Of course they do. That's what lobbying is.

The Democrats should pick the least repulsive candidate for the position in the SCOTUS, and start heavily lobbying against him/her. Knowing Trump, he'd swallow that, hook, line and sinker, and would make it absolutely sure that particular candidate would be appointed.

Pruitt's gone.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/ ... ief-695291

I've lost count of how many big exits this makes now for this administration.

Also, how many rallies has Trump had at this point of his presidency?

He totally should pick me for the EPA. I'll just pretend I'm totally in favor of dumping toxic waste into public water supply, that (for example) the people drinking lead tainted water in Flint Michigan "Deserved it" and that I hate clean air and water- and then it will be a slam dunk nomination.

Or, come to think of it, I can always apply for the Supreme court- I'll just say I'm an open admirer of Stalin, Kim Jong Un, and Pol Pot and believe in unchecked executive power, that I think the Bill of Rights ought to be abolished (except for the second amendment of course) and that big corporations can never have too much power. If I put that on my resume, he'll nominate me for sure!

Ugh, I'm not surprised to see something like that from Steve King. That man is easily one of the most odious figures in Congress, an outright racist and an idiot. This is the kind of person who kept a Confederate flag on his desk even though the state he represents not only wasn't in the Confederacy but contributed a greater percent of its population to the union army than any other state. Unfortunately, that's apparently exactly the sort of guy the people of the Iowa 4th want, since they keep voting him back into office.

Yeah, this is a long-time coming. I read that supposedly the reason Trump kept Pruitt around so long was that he could fire Mueller if Trump could've gotten Sessions to resign. Something along those lines. Hard to say.

The thing about Pruitt is that he makes no sense as a human being. He's literally a Captain Planet villain. He wants to do evil to the planet just for the sake of doing evil to the planet, with no apparent benefit to himself. What a baffling creature he is. Also, he claims it's "God's providence" that Trump is President. So that's another strike against god. Bad enough when he murdered the whole planet in a flood, but making Trump president is really going too far. Also, god's providence is bafflingly stupid. That means it was also his providence for Trump to be under investigation the whole time and for Pruitt to have to resign under a cloud of controversy and corruption.

Trump is starting a de-naturalization task force to look for naturalized citizens who "lied" during their naturalization process, the end goal being to deport them. The administration thinks it will be able to deport unspecified thousands in this manner.

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/04/62598091 ... -to-get-it


Something not raised in this article: this will likely cost millions and millions of dollars to deport a few thousand. In all likelihood, the government will be spending more per person to deport them than it would per person on standard government expenditures like social security or medicare (and of course, most immigrants are a net gain to the economy, not baggage).


Also, Melania's immigration paperwork was incorrect, so clearly she needs to be deported amiright

Well, considering the fact that the Anglican Church was founded just to facilitate getting rid of an unwanted wife, this whole charade is not something never seen before in resolving family issues...

Brett Kavanaugh is Trump's second SCOTUS pick.

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/judge ... 7-09-live/

A conservative, vanilla choice. Some bullet points on his views:

And this right here is why I don't want him to be judge, comparing internet to cable.

Kavanaugh doesn't believe in the idea that a sitting President can be indicted. The writing is clearly on the walls with this choice.

Are you guys prepared for the possibility of Trump declaring a US withdrawal from NATO?



In his defense, that view is well within mainstream jurisprudence. Obviously there's differing viewpoints but the "sitting presidents cannot be indicted" argument is widespread, generally regarded as well-founded, and cuts across party lines.

Not a fan of Kavanaugh's support for warrantless surveillance of phone communications as outlined here:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... n-question

The real MAGA = Monitored by American Government, Always.

The notion that he tends to uphold court precedent is about the only real positive we have here, but there's a lot of bullshit about this man. It's fucked up that Trump should be allowed to appoint a supreme court judge while actively under investigation himself. I seriously do not understand how Republicans have fallen so far where they are literally "anything Trump says is fine."

The United States is about to be left with no allies but fucking Russia. Russia barely qualifies as an ally. Trump makes this all about money, and he doesn't even get that part right. He doesn't understand freedom, alliances, or politics. He's Putin's best puppet.




European Council President Donald Tusk gave a speech reminding Trump to work with our allies, because we "don't have many left." He's running this country like Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il.

Also, this one flew a bit under the radar, but anti-science Trump decided to bully Ecuador over--get ready--breast feeding.



Trump is every stereotype of the shitty, evil businessman that defined 80's white collar bad guys in movies, TV shows, and fucking Captain Planet. He's so damaging to capitalism, he's going to turn people into angry, misguided socialists.

I'm not ripping on socialism, here. Only noting that the thing his ilk hate is exactly what he is going to be creating by destroying capitalism and democracy.

I thought Trump brought up a fairly logical point in that USA invests the most in NATO by a pretty absurd margin... keeping in mind that:

-NATO’s unspoken and only real purpose in current year is to apply pressure to Russia
-Germany wants to build a pipeline that will serve to make the EU even more dependent on Russian energy

At this point, we should be constructively criticizing the long term plans of Germany enabling their own dependence on a supposed foe, or we should be discussing whether NATO even needs to exist anymore. As it stands, NATO is a giant resource hog of American money for the benefit of freeloader nations that are funding the nation we’re defending them against. That needs to change.

Can we also talk about military spending being a giant (aka the biggest) resource hog of American money too or is that off the table

That’s a bit of a side topic, but by the numbers, the biggest resource hogs of federal spending are Medicare, Medicaid, and social security. I’d be down to cut military spending, though.

Let's be real about the SCOTUS, they're using the Constitution as a weapon against us, for the elite. Kavanaugh is doing just that.

Fairly logical? Come on. You would have to have an extremely severe case of Trump derangement syndrome if you were a US citizen and did not side with Trump on this issue.

FTFY
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/11/62813718 ... o-spending

When you've invested a lot of emotional and intellectual energy into believing in Trump, you gotta grasp for these kinds of "victories" whenever possible.

...or it could just be cognitive dissonance and you believe every single thing he does is wrong innately.

EU wants NATO.
NATO only serves to protect EU from Russia.
EU expends very little of their tax revenue on NATO.
US expends a lot.
Germany is making long term plans to secure energy needs for the EU from the exact same country they claim to want protection from.

Where is the logic in believing Trump is wrong here? Because the only alternatives I can conceive is that it’s somehow justified that USA pays the most money for THEIR defensive desires, or that NATO is outright nonessential. Elucidate me on your thought process because I genuinely don’t understand.

That's been a longtime problem with most international institutions like NATO, and the UN, and the WTO and so on. The US contributes the most, since it was the wealthiest post-war state, and those organizations were originally meant to prop up its international interests and hegemony. The US doesn't have to provide most of the funding, as other countries would step up now if necessary to maintain those institutions, but most countries don't see a reason to do so, so long as the US wants to keep being their policeman. It's the price the US pays for having the influence it has internationally. By forcing other countries to step up, and essentially making itself just another "equal" voice, the US risks losing its ability to control international politics (rightly or wrongly). If that's the world the US wants, so be it, but don't be surprised if the US loses its ability to use soft power to its advantage. Other countries will replace it there. Trump doesn't do the US any long-term good by taking the approach he has been taking to these issues, and I'm afraid the US is making itself out to be an international social pariah. Say goodbye to the international system as created and guided by the US. Say goodbye to the US mattering to anyone else except as another rogue nuclear state.

Derigin put it better than I would have. The US has effectively used the institutions of the existing international order to carry out its will and the cost has been paying more than other member states in those institutions. If you believe in the whole beneficent empire, american century nonsense, this is a great return on investment. Trump doesn't see this and just assumes that because the US is putting more than others into keeping this system working the way it has been, that it's getting a raw deal. The kind of a mistake a simpleton would make.

Fun fact: Article 5 of NATO ensures collective defense, which means that if a NATO member is attacked, fellow NATO members are sworn to come to their aid.

Another fun fact: the only time in NATO history that this was invoked, was by... the USA, after 9/11.

I do value your insight, Derigin. I think you’d probably make an excellent politician, but unfortunately the job seems to attract almost nothing but narcissistic sociopaths.

The only point Trump raised that wasn't riddled with errors and falsehoods was the Russia-Germany gas project. There's very little sense in that, especially since Russia regularly threatens to cut off supplies to neighbors it doesn't like and semi-regularly follows through on it. Germany's economic and national security hands are working at cross-purposes.


Also, fuck Schröder.

As I was saying, https://www.politico.eu/article/trump-t ... t-of-nato/

Inductive and intention fallacies are baby-tier rhetoric foibles. I don't think anyone here thinks that pulling out of NATO is bad because Trump said so, just as I don't think anyone here thought pulling out of TPP was bad because, Trump. It's fascinating you'd draw that conclusion though.

I apologize if my sarcasm wasn't more clear. That was in response to something John said. Looking back, I have to assume his comment was actually directed toward Von Cichlid, though, and not myself.

We're talking about Donald Trump here.

The man scammed banks out of billions of dollars lost in failed casinos.
After banks collectively told him he was worthless, he started conning regular people out of their money with his crooked Trump University.
He has a history of racism.
He has a history of sexual harassment and abuse.
He created concentration camps for children and had his face painted on the wall of at least one of them.
He's taking health care away from people left and right.
He's screwing over the people who voted for him by taking their health care, jobs, and freedoms.
He's weakening the military by attempting to kick out trans people and immigrant soldiers.
He sold this country out to the Russians.
He's regularly feuding with America's long-term allies while getting cozy with literal dictators and sycophant like Putin and Duterte.
He's deliberately forwarding policies and people to turn the US into a theocracy.
He's dragging rights for women backwards.
He encourages and inspires violence against literally anyone who isn't a white, wealthy, evangelical male.
Do I really need to go on?

It's not cognitive dissonance that everything he does is wrong--literally everything he does is innately fucking wrong, evil, or idiotic. There isn't a single good thing about him. Cognitive dissonance is believing he might actually do something right when fucking reality is giving you this much evidence that he will never, ever do the right fucking thing.

Go on... /popcorn

Gonna have to disagree with you here, one day he will, in the words of Stewie Griffin, "not be alive anymore"

I almost added a comment along those very lines. But he's taking too long even doing that. And if he dies in office, he even fucked that by leaving us with Mike "I hate gays to hide my gayness and also for Jesus" Pence.

Do you honestly want me to go bullet by bullet and correct/rationalize/debunk/agree with each one? Because while ***I don’t agree*** with a lot of things Trump has done, many of your points are just flat out non-truths. “Kicking people off of healthcare,” for example, is false. The only thing that changed is that people aren’t forced to pay a regressive tax if they CHOOSE not to enroll in the program. You make it sound like he’s Lex Luther throwing orphans off of a balcony.

Long story short (assuming I don’t have to address most of these), I don’t think Trump is an evil dude with evil intentions. Perhaps an overly ambitious person without the intellect to match his ambitions, but certainly not some supervillain KKK Grand Wizard setting out to “Deus vult” and retake the holy land.

Honestly, he just seems like a guy who views himself as a movie director, and the world is his stage.

One of the worst aspects about Trump (and his family, really) is that they just don't care. He has no real reason to care if anything he actually says he believes in actually ends up happening. He also has no reason to care about the ramifications of his actions, or inaction. He doesn't care about the protests or really his supporters - none of it. The only thing he cares about is whether he puts on a good show, and that he feels it made him look good. And get enough people around him saying "Yes, sir, you looked great!" and he'll end up feeling like even the worst things he could possibly do look amazing. He'll create drama and conflict, and then come in and save the day. He wont actually save anything, but at least he thinks he looked great doing it.

It's really hard for normal, average people - especially people genuinely interested in politics from all walks of life - to really grapple with that. At the end of the day, he has no vested interest in any of it. I agree with capeda in saying that the man isn't evil for the sake of being evil. His presidency isn't a moral or ethical thing to him. It's simply a show, and we're his cast members and crew. I don't think anyone really wants to recognize that, because, well, it makes everything seem so shallow. People will suffer, people will go through shit in their lives, and the US as a whole will end up being worse off... all because of a person who really only cares about his own personal perception. We can ridicule him all we want, and the system that created him, but the man is so up his own narcissistic ass that none of it could ever reach him, and the system itself keeps it that way. He wont be punished for any of this, by the way. Whether he retires, or loses the next election, he'll go off and live the rest of his life in the comfort he's always known. It's rare that people like him ever get any comeuppance.

It's a pretty bleak reality we live in right now.

I admit, once I realized this I stopped really having any interest in being vocal about him. The best we can hope for at this stage is to weather the storm and hope that the clean-up from Hurricane Donald is not only possible, but also manageable. And, that once it's all said and done, we hope it doesn't happen again, or at least take steps to avoid it happening again. Though I guess that'll be up to the American people to decide.

EDIT: I should add that people with nefarious, perhaps 'evil' intentions realized all of this and took advantage of it. The religious right, for instance, recognized that the only way they'd get anything done is if they had power, and that (for them) being the angel on the shoulder of the devil was better than no power at all. Trump keeps right-wing religious folks around, not because he has any vested interest in them or even particularly agrees with them, but because they willingly fuel his ego and make him feel good about himself. Putin, whose intentions are to undermine the West and American institutions, appears to have supported Trump not because they're buddies of any sort, but because he recognized the potential for Trump to really screw shit up to his advantage. I'd also say North Korea, Israel and other states have done the same, recognizing ways of using Trump to their advantage. He's the perfect President for others to manipulate. He's the perfect President if you really, really want to undermine what America stood for in the 20th century.

And this makes it immoral and unethical.