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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Aug 20, 2018 - 09:20pm PT
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Hang tight JohnnyRig....there's more
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Capt.
climber
some eastside hovel
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Aug 20, 2018 - 09:20pm PT
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Thanks for the levity Werner. Gave me a bit of a heartfelt chortle. :-D
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Aug 20, 2018 - 09:21pm PT
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cosmic....please do...
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Aug 20, 2018 - 09:24pm PT
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Jon Beck
Trad climber
Oceanside
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Aug 20, 2018 - 10:28pm PT
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hahaha, majority still rules in the south!
Of course the Steele dossier is not evidence. Of course evidence had a different definition when you were smearing Obama. The dossier is however a good road map to the evidence, has held up to be true so far. Jury is still out on hte pee pee tapes, I am willing to bet that part is true too.
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stunewberry
Trad climber
Spokane, WA
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Aug 21, 2018 - 06:05am PT
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https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375
"To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.
"It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.
"Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.
"One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.
"But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination.
I"t is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages. I wonder how it will go down with Rupert Murdoch.
"To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”. And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.
"And the results are quite satisfactory. There is good news on two fronts. First, Rupert Murdoch is happy with it – his Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors. They went the whole swinish hog: even the brown babies are liars. Those sobs of anguish are typical of the manipulative behaviour of the strangers coming to infest us – should we not fear a race whose very infants can be so devious? Second, the hardcore fans loved it: 58 per cent of Republicans are in favour of this brutality. Trump’s overall approval ratings are up to 42.5 per cent.
"This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable. So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow. "
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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Aug 21, 2018 - 06:31am PT
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Aug 21, 2018 - 07:30am PT
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It's a known fact
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dirtbag
climber
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Aug 21, 2018 - 07:32am PT
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Stunwberry is right. We are seeing it play out here and in Europe.
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dirtbag
climber
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Aug 21, 2018 - 07:45am PT
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That is a telling photo, Larry. Despite a large amount of public curiosity, Melania remains an enigma.
I don’t care, do u?
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:17am PT
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Meanwhile back at the swamp, I'd love to see a show of hands from ST denizens who, trump et al aside who continue to insist "it could have been anyone", believe there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election.
I don't think anyone believes "there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election." It's pretty clear the Russians did a lot of shady crap. But that's not the issue.
The issue is whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians on these actions. Other than meeting with a Russian attorney, to get dirt on Hillary, there's not much there.
The Feds got Flynn, Gates and Manafort for actions that do nothing to prove Trump was complicit in Russia's election meddling.
IMO the Russians main goal in 2016 was to cause discord in the US. As far as US/Russian relations go, Putin didn't have a preference as to which candidate he would be dealing with. He views all POTUSes with contempt. But by aiding Trump, the result would be what we're experiencing. Increasing discord. Increasing hostility between the left and the right. Actually, I think the result is far exceeding Putin's expectations.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Useful idiots.
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Capt.
climber
some eastside hovel
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:39am PT
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I'm at a loss. Trump is the ULTIMATE sleezball. Everything he does and says it total sleez. EVERYTHING!! What is wrong with you Trumpies?!?! He's the man for the evangelical right?!? You people are like a cult. Anything the supreme leader says must be right. Only listen to him, nothing else is true. Frickin' bunch of lemmings and sheeple.
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dirtbag
climber
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:41am PT
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Mike Murphy Republican Consultant
That list about sums it up.
Trump could sh#t golden policy nuggets (newsflash: he really hasn’t) and any of those items Murphy lists would still be disqualifying.
I will never support that racist shitbag. Ever. But when you realize that for a large percentage of his supporters (including some folks here), his authoritarianism and racism are features, not bugs, his rabid following makes more sense.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:44am PT
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The I Love Capitalism Starter Pack:
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:52am PT
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Eddie sez:
IMO the Russians main goal in 2016 was to cause discord in the US. As far as US/Russian relations go, Putin didn't have a preference as to which candidate he would be dealing with.
I guess you missed that outtake where Putin said he wanted Trump to win. There was an uproar when the official WH archives deleted the sound for that:
https://crooksandliars.com/2018/07/maddow-official-helsinki-video-and
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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Aug 21, 2018 - 08:59am PT
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You realize that the whole point of the Manafort Trial (besides sending him to prison for life) is to get him to flip on Kushner and Fredo Rump so that the case charging them with conspiracy to defraud the USA and violate election law is air tight, right?
How'd that work out?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Aug 21, 2018 - 09:13am PT
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The issue is whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians on these actions. Other than meeting with a Russian attorney, to get dirt on Hillary, there's not much there.
The issue is also was there obstruction of justice to cover it up any conspiracy against the United State. Trump and team lied about that meeting (they keep changing their story when more evidence comes to light), Trump fired Comey and said it had to do with Russia, Trump wouldn't admit there was Russia hacking, Trump won't release his tax returns (not evidence or anything but concerning), Trump is sowing discord in NATO and other transatlantic alliances (which Russia loves). There's plenty of evidence to demand a through investigation which is what is happening. So when Trump yells "partisan witch hunt!" and "the FBI is corrupt" when the evidence demands an investigation and he has been established as someone who lies far more than typical politicians on both sides, and the people in charge are republicans with good reputations, it leads me to believe he is trying to mold public opinion about more damning revelations coming.
Maybe we've already seen most of the evidence and Trumps team just made some bad decisions and they made a mistake trying to cover it up instead of admitting it. Or maybe Mueller has a lot more evidence we haven't seen yet. We'll see what happens when the report is released.
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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Aug 21, 2018 - 09:17am PT
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Is Trump really Putin's puppet?
on July 24, 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified on U.S. policy toward Russia before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He listed the administration’s actions on Russia, which include:
-213 sanctions against Russian individuals and entities,
-approval of weapons sales to Ukraine,
-expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats,
-closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle,
-and the National Security Strategy that identifies Russia—alongside China—as an adversarial competitor to the United States.
Immediately before the hearing, the State Department issued an official declaration of U.S. policy of nonrecognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
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