Lets see if we can keep this thread a little more civil.

I found this interview very interesting.  A lot of soft balls thrown at Trump, he explained his back pedalling on his more extreme issues as a lot of his claims as opening bids for negotiation purposes.  Which .. whatever .. I still think that those are insincere claims he used to get elected.

He does now come across way more presidential then he did prior to the election.  A lot of his noise, yelling, and rhetoric has been scaled back.

Do respect this one though:

Quote

 

Lesley Stahl: Are you gonna take the salary, the president’s salary?

Donald Trump: Well, I’ve never commented on this, but the answer is no. I think I have to by law take $1, so I’ll take $1 a year. But it’s a -- I don’t even know what it is.

Donald Trump: Do you know what the salary is?

Lesley Stahl: $400,000 you’re giving up.

Donald Trump: No, I’m not gonna take the salary. I’m not taking it.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-donald-trump-family-melania-ivanka-lesley-stahl/

2 hours ago, kelownabomberfan said:

as that story clearly indicated, it's not all just about the NRA.  The Democrats don't appear very interested in the mental health issue surrounding these shootings, and just want to focus on taking away guns.  The kids in the school got mad when two Democrats showed up and started preaching gun control rather than mental health, and they got up and left the auditorium.  The kids involved in the shooting appear to have some serious mental health issues, and that part seemed to be totally ignored by the politicians who attended the vigil.

This comment is dishonest.  The GOP repeatedly fights any restrictions on gun ownership to serve their lords in the NRA, while the Dems have proposed measures (including mental health considerations) time and time again only to have the GOP reject or undo them.  Speaking more broadly about mental health, you'll also find that Democrats do much more to address the issue than Republicans as they do with every single health issue that you can name.

Took me 2 seconds to disprove your comment, by the way.

"Updated | Within his first two months as president, Donald Trump repealed without public display an Obama administration gun regulation that prevented certain individuals with mental health conditions from buying firearms."

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-set-overturn-guns-mental-health-regulation-557237

 

Hey... Theres also a list out there that shows you how much the NRA has donated to individual members of both parties.. Its very Republican heavy. 

Republicans tend to BS and believe it.. Like they are either completely ignorant or just i dunno,, mom drank when she was pregnant stuff here.. 

Dems are full of it too.. But the new wave of Dems in the US do seem to actually want to make things better for ppl who aren't billionaires or false ones at that. The 1 percent. 

 

Cillizza: You've noted on Twitter that Democratic voters care much more about health care than impeachment. And yet, there's still an active debate in Congress about whether to seek to impeach Trump. Why?

Anzalone: My main point is that Americans are very divided on impeachment and it has become a political football that gets in the way of a strong Democratic message on health care, economic opportunity and the environment where we win elections.

I feel Democrats in Congress are playing into Trump's hands here. Trump's oxygen is keeping this controversy going and we are taking the bait. I think we should be holding hearings on restoring what has been taken away from ACA and improving it, which could help people today. I think we should make just as much noise in Congress on health care and economic opportunity issues (minimum wage, skills training, education grants, etc) as we do on Trump/Barr/Mueller/Impeachment.

My problem is the proportionality of it all. We are drowning out our own core strengths and strengthening Trump's political hand and exciting his base on an issue that Americans don't have any stomach for.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/09/politics/democrats-primary-2020/index.html

2 hours ago, do or die said:

Trouble is ....that issues like gun control have had political filters embedded in them for some time now.   Makes it pretty hard to have a rational discussion, with a look to future solutions possible.  The root of the problem, in the US,  actually lies in historical impulses, and how Americans view themselves and the way they are governed.   Guns are well intertwined with the flag and apple pie, as symbols of identity.

I get what you're saying, but the current paranoid rhetoric of the NRA and its supporters is a much more recent thing.  The "right" of an individual to own a hand gun wasn't even enshrined until 2008.

(Excerpts from) "So You Think You Know the Second Amendment?"

By Jeffrey Toobin

December 17, 2012

"Enter the modern National Rifle Association. Before the nineteen-seventies, the N.R.A. had been devoted mostly to non-political issues, like gun safety. But a coup d’état at the group’s annual convention in 1977 brought a group of committed political conservatives to power—as part of the leading edge of the new, more rightward-leaning Republican Party."

"The re-interpretation of the Second Amendment was an elaborate and brilliantly executed political operation, inside and outside of government. Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 brought a gun-rights enthusiast to the White House. At the same time, Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, became chairman of an important subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he commissioned a report that claimed to find “clear—and long lost—proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms."

"And so, eventually, this theory became the law of the land. In District of Columbia v. Heller, decided in 2008, the Supreme Court embraced the individual-rights view of the Second Amendment. It was a triumph above all for Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of the opinion, but it required him to craft a thoroughly political compromise. In the eighteenth century, militias were proto-military operations, and their members had to obtain the best military hardware of the day. But Scalia could not create, in the twenty-first century, an individual right to contemporary military weapons—like tanks and Stinger missiles. In light of this, Scalia conjured a rule that said D.C. could not ban handguns because “handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.”

This stuff gives me headaches....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/so-you-think-you-know-the-second-amendment

Also read:

https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-second-amendment-721379

 

The mental health angle is a political talking point spawned by the gun nuts nothing more. Mental health is a big issue that needs to be addressed, but it is a lot easier to restrict the ability to acquire fire arms so that nutters don't go shooting up public places. 

Tackle both issues.

Legalities aside, generations of Americans have been brought up on the merits and power of individual rights and freedoms.  One of these is the ability to not depend on government or any other aspect of US society to "defend themselves"  You know, upright, (men) standing tall and unafraid, with steely eyes, wrapped in the flag.     (NRA have piggybacked on this myth, brilliantly)

Now of course, the Constitution's 2nd amendment was ratified in 1791 - when "bearing arms" was a different concept entirely:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"

There are enough folks on the alt right, who haven't moved an inch intellectually, since them.....and still fantasize about forming militias to "deal with" immigrants, "big government", Jews and certain other religious groups, and various folks of race and colour.  

I have had opportunity to discourse with some of these people - both on-line, and from my days as a Civil War re-enactor...... who represent a perfect breeding and recruitment ground for some form of fascism.

 

Edited May 9, 20196 yr by do or die

Here’s another one for people who don’t understand to lol at (hahaha)

 

Trump's campaign folks sure wern't worried about the Logan Act, back them...

Predictable! Lol

 

1 hour ago, 17to85 said:

The mental health angle is a political talking point spawned by the gun nuts nothing more.

Untangling Gun Violence from Mental Illness

"The news often portrays people with psychiatric disorders as a danger to others, when suicide is the much greater risk."

"Unfortunately, a consistent and dangerous narrative has emerged—an explanation all-too-readily at hand when a mass shooting or other violent tragedy occurs: The perpetrator must have been mentally ill."

“We have a strong responsibility as researchers who study mental illness to try to debunk that myth,” says Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University. “I say as loudly and as strongly and as frequently as I can, that mental illness is not a very big part of the problem of gun violence in the United States.”

 

The overwhelming majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent, just like the overwhelming majority of all people are not violent. Only 4 percent of the violence—not just gun violence, but any kind—in the United States is attributable to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression (the three most-cited mental illnesses in conjunction with violence). In other words, 96 percent of the violence in America has nothing to do with mental illness."

 

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/untangling-gun-violence-from-mental-illness/485906/

As far as shootings go.....clinical mental health is one thing.....religious nuts and bigots are quite another......

I've read in the past that Don Jr. has had aspirations to get into politics, pleading the 5th should probably put an end to those aspirations.

What's a little obstruction, in Trump world?  
Nothingburger.

Liz Warren- this is why she should be President, she gets it. 

 

 

Won’t be long before he just admits he’s a Russian agent (probably unwittingly) and campaigns as such  

 

wOW...

 

 

This number is rising fast 

 

7 hours ago, wanna-b-fanboy said:

wOW...

 

 

At least their collusion with foreign governments to win elections is more out in the open this time. Lol 

Edited May 10, 20196 yr by The Unknown Poster

Quote

 

Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of President Donald Trump, once said that a president's refusal to comply with congressional oversight was an impeachable offense.

Source: https://pressfrom.info/us/news/politics/-270683-lindsey-graham-in-1998-ignoring-subpoenas-impeachable.html

 

https://pressfrom.info/us/news/politics/-270683-lindsey-graham-in-1998-ignoring-subpoenas-impeachable.html

 

video. Can't say he was misquoted.  probably will anyway. These people depend on their voters being uninformed.

I think Trump impeachment rating is much higher at this point than Nixon's at a similar point.

Edited May 10, 20196 yr by Mark F

 

 

13 hours ago, wanna-b-fanboy said:

Liz Warren- this is why she should be President, she gets it. 

 

 

I saw that tweet awhile ago, and had the exact opposite reaction.

His nicknames are getting worse.  Has he suffered a stroke?  Although I do enjoy the irony of calling Biden creepy when trump has 20+ credible allegations of serious sexual assault/harassment. I think he should totally make sex crimes a key election issue!

 

20 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

His nicknames are getting worse.  Has he suffered a stroke?  Although I do enjoy the irony of calling Biden creepy when trump has 20+ credible allegations of serious sexual assault/harassment. I think he should totally make sex crimes a key election issue!

 

The Biggest Loser has it pegged.

48 minutes ago, do or die said:

The Biggest Loser has it pegged.

And we're not talking about his weight in this case.

1 hour ago, kelownabomberfan said:

I saw that tweet awhile ago, and had the exact opposite reaction.

So you think wage stagnation isn't a problem?