August 26, 2016

Jimmy Kimmel's Picklegate

It all seems like a harmless joke... or IS it?

I thought it was just silly and funny, and obviously Alex Jones has lost his mind, but check out the comments -- a LOT of people REALLY think Jimmy was covering up about Hillary's health.

I used to like conspiracy theories, but IDIOTS are seriously giving conspiracy a bad name.

August 26, 2016

Is their any logic to the conspiracy about Hillary's health?

I don't even understand the freaking conspiracy about her health. They already hate her so much and think she's horrible, so what's the big deal if she's not healthy enough for the job or is she going to die soon? If she's not fit, then she can't function in the job.

Why would the powers that be push an unhealthy person into the presidency anyway, if that is the scenario?

I know its unwise to read Youtube comments, but the ones on this Picklegate bit from Jimmy Kimmel are amazingly deranged. They honestly think Kimmel is part of the conspiracy, and the audience is fake, etc. And then if you follow the #picklegate hashtag on twitter, the top hits are all people taking it super seriously and who are OUTRAGED that Jimmy Kimmel is covering up for Hillary.

I suppose it's dumb to find logic in such a silly conspiracy. Maybe it's just a horrible sexist attack.

August 26, 2016

Trump and Alex Jones and Conspiracy Theories

I'm still surprised this episode of the campaign hasn't gotten more attention. It was just a few months ago that Trump went on Jones' show.

From Hilary's speech yesterday--
"It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.
Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.""


Why doesn't anyone ask Trump his views on 9/11 or Oklahoma City or Sandy Hook being a hoax?

August 25, 2016

Have Americans ever elected anyone like Trump (in the modern era)?

Specifically I'm referring to someone who regularly insults people in a very rude manner, spouts ridiculous things, promotes conspiracy theories, and who is clearly a bigot.

How is this POSSIBLY a winning combination? How is this guy considered a viable presidential candidate at all?

August 23, 2016

Could Trump's outreach to African-Americans be anymore disgusting?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/fear-and-loathing-of-black-people
(snip)

I've heard some people describe this as a problem of tone or hyperbole. There are obviously numerous ways to fact-check this garbage. The overwhelming majority of African-Americans do not "live in poverty" - despite that fact that the poverty rate among African-Americans is almost triple that of whites. But all of this misses the point. Trump portrays African-American life as drenched in violence, devoid of any vitality or promise, quite simply, as he puts it, a "disaster." Along the way is thundering subtext that black voters are incapable of rational political action. The vocabulary, affect and tone signal nothing so much as contempt. "What the hell do you have to lose?" In other words, why do you insist on destroying yourselves?

For Trump, every black American is living in a bombed out housing project circa 1973. And despite the country's historically low crimes rates, urban crime isn't at 1980s levels in the Trump world. It's the Watts, Newark and Detroit riots all at once and everyday in every central city in the country.

It's not too much to say that you could lift Trump's version of African-American life as disaster porn from maybe half alt-right or white supremacist screeds. He just tacks on a "but I'll save you" at the end.

I know I'm not breaking any new ground by predicting that Trump's screeds are unlikely to bring many African-American voters into his camp. But it's much more than that. It's aggressive dehumanization, reduction a real people to ghastly stick figures, not a bungled departure from but actually at the heart of his increasingly white nationalist message.

--------

Seriously hearing Donald lately is giving me PTSD, he's so fucking deranged and shrill.

August 20, 2016

Why do coal miners want to continue working such a horrible, dirty job?

Alienated and Angry, Coal Miners See Donald Trump as Their Only Choice
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/world/americas/alienated-and-angry-coal-miners-see-donald-trump-as-their-only-choice.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

I can understand their fear of losing their jobs, but these are not good, healthy jobs and coal is terrible for the environment. Shouldn't they should welcome some new options? At some point, they have to realize their way of life, their means of support is out-dated, and needs to be put in the past.

ETA: Wow, this struck an unexpected nerve. I posted quickly without really considering responses. Yes, my question was kind of dumb and insensitive, the issue is still important. Coal mining is a dangerous and unhealthy job, and produces a product that we need to phase out if we have any hope of stopping climate change. I have nothing against the people who work these jobs, and I realize these are good jobs for them. But still, the fact is, that way of life is going to change. We should compensate the miners and encourage the development of new industries in these places.

August 17, 2016

Aleppo is a humanitarian catastrophe-- "ten times worse than hell"

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/17/ten_times_worse_than_hell_a

In the latest escalation of the war in Syria, Russia has begun launching airstrikes from an Iranian air base. The New York Times reports this marks the first time since World War II that a foreign military has operated from a base on Iranian soil. The move comes as fighting has intensified around Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. Earlier this month, rebels fighting the Syrian government began a new offensive to break an ongoing government-backed siege of the city. The rebels have been led in part by an offshoot of the Nusra Front, which up until last month had been aligned with al-Qaeda. The International Committee of the Red Cross has described the fight for Aleppo as "beyond doubt one of the most devastating urban conflicts in modern times." The United Nations is warning of a dire humanitarian crisis as millions are left without water or electricity. For more on the humanitarian and medical crisis in Syria, we speak with Dr. Zaher Sahloul, founder of the American Relief Coalition for Syria and senior adviser and former president of the Syrian American Medical Society. He has visited Aleppo five times since the war began.

August 17, 2016

Alex Jones is now almost indistiguishible from FoxNews

If you go to Infowars or PrisonPlanet, it is basically all pro-Trump, anti-Hillary garbage, a lot of the same memes promoted on FoxNews, like Hillary really being very ill and it's being kept secret. Obama is promoting a race-war. Hillary is part of the New World Order, trying to bring one world government. Etc.

The conservative wing of the GOP, which is the main part of the party, is now officially the conspiracy party.

August 17, 2016

It's disconcerting to see shared memes about Hillary by Trump supporters and Bernie-or-Bust types

A brief list:

1) Hillary is a lying, greedy, murderous capitalist who doesn't care about people and will stop at nothing to get power

2) the election was stolen/will be stolen by vote hacking or other means

3) pooh-poohing the idea that Russia is influencing our election-- either through wikileaks or someone like Paul Manafort

4) promoting conspiracy theories about Bilderbergs and the council on foreign relations, secret deals with Obama

5) An all-powerful Hillary personally promoted war (that wouldn't have happened without her, apparently)

6) Hillary is the real racist, who is just using black folk

7) The DNC was an un-democratic sham

I see this on Facebook and Twitter, mostly. Pretty shameful. I guess the BoB people are showing their true-colors.

August 16, 2016

We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.

https://newrepublic.com/article/135684/declare-war-climate-change-mobilize-wwii

by Bill McKibben

A really great piece that makes a compelling point.

In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy forces have seized huge swaths of territory; with each passing week, another 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice disappears. Experts dispatched to the battlefield in July saw little cause for hope, especially since this siege is one of the oldest fronts in the war. “In 30 years, the area has shrunk approximately by half,” said a scientist who examined the onslaught. “There doesn’t seem anything able to stop this.”

In the Pacific this spring, the enemy staged a daring breakout across thousands of miles of ocean, waging a full-scale assault on the region’s coral reefs. In a matter of months, long stretches of formations like the Great Barrier Reef—dating back past the start of human civilization and visible from space—were reduced to white bone-yards.

Day after day, week after week, saboteurs behind our lines are unleashing a series of brilliant and overwhelming attacks. In the past few months alone, our foes have used a firestorm to force the total evacuation of a city of 90,000 in Canada, drought to ravage crops to the point where southern Africans are literally eating their seed corn, and floods to threaten the priceless repository of art in the Louvre. The enemy is even deploying biological weapons to spread psychological terror: The Zika virus, loaded like a bomb into a growing army of mosquitoes, has shrunk the heads of newborn babies across an entire continent; panicked health ministers in seven countries are now urging women not to get pregnant. And as in all conflicts, millions of refugees are fleeing the horrors of war, their numbers swelling daily as they’re forced to abandon their homes to escape famine and desolation and disease.

World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing.

For years, our leaders chose to ignore the warnings of our best scientists and top military strategists. Global warming, they told us, was beginning a stealth campaign that would lay waste to vast stretches of the planet, uprooting and killing millions of innocent civilians. But instead of paying heed and taking obvious precautions, we chose to strengthen the enemy with our endless combustion; a billion explosions of a billion pistons inside a billion cylinders have fueled a global threat as lethal as the mushroom-shaped nuclear explosions we long feared. Carbon and methane now represent the deadliest enemy of all time, the first force fully capable of harrying, scattering, and impoverishing our entire civilization.