A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Thursday, September 17, 2026 09:05
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Buttigieg is right about why Democrats keep failing to pass their big plans. He said:
This is the conversation that we have been having for the last 20 years. Of course we need to get money out of politics, but when I propose the actual structural democratic reforms that might make a difference — end the Electoral College, amend the Constitution if necessary to clear up Citizens United, have DC actually be a state, and depoliticize the Supreme Court with structural reform — people look at me funny, as if this country was incapable of structural reform.
He is the clearest and least political thinker running. He thinks of Problems as things to be solved and defeated, and not "who will gain?" Trump is the exact opposite. If Trump wins we'll have 20 more years of reality tv presidents and 20 years of media over coverage. Buttigieg is the other direction.
Yeah. It's too bad the 8 of them polling lower don't drop out. He'd probably get a decent amount of the percentage of that and maybe he could get into the double digits finally.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democr
atic_presidential_nomination-6730.html
I think that Trump would destroy any one of them in the debates, but there's really not a need to speculate on that. There's almost zero chance that anybody but Biden is going to get the nomination. Something that I called many months ago.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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The Democrats Need to Get Their Act Together
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-democrats-need-to-get-their-a
ct-together
I found the first two series of Democratic presidential debates painful to watch, and I don’t think it was simply the result of the format or of the questions asked. It was because in their preoccupations, I don’t think the Democratic candidates have developed the message and the language that can win the White House for the party.
Medicare for All has all the problems of past plans: it threatens higher taxes; and it comes across as another welfare program in which the middle class will have to subsidize the non-working poor….Trump’s nativist attacks against immigrants from South of the Border and his administration’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers has had the perverse effect of pushing the Democrats toward a virtual endorsement of open borders….Senator Elizabeth Warren and several candidates, while bemoaning growing economic inequality, called for increases in legal immigration based on family reunification, which in the past has brought millions of unskilled workers into the labor market who compete for jobs with unskilled native-born and first-generation Americans.
….Trump has played upon a politics that could be described as “white supremacist.”…But in responding to Trump’s racism, Democrats have been using these terms in every other sentence – and add to that Senator Gillibrand’s high-toned blast against “white privilege.” In doing so, they are implicitly attacking not merely Trump but his past supporters and — even more important — people who are queasy about the Democrats for one reason or another. The terms also suggest that white voters have little to complain about, a message that won’t play very well in November 2020.
I also fear they think that in reiterating these terms — or in promoting reparations — the Democrats think they are courting black voters. In my experience — and I hope this won’t seem like some kind of weird racism — black adult voters are among the most sophisticated in the electorate. You could see it in Virginia after the various Democratic presidential candidates fell over each other to call for Governor Ralph Northam’s resignation for a 36 year old yearbook photo of questionable origin that had been publicized by a rightwing website angry about the governor’s stand on abortion. Virginia’s black Democrats, cognizant that Northam had not run a racist administration, or had a record of racism as a legislator, continued to back him. You see it in the continued African-American support for former Vice President Joe Biden in spite of Senator Kamala Harris’s attack against him for his decades-old stances on busing. Biden’s support might disappear, but again I think it is based currently on a reasoned assessment of who among the candidates is best equipped to get rid of Trump.
More at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-democrats-need-to-get-their-a
ct-together
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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It’s like we’re living in the 19th century again:
The White House has instructed newly installed Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper to reexamine the awarding of the military’s massive cloud-computing contract because of concerns that the deal would go to Amazon, officials close to the decision-making process said….The president’s directive represents a departure from what is usually a scripted bureaucratic process. Trump on several occasions has spoken out against Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos.
….Oracle has lobbied Trump aggressively on the matter, hoping to appeal to his animosity toward Amazon as well as former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who angered the president when he resigned last year over the administration’s foreign policy decisions. Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck, who runs the company’s policy shop in Washington, said he created a colorful flow chart labeled “A Conspiracy To Create A Ten Year DoD Cloud Monopoly” that portrayed connections among Amazon executives, Mattis and officials from the Obama administration. That graphic made it to Trump’s desk and led to a discussion between the president and his aides, people familiar with the matter said.
This is like a hellscape mashup of kindergarten temper tantrums with vindictive adult corruption. Trump doesn’t like the Washington Post, so he takes revenge on its owner by lashing out at Amazon and telling the Pentagon he doesn’t want them to get any big contracts. Meanwhile, the Oracle folks, obviously having taken the measure of our moron-in-chief, know exactly what buttons to push. Hell, they’re so proud of it — and so sure that Trump will never catch on — that they brag about it publicly.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/08/trump-takes-his-revenge-on-jeff
-bezos/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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What if Fox News covered Trump the way it covered Obama? It would look like this:
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The molten core of right-wing nationalism is the furious denial of America’s unalterably multiracial, multicultural national character
The question of who “we” are as “a people” is the central question on which we’re polarized. High-minded calls to reunite under the flag therefore tend to take a side and amount to little more than a demand for the other side’s unconditional surrender. “Agree with me, and then we won’t disagree” is more a threat than an argument.
The way the nationalist sees it, liberals always throw the first punch by “changing things.” When members of the “Great American Middle” (to use the artfully coded phrase of Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to refer to non-urban whites) lash out in response to the provocations of progressive social change, they see themselves as patriots defending their America from internal attack.
The attackers — the nature-denying feminists, ungrateful blacks, babbling immigrants, ostentatiously wedded gays — bear full responsibility for any damage wrought by populist backlash, because they incited it by demanding and claiming a measure of equal freedom. But they aren’t entitled to it, because the conservative denizens of the fruited plain are entitled first to a country that feels like home to them. That’s what America is. So the blame for polarizing mutual animosity must always fall on those who fought for, or failed to prevent, the developments that made America into something else — a country “real Americans” find hard to recognize or love.
The practical implication of the nationalist’s entitled perspective requires submission to a vision of national identity flatly incompatible with the existence of America’s urban multicultural majority. That’s a recipe for civil war, not social cohesion.
The author of “The Virtue of Nationalism” and impresario of the “national conservatism” conference argued that America’s loss of social cohesion is because of secularization and egalitarian social change that began in the 1960s. “You throw out Christianity, you throw out the Torah, you throw out God and within two generations people can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman. They can’t tell the difference between a foreigner and a citizen. They can’t tell the difference between this side of the border and the other side of the border.”
“The only way to save this country, to bring it back to cohesion,” Mr. Hazony added, “is going to be to restore those traditions.”
Mr. Hazony gave no hint as to how this might be peacefully done within the scope of normal politics. “It’s not simple,” he eventually conceded.
More at www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/opinion/national-conservatives-republicans-
trump.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What if Fox News covered Trump the way it covered Obama? It would look like [the way the rest of the MSM covered Obama].
FIFY
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Democrats Need to Get Their Act Together
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-democrats-need-to-get-their-a
ct-together
I found the first two series of Democratic presidential debates painful to watch, and I don’t think it was simply the result of the format or of the questions asked. It was because in their preoccupations, I don’t think the Democratic candidates have developed the message and the language that can win the White House for the party.
Medicare for All has all the problems of past plans: it threatens higher taxes; and it comes across as another welfare program in which the middle class will have to subsidize the non-working poor….Trump’s nativist attacks against immigrants from South of the Border and his administration’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers has had the perverse effect of pushing the Democrats toward a virtual endorsement of open borders….Senator Elizabeth Warren and several candidates, while bemoaning growing economic inequality, called for increases in legal immigration based on family reunification, which in the past has brought millions of unskilled workers into the labor market who compete for jobs with unskilled native-born and first-generation Americans.
….Trump has played upon a politics that could be described as “white supremacist.”…But in responding to Trump’s racism, Democrats have been using these terms in every other sentence – and add to that Senator Gillibrand’s high-toned blast against “white privilege.” In doing so, they are implicitly attacking not merely Trump but his past supporters and — even more important — people who are queasy about the Democrats for one reason or another. The terms also suggest that white voters have little to complain about, a message that won’t play very well in November 2020.
I also fear they think that in reiterating these terms — or in promoting reparations — the Democrats think they are courting black voters. In my experience — and I hope this won’t seem like some kind of weird racism — black adult voters are among the most sophisticated in the electorate. You could see it in Virginia after the various Democratic presidential candidates fell over each other to call for Governor Ralph Northam’s resignation for a 36 year old yearbook photo of questionable origin that had been publicized by a rightwing website angry about the governor’s stand on abortion. Virginia’s black Democrats, cognizant that Northam had not run a racist administration, or had a record of racism as a legislator, continued to back him. You see it in the continued African-American support for former Vice President Joe Biden in spite of Senator Kamala Harris’s attack against him for his decades-old stances on busing. Biden’s support might disappear, but again I think it is based currently on a reasoned assessment of who among the candidates is best equipped to get rid of Trump.
More at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-democrats-need-to-get-their-a
ct-together
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
It's too late for any of them now. Biden is going to be the "safe" choice since he's largely just kept his mouth shut while the rest of them are extolling the virtues of socialism, open borders, "free" healthcare for all that is anything but free and White Man Bad, but not as much as Orange Man Bad.
Biden is the only one even worth paying any attention to now, unless you're in it for the yucks. And he's not even saying anything. He's letting the other clowns destroy each other.
Biden's nomination is going to be the easiest nomination ever secured. And then Trump is going to destroy him.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Trump’s Trade Quagmire. He keeps escalating as his strategy fails.
Why is Trump doing this? A lot of center-right apologists for Trump used to claim that he wasn’t really fixated on bilateral trade balances, which every economist knows is stupid, that it was really about intellectual property or something. I’m not hearing that much anymore; it’s increasingly clear that he is, indeed, fixated on trade balances, and believes that America runs trade deficits because other countries don’t play fair.
Strange to say, however, despite all those new tariffs the U.S. trade deficit is getting bigger, not smaller, on his watch. Why aren’t tariffs shrinking the trade deficit? Mainly the answer is that Trump’s theory of the case is all wrong. Trade balances are mainly about macroeconomics, not tariff policy.
This article, by the way, while not very technical, is going to make use of a number of charts and even a few terms of art.
To preview, I’m going to make five points:
1. The trade war is getting big. Tariffs on Chinese goods are back to levels we associate with pre-1930s protectionism. And the trade war is reaching the point where it becomes a significant drag on the U.S. economy.
2. Nonetheless, the trade war is failing in its goals, at least as Trump sees them: the Chinese aren’t crying uncle, and the trade deficit is rising, not falling.
3. The Fed probably can’t offset the harm the trade war is doing, and is probably getting less willing even to try.
4. Trump is likely to respond to his disappointments by escalating, with tariffs on more stuff and more countries, and — despite denials — in the end, with currency intervention.
5. Other countries will retaliate, and this will get very ugly, very fast.
I could, of course, be wrong. But that’s how it looks given what we know now.
More at www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/opinion/trumps-trade-quagmire-wonkish.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Bosses can fire you for your politics. The First Amendment does not apply.
Updated: Aug. 5, 2019 6:32 a.m.
The public mingling of politics and work are just a hint of what we can expect as the 2020 campaign season kicks into high gear after Labor Day. Politics will soon seep into every crevice of our lives, presenting challenges for workplace supervisors.
The first and most important lesson for every worker is that your employer has no legal obligation to respect your freedom of speech. The First Amendment does protect people from government censorship, but your boss is the undisputed dictator at work, especially in Texas.
With the 2020 races likely to raise tempers and emotions, many bosses will decide a total ban makes sense. But he or she should be prepared for the hothead who storms their office questioning whether the boss can censor speech.
“The blunt answer would be, ‘Oh, yes, I can. Get out of my office,’” said Chip Babcock, a First Amendment lawyer at Jackson Walker.
Where it becomes more disturbing is that your boss can punish you for off-duty political activities. As long an employment or union contract does not specify otherwise, Texas employers can fire any employee who engages in politics they don’t like.
“If you’re an at-will employee, and the employment action is based on the speech you give out in the community, and that’s not just a pretext or something else, then sadly the employer can terminate,” Babcock explained.
www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Bosses-
can-fire-your-for-your-politics-the-First-14188340.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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How the Republican Majority Emerged
Fifty years after the Republican Party hit upon a winning formula, President Trump is putting it at risk.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/emerging-republican-majority
/595504/
In July 1969, Kevin Phillips, a 28-year-old staffer in the Nixon White House and special assistant to Attorney General John Mitchell, published a book boldly titled The Emerging Republican Majority. For nearly four decades, the Democratic Party’s New Deal coalition had dominated American politics. But in the book, Phillips argued that the old order had come to an end, and that a new conservative era was in the offing.
Quote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Phillips_(political_commentator)
From now on, Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote, and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
Phillips’s projection was grounded in his assessment of recent Republican strategies. At the same time, he asserted that his analysis offered the best hope for the party’s future: pitting racial and ethnic groups against one another and capitalizing politically on the competitions and resentments that followed. “The whole secret of politics,” he told the journalist Garry Wills during the 1968 presidential campaign, is “knowing who hates who.”
Fifty years later, the GOP has come to dominate every part of the Sun Belt, just as Phillips predicted, and President Donald Trump has mobilized the politics of division in a way no modern president has before.
Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater famously declared that the GOP should “hunt where the ducks are” by writing off “the Negro vote” and pursuing southern whites instead. Capitalizing on the white southern backlash against civil rights was central to his strategy. In making federal involvement in social, cultural, and economic issues the ostensible focus of his opposition, rather than race itself, Goldwater managed to reassure the South that he would protect the status quo.
As the political scientists Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields chronicle in their new book, The Long Southern Strategy, the old “coded racism” continued, but in concert with social appeals to religious conservatism and anti-feminism. Taken together, these approaches solidified the South for the Republicans and, as a result, secured their victories in national races.
The Republican majority that emerged did so largely on the terms set forth by Phillips. Appeals to racial resentments, handled lightly, did much of the work, but the broader social issues ultimately played an even more important role. Striking a delicate balance between the two proved to be the winning strategy for the GOP.
The risk for Republicans today, of course, is that President Trump has upset this balance, rejecting old dog whistles on race for full-throated racism. Unlike Nixon, who disastrously tried such a strategy in his first midterm but then dialed it back considerably in his reelection run, Trump has doubled down on the race-based themes that failed to work in his own first midterm. In doing so, he runs the risk of reversing decades of work and rendering the Republican majority a thing of history.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Fox host: It is important to pay some people less than $30,000 a year
Stuart Varney: Democrats are “buying votes” by advocating for $15 minimum wage
The Republicans are very upset by even the idea of $15.
www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-host-it-important-pay-some-people-le
ss-30000-year
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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America’s nuclear-weapons policy isn’t what you think—it’s much worse
https://qz.com/1680411/us-and-russia-are-starting-another-nuclear-war/
There is a large disconnect between what Americans think our nuclear policies ought to be, and what they currently are. Trump tearing up of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is just a reminder that the specter of nuclear war, so long ignored, is still with us.
Nuclear is back, baby.
Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama considered US reliance on nuclear deterrence to be a minor part of its overall international outlook. The Clinton administration definitely de-emphasized nukes; George W. Bush managed to cut the US nuclear warhead arsenal by half; and one of Barack Obama’s first speeches as president was about the importance of eliminating nuclear weapons.
These presidents kept the nuclear system alive, even if it wasn’t predominant. But under Trump, plans to maintain the arsenal have morphed into a grab for new hardware, new capabilities, and a return of lost prestige.
And a drive to spend, spend, spend.
There’s nothing particularly peaceful about the US’s new gadgets. The Trump administration is seeking to deploy low-yield warheads on its Trident missiles to make our nuclear threat seem less like a bluff.
But making the weapons “easier” to use might in fact encourage their use; there is no such thing as a “small” nuclear weapon in the eyes of our enemies. Every time the US pursues a program that could negate the existing offensive capabilities of other nations, they in turn are pushed to develop new offensive capabilities.
It’s a vicious cycle, and not a new one. What’s new is that Trump is pursuing it deliberately, again.
The best-case scenario is that we get out of this era without any nukes going off, having wasted our money on weapons. That means spending trillions on new systems that will likely leave the balance of power exactly where it started and creating new possibilities for things to go out of control.
If you’re a hawk, your range of emotions range from enthusiasm for these new “opportunities,” or that they are “unfortunate but necessary.” If you’re a complete dove, you go to the same old answer as before: ban the bomb. Or, if you’re a more moderate dove, you hope that future treaties and negotiations will tamp down the worst possibilities and, maybe, in the very long term, lead to a more stable world. (The hawks currently rule the roost, and may for some time now.)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Doomsday Machines
https://inference-review.com/article/striking-second-first
The best way to ensure the success of a nuclear first strike, one might assume, is to target the opposing president or leader, the individual with sole authority to press the button. In an effort to counter this vulnerability, suppose that an enemy nation has delegated the power to launch a nuclear attack to multiple people, each of whom can, under certain circumstances, also delegate that power. Suppose, moreover, that alongside this cascading structure, reprisals are launched automatically and that this task has been assigned to a computerized system. The deterrent power of this arrangement seems assured. But, suppose, finally, that the enemy nation fails to inform its rival about the existence of the automatic reprisal system. If the first nation then seeks to decapitate its adversary, it will be confronted with a thermonuclear hydra — mutual assured destruction would be inevitable.
This absurd scenario evokes the dark humor of Dr. Strangelove. In the film, the Soviets invent a Doomsday Machine that responds automatically to an American nuclear attack by detonating a network of buried nuclear bombs and rendering the earth uninhabitable for a century, but they neglect to warn the US leadership of its existence. As Martin Hellman has noted, far from being simply satire, the film could almost be considered a documentary.23 “Everything in that film,” Ellsberg has remarked, “existed as an operational reality at the time.”24
During the Cold War, neither the Americans nor the Soviets thought to let each other know that they had each developed Doomsday Machines by delegating the power to launch attacks beyond their leadership. At the height of the Cuban missile crisis, the American leaders were unaware that Soviet submarines patrolling the waters around Cuba were equipped with nuclear warheads. As a result, the Americans almost provoked nuclear attacks on several occasions by putting Soviet submarine commanders in situations in which they could have chosen to launch reprisals. Ellsberg acknowledges the lunacy of this situation. To admit to the world that a Doomsday Machine had been developed, he explains, was to risk terrifying one’s countrymen, allies, and, of course, the rest of the planet.25 This secretiveness reveals just how little importance deterrence had for the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union. And this is Ellsberg’s point. The fact that each nation did not inform the other about the existence of a deterrent is proof that deterrence was not their goal.
Ellsberg broadly defines the Doomsday Machine as
a very expensive system of men, machines, electronics, communications, institutions, plans, training, discipline, practices, and doctrine—which, under conditions of electronic warning, external conflict, or expectations of attack, would with unknowable but possibly high probability bring about the global destruction of civilization and of nearly all human life on earth.26
Rather than focusing on the dangers posed by nuclear proliferation and terrorism, widely considered the most pressing threats in the current era, Ellsberg believes that it is the American and Russian Doomsday Machines that constitute the greatest danger to humanity. These two Doomsday Machines, he writes, must be dismantled: “And that, at minimum, is what we must hasten to do.”27 Each are “susceptible to being triggered on a false alarm, a terrorist action, unauthorized launch, or a desperate decision to escalate.”28
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Contrary to popular opinion, Ellsberg believes that the US military has never regarded the use of nuclear weapons as a taboo — whether for threats or actual strikes. Nuclear weapons are far from the weapons of non-use suggested by the theory of deterrence. With an overwhelming array of examples, Ellsberg demonstrates that when it comes to deciding between preemption and retaliation, the former has always been preferred, and there is no reason to think that it will not triumph in the future. It turns out that the world is much more dangerous than we had imagined.
https://inference-review.com/article/striking-second-first
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Seeds of fascism: Growing number of Republicans favor expanding presidential power
The share of conservative Republicans who say that presidents could deal with problems more effectively if they “didn’t have to worry so much about Congress or the courts” has doubled since March 2018. Today, about half of conservative Republicans (52%) hold this view, compared with 26% a year ago.
www.people-press.org/2019/08/07/republicans-now-are-more-open-to-the-i
dea-of-expanding-presidential-power/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Billionaire Trump donor explains he’s in it for the tax cuts, not the racism
It’s quite plausible that multi-billionaire Stephen M. Ross is telling the truth and he legitimately does have profound disagreements with Trump over certain culture war issues. It’s just that the amount of money at stake for Ross, personally, in the question of Trump’s continuing political success is mind-boggling. That is the fundamental truth about what keeps Trump in power.
Impeachment, meaningful congressional oversight, and everything else is on hold because Trump’s presence in office serves the interests of the billionaire class.
If you want to understand what’s really happening in America in the Trump era, you could do a lot worse than read a statement provided to the press Wednesday evening by Stephen M. Ross — a rich guy who, like a lot of rich guys, enjoys spending some of his riches in order to influence public policy to make himself richer.
As a fan of turning wealth into political influence, which begets more wealth, Ross wants to see Donald Trump continue to entrench himself in office. But at the same time, like a lot of other rich guys, Ross got rich in part by selling services to the affluent masses of urban America — specifically through the upscale gym Equinox and the bicycle “cult” SoulCycle — so when news broke that Ross was hosting a Trump reelection fundraiser at his Hamptons mansion where tickets sold for up to $250,000 a pop, it damaged Ross’s brand.
In an effort to stave off criticism, Ross told the press that he has “known Donald Trump for 40 years” and that “while we agree on some issues, we strongly disagree on many others.” He didn’t explain which issues were which.
Billionaires benefit enormously from Trump
It’s interesting that though Ross is willing to support Trump’s reelection bid in material ways, he doesn’t seem particularly inclined to tell us what the issues are on which he agrees with the president.
The issue on which Ross agrees with Trump is likely taxes. Ross has an estimated net worth of $7.7 billion. And while you might think that part of the pleasure of having $7.7 billion is that you don’t need to sweat the small stuff, the fact of the matter is that Trump’s changes to the estate tax alone are worth $4.4 million to a guy like Ross.
More at www.vox.com/2019/8/8/20782269/stephen-ross-soulcycle-equinox-trump-don
or
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Another story about Trump being out of his mind:
Trump considering ending Rod Blagojevich’s prison term, citing ‘Comey gang and all these sleazebags’
www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-president-trump-considering-rod-bla
gojevich-commutation-20190808-y3ixmutnfnd5havbgdgtxcvyd4-story.html
President Donald Trump has once again dangled the idea of commuting the 14-year prison sentence of disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that he was “very strongly” considering springing Blagojevich from prison almost five years early.
But Trump also showed he has done little homework on the case since he first raised the idea of using his powers of executive clemency for Blagojevich in May 2018.
Trump repeated the same misstatement he made last year that Blagojevich was sentenced to 18 years in prison and once again mentioned only one wiretapped phone call by Blagojevich, when much of the evidence presented at trial came from witnesses who said the governor was shaking them down for campaign cash in exchange for official acts.
The victims included the then-CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital, now Lurie Children’s Hospital, who said he was pressured to contribute tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for state funding.
“He’s been in jail for seven years over a phone call where nothing happens. But over a phone — where nothing happens,” Trump said after making visits to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, following mass shootings in those cities over the weekend. "But over a phone call which, you know, he shouldn’t have said what he said, but it was braggadocio you would say.”
Such mischaracterizations have been blasted before by those who investigated and prosecuted Blagojevich.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, however, Trump said he thought the former Democratic governor — who had been a contestant on Trump’s former NBC show “The Celebrity Apprentice” before his firing — was mistreated.
“I thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly; he was given close to 18 years in prison," said Trump, a Republican. "And a lot of people thought it was unfair, like a lot of other things — and it was the same gang, the Comey gang and all these sleazebags that did it.”
The president was referring to former FBI Director James Comey, a frequent Trump target who he contends sought to politicize the nation’s top law enforcement agency in the 2016 election in which Trump faced Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. After taking office, the president fired Comey amid the investigation into Russia’s interference in the election and whether the Trump campaign was involved.
The president’s comments mirrored what Patti Blagojevich has said in not-so-veiled attempts to link her husband’s prosecution to some of Trump’s perceived political enemies.
In reality, Comey was in private practice from 2005 to 2013 — virtually the entire time Blagojevich was investigated and prosecuted.
Blagojevich, who served as Illinois governor from 2003 until his impeachment and removal from office in 2009, was sentenced to 14 years on federal corruption charges after his June 2011 conviction.
Blagojevich was convicted of attempting to use his office to personally benefit himself, offering the former U.S. Senate seat of then-President-elect Barack Obama in return for a prosperous job or campaign contributions.
Some counts involving the alleged sale of the Senate seat were subsequently thrown out, but his sentence and corruption conviction for that scandal and other actions stood. In addition to the children’s hospital executive, Blagojevich was convicted of attempting to shake down the horse racetrack owner to sign favorable legislation into law in exchange for campaign donations.
Government agents secretly recorded Blagojevich discussing the Senate seat appointment with his onetime deputy governor, Doug Scofield.
“I’ve got this thing and it’s f------ golden,” Blagojevich famously said in the secretly recorded conversation. “I’m not just giving it up for f------ nothing.”
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Trump promised to get the trade deficit down, but his profound lack of understanding of economics has led to it increasing, just as most economists predicted it would.
Trump’s mismanagement of the economy is monumental.
Foreign Trade Deficit:
Economists have repeatedly tried to explain to Donald Trump that trade agreements may affect which countries the US buys from and sells to, but not the magnitude of the overall deficit. But, as usual, Trump believes what he wants to believes, leaving those who can least afford it to pay the price.
Federal Budget Deficit:
If it takes trillion-dollar annual deficits to keep the U.S. economy going in good times, what will it take when things are not so rosy?
Income Redistribution:
Redistribution from the bottom to the top – the hallmark not only of Trump’s presidency, but also of preceding Republican administrations – reduces aggregate demand, because those at the top spend a smaller fraction of their income than those below. This weakens the economy in a way that cannot be offset even by a massive giveaway to corporations and billionaires. And the enormous Trump fiscal deficits have led to huge trade deficits, far larger than under Obama, as the US has had to import capital to finance the gap between domestic savings and investment.
www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-mismanagement-of-the-economy-is-monum
ental-2019-08-09
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-trade-and-fiscal-deficits-b
y-joseph-e-stiglitz-2019-08
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?
Originally published in New York 11.20.2011
I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.
America desperately needs a responsible and compassionate alternative to the Obama administration’s path of bigger government at higher cost. And yet: This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions—crime, inflation, the Cold War—right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong.
It was not so long ago that Texas governor Bush denounced attempts to cut the earned-income tax credit as “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.” By 2011, Republican commentators were noisily complaining that the poorer half of society are “lucky duckies” because the EITC offsets their federal tax obligations—or because the recession had left them with such meager incomes that they had no tax to pay in the first place. In 2000, candidate Bush routinely invoked “churches, synagogues, and mosques.” By 2010, prominent Republicans were denouncing the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan as an outrageous insult. In 2003, President Bush and a Republican majority in Congress enacted a new prescription-drug program in Medicare. By 2011, all but four Republicans in the House and five in the Senate were voting to withdraw the Medicare guarantee from everybody under age 55. Today, the Fed’s pushing down interest rates in hopes of igniting economic growth is close to treason, according to Governor Rick Perry, coyly seconded by The Wall Street Journal. In 2000, the same policy qualified Alan Greenspan as the “greatest central banker in the history of the world,” according to Perry’s mentor, Senator Phil Gramm. Today, health reform that combines regulation of private insurance, individual mandates, and subsidies for those who need them is considered unconstitutional and an open invitation to “death panels.” A dozen years ago, a very similar reform was the Senate Republican alternative to Hillarycare. Today, stimulative fiscal policy that includes tax cuts for almost every American is “socialism.” In 2001, stimulative fiscal policy that included tax cuts for rather fewer Americans was an economic recovery program.
I can’t shrug off this flight from reality and responsibility as somebody else’s problem. I belonged to this movement; I helped to make the mess.
More at http://davidfrum.com/article/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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At least we can say that David Frum knows who he is.
Whether or not he's genuine? The jury's still out on that.
I recommend that he give all of his money away and live under a bridge a while to contemplate what he's done.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Throughout his time in office, Trump has been his own worst enemy. Any other incumbent president with relative peace abroad, a good economy and a united party would be sitting pretty for reelection. However, he shows the nation every day the immense risks of keeping him in power.
The reason that impeachment is on the table has less to do with the Mueller report than the President's own actions. In the same way that President Andrew Johnson's attacks on Reconstruction fueled the impeachment drive against him, the President's far right agenda is emboldening Democrats to consider voting for impeachment -- even if Senate Republicans will inevitably prevent his removal from office.
The worse that the President behaves, and the clearer the real world impact of his actions becomes, the easier it will be for Democrats to go on record saying that obstructing justice in a serious investigation is unacceptable. He tried to stifle the investigators in ways that President Richard Nixon would never have imagined possible.
We are still far away from that kind of vote. The fears that Pelosi has about a backlash to impeachment in moderate districts are very real and have not disappeared. Until she has the entire Democratic Caucus behind her, she will likely be reluctant to give her full support.
Trump, however, keeps making it difficult to just say no. His presidency is off the rails, and he is playing with a fire of racism, nativism and social division that is dangerous -- if not deadly. His rhetoric keeps getting more explosive as the election heats up.
More at www.cnn.com/2019/08/11/opinions/trump-impeaching-himself-zelizer/index
.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:6ix, the following misfortune happened to you, but your answer is to vote for the GOP:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
At least we can say that David Frum knows who he is.
Whether or not he's genuine? The jury's still out on that.
I recommend that he give all of his money away and live under a bridge a while to contemplate what he's done.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Conservatives have been driven to these fevered anxieties as much by their own trauma as by external events. In the aughts, Republicans held more power for longer than at any time since the twenties, yet the result was the weakest and least broadly shared economic expansion since World War II, followed by an economic crash and prolonged slump. Along the way, the GOP suffered two severe election defeats in 2006 and 2008. Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There’s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new Democratic president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone’s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief.
The Bush years cannot be repudiated, but the memory of them can be discarded to make way for a new and more radical ideology, assembled from bits of the old GOP platform that were once sublimated by the party elites but now roam the land freely: ultralibertarianism, crank monetary theories, populist fury . . .
When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?
http://davidfrum.com/article/when-did-the-gop-lose-touch-with-reality
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?
Probably right around the same time the Democrats lost touch with reality.
Anybody who can ask me why I vote GOP after watching the Democratic debates currently going on is not somebody worth debating.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Two things:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?
Probably right around the same time the Democrats lost touch with reality.
Anybody who can ask me why I vote GOP after watching the Democratic debates currently going on is not somebody worth debating.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Why would anybody watch the debates? I never watch them for more than a minute because those have always been ridiculous until after the Convention. The craziest candidates, the ones that never will have a chance, say the darnedest things to get noticed. But it doesn't work. It simply underlines who is not Presidential. They might not even be sane. See Trump. That guy gave off the stink of a crook and a liar from the first time he wrote a book. But to get a whiff of insanity, you had to see him "debate". That guy literally is a nincompoop on taxes, the economy, nuclear weapons, international trade and always has been. But so are the people who voted for him, which explains why they do not do very well, financially.
And what was the second thing? The Democrats did not lose touch with reality and did not crash the economy in 2008. It was the Republicans who crashed it. Signym tried to blame the Democrats today, here:
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=63212&mid=10809
47#1080947
Warren Buffett pointed out to 6ix that between 1945 and July 2016 that the S&P 500 fell 5% to 9.9% 56 times, 10% to 19.9% 21 times, 20% to 39.9% nine times, and 40% or more three times. Yet Buffett has made billions in the stock market. He is pointing to the fact that 6ix understands nothing useful about the stock market, much like Trump knows nothing useful about, well, any subject. Go vote for Trump, 6ix. As for me, if the market crashes because of Trump, it will be a wealth creating opportunity to buy low. Much later, sell high, making a fortune.
www.fool.com/slideshow/warren-buffetts-advice-stock-market-crash/?slid
e=2
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Great Land Robbery
The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms
“The telling factor, looking at it from the long view, is that at the time of World War I there were 1 million black farmers, and in 1992 there were 18,000,” Fraas told me. The settlements stemming from the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit of 1997 cover only specific recent claims of discrimination, and none stretching back to the period of the civil-rights era, when the great bulk of black-owned farms disappeared.
In Pigford v. Glickman, thousands of black farmers and their families won settlements against the USDA for discrimination that had occurred between 1981 and the end of 1996; the outlays ultimately reached a total of $2 billion. The Scotts were one of those families, and after a long battle to prove their case—with the assistance of Scott-White’s meticulous notes and family history—in 2012 the family was awarded more than $6 million in economic damages, plus almost $400,000 in other damages and debt forgiveness. The court also helped the Scotts reclaim land possessed by the department. In a 1999 ruling, Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia acknowledged that forcing the federal government to compensate black farmers would “not undo all that has been done” in centuries of government-sponsored racism. But for the Scotts, it was a start.
Through a variety of means—sometimes legal, often coercive, in many cases legal and coercive, occasionally violent—farmland owned by black people came into the hands of white people. It was aggregated into larger holdings, then aggregated again, eventually attracting the interest of Wall Street.
A war waged by deed of title has dispossessed 98 percent of black agricultural landowners in America. They have lost 12 million acres over the past century. But even that statement falsely consigns the losses to long-ago history. In fact, the losses mostly occurred within living memory, from the 1950s onward. Today, except for a handful of farmers like the Scotts who have been able to keep or get back some land, black people in this most productive corner of the Deep South own almost nothing of the bounty under their feet.
More at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/this-land-was-our-land/59
4742/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Two things:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?
Probably right around the same time the Democrats lost touch with reality.
Anybody who can ask me why I vote GOP after watching the Democratic debates currently going on is not somebody worth debating.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Why would anybody watch the debates? I never watch them for more than a minute because those have always been ridiculous until after the Convention. The craziest candidates, the ones that never will have a chance, say the darnedest things to get noticed. But it doesn't work. It simply underlines who is not Presidential. They might not even be sane. See Trump. That guy gave off the stink of a crook and a liar from the first time he wrote a book. But to get a whiff of insanity, you had to see him "debate". That guy literally is a nincompoop on taxes, the economy, nuclear weapons, international trade and always has been. But so are the people who voted for him, which explains why they do not do very well, financially.
And what was the second thing? The Democrats did not lose touch with reality and did not crash the economy in 2008. It was the Republicans who crashed it. Signym tried to blame the Democrats today, here:
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=63212&mid=10809
47#1080947
Warren Buffett pointed out to 6ix that between 1945 and July 2016 that the S&P 500 fell 5% to 9.9% 56 times, 10% to 19.9% 21 times, 20% to 39.9% nine times, and 40% or more three times. Yet Buffett has made billions in the stock market. He is pointing to the fact that 6ix understands nothing useful about the stock market, much like Trump knows nothing useful about, well, any subject. Go vote for Trump, 6ix. As for me, if the market crashes because of Trump, it will be a wealth creating opportunity to buy low. Much later, sell high, making a fortune.
www.fool.com/slideshow/warren-buffetts-advice-stock-market-crash/?slid
e=2
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I'm going to guess that a post full of more feels and baseless assumptions is not made on fff.net today.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis of the United States says that Republicans were responsible for the 2008 Crash.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'm going to guess that a post full of more feels and baseless assumptions is not made on fff.net today.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf
According to the Final Report, between 2001 and 2007, mortgage debt rose nearly as much as it had in the whole rest of the nation's history. Around the country, armies of mortgage salesmen hustled to get Americans to borrow more money for houses—or even just prospective houses. Many salesmen didn’t ask borrowers for proof of income, job or assets. Then the salesmen were gone, leaving behind a new debtor holding new keys and perhaps a faint suspicion that the deal was too good to be true.
www.history.com/news/2008-financial-crisis-causes
Ronald Reagan signed a law allowing banks to engage in trading profitable derivatives that they sold to investors. These mortgage-backed securities needed home loans as collateral. As more and more banks got familiar with what the law allowed, the derivatives slowly at first, then very quickly, created an insatiable demand for more and more mortgages.
Hedge funds and other financial institutions around the world owned the mortgage-backed securities. The securities were also in mutual funds, corporate assets, and pension funds. The banks had chopped up the original mortgages and resold them.
Why did stodgy pension funds buy such risky assets? They thought an insurance product called credit default swaps protected them. A traditional insurance company known as the American International Group sold these swaps. When the derivatives lost value, AIG didn't have enough cash flow to honor all the swaps.
The first signs of the financial crisis appeared in 2007. Banks panicked when they realized they would have to absorb the losses. They stopped lending to each other. They didn't want other banks giving them worthless mortgages as collateral. No one wanted to get stuck holding the bag. As a result, interbank borrowing costs, called Libor, rose. This mistrust within the banking community was the primary cause of the 2008 financial crisis.
www.thebalance.com/2008-financial-crisis-3305679
The Federal Government had the power to stop banks from selling very risky securities that were falsely rated as safe as AAA bonds, but because Republicans controlled the government for 8 years, the banks were not stopped until it was too late -- trillions of dollars in mortgage backed derivatives were defaulting.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:I see you're flogging your favorite "Hate the GOP" meme but you never addressed this (from another thread)
The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis of the United States says that Republicans were responsible for the 2008 Crash.
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf
According to the Final Report, between 2001 and 2007, mortgage debt rose nearly as much as it had in the whole rest of the nation's history. Around the country, armies of mortgage salesmen hustled to get Americans to borrow more money for houses—or even just prospective houses. Many salesmen didn’t ask borrowers for proof of income, job or assets. Then the salesmen were gone, leaving behind a new debtor holding new keys and perhaps a faint suspicion that the deal was too good to be true.
www.history.com/news/2008-financial-crisis-causes
Ronald Reagan signed a law allowing banks to engage in trading profitable derivatives that they sold to investors. These mortgage-backed securities needed home loans as collateral. As more and more banks got familiar with what the law allowed, the derivatives slowly at first, then very quickly, created an insatiable demand for more and more mortgages.
Hedge funds and other financial institutions around the world owned the mortgage-backed securities. The securities were also in mutual funds, corporate assets, and pension funds. The banks had chopped up the original mortgages and resold them.
Why did stodgy pension funds buy such risky assets? They thought an insurance product called credit default swaps protected them. A traditional insurance company known as the American International Group sold these swaps. When the derivatives lost value, AIG didn't have enough cash flow to honor all the swaps.
The first signs of the financial crisis appeared in 2007. Banks panicked when they realized they would have to absorb the losses. They stopped lending to each other. They didn't want other banks giving them worthless mortgages as collateral. No one wanted to get stuck holding the bag. As a result, interbank borrowing costs, called Libor, rose. This mistrust within the banking community was the primary cause of the 2008 financial crisis.
www.thebalance.com/2008-financial-crisis-3305679
The Federal Government had the power to stop banks from selling very risky securities that were falsely rated as safe as AAA bonds, but because Republicans controlled the government for 8 years, the banks were not stopped until it was too late -- trillions of dollars in mortgage backed derivatives were defaulting.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Quote:http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=63212
The 2008 Financial Crisis
Before the financial crisis of 2008, there was more money invested in credit default swaps than in other pools. The value of credit default swaps stood at $45 trillion compared to $22 trillion invested in the stock market, $7.1 trillion in mortgages and $4.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury. In mid-2010, the value of outstanding CDS was $26.3 trillion.
Many investment banks were involved, but the biggest casualty was Lehman Brothers investment bank, which owed $600 billion in debt, out of which $400 billion was covered by CDS. The bank’s insurer, American Insurance Group, lacked sufficient funds to clear the debt, and the Federal Reserve of the United States needed to intervene to bail it out.
Companies that traded in swaps were battered during the financial crisis. Since the market was unregulated, banks used swaps to insure complex financial products.
The most important sentence is that quote is
Before the financial crisis of 2008, there was more money invested in credit default swaps than in other pools. The value of credit default swaps stood at $45 trillion compared to $22 trillion invested in the stock market, $7.1 trillion in mortgages and $4.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury
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OOPS.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Wrong you are, Signym. There were many things done badly. Doing any of them even half right would have prevented the Crash, but nobody did a damn thing right because doing what was risky was profitable. There is much more in the report, but one paragraph stands out on page xviii :
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The thing that made all of this possible was Bill Clinton's Commodities Futures Moderinization Act, which deregulated CDSs.
Yet we do not accept the view that regulators lacked the power to protect the financial system. They had ample power in many arenas and they chose not to use it. To give just three examples: the Securities and Exchange Commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks. It did not. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other regulators could have clamped down on Citigroup’s excesses in the run-up to the crisis. They did not. Policy makers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securitization train. They did not. In case after case after case, regulators continued to rate the institutions they oversaw as safe and sound even in the face of mounting troubles, often downgrading them just before their collapse. And where regulators lacked authority, they could have sought it. Too often, they lacked the political will—in a political and ideological environment that constrained it—as well as the fortitude to critically challenge the institutions and the entire system they were entrusted to oversee.
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Under Clinton, the US allowed lower capitalization rates, and in fact allowed banks to calculate their own rates to be competitive with BASEL II. "The IRB approach uses risk parameters determined by a bank’s internal systems in the calculation of the bank’s credit risk capital requirements. The AMA relies on a bank’s internal estimates of its operational risks to generate an operational risk capital requirement for the bank." That was a big OOPS. https://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/basel2/FinalRule_BaselII/Fi
Originally posted by second:
To give just three examples:
- the Securities and Exchange Commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks. It did not.
nalRule_Draft.pdf "our results imply that much of the decline in CRE risk premiums ... was associated with weaker regulatory capital requirements." https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/papers/2015/wp150
4.pdf
Quote:Aside from the fact that many lenders / financial institutions proved so unstable they were ready to fall like dominoes, WHAT WAS IT SPECIFICALLY about Citigroup that, all on its own, caused the Great Recession?
- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other regulators could have clamped down on Citigroup’s excesses in the run-up to the crisis. They did not.
Quote:Policy makers would have had to write new policies, for regulators to regulate to them. Regulators just can't look at something and say - I don't like it. But the policymakers under Clinton already wrote the policies. see above
- Policy makers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securitization train. They did not.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
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Quote:Policy makers would have had to write new policies, for regulators to regulate to them. Regulators just can't look at something and say - I don't like it. But the policymakers under Clinton already wrote the policies. see above
Originally posted by 1KIKI:Quote:Under Clinton, the US allowed lower capitalization rates, and in fact allowed banks to calculate their own rates to be competitive with BASEL II. "The IRB approach uses risk parameters determined by a bank’s internal systems in the calculation of the bank’s credit risk capital requirements. The AMA relies on a bank’s internal estimates of its operational risks to generate an operational risk capital requirement for the bank." That was a big OOPS. https://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/basel2/FinalRule_BaselII/Fi
Originally posted by second:
To give just three examples:
- the Securities and Exchange Commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks. It did not.
nalRule_Draft.pdf "our results imply that much of the decline in CRE risk premiums ... was associated with weaker regulatory capital requirements." https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/papers/2015/wp150
4.pdfQuote:Aside from the fact that many lenders / financial institutions proved so unstable they were ready to fall like dominoes, WHAT WAS IT SPECIFICALLY about Citigroup that, all on its own, caused the Great Recession?
- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other regulators could have clamped down on Citigroup’s excesses in the run-up to the crisis. They did not.Quote:
- Policy makers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securitization train. They did not.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
It's very evident you have no intention to read and understand THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY REPORT:
The prime example is the Federal Reserves pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages, which it could have done by setting prudent mortgage-lending standards. The Federal Reserve was the one entity empowered to do so and it did not. The record of our examination is replete with evidence of other failures: financial institutions made, bought, and sold mortgage securities they never examined, did not care to examine, or knew to be defective.
page xvii www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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It wasn't the mortgages.
It's that they were packaged and sold as assets instead of debts; and re-packaged and re-sold; and re-re-packaged and re-re-sold, and re-re-re-packaged and re-re-re-sold, and so on. And every time those packages got sold / bought the value got inflated roughly 10X till they'd ballooned to not even remotely resemble the original mortgages they were based on. Because the housing market and commercial markets were hot, and firms wanted to rake it in as fast as they could as long as the gravy-train was running.
Nobody ever said you had to be smart to be greedy.
If the Federal government had simply covered everybody's mortgages - just gave the money away directly to the borrowers - then the whole edifice built on top of them would have been secured, and it would have been far, far cheaper then securing those ridiculous monstrosities the investment banks created.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
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Quote:Wow, 1kiki! There was a much more direct and cheaper solution – do not allow government regulators to be controlled by the financial industry. It’s right there in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
It wasn't the mortgages.
It's that they were packaged and sold as assets instead of debts; and re-packaged and re-sold; and re-re-packaged and re-re-sold, and re-re-re-packaged and re-re-re-sold, and so on. And every time those packages got sold / bought the value got inflated roughly 10X till they'd ballooned to not even remotely resemble the original mortgages they were based on. Because the housing market and commercial markets were hot, and firms wanted to rake it in as fast as they could as long as the gravy-train was running.
Nobody ever said you had to be smart to be greedy.
If the Federal government had simply covered everybody's mortgages - just gave the money away directly to the borrowers - then the whole edifice built on top of them would have been secured, and it would have been far, far cheaper then securing those ridiculous monstrosities the investment banks created.
But as the report will show, the financial industry itself played a key role in weakening regulatory constraints on institutions, markets, and products. It did not surprise the Commission that an industry of such wealth and power would exert pressure on policy makers and regulators. From 1999 to 2008, the financial sector expended $2.7 billion in reported federal lobbying expenses; individuals and political action committees in the sector made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions. What troubled us was the extent to which the nation was deprived of the necessary strength and independence of the oversight necessary to safeguard financial stability.
page xviii www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf
Rather than to just admit that the government had been either purchased or bribed to not do its job, the Report says something much more bland: “Too often, regulators lacked the political will—in a political and ideological environment that constrained it—as well as the fortitude to critically challenge the institutions and the entire system they were entrusted to oversee.”
Were the regulators incapable of doing their job because of their political ideology? Or were they simply bribed? We will never know because the regulators were not forthcoming with explanations for their peculiar behavior.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:By 'government regulators', do you mean Clinton? It’s right there in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report!
Originally posted by SECOND:
There was a much more direct and cheaper solution – do not allow government regulators to be controlled by the financial industry. It’s right there in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report:
Quote:
These policies were put in place and promoted by several administrations and Congresses—indeed, both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush set aggressive goals to increase home-ownership.
In Washington, four intermingled issues came into play that made it difficult to acknowledge the looming threats. First, efforts to boost homeownership had broad political support—from Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and successive
Congresses—even though in reality the homeownership rate had peaked in the spring
of ????
He finally took his warnings to the highest level he could reach—Robert Rubin,
the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors and a former
U.S. treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and three other bank officials.
He sent Rubin and the others a memo with the words “URGENT—READ IMMEDIATELY” in the subject line.
In ????, President Bill Clinton announced an initiative to boost homeownership
from ??.?? to ??.?? of families by ????, and one component raised the affordable housing goals at the GSEs. Between ???? and ????, almost ?.? million households entered the ranks of homeowners, nearly twice as many as in the previous two years.
“But we have to do a lot better,” Clinton said.
In December ????, in response, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of ???? (CFMA), which in essence deregulated the OTC derivatives market and eliminated oversight by both the CFTC and the SEC.
In November ????, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), which lifted most of the remaining Glass-Steagall-era restrictions.
In ????, President Bill Clinton asked regulators to improve banks’ CRA performance * while responding to industry complaints that the regulatory review process for compliance was too burdensome and too subjective. (* The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is a federal law enacted in 1977 with the intent of encouraging depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. The CRA requires federal regulators to assess how well each bank or thrift fulfills its obligations to these communities.)
Initiated by Congress in 1992 and pressed by HUD in both the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations, the U.S. government’s housing policy sought to increase home ownership in the United States through an intensive effort to reduce mortgage underwriting standards.
FHA was tasked with insuring loans to low-income borrowers that would not be made unless insured; banks and S&Ls were required by CRA to show that they were also making loans to the same group of borrowers; mortgage bankers who signed up for the HUD Best Practices Initiative and the Clinton administration’s National Homeownership Strategy were required to make the same kind of loans.
followed by a whole lot more "Clinton" results.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
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SECOND, your attempt to blame 2008 on the GOP and deflect crticism from Bill Clinton is wrong, wrong, wrong, and has been demonstrated to be wrong three times already, using the very report that YOU cited. So give up, already; you're just burying yourself deeper.
Nobody is saying that the only President at fault was Clinton ... Presidents of BOTH parties kept rolling that ball forward, INCLUDING Bill Clinton. And btw, Clinton didn't just favor big banks, he also favored transnationals' move out of the USA by forwarding China's accession into the WTO and pushing for - and getting - NAFTA. And tech companies by pushing for - and getting - DMCA. Also "ending welfare as we know it". Bill Clinton was NOT a friend of us regular Americans, he was a smooth-talking bought-and-paid-for serial rapist.
Let's just say that neither party has really had our interests at heart for decades, and both parties have pretty much sold us downriver, including Obama.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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Quote:You are misunderstanding how the Republicans crashed the economy in 2008. I’m going to give you a very real analogue because you, and the GOP, would insist the GOP did not crash economy, but rather Clinton is to blame because he signed a law ten years earlier. Here we go: I was a control systems engineer for Bechtel. A client would accidentally destroy a petrochemical plant that had been running for decades and they’d come to us to rebuild so it would not happen again. The plant that exploded was not a bad design, although old-fashion, but only if the people operating it on the day it exploded knew what they were doing. And the operators must pay attention and not panic and do nothing. In the case of the Crash of 2008, the regulators kept their hands off because everybody was making so much money. Why stop when the system was running profitably?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, your attempt to blame 2008 on the GOP and deflect crticism from Bill Clinton is wrong, wrong, wrong, and has been demonstrated to be wrong three times already, using the very report that YOU cited. So give up, already; you're just burying yourself deeper.
In a petrochemical plant disaster there are usually several things that went wrong and if any of them had gone right there would not have been an explosion. The spare cooling water pump needed to be started, but was not because it was manually operated, not automatic. The furnace needed to be shutdown to reduce the heat, but it too was manually operated. Some human must press the shutdown button. The furnace won’t press the button for the human. The high pressure needed to be vented to the flare, but it was not. If the operators had done at least one of these three things right, there would not have been an explosion.
Similarly, the GOP policy makers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securitization train years before it crashed. But they did not. The Securities and Exchange Commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks. It did not.
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf
It is completely nuts to think Clinton should have stopped them in 2000 when it was the GOP that was operating the financial system more and more dangerously for the next seven years. The system worked fine, but only so long as the regulators made correct decisions. If they made no decisions, it would explode eventually. And it did in 2008.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Presidents of BOTH parties kept rolling that ball forward, INCLUDING Bill Clinton.
Quote:And constantly LYING about what people post is why you're a used asswipe, and nobody credits a fucking thing you post.
Originally posted by SLOPPY SECONDS:
... you, and the GOP, would insist the GOP did not crash economy, but rather Clinton is to blame because he signed a law ten years earlier.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
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So, a LONG time ago, back in 2007, I read an interesting article whose subject was 'the bubble economy'. https://prospect.org/article/bubble-economy and how fragile it is to popping at any time.
I just want to point out that I think we're in a stock market bubble. Before that was a bank / investment bubble. Before that was a housing bubble. And before that was the dot.com bubble. And before that was the S&L bubble.
Without real overall growth, government needs these bubbles to create good economic averages. Without the bubbles averaged in, the actual dismal state of the real economy would be exposed.
EVERYONE in government since the 70's wants to keep those bubbles frothing!
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
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Quote:1kiki, you are getting testy.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
And constantly LYING about what people post is why you're a used asswipe, and nobody credits a fucking thing you post.
In the 1990's I built safety shutdown systems for petrochemical plants. The people on duty when a plant exploded tended to shade the truth, doing their worst to avoid culpability for what happened. Lied, or at least misdirected, in other words.
But the control room records told the real story. Did the people on duty correct themselves when their story disagreed with the story the control room recorders showed? No, but they did get testy that their stories weren't being believed.
You are not really interested in the real story, are you, 1kiki? You are committed to your fake story. You know what the real story says about the GOP.
The real story is Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:These "bubbles" happen because the wealthy want them. It is their ideas, not the government's. Not the government, but the Wealthy, and their prejudices, direct America.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I just want to point out that I think we're in a stock market bubble. Before that was a bank / investment bubble. Before that was a housing bubble. And before that was the dot.com bubble. And before that was the S&L bubble.
Without real overall growth, government needs these bubbles to create good economic averages. Without the bubbles averaged in, the actual dismal state of the real economy would be exposed.
EVERYONE in government since the 70's wants to keep those bubbles frothing!
Why a Banking Heiress Spent Her Fortune on Keeping Immigrants Out
www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/why-a-banking-heiress-spent-her-fortune-on-k
eeping-immigrants-out/ar-AAFNPSB
An heiress to the Mellon banking and industrial fortune with a half-billion dollars at her disposal, Mrs. May helped create what would become the modern anti-immigration movement. She bankrolled the founding and operation of the nation’s three largest restrictionist groups — the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies — as well as dozens of smaller ones, including some that have promulgated white nationalist views.
In many ways, the Trump presidency is the culmination of Mrs. May’s vision for strictly limiting immigration. Groups that she funded shared policy proposals with Mr. Trump’s campaign, sent key staff members to join his administration and have close ties to Stephen Miller, the architect of his immigration agenda to upend practices adopted by his Democratic and Republican predecessors.
More at www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/why-a-banking-heiress-spent-her-fortune-on-k
eeping-immigrants-out/ar-AAFNPSB
It's fascinating what ideas lurk in the tiny brains of the rich and powerful. More thrilling is the story of how their wealth spreads those ideas into the big World.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Last month, the Trump White House put out a typically Orwellian statement, chock-filled with lies, distortions, and half-truths about Iran and the 2015 nuclear deal. One line in particular stood out from the rest: “There is little doubt that even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms.”
Huh? The Iranians were violating an agreement — before it even existed?
Is it any surprise that even the foreign minister of Iran took to Twitter to join the online ridiculing of the White House?
Javad Zarif @Jzarif tweeted:
Seriously?
https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/1145856200262737921
The Trump administration’s lies on the topic of Iran are now beyond parody. There is, however, nothing funny about them. U.S. government lies can have deadly consequences: Never forget that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children, not to mention more than 4,400 U.S. military personnel, are dead today because of the sheer volume of falsehoods told by the George W. Bush administration.
So it is incumbent upon journalists to do in 2019 what they collectively did not do in 2003: Check the facts, challenge the lies, debunk the myths.
More at Five Lies About Iran That We Need to Refute to Stop Another Illegal War
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/14/trump-iran-worst-lies/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Maybe Trump can get your boy Mueller fully on board and it will all come full circle.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:1kiki, you are getting testy.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
And constantly LYING about what people post is why you're a used asswipe, and nobody credits a fucking thing you post.
In the 1990's I built safety shutdown systems for petrochemical plants. The people on duty when a plant exploded tended to shade the truth, doing their worst to avoid culpability for what happened. Lied, or at least misdirected, in other words.
But the control room records told the real story. Did the people on duty correct themselves when their story disagreed with the story the control room recorders showed? No, but they did get testy that their stories weren't being believed.
You are not really interested in the real story, are you, 1kiki? You are committed to your fake story. You know what the real story says about the GOP.
The real story is Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I know with a little digging I can find quite a few times where you've blown your cool.
Best to remember this from that glass house you're living in.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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In the US, unlike in other developed countries, the minimum wage is a political issue. That means it gets raised irregularly and unpredictably. And that causes a bunch of problems for American workers and businesses.
Every other developed country with a minimum wage has some sort of commission or formula to determine what the rate should be. Some countries consult with business leaders and union representatives, and nearly all of them involve economic experts. And they review it every year or two. In the US, though, it’s in the hands of politicians.
And that goes about as well as you’d expect.
Republicans against, Democrats for, wage raise stymied.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Our Caesar: Can the country come back from Trump? The Republic already looks like Rome in ruins.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2019/08/is-there-hope-for-the-amer
ican-republic-after-trump.html
The American system has a vulnerability Rome didn’t. We have always had a one-man executive branch, a head of state, with exclusive and total command of the armed forces. There is no need for an office like Rome’s dictator, who serves only 6 months, for when a systemic crisis hits, because we have an existing commander-in-chief vested with emergency powers who can, at any time, invoke them. The two consuls in Rome shared rule and could veto each other; what defines the American presidency is its individual, unitary nature. Over the past century, moreover, as America’s global clout has grown exponentially, and as the challenges of governing a vast and complicated country have spawned a massive administrative state under the president’s ultimate control, what was once designed as an office merely to enforce the laws made by the Congress has changed beyond recognition.
So what happens when a populist celebrity leverages mass resentment of elites to deploy that power — as Marius and Sulla and Pompey and Caesar did — in ever more expansive, innovative, and authoritarian ways?
When you think of how the Founders conceived the presidency, the 21st-century version is close to unrecognizable. Their phobia about monarchy placed the presidency beneath the Congress in the pecking order, stripping him of pomp and majesty. No newspaper bothered even to post a reporter at the White House until the 20th century. The “bully pulpit” was anathema, and public speeches vanishingly rare. As George F. Will points out in his new book on conservatism, the president of the United States did not even have an office until 1902, working from his living room until Teddy Roosevelt built the West Wing.
Some presidents rose above this level of modesty. Lincoln temporarily assumed far greater powers in the Civil War, of course, but it was Teddy Roosevelt who added celebrity and imperial aspirations to the office.
FDR, as president for what turned out to be life, revolutionized and metastasized the American government and bequeathed a Cold War presidency atop a military-industrial complex that now deploys troops in some 164 foreign countries.
Kennedy — and the Camelot myth that surrounded him — dazzled the elites and the public.
Reagan ushered in a movie-star model for a commander-in-chief — telegenic, charismatic, and, in time, something of a cult figure.
And then the 9/11 attacks created an atmosphere similar to that of Rome’s temporary, emergency dictatorships, except vast powers of war-making, surveillance, rendition, and even torture were simply transferred to an office for non-emergency times as well, as theorists of the unitary executive — relatively unbound by Congress or the rule of law — formed a tight circle around a wartime boss. And there was no six-month time limit; almost none of these powers has since been revoked.
Like Roman commanders slowly acquiring the trappings of gods, presidents have long since slipped the bounds of republican austerity into a world of elected monarchs, flying the world in a massive, airborne chariot, constantly photographed, and now commanding our attention every single day through Twitter.
More at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2019/08/is-there-hope-for-the-amer
ican-republic-after-trump.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump tweeted:
Biggest crowd EVER, according to Arena people. Thousands outside trying to get in. Place was packed! Radical Left Dems & their Partner, LameStream Media, saying Arena empty. Check out pictures. Fake News. The Enemy of the People!
Great news! Tonight, we broke the all-time attendance record previously held by Elton John at #SNHUArena in Manchester, New Hampshire!
8:11 PM - 16 Aug 2019
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1162562469283471360
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
In the US, unlike in other developed countries, the minimum wage is a political issue. That means it gets raised irregularly and unpredictably. And that causes a bunch of problems for American workers and businesses.
Every other developed country with a minimum wage has some sort of commission or formula to determine what the rate should be. Some countries consult with business leaders and union representatives, and nearly all of them involve economic experts. And they review it every year or two. In the US, though, it’s in the hands of politicians.
And that goes about as well as you’d expect.
Republicans against, Democrats for, wage raise stymied.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Well... It looks like Vox finally got rid of Carlos Maza and his race-baiting and hate-mongering.
Let's see if Vox can continue to take the steps it needs ahead of time to gain a shred of integrity and something worth saving overall before the missing link media goes the way of Blockbuster Video.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump tweeted:
Biggest crowd EVER, according to Arena people.
If he manajez to stay out uv prizon, he will be doing theze rallyz till he'z 100 and idiots will keep buying tikits.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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A heartfelt cry about where the GOP fears ‘their country’ may be headed
If you want to understand American politics in 2019 and the strain of reactionary extremism that has taken over the Republican Party, a good place to start is 2011: the year after a backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency swept Tea Party insurgents into Congress, flipping control of the House.
It was clear, at the start of that year, that Congress would have to lift the debt ceiling — the limit on bonds and other debt instruments the government issues when it doesn’t have the revenues to fulfill spending obligations. These votes were often opportunities for grandstanding and occasionally brinkmanship by politicians from both parties. But it was understood that, when push came to shove, Congress would lift the limit and the government would pay its obligations.
2011 was different. Congressional Republicans, led by the new Tea Party conservatives, wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and make other sharp cuts to the social safety net. But Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House. So House Republicans decided to take a hostage. “I’m asking you to look at a potential increase in the debt limit as a leverage moment when the White House and President Obama will have to deal with us,” said the incoming majority leader, Eric Cantor, at a closed-door retreat days before the session began, according to The Washington Post. Either the White House would agree to harsh austerity measures or Republicans would force the United States to default on its debt obligations, precipitating an economic crisis just as the country, and the world, was beginning to recover from the Great Recession.
The debt-limit standoff was a case study of a fundamental change within the Republican Party after Obama took office in 2009. Republicans would either win total victory or they would wreck the system itself. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, used a variety of procedural tactics to effectively nullify the president’s ability to nominate federal judges and fill vacancies in the executive branch. In the minority, he used the filibuster to an unprecedented degree. In the majority, after Republicans won the Senate in the 2010 midterm elections, he led an extraordinary blockade of the Supreme Court, stopping the Senate from even considering the president’s nominee for the bench.
Where did this destructive, sectarian style of partisan politics come from? Conventional wisdom traces its roots to the “Gingrich Revolution” of the 1990s, whose architect pioneered a hardball, insurgent style of political combat, undermining norms and dismantling congressional institutions for the sake of power. This is true enough, but the Republican Party of the Obama years didn’t just recycle its Gingrich-era excesses; it also pursued a policy of total opposition, not just blocking Obama but also casting him as fundamentally illegitimate and un-American. He may have been elected by a majority of the voting public, but that majority didn’t count. It didn’t represent the “real” America.
The past 10 years of Republican extremism is emblematic. The Tea Party billed itself as a reaction to debt and spending, but a close look shows it was actually a reaction to an ascendant majority of black people, Latinos, Asian-Americans and liberal white people. In their survey-based study of the movement, the political scientists Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto show that Tea Party Republicans were motivated “by the fear and anxiety associated with the perception that ‘real’ Americans are losing their country.”
The scholars Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson came to a similar conclusion in their contemporaneous study of the movement, based on an ethnographic study of Tea Party activists across the country. “Tea Party resistance to giving more to categories of people deemed undeserving is more than just an argument about taxes and spending,” they note in “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”; “it is a heartfelt cry about where they fear ‘their countr
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And as we sweep the Russia bullshit under the rug, in comes muh racism to take center stage the next 14 months.
Good luck with that tactic. Nothing else has worked so far.
It should probably be noted that muh racism has been a tactic on the side for the last 2 1/2 years to no avail either, but when everything else finally gets dropped because it wasn't working this single tactic seems new to the people who were wishing upon a Mueller investigation to remove Bad Orange Man.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:The joke I have heard a hundred times from Republicans, but not once from a Democrat: “What do you call a nigger with half a brain? . . . Gifted!” If is often delivered like this: “I am not a racist, but do you know what you call a nigger with half a brain?” Then the Republican would launch an attack at how Obama would have flunked out of college if he was white. Not racist, said the Republicans. Just stating a fact.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And as we sweep the Russia bullshit under the rug, in comes muh racism to take center stage the next 14 months.
Good luck with that tactic. Nothing else has worked so far.
It should probably be noted that muh racism has been a tactic on the side for the last 2 1/2 years to no avail either, but when everything else finally gets dropped because it wasn't working this single tactic seems new to the people who were wishing upon a Mueller investigation to remove Bad Orange Man.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
6ix, I’m pretty sure you don’t know what the word racist means. You know, I never got caught as Democrat because I always laughed at the weak jokes. I was actually laughing at the joke teller.
With the exception of the president of the United States, we all know that Russia and other powers have run amok in their attempts to influence U.S. elections and those of other democracies around the world. While much of the media coverage has focused on Russian interference in U.S. elections, this is not just an American problem. As our new report on online foreign influence efforts (FIEs) demonstrates, this is a global problem. Since 2013, Russia has conducted at least 38 distinct influence campaigns targeting 19 different countries.
www.lawfareblog.com/managing-and-mitigating-foreign-election-interfere
nce
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The joke I have heard a hundred times from Republicans, but not once from a Democrat: “What do you call a nigger with half a brain? . . . Gifted!” If is often delivered like this: “I am not a racist, but do you know what you call a nigger with half a brain?” Then the Republican would launch an attack at how Obama would have flunked out of college if he was white. Not racist, said the Republicans. Just stating a fact.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And as we sweep the Russia bullshit under the rug, in comes muh racism to take center stage the next 14 months.
Good luck with that tactic. Nothing else has worked so far.
It should probably be noted that muh racism has been a tactic on the side for the last 2 1/2 years to no avail either, but when everything else finally gets dropped because it wasn't working this single tactic seems new to the people who were wishing upon a Mueller investigation to remove Bad Orange Man.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
6ix, I’m pretty sure you don’t know what the word racist means.
With the exception of the president of the United States, we all know that Russia and other powers have run amok in their attempts to influence U.S. elections and those of other democracies around the world. While much of the media coverage has focused on Russian interference in U.S. elections, this is not just an American problem. As our new report on online foreign influence efforts (FIEs) demonstrates, this is a global problem. Since 2013, Russia has conducted at least 38 distinct influence campaigns targeting 19 different countries.
www.lawfareblog.com/managing-and-mitigating-foreign-election-interfere
nce
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
LET'S ADD SECOND TO THE LIST OF LEFTIES HERE WHO USED THE N WORD IN THE LAST WEEK.
That's you and Wishy now.
And no. Quotes don't make it any better. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/15/white-professor-investig
ated-quoting-james-baldwin-use-of-n-word-laurie-sheck
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:You are seriously stupid, 6ix. Why don't you get a job? I'm getting paid while I answer you, but you are not getting anywhere by accusing Democrats of being the real racists, not Republicans. Never them. Trump keeps claiming he is the least racist person in the world. And you don't laugh at him.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
LET'S ADD SECOND TO THE LIST OF LEFTIES HERE WHO USED THE N WORD IN THE LAST WEEK.
That's you and Wishy now.
And no. Quotes don't make it any better. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/15/white-professor-investig
ated-quoting-james-baldwin-use-of-n-word-laurie-sheck
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Trump claims he is ‘least racist person in the world’ despite repeated racist attacks
Meanwhile, new poll shows majority of Americans think president is racist, despite him being careful to never say Nigger.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-racist-twe
ets-aoc-ilhan-omar-baltimore-al-sharpton-jamestown-a9027306.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You are seriously stupid, 6ix. Why don't you get a job? I'm getting paid while I answer you, but you are not getting anywhere by accusing Democrats of being the real racists, not Republicans. Never them. Trump keeps claiming he is the least racist person in the world. And you don't laugh at him.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
LET'S ADD SECOND TO THE LIST OF LEFTIES HERE WHO USED THE N WORD IN THE LAST WEEK.
That's you and Wishy now.
And no. Quotes don't make it any better. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/15/white-professor-investig
ated-quoting-james-baldwin-use-of-n-word-laurie-sheck
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Trump claims he is ‘least racist person in the world’ despite repeated racist attacks
Meanwhile, new poll shows majority of Americans think president is racist, despite him being careful to never say Nigger.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-racist-twe
ets-aoc-ilhan-omar-baltimore-al-sharpton-jamestown-a9027306.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Doubling down. lol
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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What do you regard these days as cause for optimism?
Noam Chomsky’s answer: Several points. First, the times we’re living in are extremely dangerous, in some ways more so than ever before in human history — which will essentially come to an end in any recognizable form if we do not deal effectively with the increasing threats of nuclear war and of environmental catastrophe. That requires reversing the course of the U.S. in dismantling arms control agreements and proceeding — along with Russia — to develop ever more lethal and destabilizing weapons systems; and in not only refusing to join the world in trying to do something about the severe environmental crisis but even aggressively seeking to escalate the threat, a form of criminality with literally no historical antecedent.
Not easy, but it can be done.
There have been other severe crises in human history, even if not on this scale. I’m old enough to remember the days when it seemed that the spread of fascism was inexorable — and I’m not referring to what is referred to as fascism today but something incomparably more awful. But it was overcome.
There are very impressive forms of activism and engagement taking place, mainly among younger people. That’s very heartening.
In the final analysis, we always have two choices: We can choose to descend into pessimism and apathy, assuming that nothing can be done, and helping to ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can grasp the opportunities that exist — and they do — and pursue them to the extent that we can, thus helping to contribute to a better world.
Not a very hard choice.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/noam-chomsky-interview/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Okay, so humor me because I haven't been participating in this thread, but tell me: What "racist attacks" has Trump been participating in?
I know about his willingness to defend the border. I don't consider that "racism", I consider that enforcing national sovereignty. I know about his wanting to keep people (not "Muslims") out from certain failed states. I don't consider that racism, I believe that is a reasonable response based on national security. I have heard of his referring to some nations as "shithole countries". If they're shithole countries (and I believe that they are) then how is commenting on the obvious anything other than commenting on their (failed) national policies and internal corruption? Not racism, as far as I can tell, just a correct reading of their situation.
You people seem to confuse nationality with racism. Then, in a fit of political correctness, you turn around and claim there's no such thing as race! To you, everything is race, and nothing is race!
Aside from people SAYING Trump is "racist" .. how is he racist?
This sounds to me like another RUSSIA!RUSSIA!RUSSIA! hysteria. Convince me otherwise.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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To a Democrat in 2019, anything anybody who has whitish skin has to say about anybody who doesn't have whitish skin is racist.
Doesn't matter that I'm a European Mutt, and aside from a trace amount of British blood in me, most of my ancestors were treated like shit off the boat when they got here. After generations of interbreeding, my DNA is all over the European map, from the west all the way to eastern European countries that are basically shitholes to this day.
My "joke" to myself back when I was deep in my self destructive behavioral patterns was that the German in me was trying to throw everybody else in the oven.
Hey. I think even crazy pink haired weirdos are allowed to laugh at that one. 
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:HAHAHAHA!!! Too funny SIX!
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
To a Democrat in 2019, anything anybody who has whitish skin has to say about anybody who doesn't have whitish skin is racist.
Doesn't matter that I'm a European Mutt, and aside from a trace amount of British blood in me, most of my ancestors were treated like shit off the boat when they got here. After generations of interbreeding, my DNA is all over the European map, from the west all the way to eastern European countries that are basically shitholes to this day.
My "joke" to myself back when I was deep in my self destructive behavioral patterns was that the German in me was trying to throw everybody else in the oven.
Hey. I think even crazy pink haired weirdos are allowed to laugh at that one.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Still, it would be nice if somebody like SECOND ... who has spent countless posts diligently throwing shit against the wall ... or WISHY or REAVERBOT who are ever on the lookout for anything that smacks of NAZI! .... or CC, with his post=modern sensibilities ... would take some of those feelz and provide me with a condensed version ... quotes or something ... that demonsrate the point that Trump is a "racist".
SECOND in particular - if he has read only 10% of what he quotes here, he must have some particularly trenchant quotes or links that would make the point.
SECOND, I'm finally ready to read some of your posts! Are you ready to provide me with some pointed facts?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, so humor me because I haven't been participating in this thread, but tell me: What "racist attacks" has Trump been participating in?
Must be a slow day at the Sniglets household.
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Quote:So, you got nothing.
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, so humor me because I haven't been participating in this thread, but tell me: What "racist attacks" has Trump been participating in?
NEXT ...?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:So, you got nothing.
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, so humor me because I haven't been participating in this thread, but tell me: What "racist attacks" has Trump been participating in?
NEXT ...?
No really - we posted a link (maybe even the bulk of the article) that had reference's to instances of Trump's racism. I believe you even posted in that thread....? So yeah, must be a slow day at your ranch to want to repeat things.
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It didn't have instances of Trump's racism because there are no instances of Trump's racism on display.
Muppet.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Okay, so humor me because I haven't been participating in this thread, but tell me: What "racist attacks" has Trump been participating in? - SIGNY
So, you got nothing.
NEXT ...? -
No really - we posted a link (maybe even the bulk of the article) that had reference's to instances of Trump's racism. I believe you even posted in that thread....? So yeah, must be a slow day at your ranch to want to repeat things.- CC
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:Is it Racism? Or is Trump out of his tiny mind? You decide:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
It didn't have instances of Trump's racism because there are no instances of Trump's racism on display.
Muppet.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Trump postpones Denmark trip after prime minister declines to sell him Greenland
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-postpones-denmark-trip-after-pri
me-minister-declines-to-sell-him-greenland/2019/08/20/ef900924-c3a8-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html
President Trump on Tuesday abruptly called off a trip to Denmark, announcing in a tweet that he was postponing the visit because the country’s leader was not interested in selling him Greenland.
The move comes two days after Trump told reporters that owning Greenland “would be nice” for the United States from a strategic perspective.
Greenland is a self-governing country that is part of the kingdom of Denmark.
In his tweet, Trump said that while Denmark is “a very special country with incredible people,” he is postponing his scheduled meeting with Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen based on her statement “that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland.”
“The Prime Minister was able to save a great deal of expense and effort for both the United States and Denmark by being so direct,” Trump added. “I thank her for that and look forward to rescheduling sometime in the future!” (Presumably when Denmark feels like selling Greenland. But who knows with Trump what he meant?)
He said Sunday that his visit was not related to his interest in Greenland.
“Not for this reason at all,” he said.
But his Tuesday night tweets made clear that the central purpose of his trip had in fact been discussion of a U.S. purchase of the massive, glaciered island.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Almost four decades ago then-candidate George H.W. Bush used the phrase “voodoo economic policy” to describe Ronald Reagan’s claim that cutting taxes for the rich would pay for itself. He was more prescient than he could have imagined.
For voodoo economics isn’t just a doctrine based on magical thinking. It’s the ultimate policy zombie, a belief that seemingly can’t be killed by evidence. It has failed every time its proponents have tried to put it into practice, but it just keeps shambling along. In fact, at this point it has eaten the brains of every significant figure in the Republican Party. Even Susan Collins, the least right-wing G.O.P. senator (although that isn’t saying much), insisted that the 2017 tax cut would actually reduce the deficit.
During the 2016 campaign Donald Trump pretended to be different, claiming that he would actually raise taxes on the rich. Once in office, however, he immediately went full voodoo. In fact, he has taken magical thinking to a new level.
True, whenever tax cuts fail to produce the predicted miracle, their defenders come up with bizarre explanations for their failure.
My favorite until now came from Art Laffer, the original voodoo economist and recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why did George W. Bush’s tax-cutting presidency end not with a boom, but with the worst economic slump since the Great Depression? According to Laffer, blame rests with Barack Obama, even though the recession began more than a year before Obama took office. You see, according to Laffer, everyone lost confidence upon realizing that Obama might win the 2008 election.
But Trump has gone one better. As it has become increasingly clear that the results of his tax cut were disappointing — recent data revisions have marked down estimates of both G.D.P. and employment growth, to the point where it’s hard to see more than a brief sugar high from $2 trillion in borrowing — Trump has invented ever more creative ways to blame other people. In particular, he’s now claiming that the promised boom hasn’t arrived because his opponents are hexing the economy with bad thoughts: “The Democrats are trying to ‘will’ the Economy to be bad for purposes of the 2020 Election.”
More about why Trump is not getting the results he wants at www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/opinion/trump-payroll-tax-cut.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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An irony of Trump's presidency is that he's become a catalyst for progressive change
Some Democratic voters are looking for a candidate who can restore the optimism of the Obama era.
But what if the progressive champion they're looking for is already sitting in the White House?
Call it the audacity of President Trump: He is bringing more hope and change than Obama ever could.
I know, I know. For some people, this is blasphemy. Yet one of the biggest ironies of Trump's presidency is that he has become a more effective catalyst for progressive social change than Obama.
Trump has discredited core conservative beliefs, boosted the popularity of left-wing causes and caused millions of Americans to face ugly truths about racism and bigotry that they used to deny.
I never thought I'd say this. Maybe the deep, systemic changes that so many yearn for couldn't come through Obama's temperate, "No Drama Obama" approach. Maybe real change only comes through chaos and crisis -- Trump's leadership style.
Trump is, in some ways, unintentionally doing what Obama was supposed to do.
You can already see this in several areas. He did this first as a candidate when he repudiated some of the core beliefs of Reaganomics. He said he would never cut Social Security "like every other Republican," and vowed to raise taxes on wealthy people, like hedge fund managers. And he won with overwhelming Republican support, including moderates.
Trump's successful campaign showed that even conservative voters wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy and cherished their big government spending programs.
Then he did something else that Obama couldn't do: He made Obamacare popular.
During his first year in office, Trump led a yearlong quest to replace Obamacare. It failed because of an unexpected backlash. People started cherishing their big government health program once Trump threatened to take it away.
Now a new generation of Democratic leaders is walking a path that Trump, in an odd way, helped clear. They are talking about raising taxes on the wealthy, expanding government programs like Medicare and Medicaid and creating a "Green New Deal."
The public seems ready to follow. Public support for left-wing policy-making has reached a 60-year high.
Trump has pushed voting blocs into the arms of Democrats. His immigration policies ensure that Latinos, the nation's second-largest ethnic group, now lean decisively toward the Democratic party. His attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census also appears to be turning Asian Americans into reliable Democratic voters.
Trump also helped do something else that Obama couldn't. He revived the Obama Coalition, the group of young voters, women and racial minorities that first put Obama in office.
That coalition sat out the 2010 and 2014 midterms, leading to huge losses for the Democrats. They showed up, however, to oppose Trump and Republicans during the 2018 midterms. That election featured the highest voter turnout in a century, with young people voting in record numbers. Voter turnout in 2020 is expected to reach its highest level in decades -- some say since 1908.
More at www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/us/trump-obama-change-blake/index.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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lol. Nice article, CNN.
Looks like I might have been right. Again.
From the OP of my post about The Atlantic article, just 2 days ago:
Quote:
I'm wondering if we might see a trend of lefty news articles doing an about face on Trump, even going so far as to somewhat support him albeit with a very Trump-negative tone like there is in this article. They need to be subtle about it. They need to retain their viewership, but they know they need another four years of Trump.
They would actually have to, yanno, do some work if he loses.
Captain knows exactly what I'm talking about here, being the guy that puts money and ad revenue as the justification why censorship is happening left and right and why it's okay. Why stop there, bud? Why don't we see if I'm right and you start seeing your beloved MSM favorites start turning coat on you in the name of God Money too, shall we?
And there's layoffs left and right as it is. You're going to see most of the Voxes and the MotherJoneses completely closing up shop after 2020 if Democrats win. They'll be left without any fuel for their Pretty Hate Machine they just love firing up every day.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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President Trump has exposed a myth in American politics. That myth? That Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility. The deficit will reach $960 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, which ends on September 30.
Acting Chief of Staff and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who was once known as a fiscal hawk, has admitted the Trump administration is "spending a bunch of money on stuff we're not supposed to."
President Trump isn't the first Republican to break the mold -- he is just one of a long line of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan who have pushed for supply side tax policies, touting the idea that lower tax rates will boost economic growth. Throw in high rates of defense spending on top of that, and the delicate balance between taxes and spending is often thrown off kilter.
The only exception was President George H.W. Bush who spent an enormous amount of political capital to push for a deficit reduction package in 1990, which cost him much support among conservative Republicans.
There is a long record of Democratic presidents who have grappled with reducing the deficit.
President Jimmy Carter set the tone in the late 1970s by insisting on limited spending. President Bill Clinton left office with a huge federal surplus (which President Bush ate up through his 2001 tax cuts, eventually ending his second term with the deficit at over a trillion dollars) and President Barack Obama helped reduce the deficit from $1.4 trillion in 2009 to $485 billion in 2014, ending at $587 billion in 2016.
Democrats have a greater incentive than Republicans to balance the budget -- doing so allows them to introduce new social programs. Republicans have been comfortable creating massive deficits so to "starve the beast" of government, as Ronald Reagan's Budget Director David Stockman once said.
But the myth that Republicans care about deficits persists despite the historical record. Perhaps President Trump's clear record of profligacy will expose the myth once and for all and remind voters that the Republican rhetoric on fiscal responsibility is all talk.
www.cnn.com/2019/08/24/opinions/trump-deficit-gop-myth-zelizer/index.h
tml
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=oHcj
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
/opinions/
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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We're in big trouble.
I think the 2020 election iz not going to happen.
It will be clear that Trump will looz, so sumthing will happen to stop it.
Putin will shut down the communications networks, or the entire power grid.
Trump will then declare marshal law.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
We're in big trouble.
I think the 2020 election iz not going to happen.
It will be clear that Trump will looz, so sumthing will happen to stop it.
Putin will shut down the communications networks, or the entire power grid.
Trump will then declare marshal law.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
Alex Jones was saying the exact same thing about Obama, minus the Russia bent, before the 2016 election.
I bought it because I drank my IQ down to a constant 35 back then.
What's making you nuts today?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Trump's actual goals are copied by Boris Johnson. Seeing the goals repeated in another country makes it clearer what is actually going on inside Trump's and Boris's brains:
Boris Johnson has promised aggressive tax cuts. This is a government that intends to realign Britain to the US and is set to govern just like US Republicans – cut taxes first, then maintain spending to blow up the deficit before using that to justify far deeper spending cuts.
While Johnson is unconstrained by principle or the shackles of ideology, he leads a cabinet of the hard right of the Conservative party. They have dedicated a lifetime to hacking back the state and severing Britain’s ties with the European Union, and it seems unlikely that they are on board with a project of investment in public services. (Remember Trump's $1.5 Trillion infrastructure promise that never materialized? Boris's promise is as fake as Trump's. www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/29/trump-promised-1-5-tril
lion-in-infrastructure-spending-hes-1-percent-of-the-way-there/ )
So why would the public believe what Johnson says? The real secret of populists, from Donald Trump to Matteo Salvini to Johnson, is the conflation of transgression with truthfulness. The willingness to engage in bigotry and violate hard-won social norms against racist, homophobic or misogynistic language convinces people that these politicians “speak their mind” and “say what they think”. Paradoxically, their lack of virtue confirms their veracity.
Their bigotry is the result of calculation rather than miscalculation – and the predictable howls of outrage from critics only serves to amplify the message. The upcoming election will turn on whether Johnson is found out for what he is: Trump with a thesaurus, whose real agenda of a Brexit for the elite's benefit is disguised behind the thin veneer of a few spending announcements that come after a desperate decade of the degradation of Britain at home and abroad.
More at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/28/boris-johnson-election-p
rorogue-parliament-populist-majority
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
We're in big trouble.
I think the 2020 election iz not going to happen.
It will be clear that Trump will looz, so sumthing will happen to stop it.
Putin will shut down the communications networks, or the entire power grid.
Trump will then declare marshal law.
Alex Jones was saying the exact same thing about Obama, minus the Russia bent, before the 2016 election.
I bought it because I drank my IQ down to a constant 35 back then.
What's making you nuts today?
He's f*ckin' with you. Damn. There's 4 people on this forum that have absolutely no sense of humor.
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
We're in big trouble.
I think the 2020 election iz not going to happen.
It will be clear that Trump will looz, so sumthing will happen to stop it.
Putin will shut down the communications networks, or the entire power grid.
Trump will then declare marshal law.
Alex Jones was saying the exact same thing about Obama, minus the Russia bent, before the 2016 election.
I bought it because I drank my IQ down to a constant 35 back then.
What's making you nuts today?
He's f*ckin' with you. Damn. There's 4 people on this forum that have absolutely no sense of humor.
Wishy just claimed that she was joking around about something the other day too.
It's not a sense of humor problem, Captain.
The problem is that when they're "joking" it sounds exactly the same as when they're being serious.
Unless you're proposing that every single thing that JO and Wishy have posted in the last 3 years were a joke.
Did you actually read JO's front page for his campaign website in the last week? If he's joking here, than he's also turned his campaign website into a joke as well.
At the very top of his campaign homepage:
Quote:
We're in big trouble.
If it looks like Trump will lose the 2020 election, there will be no election.
His puppet master, Vladimir Putin, will prevent it one way or another,
with the eager cooperation of the Republican party.
It continues...
Quote:
The Democratic leaders in Congress are playing by the rules of a game that was swiped off the
table in 2016, thinking it is Politics as Usual - Dem v Rep, when in reality the game is
WAR - Putin v Uncle Sam. So, every move they make is worthless and foolish.
Even if they wake up and start fighting today, it's too late. If they'd started impeachment proceedings
on the 1st day they took control of Congress and fought like rabid wolverines to bring down Trump,
Mitch McConnell and everybody else involved in the TrumPutin Conspiracy and following cover up,
we may have had a chance.
Instead, they sat and continue to sit by while Trump and McConnell charge full speed ahead to place
lackeys in key positions, hollow out our agencies and pack the courts with activist 'conservative'
judges. Republicans across the country gerrymander, purge voter rolls, shut down polling places,
change laws and do everything else they can think of to tilt the next election in their favor.
Democratic congressman Adam Schiff went on Morning Joe the other day to say "there's a growing
level of support amongst the Democratic caucus that our investigations may lead to impeachment".
So, the house is being burnt down by a gang of pyromaniacs and they are debating whether
or not to put some water in their squirt gun.
This is the party that's supposed to be our champion in the arena against the bad guys?
We are in BIG trouble.
http://www.7532020.com/
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:I'm old enough to remember white democratic union workers shouting 'America, love it or leave it!!', as is President Trump. There's nothing racist about that.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-ra
cist-tweets-aoc-ilhan-omar-baltimore-al-sharpton-jamestown-a9027306.html
Donald Trump has claimed he is the “least racist person in the world” despite his recent comments attacking politicians of colour and civil rights figures.
The president – who made the remarks on Tuesday as he departed to attend an event marking the 400th anniversary of the first legislative assembly in Virginia – has faced criticism from Democrats for racist attacks, including tweets hitting out at four politicians of colour in the House of Representatives known as “the squad”.
Since those initial attacks – telling Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib to “go back” to where they came from
Quote:What if it's true?
– Mr Trump has lashed out at civil rights leader and congressman Elijah Cummings over the state of his district, which includes the city of Baltimore. Mr Trump said that Mr Cummings’ Baltimore district – which is predominantly black – is “rat infested”.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQwCBv_bj-b4iHiwz
zcObE5EB8MYCCGX7Xh_lsqz3aNn6E3cHEL
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR2xPSd9x7oIKADSx
WBmFubnIKvDQwdKYqR6d8qBYFAX-Ji14qe
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTNKsQIf_VnUDlqTI
u-qtkmnQrCVkiEuIvCaQXbQywMJm2jJIJH
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSevpd00wOnHgpN3u
w7gMLvTqNOc-DgH3hqoPxAYFbrF6csXC6l
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR2xPSd9x7oIKADSx
WBmFubnIKvDQwdKYqR6d8qBYFAX-Ji14qe
Quote:Obviously he doesn't like Sharpton.
Most recently, Mr Trump attacked Reverend Al Sharpton after the civil rights leader posted a photo of himself heading to Baltimore. The president called him a “con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score ... Hates Whites & Cops!”
Quote:Wouldn't that make them racist?
Having travelled to Jamestown, Virginia, Mr Trump delivered remarks to mark the First Representative Legislative Assembly, also known as the House of Burgesses, that took place in 1619. That legislative body was the first assembly by English settlers in the new world.
During his speech, Mr Trump remarked on the horrors of slavery. “We remember every sacred soul who suffered the horrors of slavery, and the anguish of bondage,” Mr Trump said. He also honoured African-American contributions to US history and quoted the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
However, Virginia’s black state legislators boycotted Mr Trump’s appearance.
Quote:These are claims - not evidence.
A statement from the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus said it was “impossible to ignore the emblem of hate and disdain that the president represents” while he continues to “promulgate policies that harm marginalised communities and use racist and xenophobic rhetoric”.
Here's an exercise in what constitutes a claim:
I AM GOD. And you have damned yourself to hell unless you change.
Quote:Whom THEY claim as 'their own', to be exact.
The legislators took part in another ceremony about 96 km (60 miles) away in Richmond, marking the 1619 arrival of the first enslaved Africans into Virginia. Mr Trump said the legislators are going “against their own people”.
Quote:Hyperbole? Sure. Racist? No.
He also claimed that African Americans “love the job” he is doing and are “happy as hell” with his recent attacks on Baltimore and Mr Cummings. “The African American people have been calling the White House. They have never been so happy as what a president has done,” Mr Trump said.
Quote:
Mr Trump’s Jamestown speech was also interrupted by Democrat Virginia delegate Ibraheem
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
He's f*ckin' with you. Damn. There's 4 people on this forum that have absolutely no sense of humor.
Wishy just claimed that she was joking around about something the other day too.
It's not a sense of humor problem, Captain.
The problem is that when they're "joking" it sounds exactly the same as when they're being serious.
Unless you're proposing that every single thing that JO and Wishy have posted in the last 3 years were a joke.
Did you actually read JO's front page for his campaign website in the last week? If he's joking here, than he's also turned his campaign website into a joke as well.
At the very top of his campaign homepage:Quote:
We're in big trouble.
If it looks like Trump will lose the 2020 election, there will be no election.
His puppet master, Vladimir Putin, will prevent it one way or another,
with the eager cooperation of the Republican party.
It continues...Quote:
The Democratic leaders in Congress are playing by the rules of a game that was swiped off the
table in 2016, thinking it is Politics as Usual - Dem v Rep, when in reality the game is
WAR - Putin v Uncle Sam. So, every move they make is worthless and foolish.
Even if they wake up and start fighting today, it's too late. If they'd started impeachment proceedings
on the 1st day they took control of Congress and fought like rabid wolverines to bring down Trump,
Mitch McConnell and everybody else involved in the TrumPutin Conspiracy and following cover up,
we may have had a chance.
Instead, they sat and continue to sit by while Trump and McConnell charge full speed ahead to place
lackeys in key positions, hollow out our agencies and pack the courts with activist 'conservative'
judges. Republicans across the country gerrymander, purge voter rolls, shut down polling places,
change laws and do everything else they can think of to tilt the next election in their favor.
Democratic congressman Adam Schiff went on Morning Joe the other day to say "there's a growing
level of support amongst the Democratic caucus that our investigations may lead to impeachment".
So, the house is being burnt down by a gang of pyromaniacs and they are debating whether
or not to put some water in their squirt gun.
This is the party that's supposed to be our champion in the arena against the bad guys?
We are in BIG trouble.
http://www.7532020.com/
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Yep, read almost all of Jo's stuff, and Wishy's too. You gotta realize it's just a stupid forum. I know you know and I know it's hard to tell, but just keep it in mind next time. Hyperbole - people say a lot of sh*t for effect, and a lot of Jo's stuff, while based on his truth beliefs, seems to have a lot of humor attached as well (black as it might be).
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Quote:1kiki, I look forward to you shooting down every single instance of Trumpian racism by claiming it is the opposite. Doing that should keep you busy for a minute, but if you want more examples to shoot down of Trump's racism, then google evidence that trump is racist.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Where's the EVIDENCE?
Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List, Updated
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.
html
Racial views of Donald Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
Donald Trump’s long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2019
www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history
Trump and racism: What do the data say?
www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2019/08/14/trump-and-racism-what-do-the-
data-say/
Trump's No Racist, Just a Guy Who Keeps Saying Racist Things
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/trumps-no-racist-just-a-guy-who
-keeps-saying-racist-things.html
Republicans Baffled Why Trump Keeps Saying Racist Things
In 2015, Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot.” In the intervening years, Trump has done nothing to refute this characterization, yet Graham has refashioned himself as Trump’s favorite senatorial pet. In the wake of Trump’s latest racist tirade, Graham appeared on Fox & Friends to deliver a supportive pep talk to the president. “We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists,” he ranted, in a performance so obsequious that a delighted Trump tweeted out quotations of it in four parts.
The most revealing line in Graham’s commentary, surrounded by repeated smears of Trump’s targets, was his brief exhortation of the president to slightly alter his rhetoric. “Aim higher! We don’t need to know anything about them personally, talk about their policies,” he urged, like a dad motivating his son to go out there and be the best darn racist demagogue he can be.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Woodstock Generation was a Letdown
It’s hard not to think about how little Woodstock really accomplished. A new, relentlessly self-mythologizing documentary about the festival that opened in theaters earlier this summer calls Woodstock, in its title, “Three Days That Defined a Generation.” Indeed, in the years following the festival, the notion of the “Woodstock Generation” as a moniker for the people born between 1946 and 1964 became commonplace.
But the grandiose Woodstock ideals hardly seem to have defined the Woodstock Generation — if a generation can be defined, anyway. It’s dangerous to generalize, but based on simple data, it’s difficult to imagine characterizing that same group of Americans, on the whole, as peace-loving, antiwar communitarians, filled with hope for the future, espousing the simple joys of direct activism coupled with a modest, non-acquisitive life.
The intervening decades brought quite the opposite, with the Woodstock Generation growing likely to favor protecting gun rights, fighting in wars you may believe to be morally wrong, strong border security, and racial homogeneity, while harboring doubts about climate change. And the shift culminated in the age of Donald Trump — who was 23 when Woodstock was happening but wouldn’t have been caught within 100 miles of Bethel, New York, that weekend. (Queens is just over 110 miles from Bethel.)
Every generation has its strong points and blind spots; I’m not suggesting that boomers are uniquely worse or better than other generations or, to be honest, unique at all. But watching Woodstock in 2019 certainly gives me pause, thinking about how everyone onscreen is now either 50 years older or dead and American life doesn’t seem to have gotten more peaceful or more joyful. The film only makes it clear that the event didn’t “prove” anything. Yes, Baez’s designation of Woodstock as a “joy festival” was something to remember. But from where we stand today, that joy was short-lived — a blip, rather than a trendline.
Interestingly, it’s Baez, in a recent New York Times interview, whose look back at Woodstock seems the most clear-eyed to me. She insisted to the interviewer that whatever else it was, Woodstock was no revolution. “Nobody was really thinking about the serious issues,” she said, noting that “a revolution, I would think, involves taking risks and going to jail and all that stuff that happened in the Civil Rights movement and the draft resistance.”
More at www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/8/13/20758555/woodstock-50-anniversary-
summer-of-love-documentary-generation
The Woodstock Generation Elected Donald Trump
www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2016/11/10/the-demographic-blowback-
that-elected-donald-trump/
Baby Boomers: The Gloomiest Generation
www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/06/25/baby-boomers-the-gloomiest-generati
on/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Reagan administration opened up huge deficits thanks to regressive tax cuts. The Clinton administration closed those deficits with a mix of tax hikes and spending restraint. Then Bush opened up huge deficits with regressive tax cuts. The Obama administration closed them with a mix of tax hikes and spending restraint. And now Trump is opening up huge deficits with regressive tax cuts.
If regressive tax cuts were actually paired with spending cuts, they would be unpopular and wouldn’t pass. But if you let Republicans explode the deficit and then pressure Democrats to narrow it, you can obtain a sustainable tax-cutting agenda.
Whether the next president is Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris or someone else, they will likely want to prioritize expansion of health insurance coverage or investments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But it won’t happen because those priorities cost money. Instead, reducing Trump’s deficit will be the priority forced upon the President. The Democratic President will be faced with very loud and combative GOP Senators and the leftover GOP members of the Federal Reserve who fight to the death to reduce the deficit, although those same Republicans didn't even care to mildly express themselves about Trump's deficits.
www.vox.com/2019/8/27/20834878/bill-dudley-trump-fed-trade-war
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List, Updated
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.
html
Ahh, thanks. That's the link I posted last time. It took me 2 seconds using a site called "Google" - pretty amazing site. Last time when I posted it I believe it was the agitator SIGNORANT that tried to shoot down every instance of Trump's obvious racist behavior (or maybe it was 6?).
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T 
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Beyond winning concessions from China, Trump's biggest political objective for 2019 remains getting the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, through Congress. A victory for the deal, which still faces heavy skepticism from progressive Democrats in the House, would remove one big piece of uncertainty for businesses with supply chains that run throughout North America. And it would give Trump a huge talking point for the campaign trail to show he was able to replace the prior North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA.
But the legislative calendar is growing very short for the year and the White House knows Democrats will be even less interested in handing Trump a victory ahead of an election.
“Once you get into the 2020 campaign, it is pretty hard to see Democrats passing the USMCA in an election year. I do think there is more optimism now about it passing this fall,” a senior administration official said.
www.politico.com/story/2019/09/04/trump-economy-recession-2020-1479978
In the meantime, NAFTA, not USMCA, governs the relation between the three countries of North America. What is not to like about that? Especially because there is no discernible difference between Bill Clinton's NAFTA and Trump's USMCA, except to Canadian diary farmers and Wisconsin cheese makers?
Wisconsin's Paul Ryan condemns Trump in “American Carnage” by Tim Alberta of Politico. Alberta wrote that the former Speaker of the House, who retired from Congress in 2018, could not stand the idea of another two years with the Republican president and saw retirement as the “escape hatch.” Ryan is quoted saying: “I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government. I wanted to scold him all the time.”
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/donald-trump-push
es-trade-deal-in-wisconsin-after-unloading-on/article_c78ea529-9f93-5a88-8c37-d42c8c463449.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Where's the EVIDENCE?
Quote:No, I would probably say they were CLAIMS, not evidence, since you and the MSM seem completely unable to distinguish the two.
Originally posted by SECOND:
1kiki, I look forward to you shooting down every single instance of Trumpian racism by claiming it is the opposite.
Quote:
Doing that should keep you busy for a minute, but if you want more examples to shoot down of Trump's racism, then google evidence that trump is racist.
I'm happy to take on the challenge. And I'll see your talking points and raise you a discussion with actual - yanno - facts.
The NYTimes
This is supposedly, according to the NYTimes, not just 'a' list of Trump's racism. NOPE! - it's THE DEFINITIVE !! list.
But first, a word about the NYTimes and their work as a propaganda arm.
I won't delve into their sordid past promoting the Iraq War. Everyone who has a memory bigger than that of a gnat remembers their shameful work.
Nor will I delve into their glory hole of work decrying Trump's collusion with Russia, even though the facts of the Mueller report were so painful I'm sure most of you have wiped the entire 2+ years' endlessly flogged topic from memory.
No, I'll simply point out their NEW anti-Trump propaganda narrative http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=63225 If you're wondering why Russia died and is replaced with Muh Racisim...
Now, on to the topic at hand ...
Quote:
Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List, Updated
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.
html
The very first example about housing discrimination in this screed
Quote:actually links to ANOTHER NYTimes story which specifically exonerates D. Trump as racist.
Trump’s real-estate company tried to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans in the 1970s and gave preferential treatment to whites, according to the federal government.
Quote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-ra
cist.html
In fairness, those suits date from long ago, and the discriminatory policies were probably put in place not by Donald Trump but by his father.
The second example has no names, and no links.
Quote:And not one link despite 'multiple sources'. And an anonymous quote of a quote from a 'former manager', unlinked to anything at all.
Trump treated black employees at his casinos differently from whites, according to multiple sources.
The third example is about the Central Park Five, which we're supposed to ASSUME is about Trump's singular ideas of guilt due to racism, even though the linked story within this list provides both examples of the NYPD as well as the DA who also maintained the 5 were guilty; along with examples of why someone might hold onto the idea for non-racist reasons.
Quote:This is from the link in 'the definitive list' to another NYTimes story, which is the (partial?) ad quoted from that story.
In 1989, Trump took out ads in New York newspapers urging the death penalty for five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park
Quote:Oddly enough, when I take out the interpolated "he wrote" and put the entire quote into google (“Muggers and murderers should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes”), I get this: “Muggers and murderers ... should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/why-trump-doubled-down-on-t
he-central-park-five.html
“Muggers and murderers,” he wrote, “should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
The very first example about housing discrimination in this screedQuote:actually links to ANOTHER NYTimes story which specifically exonerates D. Trump as racist.
Trump’s real-estate company tried to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans in the 1970s and gave preferential treatment to whites, according to the federal government.Quote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-ra
cist.html
In fairness, those suits date from long ago, and the discriminatory policies were probably put in place not by Donald Trump but by his father.
1kiki, you are a flood of nonsense. The article actually says you are crazy:
"Here we have a man who for more than four decades has been repeatedly associated with racial discrimination or bigoted comments about minorities, some of them made on television for all to see. While any one episode may be ambiguous, what emerges over more than four decades is a narrative arc, a consistent pattern — and I don’t see what else to call it but racism."
www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-racist.htm
l
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:fify
Originally posted by SECOND:
blah blah blah blah ...
Just so you know, there's a saying that goes around some scientific circles and it goes like this: you can see anything if you use the right filters.
But I suspect that's too esoteric for you, so I'll quote from the movie Pi (the mathematical symbol): "You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere."
That's you.
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reposting to help me remember to finish and to get it past SLOPPY-SECOND's trolling
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Where's the EVIDENCE?
Quote:No, I would probably say they were CLAIMS, not evidence, since you and the MSM seem completely unable to distinguish the two.
Originally posted by SECOND:
1kiki, I look forward to you shooting down every single instance of Trumpian racism by claiming it is the opposite.
Quote:
Doing that should keep you busy for a minute, but if you want more examples to shoot down of Trump's racism, then google evidence that trump is racist.
I'm happy to take on the challenge. And I'll see your talking points and raise you a discussion with actual - yanno - facts.
The NYTimes
This is supposedly, according to the NYTimes, not just 'a' list of Trump's racism. NOPE! - it's THE DEFINITIVE !! list.
But first, a word about the NYTimes and their work as a propaganda arm.
I won't delve into their sordid past promoting the Iraq War. Everyone who has a memory bigger than that of a gnat remembers their shameful work.
Nor will I delve into their glory hole of work decrying Trump's collusion with Russia, even though the facts of the Mueller report were so painful I'm sure most of you have wiped the entire 2+ years' endlessly flogged topic from memory.
No, I'll simply point out their NEW anti-Trump propaganda narrative http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=63225 If you're wondering why Russia died and is replaced with Muh Racisim...
Now, on to the topic at hand ...
Quote:
Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List, Updated
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.
html
The very first example about housing discrimination in this screed
Quote:actually links to ANOTHER NYTimes story which specifically exonerates D. Trump as racist.
Trump’s real-estate company tried to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans in the 1970s and gave preferential treatment to whites, according to the federal government.
Quote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-ra
cist.html
In fairness, those suits date from long ago, and the discriminatory policies were probably put in place not by Donald Trump but by his father.
The second example has no names, and no links.
Quote:And not one link despite 'multiple sources'. And an anonymous quote of a quote from a 'former manager', unlinked to anything at all.
Trump treated black employees at his casinos differently from whites, according to multiple sources.
The third example is about the Central Park Five, which we're supposed to ASSUME is about Trump's singular ideas of guilt due to racism, even though the linked story within this list provides both examples of the NYPD as well as the DA who also maintained the 5 were guilty; along with examples of why someone might hold onto the idea for non-racist reasons.
Quote:This is from the link in 'the definitive list' to another NYTimes story, which is the (partial?) ad quoted from that story.
In 1989, Trump took out ads in New York newspapers urging the death penalty for five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park
Quote:Oddly enough, when I take out the interpolated "he wrote" and put the entire quote into google (“Muggers and murderers should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes”), I get this: “Muggers and murderers ..
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/why-trump-doubled-down-on-t
he-central-park-five.html
“Muggers and murderers,” he wrote, “should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”
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Quote:1kiki, Donald Trump claims that he’s “the least racist person.” He said it to block the facts about his actions as President. Senator Jeff Merkley said the president’s anti-immigration rhetoric is rooted in racism. When asked if he thought President Trump was a racist, Merkley responded without hesitation, “Yes, I do.”
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Just so you know, there's a saying that goes around some scientific circles and it goes like this: you can see anything if you use the right filters.
But I suspect that's too esoteric for you, so I'll quote from the movie Pi (the mathematical symbol): "You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere."
That's you.
Quoted from “Our President Is Unstable”: Sen. Jeff Merkley Makes the Case That “It’s Getting Worse”
Senator Jeff Merkley’s blunt warning about Trump’s policies and mental stability
www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/our-president-is-unstable-sen-jef
f-merkley-makes-the-case-that-its-getting-worse/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:1kiki, remember Trump saying he could not stop anybody at the Mexican border until he got a new wall? It was a negotiating ploy with Congress, but all of Central America heard Trump say it, over and over, because he couldn't shut-up and think through the consequences of his words. Central Americans went North to test the truth of Trump's words. Trump's words caused a massive migration north to the border. If Trump wasn't out of his mind, and too stupid to boot, he'd already have his $25 billion for a wall, because he had an agreement with the Democrats for the money, but only if he also reformed the immigration laws about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). But then Trump changed his mind, thinking he could get the money by shutting down the government in December 2018. Do you remember that shutdown, 1kiki? One of the stupidest Presidential moves in history.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
reposting to help me remember to finish and to get it past SLOPPY-SECOND's trolling
Trump wall - all you need to know about US border in seven charts
www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46824649
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:AND WHAT "ACTIONS" ARE THOSE? BE SPECIFIC.
Just so you know, there's a saying that goes around some scientific circles and it goes like this: you can see anything if you use the right filters.
But I suspect that's too esoteric for you, so I'll quote from the movie Pi (the mathematical symbol): "You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere."
That's you. - KIKI
1kiki, Donald Trump claims that he’s “the least racist person.” He said it to block the facts about his actions as President.
I'll bet you never answer the question with your own opinion but you'll link some irrelevant article, like you did here:
Quote:So as
Senator Jeff Merkley said the president’s anti-immigration rhetoric is rooted in racism. When asked if he thought President Trump was a racist, Merkley responded without hesitation, “Yes, I do.”
evidence" we get a person's OPINION?
Well, that makes as much sense as believing YOUR opinion!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:1kiki and Signym: I can see why the hell the two of you are such failures in real life. You make your decisions like it is some courtroom drama, as if there was a Supreme Court which will be going step-by-step over your written decisions. You're afraid of making a terrible mistake that will destroy your reputation with that superior court of law. That is neither an efficient nor effective way to make decisions about people, investments, business. Trump is a goddamn racist. Just quite arguing that he is not. Everybody I know who voted for him knows Trump for what he is. Maybe you didn't vote for him, so you still have questions about Trump. People who decided to vote for Trump have made up their minds years ago and haven't revised it to "undecided whether Trump is a racist". They know he is a racist. They know it is bad to admit to racism, but that is why they remain in love with him -- he's bad and he is one of them.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
AND WHAT "ACTIONS" ARE THOSE? BE SPECIFIC.
I'll bet you never answer the question with your own opinion but you'll link some irrelevant article, like you did here:
So as evidence" we get a person's OPINION?
Well, that makes as much sense as believing YOUR opinion!
www.businessinsider.com/amazon-efficient-decision-making-jeff-bezos-20
19-3
Trump also cheats on his taxes, too, as do his voters, unless their employer makes cheating impossible by giving the IRS a correct W-2 with a correct Social Security number. Trump is one with his voters, except he can report whatever phony-baloney numbers will best lower his taxes to the IRS because he is self-employed. That is why Trump keeps his tax returns a secret from professional auditors who can't be fired when accounting discrepancies are discovered and why he will unendingly litigate the secrecy of his tax returns, despite many previous promises to publicize his returns. As President, all those promises are void.
https://thetylt.com/politics/trump-tax-fraud-2019
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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reposting to help me remember to finish and to get it past SLOPPY-SECOND's trolling
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Where's the EVIDENCE?
Quote:No, I would probably say they were CLAIMS, not evidence, since you and the MSM seem completely unable to distinguish the two.
Originally posted by SECOND:
1kiki, I look forward to you shooting down every single instance of Trumpian racism by claiming it is the opposite.
Quote:
Doing that should keep you busy for a minute, but if you want more examples to shoot down of Trump's racism, then google evidence that trump is racist.
I'm happy to take on the challenge. And I'll see your talking points and raise you a discussion with actual - yanno - facts.
The NYTimes
This is supposedly, according to the NYTimes, not just 'a' list of Trump's racism. NOPE! - it's THE DEFINITIVE !! list.
But first, a word about the NYTimes and their work as a propaganda arm.
I won't delve into their sordid past promoting the Iraq War. Everyone who has a memory bigger than that of a gnat remembers their shameful work.
Nor will I delve into their glory hole of work decrying Trump's collusion with Russia, even though the facts of the Mueller report were so painful I'm sure most of you have wiped the entire 2+ years' endlessly flogged topic from memory.
No, I'll simply point out their NEW anti-Trump propaganda narrative http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=63225 If you're wondering why Russia died and is replaced with Muh Racisim...
Now, on to the topic at hand ...
Quote:
Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List, Updated
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.
html
The very first example about housing discrimination in this screed
Quote:actually links to ANOTHER NYTimes story which specifically exonerates D. Trump as racist.
Trump’s real-estate company tried to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans in the 1970s and gave preferential treatment to whites, according to the federal government.
Quote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-ra
cist.html
In fairness, those suits date from long ago, and the discriminatory policies were probably put in place not by Donald Trump but by his father.
The second example has no names, and no links.
Quote:And not one link despite 'multiple sources'. And an anonymous quote of a quote from a 'former manager', unlinked to anything at all.
Trump treated black employees at his casinos differently from whites, according to multiple sources.
The third example is about the Central Park Five, which we're supposed to ASSUME is about Trump's singular ideas of guilt due to racism, even though the linked story within this list provides both examples of the NYPD as well as the DA who also maintained the 5 were guilty; along with examples of why someone might hold onto the idea for non-racist reasons.
Quote:This is from the link in 'the definitive list' to another NYTimes story, which is the (partial?) ad quoted from that story.
In 1989, Trump took out ads in New York newspapers urging the death penalty for five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park
Quote:Oddly enough, when I take out the interpolated "he wrote" and put the entire quote into google (“Muggers and murderers should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes”), I get this: “Muggers and murderers
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/why-trump-doubled-down-on-t
he-central-park-five.html
“Muggers and murderers,” he wrote, “should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”
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Actual Tax Fraud or "Incompetent" Accounting? Trump doesn't want you to know which it is:
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), a senior Democratic member of the House Ways and Means Committee, says the tax returns could reveal how Trump does business, including if he and his company have employed dubious tax strategies. “Lying and tax avoidance appear to be a way of life for Trump,” he notes. “His tax returns could indicate the role tax-dodging plays in Trump’s overall business strategy. Perhaps this is another reason why Trump and his Republican enablers are so intent on defying the law to keep them hidden.”
The committee revealed a tantalizing bit of information about its inquiry: A whistleblower had come forward with “credible allegations of ‘evidence of possible misconduct’ — specifically, potential ‘inappropriate efforts to influence’ the mandatory audit program” by the IRS of Trump.
Donald Trump’s massive debts — he owes hundreds of millions of dollars — are the subject of continuous congressional and journalistic scrutiny. But for years, one Trump loan has been particularly mystifying: a debt of more than $50 million that Trump claims he owes to one of his own companies. According to tax and financial experts, the loan, which Trump has never fully explained, might be part of a controversial tax avoidance scheme known as debt parking. Yet a Mother Jones investigation has uncovered information that raises questions about the very existence of this loan, presenting the possibility that this debt was concocted as a ploy to evade income taxes — a move that could constitute tax fraud.
More at www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/donald-trump-has-never-explained-
a-mysterious-50-million-chicago-unit-acquisition-loan-is-it-evidence-of-tax-fraud/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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President Donald Trump canceled a planned state visit to Poland on Thursday, saying his presence was needed in the United States to deal with Hurricane Dorian. But he actually went golfing. This was an unfortunate choice, more as a superfluous diplomatic insult than as a situation where the president’s input was substantively needed. To the extent that he did anything at all related to the hurricane he mostly contributed confusion by saying, falsely, that Alabama was in the path of the storm.
Though all recent presidents have had a somewhat inexplicable love of golf, when Trump goes golfing it’s different from normal presidential golfing because he golfs at luxury golf clubs that he owns.
This means that when the White House senior staff and the Secret Service do things like rent golf carts to ensure that the president remains safe and well-briefed while on the links, it’s not just an expenditure of public funds but an expenditure that directly lines Trump’s pockets. This just about the most straightforward example of political corruption that one can imagine. (When it turned out that Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was making companies that contracted with the city buy copies of her book, she was drummed out of office almost immediately.)
But in the United States of Trump, it wasn’t even the most egregious golf-related act to stem from the ill-fated trip to Poland. Yet nobody in any position of influence in politics seems to be trying to do anything about it.
Mike Pence’s egregious golf-related trip to Dublin
While Trump spread misinformation and panic between rounds of golf, Vice President Mike Pence went to Poland in Trump’s stead. His team decided that it would make sense for him to stop over in Ireland on his way back, stay two nights, and do a day of meetings in Ireland between. The meetings are, of course, in Dublin, which is both the capital of Ireland and by far its largest city.
But Pence, curiously, is not staying in Dublin. Instead, his two nights will be spent at a Trump-owned luxury resort that’s about a three-hour drive away from the capital city — the plan is to commute cross-country by air to make the meetings work.
More about Mike Pence staying three hours outside of Dublin so Trump can make money at www.vox.com/2019/9/3/20845320/mike-pence-ireland-doonbeg-trump-golf
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Hope he had a nice day.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
1kiki and Signym: I can see why the hell the two of you are such failures in real life.
What are you yammering out about now, ya old bitch?
They seem to have lead pretty successful lives to me. Not everybody can live up to the make believe fantasy life you've created for your online persona from your mom's basement.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:The scandal here is not bad transportation logistics but the theft of public funds by VP Mike Pence. The true analogy to what Pence is doing would be something like stealing money from the office expense account and using it to bribe his boss to give him a good performance review. Trump has actually been thinking about dumping Pence, who needs to stay on Trump's good side if he wants to be reelected VP and have a real future as the next Republican President. Pence staying at a Trump Resort in Ireland would help convince Trump to keep Pence as his running mate in 2020.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Hope he had a nice day.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/09/05/should-donald-trump-ditch-mik
e-pence-and-run-with-someone-else/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The scandal here is not bad transportation logistics but the theft of public funds by VP Mike Pence. The true analogy to what Pence is doing would be something like stealing money from the office expense account and using it to bribe his boss to give him a good performance review. Trump has actually been thinking about dumping Pence, who needs to stay on Trump's good side if he wants to be reelected VP and have a real future as the next Republican President. Pence staying at a Trump Resort in Ireland would help convince Trump to keep Pence as his running mate in 2020.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Hope he had a nice day.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/09/05/should-donald-trump-ditch-mik
e-pence-and-run-with-someone-else/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
lol
A politician stealing from working class Americans? Ya don't say?
I don't have enough fingers on my two fucking hands to count how many times that happens per second in this country.
Is that all you've got now that the Russian narrative is dead?
Is it, Second?
You'd better hope not. And the Democrats had better hope not either, since they spent the last three years doing nothing but bitching and whining about a false conspiracy theory that's going nowhere and not actually coming up with a single good reason to vote for them.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:You demonstrated what is fundamentally wrong with Republicans, 6ix. They see Russian interference with the 2016 and 2020 elections as nothing. They see a case of real corruption, like Pence staying at a Trump Resort for no good reason but to put money in Trump's pocket, and they just shrug is if it is nothing. The Irish saw the Pence visit as “like pulling out all the stops for a much-anticipated visitor to your home and thinking it has been a great success until somebody discovers he shat on the new carpet in the spare room, the one you bought specially for him. As Pence read from the autocue and Irish eyes definitely stopped smiling, it was clear he was channeling His Master’s Voice. Trump is a fan of Brexit and of Boris.” It is not nothing, 6ix. It is a big deal to deliberately screw up an election and to shit on Ireland.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol
A politician stealing from working class Americans? Ya don't say?
I don't have enough fingers on my two fucking hands to count how many times that happens per second in this country.
Is that all you've got now that the Russian narrative is dead?
Is it, Second?
You'd better hope not. And the Democrats had better hope not either, since they spent the last three years doing nothing but bitching and whining about a false conspiracy theory that's going nowhere and not actually coming up with a single good reason to vote for them.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/05/mike-pence-ireland-shat-on-the
-carpet
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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