***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[gry60]

https://newrepublic.com/article/144572/republicans-completely-trumps-arpaio-pardon

Arpaio was a public figure in good standing on the right for two decades, not in spite of the fact that he made life hell for prisoners and immigrants living in his jurisdiction, but because of it. Republicans stood by as Arpaio built his infamous “tent jails,” where temperatures sometimes exceeded 115 degrees. They stood by as he made a woman give birth while shackled to a bed. As the country’s demographics shifted over the years, some Republicans started treating Arpaio less like a celebrated hero and more like an embarrassing racist uncle, but by then, their lots had been cast.

Trump’s decision to pardon Arpaio, like Trump’s success in the Republican primary, is an outgrowth and an emblem of the GOP’s decision to foster the intellectual and cultural climates of Fox News across the country—concentrated in heavily gerrymandered congressional districts—to help them win elections. On its own terms, that project has been an incomparable success, but it has also been a moral abomination, forcing one of America’s two major political parties into complicity with the worst actors in the country. Conservatives finally discovered a vocal distaste for Arpaio after Trump pardoned him, but for decades they have done nothing to kick Arpaioites out of the coalition. Some Republicans may be genuinely uncomfortable with this arrangement, but nearly all of them represent parts of the country that are walled off from dissent.

 

[rolaholic]

So the man pardons a racist and facist sheriff,asks for law enforcement to rough up suspects and now he's arming them with military grade weaponry...sounds like a recipe for success

 

[aepps20]

Da neck punani giving you chills brah?

Don is the MOST DAPPER PRESIDENT WE'VE EVER HAD LIBBIE.

 

[aepps20]

So the man pardons a racist and facist sheriff,asks for law enforcement to rough up suspects and now he's arming them with military grade weaponry...sounds like a recipe for success

The ONLY RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

 

[deuce king]

So the man pardons a racist and facist sheriff,asks for law enforcement to rough up suspects and now he's arming them with military grade weaponry...sounds like a recipe for success

@maximus meridius

 

[wavycrocket]

@maximus meridius

 

[RustyShackleford]

Max gonna pull up wit the stick one day if you keep this up

 

[harlemtothebronx]

http://huffp.st/XdaK4Ce

I really thought this was in reference to CNN's Paris Dennard.

 

[gry60]

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/8/25/16201218/us-coal-industry-handouts

There’s no big conspiracy, no “war on coal,” just the creative destruction of capitalism at work, as technological advances and evolving social preferences transform industries. Without creative destruction, capitalism doesn’t work — productivity and wages don’t grow. But there is no creative destruction without pain for the workers and communities on the losing end. That’s why capitalist societies need a foundation of public services (upon Matt Bruenig’s sage advice, I’m no longer using the term “safety net”). It cushions the turbulence of creative destruction.

Many members of the US business community, particularly those of a more conservative bent, like to talk about the virtues of meritocratic free markets. So do their allies in elected office.

But just as there are alleged to be no atheists in foxholes, there are no free marketeers in dying industries.

Which brings us back to the US coal industry. It is instructive, as coal mining companies go bankrupt and coal plants shut down, to watch as industry leaders vigorously shed their purported free market principles in support of public assistance. Let’s look at two recent examples.

In subsequent meetings with Trump, Justice pushed a rather brazen proposal: a federal subsidy of $15 for every ton of Eastern coal burned in a US coal plant. (To his constituents, he called this request for $4.5 billion in taxpayer handouts a “new, bold idea to put coal miners back to work.”)

Sit with that for a minute. The power sector is abandoning Appalachian coal because Western coal (from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming) is cheap and natural gas and renewables are even cheaper. So Justice wants federal taxpayers to pay coal plants to keep burning it. He wants a negative carbon tax. A pollution subsidy.

Justice’s request, ballsy as it was, pales next to Bob Murray’s.

The CEO of the coal mining company Murray Energy was an early and enthusiastic Trump supporter, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to both the campaign and the inauguration. He is arguably responsible for Trump’s allegiance to the coal mining cause (and helped persuade him to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement).

It seems that Murray had several meetings with Trump and various advisers over the summer in which he made the following proposal: He wants Trump to use emergency powers under the Federal Power Act section 202(c) to impose a two-year moratorium on the closing of coal-fired power plants.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I really thought this was in reference to CNN's Paris Dennard.

Don't let Brother Dulamah catch you bringing up that agent

 

[RustyShackleford]

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/8/25/16201218/us-coal-industry-handouts

But da Trump stans said this was about the market deciding, not picking winners.

It is like the people caping for Trump, spewing that talking point, where ignorant to the facts and were talking out their ***.

But that can't be, b.

 

[gry60]

But da Trump stans said this was about the market deciding, not picking winners.

It is like the people caping for Trump, spewing that talking point, where ignorant to the facts and were talking out their ***.

But that can't be, b.

As Carl Pope says in a post on “the secret coal bail-out,” “even as King Coal inescapably rushes towards bankruptcy, the companies are being showered by regulators and judges with extraordinary largesse.”

Pope tallies up the favors: allowing companies to dodge their pension and health care obligations to retirees; allowing them to “self-bond” and avoid paying to reclaim strip-mined land; allowing them to lease public land at beneath-market rates. By his back-of-the-napkin calculation, there’s something like $25 billion in largesse involved.

Most of that value is going to executives, as miners, retirees, and Appalachian coal communities bear the brunt. Democrats (including Hillary Clinton) have put forward plans to help those beleaguered communities, but they’ve been blocked in the Senate by Kentucky’s own Mitch McConnell. The GOP mostly likes miners as campaign props.

But the cases of Justice and Murray show that, at least for now, there is still some limit on coal’s crony capitalism, some lines that can’t be crossed.

For now. This won’t be the end of it, though. The coal industry, despite its modest and shrinking size, still carries enormous mythocultural weight in America. It is practically synonymous with the sort of rugged, blue-collar white guys everyone (wrongly) imagines as the prototypical Trump supporter. The industry will use that cultural weight to leverage every bit of public subsidy it can, for as long as it can.

After all, “picking winners and losers” doesn’t look so awful when you’re one of the losers.

 

[rolaholic]

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

So the man pardons a racist and facist sheriff,asks for law enforcement to rough up suspects and now he's arming them with military grade weaponry...sounds like a recipe for success

Very disturbing sequence of events

 

[elpablo21]

 

[wavycrocket]

Drip....Drip

Dripset

 

[AEA18]

“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,”

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

That email seems fishy. Like it's too blatant. I've heard of a smoking gun before but Jesus

 

[RIP sleazyy]

That email seems fishy. Like it's too blatant. I've heard of a smoking gun before but Jesus

On one hand I agree. On the other hand, people don't feel the need to be careful if they dont think they're at risk of being caught.

And that... Is how people get caught

 

[wavycrocket]

Reading about how many times Sater flipped and turned informant is hilarious

 

[Mark Antony]

http://huffp.st/XdaK4Ce

She sure as **** look like a white MJ. What kinda trickery MJ had going on?

 

[RustyShackleford]

She sure as **** look like a white MJ. What kinda trickery MJ had going on?

Famb that **** got me mad confused too.

It is like his DNA just had enough and said, "aight Mike you win, we white now"

 

[Nike Jordan]

She sure as **** look like a white MJ. What kinda trickery MJ had going on?

Her mother is white.

 

[harlemtothebronx]

Fam, I still wanna know why all his kids are white.

Always wondered this since Mike was dangling Blanket off balconies. I'll never understand, man. Never.

I swear there are even obvious plastic surgery features that have seemed to show up in his children. That definitely ain't Mike's nose. Looks a lot like his after the work, though.

Mike had some sort of sorcery. He had to have.

 

[whywesteppin]

there were rumors MJ used a surrogate.