival. That's all.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212329994
I see what they did there. LOL!
My version's too explicit for a billboard, I suppose.
You'll find that in the GOP 'dish it out but can't take it file'.
Oxymoron alert......
'Fascist Left'
Hope your feelings isn't hurt.
See you that and raise you this.....
We need to add an additional moniker, 'Mitch the Bolshevik Bitch'.
Does this coat make me look...……….treasonous?
McConnell lashes out at media, Democrats over "Moscow Mitch" label
Moscow Turtle's reaction suggests that he must be running low on shell wax.
https://www.axios.com/mitch-mcconnell-election-security-russian-interference-de1db459-9cee-4e74-b578-df141356567f.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100&fbclid=IwAR3HmxH9dq-MxuYbFVLTZdGOeezyxUSuYq3HinDQwlExc4pwSqiFg6jK8K8
Zachary Basu
1 hour ago
McConnell lashes out at media, Democrats over "Moscow Mitch" label
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the Senate floor Monday to angrily defend himself against allegations that he is doing the bidding of Russian President Vladimir Putin by blocking a series of election security bills proposed by Democrats.
"Last week I stopped Democrats from passing an election law bill through the Senate by unanimous consent, a bill that was so partisan that it only received one Republican vote over in the House. My Democratic friends asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that everyone knows isn't unanimous and never will be unanimous.
So I objected. ... Over the last several days I was called unpatriotic, un-American, and essentially treasonous by a couple of left-wing pundits on the basis of bold-faced lies. I was accused of aiding and abetting the very man I've singled out as an adversary and opposed for nearly 20 years, Vladimir Putin."
What about the last 3 years asshole?
The backdrop: In the 24 hours after former special counsel Robert Mueller testified about Russian interference in the 2016 election, McConnell and several other Republicans blocked election security bills from being passed by unanimous consent on the grounds that they were partisan, and that the GOP has already take steps to improve security for the upcoming election.
Democrats and many in the media responded by questioning whether McConnell's actions would effectively amount to an invitation for Russia to interfere again in 2020. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough dubbed McConnell "Moscow Mitch," while Washington Post columnist Dana Milibank wrote a scathing op-ed accusing him of being a "Russian asset." In the op-ed, Milibank noted that McConnell had blocked attempts to pass the following bills:
A Democratic bill passed in the House that would "direct $600 million in election assistance to states and require backup paper ballots."
"A bipartisan bill requiring Facebook, Google and other Internet companies to disclose purchasers of political ads, to identify foreign influence."
"A bipartisan bill to ease cooperation between state election officials and federal intelligence agencies."
"A bipartisan bill imposing sanctions on any entity that attacks a U.S. election."
"A bipartisan bill with severe new sanctions on Russia for its cybercrimes."
The big picture: McConnell maintains that he takes seriously the threat of election interference, and that Republicans have already taken steps to strengthen security. But just last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that the Russians are "absolutely intent on trying to interfere with our elections," and that the U.S. has not done enough to deter the Kremlin from repeating what it did in 2016.
What if Abraham Lincoln had lived?
His plan for Reconstruction would've been difficult to realize
But you're right about who he would land his first kicks on, and where, IF he could be here.
I think we first ease him along by taking him to the theater, again. Show him Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of him. What would he say to Lewis if he could meet him?
"Dude, you nailed it. And you're a hell of lot better actor than that s.o.b. Booth."
By Allen Guelzo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/13/what-if-abraham-lincoln-had-lived/?utm_term=.9d2c6b965cb2
Allen Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Director of the Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College. His most recent book is "Gettysburg: The Last Invasion."
April 13, 2015
President Lincoln was assassinated 150 years ago. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
The lead .41-calibre bullet with which John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865, was the most lethal gunshot in American history. Only five days earlier, the main field army of the Southern Confederacy had surrendered at Appomattox Court House, and the four dreary years of civil war were yielding to a spring of national rebirth. But by then, the man to whom everyone looked for guidance in reconstructing the nation was dead.
The result was a costly but successful war followed by a botched and even more costly reconstruction. Lincoln’s vice president, Andrew Johnson, took the presidential oath within hours of Lincoln’s death. But Johnson had none of Lincoln’s political skills, much less Lincoln’s convictions about justice and equality for the 4 million slaves freed after the Civil War. The defeated Confederates gained a second wind from Johnson’s follies, and by the time he left office in 1869, reconstruction was already faltering. The victorious North sank into “reconstruction fatigue,” while the former Confederates simply substituted Jim Crow for slavery.
Would it have been different if Booth’s bullet had missed? Having guided the nation through a wartime valley of shadows, could Lincoln have found, as he once described it: “some practical system by which the two races could gradually live themselves out of their old relation to each other, and both come out better prepared for the new”?
Lincoln never laid out a specific plan for reconstruction. Still, if he had lived, all the evidence points us toward four paths to reconstruction which he would likely have adopted:
Voting rights: If the Confederates wanted amnesty, Lincoln, as he wrote in January 1864, could not “avoid exacting in return universal suffrage, or, at least, suffrage on the basis of intelligence and military service.” Even if the Confederates balked at trading amnesty for voting rights, there was still no practical alternative to black voting rights, since only the voting power of the newly freed slaves could offset the political dominance of unbowed whites in the South.
So, safe bet Abe would not be a 'big fan'....already picking up a Trumpian phrase....of current GOP efforts at voter suppression, 'caging', gerrymandering and phony claims about voter fraud.
Economic integration: Economic independence gives heft to political aspiration, something Lincoln understood from his own struggle to rise from poverty. “I want every man to have the chance — and I believe a black man is entitled to it -- in which he can better his condition,” Lincoln said in 1860.
But in Lincoln’s world, economic opportunity was tied to the ownership of land, and the newly freed slaves owned none. Lincoln’s means for redressing this imbalance was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen’s Bureau.
It was launched in March 1865 with a mandate to claim land that had been abandoned by plantation owners — or land that had been forfeited by non-payment of taxes during the war — and divide it in 40-acre plots for former slaves to farm as their own.
Good luck with that now, Abe. You're a smart guy right? You looked at that video about integration, civil rights and voting rights in the 1960's and the Southern Strategy?
No, that last had nothing to do with Sherman's March. It was a nakedly racist play for white votes by, yep, the GO-fuckin'-P.
Western development: The Civil War actually sprang from the dispute of free and slave states over the future of the Western territories — and Lincoln regarded the West as an integral part of Reconstruction. He signed homestead legislation that opened huge tracts of public land to private ownership, and he pledged government support to a transcontinental railroad that would carry the harvests of those homesteads to world markets.
On the day of his assassination, Lincoln promised Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax that he planned to point Union veterans “to the gold and silver that waits for them in the West.” Turning the freedmen’s gaze westward would accomplish the same goal as the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Uh, huh, who do you imagine is doing nothing about infrastructure and who would cry 'socialism' about much of what you did? Same assholes.
Cleaning the Confederate slate: Lincoln was not exaggerating, in his second inaugural address, when he spoke of his hope of malice toward none and charity for all after the war. He had no wish to hunt down the Confederacy’s leaders after the war ended, but he also had no wish to stop them leaving.
Oh no, love it or leave it! One for Trump.
“Frighten them out of the country,” he said, “open the gates, let down the bars … scare them off.” This would clear the way for a new leadership in the South, a leadership of Unionist white Americans and their natural allies, the freed slaves, which in turn would establish a “practical system by which the two races could gradually live themselves out of their old relation.”
Bear in mind, though, that whatever Lincoln’s intentions, he would have faced stiff opposition. White northerners hated slavery, but they also disliked African Americans and they routinely turned back state ballot initiatives on black voting rights.
Similarly, Lincoln could scarcely have guaranteed the operation of his “practical system” without an ongoing military presence in the South to enforce it.
Yet Americans were chronically unwilling, in times of peace, to foot large military budgets, and the soldiers themselves were mostly civilians-in-uniform who wanted nothing more than to go home at war’s end.
Above all, Lincoln would have been in office only until 1869, which is not a long time to implement the vast programs his version of Reconstruction would have required. His successor would surely have been (as Johnson’s was) Ulysses Grant, and Grant had problems of his own.
Even Abraham Lincoln might not have been able to bulldoze his way to a triumphant “Mission Accomplished.” But it is hard to imagine how we could have done worse. One hundred and fifty years later, we are still struggling to do better.
Not a question of 'getting away with' anything but rather accurately calling out a racist POTUS and his equally bigoted supporters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/25/fox-polling-finds-that-americans-think-trumps-tweets-were-racist-fox-didnt-cover-it/?utm_term=.a9ffec6ed224
Fox News polling: Americans think Trump’s tweets were racist
The Fox poll also asked respondents directly whether they thought the “go back” tweets were racist. Most said they were, including half of white respondents. Republicans and Trump voters generally said they weren’t — though even about a fifth of those who supported him in 2016 said the tweets were racist.
Imagine that? 20% of the morons who supported Trump believe his tweets were racist.
That overlaps with a detail that’s buried a bit in the poll. Fox asked a question in this new poll that it also asked in August 2017, shortly after the violence in Charlottesville: Does Trump respect racial minorities?
Most respondents said he doesn’t, with Democrats and independents seeing Trump’s views on race less favorably than Republicans or other Trump supporters.
But since 2017, even Trump’s base is more skeptical about his views on race. Among Republicans, the density of those who say he respects racial minorities fell 14 points over the past two years. Less than two-thirds of evangelicals now think Trump respects minorities; nearly three-quarters did two years ago.
Again, this poll is the first live-caller poll to ask about the tweets that drove much of last week’s political conversation. That most Americans see Trump’s tweets as racist and that Republican support for Trump’s racial views has dropped is an interesting finding.
But it doesn’t appear to have been considered particularly newsworthy by Fox News itself. A review of closed-captions from Wednesday captured by the Internet Archive and a search of Fox content on the site TVEyes turned up several mentions of the poll itself on air during Wednesday’s primetime hours and on Thursday morning — but none of its findings on Trump’s tweets or his views on race.
Trump's Lackeys Spent a Second-Straight Weekend Defending His Racist Tweets
It was a new batch of racist tweets, to be clear.
By Jack Holmes
Jul 29, 2019
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a28537523/mick-mulvaney-rick-scott-defend-donald-trump-racist-baltimore-tweets/?source=nl&utm_source=nl_esq&utm_medium=email&date=072919&src=nl&utm_campaign=17625248
Last weekend, the president's lackeys spent Sunday on the television defending his racist tweets. This past weekend, the president's lackeys spent Sunday on the television defending his racist tweets. In fairness, they were different tweets each time: a week ago, it was Donald Trump's call for four congresswomen of color to go back to the countries they came from.
This time, it was an attack on Congressman Elijah Cummings, who represents parts of Baltimore, a majority-black city the President of the United States called a "disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess" where "no human being would want to live." The implication, of course, is that it's a place for vermin, not for people, which has the obvious effect of dehumanizing the people who very much do live there. It's racism.
That didn't stop our fearless leader's various defenders from suggesting it was acceptable behavior because Cummings had criticized the conditions of the migrant camps at the border.
Oh, you questioned the morality of the United States government running facilities where kids keep dying? You should've known the president would unleash a racist tirade in your direction. Just ask his (Permanently) Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney.
"I'm not reading between the lines," Chris Wallace said. "I'm reading the lines." That's the thing about dispensing with the inside voice, as Trump has done. It's no longer a matter of interpretation.
But of course Mulvaney had to make things weird, bringing up, unprompted, that Congressman Adam Schiff is Jewish while suggesting the attacks on Cummings had "zero" to do with race. Convincing! Mulvaney knows better than all this, however: in 2016, he called Trump a "terrible human being."
Now he's just another lackey, defending the president's proposal for The Wall after having called it, back in 2015, "absurd and almost childish." Maybe it became a Very Adult Plan over the last few years. Whatever's necessary to stay close to power.
Mulvaney wasn't the only one suggesting the president's racist spasm was justified because Cummings criticized (Also Acting) Homeland Security Chief Kevin McAleenan. Florida Senator Rick Scott got in on the action, too, albeit with a certain lack of commitment.
Aaron Rupar
? @atrupar
CHUCK TODD: Senator, do you think Trump's racial tweets are good politics?@SenRickScott: Well, Rep Cummings attacked our border agents
T: So that justifies a racial resentment tweet?
SCOTT: Look, I didn't do the tweets. I'm disappointed in Rep Cummings
While many Border Patrol officers are surely doing what McAleenan called his "level best" in his exchange with Cummings, some 9,000 current and former agents are also part of a Facebook group where they joke about migrant deaths and sexually humiliating sitting members of Congress.
The current head of Border Patrol, Carla Provost, was a member of the group. This seems like a cultural problem at the agency. Also, kids keep dying and the conditions are horrific. Cummings' criticism was directed at the head of a government agency, which gets to the heart of his mandate as chair of the House Oversight Committee, but it should not be verboten to criticize the behavior of any agent of the state—even a police officer or a Border Patrol agent—if it's merited.
Here, Scott half-heartedly suggested Cummings went after rank-and-file agents, so anything goes in response. Then, having suggested "let's look at what [Trump] said and why he did it," Scott said, "Look, I didn't do the tweets, Chuck. I can't talk about why he did what he did." Brave!
Then he lied and suggested congressional Democrats have not provided any resources to address the problem after they just (foolishly) handed over $4.6 billion in border funding for the administration to do with as it pleased.
But even if Cummings had gone after individual border agents, it would not merit the president's response, which has been just the latest in an escalating campaign of racist division as the 2020 cycle kicks off in earnest.
Unfortunately, this seems to be his strategy, with the aid and comfort of his hopeless sycophants, his vassals seeking influence and power in an emerging national order in which allegiance to The Leader is paramount
The Rot You Smell Is a Racist Potus
Trump and his views are the real infestations in America.
By Charles M. Blow
Opinion Columnist July 28, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/opinion/trump-racist-baltimore.html?em_pos=small&ref=headline&nl_art=1&te=1&nl=opinion-today&emc=edit_ty_20190729?campaign_id=39&instance_id=11248&segment_id=15650&user_id=4598f2b6c0cd59a7a59daee9f650852d®i_id=22212446emc=edit_ty_20190729
It seems maddeningly repetitive to have to return time and again to the fact that Donald Trump is a racist, but it must be done. It must be done because it is a foundational character issue, one that supersedes and informs many others, in much the same way that his sexism and xenophobia does.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted that Representative Elijah Cummings’s district “is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” a “very dangerous & filthy place” and “No human being would want to live there.” Cummings is black, as are most people in his district.
This talk of infestation is telling, because he only seems to apply it to issues concerning black and brown people.
He has sniped about the “Ebola infested areas of Africa.” He has called Congressman John Lewis’s Atlanta district “crime infested” as well as telling him to focus on “the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S.” He has called sanctuary cities a “crime infested & breeding concept.”
He has talked about how “illegal immigrants” will “pour into and infest our Country.” He has called the presence of the MS-13 gang members “in certain parts of our country” an “infestation.”
None of this is about crime as a discrete phenomenon, but rather about inextricably linking criminality to blackness. White supremacy isn’t necessarily about rendering white people as superhuman; it is just as often about rendering nonwhite people as subhuman. Either way the hierarchy is established, with whiteness assuming the superior position.
A survey of Trump’s tweets reveals that his attachment of criminality to populations is almost exclusively to black and brown people and to “inner cities,” an urban euphemism for black and brown neighborhoods.
Trump has repeatedly made clear his view, from the Central Park Five case to a series of tweets he published in 2013, writing: “Sadly, the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and hispanics — a tough subject — must be discussed.”
But, blackness doesn’t make one more apt to abuse others, any more than whiteness makes one apt to abuse opioids. Human beings respond to their environments, to their needs and desires, to their hopelessness and despair.
For instance, crime raged in New York City in the 1800s when there were almost no black people in the city. Indeed, in 1985, the writer and prodigious chronicler of New York City, Edward Robb Ellis, wrote in The New York Times about a citizen complaining in 1852 that “the increase of crime, the ferocity and frequency of assaults on private citizens at night in this city, and the … imbecility and inefficiency of the police is creating great alarm in the decent and orderly portion of our inhabitants.”
According to Ross, Walt Whitman himself said, “New York is one of the most crime-haunted and dangerous cities in Christendom.”
Were the white people living in New York at the time racially, pathologically predisposed to criminality? Of course not. And black and brown people now aren’t. That historical and sociological context is lost on the racists.
Furthermore, there is nothing benign in Trump’s language. Infestations justify exterminations. There is a reason that Martin Luther King Jr. said, “In the final analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide.” The mouth that demeans may not always be attached to the hand that destroys, but they are most assuredly connected in spirit and in spite.
It would be easy to prosecute a case against Trump on policy, but policies are not at the center of the creature. White supremacy, white nationalism and white patriarchy are.
The core of this man is racist in a way that is so fused to his sense of the world that he is incapable of seeing it as racist. It is instinctual for him to attack people of color. It is instinctual for him to denigrate the places they live and the countries to which they trace their heritage.
He has so bought into the white supremacist narrative that his ideology no longer requires, in his own thinking, a label. For him, this lie of it is just the truth of it, and what is “right” can’t be racist.
This is a means by which racists have operated throughout history, to rescue themselves from association with those who flayed the flesh of the enslaved, who raped the women and sold the children, who released the dogs and aimed the water cannons, who noosed the necks and set ablaze the crosses.
Those demonstrative few, those consumed by hatred and sadism, those were the racists. Not the exponentially larger groups who swallowed and regurgitated a warped view of the world, a doctored view of history, and supposedly damning “facts” without contextualization.
Trump is a racist. Say that out loud. Say it with the profundity that it deserves. That to me is the beginning and the ending of the rationale I need to stand steadfast in my resistance.
Your posts confirm that don't have even a passing familiarity with reality.
Significant Digits For Monday, July 29, 2019
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/significant-digits-for-monday-july-29-2019/
6 injuries
Six people were injured on a British cruise ship bound for Norway in a “mass brawl” involving a 43-year old man, a 41-year-old woman, a “black-tie evening,” “large amounts of alcohol,” and “a passenger taking offence at another holidaymaker dressed as a clown.”
While the cruise line denied that there was anyone aboard dressed as a clown, this is basically exactly how I envision all cruises to be, and thus why I remain to this day a land lover. [BBC]
4.63 inches of rain
Las Vegas has experienced 4.63 inches of rain this year, well above its typical 2.38 inches. This has occasioned a grasshopper invasion in the desert. On weather radar, it appeared that there were two storms over the city: one was an actual storm, and the other was the “massive hordes of grasshoppers” that have recently made Sin City their new, damp home. [CNN]
$40 million
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Quentin Tarantino’s essentially plotless movie about the late ’60s, Westerns, the Manson Family and people lighting cigarettes, made $40 million from 3,659 North American theaters, a career best for Tarantino. It finished second to “The Lion King” retread, a movie about lions, which pulled in $76 million. [Variety]
Capon, sometimes it's a good idea to read the info found at the links in posts to gain, you know, insight and understanding.
Your post is a clumsy attempt at...….
9. Gaslighting
…..thus creating an alternate reality and claiming it to be true." In other words, textbook gaslighting.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126203946
We Can't Elect a Psychopath President: 10 Psychological Terms for Making Sense of This Traumatic Moment in U.S. Election History
Has so much aberrant behavior ever dominated a presidential campaign before?
By pretty much every measure, Donald Trump is the king of gaslighting, a mind game he’s employed on a massive scale to disorient tens of millions of people in his quest for the presidency.
Trump has deftly used gaslighting throughout his campaign to avoiding responsibility for pretty much anything, employing topsy-turvy “logic” to instead place blame on everyone else. So, the media is out to get him, the election is rigged and debate moderators are unfair.
New Republic's Brian Beutler highlights Trump’s attempted gaslighting of voters to deny his use of “birtherism and other forms of racist agitation to build a political base for himself" by pointing the finger at Hillary Clinton’s long-term adviser Sidney Blumenthal.
Even electronics do not escape unscathed: Trump's debate mic was purposely sabotaged, and a “lousy earpiece” is to blame for his refusal to disavow David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.
Perhaps Trump’s most blatant use of gaslighting came just after the leak of the 2005 Access Hollywood video. Following the revelations, a number of women—at least 11 so far—have publicly stated, using detailed examples of Trump’s alleged sexual abuse, that Trump behaves in real life as he described on the tape.
Trump’s response has been to dub all the women liars, accuse Clinton, a Mexican billionaire and a globalist conspiracy of trying to destroy him, and suggest that he’ll sue them all.
According to Paul Rosenberg, Trump’s reaction "was not surprising: a wholesale denial, accusing everyone else of lying, secrecy and bad faith, thus creating an alternate reality and claiming it to be true."
In other words, textbook gaslighting. Rosenberg cites psychotherapist and political analyst Leah McElrath, who writes that “Trump’s statement is an eerie replica of psychological manipulations made by abusers after episodes of abuse.”
I'm thinking inadvertent lobotomy, though I'd prefer for them the icepick under the eyelid method. It's not as though any useful tissue would be destroyed.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kbzj8a/a-history-of-the-lobotomy
Now why does that conjure for me the image of Trump supporters with swastikas carved in their foreheads?