tattoos have been democratized to the point they don't convey a clear meaning like before.

-snoofy

Paging Sentinel for his take on the swastika.

I'm not exactly eating Jell-O, but since I'm an objectifying boomer pig, these days there are many women I find attractive who have plenty of tattoos, and that wasn't previously the case.

Having said that, I'd rather hang out with Lydia the Tattooed Lady than a smoker, regardless of her beauty or smarts or wealth or anything else.

And if you know Lydia, kudos. You want that jiggly stuff red or green tonight? With or without meds?

Unrepentant racist in his long Senate tenure, his racism cast in stone because of his youth?

#157 | Posted by snoofy

Sounds like you answered your own question in the first part of the sentence. Let's check on this guy after some time in the public eye, or even where Platner shifts to before the election, if he wants to win, which politicians usually like to do. One exception might be GHW Bush's second campaign.

Politicians I admire who loved to win and kick political ass? One was Jimmy Carter, who ran a segregationist campaign to get elected governor of Georgia in 1970, a blatantly cynical move to attract the Wallace voters. The rest of his life, before and after, showed something different.

His presidential library, last I heard, mostly ignored his gubernatorial campaign.

On Robert Byrd:

I work with a guy who didn't see a black person in person until he was eighteen years old. Can you believe that? So he occasionally says some racist sounding ----, but it's really just ignorance.

#128 | Posted by snoofy

Good for you. Sounds like an excuse for every red voting demographic in America.

And sorry, I don't think about military and police tribalism and what's good or bad for Jews, and I don't presume US police or the military are going to help anyone these days, and in many cases haven't for a long time.

You're sticking up for a very interesting cohort today. I didn't realize previously you were so fond of the people who can control your life, along with the courts, and ruin it when they want to, and oh, that was just a boyish gesture.

Like the one time Giuliani dressed up in drag, as far as I know. Sure, he's scum, but that's a one-time thing he can take off.

"Gee, that judge seemed to have a Nazi tattoo under his robes."

"Say what you want about national socialism, Dude, but at least it was an ethos."

Other than Dan Jenkins, I doubt STD and I agree on much.

But I've been thinking.

Does anyone here really believe that, in spite of their youthful indiscretions and their later claims, deep down, southern senators like Robert Byrd and Herman Talmadge somehow just gave up generations of their families' racism? The racism that made them powerful and rich?

A come-to-Jesus moment, or can I be blamed for my cynicism on the reasons for their change?

I come from 5000 years of Jews, as far as I know, and one who is in the history books was a Bad Dude indeed. By no means do I stick up for the tribe reflexively.

America was great, along with its millions of flaws, when Nazism was not discussed in polite company, except among historians. Yeah, I'm rankled by Nazi insignia and people who get it literally drilled into them. And maybe this guy is the bee's nutz. I'll admit to holding a grudge.

Then again, I'm old school. I don't view snuff films as something to take lightly either.

Pardon my nostalgia.

64. Got it.

Didn't important and serious things used to happen in the White House Situation Room?

But, damn, someone left a line of coke somewhere that a presidential offspring didn't Hoover up. I'd say that's a regular occurrence now.

Does Trump ever see Uday and Qusay? Does he remember them?

60. You're trolling, and that's not a knock. I just don't gather that you buy into what you're saying.

"Billy, if all your friends are running over a cliff, are you going to do it, too?"

If someone is that easily swept into an authoritarian culture, I'd have questions.

I'm working from an opinion that most people in the volunteer army now show up with little concern for patriotism.

And considering the America in which they've grown up, what would that even mean to them?

No, I don't think going along to get along is a positive or even neutral sign, when it involves just a cute little Nazi symbol.

Was it a swastika, or SS?

When my older son was in eighth grade, a classmate fashioned the Campbells Soup can with an SS. Oh, he's just a kid, I was told.

Whose parents were raised in Mississippi.

"Trump is the GOP's Bill Clinton." Bellringer

To the extent that they were both powerful men who had sex with females, you are correct.

Clinton had a lot of faults, and his presidency may in the long run have done more harm than good to Black citizens (see the prison industrial complex and what fed it for decades), but after that, things fall apart.

A book for all interested.

Burroughs and Ginsberg, The Yage Letters.

"Did the Republicans make him get the Nazi tattoo?"
You think a tattoo someone got in the military sets their political agenda in stone.
Did Republicans teach you critical thinking skills?

#41 | Posted by snoofy

Maybe some liberal ones, way back when, when they existed.

If I'm running for political office in this environment and don't want to be branded a Nazi sympathizer, I'd have ditched the tattoo long ago, even with my own apparent lack of critical thinking skills.

I don't even know how old this guy is, but when did he get the tattoo? Was it part of US political discourse at that time? Maybe it's not a political statement at all.

Christ, even my homeboy Pete Davidson (whom I've only heard about, never watched his shtick) knows to ditch the tats when they're no longer useful. I wouldn't consider him a deep thinker.

39. Did the Republicans make him get the Nazi tattoo? Has he removed it?

guaranteeing a supply all to themselves.

#11 | Posted by RightisTrite

"The more you use, the less you have, and the more you have, the more you use." (Wm. S. Burroughs)

6. Him too.

But you know what I'm saying. Tune in, turn on, drop out took a whole lot of seriousness out of the enterprise.

Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Leary's peer in psychedelics research, had a bit more gravitas, even for those who think Eastern theology is goofy.

I do wonder how China handles having a powerful leader clearly in the grip of cognitive decline...my guess is they don't let them have the keys to the kingdom and the nuclear missiles.

#6 | Posted by Hughmass

Or how they deal with a powerful US leader in that condition.

Most likely with supreme respect, and Trump won't know he's having his own pockets picked in the form of giving what's left of our world influence over to China.

Let em have it. The US is gonna need a long, long restoration period after the current unpleasantness.

6. The MAGA cognitive dissonance if all these evangelicals and their toadies have a come-to-Jesus moment about Trump would be delicious.

But that presumes cognition.

It might be their only chance to see one in their lifetime.

Single tipster defenestration coming soon.

22 different specialists in one visit.

Wow, US health care is just awesome.

And according to Dr. Barbarella [sic], he's ready to walk 18 holes and shoot 18 holes in one.

Just chooses not to.

But, oh my God, those barbaric Mohamedans.

Some of the world's wildest cultures must look at the US and wonder what the hell is going on.

"A very incredible machine."

Give the mofo some lotion and a Soldier of Fortune magazine and put him to bed.

The difference I've seen in the populace is that 2008 brought out a lot of people who've never voted before, and it wasn't for McCain.

And now their kids are voting, with their only sense of the present and history and the way the world works being what they've experienced and been told since 2001. Along with their parents' guidance.

Imagine your brain on the twenty-first century.

16. I don't know the answer, but has one generation ever voted much differently than their parents?

That was the expectation in 1972. Didn't work out too well.

5. It is not a long jump at all for anyone who willingly sports a Nazi tattoo to psychopath.

Electing a Democrat who has a Nazi tattoo would have been unfathomable in this country until this week apparently. And it's not a slope the Democrats want to approach.

Yeah, the party isn't supposed to own the primaries (McGovern and all that), but did no one in the Maine Democratic Party raise a flag before things got here? No viable candidate?

My DIL has always wanted to microdose my wife, who has Alzheimer's.

I've told her to save it up for when this season ends.... I don't want microdosing, and I'll need reliable supervision.