THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

[Maggot]

He may get another chance later to put another one in there. Time will tell. He has already put a bunch into the lower court system and is not finished, not by a long shot. Plenty of openings happening across the states today.

[Duchess]

I know. Our country will be fucked up for years to come. These judges will move us back rather than forward.

[Maggot]

Maybe but I don't think it will be half as bad as many say it will. In fact it may be a bit refreshing to see judges actually using the law instead of their opinion.

[HairOfTheDog]

Unless! Jeff Flake & Senator McCain step up. I'm trying to have hope here.

There's a lot of pressure on Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski when it comes to confirming Trump's next Supreme Court Justice nominee.

If Trump is specifically looking to nominate a woman Justice, it could be a transparent strategy to make it more difficult for Collins and Murkowski to vote against her. His administration has tried playing the woman card completely inappropriately before.

Remember how Trump, via Sarah Sanders, insisted that any congressperson who opposed Gina Haspell for CIA Director was discriminating based on gender (as if her pro-torture past was a silly matter of no concern)?

Anyway, both Collins and Murkowski have previously supported the Roe ruling and indicated that it's precedent which should not be overturned.

Collins said this weekend that she would vote against a nominee who was hostile to Roe and had an anti-abortion activist agenda.

However, in my opinion........... no nominee is going to come out and directly admit they want to outlaw or further federally restrict abortion, as Trump pledged during his campaign. They'll simply say that they respect the existing law and new rulings would depend on the case facts and the arguments presented.

So, Collins' statement doesn't invoke much confidence in me. She may well vote for whomever Trump puts forward. Red State moderate/conservative Dems like Joe Manchin and Doug Jones might also feel strong enough political pressure to vote for Trump's nominee prior to mid-terms.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

[Duchess]

All I’m looking for is fairness applied equally across the board and I want people to retain the rights they already have.

[HairOfTheDog]

All I’m looking for is fairness applied equally across the board and I want people to retain the rights they already have.

Yeah, me too. What puts the preservation of existing rights and equal fairness more at risk than when previous Justices were replaced is:

a. Trump publicly and privately courted the Evangelical vote by promising them conservative judges, including and especially at the Supreme Court level. He got the Evangelical leaders' input and blessing on his campaign list of Supreme Court candidates and thereby secured their votes, despite all of his sacrilegious ways. I do not believe Trump would have been elected without the Evangelicals, and he probably couldn't get re-elected without them (so, I think he's motivated to keep his campaign promises to them).

b. Trump publicly promised to appoint justices who would automatically overturn Roe v Wade. No other President has publicly announced such a litmus test as it pertains to what is supposed to be the apolitical/bi-partisan court, as far as I know.

As a result, the separation of church and state is narrower than ever in the U.S., in my view. And, also in my view, Evangelicals are not inclined to respect the rights and freedoms of individuals if those rights and freedoms conflict with the Evangelicals' religious beliefs and morality judgments.

[BigMark]

Now you can get your Trump ecstasy fix other ways...

[Duchess]

Evangelicals are not inclined to respect the rights and freedoms of individuals if those rights and freedoms conflict with the Evangelicals' religious beliefs and morality judgments.

...and it's for exactly that reason I can't stand a one of them. Fuck off with their holier than thou hypocritical bullshit. Some of them are as fucked up as anyone out there and many hide behind a veneer of gentility. Pfft.

[Duchess]

...and not to mention their fake Christianity. My God. Counterfeit Christians.

[HairOfTheDog]

Trump Goes to England

The people of London crowd-sourced funding and filed a petition to fly a 20-foot blimp of President Trump in protest of his visit to England next week.



The people backing the protest take exception with what they consider Trump's racist and fascist tendencies, his false claim about what the mayor of London said after a terrorist attack there in February, his new tariffs, etc...

'Baby Trump' is set to fly above Parliament Square Gardens for two hours on the morning of Friday July 13 when Trump is in the country for his first official visit.

Huge protests are expected (about 50,000 people) in London for the first full day of Trump's visit, which will begin next Thursday night when he flies in from the Nato summit in Brussels.

His three day trip is thought likely to include a dinner with business figures at Blenheim Palace, meeting the Queen at Windsor and talks with Prime Minister Theresa May at her country retreat in Chequers. He is also thought to be keen to play golf at his courses in Scotland.

The program is being designed to ensure Trump avoids London and the expected angry protests. He cancelled a trip last year for fear of demonstrations.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...visit.html

[HairOfTheDog]

The jobs/employment report for June 2018 was another very good one overall.

--The U.S. added 213,000 jobs in June, topping economist forecasts of 195,000. Healthcare, manufacturing, and construction saw the biggest gains.

-- However, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4% from 3.8%.

--There’s a very real question about how much “slack” is left in the labor force, even after years of strong hiring. One broader measure of underemployment, the U-6 rate that includes discouraged and part-time workers, edged up to 7.8% in June from 7.6% a month earlier.

--Labor force participation rates also remain well below pre-crisis levels, suggesting there's still more room for people to enter the workforce. That rate climbed last month.

--Wage growth isn’t making as much of a difference for workers as some would hope. Wages rose 2.7% from a year earlier in June, below the 2.8% increase economists had expected. Compared to a month earlier, wages grew 0.2%. But inflation is also picking up and could soon outpace wages, meaning workers likely aren’t feeling any richer.

--The manufacturing labor market is strong, suggesting key parts of the U.S. economy haven’t felt a huge impact from tariffs just yet. The manufacturing sector added 36,000 jobs in June, an acceleration from the 19,000 jobs added in the sector in May. Escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China haven’t yet deterred employers from hiring.

--The Federal Reserve has little reason to be worried that the economy is going to overheat. Even as the U.S. continues to add jobs at a rapid clip, wage growth has remained benign and there are signs more workers are returning to the labor force. Given that, central bankers aren’t likely to want to ramp up the pace of rate hikes aggressively.

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/june-20...t-analysis

[Duchess]

He spoke in Wyoming last night. It looked & sounded like a campaign rally. These are some of his remarks. Y'all tell me f you know what he was trying to express.

I agree that a brain is important.

[Duchess]

[Maggot]

[Duchess]

*snort laugh*

[HairOfTheDog]

Trump's press conference yesterday after his one-on-one summit with Putin was surreal.

Trump said that he doesn't see any reason to doubt Putin's claim that Russia didn't interfere in the U.S. 2016 Presidential election.......despite the contrary findings confirmed by all of the U.S. Intelligence agencies, his own defense expert advisors, and the Republican Senate. And, Trump's deflection back to Hillary Clinton's server on the world stage was truly pitiful.

I disagreed with the 2016 Democrat and Republican presidential candidates who said they wouldn't talk to Putin or Kim and agreed with Trump on that point. I think the U.S. should always be open to diplomatic discussions, so long as the U.S. representatives (in this case, only the President) go into it armed with knowledge, information, and for the purpose of strategically supporting the United States and our allies. Trump sure wasn't coming from that place yesterday. He came across as a capitulating, ass-sucking, Putin fan-boy who cared only about discrediting the findings of investigators because he's worried that those findings make his election win seem compromised.

Trump = party before country and Trump before party...........that was my first thought after processing what I'd just witnessed. However, I was encouraged to see some Republican elected officials and members of the administration immediately denounce Trump's performance and reiterate that Russia did, in fact, launch cyber warfare against the U.S. in our 2016 election and is continuing its efforts to undermine western democracy. So............what do they plan to do about it? I hope they're not waiting for Trump to give them an order. They need to be taking action now and they have the authority.

[Maggot]

Russia, China, Iran, all of them were attempting to affect the election. Mexico, Saudi Arabia, they also lobbied and tried to influence the election as we the U.S.A. tried to influence the Israel elections and the Russian elections, France, Germany. This is a game being played and the American citizens are the players. Russian influence and American influence has been going on for many years and I do not believe that the Russians had enough influence to sway the 2016 election. Not a chance.

I do have to say Trump was an idiot for running his mouth like he did.

[Ski at 1SKY6]

[Maggot]

[Blindgreed1]

Trump's press conference yesterday after his one-on-one summit with Putin was surreal.

Trump said that he doesn't see any reason to doubt Putin's claim that Russia didn't interfere in the U.S. 2016 Presidential election.......despite the contrary findings confirmed by all of the U.S. Intelligence agencies, his own defense expert advisors, and the Republican Senate. And, Trump's deflection back to Hillary Clinton's server on the world stage was truly pitiful.

I disagreed with the 2016 Democrat and Republican presidential candidates who said they wouldn't talk to Putin or Kim and agreed with Trump on that point. I think the U.S. should always be open to diplomatic discussions, so long as the U.S. representatives (in this case, only the President) go into it armed with knowledge, information, and for the purpose of strategically supporting the United States and our allies. Trump sure wasn't coming from that place yesterday. He came across as a capitulating, ass-sucking, Putin fan-boy who cared only about discrediting the findings of investigators because he's worried that those findings make his election win seem compromised.

Trump = party before country and Trump before party...........that was my first thought after processing what I'd just witnessed. However, I was encouraged to see some Republican elected officials and members of the administration immediately denounce Trump's performance and reiterate that Russia did, in fact, launch cyber warfare against the U.S. in our 2016 election and is continuing its efforts to undermine western democracy. So............what do they plan to do about it? I hope they're not waiting for Trump to give them an order. They need to be taking action now and they have the authority.

I was reminded of Obama's comment to Trump when he stated that Hil was trying to rig the election. "Stop whining."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/us/po...ction.html