Category: Politics

Why you shouldn’t smoke weed or get old

President Trump (lol. I keep forgetting that’s a real thing) met with Henry Kissinger today  –  a news item I wouldn’t bother reporting if I didn’t have something funny to share over it. But first lets get the news part out of the way:

 President Donald Trump met with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on Tuesday, calling the former secretary of state a “man of immense, talent, experience and knowledge.”

Kissinger, who worked under former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has been advising Trump on foreign policy matters since his presidential campaign. The president conferred with Kissinger at the White House in May, the same day he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Trump and Kissinger met twice in New York before he became president.

And now your dessert:

I don’t even know why I’m posting this, really. I go against the mainstream popular rejection of the anti-Drug PSA’s the meme is mocking (some of the claims about crime might have been overblown, but ones like this that note what a loser you can broadcast yourself as if you make getting high on tha weedz a major part of your life are just objectively true and humorously depicted in the visuals, sooooo… i’m going with “decent art” instead of “loathsome propaganda” on those) and poor Kissinger’s crimes are just “being Republican” and “being old” (and also maybe actual crimes) but whatever. It couldn’t be passed up.

Credit to this goes to this person on Twitter & Wyatt for finding it in the first place because he’s a Kissinger-phile and stitching the images together because I told him to.

Miller, Tiller, and Price: 3 old white guys walk into a bar

Breaking: comedian, Larry Miller, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and as-of-now Former HHS Secretary Tom Price are apparently different people.

In related news: the first guy in the picture is Tom Price has resigned. I know you don’t care, and you have no reason to, so here are the quick hits:

HHS Secretary is the leader of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Tom Price was the guy in charge. He was an advocate for doctors.

He got hassled in the press over flying in private jets at taxpayers expense even though he claimed he was reimbursing tax payers for those flights. So he resigned because of all the bad publicity – and yes, he reimbursed the United States Treasury for his private flights, like he said.

Here he is performing his famous “Five Levels of Drinking” bit on stage in the 90s:

*Addendum: it’s been brought to my attention that this might be Tillerson in the above comic routine. Standby for further research.

Update: Interesting observation – Every time the President focuses on policy, that Cabinet secretary disappears.

In CBS interview, Hillary Clinton reminds us she’s a bigger liar than Donald Trump

For all of Donald Trumps character issues, including his loose grasp of literal and specific accuracy – holy crap, did we dodge a bullet by not electing Hillary Clinton as president.

In a CBS interview talking about her 2016 election autopsy book “What Happened” (to which the joke responses all varying degrees of “YOU happened”), Hillary Clinton reminded voters not only of the levels of her delusions but the level of whopping Pants-on-fire lies she’s willing to tell herself and others to fit her worldviews.

These are dangerous lies. As I’ve explained in detail before: Trumps “lies” are 99% braggadocios machismo New York bullsh*ting. Hillary Clintons lies are oppressive divisive slanders.

“THE PRESIDENT OF ALL AMERICANS” vs “THE WHITE NATIONALIST GUT”
In the interview, Clinton talks about the inauguration day of President Trumps swearing in. Typically, defeated candidates don’t necessarily attend this event, but former presidents and First Ladies do, and she is the latter, so she attended. Good for her for showing up. But that doesn’t mean you had to lie about it…

Ruining the sympathetic upswing she was describing (about showing unity with the nation and putting behind her the heartbreak of not being the one up on that podium taking the oath) she calls President-Elect Trumps inauguration speech “A cry from the white nationalist gut”, which is an insane lie.

Clinton said the speech was an opportunity for Trump to have said “okay. I’m proud of my supporters, but I’m the president of all Americans. That’s not what we heard at all”.

In fact, that’s almost literally 100% verbatim precisely to a “T” what we heard exactly… The speech literally contains the line “The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.”

Which is more likely?: that Hillary Clinton is that woefully ignorant of White Nationalism that she thinks it includes resources and service to “all Americans”? Or that she knows that’s not the case and is just a lying because she thinks she can get away with it? The sad part is that she basically has, as I could find no pundits or fact-checkers who took up this egregious ugly bold faced jewel of dishonesty.

THIS AMERICAN CARNAGE STOPS NOW…
Imagine if CBS cut to that part of the speech after showing Clinton falsely claim that in her opinion it would have been a good time to say exactly what Trump said, followed by “that’s not what we heard at all”. That wouldn’t happen of course, not only because of CBS’s potential bias politically, but because the What Happened book is published by a CBS publisher – but that’s fine. No obligation for CBS to call her out on this if they don’t want to – but this audaciously opposite-of-reality statement did put their video editors in an awkward position since they had to directly avoid showing the part of the speech that proves she’s lying and try to find something that illustrates what she’s talking about.  Typically in a piece like this you’ll hear a person say something like “her speech was very divisive” and then the next shot will be a clip of some divisive line that the person in questions stated. In this case, Hillary’s claim doesn’t exist, so instead they had to find the most incendiary quote of Trumps from the inaugural speech in where they clip out the context and show video of him saying “This American carnage stops right here, right now”. Accepting that Clinton completely fabricated the “white nationalist gut” smear – this line about American carnage at *least* must have *some* innuendo hinting to the scourge of ethnic minority crime rates or some other impropriety by American ethnicities that are in poverty or other disenfranchised groups? Nope. The exact opposite… The “American Carnage” that Trump firmly vowed an end to is a list of traditionally minority-affected disenfranchisements including inner city poverty, lower and middle class blue collar jobs, failing schools, and crime fueled by drugs and gangs. Look at the context of when this line was delivered in Trumps speech compared to that line being chopped from that context and followed after Clinton falsely claiming that his speech embodied the very heart of “White Nationalism”, and then try to not scrunch your face like you just bit into a dirty lemon:

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

THE NONSENSE THAT ARE CALLED “LIES” VS “LIES THAT MATTER
Trumps critics in the media jumped all over the supposed “lie” that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama’s when photos of the crowds appear to clearly show that not being the case. This suggests that Trumps off the cuff exaggerated bragging is a calculated or careless effort to deceive the American people – over something that couldn’t matter less. Compare that then with the non-reaction to this whopper by the person who was almost the one delivering that speech and the fact that it absolutely IS a calculated or careless (although even the most charitable excuse-making for Hillary leave’s little excuse for such a falsehood to be an act of unintentional carelessness) and the fact that it is of major consequence to the people who hear that lie. Trump says “I got a historically big crowd at my speech” and whether that’s true or not means nothing to anyone, but Clinton says “our president gave a speech that said he was not the President of all Americans but rather only concerned with Whites” and sh*t poisons the minds of millions, feeding them a lie from a source they find credible that makes them feel powerless, disconnected, and adversarial to a Presidential Administration literally going out of its way to include, connect, and unite. Just disgusting.

And that’s what grinds my gears about this: the severity of it. The depths of this Clinton lie is what freaks me out however because of the willingness to revise history we all experienced and with a straight face claim the opposite of what was either seen or is easy to see for yourself and see that the claim she’s making has no basis whatsoever and is instead just a categorical slander.

CLINTONS CHARACTERIZATION WAS AS “OPPOSITE FROM THE TRUTH” AS IT GETS
Sorry/Not Sorry for doing a double-pass on the same point, but the details of exactly how from-the-pages-of-1984 this Clinton Lie was are excruciatingly important.

Trumps speech included gracious thank-you’s to the Obama’s, emphasized solidarity as Americans across the things that divide us, and stated that prejudice will not be tolerated.

A few lines from the speech Hillary Clinton claims was not “at all” a statement of being the President of ALL Americans and instead a “cry from the white nationalist gut” (emphasis, mine):

  • ‘We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people.”
  • “Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come.”
  • We are one nation — and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

Hillary Clinton literally said that not only did Donald Trump not say anything like “I’m the president of all Americans” in a speech where he said exactly that almost word for word, and she said his speech was from the gut of white nationalism when it actually stated that nationalism can’t possibly have anything to do with race and that patriotism and prejudice cannot coexist.

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?
This is where, even knowing Clintons history with truth telling, I am strained to find an explanation for how this could have happened. How could Clinton utter such a blatant lie on something so easily verifiable and so recent? It was reported beforehand that uniting all Americans would be the highlight of the speech, and as the NY Times reported, that’s exactly what he did. Donald Trump refers to that paper as “the failing New York Times” because it is an openly Leftist/Democrat slanted publication that is highly critical of him and his presidency and his political party, yet that didn’t stop the paper from reporting the truth that the speech’s theme was Unity – so what is so unique about Clinton that she can’t do the same?

You didn’t need to have read the NY Times to know this about Trumps speech – I also know this to be true because I watched the speech (and you can too. does Hillary Clinton know they record these things??). Hillary Clinton not only claims she watched the speech but there is video evidence that she did… and yet there she is a few months later, claiming the opposite of reality is what she observed. That is so nuts – so dangerous in a person with power – so terrifying that neither Jane Pauley interviewing her nor anyone else in the media afterward corrected this crazy falsehood – that this moment alone is enough to fall to ones knees in gratitude that Clinton lost the election.

BUT WAIT… THERE’S MORE…
While that smear was the worst in the interview, Clintons divisiveness continued onto other but similar points that were extensions of her “basket of Deplorables” remark that was designed to explain away her failures as a Politician by impugning morals and motives of the supporters of her opponent.

She blames anti-woman sentiment of course. The truth is that “We really don’t want a woman commander in chief” was not a popular opinion anywhere.

She compounds the racism charge in such a ham-fisted way, sating that Trump supporters were angry about “Gains that were made by others” to where Jane Pauly had to help her out and just say what she was dancing around: “millions of white people”. Which again, is false that a prominent sentiment of Trump support was “non-whites have made gains in this country and we need to undo that”. That is yet another ugly smear that has such a non-resemblance to anything in reality that the derangement going on in Clintons mind becomes more and more alarming.

On the fact that she was proved to be completely “careless” in the words of FBI Director James Comey, Clinton baselessly accuses the non-partisan and arguably more-anti-Trump-than-Anti-Hillary Comey to have made those findings for an “audience” of whom she doesn’t know but suggests maybe “right wing commentators, right wing members of congress, whatever”.  This echoes her much-mocked claim in the 1990’s of a “vast right wing conspiracy” to take down her husband, referring to the multiple sexual misconduct accusations non-political and Democrat women were making against him.

WATCH FOR YOURSELF…
Here is the un-edited interview with all the garbage laid out above.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6085db

The Russia and United States “Frenemy” relationship

Russian and United States relations are a mixed bag and the news media is not helping clear the connection, especially lately as it has become politically advantageous for Trump critics to latch onto an evidence-lacking conspiracy theory that Russia not only paved the way for Trump to get into office, but did so with the collusion and cooperation of the Trump campaign. Due to the accusations there are multiple government probes investigating any such collusion in which Democratic senator Feinstein admitted there was no evidence of, but the hopes among most Democrats are that this will change if enough digging takes place. Unsurprisingly, Trump calls the whole thing a total hoax. All of this criticism comes as a total about-face from Democrats whom in the last election cycle mocked Mitt Romney for calling Russia America’s top geopolitical threat. This was because the Obama administration was comically cozy with Putin’s Russian.

So are America and Putin’s-Russia friends or enemies? I’m asking rhetorically because this post is presuming to know that the answer is that they’re Frenemies: Never been very chummy with each other but different presidents have had different strategies. Bush and Obama pretty much kissed Putins butt to try and get cooperation on certain global actions and avoid direct conflicts. Hillary Clintons approach was to try to be a badass and trash talk Russia like it would shame its government into doing things we wanted and make her look like a big strong woman standing up to a big scary power she strategized that she could tame or contain. Trump has a more Trumpian policy approach where he talks nice and then sets blunt terms. This is on display in particular in the recent news that the U.S. ordered Russia to close their consulate in San Fransisco in what is described as a tit-for-tat move.

Imagine it like we’re gonna go out to lunch and Anastasia is like “Richard is pretty awesome. Great guy. Fair man. And he agrees with fairness, especially towards friends, right?” baiting Richard to be like, “eff yea I’m awesome and great. I’m so awesome and great you outta pick up my tab for this meal. wudda ya say?” and Anastasia comes in with the hook saying “I absolutely would do that you awesome dude. Although I grilled-cheesed you yesterday, so – you being such a fair dude, you outta actually be paying for me this time around – but yea man, you’re the-tits!” and then Richard, who had plans to get a free meal, is now paying for himself & Anastasia’s.

Anastasia is Trump and Richard is Putin in that scenario. In the news link shared, what happened was that Russia claimed it wanted parity (that means equality – like parallel) with the US on “missions in each others countries”. So the Trump administration move was to be like “Absolutely my friend. We will help you meet this effort. How many American government consulates [offices] do you have in Russia? 3? okie dokie artichokie – we will order the closing of Russian consulates in America so we can get our number down to 3 as well. Big hug my friend!”
So in other words, Kremlin was saying “lets make things fair [implying a balancing in their favor would achieve this]” and the Trump admin was like “sure thing, bro. lemme just check the numbers and make it fair [knowing its not what they wanted, but doing it with a smile as a legitimate execution of the stated desire]”.

Or to have it described by the Guardian:

Heather Nauert, a state department spokeswoman, said the US had fully carried out Moscow’s demands to cut its staff in Russia from 1,200 to 455, to make it the same size as the Russian mission in the US. The deadline for the staff reduction was 1 September. But Nauert also announced that the US was striking back for what she said was an “unwarranted and detrimental” move by the Kremlin.

“In the spirit of parity invoked by the Russians,” Nauert said in a statement, “we are requiring the Russian government to close its consulate general in San Francisco, a chancery annexe in Washington DC, and a consular annexe in New York City. These closures will need to be accomplished by 2 September.

“With this action both countries will remain with three consulates each. While there will continue to be a disparity in the number of diplomatic and consular annexes, we have chosen to allow the Russian government to maintain some of its annexes in an effort to arrest the downward spiral in our relationship.”

Nauert said the US hoped that “having moved toward the Russian federation’s desire for parity, we can avoid further retaliatory actions by both sides and move forward to achieve the stated goal of both of our presidents”.

The buildings to be shuttered by Saturday are the consulate general and official residence in San Francisco and trade mission offices in New York and Washington.

Further balling:

“The buildings that are owned by the Russians will continue to be owned by the Russians,” a senior administration official said. “Then it will be up to them to determine whether they wish to sell those or dispose of them in some other way.

“We are not expelling any Russians at this time. We have informed the Russians they may reassigned to other diplomatic or consular posts in the US if they chose to.”

UPDATE: Whoah…. Facing short notice of their eviction, Russian “totally not spies” burned evidence to prevent it from falling into U.S. hands.

Why the United States just bombed Syria

I’ve noticed that the typical sources that are normally all too excited to “explain the news” to you are doing reporting on this issue that requires more back-story to make any sense. I suspect that this is the case because the details behind this story don’t fit a sensationalist narrative or partisan agenda. Whatever the case – Since I happen to have been following at least the base components at play, here is my Rich-plaination for y’all on the key points of what just happened and why…

Since 2011 there has been a Star Wars style “Rebels vs The Empire” war going on in Syria.

President Obama announced to the world that if that if the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against the rebels there (really dirty painful internationally illegal cruel way of killing opponents) then that would be a “red line”, implying a line that, if crossed would come with severe consequences.

Assad used the weapons and Obama did nothing, exposing the empty threat and embarrassing the United States to a degree to where even The Obama Administrations Secretary of State John Kerry had to later admit was a costly disaster.

Thanks to this Obama failure, ISIS now has chemical weapons.

Fast forward to 2017: Assad used chemical weapons on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which, at the time of this writing is reported to have killed at least 85 civilians, 23 of whom were children.

As a direct response to this, the new Trump Administration launched missiles at a Syrian airbase. President Trump explained:

Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread of chemical weapons.

That announcement was made Thursday night from Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Many are scared about what this means for international policy while others (read: this guy) find it refreshingly badass to have a president working out of his Florida luxury resort where he pauses meetings with foreign leaders to announce that it didn’t take more than a day for the country he leads to follow up with a punishing military response to a country killing children and civilians with chemical weapons. More:

The U.S. fired 59 Tomahawk missiles from the USS Porter and USS Ross destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean against the Shayrat air base, where the U.S. says the planes that carried out a chemical weapons attack originated. The missiles targeted aircraft and aircraft shelters, ammunition, air defense systems and radars.

U.S. officials said planners did everything possible to avoid civilian casualties and are still doing battle damage assessment to determine the exact results of the raid.

Whether you too find this response refreshingly badass or not, you shouldn’t be scared about too much further foreign war entanglements. Trumps stated intentions are to curtail the spread of chemical weapons, so if Assad stops using them, there is no reason to believe there will be further strikes against Syria by the United States. That appears to be the deal.

Trump ran a non-interventionist campaign that was backed with promises to also not allow “red line” moments to happen under his watch. At the time of this writing, this test on those claims appears to have been passed.

For more info, this link at The Guardian has some helpful maps and video on the subject.

There’s no reason to FEAR Trumps victory

So Hillary Rodham Clinton, lifelong politician, just lost the presidency to Donald J Trump, reality tv star (and billionaire businessman, but the first one is funnier).

U mad?

Okay. I’m being flippant while you’re sensitive. I apologize. But seriously though:

What are Hillary supporters upset about right now, exactly?…

That the pro-war Wall Street crony tax-raising lifelong crook who takes money from countries who murder gays lost an election to the anti-war small government lifelong successful businessman who is the most consistently pro-gay candidate to run for office?

Why, again?… Because those policies are all Left Wing and Liberal (see the difference here), so you must simply fear and abhor the man personally rather than professionally.

IS IT BECAUSE YOU THINK HE’S “RACIST”?
Why? Because he accurately noted what the Fusion network reported  about 80% of women illegally trafficked from Mexico being raped and/or that he unhappily commented on crime by illegal immigrants and you believed the lie that he claimed “Mexicans” were rapists and murders?
Cuz if so, the solution is simple: just be less racist and don’t equate all illegal immigrants with Mexican nationals. Then you won’t be prone to believe such a goofy smear of a claim that opposition to criminals from Mexico means you hate non-criminal Mexicans.

IS IT BECAUSE YOU THINK HE’S A MISOGYNIST? 
Why? He has such a great relationship with his daughters and surrounds himself with strong and powerful women who guide and manage him and keep him in check. Where is the evidence he has anything against women? Is it because of the 11 year old “hot mic” audio that was uncovered in where Trumps “locker room talk” included the observation that his power, wealth, and stature gave him amazing prowess with women who would let him do “whatever” to him, in where he used as an example “grab em by the pussy”? Because how would women letting you manhandle them because they are impressed with you be a sign that you hate them? Or is it because you bought into the Democrat attack line that that private comment constituted “assault” on women, even though the audio is publicly available to be heard and verified that no assault was mentioned and in fact the very nature of the premise was precisely the astonishment that this kind of crude contact was allowed and desired – not unwanted and resisted? If so I have another easy fix to brighten your day: don’t believe every summary of everything you hear and instead actually listen to what happened. If you got the wrong impression and, say, at a Presidential debate (lets use “the second one” as an example) the person in question says that no mention of an assault was stated and that the person stating that it did must not have understood what was said – maybe go ahead and fact check which person is telling the truth instead of just blindly believing the ugly charge.

IS IT BECAUSE YOU THINK HE’S HOMOPHOBIC? 
This is the weirdest one, that I’m both happy to report but also sorry to say that it is 100% invented out of wholecloth with no merit or even basis whatsoever. Donald Trump is the most pro-gay candidate to have run in… ever. Even if he wasn’t, though, as his Vice President Mike Pence isn’t (Pence isn’t personally opposed to the legality of counseling people on sexual attractions that they may deem unwanted, which fearmongerers equate to supporting some kind of government led forcing of gays into so called “conversion therapy” to un-gay them en masse), there is nothing Constitutional law can do to persecute gays. People claiming that Trump would overturn the Republican issued ruling making same sex marriage a national right (a ruling made by the Log Cabin Republicans and argued by Republican and former Bush cabinet member Ted Olson in where Republican appointed Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the winning ruling on), know nothing about the law or are intentionally lying to you about it in addition to lying about Trumps position and policy on the issue. Not only is overturning that ruling not possible and not wanted by the President-Elect – he lacks a single negative stance on gay issues.
If you are still terrified of a Trump led gay persecution, just open your eyes to reality and remember that issue by issue, Gays will receive the most benefits from a Trump presidency.
Gays earn more income and thus will be disproportionate beneficiaries of Trump tax cuts.
Gays are disproportionate beneficiaries of a more stringent vetting process on immigrants from countries that support Islamic terror, the likes of which was responsible for the slaughter at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

PayPal co-founder and tech billionaire Peter Thiel was the first openly gay person to speak at a Republican convention and will almost surely have at minimal an advisory role in a Trump administration, and perhaps more (the rumors are Supreme Court, but I think he is more likely to just be close to the administration as an advisor) and as Caitlyn Jenner noted: Donald Trump is a Champion for Women and LGBT people – suggesting that a lifestyle perspective isn’t what pigments a person to these smears, but rather a victim mentality and willingness to see oppression and hate everywhere, whether it exists as a valid source or not.

 

You may notice a theme here: All your concerns are fear-propaganda based and originated from specific sources who duped you. That is – they are smears invented to play on your existing concerns and leverage your confirmation-bias into feeling terror over a non-threat.

That’s pretty disgusting. Thus your scorn and contempt should be reserved for the perpetrator of the smears, not the target of those smears.

Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t support Trump in the primary, didn’t think he ran a good campaign, and only reluctantly supported him against his crooked counterpart. He’s inarticulate and often careless with his speech, crass, rude, and imprecise and i’m not looking forward to having gaffes and easily-taken-out-of-context moments run around by opportunistic parties to sensationalize and profit from.
But the charge of racism is stupid. 30 years on the public stage and the man is never accused of such a slander and then all of a sudden when he threatens a political establishments corrupt power structure, we’re supposed to believe he is a KKK supporter? Please. Be real.
The charges of being anti-woman are wholly silly and unserious at every level for the same reasons as above.
The charges of being homophobic are just invented entirely out of wholecloth with no basis in truth whatsoever.

You’re being used by people fomenting fear to gain political power and you ought to fight back, not let yourself be victimized by this shameful tactic.

A brief hall of shame:

https://twitter.com/SethMacFarlane/status/796240175143653376

& then of course the appropriate response to this melodrama:

Yes, spreading terror is effective in mobilizing Useful Idiots into a panic that motivates them into supporting your thirst for power, but that’s also pretty evil.

Even if your pet issue on why you find Trump terrifying isn’t listed in this post: keep in mind that Trump needs Congress to pass anything and that he faces 100% Democrat opposition and a sizable chunk of “NeverTrump” members in his own party.

Again: It’s understandable to be bummed out right now if you were really looking forward to paying more taxes, getting into more wars, and having tons of new rules of engagement to have to go through in operating your business or securing healthcare under a Clinton Administration – but if that isn’t the source of your anxiety right now and instead you are terrified for women, racial minorities, or gay people – you have been scammed.

Get a grip and focus on the things that actually matter. Like the things that actually exist.

2016 Election Voter Guide

Obviously you should vote the way I am and I am casting my ballot under the following strategy: Vote for Trump, but with understanding of all his shortcomings and even if you desperately don’t want him to be President – vote for him anyway and just hope that Clinton wins (which I predict she obviously will).
*UPDATE: I thought she would be a shoe-in given her smear campaign with endless personal attacks that usually work well with an electorate but if I won’t just be ding dang damned – it failed like it should have. Way to go for that America. Even though President Trump isn’t a dream-sounding proposition for anyone outside of his immediate family, there are lots of reasons to have optimism and zero reasons to panic or be depressed, no matter what side you’re on.

 

PERSONAL TOLERANCE

Both candidates are awful public speakers with obnoxious mannerisms in their speech patterns and who are prone to saying weird things of different natures (Trump being insensitive, Hillary being calculated and cold in robotic gaffes). Neither will be an honor to serve the nations highest office. It comes down to what they will do for the country and TO the country…

Trump would be annoying but completely harmless because the president needs Congress (the house and senate) to support any laws they pass except military actions (which he doesn’t advocate) meaning he wouldn’t do shit unless the country was completely behind it since he would have 100% of the democrats against everything he wants to do and half of his own damn party opposing him too. Hillary on the other hand would have 100% Democrat zombie support and then peel off a decent percentage of republican pussies to support her shit and be able to do whatever she wants.

POLICIES

CLINTON: higher taxes, more regulations that stifle small businesses like mine, big government favoring big business and more control over individuals lives, pro-war and foreign intervention but soft on Islamic terror pursuit and immigration from Islamic nations, soft on illegal immigration.

TRUMP: lower taxes, less regulation to allow small businesses to compete with big corporations, small government favoring the individual (“the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen”), anti-war and anti foreign intervention unless americas interests are directly threatened, would dramatically reduce illegal immigration and vet immigrants from nations that are known to support and produce terrorist organizations.

TONE OF THE NATION

CLINTON: uses victimization propaganda to make people feel weak and needy so her policies of big government control can rescue them. Clintons staff has been caught on film bragging about instigating violence at Trump rallies.

TRUMP: has a victim mentality about himself but doesn’t spread it as a philosophy uses motivation of self reliance and hard work with help from the government that doesn’t make you dependent on it.

PERSONAL LIFE

CLINTON: Is personally and professionally corrupt with a history of scandals, most recently including making hundreds of millions in shady political dealings. Neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton have ever had had a job outside of politics. Hillary Clinton is being investigated by the FBI and if elected would be put in control over the very institution investigating her for corruption.

TRUMP: Is personally a douche and professionally successful despite a fair share of business ventures that also didn’t work out (in other words: his business record is excellent, but not without flaw or failure) with no black eyes as far as scandal or corruption in his business record over 3 decades of being in the public eye. Successful manager – never been a politician.

No offense but your gun control arguments are kindov dumb

Cultural trends have made it an American tradition to freak out over gun laws as the culprit for the blood spilt after there is a mass murder with a gun (while mass murders using other more legally obtained objects like box cutters on 9/11 don’t share a similar discrimination after the event) and the Orlando gay club massacre was no different.

Obviously this is dopey, since murder is the bad part of the situation – not the thing a murderer uses to murder. So why is it so not obvious to so many? Emotional confirmation bias, mostly, is my guess. Because when you actually examine the prudence of what gun laws in America are vs the claims of what they should be, you don’t come up with a lot of murder prevention but you do come up with a lot of “protecting against getting murdered” prevention. The truth is that the so called loopholes in gun laws aren’t aiding any kind of pattern of gun abuse, and of course the blaring fact that America is awash with guns and crime is at a record low. So what’s the deal, yo?

Even though I don’t like guns and kindov want them all illegal, I don’t see the prudence in restricting them to the mass public when there are so many in the free flowing market to those with murderous intent. If you think laws are the answer to gun murders, why don’t you just make murder illegal, you dumb hippies? What makes people think that pre-meditated murder can be curtailed by laws offering punishment on the use or access of special kinds of weapons used to murder is beyond me – but more importantly – it’s beyond the people who think that as well, evidently. I know because I ask these people all the time and the lack of having thought about the fact that there is already a life sentence or lifetime imprisonment penalty in place on pre-meditated murder is always the most glaring take-away from the exchange.

As much as I don’t love being on the so called “gun nut” side of the issue, it seems fairly clear that more gun control measures than not are shady attempts at 2nd amendment suppression than they are stopping crazy people from getting deadly weapons in service to the public safety and I’m more interested in solving problems (see: preventing murder) than I am feeding my emotional distaste for weapons that easily (with the squeeze of a finger) take precious human life.

But these arguments that keep popping up all over the popular punditry and social media in the wake of a mass shooting are so non-persuasive that I get disappointed at those persuaded by them.

For instance, the idea that “semi-automatic”(“fully automatic” –aka- machine guns aren’t legal for civilian use) guns shouldn’t be legal. What? People should have to reload their weapon after every shot? So if you have multiple attackers you just have to call a time-out in between reloads? And I’m tired of hearing the canard about the 2nd amendment being made for (and thus only applies to) single firing muskets… Ignoring the history that that’s not even accurate since there were “multiple shot without having to reload in between every firing” firearms – or what we now call “semi-automatic” in existence at the time of the 2nd amendments drafting – the logic just doesn’t hold up to level-one scrutiny.

The right to protect yourself with projectile weaponry (that doesn’t require you to be physically strong, agile, or studied in martial arts or swordplay) is not changed by modernization any more than the right to speak freely without obstruction or persecution from the government is changed by modern methods of broadcasting and distribution. You dummies who think you’re so clever saying the 2nd amendment only applies to muskets that need to be reloaded after every firing are accidentally arguing for the First amendment to apply only to paper distribution of words and real-time vocalized speech (making it extra ironic when people make the “2nd amendment was for muskets” argument on digital distribution platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube – which I’m more than 90% sure wasn’t in circulation around the time the first amendment was drafted).

Usually the fall-back argument for this and every other Government led freedom restriction goes back to saying “you don’t need it though” as the crux of the argument justifying taking something away. It’s basically the essence of Leftism in one sentence, really: “I will decide what you need and then use the force of government [backed by guns] to make sure you don’t get more than what I have decided you need”.

A less totalitarian, less civil-liberty encroaching argument would be a focus on “if you are X, Y, Z [criminally ineligible to access firearms] then you cant have a gun” rather than the argument of “*you don’t need* [a gun that I think looks scary]”.

Why isn’t all of this obvious? The scary part is that I think it is but its just that emotional issues let individuals emotions redirect from the obvious.

I find that a lot more terrifying than non-restrictive gun laws.

I endorsed destroying everything that made America great today

“I voted for Bernie Sanders today” was not something I expected to ever be guilty of saying but I desperately wanted that “I voted” sticker and the polling place had free donuts (I’m only human, after all).

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If you’re excited at my ideological conversion from Liberal to Leftist-Marxist (i.e: away from thinking “individual liberty” is a superior value to “equality of outcome”), then don’t be.

Democratic Socialism remains such a bad idea that people regularly flee from, not to it (a subject a little too Real for the Bernie buddies), but Bernie was the only choice in the race since Trump is a waste and Hillary is horrible + horrible policies, meaning I throw in with the guy who has a savvier campaign and isn’t horrible (for a Politician) but has horrible (really horrible, illogical, not even half as good as claimed, vapid) policies.

While math will ultimately be the force that crushes the Sanders campaign today – Let it be known that the Bern was felt in 2016 across Richardland.