So I guess now we should prepare for the argument that military court proceedings are some kind of secret liberal cabal that framed all these soldiers
Oh ho, you really haven't learned the Trump playbook. There will be no arguments. It is simple and straightforward: they killed muslims; they get pardoned.
Also, if you write a book in which you say nice things about Trump, even if you are a completely remorseless criminal scumbag, you get pardoned. I'm working on my draft right now...
Trump's playbook is the same playbook they used in 2003, where even people I personally knew and was friends would have been fine invading nearly ANY Muslim country and killing as many of them as possible. Me and my best friend from high school were swimming in a pool at a hotel in Rochester MN because he had some tests at the Mayo Clinic around that time, and since that is a place that gets ALOT of international traffic, there was a bunch of flags handing from the ceiling, and he said "there better not be an Afghanistan flag up there" and it was all I could do not to say "what the f**k are you talking about??" Then some months later on the eve of the Iraq War my roommate who I had known fairly well since high school started regularly wearing an American flag bandanna on his head and saying stuff like "love it or leave it" when people mentioned this was maybe not such a good idea. Nevermind the half of my mom's side of that family that was Republican during the Bush years. If you want to know what kind of stuff pushed me to where I am, it was being viewed as some kind of traitor for 5 years by people I'd known all my life for being 100% correct.
Polls (aside from push polls run by some campaigns) aren't designed to guilt people into anything. They are just asking questions and presenting options and the people on the other end of the phone take them down and then they get aggregated. It's not some nefarious subliminal temporary mind-control exercise. Moreover, if people are answering questions a different way than they actually feel, that isn't on the pollster. That means THEY feel inner guilt about their feelings and can't even bring themselves to admit it to a random stranger they are never going to meet. That's a THEM issue, not some guy making $10/hr getting responses from maybe 1 out of 4 people he calls.
I don't know who regular people are, but it sounds an awful lot like the "real America" bullshit the right has been pushing for decades, wherein the only voters that matter do manual labor and live in towns with no more than one stoplight.
You know as well as I do that polls are framed to get the responses they want. There are no polls that can predict elections anymore because of that very fact. There's nobody looking over your shoulder and judging you when you actually fill in that circle on the ballot.
If this was true not one would bother spending the money to put them in the field. Why would any campaign want an inaccurate portrait of the electorate's opinions?? What possible use would that serve??
So I guess now we should prepare for the argument that military court proceedings are some kind of secret liberal cabal that framed all these soldiers
Oh ho, you really haven't learned the Trump playbook. There will be no arguments. It is simple and straightforward: they killed muslims; they get pardoned.
Also, if you write a book in which you say nice things about Trump, even if you are a completely remorseless criminal scumbag, you get pardoned. I'm working on my draft right now...
Trump's playbook is the same playbook they used in 2003, where even people I personally knew and was friends would have been fine invading nearly ANY Muslim country and killing as many of them as possible. Me and my best friend from high school were swimming in a pool at a hotel in Rochester MN because he had some tests at the Mayo Clinic around that time, and since that is a place that gets ALOT of international traffic, there was a bunch of flags handing from the ceiling, and he said "there better not be an Afghanistan flag up there" and it was all I could do not to say "what the f**k are you talking about??" Then some months later on the eve of the Iraq War my roommate who I had known fairly well since high school started regularly wearing an American flag bandanna on his head and saying stuff like "love it or leave it" when people mentioned this was maybe not such a good idea. Nevermind the half of my mom's side of that family that was Republican during the Bush years. If you want to know what kind of stuff pushed me to where I am, it was being viewed as some kind of traitor for 5 years by people I'd known all my life for being 100% correct.
I know exactly what you mean. I voted for Trump but I'm looked at as a Liberal by my family because I'm not 100% behind him at all times. It's like I'm Ant-Christ because I criticize somebody who clearly ISN'T a Christian. That's what I mean by the two-party system tearing this country apart. There is no middle-ground anymore. I either have to be totally anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-Muslim, pro-Israel, pro-Christian morals forced on everybody or I'm a bloody liberal. Lunacy!
That's literally only because you weren't alive when those recriminations were being directed at the Gen Xers. Trust me, I was there, and you millenials have years of verbal abuse from your elders ahead of you before you will equal the silly attacks that were leveled at us.
Which is not to say it's a competition - it's not. And admittedly the recriminations against millenials are amplified by the internet, which (in BG terms) is a powerful force multiplier. A more powerful one than cable TV, which was used to amplify cultural battles in our time (which was more powerful than broadcast TV, which was more powerful than radio, yadda yadda yadda). The point is, the things you see from your point of view only comprise the things that are visible from your point of view. Which is not everything.
Breaking this apart, your point of view is also imperfect. We are all biased to more clearly identify recriminations leveled at us (in this instance, our generation) and less clearly identify those pushed at others. I am at a disadvantage here, as I didnt live through all of your generation being victimized. That said, i would recommend you do *not* underestimate just how much a force multiplier social media is.
I'm not saying every generation has come down on the following ones in some way. That is trivially true. And I'm not saying each case of it was equal in intensity or something like that. Circumstances change all the time. What I'm saying is, in a very broad sense, you are not special and your point of view is not special. You are not enlightened; you are not going to break the cycle. You are going to come down on the generation that follows you just as earlier ones have come down on you. So what's the point of yelling at your elders that they had it better, and later yelling at your youngers that you had it worse? Is it just about bragging rights?
I dont really know what you're trying to say here. It almost feels like the far-too-often trod out argument that there are "No special snowflakes" - which itself feels like a criticism constantly levied by Boomers towards Millennials. I dont think I saw anyone claiming to be special. I do think it's (generally speaking) every generation's goal to move the ball further down the field. I expect Gen Z to do that, too.
And for about seven years things were on the upswing, and the last members of Gen X were graduating right around 2000... and walked into the market in the midst of the Dot-Com Bust. And the election was stolen by a backward-thinking con man who sold the country to military industrialists and religious fanatics. And then the twin towers came down, which caused unprecedented economic harm, and enabled the con man's cronies to make an unprecedented power grab, and sent the nation hurtling into debt that no balanced budget could ever hope to undo, and embroiled the country in two wars that created deep scars and led to young soldiers being traumatized to a degree not seen since World War I. And not least, set the stage for the political divisions we are wrestling with to this day. By the time the dust settled, the main employment options were starting a food blog, and making a reality TV show about renovating and flipping houses.
I dont think any generation has ever avoided hardship. The 2008 recession was, historically speaking, the worst since the great depression. That hit everyone. Some of the worst affected people were the more established home-owners that lost an absolute TON of equity. It also raised the bar sufficiently high that Millenials wont be in a position to own homes for a long time. Which is worse? That's not for me to say. I dont weigh one hardship against another.
I'm not saying that 2008 didn't suck. I was there; it sucked. I'm just pointing out that 2008 looming so large in your point of view is preventing you from seeing other times and other challenges faced by other people. Millenials walk around with cell phones that a) are cell phones; b) cost a thousand dollars; and c) they have zero concern that someone might violently rob them of that absurdly valuable device. I'm just saying, a sense of perspective is something that must be cultivated, and a lot of millenials are not cultivating one.
This is also kind of weird and out of place. It feels like a random attack on Millennial's common sense? It's not like there arent the same Boomers walking down the street with nice phones, or Gen Xers. Soon Gen Z, too. This almost feel like an example of bias creeping into your argument about generations that came after you, and not any kind of a legitimate criticism.
Also. If you say it's not a competition. Dont make it one now. I dont think you need to defend your generation's sense of aggrievence.
That's literally only because you weren't alive when those recriminations were being directed at the Gen Xers. Trust me, I was there, and you millenials have years of verbal abuse from your elders ahead of you before you will equal the silly attacks that were leveled at us.
Which is not to say it's a competition - it's not. And admittedly the recriminations against millenials are amplified by the internet, which (in BG terms) is a powerful force multiplier. A more powerful one than cable TV, which was used to amplify cultural battles in our time (which was more powerful than broadcast TV, which was more powerful than radio, yadda yadda yadda). The point is, the things you see from your point of view only comprise the things that are visible from your point of view. Which is not everything.
Breaking this apart, your point of view is also imperfect. We are all biased to more clearly identify recriminations leveled at us (in this instance, our generation) and less clearly identify those pushed at others. I am at a disadvantage here, as I didnt live through all of your generation being victimized. That said, i would recommend you do *not* underestimate just how much a force multiplier social media is.
I'm not saying every generation has come down on the following ones in some way. That is trivially true. And I'm not saying each case of it was equal in intensity or something like that. Circumstances change all the time. What I'm saying is, in a very broad sense, you are not special and your point of view is not special. You are not enlightened; you are not going to break the cycle. You are going to come down on the generation that follows you just as earlier ones have come down on you. So what's the point of yelling at your elders that they had it better, and later yelling at your youngers that you had it worse? Is it just about bragging rights?
I dont really know what you're trying to say here. It almost feels like the far-too-often trod out argument that there are "No special snowflakes" - which itself feels like a criticism constantly levied by Boomers towards Millennials. I dont think I saw anyone claiming to be special. I do think it's (generally speaking) every generation's goal to move the ball further down the field. I expect Gen Z to do that, too.
And for about seven years things were on the upswing, and the last members of Gen X were graduating right around 2000... and walked into the market in the midst of the Dot-Com Bust. And the election was stolen by a backward-thinking con man who sold the country to military industrialists and religious fanatics. And then the twin towers came down, which caused unprecedented economic harm, and enabled the con man's cronies to make an unprecedented power grab, and sent the nation hurtling into debt that no balanced budget could ever hope to undo, and embroiled the country in two wars that created deep scars and led to young soldiers being traumatized to a degree not seen since World War I. And not least, set the stage for the political divisions we are wrestling with to this day. By the time the dust settled, the main employment options were starting a food blog, and making a reality TV show about renovating and flipping houses.
I dont think any generation has ever avoided hardship. The 2008 recession was, historically speaking, the worst since the great depression. That hit everyone. Some of the worst affected people were the more established home-owners that lost an absolute TON of equity. It also raised the bar sufficiently high that Millenials wont be in a position to own homes for a long time. Which is worse? That's not for me to say. I dont weigh one hardship against another.
I'm not saying that 2008 didn't suck. I was there; it sucked. I'm just pointing out that 2008 looming so large in your point of view is preventing you from seeing other times and other challenges faced by other people. Millenials walk around with cell phones that a) are cell phones; b) cost a thousand dollars; and c) they have zero concern that someone might violently rob them of that absurdly valuable device. I'm just saying, a sense of perspective is something that must be cultivated, and a lot of millenials are not cultivating one.
This is also kind of weird and out of place. It feels like a random attack on Millennial's common sense? It's not like there arent the same Boomers walking down the street with nice phones, or Gen Xers. Soon Gen Z, too. This almost feel like an example of bias creeping into your argument about generations that came after you, and not any kind of a legitimate criticism.
Also. If you say it's not a competition. Dont make it one now. I dont think you need to defend your generation's sense of aggrievence.
2008 was a speed-bump if you didn't panic. I took it up the ass but just held the course and got it all back and then some within two years. I even bumped up my 401k investment because the market was down. It's that sense of perspective that seems to be lacking after Gen-X (and in fairness even many Gen-X'ers panicked and lost tons of $$$) in my opinion. A house is a place to live, not an investment. If you look at it that way it wasn't a major problem (and your house value going down even meant lower taxes in Michigan since we have a property tax). The stock market always comes back, ALWAYS! Ride it out and everything will be fine...
My advice to everybody in this thread who'll listen: If you can't be unemotional about your investments (I'm literally talking about Mr. Spock-like logic here) please find a financial advisor who can to take care of your investments. There are people out there who can help with this. Ask your friends and contacts and I'm sure you can find one you can trust. You'll thank me for it!
And for about seven years things were on the upswing, and the last members of Gen X were graduating right around 2000... and walked into the market in the midst of the Dot-Com Bust. And the election was stolen by a backward-thinking con man who sold the country to military industrialists and religious fanatics. And then the twin towers came down, which caused unprecedented economic harm, and enabled the con man's cronies to make an unprecedented power grab, and sent the nation hurtling into debt that no balanced budget could ever hope to undo, and embroiled the country in two wars that created deep scars and led to young soldiers being traumatized to a degree not seen since World War I. And not least, set the stage for the political divisions we are wrestling with to this day. By the time the dust settled, the main employment options were starting a food blog, and making a reality TV show about renovating and flipping houses.
@subtledoctor while I agree with a lot of your argument, I'm not sure that Iraq was such a defining moment compared to other past events. In terms of scale there were about 200,000 US soldiers involved in the peak of the Iraq war - far fewer than in either Korea or Vietnam. The nature of the conflicts in those earlier wars were also different and I suspect probably more traumatizing to soldiers - even if the effects of such trauma were less recognized in the past.
It was problematic in lots of ways, but the main point is that it doesn't get accounted for by statements that try to compare generational challenges by comparing the stock market in the 90s vs. 2008-2012. The Millennial generation hasn't faced something like the war in Iraq - yet.
I wonder, is this true? It's always tricky to pin down generational ranges, but the earliest Millennials were old enough to serve at the start of the War in Iraq, and obviously that continued well through the rest of the war. The Army keeps statistics on the average age of Enlistment, and it's usually right around 21 years old. So I would say that Millenials did face the Iraq war, and quite a few of them fought in it.
We werent old enough to decide on the politics of if the war should be fought, but we were certainly old enough to do the fighting (Speaking anecdotally, this all tracks. I would have been 14 during 9/11, and would have been 18 in 2005. The war in Iraq lasted from 2003 to 2011).
Polls (aside from push polls run by some campaigns) aren't designed to guilt people into anything. They are just asking questions and presenting options and the people on the other end of the phone take them down and then they get aggregated. It's not some nefarious subliminal temporary mind-control exercise. Moreover, if people are answering questions a different way than they actually feel, that isn't on the pollster. That means THEY feel inner guilt about their feelings and can't even bring themselves to admit it to a random stranger they are never going to meet. That's a THEM issue, not some guy making $10/hr getting responses from maybe 1 out of 4 people he calls.
I don't know who regular people are, but it sounds an awful lot like the "real America" bullshit the right has been pushing for decades, wherein the only voters that matter do manual labor and live in towns with no more than one stoplight.
You know as well as I do that polls are framed to get the responses they want. There are no polls that can predict elections anymore because of that very fact. There's nobody looking over your shoulder and judging you when you actually fill in that circle on the ballot.
If this was true not one would bother spending the money to put them in the field. Why would any campaign want an inaccurate portrait of the electorate's opinions?? What possible use would that serve??
I think we're slowly going to find out that these polls really are less and less useful. For one thing, the only people surveyed are the people willing to be surveyed. That is definitely not a representative cross-section.
I think we're slowly going to find out that these polls really are less and less useful. For one thing, the only people surveyed are the people willing to be surveyed. That is definitely not a representative cross-section.
I think there's a really big problem with confirmation bias as it relates to polling. People point to when polling is wrong and say "I'll never trust polls again, they're always wrong", but they dont have any reaction to when polls are exceptionally accurate.
For example, the 2016 race's polls werent any further off than the average polling has been in the last 50 years. It just cut against the narrative that the media has, which decided a 3 to 4 point lead was unassailable, when it very clearly was.
Correspondingly, the 2018 for the midterms were extremely accurate, and that's despite the fact that midterm polling is usually less reliable than presidential polling.
Tl;dr - empirical evidence suggests polling is every bit as useful as its always been. The hyper-partisan nature of our electorate filters that polling and hinders our successful interpretation of it.
My advice to everybody in this thread who'll listen: If you can't be unemotional about your investments (I'm literally talking about Mr. Spock-like logic here) please find a financial advisor who can to take care of your investments. There are people out there who can help with this. Ask your friends and contacts and I'm sure you can find one you can trust. You'll thank me for it!
I don't trust this market. There's a mad king in charge of it. He makes impulsive tweets that can swing the markets. He uses tariffs and starts meaningless trade wars. This guy lost like $240k per day for a decade and his businesses went bankrupt 6 times. Trump University was a scam. Trump airlines and Trump steaks and his casinos don't exist.
This is the clown meddling in the markets. Even worse if things start to get bad, he'll lie about it and we might not even know until it's really really bad.
This is something I know more than a little bit about. EVERYONE who works directly for a bank is trained to not only recognize the signs of money laundering, but they are OBLIGATED by both law and to protect the bank from liability to report it. These workers saw those signs in both Trump and Kushner's accounts and reported it. The Executives at the top ignored them. Your local teller who cashes that check your great-grandmother sent you for your birthday would know this is to be be reported if found. You have to take a training course every year to get it drilled into your head again. Moreover, this seems for all the world as if there was retaliation by the bank for reporting it, which is also BLATANTLY ILLEGAL and against all regulatory guidelines:
Why have I been harping on the money laundering aspect of this for well over a year?? Because it was obvious even from reading cursory news articles what was going on. Mueller did not cross Trump's "red line" in regards to his finances, but it's becoming increasingly clear he should have, and the only hope is that it was one of the cases farmed out to other jurisdictions (which may in fact be the case). Because this is absolutely ridiculous.
And before anyone hops on the "just like obstruction of justice, money laundering isn't a real crime" bandwagon, let me put that to bed. Money laundering is the practice which ALLOWS criminals to route and access their money without alerting the authorities. It is the practice of using legitimate businesses as fronts for funneling cash gained from illicit and criminal means. Saying it isn't a big deal is like saying the get-away driver after a bank robbery should be let off the hook.
@jjstraka34 Can’t read the article as I am passed my NYT limit for the month. Can you give a quick summary of what the article is about and Is the article talking pre or post elections?
If it’s post (or during his candidacy) Deutsche had a moral dilemma on their hand already about loaning Trump money as in what course of action does one take if he reneged in paying it back?
@jjstraka34 Can’t read the article as I am passed my NYT limit for the month. Can you give a quick summary of what the article is about and Is the article talking pre or post elections?
If it’s post (or during his candidacy) Deutsche had a moral dilemma on their hand already about loaning Trump money as in what course of action does one take if he reneged in paying it back?
It was in 2016 and 2017. Employees specifically in the anti-money laundering department flagged MULTIPLE transactions in accounts of both Trump and Kushner to be reported to a federal financial crimes watchdog group. When the concerns reached the top of the food chain, they rejected them. This is essentially a case of whistelblowing among former Deutsche Bank employees. And it's now incredibly obvious why Trump is suing to have them not turn them over. And for the love of god, how is it that the President of the United States owing 300 million dollars to Deutsche Bank on the day he took the oath of office not the biggest story in the world??
And when talking about polls (I harp on this all the time here), it is all about how the question is worded.
There was a poll conducted recently which asked “do you think Arabic numbers should be taught in school.” And more than 50% of respondents said no. Arabic numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4 etc so clearly they should be, and are, being taught in school. Because respondents were ignorant (and really, if you didn’t know this, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just another useless fact) of where the symbols of numbers come from they would answer no for numerous reasons.
The snopes article says the actual study isn’t out yet, but I think it’d be an interesting read and study on how to properly formulate these types of questions.
Let's put it this way about the money laundering: it doesn't take a genius to see something like happening if you have access to the information, only someone who is doing their job and paying attention. What you are looking for in banking is sudden changes in patterns for no discernible reason. Take the most basic example as someone's checking account and debit card purchases. For two years, a 60-year old retired couple spend nearly all their money within 10 miles from their home in Arkansas. Suddenly, out of the blue, 3 charges appear in one week emanating from gas stations in Maine. Any fraud department worth their salt is going to immediately block the card being used for those transactions. Catching the money laundering is simply that on a higher scale. If transactions that serve no purpose or fit no pattern of the account's previous activity start showing up, then (again) it is the absolute obligation of the employee who notices it to flag it and report it. It's not even really about numbers, it's about patterns of behavior that don't fit.
@jjstraka34 Can’t read the article as I am passed my NYT limit for the month. Can you give a quick summary of what the article is about and Is the article talking pre or post elections?
If it’s post (or during his candidacy) Deutsche had a moral dilemma on their hand already about loaning Trump money as in what course of action does one take if he reneged in paying it back?
It was in 2016 and 2017. Employees specifically in the anti-money laundering department flagged MULTIPLE transactions in accounts of both Trump and Kushner to be reported to a federal financial crimes watchdog group. When the concerns reached the top of the food chain, they rejected them. This is essentially a case of whistelblowing among former Deutsche Bank employees. And it's now incredibly obvious why Trump is suing to have them not turn them over. And for the love of god, how is it that the President of the United States owing 300 million dollars to Deutsche Bank on the day he took the oath of office not the biggest story in the world??
Well it was a huge story for Deutsche. They were kinda in a panic and came to two conclusions if Trump refused to pay back the money:
1) write it off and lose out on the 300 million.
2) take the president of the free world to collections and risk him retaliating with executive orders that would hinder your company.
With this story, I think number 2 is still on the top executives mind. Because really, you’d be reporting these finding right back to Trump own cronies if they went ahead with this. If 2020 rolled around and he wasn’t elected, I would expect the bank to make this information available to federal agents, much like his loans would then be going to collections.
@jjstraka34 Can’t read the article as I am passed my NYT limit for the month. Can you give a quick summary of what the article is about and Is the article talking pre or post elections?
If it’s post (or during his candidacy) Deutsche had a moral dilemma on their hand already about loaning Trump money as in what course of action does one take if he reneged in paying it back?
It was in 2016 and 2017. Employees specifically in the anti-money laundering department flagged MULTIPLE transactions in accounts of both Trump and Kushner to be reported to a federal financial crimes watchdog group. When the concerns reached the top of the food chain, they rejected them. This is essentially a case of whistelblowing among former Deutsche Bank employees. And it's now incredibly obvious why Trump is suing to have them not turn them over. And for the love of god, how is it that the President of the United States owing 300 million dollars to Deutsche Bank on the day he took the oath of office not the biggest story in the world??
Well it was a huge story for Deutsche. They were kinda in a panic and came to two conclusions if Trump refused to pay back the money:
1) write it off and lose out on the 300 million.
2) take the president of the free world to collections and risk him retaliating with executive orders that would hinder your company.
With this story, I think number 2 is still on the top executives mind. Because really, you’d be reporting these finding right back to Trump own cronies if they went ahead with this. If 2020 rolled around and he wasn’t elected, I would expect the bank to make this information available to federal agents, much like his loans would then be going to collections.
Which is why, on top of EVERYTHING else, these limitless and endless conflicts of interest are a threat to the country in even conceivable way imaginable. Either the President is likely to blackmail companies like Deutsche Bank, or HE is likely to be blackmailed by companies like them. Or, more likely, BOTH at the same time. The very idea that someone in THIS much debt to a financial institution is sitting in his position is insane.
@jjstraka34 Can’t read the article as I am passed my NYT limit for the month. Can you give a quick summary of what the article is about and Is the article talking pre or post elections?
If it’s post (or during his candidacy) Deutsche had a moral dilemma on their hand already about loaning Trump money as in what course of action does one take if he reneged in paying it back?
It was in 2016 and 2017. Employees specifically in the anti-money laundering department flagged MULTIPLE transactions in accounts of both Trump and Kushner to be reported to a federal financial crimes watchdog group. When the concerns reached the top of the food chain, they rejected them. This is essentially a case of whistelblowing among former Deutsche Bank employees. And it's now incredibly obvious why Trump is suing to have them not turn them over. And for the love of god, how is it that the President of the United States owing 300 million dollars to Deutsche Bank on the day he took the oath of office not the biggest story in the world??
Well it was a huge story for Deutsche. They were kinda in a panic and came to two conclusions if Trump refused to pay back the money:
1) write it off and lose out on the 300 million.
2) take the president of the free world to collections and risk him retaliating with executive orders that would hinder your company.
With this story, I think number 2 is still on the top executives mind. Because really, you’d be reporting these finding right back to Trump own cronies if they went ahead with this. If 2020 rolled around and he wasn’t elected, I would expect the bank to make this information available to federal agents, much like his loans would then be going to collections.
Which is why, on top of EVERYTHING else, these limitless and endless conflicts of interest are a threat to the country in even conceivable way imaginable. Either the President is likely to blackmail companies like Deutsche Bank, or HE is likely to be blackmailed by companies like them. Or, more likely, BOTH at the same time. The very idea that someone in THIS much debt to a financial institution is sitting in his position is insane.
You are right. It should have been an election issue. It wasn’t because everyone just rolled over once he had that lame excuse of a press conference where he stated he was just going to pass his businesses to his sons.
You really can’t blame Deutsche bank now for what was dealt to them (you can blame them for actually lending out the money in the first place, but I digress) or how they are choosing to handle it.
Now that it is out there, they may be relieved since any retaliatory action can be seen a mile way if they do start helping with investigations. But let’s just see what Barr does if it gets to that point.
Not only is Trump apparently ordering McGhan not to testify before Congress, but a decision came down in the last few hours where a judge dismissed the President's bid against Deutsche Bank attempting to stop them from providing his records to the House Committee. And as I have been predicting for MONTHS, he is moving closer to ignoring the courts altogether, as he is MORE than insinuating that since this particular judge was appointed by Obama (you know, one of the ones that actually got through), the ruling is invalid. He is basically going to ignore Congress. He is now positioning himself to ignore the courts as well. What do we call that?? Because I call it an autocracy.
Not only is Trump apparently ordering McGhan not to testify before Congress, but a decision came down in the last few hours where a judge dismissed the President's bid against Deutsche Bank attempting to stop them from providing his records to the House Committee. And as I have been predicting for MONTHS, he is moving closer to ignoring the courts altogether, as he is MORE than insinuating that since this particular judge was appointed by Obama (you know, one of the ones that actually got through), the ruling is invalid. He is basically going to ignore Congress. He is now positioning himself to ignore the courts as well. What do we call that?? Because I call it an autocracy.
I call it a battle between the 3 branches of government, or more specifically, two more and more polarized parties. Autocracy is when the black helicopters start flying around and they round up people for 're-education'. I think not turning over tax returns is a far cry from that...
Not sure the politics forum is the correct place to ask this question, but is anybody else watching the Chernobyl mini-series on HBO? I just got done binge-watching the first three episodes and it is very good. I highly recommend it. I'm seriously glad that the worst-case scenarios of that disaster didn't happen. It's also very enlightening to see how much that catastrophe cost the Soviet Union. Reading a little more about it on the net makes it sounds like the initial Soviet response (or more aptly, the lack thereof) played no small part in the collapse of the USSR. Talk about repercussions!
Not sure the politics forum is the correct place to ask this question, but is anybody else watching the Chernobyl mini-series on HBO? I just got done binge-watching the first three episodes and it is very good. I highly recommend it. I'm seriously glad that the worst-case scenarios of that disaster didn't happen. It's also very enlightening to see how much that catastrophe cost the Soviet Union. Reading a little more about it on the net makes it sounds like the initial Soviet response (or more aptly, the lack thereof) played no small part in the collapse of the USSR. Talk about repercussions!
Before I want to commit to it I'd like to be assured that, unlike another prominent HBO franchise, they don't have the main character destroy the entire reactor on purpose on a whim and explain it away by having her not wear make-up in one scene and being driven instantly insane by the ringing of bells.
I think that got foreshadowed a lot; it just wasn't foreshadowed enough for it to make sense--at least, until after you saw the finale and heard her speech, which shed some light on her state of mind and thinking at the time, and the talks with Jon and Tyrion, which also explained where she was coming from when she did the bad guy burny stuff.
I think that got foreshadowed a lot; it just wasn't foreshadowed enough for it to make sense--at least, until after you saw the finale and heard her speech, which shed some light on her state of mind and thinking at the time, and the talks with Jon and Tyrion, which also explained where she was coming from when she did the bad guy burny stuff.
I think there is a universe where what happened makes sense, it just isn't the one we're living in. There is actually a great 20-minute Youtube video on this subject literally called "Foreshadowing isn't Character Development". Again, I don't object to what happened, I object to how we got there, and how it is REALLY obvious that something went drastically off the rails in Season 7 and 8 in a rush to the finish line. HBO was willing to do as many as 10 seasons. Benioff and Weiss insisted they could get it done in 7, which actually turned into two truncated seasons.
I mean, Dany's character arc is just a cherry on top of the sundae. This was a show where, in the early seasons, alot of what happened took place when the characters were "on the road" so to speak. And the most jarring thing to me starting last season was that people were, to put it in video game terms, "fast-traveling" all around the continent. If they needed to be somewhere because the plot demanded it, they just appeared there out of the blue, with no explanation or even a cursory attempt at showing the passage of time. Everyone was just hopping around like they were playing Skyrim and opening the map while they were in Whiterun and traveling to Solitude through a loading screen. The dialogue and writing problems were exemplified by Tyrion, at one time one of the wittiest characters in TV history. In seasons 7 and 8, nearly EVERY conversation he has is just some Cliff's Notes rundown of something that happened in a previous season. Either the writers thought the audience was too stupid to remember that Jon and Tyrion traveled to the Wall together in Season One (or that Davos fought in the Battle of Blackwater Bay, or that he and Sansa were once married) or they were simply totally devoid of giving him anything interesting to say anymore.
I won't go on too much more about it, since this is a politics thread, but, suffice to say, I don't know how an even remotely interested observer of the show can not see the drastic turn for the worse the show took in it's last 13 episodes. It still had great moments individually (mostly visual) but they came at the expense of everything that had made it special in the first place. People are saying it's a lazy criticism to blame "the writing", but I don't know what else to lay it at the feet of. The pacing and dialogue were completely alien to what had come before it.
Part of this is George RR Martin falling prey to the same curse Robert Jordan did with his Wheel of Time series. It started out like a gangbuster, but somewhere at the end of Book 6, he completely lost control of his own plot and started diverging into endless side-threads and plot-lines that just kept going and going never reaching any destination. This went on for 4 entire books, and by the time he got back on track at the end of Book 11, he had developed a fatal disease and he died. Watching the last two seasons of "Game of Thrones" is exactly like reading Brandon Sanderson's last 3 Wheel of Time books that he was commissioned to write to finish the story. I guess after making a such a major investment over the years I was glad to know how the story ended, but getting there was not even remotely enjoyable. And since I don't think Martin ever WILL finish his story, Benioff and Weiss were tasked with landing his plane. And, like Sanderson, they just couldn't stick the landing.
Autocracy is when the black helicopters start flying around and they round up people for 're-education'.
Definitions or no, I think we should be alarmed long before the government actually starts implementing re-education camps. If we waited until we were already living in a fascist country before we started crying foul, the war for American democracy would already have been lost. It's just like fighting cancer or fighting crime--you don't wait for it to win before you take your medicine or enforce the law.
We need to fight autocracy in its budding stages; not just when it takes over the world.
Oh please. Show pictures of any political rally and you'll see the same damned thing. People that show up to these rallies are die-hard fans, sycophants and/or zealots. A friend of mine's wife dragged him to a Clinton rally in Detroit not long back and it was no different. Just a different message...
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Trump's playbook is the same playbook they used in 2003, where even people I personally knew and was friends would have been fine invading nearly ANY Muslim country and killing as many of them as possible. Me and my best friend from high school were swimming in a pool at a hotel in Rochester MN because he had some tests at the Mayo Clinic around that time, and since that is a place that gets ALOT of international traffic, there was a bunch of flags handing from the ceiling, and he said "there better not be an Afghanistan flag up there" and it was all I could do not to say "what the f**k are you talking about??" Then some months later on the eve of the Iraq War my roommate who I had known fairly well since high school started regularly wearing an American flag bandanna on his head and saying stuff like "love it or leave it" when people mentioned this was maybe not such a good idea. Nevermind the half of my mom's side of that family that was Republican during the Bush years. If you want to know what kind of stuff pushed me to where I am, it was being viewed as some kind of traitor for 5 years by people I'd known all my life for being 100% correct.
If this was true not one would bother spending the money to put them in the field. Why would any campaign want an inaccurate portrait of the electorate's opinions?? What possible use would that serve??
I know exactly what you mean. I voted for Trump but I'm looked at as a Liberal by my family because I'm not 100% behind him at all times. It's like I'm Ant-Christ because I criticize somebody who clearly ISN'T a Christian. That's what I mean by the two-party system tearing this country apart. There is no middle-ground anymore. I either have to be totally anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-Muslim, pro-Israel, pro-Christian morals forced on everybody or I'm a bloody liberal. Lunacy!
Breaking this apart, your point of view is also imperfect. We are all biased to more clearly identify recriminations leveled at us (in this instance, our generation) and less clearly identify those pushed at others. I am at a disadvantage here, as I didnt live through all of your generation being victimized. That said, i would recommend you do *not* underestimate just how much a force multiplier social media is.
I dont really know what you're trying to say here. It almost feels like the far-too-often trod out argument that there are "No special snowflakes" - which itself feels like a criticism constantly levied by Boomers towards Millennials. I dont think I saw anyone claiming to be special. I do think it's (generally speaking) every generation's goal to move the ball further down the field. I expect Gen Z to do that, too.
I dont think any generation has ever avoided hardship. The 2008 recession was, historically speaking, the worst since the great depression. That hit everyone. Some of the worst affected people were the more established home-owners that lost an absolute TON of equity. It also raised the bar sufficiently high that Millenials wont be in a position to own homes for a long time. Which is worse? That's not for me to say. I dont weigh one hardship against another.
This is also kind of weird and out of place. It feels like a random attack on Millennial's common sense? It's not like there arent the same Boomers walking down the street with nice phones, or Gen Xers. Soon Gen Z, too. This almost feel like an example of bias creeping into your argument about generations that came after you, and not any kind of a legitimate criticism.
Also. If you say it's not a competition. Dont make it one now. I dont think you need to defend your generation's sense of aggrievence.
2008 was a speed-bump if you didn't panic. I took it up the ass but just held the course and got it all back and then some within two years. I even bumped up my 401k investment because the market was down. It's that sense of perspective that seems to be lacking after Gen-X (and in fairness even many Gen-X'ers panicked and lost tons of $$$) in my opinion. A house is a place to live, not an investment. If you look at it that way it wasn't a major problem (and your house value going down even meant lower taxes in Michigan since we have a property tax). The stock market always comes back, ALWAYS! Ride it out and everything will be fine...
@subtledoctor while I agree with a lot of your argument, I'm not sure that Iraq was such a defining moment compared to other past events. In terms of scale there were about 200,000 US soldiers involved in the peak of the Iraq war - far fewer than in either Korea or Vietnam. The nature of the conflicts in those earlier wars were also different and I suspect probably more traumatizing to soldiers - even if the effects of such trauma were less recognized in the past.
Okay. I was misinterpreting you to say. "It's not a competition... (but it is, and we've had it worse)". Sorry about imputing that into your argument.
I wonder, is this true? It's always tricky to pin down generational ranges, but the earliest Millennials were old enough to serve at the start of the War in Iraq, and obviously that continued well through the rest of the war. The Army keeps statistics on the average age of Enlistment, and it's usually right around 21 years old. So I would say that Millenials did face the Iraq war, and quite a few of them fought in it.
We werent old enough to decide on the politics of if the war should be fought, but we were certainly old enough to do the fighting (Speaking anecdotally, this all tracks. I would have been 14 during 9/11, and would have been 18 in 2005. The war in Iraq lasted from 2003 to 2011).
Used a source to pin down age ranges: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/
I think we're slowly going to find out that these polls really are less and less useful. For one thing, the only people surveyed are the people willing to be surveyed. That is definitely not a representative cross-section.
I think there's a really big problem with confirmation bias as it relates to polling. People point to when polling is wrong and say "I'll never trust polls again, they're always wrong", but they dont have any reaction to when polls are exceptionally accurate.
For example, the 2016 race's polls werent any further off than the average polling has been in the last 50 years. It just cut against the narrative that the media has, which decided a 3 to 4 point lead was unassailable, when it very clearly was.
Correspondingly, the 2018 for the midterms were extremely accurate, and that's despite the fact that midterm polling is usually less reliable than presidential polling.
Tl;dr - empirical evidence suggests polling is every bit as useful as its always been. The hyper-partisan nature of our electorate filters that polling and hinders our successful interpretation of it.
I don't trust this market. There's a mad king in charge of it. He makes impulsive tweets that can swing the markets. He uses tariffs and starts meaningless trade wars. This guy lost like $240k per day for a decade and his businesses went bankrupt 6 times. Trump University was a scam. Trump airlines and Trump steaks and his casinos don't exist.
This is the clown meddling in the markets. Even worse if things start to get bad, he'll lie about it and we might not even know until it's really really bad.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/business/deutsche-bank-trump-kushner.html
Why have I been harping on the money laundering aspect of this for well over a year?? Because it was obvious even from reading cursory news articles what was going on. Mueller did not cross Trump's "red line" in regards to his finances, but it's becoming increasingly clear he should have, and the only hope is that it was one of the cases farmed out to other jurisdictions (which may in fact be the case). Because this is absolutely ridiculous.
And before anyone hops on the "just like obstruction of justice, money laundering isn't a real crime" bandwagon, let me put that to bed. Money laundering is the practice which ALLOWS criminals to route and access their money without alerting the authorities. It is the practice of using legitimate businesses as fronts for funneling cash gained from illicit and criminal means. Saying it isn't a big deal is like saying the get-away driver after a bank robbery should be let off the hook.
If it’s post (or during his candidacy) Deutsche had a moral dilemma on their hand already about loaning Trump money as in what course of action does one take if he reneged in paying it back?
It was in 2016 and 2017. Employees specifically in the anti-money laundering department flagged MULTIPLE transactions in accounts of both Trump and Kushner to be reported to a federal financial crimes watchdog group. When the concerns reached the top of the food chain, they rejected them. This is essentially a case of whistelblowing among former Deutsche Bank employees. And it's now incredibly obvious why Trump is suing to have them not turn them over. And for the love of god, how is it that the President of the United States owing 300 million dollars to Deutsche Bank on the day he took the oath of office not the biggest story in the world??
There was a poll conducted recently which asked “do you think Arabic numbers should be taught in school.” And more than 50% of respondents said no. Arabic numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4 etc so clearly they should be, and are, being taught in school. Because respondents were ignorant (and really, if you didn’t know this, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just another useless fact) of where the symbols of numbers come from they would answer no for numerous reasons.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/teaching-arabic-numerals/
The snopes article says the actual study isn’t out yet, but I think it’d be an interesting read and study on how to properly formulate these types of questions.
Well it was a huge story for Deutsche. They were kinda in a panic and came to two conclusions if Trump refused to pay back the money:
1) write it off and lose out on the 300 million.
2) take the president of the free world to collections and risk him retaliating with executive orders that would hinder your company.
With this story, I think number 2 is still on the top executives mind. Because really, you’d be reporting these finding right back to Trump own cronies if they went ahead with this. If 2020 rolled around and he wasn’t elected, I would expect the bank to make this information available to federal agents, much like his loans would then be going to collections.
Which is why, on top of EVERYTHING else, these limitless and endless conflicts of interest are a threat to the country in even conceivable way imaginable. Either the President is likely to blackmail companies like Deutsche Bank, or HE is likely to be blackmailed by companies like them. Or, more likely, BOTH at the same time. The very idea that someone in THIS much debt to a financial institution is sitting in his position is insane.
You are right. It should have been an election issue. It wasn’t because everyone just rolled over once he had that lame excuse of a press conference where he stated he was just going to pass his businesses to his sons.
You really can’t blame Deutsche bank now for what was dealt to them (you can blame them for actually lending out the money in the first place, but I digress) or how they are choosing to handle it.
Now that it is out there, they may be relieved since any retaliatory action can be seen a mile way if they do start helping with investigations. But let’s just see what Barr does if it gets to that point.
I call it a battle between the 3 branches of government, or more specifically, two more and more polarized parties. Autocracy is when the black helicopters start flying around and they round up people for 're-education'. I think not turning over tax returns is a far cry from that...
Before I want to commit to it I'd like to be assured that, unlike another prominent HBO franchise, they don't have the main character destroy the entire reactor on purpose on a whim and explain it away by having her not wear make-up in one scene and being driven instantly insane by the ringing of bells.
I think there is a universe where what happened makes sense, it just isn't the one we're living in. There is actually a great 20-minute Youtube video on this subject literally called "Foreshadowing isn't Character Development". Again, I don't object to what happened, I object to how we got there, and how it is REALLY obvious that something went drastically off the rails in Season 7 and 8 in a rush to the finish line. HBO was willing to do as many as 10 seasons. Benioff and Weiss insisted they could get it done in 7, which actually turned into two truncated seasons.
I mean, Dany's character arc is just a cherry on top of the sundae. This was a show where, in the early seasons, alot of what happened took place when the characters were "on the road" so to speak. And the most jarring thing to me starting last season was that people were, to put it in video game terms, "fast-traveling" all around the continent. If they needed to be somewhere because the plot demanded it, they just appeared there out of the blue, with no explanation or even a cursory attempt at showing the passage of time. Everyone was just hopping around like they were playing Skyrim and opening the map while they were in Whiterun and traveling to Solitude through a loading screen. The dialogue and writing problems were exemplified by Tyrion, at one time one of the wittiest characters in TV history. In seasons 7 and 8, nearly EVERY conversation he has is just some Cliff's Notes rundown of something that happened in a previous season. Either the writers thought the audience was too stupid to remember that Jon and Tyrion traveled to the Wall together in Season One (or that Davos fought in the Battle of Blackwater Bay, or that he and Sansa were once married) or they were simply totally devoid of giving him anything interesting to say anymore.
I won't go on too much more about it, since this is a politics thread, but, suffice to say, I don't know how an even remotely interested observer of the show can not see the drastic turn for the worse the show took in it's last 13 episodes. It still had great moments individually (mostly visual) but they came at the expense of everything that had made it special in the first place. People are saying it's a lazy criticism to blame "the writing", but I don't know what else to lay it at the feet of. The pacing and dialogue were completely alien to what had come before it.
Part of this is George RR Martin falling prey to the same curse Robert Jordan did with his Wheel of Time series. It started out like a gangbuster, but somewhere at the end of Book 6, he completely lost control of his own plot and started diverging into endless side-threads and plot-lines that just kept going and going never reaching any destination. This went on for 4 entire books, and by the time he got back on track at the end of Book 11, he had developed a fatal disease and he died. Watching the last two seasons of "Game of Thrones" is exactly like reading Brandon Sanderson's last 3 Wheel of Time books that he was commissioned to write to finish the story. I guess after making a such a major investment over the years I was glad to know how the story ended, but getting there was not even remotely enjoyable. And since I don't think Martin ever WILL finish his story, Benioff and Weiss were tasked with landing his plane. And, like Sanderson, they just couldn't stick the landing.
We need to fight autocracy in its budding stages; not just when it takes over the world.
Oh please. Show pictures of any political rally and you'll see the same damned thing. People that show up to these rallies are die-hard fans, sycophants and/or zealots. A friend of mine's wife dragged him to a Clinton rally in Detroit not long back and it was no different. Just a different message...