Fogbow

sugar magnolia wrote: ↑Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:55 am

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:21 am

sugar magnolia wrote: ↑Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:15 am Small nit to pick, but you can't "dye" something white. You bleach something white.

And before you all roll your eyes at me, think of all the lawyers and computer people who have picked at nits the same size as this one.

Are you using “bleach” as a generic term for color removal? I mean, there are other chemicals besides bleach that remove color, right?

Yes, as a verb. And yes, many types of bleaching action are accomplished with other chemicals or through exposure to sunlight.

While you watch Donald Trump’s presidency stagger to what appears to be its ugly end, always keep in mind how it began: Trump entered the political world on the back of the “birther” conspiracy theory, a movement whose importance was massively underestimated at the time. Aside from its racist undertones, think about what a belief in birtherism really implied. If you doubted that Barack Obama was born in the United States—and about a third of Americans did, including 72 percent of registered Republicans—then that meant you also believed that Obama was an illegitimate president. That meant, in other words, you believed that everyone—the entire American political, judicial, and media establishment, including the White House and Congress, the federal courts and the FBI, all of them—was complicit in a gigantic plot to swindle the public into accepting this false commander in chief. A third of Americans had so little faith in American democracy, broadly defined, they were willing to think that Obama’s entire presidency was a fraud.

That third of Americans went on to become Trump’s base. Over four years, they continued to applaud him, no matter what he did, not because they necessarily believed everything he said, but often because they didn’t believe anything at all. If everything is a scam, who cares if the president is a serial liar? If all American politicians are corrupt, then so what if the president is too? If everyone has always broken the rules, then why can’t he do that too? No wonder they didn’t object when Trump’s White House defied congressional subpoenas with impunity, or when he used the Department of Justice to pursue personal vendettas, or when he ignored ethics guidelines and rules about security clearances, or when he fired watchdogs and inspectors general. No wonder they cheered him on when he denigrated the CIA and the State Department as the “deep state,” or laughed and smiled when he called journalists “enemies of the people.”

Not all of this was Trump’s doing. Many Americans had lost trust in democratic institutions long before he arrived on the scene. One recent survey showed that half of the country is dissatisfied with our political system; one-fifth told pollsters that they would be happy to live under military rule. Trump not only exploited this democratic deficit to win the White House, but he expanded it while in office. And now his political, financial, and maybe even emotional strategy requires him to damage America’s faith in its democracy further.

He is launching that strategy right now. And to be clear: It is a strategy, not a random reaction to events. Trump is no good at governing, but he has long understood, with the intuition of a seasoned con man, how to create distrust, and how to use that distrust to his advantage. The journalist Lesley Stahl has said he once told her that he attacks the media to “discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” He discredited and demeaned public servants such as the National Security Council staffers Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman too, so that when they spoke honestly about his behavior, no one would believe them either.

Foggy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 13, 2021 7:56 am

Off Topic

Yeah well, if Brits can't drink beer on Sunday, how could they have NFL games? It's metaphysically absurd!

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
10/13/21

If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ‘22 or ‘24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
10/13/21

Why isn’t the January 6th Unselect Committee of partisan hacks studying the massive Presidential Election Fraud, which took place on November 3rd and was the reason that hundreds of thousands of people went to Washington to protest on January 6th? Look at the numbers now being reported on the fraud, which we now call the “Really Big Lie.” You cannot study January 6th without studying the reason it happened, November 3rd. But the Democrats don’t want to do that because they know what took place on Election Day in the Swing States, and beyond. If we had an honest media this Election would have been overturned many months ago, but our media is almost as corrupt as our political system!

raison de arizona wrote: ↑Wed Oct 13, 2021 5:09 pm Nekkid cartoon Biden & Harris. Trump is clothed in the armor of Gawd. I dunno, doesn't make any sense to me either, but it sure is striking.

► Show Spoiler

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:46 pm I know the minions will hang in there no matter what, but even they have to be getting sick of all the whining. Think about it. You love/d your grandfather, but if all he did was sit around complaining about how crummy the cars are now, how terrible music is now, how rude and lazy the younger generation is, blah blah blah, you'd start looking for ways to cut down on grandfather time.

raison de arizona wrote: ↑Wed Oct 13, 2021 5:09 pm Nekkid cartoon Biden & Harris. Trump is clothed in the armor of Gawd prison garb. I dunno, doesn't make any sense to me either, but it sure is striking.

► Show Spoiler

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:46 pm I know the minions will hang in there no matter what, but even they have to be getting sick of all the whining. Think about it. You love/d your grandfather, but if all he did was sit around complaining about how crummy the cars are now, how terrible music is now, how rude and lazy the younger generation is, blah blah blah, you'd start looking for ways to cut down on grandfather time.

AndyinPA wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 10:25 am I like it. How to get it out into the rural areas?

much ado wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:48 pm Only 17 minutes?! And you let it slip by, didn't you, you traitor!