[Winstonm]

johnu, on 2019-August-18, 14:09, said:

Of course, the Con Man in Chief's economic team disagrees 100%

Top Trump Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow Sees ‘No Recession In Sight’

Very reassuring that a giant in the field of economics ( at least in the Fox Propaganda world ) has such confidence that there will not be a recession.


In defense of Kudlow, what are the odds that he could be wrong about when the next recession is coming twice in a row?

"In defense of Kudlow" is an oxymoron.

[y66]

Donald Trump recently tweeted that he donated 100% of his President’s salary of $400,000 to the U.S.

He did not mention that he has spent 278.5 years of annual presidential salary in taxpayer money to play golf (per HuffPo WH correspondent S.V. Dáte).

[barmar]

y66, on 2019-August-18, 20:30, said:

Donald Trump recently tweeted that he donated 100% of his President’s salary of $400,000 to the U.S.

And of course, compared to his total income from his businesses, that's petty cash.

I give about 15% of my income to charity every year. If Trump gave merely 1% it would be around $5 million.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2019-August-19, 08:18, said:

And of course, compared to his total income from his businesses, that's petty cash.

I give about 15% of my income to charity every year. If Trump gave merely 1% it would be around $5 million.

How do you know that 1% would be $5 million - have you seen his tax returns?

[y66]

From Maggie Haberman at NYT:

Quote

President Trump, confronting perhaps the most ominous economic signs of his time in office, has unleashed what is by now a familiar response: lashing out at what he believes is a conspiracy of forces arrayed against him.

He has insisted that his own handpicked Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, is intentionally acting against him. He has said other countries, including allies, are working to hurt American economic interests. And he has accused the news media of trying to create a recession.

“The Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election,” Mr. Trump tweeted last week. “The problem they have is that the economy is way too strong and we will soon be winning big on Trade, and everyone knows that, including China!”

Mr. Trump has repeated the claims in private discussions with aides and allies, insisting that his critics are trying to take away what he sees as his calling card for re-election. Mr. Trump has been agitated in discussions of the economy, and by the news media’s reporting of warnings of a possible recession. He has said forces that do not want him to win have been overstating the damage his trade war has caused, according to people who have spoken with him. And several aides agree with him that the news media is overplaying the economic fears, adding to his feeling of being justified, people close to the president said.

The claims provide a ready target to help Mr. Trump deflect blame if the economy does tip into recession. But whether they could truly insulate the president on what could be a significant issue of the 2020 election after he has so conspicuously wrapped himself in the good economic news of the past two years remains an open question, and he and his advisers have sought to tamp down concerns that a downturn is on the way.

“Our economy is the best in the world, by far,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Sunday. “Lowest unemployment ever within almost all categories. Poised for big growth after trade deals are completed.”

“I don’t see a recession,” he told reporters later on Sunday before leaving his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for Washington. But he added that if the economy slowed down, “it would be because I have to take on China and some other countries,” singling out the European Union as among those treating the United States “very badly.”

The president’s broadsides follow a long pattern of conspiratorial thinking. He has claimed, without evidence, that undocumented immigrants cast millions of ballots, costing him the popular vote in the 2016 election. During the campaign, he predicted that the system might prove to be “rigged” if he did not win. He conjured up a “deep state” conspiracy within the government to thwart his election and, more recently, his agenda. And he has said reporters are trying to harm him with pictures of empty seats at his rallies.

The attacks come as the economy has begun flashing some warning signs, despite unemployment near historic lows and relatively high marks by voters on Mr. Trump’s economic stewardship. Global growth has been slowing. Last week, stock markets plunged as the yield on the 10-year Treasury note briefly fell below that of the two-year Treasury note, an unusual situation known as an inversion of the yield curve that is considered one of the most reliable leading indicators of recession in the United States.

And signs of damage from Mr. Trump’s trade war with China have been mounting.

In some conversations, the president has been preoccupied with the trade war, as well as with how to handle the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, according to the people who have spoken with him. “I’d love to see it worked out in a humane fashion,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday, referring to potential retaliation against the demonstrators by China. “It does put pressure on the trade deal,” he added.

Mr. Trump also indicated that the Chinese tech giant Huawei, which his administration sees as a national security threat, might not receive an extension of a reprieve that allows American companies to supply it with certain goods despite a ban on such trade.

“Huawei is a company we may not do business with at all,” the president said, casting doubt on reports that the reprieve, which is set to expire on Monday, would be extended.

On Sunday, his advisers battled any notion that the trade war could be harming the economy. Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser who has urged the president on in his trade war, dismissed a study from researchers at Harvard, the University of Chicago, the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston that showed that the cost of Mr. Trump’s tariffs had “fallen largely on the U.S.,” not on China and other countries, as the administration has asserted.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever that American consumers are bearing any of this,” Mr. Navarro said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” insisting, despite abundant data to the contrary, that “they’re not hurting anybody here.”

While maintaining that any turmoil in the economy is overstated, Mr. Navarro and Larry Kudlow, the White House economic adviser, also said the Federal Reserve had slowed economic growth, mirroring Mr. Trump’s criticisms.

Mr. Kudlow, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said that the state of the economy under the Trump administration “is kind of a miracle, because we face severe monetary restraint from the Fed.”

Mr. Navarro, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” blamed the Fed for raising interest rates “too far, too fast,” adding that “they have cost us a full point” of growth in gross domestic product.

Mr. Trump has also struck an increasingly strident economic tone.

“You have no choice but to vote for me because your 401(k), everything is going to be down the tubes” if Democrats win, he told a crowd at a campaign rally in Manchester, N.H., last week. “Whether you love me or hate me, you’ve got to vote for me.”

The rally was one of a few departures from a relatively low-profile period during a nearly two-week trip to his club in Bedminster, where he typically spends part of August. He also took official trips to El Paso, Tex., and Dayton, Ohio, after the gun massacres there, and he went to Pennsylvania ostensibly to talk about energy sources, but instead delivered remarks indistinguishable from those at one of his rallies.

But the dyspeptic diatribes came in spurts, and the president whipsawed between frustration and freewheeling meetings and golf outings, including one on Saturday with the president of the P.G.A. and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to two people familiar with his playing partners. Still, Mr. Trump was frustrated by the news media’s coverage of his rally in New Hampshire. He repeatedly complained about misleading pictures of empty seats, or that attendance at the arena had beat Elton John’s record crowd there, but no one was covering it.

Long-serving aides say that Mr. Trump understands that presidents face harder re-election battles in a bad economy, and he has made the issue central to his presidency.

But even as he returns to Washington facing new pressures, Mr. Trump did not seem to anticipate a quick resolution to the trade war. “The tariffs have cost nothing, in my opinion, or certainly very little,” in terms of pain to American consumers and businesses, Mr. Trump insisted, adding that “China is eating the tariffs.”

“China would like to make a deal,” he said. “I’m not ready.”

re: "he went to Pennsylvania ostensibly to talk about energy sources, but instead delivered remarks indistinguishable from those at one of his rallies" -- as opposed to indistinguishable from a raving lunatic who can't rave enough to satisfy his fans and won't be ready to make a trade deal with China until they make unspecified major concessions and beg for mercy which they really want to do.

[johnu]

y66, on 2019-August-18, 20:30, said:

Donald Trump recently tweeted that he donated 100% of his President’s salary of $400,000 to the U.S.

Since a yuuuge percentage of the Manchurian President's tweets are filled with outright lies, how can anybody know that is true?

Unless we see a final tax return from the IRS showing this as a deduction listed under charitable contributions, this is just a tweet. Maybe he donated, maybe he didn't. The Con Man in Chief has often claimed he would make contributions to other charitable causes and failed to contribute. His own "charitable" trust was a sham and frequently benefited himself in violation of the laws governing trusts.

[johnu]

The Grifter and Con Man in Chief has been telling the the big lie that China would pay for his tariffs all around the country and all over the airwaves. Even some members of his own administration have admitted that American consumers and importers pay for every cent of the tariffs.

American Families Will Pay $1,000 Per Year For Trump’s China Tariffs, JPMorgan Says

Quote

Despite repeated assurances from Trump administration officials that U.S. consumers are not bearing the brunt of its tariffs on China, a new JPMorgan analysis predicts that the average American family will shoulder $1,000 per year.

According to CNBC, the firm estimates that the administration’s newest round of tariffs ― 10% on $300 billion of Chinese goods ― will result in a $400 increase in costs per household. Roughly half of the new tariffs are due to take effect on Sept. 1 and the other half are set for Dec. 15. The Chinese tariffs already in place are expected to cost the average household $600 per year.

December 15 is a familiar date. The Grifter and Con Man in Chief delayed some of the China tariffs until December 15 so that some Christmas related goods would be imported before the tariffs become effective and the tariff costs are passed on to consumers during their Christmas shopping. This self confirms the lie that China is paying for tariffs and not American consumers.

[y66]

From Steel Yourself for the Trump Slump from the Editors at Bloomberg:

Quote

Stocks tanked last week amid signs of a worsening slowdown in Germany and China, and bond investors flashed the clearest signal yet that the U.S. is courting a self-inflicted recession. Hopefully these cries of alarm from financial markets will cause President Trump and his advisers to stop and think. If not, steel yourself for worse to come.

Slowing growth in Europe and China has various causes, but high on the list is trade — because Trump has made disrupting commerce his main instrument of economic policy. Right now, damage to the flow of goods and services is the least of it. Far more dangerous is the blow to confidence and investment. Firms and investors are starting to ask where the president’s willingness to wreck the global economic architecture might actually lead.

Until now, the tendency has been to see the administration’s protectionist initiatives as a combination of tactical (hence temporary) disruptions and threats that will come to nothing. This is presumably why stock markets have mostly been betting on further expansion. But Trump, erratic in so many other respects, has been consistent on one thing: his disdain for international cooperation in general, and for the liberal order of global trade in particular. An idea seems to be dawning at last: Perhaps he really is willing to see both destroyed.

It would be hard to exaggerate what’s at stake. For decades, the international economy was built on the assumption that liberal trade would prevail. The only question was how far the zone of productive integration would expand, and how fast. Countless billions have been invested on the assumption of no backsliding; companies large and small have designed their operations around it. Now this fundamental premise is being called into question. The new risk is not that the evolving structures of economic integration will be cautiously modified or put on pause, but that they’ll simply be smashed by people who appear to have no clue what they’re doing.

If this happens, the costs would be staggering. The mere risk that it might happen, once the possibility begins to be taken seriously, could easily be enough to push the U.S. and the world into another recession.

Perhaps the president is beginning to sense the prospect of a crash that would rightly be blamed on him. He delayed some of his new tariffs against China until after the Christmas shopping season starts. If nothing else, this suggests he grasps, finally, that taxes on imports hurt U.S. consumers. His fervent criticism of the Federal Reserve could be another tell. Alarm over last week’s sudden drop in long-term bond yields, often an indicator of impending recession, was all the Fed’s fault, he said. But nobody is buying it — the Fed is helpless to dispel fears about a deliberate policy of smashing world trade.

Sadly, even if he wanted to, Trump couldn’t entirely undo the damage he’s caused. The world now knows what it’s dealing with. With trust gone, the president can’t repair the partnerships he has so blithely fractured, and restoring confidence in the stability of the global trading order will take years of wiser leadership. Yet the president and his officials can at least refrain from making matters any worse, by ending their policy of reckless aggression on trade. And Congress should start reaffirming its constitutional responsibility for tariff policy and claim back the trade powers it has delegated to the White House.

With luck, this glimpse of a Trump slump will do some good. But if the president just plows on, and Congress lets him, the economic consequences could be dire.

[y66]

Quote of the day from Paul Nolte, a money manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago:

Quote

“It’s kind of like a drunken walk. There’s no rhyme or reason from day to day as to what’s happening with trade, and trade is really what’s driving the markets. And there’s no way to handicap it. There is no glide path, there is no, ‘Here’s what happening.’ It’s a random walk.”

[y66]

Susan Glasser explains Mike Pompeo's path to becoming Secretary of State and what makes him tick.

[y66]

johnu, on 2019-August-18, 14:09, said:

Of course, the Con Man in Chief's economic team disagrees 100%

Top Trump Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow Sees ‘No Recession In Sight’

Very reassuring that a giant in the field of economics ( at least in the Fox Propaganda world ) has such confidence that there will not be a recession.

In defense of Kudlow, what are the odds that he could be wrong about when the next recession is coming twice in a row?

Predictions are hard as Aaron Blake explained at Wapo today:

Quote

Nobody knows whether we’re headed for a recession. Even those who are the most bearish on the economy aren’t saying it’s a 50-50 shot — just that it’s an increasing possibility.

But whatever fears exist, President Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, is here to calm them. “Well, I’ll tell you what: I sure don’t see a recession,” he told “Meet the Press’s” Chuck Todd on Sunday, before ticking off some of his preferred economic indicators. “So I think actually the second half, the economy’s going to be very good in 2019.”

Kudlow added for good measure when pressed: “No, I don’t see a recession.”

The problem is that the last time we had a recession, Kudlow was saying much the same thing. And that’s not even his most recent wayward prediction about the economy. Those predictions have persisted after he assumed the position of great power he now has.

As was widely noted Sunday after Kudlow’s interview, his consistent misses on the 2008 economic crash were some of the more remarkably bad predictions.

“Bush Boom Continues,” read a December 2007 headline on a Kudlow column in the National Review. Added the headline underneath: “You can call it Goldilocks 2.0. But you can’t call it a recession.”

In another version of the story, Kudlow elaborated:

Quote

There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that’s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well. The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told.

When signs of trouble increased, Kudlow doubled down in a column in February 2008: “I’m going to bet that the economy will be rebounding sometime this summer, if not sooner,” he wrote. “We are in a slow patch. That’s all. It’s nothing to get up in arms about.”

Even as late as July 2008, Kudlow’s rose-tinted glasses remained firmly in place. He said he saw “an awful lot of very good new news, which appear to be pointing to a bottom in the housing problem; in fact, maybe the tiniest beginnings of a recovery.” Foreclosures kept surging, though, and stocks kept tumbling.

When Kudlow was appointed by Trump, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank and New York’s Jonathan Chait documented a number of other times Kudlow’s predictions were badly off-base. But what has gotten less attention is that this tendency has persisted into his time in the White House.

Back in June 2018, Kudlow saw a declining deficit. “The deficit, which was one of the other criticisms, is coming down — and it’s coming down rapidly,” Kudlow claimed. “Growth solves a lot of problems.”

The problem was that the deficit wasn’t coming down, much less rapidly. So Kudlow clarified to CNBC’s Eamon Javers that he was making a prediction. “I was referring to future deficits,” he said, adding, “I think it will come down in 2018, and the big reductions will come in future years.”

This, yet again, has not come to pass. The deficit rose a full 17 percent in fiscal year 2018, to $779 billion, as projections suggested it was headed toward $1 trillion. That path has continued this year, and, in fact, the rate of growth has increased. So not only did the deficit not “come down in 2018,” but it almost definitely won’t come down in 2019. Any reduction in the deficit appears years away, if it ever happens during Trump’s tenure.

Kudlow also predicted in January 2018 that the GDP would grow to between 3 percent and 4 percent based on the GOP tax cuts. Since then (and including preliminary estimates for the last quarter), it has grown by 2.5 percent.

In April 2018, he said the GDP could hit 5 percent for at least a short period of time. The highest quarterly GDP growth since then was 3.5 percent.

To some degree, this is now Kudlow’s job. He’s a cheerleader for Trump’s economic policies, in addition to being his strategist. But even spokespeople should have their rosy predictions parsed carefully and their credibility adjusted accordingly. And when Kudlow provides such reassuring predictions, it’s difficult to be too reassured — judging by both his record before his time in the White House and since.

[jjbrr]

johnu, on 2019-August-15, 19:16, said:

Wow

Trump Suggests Building More Mental Institutions To Curb Gun Violence


Editorial note: We can save time and money by turning the White House into a mental institution. We should have mental institutions located where there is the most serious mental illness.

I totally skimmed so I may have missed some context, but are you suggesting that his quote is not absolutely correct, assuming these institutions provide research? I understand anti-Trump circlejerks, but he doesn't deserve criticism for suggesting we need to expand mental health research.

[johnu]

jjbrr, on 2019-August-19, 21:04, said:

I totally skimmed so I may have missed some context, but are you suggesting that his quote is not absolutely correct, assuming these institutions provide research? I understand anti-Trump circlejerks, but he doesn't deserve criticism for suggesting we need to expand mental health research.

Had you looked at the article closer, you would have read:

Quote

Research shows that most mass killers don’t have severe mental health problems. Experts have also long repeated that most people with mental health issues are not violent but are actually more likely to be victims of violence.

Why do we need "more" mental institutions when we already have plenty of mental institutions. In any case, even if the US had 2X, 5X or 10X the number of mental institutions, there is no plan to get potential mass murderers admitted and successfully treated.

IIRC (I think I heard it on TV), only ~3% of mass shooters meet the definition of seriously mentally ill.

The point is that blaming the mentally ill is a NRA talking point to deflect arguments about universal background checks, restrictions on assault weapons, restrictions on the size of gun clips, restrictions on the type of ammunition available, or any type of gun regulation. The NRA and their puppets are saying, "Why don't need no stinking gun control, let's blame the mentally ill and call it a day". And after initially saying he wanted to do something on gun control, this was the Manchurian President backtracking and distancing himself from any type of gun control by changing the subject.

Edit: When you say mental health research are you talking about field studies, drug trials, behavioral studies, etc,. or treatment? If so, that's the type of thing that would be done at a university, maybe a drug company trial, possibly some department in the NIH. The average mental institution doesn't have the money or the expertise to do large scale research.

[y66]

Guest post from Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg who is filling in for David Leonhardt at NYT this week:

Quote

One of the more telling mistakes that Donald Trump is making is he’s entering into a period of potential economic instability with a vacancy in a position that could help him. The last chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett, told the president in late May that he was leaving; Trump announced it on June 2; Hassett’s last day was June 28. Since then, Tomas Philipson has been the acting chairman. So it’s been almost three months since Trump learned of Hassett’s departure, and he has yet to nominate a replacement.

(In typical Trump fashion, he claimed on June 2 that he would announce a new chairman “as soon as I get back to the U.S.” from the overseas trip he was on at the time. Normal presidents try to avoid making specious promises because they care about their reputation for honesty and for following through on their plans — but not Trump.)

The Council of Economic Advisers vacancy isn’t the most significant of the 145 openings in important positions without nominees; that would probably be secretary of homeland security (Kirstjen Nielsen resigned on April 7 and her last day was April 10, so that’s over four months without a nominee for that one). But it’s an interesting one because of what it says about Trump’s approach to the presidency. For that, it’s worth going into a bit of explanation.

When the government expanded in the 1930s and 1940s, Franklin Roosevelt and then Harry Truman discovered that they were at a disadvantage in managing the newly enlarged executive branch. More agencies, and more responsibilities for those agencies, meant it was harder for presidents to affect what was happening. In part that’s because executive branch departments and agencies are as much creatures of Congress as they are of the president; Congress gives them statutory authority and sets their budgets, and the Senate confirms the president’s nominees. In part it’s because large agencies wind up with large bureaucracies that resist any kind of outside control.

To fight this, Truman set up what became practically a new branch of the government — what the political scientist John Hart called the “presidential branch” — consisting of the White House staff and various agencies, including the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget, all within the Executive Office of the President. In part that was set up to help the president coordinate the government and to give overall assistance to the president. But it also offers the president independent sources of information.

As the presidency scholar Richard Neustadt observed, for effective presidenting, information is intensely important. If being president is about bargaining with others, then knowing more than they do about policy and politics is what can give the president a decisive advantage.

But it’s complicated. Presidents must deal with all types of information, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Executive branch agencies have practical experience with their jobs — but what they know may be biased in favor of the bureaucracy’s operating procedures. Partisans may have deep knowledge of how party coalition groups will react to a public policy and how it will affect them, but their advocacy may lead to one-sided analysis.

So presidents have also sought to get “neutral” information — expertise outside of the push and pull of either party politics or the politics of implementation. Thus the Council of Economic Advisers, a Truman-era (1946) innovation that puts typically academic economists inside the presidential branch. Neutral, scientific information also has its weaknesses. It may be ignorant of critically important political implications, and any academic discipline winds up with idiosyncratic preferences that may be difficult for outsiders to decipher.

Nevertheless, wise presidents recognize the limitations of different forms of information and use their position in the political system to outflank others by gathering more and more ways of seeing important policy questions — including scientific and academic forms of “neutral” information. Economists may be wrong about, say, the effects of tariffs, but only a very foolish president wouldn’t want to at least know what those economists know.

Trump has supposedly relied on “acting” people in different agencies because he thinks that gives him more influence over them. That’s wrong, because those “actings” may kowtow to the president, but without any clout within their agencies, it doesn’t actually do Trump any good. But the Council of Economic Advisers is different: The whole point of having one is to get “neutral” analysis, which the president can then take or leave as he or she sees fit. Using an acting chairman will no doubt make that person less secure in the job and less likely to be forthright, but there’s really no upside to that at all.

Of course, this is a president whose main source of information appears to be whoever Fox News happens to put on the air, who doesn’t seem to accept that there is such a thing as neutral information and who considers anything that resembles bad news to be a likely sign of a conspiracy against him. And yet he seems oddly unaware that advisers with strong policy preferences may flatter him to his face while putting their own advocacy ahead of his political needs.

This results in an economic team uniquely ill suited to combat bad economic times. Which is both a danger to his presidency — something he seems to understand — and to the nation.

Perhaps Trump thinks that anyone who would work for him is not to be trusted.

[barmar]

jjbrr, on 2019-August-19, 21:04, said:

I totally skimmed so I may have missed some context, but are you suggesting that his quote is not absolutely correct, assuming these institutions provide research? I understand anti-Trump circlejerks, but he doesn't deserve criticism for suggesting we need to expand mental health research.

Mental institutions have practically never performed significant research, they're just a place to warehouse these people because we don't want to see them on the streets. Have you ever read or seen "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? It was based on a real place, and from all I've heard it was typical.

Increasing research on mental health is certainly needed. Putting mentally ill people in asylums is not necessary for that.

[y66]

From Jordan Fabian at Bloomberg:

Quote

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo called on China to respect Hong Kong demonstrators’ rights and to fulfill its pledge to uphold one country with two systems of government.

“President Trump captured this, I think, perfectly across the weekend when he said we support democracy, we support liberty,” Pompeo said in an interview Tuesday with “CBS This Morning.” “We very much want to make sure that those folks that have the desire in their hearts to protest -- to speak out on behalf of their own freedom, their own liberty, to do so.”

Pompeo said the protests, which have been ongoing for more than two months, should be conducted peacefully. “And the Chinese government should respect their right to speak out in a way that they’re speaking," he said.

The pro-democracy protesters came out in force on Sunday in a largely calm gathering that contrasted with violent clashes with police in previous weeks. Demonstrators oppose Beijing’s attempts to tighten control over the city.

Pompeo echoed President Donald Trump, connecting the demonstrations to the trade dispute between the U.S. and China.

"China needs to fulfill its promises,” he said. “One of the challenges in the trade deal is you have to make sure that China actually lives up to the commitments that it would make. In Hong Kong, this Chinese government made a promise that it has a central understanding that there’d be one country, two systems and they need to live up to that promise."

Pompeo also said the U.S. is concerned with North Korea’s recent missile tests and wishes they would be halted. He still said he hopes negotiations will resume with Pyongyang.

"We haven’t gotten back to the table as quickly as we would have hoped," he said.

This is an easy call for the U.S. State Department but it's not the type of call they have been making lately.

+1 (in context) to Pompeo.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2019-August-20, 09:30, said:

From Jordan Fabian at Bloomberg:


This is an easy call for the U.S. State Department but it's not the type of call they have been making lately.

+1 (in context) to Pompeo.

The important take-a-way is that Pompeo spoke out; Trump was quiet.

[Winstonm]

Incarceration of the mentally ill was dramatically lowered by this ruling:

Quote

O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975), was a landmark decision in mental health law. The United States Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot constitutionally confine a non-dangerous individual who is capable of surviving safely in freedom by themselves or with the help of willing and responsible family members or friends. Since the trial court jury found, upon ample evidence, that petitioner did so confine respondent, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court's conclusion that petitioner had violated respondent's right to liberty.[1][2][3]

[johnu]

Another mass shooting averted

Trump-Loving Neo-Nazi Arrested For Allegedly Plotting To Kill Miami Hispanics

Quote

Disturbing excerpts of the messages show that Lin allegedly threatened to rape and murder the unnamed individual along with the person’s family before targeting “all Hispanics” and other ethnic groups. He heaped praise on the Trump administration for supporting what he called a “race war.”

“I Thank God everyday President Donald John Trump is President,” Lin allegedly wrote.

I thought this was thought provoking in the headline:

Quote

Trump-Loving Neo-Nazi

Seriously, is there any other kind?

[Winstonm]

johnu, on 2019-August-20, 16:50, said:

Another mass shooting averted

Trump-Loving Neo-Nazi Arrested For Allegedly Plotting To Kill Miami Hispanics


I thought this was thought provoking in the headline:


Seriously, is there any other kind?

John, you are probably to young to remember but this "race war" claim reminds me of the Manson family in August of 1969.