Donald Trump, the road that might not lead to the White House!

[J Ed]

Fascinating to watch these neoliberals pivot from 'Bernie is a racist who owns slaves' to 'actually when you really think about it, perhaps what America needs is a skull shape audit'.

 

[NoXion]

Fascinating to watch these neoliberals pivot from 'Bernie is a racist who owns slaves' to 'actually when you really think about it, perhaps what America needs is a skull shape audit'.

Could you elaborate?

 

[J Ed]

Could you elaborate?

He went from boosting the identitarian attacks on Bernie Sanders to now doing the same for material that supports the positions of an ascendant far-right.

 

[NoXion]

He went from boosting the identitarian attacks on Bernie Sanders to now doing the same for material that supports the positions of an ascendant far-right.

It's the latter bit I'm having trouble understanding. I read the Vox article, and I didn't see anything that would support the far-right. The impression that I got from reading is that the problem lies with social media rather than with "diversity, immigration, and multiculturalism" as Klein characterises it. Of course it's a liberal opinion site and they are very good at cloaking their real views in progressive-sounding rhetoric so I might have missed it.

 

[J Ed]

It's the latter bit I'm having trouble understanding. I read the Vox article, and I didn't see anything that would support the far-right. The impression that I got from reading is that the problem lies with social media rather than with "diversity, immigration, and multiculturalism" as Klein characterises it. Of course it's a liberal opinion site and they are very good at cloaking their real views in progressive-sounding rhetoric so I might have missed it.

Eh, it's in the context of the fact that he was one of the first of his lot to try and normalise Trump. Called for moderates to join his admin the night he won I'm pretty sure.

 

[Treacle Toes]

EVERYONE!!!
Via the NSA the US government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchase, email, text message, internet search, social media communication, which is combined with health information, employment history, travel and student records, and so on.

Specifics aside I was making a rhetorical point...its impossible for us to really know exactly what the secret services know or can access if they want it (though some has been exposed by NSA whistleblowers), but we do know that especially post 9-11 US citizens are spied on on a scale unique in history...the general point being the notion that there is a lack of surveillance/information gathering in the US is a joke. The Register has one purpose and one alone, and that's to get racists fists and hearts pumping. Its a level of racism well beyond a dog whistle.

The Online Identity Crisis

Our identity is no longer restricted to a passport or National Insurance number. The average adult in Britain spends one day a week online and a large part of this time will be on Google, Facebook, Twitter, or shopping sites. As a result, whether we are aware of it or not, each of us also has a distinct online identity.

This digital persona allows strangers to piece together more about us than we might think. Every minute of every day, online data is being collected, curated and exploited to categorise, sell and even pigeonhole our identity.

Technology and the rise of big data allows outsiders to infer religious and political affiliations simply by examining our social networks. Facial recognition software can put names to complete strangers. If pictured outside a mosque or a synagogue, a club or a school, or leaving a hospice or an STD clinic, assumptions will be made about what kind of person we are and the lifestyle we lead. These decisions could affect our job or even the chances of finding somewhere to live.

With the distinction between our online and offline lives melting away, Financial Times' science columnist Anjana Ahuja asks if it's time to radically rethink the rules about online identity. She talks to privacy activists, computer scientists and data brokers, and hears exclusively from the lawyer who is campaigning for the introduction of a civil law to protect individuals against breaches of online identity.

Worth a listen.

 

[J Ed]

Week before the election

 

[ferrelhadley]

Hmmm one of the moves may be a constitutional change to make it illegal to discriminate on grounds of race, gender or sexuality.
Effectively making affirmative action unconstitutional.

Certainly picked a team that would head off in that direction.

 

[stupid kid]

FROM those senior to you? are you sure?

Yes, my direct line managers in particular, referred to me as sir. I found this working both the night shifts at Walmart and at a stressfully under resourced state agency providing case management and referrals to older/disabled people. Texas is weird.

 

[phillm]

We always knew Kanye was a cunt now doubly confirmed.
Kanye West didn't vote, but would have gone Trump -- and thinks people should stop focusing on racism

 

[J Ed]

Vengeance Is Mine | Jacobin

There was an enormous disparity in the energies fueling each major candidacy. The GOP was stormed by a charismatic strongman who delighted in shooting his mainline rivals in the backs of their heads, cheerfully driving a backhoe over the mass grave, to the noisy acclamation of his faithful — the pied piper of a brutal and a popular awakening.

And why not? Jeb Bush and John Kasich and Marco Rubio and the dozen-odd graspers on those awful debate platforms were the architects of so much grief and misery in this country, that even a show trial would’ve stretched on for decades. Better that a wealthy Cheshire Cat cut each of them to the quick on live television. This is not rocket science here. It was enjoyable for people to see this happen. And the promises he made — oh! Baron, like love to me!

For electoral reasons, the Democrats must pretend they care about ordinary people’s well-being — that they are not a party of capital, as the Republicans obviously are. How ironic it was then that Trump’s message, which occasionally cut against the grain of typical GOP messaging, occupied their usual terrain: paeans to manufacturing, to the resurrection of American industry, to vague, all-inclusive health care, under a system in which “I will not allow people to die on the sidewalks and streets of our country.” Marry this to a virulent program of murder, deportation, and scapegoating, and you have the makings of a pretty decent dictator.

It was Trump’s hellish, dystopian vision — that “our country does not feel ‘great already’ to the millions of wonderful people living in poverty, violence and despair” — which nevertheless verged closer to the unspeakable truth. Trump, in his restorative mode, of “making America great again,” unwittingly did what his opponents could not in any plausible sense display: he recognized that this country does not feel great to many people living in it.

It’s funny, isn’t it, who was right and who was wrong. The Samantha Bees and John Olivers and Trevor Noahs of the world had their fun little jokes about Trump, didn’t they — humorless, vapid Trump, resolutely unable to laugh at himself. He’s orange, with a two-digit IQ, and takes shits in a gold toilet bowl. And his followers, oh, what a gift for comedy — unhinged, unwell, violent — and best of all, loathsome, the perfect target of derision, because who would feel bad mocking the worst people in the world?

And yet. In the words of Trump’s slimey limey, the odious Nigel Farage, crowing to the European Parliament in the wake of the Brexit vote: “You’re not laughing now, are you?”

In her arrogance, she could not absorb the truth, leaving a grotesque, glorying Trump as the only pageantry of the night. In the truth’s place, out she sent John Podesta, the ashen-faced lobbyist scuttering on-stage, like a mortician regretfully explaining your card has been declined.

 

[krtek a houby]

We always knew Kanye was a cunt now doubly confirmed.
Kanye West didn't vote, but would have gone Trump -- and thinks people should stop focusing on racism

Easy for a multi millionaire to say, I guess.

 

[phillm]

Bannon Exclusive

“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

Ringside With Steve Bannon at Trump Tower as the President-Elect's Strategist Plots "An Entirely New Political Movement" (Exclusive)

 

[J Ed]

Less than one month before the election.

 

[J Ed]

Less than a week after the election, while Bernie Sanders attends sit-ins, protests, expresses solidarity with people who vow to oppose Trump's racism

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

We always knew Kanye was a cunt now doubly confirmed.
Kanye West didn't vote, but would have gone Trump -- and thinks people should stop focusing on racism

That's just marketing by West. No one is interested in a news story where someone gives a predictable quote.

 

[J Ed]

3 years before the election.

They lost to this

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Paul Verhoeven Slams ‘Starship Troopers’ Remake, Says It’ll Be a Fascist Update Perfect for a Trump Presidency

Did anyone really miss the satire in Verhoeven's Starship Troopers? Were they just utterly stupid? I remember watching it in the cinema and people were laughing all the way through.

 

[J Ed]

Vote for me, you don't really deserve better anyway. lol I am 'negging' you. 8 months before the election.




Hello, brother. Welcome home, everything here is exactly as you wanted. Whatever you want, it's yours. 1 day after the election.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/politics/trump-speech-transcript.html?_r=0

Tremendous potential. I’ve gotten to know our country so well — tremendous potential. It’s going to be a beautiful thing. Every single American will have the opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

 

[teqniq]

Paul Verhoeven Slams ‘Starship Troopers’ Remake, Says It’ll Be a Fascist Update Perfect for a Trump Presidency

Did anyone really miss the satire in Verhoeven's Starship Troopers? Were they just utterly stupid? I remember watching it in the cinema and people were laughing all the way through.

I think Heinlein wrote the book tongue in cheek, at least that's the way I remember it.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

An automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election, according to a report published Thursday by researchers at Oxford University.

The chatbots — basic software programs with a bit of artificial intelligence and rudimentary communication skills — would send messages on Twitter based on a topic, usually defined on the social network by a word preceded by a hashtag symbol, like #Clinton.

Their purpose: to rant, confuse people on facts, or simply muddy discussions, said Philip N. Howard, a sociologist at the Oxford Internet Institute and one of the authors of the report. If you were looking for a real debate of the issues, you weren’t going to find it with a chatbot.

“They’re yelling fools,” Dr. Howard said. “And a lot of what they pass around is false news.”

Automated Pro-Trump Bots Overwhelmed Pro-Clinton Messages, Researchers Say

 

[krtek a houby]

I think Heinlein wrote the book tongue in cheek, at least that's the way I remember it.

I read it a few months back; he seemed quite down on social workers, liberals, do gooders etc

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I think Heinlein wrote the book tongue in cheek, at least that's the way I remember it.

The book is definitely from his fascist period (which arguably carried on throughout the hippie stuff). He meant it.

 

[J Ed]

Automated Pro-Trump Bots Overwhelmed Pro-Clinton Messages, Researchers Say

Also pro-Clinton bots

Sorry but she has the entire ruling class, the entire media, the money. The election was NOT swayed by pro-Trump bots on twitter which no one is actually on anyway.

 

[Idris2002]

I read it a few months back; he seemed quite down on social workers, liberals, do gooders etc

That's because he was a cunt.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The election was NOT swayed by pro-Trump bots on twitter

Finally: some good solid facts from someone with inside information on how it all went down.

 

[J Ed]

Finally: some good solid facts from someone with inside information on how it all went down.

Do you want some of that then?

The Clinton Campaign Was Undone By Its Own Neglect And A Touch Of Arrogance, Staffers Say | The Huffington Post

We can look at all sorts of analysis, statistics and other forms of data but ultimately I think that when it comes down to it the Clinton campaign was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster. They are actually stupid and, ironically enough for people who proudly define (defined?) themselves by their cosmopolitanism, parochial. They would not have made the decisions that they did if they weren't like that.

 

[J Ed]

David Axelrod, campaign manager for Obama in 2008. 9 months before the election.



Axelrod is a really interesting figure I think. Given who he is, obviously he's an adamant Obama person but his hostility to the Clintons is also really clear, perhaps it's a result of the nasty law and order racist campaign that Clinton used against Obama. Regardless, throughout the primaries what he said went beyond what was expected for a person in his position to say both in favour of Bernie and against Clinton.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

David Axelrod, campaign manager for Obama in 2008. 9 months before the election.

Except.... the Democrats won that election...

 

[butchersapron]

Except.... the Democrats won that election...

Read it again.

or nothing to see here, keep walking, don't you fucking dare look at me racist.