US General Election 2016

{{According to Judge Napolitano on Fox News, Trump's pick for the AG job, Whitaker, is not actually legally qualified under the law to serve in that position. Apparently following Watergate Congress made new rules to make it harder for a President to put his mates in the job, and the legal criteria necessary which they drew up for someone in the AG position Whitaker doesn't meet.
Given he is not eligible for the position under he Constitution surely his appointment simply can't go ahead? How is this challenged in the US system when it so obviously breaking the existing laws? Can Congress just throw it out? Or does it have to go to court to be challenged?}}

Most likely he can do administrative duties, but will be challenged if he does anything that requires executive decision making.

{{That would surely almost entirely neuter him, which I dont think is what Trump has in mind with his appointment.
far as I can tell you have to be sworn in by Congress and take an oath before anyone is legally allowed to hold the office at all or be appointed to it- and he hasn't been. Its that simple and clear cut it seems.
So how can he even be given the position, even if he doesn't make executive decisions- he seems simply legally ineligible for the role under the law. }}

Since Trump clearly didn't want to take the easy route and make Rod Rosenstein acting AG, he's very limited. And Whitaker it seems can't become AG after being acting AG, so either Trump didn't know what he was doing or doesn't want Whitaker as his final attorney general. With Trump "doesn't know what he's doing" is usually the safer bet.

{{ My curiosity lies however in what happens if you have a President who makes appointments out of not knowing what they are doing, and so makes ones which are not actually legal under the law- such as this one- how do you stop him? Is there a mechanism in place already or is this a case of no other President has ever been so naive about the laws they are upholding so its never come up before, and there isn't a precedent to follow?
In short is there anything to actually stop him making illegal appointments?}}

He has a tendency to do things nobody else would even consider (like not divesting from his own hotel right down the street from all the government buildings) and so nobody's bothered to figure out how to stop such a thing. The only real brake on a president is either being criminally arrested or being impeached. This congress isn't likely to impeach him, and it's not clear exactly how you go about arresting a president - do federal agents waltz right through federal security forces? The main thing that's stopped him so far is Congress holding the purse strings and federal courts blocking his actions.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{According to Judge Napolitano on Fox News, Trump's pick for the AG job, Whitaker, is not actually legally qualified under the law to serve in that position. Apparently following Watergate Congress made new rules to make it harder for a President to put his mates in the job, and the legal criteria necessary which they drew up for someone in the AG position Whitaker doesn't meet.
Given he is not eligible for the position under he Constitution surely his appointment simply can't go ahead? How is this challenged in the US system when it so obviously breaking the existing laws? Can Congress just throw it out? Or does it have to go to court to be challenged?}}

My bet is that it won't come to that. Whitaker is taking on the duties of AG temporarily because Sessions technically resigned, which makes a certain amount of sense (even if Sessions was asked to resign...) But I think any attempt to appoint him permanently would trigger alarm bells among both lawmakers and the judiciary. The presidency can't function effectively without at least some cooperation from the other two branches of government, so there are lot's of practical ways of pushing back short of direct legal challenges.

Here's a good article on how the tariffs are affecting American farmers all over the country. I'm not going to go into details of how we're all hustling right now, but the article paints a pretty accurate picture.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-troubleshooters-insight/u-s-farmers-scramble-to-contain-trade-war-damage-find-new-markets-idUSKCN1NJ1LS

U.S. farmers would need about 11,000 markets the size of Sri Lanka to replace Chinese soybean purchases, but these days many growers will take any shred of new business they can get. A small but growing number of farmers have all but given up waiting for diplomatic solutions and started scrambling themselves to help open new markets and salvage existing ones disrupted by tariffs, according to dozens of interviews with producers, industry officials and trade lobbying groups. They are lobbying lawmakers, joining overseas trade trips, and hosting prospective buyers – often while neglecting or passing off farm duties during harvest.
.......
“If something doesn’t happen soon,” he said, “we’re going to lose a generation of farmers.”

{{Few things I took form that Dave- first the hard work and resourcefulness of you farming types, I suppose working the land lends itself to people with a hands on do it myself then attitude.

The other was a couple of quotes, this one-

U.S. net farm income will fall to $65.7 billion this year, down 47 percent from just five years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts.

Because that's obviously catastrophic and not sustainable for any real length of time without massive Government subsidy to make up for.

And this one-

Chinese importers said they saw buying U.S. soybeans as politically untenable even if their prices continue to fall.


Which is an aspect I stupidly had not been accounting for when looking at Trumps trade war- that from a Chinese perspective there is an actual potential threat in being seen to do business with the US at all in this climate. Thats a layer of resistance it will be near impossible to beat, you are not targeting the goodwill of the buyers to convince them to go with your goods, it doesn't really matter how much they like you, your product, its price or how much you woo them, you're trying to convince them to risk themselves, their livelihood and maybe even their freedom or lives if the Chinese government decide they dont like it if they buy US.

That alone convinces me there is no solution for this other than political. And Trump is no politician!}}

Farms have huge amounts of money passing through them, yet their margins are a shoestring. This means any vagaries of weather or politics will hit farmers much harder than industry with larger margins. I doubt Trump has any inkling of this.

halfwise wrote:Farms have huge amounts of money passing through them, yet their margins are a shoestring.

Shoestrings??? I dream of being able to afford shoestrings! It's old baling twine for me...

At least we're not as bad off as some of the big grain and soy farmers. Because our crops are smaller, our surpluses are smaller. Threre's a lot of wheat land in the eastern part of our state, and it's pretty grim over there right now.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-grains/harvesting-in-a-trade-war-u-s-crops-rot-as-storage-costs-soar-idUSKCN1NQ0GA

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-mad-snl-world-laughing-him-1261825

I tried googling 'idiot' but all I get is stories about how Trump pops up when you google 'idiot'.

bungobaggins wrote:@Petty yeah you’re right I guess we’re just asking for it. Hopefully I’ll be knocked out cold next. Christ knows I deserve it.

My god I’m a child murder. I am going to kill myself. This is not a joke.

There is no other way to atone for my sins. This is the end.

It looks like no-one noticed these two posts.

{{{ Not sure about missed Forest so much as in the context it was made, which was about morality at the top levels of US politics, it came over more as just another hyperbolic internet comment in response to my point that US tax dollars funded illegal wars (Yemen being the pertinent example) and therefore US taxpayers are complicit in it.
In that context and without the benefit of hindsight its impossible to judge or hope to know accurately someone else's mental state or personal issues. }}

Of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty, all that. I'm not suggesting carelessness; I just thought that no-one noticed these posts, considering that no-one responded to them.

Bungo did not exactly make a secret of the fact that he was struggling with depression. I don't recall him ever saying so explicitly (though I may be forgetting something), but it was pretty clear to see that he had his personal demons. That's not a complaint or judgment; I wouldn't want people to think they have to hide their feelings on here. Unfortunately, a lot of relationships were frayed by the time he made his final few returns to the forum last fall. The last thing I ever said to him was not said in a terribly conciliatory manner, but as I noted at the time, he seemed to be miserable every time he departed the forum and there didn't seem to be a clear path to return to more amicable relations short of people just never disagreeing with him about politics. Clearly, though, he had a ton going on beyond the context of discussions on here, and I have done a lot of ruminating today over the posts Forest refers to and others.

I didn't take bungo's final comments about killing himself in response to Petty criticizing Trump seriously; like Petty says, I considered it hyperbole. I don't know now (and never will) how seriously those comments were meant in the moment, though as per bungo's brother's account that exchange was more than a month before the end of his life. It seems undeniable, though, that they were--at the very least--an expression of something weighing on him. Questioning what could or should have been done differently is a common reaction in cases like this, and while I don't know what different actions I might have taken (I never knew bungo's real name and had no way of contacting anyone he knew IRL even if I'd been concerned for his immediate safety), it will always be an open question whether saying something different might have made an impact. That's ultimately a two-way street, though. I hope he had people he felt able to talk to IRL, but regardless, I have no criticism or judgment of people who don't want to talk or ask for help about their mental health struggles, whether that's in general or only in certain circumstances.

Of the 17 core members of Forumshire who have made the most posts on the new forum, bungo is the second who is no longer with us. The first was Ally, who most likely died in the same fashion back in 2013. In her case, the not knowing for sure was--and in some ways still is--the hardest part. While I've been pretty shaken up today after getting this news (in part because it comes a day after similar news from another quarter), I am very grateful to bungo's brother for letting us know. There are many other people who haven't posted here in a long time, but none who gave any red flags that I can recall. Most of them drifted away gradually and I know some are still active elsewhere online (GB, for example, continues to flourish as a fanfic writer). Tin's activity here broke off very abruptly and I was worried about her for some time, but she'd shared her real name and enjoyed a fairly successful career in DIII college golf, which left an online footprint of its own. I don't know why she stopped posting, but it was reassuring to know it wasn't because she'd died.

I'm not a good person to try to say anything about bungo on a personal level. I'm not going to try to overwrite some of the stuff that happened in recent years, but I considered him a friend for a long time and I'll try to focus more on the happier memories. He dabbled in Photoshop and a couple of the images he shared (the Beorn-as-a-metalhead concert poster and the Christmas card with people's avatars) have been saved in the "Forumshire" folder of my hard drive since ... shit, in the former case, two laptops ago. Most of his creative energy was directed toward music and therefore went over my head, but he shared several stories in the Creative Corner and was very gracious in his response when I asked for permission to include them in the fanfic collection last year. He seemed to feel very strongly about the Hobbit movies, as he did everything, which produced some memorable crabbit rants. In retrospect, it's hard not to wonder if the feeling too strongly was bad for him (he'd be far from alone in that), and I think it contributed to the some of the tension over politics. But that's bungo all over, and his net contributions to the forum over his five years with us are very much in the positive.

This post might not belong here--I swear I didn't intend for it to be this long when I started typing out a response to Forest--but as this thread was, for better or worse, bungo's main hangout towards the end of his time with us, perhaps it's fitting. I hope he is at peace now. I don't know if he would have wanted me to say this, but he will, as a key part of Forumshire for much of its existence, always have a special place in my memories: the good, the bad, all of it. I don't know what exactly he was like IRL, how different he might have been, or what his relationships with other people were there. It is not my place nor my wish to infringe on any of that. But he left a mark here, more than most people do when they join an Internet forum, and I have to believe that counts for something.

It does, yeah.

I've had occasional thoughts that Ally could have had problems with mental illness. Her thinking processes were a wonderful, delightful outlier; but without strong social networks such minds are prone to dangerous disconnection. I dearly hope you are wrong in your guesses about 2013, Eldy.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty, all that. I'm not suggesting carelessness; I just thought that no-one noticed these posts, considering that no-one responded to them.

I noticed them and at the time I didn't know what to make of them, I thought he was being sarcastic, I thought he wasn't seriously actually going to do what he said, because it seemed so unbelievably outrageous and completely out of the blue.
So I ignored it and I wish now that I hadn't, because he was obviously incredibly angry and lashing out. He probably thought he was being judged, but that's not true, I am sure everyone separated his political views from him as the person we knew. I didn't give a toss whether he liked Trump or not, he was Bungo and that was it. I know he had got increasingly angry and I am sorry if it caused a rift, in his own mind, between us. If he was alive I would like to have had the opportunity to talk to him, give him a shake and told him that he was part of forumshire and we were there for him, but now I cant.

halfwise wrote:I've had occasional thoughts that Ally could have had problems with mental illness.  Her thinking processes were a wonderful, delightful outlier; but without strong social networks such minds are prone to dangerous disconnection.  I dearly hope you are wrong in your guesses about 2013, Eldy.

yes I hope that's not true as well. I also worry about Meiko Electra.

Eldy, once again you have put it much better than I could...whatever disagreements we had, or supposed character flaws some (including himself) may have attributed to him from time time, Bungo was a valued member of this forum for many years, a friend, contributor and yes a very strongly opinionated character, but a core member of this community who joined the forum around the same time I did.

I never knew him that well, and now I dearly wish now I had taken an opportunity to change that, but there isn't any point on second guessing ourselves, we can never truly know or understand the pain and struggle he went though, I have had severe bouts of depression myself... but that's me, everyone who goes through things like this comes to different conclusions or handles it in different ways, but an illness is an illness and depression clouds your judgement and alters your life in ways you can't understand till you expereince it first hand.

I just hope he's at peace now, we won't forget you mate.

I always wondered what happened to Sinister71, he was a regular poster for a couple of years and I was acquainted with him as a casual internet name back in the Bree days...

halfwise wrote:I've had occasional thoughts that Ally could have had problems with mental illness.  Her thinking processes were a wonderful, delightful outlier; but without strong social networks such minds are prone to dangerous disconnection.  I dearly hope you are wrong in your guesses about 2013, Eldy.

I mean, I have reasons for thinking that's probably what happened (which I won't elaborate on in public) and I'm not the only one to have come to that conclusion, but I would love nothing more than to be wrong on this count.

Mrs Figg wrote:yes I hope that's not true as well. I also worry about Meiko Electra.

Shit, you're right about Meiko. I did a few searches just now and she had a pretty substantial online presence, but I can't find anything that postdates her last posts on here.

malickfan wrote:I always wondered what happened to Sinister71, he was a regular poster for a couple of years and I was acquainted with him as a casual internet name back in the Bree days...

His last publicly-viewable update on FB was just a little more than a month ago, so I think he's alright.