Lol. If you honestly think that, you need serious help.

The president submits his budget to congress, they rubber stamp it mostly, then send it back for presidential approval. The president controls it more than congress, start to finish, they only make changes the president must approve.
The president has enormous discretionary spending abilities too.
I guess you forgot what Ukraine was about...the president withholding congressionally approved funds. It works the other way too, where they spend funds not approved....constantly.

The president can make presidential orders, emergency declarations, reappropriation, and other ploys to get around congressional approval for spending. Remember that wall Mexico was paying for...how did it eventually get funded, (hint, not through the congressionally approved budget. He reappropriated funds for active duty family housing)

Edit: and now we're both right, as just yesterday the 9th circuit court decided Trump declaring an emergency at the border was a farce, his own DOJ numbers proved there was no need, no emergency, no caravans a comin, and that his misappropriation of the funding was unconstitutional....but I'm not a bit sure how that makes a difference since he already spent most of it. It was unconstitutional, but he did it anyway. They aren't going to recover those billions, so in reality being unconstitutional didn't stop anything.


Um...the "veto" we're discussing is actually technically called a "congressional override"...it's when congress overrides a presidential veto, creating the law, not repealing it. Are you confused because I called it congress vetoing the president?


He withheld congressionally approved funds from an ally, costing them lives and loss of bargaining power in an attempt to blackmail their president into STARTING an investigation into a crime that clearly was impossible if you know the timeline. That harmed American interests both in the region and internationally, cost lives, and gave aid and comfort to our enemy, Russia...that covers treason pretty thoroughly. There was NEVER an investigation into Hunter Biden to drop. Fuck, you people are gullible and ignorant, and just refuse to check facts. The Burisma investigation was shelved long before Hunter worked for Burisma, and shelving investigations for bribes was what the prosecutor had been doing his entire tenure, and why EVERYONE wanted him gone besides Russia. There was no explanation because there was never any investigation. Duh.
Can you explain why you stopped doing something you never did in the first place? Why won't you explain why you stopped having sex with infants? Knowing why is a good thing.

Yeah, you probably repeat the nonsense about him getting what was it, $2 billion from China, or was it Trillion? He would have more money than Trump if either figure were true, but they're just not. Look into it.

Oh no, sir. They have repeatedly said, alone and as a group, that they won't publicly oppose him on anything significant or usually even anything minor because they fear he will not support them, will "primary" them, and without his cultists they stand zero chance of being reelected.

Congress controls the purse strings. The president has no control over budget or taxation or whatever.

Veto is a good thing. We have too many laws (~10'000 roughly wherever you set foot), and we get more every year. Start repealing.

Correct. I will not be complaining about Biden, I will be complaining about congress. President can't sign a law that isn't handed to him by congress.

The treason accusations are subjective. It's not like he sold out defense secrets to an enemy state. He *may* have pressured Ukraine to divulge why the investigation into Hunter Biden was dropped without explanation.

Knowing why is a good thing. I also think it's fishy that a politically connected American who doesn't speak Ukrainian and is not 'an energy man' is sitting on the board of a foreign energy company in a country we helped commit a coup in and getting paid a few million+ 50k/month.

It's not that Republicans don't dare to cross him - they infight with him all the time. They also have no alternative to him right now that doesn't involve giving up power entirely.

-scheherazade

The president controls the purse strings among other powers you ignored. This one has wasted untold trillions, and maybe quadrupled the deficit.
That alone is one hell of a lot more than any mascot.

When is the last time Republicans and Democrats came together to have the votes to veto the president, because it was the last time. They couldn't agree to veto him on anything, Republicans wouldn't dare cross this president, even when he commits treason in public. In practice, this president controlled two branches of government for two years (now 1 1/2) and has both of his tiny hands on the scales of the third, filling the judiciary with "activist judges" that believe the president is above the law...at least this president....I'm sure their tune will change when it's Biden.

I guess we won't hear a peep of complaint about what Biden gets done from you then, since he has no real power and is just a figurehead?

I agree, local government is where governing hits the ground, so get rid of any trumptards that weaseled their way into it in November....as well as the higher offices. Any left will be "shallow state operatives" (they aren't deep), only interested in delaying and muddling any legislation meant to repair the nation.

Are you referring to the President?

President is the leader of the executive branch of government. The chief executive (I.e. Chief law enforcer).

He has direct command of the military, so you can call him the 'leader' of the military.

In practice, the President just has two powers : limited military command, and veto. Both of which can be legislatively overridden.

He's little more than a mascot, and in terms of national politics he's close to inconsequential. (Hence why TDS is much ado about nothing)

Your local country leadership does more to lead your life than the president.

-scheherazade

*doublepromote , I guess we know which candidate is going to get the harshest, best funded opposition come election time.
I only wish Julie Archer (the next speaker) had gone up and continued listing donations.

We can be certain those benefiting from the legal bribery system they set up will not be working against it, so there is no legal remedy. There isn't a federal ballot initiative we can start to force a finance reform law, and Trump would veto it anyway.
"Throw them all out of office" sounds nice, but isn't even possible in one election, much less likely at all. Even if it were, finding enough people willing to work for others and not their own interests is pretty hard when dump trucks of money are involved.
This is what citizens united was all about, legalizing bribery, and it clearly did exactly that.
Lobby your representatives to write an amendment limiting contributions to actual human beings, even only registered voters, with a clear, low limit (<$1000?), that might be a start....but that's also a non starter.

Everything you need to know....
There's not a single crime even alluded to in the memo, much less proven. Only accusations of bias against Trump by the agency that handed him the presidency.
The steel dossier was certainly not the only evidence presented to FISA, a fact Republicans are desperate to hide.

Republicans wrote the lax FISA rules, and renewed them just last month over Democratic objection, to make it easy to spy on Muslims in America and fight terrorism.
Those lax rules were used to legally get a warrant, and renew it.

Republicans eventually (after blocking voting on it for a week+) voted to release the Democratic memo, after it had been already submitted to the FBI and DOJ first and had a 10 day viewing period. The Republican memo was not subject to review. They also knew Trump would veto it's release, and he has so far. The democrats all voted to release the Republican memo...at the same time and with the same restrictions as the rebuttal, Republicans all voted against that.

Bias does not automatically make one not credible, or incapable of properly investigating crimes. Honest people are biased against liars. Most law enforcement is biased against criminal perpetrators. Intelligence agents are biased against traitors.

If bias was a disqualifier for investigation, what has the Republican party been doing looking at Clinton? They clearly should have recused themselves, but in that case bias against her was a prerequisite to be part of the investigation team. A little consistency would be nice, guys.

In short, this is utter bullshit distraction, fake misleading opinion based on factual omission made by those who've made a career of making unsupported, often debunked charges against political enemies, not credible evidence of crimes or improper action by anyone. Sorry @bobknight33

Trump will veto that, hide and watch....but I hope not so you can see that this memo is nothing but republicans making accusations, not evidence, just inferences drawn from implications based on not reading reports. The classified report they claim to reference isn't being released, just the partisan Republican memo...while the Democrat version of that interpretation memo was kept classified.

Funny, Trump's people claimed McCabe stepped down of his own accord, a few months before his scheduled retirement. He's not fired, he didn't quit, he wasn't even asked to leave, much less forced out. He just switched positions...ostensibly to avoid any further contact with Trump who acts like a bully on the phone, taunting the man's wife then hanging up.

Only one falling here. This should cause even republicans to vote to protect Mueller from removal. That will be Trump's death nail.

I'm not at all convinced of that (Clinton's political career being over).

It would be the sane response. And yet, clearly the DNC (and US politics in general) aren't reined in by trivialities like sanity. I think that unless the fickle public gets really riled up over this, the DNC would swing just as hard for Clinton or some other corporate-friendly type over anybody like Sanders or Warren in 2020.

Sanders being an Independent in the Senate was held against him hard by party bigwigs. Somewhat understandably. That being said, Sanders' brand of "Independent" was/is a fantastic guide to what the Democrat party should be working to become.

Politics is all bullshit, all the time. As a result, a huge percentage of voters are quite disenfranchised and don't really see any candidate as being on their side. Sanders turned that on its head. And old, rather-eccentric, Jewish dude got people excited (me too!). Massive gold-plated opportunity, with giant fucking neon signs pointing at it saying "pounce on this NOW", and the DNC took a big shit on it instead because they can't fathom a world without being 99.9% funded by massive corporations in return for congressmen, vetoes, and judges being bought and paid for.

I think that's what the guy is talking about with regards to "taking over the party". The "Justice Democrats" thing is about progressive candidates funded by actual goddamn people instead of laundered corporate money. I'm not real optimistic about their chances of really shaking up the status quo, but by god I sure hope they do.

Thoughts:

1) There has been a ban on sales of new, fully-automatic firearms ("machine guns") since 1986. That leaves some loopholes (can still buy them if they were manufactured before then, but that demand plus scarcity makes them expensive, etc.) but in general, there isn't a whole lot of uproar over that 20-year-old ban.

2) These bump-fire stocks don't technically convert a firearm into fully-automatic; the trigger is still being pulled 1 time for each bullet that comes out (semi-automatic).

3) However, they easily allow for rates of fire (bullets per minute/second) comparable to fully-automatic weapons. So, I think an unbiased and reasonable person would say that while a firearm equipped with one of these does not violate the letter of the ban on fully-automatic firearms, it does quite reasonably violate the spirit of that ban.

4) Doing anything to correct that discrepancy will require updated laws. Updating the law requires a legislature that generally supports the update and a president that agrees, or a legislature that overwhelmingly supports the update and can override a presidential veto.

5) None of that exists at the moment in the US. So, it is (perhaps coldly) logical to say that these bump-fire stocks will not be banned as an extension to the 1986 ban on full-auto firearms, at least not in the short term.

6) However, before quietly accepting that, it is worth noting that political fallout amongst those individuals in the legislature that refuse to consider updating the law is a very real possibility. Plenty of people, even on the right, even plenty of gun nuts, say that they are in favor of some degree of "common sense" gun control. Pointing out that bump-fire stocks essentially circumvent the already in-place ban on fully-automatic firearms seems like a good way to test that professed adherence to common sense.

7) Get that word out there, and pretty importantly, try to do it in a way that is as respectful towards the average "gun nut" as possible. Their minds can be swayed. Hunters, sportsmen, and even people that have guns for self defense can be persuaded with reason -- they can still do their thing even without bump-fire stocks, just like they can do their thing without fully-automatic firearms. Congresscritters probably can't be convinced, because they've already been bribed"persuaded" with campaign donations, NRA lobbyists, etc.


So, don't preach to the choir. Try to convince the people that do actually own guns. The good news? You've got "common sense" on your side.

The best way to explain it is that the Founding Fathers of the U.S. basically predicted that someday there could be an outcome like the most recent election, where people voted based on their emotions (fear, anger, hatred--all the Dark Side stuff) and not on logic or reason.

The Founding Fathers didn't trust the common man to be educated enough to always make reasonable decisions and wanted to ensure that there was a brake in place to prevent "mob rule." That "brake" is the Electoral College, a collection of (ostensibly) politically-educated individuals who could prevent demagogues (like Trump) from taking power.

I think this is the first time in history where the Electoral College can do the job it was intended to do. If the Electors put aside political partisanship, they'll recognize how putting a completely inexperienced, hate-inducing liar into the White House is a terrible idea and ensure Trump doesn't get the Presidency.

Of course, Electors not voting along party lines is in actuality highly unlikely to happen as, in the end, Electors are all long-standing and high-ranking Democrat or Republican Party members. I mean, if you were a Republican Elector whose party had spent the last eight years without a Presidential win, watching time and again as legislation in a Republican controlled congress gets vetoed down by a Democratic president, even a man like Trump is going to start to look tempting. So the safe bet is that Trump gets elected anyway and the Elector College proves itself again to be a pointless institution for this and all the other reasons explained in the video.

Some refugees arrived during the war, but not that many. Before that, Jews were about 8%of the population, so barely "significant".
Invaders came in mass soon afterwards, ignoring local laws and wishes, causing major problems, they didn't assimilate, they grabbed land, then power from the natives, and ended the peaceful coexistence that had lasted centuries before they invaded. The Nazis were long gone when they did this in about 1948, and not a factor at all then, and certainly not in 1974 when the U.N. suggested the two state solution (as you suggest), which might have worked if not for Israel's insistence on not moving or stopping expansionist "settlers" (read invaders) in Palestinian territory and supporting them with the military, and has been supported by Palestinians since the mid 70's (and publicly by their 'leaders' since 82), while Israel and the U.S. veto to this day, (and get upset when it's even mentioned internationally).

When you steal the land and push the locals out, it's not a surprise that their allies and neighbors come to their defense, I hope ours would, and I'm sure the European Jews wish their neighbors had.

It was an invasion by European Jewish people after the war was over (not refugees) with militarily superior allies that helped them and sold/gave them vastly superior weaponry.

Talk about revisionist history BS.

I continue to think them violent invaders, and horrifically racist genocidal ones at that.

Edit: It's anti-Zionist hate mongering, btw. The religion has nothing to do with it.

Shhh! The Southern Provinces haven't figured it all out yet.

Won't they be surprised when we veto Trump's election!

What does the President actually do? A few main things:

Chief Diplomat for foreign relations.
Commander in Chief of the military. (although legislature has some checks on that)
Appointing Supreme Court justices.
Presidential Pardons.
Veto power over Legislative bills.

Anything on any Presidential candidate's agenda that doesn't fall under one of those headings is hot air. Considering that, which of the candidates would actually be a better president?

Chief Diplomat role: Hillary wins here, pretty handily. Trump is generally hated by anyone outside of the US. Bernie isn't as smooth and well connected as Hillary. Interestingly enough, this is one area where I think Obama really shines. He's a good talker, and he increased the level of respect that other countries viewed the US with. Some of that was having a very easy act to follow -- Bush and the wars sent us pretty close to rock bottom in terms of how the rest of the world saw us, but Obama is legit as a diplomat even without the bonus of simply being an extremely welcome reprieve from Bush.

Commander in Chief: This one is more open to interpretation, but I think Bernie wins here. He had the right view on Iraq wars when most didn't, and a totally solid track record for a long time. Clinton acts like she was always on the correct side of that also, but she voted for Bush's war when she was in the Senate. Bernie didn't. Whatever she says to try to justify that doesn't change the simple facts of it. Trump could be pretty apocalyptically bad as Commander in Chief, but on the other hand he'd have the legislature and Joint Chiefs to keep him in check if he was doing anything truly insane. I think he's definitely the worst of the three, but I think saying a vote for him is a vote to "let the world burn" is a bit overly dramatic.

Supreme Court appointments: Sanders wins here by a LANDSLIDE. He's got the right idea on all of the judicial topics of the time, and knows exactly how important this is. Hillary is a massive corporate tool. She knows who pays her, and she'd definitely be looking out for their interests when it comes to stuff like Citizens United challenges, etc. I even think that Trump would be massively better than Clinton in this area.

Pardons: I'm specifically thinking of Ed Snowden here. Trump and Clinton both say he is a "traitor". Sanders at least acknowledges that Snowden's revelations did a lot of good, but still says that he should come home and face a trial. So that makes me think he's the best of the three -- but Jill Stein of the Green party says she would pardon Snowden, which makes her my favorite on this particular hot-button issue for me.

Veto powers: Opinions are going to vary on this one. I think Sanders wins considering that he simply stands by his record in the Legislature, which I think he deserves to be proud of. Clinton is a flip-flopping weasel of a politician, and she could easily swing things in favor of her corporate overlords with her veto power. Trump is a wildcard, but the inherent nature of veto power means that he can't do anything truly crazy with it unilaterally -- the worst he could do is get veto-happy and grind the legislature to a standstill (which they tend to do all on their own anyway) or pass something terrible (which would be more the fault of the legislature).


Depending on how any individual voter evaluates those topics, and how the prioritize them, I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone to think that any of the candidates would make a better president than any of the others. Personally, I think Sanders is the best of the three, but honestly I'd prefer incompetent President Trump to very dodgy President Clinton.

I found Colbert's question about "unknown knowns" the most interesting, but here's the thing:

Bush was the Commander in Chief. He didn't present their "intelligence evidence" of Iraq's WMDs to the American people because he *had* to. He tells the military what to do, they do it; the people don't get "veto rights". The only reason he presented it to the American people (I still remember watching Colin Powell show satellite photos etc.) was to shore up votes for his re-election. Which is exactly what any politician would do in that situation -- make a decision, and present that decision in the best possible light to the voters.

In other words, when Bush et al. were presenting that stuff to us, they weren't selling the actual invasion itself to us. They were selling us an image of their own legitimacy and competence. Viewed like that, of course they aren't going to inform us of those "unknown knowns"; it would shatter the image of them confidently and capably doing what they knew they had to do -- which was the actual point of it (selling that image to us, I mean).


I was sold, at the time. As were most (but not all) Americans, including many many people much older and wiser than I was (and am). I now agree that the invasion was a colossal mistake and that Bush's presidency in general was rather disastrous. BUT, that being said, I think it is problematic to hold these kinds of decisions against a president beyond a certain point.

FDR decided to drop two atom bombs on Japan rather than continuing with conventional warfare and risking many more American (and Japanese) lives with an invasion. Many people have questioned (and continue to question) that decision. But FDR was there. He was the Commander in Chief, he had some facts and plenty of unverifiable information and suggestions from his cabinet and intelligence sources of the time, and he made the decision.

I don't envy people in power who have to make weighty decisions like that based on incomplete information, only to have people question those decisions by citing information that they didn't have at the time. For the rest of their lives.

Sometimes I pretend I’m the Mayor of my kitchen and veto fish for dinner. ‘Too fishy’ is what I say!
— Marie Curie