politics Post Election Thread: Democracy Dies In Darkness And You Can Help

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

14 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Editing after the fact.....Classy move.  Your edit does not even make sense. 

 

Just noticed that you did not edit your original post, I withdraw that unfounded accusation.  However your original post was not phrased as a question. 

 

So.....How about you answer the question that I actually did ask:

 

 

How would you feel about a Nazi's right to free speech if something like Stalingrad had taken place in Los-Angeles, Warsaw in Boston or the London Blitz in New York (etc. etc. etc.)?

Why would I edit the post, I admitted the mistake in my last post. Are you off your meds or something? And keep dancing around my question, just who are you calling a Nazi?

 

See that emotional crap with you again. 

 

I wouldn't throw away a right, because some assholes who abused it bombed my house, I have principles.   Nice loaded BS question too BTW, and it shows once again you argue using a bunch of emotion, and too little logic. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

4 minutes ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

Why would I edit the post, I admitted the mistake in my last post. Are you off your meds or something?

 

TBH I was probably writing/editing my own posts and/or rereading yours and in the process misread that one.....This is turning into a bit of a comedy of errors!

 

Anyhow, I'm certainly not calling you a Nazi if that is your concern.....I've always been pretty straight up & direct in my posts, this you surely can't deny?

 

I was aping your post to emphasize that my dislike for fascism is every bit as strong as your belief in freedom of speech and it means every bit as much to me, I'd fight for it if necessary, I have done before.....I am not decrying your beliefs, I merely posited a question in relation to them (and it was an honest one, however emotionally charged it may be).

 

Sincerely.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

Cool, glad we got that cleared up. And who doesn't enjoy a good dustup over right now and then!

[Sgt.Squarehead]

So it seems we're on the same wavelength after all?

 

Good.

 

May I ask, again absolutely sincerely, if US WWII veterans have ever publicly commented on the issues we've discussed?  They saw what happened first hand, so I'd imagine a lot of them felt the same way my granddad did.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

My understanding, most Americans until very recently were Free Speach absolutists. It used to be a bipartisan issue for the most part, but not now. Now it's a Right/Centrist view, only the left in America is pushing hate speech laws, and they are a direct attack on our First Amendment. 

 

There was a big Supreme Court case about allowing Nazi's to March in Illinois in the 60s or 70s, and it affirmed the right of the Nazis to march. 

 

I'm not sure why people have a problem with FOS, do you really think Nazis are going to convince anyone with their BS? If not, letting them spew their shit right out in the open, so everyone can see, film, and mock seems like a good idea.  If you force them into hiding or make their message into some mysterious thing, it will attract more people. This will get worse, when the government is actively persecuting people for silly jokes.  Also, if your government does not let people gather and march for whatever reason they want, you might not be living in a free country. 

[Priory_of_Sion]

Yeah, the Skokie Affair is an interesting event that saw Jewish lawyers defend neo-Nazis. Also, I'd imagine if a neo-Nazi led state fought a new war against the US that we'd consider swastikas "fighting words" and thus illegal until they became irrelevant again. 

[Bronezhilet]

6 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

 

I was replying to @Jeeps_Guns_Tanks.....Notice how I used the quote, just like I'm doing here.

...do you know how a forum works?

 

If you don't want others to comment on whatever you say, you should be PMing with people you want to talk to instead of speaking on a forum.

[Donward]

In the United States it was actually illegal to be a Communist for a significant part of our history. Now that the Cold War is over, there are far more people who unironically call themselves Communists - or some variant - than Nazis. 

 

Hell, a lot of us have the label of "comieboos".

 

Our Nazis have pretty much been reduced to slipping homemade laminated cards into diaper boxes at the minimum wage job they have in a distribution warehouse. Hardly the sort of stuff which will overthrow the country.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

3 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

I'm not sure why people have a problem with FOS, do you really think Nazis are going to convince anyone with their BS? If not, letting them spew their shit right out in the open, so everyone can see, film, and mock seems like a good idea.  If you force them into hiding or make their message into some mysterious thing, it will attract more people. This will get worse, when the government is actively persecuting people for silly jokes.  Also, if your government does not let people gather and march for whatever reason they want, you might not be living in a free country.

 

Interesting point, I don't agree with the European policy of banning the swastika and so on for historical reasons and also for some of the reasons you describe above (emphasised).....But I also don't agree with letting them dress up like storm-troopers and march around upsetting old/coloured people. 

 

Just now, Donward said:

In the United States it was actually illegal to be a Communist for a significant part of our history.

 

But wouldn't that be a violation of an individuals FOS? 

 

I'm not taking the piss here, serious question once again.

[Donward]

7 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

 

Interesting point, I don't agree with the European policy of banning the swastika and so on for historical reasons and also for some of the reasons you describe above (emphasised).....But I also don't agree with letting them dress up like storm-troopers and march around upsetting old/coloured people. 

 

 

But wouldn't that be a violation of an individuals FOS? 

 

I'm not taking the piss here, serious question once again.

 

Yeah. We had this thing called the Red Scare in the 1920s (You guys did too). Heading to bed soon and I've only had 10 hours of sleep the last three days so I'll keep it minimal.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare

 

And we had a second one following World War 2. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954

 

Basically it was felt that the Communists were a significant enough danger to the American public that the Party needed to be outlawed. You had a variety of acts of Congress which allowed for the arrest and deportation and stripping of citizenship of agitators. 

 

The interesting thing is that the above act was lobbied for pretty heavily by Labor Unions.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I guess the brewing confrontation with the USSR made it seem a lot more reasonable at the time than it does with hindsight.

 

Sleep well.  (I actually couldn't sleep last night, so I got back up, I've been going a while now.....Never can settle when things are on my mind.)

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

4 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

 

Interesting point, I don't agree with the European policy of banning the swastika and so on for historical reasons and also for some of the reasons you describe above (emphasised).....But I also don't agree with letting them dress up like storm-troopers and march around upsetting old/coloured people. 

 

 

But wouldn't that be a violation of an individuals FOS? 

 

I'm not taking the piss here, serious question once again.

 

 

It was, and I don't think that was the right call, and I don't think the ACLU was a thing yet.  Plus, it pretty much seems like all the anti commy shit of the 50s planted a seed of decent, and love of communism/socialism in the US left, that is just coming home to roost now. 

[Walter_Sobchak]

21 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

Blue Wave 2018: I'm not seeing it.

 

 

This is a summary of voter registration data from pundit Larry Schweikart.  In short, since his election Trump has not lost net voters in any of the states he won (where information exists).  In some of the states he lost the Democrats have seen gains, but these have been surprisingly modest.

 

In related news, an NBC/WSJ poll shows slipping support for the Democrats compared to last month.  Note that the amount by which it slipped is inside the margin of error of the poll, but it still shows that their support isn't expanding.

 

Also, this old Bloomberg article from just before the election is worth reading if you still think that Trump tweets are impulsive, spur-of-the-moment expressions of the president's whim at any particular moment.

 

 

 

While I think there is a method to his madness in regards to the President's Tweets, the fact that they so often feature misspellings and errors makes me think that there is a certain amount of capriciousness involved in the process .  Covfefe.

[Ramlaen]

11 GOP Congressmen sent a criminal referral letter to Sessions, Wray and Huber.

[Sturgeon]

8 hours ago, Walter_Sobchak said:

 

While I think there is a method to his madness in regards to the President's Tweets, the fact that they so often feature misspellings and errors makes me think that there is a certain amount of capriciousness involved in the process .  Covfefe.

 

I feel like if you dug up your posts from about a year ago, it would show a pretty massive change of opinion up to now.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

Was it illegal for private citizens to be commies, or just government employees?

[Ramlaen]

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/04/19/politics/justice-mccabe-criminal-referral/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

The Justice Department's inspector general has sent a criminal referral regarding former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to the US attorney's office in Washington, according to a source familiar with the matter.

In addition, the inspector general determined that McCabe was not authorized to disclose the existence of the investigation because it was not within the department's "public interest" exception for disclosing ongoing investigations. The disclosure to the Journal was made "in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of department leadership," the report said.

[Collimatrix]

8 hours ago, Ramlaen said:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/04/19/politics/justice-mccabe-criminal-referral/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

 

 

 

 

This is a bigger deal than the media is allowing themselves to realize.

 

11 congressmen say they want the guy's hide?  Not a big deal.  Congressmen are, almost as a rule, invertebrates.  The only remarkable thing is that they would feel comfortable making a move like that.

 

But the OIG is part of the bureaucracy, and generally speaking bureaucrats will stick up for other bureaucrats unless they're having a turf war or unless the other guy really fucked the dog.

 

This means it's on.  I'm not sure what "it" is, exactly, in this case, but it is definitely on, whatever it is.

[Donward]

What "IT" is in my opinion is a slow play. You don't want to play your trump cards too early in the match

 

Other than sick, depraved political junkies like myself, the American public generally does not pay attention to politics until after Labor Day of an election year (and often later than that). So if folks are getting sent to the hoosegow, it does no one any good politically if it were done six months or a year ago. The big political splash needs to be made in a few months in order to influence the mid-terms. 

 

The Democrats have been making a mistake in expending all of their anti-Trump political ammo in 2017 and this half of 2018 to the point where the public is just tuning it out. Polls are polls but Trump's approval ratings have been ticking slowly upward over the past half year, and why not? The economy is decent, folks are getting tax cuts, except for rich liberal millionaires in California but fuck them, they should be paying more in taxes anyway. I think the American public approves of his foreign policy in Syria and North Korea and taking a tough stance on trade. And surprise, surprise, the fact that he may have slept with hot chicks isn't a detriment, at least insofar as in Trump isn't a hypocrite about it. 

 

Assuming this is a strategy, I would guess that the Justice Department will start picking off mid to high level members of the Obama Administration in the late summer/early fall. It will either be arrests or subpoenaing them as witnesses in order to nail bigger fish. I still think the "Hillary for Prison" promise made last election is still a going concern with Trump. And if not Hillary, certainly some of the other Obama Administration officials. And I can think of nothing better to turn out the GOP vote than having Cankles made to do the perp walk in an orange jump suit, only to have her trip and fall.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

If they could get Holder on something, that would be epic, that motherfucker is a so slimy scum won't even form on him. 

[Ulric]

Can we did up Janet Reno and prosecute her, Cromwell style?

[Collimatrix]

On 4/18/2018 at 7:59 AM, Walter_Sobchak said:

 

While I think there is a method to his madness in regards to the President's Tweets, the fact that they so often feature misspellings and errors makes me think that there is a certain amount of capriciousness involved in the process .  Covfefe.

 

Are you sure the typos aren't deliberate?

 

This is a man who has deliberately chosen to cultivate an awful hairstyle.  His hair is objectively bad.  He vocally prefers his steaks well-done.  That is also objectively wrong.  This is a man who attacked a political opponent for being a POW.  He's said in interviews that it doesn't matter what the media says about him as long as he's got a young and beautiful piece of ass.  He's been in professional wrestling, for god's sake.

 

Trump thrives on attention, and excels at manipulating what people are paying attention to.  He does not care how ridiculous his stunts make him look.  If the public thinks he's an obnoxious idiot who represents everything wrong with the nouveau riche, he is completely OK with that because it means that the public is thinking about him.

 

I've come to suspect that he misspells words in tweets he wants to get more attention.  He can't do this all the time, or his communication would just seem garbled.  But every once in a while he can throw in a typo or made up word or particularly idiotic phrase, just to get tongues wagging.

[ShamefurDispray]

TIL that NPR is run by the same people as the Onion

 

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/20/604343810/democrats-sue-russia-wikileaks-and-trump-campaign-over-election-conspiracy 

[Walter_Sobchak]

15 hours ago, Donward said:

What "IT" is in my opinion is a slow play. You don't want to play your trump cards too early in the match

 

Other than sick, depraved political junkies like myself, the American public generally does not pay attention to politics until after Labor Day of an election year (and often later than that). So if folks are getting sent to the hoosegow, it does no one any good politically if it were done six months or a year ago. The big political splash needs to be made in a few months in order to influence the mid-terms. 

 

The Democrats have been making a mistake in expending all of their anti-Trump political ammo in 2017 and this half of 2018 to the point where the public is just tuning it out. Polls are polls but Trump's approval ratings have been ticking slowly upward over the past half year, and why not? The economy is decent, folks are getting tax cuts, except for rich liberal millionaires in California but fuck them, they should be paying more in taxes anyway. I think the American public approves of his foreign policy in Syria and North Korea and taking a tough stance on trade. And surprise, surprise, the fact that he may have slept with hot chicks isn't a detriment, at least insofar as in Trump isn't a hypocrite about it. 

 

Assuming this is a strategy, I would guess that the Justice Department will start picking off mid to high level members of the Obama Administration in the late summer/early fall. It will either be arrests or subpoenaing them as witnesses in order to nail bigger fish. I still think the "Hillary for Prison" promise made last election is still a going concern with Trump. And if not Hillary, certainly some of the other Obama Administration officials. And I can think of nothing better to turn out the GOP vote than having Cankles made to do the perp walk in an orange jump suit, only to have her trip and fall.

 

If you really think they are going to charge HIllary with anything at this point, you are delusional.  Republicans have been trying to get shit to stick to her and Bill for 30 years now and it never does.  I'm not even trying to make a point about whether she deserves it or not, I'm just saying that nothing ever sticks.

 

Anyhow, if Trump can't even get his own justice department to stop investigating himself, how is he going to get it to investigate Hillary?  Especially now that she is a private citizen?

[Ramlaen]

Tick tock.

 

 

The “watchdog” is the IG.