CatBus

corellian77 said:

Just so I’m clear on how to present a logical argument in this thread:

Step 1: make a claim
Step 2: have said claim refuted
Step 3: throw personal insults
Step 4: get called out on said insults
Step 5: deny insults were made
Step 6: get asked to rationalize my comments
Step 7: avoid answering
Step 8: 😃

Am I doing it right?

You can also skip straight from Step 1 to Step 8 by placing the smiley on your claim, which means you’re just joking around and you don’t actually believe what you’re posting. It does have the benefit of skipping Steps 2-7, which can be tedious. But overuse on the same type of content over & over could lead to accusations of being disingenuous.

TV’s Frink said:

CatBus said:

you’d have no idea what they really think.

But isn’t that already the case?

Or is not understanding and not knowing two different things?

Snark tag fail. I’ll report it to Markdown-it.

TV’s Frink said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

What Trump supporters in this thread?

The Trump supporters in this thread have opted not to identify themselves.

Does claiming you aren’t one when you clearly are one count as not identifying yourself?

Yep.

But just because someone posts nothing but right-wing spin, conspiracy theories, and outright propaganda doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a Trump supporter. For example, they could post a disclaimer, say they’re a big Angela Davis fan, and then you’d have no idea what they really think.

later,
team trumpsupporter

Warbler said:

What Trump supporters in this thread?

The Trump supporters in this thread have opted not to identify themselves. Some don’t post very frequently.

In a serious reply to darth_ender, I think my gripe with the Republican Party prior to the rise of Trump was not that Republicans were badly-educated, it was that there was an anti-intellectual bent even among some undeniably well-educated Republicans (there’s always been that element in American politics, it’s moved back and forth between parties, and it’s not exclusively Republican even today). Lack of expertise/knowledge/experience was seen as a net positive. That is simply a problem. It leads to… well, it leads to now.

I miss Bush I, really I do. Not that I really agreed with the man on very much, but he didn’t see ignorance as a virtue, and that’s the basis of a decent political system. I feel similarly about Romney (and it gives me something resembling hope that he outpolled Trump, even if he lost).

EDIT: To be clear, I also have problems with Republicans post-Trump, but I didn’t elaborate on that because I think we’re clearly in agreement.

TV’s Frink said:

Tyrphanax said:

The good news about this whole Mensch/Taylor thing is that either they found something huge or we’ll never hear any more predictions from them again. Their entire credibility is riding on this call.

What/who?

Don’t go there. Louise Mensch is to Bernie fans as Zerohedge is to Trump fans. Storylines their audience wants to believe so much they ignore the shoddy “journalism” behind them. It’s speculative fiction at best. And if one of her “scoops” turns out by sheer coincidence to be true, she’ll be vindicated–rather than just having proved the stopped clock twice a day metaphor.

It’d be nice to think the right had a monopoly on this sort of thing, but they don’t. We have our share of cranks on the left too, they’re just not as well-funded.

Tyrphanax said:

The good news about this whole Mensch/Taylor thing is that either they found something huge or we’ll never hear any more predictions from them again. Their entire credibility is riding on this call.

Yeah, we have enough fact-free sources in this thread without bringing Mensch into the mix. The less we hear from that front, the better.

Nobody’s replied to you, Mike, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t heard you. There’s just not much we can offer to help, at least me. But we are listening.

People, and by that I suppose I mean nearly everyone, just don’t understand mental illness at a fundamental level. People suffering from it, living with those suffering from it, and pretty much everyone they encounter in their daily lives. They wish for magic wands that can make it go away–medications that are “cures” rather than “managers”, psychotropic drugs without any side-effects, drugs that always work the same way for everyone at every time, unicorn and rainbow stuff. And why shouldn’t they wish for that? Mental illness really is scary. Your mom wants to wave a wand and have her smiling son back, no medicines, no side-effects. And shit, man, it sounds like you’d like that too. You’re just a little closer to the truth of the daily struggle than she is.

I wouldn’t begrudge people for wishing for things that are never going to happen–it’s a coping mechanism. Not a great one, I agree, but that’s what it is. Explaining the experience of having mental illness to someone else is a Herculean task. But it’s your family. Even if you don’t get it across, it’s worth repeated attempts.

Do your best. It’s the most any of us can hope to do. I can also say if it helps that cracked faith still manages to work pretty well sometimes, although it works differently than the pre-cracked variety.

So I know Rome is burning and all, but does it make me a bad person if I giggle a little bit every time I see a headline that says something about Trump taking on the leakers? I guess he’s concerned they may show people who Number One works for.

TV’s Frink said:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/05/12/trump_accuses_trump_of_surveilling_trump_in_tapes_tweet.html

It Appears That Trump May Have Just Falsely Accused Himself of Wiretapping Himself

Amazing.

Naw, you’re not seeing the other conspiracy shoe dropping. Trump said “tapes” in quotes, just like “wiretapp”. Meaning, Trump wasn’t recording the Trump/Comey discussion–Obama was. That’s right, Obama’s sitting on a pile of evidence that could not only implicate Obama in criminal wrongdoing, but would also clear Trump of all wrongdoing as well (retroactive to the Trump University fraud suit even). Trump surrogates will take to the airwaves demanding Obama turn over the tapes that show what’s really going on with the Comey firing. Obama will say they’re all nuts, and that just proves he’s hiding something.

For the third act, Sessions will subpoena Obama for the tapes, Obama will say there aren’t any, and they’ll try to get him on obstruction for failing to comply with the subpoena.

TV’s Frink said:

I wonder how many Democrats would be happy to see both Trump and Comey prosecuted.

All of them?

As long as the charges were legit and they were given a fair trial, I think Democrats would be happy to see anyone prosecuted. It’s part of their “soft on crime” schtick to have those two preconditions, though.

Lawrence Tribe, constitutional law professor at Harvard said something interesting: By claiming Comey had told him that the FBI wasn’t investigating him, Trump waived executive privilege with regard to Trump/Comey exchanges.

Samuel Buell, law professor at Duke (and former federal prosecutor), said that while it’s ambiguous at the moment if firing Comey qualifies as obstruction of justice, threatening him later on Twitter makes the case for obstruction much clearer.

So basically: All the levers of power are Trump’s to lose, so keep tweeting!

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

Jetrell Fo said:
I am not refuting your articles so I ask that you not refute what I saw before the briefing took place.

I’m starting to get it… it’s an entirely new logic system.

Ben: That’s no error. It’s a logic system.

Han: It’s too inconsistent to be a logic system.

Luke: I have a bad feeling about this.

Ben: Turn the conversation around.

Han: Yeah. I think you’re right. Full reverse. SilverWook, lock the thread!

Han: SilverWook, lock the thread!

Luke: Why are we still discussing this?

Han: We’re caught in a justification loop! It’s pulling us in!

Luke: There’s gotta be something you can do!

Han: There’s nothing I can do about it, kid. There’s someone wrong on the Internet. They’re not going to get me without a fight.

Ben: You can’t win. But you can ignore.

TV’s Frink said:

CatBus said:

the aging Gen-X dad who still wears his hipster clothes

Well…I don’t own hipster clothes, but otherwise that’s spot on.

That makes you Mom.

TV’s Frink said:

CatBus said:

Just like Thanksgiving with the folks.

Dammit, now I’m hungry.

Who am I at the table?

I wanna be the old crotchety woman who had a pony back in the old country.

I’m not naming names, but we’ve got the aging Gen-X dad who still wears his hipster clothes, we’ve got Mom who likes dad well enough but kinda thinks he’d make a much better point if he wasn’t wearing an old ratty Black Sabbath T-Shirt and waving a drumstick. Liesl the exchange student who thinks maybe she got placed with the wrong family but is too polite to bring it up. And Uncle Vinnie, who swears he’s just as liberal as the next guy, but he’s checked all three Internets AND Fox News and Obama is definitely a Muslim what’s so hard to understand about that?!?

Just like Thanksgiving with the folks.

Dammit, now I’m hungry.

Back in the early days of the Obama administration someone paid for a bunch of billboards with nothing but an image of George W Bush’s smiling face and the words “Miss Me Yet?” At the time, interpreted as “You could be taken back to the Bush years”, it felt like a threat. I actually had a hard time looking at it, the menace of it eliciting such a visceral response from me.

Now, I’ve got an answer. Yes, yes I do miss you, very much even. But the billboard is long gone.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-the-fbi-reels-candidates-emerge-to-succeed-james-comey-1494459279

IMO the Wall Street Journal kinda misses the point. The “three denials” statement was never to be taken literally, it was allegorical. Comey is Peter, see? It all works into the revised Testament.

There’s nothing left to discredit. This was more of a display of impunity than obstruction of justice (although it was that as well). Like the man himself said, he could shoot a guy on 5th Avenue–even today, wouldn’t change a thing. Spicer would say the guy installed a camera in Trump’s microwave and needed killing, the media would report “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, here’s both sides”, McConnell would say we need to let the Senate investigation into the microwave tampering scandal proceed for a few more years before jumping to any conclusions, and we’d move on to the next scandal.

Warbler said:

doubleofive said:

Jetrell Fo said:

I’m glad that you see it so simply and fairly because that is exactly what it is not.

He thanked the man for not investigating him while firing him for investigating something he was convinced was worth jailing Hillary over.

He fired him for investigating Hillary? Why? Is it because he didn’t enough on Hillary to satisfy Trump?

Well, the only reasons we have been given are the ones in relevant documents. We have the official announcement which says he was fired over Emailghazi–it’s unclear if it was because he acted unprofessionally or because he didn’t act unprofessionally enough. And we have an internal memo which says Trump had decided to fire Comey a while ago and asked the AG’s office to come up with a pretext, which was presumably later decided to be Emailgazi. Other than that, all you have is speculation. Certainly a lot of that speculation seems more credible than the official announcement.

TV’s Frink said:

I personally don’t care if it’s an ultimate box set or a stand-alone or it comes attached to the back of an emu. I just want it.

I dunno, man. If you have to dig it out from under Bill Cosby, I’ll pass.

Just a reminder to the kids out there that when it came time to impeach Nixon, a majority of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted against all of the proposed articles of impeachment. If not for the Democratic majority, the articles of impeachment would never have made it out of committee (if indeed they were even considered), and he may not have resigned at all.

NeverarGreat said:

I’m glad there isn’t an ongoing Trump/Russia investigation or this firing would look reaaaaalllly suspicious.

The masters of subtlety at the Russian state news agency just tweeted: Белый дом подтвердил, что у Трампа нет ни бизнеса, ни связей с Россией

Roughly: The White House confirmed that Trump has neither business nor other links to Russia

Well that plus the Comey firing settles it, then.

Ryan McAvoy said:

CatBus said:

Well… replacements?

Just imagine the worst and least qualified possible candidate. It’ll be him/her.

Not only that, but the demotion that comes with accepting the job would make Pence President.

Well… replacements? My serious money is on Giuliani. My God-I-wish-I-could-be-absolutely-certain-this-wasn’t-a-possibility money is on Flynn. At some point the pretense doesn’t serve a purpose anymore and just gets in the way.