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NEVERENDING ♾️ The NEVERENDING Political Discussion Thread

Measures of the impact of his visit to my fair city -

A concert in the theater across the street from where he is appearing has been canceled
concerned those coming into Downtown ... for the concert wouldn't enjoy the experience because of the large crowd and commotion caused by Trump's event,
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and

Central Library will be closed on Thursday due to logistics surrounding President's Trump visit
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It is catty corner to where he is appearing. Usually it is open 9 am to 9 pm.
 
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About his visit -

After landing in town, sources say President Trump will attend a private fundraiser....
A roundtable with the President is $25,000 a person. There will also be a photo line for $10,000 each and a reception for $1,000 each.
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Money money money

Every penny that FAT Nixon gets from his rubes, from now on, is actually TIT sucking public tax money that was given to the donor by Congress.

That is all.
 
I am loathe to jump to conclusions too quickly, but some evidence suggests it may be possible that Trump is an inconsiderate person.


I don't dispense criticism like that lightly.
 
dvdneal said:
Can there be one of those walk of shame things like in Game of Thrones?
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Whenever that time comes, I can truly imagine a large mob gathering outside the White House on that last morning all chanting " na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye"
 
Maister said:
I am loathe to jump to conclusions too quickly, but some evidence suggests it may be possible that Trump is an inconsiderate person.


I don't dispense criticism like that lightly.
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Thank you for speaking up. Something was bothering me about the man's tweets and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.


Completely unrelated: Can we impeach someone for being an embarrassment to our country?

MD Planner said:
Whenever that time comes, I can truly imagine a large mob gathering outside the White House on that last morning all chanting " na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye"
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We should start glee clubs across the nation and get people to practice up for this glorious moment.
 
When my 8th grade can logically explain how goggle uses its "search engine" and code to aggregate the google news site, our president can most certainly have "advisors" explain this to him, in whatever manner that he could understand. :r:
 
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Raf said:
When my 8th grade can logically explain how goggle uses its "search engineer" and code to aggregate the google news site, our president can most certainly have "advisors" explain this to him, in whatever manner that he could understand. :r:
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Unless, you know, these "advisors" are being paid to be Yes Men and know it. The consequences of saying "Well, boss, actually...." could be dire.
 
Anyone else watching John McCain's Memorial Service? I think it's really beautiful that Joe Biden is giving a eulogy. I'm saddened of McCain's death, but I hope that this will continue to draw attention to how much respect a man gets from everyone when he really does put country over party and makes serving the best interests of the people of the U.S. to the best of his ability his highest priority as a politician.

*I'm not saying he was perfect or never had bad ideas. I just really respect that he maintained his integrity throughout his service, especially here at the end.
 
gtpeach said:
Anyone else watching John McCain's Memorial Service? I think it's really beautiful that Joe Biden is giving a eulogy. I'm saddened of McCain's death, but I hope that this will continue to draw attention to how much respect a man gets from everyone when he really does put country over party and makes serving the best interests of the people of the U.S. to the best of his ability his highest priority as a politician.

*I'm not saying he was perfect or never had bad ideas. I just really respect that he maintained his integrity throughout his service, especially here at the end.
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I think that there were several telling moments during the campaign where he defended Obama when people said that he was not a Citizen.

I did not always agree with him, but I always respected him. With Trump it is the opposite, I sometimes agree with him, but I can't respect him.
 
gtpeach said:
Anyone else watching John McCain's Memorial Service? I think it's really beautiful that Joe Biden is giving a eulogy. I'm saddened of McCain's death, but I hope that this will continue to draw attention to how much respect a man gets from everyone when he really does put country over party and makes serving the best interests of the people of the U.S. to the best of his ability his highest priority as a politician.

*I'm not saying he was perfect or never had bad ideas. I just really respect that he maintained his integrity throughout his service, especially here at the end.
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Not watching, but my family and I had planed months ago to visit DC this weekend, so we're leaving early tomorrow morning to drive down to DC, get set in the hotel and walk over to the Capitol to see if we can view him.

We'll give it a try, but I'm not interested if it takes more than an hour of wanting in line. It's not that important to me.
 
michaelskis;822392I said:
did not always agree with him, but I always respected him. With Trump it is the opposite, I sometimes agree with him, but I can't respect him.
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100% agree. I put McCain right up there with Audie Murphy when talking about true American heroes.
 
AG74683 said:
100% agree. I put McCain right up there with Audie Murphy when talking about true American heroes.
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Quoting Major Dick Winters - McCain served in company of heroes - Vietnam Medal of Honor Recipients who were POWs -

Donald G. Cook
Bud Day
Lance P. Sijan
James B. Stockdale
Leo K. Thorsness
Humbert R. Versace
 
mendelman said:
Not watching, but my family and I had planed months ago to visit DC this weekend, so we're leaving early tomorrow morning to drive down to DC, get set in the hotel and walk over to the Capitol to see if we can view him.
...
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Unlike other famous dead people, it's a closed lid presentation, draped with a flag.

You might swing by Lafayette Park, aka the Kremlin Annex, where the Occupy folks are on night 47 (tonight) of demonstrations and gatherings. They've had a mariachi band, singers, rock bands, many other genres. Oh, and it's safe. Some of the signage has bad words but it's nothing that literate tweens would not already have seen.
 
Veloise said:
[You might swing by Lafayette Park, aka the Kremlin Annex, where the Occupy folks are on night 47 (tonight) of demonstrations and gatherings. They've had a mariachi band, singers, rock bands, many other genres. Oh, and it's safe. Some of the signage has bad words but it's nothing that literate tweens would not already have seen.
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I stayed in a hotel two blocks from there last weekend, and I couldn't have told you anything was gong on in Lafayette Square - must not be much of a protest. ;)
 
I have come to the realization over the last few election cycles that I'll receive vote-for-me-robo-calls. Yesterday I received a vote-for-me-text-message. I was not amused! :-{
 
Yes, please, "own the libs" by burning your Nikes, which you already bought. Yesss own us all!:r:
 
Planit said:
I have come to the realization over the last few election cycles that I'll receive vote-for-me-robo-calls. Yesterday I received a vote-for-me-text-message. I was not amused! :-{
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Illegal unless your number was manually entered for the text. Either way, a curt "remove me from your list" reply should take care of it.

The Dem candidate in Georgia's 6th congressional district has no hope of raising even a quarter of the money Jon Ossoff raised for the insanity that was the 2017 special election (and, by extension, the GOP incumbent will not need to raise as much either)...which means far fewer robocalls this time...I hope...
 
Raf said:
Yes, please, "own the libs" by burning your Nikes, which you already bought. Yesss own us all!:r:
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John Rich is a moron. People need to stop demanding that we boycott things. I really thought the Republicans would know better, since that is standard fare for the Democrats and they get chastised for it all the time.

How about we just go about our business and stop shopping where we don't like, and only shop where we do like? Boycotts really don't work well, and in the end are just ways for us to say what we feel. They do no good in reality. Just like holding hands around a pond, so we can show how much we care about the environment. Why are you doing that? Who are you proving something to?

If I had to boycott every place that did something I didn't agree with, I would never eat or wear clothes, or drive a car, or blah, blah, blah.
 
Raf said:
Yes, please, "own the libs" by burning your Nikes, which you already bought. Yesss own us all!:r:
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I destroyed my Nikes yesterday. F!ck Kap!

j/k I agree with what he is kneeling for and support his right to do so (and I love the NFL and will keep watching this season)

I did destroy my Nikes yesterday though - I was at mile 4.5 of a planned 10 miler and the little air pocket in the sole blew out on my right shoe. I never had that happen before and it felt like part of the heel had just fallen off. I stopped and turned around to look for the missing piece but couldn't find it and then realized what had happen. I cut my run short and lopsidedly hobbled back home. I only had 340 miles on this pair but I can usually get about 500 miles out of a pair before the soles are degraded too much to be useful. This is the first time I had a blowout though.

I have no qualms about replacing them with another pair of Nikes.
 
Hink said:
The Washington Post transcript of Trump is beyond painful....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...n&utm_term=.a6180b98beca#annotations:15315887

You have got to be kidding me. I might buy Woodword's book, just because it seems that he tried very hard to get it right.... should be interesting...
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I understand Bob Woodward is an Old School journalist with impeccable credentials - it was his journalism that helped bring down Nixon. It's interesting several people in the west wing have flatly denied making derogatory statements that Woodward has specifically attributed to them. I would imagine Woodward will be able to back up his attributions with other documentation, such as recordings.
 
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims “unwavering faith in President Trump.” Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!
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incredible :r: :-c :-o 8-!
 
JNA said:
incredible :r: :-c :-o 8-!
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Just need a show of support from some other stalwart ally of our great nation, like maybe Putin.

Can we get rid of this guy already?

So here's the famous NYT op ed piece that promises to be the 'deep throat' of the generation:
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It's not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump's leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular "resistance" of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office.The root of the problem is the president's amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the "enemy of the people," President Trump's impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Don't get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president's leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief's comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
"There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next," a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he'd made only a week earlier.The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren't for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what's right even when Donald Trump won't.
The result is a two-track presidency.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
This isn't the work of the so-called deep state. It's the work of the steady state.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it's over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
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Bubba said:
Constitutionally, or are you advocating something else?
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I was proceeding more along the lines of wishful thinking, but as far as the Constitution goes I suppose there's always the 25th Amendment, which I admit would be problematic and is likely the reason the 'grownups' decided to manage the situation/Trump in the manner they've chosen to.

The world is busy trying to figure out who the author might be. My guess is either Pence or Mattis.
 
Maister said:
I was proceeding more along the lines of wishful thinking, but as far as the Constitution goes I suppose there's always the 25th Amendment, which I admit would be problematic and is likely the reason the 'grownups' decided to manage the situation/Trump in the manner they've chosen to.

The world is busy trying to figure out who the author might be. My guess is either Pence or Mattis.
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I'm going with Raj Shah.
 
Maister said:
The world is busy trying to figure out who the author might be. My guess is either Pence or Mattis.
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No way it's Pence but it's definitely a person in the Pence camp though. This is the Pence power move, with the mention of the 25th Amendment. They've been waiting for this opportunity for a while, and he's starting to break rank with Trump. Theoretically, if Trump is to exit office by January 20th of 2019, Pence could be eligible to be president for up to 10 years per the 22nd Amendment (he'd be eligible to run in 2020 AND in 2024). This happened twice before, with Lyndon Johnson after the JFK assassination, and Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned. Neither man made it to the 10 year mark, but it was possible.

He's a party man through and through, although he's almost too far right. He couldn't run as president because there's no way he'd pick up the essential swing voters. A sitting president has a huge advantage against opponents in the election, primarily because of 24/7 media exposure and the traveling White House press corps. While Pence is generally calm and collective, he's absolutely more of a theocrat than anything else. Honestly, I think a Pence presidency scares me more than a Trump presidency. I'm just hoping Trump's vanity keeps him fighting till the end.
 
AG74683 said:
No way it's Pence but it's definitely a person in the Pence camp though. This is the Pence power move, with the mention of the 25th Amendment. They've been waiting for this opportunity for a while, and he's starting to break rank with Trump. Theoretically, if Trump is to exit office by January 20th of 2019, Pence could be eligible to be president for up to 10 years per the 22nd Amendment (he'd be eligible to run in 2020 AND in 2024). This happened twice before, with Lyndon Johnson after the JFK assassination, and Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned. Neither man made it to the 10 year mark, but it was possible.

He's a party man through and through, although he's almost too far right. He couldn't run as president because there's no way he'd pick up the essential swing voters. A sitting president has a huge advantage against opponents in the election, primarily because of 24/7 media exposure and the traveling White House press corps. While Pence is generally calm and collective, he's absolutely more of a theocrat than anything else. Honestly, I think a Pence presidency scares me more than a Trump presidency. I'm just hoping Trump's vanity keeps him fighting till the end.
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Language experts have begun to analyze the op ed piece and honed in on use of the word "Lodestar." No one in the administration seems to have used in speech or writing except Pence, who has done so on multiple occasions.
Pence would also be the immediate beneficiary if Trump were for some reason removed from office before the end of his term. But, yeah, that seems a bit more Machiavellian than his usual style.

As far as comparing the two evils Trump and Pence represent - I'm sure you're correct that Pence would be far more effective than Trump has proved to be in implementing policy - which in Pence's case would likely be directed towards things like denying rights to LGBT, but on the other hand, he probably wouldn't do asinine things that could start world wars such as ordering the assassination of foreign leaders or threatening nuclear attacks. Not to mention Pence has shown no inclination towards attacking the domestic institutions (free press, independent judicial system, etc.) our democracy relies on.
 
Planit said:
The other theory is that someone else intentionally used the word "lodestar" - because they knew Pence used it - to throw the scent off them.
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I buy into this theory. The word is so unique and little used. Pence is no idiot, he'd know full well that the piece would be tied right back to him. Also, Pence is the only member of the cabinet that can't be fired. The NY Times specifically said the author wanted to remain anonymous because it could endanger their job. Pence would have to be impeached to lose his job, although Trump could completely box him out (which will probably happen anyways).

Just read another theory that the piece was written by many people, similar to a Murder on the Orient Express thing, all members had a hand.
 
I'd bet my bottom dollar it was Dan Coats, lest we forget that he was a Senator from Mike Pence's Indiana.8-!
 
Maister said:
Pence would also be the immediate beneficiary if Trump were for some reason removed from office before the end of his term. But, yeah, that seems a bit more Machiavellian than his usual style.
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Apropos of nothing:

My sons fairly often tell a story from some game or video or something that I have never seen where some guy shoots the commanding officer dead in front of everyone, announces that "Seeing as how our commander has died and I am the next in line, I'm in charge now" and someone else spontaneously announces "Stray bullet. That's what I saw." (because, presumably, the commanding officer was just that bad.)

Hypothetically, there can be difficult situations where apparent conflict of interest and actual belief that this is the right thing to do in spite of it "benefiting" you personally come into conflict.
 
Gedunker said:
I'd bet my bottom dollar it was Dan Coats, lest we forget that he was a Senator from Mike Pence's Indiana.8-!
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I like this one, plus the "lodestar" line could almost be seen as a nod that the writer is fully supportive of Pence. IMO I think the whole "Murder on the Orient Express" angle might be it. The majority of the Cabinet and Pence would need agree to remove Trump and transmit the written declaration to Ryan (Speaker) and Hatch (President pro tempore). Basically once that document is in their hands, Pence is President until Trump submits his "bigly wrong" paperwork wherein power immediately returns to him. Within 4 days, the Cabinet and Pence must submit another document that Trump is unfit to serve. At that point it becomes an issue for Congress to decide within 21 days. It takes a 2/3 vote too.

The 25th amendment only works if the Vice President is involved. It isn't the Vice President OR, it's the Vice President AND the majority of the Cabinet (or other body appointed by Congress). So Pence would absolutely have to be a willing player in this.

And as if today wasn't drama filled enough, Cory Booker says hold my beer and drops some emails.
 
kjel said:
And this bizarre exchange at a hearing yesterday at a congressional hearing. Rep. Billy Long auctions off a protester's cell phone :-c

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/05/politics/billy-long-auction-protester/index.html
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I've watched that about 40x today. He's my new congressional hero for the day. I think he starts his auctioneer's chant by trying to stay sort of relevant to what's happening in the gallery with the troll/protester (trolltester?) and then sort of reverts into just a regular auctioneers call after a few seconds. Either way, it was hilarious, worth multiple views, and the best drowning out of a protestor I've ever seen.
 
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