at the risk of bringing up the Nazi comparisons again, one of the things that made them so awful was that they were so competent and bureaucratic
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:31 (seven years ago) link
srs question: was J Edgar Hoover competent?
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Friday, 18 November 2016 17:32 (seven years ago) link
with these clowns the worst crimes are going to be lack of oversight i.e., what they enable more competent ideologues (like Ryan, local law enforcement, intelligence operatives, etc.) to execute
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:33 (seven years ago) link
dude Hoover was a master
at keeping his job for almost 50 years, at least. xxp
it's possible this 'team' will have a hard time eclipsing the batshit thuggery of the Reaganauts, but records were made to be broken
also, the stakes are higher now
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 November 2016 17:33 (seven years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.htmlthis is maybe the worst piece I've read since the election
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, 18 November 2016 17:38 (seven years ago) link
he published that the day trump announced his third racist cabinet member...
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, 18 November 2016 17:39 (seven years ago) link
"Liberal cocooning with grubhub and prestige television"
this is most of the country forever though. not just now and not just liberals. as a people just really good at not thinking about what the government does and what people in power do. or they just figure they can't do anything about it. i dunno. iraq is a distant memory to a lot of people here. they couldn't tell you what has happened there in the last however many years. how many people could?
― scott seward, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:41 (seven years ago) link
You can achieve the same effect with "This is not right".
― ¶ (DJP), Friday, November 18, 2016 11:20 AM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah i agree obv, i didn't mean to defend the specific phrase "this is not normal" so much as reflect on the notion of "normalization"—where we are worn down to accept what's wrong as the status quo, & the debilitating, traumatizing effects of that. I think there's value in talking about that effect, and fighting it by continually reminding yourself "this is not right."
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, 18 November 2016 17:42 (seven years ago) link
it's never been right. but yeah i guess this is the new improved even worse now.
― scott seward, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:44 (seven years ago) link
liberal cocooning with grubhub and prestige television is the modern day equivalent of middle class folk cocooning with their color tv and tract housing in the burbs
― carthago delenda est (mayor jingleberries), Friday, 18 November 2016 17:46 (seven years ago) link
shit coming home, they think, to people who have been insulated from most forms of oppression heretofore
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 November 2016 17:47 (seven years ago) link
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/14/chuck-schumer-the-worst-possible-democratic-leader-at-the-worst-possible-time/
So we have to count on this guy to lead the opposition?
― curmudgeon, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:51 (seven years ago) link
it's a country based on dominance. built and based on it. and that's the bargain everyone who lives here makes in order to have all the crap that we have. not to question too much how we get it. we all do it.
― scott seward, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:51 (seven years ago) link
sorry, need more coffee didn't mean to go all chomsky! gonna go listen to blue cheer.
no, Schumer v likely to be useless. end run around him
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 November 2016 17:53 (seven years ago) link
^^^
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:54 (seven years ago) link
I prefer that these ideologues be incompetent tbh. incompetence will wreak its own damage/havoc, but I'm inclined to say the situation would be worse if Trump had a team of people who really knew how to get shit done and had terrible ideas, rather than a team that doesn't know how to do a goddamn thing and has terrible ideas.
indeed. someone (Eichenwald?) had a good piece about how Trump is kind of blowing his political capital early on for no reason. at the very least it's gonna be fun to watch this all unfold.
― frogbs, Friday, 18 November 2016 17:59 (seven years ago) link
I do not think this will be fun
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 18:01 (seven years ago) link
from the intercept article - this shit is definitely going to happen imo
Schumer has long been the Democrats’ point man in efforts to craft a bipartisan deal to slash taxes on multinational corporations.
― carthago delenda est (mayor jingleberries), Friday, 18 November 2016 18:03 (seven years ago) link
yes, he reiterated his intention on this a couple weeks before Clinton's inevitable victory
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 November 2016 18:07 (seven years ago) link
yeah I don't foresee any concerted resistance to a tax cut that vastly benefits the wealthy, unless Warren or Sanders mount a lonely filibuster or something
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 18:12 (seven years ago) link
I like the fighting spirit of this article:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19638/fighting-trump-isnt-enoughwe-must-also-wage-war-within-the-democratic-party
― never have i been a blue calm sea (collardio gelatinous), Friday, 18 November 2016 18:14 (seven years ago) link
so what do we know about pompeo?
― 龜, Friday, 18 November 2016 18:16 (seven years ago) link
Benghazi dude, Koch puppet, this Zerohedge piece is actually decent:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-18/meet-mike-pompeo-new-director-cia
― sleeve, Friday, 18 November 2016 18:18 (seven years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/intensified-by-climate-change-king-tides-change-ways-of-life-in-florida.html
would mar a lagos be prone to flooding? maybe nothing will convince trump of global warming except trying to get coverage under his insurance policies
― 龜, Friday, 18 November 2016 18:20 (seven years ago) link
nah he'd claim the flooding was due to water displaced by all those refugees cramming into boats
― never have i been a blue calm sea (collardio gelatinous), Friday, 18 November 2016 18:22 (seven years ago) link
after visiting gitmo pompeo said of the hunger strikers that a lot of them looked like they had put on weight
― never have i been a blue calm sea (collardio gelatinous), Friday, 18 November 2016 18:23 (seven years ago) link
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/donald-trump-election-hillary-clinton-election-night-inequality-republicans-trumpism/
― jason waterfalls (gbx), Friday, 18 November 2016 18:44 (seven years ago) link
yeah, I imagine the Trump scandals will be like Reagan's, where underlings' actions spring from the climate set by the President's rhetoric, even when he gives no specific orders.
― duped and used by my worst Miss U (President Keyes), Friday, 18 November 2016 19:00 (seven years ago) link
Steve Bannon is not a nice guy: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/stephen-bannon-facebook-group-racist-material-obama-death-threats
― Frederik B, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:01 (seven years ago) link
https://twitter.com/surlyurbanist/status/799414446959435776 (via jamelle bouie)
this seems like the sort of nuanced take on the intersection of race and class
I read the stratification economics piece. The fact that Trump wants to eliminate the estate tax is now something else that can be added to the list of racist things.
― sarahell, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:23 (seven years ago) link
iatee made a post years back about the estate tax that has stuck with me. paraphrasing: "basically the most defensible tax ever. money doesn't come out of the economy and you didn't do anything to deserve it other than being born. should be 100%."
― k3vin k., Friday, 18 November 2016 19:34 (seven years ago) link
anybody here in/near Louisiana?
http://theslot.jezebel.com/a-runoff-election-in-louisiana-could-help-democrats-in-1788959475
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:37 (seven years ago) link
Yes, in contact with Campbell's cousin via reddit. Expect to phone bank in N.O.
― Distribution of all possible outcomes (Sanpaku), Friday, 18 November 2016 19:40 (seven years ago) link
*high five*
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:41 (seven years ago) link
money doesn't come out of the economy and you didn't do anything to deserve it other than being born. should be 100%
the 100% part is either trolling and/or stupid, unless you prefer "government" to "people," but I think the estate tax is important to keep and the current rate is good. It applies to so few as it is.
― sarahell, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:46 (seven years ago) link
this fuckin guy
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-bannon-trump-tower-interview-trumps-strategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747
― goole, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:46 (seven years ago) link
“The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years.
o rly
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:51 (seven years ago) link
From THR:
He absolutely — mockingly — rejects the idea that this is a racial line. “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” he tells me. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”
“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
― goole, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:51 (seven years ago) link
It is clear when we return to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed over, but the conservative one too — not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. “They got it more wrong than anybody,” he says. “Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical. Now they’ll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly.”
― goole, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:52 (seven years ago) link
The estate tax could be used as a tool to effectively redistribute wealth, but any change to the estate tax that upset the current class structure would never be passed, because the current class structure would never allow itself to be disturbed.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Friday, 18 November 2016 19:53 (seven years ago) link
I'm all for Bannon's aggressive gov't spending on infrastructure plan, what a weird thing to try and get the GOP to do tho
― Οὖτις, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:54 (seven years ago) link
“He gets it, he gets it intuitively,” says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found such an ideal vessel. “You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that they don’t speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids.”
Indeed, during the worst days of the campaign, even down to the last day when most in Trumpland thought only a miracle would save them, “I knew that she couldn’t close. They out-spent us ten to one, had ten times more people and had all the media with them, but I kept saying it doesn’t matter, they got it all wrong, we’ve got this locked.”
...
“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”
― goole, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:54 (seven years ago) link
I can't read it, did the THR reporter at least have the guts to ask how massive tax cuts for the .01% favor the little guy he's going to use to dominate politics forevermore?
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, 18 November 2016 19:55 (seven years ago) link
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Friday, November 18, 2016 11:53 AM (fifty-seven seconds ago)
what are you even saying here?
― sarahell, Friday, 18 November 2016 19:55 (seven years ago) link
Let's be clear: "infrastructure spending" in Trumpspeak is "tax breaks for private companies investing in highways near rich suburbs, and I believe Democrats are stupid enough to fall for it.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 18 November 2016 19:58 (seven years ago) link
Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up.
― duped and used by my worst Miss U (President Keyes), Friday, 18 November 2016 19:59 (seven years ago) link
yeah good luck passing your trillion dollar infrastructure bill through dems and gop senators you fucking despise
― carthago delenda est (mayor jingleberries), Friday, 18 November 2016 19:59 (seven years ago) link
what an arrogant asshole
― global tetrahedron, Friday, 18 November 2016 20:01 (seven years ago) link