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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 9:29 pm 
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Kea wrote:
[quote="CCC"He's going to try to keep the whole country in campaign mode for 4 years.


Because if there's one thing everyone in the country can agree on, it's that the 2016 election season didn't last long enough... :kzk:

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 10:12 pm 
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Some random thoughts:

- Can we put Trump in a Truman Show dome and let him think that he's the president?

- Everyone seems to be relieved that the new national security adviser is H. R. McMaster. The man literally wrote the book on how to say no to presidents, so I bet Trump only chose him because he looks tough and has a badass name.

- Hundreds of refugees are fleeing from the US into Canada, illegally, through the snow, whilst inadequately dressed, because they'd rather risk freezing to death than get deported by Trump.

- Now for a little bit of schadenfreude. Conservatives have finally given professional Breitbart troll Milo Yiannopoulos the old heave ho after old videos of him seemingly endorsing pedophilia surfaced. Turns out they only liked political incorrectness as long as it offended other people, i.e. women, minorities and gays. Well, if you live by the troll, you die by the troll. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 2:02 am 
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Weremensh wrote:
Nope; Bannon et al would never willingly let power make it's way down the street to Congress.


I'm not quite sure who Bannon et al are, but would they be willing to let power take a stroll in the direction of Bannon et al?

Kea wrote:
- Everyone seems to be relieved that the new national security adviser is H. R. McMaster. The man literally wrote the book on how to say no to presidents, so I bet Trump only chose him because he looks tough and has a badass name.


It's possible that someone else quietly crossed out all the other names before giving Trump the list to choose from. ("No, sir, this one said your moustache smells of parmesan...")

Kea wrote:
- Hundreds of refugees are fleeing from the US into Canada, illegally, through the snow, whilst inadequately dressed, because they'd rather risk freezing to death than get deported by Trump.


...this is a very bad sign.

Kea wrote:
- Now for a little bit of schadenfreude. Conservatives have finally given professional Breitbart troll Milo Yiannopoulos the old heave ho after old videos of him seemingly endorsing pedophilia surfaced. Turns out they only liked political incorrectness as long as it offended other people, i.e. women, minorities and gays. Well, if you live by the troll, you die by the troll. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person.


I notice the word "seemingly" in there. Does this mean that anyone with video editing software and access to news clips and social media can get anyone they want thrown out?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 3:14 am 
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Stephen Bannon is one of Trump's closest political advisors. He was the former editor of Breitbart (far right wing news site) and basically a fascist. He calls himself an "economic nationalist" but his entire philosophy is "keep immigrants out" and "let's admire Putin for being a strong leader" and "Islam is evil". He has inserted himself onto the National Security Council (political advisors have traditionally not been allowed to make national security decisions) by getting Trump to sign an executive order that Trump did not bother to read. Letting Bannon amass power is a very very bad idea.

CCC wrote:
I notice the word "seemingly" in there. Does this mean that anyone with video editing software and access to news clips and social media can get anyone they want thrown out?

No, Milo wasn't edited. He really said that it's not so bad for teenage boys to have sex with older men because he himself learned how to give sexual favours from a priest when he was 13. But because he is a troll, he claims to never mean anything that he says, so now of course he says that he doesn't really support pedophiles, he was just using dark humour. For a man who has made his entire career out of saying offensive things, he sure seems surprised that his allies are offended.

Milo Yiannopoulis was a protege of Stephen Bannon, by the way. Just so you know how awful Bannon is.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 9:06 pm 
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Since Trump put the final nail in the TPP treaty I've been reading that the TPP nations are looking to simply put together a TPP-1; the various players of the Pacific Rim minus the United States. In some ways it looks like the old Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere idea but with China playing the role of Japan (absent the overt conquest, at least for now). How this can avoid being a political and economic problem for the US is hard to see, but fortunately for the Republicans and their Dear Leader they have no intention of looking. Think of it as the geopolitical equivalent of Pacific rim global warming.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 12:10 am 
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Kea wrote:
Letting Bannon amass power is a very very bad idea.


If he's already in a position to slip orders in front of Trump that won't get read, then it sounds like he already has too much power.

Kea wrote:
No, Milo wasn't edited.


I could make any public figure 'seemingly' endorse anything I want without editing a word that they say. I just need a clip of said public figure vociferously agreeing with (something), and then precede it with a clip of someone else saying bad stuff to be agreed with. It won't fool anyone who thinks for twenty seconds, but you're making it sound like that can no longer be considered important...

Weremensh wrote:
Since Trump put the final nail in the TPP treaty I've been reading that the TPP nations are looking to simply put together a TPP-1; the various players of the Pacific Rim minus the United States.


That seems perfectly reasonable on the part of the other TPP nations.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 1:29 am 
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Yes it is possible to edit any public figure to make it sound like he supports any insane position, but that is not what happened here.

A conservative blog that opposes the alt-right managed to find footage from a speech Milo Yiannopoulis gave last year in which he did say that it was OK for teenagers to have sex with adults. No-one tricked or manipulated him into saying that, he said it because saying outrageous things is what he did for a living. Yiannopoulis admitted that he said those words, but claimed that he was only joking. After years spent mocking victims of sexual assault in the most odious terms, he tried to argue that he deserved lenience because he was the victim of sexual assault. He also added that what he was endorsing technically wasn't pedophilia because teenagers aren't prepubescent children.

Conservatives who previously cheered on his bigoted and ignorant statements because they liked watching liberals getting angry suddenly realized that they could not be seen promoting a guy who says that it's OK for adults to molest 14 year-olds, and dropped him faster than a bag of flaming dog poop. Really? Only now you notice you're carrying a bag of poo?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 7:54 am 
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...okay, that makes sense. So he did say some pretty objectionable stuff, and when called on it, his defense was pretty much "Weeeelllllll, technically, I only said this slightly less objectionable thing" which them led to his being dumped.

Thanks for the clarification.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:08 am 
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Here is one more thing I thought I would never see. George W. Bush giving Trump a lesson in middle school civics.

Quote:
Although he did not mention Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Bush expressed disapproval of the president’s assertion that “fake news media” organizations are the “enemy of the American people.”

“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy,” Mr. Bush told Matt Lauer, the “Today” host. “We need the media to hold people like me to account. I mean, power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.”

He seemed to suggest that language like Mr. Trump’s made it more difficult to press authoritarian leaders like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to tolerate a free press. “It’s kind of hard to, you know, tell others to have an independent free press when we’re not willing to have one ourselves,” he said.


Mr. Torture, Guantanamo Bay and Illegal Wiretaps talking about the free press and accountability. Wow.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:39 pm 
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Kea wrote:
Mr. Torture, Guantanamo Bay and Illegal Wiretaps talking about the free press and accountability. Wow.


In all fairness, throughout most of his administration, he was the cheerfully oblivious pawn of a highly competent and completely amoral "second"-in-command. While that doesn't excuse the horrible things that happened on his watch, it's very unlikely that he was the originating author of any of them.

While you could advance a similar argument about Trump vis-a-vis Putin, Bannon et. al., it's not clear in this case whether it's Trump or the Puppet Masters who are really being played for fools.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 6:18 pm 
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I dunno; an awful lot of Dubya's misdeeds played straight into his personal links to folks like the house of Saud.

That said, it seems Trump knows how to tell a joke. At his speech to Congress he deadpanned that he was starting to drain the swamp, at which point the Democrats all laughed and the Gators all applauded. Granted, Obama's first speech did 17 points better in the ratings; but I'm sure we'll hear the reverse by the weekend.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 8:49 pm 
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Dubya was at the very least asleep at the wheel, which is a frightening quality in a president. I wonder if he has any self-awareness about what a bad president he was?

At least Bush figured out that he shouldn't listen to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld by his second term (quick, can anyone name a Donald who isn't horrible, or a duck?) I doubt Trump will ever stop listening to people like Bannon. Even if he gets rid of Bannon, there'll be another one along in a minute. Trump is too easy to manipulate.

Edit: Seeing as Trump didn't do anything but talk in vague platitudes during his speech to Congress, can we hope that none of his people have the faintest idea about policy or legislation or coalition wrangling, and that they'll accomplish absolutely nothing until the midterm elections?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 11:15 pm 
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Kea wrote:
can we hope that none of his people have the faintest idea about policy or legislation or coalition wrangling, and that they'll accomplish absolutely nothing until the midterm elections?


Probably not, or at least not for long, because even in the extremely unlikely case that it's currently true, people who know about things like that will undoubtedly worm their way into his confidence before long.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 5:19 pm 
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In an interesting recent development Br'er Trump has accused Obama of wiretapping his campaign in some tweets. What makes this interesting isn't that it's true; but that it's true.

You see, it wasn't Obama who wiretapped the Trump campaign. It was the FBI operating under a FISA warrant. Ergo, they produced enough evidence that four people in the Trump campaign (not yet specified) were involved in espionage on behalf of the Russians to get the warrant granted.

By itself, awkward enough (almost as awkward as traitors on the Hill trying to make this about Obama). But by tweeting all this Trump declassified it, making it impossible to go after anyone who spread or may spread the story. Moreover, he may have made it impossible for the FBI not to hand over the transcripts of these taps to Congress, or for his fellow travelers to prevent Congress from formally asking for them.

Now it's been obvious for a while that he and his people committed some serious crimes here. The behavior of everyone involved regarding the Russian connection just doesn't make any sense otherwise. To blow himself away like this, well, everyone but his base has understood that he and his boys are incompetent for some time now. Bannon is probably beside himself. Of course, what we read is that Trump is furious that Sessions has recused himself rather than what Bannon thinks. Leaky? This administration? Naah.

One wonders how long it will take for someone to remind him that he can just pardon every single one of his co-conspirators and thus beat almost any potential rap...politically awkward to say the least; but he isn't acting like he'd hesitate over that.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 4:51 am 
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Hold on there.
1. Has it been confirmed that the FBI got a warrant to wiretap Trump? All I've heard is that if they spied on him, they would've had to get a warrant. Not that they actually did it.
2. If the FBI had been wiretapping Trump during the campaign, Comey had to have known about it, so why did he do cartwheels to prove he was Tough On Clinton knowing that it would help a suspected Russia collaborator? Comey may be a lot of things, but if he's a stooge of Putin, America has way bigger problems than Trump.
2. How do you know Trump isn't manufacturing a fake scandal out of some Breitbart fever dream as a distraction? If he demands an investigation into Obama, he'll give his accomplices in Congress an excuse to drag the Democrats through a years-long pointless Benghazi-style inquiry.

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