I saw a tweet the other day pointing out that if a Muslim had gone to a church and killed 6 people in Quebec city half of America would have Canadian flags for profile picture instead of nobody in the world giving a shit because it was actually a white terrorist killing Muslims. I'm pretty sure that's the most true thing I've read all day and the reaction to some guy not even actually killing anyone kind of proves it. Edit: Holy fuck wait, they made up another one ? I thought this was going to be in relation to trumps tweet about an attack in Paris were nobody even got injured except the guy with the machete who was shot.
No, no, no. This was Cruella thinking she meant the Bowling Green Arrests and instead saying "the bowling green massacre", which is actually a seasonal haunted house in Kentucky. The truly ironic thing is the arrests in 2011 made the Obama administration go "wait a minute... we busted these guys with bomb materials in Kentucky and we'd previously had one of their thumbprints on an IED in Iraq. maybe we should cross-reference those two databases." Doing this caused immigration from Iraq to slow to a standstill for six months... the very period the Trump administration is claiming Obama "banned muslims". What we're dealing with, really, is a woman who failed her way up to a position of far more power than she can handle, who spends her days exhausted, whose principal task is to defend the indefensible. She fucks up. But she can't say she fucks up because this administration does not fuck up. Which is why pretty much every press interview she does ends in "I know you are but what am I" or "I am rubber you are glue". Kellyanne Conway is fuckin' wingin' it. She's gotta have the most crazy stressful job on the planet - people previously in her position call it quits after months and they've been training for it their whole lives. Fifteen years ago Kellyanne thought she wanted to be a standup comic. We're in a weird fuckin' world here and "the bowling green massacre" is just one example. We might get a respite this weekend, depending on whether or not Bannon is going to Florida. six hours until the Shabbat and he's off-leash...
I'm seriously scared for her. 100% honest. Every day I am sure the headline is going to be about her putting a .38 in her mouth. She is so unhinged... there's just nothing alive in her eyes any more. It's painful to watch... just her name makes me cringe.
Remember when we'd watch Jon Stewart slam Fox News night after night, and feel great to see someone doing the work of taking them to task on all their bullshit? In my mind, the conservatives were running for the hills because you couldn't hide from the truth. Fox News was the original fake news. They have a huge responsibility for all this.
Look closely, though - it's easy to say "this entire Administration is based on deceit" but you misjudge the dynamics at play when you look for sweeping simplifications like that. There's a fact at the core of things: Two men, who were legally in the United States from Iraq, were arrested in Bowling Green and convicted of terrorism. This was due to functional and involved leg-work by the FBI and it's a happy ending. If you're a fan of Obama, Our Administration caught the bad guy without stepping on anyone's civil rights therefore the system works. If you're a detractor of Obama, Their Administration let terrorists into the United States to blow things up and thank God the FBI caught them before they could do anything heinous! So from a liberal perspective, the system works, why are we talking about this, the Bowling Green Massacre is a ridiculous Trumpkin falsehood. From a Trumpkin perspective, "Bowling Green Massacre" and "Bowling Green Could-Have-Been-A-Massacre" are exactly the same thing surely you liberals have better things to protest right now. THAT is the problem we're dealing with: "could have been a massacre" and "actually was a massacre" are given rhetorical equivalency by this administration and when you point out the difference you are LITERALLY TRYING TO GET WORKING CLASS AMERICANS KILLED. NYT had a piece a few days back about Trump voters that are all about the Muslim ban. - “I don’t begrudge my grandma who never met a Muslim in her life, but all she sees on TV are Muslims blowing things up,” said Mr. Bower, 35, who grew up in rural Idaho. “It is not irrational that people are worried.” - For Louis Murray, 52, a life insurance salesman in Boston, Mr. Trump’s order left him “ecstatic.” He recalled the Tsarnaev brothers, who were from a Muslim-majority part of the former Soviet Union, entered the United States on tourist visas and then applied for asylum. “They said they were in fear of their lives,” he said, “but yet they went back there for terrorist training. And they repaid our kindness of refugee status with a triple murder and a pressure-cooker bomb put on the Boston Marathon finish line. I can remember our whole city and region being on lockdown, and it was sheer terror.” - Mr. Broesch and his wife, Lynn, strongly support the immigration order. Mrs. Broesch said she had been wary of Muslims since Sept. 11, but had a new surge of worry after the knife attack by a Somali-American last year in a mall in Minnesota, where her son and his family live. - “Every story about a Muslim immigrant is that they are as American as apple pie,” he said. “But I’m sorry, Islam is no friend of L.G.B.T. people. When Islam meets gay people in Somalia or wherever, they get thrown off the roof. And you expect them to be different when they move here? You can’t expect people to absorb our values.” These are people who don't give the first fuck that the actions taken by trump address their specific concerns one little bit. Because their statements, stripped of prevarication, are - I'm scared of all muslims - I'm scared of all muslims - I'm scared of all muslims - I'm scared of all muslims - I'm scared of all muslims - I'm scared of all muslims. And they don't give a fuck that it's racist to be scared of all muslims. And they don't give a fuck that In fact, So to the people who voted for Trump, "Bowling Green arrests" and "Bowling Green Massacre" are rhetorically equivalent because all muslims are bad, all liberals are enablers, and if it weren't for Donald Trump, surely there would have been a massacre (in 2011). It isn't deceit. It's willful ignorance. It's the kind of thing that makes you set up a State's Rights test case for the Supreme Court that will curtail executive power before you can even approve a Supreme Court Justice. It's the belief that if you feel it strongly enough it doesn't matter what it actually is. "The facts have a well-known liberal bias." - Rob Corddry - “I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I was so happy,” said Mr. Oliva, 32. He is gay and said he was deeply affected by the shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., by an American of Afghan descent. “That one really got to me. That could have been me.”
His detractors argue that his actions are not borne out by facts. Since Sept. 11, 2001, no one has been killed in a terrorist attack in the United States by an immigrant — or the son or daughter of an immigrant — from any of the seven countries in the 90-day visa ban. A vast majority of killings over all happen at the hands of native-born Americans. Some recent attacks in which the Islamic State was invoked were carried out by Muslims born in the United States.
“The liberal media spent all their time and effort bashing him, laughing at him, saying he wasn’t fit,” said Don Broesch, a retired accountant from Germantown, Wis., who said it seemed as if every single story about Mr. Trump during the campaign was negative. “When there’s an underdog out there, and they are totally criticizing him, all it does is drum up support for him. It makes me like him even more. I love it when they bash him because it tells me he’s doing the right thing.”
Serious question, isn't this one of those instances where the FBI coerced people who originally didn't have the means or the desires to commit a crime so they could pad their record? If so, that kind of colors the whole situation a bit differently.There's a fact at the core of things: Two men, who were legally in the United States from Iraq, were arrested in Bowling Green and convicted of terrorism. This was due to functional and involved leg-work by the FBI and it's a happy ending.
Absolutely positively not. You're thinking of the Liberty City Seven. An ABC News investigation of the flawed U.S. refugee screening system, which was overhauled two years ago, showed that Alwan was mistakenly allowed into the U.S. and resettled in the leafy southern town of Bowling Green, Kentucky, a city of 60,000 which is home to Western Kentucky University and near the Army's Fort Knox and Fort Campbell. Alwan and another Iraqi refugee, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 26, were resettled in Bowling Green even though both had been detained during the war by Iraqi authorities, according to federal prosecutors.Serious question, isn't this one of those instances where the FBI coerced people who originally didn't have the means or the desires to commit a crime so they could pad their record?
An intelligence tip initially led the FBI to Waad Ramadan Alwan, 32, in 2009. The Iraqi had claimed to be a refugee who faced persecution back home -- a story that shattered when the FBI found his fingerprints on a cordless phone base that U.S. soldiers dug up in a gravel pile south of Bayji, Iraq on Sept. 1, 2005. The phone base had been wired to unexploded bombs buried in a nearby road.
Sure. They are all getting sued. But getting sued doesn't mean you don't go to work every day. It just means that every few weeks you have a court date, where you have to go to a room and sit and answer questions for an hour or so. Or just sit and be present. And in 5 years when the lawsuits have run their course, maybe they'll be penalized financially, and put on probation. (And I guarantee that their legal bills and penalties will be paid for by the RNC or an "unnamed benefactor".)
lack of regard for truth or basic actual facts... It's a whole new low for a presidency. Put a temporary ban on immigration? ok.. so this administration isn't the first. Put a temporary ban on immigration without checking with Legal first? New feature. Put a temporary ban on immigration and fire the Attorney General for questioning its legality? New feature. Put a temporary ban on immigration and then throw a talking head in front of some cameras to make shit up as justification? SO... maybe this administration isn't the first... but they probably could have picked something a little less completely-bull-shitty to use as justification.lack of regard for justification
Everything you list is a first for a sitting president, and it's ugly, no doubt. I think nearly all thinking people would rather not watch this stuff go down. But the government is several million professionals who all work together and nobody wants to unthinkingly, unfeelingly flush it down the toilet. Last weekend, DHS and ICE could have rolled over and gone "awright! Let's crack skulls, boys!" and the shit would have been neck-deep instead of waist-deep. Their implementation of Trump's muslim ban was half-hearted at best, however, and there was a great deal of outrage expressed by the entire world. The argument I see from pessimists is "he's going to keep doing this shit until we stop objecting to his insanity." I rarely see "he's going to keep doing this shit until we stop taking him seriously." Governance is either by consent or by force and the Trump administration lacks force. There comes a time when even the playground bully learns not to make threats with his mouth that his ass can't keep. So far, Mexico and Australia have both basically hung up on Trump. Both of them have billions/trillions of dollars worth of entanglements and that shit ain't gonna stop. So. Do you take the president at face value when he says he's going to invade your country if you can't stop the "bad hombres?" Or do you deal directly with the lower-level adminstrators you've always dealt with, less efficiently, with less mandate, but with a great deal less crazyness and bloviation? The world can't take the presidency seriously. They have to take the United States seriously. Between that rock and hard place lies compromise and improvisation, both of which are the hallmarks of government. What we're watching is the process of everyone finding the "new normal" while we all learn to work around the Madness of King Donald.
I think it's worth noting the the Supreme Court has never actually officially overturned Korematsu v. United States (the ruling that said interning Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry was legal). Perhaps President Trump (stop and puke in my mouth a little every time I write or say that) will finally give them an opportunity to do so.
What the supreme Court says is the law of the land. Nobody seems to realize or care that despite the fact that we all talk about how wrong that episode was, it was then and remains today perfectly legal. I would hope that the court would reverse course if they were given an opportunity, but they've had opportunities (e.g. Guantanamo cases) and have opted to rule narrowly.
I'm unconvinced. The world isn't going to stop in its orbit. We have a robust bureaucracy. The business of government clearly needs to keep happening, and this administration has amply demonstrated that it lacks the competence or interest to do so. Reagan's administration basically excised him from the process for the last three years. Granted, he didn't start by firing everybody, but there's a whole lotta government that still exists. I still think we're going to muddle through. It's gonna be heinously fuckin' ugly and there will be bodies but "irreparable damage" to me vastly underestimates the world's desire for stability.
I wish I shared your optimism, if that's what it can be called. I'm of the opinion that even robust bureaucracies can be dismantled in short order by the right combination of fear, lies, and power. We are two weeks in. Can you imagine if a 9-11 happens on Trump's watch? I think if our desire for stability were strong, Hillary would have won in a landslide.
I would be curious as to the basis for this opinion. The Beer Hall Putsch was 1923. The burning of the Reichstag was 1933. In between were ten years of Hitler doing everything he could to rise to power while preying on a millenia-old distrust of Jews. Meanwhile, the Arab Spring led to exactly zero democratic governments in the Middle East. Iceland effectively went bankrupt in 2008 and were back on their feet six months later. I'll be astonished if we don't have a significant terrorist event in the United States within 12 months. Bannon is praying for it - he's a crazy-ass Strauss-Howe 4th Turning end-times mutherfucker who thinks Strauss and Howe underestimated the impact of this coming bit of astrology since WWII was greater than the Civil War was greater than the Revolutionary War therefore this coming clusterfuck is going to be the Crusades or something. Steve Bannon is eager to get the Battle For All Time started so that we can move on to the Brighter Things Ahead. Anything Bannon can do to jumpstart this, he'll do. But we've had crazies before. Thing is, when September 11 happened Bush had been in the seat for 9 months. He'd been undistinguished and disappointing but most of the challenges and criticisms he faced were due to typical partisan beefing - of course a neoconservative Republican isn't going to do much about Enron, duh. But we were all ready to rally around our leader in our time of trouble and the goodwill he had moved mountains. The Trump administration is doing everything they can to give everyone reasonable doubt about their approach to crisis, considering they're generating it by talking to Australia, ffs. I suspect that if Bannon et. al. decided to ban muslims after a terrorist attack the Democrats would effectively roll over and take it. Cancel the visas of 100,000 vetted, approved immigrants and foreign travelers because you feel like it? It doesn't improve your credibility much. The longer this sort of thing goes on the less likely the country will be to look to Donald "I use the prayer breakfast to snark on Arnold Schwartzenegger" Trump. People followed bush off a cliff not because he was president, but because he was presidential. The calculus is going to be different this time. I think the Republicans have been spending 40 years discrediting Hillary Clinton, and 50 years discouraging their voters from thinking. When they told them that Trump would be an adequate president, everybody believed them. I'm guilty of listening to the DNC - "the country will hold their noses enough to vote for a woman reviled by every Republican representative since 1985 despite the fact that they lost their shit over a black man." The other side is guilty of listening to the RNC - "despite all appearances to the contrary, this man will not turn the White House into a carnival sideshow while making you wistful for George W. Bush." There were a lot of losers in this election. "Credibility of the major parties" was one of the bigger ones. I'm of the opinion that even robust bureaucracies can be dismantled in short order by the right combination of fear, lies, and power.
Can you imagine if a 9-11 happens on Trump's watch?
I think if our desire for stability were strong, Hillary would have won in a landslide.
Taken in isolation, isn't this good for our political system as a whole? Maybe Joe the Plumber SHOULDN'T have such high confidence in the Red Team and the Blue Team. Maybe JtP should be skeptical of them, and have alternatives to them? Yes to everything else, but a scattered and disorganized DNC and RNC hardly sounds like a bad thing to me."Credibility of the major parties" was one of the bigger ones.