A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, I wouldn't give you even a dollar.
I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. Let's call it even.
Quote:
You better pray that in a few years from now Elizabeth Warren eventually succeeds over the objections of every GOP Senator and Trump. That is your only hope for more dollars.
Pocahotmess is a laughing stock. I don't need any dollars. She can use them for another DNA test, or whatever that liar wants to do with them.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:But Trump would piss on those fighting for him. Trump got tired of his Kurdish partners in Syria:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, I wouldn't give you even a dollar.
I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. Let's call it even.
The U.S. military is preparing to withdraw its forces from Syria, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that marks an abrupt reversal of the American military strategy in the Middle East.
The move follows a call last week between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has threatened to launch an assault on America’s Kurdish partners in Syria. Mr. Erdogan steadfastly opposed the American partnership with Kurdish forces in Syria that he views as a terrorist force intent on destabilizing Turkey. But the U.S. has relied on the Kurdish forces as the most effective fighting force in Syria against Islamic State, which has been pushed to the brink of defeat.
Now that Trump has used the Kurds to accomplish his own goals, he is leaving them to Erdogan’s tender mercies.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1075397797929775105
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/So-now-you-re-raising
-eyebrows-at-Trump-13482278.php
The Constitution is very clear: Congress — and only Congress — has the power to declare war. It hasn’t formally declared war since World War II. Since then, it has sometimes used phrases like the “authorization of military force,” and other times presidents have acted unilaterally, invoking U.N. resolutions or really almost nothing at all. To the extent that Congress has complained, the outrage has usually been partisan. Congressional Democrats hate it when Republican presidents don’t get their approval, and vice versa.
The so-called war on terror, well into its 18th year, is a sprawling enterprise around the globe, tenuously justified by constitutionally flimsy pronouncements by Congress. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists passed after 9/11 doesn’t cover ISIS in Syria (or Africa, or the Philippines, or cyberspace).
The president basically has carte blanche to wage war — and retreat from it — without any real congressional sanction. President Barack Obama invaded Syria without congressional authorization. President Trump ramped up that war without congressional authorization. And now he wants to pull out without congressional authorization.
War is just the most grave and appalling example of bipartisan congressional cowardice. Congress gave the president almost unilateral authority over trade decades ago, even though the Commerce Clause gives Congress total authority over trade, both foreign and domestic. I understand why many support the president’s trade policies toward China, but why Congress yawned as the president invoked national security threats to wage trade wars with Canada or the EU is a different matter.
Again, this isn’t about Trump. Congress has been surrendering vast swaths of its constitutional authority to the president, to the courts and to a permanent bureaucracy for a century. Indeed, critics of the Mueller probe have a point when they complain that the executive branch should not be conducting what is in effect an impeachment inquiry. We’ve stumbled into this bizarre situation because Congress handed over much its oversight of the presidency to the Department of Justice and the FBI.
The Founders never imagined that Congress would just give away so much of its power. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 48 that Congress would always be “extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”
While the problem has been worsening for generations, the era of cable television and social media has put the trend into overdrive. The legislative branch is often little more than a peanut gallery — a parliament of pundits — full of people who use their office as a way to get on TV or as a stepping stone to a presidential bid.
Schools often teach that we have three “co-equal” branches of government. But that’s not what the Constitution established. Congress is the first and supreme branch of government, with the power to declare war, write laws, create all of the courts save the Supreme Court, and raise taxes.
We don’t live in that Constitutional system. We live in a constitutional-ish one.
www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/So-now-you-re-raising
-eyebrows-at-Trump-13482278.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Hundreds of government people who had prepared to brief the incoming Trump administration sat waiting. A day became a week and a week became a month … and no one showed up. The parking spots that had been set aside for Trump’s people remained empty, and the briefing books were never opened. You could walk into almost any department of the US government and hear people asking the same question: where were these Trump people who were meant to be running the place?
The department of agriculture was an excellent case study. The place had an annual budget of $164bn and was charged with so many missions critical to the society that the people who worked there played a drinking game called Does the Department of Agriculture Do It? Someone would name a function of government, say, making sure that geese don’t gather at US airports, and fly into jet engines. Someone else would have to guess whether the agriculture department did it. (In this case, it did.) Guess wrong and you had to drink. Among other things, the department essentially maintained rural America, and also ensured that the American poor and the elderly did not starve. Much of its work was complicated and technical – and yet for the months between the election and the inauguration, Trump people never turned up to learn about it. Only on inauguration day did they flood into the building, but the people who showed up had no idea why they were there or what they were meant to do. Trump sent, among others, a long-haul truck driver, a telephone company clerk, a gas company meter reader, a country club cabana attendant, a Republican National Committee intern and the owner of a scented candle company. One of the CVs listed the new appointee’s only skill as “a pleasant demeanor”.
All these people had two things in common. They were Trump loyalists. And they knew nothing whatsoever about the job they suddenly found themselves in. A new American experiment was underway.
More at www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/27/this-guy-doesnt-know-anything-the
-inside-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Houston Texas Republicans grapple with changing electorate after disastrous November
www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Harris-Cou
nty-Republicans-grapple-with-changing-13487934.php
Drubbed. Shellacked. Whooped. Walloped. Routed.
However you want to describe November’s midterm election, it was disastrous for Harris County Republicans. They were swept from the remaining countywide posts they held — the other shoe to drop after Democrats booted the Republican sheriff and district attorney two years ago — and lost all 55 judicial seats on the ballot. For the first time in decades, Democrats will hold a majority of Commissioners Court.
The path forward for the local GOP is unclear. The party’s statewide slate went undefeated yet rebuked by Harris County voters, raising questions about whether its pitch to rural voters alienated urban ones. In the state’s most populous county, and his home base, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz got just 41 percent of the vote.
“Pendulums will swing back,” Republican Party Chairman Paul Simpson said. “I’m confident in the near future, we’ll be back.”
Scholars and Ed Emmett, the county executive for 11 years before his upset loss, offered a less rosy assessment — that of a party catering to a largely white, graying base that is failing to adapt to changing demographics and awaiting the return of a “normal” electorate that has ceased to exist. November 2018 should be a wake-up call, they say, but they wonder if the local Republican Party is listening.
“If you look at ’18 as a turning point for Harris County, there’s nothing data-wise that would give you any indication this was an aberration and not a structural change,” said Jay Aiyer, who teaches political science at Texas Southern University. “If anything, you could see it actually swinging harder to the Democrats in ’22.”
Mark Jones, who studies Texas politics at Rice University, offered a more tepid view. He said the broad unpopularity of President Donald Trump drove some voters to the polls this fall who may not have participated otherwise.
“If you take Trump out of the equation and put in a more liberal Democrat … it’s not clear to me that Democrats have the same level of advantage,” Jones said.
Emmett, who narrowly lost his bid for re-election despite outperforming every other countywide and statewide Republican on the Harris County ballot, said he wants to pull the local GOP toward the center.
He said he finds irony in the don’t-let-Texas-become-California applause line that Senator Ted Cruz, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and other Republicans used in their campaigns. Emmett warns the Texas GOP is repeating the mistakes of California Republicans in the 1990s, who adopted a hardline stance on issues such as immigration as the state diversified, to disastrous results.
In 1996, the California party controlled five of seven statewide offices and 19 seats in Congress. Now it has zero statewide elected officials and just seven congressional seats.
Emmett warned that Texas Republicans are running out of time to expand their base to include more young and nonwhite voters, and make inroads in cities where voters increasingly are turned off by their message.
“If we don’t do something by 2022, this state’s Democrat,” he said.
More at www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Harris-Cou
nty-Republicans-grapple-with-changing-13487934.php
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:
Hundreds of government people who had prepared to brief the incoming Trump administration sat waiting. A day became a week and a week became a month … and no one showed up.
More at www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/27/this-guy-doesnt-know-anything-the
-inside-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team
Scary, but it makes sens - If youre job iz to tear it down, you dont need to learn much about it.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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Quote:It also could be that Trump voters prefer doing something passive and easy on their brains, like Trump prefers:
Originally posted by JO753:
Scary, but it makes sens - If youre job iz to tear it down, you dont need to learn much about it.
An Isolated Trump is Reportedly Watching More TV Than Ever and Often Starts His Day at 11
President Donald Trump increasingly feels like it’s him against the world. And he has fewer and fewer people at his side who he can trust. In a devastating New York Times piece, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman write that the commander in chief is increasingly feeling isolated and paranoid. As a result, he is retreating to spending time alone, which means he is watching more television than ever. What has euphemistically long been known as “executive time” is lasting longer. Whereas Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, used to make a point of forcing him to have his first meetings at 9 or 9:30 a.m., that has now slid back “to roughly 11 many mornings.” The commander in chief doesn’t just watch television in the residence for hours though, he also leaves Fox News while in the West Wing so he can always keep track of what is being said about him.
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/isolated-trump-more-tv-tha
n-ever-and-a-day-that-often-doesnt-start-until-11.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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"This is Donald Trump's Republican Party," Sen. Claire McCaskill said. "Make no mistake about it."
As she sat back in her chair in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's hearing room, where she served as the ranking Democrat, she said of Trump, "I mean, he's almost the master of, 'I'm going to do so much stuff that's crazy that nobody notices crazy anymore.' "
One instance, she cited, in particular was when the rapper Kanye West spouted off on a wild, profanity-laced tirade in the Oval Office -- all in front of the television cameras.
"I mean, Kanye West was in the Oval Office M-F---ing on live TV," McCaskill said, seemingly perplexed. "I mean, think about that. That is crazy weird. Can you imagine would have happened if that happened during the Obama years? . . . The lid would have blown off this place."
She added: "I think Fox News Channel would have gone up in some kind of spontaneous combustion, had that happened (during the Obama years). But it happens under Trump and it's like, well, just another day at the office. So there is a numbing that's gone on, that some of the craziest stuff that he says and does is not as noticeable because there's so much of it."
www.cnn.com/2018/12/24/politics/mccaskill-exit-interview/index.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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MeRE KRISMIS, eVREBUDE!
http://www.nqalf.com/KaPNHOBO.html
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/So-now-you-re-raising
-eyebrows-at-Trump-13482278.php
The Constitution is very clear: Congress — and only Congress — has the power to declare war. It hasn’t formally declared war since World War II. Since then, it has sometimes used phrases like the “authorization of military force,” and other times presidents have acted unilaterally, invoking U.N. resolutions or really almost nothing at all. To the extent that Congress has complained, the outrage has usually been partisan. Congressional Democrats hate it when Republican presidents don’t get their approval, and vice versa.
The so-called war on terror, well into its 18th year, is a sprawling enterprise around the globe, tenuously justified by constitutionally flimsy pronouncements by Congress. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists passed after 9/11 doesn’t cover ISIS in Syria (or Africa, or the Philippines, or cyberspace).
The president basically has carte blanche to wage war — and retreat from it — without any real congressional sanction. President Barack Obama invaded Syria without congressional authorization. President Trump ramped up that war without congressional authorization. And now he wants to pull out without congressional authorization.
War is just the most grave and appalling example of bipartisan congressional cowardice. Congress gave the president almost unilateral authority over trade decades ago, even though the Commerce Clause gives Congress total authority over trade, both foreign and domestic. I understand why many support the president’s trade policies toward China, but why Congress yawned as the president invoked national security threats to wage trade wars with Canada or the EU is a different matter.
Again, this isn’t about Trump. Congress has been surrendering vast swaths of its constitutional authority to the president, to the courts and to a permanent bureaucracy for a century. Indeed, critics of the Mueller probe have a point when they complain that the executive branch should not be conducting what is in effect an impeachment inquiry. We’ve stumbled into this bizarre situation because Congress handed over much its oversight of the presidency to the Department of Justice and the FBI.
The Founders never imagined that Congress would just give away so much of its power. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 48 that Congress would always be “extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”
While the problem has been worsening for generations, the era of cable television and social media has put the trend into overdrive. The legislative branch is often little more than a peanut gallery — a parliament of pundits — full of people who use their office as a way to get on TV or as a stepping stone to a presidential bid.
Schools often teach that we have three “co-equal” branches of government. But that’s not what the Constitution established. Congress is the first and supreme branch of government, with the power to declare war, write laws, create all of the courts save the Supreme Court, and raise taxes.
We don’t live in that Constitutional system. We live in a constitutional-ish one.
www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/So-now-you-re-raising
-eyebrows-at-Trump-13482278.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Every once in a while Second is good for posting a worthwhile article and/or opinion piece.
This is one of those times.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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