A day without stupid?

[jab]

Donald Trump Says He's Most Thankful for Himself on Thanksgiving

When I see foreign leaders, they say we cannot believe the difference in strength between the United States now and the United States two years ago.

I bet they do, and they say it with a grimace of despair or with a smirk, depending.

 

[blastula]

"I have a gut and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me."

 

[Tom Sawyer]

"I have a gut and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me."

It's true that nobody else seems to be able to tell this guy anything. He lives completely lost in his own version of reality.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"I have a gut and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me."

Since he can't listen that's no surprise. On the other hand, he doesn't understand when his gut tells him he's full of shit.

 

[Underseer]

Now it's the Dem's turn to do some stupid things.

[YOUTUBE]lN2Y0NBkUE0[/YOUTUBE]

Instead of becoming a proper opposition party in response to, you know, fascist traitors on the other side, the conservadem establishment have decided that now is the time to pull the Democratic party further to the right. Because if you are trying to build your election strategy around opposing fascists, the best strategy is to become more like the fascists themselves.

 

[Underseer]

Donald Trump Says He's Most Thankful for Himself on Thanksgiving

When I see foreign leaders, they say we cannot believe the difference in strength between the United States now and the United States two years ago.

I bet they do, and they say it with a grimace of despair or with a smirk, depending.

You gotta hand it to them. The Republicans have succeeded where all of America's other enemies have failed.

- - - Updated - - -

"I have a gut and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me."

The "talking gut" is just the male version of female intuition, and it's just as illogical.

 

[Elixir]

The "talking gut" is just the male version of female intuition, and it's just as illogical.

Imagine what our alt-white contingent would say if Hillary had been elected, denied all intelligence agencies, rejected science and told people "My woman's intuition tells me more sometimes than anybody eose's brain can ever tell me" as an explanation. Their heads would explode.

 

[Opoponax]

The "talking gut" is just the male version of female intuition, and it's just as illogical.

Imagine what our alt-white contingent would say if Hillary had been elected, denied all intelligence agencies, rejected science and told people "My woman's intuition tells me more sometimes than anybody eose's brain can ever tell me" as an explanation. Their heads would explode.

It's one of the things that makes all this so unbelievable. They were faux-mortified over every little alleged indiscretion, even after exoneration. You couldn't have found a group claiming to be more concerned about governmental abuse of power and violations of the Constitution.

There was no conspiracy too silly (Jade Helm anyone?). Everything was on the table all the time, and all of it was credible to them. But now, evidence supported by scores of indictments and guilty pleas is just a bunch of hogwash and none of it can be tied to Trump anyway.

I also recall hearing conservatives talk about what a poor public speaker Obama was, which was absurd. But then along comes Trump, and ... what??? That one's always stuck in my craw.

It's why it's so hard to take them seriously. What do these people believe in besides whatever the grossly ill defined Trump and/or the (R) next to someone's name? I have beaten my head against that brick wall so many times, and have never, not once come away with a new understanding such as, "Oh, okay. Now I understand better why they support Trump."

 

[DrZoidberg]

"I have a gut and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me."

It's true that nobody else seems to be able to tell this guy anything. He lives completely lost in his own version of reality.

I don't think so. I think he's very good at taking advice from people he trusts. Anybody who've survived in business for any length of time learns this, often the hard way. I think his problem is simply in choosing who to trust. He's gotten into bed with all the wrong types.

I think Trump is incredibly insecure and weak. I doubt he's capable of forming his own opinions on anything. His position on stuff seems to blow around depending on whoever he spoke to last.

 

[James Brown]

I also recall hearing conservatives talk about what a poor public speaker Obama was, which was absurd. But then along comes Trump, and ... what??? That one's always stuck in my craw.

When you hate someone, the way they hold their fork drives you crazy. But your best friend can spill his plate in your lap, and you don't mind.

Some people have been taught to hate Hate HATE Barack Obama. Thus they hate how he talks, the clothes he wears, what kind of mustard he prefers on a hot dog. Nothingburgers like Jade Helm and 'Fast and Furious' makes them red in the face. It all comes down to mindless hatred.

 

[Opoponax]

I also recall hearing conservatives talk about what a poor public speaker Obama was, which was absurd. But then along comes Trump, and ... what??? That one's always stuck in my craw.

When you hate someone, the way they hold their fork drives you crazy. But your best friend can spill his plate in your lap, and you don't mind.

Some people have been taught to hate Hate HATE Barack Obama. Thus they hate how he talks, the clothes he wears, what kind of mustard he prefers on a hot dog. Nothingburgers like Jade Helm and 'Fast and Furious' makes them red in the face. It all comes down to mindless hatred.

That does seem to be it, and maybe that simplicity makes it so difficult to understand. When you distill it all down and look for the active ingredients in the Trump cocktail, all there is to find are a few different molecules of hate and spite, with rightwing media being the liquid delivery system.

When Germany lost its mind under Hitler, you could point to a horrific war, oppression by France and Britain following that war, and then the Great Depression following that. It was a very complex situation arising from mass death, starvation, sickness, poverty, and complete humiliation. And those are just the basics.

But Americans with Trump? It's crazy.

 

[blastula]

"I have a gut and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me."

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBRKPoAPXEQ[/YOUTUBE]

 

[blastula]

DAWSEY: You said yesterday when you were leaving that you were skeptical of a climate change report that the government had done. Can you just explain why you’re skeptical of that report?

TRUMP: One of the problems that a lot of people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers. You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean. But when you look at China and you look at parts of Asia and when you look at South America, and when you look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including — just many other places — the air is incredibly dirty. And when you’re talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with.

Trump interview transcript, annotated - The Washington Post

 

[Patooka]

Flint's water is at a "record clean"?

 

[untermensche]

"Oceans are very small".

What the moron means is they are finite and can only be polluted so much.

 

[Patooka]

"Oceans are very small".

What the moron means is they are finite and can only be polluted so much.

Making assumptions on what Trump meant to say at any given instance is one very deep rabbit hole. He's like the Schrödinger's cat of opinions; two diametrically opposed points of view at any particular point of time. Schrödinger's arsehole, if you will.

 

[Underseer]

I also recall hearing conservatives talk about what a poor public speaker Obama was, which was absurd. But then along comes Trump, and ... what??? That one's always stuck in my craw.

When you hate someone, the way they hold their fork drives you crazy. But your best friend can spill his plate in your lap, and you don't mind.

Some people have been taught to hate Hate HATE Barack Obama. Thus they hate how he talks, the clothes he wears, what kind of mustard he prefers on a hot dog. Nothingburgers like Jade Helm and 'Fast and Furious' makes them red in the face. It all comes down to mindless hatred.

That does seem to be it, and maybe that simplicity makes it so difficult to understand. When you distill it all down and look for the active ingredients in the Trump cocktail, all there is to find are a few different molecules of hate and spite, with rightwing media being the liquid delivery system.

When Germany lost its mind under Hitler, you could point to a horrific war, oppression by France and Britain following that war, and then the Great Depression following that. It was a very complex situation arising from mass death, starvation, sickness, poverty, and complete humiliation. And those are just the basics.

But Americans with Trump? It's crazy.

No, it's not.

In America, racism is traditionally used by rich white people to get poor and middle class white people to look the other way while they pick their pockets.

Ever since Nixon started the Southern Strategy, Republicans started fanning the flames of racial hatred with a gusto.

By the time Reagan was in office, the Republican base was full of enough fear and hate that they got away with really screwing over everyone who isn't rich.

After Reagan was Bush I. After Bush I was Clinton, who started his third way bullshit, and so every Democratic admin since Reagan has been pushing the same Trickle-On economic policies as the Republicans, just a less extreme version of it.

And so, for a half decade now, the ranks of the middle class are shrinking while the ranks of the poor are growing. We now have 17% of the total population on food stamps if I remember correctly.

Before Reagan, a single income without a college degree was enough to raise a family, buy a house, a car, put your kids through college and set something aside for retirement.

After a half century of Reaganomics, families with two college-educated parents struggle to achieve the same thing a man with a high school diploma was once able to do on his own.

Plenty of studies show that support for Trump was largely driven by racism, but I really think the racism is driven by economic decline and the growing wealth gap. People are genuinely hurting out there, and the multibillion dollar conservative propaganda machine is telling their audience that their suffering is all the fault of racial minorities and immigrants.

Because that's the purpose of racism in America: to make it easier for rich white people to step on the necks of all the other white people without taking any blame for what they are doing to everyone else.

So now many families are hurting out there while the wealthy get wealthier and wealthier, and FOX News/right wing radio are telling their slobbering fans that it's all the fault of those dirty brown people and black people and immigrants and so now the Republican base is so hopped up on hate and fear that they voted for the candidate who said the most shockingly racist things during the Republican primary, and then Trump was able to win the general election using the same racism and anti-immigrant bullshit.

The Bush II administration proved that authoritarianism comes from incompetence rather than a lust for power, Trump is far more incompetent than Bush II, and so naturally he is destroying our democratic traditions and institutions with far greater vigor than Darth Jar-Jar ever did.

By the way, it wasn't poverty that drove the Germans into the arms of the Nazis. It was income inequality: there was a lot of resentment directed at the wealthy, who were not suffering as the common German was. For example, while everyone else was trying to put food on the table with hyperinflation going on, the wealthy got the government to waste a lot of money on a highway system at a time when only the very wealthy could afford cars at all.

And if you look at what some ancient Greek philosophers said about democracies inevitably becoming tyrannies, the driving force was an oligarchy that became out of touch with the needs of the people doing the voters, which drove the voters to vote for any rabid demagogue promising to make things better. Napoleon rose out of the ashes of the French revolution, which was caused by resentment of the luxurious lives of aristocrats at a time when the commoners suffered.

We have Trump because the wealthy in America have been hoarding wealth at the expense of the rest of America for a half century.

Even if we manage to get rid of Trump, we know that we will eventually get someone just as bad or worse because I see no evidence of the economic elites relinquishing their oversized influence over the government. Since we can predict that both parties will continue to serve the needs of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, we can anticipate that America's slide into authoritarianism and demagoguery will continue.

No small part of the problem is the fact that all conservatives, all libertarians, and most moderate Democrats all think that the solution to our problems are things that will make the income inequality worse (or in some cases, that making the income inequality worse is a desirable thing).

At this point, in order to turn this ship around, we would need to

• Convince all Republican voters that they're wrong.
• Convince most Democratic voters (e.g. the moderate majority) that they're wrong.
• Convince politicians to do what's right for everyone instead of what's better for the wealthy.
• Convince the wealthy to stop working to increase their wealth at the expense of everyone else.

Since that is pretty much impossible, this is either going to end with a fascist dictatorship, or something akin to the chaos of the French revolution, but because this is America, we will probably have roving lynch mobs instead of guillotines.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The President of the United States will hopefully be remembered as the least Presidential person to serve the roll ever, and will be an oddity of our history where examples of the following are mocked by all.

You mean he [Michael Cohen] can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term?

He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott [sic] Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.

I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” - make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!

There is so much wrong with these two examples from Twitter especially when you realize the POTUS is Tweeting it!

 

[James Brown]

Michael Cohen lied? When he admitted to lying to Congress?

Maybe he should have just told the truth.

 

[Underseer]

[YOUTUBE]BdS025nTaKY[/YOUTUBE]

Trump is a child. A tantrum-throwing child with the attention span of a gnat.