The Political Thread

[JOE SOAP]

I'm not sure he has dementia. I don't really recognise in him what happened to my gran, although I guess it affects people very differently. What I do see is someone who has some kind of personality disorder (likely narcissism) combined with huge privilege, and with the more typical issues that come with age (poor memory) and sheer arrogance (talking bullshit, like he has all his life, but now being under scrutiny for it).

Yes, I've seen what dementia is really like, and it's nothing like whatever Trump has.

I think we can safely say Trump has cognitive impairment, much like his friend, Joe Biden.

[TordelBack]

I'm not sure he has dementia. I don't really recognise in him what happened to my gran, although I guess it affects people very differently. What I do see is someone who has some kind of personality disorder (likely narcissism) combined with huge privilege, and with the more typical issues that come with age (poor memory) and sheer arrogance (talking bullshit, like he has all his life, but now being under scrutiny for it).

Yes, I've seen what dementia is really like, and it's nothing like whatever Trump has.

Agreed.

I personally don't think he's stupid or short of marbles either. I think he's a pathetic lump of amoral self-serving shit, but he knows exactly what sub-human schtick goes over best with the greedy, deluded and/or stupid people who hang on his ever dribble, and that's all he cares about.

In my book, that's far worse than being ill or thick.

[von Boom]

I'm not sure he has dementia. I don't really recognise in him what happened to my gran, although I guess it affects people very differently. What I do see is someone who has some kind of personality disorder (likely narcissism) combined with huge privilege, and with the more typical issues that come with age (poor memory) and sheer arrogance (talking bullshit, like he has all his life, but now being under scrutiny for it).

Yes, I've seen what dementia is really like, and it's nothing like whatever Trump has.

Agreed.

I personally don't think he's stupid or short of marbles either. I think he's a pathetic lump of amoral self-serving shit, but he knows exactly what sub-human schtick goes over best with the greedy, deluded and/or stupid people who hang on his ever dribble, and that's all he cares about.

In my book, that's far worse than being ill or thick.

Yes. He's a self-serving c*nt of epic proportions. His only goal is to protect his own interests at the cost of everyone else's.

[M.I.K.]

I personally don't think he's stupid or short of marbles either. I think he's a pathetic lump of amoral self-serving shit, but he knows exactly what sub-human schtick goes over best with the greedy, deluded and/or stupid people who hang on his ever dribble, and that's all he cares about.

In my book, that's far worse than being ill or thick.

It's quite possible for someone to be mentally ill, extremely stupid and evil incarnate.

[TordelBack]

Post Deleted.

[paddykafka]

It's quite possible for someone to be mentally ill, extremely stupid and evil incarnate.

That is uncanny, M.I.K. You have just described the girlfriend, of the bloke in the flat upstairs from me, to an absolute tee. 

[Professor Bear]

Keeping the argument accessible and covering ground that might be familiar to anyone involved in a Brexit debate over the last few years, Renegade Cut examines how capitalism has form in creating a system of wedge issues to make the poor wage war on themselves rather than their oppressors: "These protests are not the result of some people just being born dum-dums or inferior people - that's some low-key eugenics talk, let's not do that."

[Funt Solo]

I listened to a news report the other day where they asked a man why he was protesting the lock-down, and he responded that he has a mortgage payment and a truck payment he needed to meet - and if he couldn't make those payments he was toast. (Hardly the blathering of a right-wing nutter - just someone concerned for his economic plight.)

[TordelBack]

Lockdown should have been implemented with an option of deferment of mortgage payments and finance to the end of the loan, and corresponding waiving of rent (commercial included). It made no sense for any government to essentially suspend earning ability otherwise. Apparently this is 'too simplistic' to be possible, but it's amazing what has proved possible this past month, and the supposedly-nuanced alternative is far, far worse.

[IndigoPrime]

UBI would have fixed most of this, but conservatives are ideologically opposed, hence the needlessly complex rules set up instead (under the guise of stopping fraud). Also, banks need a kicking. They're coming across as kind and lovely, but all they're really saying is "pause your mortgage payments for three months, but we'll give you a kicking via added interest afterwards". Our council was better: we pay ten months a year here, and so they just offered to switch the 'blank' months to the start rather than the end of the payment cycle.

[Jim_Campbell]

The UK government is now saying that the £14bn/mth cost of benefits & furlough is "unsustainable".

Just a reminder that the total cost of quantitative easing (aka recapitalising the banking system) was £375bn magicked up from nowhere* and saved not one single life.

They could do this for two years with the same amount of money. If they decide not to, that's a political choice.

Remember that at the ballot box: bailing out the banks was more important than saving lives.

*ALL money is magicked up from nowhere, before some smart arse starts talking about "how do we pay for it...?"

[Professor Bear]

Government using pandemic to accelerate NHS privatisation.
Government using pandemic to introduce tracking of British citizens.

This is just an opportunity for them.  Thank goodness we have an electable opposition that's 20 points ahead in the polls and finally holding the government to account.

[IndigoPrime]

Whatever else we might say about Labour, it's not like Corbyn was suddenly going to make people change their minds. Perhaps Starmer won't either, but sticking with something that's repeatedly failed and trying again is getting close to that definition of madness people like to talk about.

[Leigh S]

Isn't that THE definition of Starmer?  Miliband mkII?

Whatever else we might say about Labour, it's not like Corbyn was suddenly going to make people change their minds. Perhaps Starmer won't either, but sticking with something that's repeatedly failed and trying again is getting close to that definition of madness people like to talk about.

[Jim_Campbell]

Whatever else we might say about Labour, it's not like Corbyn was suddenly going to make people change their minds.

We'll never know, because Tom Watson and his buddies actively sabotaged the 2017 election and now it looks like the racist bullies who gave a free pass to the tiny number of antisemites in the Labour Party in order to manufacture a 'crisis' will get away without so much as a slap on the wrist. It's all colossally depressing.