Lurker > Antifar

Is the U.S. the only country with ritalin?
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Darkman124 posted...

i think less that they normalized it and more that they created the perception among GOP voters that the dems could 'get away with it' and therfore their own leaders should never be criticized for it either

I think that's a good assessment. "Rich and powerful people get away with it" has been the undercurrent of American society since the 90s or so, but in Trump a certain sort of conservative now feels they have one on their side.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-hillary-clinton-normalized-trump-2018-5

As the Trump administration corruption scandals mount and yet President Donald Trump's poll numbers continue to tick upward, Democrats ask: Why don't voters care? Doesn't corruption matter?

Here's one reason the Trump corruption scandals aren't connecting as much as they should: Before Democrats spent the past 18 months telling everyone this is not normal, they spent years reassuring voters that this was normal.

Well, not precisely this. But the general this: politicians having extensive financial conflicts of interest.
Democrats told voters that taking high-dollar speaking fees right before you run for president from the industries you might regulate should you become president was just something everybody does. They said it was unsophisticated to worry if entities related to you had been fundraising from countries with foreign-policy interests before the US.

They said nobody would object if a man did these things.

They said you should look past the finances and understand that the Clintons shared your values and had your best interests at heart.

Of course, the Clintons' behavior was never normal. They had the second-deepest set of financial conflicts of interest we've seen in a national political operation in my lifetime second only to Trumpworld.

Democrats could have picked virtually any other candidate for president and gotten a clean advantage on the corruption issue in the general election. But by defending the Clinton model, Democrats were playing right into Trump's hands, essentially telling voters there would always be a swamp, that everybody does it, that a leader is always going to have financial interests that intertwine with his or her public duties.

Is it any surprise so many voters decided they might as well put their own corrupt guy in charge of the swamp?

Years before Trump started taking policy advice from friends at Mar-a-Lago, Hillary Clinton was forwarding freelance intelligence memos about Libya from Clinton Foundation consultant Sidney Blumenthal around the State Department as Blumenthal pursued business interests in Libya with other Clinton associates.

Close associates using the perception of closeness to officials to seek large consulting fees from businesses? How do you think Bill Clinton's former personal aide, Doug Band, got rich enough to buy David Rockefeller's $20 million mansion?

Getting in private business at the same time you serve as a top official adviser in government? Huma Abedin was doing it years before Jared Kushner.

You can even compare the Clinton and Trump swamps live in action in Prague this month, where Steve Bannon will debate longtime Clinton confidant (and brownnoser) Lanny Davis at an event sponsored by the Czech defense contractor for which Davis lobbies.

My point is not that what Bill and Hillary Clinton's associates did is as bad as what Trump and his associates have done. It's not as bad. Trumpworld has taken graft and influence peddling to a new, vulgar level. And my sense is Trump's associates have been significantly more sloppy about legal compliance than Clintonworld ever was.
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Claiming the moral high ground requires imposing high standards on your own side as Democrats have recently done with sexual misconduct
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More than any other individuals, Bill and Hillary Clinton are responsible for creating the impression of inevitable corruption that Trump has exploited to get his supporters to shrug off his own corruption.

It's not true that everybody does it. But for years, the message from Clinton surrogates was that everybody does it and we should just get over it. Voters heard that message.

I'm not sure I can get on board with all of this (it has been pointed out that a whole bunch of the Reagan administration got indicted), but...
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If you hate Trump, you should hate the way Obama enabled him by
- Ramping up ICE and its use of deportations
- Building an unaccountable drone warfare apparatus
- Refusing to hold anyone accountable for torture, leading directly to Gina Haspel becoming head of the CIA
- Presiding over (and playing a part in) a decline for the Democratic Party at every level
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Remember that time his attorney general left a job as a corporate lawyer, never prosecuted anyone for the massive fraud that led to our financial collapse, then returned to his job as a corporate lawyer?
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The bill of rights is not a technicality.
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averagejoel posted...

so much of Frasier becomes retroactively horrifying with the knowledge that he's a trump supporter

Yeah there are some...problematic episodes, even though the character is a liberal
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It's about having a frame of reference. For decades we haven't has a real leftist presence, and so it's been kinda easy for people to earnestly believe that Democrats and liberals represent the far left of political thought (or cynically label them as such). Remember when people called Obama a communist? Whereas the major countries of Europe all have at least a major social democratic party, and often smaller parties further to the left.
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I'm a socialist. I was gonna post Clint Eastwood, but Kelsey Grammar is a good option
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I associate it with my awful freshman year roommate.
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Yeah basically every game I can
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https://splinternews.com/house-democrats-line-up-to-vote-en-masse-for-totally-un-1826115862
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Is this about Chapo?
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Oof
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Within the last year or two he leaned into his reputation and started posting just to rile people up. Which worked more often than not.
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https://twitter.com/baileys/status/997646354414522368
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My phone has a headphone jack, but I've been using Bluetooth headphones anyways
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After 10,000 years I'm free!
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Doom_Art posted...

Sayoria posted...

Kasich

Kasich is not a centrist though?

What do you mean, the guy with George W. Bush's foreign policy and a desire to outlaw abortion isn't moderate?
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I'm the first to shit on anime weirdos, but we should be angling for less power for employers to fire you, not more.
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Shuddering at the thought of biting into a Smartie in my ice cream
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Look at this shit! https://imgur.com/8YY0fWM
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DoctorVader posted...

Antifar posted...

https://streamable.com/l0e57

Wait... Wtf?

Yeah, you can just turn into a plane at any point.

Also vice versa
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bump
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NeonOctopus posted...

I deed to Sheena's status screen in Tales of Symphonia when was I was a 14yo babby Neon.

I feel better knowing that wasn't just me
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DarkTransient posted...

In the real world (not the liberal fantasy world where all cops are evil), what is actually the chance of running into THREE corrupt cops (because remember, it suggests a third one was involved) over two seperate contacts?

High enough

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/10/27/nypd-officers-charged-with-raping-woman-in-police-van.html
https://nypost.com/2018/05/14/top-cops-were-at-hospital-with-teen-allegedly-raped-by-detectives-lawyer/
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Sayoria posted...

Yep, and their media doesn't constantly air the idea to their viewers. They let those few remain locally dealt with.

No, they changed policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia)
There was no shortage of coverage for these events. But they didn't crack down on the media, they cracked down on firearms.
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KingCrabCake posted...

Neither did the shooter.

Which is to say that his possession of a gun started with someone's legal possession of it.
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The people pulling the triggers, mainly.
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Sayoria posted...

They aren't as nationalized as the US makes it. When the Parkland event happened, when the Sandy Hook event happened, when Columbine happened.... we never just let it go away. We made it nationally known these events were just awful and the worst things ever. There's no way other countries place as much focus on a national level of these shootings. Terrorism? Sure. School shootings?

I mean, that's because they don't have them.
https://twitter.com/MarcHilberer/status/997531945977475073

And I don't buy for a second that our media is more sensationalist than the UK.
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Sayoria posted...

Screw the guns. Screw gun control. We are overlooking the actual problems here.

I feel like other countries also have depressed kids who would like to be famous, though.
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At least we're being honest about the purpose of police now.
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26_Sandman_39 posted...

Antifar posted...

KingCrabCake posted...

If you dont want a gun. Dont buy one. Don't push your shitty life decisions on everyone else

Nobody at that school in Texas chose to buy a gun.

Nobody in Chicago chose to have illegal guns trafficked through their neighborhoods either.

Right. The supply of illegal guns is directly related to the availability of legal guns. You choosing not to buy one doesn't insulate you from the impacts of those who do.
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KingCrabCake posted...

If you dont want a gun. Dont buy one. Don't push your shitty life decisions on everyone else

Nobody at that school in Texas chose to buy a gun.
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https://www.gtplanet.net/hands-on-with-onrush-codemasters-new-racing-but-not-really-game/

Like it feels like they're really aiming to make it "Overwatch, but with racing instead of shooting"

I hope it works out.
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I'm not a huge Oliver fan, but there are some political commentators who are just assholes, and he's not that.
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Make of this information what you will: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-shooter-20180519-story.html
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Axiom posted...

So nothing is going to change other than racist managers not being able to call the cops on black people for doing what everyone else does

I dunno that seems like a decent change
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Yeah. I never had an Xbox before, so I just buy from the digital store
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I don't think those politics have much to do with the shootings, but they tend to appeal to the isolated loners who carry shootings out.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

We got him this time fellas!

"He probably won't get impeached" is
A) a statement I agree with
B) Just about the lowest bar you could set for a president
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Damn_Underscore posted...

Liberals like big government when it agrees with them.

Everybody does. I'm increasingly skeptical of people who claim to have strong views on process issues, like "size of government" and "states' rights." It's almost always about the ends, not the means.
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Not doing flavors, but just the stuff they put into it
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bump
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Doesn't reflect well on either country imo
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New conspiracy theory: Gore did 9/11
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This is the story of a broken justice system. It appears that an innocent man was framed by sheriffs deputies and is on death row in part because of dishonest cops, sensational media coverage and flawed political leaders including Democrats like Brown and Kamala Harris, the state attorney general before becoming a U.S. senator, who refused to allow newly available DNA testing for a black man convicted of hacking to death a beautiful white family and young neighbor. This was a failure at every level, and it should prompt reflection not just about one man on death row but also about profound inequities in our entire system of justice.

Man, wtf is Brown's deal with not allowing testing? Harris too
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Doom_Art posted...

Republicans likely would've criticized him and conservative groups and media outlets would've accused him of being soft or weak

This is part of why I think Gore would have invaded Iraq eventually
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Post 9/11 was a weird time. Hard to say whether a Democrat would have gotten the same backing from the public in a moment like that, but Gore was fairly hawkish as Democrats go
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