@Raggedy Ann @Raggedy Ann he was inducted to their Hall of Fame years ago.

WWE. That's his next reality tee vee role. This reality presidential-role crap is not working out quite like maybe he anticipated.

As I said in another diary a week or so ago. I left middle school in 1967. He's stuck in a middle school ground hog day scenario where he gets to be the bully in each new episode and gets away with it.

His ultimate dream has materialized.

@dervish Camacho may have been a moron but at least he had the sense to get the fuck out of the way and let someone who knew better than he did handle things. I mean, at least the people in Idiocracy respected intelligence to a degree at the end.

Dipshit Dumpsterfire Trump claims he's the smartest person in the room while his malevolant stupidity gets people killed, damages the economy and so much more. All thanks to the megalomania and shenanigans of Hillary Clinton and the DNC, no less.

and life imitates art. Where's our Corporal Joe Bauers?

@Steven D One day in the near future, Trump will need CNN to approvingly cover one of his real estate developments.
If he turns on Fox, things will get really interesting.

I have no sympathy for CNN. This is a battle among the rich and powerful, and we can only stand on the sidelines.

I'd much rather they spent their time covering all the horrible policy Trump and the GOP are implementing with the complicity of our Quisling Democrats.

@Steven D

they spent the whole primary season covering every damned thing he said or did at the expense of the other candidates on both sides, with the exception of Hillary. But even then, Trump got much more coverage that she did. The estimates are that he received $2 billion in free advertising. So now that he is president?
They are sucking all the oxygen out of the atmosphere covering every one of his stupid tweets or his other bonehead moves.
Meanwhile, the republican are having a fire sale on what is left in this country to sell out, and even though the media is covering their heinous health care bill, I do not see the outrage that should be expected when a party wants to pass legislation that will see millions of people lose their health insurance, dismantle Medicaid and gut the safety programs that the poor, elderly and disable rely on.

As usual, the democrats are awol and not doing everything they can in their power to stop these actions. I continue to see articles that say, "the democrats should be doing...."

Well no shit. If it's obvious to us what the democrats should be doing, then it's obvious to them too. The reason they are not speaking out, IMO, is because TPTB want the republicans to succeed. The lower class is taking too much money out of the elite's hands, and even though they don't need it, they want it.

Joe And Mika Owe America An Apology

But Scarborough and Brzezinski are hardly emblems of journalistic integrity or political courage. Let’s not forget that the “Morning Joe” cohosts, particularly Scarborough (a former Republican Congressman from Florida), are partly responsible for Trump becoming president. They’ve known Trump for over a decade and were once among his biggest fans.

There's much more evidence of their relationship in this article.

Just as WWW is a fake wrestling match that has been scripted, I feel that this stupid attack on Joe and Mika has been scripted too. Look at any mainstream media headline and see what they are covering. This shit.

Not as Al said the 500 innocent civilian deaths in Syria last month.

I have no sympathy for CNN. This is a battle among the rich and powerful, and we can only stand on the sidelines.

I'd much rather they spent their time covering all the horrible policy Trump and the GOP are implementing with the complicity of our Quisling Democrats.

@Steven D

If you recall, this sort of thuggish behaviour predated and exists independently of Trump.

2010
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/carl-paladino-threatens-reporter-fred-dicker...

By Brian Montopoli CBS News September 30, 2010, 2:52 PM
Carl Paladino Threatens Reporter Fred Dicker (Video)

Video has surfaced of New York Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino threatening New York Post reporter Fred Dicker with a warning that he will "take you out, buddy."

The must-watch (if grainy) video is at left. ...

2014 - evidently involving a child-beater.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/-i-will-break-you-in-half---republican-congre...

'I will break you in half': Congressman threatens to throw reporter off balcony during interview
Eric Pfeiffer
Reporter
Yahoo NewsJanuary 29, 2014

It started out like dozens of other interviews after Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. But when NY1 reporter Mike Scotto decided to press Rep. Michael Grimm on his personal campaign finances, the Republican congressman abruptly ended the interview.

“This is only about the president’s speech, thank you,” Grimm said before walking off camera.

It’s certainly not the first time a politician has walked out during a live interview. But what happened next is shocking even to the most jaded observer.

After Stotto returned to his report, Rep. Grimm, a former FBI agent and Marine, suddenly stormed back into the camera frame, whispering a threat to the reporter.

"I will break you in half," he said, reportedly threatening to throw the journalist over a balcony inside the U.S. Congress.

Although the audio is largely muted, NY1 employees say that Grimm said, "Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this balcony.”

“I just wanted to ask you … it’s a valid question,” Stotto responded.

“No, no,” Grimm said. “You're not man enough, you're not man enough. I'll break you in half. Like a boy." ...

This, below, appears to be more the expressed wishes of a Republican candidate for office that a reporter be raped over a tweet she made than an actual threat of him physically attacking her but the fact that psychopathic parties and/or politicians fill the American public service mean that this sort of mindset is normalized by psychopathic legislators and the legislation they produce and pass...

http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/09/05/outrage-nj-republican-threatens-da...

Outrage: NJ Republican Threatens Daily Beast Reporter With Rape

By Colin Taylor
Published on September 5, 2016

... The biggest danger, however, is allowing this kind of behavior to become normalized. Only three in a hundred rapists in America will ever see justice; the vast majority of sexual assaults go unreported out of fear that nothing will be done. It is no joking matter; even the idle tweet must be taken seriously and responded to with appropriate diligence. ...

(As covered in this thread, but those first two paragraphs illustrate the choices which the American people are not permitted to actually make, on the rare occasions they have them to make, so...)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/25/election-eve-assault-asked-...

Published on
Thursday, May 25, 2017
by
Common Dreams
Election Eve Assault: Asked About Trumpcare, Then Comes 'Body Slam'

Montana Republican Greg Gianforte took reporter who wanted to know his position on healthcare law "by the neck with both hands" and "body slammed him into the ground"
by
Jon Queally, staff writer

With voters in Montana going to the polls Thursday in a special election for the state's empty seat in the U.S. Congress, Republican candidate Greg Gianforte was charged with assault overnight for a violent encounter in which he allegedly grabbed a journalist "by the neck with both hands and then slammed him into the ground" after being asked about his support for Trumpcare.

In a tight race with Gianforte facing off against Democratic challenger Rob Quist—a political novice and folk singer who has received the enthusiastic backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—the violent incident on the eve of the election could have dramatic consequences for Gianforte, a millionaire businessman aligned with President Donald Trump. ...

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/05/25/house-republican-violence-reporte...

House Republican Says Violence Is Appropriate When Reporter Deserves It As GOP Comes Unhinged

By Jason Easley on Thu, May 25th, 2017 at 12:00 pm

The Republican Party is showing its true face after Montana House special election candidate Greg Gianforte assaulted a reporter. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) said it is not appropriate for reporters to attack public officials unless the reporter deserved it.

... It doesn’t matter what the profession is; people don’t deserve to be physically assaulted when doing their jobs. This is a basic principle that every civilized society should agree on. A member of Congress who casts a vote that someone dislikes does not deserve to be punched in the face as soon as they return to their district. ...

... Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party into a violent mob that believes that as long as their feel justified, they can do anything that they want to anyone. Greg Gianfonte’s assault of the member of the media was a symptom of the larger disease reshaping the Republican Party to reflect the behavior of Trump.

Republicans are coming unglued and rejecting the rules that govern basic human behavior.

Wait, haven't they been doing that in increasingly blatant and more direct fashion ever since Reagan? As numerous others have stated numerous times, Trump is a symptom, not the disease.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/29/texas-republican-accused-th...

Published on
Monday, May 29, 2017
by
Common Dreams
Texas Republican Accused of Threatening to 'Put a Bullet' in Head of Democratic Colleague

As hundreds of protesters flood state Capitol building, legislative session ends with one lawmaker threatening to shoot another dead
by
Jon Queally, staff writer

Last week it was the body-slamming of a reporter on the eve of a special election. This week begins with an elected official threatening to murder another.

As hundreds of protesters stormed the Texas state Capitol and political tensions soaring over a recently approved anti-immigration law, scuffles and apparent threats of deadly violence between lawmakers broke out Monday as their legislative session ended in dramatic fashion. ...

... Republican Texas State Rep. Matt Rinaldi, according to witnesses, threatened to "put a bullet through the head" of Democratic State Rep. Poncho Nevarez amid clashes on the House floor. ...

... A millionaire developer who is fond of channeling disturbed newsman Howard Beale's "mad as hell" speech from the movie "Network," Paladino has acknowledged forwarding racist and sexist emails, proposed turning empty prisons into dormitory space for welfare recipients and has aggressively attacked Cuomo in the general election campaign.

One poll earlier this month showed him within striking distance of the heavily-favored Cuomo, though another showed the Democrat with a wide lead.

The Dems seem to be completely different, of course - at least, where the Clintons are concerned, people they want gone just sorta keep winding up dead, typically in highly suspicious manners/circumstances.

But this lunacy roots in the various Psychopaths That Be, who are actually selecting those hand-picked psychopaths willing to enact destructive policy for ruthless corporate interests/billionaires and for whom the American Public will be permitted to 'vote' in what seem to be rather consistently rigged 'elections', not merely to the lackeys so chosen or permitted to win public office in the US public service.

With that taken into account, some of the points in this following are rather interesting, although the notion that 'elites' can police themselves is evidently another unicorn pipe-dream, as is any implication that the problem lies only in what's termed the right, despite both corporate/billionaire parties occupying much the same quagmire area in which the country has been sunk clear up to its nervously labouring nostrils.

http://www.uexpress.com/new-republic/2017/5/26/the-republicans-and-viole...

The New Republic
The Republicans and Violence Against the Press
May 26, 2017 - 1 of 1

...I don’t know if Republicans broke American politics or if Republican politics is broken and endangering the whole political system, but it can’t be fixed so long as political elites can’t acknowledge or understand what the source of the failure is. Responding to a moldy sack of protoplasm who writes for the Daily Caller, CNN editor Chris Cillizza leapt to Jacobs’ defense on Twitter: "I don't get this. If you are a reporter, you should defend the rights of reporters to ask questions without fear of physical violence."

This is attitudinally correct, but his incredulousness belies a misunderstanding of movement conservatism and the media outlets that the movement has spawned. With exceptions, they do not conceive of themselves as playing on the same turf, let alone by the same rules, as establishment news organizations and liberal media outlets. The fact that Republicans are defending Gianforte and conservative journalists piled on Jacobs isn’t confusing or an outgrowth of “broken politics,” but the inevitable consequence of virulent illiberalism in the American right.

On Thursday morning, the anti-Trump Republican strategist Rick Wilson wrote a bracing denunciation of those on the right who defended the assault of a reporter -- though one seemingly premised on the belief that the “cultural collapse of the GOP into the Trump Troll Party” might be reversed through reason. In truth, everything that’s happened in the past year or so has conditioned conservatives to believe they will face no consequences for poor or unprincipled behavior. They write off the accurate assessments of anti-Trump Republicans like Steve Schmidt or Democrats like Sen. Brian Schatz as the impotent complaints of political losers, knowing that the public will learn about the assault of a reporter as an essentially partisan spat and that centrist pundits, out of fear of bad-faith accusations of bias, will blame it on broken politics instead of defending their own interests effectively.

Why not just declare America a democratic country of laws, not men, with all entitled to equal rights, treatment and opportunity and with politicians protected only against the sort of frivolous charges which somehow seem to be virtually the only ones ever initiated?

Only within a tyranny, dictatorship, fascist state, anything of that nature by whatever name, is boundless impunity for law-makers claimed, enabling unlimited power to corrupt absolutely. In a democracy, no-one is 'above the law' or either 'more equal' or 'less equal' than others regarding rights.

I have no sympathy for CNN. This is a battle among the rich and powerful, and we can only stand on the sidelines.

I'd much rather they spent their time covering all the horrible policy Trump and the GOP are implementing with the complicity of our Quisling Democrats.

@Lookout My eyes need a treatment.

Thinks he's a champ. It is shameful.

@CB

Yeah, due to a steady flood of propaganda in which the average American has been saturated and an educational system where critical thinking may be outright discouraged, a number of citizens may operate on such lines as described, especially with most media, electoral politics, including debates, etc., set up to offer voters little or no useful/factual information suitable for the sort of informed decision-making which TPTB and the US monopolistic corporate media work to actively discourage. Not to mention corporate interests/billionaire donors discouraging the running of any candidates worth voting for.

But how many Americans have avoided/overcome such programming? And how many more could, as with Bernie's consciousness-raising/democracy-validating efforts, with factual information made available in some manner that didn't trigger the amygdala-mind-shut-down fear/anger propaganda successfully used for so long against the public, especially (until lately) by the corporate 'official right wing' party?

The 'average American voter' is not stupid, just swamped in carefully crafted misdirection, disinformation, distraction and mind-numbing scare tactics, while their energy is consumed by the struggle to survive the very rigged and disastrous circumstances they're being disinformed about and encouraged to vote for more of by one side or another of a two-faced group of pathological hired predators which they are taught to regard, effectively, as their 'betters' and 'natural rulers' - even as these are draining them dry and poisoning their world for profit.

But Bernie kinda spoilt that for TPTB et al, and continues to validate the concepts of democracy and to actually promote some of what the American government could and should do if working in, rather than against, the public interest, no matter what either side of the corporate party does to humiliate, denigrate, smear or otherwise try to nobble him in the hope that that he abandons the corporate press-monopolized public access they've been forced to permit him to 'campaign for them', Bernie using this instead to express concepts in interactions with the propagandized public previously denied even the hope of productive policy plans.

And far more of the corporate-media-restricted are now aware that both faces of the corporate party and many politicians within them have been actively working against them and are increasingly beginning to drop the false political and other created divisions to work together with their fellow-citizens for survival, democracy and the chance of a decent life.

So the hysterical Two-Faced Corporate Party propaganda spikes somewhere beyond madness without successfully distracting most of those more aware - and spirals onward, it appears, potentially toward initiating further mass death among the American population by pitting factions against each other in a more murderous fashion, perhaps beginning with the elimination of progressives fighting hardest for the rights of the people, as urged by the corporate arms merchants running the NRA in the ad posted here on C-9?

And, I'd suspect, moving from there into far more widespread police executions of a heavily-armed population on the excuse of these increases in gun crime among the patsies they're using, reducing (as Scrooge might suggest) the excess population of Disposables.

Just guessing, of course, but it kinda looks that way to me.

Having seen some of what's been and what's being done by the Psychopaths That Be and their lackeys, I would considered it an error to conclude that any action or crime would be beyond the pale for kidnappers and torturers, mass starvers of children in created famines and the users of White Phosphorus against civilians in countries they invade, while destroying life on the planet forming the life support system on which they also depend, all for additional and ever-increasing profits for a relative few. These are not sane people...

the country got the government it deserved.

Can Democracy Succeed?
...
Psychological studies have shown that human beings do not regularly engage in logical cost-benefits analysis. People – for the most part – are irrational. Any cognitive psychologist will tell you that the area of the brain responsible for decision-making is the “Limbic” where emotions rule.

Our life-changing decisions when voting for a candidate, then, are at the mercy of irrational factors such as:

1. Appearance. Is the candidate attractive?
2. Voice. Is it soothing with a reassuring tone? Is it passionate? Or is the voice harsh, grating and strident?
3. Charisma. Does the candidate have an aura? Does he or she seem to radiate some indefinable energy that dazzles the crowd and draws you to them?
4. Race. Is the candidate of a particular ethnic group “not to your taste”? Or is the candidate perhaps from your ethnic group?
5. Religious views. Does the candidate belong to any religious group? Is it a religion that you support? Or is it a religion that you find unacceptable and strange? What if the candidate is – heaven forbid - an atheist?
6. Likability. Is the candidate someone you would "like to have a beer with"? Or a latte? Or does the candidate seem arrogant and aloof? Are they a person of “character”?
7. Believability. Does the candidate come across as honest? Is he or she direct? Do they sound too much like a lawyer engaging in slick rhetoric and double-talk?
8. Age. Is the candidate too young for such an important position? Or is the candidate maybe a bit too old. Will he fall asleep on the job?
9. Intelligence. Is your candidate able to cogitate and chew gum at the same time? Or are they only capable of chewing gum?

And let's remember that in the United States, the Exceptional Democracy, 1 in 4 Americans believe that the sun revolves around the Earth, and 50% of American adults can't read a book written at an eighth grade level.

...

@native

from a discussion at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

per said...
Trump is a mad genius. A fool sent by Providence to take down the New World Order. With his antics, he is destroying the aura of the media, while at the same time destroying the aura of the presidency. He is emptying the reputation of the Deep State and making a mockery of American Exceptionalism. The idea that the American president has a God-given right to decide the fate of other countries (in the name of democracy) is no more. A humbled America is what the world needs.