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| How will the DJT Presidency be regarded? |
| Greatened America |
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38% |
[ 14 ] |
| Bankrupted America |
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33% |
[ 12 ] |
| Entertained America |
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8% |
[ 3 ] |
| Enraged America |
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19% |
[ 7 ] |
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| Total Votes : 36 |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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 Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 9:19 pm Post subject: |
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I don't think Trump's legacy will hinge on immigration or trade issues. It will be buried in a mountain of corruption and scandal (hmm maybe that's what Krushchev prophetically meant when he banged his shoe and shouted "we will bury you!"...)
His AG, Jeff Sessions, formerly a hawk on Russia, has been forced to recuse himself from the Congressional investigation, and it's likely that he will be forced to resign his Cabinet post (but not before he probably ordered the FBI to help cover-up Trump and his cronies dirty dealings with Russia ...)
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/15/14620560/trump-flynn-russia-campaign
Even his Commerce Secretary has unsavory Russian connections ...
https://boingboing.net/2017/03/01/rachel-maddow-connects-the-dot.html |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Quote: |
| 1) Did America deal with its immigration problems? |
Way too vague. You probably could not get ten random Americans to agree on what might be meant by 'immigration problems.' |
That's fair. I had a conception in my head, and I thought it would be at least somewhat clear based on what I've written here before, but it's true, as written, it's vague. I like your revision; it may not fully express the idea I had in mind, but it is more concise than anything I'd write. Most of your revisions strike me as fine, I'd only take issue with two.
| Kuros wrote: |
| Quote: |
| 5) Did Americans trend away from identity-intensive politics? |
Meaningless and unquantifiable.
... |
Probably unquantifiable in the same sense that culture in general is unquantifiable, but not meaningless. In fact, it's probably one of the biggest political issues in our country. You suggest reducing this to, "Are race relations better or worse near the end of Trump's first term?" but that does not really capture what I had in mind, in part because I don't view "race relations" per se to be especially important, and in part because the issue at hand is larger than simply race, including as it does religion, culture, sexual preference, gender identity, and so forth. Let me phrase it in another way. The difference between the average conservative and the average liberal on most issues is one of degree, and often the degree isn't even that large; they may disagree, but compromise is meaningfully possible (and at times, even though they disagree, both their ideal points represent change away from the status quo in the same direction). Barring that, it is frequently one of method: the same goal, but a different preferred method of achieving it, meaning that compromise is still possible, because the end goal is shared. By contrast, the difference between two voters who are on opposite sides of an "identity issue" is infinite and unbridgeable, because participating in the conflict is a means of reinforcing the identity in question; even once one gets their way, another issue will immediately be manufactured, because the struggle is part of the point. Shifting away from viewing politics through that lens is what I would view as an improvement, at least at the federal level; the state or local level is a more appropriate venue for cultural battles when they are for some reason unavoidable, because it means the "losers" of those battles have the option to opt out by moving to another state or municipality. Yes, unquantifiable, but qualitatively observable (which is also the case for "race relations," really).
For what it's worth, I think he will fail in this regard.
| Kuros wrote: |
| Quote: |
| 6) Were relations with Russia improved? |
Russia earns less annual GDP than South Korea. Does this make the top ten? I mean, we can buy into Trump's narrative, but I don't see why we should. China earns the second largest annual GDP, and Trump's China policy is hare-brained and unconsidered. |
My concern is not relations with Russia for their own sake, but rather, to avoid war, proxy or otherwise. You like to talk about the "Deep State," yes? This is the litmus test for triumph over it; when Russia stops being the "bad guy," it will be clear that these people have, at the very least, lost influence. Actual ties to the countries in question are probably not that important, at least if America is willing to take a less central role in the world. Improved relations with Iran would likely be a similar marker in this regard, but if, for example, we reduced trade with China, while that would likely damage relations with China, I would not consider it a strike against this criterion. |
Okay. We can use these indicators going forward to evaluate Trump. I will clean it up later when I have some more time.
Trump is very effective at framing. I do not want to follow his framing when it comes to evaluating him. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 5:30 am Post subject: |
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| All things considered, I think he should eventually be evaluated by a prison psychiatrist ... |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 2:43 am Post subject: |
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This one is for RTeacher: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/taibbi-russia-story-is-a-minefield-for-democrats-and-the-media-w471074
| Matt Taibbi wrote: |
This is the former Director of National Intelligence telling all of us that as of 12:01 a.m. on January 20th, when he left government, the intelligence agencies had no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and the government of Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Virtually all of the explosive breaking news stories on the Trump-Russia front dating back months contain some version of this same disclaimer.
There is a lot of smoke in the Russia story. The most damning item is General Michael Flynn having improper discussions with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak prior to taking office. There is the much-discussed Republican platform change with regard to American assistance to Ukranian rebels, and the unreported contacts between officials like Jeff Sessions (and even Trump himself now) with Kislyak.
Moreover, the case that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee now appears fairly solid. Even Donald Trump thinks so. This of course makes it harder to dismiss stories like the one in which former Trump adviser Roger Stone appeared to know that Wikileaks was about to release the hacked emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta.
But the manner in which these stories are being reported is becoming a story in its own right. Russia has become an obsession, cultural shorthand for a vast range of suspicions about Donald Trump.
The notion that the president is either an agent or a useful idiot of the Russian state is so freely accepted in some quarters that Beck Bennett's shirtless representation of Putin palling with Alec Baldwin's Trump is already a no-questions-asked yuks routine for the urban smart set.
And yet, this is an extraordinarily complex tale that derives much of its power from suppositions and assumptions. |
You would have to imagine that the CIA or NSA could have pinned this on Trump fairly quickly. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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I saw the interview with Clapper. He did say that evidence "may have become available ..." since he left the government. New stuff is uncovered every day, and I think that this (presumably more-or-less accurate) graphic I posted showing all those meetings and ostensible connections constitutes a degree of circumstantial evidence sufficient to warrant further investigation.
https://thetrumpwatchdog.com/2017/02/14/the-path-to-putin/
(Also, Matt Taibbi - who coincidentally studied in Russia for a year - titled his book on Trump Insane Clown President ...) |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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J.Q.A.
Joined: 09 Feb 2017
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 4:55 am Post subject: |
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I don't know which is more amusing. The fact that you posted this tripe, you actually watch that "journalist", or...the possibility you believe her and her backing.
OK then..... |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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I doubt that anyone participating on this forum can match Rachael Maddow's academic qualifications, which include a B.A. in public policy from Stanford University, a Rhodes Scholarship, and a Doctor of Philosophy in politics from Oxford University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Maddow
By contrast, Fox News host and diehard Trump-supporter, Sean Hannity, dropped out of New York University and Aldelphi University - though he did get an honorary degree from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Hannity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell
I'm confident that Maddow has a much better grasp of the principles of journalism both in theory and practice ... |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/world/europe/geert-wilders-netherlands-far-right-vote.html
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“The Netherlands, after Brexit, after the American elections, said ‘Whoa’ to the wrong kind of populism,” Mr. Rutte told a wildly enthusiastic crowd, excited that his party, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, had come in first among the parties and lost fewer seats than it had feared.
“Today was a celebration of democracy, we saw rows of people queuing to cast their vote, all over the Netherlands — how long has it been since we’ve seen that?” Mr. Rutte said.
Alexander Pechtold, the leader of Democrats 66, which appeared to have won the most votes of any left-leaning party, struck a similar note underscoring the vote as a victory against a populist extremist.
“During this election campaign, the whole world was watching us,” Mr. Pechtold said. “They were looking at Europe to see if this continent would follow the call of the populists, but it has now become clear that call stopped here in the Netherlands.”
In the Netherlands, the results betrayed a lingering distrust of turning over the reins of power to the far right, even as its message dominated the campaign and was likely to influence policies in the new government. |
Looks like Trump himself will be the death of global Trumpism.
Let's see what happens in France. It should be an easy pick-up for Le Pen, no? Isn't her squishy centrist opponent embroiled in scandal? |
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J.Q.A.
Joined: 09 Feb 2017
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 4:00 am Post subject: |
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| Rteacher wrote: |
I doubt that anyone participating on this forum can match Rachael Maddow's academic qualifications, which include a B.A. in public policy from Stanford University, a Rhodes Scholarship, and a Doctor of Philosophy in politics from Oxford University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Maddow
By contrast, Fox News host and diehard Trump-supporter, Sean Hannity, dropped out of New York University and Aldelphi University - though he did get an honorary degree from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Hannity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell
I'm confident that Maddow has a much better grasp of the principles of journalism both in theory and practice ... |
OK, then. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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Glenn Greenwald: Key Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not to Expect Evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion
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| FROM MSNBC POLITICS shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party’s base since Trump’s victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues. This fixation has persisted even though it has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election — a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented. |
Greenwald is right: the only real "proof" presented thus far was a redacted intelligence report in which no actual evidence was provided, its content being a bizarre combination of (not illegitimate) reasons why Russians might want to have attempted to interfere combined with a polemic directed at RT. And that was the supposed proof Russia interfered at all, to say nothing of the matter of whether the Trump campaign was somehow involved.
| Quote: |
The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies — just as right-wing media polemicists did after both Bill Clinton and Obama were elected — that there are now millions of partisan soldiers absolutely convinced of a Trump/Russia conspiracy for which, at least as of now, there is no evidence. And they are all waiting for the day, which they regard as inevitable and imminent, when this theory will be proven and Trump will be removed.
Key Democratic officials are clearly worried about the expectations that have been purposely stoked and are now trying to tamp them down. Many of them have tried to signal that the beliefs the base has been led to adopt have no basis in reason or evidence.
The latest official to throw cold water on the MSNBC-led circus is President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morell. What makes him particularly notable in this context is that Morell was one of Clinton’s most vocal CIA surrogates. In August, he not only endorsed Clinton in the pages of the New York Times but also became the first high official to explicitly accuse Trump of disloyalty, claiming, “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”
But on Wednesday night, Morell appeared at an intelligence community forum to “cast doubt” on “allegations that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.” “On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all,” he said, adding, “There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark. And there’s a lot of people looking for it.”
...
Morell’s comments echo the categorical remarks by Obama’s top national security official, James Clapper, who told Meet the Press last week that during the time he was Obama’s DNI, he saw no evidence to support claims of a Trump/Russia conspiracy. “We had no evidence of such collusion,” Clapper stated unequivocally. Unlike Morell, who left his official CIA position in 2013 but remains very integrated into the intelligence community, Clapper was Obama’s DNI until just seven weeks ago, leaving on January 20.
Perhaps most revealing of all are the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee — charged with investigating these matters — who recently told BuzzFeed how petrified they are of what the Democratic base will do if they do not find evidence of collusion, as they now suspect will likely be the case. “There’s a tangible frustration over what one official called ‘wildly inflated’ expectations surrounding the panel’s fledgling investigation,” BuzzFeed’s Ali Watkins wrote.
Moreover, “several committee sources grudgingly say, it feels as though the investigation will be seen as a sham if the Senate doesn’t find a silver bullet connecting Trump and Russian intelligence operatives.” One member told Watkins: “I don’t think the conclusions are going to meet people’s expectations.”
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Media figures have similarly begun trying to tamp down expectations. Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, which published the Steele dossier, published an article yesterday warning that the Democratic base’s expectation of a smoking gun “is so strong that Twitter and cable news are full of the theories of what my colleague Charlie Warzel calls the Blue Detectives — the left’s new version of Glenn Beck, digital blackboards full of lines and arrows.”
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For so long, Democrats demonized and smeared anyone trying to inject basic reason, rationality, and skepticism into this Trump/Russia discourse by labeling them all Kremlin agents and Putin lovers. Just this week, the Center for American Progress released a report using the language of treason to announce the existence of a “Fifth Column” in the U.S. that serves Russia (similar to Andrew Sullivan’s notorious 2001 decree that anyone opposing the war on terror composed an anti-American “Fifth Column”), while John McCain listened to Rand Paul express doubts about the wisdom of NATO further expanding to include Montenegro and then promptly announced: “Paul is working for Vladimir Putin.”
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But given the way these Russia conspiracies have drowned out other critical issues being virtually ignored under the Trump presidency, it’s vital that everything be done now to make clear what is based in evidence and what is based in partisan delusions. And most of what the Democratic base has been fed for the last six months by their unhinged stable of media, online, and party leaders has decisively fallen into the latter category, as even their own officials are now desperately trying to warn. |
Superficially, it looks like Mr. Trump has gotten the upper hand in the matter: by accusing the previous President of wire-tapping him, he's created an environment in which any further low-evidence leaks fuel the narrative behind his evidence-free accusations just as effectively as they fuel the narrative behind the evidence-free accusations against him. Lots of people are angry about that little stratagem, but most of that anger feeds into its effectiveness, showing as it does the hypocrisy involved. That said, I can't help but wonder if this wasn't all a feint in the first place:
-Step 1: Accuse the Russians of interference.
-Step 2: Accuse the Trump campaign of collusion.
-Step 3: Pull back and admit there's no proof of such collusion.
-Step 4: Walk away, leaving the public convinced that, despite a lack of revealed evidence, there was meaningful Russian interference, purely on the force of how casually the matter is discussed and how little push-back it receives.
If "Step 4" were the only goal all along, this approach would seem to be effective. It might cost some journalists their reputations (or maybe not even that, given RTeacher for one doesn't seem to care if Ms. Maddow pushes a false narrative on her news program, and he's probably representative of her viewer base), and Mr. Trump might get to walk away thinking he "won," but the CIA would end up getting what it wanted anyway. That seems somehow more plausible to me than the alternative, in which the CIA is bizarrely incompetent in its attempt to litigate against Mr. Trump in the court of public opinion. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2017 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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Russia, blah.
I really wonder if any serious legislation is going to get passed. If this AHCA doesn't happen and fizzles, I really don't see how Congress will get anything done. Not sure why the Republicans decided on this and not just your straight forward tax cut stuff. Don't understand the strategy. I'm not complaining though! |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2017 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
Russia, blah.
I really wonder if any serious legislation is going to get passed. If this AHCA doesn't happen and fizzles, I really don't see how Congress will get anything done. Not sure why the Republicans decided on this and not just your straight forward tax cut stuff. Don't understand the strategy. I'm not complaining though! |
Tax cut stuff? Sure, it would have been better than H.R. 1275 World's Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017. Tax cuts sound like a Ryan-McConnell Republican initiative, though. It is all very establishment, you know?
Trump's mandate was very different. It was about jobs.
Jobs.
| Quote: |
Politicians "are fairly clueless as to what an average person's life is like," says Jim, now 55. One of their sons is in the Air Force. He just got word he'll be in the Middle East by April.
But there's one thing Jim really applauds Trump on so far: Getting the U.S. out of the TPP trade deal in Asia. |
Scrapping TPP has been Trump's greatest accomplishment; Obama wasted so much precious time on it. The causal relationship of these trade deals to jobs may be overstated, but at least there is some meaningful correlation there. As for jobs directly . . .
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The jobs Trump supporters envision when he makes statements like that are the $30-an-hour auto worker jobs. CNNMoney sat down with several Ford workers in Detroit. They feel they've lived the American Dream, but even they are worried about the economy.
"I want my kids to have a future. I want my kids to have jobs," says Sal Moceri, a 61-year-old Ford factory worker and UAW member. All of his union brothers in the room nod in agreement.
There were 103,000 American UAW workers employed by Ford in 1994, the year NAFTA took effect, according to a UAW spokesman. Now there are just 56,000.
"Trump offered to bring these auto jobs back," says Frank Pitcher, 49, who hosted the interview in a large middle class home with a big-screen TV. "For me, it meant that many other Americans were going to get that same opportunity."
Moceri and Pitcher both voted twice for Obama. But in 2016, they went for Trump. |
Trump had better reverse course on all this hard power budget and Greatest Healthcare Plan nonsense. Its jobs. Jobs are what really should keep him up at night.
Does anyone disagree? |
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