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

danime91 Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#177176: Mar 7th 2017 at 9:40:23 AM

[up]The White House janitorial staff?

Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#177177: Mar 7th 2017 at 9:44:19 AM

Carson, probably. He's had a reputation for being a really boring moron for a while now and I doubt he'd be a real asset to anyone beyond being the token black guy.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#177178: Mar 7th 2017 at 9:49:26 AM

[up] <cue footage of Carson meeting with Russian officials> tongue

edited 7th Mar '17 9:50:02 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
TrashJack Confirmed Doomer from beyond the Despair Event Horizon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Confirmed Doomer
#177179: Mar 7th 2017 at 9:49:51 AM

@nightwyrm_zero: The secret wiretappers and spies that Obama planted to make Trump look evil and incompetent?

edited 7th Mar '17 9:51:22 AM by TrashJack

"Cynic, n. — A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." - The Devil's Dictionary
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#177180: Mar 7th 2017 at 9:51:26 AM

Pence is clean as far as we know at the moment. Between the VP debate where he contradicted Donald on Russia and him being caught off guard by Flynn being caught he seems to be trying very hard to not get the crap hitting the fan sprayed on him and retain the appearance of the more sane (by comparison) alternative.

edited 7th Mar '17 9:53:23 AM by Elle

Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#177181: Mar 7th 2017 at 9:52:49 AM

De Vos, Mattis, and Carson are probably clean. Pence might be too but I'm convinced that he knew about this stuff during the campaign and did nothing. That makes him complicit in my mind.

I don't know if it will happen but realistically the entire administration should be viewed as tainted. Anybody that's not charged with criminal activity should be forced to resign.

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#177183: Mar 7th 2017 at 10:00:27 AM

I no longer consider the Republicans a political party.

They're a cult.

Nothing more, nothing less.

New Survey coming this weekend!
CenturyEye Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? from I don't know where the Yith sent me this time... Since: Jan, 2017 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
#177184: Mar 7th 2017 at 10:15:07 AM

Carson has his own problems....
In addition to his latest stupidity....

Mr Carson has in the past noted the harmful impact of slavery, using it as a benchmark against policies he violently disagrees with.

In 2013, he said President Obama's healthcare reform plan was "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery" and then, in October 2015, compared women who seek abortions to slaveholders.

In a speech to fellow Seventh-Day Adventists in 2012, he said the Big Bang was one of many "fairy tales" being peddled by "highfalutin scientists" and that the order in the solar system showed that creation was a planned event.

Back in October 2015, when he was still second-favourite to win the Republican nomination, he suggested the Holocaust may have been avoided if people had been armed.

"The likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed," he told CNN.

In late 2015 he defended stories he had told about his troubled childhood in his autobiography, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story.

...Mr Carson continued to stand by his assertion that, as a teenager, he tried to stab a relative, and angrily denounced what he called liberal bias in a CNN investigation that found no corroborating witnesses to the event.

One magazine summed up the oddness of his story, headlining its article: "Ben Carson defends himself against allegations that he never attempted to murder a child."

That's all state Sam. Is HUD in good hands?

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#177185: Mar 7th 2017 at 10:22:04 AM

Carson, probably. He's had a reputation for being a really boring moron for a while now and I doubt he'd be a real asset to anyone beyond being the token black guy.

I like the joke that he met with Russian ambassador but he fell asleep in the middle of being turned into a plant.

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#177186: Mar 7th 2017 at 10:32:58 AM

He avoided becoming a plant by being a vegetable?

Looks like a White House press briefing has started

edited 7th Mar '17 10:38:33 AM by sgamer82

TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#177187: Mar 7th 2017 at 10:43:12 AM

He was a right-wing born again Christian that brought the evangelicals back into national politics and race-baited to appeal to white voters. He peddled trickled down economics before it was even named that by Reagan.

Are... are you sure you have the right person? I mean, I don't know about the economic stuff so much or some other things you mentioned in your post, (although I know you mentioned military buildup, and I've heard military retention was terrible in the Carter years, people were leaving the service in droves and Carter and company were trying to lower fitness standards and raise incentives for service members just to keep from losing everyone at once) but Carter was no race baiter, as far as I know.

The man choose to send his young daughter to a poor, almost entirely black school during his time in office, threatened to use the IRS to crack down on churches and Christian "Universities" who were preaching against integration, (which is why the Jerry Falwells, Pat Robertsons, and Bob Jones University types had such a love boner for Reagan, despite the fact that Carter was a deeply religious Sunday School teacher while Reagan was a heathen Hollywood actor who consulted astrology more than the Bible and palled around with Christ killing Jews) and after leaving office Carter went out and took part in eradicating diseases and parasites that only affect Africans.

As a president Carter (from what I understand) was an overwhelmed micromanager who had shitty luck and spiteful enemies, (I recall it being all but confirmed that Iran intentionally held off on releasing the hostages until after Carter left office just to screw him over) but if he ever did anything in the way of racebaiting it's news to me.

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Xorn15 Nurse Mordred Attending from R&D Platform, Seychelles Waters Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
Nurse Mordred Attending
#177188: Mar 7th 2017 at 10:55:11 AM

And speaking of Ben Carson, Samuel L Jackson weighs in: https://twitter.com/SamuelLJackson/status/838857880501641216

Language warning because Samuel L Jackson.tongue

BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#177190: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:04:21 AM

That tweet from Jackson is hilarious. [lol][tup]

Do not obey in advance.
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#177191: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:05:23 AM

Not sure if I want to know what kind of healthcare system conservative groups would not be upset about.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#177192: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:06:45 AM

@The Wanderer

In addition to all you just said, Carter killed support for the vast majority of the juntas Nixon had installed, and that Reagan would go on to support. Trying to paint him as proto-Reagan is based on nothing.

ViperMagnum357 Since: Mar, 2012
#177193: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:06:56 AM

[up][up][up][up]Do you think this will send them back to the drawing board, or will they try to repeal without replacing and leave people with nothing?

edited 7th Mar '17 11:07:06 AM by ViperMagnum357

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#177194: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:07:44 AM

LMAO Jackon's tweet

[up][up][up]The kind that doesn't screw over the poor enough I imagine.

edited 7th Mar '17 11:08:23 AM by Draghinazzo

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#177195: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:12:51 AM

Repeal without a replacement energizes the Dems, and causes the swing vote (and even moderates in their own ranks) to turn on them wholesale. Those Rust Belters who voted for Trump because he lied about reviving dead industries won't be pleased if their insurance gets cancelled (they are already holding Trump to his impossible promises, if certain articles are correct).

But, if they want to replacement the ACA, they need a solution that gets enough Democratic votes (good luck with that) so they can bypass the Tea Party nuts.

edited 7th Mar '17 11:13:01 AM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#177196: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:18:36 AM

I mean, personally I'd be willing to support it if they went with 'Obamacare, except with a few mostly symbolic differences. Maybe even an improvement here or there? Anyway, the main point of this bill's existence is to shut up the crazies who hate Obamacare'.

Which is what I think they were going for, but unfortunately they landed on 'attempt at a compromise that doesn't satisfy anyone' instead.

DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#177197: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:18:46 AM

I called it. If they pass it, then many Republicans will be Primaried out of Office. Since many Teapublicans are too loyal to ever think about betraying their Financiers, though, they will most assuredly kill it off.

TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#177198: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:20:27 AM

Not sure if I want to know what kind of healthcare system conservative groups would not be upset about.

Sadly, I've seen some conservatives who fall over themselves to fellate the Martin Shkrelis of the world or the market strategy of the Epi-pen. If you can afford it after they raise the price 5,000%, then you've done right. If you can't, it's because you made the wrong choices and you either need to become rich overnight or suck it up and pay market rates if you need to. Otherwise shut up, die quickly, and get out of the way of people who've made the right financial choices.

Sadly, I'm not kidding about that. If you think I am, please recall this bit of compassion from a conservative writer who railed against small town/backwoods people voting for Trump during the campaign:

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence—and the incomprehensible malice—of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs … The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does Oxy Contin.

or the crowd chanting "Let him die!" in regards to a hypothetical uninsured person during the 2012 election.

A big part of this country's culture has become fucking sociopathic, and it tries to warp everyone who lives in it until they become just as twisted.

edited 7th Mar '17 11:21:11 AM by TheWanderer

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Eschaton Since: Jul, 2010
#177199: Mar 7th 2017 at 11:45:18 AM

[up]Just look at the debate on whether Missouri should set up a database to monitor for prescription drug abuse (the only state without one).

"On one side is Republican state Senator Rob Schaaf, who once said that when people die of overdoses that “just removes them from the gene pool.” "

It's straight-up Social Darwinism.

DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#177200: Mar 7th 2017 at 12:04:57 PM

"Being seen as real American men, pushing out the darkies, shutting up the the eggheads, keeping their guns, holding onto traditional values and having jobs are what they actually care about.

You could probably get them to vote for left-wing policies if you can do the optics right. I mean most of the Republican based loved welfare until Ronald Reagan convinced them they were being cheated by lazy minorities."

That's all true, though not in that order. I'd put jobs first, and that's the optics we could take advantage of. They vote on emotion, not position, and they just want some reassurance that there's someone in Washington who sincerely cares about them and their interests. They only voted for Trump because he's the only one who tried.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.

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