Thankfully, it seems the EU countries will stay in the deal, but the US is the world's largest economy and their sanctions are no joke. I don't know about Russia or China yet. This will have consequences in the Middle-East. There are tons of uncomfirmed rumours on Twitter about Iran and Israel increasing in military activities.

In case we needed more evidence that we have the biggest damn idiot in the White House today.

Sure hope all the people who stayed at home on election day because 'I just don't like Hillary all that much/I'm voting Green or Libertarian in protest/I'm with Bernie to the bitter end' are pleased with this news.

Yes, but they are in the pockets of gun manufacturers. They're essentially the mouthpiece for gun sellers now, not gun owners.

Good point. At this point the only real purpose of the second amendment is to make sure no action can be taken to stem the flow of weapons from the US to terrorists and dictators around the world. Its applications for regular joes just wanting to protect themselves (or whatever they imagine having a gun will do for them) is just a minor side issue that some nut jobs obsess over in lieu of having lives.

Really, the people who should be most pleased are the ones who demanded that Hillary, and only Hillary, be the democratic party nominee because she was a sure thing. A sure thing people!

Let's not re-litigate the fucking primary again, for fuck's sake...

Misery porn is the one type of porn everyone can get off to.

Unfortunately, Trump leaving the Iran deal, violating the UN Security Council's resolution, and betraying his EU "partners" sends one clear signal to other countries and in particular to North Korea: be careful, do not trust the United States.

I didn't bring it up, though you only got annoyed when I responded.

Going over the topic again doesn't bother me as much because I wasn't gung-ho for the candidate that ended up handing the country to Trump. But ok, might as well add something to the OP saying no more discussion of Hillary/Bernie if it's verboten.



That's been clear for a while, but was especially so after the destruction of Libya. As we've seen from the Gadafi/Sarkozy, all of the western powers have to be assumed to be capable of attacking at any time regardless of what they say by all non-western countries for the simple reason that western country's internal politics are complex/corrupt enough that their militaries can be used by individual or small numbers of politicians for political reasons irrespective of their national interests or legal obligations.

I voted in the primary yesterday and I gotta say that having to officially affiliate myself with a specific party is just the fucking worst. Granted Indiana is pretty much a red state by default but still...

So, how many people think the US will be at war with Iran next year? Because Trump's National Security Advisor, noted psychopath John Bolton, has not only championed it, but basically promised it would happen by 2019 at one point.

Is Trump pulling out of the Iran deal based on his own full-blown buffoonery and failure to understand the world, or is it a horrifying influence from Bolton?

Well, it does seem to be the ultimate end goal, and besides N. Korea, timeline wise, we basically there.

...You really can't resist having the last word in, can you? How hard it is to not flagrantly ignore what I asked, and moreover, doing so with that pathetically unsubtle sense of superiority you always carry with you? Knock it off.

But Morrigan, you don't understand, he's the only one who thought Hillary wasn't a good candidate!

This billboard recently appeared in my own state of Maryland, which has generally been a relatively liberal/Democratic state.




Fuck Trump for making this type of behavior the new normal. And fuck his dumbass supporters who continue to rationalize this type of horseshit.

"If you try to impeach our corrupt, lying bastard of a president, we'll start a civil war."

That's what that says. Clear as fucking day.

One thing is sure: they are deplorable. They really think they are so big with all those guns. All of those sick moron really want a civil war, a religious and racial war. They just waiting for the little spark to start it all.

Don't feel intimidated. They like to talk big, but don't really want to fight anyone. We're talking about mostly old, out of shape, former middle management type losers, not Pashtun tribal warriors. Signs like that are just to express spite. If they don't get the political outcomes they want they'll grouse and continue voting as they have been. This isn't a cool enough country to have any kind of real insurgency that has either the will or the wherewithal to fight the government just because they didn't get the government they wanted.

Great president you have there.

If this isn't hyperbole from complete morons, it's a threat of terrorism and literally nothing more.

That's literally the biggest overreaction i could see in response to that sign. It's just a poke at liberals, to them, stereotypically not having guns so they don't even have to do anything.

It's petty for the sake of being petty. Nothing more, nothing less. You can find silly stuff like that all the time here in the States. You clearly aren't from here.

I dunno, I thought that was a pretty straightforward reading of the sign. In fact, I'm not really sure how else one would read it; your take makes little sense (why would liberals stereotypically not having guns be relevant to Trump's potential impeachment at all, if the implication were not that, in such a case, they'd be threatened by "deplorables" who do?).

Of course, you can laugh it off as "they don't mean it literally," but it takes a pretty shitty person to think that the threat of political violence is humorous - moreover, I seriously doubt it's entirely in jest.

Stop excusing shitty behavior by ignorant fuckwits.

Hate crimes surged under influence from Trump.

Hate crimes also rose (again) the day after Trump was elected.

This one is probably a little more biased, but here's a "fun" hate map of incidents inspired by Trump and his cronies and supporters.

Trump is actively hostile towards almost everyone that isn't currently sitting on his lap in his inner circle. He actively supports Neo-Nazis. And you think this billboard is just harmless fun? Maybe a decade or two ago, it'd be a lot easier to dismiss as just a bunch of dumbass rednecks putting up a sign just to be dicks. But if we're actually paying attention to the United States right now, Trump's supporters have shown themselves to be violent, hateful, cruel, and empowered to be worse simply because of his fucking existence. But then again, a decade or two ago, you have people who would now be Trump supporters warring with the FBI in Waco, Texas, and you have Timothy McVeigh unleashing the deadliest home-grown terrorist attack--and he would very much have been a Trump supporter today.

Has this stuff always existed in the US? Sure. Should we maybe be paying attention to the horrifying changes we've seen that give us reason to be concerned here?

And you know what, just for shits and giggles, how about a video of those harmless Trump supporters vehemently attacking a fucking bookstore?


Trump and his supporters think every gamer is a murderer waiting to pop. Trump and his cronies think all potheads are criminals. Trump and his underlings think all Mexicans are rapists. But we should assume this is all in petty political ribbing? They assume the absolute worst in literally anyone that isn't Putin. But no, you guys, let's not assume the worst from actual deplorable human beings who put up this billboard.

A lot of people made mistakes voting for Trump. His support has dropped off, and nearly the only supporters left are his psychotic base. And we have untold evidence that they are indeed violent, dangerous, and a threat to other American life, freedom, and security.

Basically, what Oblarg and Resident said. Even if it's not an actual threat of war, it's still incredibly disturbing that they'd put up a sign like that so flagrantly. It's literally a threat of violence out of political disagreement.

Zealous Trump supporters as led by the worst Republicans are basically the American equivalent of the Taliban. They just haven't had the chance to truly show off yet. Hope they never do.

It's one of the oldest ploy that extremist groups use, to claim that they're not being serious. Just like joking about bombs at the airport, all messages threatening violence broadcast publicly are always to be taken seriously. And last, but not least, it's not fucking funny.

The Waco Branch Davidians were absolutely a crazy-ass cult led by a predatory deviant. That said, they were apolitical. I find it quite a reach to say they'd be Trump supporters today. Consider, the ATF attacked them for suspected stockpiling of weapons - likely many of those had bump stocks, and were handled by people under 21. Trump favours banning both of those things.
As for Timothy McVeigh: he turned against the US foreign policy of invading Iraq based on Saddam's use of chemical weapons; and Iraq actually did use them! You think he'd be on side with Trump bombing Syria for the same reason, when the responsibility for chemical attacks in that country are much less clear?
Short version - I don't beleive the political climate in America is so much more terribly divided than it has been before. Much of that perception comes from how we can instantaneously see all of it now. Nobody would have known or cared about some arsehole with a billboard in Maryland 20 years ago. Now, we can all see it and make a big deal of it.

It's one of the ways that the alt-right has been able to continuously attempt to push boundaries and speech past what most would find acceptable. Say something inflammatory and keep pushing the envelope until you realize where the proverbial red line is. And when you eventually do run into resistance, you can just pass it off as memeing by saying "H-heh, heh, I-I was just kidding bro! I was just being ironic! Can't you take a joke?!"

It's a way to numb the general population to the dumb shit that they say, because they are saying dumb shit all of the time.

I definitely don't think that Koresh would've been a woke redpilled Pepe-wearing #MAGA bro, but I also don't think the bump stock banning and age gate for gun ownership makes a strong case for why he wouldn't. He was just what all cult leaders are, a volatile mixture of charisma, confidence, intelligence and batshit insanity.

But I really could see McVeigh in a Make America Great Again hat. Remember that Trump himself ran on an anti-interventionist platform, and that the Syria bombing wasn't well met by many of his most outspoken supporters. Even those who didn't chastise the president were not exactly pleased with the news and constantly tried to couch it as "a one time thing."

I'll partially agree that Koresh is a toss-up, but we're also living in an era where extreme lunacy in religosity goes hand-in-hand with Republicans and supporting Trump. Indeed, the most extreme groups--religious groups and fringe groups included--have sided with Trump, and are even considered his base. The kind of extremism embodied by these people is embodied by Trump, at least in all his big talk. He's obviously a coward when it comes to reality, and he's the most cliche' bully imaginable, who acts tough right up until an authority figure lays into him. Which we saw with the NRA when he talked about how he "wasn't afraid of them" and then backed down from everything after a single discussion.

McVeigh, on the other hand, would most definitely have been in a MAGA hat, just like his modern alt-right Pepe-sharing internet denizens. Except where most of those punks are talk, McVeigh was dead serious. These groups have lived on the fringe for a while being against anything government, and Trump has actively talked about and been working at destroying everything in that government. That makes him a hero to those people, as the Charlottesville Nazis showed.

For Trump talking about banning bump stocks, he sure didn't do anything about it. I think all he did was grasp a populist idea of "bump stocks bad" for a brief moment to make himself look good, but what really matters to him is keeping his Turner Diaries loving base happy. Which means bending over hard for the NRA.

Finally, what you believe contradicts studies on this--American political divisions have indeed gotten much worse over the past 60 years or so. Here's a bunch of handy research from just before the election.

Interestingly, pretty much every president seems to drop in approval over time, and the one Republicans and Democrats were closest to agreeing on was Ford, who basically fell into the position because the previous administration (Nixon) failed him into the position. He also wasn't in the job long enough to really be all that divisive.

Are you guys psychologically prepared to be called Iran stooges by people you thought were intelligent in the upcoming war push the same way you were called Saddam lovers in 2003?

I dunno. The dinosaurs were pretty weird.

Dinosaurs lived for approximately 181 million years. Humans have existed, at a maximum, for about 2 million years. On a global history of Earth, dinosaurs weren't weird. They were the norm. They only seem weird to the longer era prior to their arrival--and that was the norm.

Will they still tell me to move to Russia if I don't like it this time? That Putin boner has developed considerably in fifteen years...

Nice to see Jeff Sessions is following in his idol's footsteps:
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/tough- ... -patients/

That is absolutely vile. I'm pretty damn certain that once Mr Sessions himself lies dying or gets cancer, he will be drugged out of his mind. Aspirin my ass...

Opioids do have their legit uses in health care. When pain gets bad enough, there's very little else that can be done, outside of outright narcosis or euthanasia. The people arguing against opioids even when used sensibly are usually the ones vehemently against euthanasia, too, it runs in the same families.

Here in Finland, there's an interesting discussion on legalizing euthanasia going. Interestingly, the ones against it are not just the religious circles, but also certain doctors. The problem I see with that is very simple: doctors actually rarely see people dying. When someone's cancer develops far enough, and there's nothing but palliative care to be done, the doctors move the patients to someone else, and never see them again. The actually painful and horrible phases of dying are only witnessed by rare specialist doctors, who already know there's nothing to do but relieve the pain as much as possible, and mostly nurses who have to see the people through the process. The doctors' usual opinion is that "we need to develop the palliative care and pain management", but somehow I fail to see the two as mutually exclusive. Sure, when my time comes, I'd sure like to live as long as possible, with the aid of sedatives and plutonium-based opioids, but if everything fails, as it often does, I'd like to flick my own off switch.

The way my lady describes the death of her father is enough for anyone with half a brain, and the blissful absence of Baby Jesus therein, to vote for legalizing active euthanasia. No way I'm going to die without my mental faculties by dehydration and/or suffocating, if a simple injection can stop the pain. If that ever becomes my likely future, I will kill myself in advance, guaranteed. It can be abso-fucking-lutely horrible, and there needs to be an option. Yeah, there's no need to make doctors do it against their will... they can always opt to become pediatricians or dentists if they wish. But I want that option open for myself, for very obvious and extremely selfish reasons.

I find it very silly that "should you have the right to die in your own terms when in agonizing, horrifying pain?" is even a debate at all.

It seems North Korea is back to its old rhetoric. Trump's Nobel peace prize is on hold...

That's scary.

I had never heard of the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania until 5 minutes ago, but his stance on climate change as being caused by the Earth moving closer to the sun (it doesn't) and the body heat coming off of people (we do emanate body heat, but it doesn't work the way he claims at all) proved to me that he is a complete fucking moron who shouldn't be running a pizza joint, let alone a state.

He'd probably think you cook the pizza by gradually walking towards the oven without actually putting it in there.

http://www.politifact.com/pennsylvania/ ... nope-not-/

Good Lord... I hope Wagner's statements were just another variation of the dumbass confusion of "change of seasons" being the same as "climate change."
Otherwise: Hmmm... I wonder how long he predicts it will take for Earth's orbit to decay and be swallowed up by the Sun?