Frothing at the mouth and hyperbole? Hardly. Are you miffed I called you out on spreading false accusations designed to invalidate an election result or something? Can you give one example?

More damage than Trump can do in two months?! Now who's hyperbolic? Please.

250000+- of us haven't survived 46 months. Over 1 million more have been utterly devastated physically and financially, many permanently.

Trump threw tradition out the window, not America. We are itching to get back to some traditional civility, rationality, and sanity.

No, there's 4 years of evidence indicating most republicans up to and including Moscow Mitch and Barr will support him until he fires or turns on them no matter what. The best we can hope for there is the system still being stronger than one flailing party, but it's certainly not as strong as it was 4 years ago.

Ok, how about zero chance he'll graciously concede or accept that he lost, he might concede that he's been cheated out of winning, but that's not a concession it's an accusation.

Where have you heard that before? Don't say Gore, he never said that although it was nearly true.

He will leave, it might be kicking and screaming like he said he would. It could conceivably be in the back of a cop car.

Everybody's singing the same song
It goes "tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight"
I never realized these artists thought so much about dying

But truth be told we all have the same end
Could make you cry, cry, cry, cry, cry
But I'm telling you
This is the best news you're getting all week

Oh sure it's ruling the airwaves
What remains of the airwaves
And we're frankly thankful for the market psychology you're hipping us to

And all the hits are saying the same thing
There's only tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight
Then life is finite
But shit, it feels like forever
It feels like forever

Oh is everybody feeling the same stuff?
We're all wild
Except for you
And you know who you are
This is a love song

And you're getting older
I promise you this; you're getting older
And there's improvements unless
You're such a winner
That the future's a nightmare
And there's nothing I can do
Nothing anyone can do about this

And oh, I'm offering you a chance to get even
But oh, you know very well the dialect of negation
Sure enemies haunt you with spit and derision
But friends are the ones who can put you in an exile
But that's not right

And you're too sharp to be used
Or you're too shocked from being used
By these bullying children of the fabulous
Raffling off limited edition shoes

And what's it you do again?
Oh I'm a reminder
The hobbled veteran of the disk shop inquisition
Set to parry the cocksure of men's sick filth
With my own late era middle-aged ramblings

Every lover favors the same things
It's all "touch me, touch me, touch me, touch me tonight"
We maybe realize what it is we need before we die

And luck is always better than skill at things
We're flying blind
Oh good gracious
I sound like my mom

But out of the little rooms and onto the streets
You've lost your internet and we've lost our memory
We had a paper trail that led to our secrets
But embarrassing pictures have now all been deleted
By versions of selves that we thought were the best ones
'Till versions of versions of others repeating
Come laughing at everything we thought was important
While still making mistakes that you thought you had learned from
And reasonable people know better than you
That cost in the long run but they don't know the short game
And terrible people know better than you
They're used and abused of the once so dear listener
So you will be badgered and taunted until death
You're missing a party that you'll never get over
You hate the idea that you're wasting your youth
That you stood in the background oh until you got older
But that's all lies
That's all lies

What an astoundingly gracious gentleman he is.

I want to see inside, where they're fighting over who gets to graciously let the other have the last doll.

@newtboy

not to butt my nose in...
ah who am i kidding..of course i am going to butt my nose in.

you and space are getting caught up on definitions.
neo-conservative which is a fairly new political philosophy from the 1960's by irving kristol,whose name you may recognize as bill-the bloody- kristol (weekly standard) father.

prior to neoconservatism was.../drum roll
neoliberalism.

the fundamental difference is what you alluded to newt,but in my opinion were far too gracious in your definition.
while neoconservatism is far more hawkish,seeing american and "manifest destiny" as her right,and being a global power has a right to use that power to serve her interests,even if that be way of military force.the ultimate goal is to spread american excellence to the world in the form of markets.we sell our awesome and they buy,and we extract what we need for our interests a.k.a business baby.

neoliberalism may be more "dovish" but the goals are the same:political and financial dominance.

and the results are very similar as well.
so while neoliberalism may use economic hitmen,the IMF and the GTO to impose the will of american buisiness,and the neoconservatives may rely on the military heavily..

countries are still stripped of their resources,their labor exploited and a starbucks on every corner.their sovereignty is more a suggestion than an actual respective entity.

both philosophies are abhorrent and destructive and cause incredible suffering....and death.

i am super high right now,so if i misread your guys conflict..please forgive.
if i read it right and helped..
you are welcome!

Thanks, once again for the promote! You've been awfully gracious the past few posts!

I'm as surprised as most everyone at how the election turned out. In the week or so leading up to election night, I considered the possibility that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, but not the other way around.

Still, as someone who thinks the electoral college is bullshit, consider this thing from all angles:

Hypothetical Possibility 1: At first, when I thought that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, I thought that would be a good thing going forward. Both sides would have been screwed out of a victory by the idiotic system in recent memory, which might push for bipartisan support to scrap it.

But thinking further ... I don't think that would have actually panned out. The GOP establishment wouldn't have seen that as "their" candidate getting screwed, they would have been happy. They might have had to pay lip service to the idea of reconsidering the electoral college to pander to angry Republican voters who felt cheated out of a Trump presidency, but they could easily have just left it at that and sat on the issue until apathy took over again.


Possibility 2: The likely reality. Trump will win by electoral votes but lose the popular vote, and that will stand. The Senate and House are both Republican controlled, and the Supreme Court will very likely swing further in that direction. Possibly a LOT.

That sounds terrible. And it definitely means that in the short term, there will be absolutely zero traction for anyone wanting to push the idea of getting rid of the electoral college. BUT -- it also sets up a gold-plated opportunity to see real, actual movement on that front in 2 years. Think Trump is going to be horrendous? Think GOP-controlled Legislature will be abysmal? Look on the bright side -- if those expectations are correct, the blowback in midterm elections won't be a "wave". It'll be a fuckin' tsunami. And that's what we need to have a shot at killing the electoral college.


Possibility 3: Faithless Elector rampage. You can argue, with some merit, that the electoral college was intended to prevent or safeguard against exactly the kind of situation that we are in now. And I'd love to see President Bernie myself. But what would actually result if enough electors swapped to make that happen?

First, NYTimes projects Trump getting 306 electoral votes. That would mean that 37 faithless electors would have to happen to flip the election. You have to go back more than 100 years to find an election where there has been more than 1 faithless elector. There has only been 1 election with more than 37 faithless electors, and that was in 1872 because the candidate died. So realistically, it would be close to impossible to pull this off. (all info from wikipedia)

But forget the odds and just assume that it did happen. I think that would be a strategically terrible idea for Democrats, liberals, etc. Trump won because enough people didn't like the prospect of President Hillary and/or actually wanted to see what Trump himself could do. In either case, his voters generally aren't going to give him a whole lot of leash to screw things up or fail to deliver on their expectations. It will be next to impossible for him to keep those swing people happy. If Trump is 1/10th as terrible as the average Democrat expects him to be, he will alienate all of those people in very short order.

But if faithless electors "stole" the presidency from him (and you know that's how it would be perceived)? Oh, man ... he'd effectively be a political martyr. The anger and backlash would likely be apocalyptic and/or lead to revolt. Worse than almost any realistic way that Trump himself might fuck things up as the President. Even if that was somehow avoided, which I tend to think would be impossible, whoever got installed as President would have the shortest leash of all time, and a massively hostile and motivated Legislature that they would be forced to attempt to work with. Better have some sacrificial lamb to put in there that has zero political future, and even then they would probably cause massive damage to their party by association when they inevitably fall.

No, I think the clear best option is to let Trump (and the GOP) dig his own grave over the next year or two, and then graciously ride the wave of comeuppance.

I remember watching an aging Ali being presented with the BBC Sports Personality of the Century award back in 2000. The Parkinson's was taking his toll and he struggled to accept the award and speak, but even then there were moments of that old Ali brilliance as he graciously accepted the award and said...

"Thank you. I think I'm gonna make a comeback"

RIP Ali, you were a goddamn legend.

Maybe the biker was right (if only to a certain extent, as was pointed out above), but when the officer conceded the point and moved on, the biker should have been somewhat gracious. His gloating and goading is no better than the officer's ignorance, and in a society where we're trying to encourage cops to be respectful to people, those people need to be just as respectful to the cops. His poor attitude is why I'm downvoting this. It does not deserve the attention nor the views.

I met him outside the theater in Denver when he was in "The Elephant Man" in 1980. He signed autographs and said a few words into my tape recorder as a greeting to my family. He was very gracious. He was also the first one I ever saw wearing a Sony Walkman at that time, that was right before it became hugely popular.

Some bits it glosses over :

Puppet dictatorship is basically a description of every US and Soviet backed b-list nation on earth back then. The fact that it's a puppet state shouldn't be used to imply anything.
For example, the U.S.S.R. had modernization programs for its satellite states, building power plants, roads, hospitals, universities, etc, in an attempt to fast forward development and catch up with the west asap. They also did this while spouting secular rhetoric.
In a general attempt to undermine soviet efforts (*both sides tried to contain each other's influence world wide), the U.S. looked for any groups within the U.S.S.R. satellite nations that would be an 'in' for U.S. power/influence. For Afghanistan, this was the people most offended by the U.S.S.R.'s [secular] agenda, and most likely to make good on foreign anti-soviet backing - the religious Jihadists. Everyone knew very well what it would mean for the local people if Jihadists took over Afghanistan - but at the time, the soviets were considered a bigger problem than Jihadists (possibility of nuclear annihilation), so better to have Jihadists in power than soviets.

Also, Assad's release of prisoners was officially part of an amnesty for political prisoners - something the people and foreign groups were asking for.
Saying that Assad tolerated AQ or Isis is misleading. These groups gained power during the Arab spring, when a large portion of the civilian population wanted a new government, but lacked the military power to force change. Militants stepped into the situation by /graciously/ offering their military strength, in exchange for economic/resource/political support to help make it happen. After a short while, these groups coopted the entire effort against Assad. Once they were established, they simply put the people under their boot, effectively replacing Assad with something even worse within the regions they held. Assad lacked/lacks the military power and support to expel the militant groups, so they fight to a stalemate. But a stalemate is by no means tolerance.
One similarity that Syria has to Afghanistan, is that the anti-government kernel within the population that birthed the revolt, did so for anti-secular reasons. In Syria's case, it was in large part people from the region that had earlier attempted an Islamist uprising during Assad's father's reign (which was put down by the government, culminating in the 'hama massacre', leaving some intense anti-government sentiment in the region).
In any case, the available choices for power in Syria are 'political dictatorship' or 'religious dictatorship'. Whoever wins, regular people lose. It's not as if regular people have the arms necessary to force anyone to listen to them. Anyone with any brains or initiative knows that their best option is neither, so they leave (hence all the refugees).

The video also omits the ambiguous alliances in the region. Early on, you had the UAE, Saudis, and Turks supporting ISIS - because an enemy of your enemy is your friend. It wasn't until ISIS started to encroach on them that they tempered their support. Turkey remains ambiguous, by some accounts being the gateway/laundromat for ISIS oil sales... because ISIS is a solution to the 'Kurdish problem' for Turkey.
If you watch some of the VICE documentaries, you can see interviews where locals on the Turkish border say that militants and arms cross form Turkey into Syria to join ISIS every night.
Then you have countries like Iran and Syria fighting ISIS, but by official accounts these countries are the west's enemy. Recently, French leadership (after the Paris bombings) has stated that they are done playing politics, and just want to get rid of ISIS in the most practical manner possible, and are willing to work with Russia and Assad to do it.

It's worth noting that ISIS' main enemy/target is 'non Sunni Islam'. U.S./Europe tend to only mention ISIS attacks on their persons/places, and it leaves western people thinking that ISIS is against the west - but in fact the west is merely an afterthought for ISIS. For every one attack on a western asset/person, there are countless attacks on Shia, etc.

-scheherazade

now what did i do to deserve such a generous gift hmmm?
thank you my friend.very gracious of you.

Consider my error a gracious gesture to you insignificant being. In the grand scheme of things they (and you) don't matter.

Go hug a tree or save a polar bear. Better yet save a child from abortion.

dag yo, thanks for making the only site that I visit once a day... other than netflix and, well, maybe xhamster or pornhub or -- what is that, xvideos? It's some porn site.

You have most graciously helped mankind in its quest to see all of the things. Except snuff and cp -- and I know that, however it must pain you, you made the right decision on that one.

All hail dag, the snuff and cp king! Wait no, anti snuff and anti cp. Wait... why am I typing this and not deleting the text? What's going on -- I'm thinking and it's typing oh my god I've been sifted

BEWARE THE SIFT!! BEWARE!!!

IT HAS BECOME SELF AWARE AND IS UPLOADING OUR SOULS!!!!!!!!

ARE YOU SO PROUD NOW HUH?! HUH! NOW THAT YOUR PRECIOUS CREATION IS TREATING PEOPLE LIKE THE NAZIS TREATED THE JETS... I MEAN NAZIS TREATED THE JETS. JETS CELEBRATE CHAWNICKA. OH MY GOD MY UPLOADED BRAIN HAS BEEN UPLOADED WITH GOOGLE'S WORTHLESS ANDROID AUTOCORRECT. I TYPED JETS WRONG ONE TIME AND NOW I'LL FOREVER REMEMBER THAT THE JETS ARE A FOOTBALL TEAM OR AN AIRCRAFT. WHO KNOWS, MAYBE AFTER 1,000 YEARS OF LIVING AS AN ONLINE ENTITY MAYBE I'LL BELIEVE JESUS WAS IN THE JEWS...

THA KS A LOB ASSWHOLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1