Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

Originally Posted by Jim Moscheck

Hi Rod, didn't mean to slight you and edited the title to convey my seasons greetings to you, too.

Oh, no worries Jim, but thanks for taking the time and consideration to edit the title and, again, season's greetings to you, your family and to all on the AM and their families as well. 

The Latest ESCALATION!


"Musk calls some Trump supporters ‘contemptible fools,’ escalating tension with MAGA hardliners"

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/27/politics/video/elon-musk-laura-loomer-foreign-workers-visa-digvid-src

NOT ONLY THAT but:

"MAGA opponents of Elon Musk claim he stripped them of their X badges"!!!

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/27/tech/maga-musk-x-visas/index.html

It been decided!:

"Trump sides with Musk on H-1B visas"

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5058560-trump-weighs-in-on-h-1b-debate-backs-immigration-visas/


Musk, for his part, stated that if he didn't get his way on the visas, “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend”

Well, he got his way...

Meanwhile, in other news, "Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt (Mo.) said that U.S. workers “have been left behind by this economy” during a discussion on “Fox News Sunday” about the H-1B work visa, a key program to attract international talent that’s been criticized as too complicated and susceptible to abuse."  “Many factory jobs have been sent overseas, and I think the abuses of the H-1B program have been evident, where you have sort of the sons and daughters of those factory workers lost their jobs, got white collar jobs as accountants and they are…training their replacements, the foreign workers who are undercutting their wages,”

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/5058972-schmitt-h-1b-program-american-workers-have-been-left-behind-by-this-economy/

Originally Posted by Chris Pagan

Rod,

Based on your position on the situation over in Israel, I'm not sure why you are gung ho on promoting the narrative of destroying the Trump agenda.

Chris

That, of course, has nothing to do with the topic of the thread.

That said, I thought you MAGAs would be ecstatic by this point since you now know which side to support in the ongoing arguments within the GOP agenda.
Also, given the fact that Trump supports these foreign work visas since he says he's got a bunch of 'em working at Mar A Lago, you now know what America first means...

"An argument pitting some of President-elect Donald Trump’s biggest supporters against each other has rocked MAGA world in recent days over whether his incoming administration should allow more highly skilled immigrant labor to come to the United States at the expense of American workers."

"What makes the beef especially awkward - or delicious, depending on who you ask – is that Trump’s D.O.G.E. duo of tech billionaires, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are at the center of it. And the brawl is taking place almost entirely on Musk’s X platform, the informal public square for Trump’s whole Make America Great Again movement."

"It also goes against Trump’s “America First” agenda and proposed crackdown on immigration, they argue, for billionaires like Musk and Ramaswamy to argue for bringing in more workers through H-1B instead of investing in training and developing Americans for those coveted jobs."

"MAGA heavyweight and The Federalist CEO Sean Davis described the H-1B program as a kind of cheap pool of indentured servants."

“Corporations love H-1B visas,” Davis tweeted, “because they allow the company to pay below market wages AND control the foreigners they hire, because the employers, not the workers, own the visas—if a newly imported foreigner leaves the sponsoring company, he has to leave the country.”


https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-vs-maga-trump-supporters-224151043.html


"The backlash escalated Thursday, when Vivek Ramaswamy, in a post on X, criticized an American culture that he said “venerated mediocrity over excellence,” attributing this as one reason for the influx of foreign tech workers."

"Trump adviser Elon Musk, with whom Ramaswamy is a co-leader of Trump’s incoming Department of Government Efficiency, had posted Thursday on X in response to a tweet about a shortage of skilled workers in Silicon Valley that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.”

“If we are going to have a throwdown, let’s have it now,” Steve Bannon said on his "War Room" show Friday morning, calling many of the arguments in favor of H-1Bs a "total scam."

"Also on Thursday, some MAGA loyalists said Musk had begun to retaliate against them by censoring them on X, which he owns, because of their opposition to skilled immigration."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-open-rift-maga-loyalists-skilled-worker-visa-rcna185557

“American workers can leave a company. Imported H-1B workers can’t. Tech wants indentured servants, not ‘high-skilled’ workers,” Coulter said.

“This is why some find this discussion frustrating. Elon is right about the problem. Others are right that the solution is flawed. We ended our farm system, we lost our bench. BIG TECH did this. Now they want more H-1B’s for their self-inflicted wound,” added Cernovich."


https://nypost.com/2024/12/27/us-news/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-in-fiery-spat-with-maga-allies-over-foreign-worker-visas-essential-for-america-to-keep-winning/

"A federal appeals court panel on Monday upheld a jury’s verdict finding President-elect Trump liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and ordering him to pay $5 million."

"In a separate case, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in defamation damages for continuing to deny her story. Trump is still appealing that verdict, but Monday’s decision marks a blow in Trump’s defense, as it was underpinned by the earlier sexual abuse judgment."

"The appeals court panel wrote that the combination of the women’s testimony, plus the tape, showed that a jury could reasonably infer Trump “engaged in similar conduct with other women — a pattern of abrupt, nonconsensual, and physical advances on women he barely knew.”

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5059810-federal-appeals-court-panel-upholds-verdict/

"The man who plowed a pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans, killing at least 15 people, has been identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar — a U.S. citizen from Texas."

"The Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas was caused by firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, and the suspect was an Army veteran from Colorado, according to local news reports."


https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5063169-donald-trump-joe-biden-open-borders-new-orleans-las-vegas-attacks/

Just a taste of more of the same ineptitude and lying incompetence we'll be witnessing over the next four years...

PS: And if the MAGA clowns don't elect MAGA Mike Johnson as house speaker tomorrow, they risk not certifying Trump as their president! 

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/02/politics/johnson-speakership-election-trump-certification/index.html

You can't make this stuff up!

"The Biden administration has informally notified the US Congress of a proposed $8 billion arms sale to Israel that includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters, Axios reported on Friday"

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-836036

"Zuckerberg acknowledged more harmful content will appear on the platforms now".

"Trump and other Republicans have lambasted Zuckerberg and Meta for what they view as censorship of right-wing voices."


https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/07/tech/meta-censorship-moderation/index.html

On Edit: SPEAKING OF CENSORSHIP:  "Judge Aileen Cannon blocks release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on Trump investigation"

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/06/politics/trump-smith-special-counsel-final-report/index.html

Geez...

Originally Posted by Russ Carroll

Not sure why I picked this quote to enter this misguided set of posts, but it has JB's name on it.

JD Vance said today that a court cannot infringe on the power of the President to shape the government in his image. This is exactly what courts are supposed to do and have for 250 years as Jim and most rational Americans understand.

While half asleep, I listened to George Conway articulate that thought, adding that the only way courts have to enforce an order being disobeyed is to get the US Marshalls to drag in a non-compliant party. The US Marshalls aer part of the Justice Dept. Who here believes the US Marshalls are going to drag a Trump official into court and potentially prison for contempt of court????? They obviously will not if yo have been watching the first few weeks of the Trump 2.0 era unfold.

So...our Canadian friend may or may not be getting right what atrocities will be unfurled onto the American people, but it will not be because the rule of law stopped it. This is how dictatorships are established, when courts no longer can control the process of what is and isn't legal.

I'm re-iterating what I've said for years, but we are approaching the point I've feared most.

"So...our Canadian friend may or may not be getting right what atrocities will be unfurled onto the American people, but it will not be because the rule of law stopped it. This is how dictatorships are established, when courts no longer can control the process of what is and isn't legal."

That's what the Trump team is presently attempting to do with the latest being Musk's call to fire at least 1% of the appointed judges. Next, Jim Jordan is quoting a sentence from the constitution regarding the authority of the executive branch and applying it to the current situation with Trump. 

They will push this to SCOTUS.

The courts are the last guardrail here. Will it hold? My guess is that Alito and Thomas are already willing and able members of the Trump camp and they haven't even seen the cases(s) yet. As for the other cons on the court, time will tell...