Support NeoGAF

[NeoXChaos]

I'd guess there's around 50/50 odds either Alito or Thomas die in office by 2032, assuming democrats win the next 3 presidential elections to block them out of retiring. And democrats would need the senate to avoid another Garland situation.

Certainly not impossible that it's only lost for a decade, but I don't love the odds, and am not very comforted by 10 years of strong conservative control.


Ever since Nixon annihilated the Warren Court 45 years ago, there's only really been 3 opportunities to drastically change the court's ideology.

- Thurgood Marshal who resigned for health reasons in 1991 and was replaced by Thomas. Thurgood Marshal didn't die until after Clinton took office.

- William Rehnquist, who announced a cancer diagnosis 2 weeks before the 2004 election, and died the next year. The seat would have likely turned liberal if Kerry had won, or at least more moderate than Roberts.

- Antonin Scalia, who you all know the story of.

So I wouldn't bank too much on back and forth swings here, given how rare the opportunities are, and how hard it is to execute on it. Democrats really need to keep all of Kennedy/Breyer/Ginsburg to hold until they win back the presidency.

Nixon, Reagan and Bush did some serious court packing between 69-93. Carter never got an appointment. Every President usually gets an appointment or 2 aside from the unusual Cater situation.

 

[Holmes]

Interesting. The 3rd is pretty Republican.

Yeah, but it also has Des Moines and burbs. Iowa can easily have a 3-1 Democratic congregation come 2019 if things continue the way they're going.

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

I'm catching up on some of this stephen miller bullshit. Drops a bunch of lies about voter fraud. Zero evidence to back it up. Claims you can talk to anyone about the state (ohio?) and they'll confirm it. Literally a bunch of bullshit that the white house can make these claims without providing any evidence. If anyone should have evidence, you'd think the white house would be capable of gathering it.

Then I saw an excerpt from him saying that the court system has too much power. It doesn't. He needs to learn what the fuck he is talking about. The legislative branch has a lot of power over the judicial court system; one power in particular that no one ever talks about because they rarely exercise it fully. It's called jurisdiction stripping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping

Is there even one reliable person in the white house administration? Is mike pence the least insane?

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I'm catching up on some of this stephen miller bullshit. Drops a bunch of lies about voter fraud. Zero evidence to back it up. Claims you can talk to anyone about the state (ohio?) and they'll confirm it. Literally a bunch of bullshit that the white house can make these claims without providing any evidence. If anyone should have evidence, you'd think the white house would be capable of gathering it.

Then I saw an excerpt from him saying that the court system has too much power. It doesn't. He needs to learn what the fuck he is talking about. The legislative branch has a lot of power over the judicial court system; one power in particular that no one ever talks about because they rarely exercise it fully. It's called jurisdiction stripping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping

Is there even one reliable person in the white house administration? Is mike pence the least insane?

I mean, Stephen Miller is a Nazi who started his political activism by joining an anti-immigration group lead by actual Nazi Richard Spencer.

 

[LostMyNarbles]

I honestly do not understand how free college education would work. If you make college accessible to everybody wouldn't that make a degree less value and force people to attain even higher education (Master's and PHD Programs) to be competitive in the work force? If that ends up being the case the issue would be that not everybody is cut out for that kind of work and somebody might not have the time to take up further education at a point in their lives. Further that, what happens when a majority of the people going to school end up pursuing a non-STEM major and get into the same conundrum people who already can't find work with those degrees are in? Obviously having a better educated population would be a nice benefit from this, but you still run into the issue that they aren't getting employed just from going to college.

I just feel like there aren't already enough jobs for people depending on their major that the only people that would benefit from free college would be the STEM field and even then you run into an issue when the number of jobs available is significantly lower than the people available to fill them.

 

[sangreal]

...will not be questioned.


How do they get away with saying shit like this?

jesus christ, that is probably the most disturbing quote to come out of the trump admin so far

 

[Team Alucard]

You guys need to give up on Iowa. Local GOP is about to pull a Walker and eliminate public sector unions. We're also dead last in the Midwest in terms of net young mgiration. Everyone bails for Chicago or the Twin Cities after they finish undergrad. The state retains less than half of all UIowa and Iowa State grads.

I honestly do not understand how free college education would work. If you make college accessible to everybody wouldn't that make a degree less value and force people to attain even higher education (Master's and PHD Programs) to be competitive in the work force? If that ends up being the case the issue would be that not everybody is cut out for that kind of work and somebody might not have the time to take up further education at a point in their lives. Further that, what happens when a majority of the people going to school end up pursuing a non-STEM major and get into the same conundrum people who already can't find work with those degrees are in? Obviously having a better educated population would be a nice benefit from this, but you still run into the issue that they aren't getting employed just from going to college.

I just feel like there aren't already enough jobs for people depending on their major that the only people that would benefit from free college would be the STEM field and even then you run into an issue when the number of jobs available is significantly lower than the people available to fill them.

All degrees aren't created equally. A Bachelors of Science from Western Illinois University is not the same as a Bachelors of Science from Stanford. Public universities going tuition free would not diminish the value of a degree from a prestigious selective school.

What would happen is what already happens. The people who get into Stanford and the Ivys will be successful, and the people who don't will not.

 

[AntraxSuicide]

All degrees aren't created equally. A Bachelors of Science from Western Illinois University is not the same as a Bachelors of Science from Stanford. Public universities going tuition free would not diminish the value of a degree from a prestigious selective school.

What would happen is what already happens. The people who get into Stanford and the Ivys will be successful, and the people who don't will not.

I think that was their point. The only difference between a free degree in Art History and a paid one is the cost of the degree itself. Free college is fine too argue for, but it's not something you can do in a vacuum. You'd see massive jumps in applicants, and yes, more of them would be in fields like the humanities instead of technical degrees.

I generally just want a well educated populace, so that part is just a subsequent issue of cheaper college, not the main one, to me. And I also agreed with Clinton that there's no reason for wealthy people to also get free college. Start from the bottom and work up.

 

[gaugebozo]

I think college enrollment should be free. The benefits are too high to be ignored. The people who attend will earn more over their life times and contribute more to federal taxes, along with the benefits their job provides to society. I think people have called for public service of some sort to qualify and that will contribute as well.

I sort of see it as the fact that public education is free and paid for by taxes, why stop at high school? The needs of our society requires higher education than ever before. People shouldn't go broke trying to enter the work force that we actually need to progress imo.

Also, I'm not a socialist in case you're rolling your eyes right now.

This needs some references. I don't think that if college were free, we'd automatically have more people earning more. Current college graduates sometimes have a hard time getting a job, and there's plenty of jobs that need technical school or apprenticeships. We should make college low cost,but there needs to be some sort of cost felt by the student. Mandatory work, universal per semester out-of-pocket costs, etc.

You're also assuming the new students would all go into engineering or something. This could result in a lot of unemployed art historians.

 

[tuxfool]

Posted yet?

"Turmoil at the National Security Council, From the Top Down"

Three weeks into the Trump administration, council staff members get up in the morning, read President Trump's Twitter posts and struggle to make policy to fit them. Most are kept in the dark about what Mr. Trump tells foreign leaders in his phone calls. Some staff members have turned to encrypted communications to talk with their colleagues, after hearing that Mr. Trump's top advisers are considering an ”insider threat" program that could result in monitoring cellphones and emails for leaks.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/...smid=tw-share&referer=https://t.co/Eo1LF4iLLg

 

[Gotchaye]

I honestly do not understand how free college education would work. If you make college accessible to everybody wouldn't that make a degree less value and force people to attain even higher education (Master's and PHD Programs) to be competitive in the work force? If that ends up being the case the issue would be that not everybody is cut out for that kind of work and somebody might not have the time to take up further education at a point in their lives. Further that, what happens when a majority of the people going to school end up pursuing a non-STEM major and get into the same conundrum people who already can't find work with those degrees are in? Obviously having a better educated population would be a nice benefit from this, but you still run into the issue that they aren't getting employed just from going to college.

I just feel like there aren't already enough jobs for people depending on their major that the only people that would benefit from free college would be the STEM field and even then you run into an issue when the number of jobs available is significantly lower than the people available to fill them.

I don't really understand the objection. Yes, if college is entirely about obtaining a credential then increasing access doesn't help much, although it might make the distribution of the credential more equitable, and probably creates some pressure to get even more degrees as a way of distinguishing oneself.

But, like, if that's what college is for then just close them all down. That's a huge waste of time and money. On the other hand, if college is teaching people valuable skills then increasing access improves the quality of the workforce.

Also I'd push back on the idea that the goal is to go get a degree in some field and then go work in that field. That is really not typical. It happens maybe a little more than half of the time in engineering and computer science. And even there, with engineering it is very common that what you actually end up doing for a living doesn't seem to use most of the specific skills you were taught in school. But anyway, the point of a history degree program is not to equip students to go work in "history". What does that even look like, other than eventually getting a PhD and becoming a professor? And unemployment among college graduates is not really a problem. Actually college graduates have an unemployment rate that's about half of the average, and see a significant improvement in employment prospects even relative to people with some college or an associate degree.

 

[Carpe Libertatem]

I don't see Iowa as an out of reach state after just one election. If Democrats lose it by 5+ in 2020, then sure, I'll buy it then. One election isn't enough to convince me that it's permanently gone.

Its importance in the primary makes me think that it will continue to receive resources during the general, too.

 

[sangreal]

Posted yet?

"Turmoil at the National Security Council, From the Top Down"



https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/...smid=tw-share&referer=https://t.co/Eo1LF4iLLg

A number of staff members who did not want to work for Mr. Trump have returned to their regular agencies, leaving a larger-than-usual hole in the experienced bureaucracy. Many of those who remain, who see themselves as apolitical civil servants, have been disturbed by displays of overt partisanship. At an all-hands meeting about two weeks into the new administration, Ms. McFarland told the group it needed to ”make America great again," numerous staff members who were there said.

New Trump appointees are carrying coffee mugs with that Trump campaign slogan into meetings with foreign counterparts, one staff member said. And Mr. Miller was once allowed to act as chairman of a weekend meeting of the national security deputies, stunning career officials.

jfc

 

[LostMyNarbles]

All degrees aren't created equally. A Bachelors of Science from Western Illinois University is not the same as a Bachelors of Science from Stanford. Public universities going tuition free would not diminish the value of a degree from a prestigious selective school.

What would happen is what already happens. The people who get into Stanford and the Ivys will be successful, and the people who don't will not.

Then what changes? People not going into debt while getting a better education is a good thing, but what good is it if they end up working at Starbucks like the majority of Humanities graduates today? It sounds like the degree market would end up in a worse situation because at least today people who do not attend Ivy-League schools can still get careers. If education opens up for everybody then you pretty much ruin the "Worth" of any degree not from a prestigious university and in that scenario only the best of the brightest end up making out well. That is also bad since not everybody could afford to travel to these schools and obviously people with families couldn't easily attend no matter how qualified they were.

 

[chadskin]

Posted yet?

"Turmoil at the National Security Council, From the Top Down"

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/...smid=tw-share&referer=https://t.co/Eo1LF4iLLg

And while Mr. Obama liked policy option papers that were three to six single-spaced pages, council staff members are now being told to keep papers to a single page, with lots of graphics and maps.

“The president likes maps,” one official said.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I like how Flynn and Mattis are obsessed with helping Saudi Arabia and escalating conflict with Iran.

What causes military people to love Saudi Arabia and hate Iran so much? They aren't that different of countries relative to American values.

 

[tuxfool]

I like how Flynn and Mattis are obsessed with helping Saudi Arabia and escalating conflict with Iran.

What causes military people to love Saudi Arabia and hate Iran so much? They aren't that different of countries relative to American values.

Culturally Iran is much more aligned with that of the western world than Saudi Arabia.

However, at the top the Saudis are aligned with the US and the leadership in Iran isn't. That is one of the bigger tragedies here, I've found Iranians to be good people for the most part.

 

[mAcOdIn]

I like how Flynn and Mattis are obsessed with helping Saudi Arabia and escalating conflict with Iran.

What causes military people to love Saudi Arabia and hate Iran so much? They aren't that different of countries relative to American values.

Iran funds Hezbollah which is against Israel. Iran also held a bunch of Americans hostage decades ago. While overall the two countries are ideologically similar I think the thing is, we only strategically need a few oil producing allies in the Middle East and one actively works against our other sworn ally(Israel) and the other's more indifferent and SA's a member of OPEC while Iran isn't so we're also gaining influence with that organization.

Considering the rhetoric regarding Iran thrown about for the last few decades anything short of continuing that rhetoric looks like appeasement.

 

[Gotchaye]

Then what changes? People not going into debt while getting a better education is a good thing, but what good is it if they end up working at Starbucks like the majority of Humanities graduates today? It sounds like the degree market would end up in a worse situation because at least today people who do not attend Ivy-League schools can still get careers. If education opens up for everybody then you pretty much ruin the "Worth" of any degree not from a prestigious university and in that scenario only the best of the brightest end up making out well. That is also bad since not everybody could afford to travel to these schools and obviously people with families couldn't easily attend no matter how qualified they were.

Again, it sounds to me like what you should really be trying to do is shut down all humanities programs outside of the Ivies.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Culturally Iran is much more aligned with that of the western world than Saudi Arabia.

However, at the top the Saudis are aligned with the US and the leadership in Iran isn't. That is one of the bigger tragedies here, I've found Iranians to be good people for the most part.

I understand that Saudi Arabia has done a good job influencing American leadership.

But I don't understand why military people like Flynn and Mattis seem obsessed with helping them. Not sure there's been any Saudi lobbying or anything aimed at those generals.

 

[thepotatoman]

I honestly do not understand how free college education would work. If you make college accessible to everybody wouldn't that make a degree less value and force people to attain even higher education (Master's and PHD Programs) to be competitive in the work force? If that ends up being the case the issue would be that not everybody is cut out for that kind of work and somebody might not have the time to take up further education at a point in their lives. Further that, what happens when a majority of the people going to school end up pursuing a non-STEM major and get into the same conundrum people who already can't find work with those degrees are in? Obviously having a better educated population would be a nice benefit from this, but you still run into the issue that they aren't getting employed just from going to college.

I just feel like there aren't already enough jobs for people depending on their major that the only people that would benefit from free college would be the STEM field and even then you run into an issue when the number of jobs available is significantly lower than the people available to fill them.

The theory is it'd do something similar to the 1900's high school movement, it would make skilled labor more accessible, but as skilled labor becomes more accessible, the demand for that skilled labor increases, new jobs and industries form we previously thought could never exist, productivity and innovation increases, the wealth of the entire country rises, and everyone gets paid more as a result.

Maybe there is an invisible limit to creating new jobs, but we have no way of knowing where that is until we hit it, and a college educated populace is way more likely to adjust to the future economy than a high school educated populace, given what we know today about the trajectory of technology and globalization.


And speaking as a software engineer, Liberal Arts are way less useless than people make it out to be. There is a lot of creativity needs in the economy, especially in the age of social media where every company needs a public face.

Just look around you and see how much art and writing there is in the world. Sure, you can hire a kid right out of high school to do that stuff and he wouldn't be as lost for what to do as he would be in an engineering job, but the quality is going to be much lower than someone that has spent that extra time with extra teaching to tell them how to draw and write and be well received by a very wide audience. Not to mention the PR and HR needs of simply being able to relate to a wide range of people.

 

[LostMyNarbles]

I don't really understand the objection. Yes, if college is entirely about obtaining a credential then increasing access doesn't help much, although it might make the distribution of the credential more equitable, and probably creates some pressure to get even more degrees as a way of distinguishing oneself.

But, like, if that's what college is for then just close them all down. That's a huge waste of time and money. On the other hand, if college is teaching people valuable skills then increasing access improves the quality of the workforce.

Also I'd push back on the idea that the goal is to go get a degree in some field and then go work in that field. That is really not typical. It happens maybe a little more than half of the time in engineering and computer science. And even there, with engineering it is very common that what you actually end up doing for a living doesn't seem to use most of the specific skills you were taught in school. But anyway, the point of a history degree program is not to equip students to go work in "history". What does that even look like, other than eventually getting a PhD and becoming a professor? And unemployment among college graduates is not really a problem. Actually college graduates have an unemployment rate that's about half of the average, and see a significant improvement in employment prospects even relative to people with some college or an associate degree.

I am a little bit confused because it sounds like you are contradicting yourself. You start out by saying college is a waste if the only purpose is to attain a credential in order to get a job. That the point in your opinion is to learn valuable new skills. But you then go on to say that most college graduates aren't using the skills they attained in school and many are not even going into the field for which they majored in.

I feel like today college is largely about making the effort to obtain a degree and employers recognizing the time you put into it. A lot of the classes people are forced to take don't correlate to gaining actually useful skills. I'm forced to muck through classes that are not relevant to what I want to go into and a lot of the Professors I have taken have been open enough to admit that we really aren't going to be learning something relevant to our degrees, but the school says we have to take it so whatever.

 

[tuxfool]

I am a little bit confused because it sounds like you are contradicting yourself. You start out by saying college is a waste if the only purpose is to attain a credential in order to get a job. That the point in your opinion is to learn valuable new skills. But you then go on to say that most college graduates aren't using the skills they attained in school and many are not even going into the field for which they majored in.

They don't. But they learn skills adjacent to their specialization. I would say one goes to college to learn how to think and to seed that thinking process with a little knowledge.

But I don't understand why military people like Flynn and Mattis seem obsessed with helping them. Not sure there's been any Saudi lobbying or anything aimed at those generals.

Because they're willing and able, and also because the Royal Family has a degree of autonomy that divorces them from the bureaucracies of dealing with their populace.

 

[B-Dubs]

And speaking as a software engineer, Liberal Arts are way less useless than people make it out to be. There is a lot of creativity needs in the economy, especially in the age of social media where every company needs a public face.

Just look around you and see how much art and writing there is in the world. Sure, you can hire a kid right out of high school to do that stuff and he wouldn't be as lost for what to do as he would be in an engineering job, but the quality is going to be much lower than someone that has spent that extra time with extra teaching to tell them how to draw and write and be well received by a very wide audience. Not to mention the PR and HR needs of simply being able to relate to a wide range of people.

The problem is most of these places, especially websites, pay pennies at best and nothing at worst. There's places that'll pay based on clicks, an infinitesimal amount, which just perpetuates clickbate.

Don't confuse all these websites that need content with places that are actually willing to pay what said content is worth.

 

[mAcOdIn]

I understand that Saudi Arabia has done a good job influencing American leadership.

But I don't understand why military people like Flynn and Mattis seem obsessed with helping them. Not sure there's been any Saudi lobbying or anything aimed at those generals.

What makes you think SA's influencing us? SA is a Sunni country, the Sunni country really, that influences the others, is a member of Opec where Iran is not, the home of Mecca and doesn't really pick fights with Israel.

If you could only pick one side, Iran versus Saudi Arabia, throwing out all the religious ideology and human rights of the two countries and just look at it economically Saudi Arabia's on paper the one to ally with. They hold more clout in the Muslim world politically, have more control over oil than Iran does and doesn't actively work against Israel like Iran does. I also think the maintaining of the status quo's important to people, we're already in bed with Saudi Arabia, we were in bed with them before Mattis and Flynn were even in the military let alone where they are now, at this point I don't even know if they contemplate the why anymore, I don't know that anyone does in government. The Devil you know basically.

 

[chadskin]

Politico: Trump reviews top White House staff after tumultuous start

If there is a single issue where the president feels his aides have let him down, it was the controversial executive order on immigration. The president has complained to at least one person about "how his people didn't give him good advice" on rolling out the travel ban and that he should have waited to sign it instead of "rushing it like they wanted me to." Trump has also wondered why he didn’t have a legal team in place to defend it from challenges.

Good read, lotsa palace intrigue.

 

[LostMyNarbles]

The theory is it'd do something similar to the 1900's high school movement, it would make skilled labor more accessible, but as skilled labor becomes more accessible, the demand for that skilled labor increases, new jobs and industries form we previously thought could never exist, productivity and innovation increases, the wealth of the entire country rises, and everyone gets paid more as a result.

Maybe there is an invisible limit to creating new jobs, but we have no way of knowing where that is until we hit it, and a college educated populace is way more likely to adjust to the future economy than a high school educated populace, given what we know today about the trajectory of technology and globalization.


And speaking as a software engineer, Liberal Arts are way less useless than people make it out to be. There is a lot of creativity needs in the economy, especially in the age of social media where every company needs a public face.

Just look around you and see how much art and writing there is in the world. Sure, you can hire a kid right out of high school to do that stuff and he wouldn't be as lost for what to do as he would be in an engineering job, but the quality is going to be much lower than someone that has spent that extra time with extra teaching to tell them how to draw and write and be well received by a very wide audience. Not to mention the PR and HR needs of simply being able to relate to a wide range of people.

I don't think Liberal Arts is necessarily useless, but I do think it cannot be denied that graduates are in a worse position than those going into STEM related majors. Obviously as a society we shouldn't ignore the arts and say it is not worth going into a degree program, but the issue goes back to their being too many people in Liberal Arts and not enough jobs to support them all.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Does Kellyanne Conway know anything about running the government? Conway replacing Reince seems like it would make things even more fucky.

 

[Gotchaye]

I am a little bit confused because it sounds like you are contradicting yourself. You start out by saying college is a waste if the only purpose is to attain a credential in order to get a job. That the point in your opinion is to learn valuable new skills. But you then go on to say that most college graduates aren't using the skills they attained in school and many are not even going into the field for which they majored in.

I feel like today college is largely about making the effort to obtain a degree and employers recognizing the time you put into it. A lot of the classes people are forced to take don't correlate to gaining actually useful skills. I'm forced to muck through classes that are not relevant to what I want to go into and a lot of the Professors I have taken have been open enough to admit that we really aren't going to be learning something relevant to our degrees, but the school says we have to take it so whatever.

No, I'm saying that you're not learning specific skills that you're going to use later. Like, I took courses on differential equations, linear algebra, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, materials science, and more. I haven't had to solve a differential equation in years. Friends of mine who went straight into the oil industry, which was basically the expected track, barely even do any of this stuff. At best they're using very narrow slices of what they learned alongside a whole bunch of stuff particular to their jobs that they had to learn after they started. Some are in management now and have other people to do the actual engineering.

What they learned was something much more general. What they got out of our engineering program was training at learning how to solve engineering problems. When we all got jobs we had to learn entirely new specific skills, but we could learn these skills quickly and well because of our education.

And this is why humanities degree programs can still be very useful. Ultimately you're getting just about the same thing that the people taking science courses are getting. The really valuable thing you're taking away is critical thinking and the ability to dive into strange new topics and make sense of them.

It's true that you can mostly get through college without learning anything useful. That's almost as true for engineering as it is for English, and I would say that if your goal is to get a degree while doing as little work as possible then you should choose a humanities program. But if you want to learn something then a humanities program can be an excellent choice (as can a science program). You get out what you put in. The advantage of having a variety of degree programs is largely that different people find different subjects more engaging. Ultimately the particular subject that they find engaging isn't that relevant to the skills they're going to develop in college, but they're more likely to develop those skills if they're presented in the context of an engaging subject. And it's those skills that you can get out of any degree program that are what actually make for a valuable employee in just about any job.

 

[Dan]

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump tackles crisis diplomacy at close range

The launch, which wasn't expected, presented Trump with one of the first breaking national security incidents of his presidency. It also noisily disrupted what was meant to be an easygoing weekend of high-level male bonding with the more sobering aspects of global diplomacy.

Sitting alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with whom he'd spent most of the day golfing, Trump took the call on a mobile phone at his table, which was set squarely in the middle of the private club's dining area.

As Mar-a-Lago's wealthy members looked on from their tables, and with a keyboard player crooning in the background, Trump and Abe's evening meal quickly morphed into a strategy session, the decision-making on full view to fellow diners, who described it in detail to CNN.

Even as a flurry of advisers and translators descended upon the table carrying papers and phones for their bosses to consult, dinner itself proceeded apace. Waiters cleared the wedge salads and brought along the main course as Trump and Abe continued consulting with aides.

Trump left the impromptu briefing room without taking questions, having delivered the first emergency foreign policy statement of his presidency, but even as he confronted one of the gravest matters of his office, Trump nonetheless found it impossible to resist dropping in on a nearby wedding reception, already underway in his treasured Grand Ballroom. Trump designed and built the space himself after purchasing Mar-a-Lago in the 1980s.

Entering the ornate room, Trump took a photo with the bride and her bridesmaids, who posed in red gowns next to the commander in chief, mimicking his signature thumbs-up.
Then he grabbed a microphone.

"I saw them out on the lawn today," Trump said of the bride and groom, who were standing nearby. "I said to the Prime Minister of Japan, I said, 'C'mon Shinzo, let's go over and say hello.' "

"They've been members of this club for a long time," Trump said of the newlyweds. "They've paid me a fortune."

a) what the fuck

b) how many of Mar-a-Lago's members are foreign spies?

 

[Vixdean]

Fuck you Donald, just gave away a car and TV to an illegal Mexican immigrant!

 

[wutwutwut]

Culturally Iran is much more aligned with that of the western world than Saudi Arabia.

However, at the top the Saudis are aligned with the US and the leadership in Iran isn't. That is one of the bigger tragedies here, I've found Iranians to be good people for the most part.

Most people are good. Ordinary people getting fucked over because their leaders have different priorities has of course been constant throughout human history, but you'd hope we'd be past that in the 21st century.

 

[chadskin]

All four new stories tonight:

@BraddJaffy: 👀
Alarm — nyti.ms/2l9rzco
Bells — wapo.st/2l9Hur1
For — on.wsj.com/2lEViak
Flynn — politi.co/2kXZJO8

Leakiest. WH. Ever?

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

We're going to war with Iran.

Please change the topic title

 

[balladofwindfishes]

The amount of protests an unprovoked random war with Iran would cause will be unreal.

 

[Dubbedinenglish]

Bush used the last of his 9/11 capital on Iraq, Trump is attempting this while underwater in approval ratings.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Some third generation immigrant from Saudi Arabia who doesn't believe in Islam is going to kill a random dude at a 7/11 and Trump will use to invade Iran like Bush used 9/11 to invade Iraq.

 

[Mirand]

Bush's approval rating was still in the high 50s when we went into Iraq. Good luck when 60% of the country is wary as fuck right now.

 

[UberTag]

What are you even talking about?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830904083519242241

Who lies this constantly about "no, I am actually very popular and the cool kids like me"?

Eric Cartman. That's about it.

 

[Teggy]

Omg, is Christie going to get his shot

Spoiler

to bring McDonald's to the white house?

 

[TiredofWinning]

Chaffetz profile in WaPo

One quote stuck out:

“It’s a very, very small minority,” he said between sips of a chocolate shake. “It’s a very vocal, very frustrated, scorched-earth mentality that’s not representative of the average person, certainly not in Utah. It might be in San Francisco or Seattle but not here. Not in middle America.”

Change around those states/cities and you have what every Democrat who lost their seat in 2010 thought in the summer of 2009.

 

[kadotsu]

Bush used the last of his 9/11 capital on Iraq, Trump is attempting this while underwater in approval ratings.

He has finally caught up with House of Cards.

 

[Extollere]

All four new stories tonight:


Leakiest. WH. Ever?

Holy fuck at all this...

How the hell are we gonna make it through a year of this bullshit, let alone 4? My head hurts thinking about it.

 

[Future Foundation]

We're going to war with Iran.

Please change the topic title

It was always so strange when I'd see people claim that, somehow, we'd be less likely to go to war under Trump.

 

[Nelo Ice]

Holy fuck at all this...

How the hell are we gonna make it through a year of this bullshit, let alone 4? My head hurts thinking about it.

Yeah I've been dead inside since the election and once it became reality I've just become numb. Like good god this administration is even worse than anyone could have predicted. Every day is a just hoping something horrible hasn't happened.

 

[Teggy]

Yeah I've been dead inside since the election and once it became reality I've just become numb. Like good god this administration is even worse than anyone could have predicted. Every day is a just hoping something horrible hasn't happened.

I'm just trying to keep an even keel by not reading too much and not posting anything to Facebook. The Miller stuff where he lied about voter fraud this morning made me really angry and I just went about my day going to the gym and the supermarket. But it really sucks.

BTW that Politico article about Hillary running again is trash. That said I think she deserved to win and would vote for her again in a heartbeat.

 

[Nelo Ice]

I'm just trying to keep an even keel by not reading too much and not posting anything to Facebook. The Miller stuff where he lied about voter fraud this morning made me really angry and I just went about my day going to the gym and the supermarket. But it really sucks.

I've just been spamming facebook lol to show hey people this is insane stop pretending this is normal. Also I went to my Congressmens's open house last weekend and some seniors I spoke to were having the same exact anxiety I was having. They lived through Nixon and they brought up coup, civil war etc without me having to say anything. Like they were freaking out and said this is nothing like they've ever seen.

 

[mo60]

Holy fuck at all this...

How the hell are we gonna make it through a year of this bullshit, let alone 4? My head hurts thinking about it.

This plus how crazy local politics is right now were I live is making for a interesting and horrible time in politics.

 

[bgbball31]

Guys, how accurate is The Observer in general? Are they a good source? Because something I just read there...

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/...awmakers.html?referer=https://t.co/D1SGIHTCA6

ALL REPUBLICANS ARE BAD.
ALL REPUBLICANS ARE BAD.
ALL REPUBLICANS ARE BAD.

Tattoo this to your fucking arm to make sure you fucking remember it.

Also, the GOP thinks Trump will help them accomplish their agenda and they're putting up with him to accomplish their agenda? THEY HAVE NO FUCKING AGENDA.

They have no health care bill! Their tax bill would get 35 votes in the Senate! Those were the only two things they mentioned in the article as being on their agenda! They have fucking nothing!

This plus how crazy local politics is right now were I live is making for a fun time in politics.

This is not remotely fun.