Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

Every President since 1835 has presided over an increase in the absolute total of the national debt. While the debt has gone up and down as a percentage relative to the entirety of our GDP. the raw total increases every year.

Each and every year, CONGRESS votes to increase the debt and the President then signs it into law.

That blame is as broadly spread as anything in government.

Correct.*

IIRC one of the larger drivers of debt during the Obama admin was borrowing above what was strictly needed to pay overall dues as they came up. I can't find the broken-down figures, and I don't know how this borrowing is described in public finance practice.

Debt growth decelerated in Obama's second term excepting FY 2016, and at a glance it doesn't look like FY2017 was anything exceptional in that regard.

https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spen...s2li111mcn_H0f
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Long-term damage of political and diplomatic damage to the standing of the US government and its currency is unfortunately more worrying, and intangible.


*We could have retired the national debt in the 1860s, if it weren't for war-monger Lincoln and the tax money-mooching failed Southern states. Sad!

[Montmorency]

I actually watched a SotU for once, since 2009 (the 2009 inauguration anyway, but give me the mulligan).

Thousands of flags placed on veterans' graves is a wasteful exercise, and a lop-sided symbolism that perpetuates the valorization of soldiers' corpses.

One thing to do it as a publicity stunt or even unexamined institutional practice - but propagandizing the Jugendliche for doing it?

That's what bothered me most. Never mind the sinister swipes at the 'impure' federal bureaucracy and request for authority to cleanse it, "beautiful clean coal", $1.5 trillion for infrastructure a step after funneling at least that much into their own and donors' pockets, the immigrant/gang violence mastication, the implication that Israel is the only friend America has in the world, and the standard Republican and bipartisan platitudes - this one callout just reflects so poorly on our government and society.

And yes, the man just had to give the longest address in post-war American history. .

[CrossLOPER]

That's what bothered me most. Never mind the sinister swipes at the 'impure' federal bureaucracy and request for authority to cleanse it, "beautiful clean coal", $1.5 trillion for infrastructure a step after funneling at least that much into their own and donors' pockets, the immigrant/gang violence mastication, the implication that Israel is the only friend America has in the world, and the standard Republican and bipartisan platitudes - this one callout just reflects so poorly on our government and society.

This has been around since the late 80's. Republicans have been feeding their base these ideas and they have become the only truths in their eyes. Linking it with religion or some misguided modern idea of nationalism has made it exceptionally difficult to dislodge.

pluning americans into debts, more than all his precedetors combined? That?

Let's spend 5 seconds researching this statement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:5...figure1(1).png

Oh look, it didn't hold up at all. What a surprise.

[Fragony]

Pick whatever http://www.google.nl/search?hl=en-NL...40.rV9xYtqDshs

[Gilrandir]

War between Russia and China would be interesting (but very unwanted). Especially as the Narrative puts Russia and China on loosely partnership basis.

Such a loss for Russia in losing Siberia could see them joining the European Union too.

China won't go into open war with Russia. It is smarter than that. Instead of taking anything by force it has been populating Russian territory with its citizens - in many cities of the Russian Far East Chinese communities are rather numerous. Besides, China gets economic control over swathes of Russian Siberia. So sooner or later China will have everything under its control without the need of an open war.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=82969
http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/06/2...ion/#arvlbdata
https://www.ft.com/content/700a9450-...1-cbdb03d71480

[Strike For The South]

Thousands of flags placed on veterans' graves is a wasteful exercise, and a lop-sided symbolism that perpetuates the valorization of soldiers' corpses. One thing to do it as a publicity stunt or even unexamined institutional practice - but propagandizing the Jugendliche for doing it?

He has to rally the base somehow, the military is an easy dunk for him. Military veneration runs deep and it something Trump can hide behind.

That's what bothered me most. Never mind the sinister swipes at the 'impure' federal bureaucracy and request for authority to cleanse it, "beautiful clean coal", $1.5 trillion for infrastructure a step after funneling at least that much into their own and donors' pockets, the immigrant/gang violence mastication, the implication that Israel is the only friend America has in the world, and the standard Republican and bipartisan platitudes - this one callout just reflects so poorly on our government and society.

Anybody who has been paying attention understands how grating it was. However, it is eminently frustrating he stayed on message. Any supporter who watched him last night was probably buoyed by the speech. The bar is so low for him that simply sounding reasonable (to say nothing of the haphazard policies themselves) illicits a "see the left is going crazy".

[Montmorency]

He has to rally the base somehow, the military is an easy dunk for him. Military veneration runs deep and it something Trump can hide behind.



Anybody who has been paying attention understands how grating it was. However, it is eminently frustrating he stayed on message. Any supporter who watched him last night was probably buoyed by the speech. The bar is so low for him that simply sounding reasonable (to say nothing of the haphazard policies themselves) illicits a "see the left is going crazy".

I mean, I won't refer to the audience footage but generally hailing a FlagVeteransPatriot boy is an unhesitatingly bipartisan sentiment. Heck, you have Democratic presidential contenders (Tammy Duckworth) setting their ProudInjuredMilitaryService against DraftdodgingCadetBoneSpurs. The Democrats wish they could be the party of Reagan.

The SotU was noted for its optimistic tone. Well, yes - why would the rulers want to paint a bleak picture of their government? Trump may not care about strategy (give him a few hours now), but I'm sure the kapo does. Paid family leave! But I don't think they know how to do Volksgemeinschaft.

[HopAlongBunny]

It looks like Trump and friends are going "all in" on disinformation.

"The four-page memo, which was compiled by staffers for the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, claims that the Department of Justice abused the surveillance programme known as FISA to unfairly target a member of the Trump campaign."

The FBI and the democratic members of the committee have stated the memo omits information and is flawed.
The strategy does get the version out the White House wishes to see; errors in fact make no difference. Even if a subsequent release of information discredits the memo, it will have infected discourse about the FBI and their investigation. "Alternate facts" are alive and well in America.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42894292

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...80233?lo=ap_b1

[Kralizec]

It looks like Trump and friends are going "all in" on disinformation.

"The four-page memo, which was compiled by staffers for the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, claims that the Department of Justice abused the surveillance programme known as FISA to unfairly target a member of the Trump campaign."

The FBI and the democratic members of the committee have stated the memo omits information and is flawed.
The strategy does get the version out the White House wishes to see; errors in fact make no difference. Even if a subsequent release of information discredits the memo, it will have infected discourse about the FBI and their investigation. "Alternate facts" are alive and well in America.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42894292

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...80233?lo=ap_b1

There is no public interest in releasing it, other than a thinly veiled desire to lower public trust in the FBI. Worse still, any information they could use to discredit the memo could very well be classified.

[HopAlongBunny]

There is no public interest in releasing it, other than a thinly veiled desire to lower public trust in the FBI. Worse still, any information they could use to discredit the memo could very well be classified.

Which raises a couple of important issues.
The Democrats, looking to clarify the matters raised, have an incentive to leak the classified info that makes their case.
Politicization of intelligence info, runs the risk of competing "disclosures" undermining the formal intelligence process.
As Kralizec notes, the reasons behind the Republican desire to declassify and reveal the information are not compelling national security matters. The wish to undermine the FBI and the special prosecutor might be.

[Husar]

[...]FlagVeteransPatriot[...]ProudInjuredMilitaryService[...]DraftdodgingCadetBoneSpurs[...]

While we're on the subject of composite words...

[CrossLOPER]

Pick whatever http://www.google.nl/search?hl=en-NL...40.rV9xYtqDshs

No, YOU pick whatever and defend your statement instead of having me do your work for you.

The FBI and the democratic members of the committee have stated the memo omits information and is flawed.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42902537

They produced what is basically a forgery.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Correct.*

IIRC one of the larger drivers of debt during the Obama admin was borrowing above what was strictly needed to pay overall dues as they came up. I can't find the broken-down figures, and I don't know how this borrowing is described in public finance practice.

Debt growth decelerated in Obama's second term excepting FY 2016, and at a glance it doesn't look like FY2017 was anything exceptional in that regard.

https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/spen...s2li111mcn_H0f
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Long-term damage of political and diplomatic damage to the standing of the US government and its currency is unfortunately more worrying, and intangible.


*We could have retired the national debt in the 1860s, if it weren't for war-monger Lincoln and the tax money-mooching failed Southern states. Sad!

It's becoming increasingly clear that the turning point from zenith to decline and fall of the American experiment was September 11th, 2001.
It's all downhill from here.

[CrossLOPER]

It's becoming increasingly clear that the turning point from zenith to decline and fall of the American experiment was September 11th, 2001.
It's all downhill from here.

I have found that people have a weird disrespect for history. It's as if it's a joke to them. They look at events going on around them and ask "how could this have happened?" They point to major events and conspiracy theories, but they ignore the fact that certain things come about as a result of trends. You don't get fat from eating a single piece of cake. You don't get outcast by your friends because you ordered a small salad when going out. You don't fail out of Uni because of a couple of bad quiz grades.

It's trends. The US has been having a lot of bad ones for some time, and they all culminated in what is happening today. The good news is that trends work the other way, too.

[HopAlongBunny]

The memo appears to be a dud.
If you read it carefully, it discredits every claim it makes.
As Slate points out, it's just complicated enough and boring enough that few will actually read it, in other words its absolutely perfect. Within their own respective bubbles most will simply let someone else tell them what it means. That is just what Team Trump needs; was it Humpty Dumpty who said: "It means exactly what I say it means. Neither more nor less"

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...ald-trump.html

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/02/58282...ence-committee

[spmetla]

It is a very unexceptional memo that's for sure. It makes false assertions such as saying that the Steele Dossier was just a Democrat/Clinton creation. It also ignores that the FISA warrant in effect on Carter Page had been in effect for years before Trump was even running for president and before the dossier was even a thing.

The odd conclusion within is that because the Steele dossier is 'opposition research' that it must be false. It seems to ignore the elephant in the room that the FBI seems to have followed up on the Steele Dossier because many of the claims actually bear out. While not everything within the dossier has been proved in public I don't recall any of it's assertions being proved as fabrications.

I don't see how any of the accusations that say this is proof any any wrong doing by the Russia investigation. It ignores so many other established facts to come to a conclusion that seems fanciful. Hannity's claim that the FBI is using circular reporting to pretend to have multiple sources seems odd when this memo seems to cherry pick some items to come to different conclusions and then is blessed off by the white house in order to exonerate the white house.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/02/0...r-russia-probe

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I have found that people have a weird disrespect for history. It's as if it's a joke to them. They look at events going on around them and ask "how could this have happened?" They point to major events and conspiracy theories, but they ignore the fact that certain things come about as a result of trends. You don't get fat from eating a single piece of cake. You don't get outcast by your friends because you ordered a small salad when going out. You don't fail out of Uni because of a couple of bad quiz grades.

It's trends. The US has been having a lot of bad ones for some time, and they all culminated in what is happening today. The good news is that trends work the other way, too.

Nice point. There is an ebb and flow to this, and while I take ACIN's point that 11Sep2001 triggered a downward trend in personal liberty and US military intervention, I do not think this signals the end of the "experiment."

One might suggest, however, that our experimental status is over and that we are at least in beta testing.

[Hooahguy]

Well the purpose of this memo wasnt to produce hard evidence of wrongdoing, it was to muddy the waters and give enough cover/support for Trump to fire Mueller or Rod Rosenstein (and then fire Mueller). Enough people arent going to read the memo and will just be like "well that makes sense due to the memo they released." I would be surprised if Mueller made it to March.

I dont know if this has been brought up, but something worrisome that Trump said in his state of the union address was this:

I call on the Congress to empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.

That is one heck of a broad mandate to fire people and really should concern anyone who cares about the rule of law.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I have found that people have a weird disrespect for history. It's as if it's a joke to them. They look at events going on around them and ask "how could this have happened?" They point to major events and conspiracy theories, but they ignore the fact that certain things come about as a result of trends. You don't get fat from eating a single piece of cake. You don't get outcast by your friends because you ordered a small salad when going out. You don't fail out of Uni because of a couple of bad quiz grades.

It's trends. The US has been having a lot of bad ones for some time, and they all culminated in what is happening today. The good news is that trends work the other way, too.

Psychologically, 9/11 did start some new trends in the American culture, or at the least revived nearly dead trends. Yes, there was a chain of events with Osama BL throughout the 80s and 90s, but sometimes there are inflection points that you look back and recognize could have set the next chain of events in an entirely different direction.

I simply don't see Donald Trump happening in a world where the US still maintains a mentality of world dominance and safety.

[Husar]

It's 04/02/2018 and I still haven't seen Trump announce the following two things:

1. That he closed the FEMA camps of the Obama NWO government, including proof.

2. That he rescued all the children the Obama NWO government "took" at the airport.

I need answers and explanations!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It's 04/02/2018 and I still haven't seen Trump announce the following two things:

1. That he closed the FEMA camps of the Obama NWO government, including proof.

2. That he rescued all the children the Obama NWO government "took" at the airport.

I need answers and explanations!

Trump is too busy [CHARLIE SHEEN RANT VOICE]winning[/CHARLIE SHEEN RANT VOICE] to deal with such pettifogging minutiae.

[Sarmatian]

Psychologically, 9/11 did start some new trends in the American culture, or at the least revived nearly dead trends. Yes, there was a chain of events with Osama BL throughout the 80s and 90s, but sometimes there are inflection points that you look back and recognize could have set the next chain of events in an entirely different direction.

I simply don't see Donald Trump happening in a world where the US still maintains a mentality of world dominance and safety.

Realistically, 9/11 is a non issue. Even with all the irrational emphasis that has been placed on it for the last almost two decades, the fact is that no one really truly cares at this point.

Trump is a consequence of the crisis and the fact that white Americans can't let go of their privileges.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Realistically, 9/11 is a non issue. Even with all the irrational emphasis that has been placed on it for the last almost two decades, the fact is that no one really truly cares at this point.

Trump is a consequence of the crisis and the fact that white Americans can't let go of their privileges.

It is no doubt that the "white" vote such as it is broke for Trump, but the ones most likely to do so were NOT privileged whites but those at disadvantage for education or employment. Source

And rest assured, the Democrat party does its fair share to keep the privileged in their comfortable perches -- they just have a different recipe for achieving it. Our war on Poverty was every bit as successful as our War on Drugs, and even more costly.

[Sarmatian]

It is no doubt that the "white" vote such as it is broke for Trump, but the ones most likely to do so were NOT privileged whites but those at disadvantage for education or employment. Source

Oh, I very much agree. You generally try to look for someone to blame when it's uphill, not downhill, and lack of education helps with that. "honest working Americans can't find a job because of those immigrants..."

And rest assured, the Democrat party does its fair share to keep the privileged in their comfortable perches -- they just have a different recipe for achieving it. Our war on Poverty was every bit as successful as our War on Drugs, and even more costly.

Agree, this is not party specific at all.

Was there ever a war on poverty, though?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Was there ever a war on poverty, though?

I don't agree it was just as successful as the War on Drugs. I think these policies have had a measured, beneficial impact to American society, whereas the War on Drugs has barely brought drug use down one-tenth of a percent (if that).

As to answer your question, the wiki page has a couple of specific bills usually lumped under the 'War on Poverty' term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty

[Gilrandir]

Trump is too busy

... erecting the wall? Or exacting tribute from Mexico to build one?

[Fragony]

I don't agree it was just as successful as the War on Drugs. I think these policies have had a measured, beneficial impact to American society, whereas the War on Drugs has barely brought drug use down one-tenth of a percent (if that).

As to answer your question, the wiki page has a couple of specific bills usually lumped under the 'War on Poverty' term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty

Drugs is just a currency nothing more, war on drugs is bigger than usage.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

... erecting the wall? Or exacting tribute from Mexico to build one?

You quoted my joke to ask a serious snide question about Trump? That's unkind.

[Beskar]

It was neither. He is perfecting his golf swing at Mar Lago especially since Rocketman got 11 holes-in-one.

[Beskar]

The fascination with the stock market is the worst combination of horse race coverage and statistics. Does nothing for the majority of working folk but they are tricked into believing it is a real measure of the economy.

On that note...
"largest point drop in history"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...eek/306400002/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-u...down-explained