Aye; it’s hard to have a compromise where one side is compromising their values and the other side is merely compromising their actions for now.
One of the biggest fallacies of modern life (I don’t know if it was already around in the reign of Hammurabi) is this notion that “corporations”, “businesses”, “the government” are somehow capable of acting independenly of people. Whatever is done by a collective entity required individual choices: “me at work” and “me at home” may wear different clothing (I sure don’t go to work in a ratty sleeveless Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and yoga pants) but it’s not different people; entering the office doesn’t make the decision makers disappear into a collective mental amoeba.
“Hey! Where’s the ball, Liberty!” (swiftly cups hand directly under dog’s butt)
Well, first, there once was this Great Orange Benefactor who sprinkled stardust over the Top 1% Most Deserving and then after that kept those #InconvenientlyBrownand DarkishPeopleDownForever.
See?
::triangle-twinkling ‘ting’ for Tinkerbell’s wand::
Vice President Upstanding Venerable Knobstick does his damnedest to look serious touring the border camps.
Unfortunately the video in the link is from Jun. 21, despite its insertion in a piece from today. Today’s video can’t be found anywhere, but I saw TV footage of Pen$e standing around, in a Totally Concerned Guy pose, in sombre tough-guy attire, arms crossed, surveying - no lording - over all, with his forced glare, and that oily face sheen rivalled by none other than Middle East teflon’er Jared Kushner. That picture sort of gives you an idea, but on TV…eewwwww…all that…face oil. The glare, though, was weird, considering I’ve been used to basically nothing but that God-I-Hope-I-Don’t-Come-In-My-Pants Look of Fawning Adoration Around You-Know-Who. Also saw footage of a large group of male adults in a cage yelling at him - not the warmest reception for ol’ God-Grease.
Sheee-yat…the 9th Court did wrong this time, with ok’ing feds to favor non-sanctuary cities in funding.
That’ll show that uppity brown lesbian Chicago mayor who’ll disrespect ICE.
oops that could be black.:smack:
He already had that reputation. Chevy Chase was just playing off it. Ford really did seem to have more than his fair share of boo-boos.
That should read constitution in post #34464.
Trump tells four US Congresswoman, three of who were born in the US, to go back to the countries they came from.
Anyone focused on the well-being of an immortal formless entity is not focused on the well-being of humans. They may be focused on the well-being os a small group of humans after the well-being of the formless, immortal entity, but they will sacrifice any outsider’s well-being for the sake of the formless. And when push comes to shove, they will sacrifice everyone for the sake of that corporation.
If this were not true, the world would not be as it is.
You’re right, of course, that corporations aren’t really people; they have no independent agency. The point of our government’s current support for an extreme interpretation of corporate personhood is to favor rich people.
A corporation gathers together than resources of thousands of people. By then declaring that the corporation is a single entity that speaks with one voice, you create a “person” who is far more powerful than any of those individuals. And the actions of this fictional person are controlled by the executives in charge of the corporation.
If we still went by the common sense idea that people hold political rights, then the CEO and the janitor would each hold the same political rights. But by claiming a corporation holds political rights, the CEO now has the political rights of a giant while the janitor still holds only the political rights of a single human.
I realize it’s just a formatting error but I think “trumpused” should enter our vocabulary.
“What did the President say in his speech yesterday?”
“He just trumpused his usual nonsense.”
Exactly what I was about to say.
No way; that would open the door to “trumpus rooms”. Og only knows what goes on in a trumpus room, and I don’t wanna.
Nothing that you couldn’t make go away with a $130,000 payoff.
There is no limit to him. He will never bottom out. He can always outdo himself.
Putting undocumented immigrants in camps is just a pilot program.
Corporations will always be amoral. They do not have the ability to make decisions based on conscience, they are not actual living beings. I personally feel the same way about corporations as I do about sociopaths. They may have some use, but if left without proper guardianship, can wreak great harm.
Those in control of a corporation, the execs and directors, are like the guardians of a sociopathic person. They are responsible to make sure that their charge does not do harm, and should be held accordingly accountable. Just as if you were to direct a sociopath to rob a bank for you, you should be held accountable, if you direct your corporation to hurt or to steal, you should also be held to account.
They’ve always been a necessary but dangerous part of our society, back around the turn of the previous century, they threatened the stability of our country as the robber barons played games at the detriment of the people, and it took extensive govt intervention to unwind the whole mess, and there are still tendrils of that time affecting us even today.
The citizens united bullshit was where it went off the deep end though. Corporations are already powerful enough, and an important job of the govt is to keep those corporations in check. When those corporations are now have power over the govt, that becomes a pretty serious problem.
Anyone who complains about “big govt” needs to first complain about the lack of constraint on corporations. The govt has to be bigger than corporations, or the corporations become the de facto govt. This does seem to be the direction we are heading, though I do think we have a bit of time before we get there.
Money needs to get out of politics. Personally I would not be opposed to an amendment that amends the first that says explicitly, “Money is not speech, duh.” Obviously, more succinct and less flippant than that, but it needs to be specifically laid out what a candidate can and cannot accept from people and from corporations, and it does need to be fairly minimal.
It’s a matter of degree. There was a guy that got shot to death for attempting to firebomb the detention centers. That’s a bit extreme, but he was obviously not OK with what the govt was doing.
But where is enough? I plan on voting against people who put kids in cages, and I’ve made a couple of calls to congresscritters, and I even attended, briefly, a little protest in my hometown about it. I even go on to message boards and make my thoughts known on the matter. But, for 160 hours a week, I don’t really care. It’s not that I wouldn’t care if I thought of it, but it is that I am thinking of other things, work, my friends, my dogs, or even just sleep. Yes, I do sleep, and sleep very well, even though there are children being kept in cages by my govt. Does that mean that I’m okay with it?
I will agree entirely with you that anyone who endorses or even actively defends the practice is going to be hard to find any common ground with, but for those who it is simply not their highest priority, there may be many things with which we can find agreement. And starting with the places that we agree makes it easier to get them to change their minds about the things that we do not agree on. If we start our interaction with me calling him a Nazi because he didn’t vote the way I think he should have voted, then he’s going to dig in, and actively disagree with anything else I say, even if he would have agreed otherwise. If we start the conversation about the things that we both agree upon, whether it be as pointless as movies or TV, or about nuclear power or the future or space, then it becomes much more possible for us to find common ground on the human rights abuses that they have never really considered to be as much of a problem as their own personal concerns.
I own a corporation. It is a small one, composed of less than 2 dozen individuals, but it is a formless immortal entity with no morals or ability to have morals. My corporation better allows me to take care of the individuals in my employee, it allows me to acquire and use resources, including human resources, in order to achieve our objectives.
I feel it is my responsibility, as owner, to direct my corporation to do well by my employees, my customers, and my community, but my corporation is not capable of doing this on its own.
Add in shareholders and directors, and it becomes even more hard to manage to keep “good”. If someone has a 401k, and one of the investments is into a corporation that makes widgets, then the owner of that 401k account is not going to care all that much about the consequences of making those widgets, only what the return on the investment is.
The only solution is to make the owners or directors take responsibility, and they way to do that is through the govt.
Yep, there are quite a number of undesirables to be rounded up and put into camps. Once we become “okay” with one goose step, then it is time go on to the next.
This is what stood out to me:
[my italics]
So, the stable genius scraps the Iran nuclear deal out of spite and pettiness just because it was done under Obama, and then has no plan after that. Brillant, this pathological insecurity about all things Obama and the need to reverse them out of spite whether it makes sense to do so or not.
July 10, 2019
Individual 1’s nominee for Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accused of sexual misconduct.
Apologies if this has already been addressed, but I caught it on Maddow Friday and I haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere.
Briefly (for me), Trumpankhamen is itching to get rid of Dan Coats — perhaps the last real professional in the Cabinet — as Director of National Security. This is not exactly a surprise, since Coats has disagreed with the president on numerous occasions; what is concerning is his prospective replacement:
Fleitz’s being a protégé of Bolton is worrying enough; his association with the Center for Security Policy is even worse. From the Wikipedia article:
Fleitz is also said to have advocated for reactivating the House Un-American Activities Committee*, with its focus changed from Communists to Muslims so that the country can be purged of “Islamist” influences.
Fasten your seatbelts.
*This brings to mind Mort Sahl’s observation that every time the Russians put an American in jail, Congress (and specifically the HUAC) retaliates by putting an American in jail.