U.S. Politics: Are You Threadening Me Master Jedi?

[Darth Richard II]

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I shouldn't laugh, but damn if that ain't some fucked up shit to have to put in a middleschool textbook.

Germans and Russians can try the old 'bad guys at the top, following orders' excuse which is pretty flimsy. But the Japanese were pretty all-in on WWII. Like, ALL in.

Yes well I've met kids from Japan that think they won WW2. I won't even get onto their views on Pearl Harbor.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

As opposed to Trump's plan of having the stock market appreciate several times over any sane reasonable value, then bursting, putting us back into a liquidity trap, and then having the Republican spew out flamin' nonsense for 10 more years.
What a clown

You know it's a problem when some center right pundits are worried that we could have some serious problems in 12-18 months.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

I think it's pretty hard to differentiate Trump's beliefs from Cotton's.  At least when Trump is listening to that tiny pathetic Nibbler piece of shit known as Stephen Miller, which is unfortunately all too often.

And at some point, you are accountable for the company you keep.  Especially when you select them to be part of your presidential staff.  There's a reason the white spremacists and Nazi wannabes swarmed to Trump like sranc to bumbling tsurumah.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

You really did elect the biggest pussy ever.  I normally hate working demo's but i really hope that i'm on duty for this one if and when it happens. 

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/donald-trump-tells-theresa-may-he-wont-visit-uk-unless-she-bans-protests-1656638

Is there any chance she'd actually acquiesce? 

5 hours ago, James Arryn said:

snip

Well written post, but I also agree with what DMC.

5 hours ago, Shryke said:

Who the fuck knows. The general idea of how long this will take is correct though. It's part of why Schumer was ready to trade the wall for a DACA fix. It's also the reason a bunch of Republicans have been making noise about setting up some sort of trust or some other method to make the wall fully funded now and not subject to later approval. Because everyone except probably Trump knows the Wall will take forever to even start and that it can and will get gutted the instant Democrats take power again. They will fucking celebrate doing it.

The problem is that while Trump would be fine trading the wall for a DACA fix, the less wussy and senile white supremacists around him know what is up and so talked him out of that deal and are instead demanding sharp reductions in legal immigration as the trade off for the DACA fix instead.

Yeah, that's more or less my take too. I always assumed that if the wall would take a long time to build then it would never be the ultimate goal in some grand bargain.

4 hours ago, lokisnow said:

snip

Whoa, this post seared my eye lashes off. Man that sounds like a giant cluster****.

 

Well, I clearly contributed a lot....

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

And at some point, you are accountable for the company you keep.  Especially when you select them to be part of your presidential staff.  There's a reason the white spremacists and Nazi wannabes swarmed to Trump like sranc to bumbling tsurumah.

And especially especially when you have no political ideology, ability to think critically and lack and semblance of intellectual curiosity. What they tell him is what Trump thinks, at least until someone else who says nice things about him tells him something new. It's kind of staggering. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I'm surprised this hasn't been posted here yet:

Quote

Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn has been accused of a decades-long pattern of sexual harassment and abuse toward workers at his casinos, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.

Dozens of current and former employees at Wynn’s gambling establishments told the Journal they had experienced or witnessed chronic abuse by the billionaire, who was named finance chairman for the Republican National Convention last year.

The allegations range from lewd comments and inappropriate touching to soliciting sex acts from women who worked as manicurists and massage therapists at Wynn’s Las Vegas casinos.

One former employee at Wynn Las Vegas said the mogul pressured her into having unwanted sex with him after she gave him a manicure in 2005. Wynn later agreed to pay the woman a $7.5 million settlement after she filed a report.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-wynn-sexual-misconduct-allegations_us_5a6b6937e4b01fbbefb17313

It will be interesting to see how Trump et al. reacts to this since it seems pretty clear that Wynn is guilty AF.

[Which Tyler]

18 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/donald-trump-tells-theresa-may-he-wont-visit-uk-unless-she-bans-protests-1656638

Is there any chance she'd actually acquiesce?

It would be helluva illegal to even try. I'd love to see her try though, it would absolutely guarantee her political suicide, and triple the size of the protests

[Morpheus]

Why can’t every country be like Saudi Arabia, not a protest in sight of his Trumpness? Mandatory fanfare and orbs added to the presidential rider.

[Which Tyler]

Have we found the root cause of his little tiff with Mike Jong In?

Is he just jealous?

[lokisnow]

Been saying this for years: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge-price-for-letting-unions-die.html

 

Elected democrats being lazy and never enacting pro labor law nor repealing anti labor law has led to massive losses in turnout and vote share.

and republicans strategize for decades on this approach to enact these outcomes and democrats do nothing to counter it.

[Martell Spy]

33 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And especially especially when you have no political ideology, ability to think critically and lack and semblance of intellectual curiosity. What they tell him is what Trump thinks, at least until someone else who says nice things about him tells him something new. It's kind of staggering. 

And don't forget the influence of the Fox and Friends caucus on Trump.

Well, holy shit, legislation is happening in Washington state? Why is this happening? Naturally because Republicans have lost the Senate and can no longer obstruct everything as is their habit. The Senate just passed a ban on bump stocks, the device used by the Las Vegas shooter to increase the rate of his weapons fire. The bill is likely to pass now that it go through the Senate. Naturally, many Washington state Republicans objected. 

Other legislation being considered includes sexual harassment, including those corporate agreements that silence victims,as well as giving more control to local governments on housing issues.

Now I'm sure Washington state Republicans would say they are not for sexual harassment, but it is rather strange this issue had to wait until they lost power in the state in order for these corporate agreements, that in essence protect sexual harassers and abusers, to be banned in the state. You'd think some kind of bipartisan effort could have been made, but perhaps Republicans just believe in protection of corporations at all costs.

 

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

You know it's a problem when some center right pundits are worried that we could have some serious problems in 12-18 months.

Well they started awhile back after:

1. Rampant Inflation!

That didn't work out.

So they moved on too 

2. Poor Savers!

And that didn't make any sense. And then they moved on to:

3. Asset mispricing!

Now, center left types of warned about asset mispricing for a very long time. As Keynes put it, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent". Now, I believe asset mispricing clearly happens and there shouldn't be any doubt about that. But, where I get annoyed is for so long the free market fundamentalist crowd suddenly found Minsky, Shiller etc. Call me cynical, but it seems to me this new found conversion to a belief in asset mispricng was not done in good faith by them. These are the same group of people that tried to blame the whole housing crises basically on poor minority people, rather than admit that yep asset mispricing occurs and it can be very nasty. And these are the same people they have fought Dodd Frank tooth and nail. And these are the same people that tried to tell us after an asset crash, that unemployment was "structural". After such an event, I can't not imagine why anyone would think unemployement was do to supply factors as opposed to demand side ones. Let's just say I'm not real impressed by their recent conversion.

Unfortunately, had we handled things better, we might have issued more safe assets, which might have prevented the bubble that we are seeing now.

[Martell Spy]

Fox News hosts ramp up ‘deep state’ conspiracies
As the network escalates its attacks on the FBI, mainstream conservatives say it is endangering U.S. institutions.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/26/fox-news-deep-state-conspiracies-372856

Quote

“The substance of what they’re saying and the conspiracy theories that are being floated are so much weirder and so much less credible than simply taking a suspicious view of the events leading up to Benghazi or questioning the motives of President Obama. There was once upon a time some factual basis for what they were looking at — some may have been drawing unreasonable conclusions and some may have been exaggerating, but here they appear to be making stuff up from whole cloth, so I do think it’s worse.”

Quote

“You have people who haven’t been known to be crackpots in the past, like Sen. Johnson, suddenly saying the most ridiculous sorts of things,” Rubin said. “So the behavior seems to be spreading from the few to the many, and I think they do take great energy from one another.

”

 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

Bush was savvy enough to see that the resignations would have destroyed his presidency. He wrote in his memoirs: “I thought about the Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973,” when Nixon demanded the firing of the Watergate special counsel, forced out the attorney general and the deputy attorney general, sparking a firestorm that consumed him. “That was not a historical crisis I wished to replicate.”

Now that we know Trump was a tweet away from starring in Saturday Night Massacre: The Sequel, we need to look at why the G-men have the power and independence to take down the president.

 

Donald Trump Wants to Fight the FBI? It’s a Suicide Mission.
Presidents who take on the Bureau rarely win.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/26/donald-trump-wants-to-fight-the-fbi-its-a-suicide-mission-216533?lo=ap_d1
 

[DanteGabriel]

32 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Donald Trump Wants to Fight the FBI? It’s a Suicide Mission.
Presidents who take on the Bureau rarely win.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/26/donald-trump-wants-to-fight-the-fbi-its-a-suicide-mission-216533?lo=ap_d1
 

I read that earlier today. I wish I could be comforted, but in the end, the FBI could put together the most airtight and damning case possible and it wouldn't matter because the Republican Party has abandoned rule of law.

[Martell Spy]

20 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

I read that earlier today. I wish I could be comforted, but in the end, the FBI could put together the most airtight and damning case possible and it wouldn't matter because the Republican Party has abandoned rule of law.

I tend to agree with you. However, I just found out there is a chance Trump could be indicted on obstruction of justice, rather than referred for impeachment, which would take it out of the hands of current Republicans entirely. It well could bring in the SC to decide it, however, and who knows how they would rule. The SC was happy to steal a Presidential election after all in 2000.

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

I tend to agree with you. However, I just found out there is a chance Trump could be indicted on obstruction of justice, rather than referred for impeachment, which would take it out of the hands of current Republicans entirely. It well could bring in the SC to decide it, however, and who knows how they would rule. The SC was happy to steal a Presidential election after all in 2000.

To be fair, there's a difference between stealing a genuinely contested fair election and turning your back on the law completely. And at this point that is what they would be doing, conceding that it is lawful to have a president who engages in unlawful actions.

[Martell Spy]

28 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

To be fair, there's a difference between stealing a genuinely contested fair election and turning your back on the law completely. And at this point that is what they would be doing, conceding that it is lawful to have a president who engages in unlawful actions.

I agree it would be turning their back on the law. I don't know how they'd justify it. Republicans and Republican SC justices have done so many things I thought they'd never do though, take swipes at the voting rights act, steal a SC court justice using the Senate, it goes on and on. I'd be somewhat surprised if Kennedy went along with it. Roberts though, it would depend on if we get the head justice that worries about the reputation of the court or the gleeful partisan, because he is capable of playing both roles.

Kennedy or one of the liberal Justices could die or retire before such a decision was made, also.

The really disturbing thing though is I am fairly confident that Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas would all be sieg heiling God Emperor Trump. They'd dress it up in pretty language, but they would totally back Trump.

[Kalbear]

37 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

To be fair, there's a difference between stealing a genuinely contested fair election and turning your back on the law completely. And at this point that is what they would be doing, conceding that it is lawful to have a president who engages in unlawful actions.

Technically they're right; the law states that they're the ones responsible for deciding if it's law or not, and  they're deciding it's fine. 

Before this, the FBI had congressional support. That isn't the case here. 

[DMC]

This whole damn conversation is stupid.  And I don't blame any of you.  It's on cable news, smart websites, whatever.  The president is not going to be indicted.  Or at least, the president will never be indicted for obstruction of justice.  Because that's now it works.  You don't start indicting the president like he's a ham sandwich.  Bob Mueller will eventually make indictments that in all likelihood will make Trump pop.  Pop so much no White House Counsel, CoS, or anyone else can keep Trump from doing something incredibly self-destructive - something we now know he wanted to do back in JUNE, when Mueller was still finding the highlighters and clipboards.  BUT, even after all of that, Mueller's not going to indict the president.  Because that's a really, really gray area in general, and Bob Mueller is a professional.  Instead, he'll recommend articles of impeachment, based on certain credible charges, like obstruction of justice.