Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seen here with Mayor Pete Buttigeg, is the subject of many speculative media articles, and is looking forward to making the Democratic Party look foolish in 2020, perhaps botching a second completely winnable election in a row.
Palo Alto, CA — Facebook CEO and future Democratic Party presidential loser Mark Zuckerberg has been busy lately, restructuring Facebook stock to ensure his control even after he plans to sell his stock, and also paving the way for a “leave of absence” in the event of government service. But the most telling sign Mark Zuckerberg plans to lose the 2020 or 2024 Presidential election is the above photo and this article which features videos of Mark, a Harvard drop-out who has become a billionaire getting people to willingly end all last vestiges of privacy in the 21st century, milking cows, riding tractors, talking to factory workers and…
Back from the edges of the Unknown Regions, Agreeing Loudly returns with a smaller strike force to finally declare a champion in its epic Star Wars: The Last Jedi prediction pool. Troy and Jered also discuss the legitimacy of diagnosing the boomer generation as sociopaths and the arrival of the ordained one, Kirk Cousins, to the Great Northern Viking realm.
Above is the template picture to be replaced by the site of the shooting picture according to the accidentally published template — this template picture is proof that most AP journalists are godless communists, that are planning to take your guns with their Star Trek quotes and hippie lifestyle.
Washington D.C. — At approximately noon today, an Associated Press journalist accidentally published the mass shooting in the United States template he had been working from for the past six years of his employment. Below is the text of that template.
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In what has seemingly become a daily occurrence in the United States, the latest mass shooting took place at [insert: city or town name here] and while we are still waiting for information to come in, authorities report that the alleged shooter is [insertfirst-middle-last name of shooter here] and has been [insert: apprehended or…
Legendary multi-Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis capped his brilliant acting career last week in his role as Judge Roy Moore. Contracted earlier this year to impersonate a cartoonish villain that would find a way to go too far even for GOP voters, Lewis pulled it off in the 11th hour, giving Democratic candidate Doug Jones the surprise victory in the December special election to fill Jefferson Beauregard Sessions’s Senate seat.
It almost wasn’t to be. Polls had Moore comfortably ahead months ago after the GOP primary where Daniel Day-Lewis portraying Moore surged ahead of establishment and Trump endorsed pick Luther Strange in the GOP primary by out-crazying Strange.
“It was a fine line that Day-Lewis had to play as an actor. To be crazy enough to win the GOP primary in Alabama, to authentically hide the fact you have been contracted by the DNC in this elaborate scheme, and to even go so far as come up with a cover performance Phantom Thread, who most were considering his film, and in a way it still is”, said industry expert Jonathan Tilters, who has no affiliation with Harvey Weinstein, nor has ever has ever had a conversation with him, or anyone who might have had one. He assures Agreeing Loudly that he didn’t know anything. (sure, Jonathan, sure…)
To complete the tour de force final performance of his career though, Day-Lewis needed to drag the GOP and Alabama electorate so far into the depths of moral depravity and nihilism that he needed a bold strike leading up to the December election, where polls showed Moore easily leading. Enter — multiple allegations of pedophilia, predator-like behavior of underage girls, and a lifetime ban from the local mall.
Writers at the DNC, the same ones currently collaborating with DNC scientists on a revised Jon Ossoff prototype candidate, pegged the mob characters from Warren Beatty’s 1990 hit Dick Tracy as the starting point for devising an unelectable Republican candidate in deep-red Alabama. The candidate that eventually evolved into twice removed from the bench-but still goes by the name of “Judge Roy Moore.” One other contingency plan on the even of last Tuesday’s special election was Judge Moore physically punching Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban repeatedly on the sideline, but Alabama was upset in their last regular season game, leaving them out of the SEC championship, and foiling the contingency.
“It almost wasn’t enough”, said Day-Lewis, wiping off the extensive makeup off his face that transformed him into a likeness of a B-roll character from the 1990 comic book film Dick Tracy, after he stepped down from the stage insisting that “Judge Roy Moore” would not concede until all the provision ballots were counted. “I had several contingency plans if pedophilia didn’t work, including leaking a video of myself peeing on Confederate monuments.”
In his last performance of his storied career, he was leaving nothing up to chance.
We’re back with another break from the neverending political chaos that is the Trumpocalypse, to discuss the surprising ascendancy of the Kings of the North, the Minnesota Vikings.
Join us as we discuss our hopes for the rest of their season, what about this year’s team makes them special and some of the most heartbreaking moments in Vikings history.
A week or so ago in a galaxy not too far away, the Agreeing Loudly Alliance witnessed the legendary trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Not content with merely watching it, the Alliance decided it was vital that over an hour be spent discussing the next movie and making predictions so bold that not even the might of The First Order can stop them.
So grab your favorite Porg (or ice wolf) and listen to this month’s episode of Agreeing Loudly Coast to Coast! On one of the Outer Rim planets with a poor internet connection? Download it instead.
This November 11th, “very serious people” who just know a lot about economics that you don’t understand, will be joining veterans of American wars past, present and forever, in parades across the country, as well as using their time in Washington defending the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a deeply complex multi-lateral trade agreement understood by five people, to lobby Congress for certified veteran status.
“I feel like we deserve America’s gratitude and thanks for our service in lobbying with our Army to protect this legislation”, said Michael Wellington, an MBA grad from Yale whose hair has not moved since his junior year at Choate.
“It’s high time brilliant patriotic organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have the social capital and honor that the general public pretends to bestow upon veterans , and I myself have sacrificed my 2nd vacation with my family this year in defense of what is probably the greatest trade agreement, piece of legislation, or political act is world history, NAFTA is the dream that Hyman Roth wanted for Cuba in the Godfather before undesirables forced their agenda upon the masses”, added Wellington, praising NAFTA, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
NAFTA has a storied legacy of adding tremendous profits to corporations and rich people that has taken the U.S. economy to record heights according to the Chamber. “The stock market is at record highs and has gone to places we could have only imagined back in 1993”, explained Chamber spokesperson Jonathan Hunter. When pressed for comment about the lack of tangible connections most Americans feel to stock prices and the Gilded Age-levels of economic inequality people are facing, Hunter retorted “look at the Dow Jones Industrial, look at the Nasdaq, look at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and finally — why are you communist who hates America?”
Before deploying a squad of the vaunted “NAFTA Army” on an AL.com correspondent earlier today Hunter was last heard yelling that the link between effort and reward is perfect, that the common people just needed to believe in the magic more, consume more products in order to achieve happiness, and most importantly, they just need to be born as Jonathan Hunter, Michael Wellington, and other similar people and they’ll do just fine.
After another several month absence, Agreeing Loudly is back from coast to coast to conduct what was originally thought to be a way too early Democratic Presidential Draft. However, three days after we recorded this episode, Nate Silver and company beat us to the punch with a draft of their own. We’re not saying they’ve bugged our recording studio…but that’s exactly what we’re saying.
Contemporary Republicans often like to grab some semblance of righteousness by claiming (correctly) that it was the Grand Ole Party that became the political vessel to end the immoral practice of slavery in this country, and brought forth the 13th through 15th amendments. However, the Party of Lincoln has been dead for decades now and has more in common with George Wallace. In fact, the obscure political party (American Independent Party) who nominated Wallace in ’68 finally did win the presidency because their nominee in 2016 won. That nominee was Donald J. Trump — 45th President of the United States.
A Dispatch from Trumpistan —
I didn’t know where to start with this one. I’ve been putting this one off for awhile now. The events of the last week regarding President Trump’s (yes folks, he’s our president, just not a particularly good one) saber-rattling with North Korea, a country of 25 billion in GDP, which is less than most U.S. states, his bizarre tweets and statements inflaming the situation, and his continued disrespect for the office of the Presidency, made this one hard to focus on without addressing the elephant in the room.
Last night and today #Charlottesville has been trending and the videos we’ve witnessed have been terrifying, saddening, maddening, and any other adjective you could use to describe what is more or less a moral rock bottom. President Trump described the collection of “Unite the Right” activists from Alt-Right, Neo-Nazi, and other White Supremacists organizations and addressed the violence, and hatred spewing from this Virginia community as such:
We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, on many sides.
In this tweet there was not a mention of calling the rally for what it was: white supremacy. As of this writing, there has been one death and 19 injuries. The victims were counter-protesters, ran over by a truck–which quickly sped away (he has since been apprehended by the Charlottesville PD).
If Donald Trump and many on the Alt-Right, Alt-Reich, Corporate Media-Right, and their moderate to conservative enablers within the Republican Party are going to dish out eight years of lambasting President Obama for not using the phrase “radical, Islamic terrorism” then surely Trump and the GOP can be rightfully called out for refusing to call this what it is–white supremacy. A doctrine that has lived on and on in this country despite many grassroots movements throughout our history to alleviate the worst effects of it. One of such effort culminated in the creation of the last third party in this country to replace a major party, the Republican Party. The Republican Party grew out of the abolitionist movement, it grew out of the collective failure of the two parties of the time: the Whigs and the Democrats, to properly address the issue at hand that was fracturing the union and eventually led to a civil war.
Many members of the early Republican Party were profoundly radical, profoundly righteous, profoundly patriotic, and ultimately–they were the progressives of their day. Had I been alive in 1855, I would have fled my former party the Whigs (as future President Lincoln did) and joined this new party in Illinois.
History demanded a new party and drastic solutions to brings us closer to a more perfect union. But that Republican Party is no more and they have not existed for over a 100 years. They are not the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, or even George W. Bush either. They are now the American Independent Party, which nominated George Wallace for president in 1968. In 2016 this obscure but still active political party nominated Donald Trump as their candidate in the state of California. Trump was the first GOP nominee that the American Independent Party ever nominated, Wallace included (who was southern Democrat).
And now the GOP and the movement conservative project started in ’55, combined with the Powell memo of ’71 has achieved their dream–completely one party control of the US Government at all levels. Although if Buckley were alive today I think he’d be likely to call it a failure already, and a nightmare. Who still wants to associate with this madness? Was it worth the change to enact the long-term policy dreams of Ayn Rand worshippers of the invisible hands and the God of money like Speaker Paul Ryan (who has condemned the events of today in much stronger tones than the President has).
The GOP tried to stop Trump, it failed. The Democrats tried to stop Trump, they also failed. Perhaps primarily because they had underestimated how many mainstream Republicans would hold their nose and say: “the Supreme Court.” Agreeing Loudly never had such fantasies (see below).
Agreeing Loudly humorist, historian, and noted public intellectual Allan Branstiter understands the dynamics of U.S. elections more than (permanent) Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (“for every working class vote we lose, we’ll pick up 2 or 3 professional class voters.”)
The Grand Old Party of Lincoln and TR is dead. Long dead. The GOP of today made a deal for power, which corrupts, and corrupts absolutely, especially when absolutely given. That deal is now a nightmare for the majority of the American people, and is being felt every day within the corridors of power by longtime D.C. observers. This is the Art of the Bad Deal.
Nothing is sacred with this administration, and the effects of that are clearly influencing the populace, especially the newly embolden and previously hidden dark corners of this country, who were out in full force in Virginia this weekend.
During the 2016 campaign Trump, who is a full-on draft-dodger and once compared not contracting STDs in the 1970’s as his “personal Vietnam”, mocked John McCain (“he got caught, I like my war heroes to not get caught”), criticized the U.S. military and its service-members, lied about his financial charitable support for veterans’ charities, and ridiculed for political purpose, the Gold Star parents of a fallen soldier. But none of that matters because the “tyranny of political correctness” or something….
Well please allow me to switch to my political incorrect mode then.
The modern-day Republican Party has become a moral abomination. Notice I’m talking about the political party itself and the issue-stances it carries publicly, as well as privately. I’m not talking about Republican voters. I know many of them are good and decent people who simply cannot bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. I understand that most modern-day voter turnout is motivated first and foremost, by hatred of the “other side.” But think about that for a minute… is this sustainable for even another election cycle or two?
Trump isn’t some isolated incident and bizarre series of unfortunate events. Rather, he is the natural conclusion and culmination of four decades of political, economic, social, and cultural trends in American life.
But while many of the voters that supply the Republican Party with its electoral power may be motivated by fear of immigrants and terrorism (see: 2016 election, Trump won on voters who cited immigration and terrorism as their top issues, Clinton won on the economy and foreign policy). Not only did Trump win in the manner that this website, on its podcast feared back in 2015/early ’16, through running a campaign on overt themes of white nationalism, and fear-based rhetoric around immigration and terrorism (all irrational fears, because nearly everything else is what is actually more likely to harm or kill you), but its perhaps more important to note why this is the strategy of the GOP now, rather than how.
I would argue it is to provide distractions from the policies that otherwise, the vast majority of the American people would never sign onto. It is the same agenda they have been trying for and striving toward for decades.
1. Elimination of social insurance programs (the incredibly popular Medicare, Social Security) and other cuts to social service programs;
2. Privatization of as many public services as possible (up next: education); and,
3. Continuing to rig electoral laws to their forever advantage.
1860 political cartoon lampooning the then-new and righteous Republican Party, which started as a third party that grew out of the abolitionist movement to become the legal and political vessel for power when the major parties of the day (Whig and Democratic) proved incapable of reform, and incapable of rising to the historical moment. We are at a similar crossroads today….
Republican policy aims (long-term) are what encouraged them to go along with this… it is what encouraged them to sign this bargain–the Art of the Bad Deal, and while it is (and could in the future now that the path is clear and while the Democrats remain incompetent) electorally successful, it will ultimately be long-remembered and the beginning of the end for the once-proud GOP, a party formed out of the abolitionist movement, formed with righteousness on their side, only to be reduced to an intellectual and moral embarrassment.
Joe Scarborough has left the party. Evan McMullin did in 2016. While others have joined it, like West Virginia Governor Jim Justice.
That being said, this version of the Republican Party, at least for me, has actually validated some of the better rhetorical pieces of authentic American conservatism (which I hold does not exist as a relevant political force anymore: hence my often-told joke “conservatives don’t exist, Democrats don’t exist”) that sound nice to some if not many, but that we now know the Republican Party is completely unserious about.
Liberals and progressives and moderates (because centrists don’t exist, except in think-tanks and Democratic candidate creation labs) alike should be thinking locally, should re-engage with federalism and constitutionalism, and whether you value or consider yourself religious or a Christian, it is of vital national security and civilizational importance that we re-engage with our faith lives, because there truly are a lot of good lessons to be learned there, and what is currently characterizing Christianity in this country cannot continue.
There is no monopoly on civic virtue, belief, patriotism, etc. But there is the law and theory of dominance politics. Therefore, we cannot let what happened today and last night in Virginia become a national normal otherwise we are doomed to permanent civic and societal decline.
In addition to those silver linings, the GOP and this current administration have accidentally given us a couple of gifts–if we utilize and recognize them as such, and if we snap out of the “history is already written” syndrome that has washed over so many good-hearted Americans, who feel increasingly hopeless in 2017. In years past we had to do some research and infer certain coded themes. Those days are no more. Things are open and notorious now, clear and obvious.
Tucker Carlson replacing Bill O’Reilly symbolizes the distinction between the old “hidden or more disguised” GOP demagoguery, and the new obvious kind by going after not just illegal immigration, but the immigration population generally.
This obviousness is similarly true within government itself. The GOP has long been a partner with the Corporate State. They were the first ones to sign onto the Corporate States of America (founded in 1971, their constitution: the Powell Memo) and their corruption and cronyism, and evidence of big business buying out and colluding with big government to enact the agenda of corporate American, rather than the preferences and beliefs of the vast majority of the American people, manifests itself quite clearly in someone like Secretary of State Tillerson, who is literally the CEO of Exxon Mobil.
This isn’t hard to do anymore. In Trumpistan–no one is even bothering with the dog and pony show, no one is even trying cover up the grift, graft, and rift-raft. And the American people, especially the young generation, the largest one in our history, will long-remember this. Generational solidarity and class solidarity is more likely to happen in our time than ever before.
The major political parties, while legally entrenched with power for now, and economically and financially secure, with propaganda networks at their disposal, despite all these advantages–they are eroding before our eyes. Armed with the traditional sources of power, their societal credibility and integrity has hit rock bottom. A bottom from which it may never emerge from.
So what now? What am I proposing? How do we unravel the Art of the Bad Deal and save the New Deal? How do we save democracy in this country, constitutional governance, and keep this country from unraveling in our time?
It’s quite simple to me now. We have to be for and positivelycontribute to whatever political movement and counter-force (and the energy and evidence exist everywhere you look right now for the possibilities) that drives the Art of the Bad Deal and this Republican Party into electoral irrelevancy and into the dustbin of history.
The Agreeing Loudly podcast is taking a break from the depressing world of United States politics to discuss the slightly less depressing world of politics in Westeros. That’s right, winter is here and the Agreeing Loudly nerds are delving deep into this season of Game of Thrones. GET HYPE.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seen here with Mayor Pete Buttigeg, is the subject of many speculative media articles, and is looking forward to making the Democratic Party look foolish in 2020, perhaps botching a second completely winnable election in a row. 
Above is the template picture to be replaced by the site of the shooting picture according to the accidentally published template — this template picture is proof that most AP journalists are godless communists, that are planning to take your guns with their Star Trek quotes and hippie lifestyle.
Washington D.C. —
