monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

And then there is the elephant in the room of the 65M people who voted for Trump and how pissed those people are at the system and teh "deep state", and the fact that if anything at all happens to Donald Trump, CW=II is on.

A lot of what I read indicates that that reality has started to sink in pretty much everywhere.

Some wack-ass muslim who lays 20 "infidel" babies down on the ground, and then takes turns with his 3 sons, aged 5, 7, and 9, decapitating them one at a time, may be convinced that they will all be rewarded by Allah by doing so, and could be right, eh?

hawkeye10 wrote:

I have Trumps exit date as 3.15.18, I said so back at the first of Feb, and so far the date still looks good.

I still have Trump serving as president for a full eight years, with the Republicans holding the White House for a full twenty years.

I am 90% sure that SCOTUS finally takes a stand against gerrymandering, so dont count your chickens just yet.

Next term the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Wisconsin’s election maps that could lead to a precedent-setting ruling against partisan gerrymandering — the problematic process whereby incumbents draw legislative boundaries to help their fellow partisans. But would politically neutral redistricting in itself yield significantly more competitive and less polarized politics? Would it ensure greater political diversity and increase the legitimacy of Congress?

The answer is no. Regardless of how you slice the map, the vast majority of Americans will live in so-called landslide districts, in which either Republicans or Democrats win by overwhelming margins. Today’s voters rarely split their tickets and are self-sorting such that the median county in the 2016 presidential race was won by more than 40 percentage points — triple the median margins in the 1990s.

G20 protesters set street fires, loot stores

Hamburg, Germany (CNN)Protesters at the G20 summit in Germany set a series of bonfires in the streets, looted shops, and stacked up blocks of pavement to use as projectiles as tension between demonstrators and police ratcheted up Friday night.

From where a CNN crew was positioned, the mass of protesters appeared to stretch for at least 1 mile. Police said 197 officers have been injured since Thursday and reinforcements from outside Hamburg have been requested.

Officers dressed in riot gear intervened as protesters tried to enter the red zone -- a blocked-off area close to the summit venue -- while other small groups staged sit-ins across the city. At least 83 people were arrested and 17 have been detained since the protests began, police said on Twitter. Protest organizers had told CNN they would try to storm police barricades around restricted areas. Anti-capitalist protesters [are attempting to disrupt] the summit world leaders including President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin met for talks.

Hamburg police tweeted Friday afternoon that some officers were attacked with iron bars in the Reeperbahn, the city's famous entertainment district.
Other officers were attacked with fire bombs in Holstenstrasse, farther north, police said, and barricades were set afire. attacked, with paint thrown and windows smashed. Bottles and fireworks were flung, injuring some officers, police said.

Hundreds of officers went into buildings to arrest rioters while being attacked with iron rods and Molotov cocktails thrown from the roofs. Some 500 people looted a supermarket in the neighbourhood, as well as smaller stores. Cars were torched and street fires lit as activists built barricades with garbage cans and bikes.

Leaders are expected to discuss climate change, terrorism and migration during the two-day meeting in what is the birthplace of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Anti-G20 riots were born in West German squats in the 1980s

The balaclava-wearing radicals known as "black blocs" rampaging through the streets of Hamburg during the G20 summit trace their roots back to Cold War-era West Germany.

Known for disrupting major international meetings across Europe for three decades, the far-left, black-clad anarchists are loosely organised with vague political demands but share a set of violent tactics.

Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution said in its annual report released this week that black blocs typically seek "direct confrontation with the political opponent or with the police".

"They try to provoke the police with violence and by igniting fireworks or throwing bottles and rocks to bring about an escalation," it said. "That happens in the hope that the 'repressive capitalist state' will be 'unmasked' with its reaction to this militancy."

In running street battles, a hard core of around 1,000 militants have ignored authorities' demands to remove their masks - which are illegal at German demonstrations - as riot police move in repeatedly with water cannon trucks and tear gas.

While leaders themselves gather in venues protected by a ring of steel, citizens of the host cities often bear the brunt of the riots, just as in Hamburg where dozens of cars parked on local streets were torched and shopfronts vandalised.

The German police officers' union GdP accused them of "hijacking peaceful demonstrations by tens of thousands of people to deliberately attack" authorities.

Initially focused on fighting local battles with police over squatter evictions and nuclear power, the targets in subsequent decades shifted to geopolitics, such as the 1987 visit by US President Ronald Reagan to West Berlin.

After the Berlin Wall fell, May Day workers' holidays were repeatedly marred by pitched battles in German cities between far-leftists and police.

The rioters had pushed many international meetings in recent years to seek out rural, hard-to-reach venues. However Merkel opted to host the G20 in Germany's second city this year for logistical reasons, given the size of the delegations, and as a symbol of transparency.

Hackers breached at least a dozen US power plants in attacks in May and June, US media report, citing intelligence officials.
The targets included the Wolf Creek nuclear facility in Kansas, according to several reports.
An urgent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report indicated a foreign power, possibly Russia, was responsible, the New York Times said.
The DHS document carried the second-highest threat rating, the Times said.
Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp declined to say if the plant was hacked but said there had been "no operational impact" at the plant.
"The reason that is true is because the operational computer systems are completely separate from the corporate network," spokeswoman Jenny Hageman told Reuters.
In a joint statement with the FBI, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said there was "no indication of a threat to public safety".
The hackers appeared to be attempting to map out computer networks for future attacks, according to the DHS report seen by the Times.
They sent highly targeted emails to senior engineers at operating firms behind the nuclear plants, mimicking job applications but laced with malicious code, the newspaper said.
Officials told the Times that the techniques resembles those used by Russian specialists linked to previous attacks on energy facilities.
US investigators accused Russia-based hackers of being behind a 2015 attack that caused blackouts across Ukraine.
Hacking is a tool increasingly deployed by nation states to infiltrate foreign industrial networks. The US and Israel reportedly used the now-infamous Stuxnet worm in an attempt to damage an Iranian nuclear facility.
The worm attacked the facility's nuclear centrifuges by overriding the system and instructing them to spin much faster than intended, reportedly causing severe physical damage.

The US and Israel reportedly used the now-infamous Stuxnet worm in an attempt to damage an Iranian nuclear facility.

The worm attacked the facility's nuclear centrifuges by overriding the system and instructing them to spin much faster than intended, reportedly causing severe physical damage.

Crime drops in Phoenix after city drops sanctuary city status

In May 2008, Phoenix reversed itself, becoming a non-sanctuary state. Under the policy, police had full discretion to ask suspects about their immigration status and had the freedom to call ICE.

We saw a decrease in crime," said Levi Bolton, executive director to the Arizona Police Association. "It had a deterrent effect on folks because the risk of discovery went up exponentially when we actually enforced the law."

"When we eliminated our sanctuary policy back in 2008, we saw crime, violent and stolen vehicles fall by 25 percent," he recalled. "We saw a 20-year low crime rate. When we were allowed and had the discretion to contact our federal immigration partners, crime fell drastically."

According to City-Data.com, which collects data from various government agencies, from 2008 to 2009 Phoenix's murder rate fell 27 percent, robberies by 23 percent, assault by 13 percent, burglaries by 14 percent and theft by 19 percent. The numbers for each category fell the following year as well.