U.S. Politics- SCOTUS 2: The Election Strikes Back

[Morpheus]

But for that “n’t” his remark really are the “tear down this wall” of our time.

 

moar like, tear down this firewall, mirite....

 

 

 

[mormont]

Typical Trump. It's not just that he lies: he lies like a child lies, with no shame, no concern for consistency or credibility. He just says whatever he thinks he has to, to get him out of trouble.

[Martell Spy]

58 minutes ago, Trebla said:

Now that he's not standing next to Daddy Putin, Trump is changing his tune.

 

He is basically telling us he was intimidated. Not a very good defense.

[Martell Spy]

Barack Obama Breaks His Silence

The former president finally did what his supporters have waited for him to do since Donald Trump became president. He spoke up.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/07/obama-breaks-his-silence/565421/

 

Quote

 

“People just make stuff up. They just make stuff up. We see it in the growth of state-sponsored propaganda. We see it in internet fabrications. We see it in the blurring of lines between news and entertainment,” Obama said. “We see the utter loss of shame among political leaders where they’re caught in a lie and they just double down and they lie some more. It used to be that if you caught them lying, they’d be like, ‘Oh, man— now they just keep on lying.”

 

 

 

[Prince of the North]

The "Gaslighter in Chief" strikes again!

[Serious Callers Only]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/us/politics/irs-will-no-longer-force-kochs-and-other-groups-to-disclose-donors.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

 

After the NRA is implicated in the russian money coming from the muller problem, how coincidental.

[Chaircat Meow]

Had I been Putin at that press conference I would have been on the floor in hysterical contortions. It is amazing he kept as straight a face as he did as that was so damn funny.

Where is the server, where is the Pakistani gentleman, where are Hillary's emails!!!

 

 

[Rippounet]

This is fucking crazy.

I'm not sure what kind of asset Trump can be when he has utterly burned himself in front of the whole world.

At this point, Putin is probably betting on the disruption that this entire affair is bringing to US (and international) politics more than anything else.

[Zorral]

Listening to John Keegan's History of Warfare. There is a lot of cultural bias in this book that I don't remember when reading it back when -- but what did I know back when?  However, it comes through all the more strongly as he takes so many other writers on war and warfare to the woodshed for not recognizing cultural biases.  Though I do agree with him when he rather marvels that Clausewitz inexplicably seems to have entirely missed the Mameluks and the Ottomans while fashioning his false argument that war is politics.

However, his primary thesis so far that war is culture remains convincing, doesn't it? As far as it goes, anyway, and that can go a very long way. I keep thinking of how Russia is making war on the USA currently as well as all of the western democratic nations and our institutions, and for how long its been doing it, and trying to put this within the Russian cultural viewpoint. I get that Russia, from even before the czars are deeply paranoid and well trained in not believing in anything that is official other than "The Strong Hand" (or the Church) -- at least if Tolstoy and others are to be believed. But how Putin working this currently? I mean, the US doesn't like the strong man, generally as ruler. We are too individual. Our culture believes in the justified violence of the individual as the supreme expression and act of freedom and manlyness. Yet here we've got the orange nazi licking Putin''s scrotum IN PUBLIC for the WHOLE WORLD to see and hear! And being APPLAUDED for it IN PUBLIC by republicans who believe in the freedom of everything.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, La Albearceleste said:

Typical Trump. It's not just that he lies: he lies like a child lies, with no shame, no concern for consistency or credibility. He just says whatever he thinks he has to, to get him out of trouble.

His words have become truly meaningless. We’ve long since past the point where you can take anything he says at face value. That’s a scary thought when you consider he’s the most powerful person on the planet.     

[James Arryn]

28 minutes ago, Zorral said:

 

Quote

I mean, the US doesn't like the strong man, generally as ruler.

 

What?

That’s...not what I think, at all. Grade school machismo is ‘Presidential’. Ask any American to explain the Carter to Reagan transition, for example, and then reconsider this statement. War is the national industry.

[The Anti-Targ]

10 hours ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

Please tell me that is a bad joke.

 

10 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Yeah Russians don't deserve the hate. 

You walked right into that one Scot.

[Zorral]

You're right there -- I didn't express myself at all clearly -- they don't like the strong men of other countries -- how they loathed the Russians -- and lordessa save us, how they hated Chavez and Ortiz and even Fidel!  And they've got a guy now who publicly licks the scrotum of a real strong man, which means he's had the USA lick his scrotum.  In public in front of the whole world.  One would think this nation would be up in arms, with pitch  forks and nooses, heading to the WH to take him down, he who has so betrayed the nation with the gun, the strongest country in the world, showing himself the weakest a$$hole in the world.  Shyte, Teresa May and Angela Merkle are stronger men than the orange nazi!

[drawkcabi]

2 hours ago, Morpheus said:

He is such a worthess piece of shit. 

Slippery and slimey one too.

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

You're right there -- I didn't express myself at all clearly -- they don't like the strong men of other countries -- how they loathed the Russians -- and lordessa save us, how they hated Chavez and Ortiz and even Fidel!  And they've got a guy now who publicly licks the scrotum of a real strong man, which means he's had the USA lick his scrotum.  In public in front of the whole world.  One would think this nation would be up in arms, with pitch  forks and nooses, heading to the WH to take him down, he who has so betrayed the nation with the gun, the strongest country in the world, showing himself the weakest a$$hole in the world.  Shyte, Teresa May and Angela Merkle are stronger men than the orange nazi!

First of all, Keegan is a biased tool.

Second of all, the Orange One's supporters support his various -isms. The Putin love is flavor.

[James Arryn]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You're right there -- I didn't express myself at all clearly -- they don't like the strong men of other countries -- how they loathed the Russians -- and lordessa save us, how they hated Chavez and Ortiz and even Fidel!  And they've got a guy now who publicly licks the scrotum of a real strong man, which means he's had the USA lick his scrotum.  In public in front of the whole world.  One would think this nation would be up in arms, with pitch  forks and nooses, heading to the WH to take him down, he who has so betrayed the nation with the gun, the strongest country in the world, showing himself the weakest a$$hole in the world.  Shyte, Teresa May and Angela Merkle are stronger men than the orange nazi!

Ah, yeah, fair enough. Although Americans tended to lionize Churchill even more than Brits, but he’s probably the exception. 

[The Anti-Targ]

13 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You're right there -- I didn't express myself at all clearly -- they don't like the strong men of other countries -- how they loathed the Russians -- and lordessa save us, how they hated Chavez and Ortiz and even Fidel!  And they've got a guy now who publicly licks the scrotum of a real strong man, which means he's had the USA lick his scrotum.  In public in front of the whole world.  One would think this nation would be up in arms, with pitch  forks and nooses, heading to the WH to take him down, he who has so betrayed the nation with the gun, the strongest country in the world, showing himself the weakest a$$hole in the world.  Shyte, Teresa May and Angela Merkle are stronger men than the orange nazi!

It's funny though, because the US govt has always liked strong men in other countries if the USA has, or thinks it has, control over said strong man. 

[Zorral]

25 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It's funny though, because the US govt has always liked strong men in other countries if the USA has, or thinks it has, control over said strong man. 

Does anyone, of whatever persuasion, honestly believe that the orange nazi and his brigades are in control of Putin????????

Jace -- are you thinking of US Robert Kagan, the notable neocon bs-er?  Because while military historian, Brit John Keegan, was surely a conservative, because, you know, military, whether a soldier or not, as Keegan is the first to speak of, are always conservatives, I don't think his career shows him as a goofball neocon.  Well he did make a dog's brekkie of ihs history of the US War of Rebellion, but he died, maybe even before he could proof it?  He also limped.  Robert Kagan is still, alas, with us, and doesn't limp.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Remember when Mnuchin (iirc) had that meeting with all the corporate bigwigs and asked for a show of hands to see which executives would hire more employees or pay more if the tax cuts were passed? And then looked around in total incomprehension and bewilderedly asked “Why isn’t anyone raising their hand” when only a tiny portion of the room did?

Good times. Too bad there was no way to know that companies wouldn’t hire more people or raise wages after getting a corporate tax break. Obviously the solution is to give them another tax break, as Donny boy has suggested.

Just think about how long and hard Putin has worked to put himself in that position and bring it to fruition. Let the man have his moment.

It was actually Gary Cohn, but that doesn't matter. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that cutting taxes doesn't necessarily mean companies are going to expand, especially when these CEOs' salaries are usually tied to the corporation's stock price value and buying back stocks with cause their value to rise.

Honestly, I think if you want to incentivize corporations to expand, you should raise their taxes and then offer huge tax breaks if they heavily reinvest in their companies. 

[Martell Spy]

6 minutes ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

It was actually Gary Cohn, but that doesn't matter. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that cutting taxes doesn't necessarily mean companies are going to expand, especially when these CEOs' salaries are usually tied to the corporation's stock price value and buying back stocks with cause their value to rise.

Honestly, I think if you want to incentivize corporations to expand, you should raise their taxes and then offer huge tax breaks if they heavily reinvest in their companies. 

Except their goal wasn't to cause corporations to expand their payroll. It was to please wealthy donors and gin up political contributions.

Zephyr Teachout Is Ready to Bring State Charges
If Trump issues an obstructive pardon, the New York attorney general candidate says she would respond.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/zephyr-teachout-is-ready-to-bring-new-york-state-charges-if-trump-issues-an-obstructive-pardon.html

Quote

The second way which the New York attorney general has a unique and critically important role is that a federal pardon does not [pardon] state crimes. New York has very strong laws against bank fraud, tax fraud, false statements, obstruction of governmental administration, bribery, money laundering, larceny, just to name a few. So if Trump were to issue a self-serving pardon, I, as attorney general, would be fully ready to bring state charges, those that are not barred by our own state double-jeopardy statue. My own read is that in the vast majority of instances of a self-serving pardon, the person pardoned would still be exposed to state criminal law. It’s incredibly important that we do not allow Trump to issue pardons to protect himself and get away with it.