US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

truly, the day he became microscopically accountable

I think rushomancy has the right idea: it's important (even crucial) to acknowledge that there are many routes to positive change beyond direct protest action, and it's equally important to conserve your own personal energies for the long fight (see JiC's mention of activists who burn hard until they themselves out, which is not uncommon ime).

I don't think President Goldfish Brain is in a position to confirm or deny anything he said or did more than fifteen minutes ago. And even then I'd double check with a raft of fact-checkers and whichever recording devices might have captured a given exchange (fake video cameras!).

Lunch/rush/Josh: Agreed. I saw a lot of activist burnout during my time as a professional environmental advocate, and also a lot of vicarious traumatization (if you can't even go out to a movie because The Salamanders Are Dying, then you're not doing yourself or the salamanders any good service).

Obviously most of us are likely to keep going out there. Hey hey ho ho and all that. Giant puppets, yadda yadda.

But the real place everybody needs to get out to is the voting booth.

I mean I honestly think it can be as simple as, for example, figuring out how to leverage whatever it is you currently do for a living into something that better promotes positive change, or volunteering for something that utilizes your strengths, or even just making the concerted effort to be kinder and more open to other people. Trump et al are trying to effect a paradigmatic change on multiple fronts and we have to do likewise.

I never thought literally non-stop lying and denying could be such an effective deflection tool.

there's a sort of Prisoner's dilemma thing going on here. by never admitting fault and continuing to lie profusely about anything and everything he's actually sort of got a leg up on news organizations who will admit when they make a mistake. not to mention you get the advantage on 'moderate' Dems who only promise unexciting incremental improvement while you get to boast about building walls (that you won't have to pay for) and throwing out 2 million immigrants within your first hour on the job

plus, look at the difference between supporters - this was all telegraphed early on, when Berniebros yelled and screamed throughout the entire DNC while everyone at the RNC gleefully chanted "LOCK HER UP!" at every speech

xpost (Not to mention the fact that there are plenty of people who are never going to be swayed one way or another by public demonstration.)

(But yes also voting is an absolute necessity, if you do nothing at all beyond that.)

Wow, I'd thought the shithole comments had been made only with his cabinet or something, but it was a bipartisan meeting and he was responding to a Democrat. This guy is mentally unstable.

Sorry if you all knew this :)

meanwhile, the context for the denials is what is by his standards an epic-length tweetstorm on his rejection of the "so-called bipartisan" DACA proposals. i am positively shocked to discover that president dealmaker couldn't make it happen. must have been nefarious mustache-twirling sabotage by the democrats. "Dirty Dick Dastardly must go down! Many people are saying this, Muttley and many others. VOTERS WILL FIX!"

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-appears-deny-shithole-slur-defends-tough-immigration-stance-n837056

super/callous/fragile/shitstain/hexed/by/racist/bullshit

Does he go to the doctor today? At the very least that will shut him up for a couple of hours.

bravo, qualms

I was involved in driving an enormous inflatable beaver around the Beltway for reasons that I don't even remember.

I'm sorry I'm going to need a little more context here.

Also, really sorry you're having such a hard time UMS, and I hope it changes soon, you are one of my favourite ILX presences.

re: the physical exam, i'm just waiting until we get "Have been told by my medical team, who are the best in the world, that there is no need for an exam because of the very terrible real estate deals of Obama. Ridiculous deal, would never have made! Now great health will not be known. BLAME DEMS!"

I still predict he walks out early in a huff.

Or blows it off entirely.

"Dumb (Dem) Senate say they want health care, now this! Many now know their lies. Will reveal big announcement next week, what will it be?"

I just want him to die, does that make me a bad person? I feel it does, somehow. Still, the heart wants what it wants.

His heart surely wants to pop..

Well, look to London: the threat of YUGE protests at 45’s visit (whether a state visit or a working one) seems to have worked a treat in that he’s cancelled, but the entire UK is roughly the size of Minnesota.

Two weeks ago a 26-year old soldier raced repeatedly into a burning Bronx apartment building, saving four people before he died in the flames. His name was Pvt. Emmanuel Mensah and he immigrated from Ghana, a country Donald Trump apparently thinks produces very subpar immigrants.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 12, 2018

woke Kristol is a thing

I forget the tweet, but the whole "some exceptional people come from those countries!" take is so fucking bad

NEW: "Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina spoke up and made a direct comment on what the president said. I was very proud of him. It took courage for what he did," Sen. Dick Durbin says, firing back at Pres. Trump's denial of "sh*thole countries" comment pic.twitter.com/YH4pCVdcjP

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 12, 2018

only cuz the guy was a TROOP xxp

ah here we are

If you have the impulse to post stories about amazing people from Haiti or other "shitholes," stop. Everyone -- even racists -- knows people like that exist. There are amazing people from every group. Equality isn't making room for the exceptional, it's embracing the average.

— N. K. Jemisin (@nkjemisin) January 12, 2018

but the entire UK is roughly the size of Minnesota.

Actually a fair bit bigger than Minnesota but smaller than Michigan.

🐦[NEW: "Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina spoke up and made a direct comment on what the president said. I was very proud of him. It took courage for what he did," Sen. Dick Durbin says, firing back at Pres. Trump’s denial of "sh*thole countries" comment pic.twitter.com/YH4pCVdcjP🕸
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 12, 2018🕸]🐦

"The most disheartening thing to me is, my belief that, that was the first time words that hateful have been spoken in the Oval Office of the White House," Sen. Dick Durbin says

Well now let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here.

I forget the tweet, but the whole "some exceptional people come from those countries!" take is so fucking bad

OTM, and as someone else on Twitter said (paraphrasing), he's not asking for more doctors or engineers or physicists or teachers, he's asking for more Norwegians, which is not a skill.

You need both protest and organization in order to build a movement capable of activating a sufficient portion of the public to make abandonment of the social-institutional & bureaucratic structures of support of the office of the President a politically sound proposition--spontaneous mass mobilizations and stable infrastructure prepared to rapidly absorb the spontaneous energy into sustained & ongoing strategic work. The strategic organizers are divided, lots of comfortable people feel protest is useless ("what did the Women's March accomplish? checkmate!"), and the GOP continues to get something out of Trump being in office, even if it's just cover for their policy wet dreams. Paul Ryan will, hopefully one day soon, be confined to a nice little yard where he can't hurt anyone anymore.

the first time words that hateful have been spoken in the Oval Office of the White House

Was gonna say! There may be a few hundred years of counterexamples.

i definitely want him to suffer legally (incl imprisonment, which lol will never happen), personally, financially. but i do think if he dies in office he'll become a folk hero. and even the press that's been adversarial will "reassess" his legacy in pretty short order.

now his enablers from the top on down, otoh...

but i do think if he dies in office he'll become a folk hero.

The best case (and I think most likely) comeuppance scenario is that it will be no longer tenable to advertise apartment buildings, casinos, or golf courses with the name Trump

Just listened (Slow Burn podcast) to a recounting of Nixon's fatal slurs on Ed Muskie — among them that Muskie once laughed when a colleague referred to Canadians as Canucks

How quaint

Honestly, I don't wish for Trump's death because I want him to live long enough to choke down the 750 years of karmic payback he has coming to him.

don't see why that can't coincide w/ a slow and painful death

I think if he dies in office the country will move on so fast, save the people who refuse to believe he's dead, or think he was killed.

Surely his tombstone will refute the death

FAKE DEATH

To contaminate perfectly good soil like that...

surely there must be recordings of this meeting?

release the pee tapes and the shit tapes

best case (and I think most likely) comeuppance scenario is that it will be no longer tenable to advertise apartment buildings, casinos, or golf courses with the name Trump

^^agree and i'll happily settle for this

already happening, to some extent. name taken off at least two hotels last year, iirc.

was in vancouver last month and was surprised to see a Trump hotel there and from my view from across the street it looked to be doing ok business? it was kind of jarring stumbling upon it.