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

[71 dB]

     No Good Biden will have a progressive agenda, in part because what you say about moving left is true. With that in mind it would be good to look ahead and choose a candidate that can 1) win and 2) govern. The object isn't to fly the progressive banner, it's to get programs enacted.

Biden will have a progressive agenda?  All he can do is tell millenials to stop whining about student loan dept! Well, he won't be getting millenial votes! Good luck having the 50+ old Dems to vote for you. Biden's style of governing is keeping up the status quo while smiling.

[JBS]

Biden will have a progressive agenda?  All he can do is tell millenials to stop whining about student loan dept! Well, he won't be getting millenial votes! Good luck having the 50+ old Dems to vote for you. Biden's style of governing is keeping up the status quo while smiling.

If you listen to lefty progressives, it's no wonder you are so badly misinformed.  They present a view that is as distorted as Fox and Friends, just in the opposite direction. AOC is important only because the media have made her prominent.  A young Latina beating an old white guy in a heavily Latinx district is not an improbability. She is taking advantage of the exposure, but she is merely one face of the Democratic left, and therefore well to the left of the public at large.

If you truly understand American politics you would understand that about half of those progressive ideas are libertarian or paleoconservative (that is, conservative before 1939) in origin.  You would also understand that most of those ideas, once they stop being slogans and start being detailed programs, are much less popular.You would also understand that centrist Democrats represent mainstream American policies as practiced for most of the last fifty years or so ago. They are not corporatist. It is the GOP that is corporatist.

Wherever you are getting your "information" from is actually just producing garbage.

[amw]

Based on my exhaustive* knowledge** of US politics I think these are the likely outcomes of a Biden nomination vs a Sanders nomination.





Any potential Biden map would look a lot like 2016. Not a sure thing & he has a sufficiently long senate history of votes that go against current D orthodoxy that he might well go the same route as Clinton and lose all the tossups. Any potential Sanders map looks stronger in the Midwest (enough so to make Iowa & Ohio potentially winnable) but weaker in the Beltway & South, and still isn't a guaranteed thing—and despite his campaign's optimism I doubt he'll be able to flip KY or WV despite his strong showing there in 2016. At least not with Trump on the ballot.

[Rinaldo]

I wish you guys over there would vote for someone who will actually live to experience the consequences of his/her agenda.

[amw]

Not exactly how the American political system works at present, lol. I guess we can try to draft Assata Shakur for General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Democratic People's Republic of Turtle Island after me and my five friends in Portland OR have overthrown the US government and replaced it with a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist dictatorship of the proletariat.

[71 dB]

If you listen to lefty progressives, it's no wonder you are so badly misinformed.  They present a view that is as distorted as Fox and Friends, just in the opposite direction. AOC is important only because the media have made her prominent.  A young Latina beating an old white guy in a heavily Latinx district is not an improbability. She is taking advantage of the exposure, but she is merely one face of the Democratic left, and therefore well to the left of the public at large.

If you truly understand American politics you would understand that about half of those progressive ideas are libertarian or paleoconservative (that is, conservative before 1939) in origin.  You would also understand that most of those ideas, once they stop being slogans and start being detailed programs, are much less popular.You would also understand that centrist Democrats represent mainstream American policies as practiced for most of the last fifty years or so ago. They are not corporatist. It is the GOP that is corporatist.

Wherever you are getting your "information" from is actually just producing garbage.

You don't understand, those lefty progressives are the only one with the facts. They tell the facts even when it's against their agenda. Watch a few videos by Kyle Kulinski and tell me he is not the most intellectually honest person you have seen in your life. If you think these progressives are as distorted as Fox and Friends you are clueless.

https://www.youtube.com/v/CIp-X6zEiU4

AOC is important because she moves the Overton window left toward where it should be. How are her ideas paleoconservative? Maybe you think it's 1992 or something. Things have changed. Internet happened. People can fact check. Millenials are left wing etc. If you don't listen to the progressives/independent media you will be kept clueless, because the top 1 % wants you to be clueless. The corporate Dems are almost as corporate and corrupted as the Republicans. The difference is the corporate Dems aren't completely insane and they are socially liberal so they don't hate blacks, LGBT+ people and other minorities.

[drogulus]

     Starting from a blank sheet of paper it's not hard to figure out what programs are needed, and whatever that is will be called progressive if for no better reason than people who call themselves progressive will advocate for the changes first. Someone has to be first, and the people who are most first most of the time are what we call progressive. They even call themselves that. As for the programs, it's not so simple. ObamaCare started out as a "Republican alternative" that failed in its mission by not being vaporware to beat back universal health care. To the horror of multitudes it became a base camp for the climb to universality.

     

[SimonNZ]

Kompromat: Or, Revelations from the Unpublished Portions of Andrea Manafort's Hacked Texts

a well written long piece, covering more than the title suggests

[BasilValentine]

Kompromat: Or, Revelations from the Unpublished Portions of Andrea Manafort's Hacked Texts

a well written long piece, covering more than the title suggests

Ugh! Gives new meaning to Manafort's cold reptilian stare.

But we can rejoice that judge Amy Berman-Jackson just made his sentence 3.5 years longer (now 7.5 years). Better still, prosecutors in NY are bringing state charges against him, just in case Trump tries to nullify the sentence for the federal ones.

[Karl Henning]

Kompromat: Or, Revelations from the Unpublished Portions of Andrea Manafort's Hacked Texts

a well written long piece, covering more than the title suggests

A gruesomely illuming read

[drogulus]

A gruesomely illuming read

     He's a very fine person.

[SimonNZ]

Book claims Tillerson, Cohn called out Kushner on mixing personal interests with foreign policy

"The confrontations are detailed in Kushner Inc by the journalist Vicky Ward, who also describes interference in foreign relations by Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump. The book is scheduled to be released on 19 March. A copy was obtained by the Guardian.

Ward reports that Tillerson blamed Kushner for Trump's abrupt endorsement of a provocative blockade and diplomatic campaign against Qatar by Saudi Arabia and several allies in June 2017. The US has thousands of troops stationed in Qatar.

Tillerson "told Kushner that his interference had endangered the US", an unidentified Tillerson aide tells Ward. Tillerson is also said to have read negative "chatter" about himself in intelligence reports after Kushner belittled him to Kushner's friend Mohammed bin Salman, the controversial Saudi crown prince.

Meanwhile, Cohn is said to have rebuked Kushner in January 2017 after it was revealed Kushner had dined with executives from the Chinese financial corporation Anbang, which was considering investing in the Kushner family's troubled tower at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

"You've got to be crazy," Cohn is said to have told Kushner in front of others. Kushner met the executives around the time he hosted Chinese government officials at the Fifth Avenue tower. The building was eventually refinanced by a Qatari-backed investment fund.

Ivanka Trump is reported to have interfered in telephone calls between her father and foreign dignitaries despite having overseas business interests. "Thanks so much for the CD you sent me," she is quoted as having told an Indian leader by someone who heard the call. The Trump Organization owns several residential towers in India.

Ward's book portrays Kushner and Ivanka Trump as relentlessly ambitious operators who are loathed by many forced to work with them. She reports that White House staffers mocked Kushner as the "secretary of everything" for his wide-ranging meddling and derided Ivanka Trump's team as Habi – "home of all bad ideas".

John Kelly, formerly Trump's chief of staff and homeland security secretary, is quoted as dismissing the couple as "just playing government".

The book also details disagreements between them and Steve Bannon, Trump's former campaign chief and top White House strategist. Bannon clashed with the couple, who are former Democrats, while pushing to convert Trump's aggressively nationalist campaign rhetoric into government policy.

Bannon recalls Kushner furiously shouting at him at the White House in 2017 after he confronted Kushner about holding secret talks with senators on immigration reform. "He goes from a little boy to, like, this fucking devil," Bannon is quoted as saying.

Bannon also claims to have told Ivanka Trump: "Go fuck yourself ... you are nothing" in front of her father, during an argument over who was the bigger leaker to the media. Ivanka Trump is said to have called Bannon a "fucking liar".

For her part, Ivanka Trump is focused on cementing a Trump dynasty to rival the Kennedys and Bushes by becoming commander-in-chief herself one day, according to Ward. "She thinks she's going to be president of the United States," Cohn is quoted as saying.

[JBS]

You don't understand, those lefty progressives are the only one with the facts. They tell the facts even when it's against their agenda. Watch a few videos by Kyle Kulinski and tell me he is not the most intellectually honest person you have seen in your life. If you think these progressives are as distorted as Fox and Friends you are clueless.

https://www.youtube.com/v/CIp-X6zEiU4

AOC is important because she moves the Overton window left toward where it should be. How are her ideas paleoconservative? Maybe you think it's 1992 or something. Things have changed. Internet happened. People can fact check. Millenials are left wing etc. If you don't listen to the progressives/independent media you will be kept clueless, because the top 1 % wants you to be clueless. The corporate Dems are almost as corporate and corrupted as the Republicans. The difference is the corporate Dems aren't completely insane and they are socially liberal so they don't hate blacks, LGBT+ people and other minorities.

If you actually understood American politics, you would recognize which of those "leftist" agenda item you listed are core paleoconservative ideas. You would understand that Kulinksi is as biased as any Fox News host. You would understand that he only tells the facts favorable to his agenda. 
But you don't. So please stop lecturing us Americans on our politics. Your ideals are (in US terms) leftist.  But thinking there is some deep leftist trend in the US is fantasy.  AOC may be moving the Overton window, but she represents a lot less people than you think she does.

[SimonNZ]

[amw]

If you actually understood American politics, you would recognize which of those "leftist" agenda item you listed are core paleoconservative ideas. You would understand that Kulinksi is as biased as any Fox News host. You would understand that he only tells the facts favorable to his agenda. 
But you don't. So please stop lecturing us Americans on our politics. Your ideals are (in US terms) leftist.  But thinking there is some deep leftist trend in the US is fantasy.  AOC may be moving the Overton window, but she represents a lot less people than you think she does.

I mean as far as I know conservatism and socialism started out as pretty similar ideologies, both on the "left" against the reactionary monarchist/colonialist "right" in 19th century Europe. Like the ideological distance between someone like John Stuart Mill and someone like Karl Marx isn't actually very significant compared to Emperor Franz Joseph III or whoever. Someone who knows more about the history of philosophy would be able to word this better but I believe this was the case almost all the way until the rise of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. I'm not sure to what extent conservatives consider figures like Bakunin, Nietzsche and Makhno ideological ancestors, but nowadays they'd probably fit under the conservative umbrella, and modern day progressives also aren't very likely to trace their views back to Engels or Luxemburg even though it's fairly obvious to me that's the (watered down) philosophical underpinning.

[71 dB]

If you actually understood American politics, you would recognize which of those "leftist" agenda item you listed are core paleoconservative ideas. You would understand that Kulinksi is as biased as any Fox News host. You would understand that he only tells the facts favorable to his agenda. 
But you don't. So please stop lecturing us Americans on our politics. Your ideals are (in US terms) leftist.  But thinking there is some deep leftist trend in the US is fantasy.  AOC may be moving the Overton window, but she represents a lot less people than you think she does.

Did you even watch that video? Kulinski criticized AOC for not supporting Ilhan Omar enough/the right way and he is himself the guy who wrote the political agenda behind AOC, he is the co founder of Justice Democrats. Kulinski criticized even Bernie Sanders sometimes! So please stop with the "as biased" as any Fox News host.

[71 dB]

I have to say I semi-agree with Trump with this. He just expresses it in a weird way. The training of pilots doesn't keep up with sophistication of planes and we encounter situations where the plane and the pilot work against each other because the pilot doesn't understand completely what is happening.

Sometimes older simpler solutions are better. Not perhaps in planes, but in some stuff.

[Roasted Swan]

I have to say I semi-agree with Trump with this. He just expresses it in a weird way.

Surely the "problem" is Trump expresses it like some bore down at a local bar who loves the sound of his own voice.  For sure I wouldn't want to fly on one of these planes at the moment but his response needs to be more measured and considered.  Yet again - leave this to the experts!  Boeing is a massive firm in the US and heaven help them if it turns out there are technical/safety issues but what they do not need is a president weighing in with a - currently - baseless opinion.  Next Trump will be telling us that "no-one knows more about avionics than me".

[71 dB]

Surely the "problem" is Trump expresses it like some bore down at a local bar who loves the sound of his own voice.  For sure I wouldn't want to fly on one of these planes at the moment but his response needs to be more measured and considered.  Yet again - leave this to the experts!  Boeing is a massive firm in the US and heaven help them if it turns out there are technical/safety issues but what they do not need is a president weighing in with a - currently - baseless opinion.  Next Trump will be telling us that "no-one knows more about avionics than me".

Well, that's why I only semi-agree with Trump and I rather read tweets about him not wanting to fly with Einstein than see him attack for example freedom of press or deny the climate change.

I don't think it is about technical issues. I think it's about training. It's easier to sell planes if you say to the buyer there is no need for additional training. Technically safer planes become less safe if the pilots don't know everything. Trump's tweet kind of tries to express that, only translated into MAGAnlish.

Maybe I am too kind to Trump here, but I have started to feel bad for him. He is probably suffering from early stages of dementia and he is the President of the United States. As soon as he is out of office he will be indicted for a lot of crimes. We demand him to care about immigrants so shouldn't we so a little bit empathy in return? Not much, but a little bit? I don't know...

[BasilValentine]

Maybe I am too kind to Trump here, but I have started to feel bad for him. He is probably suffering from early stages of dementia and he is the President of the United States. As soon as he is out of office he will be indicted for a lot of crimes. We demand him to care about immigrants so shouldn't we so a little bit empathy in return? Not much, but a little bit? I don't know...

No. He's a traitor, a career criminal, and the son of a career criminal. He's skated his whole life. Real justice would be dividing up the proceeds of his and his family's crimes to pay back those he has spent his life ripping off. Then a month or two in a pillory on Times Square to be spat upon by immigrants from every nation on earth and shat upon by pigeons. Then the rest of his life in a cell.