The Trump Presidency – 2016

[panerd]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I wouldn't worry too much about an apology at a school. Without knowing the details, like how many students complained, what was the nature of the class prior to the exam, etc., it's hard to know what was going on. A lot of times admin pressures professors to apologize just to move past issues. There is very little appetite to fight out issues.

At my institution a faculty member had to apologize because one student out of years of students complained that a particular lesson was sexual harassment. The administration just wanted the problem to go away and wasn't about to fight for academic freedom.

I get where you are coming from and working at a public school we have a pretty spineless admin ourselves but sometimes you just gotta say to the administration I'm not going to apologize for teaching medical students how to handle a person complaining they can't breathe.

[JPhillips]

If the person has tenure, maybe, although we don't know if he was threatened in any way by the admin. If the person is an adjunct, is that really a fight worth losing your job? For most people, I would bet no. Most people aren't brave and don't want a fight.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by panerd

Is it bad that I actually laughed at loud at that?

Nah. I did.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by panerd

. Can't even fathom what some of the West Coast schools are like.

I went to U of Washington in the heart of Seattle and never saw anything like that.

The worst I remember was a civics class tried to get the school administration to allow a tent city to be set up on campus and it was shot down.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

If the person has tenure, maybe, although we don't know if he was threatened in any way by the admin. If the person is an adjunct, is that really a fight worth losing your job? For most people, I would bet no. Most people aren't brave and don't want a fight.

On a braveness scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being General Owen from Starship Troopers and 10 being Bruce Willis in Armageddon, I would rate myself a 2 or a 3 in real life. However I figured out a long time ago the administrators are people just like me (nowadays people a lot younger than me) and what they really want is to not do their job. Spent about 10 years being the "good guy", around 10 years in got into a attempt to make me apologize for something dumb to some kid that I refused, and now realize about 25 years in that they just find other pushover teachers to do their jobs for them by serving on the committees and unnecessarily apologizing etc. Sometimes having some integrity does more than just get you out of one situation it makes your life a whole lot easier.

(Agree with you 100% on non-tenured though)

[panerd]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I went to U of Washington in the heart of Seattle and never saw anything like that.

The worst I remember was a civics class tried to get the school administration to allow a tent city to be set up on campus and it was shot down.

But you are about my age right? 40's? I mean my sociology and psychology professors were always super liberal but I think college today is a whole other monster. I'm sure there certainly is a get off my lawn side to this but I think it's pretty out there.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by panerd

But you are about my age right? 40's? I mean my sociology and psychology professors were always super liberal but I think college today is a whole other monster. I'm sure there certainly is a get off my lawn side to this but I think it's pretty out there.

I went later in life, graduated in 2010. To be fair the world was a lot different even back then.

[kingfc22]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Trump claimed today that Bolton was against saying Coronavirus was from China, but he said it anyway.

Bolton left the WH in September of 2019.

Surprised it wasn't Obama or Hillary who had this hidden under wraps.

[Ksyrup]

As long as the list is of unbelievable things that Trump has done or said, the "no testing means no cases" thing absolutely floors me. The idea that we would elect someone who cares so much about himself and how things reflect on him that he would willingly allow people to be infected and potentially die from a virus so he can claim we have very few cases just blows my mind. And the fact that 100% of the country isn't outraged by this is depressing.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ew/3192584001/

[JPhillips]

Trump's rallies and convention speech will absolutely, positively result in hospitalizations and deaths. Everybody knows this, but we're too exhausted to be outraged.

[thesloppy]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

As long as the list is of unbelievable things that Trump has done or said, the "no testing means no cases" thing absolutely floors me. The idea that we would elect someone who cares so much about himself and how things reflect on him that he would willingly allow people to be infected and potentially die from a virus so he can claim we have very few cases just blows my mind. And the fact that 100% of the country isn't outraged by this is depressing.

Coronavirus: Trump calls testing 'overrated' in Wall Street Journal interview

"I personally think testing is overrated, even though I created the greatest testing machine in history"

[thesloppy]

So.....Matt Gaetz reveals he has a secret 19-year old, adopted Cuban son? Where do you even start with this?

[SirFozzie]

"Bolton describes how Trump derailed a White House meeting about Iran strategy by bringing up a right wing conspiracy that Black South Africans were killing white South African farmers and stealing their land. According to Bolton, Trump blurted out that he wanted to grant the white South Africans “asylum and citizenship.”"

John Bolton’s Unredacted Book Shows Trump Was Baldly Asking for China’s Help | Vanity Fair

edit: I'm sure Bolton only remembered this because he was trying to sell Trump on war with Iran. Also, real people getting killed in foreign countries "Keep em out. Send em back to their shithole countries". Supposed White People getting killed? "Let's give them instant asylum and citizenship".

I wonder what the difference was?

Oh yeah, it's there in Black and White.

[Lathum]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/u...mid=tw-nytimes

[BYU 14]

Originally Posted by thesloppy

So.....Matt Gaetz reveals he has a secret 19-year old, adopted Cuban son? Where do you even start with this?

So proud to raise a Cuban son, but not proud enough to acknowledge him. Well, actually he did, back in 2016 when he thanked him and another page for assisting him. Again addressing him as a page, not his son.

This is going to get real good, real weird or both.

[thesloppy]

It's already weird. When he says 'adopted' he best be talking about a formal procedure, rather than 'I moved this teenage immigrant into my house'.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by panerd

Is it bad that I actually laughed at loud at that?

I chuckled.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Trump's rallies and convention speech will absolutely, positively result in hospitalizations and deaths. Everybody knows this, but we're too exhausted to be outraged.

I'm sure much like the protests and riots the COVID risk will be off the charts in Tulsa but in Milwaukee the risk will be next to nothing. Just ask an unbiased epidemiologist like Greg Gonsalves!

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/s...63577433440257

[JPhillips]

Hopefully, the combination of heat, outside, and a fair amount of mask-wearing will mitigate the spread from the protests, but they were dangerous in regards to COVID.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by panerd

Is it bad that I actually laughed at loud at that?

I laughed harder that Ann Coulter retweeted it with "Except they actually built one."

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by thesloppy

So.....Matt Gaetz reveals he has a secret 19-year old, adopted Cuban son? Where do you even start with this?

I wondered why Nestor was trending on Twitter. Just a bizarre claim by him never having mentioned him before, its not in his bio or Wiki, and no journalist (that I'm aware of) has ever reported on. There is even a picture of him with Nestor and claims he was his page when the picture was taken,

[GrantDawg]

He wanted his son out of the spotlight and political crossfire. It really isn't that big of a deal. This is coming from someone who thinks he has the most punchable face in Congress. And that is saying something.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[GrantDawg]

Australia is saying that it is under a massive cyber attack from a major state actor. They are attacking all levels of government and through out the private sector. They will not say who, but speculation is China.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[Ksyrup]

So Amy McGrath, the presumptive nominee for the Dem Senate race against McConnell, has raised $41M and at one point lead Charles Booker by 50 points. Recently, AOC and Bernie endorsed Booker, today Elizabeth Warren flipped her endorsement to Booker, and a new poll shows Booker up by 8 points.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

Australia is saying that it is under a massive cyber attack from a major state actor. They are attacking all levels of government and through out the private sector. They will not say who, but speculation is China.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Considering how pissed China is about Australia standing up to them about COVID, I'm sure it's China.

SI

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by bronconick

What a stupid goddamn administration. All they had to do was give *any* reasonable excuse to shut DACA down through proper procedures and Roberts would have agreed. This has happened a few times now. The Republic has been hanging on through their incompetence.

Roberts knows this. He's playing the long game - he knows there will eventually be some competent administration ready to gut everything. He'll be ready to help them when the time comes.

SI

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

So Amy McGrath, the presumptive nominee for the Dem Senate race against McConnell, has raised $41M and at one point lead Charles Booker by 50 points. Recently, AOC and Bernie endorsed Booker, today Elizabeth Warren flipped her endorsement to Booker, and a new poll shows Booker up by 8 points.

I'm only seeing things from a distance, but it sure looks to me like she's been playing prevent defense for the last couple of months while Booker has been clearly and loudly standing up for his beliefs. She really butchered her handling of the protests.

[Ksyrup]

McConnell will likely skate to a win in KY against a candidate who is endorsed by Warren/AOC/Bernie. They couldn't find a decent candidate people wanted to like against someone as unpopular as Mitch. I don't know why Matt Jones didn't take McGrath on.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

If the person has tenure, maybe, although we don't know if he was threatened in any way by the admin. If the person is an adjunct, is that really a fight worth losing your job? For most people, I would bet no. Most people aren't brave and don't want a fight.

When I talk to faculty and staff who are roughly our ages and older, there's largely a sense of pandering to the students in order to avoid conflict (i.e., keep the university off the front page of the newspaper). It doesn't matter if you think the issue the student has raised is stupid -- because let's be honest, kids in that 18-22 range get up to all sorts of stupid on a daily basis -- if you can minimize the potential public image damage with an apology, then you do that.

To some extent, this seems to have emerged as part of university culture when we started chasing US News and similar rankings...about the same time we started thinking of students as customers to be appeased rather than "students" who are only attending the university at the whim and will of the administration (which is the theme of pretty much every college movie made through the 1990's). I find the gap between "what we believe to be true" and "what we say is true" when it comes to students and these sorts of issues pretty interesting. It's a weird adoption of "the customer is always right" philosophy, only in a sort of "malicious compliance" way where what we're really saying is that we don't think you're intellectually capable of grappling with the nuances of the question, so we're going to ELI5 (infantilize) it for you and then just let you think you're right.

Of course, now these "kids" are growing up and joining our ranks as colleagues. Most of the ones I run into are in marketing for some reason. Today we had a zoom conference at work (i.e., for staff) to talk through our fears, feelings and uncertainties about the protests and police violence and whatnot. It was led by people who put their pronouns in their e-mail tag line. (Even the transgendered folks I work with don't put their pronouns in their tag lines. The only people I know who do that are whatever the LGBTQ equivalent of a "white ally" is.) I didn't attend the conference, as I'm not feeling particularly fearful or uncertain and couldn't see the point of talking through feelings I don't have...and we're all working from home, so if my colleagues are having those feelings, it's not like I'm going to be hanging out with them to provide comfort or a sense of security.

I'm sure someone will mention to me that I should have been there as a show of solidarity, since I'm technically a member of the administration and have people who report to me, so at some point I'll issue an official apology for my negligence and that'll make the problem go away.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

He wanted his son out of the spotlight and political crossfire. It really isn't that big of a deal. This is coming from someone who thinks he has the most punchable face in Congress. And that is saying something.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Or he could have been fucking him.

[SirFozzie]

Let's not go there, especially without evidence.

[RainMaker]

Just saying there are other reasons a single 33-year old would let a prepubescent boy shack up with him and keep it a secret from everyone including the government.

We can take what we know about Gaetz's character and judge for ourselves.

[thesloppy]

Here's Gaetz side of it that he gave to People:

Matt Gaetz Talks Relationship with 'Son' Nestor | PEOPLE.com

It is plausible enough....but also still weird enough to leave room for whatever speculation you may prefer. Lots of 'declining to talk' about Nestor's biological family, muddy travel details & timelines, and they talk about each other just a little too glowingly & antiseptic.

On the one hand it has all the trappings of like an inspiring after school special on paper, on the other hand even if my it was my closest friend or a family member that had an unofficially 'adopted' cuban teenager living with him years after breaking up with the boys aunt, I would still think that was pretty weird.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

McConnell will likely skate to a win in KY against a candidate who is endorsed by Warren/AOC/Bernie. They couldn't find a decent candidate people wanted to like against someone as unpopular as Mitch. I don't know why Matt Jones didn't take McGrath on.

This feels so much like the Tea Party movement. They primary a more centrist candidate in state that an extreme candidate has no chance of winning.

[Butter]

We get Cincinnati stations here in south Dayton, and Booker has finally started running ads... well, one ad. I think it's pretty effective, actually. It's like this video, but slightly different and a bit shorter.

[Ksyrup]

Yes, that ad is devastating. The one I've seen just stops after her stammering explanation for having family things to do.

She has had some really poor sound bites - even going back to her House race against Andy Barr - plus, she's clearly being propped up by people from outside of KY. It's hard to say she has any kind of organic, KY grassroots support. It's pretty clear that the only way McConnell loses is McConnell himself - which you'd think would be enough, but he's just running the same "Mitch and Donny, sittin' in a tree" ads and will likely win fairly comfortably.

[Butter]

Right. "I had some, uh, family things going on", cut to Booker in front of a protest. Good stuff. Not gonna win Kentucky, but he could win the primary. Thing that kills me is McGrath is already running attack ads on McConnell as though she's won the primary. NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND

[Ksyrup]

I've been seeing McGrath ads attacking McConnell since last year. At last that's what it feels like. Quarantine has seriously screwed up my perception of time...

[Lathum]

Update: Oklahoma cases now surges from a whopping 140% increase from prior week (yesterday it was just 111%). Oklahoma today only topped by Montana’s new 283% increase.

Please #CancelTrumpsTulsaRally. #COVID19 https://t.co/2pnOcIsjRf pic.twitter.com/CNLMC37Uj5

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) June 19, 2020

Good time for a rally

[albionmoonlight]

If you look across the country, the Dems have done a great job of keeping the left fringe shut out. Whenever there has been a contested primary, the more moderate candidate has won. For all of the media attention the AOC/Bernie crowd gets, they actually have almost no control over the party (much to their frustration).

(Side note. For all our deep analysis on what happened in 2018 and what will happen in 2020, the answer may be as simple as American is a moderate conservative country, and the GOP has moved toward the far right while the Dems have stayed near the center. Basically, the same story that always plays out in American politics despite our natural desire to want our period in history to be unique).

But McGrath is such a bad candidate that she might break that streak.

As for Matt Jones, I would have LOVED for him to run. He's a liberal that can speak to conservatives--a rare breed.

[Ksyrup]

I loved his show Hey Kentucky - a mix of politics, sports and everything else done kind of in PTI fashion. When he was forced to leave (allegedly due to McGrath's campaign), it just wasn't the same show anymore.

Not sure what his politics look like specifically, but he has the charisma to win against someone like McConnell. I don't know what the calculus was in deciding not to run, but I'm guessing that McGrath being the handpicked choice of the national party played heavily into it.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Not sure what his politics look like specifically

I worked with him for a year, so I have a sense.

His politics are mainline liberal. He's not an extremist. But he's also not a conservative who is "liberal for Kentucky."

He's a liberal.

I haven't talked to him since he decided not to run, but when I did talk to him about it (Summer 2018), he was very interested and had the Democratic party interested too.

I think that when they decided to go with McGrath instead, he didn't want to become part of a big primary fight. He wasn't going to fight with the DNC and McConnell.

[stevew]

They did that empty suit DNC senate pick in 2016 for the PA senate race. Mcginty got 42% of the primary vote and then lost statewide by the same amount that Hillary did. So instead of flipping that senate seat they’ve given Pat Toomey a second term. Mega frustrating.

[whomario]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1273972301156016130

Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!

Yeah, that'll end well ...

[JPhillips]

It's all bluster. The military and the Tulsa police aren't going to go Chicago 1968.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

It's all bluster. The military and the Tulsa police aren't going to go Chicago 1968.

I hope so.

It would be quite depressing to have to say "that time when a bunch of armed white people slaughtered innocent black people in Tulsa" and have to be more specific about which time you meant.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I hope so.

It would be quite depressing to have to say "that time when a bunch of armed white people slaughtered innocent black people in Tulsa" and have to be more specific about which time you meant.

Yep. If something happens it will be Trump supporters, not police and military folks.

[JPhillips]

He had to get hurt.

The WSJ told Trump that the 75-year-old protester shoved by police in Buffalo, Martin Gugino, has a brain injury and can't walk. Trump called him a "professional agitator," made some additional baseless insinuations about him, and said this. https://t.co/mSijb32Dwu pic.twitter.com/NG3E1bqNjX

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) June 19, 2020

[Atocep]

There's been a lot of executive time yesterday and today.

The fake CNN piece Trump tweeted has to be a new low for an American President.

[booradley]

I'm beginning to think that the losers of the upcoming election are going to refuse to accept the result. If Trump loses, he's almost certainly going to claim the results were "rigged", because he has a history of doing so. I also don't see the left accepting Trump's re-election. I'm very depressed because I think we're witnessing the end of the USA as a unified nation. If any of you have a less-gloomy outlook please state it. I could sure use a ray of hope right now. Sigh ...