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US 2016 Presidential Election
- Thread starter pecan
- Start date
Its a shame if you are not going to give the articles a go as they don't paint things all rosy and wonderful, I found they merely give food for thought; information which may interest you to research further through whichever sources you trust.
Columbo
Never again
I disagree. He destroyed the tpp.
What does success/failure look like? Over what timeframe?
Columbo
Never again
it is hard to trust the fake news who want to destroy Trump.
Mooseface
Little known member
Ah well. We will have to disagree on trumps greatness. I think he is very UNgreat. Vile in fact.
Columbo
Never again
success: more jobs for the working poor, Americans to feel proud of their country.
failure: America not being great again.
So what is a source you trust?
Columbo
Never again
See, @Mooseface, the one person who does know me thought that i would be a Trump supporter. And they were proved right. I just needed a little encouragement to be able to express my true feelings on the matter.
Columbo
Never again
A source that doesn't seek to desecrate a hero like Trump.
Columbo
Never again
Maybe you and i have different views on what is great?
So do you have a start point of how many Americans didn't feel proud of their country prior to Trump being elected? America being great is a vague concept. I actually think most Americans were very proud to be called American before.
Also more jobs do not necessarily make the working poor less poor. Working two jobs/three jobs to survive is not the answer.
Mooseface
Little known member
Clearly
Mooseface
Little known member
Yes. That's tricky. When you don't realise what you think on a matter until someone else points it out.
Funnily enough destroying the TPP is exactly what many on the left in NZ and Australia (the ones you seem to be mocking) actually wanted for a long time.
kxk
SAPIOSEXUAL
Destroying the TPP, the fool has played right into the Chinese hands, and Australia should give up on erratic USA and make china our buddies.
When the Chinese take over as world power, at least I have Chinese heritage that may save me....
Trump will be impeached if he continues this way ...ie making illegal decisions
The Inevitability Of Impeachment
After just one week.
Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!
Impeachment is gaining ground because it is the only way to get him out, and because Republicans are already deserting this president in droves, and because the man is psychiatrically incapable of checking whether something is legal before he does it.
Impeachment is gaining ground because it’s so horribly clear that Trump is unfit for office. The grownups around Trump, even the most slavishly loyal ones, spend half their time trying to rein him in, but it can’t be done.
They spend the other half fielding frantic calls from Republican chieftains, business elites and foreign leaders. Trump did what? Poor Reince Priebus has finally attained the pinnacle of power, and it can’t be fun.
It is one thing to live in your own reality when you are a candidate and it’s just words. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time maybe even to get elected. But when you try to govern that way, there is a reality to reality—and reality pushes back.
One by one, Trump has decreed impulsive orders, un-vetted by legal, policy, or political staff, much less by serious planning. Almost immediately he is forced to walk them back by a combination of political and legal pressure—and by reality.
Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks.
Only with his lunatic effort to selectively ban refugees (but not from terrorist-sending countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where Trump has business interests) has Trump discovered that the American system has courts. It has courts. Imagine that.
The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s whore?
In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud.
They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. This is actually complicated, and nuance is not Trump’s strong suit. Rep Tom McClintock of California spoke for many when he warned:
“We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created” with repeal, said Rep. Tom McClintock. (R-Calif.)
“That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, mocking Trump’s own nutty tweeting habits, sent out a tweet calling a trade war with Mexico “mucho sad.”
Trump’s own senior staff has had to pull him back from his ludicrous crusade against Mexico and Mexicans, where Trump forces the Mexican president to cancel an official visit one day, and spends an hour on the phone kissing up the next day.
Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers.
All this in just a week! Now capped by federal judges starting to rein him in.
Two weeks ago, in this space, just based on what we witnessed during the transition, I wrote a piece calling for a citizens impeachment panel, as a shadow House Judiciary Committee, to assemble a dossier for a Trump impeachment, and a citizens’ campaign to create a public impeachment movement.
In the two weeks since then, Free Speech for People has launched a citizens’ campaign to impeach Trump. About 400,000 people have already signed the impeachment petition.
The bipartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, (CREW) has been conducting a detailed investigation. Senior legal scholars associated with CREW have filed a detailed legal brief in their lawsuit, documenting the several ways Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from profiting from the actions of foreign governments.
There are already plenty of other grounds for impeachment, including Trump’s putting his own business interests ahead of the country’s and his weird and opportunistic alliance with Vladimir Putin bordering on treason. A lesser-known law that goes beyond the Emoluments Clause is the STOCK Act of 2012, which explicitly prohibits the president and other officials from profiting from non-public knowledge.
Impeachment, of course, is a political as well as a legal process. The Founders designed it that way deliberately. But after just a week in office, not only has Trump been deserting the Constitution; his partisan allies are deserting him.
Despite his creepy weirdness, Republicans at first thought they could use Trump for Republican ends. But from his embrace of Putin to his sponsorship of a general trade war, this is no Republican. One can only imagine the alarm and horror being expressed by Republicans privately.
In 1984, the psychiatrist Otto Kernberg described a sickness known as Malignant Narcissism. Unlike ordinary narcissism, malignant narcissism was a severe pathology.
It was characterized by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty.
Given the sheer danger to the Republic as well as to the Republicans, Trump’s impeachment will happen. The only question is how grave a catastrophe America faces first.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility. http://www.amazon.com/Debtors-Prison-Politics-Austerity-Possibility/dp/0307959805
@reepbot Can you answer this - why Egypt & Saudi Arabia are not on his hitlist, yet all of the 9/11 terrorists came from those countries, and Donald has business interests there???
Interested in your views on this and the cost of all the court cases attached to his illegal acts, plus lost productivity as everyone is out on the streets.
jobs lost not jobs made
When the Chinese take over as world power, at least I have Chinese heritage that may save me....
Trump will be impeached if he continues this way ...ie making illegal decisions
The Inevitability Of Impeachment
After just one week.
Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!
Impeachment is gaining ground because it is the only way to get him out, and because Republicans are already deserting this president in droves, and because the man is psychiatrically incapable of checking whether something is legal before he does it.
Impeachment is gaining ground because it’s so horribly clear that Trump is unfit for office. The grownups around Trump, even the most slavishly loyal ones, spend half their time trying to rein him in, but it can’t be done.
They spend the other half fielding frantic calls from Republican chieftains, business elites and foreign leaders. Trump did what? Poor Reince Priebus has finally attained the pinnacle of power, and it can’t be fun.
It is one thing to live in your own reality when you are a candidate and it’s just words. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time maybe even to get elected. But when you try to govern that way, there is a reality to reality—and reality pushes back.
One by one, Trump has decreed impulsive orders, un-vetted by legal, policy, or political staff, much less by serious planning. Almost immediately he is forced to walk them back by a combination of political and legal pressure—and by reality.
Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks.
Only with his lunatic effort to selectively ban refugees (but not from terrorist-sending countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where Trump has business interests) has Trump discovered that the American system has courts. It has courts. Imagine that.
The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s whore?
In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud.
They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. This is actually complicated, and nuance is not Trump’s strong suit. Rep Tom McClintock of California spoke for many when he warned:
“We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created” with repeal, said Rep. Tom McClintock. (R-Calif.)
“That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, mocking Trump’s own nutty tweeting habits, sent out a tweet calling a trade war with Mexico “mucho sad.”
Trump’s own senior staff has had to pull him back from his ludicrous crusade against Mexico and Mexicans, where Trump forces the Mexican president to cancel an official visit one day, and spends an hour on the phone kissing up the next day.
Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers.
All this in just a week! Now capped by federal judges starting to rein him in.
Two weeks ago, in this space, just based on what we witnessed during the transition, I wrote a piece calling for a citizens impeachment panel, as a shadow House Judiciary Committee, to assemble a dossier for a Trump impeachment, and a citizens’ campaign to create a public impeachment movement.
In the two weeks since then, Free Speech for People has launched a citizens’ campaign to impeach Trump. About 400,000 people have already signed the impeachment petition.
The bipartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, (CREW) has been conducting a detailed investigation. Senior legal scholars associated with CREW have filed a detailed legal brief in their lawsuit, documenting the several ways Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from profiting from the actions of foreign governments.
There are already plenty of other grounds for impeachment, including Trump’s putting his own business interests ahead of the country’s and his weird and opportunistic alliance with Vladimir Putin bordering on treason. A lesser-known law that goes beyond the Emoluments Clause is the STOCK Act of 2012, which explicitly prohibits the president and other officials from profiting from non-public knowledge.
Impeachment, of course, is a political as well as a legal process. The Founders designed it that way deliberately. But after just a week in office, not only has Trump been deserting the Constitution; his partisan allies are deserting him.
Despite his creepy weirdness, Republicans at first thought they could use Trump for Republican ends. But from his embrace of Putin to his sponsorship of a general trade war, this is no Republican. One can only imagine the alarm and horror being expressed by Republicans privately.
In 1984, the psychiatrist Otto Kernberg described a sickness known as Malignant Narcissism. Unlike ordinary narcissism, malignant narcissism was a severe pathology.
It was characterized by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty.
Given the sheer danger to the Republic as well as to the Republicans, Trump’s impeachment will happen. The only question is how grave a catastrophe America faces first.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility. http://www.amazon.com/Debtors-Prison-Politics-Austerity-Possibility/dp/0307959805
@reepbot Can you answer this - why Egypt & Saudi Arabia are not on his hitlist, yet all of the 9/11 terrorists came from those countries, and Donald has business interests there???
Interested in your views on this and the cost of all the court cases attached to his illegal acts, plus lost productivity as everyone is out on the streets.
jobs lost not jobs made
kxk
SAPIOSEXUAL
What do fascists always do????
Shut down free press......and then they attack Universities
Kellyanne Conway: Reporters Who 'Talked Smack' About Trump Should Be Fired
The Trump administration continues its threats toward the media.
In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, chief strategist Steve Bannon, who previously ran Breitbart, a site that traffics in white nationalism, called the media “the opposition party” and said it should be silenced.
Shut down free press......and then they attack Universities
Kellyanne Conway: Reporters Who 'Talked Smack' About Trump Should Be Fired
The Trump administration continues its threats toward the media.
In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, chief strategist Steve Bannon, who previously ran Breitbart, a site that traffics in white nationalism, called the media “the opposition party” and said it should be silenced.
kxk
SAPIOSEXUAL
It Took Donald Trump 8 Days To Bring The U.S. To The Brink Of A Constitutional Crisis
"Obedience to specific court orders is what keeps us from being a banana republic or fascist dictatorship. That's a really big deal."
When federal judges rule, government officials — up to and including the president — are supposed to obey or risk being held in contempt of court. A government that ignored the courts would be able to violate the law and the Constitution at will. So for more than two centuries, the nation’s courts have had the last word on what’s legal and constitutional — and what is not. “We are and will remain in compliance with judicial orders,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Sunday evening.
But there was little indication that the Trump administration has fully complied with the court orders — or that Trump’s inner circle even believed the administration had to do so.
“Saturday’s ruling does not undercut the president’s executive order,” a senior White House official told NBC News midday Sunday in reference to the Brooklyn judge’s decision. “All stopped visas will remain stopped. All halted admissions will remain halted. All restricted travel will remain prohibited.”
CBP officials refused throughout the weekend to obey the Virginia judge’s order to allow lawyers access to detainees at Dulles
.............it’s a constitutional crisis, where the executive branch is not abiding by the law.”
The next morning, four Democratic members of the House of Representatives went to the airport and tried and failed to convince CBP to obey the order.
“We have a constitutional crisis today,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), one of the four House members who went to the airport, tweeted Sunday.
Follow
Rep. Don Beyer ✔@RepDonBeyer
We have a constitutional crisis today. Four Members of Congress asked CBP officials to enforce a federal court order and were turned away.
Columbo
Never again
Clearly she knows me better than i know myself.