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

Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#169376: Jan 25th 2017 at 9:58:02 AM

tfw the Department of Defense subtweets the President.

Someone's getting fired.

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
#169377: Jan 25th 2017 at 9:59:34 AM

Apparently Cheeto Benito is planning to impose a gag order on the scientific community.

And here we go, Make America Dumb Again.

Inter arma enim silent leges
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#169378: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:03:31 AM

So should I start learning Mandarin or German, because I anticipate a brain drain.

Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#169379: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:11:17 AM

I'd wait and see. China's undergoing issues that may or may not be nation shattering (don't know the degree of the problem) and everyone I've talked to from Germany is fearing . . . well, that they're going to go through what we are. A return of the Nazis. Learn Swedish. Science is one of their mainstays and their culture is further left than ours. I know Denmark has right wingers with issues, but I've forgotten if anyone in Sweden is seriously considering a right wing government there.

Balmung Since: Oct, 2011
#169380: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:14:18 AM

Eh, everyone's flirting with the far right these days.

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
#169381: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:16:41 AM

Trading US for China is like jumping from the water before it boils to a pan filled with boiling cooking oil.

Inter arma enim silent leges
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#169382: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:24:23 AM

I'm looking at Spicer in TV right now on my work cafeteria. No sound but headlines so far include "Mexico will pay for wall 'One way or another'" and "Voter Fraud investigations not just for 2016"

edited 25th Jan '17 10:25:27 AM by sgamer82

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#169383: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:24:34 AM

Worth noting that there are more German speaking countries than Germany.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
math792d Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#169384: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:27:00 AM

I know Denmark has right wingers with issues, but I've forgotten if anyone in Sweden is seriously considering a right wing government there.

Our far right party is currently part of the coalition propping up the liberal government, but they're only about 22% of the vote or so, and they've been bleeding from a series of PR scandals.

Sweden is currently governed by the Social Democrats, but I'm not sure if we're talking 'liberal Social Democrats i.e fuck the poor but slightly gentler' or actual Social Democrats. A Swede might be able to answer that question better.

What I can say is that if you have (or know someone who has) one of these jobs, the immigration process is pretty easy. Bonus points if you're white.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:28:18 AM by math792d

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#169385: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:27:17 AM

Switzerland too, right? A mix of German and French, I think. Plus Austria, and a bunch of others in the area. Still not the best places to be if Germany does start picking up to be the Fifth Reich (America's got a head start, so it'll be a neck and neck race between the two.)

math792d Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#169386: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:28:52 AM

[up] Won't happen unless Af D gets a mandate so large they can govern the country alone, which the system is actively set up to prevent.

We have a higher chance of the Fifth Republic getting expanded in favor of Vichy France 2: Electric Boogaloo.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:30:50 AM by math792d

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#169387: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:30:33 AM

only about 22% of the vote or so

It's actually scary that a fifth of the voters electing the far right is seen as only.

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
math792d Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#169388: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:31:52 AM

[up] It's worth noting that our far right isn't quite Trump-level fascists, they're just feeding off the same nationalist ideas.

Basically, we're so whitebread and boring we can't even do fascism right. We always have to have the watered-down version.

And they've been hemorrhaging voters lately because people got wise to the fact that they weren't really the party of the people they were claiming to be. If the SDP wasn't led by cowardly grandstanding career politicians they may actually have died at this point.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:32:36 AM by math792d

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
3of4 Just a harmless giant from a foreign land. from Five Seconds in the Future. Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: GAR for Archer
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
#169389: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:32:24 AM

@Spicer thing: Will he retcon 2012 and 2008 for Romney and Mc Cain?

edited 25th Jan '17 10:32:53 AM by 3of4

"You can reply to this Message!"
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#169390: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:38:11 AM

[up] Spicer definitely mentioned something about 2008 having 12% Fraudulent Votes, but let's see if he's going to go even further. He could try to go all the way back to 1984, when Illegal Immigration actually became a concern and (2 years later) Reagan passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act that granted Legal Immigrant Status to 3 Million People.

megarockman from The Sixth Borough (Experienced Trainee)
#169391: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:38:16 AM

That would probably be more trouble than is worth - Obama is still rather favorable popularity-wise. More likely they'd just not reference it.

The damned queen and the relentless knight.
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#169392: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:38:17 AM

Switzerland is a weird case. Because their head of state is actually a council of seven people with the top position switching every year, and each term is seven years with one's last year being when they're at the top, it's really hard for a populist leader to get elected into the council...and then actually achieve anything, because it takes six years for them to get any individual power, and even then they can get shut down by four out of the other six. Getting seven populist demagogues elected, one every year for seven years, isn't going to work because demagogues don't tend to work too well together.

On the flip side, Switzerland is somewhat vulnerable to populist, right-wing voting because Switzerland is a direct democracy.

Basically, stupid right-wing issues can get through the Swiss people, but Switzerland is extremely unlikely to go facist, because their government structure is basically incapable of maintaining a facist government.

@ Sweden, from what I've heard, the Swedish far right is anti-immigrant...and not much else. That, on top of the fact that a big chunk of the Syrian refugees that ended up in Sweden asked to leave because of the weather, means that they're likely to be a lot less destructive. It's still not good, but they aren't the existential threat facists tend to be elsewhere.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:42:13 AM by Zendervai

Pseudopartition Screaming Into The Void from The Cretaeceous Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
Screaming Into The Void
#169393: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:38:18 AM

[up]x5 I mean, it would certainly feed into the narrative that they are the oppressed victims here.

What's depressingly hilarious is that if there really was large scale voter fraud in favour of Clinton, it would have been in the swing states, not in freaking New York and California. The whole idea makes no sense.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:39:12 AM by Pseudopartition

Wildcard Since: Jun, 2012
#169394: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:43:44 AM

So apparently Trump plans to actually go through with the executive order to ban immigration from "Muslim countries". You know maybe his skittles metaphor was apt, just not in the direction he said. Republican politicians: There is maybe one decent one in a candy bowl full of poison and it sure ain't Trumpenstein.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:44:54 AM by Wildcard

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#169395: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:51:10 AM

The Republican party has plenty of experience with witch hunts and blowing smoke, this voter fraud thing is just them taking that to the next level.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#169396: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:52:42 AM

[up][up] And by being in the same bowl, the poison from the rest of the Skittles has tainted it anyway.

edited 25th Jan '17 10:52:52 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
LinkToTheFuture A real bad hombre from somewhere completely different Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: What's love got to do with it?
A real bad hombre
#169397: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:56:15 AM

What kind of consequences will Trump's plans to stop companies moving jobs overseas have?

edited 25th Jan '17 10:57:07 AM by LinkToTheFuture

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#169398: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:58:10 AM

[up] Pretty sure it'll trigger a Recession unless Wages are increased.

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#169399: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:59:22 AM

Newsweek: Trump White House Senior Staff have private RNC email accounts

Senior Trump administration staffers including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon have active accounts on a Republican National Committee email system, Newsweek has learned.

The system (rnchq.org) is the same one the Bush administration was accused of using to evade transparency rules after claiming to have “lost” 22 million emails.

Making use of separate political email accounts at the White House is not illegal. In fact, they serve a purpose by allowing staff to divide political conversations (say, arranging for the president to support a congressional re-election campaign) from actual White House work. Commingling politics and state business violates the Hatch Act, which restricts many executive branch employees from engaging in political activity on government time.

But after then-candidate Donald Trump and the Republicans repeatedly called for “locking up” Hillary Clinton for handling government work with a private server while secretary of state, the new White House staff risks repeating the same mistake that dogged the Democrat’s presidential campaign. They also face a security challenge: The RNC email system, according to U.S. intelligence, was hacked during the 2016 race. “They better be careful after making such a huge ruckus over the private email over at the State Department,” says former Bush administration lawyer Richard Painter.

It’s not clear whether or how Trump staffers are using the RNC email addresses. If they are using them, they are subject to the “Disclosure Requirement For Official Business Conducted Using Electronic Messaging Accounts," a law, 44 U.S.C. 2209, that went into effect in 2014. If White House staffers have already used the RNC emails system for White House work, they must copy or forward those communications into the government system within 20 days.

The Disclosure Requirement was passed to prevent presidents from shielding communications that fall under the Presidential Records Act of 1978. The last time White House staffers used the same RNC email system, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) described it as an attempt to circumvent transparency. CREW Director Melanie Sloan charged in 2007 that the Bush White House was using the RNC email system because “they don’t want anyone ever to be able to come back and see what was going on behind the scenes.”

...

Besides the unfortunate P.R. optics of Trump using a nonofficial email server in his White House after a campaign built on attacking a similar practice, there are other, more serious problems. First, obviously, is cybersecurity. Russian hackers didn’t harvest as much material from the RNC system as from the Democrats’, but the system was still hackable. Second is transparency. Trump and other Republicans throughout the 2016 campaign voiced concerns about the transparency of Clinton’s use of a “home-brew” personal email server in her basement. FBI Director James Comey called her email practices “extremely reckless,” and the investigation and lingering taint of suspicion arguably cost her the election.

The chief effect of using the RNC server in the Bush years was to leave investigators who wanted to know more about the origins of the Iraq War in the dark—for years. It remains impossible to determine whether Bush staffers ever sent classified material over the RNC system.

But her emails tho!!!

New Survey coming this weekend!
Wildcard Since: Jun, 2012
#169400: Jan 25th 2017 at 10:59:24 AM

[up][up][up]]Maybe trade embargo, maybe Trump's wall street friends profiting by removing all worker protection in favor of "just work harder and you don't need your left leg anyway",

edited 25th Jan '17 11:00:17 AM by Wildcard


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