{"id":28996,"date":"2017-08-15T15:09:31","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T22:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=28996"},"modified":"2017-08-15T15:09:31","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T22:09:31","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-15-august-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/15\/squatchs-open-thread-15-august-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 15 August 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well finally we have some tolerable weather here in Metro Vancouver.\u00a0 It is currently 22 C (72 F) with 53% humidity, bright sunshine and winds at 9 km\/hour.\u00a0 This is good and the furbabes are loving it too!\u00a0 This is a busy week for me with lots of paperwork and appointments.\u00a0 At the end of next week, my little girl will have her 9th birthday.\u00a0 I plan for a fresh roasted chick breast for the 3 of them to share.\u00a0 I will be more popular than ever!<\/span><\/p>\n

CBC<\/strong><\/a> <\/span>—\u00a0U.S. President Donald Trump is lashing out at the growing number of corporate executives who are distancing themselves from his administration after his response to a white nationalist rally\u00a0in Charlottesville, Va., that led to the death of one counter-protester last weekend.<\/p>\n

A day after a number of high-profile CEOs started to resign from\u00a0his business advisory council, the U.S. president lashed out.<\/p>\n

“For every CEO that drops out of the manufacturing council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier’s <\/p>\n

Brian Krzanich,\u00a0Intel CEO,\u00a0 Kenneth Frazier, Merck CEO,\u00a0Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, and\u00a0Kevin Plank, CEO Under Armour<\/p>\n

Tesla CEO Elon Musk resigned from the manufacturing council in June, and two other advisory groups to the president, after the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. And in February, Uber’s then-CEO Travis Kalanick left the president’s side<\/a> over his executive order curtailing immigration. Kalanick said the order was “hurting people in communities all across America.”<\/p>\n

Walt Disney Co. Chairman and CEO Bob Iger resigned for the same reason from the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, which Trump established to advise him on how government policy impacts economic growth and job creation.<\/p>\n

Click through and listen to the video with\u00a0Ed Rensi, the former CEO of McDonald’s USA.\u00a0 He has some direct and sound advice for Trump and it is well worth the eight minutes.\u00a0 We may not all agree with everything these executives do in their businesses, but they all are taking principled stands and no doubt there will be more.\u00a0 As for Trump, Rensi said “It was childish, unprofessional and below the dignity of the guy holding that office. … shame on him …”\u00a0 And on politics, he went on to say “In my opinion today, there is a ruling, imperial elite.\u00a0 They make rules to keep themselves entrenched in government and now they’re going to pay the price because they have a president who is a wild card now.” \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

AlterNet<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>—\u00a0Go home; leave the state; you\u2019re not welcome.<\/p>\n

That was Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe\u2019s\u00a0message<\/a>\u00a0to white supremacists who came to Charlottesville to show America that white rage is real and is coming out of the shadows.<\/p>\n

But wait a second. Where are these domestic terrorists supposed to go back to? One of the first four people\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a0was\u00a0from\u00a0Virginia. The others were from Ohio, Florida and Tennessee. Each of these states has been dominated by white Republicans this decade, who have\u00a0methodically implemented racist election laws that gave them majority rule in state legislatures and their U.S. House delegations.<\/p>\n

\n
What kind of states are they going home to? The answer is states ruled by white power sympathizers\u2014and that’s being charitable.\u00a0 …<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Election data geeks have looked at the results of 2016 and found it was one of the most anti-democratic elections in a century. As David Wasserman, U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report, recently\u00a0wrote<\/a>, \u201cIn 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, but Republicans won the median House seat by 3.4 points and median Senate seat by 3.6 points\u2014that\u2019s the widest Senate gap in at least a century.\u201d\u00a0 …<\/p>\n

The white mobs rampaging in Charlottesville may want more privilege, segregation and wealth, but whether they know it or not\u2014most probably they don\u2019t\u2014their Republican allies have been rewriting the rules of politics and elections to favor them for years.<\/p>\n

Really, I don’t think that this will surprise anyone here.\u00a0 Progressives need to get in at the ground floor and sweep it clean.\u00a0 That means progressives from dog catcher on up; repealing discriminatory voting regulations, and redrawing voting districts so that they are fair.\u00a0 No gerrymandered districts that slant the vote.\u00a0 If the US wants to continue to be “the land of the free” then it must ensure that all its citizens can vote without undue restrictions like onerous voter ID.<\/span><\/p>\n

YouTube<\/strong><\/span> — Stephen Colbert’s Monologue — Trump denounces white supremacists<\/p>\n