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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 12:04 pm
by SR
This guy created major damage....serious attention needs to be paid him the next time around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Parscale

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 3:03 pm
by Artemis
Wow, this guy sounds like dumbass.
Former Trump Aide Says Mueller May Have “Something” on Trump
Sam Nunberg is refusing to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s investigation, but he’s doing interviews on cable television.

Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg thinks special counsel Robert Mueller may have something on the president. But he still plans to refuse to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.

In an interview on MSNBC, Nunberg said the questions he was asked by Mueller’s investigators make him think they may have “something” on the president. “I think that he may have done something during the election, but I don’t know that for sure,” Nunberg said. He also said that he thinks allegations that Trump colluded with Russia during the campaign are a “joke.”

Nunberg told the Washington Post Monday that he does not intend to comply with what he described as a subpoena to appear before Mueller’s grand jury on Friday. “Let him arrest me,” Nunberg told the paper. “Mr. Mueller should understand I am not going in on Friday.”

Nunberg kicked off the MSNBC interview by saying that Mueller’s demands are “absolutely ridiculous.” He said investigators are seeking all of his emails with Trump confidante Roger Stone and former campaign chief executive Steve Bannon. “Why should I hand them emails from November 1, 2015?” he asked.

Nunberg said it would take him 50 hours to go through all his emails. Later in the interview, he said it would take him 80 hours. Either way, he made one thing clear: “I’m not going to cooperate.”

Watch the full interview:



Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 9:21 am
by Hype
I think maybe the craziest thing about this entire situation has been how easily these "dumbasses" and "idiots" somehow manage to say out loud that they don't think they should have to abide by laws, norms, decency, etc., and they manage to get away with it... maybe not perfectly, but it's exposing the limits of the system in a way that seems frighteningly close to anarchy. The closest thing to this that I can remember, I guess, is Clinton's impeachment, which was pretty unbecoming, but now seems quaint.

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 12:09 pm
by SR
The answer could lay in the dumbass populate in the form of anticipatory obedience. Cited as a principle warning sign of tyranny (in On Tyranny), Timothy Snyder uses Stanley milgrams’ experiment to test authority’s measure of persuasion where obedience is concerned. The subjects were both Yale students and new haven residents who were asked to apply electrical shocks to people not known to them that were not limited to lethal amounts. His experiment was an attempt to understand the mass compliance in nazi Germany but was disallowed entry. The stated goal of the experiment was to learn more on ‘learning’....lol. The results were so alarming he didn’t consider a test in Germany necessary. Apparently the subjects who didn’t continue the experiment to the lethal end never inquired about the welfare of those ‘studied’. The others didn’t have to. :lol:

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 3:35 pm
by Hype
SR wrote:The answer could lay in the dumbass populate in the form of anticipatory obedience. Cited as a principle warning sign of tyranny (in On Tyranny), Timothy Snyder uses Stanley milgrams’ experiment to test authority’s measure of persuasion where obedience is concerned. The subjects were both Yale students and new haven residents who were asked to apply electrical shocks to people not known to them that were not limited to lethal amounts. His experiment was an attempt to understand the mass compliance in nazi Germany but was disallowed entry. The stated goal of the experiment was to learn more on ‘learning’....lol. The results were so alarming he didn’t consider a test in Germany necessary. Apparently the subjects who didn’t continue the experiment to the lethal end never inquired about the welfare of those ‘studied’. The others didn’t have to. :lol:
One answer someone gave to me is simpler than this (there are some issues with Milgram, Stanford, etc.): there exist many people who vote Republican, but when you show them the actual Republican platform, they don't believe those are the real policies, and they continue to vote Republican, despite the fact that they are now literally informed, and understand that the Republican policies aren't things they agree with (e.g., medicare/medicaid cuts). Worse: Trump supporters appear to be those AND the complete opposite: there exist Trump voters who support policies they only imagine Trump will actually implement, whether or not these policies are insane, or even literally impossible, and worse, they believe Trump is doing things that they support, whether or not Trump actually does those things. That combination is so hard to comprehend, I think we all hoped that we just would never have to.

The foundations of liberal democracy take very seriously the irrationality and potential danger of the multitude, and safeguards were developed that were supposed to protect liberalizing and stabilizing institutions. Somehow, the authors of these foundations (Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, etc) never seem to have conceived a world in which so many stupid people of so many different kinds could accidentally agree enough to elect someone as painfully stupid as Trump. :neutral:

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 4:10 pm
by Hype
Hype wrote:
SR wrote:The answer could lay in the dumbass populate in the form of anticipatory obedience. Cited as a principle warning sign of tyranny (in On Tyranny), Timothy Snyder uses Stanley milgrams’ experiment to test authority’s measure of persuasion where obedience is concerned. The subjects were both Yale students and new haven residents who were asked to apply electrical shocks to people not known to them that were not limited to lethal amounts. His experiment was an attempt to understand the mass compliance in nazi Germany but was disallowed entry. The stated goal of the experiment was to learn more on ‘learning’....lol. The results were so alarming he didn’t consider a test in Germany necessary. Apparently the subjects who didn’t continue the experiment to the lethal end never inquired about the welfare of those ‘studied’. The others didn’t have to. :lol:
One answer someone gave to me is simpler than this (there are some issues with Milgram, Stanford, etc.): there exist many people who vote Republican, but when you show them the actual Republican platform, they don't believe those are the real policies, and they continue to vote Republican, despite the fact that they are now literally informed, and understand that the Republican policies aren't things they agree with (e.g., medicare/medicaid cuts). Worse: Trump supporters appear to be those AND the complete opposite: there exist Trump voters who support policies they only imagine Trump will actually implement, whether or not these policies are insane, or even literally impossible, and worse, they believe Trump is doing things that they support, whether or not Trump actually does those things. That combination is so hard to comprehend, I think we all hoped that we just would never have to.

The foundations of liberal democracy take very seriously the irrationality and potential danger of the multitude, and safeguards were developed that were supposed to protect liberalizing and stabilizing institutions. Somehow, the authors of these foundations (Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, etc) never seem to have conceived a world in which so many stupid people of so many different kinds could accidentally agree enough to elect someone as painfully stupid as Trump. :neutral:
I was reminiscing this evening, and was reminded of the awareness we had that this was all happening, while it was happening, in the last few minutes of Obama's last Correspondent's Dinner speech:



And yet, no one did, or apparently could, do anything about it.

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:51 pm
by mockbee
I'm not usually a big fan of David Brooks, but I think his notion on what's to come is tragically right on.



It's a scary time.
:noclue:

Image

The Chaos After Trump

nytimes

What happens to American politics after Donald Trump? Do we snap back to normal or do things spin ever more widely out of control?

The best indicator we have so far is the example of Italy since the reign of Silvio Berlusconi. And the main lesson there is that once the norms of acceptable behavior are violated and once the institutions of government are weakened, it is very hard to re-establish them. Instead, you get this cycle of ever more extreme behavior, as politicians compete to be the most radical outsider. The political center collapses, the normal left/right political categories cease to apply and you see the rise of strange new political groups that are crazier than anything you could have imagined before.

If America follows the Italian example, by 2025 we’ll look back at Trump nostalgically as some sort of beacon of relative normalcy. And by the way, if America follows the Italian example, Trump will never go away.

Silvio Berlusconi first came to power for the same reasons Trump and other populists have been coming to power around the world: Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch. They felt swamped by waves of immigrants, frustrated by economic stagnation and disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites.

In office, Berlusconi did nothing to address Italy’s core problems, but he did degrade public discourse with his speech, weaken the structures of government with his corruption and offend basic decency with his Bunga Bunga sex parties and his general priapic lewdness.

In short, Berlusconi, like Trump, did nothing to address the sources of public anger, but he did erase any restraints on the way it could be expressed.

This past weekend’s elections in Italy were dominated by parties that took many of Berlusconi’s excesses and turned them up a notch.

The big winner is the populist Five Star Movement, which was started by a comedian and is now led by a 31-year-old who had never held a full-time job. Another winner is the League, led by Matteo Salvini, which declined to effectively distance itself from one of its former candidates who went on a shooting rampage against African immigrants. Berlusconi, who vowed to expel 600,000 immigrants, is back and is now considered a moderating influence. The respectable center-left party, like center-left parties across Europe, collapsed.

Italy is now a poster child for the three big trends that are undermining democracies around the world:


First, the erasure of the informal norms of behavior. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue in “How Democracies Die,” democracies depend not just on formal constitutions but also on informal codes. You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry.

Berlusconi, like Trump, undermined those norms. And now Berlusconi’s rivals across the political spectrum have waged a campaign that was rife with conspiracy theories, misinformation and naked appeals to race.

Second, the loss of faith in the democratic system. As Yascha Mounk writes in his book “The People vs. Democracy,” faith in democratic regimes is declining with every new generation. Seventy-one percent of Europeans and North Americans born in the 1930s think it’s essential to live in a democracy, but only 29 percent of people born in the 1980s think that. In the U.S., nearly a quarter of millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a country. Nearly half would like a strongman leader. One in six Americans of all ages supports military rule.

In the Italian campaign, we see the practical results of that kind of attitude. Voters are no longer particularly bothered if a politician shows dictatorial tendencies. As one voter told Jason Horowitz of The Times: “Salvini is a good man. I like him because he puts Italians first. And I guess he’s a fascist, too. What can you do?”

Third, the deterioration of debate caused by social media. At the dawn of the internet, people hoped free communication would lead to an epoch of peace, understanding and democratic communication. Instead, we’re seeing polarization, alternative information universes and the rise of autocracy.

In Italy, the Five Star Movement began not so much as a party but as an online decision-making platform. It pretends to use the internet to create unmediated democracy, but as La Stampa’s journalist Jacopo Iacoboni told David Broder of Jacobin: “In reality, the members have no real power. In reality, there is not any real direct democracy within M5S, but a totally top-down orchestration of the movement.”

In Italy, as with Trump and his Facebook campaign, the social media platform seems decentralizing, but it actually buttresses authoritarian ends.

The underlying message is clear. As Mounk has argued, the populist wave is still rising. The younger generations are more radical, on left and right. The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left with racially charged immigrant restrictions from the right.

Vladimir Putin’s admirers are surging. The center is still hollowing out. Nothing is inevitable in life, but liberal democracy clearly ain’t going to automatically fix itself.

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:08 pm
by mockbee
I think the biggest mistake that liberals, and the truly alarmed, out there make, and we make it often, is treating Trump as a singularity.
Like getting rid of him would get rid of the problem. Maybe briefly it would but he is just a nasty symptom of a huge disease.
I think that to truly address the malaise is to take a serious reconsideration of capitalism itself.

I think the people are ready for it, it's why Sanders and Trump did so well to begin with. Then Trump went all super capitalist like anyone with a brain knew he would.

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:08 pm
by clickie
The guy made himself sound kind of dumb at the end when he said "liberal democracy clearly ain't going to automatically fix itself".

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 7:15 am
by SR
Hype wrote:
Hype wrote:
SR wrote:The answer could lay in the dumbass populate in the form of anticipatory obedience. Cited as a principle warning sign of tyranny (in On Tyranny), Timothy Snyder uses Stanley milgrams’ experiment to test authority’s measure of persuasion where obedience is concerned. The subjects were both Yale students and new haven residents who were asked to apply electrical shocks to people not known to them that were not limited to lethal amounts. His experiment was an attempt to understand the mass compliance in nazi Germany but was disallowed entry. The stated goal of the experiment was to learn more on ‘learning’....lol. The results were so alarming he didn’t consider a test in Germany necessary. Apparently the subjects who didn’t continue the experiment to the lethal end never inquired about the welfare of those ‘studied’. The others didn’t have to. :lol:
One answer someone gave to me is simpler than this (there are some issues with Milgram, Stanford, etc.): there exist many people who vote Republican, but when you show them the actual Republican platform, they don't believe those are the real policies, and they continue to vote Republican, despite the fact that they are now literally informed, and understand that the Republican policies aren't things they agree with (e.g., medicare/medicaid cuts). Worse: Trump supporters appear to be those AND the complete opposite: there exist Trump voters who support policies they only imagine Trump will actually implement, whether or not these policies are insane, or even literally impossible, and worse, they believe Trump is doing things that they support, whether or not Trump actually does those things. That combination is so hard to comprehend, I think we all hoped that we just would never have to.

The foundations of liberal democracy take very seriously the irrationality and potential danger of the multitude, and safeguards were developed that were supposed to protect liberalizing and stabilizing institutions. Somehow, the authors of these foundations (Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, etc) never seem to have conceived a world in which so many stupid people of so many different kinds could accidentally agree enough to elect someone as painfully stupid as Trump. :neutral:
I was reminiscing this evening, and was reminded of the awareness we had that this was all happening, while it was happening, in the last few minutes of Obama's last Correspondent's Dinner speech:



And yet, no one did, or apparently could, do anything about it.
my response was directed to your observation about the administration's ability to lie, cheat, and cross all lines of civil and ethical decency unscathed. But I agree with your assessment of the confluence of stupid. Many, but not all, of the electorate eagerly believed multiple promises by trump that were self contradictory.....lower taxes for everyone, increase in medicare/medicaid/ss, elimination of debt, etc. It was as logical as if he offered a steak....grilled it for barons dinner, then ground it the next day for his burger, then returned it to the barn to sire another calf. Combined with the DNCS corruption to iso Bernie and Russian involvement and we are where we are

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 10:05 am
by Hype
Yeah, so the view I currently hold is basically that the issues with Trump and Russia will get hammered out by Mueller and the others involved there, so those are really the least of our worries.

I'm more concerned with understanding the people who are manipulated, misled, and who support things that are not just not in their interests, but which can be shown to be actively harmful to themselves and others that they clearly care about (or ought to care about). As a corollary, I'm also concerned with trying to understand how, if we do understand at least some of the first problem, how we can potentially make people less polarized, less afraid, less stupid, and less angry.

But these are massive problems, and it may be too late. It's just very unclear. I mean, even the Obama era was not an era of progressive politics. It was an era of divisiveness and centrist attempts to avoid a complete shitshow -- not Obama's fault, of course, except insofar as he himself was not a very progressive candidate in the first place.

I'm also not sure how the United States could re-liberalize while there are areas of Alabama where there is widespread retardation caused by hookworms. :neutral:

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 4:01 pm
by SR
Yes, a better understanding is a big deal.

As for Russia, it's not the least of my worries moving forward. This isn't the first time and inasmuch as Mueller will likely get to the bottom of this regimes involvement, it has really nothing to do with the impact it had. I think it was significant....any success is. Further, this cretin has purposely ignored unanimous sanctions voted in by a Congress that can't agree on anything. And also true, he won't allocate the resources to properly address it. His own appointees complain they're hobbled by his inaction.

Prior to his being elected, his credit rating in the states prohibited him from loans. It's very likely the rumors are true and he's borrowed from Russian banks....state sponsored ones of course. While the emoluments clause has already been ravedged here and abroad (China caved on decades of Trump brand refusals until after his inauguration), his inability to separate his malignant narcissism from the core responsibilities of the presidency continues to do monumental damage to the US and our allies. al-Assad and Putin and direct beneficiaries.....among others

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 4:10 pm
by SR
SR wrote:This guy created major damage....serious attention needs to be paid him the next time around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Parscale
BTW, this guy made real gains on the coattails of the electoral interference.

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 5:24 am
by SR
SR wrote:
SR wrote:This guy created major damage....serious attention needs to be paid him the next time around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Parscale
BTW, this guy made real gains on the coattails of the electoral interference.
This is a good article inasmuch as it begins to connect the dots in terms of what data resources on psychoanalytics were accumulated and ultimately manipulated by Brad Pascale. Not mentioned in the article is the fact that BP was offered, and accepted, vast human resources (free of charge) from Facebook to implement the user infiltration. New offices were set up for the Facebook consultants. The same resources were to the Clinton camp. She refused; it's not clear to me whether that refusal was part of her now well known hubris or if she saw potential conflicts of campaign laws.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/p ... paign.html

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 6:28 pm
by chaos
Note the date of the press release. :eyes:

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 7:52 pm
by SR
St Pattys’ day :drink:

:noclue:

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 9:47 pm
by chaos
chaos wrote:Note the date of the press release. :eyes:
I had embedded a tweet that the dimwit has since deleted.

Here it is (thank you internet! :lol: )

Image

Someone must have told him that BB died today and not a year ago. :lol:

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 4:04 pm
by chaos

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:54 pm
by chaos

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 3:20 pm
by Artemis
chaos wrote:
Haha...awesome! :thumb:


This weekend's G7 Summit in Quebec City should be interesting.

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 10:55 am
by chaos

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 11:07 am
by chaos

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 11:26 am
by kevin
I just don’t know what it will take to get this blowhard, entitled, schizophrenic, psychopath out of office. I’m hoping for a heart attack or for lightning to strike Air Force One. :rockon: :thumb:

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 1:24 pm
by Artemis
Robert DeNiro was in Toronto today for the groundbreaking of a new Canadian lcoation for Nobu restaurant and hotel.


Re: Donald Trump running for President.

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 5:12 pm
by nausearockpig
kevin wrote:I just don’t know what it will take to get this blowhard, entitled, schizophrenic, psychopath out of office. I’m hoping for a heart attack or for lightning to strike Air Force One. :rockon: :thumb:
And then Pence comes in. Good fucking luck if that happens. You’ll need to actually vote him out. As if.