jcsmith

Anyone who claims to respect free and fair democracy and who is supporting this obvious suppression is an unabashed hypocrite.

10 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

Michael Cohen has credibility?  Too funny.

He's got the receipts...

On 4/9/2020 at 9:26 AM, UbonThani said:

True. Trump will rip him a new one.

Trump lost all three debates to Hillary Clinton. We just watched Biden win the debate with Bernie. How do you think Trump would be able to beat Biden in a debate? Not that Biden is at peak sharpness. But he actually knows the topics. Trump in his past debates just makes up stats, insults, and lies. But Biden will fight back and when it comes to actual facts it won't be close.

45 minutes ago, melvinmelvin said:

see bold in quote above;

 

could you elaborate a bit on that?

how is it accomplished?

 

They redistribute voting districts to make it more difficult or a hassle to vote in certain communities. Or they slice up the districts in a way that doesn't make logistical sense but does allow one party to have an advantage in terms of overall votes. 

Covid-19 makes it easier. For example if you have a battleground state and you use Covid-19 as an excuse to not open all voting booths citing health concerns, you can selectively open voting booths in the districts that are more favorable to you making it more of a hassle to reach others. Do you want to vote badly enough to stand in 5 hour lines during the middle of a pandemic? And then if polling closes and they shut their doors after you've been standing in line all day what happens? 

There's an article on the guardian about some of the tactics in Georgia here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/10/georgia-election-recount-stacey-abrams-brian-kemp

5 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

4 more years thanks to Biden.

Trump is so confident that you are right that he's already calling it a rigged election, doing his best to suppress votes, saying it should be delayed, and firing his campaign staff. 

2 hours ago, Boon Mee said:

Widespread "mostly peaceful" rioting attempting to burn down Federal Buildings and the Democrats appear to sanction this seditious behavior? 

Who is sanctioning burning down buildings? The problem here is that 99.8% of the protesters are peaceful protesters, and then you have some troublemakers among them. The problem here is that Trump and Fox try to blur the lines so it seems like the thousands of people out protesting are all burning down buildings, looting, being violent. Where in actuality there have been a small number of actual incidents of that considering how widespread the protests are.

The people engaging in that activity should be prosecuted. But what shouldn't happen is that we start firing rubber bullets and gas into crowds of peaceful protesters or scoop them up in unmarked cars by unidentified officers. 

4 hours ago, rabas said:

Barr prepared for weeks to to provide information to the House committee, then not one Democrat allowed Barr to answer any of their questions (!), often drowning him out, using committee rules to silence him, or just plain insulting him. Wow. What was the 'hearing' for?  We all know.

 

That's not what happened. They'd ask him a question and he would turn it back into a question even though the original was obvious. They'd ask him if Trump ever ordered him to do something and he'd respond with something, "I'm not sure what you mean by order?" So they'd ask if Trump ever told them to do something and he'd respond, "directly or do you mean like was there a suggestion that maybe I heard from a third party?" when they would eventually remove all wriggle room he would say that he can't share private conversations with the president .

Amazingly he never fully understood any of the democrats questions, or when cornered he seemed unaware of simple things that everyone else in the country was aware of. So he'd ask more questions all the while trying to run out their time. So they stopped giving him the opportunity to do that. When questioned by republicans his memory was much improved. 

Barr's role is obvious. He enables Trump. But he also is pretty smart in how he handles questions. He's tough to corner.

48 minutes ago, scammed said:

no, covid deaths are unrelated to trump,

but the shutdown and consequent quantitative easing aka borrow from unborn generations is certainly trumps fault.

that epic fail is however shared with most of the world, save sweden

He certainly bears some responsibility though with how poorly he handled things. Per the worldometer ( https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ): 

Total Cases Per Million Population of countries with at least 5 million people: 
 

Bahrein 23,411
Chile 18,287
Oman 15,230
U.S.A. 13,584
Peru 11,968
Brazil 11,683
Singapore 10,172
Sweden 7,868
Saudi Arabia 7,771
South Africa 7,745
Israel 7,236
(Skipping some for other countries where it looked bad publicly)
Russia 5,680
U.K. 4,428
Italy 4,077
Switzerland 3,997
Iran 3,524
Mexico 3,121
India 1109
 

Total Deaths Per Million Population (min 5 million population) 

Belgium 848
UK 676
Spain 608
Italy 581
Peru 564
Sweden 564
Chile 483
U.S.A. 460
France 453
Brazil 417
Ireland 357
Mexico 348
Canada 236
Switzerland 228
Iran 192
Russia 94
Saudi Arabia 80
India 25

And although Trump loves to tout how many people the U.S. is testing, we are still as of today 21st in the world in tests per million population. 

The biggest problem with how the U.S. has handled it is that they still have the worst outbreak in the world by far, and while many of the countries ahead of them on the death charts have moved far past their peak numbers the U.S. is raging as badly as its ever been. Taking a look at the numbers from yesterday for example:
 

Numbers Yesterday
 

USA 64,729 new cases, 1,245 new deaths
India 49,632 new cases, 776 new deaths
Brazil 41,169 new cases, 955 new deaths
Colombia 10,284 new cases, 297 new deaths
South Africa 7,232 new cases, 190 new deaths
Argentina 5,939 new cases, 120 new deaths
Russia 5,395 new cases, 150 new deaths

Those European countries that are just above the U.S. in deaths per population (Spain, Italy, France) let's see where they are yesterday:

Spain 1,828 new cases, 2 new deaths
France 725 new cases, 14 new deaths
UK 581 new cases, 119 new deaths
Italy 181 new cases, 11 new deaths
Sweden 39 new cases, 10 new deaths

So what does that mean? Well while the cases and deaths per population are going down in the countries that are higher than the U.S., with the U.S. still having a thousand deaths a day right now, and those other countries having significantly less, it's only a matter of time before the U.S. surpasses them in deaths per population, as well. 

Why has the U.S. been so bad compared to Europe, for example when it hit Europe first? That is on Trump. Why has the U.S. cases surged this month when the rest of the world is improving? The rest of the world followed a plan. That plan was interfering with Trump's re-election so he told people don't believe the plan, we've already beat this virus. Let's get people back to work and kids back to school now. Let's get back to campaign rallies. Those were his decisions. He bears responsibility. His decisions are always about him... but so is the blame.

People don't just dislike Trump because they don't like the way he looks. It's because he treats everyone else like they idiots. He thinks he knows better than the experts. He attacks anyone who disagrees with him. He never accepts responsibility, always deflects blame. He lies nonstop, makes up things that can hurt others, and then doubles down on the lies being true. He has absolutely earned the hate he receives.

2 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

LOL.  The Dems have always been divisive, pitting every and any group against their "opposite."  Yeah, it's Trump.  LOL

That's pretty rich. Trump and Fox demonize the left. He's done everything in his power to stoke division. By contrast if you go to MSNBC for example, it's clearly left wing media, but they are attacking Trump or other politicians for the most part. 

It's interesting that leading into the election Trump and Putin are suddenly phoning one another like two teenage girls and Trump is trying to force Putin back into the G7. 

1 hour ago, fredwiggy said:

A friend calls him the best president we've ever had. I would go as far as one of the worst, near the bottom for sure. 

History will lean in your direction. There is this strange effect Trump has had on some people though where they support him blindly as though worshipping a cult leader.

14 minutes ago, JusticeGB said:

Wow so many Trump haters and Liberals on this thread the lynch mob is out in full.

According to pretty much every poll that is representative of the United States right now. He's the least popular president in modern history by a landslide. There is good reason for that. People didn't just decide hey let's hate on the redhead. He brought this on himself.

It's hilarious to see the flailing accusations against Obama trying to say he was corrupt. How many scandals did Obama have? The closest thing to a scandal is the made up one from Trump trying to make it sound like Obama personally ordered an investigation into him when there is no evidence of that whatsoever. Meanwhile Trump has been dogged with scandals and corruption for his entire presidency. There is no equivalency between those two. One guy was squeaky clean. The other is a con man. Even die hard Trump supporters will immediately know which is which.

Sure presidential candidate's aren't REQUIRED to release their taxes. But they all do.  Particularly someone with as many potential conflicts of interest as Trump it should be a requirement. Not to mention serious and credible accounts from his own personal former lawyer who says that Trump was inflating his value for loans while deflating it when filing taxes. Particularly when they would allow everyone to see whether or not he was lying. I mean this is a guy who went in front of the public and said he had zero interests in Russia while he was behind the scenes negotiating for a Trump Tower in Moscow at the very same time. And after his son had contradicted that. So he's lying, by why? You may be able to trace through some of his business dealings by examining where things don't line up in his taxes. 

Let's ignore that though and just focus on the promise. How many times was the George Bush quote, "Read my lips, no new taxes" quoted in the 90s? An awful lot, right. Why? Because he made a promise and then broke it. Trump lied to the American public said he couldn't release his taxes because hew as under audit... Cohen said this was not true. But more importantly Trump promised to release his taxes after the audit. Four years later he is fighting in court to keep them from going public. He lied. Obviously to cover something up. And he's fighting to keep them private so whatever he's lying about doesn't become public knowledge until after the election. The American public deserves to know what he's hiding. Or at the very least they need to understand that he lied and the gravity of that.

Another case that isn't the same but is related is his business interests. Remember when he promised to divest from his businesses. To not be involved, to put them in a trust. He had the whole fake stack of paperwork that was just empty pages saying that was what he was doing for the press. And then he put it all under the control of his children. He's even fighting to keep his current taxes hidden. Why? Because I would assume he doesn't want people to see him profiting off the office before the election. But anything there is speculation. Nobody knows whats he's hiding, but he's undoubtedly hiding something.

4 hours ago, sqwakvfr said:

“Joe Arpaio and Eddie Gallagher were both political pardons by Trump. Stone is the first one related to the investigations against him, but it isn't like he hasn't attempted to put his finger on the scale of all those cases. He certainly did in the Flynn and Manafort cases, as well. I'd expect pardons for both after the election.”

 

Flynn and Manafort have not been pardoned. At least not yet.  As for Arpaio and Gallagher what does Donald gain?  Arpaio is old and irrelevant.  Gallagher will retire and fade away.  So far the only “insider” that the Donald has protected with a pardon and/or clemency is Stone.  The implication by some has been that Donald has already protected his allies to keep them quiet? For now I can count only one in 3 and a half years? What the Donald does in the future is not a certainty. As for the election there is a good chance we will see President Biden and his woman of color VP.  In essence the Donald has about 5+ months to protect his friends.  

For Arpaio and Gallagher they were moves to reach out and back the guys who were doing the things he has encouraged. No, Flynn and Manafort haven't been pardoned, I said he put his scale on the finger of those cases. He attempted to influence the outcomes, but I'd expect him to pardon both guys after the election. He's certainly telegraphed it. 

He waited to pardon Stone until he had to go to prison. Then he did it. I'd expect he same for Flynn but he likely gets one better and the case is dropped against prosecutor's wishes. You act as though there are so many cases for him to have intervened in and he only did one out of the hundred. There were 3, he attempted to influence all three. He tried to get help from the Department of Justice in at least two.

Do you really think that this is what the founding fathers had in mind? That the president could have complete immunity even from investigation as Barr claims he should (struck down recently by the supreme court)... And that when there is a scandal he can dangle pardons to those who might otherwise talk, and then commute their sentence or pardon them before they served any real penalty. Whatever your political views it should be easy to see the problem in being okay with that.  

5 minutes ago, sqwakvfr said:

Justice was not damaged because one old man did not go to prison.

 

On the other hand a certain former President who won the Nobel Peace Price commuted the sentences of over 1700 convicted felons.  That comes out to over 200 per year of a two term president.  

 

Over and done.  

 

Obama didn't commute the sentence of someone who lied under oath to protect him. The judge knew what they were doing here. Asking for delays until after the election so Trump couldn't get political heat on it before the election. When Stone finally had to actually report to serve his time, Trump commuted him. Stone was never going to do time, they just wanted to run out the clock.

This coming on the heels of the Flynn case when the government inexplicably tries to set him free after he pleaded guilty and cooperated. Stop making false equivalences. 

Stone can now claim he was just making things up, he didn't really work with or have information on Russian hackers that by the way interfered in the U.S. election. He can lie repeatedly under oath, he can take shots at judges, disobey gag orders, and guess what? Nothing happens to him. 

All president's commute sentences. There are plenty of cases where it is warranted. Imo it shouldn't be used politically, though it often is. That's bad enough. The fact that Trump has been using it to shield those who have protected him though and to skirt the punishment of guys who have been tied up in his own scandals, while simultaneously pushing for the prosecution of political rivals or those who had the audacity to follow the law when a whistle was blown on him is an egregious abuse of power. It's out in the open. It's obvious. There's no excuse for it.