All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[Emperor-of-Dragons]

By the time Obama finished his term in office, more the 75% of his promises were achieved in some way. To be even fairer, Obama did make effort in even more but was stopped short by Republicans in Congress, who controlled at least one house SIX out of the EIGHT years he was in office, despite Obama winning not one, but TWO wave elections that saw Democrats win the popular vote in the House in 2012 and a bigger majority in the Senate. I don’t know what exactly “holding his feet to the fire” really means in the grand scheme of things when you can only do so much with executive power that is actually in-keeping with the enforcement of the laws, both past and present, on the books. I can see being upset about the Patriot Act reauthorization and his use of drone strikes. But every other issue he campaigned on, to my knowledge, he at least made an effort to fulfill.

Meanwhile, do you think Sanders, with a broad coalition of red state (and district) Democrats he has to work with, would be able to pass a progressive agenda like he wants, on the scale that he wants (he also seems committed to these ideas, which makes it difficult to compromise them, especially for political purposes), would have the same rate of success? He would actuallly need his political revolution. Obama had two wave elections. Do you think Sanders can do that AND more? I’m dubious at best.

You completely missed my point, I wasn't talking about whether or not he upheld his campaign promises. I'm talking about people trying to silence other people for keeping pressure on him to insure he kept them.

[4saken1]

LOL, this isn't a leftist thread. It's a thread where people read the ideas of the current conservative movement aloud, and then have the appropriate reaction when they realize that it isn't an Anthony Jeselnik routine.

I've seen a few different message boards where people on the left and right come to have intelligent discourse. Ultimately, they all end up leaning significantly to the left.

[worstblogever]

Trump Weighs Replacing Chief of Staff John Kelly, Plans to Remove Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen

Sarah Huckabee Sanders ‘set to leave White House by end of 2018,’ report says

Trump may run out of chumps willing to take on these jobs.

Nobody wants to sign up to be a deckhand on the Titanic after the iceberg, you know?

Sorry, all 25 of you who post here regularly: go vote.

I vote with the fury of 1,000 suns. And then get others I know to vote with the fury of at least a hundred each.

[Tami]

Nobody wants to sign up to be a deckhand on the Titanic after the iceberg, you know?



I vote with the fury of 1,000 suns. And then get others I know to vote with the fury of at least a hundred each.

I canvassed several towns to get people to vote. Did that last year and the year before.

[Kirby101]

Perhaps the greatest sentence Stan Lee wrote was "With great power there must also come...great responsibility."
Ironic that we have the most irresponsible President in History.

[InformationGeek]

Ummmm... WBE? This... ah, is something.

Reporter: Why did you make reference to lynchings when running against an AfAm candidate?

“Well what about the 20 million abortions African Americans have done???????? Nobody is talking about that."

[Tami]

So Trump has fired a lot of department employees, including a few cabinet secretaries, and WH staffers? That's not unusual for any POTUS.

Obama also fired or let a lot of people resign as well. His whole original cabinet except Tom Vilsack had resigned or were dismissed. Tom Villsack was the only original secretary who remained in Obama cabinet through all eight years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presid...bama#Personnel

Most of the changes in the Obama Administration occurred at the start of his 2nd term. Not during his first 2 years, and not nearly as often as what Trump is doing.

[Kirby101]

So Trump has fired a lot of department employees, including a few cabinet secretaries, and WH staffers? That's not unusual for any POTUS.

Obama also fired or let a lot of people resign as well. His whole original cabinet except Tom Vilsack had resigned or were dismissed. Tom Villsack was the only original secretary who remained in Obama cabinet through all eight years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presid...bama#Personnel

You are comparing 8 years of 2 full terms to less than 2 years fo Trump. And if we get into the numbers from Trump that were forced to resign or indicted, there is no comparison. What is happening in this administration is not only unusul but unprecidented.

[numberthirty]

On the First Lady...

It's very interesting that she seemingly had absolutely zero problem calling out the right hand person of the guy that a lot of folks around here seemed to think was the Grim Reaper.

[TheDarman]

You completely missed my point, I wasn't talking about whether or not he upheld his campaign promises. I'm talking about people trying to silence other people for keeping pressure on him to insure he kept them.

I suppose that’d be fair enough and I’d be more than willing to point out to them that being in the White House really is a reactive job. The president is supposed to react to things on the fly. He is the executor of the law’s after all and needs to use the power he has vested in the executive to react appropriately to situations. As a result, if a president sees all the bad effects of his policy, and should they be humble enough to recognize that it doesn’t secretly mean they are really popular, but doesn’t get to see people asking for more of the good, he’ll see the incentive to move towards the other side. We saw it with Bush with his push for immigration reform. We saw it with Obama with a few of his other later pushes for compromise. As a result, our work can never be finished. It is just more rewarding speaking up when you have a sympathetic ear. I think Obama was one that liberals were afraid to use, despite the fact that he often came through if people pushed hard enough (Chelsea Manning, DAPL, etc.).

[Tendrin]

Another CA rep bites the dust. Jeff Denham has gone down in defeat to his Democratic challenger.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

DC Neo-Nazi Who Called Pittsburgh Murders A ‘Dry Run’ Arrested; Has Deep Ties To ‘Alt Right’

Jeffrey Clark wasn’t shy about being a white supremacist. But it was only after his family reported him that authorities arrested him on gun charges. I'm sure Trump would call him a fine fellow.

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Facing Lawsuit, Trump White House Shifts Story On CNN’s Jim Acosta

The Trump administration previously accused Acosta of laying hands on an intern but now claims he was being rude to his colleagues. The White House blinked, short and sweet.

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Democrats To Investigate Voter Suppression In Georgia Governor Race And Other 2018 Midterms

Stacey Abrams has accused Brian Kemp of using his elected position to suppress African-American votes.

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Georgia Legislator, Arrested At Work, Says She Was ‘Singled Out As A Black Female Senator’

A white male colleague, who was not arrested at the same voting protest, agrees that state Sen. Nikema Williams was “treated differently.”

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Is Back In Her Chambers, Less Than A Week After Fracturing 3 Ribs

The Supreme Court justice will also resume her legendary workouts next week, her trainer told Vox. Thank goodness! More power to Notorious RBG!

[JCAll]

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Facing Lawsuit, Trump White House Shifts Story On CNN’s Jim Acosta

The Trump administration previously accused Acosta of laying hands on an intern but now claims he was being rude to his colleagues. The White House blinked, short and sweet.

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Maybe people have realized that this kindergarten keep-away crap isn't a real scandal.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump To Skip Kennedy Center Honors Again, Becoming First President To Decline Twice

President Donald Trump will — again — be skipping the Kennedy Center Honors this year, becoming the first president in the gala’s 41-year history to decline an invitation more than once.

A spokeswoman for Melania Trump confirmed to USA Today on Tuesday that, because of scheduling conflicts, neither the first lady nor the president would be attending the event — an annual affair that honors those in the performing arts for their contributions to American culture.

Trump is scheduled to travel to Argentina to attend the G-20 summit, slated to take place from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1. The Kennedy Center Honors will be held on Dec. 2 in the Opera House in Washington.

While it could be argued that Trump is woefully out of his depth when it comes to the arts and culture, neither of which I suspect he gives a rat's ass about, his upcoming absence continues a particular pattern where Dolt45 eschews any and all events where the makeup of the crowd can't be manipulated in his favor, i.e. packed full of MAGA lemmings who relentlessly cheer him like at his rallies. Case in point about events Trump has so far shunned as president:

--White House Correspondents Dinner (which I maintain was the impetus for Trump getting into politics to get back at Barack Obama who skewered him there in 2011)
--ceremonial pitch at Nationals Park on Opening Day
--the Army-Navy game
--visits to the troops in war zones

Given how thin-skinned Trump is, it's clear he can't handle being ANYPLACE where he's not 100 percent showered with adoration and actively avoids such events, lest he risk getting booed or jeered by people who don't like him. Sure, that's small and petty, but that's Trump all over, and that pattern won't end anytime soon, if at all while he remains in office.

[Tami]

Conservative Lawyers Say Trump Has Undermined the Rule of Law

WASHINGTON — The annual convention of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, has long been a glittering and bustling affair. In the Trump era, though, the group has become more powerful than ever, supplying intellectual energy and judicial candidates to an assertive administration eager to reshape the legal landscape.

But as the group prepares to gather on Thursday for the start of this year’s convention, more than a dozen prominent conservative lawyers have joined together to sound a note of caution. They are urging their fellow conservatives to speak up about what they say are the Trump administration’s betrayals of bedrock legal norms.

“Conservative lawyers are not doing enough to protect constitutional principles that are being undermined by the statements and actions of this president,” said John B. Bellinger III, a top State Department and White House lawyer under President George W. Bush.

The group, called Checks and Balances, was organized by George T. Conway III, a conservative lawyer and the husband of President Trump’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway. In recent opinion articles, Mr. Conway has criticized Mr. Trump’s statements on birthright citizenship and argued that his appointment of Matthew G. Whitaker to serve as acting attorney general violated the Constitution.

From Twitter

Wow. One day before the Federalist Society's annual convention, longtime member George Conway (@gtconway3d) has announced the formation of Checks and Balances—a new group of conservative lawyers who believe Trump is undermining the rule of law.

Twitter Link

A few words about some of the people on this list.

Twitter Link