Trump

[akiva]

D'Souza is a disgusting human being. Even conservatives should be revolted by the horrible things he says.

He admitted that he broke the law, and apologized for it. How is that him being treated unfairly by the criminal justice system?

The pardon is a message to Manafort and Cohen. It's not an accident that one of the likely charges against Cohen is the same crime that D'Souza committed.

[Phoebe]

Vile. What makes his case especially poor is that despite the racism, he was held up for years as a champion of virtue and morality on the right, in the vein of William Bennett. I realize there's some play in the definition of virtue and the context-specific judgment required for its exercise, but I never knew it could stretch so far! Trump has done so much to remove the sticky idea that the Republicans were the part of "morality", but he has a lot of help in the process.

[bralbovsky]

Martha was convicted of breaking into the mens' room. Her pardon is only consequential to the women who somehow want to rationalize their support for this scary clown, and frankly have no other traction.

The other pardons attempt to normalize and diminish behavior that someone is likely to be punished for, soon. No squawking about this, ok, so let's do it again.

No mention, by the way, is made of 3.00 plus per gallon gas, which is a direct result of specific and purposeful destabilization, and a sign of Trump choking on Putin's c***.

[Phoebe]

Everything is shit. I despair generally. Fellow citizens, it's down to November. If you demonstrate acceptance, not sure wtf. As I was saying, considering name change to Misanthropia Phoebensis.

[Phoebe]

China already cost the Iowa pig farmers hundreds of millions because of its tariffs and falling prices, and now Mexico might impose its own tariffs! Getting what you paid for yet, Iowa Republicans? Hope that big tax cut made up for it. Also: this is probably Obama's fault and if Hillary had been in jail, never would have happened. Abortion: still legal. Guns: you still have all of them and it's still just as easy to purchase them. Immigrants: you won't have enough of them to support your ag economy. Glad everyone is happy with Trump now.

[akiva]

One of the things that scares me most is that millions of people believe Trump when he lies about how great things are. So they'll vote for him even in the face of clear evidence that they're getting screwed.

[Phoebe]

Vote?! Who needs voting when we have a god emperor, who may commit whatever crimes he likes and neither be indicted nor refrain from pardoning himself if need be?!

Also, thank God that idiot who refused to put the words Summa Cum Laude on a cake is now protected as an artist, like the other Cake Artists blessed by the supreme court.

Meanwhile, whale chokes to death on plastic bags.

What is my motive for going onward? Ah yes, kids and the suffering of the ancestors. Check. Resume the efforts. Also, now that my neighborhood grocery store is full of artists - cake, deli, etc. - I would like them to stop offering service to the people who use plastic bags, since that's certainly against both their religion and artistic vision.

[Phoebe]

O. M. G.

The Supreme Court ruling is in a way so much worse than I thought it was, even though a lot of people, including the ACLU who disputed the case, are arguing that it's not so bad on the larger issue of protecting gay and lesbian rights. I.e. it punted on that issue.

The problem is that it engages in a truly sophomoric misreading of something that one of the commissioners said, to supposedly disparage the cake-baker's religion. The man's religion was not disparaged at all! The practice of wielding claims to religious freedom as a weapon to discriminate against people was the issue. That was the target of the remarks. And these are smart people; the seven Supreme Court Justices who decided to misread this completely are not dumb. They're surrounded by dozens of other people who are some of the smartest around. So what's up with that?

I would actually feel better if they just decided that being a cake baker is some crazed form of artistic expression that can't be touched, because the implications of that are so off-the-wall that it would be easier to deal with. Now I'm left wondering why they're accusing a man of attacking someone's religion when he clearly did not attack anyone's religion. ?????

[Phoebe]

Good news, I was wrong: you can still refuse to make a cake that says Summa cum laude on it, even if you're not an artist full of free expression, as long as you would refuse to write Latin words for every customer. I think the notorious RGB will still have a problem with you for being both stupid and not expressing your own message on the cake anyway, but pretty sure the rest of the Court will let you get away with that nonsense.

But now that I've read even further, this decision looks even stupider. To say that people have used appeals to religion and religious freedom to excuse discrimination is merely to state a well-established fact. If government officials can't say factual things like that anymore without being accused of animus against religion, well... Problems. If government officials can't refuse to hear a complaint from some jerk who hasn't established that he was discriminated against in the slightest way in the first place... Problems. More of the facts and evidence don't matter routine, but this time from the Supreme Court, which is really troubling. I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of LGBT discrimination; I hope it doesn't seem like I'm making light of that because I'm baffled by the particularities of this decision.

[mimekiller]

Reminder: The Supreme Court is packed with random pedants appointed by the various morons the oafs in this country elected president.

[Phoebe]

RBG's brief, pointed dissent reads like the despairing comment of a high school composition teacher who just paged through a stack of 40 utterly confused, scattered arguments and is hoping to say even one thing to rectify a baffling case of the stupids.

"This case, this case here about apples and people carving weird things into the apples? It's not so much like this other case over here about oranges that nobody was even allowed to see or touch. And you know how upset you are that this one man tossed an orange into the air idly while considering the case? We have three more rulings exactly like his from people who never touched an orange. SIGHHH."

[Phoebe]

Lol the guy who silently took a knee at the White House today is a damn national hero. We are all Spartacus.

[mimekiller]

prob should take a knee next time someone invites him to the buffet am I right

[Phoebe]

He's living his best life. I would hit it.

[mimekiller]

Kim K acted like an adult, didn't care about public opinion, went and spoke to the president and freed a black slave.

[mimekiller]

whelp essentially a unprecedented diplomatic victory that has met with approval from a great many Americans.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nort ... SKBN1J92N8

[FlameBlade]

I am reserving my approval until I know more. All of this smells of China trying to get US troops out of South Korea so China can exert influence over Asia.

USA is increasingly becoming isolated.

[mimekiller]

I guess, Japan is happy with it, Koreans are happy with it, ending the exercises saves us a chunk of change, I'm not sure bringing up the idea of the YELLOW HORDES is a good reason to continue with that.

[FlameBlade]

Homework: how many times did North Korea agree to denuclearization, historically?

[Mike]

He already committed to denuclearization a few weeks ago with South Korea or something. When he says it, he means he'll work on getting rid of his nukes IF the US commits to pulling all it's big guns out of the peninsula.

Kim gave nothing he hadn't already promised, and in exchange, he got a Trump promise that we'll stop running war games on his doorstep. IF we hold to that, it's a good move regardless. But in material terms, Kim got something and we got nothing.

But none of that matters. What matters is that both men can spin this to makes themselves look good to their respective nations. They both win.