Politics What is happening????

I'm expecting at least some of Trump's financial dealings to get hacked and/or leaked.

I wonder if the IRS has All Things Trump under special security?

What if the GOP turned its Dark Forces loose to secretly & illegally investigate Trump?
And then used that info in an effort to force Trump to resign?

I don't think White Collar Crime prison time would frighten Trump.

I think the possibility of being exposed as a mediocre business man would scare the shit out of Trump.

Unless his narcissistic delusions are so extreme he refuses to see the truth about himself.

Note--The Savings & Loan Crisis (Reagan fans conveniently overlook this), and The Oil Bust, showed me one thing very clearly: Real estate holdings are worthless shit when no one is buying, leasing, booking, etc.

 

Back in the 90s, trump was going though bankruptcy because of taking money out of his casinos. Wilbur Ross came in and negotiated a deal, saving trump and setting him up to continue to screw his investors. Guess who is trump's commerce secretary now?

 

I'm surprised more isn't written about how we don't know how this is going to end. In 10-20 years we will look back on this time and think we should have all known, and it was obvious. But, I don't know what crazy stuff will happen next week or a few years from now.

I do know that the country is broken due to the inflexibility on abortion rights, gun control, corporate control, and high taxes paying for certain government programs. And I have a hard time seeing things change without a much better and "perfect" political candidate. And it is going to have to be a straight white guy in their 40's-60's who can command respect and whose morals are clean.

 

No lasting progress will be made as long as the two major parties keep tearing down what the other has accomplished; I don't see partisan politics moving towards middle ground any time soon. Trump has very clearly proved at least one thing, playing partisan politics is the way to go.

 

This happened yesterday and is the third or fourth Trump supporter who has pleaded guilty to federal charges of making death threats against members of Congress (and/or other related charges).

Rep. Ilhan Omar wants compassion for Trump supporter convicted of making death threats against her

A man who threatened to kill Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has pleaded guilty, according to authorities.

Patrick W. Carlineo Jr., 55, of Addison, N.Y., entered the guilty plea before Chief U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci for threatening to assault and murder the freshman congresswoman and for being a felon in possession of firearms, according to a statement released Monday by the Department of Justice.

The plea stems from a March call that Carlineo made to Omar’s Washington, D.C., office. “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood?” he said to a member of Omar’s staff in that call, according to a complaint filed earlier this year. “Why are you working for her, she’s a [expletive] terrorist. Somebody ought to put a bullet in her skull.” The staff member remembered Carlineo saying, “I’ll put a bullet in her [expletive] skull,” the complaint said.

Carlineo made the call, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York, because he hates the idea that people he perceives as radical Muslims are part of the U.S. government and because of his belief that Omar supports Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Carlineo also believed that Omar’s election to Congress was illegitimate, authorities said.

Although he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, Omar wrote an open letter to Geraci requesting that he refrain from sentencing Carlineo to a long prison term and a large fine.

Carlineo needs compassion and restorative justice that will allow him to understand the consequences of his actions and to make amends, she wrote.
​

View: https://twitter.com/Ilhan/status/1196847767764815872?s=19


Here is the DOJ press release...

Steuben County Man Pleads Guilty To Threatening To Kill A U.S. Congresswoman And Illegally Possessing Firearms

There are at least four or five others, in addition to the three or four who have pleaded guilty, still facing similar federal charges.

​

 

Supreme Court will take up Trump’s broad claims of protection from investigation

So the Court will hear the case in March (it is still a travesty that the Supreme Court will not allow live video to watch the arguments made by both sides and the questioning by justices) and the decision announced in June.

This will be a true test of the Supreme Court's independence and respect for precedence in which case, in my non-legal opinion, it should be a no-brainer and Trump loses.

But these are not normal times.

 

It would be interesting if the Supreme Court had cameras, but wouldn't release the video until after the decision was made, or even held off on releasing the videos for years or decades afterwards.

 

We can only hope that Kentucky replaces him as their senator in November. The new governor made it easier for non-violent felons to vote, and the GOP will have a harder time cheating now too.

As to the next issue, I don't blame Russia or any other country. It is the media and on-line groups that are the problem. Watch this clip from PBS Newshour about it.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNpy1TYQITc


Being semi-anonymous or fully anonymous allows people to give their true opinions on-line. 20 years ago, if you put someone up on a stage in front of 1,000 people from the community and let them speak their mind on an issue like Hispanic immigration, they would have been afraid to be crass and talk bad about them. Either the religious people in the stands would have been upset, or people thought there were very few racists/nationalists who would support their views. But the media started to denigrate the immigrants and then people would talk to their work buddies and friends to spread the word and make it seem safe to talk about it. Once the forums and social media pages took off, you would get feedback and more likes the worse the things you said were.

 

View: https://youtu.be/tGB8Uuffi4M


The right learned after Obama's 2008 victory that the internet and people's opinion was being shaped by the culture of the internet. Back in the mid-2000's the internet forums were different. Comment sections weren't always great, but they weren't flooded with bots and trolls like they are now.

Part of this was that Obama used data and the Internet to win. Maybe they got lucky and more of his supporters defended him on-line back in the 2008 election cycle, but it also seemed that the support he had on-line vanished as soon as the conservatives moved in and the Democrats thought it was a waste of time to argue on-line. And all of the DeleteFacebook stuff isn't helping to overwhelm and shift the culture on-line by out commenting them.

Take the climate change debate. In scientific circles, there is a vast majority that have studied and have found evidence of how it is occurring. However, on-line, people might be skimming a headline or the comment section and it seems more like 50-50. Maybe even less if people are curating their news and friends to limit information they don't like.

 

I don't know about Nazi but it sure the hell is the first step towards Fascism.
American Fascism will never look like German.
It will have its own flavor and style of nasty.
We have to fight back against it just as hard.

 

The only problem with using Nazis as an example is the asshats point to 45 and say, "He isn't a Nazi, his daughter is Jewish. The Orthodox Jews in Israel love him."
Calling him Mussolini is probably more accurate but a good portion of Americans these days have no idea who you are talking about.