*promote *quality

I'm really amazed at the quality of the conversation this particular event has provoked. This is one of my favorites.

Makes me wonder what impact it'll have on the tourism industry.

AFAIK it's already dropped off in the Trump era, but all you need is a reminder to everyone that Hawaii is easily in NK's range and Trump loves nothing more than to try and provoke a reaction... ANY reaction.

Very poorly named video of an extremely informative and interesting presentation. I don't have the chops to know whether this individual can back up all his assertions, but a very thought provoking discussion

$40-$60 million more in undisclosed payments to Manafort surfaced last week....but Trump has nothing to do with the Trump for president campaign, does he?....and did I say collusion, or even Trump? Nope, but a guilty conscience hears accusations that never happened.
The Russians today are doing exactly what you do, pretending to be right wing nutjobs on left leaning sites, and lefty snowflakes on right leaning sites, pushing the narrative to all that the other guy is a total nut by making ridiculous, ignorant claims like you do. If you aren't being paid by Putin, you're working for him for free.

Jesus fucking Christ, Bob. Can you be more deluded and ignorant? Once again, your Russian text book of American history is 100% ass backwards.

Southern strategy: In American politics, the southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3] As the Civil Rights Movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South to the Republican Party that had traditionally supported the Democratic Party.[4] It also helped push the Republican Party much more to the right.[4]
Not Nixon courting the black vote.

Troll: Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion,[3] often for the troll's amusement.
Definitely you, Dimitri. It's almost time to have lucky investigate your ip address to see if you're in Kiev or Moscow.

The family itself doesn't generally put boots on the ground on location to do the provoking (at least not all together); that's for the pawns of their "congregation".

Hitting their lair itself might work, but since I'm arguing that their entire modus operandi revolves around intentionally provoking violence against them, I'd wager that they expect that such an attack may well happen some day and also intentionally avoid all being together in the same physical location.

I fully concur that it is enjoyable to contemplate, though.

Very analogous to Westboro Baptist "church" stooges. They (ab)use their constitutionally protected rights to free speech to say the most offensive and provocative crap that they can come up with, specifically with the intention to incite a (violent) reaction against them. Why? Because pretty much the entire Phelps family are lawyers, and they know that they can generally win any assault case that they can provoke people into. All that hate they spew boils down to a stupid, petty moneymaking scam.

Is the Seattle Nazi that devious and cunning? I doubt it. Probably just a crazy / fucked up guy, as Maher said. That doesn't excuse his fuckwittery, but it does reinforce Maher's argument that punching the guy is NOT the best response.

Morello is awesome, with RATM and Audioslave, and now Prophets of Rage, etc. But he's dead wrong on this issue, and comes across as a bit of an "internet tough guy". Outside of just ignoring them, I kinda think the only way to one-up these people is to know the law, what constitutes assault etc., and essentially beat them at their own game (ie. provoke them into doing something to you). On the other hand, there's something to be said for using using passive-aggressive snark to mock / humiliate them in a nonviolent way, ala the Foo Fighters:

Are you for real?

Do you not see that you are literally gaslighting by attempting to paint an individual, who organized a stunt aimed at intimidating another person in public, as the victim of the incident?

I don't even give a shit about gamergate or the feminism/anti-feminism celebrity battle that you, clearly, have taken a side on. I don't support anyone involved because all of the participants appear to be acting like asshats. But any objective viewer can see that one side made a bold move to aggressively provoke an opponent and succeeded in their goal of getting a response. It was bullying and abusive and it illicited an undignified response.

Let me reiterate, I am not your opposition in your crazy war. But I have to point out that it is a perplexing bit of mental acrobatics for you to attempt to perpetuate a false reality by accusing an intended victim of trying to perpetuate a false reality.

That's a clown move and if you had any integrity you would pause a moment for a little self examination.

I see, that was both unclear and unadvisable....but I'll play along.....
I think you misunderstand, they want reparations for a past theft that was never recouped or returned. The Nazis returned what they stole and paid dearly for their crimes, and they admit and have shame for the crimes of their nation/countrymen. Slave owners couldn't return the lost lives, families, property, or cultures, and largely didn't even try to pay compensation, and they and their descendants have acted like releasing the slaves WAS reparation AND just punishment for the kidnappers/slavers, so any further complaint is unjustified.

The sins of the father are the father's, but if the son takes the money dad stole and lives on it, knowing it's stolen, then the son is complicit. If my dad kidnaps your child and rapes it to death, and makes a fortune selling tickets to the event, I'm a complicit monster if I live on that money instead of giving it to you even if I wasn't born when he did it....no?

It's largely because the crimes have never been addressed and also because the victims are still, to this day, harassed and attacked as if they were the kidnappers rather than the victims.
If your mother was kidnapped, worked to death, and you were shunned and denied because of it, and so were your children and grandchildren, would you not want your great grandchildren to try to get justice for her from the people whose wealth was created by selling people like her? Would you not hold a grudge against them?

Considering the wrath provoked by niggling perceived slights against the right, can you even imagine how you and they would react if positions were reversed? I think they would demand deportation of the descendants of slave owners and forfeiture of all their assets, judging from recent behavior.

Well put. Spreading the "punch a Nazi" message is counterproductive. You don't need to encourage more people to hate Nazis. You need to stop making others feel physically threatened. All that will accomplish is provoke sympathy for those being attacked, and grow their numbers.

All the more necessary for a louder horn and some laws that give right of way to military vehicles just like the police/fire/ambulance services everywhere, at least that gives them immunity to damages incurred to all those vehicles and the license to practice that type of necessary "ass-hat-sery" without provoking too much scorn.

Granted, the loud horn shouldn't be a unique sounding horn, so as not to give away your location to attackers.

How a majority of those cars didn't yield makes me believe the absence of those laws and/or etiquette.

It's not a joke. It's hypocritical, but quite serious. Because they focus on the fact that he appears to be under Putin's control does not mean they ignore his myriad of other faults....proven by the near weekly protests against his policies.

Jesus Christ...they aren't upset the he wants to normalize relations with Russia, they're upset that he seems to be a Russian agent, as do many of his cabinet, and they fear he'll do things to benefit them instead of actually working for America.
People are upset at his people illegally, treasonously 'talking' to the Russians about removing sanctions and other subversions of established federal policy and law before they were in power and bold faced lying about it under oath and publicly uncountable times, not for having normal or legal diplomatic discussions. They won't accept it when the next president takes control on Nov. 8 and reverses their policies before taking office.

The emails themselves had no new information, it was the implication that they did, and that the investigation was still actively under way that hurt her. The media absolutely covered that, what are they talking about?

It's not about escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia, it's about abandoning normal policy and giving Russia what they want, carte Blanche to expand and reform the USSR.

I guess they forgot that Russia is building it's military on it's borders and expanding it's territories into our allies countries, and that's why NATO moved, to protect our allies, not to provoke poor little innocent Russia. Just fucking duh.

They aren't necessarily shills for Russia, they are, however, being shills for Trump, and Chomsky now seems to be moving in that direction based on this video. This is the most idiotic thing I've heard from Chomsky, as it completely ignores reality and reason to lambast people for being worried their president may be (as all evidence indicates he is) an agent for one of our worst enemies.

Sorry Chomsky, big fail.

Trump has sunk political discourse to new lows, I agree. But I think she'd suffer worse slings and arrows than "Pocahontas" no matter who her opponent is. That's the game and it always has been. She's got to "man up" and anticipate a certain amount of mud being slung her way. Hillary Clinton, for all her faults, would never be caught unaware by a provoking one-liner like that.

Or as another example, think about Bernie Sanders, in the Democratic primary. From his own party; not yet from archfiend Trump. Sanders' own party called him a kook, didn't take him seriously, and harped on the "socialist" charge that they presumed would be a rallying standard against him for Republicans, etc. But I don't remember him showing any discomfort with that or letting on that it was getting to him.


I really do like Warren, but it is of paramount importance for any Presidential candidate to develop a thick enough skin to weather the smear campaign that is guaranteed to be headed their way. And this small throwaway interview isn't a sign that she can't get there, but it is a sign that she's still got plenty of work to do if she has those aspirations. Based on that, at this point I'd feel better if Sanders was the heir apparent (although that seems very unlikely given the current heads-up-asses state of the DNC). But Warren definitely has plenty of time to get to where she needs to be.

Some people seem to think this was a false flag operation (the supposed chemical attack and the reasoning behind the US response)
Apparently its a very complicated sunni -shia - iran - saudi- yemen situation about an oil pipeline that will cut russia out of the loop. They also say Trump is more concerned about drawing attention away from his Russian treason and recklessly provoking the russians for his own domestic survival. A total all round shit show in other words.

@Payback: Forgot to say, because I was on a Jean-Pierre Jeunet rant, but David Fincher directed Alien 3, so *thumbs up* -- it wasn't that boring of a film, with some strange elements of a monastic lifestyle among criminals. I thought it was more thought provoking than Prometheus.