US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7309

On April 09 2017 18:28 xM(Z wrote:
wgergrgysehfxcthxfthbxd, jets do take off and land on dirt airstrips; fill the hole and the runway is operational again.
seriously ... why are people stuck on this runway thing?

On April 09 2017 16:11 LegalLord wrote:
Speaking of coverage - there's a pretty broad spectrum of opinions on this. The right-wingers (libertarian/alt-right/whatever else) and other populists pretty much universally decry this in often pretty harsh terms. The warhawks praise it and/or say that we need to go further. European mainstream leadership basically has a collective sense of Stockholm syndrome and are willing to forget everything before because they kinda sorta are ok with this. Russia and Iran are unhappy; China sort of is but they will never flat out say it because they want money instead of asserting themselves. Less sympathetic folk of no particular inclination are talking about how little it did (have we even settled on a number for how many people died/how much shit went kaboom?). Or talking about how this can't distract from Russiagate. In short, all of the entrenched folk whose opinion hardly reflects the opinion of the population at large are happy, most others are some shade of unhappy.

What lesson did Trump learn from all this? Seems to be "we are America, we act tough unilaterally and everything is gonna be great." Fuckity fuck.

On April 10 2017 03:26 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Yes, which is why asphalt isn't targeted with missiles.

The confusion is why Trump is commenting on how easy it is to fill asphalt.

On April 10 2017 03:22 Danglars wrote:

Just like the cry raised about Bush's vacations and having been dropped during the Obama years. It's getting to be an old political tradition.

On April 10 2017 03:44 LegalLord wrote:
I don't particularly mind presidents taking days off for vacationing - God knows they need it. The only part of this that really matters is the situation of complaining about how much Obama golfs then being the epitome of hypocrisy on vacation spending. Rumor mill has it that a combination of a refusal for more funding and a penchant for extravagant vacationing has forced the Secret Service to cut down on much of its other business not involving guarding the president.

On April 10 2017 03:47 GreenHorizons wrote:


The part that urks me is that Republicans would have a conniption if Michelle Obama demanded millions of dollars so she could live NOT in the white house. Any republican who says their party wouldn't have is completely full of shit.

On April 10 2017 03:44 LegalLord wrote:
I don't particularly mind presidents taking days off for vacationing - God knows they need it. The only part of this that really matters is the situation of complaining about how much Obama golfs then being the epitome of hypocrisy on vacation spending. Rumor mill has it that a combination of a refusal for more funding and a penchant for extravagant vacationing has forced the Secret Service to cut down on much of its other business not involving guarding the president.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said he had "no conversation" about Mexico paying for Donald Trump's border wall when he met the country's top diplomat.

In an interview with NBC News, Mr Tillerson was asked whether he made it clear the US expects Mexico to pay for the wall during his meeting with Mexico's Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray.

"We had no conversation about that issue," the Secretary of State said.

"We have had very productive talks around actions that can be taken to slow and stem and discourage transmigration of people coming from central America through Mexico and entering the United States.

"And in fact, the level of immigration, illegal crossings from Mexico... has dropped dramatically.

"So I think Mexico is quite pleased and we've had a number of discussions with them on now we'll work together to make further progress."

During the US presidential election, Mr Trump promised Mexico would pay for his "big, beautiful wall."

When asked further about whether it was US policy to make Mexico pay for the wall, Mr Tillerson said: "It's just not part of our discussions between the foreign minister and myself.

"We were also talking to organise an even greater effort around transnational crime and counter-narcotics to stem the flow of narcotics that flow into the United States and the flow of weapons from the United States into Mexico that supports the cartels.

"So we're really focused on working at very high levels to address some of these problems and challenges that are really in the interest of both of our countries to make progress on."

There has been a huge drop in the number of people arrested crossing the Mexico border into the US since Mr Trump took office.

The Trump administration has sought to take credit for the decline, with the White House issuing a statement to say Mr Trump's "commitment to securing our border and supporting law enforcement is already showing results."

However, those working in shelters and experts on migration said it will take several more months to judge whether any drop-off is long lasting, and others think the real "Trump effect" was pushing fearful people to move up their journeys and get to the US before he took office.

On April 10 2017 03:32 GreenHorizons wrote:


Well he was gone more than 2x as many days as Obama. Obama had ~217 Bush was closer to 533. It would make sense for people to notice Bush took a shit ton more than Clinton's 174 days, then be less concerned when Obama took less than half the days Bush did, then for the concern to be re-raised when Trump is on pace to outspend Obama's whole presidency in less than one term.

I do think it's a partisan thing but Republicans are certainly more shamelessly hacky about it. One of many reasons people don't take their concerns seriously. Because if you make the guy doing it a white republican man, suddenly they don't think it's a problem.

Many Minnesota employers say they can’t find skilled workers with the right career training. Meanwhile, high schools are cutting career and technical education courses because they can’t find qualified teachers.

“The jobs are there, and we’re not preparing our kids well enough to get into those jobs because the system has not allowed us to,” said Stephen Jones, the superintendent of schools in Little Falls, Minnesota. His district hasn’t had to cancel any courses for lack of instructors, but he says smaller districts in the state have.

Nationally, career and technical education (CTE) isn’t the area with the worst teacher shortage — that’s special education. But two-thirds of states are currently reporting a shortage of CTE teachers in at least one specialty, according to a Stateline analysis of federal data. Many states, such as Minnesota and South Dakota, have had a shortage of CTE teachers for a decade. Some states, such as Maine, Maryland and New York, have had a shortage for almost 20 years.

To address the problem, legislators in Minnesota and other states have pursued changes to teacher licensing that would make it easier for people who work in industry to transition into teaching, or to teach part-time.

But there are many other reasons for the shortage that are harder to tackle: Teacher salaries are too low to compete with salaries in technical fields. Too few young people are specializing in career and technical education in college. And it’s hard to attract teachers to isolated schools in rural areas.

“There’s no one answer,” said Kate Kreamer, deputy executive director for Advance CTE, a nonprofit that represents the leaders of state career training programs. “Although alternative certification is increasingly a strategy states are using, it’s obviously insufficient in addressing the overall teacher shortage issue.”

High schools can prepare students to step into jobs that require some extra training but not a college degree, such as home health aides, a profession expected to grow by 38 percent over the next decade, or entry-level jobs in construction and the skilled trades. The construction sector, like health care, is expected to grow faster than the national average in the years to come.

United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley on Sunday struggled to justify the hypocrisy between President Donald Trump’s claimed humanitarian reason for Syrian airstrikes, and his opposition to admitting Syrian refugees, many of whom are children.

Haley, asked to reconcile Trump’s vehement opposition to refugees with his explanation that he ordered last week’s attack after seeing pictures of “beautiful babies” killed in a chemical bombing, talked about the president’s call for “extreme vetting” of refugees.

“What this president has done is said, ‘Prove to me that you are vetting these people properly. And if you are vetting them properly, then we will resume where we are. But until then, you have to prove to me that these people are being vetted in a way that we’re not putting American citizens at risk,’” Haley told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

“And so what he did was, I think, that there were those countries that we knew that there were problems, that we couldn’t vet. And that’s key,” she continued. “You can’t vet. You don’t know who you’re letting in. You don’t know if there’s any sort of bad intentions there. And so what you’re seeing is the president’s being very cautious with that.”

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Haley praised Trump’s “compassionate” military response to the chemical attack, but couldn’t explain why his compassion doesn’t apply to refugee children.

“Certainly you don’t think Syrian children pose a risk to the American people,” host Jake Tapper said.

“Well, Syrian children have to come with Syrian adults. And you don’t know. It’s hard to know based on the vetting process,” Haley answered. “And that’s unfortunate that we can’t find that out. But hopefully we’ll get to the point that we can.”

Trump, as president and as a candidate for office, has been fearmongering about refugees ― especially those displaced by Syria’s civil war ― and has spread lies about their supposed danger. Trump has signed two executive orders halting refugee resettlement in the U.S. from countries that include Syria. Both have been stalled by court challenges.

On April 10 2017 05:34 Danglars wrote:

You assume the number matters at all to whiners. It's simply the political party out of power. People don't preserve some ideal number of 75-100 that, once transgressed, raises their ire.

On April 10 2017 06:18 LegalLord wrote:
Trump is... not exactly a low-threat-of-danger president. Problem is that his family has tastes for the extravagant and so they all need to be protected.