Everything you didn't want to know about Trump and were not afraid to ask

[Tero]

a letter from my Repuclican congressman. One farmer wants the government out of his farm. Yet the guvment pays when his crops fail. And Monsanto pays lobbyists to write the farm bill. Which only sunsidizes GMO corn and soy bean. Wheat is outside of it, so is cattle mostly. Our cattle eats grass on fields. Welll, till the end when it is fattened with corn.

Dear Friend,

No matter how busy the calendar in Washington, or how tense the political climate, it is a summer tradition for representatives to spend time back in the district listening to constituents. This past week, I had many important conversations during community town hall meetings in Bellevue, Lincoln, Blair, Fremont, David City, Columbus, and Norfolk.

Here is the positive news. From innovative whole person care clinics to ag tech startups, to farm-to-table restaurants and breweries, local entrepreneurial momentum has picked up. Economic activity is rising. So are wages. Tax cuts and deregulation have helped. Nebraska remains one of the happiest places to live.

Here’s where work needs to be done. What is clear: Many people are very anxious about our country, some heatedly so. The First Congressional District is very diverse. From the issues of how trade will affect the Nebraska ag sector to investigations into Russian collusion, from the importance of Social Security and Medicare to our growing national debt, a wide range of perspectives formed the discussion.

This is not exhaustive, but here are some quotes that summarize the general points made at the meetings.

“You’ve failed in your duty to checks and balances. Speaker, Senate, House all failed to do their duty.”

“Read about Russian’s hacking our electrical grid, airport guidance, elections. I’m concerned things aren’t getting done to protect us.”

“Thanks for taking these difficult questions, it means you care.”

“The news makes me nervous. Who’s really in charge of the news?”

“How confident are you that President Trump is being truthful about collusion?”

“I’m a farmer, get government out of my business.”

“At what point should Congress step in during the Mueller investigation?”

“You need to educate people more about reviewing their Medicare prescription drugs plans every year.”

“Young people have no idea what Medicare is. They think Medicare is free. Not true!”

“I’m upset when Medicare is referred to as an entitlement program.”

“How can you justify your bi-partisan bill for wildlife when we’re flooding along the Missouri River? What are you going to do to help? We're retired but can’t endure constant flooding. We lost 28 acres to flooding.”

“No border? Try living without a front door on your home.”

“If we lose the 2nd Amendment, we’re done. We’d have no way to protect ourselves.”

“Did you read and understand the Omnibus Spending Bill? Why do we do it that way?”

“With respect to the Chinese stealing intellectual property, do they steal from other countries too?”

“When are we getting away from the Russian investigation? Move on and spend time on it when all these other things addressed.”

“Everyone should read the history of how the Declaration of Independence came about.”

“The health care issue is unfair to farmers…especially when young people have to leave the farm to secure health care.”

“How do you feel about the Wall?”

"If Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh is confirmed, will it really strongly affect and shape our country?”

"What do you see as a reasonable immigration plan?”

Again, this is just a sampling of what was said. In a time when many officials have stopped these types of meetings due to security concerns and the hyper-volatility, I believe it is important that we hold dear the essential Nebraska value of civil discourse.

I have to say that the first person who spoke said something quite interesting: “You look different. A bit thinner.”


Sincerely,

Congressman Jeff Fortenberry

[Tero]

It’s so unfair! Our first snowflake president:

He has capitalized on grievance, especially that of white Americans chafing at the culture of a demographically changing country, and has expressed his view of what's unfair — everything from trade and immigration to the court system, Obamacare's individual coverage mandate, the IRS, the plight of political allies and, of course, the news media.

Since his first tweets back in 2012, Trump has used the word "unfair" in 90 tweets. Since he announced for president, he's used it 69 times, and since becoming president, 40 times.

Trump often tweets his unfairness outrage when he's in a defensive crouch. For example, over the last several months, with his back against the wall on his trade policies, two-thirds of his tweets using the word "unfair" have been about trade. It's a topic Trump has talked about for 30 years. In the 1980s, he railed against Japanese trade practices. Now, it's China.

Trump has already issued pardons to some political allies. And perceived fairness has been at the heart of those cases for the president.

Take conservative author Dinesh D'Souza, who pleaded guilty after being charged with campaign finance fraud. He used straw donors to get around contribution limits. Despite the facts in the case, Trump declared D'Souza was "treated very unfairly by our government" and gave him a presidential pardon.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/04/63529413 ... rest-of-us

[Tero]

Wrongness, bigly!
https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/08/01/opinio ... cebook.com

[Scot Dutchy]

This is no joke anymore.

Donald Trump’s war with the media has deadly implications

The president’s press attacks don’t just threaten truth: they create an atmosphere in which journalists are in real danger

The right wing shit is given police protection:

Portland far-right rally: police charge counterprotesters with batons drawn

Police in riot gear use stun grenades and pepper spray on leftwing groups protesting against Patriot Prayer marchers

Where is the American freedom speech now?

[Sean Hayden]

--shhh, I hate thinking about if the police and military slant right...

[Scot Dutchy]

What is going on with the Trumps?

Melania Trump praises LeBron James in statement after husband insults him

Shortly after Donald Trump mocked NBA star, first lady says she would visit his school and Michael Jordan joins chorus of support

[Scot Dutchy]

--shhh, I hate thinking about if the police and military slant right...

Better start. The Jack boots are not far away.

[Tero]

Trump voicing concerns about son being entangled in Mueller probe
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/04/politics ... index.html
Trump now banging Hicks: Hope Hicks spotted boarding Air Force One
had his Viagra Rx refilled before Ohio trip

[Scot Dutchy]

Trump can only grab pussy. I doubt that he will be banging anyone.

[Seabass]

Another Trump "accomplishment"! Death threats to journalists are up!

MSNBC's Katy Tur explains how Trump's rhetoric on the press puts journalists' lives and safety at risk

Tur: "'I hope you get raped and killed,' one person wrote to me just this week ... in case you want to argue that this has nothing to do with the president, the most recent note I got ended with 'MAGA.'"

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018 ... isk/220902

KATY TUR (HOST): Yeah, we get it, You don't like us. Fine. But do you have to put our lives in danger? The president continues to call the press "the enemy of the people"; even after four journalists and one sales assistant were shot dead in a Maryland newsroom by a man who was angry with what they factually reported about him, even after the publisher of The New York Times stressed to him in a private conversation that his words were putting journalists in mortal danger, even after CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta was shouted down and taunted at a rally the other night in Florida. And even after the president's own daughter, at least publicly, disagreed with her dad.

[BEGIN VIDEO]

MIKE ALLEN (AXIOS): Do you think that we're the enemy of the people?

IVANKA TRUMP (ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT): Sorry?

ALLEN: Do you think the media is the enemy of the people?

TRUMP: No, I do not.

[END VIDEO]

TUR: Good. I'm glad someone in the administration said this out loud, with a camera recording. I hope Ivanka implores him in private to tone it down as well. Because either the president doesn't get the problem or he does not care. Sadly, the harassment and threats are not stopping. Journalists get them every day. We've been getting them since the campaign, when then-candidate Trump urged the crowd to yell and scream at us. But what you saw and still see on TV, those boos and those taunts are only part of it.

What you do not see are the nasty letters or packages or emails, the threats of physical violence. "I hope you get raped and killed," one person wrote to me just this week. "Raped and killed." Not just me, but a couple of my female colleagues as well. And in case you want to argue that this has nothing to do with the president, the most recent note I got ended with "MAGA."

So if anyone in the administration cares about the safety and security of journalists, the health of a free and unintimidated press and, by extension, our democracy as a whole, please say something to your boss, to your dad, to your commander-in-chief before it is too late.

[Tero]

Trump mangles CA environmental law and fires
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/05/ ... for-fires/

“California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized,” Trump tweeted. “It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.”

Some media outlets supposed that the tweet could be referencing a 2015 proposal by an environmental group called The Tree People that suggested that Californians should capture rainwater draining from roofs and streets instead of allowing it to continue into the ocean.
Other outlets said Trump could be referring to endangered species protections, which mandate availability of water for some species. However, firefighters haven’t complained about lack of water for firefighting, but rather, the extreme nature of these fires.

Trump also added that the state “Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!”

As one tweeter responded: “Water running into the Pacific Ocean is called a river.” And firefighters haven’t complained of a lack of water for battling the blazes.

The tweet could be a muddled indication of support for a GOP battle in Washington for a larger water allocation to farmers, many of them Republican voters, in the drought-stricken state’s central valley. But it’s unclear how that would help staunch California fires. The scientific consensus is that fires are becoming more common because of climate change, which Trump once called a Chinese “hoax.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tr ... 5abaa47772

Conclusion: he pulled this one out of his ass, not from Fox and Friends

[Svartalf]

well, it's not like we're not used to it saying mistaken things or outright lies, especially when democrats are part of it...

[Seabass]

Long-ass Atlantic article on the rise of ICE and the state of US immigration.

How Trump Radicalized ICE
A long-running inferiority complex, vast statutory power, a chilling new directive from the top—inside America’s unfolding immigration tragedy
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ce/565772/

Settling into a sense of safety is hard when your life’s catalog of memories teaches you the opposite lesson. Imagine: You fled from a government militia intent on murdering you; swam across a river with the uncertain hope of sanctuary on the far bank; had the dawning realization that you could never return to your village, because it had been torched; and heard pervasive rumors of former neighbors being raped and enslaved. Imagine that, following all this, you then found yourself in New York City, with travel documents that were unreliable at best.

This is the shared narrative of thousands of emigrants from the West African nation of Mauritania. The country is ruled by Arabs, but these refugees were members of a black subpopulation that speaks its own languages. In 1989, in a fit of nationalism, the Mauritanian government came to consider these differences capital offenses. It arrested, tortured, and violently expelled many black citizens. The country forcibly displaced more than 70,000 of them and rescinded their citizenship. Those who remained behind fared no better. Approximately 43,000 black Mauritanians are now enslaved—by percentage, one of the largest enslaved populations in the world.

After years of rootless wandering—through makeshift camps, through the villages and cities of Senegal—some of the Mauritanian emigrants slowly began arriving in the United States in the late 1990s. They were not yet adept in English, and were unworldly in almost every respect. But serendipity—and the prospect of jobs—soon transplanted their community of roughly 3,000 to Columbus, Ohio, where they clustered mostly in neighborhoods near a long boulevard that bore a fateful name: Refugee Road.

...

In 21st-century America, it is difficult to conjure the possibility of the federal government taking an eraser to the map and scrubbing away an entire ethnic group. I had arrived in Columbus at the suggestion of a Cleveland-based lawyer named David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Leopold has kept in touch with an old client who attends the Mauritanian mosque. When he mentioned the community’s plight to me, he called it “ethnic cleansing”—which initially sounded like wild hyperbole. But on each of my trips back to Columbus, I heard new stories of departures to Canada—and about others who had left for New York, where hiding from ice is easier in the shadows of the big city. The refugees were fleeing Refugee Road.

full article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ce/565772/

[Scot Dutchy]

Glad to see the EU ignoring Trump. Who in the fuck does he think he is?

EU acts to protect firms from Donald Trump's sanctions against Iran

Companies told to ignore White House demands to drop all business with Iran

The fucking Orange Scrotum?

[Tero]