He loves playing with trucks, though.
Yes, golf tournaments are used for fundraising. It’s also where people who need funding go to find rich people to chat up. It’s sort of like going to museum openings, only with more sunshine and walking.
Yes, RickJay, out of the million reasons to criticize Trump, I chose that one. At the moment it seemed emblematic of the lack of knowledge Trump is famous for. If he had run his comments past *any *competent staffer, he might have made a speech that didn’t offend the very people he is trying to get to cooperate with him. But he’s too stupid to know how stupid he is. G-d help us.
The USA already is a rogue state.
The USA is militarily and economically powerful enough to pretty much do what it wants, regardless of what other first world nations would prefer (for example, Bush II’s Iraq II, which was opposed by Germany, France and Canada, and proved to be 1. started under false pretenses, and 2. disastrously destabilizing for the region in both the short and long terms, e.g. the rise of ISIS).
Trump’s pulling the USA out of the Paris Agreement that it had signed is about a rogue as it gets, putting the USA and Syria (which did not sign the agreement) in the same camp in opposition to the rest of the world. The single greatest problem that the world faces is climate change, and the USA is the world’s second greatest producer of CO2, which is causing a hellacious increase in climate change and net global warming. The result will be massive environmental harm, triggering resource scarcity, which will lead both indirectly and directly to economic and political instability, which in turn will lead to armed conflicts. As Margaret Robinson, a previous UN Special Envoy for climate change, put it: “The US reneging on its commitment to the Paris Agreement renders it a rogue state on the international stage.”
The USA is a flawed rather than full democracy that has fallen behind the first world in protecting its citizens (e.g. % population incarcerated, % population killed by state actors, lack of universal health care, resistence to human rights – i.e. black, women, gay, trans) led by a legislative branch dominated by bat-shit-crazy Republicans with no moral compass and an executive branch controlled by a bat-shit-crazy pussy-grabber whose idea of foreign relations is to enjoy being pissed on by Russian prostitutes while laying on a bed previously used by his predicessor whom he claimed was ineligible to be president due some ludicrous conspiracy theory right up there with the National Enquirer’s Bat Boy.
So no, the US president is not the leader of the free world, the USA is taken seriously by the free world because of the harm the USA can cause, not because of the good the USA can cause, and when it comes to the single most important issue facing the world – the effect climate change will have on the biosphere and humanity’s peace and prosperity – the USA is indeed a rogue nation.
Relative to other leading nations, you once were one of the leaders of the free world. Now you are the leading danger to the free world – a great power that is a rogue state hell bent and determined to destroy yourselves and drag the rest of us down with you while you are at it.
My hope is that enough Americans will support state initiatives to meet the Paris goals and move the USA forward despite the Republicans’ best efforts to ruin their own country and drag the rest of the world down while they are at it, and that enough Americans will start taking what remains of their freedom seriously enough to vote the Republicans out of the state and federal legislatures and out of the presidency.
In Canada, universal health care was very much a leftist creation. The Greatest Canadian, Tommy Douglas, was the father of medicare and a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, whose
Yes, there are examples of good employer/labour relations in North America, but historically for the most part relations were god-awful, with even the most basic workers’ rights being fought for in blood. Read up on the Western Federation of Miners / International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelters’ Union, and the
IWW (Wobblies). BTW, banned SDMB poster SmashTheState was a leader of the IWW Ottawa Panhandlers’ Union.
MSNBC just announced that Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner will be Senate witnesses next week. Kushner will testify in a closed session, the other two in open session.
Yup, I think some of these right wing republican people in coal and mining country would get the taste smacked out of their mouths by their ancestors who fought so hard for the stuff we now take for granted, such as the 8 hour day, unions, pensions, health insurance and the like.
I hope the feds play them … question them separately, offer each one “something” to turn against the others - and then fuck them all. For treason.
I was going to ask why Kushner was allowed a closed session, but overlooked the leverage angle.
…I’ve only ever heard Kushner speak once. So of course he gets to testify in closed session. Because the Trump administration is entirely normal, and not a sitcom or a reality show.
…CNN interview with former Ethics Chief Walter Shrub. Point made at 5min 35 seconds is both absolutely unbelievable and entirely in keeping with this administration. Trumps attorney asks “can Trump sign the financial disclosure without having to sign it to certify that it is true?”
Maybe because he’s an employee and has knowledge of classified materials?
…I was making a joke. I’m perfectly aware there would be good reasons why Kushner would testify behind closed doors. But Kushner is probably the most powerful person in the Trump regime. He is responsible for negotiating peace in the Middle East. He is going to solve the opioid epidemic. He’s responsible for diplomacy with Mexico and China. He is reforming and reimagining veteran affairs. He is going to reform the criminal justice system. And he is going to reinvent the entire government and make it run like a business.
And we’ve only ever heard him talk once. Thats just fucking crazy. And him testifying in closed session is like a running joke in a sitcom. “Oh look! Dean Pelton’s wearing an outrageous outfit!” “Oh look! Kushner’s not talking…again!”
If you sounded like Vanessa Bayer’s SNL character Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy, you wouldn’t talk in public either.
That.
Is fucking awesome.
What fucking balls!
I’m not even mad.
Trumpelthinskin says he never would have picked the Keebler Drow as Attorney General if he’d known he’d recuse himself from the Kremlin Connection investigation, and whines about how “very unfair” it was to not tell him about this up front.
In the same NYT interview, Der Trumpster apparently threatens Robert Mueller with firing if he launches an investigation into Trump family finances (beyond the scope of the probe into ties between his administration and Russia).
Yeah, that should work out great. “No bodies in the hall closet; no need to look in there.”
I’m a Wobbly. If we all read up on them, many of us would probably be.
Also from that interview:
Adoption? It just happened to come up during their “pleasantries”? Maybe they both have friends who have adopted kids?
If I didn’t know Trump better I’d say he was seriously trolling there. Otherwise, it sounds like he’s saying that Putin brought up the Magnitsky Act. Why would he admit that? “We were just having an unimportant pleasant conversation about sanctions.”
With robots.
Damn skippy! beep