192
   

monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

 
 
hightor
 
  1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 03:31 am
@Brandon9000,
You keep looking for something that isn't there. Remember the "perfect phone call"? Remember when I brought it up before? By repeatedly lying about non-existent voter fraud, demonizing Democrats, "weak" Republicans, the "Deep State", BLM, the press, and ultimately Congress itself he engaged in what is known as "stochastic terrorism". This demagoguery is nothing new, having been a staple of right-wing talk radio (and Trump - note the comments from '16) for decades. But when coming from someone with as much authority as a president, the chance that the rhetoric will be carried too far increases dramatically. So when he tells his mob to march to the Capitol and "fight" to prevent the Congress (and Mike Pence) from doing its job, he's not "innocent" simply because he didn't tell them to break into the chamber and destroy government property. But that's exactly the message that the most rabid supporters heard. That's why they came armed and prepared for violence.


https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.ZHi1rxG_iNV_AjRx_QH3LQHaE1%26pid%3DApi&f=1

https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2018/02/19510578_334932460273028_4437980780719315754_n.jpg?resize=768,871
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 03:49 am
@Builder,
someone without a clue wrote:
What is totally missing in this whole conversation, is that in a free-speech democratic republic, attempting to stymie or block the responses of half of the nation, is tantamount to treason, and totally against the constitution.

What's "totally missing" is your showing that you have any familiarity with the laws concerning freedom of speech. No speech is being "blocked", people are simply finding new platforms where they can lie, threaten violence, and plan insurrection with impunity. I notice you don't mention "attempting to stymie or block" the seating of the presidential candidate elected by the majority of the voters.

Quote:
I'm not surprised at all that the usual dog-pile crew here, are totally in favor of this act of fascism.


Yes, as usual you and the few others who are totally in favor of Trump, condone everything his says, and stand behind any idiot wearing a MAGA hat.

Quote:
Fascists and treasonous assholes.


You said it; I didn't.
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  2  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 05:21 am
Just a few hours left to get that swamp drained.

Quote:
This was a terrible, terrible experiment.

(...)

To me, the most striking feature of Trump’s presidency was that year after year he kept surprising us on the downside. Year after year he plumbed new depths of norm-busting, lying and soiling the reputations of everyone who entered his orbit. But he never once — not once — surprised us on the upside with an act of kindness, self-criticism or reaching out to opponents.

nyt/friedman



0 Replies
 
Builder
 
  -2  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 05:28 am
By the end of his second and final term on January 20, 2017, United States President Barack Obama had exercised his constitutional power to grant the executive clemency—that is, "pardon, commutation of sentence, remission of fine or restitution, and reprieve"[1]—to 1,927 individuals convicted of federal crimes. Of the acts of clemency, 1,715 were commutations (including 504 life sentences) and 212 were pardons.[2][3] Most individuals granted executive clemency by Obama had been convicted on drug charges,[4] and had received lengthy and sometimes mandatory sentences at the height of the war on drugs.[5]

Obama holds the record for the largest single-day use of the clemency power, granting 330 commutations on January 19, 2017, his last full day in office.[6][7] He also issued more commutations than the past 13 presidents combined.[2][8]
hightor
 
  1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 05:40 am
@Builder,
Quote:
Obama holds the record for the largest single-day use of the clemency power, granting 330 commutations on January 19, 2017, his last full day in office.

And your point is? You do understand that presidential pardoning power is a provision in the US Constitution, right? It's not how many people you pardon, it's who and why. Duh...

I notice you don't mention Trump jettisoning the ethics order he put in place when he first took office:

Quote:
President Trump's last big batch of pardons will get most of the attention, but he also issued an executive order in his last few hours in office that seeks to free all current and former hires from the ethics agreements they signed to work in his administration. Trump revoked his January 2017 "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees" order, the White House announced early Wednesday, so "employees and former employees subject to the commitments in Executive Order 13770 will not be subject to those commitments after noon January 20, 2021."

Those commitments included not lobbying the federal agencies they served under for five years after leaving government. The executive order, Yashar Ali notes, was the backbone of Trump's "drain the swamp" pledge.

Forget about draining the swamp...President Trump just filled it up.

He has revoked his own executive order (#13770) which had the following provisions (among others).

The drain the swamp stuff was all smoke and mirrors anyway but here's Trump walking back his own EO... pic.twitter.com/ZvuW0CwszQ

— Yashar Ali (@yashar) January 20, 2021

President-elect Joe Biden takes office at noon on Wednesday, and presumably he could just issue a new executive order reversing Trump's

Norm Eisen, "ethics czar" to former President Barack Obama, said in a Politico column Tuesday that Obama's clear ethics rules led to "arguably the most scandal-free presidency in memory," but "Trump greatly watered down the standards with scandalous results" and "Biden has done the opposite, restoring the Obama rules and expanding them."

Biden's planned executive order, Eisen wrote, "restores the fundamentals of the Obama plan, closing loopholes Trump opened—but going further, including new crackdowns on special interest influence. If implemented rigorously (always a big if) Biden’s plan promises to go further to 'drain the swamp' than either of his predecessors."

yahoonews

Interestingly, Bill Clinton did pretty much the same thing.
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  2  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 05:41 am
@coluber2001,
coluber2001 wrote:


The Washington Post

Opinion by
Paul Waldman
Columnist

Jan. 19, 2021 at 11:20 a.m. CST

Goodbye Donald Trump. You were the worst of us.

In fantasy worlds, a nation may be led by its best: a noble king, full of courage and wisdom and love for all his people, who bears the weighty burden of rule because no one else could do it better. That’s not how things usually work in the real world, where for every virtuous leader there are a hundred mediocrities, knaves and fools.

But here in the United States we come now to the end of a four-year experiment to answer the question: What would happen if we were led by the worst of us? What if we searched the land and plucked out literally the most repugnant human being we could find, a walking collection of character flaws, and put him in charge? What damage would he do, and what version of America would be left in his wake?

When Joe Biden takes the oath of office, there will be no joyful celebrations, only relief that Donald Trump’s presidency is finally over. America is in a state of misery and despair, our condition degraded and our divisions seeming more intractable than ever in our lifetimes.

On Trump’s last day as president we will mark 400,000 dead from covid-19 — not just Trump’s greatest failure but perhaps the greatest failure of any president in our history. By the time the pandemic he so disastrously mishandled is over, that number could be 600,000. That’s not to mention the millions out of work, the businesses shuttered, the epidemic of loneliness and depression, and all the children whose educations have been set back, perhaps irrevocably. He brought us all that.

I’ve written in the neighborhood of 1,500 articles about Trump since 2015; he dominated our consciousness like no president before him. As we approach his presidency’s end, we can’t list his misdeeds, because there are simply too many. We can’t recount his lies, because they stack halfway to the moon.

To ask what was the worst thing he did is to plunge into a discussion as much philosophical as historical. The deaths of hundreds of thousands through incompetence, or the unfathomable cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms, or the repulsive corruption of strong-arming a foreign government to help him destroy a political opponent, or the incitement of his deranged followers to rampage through the Capitol, or the relentless assault on truth itself — which was worse? There is no right answer.

But is there anyone who feels better about their country now than they did before Trump descended that escalator to grab hold of our attention and then our government? More loving toward all their fellow Americans, more optimistic about our future, with a greater faith that we can solve the problems that confront us? Perhaps some do; I can only speak for myself when I say that this era has left me with a sour taste in my mouth that I fear will never go away.

Trump changed our perspective on so many things, usually in ways that gave us a fuller understanding of our politics, even if the knowledge made us miserable. He showed us how vulnerable we were, not just to a demagogue (we’ve seen those before) but to an outright sociopath. He showed us how rickety many of our institutions are, and how easily they could be corrupted.

And he showed us the dark hearts of so many of our fellow Americans. We saw how millions would glory in his toxic message, his hateful rhetoric, his corruption and moral depravity. We saw how eager so many were to genuflect before a strongman.

Those with a clear view of history knew that already, of course; Trump simply illustrated it in vivid gigapixel resolution. If he had a political genius, this was where it lay, in his understanding that the typical politician’s rhetoric about how Americans are the most virtuous people who ever lived upon the earth couldn’t be more wrong.

We’re just people, driven as much by grievance and resentment and outright loathing for our fellow humans as anyone else. No less than in any other country that has cheered an authoritarian who grabbed power, success in America can be had by appealing to our ugliest impulses.

One can take some comfort in the fact that both times Trump ran, his opponent got more votes. The number of us who recoiled from him in disgust was greater than the number who saw him as their champion. That is true. But there were so many who supported him — 63 million in 2016, then 74 million in 2020, numbers so great that it’s hard to contemplate them without succumbing to despair.

Many of the details of this time — the vulgar offensiveness, the two-bit grifters he gathered around him, the comical lies — will fade in their particulars from our memories as time passes. One day you may struggle to explain to your grandchildren what it was like when Trump was president, to conjure the details that would help them fully understand what made each day of this period so horrid.

Perhaps that’s the best we can hope for, that in order to renew our optimism about our nation’s future we’ll have to allow ourselves to forget, just a little, what Trump made us see and how he made us feel, at least enough so we don’t lose all faith. We can focus on the flowering of progressive grass-roots activism that rose up in reaction to him, or how the pandemic made us value the relationships it has deprived us of.

It won’t be easy. But that’s another lesson of this era: Politics is hard and messy and painful, and it never ends. But it has its redemptive moments too.

So when Trump sulks back to Mar-a-Lago, take a moment to bask in that sweet relief. And resolve to do your part to make sure nothing like it ever happens again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/19/goodbye-donald-trump-you-were-worst-us/




Beautifully expressed.

I thank Waldman for expressing the feelings so many of us have so well.

0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 05:43 am
@izzythepush,
izzythepush wrote:

Wow. That has to be the most anal thing I’ve seen on the Internet.

Talk to someone, this obsession of yours is not healthy.

This will be decided by lawyers, not you, your opinion is just that. Plenty of people thought his words were inciting, you did not.

Why not start your own thread where you can dissect Trump’s words at your leisure and explain why they’re just jolly japes and not at all threatening to anyone who actually gives a ****.


Don't play Brandon's game, Izzy. He thinks he is being clever. He apparently does not know the difference between "clever" and "childish."

izzythepush
 
  3  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 05:49 am
@Frank Apisa,
He’s obsessing, it’s what control freaks do when they can’t get their own way. Just be thankful we only encounter him on A2K, imagine what it must be like to have someone like that as a neighbour.
Brand X
 
  2  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:12 am
Did Mexico meet Don with the money the other day at the wall event?

Also, does his greatest health care plan ever begin this morning?
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:30 am
@izzythepush,
The schoolboy obsession with "winning the argument" on exhibit here among the Trump-loving dog-pile crew is rather pathetic. Why would anyone want to engage in a long-running discussion with people who are so self-righteous, so condescending, and so contemptuous?
hingehead
 
  2  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:30 am
Hoping Andrews supplies a 21 bird salute to outgoing POTUS.
0 Replies
 
snood
 
  2  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:36 am
@hightor,
hightor wrote:

The schoolboy obsession with "winning the argument" on exhibit here among the Trump-loving dog-pile crew is rather pathetic. Why would anyone want to engage in a long-running discussion with people who are so self-righteous, so condescending, and so contemptuous?


And so ******* nuts.
0 Replies
 
snood
 
  2  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:38 am
A promise to myself. I’m going to try to have less and less to say about Donald Trump, and soon I will try not to speak on him at all.

But I want to say this:

If this man is able to escape without ever having to suffer any significant consequences for his countless crimes, violations, offenses, malfeasances...

It will shovel the final scoop of dirt onto the grave of any faith I ever had or will hold in American justice.

Godspeed to Leticia James and all other attorneys general and prosecutors who actually pursue bringing him to account.
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  -1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:45 am
I'd be fine with seeing about having this thread locked at noon. blatham bequeathed it to us and I doubt he'd object. And while I know we'll bring up Trump in the future because, unfortunately, that's the kind of attention-seeking narcissist he's always been, I think it would be fitting to put this one to rest.

Anyone in agreement?
izzythepush
 
  1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:47 am
@hightor,
Well yes. I’m lucky in that that particular party has put me on ignore which has to be preferable to having him follow me around from thread to thread trying to get the last word.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  2  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:50 am
@hightor,
Neptune Blue has started a Biden thread, maybe this thread can be used to document Trump’s ongoing legal battles.
0 Replies
 
snood
 
  -1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:54 am
@hightor,
Yup. It well served its purpose.
0 Replies
 
engineer
 
  0  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 06:54 am
@hightor,
Yes, this thread is a mess anyway. IMO we should have had hundreds of threads, one for each different topic so we could find them again. I can't find interesting posts in this one because they are swamped by the noise.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  0  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 07:30 am
Trump has left the building.



Now the clean up starts, how do you get rid of that nasty orange narcissist smell?
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  -1  
Wed 20 Jan, 2021 07:33 am
Although he boarded the helicopter camera shy, he is now gone. From the White House, at least.
 

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