Summations Only

Wasn’t a member of the commission suing to get access to the proceedings because he had been completely frozen out ? That’s a pretty good sign that the whole thing was fraudulent.

Yes. It was Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap that sued the commission. In fact, Dunlap has prevailed in his lawsuit and a court order has been issued requiring that commission share documentation with him. That is likely the real reason for shutting the commission down.

I think that the press need to hound Trump and his minions to hell and back over this - where’s you three million illegals? at every possible occasion. Not that we would ever find more than a dozen of them, but still.....

An opinion piece in today's New York Times tells us what we already know: Everyone in Trumpworld Knows He’s an Idiot. I'll include some quotes from the piece, but two facts in combination are incredibly scary:

• Trump's a buffon, an idiot, a moron, and many other adjectives along those lines.
• 30-40% of the American people are either just fine with that or can't recognize idiocy and disfunction when they see it.

What does it mean for us if 30-40% of the country has no problem with someone as obviously unfit for office as Trump? He's a great performer in front of crowds, and he's mastered the art of playground insult and figured out how to apply it effectively in adult interactions. And he's caused many to stoop to his level, not because he's caused them to lose their cool, but because playground adjectives are the only ones that accurately apply to someone so dismally unqualified to be an adult, let alone president of the most powerful (economically and militarily) country in the world.Some of that 30-40% of Americans both recognize Trump's incompetence and support him anyway because he shares their positions on issues, but what does it say about people who support an incompetent just because he supports the same causes? And especially what does it say about people willing to work in his administration who are, in effect, enablers of the whims of an insane, cruel, ignorant, impulsive man who has been handed great power. Some probably believe they're doing good by attempting to mitigate the damage, but Trump has proved he can't be managed.A couple quotes from the opinion piece:

quote:

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But most of all, the book confirms what is already widely understood not just that Trump is entirely unfit for the presidency, but that everyone around him knows it. One thread running through Fire and Fury is the way relatives, opportunists and officials try to manipulate and manage the president, and how they often fail. As Wolff wrote in a Hollywood Reporter essay based on the book, over the past year, the people around Trump, all 100 percent came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.

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According to Wolff, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff, called Trump an idiot. (So did the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, though he used an obscenity first.) Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, compares his boss’s intelligence to excrement. The national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, thinks he’s a dope. It has already been reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a moron, which he has pointedly refused to deny.

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--Percy

It is just history repeating.Benito Mussolini was totally incompetent, always screwing up.Adolph Hitler was a nutjob that the capitalists would be able to control.Joseph Stalin was a hick from the backwoods and would be easy to manipulate.What it means is that as a nation we do a really shitty job of teaching people how to think and in particular, US Conservative Christianity is based on checking your brain at the door and utter subservience in even the most obvious absurdities.

Amen to that.Education cures an awful lot of societal problems.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Jeff Sessions released the memo that we've been expecting for a week or so announcing that the Obama era policy of not going after marijuana in those states that have legalized it has been reversed.Sessions Ends Policy That Allowed States to Embrace Legal Pot | Courthouse News Service

quote:

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WASHINGTON (CN) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday that the Trump administration is reversing an Obama-era policy that gave states room to legalize marijuana.

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The change will allow federal prosecutors to enforce marijuana laws in their districts as they see fit, a shift from the policy put in place during the Obama administration that limited federal enforcement of marijuana laws.

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I am not a proponent of drug use, but I'm also not in favor of the current 'war on drugs' which when coupled with the programs to privatize prisons results in very destructive and expensive policies for imprisoning US citizens. These policies also help fund the criminal element in many communities.Some reaction to the new policy:

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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., likewise criticized the decision as a federal intrusion into a state issue.

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Meanwhile, Colorado’s U.S. attorney, Bob Troyer, responded to Sessions’ announcement by saying his office won’t change its approach to prosecuting marijuana crimes.

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In a statement, Bob Troyer said he has always focused on prosecuting marijuana crimes that create the greatest safety threats and will continue to be guided by that goal. He said that’s consistent with Sessions’ latest guidance.

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Polls suggest that 64 percent of Americans are in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana. Perhaps what America really needs is a good dose of f'ed up reactionary policy in action before they figure out that these folks are not your friends.

In the words of this article, What Trump does and doesn't have in common with Hitler comparisons with Hitler are lazy at best. I for one dont think that many of us, myself included, could handle what the Germans had to handle. And by the way, how did the capitalists control Hitler? Im curious....

The result is pretty clear. Most of the companies made money. They built and supplied and a great time was had by all. Well, all the capitalists.

When I first heard this, being from Colorado, I was outraged at Sessions audacity until I realized that what I have read prior to this is being verified. Populists seek to foster division rather than unity. As for marijuana in Colorado, that genie is already out of the bottle and that bottle won't ever be capped again.Besides...the strategy behind some of these political decisions seems to be to distract the public from the main issues of the day...which continues to be Muellers investigation, which must be getting too close for comfort.

I'll repeat my earlier prediction.I predict that once our country experiences another bubble and another correction (which will be inevitable) that things will really get ugly and that the divisiveness which has been sown will come to full fruition with devastating social consequences.Once the bill becomes due, the capitalists will skate off with their money and tax breaks and the rest of us will be left holding the bag. Trumps base will blame the Left and full-fledged division will have effectively been sown.

Edited by jar, : part two

NoNukes writes, in part: ...and of course it is very funny how one of the biggest stockholders in privatized prisons is none other than Jeff Sessions. Criminal element, indeed.

I respectfully disagree. While Mueller's investigation is important, the things folks like Sessions does have lasting impacts that might easily outlast whatever happens to Trump. In fact, I would suggest that the most important and lasting impact of the Trump administration is going to be the appointment of federal judges that the Republican Senate refused to allow Obama to appoint. Potentially that impact is even larger than the single appointment to the Supreme Court that Obama did not get to make.The second largest impact is the ongoing assault being wrought by having Jeff Sessions as the attorney general. In my opinion, appointing Sessions is the single worst thing Trump has done. If Sessions had not been forced to recuse himself, it seems likely that Mueller would be long gone.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

And that is exactly what is happening with even the most absolutely incompetent candidates being rapidly and quietly approved. The harm has already been done and is unlikely to be reversed for many, many decades.