whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:I have an idea:

McMaster should write a memo for Trump that reads: DO NOT EAT BROKEN GLASS OR DRINK GASOLINE

I think the evils of facefook deserves it's own thread but I am surprised that there's not much mentioned here. We didn't have facefock when I was a kid but we had plenty of guns. JMT (just my theory, which is different than my opinion) Guns + facefook = death. There are so many people that shouldn't have either one.

Swamp wrote:I think the evils of facefook deserves it's own thread but I am surprised that there's not much mentioned here. We didn't have facefock when I was a kid but we had plenty of guns. JMT (just my theory, which is different than my opinion) Guns + facefook = death. There are so many people that shouldn't have either one.

If by "facebook" you mean social media generally I'd say you're on to something, swamp. Social media has the strange effect of reinforcing the disaffectedness of the isolated and disaffected, while also allowing them to connect to the exact worst influences for their particular situation in a very incendiary way.

beantownbubba wrote:Social media has the strange effect of reinforcing the disaffectedness of the isolated and disaffected, while also allowing them to connect to the exact worst influences for their particular situation in a very incendiary way.

This is a succinct & accurate description of how I view the negative effects of social media. Well stated, bubba.

McMasters out as National Security Advisor. John Bolton taking the position. Kim Jong Un, say "Hello" to our little friends!

Bolton has wanted war with Iran forever

beantownbubba wrote:

Swamp wrote:I think the evils of facefook deserves it's own thread but I am surprised that there's not much mentioned here. We didn't have facefock when I was a kid but we had plenty of guns. JMT (just my theory, which is different than my opinion) Guns + facefook = death. There are so many people that shouldn't have either one.

If by "facebook" you mean social media generally

More or less but the fact Cambridge Analytica used it the way they did and things or actions, so to speak, that I have witnessed myself is why my sights were on facebot.
There are some really good aspects of social meda but the bad ones can be horrifing.
Youtube is a perfect example of something that can be so cool yet used in such a wrong way by so many people. Does the good out weigh the bad?

cortez the killer wrote:

beantownbubba wrote:Social media has the strange effect of reinforcing the disaffectedness of the isolated and disaffected, while also allowing them to connect to the exact worst influences for their particular situation in a very incendiary way.

This is a succinct & accurate description of how I view the negative effects of social media. Well stated, bubba.

Thanks, Cortez.

"Succinct" and "bubba" in the same sentence (sort of). Next thing you know Loyola-Chicago will win 3 games in the NCAA tournament.

Just saw Bolton referred to as War Moustache

Best.band.name.ever

yeah, but what the fuck does McCaffrey know?

For some unknown reason?

Zip City wrote:For some unknown reason?

pearlbeer wrote:

Zip City wrote:For some unknown reason?

pearlbeer wrote:

Zip City wrote:For some unknown reason?

I'm thinking his pecker is too big as represented.

Our long national nightmare is finally over

whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:Our long national nightmare is finally over

“I don’t know Mr. Libby, but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly,” Trump said in a statement Friday

Nice to know we have such a high standard for Presidential Pardons.

Operation Desert Stormy

As a general rule, if the president is being criticized by both the left and right for a particular decision he's probably doing something right. But I'm thinking Syria may be the exception to the rule. Leaving aside nausea inducing comments like "mission accomplished" and "locked and loaded," it is completely unclear to me what the purpose of the attack was and where it fits into an on-going policy/strategy. I actually do think Trump is legitimately outraged by the use of chemical weapons so I'm willing to cut him more slack than usual, but it's hard to see what was accomplished beyond the specific destruction of the targets.

beantownbubba wrote:As a general rule, if the president is being criticized by both the left and right for a particular decision he's probably doing something right. But I'm thinking Syria may be the exception to the rule. Leaving aside nausea inducing comments like "mission accomplished" and "locked and loaded," it is completely unclear to me what the purpose of the attack was and where it fits into an on-going policy/strategy. I actually do think Trump is legitimately outraged by the use of chemical weapons so I'm willing to cut him more slack than usual, but it's hard to see what was accomplished beyond the specific destruction of the targets.

That's because targeted military strikes are usually made to provoke diplomatic discussions and, with Mike Pompeo not confirmed yet and our diplomatic corps depleted to dangerous levels, we have no State Department thus any strategy. It's a little like hiring a guy to build a foundation to a house with the full knowledge that there is no general contractor available to actually build the thing and having no timeline to find one.

So...Cohen had three clients:

One, he was covering for an affair with a porn star. The second, he was covering for an affair with a Playboy Model. The third is Sean Hannity.

Make me wonder what kind of questions MRS. Hannity had last night.

pearlbeer wrote:So...Cohen had three clients:

One, he was covering for an affair with a porn star. The second, he was covering for an affair with a Playboy Model. The third is Sean Hannity.

Make me wonder what kind of questions MRS. Hannity had last night.

"Real estate" says he. Hmmmm, an apt for his mistress thinks I. Or laundering money for the russians?

It's an absolute rule of life: Nobody benefits from being in Trump's inner circle but Trump.

beantownbubba wrote:

pearlbeer wrote:So...Cohen had three clients:

One, he was covering for an affair with a porn star. The second, he was covering for an affair with a Playboy Model. The third is Sean Hannity.

Make me wonder what kind of questions MRS. Hannity had last night.

"Real estate" says he. Hmmmm, an apt for his mistress thinks I. Or laundering money for the russians?

It's an absolute rule of life: Nobody benefits from being in Trump's inner circle but Trump.

Yep. That is my bet: mistress in an apartment. Bonus points if it is located in a Trump property.

The speed at which we have all now come to accept and normalize that the President of the United States has a "fixer" is astounding. Newspaper articles simply regurgitate it like it's no big deal "Mr. Cohen served for more than a decade as a trusted fixer for Mr. Trump" as an example from a NYT piece. I also saw one of the President's defenders on CNN yesterday say "There isn't a businessman in America that doesn't have a trusted fixer who's willing to get his hands dirty when it may be inappropriate for others in the organization to do so". Not kidding, that's word for word. When did we just accept that big business needs to operate like the mafia? No longer are "fixers" limited to mob Dons, now everyone's gotta have one including the President of the United States. C'mon folks, this isn't normal. Not even close.

Tequila Cowboy wrote:The speed at which we have all now come to accept and normalize that the President of the United States has a "fixer" is astounding. Newspaper articles simply regurgitate it like it's no big deal "Mr. Cohen served for more than a decade as a trusted fixer for Mr. Trump" as an example from a NYT piece. I also saw one of the President's defenders on CNN yesterday say "There isn't a businessman in America that doesn't have a trusted fixer who's willing to get his hands dirty when it may be inappropriate for others in the organization to do so". Not kidding, that's word for word. When did we just accept that big business needs to operate like the mafia? No longer are "fixers" limited to mob Dons, now everyone's gotta have one including the President of the United States. C'mon folks, this isn't normal. Not even close.

His supporters excuse anything his does, his opponents are moving on to beating him. Nothing he does matters for at least the next 8 months. Nothing.

Iowan wrote:

Tequila Cowboy wrote:The speed at which we have all now come to accept and normalize that the President of the United States has a "fixer" is astounding. Newspaper articles simply regurgitate it like it's no big deal "Mr. Cohen served for more than a decade as a trusted fixer for Mr. Trump" as an example from a NYT piece. I also saw one of the President's defenders on CNN yesterday say "There isn't a businessman in America that doesn't have a trusted fixer who's willing to get his hands dirty when it may be inappropriate for others in the organization to do so". Not kidding, that's word for word. When did we just accept that big business needs to operate like the mafia? No longer are "fixers" limited to mob Dons, now everyone's gotta have one including the President of the United States. C'mon folks, this isn't normal. Not even close.

His supporters excuse anything his does, his opponents are moving on to beating him. Nothing he does matters for at least the next 8 months. Nothing.

This isn't even about that though. We've just decided that it's standard operating procedure in business to have a "fixer". The line from the NYT piece just blew me me away. I mean by normalizing the language it essentially said "Oh, ho hum we'll just call him the President's fixer". I have not heard one commentator, one person at all really, challenge the idea that a fixer is normal.

I'm not sure I'm 100% with you. It could be that I'm reading too much into it, but I see those fixer references as implying or assuming"of course someone like Trump had a fixer in his private life and it was inevitable that the fixer would follow Trump into public life." Because, yes, "businessmen" like Trump DO have people like Cohen, but Trump was never a big businessman nor an ethical businessman and at this point it would be naive to think that he conducts the government's business any differently than he conducts his own [also note present tense there which itself would have been ground for outrage mere months ago]. Just to anticipate, while ethical businessmen might not fill Yankee Stadium, they are not nearly as rare as unicorns.

Tequila Cowboy wrote:

Iowan wrote:

Tequila Cowboy wrote:The speed at which we have all now come to accept and normalize that the President of the United States has a "fixer" is astounding. Newspaper articles simply regurgitate it like it's no big deal "Mr. Cohen served for more than a decade as a trusted fixer for Mr. Trump" as an example from a NYT piece. I also saw one of the President's defenders on CNN yesterday say "There isn't a businessman in America that doesn't have a trusted fixer who's willing to get his hands dirty when it may be inappropriate for others in the organization to do so". Not kidding, that's word for word. When did we just accept that big business needs to operate like the mafia? No longer are "fixers" limited to mob Dons, now everyone's gotta have one including the President of the United States. C'mon folks, this isn't normal. Not even close.

His supporters excuse anything his does, his opponents are moving on to beating him. Nothing he does matters for at least the next 8 months. Nothing.

This isn't even about that though. We've just decided that it's standard operating procedure in business to have a "fixer". The line from the NYT piece just blew me me away. I mean by normalizing the language it essentially said "Oh, ho hum we'll just call him the President's fixer". I have not heard one commentator, one person at all really, challenge the idea that a fixer is normal.

I think it does play into it, a bit. There's nothing normal about Trump's presidency. More than any other President we've ever had, his is a cult of personality and thus the traditional mores and ways of handling oneself in that tradition are out the window.

There's not really any point in challenging some of these behaviors, so I think people have come to the conclusion of "why waste the time?" There's an acceptance that this isn't the norm, or the standard, and continuing to discuss how out of whack it is isn't all that productive. Just my $.02.

Iowan wrote:I think it does play into it, a bit. There's nothing normal about Trump's presidency. More than any other President we've ever had, his is a cult of personality and thus the traditional mores and ways of handling oneself in that tradition are out the window.

There's not really any point in challenging some of these behaviors, so I think people have come to the conclusion of "why waste the time?" There's an acceptance that this isn't the norm, or the standard, and continuing to discuss how out of whack it is isn't all that productive. Just my $.02.

I could argue your point about ignoring the language and abnormality of it all, there's a New Yorker piece this week that does just that, but that wasn't what I was aiming for at all. It's not this idea that Trump has a fixer but rather that newspapers and TV news have just plain accepted the idea of fixer as just being part of the normal order of things. I don't know about you but I learned about the idea of fixers from gangster movies, there are kids out there right now that are going to learn about them from the news which lends that idea legitimacy. I honestly can't even blame this on Trump. He didn't talk about his "fixer" everyone else did. I mean completely separate from all this we all just fell into thinking that people calling the President, the last one of course, a "filthy Muslim terrorist" or his wife The First Lady a "dirty monkey" was just simply "talk". No that wasn't talk. Or how about the conservative talking point cum dogma that liberal were enemies of America? All of those things predated Trump. My overarching point was that over time as we've been presented with more and more absurd scenarios we just let them roll off our back and soon they're considered normal behavior. That's alarming and again it has very little to do with Trump.

But "fixers" (and their like) ARE normal in big business, and have been forever