The Trump Presidency

[Calliander]

The Dems don't need great candidates. They just need a viable alt to Trump who will actually run a campaign (Hilary didn't even campaign in half the states she lost).

That dbag representing the porn star is actually right: They need a dbag like him to run. Someone who will hit back instead of laughing dismissively and rolling their eyes. Taking the high road these days means losing - which is a fucking sad commentary about the United States of America. But it can also be reversed.

The main problem is that an elected body of representation is a broken idea because we are all immature. Trump's actually right that we need a dictator but we need a "benevolent" one and those two things are mutually exclusive. A societal parent. Someone to be like, "Fuck you, you fat shits, you drank too much soda and now you don't get any more for a while. You can have your freedom to drink soda back when you learn a little self control. That's how it works. Don't like it, have a cry. Your health is more important than being free to down 72 ounces of Coke in one sitting." And we'd also need a media who can ignore the bullies as they shout about how they should be able to put whatever they want into their bodies.

All of those things are anathema to a free society....... but maybe we don't deserve that any more? I feel dirty and awful saying/thinking that. But we do suck.

[Doc Holliday]

And every democrat was literally Marx, Lenin, Satan, and Hitler in some sort of odd Voltron. However, I'm used to the right being hysterical - that's why people like Rush Limbaugh are still employed, because they are so over the top with their grievances that it's entertaining. That's why Anita Bryant and Billy Graham are still made fun of, long after they ceased to be relevant. The right has an embedded hysteria in its core since Reagan, which I think stems from the alignment with Fundamentalism and ttttthhhheeeee grrreeeaaaat Saaaatannnnnn and all that theatrical stuff.

But I truly expect more from liberals, I didn't expect them to pick up where the fundamentalists left off in tyool 2018. I mean, I should have figured they would - profits are profits at this point, and the 24-hour news cycle does not lend itself to any positive outcome. We as libs have replaced "Satan" with every ill we can possibly think of: "This is the end of ______ as we know it!" Is that productive? I don't think it is. I'm just really surprised - not at the hard left SJW/identity politics, because outliers always exist - but at the true middle of the road liberal. So many of us just have reverted to conservative tricks and it didn't work for them and it's not gonna work for us. So, RIP Democratic Party as we know it, I suppose.

I disagree on the first part. The hate for Bush wasn’t near as severe before the invasion of Iraq. He earned his hate. Obama & Trump received hate day 1. Trump of course, took the low road and encouraged it.

I agree with the rest. It’s why I am the way I am. Hanging out with artists and watching the left turn into shallower arguments, closing off their tribe into increasing tighter circles. They adopted the methods and language white supremacists and religious fundamentalists have used for decades. It was disturbing.


IOO R.I.P. Dems 2018

The jobs market has reached what should be some kind of inflection point: there are now more openings than there are workers.

April marked the second month in a row this historic event has occurred, and the gap is growing.

According to the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released Tuesday, there were just shy of 6.7 million open positions in April, the most recent month for which data are available. That represented an increase of 65,000 from March and is a record.

The number of vacancies is pulling well ahead of the number the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts as unemployed. This year is the first time the level of the unemployed exceeded the jobs available since the BLS started tracking JOLTS numbers in 2000.

[icarusfall]

Pruitt resigned.

[Doc Holliday]

[Fe 26]

All of those things are anathema to a free society....... but maybe we don't deserve that any more? I feel dirty and awful saying/thinking that. But we do suck.

We should have never tethered school funding to property tax.

[gameoverDude]

A former Fox News exec & close friend of Sean Hannity, Bill Shine is now working for Trump as Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications.
Really a surprise. He was accused of covering up for Roger Ailes' sexual harassment.

[Joust Williams]

Trump's actually right...Someone to be like, "Fuck you, you fat shits, you drank too much soda and now you don't get any more for a while. You can have your freedom to drink soda back when you learn a little self control. That's how it works. Don't like it, have a cry. Your health is more important than being free to down 72 ounces of Coke in one sitting."

they say Trump is the master of projection, he really does need to take his own advice

[Bacon McShig]

So many of us just have reverted to conservative tricks and it didn't work for them and it's not gonna work for us.

Hahaha, excuse me? It works amazingly for them. Across 80% of America's land mass there are restaurants that leave their TVs locked on Fox News, markets where conservative talk radio owns the airwaves without any ounce of representation from a liberal counterpoint, and that's spreading to local TV with this Sinclair business. Even driving in rural-adjacent places, it's not rare to see a bunch of InfoWars and fairtax.org bumper stickers proudly displayed. I ain't never seen a Rachel Maddow bumper sticker, hell I don't think I've ever seen a Daily Show one.

But you're right that the right's shallow provocation techniques don't work for liberals. There was a 60 Minutes interview of one of the big alt-right figureheads that was seeding a bunch of targeted fake news during the election not too long ago; They asked him why he kept poking at the conservative beehive for his stories, and he very plainly stated that he tried planting liberal ones just as much at the start, and they just didn't take. There's some dumb liberals, but generally they're not that dumb, even if it's a story we really want to believe, we're a suspicious lot that will generally run a sniff test on that stuff. Liberal-targeted fake news certainly exists but people fact check it and shoot it down and it flickers out quickly, it doesn't hang around to keep snowballing and snowballing. Any liberal attempt at a bombastic conspiracy theory like Pizzagate or Birtherism would die on the vine immediately. Whereas you serve the right a fake news story potted in a soil that's clearly made of broken glass and dog feces, and as long as it's got their favorite trigger words in there, somehow the fruit of perpetual office e-mail chains, national media coverage, and mainstream Republican acknowledgement still springs wildly forth.

[Doc Holliday]

Have you met bbobb & Joust, yet?

[Bacon McShig]

I mean, they're a broken record about Trump being a massive dipshit that keeps doing things that should have sent him down in flames a hundred times over by now, but... that ain't fake news.