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dewme said:

All of this turmoil seems to be attributed to one man. But don’t forget that there are 535 + 9 other people who collectively have the power to reign in this guy. I can’t imagine there are even half that number of people who are willing to sell out their country, their constituents, their children and grandchildren, and their soul just to stay in the good graces of a psychopath. No job is worth the price that they and the future generations of Americans and the world are going to pay for their current selfishness. 

At some point someone with a spine is going to have to stand up to this man and potentially suffer the consequences of demonstrating that at least one person with the ability to do something positive can think beyond their own personal concerns and lust for power and wealth. 

Just yesterday we honored the ultimate sacrifices that hundreds of thousands of Americans were willing to pay to preserve American democracy, freedom, and self determination. Every one of them took the same exact solemn oath that every congressperson, senator, executive, cabinet member, justice, and military member takes when taking on service to their country. 

There is nothing in that oath that guarantees personal wealth, prestige, power, or honor. Honor is earned by those who serve their country honorably, live up to their oath, which includes protecting the constitution, even if doing so comes with great personal sacrifice. There is nothing in the oath of service that mentions anything about protecting one’s own self interests and enriching one’s own personal wealth or status while serving the country. On that point alone the current president and those who are complicit in aiding him are doing a great disservice to the country and serving dishonorably. 

Tim Cook and other corporate leaders are just like the rest of us, doing what’s best for the health and financial stability of their stakeholders while being good citizens. Nobody should be looking at Tim Cook or Apple by asking them to sacrifice or suffer the consequences of the personal whims of one man, especially when those whims are driven by personal greed, resentment, retribution, self interest, and uncontrollable lust for power. 

Tim Cook is a great citizen and a great American. He’s doing everything within his power to protect his stakeholders, which includes most of us here. But he didn’t take the same oath that the president and his administration took. Their oath is intended to allow Tim Cook, Apple, and all corporate entities in America to operate under the umbrella of security and protection needed to allow them to even exist. 

1) Unless there is blackmail and extortion involved I'd say this is no different than how other predators are allowed to reign. For example, people like R. Kelly, Jefferey Epstein, or the excessive number of Catholic priests that have been called out after decades of horrific abuse when there are people around that are either happy with the atrocities being committed or willing to turn a blind eye and protect the monster for money and/or power. 

2) I wonder if Mitch McConnell regrets his partisan maneuvering to keep Obama from appointing Supreme Court justices after seeing that it cost him control of his entire party. Personally, I blame him for that imbalance of the judicial branch and I blame McConnell and a lot of shortsighted people in power for Citizens United. A handful of wealthy donors that hold nearly all of the nation's wealth and mega corporations should not be able to dictate what should happen to the majority of the people. Citizens United is when I first realized that this country took a very bad turn.

iJeffrey said:

SPOILER ALERT: Did anyone ever see Kingsman: The Secret Service? You know, the one where Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) either kidnaps world leaders and stashes them in a mountain or plans to use global cellular signals to make people go berserk? It wouldn’t surprise me if Mar-A-Lago had a Neuralink lab in the basement. Guests come to dine with Donald, and Elon slips a nice little chip into their brains to ensure compliance. So, either Tim got one of the “Made in America” models, managed to have his removed, or… I don’t even want to consider the third option. Either way, I admire Tim for not jumping every time Trump Needs Props for his all his shows.

That would require actual intelligence and planning. This is just good ol' fear mongering so you can grift people by making the ignorant general populace think you're going to hurt their particular boogeyman.

The biggest surprise to me in all of this is that they'll willing to ignore how much they're being hurt and yet still willing to defend the con even while they see themselves losing out. The second biggest surprise for me is that the 3 branches of gov't mean nothing if you can just ignore any and all laws and court decisions. I wonder if Madison would be shocked to know that it only took around 230 years for the weaknesses in the system to breakdown this completely or would be surprised that it took this long?

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judicia in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self–appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny” (James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788).

My guess is that he would said the latter because of the political parties we have, especially know with the MAGA fascists that are Republican in name only (RINO). I say this because Madison said, "a well-constructed Union [should be] its tendency to break and control the violence of faction," which isn't happening. Even after all the very clear evidence of wrongdoing the promise of hurting someone boogeyman was so powerful that MAGA has grown.

The Founding Fathers were smarter than we are today at the highest levels. For example, Alexander Hamilton stated that political parties are "the most fatal disease” of popular gov't.

George Washington in his Farewell Address stated, "However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

Willard Sterne Randall wrote that “[Washington] had stayed on for a second term only to keep these two parties from warring with each other [because Washington] was afraid of what he called ‘disunion.’" Maybe that's telling if the Union was already starting to fall to the weakness of corrupt men out of the gate.

mark fearing said:

If that's true the tariff won't stand up in Court. You can't tariff people you don't like. The Constitution has a thing about Equal treatment. 

It will if the tyrants control the courts.

williamlondon said:

Wesley_Hilliard said:

Don't feed the trolls because at this point that's all I can assume they are. Dislike the post. Ignore the poster. Move on. Attention gives them power. Flag posts that violate the rules and move on.

Or you could, since you do have this power, delete their posts and ban their accounts. Just a suggestion.

Outside of the stated guidelines for regular commentators, I assume that they have their own internal guidelines as to when banning a user is warranted. I also assume there needs to be some arbitration from the moderators for banning to occur. While I've certainly had many salty comments removed for calling out posters like █████, ████, and ██████ for making untruthful and/or bigoted comments, I have never trolled anyone. Still, if I didn't curtail my calling out certain posters they way that I did I think I could get my account banned simply because it's more trouble than it's worth to delete or edit my comments when they violate the guidelines. I'm trying to just ignore them at this point since they probably do feed on negative replies and I think it was Wesley that stated that reasonable dialogue with them isn't possible.

When I first joined AI he forum software used vBulletin which included a feature called Goes to Coventry, IIRC. The user wouldn't be blocked from logging it, reading, or posting, but no one else could see their comments.

1) Apple is down 3% and I'm sure Trump and his cronies were short selling this week and will then repurchase right before Trump announces that Apple doesn't have to pay 25% on tariffs.

2) What did Cook expect to happen by allowing himself to be extorted by Trump? Once you let a wannabe dictator extort you it's going to keep happening.