US Politics

[bustamente]

2 hours ago, The Unknown Poster said:

That’s trump at his most popular due to the crises.  

We have been fooled by polls in the past election, but that is a sizeable gap, would it be fair to say that if Trump loses any 3 of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida he is toast

[17to85]

2 hours ago, The Unknown Poster said:

If you don’t know the huge difference between Obama and Bernie, well....

Obama was also campaigning for president 12 years ago right? That's a long time and things have changed since then. He certainly wasn't the establishment choice even if he wound up governing that way. 

[Tracker]

                                                      

[Tracker]

On Fox News Thursday in discussion with Sean Hannity, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made an extraordinary statement: That he wants the United States to “cancel” some of the national debt held by the Chinese government as punishment for allowing the coronavirus to spread beyond its borders.

“I want to get the medical supply chain back in the United States, and I want to start canceling some debt that we owe to China, because they should be paying us, not us paying China,” said Graham. “So I think you’re going to see a bipartisan pushback against China to punish them so severely to deter them in the future.”

Putting aside the thorny legal question of whether a foreign country can be legally held at fault for the spread of a deadly disease, there is a big problem with what Graham is proposing: the 14th Amendment.

The amendment, one of the three “Reconstruction Amendments” passed in the wake of the Civil War, contained a clause at the end that was designed to prevent Southern politicians — who historically wielded outsized power in Congress — from canceling the U.S. war debt, which could have shielded the white landowners who led the war effort from having to pay taxes: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

[blue_gold_84]

In Lindsey Graham's defense, though... he's an idiot.

[Tracker]

1 minute ago, blue_gold_84 said:

In Lindsey Graham's defense, though... he's an idiot.

And an idiot left without adult supervision. Come to think of it, that applies to pretty much to Trump and the whole GOP, as well as some Democrats.

[Tracker]

According to columnist David Lurie, writing for the Daily Beast, Donald Trump’s purge of inspector generals in the government is an attempt to make sure that he is not be subjected to any embarrassing reports or investigations before the November election.

As Lurie notes, the president has enlisted former bodyman John McEntee, who was previously booted from the White House by former Chief of Staff John Kelly, to purge critics and those considered not loyal to Trump from their posts, and that inspector generals are at the top of the list. 

“In the midst of a deadly pandemic, Donald Trump has expanded his war on oversight by attacking the governments’ inspectors general, compounding the damage already done by his unprecedented stonewalling of congressional oversight investigations,” Lurie wrote, before adding that Trump and McEntee are dead set on “targeting IGs as part of a broader effort to purge officials who aren’t sufficiently personally loyal to Trump.”

“That effort might help Trump delay any formal reviews of his failed leadership during the pandemic, or of his administrations’ disbursement of trillions in coronavirus-related spending, until after the November election,” he continued before highlighting the firing of Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general for turning over to Congress the whistleblower report on Trump’s attempts to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. 

Adding that Trump’s “attacks on the government’s IG infrastructure have been so audacious that they have raised questions among at least some GOP legislators,” Lurie reports, “Additionally, Trump has taken a uniquely recalcitrant approach to congressional investigations. In the Ukraine matter, Trump defied long-standing precedent by refusing to voluntarily comply with nearly all congressional requests for information, and instructed current and former government officials to do the same.”

Edited April 11, 2020 by Tracker

[Tracker]

 

 

                                                            

[Tracker]

[Tracker]

APRIL 11, 2020 4:05PM (UTC)

Encouraged by the pain, suffering, misery and distraction caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump is continuing his assault on American democracy and the rule of law.

His most recent move: removing at least seven inspectors general who provide independent oversight within various departments of the United States government.

Trump is a malignant narcissist with authoritarian tendencies and may well be a sociopath. Like a Mafia boss, he views personal loyalty as more important than loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law. Aided by Attorney General William Barr, Trump appears poised to loot the coronavirus relief funds passed by Congress, harass and silence his political enemies, speed up the country's downward slide into failed democracy, and unleash more cruelty against those Americans he deems to be insufficiently loyal or otherwise "undesirable."

On Twitter, Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, summarized recent developments:

A last line of defense in this war on ethics and law is the Inspector General community. They're the eyes of the American people, objective investigators traditionally freed to pursue accountability by the safeguard of bipartisan congressional protection.

What began with the fall of the ethics program is entering the end game with the potential fall of the Inspector General community. The government is failing us, safeguards that took two centuries to build have crumbled, and fascism is eyeing this republic like lunch. 

Shaub is perhaps being optimistic: Donald Trump and his allies, both foreign and domestic, are already gorging on democracy. Trump makes no effort to hide his contempt for American democracy. He is obvious and unapologetic.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Tracker

[Tracker]

MOTHER KNOWS BEST!

 

 

                                                         

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

Trump re-election depends on voter suppression. If people vote freely and easily- he's toast.

Mail-in voting would be devastating to trump. 

The USPS is on the brink of folding... a 300 year institution...

Of course he would do this... nothing will get in his way, nothing will deter him, it's frightening. 

[Tracker]

                                      

[Tracker]

Former GOP strategist blasts Trump: ‘We’ve never seen a president more visibly failing hour by hour’

Yes, he foisted Sarah Palin on our national politics, which was a little like bringing an uncooked moose to a dinner party instead of a nice insouciant, oaky cabernet.

But Steve Schmidt, the veteran Republican campaign strategist who guided John McCain’s 2008 presidential run, now speaks the truth. And he’s not pulling punches when it comes to the ocher abomination.

Yesterday, during a panel discussion on MSNBC, Schmidt said what the majority of Republicans still can’t acknowledge. Donald Trump sucks. Hard. So hard, in fact, that he will go down as the worst president in the history of our country.

Sarah Reese Jones Schmidt says that by the time Trump is done he will be regarded along with James Buchanan, as the worst Commander in Chief in America.

SCHMIDT: “When we look back at history, what we would have seen from Barack Obama back through Harry Truman is an American president calling for an international convention on pandemics, about how we bring the world together, how American leadership can drive toward a solution. Instead, we have the American delegation saying no to a communique because they won’t use the word ‘Wuhan flu.’ So it’s theater of the absurd that tops off every evening at the 6 o’clock follies where the American people are lied to nonstop, where he sows confusion, where he sows division, where he attacks the people who need help the most. We’ve never seen a dereliction of duty, we’ve never seen a level of unfitness for command, we have never seen a president more visibly failing hour by hour to meet the moment, to meet the test of history than we’re seeing with Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States. And I think by the time we get to the end of it, someone who will be universally regarded by historians, along with [James] Buchanan, the 15th president, who prefaced the Civil War, as the worst commander in chief in American history.”

[Tracker]

Trump Spends Easter Asking Confidants: ‘What Do You Think of Fauci?’

 

WORKING THE PHONES

The president called various friends and allies over the weekend to ask for their opinion on the doctor he says he made a “star”—and even retweeted a call for his firing.

 

Asawin Suebsaeng

White House Reporter

Updated Apr. 13, 2020 4:10AM ET /

 

President Donald Trump spent much of this Easter weekend, his first Easter sequestered at the White House in the midst of a global pandemic and crashing economy, in a rather predictable fashion: working the phones and rage-tweeting at The New York Times and Mike Wallace’s son.

At one point, the president even promoted a Twitter post calling for the firing of his top infectious-disease expert in the middle of a deadly pandemic—because he’d said something construed as rude to Trump.

 

Over the weekend, the president picked up the phone and began dialing various close advisers and associates to ask them their opinion on how soon he should “open” the U.S. economy and call for Americans to start resuming business as usual, according to three people familiar with the conversations. 

The subject of when to ease restrictions and guidelines, as the death toll has risen in the tens of thousands and governors and the federal government have struggled to combat the coronavirus, has been a major point of debate within the upper ranks of the Trump administration. While the president has often advocated highly optimistic and at times even negligent positions on the crisis, certain key members of his coronavirus task force—including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—have urged a more cautious, patient approach, particularly on “reopening” the United States for business.

And so the doctor appeared to weigh on Trump’s mind this Easter weekend.

“What do you think of Fauci?” the president repeatedly worked into his phone conversations over the past few days, the three sources said, as he pulsed his broader network of informal advisers, industry allies, and current staff on their opinions on the news of the day. At one point this weekend, Trump remarked that he’s made Fauci a “star” and that barely anybody would have known who the doctor was were it not for the president putting him front and center in the administration’s coronavirus response, televised press briefings, and media strateg

[do or die]

Steady drumbeat against Fauci, from the usual sites, crying about his "betrayal" and calling him various forms of swamp dwelling, Obama loving, deep state agent....

So, who would replace him?

Dr. Rudy?
Dr Oz?
Dr. Navarro?
Dr. Kushner?

Normally, one would think this is satire, but this administration has already passed the point of absurdity, in a whole lot of areas.

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by do or die

[The Unknown Poster]

Hopefully the Bernie Maniacs fall in line too.   

Edited April 13, 2020 by The Unknown Poster

[pigseye]

Trumps toast, Biden will steamroll him.

 

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

1 hour ago, pigseye said:

Trumps toast, Biden will steamroll him.

 

A lot can happen between now and Nov. 

Don't count out trump.

Let's see what happens to the USPS first.

Edited April 13, 2020 by wanna-b-fanboy

[17to85]

By all rights Trump should have been toast before he even got himself elected. 

Never underestimate how stupid people can be. 

[Floyd]

Biden is literally the only Democrat that could lose to Trump... same as Hillary

If Obama and Kamala Harris can carry him, there's a chance...  but I have yet to see an interview where Biden does start mumbling like Grampa Simpson

[AtlanticRiderFan]

6 hours ago, do or die said:

Steady drumbeat against Fauci, from the usual sites, crying about his "betrayal" and calling him various forms of swamp dwelling, Obama loving, deep state agent....

So, who would replace him?

Dr. Rudy?
Dr Oz?
Dr. Navarro?
Dr. Kushner?

Normally, one would think this is satire, but this administration has already passed the point of absurdity, in a whole lot of areas.

 

 

 

Jim Bakker, the Silver Solution guy could be in the mix as well, haha.

[Mr Dee]

I said it before. The only one qualified is

 .......Dr. W.H.O.

[The Unknown Poster]

3 hours ago, 17to85 said:

By all rights Trump should have been toast before he even got himself elected. 

Never underestimate how stupid people can be. 

He was toast. Even with the cheating.  Even by energizing a core that usually doesn’t vote, by appealing to their racism and stupidity.  He was way behind Hilary.  As dumb as Rudy is he did one thing right.  He leveraged his relationships in the NY fbi to pressure Comey into doing what I’m sure he felt was exceedingly fair but in reality was the most idiotic boneheaded things in the history of American politics.  And it handed trump a presidency he didn’t earn, deserve or want. 
 

this year trump has about the same chance.  Virtually none.  Outside of a crazy scandal, which the alt right is desperately trying to conjure up or absurd cheating or some sort of disaster that allows the admin to stifle votes (and you can see how they want to use Covid to do that), trump really has no chance.   I mess Biden drops dead two weeks before the election or suffers a debilitating stroke or something, there is virtually nothing trump can actually do on his own to win. He’s never polled close to “winner”.  And even when his approval was its highest he trailed well behind Biden.  
 

and that’s before Obama even enters this thing.  

[FrostyWinnipeg]

Sanders supports Biden. Biden accused of assault.

Joe2020

Cuomo's the new backup plan.

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by FrostyWinnipeg