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    George Conway Believes thread

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    Got me thinking, though, that a lot of Trump fans like Trump precisely because he doesn't believe anyone else, only himself, and they like that mindset. They don't care if in his case it's because of narcissistic disorder, maybe alls the better that he has it. In general, though, they like the individualist ethos.




    Pompeo arms whitewash



    Re-up immigration thread

    US gov's Anti-immigrant racket here: 

    http://dagblog.com/comment/286798#comment-286798

     



    WAP: "Brands arent radical"

    Russell Brand points out the same old same old

    https://youtu.be/EdP9H60N2l8

    And his point might be 9 years ago dance floors were screamIng Azealia Banks' "I guess your cunt getting eaten", thoroughly humored and relaxed with herself, so why the over-the-top Cardi B/Stallion nonsense when you have much harder hitting  212?

    https://youtu.be/i3Jv9fNPjgk

    Or Courtney in 1999 entertaining 50,000 Aussies with "Celebrity Skin" (1:01) - playing an instrument, not just a dress

    https://youtu.be/iS4uJJCNcDM


    I find Russell Brand infinitely fascinating to listen to as a character mostly because he's a working class and very naughty Essex boy without much education who happens to somehow have picked up the highbrow vocabulary of an Oxford don combined with that of French postmodern intellectual, and then he uses it in a gobsmackingly loquacious motormouth manner. It's also like he's always on speed, his brain is running at 10,000 RPM, even when the rest of him is relaxed.


    Yeah, Hes a mess. Think he prepared any of that, or just knows how to chatter?


    Hey wait, does the Pixies' 1988 "whores in my bed" now count as empowerment for women? (though technically Kim Deal only sang the word "chained"). And when did it become only *conservative men* having hot flashes on TV as porn whisperers?

    https://youtu.be/OdZGvMEeNLw


    Where's Dersh?


    You've (not) Got Mail


    Yes, I do recall that being a terrible problem cropping up from time to time over the decades. I'm actually not a big fan of the USPS because of that, not that I think it needs to be gotten rid of, far from it. The whole set up they are working with is screwy, it does need reform, just not by this rat.



    I saw that last night, but it hadn't been verified by a good source, or even dated, so I didn't post it. It both shocking and and problematically intriguing, comments I saw made that clear. People were saying--that's horrific but actually the ambassador is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Because Kiribati is courting China's interest and it is their custom and they wanted to show respect to the Chinese, that that's how they show respect. That like it or not, it's not really the Chinese ambassador's fault, it he says no to doing it, it would be insulting them.

    Really brings home the whole debate about respecting old time cultural traditions because that is supposedly better than forcing "western" values on everyone. C'mon,it's the 21st century, certain values should be global in this day and age. Just say no. Everybody doesn't have to go along with every primitive tradition in order to de-colonize the world. De-colonize to what? This?


    Should he turn down the 3 13-year-old vestal virgins sent to his room too? Don't you think you're carrying this too far?


    Indian Matchmaking in US -

    https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5f36cdbdc5b65bbd8c8ceffc

    I'm struck by the perversity of a quaint notion about Indians, yet a fixed attitude towards White southerners. Indians explicitly favor those with lighter skin, discriminate against those not of their caste/tribe and class, occasionally pull off massive murderous pogroms against Muslims, are exceedingly homophobic, etc. 

    But I don't know that Indians are *that* unique around the world, just that we often put the unknown exote a few levels up on our home altar, the familiar daemons a few rungs down.

    Paris is amazing, no? But the French killed a million Muslims on their way out of Algeria 60 years ago (the Algeria wanted independence), left us with their Indochina *plantations* around the same time (the Vietnamese, Cambodian, et al wanted independence), gave us "Devil's Island" as a model of brutal incarceration. But their wines are delish! (to be fair to our "noble savage" image, the Cambodians brutally murdered and enslaved a million in the Killing Fields, killed and raped 6 million in the Congo just 20 years ago - so a bit of "both sides do it". 

    Australia seems so pleasant because around the time we we're fixing up our Constitution and doing that Trail of Tears thing, the Aussies created a cordon to slowly walk across the Tasmanian island to kill off all the natives. Rinse and repeat elaewhere. But Brisbane's got awesome surfing and the Great Barrier Reef (just watch out for sharks). Love the accent, Crocodile Dundee and Olivia Newton-John and all.

    In short, we're pretty emphatic on bringing up the 160-year-old Civil War as if the effrontery of the Southerners in leaving that sacred Union they'd committed to was this unforgivable act - Treason! - yet Brits starving millions of Irish at the time or disappearing Irish Catholics in the 70's just adds a bit of character to Big Ben on our tourist walkabout. Slave descendents from *other people's atrocities* in the Caribbean and Yucatan and Brazil are all nicely exotic to go with our fruity rum drink and "Que habla, dudes?" quest for polyglotism, and brushing aside the mass graves and work camps on our way to the cabana. Only a history stickler will ruin a vacation trip to futuristic efficient Tokyo with a reminder about Bataan or Manchuria already 75 years gone.

    Just a reminder of the shithead behavior that permeates the world (though has some prominent examples of good promising ethics) and the unreasonableness in judging just based on proximity to us, the Familiarity Trap. Yeah, racism exists hugely around our country (not just in the South by any means, though Mississippi attitudes are easy to categorize), but this Lincoln/Civil War thing seems a peculiar rock in the craw, something that people take so personally. (Note there's a pig vs chicken breakfast thing - chicken involved, pig is committed - if you're Vietnamese the Vietnam War means something a bit different than for Americans, so real southern descendents of both colors may have more personal feelings than transplants or remote commentators).

    The South in the 70s to 90s seemed much more hopeful than the South today - and even today is a far sight better than Reconstruction or the mass poverty of the Depression. But there's this sense that it's always been like this, incorrigible, baked in, not something that gets built up by tropes and rumors and fear mongering, especially in the more efficient internet age where lies travel the world in nanoseconds.

    A while back I met a black-skinned Indian woman in Birmingham, asked her how she liked it. She seemed fine, had a nice job in a modern medical institute, people treated her well (Birmingham's of course majority black), a few decades in and she feels at home. Doubt she would have done too well with the Matchmaking back in India, or the opportunities  & treatment for her if not in one of perhaps 5 Indian cities. For her it was a step up and pleasant. (nd 50 years earlier, not so much). YMMV.

    Also, as a nation of immigrants, how many newcomers are related to the Hun Sens of Cambodia or the generals in Guatemala or Karadzic in Croatia or the Idi Amin's of Uganda? Or their many likely (hopefully) non-barbarous countrymates (many who fled from the same). How do we even judge the fast moving cultures these days, when so much has happened the last 50 years, much less 6-7 generations ago. (My daughter asked me if "the Shah was bad" - that of course brings of a complex response for a Mideast culture in transition and a dangerous place, not an easy "yes" or "no". What did he do well, what badly, what evilly, same as his successor even, as well as our involvement, what Ben were the alternatives that *werent* taken?). Who are all these people within these streams of humanity moving around? What kind of conclusions from the many are even valid, and what would it take to alter those impressions - a new view, a new ingredient, some new breakthrough - where's our progressive hope, view to the future?


    WaterGate II


    Be Best. Cherry trees are overrated anyway. Ask George Washington.


    they were 10 crabapple trees, not cherry, BTW.


    Don't sit under the crabapple tree with anyone else but me...



    wtf, we really are in Banana Republic land with this one, Dorothy, I can't believe the RNC is allowing this:

    don't cry for me Trumpita...


    I see Joyce and Kurt are thinking more along the lines of the Soprano's, but while I am not a published writer of renown like them, I still like my banana republic image better!





    Why won't GOP reach out to Carlos Danger?

    Barr's predecessor made his name selling toilet bowls for guys with too-big dicks, expanding that self-deluding prestige category for Trojans. Trump did it for Walls and crowd count and high-rises. Weiner's totally on-brand for the Republicans - guy with no sense of shame in love with his dick. Give him the stage! Carlos will change your world, one dick-pic at a time!

    (liked Garry's assortment above)

    (I still think that "15-year-old" who reported Weiner not the the police but a London gossip rag was a setup. Her Daddy was quite the convenient small town NC Republican with those perfect national connections. Not too hard to catfish a known sexter of high value.)


    Setup? Maybe. But some people can be setup and some people can't. I don't send dick pics to anyone so I can't be setup to send a dick pic to a teen girl. And he knew she was underage. So frankly I don't give a shit if he was setup.


    No, he suspected she wasn't a 15-yeqr-old. She was quoting all sorts of 60's lit only a very strange southern 15-year-old would know.

    I don't send dick pics, but I don't have an Instagram or Pinterest account either - that doesn't mean no one uses Pinterest or Instagram. And I really don't give a fuck about Weiner's personal life (nor whether a 15-yrar-old sees a dick on the internet - horrors) - I care whether Russian/GOP operatives (or Israeli or whoever) used catfishing and hacking to create a fake scandal to derail a Democratic candidate. That Weiner for a dick pic went to jail longer than a motherfucker traitor NSA head who was conspiring with Turks and Russians who hacked us *does* piss me off, however. (Petraeus doesn't piss me off so much, as he largely was discredited, though why Reality Winner gets so much jail time also pisses me off. So much confidential info's been leaked the last 4 years, and hers was a 1-timer for the public good, hardly a Snowden megadump)


    She told him she was 15 more than once. The texts are in evidence. He didn't just knowingly send a teen girl dick pics he  asked her to get naked and play with herself. They have the exact dates when when she told him her age and when he asked her to get naked etc. It doesn't seem like you actually followed the story.

    https://people.com/crime/anthony-weiner-sentenced-sexting-teen-girl/

    We could debate the "fairness" of punishments and different jail times but Weiner was very guilty of what in my opinion was a very serious crime.


    Cleopatra seduced Mark Antony at 14 and became Queen at 17. Even if true, some sleazy advance 15-year-old daughter of a sleazy partisan politician is easily able to pull fine Roger Stone ratf*cking operation and lose no sleep - touching yourself for a camera? Pretty tame for a political groupie.. And then there are all those Almost Famous nubiles who were having the time of their lives at 12-14 sleeping with perv musicians, and writing gushing books about it decades later. We mostly have these laws to protect *vulnerable, weak, unwilling* minors, not 15-year-olds prone to terrorizing men, and ages are partly social constructs - somewhere between 13 and 21 girls typically become willing and interested, but a whole lot of variation that laws have to find a 1-or-2-sizes-fit-all approach.

    Anyway, see if any of this article sounds plausible. I don't take it as gospel, but some likely bits, esp. as the GOP coordinates its dirty tricks.

    https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/05/09/exclusive-trump-backers-weaponized-ant... 


    Once again some people can be set up and some people can't. So I don't give a shit if he was setup. The basic difference is I support the laws protecting teens and you don't. At times I may think the punishment excessive but I support the laws.


    Oh, I'm fine with the laws. I think in general they work. I'm just saying don't confuse laws with human nature. As someone noted, the law is not about justice.


    Fuck human nature. It almost always comes down to choice. I've had opportunities and the odds of getting caught were near zero. I chose to decline. Weiner chose to not only say yes but chose to attempt to escalate the interaction. He was clearly guilty of breaking the laws you claim to be fine with. He deserved to be punished. We're a violent predator species.But it's not something that's out of our control. The law is about punishing people for acting on that human nature. Punishment of high profile people is the best message to send and the largest deterrent to low profile people choosing to act on their human nature.


    Fuck human nature. How quaint. I'm against girls being abused. Young girls setting up stupid sick guys? Not so much. 5x for political purposes. But somehow, she decided to share her story with the Daily Mail. Poor thing, how she suffered those months.

    It sparked a months-long exchange between them which included graphic messages and topless photographs of the 53-year-old former New York congressman. 

    In her interview this week, the teenager said she was 'disgusted' by the messages she received from Weiner who, at the time, was still living with wife Huma Abedin, one of Hillary Clinton's closest aides.

    She said last year that their relationship with consensual and begged her father not to press charges against him but took part in her sit-down interview with DailyMail.com in the hope that it would stop him from sexting underage girls.  

    ...

    The teenage girl first made contact with him through a private Twitter message where she told him she was a fan in January 2016.

    She was aware the previous sexting relationships which torpedoed his political career and but said she wanted to see if he would take the bait given Clinton's presidential bid.  

    'I knew that Hillary Clinton would be running for president in the year 2016 and I wanted to see if Anthony was still up to the same antics,' she said in her Inside Edition interview.  

    After speaking briefly on Twitter, she and Weiner soon began exchanging text messages and his input quickly turned sexual. 

    'I knew it was going downhill and really fast,' she said.

    For months afterwards, they exchanged sexually graphic text messages, spoke over several social media platforms and he sent her photographs of himself in various states of undress, sometimes posing with his son.   

    So sounds like she didn't send any pictures of herself or do any acts? And his first & only contact with a minor, who initiated the contact, decides to redo a Public Service Announcement so he wouldn't sext other underage girls [that figured out how to get hold of the famous perv and came knocking at his door]

    Now, if she or her father were paid by the GOP or the Daily Mail, would that change anything? If it were in advance? Cuz extorting people is human nature too...

    Odd that Epstein and Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell had all this access to underage girls as sex slaves, yet a Democratic opponent is the only one who went to jail - for sexting dick pics  (assuming we don't count Jeffrey's country club a-few-hours a day conditions of his first bust in Florida - the one that all the local figures signed off early release on?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4866378/amp/Teen-sexted-Anthony...

    PS - Weiner was the only one who showed remorse and got treatment. Or I guess Cohen on those other charges. Everyone else? Deny or brag.


    One article doesn't tell the whole story about anything. You know that so usually you read several articles on most of the subjects you talk about here. Except this one. Look you don't care if older men send dick pics to teens so you stopped following the story right there. Why not just admit that you don't think it's a big deal. It's pretty clear from your posts. I think it's a big deal. We disagree and that's ok.


    Read the novel - it's better

    And what the fuck, dude - do you really think it's a big deal that a 15-year-old who went in search of a sexter sees a dick pic? It's 2020, we have the internet - any teen can see whatever fucky sucky he/she wants. She hung around for months, no extortive coercion, no threats, no physical abuse. I mean, technically it was illegal for my brother to show me a Playboy when I was 12 or 13. Should I have called the police, had him busted? Was it a "big deal"? Was I harmed and those important laws should have been invoked to keep Barbie Benson Barbi Benton from corrupting my minor soul? Did you see Almost Famous and it pushed you over the edge?


    any teen can see whatever fucky sucky he/she wants. 

    I think that's a huge problem too. How the hell did we ever let it get this far? I think anyone who wants to log onto a porn site should have to submit a credit card as proof of age for access. So call me a prude if you want. Let's just admit we have different views on the subject

    eta and by the way, I think the other people have done worse and gotten away with it argument is the worst argument anyone can make. We need to work harder to hold them accountable. It doesn't excuse the lesser crimes.


    Great idea. But that's not how it works, and it hasn't worked that way for at least 20 years. So prude or not, it's totally fucking irrelevant, because I'm discussing things that happened and practices that exist, laws and how they're enforced, not some moral code in fantasy land. I mean, a 15-year-old girl got arrested for sending some skin photo of herself to a couple other girls - that really happened. She'll have to register as a sexual predator.

    And sorry, I don't think dick pics are as bad as Jeff & Ghislaine making 15-year-olds sex slaves - guess that's my bit of whataboutism I'll have to work on.

    Ok, my details slightly wrong if this was the one: https://brettpodolsky.com/sex-crimes/teens-arrested-for-naked-pictures-o...

    But this guy pretended to be a woman and got pushier and pushier,l and found girls, whereas Weiner was an open book and she came to him, so somehow I find the other guy worse 

    https://kutv.com/amp/news/local/never-ever-do-it-teen-victims-warn-of-se...

    And then here's a 19-year-old in a more Weiner-like sextung-and-chatting relationship with a 15-year-old, so only 4 years difference. - should I be equally grossed out as with married Carlos Danger with the psych problem?

    https://www.pennlive.com/crime/2020/08/man-sent-nude-photos-professed-love-to-15-year-old-he-met-in-online-game-police.html


    Yes there are problems with the law. That doesn't mean that what Weiner did was ok. We can have a larger discussion about the law or a smaller discussion about this girl and Weiner. It wasn't just dick pics.

    Prosecutors say Weiner coaxed the girl, who he knew was 15, to get naked and fondle herself, which he watched over Skype and Snapchat. 

    Prosecutors continued, “During the latter two Skype sessions, on February 18 and 23, 2016, and in a Snapchat communication on March 9, 2016, the defendant used graphic and obscene language to ask the Minor Victim to display her naked body and touch herself, which she did.”

     That's a crime. I think it should be a crime. That Epstein committed a greater crime and that it took a lot longer for him to face punishment doesn't make what Weiner did ok. We can keep excusing criminal behavior because other criminals are worse until we get to Epstein, or Hitler. I think that's a terrible argument and I totally discount it. So I guess we also disagree about the validity of the I can find worse shit in the world argument.


    The girl fondling herself is worse than just showing her tits. I hope we have closure on this issue now.


    15? Abused? No, one article doesn't tell it all I'm sure (Twitter will - though you can ask for a roll-up)

    Shame they didn't get her Emancipation Proclamationa as part of the convention - that'd be totally exciting.

    "I, Claudia..." I hope she didn't face nudity too - tough for a minor these days - ask the delegation from West Virginia.

    https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/kellyanne-conways-daughter-claudia-15-says-shes-seeking-emancipation/2326971/


    He always impressed me as an incredibly arrogant nasty narcissist prick who thought he knew best for the little people, mommy's little genius, how dare anyone challenge him.  A climber who would walk all over anyone to get where he wanted to go, transactional to the max. The type that might have inspired the Germans to invent the word schadenfreude. Like in comparison, Bill De Blasio looks like an innocent befuddled saintly guy. Weiner was just a nasty piece of work. Throw in a tendency to hysterical hyperbole to boot.

    If he was framed it just as well could have been someone with actual good intentions who had the misfortune to work for him as it could have been a political enemy. Was glad to see him go for whatever reason.

    Made me question the sanity of his Huma Abedin, though no one ever had a bad word for her. Seriously.

    Hope he learned something about humility.


    Future of (no) work


    and this is the best paragraph I have read in a long time

    The pandemic has led to unemployment of workers in the service sector, retail and other fields at a scale and with a swiftness unprecedented in the historical record. They are cashiers and janitors, construction laborers and secretaries. For many, their prospects were already diminished.

    and along with this intro

    The rapid adoption of remote work and automation could accelerate inequalities in place for decades. Economists say the resulting ‘K’ shaped recovery will be good for professionals—and bad for everyone else.

    I wish all BLM protesters in big cities were forced to read it. To realize that concerns about abusive police are such a minor thing in the scheme of things. Fiddling while Rome burns and it may indeed continue to burn into the eighth circle of hell. (And looting luxury shops in few remaining elite shopping areas where one might still get a halfways decent job that doesn't include hard manual labor? Past absurd! More like: how to committ suicide. If there is not at least one upscale retail area for tourists and leisure visitors with money to visit, cities are going to be one big ghetto of poor people preying on one another and museums with heavy security at the front door.)


    Who is responsible for letting in this filthy plague-ridden female from a shithole country, no doubt also the type that doesn't know from a good broom, iron her man's underwear nor scrub the soles of her family's shoes:


    Oh come on, we've had troops in Germany since WWI ended (isn't Garmisch a military base?). Don't the Krauts understand the difference yet in American legisprudence and basic Constitutional rights? They are better when Mussolini kept things running - these liberal "Mutti"-type immigration lovers have run the country into the ground. It was called the "Fatherland" for a reason, no?

    https://youtu.be/eBShN8qT4lk


    Americans saved Europe in WW1 and WW2 and with the Marshall Plan. We give and we give and we give and get nothing but complaints. Now this nice American woman goes to a resort and gives to 59 Germans and it's still not enough.


    Even when we ask them to pay their share they scoff at us. Free handouts for the Euro-socialists, nothing for the capitalists who drive the world's engine of democracy.


    Turns out joking about WWII unnecessary - fewer and fewer have any idea what happened. Poor Belushi, one of his most memorable lines will now just draw blank states. 10% think the *Jews* started the Holocaust, and those camps burned into our brains - Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Terezín, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen... - are just odd bits of foreign word salad. Which I guess is only fair - we don't know any camp names from The Killing Fields or Rwanda or the last war in Congo or The Great Leap Forward or Hotel Rwanda... The closest is the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/holocaust-us-adults-study


    That renowned middle east expert, Kanye:


    So Kanye's "running against" Trump, but praising Trump's team? Nothing to see here, move along...


    I am starting to think that ALL Kanye's b.s., including not just the run for prez but the supposed "mental illness" is merely his own idea of marketing hijinks:

    He is VERY like Trump in that he believes he is a genius and he therefore thinks his ideas about things like marketing are better than any expert's advice he could buy. But the reality is that it's just chaos, not decent marketing at all.


    Chris Rock's timing prob

    Seems to think Pelosi controlled or understood severity of the Covid pandemic in January while impeachment was already finished a month before and *already in the Senate*, where McConnell could have adjusted the timing to allow acknowledging & responding to the pandemic, but he and the rest of the GOP were busy covering it up for at least another month. And convicting Trump Feb 5 would have allowed a slightly saner Pence-run government to handle the pandemic rather than a socio/psychopath. Stick to humor, Chris - your political analysis is... funny.

    I'm glad at least Al Sharpton's making sense - hate to have black voters listening to only the ditzyist performers as their influencers.

    https://www-foxnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.foxnews.com/entertainment/chris-rock-rips-pelosi-dems-you-let-the-pandemic-come-in-during-impeachment.amp


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