@k9disc The word "terrorist" means whatever they want it to mean.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

Seriously. I read that and kind of freaked a bit. Like,"WTF!?"

I could see the "Axis of Evil" with a Despot, an "out of control democracy", and a failed state with Nukes, but that wasn't calling them a terrorist nation.

Tell me all about their exportation of terror. Like... Where?

@k9disc
"Tell me all about their exportation of terror. Like... Where?"
Well, what about the nukes North Korea gave to Syria?

Seriously. I read that and kind of freaked a bit. Like,"WTF!?"

I could see the "Axis of Evil" with a Despot, an "out of control democracy", and a failed state with Nukes, but that wasn't calling them a terrorist nation.

Tell me all about their exportation of terror. Like... Where?

@The Aspie Corner They figured out how to make it work fine for them. Now, I'm surprised they dare try to impeach Trump--where will they get their credibility when he's gone? After telling everybody Mike Pence is a better alternative because he's a rational grown-up with the right manners?

Bill Clinton wouldn't have told him to run otherwise. Sure, he was supposed to be Hillary's patsy, but this works fine for them.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

on Obama's 2008 "election" to protesting in the streets over last years California primary, I have come a long way to get to the point where I finally recognize how it works:

The point of "taking turns" in the credibility dance is generating faith in the system, so that too many people don't give up on the system altogether. You don't want them doing that, because then too many of them might start doing other things than participating in the system, and then you'd have to repress their activities, which would be inconvenient and messy. So much better if they keep believing that if they just vote for the right people long enough, things will improve.

Does that make me a troll for agreeing with you? Or just you for saying it?

We're all dumb shits for letting this happen.Even if you didn't vote for the dumb shit, you allowed this to happen in one way or another.

If you think voting, or the opinion of the people, is what has "elected" anybody since 1996 (at the latest), you may be a dumb shit.

Some of us believed we elected Obama in 2008, but what really happened is that we were convinced by a candidate already vetted by the NSA, among others, including the "smart money" on Wall St. We agreed with the NSA and 1/2 of Wall St that he would be a good president, or thought he might be a good president even though he had (at least a few) visible ties to them. We believed this, and believed we elected him, because, well, we were dumb shits.

The fact that more than 60 million people voted for Obama in the general election in 2008 is not why he was put in place. He was put in place because, to quote a phrase, "it was [his] turn." They have to alternate between Democrats and Republicans up there because it takes time to rebuild the reputation of any given party after it does horrible shitty things to the country and the world. You take your place in the limelight, promising to change things; you inflict horrendous damage on the country and the world; the people become disgusted with you and your party; then your party retreats out of power. The "opposing" party then takes its place in power and does horrendous things. Meanwhile the party out of power wrings its hands and talks about how they'd do things differently if they were only in power. The party out of power rebuilds its reputation. When the level of disgust with the party in power reaches a certain point, and the party out of power has rebuilt its reputation sufficiently, it becomes, once again, "their turn."

The point of this farcical dance of trashing and rebuilding one's credibility is not to get enough people to believe in you that they will vote for you. You don't give a shit who votes for you, because all that will be arranged by the techies working for your financial backers, and there will be little or no fuss about it, because everyone knows ahead of time who's going to "win." The point of "taking turns" in the credibility dance is generating faith in the system, so that too many people don't give up on the system altogether. You don't want them doing that, because then too many of them might start doing other things than participating in the system, and then you'd have to repress their activities, which would be inconvenient and messy. So much better if they keep believing that if they just vote for the right people long enough, things will improve.

The Bush/Cheney administrations trashed the reputations of the Republicans more than usual, because they did more horrendous things than usual. So there was really no question in 2008 about whether a Republican or Democrat would step into the Oval Office. The only question was "Hillary or Barack?" The answer was a bit unexpected, but all that really meant was that some of the elites are smarter and more imaginative than they had previously demonstrated. Obama offered far more useful talents and characteristics for the 1% than Hillary did.

This is all to say that people voting for Trump has little to do with why Trump was elected. Whoever countered Hillary's hackers, whether people working (at a distance) for Trump or just people with high levels of digital skill or security clearance who despised Hillary, they are responsible for Trump being in office. After watching the shit Hillary pulled--repeatedly--in the Democratic primary, you can't imagine that she and hers would leave the general election to chance. Why should they, when they could assure a victory? They certainly demonstrated in the primary that they had no regard for election integrity or what the voters wanted; they further demonstrated that nobody backed by big money was ever going to be prosecuted for election fraud.

That's why there has been so much hand-wringing and consternation from that camp. They thought they had it in the bag, because they were cheating, and they knew they had it in the bag. But they're not the only ones who know how to hack the vote. They were countered by somebody.

Despite the horrors unfolding every day, I have little ire towards those hackers--or those people deep within the security state, whichever it is--because, however evil Trump may be, it would have been no better if those people hadn't hacked the vote, and had just let Clinton cheat her way to the top.

It's not a question of being pissed off at people--or calling them dumbshits--for being involved in putting a particular person into the Presidency. The people to be pissed off at are the ones who compromised the entire system and made it a machine that usually (almost always) produces results made to order for a handful of rich sociopaths who run everything.

One of the only two pleasant things about Trump being in office is watching the system run in circles shrieking because they don't have absolute control. Only 99.99999% of the control. Don't get me wrong--they have no problem getting Trump under control. But they got a result of an election that surprised them and that galls them to no end, seeing as how it hasn't happened since 1976.

It would be lovely to think that we the people had vexed them so. But it wasn't us who put him in. Our votes don't put people in office, at least not at the D.C. level. Thinking they do is being a dumb shit.

@detroitmechworks I don't understand why the Russian 1% (the oligarchs) are less bent on global destruction than our oligarchs.

Of course, they're just as bad on global warming as our oligarchs. But, as I've said elsewhere, it's truly not realistic to expect Russia, under the global conditions as they've been for the past 17 years, to try to end the petrochemical economy. They'd be lying down in front of our oligarchs and baring their throats, saying "Start the incision here."

That said, I don't necessarily harbor much hope that they'd abandon the petrochemical economy even if they were free to. I wish that were true--but I know better now than to rely much on hope.

Where they are better than our oligarchs is that they don't want nuclear war. Or any version of World War III.

by a sally.

They were mostly broken by relief coming from the outside.

The American people have been under siege by the 1% for years. And now the 1% are doing everything they can to ensure that the people do not start looking for solutions that will actually help.

If we want a revolution, we need to start making allies with people around the world. We need other governments to start looking at the people as the legitimate government of the US, and NOT the corporations and think tanks that pump out the propaganda.

The first revolution was won by Franklin. Were it not for the support of France, and Spain, the colonies would have been annihilated, and the great age of Revolutions might have been strangled in the crib.

So yeah, the PTB are right to fear Russia. The Russians might just be the allies of the people in the next revolution.

@Big Al It's just a difficult concept to bend one's mind around when the Presidency has been so revered since we've been around as a country.

No one, myself included, abandons their comfort zone without a gentle push. Or a shove.

Keep on pushing, Al.

Too far out there. I was just trolling anyway.

@BrutallyHonest
or "psychopaths" for people who work for their own profit all the time and lust for the power to work on maintaining their profits flowing into their pockets. Is psychopathy or sociopathy a sickness you are born with? When do you become a sociopath? And when do you become a psychopath?

Getting rid of just the Presidency is, in your own words, "Stupid". It is another half measure.

The only thing that the 1% fear with the election of Trump over Hillary is that Trumps election will cause too many people to wake up and see that the whole system, economic and governmental, that we live under is all BS, a lie, and a scam.

Capitalism enables sociopathic behavior. Sociopathic behavior makes people with empathy feel scared, brutalized, uncared for, and isolates. Add to the mix that our governmental system has shown itself to not now, or ever, truly worked for every one equally in our country and its high time to say that the whole system must change.

For those who want the revolution to be enacted in an anti violent way, it is possible to do so, however, you all have to understand that our enemy are people who are sociopaths/ psychopaths. These are people who have no ability to feel empathy, compassion, or love for their fellow man and as such have no compunction in enacting violence upon others.

So what is the way forward?

Making every company a worker cooperative is the first step in solving our problems.

Worker cooperatives would educate, and empower the populace in ways that unions never could.
Worker cooperatives would create a bottom up power structure that would overpower, and supplement the current top down US government system, and the capitalist system at the same time.
Worker cooperatives would offer for a real democratic choice for every person thus again helping in removing and replacing our government.

How could we make this change? Easily!

You fear that the propaganda the 1% has used is too strong to combat and thus it will be too hard to convince others to the power of worker cooperatives. I say then embrace their propaganda and use it against them!

"Workers deserve a choice in how and where they work!"
"Where does everyone spend most of their time when they are not home? At work! Then why do we all not have an equal vote on the decisions at our work place? is this not a Democracy? Then one person, one worker, one vote!"

Worker cooperatives are so beneficial to the mass people that once we get enough people to start, or join a worker cooperative the war will be won before the 1% knows it.

That is why it is important also that worker cooperative banks, telecommunication, health care, and security companies are formed in the very beginning. If we have these kind of help on our side we can win. Without these companies on our side we will definitely lose.

The only true minority destroying our world are the Sociopaths/Psychopaths. These people have no capacity for empathy, care about others, care about the planet, or the ability to love. In essence Sociopaths/ Psychopaths are EVIL. I am sick and tired of living in a world that empowers Sociopathic Morals, its time we became a more caring and just world.

Who is with me?