whembly wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 whembly wrote:


The only recourse, if a party steps out of bound, is to simply vote for the other guy.

You should really, really follow your own advice and vote for the Hil-mon. Trump represents the "point of no return" for a sensible, not-awful Republican party.

Not Johnson/Stein. The Hils.

Um... Hil-mon would continue Obama's policies...

No thanks.

 whembly wrote:

The only recourse, if a party steps out of bound, is to simply vote for the other guy.

 Frazzled wrote:

You can't respond with "Right now they are negatives." and reconcile that with your statement defending your bias,
***Well I am open to things turning out better, but right now they are absolute cluster feths. I'm just keeping an open mind.

Its not unfounded bias. Please provide cites on the extensive views that the Libya war was a good idea and the handling of Syria has been done well (note I fully support staying the heck out of Syria, getting involved is the mistake).

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

The only recourse, if a party steps out of bound, is to simply vote for the other guy.

Throw your hands up in the air, wave 'em round like you just don't care. Yell Perot! Perot!

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

You can't respond with "Right now they are negatives." and reconcile that with your statement defending your bias,
***Well I am open to things turning out better, but right now they are absolute cluster feths. I'm just keeping an open mind.

Its not unfounded bias. Please provide cites on the extensive views that the Libya war was a good idea and the handling of Syria has been done well (note I fully support staying the heck out of Syria, getting involved is the mistake).

Yes it is unfounded, confirmed by your acknowledgement and understanding of historical review and completely relevant only to the reality of the liquidity of the here and now in a revolution that is only 5 years old! As the saying goes, "Time will tell."...so let's give it some time! Furthermore, I'm certainly not going to say it was a "good" idea, any more than I'll let you slide calling it a "bad" idea, because that puts me in the same trap you find your argument in. It is, simply, what it is at this very moment. An unfolding story, with ALOT of outside influence muddling the waters...here's where the cluster feths are coming from...and it needs to take it's course before anybody starts levelling criticism.

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

The only recourse, if a party steps out of bound, is to simply vote for the other guy.

Throw your hands up in the air, wave 'em round like you just don't care. Yell Perot! Perot!

Yup.

My give a gak meter broke in this election.

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

The only recourse, if a party steps out of bound, is to simply vote for the other guy.

Throw your hands up in the air, wave 'em round like you just don't care. Yell Perot! Perot!

Yup.

My give a gak meter broke in this election.

 Frazzled wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

You can't respond with "Right now they are negatives." and reconcile that with your statement defending your bias,
***Well I am open to things turning out better, but right now they are absolute cluster feths. I'm just keeping an open mind.

Its not unfounded bias. Please provide cites on the extensive views that the Libya war was a good idea and the handling of Syria has been done well (note I fully support staying the heck out of Syria, getting involved is the mistake).

Yes it is unfounded, confirmed by your acknowledgement and understanding of historical review and completely relevant only to the reality of the liquidity of the here and now in a revolution that is only 5 years old! As the saying goes, "Time will tell."...so let's give it some time! Furthermore, I'm certainly not going to say it was a "good" idea, any more than I'll let you slide calling it a "bad" idea, because that puts me in the same trap you find your argument in. It is, simply, what it is at this very moment. An unfolding story, with ALOT of outside influence muddling the waters...here's where the cluster feths are coming from...and it needs to take it's course before anybody starts levelling criticism.

Well if its unfounded I am sure you can find dozens of articles for us on why Libya was a good move.

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

You can't respond with "Right now they are negatives." and reconcile that with your statement defending your bias,
***Well I am open to things turning out better, but right now they are absolute cluster feths. I'm just keeping an open mind.

Its not unfounded bias. Please provide cites on the extensive views that the Libya war was a good idea and the handling of Syria has been done well (note I fully support staying the heck out of Syria, getting involved is the mistake).

Yes it is unfounded, confirmed by your acknowledgement and understanding of historical review and completely relevant only to the reality of the liquidity of the here and now in a revolution that is only 5 years old! As the saying goes, "Time will tell."...so let's give it some time! Furthermore, I'm certainly not going to say it was a "good" idea, any more than I'll let you slide calling it a "bad" idea, because that puts me in the same trap you find your argument in. It is, simply, what it is at this very moment. An unfolding story, with ALOT of outside influence muddling the waters...here's where the cluster feths are coming from...and it needs to take it's course before anybody starts levelling criticism.

Well if its unfounded I am sure you can find dozens of articles for us on why Libya was a good move.

Almost every article on the Libyan time line will have positive points, i.e. Gaddafi's overthrow, cessation of the bombing of civilians, release of political prisoners, parliamentary elections, etc. If you've done your research, as I'm sure you have, you know as well as I do that these exist. Just as I know that those same articles point to the chaos created created in the wake of the revolution's power vacuum.
There's at least two sides to this story, it's nowhere near being done and that simply is my pushback to your initial post labelling it as a "bad", from a historical perspective, for Obama. This game is in very early innings.

Almost every article on the Libyan time line will have positive points, i.e. Gaddafi's overthrow, cessation of the bombing of civilians, release of political prisoners, parliamentary elections, etc. If you've done your research, as I'm sure you have, you know as well as I do that these exist. Just as I know that those same articles point to the chaos created created in the wake of the revolution's power vacuum.

 Frazzled wrote:
No no Iraq II bad because Republicans

Libya good because Democrats. Iraq III good because Democrats.

Almost every article on the Libyan time line will have positive points, i.e. Gaddafi's overthrow, cessation of the bombing of civilians, release of political prisoners, parliamentary elections, etc. If you've done your research, as I'm sure you have, you know as well as I do that these exist. Just as I know that those same articles point to the chaos created created in the wake of the revolution's power vacuum.

How about something since 2012?

 Frazzled wrote:
Wait this deal?
http://www.ibtimes.com/libya-rejects-un-backed-peace-deal-unity-government-conflict-deepens-2278640

 Frazzled wrote:
Per the BBC:
"2016 - Following years of conflict, a new UN-backed "unity" government is installed in a naval base in Tripoli. It faces opposition from two rival governments and a host of militias."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13754897

However with a quick search it appears really hard to get unbiased news on Libya.

 Frazzled wrote:
Obama will be known as the first black President.

Almost nothing else will matter to historians.

 whembly wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Tanner... investigative hearings are inherently political. Every.Single.One.Of.Them.

Did I say political? Why, no, no I did not. I said partisan. There is a difference.

It's naive to expect a lack of partisanship in Congress.

It's always been this way.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Tanner... investigative hearings are inherently political. Every.Single.One.Of.Them.

Did I say political? Why, no, no I did not. I said partisan. There is a difference.

It's naive to expect a lack of partisanship in Congress.

It's always been this way.

No, it hasn't.

Traditionally congressmen have voted according to the local concerns and interests of their constituents -- e.g. pork barrel etc.

It's since the 1990s that the Republican Party has pursued a much more ideological pattern of politics.

 whembly wrote:

Dude. Politics has always been an ugly furball.

 whembly wrote:

It's now apparent, in recent memory, simply because of all the information we have at our finger tips.

 whembly wrote:


EDIT: Just ask LordofHats... he's the resident historian.

Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.

Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.

In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the height of a flagpole.

In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.

The check to charity from the Trump Foundation.

In another case, court papers say one of Trump’s golf courses in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s chosen charity. A $158,000 donation was made by the Trump Foundation, according to tax records.

The other expenditures involved smaller amounts. In 2013, Trump used $5,000 from the foundation to buy advertisements touting his chain of hotels in programs for three events organized by a D.C. preservation group. And in 2014, Trump spent $10,000 of the foundation’s money on a portrait of himself bought at a charity fundraiser.

Or, rather, another portrait of himself.

Several years earlier, Trump used $20,000 from the Trump Foundation to buy a different, six-foot-tall portrait.
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) railed against GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump from the Senate floor Sept. 20. Reid accused Trump of being "incapable of making money honestly." (  / C-SPAN)

If the Internal Revenue Service were to find that Trump violated self-dealing rules, the agency could require him to pay penalty taxes or to reimburse the foundation for all the money it spent on his behalf. Trump is also facing scrutiny from the New York attorney general’s office, which is examining whether the foundation broke state charity laws.

More broadly, these cases­ also provide new evidence that Trump ran his charity in a way that may have violated U.S. tax law and gone against the moral conventions of philanthropy.

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Washington Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as “really shocking.”

“If he’s using other people’s money — run through his foundation — to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in awhile,” Tenenbaum said.

The Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about the four cases but received no response.

The Trump campaign released a statement about this story late Tuesday that said it was “peppered with inaccuracies and omissions,” though the statement cited none and the campaign has still not responded to repeated requests for comment.

The New York attorney general’s office declined to comment when asked whether its inquiry would cover these new cases­ of possible self-dealing.
Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold is investigating how much Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has given to charity over the past seven years. Here's what he found. ( Sarah Parnass / The Washington Post)

Trump founded his charity in 1987 and for years was its only donor. But in 2006, Trump gave away almost all the money he had donated to the foundation, leaving it with just $4,238 at year’s end, according to tax records.

Then, he transformed the Trump Foundation into something rarely seen in the world of philanthropy: a name-branded foundation whose namesake provides none of its money. Trump gave relatively small donations in 2007 and 2008, and afterward, nothing. The foundation’s tax records show no donations from Trump since 2009.

[In 2007, Trump had to face his own falsehoods. And he did, 30 times.]

Its money has come from other donors, most notably pro-wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon, who gave a total of $5 million from 2007 to 2009, tax records show. Trump remains the foundation’s president, and he told the IRS in his latest public filings that he works half an hour per week on the charity.

The Post has previously detailed other cases in which Trump used the charity’s money in a way that appeared to violate the law.

In 2013, for instance, the foundation gave $25,000 to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R). That gift was made about the same time that Bondi’s office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. It didn’t.

Tax laws say nonprofit groups such as the Trump Foundation may not make political gifts. Trump staffers blamed the gift on a clerical error. After The Post reported on the gift to Bondi’s group this spring, Trump paid a $2,500 penalty tax and reimbursed the Trump Foundation for the $25,000 donation.

In other instances, it appeared that Trump may have violated rules against self-dealing.

In 2012, for instance, Trump spent $12,000 of the foundation’s money to buy a football helmet signed by then-NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

And in 2007, Trump’s wife, Melania, bid $20,000 for the six-foot-tall portrait of Trump, done by a “speed painter” during a charity gala at Mar-a-Lago. Later, Trump paid for the painting with $20,000 from the foundation.

In those cases, tax experts said, Trump was not allowed to simply keep these items and display them in a home or business. They had to be put to a charitable use.

Trump’s campaign has not responded to questions about what became of the helmet or the portrait.
After the settlement, Trump put a slightly smaller flag farther from the road and mounted it on a 70-foot pole as seen in this Nov. 1, 2015, photo. (Rosalind Helderman/The Washington Post)

The four new cases of possible self-dealing were discovered in the Trump Foundation’s tax filings. While Trump has refused to release his personal tax returns, the foundation’s filings are required to be public.

The case involving the flagpole at Trump’s oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club began in 2006, when the club put up a giant American flag on the 80-foot pole. Town rules said flagpoles should be 42 feet high at most. Trump’s contention, according to news reports, was: “You don’t need a permit to put up the American flag.”

The town began to fine Trump, $1,250 a day.

Trump’s club sued in federal court, saying that a smaller flag “would fail to appropriately express the magnitude of Donald J. Trump’s . . . patriotism.”

They settled.

The town waived the $120,000 in fines. In September 2007, Trump wrote the town a letter, saying he had done his part as well.

“I have sent a check for $100,000 to Fisher House,” he wrote. The town had chosen Fisher House, which runs a network of comfort homes for the families of veterans and military personnel receiving medical treatment, as the recipient of the money. Trump added that, for good measure, “I have sent a check for $25,000” to another charity, the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial.

Trump provided the town with copies of the checks, which show that they came from the Trump Foundation.

In Palm Beach, nobody seems to have objected to the fines assessed on Trump’s business being erased by a donation from a charity.

“I don’t know that there was any attention paid to that at the time. We just saw two checks signed by Donald J. Trump,” said John Randolph, the Palm Beach town attorney. “I’m sure we were satisfied with it.”

Excerpt from a settlement filed in federal court in 2007.

In the other case in which a Trump Foundation payment seemed to help settle a legal dispute, the trouble began with a hole-in-one.

In 2010, a man named Martin Greenberg hit a hole-in-one on the 13th hole while playing in a charity golf tournament at Trump’s course in Westchester County, N.Y.

Greenberg won a $1 million prize. Briefly.

Later, Greenberg was told that he had won nothing. The prize’s rules required that the shot had to go 150 yards. But Trump’s course had allegedly made the hole too short.

Greenberg sued.

Eventually, court papers show, Trump’s golf course signed off on a settlement that required it to make a donation to a group of Greenberg’s choosing. Then, on the day that the parties informed the court they had settled their case, a $158,000 donation was sent to the Martin Greenberg Foundation.

That money came from the Trump Foundation, according to the tax filings of both Trump’s and Greenberg’s foundations.

Greenberg’s foundation reported getting nothing that year from Trump personally or from his golf club.

Both Greenberg and Trump have declined to comment.

Several tax experts said that the two cases­ appeared to be clear examples of self-dealing, as defined by the tax code.

The Trump Foundation had made a donation, it seemed, so that a Trump business did not have to.

Rosemary E. Fei, a lawyer in San Francisco who advises nonprofit groups, said both cases­ clearly fit the definition of self-dealing.

“Yes, Trump pledged as part of the settlement to make a payment to a charity, and yes, the foundation is writing a check to a charity,” Fei said. “But the obligation was Trump’s. And you can’t have a charitable foundation paying off Trump’s personal obligations. That would be classic self-dealing.”

The Trump International Hotel in Washington, a renovation of the historic Old Post Office Pavilion, opened Sept. 12. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

In another instance, from 2013, the Trump Foundation made a $5,000 donation to the D.C. Preservation League, according to the group and tax filings. That nonprofit group’s support has been helpful for Trump as he has turned the historic Old Post Office Pavilion on Pennsylvania Avenue NW into a luxury hotel.

The Trump Foundation’s donation to that group bought a “sponsorship,” which included advertising space in the programs for three big events that drew Washington’s real estate elite. The ads did not mention the foundation or anything related to charity. Instead, they promoted Trump’s hotels, with glamorous photos and a phone number to call to make a reservation.

“The foundation wrote a check that essentially bought advertising for Trump hotels?” asked John Edie, the longtime general counsel for the Council on Foundations, when a Post reporter described this arrangement. “That’s not charity.”

The last of the four newly documented expenditures involves the second painting of Trump, which he bought with charity money.

It happened in 2014, during a gala at Mar-a-Lago that raised money for Unicorn Children’s Foundation — a Florida charity that helps children with developmental and learning disorders.

The gala’s main event was a concert by Jon Secada. But there was also an auction of paintings by Havi Schanz, a Miami Beach-based artist.
A painting by artist Havi Schanz of Donald Trump. (Photo provided by Havi Schanz)
Trump with the painting that he bought. (Photo provided by Havi Schanz)

One was of Marilyn Monroe. The other was a four-foot-tall portrait of Trump: a younger-looking, mid-’90s Trump, painted in acrylic on top of an old architectural drawing.

Trump bought it for $10,000.

Afterward, Schanz recalled in an email, “he asked me about the painting. I said, ‘I paint souls, and when I had to paint you, I asked your soul to allow me.’ He was touched and smiled.”

Local Politics Alerts

Breaking news about local government in D.C., Md., Va.

A few days later, the charity said, a check came from the Trump Foundation. Trump himself gave nothing, according to Sharon Alexander, the executive director of the charity.

Trump’s staff did not respond to questions about where that second painting is now. Alexander said she had last seen it at Trump’s club.

“I’m pretty sure we just left it at Mar-a-Lago,” she said, “and his staff took care of it.”

The website TripAdvisor provides another clue: On the page for Trump’s Doral golf resort, near Miami, users posted photos from inside the club. One of them appears to show Schanz’s painting, hanging on a wall at the resort. The date on the photo was February 2016.

 LordofHats wrote:

 whembly wrote:


EDIT: Just ask LordofHats... he's the resident historian.

Okay.

There is always partisanship of course, but partisanship is not one thing. It can take different forms. The level of it that currently exists, especially among the most radical branches of Conservatism, is far in excess of what can be considered the American norm. Political parties form their cohesion by nominally rallying around a joint platform, but increasingly in the past 20 years (namely since Barry Goldwater's run at the White House but I'm gonna focus on post Reagan because there's no letter grades on DakkaDakka) the Republican party has found its cohesion not in a unified platform of coherent policy, but in a jumbled body of indignation and rejection of the Socially Progressive platform that started to dominate the Democratic Party in the 1930s. I.E. The Republicans are not united by shared values so much as they are united by mutual partisanship against the Democrats. It's not that hard to see why. The Republican party has a very disparate base of Social Conservatives espouses very strict Christian morality, small government conservatives (a group that encompasses a range of distinct ideas from conservative to radical), white nationalism, and neoliberalism. These groups are not such that they can work together under their own steam. What has united this party since the Reagan years is a rejection of the other side.

Comparatively, this does not define the Democratic party. The Democratic party is able to unite by falling behind notions of Social Progressivism. While the Republican party has increasingly identified itself by who it wants to exclude, the Democratic (I actually think decreasingly in recent years, but still such) defines itself by who it wants to include. This might seem a split hair, but it's an important distinction in mentality. To the Democratic party at large, politics is about expanding pluralism. It will naturally have partisanship, but it doesn't strike it up to the degree that its opponent has given that the GOP now defines itself by its opposition to everything its opponent stands for rather than what it itself stands for. Standing up from a vague notion of their principals has become more important for the GOP than coherent policy decisions, or even a concise national strategy.

This isn't to say the Republican party through and through is hateful and incompetent. This is a problem born of a number of factors. The current party derives itself foremost from strong grass roots coalitions that began to emerge in the 1960s and 70s, who were eventually rallied together by Reagan in 1980. The strength of the resurgent Conservative branch in US politics came from a willingness to set aside internal differences to oppose what was seen as a disastrous and self defeating progressive agenda. The problem emerged when no coherent policy besides opposition to that agenda managed to form. This hamstrung Republican politicians throughout the 90s and early 00s, who of course needed to be elected to get anything done and the only way they could really get the base behind them was to play to its concerns without alienating the diverse group that base represented. Thus the party became inwardly focused to the point it lost outward perspective, and the inability of classic Reagan styled Republicans to defeat Barrack Obama in 2008 and 2012, combined with very lackluster feelings held about the presidency of George W. Bush began tearing the party's unity apart. Thus we have Trump, not because Trump is the best option, but because he simply ended up with the largest slice of pie of a fraying party.

You have to go back to the Civil Rights movement to find the last time US politics were quite this divided and harsh, and the New Deal Era before that. I've mentioned it before, but Trump, his mannerisms, style, and the nature of his base of support is very reminiscent of Alabaman politician Huey Long. However Huey Long was an actual political outsider. He never managed to develop strong party support, and (unlike Trump) at least when he ran for the White House in 1936 the Democratic party was busy uniting behind FDR, and excluded him. Someone like this has never run for president in living memory, and I'm not sure we've ever had a run quite like Trump's. While his candidacy might not be new, his campaign is completely new ground.

Spoiler:

You don't think partisanship was awful in comparison during the Bush years?

Do you think social media/internet exacerbates this?

 whembly wrote:
The old school media/blogosphere are a liberal/left-wing tilt.

 whembly wrote:

The old school media/blogosphere are a liberal/left-wing tilt.

 Frazzled wrote:
I am not surprised, an Australian would say that, not being versed in what the impact of being the first black President (or more precisely the first biracial) President means. Thats ok.

400 years of oppression comes full circle with hope in Obama. Wars, Jim Crow, the rise and fall of the Klan, the lynching of thousands, dozens to hundreds of bombings and burnings come full circle to a moment dreamed of by an entire race of people. Hundreds of thousands died to free them from bondage. Tens of thousands died in the struggles they endured to stand up under oppression and raise their heads as equals. Obama's election is a watershed event, a nexus point, a point of freedom.


But please keep telling us how thats not the important part. What the feth ever.