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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I just saw the play King Charles III (highly recommend it) and the military parades thing reminds me of this one line. Prince (now king) Charles makes some impolitic decisions that stir up lots of popular discontent so much so that he worries about his own safety. He asks a high ranking commander whether the guns carried by the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen
's_Guard Guard]] (the guys in the funny hats outside of Buckingham Palace) actually contain bullets or are for show. The commander responds that the colorful outfits charm tourists and cause citizens to forget that these are real soldiers and their presence is essentially a military occupation. Charles also puts a tank on the front lawn of the Palace.
Point being though that the Third Amendment to the Constitution exists for a reason/in contrast to England where quartering of troops and their presence in civilian spaces was a regular, even positively thought of thing (see any Jane Austen novel).
Troops marching in the streets of the United States is decidedly not a normal or cool thing and has the same sense of tyranny as Trump's idea of sending the National Guard to quell gun violence in Chicago (incidentally, the President does not technically control the National Guard and what he's talking about violates the spirit if not necessarily the letter of the Posse Comitatus Act
).
edited 18th Jan '17 2:04:21 PM by Hodor2
Something from my local news:
Rep. Heather Scott: ‘I apologize to every member of the House’
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article127301459.html
Rep Scott came under fire for making remarks that female lawmakers only ever sleep their way into committee chairman assignments. The House Speaker removed her from her committee assignments in response.
I can't help noticing that she isn't apologizing for the remarks themselves, only her wording.
@unknowning: So now that Trump wants military parades just because he stroke himself with his tiny hands, how far are down on the list of "At least we're not Venezuela"?
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That's the GOP m.o.: Giving faux pas apologies
"I'm sorry that I offended you" Is an apology
"I'm sorry that you're offended" is an insult trying paint the victim as the attacker. And the GOP uses very often
edited 18th Jan '17 4:21:50 PM by NoName999
No, I just study here, and my tan is Mediterranean average. Again, I struggle to imagine how anyone on the planet can find the idea of taxing and spending any more noteworthy than the idea of tying one's shoelaces.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Considering how many people in the US have Taxation is Theft stamped somewhere and think Timothy Mc Veigh anti government terrorist acts were justified, it is hardly surprising the existence of people who treat taxes and spending as the worst thing to ever happen.
Inter arma enim silent legesBecause people don't like the idea of their money helping other people.
Continue writing our story of peace.Generally, the Republicans favor small government, keeping the government out of the way of business. Of course, the problem with this view is that regulations are needed to keep businesses honest and that many businesses end up benefiting from regulation against other businesses that would just crush them otherwise with no regulation. In addition, regulation is also sometimes needed for the good of a nation. As for 'bootstraps,' that is a general demand from Republicans that people just need to work hard to be successful, ignoring that the current state of America is one where the White Baby Boomers pulled up the Corporate Ladder with them after climbing up it themselves and then started yelling at Millennials to jump.
edited 18th Jan '17 5:16:02 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food BadlyRick Perry didn't know the DOE was about nukes until after he accepted job.
In the days after, Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor, discovered that he would be no such thing — that in fact, if confirmed by the Senate, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the planet, the United States’ nuclear arsenal.
Two-thirds of the agency’s annual $30 billion budget is devoted to maintaining, refurbishing and keeping safe the nation’s nuclear stockpile; thwarting nuclear proliferation; cleaning up and rebuilding an aging constellation of nuclear production facilities; and overseeing national laboratories that are considered the crown jewels of government science.
“If you asked him on that first day he said yes, he would have said, ‘I want to be an advocate for energy,’” said Michael Mc Kenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who advised Mr. Perry’s 2016 presidential campaign and worked on the Trump transition’s Energy Department team in its early days. “If you asked him now, he’d say, ‘I’m serious about the challenges facing the nuclear complex.’ It’s been a learning curve.”
It's official.
The Onion has no reason to exist anymore
edited 18th Jan '17 5:40:33 PM by TacticalFox88
New Survey coming this weekend!
Hooray for radiation leaks and potentially accidentally nuking ourselves! Seriously, though, the guy sounds like he knows he's in over his head after finding out that it is actually about nuclear maintenance, not energy.
edited 18th Jan '17 6:08:32 PM by Bat178
Lovely, our country was stupid enough to say "He was on a game show I know, plus he said racist stuff. I want to have his baby!" So I can't see why we are considered the best country on Earth by "Patriots". For one thing Canada has us beat to good things like gay marriage and healtcare by decades, and their crazy religious right doesn't have anywhere near enough power for them to be taken seriously.
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Possibly. When suddenly faced with a task of such magnitude on short notice, people tend to react in one of two ways. Sometimes, they realize the enormity of the task before them and are convinced that they're just not up to it, but because they know it's so serious and important, they rise to the occasion and do everything in their power to do the job as best they're able anyway, despite wanting anything but to have so much responsibility placed on their shoulders. They don't want anything to do with it, which ironically makes them decent picks for the job.
On the other hand, some people just don't give a crap, and either run for the hills or do their job in as half-hearted a manner as possible. Lucky for us, he seems to actually be taking the job seriously, because if he wasn't, we'd be fucked seven ways to Sunday.
edited 18th Jan '17 6:55:41 PM by kkhohoho
Wait...so Rick Perry might be the most competent and level-headed member of Trump's Cabinet?
SMH
There's also Fifties Nostalgia, back when the U.S. was booming on account of having no significant competition (since the rest of the industrialized world was still recovering from World War II).
edited 18th Jan '17 6:41:30 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised

![[up] [up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png)
Meaning: to counteract the GOP fuckery, the Dems need to first overcome the GOP fuckery. And make sure they retake the states currently under GOP fuckery to fix their voting laws. Sounds easy.
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV