i wonder how obamacare will mutate now. maybe it ends up turning into universal medicare when all our incomes drop. hurray! i was always for single payer.

Come on, Jan 20th was pretty fantastic too. Although I agree that after Nov 8 even sex started to feel 2nd best in comparison.

haaa haaa what?

Al Bore claims global warming is to blame for Brexit. A slight rise in the temperature made the UK vote leave. So now we know. It's temperature that determines political outcomes. I would love to know what the temperature was in the US when the people voted in the presidential election. Could Hilary Clinton have won if there was a difference in temperature of just 0.01°C?

so out with jeff sessions is what you're saying?

great!

This "Manne" Gorsuck guy will be the end of many decent SC decisions, among them, rights of women to physical autonomy, consumer rights, workers rights, etc

read the following about the right wing, anti-choice, ALEC-like anti-choice "playbook"

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/26/wher...erally-a-book/

i grew up around catholics so i understand the anti-abortion agenda. not saying that i agree, only that i understand it.

2 days ago on npr a man was being interviewed about his book which deals with the history of the eugenics movement and forced sterilizations-- and back then it was actually catholics who opposed that, while oliver wendell holmes played the fascist in that drama.

terry gross or whatever was grossed out by the story

eta: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

From The New Yorker:

Behind Neil Gorsuch's Non-Answers
Every sign suggests that he would be at least as conservative a judicial activist as Samuel Alito

ow! Alito is the fucking worst, even worse than Thomas or Scalia. I noted the parsing of the words in this answer

“All human beings are intrinsically valuable,” he wrote, “and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

what can be read into that is that the death penalty is AfuckingOK

haaahaaaahaaaa!

yes, republican "thinking"

"private" being the key word there of course

because the public taking of lives (by war or execution or angry cop) is always right

republicans are left wingers of death

Jesus that's unsettling. You don't even have to read into it to get the death penalty stance. Who the fuck would place the word "private" in there if they weren't absolutely prepared to defend the "public" taking of lives.

Weird thing to say. But not really surprising.

went by my inlaws house and on cnn some man was opining about trump's "arranged marriage" and said "the two men understand that they need each other."

just the other day i watched THE ODD COUPLE. not the tv show which i always hated but the movie adaptation of the neil simon play.

it was hilarious.

hard to think about trump and paul ryan in such human terms though lololol.

orange hitler and mr. pie-in-the-tax-cut-sky

DOJ to crack down on sanctuary cities by denying and clawing back federal grants

https://thinkprogress.org/sessions-s...s-6cacd7c1b26e

I think this is actually illegal? A form of economic extortion.......

good analysis of the legal issues here

http://www.slate.com/articles/busine...has_begun.html

some reality check for our optimism (sorry guys)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...b69b72b2551039

Guess I don't have to read that because I was never optimistic. I knew for a fact that quite soon after AHCA's failure some toxic shit would come down the pike. Think Trump will just shrug off a loss like that? I don't think Session's sanctuary city crusade is quite it. I predict by the end of the week, something will really make you vomit, and it'll be something you can't do jack about.

paywall, so can't read it

" La, La, La, I can't hear you"



:o

ha ha ha

so, basically, he's fucking up the government via non-hires and executive orders

or in charlie sheen's words, "winning"

no bet! Today's headline about a new Office of Innovation run by Kushner fits the bill...

Y'all are fixated on Trump, but you should take a look at Kushner. How did this 25 year old kid end up buying a daily metro NYC newspaper in 2006? [wikipedia says he made money in mass] That was chum change for the following year, "2007, Kushner made the most expensive single-building property purchase in US history, acquiring 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion". Oddly, that was the location of my first corporate job out of college, the polished stonework in the lobbies was full of fossils...it is hard to tell if he is as accomplished as his credentials show (BA Harvard, JD MBA NYU). Or if he was a conduit for his old man to pass over the cookies, so to speak. that makes sense, the old man would have known Roy Cohn.

New election theory: Did “working-class whites” switch from Obama to Trump because the economy was better?

New voting data suggests that some white working-class voters are only Democrats when they're down and out

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/30/new-...my-was-better/

at the same time there's a story in today's warshington poast (yes) about yahoos turning to disability in the face of chronic unemployment

Democratic senator Joe fuckin' Manchin, whoever he is, is down with the Gorshit:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&....1._U6CO6mf2Bk

Asshole.

Joe's Munchin!

Uh. What?

Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General. Rex "I didn't ask for this" Tillerson is the Secretary of State.

I'm not sure we should even read your posts anymore.

You're this thread's very own little "paid protester." If such things exist, you be one son.

Wow.

Thanks for sharing!

The initial report came from The Wall Street Journal, so obviously no "liberal bias" :rolleyes: there.

Oh of course, of course... yes. We need to be very, very wary of the media ("Or the fake media as I often call it," Trump says, in a super classy and super subtly self-congratulatory way, as he's speaking to the fucking media), because, y'know, that crazy media exists only to prop up the left...







... Right?

I have to admit though... as someone who works in "the media," and painstakingly weighs out the content of opinion pages to make sure that they reflect both sides of an issue at pretty much all times, I am growing VERY tired of the non-stop editorializing that a lot of national publications and TV news channels are engaging in, and have been engaging in throughout the primaries and the general.

Not only is it unprincipled bullshit to load up your "news" feeds with editorials that all align with a partisan perspective (looking at you, Newsweek), it's also just providing more fodder to the right, and the folks who insist that the media is not to be trusted.

You can't beat the right when it comes to smearing and editorializing. You just can't. They're better at it. So don't engage. Or, as Pelley learned on 60 Minutes, they will beat your ass at a game they've perfected. You can have all the facts in the world on your side, but it doesn't matter. Not today. So I would urge the national pubs to report facts objectively and without "slant" of any kind.

And knock it off with the Opinion pieces for fuck's sake!

Does Nunes work for Trump? One guy thinks so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzbdcM0fbuc

Sinclair Broadcast Group (big TV station owner)173 TELEVISION STATIONS 514 CHANNELS 81 US MARKETS, mostly swing states in deal with Trump and Kushner for biased pro Trump anti-immigrant coverage)

check for your TV news at http://sbgi.net/tv-channels/

they own 2 network stations in my little town, local CBS and NBC affiliates and a total of 18 stations here. They "share" stories across their various platforms, so you will get the same fiction across multiple air, cable, radio and broadcast stations.



Look for anti immigrant reports by Leandra Bernstein (for example). Quotes Federation for Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies, both anti-immigrant hate groups, without mentioning that these sources are biased.

https://www.splcenter.org/20090201/n...es-intolerance

see also

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...=.36b18fd77775

and

https://www.thenation.com/article/th...s-all-at-risk/

From The Washington Post:

A Solar Saudi Arabia

Good luck over there with the coal, suckaaaas!

ironically it was Bill Clinton who signed the 1996 Telecom bill that opened the way for the Sinclairs of the country to aggregate their little mind control empires.

famous HR's

HR Geiger



HR Puffenstuff



Catbert




General "HR" McMaster

Clearly there's a war between the Bannons and the McMasters. Where do the Pillagin' Putinlovin' Kushners fit? Fuck 'em all.

 

What Good Are The Arts?
by David Byrne
04/03/2017

The Trump administration and their Republican allies hope to eliminate funding for a number of federal arts organizations. This is a political move—it really doesn’t amount to much money—it's a tiny part of the federal budget. The amount of federal funding is $741 million, which sounds like a lot, but is less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the United States' annual federal spending, an amount supporters say is too small to make a difference in the budget if it was cut. On a budget pie chart it doesn't even show up, it's too small.

Q: What does that "investment" get us as a nation?—A: It gets multiplied more than 100 times= $135.2 BILLION.

The arts are considered superfluous by many and fluffy and indulgent by others—plays and projects that appear ridiculous are often held up as examples of "look where your tax dollars are going". The arts are often viewed as the provenance of the elites—"Why should we be paying for the silly amusements of other people? Stuff we have no interest in?"

Well, my argument to those skeptics has nothing to do with the quality of the artworks—I might actually agree that some of it is indulgent and silly, but I would argue that there is undeniable and indisputable monetary and social value to the nation as a whole in the publicly funded arts. It is by far one of the best investments the government can make, and here's why.

A recent study called Arts and Economic Prosperity found that nationally the non-profit arts (we're not talking about Broadway shows, pop concerts, video games, movies or the art world) generates $135.2 BILLION in economic activity in the US.

If one includes other kinds of for-profit arts organizations, the number jumps up, way up:

In 2013, the production of arts and cultural goods added more than $704 billion to the U.S. economy. This amounts to 4.23% of GDP. The arts and cultural sector contribute more to the national economy than do the construction, agriculture, mining, utilities, and travel and tourism sectors.

Here is a graphic with a similar number.



There's a halo effect as well. The real estate value of homes and businesses increases significantly around cultural centers. Developers and real estate investors understand this. An arts or cultural center increases the value of their nearby properties. Businesses—restaurants, cafes, shops—around cultural centers do better when there is an arts center close to their business. The value of real estate around culture goes up.

These effects are not just in big cities and mainly for the elites that live in them—this funding goes to small organizations across the country—in thousands of small towns and communities. To both red and blue states—they all benefit.

And that's not all—the arts also have positive effects on health, safety, education... and their presence lowers the crime and child abuse rate—all at bargain rates!

A study released this month by researchers from the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania has revealed a quantitative relationship between the presence of cultural resources in a neighborhood and key aspects of social wellbeing, particularly in underserved neighborhoods. In New York City, the relative higher presence of cultural resources in lower-income neighborhoods is linked with serious health, safety, and education benefits. These include a 14% decrease in indicted investigations of child abuse and neglect, an 18% decrease in felony crime rate and also a 17-18% increase in the number of students scoring at the highest level on standardized Math and English tests. Other ways of making these improvements in our communities are much more expensive—and often not as effective.

One can argue that placing these kinds of metrics on the arts is unfair—not everything that makes money is good and some of the best and most influential works fail or were badly received when they were made. True.

But even so... why in the world would one want to walk away from such an incredible investment? It's probably the best investment the government makes—as far as a means of generating jobs, growth and social good... surely the businessmen and women in our government can see this and get beyond making silly political points at the expense of the nation, its economy and people.

David Byrne

NYC

I was totally flabbergasted when I saw that, Robert, I mean, jeez, this is the sonic youth board, we do demand the highest standards of grammar and punctuation. It's good it is all resolved between you and the sensitive severen.

how many insults did severen manage to combine into one paragraph? you never know what is going to trigger some of these types. it does kinda read like trainee work however.

the patriots seem to think the neocons have taken over through young kushner and the NSC. Everyone on the staff seems to be a Goldman Sachs alumni. severan and the nazi can cheer, they're gonna get their war.

Clinton said this yesterday so you saying she was blasting him is bollocks.

And did you actually, honestly believe Trump was gonna bring about a revolution? I mean at what point did you think "yeah, he's clearly a man of his word and will help bring about change"? Surely it wasn't his obsession with a good slogan like "drain the swamp" that did it?

and there goes another stiffed contractor / stiffed investor / trump u student

this is bad. that fucker launched missiles at syrian military base, even before proper independent investigation. during his campaign he frequently spoke out against meddling in syria. just words, nothing has changed. this choice is no choice! business as usual...