A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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AOC Condemns U.S. System That Allows Trump, Amazon to Pay Almost No Taxes But Doesn't Fund Health Care For All
https://www.newsweek.com/aoc-condemns-us-system-that-allows-trump-amaz
on-pay-almost-no-taxes-doesnt-fund-health-care-1535097
Nailed it, yet again.
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Quote:What really irritates the hell of me is the Trump lovers also love H-bombs. More bombs is better! That attitude shows when Trump cancelled nuclear weapon treaties. I saw this about START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty):
Originally posted by reaverfan:
So they love that piece of shit because they themselves are pieces of shit.
Makes sense. Look at the pieces of shit here who spew their hate and lies all day long, even after we prove them wrong.
Trumptards, like Trump himself, are just evil pieces of shit.
President Donald Trump is planning to rev up the nuclear arms race a few weeks into his second term.
The New START strategic arms-reduction treaty, signed by President Barack Obama and Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, expires on Feb. 5 unless the two countries agree to extend it by another five years. Trump has indicated he has no interest in extending it unless the Russians make certain concessions, which have nothing to do with the treaty and which they have no interest in making.
Trump asked senior military officers how long it would take to load the thousands of nuclear warheads we have in storage onto long-range bombers and submarine-based missiles, when New START expires.
If Trump is trying to put the threat on the table as a bargaining chip, he’s going into the game with a weak hand. First, especially in the COVID economy, we can’t spend any adversary into oblivion without spending ourselves into oblivion too.
Second, Russia has even more nuclear weapons in storage than the United States. In other words, anything Trump can threaten to do, Vladimir Putin can match and then some. Under those circumstances, Trump’s bargaining strategy is self-defeating.
Third, the Trump administration’s conditions for agreeing to extend New START are, from the Russians’ point of view, unreasonable. Trump wants China to take part in the next round of arms talks. China has no interest in doing so — and it’s an odd idea to invite them, in any case. China has about one-fifth as many active nuclear weapons as the U.S. or Russia; it has never been engaged in an arms race with either of those countries, though roping them into trilateral arms talks might spur Chinese officers to demand equality in nuclear weaponry — thus creating a new arms race where there isn’t one now.
Finally, the United States simply does not need a larger nuclear arsenal. During the negotiations for New START and the ratification debate afterward, no senior U.S. military officer argued that the treaty was placing onerous restrictions on our nuclear arsenal or on our ability to carry out national-security policy.
The big point is this: No one is arguing that the U.S. needs more nuclear weapons. It would be much cheaper to simply extend New START for another five years. The Russians have said they’re willing to do that unconditionally. We would gain no advantage from pushing them into an arms race.
It would be an act of common sense — not weakness or appeasement — to keep the current limits in place. But Trump isn’t interested in common sense when it comes to nuclear weapons; he’s interested in bluster and meaningless measures of strength about who has the most bombs, measured in thousands. But to actually explode a hundred bombs, or even a few dozen, would end the world. This is another reason for ensuring that Trump is not still president on Feb. 5.
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-new-start-russia-nuc
lear.html
Trump lovers feelings about H-bombs tend to follow their feelings about guns. I have a shotgun, a pistol, and a rifle. The next door neighbor, a Trump lover, has an entire room full of weapons, none kept in a gun safe. He thinks more guns and nukes means he is better protected. I am convinced that too many guns and nukes makes you dangerously less safe.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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What is America really fighting over in the upcoming election? No particular issue. Not even Democrats versus Republicans.
The central fight is over Donald J. Trump.
Before Trump, most Americans weren't especially passionate about politics. But Trump's MO has been to force people to become passionate about him — to take fierce sides for or against. And he considers himself president only of the former, whom he calls "my people."
Trump came to office with no agenda except to feed his monstrous ego. He has never fueled his base. His base has fueled him. Its adoration sustains him.
So does the antipathy of his detractors. Presidents usually try to appease their critics. Trump has gone out of his way to offend them. "I do bring rage out," Trump unapologetically told journalist Bob Woodward in 2016.
In this way, he has turned America into a gargantuan projection of his own pathological narcissism.
His entire re-election platform is found in his use of the pronouns "we" and "them." "We" are people who love him, Trump Nation. "They" hate him.
In late August, near the end of his somnolent address on the South Lawn of the White House accepting the Republican nomination, Trump extemporized: "The fact is, we're here — and they're not." It drew a standing ovation.
At a recent White House news conference, a CNN correspondent asked if he condemned the behavior of his supporters in Portland, Oregon. In response, Trump charged: "Your supporters, and they are your supporters indeed, shot a young gentleman."
In Trump's eyes, CNN exists in a different country: Anti-Trump Nation.
So do the putative rioters and looters of "Biden's America." So do the inhabitants of blue states whose state and local tax deductions Trump eliminated in his tax overhaul. So do those who live in the "Democrat cities," as he calls them, whose funding he's trying to cut.
California is a big part of Anti-Trump Nation. He wanted to reject its request for aid battling wildfires "because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn't support him," said former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor.
New York is the capital of Anti-Trump Nation, which probably contributed to Trump "playing down" the threat of COVID-19 last March, when its virulence seemed largely confined to that metropolis. Even now, Trump claims the U.S. rate of COVID-19 deaths would be low "if you take the blue states out." That's untrue, but it's not the point. For Trump, blue states don't count because they're part of Anti-Trump Nation.
To Trump and his core enablers and supporters, the laws of Trump Nation authorize him to do whatever he wants. Anti-Trump Nation's laws constrain him, but they're illegitimate because they are made and enforced by the people who reject him.
So Trump's call to the president of Ukraine seeking help with the election was "perfect." It was fine for Russia to side with him in 2016, and it's fine for it to do so again. And of course the Justice Department, Postal Service and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should help him win re-election. They're all aiding Trump Nation.
By a similar twisted logic, Anti-Trump Nation is dangerous. Hence, says Trump, the armed teenager who killed two in Kenosha, Wisconsin, acted in "self-defense," yet the suspected killer of a right-winger in Portland deserved the "retribution" he got when federal marshals gunned him down.
It follows that if Trump loses the election, he will not accept the result because it would be the product of Anti-Trump Nation, and Trump isn't the president of people who would vote against him. As he recently claimed, "The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged."
In the warped minds of Trump and his acolytes, this could lead to civil war. Just last
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MAGA
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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The Very Strong Case for Bidenomics
The former vice president’s tax and spending claims are credible; Trump’s aren’t.
Thanks to Donald Trump’s shouting and nonstop lying, there wasn’t much of a substantive policy discussion at the debate on Tuesday.
But there were some broad — and unsurprisingly, false — assertions about economic policy. Joe Biden claimed that his tax and spending plans would create millions of jobs and promote economic growth. Trump claimed that they would destroy the economy.
Well, everything we know suggests that Biden was right and Trump wrong. And I’m not the only one saying this. Nonpartisan analysts like Moody’s Analytics and the not-exactly-socialist economists at Goldman Sachs are remarkably high on Biden’s proposals.
Before I get there, some history.
There’s a widespread perception that Republicans are better than Democrats at managing the economy. But that’s not at all what the record says.
Yes, Ronald Reagan presided over a long economic expansion; but so did Bill Clinton, and the Clinton boom was both longer and bigger. The economy did in fact add many jobs under Trump before the coronavirus struck, but this simply represented the continuation of an expansion that began under Barack Obama.
And those were the good stretches. Both Bushes presided over really poor economic performance.
Republicans also have a long history of claiming that progressive policies would lead to economic disaster. They’ve been wrong every time.
They’ve been wrong about tax hikes: When Clinton raised taxes in 1993, Republicans confidently predicted recession, but what actually happened was a huge boom. When California raised taxes under Jerry Brown, the right called it “economic suicide”; again, the economy boomed.
They’ve also been wrong about social programs. Obamacare, the G.O.P. insisted, would destroy millions of jobs. One of the dozens of attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act was actually called the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” Yet in the six years after January 2014, when the act went into full effect, the economy added almost 15 million jobs.
And let’s not forget the flip side, the many, many times Republicans promised that cutting taxes on the rich would produce an economic miracle, promises that never came true. There’s a reason conservatives still go on and on about the Reagan boom, all those years ago; it’s the only example they have that even seems to support their economic ideology. (It doesn’t, but that’s another topic.)
But there’s a difference between saying that progressive policies are not the disaster conservatives claim and saying that Biden’s plan would actually promote growth. Why are Moody’s and Goldman Sachs so high on his proposals? Why do I share that optimism?
More at www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/opinion/trump-biden-economic-policy.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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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What is America really fighting over in the upcoming election? No particular issue. Not even Democrats versus Republicans.
The central fight is over Donald J. Trump.
The election is about whether or not we have Trumps, 'Jacks' vision of America, or Biden's.
I choose Biden's vision.
T
Stupid people don't know they're stupid, and they certainly don't realize how obvious it is to others.
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Quote:We will NOT get Biden's vision because the Republicans in the Federal Courts and Republicans left in the Senate will stop him cold, but at least we will be rid of fat dumb Trump and his forever flapping mouth. Maybe there will be a little entertainment from fatso fighting the IRS. Maybe fatso will start a new political party and all the Trump lovers will flock to it, abandoning the GOP to actual Conservatives.
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What is America really fighting over in the upcoming election? No particular issue. Not even Democrats versus Republicans.
The central fight is over Donald J. Trump.
The election is about whether or not we have Trumps, 'Jacks' vision of America, or Biden's.
I choose Biden's vision.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Revelation of vast 'consulting fees' threatens damage for Ivanka Trump
First daughter apparently took almost $750,000 from the Trump Organization while she was simultaneously an employee
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/02/ivanka-trump-donald-tr
ump-tax-affairs
Looks like daddy isn't the only one looking at a prison term.
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Trump’s Turn From Immigration to the Enemy Within
Trump’s shift from demonizing immigrants to targeting leftists is straight out of the fascist playbook.
Listening to Donald Trump describe the U.S. in 2016 was to hear a story of a nation in peril of losing its identity to waves of brown-skinned invaders. Immigration and the border, particularly the urgent need to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, dominated Trump’s campaign rhetoric.
It may have come as a surprise to some that immigration hardly came up at all in the first presidential debate of 2020. The Trump administration has increasingly and prominently centered purported threats posed by leftists, anarchists, and anti-fascists in its bid to hold onto power. This widening of the threat aperture is straight out of the authoritarian playbook, said Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.”
In the case of Trump, the first three years of the administration featured talk of threats from MS-13 gang members, migrant caravans marching north through Mexico, Islamic State killers hidden among refugee populations and more — all were couched in terms of threats to the homeland, an “invasion” that posed a danger to national security and warranted decisive law enforcement and military responses. In some cases, such as the October 2018 migrant caravans that led to military deployments to the border during the midterm elections, the supposedly increased severity of the threat coincided with important electoral moments.
Stanley’s argument is not that the U.S. currently has a fascist government — at least not yet. Instead, he draws attention to the concerning features of Trumpism. “It’s a cult of the leader, all about Trump,” he said. “It’s a fascist social and political movement.” The identification of enemies is central to such movements, he argued, and quite often involves creating linkages between criminalized immigrant populations and the political left.
The DHS intelligence shop has repeatedly disseminated reports describing opponents of the president’s border and immigration policies as domestic terrorists. The idea the DHS sells is that leftists are bringing immigrants in to destroy the white race. Immigration is a communist plot to destroy the racial character of the nation so that the communists can take over.
The DHS is a massive quasi-military organization devoted to targeting noncitizens and vilifying them as terrorists. All Trump has got to do is move that over one little notch to focus on political opponents.
More from https://theintercept.com/2020/10/03/trump-immigration-antifa-fascism/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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