Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[milk]

Of course the media makes a big fuzz about this while not talking about real policy issues which would matter to people. It's all identity politics these days...

America seems real stalemated. Sometimes I think it'd be interesting if the parties called a limited truce, like, a 3-year truce where they agreed to exchange concessions. I personally think reduced immigration for a time is not a terrible thing as long as there's a way for people already in the States to get a pathway. I think the Dems should trade getting universal healthcare for giving up something else. I saw Stephen Pinker today saying issues should be decided more scientifically. That's not going to work with everything but with some things, it's possible. Maybe it's naive. I'm so far removed from the States these days. I wonder what people would say are the biggest problems for most average people? I can't believe the U.S. doesn't have accessible healthcare that's guaranteed. University is too expensive, too. Living in Japan I can say what the problems are here and I have some idea of why they're difficult to solve. America's so much bigger and more complicated.

[Karl Henning]

America seems real stalemated. Sometimes I think it'd be interesting if the parties called a limited truce, like, a 3-year truce where they agreed to exchange concessions. I personally think reduced immigration for a time is not a terrible thing as long as there's a way for people already in the States to get a pathway. I think the Dems should trade getting universal healthcare for giving up something else. I saw Stephen Pinker today saying issues should be decided more scientifically. That's not going to work with everything but with some things, it's possible. Maybe it's naive. I'm so far removed from the States these days. I wonder what people would say are the biggest problems for most average people? I can't believe the U.S. doesn't have accessible healthcare that's guaranteed. University is too expensive, too. Living in Japan I can say what the problems are here and I have some idea of why they're difficult to solve. America's so much bigger and more complicated.

It's becoming much simpler:  if you're among the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans, you're in good shape.

[Karl Henning]

And more about the "reality TV star" who cannot be bothered to, you know, govern:

Trump could help curb a potential pandemic. Instead, he has been silent.

One in 10 Americans who died last week were killed by flu — more than from opioid addiction or breast cancer. The 2018 flu outbreak is on track to rival the swine flu epidemic of 2009, which made 60 million Americans sick, hospitalized more than a quarter of a million and killed more than 12,000.

Of course, this epidemic is not the fault of the Trump administration, any more than 2009's H1N1 outbreak was the fault of President Barack Obama's White House. What does fall in the president's lap is the fact that we are confronting this current challenge without a confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with a number of states — with encouragement from the Trump administration — instituting work requirements for Medicaid coverage, which widens gaps in coverage, and, above all, with no leadership from the White House on the flu response.

And that, sadly, is no surprise.

[milk]

Of course the media makes a big fuzz about this while not talking about real policy issues which would matter to people. It's all identity politics these days...

But I can't resist:
While he insists that the allegations are "factually unsupported and without legal merit," nothing in Cohen's statement disproves them — unless one actually believes that he gave Clifford a massive sum of money for reasons that have nothing to do with his boss.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/trump-lawyers-stormy-daniels-payoff-may-still-be-illegal.html
meanwhile:
Trump's handpicked director, Christopher Wray, delivered an understated but impactful rebuke to the White House Tuesday. He made clear the background investigation of Rob Porter had been completed last July and administratively closed by the FBI in January – protecting his own agents' reputations, and leaving White House aides holding a rather substantial bag, stuffed with the accusations of three women.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/note-trump-white-house-fbi-director/story?id=53073748

[Karl Henning]

Make America a Laughing-Stock!

[El Tupé's] lawyer confirmed the Stormy Daniels payment. What's conspicuously absent: Any denial that [El Tupé] was involved.

[Karl Henning]

The big problem with [El Tupé's] budget

[El Tupé] once again sells a cruddy product.

We hesitate to place too much emphasis on the president's budget because, like last year's, it will be almost entirely ignored by a GOP-controlled Congress that frankly has no appetite for things like cutting Medicare or doing away with all foreign aid (which, as the smarter ones know, is a sliver of the budget but an important soft-power tool). While the budget won't foretell the final product, it is revealing of the failed vision of President Trump and his party.

[El Tupé] ran on preserving entitlements and on making health care less expensive. He is delivering (or wants to deliver) hollowed-out government. We are spending more, but his base is getting less — and the debt is getting bigger.

Consider the middle class [El Tupé] voter in the Rust Belt. He might get a few hundred dollars in tax cuts (if he pays federal income tax at all) but he's likely going to pay more to visit a national park or use an airport; more for his family's health care purchased in the individual exchange; and more to take care of an aging relative. The cost of putting his child through college will go up too. The infrastructure around him will continue to crumble and make commuting a nightmare. Air quality and drinking water may not be as pristine as he is accustomed. And the big manufacturing plant still isn't open and he still doesn't have the skills for a good-paying high-tech job. Is his quality of his life any better? Does he have more disposable income and more security, or is he just getting less from government?

[...]

[El Tupé's] budget also reveals his bait-and-switch on infrastructure. Democratic politicos might consider carting around a goose egg to their news conferences. That's about what the plan is worth — a big fat goose egg. What about the $200 billion outlay? Even that's a bit of a sham. As critics note: "In its fiscal year 2019 budget request, which was also released on Monday, [Team Tupé] lays out a remarkably austere path for roads, bridges, and especially transit systems, with as much as $275 billion in cuts to infrastructure programs." Democrats are also highlighting the transportation cuts. While the White House disputed his figures, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) identified more than $240 billion in proposed cuts over the coming decade to an array of existing infrastructure programs — a higher number than what [El Tupé] is proposing in 'new' spending." Even if the cuts don't gobble up all the new money, the plan essentially foists the responsibility for funding infrastructure on the states.

This is a perverse form of federalism[....]

[Karl Henning]

And more about possibly America's greatest President ever:

The split in American politics we may be missing is not left vs. right or pro-[Tupé] vs. anti-[Tupé] but normality vs. the [El Tupé]-inspired Washington circus.

If the doings in the nation's capital seem strange when you are there, they look positively lunatic at any distance from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

First, the entire White House is seized by vicious infighting over its inability to tell the truth about what it knew when concerning allegations of domestic violence against a top aide. It's remarkable how sealed off from reality this self-involved snake pit has become. [El President Tupé] has ratified the maxim that a leader gets the staff he deserves.

Combine this with the astounding disconnect between what [El Tupé's] own intelligence officials told us on Tuesday about the threat of Russian meddling in our midterm elections and [El Tupé's] denials and inactivity. The signal is that [El Tupé] doesn't care what happens to the nation he leads. He is only concerned that Russian meddling taints the triumph he loves to boast about and that further investigations of it could get him into real trouble.

Oh, yes, and there was also that payoff to the porn star.

[SimonNZ]

The alt-right and a few on this thread like to talk about "virtue signalling", which, if it means anything and is not just a vague all-purpose insult, refers to an empty rhetoric fashionable and easily paraded to improve ones image without any commitment in one's life beyond a few gestures. They may, however, not be aware that one of the most common cited examples illustrating this is the hackneyed "thoughts and prayers" offered with no intention off addressing root causes or of future reoccurences.

Don't look to Trump for leadership after the Florida school shooting

[Karl Henning]

The alt-right and a few on this thread like to talk about "virtue signalling", which, if it means anything and is not just a vague all-purpose insult, refers to an empty rhetoric fashionable and easily paraded to improve ones image without any commitment in one's life beyond a few gestures. They may, however, not be aware that one of the most common cited examples illustrating this is the hackneyed "thoughts and prayers" offered with no intention off addressing root causes or of future reoccurences.

Don't look to Trump for leadership after the Florida school shooting

Exactly.

Personally, I do not believe that even his tweeted "thoughts and prayers" were sent by his own thumb;  bet it was a staffer's.  Too low-priority.

[milk]

One thing I don't have to worry about in Japan is shootings. It's sad to see people living in fear and terror. Very sad and unnecessary.

[Karl Henning]

One thing I don't have to worry about in Japan is shootings. It's sad to see people living in fear and terror. Very sad and unnecessary.

なるほど

[Karl Henning]

When the President is a kneejerk bullshitter, that is the sort of Press Secretary he hires:

Kelly learned the details of Porter's situation only "40 minutes before he threw him out," last week, several months after Kelly reportedly was informed that allegations of spousal abuse were holding up Porter's security clearance.

[milk]

"I'll be able to make sure that when you walk down the street in your inner city, or wherever you are, you're not going to be shot...Your child isn't going to be shot...The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end...Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored."
Guess who.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/trump-carnage/553424/?utm_source=atlfb

[Karl Henning]

"I'll be able to make sure that when you walk down the street in your inner city, or wherever you are, you're not going to be shot...Your child isn't going to be shot...The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end...Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored."
Guess who.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/trump-carnage/553424/?utm_source=atlfb

I guess that sounds like Gospel to them what drunk the Trump Kool-Aid.

[Karl Henning]

[El Tupé] and Pence made peculiar statements on spousal abuse. You should listen closely.

[Karl Henning]

The horrific mass shooting on Wednesday at a South Florida high school in which 17 were killed highlighted [El President Tupé's] glaring deficiencies. Rather than face the nation, he hid. He did not come out to speak to the country; his press secretary had no briefing on Wednesday. All he could manage were perfunctory tweets on Wednesday and again Thursday morning. ("My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting," he said Wednesday. "No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.") This morning he was the impassive observer, already spinning to cast this as a mental health crisis. "So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!" Was he blaming victims, or just blathering? He could muster only a written statement directing flags be flown at half-staff. Again, his only reaction is in writing. One cannot imagine Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton behaving in such a fashion.

The role of consoler in chief is utterly beyond [El Tupé]. It's hard to envision him delivering a moving eulogy, as presidents before him have done. He adeptly channels and elicits anger from his base, but he has no compassion offer the country.

His inability to address bloodletting in American schools — which takes many more lives than do Islamist-inspired terrorists — underscores his priorities. It is never the "right time" to talk about a response to school shootings; yet before facts are known in the wake of a jihadist-inspired slaying, he's always at the ready to devise anti-immigrant measures. [El Tupé] is content to say that nothing can be done about mass slayings (we must be resigned to evil in the world, he would have us believe) — unless they are motivated by Islamist fundamentalism. In the case of white supremacists or disturbed teenage murderers, any proposal regarding guns is flyspecked and dismissed if it would not have prevented this particular attack; with Islamist terrorism, no such causal relationship is required (i.e. he used the October 2017 terror attack in New York as an excuse to propose doing away with family reunification immigration).

And then there is Congress. More than four months after the mass slaying in Las Vegas, the Republican-controlled Congress has done exactly nothing, even on the limited issue of banning bump stocks. There is no gun-oriented reform (expanded background checks or preventing people on the no-fly list from buying guns, for example) that is deemed acceptable; no inconvenience to gun owners, no matter how small, can be tolerated.

On the budget front, Republicans are unwilling to fund common-sense measures that might prevent gun violence or enhance school safety. To the contrary, in its mode of hollowing out government, Congress rolls back existing funding. ("President Donald Trump's newly unveiled budget would cut millions of dollars from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which gun dealers use to verify if someone is banned from buying a gun before selling it to them.") It tries to harass so-called sanctuary cities by threatening funding rather than supporting local priorities, which might include school safety. Congress might be willing to pay $10 million to $30 million for a parade, but new money to train school officials or retrofit schools with bulletproof glass, door blocks for classrooms, security cameras and alarm systems? Not interested. It has lost the revenue in voting for cuts for the rich and corporations, you see. ([El Tupé] is also proposing significant cuts in the Education Department's budget.)

Republicans, including [El Tupé], like to say that the gun problem is really a mental health problem. But on that front, Republicans want to do less, not more. As part of "health-care reform," the GOP-led Congress wanted to scale back Medicaid, which in 2015, for example, "covered 22% of nonelderly adults with mental illness and 26% of nonelderly adults with serious mental illness." (In addition,  Medicaid "covers many inpatient and outpatient mental health services, such as psychiatric treatment, counseling, and prescription medications. Medicaid coverage of mental health services is often more comprehensive than private insurance coverage.") In his 2019 budget proposal for the Health and Human Services Department, [El Tupé] proposes "a 21 percent decrease from 2017 funding levels."

[El Tupé] is emotionally and politically inert — useless, really — in these ordeals. Congress is little better. So long as the anti-gun-measure extremists and anti-government Republicans dominate the federal government, we shouldn't expect much from the feds. That leaves it to state and local officials and legislatures, parent activists and voters. Acknowledging the iron grip of the National Rifle Association does not mean we cannot do something more than send "thoughts and prayers."

[milk]

Good piece from Rubin. Tump is such a coward.

[Karl Henning]

Considering all this, it is . . . cute to reflect that the dudgeon over Clinton's e-mail server was national security.

[...] To be blunt, given his financial associations and reported dependency on Russian money, it is not clear that Trump could qualify for a top-secret security clearance. (Hint: If his son-in-law could not, do we think Trump is less of a risk?) As president, of course, he gets that clearance — and also command of our armed services and intelligence community.

Russia has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in promoting a president intertwined with Russian oligarchs and determined to ignore the Kremlin's anti-Western espionage. Putin could not have imagined a better helpmate who would leave American democracy open to attack.

[André]

White supremacist, Trump supporter and high school killer. Got his semi-automatic firearm from a fellow member of Republic of Florida.

[71 dB]

White supremacist, Trump supporter and high school killer. Got his semi-automatic firearm from a fellow member of Republic of Florida.

About 180.000 Americans have died because of gun violence after Sandy Hook. That's three Vietnam wars, but why have some basic gun control? Only 93 % of Americans want better gun control, even the majority of NRA members want that. When are you Americans going to get your democracy back? This oligarchy is a bit too lethal wouldn't you say?