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ZooeyModeratorLOL
5 starts for Mr. Hekker.
ZooeyModeratorHis absence isn’t why I have been posting less. I’ve just been drawn to places with more activity because I’m in such a state.
I LIKE having a variety of viewpoints. I think most of us do. What I don’t like is trying to debate someone who has no understanding of how to argue. No recognition of fallacies, no ability to judge the weight of evidence. And insulting to everyone in the bargain while playing the victim card. That just gets old.
February 18, 2017 at 2:21 pm in reply to: Has the Large Hadron Collider disproved the existence of ghosts? #65367ZooeyModeratorThen explain Captain Daniel Gregg, big guy.
Game, set, and match.
ZooeyModeratorI don’t know if “numb” is the word. I am stunned.
Even though I know the strategy is exactly “Shock and Awe,” and I see it coming, I am just finding myself more and more speechless.
I have been unable to turn away from reading about everything, and even have been watching the Sunday morning shows to see what the establishment is saying, and I am just at the saturation point where I have to turn away because I can’t handle it. It’s affecting my work, my free time, my well-being.
But I can’t quite turn away. I just need one more little drink.
ZooeyModeratorIn terms of highlighting and examining the war horrors of one’s own national history, absolutely we should do that and DO do that
{snicker} zn said, “doo doo.” {snicker}
ZooeyModerator<
Do you really think people care Zooey?I doubt it. I think people care about things that personally impact them. So people whose kids are out of the nest aren’t going to worry much about education. Childless people won’t concern themselves about it. Families with their kids going to private schools aren’t going to defend the system. You know.
And then there are quite a few people who are using public education who sense something is very wrong with it, and they aren’t going to defend it, either.
But, then, there are some families who take the education of their children very seriously, are actively involved in supporting the school, and they care. I mean…I have parents whose kids have graduated and moved away who still come to help out with our theatre productions because they feel so grateful about how the experience in theatre impacted their kid’s life. There are people. A lot of people. Enough, I think, if they are made aware of what is at stake. That’s just the key to everything, though, isn’t it? Getting people to understand issues beyond bumpersticker slogans.
On NPR this morning, I heard a guy say, “I think Trump MEANS well, and wants to do the right thing for our country, not just pro-life, but about jobs and everything….” That’s what the guy said. And I think that represents his support generally speaking. They may not approve of his public ugliness, but they are willing to put up with that (since they are largely unaffected by it) because they sense something is wrong, Trump agrees with them, and he’s a billionaire, so he knows what he is doing. It’s that simple, I think. They are the “something’s gotta change” crowd.
Well, when that something that changes is they lose their health coverage, or their school starts losing teachers due to layoffs or teachers quitting, and the classrooms deteriorate, they are gonna react to that. The question for me is “How much damage will be done before people realize they’ve been conned?”
ZooeyModeratorThat is compelling evidence in itself that the guy is striving to destroy the government…
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…continuing that sentence……in order to help Corporations.I mean who else is going to benefit?
w
vWell, I think some people – libertarians – think that in destroying the government, they are creating individual freedom. They don’t think it through to its natural conclusion.
Bannon, I think, believes that in destroying the government, he is shirking off the “White Man’s Burden.” He thinks that white men shouldn’t have to carry the darkies who just are naturally dependent on the superior race for everything. I don’t think he is pro-corporation per se. He is pro white christian. And krazee people like that don’t think things through to their natural conclusions. In any event, corporations are run by white men, so that all seems natural anyway.
And, yes, it’s pro-corporate even if he doesn’t think of it that way.
ZooeyModeratorWell, as I said in the thread on Bannon, I am not as concerned about her lack of qualifications as I am by her intentions. Her lack of qualifications is good news compared to her intentions.
Imagine if she knew what she was doing from day one.
As it is, she is going to have a learning curve that may help us. She may try to just roll out all kinds of wacko shit like Trump has, and get hung up on the illegality of it which could give people enough time to notice what she is doing, and rally to stop it.
ZooeyModeratorWell, I saw a headline today that Bannon believes in the Apocalypse. You know, Armageddon between East and West.
Didn’t read the article. Don’t care. He is off-the-charts dangerous no matter what.
Snopes may not be able to verify (since there is only one witness – the guy who wrote the story), but all the cabinet appointments fit that.
I mean…all the talk about DeVos was disheartening to me. The opposition focused on her lack of “qualifications.” To me qualifications are only important if the person applying for the job wants to do well at it, and it seems the opposition missed the obvious fact that she wants to destroy public education. That is a far greater concern than whether she is qualified or not, and should have been the grounds for fighting against her. What the hell are they thinking? Make it about her intentions. Frankly, the fact that she has no experience is an asset to us right now because she will face a learning curve on trying to damage the department of education. You know, right now, the appointment of Carson is the least offensive because – although he has no qualifications – he isn’t a complete enemy of the interests he has been appointed to oversee. All the other appointments are “burn the house down” people.
So regardless of whether that quote about Bannon can be verified…look at the appointments. That is compelling evidence in itself that the guy is striving to destroy the government.
February 5, 2017 at 2:50 pm in reply to: Rams go after Mark LaFleur for OC…and then, hire him #64942ZooeyModeratorI wonder if McVay’s desire to call plays himself has a dampening effect on coaches’ desire to be OC with the Rams. Who would want to be OC without play-falling responsibility?
February 4, 2017 at 11:11 pm in reply to: Why Aren't Democrats Doing More to Support the Trump Resistance Movement? #64878ZooeyModeratorI don’t have any real hope…but the best thing in the world would be a 3rd party that was actually progressive. What would the Dems do then? They would be so totally screwed.
ZooeyModeratorI agree with the point about networking. I believe that is probably the most important outcome of the March. Not just creating contacts, but the expansion of awareness of related issues. There is no way to educate people on all of these issues efficiently. The best way is through conversations that take place when people’s interest is aroused, like these marches. So hopefully a lot of the Marchers who aren’t socialist feminists had their eyes open to a wide range of issues. That’s the best outcome of all of these demonstrations in my opinion.
ZooeyModeratorI don’t think the women’s march was any one thing. It wasn’t even confined to women’s issues. There were a lot of people marching who marched in solidarity with women, but were motivated by, and promoting, other issues such as LGBT, gay, environmental, and so on. It was a broad coalition of causes that united under the banner of women’s issues with which everyone is sympathetic.
Moreover, I will say that I never heard of a pussyhat website until now. None of the marchers I know ever mentioned it, and they certainly weren’t following any kind of instructions, or lead from a webpage. So I agree that part of the article is just facile. This was not Bernays-level manipulation by any stretch.
But I also don’t see any Stalin-level demands for purity in the piece. I see a (correct) observation that most of the marchers have failed to recognized the big picture, the one that extends to women’s rights beyond their own personal concerns. I think that’s just true. They were largely out there because of concern about the chauvinistic tone of Trump and his supporters, and because of concern about Planned Parenthood etc. That, broadly speaking, was the impetus. The writer points out that that is hardly a comprehensive approach to women’s issues.
Unfortunately, I think he is dismissive of the march for that reason, when another person might have pointed out that it was a big step in the right direction that people are standing up for themselves. We haven’t even been doing THAT much in this country. So standing up for self may be the first step. Standing up for others comes later in the growth of the movement.
I don’t, however, think that the march means much unless it is followed with constant pressure, and a concerted effort to dislodge as many politicians as possible with alternatives who are farther to the left politically. Because – let’s face it – the march in itself was close to pointless. Marches don’t do much of anything except provide catharsis. They have little, if any, impact on policy. Just a few days after the march, Trump nominates a regressive judge to the SC, and while the women are marching, he signs the Global Gag Rule. So…you know…
ZooeyModeratorFalcons in a stunning blowout because God owes us.
Lady Gaga becomes the talk of the world for a full week after wiping her ass with a photo of Donald Trump.
ZooeyModeratorAnother poll had him at 50% disapproval.
Just read a poll that had him at 45% approval, 50% disapproval with 40% supporting IMPEACHMENT.
I think the Republicans are waiting…
They got Pence in there… They’re just waiting for a reason at this point. Every minute Trump’s in there now harms the Republican brand…
They need a fairly solid reason…and I don’t just mean a legal reason because those are going to be readily available: business conflicts, etc. – it has to be a reason that most people will see as impeachable. Something his nutty backers can’t come out and say, “Clinton did this, Obama did that, too.” But I don’t think I will get a decent, restful night’s sleep again until Bannon is gone.
February 3, 2017 at 12:46 am in reply to: Stern interview Trump ran for presidency for Apprentice $$$ #64709ZooeyModeratorI saw this earlier. I think there was a large consensus that he was running just for Trump promotional purposes, and never imagined he’d win. He didn’t really try to win. He didn’t play the game. He just happened to be the wrong guy at the wrong time.
But I don’t think he is investigating voter fraud in order to flip the election to Clinton. That sounds like crap to me. I think he’s investigating the election because he half believes it, and because Bannon told him to. They will use the results of the investigation to make it even harder for the dispossessed to vote.
February 2, 2017 at 3:06 pm in reply to: Trump to 'destroy' law banning political activity by churches #64681ZooeyModeratorBannon isn’t stupid. He’s getting Trump to lock in the evangelical base. There is no more fervent supporter than an evangelical one. If he gives them Christ in the schools and anti-abortion they’ll follow him to Armageddon.
They will love him. It’s kind of a way to get Republicans in line.
Yep.
And there are 80 million evangelicals in this country, plus a lot more religious types who aren’t in the evangelical category who are going to find some things to like about this.
We are in big trouble.
February 2, 2017 at 12:29 am in reply to: Trump renaming domestic counter terrorism program "Countering Islamic Terrorism" #64657ZooeyModeratorAm I reading this right?
They want to drop surveillance of white supremacist groups, and focus on domestic Islamic terrorism?
So they are basically turning loose white supremacists – who even now have a website similar to GoFundMe to create bounties?
ZooeyModerator————–
Hmmmm. Well, i guess i just dont care about ‘approach’ to policy. I dont really care about how weaselly the ‘approach’ is. What i care about it is the neoliberal-neocon Policies of both corporate parties that are destroying poor people, destroying the biosphere, and murdering assorted brown people with drones. That stuff just dwarfs everything else we can complain about, imho.
And it just seems to me THAT is what singers should be singing about, protesters should be protesting about, and writers ouughta be writing about.Yes, i’m a monomaniacal curmudgeon about this. I am.
w
vOkay, but with a rational approach to debate completely out the window, we can’t even hold a sensible conversation about the neo-liberal, neo-conservative approach to committing suicide. We are just completely fuckt.
ZooeyModeratorYeah, okay, but I think the first part of that sentence is important:
the Republican Party abandoned any semblance of normal politics beginning with their assaults….
I take it for granted Clinton and Obama sucked, but it was with the Contract on America that the Republican Party checked out of “reality,” and just started making shit up, and denying facts. Parties have always had spin. But Gingrich ushered in abnormal politics, and era in which it just no longer made any difference what the opposition said or did, it would be opposed, contradicted, undermined…you know.
I think the author is saying the logic and reason just went out the window in the Republican party at that time. He isn’t arguing POLICY, he’s arguing the APPROACH to policy. I think.
ZooeyModeratorSome part of me resists saying outright that America IS a fascist country. I admit it is moving that way, but I can’t quite call it totally fascist.
Yet I can’t think of a counterargument to pit against the proposal that it is now fascist.
Trump has completely filled his cabinet with corporations. Is there any aspect of the government now that is NOT controlled by corporations? The only things we have going for us that I can see is a kind of hollow electoral system – elections haven’t been completely dispensed with, but they are constructed in such a way that they border up against meaninglessness – and a judicial system that still has pockets of sanity. But I’m not sure any of that amounts to anything because the outcomes are almost entirely fascist. There is just enough of a heartbeat left to give people hope, but not enough to actually work with.
I don’t see an equitable society anywhere on the horizon. I don’t see any way to stop the onslaught of Loot and Pollute until we’re all dead. I mean…I love all these demonstrations…they’re heartening in a way, but what do they do, really? They ONLY thing they do is give dissenters a feeling of belonging. They don’t change anything. The women’s march was allegedly the largest march ever, and a few days later, Trump nominates a regressive justice to the Supreme Court that is drawing early cheers from the anti-abortion crowd. That’s how much a billion women marching all over the country affected the government. None.
And as Hedges says, democrats aren’t doing anything of any substance at all. Hell, Sanders and Warren are the only ones saying anything. Maybe Franken. But seems to me corporations are running roughshod over the government, and are going to manipulate the rules to give themselves even more latitude to fuck us all over, and we’re losing this game 49 – 3 and we have Austin Davis at QB.
I think this is fascism. Fascism that’s play Good Cop for the present.
ZooeyModerator“In Chicago, for instance, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program — the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics, as in Haiti and wherever else the International Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn’t been up to the challenge. We have to do better.”
Well. He called that, didn’t he?
ZooeyModeratorThe possibility that the events of the past few days are just the result of an inexperienced but well-intentioned administration trying to find its way would be more likely to me if it weren’t for Bannon. He’s the wildcard in all of this. He was cunning and shrewd enough to get Trump elected in spite of Trump’s flaws and foot-n-mouth disease.
Therefore I’m more inclined to favor the head-fake scenario, which is the far more frightening one.
If it makes you feel any worse, that is my thinking as well. Bannon has done his homework. He has read all the How To books on ruining the world. Steve Bannon may be the most dangerous man in the world right now.
ZooeyModeratorI only hope that half of what you say would occur Zooey. But I have no faith in people doing anything resembling critical thinking.
I didn’t say anything about critical thinking, and I’m not talking about the American People, anyway. Nothing important happens in government just because the people want it. No president would ever be impeached because the people come to an educated stance and desire his impeachment.
If Trump is impeached, it will be because the Republicans think his presidency is going to harm their chances at re-election, at retaining power/control. Right now, they are skeptical of him because they don’t know if they can control him. They will suffer him to remain president until he does something they greatly oppose – like spending a bunch of federal money on infrastructure – or until he threatens their “brand.” They are going to be happy with him as long as he cuts taxes for the 1%, and so on. But they would rather have Pence. He is a member of the Club.
They will impeach him for selfish reasons eventually. Is my guess.
ZooeyModeratorMr. Kelly was only informed of the details that day as he was traveling to Washington, even though he had pressed the White House for days to share with him the final language, the people said.
Late Monday, the White House announced Mr. Trump intended to nominate a former agency official from the George W. Bush administration, Elaine Duke, to the deputy post. Earlier, it declined to comment on when Mr. Kelly was briefed on the executive order. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, “The people that needed to be kept in the loop were kept in the loop.”
This kind of thing right here is going to lead to his undoing. The rest of the government, particularly the House and Senate, think they ought to have some say in the governing of the country, and they aren’t going to take to this dismissal kindly.
It’s certainly a case of “Be careful what you wish for,” but the unraveling of Trump, and the fireworks he will create as he goes down as the most vilified president ever is going to be a spectacle.
ZooeyModeratorI think the Rams should just beat the shit outta him for the next 5 years.
January 29, 2017 at 10:50 am in reply to: Trump's immigration ban excludes countries he does business with… #64491ZooeyModeratorI think the Republicans are just waiting for him to dig himself in too deep and then replace him with Pence. They’re just grinning and bearing it right now and trying to keep their distance. They have their own agenda.
I think they will milk him for all they can, let him take all the credit for the most unpopular stuff, and then create some separation on some kind of “principle” so that he is isolated.
ZooeyModeratorThe best friend a Republican House and Senate ever had has been a Dem President.
Do we need to go through the list of Republican garbage Clinton and Obama passed that no Republican President could have?
And by having a Dem President do it, Reps can not only get what they originally wanted, but bitch about it and argue for more.
So, are we really going to entertain that another Clinton with a Republican Congress wouldn’t be the moderate Republican she really is and basically pass their agenda?
The only difference is that there would be a soporific quality about it.
Oh, and instead of Steve Bannon telling the press to STFU, it would be a White House staffer to Progressives…
I think that was true in the past, but I don’t think it is true now. Trump is a completely different ballgame because he is not only going to give the Republican congress more than they ever imagined was possible, he is going to take all the credit for it. So while they got some rewards out of Clinton and Obama, Trump is going to take it all the way to the house. He is going to build a big, beautiful wall, build more nukes, gut the EPA, siphon billions out of public education and set standards that can’t be met so that schools will appear to be failing en masse, he will loot and pollute, institutionalize voter suppression, give tax cuts to the rich, and dismantle all the government oversight, and maybe even fight with Iran…and…best of all…he is going to BRAG about it, and take all the credit for it.
Then McConnell and Ryan and the rest of the posse will weave a narrative about their heroic self-sacrifice to Save America, and impeach him when it’s politically timely to do so. They will have a smorgasbord of reasons to choose from, and they will get rid of Trump, and install their fascist evangelical man Pence who is every bit as insane on a policy level, but wears a suit that actually fits him, has an expensive haircut, and avoids Twitter.
Trump is a gift from God for the fascists, and fascism is what we are looking at right now. The real thing.
January 28, 2017 at 12:36 pm in reply to: Trump's immigration ban excludes countries he does business with… #64467ZooeyModeratorIf this wasn’t so scary it would be fascinating from a sociological perspective.
This era will be studied for years by sociologists…assuming there are researchers left to study it.
Yeah. That’s what I keep thinking…This is so fascinating..Wait, NO!…This is terrifying!…but…you know…so entertaining…No! This is actually happening!
January 28, 2017 at 11:25 am in reply to: Trump's immigration ban excludes countries he does business with… #64464ZooeyModeratorThis is not going to end well for Trump. I am pretty close to taking it for granted now that he will not make it four years without being impeached. And for a guy with his ego, I don’t know how he survives the humiliation on the biggest stage of all.
Anyway, I’m wondering how this can/will happen. Obviously, it will have to be Republicans in charge of the impeachment since they are in the majority, but it runs the risk of being suicidal. Somehow McConnell, Ryan, and Kaine have to cast themselves as the heroes of the narrative, saving America.
I dunno, but I can’t take 200 weeks of this shit.
Saw a tweet today that likened this administration to what would happen if all those angry sports radio callers were to suddenly be put in charge of the NFL.
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