The Trump Presidency 14

[Minoosh]

SGT Artie Muller (USA Ret), Executive Director of Rolling Thunder as asked about this tweet live on CSPAN 10 min ago and says the org has not heard of this and has no plans to ever come back to DC after this year.

Trump criticized the Pentagon, which had some fees which seemed reasonable to me. From dcist:

Rolling Thunder will roll through D.C. for the last time this weekend

Muller said he looked around for cheaper options, but found none. The parking lots at Ronald Reagan National Airport had too many obstacles that could lead to accidents, and the lot outside FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland, was too far from D.C.

“We have been really aggravated with the way the Pentagon works and Pentagon security,” Muller said. He cited an issue last year where riders said security personnel redirected them away from certain lots, leading to confusion.

Sounds like they were already confused. Since when did it become a motorcycle club's right to use the Pentagon parking lot except under the Pentagon's conditions? If they couldn't find cheaper options, maybe that's a clue?

And Trump tweets out a stand against the DOD (though not by name), probably without knowing **** about the issue. Maybe he thought the problem was D.C. cops?

Then lies that they'll be back next year.

Muller said he wants Rolling Thunder chapters across the country to organize their own Memorial Day rides next year. He thinks those local rides will do more to raise awareness about veterans and prisoners of war than one big national event.

I know this is a tiny thing and not worth getting even mildly annoyed over. But dang Trump sure seems determined to alienate the people who work for him and to demonstrate every day how dishonest and/or out of touch with reality he is.

 

[acbytesla]

The Senate does not impeach. You mean the Senate won't convict even if the House does impeach (impeach being the the equivalent of indictment).

You're right. It's an actual trial held in the Senate with the Chief Justice presiding. I always tend to lump them together.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

He has no charisma.

I don’t see it, but having watched crowd reaction at his rallies, I think his charisma definitely resonates with certain crowd.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I don’t see it, but having watched crowd reaction at his rallies, I think his charisma definitely resonates with certain crowd.

If you mean Evangelicals ... they are used to listen to boring diatribes lasting hours at least once a week since a very young age.
But even when he speaks at religious colleges, people walk out.

 

[Trebuchet]

I don’t see it, but having watched crowd reaction at his rallies, I think his charisma definitely resonates with certain crowd.

If you mean Evangelicals ... they are used to listen to boring diatribes lasting hours at least once a week since a very young age.
But even when he speaks at religious colleges, people walk out.

I don't think a majority at his rallies are Evangelicals, just garden-variety morons.

 

[Minoosh]

If you mean Evangelicals ... they are used to listen to boring diatribes lasting hours at least once a week since a very young age.

A long time ago I associated men who identified as "Christian" (vs. a denomination) with odd or dated-looking hairstyles. But none so odd as Trump's.

But even when he speaks at religious colleges, people walk out.

Do you have a cite for this?

 

[acbytesla]

A long time ago I associated men who identified as "Christian" (vs. a denomination) with odd or dated-looking hairstyles. But none so odd as Trump's.

Do you have a cite for this?

I'm not sure Trump has spoken at religious colleges. But Pence has and students walked out on him.

 

[Trebuchet]

I'm not sure Trump has spoken at religious colleges. But Pence has and students walked out on him.

Trump has spoken at Liberty University. Student attendance was mandatory.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Do you have a cite for this?

https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...-out-in-protest-of-pence-commencement-address

 

[Minoosh]

Trump has spoken at Liberty University. Student attendance was mandatory.

That must be why they call it Liberty.

 

[Minoosh]

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Liberty U. Senior Official Accepted Bag of Money for Helping Trump in Online Polls, Report Says

What a scuz.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Liberty U. Senior Official Accepted Bag of Money for Helping Trump in Online Polls, Report Says

What a scuz.

From the link:

An administrator and Liberty students also produced a film about a former firefighter who said he had heard God say that Trump would be the next president.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

I don't think a majority at his rallies are Evangelicals, just garden-variety morons.

Nothing in the definition of charisma precludes it’s ability to persuade garden-variety morons.

 

[Aridas]

The biggest set back is, of course, global warming. Even if Dump only lasts four years the time lost is ... well, lost. And even if we completely turn around to be really aggressive in our efforts, will the rest of the world get behind our leadership. Maybe over time, a commodity we have little of.

Mmm. Not just lost. Trump and his Administration have been ACTIVELY working to undo progress on that front. Not only undo, for that matter, but trying to make things worse and worse. His push to force energy grids to rely on coal, for example, even if it's largely failed. His picks arbitrarily changing the mandates of government bodies from protection of the land and people to only be focused on immediate economic concerns, for another.

 

[Trebuchet]

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Liberty U. Senior Official Accepted Bag of Money for Helping Trump in Online Polls, Report Says

What a scuz.

Jerry Falwell, Sr., was a complete piece of crappe. His son is even worse.

Nothing in the definition of charisma precludes it’s ability to persuade garden-variety morons.

Exactly. In fact, they are probably more vulnerable to it. Come to think of it, that probably explains why so many evangelicals follow preachers who are clearly scum-bags.

 

[Minoosh]

I also liked this:

Gauger told the [Wall Street] Journal he had been paid by Cohen with a blue Walmart bag filled with $12,000 to $13,000 in cash, as well as a boxing glove once used by a Brazilian athlete. Cohen disputed that characterization, telling the Journal that Gauger had been paid by check, not cash. ...

Cohen, in a tweet, said Trump knew of his attempt to rig the polls. He did not respond to Gauger’s claim to the Journal that he had underpaid the administrator by more than $37,000. “I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it,” he wrote, referring to Trump.

What I want to know is, what happened to the boxing glove?

Isn't that just like Trump? Pay someone to put his thumb on the scale, then stiff him for $37K.

 

[CapelDodger]

You pretend as if Hitler didn't terrorize the Jewish people in Germany from day one. I grant you that the final solution didn't take form for ten more years. But the NAZIs began to systematically take away basic civil rights from Germany's Jewish citizens starting in 1933 when Hitler took power. By 1936 half the Jewish population had left the country. In 1936, Germany passed laws against Jewish people holding professional jobs. They were purged from the teaching profession and academia altogether. By 1938 Germany started to confiscate property.

I don't pretend anything of the sort. Hitler was quite open about his objective of a racially pure state because he saw no reason not to be. Such an idea had its adherents across the Western world and its colonies, particularly amongst the Boers in South Africa, Southern whites in the US, and Zionists in Palestine. What he didn't advocate was that this be achieved through genocide, which is what you come very close to suggesting. He saw nothing wrong in it, and much that was right. Had he gone no further than this he really wouldn't have stood out as an evil figure against Stalin's genocidal pursuit of class purity in the Soviet Union or Japanese behaviour towards "inferior races" in the Far East. This why I say making him the supreme icon of evil is lazy thinking : it takes no account of the events which led him on to the Holocaust, in particular the failure before Moscow in the winter of '41-42.


In comparison, McConnell was brought up in a culture where equality under the law, libery, and government of the people by the people for the people were presented as guiding principles, and he's suffered none of the traumas which Hitler's generation did (unless one counts eight years of a mixed-race President of the US, which perhaps he would), yet he shooses to pervert the US's democracy simply for his own self-interest and that of his rich white man's tribe. That's real evil, to my mind.

 

[CapelDodger]

@Fast Eddie :

Nothing in the definition of charisma precludes it’s ability to persuade garden-variety morons.

All that requires is celebrity.

 

[Stacyhs]

Jerry Falwell, Sr., was a complete piece of crappe. His son is even worse.



Exactly. In fact, they are probably more vulnerable to it. Come to think of it, that probably explains why so many evangelicals follow preachers who are clearly scum-bags.

These televangelists are disgusting, money-grubbing, hypocritical snake oil salesmen as far as I'm concerned. My late grandfather would send them money after watching them on Sunday mornings until my grandmother hid the check book from him.

 

[acbytesla]

I don't pretend anything of the sort. Hitler was quite open about his objective of a racially pure state because he saw no reason not to be. Such an idea had its adherents across the Western world and its colonies, particularly amongst the Boers in South Africa, Southern whites in the US, and Zionists in Palestine. What he didn't advocate was that this be achieved through genocide, which is what you come very close to suggesting. He saw nothing wrong in it, and much that was right. Had he gone no further than this he really wouldn't have stood out as an evil figure against Stalin's genocidal pursuit of class purity in the Soviet Union or Japanese behaviour towards "inferior races" in the Far East. This why I say making him the supreme icon of evil is lazy thinking : it takes no account of the events which led him on to the Holocaust, in particular the failure before Moscow in the winter of '41-42.


In comparison, McConnell was brought up in a culture where equality under the law, libery, and government of the people by the people for the people were presented as guiding principles, and he's suffered none of the traumas which Hitler's generation did (unless one counts eight years of a mixed-race President of the US, which perhaps he would), yet he shooses to pervert the US's democracy simply for his own self-interest and that of his rich white man's tribe. That's real evil, to my mind.

Do I think McConnell is awful? Yes I do. I'm not defending him. There is no excuse for his anti-democratic actions. I grant you that there had been a long history of anti-semitism raging in Europe for centuries. But it's impossible for me to compare the inhumanity of Hitler and the NAZIs to anything McConnell and Trump have done so far.