kurtster wrote: 
I think that the people at the bottom will be hurt the worst when the full effects of Brexit take hold, but the impact won't be felt for years. 

I would like to see some evidence that the "the insanity of the uncontrolled migration" has had a net negative impact on the UK's economy. These two pages

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6399/economics/impact-of-immigration-on-uk-economy/

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/eu-immigration-hasnt-hurt-jobs-or-wages-heres-why/

seem to indicate that immigration to the UK has not hurt the economy or overall wages. Immigration tends to help grow economies because immigrants pay for goods and services and increase aggregate demand. 

This link 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2684410/Rogue-bosses-exploiting-cheap-foreign-workers-face-prosecution-MILLION-years-damning-Home-Office-report-finds.html

seems to indicate that migration to the UK has hurt the wages of low-paid workers in certain areas of the kingdom.

 

Back to Trump: I think we've been 'round and 'round on this point. If a person has been placed in a socio-economic box and feels ignored by the mainstream political parties, voting for someone like Trump isn't a very constructive or self-beneficial way of expressing anger or frustration. I think it's obvious now that Trump's unreadiness to be President extends even to his campaign. He clearly has not thought through the effects of building The Wall or putting into place similarly restrictive but more attempts to stop immigration into the US. 

 islander wrote: 
Who got hurt today ?  Those on the bottom didn't.  Those on the top did though.  Trillions of units of currency were lost.  Not really though, it just changed hands.  Can't have a seller without a buyer, right ?  On the other hand, I made a couple hundred on some coins sitting around based only upon their intrinsic worth.  

Those on the bottom had a day to celebrate in the UK.  It would appear that someone has finally put the brakes on in the face of the insanity of the uncontrolled migration.  The uncontrolled migrants quarm resources from those already there on the bottom dependent on these resources.  The pie is only so big.  The elites on the top have no reservations about extending their generosity at someone else's expense.  They don't chip in any more, they get away with just diluting the services that accompany their generosity.

Its more than just that of course, but I'm going to have to say that you are out of touch with life at the bottom and cannot comprehend what it is all about.  I am the bottom, one flavor of it anyway.  When one is within $1k over per year for qualifying for medicaid, you are at the bottom, you are legally impoverished.  We may see a lot of the same things, but what we are thinking about these things as we look at them are way different.  I'm in no way unhappy that you have done well in your life, just saying that the day to day concerns are very different depending on one's financial situation.  

Its about priorities.  Your priorities change as you situations improve.  When you are at the bottom, you can basically affect nothing in your life.  You are confined, perpetually, to live within those confines, resource restraints or upper income limits.  Here's your box, now deal with it and don't cause any trouble or we'll fuck with you.  I'll say fine, tell me what the rules are and I'll figure it out.  But don't change the rules or only apply them to some and not all.  To lose that is the ultimate loss.  Its when you have nothing left to lose.  And then have to deal with the reasons and causes of this societal infidelity without a way to object or someone to object to, is when you say enough.  But if you can buy a bigger box or move to another box somewhere else, you are less affected and less aware of what's happening in the places you never see.  Oh you can see it and you can even visit it for a while.  But unless you're living it, its very hard to understand.

Ah, but we all had our salad days, right ?  If that's one's only connection, its so far in the rear view mirror as to be meaningless in the scope of understanding the feelings and emotions involved today.  The markets can go to hell and those invested in them get screwed, but as long as my keys open my own door, the lights go on when I hit the switch, there's food in the grocery store and gas at the pumps, then I have lost nothing.  We see the same things, but they affect us much differently here on the bottom.  If my vote pisses off someone, then they can just shoot me.  I'm voting with thought not anger, and to the best of my ability to get what I want within the rules of the game.

peace, out ... 

 kcar wrote: 
BlueHeronDruid's friend: "Cheeto-faced ferret-wearing shitgibbon." 

 Beaker wrote: 
I move that we allow all the people whose tweets were in the article to immigrate here as voting American citizens. 

“Toupéd fucktrumpet” is pretty damn good, but this one takes the gold: 
 

 R_P wrote: 
That New York Times piece by Mike McIntire (the last link in your post) is well worth reading. That Trump SoHo condo/hotel project was a collision of bad (BAD) economic timing, fraudulent claims about pre-opening sales, a serious lack of research into the past of his new partners and this head-slapper: 

"The economics of the investment were largely untested in New York real estate. To get around residential zoning restrictions, owners of Trump SoHo units were allowed to live in them only 120 days a year. The rest of the time, the units would be rented as hotel rooms, with the owners sharing in the revenue."


That's right: pay top dollar to live in a Trump building for less than 1/3 of the year, and then let strangers stay in your place for 240+ days. Oh, and you have to share that rent money with Trump.
 

But hey, it appears that stupidity isn't limited to psychopathic blowhard narcissists: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/24/the-british-are-frantically-googling-what-the-eu-is-hours-after-voting-to-leave-it/?tid=pm_pop_b

"That confusion over what Brexit might mean for the country's economy appears to have been reflected across the United Kingdom on Thursday. Google reported sharp upticks in searches not only related to the ballot measure but also about basic questions concerning the implications of the vote. At about 1 a.m. Eastern time, about eight hours after the polls closed, Google reported that searches for "what happens if we leave the EU" had more than tripled. "
 

Prankster Lee Nelson hijacks Trump's Turnberry opening with swastika golf balls

"These are the new balls available from the clubhouse as part of the new Trump Turnberry range. I forgot to hand them out before"

 R_P wrote: 

Don the Con and the Mob...
The Donald Trump Story You’re Not Hearing About

(...) Unlike its TV competitors, ABC News has raised some questions about Trump’s mob relations. Last December, a Good Morning America piece by the network’s investigative master Brian Ross touched on one tendril: Trump’s relationship with a twice-convicted felon, the Russian émigré Felix Sater, who (along with several other felons) occupied office space in Trump Tower. On air, Ross reported that Donald Trump had testified under oath in a civil lawsuit that Sater “helped develop the Trump SoHo hotel and condominium in New York City.” Online, in a simultaneous piece co-written with Matthew Mosk, Ross noted that in 1991, Sater got into an argument with a commodities broker at the bar of a New York restaurant, smashed a margarita glass and with the broken-off stem, slashed the man in the cheek and neck, breaking his cheek and jaw, severing nerves and lacerating his face and jaw. The victim required 110 stitches.Sater was convicted of first-degree assault and sent to prison in 1993. Then, in 2000, he pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges for running a $40 million “pump and dump” stock scam and for, as Mosk and Ross wrote, “collaborating with members of four New York mob families.” Sater served no time, however, because the FBI testified at his sentencing hearing that he was “an important witness on both mob-related and national security matters.”

To date, Trump has danced away from straight answers about his former associates. In a 2013 video deposition for a civil lawsuit, Trump said: “If he (Sater) were sitting in the room right now, I really would not even know what he looked like.” This, Mosk and Ross noted, from a man who “touts his outstanding memory.” During the same deposition, “when asked about how much he knew about Sater’s past,” Mosk and Ross wrote, “Trump said he knew Sater had ‘got into trouble because he got into a barroom fight which a lot of people do.’” Trump added: “I don’t know him very well, but I don’t think he was connected to the Mafia.”

In his on-air piece, Ross pointed out that the BBC had pressed Trump on why he didn’t tell Sater “You’re fired!” after reports surfaced alleging that the Trump associate had organized crime connections. Trump rose from his chair mid-interview.“I hate to do this, but I do have that big group of people waiting so I have to leave,” he said. With that, he walked out of the room. “Trump later said under oath he did not remember being interviewed by the BBC,” Ross went on. In February, Trump’s then-rival Ted Cruz picked up the Trump-Sater story, but the issue died, at least temporarily, with Cruz’s campaign.

In April, The New York Times picked up the baton with a front-page investigation by Mike McIntire about Trump’s close collaboration with Felix Sater and other investors from the former Soviet Union. In McIntire’s words, “What sort of due diligence Mr. Trump did before jumping in with his new partners is unclear. But he, as well as many others, apparently missed some dark spots on Mr. Sater’s résumé.” (...)

Donald Trump’s Brexit press conference was beyond bizarre

People want to take their country back. They want to have independence, in a sense, and you see it with Europe, all over Europe. You're going to have more than just — in my opinion, more than what happened last night, you're going to have, I think many other cases where they want to take their borders back. They want to take their monetary back.

They want to take a lot of things back. They want to be able to have a country again. So, I think you're going have this happen more and more. I really believe that, and I think it's happening in the United States.

It's happening by the fact that I've done so well in the polls. You look at the recent polling, and you look at the swing states and you see how I'm doing, and I haven't even started my campaign yet, essentially.

 islander wrote: 
If you frame the election as Authority Figure vs Troublemaker, particularly in the wake of how much FOX has framed the emotional tone of the nation into a temper tantrum, then we might indeed have our own catastrophe looming. 

 islander wrote: 
So this was from a few weeks ago.

The Brexit debacle is what happens when the ugly side of populism takes hold.  Everyone is indeed going to feel the pain, but the ones who will really suffer are the poor and the young.  I really feel for the youth of England, this may be another decade lost for them. I wonder if the youth of America are paying attention, and I wonder how much they want to gamble on old people driven by fear and hate.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
If the article's disagreement was with Trump's lack of an expression, that would make sense in this case. I hate the "thoughts and prayers" statements as routine and irrelevant. 
The author's point here, I believe, was that Trump used the setting for self-aggrandizement. Would've been more grown-up for him to keep quiet instead. 

 Steely_D wrote: 
Keep in mind when you are dealing with politicians, expressed is the key word.  Expressed sorrow followed by carefully scripted words to use this and any tragedy as a means to achieve an agenda. I think there should be at least a week moratorium of silence mandated for all elected officials including the President before making a statement following these tragedies.  There is nothing they can say that will not piss off at least half of the population and is actually disrespectful to the victims and their loved ones. 

Donald Trump and the “Amazing” Alex Jones - The New Yorker

Garrison Keillor: The punk who would be president

 steeler wrote: 
Point taken. Most of us have reasons for not participating more in politics, reasons that we should be able to overcome or work around. The ones I hear most are

1) lack of time

2) feelings of impotence in the face of monied, vested and organized interests

3) belief that national politics don't affect someone's daily life

When I hear about so many people working two or more jobs, I can really understand excuse #1. I snicker when I hear pundits come up with involved reasons for voting patterns because most people just don't have time to pay lots of attention to campaigns and politics. A typical voter supports a candidate based largely on a gut reaction that the candidate is the option most closely resembling the voter. That hunch doesn't rely on careful thought and analysis. 

Trump got the nomination by voicing #2 and savaging the canned personalities of everyone else. I don't listen to conservative shock-jocks and pundits but Trump reminds me of a mix between Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. He called bullshit on the candidates and the entire stilted, preachy campaign process. Someone needed to, frankly. 

I suspect that reason #3 helped Trump, too. The Washington Post and other news organizations keep reporting that Trump's supporters don't expect him to actually build The Wall or keep Muslims out, but they love his blunt anger and statements that he's on their side. I wonder whether many of Trump's supporters think that a President Trump wouldn't be that bad or wouldn't affect their lives even if he was incompetent. They like his yelling but they apparently don't think it's going to cause problems for them.

In terms of fixing things, I don't know how you tackle #1. Many times people say they don't have time when they're really thinking that they don't want to re-arrange their life priorities. People make time for things they care deeply about. My best guess for tackling #2 and #3 is to get people involved in local politics or in grassroots organizations that focus on specific issues, like health care reform or job training/creation or environmental issues. Make them feel empowered about politically addressable issues they care about and that affect their lives. Hopefully their interest and power in local or smaller issues trickle up into influence on the two parties' national agendas. 

Apparently a number of Bernie's supporters are starting grassroots organizations in order to carry on his message. That's brilliant. I hope both parties start taking more direction from voters because both establishments need to get the average American more involved and empowered. 

Final thought: Donald J. Trump actually being Andy Kaufman in disguise would be the greatest comedy act in the history of Western civilization.  

 Steely_D wrote: 
Probably much the same things you are willing to do, or are doing.

I firmly believe that each of us has to look at ourselves and our involvement, or lack of involvement.. It is too easy to lay all the blame on the politicians, the media ,Wall Street, etc. When  we do that, we tend to absolve ourselves of any blame for these problems. We all share the responsibility. We live in an era in which there are abundantly more sources of information than any other time in history.  Excusing  people for not voting based on the claim that they are being bamboozled does not ring true to me.

 

Cash-Strapped Trump Campaign Auctions Chris Christie on eBay

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R Crumb, the Father of Underground Comix, Takes Down Donald Trump in a NSFW 1989 Cartoon | Open Culture