The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[John Cotter]

8 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

Hi John I too am un "jabbed".

I don't like to use the word "vaccine" unless it's the J&J  because they changed the definition for this shot. I have "Pure Blood" on my Instagram bio to xxxxx people who love Harry Potter, lol. Where I'm living things weren't as politicized as America I don't know how it is where you are. I've never had Covid-19, I think it's ridiculous to require a vaccine for something that is 99.98% survivable, it really should be left up to personal decision you know "My Body My Choice" as leftists here parrot.

There is a Vaccine Injury Court in America and was set up because vaccines are not a 100% safe procedure. So it is medical Fascism to mandate people take a procedure that is not not considered safe. Funny how people here on the forum who throw the word fascist around liberally don't use it when the government mandates you take a corporations gene therapy relabeled as a vaccine to gain peoples trust, that doesn't have long term safety data... in fact you aren't allowed to see the data for 75 years (sound like anything else we are all familiar with;) I've seen the vaccine injuries (Worm like blood clots, blood blots in the brain, mythocarditis) the science is junk on the spike cell. The people who have it now seem to be most effected by the variants are people with the vaccine. I don't remember people dropping dead before or Futbol players collapsing like I've seen since the introduction of the vaccine. Interestingly on social media you are censored from talking about or discussing what appears to be a vaccine that does not meet salty standards or original terms that it was sold as. 

Donald Trump in my opinion was a big enough threat to the "Deep State" that they literally did the 201 drill Bill Gates and and Co were war gaming to get Trump out of office. It' interesting how drills become live action events over and over again.  The odds of a bunch of states finding 4am votes at the same time to change the election is unprecedented and you get kicked off social media for discussing that also. There is no way Joe Biden could have gotten that amount of votes without what he called "The Greatest Fraud Organization in History" now we are learning in real time about a piece of that Fraud Organization THX and SMB as that implodes and is looking like another BCCI. It was surprising at first to see Ukraine involved but shouldn't be anymore seeing just how corrupt Zelensky and his regime are. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This thread is based on the Curmudgeon Fintan O'Toole article https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928   I put the parts that aged really bad or are in-accurate IMO in red. 

Usually, when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

US President Donald Trump has claimed he was being sarcastic and testing the media when he raised the idea that injecting disinfectant or irradiating the body with ultraviolet light might kill coronavirus.

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted … like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.

Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.

There is, as the demonstrations in US cities show, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually, when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.
If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics
That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.
Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

Fintan O’Toole is an Irish columnist, literary editor, and drama critic for The Irish Times, for which he has written since 1988.

 

 

 

 

Yes, Matthew, I also prefer the word “jab” to “vaccine” for the reasons you mention. I have never taken the flu “vaccine” either. As you say, if people want to inject themselves with experimental concoctions, that’s fine with me, but they shouldn’t be vilifying and penalising others for not sharing their faith in corporate entities whose primary aim is to make a profit and for whom safeguarding public health is at best a secondary consideration.

Mandating the jab for children was especially despicable, since the risk from covid for children was practically zero. The same goes for mask mandates for children, in view of their dehumanising, anti-social and air-flow-impeding effects. A lot of people should go to jail for these heinous impositions, but they never will.

As for Fintan O’Toole, he still writes the occasional good column, but by and large he’s a typical faux-left authoritarian neoliberal. Last December he wrote a column titled “The three anti-vaccine types – egoists, paranoiacs and fascists”. I wondered if the rabid vitriol of the article had anything to do with the fact that he had once chaired a mental health symposium sponsored by Pfizer that I attended.

The whole Donald Trump phenomenon was summed up very well by Glen Greenwald:

"The monomaniacal fixation on Trump - as though he's the sole evil in what had previously been a magnanimous US democracy - is obscuring, by design, the systemic, fundamental pathologies that gave rise to him, ones created by the very same elites who are now pretending, in an act of self-exoneration, that Trump is the sole disease ... People can get rid of Trump if they want, but until they fix the underlying pathologies that led to him, there will be plenty more Trumps - and worse - in our mid-term and even short-term future."

[W. Niederhut]

Over 600 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year-- a staggering statistic!

So, the American public is, understandably, numb.  It's hardly news anymore.

This one hits close to home here, in arch-conservative El Paso County, Colorado-- home of NORAD, the Air Force Academy, and right wing Protestant Evangelical organizations like Focus on the Family.

[WATCH] Gunman Identified In Tragic LGBTQ Club Shooting in Colorado Springs | HillReporter

I'm saddened, but not surprised, to hear that an angry, paranoid white kid with an AR-15 murdered people at an LGBT nightclub in that right wing community.  

There has been a lot of anti-LGBT rhetoric, and legislation, in the MAGA-verse of late.

IMO, it's another manifestation of Trumplicon fascism-- the scapegoating and targeting of minority groups by a militant, nationalist political party.

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Matthew Koch]

 

[Ron Bulman]

"How can you type with blood on your hands".

Entire internet tells Lauren Boebert to sit the f*ck down after she tweets about Colorado Springs shooting (msn.com)

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, John Cotter said:

Yes, Matthew, I also prefer the word “jab” to “vaccine” for the reasons you mention. I have never taken the flu “vaccine” either. As you say, if people want to inject themselves with experimental concoctions, that’s fine with me, but they shouldn’t be vilifying and penalising others for not sharing their faith in corporate entities whose primary aim is to make a profit and for whom safeguarding public health is at best a secondary consideration.

Mandating the jab for children was especially despicable, since the risk from covid for children was practically zero. The same goes for mask mandates for children, in view of their dehumanising, anti-social and air-flow-impeding effects. A lot of people should go to jail for these heinous impositions, but they never will.

As for Fintan O’Toole, he still writes the occasional good column, but by and large he’s a typical faux-left authoritarian neoliberal. Last December he wrote a column titled “The three anti-vaccine types – egoists, paranoiacs and fascists”. I wondered if the rabid vitriol of the article had anything to do with the fact that he had once chaired a mental health symposium sponsored by Pfizer that I attended.

The whole Donald Trump phenomenon was summed up very well by Glen Greenwald:

"The monomaniacal fixation on Trump - as though he's the sole evil in what had previously been a magnanimous US democracy - is obscuring, by design, the systemic, fundamental pathologies that gave rise to him, ones created by the very same elites who are now pretending, in an act of self-exoneration, that Trump is the sole disease ... People can get rid of Trump if they want, but until they fix the underlying pathologies that led to him, there will be plenty more Trumps - and worse - in our mid-term and even short-term future."

"The monomaniacal fixation on Trump - as though he's the sole evil in what had previously been a magnanimous US democracy - is obscuring, by design, the systemic, fundamental pathologies that gave rise to him, ones created by the very same elites who are now pretending, in an act of self-exoneration, that Trump is the sole disease ... People can get rid of Trump if they want, but until they fix the underlying pathologies that led to him, there will be plenty more Trumps - and worse - in our mid-term and even short-term future."--JC, quoting GG

Glenn Greenwald is always worth reading. 

Two generations of lower living standards for the employee class, open borders for labor and salve-made goods, fantastically expensive housing and health care, and $4,000 per capita in globalist (DoD, VA, black budget, prorated interest on debt) outlays. 

The problem? 

Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump! 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

 

20 armed FBI agents storm a UFO researcher's home? Area 51.....

[Douglas Caddy]

13 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Great! Congratulations Doug.

Thanks, Joe. Much appreciated.

[Steve Thomas]

- Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J223nglXql8

 

“When you stand up for what’s right, when you show people you’re willing to fight for them, they will walk over broken glass barefoot to come vote for you, and that’s exactly what they did for me in record numbers,” the Republican governor said to a standing ovation. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and I have only begun to fight.”

 

Fifth Avenue shooting, anyone?

Steve Thomas

[Matthew Koch]

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

There has been a lot of anti-LGBT rhetoric, and legislation, in the MAGA-verse of late.

IMO, it's another manifestation of Trumplicon fascism-- the scapegoating and targeting of minority groups by a militant, nationalist political party.

 

That's quit a "Theory" there.. do you think the shooter yelled "Wheres Nancy" also? 

 

[W. Niederhut]

 

     As a psychiatrist who occasionally had to assess and manage homicide risks during my career, this is the kind of thing that really sticks in my craw.  Time and time again, these angry young mass shooters in the U.S. (almost all male) seem to slip through the cracks, even when obvious red flags were waving.

    If we had a functional, adequately-funded mental healthcare system in the U.S., these angry young men--from any socio-economic stratum-- who make homicide threats would be carefully evaluated and monitored over time, and, certainly, not allowed to buy guns!

    Our American society never seems to learn anything useful from these recurrent mass shootings.  And, I might add, an inability to learn from mistakes is one working definition of stupidity.

Edited November 21, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Matthew Koch]

https://babylonbee.com/news/turkey-denied-presidential-pardon-after-photos-emerge-of-it-attending-jan-6-riot

 

Turkey Denied Presidential Pardon After Photos Emerge Of It Attending January 6

U.S.· Nov 21, 2022 · BabylonBee.com 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a break from a long-standing tradition, the White House announced that this year's Thanksgiving turkey would not receive a ceremonial pardon from President Joe Biden after it was discovered that the turkey had attended the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

"The turkey we had chosen for the occasion has been determined to be completely undeserving of a pardon," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a media briefing. "The President was very eager to bestow a pardon, but unfortunately, it came to our attention that this turkey participated in the violent attack on the Capitol that attempted to overthrow the government and destroy democracy itself."

The turkey has been returned to police custody.

The Biden administration learned of the scandal after it was presented with photos of the foul fowl wearing a red "Make America Great Again" baseball cap among other Trump supporters and undercover federal agents planted surreptitiously throughout the crowd on the day of the riot. Though other witnesses vehemently argued that the turkey had valiantly attempted to prevent agitators from vandalizing the Capitol and breaching its doors, security camera footage of the MAGA turkey wandering the halls and gobbling in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office was considered particularly damning.

"Listen, these dangerous ultra-MAGA birds are a serious threat to our nation, folks," President Biden said in brief remarks about the situation. "They must be dealt with and put in their rightful place, which is on my dinner table. End of speech. Walk away from podium."

At publishing time, all requests made to interview the turkey had been denied. It was reported that the bird was placed in solitary confinement at an undisclosed location as it awaited its execution, brining, and deep-frying without due process.

 

[Ron Bulman]

9 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

 

     As a psychiatrist who occasionally had to assess and manage homicide risks during my career, this is the kind of thing that really sticks in my craw.  Time and time again, these angry young mass shooters in the U.S. (almost all male) seem to slip through the cracks, even when obvious red flags were waving.

    If we had a functional, adequately-funded mental healthcare system in the U.S., these angry young men--from any socio-economic stratum-- who make homicide threats would be carefully evaluated and monitored over time, and, certainly, not allowed to buy guns!

    Our American society never seems to learn anything useful from these recurrent mass shootings.  And, I might add, an inability to learn from mistakes is one working definition of stupidity.

Looks like it runs in the family.  Colorado Springs don't need no stinking Red Flag laws.

Like Jospeh alluded to when he started this thread, 59 years tomorrow led us to this s h i t.

Colorado shooting suspect is grandson of GOP lawmaker who celebrated January 6 Capitol riot (msn.com)

[Matthew Koch]

8 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

https://babylonbee.com/news/turkey-denied-presidential-pardon-after-photos-emerge-of-it-attending-jan-6-riot

 

Turkey Denied Presidential Pardon After Photos Emerge Of It Attending January 6

U.S.· Nov 21, 2022 · BabylonBee.com 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a break from a long-standing tradition, the White House announced that this year's Thanksgiving turkey would not receive a ceremonial pardon from President Joe Biden after it was discovered that the turkey had attended the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

"The turkey we had chosen for the occasion has been determined to be completely undeserving of a pardon," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a media briefing. "The President was very eager to bestow a pardon, but unfortunately, it came to our attention that this turkey participated in the violent attack on the Capitol that attempted to overthrow the government and destroy democracy itself."

The turkey has been returned to police custody.

The Biden administration learned of the scandal after it was presented with photos of the foul fowl wearing a red "Make America Great Again" baseball cap among other Trump supporters and undercover federal agents planted surreptitiously throughout the crowd on the day of the riot. Though other witnesses vehemently argued that the turkey had valiantly attempted to prevent agitators from vandalizing the Capitol and breaching its doors, security camera footage of the MAGA turkey wandering the halls and gobbling in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office was considered particularly damning.

"Listen, these dangerous ultra-MAGA birds are a serious threat to our nation, folks," President Biden said in brief remarks about the situation. "They must be dealt with and put in their rightful place, which is on my dinner table. End of speech. Walk away from podium."

At publishing time, all requests made to interview the turkey had been denied. It was reported that the bird was placed in solitary confinement at an undisclosed location as it awaited its execution, brining, and deep-frying without due process.

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

59 years ago, I was asleep in my bed in a suburb of Denver Colorado.  John F. Kennedy arrived in Fort Worth, where I was born, late.  At Carswell Air Force Base.  A very large crowd awaited to greet him at 11:00 PM.  He was taken to the Hotel Texas, to a room decorated with historic paintings and sculptures provided by the wealthy wives of local oil barons to honor his presence.  And spend his last night on this earth comforted and honored by the work of world-renowned historical artists.

Some of his protective Secret Service detail went to the Cellar and got drunk.  Leaving his protection to the Fort Worth Fire Department and PD.   And them hung over the next day.

[Matthew Koch]