All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Seriously I can't get over how insane it is that the way this guy responds to emails is to have his secretary print out the email so he can write his message on the print out in sharpie and have his secretary scan it and send it back. Like that is straight up psycho stuff.

[zinderel]

Ahhhhhhh... you know how Trump bothered that reporter for years after making a remark about his fingers? Well... this just happened?

He sent that to a reporter... man, too bad this didn't happen sooner for your update WBE.

Oh good lord. Now, in addition to being a filthy racist shitbag, he's a child, too? "I know you are, but what am I, nyeah, nyeah, nyeah!"

THIS is the guy the Republicans swear fealty to. Or are too scared of to speak up...

[Malvolio]

Today, I listened to a bit of John Fugelsang's show on Sirius XM. He's pretty liberal, but he will sometimes debate with conservative callers. Today, he had a woman on whom he challenged to defend Trump. Her most ridiculous reason for voting for and supporting him was that "...he's a regular Joe!" I literally laughed out loud. Regular Joe? He was born on third base and acts like he hit a double and then stole third base. He brags about the super-models he dated while still married to his second wife. He's made an entire career of making his name synonymous with a caricature of a rich guy. He's the furthest thing from a regular Joe.

Maybe he's what regular Joes think they would be if they won the lottery. Well, Donald Trump won the lottery on the day he was born. There is nothing regular or Joe about him.

[Mister Mets]

You're entitled to terrible opinions. We've seen 'em.

Why is my concern about the poll showing that Democrats have a better opinion about socialism than capitalism a terrible opinion?

Do you believe that socialism is better than capitalism? If so, why?

[numberthirty]

The one actual upside of this Omarosa one ring circus is?

You know good and well that Michael Avenatti is sitting somewhere fuming over being utterly and completely upstaged.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Seriously I can't get over how insane it is that the way this guy responds to emails is to have his secretary print out the email so he can write his message on the print out in sharpie and have his secretary scan it and send it back. Like that is straight up psycho stuff.

But his uber-loyal lemmings will cheer what Trump did, saying they're proud of their president for hitting back against the haters.

Oh good lord. Now, in addition to being a filthy racist shitbag, he's a child, too? "I know you are, but what am I, nyeah, nyeah, nyeah!"

THIS is the guy the Republicans swear fealty to. Or are too scared of to speak up...

How about both?

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Trump Signs Act Named After John McCain Without Mentioning McCain Once

The president couldn’t say one nice thing about the senator before signing the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. No surprise there, given how petty Trump is and how he lives for nursing vendettas, and McCain is near the top of his personal hate list.

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‘NO TAPES,’ Trump Tweets As He Brags Omarosa Called Him A Civil Rights Champ

“I don’t have that word in my vocabulary and never have,” the president says about her claims that an audio recording captured him using a racial slur. Well, dear, let's hear that tape and prove Dolt45 wrong.

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It’s Official: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Is An Ostrich About Wildfires

Two days after railing against the “uninformed” left, the Interior secretary claimed California’s catastrophic blazes have “nothing to do with climate change.” Suuuuuuure, Ryan. Whatever you say.

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Tech Companies Promised To Stop Helping Neo-Nazis Raise Money. They Haven’t.

They cut off Richard Spencer but still do business with the racist websites that publish his work.

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The Economy Won’t Save Republicans In The Midterms

Donald Trump keeps bragging about the economy — an unemployment rate of just 3.9 percent, 3.7 million jobs created since he took office, consumer confidence up. Will this help the Republicans in the 2018 midterms? Probably not.

If anything, the good economic performance paradoxically will hurt the GOP. Why? Because it’s not trickling down to ordinary people. Voters hear news reports and claims about the strong economy but know that their own wages are still lousy. This reinforces their sense that someone else is making off with the gains. And the statistics bear them out. Because of structural changes in the job market, real wages adjusted for inflation are actually flat.

What structural changes? A shift in power from the worker to the boss. A shift to part-time, temp and contract work. An escalation in the war against unions.

This the first time in modern economic history that very low unemployment rates and tight labor markets have not led to higher worker earnings. Regular people may not grasp the finer nuances of labor market theory, but they know when the boss is giving them a good screwing.

Same story with the tax cut. Republicans thought it would give them bragging rights with voters. But so little of it actually trickles down that Republican candidates have stopped bragging about it. Rather, Democrats hit pay dirt when they emphasize that the immense deficit created by the 10-year cuts have become the excuse for Republicans to target cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

[Iron Maiden]

Ahhhhhhh... you know how Trump bothered that reporter for years after making a remark about his fingers? Well... this just happened?



He sent that to a reporter... man, too bad this didn't happen sooner for your update WBE.

Does anyone else thing that Trump's signature looks like the read out from a really bad lie detector scan with all those spikes? BTW, the person that is being referred to as remarking about Trump's small hands is Graydon Carter, who recently retired as EIC of Vanity Fair. He covered Trump for years on the NYC scene, before his Presidential run. He calls him "the short fingered vulgarian", back from his days on Spy magazine (i miss that one!). He was the one that invited Trump as a guest to the now Infamous White House Correspondents dinner where Obama roasted him from the podium. He didn't know Obama was going to do that though.

[Iron Maiden]

B
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Trump Signs Act Named After John McCain Without Mentioning McCain Once

The president couldn’t say one nice thing about the senator before signing the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. No surprise there, given how petty Trump is and how he lives for nursing vendettas, and McCain is near the top of his personal hate list.

**********

They talked about this on Chris Matthews last night. That wasn't all. Later on, he made a remark about McCain's thumbs down vote so you know he's still holding a grudge about that. How petty can you be to not let go of something when the man is dying.

[Iron Maiden]

duplicate post

[WestPhillyPunisher]

They talked about this on Chris Matthews last night. That wasn't all. Later on, he made a remark about McCain's thumbs down vote so you know he's still holding a grudge about that. How petty can you be to not let go of something when the man is dying.

Because it's not in Trump's nature to forgive or forget. I don't think he knows how, nor would he care to learn. He's far too small (and not just when it comes to his hands) and shallow to let go of a slight levied against him. I think Trump is fueled by hate and vindictiveness, that he needs enemies to attack to give his life meaning.

[JCAll]

Ahhhhhhh... you know how Trump bothered that reporter for years after making a remark about his fingers? Well... this just happened?

He sent that to a reporter... man, too bad this didn't happen sooner for your update WBE.

"No racist. No racist. You're the racist."

Man, WBE was right about his profile being out of date as soon as it's posted. Time to get started on next year's update.

[Iron Maiden]

Because it's not in Trump's nature to forgive or forget. I don't think he knows how, nor would he care to learn. He's far too small (and not just when it comes to his hands) and shallow to let go of a slight levied against him. I think Trump is fueled by hate and vindictiveness, that he needs enemies to attack to give his life meaning.

QFT. He is such a shallow, mean spirited creature. I'm amazed that he has any friends at all.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

QFT. He is such a shallow, mean spirited creature. I'm amazed that he has any friends at all.

No, Trump doesn't have genuine friends, only toadies, sycophants, yes men, hangers-on and bootlickers. To get a little closer to home, the only reason Melania stays with him is for the money (on the flip side, if Trump never ran for office, I'm convinced he would've dumped her for a younger European hottie long ago) while Ivanka and his sons tolerate him because they're in his will. Trump will easily go down in history as perhaps THE most disliked president of all time.

[worstblogever]

Why is my concern about the poll showing that Democrats have a better opinion about socialism than capitalism a terrible opinion?

Because it reeks of the Republican/conservative narrative born over socialism from the past few years where you wet your pants at "socialism" and immediately equate it to the worst Communist regimes.

Do you believe that socialism is better than capitalism? If so, why?

That's not the poll question you're fretting about. The question is, "Democrats have a better opinion of socialism than capitalism by a narrow margin, and at the moment, my opinion of socialism is slightly better".

I'll answer your question anyway.

I don't believe one is better than the other. Both socialism and capitalism are systems of government that, if exploited by the corrupt, can be used to make the masses suffer.

Just as there was the Soviet Socialist Republic with Stalin and his gulags... that's the extreme of socialism.

We're currently in a point in American history not seen in a century. Capitalism ran mostly unchecked in the early 20th century, and it showed. You had coal barons putting down striking workers by having the Pinkertons straight up murder them. You had no child labor laws, and kids working in factories in dangerous conditions. You had no safety regulations in sweatshops where women worked, and a fire would break out and they were locked inside to work and died horrible deaths.

Today, it's not quite that bad, but some of the libertarian wing of the GOP, and the rich would like it to go back to that. It's why even after the '07-'08 Wall Street Collapse, those bankers want to be deregulated to make the same mistakes, and worse, without concern that it was the American taxpayer who bailed them out of their stupidity. It's why Martin Skreli can his douche-tastic face can jack up the price of HIV medication that keeps people alive. It's why you have coal barons like Robert Murray dictating what energy policy should be to Trump's Cabinet, and Scott Pruitt was bending to the will of businesses at the cost of the environment at the head of the EPA. We've got a billionaire tax cheat in the White House, who proclaimed how he was "smart" for not paying his taxes. We have the Citizens United decision that's allowing people like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson to buy the representation THEY would like, at the expense of the majority of the nation. The United States has become a kleptocracy carried out by the wealthy, and now stands on the precipice of being a full-on plutocracy if it already isn't one.

What socialism today looks more like, when it's tempered, is democratic socialism, which isn't the same thing. It's setting up a balance where there's a capitalist core, but there's still regulations in place that assure that no one is left behind in poverty, in hunger, or in sickness without help by their government. That's the model that most of Western Europe is running on, and when you look at polling of people in those countries are ridiculously happy, and all the statistics show they're far more healthy, highly educated, and their countries are clean.

Given current events, I think my opinion of socialism is better than capitalism, because we're living in a reality showing us how toxic capitalism can get.

You were likely trained to fear the word "socialism" as a Republican for years by conservative media sources, going back to the Cold War. It was much of the scarecrow used against the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and the gasoline that was thrown on the fire during the Tea Party Wave.

But you'll have to forgive the half of Democrats that are looking sideways at Capitalism at the moment, versus Socialism, because Americans are suffering, and/or in extreme cases, dying, because of capitalism running amok that has left them with no ability to improve their lives if they weren't already born into wealth. And they're suffering and dying simply so the rich can get richer while we learn Betsy DeVos can have a yacht go adrift, but it's okay because she has 9 more.

So to expand fully on my thought earlier, it is a terrible opinion to not understand how someone could contemplate trying a model that works everywhere else, when the one we've got no longer has any of the American dream left in it.

I hope you're glad you asked.

[worstblogever]

"No racist. No racist. You're the racist."

Man, WBE was right about his profile being out of date as soon as it's posted. Time to get started on next year's update.

Seriously, we're getting a week long golf trip, Omarosa tapes, pretending John McCain doesn't exist, and accusing a reporter of being "the real racist". This while Manafort is likely getting ready to head to jail, and Rudy Giuliani continues to go on cable news to f*** up Trump's story and make him look more like the liar that he is.

It's been two and a half days since that Trump update, and all that has happened.