Donald Trump is the President Mark IV (Read Mod Warning in OP)

Water John · 24-10-2018 11:38pm

Why would anyone who wishes their list to be taken seriously include the a whole lot of nonsensical ones? You only do that if the number is more important to you than the legitimacy of your claim.

Itssoeasy · 24-10-2018 11:42pm

Speaker of the house Paul Ryan made very strong comments about the pipe bombs and called them acts of terror.

2 Scoops · 24-10-2018 11:42pm

Water John wrote: »

Why would anyone who wishes their list to be taken seriously include the a whole lot of nonsensical ones? You only do that if the number is more important to you than the legitimacy of your claim.

Honestly, you know what I'll do over the next day or so, I'll try to quickly find every story I can citing legitimate harassment, violence or intimidation towards Trump supporters then link a nice big database here providing all the sources. Ten minutes here and there and it shouldn't take that long. That way you can forget about Breitbart entirely and I won't have to hear it being used to undermine the credibility of my point. ( Yes I linked it but like I've already said, I couldn't find other lists and was trying to make a quick point ).

Professor Moriarty · 24-10-2018 11:43pm

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Some of those aren't things you'd be Proud of but in no way do any of those incidents come to the level of sending potentially viable(well the CNN one seems legit) devices to former presidents and a former Secretary of State, former AG, and a news organisation that the president has called "fake news" which it's not it's just not news that paints the president in a good light. There's a difference.

This is a particular favourite of mine:

Madonna fantazizes about blowing up the White House

2 Scoops · 24-10-2018 11:46pm

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Some of those aren't things you'd be Proud of but in no way do any of those incidents come to the level of sending potentially viable(well the CNN one seems legit) devices to former presidents and a former Secretary of State, former AG, and a news organisation that the president has called "fake news" which it's not it's just not news that paints the president in a good light. There's a difference.

He was taking the somewhat harmless examples to try and undermine my point. Obviously the most serious one on the other side was the GOP congressmen being shot at.

Water John · 24-10-2018 11:49pm

Scoops, don't bother yourself, just look at the news today. Doubt these mad lefties are sending bombs to former Presidents.
The aggression is mostly owned by the right, emboldened by the language of the present President.

batgoat · 24-10-2018 11:52pm

Water John wrote: »

Scoops, don't bother yourself, just look at the news today. Doubt these mad lefties are sending bombs to former Presidents.
The aggression is mostly owned by the right, emboldened by the language of the present President.

And worth remembering that Trump was pushing Soros conspiracies as recently as last weekend.

Professor Moriarty · 24-10-2018 11:58pm

2 Scoops wrote: »

He was taking the somewhat harmless examples to try and undermine my point. Obviously the most serious one on the other side was the GOP congressmen being shot at.

I was just having a bit of fun. You really shouldn't quote Breitbart as a credible source TBF.

Itssoeasy · 24-10-2018 11:58pm

2 Scoops wrote: »

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Some of those aren't things you'd be Proud of but in no way do any of those incidents come to the level of sending potentially viable(well the CNN one seems legit) devices to former presidents and a former Secretary of State, former AG, and a news organisation that the president has called "fake news" which it's not it's just not news that paints the president in a good light. There's a difference.

He was taking the somewhat harmless examples to try and undermine my point. Obviously the most serious one on the other side was the GOP congressmen being shot at.

I didn't read the previous few posts. Who said it wasn't serious ? He's lucky to be alive and when he walked back onto the house floor he got a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle.

Can you not understand and see some posters point that as president his words carry more weight and why does he continue to use words that may have contributed to the incidents today ?

2 Scoops · 24-10-2018 11:59pm

Water John wrote: »

Scoops, don't bother yourself, just look at the news today. Doubt these mad lefties are sending bombs to former Presidents.
The aggression is mostly owned by the right, emboldened by the language of the present President.

They usually end up finding the culprits in these cases. Yes it's 99% likely to be some nutter who's a Republican. He's done the party a major disservice this close to the mid term elections. I hope he gets life if he's mentally sound.

We won't agree on the bolded part if we're talking about the past 2 years.

2 Scoops · 25-10-2018 12:01am

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Can you not understand and see some posters point that as president his words carry more weight and why does he continue to use words that may have contributed to the incidents today ?

I've said that multiple times already. If someone makes the point that Trump's rhetoric has created heated divisions I wouldn't disagree at all.

goat2 · 25-10-2018 1:14am

I am glad, that those bombs were spotted before they harmed anyone, just shows that past heads of state are always in danger,

Manic Moran · 25-10-2018 1:28am

Water John wrote: »

Scoops, don't bother yourself, just look at the news today. Doubt these mad lefties are sending bombs to former Presidents.
The aggression is mostly owned by the right, emboldened by the language of the present President.

You obviously haven’t been to San Francisco recently. The amount of money that protestors and rioters have cost San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley the last two years in damages and riot control has been significant. University California Berkeley spent over $4million on police operations last year, a single night of violence caused over $100,000 of damage to Berkeley businesses and streets. This wasn’t a clash between sides, that would require folks on the right to have actually been present. They were not. Indeed, in Berkeley, I doubt one can find enough Republicans to have a riot. The cause of the riots, folks didn’t like what someone on the right had to say at a talk. And since the talk was cancelled due to the heckler’s vecto, the riot was actually over what was not said by a right-wing speaker. Folks coming out of a Trump rally in San Jose were ambushed on the way to the car park. What made it worse was that the police funneled the Trump supporters straight into the crowd, then took no action once the violence started. The actions were considered so egregious that a couple months ago the courts stripped the police of the immunity from such suits that they usually have. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Trump-supporters-can-sue-police-for-attacks-by-13111546.php#photo-10186086

Without detracting from the issues of mail bombs, it is almost willful blindness to say that political violence is the sole purview of right-wingers these days. Back on topic, Trump seems somewhat disapproving of the bombs. The Feds are also pretty good at catching these guys, the chap who sent crude ricin contraptions to Mattis and a few others was arrested two weeks ago.

As to the tax thing, the effects of the tax code changes have already started. For those who don’t understand how the system works here, using a ridiculously complicated formula, you tell your employer how much money you want them to take out of your pay cheque and give to the IRS every cheque. The goal is that when you file your taxes in April the following year, you will neither owe anything (so no large surprise bill) because you told your employer to keep enough of your pay, nor get a large refund, which means that you told the employer to give the government too much of your money, which you couldn’t use and the government collected the interest on instead.

What makes the calculation particularly difficult is all those one-off modifications which only get the properly calculated in the final tax return the following April, which requires some nasty maths, but a lot of folks don’t have these.

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you are expecting to have a lower tax bill in April next year, you will have your employer deduct less from your cheque throughout this year, thus giving you effectively more money in your pocket starting a year and a bit before the filing deadline. Personally. The calculators are saying I should be about 1% better off this year under the new tax structure, even accounting for the limitations on State taxes here in California. Which I never understood anyway. I wold have thought that every US taxpayer should be paying the same amount to the Feds. If a State wishes to to charge their denizens higher State taxes, that should be their lookout, not the Fed’s problem.

rosser44 · 25-10-2018 6:49am

Manic Moran wrote: »

Without detracting from the issues of mail bombs, it is almost willful blindness to say that political violence is the sole purview of right-wingers these days.

Yeah, you're right there Manic. If you watch Fox you would be forgiven for thinking its almost 50:50 or worse....... but it isn't, its not even remotely close.

According to the right leaning Cato institute, Americans are killed by right wing terror attacks at nearly 10 times the rate that they are killed by left wing terror attacks, and the injury rates run at closer to 20:1

https://www.cato.org/blog/terrorism-deaths-ideology-charlottesville-anomaly

I'm not saying antifa are anything other than LARPing trust fund sh1ts and criminals, but the idea that there is anything approaching parity between left and right wing politicial violence and terrorism is ridiculous.

So yes, political violence is not the sole purview of the right, they just seem to be vastly deadlier to Americans and better at it.

listermint · 25-10-2018 7:07am

everlast75 wrote: »

Hang on scoops.

I don't think the worst person in a group should define a group. Anyone can pick up a relatively innocuous statement and run with the worst interpretation. You can't legislate for that. Not all MAGA are the same.

That said, his enablers said that he doesn't speak in specifics as he is one of the people or some BS, but then send out surrogates with a mop and bucket to clean up after him.

So he is "knowingly" clumsy and obtuse with his words. He doesn't care. And they excuse it.

He specifically called the free press the enemy of the people, jokes about physically assaulting a member of the press, encourages chants of "lock her up" regarding a political opponent who has not been found guilty, never mind charged with one despite him being in power 2 years and promising to do so, mocked the me too movement, criticises the police, FBI and intelligence agencies and calls the dems and others part of the deep state. That kind of rhetoric is gross negligence and bordeline incitement to hatred and he cannot but know that.

Therefore, whatever about any slightly ambiguous statement by a politician being misunderstood by a reasonable person, what he says can only be interpreted as extending permission to do something to an unreasonable one. It was only a matter of time.

That is entirely different to any other politician has done.

I'm on the mobile but to equate that to what Holder said, which when you watch the video or read the full quote of what he said after, he specifically said that he did NOT mean violence.

Both sides are wound up to the nines at the moment, but the blame can only reasonably be levelled at one group in particular.

There is one way things can be cooled down. Remove the guy breaking all political norms, lowering the standards of public offence and diplomacy, insulting all and sundry and go back to bi-partisan cooperation between the two parties.

There's a reason 2scoops purposefully chose to ignore this post and it's this.

He can't argue that he core rethoric the heavy rethoric and the decisive rethoric originates from one man Donald Trump. He purposefully and willfully creates a them and us mantra.

2scoops has chosen to go down a press are the problem route here because it navigates the blame away from the problem. A terrible president.

Igotadose · 25-10-2018 7:07am

Rjd2 wrote: »

You are correct.

How do we stop all the abuse aimed at Republicans though? Scalise was shot last year and only recently Collins and Cruz got ricin sent to them, and we had prominent Republicans doxed after the Kavanaugh hearings.

Well, maybe the tGOP can dial it back, too. Body slamming reporters? Endless aggressive soundbites from so-called leading figures like McConnell, Graham and Grassley?

It all starts with Trump. If he'd actually stfu and do Presidential things as his priority - not weekly Nuremberg rallies, not endless golf course weekends, and, frankly, learn how to give a speech where he doesn't sound like a complete idiot. I think the nation calms down if Trump's not blathering in front of a camera multiple times/day. Stop attacking the media to start with.

Can he? Well, I think he can if he's willing to take the slight hits from his acolytes as he spins away from 'enemy of the people' towards 'necessary evil' or whatever. No President has liked the media. Trump's worked on demonizing them and finding outlets to, basically, lie about nearly everything. Stop it. Grow up and be president.

It's also be good if there were meaningful daily WH press conferences where questions are answered rather than blank-faced monotonous 'I'll get back to you on that' non-replies that are never replied to.

The tGOP follow his lead, and his behaviors.

One other thing that I haven't seen much of (not looked too hard tbf), but all those packages were shipped by the USPS. Amazing none of them went off in transit, imagine being the letter carriers and realizing what you just delivered!

listermint · 25-10-2018 7:13am

Manic Moran wrote: »

You obviously haven’t been to San Francisco recently. The amount of money that protestors and rioters have cost San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley the last two years in damages and riot control has been significant. University California Berkeley spent over $4million on police operations last year, a single night of violence caused over $100,000 of damage to Berkeley businesses and streets. This wasn’t a clash between sides, that would require folks on the right to have actually been present. They were not. Indeed, in Berkeley, I doubt one can find enough Republicans to have a riot. The cause of the riots, folks didn’t like what someone on the right had to say at a talk. And since the talk was cancelled due to the heckler’s vecto, the riot was actually over what was not said by a right-wing speaker. Folks coming out of a Trump rally in San Jose were ambushed on the way to the car park. What made it worse was that the police funneled the Trump supporters straight into the crowd, then took no action once the violence started. The actions were considered so egregious that a couple months ago the courts stripped the police of the immunity from such suits that they usually have. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Trump-supporters-can-sue-police-for-attacks-by-13111546.php#photo-10186086

Without detracting from the issues of mail bombs, it is almost willful blindness to say that political violence is the sole purview of right-wingers these days. Back on topic, Trump seems somewhat disapproving of the bombs. The Feds are also pretty good at catching these guys, the chap who sent crude ricin contraptions to Mattis and a few others was arrested two weeks ago.

As to the tax thing, the effects of the tax code changes have already started. For those who don’t understand how the system works here, using a ridiculously complicated formula, you tell your employer how much money you want them to take out of your pay cheque and give to the IRS every cheque. The goal is that when you file your taxes in April the following year, you will neither owe anything (so no large surprise bill) because you told your employer to keep enough of your pay, nor get a large refund, which means that you told the employer to give the government too much of your money, which you couldn’t use and the government collected the interest on instead.

What makes the calculation particularly difficult is all those one-off modifications which only get the properly calculated in the final tax return the following April, which requires some nasty maths, but a lot of folks don’t have these.

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you are expecting to have a lower tax bill in April next year, you will have your employer deduct less from your cheque throughout this year, thus giving you effectively more money in your pocket starting a year and a bit before the filing deadline. Personally. The calculators are saying I should be about 1% better off this year under the new tax structure, even accounting for the limitations on State taxes here in California. Which I never understood anyway. I wold have thought that every US taxpayer should be paying the same amount to the Feds. If a State wishes to to charge their denizens higher State taxes, that should be their lookout, not the Fed’s problem.

I'm confused what this post is about .

I'm better off this year in taxes therefore the president can be as utterly devisive as he likes ?

It's either written wrong or that's how it could be perceived. Is this the bar you've set for the office of the president?

Igotadose · 25-10-2018 7:22am

listermint wrote: »

I'm confused what this post is about .

I'm better off this year in taxes therefore the president can be as utterly devisive as he likes ?

It's either written wrong or that's how it could be perceived. Is this the bar you've set for the office of the president?

This discussion was about 'have Trump's tax cuts affected anyone in FY 2018.' They have. Manic's pointing out just how complicated tax calculation is in the US, he's spot on (US citizen here born and raised, married to an Irish citizen living in Ireland now.)

I don't think its about whether this makes Trump good or bad. It doesn't make him particularly good - he's cut taxes, that's nice, it's something he said he'd do, whoopee. President isn't graded on a scale (nor is anyone for that matter): Do X good things vs Y bad things, if X > Y, you're good? No. IMO it's about the pervasive effects of individual actions.

For example, GWB started the Iraq war based on false pretences. This is categorically BAD and the pervasive effect is the chaos in the middle east. Jimmy Carter's failed attempt at a rescue in Iran energized the Iranians and made any further attempts at anything by his administration pointless, he was dead man walking at that point. Reagan's profligate weapons buildup drove the Soviet Union into bankruptcy and brought it down, for which Reagan gets credit. And so on and so on.

So, Trump cut taxes. So what. Every administration claims to. It's the pervasive long-term effects that matter.

Manic Moran · 25-10-2018 7:38am

I'm confused what this post is about .

I'm better off this year in taxes therefore the president can be as utterly devisive as he likes ?

It's either written wrong or that's how it could be perceived. Is this the bar you've set for the office of the president?

My post presumes that you have been following the threads of conversation over the past few pages.

One thread has been discussing the political violence we have been seeing over the past few years, the other thread I addressed has been discussing the current tax environment.

I made comments on both in one post, clearly distinguishing that there was a topic change with the phrase “as to the tax thing”. I am unsure as to how you may have concluded that I was in any way attempting to link the two, entirely unrelated, subjects.

everlast75 · 25-10-2018 7:53am

So Trump levels blame at the news outlets, for making up facts and stories about him.

This, coming from Mr "over 4000 lies" since he became presidency.

The gaslighting is sublime

Christy42 · 25-10-2018 8:11am

everlast75 wrote: »

So Trump levels blame at the news outlets, for making up facts and stories about him.

This, coming from Mr "over 4000 lies" since he became presidency.

The gaslighting is sublime

Indeed. He also made reference to people calling him Hitler. Somehow him praising a man for assaulting a reporter was not mentioned. You would figure it would have been higher if we are talking about things that could have incited these attacks. Nor indeed did he mention the rest of his violent rhetoric aside from mentioning how nice he was being.

As for the tax topic Manic is right and your employer would pay it throughout the year. Even then I would expect most people to consider the expected benefits over a full year when asked that question.
Side note: would most employers not work out your taxes on your main pay check for you? Seems more efficient to have specialised accountants doing a full companies in one go.

Igotadose · 25-10-2018 8:20am

Christy42 wrote: »

As for the tax topic Manic is right and your employer would pay it throughout the year. Even then I would expect most people to consider the expected benefits over a full year when asked that question.
Side note: would most employers not work out your taxes on your main pay check for you? Seems more efficient to have specialised accountants doing a full companies in one go.

They do. You typically tell the employer via a form how many deductions to take; said form is filed with the IRS, in my experience the employer took care of this. You can choose no deductions and get "more" back with whatever refund comes with your taxes. This along with your salary are the basis of how much tax is withheld from your paycheck per pay period.

The employer handles the computation of taxes, your Medicare payment as well as your Social Security payment, and state income taxes too if relevant (I think there are 6 states that don't collect income tax.) Some cities collect income tax like NYC. When I lived in NYC and worked in NJ, there were additional taxes for that, too.

The employer would report your 401k (post-retirement funds) deduction, too and report it to the IRS with their annual summary. Likewise, your pension (if you have one) and if you contribute to it, is reported by your employer if I recall correctly, it's been decades since I contributed to your pension.

No doubt individual states require more of employers as well, like Alaska where there's all kinds of complicated stuff around the oil revenues in the State.

Further, it's probably likely you can have additional things done by your employer, at your request. I know that very highly paid people get their entire social security payment taken out at once, usually early in the year.

Billy Mays · 25-10-2018 9:22am

So Trump took zero responsibility for the hostility in American politics and blamed it all on the media at his latest rally?!

I for one am shocked at this turn of events

seamus · 25-10-2018 9:27am

Billy Mays wrote: »

So Trump took zero responsibility for the hostility in American politics and blamed it all on the media at his latest rally?!

I for one am shocked at this turn of events

He also praised himself at the rally for being uncharacteristically nice and restrained. Odd that someone would have to make an effort to be a decent person, and joke about how unusual it was for him.

When you think about the other world leaders that pride themselves on being a bad guy/hard man, it says a lot about the kind of people who support Trump.

Billy Mays · 25-10-2018 9:31am

everlast75 · 25-10-2018 9:37am

seamus wrote: »

He also praised himself at the rally for being uncharacteristically nice and restrained. Odd that someone would have to make an effort to be a decent person, and joke about how unusual it was for him.

When you think about the other world leaders that pride themselves on being a bad guy/hard man, it says a lot about the kind of people who support Trump.

He also said, when criticising the disappearance of Khashoggi, that people may be surprised to hear him say that the murder of a journalist was a bad thing.

He knows full well what he says about reporters and how that is perceived.

There is no plausible deniability here. He has instigated hatred towards journalists. I'm not saying that he is responsible for the death of Khashoggi. I am saying that he is directly responsible for the hatred of the media and that has direct consequences, such as them being targeted with hate mail, bodyslammed by politicians, or even IEDs being sent to CNN.

And Flake, Graham, Sessions - the lot of them. They are responsible too for enabling that idiot from spouting his violent rhetoric. Not one backbone between them. Heaven forbid they should try and put a stop to his nonsense - sure they might risk losing their seat at the next election, and we couldn't have that!

BabyCheeses · 25-10-2018 10:16am

Water John wrote: »

Why would anyone who wishes their list to be taken seriously include the a whole lot of nonsensical ones? You only do that if the number is more important to you than the legitimacy of your claim.

Gish gallop is the term. You just need to copy and paste a list from somewhere and then the other person has to take the time to go through each one and check the accuracy.

A lie can travel halfway across the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

pixelburp · 25-10-2018 10:27am

pixelburp wrote: »

Just to add to this piece of news, here's another clear and demonstrable attack on the LGBT community: this time the 'T' part in a floated proposition' to rollback protections during the Obama admin, and "... define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/us/politics/transgender-trump-administration-sex-definition.html

The idea that this administration has any compassion or interest in maintaining - or indeed building upon - LGBT rights is not just false but downright farcical. And what few individuals from that community that might follow him can only be best described as Uncle Toms.

And even more! But don't worry LGBT friends, Trump held a rainbow flag, so he really wants to help your community - despite all the mounting legal evidence to the contrary.

Now the DoJ is claiming that businesses should be able discriminate against workers based on gender identity. So between this and the above scuttlebutt over enshrining gender as locked in at birth, it's clear as day Trump, Pence and co. are trying to remove the 'T' from existence.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/justice-department-says-transgender-discrimination-is-lawful

To be exact, the DoJ want to overturn an Appeals Court decision that found a funeral home violated workplace discrimination laws.

It's all well and good calling this thread an echo chamber, but when cases are so self-evident as this - what else is there to say? There is no serious argument to be made that this administration holds the LGBT community as anything other than a target. Trump loves attention, and if held a flag once it was because of the few Uncle Toms who liked the man, ergo, Trump embraced the attention. Actions speak louder than sycophancy however.

Stallingrad · 25-10-2018 11:46am

pixelburp wrote: »

And even more! But don't worry LGBT friends, Trump held a rainbow flag, so he really wants to help your community - despite all the mounting legal evidence to the contrary.

Simple maths, he knows he does not have their vote so why help them? Whereas this rabid stuff may gain more fundamentals and solidify his base even further. It's all about 'what's in it for me'. If there is nothing in it for him you may as well be a foreigner in your own country.

Captain_Crash · 25-10-2018 11:54am

Looks like Robert De Niro is also a target

https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/clintons-obama-suspicious-packages/index.html

Donald Trump is the President Mark IV (Read Mod Warning in OP)

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