We need to talk about Donald: the cursing & swearing thread

[Forty Two]

Some people probably voted for Trump because he was endorsed by their religious leaders - but that isn't the point of the satirical etching above, as well you know.

I know Philosophy profs that voted for Trump. Really, it is not that simple.

Well I did say 'some' and 'probably' there. I was just pointing out that 42 was challenging the charge that people did 'vote for Trump because he's religious' - which is a charge nobody made, nor did it seem to be the point of the caricature posted.

Well, the caricature posted has Trump in the role of Jesus, suggesting that the things that Trump is doing is not particularly Christ-like, and yet the supporters are supporting him. So, I think I did get the point, and noted that Trump's supporters were never expecting someone to act like Jesus and aren't supporting him because he's supposed to be Christ-like, and whatever their religious views, they elected Trump for a different reason. It's not really incongruous for an otherwise kind and religious person, or devotee of Christ, to support a stronger military - a person who likes Jesus can still support a strong defense of the US in a world of competing and sometimes hostile nations.

So, that's what I'm getting at there. I think the article is trying to suggest that the religious right are hypocrites because they support a Trump in Jesus' clothing. However, I don't think his voters ever expected anything like their mythical Jesus when they voted for Trump.

[Forty Two]

Then why is Coulter still trying to defend his adultery if it's not religious. Why not just say, yeah he's an adulterer, we don't care.

I don't know why Ann Coulter does anything. But, if it were a religious issue for Coulter, I would think she'd not defend the adultery. It's only if it's not a particularly important religious issue that a religious person would say "we don't care." They do care about adultery, but they vote for Trump anyway because it's not why they're electing Trump as President. I think Coulter referred to "degrees of adultery" where some affairs are less bad than others. I agree with that view - there are degrees of most offenses. Big deal?

Trump has never claimed to be virtuous, and I can't imagine any supporter of his being snowed into thinking the guy is blameless and free of sin. LOL.

[BarnettNewman]

Since when have conservatives, Coulter in particular, embraced relativistic morality?

[Forty Two]

Since when have conservatives, Coulter in particular, embraced relativistic morality?

Who cares?

They would say that degrees of crime or offenses is not relativistic. They say it's objective, different circumstances create a different moral judgment and intent of a perpetrator changes a moral judgment - but they still will tell you it's objective. They think that murder being wrong, but killing in self defense being right, is somehow an objective moral truth, for example, but they're wrong. It's not.

What they tend to mean by "objective" is that there is some source for morality outside of the individual, and that therefore offense X is moral or immoral regardless of what you or I think about it.

[Sean Hayden]

Why can't she just be a hypocrite? Christ, everyone's so fuckin righteous all the time.

I don't care about Trump's adultery cause I hate your ass so much more. -get over it sunshine

[Brian Peacock]

What he does with his private parts is his own affair. Only if he starts telling you what to do with yours does it become a public matter.

[Tero]

Elsewere:
"As for our (Dem's) plan to take them (MI, WI, PA)back ... well, I don't want to let you in on our secret but if you promise not to tell anyone I will this one time. We're using Trump!

Ain't that a kick in the butt!?! We're letting him single-handedly ruin the Rep party, and the lemmings are following him over the cliff!"

[Tero]

Lame duck Trump:
George W. Bush launched the surge in Iraq, gave a shot at Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and initiated a massive humanitarian effort to fight AIDS in Africa. Obama’s second term was dominated by his obsession with getting a nuclear deal with Iran.

And now President Trump, early in his first term, is trying the same trick. That’s because, according to numerous reports from inside the shockingly leaky White House (another feature of lame duck presidencies, when staffers look to their own political future) Trump is eager for “wins.” As Trump advisor Larry Kudlow told the Washington Post, “The president wants Ws — he wants wins.”

The question is, what happens when the list of easy Ws runs out? There’s little evidence that Trump is operating with a coherent strategic vision, which means that he won’t have a thought-out criteria for knowing when to say no to the generals he clearly admires. For a true lame duck president, that may not matter — when the Ws run out, he’s out of office. For a first-term president who just acts like a lame duck president, it’s another story.

(LA Times, April)
Now he is even more a lame duck

[JimC]

Lame ducks get culled from the flock, and then used to make Duck a L'Orange...

Rather apt, actually...

[Animavore]

It’s the “revenge of the GOP women,” Associated Press congressional reporter Alan Fram pointed out, as it became apparent that Republicans would soon have no choice but to throw in the towel on their Obamacare repeal efforts.

By Tuesday afternoon, three Republican senators — all women — had come out against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to push a vote on a clean Obamacare repeal bill — enough to sink it altogether. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) confirmed they would not vote for a repeal bill that delayed enacting the policy by two years.

It didn’t take long.

On Monday night, two key defections killed the Senate’s revised health care bill. Voting on a clean repeal bill appeared to be McConnell’s Hail Mary effort to get his conference to vote on some form of Obamacare repeal. But gripes around a closed legislative process, and what would only be more uncertainty to come with a successful repeal-and-delay bill, tanked the effort in less than a day.

It’s notable that the three women who had the final say, vocal in their positions on health care policy, were all cut out of the Senate’s initial working group to draft the Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill — a group of 13 men.

]
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... are-repeal

[Tero]

Putin ordered: Trump is our man. How do we do this?

Russia’s election interference began well before the general election. It started during the GOP primaries and clearly in support of Donald Trump over his GOP opponents. Thanks to investigative reporting by the New York Times, we now know, at the very least, the Trump campaign was open to support from the Russian government by early June 2016 when senior campaign members met with Russians purporting to have information from the Kremlin that would harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, discussed timing for implementing Russian support, and failed to report any of this to U.S. authorities. Many have raised the question whether the Trump campaign’s knowledge of Russian government support and these kinds of exchanges began before June 2016. Yet to truly understand the scope of Russian interference in the U.S. election, we must ask a more specific question: did the Trump campaign know about, accept, or work with the Russian government when the Kremlin interfered in the GOP primary?


The publicly available information on this matter should prompt Congress, Robert Mueller, news media, and others to pursue that question with utmost concern. Let’s take a closer look.

I. Russia’s election interference during the Republican primary

Before we explore whether the Trump team was working with Russia during the primaries, it’s worth briefly reviewing the Russian government’s overall involvement in in the 2016 GOP primaries. Russian election interference reportedly took effect during the primaries in an effort to undercut GOP candidates whose positions were hostile to Moscow’s interests and, more specifically, in an effort to boost Donald Trump. The Russian operation included (at least) two prongs: a propaganda effort to spread fake news and cyber operations to steal confidential information.

When exactly did the Russian influence campaign begin? In an interview with Just Security, former FBI special agent Clint Watts explained that the Russian approach to its influence campaign involved an earlier starting point than many assume. Watts said:

“What many people miss is that a first principle of effective information wars is to win over the audience first. The Russians developed an alt-right audience in the United States, including testing how they would respond to different messages, well before the primaries began. The Russians were then ready for whichever candidate suited them.”

https://www.justsecurity.org/43270/trum ... p-primary/

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, but the US has done some dodgy things when it comes to other countries elections and Hillary was shit at email, so it all evens out in the end.

[Animavore]

[Animavore]

[Animavore]