Red Mosquito

Biff Pocoroba wrote:Our president put out a tweet where he is wrestling the media. Not a cartoon, an actual video clip of him wrestling the media.
We are Idiocracy.

tragabigzanda wrote:

Biff Pocoroba wrote:Our president put out a tweet where he is wrestling the media. Not a cartoon, an actual video clip of him wrestling the media.
We are Idiocracy.

Wasn't it worse when Greg? Ginaforte literally body-slammed a reporter a few weeks ago?

wease wrote:

McParadigm wrote:So far, four states have refused to turn over voter data to Pence's "voter fraud" commission...including Kentucky and Minnesota.

Ken-Mitch McConnell-tucky? Odd.

wease wrote:Chris Christie is the greatest politician of our time.

tommymtcom wrote:

wease wrote:Chris Christie is the greatest politician of our time.

He's such an unbelievable slimeball. How do these people get elected?

wease wrote:Chris Christie is the greatest politician of our time.

B wrote:Lindsay Lohan throwing her hat into the ring.

wease wrote:

B wrote:Lindsay Lohan throwing her hat into the ring.

My opinion is changed.

B wrote:

wease wrote:

B wrote:Lindsay Lohan throwing her hat into the ring.

My opinion is changed.

About Trump or Lohan?

Noah Chomsky wrote:
I don’t think things are quite that bleak. Take the success of the Bernie Sanders campaign, the most remarkable feature of the 2016 election. It is, after all, not all that surprising that a billionaire showman with extensive media backing (including the liberal media, entranced by his antics and the advertising revenue it afforded) should win the nomination of the ultra-reactionary Republican Party.

The Sanders campaign, however, broke dramatically with over a century of U.S. political history. Extensive political science research, notably the work of Thomas Ferguson, has shown convincingly that elections are pretty much bought. For example, campaign spending alone is a remarkably good predictor of electoral success, and support of corporate power and private wealth is a virtual prerequisite even for participation in the political arena.

The Sanders campaign showed that a candidate with mildly progressive (basically New Deal) programs could win the nomination, maybe the election, even without the backing of the major funders or any media support. There’s good reason to suppose that Sanders would have won the nomination had it not been for shenanigans of the Obama-Clinton party managers. He is now the most popular political figure in the country by a large margin.

Activism spawned by the campaign is beginning to make inroads into electoral politics. Under Barack Obama, the Democratic Party pretty much collapsed at the crucial local and state levels, but it can be rebuilt and turned into a progressive force. That would mean reviving the New Deal legacy and moving well beyond, instead of abandoning, the working class and turning into Clintonite New Democrats, which more or less resemble what used to be called moderate Republicans, a category that has largely disappeared with the shift of both parties to the right during the neoliberal period.

Such prospects may not be out of reach, and efforts to attain them can be combined with direct activism right now, urgently needed, to counter the legislative and executive actions of the Republican administration, often concealed behind the bluster of the figure nominally in charge.

There are in fact many ways to combat the Trump project of creating a tiny America, isolated from the world, cowering in fear behind walls while pursuing the Paul Ryan-style domestic policies that represent the most savage wing of the Republican establishment.

G.Y.: What are the weightiest issues facing us?

N.C.: The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war. On the former, the Republican leadership, in splendid isolation from the world, is almost unanimously dedicated to destroying the chances for decent survival; strong words, but no exaggeration. There is a great deal that can be done at the local and state level to counter their malign project.

On nuclear war, actions in Syria and at the Russian border raise very serious threats of confrontation that might trigger war, an unthinkable prospect. Furthermore, Trump’s pursuit of Obama’s programs of modernization of the nuclear forces poses extraordinary dangers. As we have recently learned, the modernized U.S. nuclear force is seriously fraying the slender thread on which survival is suspended. The matter is discussed in detail in a critically important article in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in March, which should have been, and remained, front-page news. The authors, highly respected analysts, observe that the nuclear weapons modernization program has increased “the overall killing power of existing U.S. ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.”

The significance is clear. It means that in a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike — which means the end for all of us.

BurtReynolds wrote:I thought Lohan was a Muslim now.