If he needs to pardon himself or that is even a consideration... he shouldn't be president.

One of many.

Not a good day for criminals trying to use the coronavirus as a "Get Out of Jail free" card-Roger Stone tried to extend his reporting to prison to September and judge said no because there are no cases of the virus in the facility where he will be held. He has to report on July 14.

l
The good news just continues to roll in today

I don't pretend to know if he will, but it wouldn't surprise me to see him go on a diplomatic/fact-finding trip to a non-extradition country days before Biden's inauguration and then just retire there and not come back.

This is kind of a bullshit move by the DOJ. And I think Cohen is a piece of shit.

Here is the gag order that Michael Cohen balked at signing today. His lawyers claim his reluctance resulted in his being remanded to federal custody today. https://t.co/cbDDiai0AA pic.twitter.com/hjF1mA89BK

— Dan Friedman (@dfriedman33) July 9, 2020

Yeah Rainmaker, on the surface this seems sketchy but I don't know if these are the normal restrictions put on somebody going into house arrest or not?

Nate Silver made a good point on this I thought. This probably saves the Democrats from themselves. Having a bunch of hearings over his tax returns while people continue to die from the virus and find themselves out of work won't look good.

Trump isn't going to lose because someone finds out he isn't as rich as he says or took out some shady loans. You either know he's a con man or nothing will change your mind. He is going to lose because he has botched a pandemic and helped destroy the economy.

It is not a normal restriction.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest pieces of shit in this country got let out of prison.

Kids for Cash judge out of prison | wnep.com

Then I would have to say it was an attempt by Barr/Trump to prevent him from talking before the election

Jaime Harrison, Lindsay Graham's Dem challenger with a little good wishes for Lindsay's 65th birthday today:

Jaime Harrison

@harrisonjaime







US Senate candidate, SC





Happy 65th birthday to @LindseyGrahamSC
! As your Senator, I promise to protect your new retirement benefits from Medicare, the program you've been trying to gut for decades.

As a defense lawyer, I will say that those are not normal conditions. But that most defendants are not in a position to profit from writing a book. So that's probably not the right question to ask.

This happens all the time with them. Both hilarious and sad.

SI

Trump says the Walter Reed doctors were very surprised he passed his cognitive test. So are the rest of us. Assuming it's true, of course.

If I am Cohen I would be filing some sort of motion because its clear to me he is being singled out. I have no doubt this is Barr and Co doing this shit.

Aren't parole/house arrest conditions usually based on the individual and their crimes?

And the phase of the moon, and the mood of the parole board.

And parole officers can be as lazy or as iron-fisted as they want to be in regards to actually enforcing the terms. There's very little oversight unless something bad happens, and parole officers are, to put it mildly, not the cream of the crop.

Worked for many years at a company who ran the monitoring / call center for parolees in multiple states. I worked on the software that actually tracked these folks. It's an ... interesting world.

edit: Same company, I built a companion piece of software that did similar for bail bonds companies. The only thing with less oversight and more insanity than the parole system is the bail bonds world. Bail bondsmen can very nearly do WHATEVER the fuck they want.

So, some how Biden's economic plan both plagiarized Trump, and is radically leftist.

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I'm sure they are banking on Trump's supporters not realizing the disconnect.

This is fucking horrifying

Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2020

Pretty safe bet.

Although, because of this tweet the First Amendment violation is obvious if they ever follow through.

So, being a President of law and order, I am sure he follow up with the same for some churches that flout mandates to close and spew far right propaganda under the guise of religious freedom. I mean, it is only fair right?

The judge in the Vance vs Trump case that got sent back to him from the Supreme Court wants to hear from both sides by next Wed how they want to proceed.

Trump - "Bigly slow"

Not contesting you, honestly asking since you are one of our resident lawyers (IIRC) and I certainly am not.

How is 1A violated even if they follow through?
Nowhere does it say that you will receive tax free existence regardless of speech. It isnt a punitive tax, its a repeal of special tax exemption afforded to educational institutions.

Frankly I think all colleges should be treated as the private businesses they truly are anyway.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I expect the problem would be equal protection.

The government is making a content specific decision on funding. The President has just admitted that he will regulate this law based on the political content (speech) of what is being taught at the University. The Government has to make content neutral rules to avoid running afoul of the First Amendment right to Free Speech.

It is just not Trump. The whole party has gone full Trumpian.

This is a lie. The plan was only to send to ACTIVE registered voters. RNC dismisses the case with nothing. https://t.co/ZsDnc2c40k

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) July 10, 2020

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...d-lost/613999/

This article from the Atlantic about the cost of Evangelicals supporting Trump is completely on point.

It also completely misses the fact that Evangelicals are inured to this sort of criticism because they will never see themselves as anything other than a persecuted minority. I mean, the entire source text is from the perspective of a persecuted minority.

I say that as a believing Christian.

Wayfair trafficking kids in utility closets has been brought to you from the minds behind pizzagate

I don't think they set aside the tenets of their faith. Evangelicals have been some of the most loathsome people in this country. Devoid of empathy or any morals. Trump is a reflection of what they are.

I'm always struck by the irony of my many friends who work for progressive not-for-profits[1] joining the chorus of folks who want to see churches and religious organizations have their non-profit status exemptions removed.



[1] I'm including community-based mental health organization in this mix. I spent a bunch of years working in drug rehab back in my college days in this environment. To say that this field tends to attract folks of a progressive political bent is probably not surprising, but I figured I should be explicit about my definitions.

Shocking news.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/media...eff/index.html

My brother in law is Jamie Dimons right hand man, has a legit shot at being the next CEO. told me a while back he was at an event late 2015 early 2016 with Carlson and he told my BIL Trump was a moron whom he hated but he would be the best thing to ever happen to him.

Seeing as though he's gone from CNN's token conservative nitwit to potential 2024 presidential candidate, I guess he was right.

Perhaps not surprisingly, my experience with this community does not reflect your experience. :)

That said, my experience can only really be about the church communities in which I've been a participant. (I've never been a member of an American northeast congregational church, for instance. Or a member of a deep south Baptist church.) What I do know experientially (and, let's be honest, anecdotally) is that every church I've attended is probably a 65/35 mix of people I'd identify as "true believers" vs. "remedy seekers" or "traditional participants".

Church is one of those funny gatekeeping things that can confuse casual conversations. Because when I talk about the church, I'm not talking about the 70% of Americans (or whatever the percentage is these days) who self-identify as religious. I'm also not talking about para-church and affiliated political organizations. I see lots of people who self-identify as part of the church, but whose lived expression of Christianity doesn't match the sort of markers used to historically (or theologically) identify members of the church polity. (I'm intentionally ignoring issues of progressive sanctification as markers here, since the whole idea of sanctification -- unless maybe you're a southern independent Baptist ;) -- seems to be that there's a learning curve. But being *on* the curve is an essential indicator.)

But, I mean, that's my experience. And I've certainly butted heads inside my own church organizations with plenty of people who have confused their politics, their nationalism, and their religion to the point that Trump is exactly what they were pining for. In some of those cases, I question their claim of salvation, but in most, I just question their clarity and their priority, because the fruit expressed in their lives generally is sufficient to indicate that they have a determined love for the things of God.

After a judge refused to delay Roger Stone's date to go to prison, Trump has commuted his sentence

Law and order! Lol

I have no idea how this is ever fixed.

To me, it's been up there for the most disappointing aspect of the Trump administration (and lord knows there have been a lot). The full throated acceptance by most Evangelicals. Let's just say that I'm much more fulfilled as ELCA than LCMS and that would go about doubly (a milliony) more during the last 3+ years.

SI

Mowing the lawn this evening and doing a bunch of thinking (the lawn and the toilet are my 2 thinking places), it occurred to me that if we do a bunch of mail-in voting and if the election is close, you can expect that either the presidency or some important senate seats are not going to be decided for a couple of weeks after the election due to delays in counting votes and the inevitable lawsuits, and that we may get some clarity right around Thanksgiving - just in time for family get-togethers.

What a sh!tshow that is going to be for a lot of us. I'm already dreading my parents coming for Thanksgiving. There will be no way to avoid the news if all of this is unfolding near the end of November. If there's anything that can further divide (or sub-divide) us, it will be complete family disintegration during the holidays.

Why is the Stone thing not immediately deserving of something? I mean...get in line with all the questionable stuff he's done, but I thought that even the good people in the opposition party wanted leadership that had some morals, some integrity, some sense of fairness? Without any sort of ethical standards for leadership, and no group to hold that leadership accountable, the standard has been lowered so far that it's outright dangerous. People have to believe in their leadership, all this does is further erode that trust. I don't think we'll ever come back from this. Not in my lifetime. There is not enough good willing to overcome the power freaks. It's depressing. Every day we need more Rage Against the Machine. Now more than ever.

I agree. The depressing and scary thing is not that it's happening but that there is seemingly no way to stop it within the usual backstops we all expect to come to the rescue in a time like this. Now that the system has been broken, all that's left is for the next people in power to continue to exploit it. There's no going back.

Trump has really mastered the late Friday BS move knowing the news won’t even be a blip on the radar come Monday.

They admitted that they were selling their souls (or at least their moral authority) for an imagined golden goose. But instead, they only got 40 pieces of silver.

This makes so much sense to me, despite the fact that I made, in essence, the opposite denominational conversion -- from a more non-denominational/charismatic ethic to a more conservative/confessional/Calvinist profession.

And I think the conclusion I reached is that how well I get along in the context of an instantiated congregational or confessional particularity of the Body of Christ (i.e. "what church I go to") is directly correlated with how seriously they attend to their theological education...and the concept of education generally.

There's a reason that for the bulk of institutionalized educational history that Theology was considered the "Queen of the Sciences". It's complicated stuff (which, you know, you want it to be if the object of your study is supposedly understanding a divine and infinite Being). The more you boil that commitment down to 90 minutes on Sunday morning and the less you engage your intellect to wrestle with the God you claim to believe in -- the more you replace the nuances of reconciliation with God with dogma -- the more prone you are to introducing systematic errors in your thinking.

And that has real consequences for how you engage with culture and what you think you mean when you talk about the kingdom of heaven having arrived.

In other words, if I do what I perceive to be the "right things" that I've received from my religious tradition, that doesn't reflect a right standing with God if I'm doing them for the wrong reasons. And if I know anything about myself as a human being, it's that I've almost always got wrong reasons behind what I'm doing.

Now, I've got plenty of reasons to be critical of the post-modern philosophy that informed my college education and influenced the sort of thoughts that are my default critical settings, but at least it did teach me to think critically about myself and my own representations of reality. How can we be expected to think rationally about God if we won't even be open to the idea of thinking rationally about ourselves and our received traditions?

I've watched my parents, especially my Dad, really wrestle with this the past couple of years. They go to a not-quite-megachurch and I've watched him have such a hard time reconciling the good that he can do with their infrastructure and resources and the hatred that is in so many of their hearts. He's one of their leads on international mission trips, he helps out with their Habitat projects, they do a lot of small group stuff - I can see it gives his so much joy to be able to help so many people and it gives him a purpose in retirement. But he has to balance that against how they basically can't do much small talk at their small groups because something awful - racist, sexist, bigoted, whatever will come out or how he knows some of his offering money is going to causes he strongly is opposed to that he would not consider Christ-like.

SI

I’m with you on this one. I have strong political disagreements with a lot of my friends who were Pentecostal, but they struck me as trying to be good and decent folk. And sometimes it was even at strange odds with some of their percieved policy beliefs. But even then, I did think I could reach those evangelical friends of mine through basic decency.

That has been shattered now. Interestingly a lot of the young Pentecostals I know have gone significantly to the left. They have completely disavowed Trump and White Supremacy Christianity. And it started for many of them because they got disgusted that the leaders they looked up to, who told them being Christlike was to be kind and loving, suddenly took up the banner for Trump. It gives me some hope for the future of Evangelicalism.


ELCA in the House! I was just attending a Virtual Holy Week(end) with a group of young leaders in the church, focused on George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. The youth here in our Church also give me hope.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/us/wh...rke/index.html

If we're doing the recently-posted religion and race articles thing.

I've been tracking a rise in YouTube channels by hyper-conservative apologists railing against groups like the The Gospel Coalition (which, I don't know, even 6 months ago I would have put squarely on the conservative theological end of the spectrum -- and, in fact, I still would) as bastions of neo-Marxist infiltration into "real" Christianity because they're focusing on racial and inequality issues ("chasing culture") rather than focusing on abortion and teh gays like true Christian leaders.

Coupled with the resurrection of KJV-Only inspiration rhetoric, it's an interesting development.

I have to admit, however, that I don't have much experience with racial issues in the church (outside of the generic "racism is bad"...by which I mean that it wasn't something we ever really talked about). My brother is a Presbyterian pastor in Mississippi, just outside of Memphis. He assures me it's a much bigger deal in his neck of the woods.

I'll say it again, the day that I decided that I didn't need to be bound by dogmatic religious beliefs and structure was the day I was truly set free to be myself. No longer was I bound by an external definition of good and bad. No more guilt, no judgement, no discussion of biblical interpretation, no hope that something else was in charge, predetermined, or looking for some other meaning in the events around my life. Everything became clean, simple and translucent. I could breathe.

'cause, you know, Jesus never talked about those sort of things :rolleyes:


Then again, these are the same (insert bad word here) who will pick out a single OT verse to justify some sort of bigotry.

Our church has a different side of the problem described in that article. It's awkward as church is, I'm guessing, about 80% white and talking about problems of race. They (we) want to engage but we're coming from a position of genuine (though not willful) ignorance.

SI

I think I'm exactly the opposite in my orientation. I need the structure to react against, because at least the structure knows something about itself. Even at a bare materialist level, it's a couple thousand years of people who are smarter than me trying to figure out how human beings relate to themselves and to each other and what the proper way of doing that might be. It's an existentialist framework generator.

I'm one of those sorts of people who does my best thinking reactively. I need something to bounce against in order to analyze my trajectory. It's the same mentality that made me a great undergraduate student. I can connect threads across a ton of different inputs and come up with an interesting synthesis of seemingly unrelated ideas...but coming up with an original assertion and then trying to defend it? I wouldn't even know where to start.

In my church, we'd be looking at the one black guy every time we said something and waiting for him to nod to tell us we were on the right track.

Racism has been prominent in the evangelical movement. Falwell Sr was a staunch segregationist and his son seems to be picking up that mantle. Religions was used by preachers to defend slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation through over a century. Now they're being used to defend mass slaughter and incarceration of those based on ethnicity or race.

They can pretend that race isn't an issue to them, but they backed the white supremacist.

And as I mentioned, this is not new. Evangelicals loved George W Bush. A guy who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the middle east over "faulty intelligence". Supported the torture of individuals. Then made drastic cuts in health care, mental health, and child care for poor people because he needed to make up the gap for his tax cuts for the rich. He let an American city fend for itself after a natural disaster.

They also got behind Ronald Reagan, who was actually not religious at all. He ignored atrocities around the world and armed our enemies. Initiated the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government. Supported Apartheid in South Africa, created Al-Qaeda, and let farmers lose their livelihoods and joked about it. And of course completely ignored AIDS and joked about how it was killing the right people.

Evangelicals are the most morally bankrupt people in this country who have nothing in common with the tenets of Christianity. They use it as cover to hate and oppress people. They didn't sell out for Trump, they've been selling out for hundreds of years in this country.

I think I mentioned this to you before, but I know about a dozen ELCA pastors and see Facebook posts about their youth group conventions and such (and my father was an ELCA pastor heavily involved in the national stuff in the 70s and 80s). Most of them are in the northeast, but, I do have a cousin pastor that just moved from South Carolina to Durham.

I don't go to church now, but every so often out when I'm feeling brave and my friends are church-bashing I kind of gently work in that I grew up in a church that wasn't at all like the ones they're familiar with or think they're familiar with. Though I have to remember that their experiences are very different than mine - I know some people whose parents disowned them because they were gay, etc. I'm not looking to convert them or anything, I just don't want to judged or assumed to have certain traits. I still kind of have a hard time connecting the Christianity that I grew up with with the hateful version I hear about. Those things just don't make sense to me together, and to this day I really don't know any conservative Christians, in my family or otherwise.

So my perspective on church and religion is kind of wacky because my friends and acquaintances are almost all either far-left Christians or far-left occasionally vocal atheists. Even among my friends in Idaho. They're all very similar in almost every way except half finds great value in the church and half believe church is the root of all evil. Sometimes I think I'm a good influence on the latter group - I'm Christian, work in the criminal justice system, AND am a Boston sports fan. Basically a trilogy of evil. But they still like me. And I tend to keep those things to myself until I know someone well, I have found all three to be triggering to some people in certain contexts.

Say it with me, the CRUELTY IS THE POINT.

https://t.co/lrV72UUxn3?amp=1

When Albert Paul Cruz opened a letter from the Education Department last month, he saw the words he’d been waiting for: “We approved your claim.” The government finally agreed that he’d been defrauded by ITT Technical Institute, the defunct for-profit chain where he’d racked up almost $60,000 in student loans getting what he considers a worthless degree.

Then he scrolled to the next page and saw how much of that debt would be forgiven: zero. The department, the letter said, had concluded he suffered no financial harm.

NEWSWEEK: ICE Offering 'Citizens Academy' Course with Training on Arresting Immigrants

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is set to launch a six-week "Citizens Academy" course on immigration enforcement, which will include training for citizens on how to arrest undocumented immigrants.

What could possibly go wrong with this idea.....gotta defend that Chicago border.

Maybe the US Government will contract with Trump University for $1.8B to operate the classes. I mean, at this point, why even pretend, right?

Can we FOIA request the list of people who signed up to take the class?

Might be useful to know which of my neighbors is a wanna-be Brownshirt.

Sell the brown people (PR), buy the [perceived] white ones (Greenland).

I'm sure China would love Guam.

It all makes sense. Sell Puerto Rico and fabricate a claim on Toronto. Use the money from the sale to hire mercenaries and surprise the Canadians before their morale is at full.

From the article


So in 6 days average Joe is going to become a qualified immigration enforcement officer? How fucking stupid do you need to be to think this could possibly have any kind of positive outcome? Shit like this is just begging for another Ahmaud Arbery situation.

We can't even give our Police Officers adequate training and we are going to get weekend Barney Fife's up to speed in 6 days?

Shhh... don't give him ideas. The only corrupt ones he hasn't done are the ones he hasn't thought of

SI

Trump's campaign staff and others have been sure to tweet him wearing a mask today for the first time and sadly think this will be enough to defeat Biden. Maybe if he had done that back in March...

Meanwhile at the Wisconsin State GOP Convention:

how is this real life pic.twitter.com/qctr60kbgl

— Aaron Miller (@amillerphd) July 11, 2020

Trump's former physician: People are 'trying to make the president look bad' - Fox News - The Baltimore Post

Well to quote The Producers, "He didn't need our help!"

I hope some reporter follows up on that lungs and finds out that if he had COVID, how many people just got it from him.

Or he could be like me, who just randomly swallows saliva down the wrong pipe and goes into choking fits. Because I am smooth and coordinated like that.

Same.

Or it could have been a natural reaction to saying Donald John Trump.

+1

My wife and I both do this. It's really just started in our 40's. We have termed it "choking on spit."

"What's wrong?"
"Just choking on spit."

The WH sent out an oppo research folder on Fauci.

I've stated that I don't fault Trump (or at least too much) for the pre-Feb early days, do fault him for early-Feb to his "I can't read speech" in mid-March when he had an opportunity to take it seriously and mobilize the country, and said don't know if Hillary/Biden could have done significantly better after mid-March.

However, this second wave is all on him.

There'll still be covidiots and true disagreements on pace and method to re-opening. How hard would it have been for him to say

"Look country, we need to slowly re-open. I'm mandating everyone wears a mask, avoid crowds (other than the BLM protests of course), and schools and businesses limit/alternate onsite presence etc. We'll monitor and adjust as needed. And oh by the way, I've authorized $X billions for the ramp up manufacturing of X, Y, Z"

vs turning a blind eye and being oblivious to the serious threat here.

How can you not fault him for the pre-Feb days. Everyone knew it was coming, everyone told him to take it seriously, other countries were reporting massive issues, but he called it a hoax and refused to prepare.

Everyone may have heard of it but not everyone was convinced it would spread or get that bad over here.

WP and NYT warned us it would be a pandemic on Feb 2 (that's when I started the COVID-19 thread).

Read the first page of that thread and you'll see even forum members here disagreed on the severity or risk implications in early Feb.

I'm glad that I didn't see DeVos on the Sunday shows today. It would have induced a rage fit.

(From several tweets)

BASH: "Yes or no: Can you assure students, teachers and parents that they will not get coronavirus because they’re going back to school?"

DEVOS: "Well, the key is that kids have to get back to school."

---
DeVos: “There’s nothing in the data that would suggest that kids being back in school is dangerous to them.” DeVos downplays possibility kids can pass virus along to others. DeVos also won’t say if schools should listen to CDC guidelines.


The Trump administration is a Capitalist suicide pact.

I know that you guys are kind of kidding around and this isn't the purpose of this thread but my brother and I both had/have this problem and it is possibly dysphagia and/or GERD. He ended up developing esophageal cancer and I had to have surgery for Barrett's Esophagus. Not trying to be Debbie Downer but if it happens a lot and/or when you are laying down you may want to catch things early. Thankfully my brother survived and is cancer free but his recovery was no joke.

How are the schools, county, state protecting themselves from liability? If there is an outbreak in a school and some kid(s) spend days in the hospital or die, I would think parents would sue them.

Also, I wouldn't put it beyond parents to sue other parents for sending their kid to school knowing they showed symptoms (wife is a special ed school teacher, parents send their sick kids to school all the time).

Parents are desperate. I met a woman who said she signed her kid up late at Woodward so she could get back to a normal life since City of Atlanta is now virtual for 9 weeks. Literally! She got the news and immediately paid $25k (or whatever it is) to put her kid in a private school. If this does not scare you as a parent (the desperation of kids getting back to school) then I'm not sure what will. There are absolutely, 100%, parents that will send their kids to school with symptoms just to get a break.

I know many, many, parents not willing to send their kids back. to say 100% is absurd. We are still on the fence, depending on the opening plan for our district, but I am leaning towards sending them. that being said it isn't to get a break from them.

Um, I think you misread that miked 100% thing.

he's not saying 100% of parents will send their kids to school with symptoms
he's saying that there's a 100% chance that at least some parents would do that.

aha, I see now.

yeah. He is right. Parents sucks

Confusing wording. Basically there are parents out here who either think a) everything is a sham and kids are lowest risk and b) get my kids out of the house at all costs so I can be normal again. This is not 100%, but I would put some chunk change saying it was 25-50% especially in the south.

Aside from the fact there were still weeks between feb 2 and a point where swift action would have made a huge difference: He's president and we discuss in a forum. People here seeing the glass half full and hoping for the best harms no one. People in power should Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Not just hope for the best.

He downplayed it on March 9th, saying nobody shuts shit down for the flu, implying doing so here would be ludicrous. Then he declared an emergency only to within 10 days blur the message by turning it into an international conflict of sorts (China), hawking unproven medication (implying all will be fine) and picking up the "cure worse than disease" narrative while arguing

Was it a bunch of tough calls ? Yes. Were the facts murky ? Yes. Did the CDC testing failure hurt a lot ? Yes. Did bad luck contribute early on ? Yes.

But please don't pretend he didn't contribute to the chaos and uncertainty with the way he refused to even entertain the thought of it being a problem. He is the president. His job is to lead. If he leads wrong based on faulty data/advice that hurts but is understandable. But that is not what the problem was. The problem was he treated the whole situation as some sort of inconvenience, brought up by his 'enemies' to rain on his parade.

word is Fauci hasn't talked with trump in a month, was purposely kept off of tv, and doesn't visit the wh any longer. the reason being that trump doesn't like what he says and doesn't believe him. cos trumps gut is instantly more right than anything else. also trump gets a lot of work done on the golf course always working.

Plus parents who need them taken care off to be able to work (which, if not, also effects the economy), especially now with the extra benefits running out (i think ?). Or parents that actually depend on their kids getting school lunches. Or those that know that their home situation is problematic or not conducive to learning or just realize the disadvantage it puts their kid in.

There really are 2 massively shitty options to chose from re: open/close(online) :(

Nah, this isn't GERD. I can be sitting up and I go to talk or breathe and just have too much saliva in my mouth (I am a drooler - always have to hold the suction by my self at the dentist, but as a plus I don't get cavities. Downside: wet pillows). Some slips down when I am inhaling and away we go. I've done this for years.

DeVos and the far rights dream is the end of public schools. This is exactly what they want. Have parents with money diverting their kids to private schools and/or homeschooling. They could care less about poor kids, or teachers. They have been doing everything they can to end special needs funding as well.

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Well I think I have officially entered the 2020 campaign season.

I just saw an ad by Trump attacking Biden for wanting to defund police.

I know now that I'm in for a long season of political ads. I wish I didn't live in a purplish state.

This one dude I vaguely knew tried to get me into Amway. It was already dead on arrival, but I told him to double fuck off because of DeVos ruining education(my wife is a teacher).

Edward....What do dueling crises reveal about American exceptionalism?
Covid-19 Is Destroying the Myth of American Exceptionalism | The Nation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...1ff_story.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...lation/613423/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...nalism/611605/
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020...tary-american/

I've learn to try define "what we are talking about" (and constantly remind what that is as we tend to get on tangents often).

I've not read thru all the articles but can you summarize crisply what your discussion topic is?

I think, but don't want to assume, it is one of the 3 ... "American exceptionalism is no more" or it could be "American exceptionalism never really existed" or "American exceptionalism is temporarily on break"?

Also, I think this could be a interesting discussion. Glad to share an immigrant POV.

However, I would ask if you are one that thinks the core of the US is racism (the ADL definition), let's not bother having the conversation because it will inevitable devolve into a non-productive conversation with more radical elements on this forum chiming in incessantly and derailing us.

American exceptionalism is no more"- I would argue it is greatly damaged over the past 4 years. You have often posted about how it is still a place many want to come to. That has been true I would argue up until now. I have a number of immigrant members in my direct family - wife and children.


“However, I would ask if you are one that thinks the core of the US is racism (the ADL definition), let's not bother having the conversation because it will inevitable devolve into a non-productive conversation with more radical elements on this forum chiming in incessantly and derailing us. “
I would say overall no but we definitely have some major racial issues probably due to the large makeup of people in US of a diverse racial, cultural, religious and ethnic background. I am more interested in how we improve the issue as to why it is thoughI can argue that the why can be quite beneficial in improving the overall issue.

Thank you for remembering my arguments about the US being far and ahead the place immigrants want to come to (regardless whether or not they can). This is one of my central tenants as evidence that the US is still looked on as the "land of opportunity" (e.g. I don't see many clamoring to live in the Nordic countries as first pick).

I lean towards American exceptionalism/land of opportunity is temporarily on hiatus. I cannot argue that Trump has definitely hurt the US from the overall view of the world.


I too want to discuss how to improve current race discrimination/bigotry and also, albeit lesser/smaller extent, ADL-racism. I do believe there is a degree of systemic ADL-racism but I personally do not believe it is as prevalent as some here believe.

Going to bed. Give me a little time to read your articles & formulate my thoughts for you to react to.