Mark Zaid, JFK and Trump

[David Andrews]

Trump passed the test, or so they say:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/mar/14/trump-coronavirus-test-video

 

[James DiEugenio]

William:

The first four statements on your list seem to me to be more or less adjuncts to the modern Republican party.  At least the way it has evolved since the watershed victory of Reagan in 1980, and then been amplified by the likes of Gingrich and Tom DeLay and W.  I still think W was the worst president ever. And the propaganda was made to order by men like Roger Stone and Karl Rove and Bannon.

Concerning point five, the constitutional dodges, to me I really don't think this can actually apply today.  For the simple reason that the Federalist Society, in union with the GOP, has made a mockery of  whatever constitutional guidelines we had.  Caddy posted a good article where a University of Hawaii professor wrote a letter to Roberts explicitly saying this. This is a serious but I think underrated and unpublicized atrocity that does not get anywhere near the attention it should.  But even at that, I don't think you can compare what we have in that regard with what Hitler did in the Reich. Do you really think that what happened to the conspirators in the Von Stauffenberg plot could happen in America today? Or from before that, that Trump could get away with the NIght of the Long Knives?

As per Obama, I don't even want to get into that area since if you have to compare Obama with Trump then something is wrong somewhere.  Plus Trump did leave Afghanistan didn't he?

As per your last point, that is one with which I think there can be no disagreement.

[Joe Bauer]

I've been viewing You Tube video's of American soldier's who were the first liberators of several Nazis death camps just as the War in Europe was ending.

These are part of a series created and presented by the USC Shoah Foundation.

I thought I knew enough about this part of Hitler's doings to consider myself generally informed on the subject.

But after viewing 15 or more of these living testimony interviews of Nazi death camp discovering U.S. soldiers who were now in their old age, I now know how naively uninformed I was about the true horrors perpetrated in them...for years!

Horrors beyond comprehension.

Horrors that many of these soldiers still can hardly believe even 60 years later.

Horrors that made many of them weep in recounting them even after that long of time.

Their outrage upon seeing the incomprehensible torture inflicted on the camp prisoners triggered a mad revenge killing wave where even against orders they shot and killed many of the Nazi Guards captured at the camps on the spot.

These video taped interviews have imbued me with a hugely more profound and deeply disturbed view of the evils of Hitler and those who carried out his orders beyond anything I had comprehended previously.

Of course, we are not close to this type of national evil. And I'm fairly certain it won't ever happen here.

However, I AM very disturbed and concerned that our brilliant businessman leader is for sure someone who is uninclined and indifferent to the true history of tragic world events including the horrors of dictators upon their subjects and may even be a fan of the worst of these monsters?

And I don't see Ivana Trump making up her story of Trump keeping a book of Hitler speeches on his bedroom shelf.

Along with Norman Vincent Peale's "The Power Of Positive Thinking" and the latest issues of Playboy Magazine.

JFK's reading interests were a tad more eclectic one would guess.

 

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Sandy Larsen]

On 3/12/2020 at 11:01 AM, Douglas Caddy said:

In Sunday's debate I would like to see Bernie force Biden to agree to a genuine progressive agenda for his administration. Otherwise Biden will just be Obama2.O with nothing to show for electing him.

 

What?? Obama had nothing to show for his presidency?

And yet somehow Obama ranks #8 among U.S. presidents according to the 2018 APSA Survey of political science scholars. Right up there with Truman and Eisenhower.

How can that be? Maybe because Obama is credited with saving the U.S. from a second great depression? (I regularly watched CNBC back then because I was into day trading of stocks. I recall several experts lamenting the possibility of another depression. I remember Jim Cramer crying live on air, begging the Fed to do something before it was too late. He said the investment banks were about to collapse and nobody at the Fed was aware of it. Cramer was proven right.)

So nobody should dismiss with a sniff the fact that Obama saved the economy.

Then Obama got insurance for 20 million uninsured Americans. I was finally able to afford insurance again. In 2018 I was hospitalized in the ICU for two or three weeks and the bill totaled $85,000. Because of Obamacare, I had to pay only $2000 of that and didn't lose my home.

Following is a comprehensive list of Obama's accomplishments, for those of you who didn't pay attention.  (Sorry for the cheesy graphics. I wanted to post the list without the photo, but I don't have the time or energy to retype all that text.)
 

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by Sandy Larsen

[James DiEugenio]

I should add as to why I think W is the worst president ever.

He hit the Grand Slam:

1. Began a completely needless war that took the lives of over 600,000 people and destabilized the Middle East, leading to the creation of ISIS.🤐

2. Oversaw the worst financial crisis since the 1929 crash. 🥵

3. Twiddled his thumbs during one of the worst health and safety disasters in modern history while telling Mike Brown what a great job he was doing. 😒

4.  Did not fire one single employee over 9-11, and then was willing to have Kissinger (Mr. Genocide)  run the inquiry into what had happened.  😚

 

 

[Bob Ness]

1 minute ago, James DiEugenio said:

I should add as to why I think W is the worst president ever.

He hit the Grand Slam:

1. Began a completely needless war that took the lives of over 600,000 people and destabilized the Middle East, leading to the creation of ISIS.🤐

2. Oversaw the worst financial crisis since the 1929 crash. 🥵

3. Twiddled his thumbs during one of the worst health and safety disasters in modern history while telling Mike Brown what a great job he was doing. 😒

4.  Did not fire one single employee over 9-11, and then was willing to have Kissinger (Mr. Genocide)  run the inquiry into what had happened.  😚

 

 

Please. That's only a bare beginning. He looted entire sectors of the economy beginning with deregulating the electrical grid, stripping the FEC, green lighting several unregulated securities exchanges we could go on and on. As bad as Trump is he's got some catching up to do. These are the best and brightest of today's GOP. It's sad.

[James DiEugenio]

BN: Please. That's only a bare beginning.  

LOL 😀

 

[James DiEugenio]

This is getting scary:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7992909/Military-approves-11-COVID-19-quarantine-camps-1-000-people-major-airports.html?ito=facebook_share_article-top&fbclid=IwAR2DQ--ieXHcFS4CwqFuvKDG9Qee4uoGutj2JwzTyMdIiYW3Vq9DbJ8IBDo

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

This is getting scary:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7992909/Military-approves-11-COVID-19-quarantine-camps-1-000-people-major-airports.html?ito=facebook_share_article-top&fbclid=IwAR2DQ--ieXHcFS4CwqFuvKDG9Qee4uoGutj2JwzTyMdIiYW3Vq9DbJ8IBDo

I believe/hope the armed forces has additional ventilators they bring into the equation to supplement the 72,000 (the number nation wide - what I've heard) domestically available units elsewhere. Hopefully the measures they're putting into effect now will make them unnecessary but most aren't optimistic about that because of the late start. We'll see.

[Ron Ecker]

2 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

Ibelieve/hope the armed forces has additional ventilators they bring into the equation to supplement the 72,000 (the number nation wide - what I've heard) domestically available units elsewhere. Hopefully the measures they're putting into effect now will make them unnecessary but most aren't optimistic about that because of the late start. We'll see.

Looking on the bright side, Trump says he bears no responsibility at all for the late start. Also, there was a group meant to deal with this kind of thing on the National Security Council, but it was disbanded a couple of years ago. Trump (in response to a "nasty question" from a black reporter) said he didn't know anything about it so he bears no responsibility there either.

It's comforting to know that we have such an irresponsible president.

 

[David Andrews]

Arbitrary TSA rules suspended:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/coronavirus-tsa-liquid-purell-paid-leave-rules.html

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by David Andrews

[W. Niederhut]

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I should add as to why I think W is the worst president ever.

He hit the Grand Slam:

1. Began a completely needless war that took the lives of over 600,000 people and destabilized the Middle East, leading to the creation of ISIS.🤐

2. Oversaw the worst financial crisis since the 1929 crash. 🥵

3. Twiddled his thumbs during one of the worst health and safety disasters in modern history while telling Mike Brown what a great job he was doing. 😒

4.  Did not fire one single employee over 9-11, and then was willing to have Kissinger (Mr. Genocide)  run the inquiry into what had happened.  😚

 

 

Jim,

     It's another can of worms entirely-- which probably belongs on the 9/11 board-- but I believe Kissinger was in-the-loop on the PNAC 9/11 op.

   IMO, that's why Dubya asked him to chair the 9/11 Commission cover up.

1)  Kissinger's right hand man, (at Kissinger & Associates) L. Paul Bremer, was the first commentator in the U.S. mainstream media to announce on 9/11 (on CNN) that Osama Bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" were the primary suspects in the 9/11 attacks-- shortly after the nose cone of the first plane hit L.Paul Bremer's WTC office at Marsh & McLennan.

     (And, of course, Paul Bremer was later sent to Iraq as Rumsfeld's disastrous de-Baathification Czar-- in 2003.)

2)  Kissinger, himself, went on Sky Television in Europe on 9/11 to announce that Osama Bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" were the likely 9/11 culprits.

3)  Kissinger said on December 13, 2000-- shortly after the Bush v. Gore SCOTUS ruling that put Dubya in the White House--

“I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target..."

--Henry Kissinger, appearing on CNBC, 13th Dec 2000

 

[Bob Ness]

6 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

It's comforting to know that we have such an irresponsible president.

This is what happens when you hire an amateur who happens to have very severe personality disorders.

I doubt there is anyone who would trust this person to invest their retirement accounts, chaperone their children, look after their parents or any other task requiring a sense of ethical conduct much less competence. Yet he'd make a great president, the most difficult job in the world according to the Republicans.

Would any restauranteur hire someone who's never worked in a restaurant to be the head waiter? That would be insane. But here we are, and the result speaks for itself. It's a play off the old term limits argument about how important it is to get new blood into politics. The blowback is idiots who can't make the trains run on time.

But he's the best the GOP has to offer apparently.

Edited March 15, 2020 by Bob Ness

[Douglas Caddy]

New NBC-Wall Street Journal poll on how serious the virus is:

WASHINGTON — A majority of American voters say they’re worried that someone in their immediate family might catch the coronavirus, and six-in-10 believe the worst is yet to come for the outbreak inside the United States, a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds.

In addition, more than 40 percent say their day-to-day lives will change as a result of the pandemic.

But public attitudes about the coronavirus — including President Donald Trump’s handling of it — are starkly divided along partisan lines, with nearly nine-in-10 Republican voters having confidence in Trump dealing with the outbreak, compared with just a sliver of Democrats who agree.

Indeed, 45 percent of all voters approve of Trump’s handling of the issue, which is almost identical to his overall job rating in the poll.

 

 

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

Trump at work to save himself and the chosen Republicans from the virus:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/15/trump-offers-large-sums-for-exclusive-access-to-coronavirus-vaccine

From the article:

The Trump administration has offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusive access to a Covid-19 vaccine, German media have reported.

The German government is trying to fight off what it sees as an aggressive takeover bid by the US, the broadsheet Die Welt reports, citing German government circles.

The US president had offered the Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac “large sums of money” to gain exclusive access to their work, wrote Die Welt.

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by Douglas Caddy