The Trump thread: All things Donald

[psiberzerker]

I was referring to the Klan.

[Athos_131]

Trump Administration Seeks to Stifle Protests Near White House and on National Mall

#Resist

[Lois]

Trump Administration Seeks to Stifle Protests Near White House and on National Mall

#Resist

What an Ass!

[Athos_131]

The only crowds Dolt 45 wants on the National Mall are photoshopped ones.

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

The only crowds Dolt 45 wants on the National Mall are photoshopped ones.

ROFL, Dolt 45!  That's awesome!

[Athos_131]

President Trump on Christine Blasey Ford, his relationships with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and more

Lesley Stahl: This is amazing.

#Resist

[Katiebee]

Mitch McConnell was astounded to discover today that the deficient has increased by 17% from last year.  He credits this increase to entitlement programs.

I strenuously advocate that he and the rest of the Republican senators immediately take a remedial math class.

This is what happens when you voluntarily reduce your income and increase your spending.

Republicans the party of the Free Lunch.

I have news for them, TANSTAAFL.
(There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch)

[Athos_131]

That tax cut for the 1% doesn't pay itself.

#Resist

[IdleBoast]

TANSTAAFL.

Oh, I grok references!

[Athos_131]

The Cruelty Is the Point

The Museum of African-American History and Culture is in part a catalog of cruelty. Amid all the stories of perseverance, tragedy, and unlikely triumph are the artifacts of inhumanity and barbarism: the child-size slave shackles, the bright red robes of the wizards of the Ku Klux Klan, the recordings of civil-rights protesters being brutalized by police.

The artifacts that persist in my memory, the way a bright flash does when you close your eyes, are the photographs of lynchings. But it’s not the burned, mutilated bodies that stick with me. It’s the faces of the white men in the crowd. There’s the photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana in 1930, in which a white man can be seen grinning at the camera as he tenderly holds the hand of his wife or girlfriend. There’s the undated photo from Duluth, Minnesota, in which grinning white men stand next to the mutilated, half-naked bodies of two men lashed to a post in the street—one of the white men is straining to get into the picture, his smile cutting from ear to ear. There’s the photo of a crowd of white men huddled behind the smoldering corpse of a man burned to death; one of them is wearing a smart suit, a fedora hat, and a bright smile.

Their names have mostly been lost to time. But these grinning men were someone’s brother, son, husband, father. They were human beings, people who took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death—and were so proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork, jostling to ensure they caught the eye of the lens, so that the world would know they’d been there. Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another.

The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of children that would make it possible to unite them with the families the Trump administration had arbitrarily destroyed, that the White House was considering a blanket ban on visas for Chinese students, and that it would deny visas to the same-sex partners of foreign officials. At a rally in Mississippi, a crowd of Trump supporters cheered as the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who has said that Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump has nominated to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, attempted to rape her when she was a teenager. “Lock her up!” they shouted.

Ford testified to the Senate, utilizing her professional expertise to describe the encounter, that one of the parts of the incident she remembered most was Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge laughing at her as Kavanaugh fumbled at her clothing. “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” Ford said, referring to the part of the brain that processes emotion and memory, “the uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.” And then at Tuesday’s rally, the president made his supporters laugh at her.

Even those who believe that Ford fabricated her account, or was mistaken in its details, can see that the president’s mocking of her testimony renders all sexual-assault survivors collateral damage. Anyone afraid of coming forward, afraid that she would not be believed, can now look to the president to see her fears realized. Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.

The cruelty of the Trump administration’s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty toward women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are smiling not merely because of what they have done, but because they have done it together.

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border-patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting to Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president had sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by the police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.

Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

The laughter undergirds the daily spectacle of insincerity, as the president and his aides pledge fealty to bedrock democratic principles they have no intention of respecting. The president who demanded the execution of five black and Latino teenagers for a crime they didn’t commit decrying “false accusations,” when his Supreme Court nominee stands accused; his supporters who fancy themselves champions of free speech meet references to Hillary Clinton or a woman whose only crime was coming forward to offer her own story of abuse with screams of “Lock her up!” The political movement that elected a president who wanted to ban immigration by adherents of an entire religion, who encourages police to brutalize suspects, and who has destroyed thousands of immigrant families for violations of the law less serious than those of which he and his coterie stand accused, now laments the state of due process.

This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.

A blockbuster New York Times investigation on Tuesday reported that President Trump’s wealth was largely inherited through fraudulent schemes, that he became a millionaire while still a child, and that his fortune persists in spite of his fumbling entrepreneurship, not because of it. The stories are not unconnected. The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty.

Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.

Fuck Trumpers, and fuck people who say I need to have empathy for them.

Trumpers embrace this behavior.

Flame away.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump says it’s not his fault if Republicans lose the House

#Resist

[joan1984]

Athos: 'The Cruelty Is the Point', TheAtlantic article quoted.

  Nice long article with a flaw, the author's statement that Trump's rally audience chanted "lock her up" about Mrs. Ford.

  The audience lustily, and with spontaneity, and enthusiasm, chanted "Lock her up" regarding Sen. Feinstein, who was the person Mrs. Ford charged with keeping her identity secret, and who chose to delay Mrs. Ford's claims announcement until the Nomination was due for a Committee vote.

  Senator Feinstein thus earned her place, along with Hillary Clinton, in the list of those who enjoy President Trump, and dismiss his adversaries.

 Fixed that for you!

[psiberzerker]

The crowd chanted "Lock Her Up!"  In unison.  How much you want to bet that every single one of them agreed apon the meaning ahead of time, thinking and feeling the exact same thing, with a hive-mind?

We know what they said, that was recorded.  Nobody knows what everyone is thinking. You can only assume.

Also, @Joan, you know that Athos didn't write the article, right?

[joan1984]

I read the Article, know he did not write it, and I saw the live feed, watched the rally, and saw/heard the crowd reaction to the mention of Senator Feinstein's name and behavior. Her behavior drew the response, however unexpected it was at the time, and not Mrs. Ford's name.

The factual statements about Mrs. Ford's testimony, lack of detail about most questions asked, such as who, what, where, when, how... and it is good President Trump noted her statements, as mainstream media and "Fake News" was not going to inform the masses... did not fit the agenda, you see.

The crowd chanted "Lock Her Up!"  In unison.  How much you want to bet that every single one of them agreed apon the meaning ahead of time, thinking and feeling the exact same thing, with a hive-mind?

We know what they said, that was recorded.  Nobody knows what everyone is thinking. You can only assume.

Also, @Joan, you know that Athos didn't write the article, right?

[Katiebee]

The disrespect that Trump shows demonstrates his unfitness to hold the office he is in. He has no class. We know he has no shame. He assumes the credit for things he did not do or cause, yet refuses to accept responsibility for the shit he does do.

Joan, congratulations, because you uncritically embrace his behavior you are a deplorable person.

And furthermore, because you wholeheartedly embraces the tax cut you are responsible, just as much as Mitch McConnell and his ilk for the 17% increase in the deficit.

Not only do you “conservative” Trump supporters not adhere to facts, you can’t bloody well do simple math.

Let me explain. Reduce your income, and increase your expenditures means you aren’t going to have a positive cash flow.

Or is that too obtuse?

[Athos_131]

Thanks for the clarification.  

The premise of the article is still accurate.  Trump and Trumpers are shitbags.  

They deserve no empathy or civility.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

We're Living in a Time of Cruel Laughing Men

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Pump And Trump

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Audio Offers Gruesome Details of Jamal Khashoggi Killing, Turkish Official Says

After he was shown into the office of the Saudi consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, the agents seized Mr. Khashoggi almost immediately and began to beat and torture him, eventually cutting off his fingers, the senior Turkish official said, describing the audio recordings.

Whether Mr. Khashoggi was killed before his fingers were removed and his body dismembered could not be determined.

But the consul was present and objected, the official said. “Do this outside. You will put me in trouble,” Mr. al-Otaibi told the agents, according to the Turkish official and a report in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak. Both cited audio recordings said to have been obtained by Turkish intelligence.

“If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up,” one of the agents replied, according to both the official and the newspaper.

A top Saudi doctor of forensics had been brought along for the dissection and disposal of the body — an addition to the team that Turkish officials have called evidence of premeditation. And as the agents cut off Mr. Khashoggi’s head and dismembered his body, the doctor had some advice, according to the senior Turkish official.

Listen to music, he told them, as he donned headphones himself. That was what he did to ease the tension when doing such work, the doctor explained, according to the official describing the contents of the audio recordings.

#Resist

[joan1984]

  Thank you, Katiebee. A Democrat concerned about the Deficit. Who knew?

How about you, Katiebee, and your standard of living, earnings, and confidence related to our Economy lately.

  Has your life/living situation declined since the 2016 Election? While any single person may have seen a decline, you would be an outlier, methinks.

  Our economy is just now showing the effects, as were projected/forecast by this Administration, and while the Markets climb remains a day to day thing, most no longer need to abide the previous Administration's advice that we should get used to losing, get used to making do, get used to 'the new reality' of low Growth, low Employment, and we should expect more of the same as we looked to the future.

  I hope you are not continuing to live on the edge, expecting a downturn as you view each day, and are instead reaping some rewards from the 'new' economy, brought to you courtesy of more confident businesses, having to battle fewer regulations, more common sense choices in the coming future.

  Government Spending remains to be tamed, especially as related to Growth in sustainable Manufacturing and increased stability in Service as we grow.

  If you yearn for the good old days of less than 2% Growth, unemployment for everyone which reached high numbers, as opposed to todays Full Employment, or nearly, then Vote your wishes. Bring back the promised Higher Taxes, lower Growth, and all the increased Regulations you can imagine.

  Nancy and Chuck will take care of everyone, right? No need for an economic plan, just plan on higher taxation, higher regulation, less manufacturing, less employment, wage stagnation, and the usual Democrat economy we enjoyed from the time our last President was elected, until he retired two terms later.