Fuck Trump and here's why.

[Rat Diva]

Nah, make it a nice cushy layer of 3M's finest Very High Bonding Tape. Bloodborne pathogen cleanup protocols are such a PITA. Plus they'd have to de-pants themselves in order to to get up. And that'd be funny.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by BJMoose

You overlook the fact that Young Turk has long since been a generic term for "rabble rouser". Since I, unlike you, will not presume to know what is going on in other people's minds, I will merely suggest that whoever named the program knew the term but not its full history.

And I'll note again that the person who named the program (presumably) is someone with a history of denying the Armenian Genocide.

I mean, "Nazi" has a largely inoffensive figurative meaning, too, but if someone with a history of Holocaust Denial was founder of a group called "The Nazis" we'd look at them sideways, right?

[Borborygmi]

I hate it when the Fuck Trump thread obsesses over a perceived slight, distracts from serious current issues, and fosters discontent. I mean, what has that got to do with Trump?

[Random Precision]

ISWYDT

[Swammerdami]

Some of us have said there's a fair chance that Trump will refuse to step down if he loses the November election. Most others regard this as wild conspiracy-theory droolings.

Now Tom Rogers and Tim Wirth have come out as firm believers in that "conspiracy theory," saying Trump is already laying the groundwork for declaring the November election fraudulent.

Rogers and Wirth are hardly crackpots, or shrill YouTube spectacles. Rogers is a highly-respected top media executive. Wirth is a humanitarian politician, and hardly a flagrant partisan: he was appointed to a sub-cabinet post by Richard Nixon.

[Swammerdami]

Originally Posted by Derleth

And I'll note again that the person who named the program (presumably) is someone with a history of denying the Armenian Genocide.

So what?

(a) This is COMPLETELY off-topic in this thread, nor is it germane to my mention of the YouTube channel, which was simply to link to the contest: Which Trump utterance is stupidest?

(b) Although irrelevant, I happen to dislike Chubby Turk Whats-his-name. Like Rachel Maddow and many others, he is MUCH too fond of his own opinions, and he made the mistake of posting lots of silly stuff — some very sexist — on the Internet when he was young. IIRC he's disavowed most of that, including his opinion on the Armenian genocide.

(c) But why, in heaven's name, do you need to salivate about a Turk adhering to Turkey's propaganda when he was young and naive? There are plenty of "patriotic" Americans who will claim that the American genocide against Native Americans either never happened or was a good thing. If you think your posts here are sensical and on-topic, does that mean we should also be discussing those Americans, and Holocaust deniers, here in the "Fuck Trump" thread?

If denouncing Chubby Turk Whats-his-name is so important to you, please start a new thread. Thanks in advance.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by Swammerdami

So what?

So admit quoting him is a bad idea and move on.

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by Swammerdami

Rogers is a highly-respected top media executive. Wirth is a humanitarian politician. . .

I thought you said they weren't crackpots.

[Flying Saucerian]

I have this vision of Trump, after losing by a landslide (Please God) still standing there shouting that he WON by a landslide, he absolutely won in a landslide, nobody voted for Biden, he didn't get any votes because HE got all the votes and he won and it's fake news that he didn't win because he totally won and he just keeps going on like that while Ivanka throws a shawl over his shoulders and gently leads him away...

[What Exit?]

Originally Posted by Flying Saucerian

I have this vision of Trump, after losing by a landslide (Please God) still standing there shouting that he WON by a landslide, he absolutely won in a landslide, nobody voted for Biden, he didn't get any votes because HE got all the votes and he won and it's fake news that he didn't win because he totally won and he just keeps going on like that while Ivanka throws a shawl over his shoulders and gently leads him away...

It's a nice dream. I hope we see it or something close to it.

[C2H5OH]

Originally Posted by Swammerdami

Some of us have said there's a fair chance that Trump will refuse to step down if he loses the November election. Most others regard this as wild conspiracy-theory droolings.

Now Tom Rogers and Tim Wirth have come out as firm believers in that "conspiracy theory," saying Trump is already laying the groundwork for declaring the November election fraudulent.

Rogers and Wirth are hardly crackpots, or shrill YouTube spectacles. Rogers is a highly-respected top media executive. Wirth is a humanitarian politician, and hardly a flagrant partisan: he was appointed to a sub-cabinet post by Richard Nixon.

Trump can "Declare" anything he damn well pleases. He's only one man, though. It don't mean shit unless he gets a significant share of the government to go along with his "Declaration" (that he doesn't have the official authority to make) to enforce it for him, and I don't see that happening.

Plain and simple, he can't stay in office after losing the election unless the rest of the government continues to treat him as the real president instead of the actual winner.

[Ludovic]

Originally Posted by BJMoose

I thought you said they weren't crackpots.

A "crackpot" is different from an "oxymoron"

[Swammerdami]

Originally Posted by Ludovic

A "crackpot" is different from an "oxymoron"

Untempered cynicism is a bigger fault than childlike naiveté.

[Swammerdami]

Crackpot/oxymoron Bill Kristol (part of "Republican Voters against Trump") also isn't sanguine about our upcoming "fair and free" election.

James Carvile (who reminds me of the journalist Hunter Thompson) thinks Trump will drop out of the race before November. (He's advising Georgians to drink Pepsi rather than Coke, and to stop flying on Delta until lobbyists start discouraging Georgia's government from rigging elections.)

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by Flying Saucerian

I have this vision of Trump, after losing by a landslide (Please God) still standing there shouting that he WON by a landslide, he absolutely won in a landslide, nobody voted for Biden, he didn't get any votes because HE got all the votes and he won and it's fake news that he didn't win because he totally won and he just keeps going on like that while Ivanka throws a shawl over his shoulders and gently leads him away...

You are exactly right. But it won't do Trump a bit of good. And he knows it.

Right now, I'm giving 4:6 odds of Trump having a complete mental or physical breakdown by mid-October.

[Mr. Plumbean]

How will anybody notice?

[Sputnik]

Originally Posted by Mr. Plumbean

How will anybody notice?

He'll declare the constitution unconstitutional.

[Sputnik]

From the back cover of Mary Trump's book, Too Much and Never Enough, I quote this;

"today, Donald is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in & synthesize information."

Mary Trump, a licensed clinical psychologist.

Her book will be out in a week.

[Jaglavak]

Lobbyists connected to Trump reap windfall in coronavirus aid money

Forty lobbyists with ties to President Trump helped clients secure more than $10 billion in federal coronavirus aid, among them five former administration officials whose work potentially violates Trump’s own ethics policy, according to a report by the watchdog group Public Citizen. [Lobbyists] either worked in the Trump executive branch, served on his campaign, were part of the committee that raised money for inaugural festivities or were part of his presidential transition. Many are donors to Trump’s campaigns, and some are prolific fundraisers for his reelection.

They include Brian Ballard, who served on the transition and is the finance chair for the Republican National Committee and has bundled more than $1 million for Trump’s fundraising committees. He was hired in March by Laundrylux, a supplier of commercial laundry machines, after the Department of Homeland Security issued guidance that didn’t include laundromats as essential businesses that could stay open during the lockdown. A week later, the administration issued new guidance adding laundromats to the list.

Dave Urban, a Trump advisor and confidant, has collected more than $2.3 million in lobbying fees this year. The firm he leads, American Continental Group, represents 15 companies, including Walgreens and the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, on coronavirus issues.

Trump pledged to clamp down on Washington’s influence peddling with a “drain the swamp” campaign mantra. But during his administration, the lobbying industry has flourished, a trend that intensified once Congress passed more than $3.6 trillion in coronavirus stimulus... “The swamp is alive and well in Washington, D.C.,” said Mike Tanglis, one of the report’s authors. “These [lobbying] booms that these people are having, you can really attribute them to their connection to Trump.”

[wring]

was there ever any doubt?

[Flying Squid with Goggles]

Brazil's own mini-Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, has been showing symptoms consistent with COVID-19 including a fever. He's apparently taken a COVID test and the results should come in tomorrow (July 8th)

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/coro...eling-ill.html

He's not Trump, but he's similar enough that fuck that guy too.

[Sputnik]

Donald Trump's niece says he paid someone to take his SAT
From CNN.

She writes at length about how she sees Trump, comparing him to a three-year-old, saying he "knows he has never been loved" and arguing that Trump's "ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."

All this is adding up now, isn't it? She's just putting into words what we've been thinking for 3 + years now.

She even claimed that Trump even paid someone to take the SAT tests for him to help him get into the University of Pennsylvania. Trump was "worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of his class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted."

Paging Lori Laughlin, it's fine to do what you did, even the president did it.

[Slate]

A sitting president who loses an election should also lose the power to issue executive orders and pardons during the lame-duck period. Just spitballin'. Change my view.

[Dragonlady]

I agree.
That is a vote of "no confidence".

[Swammerdami]

Originally Posted by Sputnik

Donald Trump's niece says he paid someone to take his SAT
From CNN.

All this is adding up now, isn't it? She's just putting into words what we've been thinking for 3 + years now.

Paging Lori Laughlin, it's fine to do what you did, even the president did it.

The book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man has other insights from those who knew Donald best:

Freddy Trump [Donald's older brother] died in 1981 from an alcohol-induced heart attack when he was 42, and Mary Trump tells the story in her book about how his family sent him to the hospital alone on the night of his death. No one went with him, Mary Trump writes.

Donald Trump, she added, went to see a movie.

...
Even at the start of Donald Trump’s campaign, his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal appeals court judge, had deep reservations about his fitness for office, Mary Trump writes.

“He’s a clown — this will never happen,” she quotes her aunt as saying during one of their regular lunches in 2015, just after Donald Trump announced that he was running for president.

Maryanne Trump was particularly baffled by support for her brother among evangelical Christians, according to the book.

“The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there,” Mary Trump quotes her aunt as saying. “It’s mind boggling. But that’s all about his base. He has no principles. None!”

...
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, asserts that her uncle has all nine clinical criteria for being a narcissist. And yet, she notes, even that label does not capture the full array of the president’s psychological troubles.

“The fact is,” she writes, “Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neurophysical tests that he’ll never sit for.”

At another point she says: “Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.”

Like other critics of the president, Mary Trump takes issue in the book with the notion that Donald Trump is a strategic thinker who operates according to specific agendas or organizing principles.

“He doesn’t,” she writes. “Donald’s ego has been and is a fragile and inadequate barrier between him and the real world, which, thanks to his father’s money and power, he never had to negotiate by himself.”

[Solfy]

My mother mentioned that she was debating getting Mary's book. I recommended against it on the grounds that she wouldn't learn anything useful that she doesn't already know; the only thing it could do is reinforce what a terrible person he is. I've had to cut back on my news consumption because I've found having that info pouring into my brain for too long runs counter to being in a good mental state. It's like poking a wound to see if it's still sore.

[Sputnik]

trump's latest attempt to lead involves using children as pawns in reopening this economy. Reopen schools he says. Because our children and grandchildren's lives are expendable for him as long as it leads to reelection, that asshole is willing to gamble with the lives of the most innocent members of our society. He needs to get this virus, and suffer.

[Solfy]

I'm not saying I don't have reservations against sending kids into germatoriums, I feel it deeply and personally as my youngest is going into 2nd grade and nearly ever virus that has come into our house in the past decade has been from school kids, but the fact of the matter is that many people use school as a form of day care. Two-income houses, or working single parents, are made possible by the fact that the kids go somewhere else for most of the day five days a week. If we're sending the parents back to work, what are they supposed to do with the kids?
Many schools are considering a sort of shift schedule where half the class goes to school Monday and Tuesday, they sanitize* on Wednesdays, and the other half goes on Thursday and Friday. What are people supposed to do with at-home kids three days a week? It's yet another way people of lower SES are being disproportionately affected.


*Sanitation feels like security theater. So what if they sanitize on Wednesday? It only takes one COVID positive person to foul up surfaces Thursday morning and spread it to everyone all of that day and the next. I fear the "don't worry, we sanitize!" message gives people a false sense of security.

[Simple Dog]

Originally Posted by Solfy

*Sanitation feels like security theater. So what if they sanitize on Wednesday? It only takes one COVID positive person to foul up surfaces Thursday morning and spread it to everyone all of that day and the next. I fear the "don't worry, we sanitize!" message gives people a false sense of security.

It's even more theatrical than that since it seems like surfaces probably aren't even a big vector for the thing.

[Glazer]

Fighting this virus will cost everybody. And those on the lower end of the economic spectrum will pay the most, no doubt. But the cost to everyone will be much lower if we pay it now rather than later. Reopening schools would be a moot point had we paid the price in the spring rather than wait till it has spread to all corners of society.

[Rat Diva]

Tulsa sees Covid-19 surge in the wake of Trump's June rally

Shocking

500 new cases, and rising, after there had been a 20% drop in cases. But of course they're not blaming the Trump rally, because there were "several" large events around the same time. I'm curious to know what these events were, and what precautions were taken.

[running coach]

Originally Posted by Rat Diva

Tulsa sees Covid-19 surge in the wake of Trump's June rally

Shocking

500 new cases, and rising, after there had been a 20% drop in cases. But of course they're not blaming the Trump rally, because there were "several" large events around the same time. I'm curious to know what these events were, and what precautions were taken.

Parking for Trump's rally
Walking to Trump's rally
Waiting outside Trump's rally
Eating out after Trump's rally
Walking back to car from Trump's rally
Mingling in parking lots near Trump's rally

[Borborygmi]

Attend Trump's speech to the overflow crowd outside the arena for Trump's rally

[JackieLikesVariety]

Originally Posted by Borborygmi

Attend Trump's speech to the overflow crowd outside the arena for Trump's rally

LOL

[Sputnik]

This is the kind of headline I love seeing. From CNN

Are we on the verge of a 'Democratic tsunami'?

It seems trump is a plague on down ticket Republicans come November. I don't know but I'd suggest some of them start jumping ship before he takes them down with him.

SCOTUS is supposedly ruling on the House getting trump's tax returns tomorrow. This will get interesting.

[BJMoose]

If they don't do it tomorrow, it likely will be October or later.

[3acres]

The Supreme Court has kicked the issue of Trump's tax returns back to lower courts.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...ump-s-n1232086

[Pogo]

Originally Posted by Rat Diva

Tulsa sees Covid-19 surge in the wake of Trump's June rally

Shocking

500 new cases, and rising, after there had been a 20% drop in cases. But of course they're not blaming the Trump rally, because there were "several" large events around the same time. I'm curious to know what these events were, and what precautions were taken.

Originally Posted by 3acres

The Supreme Court ...

Will the 500 new cases be added to the numbers for the Reservations, the numbers which show that American Indians have been hit pretty hard?

The Supreme Court ...

[Sputnik]

Originally Posted by 3acres

The Supreme Court has kicked the issue of Trump's tax returns back to lower courts.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...ump-s-n1232086

There is something about the ruling that should scare the crap out of trump. SCOTUS said the New York state prosecutors COULD see his taxes, just not yet. Trump probably thinks he'll wiggle out of his legal problems in the end by a pardon, but no pardon will reach the New Your state action. He may have to come to court after all, albeit when he's no longer potus.

[Rat Diva]

That'd be OK with me. Plus, that would give him the attention he craves, his mind-slaves something to fixate on, and adults can get on with the business of picking up the cack-spackled fragments of our country.

[Borborygmi]

Not really germane to today's Fuck Trump goings-on, but Wonkette's been using this gif often recently and I want to get posting it here out of my system:

[Swammerdami]

If you can stand Rachel Maddow for just five minutes she offers a pretty good summary of the Trump Administration.

[Rat Diva]

Sleepy Joe visited the Scranton area yesterday to tour a metal fab plant amongst other things. Pictures show him wearing a mask and standing a safe distance away from a handful of people.

Yep, I'll be votin' for the adult come November.

[Sputnik]

Trump commutes Roger Stone's sentence. He also called the FBI investigators human scum. Human scum he called them. This guy is becoming more and more dangerous every day.

I need to log off and pray to the God of Karma that the bastard trump comes down with the virus, the one with stomach cramps and explosive diarrhea, loses his hair, goes blind and gets clubfeet from his bone spur. And Melania gets pregnant from a Democrat.

[BJMoose]

Ah, but he knows what he's doing. Earlier today he claimed to have "aced" a cognitive ability test (much to his doctors' surprise, says he; mull that one over a little bit). Alas, no one at the White House seems to know anything about such a test.

[C2H5OH]

Originally Posted by Sputnik

And Melania gets pregnant from a Democrat Putin.

FTFY

[Jaglavak]

Originally Posted by BJMoose

Ah, but he knows what he's doing. Earlier today he claimed to have "aced" a cognitive ability test (much to his doctors' surprise, says he; mull that one over a little bit). Alas, no one at the White House seems to know anything about such a test.

Someone needs to tell him that putting on his own socks this morning was not a cognitive ability test.

[Sputnik]

This Stone sentence commutation makes me wonder what Stone has on the emperor?
What dirty little bit of truth is Stone keeping quiet?
After seeing bits and pieces of Mary Trump's book, "Donald is a Nut" or whatever she called it, I really think he's just playing an ego games.

[Rat Diva]

Trump: "Biden and Obama stopped their [COVID-19] testing"

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by Rat Diva

Trump: "Biden and Obama stopped their [COVID-19] testing"

It isn't clear (of course), but Trump is probably talking about H1N1. ". . . on a much lesser problem than the problem that we have . . ."