The Official Former President Trump thread

[Granny Danger]

5 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Just so we're all aware, on a Friday evening while a more powerful hurricane than Katrina is currently hitting the US mainland, Donald has signed an executive order banning transgender people from the military and pardoned a sheriff who quite frankly has done too many things for me to snappily finish this statement with, so have a read yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio

Friendly reminder too that in the week someone who dodged the draft for Vietnam committed more troops to Afghanistan he's decided to limit the amount of people that can be in the military, just if you thought this cowardice was the work of some sort of enlightened strategic operator.

The real scandal with the pardon is not Arpaio (though it's a disgrace) but that a so called Western democracy allows an individual the power to subvert and undermine the judicial system by giving him/her the power of veto.

[Savage Henry]

The real scandal with the pardon is not Arpaio (though it's a disgrace) but that a so called Western democracy allows an individual the power to subvert and undermine the judicial system by giving him/her the power of veto.

In this case the real scandal is the Arpaio pardon, and it's cynical timing.

Arpaio is a genuinely odious individual who literally withdrew money from child abuse investigations and redirected to funding an investigation in Hawaii into Obama's birth certificate. There's a long, long list of his crimes.

The presidential pardon has been used for good and for ill. Debating its merits is one thing, but like the statues "controversy" it simply detracts from the Wotsitman's actions.

[TheProgressiveLiberal]

7 hours ago, pandarilla said:

 

Jeezo you massively missed the point eh? No wonder it bores you.

It's not that you don't have 'the right' to the nation, it's that no-one does. 'Murica was not originally a 'white' place, and folk that are descended from immigrants should never forget that when denigrating contemporary immigrants.

And what is the relevance of the stats on disease? Do you think people are somehow 'picking' on those 'first settlers'?

The united states has a pretty ropey history when it comes to mistreating people who were not white. Liberals and progressives have made huge strides to right many of those wrongs but it takes a long time.

When the fucking president whips up the nutjobs it only goes to show how far you still have to go (just to catch up with Europe - and we had the original fucking nazis!).

 

So you don't believe in the concept of a nation state or borders?

No place in the entire world in inhabited by the original ethnic group if you go back far enough. It's an irrelevant argument to say that the US was originally inhabited by another group. I'm under no obligation to make my country what I view as worse just because at some point my ancestors moved here from another place.

It's unfair to bring up the treatment of blacks as justification for why we have to have open borders to 3rd world immigration. Two separate issues. 

6 hours ago, welshbairn said:

As usual you don't give any sources for your data. Automation has killed far more jobs and reduced wages in America than immigration and foreign trade has for all Americans. But for some reason all you care about is race. 

Low skilled immigration and free trade are bad for the working classes of all races in America. It's especially bad for black people. I've worked low skilled jobs my whole life. I've seen it for years. People hate hiring low skilled black people. Lots flat out won't. I'm sure lots more put whites and Mexicans at the top of the stack if there's a surplus of applications. Lots more use a surplus of white and Mexican applicants as an excuse to fire blacks for small infractions. 

The very first job I ever had around people who weren't white was a summer job at a cereal warehouse before my senior year of high school. There were a handful of white people. All high school or college students doing summer work. There were dozens of Hispanic immigrants who did not speak English. Then there would be the blacks. Their number more or less equaled the Hispanics, but outside of a few all of them would end up fired or quitting within weeks. A few would be fired almost every day. You could be fired for talking to your coworkers, working too slow, and things like that. The impression I developed at that point in life was that Mexicans were crazy workers and the blacks couldn't hang. As I've gotten older my perspective has changed. I realized that I should side with low class black people wanting to work over foreigners working hard to help the bossman. The temp agency which staffed the place wasn't racist. They would send anybody. The bosses who ran the warehouse weren't racist. They held everyone to the same standards. The problem is that the presence of Hispanic immigrant workers allowed them to set up a shop where the rules made it likely that very, very few lower class black people would be able to work there. It was a crappy job, but it helped me build income to go out on my own after I was done with school. If black people don't have that same opportunity because lots of jobs won't employ them then they start out way behind someone like me when they hit adulthood. I have a million stories along those lines. I'm currently feuding with the Chinese man who owns my workplace because I hired a black guy to deliver, which I'm not supposed to do. Most of your pay is in tips, but you also get a bit of a wage. The owner tried to write his first check for $5/hr instead of $7/hr which was the advertised starting salary. This was after attempting to confiscate some of his tips during his first shifts. The Chinese man is trying to do something every day to make the black dude quit and I'm stuck inbetween them. (Blacks and Chinese are the two groups most like oil and water based on their cultural characteristics that I've ever run into.) We go through something roughly similar every time I hire a black guy.

As for automation, you are correct. That's not a reason to make things worse when it comes to low skilled employment in other ways as well. We can't stop automation without being Luddites. We can stop low skilled immigration and free trade.

[TheProgressiveLiberal]

6 hours ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

It's probably this

http://www.unz.com/isteve/california-has-been-bad-for-blacks/

I found it on the spotted toad blog that Mr. Sailer linked to. But I originally found that blog through Mr. Sailer. I'm a regular reader of Sailer's blog. Apparently so are most of the people who are important on the right wing of America, but nobody can admit it because of some of the topics he tackles.

3 hours ago, MrSpikey said:

Certainly probably! Always a good combination. And well supported with evidence, as ever...

 Yeah. I'm a poor writer. Never claimed otherwise. As for evidence, I thought the rapes committed by the Soviet Army were common knowledge. I also thought the accepted line of thinking was that large parts of the German Army behaved professionally during the war. Am I wrong on this? Can't say I'm an expert on WWII.

[Fullerene]

22 minutes ago, TheProgressiveLiberal said:

I thought the rapes committed by the Soviet Army were common knowledge. I also thought the accepted line of thinking was that large parts of the German Army behaved professionally during the war. Am I wrong on this? Can't say I'm an expert on WWII.

You might, just might, be able to argue that the German soldiers were more disciplined than the Russians.
After all, Stalin had most of the top ranks shot before they started fighting the Germans.

However, there was not too many people who saw the Germans coming and said "Great, here come the good guys."
In a few cases, like Ukraine and Lithuania, they may have thought the Germans would liberate them from the Soviets but soon discovered they were worse.

During the war, for a German soldier, behaving professional meant killing all Jews, Gypsies and other undesirables.
The war on the Eastern Front was one of annihilation.  I doubt good behaviour was displayed much by either side.
 

[Granny Danger]

1 hour ago, Savage Henry said:

 

In this case the real scandal is the Arpaio pardon, and it's cynical timing.

Arpaio is a genuinely odious individual who literally withdrew money from child abuse investigations and redirected to funding an investigation in Hawaii into Obama's birth certificate. There's a long, long list of his crimes.

The presidential pardon has been used for good and for ill. Debating its merits is one thing, but like the statues "controversy" it simply detracts from the Wotsitman's actions.

 

We will have to disagree on this.  I'm not condoning the Arpaio pardon, it is genuinly shocking, but if you give an individual powers like this then these powers will be abused.  The only way to avoid the abuse is to remove the powers.  Trying to justify these powers with "good" examples doesn't work.  If someone has been wrongly convicted of something address the system that convicted them.

 

[mjw]

Wait till he starts throwing his pardons around like confetti when all his family and friends are outed as Russian puppets.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

Uh, I'm sure there were individual good Germans in WWII. Certainly your average Germany soldier probably behaved better than your average Russian soldier.
 

The Russians also stayed out of the war till 1941

[DA Baracus]

Again, people need to stop replying to PL. He's absolute garbage who deserves a kicking for being a lying piece of shit

[Miguel Sanchez]

Without getting into the pardon system and the ethics of it - because I have no clue how it works - here is another nice list of the things done by a person Trump believes deserving of it:

https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901263384087334914

 

[welshbairn]

33 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Without getting into the pardon system and the ethics of it - because I have no clue how it works - here is another nice list of the things done by a person Trump believes deserving of it:

https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901263384087334914

 

Some of the stuff there reads like a Carl Hiaasen novel. This one of the less psychotic ones. In another he stages a murder attempt on himself for pre election publicity and has a poor sap locked up for 4 years before the charges are laughed out of court.

Quote

Statement of Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey, former owners of New Times, Regarding Settlement of Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Dennis Wilenchik

Sheriff Joe Arpaio arrested us on October 18, 2007, for writing "Grand Jury Targets New Times and Its Readers."

Earlier today, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors ratified a $3.75 million settlement of our lawsuit filed in 2008 against Sheriff Arpaio and special Maricopa County prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik. This follows a June 9, 2011, finding in our favor by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals with respect to efforts by Arpaio and Wilenchik to escape liability for their actions.

Unlike most of Arpaio's victims, we had the financial wherewithal to defend ourselves in court, and we were able to speak through the newspaper. But the vulnerable and impoverished victims of Arpaio's ongoing abusive practices have neither the money nor the voice to fight back. We intend to use proceeds from today's settlement to help those who fight the good fight against government actors who attack the most vulnerable among us. We further intend to help an organization that seeks to preserve and protect free speech on the Internet.

Our decision to settle this case rather than demand our day in court is largely motivated by the knowledge that nothing that can come from a trial will speak as clearly and with as much binding legal force as the Ninth Circuit's landmark decision in Lacey v. Arpaio.

In a scathing opinion, the appeals court scolded Arpaio and Wilenchik for retaliating against a free press, for grand jury abuse, for false arrest, and for a variety of other conduct. The Court served notice that thuggish behavior by police and prosecutors against journalists strikes at the heart of the Constitution. The Court's landmark opinion has already been cited in a dozen published federal appellate cases and over a dozen federal district court opinions in the short time since it was handed down.

The events giving rise to this settlement began in 2004 when Phoenix New Times published a story "Sheriff Joe's Real Estate Game," July 1, 2004) questioning the source of funds for $690,000 in cash invested by Sheriff Arpaio in two pieces of commercial real estate.

The Sheriff also owned another half-dozen commercial properties. The records of those six parcels were also hidden from public view.

Using an Arizona statute intended to protect a peace officer's home address, Arpaio redacted from public records all of the financial details of his commercial transactions.

Reporter John Dougherty detailed these problems and asked: Where does a public servant get this kind of cash? Why is the Sheriff hiding his real estate speculation?

Arpaio responded with a heavy-handed, two-and-a-half-year campaign to have the newspaper and its reporters and editors prosecuted for disclosing his home address. While the paper did publish, as part of its investigation, the Sheriff's address, that very same address was widely available elsewhere on the web, including on official government sites. Furthermore, the obscure statute that Arpaio relied upon to pursue New Times states that the publication of the address must present a knowing and timely threat. Given that the subpoenas were served two-and-a-half years after Dougherty's original story, the "timely threat" appears not to have existed.

After the Case Review Board of the Maricopa County Attorney's office found no basis for a prosecution, and the Pinal County Attorney's Office reviewed the case and likewise refused to prosecute, Dennis Wilenchik was appointed as a special prosecutor to pursue Arpaio's retaliatory objectives against us.

Wilenchik had earlier represented Arpaio in seeking to silence other press criticism. His law firm had done millions of dollars in legal work for Arpaio. And he had been the focus of New Times stories questioning his highly profitable relationship with Arpaio and former Wilenchik employee Andrew Thomas, the now-disbarred former Maricopa County Attorney.

Wilenchik embraced his role as Arpaio's special prosecutor with Orwellian vigor. He issued grand jury subpoenas demanding all notes, records and sources on each New Times story mentioning the Sheriff over nearly a four-year span.

More alarming, the prosecutor demanded to know the identity of thousands of the paper's online readers -- anyone and everyone who had read anything on the New Times website in the preceding 44 months. And he demanded to know what other websites these New Times readers had visited.

As the paper's journalists sat in the closed courtroom of presiding Maricopa County Criminal Judge Anna Baca in the fall of 2007, the grand jury proceedings took an unexpected, and disturbing, turn: Judge Baca lashed out at special prosecutor Wilenchik. According to Judge Baca, Wilenchik had attempted to arrange a secret meeting with the judge using an intermediary who was acquainted with the judge and who had sat on the commission overseeing judicial appointments. Judge Baca termed the approach "absolutely inappropriate."

Prosecutor Wilenchik's outrageous behavior is not a matter of opinion.

An attorney's obligations under the Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct are clear: "A lawyer shall not communicate ex-parte [one side only] with a judge during the proceeding . . ."

There is an old legal cliché: You can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.

Apparently, prosecutor Wilenchik was not content with the stacked deck provided by the grand jury; on October 10, 2007, he attempted to get to the judge.

Faced with an out-of-control prosecutor, we decided to inform our readers.

On October 18, 2007, we published "Grand Jury Targets New Times and Its Readers" in Phoenix New Times. That very night, Sheriff Arpaio's deputies arrived at our homes, cuffed us in front of our families and loved ones, and dragged us off to jail for violating the secrecy of the grand jury. The alleged transgression is a misdemeanor, normally an offense handled with a ticket or summons, but Arpaio wanted to deliver a message we would hear loud and clear.

Then all hell broke loose.

Media outlets from The Arizona Republic to The New York Times, lawyers, academics, and private citizens reacted with shock and anger to our arrests. The following morning a chagrined Andrew Thomas held a news conference at which he fired Wilenchik as special prosecutor and announced that the investigation was at an end.

It would later be determined by Judge Baca that there had been no grand jury -- that Wilenchik had simply issued the subpoenas himself in clear violation of Arizona law, without the grand jury or judicial oversight required by law.

Arpaio and Wilenchik later went before the Ninth Circuit to shield themselves from liability by hiding behind the police and prosecutor immunity doctrine. But the Court wasn't buying it, and for good reason.

As nearly as we can tell, the last American journalist arrested for something he'd written was John Peter Zenger, and that was prior to the American Revolution.

Before his reign of terror subsided, the Sheriff would become notorious nationally for rounding up immigrants as well as for attacks upon the judiciary.

"County officials could have curtailed the abuses of the Sheriff years ago," says Lacey. "Instead, they looked the other way until Arpaio's excesses moved from Mexicans to magistrates. With these cash grants, we choose to stand with those who resist."

Toward this end, we will make grants from settlement funds to the following organizations: the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which has successfully litigated against the racial profiling abuses of Sheriff Arpaio's roundup of Hispanic immigrants; the Florence Project, which defends immigrants detained in confinement; and the grassroots, migrant rights group Puente. We will also be contributing to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has taken the lead nationally in fighting in the courts against government intrusion on Internet speech and privacy rights.

 
 

 

[Fullerene]

5 hours ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

The Russians also stayed out of the war till 1941

 

 

No they didn't.  They were in it from day 1 in 1939 and invaded Eastern Poland at the same time that Germany invaded Western Poland.
Also, they declared war on Finland.  It was their poor performance against the Finns that persuaded Hitler that they would be no match for the Germans.

Stalin was very willing to befriend Hitler and was still sending him supplies the day before German betrayed him.

Unlike Germany, at the end of the war, Stalin insisted on keeping all his gains - even at the expense of Poland, who were compensated for by land from Germany.

Hence Churchill's remark that "Poland is a nation on wheels."

[Fullerene]

Happy to shake hands with anyone

[Antiochas III]

20 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Unlike Germany, at the end of the war, Stalin insisted on keeping all his gains - even at the expense of Poland, who were compensated for by land from Germany.

 

At the end of the war Germany didn't have many gains, in fact it had probably a loss of around 90% of territory it held in 1939 never mind it's height in 1942. It also lost the war so not sure comparing the two and their request for gains is a fair comparison.

How much of their gains do you think Germany would have gave back if either Britain or the Soviets surrendered in 1941?

Edited August 26, 2017 by Antiochas III

[Fullerene]

1 minute ago, Antiochas III said:

At the end of the war Germany didn't have many gains, in fact it had probably a loss of around 90% of territory it held in 1939 never mind it's height in 1942. It also lost the war so not sure comparing the two and their request for gains is a fair comparison.

I was simply pointing out that Germany had to lose all its ill-gotten gains - and rightly so whereas the Western Allies were unable to convince Stalin that he should give up territory he gained when Germany and the Soviet Union were allies - such as eastern Poland which was incorporated into the Ukraine and Lithuania.

[Antiochas III]

The territory the Soviets gained as treaty partners (not allies) with Germany they lost then re-gained when at war with Germany.  

[topcat(The most tip top)]

No they didn't.  They were in it from day 1 in 1939 and invaded Eastern Poland at the same time that Germany invaded Western Poland.

 

True although if one were to be even fussier it could be argued that "day one" of the second world war was July 7th 1937 when Japan went to war with China.

 

In this context though it should be apparent on reflection that I meant it in the, admittedly narrow, sense of "the war against Nazism"

 

I was referring to American Nazi's campaigning to keep America from going to war against Nazis and responding to a Nazi apologist's Whataboutery defending Nazis

 

 

 

 

[welshbairn]

Trump (ie. the US taxpayer) has spent 3 times more on trips to Mar-a-Lago Country Club than the yearly cost of medical procedures for transgender soldiers.

Edited August 26, 2017 by welshbairn

[Miguel Sanchez]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

Trump has spent 3 times more on trips to Mar-a-Lago Country Club than the yearly cost of medical procedures for transgender soldiers.

https://www.sbnation.com/golf/2017/3/27/15073086/donald-trump-tweets-barack-obama-golf

The 27 times Donald Trump tweeted about Barack Obama playing golf too much

[welshbairn]

He even profits from renting out rooms to the Secret Service to protect him while he's playing golf etc.