DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump Rolls On with Making America Great Again!

I doubt that but who knows. Please don't sit at home. Vote Vote Vote! Even if it's just for the local and State elections and issues. But please don't sit at home or not vote on election day! That's really what the GOP is hoping for. Everyday U.S. citizens staying away from the election poles. That's their bread and butter.

You missed one detail.
The Democrats have got to give people something to vote for!

So far, America is rejecting them and their message.

LMAO....you Libs are really detached from reality. Continue to make crap up. How many special elections have you lost in the last 6 mths? Warren, Pelosi, Schumer, Waters....all clueless!

They also need to run more moderate Democrats for office.
The further Left they go, the more rejected they are.

Of course they could also push to set the voting age to 10 years old.

You have a lot of moderates that want a candidate worth voting for. Someone you believe at least has a minimum standard of character and honesty.

Neither Clinton nor Trump fit that bill. To me, my vote has to be earned, not given. A lot of voters I know simply held their nose and voted. If the Dems would have ran a better candidate, they would have won hands down. But they chose a party insider with very questionable character.

Give me a candidate that I feel at least wants to do the right thing for the American people and I will gladly give you my vote. It's really not that much to ask for.

Trump will do you all a favor. Many who voted for him believed his lies. When he comes up for re-election, voters won't be saying "anyone but Hillary", they'll be saying "anyone but Trump".

I'm detached and you're the one that doesn't have a clue on how our veterans get affordable healthcare.

How do they?

She might not have even won the primary if, as some suggest, she was too ethical to stick it up Bernie's backside while he wasn't looking and steal the nomination.

Trump, in Poland, vows 'the West will never, ever be broken'


Trump in Poland: We will confront threats and we will win

President Trump delivered a staunch defense of Western values during a rousing speech Thursday to thousands of Poles in Warsaw’s Krasinski Square, rallying allies against what he described as “dire threats” to civilization and vowing, “the West will never, ever be broken.”

On his second overseas trip as president, Trump voiced confidence in the resolve of Western nations to confront common threats but said allies must remember who they are to topple those challenges. Trump said nations must have the will to protect borders and preserve civilization from those who would destroy it.

“Just as Poland cannot be broken, I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken,” Trump said. “Our values will prevail, our people will thrive and our civilization will triumph.”

In sweeping terms, Trump used the address to cheer the contributions of Western societies, as the enthusiastic crowd frequently broke out in applause and chants of “USA” and “Donald Trump.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/06/trump-in-poland-vows-west-will-never-ever-be-broken.html

She was to ETHICAL.....are you serious

Another good one from Fox: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/...themselves.html

Trump rips CNN for response to GIF, says 'they’ve hurt themselves'

A day after CNN’s president complained President Trump was trying to “bully” the network, Trump on Thursday again lambasted the channel as being “dishonest” and “fake news” -- and suggested they took his infamous wrestling GIF "too seriously."

Speaking during a joint news conference with President Andrzej Duda in Poland, Trump addressed the network’s latest controversy, after CNN this week appeared to threaten to expose the Reddit user who created a GIF of Trump wrestling a person with a CNN logo photoshopped over his head.

"I think what CNN did was unfortunate for them, as you know now they have some pretty serious problems,” Trump said. “They have been fake news for a long time. They have been covering me in a very, very dishonest way.”

DID CNN COMMIT A CRIME?

Trump had tweeted a version of the wrestling GIF last weekend, drawing bipartisan criticism. But on Thursday, he described CNN's response as going too far.

He added: “I will say that CNN has really taken it too seriously, and I think they’ve hurt themselves very badly. Very, very badly.”

CNN has been under fire since Tuesday for appearing to warn that it could name the Reddit user behind the GIF if he reneged on his apology.

CNN, however, has adamantly defended its handling of the story, issuing a statement Wednesday saying the network did not publish the user’s name out of concern for his safety -- adding, "Any assertion that the network blackmailed or coerced him is false."

In the statement, CNN said the team published the line in question to be “transparent that there was no deal.”

Trump also lobbed a barb at NBC on Thursday.

"NBC is equally as bad, despite the fact that I made them a fortune with 'The Apprentice,' but they forgot that," said Trump, an ex-reality show host for the network.

But despite Trump taking questions from the press for the first time in nearly a month, the press conference wasn’t good enough for at least one reporter – who happened to be from CNN.

Jim Acosta, who has regularly sparred with Trump and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, tweeted: “Trump finally held a news conference overseas. But he took a question from a friendly reporter and then attacked CNN as ‘fake news.’”

Acosta added in one of several follow-up tweets: “Isn't it a ‘fake news conference’ to take a question from a reporter who is essentially an ally of the White House?”

Trump took questions from MSNBC – which could definitely not be cast as a Trump ally – and The Daily Mail, and Acosta appeared to be alluding to the latter. U.S. political editor David Martosko was considered for a communications job last month but pulled out of consideration.

But Acosta's complaints drew criticism from Republicans, who noted the Obama administration enjoyed a friendly press.

“So by that logic, was every news conference for the last 8 years #fakenews Jim?” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.

Former Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer added, “Jim - care to guess how many questions I took from reporters who went on to join the Obama WH??”

Trump’s continued criticism of CNN came just hours after a New York Times article in which CNN president Jeff Zucker castigated the president for his treatment of the network.

“He’s trying to bully us, and we’re not going to let him intimidate us,” Zucker said. “You can’t lose your confidence and let that change the way you conduct yourselves.”

What a fascinating story... sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/busin...t-meme-war.html

How a CNN Investigation Set Off an Internet Meme War

As Americans relaxed over a long Fourth of July weekend, the pro-Trump meme factories were gearing up for war.

These online communities, which churn out lo-fi, shareable images and videos meant to amuse and energize President Trump’s social media supporters while provoking his enemies, were spurred to action by what, in their world, qualified as a series of seismic events.

The first shock came on Sunday morning, when President Trump tweeted a video that depicted him in a professional wrestling arena attacking a man with a CNN logo superimposed on his head. The meme, or one very similar to it, had been created by a user on Reddit, the popular internet forum, and posted days earlier on /r/The_Donald, an active pro-Trump forum there, before making its way to the wider internet and, finally, to the 33.3 million Twitter followers of the leader of the free world.

In the world of meme creators, where getting a presidential tweet is akin to having your artwork hung on the wall of the Smithsonian, President Trump’s post was cause for celebration. “Wow!! I never expected my meme to be retweeted by the God Emperor himself!!!” wrote the creator, a frequent poster on Reddit whose user name combines a vulgarity with the Star Wars character Han Solo.

Continue reading the main story
Days later, that Reddit user himself became a figure of national interest as news organizations checked his posting history and discovered that he had a record of creating memes that were racist and anti-Semitic.

On Monday, a CNN reporter tracked down the identity of the user, who quickly deleted his posts, renounced his meme-creating ways, and apologized in a long, seemingly sincere post to /r/The_Donald. CNN declined to name the user, but said, somewhat mysteriously, that it “reserves the right” to publish his identity in the future if he continued to create offensive content.

To many on the right, that caveat felt like a threat issued by a powerful news organization to a private citizen: Fall in line, or we’ll expose you.

CNN quickly clarified its intent, saying that it had “decided not to publish the name of the Reddit user out of concern for his safety,” but the battle had already begun. Right-wing Twitter users excoriated CNN for what they saw as a threat against the Reddit user, and the hashtag #CNNBlackmail began to spread as thousands of the network’s detractors began to pile on.

“A multibillion dollar TV network blackmailing a private citizen into not making funny videos about it is not journalism, CNN,” tweeted Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

To understand how Reddit memes could ignite a national controversy and put a multibillion-dollar media company on its heels, it helps to know that right-wing meme-makers are a particularly prolific and vocal internet subcommunity. They gather in clusters on Reddit, and similar sites like 4chan and Discord, in order to trade images and strategize about disseminating them to wide audiences.

Their goal isn’t necessarily political influence. For some, it’s a game whose only goal is to impress and entertain other meme enthusiasts; for others, it’s a more serious pursuit designed to push the limits of discourse, either by riling up the enemy camp or by creating something that becomes ammunition for their own side. A particularly clever creation (or “dank meme,” in the jargon of the trade) might be shared by a prominent alt-right Twitter user or, in rare cases, by a bona fide public figure.

But in instances where the meme-making community finds itself facing off against a clear antagonist, its tactics can be swift and brutal, and can catch large institutions off guard.

In these communities, a feud with CNN over the identity of a Reddit user provided a perfect storm of hot-button topics: speech policing, journalist ethics and the perceived bullying of right-wing sympathizers on social media. The fact that the media organization in question was CNN, which has been singled out for criticism in recent weeks by the Trump administration, only added fuel to the fire.

In a Reddit message, a user known as ShadowMan3001, one of the moderators of /r/The_Donald, told me that memes were “by far the fastest, and likely the most effective, means of spreading an idea” in today’s oversaturated media environment. He added that CNN’s statement about possibly releasing the identity of the Reddit meme-maker was “a glaring example of their absolute lack of not only journalistic integrity, but basic morality.”

That was certainly the theme of the right wing’s subterranean meme machines as they kicked into high gear Wednesday. The Reddit forum r/CNNmemes, a self-described outpost for “memes of CNN or other failing MSM networks,” began to fill with user-generated images. One user pasted CNN’s logo into a still image from what appeared to be an ISIS hostage video, implying that the network had coerced the Reddit user behind the pro-Trump meme into making an apology. Another user superimposed CNN’s logo onto the face of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator.

On Discord, a chat app for gamers where several right-wing factions congregate in private groups, the news of a new, high-profile feud was cause for celebration. Some even likened the effort to humiliate CNN to Peter Thiel’s well-publicized campaign to take down Gawker, another longtime enemy of the online right.

“I want to see CNN go down like Gawker,” wrote one user, posting to a pro-Trump Discord channel called Centipede Central.

“Fight the FAKE NEWS with all of your strength and all of your wit,” wrote another user.

Remarkably, the CNN episode has managed to unite the notoriously fractious right-wing meme community under a common cause. On 4chan, a message board known for off-color humor and offensive memes, one poster wrote: “Right now, Reddit and r/TheDonald are our allies. We may not like them but we don’t have to. We are fighting a common enemy ... everyone should be producing as many anti-CNN memes as possible.”

By midday on Wednesday, the meme armies on Reddit, 4chan, Discord and other right-wing enclaves had declared that “the second meme war” had begun. (Meme War I, according to these groups, was getting Mr. Trump elected in the first place.)

Eventually, as is all too common in these kinds of internet feuds, the meme community’s ironic, half-joking battle cries turned into serious discussions of tactics and strategies that would have real-world consequences for their enemies. Pro-Trump Twitter users began harassing Andrew Kaczynski, the CNN reporter who reported on the Reddit poster, as well as exposing the personal information of other CNN staff members. Others pledged to complain to CNN’s advertisers one by one about the network’s coverage. They would, they said, stop at nothing to inflict pain on the president’s media foes, one grainy image at a time.

“The next meme war is upon us,” wrote one Discord user, “and we will win.”

Hmmm I am a veteran and if IIRC, 2 years service is minimum requirement to get VA health care. Of course there are income requirements.

Here ya go;

https://www.va.gov/HEALTHBENEFITS/apply/veterans.asp

Minimum Duty Requirements

Most Veterans who enlisted after September 7, 1980, or entered active duty after October 16, 1981, must have served 24 continuous months or the full period for which they were called to active duty in order to be eligible. This minimum duty requirement may not apply to Veterans who were discharged for a disability incurred or aggravated in the line of duty, for a hardship or “early out,” or those who served prior to September 7, 1980. Since there are a number of other exceptions to the minimum duty requirements, VA encourages all Veterans to apply so that we may determine their enrollment eligibility.

Apparently CNN tracked down the wrong person. Per Wikileaks: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/882672343037988864

CNN appears to have even identified the wrong person over Trump's CNN meme tweet. Video tweeted by Trump has substantial differences.

---

So basically CNN borderline blackmailed somebody for making the CNN video and making racist posts in the past. Ignoring the part about coercion, there's one major problem here: Trump actually got the meme from somewhere else! CNN didn't even bother to verify that it was the same video. :NeedAFacepalmEmoji:

Hope they get sued over it! Thank God we have Fox News. May not be 100% accurate but they are the fairest of all news channels.

Vets have to have a service connected disability in order to receive free healthcare from the va, and even then, the only "free" part about it is that the medical treatment usually has to coincide with your disability.

Combat vets gets free healthcare and dental for 5 years after our ETS, after that we can be seen but have to pay a very small co pay.

The only vets who get completely free healthcare for the rest of their lives are vets rated at 100%.

I believe you're a vet, but something tells me you don't use the va all too often. Unfortunately I'm there twice a week.

Great posts!

The Media has attacked Trump, made up lies with zero proof and now the President has hit back, 10 times harder I might add, and CNN and MSNBC are all but finished. People everywhere are calling them fake news and their viewership has plummeted.

Lefties cry that Trump isn't acting like a President but I say oh yes he is! Who else but a President can knock down this giant corrupt Media that eats the American People for lunch, at will?

Our President is Leading We the People in an effort to Drain The Swamp! He has crushed CNN and MSNBC while putting the others on notice.

Thank you Mr.President! A man of the People.

Whatever...the tweet still makes the POTUS look dumber than a 5th grader for the whole world to see.

Just like your hero below.

I thought it was funny, but it's not even about the Tweet anymore so much as it is this specific "news" network's shameful response to it.

Yes, attacking the free press is so presidential. He's the biggest snowflake I've ever seen.

Once the Free Press crossed the line and became an opposition party they opened themselves up to being treated like an opposition party.

It just takes an All American man, like Trump, to have the guts to stand up to them and show everyone their #TrueColors.

Excusing the acts of a moron isn't a becoming trait.

Neither is calling someone 10 times smarter than you a moron.

One of the top psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow had this to say about Trump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFcbQFHLptQ

Crazy like a Fox.

Top of what?

According to the Associated Press, Ablow "freely mixes psychiatric assessments with political criticism, a unique twist in the realm of cable news commentary that some medical colleagues find unethical." Ablow has, for instance, frequently diagnosed former President Obama as having "abandonment issues" without ever having met or treated the former president. Ablow has asserted that Obama dislikes the United States, that he prefers Africa to the United States, and wants the United States to dissolve. Ablow promoted a conspiracy theory that Obama wanted Ebola to spread to America because he wanted America to suffer as much as poor countries. He publicly speculated that Vice President Joe Biden had dementia after his 2012 VP debate performance.
Ford Vox, a staff physiatrist at the Shepherd Brain Injury Rehabilitation Center in Atlanta, said that Ablow's attempts to connect his political views to medical analysis "is really just irresponsible and it's embarrassing for physicians in general". Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and past president of the American Psychiatric Association, said that "It is shameful and unfortunate that he is given a platform by Fox News or any other media organization. Basically he is a narcissistic self-promoter of limited and dubious expertise."

He sounds more like a psychiatrist turned political hack.

He is at least equally qualified as any other Psychiatrist who thinks he can diagnose from the tv set.

I wish it could be done that way so I could send a tape of myself to my Doctor and he could stick his finger in that!

This I will agree with.. doctors, well meaning as they may be, should avoid offering diagnosis based on watching somebody on television.

Ford Vox, who contributes frequently to CNN Opinion, is a physician specializing in brain injury in Atlanta.

Sounds like some of the lawyers on the CNN payroll.

Dang ... i been excusing your acts for years ... ...

Hey unlike Trump, at least Ive been willing to admit that I'm not qualified to be president. lol

Let's face it, the guy is in Europe on a very important foreign policy trip and still can't help himself from attacking the press.

They probably need attacking. They make crap up, then spend hours, days, weeks, and months hammering it home.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/06/cnn-falsely-claims-merkel-chose-g20-location-to-hurt-trump/

I don't know what people think of the Federalist........but this is something to keep in mind about CNN. If it's true, CNN is about as unbiased as 40.

Trump was interrupted 6 times during his speech in Poland by the crowd chanting...

Donald Trump!
Donald Trump!
Donald Trump!

Sounds like my house when he is on tv.

Since this thread is about all sorts of things, I'll just put it here instead of starting a new one...

Seattle fires research team that proved minimum wage hike would hurt low-wage workers
By Alana Bannan | July 6, 2017 | Comments


Seattle leaders are displaying shocking bias by turning over a study on their minimum wage increase to Michael Reich, a left-leaning economics professor at the University of California Berkeley, after their initial sanctioned study with the University of Washington (UW) proved their decision to raise the wage was having adverse effects.

Seattle’s 2014 legislation called for a gradual increase of the city’s minimum wage until it reaches $15 an hour. Following the vote, commissioners recruited a team of UW researchers to find the effects of the steady rising minimum wage. Not to the surprise of fiscal conservatives, the study found the last minimum wage increase ($10.50 to $13 an hour) resulted in a 6 percent drop of what employers are able to pay their employees — an adverse effect on both employment rates and the hours workers are able to pick up.

Despite the study receiving bipartisanship acknowledgment, Seattle city leaders abruptly pulled the UW study and turned it over to a well-known “raise the wage” activist. Seattle City councilwoman Kshama Sawanat critiqued the methodology and abruptly cut funding.

“The moment we saw it was based on flawed methodology and was going to be unreliable, the Vigdor study no longer speaks for City Hall,” said Sawant, who ran for her current councilwoman position as a socialist.

Councilwoman Sawant’s dislike of the study’s methodology seems disingenuous and suspicions surrounding a bias on the part of Sawant and other city leaders deepen when looking at who city leaders sought out as a replacement for evaluating the effects of Seattle’s minimum wage.

Sawant and Mayor Murray contacted Professor Reich of UC Berkeley after retracting funding from the University of Washington team. Professor Reich is most well-known for being a founding member of the anti-capitalist group, the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE). URPE states on their website that their mission is to “construct a progressive social policy, and a human-centered radical alternative to capitalism.”

Professor Reich’s clear personal opposition to capitalism coupled with his past studies revealing the benefits of raising the minimum wage leave one wondering if Seattle city leaders sought him out for his politics rather than his economic expertise.
_______________________________

Red Alert Politics

the only thing I disagree with in the article is the 5th word.. this isn't shocking at all.

Pretty cool site, run by conservative millennials for conservative millennials... Gives you a pretty good understanding of what the next generation of conservatives/republicans is thinking about. No shocker, I tend to agree with it more than I do the current republican leadership.. and I use the term leadership loosely.

This is working out well .. I'm not sure for who cause it certainly isn't the low income people its suppose to be helping .. *L* ...

In Maine I believe it was ... It was one of those small NE states ... the restaurant workers actually got the state to revoke the minimum wage increase for their industry ... the SHOCKING part to me was that the state legislatures actually did what the people wanted and rolled the law back for the restaurant people ...

I remember when they announced it in NY .. within a month Verizon closed 2 or 3 call center and 4 or 5 other call centers and factories announced they'd be moving there operations due to the increased minimum wage ... a buddy of mine is now making plans to close his restaurant/bar and get out of NY in the next 24 months because the increased minimum as it gets higher over the next two years will eat up all his profit unless he raises prices witch he just had to do and the ENTIRE restaurant/bar industry in my pole hometown has all ready seen a decrease in biusiness ...

And just like with the illegals and the refugees ... ITS SIMPLY NOT REPORTED when it diesn't fir the libs narrative of how "fair" and "righteous" and smart they are ...

The sad part .. many on here like Swish and OCD and CHS and in our society fall for the crap that there heroes spew no matter how little sense or close to reality it is ...

Look at oBUMa care ... the initial premise .. we're going to give 20 million more insurance coverage while at the same time were going to lower your premiums and your going to have better coverage .. that only makes sense in BIZZARO NO COMMON SENSE WORLD ...

Same with the trade deals Reagan started signing in the 80's and every other president til this one followed suit with ... it started with NAFTA .. i was a pup just starting out in business .. and it made ZERO SENSE to me we were going to open our borders up to Mexico and Canada (Mexico is the one that made me scratch my head and say ... HUH ... ) and this was somehow going to improve our exports more than it hurt what was going to happen to the businesses selling solely in this country ... Mexico was and still is DIRT POOR and i couldn't figure out how we were going to compete with a country of dirt cheap labor ... especially think back to the early 80's ... it was the hay day of unions ... i had friends working at GM making 22 an hour back in 1980 for pushing a broom ... not a lie ...

Some things just don't pass the simple as could be smell test .. and what the trade deals have done and how oBUMa care was presented just STUNK TO HIGH HEAVEN ... but the dolts just fell in line ... just like they do now .. if their side says it .. it MUST BE TRUE ...

Very sad on both sides ... very sad ...

Just wanted to hear that part again.

Why the EU-Japan trade pact is a big deal for Trump

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eu-japan-trade-pact-big-deal-trump-205202504.html

On Thursday, the European Union and Japan announced an agreement on a new trade deal.

Coming just one day before the start of the G-20 meeting in Germany, this deal is also seen as something of a rebuke to the antagonistic trade talk President Donald Trump made a cornerstone of his campaign and which has featured prominently in the early days of his presidency.

On Wednesday, for example, Trump tweeted that the United States has “made some of the worst Trade Deals in world history. [Why] should we continue these deals with countries that do not help us?”

Trump has also repeatedly referenced America’s “bad” or “one-sided” trade deals in the last 18 months.


In a statement, the European Commission called this “the most important bilateral trade agreement ever concluded by the EU.” The Commission added that this deal will “for the first time include a specific commitment to the Paris climate agreement.” Recall that earlier this year Trump said he had withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.

The New York Times writes that this deal is “an act of geopolitical theater,” and indeed it is. But that the EU and Japan reached a deal which had been in the works for years shows that while the Brexit vote and Trump’s victory were seen as signs that something like the “western neoliberal order” was cracking, these proclamations may have been either premature or misguided.

No one leader can change the world economy in one fell swoop

At the risk of making the EU-Japan trade deal something it is not — this deal does not show that everything is “fixed” or that the U.S.’s involvement in foreign affairs is now meaningless — it is worth emphasizing that this is an agreement in principle, a diplomatic show of force about which interests some of the world’s leading powers want to protect: free trade and economic collaboration chief among them.

But against a backdrop of the gnawing sense that something fundamental about the world order we thought we knew having changed in a post-Trump world, this deal is also a reminder no one world leader — U.S. president or otherwise — is likely in one fell swoop to alter international economic alignments.


President Donald Trump (L) with German chancellor Angela Merkel.
More
A recent report from Pew Research, for example, found that in the last year support for the EU among many member countries — notably Spain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands — rose sharply. Additionally, a report from CNN Money this week suggested Mexico and China could be in talks on a new trade deal. Both countries have been the target of perhaps Trump’s strongest rebukes of existing U.S. trade deals.

Among Trump’s first actions as president was signing an executive order pulling the U.S. from the Trans Pacific Partnership, while the administration has also signaled its intention to renegotiate NAFTA.

These actions were very much in line with Trump’s campaign and to be expected after his victory. This also established Trump’s negotiating position in the international community: the U.S. would be seeking to act unilaterally — that is, on a one-to-one basis — with its major trading partners rather than as part of a larger group.

Approach with skepticism

Certainly, both Trump’s win and Brexit came as a shock to the elite establishment not only in the U.S. and the U.K. but around the world as well. In his new book “The Retreat of Western Liberalism,” Edward Luce writes that, “If the intellectual basis of Western liberalism is skepticism, we should learn to live up to its meaning.”

And while this critique is aimed at those who were sure the spread of western liberalism would continue unabated and were left reeling after Brexit and Trump’s win, this cuts both ways.

The EU and Japan may be seizing on a lack of specifics emerging from the Trump administration on its stated desire to re-work the world’s existing series of economic integrations into something it deems more favorable for the U.S. On some reading, this deal may be putting off an inevitable reaction against this kind of free-trade state of play.

But that Trump can or will succeed in putting America first should be viewed with equal skepticism. Financial markets, to a large extent, have largely discounted that the Trump administration will pull off a kind of wholesale re-configuring of the global economic order.

This may be fine for a president who is clearly pleased with the rise in stock prices resulting from bets on a continued status quo.

The real question for Trump, though, is if this will be fine for voters.