USPOL Winter: barely-literate frogman powered by kitsch and bad intentions is POTUS

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USPOL Winter: barely-literate frogman powered by kitsch and bad intentions is POTUS

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Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

My Twitter Account posted:

So the Dems aren't going to be so stupid as to actually elect Pelosi speaker again, are they?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1060162807960870913

It is going to happen, and her obsession with decorum is going to mean not even symbolic protest bills get passed, and nothing loving matters. That is the bipartisan goal here, completely neutering any meaningful gains because Pelosi will be in charge and will not whip the party to hold the line.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2018 15:59

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 16:30

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

HappyHippo posted:

Turns out every election is a lovely map for the Democrats in the Senate.

Decades of gerrymandering will do that. :smith:

# ¿ Nov 7, 2018 16:02

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Your Taint posted:

You, uh, can't gerrymander the Senate.

No. You use the Senate to gerrymander the House districts, and thus depress voter turnout by making it look like nothing matters.

I should have been more clear, sorry.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2018 16:06

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Soothing Vapors posted:

My fondest wish is that PPJ institutes a new policy where you have to pass a civics test confirming that you have even a rudimentary understanding of American politics before you can post in this thread
I mean, yeah

Yeah, I'm hung over and full of poo poo this morning. My bad.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2018 16:25

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Fulchrum posted:

Whereas only Bernie Sanders has the proven experience to rename all the post offices he needs to to fix the problem.

And I remember how the Dems refused to support the Paris climate agreement. Or are you just going to move the goalposts to say that anything the dems do isn't substantial.

So what have they, in fact, done that's substantial in the last two years?

As far as the Paris agreement goes, you're aware that we're currently on the line to back out of it the day after Election Day 2020, correct?

# ¿ Nov 12, 2018 10:40

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Potato Salad posted:

This is a bad standard, and it is blind to Sanders' soft work in Vermont where he has indeed influenced energy consciousness.

That is a thing. Hell, it's more than most of the part which can't even whip Manchin for a symbolic protest vote has managed.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2018 14:57

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Stereotype posted:

Yeah probably, unless anyone can think of someone better.

I mean on one hand, yeah, it'd be great to have someone more sympathetic to leftist causes, but on the other, you're right. There isn't really anyone better who would get support.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2018 00:09

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

RaySmuckles posted:

what happened to Mike Pence?

He's got a date on Stablr.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2018 00:31

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

CubanMissile posted:

I guess I've never thought about this before, so forgive me if it's a dumb question, but why isn't the the vice presidency a separately electable position? Are there major downsides I'm not considering?

Technically it is, per the 12th Amendment. Before that, the VP was the runner up in the Presidential election, which led to a tie and caused a lot of chaos.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2018 00:47

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Mendrian posted:

The first thing we need to do is control the runaway price of property. People are poor because they spend so much loving money putting a roof over their head. And it would only cost the wealthy hypothetical money, as opposed to actual money.

Cost of living in this country is ridiculous. Give people a choice between keeping a roof over their head or buying their medication, they'll pick the roof every time.

You're so close to understanding it.

The issue isn't property prices. The issue is the exploitation of the working class by the rich to ensure that the overwhelming majority of the productivity increases of the last century translated into bigger bank accounts for them as opposed to a better standard of living for the workers.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2018 09:42

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Your Taint posted:

If a Trump family member gets indicted tomorrow, $20 to Doctors without Borders.

$100 to RAINN if a Trump (or Kushner) gets indicted today. :gritin:

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 13:26

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

If Trump gets perp walked across the South Lawn I may do myself harm from laughter.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 13:46

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

mdemone posted:

Yeah, he's probably in my top three wishlist. McConnell is at the top, Prince is on there, and Trump himself. From day to day I can't decide who I'd rather have die in prison if I had to just pick one.

...what am I saying, it's McConnell and it's not close.

I'm still rooting for Pence getting caught balls deep in a horse.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 14:33

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

mastajake posted:

It's the other way around, friendo.

Never happen. Pence would spontaneously combust if presented with a Big Gay Horse.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 15:37

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Jealous Cow posted:

Pelosi is a very effective politician.

This. I may not agree with her, but she knows how to get poo poo done, and has embraced the progressives a lot more than I had expected. It gives me hope.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2018 03:00

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Gen. Ripper posted:

Bush doesn't have a 20+ year cult of personality built around him by the Beltway media and pundits. I think it's safe to say that, for instance, we won't see Dana Bash or whoever tweeting "The angels were crying" if it rains during GWB's funeral.

quote:

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK

DATE: MAY 1, 1994
FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER.... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA.... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
---Revelation 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said, "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.

These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon's immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president's body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least 100 miles off the coast and at least 1,000 miles south of San Diego, so the corpse could never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable -- some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern -- but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man -- evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him -- except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values."

Many were incensed about the howitzers -- but they knew there was nothing they could do about it -- not with the current president sitting about 50 yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon's last war, and he won.

The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow seized the No. 3 slot on the roster and uttered such a shameless, self-serving eulogy that even he burst into tears at the end of it.

Dole's stock went up like a rocket and cast him as the early GOP front-runner for '96. Wilson, speaking next, sounded like an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator and probably won't even be re-elected as governor of California in November.

The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments -- most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H. P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election.

When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of 40, he was a smart young man on the rise -- a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be President. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.

Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him). It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.

Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director -- who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says -- and he is, after all, the President of the United States.

Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."

poo poo. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. He was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.

Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.

Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Richard Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his Presidency.

It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that -- but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.

Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives -- whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man making GBS threads in his own nest. But he also poo poo in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

I'm a little glad HST didn't live to see Trump take office. It would have hurt him deeply.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2018 10:37

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

VH4Ever posted:

I mean, he is human after all, meaning he's flesh and blood and fallible. Honestly, the cold hearted part of me does hope that like stress and doubt are now finally super-aging him in the way we've seen presidents aged by this job, and that finally on some level his own reality is caving in because, these are the times that presidents with vision and some sort of fortitude retreat a bit and regroup to fight a new day. He just does NOT have the constitution for that and never did.

He'll never be removed from office via impeachment, and won't be led away in cuffs. We made that choice long ago, we don't jail presidents no matter what they do. But knowing that his children won't be able to live an opulent life stolen off the backs of the suckers their dad grifted, and that some of them may see the inside of prison cells (Mueller willing), that might be enough for me. Not enough for society and the damage they've done but it's probably the best we'll get under the system we have. It's unusual enough for someone that rich to be torn down in such a way so remarkable for that reason if indeed it does happen.

It will never be enough for me until he leaves the White House in cuffs, or is wheeled out on a stretcher because his body gave out.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2018 18:59

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

GreyjoyBastard posted:

One thing Housedems could do, if they're living in fear of Manchin giving bipartisan cover to anti climate murder of legislation (which, again, he can do right now if he's willing to be the guy holding the knife), could be bribing the poo poo out of West Virginia with renewable energy money. Just give the rear end in a top hat his pound of flesh.

Only works if they're actually going to hold his feet to the fire re: voting with the caucus. Otherwise he'll laugh his way to re-election with an (R) and visible proof of doing something for the state to sell himself with.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2018 07:16

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

I was more trying to imply that the dude's voting record looks more like a GOPer than a Dem most days and not quite getting there.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2018 07:30

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

nine-gear crow posted:

Why are leftists so loving dense when it comes to figuring out how implacably evil Republicans are? How many time do they have to be stung by the scorpion to learn it's in the scorpion's nature?

Accepting that means accepting the inevitability of violent, bloody civil war to pry power out of their hands. It's a hard ask.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2018 10:28

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Kai Tave posted:

The funniest would be Mooch but only if he gets fired again after 48 hours.

He could hire Gorka...

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 08:06

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

1glitch0 posted:

So why is May lovely?

And also, is there anything she could be doing better about Brexit? It seems to me since it was a non-binding vote in the first place everyone should just bite the bullet and say no we're not going to do that.

She is essentially leading the UK's economy into suicide because she (and her party) can't bear to be seen to be wrong or lose.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2018 11:20

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Failed Imagineer posted:

Not even. ECJ guidance last week made it clear that the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50.

Literally the only thing preventing the avoidance of national catastrophe is political hubris and craven self-interest

# ¿ Dec 12, 2018 11:41

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

FizFashizzle posted:

Also keep in mind that there's no good political option for any politician no matter what regarding brexit.

No matter what happens they're all hosed.

It's so hilariously stupid.

Stupid, and entirely their own choice. The greatest unforced error in decades.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2018 11:45

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Junior G-man posted:

Not a bad way for thinking about Brexit and UK party politics is like this: you can 'win' Brexit or the next election, but not both. Choose one.

I think my better question is if, whence May and her chinless ilk have torpedoed the UK's economy, they avoid a breakup of the United Kingdom.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2018 11:54

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Failed Imagineer posted:

As an Irishman, I certainly hope not.

Also whence is a place not a time

Was going for 'once'. Clearly didn't get there, as it's early here. Speaking of which is the Citrus in Chief tweeting yet?

# ¿ Dec 12, 2018 12:02

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Lote posted:

Why didn�t the mob think of this defense? Mob boss tells his lawyer that Jimmy the Snitch needs to stop snitching. Jimmy takes a nap with the fishes. Mob boss says I didn�t mean to tell my lawyer to commit a crime.

Viola

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"

# ¿ Dec 13, 2018 15:39

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Fallom posted:

Isn't that also the part that can make eminent domain cases take years to resolve?

This is why the Cards Against Humanity.golks bought a chunk of border land and retained a law firm. Specifically to tie up any eminent domain attempt as long as possible.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2019 21:33

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

friendbot2000 posted:

I think a goon who works in the steel industry posted a while back that the sheer amount of steel that a wall he is describing would dwarf the steel production of the entire world lol

Imagine the bidding process. :allears:

# ¿ Jan 4, 2019 21:42

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

papa horny michael posted:

Most of the older scif/fantasy writers out from the midwest are some form of socialist. Did people think R.A.Salvatore was something else because of the violence in his work?

Nah, but there are some real chuddy SF/F writers out there like Goodkind and OSC who set the expectation. Plus the whole Sad Puppies thing.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2019 23:16

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:

The richest Americans taking the vast majority of their income as investment returns that are not subject to the marginal tax rate

Short term capital gains are subject to income tax rates.

Long term capital gains rates need to go up or join the income pile, I agree.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2019 00:14

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Lycus posted:

Why the gently caress is Trump saying the shutdown may last for years? The only thing that keeps people working is the likelihood a budget will get soon passed and they'll get backpay. If they think it will last for years, they'll just quit.

I'm not sure that he understands that they can quit. He likely thinks government workers are like the military, who face legal action for desertion if they quit.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2019 01:44

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Shifty Pony posted:

I would assume that any suspected foreign agent like lawyer lady would have their communications tapped, but it is always possible that she just used an email hosted somewhere that they could subpoena.

She probably used the Trump Tower wifi, which was already being tapped for other reasons.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2019 20:40

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Deified Data posted:

As someone who's hobby for the past week with the flu was laying in bed trying to get a nazi group banned on FB I can attest that it's literally impossible - calls to murder, genocide, goading people to suicide, targeted harrassment, posting full-on nsfw nudity and gore, it's all cool and embedded deep within FB like a tick. 90% of their content reporting features link back to "maybe you should leave the group if you're so offended lol" and the other 10% result in dead links.

Boy were they on me like flies on poo poo the second I posted a non-hateful meme with the word white trash in it though.

You want more fun, try reporting obvious pyramid scams when they come in ads.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2019 01:16

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

mutata posted:

I'm registered "Unaffiliated" and I voted a straight D ticket last November. I get the vibe that "Independent" is for people on some extreme or the other who still want a tribe to feel like they belong to.

Please consider tactically registering Dem if your state has closed primaries, for one crucial reason: registered dems get to vote in primaries.

Help drag the party kicking and screaming to the left by setting the ballot.

Abner Assington posted:

Be prepared to die in an airplane, I reckon.

Doing nothing would be statistically comparable to failing their own internal inspections constantly as the TSA does now. Multiple handguns make it onto planes yearly despite the security theatre because their methods are flatly not effective, nor were they designed to be.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jan 14, 2019

# ¿ Jan 14, 2019 02:46

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

ZypherIM posted:

This for real. I'm a white guy so I've never had problems, but I know a guy of middle east ancestry who gets pulled for extra screening every *single* time he goes through. I'm sure people of minority (or poo poo, probably just women in general) here can attest to what amounts to harassment through extra screening.

Think of it as sort of an extension of the way terrorism actually achieves its goals already. They don't cause the most harm from the attack itself, but from our response to the attack. We've created a system that is more or less immune to criticism that allows for systemic harassment and has marginal effectiveness. We also spend over 7 billion per year on it.

You realize that someone could bring a bomb into the pre-security area of an airport and kill as many or more people? Or do a truck bomb like OK city. Having a big fancy checkpoint doesn't actually make you safer.

Or, as we've seen in right wing domestic terrorism in the last few years, drive a vehicle into a crowd or attack concerts or clubs where people gather.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2019 03:29

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

CelestialScribe posted:

The argument being made in this thread is that even that is too much security.

You are the only one making that argument.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2019 03:33

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

ZypherIM posted:

Yea for sure, I'm just glad they're too stupid or inept or cowardly to use explosives. If you remember anything about the Timothy Mcveigh and the OK city bombing, something like that would be a huge tragedy (not that the attacks aren't, just in terms of what could have been).

I think that's actually the result of real security. It is a lot harder to get ahold of bulk explosive materials without the Feds noticing now than it was in McVeigh's day precisely because of the regulatory changes made to how they're tracked after OKC.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2019 03:37

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Lightning Knight posted:

Not having luggage checks is not the same as not having airport security.

It does remove a prime opportunity for robbing people's luggage that is provided by the requirement for TSA openable locks. That's why I'll never fly with anything expensive in checked baggage under the current regs. Too easy to access.

X-raying luggage is no big deal.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2019 03:46

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 16:30

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

What the hell is this.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2019 04:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USPOL Winter: barely-literate frogman powered by kitsch and bad intentions is POTUS

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