What stupid shit has Trump done today?

[teqniq]

 

[Joe Reilly]

Great takes.

Why the Trump dynasty will last sixteen years | Edward Luttwak



Shattered is a great read btw, well recommended, I would disagree with the author of the TLS piece insofar that it is unbiased I think it was very strongly anti-Sanders but was nonetheless a very useful insight into the dysfunction of the Clinton campaign.

What was the nature of the anti-Jewish smears against Sanders mentioned in the Luttwak piece?

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

I won't link and haven't digested it all, but Trump has done some wank-speech about "Christianity" today, though he's not a bloke I'd look to as an embodiment of the teachings of the Nazarene carpenter, there's more chance that the invocation is blasphemous. But it does underline the the right-wings fetishisation of identity politics for which the left is often harangued and self-examining about.

 

[butchersapron]

?

 

[spring-peeper]

interesting.....

Without Priebus, Trump Is a Man Without a Party

 

[CRI]

Hackers descend on Las Vegas to expose voting machine flaws

. . . hundreds of cybersecurity experts who descended on “Voting Village,” one of the most talked-about features of the annual DEF CON hacker conference. In a cramped conference room, they took turns over three days cracking into 10 examples of voting machines and voter registration systems — a reminder, they say, of the risks awaiting upcoming U.S. elections.

“I could have done this in 2004,” said Schurman, who could gain administrative-level access to the voting machine, giving him the power to see all the votes cast on the device and to manipulate or delete vote totals. “Or 2008, or 2012.”

 

[NoXion]

Never understood how anyone can think that electronic voting is a good idea, apart from making electoral fraud easier. At least with paper ballots there's a whole lot of physical objects that would have to be destroyed or manipulated, and which would be much more likely than electronic ballots to leave a trail of evidence were such tampering to occur.

 

[J Ed]

What was the nature of the anti-Jewish smears against Sanders mentioned in the Luttwak piece?

I wondered about the specifics of this as well. I think that it is actually referring to just dogwhistle stuff, the sort of thing that was used against Ed Miliband. That he is sneaky, dishonest etc.

The use of Sanders' Jewishness was discussed in the DNC leaks, so we know at least that it was something that the Clinton team regarded as being fair game.

New Leak: Top DNC Official Wanted to Use Bernie Sanders’s Religious Beliefs Against Him

 

[J Ed]

The living conditions of the people who work for the richest in America.

http://nypost.com/2017/07/29/inside...-where-poor-hamptons-workers-live-in-squalor/

Shortly after arriving from El Salvador four years ago, Maria moved to the Hamptons, where she quickly found work washing dishes in a Caribbean-themed restaurant and cleaning palatial homes that overlook sprawling white sandy beaches.

Maria lives only a few miles from those beaches, but it might as well be a world away.

Her home is a low-ceilinged clapboard motel on a parched stretch of Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays, a middle-class hamlet of 13,000 sandwiched between the tonier villages of Quogue and Southampton.

Maria’s neighbors use a rope to hang-dry clothes and they store many of their worldly possessions — an old tire, an upright vacuum cleaner, rusted paint cans, dusty Christmas decorations — in shopping carts on the tiny cement patches that double as front porches outside their rooms.

Maria lives with her two young daughters and a sister in a single motel room amid stacks of canned food, a hot plate and a plastic effigy of the Virgin Mary that has pride of place on plastic storage containers at the entrance.

She knows her living arrangement is illegal but is grateful not to be homeless, although she winces when she reveals her rent just increased by $100 a month to $1,300, and says she has to work three jobs to make ends meet

 

[TomUS]

Never understood how anyone can think that electronic voting is a good idea, apart from making electoral fraud easier. At least with paper ballots there's a whole lot of physical objects that would have to be destroyed or manipulated, and which would be much more likely than electronic ballots to leave a trail of evidence were such tampering to occur.

It's good for the voting machine companies. That's about it. Three states OR, WA, CO have all vote by mail with paper ballots with CA to follow in 2018. It's great. No waiting in lines at polling places, voter suppression efforts useless.

 

[Joe Reilly]

I won't link and haven't digested it all, but Trump has done some wank-speech about "Christianity" today, though he's not a bloke I'd look to as an embodiment of the teachings of the Nazarene carpenter, there's more chance that the invocation is blasphemous. But it does underline the the right-wings fetishisation of identity politics for which the left is often harangued and self-examining about.

The liberal left was happy to be identified with identity politics and engage in culture wars for 30 years. The minute, literally, it concluded the strategy might have been responsible for the Trump victory, it was immediately denounced as 'right-wing'. What they are yet to acknowledge, or come to terms with, is that it was right wing all along.

 

[ViolentPanda]

This made me think that maybe Trump's demise will be as Al Pacino in the final scene of Scarface - facedown in a pile of cocaine then staggering out to confront the impeachment hearing bellowing "say hello to my little friend" - whilst his clumsy, fat fingers struggle to undo his flies.

You forgot to insert "tiny" before "clumsy".

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

The liberal left was happy to be identified with identity politics and engage in culture wars for 30 years. The minute, literally, it concluded the strategy might have been responsible for the Trump victory, it was immediately denounced as 'right-wing'. What they are yet to acknowledge, or come to terms with, is that it was right wing all along.

Defending minorities is legit and necessary. Celeberating some aspect of such identities can be useful in building confidence against oppression. It's a tricky balance though and the left have correctly spent quite a lot of time debating the usefulness and necessity of it.

But aspects of identity that are relatively privileged have no such necessity, and fake-necessity can only be concocted via fake victim-hood, which seems almost a cornerstone of alt-right thinking.

 

[CRI]

Defending minorities is legit and necessary. Celeberating some aspect of such identities can be useful in building confidence against oppression. It's a tricky balance though and the left have correctly spent quite a lot of time debating the usefulness and necessity of it.

But aspects of identity that are relatively privileged have no such necessity, and fake-necessity can only be concocted via fake victim-hood, which seems almost a cornerstone of alt-right thinking.

Yes, this. But unfortunately, you can get dismissal of self-organising and support within marginalised groups from folk across the political spectrum, for being "divisive" or some such.

And yes, turning things around to play like you're the victim is a popular move for those who's identity is contingent on denying they actually have privilege (e.g. Christians being discriminated against by non-believers.)

 

[CRI]

NAACP Issues Warning Advisory For Black People Traveling To Missouri

A travel advisory was issued last week after the controversial bill Senate Bill 43 was passed making it more difficult for fired employees to file discrimination lawsuits in the state.

"The bill would allow discrimination to run rampant in the workplace. We've actually rolled back protections for our most vulnerable citizens," State Rep. Brandon Ellington (D-Kansas City) told KSHB during a community event in the metro on Saturday. "People should be concerned that we have a national organization that is painting Missouri as a racist state ... People should be cautious about coming to a state that values civil rights so little that we're willing to change the law to allow discrimination."

This advisory was also issued after a new report coming from the Missouri Attorney General's Office claiming that black drivers in the state were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers. In recent years, the state has been a hotbed for protests resulting from various unaddressed civil rights issues such as police brutality, racism on public university campuses and racial profiling by police.

 

[Wookey]

He just sacked the Mooch.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

He just sacked the Mooch.

Trump Removes Anthony Scaramucci From Communications Director Role

 

[little_legs]

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

He just sacked the Mooch.

Trump Removes Anthony Scaramucci From Communications Director Role

Yep. We all may have gotten whiplash from that. Too bad we won't have healthcare.

 

[J Ed]

The constant changing of positions in the WH it seems to me might be a consequence of the fact that Trump seems to agree 100% with the last person he has spoken with.

 

[Dogsauce]

What's the word for the next level beyond 'omnishambles'?

 

[CRI]

 

[SpookyFrank]

Was he even there a whole fortnight?

 

[NoXion]

What's the word for the next level beyond 'omnishambles'?

Strong and stable?

 

[J Ed]

Was he even there a whole fortnight?

11 days I think

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

You know, I never thought much of Jimmy Carter as President, but he did set an example for solar energy:

Earlier this year, he commissioned SolAmerica to create a solar farm on 10 acres of his land in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. Today, that farm is supplying half of his town's electricity needs. It's expected to supply 1.3 megawatts of electricity annually, the equivalent of burning 3,600 tons of coal....

Carter went ahead and had 324 solar panels installed on the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, which will provide about seven percent of the library's energy.

"Distributed, clean energy generation is critical to meeting growing energy needs around the world while fighting the effects of climate change," Carter said in a press release. "I am encouraged by the tremendous progress that solar and other clean energy solutions have made in recent years and expect those trends to continue."

Carter's projects won't power the world, but they show that individuals can invest in small ways to generate energy. Collectively, these individual projects have the potential to transform energy grids around the world.

The New Yorker recently reported on how decentralized solar grids in Sub-Saharan Africa are bringing electricity to millions of people and allowing the region to "leap-frog" fossil fuels, similar to how developing countries are using mobile phones to "leap-frog" telecommunications infrastructure.

Jimmy Carter Powers Half of His Hometown With Solar

And, even though he's a believer in sky pixies, he's still more rational than that nutjob Trump.

 

[Wookey]

What's the word for the next level beyond 'omnishambles'?

Superpickle.

 

[SpookyFrank]

And, even though he's a believer in sky pixies, he's still more rational than that nutjob Trump.

I can't think of anyone less rational than Trump, and I work with small children.

 

[Wookey]

Dear United S of A,

We are not laughing at you. Really.

It's more that we're laughing wi....



OK, on second thoughts we are laughing at you. We're looking right at you and we are laughing, laughing, laughing so hard we might just be sick.

Best of luck,

The World

 

[SpookyFrank]

It's all fun and games til someone nukes the wrong Korea.