Picaro
Picaro's JournalGet used to it
The sad truth is that tomorrow Trump becomes President.
We will all have to get used to this level of stupidity.
He's just going to shoot his mouth off on Twitter and in other mediums. He seems to not understand that he is going to be the President of the U.S. and saying things like this are confusing, destabilizing, and detrimental to the country he is supposedly going to lead.
He's the most dangerous kind of idiot. One that doesn't know that he's not that bright.
He will seriously damage the standing of the U.S. He will be outmaneuvered and outplayed and he'll keep telling us that he's real smart.
That wrecking crew he calls a cabinet will do everything they can to return us to the 1920's.
God help us all.
Look where this started
Alex Jones does the electronic equivalent of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater every day. I don't know if he was the actual creator of the Sandy Hook "truther" thing, but he definitely promulgated it. Now he is fanning the flames of the crazy Pizzagate thing which is spreading like a virus among the loons.
Here is the thing--this crazy, irresponsible nutcase is going to get people killed if he hasn't already. There have always been and should be limits to the 1st amendment.
When do we, as a society, start working on a solution to the flaws in our Constitution?
They are literally killing us. The election of Trump is just the latest symptom. Pizzagate is another. The Sandy Hook insanity another.
We are a country being dragged down into madness by our own mentally ill--made strangely powerful by our system.
The ironic fact is that any cure could be far worse than the disease.
The one line that jumped out at me was...
"...people are not operating on the same set of facts..." (liberal paraphrase).
And that is what I've seen in this horrible election. When you challenge someone about considering voting for Trump you are immediately told "...Well, Hillary is worse." But the only thing they have is the so-called email scandal. I would bet that most of them would be hard pressed to explain why that not handling emails properly is worse than all of the things that have come out of Trumps mouth or that have been actually recorded.
The right wing (Fox news, CNN, even MSNBC and many, many other sources) have managed to convict Hillary without a trial. She is considered dishonest, guilty of the deaths in Benghazi, culpable for Iraq and the chaos that has developed in the Middle East--not to mention guilty of having multiple people murdered (Vince Foster being just one). Charges have been leveled and so many of our fellow citizens have, in their hearts, convicted her. It is amazing.
She is the most accused and most investigated person in America. Many of these accusations were made by organizations and people funded by the Scaife family who are a concrete example of the old saying that idle hands are the devil's playground.
Our fellow citizens accept as facts what they read and hear on the internet and television. They are uncritical and will quickly bond to the "facts" they find attractive and that reinforce their prejudices and preconceptions. Once their world view is set it resembles concrete and there is nothing you can say to dissuade them.
I asked a couple of Trump supporters during the primaries to give me one example of one coherent Trump policy that could actually be implemented. I never received an answer.
I stopped talking to Trump supporters after that. It reminded me of trying to teach a pig to sing. It pisses off both you and the pig and in the end the pig still can't sing.
Somewhere around 40% of the voting populace are going to loath and despise the next President of the United States. There will be no honeymoon.
I'm glad that Luntz is disturbed by what he is witnessing. But I can't forget that his expertise with language has allowed the Republicans to sell policies and positions that have led us to where we are today.
I did find the piece very interesting.
Incomprensible verdict
These jurors simply ignored the law and acquitted these thugs. They've sent a message out to all of the armed right wing crazies that it is just fine to show up and invade someone's property and occupy it if you've decided that you have a right to do so.
This puts me in an apocalyptic frame of mind.
God, this country is starting to resemble Weimar Germany more with each passing day.
Me too!
It took me 5 minutes at most.
I live in Collin county Texas. Plano to be more precise.
The precincts in this part of Plano are deep, deep Red.
There is very low turnout for early voting here. Dallas is another story. Very Blue and the turnout is setting records. It was heavy for the last two elections and reportedly may double that.
Low Republican turnout may define the outcome of this election. I know a lot of Republicans. And many are saying they can't bring themselves to vote for Trump.
Yes, yes you can
That is entirely the point right now. Clinton is using a form of political jujitsu that only an amateur would fall for. Trump is not a politician and has had a lifetime of positive results from always going on the attack.
This time though the optics really, really suck and they will just keep getting worse.
The right wing media machine have spent over two decades turning Clinton into some sort of Boogieman/Shiva hybrid that everyone that listens and watches (Fox) instinctively reviles on a basic, lizard brain level.
Trump is rendering that almost inoperative. Before he is finished people that today revile her are going to start seeing her in a sympathetic light.
The core Trump support--the ultra authoritarians will eat up everything he spews. The more normal will find him so repellent that they'll vote for Clinton just to prevent him from ever occupying the Oval office.
Intelligence assets reportedly died due to this leak
What everyone conveniently ignores on the Republican side is that this leak outed a deep cover agent and reportedly may have led to the deaths of some of our intelligence assets.
Whether that rises to the level of treason or not is up for discussion. But Scooter Libby did go to jail over it.
Clinton has been exhaustively investigated and the emails that are being obsessed over reportedly involved things that shouldn't have been deemed classified.
Oh, and no CIA agents were outed and no intelligence assets died.
You could follow up Valerie Plame with Alberto Gonzalez/Karl Rove... Remember that one? And then there's the well known fact that Dubya had his own server and so, apparently, did Colin Powell and Dick Cheney. Etcetera, etcetera.
How relative their morals are when it is someone from the other party. Moral relativism indeed.
Complete BS
This 'linguist' is ascribing a level of intelligence to Trump that is superhuman. What he/she is saying is that each word is masterfully planned out and isn't just stream-of-consciousness blathering.
Trump must be one of the Illuminati then.
Trump is the Rorschach blot candidate. There is so little structure to what he does that the observer is left to impose whatever form and structure they desire.
This morning in the Dallas Morning News there were two pro-Trump letters.
One from a man angered because the doctor he wanted to switch to won't accept Medicare patients. This is, of course, the Democrats fault and Obama's in particular. The final line in the letter is, "VOTE TRUMP". Silly me, I can't remember Trump ever saying anything about Medicare or healthcare. The 2nd was from a woman violently opposed to the status quo (because everything is in the toilet from the economy to immigration) and she opposes Hillary because she will just perpetuate the status quo (which is badness). I quote, "If you want change and improvement, you must vote the better choice, Trump. He is our only hope."
This is the Trump voter in a nutshell. Start out with the notion that everything is bad. Trump says he'll make the badness go away without specifying how (the specifics he does supply are completely cra-cra). Therefore Trump is good. You've already accepted that all is bad without any sort of analysis so accepting that Trump will fix that vague badness with his vague pronouncements is not much of a leap.
This isn't genius. Trump thinks simply the way his followers think--simply. Things are true because someone has said them and they agree with what they hear so it must be true.
Fox did it first (if anything Ailes is the genius). Trump just took it into a Presidential race. He's not a genius. He's just as dumb as they are and they love him for it.
A sea of white faces
I was at the gym and they always have Fox on one of the televisions. So, I caught a little of this great speech. He was essentially saying that Detroit was one of the worst places in America in terms of crime, poverty etc. It was,of course, all the due to the Democrats and their policies and those lavish safety net dollars that caused everyone in Detroit to stop working and go on the generous dole.
He implored all African-Americans to vote for him because the only way to change things for the better is to change leadership. No mention of what magic wand he would wave to remove the structural economic issues that have led to this for all racial categories.
I couldn't help noticing that in the part of the audience that I could see there was not a single even slightly swarthy face.
Hmmm... Seems like Donnie boy only preaches to his very receptive choir. Wonder how that is working out for him?
Well, duh.
I saw a reprint of this article in the Dallas morning news this morning. My first reaction was "well, duh".
Of course people are continuing to live with their parents.
Milenials are being squeezed from all sides. On the one hand they are told that they have to go to college to have any hope of having a decent life. Unfortunately, most of these young people have to borrow large amounts of money to go to college because their parents for one reason or another don't have the kind of money that would allow them to pay tuition, fees, books, and living expenses.
Then, when they get out they find that the job market is not all that great and technology is allowing the offshoring of most of the high-paying jobs that existed in the past. This doesn't even begin to address the threat posed by robotics and artificial intelligence . So, many of these young people are unable to find jobs that pay that kind of money that would allow them to both pay off their student loans and live independently.
This system couldn't have been better designed to produce this outcome. I think, by and large, it is accidental. It is just the result of valuing profit above all else by society in general.
Profile Information
Name: Ernie FergusonGender: Do not display
Hometown: Plano, TX
Home country: USA
Current location: Plano, TX
Member since: Thu Apr 30, 2009, 11:22 AM
Number of posts: 1,520
