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

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#186151: May 2nd 2017 at 2:14:12 AM

[up] Might be where he got the idea

math792d Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#186152: May 2nd 2017 at 2:16:00 AM

I mean, 'slowly decaying zombie' is the Trump brand.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#186153: May 2nd 2017 at 2:22:19 AM

[up] Oh please, that's disrespectful to zombies.

..Dammit I just can't stop using Insult to Rocks when it comes to Trump.

Disgusted, but not surprised
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#186155: May 2nd 2017 at 2:34:15 AM

An already married FBI agent married an ISIS operative that she was investigating and moved to Syria then came back after second thoughts.

An FBI translator with a top-secret security clearance traveled to Syria in 2014 and married a key ISIS operative she had been assigned to investigate, CNN has learned.

The rogue employee, Daniela Greene, lied to the FBI about where she was going and warned her new husband he was under investigation, according to federal court records.

Greene's saga, which has never been publicized, exposes an embarrassing breach of national security at the FBI—an agency that has made its mission rooting out ISIS sympathizers across the country.

It also raises questions about whether Greene received favorable treatment from Justice Department prosecutors who charged her with a relatively minor offense, then asked a judge to give her a reduced sentence in exchange for her cooperation, the details of which remain shrouded in court-ordered secrecy.

He was Denis Cuspert, a German rapper turned ISIS pitchman, whose growing influence as an online recruiter for violent jihadists had put him on the radar of counter-terrorism authorities on two continents.

In Germany, Cuspert went by the rap name Deso Dogg. In Syria, he was known as Abu Talha al-Almani. He praised Osama bin Laden in a song, threatened former President Barack Obama with a throat-cutting gesture and appeared in propaganda videos, including one in which he was holding a freshly severed human head.

Within weeks of marrying Cuspert, Greene, 38, seemed to realize she had made a terrible mistake. She fled back to the US, where she was immediately arrested and agreed to cooperate with authorities. She pleaded guilty to making false statements involving international terrorism and was sentenced to two years in federal prison. She was released last summer.

Just what the hell.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#186156: May 2nd 2017 at 2:54:08 AM

[up] Two years? That's...really light considering what she did.

This was one particularly cringeworthy real life case of Love Makes You Dumb and/or Love Makes You Crazy.

Somehow I'm not surprised something like this happened not long after Comey was appointed FBI director.

edited 2nd May '17 2:55:37 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
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
#186157: May 2nd 2017 at 3:03:30 AM

In all seriousness that would be bad. That's way too close to a state-run economy for my taste.

Why? Sure a state-run economy is bad but state intervention is the only reliable way to prevent monopolies forming and the market becoming anything but free. The state is already guaranteeing the financial security of the banks (as it will bail them out if they go bust) so why shouldn't it try and mitigate the risk by breaking the banks up? If a bank is so large that it needs the state to guarantee it then should the state not get a say? It's the state's money that's on the line after all.

Now all of this is just my defence of the idea, I don't trust Trump to follow though nor do I for a second buy that if he did he'd manage to do things in a way that didn't make them worse (he'd probably try and force some banks under his ownership as Trump Bank or something).

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#186158: May 2nd 2017 at 3:21:31 AM

[up] Why breaking up banks can backfire.

Admittedly this is a Forbes article from 2013. But it makes some arguments for why breaking up banks might not help that much.

While I don't entirely agree that these things are guaranteed to happen, I am rather certain that all of the things that could go wrong with breaking up banks will happen if Trump and his administration manage it.

I definitely wouldn't put it past Trump to nationalize some of the broken up banks and consolidate them into Trump Bank or something either.

edited 2nd May '17 3:27:20 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#186159: May 2nd 2017 at 4:00:34 AM

Another item on "why did Trump win": Democrats were perceived to be too pro-wealthy.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
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
#186160: May 2nd 2017 at 4:02:05 AM

The arguments aren't that solid, it claims that American banks aren't that big because they're not big globally, but that doesn't mean that they're not to big. Beyond that it claims that banks can't survive without insane profit margins and that thus you'd destroy the banking sector by breaking them up, which is the same argument used to prevere every monopoly ever, it was even used to defend slavery. I trust that the market will find a way to make a profit regardless of regulation, the market is smart like that.

The rest is talking about political connection and how there's no point because it will either all be undone in the future or small banks will still get bailed out because they'll still be politically connected, which is just defeatism.

The final argument is the best, that the banks should simply be allowed to fail, but the examples used are terrible, it claims that the recovery of Germany and Japan after the Second World War proves that economies can come back from being destroyed, while totally ignoring the massive direct investment done by the US into Germany and Japan as part of their recoveries.

Sure the US could survive a totally collapse of the banking sector, but a lot of the US's citizens couldn't, that shodul be the measure used to determine if a bailout is needed, not if the economy would eventually bounce back some day.

The arguments are honestly pretty shoddy, the article comes closest by saying that banks should just be allowed to fail but it doesn't understand who bad that would be, you're looking at either an economic collapse that makes the Depression look like childplay, or the Nationalisaiton of failed large banks. Now I'm a big fan of nationalisation, but it would have to be done right and be done with full state control, none of this silent shareholder bullshit.

I'd much rather breakup the banks now than nationalise them in twenty years when they go bust again.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#186161: May 2nd 2017 at 4:05:16 AM

The big problem with breaking up the banks is that the people responsible for screwing things up will still be involved in the financial sector. And if Trump puts a banker in jail, it's only because that banker wouldn't do business on his terms.

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#186162: May 2nd 2017 at 4:42:37 AM

This is sort of funny. The FDA is relaxing Obama Era school lunch policies due among other things to "Paletability issues." (Granted, school food is awful)

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-relaxing-obama-era-school-lunch-standards/story?id=47134641

edited 2nd May '17 4:58:59 AM by megaeliz

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#186163: May 2nd 2017 at 5:26:02 AM

Re: Elizabeth Warren, acknowledging that she's my senator and I put $100 into her campaign this year, and thus I'm not entirely unbiased:

1.) Her point isn't without merit.

2.) It was poorly stated, and trashing the party's previous president and standard-bearer, no matter how much or how little, is poor form and politically foolish, since it makes it look like the Democrats have no successes to their record. The reason twenty million of the fabled WWC have healthcare is because of Obama. He didn't abandon them, he helped them like few presidents before him and certainly much more than Trump.

3.) We might have all fallen victim to fake news, or at least an editorialized headline, since while Obama is mentioned, her speech wasn't a direct takedown of him.


Also, she kind of has to start spouting the populist garbage. We're heading into election season where the divining at the polls shows Charlie Baker winning a second term. She probably wants to make a thrust into the MetroWest libertarians and conservatives, play the different-but-really-the-same game so that a Republican challenger doesn't have that backing, and on election day, win decisively.

edited 2nd May '17 5:29:11 AM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
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?
#186164: May 2nd 2017 at 6:00:56 AM

@ Puerto Rico: Well, anyone want to take a pool on how long before it declares independence/ starts to remind us uncomfortably of late-century Ireland?

OK, been through four or more topics since last night, but I have this pleasantly bleak look at tribal party politics a la USA: The Collapse of American Identity

     Tribes 
After the British writer G. K. Chesterton visited the United States for the first time, he remarked that America was “a nation with the soul of a church.”

Mr. Chesterton wasn’t referring to the nation’s religiosity but to its formation around a set of core political beliefs enshrined in founding “sacred texts,” like the Declaration of Independence...the United States, unlike European countries, did not rely on ethnic kinship, cultural character or a “national type” for a shared identity [but] ...aspired to create “a home out of vagabonds and a nation out of exiles” united by voluntary assent to commonly held political beliefs.

But recent survey data provides troubling evidence that a shared sense of national identity is unraveling, with two mutually exclusive narratives emerging along party lines.

An Associated Press-NORC poll found nearly mirror-opposite partisan reactions to the question of what kind of culture is important for American identity. Sixty-six percent of Democrats, compared with only 35 percent of Republicans, said the mixing of cultures and values from around the world was extremely or very important to American identity. Similarly, 64 percent of Republicans, compared with 32 percent of Democrats, saw a culture grounded in Christian religious beliefs as extremely or very important.

...Like Americans overall, large majorities of Democrats believe minority groups such as African-Americans, immigrants, Muslims and gay and transgender people face a lot of discrimination in the country. Only about one in five Democrats say that majority groups such as Christians or whites face a lot of discrimination.

Republicans, on the other hand, are much less likely than Democrats to believe any minority group faces a lot of discrimination, and they believe Christians and whites face roughly as much discrimination as immigrants, Muslims and gay and transgender people. Moreover, only 27 percent of Republicans say blacks experience a lot of discrimination, while 43 percent say whites do and 48 percent say the same of Christians.

Taken as a whole, these partisan portraits highlight contrasting responses to the country’s changing demographics and culture, especially over the past decade as the country has ceased to be a majority white Christian nation — from 54 percent in 2008 to 43 percent today. Democrats — only 29 percent of whom are white and Christian — are embracing these changes as central to their vision of an evolving American identity that is strengthened and renewed by diversity. By contrast, Republicans — nearly three-quarters of whom identify as white and Christian — see these changes eroding a core white Christian American identity and perceive themselves to be under siege as the country changes around them.

Americans of both political parties sense the unraveling of a broadly shared consensus of American identity, although they cite different reasons for feeling that way. About seven in 10 Republicans and Democrats fear that the United States is losing its national identity, the A.P.-NORC survey found. The two political parties may not share much, but each is increasingly aware that the other has embraced a radically different vision of America’s identity and future.

These responses are shifting the political magnetic field that defines the parties. Republican leaders are finding strong support among their base for the Trump administration’s executive order barring travel to the United States from particular Muslim-majority countries. But their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was dramatically derailed by factions within their own party.

Democrats, on the other hand, are enjoying energetic backing from their base for pro-immigration and pro-L.G.B.T. stances, but they are experiencing increasing opposition to their support for free trade.

The temptation for the Republican Party, especially with Donald Trump in the White House, is to double down on a form of white Christian nationalism, which treats racial and religious identity as tribal markers and defends a shrinking demographic with increasingly autocratic assertions of power.

For its part, the Democratic Party is contending with the difficulties of organizing its more diverse coalition while facing its own tribal temptations to embrace an identity politics that has room to celebrate every group except whites who strongly identify as Christian. If this realignment continues, left out of this opposition will be a significant number of whites who are both wary of white Christian nationalism and weary of feeling discounted in the context of identity politics.

Again, I suspect tis is preaching to the choir and as the article itself hints, registered Dems & Reps combined don't equal a majority of the population.
But it still emphasizes that the post-Trump government's most important task is probably addressing Chesterton's idea. His observation was probably never true, but better late than never. That problem is probably not insurmountable. The statistics show strong majorities in the differences, but nothing like 90%.

edited 2nd May '17 6:04:09 AM by CenturyEye

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
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#186165: May 2nd 2017 at 6:28:22 AM

How sweet, despite recent troubles, the trump/Putin Romance continues.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/02/trump-putin-phone-call-237868

The Republican still don't have the votes to pass Trumpcare. they are looking at the wrong wing of their party. The libertarian agenda just doesn't have a wide enough base.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/331478-gop-struggles-to-find-obamacare-repeal-votes?amp

edited 2nd May '17 6:40:39 AM by megaeliz

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#186166: May 2nd 2017 at 6:44:22 AM

What has Warren to do with Baker?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#186167: May 2nd 2017 at 6:47:11 AM

[up][up] The Freedom caucus is extremely loud and whines about everything. It seems much larger than it actually is, but there are actually a bunch of people in Congress who showed up in the Tea Party wave who were more or less caught up in it by accident. They absolutely did take advantage of it later though.

Although one of the problems that branch of the Republicans is having now is the fact that their constituents are beginning to pick up on the fact that the Tea Party platform is completely antithetical to their good health.

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#186168: May 2nd 2017 at 7:21:09 AM

Why Trump is fighting Canada on softwood lumber and dairy

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/331429-why-trump-is-fighting-canada-on-softwood-lumber-and-dairy?amp

And the latest from our delusional leader.

https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/859392449181093888

https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/859393829505552385

He is literally saying that he wants a government shutdown.

edited 2nd May '17 7:26:17 AM by megaeliz

DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#186169: May 2nd 2017 at 7:33:30 AM

[up] Come September, Trump will say "I never said I wanted a shutdown! You took my tweets wrong!" as he signs another Democratic-Favoring Spending Measure.tongue

Also, a Shutdown in September will simply give more power to the Democrats, not the Republicans, and I'm pretty sure they can't remove the 60-votes for Spending Measures in the Senate without a Constitutional Amendment.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#186170: May 2nd 2017 at 7:33:56 AM

[up][up]The POTUS is saying the government should shut down.

...

<slams head against wall>

edited 2nd May '17 7:34:11 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#186171: May 2nd 2017 at 7:39:05 AM

The dairy argument is really dumb because the American dairy industry was abusing a loophole in NAFTA that Canada is now closing. And yes, the whole quota system does kind of lock outside dairy companies out of the market, but I think it's a better idea than massively overproducing.

The US really needs to slow down on dairy production. Like, a lot. There's a gigantic surplus of cheese that's constantly increasing because they just won't stop ramping up production even though the demand has stayed pretty even for years now.

The problem is that the big American dairy companies bought hook line and sinker into supply side economics, but now when the supply massively outweighs demand, they're trying to force other markets to take their surplus. Canada, on the other hand, actually slightly underproduces, so it almost, but not quite, meets all the demand, thus ensuring that the dairy farmers aren't being paid pennies for their work. It's not perfect, but it is better than the American approach. Also, try to pry subsidies from the hands of the Québécois. It isn't going to happen.

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#186172: May 2nd 2017 at 7:41:28 AM

The 60 votes margin for spending bills is simply a matter of Senate procedure. The reason why they haven't changed it yet is, presumably, because the spending bills from the House that could be passed aren't well liked among Senate Republicans either.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
FluffyMcChicken My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare from where the floating lights gleam Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: In another castle
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#186174: May 2nd 2017 at 7:43:37 AM

California is considering blacklisting any companies that help build a border wall.

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/02/526514203/states-move-to-blacklist-southern-border-wall-contractors

Here's a quick article about Trumps shut down comments.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/331512-trump-us-needs-a-good-shutdown?amp

edited 2nd May '17 7:47:04 AM by megaeliz

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#186175: May 2nd 2017 at 7:46:10 AM

[up] Damn, California swinging it's massive dick around.

I approve.

New Survey coming this weekend!

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