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US Politics: The American Messias, Greenland and attacks on Jews voting Democrats. Or as we call it Wednesday.


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Just now, larrytheimp said:

Sweet so then if our wages don't go up we that should be indexed against our relative tax burden for the rest of us, right?  Oh, no?  Oh it's only for rich people?  Lol.  Seriously this is what makes people start doodling guillotines 

Doodling? I've been buying lumber.

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Wow, this woman is pathological. Why does she hate student-loan borrowers so much?

DeVos tightens rules for forgiving student loans

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/30/devos-forgiving-student-loans-1697959

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“We made substantive changes to our proposed rule based” on public input, DeVos said.

But those changes did not go far enough for consumer advocates and Democrats, who said Friday that the Trump administration was gutting important protections for students defrauded by their college.

“This rule is another Trump-DeVos giveaway to their for-profit college cronies at the expense of defrauded student borrowers,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), chairman of the House education committee, said that "the Trump administration is sending an alarming message: Schools can cheat [their] student borrowers and still reap the rewards of federal student aid."

Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending — whose successful lawsuit last year forced DeVos to implement the Obama-era rules — vowed on Friday to bring a new legal challenge “in the coming days” to stop the latest regulations from taking effect.

“If Betsy DeVos won’t do her job and stand up for students, then we will fill that void,” the organization’s legal director, Eileen Connor, said in a statement. “That is why we will be filing a suit challenge these harmful new regulations that give a green light to for-profit colleges to continue scamming students.”

The new rules narrow the type of misconduct by colleges that could trigger loan forgiveness and also require that borrowers provide more extensive documentation about the financial harm they faced. Borrowers will also have to file their claims within three years of leaving school.

In addition, the final rule allows colleges to resume using mandatory arbitration agreements in their enrollment agreements with students, reversing an Obama-era ban on the practice, which was common at for-profit schools.

 

 

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Looks like the 'Wall' really is moving full speed ahead, with assorted natural and legal obstacles being bulldozed...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-administration-schedules-to-build-wall/ar-AAGChP1?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580&fbclid=IwAR0dIb5oCW173AWxPWmWdDf8CoLi45CM3xa8OY4wSf0XuXS9O1jd2rMd-lw

 

The Trump administration will soon start building new sections of border wall in protected wildlife refuges and near the historic La Lomita Chapel in the Rio Grande Valley.

 

As it has in the past, the government will again waive more than two-dozen laws protecting the environment and indigenous sites to expedite construction.

The expected wall will start near the chapel and run east in section-by-section to the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge. Another short 3.5-mile stretch of wall will be built near La Grulla, according to the government notice posted Friday.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to requests for comment on the length of the new sections of wall or when construction will begin.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which is suing the Trump administration over its border wall construction in sensitive wildlife areas, estimates it amounts to 17 more miles of steel bollard fencing.

President Trump has been pressuring his aides to fast-track border-wall construction, saying he would pardon them if they had to break any laws to build it, according to recent reports. Building a “big, beautiful wall” was the centerpiece of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and he’s promised to build hundreds of miles of it by the 2020 election.

 

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2 hours ago, Zorral said:

too bad sissy states like uh... texas dont have more good guys with guns to stop stuff like this

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3 hours ago, Zorral said:

eventually, the far right might start pushing the notion that 

 

mass shootings are just part of the american way of life.  Something normal, not to be changed.

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12 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

eventually, the far right might start pushing the notion that 

 

mass shootings are just part of the american way of life.  Something normal, not to be changed.

Heritage not Hate #ShootingsDon'tKillPeople

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26 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

eventually, the far right might start pushing the notion that 

 

mass shootings are just part of the american way of life.  Something normal, not to be changed.

Is that not exactly what they've already done? It's been two decades since Columbine.

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55 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

eventually, the far right might start pushing the notion that 

 

mass shootings are just part of the american way of life.  Something normal, not to be changed.

In theory they have to pretend that they give a damn about the loss of human life. 

Well Beto, we are indeed functionally helpless. Due to the Senate filibuster, the right-wing billionaires like the Koch brother purchasing our democratic system, and a nihilist President that refuses to do anything but constantly bow to the NRA. Our options are pretty much do nothing, take up guns ourselves and add to the problem further, or radically remake our entire political system. 

Otherwise a bunch of 90 year old billionaires will constantly demand guns be put into the hands of even more mentally ill people and domestic abusers. And none of this will change until billionaires get shot. Because the lives of people worth less than 100 million are basically worthless in America.

 

Beto O’Rourke on Texas Shooting: ‘This Is F*cked Up’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/beto-orourke-blasts-congress-after-texas-shooting-this-is-fcked-up?ref=home

Former Texas representative and 2020 hopeful Beto O’Rourke railed against Congress late Saturday for not doing enough to stop gun violence after yet another mass shooting. After a gunman in west Texas left at least 5 dead and 21 injured, O'Rourke told voters in Virginia that “there is no reason” Americans should live with such gun violence. “Not sure how many gunmen, not sure how many people have been shot. Don’t know how many people have been killed, the condition of those who have survived. Don’t know what the motivation is, do not yet know the firearms that were used, or how they acquired them. But we do know that this is fucked up,” he said.

“There is no reason that we have to accept this as our fortune,” he said, “And yet functionally, right now, we have.” He went on to slam Congress, which he said “will not even pass universal background checks or close those loopholes that allow people to buy a firearm when they should not be able to.”

 

 

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The Trump Tariffs are on - for now anyhow.  Given the huge outrage and his past behavior, I'm almost willing to bet that Trump will reverse course and claim to have saved Christmas or be the Economic Messiah by this time next week.  

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/they-re-on-trump-says-of-tariffs-set-to-kick-in-on-sunday/ar-AAGC2D9?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580&fbclid=IwAR1PBpozpukHbpsNvP3A-1oBHiGRKVK5inzsfuMYJLN2lQoaJu04x1Vpq_s 

 

"They're on. They're on," the president told reporters Friday before departing for a weekend stay at Camp David.

Americans were largely spared from higher prices in his previous rounds of trade penalties. No longer. The 15% tariffs on $112 billion in Chinese imports will apply to items ranging from smartwatches and TVs to shoes, diapers, sporting goods and meat and dairy products.

For the first time since Trump launched his trade war, American households faced price increases. Many U.S. companies said they would be forced to pass on to customers the higher prices they had to pay on Chinese imports.

 

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6 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Because the lives of people worth less than 100 million are basically worthless in America.

Yeah that's certainly been my impression since about 2000. Congress just does not work for anyone outside the 1-2%. The Presidency isn't held by the winner of the popular vote. The Supreme Court is said to consider corporations people, which is being generous, because this SC likely sides with Corporations over citizens 9 times out of 10. 

I think even our cherished system of checks and balances have been compromised by an apparent administration that is above the law.

All three branches look like a shitstorm that do not represent my interests.

 

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State Rep. Matt Schaefer illustrated just how opposed to any type of gun control many elected Republicans are when he staunchly stood up against making any changes to current law mere hours after two towns in his home state were terrorized by a gunman who went on a random shooting rampage. At a time when the death toll of the West Texas mass shooting wasn’t even clear yet, Schaefer went on a rant on social media making clear that the fact that a 17-month-old child was shot wouldn’t make him think that perhaps some gun control could be beneficial. After all, he insists, the problem isn’t the guns but evil.

Schaefer, in a post on Facebook and Twitter wrote that elected officials often hear demands to “Do something!” But he made clear what he won’t do: “I am NOT going to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of my fellow Texans. Period.” And his refusal to do anything includes things that many Americans support, including background checks and banning high capacity magazines. After all, nothing would stop a person with “evil intent,” he added.

So what will Schaefer support? More prayer, of course. “YES to praying that God would transform the hearts of people with evil intent,” he wrote. While he was at it he would also support “fathers not leaving their wives and children” and “discipline in the homes.” The answer is, of course, more guns: “YES to giving every law-abiding single mom the right to carry a handgun to protect her and her kids without permission from the state, and the same for all other law-abiding Texans of age.”

 

Hours After Mass Shooting, Texas Lawmaker Rejects Any Form of Gun Control, Calls for Prayer

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/matt-schaefer-texas-state-lawmaker-rejects-gun-control-hours-after-west-texas-shooting.html

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5 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

“YES to praying that God would transform the hearts of people with evil intent,” he wrote.

You know it's pathetic how these lazy conservatives continue to nothing but demand entitlements from Jesus rather than picking themselves up by their bootstraps and fixing their own problems.  What a bunch of Rosary Queens sucking on The Lord's teat.

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4 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Hours After Mass Shooting, Texas Lawmaker Rejects Any Form of Gun Control, Calls for Prayer

 

Of course, he does not recognize that armed police officers attempting to stop the incident from its beginning and were not able to nor the likelihood that multiple people at one or more of the scenes had firearms on them and failed to stop it.   Nope.  More guns will make us safer.  Somehow.  With prayer of course.  

Soon these assholes are going to be telling us that it was the victims' fault for dying because they went out in public without wearing body armor.  

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10 minutes ago, davos said:

Soon these assholes are going to be telling us that it was the victims' fault for dying because they went out in public without wearing body armor.  

Well, yeah, going out not dressed that way, you're just asking for it...

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I have studied an enormous amount of antebellum, secessionst, and CSA literature, so for years I've been commenting that the rhetoric of those eras out of the slavery South is often word-for-word repeated in this present day by racists, and the appeals of "the reasonable right" to social progressive to halt their divisive language and actions. 

Those who believe there is such a thing as a 'reasonable right,' who exhort 'the left' to be more kind, fair and open-minded, and not so censorious of those they deem as violating their social and racial justice norms, because that halts freedom of speech and civil discourse in their tracks and drive the racists, white nationalists, nazis, women haters, etc. further to the right, to even committing violence. These self-labed 'reasonable rightists' ignore the daily national headlines that the white nationalists and etc. are committing tremendous violence every single minute, i.e. domestic terrorism. So these timely pieces provide some historical perspective as to why those who publicly object to these movements, know being quiet and polite is useless, because those who perceive themselves as 'the reasonable right,' provide as  "... their key argument ... an offer of peace in exchange for tolerating slavery..." -- or, today, to tolerating the separation families, killing children, repressing dissent, prohibiting women of every right from reproductive choice to the vote, a carcel state for African Americans whose unpaid labor will again take the place of the labor of migrants, and having every mentally deranged hater armed like an army.

In other words 'the reasonable right' wishes to deny freedom of speech to those who speak out -- just as does the bedbug in chief who calls for investigation by the Justice Department into every journalist, every person, who does not support him.
 
"The Reasonable Rebels" by Eve Fairbanks
Conservatives say we’ve abandoned reason and civility. The Old South said that, too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/29/conservatives-say-weve-abandoned-reason-civility-old-south-said-that-too/

The NY Magazine discusses the WaPo piece here:

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/what-should-progressives-sacrifice-on-the-altar-of-civility.html

Quote

 

.... The real victims of this deal to maintain the peace were not, of course, the abolitionists (or their extremist counterparts in the South, the slavery-expansion zealots). The slaves themselves were presumed to be of too little civic (as opposed to economic) value to become a true casus belli.

And while Fairbanks doesn’t extend her argument to the politics of race that prevailed between the Civil War and the 21st century, the reasonable right was there all along, offering peace — for a price. Early on, southern defenders of restored white supremacy understood that their best prospects for success depended on convincing moderate northern opinion that Reconstruction was a bar to national reconciliation and economic recovery. While the white terrorists of the South who fought to crush voting, office-holding, and land ownership by ex-slaves were essential to the task of demoralizing well-intentioned Northerners, the real triumph of reaction occurred when Republican president Rutherford B. Hayes campaigned on an end to Reconstruction and then ascended to the White House after a contested election by consummating it. Within the South itself, social peace between rich and poor white citizens was achieved by an agreement that disenfranchising African-Americans was the top political priority, and Southerners wore down resistance to the imposition of Jim Crow by convincing an increasingly conservative Republican Party to abandon the “bloody shirt” and the cause of racial justice.

The peace-for-injustice bargain, of course, continued throughout the first half of the 20th century, where alternatively, Democratic Party unity and bipartisanship depended on the South’s ability to veto civil-rights legislation. Even now, centrists of all varieties lament the passing of those golden years when white male senators got together over bourbon and cigars and cut deals that depended on the continued subjugation of people who did not look like them.

Long after the antebellum era, in which Fairbanks hears eerie premonitions of today’s “reasonable right,” it was a powerful force in American politics. And its fundamental purpose was not so much to marginalize “the left” or “radicals” as to sideline the powerless people for whom they spoke, often alone.

Does that mean the “reasonable right” proponents Fairbanks worries about are racists or neo-Confederates? No, of course not. What they are, by and large, are people who fundamentally disagree with the idea (as expressed by, of all people, Barry Goldwater in his 1964 presidential nomination acceptance speech) that “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” For various reasons, they aren’t particularly invested in progressive causes, and think reasonable center-left people should identify with their grievances against political correctness and the alleged cultural dominance of the radical left, and join with them in a coalition against left and right extremism.

To those of us who think the left is mostly (not always) right and the right is mostly (not always) wrong, these pleas for reason are the ultimate reflections of false equivalence, and the peace they offer is the troubled sleep of a guilty conscience. As always, those who will pay the real price for this sort of corrupt bargain are not “radicals” or “socialists” or “the politically correct,” but the powerless people, some immigrants, but many more the descendants of the slaves sold out by “reasonable” Yankees before the Civil War, or of ex-slaves sold out during the post-Reconstruction era, or the disenfranchised and exploited victims of Jim Crow sold out by bipartisanship....

 

 

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11 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

“I am NOT going to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of my fellow Texans. Period.”

Is this guy equating James Madison with Jesus? I'm pretty sure guns aren't in the Bible. And I'm pretty sure the 2nd amendment wasn't written by Jesus. So God can only come into it if he's saying James Madison=Jesus=God.

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