President Trump: good, bad, and ugly
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Monday, December 14, 2020 11:53
VIEWED: 23519
PAGE 1 of 3
Waiting for some real news....
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NOT REAL NEWS
Trump gave a speech to the CIA (fact) that was described as 'bizarre' (not fact). I listened to it all the way through, and it didn't seem that bizarre to me (personal opinion). He told the CIA that their job was to destroy ISIS (fact). What I read into that was that he was telling them whatever jobs they had before - topple Gaddafi, get rid of Yanukovych, Assad must go! by any means necessary (even if it means cozying up to ISIS) - that was all over now (personal interpretation). Their job was to get rid of ISIS, and they would get so much support for that, they would think it was too much (fact).
But then, it was a Trump speech. And those are just words. I need to see what he does.
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
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Quote:
Ethics lawyers to sue Trump over foreign payments
A group including former White House ethics attorneys will file a lawsuit on Monday accusing President Donald Trump of allowing his businesses to accept payments from foreign governments, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit, brought by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, will allege that the Constitution's emoluments clause forbids payments to Trump's businesses. It will seek a court order forbidding Trump from accepting such payments, said Deepak Gupta, one of the lawyers working on the case.
Trump does business with countries like China, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, the group noted in a statement.
"When Trump the president sits down to negotiate trade deals with these countries, the American people will have no way of knowing whether he will also be thinking about the profits of Trump the businessman," it said.
A Trump representative referred questions to a law firm representing the president on ethics matters.
"We do not comment on our clients or the work we do for them," said the representative of the firm, Morgan Lewis & Bockius.
The case is part of a wave of litigation expected to be filed against Trump by liberal advocacy groups. It will be filed in a Manhattan federal court, Gupta said, and attorneys for the plaintiffs will include Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in Republican President George W. Bush's White House.
The impending lawsuit was earlier reported by the New York Times.
Trump's son Eric Trump, an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, told the Times on Sunday that the company had taken more steps than required by law to avoid any possible legal exposure, such as agreeing to donate any profits collected at Trump-owned hotels that come from foreign government guests to the U.S. Treasury.
"This is purely harassment for political gain," Trump told the newspaper.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-ethics-lawsuit-idUSKBN15701V
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"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
According to you GSTRING, if I discuss something I'm over-reacting. If I DON'T discuss something, I'm hiding.
You see? You're a troll. YOU don't want to discuss the subject, all you want to do is look for an excuse for personal attacks. So the reason why I'm NOT discussing this with you further is because (1) You've been demonstrated to be wrong about five ti
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Quote:
Originally posted by G:
Another big plus: He may be responsible for blowing up both major political parties.
You're just figuring this out now. It's the single biggest reason I voted for him.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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I agree. Trump is a loose cannon. He has horrified career Democrat AND Republican politicians and wonks. He's also brought out Dem AND Republican voters who have not voted in years... if ever. That's a good thing, IMHO, but he also needs a close eye on what he's doing. Protests, demonstrations, calls and letters to your Congressperson, and letters to the editor and social activism are in order if he does something stupid.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
According to you GSTRING, if I discuss something I'm over-reacting. If I DON'T discuss something, I'm hiding.
You see? You're a troll. YOU don't want to discuss the subject, all you want to do is look for an excuse for personal attacks. So the reason why I'm NOT discussing this with you further is because (1) You've been demonstrated to be wrong about five ti
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
NOT REAL NEWS
Trump gave a speech to the CIA (fact) that was described as 'bizarre' (not fact). I listened to it all the way through, and it didn't seem that bizarre to me
His complaining about press reports that his crowds during his inauguration were not the most ever, while he was standing in front of the wall of hero's
didn't seem bizarre to you???
didn't seem childish to you???
didn't seem thin skinned to you???
didn't seem as thought the importance of his meeting the CIA in an unifying manner was lost to him because he was arguing with the press and lying about the numbers, didn't seem bizarre to you???
Of course it doesn't. Because you are a commie troll who supports dictatorships.
____________________________________________
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Quote:
Trump Signs 3 Executive Orders:
(1)Withdraws From TPP
(2) Freezes Federal Hiring
(3) Limits Overseas Abortion Funding
(1) GREAT!
(2) mkay
(3) I guess ... (A bone to the Xtian crowd maybe?)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-23/trump-signs-3-executive-order
s-withdraws-tpp-freezes-federal-hiring-limits-overseas-
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
According to you GSTRING, if I discuss something I'm over-reacting. If I DON'T discuss something, I'm hiding.
You see? You're a troll. YOU don't want to discuss the subject, all you want to do is look for an excuse for personal attacks. So the reason why I'm NOT discussing this with you further is because (1) You've been demonstrated to be wrong about five ti
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The Trump Administration's "war" with the press is stupid. It's not winnable. The press always has the last word.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
NOT REAL NEWS
Trump gave a speech to the CIA (fact) that was described as 'bizarre' (not fact). I listened to it all the way through, and it didn't seem that bizarre to me ...
Quote:WHAT TRUMP SAID
Originally posted by THGRRI:
His complaining about press reports that his crowds during his inauguration were not the most ever, while he was standing in front of the wall of hero's
didn't seem bizarre to you???
Quote:It's looks like a legitimate complaint. 250,000 is far too low an estimate: ie FAKE NEWS. Trump SHOULD be complaining about FAKE NEWS.
The unnamed television network, he noted, estimated a turnout of 250,000 people — a figure he argued was way too low.
“Now, that's not bad. But it's a lie,” he said. “We had 250,000 people literally around in the little ball we constructed.” In other words, 250,000 people had been given tickets to the swearing-in ceremony, which is what the Joint Congressional Committee for Inaugural Ceremonies told CNN.
AND SO SHOULD YOU.
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
NOT REAL NEWS
Trump gave a speech to the CIA (fact) that was described as 'bizarre' (not fact). I listened to it all the way through, and it didn't seem that bizarre to me ...Quote:WHAT TRUMP SAID
Originally posted by THGRRI:
His complaining about press reports that his crowds during his inauguration were not the most ever, while he was standing in front of the wall of hero's
didn't seem bizarre to you???Quote:It's looks like a legitimate complaint. 250,000 is far too low an estimate: ie FAKE NEWS. Trump SHOULD be complaining about FAKE NEWS.
The unnamed television network, he noted, estimated a turnout of 250,000 people — a figure he argued was way too low.
“Now, that's not bad. But it's a lie,” he said. “We had 250,000 people literally around in the little ball we constructed.” In other words, 250,000 people had been given tickets to the swearing-in ceremony, which is what the Joint Congressional Committee for Inaugural Ceremonies told CNN.
AND SO SHOULD YOU.
As I said. Your being a commie troll who belongs to a dictators propaganda machine, would prevent you from understanding what was wrong with what Trump did. And your post shows you don't.
____________________________________________
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Quote:'YOUR' English is slipping. You mean I'm a troll because I don't sign on to FAKE NEWS - like the estimate only 250,000 people showed up to Trump's inauguration? Let me ask you, THUGGER, if I'm a troll for pointing out FAKE NEWS, what does that make you when you endorse it?
Your (sic) being a commie troll who belongs to a dictators (sic) propaganda machine ...
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:Quote:'YOUR' English is slipping. You mean I'm a troll because I don't sign on to FAKE NEWS - like the estimate only 250,000 people showed up to Trump's inauguration? Let me ask you, THUGGER, if I'm a troll for pointing out FAKE NEWS, what does that make you when you endorse it?
Your being a commie troll who belongs to a dictators propaganda machine ...
What are you talking about? Try to stay on point. You do that by posting objectively not subjectively.
Let me help you out. Here is what we were talking about.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
NOT REAL NEWS
Trump gave a speech to the CIA (fact) that was described as 'bizarre' (not fact). I listened to it all the way through, and it didn't seem that bizarre to me
Me responding to you.
His complaining about press reports that his crowds during his inauguration were not the most ever, while he was standing in front of the wall of hero's
didn't seem bizarre to you???
didn't seem childish to you???
didn't seem thin skinned to you???
didn't seem as thought the importance of his meeting the CIA in an unifying manner was lost to him because he was arguing with the press and lying about the numbers, didn't seem bizarre to you???
Of course it doesn't. Because you are a commie troll who supports dictatorships.
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
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been there, done that -
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
NOT REAL NEWS
Trump gave a speech to the CIA (fact) that was described as 'bizarre' (not fact). I listened to it all the way through, and it didn't seem that bizarre to me ...
Quote:WHAT TRUMP SAID
Originally posted by THGRRI:
His complaining about press reports that his crowds during his inauguration were not the most ever, while he was standing in front of the wall of hero's
didn't seem bizarre to you???
Quote:It's looks like a legitimate complaint. 250,000 is far too low an estimate: ie FAKE NEWS. Trump SHOULD be complaining about FAKE NEWS.
The unnamed television network, he noted, estimated a turnout of 250,000 people — a figure he argued was way too low.
“Now, that's not bad. But it's a lie,” he said. “We had 250,000 people literally around in the little ball we constructed.” In other words, 250,000 people had been given tickets to the swearing-in ceremony, which is what the Joint Congressional Committee for Inaugural Ceremonies told CNN.
AND SO SHOULD YOU.
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
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You still don't get it 1KIKI.
His complaining about press reports that his crowds during his inauguration were not the most ever, while he was standing in front of the wall of hero's
didn't seem bizarre to you???
didn't seem childish to you???
didn't seem thin skinned to you???
didn't seem as thought the importance of his meeting the CIA in an unifying manner was lost to him because he was arguing with the press and lying about the numbers, didn't seem bizarre to you???
Of course it doesn't. Because you are a commie troll who supports dictatorships.
____________________________________________
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Quote:been there, done that -
Originally posted by THGRRI:
What are you talking about? Try to stay on point. You do that by posting objectively not subjectively. Let me help you out. Here is what we were talking about.
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
NOT REAL NEWS
Trump gave a speech to the CIA (fact) that was described as 'bizarre' (not fact). I listened to it all the way through, and it didn't seem that bizarre to me ...
Quote:WHAT TRUMP SAID
Originally posted by THGRRI:
His complaining about press reports that his crowds during his inauguration were not the most ever, while he was standing in front of the wall of hero's
didn't seem bizarre to you???
Quote:It looks like a legitimate complaint. 250,000 is far too low an estimate: ie FAKE NEWS. Trump SHOULD be complaining about FAKE NEWS.
The unnamed television network, he noted, estimated a turnout of 250,000 people — a figure he argued was way too low.
“Now, that's not bad. But it's a lie,” he said. “We had 250,000 people literally around in the little ball we constructed.” In other words, 250,000 people had been given tickets to the swearing-in ceremony, which is what the Joint Congressional Committee for Inaugural Ceremonies told CNN.
AND SO SHOULD YOU.
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
I put the salient words in large font to accommodate your reading deficiencies. PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS THE THIRD TIME I'VE POSTED THIS QUOTE.
You're welcome.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
He's also brought out Dem AND Republican voters who have not voted in years... if ever.
Did he?
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/
If so, there wuz a greater number uv previous voterz who stayed home. A reazonable propozition, but can you proov it? Also reazonable to say Hillary cauzed them to stay home!
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.nooalf.com
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About the ugly - Trump iz alredy starting the Prezidential ajing prosess. And Kellyanne Conway, hiz 'advizor'. Especially her, looking at her appearens on Meet The Press yesterday.
Thats just 2 dayz in! Wut will they look like in a month? It'll be like The Picture uv Dorian Gray.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.nooalf.com
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Trump, repeating an assertion that lacks supporting evidence, told a meeting of congressional leaders Monday that he would have won the popular vote in November if not for voter fraud.
Trump used the first 10 minutes of the meeting to say that he would have won more votes than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants had not cast ballots, according to the people familiar with the conversation.
With 5 million fraudulent votes, there would be hundreds of District Attorneys filing thousands of indictments for fraud. Never happened. Trump's got nothing, but he said it anyway because that is how he rolls.
www.marketwatch.com/story/donald-trump-repeats-false-claim-of-voter-fr
aud-2017-01-23
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
...repeating an assertion that lacks supporting evidence...
He'd fit right in here in the RWED...
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
He's also brought out Dem AND Republican voters who have not voted in years... if ever.
Did he?
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/
If so, there wuz a greater number uv previous voterz who stayed home. A reazonable propozition, but can you proov it? Also reazonable to say Hillary cauzed them to stay home! m
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voter-turnout-fell-especially-in-
states-that-clinton-won/
If you only read the titles of articles, you're not getting the entire story. This article is titled "Voter turnout fell especially in states that clinton won".
But in the second paragraph it says that 1.4 million more people voted in the 2016 election than in the 2012 election.
What this tells me is that a lot of people who weren't registered to vote signed up to vote this time around, even though more people who were already signed up decided not to vote this time around.
Whether that was because people were excited about voting for Trump or would do anything to keep Hillary from being president can only be speculated.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Trump is in a special class, because when he says it, it changes his and America’s reputation. When we say it, nothing changes. Our reputations have no significance because we are both anonymous and weightless. For example, if I used my real name (Alan Tudyk or Summer Glau) that would be a big deal having consequences. I might not be invited to the next Comicon Firefly reunion! When I go by “second” nothing changes.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
...repeating an assertion that lacks supporting evidence...
He'd fit right in here in the RWED...
Do Right, Be Right. :)
What Does It Take to Finally Call a Lie a Lie? We Have an Answer.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/what-does-it-take-finally-call-
lie-lie-we-have-answer
The New York Times has called one of President Trump's lies a lie. The word isn't used in the text of the story, but it is used in the headline:
Trump Repeats Lie About Popular Vote in Meeting With Lawmakers
By Michael D. Shear and Emmarie Huetteman JAN. 23.2017
In this case, Trump said that 3-5 million illegal immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton, and he would have won the popular vote if not for that. Why was that judged a lie? Presumably because Trump has said it before and it's been widely exposed as flatly untrue. Trump surely knows this, which means he's telling a knowing falsehood, aka a lie.
This is a reasonable metric. The problem with branding something a lie is that you have to be sure the speaker knew it was wrong. Otherwise it's just ignorance or a mistake. But in Trump's case, it's often clear that he knows he's lying. When he says the crowd at his inauguration was over a million, it's clear that he has no basis for this. He's just making up a number. When he says millions of illegal immigrants voted, he knows it's false because a legion of reporters have told him it's false. When he says the unemployment rate is 42 percent, it might be a mistake the first time. But the tenth time? It's a deliberate lie.
Beyond this, I'll repeat a 3-part test I offered a few years ago that I find useful for judging how deceptive a statement is:
1) What was the speaker trying to imply? This is necessarily a judgment call, but it's what gets us away from a single-minded focus on "lying" and instead focuses our attention on how badly a speaker is trying to mislead us.
2) What would it take to state things accurately? This is the most important part of the exercise. Without getting deep in the weeds (nobody expects politicians to speak in white paper-ese), what would it take to restate things reasonably accurately?
3) How much would accuracy damage the speaker's point? Obviously, if accuracy dents the speaker's point only a bit, not much harm has been done. If it demolishes the speaker's point completely, it's as bad as an actual lie even if you can somehow spin it as technically true.
In this case, Trump was (a) stating that millions of illegal immigrants voted, (b) the only way to restate this accurately is to say that only a tiny handful of illegal immigrants voted, and (c) this completely demolishes Trump's point. It's obviously a 10 out of 10, and since Trump is aware of this, that makes it an egregious lie.
Why do I think this test is useful? The nickel version is that it's a check on my emotional response. When I go through these three steps, sometimes I find things worse than I thought and other times I find them more benign. Give it a try.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Beyond Futile Outrage
January 24, 2017
http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2017/01/beyond-futile-outrage
.html
Why does our world suddenly seem to be filled with outrage, yet nothing changes? When our moral intuitions provoke anger, we voice our hatred or cynicism online and somehow feel that is enough. Nothing changes, since we have lost a common ethical backdrop against which we can adequately even discuss our ethics, let alone bring about any kind of change. Of the three ways of conducting moral thought, we have abandoned one of them, and corrupted the other two, thus our moral intuitions have lost their force, since the context that gave them meaning has broken down. The result is anger against other people who do not share our values, with no possibility of a productive dialogue that can bring about a new state of affairs. This is the paralysis brought on by outrage culture.
To bring about changes requires a common standard, and the problem with contemporary ethical thought is that we do not understand our moral mythos well enough to maintain a shared basis for judgement. As moral psychologists have reported, the tendency is for us to have an emotional response to a situation (e.g. outrage), then afterwards to dress it up in justifications (e.g. demonisation of a particular identity) – what Jonathan Haidt waggishly dubbed ‘the emotional dog and his rational tail’. However, I break with the psychologists who advance this theory at the conclusions they draw from it, which amount to perilous assumption that moral philosophy has no role, as well as questioning their research methods, which are inadequate to most of the conclusions being drawn.
More at http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2017/01/beyond-futile-outrage
.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I don't necessarily believe that the 3-5 million illegals voting is not true. I really don't understand why we don't require IDs to vote. It really would clear up 99% of these things once and for all.
Some people are resourceful and always find a way against these sorts of things, but requiring an ID that was checked against the voter list would clear up any doubts anybody has about massive scale voter/election fraud. It always seems to be only the Democrats who are against such a rule. I find that terribly hilarious since it was largely the Democrats who made liquor store employees so terrified of being fined that I get carded much more often than I did when I was 21 years old.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Why does our world suddenly seem to be filled with outrage, yet nothing changes? When our moral intuitions provoke anger, we voice our hatred or cynicism online and somehow feel that is enough.
This isn't new, or "sudden". I started voicing my cynicism right here more than 10 years ago about GWB and back then there were a lot more people in the RWED. And if you didn't notice this going on the last 8 years because you were happy with Obama, you simply were surrounded by your own echo chamber and didn't notice that it was going on.
As to why nobody does anything anymore, I think it's the Social Media culture to blame. Everybody is a political analyist online now. Facebook is notorious for this. I stopped using that site completely.
What I noticed about Facebook, and the NUMBER 1 reason why nobody should use Facebook, is that people talk to people they actually know and even love there the same way they would talk anonymously on a website like this one. It's terrible. People who would never talk the way they do to each other online seem to have no filter when it comes to voicing their political beliefs on Facebook. After this terrible election cycle, many friendships and even marriages have been destroyed. That wouldn't have happened 15 years ago before the days of myspace and beyond.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Since 2008, Republican controlled states have passed measures to make it harder for Americans — particularly blacks — to vote. These measures include cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls. Would 6ixStringJack care to speculate why only Republicans are doing this? Care to give a number of illegals who voted before 2008? 12 is my number. Care to give a number of blacks turned away from voting after 2008? 12,000,000 is my number. Is 12 less than 12,000,000? Do the exercise with your numbers and see what you get.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I don't necessarily believe that the 3-5 million illegals voting is not true. I really don't understand why we don't require IDs to vote. It really would clear up 99% of these things once and for all.
Some people are resourceful and always find a way against these sorts of things, but requiring an ID that was checked against the voter list would clear up any doubts anybody has about massive scale voter/election fraud. It always seems to be only the Democrats who are against such a rule. I find that terribly hilarious since it was largely the Democrats who made liquor store employees so terrified of being fined that I get carded much more often than I did when I was 21 years old.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Care to back that up with evidence? Or is this just more fact-free opining?
I don't necessarily believe that the 3-5 million illegals voting is not true. I really don't understand why we don't require IDs to vote. It really would clear up 99% of these things once and for all.
Some people are resourceful and always find a way against these sorts of things, but requiring an ID that was checked against the voter list would clear up any doubts anybody has about massive scale voter/election fraud. It always seems to be only the Democrats who are against such a rule. I find that terribly hilarious since it was largely the Democrats who made liquor store employees so terrified of being fined that I get carded much more often than I did when I was 21 years old.- SIX
Since 2008, Republican controlled states have passed measures to make it harder for Americans — particularly blacks — to vote. These measures include cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls. Would 6ixStringJack care to speculate why only Republicans are doing this? Care to give a number of illegals who voted before 2008? 12 is my number. Care to give a number of blacks turned away from voting after 2008? 12,000,000 is my number. Is 12 less than 12,000,000? Do the exercise with your numbers and see what you get.- SECOND
I'm for picture ID laws, and I like the concept of the state paying the fee for such ID acquisition in order to make it fair. Instead of holding a "cattle drive" for a few weeks every four years, why doesn't the Democratic Party press on steadily with voter ID and voter registration efforts for all of the years in between elections? Yanno, assist shut-ins, the disabled, those working three jobs etc to get the ID that they need, and then get registered?
AFA voter rolls ... how they are sometimes handled is a crime (i.e. Katherine Harris, FL) and any State Scy doing such a hatchet job on people's right to vote should be able to be sued and prosecuted.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
According to you GSTRING, if I discuss something I'm over-reacting. If I DON'T discuss something, I'm hiding.
You see? You're a troll. YOU don't want to discuss the subject, all you want to do is look for an excuse for personal attacks. So the reason why I'm NOT discussing this with you further is because (1) You've been demonstrated to be wrong about five ti
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Quote:How is Trump running the government?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
This isn't new, or "sudden". I started voicing my cynicism right here more than 10 years ago about GWB and back then there were a lot more people in the RWED. And if you didn't notice this going on the last 8 years because you were happy with Obama, you simply were surrounded by your own echo chamber and didn't notice that it was going on.
“He’s running it much like he’d run a Fortune 500 company,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told Politico after his meetings with Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. “He’s finding the best people he can and he’s going to turn the reins over to them to see what they can do. He wants them to perform.”
Trump, it’s worth emphasizing, has never run a Fortune 500 corporation.
No board of directors of any company has at any point even considered hiring Trump as a CEO.
He did have a stint running a publicly traded company that he started during the 1990s stock market mania, and it turned out (like his fake college) to be a scam, in which he enriched himself at shareholder expense.
It is true, however, that many big companies are run along these kinds of decentralized lines.
And it’s easy to see why Trump, assisted by a core team of Priebus, Bannon, and Jared Kushner — none of whom have any experience working in government or running a successful publicly traded company — would come up with this facile and deeply flawed analogy between the two kinds of undertakings.
But you can’t run the government the way you would run a publicly traded conglomerate for roughly the same reason actually successful CEOs don’t host reality television shows — it’s not the same thing.
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/24/14346270/government-business
-chaos
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The standard method of authoritarianization goes like this: you appoint loyalists into the judiciary and security agencies, move on to defenestrate critics within your party, neutralize the media through accusation and delegitimization, and single out individuals for special scorn.
Since declaring his candidacy in June 2015, Trump has appeared to be taking pages out of the authoritarianization playbook.
He has attacked 305 people and entities big and small, according to a running tally by The New York Times, often astonishingly infantile tirades that have nonetheless destroyed political rivals, brought others to heel, alarmed foreign powers, and plain annoyed a lot of people.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-ins
ults.html
He is now intimidating Washington power centers into accepting his one-man leadership—the intelligence agencies, the Federal Reserve, and Congress.
www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-05/trump-s-systematic-attack-o
n-u-s-institutions
So slowly are these steps taken that it is hard to discern when the break with democracy actually occurs. That is one reason why its insidiousness poses one of the most significant threats to democracy in the twenty-first century.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The standard method of authoritarianization goes like this: you appoint loyalists into the judiciary and security agencies, move on to defenestrate critics within your party, neutralize the media through accusation and delegitimization, and single out individuals for special scorn.
Since declaring his candidacy in June 2015, Trump has appeared to be taking pages out of the authoritarianization playbook.
He has attacked 305 people and entities big and small, according to a running tally by The New York Times, often astonishingly infantile tirades that have nonetheless destroyed political rivals, brought others to heel, alarmed foreign powers, and plain annoyed a lot of people.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-ins
ults.html
He is now intimidating Washington power centers into accepting his one-man leadership—the intelligence agencies, the Federal Reserve, and Congress.
www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-05/trump-s-systematic-attack-o
n-u-s-institutions
So slowly are these steps taken that it is hard to discern when the break with democracy actually occurs. That is one reason why its insidiousness poses one of the most significant threats to democracy in the twenty-first century.
Sounds like Putin's playbook
____________________________________________
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Since 2008, Republican controlled states have passed measures to make it harder for Americans — particularly blacks — to vote. These measures include cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls. Would 6ixStringJack care to speculate why only Republicans are doing this? Care to give a number of illegals who voted before 2008? 12 is my number. Care to give a number of blacks turned away from voting after 2008? 12,000,000 is my number. Is 12 less than 12,000,000? Do the exercise with your numbers and see what you get.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I never understood why requiring an ID to vote keeps blacks from voting. I've already said that everyone should be able to get a State ID for free, and only have to pay for an actual Drivers license.
I only mentioned requiring IDs. Not cutting early voting and purging voter rolls.
Stay on topic.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How is Trump running the government?
Not sure why you quoted me on this one. I don't see how that reply pertains at all to what I was talking about.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Cynically, Trump claims he will run the government like a business. Trump promised 6ix a good job (6ix is an unemployed Ne'er-do-well) and promised second a huge tax cut (second is the 1%). We can judge Trump by how soon he meets these goals and the cost to meet them. Since he is running the USA like a business, we need to also look at the National Debt. He could meet every goal almost instantaneously if he expands the National Debt very fast. But that would not be business-like, would it? You can read about these kinds of trade-offs between goals and expenditures at "Donald Trump is about to find out you can’t run government like a business"
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How is Trump running the government?
Not sure why you quoted me on this one. I don't see how that reply pertains at all to what I was talking about.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/24/14346270/government-business
-chaos
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I see SECOND is up to her pointless, bilious whinging again.
Quote:
Cynically, Trump claims he will run the government like a business. Trump promised 6ix a good job (6ix is an unemployed Ne'er-do-well) and promised second a huge tax cut (second is the 1%). We can judge Trump by how soon he meets these goals and the cost to meet them.- SECONDRATE
There has been such a flurry of executive orders, it's hard to keep track of them all! And I'll bet the Demorats who were cheering Obama's discovery of "Executive Orders" are now wishing that they had never been invoked. So, just as a lesson for the future: Whatever powers you grant to a President that you like will be invoked... with interest! ... by the President that you don't like. So be careful what you wish for!
Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements -- January 25
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2017/images/01/28/border.security.and.imm
igration.enforcement.improvements.pdf
Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States -- January 25
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2017/images/01/28/enhancing.public.safety
.in.the.interior.of.the.united.states.pdf
Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals for High Priority Infrastructure Projects -- January 24
Minimizing the Economic Burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Pending Repeal -- January 20
Presidential memorandums
Streamlining Permitting and Reducing Regulatory Burdens for Domestic Manufacturing -- January 24
Regarding Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline -- January 24
Regarding Construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline -- January 24
Regarding Construction of American Pipelines -- January 24
Regarding the Hiring Freeze -- January 23
Related: Memorandum from Sandy, the acting OMB chief, on the federal civilian hiring freeze -- January 25
Regarding Withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations and Agreement -- January 23
Regarding the Mexico City Policy -- January 23
Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies (from Chief of Staff Reince Priebus) -- January 20
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/trump-executive-actions-orders/
index.html
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
According to you GSTRING, if I discuss something I'm over-reacting. If I DON'T discuss something, I'm hiding.
You see? You're a troll. YOU don't want to discuss the subject, all you want to do is look for an excuse for personal attacks. So the reason why I'm NOT discussing this with you further is because (1) You've been demonstrated to be wrong about five ti
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Yanno, with all of the SUBSTANTIVE criticism that one could bring to bear on Trump's Presidency (so far) I'm surprise people are still riled up by fake news.
Well, where to begin on the real news? There's so much to process!
Trump is being pretty much what I thought he would be: A loose cannon. Naturally, I agree with some Executive Orders/ Memoranda, and disagree with some. Starting with the one I agree with:
Quote:
Presidential Memorandum Regarding Withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
It is the policy of my Administration to represent the American people and their financial well-being in all negotations, particularly the American worker, and to create fair and economically beneficial trade deals that serve their interests. Additionally, in order to ensure these outcomes, it is the intention of my Administration to deal directly with individual countries on a one-on-one (or bilateral) basis in negotiating future trade deals. Trade with other nations is, and always will be, of paramount importance to my Administration and to me, as President of the United States. Based on these principles, and by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby direct you to withdraw the United States as a signatory to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), to permanently withdraw the United States from TPP negotiations, and to begin pursuing, wherever possible, bilateral trade negotiations to promote American industry, protect American workers, and raise American wages.
You are directed to provide written notification to the Parties and to the Depository of
the TPP, as appropriate, that the United States withdraws as a signatory of the TPP and withdraws from the TPP negotiating process.
You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.
DONALD J. TRUMP
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2017/images/01/28/presidential.memorandum
.regarding.withdrawal.of.the.united.states.from.the.trans-pacific.partnership.negotiations.and.agreement.pdf
Some people would argue that this Order will have no effect at all, since the TPP would still have to pass Congress. I personally think that there are enough "free trade" Democrats AND Republicans to pass this pig, and that the declaration was necessary.
As to the Order's effect: I don't think people have FULLY thought out what the TPP is and what it does.
1) It excludes China. It was meant to ring-fence China with trading partners who were legally bound to respect copyrights and patents.
2) It excludes the Legislatures and Parliaments from adjudicating trade claims, and bound the signatories in private trade courts which would decide investor-state arbitration.
Now, I know I've posted about this before, maybe it will sink in this time, but here is an example of how screwed, blue, and tattooed we would be if we had signed onto this: Under a similar trade agreement, Australia's Tobacco Plain Packaging Act ... a law that the Australian Parliament passed to discourage smoking and prevent disease and death ... was taken to TRADE COURT by Phillip Morris Asia under the presumption that this Act would interfere with normal and expected profits under a bilateral trade agreement with Hong Kong.
Quote:The arbitration was decided by a tribunal in Hong Kong. Fortunately, the suit was overturned. Unfortunately, it was overturned on a narrow technicality which would probably not apply in future cases.
Philip Morris Asia challenged the tobacco plain packaging legislation under the 1993 Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of Hong Kong for the Promotion and Protection of Investments (Hong Kong Agreenment). This was the first investor-state dispute brought against Australia. https://www.ag.gov.au/tobaccoplainpackaging
Now, imagine this scenario played out over USA environmental or product safety or food safety laws.
Let's say that a state (eg. CA) wants to pu
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The Executive Order that is causing such a fuss:
Quote:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq., and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Purpose. The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States. Perhaps in no instance was that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans. And while the visa-issuance process was reviewed and amended after the September 11 attacks to better detect would-be terrorists from receiving visas, these measures did not stop attacks by foreign nationals who were admitted to the United States.
Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement program. Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter the United States. The United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those approved for admission do not intend to harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism.
In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States; and to prevent the admission of foreign nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.
Sec. 3. Suspension of Issuance of Visas and Other Immigration Benefits to Nationals of Countries of Particular Concern. (a) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall immediately conduct a review to determine the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall submit to the President a report on the results of the review described in subsection (a) of this section, including the Secretary of Homeland Security’s determination of the information needed for adjudications and a list of countries that do not provide adequate information, within 30 days of the date of this order. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide a copy of the report to the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence.
(c) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States anNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
What I find interesting are the corporatists who are objecting so strongly, like Uber (Where will get we our cheap drivers from???) and Apple's Tim Cook (Where will we get our cheap programmers from???). These are the same people whose butts puckered when the TPP was killed, and who cling desperately to their H-1B visas so they can drive down the salaries of American scientists and programmers. What a bunch of hypocrites.
Quote:Now, Bush and Obama (and Hillary) having created the clusterfucks in these nations, it seems to me that the USA SHOULD help clean up the mess. Did I mention that I know a Syrian Xtian who is a programmer in the USA, and that he and his wife both have family in Aleppo?
Citizens of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya would be banned from entering the U.S. for 90 days, while the government determines what information it needs to safely admit visitors.
What is the best way for the USA to restore these subject nations to livability so that people no longer need to flee? How do we best handle refugees in the interim?
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
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Now, what does this last Executive order say?
It will suspend the visa program for seven nations for 90 days until Homeland Scy, Immigration, and State can figure out what information to gather in order to determine that people are who they say they are.
Not admit anyone who hates the USA and would want to do it harm.
Suspend the entry of 50,000 refugees indefinitely. However, refugees may be admitted on a case-by-case basis if they are already in transit, face religious or sexual persecution, or admission is in the national interest.
Expedite the biometric tracking system.
Interview EVERYONE who is applying for a visa, no exceptions, and increase the number of language experts so the interviews aren't delayed.
Make visa requirements reciprocal with other nations.
Provide timely and complete information to the public on the "number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; convicted of terrorism-related, post-visa radicalization, and gender-based religious violence committed by visa holders, and any other public safety information.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
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Nothing wrong with anything I've read there...
Except the fact that it is an Executive Order.......
I'm waiting on him to start tearing up all of the ones Obama and GWB wrote. Not too thrilled that he's already written one, even if I do agree with it. I hope he does the right thing with this and it goes to Congress like it should.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Why in god's name do I have to rely on a diligent poster in an obscure forum for a simple list of Trump's Executive Orders?
The msm should be keeping a running daily tally above the fold in big font, and WITH LINKS in every on-line publication, instead of ignoring nearly all of them and and endlessly frothing over one or two.
And if that doesn't tell you how much the msm is an arm of the propaganda machine rather than a NEWS SERVICE, nothing will.
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
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https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.mph9zh2fx
Trial Balloon for a Coup?
Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours
The theme of this morning’s news updates from Washington is additional clarity emerging, rather than meaningful changes in the field. But this clarity is enough to give us a sense of what we just saw happen, and why it happened the way it did.
I’ll separate what’s below into the raw news reports and analysis; you may also find these two pieces from yesterday (heavily referenced below) to be useful.
News Reports
(1) Priebus made two public statements today. One is that the ban on Muslims will no longer be applied to green card holders. Notably absent from his statement was anything about people with other types of visa (including long-term ones), or anything about the DHS’ power to unilaterally revoke green cards in bulk.
The other was that the omission of Jews from the statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day was deliberate and is not regretted.
A point of note here is that Priebus is the one making these statements, which is not normally the Chief of Staff’s job. I’ll come back to that below.
(2) Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that the intent of yesterday’s order was very much a ban on Muslims, described in those words, and he was among the people Trump asked how they could find a way to do this legally.
(3) CNN has a detailed story (heavily sourced) about the process by which this ban was created and announced. Notable in this is that the DHS’ lawyers objected to the order, specifically its exclusion of green card holders, as illegal, and also pressed for there to be a grace period so that people currently out of the country wouldn’t be stranded?—?and they were personally overruled by Bannon and Stephen Miller. Also notable is that career DHS staff, up to and including the head of Customs & Border Patrol, were kept entirely out of the loop until the order was signed.
(4) The Guardian is reporting (heavily sourced) that the “mass resignations” of nearly all senior staff at the State Department on Thursday were not, in fact, resignations, but a purge ordered by the White House. As the diagram below (by Emily Roslin v Praze) shows, this leaves almost nobody in the entire senior staff of the State Department at this point.
The seniormost staff of the Department of State. Blue X’s are unfilled positions; red X’s are positions which were purged. Note that the “filled” positions are not actually confirmed yet.
As the Guardian points out, this has an important and likely not accidental effect: it leaves the State Department entirely unstaffed during these critical first weeks, when orders like the Muslim ban (which they would normally resist) are coming down.
The article points out another point worth highlighting: “In the past, the state department has been asked to set up early foreign contacts for an incoming administration. This time however it has been bypassed, and Trump’s immediate circle of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus are making their own calls.”
(5) On Inauguration Day, Trump apparently filed his candidacy for 2020. Beyond being unusual, this opens up the ability for him to start accepting “campaign contributions” right away. Given that a sizable fraction of the campaign funds from the previous cycle were paid directly to the Trump organization in exchange for building leases, etc., at inflated rates, you can assume that those campaign coffers are a mechanism by which US nationals can easily give cash bribes directly to Trump. Non-US nationals can, of course, continue to use Trump’s hotels and other businesses as a way to funnel money to him.
(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was
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All speculation aside, if things are going down the way they are outlined, I'm not too excited about it.
Just because I approve of the results of what is to happen by no way means I support the way that it is being carried out. This administration does stuff like this and then the next Democratic administration can do things I'm 100% against in the same fashion.
I'd appreciate it if you can present facts as they arise as you did here without yelling and pissing about it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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You don't seem to be capable of understanding what's going on right in front of you.
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Wait until The Cragis and his 'Flesh and Blooder' pals come for you. Your state of 'Rapport' with George (The Animal) Soros will come to a grinding halt faster than you can say 'thalamic implant'.
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Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
You don't seem to be capable of understanding what's going on right in front of you.
Was that a reply to me?
I was serious. I liked the way you presented that information without pissing and whining and giving your two cents about it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Why in god's name do I have to rely on a diligent poster in an obscure forum for a simple list of Trump's Executive Orders?
Quote:Because I can't depend on the news for - yanno - NEWS?
Originally posted by G:
Because you can't spell Google?
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
The msm should be keeping a running daily tally above the fold in big font, and WITH LINKS in every on-line publication, instead of ignoring nearly all of them and and endlessly frothing over one or two.
And if that doesn't tell you how much the msm is an arm of the propaganda machine rather than a NEWS SERVICE, nothing will.
Quote:I'm surprised you're so up front about it.
Originally posted by G:
I'm confused Kookoo
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
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Republican senators are criticizing Trump’s immigration order but not doing anything about it
Senators have maximum leverage now, but are not using it.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/30/14440490/republicans-critici
ze-refugee-ban
Most congressional Republicans haven’t said anything about Donald Trump’s controversial executive order banning refugees and residents of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. But a fair number, including a substantial group of senators, have spoken out and done so in a critical way.
They have not, however, taken any steps to get the order changed. This is noteworthy because right now individual senators are at a point of maximum leverage vis-à-vis the White House, which needs its Cabinet secretaries to be confirmed.
Today, for example, the senate is expected to take a vote to advance the nomination of Rex Tillerson to serve as secretary of state. Democrats, according to CNN’s Eric Bradner, “are now expected to push for the vote to be delayed until he comments on the Trump travel ban on refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.”
It would only take three Republican senators joining them to force Mitch McConnell to give in and grant this request. That would create an opportunity for senators to get the designated secretary of state to clarify the order, and one for the Trump administration to alter the substance of the order to smooth things over. It would also lay the groundwork for potential tripwires on future Trump nominees to undersecretary positions.
Some Senate Republicans, of course, face the problem of being less popular with their own constituents than Trump is. But anti-order Republicans John McCain and Rob Portman were just reelected by much wider margins in their states than Trump secured. Susan Collins has criticized the order and represents a state Trump lost. Orrin Hatch, also critical, is from Utah, where Trump’s performance was catastrophically bad for a Republican.
The presidency is, at the end of the day, both the most powerful political office we have and one whose formal powers are rather circumscribed. The president can’t even staff his own administration without the Senate’s say-so. If the Republican senators who say they want Trump to modify this order insist that he modify it, he would ultimately have no choice but to do so. So far, though, they haven’t chosen to use the leverage they have. And once Trump’s team is in place, that leverage will diminish.
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In reality, I see nothing wrong with this particular Executive Order. What I hear is a lot of emotive whinging about "freedom" and "what America stands for", which are the ever-handy excuses for almost everything (including bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya).
BTW, do you know what the number of allowed immigrants was under JFK, that paragon of liberal Democrats?
I'll leave that question out there for a while. Maybe someone other than me knows about it, or will bother to learn. If anyone is willing to discuss the Executive Order, and not some phantasm, let me know. Historical examples, facts and figures, and logic are a plus. Leave your mindless outrage at the door please.
To get the conversation going, I'll cross post this POV here, too.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
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Quote:Then it's a good thing the executive order calls for data on the topic to be gathered.
Originally posted by G:
1. The pitch from Trump for this was to protect the US from foreign terrorists, but the facts of where terrorists have come from blow that up completely. So another lie.
Quote:Yet neither Islam nor Muslim are mentioned anywhere in the entire document.
2. According to Rudy G., this was a ban on a religion.
Quote:That would apply to citizens. Also, fwiw, many particular RELIGIOUS PRACTICES - like human and animal sacrifice, and plural marriage - are banned by law. So even the supposed religious freedoms citizens enjoy are limited.
Maybe you are new to the US, but religious freedoms are the very core of our CONSTITUTION.
Quote:Yet neither Islam nor Muslim are mentioned anywhere in the entire document.
3. Banning Muslims only
Quote:Got proof of that?
further's (sic) ISIS desire for religious conflict between Islam and Christians
Quote:logical fallacy - which seems to be all you have
- do you want that? Maybe you do.
Quote:Bungled is the word I'd use.
4. It was rushed, poorly handled - bad showing for the administration which reflects poorly on the country - and for no reason.
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
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Quote:The answer was: ZERO.
BTW, do you know what the number of allowed immigrants was under JFK, that paragon of liberal Democrats?
I'm getting a sense of the Trump Administration's flaws. It has a lot to do with inexperience with government: Trump thinks that the White House plays like reality TV, that all he has to do is give the word and it shall be done. And Trump's appointees mostly reflect Trump's own POV- people who talk big and promote well, but who don't necessarily follow up. Loose cannons.
Michael Flynn, for example. My impression of his 45-minute interview was that he was something of a "fast talker". While he never said anything cringeworthy, he always had an excuse or a reason or an explanation for why something didn't go well. Which explains why he's in trouble now.
OTOH, Tillerson is a shining appointee. He doesn't blab all over the media. Instead, he seems to be steady and methodically goal-oriented.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
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Do you see what's happening here SIG? I'll fill you in. With self-righteous indignation you are beginning to voice a displeasure with Trump. You are repeating to us what we were telling you before the election.
Did you think you could do that without condemnation from the rest of us? In thread after thread you argued for Trump. Now you want to shift to condemner and chief? No SIG, your past posts trying to debunk what we were saying then, as opposed to what you are saying now, are going to haunt you. Vladimir Trump is your guy.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:The answer was: ZERO.
BTW, do you know what the number of allowed immigrants was under JFK, that paragon of liberal Democrats?
I'm getting a sense of the Trump Administration's flaws. It has a lot to do with inexperience with government: Trump thinks that the White House plays like reality TV, that all he has to do is give the word and it shall be done. And Trump's appointees mostly reflect Trump's own POV- people who talk big and promote well, but who don't necessarily follow up. Loose cannons.
Michael Flynn, for example. My impression of his 45-minute interview was that he was something of a "fast talker". While he never said anything cringeworthy, he always had an excuse or a reason or an explanation for why something didn't go well. Which explains why he's in trouble now.
OTOH, Tillerson is a shining appointee. He doesn't blab all over the media. Instead, he seems to be steady and methodically goal-oriented.
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
---------------------
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So, how is Trump doing on the three things that I thought were so important that they outweighed the fact that Trump would be a loose cannon ... something that I mentioned frequently BEFORE the election?
1) FREE TRADE
Two backed out of (TPP, TTIP) two more (NAFTA, CAFTA) to go. The WTO might be too big to tackle. The quality of Trump's "bilateral" deals has yet to be demonstrated.
2) MAKE NICE WITH RUSSIA
Trump is getting a lot of pushback from neocons in both parties. No progress in this area.
3) ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
So far, I've been very pleased with Trump's temporary pause on visas from seven war-torn, terrorist-burdened nations, plus his "surge" of raids and deportations. People who are in this country illegally shouldn't expect ICE to ignore the law on their behalf, and if they get swept up because they were in the company of drug-runners, gangbangers, and murderers ... oh well, maybe people will start being a little more careful about the company that they keep.
Things I KNEW I was going to be against
1) ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
However, by withdrawing from TPP and TTIP, the venue for disagreement is in the US courts and Congress, not secret tribunals in Brussels or Singapore. Different states can adopt different policies, and (strangely) it may be the liberal states arguing about "states' rights", which I find to be a positive development.
Things I suspected I might be against
1) REGULATORY POLICIES
Yes, I know that businesses - especially small businesses - face a welter of regulations. However, businesses have proven to be incapable of regulating themselves. There's a reason why regulatory agencies came into being in the first place. We all know what we want out of businesses: don't sell us contaminated products, don't shit up the environment, don't brutalize your workers. Why can't we simplify?
2) TAX POLICIES
I have no idea what will come out of the Trump administration. Our tax laws desperately need reform, but I doubt that Trump's reforms would match mine.
3) CHINA AND IRAN
Unnecessarily confrontational, militarily. China is an economic adversary, not a military one. Iran isn't our enemy at all, it's Saudi Arabia's - but who the heck cares?
Things I suspected I might be for
1) BORDER TAX
However, there will be a lot of pushback from out "trading partners" involving possibly the WTO
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-13/biggest-case-wto-history-euro
pe-prepares-legal-challenge-against-trump-border-tax
so it may have to be framed as a Value Added Tax reform, to make our taxes more like other nations and to level the playing field.
Issues that are complete unknowns:
1) OBAMACARE
Obamacare needs to be replaced, but it depends on with what. If Trump makes the government negotiate for best drug prices, he will do more to save Medicare than all of the liberal hand-wringing. It would also help Obamacare be more cost-effective. But what comes out is unpredictable.
----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
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As far as I can tell, so far Trump has TALKED about a lot of things, which is open to opinion but hasn't resolved into fact. When he TALKS about Russia, for example, I interpret it as pre-positioning for Trump-style negotiations. What'll come out of it is anybody's guess.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/executive-orders-presidents-act
ions-presidential-memoranda/
executive orders
¤ Minimizing the Economic Burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Pending Repeal
¤ Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals for High-Profile Infrastructure Projects
¤ Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements (the wall)
¤ Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States (deportation, reducing funding to 'sanctuary entities)
¤ Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States
¤ Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees (lifetime ban on administration officials lobbying for foreign governments, and a five-year ban for other lobbying)
¤ Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs (every new regulation requires two be phased out)
¤ Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System (directive for regulatory agencies to consider Trump's set of priorities and return a report within 120 days on which current laws don't abide by the order and the actions that may need to be taken)
¤ Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety (Trump outlines a commitment to reducing the US crime rate by tackling illegal immigration, drug trafficking and violent crime. It directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to establish a task force that will collaborate with law enforcement nationwide and design new strategies to reduce crime.0
¤ Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking (an order targeting transnational drug cartels)
¤ Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Enforcement Officers
¤ Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice
presidential memorandums
¤ Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies -- An order to halt any new federal regulations until they can be reviewed by the new administration. This was a near exact replica of executive orders that the past two presidents have had their chiefs of staff issue at the beginning of their administrations.
Day 3:
¤ Regarding the Mexico City Policy -- Reinstates a policy that, among other things, restricts US funding to nongovernmental organizations that provide abortions.
¤ Regarding Withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations and Agreement -- Withdraws the United States from a massive trade deal that was negotiated by the Obama administration, but not yet ratified by Congress. It was largely a symbolic move since the TPP was never officially enacted.
¤ Regarding the Hiring Freeze -- Institutes a freeze on the hiring of new federal workers, except for the military.
¤ Construction of American Pipelines - Says new pipelines should be made using US-produced materials.
¤ Regarding Construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline -- Kick starts a pipeline the Obama administration had quashed. Trump's order allows the pipelines to proceed but the projects are still a long way from getting underway. Trump himself said the US would renegotiate the terms of the pipelines, which implies a lengthy process with several competing interests.
¤ Regarding Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline -- Prioritizes a controversial pipeline that was the subject of protests in North Dakota
¤ Streamlining Permitting and Reducing Regulatory Burdens for Domestic Manufacturing -- Requests a plan to make the permitting process easier for US manufacturers.
¤ Rebuilding the US Armed Forces -- spurs military spending and directs Defense Secretary James Mattis to begin "developing a plan for new planes, ne
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The truth of what is going on is playing out in public. What you two post here is a joke.
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Quote:Take it up with CNN. That's what I quoted.
What you two post here is a joke.
THUGGER admits he's a troll
here http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61371&p=1#1
024017
here http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61329&p=3
here http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61343
and
here http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61366
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Flynn resigns amid controversy over Russia contacts
How did your beloved 'democratic' party fuck up so badly?
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Cynically, Trump claims he will run the government like a business. Trump promised 6ix a good job (6ix is an unemployed Ne'er-do-well) and promised second a huge tax cut (second is the 1%). We can judge Trump by how soon he meets these goals and the cost to meet them. Since he is running the USA like a business, we need to also look at the National Debt. He could meet every goal almost instantaneously if he expands the National Debt very fast. But that would not be business-like, would it? You can read about these kinds of trade-offs between goals and expenditures at "Donald Trump is about to find out you can’t run government like a business"
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How is Trump running the government?
Not sure why you quoted me on this one. I don't see how that reply pertains at all to what I was talking about.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/24/14346270/government-business
-chaos]
T
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Liberal Democrats are becoming a joke, party greatly needs reform, if Trump continues having some media trouble they in the Dem party might stumble into a few new seats with midterm election but the Left Democrats have lost their way. I still Predict a growth in Third-party, independent, Libertarian and unaffiliated ...some media celeb types might start getting active in politics Roseanne Barr, WWE Dwayne 'the Rock' Johnson and others getting active online.
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Well, let's see! A lot has happened in the past three years, by now enough to get a bead on Trump's performance as President! It will take me a while to go back over the record and process what has happened, but here's my top-of-the-head reaction
Trump has actually been relatively successful at getting traction on illegal immigration issues. The wall is getting built, without help from Congress. Visitors from wartorn jihadist-filled nations are blocked. Policy is changing on asylum, which economic migrants have been abusing for decades. Most successfully, Trump or one of his appointees did some out-of-the-box thinking and put pressure on Mexico to stem the surge of Central American migrants passing thru Mexico instead of just funneling them to the border, which has reduced pressure at the border by something like 50% from its peak. I think when Trump puts his mind to it, he knows how to accomplish.
Trump does seem to have a penchant for breaking up old agreements and old arrangements that he didn't have a hand in negotiating.
Sometimes that's a good thing, like with TTP and TTIP
Sometimes it's a neutral thing, like with the Paris Climate Accord (which was a feckless attempt at window-dressing a serious problem).
Sometimes that's a bad thing, like with the JCPOA and the INF.
Sometimes that's a nascent thing yet to occur like with NATO, the EU, N Korea, Israel, the Mideast, and Russia.
Sometimes that's a thing with many moving parts, like our trade relationship with China, which needed a serious reset but has both good and bad effects, yet to be determined.
In any case, Trump is a disruptor, or ... as I called him BEFORE the election ... a loose cannon. Now, I happen to believe that many of our former alliances, agreements and arrangements needed serious disruption, so shaking things loose is a necessary step towards improvement. OTOH, Trump has not been able to reach good conclusions for these disruptions. Part of this may be his combative approach of applying "maximum pressure" and sending out mixed signals before "the big ask"; part of this may be internal contradictions in his own set of goals (make nice with Russia, make war on Iran which I pointed out even before he was elected couldn't both be accomplished); and part of this may be resulting from neocon/deep state interference.
I think this requires a serious picking-apart. I suspect quite a bit of this chaos is due to deep state interference, given the CIA's feeding bad info to Trump via Gina Haspel (Syria, Skripal) and people like Bolton constantly monkey-wrenching Trump's foreign policy (N Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, etc) It didn't help that Trump was being pressured by an internationally-coordinated covert operation and psyop against the American people.
But at this point it may not matter whether this is Trump's innate combative and disruptive approach to negotiations or lack of clarity of objectives or whether this is the deep state constantly throwing Trump's initiatives off track, because at SOME point the various negotiators across the table are going to throw in the towel and say that the Trump administration is (as the Russians say) "not agreement-capable" and I believe that point has been reached. And even if Trump manages to fire some of the sabateurs in his administration and rein in the rest, it's too late to pull the foreign policy bacon out of the fire.
Wittingly or not, thanks to sanctions and threats, what Trump has managed to do is consolidate Russia, China, Iran, and (sometimes) India, plus most of the 'stans into a trading and security bloc which will not be using either SWIFT or the dollar. For example, India just announced a deal to invest in Russia's northeast energy sources (I'll try to get the value, but it's in the realm of "billion"), while China just announced a $400 billion dollar deal to invest in Iran over 5 years, with Russian par
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Interesting and usually insightful analysis can be found here
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
THE DURAN
TOM LUONGO: GOLD, GOATS AND GUNS
Breaking headlines here, but allotacrap also
https://www.zerohedge.com/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Hmmm ... anyone agree? Disagree? No takers on discussion?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Trump's immigration crackdown starts to gain traction
Trump's immigration crackdown starts to gain traction
[AFP]
Sebastian Smith
,AFP•September 12, 2019
US President Donald Trump, pictured on September 11, celebrated a string of immigration victories this week
US President Donald Trump, pictured on September 11, celebrated a string of immigration victories this week (AFP Photo/NICHOLAS KAMM)
Washington (AFP) - With a little help from the Supreme Court and Mexico, US President Donald Trump's fitful crackdown on immigration is finally gaining traction.
Trump has spent his entire presidency promising to stop illegal immigration, shut out asylum seekers and wall off the Mexican border.
The far-reaching policies sparked an avalanche of court challenges, complaints from human rights organizations and derision from opposition Democrats ahead of next year's elections.
Undeterred, Trump has hammered away, making construction of a US-Mexican border wall one of his presidency's centerpieces -- and a key part of his 2020 reelection platform.
And this week he celebrated a string of victories.
The latest boost came Wednesday when the Supreme Court said he could enact severe restrictions on asylum seekers.
The ruling requires would-be refugees to ask for asylum in the first country they visit and only then -- if they are rejected -- can they attempt to apply in the United States.
The ruling -- which has temporary effect while challenges play out in lower courts -- shuts out large numbers of people fleeing violence and poverty in Central America. They will now have to apply for asylum in Mexico, rather than head directly to the United States.
Trump's opponents, as well as dissenting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, say the change upends decades of tradition in which the US, itself founded by waves of often poor immigrants, has welcomed refugees.
But Trump, who argues that economic migrants abuse the system with fraudulent asylum claims, went on Twitter to herald the "BIG United States Supreme Court WIN for the Border on Asylum!"
"The Southern Border is becoming very strong despite the obstruction by Democrats," he tweeted.
- Mexico comes on board -
That's far from all.
In July, the Supreme Court backed Trump's move to divert billions of dollars in Pentagon funds to pay for extending or rebuilding stretches of wall on the Mexican border. This lets him circumvent fierce resistance to funding in a divided Congress.
The Pentagon also said this Tuesday that the deployment of 5,500 troops on the border -- something that was initially highly controversial -- was being extended for the coming year.
While Trump exaggerates the amount of wall-building activity there's no question that momentum is gradually shifting his way.
"The Wall is going up very fast despite total Obstruction by Democrats in Congress, and elsewhere!" he tweeted Wednesday.
Perhaps the most significant shift has happened on the other side of the long, rugged frontier, where the Mexican government has set aside previous hostility to cooperate with Trump.
The change in mood follows threats by Trump to impose trade tariffs on Mexico, even though the two countries are in a free trade agreement together with Canada.
Not that Mexico is entirely happy. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard called the new US asylum restrictions, which could mean a torrent of new cases for his country, "unprecedented."
"Or course we disagree," he said.
But Mexico appears to have accepted it has no choice but to play by Trump's rules.
On Monday, Mark Morgan, head of the US border patrol service, welcomed "unprecedented support" from Mexico, which he said has deployed 10,000 troops on its own southern border with Central America and 15,000 on the US border.
Proof that the joint crackdown is having an effect is in the numbers, US officials say.
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Quote:And part Trump is not well. Accepting the reality about the president’s disordered personality is important — even essential.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
In any case, Trump is a disruptor, or ... as I called him BEFORE the election ... a loose cannon. Now, I happen to believe that many of our former alliances, agreements and arrangements needed serious disruption, so shaking things loose is a necessary step towards improvement. OTOH, Trump has not been able to reach good conclusions for these disruptions. Part of this may be his combative approach of applying "maximum pressure" and sending out mixed signals before "the big ask"; part of this may be internal contradictions in his own set of goals (make nice with Russia, make war on Iran which I pointed out even before he was elected couldn't both be accomplished); and part of this may be resulting from neocon/deep state interference.
Trump’s psychological impairments are obvious to all who are not willfully blind. On a daily basis we see the president’s chaotic, unstable mind on display. Are we supposed to ignore that?
Donald Trump’s disordered personality — his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving — has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them; his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating.
It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny, predatory sexual behavior, and sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW. (When asked about Trump’s feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump’s mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, reportedly said, “He pisses ice water.”)
The most recent example is the president’s bizarre fixation on falsely insisting that he was correct to warn that Alabama faced a major risk from Hurricane Dorian, to the point that he doctored a hurricane map with a black Sharpie to include the state as being in the path of the storm.
“He’s deteriorating in plain sight,” one Republican strategist who is in frequent contact with the White House told Business Insider on Friday. Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, “You should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment.”
We have repeatedly heard versions of that sentiment over the course of Trump’s presidency.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/donald-trump-not-well/597640/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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blah blah blah
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:You could get exactly the same policies from V.P. Mike Pence without Trump's sudden U-Turns, dithering, confusion, and long delays because the machinery that's doing the actual work -- the GOP -- would be exactly the same.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
blah blah blah
Do Right, Be Right. :)
For 8 months George Bush's presidency was as peaceful as Trump's first 33 months, but if there was another 9/11, Trump would react the same as Bush, except the target would be Iran rather that Iraq because Trump has a funny thing going around in his head about Iran, same as Bush had with Iraq. I am unsure if President Mike Pence would arbitrarily and capriciously target Iran after another 9/11, since Pence is not nuts. But Iran might be the GOP's preferred next target, and hence Pence's: "Bolton Is Gone, but Tensions With Iran Remain High"
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/12/bolton-is-gone-but-tensions-with-
iran-remain-high-rouhani-jcpoa-oil-sanctions-trump/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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How do you know that Pence isn't nuts?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:The baseline is Trump. Compared to Trump, Pence is an exemplary model of stability and rectitude. There are long, long lists of how many times Trump lied; not so long for Pence.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
How do you know that Pence isn't nuts?
www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/fals
e/
The beauty of Pence is that he has all the same policy preferences as Trump, but without the dizzying spin of Trump, who is bouncing randomly around like a steel ball on a whirling roulette wheel. Somebody needs to up Trump's dosage of medication for bipolar syndrome. He is in the maniac stage all the time.
www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/hypomania-mania-symptoms
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Somebody needs to up Trump's dosage of medication for bipolar syndrome. He is in the maniac stage all the time.
www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/hypomania-mania-symptoms
That's called Mania. If he is in that stage all of the time than he doesn't have Bipolar Disorder.
Don't quit your day job as a goat herder or whatever it was.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Like what? Just OOC what policies would Pence follow that would be exactly the same as Trump?
You could get exactly the same policies from V.P. Mike Pence ...
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Like what? Just OOC what policies would Pence follow that would be exactly the same as Trump?
You could get exactly the same policies from V.P. Mike Pence ...
He couldn't possibly have an answer for that question. Pence is a completely unknown quantity. I can't recall a time in my life where there ever was a VP who was less talked about than Pence.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Not only is it impossible to know what policies Pence would follow, I'll bet SECOND can't describe Trump's policies either.Which is why I don't really discuss much with SECOND, because he keeps making fatuous statements that he can't possbly have spent even three seconds thinking about.
But yeah, I'd be interested to see if SECOND has an answer for this one.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:Pence's policies would be identical to the wisdom of the GOP's elders. So would Trump's if only Trump could understand what he is being told. If you haven't noticed, Trump is stupid and he doesn't know the difference between what he is being told to do and what he does do. He's just such a numbskull. Pence is not, or at least he hides his ignorance better than Trump does.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Not only is it impossible to know what policies Pence would follow, I'll bet SECOND can't describe Trump's policies either.Which is why I don't really discuss much with SECOND, because he keeps making fatuous statements that he can't possbly have spent even three seconds thinking about.
But yeah, I'd be interested to see if SECOND has an answer for this one.
For an example that is purely technical and has nothing to do with the difference between Democrats and Republicans, Trump has been told the predictable and obvious consequences of his economic policies, but he doesn't grasp what he has been told. I'm pretty sure Pence does, but Pence is not in charge. Pence isn't in a position to prove, yet, that he is smarter than Trump on economics:
www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/opinion/trump-economy.html
Trump’s two signature economic policies were his 2017 tax cut and his rapidly escalating trade war with China. The first was "supposed" (if you believed what Trump believed for no real reason) to lead to a decade or more of rapid economic growth, while the second was "supposed" to revive U.S. manufacturing.
In reality, however, the tax cut delivered at most a couple of quarters of higher growth. More specifically, huge tax breaks for corporations haven’t delivered the promised surge in wages and business investment; instead, corporations used the windfall to buy back stocks and pay higher dividends.
At the same time, the trade war has turned out to be a major drag on the economy — bigger than many people expected. Until last fall the general expectation was that Trump would deal with China the way he dealt with Mexico: make a few mainly cosmetic changes to existing arrangements, claim victory, and move on. Once it became clear that he was really serious about confrontation, however, business confidence began falling, dragging investment down with it.
And voters have noticed: Trump’s approval rating on the economy, while still higher than his overall approval, has started to decline. Hence the panicky demands that the Fed pull out all the stops.
But while Trump realizes that he’s in trouble, there’s no indication that he understands why. He’s not the kind of person who ever admits, even to himself, that he made mistakes; his instinct is always to blame someone else while doubling down on his failed policies.
Even actions that look like a slight policy softening, like his announcement of a two-week delay in implementing some China tariffs, betray a deep incomprehension of the problem — which has as much to do with his capriciousness as with the tariffs per se. Policy zigzags, even if they involve delaying tariffs, just add to the will-he-or-won’t-he uncertainty that’s causing companies to put investment on hold.
So what happens next? Trump could reverse course, and do what most people expected a year ago, reaching a deal with China that more or less restores the status quo. But that would be a de facto admission of defeat — and at this point it’s not clear why the Chinese would trust him to honor any such deal past Election Day 2020. The fact is that when it comes to economic policy, Trump has trapped himself in a bad place.
More at www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/opinion/trump-economy.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Which are ... what?
Pence's policies would be identical to the wisdom of the GOP's elders.
Quote:So, Trump's policies ARE NOT what the GOP elders want (whatever those are) and since Pence's policies would be identical to the wisdom of the GOP elders (whatever that is) the only logical conclusion is that Pence's polices WOULD NOT be the same as Trump's.
So would Trump's IF only Trump could understand what he is being told.
Seriously dood, does it not trouble you that you contradict yourself within the space of three posts? That's why I barely read your posts. You're a shit-skimmer; you skim for shit and post it without applying even the slightest filtration. And now you're busy shitting up this thread too. Why should I bother reading shit?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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A critical commentary about Trump's foreign policy with a critical description of Moke Pennce
Quote:timely prediction
Trump Foreign Policy as Theater of the Absurd
A nightmare that one never wakes up from
Philip Giraldi • September 10, 2019
One might be forgiven for thinking that the foreign policy of the United States is some kind of theatrical performance, like a comic opera, with new characters appearing on stage willy-nilly and then being driven off after committing an incredible faux pas only to be replaced by even more grotesquely clownish figures. Unfortunately, while the musical chairs and plot twists contrived by a Goldoni or Moliere generally have a cheerful ending, the same cannot be said about what has been taking place in the White House.
The latest White House somewhat unexpected departure was that of ex-real estate lawyer Jason Greenblatt, who has been hanging around for over two years putting together the Deal of the Century for the Middle East. The Deal will reportedly end forever the possibility of any real Palestinian state but has run into a problem because Israel does not want its hands tied in any way while the Saudis and friends are reluctant to come up with the cash to fund the arrangement. Back to square one, though the Administration has replaced Greenblatt with thirty-year old Avi Berkowitz, whose only qualification for the position is that he is a friend of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and whose most recent job at the White House consisted of managing “daily logistics like getting coffee…” The president is nevertheless still insisting that the peace plan will be revealed in all its glory after the Israeli election on September 17th.
Another administration notable who now appears to be waiting for the hook to come out from offstage and take him away is National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Quote:
Bolton has long been regarded by those who still believe that Donald Trump actually has a heart and a mind as the eminence grise seated behind the throne who has encouraged the president’s bad angels. That may indeed be so, but leaks are now suggesting that the president has been disagreeing with his chief minister and marginalizing his presence in meetings. But as bad as Bolton truly is, one should not dismiss from consideration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom, like Bolton, have exhibited extraordinary ability to provide bad advice and to simultaneously say and do stupid things.
Pence’s recent error plagued trip to Ireland left one exasperated Irish journalist complaining that it was as if the Vice President had been invited to someone’s home and had “shat on the new carpet in the spare room, the one you bought specially for him” before his departure. Pence had unwisely made comments about Brexit that were both uninformed and regarded as “humiliating” by his hosts. But his real crime was that he blamed his boss for the ridiculous decision to stay at a Trump property 180 miles away from Dublin. President Trump denied the claim and, as he does not like being embarrassed by his subordinates, there is already talk that Pence will be replaced on the Republican ticket in 2020. Unfortunately, Attila the Hun is no longer available but it is certain that the GOP will be able to come up with someone else who will, like Pence, offend almost everyone. Tom Cotton maybe? Nikki Haley?
Now that North Korea is not cooperating with Trump’s distinctive brand of diplomacy, the Great Negotiator has turned to America (and Israel’s) enemy number one, suggesting a sit down with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The only problem with that is that Rouhani is not playing because the United States has been engaged in nothing less than “maximum pressure” economic warfare against his country. End the sanctions and Rouhani would consider talking directly.
Israel, of course, is deeply concerned lest American and Iranian heads of government actually get together to discuss things. According to some observers, Prime Minister Benjamin NNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The dratted double
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The terrible triple!
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Quote:You want to talk Trump's "policy", as if Trump is designing, crafting something. He can't do it because he is stupid. Please remember that Sharpiegate was only last week, Signym. Trump was showing himself as a real idiot on something completely trivial, but he is even worse at understanding economic predictions then he is on weather predictions. Mike Pence would never fall into the confusion and silliness that Trump does every day about everything.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Which are ... what?
Pence's policies would be identical to the wisdom of the GOP's elders.Quote:So, Trump's policies ARE NOT what the GOP elders want (whatever those are) and since Pence's policies would be identical to the wisdom of the GOP elders (whatever that is) the only logical conclusion is that Pence's polices WOULD NOT be the same as Trump's.
So would Trump's IF only Trump could understand what he is being told.
Seriously dood, does it not trouble you that you contradict yourself within the space of three posts? That's why I barely read your posts. You're a shit-skimmer; you skim for shit and post it without applying even the slightest filtration. And now you're busy shitting up this thread too. Why should I bother reading shit?
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/this-isnt-just-a-stupid-story-i
ts-a-big-story-an-oral-history-of-sharpiegate/2019/09/13/504b63c4-d404-11e9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html
You can actually see how stupid Trump is if you watch the video. He hasn't the good sense to shut up on the stage. Read one those tell all books written about the early months of his administration (Fire and Fury Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff [2017]). Trump is the same way in all areas: Meetings, diplomacy, speech-making, whatever he does. He pleased his voters for "telling it like it is" but Trump cannot turn his mouth off and think for 10-minutes before rambling on some more, saying the stupidest stuff. And then making the stupidity his new policy. You will never see Pence be this idiotic in unscripted remarks:
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
You want to talk Trump's "policy", as if Trump is designing, crafting something- STUPID
No, YOU want to talk Trump "policy".
Quote:
You could get exactly the same policies from V.P. Mike Pence
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:The difference between Pence and Trump come down to competence. It is excruciatingly obvious that Trump is incompetent, but there is a funny thing I've noticed: incompetent people can't tell that Trump is incompetent, since he is continually bragging that he is great at his job. Hint: if you think Trump is great, you don't know what doing a great job is. Another oddity: the higher your income, the less likely you are to vote for Trump.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
You want to talk Trump's "policy", as if Trump is designing, crafting something- STUPID
No, YOU want to talk Trump "policy".Quote:
You could get exactly the same policies from V.P. Mike Pence
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
In the distant past, the richer you were the more likely you were to vote for a Republican. That’s held true in every single presidential election since 1948 — until you get to 2016. In that year, the top two income deciles (D9 and D10) suddenly diverged from their usual historical pattern and voted for Democrats by about 30 points more than they should have.
The upper middle class and the rich like Donald Trump way, way less than they like the average Republican.
In 1948, highly-educated voters preferred Republicans by 16 points. That’s changed pretty steadily, and in the 2016 election highly-educated voters preferred Democrats by 24 points. That’s a swing of 40 points.
Those voters with high incomes could predict that Trump would be grossly incompetent. He has since proved it, day after day.
It is unsurprising that Trump can't understand what the GOP elders want him to do. He loses track of the GOP plan and gets hopelessly confused by the details. It is not that he doesn't want to do what the GOP wants him to do. He can't because he is stupid as hell and too proud to get help. On the other hand, Pence is not stupid nor confused.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/09/raw-data-we-have-met-the-merito
cracy-and-it-is-us/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:How would you know?
The difference between Pence and Trump come down to competence.
Quote:It's obvious that he's inconsistent and unpredictable. That might be a deliberate tactic. And even if it isn't, it may have a positive effect.
It is excruciatingly obvious that Trump is incompetent
Quote:By logic, incompetent people can't tell that he's competent either, since they're unlikely to be able to recognize either one.
but there is a funny thing I've noticed: incompetent people can't tell that Trump is incompetent
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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I'm trying to figure the guy out, SECOND, not bag on him or praise him.
Trump is combative, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because if you're trying to change long-standing policies that are advocated by pretty much everyone in government, such as outsourcing American jobs and tolerating (if not outright encouraging) illegal immigration, hemorrhaging money to our bought-and-paid-for "allies" ... well, it helps to be combative because you're going to have a fight on your hands.
Plus, Trump can't be ALL bad- I just look at his enemies (the security-state operatives, the monopolistic M$M and liberaloids everywhere) and I figure if THEY hate him to the point of fabricating a nonsensical "Russia collusion" hoax and slinging mud at every little thing ... well, he must be doing something right!
But I am frustrated with his inability to stop the neocons and his (apparent) constant sucking up to Israel. (if Netanyahu fails to get elected, Kushner will have to find a new BFF in Israel.) His foreign policy is a mess, and he can't really blame Bolt-on because after all, he was the one who appointed him. And his economic policy is pretty pointless ... if you're going to revitalize manufacturing you're going to have to do more than repatriate capital, tarrif imports, and cross your fingers; American financialists aren't "into" investing, they're into speculation. Trump would have to find some way of actually mandating investment in manufacturing or having the governent invest directly itself. Plus, he's way overbudget.
So I'm just trying to get an overall bead on whether or not Trump is lurching in generally a good direction or not.
We (Americans) are facing a long list of problems NOT caued by trump; these are problems literally 50+ years in the making. The question is, is Trump solving them, making them worse, sliding sideways, or something else?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:It is perfectly obvious that Trump is attempting to follow the standard GOP designs, but he deviates from those designs because he is stupid.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I'm trying to figure the guy out, SECOND, not bag on him or praise him.
Why would you think Trump can solve 50+ year old of problems? He might want to talk about them, and brag that only he could solve the problems, but the GOP doesn't care to help Trump on his ego trip to a glorious story about Trump. It has a different set of tasks, and Trump either does what the GOP wants or the work does not get done.
Trump is like somebody assembling furniture from the IKEA Catalog, but he does poor quality work. His shelves and tables are wobbly and his chairs might collapse when sat in. On the other hand, Pence would actually read and follow the instructions and his finished IKEA/GOP furniture would be solid. But what both Trump and Pence are trying to build would be the same old highly recognizable GOP/IKEA designs. Trump is bad at assembling and Pence is probably better. But what they are doing is assembling furniture. It is not at all about solving problems that attracted Signym's attention.
For one example: if Trump wanted to actually solve the illegal alien problem, he wouldn't start with building the Texas/Mexico Wall, which requires GOP Congress to agree. Instead he'd be enforcing already existing laws about illegal aliens and he would be going full speed ahead with deporting those 25,000,000 aliens who have addresses, phone numbers, cars, jobs, everything that citizens have except citizenship. It ought to be pretty damn easy to figure out who is not a citizen, then deport them. But Trump hasn't figured out anything. I'm pretty sure that is because the GOP hasn't told Trump how to do it since the GOP elders want a large supply of cheap illegal immigrant labor that is easy for bosses to intimidate. But the GOP elders cannot talk in public about that because GOP voters would not agree.
"Trump vowed millions of immigration arrests in dramatic raids. ICE caught 18 family members."
www.texastribune.org/2019/07/24/trump-promised-massive-immigration-rai
ds-ice-caught-18-family-members/
"Largest US immigration raids in a decade net 680 arrests"
www.apnews.com/bbcef8ddae4e4303983c91880559cf23
The GOP is not helping Trump think his way to a solution. Without help, Trump is flailing around.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Plus, Trump can't be ALL bad- I just look at his enemies (the security-state operatives, the monopolistic M$M and liberaloids everywhere) and I figure if THEY hate him to the point of fabricating a nonsensical "Russia collusion" hoax and slinging mud at every little thing ... well, he must be doing something right!
You should read your own posts sometimes - hi-larious.
You realize you bring up RUSSIA! more than anyone else here except lately 6, and sometimes Kookie, right? I also think it's funny that you care about it so much. Why? So what if people want to know more about Trump's involvement with Putin. Doesn't that just make sense? Isn't it prudent? Why does that bother you so much? He and his family have been lying about their relations with Russia since before the election. Aren't you curious why?
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Because, Captain, they railed on it non-stop for 2 1/2 years and it was all bullshit.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:No BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ANY OF SIGNIFICANCE.
Plus, Trump can't be ALL bad- I just look at his enemies (the security-state operatives, the monopolistic M$M and liberaloids everywhere) and I figure if THEY hate him to the point of fabricating a nonsensical "Russia collusion" hoax and slinging mud at every little thing ... well, he must be doing something right! SIGNY
You should read your own posts sometimes - hi-larious.
You realize you bring up RUSSIA! more than anyone else here except lately 6, and sometimes Kookie, right? I also think it's funny that you care about it so much. Why? So what if people want to know more about Trump's involvement with Putin. Doesn't that just make sense?
It's like obssessing over Saddam's WMD, or Alex Jones' lizard people: It's delusional. Your minds (yours, WISHY's, JO's, SECOND.s, THUGR's) keep circling this non-event like our planet circles the sun, you can't seen to escape its attraction. You've been captured by a psoyp, and you can't seem to get out.
Quote:NO IT'S DELUSIONAL
Isn't it prudent?
Quote:BECAUSE IT'S DELUSIONAL
Why does that bother you so much?
Quote:NO THEY HAVEN'T
He and his family have been lying about their relations with Russia since before the election.
Quote:NO, BECAUSE I'M NOT DELUSIONAL.
Aren't you curious why?
Lookit CC, anyone who does business or politics internationally will have SOME contact with Russia somewhere along the way. Why do you insist on turning this into something it isn't?
I'm more concerned about Trump's ties to ISRAEL, which are MUCH more apparent and MUCH more dangerous, since "Bibi" seems intent on getting us into a war with Iran and fighting his wars for him. Why aren't you worried about that?
I know the answer: BECAUSE YOU'RE DELUSIONAL AND I'M NOT.
Your delusions (colletively) are preventing you from seeing and responding to real problems. You're kike the guy glued to his smart pone as he walks off a cliff.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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huh?
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Another "where did THAT come from"?
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Consider this thread to be an exercise in thinking about Trump without thinking about Russian "collusion", since that didn't happen and Russia is insignificant in that context.
Can we focus on REAL problems and REAL events please?
Negative interest rates?
War with Iran?
Exploding debt load?
Any of this ringing a bell?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by CAPTAINCRUNCH:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Plus, Trump can't be ALL bad- I just look at his enemies (the security-state operatives, the monopolistic M$M and liberaloids everywhere) and I figure if THEY hate him to the point of fabricating a nonsensical "Russia collusion" hoax and slinging mud at every little thing ... well, he must be doing something right!
You should read your own posts sometimes - hi-larious.
You realize you bring up RUSSIA! more than anyone else here except lately 6, and sometimes Kookie, right? I also think it's funny that you care about it so much. Why? So what if people want to know more about Trump's involvement with Putin. Doesn't that just make sense? Isn't it prudent? Why does that bother you so much? He and his family have been lying about their relations with Russia since before the election. Aren't you curious why?
T
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Please leave your delusion at the door ...
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Consider this thread to be an exercise in thinking about Trump without thinking about Russian "collusion", since that didn't happen and Russia is insignificant in that context.
Can we focus on REAL problems and REAL events please?
Negative interest rates?
War with Iran?
Exploding debt load?
Any of this ringing a bell?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:Oy vey!
US, Israel talk about mutual defense treaty – Trump
Of course, one never knows how seriously to take what Trump says ... There is a lot of oover-the-top electioneering going on in Israel right now, and the Trump administration is ready to hop onboard with allegations against Iran.
Quote:ie. the USA interfering in an Israeli election ...
The US and Israel are discussing a mutual defense treaty that would further cement the already “tremendous” alliance between the two countries, President Donald Trump has revealed.
"I had a call today with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of moving forward with a Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Israel, that would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries," Trump tweeted.
....between our two countries. I look forward to continuing those discussions after the Israeli Elections when we meet at the United Nations later this month!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2019
Trump voiced not-that-veiled support for Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections in Israel.
“I look forward to continuing those discussions after the Israeli Elections when we meet at the United Nations later this month!” Trump wrote.
The support surely comes in handy, as Netanyahu’s backing appears to be quite shaky. The September 17 polls are the second snap legislative elections this year after Netanyahu failed to form the government back in April.
The outcome of the upcoming vote is hard to predict, as Netanyahu’s party, Likud, has almost equal support as their main opponent the Blue and White led by Benny Gantz, opinion polls show.
Netanyahu was quick to respond to Trump’s announcement, lauding the prospects of the alliance and managing to call the US president a “friend” twice in a single tweet.
Thank you my dear friend President @realDonaldTrump. The Jewish State has never had a greater friend in the White House. I look forward to our meeting at the UN to advance a historic Defense Treaty between the United States and Israel.
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 14, 2019
Forging a proper US-Israel alliance won’t be that great a step, since the standing agreements already oblige Washington to protect Tel Aviv in case of a war, former Pentagon official Michael Maloof believes. Still, such a deal somewhat increases the chances of the US being “lured into a conflict we don’t want.”
“In one sense, it would commit the United States to Israel’s defense, even if Israel decides to attack, let’s say, for example, Iran, then we will be committed to back them up without any hesitation. Already we have what amounts to a defense arrangement,” Maloof told RT. “Even without a piece of paper, the United States would come to Israel’s assistance, if it was physically attacked en masse.”
What I’m concerned about is that with someone like Netanyahu it will actually commit us even more to going into a conflict that he may drag us into.
Trump’s decision to announce such plans just a few days before the Israeli elections is not a coincidence, Maloof noted, and it clearly shows that he tried “to send a message that he wants Netanyahu re-elected.”
Quote:
Relations between Washington and Tel Aviv have always been quite cozy – and got even closer under Trump – yet the two countries do not have a full-fledged military alliance.
Israel was one of the first major non-Nato ally (MNNA), a designation that goes with a whole set of benefits, such as generous loans, a priority in delivery of various military surplus, possession of war reserve stocks of Pentagon-owned hardware outside US military bases (Israel is said to have at least six sites) and others.
Yest in 2014 the US enshrined Israel into a new class of ally – a major strategic partner. The new designation, which is a step above MNNA, was basically established specifically for Israel. It greatly expanded the US wartime stockpiles in Israel from $200 million in value to a whoppiNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Consider this thread to be an exercise in thinking about Trump without thinking about Russian "collusion", since that didn't happen and Russia is insignificant in that context.
How do you know "it" didn't happen? Too many connections for there to be nothing. Plus, Trump's a dealer and a compulsive liar, some would say a loose cannon even...
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Can we focus on REAL problems and REAL events please?
Those are your big problems? Bigger than having a crime family in the WH who are under our greatest advesary's thumb?
Negative interest rates? - List any long term (more than 5 years) successful uses.
War with Iran? - Without Bolton this is unlikely (not that it was ever likely). It would cost us way too much without any ROI.
Exploding debt load? - Personal or Gov? Trump?
I can think of much more important problems - in no particular order:
Tariff war with China
Health Care
Opioid Addiction
Gun legislation
Human trafficking
Alternative Power
Climate
Infrastructure
Russia!
Kneeling Black pro football players
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
video
Funny video, T! Him and what's his name, Shep Smith? And Wallace - they actually have some decent talking heads that have their lights on.
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Quote:Because despite a REAL TIME counterintelligence operation on the Trump campaign (which ran a number of "dangles" on campaigners), and an after-the-fact multi-year "investigation" (which btw used such sleazy and illegal tactics as hiding exculpatory evidence (eg an internal memo which cleared Flynn of "collusion" with Russia) in order to pressure potential witnesses) there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE that any such "collusion" occurred.
Consider this thread to be an exercise in thinking about Trump without thinking about Russian "collusion", since that didn't happen and Russia is insignificant in that context. - SIGNY
How do you know "it" didn't happen?- CC
Seriously, if there had been collusion it would have left traces ... electronic communications, at least ONE packet captured by the NSA, real-time humint... but there's nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip. Just your paranoia.
Quote:Not real, just your delusion, which you can't seem to shake.
Can we focus on REAL problems and REAL events please?- SIGNY
Those are your big problems? Bigger than having a crime family in the WH who are under our greatest advesary's thumb?- CC
Quote:None
Negative interest rates? - List successful uses
Quote:I hope you're right
War with Iran? - Without Bolton this is unlikely (not that it was ever likely)
Quote:And all of our other ME wars? Why did THEY happen? There was no ROI either, and over a trillion dollars were spent - not chump change!
IF the unlikely were to happen... it won't be because of Israel. It will cost us way too much without any ROI.
Quote:At all levels- corporate, personal, public, trade.
Exploding debt load? - Personal or Gov? Trump?
Quote:Jeezus
I can think of much more important problems:
Tariff war with China
Health Care
Opioid Addiction
Gun legislation
Human trafficking
Alternative Power
Climate
Russia!
Quote:
Kneeling Black pro football players
Health care and tariff war - check. Opioid addiction is a subset of healthcare.
Gun legislation ... ho hum
Human trafficking - a tragedy, but we can stop it without too much trouble. Starting with securing our borders.
Climate- yep.
Fractional reserve banking, probably THE source of many of our economic and financial problems. Lots of things to discuss BESIDES your paranoid delusion. Is Trump making progress anywhere? Is it important? Is he going backwards anywhere? Is THAT important?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Trump canceled a meeting with the Taliban at Camp David. The meeting was to have been secret. It was scheduled for the week of the anniversary of 9/11. He canceled it by tweet.
Does this strike you as even remotely rational?
Before that, Trump canceled a state visit to Denmark because Denmark wouldn’t sell Greenland to the US. Hello? Greenland wasn’t for sale. The US no longer buys populated countries. The state visit had been planned for months.
He has repeatedly told senior officials to explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes hitting the US. He believes video games cause mass shootings. He thinks climate change is no big deal.
He says trade wars are “good and easy to win”. He insists it’s Chinese rather than US consumers who pay his tariffs. He “orders” American firms to stop doing business in China.
He calls the chairman of the Federal Reserve an “enemy”. He retweets a comedian’s sick suggestion that the Clintons were responsible for the suicide of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
I think we have to face the truth. This is no longer a case of excessive narcissism or grandiosity. We’re not simply dealing with an unusually large ego.
Trump is mentally unstable. And he’s getting worse by the day.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Trump is compared to the main character in #1 out of "The 100 best films of the 21st century".
#1 -- There Will Be Blood (2007)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s strange masterpiece, freely adapted by him from Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, has a dark title that threatens a calamity now visible on the horizon: destruction of the Earth itself. And it is all inscribed in the story of the movie’s leading character, a man with the Bunyanesque name of Daniel Plainview. Daniel Day-Lewis gives perhaps the greatest, certainly the most exotic performance of his career as an oil prospector in the early 20th century, rewarded with colossal wealth that never gives him the smallest pleasure.
The movie perhaps looks even stranger, starker and more unforgiving now than it did in 2007 when it first came out. But from 2016, there has been a raging Plainview in plain sight in the White House: Trump, the eccentric property billionaire and spoilt baby whose cranky tweets are as crazy as Plainview’s deranged “milkshake” pronouncement. What a spectacle Anderson and Day-Lewis create: a portrait of male belligerence and fear, a Tutankhamun of misery, walled up in his own sarcophagus of wealth and prestige.
www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/13/100-best-films-movies-of-the-21st
-century
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Never heard of that flick.
Never heard of Peter Bradshaw either, for that matter.
Hey everybody... This guy 
doesn't like Trump.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:There are many rich and Trump-like characters in Texas. Ross Perot, for one example, who received 19% of the popular vote in 1992. Most of these characters are smarter, better spoken, and have better organizing skills than Trump, and are less than half as crazy. None of them should be President. Neither should Mr. Plainview, from the movie "There Will Be Blood":
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Never heard of that flick.
Never heard of Peter Bradshaw either, for that matter.
Hey everybody... This guy doesn't like Trump.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Because despite a REAL TIME counterintelligence operation on the Trump campaign (which ran a number of "dangles" on campaigners), and an after-the-fact multi-year "investigation" (which btw used such sleazy and illegal tactics as hiding exculpatory evidence (eg an internal memo which cleared Flynn of "collusion" with Russia) in order to pressure potential witnesses) there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE that any such "collusion" occurred.
Seriously, if there had been collusion it would have left traces ... electronic communications, at least ONE packet captured by the NSA, real-time humint... but there's nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip. Just your paranoia.
That's not true of course. There was evidence, just not enough to successfully prosecute a president. Big difference.
Here's a thought experiment:
If Hillary won the election and stood at a podium next to Putin during a public press conference and said, "I know my people believe Russian hacked the election, but I think they're wrong because Putin told me they were. He was very strong and powerful in doing so." (fwiw I seriously believe Putin even told him to use those words). If Hillary dissed her own country publicly to side with Putin or Xi? Yeah, we'd want to know wtf they had over her. That's not paranoia or delusion, that's basic logic.
Can we focus on REAL problems and REAL events please? - SIGNY
Quote:None - SIGNY
Negative interest rates? - List successful uses
Quote:I hope you're right - SIGNY
War with Iran? - Without Bolton this is unlikely (not that it was ever likely)
Quote:And all of our other ME wars? Why did THEY happen? There was no ROI either, and over a trillion dollars were spent - not chump change! - SIGNY
IF the unlikely were to happen... it won't be because of Israel. It will cost us way too much without any ROI.
It's called learning, evolving.
Quote:At all levels- corporate, personal, public, trade. - SIGNY
Exploding debt load? - Personal or Gov? Trump?
Quote:
I can think of much more important problems:
Tariff war with China
Health Care
Opioid Addiction
Gun legislation
Human trafficking
Alternative Power
Climate
Health care and tariff war - check. - SIGNY
Opioid addiction is a subset of healthcare. - SIGNY
Gun legislation ... ho hum - SIGNY
Human trafficking - a tragedy, but we can stop it without too much trouble. Starting with securing our borders. - SIGNY
Climate- yep. - SIGNY
Guess we're done, then! Great discussion!
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But Trump is for the next five years. You'll have plenty to bitch about for a long time. That should make you happy.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
But Trump is for the next five years. You'll have plenty to bitch about for a long time. That should make you happy.
Trump is what? You already know I think he'll "win." The only good thing I can say about him next to the 100 sh*tty things, is that he's not fucked anything up too bad yet. He doesn't do much of anything, really. Talks and tweets mostly. He is good at feeding his desires. He's enriched himself and his fellow rich people. He hates non-whites with a passion, and has worked hard to "clean up" this country. That's it.
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