All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[InformationGeek]

Basically a f**k you to our allies if they ever get in danger.

....almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN. Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to.....

[jetengine]

Basically a f**k you to our allies if they ever get in danger.

I meam we're basically back in the 20s anyway, neo gilded age with an isolationist united states, a Britain harping on about the glory of Empire and sovereignity when its readily apparent how weak it is.

[GOLGO 13]

I don't believe Trump will leave the White House peacefully even if he lost in a landslide in 2020. He'd scream voter fraud, deep state, and civil war before showing an ounce of dignity. There's no way I see him having the grace to resign.

I hope he resists & that the US Marshalls will have to frog march him from the WH while US Marines hold the door open for them. That will be glorious!

[Iron Maiden]

What Trump isn't telling you about his children



Was wondering when the news organizations would start going after the Trump kids. It's only fair, after all.

QFT. Jared and Ivanka have been laying low for a while now, I guess hoping that no one is paying attention to them.

[Iron Maiden]

NY Judge dismisses Trump request to keep taxes secret. Oh boy, I hope we start having some fun now. Trump's legal staff has already filed an emergency appeal.

[GOLGO 13]

NY Judge dismisses Trump request to keep taxes secret. Oh boy, I hope we start having some fun now. Trump's legal staff has already filed an emergency appeal.

Can't claim executive privilege on crimes committed before you became POTUS. LOLZ!

[WestPhillyPunisher]

NY Judge dismisses Trump request to keep taxes secret. Oh boy, I hope we start having some fun now. Trump's legal staff has already filed an emergency appeal.

While this would be a prime example of locking one's front door after the house had been burglarized, a law should immediately be put on the books stating that presidential candidates MUST release a bare minimum of five years worth of tax returns in order to be on the ballot in ALL 50 states. That would stop the shenanigans Trump's been pulling since day one.

[JackDaw]

How damaging is it to society when a privileged person takes unfair advantage of position?

There’s a ton of stuff on UK radio about wife of an American diplomat involved in a motor accident in which a kid died. The woman one day...in presence of her lawyer (i.e. no question of duress/ whatever)...promised to stay in country to help police with their enquiries.

The very next day she jetted out of country citing “diplomatic immunity”.

Legally..she has that right, of course.

But...it’s really not what diplomatic immunity was created for. Is it?

[Tami]

While this would be a prime example of locking one's front door after the house had been burglarized, a law should immediately be put on the books stating that presidential candidates MUST release a bare minimum of five years worth of tax returns in order to be on the ballot in ALL 50 states. That would stop the shenanigans Trump's been pulling since day one.

In addition to that, i still believe that all Presidential Candidates must be screened for possible security clearances, should they win. Most government employees who work with sensitive information have some level of security clearance. I don't see why the President and Vice-President shouldn't also be required to have security clearances as well.

[JackDaw]

I hope he resists & that the US Marshalls will have to frog march him from the WH while US Marines hold the door open for them. That will be glorious!

Jeez, it’s like the glory days of Richard Nixon and Watergate when Private Eye published a cover showing the White House surrounded by armed police...

A police man on loud speaker: “Come out, Mr President, we know you’re in there”.

Richard Nixon: “Come and get me, copper”.

[Tami]

While Trump Cracked Down on Immigration, a Republican Megadonor Sued for a Special Visa

As two of the most prolific political donors in the Donald Trump era, billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein have supported the president’s “America First” agenda. Elizabeth, the president of their shipping supplies company, recently wrote to customers: “Personally, I am an American first. I care about American jobs.”

But when it comes to business, their company has sought special visas for foreign workers — going so far as to sue the government to secure one at the same time federal officials implemented the president’s more stringent immigration policies.

The suit, filed February in federal district court in Illinois, came after the administration rejected the company’s 2018 petition to hire a full-time software engineer from India, court records show. The company sought a type of visa, called an H-1B, that allows foreign workers with special skills to stay in the U.S. for temporary periods.

[InformationGeek]

Trump is so losing it. His tweets are somehow getting worse.

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over...

Nancy Pelosi knew of all of the many Shifty Adam Schiff lies and massive frauds perpetrated upon Congress and the American people, in the form of a fraudulent speech knowingly delivered as a ruthless con, and the illegal meetings with a highly partisan “Whistleblower” & lawyer...

....This makes Nervous Nancy every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason. I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly “Colluded” with them, must all be immediately Impeached!

[Tami]

In the Land of Self-Defeat

What a fight over the local library in my hometown in rural Arkansas taught me about my neighbors’ go-it-alone mythology — and Donald Trump’s unbeatable appeal.

Only about 2,500 people live in my hometown. The library serves the entire county, which has an estimated 16,600 people, a marked decline from the population at the last census in 2010. The library has historically provided a variety of services for this community. It has offered summer reading camps for children and services like high-speed internet, sewing classes and academic help. I grew up going to the library and visited it often when I returned. It was always busy. I thought people would be supportive.

Instead, they started a fight. The battle began on the Facebook post, which had 240 comments by the end. The first comment came from Amie Hamilton, who reiterated her point when I interviewed her several months later. “If you want to make $25 an hour, please go to a city that can afford it,” she wrote. “We the people are not here to pay your excessive salaries through taxation or in any other way.”

There was general agreement among the Facebook commenters that no one in the area was paid that much — the librarian’s wages would have worked out to be about $42,200 a year — and the people who do actually earn incomes that are similar — teachers and many county officials — largely remained quiet. (Clinton has a median income of $34,764 and a poverty rate of 22.6 percent.) When a few of us, including me, pointed out that the candidate for the library job had a master’s degree, more people commented on the uselessness of education. “Call me narrow-minded but I’ve never understood why a librarian needs a four-year degree,” someone wrote. “We were taught Dewey decimal system in grade school. Never sounded like anything too tough.”

I watched the fight unfold with a sense of sadness, anger and frustration. I started arguing. It didn’t work. The pay request was pulled from the Quorum Court’s agenda.

Almost everyone I spoke with feels that the county overspent during the gas boom years, and that the bill is coming due. “We got wasteful and stupid, and now we have to go back to common sense,” Corrine Weatherly, who owns a dress- and costume-making shop, Sew What, told me. Ms. Weatherly also runs the county fair, and so she shows up to almost every Quorum Court meeting.

This worldview will continue to affect national elections. The most dominant news source here is Fox News, which I think helps perpetuate these attitudes. There’s another element, too: For decades, the dominant conservative theory of politics is that government should be run like a business, lean and efficient, and one of the biggest private employers here is Walmart, where Mr. James was working when he was elected.

There’s a prevailing sense of scarcity — it’s easy for people who have lived much of their lives in a place where $25 an hour seems like a high salary to believe there just isn’t enough money to go around. The government, here and elsewhere, just can’t afford to help anyone, people told me. The attitude extends to national issues, like immigration. Ms. Hamilton told me she’d witnessed, in Texas, a hospital being practically bankrupted by the cost of caring for immigrants and said, “I don’t want my tax dollars to be used to pay for people that are coming here just to sit on a government ticket.” Mr. Widener, who described himself as “more libertarian” than anything else, told me his heart goes out to migrant children who are held in detention centers at the border, but he blames the parents who brought them to this country.

Where I see needless cruelty, my neighbors see necessary reality.

Economic appeals are not going to sway any Trump voters, who view anyone who is trying to increase government spending, especially to help other people, with disdain, even if it ultimately helps them, too. And Trump voters are carrying the day here in Van Buren County. They see Mr. Trump’s slashing of the national safety net and withdrawal from the international stage as necessities — these things reflect their own impulse writ large.

They believe every tax dollar spent now is wasteful and foolish and they will have to pay for it later. It is as if there will be a nationwide scramble to cover the shortfall just as there was here with the library. As long as Democrats make promises to make their lives better with free college and Medicare for all sound like they include government spending, these voters will turn to Trump again — and it won’t matter how many scandals he’s been tarnished by.

[AnakinFlair]

How damaging is it to society when a privileged person takes unfair advantage of position?

There’s a ton of stuff on UK radio about wife of an American diplomat involved in a motor accident in which a kid died. The woman one day...in presence of her lawyer (i.e. no question of duress/ whatever)...promised to stay in country to help police with their enquiries.

The very next day she jetted out of country citing “diplomatic immunity”.

Legally..she has that right, of course.

But...it’s really not what diplomatic immunity was created for. Is it?

Where's Danny Glover when you need him?

[Tami]

Woman shot after Labrador retriever steps on gun inside pickup truck, police say

An Oklahoma woman was shot in the leg after a Labrador retriever stepped on a loaded gun while she and the dog's owner were in a pickup truck waiting for a train to pass.

Police officers from the Enid Police Department were dispatched to North 10th Street after dispatchers received a 911 call stating that the lab, named Molly, had caused the gun to discharge a bullet into the passenger's left thigh, according to a police report.

The man told emergency dispatchers that she was "bleeding pretty bad" before they instructed him to use his belt as a tourniquet. He then tied it above the wound to cut off circulation, according to the 911 call.

When asked who shot the woman, the man replied, "We had a dog in here, and it stepped on the gun."

So now dogs need gun licenses.

Can not being dumb enough to leave guns lying around where dogs and children can get t o them be a requirement for a gun licenses?