|
Post by lugg on Jun 1, 2020 9:19:47 GMT
What has shocked me in all I have read is that parents are taking their children with them on some of the protest marches. Of course that is a good thing if they remain peaceful but with the current situation it seems to me to be a huge risk. I wonder if the two children who were separated from their parents when that truck drove into the crowd have now been found/ reunited.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Jun 1, 2020 10:31:44 GMT
Questa i agree and disagree at the same time. Profoundly racists parents will teach their children to becone racists but maybe education will stop or tame. But when it goes to neutral things where parents have no opinion, then education helps. At school we were all homophobic because it was so shocking... yet parents never talked about it. Actually education didnt take homosexuality seriously so it took the next generation to accept them as something natural, whilst i had to fight my own prejuges dating from medieval times.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 1, 2020 16:04:13 GMT
Apparently, the POTUS just had a conference call with numerous state governors and he said they were "weak" and needed to show how tough they really are. I thought that Trump was the king of Washington, D.C. so why was he down in his bunker over the weekend when he could have gone out in the street and beat the shit out of the vandals?
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jun 1, 2020 16:19:37 GMT
Why was he in the bunker? Because he is like all those loud-mouthed bullies -- a coward. He incites violence from his podium and his twitter feed. He wouldn't do it if he thought he would have to answer for it.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 2, 2020 2:59:42 GMT
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 2, 2020 3:19:10 GMT
The lesson of Donald Trump's life is: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come.
George Will on Twitter, 7 hours ago
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Jun 2, 2020 11:09:46 GMT
|
|
|
Post by mickthecactus on Jun 2, 2020 11:31:39 GMT
Certainly is and much needed.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 2, 2020 16:19:19 GMT
Oh ~ that is wonderful, thank you LaGatta! I do love that the woman's last name is so appropriate for her.
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Jun 2, 2020 17:11:43 GMT
Moreover, both human and equine cut fine figures!
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 3, 2020 16:10:57 GMT
I confess that I scrolled past the headline without clicking on it, but I saw: The United States -- the worst is yet to come.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Jun 3, 2020 16:16:15 GMT
Yez. I read an article that read Trump le pire est a venir. Basically saying that Trump will send troops and lower once more the defences of the democracy.
Even gw bush declared that a president should calm sown and take care of the cancer of the US that racism is.
If i start agreeing with bush where is the world goi g to ?
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Jun 3, 2020 17:46:52 GMT
Something I read on the web today....
..."Trump Broke All Rules of Publicity With St. John's Stunt Wed., Jun. 3, 2020 By Tom Goodman
There is little doubt that President Trump’s June 1 publicity stunt at St. John’s Church will go down in the PR record books as one of the most ill-advised, dangerous and troubling moments in modern presidential history.
Negative reaction was swift:
“Trump may have broken international law with ‘unjustified’ use of a chemical weapon on protesters,”according to Salon.com; An MSNBC story claimed, “It was quite possibly the most ridiculous presidential photo-op in the history of presidential photo-ops;” A senior defense official resigned; Church leaders lambasted the president; Tom Friedman stated in the New York Times that the bible (a prop) was held upside down; John Filo, my former CBS colleague and witness to the Kent State shootings, wondered, wryly, on Facebook whether the president retrieved the Bible from a motel room.
These are not reactions that one wants from a publicity stunt. It reminded me of all the things that I, and many of you, have learned over the years. “Don’t do anything stupid.” “Don’t get anyone hurt.” “And never make your client look foolish.”
The White House seemed to have botched all of those things in one fell swoop.
Jim Mendenhall, an African-American friend since college, noted that another troubling layer involved the participants, notably the ones missing.
“As I watched that horrible walk Trump made from The White House to the church, I saw no person of color, other than the female Secret Service officer. Where are the voices of black leadership in the administration…total silence!”
Many of us have worked on spectacular stunts over the years. And we’ve certainly worked on some “doozies,” too. The good ones you tend to remember and cherish; the bad ones you want to forget.
Publicity stunts are inherently complicated, with so many “moving parts” and so much that could go wrong. What went wrong with Trump's publicity stunt will be studied by industry observers and in college PR classes for years to come.
The course headline? “If In Doubt, Don’t Do It.”
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 3, 2020 18:12:55 GMT
He probably could have gotten away with it (at least with his fans) if he had been able to go into to the church and be shown praying (I don't know if he knows how to do that, but I know that he knows how to fake it by closing his eyes). But standing in front of a boarded up church was totally ridiculous. I'm thinking he didn't even know it was closed before he started out. The bible waving made me nauseous and I'm wondering why I stayed up past midnight to watch it live.
|
|
|
Post by lugg on Jun 3, 2020 19:16:07 GMT
Certainly is Lagatta - I have seen some other pictures today that are similar - will see if I can find them again and post. Some of the stories in the press today are just terrible and heart rending. Some are absolutely sickening.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jun 3, 2020 19:18:43 GMT
I read that Ivanka Trump had the bible in her purse and handed it to him and there were several takes to get a picture where he is holding it in the right position.
But I read elsewhere (the Independent?) that some evangelicals were really happy with Trump's appearance and the bible he held up.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 3, 2020 20:05:11 GMT
Ivanka must have a damned big purse.
And I'm sure that the evangelicals were delighted. They are experts in simulation since they have no sincerity.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 3, 2020 21:37:32 GMT
I read that Ivanka Trump had the bible in her purse and handed it to him and there were several takes to get a picture where he is holding it in the right position. Bjd, you have to see the video. He is so pathetic, so vain, so in an ego-bubble of his own making. Never mind that it's a bible he is holding, it certainly looks as though he doesn't know how to hold a book, any book. The clip gets more nauseating when he directs his lickspittles to come stand out there with him. Jeeeez -- that press secretary! How I love that she has "inane" built into her last name.
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Jun 3, 2020 22:04:54 GMT
Yes, a book one treasures would never be held like that. I have several written by professors and/or friends, some of whom have died. I'd never hold them like that.
It is funny, but holding a book like that reminds me of something supposedly at the other end of the left/right spectrum but at the same end of the authoritarian one: the Red Guards' little red book.
His play-acting is very offensive to the Episcopals across the street. I've interpreted at (non-fundamentalist) churchy things and a surprising number of Anglicans here are people from the British West Indies. There was a very lovely Londoner at the Thorn Tree (Ben Haines?) who was a member of a C of E congregation and a large number, perhaps a majority, of his fellow congregants were people of colour.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Jun 3, 2020 23:18:11 GMT
Trump’s a joke. A bad one.
|
|
|
Post by questa on Jun 3, 2020 23:53:00 GMT
It WAS a Bible he held up, was it? Did anyone check if his hands were burning? I thought it may have been " Grimm's Fairy Tales".
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Jun 4, 2020 18:56:16 GMT
It's impossible to compare madmen of course...but he has the look of Sadam about him. I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend. I know that he isn't a mass murderer and I'm not accusing him of such a thing...I just remember Hussein being fond of self publicity and creating photo opportunities that were very offensive at every turn. Always with that self satisfied smile on his face. I'm sorry.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 4, 2020 20:48:49 GMT
Go ahead and accuse him if you wish, Cheery. He has amply demonstrated his disregard for truth, his willingness to ride roughshod over anything that gets in his way, his glee in undoing anything his predecessor did, and his unbridled admiration for the worst kind of strongmen leaders. Who knows where all that might lead if he is not reined in?
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 4, 2020 22:09:33 GMT
Click on sentence below to open Spoiler. {Opinion piece by George Will in the Washington Post}Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.
By George F. Will June 1, 2020 at 2:18 p.m. CDT
This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.
Presidents, exploiting modern communications technologies and abetted today by journalists preening as the “resistance” — like members of the French Resistance 1940-1944, minus the bravery — can set the tone of American society, which is regrettably soft wax on which presidents leave their marks. The president’s provocations — his coarsening of public discourse that lowers the threshold for acting out by people as mentally crippled as he — do not excuse the violent few. They must be punished. He must be removed.
Social causation is difficult to demonstrate, particularly between one person’s words and other persons’ deeds. However: The person voters hired in 2016 to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” stood on July 28, 2017, in front of uniformed police and urged them “please don’t be too nice” when handling suspected offenders. His hope was fulfilled for 8
What Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviancy down” now defines American politics. In 2016, voters were presented an unprecedentedly unpalatable choice: Never had both major parties offered nominees with higher disapproval than approval numbers. Voters chose what they wagered would be the lesser blight. Now, however, they have watched him govern for 40 months and more than 40 percent — slightly less than the percentage that voted for him — approve of his sordid conduct.
Presidents seeking reelection bask in chants of “Four more years!” This year, however, most Americans — perhaps because they are, as the president predicted, weary from all the winning — might flinch: Four more years of this? The taste of ashes, metaphorical and now literal, dampens enthusiasm.
The nation’s downward spiral into acrimony and sporadic anarchy has had many causes much larger than the small man who is the great exacerbator of them. Most of the causes predate his presidency, and most will survive its January terminus. The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.
In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for . . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s most risible deliberative body.
A political party’s primary function is to bestow its imprimatur on candidates, thereby proclaiming: This is who we are. In 2016, the Republican Party gave its principal nomination to a vulgarian and then toiled to elect him. And to stock Congress with invertebrates whose unswerving abjectness has enabled his institutional vandalism, who have voiced no serious objections to his Niagara of lies, and whom T.S. Eliot anticipated:
We are the hollow men . . . Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass or rats’ feet over broken glass . . .
Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.
|
|
|
Post by questa on Jun 4, 2020 23:46:40 GMT
It sends shivers down my spine. Such words and images! Such Truth!
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Jun 5, 2020 0:16:14 GMT
When you've lost George Will... I picture George's bow tie spinning as he wrote that.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 5, 2020 1:26:50 GMT
When this appeared, I sent the hollow men part to Marco Rubio who probably is not familiar with Tough Sh-t Eliot. 👍Oh, Trump lost George Will a long time ago. I've been reading Will since the early 90s. You don't have to agree with everything a person says to recognize a good mind at work.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jun 5, 2020 6:23:11 GMT
I have never understood how polling numbers are done and don't know anybody who has ever been polled. But to read that Trump still has a 40% approval rating makes me really wonder what these people are thinking.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 5, 2020 11:15:08 GMT
The US military is now 40 percent minority. That statistic os often mentioned, but apparently most of the minorities occupy service jobs in the military. A very high percentage of the combat troops are gung ho knife-between-the-teeth Trumpists, so all the people hoping that the military would revolt if the POTUS ordered the troops into domestic action would probably be disappointed.
|
|
|
Post by questa on Jun 5, 2020 14:22:07 GMT
Saw this posted elsewhere but worth sharing:
Trump holds a bible like a nun holds a dick.
|
|