Disagreeing with the policies and beliefs of POTUS does not mean you hate America - it means you disagree with his policies and beliefs, which is something you have an absolute Constitutional right to do. Our allegiance is not to the man who currently holds the office - it is to the country and the Constitution. There's no law that says we have to agree with him.
"America - Love It or Leave It" was a catch-phrase during the Vietnam War era. It makes as little sense now as it did then. Trump's sycophants are desperately trying to reframe his racist remarks about the four Congresswomen - suggesting that they "go back and fix the problems where they came from before telling us how to run our country" - as being about policy rather than race, but the American public is not that stupid.
First of all, three of them were born here, and the fourth is naturalized. Second, if they hated this country, why did they run for office? Third, "telling us how to run the country" is exactly what they were elected to do - they weren't elected to sit there and rubber-stamp what the Congressional leaders or POTUS wanted to do. They were elected because their constituents believed in their message, and their constituents expect them to start delivering on it.
AOC primaried a sitting Rep who had been there for about 20 years, was high in House leadership and was so sure he had the seat locked up that he didn't even show up for a debate with her, sending a surrogate instead. She crushed him in the primary -her message resonates with her constituents.
Finally, Trump has been lying about what he claims they've said. Ilhan Omar never praised Al Qaida, AOC never said that America was garbage, yet this is the snake oil Trump is trying to sell and his MAGAts are buying it. Meanwhile, someone on MSNBC this morning read off a LONG list of Trump's tweets since 2014 - not fake news, they actually exist - in which he talked about how bad the country was and called Obama's policies garbage - the exact same thing he is accusing the Congresswomen of doing.
Donald Trump proved today that he is both a racist and a white supremacist.
In a tweet this morning, he suggested that the four Progressive female Dems should "go back and fix the problems in their own country" before trying to fix ours.
All four are American citizens of color. Three of the four were born here - they have no country to "go back" to. The fourth is a Somali immigrant who came here legally and became a naturalized citizen at the age of 17. All four were elected to office by popular vote of their constituents - something Trump cannot claim. For him to suggest that they should leave the country is just mind-boggling.
For years, American citizens who are not Caucasian have been told they should just go back to where they came from - blacks, Asians, Latinos - anyone who is not white. Just go back where you came from and get out of OUR country, even when where they came from is RIGHT HERE, in America.
And now we have President Trump telling non-white members of Congress that we don't want or need you here, so go back to where you came from.
So, MAGAts - has it finally come down to this? Does Make America Great Again really mean Make America White Again? Is that what you signed up for when you put on that stupid hat? If so, you're a white supremacist and a racist. Own it and deal with it.
The video below is real - it's an episode from a 1958 TV show called "Trackdown". A conman comes into a Texas town and convinces residents that the town is about to be destroyed and that only he can save them, and he will do it by building a wall around the town. The "wall" turns out to be a bunch of parasols with special abilities that will repel the rain of meteorites that will destroy the town.
Here's the weird part - the conman's name is Trump. The episode runs about 20 minutes.
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced the other day that the US is running out of money sooner than expected and that we might have to raise the debt limit before September.
Wow. Who would have thought that was possible? I mean, you cut revenue and increase expenses, and you're surprised that the debt has increased? This moron used to run a bank - he couldn't see this coming?
This is all the evidence you need to prove that the big tax cut - Trump's only major legislative victory so far - did NOT deliver what we were promised it would deliver. It did not trickle down to the middle class and give them more money to spend so that tax revenues would increase - it did not increase revenue, because the concept is flawed and has never worked since Reagan first tried it. What it has done is balloon our deficit to almost a trillion dollars.
And just to be clear - the debt limit is not a limit on what we can spend - it's a limit on what we can pay for interest on the money we've already spent. Not raising the debt limit is the equivalent of telling your credit card company you won't pay the bill anymore - with similar results, except more serious. Like crashing our economy...
This whole "trickle-down" theory is based on the work of Arthur Laffer, an economist who created what's known as the Laffer Curve, a model that projects revenue vs. tax rates. A lot of other economists disputed this theory, but the Reagan administration seized on it - and it didn't work. Bush 2 tried the same thing, and it still didn't work. Third time is not the charm - doing it again just got the country deeper in the hole, just as it had the last two times.
Laffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year, which baffled some people. What was more baffling was that Trump, in his remarks during the presentation, said that he studied the Laffer Curve as a student at Wharton.
Trump graduated six years before Laffer created his theory and his curve...
Thought JP could use a topic different than Trump or AOC for a change.
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Personally, I think that just because a person or a group has a different view on a specific topic or another group doesn't, in and of itself, make them a "hate group". That is far different than if a person or a group promotes violence against a person or another group (e.g. ISIS, Antifa, etc.)
Based on the things Stossel brings up, I think I would have to agree with him.
Full copy of the article w/o link --want everyone to have a laugh break without thinking "that's a ... left/right wing site. I'm out of here"
"Pat Sajak Takes Out Kimmel And Other Leftist Celebrities With One Hilarious Tweet" By Hank Berrien October 4, 2017
Pat Sajak, the host of Wheel of Fortune and a very funny man, issued a tweet in the wake of the plethora of uninformed opinions offered by self-important celebrities (Need we mention Jimmy Kimmel?) in response to the Las Vegas massacre:
OK, let me explain this again: We're celebs. We're wiser & more empathetic than you. We are famous. Please take our opinions more seriously. Pat Sajak (@patsajak) October 4, 2017
This is not the first time Sajak, a political conservative, has lanced the celebrity bubble of leftism that pervades Hollywood; his resume should have been a warning to leftists that his wit would target them. Sajak is an external director for the conservative publishing house Eagle Publishing, serves on the Board of Trustees at Hillsdale College and has served on the Board of Directors for the Claremont Institute.
Here are some other examples of Sajak pointedly targeting the Left:
Looking forward to next awards show/lecture. Pat Sajak (@patsajak) January 10, 2017
Nobody abhors violence more than Hollywood, and nobody does more to glorify it. Pat Sajak (@patsajak) January 12, 2017
I wonder if the celebrities who moved out of the country will return for the demonstrations? Pat Sajak (@patsajak) January 18, 2017
Unhappy about results of last week's People's Choice Awards. Thinking of breaking Starbucks windows & trashing limos. Pat Sajak (@patsajak) January 21, 2017
Changing the world one screamed obscenity at a time. Pat Sajak (@patsajak) January 23, 2017
"Alexa, turn on CNN. I want to hear the news." "You'll have to pick one or the other." Pat Sajak (@patsajak) July 7, 2017
Does anyone have thinner skins than the "tough" news media? Pat Sajak (@patsajak) January 13, 2017
Can anyone explain to me why the President's daughter thought she should insert herself into a conversation with world leaders?
She has zero foreign policy experience and the only thing she knows about foreign countries are which ones can manufacture her stuff the cheapest.
What was she doing at the G-20 in the first place and why did the American people have to pay the freight for her being there? And before you start accusing me of just being anti-Trump, please tell me what her qualifications are for dealing with other world leaders and American foreign policy. I'd really like to see them because as far as I know, she's as much an idiot in that area as her father. Please prove me wrong.
French media released the video of Ivanka inserting herself uninvited into a discussion for a reason - this is how the rest of the free world sees the Trump presidency. They're laughing at us - we allow an airhead to get involved in serious conversations rather than a seasoned diplomat, and we no longer have diplomats because Trump doesn't see a need to appoint them.
In what appears to have been a coordinated attack on Twitter, a number of Twitter accounts simultaneously sent out the same message alleging that Kamala Harris is not an American citizen and not eligible to run for President. Other trolls picked it up and started embellishing on it, and Don Jr retweeted it on his account before later deleting it.
Jacob Wohl, a notorious Internet troll and conspiracy nut, whose last crash and burn was a failed attempt to smear Robert Mueller for sexual harassment (the reporters at the "press conference" practically laughed him and his partner out of the room), fleshed out the conspiracy by adding new requirements for Presidential eligibility that reminds me of Orly Taitz and the Obama birther conspiracy that Trump picked up and ran with.
Orly Taitz is a lawyer who was a moving force behind the birther conspiracy who made wild, unsubstantiated claims about Obama. If I recall correctly, she's the one who came up with the eligibility requirements for the parents, which simply don't exist. Taitz filed multiple lawsuits challenging Obama's legitimacy as President, and they were ALL dismissed. At one point, she was sanctioned by a judge for frivolous lawsuits and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine. If you want to see what a real conspiracy theory nut job looks like, read her Wikipedia page:
According to Wohl, Harris is ineligible because her parents were immigrants and hadn't lived here for 5 years before she was born, and she was raised in Canada, so she's not a natural born citizen.
There are only three requirements listed in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution regarding Presidential eligibility:
- Natural born citizen, - at least 35 years old, - a resident of the US for 14 years
That's it - there's no residency requirement for the immigrant parents, and there's no requirement that you have to have been raised in the States.
Harris was born in Oakland, CA, to immigrant parents. According to the definition in effect since 1790 and borrowed from the English Common Law concept of "jus soli" - the right of the soil - that makes her a natural born citizen. Anyone born on American soil is considered a natural born citizen. Period. Full Stop. That concept of birthright is affirmed by the 14th Amendment.
That's the "birthright citizenship" that Steven Miller told Trump he should do away with, but it's just another thing the courts won't allow him to change by Executive Order - Presidents don't have the authority to amend the Constitution by fiat.
Harris was raised for a time in Canada but has lived here in the US at least since returning to go to college in CA in the '80s. She has been working in CA government since at least the '90s and is 54 years old.
She checks all the boxes, so she's eligible to run.
What's most disturbing was that this was a coordinated attack, and we don't know who is behind it. It's a sign of another disinformation campaign meant to influence the 2020 election. I am NOT laying the blame for it at the feet of the right-wing in general, but there are some radical right-wingers such as Jacob Wohl who have to be called out and exposed. I also have no doubt that there will be similar incidents from the radical left-wing. From what the Mueller report tells us, the Russians played both sides of disinformation during the 2016 campaign
Whether you're conservative, liberal, or somewhere in the middle, you have to be on the lookout for this kind of nonsense in the runup to 2020. Critical thinking is going to be so important. The radicals on both sides will create this stuff and spread it, but we - as those who not on the fringes - will have to be the adults in the room and call out and challenge the BS when we see it.
Donald Trump is upset that SCOTUS decided today that citizenship status could not be part of the 2020 census. Trump says it's ridiculous that the government cannot ask about citizenship, but that's not what the SCOTUS decision said - what they said was that the question on the census form was contrived and sent the case back to a lower court for a better explanation from the government for adding that question to the census. They can still ask the question, but if they want to ask it as part of the census, they need to have a legitimate reason for doing so.
This is how our system of government works - there are rules and guardrails to make sure that privacy is not violated. The census is not about WHO you are, it's about WHERE you are. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that suggests that citizenship is an issue - it's literally just a body count. Why do we need to know who is a citizen and who is not? That was never a consideration.
Trump now wants to delay the census indefinitely until the question can be decided. This is yet another example of him either not understanding or just ignoring the Constitution. The census HAS to happen in 2020 - it cannot be delayed until Trump gets what he wants, and the questionnaire HAS to be finalized this year in order to be distributed early next year and give census workers time to go door to door to contact those who didn't respond.
Should the census ask about citizenship? I don't think so - there's no requirement in the Constitution that we differentiate between citizens and non-citizens; the enumeration is supposed to be of everyone living here, without regard to citizenship (other than the 3/5 person a slave was worth, but we got rid of that...).
If undocumented individuals live here, they should be counted, because they're a person to whom services will be provided - whether you like it or not.
As an aside, I'm no longer going to refer to undocumented individuals as "illegal aliens" - we're ALL illegal aliens. This is not our land, we stole it from the aboriginals, and no matter how you try to spin it, it was never ours to populate and govern in the first place. The idea that WE - mostly the descendants of Europeans - can decide who can and cannot come here is bizarre. Worse than that, we're deciding whether indigenous people on our fake southern border - who lived there long before we stole the land - cannot come here either.
And as that photo of the father and daughter who died trying to cross the Rio Grande shows, people will risk their lives to get here to freedom. They're not the drug dealers or murderers or rapists of Trump's fevered mind - they're people who desperately want to find a better life. And we fail them by letting this happen.
The debates last night were probably the worst example I have seen of fake news. So, obviously scripted it was disgusting. I guess since we no longer have sitcoms on tv, those writers need a job, and are all working for NBC.
Nobody asked any biting questions of the candidates. All there was were softball questions promoting the socialistic agenda of the Democratic party.
Create a crisis and then resolve it. We've seen this reality show before.
Trump announced earlier this week that on Sunday, 6/23, ICE would begin raids that would ultimately result in the deportation of 1 million illegal immigrants. And then today, at the last minute, he announced that he was suspending that order so that Congress could have a chance to work out a deal on immigration.
This is just so much more Trumpian ca-ca. Create a crisis and then pretend to solve it.
First of all, deporting that many people is financially and logistically impossible. ICE and CBP are already stretched to the limits - there is no room to detain these people he wants to deport and there is no money allocated to pay for it. Trump apparently thinks that ICE can just grab these people and throw them out of the country. It doesn't work that way - they have to be detained until they can appear before a judge, even if they already have a final deportation order against them before they can be deported. ICE literally has nowhere to put them, so how could they carry out this order?
Although I know Trump doesn't believe in them, we have these things called laws in this country. Yes, we have laws against undocumented immigrants, but we also have laws about how to deal with them. Trump doesn't get to choose which ones we follow.
Second, these are families we're talking about, not violent criminals. For the most part, these are people who have been part of a community for years, have been paying taxes (even though they won't see the benefits), have raised a family of children who were born here and are American citizens by law. And now we rip those families apart? If we deport the parents, do we deport their children as well - children who are American citizens under the Constitution - or just leave them to fend for themselves?
Third, signaling what you're going to do before you do it is a really dumb idea - the people you're targeting are not going to be there when your thugs show up. Trump himself accused Obama of doing this - telegraphing what the US would do - and yet here he is doing the exact same thing.
I believe in strong immigration laws, but I also believe that we have to use common sense. If someone has entered the country illegally but has established him or herself as a member of the community - is working and contributing to the community - they deserve a chance. The dangerous ones are the criminals and gang members -that's where the deportation focus should be. But ICE doesn't go after those people because they're harder to find, so they go after the low-hanging fruit - the undocumented who are living here and obeying our laws. Are they here illegally? Yes. Should they be targeted ahead of violent criminals who are here illegally? No, but that's what Trump wants to do because it's easier and it pleases his base.
OK, so Iran shot down one of our dromes. Trump threatened to retaliate and an attack was planned for last night but was called off at the last minute.
Trump's initial explanation, via Twitter, was that he called it off 10 minutes before it was supposed to happen because he asked a general about casualties and was told that 150 might die. To his credit, he realized that 150 dead Iranians was not appropriate retribution for the loss of a single unmanned drone.
However, I have questions... while I have no personal knowledge of military operations, my understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that part of the mission planning is a discussion of potential casualties on both sides. If that's the case, how is it that the Commander-in-Chief - on a mission of this nature - was completely unaware of the potential casualties on the Iranian side until 10 minutes before the attack was to take place?
Trump also walked back his earlier statements about the aborted attacks and told NBC's Chuck Todd that he never authorized the attacks and that the planes were never in the air - well, which was true? His tweets about what happened or what he said to Chuck Todd?
Personally, I think this was just another Trump special - create a crisis, and then claim to have resolved the crisis you've created. He has done this so many times before, most notably on the border. Remember those caravans of immigrants and terrorists he told us were coming during the run up to the 2018 election? They vanished into thin air the day after the election. Only Trump's followers and Fox News believed they were real. The rest of us knew that the whole thing was BS.
Don the Con is going to keep doing this - create a crisis to take attention off bad news about himself and then solve it, and the suckers are going to continue buying it and telling themselves how great he is.
Trump says he's going to live-tweet the Democratic primary debates next week. Ask yourself this - who watching those debates is going to care about what he has to say? And who that cares about what he has to say is going to be watching those debates? He just has this pathological need to be in the spotlight. The sad thing is that some of the media that he calls "fake news" and the "enemy of the people"will give him the exposure he wants.
Spent much of today bemused, contemplating the reactions of Republicans -- especially some of the denizens of this forum -- if Barack Obama had said he would accept political dirt from a foreign government on his opponent, and might not even pass that interaction on to the FBI. I'll be equally bemused, I'm sure, watching the aforesaid denizens tapdance around Trump's comments.
Saw a disturbing article today about faked videos. In response to Facebook's refusal to take down the obviously faked videos of Nancy Pelosi, which were an amateur effort, someone posted a video on Instagram of Mark Zuckerberg that is what's called a "deep fake" - it's Zuckerberg's face and sounds like his voice and his lips appeared to be moving properly to say the words most of the time. but it's not real. You had to watch it REALLY closely to detect minor discrepancies, and unless you compare it with the actual original video (in this case, a video from CBS), for the most part, you can't tell the difference.
This means we're entering an age where we can't necessarily trust what we see unless we're really vigilant.
I'm going to try to embed the Zucckerg video below. Chris said he was having problems with that, so if it doesn't work I'll add a message with a link.
There was also a reference in the article about another deep fake that was done just for fun - comedian Bill Haser of SNL dad an impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his face morphs into Arnold's. The software to do this is available free on the Internet. Again, trying to embed and if that fails the link to this one will be the following message.
Trump looked like a sack of Idaho potatoes in that ill-fitting disaster of a tuxedo at the Buckingham Palace dinner. Or was it more like a sack of rocks? Oh, that's right, those would be in his head. I can't believe Melania let him out of the hotel room looking like that.
I went just in time last year and it was lovely but I guess our government is worried that their government is going to brainwash us in the couple of days that we are there??? or maybe we are going to be molested???? not sure what the reason is that the US has closed off the port. Guess we will hear more soon.
