Prickly City by Scott Stantis for August 21, 2020

You gotta wonder how much the Trump Disciples who read these boards donated to Steve Bannon and “We Build the Wall”.

I’m sure the laissez-faire republicans and libertarians are ecstatic to have the Resident picking winners and losers from the Oval Office. This, Goodyear and Goya.

The Visible Hand of the Market.

He didn’t decide to go after Tik-Tok because it’s owned by the Chinese. He decided to target it after thousands of people used it to reserve seats at his Oklahoma rally with no intention of attending. This led to a half-empty auditorium which embarrassed Trump, so he needs to have his revenge for his hurt feelings, poor baby.

Annoying a generation of young people. What a great political strategy. Republicans are really seeding the future…

“One day, when the Glory comes”… man, John Legend made me forget for a minute that I’m not a Christian. Pretty proud of Joey too…

Dec 16, 2019 -

US politicians’ concern over TikTok began with an investigation the Guardian published on September 25, which revealed leaked documents that showed TikTok instructing its moderators to censor videos that mentioned topics sensitive to the Communist Party of China: Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, and the religious group Falun Gong, for instance.

The Guardian’s investigation came after the Washington Post noted that a search for Hong Kong-related topics on TikTok showed virtually zero content about the ongoing and widely publicized pro-democracy protests, which were a major topic on other social media sites at the time.

In early October, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) called for a formal investigation into whether TikTok poses a national security risk.

“These Chinese-owned apps are increasingly being used to censor content and silence open discussion on topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese Government and Community Party,” Rubio wrote in a letter addressed to US Department of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

“The Chinese government’s nefarious efforts to censor information inside free societies around the world cannot be accepted and pose serious long-term challenges to the US and our allies.”

Later that month, two senators from both political parties, Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), followed suit, calling for a “rigorous assessment” of the potential national security risks of TikTok by US intelligence officials.

Their memo expressed concern that it could be a target of foreign influence campaigns like those during the 2016 election, and noted that Chinese companies are required to adhere to Chinese law, which grants the government much greater access than the US to the data belonging to private companies.

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https://www.vox.com/open-sourced/2019/12/16/21013048/tiktok-china-national-security-investigation

I’m pretty sure a lot of folks made fun of Bloomberg’s speech. But he said a couple things that would seem appropriate here.

(To the effect of) I’m not telling you not to vote for Trump because he’s a bad guy; I’m telling you not to vote for Trump because he’s done a terrible job.

After reminding us that all that was great from Trump’s pre-virus times was the economy that he inherited from Obama and, like Trump’s previous businesses, Trump has run them into the ground, Mike then asks, to the effect of, would you re-hire such a person?

Admittedly, not the most inspiring or emotional speech of the convention, I found its comparisons bone-chilling.

Something else I considered odd: The number of Republicans taking the stage this week to endorse Biden.

In 2016, we nominated a candidate more Republican than Trump.

This year, we’ve done it again, only this time, at least a few Republicans have taken notice…

The Virtual Democrat Convention was this week. Seemes most commenters here missed it. Must be more interested in the President then their own so called candidate , wait their candidate is an old rich white guy who has business ties to Ukraine and China, and treats women inappropriately. Maybe they just didn’t notice the differance.

Why Recent Republican Presidents Have Been Economic Failures

Joe Biden should remind Americans that Democrats have been better stewards of the economy for decades.

✁

President Trump’s economy — enhanced by massive deficit spending, which somehow ceased to bother Republicans — was chugging along before the pandemic, creating around 6.6 million jobs, or about 175,000 a month (still lower than Mr. Obama’s second term average).

He made no effort to address the longstanding problem of economic inequality and arguably exacerbated it with his 2017 tax cut.

And since the coronavirus crisis, according to the St. Louis Fed, the economy has lost nearly 13 million jobs, leaving Mr. Trump, for now, more than six million jobs in the red.

Obviously, the coronavirus was not Mr. Trump’s fault. He can be faulted, however, for the botched response to it and for much of the resulting economic mess.

A national lockdown from March to June, besides limiting the number of deaths, would have made that illusory “V-shaped recovery” far more likely and the economy far more resilient.

But the Trump administration didn’t do that. And experts foresee more economic duress. The Conference Board, for example, predicts a baseline contraction of gross domestic product by about 5 percent in 2020.

These Republican failures are not an unhappy coincidence. They’re a result of conservative governing practice.

Republicans no longer fundamentally believe in the workings of government, so they don’t govern well. Their contempt for government is a result of conservative economic theory.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/opinion/democrats-republicans-economy.html

Isn’t against the law for a president to interfere in a private business?

If indeed, John Adams 96 is a re-boot of Tom Pain, then I will respond to him here.

No question, we need to be concerned about Chinese overreach and control. But the point of other posters today is not that Trump cared about the Chinese, but was simply being petty and needing someone to blame for his campaign event in Oklahoma – an event that failed politically but may well have succeeded fantastically at spreading the virus! (Even if Herman Cain’s estate tries to deny it)

At the same time, I’m not exactly sure how or why TP was banned. Terrible as he was, I see a lot of stuff that’s worse. Frankly, all Tom did was live up to his last name.