Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

I'm just flummoxed that there are still people who are unable to take like this big picture view of a dumbfuck public figure who has been showing us exactly who he is for decades and who has been vocally espousing a very particular strain of his general douchebaggery for years and who has spent the last year and a half incessantly assaulting us with what a spectacularly irredeemable piece of human garbage he is and how thoroughly resistant to change he is. I don't know how, in the face of that, you can watch him talking slightly more calmly about things that are just slightly less hateful than usual and pretend that he's pivoting or changing or maturing or growing. Fuck every single person who's promoting that narrative, seriously, and may each one of them be tethered to him in the historical narrative of whatever awful shit he manages to do before he's ejected from office.

I'm not sure how the VOICE thing isn't completely overshadowing anything else that's being considered positive about this speech.

Most people think politics are really this easy thing that corrupt politicians have fouled up, so what non-dumbfucks see as evidence of incompetence and cluelessness, they see as "the new Sheriff in town being temporarily stymied by the old corrupt bureaucracy"

yeah. there were audible gasps in the audience when he described it. xpost

God, the headline on NYT right now: "Trump Offers Up a More Hopeful Vision"

the next several decades as the baby boom ages into their eighties and nineties

why we are well fucked for 25+ more years, and not just bc of health care costs.

Reasons why i am planning to die by 55

Without spawn

NPR noon newscast totally emph'd the "presidential" spin

Reasons why i am planning to die by 55

well, i have to see if the Mets win this year

and the only guvmint that matters:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/01/investing/dow-21000-trump-speech/index.html

the stock market thing and the whole media narrative around it is troubling. could it be that investors are optimistic because they know they're in an era of deregulation? no, no, that couldn't be it. they're optimistic because of trump's patriotic eagle vision for the country.

trump clearly loves taking credit for the gains since his election. and when there's an inevitable dip/crisis/crash, it's all too predictable how trump will react - it will be somebody or something else's fault, he will be treated so unfairly

it's because currency is imaginary etc xp

The Dow Jones thing to me looks like a big run-up ahead of a big cash-out (which will come only after tax rates have been slashed). It's all short-term thinking, I seriously doubt anyone has any idea (or even cares much) whether the broader economy is headed up or down.

I thought I'd gotten myself on a more even keel, but media backpedaling on the basis of a moment of inconsequential relative temperance has me feeling more panicky despair than pretty much anything the Orange Mummy has done or said in the past month.

what is the VOICE thing i cannot google atm

we predicted the reaction yesterday. He spoke in complete sentences, thanks to the teleprompter. Nothing to panic about. Wait till ACA repeal ('and replace') comes to his desk.

xpost Well, you know how immigrants are committing all of the crimes in the US? We finally have a governmental program to deal with this threat to our well-being and way of life by disseminating information on these heinous crimes far and wide.

I thought that was announced earlier, in one of his EOs

VOICE sounds maybe a little like this idk

And we see back in Nazi Germany there was a paper called—a Nazi paper called Der Stürmer, and they had a department called "Letter Box," and readers were invited to send in stories of supposed Jewish crimes. And Der Stürmer would publish them, and they would include some pretty horrific graphic illustrations of these crimes, as well. And there was even a sort of a lite version of it, if you will, racism lite, in which the Neues Volk, which was more like a Look or a Life magazine, which normally highlighted beautiful Aryan families and their beautiful homes, would run a feature like "The Criminal Jew," and they would show photos of "Jewish-looking," as they called it, people who represented different kinds of crimes that one ought to watch out for from Jews.

we don't have to report them to VOICE though if they can support themselves

nothing fucked up about that at all :)

didn't Bannon also publish black crimes in his rag ?

yep

The most awesome aspect of an idea like VOICE, IMO, is that you know the people who promote and contribute and respond positively to information like this are those who will be rigorous in making distinctions between, say, criminal immigrants and law-abiding immigrants or undocumented immigrants and US citizens when trying to determine who to demonize and kick the shit out of.

the VOICE thing freaks me the fuck out.

i can't wait to be told how this does not resemble nazi germany in any way

it's not even about convincing more people that undocumented immigrants are more likely to violent criminals. it's about providing government-sponsored "information" to the people who were already convinced of it so they can feel legitimized.

btw Van Jones is a nincompoop

https://twitter.com/DougHenwood/status/836929317766561793

might sound flip, but after 8 years of hearing about how markets "crave" stability and then seeing the weird exuberance following the election of the most unstable egomaniac(s) fathomable, touting many policies that are unambiguously bad for many sectors of the economy, i'm starting to think Wall Street might be ... racist

I'm not sure there's a position of this administration and the GOP in general that can't be summed up as (and sometimes explicitly defined as) an attempt to maintain and reassert (mostly wealthy and mostly male but always) white hegemony.

FFS! trump didn't shit himself up the how predicational of him xxp

oh fuck autocorrect ugh

Same as it ever was for the last 50 years, I guess, but it's just so fucking uncouched at this point. It feels like it's just a matter of time before we start hearing elected officials casually tossing around racist epithets again.

uh we are past that point

Media shitstains vs. actual veterans: https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/836987065145389056

That twit ("We are all one people, with one destiny") just lit up my "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" warning panel.

seriously, what is our one destiny? what could that possibly mean?

we're all gonna die

I'm pretty sympathetic to Van Jones, who had legit feelings of terror on election night, and probably still does, at least saying that Donald appeared Presidential and less scary, which might at least douse a few fires amongst his incitable base and ease tensions for the near future. Tensions that have immediate ramifications for him and his community.

He did also explain that he still largely disagrees with the President. and that being able to do this "again and again and again", well, that remains to be seen. speaking competently is really not that hard, but few other speeches have the magnitude of SOTU where you can achieve maximum impact. prior to his next one, there is ample time for him to erode what he just did.

starting to get seriously afraid that this Russia story is all going to wash out by the summer :/

not to be all ageist but this trump fella is too old to be president

+

not to be all mccarthyist but the oldest person ever inaugurated is too deep in russia's pocket to be president

=

lol usa

not buyin' it xxp

IT'S CLASSIFIED -- where's it gonna go, most likely? Into the memory hole. xp

I'm more scared of him 'appearing' presidential and fooling people into actually thinking that he's presidential than I am of his usual unhinged and scary self. If people lean on the former, they're fooling themselves and it helps no one.

i am still stunned that the VOICE thing isn't the main headline right now, everywhere

at least it headlines this thread title. that's comforting

from last night:

@pareene
here's an idea for everyone: Treasure of the Sierra Madre is on TCM literally right now

@DontFollowDave
either way you get to watch a delusional man who does not trust Mexicans get consumed by his greed

eh you don't like Sierra Madre

I do like it! I don't think it's one of the All-Time Greats.

(i like the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Fred C Dobbs appears more)

More useful way of spending last night, at least, similar to how some of us went to a screening of Blaxploitation trailers at a local art house last night

delicious

daaaaaaaaaaaamn

global warming's terrifying new math

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39906-as-trump-s-denialists-get-to-work-the-climate-is-changing-170-times-faster

damn son

Krauthammer himself has been a paraplegic since the age of 22. That’s an expensive medical condition. Probably he has group insurance through the Washington Post or another institution with which he’s affiliated, allowing him to spread the cost of his expensive medical care onto a risk pool that includes healthier, cheaper-to-cover people. Or perhaps he has a different arrangement. I do not for one moment resent that my insurance helps cover either childbirth or mechanized wheelchairs, even though I personally need neither service, and nothing Krauthammer says would make me reconsider.
It is callous enough that Republicans apply their every-man-for-himself logic to health care, and land on the belief that those fortunate enough to be blessed with good health should not be burdened with the cost of paying for the medical needs of others. But when the advocate of this argument himself has expensive medical needs, the callousness rises to a level of solipsistic barbarism. A paraplegic man resents having to pay for women who need help breastfeeding their babies. Why should those women have to buy insurance that covers wheelchairs?

oops [ q ]

chait is stone cold

Conservatives will scream "wow, rude" if they acknowledge it at all, but it's such a direct hit.

Bring on the April thread already, US peeps

He got away with all his lies, people still elected him. Will he also get away without getting anything done? By blaming others all the time? I hope not but I fear yes. I am really happy living in good old europe these days. The usa give me the chills.

"Just another day in paradise, okay?" April 2017 President Trump and oppo dump thread

Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd!!!!

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more like Sexy Eyes Chuck Todd

OK lock it now