New Donald Trump thread

[Muda69]

How exactly does a major political party "purge it's own"?

 

[foxbat]

23 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

How exactly does a major political party "purge it's own"?

 

Ask Al Franken.

[Muda69]

2 minutes ago, foxbat said:

Ask Al Franken.

So those to be "purged" have to be racists, misogynists, etc. that are accused of some kind of heinous act?  If so why hasn't Bill Clinton been "purged"?

 

 

[Muda69]

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/02/media-propaganda-russia-lara-logan/

Quote

Former CBS News correspondent Lara Logan accused the media of pushing a false narrative on Russia during a Tuesday “Fox and Friends” segment and said they’ve become a propaganda arm of the left.

“This is just indicative of the propaganda, the organized propaganda that’s behind all of this. It seems to me that so many journalists don’t even know that they’re pushing a narrative that was pushed onto them and they did it. A lot of them, it happened so successfully because they didn’t bother to do their jobs. And they didn’t bother to do the most basic journalism,” Logan said.

Logan said the media has become an “organized propaganda” machine that pretends to practice actual journalism.

“What you’re seeing now with more propaganda being pushed and people not standing up and owning their mistakes,” she continued. “To me, that’s a sign that this really is an organized propaganda effort.”

“If you look at the strategic document for Media Matters for America … they pretend that they’re about good journalism but there’s no propaganda organization that’s looking for good journalism. They’re pushing their agenda. And in it, one of their main pillars of their strategy is to make sure that [President] Donald Trump is seen as the most unpopular president in history.”

Logan also said some members of the media have been deceived while other are openly rooting for political parties and partisan agendas.

“They’re being manipulated. They’re being deceived. Some of them are willing, some of them are political operatives themselves. What I think is a mistake to look at this as just human failing,” she said.

“Oh, it just happened because people were upset because [Trump] is so terrible. Well, that in itself is a propaganda talking point for the Progressive political movement and Media Matters for America. And You’ll see it. It’s not me making it up. It comes from them. And what I’m more concerned about is what is the level of organization and funding behind this? And the level of collusion between journalists and propaganda groups that these narratives have been so powerfully enforced?”

 

[foxbat]

4 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

So those to be "purged" have to be racists, misogynists, etc. that are accused of some kind of heinous act?  If so why hasn't Bill Clinton been "purged"?

 

 

No, not at all.  Your idea, not mine.  Purging can come from any direction.  Can certainly be based on racist, misogynistic, etc. activity, but could certainly be as simple as purging the old rolls to make room for newer blood or shifts in ideology.  The President is working on purging his party over ideology and opposition to himself.

Again, my point was actually looking at both parties over similar issues and merely observing that Franken was forced out mainly due to calls and push from his own party.  Similarly, if Biden goes, it'll likely be from push of his own party.  That has not been seen, on this issue, from the GOP side ... especially in the case of the one guy who actually has cases lining up waiting the go ahead.

As for Clinton, I see him as irrelevant to the situation at hand unless he's planning to run in the upcoming race.  It's been a couple of decades since he's been in the mix, but if the issue is pointing to Clinton then that kind of just shores up the issue with the GOP as they took the moral high ground that he was "diddling" around and used that as a rallying cry to gin up, specifically, the Evangelical base, so that should also have them in the position of purging their own too a couple of years ago ... but that didn't happen and won't happen either.

[Wabash82]

3 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/02/media-propaganda-russia-lara-logan/

 

Blah, blah, blah. Concerns about propaganda mmasquerading as journalism from The Daily Caller?! Priceless.

"Oh, it just happened because people were upset because [Trump] is so terrible. Well, that in itself is a propaganda talking point for the Progressive political movement and Media Matters for America."

Or, alternatively, Trump is terrible. 

[Muda69]

21 minutes ago, foxbat said:

No, not at all.  Your idea, not mine.  Purging can come from any direction.  Can certainly be based on racist, misogynistic, etc. activity, but could certainly be as simple as purging the old rolls to make room for newer blood or shifts in ideology.  The President is working on purging his party over ideology and opposition to himself.

Again, my point was actually looking at both parties over similar issues and merely observing that Franken was forced out mainly due to calls and push from his own party.  Similarly, if Biden goes, it'll likely be from push of his own party.  That has not been seen, on this issue, from the GOP side ... especially in the case of the one guy who actually has cases lining up waiting the go ahead.

As for Clinton, I see him as irrelevant to the situation at hand unless he's planning to run in the upcoming race.  It's been a couple of decades since he's been in the mix, but if the issue is pointing to Clinton then that kind of just shores up the issue with the GOP as they took the moral high ground that he was "diddling" around and used that as a rallying cry to gin up, specifically, the Evangelical base, so that should also have them in the position of purging their own too a couple of years ago ... but that didn't happen and won't happen either.

So if one is "purged" do they get a letter on official uni-party national committee letterhead stating something like "Dear X,  your membership is our special club is hereby revoked.  Get the f*ck out and don't come back."?

 

[gonzoron]

10 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

So if one is "purged" do they get a letter on official uni-party national committee letterhead stating something like "Dear X,  your membership is our special club is hereby revoked.  Get the f*ck out and don't come back."?

 

Is that how your Flipflopertarian Party does it?

[Muda69]

12 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Is that how your Flipflopertarian Party does it?

I wouldn't know since I'm not a member of the Flipflopertarian Party,  or any political party for that matter.    

Are you a member of political party, BB?

 

 

[gonzoron]

2 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Are you a member of political party, BB

What is political party, BB???

[Muda69]

3 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

What is political party, BB???

Sorry, since you are a Baby Boomer I thought you would understand that shorthand.  Sorry.  

So, are you currently a member of a political party?  If so, then which one?

 

[gonzoron]

1 minute ago, TrojanDad said:

to point out hypocrisy, you only need to look at the guy in the mirror....right in front of you.

Nope, I'm not a hypocrite. I don't have much use for them. Hence the reason you and I have never gotten along.

[foxbat]

1 minute ago, TrojanDad said:

LOL....yet he blasted the GOP....

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/al-franken-satirist-turned-senator-resign-amid-sexual-misconduct-allegations-n825576

 

By your own article,

I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has preyed on underage girls is running for the Senate with the full support of his party," Franken, D-Minn., said in emotional speech on the Senate floor.

His blasting was not blaming the GOP for his ouster, but instead calling out just what I posted as well.  If you are going to shout from the other side of the aisle that Franken should go, you shouldn't have to yell over the Access Hollywood tape to do it.  Is there anything incorrect in what he said about the President in that situation?  Also, the Democrats also pushed Conyers to retirement as well over sexual misconduct issues.  Honestly, what would it take for the GOP to decide to do the same for the President?  The answer is, nothing because it isn't going to happen.  Matter of fact, just look at the responses that folks in Alabama had about Moore when they made statements to the effect that, even if Moore did what he was accused of, it didn't matter because you can't have a liberal elected Senator in Alabama.  That's pretty much the same issue at play here with where the GOP is today on tariffs, trade, debt, deficits, swampism, embracing strongmen, and a whole bunch of other "shifts" in the party platform based on the current President.

[Muda69]

10 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

You and I will agree to disagree on the first point. Big time!   But no lost sleep here...as it takes too much energy to feel one way or another about a person with zero invested stake.  

But you do make me chuckle......

A BB like Gonzo will likely be dead before his progressive/socialist wet dreams come to fruition and utterly ruin the country for his children and grandchildren.  But hey, he got his defined pension,  social security, and medicare, right?  Screw the future.

 

[gonzoron]

2 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

A BB like Gonzo will likely be dead before his progressive/socialist wet dreams come to fruition and utterly ruin the country for his children and grandchildren.  But hey, he got his defined pension,  social security, and medicare, right?  Screw the future.

 

My children and grandchildren are doing just fine. I have children in 3 different generations, X, Y, and Z. And you are blinded by your own biases on everything you stated here. It's sad that you feel the need to lie to make a point. And you might just be a bigger hypocrite than Troj.

[Muda69]

1 minute ago, gonzoron said:

My children and grandchildren are doing just fine. I have children in 3 different generations, X, Y, and Z. And you are blinded by your own biases on everything you stated here. It's sad that you feel the need to lie to make a point. And you might just be a bigger hypocrite than Troj.

Sure, maybe they are doing fine now, I never contested that.  But when your progressive socialist utopia comes to pass via screeds like the "green new deal" will they still be "doing just fine"?  I know you want to believe that, as your biases blind you on virtually everything you post.   

And where did I lie, gonzo, based on the information I currently have?  And again as a hypocrite yourself your really need to look in the mirror, and think about the America you want to leave for your children and grandchildren.  A future full of mediocrity and generation-crushing national debt, all courtesy of the "old men" (your previous term, not mine) of your generation. And you will let it happen.

 

 

[gonzoron]

38 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

And where did I lie, gonzo, based on the information I currently have?

About everything. Your information is sorely lacking. Which makes sense if you received it from someone's blog on reason.com

[gonzoron]

Trump says his father was 'born in a very wonderful place in Germany' — but Fred Trump was actually born in New York City

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-father-fred-born-germany-2019-4?fbclid=IwAR3a6CJiqu7SZ8bqNKZ7BK80QP1w_7Wr3R-wpSgFjwR0wMA_WVgZQnGUfsU

[Muda69]

15 hours ago, gonzoron said:

About everything. Your information is sorely lacking. Which makes sense if you received it from someone's blog on reason.com

Again, no real answers from Gonzo.  Tell me, where do you get all of your "information?"   CNN?  Media Matters?

If you can point out where something I linked to at reason.com is not factual, then please, speak up and provide details.

 

 

[foxbat]

1 minute ago, TrojanDad said:

Al Franken was forced out by the #metoo movement.  It wasn't the entire Dem party...not by a longshot.  It was certain members of the Dem party.  You make it sound like the Dems police their own.  That is laughable.  Some argued (include members of GOP) that Franken was caught in up in politics and he never was really allowed due process to defend himself.  Franken was bitter, and lashed out at the GOP.  But I don't think it was just the GOP he was angry about...certain members of the Dem party went after him...and played politics.  Yet, the same people have always turned an eye when it came to the Clinton's.  

Putting one side on the moral high ground of this issue is flat out laughable.  The Dems play for votes...and it that means eating their own...they will do it....or in the case of the Clinton's, turning their head away...they will do that as well.  C'mon....

Not putting any side on the moral high ground.  Matter of fact, just pointing out that the side claiming the moral high ground and pushing the moral high ground, especially on this issue, has a very big beam in the White House in its eye.

[Muda69]

Mexico border closure: The whole auto industry could shut in days, analysts say: https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2019/04/03/trump-mexico-border-auto-industry/3344399002/

Quote

A U.S.-Mexico border shutdown would be “devastating” to American auto companies, their workers, parts suppliers and regional economies throughout the Midwest, Texas and California, industry experts said Tuesday.

“I don’t know why we’re talking about avocados & strawberries (as much as I love both), when the whole flipping auto industry could be shut down in a matter of days if we close the US-Mexico border,” tweeted Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.

“Go back to what Michigan looked like in 2009," she told the Free Press on Tuesday. "It’s pretty dire. Everybody was laid off or idled and it was economically devastating to the state.” 

Not only do parts come into the United States from Mexico, but 37% of U.S.-made parts ship to Mexico for further steps in vehicle manufacturing, Dziczek emphasized. A disruption in the supply chain risks shutting down factories and bigger production operations that can’t simply restart. It would impact hundreds of thousands of people immediately, she said.

President Donald Trump, responding to a surge of immigrants at border seeking asylum, putting enforcement at a "breaking point," has talked in recent days of closing the U.S.-Mexico border. He acknowledged Tuesday that such a move "will have a negative effect on the economy," but said national security is "more important than trade.”

...

Mr. Trump has no clue.

Something like one billion dollars worth of goods flow back and forth over the Mexico-U.S. border every day .   Most than just auto manufacturing plants would would be shut down, but many of their 1st and 2nd tier parts suppliers as well.    All the auto manufacturing plants here in Indiana would probably shut down within a week, maybe two,  potentially putting thousands of hourly workers temporarily out of work.

  

[Muda69]

With Mueller Hopes Gone, So Goes Progressive Unity: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/mueller-report-aftermath-progressive-unity-over/

Quote

The Democratic party has lots of radical new ideas, and lots of radical presidential candidates and politicos.

But the common hatred of President Donald Trump has united otherwise quite disparate Democratic leaders such as House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.); former vice president Joe Biden; Senators Kamala Harris (D., Calif), Cory Booker (D., N.J.), and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.); and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.).

These diverse progressive politicians all shared faith in Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his “dream team.” They believed over the last two years that the Mueller investigation was slowly grinding down Trump. T-shirts were sold with the slogan God Protect Robert Mueller.

The unifying progressive creed assumed that Mueller’s team would eventually find Trump unequivocally guilty of “collusion” with Russia. That buzzword was the non-criminal euphemism for felonious conspiracy to rig an election.

The hunt for collusion would end with the holy grail of Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. In 2020, there would be an almost automatic progressive takeover of government.

Periodic leaks from Mueller’s team during the investigation’s 22 months prompted giddy media anticipation that “the walls were closing in” on Trump. It always seemed that the “noose was tightening” around him and that yet another “bombshell” was about to go off.

This anti-Trump echo chamber lessened the need for progressives to offer a comprehensive, coherent, and winning alternate agenda. Damning the sure-to-be-impeached Trump was unity enough. All progressives at least agreed on that.

But as Mueller was supposedly about to indict Trump, a divisive, hard-left agenda was almost imperceptibly floated to the public: the Green New Deal, reparations for slavery, abortion redefined as permissible infanticide, open borders, packing the Supreme Court with liberal justices, the abolition of the Electoral College and ICE, free college tuition, the elimination of student debt, Medicare for all, a wealth tax, a 70 percent top marginal income tax rate, a 16-year-old voting age, voting rights for ex-felons, and on and on.

It seemed as if today’s radical proposal would become yesterday’s sellout within 24 hours, as progressives awaited tomorrow’s even more revolutionary idea.

While progressives were celebrating the seemingly inevitable Mueller indictment of Trump, they were also increasingly at odds over many of these divisive and mostly unpopular new issues and over the self-created paradoxes of identity politics.

When he was not declaring Trump guilty of treason, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, a lifelong beneficiary of wealth and influence, did his best to blast his own former white privilege.

Socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, when he was not predicating Trump’s impeachment, talked in the abstract, as if an old white guy like himself in the concrete had no business running for president.

Current front-runner Joe Biden, when he was not gloating over Trump’s supposed guilt, tried hard to trash his own white male culture as the root of many of America’s problems.

How odd that three of the anti-white-male party’s leading presidential contenders were none other than the white male trio of Biden, Bernie, and Beto.

Now, Mueller has gone, his report having found no evidence of an election conspiracy. There is no longer a rallying cry of Trump-Russia collusion.

In other words, an investigation that for two years had reconciled the irreconcilable no longer serves as a source of Democratic unity.

We are going to see hard-left Democrats and socialists force their mostly unpopular agenda on politicians and candidates from their own party. And they are now putting their identity-politics money where their mouth is by openly discouraging candidates on the basis of their race and gender.

With the end of the Mueller investigation, thousands of government documents, mostly unredacted, will be released. The result may be that the hunters of Trump soon become hunted by federal prosecutors. Sworn statements of Obama-administration officials in the Justice Department, CIA, FBI, and other bureaucracies will contradict newly released documents.

To escape punishment, all of these players in the Russian collusion delusion may now begin to turn on one another after being so united in going after Donald Trump.

The media sensationalism and optics will play out in reverse as the “noose tightens” and “the walls close in” on people such as former CIA director John Brennan, former director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI director James Comey, and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

There will also be more infighting over the collective embarrassment of the Russian collusion hoax.

A few shamed progressive politicians and reporters will grow quiet and acknowledge their overreach. But many will double down and weirdly insist that there really was Russian collusion and that the Steele dossier was true. Most will remain unashamed and simply move on to the next supposed Trump scandal.

Progressives in unison boarded the Mueller express to nowhere. As they now jump off the train wreck, the fighting won’t be pretty.

 

[gonzoron]

[Muda69]

The Trump Era Should Make Libertarians of Us All: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/the-trump-era-should-make-libertarians-of-us-all/

Quote

Democrats and many other Trump opponents are thrilled that House Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal has “formally requested” six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns. At last, they argue, Trump will be forced to be transparent. At last we’ll see the financial information that he’s so diligently sought to hide ever since he launched his race for the White House.

Isn’t this good news? Shouldn’t the nation’s chief executive be transparent about his income and business dealings? Perhaps. But “should” is a much different than “must,” and the lawyer and civil libertarian in me immediately wondered about the legal basis for the Democrats’ request. After all, Trump is still an American citizen and entitled to a degree of privacy, and there is no law requiring presidents to release their tax returns. So, on what grounds did the Democrats demand to see his taxes?

Well, it turns out that federal privacy laws contain a rather wide loophole. Congress, which granted taxpayers relatively strong protections from disclosure to other entities, left for itself a nice little out: On mere “written request” from the chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, or the Joint Committee on Taxation, the secretary of the Treasury “shall furnish” the requesting committee “with any return or return information specified in such request.”

That’s right. All they have to do is ask. They can have your return, my return, or any political enemy’s return. But don’t worry, the law states that if the return or return information might identify the taxpayer, then it can be provided only when the committee is in “closed executive session.” And we all know that Congress never leaks, and would never dare use private information to launch ruinous politically motivated investigations. After all, there’s nothing but good public servants up on Capitol Hill, right?

As the saying goes, if this is the law, then the law is an a**.

One of the many startling aspects of the Trump era is the extent to which intense political combat has illuminated the sheer number of ridiculous rules and statutes governing this country — including rules and statutes that grant public officials truly vast amounts of discretion. For decades, the federal government has vacuumed up an immense amount of power, doled it out among the various branches of government, and then turned to the American people and said, “Trust us.”

While the current controversy involves Congress’s reservation of a right to take a peek at your life, many others involve its abdication of power to the president. Consider these recent examples . . .

Why is the president able to unilaterally raise tariff rates and essentially tax the American people without congressional approval? After all, Article I Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign nations.” Well, as this Vox piece by Tara Golshan nicely explains, Congress has for decades relinquished authority to set tariff rates to the president, using multiple different justifications. Laws such as the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 collectively grant the president enormous discretion to act on his own.

Why was the president able to unilaterally ban immigrants from multiple majority-Muslim countries? Because Congress gave the president the power to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate” whenever he finds their entry “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Relatedly, while there may exist statutes that regulate how a president uses his emergency powers, the National Emergencies Act essentially leaves the definition of an emergency to the president’s discretion. How does he define an emergency? He knows it when he sees it.

And don’t get me started on the bipartisan abdication of congressional authority to declare war. When Trump struck the Assad regime without congressional authorization, he was walking a trail blazed by many presidents before him.

The judiciary shouldn’t be given a pass on all of this, either. One of the prime reasons presidential contests have become so contentious is the Supreme Court’s repeated willingness to improperly interfere in the Democratic process, and gather for itself immense power well beyond the  adjudication of enumerated constitutional rights and the coherent interpretation of specific constitutional provisions.

The president not only controls a bloated executive branch, he appoints the members of the excessively powerful judicial branch. And now members of that branch have invented a new kind of power grab: the nationwide injunction, in which the reach of a mere federal trial-court judge can extend beyond the parties before him to the entire nation.

When people ask me, how the Trump era is adjusting my political views, my answer is simple: It’s making me more libertarian. It’s making me more concerned about the fate of the Constitution. I trust the government less, I’m more appalled at its sweeping assumptions of power, and I see more clearly what happens when its leaders — possessed with unwavering self-righteousness — believe that the ends justify the means.

Now the Democratic war against Donald Trump has exposed yet another bad law. Congress can investigate your finances — no matter who you are — for any reason or no reason at all. The fact that Trump is the man currently under the microscope should in no way lessen our objection to such an atrocious policy. Bad laws don’t become good just because they’re used to target people you happen to dislike.

 

[gonzoron]

1 minute ago, Muda69 said:

The Trump Era Should Make Libertarians of Us All: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/the-trump-era-should-make-libertarians-of-us-all/