A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Quote:
I have asked SIX...SIGNY
I'm sure you meant Second.-SIX
Oh dear! :embarrassed: Yes, I meant SECOND. Sorry about that! Was in a hurry, had to meet with a contractor. A thousand apologies!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Not voting for the GOP is a vote to impeach Trump, says Trump:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
I have asked SIX...SIGNY
I'm sure you meant Second.
Oh dear! :embarrassed: Yes, I meant SECOND. Sorry about that! Was in a hurry, had to meet with a contractor. A thousand apologies!
“Trump has demonstrated his mastery of winning the news every day,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) said. “No matter what it is that’s going on in our country or the world, he wants to be the subject of the news, and he has taken at times dramatic, sometimes alarming, often unsettling steps to ensure that he is what we’re talking about, for better or worse, almost every day.”
The one-two punch of the Woodward book and anonymous Times column inspired Trump to take the extraordinary step of publicly defending his very mental capacity.
“I can’t get up and talk in front of a crowd, many times without notes, for an hour and 25 minutes and get the biggest crowds in the history of politics . . . you don’t get up and do that because you don’t know how to think or talk,” Trump told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One. “You can only do that if you’re at a very, very high level. I’m highly educated and always did well — always did well — no matter what I did.”
The night before, at a campaign rally in Billings, Mont., Trump boiled the Democratic campaign agenda down to a single word: Impeach. The president’s oversimplification placed himself at the heart of the campaign, with Trump offering up his political future as a central reason to vote Republican.
“They like to use the impeach word. ‘Impeach Trump,’ ” he said. “I say, ‘How do you impeach somebody that’s doing a great job that hasn’t done anything wrong?’ . . . If it does happen, it’s your fault, because you didn’t go out to vote.”
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-colors-the-fall-campaign-landsca
pe-‘he’s-been-the-only-thing-that-matters’/ar-BBN3Jsu?ocid=spartanntp
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
I have asked SIX...SIGNY
I'm sure you meant Second.
Oh dear! :embarrassed: Yes, I meant SECOND. Sorry about that! Was in a hurry, had to meet with a contractor. A thousand apologies!
No worries. I knew what you meant.
I was really just using that as a means to bump the thread and see if Second wanted to play another game of chess, which apparently he has no interest in doing.
Can't say I blame him. ;)
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro put it most succinctly: “Obama lecturing us is LITERALLY how you got Trump.”
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I was really just using that as a means to bump the thread and see if Second wanted to play another game of chess, which apparently he has no interest in doing.
Can't say I blame him. ;)
You see this on the right a lot, and I’ve come to think it the most revealing argument in conservative politics right now. It’s a truth the right refuses to follow to its obvious conclusions.
Let’s state the obvious, and state it neutrally: Republican voters responded to the eight years of Obama’s presidency by turning to Trump. The question is why.
Obama blames demographic and technological shifts that scrambled our economic, social, religious, and civic institutions. Shapiro blames an emotional reaction to the first black president.
These answers omit the information the other includes. Obama left himself out of his explanation. Shapiro left everything except Obama out. But combine them and you get something convincing: Donald Trump capitalized on fears triggered by demographic, technological, economic, social, religious, and civic change, and nothing represented or activated those fears as powerfully as Obama himself.
Political scientist Michael Tesler found that the most racially resentful Americans were the most economically pessimistic before the 2016 election and the most economically optimistic after it. Why?
The term “white fragility” is overused in politics right now, but it is relevant here: Republican voters enthusiastically supported the candidate who promised to turn back the demographic clock.
Trump, for all his flaws, ran a campaign based on clear positions and aspirations. He promised to build a wall; he said that our country was being weakened by louche**, violent, parasitic immigrants; he said Obama was an illegitimate president with a forged birth certificate; he vowed to stop Muslims from traveling to the country; and in every speech, at every turn, he promised to turn back the clock, to make America great again.
Obama is a symbol of a changing America, of white America’s loss of power. That perception wasn’t incorrect: In his 2012 reelection campaign, Obama won only 39 percent of the white vote. A few decades ago, the multiracial Obama coalition couldn’t drive American politics; by 2012, it could.
For all Shapiro’s focus on Obama’s “lecturing,” the reality is that Obama’s presidency was framed in the most threatening possible terms in 2009. Rush Limbaugh, whom Shapiro has honored as “one of the founders of the modern conservative movement,” told his millions of listeners:
“How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people, or even saying you do, or that they’re not good, or whatever. Make white people the new oppressed minority, and they are going along with it, because they’re shutting up. They’re moving to the back of the bus. They’re saying I can’t use that drinking fountain, okay. I can’t use that restroom, okay. That’s the modern day Republican Party, the equivalent of the Old South, the new oppressed minority.”
On its face, this is laughable. But Limbaugh’s audience wasn’t laughing. They were listening. And it wasn’t just politics they were reacting to. The changes that led to Obama’s presidency are everywhere in our culture. We live in an America where television programs, commercials, and movies are trying to represent a browner country; where Black Panther is a celebrated cultural event and #OscarsSoWhite is a nationally known hashtag; where Colin Kaepernick is leading Nike ads and pressing 1 for English is commonplace.
So yes, all of this led to Trump. Where Obama and Shapiro differ sharply in their explanation is in the attribution of blame. Obama blames Trump and conservative media for demagogically preying on Americans’ fears and anxieties. Shapiro blames Obama for adopting a lecturing tone that alienated a critical mass of Americans.
More at www.vox.com/p
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
** (For 6ix, who knows not of dictionaries: louche is defined as disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way. "the louche world of the theater")
You're still on that, son?
I've already schooled you in your inability to use a dictionary properly. Why are you pretending that that didn't just happen?
How very louche of you.
(by Mirriam Webster's one and only definition of the word: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/louche, which says nothing about being rakish or appealing, btw.)
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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The Senate is poised to confirm Judge Kavanaugh, who will decide, in the foreseeable future, whether Trump is above the law. The president’s claimed immunity from any investigation, or suit, or any legal consequences — claims Trump proffers regularly — will be decided by a justice who has already made clear in his writings and speeches that at least in principle he supports such claims. The nominee refuses to discuss this possibility, and that is his prerogative. But senators are not required by any ethical rules to pretend that this scenario may not ever happen. They are, in fact, obligated by their oaths of office to at least imagine that it will.
Judge Kavanaugh has expressed more extreme views of presidential power than any Supreme Court nominee in our history. Through his long career, his writings and speeches have shown that he does not believe the president can be forced to comply with a subpoena. He does not believe the president can be subjected to criminal or civil proceedings while in office. And he is among the most extreme proponents of the “unitary executive” — the theory that the president has total power to control the entire executive branch, which would include his ability to fire his prosecutors, obstruct justice, and more — on any level of the federal bench.
It is folly to believe that the judge’s extreme executive-power beliefs were lost on the president when Kavanaugh — who was not even under consideration for the seat filled by Justice Gorsuch — was anointed as the nominee. The president, after all, is now subject to multiple criminal investigations and civil lawsuits. It is hardly unimaginable that Donald Trump believed he could protect himself by nominating a justice who believes in extraordinarily broad presidential power. Nor does one have to reach far to imagine these issues being discussed privately with Judge Kavanaugh before he was selected. While he declined to discuss it in his hearings, one of his close friends works for the law firm that once represented Trump on these issues.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/how-brett-kavanaughs-confi
rmation-allows-corker-flake-and-sasse-to-constrain-trump.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Trump administration to take tough stance against International Criminal Court, threatening sanctions against ICC judges if they proceed with an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Americans in Afghanistan. The court’s aim is to bring to justice the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, is to make the announcement in a midday speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative group, in Washington. It will be his first major address since joining the Trump White House.
Bolton’s draft speech says the Trump administration “will fight back” if the ICC proceeds with opening an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by U.S. service members and intelligence professionals during the war in Afghanistan.
If such an inquiry goes ahead, the Trump administration will consider banning judges and prosecutors from entering the United States, put sanctions on any funds they have in the U.S. financial system and prosecute them in American courts.
“We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us,” says Bolton’s draft text.
Because of Republicans in the Senate, the United States never ratified the Rome treaty that established the ICC in 2002. President George W. Bush was opposed to the court, but he tortured prisoners, so what else would you expect? Bush’s successor, President Barack Obama, took some steps to cooperate with ICC.
www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-icc/trump-administration-to-take-
tough-stance-against-international-criminal-court-idUSKCN1LQ076
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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According to Trump there is no such thing as the greenhouse gas effect, also global warming does not exist. It follows that the “Trump Administration Wants to Make It Easier to Release Methane Into Air”
The Trump administration, taking its third major step this year to roll back federal efforts to fight climate change, is preparing to make it significantly easier for energy companies to release methane into the atmosphere.
Methane, which is among the most powerful greenhouse gases, routinely leaks from oil and gas wells, and energy companies have long said that the rules requiring them to test for emissions were costly and burdensome.
The Environmental Protection Agency, perhaps as soon as this week, plans to make public a proposal to weaken an Obama-era requirement that companies monitor and repair methane leaks.
The new rules follow two regulatory rollbacks this year that, taken together, represent the foundation of the United States’ effort to rein in global warming. In July, the E.P.A. proposed weakening a rule on carbon dioxide pollution from vehicle tailpipes. And in August, the agency proposed replacing the rule on carbon dioxide pollution from coal-fired power plants with a weaker one that would allow far more global-warming emissions to flow unchecked from the nation’s smokestacks.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/climate/methane-emissions-epa.html
Stephen Hawking feared Donald Trump's policies on global warming could endanger the planet and make global warming irreversible. He said, "Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it's one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children." – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Politics
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
According to Trump there is no such thing as the greenhouse gas effect, also global warming does not exist. It follows that the “Trump Administration Wants to Make It Easier to Release Methane Into Air”
The Trump administration, taking its third major step this year to roll back federal efforts to fight climate change, is preparing to make it significantly easier for energy companies to release methane into the atmosphere.
Methane, which is among the most powerful greenhouse gases, routinely leaks from oil and gas wells, and energy companies have long said that the rules requiring them to test for emissions were costly and burdensome.
The Environmental Protection Agency, perhaps as soon as this week, plans to make public a proposal to weaken an Obama-era requirement that companies monitor and repair methane leaks.
The new rules follow two regulatory rollbacks this year that, taken together, represent the foundation of the United States’ effort to rein in global warming. In July, the E.P.A. proposed weakening a rule on carbon dioxide pollution from vehicle tailpipes. And in August, the agency proposed replacing the rule on carbon dioxide pollution from coal-fired power plants with a weaker one that would allow far more global-warming emissions to flow unchecked from the nation’s smokestacks.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/climate/methane-emissions-epa.html
Stephen Hawking feared Donald Trump's policies on global warming could endanger the planet and make global warming irreversible. He said, "Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it's one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children." – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Politics
I can't think of a single thing he's done that's helpful for this country - in fact, I can't think of anything he's done that isn't harmful for this country.
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GOP Senator Ted Cruz rose to fame for his anti-establishment political theater in Washington. This was the senator who read Green Eggs and Ham to shut down the government over Obamacare and repeatedly trashed his own party as part of his political strategy.
When GOP political fund-raiser Mulvaney told donors that “likability” could be an issue in the race to be reelected Senator from Texas, it’s because not too long ago, Cruz had a reputation for being the worst.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) once joked that if you “killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” Former Republican House Speaker John Boehner called him a “miserable son of a bitch.”
That persona propelled Cruz to the national stage with a presidential bid that was supposed to take the I’ll-be-an-asshole-for-America mantra all the way to the White House. Then Trump happened, and beat Cruz at his own game.
As Al Weaver detailed in the Washington Examiner earlier this summer, in the age of Trump, Cruz’s style has been much more muted. The most generous Republican observers say he’s been playing inside the state instead of on the national stage. More critical observers would say he’s unable to rival Trump’s antics.
More at www.vox.com/2018/9/12/17841716/ted-cruz-beto-orourke-senate-midterm
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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