Trump Demands Poem on Statue of Liberty Be Revised to Exclude Sh?thole Countries
 

[url]https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-demands-poem-on-statue-of-liberty-be-revised-to-exclude-shithole-countries[/url]
I need not say more. :razz:

[QUOTE=kladner;477460][url]https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-demands-poem-on-statue-of-liberty-be-revised-to-exclude-shithole-countries[/url]
I need not say more. :razz:[/QUOTE]
Saturday Night Live returns tonight with an all new episode. Does Trump even care how hard last minute script changes are on the cold open? I'm just saying.

[QUOTE=kladner;477460][url]https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-demands-poem-on-statue-of-liberty-be-revised-to-exclude-shithole-countries[/url]
I need not say more. :razz:[/QUOTE]

Then again, we all knew Trump was a crass, boorish guy going into the election - dude's a NYC real-estate developer, after all. Unhelpful as the latest "the Id speaks!" moment was, I'm leery of falling into the "decorum trap" being deployed by the MSM and the Hillaryites, by which well-spokenness is simultaneously portrayed as being essential to the presidency and treated as a magic balm which excuses all manners of actual *inflicted* policy horrors.

As one NC reader [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/01/links-11218.html#comment-2909810]commented[/url]:
[quote]RE: Immigration Talks Muddled Amid Vulgar Trump Comments Wall Street Journal

Pulverize them with bombs and drones, destabilize their governments, exploit them financially, instigate then ignore humanitarian crises, but don’t [i]evah[/i] call them “shitholes.” That’s just [i]vulgar[/i], and if there’s one thing americans will not tolerate, it’s [i]vulgarity[/i].

He should’ve just called them “deplorable.” At least the msm wouldn’t have to look like fools pretending they couldn’t say the word on tv.[/quote]

But it has always been a question of how far he will go, and currently, how far gone he is.

[QUOTE=kladner;477483]But it has always been a question of how far he will go, and currently, how far gone he is.[/QUOTE]

How far he will go in terms of policy or politesse? Obama was unfailingly decorous in his verbiage, but - e.g in terms of bailing out the crooked Wall Street bank cartels, expanding the imperial wars, deporting illegal immigrants, and normalizing the worst of the W. Bush-era atrocities - he went pretty goddamn far.

Re. the "how far gone", please tell me you haven't bought into the - now that the-Russians-own-the-presidency BS is visibly falling apart - latest impeachment-angling meme by Team DNC and establishment insiders. Here's why that meme doesn't pass my smell test:

[url=http://www.zdnet.com/article/here-are-the-256-lawmakers-members-who-just-voted-to-reject-privacy-reforms-and-extend-nsa-spying/]These are the House members who voted to extend NSA spying and reject privacy reforms[/url] ZD Net

To which none other than Glenn Greenwald [url=https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/951948948402524160]commented[/url]:
[quote]Right. If you combine today's news with yesterday's, the bipartisan commentary amounts to: "Trump is a racist, corrupt, mentally unfit degenerate, and it's imperative we give him the power to spy on Americans without any meaningful checks or safeguards." [url]https://t.co/jkrKjNFJ4o[/url][/quote]

Not sure just what I buy into these days. Not "Russia owns us." Thing is, while you certainly have to reject the entire picture as Greenwald presents it, it is hard to rule out each detail.

There are many (millions perhaps?) around the world who would describe the US as a :poop:hole country. Not all of them are outside the US and/or non-US citizens.

To me, saying that the Russians tried to influence the election is belaboring the obvious. And their operation in and of itself is bad enough, practically an act of war. I do [i]not[/i] think their meddling had all that much to do with the outcome. I think that Bernie Sanders could have won against [i]Il Duce[/i]. Just about any Democratic candidate [i]other[/i] than HRC would have beaten [i]Il Duce[/i] handily. But people were so fed up with the status quo, they were willing to vote for a "none of the above" candidate. And, as is so often the case when people are completely fed up with the status quo, they choose -- or wind up with -- something much worse.

Ron Paul, bless his heart, has said he will filibuster the Gestapo Powers Act. But of course [i]Il Duce[/i] needs to be able to spy on everyone -- at least if he plans on staying in power. He knows perfectly well he is deeply unpopular, and widely viewed as ignorant and incompetent. He recently dissolved his fake Voter Fraud Commission. Why had he appointed the commission in the first place? Because he had asserted, with zero evidence, that HRC's multimillion popular vote plurality was the result of "millions" of illegally cast votes. And, since he had no evidence, his calls to DOJ to investigate fell on deaf ears. His calls to Congress to investigate garnered replies to the effect, "Don't waste our time." So, he appointed a commission. And when this commission began demanding lists of [i]all[/i] eligible voters, state Secretaries of State, by and large, told them to take a flying :censored: at the moon.

At this point I'm beginning to wonder whether the 2018, or especially the 2020 elections for federal offices -- will even be held.

BTW, there was an item in the news not too long ago that [i]Il Duce[/i] asserted that he had the executive authority to order DOJ to open -- or close -- [i]any[/i] investigation. Sounds like the Gestapo to me...

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;477510]BTW, there was an item in the news not too long ago that [i]Il Duce[/i] asserted that he had the executive authority to order DOJ to open -- or close -- [i]any[/i] investigation. Sounds like the Gestapo to me...[/QUOTE]To the best of my knowledge, the Geheime Staatspolizei didn't have any such power. Some members of the Kabinett Hitler undoubtedly di.d.

[QUOTE=xilman;477514]To the best of my knowledge, the Geheime Staatspolizei didn't have any such power. Some members of the Kabinett Hitler undoubtedly di.d.[/QUOTE]

I was thinking more in terms of the Gestapo being empowered to investigate just about anything -- especially political opposition -- and being answerable only to [i]der Fuhrer[/i]. As described in the Wikipedia page on the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo]Gestapo[/url],

[quote]The Gestapo had the authority to investigate cases of treason, espionage, sabotage and criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and Germany. The basic Gestapo law passed by the government in 1936 gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial review—in effect, putting it above the law.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo#CITEREFDamsStolle2014][sup]27[/sup][/url] The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws. As early as 1935, a Prussian administrative court had ruled that the Gestapo's actions were not subject to judicial review. The SS officer Werner Best, one-time head of legal affairs in the Gestapo,[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo#CITEREFMcNab2009][sup]28[/sup][/url] summed up this policy by saying, "As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally."[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo#CITEREFShirer1990][sup]29[/sup][/url][/quote]

[QUOTE]"As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally."[/QUOTE]
"When the President does it, that means it's not illegal."
-Richard Nixon