[worry]

I don't think "both sides" partisan gridlock is our problem. And I want a president who finds middle ground with the GOP like I want a doctor who'll find middle ground with the mortician.

[worry]

Good thread:

[Slow Ben]

Briar King, on 06 May 2019 - 11:35 PM, said:

Hey forum People who respect the constitution/rule of law/congressional oversight why ain’t y’all talking about Knock Down the House?ed that’s me assuming it’s probably geared more for y’all with title and AOC in pic

Is it any good? I may watch if y’all glow it up.

Could a put in TV or Docu but not every one goes there.

Fixed that.


I’ve been trying to find time to watch it since it came out. Hopefully get to it Wednesday.

[Cause]

https://edition.cnn....049b55-92205209

Does self defence mean something else in American? Or is this article poorly written?

[worry]

Self defense means any time one of "us" kills one of "them".

[worry]

Not expecting this to hurt DJT, but here it is anyway for thread posterity. He's a liar, a con artist, and a perpetual business failure, but we already knew all that. Maybe it'll give him a stroke, though, who knows.

Quote

In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.

Over all, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years. It is not known whether the I.R.S. later required changes after audits.

[QuickTidal]

House is holding vote now to hold Barr in contempt.

Meanwhile, Barr has told Trump to claim exec privilege on the un-redacted full Mueller report.

[QuickTidal]

This Jeffries guy is my hero. Bringing the HEAT and the facts.

[Aptorian]

worry, on 08 May 2019 - 12:59 AM, said:

Not expecting this to hurt DJT, but here it is anyway for thread posterity. He's a liar, a con artist, and a perpetual business failure, but we already knew all that. Maybe it'll give him a stroke, though, who knows.

Quote

In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.

Over all, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years. It is not known whether the I.R.S. later required changes after audits.

Wasn't this already known? Like at one point he owed billions of dollars?

It's that story Ivanka tells about Trump pointing at a homeless person and saying the bum owns 6 billion dollars more than her father. Or something like that.

[QuickTidal]

These MFers are actually filibustering their own goddamn amendment! Fucking hell, what a circus. They TOTALY weren't expecting the Democrats/Nadler to accept Gaetz's redundant amendment...and now that they have the R's are floundering. LMAO!

[QuickTidal]

This numpty fuck from Louisiana is probably the dumbest R on the Senate Judiciary Committee. No offence to your State BK.

[worry]

Kinda sorta known? But not really. America has collective amnesia on Trump. He's been famous -- and a famously stupid, racist, grifting, slumlord buffoon -- since the 1970s. He was the poster boy for bumbling zero-consequences rich kids who fail time after time in business and get saved by family wealth. The kind everyone, across all political stripes, can and should and did hate. Then came The Apprentice (I guess) and the effort to reform his brand as a man who survived the pitfalls of business to emerge victorious, due to his business acumen. Aside from the racism, that was the big selling point of his candidacy: he's an economic powerhouse, one of the actual job creators the GOP tells you about, in the flesh. Imagine if say Paris Hilton -- who's done way less damage to people over a much shorter period of time -- was elected president and everyone pretended all the bad will she generated over that time never happened. Seems impossible. But it happened for DJT, a much worse person and a much worse businessperson.



Anyway, this information doesn't describe a hard-pressed businessman going through tough times, it describes a perpetual failure who had to get bailed out time and again. The fact that he may be the biggest loser, by orders of magnitude, is an exclamation point on that. It also points to his consistent tax dodging practices, an issue his family is being investigated for and why his sister retired early from her federal judgeship just one month ago, to avoid scrutiny (which itself is a weird loophole in the law): Link


Does it matter? I dunno. Like I said, the amnesia is strong, and it likely veils something worse at the heart of America. I mean, Trump bilked thousands of hopeful people out of millions of dollars w/ Trump University, and settled for $25 million in Nov 2016 -- right after the election -- and it didn't make a dent in his support. They even get a thrill out of it. I like this excerpt out of Alex Pareene's latest article (in a broader discussion of Trump's generally older-generation appeal):

Quote

Trump’s fuckups, in business in particular, have been so large but come with so few negative consequences that they have only served to ratchet up his already titanic sense of invincibility. In much the same way that you can’t get a teenager to internalize the idea that risky behavior today could cause problems down the line, it has been seemingly impossible to get Trump to act as though anything he does will ever catch up with him. And his children, who’ve been in the Trump family business their entire adult lives, have behaved similarly, expecting that no one would ever seriously look into the finances of the family charity, or investigate all the money-laundering at the Trump Ocean Club Panama project.

Naturally, House Democrats, newly emboldened with the power to investigate and subpoena Trump’s administration, have privately signaled to Politico that they are wary of using that power to investigate Trump’s adult children, for fear of creating a backlash of sympathy for the president. The American Boy protection industry is particularly influential in our nation’s capital. The number of people who feel a genuine spark of dread at the question, “how would you feel if someone investigated your son for lying to Congress?” is quite small, but you can guess where most of them live.

Modern conservatism, its Trumpist strain included, is in part built on plutocrats pitting the old against the young. A few days of Fox News will show you just how much energy is devoted to making retirees resent their grandchildren. Some of the richest people a society has ever produced have convinced a generation that, as a whole, did better than any prior generation in American history to let the world burn and the seas rise, and if today’s campus snowflakes drown in either student debt or actual ocean water, it will be their own fault for lacking the work ethic and moral certitude of their elders.

You can see why this has created a “youth problem” for the Republican Party. Their donors have mostly addressed this by funneling millions of dollars to witless grifters like Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, whose strategy is to have each college’s most unpleasant students attempt to troll their peers into joining the right.But Trumpism took the racial resentment that was always the only successful recruiting strategy of the College Republicans and fused it with the only lesson he ever internalized in his elite education: complete irresponsibility is gloriously liberating. What unites Trump’s older base and his small core of young white devotees is the delight they take in watching him get away with it.

Trumpism’s pitch to young white men is thus a stirringly amoral sort of syllogism: we can’t give you anything material, because we stole it all and are hoarding it, but we can create a world in which you can regularly act on your worst impulses and get away with it. Some city kids are coming to town; here’s a way to racially mock them that won’t get us in trouble.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Courts have recognized that the House and Senate each have the authority to enforce their orders by imprisoning those who violate them—literally. They can direct their respective sergeant at arms to arrest officials they’ve found to be in contempt and bring them to the Capitol for trial and, potentially, jail. Congress hasn’t invoked what’s known as the “power of inherent contempt” in nearly a century, but the escalating clash between two co-equal branches of government has Democrats talking about moves previously deemed unthinkable.'

https://www.theatlan...9U1_L9Kz21Nb_1Y

[Cause]

QuickTidal, on 08 May 2019 - 04:56 PM, said:

These MFers are actually filibustering their own goddamn amendment! Fucking hell, what a circus. They TOTALY weren't expecting the Democrats/Nadler to accept Gaetz's redundant amendment...and now that they have the R's are floundering. LMAO!

tell me more

[worry]

If these are our choices, we're doomed. Quite literally.

[Slow Ben]

Yep.

Plus, MORE TARIFFS!!!!

Winning.

[worry]

(For the record, if it comes down to it, the Biden vs Trump choice is an easy one to make for lots of other reasons, however unpalatable I find it -- not the least of which is that one of them can theoretically be pressured in the right direction and one most certainly cannot be -- I just personally hope it doesn't come down to that).

Anyway, in lighter news, I just got a kick out of this anecdote. Hope it brings joy in the midst of all the bad news lately:

[Slow Ben]

https://www.bbc.com/...and-middle-east

Just in case anybody missed Ben Shapiro on BBC. It’s sad this guy is such a voice in American politics. Take him out of his echo chamber and he turns into a petulant child.

[Tiste Simeon]

Three fact that he called Andrew "the Tory mouthpiece" Neil a Leftist does how much he doesn't know. When he's not controlling the narrative and smugly shooting down high school kids, he's nothing.

[worry]

It's this kind of bold, against-the-grain action you just gotta respect. I'd like to see anyone attempt an argument against this decision.