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Author Topic: President Trump has Covid19  (Read 11015 times)

Shasarak

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #30 on: October 04, 2020, 09:52:57 PM »
*Yes, I mean US income taxes in 10 out of 15 years. Trump can easily clear it up by releasing his tax returns like every other modern president or presidential candidate.

Since when has someone using Obama Taxes been a problem?

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There will be poor always,
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look at the good things you've got! -  Jesus

Shasarak

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #31 on: October 04, 2020, 09:56:47 PM »
Since COVID-19 doesn't give up as quickly as human beings, I expect this will continue as the major topic of the rest of the campaign. Unlike calling members of the military suckers and losers, Woodward's tapes (ha, he almost used presidential tapes to bring down a Republican president early and late in his career), Trump not paying taxes, debate debacle, Melania's attacks on Christmas and separated children - not to mention all the things I've forgotten in just the past few weeks.

I thought that the new york times article said that Trump paid over 4 million in taxes?  Too far past the headline to read?

Fair enough; I should say "no US income taxes in 10 of 15 years, and $750 in each of 2016 and 2017". (The more alarming news in that story seems to be the amounts he owes to unknown parties, a big red flag for those who give security clearances.)

But ... did Shasarak just endorse a New York Times article as a reliable source of information? Outing yourself as a latte-sipping elitist, I see. They don't cotton to that kind of thing around here.

Dogpile on Shasarak, everyone!

Shit I forgot that only Pat gives sources.
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Delete_me

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #32 on: October 04, 2020, 10:25:00 PM »
He had to divulge that info in order to even receive a security clearance.

The President does not receive a security clearance. He simply has access to all the nation's secrets. The National Security Act does not and, constitutionally, could not require the President to receive a clearance. The only exception to this is the Census data.

This President, and no other President before him, has ever had to submit any info to receive a security clearance in their role as President. (I'm sure George H.W. Bush did in his prior career as Director of the CIA.)

Delete_me

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #33 on: October 04, 2020, 10:29:22 PM »
*Oh, the Woodward tape was the one where Trump was talking about preventing a panic? Yeah. Just remember the Dems had the same level of briefings and didn't do diddly fucking squat. They were too busy trying to impeach Trump to care two shits about a looming pandemic. Nobody knew how this was going to go down at the time, and hindsight is 20/20.

Actually, we don't know that they did. The White House had cut off intelligence briefings to the Congress around the same time as the original whistleblower report as part  of the tit-for-tat that was happening back then (Oct/Nov of 19).  While some intelligence is required to be briefed to Congress by statute, there was quite a bit of that which the President had ordered the National Security Council to stop reporting to Congress. Several subpoenas were issued for it and ended up in court, but the Democrats did not want to wait for the SCOTUS to rule on it.

The House and Senate might have received those briefings, but we have no way of knowing that currently and have probable cause to believe they may not have.

moonsweeper

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #34 on: October 04, 2020, 10:49:33 PM »
He had to divulge that info in order to even receive a security clearance.

The President does not receive a security clearance. He simply has access to all the nation's secrets. The National Security Act does not and, constitutionally, could not require the President to receive a clearance. The only exception to this is the Census data.

This President, and no other President before him, has ever had to submit any info to receive a security clearance in their role as President. (I'm sure George H.W. Bush did in his prior career as Director of the CIA.)

I'll give you a technically true on self-divulge...but the information is known to counter-intel at some level because it is part of his tax record and if there was anything it would have shown up during their investigation leading to the impeachment.
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Delete_me

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #35 on: October 05, 2020, 12:48:23 AM »
I'll give you a technically true on self-divulge...but the information is known to counter-intel at some level because it is part of his tax record and if there was anything it would have shown up during their investigation leading to the impeachment.

Why? Counter-intelligence can't just look at someone's taxes. They have to get a very specific subpoena, and even then can only look at very limited tax records. They do not just have access to anyone's tax records, and attempting to subpoena the President's tax records from within the administration would get attention from the Attorney General himself.

The Mueller investigation was the only one that would have had a reason to look at the President's tax records and the investigation elected not to make the attempt, over the objection of some senior members of the investigative staff, according to recent memoirs. Charitably, one could assume that Robert Mueller, or another senior, strictly constructed his mandate and decided that would be outside the scope of his investigative powers (this is what he claims). Less charitably, some on the staff believe it was because they feared being fired if they tried and didn't want investigation to end like that.

All that aside: I find it fascinating how much the public does not understand how the National Security apparatus works. How much data they assume the national security apparatus has and what type of data it is. This leads to a weird situation where the US public is both mad at the counter-intelligence community for collecting types of data which it actually doesn't, while giving them a complete pass for the types of data it DOES collect that they should be horrified about. We are a country of lovely contradictions.

jeff37923

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #36 on: October 05, 2020, 07:53:23 AM »
I check in here just to see what craziness you guys are up to. Still mostly waiting for some actual election commentary rather than the usual railing against an invented reality. Ravenswing has opened the door to actual reality, so I guess I'll make a rare post.

Both parties have rules in place to replace nominees who are unable to continue; the article at https://ballotpedia.org/State_laws_and_party_rules_on_replacing_a_presidential_nominee,_2020 seems to agree with everything else I've seen. Given that voting with the current ticket is already going, I suspect either party would continue with the deceased candidate and have the electors for that party determine who actually gets it, rather than risk splitting their general election votes between dead candidate and replacement candidate. (In 2000, Mel Carnahan won a Senate election despite being dead.)

I wonder why anyone would seek out commentary from the most extreme members of the other end of the political spectrum. (OK, I spend a little time here, but I would be surprised if anyone here is even close to the most extreme end of the right wing.)

The people on the left that I read have mostly offered sympathy (OK, Kos wants Trump to live so he can lose the election, be prosecuted and imprisoned, and see the ruin of his personal finances) or remained studiously neutral. In these sorts of situations, the right wing dredges up some obscure nobody to tar all Democrats, while it's major Republicans who advance cruel attacks and extreme conspiracy theories. A very common twitter post the last few days is Trump's mockery of Hillary Clinton's pneumonia, which coincidentally had its four year anniversary on Friday; and of course there's always a Trump tweet. While the Biden campaign has suspended negative advertising, the Trump campaign is still attacking Biden for wearing a mask too much and having smaller events. (Interestingly, at least one of the apostate Republicans who founded the Lincoln Project advocates keeping up the negative ads.)

Trump's doctor (medical or spin?) has admitted that he misrepresented things yesterday to be "upbeat"; nobody still in the administration has much credibility at this point, which is good for blunting any October surprises they may spring. Like their tax returns, the broad facts of a Presidential candidate's health should be known to the public. They knew enough from Hope Hicks' test result that Trump should never have gone to a buffet dinner maskless fundraiser on Thursday, even if Trump himself tested positive no earlier than the claimed timeline.

Since COVID-19 doesn't give up as quickly as human beings, I expect this will continue as the major topic of the rest of the campaign. Unlike calling members of the military suckers and losers, Woodward's tapes (ha, he almost used presidential tapes to bring down a Republican president early and late in his career), Trump not paying taxes, debate debacle, Melania's attacks on Christmas and separated children - not to mention all the things I've forgotten in just the past few weeks.

I know that it is you, rawma, so you don't understand the nuances of most things in the world, but Trump has donated most of his presidential salary to charities which does significantly offset the amount of taxes that he owes for working as President.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/11/fact-check-donald-trump-donates-salary-but-he-still-makes-money/5410134002/

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Pat
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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #37 on: October 05, 2020, 08:12:04 AM »
If it goes to the House, the Republicans might win - each state gets one vote for its entire delegation (presumably no vote if it's evenly split?) and the Republicans control 26 state delegations even though the Democrats have a majority overall. But the Democrats with the Speaker position might be able to block the vote procedurally; who knows? More reasonably, the Democrats are trying to flip state delegation control to avoid losing a House vote.
Good point, I forgot about that. For a fairly short document, the Constitution has a lot of obscure arcana that almost never comes up. One additional note: The 26 state majority Republicans hold is unlikely to change in the November election. The contested seats won't flip any of the state delegations.

Delete_me

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #38 on: October 05, 2020, 09:00:21 AM »
While the 12th Amendment says the House must choose "immediately," nothing actually defines immediately. It's entirely possible to stall through procedural votes until a new Congress is in. If something tectonic happened to the House this election, then the Republicans could then seek to stall in the opposite direction until Pence becomes President by default in March.

Of course, this would all wind up in the courts because these particular provisions have never been litigated before. (Does "immediately" in the 12th Amendment mean  the vote must be cast immediately, ignoring the House's usual rules, or do the House rules of procedure apply and thus the immediately only means you have to start  the process immediately?) By the time the Courts resolve such an issue, if they do at all, it may already be fiat accompli.

That assumes though that any swing state which decides to contest the outcome of the election doesn't simply vote to cast all their Electors  in a particular way, regardless of what the current outcome says, "because the veracity is in doubt." While on the face of it that would seem to run afoul of Chiafolo v. Washington, it doesn't because the exact issue of, "what happens if the vote itself is in doubt?" has not been litigated.

rawma

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #39 on: October 05, 2020, 08:33:20 PM »
You claim Trump called out the military and then walk it back to just McCain when challenged.
You claim Trump didn't pay taxes and then walk it back to his tax returns when challenged.
Melania is the kind of Hollywood gossip that I really don't give a shit about.
The Woodward tapes I'm not as familiar with, so I'll let someone else opine about that.

You might notice that I originally claimed only that they were major topics in the campaign; that much is certainly true (although the Melania one never really got far as a major topic because of COVID-19 rampaging through the White House; it would have brought forward the child separation policy again, as Melania falsely claimed in the tape that Obama did it first - Politifact said that was False when Donald Trump claimed it). I am still trying to fathom where you think the conspiracy theory is, if some portion is easily verified; I still haven't gotten any response on that.

So there's enough evidence, mostly from videos and audio tapes, that some portion of each is true, and the remainder is therefore a legitimate issue; you'll notice that Chris Wallace (Fox News, y'know) asked Trump point blank about his income taxes. I'm not interested in a long back-and-forth where I give references from The Atlantic, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, statements by elected officials, Trump relatives and Trump administration members, and you reference Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the Gateway Pundit.

rawma

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #40 on: October 05, 2020, 08:34:55 PM »
Injecting bleach is pretty much as fake as fake news can be.

A quick check of Politifact would have pointed that out, but that site is probably too far to the right for him.

...although I am inclined to think anyone who even considers injecting themselves with bleach probably should...hopefully before they breed

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning..." - Donald J. Trump, very stable genius (with added bold formatting)

OK, maybe he thought you could inject ultraviolet light, and maybe the disinfectant in question was isopropyl alcohol.

It's probably true that many of the calls to Poison Control about bleach were fakes. Probably.

rawma

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #41 on: October 05, 2020, 08:36:20 PM »
*Yes, I mean US income taxes in 10 out of 15 years. Trump can easily clear it up by releasing his tax returns like every other modern president or presidential candidate.

Since when has someone using Obama Taxes been a problem?

You're going to have to translate that from RightWingEchoChamberese or whatever to something with meaning in reality; what are "Obama Taxes" and how did Trump use them? You might have noticed that Obama was only president during any part of nine of those years, and two of those had Trump income tax payments of $750. What's your excuse for the years preceding Obama - time travel?

Shasarak

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #42 on: October 05, 2020, 08:41:00 PM »
Injecting bleach is pretty much as fake as fake news can be.

A quick check of Politifact would have pointed that out, but that site is probably too far to the right for him.

...although I am inclined to think anyone who even considers injecting themselves with bleach probably should...hopefully before they breed

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning..." - Donald J. Trump, very stable genius (with added bold formatting)

OK, maybe he thought you could inject ultraviolet light, and maybe the disinfectant in question was isopropyl alcohol.

It's probably true that many of the calls to Poison Control about bleach were fakes. Probably.

Could you give me the quote where he tells you to inject bleach?

I know it breaks your rule of providing sources so I will understand if you choose not to....
Who da Drow?  U da drow! - hedgehobbit

There will be poor always,
pathetically struggling,
look at the good things you've got! -  Jesus

Shasarak

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #43 on: October 05, 2020, 08:46:36 PM »
*Yes, I mean US income taxes in 10 out of 15 years. Trump can easily clear it up by releasing his tax returns like every other modern president or presidential candidate.

Since when has someone using Obama Taxes been a problem?

You're going to have to translate that from RightWingEchoChamberese or whatever to something with meaning in reality; what are "Obama Taxes" and how did Trump use them? You might have noticed that Obama was only president during any part of nine of those years, and two of those had Trump income tax payments of $750. What's your excuse for the years preceding Obama - time travel?

Obama gave real estate developers a tax break to develop real estate and Trump is a real estate developer who took Obama real estate tax breaks.

If you dont like people taking Obama tax breaks then maybe you could take that up with Obama?

He is probably on Twitter somewhere, I am sure he will be fascinated.
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There will be poor always,
pathetically struggling,
look at the good things you've got! -  Jesus

rawma

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #44 on: October 05, 2020, 08:55:38 PM »
I know that it is you, rawma, so you don't understand the nuances of most things in the world, but Trump has donated most of his presidential salary to charities which does significantly offset the amount of taxes that he owes for working as President.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/11/fact-check-donald-trump-donates-salary-but-he-still-makes-money/5410134002/

The president gets paid $400,000 per year; Donald Trump had to shut down the Trump Foundation and pay $2,000,000 because of illegally using charitable funds for political purposes. I certainly approve of reducing his total income by legitimate charitable contributions, if any can be found. If he were really a billionaire, $400,000 either way wouldn't matter (and would have had no effect before 2017 anyway).

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2019/donald-j-trump-pays-court-ordered-2-million-illegally-using-trump-foundation