All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[MindofShadow]

It's also weird how, in addition to using the presidency to enrich himself and his rich friends, Trump is using it for his own personal vendetta against Amazon.

Bezo or whatever that dousches name is should just put a disclaimer on Amazon

"Thanks to President Trump, all shipping prices have now doubled site wide"

Watch what happens lol.

[ZombieHavoc]

Bezo or whatever that dousches name is should just put a disclaimer on Amazon

"Thanks to President Trump, all shipping prices have now doubled site wide"

Watch what happens lol.

Maybe Trump has stock in Prime and is trying to get more people to subscribe for the free 2-day shipping benefit.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

It's also weird how, in addition to using the presidency to enrich himself and his rich friends, Trump is using it for his own personal vendetta against Amazon.

From what I've heard and read, Trump's vendetta isn't with Amazon pre se, but with Jeff Bezos who owns the Washington Post which has done highly critical pieces on Trump from day one of his presidency. And, as we all have seen, the thin-skinned Angry Orangutan doesn't take at all well to any amount of criticism leveled against him.

[ZombieHavoc]

It sucks how depressing the world is and how much you need to escape media to feel better about life.

When I end up being out of the loop on news for a couple days, for whatever various reason, I am in much better spirits and way nicer to people I come across.

However. it feels irresponsible to just ignore everything going on. And also, it's like...what if someone was an adult in 1968 and you asked them how they felt about everything going on at the time and their response was, like, well I didn't pay attention to any of it so I don't really remember or have an opinion. World is fucking crazy right now and depressing as it is, I can't imagine just avoiding it. It's depressing but it's also insane and in ways exciting, for the wrong reasons.

Like, however the Mueller investigation ends up, wherever it ends and whoever does or does not get charged--it's intriguing and it'd be weird to just be ignoring all this shit.

[PaulBullion]

The Senate race in West Virginia will now be between three high profile conservatives:

Blankenship to wage third-party bid after losing primary

This is probably good news for incumbent Joe Manchin, who can be a bit of a DINO, but at least he stopped the GOP from repealing Obamacare outright.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

So another Trump supporter posted an insane meme where a twitter poster claims that he supports Trump's death plan on food stamps by the government sending out monthly rations of food in a box. This way they can get those useless poor fucks off the steak and lobster they are so getting each month.

Anyhow as I pointed out Trump's administration couldn't get Puerto Rico's 30 million meals delivered right. What makes you think they could supply good edible food monthly to 44+ million Americans ? Also as I brought up lots of poor elderly and some disabled Americans depend on those monthly food stamps and could starve without food and imagine if they don't get that delivery ?

[MindofShadow]

When I end up being out of the loop on news for a couple days, for whatever various reason, I am in much better spirits and way nicer to people I come across.

Ditto.

I'll be curious with this investigation and with upcoming mid terms.

If investigation is a dud and midterms are a dud, i'll probably bow out and accept things as they are.

but I honestly think most people like how things are going. I don't trust humanity anymore. I see a lot of different people everyday because of my job and while I got off facebook my wife is still on there... the same people who voted for this dude are still supporting him. So... whatever.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

So another Trump supporter posted an insane meme where a twitter poster claims that he supports Trump's death plan on food stamps by the government sending out monthly rations of food in a box. This way they can get those useless poor fucks off the steak and lobster they are so getting each month.

Anyhow as I pointed out Trump's administration couldn't get Puerto Rico's 30 million meals delivered right. What makes you think they could supply good edible food monthly to 44+ million Americans ? Also as I brought up lots of poor elderly and some disabled Americans depend on those monthly food stamps and could starve without food and imagine if they don't get that delivery ?

C'mon now, do you REALLY think Republicans care if poor people, the elderly and the disabled starve? I'm sure they're of the Ebneezer Scrooge (pre-spirit visitation) mindset: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

[PaulBullion]

C'mon now, do you REALLY think Republicans care if poor people, the elderly and the disabled starve? I'm sure they're of the Ebneezer Scrooge (pre-spirit visitation) mindset: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

Jesus would teach a man how to fish, dontcha know?

[Tami]

Jesus would teach a man how to fish, dontcha know?

While Trump's EPA is turning a blind eye to dumping toxic waste into the water, making the fish deadly to eat. Under these conditions, even Jesus would think twice about teaching people to fish.

[ZombieHavoc]

If investigation is a dud and midterms are a dud, i'll probably bow out and accept things as they are.

Sometimes I get the same inclination. I don't have high expectations for the investigation or the midterms, and I guess whether I keep my eye on the news or not, nothing is changed so...

I don't know. I feel obligated to pay attention to it all. We'll see.

What really bothers me isn't Trump. I mean, yes, he bothers me. But my disillusionment in the people of this country is what has been the bigger issue.

[MindofShadow]

But my disillusionment in the people of this country is what has been the bigger issue.

Yep.

I kept thinking after every dumbass thing he tried or did, at least one inlaw would go, "yoooo too much wth have I done."

I especially expected the farmer inlaws to go, "oh fuck" after the whole tariff thing.

Instead it was, "we are big enough to survive it but all these smaller farmers are fucked. Oh well."

[Malvolio]

C'mon now, do you REALLY think Republicans care if poor people, the elderly and the disabled starve? I'm sure they're of the Ebneezer Scrooge (pre-spirit visitation) mindset: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

Didn't Newt Gingrich say almost exactly that the last time he ran for President?

[Iron Maiden]

Ditto.

I'll be curious with this investigation and with upcoming mid terms.

If investigation is a dud and midterms are a dud, i'll probably bow out and accept things as they are.

but I honestly think most people like how things are going. I don't trust humanity anymore. I see a lot of different people everyday because of my job and while I got off facebook my wife is still on there... the same people who voted for this dude are still supporting him. So... whatever.

I keep hearing that the blue wave is kind of stalled right now In Indiana, we really don't gain much. In some respects, we are similar to Illinois. Big population centers in the north (not that I'm comparing NW Indiana population size to Chicago) that mostly votes Democratic. the rest of the state, which is mostly rural, votes GOP with the exception of Marion county (Indianapolis). If Democrat Joe Donnelly keeps his senate seat, he votes with the GOP a lot. If he loses, then we get a GOP senator. At least the worst of that lot got defeated in the primary. They were all falling all over themselves trying to outdo the other in their Trump loyalty.

I really despair at how many millions of people who think Trump is a great president, and even a good role model for children. Or how he's done maybe a 100 things with no comment from the GOP but they whined about Obama wearing a tan suit, blocked legislation after the midterms, were determined not to even entertain the idea of Obama proposing a candidate for the Supreme Court after Scalia died, vowed to make him a one term President, etc. The holier than thou crowd that supports a President with children from multiple wives, openly lusted after his own daughter and is a grifter and a liar.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

From Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch:

How the Trump family sold U.S. foreign policy to the highest bidder

Today marks the 16-month anniversary of Donald Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States, and nowhere has our unlikeliest commander-in-chief placed a greater stamp on America’s place in the world than his dramatic — and sometimes arbitrary and capricious, or so it seems — shifts in foreign policy. None of these seismic changes seemed more baffling than last spring’s abrupt sellout of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar — a longtime ally where the U.S. Air Force Central Command and its 10,000 American troops are now based.

But suddenly, like the remarkable mid-speech policy reversal that occurs in George Orwell’s 1984, we were, in a sense, at war with Qatar. We had always been at war with Qatar.

Trump stunned his own foreign policy team — including then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis — when he tweeted that Qatar is a sponsor of terrorism and seemingly endorsed an economic and political blockage of the tiny, oil-rich nation organized and led by two powerful neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, or UAE.

How to make sense of a 180-degree shift in policy that seemed so counter to U.S. interests in the region? A few months later, people who suspect the worst about Trump and his minions learned a possible motive that was almost too cynical to comprehend. Not long before Team Trump switched gears on Qatar, key officials from the emirate had met with Charles Kushner — father of Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared, who’s in charge of Trump’s Middle East portfolio — to discuss a massive Qatar-funded bailout of 666 Fifth Ave., the debt-laden Manhattan skyscraper that was threatening to sink the Kushner family real estate empire. But the Qataris rejected the deal — just weeks before the policy about-face. Whatever actually happened, the appearance was simply awful.

The scope of the Trump-Kushner foreign policy auction is so vast that it would take a whole book to cover, and indeed several have been written. But it helps to break down the outlines of a conspiracy into three simple components. In each of these areas, the accumulating evidence has grown from a whisper to a scream over the last two years.

Part 1: The Art of the Steal: With the GOP nominee behind in the polls for much of 2016, Team Trump seemed willing to listen to offers of help from any and all comers, morality or election laws notwithstanding. In June 2016, having secured the nomination, Don Jr. gladly convened a Trump Tower confab with Russians who claimed to have dirt on Clinton. It didn’t produce any overt deal on collusion because it didn’t need to. Just days after Team Putin learned that Trump’s people were open to help and wouldn’t rat them out to the FBI, the flow of illegally hacked Democratic documents — the 21st-century version of breaking-and-entering at the Watergate — began.

Part 2: Cashing in the Chips. Winning the presidency should have been its own reward, but that’s not how the childish Gambinos now in charge of a global superpower conduct their family business. As noted above, Russian oligarchs tied to Putin funneled millions to the Trump inauguration and one firm backed by a pro-Putin billionaire hired the president’s personal lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, who was peddling his access to Trump all around Washington.

Part 3:The Big Payback. It’s impossible to dispute that these countries that made offers to help Trump win the election have continuously benefited in terms of policy — beginning as early as the summer of 2016, when Trump allies changed the GOP election platform to take a less confrontational stance toward Russia in its conflict with Ukraine. The determination not to impose new sanctions on Russia or, under great pressure, to announce largely toothless penalties — despite the clear-cut evidence that Russia meddled in our election — has been a continual storyline of the Trump presidency.

And there's more. The shit Trump and his henchmen have done is repugnant in every sense of the word----except of course to the GOP who continue turning a blind eye and deaf ear to all the skullduggery.