Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

  On 1/3/2017 at 8:23 PM, ambermonk said:

Also interesting to note that former Fox News pundit Glenn Beck supposedly shifted to the political left just this past year.

 

crying twat'll be just as useless there as anywhere else.

  On 1/3/2017 at 10:12 PM, joshuatx said:

 

  On 1/3/2017 at 8:23 PM, ambermonk said:

And we got that news yesterday about House republicans trying to gut the Independent Office of Congressional Ethics, but then backed down after Trump himself denounced the move.

 

Oh it was "drain the swamp and then dump toxic waste in it" I knew that promise had a catch.

 

Rick Perry pulled a similar stunt before he left, defunding an independent agency in Texas. Also NC effectively threw a hissy fit when a Dem won the governor's office and stripped him of his powers in a similarly anti-democratic shady session.

 

NC judge put a hold on that... at least temporarily.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/31/judge-temporarily-blocks-law-curbing-power-new-nc-governor/96032870/

so there's that. 

  On 1/3/2017 at 8:23 PM, ambermonk said:

Well she wasn't on the best of terms with Trump either, so it kinda makes sense. Also interesting to note that former Fox News pundit Glenn Beck supposedly shifted to the political left just this past year.

 

And we got that news yesterday about House republicans trying to gut the Independent Office of Congressional Ethics, but then backed down after Trump himself denounced the move.

 

Interesting times.

To clarify - Trump wasn't happy with the timing. He probably wants the other big issues to be in the spotlight and then gut the Ethics board when no one is looking so he can "embiggen" his wallet.

^ US House pulled their stunt back too. Say they will try later in the year but that it's not a priority.

  On 1/3/2017 at 7:36 PM, goDel said:

In the category "give credit where due", I've got to admit I loved todays events with respect to the Ethics Committee proposal of house reps. Trump makes two tweets criticising them to put their focus on more important issues..and *poof*... their proposal is off the table. Regardless of all his tweeting-bullshit, I really like seeing developments like these. Good to see it's possible to have a president putting reps back in place when necessary.  ;-)

Again, look what he actually tweeted - he still thinks the Ethics Committee is unfair, he just wants them to get rid of all the social safety nets first and gut the ethics committee later, when everyone is too busy fighting for some basic social welfare.

e: nm

  On 1/3/2017 at 11:20 PM, usagi said:

 

  On 1/3/2017 at 8:23 PM, ambermonk said:

Also interesting to note that former Fox News pundit Glenn Beck supposedly shifted to the political left just this past year.

 

crying twat'll be just as useless there as anywhere else.

Isn't that where he was originally before he got his show on Fox News?

"Public School is dumb" - some white lady. 

everyone in my industry is all worried about WA's legal cannabis industry getting fucked by Trump and the gang. I highly doubt he's that dumb. Hopefully if he's half the twat of a businessman he seems to be he'd see the $ generated from legalization and start collecting some tax $$$ and making jobs

  On 1/4/2017 at 4:07 AM, Audioblysk said:

everyone in my industry is all worried about WA's legal cannabis industry getting fucked by Trump and the gang. I highly doubt he's that dumb. Hopefully if he's half the twat of a businessman he seems to be he'd see the $ generated from legalization and start collecting some tax $$$ and making jobs

DEA/FDA just classified CBD oil as schedule 1 no medical value.. wtf.. 

the brakes got put on any (and there are a few) ventures that were looking to go national w/CBD oil which can be extracted from all the bits of the no THC plants used in creation of industrial hemp products.. which mostly use the stalk.. so all that is in limbo or on hiatus until the feds get their fuck heads out of their fuck asses. 

To quote GSY!BE: 'the government is corrupt.'

  On 1/4/2017 at 12:36 AM, chenGOD said:

 

  On 1/3/2017 at 7:36 PM, goDel said:

In the category "give credit where due", I've got to admit I loved todays events with respect to the Ethics Committee proposal of house reps. Trump makes two tweets criticising them to put their focus on more important issues..and *poof*... their proposal is off the table. Regardless of all his tweeting-bullshit, I really like seeing developments like these. Good to see it's possible to have a president putting reps back in place when necessary.  ;-)

 

 

Again, look what he actually tweeted - he still thinks the Ethics Committee is unfair, he just wants them to get rid of all the social safety nets first and gut the ethics committee later, when everyone is too busy fighting for some basic social welfare.

Again again: give credit where due: timing and idea was horrible. It got cancelled. Which is a positive.

Yes it might come back in the future, and yes it's not clear what trumps position will be at that point in time. But it's too early for going on a boy cry wolff trip by shouting its not an offset but a delay. I agree its not the same and there might be something on the table in the future. But there's simply no reason to blindly assume its just a delay. The most likely scenario is that delay means change. So if the subject returns, the proposals will likely be different.

Again again again, if he supported the change, why stop it? The reps are at an alltime high and can do anything they want. If he had any benefit of the proposal, he could have done nothing. (He isnt even in the office at this point, for f.cks sake) But that was not what happened. Please don't assume the worst because it fits a narrative. It's good to be concerned though. But concerns and prejudgments are two distinctly different beasts.

Also, predictions for the obama care "repeal": it's going to be very similar to the obama-getting-troops-out-of-iraq thing.

Things will visually change and be labelled as a repeal, even though it's mostly stuff which was already mandated, or in the pipeline of necessary changes to the aca (but blocked by the toxic political climate). Just like the troops in iraq were already destined to be drastically reduced under the bush administration.

In other words: there will be no actual repeal. The aca will keep going, but with a couple changes. Just remember there are an awful lot of reps who have huge interests in being able to say they repealed obamacare, while at the same time, keeping a lot of provisions from the aca because their constituents actually demand access to a lot of stuff in the aca. It's just the label of obamacare thats toxic.

And if you want to keep those parts of the aca (eg preexisting conditions) you'll end up with something that will really look like the aca.

It's amazing how distorted the discussion about obamacare is. Baffling.

  On 1/4/2017 at 4:07 AM, Audioblysk said:

everyone in my industry is all worried about WA's legal cannabis industry getting fucked by Trump and the gang. I highly doubt he's that dumb. Hopefully if he's half the twat of a businessman he seems to be he'd see the $ generated from legalization and start collecting some tax $$$ and making jobs

pot legalization is pretty much slow but safe at this point - law enforcement in certain states or regions (border of Mexico, midwest states bordering WA and CO) is really the only obstacle but at this point I think heroin and other opiods are making them focus resources elsewhere. many conservatives are literally like "eh" when asked about it and ok with medical usage at the very least.

also you will likely always have really rural conservative pockets that will oppose it - there are still dry states and large amounts of dry counties in states like Texas.

I dunno much about the state of pot become too monopolized or the emergence of legal cartels / controlled distro / etc but that seems like a bigger concern in the future eventually

would folks want big-brand/corporate buds?

seems the pattern of merkin corporatism generally in other matters, although PKD's "Land of Smiles" brand is crying out for a backer (step forward Ed Rosenthal)

  On 1/4/2017 at 3:45 AM, Nebraska said:

Ayn Rand & the Objectivists would surely be v v proud

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/817329823374831617

the rating machine that is djt forgot to clear up that when he said mexico would pay for "the great wall" what he meant was that we'd actually pay for it then get an iou from mexico.

If you're tired of people calling Trump the return of Hitler/fascism, this might put your soul back to rest.

Interesting piece by Niall Ferguson about why analogies with 1920s/1930s are crippled. Don't take everything what he says as fact though. He does wear his political views on his sleeve. But he can bring an interesting perspective from time to time.

http://www.cirsd.org/en/horizons/horizons-autumn-2016--issue-no-8/populism-as-a-backlash-against-globalization?utm_content=buffer4a254&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

  Quote

Journalists are fond of saying that we are living in a time of “unprecedented” instability. In reality, as numerous studies have shown, our time is a period of remarkable stability in terms of conflict. In fact, viewed globally, there has been a small uptick in organized lethal violence since the misnamed Arab Spring. But even allowing for the horrors of the Syrian civil war, the world is an order of magnitude less dangerous than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, and a haven of peace and tranquility compared with the period between 1914 and 1945.

 

This point matters because the defining feature of interwar fascism was its militarism. Fascists wore uniforms. They marched in enormous and well-drilled parades and they planned wars. That is not what we see today.

Well, the rise of fascism was also preceded by rise of nationalism, anti-capitalism, anti-globalism, anti-intellectualism, conservatism and the feeling that democracy has failed. So..

But yeah, Trump doesn't really appear that kind of "blood and soil" purge-the-decadent type of fascist of the 1930s Germany. But the fascism also took decades to form and it wasn't really clear what it actually encompassed ideologically. The Italian fascists were pretty different bunch from Nazis etc. Not all fascists were racists and some were even pacifists and some fascist thinking included lots of socialist ideas.

  On 1/8/2017 at 11:36 AM, mokz said:

Well, the rise of fascism was also preceded by rise of nationalism, anti-capitalism, anti-globalism, anti-intellectualism, conservatism and the feeling that democracy has failed. So..

 

But yeah, Trump doesn't really appear that kind of "blood and soil" purge-the-decadent type of fascist of the 1930s Germany. But the fascism also took decades to form and it wasn't really clear what it actually encompassed ideologically. The Italian fascists were pretty different bunch from Nazis etc. Not all fascists were racists and some were even pacifists and some fascist thinking included lots of socialist ideas.

Well, Nazism wasn't a purely-cognitive ideology that disseminated throughout the population on the basis of its attractiveness. It was way more nuanced than that. I think it's prolly more useful to describe it as 'behavioral patterns' rather than 'rationally-accepted ideas'.

Many of the horrors of Nazism were carried out by people who weren't motivated by Nazi ideals. I mean hell, does everyone in the U.S. military have a unified, identical ideology? Well, if you saw them in action you might think they all shared the political beliefs of the president (because look, they're acting that way!)

But also: Fascism is not some grand, ever-looming threat. It's not an 'on/off' switch. You encounter it daily, in negligible doses, where (luckily) the fascist in question doesn't have enough power to fully control their environment and the people in it. But if they *did* have that power...

So anyway the point I was driving at was that if we're wondering "is this fascism or not?" then we should know what markers we're looking for exactly.

You don't need explicit fascist ideology to get fascism. You just need people with power acting fascist-ly. And 'fascism' is more of a spectrum than a binary 'on/off' category.

how about reading the piece? it's all in there.

  On 1/8/2017 at 12:42 PM, goDel said:

how about reading the piece? it's all in there.

"This is not what we see today"

The blurb you posted makes it sound like all is well because "this is not what we see today"

But as I said in my post: we shouldn't be looking for that "this" because that "this" is not a good marker of fascism

(I just woke up so give me a bit to read the whole thing)

How about instead of wondering whether or not it's fascism (probably more along the lines of corporatism) you have to worry about, you citizens of the USA get out there and demand impeachment of a president-elect who is too busy to receive intel briefings but not too busy to tweet about the ratings of a TV show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHO31oi2OrE