[kenberg]

 barmar, on 2018-March-03, 23:45, said:

How about the whiplash we all got last week, trying to follow Trump's stance on gun control?

When he had the listening session with the high school students, he was all about arming teachers.

A few days letter he met with legislators, and accused them of being afraid of the NRA. He advocated increased gun control, including violating due process to take guns away from potentially violent people.

Then he met with NRA leaders, and his views shifted again, they were very happy with the results of the meeting.

We're all familiar with politicians who flip-flop, but it's usually over the course of years. Trump seems to have more stances on some issues than there are days of the week.

It has been immensely destructive. I believe that many people are much like me. With regard to guns, I can think of places in this country where if I absolutely had no choice, if I had to live or work there, I would probably buy a gun. But surely, and again I think most everyone would agree, we need to fix that situation rather than arm everyone. Yes there are some people who, through career choice, are thoroughly trained in the proper use of a gun, who are mentally capable of using it carefully and as a last resort, and so on. But mostly I see that the people who most advocate arming everyone are the same people that I would least like to see having a gun. They are way over-confident about how safe having a gun makes them. What, me worry, I got me a gun. Well, if the other guy also has a gun then there is a good chance that someone dies and someone goes to jail. We need to do better, and having everyone packing a rod is not the way to go about it. I do not in any way consider this to be some wild liberal view.

And Trump hopping around like a butterfly from one view to another is not helping. Not helping with guns, and not with anything really.

[hrothgar]

 kenberg, on 2018-March-04, 09:48, said:

And Trump hopping around like a butterfly from one view to another is not helping. Not helping with guns, and not with anything really.

Ken, what you don't realize is that Trump has now moved from three dimensional chess to eight dimensional backgammon!

He has a master plan! And actively working to convince people that he is completely ignorant about basic facts and incapable of remembering his policy positions from one day to another is fundamental to backgammon.

We can only hope that he can flip the doubling cube one or two more times before that game switches to 9th dimensional Candyland.

[awm]

 kenberg, on 2018-March-04, 09:48, said:

... What, me worry, I got me a gun. Well, if the other guy also has a gun then there is a good chance that someone dies and someone goes to jail.

Some US states have solved this by instituting "Stand Your Ground" laws. Sure, someone might die. Sure, it might be an unarmed teenager with a big gulp and a bag of skittles. But no one goes to jail.

[y66]

From Pure madness’: Dark days inside the White House as Trump shocks and rages by Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey at WaPo (March 3):

Quote

Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its center.

These are the darkest days in at least half a year, they say, and they worry just how much farther President Trump and his administration may plunge into unrest and malaise before they start to recover. As one official put it: “We haven’t bottomed out.”

I suspect that official was not Mike Pence who had this take a couple months ago:

Quote

“Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that truly is restoring this country.”

“You described it very well, Mr. President.”

“You've restored American credibility on the world stage.”

“You've signed more bills rolling back federal red tape than any president in American history.”

“You've unleashed American energy.”

“You've spurred an optimism in this country that's setting records.”

“You promised the American people in that campaign a year ago that you would deliver historic tax cuts, and it would be a 'middle-class miracle.' And in just a short period of time, that promise will be fulfilled.”

“I’m deeply humbled, as your vice president, to be able to be here."

“Because of your leadership, Mr. President, and because of the strong support of the leadership in the Congress of the United States, you're delivering on that middle-class miracle.”

“You've actually got the Congress to do, as you said, what they couldn’t do with [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska] for 40 years.”

“You got the Congress to do, with tax cuts for working families and American businesses, what they haven’t been able to do for 31 years.”

“And you got Congress to do what they couldn’t do for seven years, in repealing the individual mandate in Obamacare.”

“Mostly, Mr. President, I’ll end where I began and just tell you, I want to thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank you for speaking on behalf of and fighting every day for the forgotten men and women of America.”

"Because of your determination, because of your leadership, the forgotten men and women of America are forgotten no more. And we are making America great again.”

[Winstonm]

 awm, on 2018-March-04, 10:47, said:

Some US states have solved this by instituting "Stand Your Ground White Guys With Guns" laws. Sure, someone might die. Sure, it might be an unarmed teenager with a big gulp and a bag of skittles. But no one goes to jail.

FYP

[kenberg]

 awm, on 2018-March-04, 10:47, said:

Some US states have solved this by instituting "Stand Your Ground" laws. Sure, someone might die. Sure, it might be an unarmed teenager with a big gulp and a bag of skittles. But no one goes to jail.

We used to have more sense. My understanding, growing up, was that you cannot walk up to someone, call him a no good lying son of a bitch, and then shoot him in self-defense when he punches you. I assume the same would have applied if you stalked him, following him around in a car and on foot. I understand about self-defense, but the stand your ground stuff makes a mockery of it. The terminology makes the difference clear. In self-defense you do your best when attacked. Stand your ground? I think of Wyatt Earp. It's just a whole different thing. I think anyone can see the difference, and that's what should be stressed. There is an obvious difference between self-defense and stand your ground. I should think socialists, libertarians, and everyone in between could see that.

[Winstonm]

This is new:

Axios:

Quote

Axios has reviewed a Grand Jury subpoena that Robert Mueller's team sent to a witness last month.

What Mueller is asking for:

Mueller is subpoenaing all communications — meaning emails, texts, handwritten notes, etc. — that this witness sent and received regarding the following people:
Carter Page
Corey Lewandowski
Donald J. Trump
Hope Hicks
Keith Schiller
Michael Cohen
Paul Manafort
Rick Gates
Roger Stone
Steve Bannon

[barmar]

 awm, on 2018-March-04, 10:47, said:

But no one goes to jail.

Probably not true.

White guy shoots a black guy -- he was just standing his ground.

Cop shoots a black guy -- he was just doing his job.

But black guy kills a white guy -- he's a thug and we have to lock him up.

[Al_U_Card]

Prison, the second biggest growth industry after armaments...
War on poverty.
War on crime.
War on drugs.
War on terror.
Just plain war in the warfare society.

[Winstonm]

I can't think of a better description of the problems of the U.S. than this quote from The New Yorker article about Christopher Steele:

Quote

Indeed, on January 18th, the staff of Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, produced a report purporting to show that the real conspiracy revolved around Hillary Clinton. “The truth,” Nunes said, is that Clinton “colluded with the Russians to get dirt on Trump, to feed it to the F.B.I. to open up an investigation into the other campaign.” Glenn Kessler, who writes the nonpartisan Fact Checker blog at the Washington Post, awarded Nunes’s statement four Pinocchios—his rating for an outright lie. “There is no evidence that Clinton was involved in Steele’s reports or worked with Russian entities to feed information to Steele,” Kessler wrote.

Nonetheless, conservative talk-show hosts amplified Nunes’s message. On Fox News, Tucker Carlson denounced Steele as “an intense partisan with passionately left-wing views about American politics,” and said, inaccurately, that his “sloppy and reckless” research “appears to form the basis” of the entire Mueller investigation. Sean Hannity charged that Steele’s dossier was “claptrap” filled with “Russian lies” that were intended to poison “our own intelligence and law-enforcement network” against Trump. The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal accused Steele of turning the F.B.I. into “a tool of anti-Trump political actors.” Rush Limbaugh warned his radio listeners, “The battle is between people like us and the Deep State who are trying to keep hidden what they did.”

As a reasonable person, it is easy to dismiss this nonsense as partisan claptrap; however, the reality is that this message reaches millions of true believers who feel themselves to be part of the "correct" group of people, the genuine patriots. When facts are so easily dismissed in favor of partisan lies, it is easy to see how a foreign government wielded influence via social networks.

The problem is not Russia. The problem is not the right or left. The problem is that millions of us have abandoned the concept of independent, verifiable truth.

[RedSpawn]

 barmar, on 2018-March-03, 23:45, said:

How about the whiplash we all got last week, trying to follow Trump's stance on gun control?

When he had the listening session with the high school students, he was all about arming teachers.

A few days letter he met with legislators, and accused them of being afraid of the NRA. He advocated increased gun control, including violating due process to take guns away from potentially violent people.

Then he met with NRA leaders, and his views shifted again, they were very happy with the results of the meeting.

We're all familiar with politicians who flip-flop, but it's usually over the course of years. Trump seems to have more stances on some issues than there are days of the week.

https://me.me/i/gemi...ultiple-6807669
https://www.elitedai...-gemini/1690102

President Trump sounds NOTHING like a textbook Gemini, right?

[RedSpawn]

 barmar, on 2018-March-04, 23:22, said:

Probably not true.

White guy shoots a black guy -- he was just standing his ground.

Cop shoots a black guy -- he was just doing his job.

But black guy kills a white guy -- he's a thug and we have to lock him up.

Let's review:

Adam Lanza -- White male who shot and killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, before shooting himself. Nope --> he is not labeled a terrorist or thug for his actions. It's an out-of-control mental health issue.

Nikolas Cruz --

• 17 people were killed and another 14 were wounded.
  
• Suspect identified as Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. He may appear in court Thursday.
  
• Cruz, 19, was believed to have used an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle.
  
• Broward County Sheriff's Office set to hold a news conference at 10:30 a.m. ET Thursday.
  
• A YouTube user named "Nikolas Cruz" reportedly posted "I'm going to be a professional school shooter" on the site.
  
• President Donald Trump has tweeted that there were "many signs the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed." He will address the nation at 11 a.m. ET.

He too is mentally disturbed. This is a mental health issue -- He is not labeled a thug.

Mr. James Alex Field, Jr. plows into multiple people at a white nationalist rally. He kills one person and injures 19 people doing this:
Source: http://www.bbc.com/n...canada-42365066
https://www.nytimes....le-driver-.html ---> Is he a thug, a vigilante, and if so, why is the media not willing to go there and label him as such?

Stephen Paddock--Notorious mass killer who killed 58 and wounded 489 people in Las Vegas --
Is he a terrorist or thug or a victim of poor mental health?
https://www.theguard...tephen-paddock.

Mr. Dylan Roof--who killed 8 African-American church members in a Charleston Church shooting members on 06/17/15. The Fox News article below hones in on that he is psychiatrically ill: See http://www.foxnews.c...ylann-roof.html

Semantics matters and these senseless crimes get disparate treatment by the media and law enforcement when the perpetrator is non-melinated.

[Winstonm]

Trump Ocean Club Panama
International Hotel

FTP

[Winstonm]

This is from a huge new article in The New Yorker about Christopher Steele and the dossier.

Quote

In the spring of 2017, after eight weeks in hiding, Steele gave a brief statement to the media, announcing his intention of getting back to work. On the advice of his lawyers, he hasn’t spoken publicly since. But Steele talked at length with Mueller’s investigators in September. It isn’t known what they discussed, but, given the seriousness with which Steele views the subject, those who know him suspect that he shared many of his sources, and much else, with the Mueller team.

One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President.

[jjbrr]

Preet Bharara is a national treasure.

[y66]

From the trade war chronicles:

Quote

Perhaps the most vital contributor to American homebuilders’ success is their ability to keep the so-called affordable homes they build, well, affordable.

Donald Trump is making that difficult.

In the coming issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Jen Skerritt reports on how the president’s tariffs on Canadian softwood timber has created fresh challenges for the homebuilding industry:

“Framing lumber, including installation costs, accounts for about 18 percent of the average home’s selling price, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The rising price of timber comes at a bad time for U.S. builders, which are already contending with labor shortages and scarce supplies because of summer wildfires that wiped out some timberland in British Columbia. ‘You’ve got the kind of perfect storm brewing for the homebuilder,’ says Jim Barbes, vice president for national sales at 84 Lumber Co., one of the nation’s largest building-supply chains.

“On Nov. 2 the U.S. Department of Commerce announced average import duties of 21 percent on shipments of timber from Canada, which supplies more than a quarter of what American builders use each year. The price of one type of lumber futures contract that’s a widely watched industry metric has surged 31 percent in the past 12 months, and it’s trading at the highest level in at least 32 years. ‘So we’re talking about the potential not just for a record-setting year, but one that is unprecedented,’ says David Logan, director of tax and trade policy analysts at the National Association of Home Builders.

“The import duties leave companies paying $1,360 more to build a single-family home.

[Al_U_Card]

 y66, on 2018-March-05, 18:50, said:

From the trade war chronicles:

Aren't immense amounts of US softwood being pulverized and shipped to England where they can be burned in eco-"friendly" biomass electricity generating plants? (That this produces ever more CO2 seems secondary to the point...) Perhaps growing lumber-producing softwood might be more beneficial all round?

[cherdano]

Only the best people.
https://www.washingt...m=.4c4360f94d50

[y66]

From the NYT's Daily Briefing:

Quote

Stephen Colbert went to town about how Sam Nunberg, one of President Trump’s former advisers, gave numerous interviews on Monday on whether he would comply with a grand jury subpoena from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller. Nunberg told The Washington Post that he planned to tear up the subpoena live on Bloomberg Television, to which Colbert said: “Smart thinking. Do it on Bloomberg, no witnesses.”

Nunberg, at one point, told Katy Tur of MSNBC that his lawyer was about to “dump” him. Colbert quipped, “Sam, I think your dentist is going to dump you right now.”

“Nunberg took over cable news like a car chase. He was on MSNBC at 2:45, CNN at 3:30, and CNN again at 4 o’clock. I believe at 5, he called into HGTV to incriminate himself on ‘Flip or Flop.’ I’m pretty sure after Mueller gets done with him, it’s going to be flip.” — STEPHEN COLBERT

[jjbrr]

The Nunberg episode was sponsored by Jack Daniels and lasted approximately 0.6 decimooches. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes I suppose.