American Politics from 2019 on

[Svartalf]

Burn the heretic!

man, it would give me so much pleasure to do so...

[Svartalf]

and can please somebody sum up the article Jim posted for me, I was lost before the third paragraph.

[Tero]

and can please somebody sum up the article Jim posted for me, I was lost before the third paragraph.

...signs of frontotemporal dementia, which affects a person’s personality, behaviour and language more than memory.

[Brian Peacock]

Bah. Trump has always been a self-obsessed, sociopathic, sadistic, racist arsehole. It's part of his charm.

[Brian Peacock]

...

and when [Vance] aims at reproofing the effing pope on matters theologyckal, i wonder if vance is expressing 5 centuries of protestant personal interpetation of the bible tradition, or just playing the rump game and talking from the rear.

Exactly. He's missing something of deep significance to Catholicism - the pope is second only to the big man himself, and his theological word is metaphysical and actual religious law. Vance exposed that his self-declared (and heavily self-promoted) religiosity is fundamentally at odds with, and subservient to, his political perspective.

more like, he just stated that I'm more of a Catholic than he is.

In the olden days you'd be tested on the rack or offered the embrace of the iron maiden for saying you were more Catholic than the pope.

[L'Emmerdeur]

As if being more Catholic than the Pope were something any sensible person would aspire to.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The article below points out the irony of past outrage regarding possible corruption in the Clinton charity endeavor, given the current unabashed corruption of the Trump administration. In particular the ridiculous nepotistic oligarch caricature of diplomacy embodied by Kushner and Witkoff.

'Trump’s Middle East envoys are partners in duplicity'

The New York Times reported on Monday about an event that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago when Republicans were shrieking that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be disqualified from running for president because she would supposedly sell out America’s national security to procure money from foreign leaders to fund her family’s global charity. In late March, as the Iran war was dragging into its 26th day, Kushner appeared at a Saudi investment conference in Miami. The president’s son-in-law, who had represented the U.S. in the failed talks that led to war breaking out with Iran, was not in south Florida as an American official but as the founder and chief executive of Affinity Partners, an investment firm that had received billions from the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund.

Kushner was reportedly fundraising for another massive cash injection from the Saudi crown prince at the same time he was serving as a special envoy in the administration’s negotiations with Iran — and as the Saudis were reportedly pushing for war with the Islamic Republic. It is one of the most egregious examples of conflict of interest in American political history. And nobody said a word.

Within days he was off to the Middle East for more talks with Trump’s other special envoy, Steve Witkoff, another arrogant real estate investor with no diplomatic experience who is botching American foreign policy all over the globe.

Like his partner in duplicity, Witkoff’s conflicts are numerous. He previously joined with the Trump family in the cryptocurrency World Liberty Financial, and after he was named special envoy, Witkoff leveraged his position to argue for an export deal to export the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates, a deal which had not been previously approved due to national security concerns. Coincidentally, I’m sure, a UAE government-backed company handed World Liberty a $2 billion investment in its stablecoin. Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon issued a statement saying that “[the deal] appears to have aided a foreign power’s effort to acquire U.S. technology with serious economic and national security implications — and [Witkoff] potentially did so in exchange for his personal financial benefit.”

[Brian Peacock]

Why do you hate winners L'Emmy?

[Svartalf]

Bah. Trump has always been a self-obsessed, sociopathic, sadistic, racist arsehole. It's part of his charm.

I don't see any charm there, but I suppose american voters love arseholes.

[pErvinalia]

The nastier he is, the more they own the libs.

[Svartalf]

...

and when [Vance] aims at reproofing the effing pope on matters theologyckal, i wonder if vance is expressing 5 centuries of protestant personal interpetation of the bible tradition, or just playing the rump game and talking from the rear.

Exactly. He's missing something of deep significance to Catholicism - the pope is second only to the big man himself, and his theological word is metaphysical and actual religious law. Vance exposed that his self-declared (and heavily self-promoted) religiosity is fundamentally at odds with, and subservient to, his political perspective.

more like, he just stated that I'm more of a Catholic than he is.

In the olden days you'd be tested on the rack or offered the embrace of the iron maiden for saying you were more Catholic than the pope.

not really, to start with, the iron maiden is probably sheer myth, and anyway, it's a means of killing, not torture.
but yeah, if Leo is not a milquetoast idiot, he should sendopus dei agents make an example of that moron.

[Svartalf]

As if being more Catholic than the Pope were something any sensible person would aspire to.

well, etymologically speaking, and given the fact that the pope is focussed on his own sect, so yeah, it should be desirable to be more catholic/universal than him.

[Svartalf]

Why do you hate winners L'Emmy?

because NOTHING excuses acting unethically, even being a "winner".