i am not joking. he was at a media event showcasing his appointment of rudy giuliani for the head of making cyber security stronger. i am not joking.

First part is true. Second part, I'm gonna scream. He's taking a wrecking ball to everything including elections. We have to fight just for an election in 4 years. If you think you can just wait 4 years and he'll be gone, you are wrong. If minorities can't vote, he wins in a landslide among a million other things I can think of.

I make sure to watch these everyday after work.

They had one for a couple years. I just read it in kasparov's book on putin. (it's the bad stuff everyone's saying, spoiler alert)

Just want to put it out there that I'm an atheist and I am 100% against Trump and any ban against any religion. I believe in American civil liberties and values and freedom of (and from) religion.

I frequent a few atheist and secular sites, and I can't think of one person on those sites who claimed to be for the ban because "the less religion the better" or whatever.

Kind of insulted that anyone would think atheists would be for the ban, to be honest.

lol everyone in my English dept. are absolutely befuddled why that woman is the appointee.

It's b/c atheists don't give a**** about religion thus we don't have the need to dominate or feel superior or the fear of another one doing it to us. We don't give a **** at all. So naturally, the entire world is about to be religious again by force. World history always cycles, I was naive to think maybe it wouldn't for once this century but nope.

She's a christofascist just like the rest of them. That's why. They're taking everything radical christianity hates out of education. ie gg science. Yep, religion going straight into schools with her. (or they just take all the $ from public schools and give it to private christian schools)

That and 200M donated to the party which would normally be the only reason but that's just a bonus here.

World history always cycles, yo!

Since the end of the Cold War and colonial rule in Africa, countries -- for instance, Ethiopia -- have vacillated between genuinely competitive multi-party elections in the early 1990s to backsliding into autocracy by the mid 2000s. The backsliding isn't always obvious and doesn't always involve goose-stepping down the street in uniform and the cops roughing up political opponents (although violent intimidation of political opponents does happen in Ethiopia). But on the merits, there's enough political freedom for political opponents to operate and vote counting is done transparently and fairly enough that you see results like this where in 2010 the opposition Medrek party wins more than 30% of the popular vote but got 1 seat out of 547 in parliament due to the ruling party re-writing the rules on how the seats get awarded.

The cynics and thisisfine.jpg types will cry foul but the GOP is essentially crafting the same system where gerrymandering, voting restrictions and burdens will functionally suppress the popular will and where expressed, the results are designed not to reflect it, to empower certain voters over others. Consider how much time Trump is STILL dedicating to myth-making about voter fraud. Think about how many GOP controlled state legislatures are sitting on voter ID laws and other similar legislation and regularly trotting them out, and how much mind-share and consensus building exists on the right to mythologize voter fraud to justify this stuff. They mean it. They should be taken both seriously and literally.

Transparently, the GOP has abandoned outreach and growth as a party and have set to work on a project to entrench the political power of ~25% of the eligible electorate (turnout in 2016 was ~55% and Trump got 46% of the vote) as far as they can take it.

The GOP is obviously distracted this week but as the elections approach in 2018 and 2020, their efforts will be focused on both rewriting districts (gerrymandering), rewriting the rules (e.g., having blue state legislatures controlled by GOPers turn their electoral apportionment into Maine/Nebraska style systems where EVs are awarded by CD) and curtailing the voting rights of populations they perceive as opposition (voter IDs, limiting polling hours, aggressively pursuing drug crimes and then disenfranchising felons, other onerous voting restrictions).

And that's just the obvious, transparent stuff. The hand they will play completely face up. Who knows what Nixonian-or-worse type tactics Trump will engage in to use the state authority for propaganda and/or harassing his opponents.

t;ldr summary: your confidence this too will pass due to free and fair elections providing a bulwark against malfeasance seems misplaced, GOP is absolutely going to work on that now.

We have agency to create a different outcome and this is not fate but I'm not convinced a confident attitude democratic norms will ensure voters' will is respected is the right play anymore.

The guy who said that was a repeatedly banned white supremacist and half wit.

+1

True, but one cannot ignore the normalizing of islamophobia by the Bill Maher and Sam Harris types in the guise of #rationality and #logic. Atheists for regime change!

edit: Oh, and Dawkins too.

Trump going to use Facebook live for sc nom announcement

I assume this is "Winter is Coming"....would you recommend it?

Budweiser Super Bowl ad...pretty good troll of Trump

Reuters poll has Americans in favor of the travel ban, 49-41

sigh

Do they say what they say because they are not nice people or because they are not smart enough to recognize that their thoughts are based on shoddy reasoning?

I'm also in the bubble, but I'm guessing the CP crew is really happy that libs are mad and the media is all still chasing after the laser pointer like a kat.

Should we though? I feel like pointing out trump's ineptitude is what we've been trying for 2 years, because it's so obvious to us. But he's their god. Not because they always agree with him, but because the liberals are the devil.

It's easy to be obstinate because the gop has a long track record of always being wrong, about everything.

Trumpkins stopped reading after the word "bad", because emails you libtard.

Yeah. The media is failing harder than ever. Lol at Chuck Todd for having these people on his show.

"Mr. Priebus, welcome to the show. You helped elect the birther, so now you can **** off. Up next, I tell lying ass spin artist Kellyanne Conway that her birther supporting ass is either stupid or doesn't give a **** about her own childrens' future. Followed by the round table, where Doris Kearns and I take turns beating the **** out of a trump piñata with baseball bats. Because if it's Sunday, it's meet the protest mother ****er."

I would watch that

****, I know ****s bad right now, with all that Trump, but you really think Ethiopia is a good example for comparison? Ethiopia?

For all you say there are no examples post WW2 of any country with a long history of strong institutions, strong democratic tradition and strong civil society/rights bugging out on those traditions to an authoritarian one.

Yes there are plenty of examples with countries with very weak institutions, endemic corruption and/or very recent democratic development vacillating between "democracy" and authoritarianism, but for all sorts of reasons they cant really be compared to USA.

This cuts both ways though, its a reason for some hope, but also dread.

Also obviously need to work around how arbitrary the whole post WW2 line is, but even if we roll it back, there were unique conditions in Germany and also Democracy was still in an earlier phase of development then.

Only a matter of time until he does something which only a very small minority will favor and creates massive protests. Things should get interesting then!

www.twitter.com/TrumpDraws for a few more drawings...

Like what? Seriously, give me something that only 20% of Americans support and would result in even conservatives protesting against it. I cannot think of anything. No matter what, it will be spun and they will still support him.

denouncing religion including Christianity
killing Americans on purpose
nominating Ted Cruz to the Supreme Court seat

that was 3 pretty easy ones