u/BluesSuedeClues

He's actually famous for that, from long before he entered politics. He was on Howard Stern once, and Stern asked him about the winner of one of his beauty pageants. Trump opined that she was "getting kinda fat", and was turning into "a real porker". Some TV reporter caught her at an event and asked her about Trump's comments. She said that Trump was obviously overweight himself, and in no position to talk about anybody's weight. So he sued her. It was a meaningless suit for defamation, and was never going to go anywhere, but he had his lawyers keep filing motions and pushing it until she went broke paying lawyers to defend her from his suits. Then he dropped it.

Donald Trump isn't just an assclown, he's a mean-spirited, vindictive assclown and shit excuse for a human being.

People in this thread keep asking that question, I fail to see how it's relevant? Whether he still wants to be in this relationship is not clear in this exchange. He very clearly, from the very beginning, insists he's not going to argue with her (Op), and that he respects her need to remove herself from their living situation. Then she continues to press for an argument. We don't know if he previously agreed to stop his friends from dropping by without warning, or if he refused to. We don't know if Op has issued ultimatums like this before, or whether she follows through with them or not. All we really know from this exchange is that Op wanted an emotional reaction that he was not giving her.

There is no tone of voice in text. We don't know if the boyfriend's behavior is vindictive (withholding emotions as a form of punishment), or exhausted (the context makes it sound as if this is an argument they have already had many times), or even if he's just distracted, like maybe he's at work or driving, and just can't engage right now.

But Op is 31 years old, and should know better than to try to have this kind of discussion/argument by text. There's zero chance any substantive understanding is going to be reached in that medium.

Fertilizer prices as well. Same issue, same reason.

The Catholic Church used to be the largest patron of fine arts the world has ever known. It would be very interesting to see even a small fraction of that investiture return. It won't undo the harm that institution has done, but it might give it a reason to continue to exist.

“It has always seemed strange to me, the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."

-John Steinbeck Cannery Row

Half of the Senate and 31% of the House have law degrees. You can both be right on this one.

He's just openly full of shit. His tariff madness is decimating manufacturing in the United States. Other countries don't want our shit anymore.

I'm north of you, in Cadillac. We've had a boat factory here for more than 50 years, that has been a mainstay of the city's economy. That's over now. Groupe Beneteau owns it, and is shutting it down, citing the tariffs as a factor in reducing the cost effectiveness of manufacturing in the US. Trump is fucking everything up, and most Republicans are still clapping like trained seals for this stupidity.

I try not to make the mistake of dismissing the people I disagree with as "stupid". It's an easy intellectual trap to fall into, and a lazy way of excusing oneself from the work of explaining your own position and why you support it and not the opposition. But... holy shit, so many Republicans genuinely are so damn stupid.

"I didn't do it. The Monster did it. Blame him, not me." -Dr. Frankenstein

You've received a couple of demanding responses here, that would require serious commitment from your girl to educating herself, but are much more likely to disheartened her and chase her away from the subjects.

Start casual, comfortable. Sit down with her and watch the excellent Michael Douglas movie The American President. It does a nice job of explaining what a lobbyist is, how they work, and why it can be effective or detrimental to any given agenda, and why Presidents (and other politicians) often seem to work against policies they claim to support, how the push and pull of real politics works.

If I were you, I'd solicit more input from other people on what movies/shows present interesting and educational views of politics and the other subjects you mentioned. Make it interesting and exciting and you're much more likely to help her find the enthusiasm to educate herself, and to follow current events in that realm.

Apropos of nothing, I find it sad that younger people now grow up with little or no understanding of these issues and how they are personally effected. I'm old, but when I was a kid, civic education was viewed as a public necessity. On Saturday mornings, when we were watching TV, we were often spoon fed little entertaining bits of that education by programs like School House Rock. We weren't really interested, but it was on the the TV, shoehorned into our regular viewing schedule, and it beat cleaning up your room.

It is a very common element of fascism for the leader to conflate the interests of the state with his own interests. In his mind, he is the United States, and the United States is his.

We're already "fucked for decades", no matter how the elections in November go. This administration has destroyed American standing in the world, and driven our closest allies and trading partners very close to seeing us as a pariah state like North Korea or Russia. Other countries are now openly talking about replacing the petro-dollar with a different currency, and most Americans cannot even contemplate what that will mean for our economy and trade power on the global stage.

This was the goal all along. In 2016, he never intended to win the Presidency. He just wanted to raise his public profile enough to start his own television channel. He's finally done it, but it won't be enough. It still won't satisfy his ego, it won't fill that empty void where a soul should be.

Trumpstein war. Let those two kiddy fuckers be inextricably linked for all time.

What I find funny, and utterly bizarre, is that the people they are most upset about, the frontrunners of the "communist" attack on their sensibilities, are consistently the people they put up the least effective opposition to. The Mike Rodgers and Abdul El Sayed race in Michigan is a good example. Rodgers is a garbage candidate, an obvious corporate shill and deeply establishment candidate. Ken Paxton running against Talarico in Texas is even worse, that dude is just as openly corrupt as Fat Donny. It amazes me that Republicans don't have the sense to reach into their library of back-bench "patriots" and find somebody who is vaguely appealing.

I read this book last year. The author would agree with you, but not just about Mussolini. These guys have an awful lot of personality traits in common.

Will Republicans really stay complicit if Donald Trump nukes Tehran?

Because, yes. I think they will.

I like mentioning his weight. Not fat shaming or harping on about obesity, but I have never met a Trump supporter who can agree that he is obese. Some of them will go so far as to allow that "he's carrying a few extra pounds", but admitting that he's an old fat man is so far from their need to view him as strong, powerful and vital, it forces them to openly denounce reality in favor of their fantasy construction. It's fascinating to watch people deal with that kind of dissonance in real time.

We teach children to "speak to others the way you want people to speak to you". And this can be a very nice standard of behavior. But what we really should be teaching them is "Speak to yourself the way you want other people to speak to you". Most of us are absolutely horrid to ourselves.

Lauren Boebert is one of two things (and maybe both, at the same time), she is either blissfully stupid and feels no internal conflict at the dichotomy between her public words and her personal behavior, or... she's a miserable cretin who hates herself a great deal more than she hates the people she publicly rages against.

Less Stalin and more Nero. Fat Donny is playing his fiddle and we get to watch it all burn. Yay.

Can't decide if Fat Donny is more of a Nero or a Caligula.

The "Katie Johnson" video deposition is still up (last I looked) on Youtube. It's brutal and very difficult to listen to.

He resents the intrusion of objective reality.

He doesn't believe in complex systems, or mutually beneficial relationships. In his mind, everything boils down to "Who gets the money?" And whoever gets the money, gets the "win". So... yeah. He's a goddamn moron.

But we would have missed out on the explosive diarrhea.