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I just realized... Trump can (and probably will) blame the American Corona disaster on the BLM protests.  :( 

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He has already done exactly that in advance. "We had it under control and now these antifas have spoiled it all."

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I think the way he goes against "antifa" is pretty telling. After all, this is "anti fascism". But what does one expect from a person who has clear fascist tendencies himself.

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6 minutes ago, Astreya said:

I think the way he goes against "antifa" is pretty telling. After all, this is "anti fascism". But what does one expect from a person who has clear fascist tendencies himself.

That was exactly my thought when they started spouting all this antifa nonsense.

 

Now the White House wants the Pres. to give a speech on "race and unity"? What could possibly go wrong there?

In the words of Ben Carson (who I used to respect and admire as a neurosurgeon)

"I believe you're going to be hearing from the President this week on this topic in some detail. And I would ask you maybe to reserve judgment until after that time," Carson said.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/politics/trump-race-nationwide-speech/index.html

 

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5 hours ago, Confused Cat said:

I just realized... Trump can (and probably will) blame the American Corona disaster on the BLM protests.  :( 

 

If Trump could blame the oxygen we breathe for his problems, he would. He truly reminds me of Michael Scott from The Office: he wants all of the credit, and none of the blame.

 

2 hours ago, purplehaze said:

That was exactly my thought when they started spouting all this antifa nonsense.

 

Now the White House wants the Pres. to give a speech on "race and unity"? What could possibly go wrong there?

In the words of Ben Carson (who I used to respect and admire as a neurosurgeon)

 

 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/politics/trump-race-nationwide-speech/index.html

 

 

Antifa is too broad of an umbrella of groups to effectively designate as a terrorist group. They'll still try, though, then call anyone who doesn't agree with them as antifa. The predictability of this administration is amazing because they're like elementary school children.

 

John Oliver nailed it this week on Last Week Tonight when he covered the police. I highly recommend this to everyone.

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16 hours ago, Astreya said:

 

Yeah, My opinion, just my opinion. Not speaking for anyone else.

 

So, if we don't feel that it is OK for the police to murder unarmed peaceful citizens, we should be shot with impunity??? I feel as though I have been transported back in time to a darker, more violent '60s than the one I have already lived through.

 

I have honestly lived the intervening years in a fantasy world in which I believed we as a society had progressed beyond this type of prejudice, inequality, injustice and violence. I can't even articulate how frightened and disillusioned I feel right now. This is so NOT RIGHT!

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Thanks, PDC. I had to use a proxy  - but with one, I can view it - EU readers please note !

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6 hours ago, purpledragonclaw said:

That was awesome!

 

This was an interesting read on a friend's FB page (warning, it's long):

Spoiler

Now, let me repeat myself.

I have no more patience for discussions about how Trump is going to suspend the election.

He doesn't have the legal authority to do it. We had elections during the Civil War, during the pandemic of 1918. We will have an election this year.

Anymore pearl-clutching on this subject will be deleted. Stop wasting electrons.

Next? Don't retreat to your fainting couch with the vapors over the delusional possibility that Trump will refuse to give up power.

His term ends on January 20th at 12 noon. It doesn't matter if he barricades himself in a blanket fort in the Lincoln bedroom. At that moment, he becomes a trespasser on federal property.

Posts and comments which lay out scenarios in which Trump somehow seizes power in a coup — they'll be deleted too. Stop wasting electrons. He doesn't have the organization to mount a coup. He'd need the cooperation of the military and while he might have a few supporters in the service, he doesn't have enough.

Check out the history of the attempted (failed) Russian coup in 1990 — it caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the coup plotters were supposedly smarter than this reign of error.

So let's just lay that one to rest too. Enough. I'm tired of reading bad science fiction. I can write bad science fiction myself — just ask any of the melancholy canines.

I'm not interested in speculations about Putin or McConnell — and Trump is nowhere near as smart as Richard Nixon. When I do mention Nixon's downfall, I'm not comparing the two as much as I'm pointing out how public opinion eventually turned on him.

Here's what has happened.

It's this simple.

Donald Trump has lost control of the narrative.

His singular strength was that he could suck oxygen out of the room, nothing else. Even those who were rational and compassionate got sucked into the trap of talking about Donald Trump, because that's his super power.

He has a limited repertoire of human behaviors. His drop-down menu has only three items. Claim to be great. Attack someone else. Quit and stick someone else with the bill. That's it. He's incapable of any other possible behavior. Oh, and cheat at golf. When in doubt, double down — escalate.

And while that might work when the majority have a full belly and a roof over their heads, there are some situations where none of those responses will work. We are in three of those situations right now, a perfect storm of disasters.

Trump cannot bully a pandemic. The virus is a mindless organism. To the virus, Trump is nothing more than a big orange host.

Trump cannot bully a recession/depression. An economy is a machine of many moving parts — and if some of the parts stop working, the entire machine slows down, or even comes to a stop.

And most important, Trump cannot bully the Black Lives Matter protests. In fact, any attempt to bully the protesters will backfire on him. It will only energize the movement and create more protesters and more demonstrations.

Tonight, Hollywood Blvd. saw more than 20,000 marchers in a demonstration more than a mile long.

The point is this — pay attention because every time I post this, the yabbuts and whatbouts leap for the parsley instead of the meat and potatoes — the point is that Trump has lost control of the narrative and nothing he does will change that.

The narrative has shifted. It is no longer about him. It is about us. It is about the pandemic death toll. It is about the 40 million unemployed. It is about the growing number of protests in American cities and around the world.

There is nothing he can do, there is no short-term fix, that will allow him to claim any kind of a victory. No matter what delusions he tries to sell, the evidence is piling up.

Now, if that were all I had to say about this, you could do the yabbuts and whatabouts and I would patiently admit that I could be wrong, because I've been wrong before, and who knows what black swans are about to **** on us?

But ...

The hard evidence, the evidence that cannot be ignored, is the steady drip-drip-drip of erosion on his side of the aisle. Forget Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski's hand-wringing concern. If they had backbones, they'd have stood up a long time ago. But notice that George F. Will and Mitt Romney and Colin Powell have all publicly rebuked Donald Trump. Notice who else. General Mattis. And the Mayor of Washington DC. And even George W. Bush. Senator Tom Cotton (short for Cottonmouth) wrote a disgusting op-ed piece, published in the New York Times, and the outrage was enough that the editor who published it had to resign.

The symbolism of a new wall around the White House is more than enough to demonstrate the inherent cowardice at the heart of this shriveled little soul. And that wall is now covered with so many protest signs and banners that it has become a symbol of Americans' desire to get this man out of our White House.

All of this was unthinkable when he skated on the impeachment in January. It looked, horrifyingly enough, as if he could be reelected.

But that was then and this is now — and the only point I am making here is that he has lost control of the narrative and there is nothing he can do, because there is nothing he knows how to do, that will allow him to escape the consequences of his three years of colossally incompetent management of the nation's most important office.

The tide has turned, the wind has shifted, and someday we may look back and say that this was finally the moment when we reached that tipping point where his defeat became inevitable.

Yes, I could be wrong — but every day brings new evidence that the layers of support around this badministration are falling away like the dead layers of a rotting onion.

The more that people speak out, the easier it is for more people to speak out. This will be a snowball effect. Over here this is how it looks to me:

It is too late for the orange pebble to vote, the avalanche has already started.

 

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@Lagie

I really hope David Gerrold is right.

(By the way he's one of my childhood heroes as he gave me my all-time favourite ST:TOS episode XD)

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2 hours ago, Astreya said:

@Lagie

I really hope David Gerrold is right.

(By the way he's one of my childhood heroes as he gave me my all-time favourite ST:TOS episode XD)

 

Isn't that one just about everyone's favorite ST:TOS episode? Even if it did lose the Hugo Award to Harlan Ellison and his The City on the Edge of Forever.

 

And in other news, and something I'd missed with all the other garbage happening lately, guess who vetoed a bill meant to make it easier to forgive the debt for defrauded student loan borrowers. You know, like those poor schmucks who paid for Trump University and similar places. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/29/trump-backs-devos-plan-to-limit-student-debt-relief-290177

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On 6/6/2020 at 3:29 PM, purpledragonclaw said:

Also, don't trust those unemployment numbers he's touting, they seem shady. 

 

To follow up on this, it turns out there was an error in the reporting of job numbers going all the way back to April, and the rosy outlook for the economy Trump reported is based on these numbers. Now that the truth is out, it turns out America has been in a recession since February. 

 

Trump, of course, is not talking about this at all, instead choosing to talk about an insane conspiracy theory that the 75-year-old man Buffalo PD shoved is an antifa provocateur. Even better, it was reported on the one network even friendlier to Trump than Fox News, OANN, by a reporter who is a Russian national that works for one of Russia's Kremlin-owned news stations. We have a president that thinks Alex Jones and Roger Stone are legitimate news sources...

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56 minutes ago, purpledragonclaw said:

Trump, of course, is not talking about this at all, instead choosing to talk about an insane conspiracy theory that the 75-year-old man Buffalo PD shoved is an antifa provocateur. Even better, it was reported on the one network even friendlier to Trump than Fox News, OANN, by a reporter who is a Russian national that works for one of Russia's Kremlin-owned news stations. We have a president that thinks Alex Jones and Roger Stone are legitimate news sources...

A friend of mine posited that forth when I mentioned the incident, kind of along the lines of "oh well he was an activist" (which I promptly assured her he wasn't but her husband watches Fox news so you know it must be so /sarcasm) but even if he had been you don't knock over a 75 year old and leave him bleeding on the ground.

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11 hours ago, Lagie said:

you don't knock over a 75 year old

No, you don't. There are just too many risks for old folk. Slowed reaction resulting in bad head injuries, brittle bones (hip fracture being too common and often resulting in the person never being able to walk again), blood thinners making bleedings so much worse... You just don't shove elderly folkd. Period.

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President Trump is planning a huge campaign rally next week in Tulsa, Oklahoma just as the state is beginning to loosen restrictions. In spite of the governor's recommendations that people still need to employ social distancing and “minimize time spent in crowded environments”.

 

Trump's campaign plans none of that. Instead, they are requiring attendees to sign waivers agreeing not to hold Trump or his campaign liable if they become ill from attending.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/12/trump-rally-supporters-sign-coronavirus-waiver

 

Trump's rally has also sparked controversy due to it's date and location:

The announcement, which comes amid sweeping protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death, also raised eyebrows for its date – a day known as Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery – as well as its location in Tulsa, a city with a troubling history of racial violence.Tulsa’s 1921 race massacre saw the destruction of black businesses and residences at the hands of angry, white mobs, and is considered one of the worst single incidents of racial violence in American history.Trump’s announcement comes as the president has criticized the Floyd protests and referred to those demonstrating against police brutality as “thugs”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/10/donald-trump-rally-tulsa-oklahoma-juneteenth-coronavirus

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7 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

Trump's campaign plans none of that. Instead, they are requiring attendees to sign waivers agreeing not to hold Trump or his campaign liable if they become ill from attending.

Well, obviously someone in the campaign realised that such a mass event might be dangerous after all. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if each of them caught the virus if they were all alone, but unfortunately they will endanger numerous persons who have nothing to do with their idiocy.

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What worries me is I've seen a surge of people saying that Bernie Sanders is still on the ballot and to vote for him not Joe Biden. And to me, that is frightening. First off Bernie couldn't even win one primary that he ran in, he couldn't win against Hillary or Biden so how the hell does anyone think he stands a chance in hell of winning against Trump? It's just gonna ensure Trump wins another election. It would be a colossal mistake for anyone to vote for him. I already thought him wanting to continue to collect delegates was dangerous and selfish to push for his issues when we have so many problems now and that was before the pandemic. It's not like what he is advocating for aren't things I don't agree with but now really isn't the time and could turnout to be extremely detrimental. 

 

also another video of police murdering another Black man in custody, the cops involved, one was straddling the man's chest while he has his hands around his neck and for 2 mins after the man stops moving and is unresponsive finally removed his hands from his neck then they drag his body to a wheelchair strap him in and put him in a cell. They don't try to get him help, they don't appear agitated that they just killed a man. They look like they are covering up their murder. It's so sick seeing just how much police feel they can get away with.

Edited by AngelsSin

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ANY write in would be a colossal mistake.

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Trump has now pushed his rally back a day after getting so much criticism for holding it on Juneteenth.

Quote

Donald Trump has postponed his planned election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma – the scene of one of the worst race massacres in US history – amid outcry over its clash with the Juneteenth holiday marking the end of US slavery.
The gathering – which had also caused alarm among health officials tackling the coronavirus pandemic – was to be held on 19 June, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when a general read out Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation in Texas, freeing slaves in the last un-emancipated state.
On Friday night, the US president reversed his decision to hold a rally then as a “celebration” of that day, pushing it back one day to “honour requests” from the African American community.
He tweeted: “Many of my African American friends and supporters have reached out to suggest that we consider changing the date out of respect for this holiday, and in observance of this important occasion and all that it represents.
“I have therefore decided to move our rally to Saturday, June 20th, in order to honor their requests.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/13/donald-trump-oklahoma-election-rally-juneteenth-slavery-date

 

And this morning he delivers a graduation address to the cadets at West Point, who were brought back to campus after being sent home in March due to the corona virus threat. Another photo op for the POTUS?

Quote

At West Point on Saturday Donald Trump will deliver a speech controversial by its very occurrence and due to tensions between the president and leaders of the US armed forces.
With New York state only beginning its reopening after the coronavirus outbreak, Trump will address graduates at the United States Military Academy, 40 miles up the Hudson river from New York City.The city has been a global hotspot for Covid-19, recording more than 213,000 cases and more than 21,000 deaths.
Across the US, graduation ceremonies and commencement speeches have taken place online. But the 1,100 graduating cadets at West Point, who had been at home since early March, just before lockdowns began, were brought back to campus late last month.
(...)
Some have decried the decision to bring the graduating second lieutenants back to campus to hear the president speak during a public health crisis. A group called Veterans For Peace announced a protest outside West Point’s main gate on Saturday, against what it called “Trump’s dangerous narcissistic Photo-Op Stunt at the West Point Graduation”.

(...)

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/13/trump-west-point-speech-graduation

Edited by purplehaze

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Things get more and more surreal in the "Anglosphere". As Mr.Johnson from the UK seems to be extremely eager to follow in the footsteps of Mr.Trump from the US, in both countries, right-extreme groups seem to get more and more emboldened.

As statues of historical figures with (today) questionable morals get attacked all over the world, the far-right seems to be a bit miffed that their racist forefathers get taken down in many places, and thus they decided to march in numbers to stop this.

 

In London, though, the BLM protest of today got cancelled, while the far-right supporters obviously didn't get the memo. This led to

Quote

Police were pelted with bottles and flares during violent clashes with far right protesters in central London.

Thousands of right-wing demonstrators claimed to be there to ‘defend’ monuments like the Cenotaph from a Black Lives Matter protest (which had been cancelled). With little to ‘counter-protest’, groups including veterans, football hooligans and far-right extremists descended into rioting and attacks on officers who were stationed to – wait for it – protect those very statues. There were reports of heavy drinking, chants of “England” and Nazi salutes, which is very confusing given they were supposedly there to ‘protect’ the statue of Churchill who, er, led Britain in war against the Nazis.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jun/13/uk-news-live-patel-warns-of-health-and-legal-risks-at-blm-protests-coronavirus#comment-141549076

 

Edited by Astreya

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I see the far-right are not just prone to violence in America, either, reading that article above. The attacks that turned violent here in the U.S. (when the police didn't start the violence, that is) have all been from far-right groups. Even attacks that had initially been linked to antifa came from the right. Just curious, since I'm not as knowledgeable about British politics, as to what their logic is for wanting to protect those monuments? Is it the same twisted logic the Confederacy defenders out here use (which lost all attempts at credibility after Charlottesville)?

 

Also, never forget the cruelty is the point. The Trump administration announced this yesterday, the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting. 

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The whole idea is part of the Shock Doctrine (Read your Natalie Klein, everyone.). Create chaos and while it's rampant, get through all the nasty policies you want. The orchestrators of this nonsense were very lucky with Covid - it helped them enormously. Dominic Cummings - the evil man behind it all in the UK - has actuality spelled out that the way to get what you want is through chaos - and it is. We are all, for instance, starting to believe that it's OK for the government to tell us not to get close to others, not to go out, not to shop.... The next thing they tell us to do will seem that bit more reasonable....

 

As to the statues - we need to make like Budapest. 

 

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/memento-park-budapest-hungary/index.html

 

Museum-fy them all, with associated display text. I cannot think of one single statue where the person hasn't got some foul bit of background. (Well, OK, Greyfriars Bobby... :lol: )

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More covidiots at work:

Quote

On Friday, the Oklahoma supreme court on Friday rejected a legal request to require everyone attending the rally to wear a face mask and maintain social distancing inside the arena. Masks have become a subject of partisan rancor across the US, with Trump and his supporters publicly eschewing them and Republican governors undermining health officials’ calls for “universal” masking.

 

In just one recent instance, in Nebraska, the Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, told local courthouses they could not require attendees to wear masks. If they did, towns could be cut out of $100m in federal Covid-19 response aid.

Source:  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/19/oklahoma-officials-ask-trump-written-plan-keep-rally-safe-amid-coronavirus-pandemic

 

Meanwhile...

Quote

Six members of the Trump campaign’s advance team in Tulsa ahead of Saturday’s rally have tested positive for coronavirus, NBC News is reporting.

 

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, said the six staffers were a small fraction of the hundreds of tested performed and “quarantine procedures were immediately implemented”.

 

No Covid-positive staffers or anyone in immediate contact will be at today’s rally or near attendees or elected officials,” Murtaugh said in a statement. “As previously announced, all rally attendees are given temperature checks before going through security, at which point they are given wristbands, facemasks and hand sanitizer.”

[Source]

LOL. Ever heard of asymptomatic virus carriers?

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