US Politics: 2017 Edition

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**Co'tor Shas**

Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, dies at 69

Norma McCorvey, who was 22, unwed, mired in addiction and poverty, and desperate for a way out of an unwanted pregnancy when she became Jane Roe, the pseudonymous plaintiff in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion, died Feb. 18 at an assisted-living facility in Katy, Tex. She was 69.

Her death was confirmed by Joshua Prager, a journalist working on a book about Roe v. Wade. The cause was a heart ailment.

Ms. McCorvey was a complicated protagonist in a legal case that became a touchstone in the culture wars, celebrated by champions as an affirmation of women’s freedom and denounced by opponents as the legalization of murder of the unborn.

When she filed suit in 1970, she was looking not for a sweeping ruling for all women from the highest court in the land, but rather, simply, the right to legally and safely end a pregnancy that she did not wish to carry forward. In her home state of Texas, as in most other states, abortion was prohibited except when the mother’s life was at stake.

On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its historic 7-to-2 ruling, written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, articulating a constitutional right to privacy that included the choice to terminate a pregnancy.

The ruling established the trimester framework, designed to balance a woman’s right to control her body and a state’s compelling interest in protecting unborn life. Although later modified, it was a landmark of American jurisprudence and made Jane Roe a figurehead — championed or reviled — in the battle over reproductive rights that continued into the 21st century.

Ms. McCorvey fully shed her courtroom pseudonym in the 1980s, lending her name first to supporters of abortion rights and then, in a stunning reversal, to the cause’s fiercest critics as a born-again Christian. But even after two memoirs, she remained an enigma, as difficult to know as when she shielded her identity behind the name Jane Roe.

She admitted that she peddled misinformation about herself, lying about even the most crucial juncture in her life: For years, she claimed that the Roe pregnancy was the result of a rape. In 1987, she recanted, saying that she had become pregnant “through what I thought was love.” Although the details of her account were legally unimportant, abortion foes pointed to the lie to discredit Ms. McCorvey and her case.

Ms. McCorvey was not the first plaintiff to challenge a state abortion law, but Roe v. Wade was the first such case to work its way through the appeals process to the Supreme Court. She used the pseudonym Jane Roe to protect her privacy. The defendant, Wade, was the Dallas County district attorney, Henry Wade, an official responsible for enforcing Texas abortion laws.

Years later, Ms. McCorvey expressed bitterness at what she described as her attorneys’ unwillingness to help her find what she needed — an abortion, even an illegal one.

“Sarah sat right across the table from me at Columbo’s pizza parlor, and I didn’t know until two years ago that she had had an abortion herself,” Ms. McCorvey told the New York Times in 1994. “When I told her then how desperately I needed one, she could have told me where to go for it. But she wouldn’t because she needed me to be pregnant for her case.”

“Sarah saw these cuts on my wrists, my swollen eyes from crying,” she continued, “the miserable person sitting across from her, and she knew she had a patsy. She knew I wouldn’t go outside of the realm of her and Linda. I was too scared. It was one of the most hideous times of my life.”

‘I wasn’t good enough for them’
After the Supreme Court ruling, Ms. McCorvey did not live in total anonymity, as has been erroneously reported, but lived a mainly private existence before revealing herself in interviews and then in a memoir written with Andy Meisler, “I Am Roe” (1994). She worked in abortion clinics, “trying to please everyone and trying to be hardcore pro-choice,” she told Time magazine.

“That is a very heavy burden,” she said. Moreover, she said that her social background as a poor high school dropout made her ill at ease among the largely upper-class and well-educated activists who helped make abortion a matter of urgent national importance in the 1960s and 1970s.

“I wasn’t good enough for them,” she once said. “. . . I’m a street kid.”

Her conversion came about when Benham, the head of Operation Rescue, opened an office near one of Ms. McCorvey’s clinics and befriended her. She announced that she opposed abortion rights except in the first trimester — a position that put her in fundamental conflict with other antiabortion activists, who opposed abortion in all circumstances. Nevertheless, her defection was hailed as a victory for their cause.

Weddington looked suspiciously on Ms. McCorvey’s conversion and once described her former client as a person who “really craved and sought attention.” Ms. McCorvey attributed her philosophical reversal to her being “worried about salvation.”

She wrote another memoir, “Won By Love” (1997), with co-author Gary Thomas, founded the Dallas-based Roe No More ministry and reportedly became a Catholic. She participated in antiabortion protests and was arrested in 2009 for disrupting the Senate confirmation hearings on Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

Gloria Allred, the women’s rights lawyer who for a period represented Ms. McCorvey, told the Times in 1995 that Ms. McCorvey was justified in feeling abandoned by the women’s movement.

“She was shut out of many national pro-choice celebrations. She attended but for the most part she was not invited and it was a very hurtful experience,” Allred said. “When she did speak . . . she was really very eloquent, not well-educated but speaking from the heart, and I think she had a lot of common sense in what she was saying about choice.”

But neither did Ms. McCorvey find a comfortable home among conservatives in the antiabortion movement, many of whom regarded lesbianism as immoral.

“Neither side was ever willing to accept her for who she was,” the historian David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and the author of “Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade,” said in an interview.

Ms. McCorvey supported herself in part through honoraria, book royalties and other income she generated from her role in the abortion debate. By 2013, according to Prager’s article in Vanity Fair, Ms. McCorvey was relying on “free room and board from strangers.”

Survivors include her daughter Melissa and two grandchildren. Nothing is publicly known of the two children Ms. McCorvey gave up for adoption, according to Prager.

“I don’t require that much in my life,” Ms. McCorvey told the Times in 1994. “. . . I just never had the privilege to go into an abortion clinic, lay down and have an abortion. That’s the only thing I never had.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/norma-mccorvey-jane-roe-of-roe-v-wade-decision-legalizing-abortion-dies-at-69/2017/02/18/24b83108-396e-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html?utm_term=.d0a9bb56ff94

**Verviedi**

Rest in peace. She done good.

**jasper76**

I always found it an innteresting footnote that she reversed her point of view and became pro-life.

**Scrabb**

Verviedi wrote:
Rest in peace. She done good.

I don't think you read the article. That lady had a difficult life and was failed by both sides of the political forces she got caught up in. Really rather sad story.

**BigWaaagh**

Kilkrazy wrote:
BigWaaagh wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
BigWaaagh wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Like Breitbart, owned by Steve Bannon.

One of the beauties of a free press is that anyone can set up a newspaper, etc, and publishing is cheaper and easier than ever now, thanks to digitalisation. The citizen journalist, and so on...

Who cares if a political party has a newspaper and a website? The other parties also can have their papers and sites.

Trump's tirade isn't against "the mainstream media", it is against the parts of the media that question and criticise his actions. Which shows the press is working properly. The media are questioning Trump's actions because they are highly questionable.

Bannon is a top political advisor. Check. He has some political power. Check. He isn't, however, a political power in the sense that he isn't an elected offical, so I don't know if I'm with the OP on this, hence my request for an explanation.

Bannon has the ear of the president. He has a seat on the national security council. He very clearly has political power regardless of whether he has been elected or appointed. In fact being unelected means he can't lose his position in an election, making him in some sense more secure and unaccountable than an elected official.

No, because he's totally dependent on that elected sponsor for his position and said power.

He's not answerable to you, though.

But he is to the guy who controls his fate and that guy is very answerable to me. Please see ex-Nat. Sec. advisor Michael Flynn's fortunes for reference.

**Dreadclaw69**

d-usa wrote:
Dreadclaw69 wrote:
d-usa wrote:
If the only reply to anything the GOP does is "herp derp the Democrats do it herp derp" then what's the point of posting in this thread? Lets just lock this thread, post a sticky saying "both sides are bad" in the OT, and it would be the same as what we got now.

Coming from the person who posted this on the same page above;

d-usa wrote:
Pruit also used private email accounts to conduct official business, so naturally conservatives are outraged and opposing his nomination. In addition to waiting what the court ordered compliance with the FOIA requests might reveal about potential communication with fossil fuel businesses when suing the EPA. I'm glad we have the party of transparency and accountability in charge now.

What's the point of posting in this thread if the only reply to anything the Dems does is "herp derp Republicans do it herp derp"? If you want to point out the double standards of one party don't be surprised if people point out the double standards from their counter parts. If you don't want this to happen then don't do it yourself.

Because pointing out that people suddenly don't give a gak anymore after years of holding investigations and making it the single most important issue in this election is exactly the same as saying "I don't care because the other guys did it too."

But thanks for making a "it's okay because X does it too" post to show why "it's okay because X does it too" posts are stupid.

Thanks for making my point for me again about selective concern for double standards

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NinthMusketeer wrote:
d-usa wrote:
Dreadclaw69 wrote:
d-usa wrote:
If the only reply to anything the GOP does is "herp derp the Democrats do it herp derp" then what's the point of posting in this thread? Lets just lock this thread, post a sticky saying "both sides are bad" in the OT, and it would be the same as what we got now.

Coming from the person who posted this on the same page above;

d-usa wrote:
Pruit also used private email accounts to conduct official business, so naturally conservatives are outraged and opposing his nomination. In addition to waiting what the court ordered compliance with the FOIA requests might reveal about potential communication with fossil fuel businesses when suing the EPA. I'm glad we have the party of transparency and accountability in charge now.

What's the point of posting in this thread if the only reply to anything the Dems does is "herp derp Republicans do it herp derp"? If you want to point out the double standards of one party don't be surprised if people point out the double standards from their counter parts. If you don't want this to happen then don't do it yourself.

Because pointing out that people suddenly don't give a gak anymore after years of holding investigations and making it the single most important issue in this election is exactly the same as saying "I don't care because the other guys did it too."

But thanks for making a "it's okay because X does it too" post to show why "it's okay because X does it too" posts are stupid.
Agreed on the irony. Pointing out that Republicans don't care about email servers aside from Clintion's isn't saying 'look the other side does it too' it's highlighting a double standard. No one is trying to excuse Clinton's behavior here.

In case you missed it when you quoted it;
" If you want to point out the double standards of one party don't be surprised if people point out the double standards from their counter parts. If you don't want this to happen then don't do it yourself."

I don't see anything that I posted that excuses either side for the conduct.

**d-usa**

I didn't do whatever the hell it is you think I did. I know it's a waste of time, but I'll repeat it one more time just like I have multiple times over the past few months already. I know that I can explain it to you until I am blue in the face, but I cannot understand it for you. But once more, because I like to kick myself in the balls:

I give absolutely the same amount of feths about the private servers used by Clinton, Trump, Pruitt, Fallin, Rice, Powell, and a metric gak ton of other politicians:

There is no double standard there because I don't give a feth about it. I don't think that it's okay that Clinton did it because the Republicans do it do. I don't give a feth who did it because I don't give a feth that it happened. Got that? I don't think so, because I have repeated that so often that people have to not understand that on purpose, and I can't fix that.

Now that we have cleared up that I don't give a feth about the servers, again, let's address the issue that I do give a feth about, again:

People who give a feth when one side does it, and don't give a feth when their side does it.

For this specific example: You keep on implying that I give a feth that Pruitt used a server when I didn't give a feth that Clinton used it, or that I am saying "Pruitt does it too, so it's no big deal". Which is of course not what I have ever said.

What I said is that it's totally not surprising that Republicans don't care when their own party does the same thing that resulted in years of hearings when another party did it.

That's it, a very simple statement without any double standard. Unless expecting a party to be consistent is somehow inconsistent. But maybe some people just have problems understanding that.

But then again, arguing against something completely different from what I actually said has been your thing for a while now.

**Vash108**

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-costs-trips-security-taxpayer-barack-obama-month-year-a7586261.html

My tax dollars at work

**Co'tor Shas**

He's costing NYC something like $1M a day.

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We should really put a cap on the amount of money the president+family is allowed to cost us for non-essential travel at this rate. Or make Trump pay for it, I mean he has billions, right?

**Vaktathi**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
He's costing NYC something like $1M a day.

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We should really put a cap on the amount of money the president+family is allowed to cost us for non-essential travel at this rate. Or make Trump pay for it, I mean he has billions, right?

This was the reason they gave the President a Salary in the first place. Washington originally just asked the congress to pay his expenses and he would not draw a salary, well, it turned out his "expenses" were rather exorbitant

**Ahtman**

If Michelle Obama had lived in a gold lined Isengard Tower in NYC that cost $1m+ a day people that aren't saying gak would be throwing absolute fits.

**AegisGrimm**

Well, yeah. That's the whole game of US politics. If your party does it, it's necessary business. If the other party does it...."Oh god! The sky is falling !"

If Obama was like Trump, the Republicans would have lost their friggin' minds like the Dems are now. Both sides are knee-jerk idiots, which sucks in a two-party system.

**Co'tor Shas**

Interesting little article. Also the actual survey is hilarious.
http://www.npr.org/2017/02/17/515791540/the-trump-media-survey-is-phenomenally-biased-it-also-does-its-job-well

**thekingofkings**

cuda1179 wrote:
thekingofkings wrote:
Gordon Shumway wrote:
If it were really about self defense, couldn't we just scrap all branches and make a "nuclear missle" branch? Has a nuclear power ever been invaded by another country?

Yes, in the Kargil war of 1999. It was a limited invasion that never escalated into an existential threat to either combatant, both of which are nuclear powers.

Wait, when did Israel get nukes? wasn't that before one of those invasions?

Prior likely to the Yom Kippur War, but I cant reliably say yes or no that the Jericho I was available, I have seen instances were Moshe Dayan had in 1973 implied they were usable, and that Dr. Kissinger had warned Sadat about the possibility. But that was quickly turned around with Israel in striking distance of both Cairo and Damascus. There may technically be others, but I believe the Kargil war was the only one where both powers were nuclear.

**LordofHats**

So I had a big WTF moment today. I was meeting the folks for a pleasant dinner and movie and they started talking about a family friend whose been caught up in a scandal that sounded really familiar.

So I'm like "wait, that Mike Flynn is our Mike Flynn?"

And they're like "Yes."

And then I'm like;

Those little people on the Disney ride are right XD It is a small world. I didn't even recognized him from the pictures I've seen. That's like the third person I've known from my youth even vaguely to have been caught up in a scandal >.>

**AlmightyWalrus**

So, does anyone have a clue what happened in Sweden the day before yesterday according to Trump's speech yesterday? I certainly don't, and no one else seems to either.

**Compel**

Get out of here AlmightyWalrus, noone wants your FAKE NEWS!!!!!!!!!11

**Mr. Burning**

AlmightyWalrus wrote:
So, does anyone have a clue what happened in Sweden the day before yesterday according to Trump's speech yesterday? I certainly don't, and no one else seems to either.

Rape?
Murder Rape?
Murder Rape by Immigrant?
Murder Rape by immigrant Terrorist?

The possibilities are limited only by the Oompa Loompa in chiefs imagination.

Sweden! Who would believe this?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/19/trump-refers-non-existent-refugee-incident-sweden-rally/

**reds8n**

Thoughts and prayers for everyone in Sweden caught up in the Bølënn Grïnne Massacre.

Stay strong.

**sebster**

Rosebuddy wrote:
Iran and Iraq are also much smaller than Russia and was hit when the US and the West in general wasn't in as much turmoil as it is now.

Being bigger makes it harder to bypass. Because being means you need to effect a much larger bypass to have any effect, and of course that bigger bypass leaves a bigger footprint, which is much more likely to be detected by the countries maintaining sanctions.

This is ridiculous. You have just randomly claimed out of nowhere that sanctions will get bypassed in time. I pointed out this hasn't happened on any material level, and no sign at all has been shown of this happening on any level. You just take that in your stride, and come back with 'Russia is big'.

You've got moxie, I'll give you that. Read something and you'd be dangerous.

NATO and the EU aren't looking as rock solid as they used to.

NATO is only lacking its previous certainty because of the presence of a uniquely stupid US president. It remains the absolute dominant military treaty organisation in the world, and its political importance is greater than it has been for a long time.

As for the EU... yeah the political will has declined and the stupidity of monetary union is causing a lot of issues. But the EU has nothing to do with conversation, there was no reason for you to mention it.

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Kilkrazy wrote:
It's not just Trump. A lot of his close staffers like his press secretary have the same attitude. One of his press guys had a big fight with the BBC's News Night anchor because of it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39000118

Wow, Sebastian Gorka, who was Breitbart columnist before joining Trump's team, is complaining about fake news.

The role of the press in a liberal democracy is to hold Authority to account and call out their lies. As long as Trump keeps lying he will have a rocky relationship with the press.

If Trump was as half as smart as the next dumbest US president, then he'd realise that the press is very diverse and not actually that interested in grand political causes. To the extent the press has any consistent features it is that they are overworked, ambitious and very vain. The first two mean that they rarely spend time on heavy research of complex issues, and will instead run with whatever sounds big on a superficial level as that will get their mugs in front of lots of eyeballs.without them having to research in to wee hours of the morning. What this means is that if you make it just a little bit hard to properly prove that you're lying, the press will most likely let you get away with it.

But because the Trump lies are so brazen, you don't barely even need research. It takes five minutes on wiki to establish the president has repeatedly lied about his EV performance. It takes even less time to prove he told a complete lie about the murder rate. So of course the press will report that. And then Trump goes and abuses them directly, which pricks their vanity, which actually has driven the press to do some actual work investigating the guy.

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Ensis Ferrae wrote:
This is a cabinet that is quite fething delusional. We need an entire do-over. New primaries, new general, everything.

New voters...

**AegisGrimm**

Sorry if I remember incorrectly, but isn't this 'fake news' the same news that Trump touted as getting all his breaking and hot information from during his campaign?

**sebster**

whembly wrote:
The simple matter is if it were anyone else... that person/persons would be in the slammer, regardless of intent. No IF.AND.BUT. about it.

I continue to await the list of senior politicians and officials who have been put in prison for reckless handling of classified intelligence. I've been waiting for this list for a year now. Despite being unable to give me a list with a single fething name on it that meets the criteria I gave, you continue to claim that you have absolute certainty that it is only by the magic of Clinton that she escaped the prosecution that all of the nobody in her situation previously suffered.

Stop it.

He'd take incompetent (Trump) over someone who knowingly gets away with breaking TS handling laws.

That person must feel like a right numpty now, because Trump has shown utter disregard information security. He talked openly during the campaign about intel briefings he received. He just talk a phone call about the NK missile test in the middle of hte dining hall of Mar-a-lago. He spoke openly to club members about staff appointments, and asked members if they'd like to come along to interviews.

You missing a vital piece of information... he had just done gone through a Congressional Hearing under oath.

First up, that makes the difference one due to the decision of congress to involve themselves in the matter. Which means you are now accepting the difference is one driven by a partisan political choice made by the party that controlled congress. Good we've got that settled.

Second up, your response utterly fails to address any of the issues I just explained to you. Comey was required to report, but that report came with great discretion. To repeat all those bits of discretion, Comey could have delayed his report until a warrant was received, or until after the election, or notified congress in person so that the inevitable leak could not be substantiated, or he could have explained in the memo the re-opening was entirely speculative and there was no reason to think they necessarily had any new emails or that those emails might contain anything meaningful. Comey did not of that, in fact he made every choice possible to make the story seem as big as possible.

Could you imagine if it leaked that the FBI had been sitting on thousands of additional emails and evidence related to the Clinton criminal investigation and didn’t inform Congress or the public before the election?

It was obvious that Comey only did this to cover his & the FBI's asses and try to maintain some shred of integrity.

Yeah, I mean, imagine if Comey flatly denied there was any FBI investigation in to connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then it turned out the FBI did have an investigation in to connections between the Trump campaign and Russia? Wouldn't that just shake the foundations of... oh yes, that's actually a real thing.

Okay, then, imagine if the FBI volunteered information to congress in an easily leaked format about a speculative re-opening of a case of one major presidential candidate, and meanwhile flatly denied questions about an investigation in to the other presidential candidate. Yeah, that would leave the FBI without a shred of dignity. Imagine if that happened.

Oh.

Seb... Russia wasn't this 'docile nation' waiting for helping hands from the west prior to Crimea... that was my point. The whole Georgia-Ossetian (Russia by proxy) ordeal began early in Obama's presidency.

Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008, while Bush was in power. Can you just wiki check your dates? This is far from the first time these conversations have gotten bogged down in correcting lots of little things.

There's a whole lotta steps between sanctions and outright war.

Ukraine knows NATO troops in country is way too politically sensitive, so now please explain all the steps you think Obama should have done.

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whembly wrote:
That was on the RNC server (which were found) over the unusual Bush firings of the DoJ prosecutors.

No, this is not fething good enough.

The point is that RNC server was used by Bush staffers to conduct Whitehouse business, to avoid federal disclosure regs. This is exactly what Clinton was doing, using a different server so that emails she didn't want captured in official records weren't caught in official records.

It was skeezy of the Bush admin, just as it was skeezy of Clinton, and just as it is skeezy of the Trump admin.

The only reason you can't see this is because you treat this as a cheerleading exercise.

**Relapse**

jasper76 wrote:
I always found it an innteresting footnote that she reversed her point of view and became pro-life.

Very true. I'm sure it's common with folks on both sides of that issue. I'm anti abortion, with qualifiers allowing for abortion, myself.

**sebster**

whembly wrote:
Evidently, the Trump team don't like Flynn either and this ordeal was used as a pretext to ask for Flynn's resignation.

That's a plainly hopeless reading of the situation. Flynn began working with Trump in February 2016. They got along so well that Flynn actually taken through the vetting process to be Trump's VP. Flynn was invited to be the keynote speaked on the first night of the Republican convention. Trump and Flynn worked very closely for the next 10 months, and Trump then offered Flynn the role of national security advisor.

You are then asking us to believe that Flynn and Trump fell out so badly during Flynn's three weeks in the job that Trump then invented a reason to fire him. The reason Trump used was that Flynn spoke to Russia, lied to Pence about it, Trump found out and then sat on this info for two weeks, until the papers broke the story, and then finally Trump decided he had an excuse to fire Flynn. This is, fairly obviously, fething ridiculous.

I'll offer you a different alternative. Flynn spoke to Russia repeatedly during his time working for the Trump campaign. He kept these calls secret. This is a matter of fact. Flynn spoke to Russia on the very day that Obama announced new penalties, and Putin took the incredible response of not reacting at all, almost as if he knew Trump would not continue Obama's penalties. Again, this is a matter of fact.

What we are left to speculate is whether Flynn spoke to Russia while part of Trump's campaign with Trump's knowledge, and possibly with information from Trump that he desired Putin to know. To me, that seems a no-brainer. I cannot imagine a world leader, even Trump, accepting that his senior foreign advisor was in regular contact with a major foreign rival, and showing no interest in those calls.

And while I know this has not been proven and nothing should be done until it is, I also believe it is impossible for any sensible person to consider it the most likely explanation of events.

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whembly wrote:
As to the press conference...It was a bunch of nonsense really...

It's exactly what he did during the campaign. His supporters loved it... the media/detractors are like WTF... the indies won't give a gak.

Here you are again talking about stuff with regard for nothing but the political game. Spouting stuff that wanders between factually incorrect and utterly fething bonkers somehow managed to win a presidential election, because the Republican base is shockingly indifferent to reality, but Trump is now actually president. He ha to govern. Governing at the most minimally competent level requires some appreciation of reality. Trump has shown nothing of the sort.

At what point do you stop treating this as a horse race where you've $5 on the red horse, and start treating like the governing of the most powerful country in the world?

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cuda1179 wrote:
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/millions-hispanics-illegal-vote/2017/02/16/id/774045/

Looks like the Washington times shows that 2.1 million non-citizens admitted they were registered to vote in the last election.

Oh for feth's sake. A survey was done in 2013 in which 58 people out of 800 surveyed said they were non-citizens and were registered to vote. While most people would see 7% of survey respondents blithely admitting to breaking federal law and see that as the usual 'just fething with the surveyors' responses, the Moonie owned Washington Times multipled some random number by some other random numbers and decided this was evidence of 2.1 million people illegally voting 3 years after the survey. This in turn was picked up by Newsmax because they care as little about reality as the moonies. And the cuda1179 brought it here because he also just doesn't fething care.

**Zywus**

AlmightyWalrus wrote:
So, does anyone have a clue what happened in Sweden the day before yesterday according to Trump's speech yesterday? I certainly don't, and no one else seems to either.

I heard something about this as well. (woke up to a excerpt of a Trump speech on the morning radio so I wasn't fully awake yet).
Did he refer to a specific event/date or just Sweden's immigration policies in general over the last decades?

**sebster**

Just Tony wrote:
Maybe the book I picked up at Dachau was wrong, but it specified that the Nazi party ran on a socialist ticket. How'd they crack down on themselves?

At a town outside of Auschwitz as we left I purchased a serve of chips. I don't take those chips to be my complete guide to light snacks during the Holocaust because I understand geography alone doesn't actually make a thing have historical accuracy. Perhaps if you focused your reading more on quality than geography you would know that that through its formative years the Nazi party contained a lot of competing, and exclusive strains of though. One of the biggest causes of inter-party friction was between the anti-capitalist and anti-marxist elements. Both groups found common ground in believing that whether it was marxist or capitalists screwing things up, it was definitely an international jewish plot. Hitler led the anti-marxist element, and as he grew in power, he came increasingly in to conflict with the anti-capitalist, socialist element.

To resolve this conflict, Hitler had the leaders of the socialist wing of the party murdered. This is commonly known as the Night of Long Knives. It's more than a bit famous. The book you bought in Dachau might have even mentioned it.

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Dreadclaw69 wrote:
What's the point of posting in this thread if the only reply to anything the Dems does is "herp derp Republicans do it herp derp"? If you want to point out the double standards of one party don't be surprised if people point out the double standards from their counter parts. If you don't want this to happen then don't do it yourself.

The difference, of course, being that Republicans are ridiculously claiming that Clinton should have kept from any future positions because she had a private server. Democrats are pointing out that many Republicans have had similar issues, and the only statement that all of them should be kept from power has been spurious, made just to prompt Republicans in to some kind of honesty.

That honesty has not been forthcoming. Instead we get stuff like your effort above, in which you attempt to pretend that merely asking you to be consistent in how you treat Republicans and Democrats who have attempted to avoid record keeping regs is a 'your side does it too' argument.

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Vash108 wrote:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-costs-trips-security-taxpayer-barack-obama-month-year-a7586261.html

My tax dollars at work

Along similar lines, Trump recently used Airforce One to fly to his speech in Melbourne. It was a two hour flight, it would have taken less time by car, but Trump wanted Airforce One behind him for his backdrop. This cost $400,000.

This comes a couple of weeks after Trump publicly attacked the Airforce One program as a waste of taxpayer dollars (while getting the cost of the program wrong by a factor of about 10).

**Rosebuddy**

sebster wrote:

Being bigger makes it harder to bypass. Because being means you need to effect a much larger bypass to have any effect, and of course that bigger bypass leaves a bigger footprint, which is much more likely to be detected by the countries maintaining sanctions.

This is ridiculous. You have just randomly claimed out of nowhere that sanctions will get bypassed in time. I pointed out this hasn't happened on any material level, and no sign at all has been shown of this happening on any level. You just take that in your stride, and come back with 'Russia is big'.

You've got moxie, I'll give you that. Read something and you'd be dangerous.

This is what I mean by arrogance. My point is not that Russia absolutely will or won't do any particular thing (other than react to US policy in some manner), it's that you refuse to consider the possibility that things won't go the way the US wants them to. You refuse to consider that the Russian leadership is composed of human beings capable of thought and action. You refuse to consider consequences in any way, intended or otherwise. You refuse to consider that the relationship between the US and Iraq in the 90's isn't the same as the relationship between the US and Russia in 2017. Additionally, your hypocrisy in demanding that Russia be brought low for things you know yourself the US already does more of simply because world power is aligned with the US rather than against it leaves you with absolutely no moral ground to stand on. All of this taken together means that your suggestions are dubious at best.

**sebster**

AegisGrimm wrote:
Well, yeah. That's the whole game of US politics. If your party does it, it's necessary business. If the other party does it...."Oh god! The sky is falling !"

If Obama was like Trump, the Republicans would have lost their friggin' minds like the Dems are now. Both sides are knee-jerk idiots, which sucks in a two-party system.

This 'both sides' thing is a throw away line. It is the cheap way to sound cynical without having to actually learn anything about what is happening. When one side is mediocre, and the other side is a fething disaster of historic proportions.... then 'both sides' just doesn't cut it anymore.

**Co'tor Shas**

LordofHats wrote:
So I had a big WTF moment today. I was meeting the folks for a pleasant dinner and movie and they started talking about a family friend whose been caught up in a scandal that sounded really familiar.

So I'm like "wait, that Mike Flynn is our Mike Flynn?"

And they're like "Yes."

And then I'm like;

Those little people on the Disney ride are right XD It is a small world. I didn't even recognized him from the pictures I've seen. That's like the third person I've known from my youth even vaguely to have been caught up in a scandal >.>

That's actually pretty hilarious.

**whembly**

sebster wrote:

At what point do you stop treating this as a horse race where you've $5 on the red horse, and start treating like the governing of the most powerful country in the world?

Oh... I'm sorry, you must be confused for someone who gives a gak.

As someone who's voted for the A'llepoing Stoner, I'm in a unique position to Calvin Ball this and not give a gak.

So while I can cheer on Trumpo for some of the good things he has done, the stuff that I don't like... well, I don't feel bad for being like:

'cuz I know the alternative would be just as bad or even worst.