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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Hodor2 Since: Jan, 2015
#163776: Dec 22nd 2016 at 6:48:15 AM

I believe Tom Arnold is crazy (or at least has been in recent years).

Assuming such a tape exists though, it wouldn't matter in terms of the election at this point, but anything that gives Trump a low approval rating would be helpful.

Although to be honest, to some extent I'm not sure how much him being racist/using racial slurs on tape would actually hurt him, since that's part of his appeal- like on one hand, I think a lot of supporters draw the line at open racism, especially when specific slurs are used, but on the other hand, there's a probably stronger pull among those supporters to handwave bad behavior by Trump, especially if it's something criticized in the news media.

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#163777: Dec 22nd 2016 at 6:56:34 AM

Say, since some of Trump's supporters are finally starting to realize that Trump and his gang may not be a good idea after all... Hypothetically speaking, if the majority of Trump supporters turn their backs on him before January 20 and demand disqualifying him from the presidency, would it be legally possible?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#163778: Dec 22nd 2016 at 6:58:11 AM

[up] No, but if the Republican base turns against him, he'll likely be impeached. That being said, of Trump's supporters, the ones who are losing hope are generally people who were already swing voters to begin with. The core of the GOP, and the base which dominates the primaries is thrilled with Trump.

AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#163779: Dec 22nd 2016 at 6:58:16 AM

Also he says it's a preview for the video of Trump participating in a Russian orgy that'll also be released.

eh.

Inter arma enim silent leges
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#163780: Dec 22nd 2016 at 7:23:11 AM

No, only Congress can actually impeach anybody. Common citizens don't really have any power beyond voting.

Oh really when?
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#163781: Dec 22nd 2016 at 7:24:18 AM

[up] Yes, but the GOP brass HATE Trump. If he starts looking like a liability, they'll dump him. Which is probably the whole point of his massive tax breaks; that will win him a great deal of favor among economic elites, and make his position less dependent on the goodwill of the GOP's base.

edited 22nd Dec '16 7:25:02 AM by CaptainCapsase

Medinoc from France (Before Recorded History)
#163782: Dec 22nd 2016 at 7:32:17 AM

Impeaching him won't do much, Pence is just as likely as he is to rubber-stamp their laws to screw over minorities, suppress Democrat voters and slash education to breed more sheeple Republican ones...

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#163783: Dec 22nd 2016 at 7:38:03 AM

It'll be a symbolic victory.

And a banner to rally behind come 2020

And it'll be good to watch the Republican party cut off its own head.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#163784: Dec 22nd 2016 at 7:42:13 AM

Or they might save face by tossing Trump out and trick people into thinking they're reasonable.

Oh really when?
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#163785: Dec 22nd 2016 at 7:50:57 AM

This one is a big problem, democracy doesn't hinge in the parties or the politicians that compose it but in the institutions that maintain a democratic government.

The Economist: Donald Trump’s most damaging legacy may be a lower-trust America

Fomenting cynicism and partisan divisions is his best chance of surviving his term

AT THE height of Silvio Berlusconi’s power, as the billionaire-politician brushed scandals and lawsuits aside with the ease of a crocodile gliding through duckweed, a professor at an Italian university described to Lexington how the terms furbo and fesso helped explain the then-prime minister’s survival. In those bits of Italian society from which Mr Berlusconi drew his strongest support, it is a high compliment to be deemed a furbo, or a sly, worldly wise-guy. The furbo knows how to jump queues, dodge taxes and play systems of nepotism and patronage like a Stradivarius. In contrast the fesso is the chump who waits his turn and fails to grasp how badly the system is rigged, or how much of his taxes will be stolen. The fesso might cheer a new clean-air law in his city, naively taking an announcement by the elites at face value. The furbo wonders who in the environment department may have a brother-in-law with a fat contract to supply chimney scrubbers. Mr Berlusconi’s fans saw him as the furbo to end all furbi. He showed that he heard them, offering them crude appeals to wise-guy cynicism, as when he asserted that any Italians who backed his centre-left opponents were not just mistaken, but were coglioni or, to translate loosely, “dickheads”, who would be voting “against their own interests”.

Living in that sort of society comes with costs. For decades anthropologists and political scientists have weighed the advantages of living in a high-trust, highly transparent country like Sweden, and measured how corruption and squandered human capital harm places like Sicily. “Trust”, a book published by Francis Fukuyama 20 years ago and now sadly topical again, suggested that America and its distinctive model of capitalism flourished because strangers learned to trust one another when signing contracts, allowing them to do deals outside the circles of family, tribal or in-group kinship relied upon in low-trust societies.

As the Trump era dawns in America, the composition of the cabinet and inner circle taking shape around Donald Trump is too ideologically incoherent to define the next president’s policy agenda. There are bomb-throwers and hardliners in Team Trump, including cabinet secretaries who have called for the federal agencies they will run to be hobbled or abolished, and an alarming number of men who see no harm in threatening a trade war or two. But it also has figures from the oak-panelled, marble-pillared heart of the Republican establishment.

When it comes to national security, Mr Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon is a retired general, James Mattis, who has called Russia’s annexation of Crimea a “severe” threat and accused President Vladimir Putin of wanting to “break NATO apart”. His pick to run the State Department, Rex Tillerson, is CEO of an oil firm, Exxon Mobil, that argued against sanctions imposed on Russia after the Crimean invasion. Mr Trump’s Office of Management and Budget is to be run by a shrink-the-government fiscal conservative, Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, while his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, has called for a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that will drive conservatives “crazy”. It is equally easy to imagine headlines, years from now, that call President Trump a revolutionary who took America down the path to hard-edged nationalism, as it is to imagine a hapless incompetent paralysed by factional in-fighting and plunging poll ratings.

If Mr Trump’s policies are a mystery, his approach to politics is not. The Republican won office by systematically undermining trust in any figure or institution that seemed to stand in his way, from Republican rivals to his Democratic opponent, leaders of Congress, business bosses, the news media, fact-checkers or simply those fessi who believe in paying taxes. Accused of avoiding federal income taxes during a debate with Hillary Clinton, he growled: “That makes me smart.”

Mr Trump will not be able to stop that destructive mission to make America less like Sweden and more like Sicily. He has too many promises that he cannot keep. He must betray those supporters whom he wooed with a conspiracy theory dressed up as an economic policy, backed with crude invective worthy of an American Berlusconi. He spotted a market opportunity: millions of Americans with conservative instincts, notably working-class whites in the Midwest, who felt ill-served by both major parties and could conceive of no benign explanation for social and economic changes that angered and dismayed them. Mr Trump ignored transformational forces, such as automation or global competition. He dismissed the notion that foreign policy is filled with complex trade-offs. Instead Mr Trump told voters a story about “stupid” and feckless elites who had given away what was rightfully theirs: from manufacturing jobs to traditional values or a border secure against illegal immigrants and Muslim terrorists. Just give him power, and all would be well.

Get smart

Fomenting cynicism and partisan divisions is not a flaw in Mr Trump’s approach to politics: it is his best chance of surviving the next four or eight years, as reality bites. That is why he has told his supporters not to believe the CIA, when American spy chiefs accuse Russia of working to disrupt the election by hacking e-mails sent by bosses at the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. It is why Mr Trump has recently held rallies in states that he won, telling supporters, “We are really the people that love this country” and breezily saying of crowd chants to lock Mrs Clinton up: “That plays great before the election, now we don’t care.” As a man about to break his word, Mr Trump needs an America in which all morals are relative, facts are written by winners and principles count for less than winking appeals to partisan loyalty. Most of the Trump legacy is still unknowable. Some of what he does will be reversed by the next president when the electoral pendulum swings the other way, as it usually does. A lower-trust America will be harder to fix.

edited 22nd Dec '16 7:51:05 AM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#163786: Dec 22nd 2016 at 8:54:20 AM

Again, Trump is in a way the smallest problem, because he is basically a giant distraction.

blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#163787: Dec 22nd 2016 at 8:56:07 AM

He's a symptom of a much more sinister disease.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
carbon-mantis Collector Of Fine Oddities from Trumpland Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: Married to my murderer
Collector Of Fine Oddities
#163788: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:12:57 AM

Trump now calling for a massive nuclear rearmament :/

Krieger22 Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018 from Malaysia Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
#163789: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:18:09 AM

How did Concordia Parish, Louisiana become one of the sickest counties in the US?

Bobby Jindal, the GOP platform as a whole and good old-fashioned Suthin' Racism.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#163790: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:19:16 AM

Cross posted from the Racism Thread. Trumpkins are now all over Star Wars because it is anti-fascism and anti-racism.

Jared Wyand banned from twitter after driving into antisemitism while calling a boycott to Star Wars: Rogue One.

I find amusing how the point of an entire franchise of movies that is dead set against the dangers of fascism, populism and authoritarian empires goes over the head of the alt-right and Trumpkins who bitch and whine about everything that doesn't cater to their feelings.

For a group that bitches and moans about SJ Ws looking for reasons to be offended and trying to force their views on everything, the doublethink is strong with them.

A Trump fansite called Magafeed lamented the suspension of Wyand's account, writing, "Jared joins a list of well respected deplorables, including Ricky Vaughn and Milo [Yiannopoulos], who have been banned by Twitter."

How dare those private companies no putting up with our bullshit!

>#Palpatine Was Right

>#The Empire Did Nothing Wrong

>#Alderaan Holocaust Hoax

Inter arma enim silent leges
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#163791: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:20:50 AM

@mantis: Jesus Christ. Best case scenario is that he simply lets Obama's planned modernization of the US nuclear arsenal go through and takes credit. Or, as some foreign policy pundits are claiming and/or hoping is the case, he's embraced Nixon's "Madman Theory" and is simply bluffing.

BBC on this story.

edited 22nd Dec '16 9:29:44 AM by CaptainCapsase

kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#163792: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:31:00 AM

@Mantis: Link? Because the only articles I can find on that are months old, and for all we know, Trump could have flipflopped his stance on that again and again since then.

[up]...Oh.

edited 22nd Dec '16 9:31:22 AM by kkhohoho

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#163794: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:35:56 AM

"The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes"

Is this motherfucker serious?!

New Survey coming this weekend!
speedyboris Since: Feb, 2010
#163795: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:37:47 AM

You know the theory that Trump changes his mind based on who he talked to last? Quick, somebody talk in his ear so he'll do a 180 and go, "Eh, we don't really need to expand nukes right now. I never said that."

Obama officially ends the NSEERS program, thus making it harder for Trump to create his Muslim registry. Niiiiice.

edited 22nd Dec '16 9:38:27 AM by speedyboris

carbon-mantis Collector Of Fine Oddities from Trumpland Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: Married to my murderer
Collector Of Fine Oddities
#163796: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:38:20 AM

Derp, forgot a link. BBC News

Just another twitter message so far, said to come on the heels of a statement by Putin advocating Russia expanding theirs.

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#163797: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:46:01 AM

John: writes Revelations Lord, the End is signaled by trumpets?

God: No, Trump/Pence

John: Right. Trumpets.

God: Fine. They'll know.

Classic, seems to be appropriate here

New Survey coming this weekend!
carbon-mantis Collector Of Fine Oddities from Trumpland Since: Mar, 2010 Relationship Status: Married to my murderer
Collector Of Fine Oddities
#163798: Dec 22nd 2016 at 9:57:06 AM

Another bit of sad/infuriating news to arise today; by allowing them to register as 501 nonprofits the US government has in part allowed four prominent hate groups to raise nearly 8 million dollars in tax deductible donations. The article postulates that the backlash from reports claiming that they were unfairly targeting conservatives has caused the IRS to turn a blind eye to openly white supremacist groups claiming charity status. If they change their mind the new administration isn't gonna make it any easier for them to weed them out now.

Krieger22 Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018 from Malaysia Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
#163799: Dec 22nd 2016 at 10:12:10 AM

Noted alimony leech Mike Cernovich is trying to convince folks that Vic Berger IV, Tim and Eric collaborator, is part of a pedophilia ring.

Given the amount of projection going on with these alt-right types I really don't want to find out what the hidden/encrypted folders on their hard drives contain.

EDIT: The House Intelligence Committee has declassified a report accusing Snowden had and continues to have contact with Russian intelligence.

edited 22nd Dec '16 10:23:20 AM by Krieger22

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#163800: Dec 22nd 2016 at 10:40:32 AM

[up] Pardon me if I have a rather low opinion of the American intelligence agencies (Or any intelligence agency) as a source of truthful, unbiased information. At least until such a time as the internal documents are declassified decades down the line and we get to see what was actually going on and what they actually knew.

Trump dismissing the CIA as "distrustful" is worked so well because he's not wrong; they aren't trustworthy in the slightest.


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