Trump - Page 9

[Reverend Jim]

Interesting. In 2013 when the GOP controlled Congress and the Senate, they called it the Obama Shutdown. Now when the GOP controls Congress, the Senate AND the White House, it's called the Schumer Shutdown.

[happygeek]

Then of course there's his remarks about 2013 and now:

Then: “'Here’s the truth, the gov't doesn’t shutdown.' ... All essential services continue. Don't believe lies." (Via Twitter, Sept. 23, 2013)

Now: "A government shutdown will be devastating to our military ... something the Dems care very little about!" (Via Twitter, Thursday)

source: Trump's had some very different views on government shutdowns over the years

[Reverend Jim]

Identify a group or groups and villify them.

• Mexicans are drug runners, rapists and murderers
• Immigrants are stealing your jobs
• Muslims are terrorists

If the press is against you say that everything they report is a lie

• Lügenpresse (lying press)

The big lie (if you repeat it often enough people will believe it)

• Too many examples to list here

Too many parallels to ignore. It can happen here.

[overwraith]

Well, at least trump does not use home made email servers for top secret documents. Anybody else would be thrown in jail for that. There is a slew of regulations about that. So at least he is not making insecure email servers for every wannabe hacker and foreign intelligence agency to mine for secrets on the internals of our agencies. You all are in IT, you should know the requirements for true security, and I bet some of you have actually met IT defense contractors. There is a lot of time and effort involved in keeping top level communication secure in a very technical way. The only reason Hillary was not thrown in jail was that she had fame, and none of the agencies would procecute the next proabable president. The fix was in. I chuckle to myself every so often that some of the other news agencies over printed articles and magazenes by the millions with hillary's winning articles, only to discover the next day that trump had in fact won.

You opened up this holy war, now here's both barrels.

[Reverend Jim]

Right. The "what about you" defense, also known as the "look over there" tactic. Hillary lost the election. I'm not talking about Hillary. I'm talking about Trump.

[overwraith]

Actually you are contemplating why trump rose to power, and not applying the context to which he did rise to power, he was versing a democrat who had an email scandal pending. Speaking of "the look over there" tactic, I have seen it plenty of times from hillary when she foraged a dossier on trump and fed it to the intel community. I believe that your original statements concerning trump are baseless, due to the fact that there are other factors, outlined in my post.

[Reverend Jim]

And back to Hillary.

My previous post was contemplating the things Trump has done since assuming the office of president. As I said, this thread is about Trump, not Hillary. If you can defend the things Trump has been doing (without the "What about Hillary" rhetoric) I'd be interested in listening. If you want to start a thread about Hillary then please feel free. If you want to keep talking about her here then I'll just delete the posts as being off topic. If you start posting about chocolate or pandas in this thread I will also delete for being off topic.

Keep in mind that trolling is against the daniweb rules which you agreed to follow when you joined.

[overwraith]

Well, I do think my observations are related if you actually read post number 2 it justifies the assertations as being related to this topic. You don't suppose you just want your soap box? You wanna be king of the hill? Sensorship of opinions? Only the opinions you like?

[Reverend Jim]

Well, I do think my observations are related

Then start a new Hillary thread and add a link to this thread in the first post. As I said, if you want to defend Trump's actions on their own merits then do so. Claiming that someone has done worse is not a defense. If so then all rapists would get off because, after all, murder is worse. If you can't do that then one can only conclude that his actions are indefensible.

PS - I'd be more than willing to post all the bad things I think about Hillary, just not in this thread.

[alan.davies]

This exemplifies why Trump rose to power. Justify nothing, point to a failed alternative. His supporters understand this
They do it to justify supporting him. You will never win an argument with this flavour of wing nut. Well you will every time but they fail or pretend to fail to see it.

[Agilemind]

+alan.davies And it is catching. Both Brexit and Doug Ford were campaigns run on nothing except hating on the alternatives. If all you do is vote against a thing you don't like then any power-hungry monster can exploit you to get into power and do whatever the F--- they want because they barely need to pretend to do something good.

I don’t particularly care for politics and really don’t follow what’s going all that much. I educate myself just enough to be able to make a sound vote when the time comes

[Reverend Jim]

Paul Manafort has been found guilty on 8 counts. That will mean jail time. Trump has two options at this point.

1. He can let the chips fall where they may, in which case he is telling everyone with dirt on him that they are on their own. There would then be nothing to keep them from cutting a deal and testifying.
2. He can pardon Manafort, in which case he is saying that people who are useful to him are above the law. He has already asked about the president's ability to pardon himself so this would also mean that he considers himself above the law (like we had any doubt).

Any bets on which way this will play out?

[happygeek]

And then there's the Cohen plea of course, with the campaign silence payments at the direction of Trump... Perhaps time is, at last, running out for the orange clown?

[alan.davies]

He's said it's a shame as they are, in his limited vocabulary, "good men". He doesn't care what the media says or what Democrat voters think. He has the yeehaws in his pocket already.

[Reverend Jim]

Someone said something like "If this is a witch hunt they certainly bagged a lot of them. And only the best and brightest witches."

[Reverend Jim]

11 months ago I posted

An episode of the 1950s western TV series 'Trackdown' featured a character named Walter Trump who claimed he would build a wall in order to protect a town from the end of the world.

In light of more recent examples of Trump-l'œil such as him claiming that he is our only hope and if he is removed from the presidency the economy will collapse, I give you this excerpt of dialog from "Trackdown - The End of the World"

Judge Clement: It's a funny thing. When we were kids we were all afraid of the dark. Then we grew up and weren't afraid anymore. But it's funny how a big lie can make us all kids again.
.
.
.
Walter Trump: I am the only one. Just me. I can build a wall around your homes that nothing can penetrate ... You ask me "how do you build that wall? You ask and I'm here to tell you.

[ddanbe]

It grieves me that a suckling in his seventies puts such an indignity on the honour to be president of the USA. But yeah that is what democracy is all about, or isn't it?

[Reverend Jim]

Supposed to be. But it's not a democracy. To wit - the GOP in North Carolina heavily gerrymandered the voting districts in order to pack as many black voters into as few districts as possible. This was ruled unconstitutional because you cannot redistrict based on race so they then claimed that the lines were not drawn by race but by party and supposedly that was not illegal (it is). The courts produced evidence of this. Apparently GOP officials had stated at the start of the redistricting that they wanted the lines drawn to guarantee 10 Republican seats and 2 Democrats. When asked why, they responded, "because we couldn't figure out how to guarantee 11 and 1". They have been ordered to redraw the lines before the November election. The GOP is naturally fighting to delay this until after the election.

In Georgia, one district (heavily GOP) in a recent election had a %216 voter turnout. The ruling party (GOP) found nothing amiss. You know, the GOP that is always shouting VOTER FRAUD whenever a Democrat gets elected.

Back in North Carolina, when a Democrat won the Gubernatorial race, the GOP house (with a super majority) stripped him of most of his powers. A state supreme court seat is currently up for grabs. When the last open seat went to a Democrat, the GOP ordered an elimination of primaries, assuming that with one Republican running, multiple Democrats would split the vote. When a second Republican registered to run, the GOP tried to strip him of party status (and failed). Then they tried to pass a law forcing candidates with last names starting with A-E (the Democratic candidate is Anita Earls) to the bottom of the ballot (many people just pick the top name).

With so many state legislatures controlled by a party that pulls shit like that, and an Electoral College that gives the minority candidate the presidency, is it really a democracy?

On a side note, doing away with the Electoral College would require a constitutional change but it could be rendered ineffective if enough states pass legislation that would automatically give all of their EC votes to the presidential candidate with an overall majority of the popular vote, so there is still hope.

[alan.davies]

I just cannot believe how stupid people are. Thatcher, Bush Jr, Berlusconi, Brexit, Trump. All free choices. As a species we do not seem better than lemmings, despite our so-called intelligence. How will the plebs of the 20th and 21st century be remembered? As fucking morons.

[Reverend Jim]

I just cannot believe how stupid people are.

I don't know about Europe, but in the US politics is treated like any other sport. As long as your team wins you don't give a shit what they do after.

I often wondered why so many of Trump's supporters keep supporting him even after they have obviously been negatively impacted - like the northern farmers losing big time because of the new tarrifs. All I can think is that they have been convinced that a little pain and suffering on their part is tolerable as long as those in the "other tribe" are suffering even more.

[Reverend Jim]

I wouldn't be surprised if Trump files copyright/trademarks on the phrases "Fake News" and "Witch Hunt" just so he can make a few bucks as they take him down

[wbport]

It seems with every Presidential Primary, a well funded moderate blows away a handful of conservatives while taking only a plurality of votes. If someone wins a primary in a state with only 35% of the vote, it means 65% of the voters voted against him. Is the leader an acceptable substitute for the other candidates' voters choices or is this a polarizing candidate the 65% would have voted against if possible? Without a runoff, there is no way to know. Also, people who want to vote against a certain candidate have no opportunity to rally behind someone else. It could be noted the Donald Trump did not win a primary with a majority until late April, 2016.

I started working on something that simulates a Ranked Choice Voting primary that year. Note "Don's" popularity (or lack thereof) in two voting groups: Click Here

[Reverend Jim]

Maine used runoff voting in this year's midterms. The republican candidate (Poliquin) led the Democrat (Golden) by more than 2000 votes, however, he did not win a plurality. After votes for the independent candidates were transferred upward, Golden won a plurality by almost 3000 votes. Then Poliquin immediately claimed the election had been stolen from him. So if you are the GOP candidate it's "heads I win, tails you lose".

In the mean time, South Carolina Republicans are considering not holding primaries for the 2020 presidential election. The GOP has done this before, cancelling primaries in 2004 in eight states. Democracy inaction.

Further, the New Hampshire GOP has been caught (twice) illegally harvesting (and destroying) absentee ballots. And when they lose (see Wisconsin) they try to strip the powers of the winner because Democrats can't be trusted with actual power.

This is "The Party of Lincoln"?

[Reverend Jim]

Looks like Mueller was just granted a six-month extension on his investigation. He was due to produce his report before the end of February and now that has been pushed to the end of August. It may just be me, but I'm starting to consider the possibility that he will find some way to delay the final report until after the 2020 election.

[Reverend Jim]

The media is seriously failing regarding the shutdown. Several points:

1. If you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.
2. Trump is on record (video) stating that he will own the shutdown.
3. He is now pivoting saying you can call it "The Trump Shutdown" or "The Democrat Shutdown" or "The Pelosi Shutdown". Soon it will just be "The Pelosi Shutdown".

Here's where I call BS on the media. For every clip where they show Trump trying to pivot they should immediately replay the clip of him telling them media (with Dem leaders in the room) that he will own the shutdown. Only this immediate feedback counter his lame (but often effective) attempt to shift blame. By not doing this they are implicitly validating his agenda.

[rproffitt]

Oh I long for the days where Congress would pass a bill, a veto or such would happen and then Congress would override the veto.

The top "dogs" need to find a new (retirement?) home.

[Reverend Jim]

Problem now is that no legislation can be passed because no legislation is making it to the Senate floor. I loved it when Pelosi (effectively) said that Trump is not welcome in her house (no in-person SOTU speech).

Trump campaigned saying he wanted to run government like he ran his business. He's doing exactly that. His businesses went bankrupt and he stiffed his employees/contractors. You can't say he doesn't occasionally deliver.

[rproffitt]

If you look up "House rules" and "Senate rules" you see the power has moved from all to a very few. So much for Robert's Rules Of Order where you ask "Any new business?" How dare you put something up for vote?

[Reverend Jim]

BTW, has anyone considered another possibility for exploding the debt/deficit? This debt/deficit is financed largely through the sale of T-Bills. T-Bills are considered a safe investment. Those "rich" people who got that trillion-plus tax cut have the money to buy T-Bills so on top of the tax cut bonus they will also be raking it in via interest on T-Bills which will be paid for by the American taxpayers. Talk about your double-dipping.

Also, interest on T-Bills is exempt at the state level even though it is taxable (at least for now) federally. I expect a federal exemption (at least an attempt to pass one) strictly for "patriotic" reasons, of course (sarcasm intentional).