US Politics: Let's Arm All the Teachers! 30 Pieces of Silver to Shoot a Student!

[The Anti-Targ]

Is it true that Trumps approval rating has gone up since he talked about arming teachers? Clearly his soft right-wing support that erroded over the past several months is amenable to returning if Trump comes out on their side of a hot button issue. I guess like comedy the art of good politics is timing. If they get the timing right on a hot button issue, they crystalise the right to vote the right way in big enough number to secure electoral success.

If they can spend the rest of the year developing (and thus talking about) teacher arming policy (and keep getting the left riled up and focussed on an argument that gets the right determined to hit the voting booths), and pass a bump stock ban, at the right moment, as a sacrificial lamb, then they will go a long way to helping the Democrats to once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[Gertrude]

We do know that Eric Trump bragged about having access to millions of dollars from Russia to invest in their golf courses from an interview from a few years ago. To my knowledge we don’t know the details, but that’s something straight from the horse’s mouth prior to Trump’s campaign.

[TheKitttenGuard]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

 

Market based would fit in the Conservatives philosophy .Okay 

Yes and many Conservative thought an Insurance Mandate was critical for that. Once they start winning and more Democrats were becoming of it the mandate started to be view more negatively.

Ironically all the action Republicans took last year made a system they have railed against were people can wait until an emergency to sign up for Health Care Coverage.

*- anything in addition I advise move to the U.S healthcare thread.

[maarsen]

2 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

And yet he still kept getting banks and financial institutions to lend him more money.

Not quite. North American banks will not lend him a dime, as do most European banks. That is why he is cozying up to the Russian oligarchs and Putin. The Steele dossier makes it quite clear that Trump is deeply in debt to these Russians. That is why he is so hysterical about denying any collusion with the Russians. He can't afford to have his loans called and I suspect he is also laundering money for the Russian mob, just as he did when he owned and bankrupted a casino.  No matter how big of a fool Trump is, a bigger fool will lend him money. And yes, there is always a bigger fool. That is why lotteries exist.

[Mexal]

24 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Is it true that Trumps approval rating has gone up since he talked about arming teachers? Clearly his soft right-wing support that erroded over the past several months is amenable to returning if Trump comes out on their side of a hot button issue. I guess like comedy the art of good politics is timing. If they get the timing right on a hot button issue, they crystalise the right to vote the right way in big enough number to secure electoral success.

If they can spend the rest of the year developing (and thus talking about) teacher arming policy (and keep getting the left riled up and focussed on an argument that gets the right determined to hit the voting booths), and pass a bump stock ban, at the right moment, as a sacrificial lamb, then they will go a long way to helping the Democrats to once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Not quite. Trump had a bump before the school shooting that has evaporated over the last week or so. We'll have to see in another week or two what happens. I really do doubt that arming teachers is going to be the position that will win him support.

[Jace, Extat]

Chryst on a cracker. The Governor of Kentucky is launching a war on Media.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Chryst on a cracker. The Governor of Kentucky is launching a war on Media.

Video games are not the media -- meaning they don't provide platforms for information.  Entertainment they do, of course, so maybe I'm wrong on this.

It seems more like Bevin's going after people who don't want guns in schools and going after health care for anybody who isn't rich enough to pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for it.

Though it is pretty hard a lot of time to not think the combination of easy access to guns and watching endless hours of people shooting each other on tv, movies and games do have a connection to real life gun violence -- like the combination of easy access to guns and alcohol in the same spaces.  But Bevin is an idiot in every other way, so that's hard to swallow.

 

[GAROVORKIN]

On 2/22/2018 at 6:10 PM, Tywin et al. said:

Don't take this the wrong way Lany, but this is actually the worst person to arm in a school IMO. Kids, especially at that age, like to make substitute teachers' lives hell, and it's pretty easy to see one snapping after the 20th kid hit him or her with a spitball, for example. 

Given all the difficulties and lack of pay and lack of pay and befits ,  It's a wonder anyone wants to be the teaching profession at all. 

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

10 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

He was working towards that 'I would have saved the day' moment.

The Orange Blob was going to "run in there and save those kids" but his bone spurs started acting up.

[Shryke]

10 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Bunch of people on this thread are claiming that Trump has loans from the Russians.  As far as I know, that has yet to be proven.  All we know for sure is that Trump's last set of loans were from Deutsche Bank.  Whether those loans were actually funded using laundered Russian money through Deutsche Bank is something Mueller is certainly looking at, but no conclusions have leaked so far.

You don't have to prove it. As usual, they just admit it. Trump Jr like a decade ago was talking about how much of their money was coming from Russia. The Trumps are balls deep in Russian money, which means oligarch money.

Mueller hasn't leaked anything about that specifically because he knows how to fucking run an operation. But if you've paid any attention for the past like 2 years as reporters have been digging in to Trump and his associates, it's stupidly obvious that there's financial connections between Trump and Russians and that they wield influence over his policy decisions and statements wrt Russia. 

[The Anti-Targ]

8 hours ago, Zorral said:

Video games are not the media -- meaning they don't provide platforms for information.  Entertainment they do, of course, so maybe I'm wrong on this.

It seems more like Bevin's going after people who don't want guns in schools and going after health care for anybody who isn't rich enough to pay thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for it.

Though it is pretty hard a lot of time to not think the combination of easy access to guns and watching endless hours of people shooting each other on tv, movies and games do have a connection to real life gun violence -- like the combination of easy access to guns and alcohol in the same spaces.  But Bevin is an idiot in every other way, so that's hard to swallow.

 

PQJ said "media" not "the media". Media is stuff you consume by looking at screens and listening to the wireless

8 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Given all the difficulties and lack of pay and lack of pay and befits ,  It's a wonder anyone wants to be the teaching profession at all. 

 

If the US is anything like here, with the erosion of teacher salaries relative to cost of living, it is likely there is, has or will be a sharp drop off in people going into teacher training. Enrollments in teacher training here has dropped quite a bit recently.

[OldGimletEye]

Yes, Republicans just have to fuck up everything.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-financial-deregulation-lehman-brothers-redux-by-simon-johnson-2018-02

Quote

WASHINGTON, DC – Last week, with some fanfare, the US Treasury Department released a report on what to do about the Orderly Liquidation Authority. The OLA, created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, was intended to prevent a recurrence of what happened in September 2008, when one failing firm, Lehman Brothers, was able to trigger a cascade effect that nearly destroyed the financial system.

 

Quote

The OLA allows the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), subject to reasonable safeguards, to take over a failing financial firm and wind it down in an orderly manner – very much in line with what happens, with some regularity, when a small bank becomes insolvent. Although the Treasury report reads more like a political document rather than a well-reasoned technical assessment, it still comes to a sensible conclusion: keep the OLA in place.

Well at least Trump's Treasury department shows some sense. Not a lot. But some.

Quote

Unfortunately, the report also masks a broader legislative and regulatory agenda that will add unnecessary risk – and a lot of it – to the financial system.

Yes, the Republican Party could fuck up a wet dream.

Quote

The OLA has attracted a great deal of bipartisan support in recent years, including on the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee (the SRAC, of which I am a member). But some highly influential Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee have attacked the OLA relentlessly, arguing that it represents a government bailout-in-waiting. They want to abolish it, and insist that failing financial firms simply go through a court-supervised bankruptcy process.

Yes Jeb Hensarling and his fellow travelers are morons.

Quote

Lehman Brothers, of course, went bankrupt – and it was the spreading effects of that failure that caused so much damage in September 2008 and subsequently. House Republicans, drawing on work by scholars at the Hoover Institution, have argued that modifying the bankruptcy code – creating a so-called Chapter 14 – would allow such firms to fail without the risk of adverse systemic consequences.

Let's not beat around the bush here and lets name names. One of the people pushing this nonsense is John Taylor. Taylor served under the Bush Administration and then after the Bush Bust, spent eight years stroking his chin and going "um, yes, yes Obama....." But Taylor is wrong about the OLA and has been wrong about many other things as well. He's been a real clown for over a decade now.

Quote

The Treasury report makes a big deal of demanding that bankruptcy must be the first and preferred option when a big bank is in trouble. But this is exactly what the Dodd-Frank legislation said – and it is what the FDIC and other regulators have worked hard to implement. (All SRAC meetings are public and broadcast online, and the details of implementing the OLA have been reviewed many times by Paul Volcker, Sheila Bair, and other experts.)

Hmm. Looks like trying to make a dispute where there really isn't one. I guess it's to please the conservative clown crew.

Quote

The Treasury report does sketch out a new Chapter 14, but this would achieve little. The main problem with the bankruptcy approach is the lack of Debtor-In-Possession financing for a complex global financial institution with an enormous balance sheet; without access to operational funding from the private sector, the entire process collapses – exactly the Lehman scenario.
The second problem with the bankruptcy approach is that international regulators would find themselves unable to cooperate – for their own legal and procedural reasons – with a US process that affects a major part of their own economies. Senior officials at the Bank of England, for example, have been commendably forthright about this – including at public SRAC meetings.

I'll add a third problem. It's simply not credible and is time inconsistent. And I'll bet that bankers are smart enough to know it.  And that puts you right back at doing the kind of no strings attached bailouts we had under Tarp. And even if you thought Tarp was necessary, it's certainly a situation where you do it while holding your nose.

Quote

Much more worrying, however, is what lurks unmentioned behind the Treasury report: a serious legislative effort, supported by the Trump administration, to reduce the level of scrutiny applied to banks that are on the verge of becoming systemically important. The proposed bill, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, is a misnomer. Title IV of the law would raise the threshold for “applying enhanced prudential standards from $50 billion to $250 billion.”
The main lesson from the experience of 2008 and the subsequent deep recession is that it is much better to prevent big banks from failing than to deal with the consequences when they do. I testified to Congress that $50 billion, as defined under Dodd-Frank, is a sensible threshold at which the Federal Reserve should pay more attention to financial institutions. Art Wilmarth of George Washington University Law School has also written persuasively on this point: at $250 billion, a bank’s failure can have major ripple effects.

And here I wonder:

Does opposing people like Taylor, Hensarling, and the Republican Party, generally, on issues of financial regulation, make one part of the "far left"?

Does thinking on occasion, "I think Rush might be wrong here" make one part of the "far left"?

Not that I really give a damn about being identified with the far left, as I could care less about the opinions of the conservative clown crew and the professional centrist. Just wonderin'.

[Jace, Extat]

The man's unraveling!

"Witch Hunt!"

That's this morning's tweet. In its totality.

[LongRider]

14 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

The man's unraveling!

"Witch Hunt!"

That's this morning's tweet. In its totality.

Hmmmm, anybody know what's being reported on Fox News this morning?

[Which Tyler]

21 hours ago, Morpheus said:

Trump says if he were at the school, he would have charged in even without a gun. LOfuckingL

 

http://www.rugbyrebels.co/board/download/file.php?id=455

#CadetBoneSpurs

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

The man's unraveling!

"Witch Hunt!"

That's this morning's tweet. In its totality.

Well to be fair it was after a few other tweets. That said, I think it’s abundantly clear that the man is terrified. Title bet says Manafort is singing like a canary as we speak.

1 hour ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Hmmmm, anybody know what's being reported on Fox News this morning?

These are the three preceding tweets, so we know he’s been busy this morning.

[Maithanet]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

Well to be fair it was after a few other tweets. That said, I think it’s abundantly clear that the man is terrified. Title bet says Manafort is singing like a canary as we speak.

We'll see.  Manafort is looking at the rest of his life in prison UNLESS he gets a presidential pardon.  If he thinks that is coming, he could probably do a year or two.  The question is whether he's willing to take that chance.  Trump will definitely pardon Manafort if he gets a chance, but at the moment doing so creates too many other problems for him.  If Trump looses reelection a lame duck pardon is likely. 

Now I'm sure Manafort has gone over with his lawyers what crimes he could be on the hook for in NY courts, and maybe those are sufficient that a pardon wouldn't help much.  But it's hard to know for sure when he isn't charged yet. 

[Fragile Bird]

Ken Starr is a Trump supporter?  

[DanteGabriel]

15 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ken Starr is a Trump supporter?  

His last gig was covering up sexual assaults at a nominally Christian university (where "Christian" means "you sluts should have defended your virtue better") so he seems like a perfect fit for Trump world.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

52 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

We'll see.  Manafort is looking at the rest of his life in prison UNLESS he gets a presidential pardon.  If he thinks that is coming, he could probably do a year or two.  The question is whether he's willing to take that chance.  Trump will definitely pardon Manafort if he gets a chance, but at the moment doing so creates too many other problems for him.  If Trump looses reelection a lame duck pardon is likely. 

Now I'm sure Manafort has gone over with his lawyers what crimes he could be on the hook for in NY courts, and maybe those are sufficient that a pardon wouldn't help much.  But it's hard to know for sure when he isn't charged yet. 

I think your reading of the situation is correct, but I suspect there is so much stuff they can hit him with in state court that makes a presidential pardon meaningless. He’s either going to roll or spend the rest of his life in jail.

Also, IIRC, Bannon called Trump’s firing of Comey one of the dumbest decisions in political history. In hindsight, Manafort agreeing to work for Trump for free has to surpass that.

3 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

His last gig was covering up sexual assaults at a nominally Christian university (where "Christian" means "you sluts should have defended your virtue better") so he seems like a perfect fit for Trump world.