US Politics Mega-thread - Page 637

On August 23 2018 16:28 Jockmcplop wrote:
The saddest thing is that people are so unapologetic about voting such an obvious gang of criminals into the WH and are even doubling down on their support just out of ideology. The principles of American democracy have really gone down the shitter haven't they?
Of course, the crimes they have committed aren't really crimes to conservatives. Tax fraud is just getting what was yours to begin with, right?
Campaign finance violations are just doing whatever it takes to win.

On the other hand, it would be interesting to see what would have happened if this style of investigation was carried out into every president.
I'll bet there's not been a clean cut guy in office in the US at all.
I think the only difference with Trump is how blatant they are about it.

On August 24 2018 00:03 Danglars wrote:

You've just pivoted from "isn't it sad about this obvious gang of criminals" to admitting "I'll bet there's not a clean cut guy in office ... Trump is blatant."

Your point becomes absolutely excusing corruption as long as it's hidden enough from your view to barely take notice of it. I mean, talk around that reality all you want, but you are advocating for a more sophisticated form of corruption because the blatant stuff is just so icky that how could anyone possibly... . Well, perhaps all the historical payoffs and quelling of bimbo eruptions and lobbying, lies, and deceit were actually a little more apparent to others than to you, and the choice was more about which gang of criminals would do some good alongside it all?

I swear, the biggest thing to come out of this is how morally unprincipled the attacks on Trump voters by denying nuanced positions. You must not think Clinton represented more corruption and careerist pay-to-play because that's not your conclusion. Nobody could think that, you loser idiots, which means that's all just pretense. You must really never have cared about principles by making so many obviously false conclusions.

Frankly, I chalk it up to shock at America actually voting him in, high reliance on presidents sounding presidential regardless of what they do or don't do, and not realizing all the identity politics and open borders and America-last rhetoric had finally taken its toll. It was pretty nice in Obama's era to miss all that buildup, and chalk it up to racism or knuckle-dragging religion-clingers or whatever the attack du jour was on Obama's opposition. And Jockmcplop you already covered the perfect word for it. It's sad. I'm saddened, a lot of people that voted Trump are saddened, but I willing to let all the fear and anger run their course for hopefully cooler heads to prevail.

Seeker already covered the one-sided attacks and circlejerk on specifically xDaunt's character in his absence, so I won't comment.

On August 24 2018 00:03 Danglars wrote:

You've just pivoted from "isn't it sad about this obvious gang of criminals" to admitting "I'll bet there's not a clean cut guy in office ... Trump is blatant."

Your point becomes absolutely excusing corruption as long as it's hidden enough from your view to barely take notice of it. I mean, talk around that reality all you want, but you are advocating for a more sophisticated form of corruption because the blatant stuff is just so icky that how could anyone possibly... . Well, perhaps all the historical payoffs and quelling of bimbo eruptions and lobbying, lies, and deceit were actually a little more apparent to others than to you, and the choice was more about which gang of criminals would do some good alongside it all?

I swear, the biggest thing to come out of this is how morally unprincipled the attacks on Trump voters by denying nuanced positions. You must not think Clinton represented more corruption and careerist pay-to-play because that's not your conclusion. Nobody could think that, you loser idiots, which means that's all just pretense. You must really never have cared about principles by making so many obviously false conclusions.

Frankly, I chalk it up to shock at America actually voting him in, high reliance on presidents sounding presidential regardless of what they do or don't do, and not realizing all the identity politics and open borders and America-last rhetoric had finally taken its toll. It was pretty nice in Obama's era to miss all that buildup, and chalk it up to racism or knuckle-dragging religion-clingers or whatever the attack du jour was on Obama's opposition. And Jockmcplop you already covered the perfect word for it. It's sad. I'm saddened, a lot of people that voted Trump are saddened, but I willing to let all the fear and anger run their course for hopefully cooler heads to prevail.

Seeker already covered the one-sided attacks and circlejerk on specifically xDaunt's character in his absence, so I won't comment.

On August 24 2018 00:56 Broetchenholer wrote:
Somebody has to trick him into wanting to abolish the second amendment. Maybe point out that mexicans can buy guns too?

On August 24 2018 00:09 Jockmcplop wrote:


I can't actually discern your point here unless you've literally misunderstood everything I wrote.
Trump is the most blatant example of a corruption that is rife in the political class. Despite how blatant it is, people voted him in anyway, and that is a shame. It says something about America's view of corruption.
If the corruption is hidden, it doesn't say anything about people who vote anyone in. Its hidden, the nature of hidden things is that you can't see them.
I'm not saying that its better to be corrupt and hide it, I'm saying that when its out in the open and people accept it anyway it says something about those people.

As regards xD, I was using something he said as an example of the kind of things conservatives say, I wasn't trying to start a conversation about him or his character at all.

On August 24 2018 00:39 Broetchenholer wrote:


So, are you now denouncing the president of the united states if he is found guilty of corruption or are you not. Because, by your words, it sure seems like you just wanted to point out that it's okay that Trump is a corrupt criminal because he is your corrupt criminal. And without claiming to know what jock though when writing this, nowhere did he write that every president of the USA would have been as criminal as Trump might be found guilty of. Just that there probably is no one that is completely clean. But there is a big difference between using loopholes to not pay taxes and textbook corruption.

On August 24 2018 01:22 On_Slaught wrote:
@Danglers, do you agree with the presidents sentiment here? Do you think that doing things one likes should be a mitigating factor in impeachment hearings? Hell, even if Trump was a competent president and the best in history, do you still think that should be a consideration in whether he should be impeached if there are findings of illegal activities?

https://twitter.com/foxandfriends/status/1032603360057151488

On August 24 2018 01:03 On_Slaught wrote:


I think that video evidence of him approving an abortion for some chick he knocked up may be enough. Or maybe a video of him degrading Christian's? Saying he loves Muslins? Short of something that is against Republican core beliefs I dont see anything making the bulk of the voting Republicans turn on him. Thankfully that is a minority of the US.

On August 24 2018 01:47 Broetchenholer wrote:
I do remember you (or xdaunt, one of you...)claiming that you seperate Trump the business man, Trump the personality and Trump the private person from Trump the president and as long as he can give you taxcuts und build that wall, you can look over the fact that he is, well, Donald Trump. I, and jock who stared this part of the discussion, am just wondering if this includes white collar crime or not. So, what would have to be found against Trump to make you believe he should be impeached? Tax evasion? Fraud? campaign finance law violations? Treason? Rape? Murder? Or do you not agree at all that you tolerate him because he is in ur camp?

On August 24 2018 01:44 Danglars wrote:


I’m wondering if you seriously expect reading and responses when your whole schtick is trumpeting hypocrisy on core values. You can have one of two things: circle-jerks of “haha cons so dumb they’d only oppose Trump if he knocked a chick up and made her get an abortion haha let’s trick him to oppose the second amendment haha if he ever said he loves Muslims the base would turn on him” or reasoned discussion/response. I know this is the thread standard for libs, and is the mirror image of Trump MAGA hats in America today, but it doesn’t inspire anyone taking you seriously.

In fact, the permissiveness shown towards this behavior inspired some of mine to Seeker-out the two sets of drawn lines.

When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers

Randy Carter is a member of the Director's Guild of America and has notched some significant credits during his Hollywood career. Administrative assistant on The Conversation. Part of the casting department for Apocalypse Now. Longtime first assistant director on Seinfeld. Work on The Blues Brothers, The Godfather II and more.

But the one project that Carter regrets never working on is a script he wrote that got optioned twice but was never produced. It's about the summer a then-17-year-old Carter and thousands of American teenage boys heeded the call of the federal government ... to work on farms.

The year was 1965. On Cinco de Mayo, newspapers across the country reported that Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz wanted to recruit 20,000 high schoolers to replace the hundreds of thousands of Mexican agricultural workers who had labored in the United States under the so-called Bracero Program. Started in World War II, the program was an agreement between the American and Mexican governments that brought Mexican men to pick harvests across the U.S. It ended in 1964, after years of accusations by civil rights activists like Cesar Chavez that migrants suffered wage theft and terrible working and living conditions.

But farmers complained — in words that echo today's headlines — that Mexican laborers did the jobs that Americans didn't want to do, and that the end of the Bracero Program meant that crops would rot in the fields.

Wirtz cited this labor shortage and a lack of summer jobs for high schoolers as reason enough for the program. But he didn't want just any band geek or nerd — he wanted jocks.

"They can do the work," Wirtz said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., announcing the creation of the project, called A-TEAM — Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower. "They are entitled to a chance at it." Standing besides him to lend gravitas were future Baseball Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Warren Spahn and future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown.

Over the ensuing weeks, the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture, and the President's Council on Physical Fitness bought ads on radio and in magazines to try to lure lettermen. "Farm Work Builds Men!" screamed one such promotion, which featured 1964 Heisman Trophy winner John Huarte.

Local newspapers across the country showcased their local A-TEAM with pride as they left for the summer. The Courier of Waterloo, Iowa, for instance, ran a photo of beaming, bespectacled but scrawny boys boarding a bus for Salinas, where strawberries and asparagus awaited their smooth hands. "A teacher-coach from [the nearby town of] Cresco will serve as adviser to all 31," students, the Courier reassured its readers.

But the national press was immediately skeptical. "Dealing with crops which grow close to the ground requires a good deal stronger motive" than money or the prospects of a good workout, argued a Detroit Free Press editorial. "Like, for instance, gnawing hunger."

Despite such skepticism, Wirtz's scheme seemed to work at first: About 18,100 teenagers signed up to join the A-TEAM. But only about 3,300 of them ever got to pick crops.

One of them was Carter.

He was a junior at the now-closed University of San Diego High School, an all-boys Catholic school in Southern California. About 25 of his classmates decided to sign up for the A-TEAM because, as he recalls with a laugh more than 50 years later, "We thought, 'I'm not doing anything else this summer, so why not?' "

Funny enough, Carter says none of the recruits from his school — himself included — were actually athletes: "The football coach told [the sportsters], 'You're not going. We've got two-a-day practices — you're not going to go pick strawberries."

Students from across the country began showing up on farms in Texas and California at the beginning of June. Carter and his classmates were assigned to pick cantaloupes near Blythe, a small town on the Colorado River in the middle of California's Colorado Desert.

He remembers the first day vividly. Work started before dawn, the better to avoid the unforgiving desert sun to come. "The wind is in your hair, and you don't think it's bad," Carter says. "Then you go out in the field, and the first ray of sun comes over the horizon. The first ray. Everyone looked at each other, and said, 'What did we do?' The thermometer went up like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. By 9 a.m., it was 110 degrees."

Garden gloves that the farmers gave the students to help them harvest lasted only four hours, because the cantaloupe's fine hairs made grabbing them feel like "picking up sandpaper." They got paid minimum wage — $1.40 an hour back then — plus 5 cents for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 fruits. Breakfast was "out of the Navy," Carter says — beans and eggs and bologna sandwiches that literally toasted in the heat, even in the shade.

The University High crew worked six days a week, with Sundays off, and they were not allowed to return home during their stint. The farmers sheltered them in "any kind of defunct housing," according to Carter — old Army barracks, rooms made from discarded wood, and even buildings used to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II.