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

[DotCommunist]

The face of a rapist when his date arrives at the table.

mitts having humble pie for dessert I take it. The speed with which these rats fled back to the not-sinking ship is disgusting

 

[bluescreen]

At least he has the grace to look embarrassed.

 

[Artaxerxes]

mitts having humble pie for dessert I take it. The speed with which these rats fled back to the not-sinking ship is disgusting

It is isn't it, everyone scrambling over themselves to lick his arse now he's in the presidents chair in a naked display of power worship.

 

[hot air baboon]

there is bound to be some hideous catch

...probably just basic concern over reputational damage & wanting to avoid a bucket load of negative headlines from being the first company Post-Election to sack American workers & shift their jobs to Mexico.....the plans will no doubt be put on a shelf for future consideration

ETA : on the other hand...

“The deal reportedly will keep a majority of the jobs in the state in exchange for friendlier business regulations and an overhauling of the corporate tax code,”

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Yes, Donald Trump’s politics are incoherent. But those who surround him know just what they want, and his lack of clarity enhances their power. To understand what is coming, we need to understand who they are. I know all too well, because I have spent the past 15 years fighting them.

Over this time, I have watched as tobacco, coal, oil, chemicals and biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into an international misinformation machine composed of thinktanks, bloggers and fake citizens’ groups. Its purpose is to portray the interests of billionaires as the interests of the common people, to wage war against trade unions and beat down attempts to regulate business and tax the very rich. Now the people who helped run this machine are shaping the government.

Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it | George Monbiot

You know, there's no doubt that Clinton was a really bad candidate. But one has to wonder: if she'd won, would she have stacked her cabinet and inner circle with anti-abortionists, anti-socialized medicine advocates, Army generals, racists, climate sceptics, Goldman Sachs bankers; and a gaggle of billionaires with a belief structure straight out of the pages of Ayn Rand?

 

[Idris2002]

Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it | George Monbiot

You know, there's no doubt that Clinton was a really bad candidate. But one has to wonder: if she'd won, would she have stacked her cabinet and inner circle with anti-abortionists, anti-socialized medicine advocates, Army generals, racists, climate sceptics, Goldman Sachs bankers; and a gaggle of billionaires with a belief structure straight out of the pages of Ayn Rand?

Well the Goldman boys and the billionaires go without saying: and she herself is an opponent of socialised medicine.

 

[inva]

So she took a buckshee dinner from Mad Vlad. How is that the same as Hilary taking huge donations from the butchers of Yemen?

maybe not the same, but

Stein said the US should be working with Syria, Russia, and Iran to restore all of Syria to control by the government

link

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

The face of a rapist when his date arrives at the table.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So, just magically, out of thin air, a particularly regressive form of christianity appeared (with all the hoopla of mega-churches) because of? It is quite true - I really fail to grasp something fundamental about US religion...and that is the sheer size and diversity...it appears that anyone can call themselves a pastor and start reeling in donations...and any old interpretation of biblical texts can be wheeled out as proof of God's Will...so where, exactly, is the socialist Jesus?

We tend to forget that the US was built on Protestantism, with many of the first century of settlers being those fleeing countries that persecuted their particular brand of faith. Some of that stuff - the Lutheran and Calvinistic traditions, the overhang of Anglican Puritanism, the influence of the Scots independents who fled The Clearances - is as embedded in the midwest as the remnants of pioneer culture are. Protestantism, like Catholicism, has a long and not-very-proud history of producing followers whose arrogant assumptions about the rightness of their version of G-d tend to over-ride reason.

 

[ViolentPanda]

mitts having humble pie for dessert I take it. The speed with which these rats fled back to the not-sinking ship is disgusting

They'll be congratulating themselves on their pragmatism, as their lips fasten around Trump's member.

 

[campanula]

I know this VP...just not altogether sure why religion has hung on with such a fervent base while the UK is largely secular. The US has as much history of migration and settlement as did the UK, albeit European settlement occurred over a longer timescale...but for a supposedly developed scientific country, the US remains stolidly locked into a particularly literal type of biblical mindset...which can only come from the structural conditions regarding the seemingly widescale creativity in founding particular creeds. The number of varying classes of christianity are truly mind-boggling - literally thousands.

Grief VP - that little last post - just put me off my elevenses toast and nutella!

 

[krtek a houby]

Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy | Moira Weigel
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trump
Basically, a histor of the useage of the term and how Trump and some of his predecessors used it to their favour.

 

[mojo pixy]

not altogether sure why religion has hung on with such a fervent base while the UK is largely secular. The US has as much history of migration and settlement as did the UK, albeit European settlement occurred over a longer timescale...but for a supposedly developed scientific country, the US remains stolidly locked into a particularly literal type of biblical mindset...which can only come from the structural conditions regarding the seemingly widescale creativity in founding particular creeds. The number of varying classes of christianity are truly mind-boggling - literally thousands.

It's a conundrum. I've wondered if the broad secularism across the UK and much of Europe derives from long, many-generational experiences of the many religious wars, which have culminated in widespread rejection of all religion. OTOH, (and despite the prominence of a few secularists like Thomas Paine and Mark Twain) the US's origins are very much in the devoutly religious escaping from those wars into a kind of Terra Incognita where their faith(s) could grow and flourish, having little competition or conflict to worry about. The little there has been (against the Spanish or French, say) can only have strengthened the broadly protestant hegemony. And the wars against the native populations seem to have strengthened the sense that Our Faith is The True Faith, rather as the same kinds of genocides committed in the southern americas have done for catholicism.

Just impressions, mind.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Or the 47% who refused to engage in such a crapulous spectacle and stayed home? And out of the 53% who did vote, do you think each side was entirely satisfied with their choice? No negative voting? No voting because they believed what they were told (because we would never do that, no). Those people who voted for Trump all voted for the same reason? Or Hillary?
There is a lot of finger pointing with tendencies to place people in neat categories with a fully functional set of prejudices, faults and motivations...while simultaneously divorcing them from much in the way of context. I am just not seeing a lot of it as particularly illuminating or helpful or even balanced. Lots of angry spouting from some frothing journo does not constitute anything remotely like an analysis (and hardly ever offers an alternative view unless it is the imaginary one conjured up in said journo's own head). Colourful, psuedo-anthrolpological pifflle with a side helping of smug outrage.

Abstaining, voting for third party candidates (at least the non-mental ones) and voting for Clinton as the lessor of two evils were all within the range of rationally or morally defensible options in the US election. Voting for a KKK-backed, violent sexual predator who thinks climate change is a conspiracy cooked up by the Chinese government and who generally seems incapable of rational thought was either the product of (1) them sharing Trump's vile and hateful bigotry; (2) lazy ignorance as to what Trump's policies actually were or (3) unbelievable stupidity in believing that Trump's election would somehow 'shake up the establishment' for the better. I see no reason not to be angry at Trump voters: it's thanks to those cunts that an orange rapist who brags about sexually assaulting women is going to be the most powerful man on earth.

 

[bluescreen]

BTW, where is CR these days? Is his work here done?

 

[mojo pixy]

He's away to join Trump's cabinet as LGBTQ secretary.

 

[teqniq]

I find this difficult to believe

Donald Trump just announced he is giving up his business

 

[Yossarian]

Why does he go on Twitter to announce these things at 7 in the morning? I'm starting to think he stays up all night sometimes smoking meth and reading stuff about what presidents are supposed to do.

 

[butchersapron]

I find this difficult to believe

Donald Trump just announced he is giving up his business

This is, i suspect, to do with moves to force him to put his interests in a blind trust - one that isn't connected to family members - as they would clash with the Emoluments Clause of the constitution. Just an attempt to pre-empt that situation.

 

[teqniq]

Even so it is likely to be merely window-dressing.

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

BTW, where is CR these days? Is his work here done?

Probably been redeployed to French and German message boards

 

[nuffsaid]

Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy | Moira Weigel
Basically, a histor of the useage of the term and how Trump and some of his predecessors used it to their favour.

I just read that and was dissappointed there wasn't a comment button. I wanted to reply to this statement in it -

'They were not reacting to the tyranny of political correctness, nor were they returning America to a previous phase of its history. They were not taking anything back.'

But the trouble is they they think they are, and many who voted Trump think the same.

I disagree with the article where it suggests the Right used it as some phantom enemy. It does exist and Trump's team believe in it as an enemy as much as the people that were fired up to vote against it by voting for Trump. It's not a phantom of the Right's making as the title suggests the writer thinks.

 

[krtek a houby]

I just read that and was dissappointed there wasn't a comment button. I wanted to reply to this statement in it -

'They were not reacting to the tyranny of political correctness, nor were they returning America to a previous phase of its history. They were not taking anything back.'

But the trouble is they they think they are, and many who voted Trump think the same.

I disagree with the article where it suggests the Right used it as some phantom enemy. It does exist and Trump's team believe in it as an enemy as much as the people that were fired up to vote against it by voting for Trump. It's not a phantom of the Right's making as the title suggests the writer thinks.

It's an opinion, though. The intent behind the term was about treating people equally and respectfully; something that got twisted all out of proportion by the right over the last couple of decades. But - crucially - that's just my opinion on that opinion.

But yes, you're right - there are those who believe they are "taking it back" and or "making America great again".

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

We tend to forget that the US was built on Protestantism, with many of the first century of settlers being those fleeing countries that persecuted their particular brand of faith. Some of that stuff - the Lutheran and Calvinistic traditions, the overhang of Anglican Puritanism, the influence of the Scots independents who fled The Clearances - is as embedded in the midwest as the remnants of pioneer culture are. Protestantism, like Catholicism, has a long and not-very-proud history of producing followers whose arrogant assumptions about the rightness of their version of G-d tend to over-ride reason.

No doubt that Protestant elites held sway in the US for a long time, and still wield a lot of power; but it's interesting to note that the US elected a Catholic President in 1960, while Britain has yet to elect a Catholic PM.

 

[ViolentPanda]

No doubt that Protestant elites held sway in the US for a long time, and still wield a lot of power; but it's interesting to note that the US elected a Catholic President in 1960, while Britain has yet to elect a Catholic PM.

Not quite true. We elected a crypto-Catholic PM in 1997, he just held off converting to RC until after he left power.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I disagree with the article where it suggests the Right used it as some phantom enemy. It does exist and Trump's team believe in it as an enemy as much as the people that were fired up to vote against it by voting for Trump. It's not a phantom of the Right's making as the title suggests the writer thinks.

Much of it really doesn't exist. eg UK example: 'Can't say "paki" any more cos political correctness.' No, it was always bloody offensive to say that, it's just that those who find it offensive are now in the ascendancy so you feel obliged to stop saying it, but you should never have been saying it in the first place. Tough shit if you don't like it - you're losing.

 

[maomao]

No doubt that Protestant elites held sway in the US for a long time, and still wield a lot of power; but it's interesting to note that the US elected a Catholic President in 1960, while Britain has yet to elect a Catholic PM.

We had a jew. Sort of.

 

[nuffsaid]

Much of it really doesn't exist. eg UK example: 'Can't say "paki" any more cos political correctness.' No, it was always bloody offensive to say that, it's just that those who find it offensive are now in the ascendancy so you feel obliged to stop saying it, but you should never have been saying it in the first place. Tough shit if you don't like it - you're losing.

Whoa, whoa, I didn't say I didn't like it. It's been a way of attacking prejuicidal thinking, that needed to be confronted, all good. But it was a mindset that did come out of universities in the US (possibly others - I remember reading about it coming out of the CA research centre at Stanford University actually). My argument is that it's wrong to say the Right made up a villain to rail against. It was made up, and rightly so, but on the flip side is it's been a victim of it's own success. I'd answer the writer of that article that PC'ness appeared to be forced upon people so they railed against it and Trump and his like were able to use the existing dislike of it - a dislike fermented by it's overuse - or misuse more so. So I'm saying - the institutions that propagated it, correctly as a means to overcome prejudice, shot themselves in the foot.

 

[Idris2002]

The face of a rapist when his date arrives at the table.

The best caption I saw for this one was "your name is now Reek".

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Whoa, whoa, I didn't say I didn't like it. It's been a way of attacking prejuicidal thinking, that needed to be confronted, all good. But it was a mindset that did come out of universities in the US (possibly others - I remember hearing about it coming out of the CA research centre at Stanford University actually). My argument is that it's wrong to say the Right made up a villain to rail against. It was made up, and rightly so, but on the flip side is it's been a victim of it's own success. I'd answer the writer of that article that PC'ness appeared to be forced upon people so they railed against it and Trump and his like were able to use the existing dislike of it - a dislike fermented by it's overuse - or misuse more so. So I'm saying - the institutions that propagated it, correctly as a means to overcome prejudice, shot themselves in the foot.

No, but the idea behind my point is that such people think what they are saying used to be ok but now isn't. They're wrong, and it is not US universities that have changed the culture such that they are now obliged to shut it. This wasn't some top-down edict.