Trump Thread

[Strike For The South]

If Trump is 239 pounds, I have a 12 inch button.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Good news, the President is in perfect health, mental health included:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/16/p...lth/index.html

This means, of course, that my interpretation thus far has been correct. He is neither crazy nor ill. He is an asshat.

[Husar]

This means, of course, that my interpretation thus far has been correct. He is neither crazy nor ill. He is an asshat.

Yes, it looks that way.
It does make his slurring and covfefeing that much weirder though.
Trevor Noah sums it up quite well:

[Montmorency]

This means, of course, that my interpretation thus far has been correct. He is neither crazy nor ill. He is an asshat.

Two things to note:

Given the overwhelming barrage of lies from all levels of the administration, it's hard to take adulatory health assessments from underlings seriously. I suspect that Trump is in poor overall health even for his age, but not (inasmuch as can be assessed) in immediate danger of dropping dead. The president's work schedule in this administration is not overly burdensome, and the content of his efforts uncongenial to me, so this is fine.

A proper assessment of mental and cognitive health would require a long period of observation, and sustained cooperation from Trump; it's not going to happen. I've felt this question doesn't actually matter beyond giving Republicans some pretense to remove the President (and there's no shortage there). A clinical diagnosis would make Trump's conduct neither more nor less acceptable, therefore it's superfluous. Maybe he's senile, maybe he's congenitally... a low-grade imbecile "fucking moron"... Knowing the case wouldn't and shouldn't change our perceptions of him, or calculations as to his removal. (I.e., he should be removed.)

[Montmorency]

Also: ain't nothing wrong with McD and a Diet Coke. I think they've actually improved the flavor and quality over the past two decades. It's Trump's fear of contamination (clinical or otherwise) leading to a restricted diet that seems off-putting and unhealthy.

[CrossLOPER]

Yes, it looks that way.
It does make his slurring and covfefeing that much weirder though.
Trevor Noah sums it up quite well:

"Genetics"? This is the same garbage argument that incels use to describe why they can't get anywhere in life. If your body is capable of processing junk in such a manner, it's genetics in that you are simply not human.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ8EAwRauoM&t=511s

[Seamus Fermanagh]

... The president's work schedule in this administration is not overly burdensome, and the content of his efforts uncongenial to me, so this is fine....

LOL. I always wondered why it bothered candidate Trump so much that Obama went golfing a fair bit. Since he opposed virtually EVERY Obama initiative, wouldn't you WANT him taking as many days off as possible? It's like the old borscht-belt joke about the two women complaining about a lunch café. The first says "the food was horrible." The second says, "I agree, and the portions were small."

[Montmorency]

"Genetics"? This is the same garbage argument that incels use to describe why they can't get anywhere in life. If your body is capable of processing junk in such a manner, it's genetics in that you are simply not human.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ8EAwRauoM&t=511s

Caprisun!

!!!

[HopAlongBunny]

The "bloody nose" option in N. Korea.
This has been touted as a demonstration of American will to engage with N. Korea! Leaving no doubt...blah blah blah!
Chances are it would end badly, for all concerned:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...ategist-216306

Quick fact, N.Korea is so small that if it believes war has been declared, it has no option but to go (without delay) to an illustration of cost.
The article suggests a limited strike at Hawaii, Guam, Japan and S. Korean assets as a first round; this could easily end up in an all out exchange.
Yes, N. Korea would likely cease to exist, and S. Korea and a random selection of US cities. Yay?

Just a bluff you say?
A bluff needs to be credible; this is not a credible action.

[rory_20_uk]

Trump has had a very cushy life, and continues to do so. Not smoking / drinking has helped. If he's kept his blood pressure under control, small vessel dementia is not likely and other forms are more genetic.

So, his diet and indolence probably mean he's at risk of macrovascular disease (and for the good of the world may he have a stroke / heart attack sharpish) but what he does is if anything Psychological pathology which is always a grey area - when does a lazy self-obsessed liar, braggart and cheat become mentally ill?

[Strike For The South]

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.

[Strike For The South]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/o...ol-left-region

Tangentially related, but people see what they want to see I guess.

[Husar]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/o...ol-left-region

Tangentially related, but people see what they want to see I guess.

Donald Trump has succeeded where Barack Obama failed. The economy is up, foreign tyrants are afraid, ISIS has lost most of its territory, our embassy will be moved to Jerusalem and tax reform is accomplished. More than that, Mr. Trump is learning, adapting and getting savvier every day. Entitlement reform is next! Lastly, the entrenched interests in Washington, which have done nothing but glad-hand one another, and both political parties are angry and afraid.

Who knew that all it would take to make progress was vision, chutzpah and some testosterone?

STEVEN SANABRIA
OAKDALE, CALIF.

(Emphasis mine)

That's top-down class warfare at its finest!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

A huge chunk of folks are invested in the market, though most are using funds of one sort or another (safer, since picking single stocks IS as tough as handicapping horses).

At best, the market's value at a given time represents what significant portion of professional investors feel will be the value/health of the economy 3-6 month from now. And that guestimate of the future is just that -- an educated guess. If I were to attempt to publish a study that used that reliability level of data to suggest conclusions, I MIGHT be told to redo the measurement and statistical treatments and try again. More likely it would just be rejected.

Stock markets are not a roulette table, but there is a good deal of randomness in them nevertheless.

[CrossLOPER]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/o...ol-left-region

Tangentially related, but people see what they want to see I guess.

Most of those were complaining that Obummer didn't defeat ISIS fast enough.

[spmetla]

Well to his credit Trump thankfully didn't change our engagement in Iraq which continued Obama's slow defeat of ISIS via providing SOF and enablers to the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Peshmerga. I'm definitely in the camp of people unhappy with the slow Obama approach to ISIS and personally feel more sooner would have been much more appropriate but so long as they are defeated in the end I'm content. The moment Mosul fell we should have been there in a big way to steady the Iraqi government and defeat ISIS instead of letting it drag out for nearly half a decade.
Upon his election I was worried that he'd pull us out of there and Afghanistan as part of his isolationist stance.

Same for the stock market I guess. It's really just a continuation of Obama's policies. The recent tax bill is the only thing that may have an effect that's been done that wasn't just a continuation of present policy. The norm for all Presidents is to claim everything that happens as their personal doing such as his taking personal ownership for the USS Gerald Ford as part of his strengthening the US Military when it was all planned and built under the previous president.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Well to his credit Trump thankfully didn't change our engagement in Iraq which continued Obama's slow defeat of ISIS via providing SOF and enablers to the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Peshmerga. I'm definitely in the camp of people unhappy with the slow Obama approach to ISIS and personally feel more sooner would have been much more appropriate but so long as they are defeated in the end I'm content. The moment Mosul fell we should have been there in a big way to steady the Iraqi government and defeat ISIS instead of letting it drag out for nearly half a decade.
Upon his election I was worried that he'd pull us out of there and Afghanistan as part of his isolationist stance.

Same for the stock market I guess. It's really just a continuation of Obama's policies. The recent tax bill is the only thing that may have an effect that's been done that wasn't just a continuation of present policy. The norm for all Presidents is to claim everything that happens as their personal doing such as his taking personal ownership for the USS Gerald Ford as part of his strengthening the US Military when it was all planned and built under the previous president.

Again, Trump IS affecting it because the stock market is (if anything) a leading indicator, unlike economic growth reports, which lag. The Street is happy with Trump because they see an era where very little regulation will be added or changed and where some regulation may well be removed. This make Financial game players happy, so they invest I what they see as a brighter future and the market goes up.

[Montmorency]

Well to his credit Trump thankfully didn't change our engagement in Iraq which continued Obama's slow defeat of ISIS via providing SOF and enablers to the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Peshmerga. I'm definitely in the camp of people unhappy with the slow Obama approach to ISIS and personally feel more sooner would have been much more appropriate but so long as they are defeated in the end I'm content. The moment Mosul fell we should have been there in a big way to steady the Iraqi government and defeat ISIS instead of letting it drag out for nearly half a decade.
Upon his election I was worried that he'd pull us out of there and Afghanistan as part of his isolationist stance.

Same for the stock market I guess. It's really just a continuation of Obama's policies. The recent tax bill is the only thing that may have an effect that's been done that wasn't just a continuation of present policy. The norm for all Presidents is to claim everything that happens as their personal doing such as his taking personal ownership for the USS Gerald Ford as part of his strengthening the US Military when it was all planned and built under the previous president.

As noted in the Syria thread, if IS retreats into endemic guerrilla activity in West Asia while hundreds of its most skilled fighters, leaders, and technicians disperse around the world to join regional groups - it's not really a victory. Ultimately the Obama policy was less a principle of rebalancing than of minimizing direct liability, and that's probably the plurality consensus among the political and military leadership to this day. Decisive military campaigns won't accomplish much (outside perhaps the nakedly-destructive "raid" model of constantly repeating Afghanistan 2001 in trouble areas, then pulling out immediately), but long-term political and diplomatic strategies are too complicated, hard to devise and to propound, require concomitant comprehensive changes in other areas of strategy and policy: path of least resistance it is then.

I never knew much about Al Franken, the senator resigning over photo-groping allegations, but I like this story about him and Paul Wolfowitz:

At last weekend's White House Correspondents' Dinner, one gossip column reports, liberal comedian Al Franken went up to Paul Wolfowitz, the neoconservative deputy defense secretary and said, "Clinton's military did pretty well in Iraq, huh?" Wolfowitz responded by proposing that Franken perform an anatomically impossible act.

[spmetla]

if IS retreats into endemic guerrilla activity in West Asia while hundreds of its most skilled fighters, leaders, and technicians disperse around the world to join regional groups - it's not really a victory.

It means it has retreated into just another terrorist organization as it was before it took Raqqa and Mosul. At least they are no longer able to capture towns and cities and enslave thousands of women and children while summarily executing their opposition enmasse. Yes, if given the space and time they could always pose another threat to the region but right now they are a force that is no longer able to be a banner of victory for the extreme islamists that flocked to the middle east to wage war or were inspired to conduct terrorism in their home country. Yes, terrorism will still occur but sadly that's just part of the new normal of our times.

Decisive military campaigns won't accomplish much

Correct if it's just a campaign on its own. In the middle east there is no military solution to create peace but there's also no peace without some sort of military component. The current Iraq model of letting US firepower hammer ISIS while the Iraqis can shed blood clearing streets and buildings works to our strength at the least and is politically sustainable for us and the host nation. A "great raid" approach against ISIS could probably have been done sooner though with a more significant military footprint but not necessarily one so large that we're re-establishing semi-permanent bases again.

Again, Trump IS affecting it because the stock market is (if anything) a leading indicator, unlike economic growth reports, which lag. The Street is happy with Trump because they see an era where very little regulation will be added or changed and where some regulation may well be removed. This make Financial game players happy, so they invest I what they see as a brighter future and the market goes up.

I do understand that but I would not credit Trump with that too much. FYI I too have been personally benefiting from this booming stock market and happy about it.

His protectionist personal stance is at odds with the free market policies of the Republicans. If were to actually undo NAFTA, be tough on China via tariffs, and punish companies that outsource labor the market would react quite poorly. He has been thankfully hamstrung by Ryan and McConnell from doing these things and the economy is running along in a business as usual approach just as it did before Trump.
The Tax bill which has many things I like and hate in it is a product of anything but what Trump was speaking about during his populist campaign rallies. Trump at the very least though has learned to listen to his betters on the economy which is far more complicated than his real-estate business ever was.

[Kralizec]

edit: nevermind

[a completely inoffensive name]

My condolences to all the park rangers out there who now have to put up those signs that say "please stop walking in this part of the country".

[Montmorency]

Run liberals in Republican primaries, run socialists in Democratic primaries.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Run liberals in Republican primaries, run socialists in Democratic primaries.

Elect people of good character against their will and force them to serve.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Elect people of good character against their will and force them to serve.

2,500 years later and we ended up going back to rounding up the children with gold souls to serve the public.

[Gilrandir]

[Montmorency]

[Montmorency]

Extraordinary Implication:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Nyarlathotep . . . the crawling chaos . . . I am the last . . . I will tell the audient void. . . .
I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.
I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city—the great, the old, the terrible city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; that what was thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy, and that in the sputter of his sparks there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others saw not.
It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. And I saw the world battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning; struggling around the dimming, cooling sun. Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about “imposture” and “static electricity”, Nyarlathotep drave us all out, down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with me for solace. We sware to one another that the city was exactly the same, and still alive; and when the electric lights began to fade we cursed the company over and over again, and laughed at the queer faces we made.
I believe we felt something coming down from the greenish moon, for when we began to depend on its light we drifted into curious involuntary formations and seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think of them. Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced by grass, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew where the tramways had run. And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and almost on its side. When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find the third tower by the river, and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged at the top. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a different direction. One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving only the echo of a shocking moan. Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a laughter that was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open country, and presently felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn; for as we stalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemed very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind, for the black rift in the green-litten snow was frightful, and I thought I had heard the reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished; but my power to linger was slight. As if beckoned by those who had gone before, I half floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.
Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[CrossLOPER]

Elect people of good character against their will and force them to serve.

Make public policy decisions using a See 'n Say with policies taped over the animal pictures.

[Shaka_Khan]

[rory_20_uk]

Trump... Trump is apparently going to... apologise! I fear more than ever for his health... Link

He does plead ignorance that he had no idea about the group he was re-tweeting which certainly is plausible.