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[Kagus]

I mean, purple literally blow themselves up for no better reason than to kill people for their ideology.

Ah yes, the infamous terrorist organization IS: The Indigo State

[Dunamisdeos]

It's not the worst idea I've ever heard.

Guess I gotta try harder then.

What if we execute them, but his successor has a 2 million budget and is legally required to use all of it on props?

[Karnewarrior]

I mean, purple literally blow themselves up for no better reason than to kill people for their ideology.

Ah yes, the infamous terrorist organization IS: The Indigo State

Obama killed Roy G. Biv, the Indigo state is gone.

[Descan]

I mean, purple literally blow themselves up for no better reason than to kill people for their ideology. You don't think similar extremists would just as readily take a presidential position with such stipulations.

A better way would just to have all assets seized after their term is up. Make it so they can't keep anything they might gain from it. Eliminates the problem I think.

When you become president, all of your assets are seized and assessed. They're then distributed according to, uh, groundhog farts or whatever, who cares.

After your presidency, you get a random assortment of new assets worth what you gave up on entry, plus inflation. Well, to the best of current knowledge and with little to no ability to predict future performance, though if they're sufficiently randomized and distributed, you probably won't lose everything due to a faulty swing in the economy. Hell, you might be better off if you weren't sufficiently diversified beforehand.

That way, getting into the presidency isn't a sacrifice, but it also isn't ripe for exploitation like having government meetings and foreign dignitaries at your own hotels, paying you. For example. Off the top of my head. Completely out of nowhere.

And any 'exploitation' you do to make sure you're better off afterward would necessarily be to better the whole economy, not just your little corner of it, because you have no idea what you're going to get. Similarly, the bribery and 'bribery' from industry would cancel itself out, because all assets are taken and randomized from the president so whatever million dollar babyfund you give their campaign or them will be obliterated.

The only problem is nepotistic exploitation, giving your brother-in-law's company a cozy make-work job or something. Dunno how you'd fix that unless you also randomize the assets of anyone related to the president.

/s

[Reelya]

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/25/632191533/ga-lawmaker-resigns-after-dropping-pants-shouting-slurs-on-sacha-baron-cohen-sho

This is just too strange for me to even understand what happened.

Da fuq?

"Sacha Baron Cohen and his associates took advantage of my paralyzing fear that my family would be attacked," Spencer said, adding that the techniques he demonstrated were meant to deter "what I believed was an inevitable attack."

What? Is the guy a moron or something ... He was duped to believe there would be a terrorist attack if he didn't drop his pants, and moon the camera while shouting the N-word, as far as I can tell. At least, that's the excuse he's going with.

He told the Journal-Constitution that he was denied final approval before the episode aired. "This media company's deceptive and fraudulent behavior is exactly why President Donald Trump was elected," he told the newspaper.

That's just too bad. If you're gullible enough to fall for such a blatant prank, then you deserve to lose your seat so that one of the vast number of people with more common sense in your state can have a shot at running things. People with enough sense not to drop their pants and shout profanities, just because someone suggests they should.

Man, but I really like this bit:

In it, Lott says, "Something we should think about in America" is putting guns in the hands of "law-abiding citizens, good guys, whether they be teachers, or whether they actually be talented children or highly trained preschoolers."

This Republican got "duped" into saying we should "highly train" preschoolers to shoot guns at attackers. There's only so much "duping" needed. Sure, Sasha Baron Cohen might have planted the idea, but you still gotta go along with it to repeat the idea like that. These are supposed to be responsible community leaders after all, not some joe average on Candid Camera. If state leaders are endorsing crazy stuff like armed toddlers, then that's no fault of Cohen for "setting them up". He's doing the country a favor by exposing morons like this.

[scriver]

Nice to see Sacha Baron Cohen doing stuff again.

"Kinderguardians" sounds like a great concept for an 80's-90's Saturday morning kids cartoon. They're clumsy, incoherent, immature children, but when the city needs saving they transform into Liefeldian, hyper-muscular supermen!

[Reelya]

Or, it could be a horrible CGI talking-babies thing that's a spin-off of the Baby Geniuses movies.

[nenjin]

I don't think he was duped. I think he was prompted in to believing this would go over well with his supporters ("Look, I can shout the N word and drop my pants, IDGAF") and then it predictably blew up in his face once it hit the rest of the internet. And rather than saying "Yes I did all this stuff deliberately", oh, now he was "duped."

No matter which way you slice it, he's a fucking moron.

[Lord Shonus]

This Republican got "duped" into saying we should "highly train" preschoolers to shoot guns at attackers. There's only so much "duping" needed. Sure, Sasha Baron Cohen might have planted the idea, but you still gotta go along with it to repeat the idea like that. These are supposed to be responsible community leaders after all, not some joe average on Candid Camera. If state leaders are endorsing crazy stuff like armed toddlers, then that's no fault of Cohen for "setting them up". He's doing the country a favor by exposing morons like this.

Without seeing the clip, are we sure that this isn't a case of the politician deliberately going along with the joke, in an attempt to seem "hip"? I have a hard time with the notion that that many people don't know that Cohen is a professional troll, given that his movies were such huge hits.

[MrRoboto75]

Its hard to tell these days, nothing's too absurd.

[Dunamisdeos]

I feel like this is a situation of publicity and political satire gone awry.

The main problem to me is that any major government representative would find it appropriate or funny under any circumstances to moon a television camera while uttering ethnic slurs.

[hector13]

Maybe not worth losing your job over.

Well, other jobs are available. Maybe I just have too much dignity.

[Dunamisdeos]

Ok here I'm going to put this a way better way. My problem is that an elected representative meant to act as a leader of his state in some capacity is basically doing this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"N****r N****r N****r!!!!"

And this is the image that people see now when they think of a Georgia official. I myself feel like that's understandable to resign over.

[misko27]

This Republican got "duped" into saying we should "highly train" preschoolers to shoot guns at attackers. There's only so much "duping" needed. Sure, Sasha Baron Cohen might have planted the idea, but you still gotta go along with it to repeat the idea like that. These are supposed to be responsible community leaders after all, not some joe average on Candid Camera. If state leaders are endorsing crazy stuff like armed toddlers, then that's no fault of Cohen for "setting them up". He's doing the country a favor by exposing morons like this.

Without seeing the clip, are we sure that this isn't a case of the politician deliberately going along with the joke, in an attempt to seem "hip"? I have a hard time with the notion that that many people don't know that Cohen is a professional troll, given that his movies were such huge hits.

Well he got Cheney on his channel recently, and Palin a few weeks ago. It helps that he never uses his name. No one hears "Sasha Baron Cohen", they hear Col. Erran Morad, former Mossad agent, who has a nice website all done up in Hebrew for you to read if you want.

Hilariously, one of the people who were duped, Joe Walsh, was convinced in precisely this fashion: his wife asked to see their website, they gave her a Hebrew one. She asked for english, but Sasha's team did not respond, and the crucial bit is the Walsh's went with it anyway. Only after Walsh had endorsed the arming of toddlers did the Walsh's finally reach out the Israeli Consulate, discovering that yes, it was fake. Why did he go? If i had to guess, because Walsh was promised some lovely trophy for being a "Friend of Israel" in honor of their 70th anniversary (he did indeed receive a real trophy for this fake award).

“A 3-year-old cannot defend itself from an assault rifle by throwing a Hello Kitty pencil case at it,” says Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina. “Our Founding Fathers did not put an age limit on the Second Amendment.”

“The intensive three-week Kinderguardian course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semiautomatics, and a rudimentary knowledge of mortars,” says the former congressman and talk-radio host Joe Walsh. (Yes, he said mortars.) “In less than a month, less than a month, a first grader can become a first grenader.”

“Toddlers are pure, uncorrupted by fake news or homosexuality,” says Larry Pratt, the executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America, before dutifully continuing with the talking points “Morad” has given to him. “Children under 5 also have elevated levels of the pheromone Blink-182, produced by the part of the liver known as the Rita Ora. This produces nerve reflexes to travel along the Cardi B neural pathway to the Wiz Khalifa 40 percent faster, saving time and saving lives.”

For what it's worth, a fourth republican did show up on the show, but in the word's of politico, "[they] declined to endorse the arming of toddlers."

It's probably not that these people secretly believe that toddlers should be armed. Just that it's surprisingly easy to convince them to go along with the very obviously insane so long as you appear genuine and very earnest and passionate about it. Sasha doesn't throw up the red flags that ordinarily prevent people and politicians from getting into these circumstances to begin with, so they let their guard down and do what the nice man asks them to do.

[nenjin]

I approve of giving politicians the rope with which they will hang themselves.