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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
- Start date
Folks, American democracy will likely not end with a Reichstag fire. It will not end with a military coup. It will end with a transformation of our political culture to transfer more and more power to the president and the ruling party at the expense of everyone else.
Our traditions, our laws, our processes, will be chipped away at. Court appointments will be politicized. Government will be shut down if the president doesn't get his way. Senate approval for appointees will no longer be sought as "acting" secretaries take power.
Obstruction of justice will be seen as the norm. Using the presidency as a personal piggy bank will be accepted. Ethics laws will be ignored. Nepotism will reign. Executive orders and the assertion of "emergency powers" will replace legislation.
Denying a state or territory aid to punish political adversaries will happen regularly. Attacking branches of government that fulfill their constitutional responsibilities rather than serving his personal whims will become the daily fare in social media and elsewhere.
Accepting lies as truth because the president or his party wills it, denying science or history because cliques of political supporters are made uncomfortable by reality, will be seen as our new political and social way of life.
That is how American democracy will die. Worse, more disturbing, is that is what is happening now. With each passing day, the acceptance of these perverse, political pathologies puts more of us and more of our system at risk.
It is easy to think that today's debate is about a wall. It is not. It is about something more dangerous: an attack on the foundations of our system. The threat is coming from within and distractions like the calculated debate over the wall only makes that threat graver.
We must be on alert. We must reject these changes. We must support those who fight these abuses in the courts. We have already made an important step in this regard with the election of the Democratic opposition to take the lead in the House of Representatives.
Our courts and pillars of our justice system like the special counsel and the FBI have helped. But we must not be complacent. The risk to our system is higher than it is have ever been, creeping in lie by lie, Tweet by Tweet, press event after press event.
Our president is a cancer on our democracy and that cancer has metastasized through the compliance of the GOP leadership and the sycophants who populate the White House. It must be excised. Not in the distant future...shifts in culture take root with every passing day.
We must stop them now. The situation is critical. The transformation is happening. Some elements of it did not even start within this administration. But we are in a new order of profound crisis now. It is time for action. It is time to defeat this attack on our system.
Thread by @djrothkopf: "Folks, American democracy will likely not end with a Reichstag fire. It will not end with a military coup. It will end with a transformation […]"
Our traditions, our laws, our processes, will be chipped away at. Court appointments will be politicized. Government will be shut down if the president doesn't get his way. Senate approval for appointees will no longer be sought as "acting" secretaries take power.
Obstruction of justice will be seen as the norm. Using the presidency as a personal piggy bank will be accepted. Ethics laws will be ignored. Nepotism will reign. Executive orders and the assertion of "emergency powers" will replace legislation.
Denying a state or territory aid to punish political adversaries will happen regularly. Attacking branches of government that fulfill their constitutional responsibilities rather than serving his personal whims will become the daily fare in social media and elsewhere.
Accepting lies as truth because the president or his party wills it, denying science or history because cliques of political supporters are made uncomfortable by reality, will be seen as our new political and social way of life.
That is how American democracy will die. Worse, more disturbing, is that is what is happening now. With each passing day, the acceptance of these perverse, political pathologies puts more of us and more of our system at risk.
It is easy to think that today's debate is about a wall. It is not. It is about something more dangerous: an attack on the foundations of our system. The threat is coming from within and distractions like the calculated debate over the wall only makes that threat graver.
We must be on alert. We must reject these changes. We must support those who fight these abuses in the courts. We have already made an important step in this regard with the election of the Democratic opposition to take the lead in the House of Representatives.
Our courts and pillars of our justice system like the special counsel and the FBI have helped. But we must not be complacent. The risk to our system is higher than it is have ever been, creeping in lie by lie, Tweet by Tweet, press event after press event.
Our president is a cancer on our democracy and that cancer has metastasized through the compliance of the GOP leadership and the sycophants who populate the White House. It must be excised. Not in the distant future...shifts in culture take root with every passing day.
We must stop them now. The situation is critical. The transformation is happening. Some elements of it did not even start within this administration. But we are in a new order of profound crisis now. It is time for action. It is time to defeat this attack on our system.
Thread by @djrothkopf: "Folks, American democracy will likely not end with a Reichstag fire. It will not end with a military coup. It will end with a transformation […]"
Senorman
Well-known Member
Government shutdown stops FDA food safety inspections
It would be a shame if some E. Coli made it into theorangething’s Big Mac.
He’d be eating his very own shit sandwich.
It would be a shame if some E. Coli made it into theorangething’s Big Mac.
He’d be eating his very own shit sandwich.
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hunterbro
New Member
the sky is falling..... the sky is falling..... is that the purpose of the obsessive posting?
Swiper
Banned
i’m pretty sure it’s in the best interest of those companies to make sure they don’t kill their customers. that’s not a good business model. repeat customers are golden.
In the wake of President Trump’s https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-declares-a-growing-humanitarian-crisis-at-the-border-in-demand-for-wall-funding-to-end-shutdown/2019/01/08/bdd2767e-1368-11e9-803c-4ef28312c8b9_story.html?utm_term=.7b768b841d38 (nationally televised plea) for his long-promised border wall, both he and Democratic congressional leaders are digging in Wednesday as the partial government shutdown continues with no end in sight.
House Democrats passed a bill that would reopen the Treasury Department and ensure that the Internal Revenue Service would remain funded as tax season kicks off and millions of taxpayers begin to file their returns.
Eight House Republicans voted in favor of the bill, defying the president’s pleas for unity. But the measure has no path to passage, as Trump has said he opposes any legislation that does not include funding for the border wall.
The vote comes on the eve of a visit by Trump to the U.S.-Mexico border.
WASHINGTON — A federal court has rejected President Trump’s first major effort to cut payments for prescription drugs, saying the administration went far beyond its legal authority.
The Trump administration made a “drastic departure from the statutorily mandated rates” when it reduced payments to hospitals for drugs given to Medicare beneficiaries in outpatient clinics, Judge Rudolph Contreras of the Federal District Court here said in the decision, issued late last month.
Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, “may not end-run Congress’s clear mandate,” the judge said.
The court is still considering how to compensate hospitals for the money lost, estimated at $1.6 billion for last year. The cuts are still in effect, but the court has asked the government and hospitals to propose a remedy.
President Trump, and vast parts of the federal government, have been consumed with caravans, walls and a border “crisis” since at least Oct. 16. While the definition of a crisis is highly debatable, the extent of other problems with wider reach and much higher death tolls is not.
Why it matters: The border is a big deal, and the problems are real, but often lost in the shutdown madness is whether the crisis is bigger than other wrongs and injustices impacting American lives.
- Since Trump's Oct. 16 tweet about the caravan, 547 people have been shot in Chicago, and 111 people have been killed, according to data from the Chicago Tribune.
- 86 people were killed in the Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Trump did visit after the fires — but he's now blaming California for not exercising "proper Forest Management" and threatening to cut off emergency aid to the state.
- An average of around three men are killed every day in the U.S. by police officers, according to one estimate in the American Journal of Public Health — which would mean around 255 American men had been killed by law enforcement since Oct. 16.
- There's no real-time data on deaths from the opioid crisis, but with 67,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. every year, according to CDC, it's likely that roughly 16,000 Americans have died of drug overdoses — including opioids — since October.
- Suicide rates continue to climb, year over year, despite a healthy economy.
- Seven U.S. military officers were killed in Afghanistan since Oct. 16, including six combat deaths. Trump signaled a strategic shift but never addressed the nation about it.
- In Syria, at least 191 civilians were killed by the U.S.-led coalition between Sept. 10 and Nov. 17, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The big picture: Per CNN, there are already 31 active declared national emergencies in the U.S., similar to the kind he's thinking of declaring to build his border wall without Congress.
- These national emergencies, which allow the president to use special powers to respond to a pressing danger, have ranged from imposing sanctions on foreign nations that interfere with U.S. elections to holding accountable those in Yemen threatening the peace or security of the nation.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly advocated for a steel slat design for his border wall, which he described as "absolutely critical to border security" in his Oval Office address to the nation Tuesday. But Department of Homeland Security testing of a steel slatprototype proved it could be cut through with a saw, according to a report by DHS.
A photo exclusively obtained by NBC News shows the results of the test after experts from the Marine Corps were instructed to attempt to destroy the barriers with common tools.
The Trump administration directed the construction of eight steel and concrete prototype walls that were built in Otay Mesa, California, just across the border from Tijuana, Mexico. Trump inspected the prototypes in March 2018. He has now settled on a steel slat, or steel bollard, design for the proposed border barrier additions. Steel bollard fencing has been used under previous administrations.
However, testing by DHS in late 2017 showed all eight prototypes, including the steel slats, were vulnerable to breaching, according to an internal February 2018 U.S. Customs and Border Protection report.
Photos of the breaches were not included in a redacted version of the CBP report, which was first obtained in a Freedom of Information Act Request by San Diego public radio station KPBS.
The photo of testing results obtained by NBC News was taken at the testing location along the California-Mexico border, known as "Pogo Row."
NBC News toured the eight wall prototypes twice before President Trump's March 2018 inspection. According to San Diego Sector Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, the versions seen by NBC News and the president, however, were larger than the actual prototypes tested at "Pogo Row."
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
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