A new US Republican thread 2016

[fohat]

This “press conference” was completely bonkers: https://www.c-span.org/video/?424148-1/ ... conference

The guy is losing whatever mind he had in real time, in front of the world.

"We are becoming a drug-infested nation. Drugs are becoming cheaper than candy bars." @ 16 min

"The leaks were real but the news was fake." @ 38 min

"And Reince happens to be doing a great job, but half of his job is putting out lies." @ 50 min

and perhaps best of all:

"We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20% of the uranium in our country." @ 53 min

[seebart]

77-MINUTE MELTDOWN

- Great title for this performance!

I watched it, one hell of a press conference if one can even call it that?!? More like a strange looong monologue!

Bottom line is he "inherited A MESS" but is going to take care of all of it with his "fine tuned machine" of an administration!

Wow, this really makes me wonder what the future “press conferences” will be like?

[vivalarevolución]

Haven't watched the whole thing, but after saying he is the least racist person, he says something that is blatantly racist. if you don't understand why it is racist or think I am an overly sensitive liberal, I can help explain. He is inferring that the black female reporter knows the Congressional Black Caucus because, well, all black people should know all the other black people, right? Might as well ask me to setup a meeting with the KKK, because, ya know, I'm white and should know all the other white people.

2) After reporter April Ryan asked Trump about the Congressional Black Caucus, the president asked if she could set up a meeting with them. Ryan, who is black, is the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks in Baltimore.

RYAN: When you say the inner cities, are you going — are you going to include the CBC, Mr. President? In your conversations with your -- your urban agenda, your inner city agenda, as well as --

TRUMP: Am I going to include who?

RYAN: Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional --

TRUMP: Well, I would. I tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Do you want to set up the meeting?

RYAN: No, no, no. I’m not —-

TRUMP: Are they friends of yours?

RYAN: I'm just a reporter.

TRUMP: Well, then set up the meeting.

RYAN: I know some of them, but I'm sure they're watching right now.

TRUMP: Let's go set up a meeting. I would love to meet with the Black Caucus. I think it's great, the Congressional Black Caucus. I think it's great.

[chuckdee]

Haven't watched the whole thing, but after saying he is the least racist person, he says something that is blatantly racist. if you don't understand why it is racist or think I am an overly sensitive liberal, I can help explain. He is inferring that the black female reporter knows the Congressional Black Caucus because, well, all black people should know all the other black people, right? Might as well ask me to setup a meeting with the KKK, because, ya know, I'm white and should know all the other white people.

2) After reporter April Ryan asked Trump about the Congressional Black Caucus, the president asked if she could set up a meeting with them. Ryan, who is black, is the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks in Baltimore.

RYAN: When you say the inner cities, are you going — are you going to include the CBC, Mr. President? In your conversations with your -- your urban agenda, your inner city agenda, as well as --

TRUMP: Am I going to include who?

RYAN: Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional --

TRUMP: Well, I would. I tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Do you want to set up the meeting?

RYAN: No, no, no. I’m not —-

TRUMP: Are they friends of yours?

RYAN: I'm just a reporter.

TRUMP: Well, then set up the meeting.

RYAN: I know some of them, but I'm sure they're watching right now.

TRUMP: Let's go set up a meeting. I would love to meet with the Black Caucus. I think it's great, the Congressional Black Caucus. I think it's great.

That is not racist. Racism is defined as prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. There is nothing in that statement that implies racism. Perhaps insensitivity in statements.

The reason that I call this misconception out wherever I see it is because racism is becoming conflated with being bigoted or prejudiced because of ignorance, and thus are watering down real pronouncements of racism.

It is because of this that we have the statement 'the race card', because people are erroneously reporting things that are not racism as the same, and thus the boy who cried wolf syndrome.

Racism is a choice based on erroneous science, and anyone who makes that choice should be called out. But on the inverse, calling someone out basically puts up a wall of confusion, because (a) being a racist is a bad thing, right? so the person gets defensive, and (b) they don't 'view themselves as racist' because they don't believe that one race is better than another.

And thus we get two defensive sides not communicating.

[jacobolus]

Assuming that all black people must know each-other is not just “ignorance”; or maybe it’s ignorance in a profound sense, a basic lack of understanding of how the world works that most people figure out sometime before age 10.

I’d probably blame it on Trump’s psychiatric disorder rather than deliberate racism though. The man needs to be removed from office and barred from business and society so he can be given the help he desperately needs. He should be sitting in front of a TV in a retirement home, shouting abuse at his overworked caretakers, not president of the US shouting abuse at the whole country.

[chuckdee]

Assuming that all black people must know each-other is not just “ignorance”; or maybe it’s ignorance in a profound sense, a basic lack of understanding of how the world works that most people figure out sometime before age 10.

I’d probably blame it on Trump’s psychiatric disorder rather than deliberate racism though. The man needs to be removed from office and barred from business and society so he can be given the help he desperately needs. He should be sitting in front of a TV in a retirement home, shouting abuse at his overworked caretakers, not president of the US shouting abuse at the whole country.

My point, and my only point, is that it's not racist, and we should quit conflating such things with racism. It doesn't help the dialog at all, and so I point it out whenever I see it. Stop using the word- call it ignorant, bigoted, thoughtless, or whatever you want to, but don't lump it in with racism.

[vivalarevolución]

You just pulled the first definition from the Google results. It's not the only definition of racism. Historically, the element of racial superiority probably is the purist definition of racism. Perhaps modern usage of the term has diluted the most basic idea of racism.

Okay, then what do we call instances when a person believes that an individual of a certain race speaks for the entire race or fits a stereotype of that race just because they are of that certain race? Racial stereotyping? Racial prejudice? Racial bigotry? The statement was clearly prejudice and stereotypical, but it lacks the belief of superiority. The thought behind what he said is that because the reporter is black, she should know all the other black people in Washington, and call them up and get them together.

As human beings, I think we all hold some level of racial prejudices, whether we are aware of it or not, and there is no harm in acknowledging those so we can move beyond them. Although we may not be full-blooded racists or identify as a KKK-level racist, we might say things from time to time that display an unintentional racial stereotype or prejudice or bigotry or ignorance. If a person cannot recognize their own prejudices, it also does not help move a discussion forward.

It's a messy discussion, so I don't have much else to say. But I'll go with jacobolus on this one and blame on the psychiatric disorder rather than deliberate racism. Trump is clearly clueless of his own prejudice and bigotry, for reasons we can only speculate.

[vivalarevolución]

His public appearances seem to be a pretty standard affair at this point:

1. Talk about himself incessantly.
2. Lie a bunch.
3. Skimp on any details.
4. Attack and discredit the press as much as possible.
5. Maintain superiority and authority over everyone there.
6. Fulfill his definition of winning.

He took this press appearance a little different because what he cares about the most is popularity and ratings and others liking him. He knows all that is suffering right now and needs to tone down the theatrics and display at least a minimal level of substance to reassure us that the administration is working on things. Yet the more he talks, the more he discredits himself and his own administration.

[jacobolus]

It’s clear from other statements that Trump’s speech and actions have been racist (and sexist) his whole life. People who aren’t racists don’t knowingly chum it up with white supremacists, hire teams of white supremacists and other well-known racists, accuse whole groups of people of being rapists or killers or terrorists, and so on.

Trump is a man who in the 80s took out a full page newspaper ad calling for executing several accused black teenagers, and when they were later proved innocent stated that he had no regrets about it.

His casinos and hotels used to hide all the black employees whenever he was going to visit, because he didn’t want to see them there.

Here’s a quotation from a 1991 book: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”

And let’s not forget the racist “birther” conspiracy that Trump spent years promoting.

[webwit]

Dear Alt-Left Diary,

Day 29. The Witch still hasn't been burned yet.

[fohat]

Yet the more he talks, the more he discredits himself and his own administration.

He has nothing to work with. Obama took the reins when the nation was in epic disaster mode, and steered us back into stability and some moderate level of prosperity. Those facts are absolute and cannot be disputed.

All that the current "right" has to work with are amorphous emotional things like worrying about gays and guns and tax rates.

[jacobolus]

He’s definitely not a witch. Witches are smart, profiting from their their arcane knowledge of black magic. I would feel a lot safer with a team of witches running the country.

Trump is more like a ridiculous evil cartoon villain, an unbelievable caricature in a children’s story who has no redeeming or humanizing qualities.

[webwit]

You know, as a libertarian and a non-us citizen, I'm kind of impartial which cocksucker you guys elect, particularly because nothing much changes on a bigger level. But one never-ending source of entertainment is the foam-mouthed useful idiots, whether it was the alt-right during Obama, or you guys now the orange guy won. All their anger is thoroughly deserved for the endless hypocrisy on both sides.

Take your racist crap concerning black people. That all basically dates back to the colonization of Africa by the West and the shipping of slaves. It was wrong, right? Yet in modern times people from the West, white, black or purple, colonized the Middle East for their oil and don't give a single fuck. Why doesn't that make you a "racist"? The learning curve was zero. And people are not innocent, they vote for it. I guess your grand-grand-grand children will be blamed.

[fohat]

I guess your grand-grand-grand children will be blamed.

My great-great grandfather was a slave owner. I voted for Obama twice and I believe that he was arguably the best president that the US has had in my lifetime.

I believe that the US should divorce itself from fossil fuels in years, not decades, and I vote accordingly.

The fact that my choices are limited is beyond my control, but I do the best I can with what I have to work with.

[chuckdee]

You just pulled the first definition from the Google results. It's not the only definition of racism. Historically, the element of racial superiority probably is the purist definition of racism. Perhaps modern usage of the term has diluted the most basic idea of racism.

Okay, then what do we call instances when a person believes that an individual of a certain race speaks for the entire race or fits a stereotype of that race just because they are of that certain race? Racial stereotyping? Racial prejudice? Racial bigotry? The statement was clearly prejudice and stereotypical, but it lacks the belief of superiority. The thought behind what he said is that because the reporter is black, she should know all the other black people in Washington, and call them up and get them together.

As human beings, I think we all hold some level of racial prejudices, whether we are aware of it or not, and there is no harm in acknowledging those so we can move beyond them. Although we may not be full-blooded racists or identify as a KKK-level racist, we might say things from time to time that display an unintentional racial stereotype or prejudice or bigotry or ignorance. If a person cannot recognize their own prejudices, it also does not help move a discussion forward.

It's a messy discussion, so I don't have much else to say. But I'll go with jacobolus on this one and blame on the psychiatric disorder rather than deliberate racism. Trump is clearly clueless of his own prejudice and bigotry, for reasons we can only speculate.

I used that for example sake... but it's the historical definition, and the one from back in the day.

To give some clarification on where I'm coming from as from this, I am Black. I tend not to even refer to that on forums, because like Morgan Freeman said, until we stop referring to ourselves by color, it won't go away, and it's 99% of the time none of the business of people that I'm talking to, and not relevant to the conversation. Right now, I think it is, because it gives context.

I'm old enough to have seen my sister piss herself because people wouldn't let her use the bathroom because she was black and inferior and dirty and might have some sort of disease. And to see my father have to take it.

I'm old enough to have found my uncle lynched because my aunt could pass, and people in a town where we stopped for the night thought he was married to a white woman.

I'm old enough to have gone to the funeral of Doctor King, and to have seen exactly what we lost.

So given that, now talk to me about the definition of racism, and how it's the same as a stupid statement about black people knowing each other, or perpetrating an obvious lie about a birth certificate.

[jacobolus]

Hasn’t been mentioned here, but apparently Flynn lied to the FBI. That’s a felony, but for now it doesn’t look like Trump’s Justice Department will bring charges.

There should be multiple independent investigations going on here. First, there should be special bipartisan congressional committees set up to investigate, one each in the House and the Senate. Second, there should be an independent special prosecutor appointed, given broad discretion to investigate executive agencies.

[jacobolus]

Webwit: (some) people here most certainly do “give a fuck” about US involvement in the Middle East. It has been a travesty throughout the post-WWII period. The US (and France, England, etc.) have been propping up autocrats, undermining democracy both overtly and covertly, enabling abuses by western oil companies and others, and providing weapons and financing for brutal conflict. (Before WWII, western Europeans were more directly responsible for all the fucked-ness of the region.)

We also “give a fuck” about US involvement in e.g. Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

A large number of former US officials should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in international courts: In particular, a substantial proportion of high-level officials involved in foreign affairs during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II administrations. (It’s probably too late to go after folks involved in US policy from the 1950s–1970s.)

It was a great disappointment that Obama went back on his campaign promises and did nothing to investigate torture, military “black sites”, or the military’s crimes during the Iraq war, etc., and did nothing to investigate the lies and cover-ups of the Bush II administration’s initial claimed rationale for going to war or of the war’s conduct.

I also personally think that the ongoing “war on terror” with drone strikes, arms supply to various local militias, etc. has been stupid and destructive policy. They aren’t blatantly illegal in the same way (sure, the USA and Europe set the rules, so this is not fair), so there’s probably not much to build a case against folks in the military during the Obama years. Just leaving ISIS to rule Iraq and Syria is not a happy outcome either though (either for people locally or for US/western interests), so they are having to make hard choices. After the Iraq War, the USA is going to be blamed for whatever happens in the Middle East in the next 20 years, so we have a lingering responsibility to work toward some kind of stability. For instance the US deserves significant blame for the current refugee crisis in Syria, along with the Assad regime, ISIS, Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

I think the USA should significantly down-size its military, stop spending unlimited money on weapons systems and military aid, and redirect its resources toward more productive uses. Unfortunately, a large proportion of Americans have a knee-jerk pro-military stance, and building weapons is extremely profitable for some powerful lobbying groups, so nothing too drastic is likely to change in the near future.

Moreover, the US and Europe should stop allowing local companies to produce unlimited numbers of small arms and sell them on the black market throughout the world. Illegal small arms sales to various military and paramilitary groups has caused much more death and destruction than drone strikes or direct Western military action.

[webwit]

And yet you voted Clinton.

We are all hypocrites. We love the gravy of oil generated wealth, and know perfectly well it goes at the expense of the people living there. We don't care about their fate, we care about the steady supply.

My great-great grandfather was a slave owner.

Funny fact, goes well at parties. Mine was a Prussian serf. Escaped and fled to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to become a circus artist in the art of pulling heavy objects, such as loaded coaches, with his teeth. It's true.

[jacobolus]

Clinton is much more hawkish than my preference, and is friends with a number of prominent American war criminals, but she’s also not an idiot, is not suffering from a serious personality disorder, and is not nearly so trigger-happy as most of the Republican foreign policy establishment.

With Trump in office, everyone here is praying for a return of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. People who might be evil, but at least have some sense of self preservation.

[webwit]

If you voted Clinton, you can't take the moral high road, and should spare us your diary.

[jacobolus]

webwit: you’re a joke.

[vivalarevolución]

Not sure what's more entertaining, a Trump press conference or a classic jacobolus/webwit off topic jousting match. I'll go with a jacobolus/webwit tiff, because neither of them have the nuclear codes or strike worry and fear into millions of people.

[webwit]

Weak counter arguments.

But if you want off-topic, what about this. I eat meat. We could have a philosophical discussion about eating meat such as on the carnivorous merits of our species or not, etc. But what is a given is that the mass meat industry is utter total shit, and an utter disgrace for our species. Do you eat meat?

Don't even answer that. The premise is that we, and you, are hypocrites. And you are in this topic. And least man up to your hypocrisies and weaknesses. You are currently not. Just mere snowflakes.

[002]

Without webwit in this thread it would be just another echo chamber circle jerk, just like The_Donald basically is.

[vivalarevolución]

Without webwit in this thread it would be just another echo chamber circle jerk, just like The_Donald basically is.

Give yourself some credit, bro.

[002]

I am not as HIGH ENERGY as you guys when it comes to researching and rebuttals and stuff because I don't think anything I say here will change opinions. I do read it often to see peoples' point of view though.

[fohat]

I eat meat.

I too eat meat, even though I know that it is wasteful, inefficient, and morally harmful. I voted for Hillary Clinton in preference to Donald Trump, even though I was a Bernie Sanders man all along (and Elizabeth Warren is my true hero).

I oppose US involvement in the Middle East in general, and Israeli occupation of Palestine in particular. But ISIS is an insidious cancer that must be eliminated at any cost, preferably by an international coalition.

And my (great-)great-great grandfather was an Indian-killer in addition to being a slave owner.

But even incremental improvements are preferable to no advancement at all.

[jacobolus]

So webwit, your new position is that by virtue of living we are all hypocrites with no moral standing to discuss the world?

I mean, we all get it. You have a weird fetish for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (apparently unique to those two among all the politicians in the world), which you’ve confusingly elaborated several times like a broken record, and you don’t seem to have any desire to share new information or engage with anything anyone else says. You could pretty much be replaced by a Markov chain trained on your past comments and nobody would even notice the difference.

Now you’re basically arguing that any discussion at all is inherently unwarranted.

Why are you still here then?

[webwit]

Blah blah ad hominem. I don't even.

[jacobolus]

Apparently Trump is helping the German SPD. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eu ... story.html