The Trump Presidency

[DaneHill]

1. I don't think it's dumb when it's actually being asked in this country

2. Thank you. I see the distinction.

3. Yes they are. https://www.change.org/p/the-univers...on-from-campus

Sturg, that petition is 2 years old and got a grand total of 158 supporters, some of whom only signed so that they could comment that they do not agree with removing the Jefferson statue. Again, for the handful of people who would advocate such removals of Founding Father monuments, I believe they are in the wrong. On the other hand, I'm a white dude who maybe can't appreciate fully the perspective of our black brethren. These Founding Fathers, for all their faults given the era in which they lived, dedicated their lives in pursuit of giving us our current freedoms and country. To turn our backs on them seems decidedly un-American.

[Julio3000]

Why not?

By all accounts, Lee was a respected general, an American hero, who was asked to fight for the north, and was forgiven post-war for fighting for the south.

Well OK... none of that matters since he fought for the south and is thus a racist nazi whatever the word of the day is. Fine

By all accounts, Washing was a great leader, a great military man, the founder of our country, and ensure to give the power back to the people.

Well OK... none of that matters because he was OK with owning slaves and treating blacks as propoerty.

I'm not sure why it's not relevant. I think this is the direction we are going, and I think these decisions will be next.

Like I said, uniersities are already fighting to take down Jefferson... and see aces' post above

I can't speak for others, but I draw a categorical difference between viewing the founders, in their proper historical context and without airbrushing their blemishes, as net contributors to the continued advancement of the values espoused in the founding documents (3/5ths clause and all), and thereby worthy of honor in our public spaces; and venerating the architects and generals of a failed insurrection against those values and specifically in favor of slavery and white supremacy. It's worthy of contemplation but not really that tough a call.

But, slippery slope and strawman away, I guess.

[The Chosen One]

Yeah.

My position right now is, if towns want to remove Confederate Statues I'm ok with it. I'd rather they go into a museum so people can understand the history.

Removing the founding fathers (yes they owned slaves) is something I'm not ok with. Not sure why the Lincoln Memorial was vandalized (probably trolls). Not sure why Teddy needs to be removed. If there's a POTUS that needs to be reconsidered maybe Johnson. Even then I'd rather just leave Presidential monuments alone, especially the Founders.

[Julio3000]

I'm more concerned with the PC culture violently taking over this country. I see no reason to pull down a Lee statue.

Violently taking over the country? Do you hear yourself?

[Julio3000]

Maybe so.. but PC culture gave them a platform

This is the reasoning that I just don't get. All the folks who like to chat **** about snowflakes and trigger warnings will then apologize for heinous behavior because another subset of people are so monumentally triggered by "PC culture."

Individual agency, dude. You of all people should understand that. Stop excusing atrocity.

There's nothing new under the sun. Today's complaints about PC culture, while sometimes cogent and on point, are most often just a recycling of yesterday's complaints about civil rights, womens' lib, gay rights, etc. Today's "many sides" was "outside agitators" yesterday.

[DaneHill]

Some points should be clarified as well about the weekend protests, because there appears to be a lot of "fuzzy support" for the alt-right protesters because they had a permit and the counter-protesters did not.

The alt-right protesters only had a permit for Saturday within the confines of Emancipation Park in downtown Charlottesville. The counter-protesters actually also had a permit to, well, counter-protest on Saturday within the confines of Emancipation Park. Emancipation Park is not on the campus of the University of Virginia.

The alt-right protesters decided that they wanted to start marching on Friday evening outside of Emancipation Park instead. They did not have a permit for this. They marched onto the University of Virginia campus with torches, chanting Nazi slogans and surrounding a few dozen impromptu student counter-protesters, who had gathered at a statue of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of UVA. (From what I understand, the student counter-protesters did not realize that the alt-right protesters would come swarming around the university's Rotunda and onto the campus at them, torches ablaze.) This is the now-famous picture of the torchbearers surrounding the students at the statue. Campus police broke up the march as unlawful assembly. Charlottesville mayor and UVA president condemned the alt-right gathering and march onto university grounds. This set the stage for Saturday's tense face-off between the two sides.

[57Brave]

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!

The Rude Pundit‏ @rudepundit 7m7 minutes ago

The Rude Pundit Retweeted Donald J. Trump

So, in other words, it's like your casinos.

.......

Or like your nuclear bluff.

[57Brave]

Update 8/16 11:21 a.m.: The White House posted the text of the executive order last night. In just 28 words, one section of the order reverses stricter flood standards set by Obama, making Americans and businesses more vulnerable to heavy rains and sea-level rise.

Update 4:48 p.m.: Trump signed his infrastructure executive order Tuesday afternoon at Trump Tower before making a statement and taking questions that mostly revolved around Charlottesville. “We are literally like a third world country,” he claimed in reference to the state of the nation’s infrastructure. Trump didn’t mention that the order revokes Obama’s flood-risk program.

In his latest executive order, President Trump is expected to tell the federal government to ignore the best science out there on sea-level rise and flooding and build infrastructure projects in risky, flood-prone areas anyway.

At a signing ceremony that will take place at his New York City Trump Tower on Tuesday, Trump will reportedly reverse an Obama-era policy from 2015 that directed agencies to set stricter standards for where roads, buildings, public housing, and other infrastructure projects receiving federal funds can be built. Before the 2015 order, federal agencies usually relied on historical data for predicting vulnerability to flooding instead of on future projections of sea-level rise. The order required higher elevation standards for road, bridges, and other infrastructure projects, with even stricter requirements for critical sites such as hospitals and evacuation centers.

Multiple outlets are now reporting that Trump’s impending order will tell agencies to revoke these standards. States and cities would still be able to pursue the stricter flood-risk requirements.

The president and his administration have designed most of their policies in spite of what federal scientists have to say about sea-level rise and climate change, but this reversal has already been characterized as especially ill-conceived.

“The fundamentals of the Obama policy were pretty simple: The taxpayer isn’t going to spend a vast amount of money to subsidize stupid things,” such as building vulnerable, flood-prone infrastructure, says Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a group that advocates a libertarian approach to addressing climate change. “This is a terrible idea for taxpayers. Undoing it is likely to waste billions of dollars with no benefit to speak of for anybody.”

FEMA’s estimated that the US lost $260 billion in flooding damages from 1980 to 2013.

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune added that Trump’s plan not only wastes taxpayer money, but puts people in danger. “This is climate science denial at its most dangerous,” he said in a statement. “Trump is putting vulnerable communities, federal employees, and families at risk by throwing out any guarantee that our infrastructure will be safe.”
.............................

The bolded passage above was predicted by his bankrupting a gaming house where he was literally playing with house money

Some businessman

[Julio3000]

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!

The Rude Pundit‏ @rudepundit 7m7 minutes ago

The Rude Pundit Retweeted Donald J. Trump

So, in other words, it's like your casinos.

.......

Or like your nuclear bluff.

Wait, just yesterday he was saying how many great people were lining up to replace the defectors.

Seriously, who but this guy could **** up ceremonial advisory council?

[57Brave]

“Nothing makes us more proud at the KKK than we see white patriots such as James Fields Jr, age 20, taking his car and running over nine communist anti-fascist ... James Fields hail victory,” the recording says. “It’s men like you that have made the great white race strong and will be strong again.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...ushpmg00000009

[goldfly]

[cajunrevenge]

“Nothing makes us more proud at the KKK than we see white patriots such as James Fields Jr, age 20, taking his car and running over nine communist anti-fascist ... James Fields hail victory,” the recording says. “It’s men like you that have made the great white race strong and will be strong again.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...ushpmg00000009

Prison is basically Nazi heaven.

[goldfly]

the irony is that Lee would most likely be in favor of taking them down since he wasn't in favor of them being put up in the first place

[Oklahomahawk]

the irony is that Lee would most likely be in favor of taking them down since he wasn't in favor of them being put up in the first place

Lee was certainly a flawed individual, just like all the rest of us I guess. Perhaps the terrible (and likely true) stories about him and the slaves he owned and mistreated is a good cautionary tale for us all. Lee was I believe basically a good man, but when any person allows themselves to harbor a moral and ethical cancer like slavery only bad things can come of it. Like any cancer it can ruin the very best of humanity that it touches. Maybe Lee's experiences on what happens to an otherwise pretty decent guy is enough of a good life lesson that we should put up or leave a statue to him for that very reason, "Don't let THIS happen to you"!!

By the way, I agree with you about Lee, he'd likely be the very first one in line to tear it down.

[Julio3000]

Here's some more about "many sides" and the violent left.

From a pastor:
"A phalanx of neo-Nazis shoved right through our human wall with 3-foot-wide wooden shields, screaming and spitting homophobic slurs and obscenities at us. It was then that antifa stepped in to thwart them. They have their tools to achieve their purposes, and they are not ones I will personally use, but let me stress that our purposes were the same: block this violent tide and do not let it take the pedestal."

From a rabbi:
"There was a group of antifa defending First United Methodist Church right outside in their parking lot, and at one point the white supremacists came by and antifa chased them off with sticks."

From an academic:
"At that point, more of the anarchists and antifa milling nearby saw the huge mob of the Nazis approach and stepped in. They were about 200-300 feet away from us and stepped between us (the clergy and faith leaders) and the Nazis. This enraged the Nazis, who indeed quickly responded violently. At this point, Sekou made a call that it was unsafe—it had gotten very violent very fast—and told us to disperse quickly.

While one obviously can’t objectively say what a kind of alternate reality or “sliding doors”–type situation would have been, one can hypothesize or theorize. Based on what was happening all around, the looks on their faces, the sheer number of them, and the weapons they were wielding, my hypothesis or theory is that had the antifa not stepped in, those of us standing on the steps would definitely have been injured, very likely gravely so."

Plenty more.

[57Brave]

LOLGOP‏ @LOLGOP 52s53 seconds ago

Republicans are barely flinching when Trump defends white supremacists. What could Mueller find that would shake them into decency?

This helps to understand how some fellow posters continually dismiss the Russian investigation.
That is chilling

[57Brave]

what a horrible 10 days.
It can get worse

[DaneHill]

Here's some more about "many sides" and the violent left.

From a pastor:
"A phalanx of neo-Nazis shoved right through our human wall with 3-foot-wide wooden shields, screaming and spitting homophobic slurs and obscenities at us. It was then that antifa stepped in to thwart them. They have their tools to achieve their purposes, and they are not ones I will personally use, but let me stress that our purposes were the same: block this violent tide and do not let it take the pedestal."

From a rabbi:
"There was a group of antifa defending First United Methodist Church right outside in their parking lot, and at one point the white supremacists came by and antifa chased them off with sticks."

From an academic:
"At that point, more of the anarchists and antifa milling nearby saw the huge mob of the Nazis approach and stepped in. They were about 200-300 feet away from us and stepped between us (the clergy and faith leaders) and the Nazis. This enraged the Nazis, who indeed quickly responded violently. At this point, Sekou made a call that it was unsafe—it had gotten very violent very fast—and told us to disperse quickly.

While one obviously can’t objectively say what a kind of alternate reality or “sliding doors”–type situation would have been, one can hypothesize or theorize. Based on what was happening all around, the looks on their faces, the sheer number of them, and the weapons they were wielding, my hypothesis or theory is that had the antifa not stepped in, those of us standing on the steps would definitely have been injured, very likely gravely so."

Plenty more.

Well, that's interesting now isn't it. I would point out that I don't agree with the clergy blocking the entrance into Emancipation Park, though I admire their bravery and resolve. I can't on one hand be angered at religious persons for trying to enact unconstitutional laws against gays, and then applaud them for flouting someone's constitutional right to assemble on the other. Regardless, that does NOT excuse those Nazi animals from barging through them as described. I would also point out that I believe the permit allowed for the alt-right's gathering to start at 1:00pm and they were looking to get into the park earlier around 11:00am or noon I believe, not that timing was a factor for those blocking the entrance. So technically, if that is true, then the alt-right gathering did not in fact have a permit on Saturday yet, making it unlawful.

Anyway, got side-tracked, very interesting perspectives on the supposed antifa extremists.

[57Brave]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...=.2e03b9171fc9

He’s the false-equivalency president.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, the national news media’s misguided sense of fairness helped equate the serious flaws of Hillary Clinton with the disqualifying evils of Donald Trump.

“But her emails . . .” goes the ironic line that aptly summarizes too much of the media’s coverage of the candidates. In short: Clinton’s misuse of a private email server was inflated to keep up with Trump’s racism, sexism and unbalanced narcissism — all in the name of seeming evenhanded.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////

LOLGOP‏ @LOLGOP 4m4 minutes ago

Children fleeing wars terrify Trump -- but he just wants you to give guys with swastika tattoos chanting "Jews will not replace us" a chance

[sturg33]

Or like your nuclear bluff.

Uhh how was it a bluff?

Love that you still haven't commented on NL standing down