The irony! Mr. “I am the smartest man in the room”.
Go for a walk or something, before you have a stroke.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that the ratio of Mensa members on the SDMB is far above any other random collection of persons. And that just includes the smug assholes who might join such a club! Not even the ones who are quite certain they could join, but abstain from an abiding sense of humility.
Hey, those big picket signs that say “THE END IS NEAR!” aren’t gonna march up and down Lexington Avenue by themselves, you know…
Aw, for Pete’s sake, people. He’s not an asshole or a coward. Just someone-- like many of us-- who is being made nuts by the current political situation. He often posts the stuff I’m thinking (but would never post, because I don’t enjoy being stomped on). Just let the man rant and don’t take the fucking bait. Let **asahi **be asahi. No, he doesn’t have solutions… who does? I also think some of the late-night rants are alcohol-fueled, but I only say that after considerable experience with drinking (my own in the past) and others’ (boyfriend of 10 years ago). Ya know, the steam valve is there for a reason-- just let it spout and move on. My 2 cents.
I wonder how much money it takes to buy off a Republican’s loyalty. If Obama or any Democrat had done a fraction of what they’re barely trying to conceal from the public, they’d be demanding trials for treason. Money is the alpha and teh omega I guess.
He doesn’t do shit except whine and say “there’s nothing we can do, we have to wait for others.”
That’s a cowards position, Thelma. This is America, where the active participation of the citizenry is demanded by our form of government. And Asahi the Coward has, for 3-4 years, constantly said “the sky is falling, and there’s nothing we can do about it, unless others say it is OK.”
Cowardice. I stand by my assessment.
SO WHAT?
and also
WHO CARES?
My further two cents, and now I’m out of this part of the discussion. Carry on as you see fit. :dubious:
And term limits, and budget deficits, and smaller government, and tax reform…
Guys, just put the smartest guy here on ignore and I guarantee you’ll be much happier. Now, whenever I see his name and the message that his post is hidden to me because he’s on my ignore lost, I smile because his arrogant impotent frothing is no longer clogging my screen. Also, the fact that I’m seeing less people quoting him these days indicates that more people probably have that jackhole on ignore. Happier days, indeed.
I’m not whining; I’m pointing out where the country is headed, and I wasn’t wrong despite being told numerous times that I was hyperbolic.
It’s an online message board, not the Capitol Building or Independence Hall, so the way I look at it, there aren’t really any heroes here, despite what you might think of yourself.
I’m seeing headlines that Daniel Coats is worried about Barr releasing classified material without going through him first, but all of the reports I see are behind paywalls, so I can’t verify what they say.
Yeah that’s right, refer to people as a “shit stain,” mock people and compare them to Alex Jones for their excessive “doom and gloom,” which was a well-founded concern as it turned out. Then put them on ignore when the joke’s on you. I lol’d.
The usual procedure is the AG consults with the directors of various intel agencies to make sure that whatever is released isn’t harmful to national security interests, and also to the people who actually risk their lives getting info on hostile actors. Barr is threatening to just release classified information regardless of whether Coats and other intel chiefs believe it’s damaging to US interests. It’s only made worse by the fact that Barr’s not even pretending to be an AG but rather Trump’s own personal legal and political consigliere.
Bolton - I knew that guy was a jerk the time he got all bent out of shape at Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. I mean - really? {as I recall the next time Jon Stewart - or his producers - invited John Bolton onto the show [which is more than I ever would’ve done] Jon Stewart gave him a cup of cocoa and some marshmallows in an effort to keep him calm. Or maybe it was a [not so] subtle reminder of what an ass he’d made of himself the previous time he was on the show} And what’s with that L-A-M-E (as my wife would say) “Coo-Coo Ka-choo” moustache? Is he (still) trying to impress the ladies, or something, with that upper lip brush?
It’s not the hyperbolism, it’s the repetitive nature of it, you go on and on about it, and then when something obviously predictable happens, then you go on and on about how you were right. You aren’t some sage, back right around election day, I was pointing out that trump was an authoritarian, albeit, with a decent amount of pushback, and that the price of democracy was vigilance against that authoritarianism. My hope was that the systems in place would stand as a bulwark against his desires, and to a very large extent, they have held up, even better than I actually thought. I’ve even stuck up for you a bit, when you were talking about obvious predictions, rather than repeating them over and over or preening about how you called it that the sun would rise in the east this morning. You are not the first to go nuts like this, people at anti-trump rallies are even nuttier.
You remind me of the scene from the BBC TV version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy from the 80’s. As the Vogons are getting ready to destroy the earth, there is a scene of a crowd of people, with one of them wearing a “The End is Near” sign. Being right in this case is nothing to be proud of, as it wasn’t that difficult to see.
Oh but apparently it was difficult to see for some who wanted to create pit threads about my posts, which is fine on some level - the pit exists for that reason. I guess you could say I’m just giving some of it back.
As for going on and on about it, I think pretty much anyone who isn’t a Trump supporter is going on and on about it. We’re outraged, shocked, and saddened by what’s happening to our society, and that’s a healthy sign. It’s a sign that people still care. When they don’t, well, that’s when you might as well just throw in the towel.
And as far as “what are you gonna do besides sit there and type,” I’d ask the same question. What is everyone else doing? Being cynical by itself and being only cynical isn’t a solution, but neither is being pollyannish and overly-optimistic.
If you had known at the time that Operation Enduring Dysfunction was based on false and manufactured evidence, would you have still been supportive?
This isn’t really the thread for solutions, but what should we do about it? Get involved. It seems too big for us, doesn’t it? Trump vs little ol me.
Well, there are many of us, so we don’t all need to fight the big fight ourselves individually. We need to spread out and fight all the little ones. I like to think that I was instrumental last fall in getting the old male incumbent republican on my city council replaced with a young female liberal, as she only won by a few dozen votes, and I knocked on hundreds of doors. That’s what I am doing about it. I may run for something myself in the future, ut there are people with better qualifications and more time ahead of me right now, so I will just do what I can to support them.
That’s how we fight back, that’s how we make a difference. We fight them in our city councils and school boards and township trustees. We get people into the statehouse and into the governor’s mansion. The supreme courts of most states are elected positions, and I guarantee you that the overwhelming vast majority of people could not name one, much less all of their state SCOTUS’s.
That’s where the republicans outplayed us, a good ground game while our liberals were keeping their heads in the sky. Now instead of being able to talk about advancing transgender rights, we are going back and having to defend against basic racial discrimination.
Trump will do some damage, and if we don’t take things back in 2020, then he may do more damage than can ever be recovered. But he is not the end of the world. We can fix things, we can rebuild things, and maybe we will take some lessons from the symptom that was Trump’s election, and rather than fight and condemn and rail against the opportunist that took the opening that was offered, we can try to close up those openings, fortify our democracy from the ground up.
I don’t disagree with what you’ve written, nor do I disagree with JohnT’s activism, which he’s written about before. I, too, have knocked on doors and done phone banking, maybe or maybe not to the same extent. I don’t knock civic activism. Why would I?
My take - and feel free to disagree - is that some people who’ve been writing here for a long time feel like it’s ‘their’ board, and I get that. There have been other message boards that I felt were ‘mine’ as well, even when they weren’t. I understand that each message board has its own culture, its own norms, its inside jokes. I’m no longer new here, but I was when I started rubbing people the wrong way. Maybe I unintentionally pissed some of the vets here because of that - I don’t know.
I also came in at a unique moment, when our society as a whole was/has been hyper-polarized. We live in a time of perpetual outrage and we’re constantly on the edge of our sofas waiting for the next outrage, it would seem. My chicken little “schtick” wasn’t meant to be schtick; it was just making observations about what I was seeing because I was just as incredulous as anyone else. I don’t think I’m the only one who’s anxious or obsessed with what’s happening, but maybe I’m a lot less light hearted and don’t engage in some of the lighter moments that people seem to share here.
The “I’m the smartest poster” routine? Okay, yeah, that’s schtick…most of the time.
Trump in Japan says he is the guest of honor at their most important event in 200 years and that relations with Japan are, of course, the best they’ve even been.
He also just tweeted about North Korean’s latest missile test. He’s not concerned, Kim Jong Un will keep his promise to Trump.