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Donald Trump 2019


Francisco 2.0

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1 hour ago, TornACL said:

I love when any of the new wave of 70 IQ conservative internet pundits think they've come up with a real whiz bang cracker jack of an argument. 

Nobody's been able to answer this! 

How often are they posting an original thought and not just repeating what they've heard or read elsewhere? I remember not too long ago someone posted a link to the blog that some Trump troll copied and pasted from as if they were speaking for themself. Whenever news breaks, there's always a delay until we hear from them while they wait for their talking points from their right-wing thought leaders. 

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2 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

The next time some dude starts in on a “All bitches be crazy” screed, I’m going to interrupt with a “Donald Trump has a penis. Your argument is invalid.” and shashay away.

And I’d be like, that’s debateable.   There’s many a clit bigger than Donald’s ‘dick’.  Just ask Stormy.  

Depending on how well you sashayed, I might even accuse you of having him beat.  

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Totally normal, legit, non-swampy behavior:

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-intervened-in-trumps-casino-pal-steve-wynns-case?ref=home

 

Quote

In the summer of 2017, the Trump White House asked for a meeting with a top official at the Department of Justice to discuss a sensitive legal and administrative matter involving a top Republican donor. 

The donor, then-Republican National Committee finance chairman and casino magnate Steve Wynn, was embroiled in litigation involving Obama-era rules governing how companies could distribute tips gathered by their employees. Months after the meeting request, the Trump administration revised those rules to make them far friendlier to employers.

 

Quote

It is unclear why the White House made the request for the meeting with acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall, which was uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act discovery by the group American Oversight and has not been previously reported. Nor is it clear if Wall actually met with White House officials about Wynn’s case. Both the White House and the Department of Justice declined to comment.

 

Quote

Top legal officials of past administrations said it was not uncommon for White House officials to meet with the solicitor general or top DoJ officials to discuss pending business before the courts. But the email still struck legal ethicists as problematic, as it showed the Trump White House eager to keep tabs on litigation directly affecting one of the president’s highest-profile donors.

 

Spoiler

“Once there is an actual case being litigated, the norm has been that the White House stays out of it. That’s the norm. For the legal ethics point of view, the lawyers handling that case cannot allow the White House to influence their independent professional judgement on behalf of the United States,” said Stephen Gillers, an expert in legal ethics and a professor at the New York University School of Law. “A lawyer at the Department of Justice who is approached by the White House regarding a pending matter… has to refuse to discuss it. Because that discussion cannot be allowed in any way to influence or appear to influence the decision of the Department of Justice lawyer.”

A legendary and controversial figure in the casino industry, Wynn had spent years embroiled in legal drama stemming from how his company, Wynn Resorts, chose to allocate the tips collected by workers at his casinos. At issue was a decision in 2006 to have those tips pooled and shared among both tipped and non-tipped employees, including supervisors. That decision, which compelled Wynn Resort workers to unionize, prompted legal action from tipped workers who alleged that Wynn was effectively violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by dipping into casino workers’ tips to compensate non-service employees. The case worked its way through the court system, during which it was adjoined with similar complaints. 

The Obama administration Department of Labor issued regulations in 2011 saying that such tip-pooling was not permitted and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling on grounds that the opacity of the law gave the department administrative leeway to issue such guidance. 

When the Trump administration took over, the expectation was that the Obama-era guidance would be reversed. But there was a secondary track as well. Wynn Resorts had appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court and so had the National Restaurant Association, which had sued the Department of Labor over the matter.  

In April of 2017, Department of Justice ethics officials asked that Wall be given an ethics waiver to participate in the NRA case. Scott Schools, who was a top ranking attorney at the Justice Department at the time, approved of Wall’s “participation in the NRA matter,” according to internal emails. In August of that year, Cynthia Shaw, the director of the Departmental Ethics Office, went back to Schools, this time asking him to clear Wall to work on the Wynn case in addition to the NRA one. 

Screen_Shot_2019-01-09_at_8.03.33_PM_b4o

“Jeff just received a request to meet with the White House about both theWynn Las Vegas and National Restaurant Association cases,” Shaw wrote. Schools, who has since left DoJ, again authorized Wall to work on the matter. 

Wynn was then a major figure in Trumpworld. He had made a $729,000 in-kind contribution to the president’s inauguration in addition to joining the inaugural committee. He was subsequently made finance chair of the RNC, helping it raise a record sum that year. The influence that came with that status and fundraising, officials say, is what made the White House’s request to talk to Wall about the Wynn case so ethically thorny. 

“During the early months of the Trump administration, it looked like Steve Wynn’s political connections were going to pay off,” said Austin Evers, Executive Director of American Oversight. “Whether Wynn got the advantages he was seeking or not, the records show that the Trump administration’s first instinct was to help a wealthy patron and senior official at the RNC. Two years later, the episode looks like an early crack in the foundation of the rule of law.”

Wynn Resorts, for its part, says it was never included in any White House discussions over the FLSA and the Trump administration’s efforts to revise it. “No one [at the company] is aware of any conversations with the WH on that topic,” spokesperson Michael Weaver told The Daily Beast in an email.

And Matthew Miller, a former spokesman for the Obama-era Department of Justice and a vocal Trump critic, noted that there is “nothing inherently wrong with the White House inquiring about the position DoJ intends to take on a case and being briefed by the Solicitor General’s office.” But, Miller still saw potential problems in the email. “Given that the underlying company in this case was run by the finance chair of the RNC,” he said, “it raises a number of questions about what the White House motivation was.”

Just over three months after Wall was approached with the White House’s request to meet, the Trump administration announced that it would reverse the Obama era tip-pooling guidance, pending notice of further rulemaking. Worker rights groups were aghast, with some arguing that the way the new guidance had been written would have effectively allowed employers to pocket workers’ tips. 

Before the comment period on the new rule had ended, however, Wynn’s universe began to implode. On Jan. 27, 2018, The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell story detailing allegations that Wynn had engaged in sexual harassment for decades. That same day, Wynn resigned his positionas RNC finance chair. Weeks later, he stepped down as Wynn Resorts CEO. 

Amid heavy pushback, the Trump administration ultimately toned down the reach of its ruling. In March of 2018, it reached a compromise with Democratic lawmakers on the Hill that allowed for tip-pooling between service and non-service employees provided that both pools of workers were already paid the minimum wage. The compromise also prohibited employers from pocketing any of their employee tips. 

“From our perspective it is a good change in policy and we were happy that the rule still keeps the tips out of the pockets of employers,” said Eva Putzova, director of communications at Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. “Obviously we know about the gaps that still exist in the restaurant industry between the back of the house and the front of the house.”

 

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8 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

I need an answer, dude.

Do you think that is a troll question?

Yes or no?

Follow up, show your work: why?

 

No. I think it’s an interesting follow through. If you think walls are immoral, should we tear down the ones that we’ve built?  

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8 hours ago, GRHorn said:

 

 

The issue at hand is whether a wall stretching  between Matamoros, TX and San Ysidro, CA will have any appreciable effect in curbing illegal immigration, flow of drugs, etc... It is wanting to know more definitively what it will really cost, in dollars, environmental impact and natural aesthetics in areas like Big Bend National Park.  Finally, it’s a test to see whether this Republican shit-stain on the Oval Office rug is capable of governing through diplomacy, persuasion and consensus building — a test that he is failing abysmally.  Hell, Trump couldn’t even sell a deal for a wall when his party controlled both houses of Congress.

He has been offered money for border security.  Money that could be used for targeted placement of physical barriers where they would provide value.  The Dems have passed what GOP senators brought to the table.  But the man-baby wants his toy, so 800,000 Americans get to feel what life is like in America when your paycheck suddenly disappears.

#MAGA, motherfucker.  You conservatives and your coddling, enabling leadership need to put your foot down and quit letting the man-baby run the household.  Cut him down politically or else your worst fears of living under perpetual liberal leadership in this country are going to come true.

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Ugh.  Paul Heninger's op ed in the WSJ this morning explains, again, (and in a positive light) Trump's strength.  And that is the solid right is oblivious to his various asshole moves because he is the living exemplar of "the resistance".  In other words, and again, the solid right cannot stomach the thought of sharing any power with any version of "the left", ever, period.  That they hold the majority of state governments, hold the presidency, the senate, and the suprement court, and recently the house does not keep them from taking the perspective of the aggrieved insurgent "resistance".   And Trump shits on the dems like no other pub ever, thus he is the god of the resistance.

The picture is Brisketerian in its dystopia.

The more the dems gain, the stronger the "resistance". 

 

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9 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

The next time some dude starts in on a “All bitches be crazy” screed, I’m going to interrupt with a “Donald Trump has a penis. Your argument is invalid.” and shashay away.

Posrep for the use of shashay.

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1 minute ago, NBMisha said:

Ugh.  Paul Heninger's op ed in the WSJ this morning explains, again, (and in a positive light) Trump's strength.  And that is the solid right is oblivious to his various asshole moves because he is the living exemplar of "the resistance".  In other words, and again, the solid right cannot stomach the thought of sharing any power with any version of "the left", ever, period.  That they hold the majority of state governments, hold the presidency, the senate, and the suprement court, and recently the house does not keep them from taking the perspective of the aggrieved insurgent "resistance".   And Trump shits on the dems like no other pub ever, thus he is the god of the resistance.

The picture is Brisketerian in its dystopia.

The more the dems gain, the stronger the "resistance". 

 

And this was fully engineered by Fox News, Rush, etc.  This is what happens when you convince people they are losing no matter what.  Retired and sitting on a comfortable nest egg in the lily white suburbs?  The browns are coming to take it from you! 

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11 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

And this was fully engineered by Fox News, Rush, etc.  This is what happens when you convince people they are losing no matter what.  Retired and sitting on a comfortable nest egg in the lily white suburbs?  The browns are coming to take it from you! 

Or a quote over the weekend from my FIL (paraphrasing) "those fucking socialists are coming to take my money".

He only began using the word socialist on January 3rd.

 

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9 hours ago, GRHorn said:

 

 

It's a troll question in the sense that it's dumb, likely because the author is a Brit who lives in Colorado and therefore has no idea what the border is actually like. It's a Trump-level question in its logic, which is probably why GRHorn found it to be so attractive. "IF YOU DON'T LIKE TRUMP WALL WHY HAVE WALLS AT ALL?"

Not every section of the border is the same. It's not a uniform geographical, political, or logistical situation across the entire span. Even with a fairly humane and open view of borders, different areas require different treatment. Even I would think it wise to look at each section individually, and I'm not even sure nations themselves make any sense.

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5 minutes ago, pacman said:

Has Trump ever detailed how the 5.7b will be utilized? It doesn't strike me as much money to accomplish anything and a rather random number.

Nope.  He has a number, but that's it for the details.

Here's the deal.  The Dems have no problem spending 5.7 billion (and neither do the Republicans).  And if President Fuckstick would say something like "I just want 5.7 billion for more border patrol officers, more Tahoes for them to drive, full body scanners,  cameras everywhere, blah blah this thing would be over by now.

But despite the best efforts of Pence, Graham and others to say the "wall" is a metaphor for more border security funding, our dumbass-in-chief keeps saying Wall or Barrier.

And here we are.

 

 

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8 minutes ago, pacman said:

Has Trump ever detailed how the 5.7b will be utilized? It doesn't strike me as much money to accomplish anything and a rather random number.

No, and he has no plan on what to do with the money. It's theater. He's holding real people hostage in his reality tv show presidency for the sake of manufactured conflict. He's just keeping his audience tuned in. 

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3 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Nope.  He has a number, but that's it for the details.

Here's the deal.  The Dems have no problem spending 5.7 billion (and neither do the Republicans).  And if President Fuckstick would say something like "I just want 5.7 billion for more border patrol officers, more Tahoes for them to drive, full body scanners,  cameras everywhere, blah blah this thing would be over by now.

But despite the best efforts of Pence, Graham and others to say the "wall" is a metaphor for more border security funding, our dumbass-in-chief keeps saying Wall or Barrier.

And here we are.

 

 

This pretty much distills it.  If rational adults were in charge none of this would have ever happened.  But we have a narcissist toddler pulling the reins.

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57 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

So the Opposition Party and the Dems are two separate entities? I haz confused. 

In the last few days, he's taken to calling the media the "Opposition Party." Someone must've recently whispered in his ear that calling them the "ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!" sounds a shade too totalitarian and doesn't play well with the masses.

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10 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

No, and he has no plan on what to do with the money. It's theater. He's holding real people hostage in his reality tv show presidency for the sake of manufactured conflict. He's just keeping his audience tuned in. 

This is what everyone needs to realize.  This is all about wielding power.  It has nothing to with walls, money, or security. 

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