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Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that he has directed his federal prosecutors to pursue the most severe penalties possible, including mandatory minimum sentences, in his first step toward a return to the war on drugs of the 1980s and 1990s that resulted in long sentences for many minority defendants and packed U.S. prisons.
[...] In the later years of the Obama administration, a bipartisan consensus emerged on Capitol Hill for sentencing reform legislation, which Sessions opposed and successfully worked to derail.
In a two-page memo to federal prosecutors across the country, Sessions overturned former attorney general Eric H. Holder's sweeping criminal charging policy that instructed his prosecutors to avoid charging certain defendants with offenses that would trigger long mandatory minimum sentences. In its place, Sessions told his more than 5,000 assistant U.S. attorneys to charge defendants with the most serious crimes, carrying the toughest penalties.
More at Washington Post, Fox News, Huffington Post, The Hill
Memorandum on Department Charging and Sentencing Policy - US Department of Justice PDF
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @01:36PM (28 children)
Recreational drug use and addiction are two separate, but related issues. The war on drugs makes both worse, but supports a broad industry to fight the war from both sides. On the Pro bench is pharma and the drug lords. On the Con bench are the departments of Justice and Defense and tobacco, alcohol, and pharma industries. (Yes, pharma, and probably others play both sides.) It's a really big money machine for all involved, except the users.
The lesson of prohibition was that no matter what you do, some folks are going to get high. Most will remain functional, otherwise law abiding productive members of society. Some unfortunately have a bad gene which will push them towards addiction. This is a problem solved best with the medical system. Attempting to solve it with the legal system just makes the mess we have.
President Trump should know all this. His family has the gene. He has helped many of his friend's kids by talking to them about this. Would the world be better if instead, each of these kids were put in the criminal justice system? I think not, but the more interesting question is what does Mr. Trump think?
This country needs a reset on many fronts. That's why Mr. Trump got the job. I'd really like to understand what he is thinking on this. It seems an area where he has personal knowledge and should make a rational choice to improve the situation. How does continuing to dig the hole deeper help this already bad situation?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:31PM (27 children)
He was never going to be anything but a nuclear bomb. The voters weaponized the candidate and sent him like a guided missile to DC in order to leave the place a giant smoking crater. He is accomplishing that. Maybe he's not doing it intentionally or the way people thought he would, by "draining the swamp," but he is totally destroying residual faith in the American government by bringing every edge and contour of the Establishment out against him, in the open, showing how they won't even pretend to honor the office of President when it's aimed at breaking their power, and by being utterly incompetent as a politician. He is making a mockery of the office himself through his behavior, and that in turn is making formal what has been a fact for a long time, that the titular government and all the kabuki surrounding its actions does not matter when the Deep State controls everything.
It might not be intentional, but that's a huge victory. We have proven the Deep State doesn't give a damn what voters think, and that nobody we can possibly elect President, even one as corrosive and destructive and nihilistic as Trump, can change anything in this system. The Deep State simply will not allow the will of the voters to get in the way of its self-serving sociopathic agenda. This whole episode is the exclamation point at the end of the First American Republic.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jIyajbe on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:51PM (9 children)
Is this familiar quote a summary of your point?
"...the purpose of the presidency is not to wield power, but to distract attention away from it."
I am coming round to this point of view.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 16 2017, @06:25PM (8 children)
I have not heard that quote before and don't know its provenance, but it feels descriptive of what we see now.
I recall from history class that historians often write that America's original sin was slavery. There's the famous quote from Sojourner Truth about the Constitution having "a little weevil in it!" they repeat. I believe there's another, worse original sin in the American system, in its unwritten Constitution: aristocracy.
The Founding Fathers were aristocrats. They were British subjects who were fine with the notion of aristocracy--they just didn't like the king at the time. So they jettisoned the king and kept the aristocracy, and enshrined it in the Way Things Are Done.
We're still trying to unwind the effect of slavery on the country, and that's after specifically, formally, openly dealing with it for 150 years. We have never openly and honestly tried to formally, and completely, root out aristocracy.
Up until now the aristocracy has been fine to allow the appearance of democracy, the endless see-saw between the Republicans and Democrats, that, gosh, just never seems to resolve anything real, because it doesn't change the underlying power or wealth of their Deep State. Now that we have the technological means to find out all about the shape and contours of the Deep State, we have a reality to match to our ongoing observation of our social wealth and human vitality and collective potential being leached away by invisible, vampiric forces whose collective aspirations seem to amount to nothing more than greater piles of blow and larger numbers of hookers.
I think we can do better than that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Tuesday May 16 2017, @09:26PM
As I understand it, the USA governmental system design is heavily based on the Roman Republic.
Only citizens may vote. The citizens are the land owners/aristocrats. The vast majority of the people are only residents. Thats the way USA was for the first ~70 years of time as well in terms of voting. USA was explicitly set up from the initial start to favor the wealthy. The voting system ensures there are only two parties. It is broken by design? No, because it has worked/lasted a long time, it works mostly as intended. And one those intended things is being able to get laws in place that allow discrimination against the poor.
My point? It will not be easy removing the upper class from control when it was explicitly designed for them to be in control.
One possible option I see is to linearize income + wealth: tax wealth progressively say .5% per magnitude starting at 1% at the million dollars of equity.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:27PM (6 children)
No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.
Someone didn't like nobility to the point of preventing the US from creating them. We also ignore both the US's strong connection to the revolution in France which also was happening at the time and which was strongly egalitarian, and the ease of obtaining land in the US. It wasn't hard to become a land-owning "aristocrat" in the US and circumstances didn't really change on that front until public lands were withdrawn from sale starting around the beginning of the 20th century.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:42PM (5 children)
You're getting hung up on the titular component of "aristocracy," whereas I'm talking about the functional aspect of aristocracy, which is hereditary entitlement and entrenched privilege. So you're correct that we don't have dudes swanning around calling themselves the "Baron of the Hamptons," or the "Duke of Las Vegas," but we do very much have dudes swanning around claiming all the rights and benefits that would accrue to said formal titles.
But, sigh, fine, if you like, call it "plutocracy" instead, but that rather misses the hereditary, entrenched nature of what I'm talking about and can be shaded into the salutory "meritocracy," meaning, which implies that those jackasses earned what they have and the rest of us are just jealous and lazy.
Are you one of them, khallow? If not, is it because you're mentally torpid and lazy, and merely envious but aspiring?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:21PM (4 children)
You're getting hung up on the titular component of "aristocracy," whereas I'm talking about the functional aspect of aristocracy, which is hereditary entitlement and entrenched privilege.
No, I'm making a point here. The founders went out of their way to eliminate a common component of aristocracy. And titles aren't as irrelevant as you think. They've been used as gatekeepers for the aristocracy and power for a long time in Europe. When reading biographies of ambitious people in Europe during the Middle Ages, you often see them go to enormous effort just to get a better title.
In the US, you have to keep the wealth and property in order to keep the class. Plenty of people can't do that and hence, don't stay aristocrats.
But, sigh, fine, if you like, call it "plutocracy" instead, but that rather misses the hereditary, entrenched nature of what I'm talking about and can be shaded into the salutory "meritocracy," meaning, which implies that those jackasses earned what they have and the rest of us are just jealous and lazy.
No, plutocracy doesn't miss that. And you're grossly exaggerating the "hereditary, entrenched nature". Further, are you ever going to take these contrary indications into account, or will we a few months from now, have this debate reset once again to the same starting point? There's considerable nuance that needs to be grasped here even if we fully grant your point of view.
The real problem with the idea is the huge power of bureaucracies throughout the world. Technocracy is really the proper label for this system. Everyone sees the flashy bits, the CEOs, wealthy investors, politicians, etc at the top of these pyramids, but it is the people under them who create the real power. Those bureaucracies whether private or public know more about us and enable far more powerful infrastructure (which can be and often is used to control us) than the bureaucracies of the past.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @09:28PM (3 children)
Nobody's ever heard of the Rockefellers, Fords, Vanderbilts, or Du Ponts? All the stuff about wealth inequality being the worst in American history is fake news? The data about how CEOs make 1000 times the median wage of their employees is fabricated?
What is the "considerable nuance" you're talking about that debrides that? Do you know of some path to capturing a reasonable share of the value of our output that the rest of us don't? Is the secret getting an MBA, going to med school, or making the right friendship in your college fraternity? I would really like for there to be such a thing, so if you know it, share it. That sounds flippant, because I am a flippant guy, but seriously, please tell us how to escape the crumbling middle class and join the ranks of the rich and powerful. I'm pretty sure we'd all like to know. What is the source of the hope and confidence in the justice of this status quo that feeds you?
You seem to be weighting bureaucracy more than I do, here, but you're not going to get much argument out of me there. I'm no fan of big government. I think I would be a fan of efficient government, but I don't know of many real-world examples.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:57AM (2 children)
Nobody's ever heard of the Rockefellers, Fords, Vanderbilts, or Du Ponts?
And your point is? I didn't say that people couldn't inherit wealth. None of those families have any notable power or history-making ability now. Even the more politically oriented families like Kennedys and Bushes see a considerable dilution of their power with subsequent generations. Meanwhile coming from the other direction, we have a lot of new wealth. For example, of the wealthiest ten people in the US, only two had extremely wealthy parents (Charles and David Koch, known as the "Koch brothers" who inherited a considerable oil company from their father and grew it into one of the largest privately owned (that is, not publicly sold on a stock market) companies in the US).
The data about how CEOs make 1000 times the median wage of their employees is fabricated?
That is entirely irrelevant and ignores that the CEO can be worth a 1000 times the median wage of their employees.
What is the "considerable nuance" you're talking about that debrides that? Do you know of some path to capturing a reasonable share of the value of our output that the rest of us don't?
No. But I do know that saving and investing your money does the trick. Due to labor competition with the developing world, labor is not as great a way to generate wealth. But owning capital remains a great way to do so.
Is the secret getting an MBA, going to med school, or making the right friendship in your college fraternity? I would really like for there to be such a thing, so if you know it, share it.
First of all, you have to want that. I should be stating the obvious in noting that most people simply aren't behaving in a way that would accumulate wealth at a class-shifting level. Have you tried to do the things that very rich people have done to get rich? Most of them have run multiple businesses and tried aggressively to make advantageous connections.
Second, they tend to be really competent at what they do which comes from learning from experience combined with a lot of experience.
Third, be really focused on growing the value of the businesses and investments they own.
That sounds flippant, because I am a flippant guy, but seriously, please tell us how to escape the crumbling middle class and join the ranks of the rich and powerful. I'm pretty sure we'd all like to know
Moving on, did you know that more [reason.com] of the US middle class crumbles up into the upper class than crumbles down into the lower class? Sounds like there might be a lot of people who have figured this thing out.
What is the source of the hope and confidence in the justice of this status quo that feeds you?
I pay attention to what is actually going on. Today we have the greatest improvement in well-being of all humanity in history and have in addition a considerable drop in global wealth inequality. Second, wealthy societies result in improvements in every enormous human problem such as overpopulation, poverty, habitat and arable land destruction, government and societal corruption, etc. That has come at a slight increase in the amount of relative poverty in the US. We have enormous technological developments underway that can completely change how we view the universe as something out there, our acceptance of the limitations of our bodies as something we can't do anything about, planets and stars as colored lights in the sky, and thinking itself. A primitive view of society as run by aristocracy completely ignores the society (you also have yet to explain your earlier use of the term, "deep state" - could it be that you actually agree with me without realizing it?). It's yet another prison of the mind.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 18 2017, @03:31AM (1 child)
Ah, OK. They want it more. As for doing the things very rich people have done to get rich, do you mean using my buddies to hand me a sweetheart, no-bid contract? No, of course not. You imply they have better instincts and business savvy than everyone else. One question, khallow, do you really know any rich people?
Do you really know any rich people?
Haha, OK. I've got to stop you there. Jesus. Social Darwinism really is forever here, isn't it? It's all about the breeding, you see...
As for the rest, you have an oddly insousciant view of how things are going in the world, and moreover, how everyone else thinks things are going in the world. I think it's safe to say that the consensus is that the status quo is broken. Great Britain voted for Brexit because they think the status quo is broken. People voted for Trump because they think the status quo is broken. Marine Le Pen, who couldn't get the time of day in France for decades, was the runner-up candidate in France this time. France, where people who are homeless and unemployed go on strike when their benefits are cut, and win! Markets don't wring their hands about the potential break-up of the Eurozone because, well, nearly everyone in it thinks things are swell. Billionaires don't gather in Davos and chatter about their bug-out bunkers because they think the plebes are fat and happy. We have Michael Moore and Pat Buchanan nearly on the same page about where Americans' heads are at, and that is not normal.
It's like you live in a parallel universe. Do you not see any of these things, or is it that you're paid not to? I don't get it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:23PM
Ah, OK. They want it more. As for doing the things very rich people have done to get rich, do you mean using my buddies to hand me a sweetheart, no-bid contract? No, of course not. You imply they have better instincts and business savvy than everyone else.
Well, looking at those ten people on the richest list that I mentioned yesterday, not a one got that way through sweetheart deals.
You imply they have better instincts and business savvy than everyone else.
No, if I had implied that, I would have implied that. However, if you don't do anything that would develop those instincts, then why do you think you would have better instincts?
One question, khallow, do you really know any rich people?
How does "knowing" rich people help you figure out how to get rich? Is that working for you?
As for the rest, you have an oddly insousciant view of how things are going in the world, and moreover, how everyone else thinks things are going in the world.
The current developed world troubles are temporary. There isn't an infinite supply of cheap developing world labor. My view is that the developed world is currently under an economic stress that can't be fixed with politics, but only by elevating most of the rest of the world to developed world status. Further, we're well on our way to getting that done. I believe 2050 will see a very different developed world than the present.
I think it's safe to say that the consensus is that the status quo is broken. Great Britain voted for Brexit because they think the status quo is broken. People voted for Trump because they think the status quo is broken. Marine Le Pen, who couldn't get the time of day in France for decades, was the runner-up candidate in France this time.
So what? Those activities are all completely democratic and legal, and are examples of voting populations attempting to fix perceived problems in their countries. Sure, good intentions don't magically result in good outcomes, but you do want voters to try to fix the things they see as wrong, right?
It's like you live in a parallel universe. Do you not see any of these things, or is it that you're paid not to? I don't get it.
The problem is your provincial perception. Look at all that verbiage you wrote. What continents did the various activities you mention fall on? North America and Europe. At best, that's roughly a billion people, a seventh of the world's population. You ignore what happens to a much greater portion of the world's population. China and India are each elevating more than a billion people into the developed world, for example.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:52PM (16 children)
An interesting and perhaps insightful observation, but I think here:
The voters weaponized the candidate and sent him like a guided missile to DC in order to leave the place a giant smoking crater
you give the voters too much credit. Yes, that may well be the result of their votes, and decades from now revisionist history texts might claim that was the intent, but that's not what the majority of Trump voters wanted. They wanted a wall and they wanted "LOCK HER UP" and they wanted somethingsomethingCHINAsomethingsomethingSOUNFAIR!, but I don't think many of them saw their vote as part of a cunning conspiracy to burn down DC with an orange Trojan Shitbomb.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 16 2017, @04:43PM
Our very own alt-right diva J-Mo specifically says he wants to burn the lot down, and so does Bannon. You know, *Bannon?* That guy?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @05:46PM
MAGA has gotten lost somewhere. I thought it was because we wanted to win. We wanted to get bored of winning. We were tired of loosing. We want La Guardia to get a federal remodel so Trump doesn't have to look down on 3rd world levels of poverty when he flies in from MargoLargo. It's DISGUSTING. Clean up the swampy poor people who get in his flight path.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 16 2017, @06:02PM (13 children)
For what it's worth, Michael Moore said much the same [globalnews.ca]:
Moore's read on it reads quite true to me. So reducing the motivations of Trump voters to a handful of simplistic points falls into the fallacy that they're stupid. They are not stupid. Perhaps not everyone can write a doctoral thesis on their motivations, perhaps for some their support is inchoate, sure, but they're not imbeciles.
It is dangerous to view epochal shifts like these through a cartoonish lens. Please don't do it, and don't contribute to it or applaud it. If you do, you make it so much more likely for the worse things to happen again, or unpleasant things to slide into nightmares. As an example I offer this, that the Jews in Hollywood and the American entertainment complex have spent the last 70 years lampooning and demonizing Hitler and the Nazis to the point that none of us recognize them as human. They're mythical bogeymen. The reality is they had real reasons for doing what they did; they believed they were justified in doing what they did; and their righteous cause made anything done in its name defensible. And the same reasons they had are being nursed in the American national bosom (and also elsewhere) today, and have already been used to excuse war crimes; the CIA tortured, and tortures people by order of the US government, and neither they nor those who ordered the torture have been hanged for it, as they must. As I pray to god they shall.
You may disagree with me and Moore, but after seeing that electing a uniter didn't work, the country did mean to elect a destroyer.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @08:27PM (6 children)
> It is dangerous to view epochal shifts like these through a cartoonish lens.
That's rich. You've got your favorite cartoonish explanation which isn't supported by the data.
Over and over again the actual research, instead of your hand-waving wishful thinking, is that Trump won because of white anxiety.
The guy literally made his political bones selling a conspiracy theory that the first black president was an illegitimate crytpo-muslim.
Turmp is end-stage obama derangement syndrome (well, its not end-stage, because the country will continue to brown and fragile whites will continue to lose their shit, but lets hope he's a local maximum).
Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump [prri.org]
Trump supporters are actually richer, not poorer, than average, although they tended to be blue-collar and less educated. Trump supporters also tended to live in racially segregated areas, particularly those that were not especially hard hit by trade or immigration. [ssrn.com]
Voters’ measures of sexism and racism correlated much more closely with support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction [umass.edu]
People who strongly identified as white were told that nonwhite groups will outnumber white people in 2042, they became more likely to support Trump [sagepub.com]
Trump supporters are more than twice as likely as Clinton supporters to have negative views of Islam [reuters.com]
Half of Trump supporters think undocumented immigrants have hire rates of crime than US citizens, versus 13 percent of Clinton supporters [people-press.org] (they actually have lower rates [nytimes.com])
43 percent of Republicans said Trump was right to complain about Judge Curiel, while 39 percent said he was wrong. In comparison, only 8 percent of Democrats said Trump was right, versus 81 percent who said he was wrong. [yougov.com]
73 percent of Republicans support building a wall at the US-Mexico border, compared to 13 percent of Democrats. [turner.com]
Trump supporters are less educated and more likely to work in blue collar occupations, but they earn relatively high household incomes and are no less likely to be unemployed or exposed to competition through trade or immigration. [ssrn.com]
More ‘warmth’ for Trump among GOP voters concerned by immigrants, diversity [pewresearch.org]
Trump supporters more likely to view blacks negatively - Reuters/Ipsos poll [reuters.com]
white Trump supporters are much more likely to show high levels of racial resentment than Clinton’s white supporters. [telesurtv.net]
Obama was the first president to declare himself a feminist. And unsurprisingly, hostile sexism correlated with trump support far more than it did with romney support. [twitter.com]
Economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment. Racial resentment is driving economic anxiety. [washingtonpost.com]
In 2016 Trump did worse than Mitt Romney among voters with low and moderate levels of racial resentment, but much better among those with high levels of resentment [theintercept.com]
Opinions about how increasing racial diversity will affect American society had much more impact on support for Trump during the 2016 election compared to support for the Republican candidates in the two previous presidential elections. We also find that individuals with high levels of racial resentment were more likely to switch from Obama to Trump, but those with low racial resentment and more positive views about rising diversity voted for Romney but not Trump. [thenation.com]
If the democratic party doesn't figure out a way to check white anxiety, no amount of socialism will help. In fact, in Europe, countries with more robust welfare states tend to have stronger far-right movements.
The top third of countries — that is, the ones with the largest welfare states — saw roughly four times the rate of far-right support among the working class as the countries in the bottom third did. [kai-arzheimer.com]
Its almost as if not having to worry about dying from lack of healthcare or starving from lack of food frees up extra time to focus on tribalism. Its called "welfare chauvinism" [nytimes.com] — the idea that only 'deserving' people should get state support and if you aren't white you aren't as deserving.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:42AM (1 child)
I voted for Trump because the other politicians hated him. I hated them, so in theory the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I know Trump wouldn't be my friend, but there were no friendly options for me, so what goes around comes around. If they're too busy fighting each other maybe they'll leave me alone a little more often and perhaps the internal power struggles will lead to a slightly better government in the future. I would have voted for Sanders solely because his voting record was consistent, or at least that's what I had heard (would have looked it up if he had been running).
It's all bullshit anyway. The President is supposed to be more focused on foreign policy than internal policy. Somehow the general public thinks the President's job should be what Congress does. Sadly members of the government are buying into that miss-belief too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @01:36AM
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more, no less.
- Howard Tayler (Schlock Mercenery)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:54PM (3 children)
No, no, you're obviously right. The same sources that proved Hillary was going to win the election in a walk have now, per you, proven that Trump won because racism. You have proven that the clear economics that Americans live every day had nothing to do with why they voted for Trump, and that all that was eclipsed by the simplistic racism of credulous white racists.
You see, I know how to push-poll, too. I can design surveys that produce the answers I'm looking for. I can oversample and undersample to skew trends. There are all sorts of ways to use data to lie. And if I have a narrative I'm trying to serve, and purpose to de-legitimize a guy or trend I don't like, it's so seductively easy to do all of that to "prove" I'm right.
It's easy to fool people who don't know anything about social science or statistics or PR, isn't it?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:28PM (2 children)
> The same sources that proved Hillary was going to win the election in a walk have now
(a) The polling did not show that. Pundits spun a thin a margin into a decisive win for sensationalistic news.
(b) It isn't even close to the same thing - this isn't push polling at all. These are academic researchers.
> It's easy to fool people who don't know anything about social science or statistics or PR, isn't it?
Its even easier to fool conspiracy freaks.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @09:35PM (1 child)
Sigh. Yes, sure, pal. The NSA is not really spying on us. Bush & Cheney really were telling the truth about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. The DNC wasn't really rigging the primaries for Hillary. Anything else factual, proven, that you would like us to now dismiss while you're waving your hand and smearing all of us as "conspiracy freaks?"
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @11:00PM
Gee, is that the best you can do? There once was an actual conspiracy, so all conspiracies must be true!
And thus we know that the Killary body count is all true, so is pizzagate, spirit-cooking and Obama really was born in Kenya.
If you are trying to convince us that you are a conspiracy freak you are doing a bang-up job.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @02:52AM (5 children)
As much as I despise Michael Moore, his take on the election is pretty accurate. In fact, I share the attitude, "Fuck the Establishment!" The Establishment, of course, being the marriage of government and megacorporations.
Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex, but he probably didn't visualize that the rest of government and corporate America could go the same route.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:37PM (3 children)
> In fact, I share the attitude, "
You also share the attitude of insane levels of white anxiety directed at muslims and mexicans.
Its nice to be able to say its about the establishment though. Makes it easy to sleep at night.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:51PM (2 children)
SHUT UP YOU MEXICAN MUSLIM!!!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @09:38PM (1 child)
Look, man, they may speak a different language but you're supposed to call them "Southerners," not, "Mexicans." Real Mexicans drive bigger pickups.
You may be right with "Muslim," though, since nobody but Runaway seems to know what the hell "Daesh" means or how to use it correctly in a sentence.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:46AM
Mohammad's Daesh is really sore since he passed out in the Blue Oyster bar.
If you spread the Daesh evenly over the field and then plow it in, your plants will grow better.
Daesh the Daeshing Daeshers.
There you go, 3 sentences containing the word Daesh..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:33PM
Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex, but he probably didn't visualize that the rest of government and corporate America could go the same route.
In the same speech, Eisenhower warned against other things:
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields… ,” Eisenhower warned. “Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”
and earlier on:
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
So he did visualize that other parts could go that way, and mentioned two of them.