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

Wyldchyld (Old as dirt)
#183176: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:08:01 PM

Does Trump understand the difference between diplomatic behaviour and acceptance? In interviews he's done with the leaders of other countries, he's quick to cite any evidence of friendship and agreement, but often what he's referring to appears to me to just be 'good diplomatic behaviour' on the part of his companion.

edited 16th Apr '17 4:08:49 PM by Wyldchyld

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#183177: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:08:09 PM

[up][up]Most Old Money people are in general too polite and tactful to debase themselves in public by flat-out telling him: "Bugger off, you crude, boorish wannabe!" And Trump is too dense and self-absorbed to understand a Stealth Insult. So he winds up being The Friend Nobody Likes.

edited 16th Apr '17 4:50:54 PM by pwiegle

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#183178: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:18:58 PM

A look back at the worst industrial disaster in US history, especially at a time when Trump is helping cut corners for the sake of jobs.

http://www.chron.com/local/history/major-stories-events/article/Texas-City-Disaster-devastated-community-changed-8311509.php

Early on the morning of April 16, 1947, Fred Atwood Jr. and his wife, Yvonne, awoke to fire alarms sounding down at the docks in Texas City.

They ate breakfast and gave their 6-month-old son, Kent, a bottle in his crib. Then they went outside to watch smoke rise from the French freighter SS Grandcamp docked in the town's port, along the west shore of Galveston Bay.

Fred Jr.'s father, Fred Sr., worked at the Monsanto Chemical Co., about 300 feet from the docks.

The couple and Fred Jr.'s mother got into their Oldsmobile with Kent and headed toward the orange smoke.

They were about a football field away when the ship, carrying ammonium nitrate, exploded.

"Fred," Yvonne Atwood remembers her mother-in-law saying, "start this car and get us away from here."

The Houston Chronicle described the devastation in Texas City, 40 miles south of Houston, in the next day's edition: "The wartime boom town of Texas City lay in warlike devastation Thursday."

The death toll eventually reached 576, including the missing. All but one member of the Texas City Fire Department died.

The Texas Department of Public Safety counts it as the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history.

The explosion sent a fireball into the sky, shrapnel across town and damaged or destroyed more than 1,000 buildings.

"A young mother, wounded and with blood streaming down her face, roamed the streets, clutching a small baby in her arms," the Chronicle article said. "The baby was dead. The mother did not seem to realize it, for she violently fought off all attempts to take the baby from her."

The blast blew out Fred Jr.'s car window and dented the roof. Kent got a sliver of glass in the back of his head, recalled Yvonne Atwood, now 90.

The family drove back to their apartment on Seventh Avenue, where windows had broken out, Yvonne Atwood said. A big piece of glass was in Kent's crib.

Jewel Turner, 90, remembers driving through downtown with her uncle and daughter that day and seeing ambulances and "dead bodies everywhere."

"It was just like charcoal, just like it had burned up," she said. "We really thought it was the last. We thought it was Judgment Day."

Fred Jr. looked for his father at clinics and first aid stations, but couldn't find him.

The explosion ignited a fire on the SS High Flyer, another ship loaded with ammonium nitrate, used to make dynamite and fertilizer. Nearly everyone was evacuated, and the Flyer was towed about 100 feet from the docks before it exploded.

Later that day, Texas City officials opened the doors of the Central High School gymnasium, where 189 bodies were laid out in six long rows, and "bade Texas Citians to enter and begin the heart-rendering task of putting a name to the nameless ones," the newspaper reported.

The Chronicle featured a photo of a young mother crying and being supported by two men as she walked out of the gym after identifying her husband. "Oh, God, how can I tell my baby," the newspaper quoted her as crying.

Fred Jr. found his father, who had been on the pier when the ship exploded.

"It blew all his clothes off except his belt and his pocket watch," said Yvonne Atwood.

Two days after the blast, more than 1,000 people attended a memorial service at the gymnasium. Support for Texas City poured in from across the country. Celebrities, including Frank Sinatra and Jack Benny, performed in fundraisers.

The Coast Guard opened an inquiry into the blast. Officials spent months trying to identify all the bodies. The newspaper carried descriptions of the belongings found along with the remains: "Body 343, fragment blue-grey shirt, Herringbone weave, fragments of blue overalls, tan leather jacket and white ribbed undershirt."

"Body 391, man's wedding ring, plain yellow-gold band, belt buckle and screw-type roofing nail."

In June 1947, the 63 bodies that remained unidentified were buried in a city park during a mass funeral service.

The accident prompted more than 3,000 lawsuits against the federal government, because the ammonium nitrate came from U.S. ordnance plants. Congress resolved the lawsuits in 1955 by passing a special act that settled all claims for $16.5 million.

The accident also resulted in new regulations for the manufacturing and shipping of chemicals. The rules required specialized containers for ammonium nitrate and prohibited its storage near other reactive substances.

Still, 69 years later, the U.S. government is grappling with ammonium nitrate regulation.

Safety advocates called for the Environmental Protection Agency to add it to its list of dangerous chemicals that require companies to take greater safety measures after an explosion in West, Texas, in 2013 killed 15 people and injured 160.

But the agency did not add ammonium nitrate when it released proposed reforms earlier this year.

Turner, who was 19 when the SS Grandcamp exploded, said she drives past the memorial for the unidentified victims of the disaster once a week, and it always brings back memories.

She remembers being struck by the beauty of the smoke before the explosion.

"It was so many pretty colors," she said. "You just couldn't describe it."

She remembers holding her 8-month-old daughter as she surveyed the charred remains of downtown.

"It was a horrible sight. People screaming, packing little babies. They didn't know where to go," she said. "It was just turmoil."

She still thinks about it every day, she said.

"You lay there and think about how good God was to bring you through it," she said. "It could have killed me, too."

Yvonne Atwood said Fred Jr., who worked in a Texas City refinery most of his life, died of cancer in 2006.

He was buried in Hitchcock, in the same cemetery as his father.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#183179: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:25:16 PM

Still, might explain why he keeps desprately trying to impress with ever more extravagant but ultimately tacky grandeur.

Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#183180: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:28:28 PM

[up][up] And that's the reason strict and stringent safety regulations are absolutely necessary. People might think that they're just a pain and cost money, but when they don't exist or aren't strong enough, things like [up][up] and that fertilizer planet explosion in 2013 happen. Sure, you might save money now, but how are you going to recover when your entire factory is just gone and tons of people are dead because you cut corners?

edited 16th Apr '17 4:28:44 PM by Zendervai

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#183181: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:29:40 PM

@Ambar: I don't think you're trying to suppress the left, but I do think you and people like you are quite good at doing just that unintentionally. Crush peoples hopes one time too many, and they'll eventually succumb to fatalism and conclude that Real Life is an immutable Crapsack World, and either stop participating in the political process entirely, or do so entirely out of self-interest, reasoning that it's better them on the throne than somebody else.

I can definitely tell you that sort of attitude is something I've struggled with since even before the election, which is pretty much the reason behind some of my more unpleasant outbursts on this thread, including the most recent one earlier today.

edited 16th Apr '17 4:39:15 PM by CaptainCapsase

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#183182: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:48:01 PM

Woody Guthrie wrote lyrics for a song about Fred Trump's racist policies in his appartment complexes, where he took advantage of federal housing laws to discriminate against black people. Sadly it was never finished or recorded, but here it is.

Original lyrics: http://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Old_Man_Trump.htm

First verse: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=54Kfp2qxQKc

People who have finished it:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uNEGfRZfBt8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OcSDZl7gawc

edited 16th Apr '17 4:57:55 PM by megaeliz

JBC31187 Since: Jan, 2015
#183183: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:57:02 PM

And that's the reason strict and stringent safety regulations are absolutely necessary. People might think that they're just a pain and cost money, but when they don't exist or aren't strong enough, things like and that fertilizer planet explosion in 2013 happen. Sure, you might save money now, but how are you going to recover when your entire factory is just gone and tons of people are dead because you cut corners?

Christ, I remember that. It was about the same time as the Boston Marathon Bombing. People kept talking about Boston, which killed two people, but no one gave a shit about the industrial negligence that killed thirteen or so because that's just life.

DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#183184: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:57:12 PM

@Ambar- all of which would make sense, were anyone like that posting here. But no one is, no one in this thread has said anything like that. Yet there are Sanders supporters here. When you fail to make any distinctions, it sounds like you are accusing us, or at the very least very patronizing, as if we cant tell the difference between a radical and a revolutionary.

I would like to see fewer attacks on people, and more dierected at positions.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#183185: Apr 16th 2017 at 4:58:26 PM

"This thread" may not be trying to alienate left wing voters, but after a while all the complaining about the far left and Sanders becomes undue and out of proportion. And repetitive.

I'm assuming that, since you were responding to me, that by "far left" you mean the groups I cited in my post. What are we supposed to do about a group of people who are actively undermining the progressive movement? Pretend they aren't there? Much as I'd love to pretend they're a vocal minority who don't matter, the reality is that they've got entire You Tube channels, with thousands and even millions of hits and subscribers dedicated to pushing their nonsense, and as we've seen this past election, it only takes a few thousand bad votes, or a few thousand people staying home to screw up an election and land us with the likes of Trump.

Especially when it starts to rely on dubious reading of certain sources.

I presume this is a reference to the article I posted a while back about the alt-right and health care. There's nothing dubious about my reading of that article. It tries to claim that the hard right agrees with elements on the left about the need for health care for all, while claiming "centrists" are getting in the way. This is nonsense. The alt-right boys only want health care for whites, and will only include minorities in it in order to further their racist goals. The article specifically references Richard Spencer and Mike Cernovich, so we're not talking about some nebulous group of right-wingers or Trump supporters—we are talking about people who are among the "intellectual leaders" of the alt-right. For the article to position Spencer and Cernovich as people whose views on health care should be taken seriously, let alone included in the same category as those of leftists who really do want free and comprehensive health care for everyone, is unconscionable.

Now, it's not the fault of Sanders or his supporters that said article is moronic. It's not even their fault that the article tries to draw comparisons between Sanders' position and Spencer's—bad writing happens. But it is their fault that it got shared on Sanders' Twitter feed. At best, it was utterly tone deaf. At worst it is a plug for the article and the message contained within it. Now, it's my hope that this was something done by a dumb intern who didn't actually read the article. But regardless, it is worthy of condemnation, partly because if it was an "Establishment Democrat" sharing an article that argued they shared some views with the alt-right, the Internet left would explode about it, but mostly because nobody, and least of all a supposed progressive like Sanders, should be giving any cover to Spencer and his ilk.

The optics on this thing were terrible. And I don't see what the issue is with noting that.

edited 16th Apr '17 5:05:57 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#183186: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:00:11 PM

[up]Agreed. I get you are frustrated with people like that, which is justified, but it can get a bit frustrating to deal with it.

edited 16th Apr '17 5:03:13 PM by megaeliz

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#183187: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:06:08 PM

all of which would make sense, were anyone like that posting here. But no one is, no one in this thread has said anything like that. Yet there are Sanders supporters here. When you fail to make any distinctions, it sounds like you are accusing us, or at the very least very patronizing, as if we cant tell the difference between a radical and a revolutionary.

I would like to see fewer attacks on people, and more dierected at positions.

You're joking right? A number of self-described radicals in the thread (some regular posters, some irregularly so) have taken it upon themselves to claim the mantle of progressivism entirely for themselves and their candidates, while denouncing the Democratic Party and those who support their policies as centrists, sellouts, Establishment, corporate-controlled, you name it.

As to the idea that I'm somehow attacking Sanders supporters, I explicitly cited the Bernie or Bust crowd, people who voted for Jill Stein, and those who would back candidates like Gabbard. I regularly reference places like TYT and The Intercept as the source of the problem. I consistently refer to "certain elements on the left" or the Unicorn Brigaders. I'm really not sure how much more differentiation you can realistically be demanding from me, because at no point in here have I said that everyone who supported Sanders acted like that. You want me to put #Not All Sanders Voters at the end of every post?

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#183188: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:13:13 PM

No, That would be silly. We are not trying to attack you, you know. It's just it has got to the point that we repeat the same arguments and points every time the subject is brought up, and they are not the driving force right now.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#183189: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:14:03 PM

[up][up] Considering more or less the only thing you come to this thread to talk about these days is the latest stupidity to be found in that particular corner of the Internet, I think I have adequate reason to doubt your sincerity in claiming you aren't intending to paint us all with that brush.

edited 16th Apr '17 5:14:10 PM by CaptainCapsase

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#183190: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:24:05 PM

[up] You're really go the question why Amber comes to this thread? And to think I just sent a PM trying to explain how you're not actually unable to understand that Amber is a reasonable person...

We're kinda at an impasse here guys, we're having a meta discussion about the behaviour of other posters and that's hard to do while also trying to avoid naming names, I'd suggest we drop it or move it to P Ms, though I'd suggest folks play extra nice if moving it to P Ms, which people people may not be able to do.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#183191: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:24:49 PM

I was thinking along the same lines.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#183192: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:27:44 PM

[up][up] Well yes, it's probably best to drop it, and as was previously requested, stop re-litigating the primaries every other day. Nevertheless this particular argument keeps coming up over and over and over again.

Speaking of which, Trump is apparently mentioning God a lot more now that he's President. Kind of a lame topic, but anything other than the 115th rematch of Clinton versus Sanders.

edited 16th Apr '17 5:32:21 PM by CaptainCapsase

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#183193: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:35:49 PM

it's to pander to his white evangelical base .

edited 16th Apr '17 5:43:47 PM by megaeliz

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#183195: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:46:57 PM

Of course the guy has no religion but money. The big question is how do people deal with the cognitive dissonance of supporting the thrice married Trump, who likes to "grab woman by the pussy".

Now that I think about it, I asked my grandmother about this, and she told me he was younger then.

[down] accidentally sent before I finished typing

edited 16th Apr '17 6:02:08 PM by megaeliz

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
Aszur A nice butterfly from Pagliacci's Since: Apr, 2014 Relationship Status: Don't hug me; I'm scared
A nice butterfly
#183197: Apr 16th 2017 at 5:52:41 PM

I'm just here for that sweet, sweet internet moral outrage

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
Lightysnake Since: May, 2010
#183198: Apr 16th 2017 at 6:05:28 PM

What gets me..it could not even be more obvious how little Trump cares about religion. His life is filled with examples of it.

The 'moral' side of the aisle shows yet again what hypocrites they are with him.

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#183199: Apr 16th 2017 at 6:08:26 PM

Yeah, even ignoring their repulsive viewpoints on most issues, the religious right definitely proved that they are nothing but power mongering, morally bankrupt, hypocrites by voting for Trump. The man is everything that they claim to hate.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
BearyScary Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: You spin me right round, baby
#183200: Apr 16th 2017 at 6:13:09 PM

The Daily Show had a great segment recently where Jordan Klepper asked a preacher how Trump could be so popular with evangelicals if they believe that marriage should only be between one man and one woman.

Do not obey in advance.

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