Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[kenberg]

Ken, during past presidencies, were you not aghast at Bill Clinton's peccadilloes? Or disgusted by Nixon's illegalities? Or W's lack of "presence" etc.?

Is not Trump just another in a fairly long line of "objectionable" characters? Is not your system of government somewhat used to and protected from them? (The price being gridlock and inertia perhaps but necessary apparently.)

Here, in Canada, less is in play so we have smaller concerns.

 

Generally I stay away from "Ok, X has his flaws but look at Y' arguments. There is some point to them, but it's also a distraction. But let's look a little.

 

Clinton and peccadilloes: I sort of liked Paula Jones. Monica not so much. Having sex with someone who is married (let alone someone who is president) requires that you shut up abut it. Paula, as I recall, told him to put it back in and zip it up, and then she walked out of the room. Bravo Paula. As to Trump. I haven't said all that much about Stormy whoever. It's not good, and his wife had just given birth so it's really not good, but this, by itself, does not exactly put the country at risk.

 

Nixon is a complex case. His actions, in Watergate and the cover-up, were a threat to our political system.And there were other things. For all of his many faults, he was not the out of control nut job that our current president is. I am not defending Nixon here, I do think the whole issue is complex. Trump is not complex.

 

As to your question to Winston about admiring presidents, I am not much into admiration. I have never wished to be admired. I think, for example, George H. W. Bush was a serious experienced person who did a decent job. I think he would be satisfied, perhaps even pleased, to be described that way. Our current guy needs constant adulation. That's a very unhealthy need for anyone.

[Winstonm]

Already crystal clear. Your system has its pros and cons (do they ever go to prison?) so you have to roll with it. Our pols are mostly boring or ineffectual but that suits our national temperament... ;). Who was your last Prez that you admired and why?

 

I thought Washington was O.K.

[Winstonm]

How to turn a headline from TheOnion into a legitimate headline:

 

TheOnion:

Legendary Bass Fisherman President Trump Explains How Easily He'd Catch The Fish Monster From 'The Shape Of Water'

 

FTP

[y66]

The country, and the world, is caught up in questions of identity so the question of just what makes us who we are has relevance. I am at the extreme opposite end of those who can, for example, trace their family back to the first American settlers. As mentioned, I am adopted. My adoptive father came to this country when he was 10, brought by his older brother who was 16, an adult at the time. He was always unsure of what country he came from. Ellis Island says Hungarian nationality, Croatian ethnicity. He thought he was Austrian or maybe Czech. I have never developed the need to "search for my roots", not in any substantive way, but naturally I am curious. I never completely understood what Sartre meant by "Existence precedes essence" but if it was meant to place importance on choices I agree with it.

I suspect you understand the gist, even if you have perhaps not read everything he wrote on the subject, and that what you believe makes you you (essentially), which is influenced by genetic makeup and other factoids but not determined, is not so different from his ideas about freedom, responsibility and choice which I know as much about as anyone who's taken a one semester class. I also suspect your thoughts on this subject preceded your introduction to Sartre and that you both may have some common ancestors who enjoyed talking about this stuff.

[ggwhiz]

As to your question to Winston about admiring presidents, I am not much into admiration.

 

I don't believe in admiration in an overall sense and think it is very unhealthy, required by cults and Trump. Respect may be grudging and is a better benchmark.

 

I respect individual actions and of some otherwise ridiculously horrid people. For example, when Cubans were washing up on Florida beaches and being welcomed, Castro emptied his insane asylums and put them on rafts.

 

Credit should likely go to a nameless Cuban pencil pusher but all I could think of was "well played sir".

[Al_U_Card]

I gather that the Russian "reach" also extends to environmental causes, especially where the US fossil fuel sector is concerned. More angling to provide an advantage to Russia but who amongst the anti big-oil and climate change zealots are useful idiots, stooges or fellow travellers? So, perhaps the Trumps were simply doing counter-intelligence surveillance when they met with all those Russkies? ;) (Beware of flying pig droppings...lol )

[Al_U_Card]

I am shocked, shocked to find that insider trading may be occurring:

 

WaPo:

What is one fundamental difference betwèen free trade and tariffs? In the former, corporations determine supply based on profit motives independant of electorate preference (for better or worse). In the latter, politicians appoint a bureacracy to satisfy an electorate with beneficial (subject to detrimental aspects) economic conditions and those politicians are subject to electorate wrath. One is more transparent and democratic and less subject to machiavellian manipulations than the other.

[Winstonm]

Yahoo story:

Report: Donald Trump didn’t help UCLA players get out of Chinese jail

Rob Dauster,NBC Sports Fri, Mar 2 2:33 PM CST

 

This is how crazy college basketball has been during the 2017-18 season: Did you remember that three UCLA players, including LaVar Ball’s middle son LiAngelo, were arrested in China for shoplifting and, according to the president himself, had to be rescued by Donald Trump during his trip to the country.

 

Well, they were.

 

And, as it turns out, LaVar Ball was right when he said that the president did nothing to help get Gelo out of jail. The way the story was told by the New York Times in November is that Trump, while meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, “intervened” to get the police in Hangzhou to let the players leave.

 

But that’s not really how it played out, according to a story from ESPN:

 

“The players were already checked into the hotel before the public discovered they were arrested,” a team source said. “They also were not under house arrest. It was our decision to keep them at the hotel until the situation was resolved. The charges were dropped, they weren’t reduced, and that happened two days before we heard from Gen. Kelly.”

Remember when Trump tweeted “I should have left them in jail”?

 

Interesting.

 

Surely someone should be left in jail, though. :o

[Winstonm]

This is new from the NYT, pm on 3/3:

 

WASHINGTON — George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, has hovered on the fringes of international diplomacy for three decades. He was a back-channel negotiator with Syria during the Clinton administration, reinvented himself as an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, and last year was a frequent visitor to President Trump’s White House.

 

Mr. Nader is now a focus of the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. In recent weeks, Mr. Mueller’s investigators have questioned Mr. Nader and have pressed witnesses for information about any possible attempts by the Emiratis to buy political influence by directing money to support Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

 

The investigators have also asked about Mr. Nader’s role in White House policymaking, those people said, suggesting that the special counsel investigation has broadened beyond Russian election meddling to include Emirati influence on the Trump administration. The focus on Mr. Nader could also prompt an examination of how money from multiple countries has flowed through and influenced Washington during the Trump era.

 

In one example of Mr. Nader’s influential connections, which has not been previously reported, last fall he received a detailed report from a top Trump fund-raiser, Elliott Broidy, about a private meeting with the president in the Oval Office.

 

Mr. Broidy owns a private security company with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the United Arab Emirates, and he extolled to Mr. Trump a paramilitary force that his company was developing for the country. He also lobbied the president to meet privately “in an informal setting” with the Emirates’ military commander and de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan; to back the U.A.E.’s hawkish policies in the region; and to fire Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson.

 

A copy of Mr. Broidy’s memorandum about the meeting was provided to The New York Times by someone critical of the Emirati influence in Washington.

 

I guess this is what happens when there is an investigation of a New York crime family.

[barmar]

Back maybe a year or so there was a thread with a title something like "How could I vote for such a disgusting man?". Being disgusting is of course a bad feature but it pales in comparison with items like you quote above. We have a president who does not seem to know on Tuesday what he will do on Wednesday, and sees no problem with that. On PBS last night Mark Shields reminded us that the Trump supporters tell us that we should not take the president literally when he says something. This is somehow supposed to reassure us.

How about the whiplash we all got last week, trying to follow Trump's stance on gun control?

 

When he had the listening session with the high school students, he was all about arming teachers.

 

A few days letter he met with legislators, and accused them of being afraid of the NRA. He advocated increased gun control, including violating due process to take guns away from potentially violent people.

 

Then he met with NRA leaders, and his views shifted again, they were very happy with the results of the meeting.

 

We're all familiar with politicians who flip-flop, but it's usually over the course of years. Trump seems to have more stances on some issues than there are days of the week.

[kenberg]

How about the whiplash we all got last week, trying to follow Trump's stance on gun control?

 

When he had the listening session with the high school students, he was all about arming teachers.

 

A few days letter he met with legislators, and accused them of being afraid of the NRA. He advocated increased gun control, including violating due process to take guns away from potentially violent people.

 

Then he met with NRA leaders, and his views shifted again, they were very happy with the results of the meeting.

 

We're all familiar with politicians who flip-flop, but it's usually over the course of years. Trump seems to have more stances on some issues than there are days of the week.

 

It has been immensely destructive. I believe that many people are much like me. With regard to guns, I can think of places in this country where if I absolutely had no choice, if I had to live or work there, I would probably buy a gun. But surely, and again I think most everyone would agree, we need to fix that situation rather than arm everyone. Yes there are some people who, through career choice, are thoroughly trained in the proper use of a gun, who are mentally capable of using it carefully and as a last resort, and so on. But mostly I see that the people who most advocate arming everyone are the same people that I would least like to see having a gun. They are way over-confident about how safe having a gun makes them. What, me worry, I got me a gun. Well, if the other guy also has a gun then there is a good chance that someone dies and someone goes to jail. We need to do better, and having everyone packing a rod is not the way to go about it. I do not in any way consider this to be some wild liberal view.

 

And Trump hopping around like a butterfly from one view to another is not helping. Not helping with guns, and not with anything really.

[hrothgar]

 

And Trump hopping around like a butterfly from one view to another is not helping. Not helping with guns, and not with anything really.

 

Ken, what you don't realize is that Trump has now moved from three dimensional chess to eight dimensional backgammon!

 

He has a master plan! And actively working to convince people that he is completely ignorant about basic facts and incapable of remembering his policy positions from one day to another is fundamental to backgammon.

 

We can only hope that he can flip the doubling cube one or two more times before that game switches to 9th dimensional Candyland.

[awm]

... What, me worry, I got me a gun. Well, if the other guy also has a gun then there is a good chance that someone dies and someone goes to jail.

 

Some US states have solved this by instituting "Stand Your Ground" laws. Sure, someone might die. Sure, it might be an unarmed teenager with a big gulp and a bag of skittles. But no one goes to jail.

[y66]

From Pure madness’: Dark days inside the White House as Trump shocks and rages by Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey at WaPo (March 3):

 

Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its center.

 

These are the darkest days in at least half a year, they say, and they worry just how much farther President Trump and his administration may plunge into unrest and malaise before they start to recover. As one official put it: “We haven’t bottomed out.”

I suspect that official was not Mike Pence who had this take a couple months ago:

 

“Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that truly is restoring this country.”

 

“You described it very well, Mr. President.”

 

“You've restored American credibility on the world stage.”

 

“You've signed more bills rolling back federal red tape than any president in American history.”

 

“You've unleashed American energy.”

 

“You've spurred an optimism in this country that's setting records.”

 

“You promised the American people in that campaign a year ago that you would deliver historic tax cuts, and it would be a 'middle-class miracle.' And in just a short period of time, that promise will be fulfilled.”

 

“I’m deeply humbled, as your vice president, to be able to be here."

 

“Because of your leadership, Mr. President, and because of the strong support of the leadership in the Congress of the United States, you're delivering on that middle-class miracle.”

 

“You've actually got the Congress to do, as you said, what they couldn’t do with [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska] for 40 years.”

 

“You got the Congress to do, with tax cuts for working families and American businesses, what they haven’t been able to do for 31 years.”

 

“And you got Congress to do what they couldn’t do for seven years, in repealing the individual mandate in Obamacare.”

 

“Mostly, Mr. President, I’ll end where I began and just tell you, I want to thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank you for speaking on behalf of and fighting every day for the forgotten men and women of America.”

 

"Because of your determination, because of your leadership, the forgotten men and women of America are forgotten no more. And we are making America great again.”

[Winstonm]

Some US states have solved this by instituting "Stand Your Ground White Guys With Guns" laws. Sure, someone might die. Sure, it might be an unarmed teenager with a big gulp and a bag of skittles. But no one goes to jail.

 

FYP

[kenberg]

Some US states have solved this by instituting "Stand Your Ground" laws. Sure, someone might die. Sure, it might be an unarmed teenager with a big gulp and a bag of skittles. But no one goes to jail.

 

 

We used to have more sense. My understanding, growing up, was that you cannot walk up to someone, call him a no good lying son of a bitch, and then shoot him in self-defense when he punches you. I assume the same would have applied if you stalked him, following him around in a car and on foot. I understand about self-defense, but the stand your ground stuff makes a mockery of it. The terminology makes the difference clear. In self-defense you do your best when attacked. Stand your ground? I think of Wyatt Earp. It's just a whole different thing. I think anyone can see the difference, and that's what should be stressed. There is an obvious difference between self-defense and stand your ground. I should think socialists, libertarians, and everyone in between could see that.

[Winstonm]

This is new:

 

Axios:

 

Axios has reviewed a Grand Jury subpoena that Robert Mueller's team sent to a witness last month.

 

What Mueller is asking for:

 

Mueller is subpoenaing all communications — meaning emails, texts, handwritten notes, etc. — that this witness sent and received regarding the following people:

Carter Page

Corey Lewandowski

Donald J. Trump

Hope Hicks

Keith Schiller

Michael Cohen

Paul Manafort

Rick Gates

Roger Stone

Steve Bannon

[barmar]

But no one goes to jail.

Probably not true.

 

White guy shoots a black guy -- he was just standing his ground.

 

Cop shoots a black guy -- he was just doing his job.

 

But black guy kills a white guy -- he's a thug and we have to lock him up.

[Al_U_Card]

Prison, the second biggest growth industry after armaments...

War on poverty.

War on crime.

War on drugs.

War on terror.

Just plain war in the warfare society.

[Winstonm]

I can't think of a better description of the problems of the U.S. than this quote from The New Yorker article about Christopher Steele:

 

Indeed, on January 18th, the staff of Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, produced a report purporting to show that the real conspiracy revolved around Hillary Clinton. “The truth,” Nunes said, is that Clinton “colluded with the Russians to get dirt on Trump, to feed it to the F.B.I. to open up an investigation into the other campaign.” Glenn Kessler, who writes the nonpartisan Fact Checker blog at the Washington Post, awarded Nunes’s statement four Pinocchios—his rating for an outright lie. “There is no evidence that Clinton was involved in Steele’s reports or worked with Russian entities to feed information to Steele,” Kessler wrote.

 

Nonetheless, conservative talk-show hosts amplified Nunes’s message. On Fox News, Tucker Carlson denounced Steele as “an intense partisan with passionately left-wing views about American politics,” and said, inaccurately, that his “sloppy and reckless” research “appears to form the basis” of the entire Mueller investigation. Sean Hannity charged that Steele’s dossier was “claptrap” filled with “Russian lies” that were intended to poison “our own intelligence and law-enforcement network” against Trump. The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal accused Steele of turning the F.B.I. into “a tool of anti-Trump political actors.” Rush Limbaugh warned his radio listeners, “The battle is between people like us and the Deep State who are trying to keep hidden what they did.”

 

As a reasonable person, it is easy to dismiss this nonsense as partisan claptrap; however, the reality is that this message reaches millions of true believers who feel themselves to be part of the "correct" group of people, the genuine patriots. When facts are so easily dismissed in favor of partisan lies, it is easy to see how a foreign government wielded influence via social networks.

 

The problem is not Russia. The problem is not the right or left. The problem is that millions of us have abandoned the concept of independent, verifiable truth.

[RedSpawn]

How about the whiplash we all got last week, trying to follow Trump's stance on gun control?

 

When he had the listening session with the high school students, he was all about arming teachers.

 

A few days letter he met with legislators, and accused them of being afraid of the NRA. He advocated increased gun control, including violating due process to take guns away from potentially violent people.

 

Then he met with NRA leaders, and his views shifted again, they were very happy with the results of the meeting.

 

We're all familiar with politicians who flip-flop, but it's usually over the course of years. Trump seems to have more stances on some issues than there are days of the week.

https://me.me/i/gemini-personality-disorder-dissociative-identity-disorder-symptoms-mood-swings-multiple-6807669

https://www.elitedaily.com/news/politics/donald-trump-embodies-gemini/1690102

 

President Trump sounds NOTHING like a textbook Gemini, right?

[RedSpawn]

Probably not true.

 

White guy shoots a black guy -- he was just standing his ground.

 

Cop shoots a black guy -- he was just doing his job.

 

But black guy kills a white guy -- he's a thug and we have to lock him up.

 

Let's review:

 

Adam Lanza --http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/04/02/article-0-190BCCAE000005DC-818_306x357.jpg White male who shot and killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, before shooting himself. Nope --> he is not labeled a terrorist or thug for his actions. It's an out-of-control mental health issue.

 

Nikolas Cruz -- http://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnews.com/content/fox-news/us/2018/02/15/nikolas-cruz-opened-fire-in-florida-high-school-then-fled-with-students-police-say/_jcr_content/article-text/article-par-3/inline_spotlight_ima/image.img.jpg/612/344/1518700003769.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

• 
  
• 17 people were killed and another 14 were wounded.
  
• Suspect identified as Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. He may appear in court Thursday.
  
• Cruz, 19, was believed to have used an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle.
  
• Broward County Sheriff's Office set to hold a news conference at 10:30 a.m. ET Thursday.
  
• A YouTube user named "Nikolas Cruz" reportedly posted "I'm going to be a professional school shooter" on the site.
  
• President Donald Trump has tweeted that there were "many signs the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed." He will address the nation at 11 a.m. ET.
  

He too is mentally disturbed. This is a mental health issue -- He is not labeled a thug.

 

Mr. James Alex Field, Jr. plows into multiple people at a white nationalist rally. He kills one person and injures 19 people doing this:

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42365066

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/james-alex-fields-charlottesville-driver-.html ---> Is he a thug, a vigilante, and if so, why is the media not willing to go there and label him as such?

 

Stephen Paddock--Notorious mass killer who killed 58 and wounded 489 people in Las Vegas --

Is he a terrorist or thug or a victim of poor mental health?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/20/las-vegas-shooting-police-report-gunman-motive-mystery-stephen-paddock.

 

Mr. Dylan Roof--who killed 8 African-American church members in a Charleston Church shooting members on 06/17/15. The Fox News article below hones in on that he is psychiatrically ill: See http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/06/22/charleston-why-didnt-anyone-help-dylann-roof.html

 

Semantics matters and these senseless crimes get disparate treatment by the media and law enforcement when the perpetrator is non-melinated.

[Winstonm]

Trump Ocean Club Panama

International Hotel

 

FTP

[Winstonm]

This is from a huge new article in The New Yorker about Christopher Steele and the dossier.

 

In the spring of 2017, after eight weeks in hiding, Steele gave a brief statement to the media, announcing his intention of getting back to work. On the advice of his lawyers, he hasn’t spoken publicly since. But Steele talked at length with Mueller’s investigators in September. It isn’t known what they discussed, but, given the seriousness with which Steele views the subject, those who know him suspect that he shared many of his sources, and much else, with the Mueller team.

 

One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President.

[jjbrr]

Preet Bharara is a national treasure.