President Trump: Making America Great Again...

[Jeff Lebowski]

Funny you say that. ONe of the htings that I find rather amazing is the attitude that all these Nazis just popped up out of nowhere. Trump certainly seems to have emboldened them, but they ahve been around doing obnoxious things like this for many years. The Skokie marches come to mind. Wearing swastikas, giving sig heil salutes and marching thorugh a neighborhood with a lot of holocaust survivors. These people have been low lifes and idiots for a long time.

Oh sure. But we have Nazis killing people and the president refusing to unequivocally condemn them. That is way more interesting than Russian hackers!

[Eddie]

... My mind remains open. Does yours?

Do you think there is smoke? I don't feel like your mind is all that open.

Just curious, Frank - you kind of glossed over creekster's question. Is your mind made up? Or are you open-minded to the idea that there might be reason to investigate, there might be reason for concern, but there might not actually be anything behind it all?

I'm sure it's this kind of post that gets me grouped in with the Trump supporters. The reality is that I'm not a Trump supporter - I just feel like there is plenty of areas to blame him for the idiotic and/or illegal stuff he does/says and not for the stuff that he might've done. When the evidence comes out, I'll be happy to condemn him with you. If it doesn't, I won't. He's given plenty of other material to focus on in the meantime.

[falafel]

Oh sure. But we have Nazis killing people and the president refusing to unequivocally condemn them. That is way more interesting than Russian hackers!

To be fair, it was only one nazi.

[BlueK]

Say it isnt so.


http://www.npr.org/2017/08/17/543905...-is-hoping-for

yeah, so basically it says there is no information leaking from the investigation team so therefore nothing is happening, and therefore Trump is going to come out smelling like a rose. Did I interpret that right?

[BlueK]

Yes, I certainly hope that with 16 attorneys working for him full-time he is taking it seriously and fulfilling his duty and not just wasting time. I have no reason to think otherwise, nor have I suggested otherwise. And if something comes of it I am certain we will find out in due course. But, you see, the source there was NPR, not exactly a noted Breitbart ally, and they are starting to float the idea that maybe, just maybe, there won't be a grand reveal, becasue there is not much if anything to reveal.

I am not entrenched in anything. I am eager to see evidence. You kindly listed yours out, in detail, some days ago and unless I missed something since then there is nothing new to consider (and I dont count the 'devastating' emails that will be used to hem in Manafort for the reasons I explained above). Based on the actual evidence that we have, there is no collusion shown. My mind remains open. Does yours?

You gotta admit the 4 am raid on Manfort's apartment was pretty fun, if nothing else, right?

[Eddie]

yeah, so basically it says there is no information leaking from the investigation team so therefore nothing is happening, and therefore Trump is going to come out smelling like a rose. Did I interpret that right?

All but the rose part. No way no how Trump ever comes out smelling like anything but a rich old man.

[BlueK]

Oh no. Feel free to carry on. I just lost interest a long time ago. Now we have living, breathing Nazis!

I'd vote for impeachment just for that.

[Jeff Lebowski]

To be fair, it was only one nazi.

Indeed. Good point.

[frank ryan]

Funny you say that. ONe of the htings that I find rather amazing is the attitude that all these Nazis just popped up out of nowhere. Trump certainly seems to have emboldened them, but they ahve been around doing obnoxious things like this for many years. The Skokie marches come to mind. Wearing swastikas, giving sig heil salutes and marching thorugh a neighborhood with a lot of holocaust survivors. These people have been low lifes and idiots for a long time.

They've grown with the internet. They never had a place in the GOP until Trump. LE etc have been worried about white supremacists and their kindred spirits in militias and sovereign citizen movements for quite awhile.

[Commando]

This, from Facebook (as always, I lack the skill to embed): Dear God, If you want us to impeach Trump, give us a sign, like blot out the sun... Anytime in the next week. Thanks, Americans

That's really good. I would like to have thought of that myself.

[Walter Sobchak]

Russia discussions.

#notwoke

[frank ryan]

I remember reading about Skokie. Not giving the pitiful American Nazi Party attention was effective at that time. Now with social media etc, it's a lot harder to ignore. On the other end of the spectrum in terms of dealing with Nazis is the Battle of Cable Street: 6-7,000 uniformed British fascists planned to march through a Jewish neighborhood to intimidate them. This was in '36. They were met by what wikipedia says were 20-30,000 anti-fascists, but in a book a read about it they estimated over a 100k. Anyway they fought with the fascists and their sympathetic police escort until the fascists abandoned their plans. That was a turning point and the British Union Party fell apart after that. Hitler later made it a point to bomb the shit out of the street because it was considered a major humiliation for his ilk.

This event is viewed positively by the British today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cable_Street

https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-10-...sm-london-1936

Here is a song by an underrated band about the incident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKv5gjOzTA

Here is a snippet of a documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiZFyYkcnf4

[Walter Sobchak]

If you've read Jon Ronson's "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" ... you will recognize an allusion (not cited below) embedded within this article:

Is Being a White Supremacist Grounds for Firing?

The strategy of exposing the faces of rally attendees to hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter worked, and many were identified. By Sunday, one of those whose name and place of residence had been revealed had reportedly been fired from his job at Top Dog, a hot dog restaurant in Berkeley, California, according to Berkleyside. (A call to Top Dog went unanswered.)

The strategy that ultimately got Cole White, the man who lost his job after being identified via social media, fired directed a mix of public shaming and economic pressure not at him, per se, but toward his employer. It took only a few hours for internet users to come up with an identification, where he was from, and where he worked and then to start calling on Top Dog to let him go. That’s certainly not a brand new tactic, but it’s a variety of vigilantism to which social media is particularly well suited, finding and disseminating information and amplifying calls to action far beyond what would be possible within a single geographic community. After the news broke that White had been fired, many who had participated tweeted delighted responses. ”Awesome! We must shame them into oblivion,” wrote one user.

[...]

In many cases, firing someone for their political ideas raises few legal issues. Though public-sector workers can’t be terminated for their political views, and many union contracts require that an employer demonstrate “just cause” for firing someone, federal law doesn’t offer any protections for expressing political views or participating in political activities for those who work in the private sector and don’t have a contract stating otherwise, according to Katherine Stone, a law professor at UCLA who focuses on labor law. (There are a few caveats for those in states or municipalities with laws that go beyond the federal mandate.) But more to the point, Stone says, it’s not at all uncommon—or illegal—for private-sector workers to get fired for what they do in their free time if it reflects poorly on their employer. In cases such as this, an employer in the private sector simply isn’t required to employ someone who exercises their right to free speech, Stone says.

The history of job termination as a means of punishing those who advocate for unpopular political or social causes during their free time makes Walter Greason, the historian at Monmouth University, wary of its use now. But he does believe that employers have a responsibility when it comes to selecting, hiring, and educating employees. Greason says that while firing someone for associating with a white supremacist group may provide a quick fix, “those folks are then sent out into the world without any means of changing, [and] they connect with others who share that same hate.”

That’s certainly true: Firing someone for their racist ideas is unlikely to make them less racist. But it's also true that the public, with the business community as its actor, often has the right to use its power to reject some ideas and ideologies. And doing so is part of the messy, haphazard process by which the country decides what the future will look like.

[wuapinmon]

[BlueK]

Trump is crazy.