Attention Trump haters! If you’ve been starved for schadenfreude lately, there’s a blog for you: Trumpgrets, a small but growing compilation of Tweets from Trump fans now feeling betrayed by Orange Mussolini.
Granted, most of them are mad at him for terrible reasons, but hey, I’ll take what I can get at this point.
Speaking of Ann Coulter, the author of In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! and yes that really is the name of the book, is also feeling played, big league!
While it’s always delightful to see Coulter redfaced — with “blood in the face,” as her white supremacist colleagues like to put it — some of the other Tweets are more sad than funny.
Ah, Bob. You know who else is worried, Bob? EVERY OTHER PERSON ON MEDICARE OR MEDICAID. Every American with pre-existing conditions who couldn’t get insurance before Obamacare kicked in. Lots and lots of people who are just barely hanging on.
You and everyone else who voted for Trump made a huge mistake. And we’re all going to be paying for it for years.
H/T — To the WHTM reader who linked to Trumpgrets in the comments here.
@Miggy
lmao. You said third-party voters purposely vote for third party only for the spoiler effect.
HawkAtreides said this:
The “spoiler effect” may happen despite the actual intentions of third-party voters, but Hawk’s point was that saying that is the only reason people vote for third parties delegitimizes third parties and third-party voters. He was defending third parties.
You, in your typical adorable cluelessness respond with:
That zooming you hear is the thoughts that are so very far above your head. I’d recommend you try finding some people on your intellectual level to “debate” with.
I was just lying in the tub thinking about fungibility. Let’s say I have the choice between two meals, and I’m interested only in the cost/benefit ratio of each. One choice is to go out to a Chinese restaurant; the other is to eat a meal with family and friends and then help clean up afterward. How much time would I have had to spend working in order to earn enough money to pay for an equivalently-nice meal, as well as the cost of getting to the restaurant and back? Is that more or less than the 10 minutes or so of labour I’d have to put in to help clean up after the otherwise-free meal with the family? (I estimate it takes about 10 minutes per person to clean up after a meal; the larger the meal the more mess, but more people are available to help clean up.)
@guest
Interesting. I must admit I’m not terribly conversant in fungibility. Does it take into account substituting non-monetized cost to benefit ratios? For instance, I can recall many extremely pleasurable instances of sharing labor with friends and family that made the labor itself actually feel like more of a benefit than a cost.
@belladonna
…for example, the financial sacrifice you make washing up plates (instead of changing the world, Galt-style) after a home cooked meal may well be nicely offset by the way it actively drives away certain types of toxic asshole you may be related to.
@Belladonna 🙂 no, for my example I adopted the ‘rational’ ‘logical’ language of MGTOW homo economicus to point out that even by that standard the equation doesn’t balance. Of course people consider things other than pure monetary value when making decisions.
Fungibility is often a useful thing to keep in mind, though; for example, as Ivan Illich pointed out, if you include the hours it takes to work to earn the cost of owning and maintaining a car, cars don’t actually travel at more than about 2mph.
@ miggy
This documentary covers, inter alia, reservations, welfare and why that’s not quite the cushy deal you seem to think.
https://youtu.be/lheXnx02JYE
@M for Man Goes Trolling On WHTM
You’re not even arguing the same point anymore. Showing the existence of the spoiler effect – something I never argued against – is not providing evidence that third-party voters intend only to leverage the effect to shift the Overton Window. My statement was that there are third-party voters who themselves claim that the spoiler effect is a myth. So let’s see, so far we have an extraordinary blanket statement (that third-party voters are all just leveraging the effect) that you have failed to back up – how ironic that you excoriate me for not sourcing my counterargument! – and a failure to understand the basic underpinnings of my rebuttal while spitting out lazy evidence that has no bearing on what I said.
On top of all that, your dismissive blurt about “Democrats” is kind of hilarious, given that Ross Perot was the most successful third-party candidate since 1912 and he spoiled the Republican vote.
Your arguments aren’t cohesive, you fail to follow the most basic concepts of argumentation, and you can’t even follow the thread of rebuttals long enough to make sense. I give you a C- as a troll, and an F as a debater. I saw better argumentation from teenagers on Gaia Online than you provide here. You bore me. No, seriously, you’re boring. Your rotating pseudonym is more engaging than your posts.
What is it you expect to get out of engaging here? Are you just trolling, hoping to get some juicy SJW quotes to take back to IRC? You’re not winning hearts and minds – you’re only making the entire MGTOW movement look more and more like a bunch of self-entitled pseudo-philosophers who in actuality are merely uncritically parroting the same few trite talking points, and who fall back on vulgarity and insult when they don’t have Received Movement Wisdom to fall back on. The only reason I’m even deigning to respond to you this time is so you don’t get the pleasure of claiming you ran me off.
Dear “Bob 4 Trump”: I hope you get exactly what you voted for. Hard. Fuck you.
@Stephen Lawt I can’t summon up any schadenfreude, either. I suspect it’s because things will get very bad and it’s difficult to take pleasure in people realizing that.
Lol, I’m a single mum and I don’t camp out for expensive presents for my kids. Do many people do that in reality?
Also, my dad has cooked Christmas dinner every year for the past 30 years and then my sisters and I wash up and get a little drunk. Is that misandry? As the only adult male, is my dad supposed to not cook or wash up? Am I supposed to argue over lights and demand presents?
Ffs, every time a misogynist comes to whtm I learn another way I’m feministing wrong.
Why did our serially lying candidate with absolutely no qualms about any sort of human decency change his mind?!?!?!?!
At least he’s still a racist and a fascist, you guys. You got that part.
(This one’s a bit of a ramble, but I’ve left it in, because I can’t be bothered to edit down right now!)
Ahh, @miggy. You’re really something. Just like most of our, er, visitors here, you’re very correct within the confines of a certain slice of reality. Your perspective on your life reflects a deep truth about some of the injustices of our society, and there’s something important in there. Specifically, your allusions on the topic here:
You’re happy being single, and you’re trying to be cheerful as you do your own thing – you’re probably successful to a large degree, too. I don’t doubt that you enjoy the freedom and relative wealth of the single life. I’m single too! So are many others here.
You do make an error, though, and it’s been very helpful in sort of illuminating the unique parts of the MGTOW mindset. See, the single life is sort of looked down upon in our society. You know it, you rail against it in your text above and you’ve done so elsewhere. Society expects men to get a wife, get a house and a dog and two-point-five kids and a white picket fence and etc, etc. And you say hell no! And good for you!
But society frowns at you for it, and you get the cold shoulder from time to time. Assumptions about the sort of person you are because you’re single. Even the thoughtless isolation of erasure can be painful – the assumption that everyone’s married, and anyone who isn’t is either horrible or broken.
Thing is – rejecting that story isn’t a MGTOW thing. Do your homework. Feminists have been talking about that for decades. Men and women both experience this, in their own gendered ways. Single women are at best just forgotten, thought pitiable and broken. Men are still expected to be dynamic actors in the world, with something else to fill their time. Women are expected to dissolve into the background.
Ever hear of cat ladies? And why feminists are usually threatened with turning into them? That’s because being “proudly single” has always been a feminist thing, not a MGTOW thing. Feminists have been wearing the mantle of “defiantly single” for decades now, and have worked to push it into the sphere of acceptability. And that’s for both men and women.
And that’s what really makes me laugh about all of it. MGTOW, you’re riding on feminist coat-tails. You’re appropriating the tools and ideas of feminism – which you can, by the way, the idea that being single is not a flaw is a good one which should be spread everywhere. It’s just sort of funny, y’know? You’ve incorrectly targeted women as being responsible for the oppression-against-singleness, because some women do that. But it’s not women, it’s society.
(We call it Patriarchy to be technical, but society works too)
So no, “the single life” isn’t what MGTOW is about. MGTOW is about being single and blaming women for things. The former part of that definition is appropriated from feminism, but the latter, that’s all you. Ain’t nothin but a Migg thang, baby.
Thank you for the illumination!
– Scildfreja Ceorllæs
(still on page 3, but) wwth said
This. Anyone who really, truly believed that Trumplethinskin was going to “drain the swamp” wasn’t paying attention. He never EVER hid who and what he is, which is an entrenched and devoted denizen of the swamp.
So if misery loves company, pull up a folding chair you disappointed trumpence voters. Just don’t expect any of us who voted for Hillary to fix you a cup of tea or provide any sympathy. But if any of you want to join in our fight for our country, I’ll open wide my tea stash for you! (Seriously, I have a LOT of tea)
Axe – I heard about the Army Corps’ decision yesterday and since I donated last week to the veteran’s group that was going to protect the protesters, it’s turned out to be the closest thing to instant gratification I’ve had in quite a while!
Couldn’t help myself, have to reply to these too, though others have done a better job.
Lol.
First, let me do this with a formal proof
Since I know you think science is the devil’s work, though, I’ll be all pedestrian, just for you. See, people don’t always do The Perfect Thing. It may be true that there’s no chance for a third party ticket to actually win in the current political climate – I don’t argue that – but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to believe that. Case in point, go watch some interviews with Jill Stein supporters. Plenty will say they’re there to push the Democrats, but plenty more say they are voting as they do because they think their candidate can win. You can call’em stupid if you want, but you can’t say they’re all being calculating actors, trying to pull the democrats. That’d make you stupid.
Second one! Also, the important one.
Jack said it far, far better than I did. The government pushes them onto smaller and smaller plots of land, dishonours the treaties they signed with the first nations of the land, and now you gripe about them receiveing welfare? After they’ve been bullied onto the least prosperous territories of the country and even then they don’t have the peace of sovereignty or protection from predation? Gross, dude.
I think they should be given back their original territories, to be honest. They’d make far better stewards of the land than the American Government seems to be. (I also think the same of the Canadian Government too, if you’re asking). I’d be proud to call myself Algonquin.
On that note,
#NODAPL!!!!!!!
http://i1171.photobucket.com/albums/r560/Ponymaster/Fluttershy/Fluttershy%20gifs/yay.gif
@Scildfreja
There was a conversation in the Hamilton thread about just how the return of Native American lands might go down. Which peoples belong where, extant treaties, practicality concerns, etc. Anywho, might I ask how Canada could go about doing this, assuming the political will was there? Is there legal recourse to cede land that way? Who’d probably end up getting what? Stuff like that…
I’m no lawyer or expert, and I’m relying on high-school level knowledge of this stuff for the most part, so take this more as a lens on what might actually happen!
Boring background first. Canada is a confederation of provinces. Once upon a time each province was a signatory to the original 1867 charter of confederation. That document has been heavily amended by the 1982 Schedule, but the original signatories stand, with each province being admitted separately by order of the Crown. Each Provincial Legislature is also defined in the Constitution. So, technically, the federal government could dissolve or redefine the provinces! However, the 1982 charter makes clear that the provinces must be recompensed for any powers taken away from them, though it doesn’t say what sort of powers that would be, or what that repayment would look like. Basically, you need to have the provinces willing to participate in any changes for them to happen.
But let’s pretend that was the case, because it’s a lovely thing to think about. The Prime Minister would call the Leaders of the First Nations to Ottawa, along with the Premiers, and they’d do much like they did in the 1982 constitution update – argue and talk a lot as they come to terms. The borders of the provinces would likely stay the same, but the Legislature could be replaced by a Council of First Nations. The same pattern could be followed in Ottawa, with representation in politics happening through the First Nation councils instead of political parties.
The provinces as they are are fine geographical divisions, and the Constitution requires the “Have” provinces to pay equalization payments to the “Have-Not” provinces, helping prevent rich provinces from lording it over the country. Far from perfect, but it’s functional. Restoring the old borders of the First Nations may or may not make sense – I imagine that’d be the sort of thing that would be discussed ad nauseam by the councils. Don’t know if it would accomplish anything for the people living today, though, so I suspect there’d just be a weakening of provincial boundaries in general, instead.
I’m a big believer in democracy, and don’t want it to be an autocracy of the First Nations, mind you. Really, the best result would be a simple change of outlook in the population at large – an embrace of the outlook of the First Nation cultures and a real desire to restore them to their rightful place. We can’t (and shouldn’t) just try to turn back the clock, but we should honour their gifts to our society and their outlook on the world, and we should let them be our guiding star.
I dunno, I’m being all rambly here. I don’t want to pretend that the past didn’t happen, and that it doesn’t still happen every day – I’m utterly sick of half of my associates who say things like “I’m not racist, but [horrible racist thing about natives].” I’d be thrilled to vote for my representative on the Algonquin Council instead of my Alberta MLA, and would be happy to have Algic taught as a requirement in primary and secondary schools, alongside English and French. I’d also be happy to have official documents in a number of native languages – we already require all documents in English and French, why not Algic and Salish and Na-Dene as well?
Those are my thoughts! Gosh, what a mess. Fun idea, though. I desperately wish it were possible.
@Scildfreja
Interesting! Didn’t know about the whole dissolution thing. Thanks! A fun idea indeed 🙂
@Scildfreja I second all that. 🙂
You sent me down a rabbit hole, Axe! Im’a ramble a bit.
Our constitution is a very different beastie compared to the American one. It’s more like the list of chores and rules that responsible housemates come up with when they start living together. “Okay now, we’re all gonna take turns doing the dishes every night, and – Quebec, yeah, french radio’s fine, and since you’ve got the good paying job, Alberta, you sure you’re okay with helping PEI out, since they can’t work? Great.”
I am actually quite pleased with the 1982 revisions, truth be told. It puts the Charter of Rights and Freedoms first-thing, and the language is very clear and unambiguous. Also, more expansive in places, but clear about where limitations exist and are applied. Our Freedom of Expression law is more expansive than the First Amendment, for example. Disruptive picketing (e.g. DAPL) was ruled to be protected under Section 2 of the Canadian Constitution, whereas the US doesn’t provide protection for disruptive picketing.
There’s a limitations clause, though, which allows the government to create laws contradicting the letter of the law in some cases. I don’t know enough about it to have a strong opinion beyond “that makes me uncomfortable”, but it’s included to allow for nuance and sensitivity to specific issues. It has to pass something called the Oakes Test:
So, applied to the US, this sort of thing could be used to test whether a law restricting gun ownership was reasonable. All the murders and mass shootings makes for (1) a pressing and substantial objective, and (2) is proportional and rationally connected to that objective. Does it minimally impair the Second Amendment rights? Is there proportionality between objective and infringement? That’s up to a court. But the sentiment is to allow for the limitations of rights when they come into conflict with other rights.
Which is totally reasonable! But wow, potential for abuse. It’s specifically a tool for the court, though, so I suppose that if the court came out with a terrible ruling, the HoC could come up with a law to cover that case in a better way. Still!
Lots of weirdness in our Constitution, but I think there’s a lot of good stuff. Specific mention of First Nations! Requirement that all interpretations be provided in French and English! And that they be interpreted within a multicultural context! And it’s very readable, for the most part! \o/
Srsly u guys, you should revamp your constitution. Polish it up for the 21st century!
What are your thoughts on this article?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/04/democrats-can-look-forward-to-the-coming-republican-era-being-a-disaster-for-republican-voters/?tid=pm_business_pop&utm_term=.28300b6b55c5
@Scildfreja:
And in order to use the Notwithstanding Clause, which would be the only way to try to override that sort of test, all laws written with that in mind must also have a built-in sunset date of no more than five years. So you can create a law that violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it WILL end on its own unless it is actively renewed.
(The only time that has actually been used was with the Quebec sign laws. There were a couple of other cases, but all of them were either not passed as originally written or determined to not actually require the Notwithstanding Clause. Honestly, it’s the sort of legal bear trap that most legislators really don’t want to step in.)
@ikanreed:
And he’s probably not racist enough for some of these people. Mostly because everything seems so filtered by what affects him, unlike some of the followers who seem more driven by ideology. (Basically, I figure Trump doesn’t care about what people do as long as he doesn’t have to see it. But some of the old-school racists seem to just burn with rage at the sheer possibility that those people have any freedom at all.)
@Scildfreja
Sounds similar to our concept of scrutiny. Except that has to do specifically with discrimination. Discrimination is allowable so long as it’s in furtherance of a ‘compelling state interest’, ‘narrowly tailored’ to a specific situation, and is the ‘least restrictive means’ of achieving that interest. Scrutiny is more strict for certain groups (religion, ethnicity) than for others (gender, orientation) which is more than others (socioeconomic class)
@Hu’s
Yes, yes, and more yes! This is what the federal system is for. If Trump is gonna fuck up the country, might as well keep the whole ship from sinking. If that means CA lives while KS dies, so be it unfortunately
@ scildfreja
As you probably know the UK doesn’t have a written constitution; we are however a signatory to be European Convention on Human Rights. That has a similar stance on limitations. Basically you can restrict rights if such a restriction is “necessary, proportional and reasonable in a democratic society”.
That obviously provides work for lawyers but on the whole it’s not particularly complicated. So although, for example, there’s a right to freedom of expression we can have laws against hate speech and defamation.
There’s also a thing called ‘derogations’. That allows for temporary suspension of some convention rights in times of national emergency (that’s why some signatories declare ‘states of emergency’ although strictly speaking there’s no obligation to do that)
In the UK we also have ‘declarations of incompatibility’. That’s to do with our sovereignty of parliament thing. Parliament can pass laws that don’t abide by the ECHR but they have to be up front about it and state that in the relevant Act (rather confusingly, court judgments that a law breaches the ECHR are also called declarations of incompatibility but technically that’s not quite the same thing).
@Axe, yeah, the Oakes test is just a Canadian version of the same stuff that’s found in other countries. Sorta like – I think you have the Lemon test down there? Same idea. We do have some uniquely Canadian legal principles, though, like the Living Tree Doctrine – it’s a directive to the courts that the constitution (Originally the BNA act) is a living document which should be interpreted progressively, in a manner which reflects the times. We’ve had that one ever since 1867, apparently? Either way, I quite like that one.
@Jenora, @Alan, the notwithstanding clause is sort of similar to the “declarations of incompatibility” – the province has to specifically declare what part of the Constitution Act it’s incompatible with, and then it has to expire after five years. Given that a government’s term is maximum five years, it makes sense to do it that way. Allows for an individual government to contravene the federal act, but restricts it to that particular government. I’m embarrassed to say that Alberta once used it to try to define marriage as between-one-man-and-one-woman, but that’s in Federal jurisdiction anyways, so they weren’t able to do so. And thank goodness.
The UK has the whole Supremacy of Parliament thing, which we used to have here, but the 1982 Constitution Act here replaced that with the Canadian Constitution. The Notwithstanding Clause allows for a little bit of the original parliamentary supremacy to come through, but with a limited scope. Apparently, the provinces wouldn’t have agreed without it!
@Hu’s, I hope that the states are able to do that! The less-red states would do very well to enshrine protections for its citizens in their own various constitutions, ’cause it’s pretty clear that the Federal government doesn’t have any interest in it. With luck, the people in red states will see the differences in outcomes and finally come to their senses. Until then, I hope those of you in blue states will be welcoming to people migrating in to escape the Republican Menace!