Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

I have to admit I do find comfort in the confirmation of my views by people who are way smarter than I am.

 

“Trumpism, like the Brotherhood, is a political movement built on the mass mobilization of faith—in the one case religious faith and in the other case faith in a single charismatic individual,” we wrote.

[hrothgar]

Statistics show that a gun at home is far more likely to be involved in accidental shootings (including among children), suicide, or family violence than self-protection.

 

You can say that properly securing the firearm can prevent the accidents, but how can we ensure that? Police can't do random checks to make sure everyone is locking up their guns.

 

Few quick comments

 

1. I agree that accidental shootings and domestic violence are very important issues

 

2. I don't believe that there is any kind of one size fits all solution

 

3. It's unclear to me that it is reasonable to completely ban firearms in the home. For example, my preferred solution would allow individuals to keep long arms in their house

 

When it comes to issues surrounding domestic violence, my belief is that waiting periods and licensing requirements will have the most impact. Not sure if you can do that much wrt an abusive individual who already has a weapon. Sadly, having another family member make use of a red flag law or some such is likely to trigger the very behaviour that we're worried about.

 

When it comes to accidental shootings, your best best is insurance / licensing costs

 

Folks who

 

1. Have a gun in the house

2. Don't have a gun safe

 

Need to pay a lot more money if they want to keep a gun at home

[barmar]

There is a very interesting issue here. Should statistics, which necessarily involve what other people do, be used to control what I am allowed to do?

Sorry, but I think it should.

 

We have too many people in the population to try to tailor laws to every possibility. it's simply not feasible to figure out who are the safe gun owners and who are the ones we should be worried about.

 

I'll bet most people who have been involved in accidental shootings and domestic violence thought similarly to you. We can't depend on self assessments of competence, see the Dunning-Kruger effect. I used to drive really fast (80's) on highways, I now realize that I was suffering from D-K when I felt I was safe doing this; probably the only people who are actually competent to drive like that are trained racecar drivers (and maybe even not, since consumer cars are not engineered the same as racecars).

 

Red flag laws wouldn't have helped this week -- neither of the shooters was considered mentally ill. In fact, most mass shooters were not. It's not the "mental health" problem that Trump and others make it out to be, unless you define after the fact that anyone who would do this must have been mentally ill. But that definition is useless for prevention, which depends on diagnosing the illness before they commit violence.

 

Licensing doesn't help, both these shooters obtained their guns legally.

 

The simple fact is this: If there are lots of guns, there will be lots of gun violence.

 

Gun proponents argue that this is true for other things: cars cause lots of accidents and deaths, not to mention climate change, but we don't ban them. The difference is that this is not the primary intended use of cars -- it's an incidental problem that we have to live with because modern life would be practically impossible without them. We also make efforts to reduce the danger, we've been adding more and more safety features to cars.

 

Guns in homes, on the other hand, exist for no other purpose than to hurt someone.

 

So I think we're forced to face the fact that we do need to adopt a one-size-fits-all policy, based on statistics -- anything else is just too complicated. We have similar policies in other areas -- critically ill people can't take drugs that haven't been FDA approved, even if there's no approved solution (I think there may be some exceptions). Racecar drivers can't get a special license that allows them to exceed speed limits.

[y66]

From Richard Parker, author of "Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America", at NYT:

 

EL PASO — If consoling the nation in a time of desperate need is a vital and yet simple task of the American presidency, Donald J. Trump failed miserably this week.

 

From his flight on Wednesday to Dayton, Ohio, to this sprawling high-desert city on the Mexican border, the 45th occupant of the White House not only littered his consolation tour with petty insults — but just to rub salt in the wound, doses of renewed racism. Yet most striking was how alone and outnumbered the president was: rejected, ostracized and told to go home.

 

The people who streamed the scene of the terrorist attack here — brown, black, white and every hue in between — defiantly defended the nation’s diversity. With no public appearances, the president seemed to shrink, ever more alone as he clung to his white nationalist politics and governance. But he and his supporters were grossly outnumbered. For perhaps the first time in his angry, racist and cruel presidency, the tables were turned in smoldering, righteous popular anger — and he was on the receiving end.

 

You have to give this to Mr. Trump: He never backs off. He doubles down like a wild gambler in a casino, raising the stakes one more time demanding just a few more chips from the house. Leaving the White House on Wednesday morning, he said, “I think my rhetoric brings people together,” adding he was “concerned about the rise of any group of hate. I don’t like it, whether it’s white supremacy, whether it’s any other kind of supremacy.”

 

As if there was some other kind of violent political ideology that has killed people — blacks and whites, Jews and Latinos — from Charlottesville, Va., to Pittsburgh, Dayton and El Paso. Leaving Dayton, Mr. Trump insulted the mayor and a senator from the safety of Air Force One and, of course, Twitter.

 

Trump even jabbed a racist poke at El Paso, ridiculing the former Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke’s Spanish first name, though he is of Anglo descent: “Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed polling at 1% in the Democratic Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement — & be quiet!”

 

While it was bad manners for a nation in mourning, it was more than that: It was a fresh dose of racism. In an era in which minorities are becoming majorities, as in Texas, and intermarrying with Anglos, who is Mr. Trump to judge people’s race and ethnicity based on their names? My last name is Anglo, but I am the son of a Mexican immigrant.

 

At the makeshift memorial to the 22 killed for the hue of their skin while shopping at a Walmart on a Saturday, I spoke with a young soldier from the 1st Armored Division at nearby Fort Bliss. Big and burly in his camouflage uniform, Pvt. First Class Richard Riley, 20, stood with arms crossed, staring silently at the piles of flowers, plastic hearts and white crosses, one for every victim.

 

But behind his dark glasses, his eyes welled up. “I just can’t believe it,” he said. “I’m Hispanic, too. And I can’t believe that these people were killed because they were.”

 

In the dark hours after the attack, fear swept over my hometown. Lightning flashed on the horizon, illuminating empty streets and parking lots. Bars and restaurants shuttered their doors. Wherever I went, as I departed I heard this: “Take care out there.” That was a phrase I’d never heard in this city in more than 50 years.

 

Even at a public library, near the site of the attack, people openly advised each other to be careful, even exiting to the parking lot. “You gotta look both ways when you head out there,” said one man, loud enough for all to hear. “Be safe out there in all aspects.”

 

But in the human cycle of grief, the fear, disbelief and anxiety has transformed into a seething anger. El Paso is not a volatile, rioting city where the president could expect trouble. But he inevitably saw how alone he was in his toxic, racist politics, some throwback to a receding time in America.

 

When Air Force One touched down, the temperature was soaring toward 104 degrees and just one single local official, Mayor Dee Margo, was there to greet him (Gov. Greg Abbott was there as well).

 

Along the president’s route from the airport to a hospital, people lined the roads to greet him — largely with rejection. “What’s more important?” Asked one man’s sign. “Lives or re-election?” American and Mexican flags sprouted together in the August heat. Signs with quotes bearing his name came back to haunt him: “We cannot allow these people to invade our country.” “Not Welcome” covered a stage at a park where people protested the president. The El Paso Times ran a black front page with this headline: “Mr. President, We Are Hurting.”

 

How people actually live here stands in stark contrast to Mr. Trump’s white nationalism, consistently separating Americans into old-fashioned, racist categories. (Among other instances: He has told American Jews that Israel’s prime minister is their leader and proudly boasted of his few black supporters by calling them “my African Americans.”) Six in 10 Americans here have family on the other side of the trickling Rio Grande, according to a study by the El Paso Community Foundation, while six in 10 Mexicans just across the border have family on the American side. Thirty percent of Latinos here marry outside their ethnicity, usually an Anglo. Nationwide, one in six marriages are interracial, according to the Pew Research Center.

 

And what is usually forgotten is that racial violence in America has almost never been a two-way street. Instead, it has been visited, unfortunately, by the majority — whites. What whites have historically called “race riots” have actually been one-sided assaults by whites: Anglo-on-Latino in Texas, white-on-Chinese further West, white-on-blacks in Oklahoma and the Deep South. And so it continues, in 2019.

 

As if to symbolize just how out of touch Trumpism is here and in much of America, a sole woman approached the makeshift memorial at the Walmart where 22 people died. She wore a bright red MAGA hat, and quickly over 30 people surrounded her chanting: “Take it off! Take it off!” She refused, yelling back that the president should be accepted here — only to be drowned out. Later, young people appeared, dressed in black, chanting: “white violence, White House.”

 

Something is shifting. Mr. Trump may not have felt it during his few hours in town, but walking around, you couldn’t miss it. The El Paso massacre brought together the most active of America’s shifting tectonic plates: racism, assault weapons, a national Latino population of 60 million now with a target on its back, Mr. Trump’s white nationalism and his awful manners for a country in mourning.

 

Another president might have been sensitive enough to sense the shift, and changed course accordingly — played the convener, the unifier. Instead, Mr. Trump displayed just how small he is, no matter how big his mouth or powerful his office. He never once appeared in public. By 6:01 p.m., after just a little more than two hours, he was safely aboard Air Force One again and it was wheels up into the sky. But he is a shrinking president, stuck in a racist past, flying over a changing America. And I think we — or most of us — are all El Paso now.

[helene_t]

There is a very interesting issue here. Should statistics, which necessarily involve what other people do, be used to control what I am allowed to do?

Yes I think so. If I try to take some pest insects into New Zealand, airport biosecurity will destroy them (and fine me, if I didn't declare them). I may say that "but I am a responsible insect keeper, I would never release them into the environment" but they would not believe that. If I run a Zoo or an animal testing facility I can obtain a license, but the burden of proof is on me.

 

Analogously, if I wanted to buy or 3D-craft a gun, IMHO I should have to show that I have some acceptable reason for such high-risk activity (maybe I run an olympic shooting range or a military training facility) and that my staff is properly trained.

 

To some extent I can buy into the idealistic view that freedom from government intervention is a core value. I could live with the government allowing people to trade crack (as long as they don't sell it to children or mentally disabled, and don't sell it on credit to people who will struggle to pay) and I am OK with the government not preventing consenting 12 years old from having sex with adults. And allow restaurant owners to allow smoking in their own restaurants. And driving without seatbelts. Even if I think those are very bad things, I am not convinced that the government should be in the business of regulating it.

 

Allowing guns goes too far for me, though.

[kenberg]

I am not under the impression that I can figure out who the safe gun owners are and I do not regard myself as at all an idealist i this. I see my suggestions as practical. Nobody needs a gun to kill 20 people a minute, so we forbid those except to highly trained units of the National Guard , the Secret Service, and such. Not everyone, not by, well, not by a long shot, would every Secret Service agent carry such a weapon. But they have an important job and I can see that in some cases they might need a weapon tht the rest of us don't/ For smaller weapons, a hand gun, a person must be licensed and he will be responsible for how it is used. No, I absolutely cannot tell\, except in some pretty obvious cases, who is too nuts to have such a weapon. In some cases, yes. But in most cases, no, we cannot tell and so we do not pretend that we can.

 

This accepts the fact that some people will be owning handguns. I doubt there is any possibility of having it otherwise. So I accept that and make the best attempt I can think of to force people to think about their responsibilities when they buy one.

 

I do not see that as idealistic at all.

[y66]

From Mike Dorning and Erik Wasson at Bloomberg:

 

Farmers’ discontent over President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China erupted into the open Wednesday as his agriculture secretary was confronted at a fair in rural Minnesota.

 

Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, drew applause as he leveled criticism of the administration’s trade policy at a forum with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in front of thousands of farmers gathered in a metal barn for a panel discussion.

 

American farmers took a fresh financial hit from Trump’s trade war over the weekend as China announced a halt to all U.S. agricultural imports after the president threatened Beijing with another tariff increase.

 

Wertish criticized Trump’s “go-it-alone approach” and the trade dispute’s “devastating damage not only to rural communities.” He expressed fears Trump’s $28 billion in trade aid will undermine public support for federal farm subsidies, saying the assistance is already being pilloried “as a welfare program, as bailouts.”

 

Others joined in. Brian Thalmann, president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, complained about Trump statements that farmers are doing “great” again. “We are not starting to do great again,” he said. “We are starting to go down very quickly.”

 

Joel Schreurs of the American Soybean Association warned American producers are in danger of long-term losses in market share in China, the world’s largest importer of soybeans.

 

Perdue sought to soothe the crowd as he defended the president’s policies. “Obviously this is a popular opinion. A lot of applause,” he joked after the audience reacted to Democratic Representative Angie Craig saying aid is not substitute for a strategy on trade. “There is a lot of stress out there.”

 

Giving Assurances

He offered assurances that American farmers would gain their market share in China back but said any resolution to the conflict had to be based on “reciprocal trade.”

 

“If your solution is to forget about what China has done and sell and trade with them anyway with cheating, then I just fundamentally disagree with you,” Perdue said.

 

Perdue told reporters afterward that ”the ball is in China’s court” on the trade dispute and no additional trade assistance is currently planned for farmers beyond what the administration has already announced.

 

Trump hinted on Tuesday his administration may provide more money for farmers.

 

“As they have learned in the last two years, our great American Farmers know that China will not be able to hurt them in that their President has stood with them and done what no other president would do,” Trump said in a tweet. “And I’ll do it again next year if necessary!”

 

The trade war has hit farmers already beset by years of low commodity prices due to global overproduction and this year a string of bad weather. U.S. farm income dropped 16% last year to $63 billion, about half the level it was as recently as 2013.

 

U.S. Agricultural exports to China dropped by more than half in 2018 after the trade war began, falling from $19.5 billion in 2017 to $9.2 billion in 2018.

 

Major farm groups sounded an alarm earlier this week after China announced it was halting U.S. agriculture imports.

 

Zippy Duvall, president of the the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest and most influential general farm organization, on Monday called the import cut-off “a body blow to thousands of farmers and ranchers who are already struggling to get by.”

 

Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, the nation’s second-largest general farm group, said Trump’s “strategy of constant escalation and antagonism” has “just made things worse.”

 

Trump’s overwhelming support in rural America was crucial to his narrow 2016 election victory and maintaining farmer’s backing is critical to his re-election bid.

 

In June, 54% of rural voters approved of Trump’s job performance compared with a national approval rating of 42%, according to a Gallup survey of 701 self-identified rural voters.

"I stand with you" is Trump's version of the punch line to the old joke "How do they say f**k you in LA?"

[helene_t]

This accepts the fact that some people will be owning handguns. I doubt there is any possibility of having it otherwise.

Maybe not. Banning alcohol didn't work so well and banning guns might not work so well either. It has worked well in many other countries, but maybe USA is different.

[kenberg]

Maybe not. Banning alcohol didn't work so well and banning guns might not work so well either. It has worked well in many other countries, but maybe USA is different.

 

 

Here, for example, is a 2018 Gallup poll:

 

https://news.gallup....r-gun-laws.aspx

 

As to handgubs handguns (although handgubs has a nice sound to it) I quote

 

While a clear majority of Americans support tougher gun laws, the U.S. public is substantially less supportive of an outright ban on handguns. Fewer than three in 10 Americans, 28%, support a handgun ban, unchanged from last October. Americans' support for a handgun ban has been below 30% since 2008.

 

Even among the groups most supportive of a handgun ban, less than a majority say they favor it. Among Democrats, for example, 42% support such regulation, compared with 10% of Republicans.

 

 

 

 

It is often said that the public "supports gun control". Yes, in general. But that leaves open the question of just what sort of gun control is supported. It's easy to say yes to "Do you support preventing nutjobs from shooting up a mall, a school, or a movie theater?". Exactly what action is supported is another matter. What I recommend goes well beyond what would, at the moment, have support. I am pretty sure of that. But I think it is sensible and has a chance of gathering support.

 

I don't claim to have the details exactly right, I realize that registering guns pre-supposes that a gun can be unambiguously identified and that there are some ways around this. But the general idea is that the weapons often used in the mass killings should be unavailable to the public at large, and purchasing a handgun should give the purchaser substantial responsibility for how and by whom that weapon is used. If I purchase arsenic, I have some responsibility for it. Same idea. Details to be worked out.

[y66]

From Luke Savage at Jacobin:

 

From actively spurning big donors to calling out corporate malefactors by name, there is much about Bernie Sanders’s political style that separates him from the liberal politicians who dominate the Democratic Party. But among his most heterodox traits is a willingness to bring his arguments to skeptical or even right-leaning audiences: a practice he’s engaged in on more than one occasion.

 

In 2015, Sanders addressed a crowd at Liberty University — the largest evangelical Christian university in the world. More recently, he participated in a televised town hall hosted by Fox News. Both events, perhaps understandably, elicited controversy from some on the left. Nevertheless, in both cases, Sanders successfully exposed a new audience to his ideas and emerged unscathed, drawing cheers and approval from corners where they might otherwise have been unthinkable. By the end of Fox’s town hall event in April, he actually seemed to have won over the majority of attendees with his arguments for democratic socialism, against oligarchy, and in favor of Medicare For All.

 

This week, Sanders repeated the strategy by appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience: a hugely popular but decidedly non-left-leaning podcast that features an eclectic buffet of guests ranging from fairly innocuous weirdos to overt reactionaries. In less than twenty-four hours, the episode has already garnered well over two and a half million views and, judging by its reception thus far, Sanders and his arguments proved a hit — even to those accustomed to getting their political bearings from the likes of Sam Harris and other dubious sources.

 

There is a clear difference between appearing alongside a right-leaning host in order to agree with their right-leaning views and doing so with the goal of persuading their audience. Despite Rogan’s politics, the Vermont senator arguably got a fairer hearing than he typically gets from major cable networks and, with more than an hour at his disposal, he was able to use the interview decisively to his advantage — delivering his key ideas and tying them together near the episode’s end with a pro–working class message contrasting his politics with Trump’s:

 

[My administration] is going to be filled with the best people, often from the working class itself, from the trade union movement, people who are gonna help us create policies that work for workers and not just the billionaire class.

 

By appearing on the show, Sanders successfully exposed Rogan’s audience to left-wing ideas many have probably never encountered before, without the compromising filter usually applied to them by the mainstream media or the typical bad-faith actors on the right.

 

This becomes clear from even a perfunctory survey of the episode’s comment section, which suggests that Sanders both reached and persuaded listeners who might not regularly encounter his arguments, or who would otherwise be inclined toward hostility.

 

A few samples:

 

“This was pretty great. Learned more about Bernie from this than any other source in the past 5+ years . . .”

 

“I consider myself a Republican, but I actually agree with a lot of what Bernie said here.”

 

“I have changed my mind on this man. Really great interview. This man needs to be heard.”

 

“I’ve watched media tell me this guy was a nut for years. After this interview I feel like he might be onto something.”

 

“I consider myself the exact opposite of a socialist, but Bernie is onto something taxing Wall Street 0.5% for every trade. It would create a more stable stock market as well as creating more revenue for this country . . . Plus, we already bailed them out sooooooo . . .”

 

“I was on the fence about which Dem I was voting for till I watched this video. Thanks Joe for asking great questions and giving Bernie time to answer thoroughly.”

 

“Bernie is only labeled as radical by a hostile media bought by the same special interests he wants to remove from power.”

 

Anecdotal as these are, there are quite literally thousands more in the same vein (anyone who suspects cherry-picking should scan the comments and see for themselves).

 

As with his April town hall on Fox, Sanders’s appearance on Joe Rogan showcased one of his most significant strengths: a capacity to puncture the ideological fog of war that permeates American politics and reach people typically written off as unreachable. By definition, this will always involve appealing to audiences that don’t get their news from MSNBC or bear the usual signifiers of middle-class cultural liberalism.

 

As Nathan Robinson writes:

 

Bernie Sanders . . . knows how to take popular discontent and tell people that their problems are not the fault of immigrants and people of color, but billionaires like Trump who hoard all the wealth and are casually destroying the planet. Every time Bernie goes up against Republicans you can see it, whether he is debating Ted Cruz or speaking at Liberty University. Bernie is the best existing messenger for the left because he knows how to sell socialism to everyone, to go to Iowa or West Virginia or Fox News and get everyone clapping for free college and the demise of Aetna.

Sanders’s ability to reach non-traditional constituencies and non-voters alike could make him a formidable candidate in a general election contest against Donald Trump. And if the ultimate goal is to secure a sweeping realignment of US politics rather than eke out a razor-thin electoral college victory against an unpopular Republican president, there is simply no alternative to persuading those previously written off as unpersuadable — even the ones who are into DMT and alien conspiracy theories.

[y66]

From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

 

Item: Sue Gordon announced her plans to retire as principal deputy director of national intelligence, taking decades of experience with her, in a less-than-appreciative letter — what Dan Drezner called “Mattis Letter II.”

 

Item: A Foreign Service officer resigned in an op-ed, saying “ I can no longer justify ... my complicity in the actions of this administration.”

 

Item: The Donald Trump administration is finding creative ways to destroy the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, which Catherine Rampell describes as “arguably the world’s premier agricultural economics agency.”

 

That’s all from Thursday. They are hardly the only examples of how the administration is, to put it bluntly, destroying the U.S. government.

 

We’ve seen this from the start of Trump’s presidency, and it continues. I don’t think there’s any full accounting of all the damage that’s being done, whether it’s attacks on government statistics or the capacity to do science or the well-publicized war against an accurate census.

 

Some of this, like the attacks on the intelligence community, seem to be a combination of Trump’s personal preferences and conspiracy-minded thinking in Republican-aligned media. Some of it is mindless budget-cutting from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney that Trump likely neither knows or cares about. Some of it is what happens when the government is turned over to the short-term interests of major corporations.

 

But in the long term, the U.S economy will likely pay dearly for it. Economic management will suffer without reliable statistics. Productivity will suffer without government assistance in innovation (regardless of what ideologues on one side or the other will claim, innovation in the U.S. has always been a product of both public and private initiatives).

 

And the same thing for U.S. foreign policy, and really everything else.

 

This is of course not to say that everything the federal government does is worthwhile or running at maximum efficiency. Or that every federal bureaucrat is delivering for the nation. But there’s nothing systematic about any of what’s happening here. No plan. No strategy. No effort to separate the worthwhile from the worthless. It's just basically random attacks on random pieces of the government. It will take years to recover from. In some ways, perhaps the nation will never recover.

 

As with the failure to fill positions with confirmed presidential nominees, it’s always possible that some of this will lead to very visible catastrophic failure. But what’s more likely is just an erosion of the capacity of the nation. We won’t necessarily be able to connect the dots when things go wrong, but there will be effects, and they are likely to stretch out into the future.

Who ya gonna call?

[barmar]

As to handgubs, I quote

https://youtu.be/4VdMdboymT8

 

"Abt natural, I have a gub." (Although I've never figured out how a "c" could possibly look like a "b", and "b" for "n" only happens when typing because they're adjacent keys.)

 

It is often said that the public "supports gun control". Yes, in general. But that leaves open the question of just what sort of gun control is supported. It's easy to say yes to "Do you support preventing nutjobs from shooting up a mall, a school, or a movie theater?". Exactly what action is supported is another matter. What I recommend goes well beyond what would, at the moment, have support. I am pretty sure of that. But I think it is sensible and has a chance of gathering support.

There's been a lively discussion on Politics Stack Exchange

Why do proponents of guns oppose gun competency tests?

[y66]

From Matt Yglesias regarding Jeffrey Epstein's demise:

 

Epstein’s deal with Acosta mysteriously immunized unnamed co-conspirators who are now conveniently off the hook again.

I am going full conspiracy theory on this, sorry folks.

From a former federal prosecutor via Adam Klasfield:

 

No one else will have standing to challenge the search warrant on his house. Everything will be admissible against every other defendant without possibility of a motion to suppress.

[johnu]

Trump’s Trip to Dayton and El Paso: The Back Story

 

Oops, the Psychopath Manchurian President's visits produced indignation and criticism instead of the idolization and loud cheers he would have got at a political rally. Who could have known?

 

By the time President Trump arrived in El Paso on Wednesday, on the second leg of a trip to meet with people affected by mass shootings in two cities, he was frustrated that his attacks on his political adversaries had resulted in more coverage than the cheery reception he received at a hospital in Dayton, Ohio, the first stop on his trip. So he screamed at his aides to begin producing proof that in El Paso people were happy to see him.

 

Adolpho Telles, the chairman of the El Paso Republican Party, said that Mr. Trump’s visit had been unfairly politicized and that he saw nothing inherently wrong with the president’s interactions, including the thumbs-up.

 

“The guy is honest,” Mr. Telles said ... ”

I've never heard of this Telles guy, but the nightly entertainment shows like the Tonight show or the Late Night show need to sign this guy up as a comedy writer because saying the Grand Wizard of the USA is honest is comedy gold.

[Winstonm]

Reporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest --"

 

Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.

 

More about some of those "very fine people".

 

A Florida white supremacist has been arrested for threatening a shooting at a Walmart just days after 22 people were killed at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in one of the worst mass shootings in the country's modern history.

 

(MORE: Las Vegas neo-Nazi charged with plot to bomb gay club, synagogue)

[kenberg]

Trump's Trip to Dayton and El Paso: The Back Story

 

Oops, the Psychopath Manchurian President's visits produced indignation and criticism instead of the idolization and loud cheers he would have got at a political rally. Who could have known?

 

 

 

 

I've never heard of this Telles guy, but the nightly entertainment shows like the Tonight show or the Late Night show need to sign this guy up as a comedy writer because saying the Grand Wizard of the USA is honest is comedy gold.

 

A normal person would understand that when he flies in to visit the tragic scene of a mass killing he should not, as part of his visit, pose for a picture showing him smiling and giving a thumbs up sign. It does not matter what he is smiling about or what he is giving a thumbs up to praise, a normal person would understand that when he flies in to visit the tragic scene of a mass killing he should not, as part of his visit, pose for a picture showing him smiling and giving a thumbs up sign.

 

Presumably this is obvious to everyone except Trump and his most dedicated supporters.

 

Please, if I ever have troubles, I do not want a comforting visit from Donald Trump. Just not, please.

[Winstonm]

It appears there are some things even the handpicked vessel of God can't do and still receive churchgoer support:

 

“The third phone call is when I actually went and watched his speech because each of them sounded distraught,” said Hardesty, who describes himself as a conservative Democrat.

 

Here’s what he would have seen. Trump crowing, “they'll be hit so ***** hard,” while bragging about bombing Islamic State militants. And Trump recounting his warning to a wealthy businessman: “If you don't support me, you're going to be so ***** poor.”

 

Massive corruption? No

Separating children from parents? No

Support of white supremacists? No

Adultery? No

Taking the Lord's name in vain: YES!

 

At least we uncovered the God*****ed red line.

[Winstonm]

I think I just found out why Trump promoted Norwegian immigrants over African immigrants, who he said were from "shithole countries".

 

The suspected gunman in an attack on a mosque in Norway on Saturday was inspired by recent white extremist attacks in New Zealand and the US, online posts suggest.

 

Police in Norway have so far only said the attack in Baerum, a town 20km from Oslo, the capital, will be investigated as a possible act of terrorism

[y66]

From Texas Is Bracing for a Blue Wave in 2020. Yes, Texas by Bob Moser at The New Republic:

 

“The tectonic plates shifted in Texas in 2018,” Senator John Cornyn, the powerful Republican who’s facing reelection in 2020 (with just a 37 percent approval rating) said earlier this year. Cornyn has been sounding the alarms ever since November, warning national Republicans against complacency and spelling out the dire consequences for his party if they can’t stave off the Democratic surge: “If Texas turns back to a Democratic state, which it used to be, then we’ll never elect another Republican [president] in my lifetime,” said Cornyn.

 

A confluence of events over the past couple of weeks has reinforced Cornyn’s message. In what giddy Democrats are calling “the Texodus,” four Republican members of Congress announced, in short order, that they won’t be running for reelection in 2020; three of their seats, all in the suburbs, will likely go Democratic, adding to the two they took from Republicans in 2018. “We could see other representatives step away too,” said Manny Garcia, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. “Why would you go into a knockdown, drag-out fight when you’re either going to lose next time, or soon afterward?”

[PassedOut]

One of my grandfather's favorite sayings was, "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched."

[kenberg]

One of my grandfather's favorite sayings was, "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched."

 

I heartily agree with your grandfather and I think Dems need some lessons in how to connect with voters. Nonetheless, I am starting to feel at least a bit hopeful. Trump can shoot someone on Fifth avenue and not lose votes. Perhaps that is true. But more and more he is looking like a guy stumbling down the block peeing on lamp posts. People notice, and that will cost votes.

 

 

 

[Winstonm]

I heartily agree with your grandfather and I think Dems need some lessons in how to connect with voters. Nonetheless, I am starting to feel at least a bit hopeful. Trump can shoot someone on Fifth avenue and not lose votes. Perhaps that is true. But more and more he is looking like a guy stumbling down the block peeing on lamp posts. People notice, and that will cost votes.

 

Any chance of arranging an electrical short in that next lamp post? :P (It's a joke)

[y66]

One of my grandfather's favorite sayings was, "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched."

re: Four Texas Republican members of Congress announced they won’t be running for reelection in 2020:

 

One of father's favorite sayings was "Got em 1 down? Get em 2 down. Got em 2 down? Get em 4 down."

[barmar]

One of father's favorite sayings was "Got em 1 down? Get em 2 down. Got em 2 down? Get em 4 down."

From The Untouchables:

ou wanna get Capone? Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way.

[Winstonm]

re: Four Texas Republican members of Congress announced they won’t be running for reelection in 2020:

 

One of father's favorite sayings was "Got em 1 down? Get em 2 down. Got em 2 down? Get em 4 down."

 

The Art of War

 

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

― Sun Tzu