Ravenprose said:Trump has officially declared a fake national emergency so that his administration can steal much needed disaster relief funds to build his dumb wall. SMH.
Meanwhile Puerto Rico still suffers.
Interesting that the greatest reality TV show on earth is following the events of It Can't Happen Here quite accurately, events which aren't particularly convincing in the novel itself. But reality TV isn't meant to be convincing, so that makes a weird sort of sense!
gamingeek said:I thought the only time Trump would call a national emergency is if KFC runs outta chicken.
Isn't he devoted to McDonald's?
He doesn’t play favorites with fast food.
So elections came and went this Sunday here in Belgium. We've been blesssed with the holy trinity of European elections, federal elections and elections-for-the-governments-per-geographical-are-where-they-speak-the-same-language. We have a better word for that last one in Flemmisch (and French) but I don't think it'll have an apt translation.
Everybody was so focused on how well the ecology party's would do, and if the right wing party in Flanders would grow, that nobody even thought of what actually happened. In Flanders extreme right gained a lot of ground and in Walony extreme left grew enormously. This leaves us with a nation that is neigh ungovernable. Which is exactly what the Flemmish right wing party wants, as they want to go for full on confederalism. Yuck. Basically imagine the south half of the USA voting all Democrate, the top half all Republican, and then having them try to make a governement together. And now imagine that all the Democrates are extremely left wing and all the republicans extremely right wing.
So yeah, seems we're set to attempt to break our own world record for longest timespan it takes to form a government after an election. I think our current record sits at about 540 days.
The Brexit party won here. I think on the news they said they would now be the largest block in the European parliament wtf?
gamingeek said:I think on the news they said they would now be the largest block in the European parliament wtf?
That's bollocks. Eurosceptic parties did well, but they're by far the largest block. Biggest shift is that the democrats and socialists together don't have enough seats to govern together. They'll need to take aboard the liberals or the ecologist parties/green parties.
Arguably, many governments undergoing difficulties today are super effective, it's just that some of the things they're doing don't represent majority interest, and most of the stuff they're doing that does, they've decided a) relinquishing control over the narrative for profit won't do much damage or b) (more likely) getting shat on is worth it for the sake of stoking the fires of xenophobia and irrationality, which private media is significantly better at than public media, unless you're in Australia; no one does xenophobia better than the Australian government. Russia's up there too, to be fair.
Take the UK, for instance. On many popular metrics of public outrage, they're actually doing great. A public discourse complaining about things you're doing well, is a wonderful smokescreen for where you're shitting on people, such as your rampant austerity measures. Given that private media will complain about these things regardless of how they actually are, then why not just let them go ham, and keep quiet about how well things are actually going in those areas? It also makes shitting on the weak affected by said austerity measures easier, cause the average idiot thinks they're all a bunch of pregnant teen illegal immigrants defrauding the dole while simultaneously stealing jobs. I'm sure that's just a coincidence, and not by design. 
Well, over here a main focus for years has been that labour is too expensive (read, too much taxes) and that this is our biggest handicap in attracting more internationa investments, but which was partially alleviated by our superb productivity.
We've finally closed the gap in terms of labour cost with our surrounding nations (read, taxes were cut for enterprises, taxes were raised for families) and now that's out of the way it seems the government has little to hide behind when it comes to the fact that they've been basically screwing over everyone because they're so poor at governing and actually looking ahead more than 3-4 years.
I think the above is more or less an reply to what Foolz wrote, but I could be wrong about that. 
SupremeAC said:Well, over here a main focus for years has been that labour is too expensive (read, too much taxes) and that this is our biggest handicap in attracting more internationa investments, but which was partially alleviated by our superb productivity.
We've finally closed the gap in terms of labour cost with our surrounding nations (read, taxes were cut for enterprises, taxes were raised for families) and now that's out of the way it seems the government has little to hide behind when it comes to the fact that they've been basically screwing over everyone because they're so poor at governing and actually looking ahead more than 3-4 years.
I think the above is more or less an reply to what Foolz wrote, but I could be wrong about that.
Either way, it's interesting. 
All I know about Belgium's politics is that Herge continued to work during the Nazi occupation, which hurt his reputation almost as much as his early comics that we find tremendously offensive today (I personally think the TNT, seemingly shooting the same animal 50 times, and monkey skin jokes are some of the best in comic slapstick ever, though; I'm also partial to the dark humour of the Soviet stuff). And, to be fair, Belgium's colonial activities were on a comparable sort of scale and horror to the Nazi's... But Belgium had the good sense to conduct them in Africa, not Europe, so they dodged a reputational bullet there.
He managed to dodge the law throughout his "illustrious" conman/money launderer real estate career (notwithstanding being done for racial discrimination and civil suits), it's hard to believe he'd be in any sort of legal danger post-presidency. Let's not forget Obama's response to Bush was let's protect our own arse for the horrendous shit we're going to do, and the media's response soon became, look at this eccentric old man painting shitty still lifes. And now we have Trump, Bush is a dignified, empathetic elder statesmen doling out candy to deserving blacks. Absolutely sickening.
But maybe he'll get Nixon'd if he does something equally ridiculous? Then again, during Nixon there were genuine anti-government mass movements unlike today, so where would the pressure come from? Social media may have some degree of power when it comes to corporations' PR strategy, but other than self-inflicted transparency, what power does it have in politics? Plus you'd probably have to actually impeach Trump, rather than force him to resign.
Discussing prison is incredibly bizarre in this context because the facts are
- He's already been implicated in a crime as an unindicted co-conspirator
- He's already admitted crimes on TV
- The Department of Justice is adhering to its policy that a sitting President can't be indicted as it's up to Congress to remove them first.
I don't have faith in the US justice system to prosecute the rich and powerful. Also if Trump wins a second term, those crimes may pass the statute of limitations while he's still in office. But from a by-the-book evaluation, he should be indicted upon leaving office.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileWell, seems we can one-up your presidential shenannigens. Maybe half a year ago journalists lay bare an underground network of very conservative, extreme right, xenophobic and mysogynistic youth who were actively trying to infiltrate multiple public instances as to impact policy creation from within. Their leader was a rights student who tried to deny everything but couldn't convincingly do so because there was just too much factual evidence from their social network pages stored by the journalists.
Come the elections, and the extreme right nationalists offered him a leading position as number one candidate in one of our provinces. Which means that if the party does even only reasonably well, he'll be garanteed a place in parliament and thus inviobality (or so google translate tells me, not sure it's the correct word). So this guy goes from being publicly shamed and outcast, to being elected to parliament and thus being neigh impossible to prosecute, as well as receiving a very nice pay for the next 4 years in return for a forum to spew his xenophobic thoughts.
Yesterday news broke that he's being charged for hatespeach and xenophobia regardless. Wonder where this will lead. I hope the parliament agrees to letting him be tried, as he's clearly a complacent git who is not fit to be allowed anywhere near a governing body.
If the Bill Clinton of the early 90's could somehow run for office today on the same polices and ideals he ran on then, he would be considered a "far right nazi". That's how insane the left has become.
Actually, pretty much any president before Obama would now be talked about that way.
edgecrusher said:If the Bill Clinton of the early 90's could somehow run for office today on the same polices and ideals he ran on then, he would be considered a "far right nazi". That's how insane the left has become.
Actually, pretty much any president before Obama would now be talked about that way.
What ideals and policies lol? Trump probably wouldn't be president if it wasn't for NAFTA, which is one of Clinton's major legacies, and its destruction is what Trump based much of his campaign on. Not to mention Clinton made some attempts to decelerate rather than accelerate climate change, and instead of his businesses discriminating against blacks, he was America's first black president.
They're both pro-gulag, pro-bombing shit, but so far Clinton has bombed more shit and Trump just says he will, and his gulag policies pale in comparison so far as well. Plus they're both unfaithful and utter pieces of shit as human beings. So they have that much in common, but to say they ran on the same policies and ideals is a bit over the top.
However, if Trump isn't far right, what the fuck would be? Clinton's pretty right himself (he's a post-Raegonomics American president, what else could he be?). The fact that Clinton is considered left shows how insane the American left has become, not that they call a spade a spade when referring to Republicans lol. Calling far-right politicians Nazis is just an insult, or commenting on historical or philosophical similarities. Who fucking gives a shit?
edgecrusher said:If the Bill Clinton of the early 90's could somehow run for office today on the same polices and ideals he ran on then, he would be considered a "far right nazi". That's how insane the left has become.
So I don't understand this. At a time when the right is lining up behind a President
- Who bragged about sexual assault on film
- With 19 sexual assault allegations against him
- Who nominated a supreme court justice credibly accused of rape
- Sought the help of foreign adversaries during the election
- Is using his businesses to funnel money to himself, including from again, foreign nations
- Fired the director of the FBI investigating him in relation to Russian election meddling, and stating national TV that he did it because he didn't like the investigation
- Reported multiple offenses of obstruction of justice into the investigations of the above
- Is an unindicted coconspirator in an indictment against his personal lawyer for financial crimes
- Is running concentration camps full of migrant children who were seeking asylum, several of whom have died, and related to which government lawyers have suggested they shouldn't need to provide toothpaste, beds, or toiletries
- Called neo-nazis marching in Charlottesville and murdered a woman "very fine people"
- Casually disclosed highly classified security intel to the Russian foreign minister
- Routinely disregards and undermines American intelligence organizations, such as the conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 election
- Canceled the Iran nuclear deal for no reason
- Left the Paris climate accord
Meanwhile the Republicans in congress are
- Blocking legislation and funding to help protect future elections from meddling
- Rolling back civil rights protections
- Passing complete abortion bans
- Doing everything possible to pretend like climate change doesn't exist
- Limiting voting rights in every way possible
- Ignoring or undermining state referendums, like in Florida where they voted to allow ex-cons to vote
- Obstructing investigations into election meddling, such as in Georgia where they destroyed harddrives pertinent to an elections lawsuit
- Fine with the Republican candidate for Governor in Georgia overseeing the election of the Governor of Georgia
At the core of it all is essentially making enemies of everyone who is not straight and white. Immigrants are the enemy. The LGBT community is the enemy. The most vulnerable in society are the enemy.
This is off the top of my head. There is so much endless scandal, corruption, and just plain criminality that it's impossible to keep up. To look at what's happening and respond with "the left is crazy" is in itself insane. Please try to take a fresh, objective look at what has been happening. With the influence of the US, the entire world is deeply impacted. It's so important.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileIt may, or may not, be a coincidence, but Neo-Nazi stickers started to appear at the same time as Brexit and Trump graffiti (before that, international political graffiti used to be about issues directly related to us; and we had our own world-leading brands of xenophobia). I find this utterly pathetic; Australia responded to a boat of refugees with the special forces before September 11, we've had concentration camps for donkeys years, why the fuck are our ultra nationalists sucking up to foreigners? Utterly shameful.