After this's all over, I hope the U.S. gov't bills Trump for the damage he's done to our reputation

[Kacey Y]

Random thought. I hate Jeff Sessions so much. I'm really hoping that he gets the boot, but I'm also hopeful that everyone just continues to ignore him on a state level.

Here in Kansas/Missouri we have that dip shit messing up hemp sales. Now it's illegal to buy CBD supplements (or from what I understand really, hemp in general). A dude who owns a shop 20 minutes or so from my house had to shut down a month ago because of this. The police are actually cracking down on CBD. Fucking insane and obnoxious. It doesn't get you fucking high. I take Hemp protein, drink hemp milk sometimes..etc. Give me a fucking break. Our government has their collective head so far up their asses it's insane.

I feel like it' probably going to take 8 years or more to undo what's happening now in the White House.

Normally if someone said something like this, my internal reaction would be "that's probably a bit of an overreaction", but somehow the only real policy this white house seems interested in pursuing is just undoing or intentionally sabotaging anything the previous administration did the last 8 years. I've honestly never seen anything like it in my life. Their version of "big government reform" is just to fire everyone the last administration appointed and not hire anyone to fill vacant State Dept and internal non-political public service jobs. At one point they actually used the term "reform by attrition". Which isn't reform, which would be based off audits and restructuring plans towards specific goals and budgets, it's just letting the internal, day to day workings of the Federal government fall apart. Which actually makes the government way LESS efficient. So they don't want to make the government smaller and more efficient, they're just fucking it up out of spite towards the last person who ran it and the people who aren't on their "side".

[Seance]

Their version of "big government reform" is just to fire everyone the last administration appointed and not hire anyone to fill vacant State Dept and internal non-political public service jobs. At one point they actually used the term "reform by attrition". Which isn't reform, which would be based off audits and restructuring plans towards specific goals and budgets, it's just letting the internal, day to day workings of the Federal government fall apart. Which actually makes the government way LESS efficient. So they don't want to make the government smaller and more efficient, they're just fucking it up out of spite towards the last person who ran it and the people who aren't on their "side".

It's almost as if some hostile foreign power hired Drump to intentionally sabotage the US or something.

It's taking a lot longer than it should for Republicans to stand up for their own professed belief in the
constitution and the "rule of law". But when your main political stance is that the government should
never be funded (Grover Norquist and his insane, feel-good stance of "no new taxes") and that the
military should always be bigger (military funding is the sacred cow of pork barrel politics) the result
is that nothing else gets funded and the only thing that grows is the national debt.

There are plenty of things that the majority of US citizens and politicians agree upon, and yet basically
none of that has been attempted, much less accomplished. Such as:

Where is the action on infrastructure?
Why isn't the government forcing pharmaceutical corporations like Purdue Pharma to pay for the opioid crisis they profited in creating?
Why isn't the government responding to a cyber attack by a hostile foreign government?
Where are the proposed solutions to make healthcare more affordable for everyone?

There is hope that the midterms and 2020 elections will restore balance and sanity and a true "separation of powers"
in the government. But I suspect that there has been little action to curtail the cyber attack on the American voting
system because last time was a run-through test, and the upcoming elections are going to be "rigged" as Drump was
so fond of saying.

And why was he saying that so much about the election before the election? "The system is rigged." Because if anyone
had responded forcefully to the cyber attack on the US election system, then crying "rigged" would rile up the base
into thinking that protecting the US electoral system from Russian interference was somehow "partisan".

[Kacey Y]

I actually don't think Trump is intentionally fucking stuff up in the way people think, off that "hired by the Russians" tip. If anything, I think he's just a borderline insane unstable narcissistic maniac and other people who want to get rich, powerful or fuck stuff up are just winding him up and letting him go.

[Seance]

I actually don't think Trump is intentionally fucking stuff up in the way people think, off that "hired by the Russians" tip. If anything, I think he's just a borderline insane unstable narcissistic maniac and other people who want to get rich, powerful or fuck stuff up are just winding him up and letting him go.

...like the Russians.

[Kacey Y]

Yeah, I would easily believe they're actively manipulating him through his business interests and ego. I think that's why he keeps insisting there's no collusion, because I don't think there's any direct "Hey, we'll give you this and you give us that" deals happening. So much as the Russians have probably just been setting up deals and connections with his people/businesses/interests and he just thinks he's an amazing deal maker who is getting what he wants, while they call back favors from all the people who do his dirty work for him and line up all these favors. The way that mafia dons never really went down through all the huge FBI cases from the 70's into the 90's. They had all these people around them who did the dirty work, it was understood what they were supposed to do, but nothing ever touched the guy at the top. The only potential difference being that Trump seems to have no loyalty to anyone outside his immediate family, so there's not much incentive for all the people under him to not snitch...unless they're directly connected to Putin. I don't think anyone who's working directly for Russia would be crazy enough to spill beans at this point. They murder anyone that farts in Putin's direction and no one of significance ever gets significant blowback for it. They've been living with sanctions for decades, doesn't seem to slow them down much.

[Jwar]

Putin had a re-election recently...

Couldn't see that one coming! Eye roll.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/tr ... 6761548a54

[comesect2.0]

Saddam_DJ.jpg

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7h9VViguQw[/youtube]

[Iommic Pope]

Anti Vaxers, Flat Earthers, Trumps, post truthers, Russian shenanigans everywhere and now this:
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese- ... y-invasion
This is the end of intelligence. We will not pass any great filter after this one.

[Iommic Pope]

That is literally the plot of a Black Mirror episode.

[D.o.S.]

It's also basically a personal reputation, something that predates Black Mirror by millennia.

I mean I'm not thrilled about it but it's hardly the straw on the cables back for me regarding data usage etc.

[Iommic Pope]

Yeah I know, but if you look at the spike in knowledge and progress, the fact that any of that shit exists is just saddening.

Regarding the data thing, like, whatever, but I feel for the people in China that are mostly just gonna be ok with this and President Forever Self-Elect Xi Jinping.
Like, they don't have the option but nobody is even going to blink at any of that. That's the shit that truly disturbs me.

[Achtane]

My hope for the future rests on whether or not I can claim refugee status and emigrate to a sweet Scandinavian country. Or maybe Canada. Australia.

[Bassist_Diver]

I actually don't think Trump is intentionally fucking stuff up in the way people think, off that "hired by the Russians" tip. If anything, I think he's just a borderline insane unstable narcissistic maniac and other people who want to get rich, powerful or fuck stuff up are just winding him up and letting him go.

When I took AP psych in high school our textbook used Donald Trump as an example of a person with narcissistic personality disorder. I personally think he's in way over his head and people who wish to push their own agendas are using his ego as an easy way to get it through.

Except for the sleezy scumbag part, he's been that way all on his own since the 90s.

[Seance]

I feel for the people in China that are mostly just gonna be ok with this and President Forever Self-Elect Xi Jinping.
Like, they don't have the option but nobody is even going to blink at any of that. That's the shit that truly disturbs me.

China has a long history. Other than a dip during the colonial times after the British forced them to stay addicted to opium (Opium Wars)
even foreign invaders mostly conformed to Chinese culture (the Mongols, the Manchurians). And during most of that time there have been Emperors.
But the whole belief system is also based on a notion of order and how the heavens and earth align and the Emperor rules by the "Mandate of Heaven".

I suspect that the current "President Forever" will be held to the same standard. If something happens (crops fail, the economy goes in the toilet)
then he will be out of there. If the "Mandate of Heaven" is seen to be broken through bad omens or large-scale bad events, then the Emperor is
out of there.


But yes. regardless of the grand sweep of cultural history... dictators are not good and almost universally bad. The situation is just slightly
different in China since it has always been a heavily populated place that has cared more about order than about personal freedoms.
They typically have feared chaos more than the danger of being executed for nonconformity with strict or repressive laws.

[Iommic Pope]

I feel like having a long history of being shitty is still not really an excuse for being shitty.
Like, it’s 2018, there are other options.
Like not shitty.