US Politics

Ha!

https://www.gq.com/story/jussie-smollett-hate-crime

I don't know the actor, apparently he's well known out there. Could have been targeted because of that, maybe not. Either way, how far away from a news report of an actual lynching are we?

Horrific.

I only just heard about the ‘prayer mats at the border’ statement. It's crazy.
20 years ago that statement alone would be the subject of several PhD theses. And quite possibly a celebrated book by a cool French thinker.

These days such things just passes by in an instant before they're lost again into the constant shit blizzard.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/us/politics/fed-interest-rate.html

“My colleagues and I have one overarching goal: To sustain the economic expansion,”

So much for counter-cyclical policy eh

Does anyone have a link/remember the article about Trump's lack of preparedness before entering the WH?

Struggling to find it via google or in thread.

The Michael Lewis one spoke how he messed up his transition period:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/27/this-guy-doesnt-know-anything-the-inside-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team

Reagan told nearly as many porkies as Trump. He just got away with it more because of the widespread delusion that he was a nice guy.

The drivel he's been spouting about the border, prayer mats, terrorists, cars that can't be caught and women with their mouths taped shut are all scenes from the Sicario sequel

I watch Sicario 2 over the weekend, did Trump think it was a documentary or something!

Reagan told nearly as many porkies as Trump.

His porkies is much more coherent than Trump tho.

cheers!

I wasn't really around then, but from people who were wasn't he also a joke in many peoples' eyes?

Film-star-trade-unionist-republican-war-monger-simpleton?

IMO it was the "fact" that he ended the cold war which defined his legacy as a +ive.

He was infinitely more charismatic though.

He was seen as a joke over here, not over there. Over there, liberals/left didn't find him funny. He put a folksy gloss on some really shitty things.

Almost anybody looks good next to Trump. I guess you could say Reagan conned blue collar America into feeling optimistic about the neolib economics that were going to impoverish them, whereas Trump is pumping them up with hate to distract them from the same thing. Slight improvement on that count, except that it helped get us here.

Can defo imagine that.

Him and Nancy did make a homely couple.

Watched half of Get me Roger Stone on Saturday night, Narcissistic nutcase yes, though I struggled to reach the conclusion this was a guy who would sell his country to the Russians.

As for Manafort, odd seeing him being a talking head on a 2016 documentary with the reality that he's now a guy who'll die is prison or get butchered by an oligarchs henchmen.

Doc: Then tell me future boy, who's President of the United States in 1985?

Marty: Ronald Reagan.

Doc: (Increasingly agitated and bewildered) Ronald Reagan!? The actor!? And who's Vice President? Jerry Lewis? (Shouting) And I suppose Jane Wyman is First Lady and Jack Benny is Secretary of the Treasury. Argh!

Marty: Doc, ya gotta listen to me.

Doc: I've had enough practical jokes one evening, good night future boy!

I think Reagan was and is largely viewed with skepticism and contempt by the left in the US but he's certainly revered by the right. He was perhaps given a free pass by the media because of the nearly successful assassination attempt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su0Hvt6hTmA

Trump was not supposed to win. Look at Stone's face on the Infowars election night party when the results came in.

Him and Manafort had been run out of Washington and Trump was their play to get back in the game by getting just close enough with the worst candidate possible.

I always wondered how Johnny Ramon (another dead right wing icon) felt about this one.

Edit: Originally the song was deemed simply “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg,” but guitarist Johnny Ramone refused the title because of his strict conservative approach and full support of Reagan. The title was changed to “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down” with “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg” appearing in parenthesis. Regardless of the change, the song is simply known as “Bonzo.”

Pretty sure this was a Joey Ramone song, who was a Jewish man so had skin in the game.

rip

It's obviously not a complementary song to Reagan. If Johnny objected to it enough to change the title, I'd have thought he'd object more to actually performing it.

[Edit after looking it up:

Apparently he refused to play it once he later found out what it was about:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/sep/16/popandrock.ramones

Amazing - Dee Dee and Joey must have agreed just to not tell him what was in the lyrics once he was over the insulting title :) ]

Maybe Stone knew that all the shit they had done would come under scrutiny if he was elected president. Nobody would have mentioned collusion if Hillary had won, life would just have continued.

I disagree. The stuff that the FBI was on to early as 2015 would have ensured that the investigations went ahead.

Trump's skin tone matched to the colour around his eyes

Dead man walking.