I almost his admire his Martin Shkreli dedication to the troll.
I almost his admire his Martin Shkreli dedication to the troll.
You don't PLAN to shut down the government in order to barter for an unrelated concession. Very soon, we will begin to unravel just how damaging this shutdown has been on every damaging level. It will seem preposterous in the wake of that tragic revelation.
Many of Trump's super fans who aren't being directly impacted by the shut down in an immediate way still think it doesn't really matter, because they're a bunch of solipsistic idiot dipshits. They're due for a "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh wow" moment.
Trump thinks he can shut the government down on a whim when he doesn't get his way, and then open it up when the public opinion goes sour? He's a fucking idiot. In his mind (and I hate that I think I 'get him' a little better now), he thinks that this temporary restart serves two purposes: 1. It will fix the looming fallout of negative opinion from his supporters immediately hurt by it. 2. By the time he gets around to trying to do it again, he'll "have a better idea of what it actually entails to do this sort of thing, and he'll be starting again at square one; instead of trying to dig himself out of a hole, he thinks he'll be able to reframe the public opinion of this and wind up being able to blame the democrats this time successfully... he really thinks his only mistake here was gaffing about OWNING it before doing it.
What he doesn't realize is that he has NO fucking idea what he's doing. Remember, he actually thought shutting down the government was going to SAVE money - he thought it was going to put money in coffers that could be allocated to wall funding... he was so fucking ignorant about this that he thought there'd be "shutdown money."
Unpaid furloughed scientist compiles data with free time and wins Twitter:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...687777280.html
I don't think Trump will want to go through another shutdown. He seems bummed out by this whole experience. His "I wish people would just listen to me" tweet yesterday sounded so pathetic. This whole thing has been demoralizing and terrible for his approval rating. It will be ten times worse for him if he drags us through this pointless slog a second time. I think he's gonna pull the trigger on the emergency thing.
Yesterday was fun!
Also...
Apparently Roger Stone has Nixon's face tattood onto his back?
These people are sad as hell, they would happily sacrifice their pay for Trump.
Bunch of suckers.
"Hubububububuut the democrats." Hubububuhow about you folks grow a brain?
Yeah, regarding those "illegal immigrants" and taxes ...
The reality is far different. Immigrants who are authorized to work in the United States pay the same taxes as US citizens. And, contrary to the persistent myth, undocumented immigrants do in fact pay taxes too. Millions of undocumented immigrants file tax returns each year, and they are paying taxes for benefits they can’t even use.
The best estimates come from research by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, DC, think tank, which suggests that about half of undocumented workers in the United States file income tax returns. The most recent IRS data, from 2015, shows that the agency received 4.4 million income tax returns from workers who don’t have Social Security numbers, which includes a large number of undocumented immigrants. That year, they paid $23.6 billion in income taxes.
Those undocumented workers paid taxes for benefits they can’t even use, like Social Security and Medicare. They also aren’t eligible for benefits like the earned income tax credit. But the IRS still expects unauthorized immigrants to file their taxes, and many of them do so.
Filing taxes helps immigrants create a paper trail to show when they entered the country and how long they’ve been contributing tax dollars. Many are hoping it will help them get legal status one day. That has happened in past reform efforts, and one of the first requirements is usually to prove that a person has been paying taxes. That was the case for the undocumented youth granted temporary work permits under President Obama’s deportation relief program, known as DACA.
OMG, this dude takes a highlighter pen to PDFs of the Stone indictment on Twitter and it’s hilarious and illuminating:
https://twitter.com/baratunde/status...600030721?s=21
heard that... I still refuse to believe it. It's too insane.
i saw it on maddow last week (maybe earlier this week, its been a long week). i have no idea how the US president would casually take a movie plot and turn it into "facts" but this is where we're at. I'm glad people noticed. anyone want to guess what movies we'll see in the state of the union address?
next, we're going to hear about how we need to build a wall because the Mexicans are trying to steal our Unobtanium.
As if bringing Nazi's back wasn't enough, we can now add the cold war to the list of things we have already dealt with that this president has brought back.
Welcome back Cold War!
In other news, someone shared a yearbook page of Democratic Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam from college that shows that he was either in blackface or a KKK hood. Julian Castro has called on him to resign and I agree with that. It's bad behavior and it's unacceptable.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/polit...oto/index.html
yes, though, I'd like us to know whether he's the guy in blackface or the klan hat. General curiosity really. There's also (unlikely acceptable) explanations for this sort of "joke," but I'd still like to hear em. Maybe I just want to hear a grown man admit that what he did when he was young and ignorant was wrong, and then agree to resign.
If he's just going to lie needlessly on his way out the door, then he's just as disgusting as the commander in chief.
He's gotta go for that. He also had a nickname of "Coonman" listed for himself in that yearbook. Not a good look either. This shit happened in 1984, so that is not nearly old enough for him to try and trot out that bullshit excuse either.
His Lt. Governor is a Dem (hopefully less of a centrist/almost Republican than Northam is), so no harm there if he goes. I'll tell you what though....if a special election had to be called or the next in succession was a Republican, I would go against my better judgement and tell him to stay. These right wing assholes play dirty every time, and it's time the left cares more about their own power too. Because you can bet there's no way a Republican governor would resign under these charges (was honestly surprised the underling guy in Florida just resigned for his Katrina blackface costume). Luckily that's not the case here (got lucky with the Franken thing too), so yeah he needs to resign. I imagine he'll try to wait out the weekend, see if it dies down and try and ride it out. If more and more high profile Dems call for him to resign, and something big in the news cycle doesn't come along to bury this, he'll go. Virginia is too important a state to let this prick drag it down.
He's so dumb. You have to know public information like this is gonna get out. He should have found a way to get out in front of this. Bring it up yourself somehow and apologize. Fall on your sword. Instead he hoped against hope no one would find it. As if Northam & his campaign people never heard of "oppo research" before. That former Breitbart guy found this, sat on it, and sprung it just now as this supposedly controversial (not controversial at all if you actually care about women) abortion bill comes up in VA, probably in the hopes that this would somehow help kill it maybe?
What do you all think is worse for him? The blackface or the klan costume? it's honestly a tough call.
Last edited by bobbie solo; 02-01-2019 at 11:56 PM.
Now the VA governor is claiming it's not him in the picture, despite him apologizing for it yesterday. This at the same time he's admitting to darkening his skin for an MJ Halloween costume at some point in the past too. Genius move. This should all work out really well for him.
Here, he refuses to shake a black opponent’s hand:
This college yearbook shit happened a long time ago, but it’s still reprehensible. I can’t imagine ever AGREEING to having that on your yearbook page as a “joke,” even if you weren’t wearing the KKK hood or the blackface? IT’S STILL ON YOUR COLLEGE YEARBOOK PAGE!! It represents YOU! It’s THE most racist shit POSSIBLE.
He must resign, he’s a piece of shit. Take Steve King with him.
Last edited by allegro; 02-03-2019 at 12:02 AM.
Agreed that refusing to shake his opponent hand is extremely telling of who he is. To me the real problem is people still voted him in after that. That’s why he doesn’t feel the need to resign. His voters support him.
I think without the photo and admission of donning blackface to impersonate Michael Jackson... without all that, the refusal to shake hands there doesn’t immediately scream racism. In light of the other evidence though...
His denial was so weird too. “That’s not me in the photo, but it totally reminds me of another time I wore blackface...”
and in the middle of this bullshit, he almost takes up a reporter’s challenge to demonstrate his mastery of the fucking moonwalk. His wife had to stop him and remind him this might not be the time and place for that. Who IS this guy?!?!
There's apparently talk of impeaching him.
While I agree he's got to go, impeaching someone for something that happened 30 years before he was in office seems like an abuse of impeachment.
EDITED TO ADD: It's likely also (awful) constitutionally protected speech.
Last edited by binaryhermit; 02-03-2019 at 10:58 AM.
I think impeachment would require something more in the lines of a criminal charge; this is disgraceful and awful, but it’s not illegally unethical.
Edit: A state ethics violation (meaning violating a state statute re ethics) would be something more like bribery, extortion, campaign finance violations, etc.
Last edited by allegro; 02-03-2019 at 11:46 PM.
I would argue it is unethical, but not in a "illegal" way. Legal doesn't necessarily mean ethical and illegal doesn't necessarily mean unethical.
I mean, I find working against gay rights unethical. But it's not illegal necessarily.
Impeach him for having the clueless WTF-all to think a conference discussing his racism would be a good forum for him to smile and moonwalk.
That's insane, right? You can impeach for insanity? Right? RIGHT!?!!?!