Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted
37 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

Watch the next several jobs reports be negative, unemployment rising, and these clowns will be claiming it's a benefit to tax payers because they are saving money.

They will have an explanation for the upcoming recession, caused by unnecessary tariffs and trade wars, and point to it as a good thing. Nerds will point out the massive private sector layoffs as a large part of his policy, unexpected cancelling of government contracts, deportation of cheap immigrant workers and the general retraction of the economy due to his dumb policies, but he and his media apparatus will spin it as good for the country. It's gonna be great.

You're thinking way too much.   They will just blame Biden.

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted
2 minutes ago, d2o said:

You're thinking way too much.   They will just blame Biden.

Obama imo, it's always been about the black guy that broke half the country's brains.

  • Hook 'Em 3
  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 1
Posted
1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

Disagree or agree. We can certainly hash it out on some of the details. But tell me the prior admin and in particular the candidate the Democrats tried to hot swap from VP to POTUS is capable of this presentation. Just give it the whole watch. 

 

 

There are any number of politicians who can deliver a speech that pisses off our allies. What Vance did was unremarkable and predictable. That was SDE.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 3
  • Haha 1
Posted
1 minute ago, Surly Bevo said:

Obama imo, it's always been about the black guy that broke half the country's brains.

True

 

1 minute ago, Biff Tannen said:

And it will work 

Its their greatest hit

Posted
34 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Do you honestly think that the Trump regime is pretty much business as usual or are you just finding ways to stick pins in people for neglible hypocrisy? Your posts the last few days don't read like the usual you.

He has snapped, or he is deep in the throes of addiction.  Stop responding to him, he is not worth the effort.  I hope he gets help.

Posted (edited)
8 minutes ago, Goofyboy said:


If you’re not a racist, misogynistic twit, you’d realize that VP Harris can give any presentation Vance could.

She may not be quite as smart as Vance, or maybe even as versed on foreign affairs, such that her ad libbed answers to interview questions aren't super-polished.  Then again, Vance pretty regularly inserts his foot in his mouth, deeply, while speaking extemporaneously.  Far more than Harris.

But that was a prepared speech that most politicians could give.

Edited by TwiceHorn
  • Like 1
Posted
11 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

She may not be quite as smart as Vance, or maybe even as versed on foreign affairs, such that her ad libbed answers to interview questions aren't super-polished.  Then again, Vance pretty regularly inserts his foot in his mouth, deeply, while speaking extemporaneously.  Far more than Harris.

But that was a prepared speech that most politicians could give.

Twice, do you think those present came away thinking how smart Vance is? I just hope we don’t “Ted Cruz” him explaining away odious behavior that ostensibly belies his brilliance.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
1 hour ago, Satchel said:

I’m halfway through ABC Nightly News and I had to stop watching. Stories about laying off thousands of federal workers willy nilly, including essential medical professionals at the CDC and National Nuclear Security Administration, and Vance overseas upbraiding European allies (calling them the enemy within) for resisting the far right Nazi lite Party in Germany, is just too much. How can anybody watch what’s being done to our country and not be enraged, is beyond me.

Just to be clear, there are no federal workers being laid off.  No one has implemented the federal version of that yet, a RIF.

All these probationary employees are being told they’re released for unsatisfactory performance. That’s because even in a probationary role, indiscriminate mass firings are illegal.  
 

But it is easy to release a “poor performer” in that period with less documentation and no appeal rights.  So they just lie and say everyone was a poor performer.  
 

It’s a super shitty thing to do. 

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Despite what Americans may believe, Europeans are actually rather less alarmist about America and more inclined to think we will ultimately be normal and it is shocking to see a representative of the superpower behave like Viktor Orban because deep down they still think we are a serious country.  

Are we sure about this?

I have a good friend from Norway and I dated a woman from Spain.  They both indicated that the general opinion in their home countries is that the United States lost its mind somewhere around the first time we elected Trump, if not going back to when we elected W.  And I was in London and Paris a couple of years ago, and cabbies were chatting me up with questions that amounted to, "Is the US as batshit crazy now as it seems?"

 

Edited by TexArcher
  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Rage+1 1
Posted
30 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

She may not be quite as smart as Vance, or maybe even as versed on foreign affairs, such that her ad libbed answers to interview questions aren't super-polished.  Then again, Vance pretty regularly inserts his foot in his mouth, deeply, while speaking extemporaneously.  Far more than Harris.

But that was a prepared speech that most politicians could give.

Every GOP politician in America is fully capable of giving a speech that boils down to “they say we need to worry about Russia and China, but the real enemy is Woke.” 
 

I will concede that even now most of the GOP that is worldy enough to travel abroad resist giving that speech to a room full of the CHODs and Defense Ministers we hope might help us fight Russia or China if needed. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Posted
2 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Are we sure about this?

I have a good friend from Norway and I dated a woman from Spain.  They both indicated that the general opinion in their home countries is that the United States lost its mind somewhere around the first time we elected Trump, if not going back to when we elected W.  And I was in London and Paris a couple of years ago, and cabbies were chatting me up with questions that amounted to, "Is the US as batshit crazy now as it seems?"

 

I was mostly talking about the people at MSC, who for decades have gotten our private assurances that we don’t mean the batshit things we tweet. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted
1 minute ago, mchookem said:

i honestly chuckled that Vance reading a prepared speech scolding Europe for not placating their own right-wing fanatics more is seen as a paragon of intellect and ability by our own Ignatius J Reilly. whoo-eey 😆

Consider that speech the launch point of his Crusade for Neo-Nazi Dignity. 
 

My valve is acting up. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 2
  • Haha 4
Posted
4 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Are we sure about this?

I have a good friend from Norway and I dated a woman from Spain.  They both indicated that the general opinion in their home countries is that the United States lost its mind somewhere around the first time we elected Trump.  And I was in London and Paris a couple of years ago, and cabbies were chatting me up with questions that amounted to, "Is the US as batshit crazy now as it seems?"

I found myself at a pool side bar in Playa back in October 2016 with a group of probably mid 40s Germans and another group of late 20s early 30s professional guys from Monterrey (they were there for a bachelor party....they were a lot of fun). Both groups thought we were going batshit crazy back then for even considering Donald Trump and that was a few weeks BEFORE his first election.  

  • Hook 'Em 4
Posted

ok so I tried to watched a few mins of the Vance speech. Just gaslighting for the first 5 minutes there. Russia isn't the worry and democratic values, uh huh, coughs in January 6th. Just a massive F U to everyone in the room. 

that'll be $9.95 

Hey, its summer down this way. Hope you homies are well. I made it all the way to Saturday and so can you. 

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Like 1
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Satchel said:

Twice, do you think those present came away thinking how smart Vance is? I just hope we don’t “Ted Cruz” him explaining away odious behavior that ostensibly belies his brilliance.

No, that wasn't my point.  But he's smart and well-educated and as a general proposition, pretty articulate.  And I think that's why he gets tied in knots doing Maga shit, because he's an invertebrate.  But theres enough of a notochord in there that he gets twisted up spewing stuff he knows is performative bullshit.

Cruz is much the same way, but a bit more practiced at overcoming his notochord.

Those guys can easily give that speech, as could Kamala Harris.  I don't think Trump could and Joe could come closer than Trump, his agedness and speech impediment notwithstanding.

Edited by TwiceHorn
Posted

If I know one thing, it's that if we ever get out of this hellscape (or, when future historians discuss the demise of America), there will need to be a serious discussion about/reckoning with the huge role that our current media landscape has played in our downfall. Its highly fragmented, heavily curated nature combined with changes in the ways people consume content have created echo chambers like no other. Look at the current home page of Fox News:

image.thumb.png.b3316d27ccc3ef7f719f39bb5a0c3e43.png

Compared to NBC News:

image.thumb.png.2c1de3f1d086adeab9845665cfd71ae7.png

 

  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 5
  • Drool 1
Posted
4 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Hannity is going to get a “joint” interview with Musk and Trump from the White House. Has a sitting POTUS EVER done a “joint” interview with another American? 
 

I am struggling with my historical analogy.  Am I watching Diocletian create the tetrarchy? Am I a Russian titular councillor trying to understand why Rasputin is speaking for the Tsar?

 

Regardless, I think any historian will have to write that in 2025 the U.S. experimented with a dual executive system.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5146248-trump-elon-musk-hannity-fox-news-doge/amp/

Wait until Trump gets around to doing some fireside sharts.  

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Haha 6
Posted
11 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

 

Good. This needs to happen as quickly as possible. I’m actually glad they’re not pacing themselves. 

Posted
3 hours ago, Mileslong said:

At what point during this Orange idiots term is he going to put forth the idea of putting him on Mount Rushmore?

He wouldn’t be willing to share the spotlight.  He will have it carved into El Capitan. 

  • Like 1
Posted
1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

He wouldn’t be willing to share the spotlight.  He will have it carved into El Capitan. 

Denali. So he can see Russia.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 2
Posted
2 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

He wouldn’t be willing to share the spotlight.  He will have it carved into El Capitan. 

 

1 minute ago, InkaUtexas said:

Denali. So he can see Russia.

Either way, I'm going full ecowarrior.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Posted
15 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

He wouldn’t be willing to share the spotlight.  He will have it carved into El Capitan. 

Oh man. That would end me. As in, I would not allow that to occur and I’m pretty sure tens of thousands of others would not either. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 2
Posted

Trump's "Shock And Awe" Month

Look through the smoke and chaos and drama. He's blundering and flailing.

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/trumps-shock-and-awe-month-7a9

Quote

The words “shock and awe” describe the first month of the second Trump administration pretty well, it seems to me. It’s been a blitzkrieg of executive orders, mass firings, violations of laws and norms, wanton cruelty for the sick, destitute, and hungry, and performative administrative chaos as far as the eye can see — all designed to paralyze and stun what’s left of the opposition.

And front and center: a drug-fueled, sleep-addled billionaire, commandeering the Oval Office, offering half-baked political theories, threatening judges with impeachment, tweeting at the pace of an adderall-addicted gamer, and holding press conferences with a toddler on his shoulders, where he tells the world he cannot be trusted to tell the truth. I guess there are some people who find all this deeply impressive. I’m sorry to say that, despite agreeing with some of Trump’s policy planks, I don’t.

Which brings me back to “shock and awe.” You may recall those words were also once used by a previous administration, huffing its own fumes, bent on breaking norms and boldly declaring a new era. We know now, of course, how the Iraq War ended. And it’s beginning to look as if Trump 2.0 will have something like the same result.

Get the Dish free every Friday

Take DOGE. First off: is this what Trump really ran on? Slashing government spending is a Ryan/Romney type of Republicanism, not Trumpism. Trump, like Karl Rove, has never cared about deficits. “I’m the King of Debt,” he once bragged in a rare lapse into honesty. In his first term, Trump ran up the deficit with glee; and in the first 30 days of this term, his spending per day is $4 billion higher than Biden’s was a year ago. Go read Riedl for how Trump is set to bankrupt the US still further.

Speaking of which: next up are massive tax cuts for the wealthy — paid for by huge cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Just what Trump’s new multiracial working-class coalition wants! In a Fox News poll, only 1 percent of Americans favored “tax reform” as a Trump priority. I doubt “tax cuts” would get even that.

More to the point, Musk is doing nothing serious to actually cut the deficit. Of course he isn’t: 90 percent of government spending is outside his remit. And where does this guy cut? A program, PEPFAR, that is a rare example of a hugely successful, cost-efficient program; and an entity, the CFPB, which was the only thing that empowered the little guy against big financial corporations after 2008. Populism reborn! Please.

Worse, Musk has cut and fired first, often illegally, and asked questions after — which leaves everything vulnerable to being reversed as soon as the courts weigh in. Has he uncovered rampant fraud, as he and Trump insist? None they’ve shown us. Is the goal to get a case to SCOTUS to affirm the executive’s control of the purse? Maybe. But meantime, many of the EOs are simply and easily being reversed by the courts.

As for that “power of the purse”? Does Vought really think that Kavanaugh or Roberts is about to turn the Congress into the equivalent of Putin’s rubber-stamp Duma? The same Kavanaugh who previously ruled that “even the President does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend” funds appropriated by Congress? The same Roberts who ruled that “no area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse”? Let’s just say that I doubt even this Court will assent to a Claremonster’s view of the American presidency. Which means that all this law-breaking is for naught in the long-term. It’s chaos leading to failure.

Imagine what they might have done. Trump could have announced that Musk and his minions were going in to audit the federal government. Within a few months, they’d bring a report, outlining every insane piece of waste or DEI excess or fraud they could find. Trump would then urge Congress to vote on these reforms. Win, win, win. It’s a great idea to shake up the joint with an outsider! But nah. They are busy ensuring that any cuts they make are brutal, dumb, and destined to expire.

Immigration? As of now, we’ve seen no major change since Biden’s executive order restoring control. The border is extremely quiet. Deportations? The pace of arrests is up but still only around a third of the levels Trump promised. Give him time, of course, but so far: underwhelming. Foreign policy? A man who pledged to keep the US from getting into quagmires abroad now wants the US to take over — checks notes — Gaza, ethnically cleanse its inhabitants, and give it all to Jared and his friends to make money. He also wants to invade and occupy ... Greenland! In talking to Russia, he has begun by blessing Putin’s conquered territories in Eastern Ukraine in advance — for nothing in return. What a negotiator!

And remember the other issue that won him major support: inflation. It ticked up this month, with the average wholesale price of eggs reaching an all-time high of $8 a dozen. It will get worse: Trump is pursuing lower interest rates from the Fed and higher tariffs everywhere: a recipe for super-charging inflation. “The layers of intellectual confusion here are hard to parse,” notes the Wall Street Journal, with uncharacteristic understatement. What happens to Trump’s support when inflation takes off again?

Trump is on firmer ground with his efforts to leverage the federal government’s ubiquitous funding to curtail DEI’s race and sex discrimination. But even here, he is larding up the public record with comments that absolutely reflect his own animus and bigotry — especially against trans people — which will give opponents some chance to fight back in the courts. He didn’t have to do this. There are good, non-transphobic arguments for fairness in sports and ethical medicine for children. But a bigot’s gotta bigot, even if it boomerangs on him, as it should.

Trump is also making exactly the same mistake as Biden did. Biden refused to have any enemies to his left, enabling crazies and extremists and fanatics to run riot in his administration. Trump has a no-enemies-to-the-right approach — which means, for example, he is more than happy to rehire a grown man who just a few months ago tweeted “Normalize Indian hate,” “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” If expressing neo-Nazi views does not disqualify you from the Trump team, nothing does.

Then there’s the equivalent of Caligula’s legendary (and probably exaggerated) nomination of his horse for a consulship. That’s RFK Jr, a man who doesn’t believe in vaccines in charge of vaccines; or Tulsi Gabbard, a steward of US intelligence who prefers the KGB to the CIA. Or the insane idea that the president of the United States can just declare that the Gulf of Mexico is now called something else — and then take your press credentials away if you don’t agree.

I guess you could call this frightening. But another word for it is pathetic. Last year, a ton of readers who agreed with me on immigration, DEI, the transing of children, and the need for a more restrained foreign policy asked, in frustration, why I still couldn’t endorse Trump.

I hope that’s clearer now.

 

  • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
Posted
4 hours ago, Mileslong said:

At what point during this Orange idiots term is he going to put forth the idea of putting him on Mount Rushmore?

his statue will replace the lady liberty 

  • Like 1
Posted
43 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:


The downfall of this country can essentially be singlehandedly traced back to Rupert Murdoch.

With a MSM media that are cravenly profit driven, is it even realistic to expect anything else?

Posted (edited)
51 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:


The downfall of this country can essentially be singlehandedly traced back to Rupert Murdoch.

Rush Limbaugh is rolling over in his grave to not get a courtesy shout out.

Edited by aggie08
  • Hook 'Em 4
  • Like 2
Posted
1 minute ago, Gil Bang said:

that name rings a bell. Is he the self-loathing gay dude?

Gay conservative misogynist racist British Catholic who loved Margaret Thatcher so much he moved to America to live under Ronald Reagan. Got HIV and was an early campaigner for marriage equality, which really got him kicked out of the kool kids konservatives klub, but he kept his name out there by talking about how Black people are just inherently dumber than other people "like guys you just have to read the science of this one nutjob and it's obvious" sort of takes. DADT, DOMA, W, and Iraq broke him from Republicans and he simped huge for Obama for 8 years. Got really hard on the anti-trans train when that started taking off and I'm not surprised to see him "agree with some of Trump's planks."

  • Hook 'Em 3
  • Rage+1 1
Posted
5 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Disagree or agree. We can certainly hash it out on some of the details. But tell me the prior admin and in particular the candidate the Democrats tried to hot swap from VP to POTUS is capable of this presentation. Just give it the whole watch. 

 

 

This has to be trolling. This person impresses you? Are you joking? I’m seriously confused.

  • Hook 'Em 6
  • Like 2


×
×
  • Create New...