The National Emergency Thread

Am I wicked or evil, that I hope a small but true emergency arises that will force a sense of perspective back into national leadership?

(I'm trying to be a-political, and not hoping for deaths or major maiming)

Mr. Trump's "national emergency" is a joke but the one he created by furloughing 800,000 workers is not.  I was referring to Trump's manufactured lies.

ml1 said:
  An awful lot of Americans seem to want to have an all-powerful executive.  I hope I'm wrong and this imbalance is ultimately remedied.  I'm just not that optimistic.

I think that at least 25% of Americans want ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer .

To be fair, I think a lot of those who oppose Trump would have supported Obama is he tried to pull off a power grab.

joanne said:

drummerboy said:
The FDA has stopped inspecting our food supply.
Yay.

 Really? It's stopped inspections and checks? Cripes! Does that means hazard notices and recalls, safety notices etc won't be issued?   

Trump had already started dismantling FDA regulations before the shutdown.

https://people.com/politics/trump-fda-rollbacks-e-coli-outbreak/

Last spring, another E. coli outbreak in lettuce infected 210 people, hospitalized 96 people and killed five. Despite the fatal outbreak, Trump’s U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) then allegedly delayed important water-testing requirements for produce growers, Reveal reported in September.

Those rules were crafted by the Obama administration’s FDA and passed into legislation by Congress in 2011, in response to several disease outbreaks linked to food, Reveal reported. The rules, which should have gone into effect earlier this year, require farmers to regularly test their irrigation water, which often gets polluted from fecal runoff from livestock or wildlife waste, causing the growth of pathogens such as E. coli.

I was reading earlier today (my time, I'm about to go bed) that you're all on the verge of a very nasty flu epidemic, worse than last year's. Really won't take much to push it over. 

yahooyahoo said:

joanne said:

drummerboy said:
The FDA has stopped inspecting our food supply.
Yay.

 Really? It's stopped inspections and checks? Cripes! Does that means hazard notices and recalls, safety notices etc won't be issued?   

Trump had already started dismantling FDA regulations before the shutdown.
https://people.com/politics/trump-fda-rollbacks-e-coli-outbreak/

Last spring, another E. coli outbreak in lettuce infected 210 people, hospitalized 96 people and killed five. Despite the fatal outbreak, Trump’s U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) then allegedly delayed important water-testing requirements for produce growers, Reveal reported in September.
Those rules were crafted by the Obama administration’s FDA and passed into legislation by Congress in 2011, in response to several disease outbreaks linked to food, Reveal reported. The rules, which should have gone into effect earlier this year, require farmers to regularly test their irrigation water, which often gets polluted from fecal runoff from livestock or wildlife waste, causing the growth of pathogens such as E. coli.

This gives a whole new meaning to the saying "everything trump touches goes to sh*t'

tjohn said:

ml1 said:
  An awful lot of Americans seem to want to have an all-powerful executive.  I hope I'm wrong and this imbalance is ultimately remedied.  I'm just not that optimistic.

I think that at least 25% of Americans want ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer .
To be fair, I think a lot of those who oppose Trump would have supported Obama is he tried to pull off a power grab.

that's why I think it's more than 25% who want an all-powerful leader.  There's a left-leaning group and a right-leaning group who are ok with an authoritarian, as long as it's their authoritarian.

ml1 said:

tjohn said:

ml1 said:
  An awful lot of Americans seem to want to have an all-powerful executive.  I hope I'm wrong and this imbalance is ultimately remedied.  I'm just not that optimistic.

I think that at least 25% of Americans want ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer .
To be fair, I think a lot of those who oppose Trump would have supported Obama is he tried to pull off a power grab.

that's why I think it's more than 25% who want an all-powerful leader.  There's a left-leaning group and a right-leaning group who are ok with an authoritarian, as long as it's their authoritarian.

 The political spectrum is circular with the far right and far left becoming indistinguishable.

I don't quite get why Lindsay Graham is pushing for the national emergency and build the wall.  I thought he had a little common sense.  

jamie said:
I don't quite get why Lindsay Graham is pushing for the national emergency and build the wall.  I thought he had a little common sense.  

He had common sense when Lieberman and/or McCain were telling him what to do. Without them, not so much.

thank god the murderer / kidnapper suspect in Wisc is a white guy.  

Red_Barchetta said:
thank god the murderer / kidnapper suspect in Wisc is a white guy.  

 Amen to that.

I’ve just enjoyed the Guardian’s review of ‘last night’s late night comedians’. While it’s unfair that there almost needs to be so much political turmoil for them to have so much rich material, do you sometimes wish for a simple ‘reset’ button??

Sigh.

basil said:

jamie said:
I don't quite get why Lindsay Graham is pushing for the national emergency and build the wall.  I thought he had a little common sense.  

He had common sense when Lieberman and/or McCain were telling him what to do. Without them, not so much.

If you saw his performance during the Kavanaugh hearings, you wouldn't think he had any common sense.

Graham has some sort of political bipolar condition. He swings between being eminently reasonable to totally whacko.

drummerboy said:
Graham has some sort of political bipolar condition. He swings between being eminently reasonable to totally whacko.

 Agreed.  I've been wondering what's driving it.  Does Trump occasionally dangle a cabinet position in front of him?

joanne said:
I’ve just enjoyed the Guardian’s review of ‘last night’s late night comedians’. While it’s unfair that there almost needs to be so much political turmoil for them to have so much rich material, do you sometimes wish for a simple ‘reset’ button??
Sigh.

Related to your thought, I often wonder how much time I would've spent reading, thinking about, and watching news in the past two years. I've always been a politics "user" but I've been a stone "junkie" for the past two years. I think DJT has caused lots of anxiety in me and in the country at large. 

I’ve also begun thinking about the air traffic controller from Breaking Bad who, after his daughter’s OD death, becomes so distracted he causes an airline crash. How many  real ones are distracted by the shutdown and loss of pay?

GL2, we felt like that under Abbott, and now with Dutton as Home Affairs Minister - you just don't want to hear the headlines any more because you just know there's another cringeworthy moment hiding a shifty legislative bungle lurking in there.

I've formed my own crazy conspiracy theory. Tell me what you think. I'm thinking about some old 40s movie where people pull off a robbery by turning the lights off.

I heard about how the White House phones are now being answered by voicemail. It got me thinking about what other lights are off. Is there a government agency that logs large money transfers? And are their lights out? Is Trump pulling off a heist that the government agency can legitimately say it can't trace because it was shut down?

That’d be an interesting movie twist

I’m wondering if, now that a record has been broken and he is indeed acknowledged to be No. 1 at something, the ego will be appeased and more ready to grant a boon or two.

have just seen this article on dying beech trees in Ohio (signalling a fairly big environmental crisis) except no-one really understands what’s happening.

https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2019/01/beech-trees-in-ohio-are-dying-and.html#y3YtFcYIzmGtydSx.97

Thinking of the damaged Joshua Trees and other damaged wikderness areas, maybe it’s time to simply revive the old Roman fortress walls with turrets, roads etc on top and rooms inside, and have elephant squads patrolling, like in Hannibal’s time??? It’ll look good on postcards, there’ll be loads of storage space; design and construction stages will keep locals busy for a while; meanwhile, govt can resume so important work can pick up where it matters.

Longtime Adirondack Park property owners (I am one) are continually in battles to keep off road vehicles out of certain parts of the Park, for fear of damage. This Joshua Tree damage is very dispiriting. Why TF go to a wilderness area just to burn gas and leave tracks? 

Perhaps Mueller will find the true emergency:

LOST said:
Perhaps Mueller will find the true emergency:

 love that movie, and this scene has stuck in my memory for decades.

need to bump this. there are National Emergency noises coming from the WH

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/24/politics/trump-border-wall-emergency-draft/index.html

That would allow him to declare martial law. Protests would be illegal, and it would be legal for police to be violent against protestors.

Tom_Reingold said:
That would allow him to declare martial law. Protests would be illegal, and it would be legal for police to be violent against protestors.

 When has it been illegal for police to be violent against protestors?  Can anyone think of a time?  Maybe the marches that are sponsored by major political parties are safe.  Remember the civil rights era? Remember Vietnam war protests?  Protests are often violent. The problem is, once somebody starts the violence, how do you end it?  

Now that the political parties sponsor protests I guess people feel safer. 

Lovesagoodsale said:

Tom_Reingold said:
That would allow him to declare martial law. Protests would be illegal, and it would be legal for police to be violent against protestors.

 When has it been illegal for police to be violent against protestors?  Can anyone think of a time?  Maybe the marches that are sponsored by major political parties are safe.  Remember the civil rights era? Remember Vietnam war protests?  Protests are often violent. The problem is, once somebody starts the violence, how do you end it?  


Now that the political parties sponsor protests I guess people feel safer. 

 Are you serious? Tell us why officers have weapons.

Keep your head down, Tom. NRA forces are working to bring open-carry to NYC.