Renzatic on 19/2/2020 at 12:15
He's hardly the first president to pardon someone close and/or beneficial to him. Clinton pulled a couple of questionable pardons himself. It's just that Trump is the first to be so nakedly corrupt about it.
Patti Blagojevich went on Fox News, and all but verbally blew Trump on live TV on her husband's behalf, claiming he was a victim of a Comey/Mueller witch hunt of his own, and only a leader of Donald J. Trump's sterling caliber could right this grievous wrong. Rod got his pardon soon after. I'm sure they're both registering as Republican as we speak.
Think I'm exaggerating? (
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-commuted-blagojevich-sentence-wife-attacked-comey-mueller-fox-news-2020-2?utm_source=reddit.com) I'm not.
...and it amazes me how many Trump defenders are now justifying this move. Here's a guy, a life long Democrat, who was held up as the de facto example of Chicago political corruption by the Republicans, and is now being defended by the very people who once derided him, in part because he also happened to be subject of an investigation fielded by two once highly regarded life long Republicans who are now openly derided in their own party.
Up is down and down is up.
[video=youtube;pyOyiG4MDFM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyOyiG4MDFM[/video]
lowenz on 19/2/2020 at 13:20
It's why democracy is amorality at its best :p
demagogue on 19/2/2020 at 13:22
It's all so very transparent, and the mental gymnastics they have to do to make up some story that makes it all sound fuckin-fantastic, more of that please, doesn't make it sound corrupt as hell to its core is so incoherent and, I mean, they can't hold one story together without blasting apart another one of their bs stories on another issue, they can't all be true at the same time, one literally requires another be false, and, and.... Where am I going with this? It's so stupid.
What captured it for me this week was that emission standards report they came out with ... uh, some gov't department always puts out a report on the economic costs of car emissions and fuel standards, they've done it for like 30 or 40 years, and every year it's the same punchline, increasing fuel efficiency standards is good for consumers (lower fuel costs) and the environment (less emissions), and car companies can actually agree with stricter standards as long as all other car companies are held to them (they couldn't do it unilaterally), so even the frigging car companies were in favor of stricter standards... Well before you even get to that part, they all agree on the economic analysis about it since economics is economics. It's always the same equations with the same kind of data so there aren't ever any surprises... But ooooh nooo, not this year. This year they wouldn't let actual economists touch the analysis and left it to who knows what boneheads who concluded that the science was clear that consumers and the economy benefits from looser standards with analysis that even the car companies didn't agree with. And when economists looked at their numbers, because why should this year be so radically different from the last 40 to flip such simple logic so radically on its head, they saw really newbie mistakes, one of my favorites being that they mixed up supply and demand in the supply-demand curves to conclude that rising fuel prices increase demand, like consumers prefer to pay more for gas.... I mean, to put it into context, supply and demand curves are like what Freshmen learn in the first class of Microeconmics 101, and it's like the simplest concept to get. How braindead do you have to be to think demand rises as costs get higher? So the economists commenting on it were dumbfounded... How does one respond to what's presented as a serious economic analysis that has such boneheaded blatant mistakes?
The whole story made me think about what stage of authoritarianism we are in the US right now. In this version, they still bother doing the math (poorly) because they fancy themselves "serious policymakers" that should be doing "serious government business". But if they get away with this kind of sloppy work with impunity, which they are, watch their faces as the realization gradually comes to them. It doesn't matter what equations and numbers they put into the reports. They may as well have put in bullshit math symbols that have no meaning and at the end put the number that they want. (Nevermind that actual companies don't even want it, so it's not even "pro-business"; they don't even get that far. It just matters what seems to be pro-business in the two microseconds their pea brains can deal with thinking about it in the most brutish way possible.) That's the track we're on right now, the gradual realization throughout the whole apparatus of federal government that they can just make up any bullshit answer they want, and eventually they actually start trolling it to smear it into people's faces that it's blatantly the wrong answer, random numbers after random symbols, you see it, I see it, everybody sees it, and there's nothing you can do about it. That's where this is going.
Starker on 19/2/2020 at 14:17
"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty."
-- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Well, that's doublethink squared off, Gym Jordan is busy honing his duckspeak, what you're seeing and hearing is not what's happening... Of course the Miniplenty is not above tweaking a few numbers here and there to get the result they want.
And here I had always thought Huxley's world would be the more plausible of the two.
lowenz on 19/2/2020 at 15:00
Quote Posted by Starker
And here I had always thought Huxley's world would be the more plausible of the two.
And you're right.
lowenz on 19/2/2020 at 15:09
Quote Posted by demagogue
It's all so very transparent, and the mental gymnastics they have to do to make up some story that
makes it all sound fuckin-fantastic, more of that please, doesn't make it sound corrupt as hell to its core is so incoherent and, I mean, they can't hold one story together without blasting apart another one of their bs stories on another issue, they can't all be true at the same time, one literally requires another be false, and, and.... Where am I going with this? It's so stupid. .
It's how "post truth" world works.
Keep bullshitting people until people's pleased or forget the reality -
'cause our good leftists friends always say there are only interpretations of reality so let's effectively turn this epistemological paradigma against them - thanks to some impressive and appealing (APPALING :D if you ask me)
visionsIt's really simple and effective.
Maybe you'll know this: (
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/world/europe/carola-rackete-italy-migrants.html)
Well, here in Italy, the (Alt)Right literally redefined the concept of "TO RAM" to get its point.
Total
Fucking
Redefinition
of the word itself!
You see the video, there's NO ship "ramming" another but no, THAT'S RAMMING. Why? Because I keep repeating the appealing term "RAMMING" so it's DAMN RAMMING! So Carola is a TAFFING :D PIRATE RAMMING US!!!!
And the people
sadistically moved "
Cuff that radical shit bitch!!1111"
heywood on 19/2/2020 at 15:21
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Lol wow knives out.
Love it.
Quote Posted by Tocky
This is how I feel about anyone who says they won't vote for anyone but their preferred candidate. ANYONE IS BETTER THAN TRUMP.
Hey, I'm flexible. I'll vote for anybody on either side except for Trump and Bloomberg, although the only two candidates that I would donate to and work for are Bernie and Liz.
Quote Posted by demagogue
What captured it for me this week was that emission standards report they came out with ... uh, some gov't department always puts out a report on the economic costs of car emissions and fuel standards, they've done it for like 30 or 40 years, and every year it's the same punchline, increasing fuel efficiency standards is good for consumers (lower fuel costs) and the environment (less emissions), and car companies can actually agree with stricter standards as long as all other car companies are held to them (they couldn't do it unilaterally), so even the frigging car companies were in favor of stricter standards... Well before you even get to that part, they all agree on the economic analysis about it since economics is economics. It's always the same equations with the same kind of data so there aren't ever any surprises... But ooooh nooo, not this year. This year they wouldn't let actual economists touch the analysis and left it to who knows what boneheads who concluded that the science was clear that consumers and the economy benefits from looser standards with analysis that even the car companies didn't agree with. And when economists looked at their numbers, because why should this year be so radically different from the last 40 to flip such simple logic so radically on its head, they saw really newbie mistakes, one of my favorites being that they mixed up supply and demand in the supply-demand curves to conclude that rising fuel prices increase demand, like consumers prefer to pay more for gas.... I mean, to put it into context, supply and demand curves are like what Freshmen learn in the first class of Microeconmics 101, and it's like the simplest concept to get. How braindead do you have to be to think demand rises as costs get higher? So the economists commenting on it were dumbfounded... How does one respond to what's presented as a serious economic analysis that has such boneheaded blatant mistakes?
The example you mention is easily understood to be wrong by most people in the country, so it makes me wonder what the motivation is. Is this being driven by lobbying from the energy sector? Or is this like "rolling coal", just head in the sand anti-AGW sentiment reflexively driving the policy making?
I remember examples before where political appointees make judgments counter to all the expert advice and data they're getting from the career staff, e.g. Gregory Jaczko. But it's never happened on the scale of the Trump administration. So far, I think most of the career staff are just waiting Trump out. There was some brain drain in his first term because the job market was so strong. The real question is how much more competence in government we'll lose if Trump gets another four.
catbarf on 19/2/2020 at 17:46
There's a pretty big difference between 'I won't vote for anyone but my preferred candidate' and 'I won't vote for
that one, especially if they win the primary unfairly'.
I'm sure the Democratic Party is very happy to have apologists, like that comic author, conflate the two. The DNC doesn't want to self-reflect on the wisdom of propping up weak candidates in the hopes that voters support the lesser evil over (
https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/) the opponent they helped install. Easier to just blame the electorate for not playing ball.
My preference is overwhelmingly Sanders, but I will vote for whichever Democrat is nominated. Unless it's Bloomberg, in which case I stay home.
Starker on 19/2/2020 at 19:21
On the other hand, a lot of Democrats seem to go in all or nothing on a candidate who failed to beat Clinton, one of the worst Democratic nominees in decades (and I'm including Gore). And yes yes, Clinton and DNC rigged the election with superdelegates and whatnot, but on the other hand, people also failed to come out for Bernie. Clinton won most of the delegates and the popular vote by a sizeable margin.
But if you think Clinton was playing it dirty, just wait until you see what Lord Dampnut has in store for Bernie. You will see a repeat of his Clinton strategy on steroids. Expect to see Venezuela mentioned a lot. Plus all the health stuff and a wealth of stuff from Bernie's past. The Republicans will have a field day with all their favourite scaremongering tactics -- tactics that are proven to work, unfortunately.
Don't get me wrong, I like Bernie. He's probably my favourite candidate out of the Democrats. And nothing is set in stone -- conventional wisdom only helps you so far in unconventional times. But the Democrats just don't seem to play for the win. This is not a battle won by policies, it's a referendum on Lord Dampnut, fought out in the swing states.
heywood on 19/2/2020 at 20:16
Last time, the DNC strongly discouraged people from getting into the race. You only had Clinton and Sanders to choose from. Marty O'Malley was also there at the first debate, but withdrew.
This time, we've enjoyed a spectrum of choices, which has been great so far. But now we're witnessing a giant wrecking ball of money bust through the process, and I think it's going to topple everyone but Bernie, setting this up for another bitter campaign. What I don't understand is why anybody (besides the man himself) thought Bloomberg was needed in the race. Is there somebody that can tell me that of the ~20 candidates present at the first debate, none of them were good enough to support? Do people think we have draft Kodos to beat Kang?