Octopus Overlords

RunningMn9 wrote: Thu Aug 16, 2018 9:47 pm For what? To stroke this shitbag’s ego? I don’t care if the parade only costs $1 additional dollar. It’s still a waste of time and money.

hepcat wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 8:52 amHe really does live in an echo chamber of his own making.

hepcat wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 8:52 am It's always someone else's fault in the world of Trump.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 0725118976

Spoiler:

The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up!

sidenote: in looking over the Mangerine's tweets, it's astounding how many of them include links to Fox shows/commentators. He really does live in an echo chamber of his own making.

Zaxxon wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:20 am But at least now we can buy some more jet fighters!

Zaxxon wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:20 am But at least now we can buy some more jet fighters!

Zaxxon wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:28 am I'm more curious as to exactly what those are. I mean, I know what a fighter jet is. But a jet fighter? Is it someone who redirects plumes of air? Or an NFL team other than the Cleveland Browns? I'm just totally unclear.

hepcat wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 8:52 am sidenote: in looking over the Mangerine's tweets, it's astounding how many of them include links to Fox shows/commentators. He really does live in an echo chamber of his own making.

Chaz wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:12 am It's also a deflection to blame local DC city politicians black people. The $92MM estimate came from the DoD.

Paingod wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:00 amIf this were any country but the US and he thought he could get away with it, I guarantee he'd have executed journalists by now for "Treason".

Holman wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 10:14 am

hepcat wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 8:52 am sidenote: in looking over the Mangerine's tweets, it's astounding how many of them include links to Fox shows/commentators. He really does live in an echo chamber of his own making.

He wakes up in the morning and basically live tweets Fox and Friends or other Fox programs.

Several journalists are tracking it and can tell you whether he's watching live or via TiVo (and how many minutes or hours behind). It's often possible to predict his next Tweet if a Fox guest says something particularly Trump-provocative or Trump-pleasing (and of course Fox guests know this).

Fox and Friends is basically writing the president's script.

The president began going around the room asking the different representatives what they were working on and how his administration could help, having made veterans’ issues a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign rhetoric.

Soon, he got to Rick Weidman, co-founder of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), who was one of Vietnam vets in the room that day, having served a tour of duty in 1969 as a medic. (Trump famously avoided military service in that disastrous war, ostensibly due to “bone spurs,” and had once said that his prolific sex life was his own “personal Vietnam.”)

According to two sources in the room who requested anonymity, this is when things went off the rails.

During the course of the meeting, Weidman brought up the issue of Agent Orange, an extremely notorious component of the U.S. herbicidal warfare on Vietnam. Weidman was imploring the president and his team to permit access to benefits for a broader number of vets who have said they were poisoned by Agent Orange.

Trump responded by saying, “That’s taken care of,” according to people in the room.

His reply puzzled the group.

Attendees began explaining to the president that the VA had not made enough progress on the issue at all, to which Trump responded by abruptly derailing the meeting and asking the attendees if Agent Orange was “that stuff from that movie.”

He did not initially name the film he was referencing, but it quickly became clear as Trump kept rambling that he was referring to the classic 1979 Francis Ford Coppola epic Apocalypse Now, and specifically the famous helicopter attack scene set to the “Ride of the Valkyries.”

Source present at the time tell The Daily Beast that multiple people—including Vietnam War veterans—chimed in to inform the president that the Apocalypse Now set piece he was talking about showcased the U.S. military using napalm, not Agent Orange.

Trump refused to accept that he was mistaken and proceeded to say things like, “no, I think it’s that stuff from that movie.”

One clue belying the president’s insistence is that the famous Robert Duvall line from the scene in Apocalypse Now, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” is not “I love the smell of Agent Orange in the morning.”

He then went around the room polling attendees about if it was, in fact, napalm or Agent Orange in the famous scene from “that movie,” as the gathering—organized to focus on important, sometimes life-or-death issues for veterans—descended into a pointless debate over Apocalypse Now that the president simply would not concede, despite all the available evidence.

Finally, Trump made eye contact again with Weidman and asked him if it was napalm or Agent Orange. The VVA co-founder assured Trump, as did several before him, that it was in fact napalm, and said that he didn’t like the Coppola film and believed it to be a disservice to Vietnam War veterans.

According to two people in attendance, Trump then flippantly replied to the Vietnam vet, “Well, I think you just didn’t like the movie,” before finally moving on.

The level of control Fox News is having over the Presidency is goddamn terrifying.

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:09 pm Being ignorant of Agent Orange isn't a crime, even for a president. Honestly, I have no ill feelings for the president at that point.

How he reacted to his ignorance should be. He is criminally, dangerously stupid.

Holman wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:29 pm No educated American of Trump's generation has any excuse for misunderstanding the issue. He didn't used to be this stupid. I'm chalking this one up as further evidence of cognitive impairment.

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:32 pm

Holman wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:29 pm No educated American of Trump's generation has any excuse for misunderstanding the issue. He didn't used to be this stupid. I'm chalking this one up as further evidence of cognitive impairment.

I'll have to take your word for it. Clearly a majority of people are going to know. I don't think the details of a chemical agent used 50 years ago is something that "everyone" is going to know, which means that some people are going to be ignorant through no fault of their own. Drumpf could be one of those people.

geezer wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 2:01 pm

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:32 pm

Holman wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:29 pm No educated American of Trump's generation has any excuse for misunderstanding the issue. He didn't used to be this stupid. I'm chalking this one up as further evidence of cognitive impairment.

I'll have to take your word for it. Clearly a majority of people are going to know. I don't think the details of a chemical agent used 50 years ago is something that "everyone" is going to know, which means that some people are going to be ignorant through no fault of their own. Drumpf could be one of those people.

It's sort of a cultural touchstone here in the States. Like if you didn't know what a Mountie was

YellowKing wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 2:32 pm It's one thing to not understand what Agent Orange is. Quite another to not accept the fact that you didn't know, accept the correction, and move on.

Chaz wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:12 am It's also a deflection to blame local DC city politicians. The $92MM estimate came from the DoD.

WASHINGTON—Insisting that it had to be in the audio recordings made during her time in the administration, Omarosa Manigault-Newman was frantically searching Tuesday through tapes of everyone else in the White House using the N-word for one of President Trump uttering the racial slur. “C’mon, c’mon, I know Trump’s in here somewhere,” said Manigault-Newman as she fast-forwarded through a recording of Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions casually using the racial slur during a conversation in the West Wing. “I’ve got hours of John Kelly dropping N-bombs and a several where Trump is in the room when Bannon yells it, but I haven’t found any of the president yet. One tape seemed promising, but there’s a lot of crosstalk where everybody in the room was saying the N-word over each other, so you can’t make out Trump clearly. Ugh, this is going to take forever.” At press time, Manigault-Newman was forced to keep looking after all that turned up so far were two dozen recordings of Trump saying “wetback” and “dune coon.”

Enough wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:38 pm Um Kelly saying it would be a big deal?

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Max Peck wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 2:44 pm The take-away (for me, YMMV) isn't whether or not Trump had any particular level of knowledge about Agent Orange. It's that he just doesn't care about things like Agent Orange, just as he doesn't actually care about the effect it or anything else has had on American soldiers, and that he'd rather argue about whether or not he is right about a scene in a movie than constructively discuss solutions to veterans' issues. (Spoiler: He's never wrong about anything. Just ask him.) None of that has anything to do with him. He's just there for the photo-op, and absolutely nothing matters aside from feeling good about himself.

And about 40% of Americans are solidly fine with that.

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:58 pm

Enough wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:38 pm Um Kelly saying it would be a big deal?

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Onion article.

GreenGoo wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 4:09 pm

Max Peck wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 2:44 pm The take-away (for me, YMMV) isn't whether or not Trump had any particular level of knowledge about Agent Orange. It's that he just doesn't care about things like Agent Orange, just as he doesn't actually care about the effect it or anything else has had on American soldiers, and that he'd rather argue about whether or not he is right about a scene in a movie than constructively discuss solutions to veterans' issues. (Spoiler: He's never wrong about anything. Just ask him.) None of that has anything to do with him. He's just there for the photo-op, and absolutely nothing matters aside from feeling good about himself.

And about 40% of Americans are solidly fine with that.

Well, yeah. I don't think anyone overlooked that.

hepcat wrote:Whoa...times are really bad when Canadians start fighting with each other.