General Chat (Non-Music-Related)

Still laughing Mark carry on!

well, of course you are!

Still laughing Mark carry on!

Once an asssshole , always an asssshole!

WOW! The silence is DEAFENING!

Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!


Impeachment is gaining ground because it is the only way to get him out, and because Republicans are already deserting this president in droves, and because the man is psychiatrically incapable of checking whether something is legal before he does it.


Impeachment is gaining ground because it’s so horribly clear that Trump is unfit for office. The grownups around Trump, even the most slavishly loyal ones, spend half their time trying to rein him in, but it can’t be done.


They spend the other half fielding frantic calls from Republican chieftains, business elites and foreign leaders. Trump did what? Poor Reince Priebus has finally attained the pinnacle of power, and it can’t be fun.


It is one thing to live in your own reality when you are a candidate and it’s just words. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time maybe even to get elected. But when you try to govern that way, there is a reality to reality—and reality pushes back.


One by one, Trump has decreed impulsive orders, un-vetted by legal, policy, or political staff, much less by serious planning. Almost immediately he is forced to walk them back by a combination of political and legal pressure—and by reality.


Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks.


Only with his lunatic effort to selectively ban refugees (but not from terrorist-sending countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where Trump has business interests) has Trump discovered that the American system has courts. It has courts. Imagine that.


The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s whore?


In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud.


They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. This is actually complicated, and nuance is not Trump’s strong suit. Rep Tom McClintock of California spoke for many when he warned:


“We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created” with repeal, said Rep. Tom McClintock. (R-Calif.)


“That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.”


Sen. Lindsey Graham, mocking Trump’s own nutty tweeting habits, sent out a tweet calling a trade war with Mexico “mucho sad.”


Trump’s own senior staff has had to pull him back from his ludicrous crusade against Mexico and Mexicans, where Trump forces the Mexican president to cancel an official visit one day, and spends an hour on the phone kissing up the next day.


Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers.


All this in just a week! Now capped by federal judges starting to rein him in.


Two weeks ago, in this space, just based on what we witnessed during the transition, I wrote a piece calling for a citizens impeachment panel, as a shadow House Judiciary Committee, to assemble a dossier for a Trump impeachment, and a citizens’ campaign to create a public impeachment movement.


In the two weeks since then, Free Speech for People has launched a citizens’ campaign to impeach Trump. About 400,000 people have already signed the impeachment petition.


The bipartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, (CREW) has been conducting a detailed investigation. Senior legal scholars associated with CREW have filed a detailed legal brief in their lawsuit, documenting the several ways Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from profiting from the actions of foreign governments.


There are already plenty of other grounds for impeachment, including Trump’s putting his own business interests ahead of the country’s and his weird and opportunistic alliance with Vladimir Putin bordering on treason. A lesser-known law that goes beyond the Emoluments Clause is the STOCK Act of 2012, which explicitly prohibits the president and other officials from profiting from non-public knowledge.


Impeachment, of course, is a political as well as a legal process. The Founders designed it that way deliberately. But after just a week in office, not only has Trump been deserting the Constitution; his partisan allies are deserting him.


Despite his creepy weirdness, Republicans at first thought they could use Trump for Republican ends. But from his embrace of Putin to his sponsorship of a general trade war, this is no Republican. One can only imagine the alarm and horror being expressed by Republicans privately.


In 1984, the psychiatrist Otto Kernberg described a sickness known as Malignant Narcissism. Unlike ordinary narcissism, malignant narcissism was a severe pathology.


It was characterized by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty.


Given the sheer danger to the Republic as well as to the Republicans, Trump’s impeachment will happen. The only question is how grave a catastrophe America faces first.


Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility.

President Donald Trump‘s Department of Homeland Security announced it would comply with a bevy of federal judges’ injunctions against portions of his executive order barring entry to people from seven Muslim-majority nations—but declared it would continue to press ahead with the rest of the White House fiat.

The agency’s announcement came this afternoon after Brooklyn Judge Ann Donnelly issued a restraining order forbidding DHS’s Border and Customs Enforcement arm from deporting any of the people held at John F. Kennedy Airport and other hubs nationwide who the Obama administration approved to enter the country. Two federal jurists in Massachusetts enjoined the administration from detaining or expelling any arrival from Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Iran or Iraq who was either a legal permanent resident of the U.S. or who possessed a proper visa—while a federal judge in Virginia granted those detained at Washington Dulles International Airport access to legal counsel.

DHS’s promise of compliance was buried at the bottom of an otherwise petulant public statement.

“The Department of Homeland Security will comply with judicial orders; faithfully enforce our immigration laws, and implement President Trump’s executive orders to ensure that those entering the United States do not pose a threat to our country or the American people,” the statement reads.

The judges orders are temporary pending hearings, and do not appear to apply to future travelers and asylum-seekers who have yet to obtain federal authorization to come to the United States. The administration’s public release noted this, bitterly.

“No foreign national in a foreign land, without ties to the United States, has any unfettered right to demand entry into the United States or to demand immigration benefits in the United States,” the agency’s statement reads. “President Trump’s executive orders remain in place—prohibited travel will remain prohibited, and the U.S. government retains its right to revoke visas at any time if required for national security or public safety.”

DHS also asserted that the dozens held in detention represent a tiny fraction of all people entering the country, and were merely obligated to go “enhanced security screenings” before exiting the airports.

Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s DHS Secretary, released three clarifying statements on the executive orders this evening. One stated that it would not obstruct the entry of any legal resident of the United States coming from the seven embargoed nations, so long as the government did not possess “significant derogatory information indicating a serious threat to public safety and welfare.”

Another reaffirmed that the administration was “already taking steps to comply” with the judges’ orders, and vowed government had not violated any person’s civil rights.

“We are committed to ensuring that all individuals affected by the executive orders, including those affected by the court orders, are being provided all rights afforded under the law,” the release said. ” As Secretary Kelly previously stated, in applying the provisions of the president’s executive order, the entry of lawful permanent residents is in the national interest.”

Finally, DHS put out a “fact sheet” that asserted that the U.S. has “the world’s most generous immigration system,” which has been “repeatedly exploited by terrorists and other malicious actors who seek to do us harm.” It did not cite any examples to back up that assertion, and most recent terror attacks—such as the Chelsea bombing and the Orlando night club shooting—have been carried out by the American-born adult descendants of immigrants, not by immigrants themselves.

The fact sheet also noted that the Obama administration had flagged the countries in question as potential sources of terrorists, and even temporarily denied visas to Iraqis in 2011, though both those moves were far narrower in scope and impact than Trump’s order. The DHS release continued that the agency would conduct a 30-day review of potential vulnerabilities from of visitors and asylum-seekers in each nation, and give each foreign government 60 days to respond to any of its inquiries.

Once that review is complete, the agency promised it would resume refugee resettlement in the United States, though the country would not accept more than 50,000 people this year. In the meantime, Kelly would create a DNA database for tracking all travelers to the United States.

“The Department of Homeland Security will faithfully execute the immigration laws and the president’s executive order, and we will treat all of those we encounter humanely and with professionalism,” the fact sheet promised.

It also reiterated DHS’s intention to work with the Department of Justice to publish bi-annual reports on “the number of foreign nationals charged with terrorism-related offense or gender-based violence against women.”

President Trump is doing a great job for America and real American's.

As a matter of fact, President Trump may become the greatest President ever after George Washington.

If you don't want to help him make that happen, take the next flight out of the U.S.A.

Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!


Impeachment is gaining ground because it is the only way to get him out, and because Republicans are already deserting this president in droves, and because the man is psychiatrically incapable of checking whether something is legal before he does it.


Impeachment is gaining ground because it’s so horribly clear that Trump is unfit for office. The grownups around Trump, even the most slavishly loyal ones, spend half their time trying to rein him in, but it can’t be done.


They spend the other half fielding frantic calls from Republican chieftains, business elites and foreign leaders. Trump did what? Poor Reince Priebus has finally attained the pinnacle of power, and it can’t be fun.


It is one thing to live in your own reality when you are a candidate and it’s just words. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time maybe even to get elected. But when you try to govern that way, there is a reality to reality—and reality pushes back.


One by one, Trump has decreed impulsive orders, un-vetted by legal, policy, or political staff, much less by serious planning. Almost immediately he is forced to walk them back by a combination of political and legal pressure—and by reality.


Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks.


Only with his lunatic effort to selectively ban refugees (but not from terrorist-sending countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where Trump has business interests) has Trump discovered that the American system has courts. It has courts. Imagine that.


The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s whore?


In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud.


They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. This is actually complicated, and nuance is not Trump’s strong suit. Rep Tom McClintock of California spoke for many when he warned:


“We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created” with repeal, said Rep. Tom McClintock. (R-Calif.)


“That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.”


Sen. Lindsey Graham, mocking Trump’s own nutty tweeting habits, sent out a tweet calling a trade war with Mexico “mucho sad.”


Trump’s own senior staff has had to pull him back from his ludicrous crusade against Mexico and Mexicans, where Trump forces the Mexican president to cancel an official visit one day, and spends an hour on the phone kissing up the next day.


Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers.


All this in just a week! Now capped by federal judges starting to rein him in.


Two weeks ago, in this space, just based on what we witnessed during the transition, I wrote a piece calling for a citizens impeachment panel, as a shadow House Judiciary Committee, to assemble a dossier for a Trump impeachment, and a citizens’ campaign to create a public impeachment movement.


In the two weeks since then, Free Speech for People has launched a citizens’ campaign to impeach Trump. About 400,000 people have already signed the impeachment petition.


The bipartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, (CREW) has been conducting a detailed investigation. Senior legal scholars associated with CREW have filed a detailed legal brief in their lawsuit, documenting the several ways Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from profiting from the actions of foreign governments.


There are already plenty of other grounds for impeachment, including Trump’s putting his own business interests ahead of the country’s and his weird and opportunistic alliance with Vladimir Putin bordering on treason. A lesser-known law that goes beyond the Emoluments Clause is the STOCK Act of 2012, which explicitly prohibits the president and other officials from profiting from non-public knowledge.


Impeachment, of course, is a political as well as a legal process. The Founders designed it that way deliberately. But after just a week in office, not only has Trump been deserting the Constitution; his partisan allies are deserting him.


Despite his creepy weirdness, Republicans at first thought they could use Trump for Republican ends. But from his embrace of Putin to his sponsorship of a general trade war, this is no Republican. One can only imagine the alarm and horror being expressed by Republicans privately.


In 1984, the psychiatrist Otto Kernberg described a sickness known as Malignant Narcissism. Unlike ordinary narcissism, malignant narcissism was a severe pathology.


It was characterized by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty.


Given the sheer danger to the Republic as well as to the Republicans, Trump’s impeachment will happen. The only question is how grave a catastrophe America faces first.


Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility.

President Donald Trump‘s Department of Homeland Security announced it would comply with a bevy of federal judges’ injunctions against portions of his executive order barring entry to people from seven Muslim-majority nations—but declared it would continue to press ahead with the rest of the White House fiat.

The agency’s announcement came this afternoon after Brooklyn Judge Ann Donnelly issued a restraining order forbidding DHS’s Border and Customs Enforcement arm from deporting any of the people held at John F. Kennedy Airport and other hubs nationwide who the Obama administration approved to enter the country. Two federal jurists in Massachusetts enjoined the administration from detaining or expelling any arrival from Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Iran or Iraq who was either a legal permanent resident of the U.S. or who possessed a proper visa—while a federal judge in Virginia granted those detained at Washington Dulles International Airport access to legal counsel.

DHS’s promise of compliance was buried at the bottom of an otherwise petulant public statement.

“The Department of Homeland Security will comply with judicial orders; faithfully enforce our immigration laws, and implement President Trump’s executive orders to ensure that those entering the United States do not pose a threat to our country or the American people,” the statement reads.

The judges orders are temporary pending hearings, and do not appear to apply to future travelers and asylum-seekers who have yet to obtain federal authorization to come to the United States. The administration’s public release noted this, bitterly.

“No foreign national in a foreign land, without ties to the United States, has any unfettered right to demand entry into the United States or to demand immigration benefits in the United States,” the agency’s statement reads. “President Trump’s executive orders remain in place—prohibited travel will remain prohibited, and the U.S. government retains its right to revoke visas at any time if required for national security or public safety.”

DHS also asserted that the dozens held in detention represent a tiny fraction of all people entering the country, and were merely obligated to go “enhanced security screenings” before exiting the airports.

Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s DHS Secretary, released three clarifying statements on the executive orders this evening. One stated that it would not obstruct the entry of any legal resident of the United States coming from the seven embargoed nations, so long as the government did not possess “significant derogatory information indicating a serious threat to public safety and welfare.”

Another reaffirmed that the administration was “already taking steps to comply” with the judges’ orders, and vowed government had not violated any person’s civil rights.

“We are committed to ensuring that all individuals affected by the executive orders, including those affected by the court orders, are being provided all rights afforded under the law,” the release said. ” As Secretary Kelly previously stated, in applying the provisions of the president’s executive order, the entry of lawful permanent residents is in the national interest.”

Finally, DHS put out a “fact sheet” that asserted that the U.S. has “the world’s most generous immigration system,” which has been “repeatedly exploited by terrorists and other malicious actors who seek to do us harm.” It did not cite any examples to back up that assertion, and most recent terror attacks—such as the Chelsea bombing and the Orlando night club shooting—have been carried out by the American-born adult descendants of immigrants, not by immigrants themselves.

The fact sheet also noted that the Obama administration had flagged the countries in question as potential sources of terrorists, and even temporarily denied visas to Iraqis in 2011, though both those moves were far narrower in scope and impact than Trump’s order. The DHS release continued that the agency would conduct a 30-day review of potential vulnerabilities from of visitors and asylum-seekers in each nation, and give each foreign government 60 days to respond to any of its inquiries.

Once that review is complete, the agency promised it would resume refugee resettlement in the United States, though the country would not accept more than 50,000 people this year. In the meantime, Kelly would create a DNA database for tracking all travelers to the United States.

“The Department of Homeland Security will faithfully execute the immigration laws and the president’s executive order, and we will treat all of those we encounter humanely and with professionalism,” the fact sheet promised.

It also reiterated DHS’s intention to work with the Department of Justice to publish bi-annual reports on “the number of foreign nationals charged with terrorism-related offense or gender-based violence against women.”

hahaha

It's hilarious how desperate the Left is to continue the false narratives they got away with when the Liar-in-Chief was behind them.

Did you not see the memo? America gave the media a collective middle finger.

NO ONE believes their sh*t no more....but next time cite the article so we know which outlet is doing the lying this time, ok?

you almost sound treasonous Mike Birch, if you actually wrote that...does not quite sound like the way you word things, but I may be wrong..

They are quotes from online news sources, Dane. yet you call me treasonous? So Free Speech is no longer part of the US constitution?

For 8 stinking years Free Speech has been under assault by the false "President" ... The Black Messiah. Now under a real President ... Trump, the Constitution for The united States (Capitalized) is no longer being ignored or contaminated by Treason. This Muslim cancer has spread and now many of the "limpNoids" must be removed to effect a good recovery.

Here is a good example of one that should have been cut out long ago "Starbucks" ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-bEv4oVorY

some of it sounded borderline tereasonous, but since you did not write it or thunk it LOL(thunk) no worries.. that is crap about the impeachment thing.. should at least give him a year or two, and next election time in 2 years vote in some Democrat senators, representatives.. let's do this process by the law instead of making Trump out to be crazy or insane.. by the letter of the law please..

Trump may be the greatest president since George Washington.
MADONNA SHOULD BE IN JAIL FOR DEATH THREATS!!!!

For 8 stinking years Free Speech has been under assault by the false "President" ... The Black Messiah. Now under a real President ... Trump, the Constitution for The united States (Capitalized) is no longer being ignored or contaminated by Treason. This Muslim cancer has spread and now many of the "limpNoids" must be removed to effect a good recovery.

Here is a good example of one that should have been cut out long ago "Starbucks" ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-bEv4oVorY

Yet that 'free speech' allowed you to constantly post all the 'black messiah' crap and let all those other fake news sites you constantly copy-and-paste here allow to put whatever they wanted.
Hypocrite much?

Copying and pasting another interesting perspective on the notion of this weekend's "shock event" from Boston College professor of American History, Heather Cox Richardson: she is writing from the position of a moderate (albeit one who has published several books on the history of the Republican party).
"There is an important non-partisan point to make today.
What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event." Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order. When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.
Last night's Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.
It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like. I don't know what Bannon is up to-- although I have some guesses-- but because I know Bannon's ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle-- and my friends range pretty widely-- who will benefit from whatever it is. If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.
But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event. A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union. If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln's strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power. Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it

Mike you just don't GET IT!
Under the McCarran Walter act... A LAW. From 1952.
President JIMMY CARTER, a very kind, loving, and liberal PRESIDENT... Rounded up 10,000 Iranian citizens... That were here legally... and kicked their sorry asssssses out.

Do you even remember why? Flash forward.

We just paid iran a handsome ransom. We just gave them a treaty to blow our sorry assssses away.

All you are posting here tells me you don't give a damn about ANY AMERICAN CITIZENS LIFE!

I do... YOUR LIBERAL NWO PROBLEM!!!!!!

That was the most disgusting post YOU EVER PUT UP HERE... MIKE BIRCH!!!!

AMERICAN LIVES MATTER!!!!!