Donald Trump running for President.

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chaos
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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#681 Post by chaos » Fri Jul 13, 2018 6:59 pm


erotic cheeses
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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#682 Post by erotic cheeses » Sun Jul 15, 2018 4:18 pm

Such a warm welcome for this prick. Thousands in protest and a baby blimp.
U.K. You embarrass we often but didn't let me down with this one..

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#683 Post by erotic cheeses » Sun Jul 15, 2018 4:19 pm

We me whatevever

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#684 Post by Artemis » Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:56 pm


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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#685 Post by guysmiley » Mon Jul 16, 2018 11:15 pm

I saw a bunch of stuff last night. At first I thought it was people overreacting, but after watching the video, it looks bad bad. Just spineless and more worried about himself than the country. Totally threw intelligence community under the bus too. I don't understand how anyone can defend that. :neutral:

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#686 Post by Hype » Tue Jul 17, 2018 8:11 am

guysmiley wrote:I saw a bunch of stuff last night. At first I thought it was people overreacting, but after watching the video, it looks bad bad. Just spineless and more worried about himself than the country. Totally threw intelligence community under the bus too. I don't understand how anyone can defend that. :neutral:
The staunchest supporters of Trump are conspiracy theorists who often hold a view that is basically antisemitic -- a secret group of "globalists" (this means Jews) control all the things that they blame for why things are bad. Nobody can actually defend this, but the people who believe it don't defend it -- they just say it over and over again and don't care what anyone else says. The difference right now is that these people actually have someone in the highest office emboldening them.

The Republicans who have criticized Trump for this are mealy-mouthed cowards unless they actually do something to fix this shit.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#687 Post by Artemis » Tue Jul 17, 2018 5:25 pm

:lol:

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#688 Post by chaos » Wed Sep 05, 2018 4:37 pm

There are conspiracy theories that either Pence wrote the oped piece below, or someone is trying to make it look as though Pence wrote the piece. Apparently the word "lodestar" is the giveaway. :lol:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opin ... tw-nytimes

Opinion
I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

Sept. 5, 2018


The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/read ... tions.html

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.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.


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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#689 Post by Artemis » Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:49 pm

I think the 25th amendment should be invoked. I don't know a great deal about it or how it actually works, but Cheeto needs to go. The downside would be Pence taking over. :jasper:

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#690 Post by Hype » Thu Sep 06, 2018 6:00 am

I would much rather that all legal means be taken to remove Trump from office and especially that democratic means (i.e., elections) be used to remove other unfit congresspeople than the worrisome way in which the constitutional powers of various offices are being undermined both by those who hold the offices and by those who, rightly, oppose those who hold them.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#691 Post by SR » Thu Sep 06, 2018 7:01 am

Legal means to remove him would most certainly result in multiple large pockets of violence nationwide. Impeachment would result in a trial in the Senate after some 8 steps to author a case in the House (should it be flipped) in November. I don't think it would ever get the 60+ votes needed in the Senate.


I think Dan Coates is the author. Of the only reasons of support for the fuckwit, "safety" and a "robust military" are cited. As no reasonable person would consider us safer with consideration to all particulars, only a military man would equate a larger military with safety...a central piece of his generations' thinking.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#692 Post by Pandemonium » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:27 am

There's little doubt in my mind that there's a lot of truth to much of the craziness and corruption in the Trump administration, but the fringe Left and especially The Media is shooting themselves in the head with all this hysterical unsubstantiated rumor and "anonymous sources" bullshit. It's getting to the point it's all just white noise regardless of how important or not every days' new "revelations" might be.

It's become pretty clear by now Mueller's team isn't going to nail Trump - you don't even hear about "Russian Collusion" anymore and apparently it's not even mentioned in Woodward's new book. They're passing the point of shit or get off the pot in this investigation.

It's is deeply concerning this anonymous person, and others apparently, think it is up to them singularly to thwart and subvert an erratic man's actions simply because they approve of some "achievements." They don't get to determine the course of this country. That's where you get the whole "Deep State" conspiracy stuff.

There's a mechanism in place to remove a truly corrupt or unfit public official, even The President and if no one has the balls or the facts to do so, well, it's been two years and counting. If The President is that much of a fruit basket, people need to step up to the plate and institute a Section 4 on him. What, if he's as crazy as it's implied, are they waiting for him to wake up on the wrong side of bed one morning and nuke China? When you know someone is truly erratic and dangerous, you don't antagonize them - you take decisive action. They are all enablers.

If this person(s) is too big a pussy to put their name to behind-the-back allegations yet continue to work for the guy "for the good of the country" or whatever excuse helps them sleep at night and continue to collect a paycheck from the American people, fuck off, they're no Patriot. And believe me, if we ever cross that final threshold where a President is forced out of office on hearsay like recent accusations in social media have condemned and ruined people in literally hour's time without a trial, every future President will suffer the same fate.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#693 Post by chaos » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:37 am

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/06/dea ... dly-op-ed/

Dear Anonymous Trump Official, There Is No Redemption in Your Cowardly Op-Ed
Mehdi Hasan
September 6 2018, 9:48 a.m.

DEAR ANONYMOUS TRUMP OFFICIAL,
You claim, on the opinion pages of the “failing” New York Times no less, that senior officials working for the president of the United States “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”

“I would know,” you add dramatically. “I am one of them.”

Sorry, what was the point of this particular piece? And what is it that you want from the rest of us? A thank-you card? A round of applause? The nation’s undying gratitude?

Screw. You.

There is no redemption; no exoneration for you or your colleagues inside this shit-show of an administration. You think an op-ed in the paper of record is going to cut it? Gimme a break. You cannot write an article admitting to the president’s “anti-democratic” impulses while also saying you want his administration “to succeed.” You cannot publish a 965-word piece excoriating Donald Trump’s “worst inclinations” while omitting any and all references to his racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and white nationalism.

You did find space, however, to heap praise on yourself and your fellow officials. “Unsung heroes.” “Adults in the room.” “Quiet resistance.” “Steady state.”

Are you kidding me? Where were your “unsung heroes” when this administration was snatching kids from their parents and locking them in cages? Drugging them and denying them drinking water?

Where were your “adults in the room” when this administration left 3,000 Americans in Puerto Rico to die because, apparently, it is an island “surrounded by water, big water, ocean water”? Where were they when the president was denying that Hurricane Maria was a “real catastrophe” and lobbing paper towels at the survivors?

Where was your “quiet resistance” when the president was extolling far-right racists as “very fine people” and blaming the violence in Charlottesville on “both sides”? How “quiet” were you when he later disowned his half-hearted and belated denunciation of the “KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” as “the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made”?

Where was your “steady state” when the president fired the director of the FBI because, he told NBC News, “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story”? Or when he sacked Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Sally Yates, the acting attorney general? Or when he tweeted, earlier this week, that Attorney General Jeff Sessions shouldn’t have indicted two Republican allies of his over alleged financial crimes?

The reality is that you and your fellow officials are enablers of Trump; you are his protectors and defenders. You say it yourself. Why were there only “whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment,” which provides for the cabinet to remove the president from office if he is unable to do the job? Why not invoke it and let Mike Pence take over? (Are you, by the way, Mike Pence?)

If as you claim — and we all agree! — that the president you serve “continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic” with “misguided impulses,” then how can you advocate for anything other than his swift removal from office?

Your defense is that “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.” Seriously? You don’t agree with former Secretary of State John Kerry that we’re already in the midst of “a genuine constitutional crisis,” given your own op-ed outlining his “erratic behavior” and “reckless decisions” and Bob Woodward’s new book describing “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” at the center of the Trump White House?

You are keen to remind the liberal readers of the New York Times that yours “is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left” and that you believe this administration’s policies have “already made America safer and more prosperous.” You cite “historic tax reform” and “effective deregulation” as the supposed “bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture.” But by tax reform, do you mean the Trump tax cuts that give the richest 1 percent of Americans almost half of the benefits? And by deregulation, do you mean the rescinding of Obama-era protections for the oceans; the lifting of controls on toxic air pollution; and the green light to Wall Street to once again cause havoc in the financial markets?

What is it, then, that you object to? Well, it seems, your biggest concern is “not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency,” but how Americans have “sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.”

You’re joking, right? The widespread dishonesty, the rampant corruption, the brazen racism, the growing authoritarianism, the accusations of collusion — none of that tops your list of Trumpian abuses and infractions? But the “civility” of our discourse does? Fuck civility.

Also, what did you think would happen when you signed up to work for a reality TV star who was accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, and of rape by his first wife? Who stiffed hundreds of contractors, ripped off Trump University students, cheated on his third wife just months after she gave birth, and cut off health care coverage to his own nephew’s sick baby in a fit of rage?

You knew all of this and yet you still chose to work for him at the highest level of government. You now acknowledge that “the root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” But how about your own amorality? I hate to agree with your boss, but you are “gutless.” You’re a shameless coward, a cynical opportunist.

Don’t hide behind anonymity. Don’t pretend that you have “gone to great lengths” to restrain Trump and “put country first.”

Tell us your name. Quit your job. Call out this president in public.

Call him out for his bigotry, his mendacity, his sheer mental and emotional unfitness for the office he occupies. Call him out in front of a congressional committee. Or a court of law.

Otherwise, I say again: Screw. You.

Sincerely,

Mehdi Hasan

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#694 Post by Hype » Thu Sep 06, 2018 1:14 pm

the fringe Left and especially The Media is shooting themselves in the head with all this hysterical unsubstantiated rumor and "anonymous sources" bullshit.
It scares me both that you think that straightforward reporting on this administration is something that only concerns "the fringe Left" and "The Media". That seems to me to be feeding right into the divisive strategy that Putin has been applying across the planet, from Europe to North America. This association of the current state of affairs with "The Media" when in fact this administration is openly hostile and threatening to the free press isn't hysterical. It's accurate, and should be frightening.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#695 Post by Pandemonium » Thu Sep 06, 2018 1:44 pm

Hype wrote:
the fringe Left and especially The Media is shooting themselves in the head with all this hysterical unsubstantiated rumor and "anonymous sources" bullshit.
It scares me both that you think that straightforward reporting on this administration is something that only concerns "the fringe Left" and "The Media". That seems to me to be feeding right into the divisive strategy that Putin has been applying across the planet, from Europe to North America. This association of the current state of affairs with "The Media" when in fact this administration is openly hostile and threatening to the free press isn't hysterical. It's accurate, and should be frightening.
I don't disagree with your view Trumps administration is openly hostile to and threatening free press freedoms but there's a flip side to that coin that the mainstream media is openly biased and distorts facts and issues to serve their own overall views. That simply cannot be ignored. Just look back at all the passes the last 2 Presidents got from the mainstream press, Bush Jr's WMD excuse to invade (why isn't he in jail for war crimes?), Obama got away with giving billions of dollars to prop up criminal banking institutions and handing out pallets of cash to known terrorist nations, lying about the NSA... shit like that is long forgotten.

Straightforward, level-headed unbiased reporting is a rarity these days. Everyone has an agenda, whether it's Fox or MSM. It's a successful divisive strategy because both sides are gleefully engaging in it. You need only look at any day's CNN front page to know I'm right.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#696 Post by lollapaloser » Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:18 pm

Pandemonium wrote:
Hype wrote:
the fringe Left and especially The Media is shooting themselves in the head with all this hysterical unsubstantiated rumor and "anonymous sources" bullshit.
It scares me both that you think that straightforward reporting on this administration is something that only concerns "the fringe Left" and "The Media". That seems to me to be feeding right into the divisive strategy that Putin has been applying across the planet, from Europe to North America. This association of the current state of affairs with "The Media" when in fact this administration is openly hostile and threatening to the free press isn't hysterical. It's accurate, and should be frightening.
I don't disagree with your view Trumps administration is openly hostile to and threatening free press freedoms but there's a flip side to that coin that the mainstream media is openly biased and distorts facts and issues to serve their own overall views. That simply cannot be ignored. Just look back at all the passes the last 2 Presidents got from the mainstream press, Bush Jr's WMD excuse to invade (why isn't he in jail for war crimes?), Obama got away with giving billions of dollars to prop up criminal banking institutions and handing out pallets of cash to known terrorist nations, lying about the NSA... shit like that is long forgotten.

Straightforward, level-headed unbiased reporting is a rarity these days. Everyone has an agenda, whether it's Fox or MSM. It's a successful divisive strategy because both sides are gleefully engaging in it. You need only look at any day's CNN front page to know I'm right.
The pallets of cash was Iran's own money that had been taken via sanction. That was part of the nuclear deal. That was legitimate, but spun by Fox news to be Obama funding terrorism. Not saying Obama was a saint, he killed shitloads of innocent people with drones, but that story was severely distorted.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#697 Post by Hype » Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:28 pm

I think it's fair to criticize CNN. In fact, that started becoming more mainstream after Jon Stewart's numerous takedowns. But that's *not* the same thing as a generalized, diffuse cynicism about some magical entity called "The Mainstream Media". The latter is not healthy scepticism, but feeds straight into known propaganda. There is no singular entity that is engaging in "fake news". The threats to independent reporting and investigative journalism are real, and come not from "both sides" but from clear causal sources: the death of print media that has been going on for nearly a decade (see, e.g.: the Gawker debacle), and the consolidation of local and national news entities by multinational corporate interests (we should be somewhat concerned, e.g., by Bezos's purchase of WaPo, but there's been no evidence that he's affecting their historically very high quality reporting. It's far more worrying how Saudi Arabian interests own a considerable portion of everything from Fox News to ... shit, I don't even know, the list is very long.) But again, this isn't a reason to buy into rhetoric about "the media". That is a tactic used by corporatists (i.e., as of yet non-violent proto-fascists) to distract from what they are doing and distribute distrust among other entities. But it's just not true that there is a marked change in the quality of good reporting. There is good reporting and there is bad reporting, just as there always has been. In fact it's *easier* now to fact-check than it ever has been. So why would it make sense to be so cynical? It's Trump and Putin who want ordinary citizens to trust *them*, and not believe what reporters are saying about them.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#698 Post by clickie » Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:01 am

So wheres the best place to get un-biased news these days?


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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#700 Post by chaos » Tue Sep 25, 2018 9:21 am


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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#701 Post by chaos » Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:11 pm


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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#702 Post by perkana » Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:12 pm

From George Lopez:
Asking for Unos Amigos #askingforafriend did everyone get this , my Tia is #inconsolable and who ordered these #PODS #gacho
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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#703 Post by Artemis » Fri Oct 05, 2018 12:38 pm

:lol:

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#704 Post by Hype » Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:10 am

I am okay with anyone over the age of 70 making those kinds of mistakes. That seems like a pretty normal lapse.

I'm not okay with anyone over the age of 70 being President, though. And I'm definitely not okay with a sociopathic fraud over the age of 70 being President. Toilet paper on his shoe is the most forgivable thing he's ever done as President.

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Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#705 Post by SR » Mon Oct 08, 2018 5:06 am

They let him. No less than 40 eyes on him at all times.

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