The Trump Presidency 13: The (James) Baker's Dozen

Status
Not open for further replies.
The Great Zaganza said:
cheering for him to lie and slander isn't the same a believing him: just like you might want your divorce lawyer to sue your Ex for violating the Geneva Convention, Trump supporters want him to "stick it to (((people we don't like)))".
And that sticking won't be tough enough if he constraint himself with concepts of truth.
Click to expand...
Do you have an idea what applies to whom?
 
In no particular order...

Captain_Swoop said:
Trump Tweets

“The Washington Post ignored basic journalistic standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump.” Covington student suing WAPO. Go get them Nick. Fake News!

The Press has never been more dishonest than it is today. Stories are written that have absolutely no basis in fact. The writers don’t even call asking for verification. They are totally out of control. Sadly, I kept many of them in business. In six years, they all go BUST!
Click to expand...

The news NEEDS Trump's antics to stay afloat. He's totally been doing them a solid!

Fast Eddie B said:
I think “packing” or “stacking” the court usually refers to adding or subtracting the number of Justices on the court. Trump has not done that.

One would expect a Republican president to appoint conservative judges. Though one might be opposed to conservative judges, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with it.
Click to expand...

As a direct term, you have a point. The bigger issue, overall, though, is what the Republicans in the Senate were doing from Day 1 of the Obama Presidency, doing their best to prevent any of Obama's nominee's from being seated. Because they wanted to politically sabotage Obama, not because of any particular issues with the nominees. That somewhat came to a head with Merrick Garland, a moderate, not a liberal, not even getting a hearing. And then, of course, Trump's nominees have been rushed through to the extent that they've been able to rush them through. Colloquially speaking, that quite counts as packing the courts with "their" people.

phiwum said:
What is this about? I've heard many media articles that no new wall has been under construction under Trump. Is he referring to a reconstruction of a fence or something?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Probably reconstruction. There has been that going on pretty much all along.

Now, for a couple things that may be of interest for this thread from stuff I saw today. The Trump Administration's trade talks with China aren't going all that well. I think that this summation of why might get to the heart of the issue, though.

Which brings us back to Trump’s idiotic tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods. Even at the height of the bygone Age of Mercantilism, when protectionism and tariffs dominated the largest economies in Europe, never has any nation attempted to use tariffs to shape the internal economic institutions of a major trading partner; never, until Trump.

In effect, Trump is telling China that it must cease to be a planned and managed economy with State ownership of enterprises. Trump is insisting that China stop being Communist, for the sake of US tariffs and trade amounting to a mere sliver of the rapidly growing Chinese economy. That is never going to happen, during the current talks or any other.
Click to expand...

Next up, hearings about the NC voter fraud continued. Here's a summation of a couple of the important things of note.

Day 2 mostly centered around the testimony of Andy Yates, “CEO” of the one-man political consulting firm, Red Dome Group, which provided campaign management services to the Harris campaign. We learned that Harris hired Dowless for GOTV services in Bladen County shortly before Red Dome came onboard the campaign, and Harris then transferred management and payment of Dowless to Red Dome — thus keeping the fraudster at arm’s length from Harris himself. Accounting records reveal that Red Dome paid Dowless over $130,000 for his efforts for the Harris campaign. Boy-howdy that’s a lot of money in backwoods North Carolina. It’s also about 5% of Harris’s entire campaign budget.

We also learned that Red Dome neither collected nor retained any records of Dowless’s activities. Dowless, a contractor, was under no written contract, with no statement of work to be performed. He was reimbursed for expenses by Red Dome without being required to present any receipts. Red Dome had no record of how many people Dowless employed to work doors for Harris, nor how many hours they worked (despite reimbursing Dowless by the person-hour). It never supervised his work in any way...
Click to expand...

That's pretty damning towards Harris right there. But wait, there's more! From Day three,

Under oath, Harris Jr. revealed that just prior to Harris Sr. hiring Dowless he (Harris Jr.) strongly advised his father that Dowless’s operation looked shady and probably involved illegal ballot harvesting, but Harris Sr. went ahead and hired Dowless anyway.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Harris doesn't look like he has any real defense left. Sounds like he'll be on the stand in a few hours, either way.

Moving on... The Wall Street Journal argues Trump may have committed too many crimes to be investigated

In an editorial published in the Journal last week, Rivkin and co-author, fellow “conservative legal theorist” Elizabeth Foley, essentially, and without a hint of self-reflection argue that the sheer multiplicity of criminal allegations of Trump's "pre-presidential"activities should prompt newly sworn in Attorney General William Barr to shut down congressional investigations into Trump's crimes, for the “good of the country.”
Click to expand...

This is, of course, quite the opposite opinion from what the Wall Street Journal published about investigations into Clinton. Also, it conflicts with the Supreme Court opinion from the Clinton era about how investigating the President is entirely allowable despite disruption that it may cause.

Moving on, it's not just Trump declaring bogus emergencies to get their way. Trump's EPA is doing so, too.

As EcoWatch reports, in 2018 the EPA issued what it called “emergency” approvals to spray the substance that is “very highly toxic” to bee, on more than 16 million acres of crops that do attract bees. The EPA’s own inspector general found that the practice didn’t consider either the effect on the environment, or on human health.

Just as with the National Emergency Act, the EPA’s ability to allow emergency use of otherwise restricted substances is supposed to be limited. The authority is there to protect against outbreaks of insects that might spread disease or threaten the food supply.

However, neither of those things applied in this case. The 16.2 million acres sprayed was on sorghum and cotton plants across 19 states. There was no widespread threat. No new insect ravaging these crops. No emergency.

But again, just as with the National Emergency Act, the EPA’s authority in making these rulings includes a lot of leeway, with the expectation that good judgement will be involved. Instead, the EPA under Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler has been searching out reasons to issue these orders.
Click to expand...

And more unpleasant news. The fallout from the INF treaty being scrapped is already showing.

Vladimir Putin, also known as the man whom Donald Trump trusts more than his own intelligence services, has ratcheted up the threat of new high-tech missiles, promising new weapons that are faster and more evasive than anything now in service. And now that both the U.S. and Russia have cast off the three-decades-old agreement on the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear weapons, Russia is free to menace Europe with its new low-flying hypersonic missiles that are much more difficult to block with any existing, or contemplated, defense system.

To counter the Russian deployment, the United States would need to find places for its next generation of missiles, yet to be constructed, somewhere in Europe. Except there are two problems. First, as the New York Times reported, Mike Pence was just sent home from Europe with a big “No, thank you” to any suggestion that Donald Trump’s America knows anything about its defense. In fact, Trump’s approach to Europe has been so off-putting that it’s gone beyond just threatening the integrity of alliances that have held since World War II. Trump has actually managed to encourage such staunchly Western governments as Germany to “flirt” with Russia. With polls showing that Germans now trust Vladimir Putin more than they doTrump, the danger isn’t just that Trump will wreck NATO; it’s that he’ll flip it.

The second problem is what Putin says he will do if the U.S. does try to deploy new missiles to someone willing to take them. As Bloomberg reports, Putin states that he’ll target the host countries and aim additional nukes at the United States, saying, “Russia will be forced to produce and deploy weapons that can be used not only against the territories from which we face this direct threat but also those where the decision is made to use these missiles.”

One of the primary reasons that the intermediate-range treaty was created in the first place was because these were felt to be among the classes of weapons most likely to be used. They can strike beyond the range of most conventional forces and be used to target those forces at their bases in preparation for a military advance. After decades in which both the number of nuclear weapons and the threat of their use have decreased, both now seem to be on the rise.
Click to expand...

On the... sorta positive side, it looks like some right-wing domestic terrorism that would have been directly targeting Democratic congresspeople and journalists has been prevented.

Seamus Hughes, a former Senate Homeland Security Committee and Senior Counterterrorism adviser, broke the news on Twitter with the court filing detailing the absolutely frightening charges. Prosecutors said, “The Defendant is a domestic terrorist bent on committing acts dangerous to human life.” In fact, the first sentence of the motion for detention pending trial (seen below), is quite alarming: “The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.”

As you can see in the Twitter thread below from Hughes, prosecutors say Hasson had contacts with white supremacists, advocated for a “white state” in America, and was a fan of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people, including 59 children in 2011.

Hasson’s target list included Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Richard Blumenthal, Tim Kaine, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Kristin Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, John Podesta, Joe Scarborough, Chris Hayes, Ari Melber, Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and Van Jones. He used racist or inflammatory names for many of the people on his list.
Click to expand...

Positive because it was stopped. That's about the only good thing about it.

Now, to end this bunch of things on a positive note... Looks like Betsy DeVos is finally going to start to be held accountable.

Among the things Democrats are planning: requiring the department to hold states accountable for achievement gaps between white students and students of color, as the law requires; asking for an explanation for why the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools was reinstated after it had been stripped of its certification by the previous administration: and, in a new revelation, obtaining a response as to why her department is interfering in its inspector general's investigation into her decision to reinstate ACICS. Scott also wants to know DeVos' "justifications for rescinding policies meant to protect black students from being disproportionately suspended and placed in special education and student borrowers from predatory lenders and higher-education diploma mills."

Scott says he's less interested in a public grilling of DeVos than in having accountability.
Click to expand...
 
dudalb said:
I think what sticks in many people throats was the way the GOP Senate delayed Obama's last Supreme Court Nominee until after the election. Something like that has not happened since the 1860's, and was a huge violation of the norms of our Democracy.
Click to expand...
Not just that, federal judicial nominees were being routinely having their hearings delayed by Republican senators, resulting in 45 judicial vacancies becoming 101 during the course of the 114th Congress.

Once Trump took up the reins, there was virtually no stopping the Republicans giving the new, Federalist Society-approved nominess the nod.
 
Aridas said:
Oops! Here's the link I meant to put there.
Click to expand...

Wow.

So what is the reasoning that might be used when asking the courts for a new primary if a new election is required? I mean I know why they want it, but what reasons will they give for why they should get it?
 
I think I’ve stated before that I found the Republicans denying Obama his choice for the Supreme Court reprehensible.

I always thought the Democrats should have raised a bigger stink about it. But I can’t specifically say what other actions they should or could have taken. I suspect they thought the choice was going to Hillary anyway, so it was not a hill they chose to die upon.

My point was simply it’s still not court “stacking” or “packing”, something I very well may have learned here.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I think I’ve stated before that I found the Republicans denying Obama his choice for the Supreme Court reprehensible.

I always thought the Democrats should have raised a bigger stink about it. But I can’t specifically say what other actions they should or could have taken. I suspect they thought the choice was going to Hillary anyway, so it was not a hill they chose to die upon.
Click to expand...

Do you think McConnell knew something they didn't?
 
Fast Eddie B said:
That his boy might have a little extra help getting elected?

Interesting theory, if that’s what you’re getting at.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm getting at, yes. It's a wild theory, of course. He could've just blocked Obama for the sake of doing that, hoping that the next President would be from his clan, but it's not impossible that he was very confident that this would happen.
 
Belz... said:
That's what I'm getting at, yes. It's a wild theory, of course. He could've just blocked Obama for the sake of doing that, hoping that the next President would be from his clan, but it's not impossible that he was very confident that this would happen.
Click to expand...
I think it was just about Senate demographics. Doesn't matter who the president nominates, if the Senate won't confirm.
 
Trump Tweets

I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard. American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind. There is no reason that we should be lagging behind on.........

....something that is so obviously the future. I want the United States to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies. We must always be the leader in everything we do, especially when it comes to the very exciting world of technology!
 
Trump Tweets

THE WALL IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION RIGHT NOW!

Quote Tweet
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
We have just built this powerful Wall in New Mexico. Completed on January 30, 2019 – 47 days ahead of schedule! Many miles more now under construction! #FinishTheWall
 
Last edited:
Captain_Swoop said:
Trump Tweets

THE WALL IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION RIGHT NOW!

Quote Tweet
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
We have just built this powerful Wall in New Mexico. Completed on January 30, 2019 – 47 days ahead of schedule! Many miles more now under construction! #FinishTheWall
Click to expand...

So why did he proclaim an emergency?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom