New Donald Trump thread

[Muda69]

Just now, gonzoron said:

Glad I provided you with a picture you enjoy so much.  Much of your stuff is linked to facebook, which I can't access, so it comes up blank here on the GID.

So you disagree with the statement?:  "Bad laws don’t become good just because they’re used to target people you happen to dislike."

 

 

[gonzoron]

2 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Much of your stuff is linked to facebook, which I can't access, so it comes up blank here on the GID.

Guess I've saved myself a lot more down votes that way.

[Muda69]

1 minute ago, gonzoron said:

Guess I've saved myself a lot more down votes that way.

Here, have another since they seem to be so important to you.

 

[gonzoron]

8 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Here, have another since they seem to be so important to you.

 

Thanks! I'll have my sockpuppet take care of that for me.

[Muda69]

10 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Thanks! I'll have my sockpuppet take care of that for me.

Glad I could help you out.  And thanks for the sockpuppet admission.

 

[foxbat]

[gonzoron]

[foxbat]

This seemed to have slipped completely under the radar screen this week ... Trump nominates Cain for the Fed:

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/710023657/trump-to-recommend-pizza-magnate-herman-cain-for-federal-reserve-post

I'm assuming that all of the fiscal conservatives, both on and off this board, will just love this ... well at least the ones who say they are, but actually aren't.  Similarly, I'm assuming that the folks with the quick-out-of-the-holster Biden memes will also have some just waiting for Cain too.

If the idea of someone like Cain being nominated to the Fed, especially on the heels of the almost nomination of Moore doesn't convince us that we've normalized this kind of recklessness, then we're pretty close to reaching the event horizon of politics and leadership in the country.

[foxbat]

Now Hiring ...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kirstjen-nielsen-resigns-233736783.html

Wonder if Nielsen left because she got crossways with Trump over his "shut down the border" act last week or because she saw the light?

[foxbat]

9 hours ago, TrojanDad said:

you sure its only because of the 2 options you listed?

maybe it may be for other reasons.....

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/07/politics/kirstjen-nielsen-homeland-security/index.html

 

From the article you posted ...

Nielsen did not resign willingly, a person close to her told CNN, but was under pressure to do so. Nielsen did not fight nor grovel to keep her job, the source said. Nielsen should be staying for a week of transition, another White House official said.

...

Nielsen "believed the situation was becoming untenable with the President becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests," a senior administration official tells CNN.

Trump kept her on for over two years.  She was one of the ones pushing back on Trump's "shut down the border" talk from last week.  She's one of the ones that caused the President's sure-handedness last week with border closure to turn into :Well, maybe we'll give them a year or so."  He was not happy with that.  He hates having to reverse course ... which is typically the result of a weekend tweetstorm that hasn't been well thought out.

The last border issue was Trump's last straw, but frankly, everything else that she did while she was there had Trump's blessing on it ... until it didn't.  Kind of like DeVos and Special Olympics.  The reason she looked like a deer in the headlights defending it is because it wasn't her idea.  The reasons that Nielsen had remained for so long was for similar reasons ... she was along with Trump's ideas ... until she tried to make a more reasonable choice.  In the difference between the two, Trump could pretend that it was his idea to restore Special Olympics funding and make it look like he overrode DeVos ... with his base, he can't be the one saying that he was overriding Nielsen, so she had to go.  Then again, we can look to several others who also were with the President as one of the "best people" right up until there was a crossways moment.  There's a continuing pattern with all of these "best people."

 

[foxbat]

1 hour ago, foxbat said:

From the article you posted ...

Nielsen did not resign willingly, a person close to her told CNN, but was under pressure to do so. Nielsen did not fight nor grovel to keep her job, the source said. Nielsen should be staying for a week of transition, another White House official said.

...

Nielsen "believed the situation was becoming untenable with the President becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests," a senior administration official tells CNN.

Trump kept her on for over two years.  She was one of the ones pushing back on Trump's "shut down the border" talk from last week.  She's one of the ones that caused the President's sure-handedness last week with border closure to turn into :Well, maybe we'll give them a year or so."  He was not happy with that.  He hates having to reverse course ... which is typically the result of a weekend tweetstorm that hasn't been well thought out.

The last border issue was Trump's last straw, but frankly, everything else that she did while she was there had Trump's blessing on it ... until it didn't.  Kind of like DeVos and Special Olympics.  The reason she looked like a deer in the headlights defending it is because it wasn't her idea.  The reasons that Nielsen had remained for so long was for similar reasons ... she was along with Trump's ideas ... until she tried to make a more reasonable choice.  In the difference between the two, Trump could pretend that it was his idea to restore Special Olympics funding and make it look like he overrode DeVos ... with his base, he can't be the one saying that he was overriding Nielsen, so she had to go.  Then again, we can look to several others who also were with the President as one of the "best people" right up until there was a crossways moment.  There's a continuing pattern with all of these "best people."

 

I hit submit before finishing and figured I'd edit after getting ready for classes ... apparently the system has a really short window for editing your own posts ...

Add on ... As Nielsen pretty much moved along with what the President wanted, like Kelly, her mentor, she also gave some pushback over time.  Also, like Kelly, it was spotty as to how it happened.  Sometimes Kelly appeared like the adult in the room and, other times, it seemed like Kelly was OK with driving the car of vandals to TP a house in the next subdivision.  Eventually, whether Kelly got tired or Trump got tired of Kelly can certainly be argued.  Similarly, whether Trump finally tired of Nielsen telling him the things he wanted to do were illegal and then going along with most of the stuff that wasn't illegal anyway or whether Neilsen finally tired of telling Trump that it was illegal will likely be debated.  As for other reasons, she's not leaving to "run his campaign," she's not leaving "to take a lobbyist job," she's not leaving "because she's likely not to be Speaker of the House even if the GOP wins the mid-terms," she's not leaving so "she can then tell all the folks that the President likes to lie because it's fun," ...

[Muda69]

21 hours ago, foxbat said:

This seemed to have slipped completely under the radar screen this week ... Trump nominates Cain for the Fed:

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/710023657/trump-to-recommend-pizza-magnate-herman-cain-for-federal-reserve-post

I'm assuming that all of the fiscal conservatives, both on and off this board, will just love this ... well at least the ones who say they are, but actually aren't.  Similarly, I'm assuming that the folks with the quick-out-of-the-holster Biden memes will also have some just waiting for Cain too.

If the idea of someone like Cain being nominated to the Fed, especially on the heels of the almost nomination of Moore doesn't convince us that we've normalized this kind of recklessness, then we're pretty close to reaching the event horizon of politics and leadership in the country.

It is just yet another example of Mr. Trump appointing his political loyalists to a position in the federal government,  all administrations do it.  And since the Federal Reserve should be abolished in the first place maybe Mr. Cain's perceived economic ineptitude will help with that demise.

 

[gonzoron]

Twitter removes video posted by President Trump for use of 'Dark Knight' score

https://www.bdtonline.com/news/entertainment/twitter-removes-video-posted-by-president-trump-for-use-of/article_1776bf5b-dcf1-5a8e-a0e0-fe4d26859afc.html?fbclid=IwAR2rFqi5wSC74UB_dTd8gfHZSqg7pX7rNhcYllSmKv8F2QgjeSA8e5GcUU4#utm_campaign=blox&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

[Muda69]

As a candidate, Trump promised to end pointless Middle Eastern wars. He just vetoed a resolution to do exactly that.: https://reason.com/2019/04/16/so-much-for-the-anti-war-president/

Quote

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump promised to put some reasonable limitations on how the United States conducted its post-9/11 wars across the Middle East.

“The legacy of the Obama-Clinton interventions will be weakness, confusion and disarray, a mess,” he said in April 2016, during his first major speech about foreign policy. “We’ve made the Middle East more unstable and chaotic than ever before.”

Since taking office, Trump’s track record has been decidedly mixed. He launched missiles into Syria. He ordered American troops home from Syria. He then reversed himself and sorta-kinda agreed to keep them there for a while longer.

But on Tuesday night, Trump unambiguously backed Forever War. He vetoed a congressional resolution that would have ended American military involvement in the Yemeni civil war—a conflict that has killed an estimated 50,000 people (scores more have died in a famine triggered by the conflict) without having any significant bearing on U.S. national security.

“This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future,” Trump said in a statement. The congressional resolution is unnecessary, Trump says, because “the United States is not engaged in hostilities in or affecting Yemen.”

That’s being too clever by half. Yes, there are no American troops fighting on the front lines in Yemen, but the Trump administration has been providing logistical support and intelligence to the Saudi-backed coalition that’s fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. American-flown planes are being used to refuel Saudi aircraft in mid-air, for example. Trump’s own veto statement belies the internal contradiction, with its nod to American “service members” who are very much participants in the bloody, seemingly intractable conflict.

The resolution calling for an end to that military support, sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.), says “the activities that the United States is conducting in support of the Saudi-led coalition, including aerial refueling and targeting assistance, fall within” the authority of the War Powers Act of 1973. That law was passed in the closing stages of the Vietnam War, with the intention of preventing a president from getting America into another years-long conflict without congressional authorization (please, hold your laughter).

The resolution cleared both chambers of Congress with bipartisan approval, but not a veto-proof majority in either. (Notably, libertarian-leaning Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) voted against the resolution in the House due to concerns over how it might expand congressional authorization for other Middle Eastern wars.)

Still, it’s something of an accomplishment, since this is the first time a congressional resolution invoking the War Powers Act has reached the president’s desk.

But that won’t be enough until America has a president actually willing to rein-in America’s foreign military excursions—instead of merely promising to do so to get elected.

 

[Muda69]

America’s War in Yemen Is Plainly Unconstitutional: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/americas-war-in-yemen-is-plainly-unconstitutional/

Quote

Yesterday, Donald Trump vetoed a bipartisan congressional resolution demanding an end to U.S. involvement in Yemen’s civil war. It’s now official: The president who ran for office pledging to reduce military entanglements abroad is involving American forces in a foreign war in direct defiance of the plain language of the Constitution.

First, some background. Beginning in 2015, the Obama administration recklessly inserted itself into Saudi Arabia’s proxy war with Iran, backing Saudi military action against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. America has long been an important source of arms for Saudi Arabia, but Obama’s support went well beyond merely providing planes and bombs. His administration also authorized other active, indispensable support, including aerial refueling and targeting assistance.

This direct involvement represented an act of war by any reasonable measure, and there is no meaningful argument that it was enabled by any existing congressional war authorization. The Authorization for the Use of Military Force enacted after the 9/11 attacks plainly doesn’t apply to Iran-backed Shiite rebels fighting in Yemen (though it does apply to al-Qaeda cells active in the country), nor does the subsequent Iraq War authorization.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive authority to declare war. Yes, Article II declares that the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but reading the two clauses together, their meaning is plain: The president commands American forces when Congress declares war. Yes, the president has inherent authority to order immediate military actions in times of crisis, but he should also promptly seek congressional approval for such actions.

No one should pretend that there aren’t constitutional gray areas in this structure, of course: How long can a president respond to an emergency before Congress must ratify or reject the conflict? Once Congress has authorized any given action, how far can a president extend or expand a conflict? Does the authorization of force against al-Qaeda extend to, say, al-Qaeda progeny such as ISIS? Does the authorization of war in Iraq extend to actions deemed militarily necessary to stabilize the country, like the use of force in Syria?

These are all good constitutional questions, but they’re beside the point because none of them apply to the conflict in Yemen. President Obama wasn’t responding to a true national emergency in backing the Saudis against the Houthis, and President Trump isn’t responding to a true national emergency in continuing to back the Saudis. They were (and are) waging a new conflict against a new enemy.

Late last year, in the resolution Trump just vetoed, Congress rejected military action in Yemen under the provisions of the War Powers Act, a controversial 1973 statue passed over Richard Nixon’s veto. The Act attempted to answer the thorny constitutional issues outlined above by requiring a president to consult with Congress within 48 hours of the introduction of American forces into foreign hostilities. Congress can then, by resolution, terminate American involvement. 50 U.S.C. Section 1544(c) states that “at any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution.” (Emphasis added.)

Presidents have opposed the War Powers Act ever since its passage, even as they’ve frequently complied with its terms. They have historically taken such a broad view of their commander-in-chief powers as to functionally write Congress’s war-making power out of the Constitution. If a president can fight when he wants, where he wants, and for as long as he wants, then Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 is meaningless.

Moreover, even Trump’s veto is an unconstitutional act. A declaration of war requires an affirmative act of Congress. A bipartisan majority’s rejection of American participation in the Yemeni conflict is anything but an affirmation. And when the Constitution requires congressional affirmation, then congressional rejection can’t be vetoed by the president.

I understand and support the core holding of Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, which ended the practice of so-called legislative vetoes — instances where the legislature invalidated executive acts by mere majority vote — but Constitution gives war-making powers explicitly to Congress. When it is construed as allowing the president to launch war on his own and then to continue that war in the absence of congressional supermajorities, the constitutional structure is fatally undermined.

Debates about different American wars are debates for a different time. There is no longer any constitutional justification for continuing American participation in Saudi Arabia’s indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen. Congress has spoken. Trump doesn’t have the choice of vetoing the resolution. It’s now his obligation to order American forces to stand down. His refusal to do so further degrades America’s already-shaky constitutional structure.

Agreed.  This issue needs to go directly to the SCOTUS for resolution.

 

[Bobref]

3 hours ago, Muda69 said:

America’s War in Yemen Is Plainly Unconstitutional: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/americas-war-in-yemen-is-plainly-unconstitutional/

Agreed.  This issue needs to go directly to the SCOTUS for resolution.

 

This may well be an issue to be resolved by SCOTUS. But not “directly.” The ability to initiate a lawsuit in the Supreme Court - called “original” jurisdiction - is limited by the Constitution. Article III, Section 2 restricts the Court’s original jurisdiction to suits between states and matters involving foreign diplomats, consuls, and the like.  For this matter to get to SCOTUS, it’s going to have to start in a district court, then the Circuit Court of Appeals, and then to SCOTUS ... if they decide to hear it. They don’t have to accept the case ... in which case the ruling in the Circuit Court of Appeals becomes final.

[Muda69]

Donald Trump, Scaredy-Cat: https://reason.com/2019/04/18/donald-trump-scaredy-cat/

Quote

"Crooked Hillary," Donald Trump tweeted in November 2017, "bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!" The unusually tight relationship during the 2016 primary between the Democratic National Committee and its presidential front-runner, the president suggested, might be worthy of a Justice Department investigation.

If that were true, then the FBI should have a new case on its hands: the unprecedented collusion between the Republican National Committee and Trump himself.

Clinton, in August 2015, signed a secretive and controversial joint fundraising agreementwith the DNC that gave her the vast bulk of money raised and eventually placed some of the party machinery under her financial control. Trump, on the other hand, hasn't just influenced and benefited from the RNC; he's inhaled it like a cheeseburger.

In December, nearly two years before the 2020 election, the Republican Party and the president's re-election campaign literally merged into a single unit, called Trump Victory, which RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel clucked would be "the biggest, most efficient and unified campaign operation in American history." In January, the party passed a resolution giving the president its "undivided support."

Political party apparatuses are supposed to be impartial arbiters of primary contests, not corner men for the reigning champions. Yet McDaniel at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February boasted that any Republican foolish enough to challenge Trump in the 2020 primaries would "lose horribly," adding this taunt to the Bill Welds of the world: "So have at it, go ahead, waste your money, waste your time and go ahead and lose."

Weld, who officially launched his campaign Monday, called McDaniel's comments at the time "a stunning reversal of past party practice of honoring neutrality in primaries," asking: "What is it they are so afraid of?"

That may be the most puzzling question of all. Trump is clobbering Weld in the polls — 85% to 15%, according to a national Emerson survey released this week. Even in Weld's home state of Massachusetts, where he was a popular two-term governor in the 1990s, the president has a gargantuan 82-18 lead.

Approval of Trump among Republicans has stabilized at around 90%, according to Gallup polling, and Robert S. Mueller III's special investigation — which would-be candidates John Kasich and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan had been waiting for to help inform their decisions on whether to run – has failed thus far to land a serious blow. Sure, Republican voters may say they want more competition, but when presented with actual names, they tend to jump back into the arms of the party's standard-bearer.

And yet the Trump machine is taking a bazooka to this thumb-wrestling match, inserting Trumpist yes men in regional party leadership positions — including in the crucial early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Some of those apparatchiks have wondered out loud whether the party even should hold primaries next year.

"I've never seen anything like it and I've been involved in the Republican Party for most of my life," Hogan told Politico in February. "It's unprecedented."

Such a cartoonish show of force is clearly designed to scare off potential competitors before they even get in the ring. But like many exaggerated projections of strength, it's giving off the unseemly whiff of flop sweat.

There is a parallel here. Once upon a time, a Republican incumbent president popular within his own party faced minor competition both in early-state GOP primaries and among a rowdy Democratic field. There was some scandal and gross arm-twisting emanating from the White House, though not yet in a seriously prosecutable way; meanwhile the left was flirting more openly with socialism than it had in a generation.

In the end, Richard Nixon would squash the antiwar Californian Pete McCloskey like a bugin New Hampshire, before romping to the kind of general-election landslide that Donald Trump can only dream about. But along the way the president's paranoia, crude habits and questionable taste in personnel — Roger Stone, anyone? — sowed the seeds of his administration's destruction.

It is a time-wasting folly for Democrats to expect some mythical Watergate 2.0 to solve their biggest political problem with a single bang of the gavel. If anything, the analogy is more teachable for Trump himself. It's the smallest men who require the biggest parades, and the organizations they corrupt will be staffed by compromised opportunists.

The president should welcome a political fight — he's certainly better at it right now than any national Republican. But by stacking the deck so grossly in his favor, Trump is making the tacit admission that he just doesn't believe in himself. Be very afraid when the president is scared.

Good question, who on the Republican side of the uni-party is Mr. Trump afraid of?

 

[swordfish]

[foxbat]

1 hour ago, swordfish said:

The problem with memes is that they don't usually tell the whole story ... or any story at all.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/in-his-report-mueller-says-congress-could-take-action-on-trump-obstruction-152454775.html

FTA:

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller wrote.

...

Specifically, Mueller found clear evidence that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency.

“The investigation identified two different forms of connections between the IRA and members of the Trump Campaign. (The investigation identified no similar connections between the IRA and the Clinton Campaign.) First, on multiple occasions, members and surrogates of the Trump Campaign promoted—typically by linking, retweeting, or similar methods of reposting—pro-Trump or anti-Clinton content published by the IRA or through IRA-controlled social media accounts. Additionally, in a few instances, IRA employees represented themselves as U.S. persons to communicate with members of the Trump Campaign in an effort to seek assistance and coordination on IRA-organized political rallies inside the United States,” the report stated.

...

On the question of obstruction, Trump, Mueller wrote, "engaged in efforts to curtail the Special Counsel's investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it, including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses."

 

[Muda69]

Here is some light reading for your Easter weekend:  https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

Enjoy.

Only 855 redactions:  http://thesmokinggun.com/buster/donald-trump/mueller-redactions-738952

 

Edited April 18, 2019 by Muda69

[swordfish]

2 hours ago, foxbat said:

The problem with memes is that they don't usually tell the whole story ... or any story at all.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/in-his-report-mueller-says-congress-could-take-action-on-trump-obstruction-152454775.html

FTA:

“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller wrote.

...

Specifically, Mueller found clear evidence that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency.

“The investigation identified two different forms of connections between the IRA and members of the Trump Campaign. (The investigation identified no similar connections between the IRA and the Clinton Campaign.) First, on multiple occasions, members and surrogates of the Trump Campaign promoted—typically by linking, retweeting, or similar methods of reposting—pro-Trump or anti-Clinton content published by the IRA or through IRA-controlled social media accounts. Additionally, in a few instances, IRA employees represented themselves as U.S. persons to communicate with members of the Trump Campaign in an effort to seek assistance and coordination on IRA-organized political rallies inside the United States,” the report stated.

...

On the question of obstruction, Trump, Mueller wrote, "engaged in efforts to curtail the Special Counsel's investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it, including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses."

 

Nice doggie......Keep fishing......

[foxbat]

1 minute ago, swordfish said:

Nice doggie......Keep fishing......

How do you get fishing from direct Mueller quotes? 

 

[gonzoron]

[swordfish]

[Wabash82]

8 hours ago, swordfish said:

#6,274 on the list of things Hillary was way wrong about. She thought her husband was faithful, too....