Wonāt go anywhere. His followers (and government) will gladly believe hacked documents from Hillary (or Trayvon).
But they will never believe hacked Trump tax returns are real.
3 Likes
This is quite possibly the dumbest legal argument you could possibly have about the electoral college. Because of course electors have the constitutional right to vote for a different candidate than the one who wins their stateās popular vote, itās the entire fucking point of having electors at all.
Now, if you want to have a legal argument about whether the US can, or should, do away with the electoral college because it doesnāt sit well with modern democratic values thatās a different story - fire away on that one.
5 Likes
āPeopleās willā means just about anything. A mob of yahoos armed with assault weapons is the will of people, if it doth proper. I guess āwill of the people as expressed in a strict set of constitutional rulesā is too big a mouthful.
And as you said, thereās nothing about requiring electors to vote for a particular candidate, except these untested state rules. There have been problems when some electors were the worst ward-heelers, who could be bought for a drink strong enough to make them forget about Doctor Tar and Professor Feather waiting for them back home. I donāt know, pick better electors?
Ferguson is a Democrat, but Iām guessing that heās quite centrist.
3 Likes
Watch out Kim Jong-un - here comes Super Duper Rocket Man!
6 Likes
Super-Duper, eh?
1 Like
āBeyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army."
ā George Orwell, essay āEngland Your Englandā 1941
8 Likes
āSeventeen times faster than existing missilesā doesnāt make much sense when existing missiles are sub-orbital already. A missile that is traveling at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour will expend all its fuel accelerating downward to stay somewhere near the Earth, never mind hit a target.
4 Likes
If American tech is used to design or make that chip, you better not ship it to Huawei, warns Uncle Sam
The Trump administration on Friday officially clamped down on the use of US technology worldwide to manufacture chips for Huawei, cutting off the mega-corp from vital semiconductor supply chains.
Essentially, chips manufactured overseas using US software or hardware cannot be shipped to Huawei or any of its subsidiaries without Uncle Samās permission. That means that even if the semiconductors were commissioned or designed by Huawei and manufactured by foundries outside of the States, the chips will still be subject to export limits if the manufacturing processes use any US equipment or design tools. That blocks Huawei from placing the system-on-chips and other integrated circuits in its own products, such as phones and tablets.
This even affects TSMC, which makes chips for Huawei and just promised to build a 5nm semiconductor factory in Arizona.
5 Likes
Hmm. The U.S. is indeed teetering on the edge of fat out tyranny, but weāre allowed to laugh at the army. It just never occurs to 99.9% of us to ever do it.
Itās true though that popular entertainment that includes laughter at āthe militaryā ā its bureaucracy, its pompous officers, etc, as in MASH or Catch-22 ā is virtually non-existent now. We do now generally respect the military, donāt question its gargantuan budget, think of vets as holy heroes, and so on.
10 Likes
Not exactly a shock.
13 Likes
OH NO! What will they do without without American chip technology!
Hopefully Huawei wonāt think of going to Chinese chip companies for second-source or outright pirate copies.
7 Likes
One of the things that really gets me is how everything Trump does ā and this was true before he took office, too ā actually proves how BAD he is at understanding business, commerce, economics, etc. You know, the stuff heās supposedly such a genius at. NY and NJ residents were keenly aware of this fact, having been affected by his incompetence and reliance on illegal means for decades, but how are the average Ma & Pa store owners in the heartland not catching on yet?
12 Likes
The Secret Service has signed a $179,000 contract to rent golf carts this summer in Bedminster, New Jersey, where President Donald Trump has a golf resort.
Mar-a-Lago will be a separate tab.
9 Likes
Should CBS sue for copyright infringementā¦ 
14 Likes
20 Likes
The Wizard of Oz really was prescient. The heartland truly pays no attention to the man behind the orange makeup.
11 Likes
Compare MASH with NCIS. On almost all levels the narrative has flipped.
MASH looked at the victims of war ā soldiers and civilians, us and the āenemyā and concluded that the bad guys all resided in power, regardless of skin colour. It pondered the injustice of war, and whether we should be waging it.
NCIS glorifies the military ā the bad guys are almost always working against the pure and noble US forces ā and when the perpetrator is in the military, theyāre given a sympathetic reason for their actions or theyāre a ālone wolfā edge case that is dealt with and the military is pure again. Brown people (especially from the ME) are always just evil foreigners trying to harm innocent Americans. There is no thought given to the justice of the US being in their countries as an occupying force.
Thereās a reason people believe that a Black or Brown person with a rock is a terrorist, but doesnāt automatically slap that label on the White guy with an AR-15. Yes, itās racism, but itās also because they see that racism supported and reinforced every day. When they see White men with guns on TV, theyāre the good guys. If the casting gets any diversity, itās still the Americans (US) who are good. No one else is allowed humanity, unless they are marching in lockstep with US.
As I keep saying: the stories we tell matter. Fiction doesnāt just reflect our reality, it shapes and reinforces it.
The most insidious thing about shows and books like that? They donāt require much thought. You have to follow an A and maybe a B plot, and if you miss a detail, theyāll fill it in again later. They donāt hit you with deep ponderables. They comfort us by telling us that we are fundamentally good and that itās other people who are bad. And in a world where weāre all physically and mentally exhausted, we like easy. Our brains latch onto it. Weāll microwave a quick dinner, grab the remote and zone out. And we absorb the propaganda message and all the biases along with the simple story.
27 Likes
Really, just so well said. Would that I had more than one 
to give.
14 Likes
15 Likes
