Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: RNC 2016: A literal shitshow

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  • nzlemming, in reply to Grant McDougall,

    Regarding Paddy Gower, I had to laugh at his comment a few nights ago that "they are really drinking the kool-aid here."

    That knee is full of iron, though I doubt Gower comprehends that.

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel, in reply to Stephen R,

    Fewer Capitalists

    touché

    I shoulda known better!
    :- )

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    So much for my estimate of when Trump would speak, they do go on... – I couldn’t wait and had to go out – so gawd knows what time he started and I just got home and heard he only just finished talking – at midnight EST.!!
    Don’t think I’ll bother going back and watching/listening – life’s too short now that I think about it…

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming,

    Fab article by Laurie Penny about Milo Yiannopoulos and the gay Republican trollery:
    https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0b2932#.7gky64tff

    <a>America is a nation eaten by its own myth</q>

    Nothing says it better.

    H/t Emma Hart

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie, in reply to nzlemming,

    Nothing says it better.

    True dat. For my money, Laurie Penny conveys manages to convey more than a mountain of mainstream pundits.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    Well, the situation with Meredith McIver just got serious for Trump. He's now alleged to have broken federal elections law by having a corporate employee carrying out duties on his campaign.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming, in reply to Matthew Poole,

    Well, the situation with Meredith McIver just got serious for Trump. He's now alleged to have broken federal elections law by having a corporate employee carrying out duties on his campaign.

    Rock and hard place - either McIver really truly does exist and Trump is guilty, or he has to admit he made her up, so there's no case to answer. Either way, he's going to have a harder job painting Clinton as lawbreaker and liar. Not that that will stop him, of course.

    In a side note, the Federal Election Campaign Act has the acronym FECA, which seems very proper in 2016

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming,

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/21/we_finally_really_did_it_you_maniacs_you_blew_it_up.html

    Melania does not look happy, smiling only when she realises the camera is actually on her.

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming,

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming,

    Finally, although the RNCinCLE is the gift that keeps on giving, this:
    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20160722_Daniel_Pipes__With_Trump_as_nominee__time_to_quit_the_GOP.html

    The Republican Party nominated Donald Trump as its candidate for president of the United States - and I responded by ending my 44-year GOP membership.

    I hope his feeling spreads.

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • simon g,

    Trump tried to step back from the mob in his speech. Cries of "lock her up" are no longer what he wants to hear - watch his body language when they start baying.

    As always, those who first stoke the fires to get attention, cannot then look convincing as the fireman (or to mix clichés: genie, bottle, reap, sow etc).

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1333 posts Report Reply

  • william blake,

    Attachment

    A.Eger Leintz 1902. Austrian painting captures the spirit of the following decades.

    Since Mar 2010 • 380 posts Report Reply

  • Rich Lock, in reply to ,

    It’s got some dangerous inertia.

    My biggest fear with all this is 'what happens next?' Even if Trump loses, I really doubt that everyone is going to then pack up quietly and go home. Same with Brexit.

    back in the mother countr… • Since Feb 2007 • 2728 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming, in reply to Rich Lock,

    My biggest fear with all this is 'what happens next?' Even if Trump loses, I really doubt that everyone is going to then pack up quietly and go home. Same with Brexit.

    This is concerning a lot of my American friends, yes. Whether Trump wins or loses, he's already screwed the place up.. We may be witnessing the start of the 2nd American Revolution, or the 2nd Civil War...

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie, in reply to william blake,

    A.Eger Leintz 1902.

    Thanks for the picture ID. It's an image that's stayed with me since it featured in an article in US Penthouse in the early 80s on the rise of the then-new American fundamentalist right. Can't recall the author, only that the striking image was copyright credited to an Austrian state art gallery.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic, in reply to nzlemming,

    Finally, although the RNCinCLE is the gift that keeps on giving, this:
    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20160722_Daniel_Pipes__With_Trump_as_nominee__time_to_quit_the_GOP.html

    The Republican Party nominated Donald Trump as its candidate for president of the United States - and I responded by ending my 44-year GOP membership.

    I hope his feeling spreads.

    Then again, Pipes endorsed Ted Cruz, who's equally insane as Trump but for different reasons.

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    Wipe out!
    If as them scientifickers posit our brains are unduly influenced by our gut flora and fauna I can see a distant future archaeological dig at the Quicken Loans Shrine site uncovering a similar midden to this old Silk Road one revealing that the Alpha Centaurian synaptic fluke had been present for hundreds of years longer than suspected and well before their successful annexation of Earth - some point to the TV Series BrainDead as an early cry for help from a nascent resistance group...

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • andin,

    Quicken Loans Shrine

    if they win it may become one

    Laurie Penny summed it up like this

    They ventriloquise the fear of millions into a scream of fire in the crowded theatre of modernity where all the doors are locked, and then they watch the stampede, and they smile for the cameras.
    I’ve seen enough. This is an evil place, airless and soulless

    How many millions? Not enough to win, just enough to make others wake to the danger. I hope.

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,


    go sit on it, and rotate…
    Putting things in perspective…
    Behold the chaotically fragile marble (or snow globe) we live on
    - one year in time-lapse

    Go full screen for best effect…
    (possibly not safe for epileptics)

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Alfie,

    Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone sums up the sad spectacle that was the 2016 Republican Convention. A campaign trail which was “more TV show than democracy” populated by fading celebrities. A very one-sided affair with “10 cops for every reporter and 10 reporters for every protester.”

    It wasn’t what we expected. We thought Donald Trump’s version of the Republican National Convention would be a brilliantly bawdy exercise in Nazistic excess.

    We expected thousand-foot light columns, a 400-piece horn section where the delegates usually sit (they would be in cages out back with guns to their heads). Onstage, a chorus line of pageant girls in gold bikinis would be twerking furiously to a techno version of “New York, New York” while an army of Broadway dancers spent all four days building a Big Beautiful Wall that read winning, the ceremonial last brick timed to the start of Donald’s acceptance speech…

    But nah. What happened instead was just sad and weird, very weird. The lineup for the 2016 Republican National Convention to nominate Trump felt like a fallback list of speakers for some ancient UHF telethon, on behalf of a cause like plantar-wart research.

    It's also worth checking out Jon Stewart's RNC rave when he guests on The Late Show.

    Dunedin • Since May 2014 • 1440 posts Report Reply

  • Rosemary McDonald, in reply to Alfie,

    It’s also worth checking out Jon Stewart’s RNC rave when he guests on The Late Show.

    We watched that last night, along with this....

    'truthiness comes from the gut....trumpiness from somewhere, er, lower.'

    Provided a little sane relief...

    Waikato, or on the road • Since Apr 2014 • 1346 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson, in reply to Russell Brown,

    Wow, that's unusual, harsh, and true.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming,

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board/

    Even in small groups, he is completely incoherent.


    ETA: Jaw dropping moment:

    DIEHL: What about China and the South China Sea. What do you think they’re up to and—

    TRUMP: I think it’s a terrible situation, I think it’s terrible they have no respect for–

    DIEHL: –and what should we do about it?

    TRUMP: Well look, we have power over China and people don’t realize it. We have trade power over China. I don’t think we are going to start World War III over what they did, it affects other countries certainly a lot more than it affects us. But—and honestly, you know part of—I always say we have to be unpredictable. We’re totally predictable. And predictable is bad. Sitting at a meeting like this and explaining my views and if I do become president, I have these views that are down for the other side to look at, you know. I hate being so open.

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    The Manchurian Candidate redux?
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/trump_and_putin_the_real_winner_of_the_rnc_is_the_kremlin.html

    not to mention
    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/21/reince_priebus_tells_inspirational_story_of_gm_president_william_knudsen.html

    The book General Motors and the Nazis notes that in September 1938 Knudsen met personally with Hermann Göring at the Nazi leader's hunting lodge. On Oct 26, 1938, the New York Times quoted Knudsen’s remarks upon his return from a trip to Europe: “He said that Germany had been transformed since his last visit several years ago and that the Reich today was ‘the miracle of the twentieth century.’ ” The following year, according to General Motors and the Nazis, Knudsen set into motion the construction of “a plant designed, at the request of the German Air Ministry, to utilize American technology to develop advanced components for aircraft engines in which the leaders of the Luftwaffe were particularly interested.”

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

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