All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Malvolio]

I doubt he was taken out. I think he knew that

1. His life was completely over. The first time he kinda skated and nobody knew about it. This time the feds couldn't let him skate and even if he did somehow get off he would live the rest of his life as a pariah. People couldn't associate with him anymore.

2. He was going to implicate a lot of very powerful people and it was going to be a nightmare for him.

It's like the mafia when someone gets popped, someone goes to that person and says, "listen, it's done for you and you can't change that, don't make it worse and try to bring everyone else down with you, because as bad as it is now we can make it worse".

The thing with this is that he was the most high profile prisoner in the country and everyone knew he was a massive risk for this and they didn't do enough to stop it.

I think the conspiracy is mroe that people looked the other way and enough gaps were left to let it happen.

So you're saying he went out like Frankie Five Angels?

[Malvolio]

And I know I've said this before, but here's what I think about libertarianism. The "Free market" can only work the way die-hard libertarians say it will if those selling goods and services are honest about those goods and services. But the history of advertising tells us that that rarely happens. I mean, if we got rid of the FDA, for example, how would we know if the meat we're buying is safe, or that the tomatoes and lettuce we buy won't give us e-coli? Are we supposed to bring a microscope with us to the supermarket? And how many of us would even know what to look for?

So yeah, let's get rid of all safety regulations and let word of mouth, via social media, fight the big boot of corporate advertising. That should work out well.

[Iron Maiden]

Frankly, I think the Trump administration just opened Americans' eyes to how the rest of the world has seen us all along. Granted, most of these countries are in no position to criticize our society given their own failings and would certainly do much worse were they handed the reins of global hegemony, but to think that America was ever some kind of universally respected big brother in a family of like minded nations is just delusional.

I don't agree with that. I think America gained a tremendous amount of respect from the sacrifices we made in WWII. Young men were slaughtered on Omaha beach. There are nearly 10,000 Americans buried in Normandy Cemetery. I do think some of that respect was chipped away over the years but Trump definitely had made things worse with how he treats our NATO allies and plays into Putin's hands.

[Gray Lensman]

Yeah, the Michael Brown shooting really isn't the hill I'd pick if I were Democrats. It became clear pretty immediately that the first things we heard about that particular incident just were flatout untrue and the shooting while tragic was probably justified by what is probably an agreed upon standard (don't try to take the cops gun and charge at him). It's got a lot of traction because it was one of the first really big cases after Trayvon Martin, but yeah, pretty much all the evidence sided with the cop and nearly everything we were told (from the cop targeting him for no reason to having his hands up and surrendering) were contradicted by witnesses.

The thing I always tell my parents (who bring him up occasionally as a Fox-approved cudgel against BLM) is that Ferguson was a toxic mix of sawdust and gas fumes waiting for a match. If didn't have to be the 'right' spark because it was so primed for any spark at all. An area financing itself via fines rather than taxes, where you couldn't get a fair trial since your judge was a neighboring jurisdictions prosecutor (and the guy prosecuting you may have been the judge over there) with the mechanisms of the state aimed only at one segment of the populace, and well, we all saw what happened when it went off.

[Gray Lensman]

I don't agree with that. I think America gained a tremendous amount of respect from the sacrifices we made in WWII. Young men were slaughtered on Omaha beach. There are nearly 10,000 Americans buried in Normandy Cemetery. I do think some of that respect was chipped away over the years but Trump definitely had made things worse with how he treats our NATO allies and plays into Putin's hands.

I don't think it was the sacrifices of WWII that did that, but the ones made right afterwards that resonated. Paying to rebuild much of Western Europe and not demanding every last dollar be repaid are what I think cemented America's position in the post-war order.

[Iron Maiden]

Denial is not just a river in Egypt, it is also a news network.https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carl...y-hoax-1453134

I don't see how his show keeps any sponsors these days. Even if what he says is true, that there enough white supremacists to fit in a football stadium, that could be 100,000 of them. W've seen that all it takes is just one to kill dozens of people. And each of them probably have a small arsenal of firearms.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The thing I always tell my parents (who bring him up occasionally as a Fox-approved cudgel against BLM) is that Ferguson was a toxic mix of sawdust and gas fumes waiting for a match. If didn't have to be the 'right' spark because it was so primed for any spark at all. An area financing itself via fines rather than taxes, where you couldn't get a fair trial since your judge was a neighboring jurisdictions prosecutor (and the guy prosecuting you may have been the judge over there) with the mechanisms of the state aimed only at one segment of the populace, and well, we all saw what happened when it went off.

And I think that's the bigger thing. Everything was leading to that in Ferguson and if it wasn't Michael Brown it would have been someone else. Ferguson was a mess. This was like a few weeks after the one year anniverssary of the George Zimmerman acquittal. Tensions were already high that it was going to blow up. It just so happened to not be the right case going forward.

[Iron Maiden]

I don't think it was the sacrifices of WWII that did that, but the ones made right afterwards that resonated. Paying to rebuild much of Western Europe and not demanding every last dollar be repaid are what I think cemented America's position in the post-war order.

Thanks for bringing that up. I forgot about that.

[Mister Mets]

And I think that's the bigger thing. Everything was leading to that in Ferguson and if it wasn't Michael Brown it would have been someone else. Ferguson was a mess. This was like a few weeks after the one year anniverssary of the George Zimmerman acquittal. Tensions were already high that it was going to blow up. It just so happened to not be the right case going forward.

The Justice Department investigation was pretty clear that there were systematic civil rights violations in Ferguson, so we can't ignore that. But when prominent Democratic presidential candidates are saying something untrue with implications for real people, it makes it tougher to be taken seriously when they criticize Trump for doing the same.

I don't see how his show keeps any sponsors these days. Even if what he says is true, that there enough white supremacists to fit in a football stadium, that could be 100,000 of them. W've seen that all it takes is just one to kill dozens of people. And each of them probably have a small arsenal of firearms.

It depends on what the argument is. The existence of 100,000 armed white supremacists is a different problem than the idea that they're a significant voting constituency.

[Tami]

The brand label that stokes Trump’s fury: ‘Racist, racist, racist.’

President Trump considers himself a branding wizard, but he is vexed by a branding crisis of his own: how to shed the label of “racist.”

As the campaign takes shape about 15 months before voters render a verdict on his presidency, Trump’s Democratic challengers are marking him a racist, and a few have gone so far as to designate the president a white supremacist.

Throughout his career as a real estate magnate, a celebrity provocateur and a politician, Trump has recoiled from being called the r-word, even though some of his actions and words have been plainly racist.

Following a month in which he leveled racist attacks on four congresswomen of color, maligned majority-black Baltimore as a “rat and rodent infested mess” and saw his anti-immigrant rhetoric parroted in an alleged mass shooter’s statement, the risk for Trump is that the pejorative that has long dogged him becomes defining.

[Tami]

An Oral History of Trump’s Bigotry

The first quotation from Donald Trump ever to appear in The New York Times came on October 16, 1973. Trump was responding to charges filed by the Justice Department alleging racial bias at his family’s real-estate company. “They are absolutely ridiculous,” Trump said of the charges. “We have never discriminated, and we never would.”

[ed2962]

The Mooch defends himself against Trump

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...try/ar-AAFEBNG

[Gray Lensman]

The Mooch defends himself against Trump

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...try/ar-AAFEBNG

He's not wrong in that assessment.

[SquirrelMan]

The Mooch defends himself against Trump

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...try/ar-AAFEBNG

There are not a lot of people who can count Nils Lofgren and Donald Trump among their greatest enemies.

[Tami]

These Texas Women Had Plastic Surgery to Look Like Ivanka Trump Nov 2, 2016


The obviously have her low IQ already

Tiffany Taylor is a country girl at heart and the 33-year-old mom of three is a Texan through and through, with a surprisingly cosmopolitan role model.

For the past year, Taylor, an aspiring socialite who works in the oil and gas business, has been transforming her body and face to look like Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of Donald Trump.

Taylor has already undergone multiple rounds of plastic surgery to look like her beauty idol.

“I had my breasts done and I got a ‘C,’ so I had them done a second time and got a ‘D;’ I also had my nose done they just took out some of the bulk out of the tip and kind of defined it a little bit right here,” she said.

She’s also had injections in her cheeks and a “mini eye lift, and then my chin area lifted up to help with my acne scars and define the chin and I also had lipo in my stomach.”

And Taylor said she wants more. She recently went in for another round of surgery for a new nose job and to have her eyelids done. In all, Taylor said she has spent approximately $60,000 on plastic surgery.

“I see perfection,” she said, looking at her bruised and bandaged face in the mirror. “Absolutely stunning perfection. It's like an art piece it has high points and some love. It's really pretty.”

Taylor’s Houston-based plastic surgeon Dr. Franklin Rose said he is getting more and more clients asking for the “Ivanka Trump look.”

“She's very beautiful and she's very poised … and very elegant and very soft-spoken. So patients want to be like that,” Rose said.

After her latest round of surgery, Taylor went to Neiman Marcus to find clothes that would emulate Ivanka Trump’s classic style.

Come to find out that Taylor isn’t alone in her quest. Jenny Stuart, a 36-year-old mother of two and an IT headhunter in Texas, is a consistent head-turner when she’s out.

“I’ve been told probably hundreds of times that I look like Angelina Jolie,” Stuart said.

For some, a comparison to this Oscar-winning actress would be hitting the jackpot, but Stuart also wants to look like Ivanka Trump.

“Honestly if she was running I would absolutely vote for her,” Stuart said. “I was impressed with her when I saw her at the RNC. She looks amazing … and she’s just a very classy pretty, which I admire.”

Stuart also sought out Dr. Rose for the Ivanka makeover. Her surgery entailed liposuction to harvest fat for a Brazilian butt lift, a nose job, breast implants and injectable fillers for her face. She says the procedures cost her $30,000, including a discount from her surgeon for appearing on television.

“This might be the 1000th very, very beautiful patient that I've operated on,” Rose said. “In an odd way, it’s sort of more enjoyable because you can take the beautiful into the hyper-beautiful.”

But not everyone is convinced, including some of Stuart’s friends who said, “If she was ugly, we would probably support her more.”

I wonder if this is still going on.