Numbers are meaningless. It's about who and why. Obama mostly pardoned people who were convicted of drug crimes, already did substantial time and were sentenced during the war on drugs with mandatory minimum sentencing. Trump pardons Arpaio and his stooges.

Michael and I already explained the rules that apply in Oregon and what the difference is between detainment, arrest and kidnapping. It's clearly kidnapping if it's neither an arrest or detainment. Clearly fascist. And you're happy to side with him and excuse the worst.

As to cronyism, that others did it is not an argument in favour of it and you seem to misunderstand what it is ; the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications.

Kudlow, Kushner and his team of failures on corona is killing us citizens. Herman Caine and Stephen Moore to the federal reserve. Really? Various ambassadors.

As to Barr denying having been asked. That might even be true; a good dog fetches the paper before the master asks. Even so, when a criminal goes out of his way to deny the crime, we are to believe him? It was highly irregular and fits the pattern we are to expect of cronies. While circumstantial, it is evidence of wrongdoing.

All of which was borne out by the results. He was right. — NOS4A2

Wrong. He wasn't right. He was protected by Republicans in Congress.

Numbers are meaningless. It's about who and why. Obama mostly — Benkei

Mostly? Numbers are meaningless.

Daily reminder that Trump is a failure and NOS is a sycophantic piece of shit.

I haven't reviewed all 1792 cases. Have you? I find plenty of problems with the few things Trump had done in this field. Even so, even if Obama was worse (which he wasn't), that - once again - doesn't excuse Trump.

It's pretty annoying really that this specific fallacy keeps being repeated on a philosophy forum.

I fear that Trump is collapsing into the mere absurdity he always already was. Like a carnival tent ripped apart by wind, pieces now lying about in dust and trash. He is, ultimately, banal. But one sustained by great evil and criminality. In my opinion it is essential to lay out and lay bare every bit of it, because the evil is not gone. Criminals tried and punished hard. And the history, complete, published and distributed to every library and available at less than cost to anyone. I should like Biden to assign that as a several year's task. Complete investigations with complete disclosure and transparency. All held to account. Trump's administration is our Santayana moment.

And it's interesting. Biden the old man, if he does a right and good job, may well earn a spot in the ten-best, even five-best.

But cleaning up and cleaning out after Trump, history, indictments, trials and all, will be a task beyond Herculean. It will take the combined efforts of an entire administration. I hope to God Biden is up to it.

Biden's election will probably smooth the transition to the next Trump as his middling will inevitably disappoint everyone and, as conditions deteriorate further in the absence of any systemic change, cause the political ratchet to click one more to the right as it has done for the last 50 years of American politics.

Just think of time when Donald Trump as President feels as a far better option than the then current president.

Yes, that can happen in the US. Better to have an inept populist authoritarian than a very capable populist authoritarian.

I can offer plenty of examples of these mistakes, while you offer exactly zero of Trump's "fascistic" thought crimes. — NOS4A2

I actually have a conspiracy about this. Donald J. Trump, star of the show, The Apprentice was led into his position of power by the Central Intelligence Agency. Think about it. They know that almost the entire American populace, including most of the Right, though they tend not know as to just what it is that they have against them, aside from, perhaps, a few Neo-Conservatives, is likely not to agree with anything that they do, and, so, prop up an unlikable businessman to eat all of the flak. The news media swarms upon every controversy, while the CIA has attempted to orchestrate a Neo-Fascist coup d'état in Italy so as to secure control over the Mafia, and incite a global clandestine civil war to be given both the legal and extra-juridical rationalizations, justifications, and attempts at vindicating the establishment of a global crypto-Fascist totalitarian regime that was to bear only the semblance of Liberal democracy, being more or less the implicit goal of the organization since even before its official establishment. Luckily, for all of us, I put a stop to this.

The way I see it, though, Trump himself is not really a Fascist; he's a "useful idiot" to Fascists. They chose him for his sensational attitude towards the associated press and extraordinary capacity to proliferate thought-terminating clichés. To them, he's just there to get people used to what they plan next. There's no real reason to consider what they project into a future where Fascism is capable of securing power again, though.

I’m a little too cynical to believe any one group of people is capable of such a conspiracy. So I have to attribute the behavior to some form or other of mass hysteria or megalomania.

Trump going after the disillusioned Sanders voter.

Why, though? The coordinated grassroots Democratic Socialists of America campaign in favor of Bernie Sanders was the last political campaign that I believed in. Seeing that I have now become a-political, I would never return upon the other side. What I actually suspect to be likely to happen is for the Anarchist movement to find itself in a fix and to beg me to bail them out of it à la "Gandalf the White", but I am hoping that my having left in protest will prevent that from ever needing to occur.

Trump, who has funnelled billions of public money into private hands pretending like he gives a shit about disparity and propagandist fucks like NOS being a nice little brown nosed bitch about it.

Trump trimming more fat.

Trump moves to overhaul Tennessee Valley Authority leadership

President Trump announced Monday he's firing the Tennessee Valley Authority chair and is pushing for the ouster of the corporate agency's CEO, citing the authority's outsourcing of American jobs and high compensation.

Seated near TVA employees at a White House roundtable, the president blasted TVA chair James Thompson and CEO Jeffrey Lyash. Lyash is the highest paid federal employee, earning $8 million a year in total compensation. Mr. Trump said he's also removing board member Richard Howarth. The president said any new CEO must earn no more than $500,000.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-to-overhaul-overhaul-tennessee-valley-authority-leadership/

How is it trimming far if it isn't funded by taxpayer money?

Maybe he’ll sign an executive order disallowing talking about death as a proportion of population.

Maybe he’ll sign an executive order disallowing talking about death as a proportion of population. — praxis

At today's news conference, while answering a journalist about precisely this issue, he essayed another metric. He said that if we exclude the deaths that occurred early on in blue states such as New York and New Jersey, then the U.S.A. death rate doesn't look so bad anymore compared with other countries. (Maybe he'll sign an executive order to expel those two states from the Union.)

He said that if we exclude the deaths that occurred early on in blue states such as New York and New Jersey, then the U.S.A. death rate doesn't look so bad anymore compared with other countries. — Pierre-Normand

A high death rate in blue states is win-win for Trump: fewer Democratic voters and he can blame Democrats.

What do you mean? He'd blame Democrats for having increased the death rate, by dying?

Democratic governors and mayors I think.

The small clip clearly shows how totally clueless Trump is.

It's no wonder why so many that have had to try to explain Trump issues have said he is a moron.

But oh well, some Americans are OK with this.

After all, rich people cannot be morons, right? :smirk:

He's blaming Democratic mayors and governors.

Trump is representation of American dream, such as wealth, power, and success.

Best american philosopher i know is Donald Trump

- God bless america, and us all.

Maybe someone should just check if there is 2,700 tonnes of high explosive stored near the White House. Better safe than sorry.

Likely not. Real estate prices are quite high around the White House, so nobody will use there the real estate as a storage space for fertilizer.

But there is an equivalent of thousand times more than 2,700 tonnes of high explosives targeted at the White House that can explode above in just 20 minutes or so.

This is a great read from a whistleblower. A taste of things to come in the Spygate scandal.

The Spies who Hijacked America

Trump says Postal Service needs money for mail-in voting, but he’ll keep blocking funding

President Trump says the U.S. Postal Service is incapable of facilitating mail-in voting because it cannot access the emergency funding he is blocking, and made clear that requests for additional aid were nonstarters in coronavirus relief negotiations.

Trump, who has been railing against mail-in balloting for months, said the cash-strapped agency’s enlarged role in the November election would perpetuate “one of the greatest frauds in history.” Speaking Wednesday at his daily pandemic news briefing, Trump said he would not approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service, or $3.5 billion in supplemental funding for election resources, citing prohibitively high costs.

“They don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can’t do it, I guess,” Trump said. “Are they going to do it even if they don’t have the money?”

hey, MAGAts - finally the whole truth and nothing but the truth...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6coWUDWF5w8

:mask:

More peace in the Middle East thanks to Trump. Neocons on suicide watch.

Israel and United Arab Emirates Strike Major Diplomatic Agreement

Like Israel and the UAE were ever in danger of a conflict. LMFAO. The poor brainlets who think this means anything are beyond help.

"Israel and the Emirates have long maintained a thinly veiled secret relationship over mutual interests, and the idea of formalizing it had come up several times over the past year."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/politics/trump-israel-united-arab-emirates-uae.html