kellyb
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We don't know what ends these folks envision, though. We can only surmise getting radically-conservative SCOTUS judges is one of them.
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NY Times editorial bombshell
- Thread starter Mycroft
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We don't know what ends these folks envision, though. We can only surmise getting radically-conservative SCOTUS judges is one of them.
portlandatheist
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Of Trump's many many character flaws, lack of sense of humor is one of them.
You are right about Trump never giving "a moment's thought to anything regarding white supremacists." And why should he? They love him, and that's all he cares about!
He denounces them grudgingly when his advisers persuade him that it's absolutely necessary to do do. Otherwise he prefers to denounce the enemies of white supremacists.
Why does he feel the need to remind people that he defeated her in the election two years ago? Again and again and again? If not for his own insecurity? Has any other president ever behaved in a remotely similar way? Did Bush spend the two years after defeating Al Gore taunting him? Did Obama try to ridicule McCain? (We know who did that, don't we?!)
The guy is so weak and scared that it's sometimes almost difficult not to pity him.
Mumbles
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I meant to quote you. This does not mean that I am accusing you of anything, I am just pointing out a particular matter, and riffing off what you wrote, for you to potentially say "Huh. good point."
Birtherism.
Mumbles
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Okay, so he is simply willing to bring disaster to all nonwhite people in the US, because Obama insulted him.
THis is white supremacism.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
To be clear, I was talking about the ends envisioned by the person being administratively thwarted.
Minoosh
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About the undisclosed source(s) being unaccountable: I think a lot of people are worried that Trump is unaccountable which for some is the bigger fear.
On paper, Trump is accountable. But with Congress doing everything it can to protect him, including confirming SC justices who Trump thinks will also protect him, the checks and balance calculus look pretty dismal. For now, anyway.
Minoosh
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Even if Trump also wants disaster for every white person who didn't vote for him?
He has a lot of hate to go around, but I think it's safe to say that he is racist and expends more on non-whites than is their share.
The strategy of the Republican spin machinery has been the same for the Op-Ed as it has been to each and every one of the many prior embarrassing, disturbing, even revolting revelations as to the Trump Whitehouse. As would any good product-advertising agency the Republican/conservative public relations experts "brainstormed" the possible strategies, tried out several based on "market research" (using focus groups and by releasing a variety of initial statements and analyzing the public's response), and then pushed ahead with the responses that "sold" the best: glossy, emotionally appealing uses of patriotic memes and mindless superficial notions that make some sort of vague sense - if one didn't think about them too much. These talking points were then widely and frequently repeated by the usual talking heads and in the conservative blogsphere to generate false credence: the impression that these talking points must be the correct perspective because... well, so many people are talking about them.
To bring a dose of reality and logic to the issue, however:
1. "Verification" is a process. It is assembling information and evidence to seek the truth. Something cannot be blandly dismissed as "unverified" during this process of information and evidence gathering as if it was not true. It is being tested to see if it is true. Many times enough evidence and information arise during the verification process to legitimately allow even a skeptic to begin to form opinions and ideas. A true skeptic will remember that their opinions are initial ones, have not been proven and will keep an open mind that later information may prove their initial opinion wrong. But to not even begin to suspect something is true when a substantial number of facts point in that direction is not skepticism; it is naivety. And of course how much verification is required to finally accept something as truth varies based on the point at issue and on the individual examining the evidence.
2. Eyewitness accounts are crucial and legitimate contributors to the process of verification in most of our attempts to discern truth: in our day to day lives, in constructing history, in the criminal justice system, and in journalism. People write or tell us what they saw and we repeatedly use this as an important basis of deciding what actually happened. There are well known problems with eyewitness accounts, so we try to have independent eyewitness accounts and physical evidence for the most important issues, but almost always eyewitness accounts contribute substantially to how we think about virtually all of those many events that we do not observe ourselves.
3. The NY Times editorial is an eyewitness account of events, not an unverified empty claim. Additional eyewitness accounts that share the same or very similar observations have been provided independently and represent additional verifications: they contribute to the total weight of information that supports the picture drawn of the Trump Whitehouse in the Op Ed.
4. I agree that the anonymity of the Op Ed (to the public) is a definite limitation to its weight as evidence. Absolutely! But this is neither unique nor does it allow the information provided to be unthinkingly discarded as untrue. Many facts have been revealed by anonymous revelations. Often people involved in the darkest areas of human endeavor, areas the most important to reveal to the public, seek to protect their identity. The list is very long. We still do not know the identity of Deep Throat. Typically we then ask if there are other pieces of evidence that support the anonymous source. Accounts from other eyewitnesses who are willing to be identified. Information from official sources. Videos. Tweets. Court records. Etc. As far as I can judge these add up to substantially support the account in the Op Ed. Enough to allow me a working hypothesis although they fall short of absolute proof. And my hypothesis is that Trump is indeed who we suspected he was: a very dangerous and ignorant man.
To bring a dose of reality and logic to the issue, however:
1. "Verification" is a process. It is assembling information and evidence to seek the truth. Something cannot be blandly dismissed as "unverified" during this process of information and evidence gathering as if it was not true. It is being tested to see if it is true. Many times enough evidence and information arise during the verification process to legitimately allow even a skeptic to begin to form opinions and ideas. A true skeptic will remember that their opinions are initial ones, have not been proven and will keep an open mind that later information may prove their initial opinion wrong. But to not even begin to suspect something is true when a substantial number of facts point in that direction is not skepticism; it is naivety. And of course how much verification is required to finally accept something as truth varies based on the point at issue and on the individual examining the evidence.
2. Eyewitness accounts are crucial and legitimate contributors to the process of verification in most of our attempts to discern truth: in our day to day lives, in constructing history, in the criminal justice system, and in journalism. People write or tell us what they saw and we repeatedly use this as an important basis of deciding what actually happened. There are well known problems with eyewitness accounts, so we try to have independent eyewitness accounts and physical evidence for the most important issues, but almost always eyewitness accounts contribute substantially to how we think about virtually all of those many events that we do not observe ourselves.
3. The NY Times editorial is an eyewitness account of events, not an unverified empty claim. Additional eyewitness accounts that share the same or very similar observations have been provided independently and represent additional verifications: they contribute to the total weight of information that supports the picture drawn of the Trump Whitehouse in the Op Ed.
4. I agree that the anonymity of the Op Ed (to the public) is a definite limitation to its weight as evidence. Absolutely! But this is neither unique nor does it allow the information provided to be unthinkingly discarded as untrue. Many facts have been revealed by anonymous revelations. Often people involved in the darkest areas of human endeavor, areas the most important to reveal to the public, seek to protect their identity. The list is very long. We still do not know the identity of Deep Throat. Typically we then ask if there are other pieces of evidence that support the anonymous source. Accounts from other eyewitnesses who are willing to be identified. Information from official sources. Videos. Tweets. Court records. Etc. As far as I can judge these add up to substantially support the account in the Op Ed. Enough to allow me a working hypothesis although they fall short of absolute proof. And my hypothesis is that Trump is indeed who we suspected he was: a very dangerous and ignorant man.
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kellyb
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Can we dock their pay for failure to thwart his "America - the birthplace of infant and toddler jails" program?
Travis
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Actually it is. You don't continue to follow the law when the people you should be reporting or turning to don't care about following the law.
Consider, you see someone breaking into your neighbor's house. You might call the police but what if every time you do they just show up and help the burglars then pull out some innocent third party, shoot them in the head and declare the case solved. Do you follow the law and call the police or do you take matters into your own hands?
When the institutions we rely on become hopelessly corrupt we have to abandon some of the pretenses of how we should operate.
BobTheCoward
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I think your scenario omits a key details (though kellybs post doesn't make it clear).
The white house involves an affirmative decision to be there and can be severed. That is the only detail that changes when you decide to leave. You still get to sleep in your bed. We don't have that option with the police.
As I said earlier, I'm not bothered if someone on a white house tour swiped the order.
Stacyhs
Penultimate Amazing
Trump hates Obama for more than one reason. IMO, the primary reason he hates Obama is because Obama is everything Trump is not: a happily married family man, intelligent, articulate, a self-made man, respected by world leaders and elected twice to the presidency. The fact Obama made fun of him was the icing on the cake for Trump. His narcissism does not allow him to make fun of himself, especially when what Obama was poking fun at was true. He is just plain jealous of Obama.
Whether Trump is racist or not can be determined by his actions such as blocking people of color from renting in one of his apartments, his "some of them are fine people" when referencing white supremacists, referring to a black man at one of his rallies as "my African-American" and allegations from past employees such Trump not wanting any "blacks" handling the money in his casinos and that blacks are "lazy". He said Haitian immigrants all have AIDS and that Nigerian immigrants need to go back to their "huts" and that we need less black immigrants and more from Norway.
For a list of how Trump demonstrates his racism:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.html
johnny karate
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http://fortune.com/donald-trump-white-supremacist-genocide/
Up next: Watch BrooklynBaby defend someone he thinks is a good president by arguing that he’s too stupid to know when he’s retweeting white supremacists.
portlandatheist
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Trump finds more credibility in Putin than America's law enforcement community. Very strongly and bigly. He hates our friends and loves our enemies. I think it is fair to say we are in a crisis.
kellyb
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I'm not sure Trump thinks or believes any of those good things about Obama. I'm not ever sure he hates Obama. I suspect he probably looks down on Obama as a lower level con artist than he himself is.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
Sure thing, if the immigration process turns out to be their bailiwick.
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kellyb
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It's somebody's.
Stacyhs
Penultimate Amazing
I disagree. Trump never misses an opportunity to diss Obama...including lying about him. Trump looks down on everyone as lower than he...the best he can do is think of someone as a possible equal. Like Putin.