John McCain, a Vietnam War hero, two-time Republican presidential contender and towering figure in Congress known for his bipartisan deal-making during six terms as an Arizona senator, has died. He was 81.

McCain's office confirmed his death at 4:28 p.m. Saturday in a statement.

Donald Trump’s arrival at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, Saturday morning marked 150 days of his 582 days in office that he’s spent at a golf club bearing his own name. That is a quarter of his time in office.

The visit also marked his 193rd day at a Trump property. Or a third of his time in office.

John McCain just died. We all knew this was coming.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/ ... acy-297689

McCain’s first brush with death came in July 1967 when, as a a navy pilot in the Vietnam war, a missile exploded near his fuel tanks, causing a ship fire that killed 134 troops. Three months later he was shot down over Vietnam, breaking both arms and a leg, and was captured by the North Vietnamese.

McCain was offered early release because his father was a four-star admiral but rejected it until his fellow PoWs were also freed. During five years in captivity, including more than two in solitary confinement, he suffered beatings and torture almost daily.

That McCain displayed rare fortitude in the “Hanoi Hilton” was common cause - until Trump mocked him during the 2016 election campaign, telling a conference in Iowa: “He’s not a war hero.” The future president, who avoided the draft five times, added: “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

edit: in other news, this'll interest someone.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... li=BBnbfcL

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-stormy-daniels-donald-trump-two-minutes-20180828-story.html

What a time to be alive.

Just look at what has been happening at the state level.

In North Carolina, after a Democrat won the governorship, Republicans used the incumbent’s final days to pass legislation stripping the governor’s office of much of its power.

In Georgia, Republicans tried to use transparently phony concerns about access for disabled voters to close most of the polling places in a mainly black district.

In West Virginia, Republican legislators exploited complaints about excessive spending to impeach the entire State Supreme Court and replace it with party loyalists.

And these are just the cases that have received national attention. There are surely scores if not hundreds of similar stories across the nation. What all of them reflect is the reality that the modern G.O.P. feels no allegiance to democratic ideals; it will do whatever it thinks it can get away with to entrench its power.

This week Axios created a bit of a stir with a scoop about a spreadsheet circulating among Republicans in Congress, listing investigations they think Democrats are likely to carry out if they take the House. The thing about the list is that every item on it — starting with Donald Trump’s tax returns — is something that obviously should be investigated, and would have been investigated under any other president. But the people circulating the document simply take it for granted that Republicans won’t address any of these issues: Party loyalty will prevail over constitutional responsibility.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/28/donald-trump-considering-regulations-google-search-engine-aide/1108261002/

So Trump thinks Google has rigged their search results against him. Meanwhile I'm just wondering when Google is gonna stage a coup already...

I refuse to believe that it took him this long to google himself.

I do. He's a 70 whatever year old white racist. They are technologically impaired.

I would bet a large sum of money that the recent tirade against Google, Facebook and Twitter is the direct result of watching some piece about it on FOX or the like.

More shit on the heap: Trump warns Evangelical leaders in a closed-door meeting at the White House that a "blue wave" in November will mean that the left will start violently taking them all out.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he was canceling pay raises for most federal employees that had been set to go into effect in January, citing government budget concerns.

In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Trump wrote that he’d decided “across-the-board” pay raises as well as locality pay raises for civilian federal workers in 2019 would be frozen.

“I have determined that for 2019, both across‑the‑board pay increases and locality pay increases will be set at zero,” he wrote. “These alternative pay plan decisions will not materially affect our ability to attract and retain a well‑qualified Federal workforce,” Trump added.

In the letter, Trump said a 25.7-percent pay raise for localities, as well as a 2.1-percent pay increase for across-the-board pay, both scheduled for January 2019, would add billions to the federal deficit. Specifically, he pointed to the scheduled locality pay raise as costing $25 billion.

“We must maintain efforts to put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and Federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases,” Trump wrote in the letter.

Good. The federal government is not a business and people should be discouraged from making careers within something that should be a public service.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-cancels-scheduled-pay-raises-most-federal-employees-n905151?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma



Well at least we now know how he plans to pay for the tax cuts for the rich.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-cancels-scheduled-pay-raises-most-federal-employees-n905151?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma



Well at least we now know how he plans to pay for the tax cuts for the rich.

So we were supposed to have a US politics thread at some point but I've been slacking off. Well here it is. Let's start with the obvious elephant (GOP pun not intended) in the room: the stupid motherfucker the US calls a president these days. Just for kicks, I've compiled a timeline of all the fuckery he's caused since his first day in office. There's something pretty much every day. And I probably left tons of things out too because that's how crazy this world has become.

Oh, by the way, if you voted for this clown, you're really, truly, a stupid motherfucker too. And if you still support him after all this, you're double that.

Not compiling all the sources (maybe I'll edit them later) because it'd take too long, but all of this is obviously easily verifiable information (mixed with some of my own biased commentary, but the facts remain). Items grouped together happened on the same day. Items in bold are particularly egregious.

January!

> On Day 1, POTUS proclaims "National Day of Patriotic Devotion", because of course he's a narcissistic cunt

> Women's March. Sean Spicer's first appearance as press sec, goes apeshit and whines like a giant manchild about the coverage of crowd size. This crowd size thing would continue to be a major issue for Trump and Spicer in the following weeks, because he's an insecure baby.
> Drone strikes in Yemen. What, you thought he wouldn't? LOL

> Trump claims millions of people voted illegally and he'd have won the popular vote otherwise. Claim is totally spurious without a shred of evidence, of course.
> Trump appoints an anti-net neutrality advocate, Ajit Varadaraj Pai, as chairman of the FCC.
> Kellyanne Conway coins the phrase "alternative facts"

> Trump reverses Obama's halt on Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota access

> Trump signs EO to "begin the construction of the wall", an essentially meaningless gesture
> Trump signs EO to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities
> He says he wants to investigate the "voter fraud", because he really can't let it go that he lost the popular vote

> Sean Spicer says the wall might be funded by a tariff on Mexico goods. Anyone with any shred of knowledge of trade and economics laughs out loud.
> The Mexican president takes no shit from the orange cretin and cancels their meeting. Trump's a master negotiator you guys
> A whole bunch of people resign from the Department of State

> Evil racist Breitbart fuckface Steve Bannon gets National Security Council seat

> Trump still talks about stealing Iraq's oil, apparently not realizing that'd be a war crime

> First attempt at Muslim ban goes into effect. Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan strangely absent from list of affected countries

> Federal judges in various states halt the Muslim ban
> Several casualties reported from Trump's first commando raid in Yemen, including several Yemeni civilians

> Sally Yates is fired

> Trump nominates Scalia Jr, aka Neil Gorsuch, as SCOTUS judge

> Senate confirms CEO of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson as... Secretary of State

> Sean Spicer uses the Quebec City shooting to defend the travel ban. Only problem with that is, well, the victims of the shooting were Muslims and the perpetrator was a white guy. Oops?

February!

> The Senate confirms Betsy Devos as Secretary of Education by a 51-50 vote, all according to party line except 2 dissenting Republicans (VP Pence broke the tie). Who better to serve as Secretary of Education than a millionaire airhead who doesn't believe in public education and who knows nothing about the field, and who thinks guns should be allowed in schools to fend off grizzly bears (not even making this up)? GOP wants to keep the population stupid and uneducated, since they turn into GOP voters.

> Senate confirms evil hobbit too-racist-for-Reagan-administration-in-the-80's Jeff Sessions as Attorney General (partisan line voting of course)

> Trump meets with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe with the cringiest handshake ever
> Tom Price, a pro-life nutter who also opposed tobacco regulation, is confirmed as... Secretary of Health and Human Services

> Trump blabs about sensitive information regarding North Korean missile test in earshot of random civilians during a dinner at Mar Lago (his private estate in Florida) with the Japanese PM

> Trump meets Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and attempts his macho handshake, only to be fail miserably
> Michael Flynn resigns as National Security Advisor for his undisclosed Russian ties
> Senate confirms Goldman Sachs exec Steve Mnuchin as... Secretary of the Treasury, because drain the swamp!!

> Senate confirms Linda McMahon as Administrator of the Small Business Administration, because this administration wasn't a total circus already and she surely knows a lot about small businesses like the WWE
> Trump repeals a law requiring disclosure of payments for commercial development of oil, natural gas or coal

> In a press conference, Trump whines about the media, denies Russian collusion, talks about Hillary for some reason
> Trump repeals an Obama environmental protection law regarding coal regulation

> Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier who has in the past launched lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency, is appointed as head of the... Environmental Protection Agency

> Trump holds a rally in Florida, because he's an attention whore who only cares about winning elections and not actually governing

> Memo is sent to deport any illegal immigrant accused of any crime

> Trump reverses an Obama policy that protects transgender people and lets them use the bathroom of their gender

> Jess Sessions rescinds Obama's work to start phasing out private prisons, because he has a hard-on for locking up poor people and people of colour

> The New York Times, CNN, Politico, Huff Post, LA Times and Buzzfeed are banned from White House press briefings. Fox News and Breitbar are not banned, of course.

> Trump proposes a budget with a 10% military increase, diverted from other sources such as the EPA. Tons of experienced military veterans criticize this insanity.

> Trump nullifies a bill that sought to close loopholes about background checks for gun purchasing

March

> Inquiry open by the House Intelligence Committee into Russian interference in the US elections

> Sessions "recuses" himself from that investigation because he's a perjurious motherfucker
> Senate confirms Ben Carson as... Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

> Trump tweets accusations that Obama wiretapped him. The accusations are, of course, entirely spurious

> Trump pledges to undo regulations that were put in place to protect consumers after the 2008 crisis

> Spicer accuses the GCHQ (UK) of spying on Trump, a claim he repeated from a Fox News pundit

> Trump tweets that any allegations about Russian collusion are "fake news" (sure, dude)

> Congress vote on Obamacare repeal is postponed due to overwhelming lack of support

> Trump signs EO to repeal the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, because what else can you expect from the man who routinely cheated his employees and contractors?

> Trump signs EO that removes climate change from deliberations during the National Environmental Policy Act, removes restrictions on fracking, and directs the EPA to get rid of the Clean Power Plan act (an Obama policy aiming to combat climate change)

> Ivanka Trump becomes an unpaid White House employee and gets security clearance

April

> Trump signs a congressional resolution allowing ISPs to more easily collect and sell customer usage data

> Department of State cuts funding to UN population fund, a fund focused on reproductive health and family planning

> Trump accuses Susan Rice (former National Security Advisor) of breaking the law, without evidence of course

> Trump orders a strike in Syria, seemingly forgetting his previous tweets where he said the USA shouldn't ever intervene in Syria

> Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court by the Senate

> Sean Spicer blunders on TV, saying "even Hitler didn't resort to gassing his own people"

> Trump signs a bill into that nullifies a regulation that would prevent states from withholding funds from abortion providers. The bill is labelled "the first major national pro-life bill in more than a decade"
> Scott Pruitt announces plans to reconsider a rule that would aim at reducing pollution from steam electric power plants

> Steve Mnuchin presents Trump's tax reform plans, which drastically cuts taxes to businesses and wealthy people, and in no way helps the poor and the middle class (shocking from a NYC billionaire living in towers made of gold, I know!)

> State Department website advertises Trump's Florida resort Mar-Lago (before being taken down after complaints)

> Day 100 of Trump's presidency. He initially made campaign promises based on that, but now that he hasn't done a shred of good, claims it's an arbitrary, meaningless threshold
> Trump gets all friendly with rabid murdering madman Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines president) and invites him to the WH
> Trump does NOT attend the traditional WH Correspondents' Dinner, because he's a coward who hates being roasted, as we all remember from those years ago when Obama roasted him

> Trump blames China for the DNC email leaks

May so far!

> Trump suggests abandoning the Senate rules about supermajorities, is pissy that he can't do whatever the hell he wants all the time

> The House votes in favour of repealing and replacing Obamacare with their horrible plan that would make millions of Americans lose health insurance, repeal the rule about banning pre-existing conditions, and would even consider domestic abuse, sexual abuse and pregnancy as "pre-existing conditions" (e.g. being a woman). Note, most congressmen voted for it without having even read it

> Sally Yates testifies before Senate about Michael Flynn

> James Comey, director of the FBI who was investigating Trump for his Russian ties, is fired by Trump
> WH claims the reason is because Comey was unfair to... Hillary Clinton during the email investigation (LOL), something Trump repeatedly praised Comey for earlier
> It is claimed Trump fired him at recommendations from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions

> Trump meets with Russian ambassadors in the Oval Office. American press is not allowed into the room but Russian press is.
> Russian press releases photos of the meeting, infuriating White House officials, who are quoted as saying "They tricked us" and "They lied" (LOL)

> Trump initiates an investigation into "voter fraud"
> In an interview, Trump says he would have fired Comey regardless of recommendations, contradicting his PR people

> Trump wants to stop press briefings and the WH to only release "written statements" instead
> Trump threatens Comey on twitter about "tapes" (Comey, unruffled, shoots back, "I hope there are tapes"

> Trump blabs classified information about an ISIS plot, obtained by an Israeli source, to Russian diplomats
> WH denies that this happened
> Intelligence experts are worried that Israel's source on the ground among ISIS might now be compromised

> Trump, seemingly ignoring the WH denials, says he "had the right" to share the information

> James Comey claims Trump asked him personally to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn (WH denies). That's called obstruction of justice
> In the same report about this, Comey says Trump asked him if he could jail journalists who "leaked classified information"

> A conversation between House Majority Leader McCarty and Paul Ryan talk about Russian collusion. A spokesman denied the conversation took place, until he was told there was a tape, then he claimed it was "just jokes" (sure, sure). The tape has Paul Ryan urging his fellows to silence, talking about "we're a family here".
> The FCC officially proposes to kill net neutrality

> Foreign leaders have to praise Trump and coddle him like a baby when meeting him

> Turkish president dictator Erdoğan visits White House. Erdoğan supporters (including part of his security staff) assault peaceful protesters while Erdoğan (and Trump) do nothing but watch. The entire thing was very likely planned by Erdoğan himself.

> Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, named person of interest in FBI investigation into Russian collusion.

> Saudi Arabia is the first country Trump visits on his first-ever foreign trip as president
> Trump signs $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia + $350b over 10 years to "fight ISIS", possibly largest single arms deal in US history. What could possibly go wrong? [Edit: turns out there might not be, WH lied about it, it was just a letter of intent]

> Two Ohio coal plants shut down. So much for coal revival!
> Remember those Carrier jobs Trump "saved" from being shipped to Mexico? Yeah, about that...

> Trump's budget of double failure at basic math
> Btw, that budget would do TONS of cuts (in the billions) to programs like Medicaid, food stamps, Meals on Wheels, drug treatment programs, and student loan subsidies. Because of course he hates the sick, the poor, the starving, and those who try to educate themselves.
> Trump visits Israel, says in a press conference "I never said it was from Israel", referring to his leak of classified information to the Russians, effectively confirming the source was Israeli. Basically a sitcom character come to life.

> G7 summit. Trump makes an ass of himself by using a golf cart instead of walking a few hundreds of yards to pose for a group picture (every other world leader walked), by rudely shoving aside another Prime Minister, by calling Germany "very bad" for daring to sell automobiles in the US, and myriads of other ways.
> Trump refuses to commit to the Paris agreement. The only other countries that refuse to join the accord are Syria and Nicaragua.

> Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, wanted to create a secret comm channel with the Kremlin. Totally not sketchy, nope.
> Twitter storm about "fake news", claims that any story using anonymous sources is "fake news" and should be disregarded. Later tweets a Fox News story using an anonymous source, because of course he's immune to irony or self-contradiction.

> #covfefe happens: Trump tweets a sentence fragment ending with a garbled, misspelled world "covfefe", and the tweet stays up for hours and the Internet explodes in mocking memes. While the word was obviously a typo for "coverage", instead of admitting to the typo, a few hours later the tweet is deleted and the WH pretends it was "intentional" and Sean Spicer says "the president and a small number of people know what it means". Because even saying "oh, I made a typo, then fell asleep and forgot to check" is too much to admit.
> Trump reiterates that he refuses to join the Paris Agreement.
> Elizabeth Warren tries to create a bipartisan bill that would help lower prices of hearing aids. Prominent Republicans and the NRA oppose the bill because... it's Warren. Even though the bill would be of great benefit to hunters and gun users whose hearing often gets damaged. Yeah. The GOP and the NRA are cartoon villains.

June

> Trump officially pulls out of the Paris Accord, pissing off literally the entire world
> After the terror attacks in the UK (Manchester and London), Trump reiterates his need for the travel ban
> Trump dishonestly quotes London mayor out of context, who told his people not to be alarmed at additional police presence (Trump framed it as him saying "do not be alarmed by the terror attacks" which is a lie)

> Clusterfuck in the Middle-East, where a bunch of countries (incl. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and more) cut diplomatic ties with Qatar; Trump essentially takes their side in this (even takes credit, lol), despite a) Saudi Arabia being a primary source of salafist/terrorist ideology and b) the USA having their biggest military base in the ME in Qatar. Oops?
> Turns out there wasn't a billion-dollar arms sales deal with Saudi Arabia, just a letter of intent? White House lied, shocking

> Trump funnelled charity money meant for kids with cancer into his business. Hey, gotta live up to the cartoon villain image, right?

> Eric Trump says Democrats aren't people
> Trump wants to cut billions from food stamps AND punish stores for accepting them, which would hurt poor people, kids and small businesses/independent grocers all at once. Cartoon villain? Yeah, I know, this is getting redundant, but... they just won't stop

>> Following updates courtesy of Resident_Hazard:

>> Trump is now totally under investigation for obstruction of justice.

>> Republican Steve Scalise, Majority Whip of the House of Representatives was among four people shot. Which prompted the cancellation of a House hearing on gun control today. Republican, no doubt, stuck trying to figure out how to spin that guns are super awesome after one of their own gets shot.

>> The only truly evil Hobbit, Jeff Sessions scurried into and out of his testimony hearing blathering on in a manner befitting a person with no working brain or memory, contradicted himself, and wasted everyone's time.
>> Trump finally held his first Cabinet Meeting, which has been described across the board as creepy, a sign of American collapse, and downright Soviet and surreal. (Morri notes: this is fucking "Dear Leader" kind of nonsense, how can anyone defend this tripe? then again how can anyone defend ANY of this...)

>> On a fucking hilarious note, the 9th Circuit Court ruled that Trump's tweets are to be taken as an official dialog, furthered by Sean Spicer's similar statement from an earlier point.




--------------
Welp. Good job, America. Good thing you didn't elect the sane lady who misused an email server, who knows what kind of state the world would be in today...

...if you live in India then I live in St. Petersburg.

In that case, as an Indian you didn't vote in the US elections so who are you to lecture anyone on this continent about how we describe our politicians?

damn vganesh ownin the libs #logic

So it's not okay for Morrigan to use "abusive and derogatory language" about Trump but you're exempt from the rule and can say what you like about left-wingers? Personally I don't have a strong opinion on this particular subject of left/right wing politics, but I think you should be following your own rules...

You've got to wonder what kind of environment caused some random dude from India to not only buy-in to US conservative propaganda wholesale, but to feverishly regurgitate and defend it online. Like seriously, this is the most cucked shit this side of Dennis Quaid. Wasn't it just supposed to be liberals who wanted to tend to other people's young?

There's a world of difference between expressing something civilly and expressing something in the form of using abusive and derogatory language and I expressed myself civilly and showed the mirror to the Left and their ilk and if someone from their side gets worked up on being shown the truth about them in the mirror, so be it and they deserve it.

You're defending the GOP and the people who support them; the shit-flinging monkeys of Western politics. They are anything but civil.

Also, bootlicking cunts like you can take your hollow, mock-polite rhetoric and get fucked. You care more about being called mean names than about the people suffering as a result of the direct actions of this pathetic excuse for an administration. And I know this is going to completely fly over your head like the empty sociopath you are and you're just gonna use my comment as yet another example of "the intolerant left", so get fucked again.

Thanks for the kind words. My intent was never that. Earthcubed just got on my nerves by poking his nose unnecessarily.

i was kidding. i skimmed like half a post and realized you had literally nothing of value to say so i shitposted. fuck donald trump and fuck people that try to defend him.

Glad to see bootlicking cunts still piss themselves when adressed for what they are.

For someone who doesn't care about what we think of him, you do take your sweet time to answer to every single post addressing you.

Bootlicker.