Why can't everybody become an artist, or skip around in meadows all day? That's quite literally what our species evolved to do. I agree that it's not reasonable for everybody to find an audience for their work, but that's a concern for capitalists, and is neither necessary nor sufficient to be considered an artist.

Finding purpose in your life is your own responsibility. I just think you'll need a short "revolutionary period" where boring pointless office jobs are kept open, just to avoid the culture shock. Maybe we're already living in that period, though?

Yes. This already happens today.

I'm not interested in prognostication, I'm stating facts.

We aren't talking about a fast, night-and-day switch over to a fully automated, post-scarcity society. We're talking about a long, dragged-out transition period, during which we will continue to experience scarcity, and we'll still need people to work boring terrible jobs they hate, but also during which people are slowly edged out of the economy as the technologies to replace them are invented and implemented. It's easy to guess that socialism might work after this transition is over, but it's a mote harder to predict whether there will still be people alive to call themselves socialists by then.

I think we're deep into this transition period, though, and I also think the only thing that has prevented the world from descending into madness is the psychology of employers. It's well known that wages are sticky, and that employers do not lay off unnecessary workers until there is a pressing financial need to do so (this is why companies downsize, rather than slowly eliminating positions as they become unnecessary). Wage stagnation over the past 30 years, despite ever-increasing productivity, is strong evidence that we're already several decades into this transition.

Yeah, I'm with Eversor. They know a lot about the Russian hacks. They used the Dutch Bits Of Freedom server, for example, which is a special server that guarantees 100% privacy on the internet.

As for the whole Flynn drama.. I find it unsettling that the White House apparently knew everything, but didn't think it was a problem until the press started digging. Incredible.

And yes, that Conway interview was brutal. I've seen her getting cornered in so many interviews now that I'm almost starting to pity her.

They say a fish rots from the head down, but apparently the White House is depending on scandals bubbling from the bottom up before they even move an inch on them.

One theory I just heard told to a CNN reporter? President Trump may be staying up to date on scandals by watching television, implying that he may not have any established system in his office by which his staff informs him on recent developments. (And I am sad to say that now that this itself was pointed out on television, the probability that this will now actually happen just went way up.)

It's both beautiful and terrifying how corrupt, lying empty suits eventually implode their own organization under the most mild of perturbations. It's almost as if they can't distinguish between situations, depending on whether or not a lie will ultimately be merely convenient, or in fact disastrous for them, since they are so used to being duplicitous all of the time, and therefore literally haven't acquired the skill to tell the two cases apart.

I just happened to see the Trump/Netanyahu press conference, and Trump says it's "unfair" what happened to Flynn, the "fake press" has treated him terribly, and it only happened because of (and he stressed this) "illegal leaks" that shouldn't have happened.

See, the problem is not that the national security advisor broke the law and turned out to be vulnerable to blackmail, no the problem is that it got leaked and that the press found out. It's the reddest herring!

Not only does the Trump administration seem like an amateurish mess, the way they try to spin these things is just jaw dropping. I remember the lies of the GW Bush administration, but this is like a whole new level of contempt for pretty much everything and everyone. I just can't wrap my head around it.

The problem is NOT that Flynn is beaing treated unfairly! JFC.

Also, when you hear Trump himself, it's a whole other story than Spicer saying in his press conference that Trump lost confidence in Flynn.

Aaaaaand here come the reports about Trump aides being in close contact with Russian officials during the campaign.

"From the lead story in today's New York Times: “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials. American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee … The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the government outside of the intelligence services, they said…

“The call logs and intercepted communications are part of a larger trove of information that the F.B.I. is sifting through as it investigates the links between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government, as well as the hacking of the D.N.C. … As part of its inquiry, the F.B.I. has obtained banking and travel records and conducted interviews…"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/02/15/daily-202-it-s-bigger-than-flynn-new-russia-revelations-widen-trump-s-credibility-gap/58a3c5b9e9b69b1406c75cb4/

To be fair, that's more or less the same way the Democrats handled leaks.

Blaming the "fake media"?

I've completely lost any interest in anything KA Conway has to "say". It's all just a transparent attempt to blather through the interview based on simple pattern matching against the questions without comprehension beyond what's needed to divert.

Fails the Turing test.

Looks like lots of people have: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/kellyanne-conway-tv-media-trump-235022 , https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/15/morning-joe-has-blacklisted-kellyanne-conway-and-thats-not-all/?hpid=hp_hp-banner-main_morningjoe-fix-145pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.458e44633fb3

The president really does seem to be losing his mind over the embarrassment of being forced to fire Flynn by the fake news media and those treasonous leakers.

I'll bite again.

If Flynn was treated so unfairly, and it's all just a democrat plot because they lost the elections, then why not keep him on? Why the press conference by Spicer saying confidence was eroded? The contrast between these statements is stark.

Nobody here has brought up Bernie but you.



I 100% believe Russia was meddling in the election, I'm disputing specific facts about it. It's become really easy for people to scaremonger about Russia when it's unwarranted. Yes it's big, and yes it's serious, but it's also important to remain specific and clear about what has happened.



Damn, this again? The lack of evidence is not evidence of evidence. It may very well be true they do have evidence they can't share. I find it plausible and probably true, but if you're going to blindly trust the ****ing CIA of all orgs then you're nuts.



I'm not denying Russian involvement. I'm saying people should be cautious and investigative before claiming **** about Russia. That may not be a problem on Massassi, but all over the internet and in real life people are saying crazy **** about Russia's involvement.



See above.



It's not just "some Democratic voters", YouGov suggests it's about 50%. Of course not as bad the delusions Trump supporters believe, but apparently a huge amount of Democrats aren't solely sourcing their news from the more reputable sources. Even then, WaPo pushed a false story about Russians hacking into the power grid. Things aren't so bad now, but if you think there wasn't an illegitimate "ramping up" of the attempt to cast Russia as a threat, well that's false too.

FTFY

To say nothing of blind trust, I'll throw my lot in with the military establishment any day of the week over this lying, psychotic elected government, so long as they don't take Congress' duty to impeach into their own hands (if you know what I mean).

In the eyes of far left anarchists who see apologists for state power as privileged evil *****, I am well aware that this makes me a pariah.

As far as I'm concerned, these accusations can stay in the news cycle for all eternity, so long as

1. the administration continues to go ape**** and spread lies in response to every single accusation
2. said accusations have yet to be addressed by a credible and consistent narrative from the administration, including the necessary resignations and admissions, or else a full independent investigation by Congress having done everything it reasonably could do to force this

Any attempts to normalize the sad excuses the psychopaths in the White House are peddling to justify their behavior is just another false equivalency of the kind being emitted by conservative Trump apologists, and his Republican toadies in Congress.

Spicer & Conway: the Ministry of Truth

So I actually read quite a bit of the original, and I found it pretty fascinating. Not the part where they talk about the election, because that's pretty mundane, but their section about Russian propaganda efforts via RT is fascinating. For instance, they claim part of Russia's discontent operations involves:



Because as we all know, supporting third-party candidates is un-American, and as well all know it's super un-American to believe Americans are disenfranchised and American democracy is super great and it's un-American to dislike it.

Oh wait, none of this is true or organic, is it? The only dissatisfaction people have is due to RT and Russian propaganda.



Let's look at some of the specifics!



Definitely un-American to describe the U.S. as a surveillance state, and un-American to claims there are any infringements of civil liberties, and definitely un-American to claim our police do anything wrong.

I know now what you're thinking. "Reid, how can you defend RT? That makes you un-American!" I'm not defending RT and it clearly is a propaganda effort. Yet, RT is capable of using the truth as propaganda because they're the only ones saying the things people want to hear. It works because the grievances aren't acknowledged. But the point isn't about RT, it never was about RT, the point is you should be looking at the perspective of U.S. intelligence. They basically believe that Americans don't have legitimate grievances, and **** like Occupy Wall Street is literally the result of Russian propaganda efforts.

Let that sink in, because this is how you get a more true (not Trump's comical) fascism forming. "Any line against the party line is the line of the enemy".

And no, American reporting on Occupy Wall Street was almost universally hostile. Even the conservative NY Times (one of the best U.S. publications IMO) published a lovely op-ed critical of Occupy Wall Street by saying:



Wow, so Occupy Wall Street co-opted Gandhi falsely because Gandhi didn't believe in class war?? Not really. Gandhi opposed class war because he interpreted it as a literally violent class war. He thought the ideal future would be classless, akin to Marx's vision in the Manifesto. I.E., Occupy Wall Street's use of Gandhi to promote non-violent class war was exactly not what Gandhi was criticizing. Good job NY Times.

In contrast, RT offered support for OWS. So when the report laments,



It's probably because all of the "left" liberal journals were basically all criticizing OWS whereas RT was the only source supporting it. Is it really a mystery? You can't have your cake and eat it too, U.S. intelligence.

Can we nitpick about the US intelligence service after the impeachment proceedings, maybe? We all know they are a bunch of bad hombres who have disposed democratically elected governments, created the unibomber, etc.

That wasn't my argument. My argument is an appeal to authority.



You're just walking back what you said. I'll quote you again:



Hardly sounds like 100% belief to me.



Yep, it would be crazy to blindly trust the CIA. But, as I said, now that Donald Trump -- who has more reason than anyone else to deny it -- has himself acknowledged Russian interference, one can assume that the evidence available to those with security clearance is likely quite compelling.



Increasingly it's being revealed that the Russians did do crazy ****. But yeah, again, you're walking you argument back, because that's nothing like what you actually said in your first post.



Yep, just as I said. Why would I disagree?

I get all my information from fake news like the NYT and CNN, so I must simply have Trump derangement syndrome.

Can't you guys see we're being ****ing gaslighted?? All this confusion and infighitng is distracting us from the person who is creating it.

The media is doing a fantastic job, in my opinion.

I'd be more skeptical about Trump's alleged connections to Russia if he hadn't spent the last decade greasing Russian palms, and bragging about how much business he does with Russian oligarchs.

Like, that stuff really happened. I actually have no idea why the media downplayed that **** during the election. Trump 100% has a strong personal profit motive to eliminate the sanctions that are affecting Putin's rich friends.

I'm not quite sure what you're implying by this. Trump has no allies in America. This Russia thing has the capacity to have him removed from office.



I'll agree that my first post sounded misleading. So, uh, other than that, do you have a point to make?

Oh nothing much, just an exasperated throwaway remark to put a cherry on the top of my anti-Trump rage.



Good.

Yep.

Well, yeah, treason will do that.

TLC: Treasonous Lying **** in Chief.

I don't see why anyone reasonable would support Trump. He's not likable. There's clear corruption on an absurd level. The recent NY Times article is incredibly damning.



If the Russian military was actually a threat to the U.S. in any capacity, it would be an actual concern. Short of anything nuclear, the U.S. has such a strong global dominance that it's silly to worry about Putin. Unless you live in Eastern Europe, in which case you're rightful to be concerned.



Is there going to be an impeachment?

Not yet, but one can hope the Republicans will get tired of being humiliated.

Okay, so we seem to be largely in agreement about Russia. What do you think this implies? Do you think there's any evidence of a U.S. Intelligence power grab embedded in the legitimate concern over Russia?

lol

The administration has enormous potential to cause long term damage to the civil service and military establishment if honest bureaucrats doing their work get in the way of his machinations, and he decides to install a bunch of stooges. Just look at the whole NSC debacle for starters.

Wait, I thought you said that you "100% believe Russia was meddling in the election"? But somehow the US's military strength makes it immune to any non-nuclear threats from Putin? Wah?

No, I definitely don't think that. Doesn't seem like we agree on much. Pretty funny suggestion coming from an avowed stickler on evidence, though.

The US's invincibility is propaganda, but more knowledgeable people than you have made this mistake, so you shouldn't feel too bad about it.

I've read stuff from wargames nerds, who concluded that it would take the combined military of the entire rest of the planet to successfully invade and hold the United States. That, of course, assumes that you're interested in holding the United States, versus just crippling it, and that the people who lived there had unlimited endurance for warfare. You don't need a full-scale invasion in order to effectively defeat an enemy.

Here's a great talk from DEFCON about how a very small number of skilled people can topple a government.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_pYBkW7qgI

Putin probably thought he was getting a good deal in Trump by helping a fellow strongman come to power.

Now that he's finding out what he's gotten after all is in fact an incompetent buffoon who can't even control his own country, well we all know what happens to incompetent SPECTRE stooges when Blofeld loses his patience with them.

The only situation in which he would realistically live under Putin's control is if the two countries went to war and Russia won, so I was implying the choice is an imagined one. Yes, clearly living under the American government is superior to living under Putin.

And no, even though it appears Trump's administration is probably controlled by Russians, I don't think it's going to amount to an ending blow to American supremacy. I imagine a pretty impactful blow to American supremacy, but nothing that would tilt the scales in favor of Russia.

An impactful blow, like, say, electing an "America First" president, who views the world as a series of real estate transactions and is looking to enrich himself?

I honestly think that 80% of the US's political problems around defense and intelligence are caused by idiot politicians who get into power, discover that the "US = invincible" propaganda is false, panic, and spend spend spend trying to make it true. And the other 20% are caused by idiot politicians who don't even understand that much.

Well you know, we need to prove to Jesus that America is a Shining City on a Hill by flexing our military might by knocking down petty dictators with $3T wars....

shiny piece of glass in a crater

see y`all in hell, `cause I for one am going to the rapture!