The Random Thoughts About Anything, except VAR, Thread [R]

Yeah! Nothing wrong here.
Here, try this instead of Hannity.


On Tuesday, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman wrote a blistering op-ed that excoriated Attorney General William Barr for his Justice Department’s apparent political abuses of power.

“The withdrawal of all four career prosecutors handling the case against Roger Stone, in the wake of the Justice Department’s sentencing shift, underscores that Attorney General William P. Barr’s department has effectively gone rogue,” wrote Litman. “Resignation is the strongest possible protest that prosecutors can employ, within professional bounds, against improper conduct by their leadership. The president’s tweet and the department’s reduction of Stone’s sentencing were utterly rank and improper. The action runs counter not only to standard practice but also to the standard that the Justice Department is supposed to embody: the administration of justice without fear or favor.”

Your responses are in the true Trumpoid fashion. Everyone is attacking me. Oh the hate and anger.
Its called projection.

 

That's a nice way to put it but yes, that's better. I'm center-left, personally. I'm pretty much anti-bullshit and I try to take that approach no matter what letter is next to the politician in question. There are plenty of looney toons on the left too. That being said, your "whataboutism" is on another level.

 

We’re living in the age of anger. Our politics have become consumed by it because it sells so well these days. Can you remember even one time when Trump or Sanders didn’t sound pissed off about something? Interesting that they’re our most popular politicians despite being poles apart in terms of policies. The moderates are having trouble getting any bandwidth because they’re not angry enough. I think Buttigieg and Klobuchar have a lot offer but not sure they’ll get anywhere because they’re not projecting enough outrage.

 

Don’t we have a footy match.....Soon...???

 

good point. being reasonable (about almost anything) in US politics these days seems to be interpreted as a sign of weakness.

did that start with the Tea Party?

 

I’m not enough of a sociologist to know where it all started but yup the Tea Party was one of the early manifestations of it as I remember. The Bush war in Iraq kicked up a lot of justifiable outrage back then too.

 

I'm sure it's debatable but I think the first domino was pushed over with Newt Gingrich in the 90's. He peddled a nastier side to the political dark arts and we're just witnessing version 8.0 or whatever today.

 

You’re either with us or you’re against us.

 

Also, (as usual) the internet hasn't helped our civility.

 

WARNING: Old Fart Alert. I guess the real genesis of what we have today was the late 1960’s - this is when the big fractures initially appeared in our society. Vietnam, Cambodia, the initial attacks on Jim Crow with civil rights and affirmative action, MLK, RFK assassinations, inner city riots, Tricky Dick. Some of it got papered over but it never came together again. The anger and rage back then were a lot like today.

 

poor old Ray McAnally must be turning in his grave....

 

Well, part of the problem is an unwillingness on the part of the press to kill the golden goose.
He could actually be shut-up or stupefied if questioner's were willing to not back down ....
Simply put, every time Trump engages his particular type of verbal lunacy on the track of the repetition that it was "a totally acceptable and correct call" etc. He should be asked "why does Lamar Alexander (and Susan Collins - both on record as saying it was most definitely not right or acceptable) say that what he did was wrong then?" Persist with this: "They say it was just not enough to remove you from office because he feels that you have learned the lesson. Have you?"
Just stick with that one, Over and over......
That's the way to treat this contemptible prick .....

 

The US economy has been on an investment fed up for about 7 years - that has nothing to do with the incumbent government.... It's a boost after everyone froze imvestment for a few years due to the economic crisis.
Poor people aren't doing any better in those disproportionately affected areas of the rus belt because of Trump and his thickest idea first policies. That's for sure. Those kinds of changes require real government interest and investment. Show me some data on any of that??

Last time I checked the UN's world standard of living comparisons Canada was wayy ahead of the US. The US is pretty far down the list of 1st world countries when they measure average standards of living...

 

Exactly what massive percentage of Canadians? Swiss? Finns? Danes? French? German? English? Norweigan? Dutch? Belgian? New Zealander? Austrian? are clamouring to emigrate to the UNited States??

 

A while back my daughter a New Zealand teacher not some brown rapist and murderer came on a visit. She was detained for a while and hassled about her “green card” even threatened to deny her entry. She managed to call me, so I called the state attorney general. We got it sorted and my daughters parting shot was to give her green card to the immigration guy and told him to shove it. She didn’t plan on living in a country that treated people like that.
She’s been here to visit many time since with no problems.

 

Well, it is a condition of the Green Card that you don't live outside the US for longer than 6 months (I think- but it could be a year) without telling them in writing that you plan to. I once got in a lot of hassle before I became a citizen with that, having lived in Switzerland for a year without bothering to notify them...... So, there's that.
However, they aren't exactly beacons of practical sense in the Dept of HS or the old INS.....
I played the didn't read the small print guy - and they gave me a rap on the pseudo-knuckles and told me not to do it again.....

The trick is to fly in from a country that doesn't have US Immigration. I flew from Zurich and hence hit immigration in SF, but if I had been coming from Dublin (which I almost did) I would have missed my flight while Immigration there dithered. That's something worth knowing when it comes to dealing with US Immigration.

 

Colbert discovered something fascinating this week.....
Stunning the entire human race, Trump came up with an actual truth (for once)...
there are 4 trillion dollar companies in the US
Microsoft
Apple
Google
Amazon
an anagram for MAGA.... (which we all know he is doing )

Colbert pointed out that Donald Trump is an anagram for
Plod Turd Man....

 

The average middle class american probably isn;'t struggling to put food on the table and pay the utility bills. But it hadn't really gotten to that point for most of them anyway. But they aren't saving like they used to and there's a lot of credit card debt. But the line below the middle middle class, that which encompasses the lower middle class and working class - these are the demographics that require government intervention in the shape of the provision of services and safety nets.
Nothing that Trump does is likely to help this demographic. Sure, he'll finagle open a coal mine here and there.... how long is that going to last? It's like letting go of your walking stick, to pick up a gun and shoot yourself in the other foot......

 

I love the way he has been trying to associate himself lately with Abe Lincoln, or "Honest Abe" as brother in honesty and tied for #1 in the Guinness Book of Records for Honesty, Donnie L'Orange titles him.....

If Abraham Lincoln or Jesus Christ were to be somehow reconstituted alive and find themselves in any form of recognizable association with Donald Trump they would both immediately self-immolate.....

 

same kind of clarity I expect from a play by Sophocles, which is over 2000 years older......

 

No. It would not be an impeachable offence.
It would, however, be absolutely wrong. Wrong along the same kind of moral lines as say, raping Hellen Keller. Now Do You think the senate would realize that and tell him so? They are supposed to be senators.... not sycophants.....?? Sure, he has the right to pardon people, for what reasonable politicans would consider reasonably pardonable situations. .... Roger Stone DOES NOT qualify. The Presidential Pardon was not meant for presidential friends.

You should listen to yourself with some of this stuff. The problem with your arguments (and generally with what passes for argument on Fox News ) are that they are ill-defined rantings... take this stuff....

Why would it kill it? There's no reason to believe that. Here another fact: It has never killed it in any other first world country where it's ever been tried. Socialism (as government policy - not as institutional fiat (that's communism, btw - and it does seem to be a problem that many americans on the right cannot learn the difference between the two definitions) has worked very well in over a dozen wealthy educated countries when it has been instantiated as policy, and the governments have left the subsequent governments with the right to dismantle it as they wished. FFS man, Margaret Thatcher's entire schtick was the dismantling of socialist policy. If socialism is so dangerous to those free-folk who disagree with it, how come it wasn't a menace to Thatcher?? How come it didn;t use its power to stop her? I'll tell you why - because the real world isn't some insipid Ayn Randian novel where the idiot proletariat are always changed horrifically and irrevocably by any-handing to them of state benefits to alleviate misery.
Socialism is not inherently bad.
Francois Mitterand was socilaist president of France for 14 years, and their world did not end. It was just as up and down as it was under his pre-decessor Giscard D'estaing and his successor Jacques Chirac......
The only thing that changed was that poor people got better services in this period in France than they did under Thatcher or Reagan.

To hear people (partiucularly poor americans) talk the utter foolishness that Bernie Saunders would somehow be "worse than Trump" because of a willingness to instiutute policy that would actually benefit the poor by spending money on their needs, as opposed to wasting it on ridiculous tax breaks for lobbyist defined uber-wealthy interests is to be shown how easy it is to con people with hoopla and cant.....

 

It’s a year and you can file for a simple extension for another year. I’ve done it and so had Jenny. She just met the wrong arsehole.

 

I know, but you are supposed to advise them in advance (initially) not wait the year and then start. Not that I'm saying it should be such a big deal. But these governmental organizations love to apply their rules ... irrespective of the actual pointlessness of the said rule.....

Funny though, tossing them her Green Card. A chip(ess) off the old block!

 

EDIT the underlined additional bit(for clarity)to my post above:

It is NOT A CONSPIRACY when people state openly in public that the actions of a particular type of person will conceivably lead to him acting in a particular, mentally connected way. It is a theory, but not a conspiracy theory. However, essentially truthful things like theories, don;t possess the bad connotations of "conspiracy theory"

(for anyone who cares)