The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: Harm to Ongoing Matter - Page 503 - Politics and Economics

**goofyballer** · 03-27-2019, 11:43 PM

George Conway takes his trolling to the Washington Post with an opinion piece: Trump is guilty — of being unfit for office

Quote:

As all presidents must, Trump swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to faithfully execute his office and the laws in accordance with the Constitution. That oath requires putting the national interests above his personal interests.

Yet virtually from the moment he took office, in his response to the Russia investigation, Trump has done precisely the opposite: Relentlessly attacked an attorney general, Mueller, the Justice Department — including suggesting that his own deputy attorney general should go to jail. Lied, to the point that his own lawyers wouldn’t dare let him speak to Mueller, lest he commit a crime. Been more concerned about touting his supposedly historic election victory than confronting an attack on our democracy by a hostile foreign power.

If the charge were unfitness for office, the verdict would already be in: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

**goofyballer** · 03-27-2019, 11:46 PM

Trump complains to senators that Puerto Rico is getting too much hurricane relief funding

Quote:

In the past, Trump has asked advisers how to reduce money for Puerto Rico and signaled that he won’t support any more aid beyond food stamp funds. At the lunch Tuesday, Trump rattled off the amount of aid that had been designated for other disaster-hit states and compared it with the amount allocated for Puerto Rico following the 2017 hurricane, which he said was too high, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting.

...and yet, the figure Trump cited appeared to have been pulled out of thin air (shocker):

Quote:

Trump noted to GOP senators that Texas — also battered by a spate of hurricanes — was awarded $29 billion in aid, while South Carolina got $1.5 billion to recover from storms. Trump then questioned why Puerto Rico was getting $91 billion, according to two people familiar with his comments, indicating that this was too much compared with compensation for states on the mainland.

Trump remarked that one could buy Puerto Rico four times over for $91 billion, according to people familiar with his comments.

But it’s unclear where Trump got the figure for Puerto Rico aid. It is similar to estimates of the amount of damage as opposed to what Congress has approved for relief. One congressional official said it’s difficult to quantify how much aid the island received because of how the money is disbursed.

Trolly McTrollson · 03-27-2019, 11:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

Trump complains to senators that Puerto Rico is getting too much hurricane relief funding

...and yet, the figure Trump cited appeared to have been pulled out of thin air (shocker):

I know Dvaut likes to refer back to The Paranoid Style in American Politics as one of the seminal, must-read articles on American politics, but I want to humbly submit The Cruelty Is the Point as something every single person living in the Trump Era of abject cruelty should read over and over again. Reminder that these people just cancelled the Special Olympics because it cost $20 million or something:

Quote:

Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

The laughter undergirds the daily spectacle of insincerity, as the president and his aides pledge fealty to bedrock democratic principles they have no intention of respecting. The president who demanded the execution of five black and Latino teenagers for a crime they didn’t commit decrying “false accusations,” when his Supreme Court nominee stands accused; his supporters who fancy themselves champions of free speech meet references to Hillary Clinton or a woman whose only crime was coming forward to offer her own story of abuse with screams of “Lock her up!” The political movement that elected a president who wanted to ban immigration by adherents of an entire religion, who encourages police to brutalize suspects, and who has destroyed thousands of immigrant families for violations of the law less serious than those of which he and his coterie stand accused, now laments the state of due process.

This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.

Trolly McTrollson · 03-28-2019, 12:04 AM

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There’s the undated photo from Duluth, Minnesota, in which grinning white men stand next to the mutilated, half-naked bodies of two men lashed to a post in the street—one of the white men is straining to get into the picture, his smile cutting from ear to ear.

Their names have mostly been lost to time. But these grinning men were someone’s brother, son, husband, father. They were human beings, people who took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death—and were so proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork, jostling to ensure they caught the eye of the lens, so that the world would know they’d been there

There's a throughline here between the dudes with ****-eating grins taking selfies next to murdered black men and the smirking online dudes with minstrel avatars trolling the libs for epic lolz.

prana · 03-28-2019, 12:16 AM

I have to imagine the Vegas forum gets a lot of random traffic from google searches. That thread will be a great look for the site. Already claims that some races choose to commit crimes more than others.

markksman · 03-28-2019, 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Truant

I don’t even know who that is in the video, but I am getting great pleasure never clicking play to find out what his stupid ****ing take is. Mildly healing pleasure.

Yeah I have never clicked on one of his videos. I assume people do. No aspersions.

**David Sklansky** · 03-28-2019, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by microbet

If every single person from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (the places that are really the issue now) came here, that'd be good for us, not bad.
.

Can you prove that? Or if not, can you give arguments that 75% of Ivy League graduates would agree were almost 100% persuasive?

microbet · 03-28-2019, 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Sklansky

Can you prove that? Or if not, can you give arguments that 75% of Ivy League graduates would agree were almost 100% persuasive?

"good for us" is implicitly value based. If you dislike seeing people with darker skin, hearing people speak Spanish, seeing signs in Spanish, having people enjoy different customs then you're not going to think that it's "good for us" and I expect somewhere around 25% of Ivy League graduates would fail to agree just based on such factors.

If your metric is "increase GDP per capita" then obviously not. Economics is so fuzzy that you probably couldn't get 75% of Ivy League graduates to agree after the fact whether some factor increased GDP or not, let alone agree on a prediction of the future.

It would be nearly impossible to convince anywhere near 75% of Ivy League grads that Central Americans wouldn't largely be takers who would leach off of them.

If you asked Ivy League grads in 1880 whether immigrants would be good for the country you couldn't have convinced 75% that they would be either.

**David Sklansky** · 03-28-2019, 02:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by microbet

"good for us" is implicitly value based. If you dislike seeing people with darker skin, hearing people speak Spanish, seeing signs in Spanish, having people enjoy different customs then you're not going to think that it's "good for us" and I expect somewhere around 25% of Ivy League graduates would fail to agree just based on such factors.

If your metric is "increase GDP per capita" then obviously not. Economics is so fuzzy that you probably couldn't get 75% of Ivy League graduates to agree after the fact whether some factor increased GDP or not, let alone agree on a prediction of the future.

It would be nearly impossible to convince anywhere near 75% of Ivy League grads that Central Americans wouldn't largely be takers who would leach off of them.

If you asked Ivy League grads in 1880 whether immigrants would be good for the country you couldn't have convinced 75% that they would be either.

You are trying to wiggle out of what I am actually asking. Change my question to 75% of very smart totally non racist people who are willing to agree that there are more benefits than just GDP. The only thing you have to overcome is their ability to recognize fallacies. Can you get them to agree you are almost certainly right?

(Note: I agree that it is totally unfair that Americans think that they have a right to live in a much richer country when it is almost total luck that they are here. Some have the small argument that their great grandparents went to war so they would have that luck but its very weak. My only problem with your assertion is that you said it as if it was a fact even though even a lot of liberals would disagree. To do that you must have arguments that get past the best argument evaluaters. At least you do here. If you want to couch a gut feeling as an obvious fact you need to go to Mike Caro's website.)

plexiq · 03-28-2019, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SenorKeeed

Axioms like "open borders"?

But non-snarkily, the most compelling argument for Medicare for all is that most (all?) other wealthy countries have implemented a similar system, have better health outcomes and spend less on healthcare. That's a compelling argument! OK. But then apply that same logic to immigration. Do any comparable countries have open borders? Except within the EU, they don't -- and the EU only has open borders among member nations, all of which have similar welfare states and generally relatively similar per capita GDP levels.

Yeah, not really. The relative spread between top and bottom GDP(PPP) per capita within the EU is similar to the USA-Mexico spread.

USA: 59.5k
Mexico: 19.9k

--
[Luxembourg: 106.3k]
Netherlands: 53.6k
Sweden: 51.5k
Germany: 50.4k
...
Romania: 24.5k
Bulgaria: 21.7k

(https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2004rank.html)

RainierWolfcastle · 03-28-2019, 03:56 AM

To add to this comparison:

Massachusetts: 65.5K
Mississippi: 31.9K

That's not much smaller than the difference between the US and Mexico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...GDP_per_capita

microbet · 03-28-2019, 04:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Sklansky

You are trying to wiggle out of what I am actually asking. Change my question to 75% of very smart totally non racist people who are willing to agree that there are more benefits than just GDP. The only thing you have to overcome is their ability to recognize fallacies. Can you get them to agree you are almost certainly right?

(Note: I agree that it is totally unfair that Americans think that they have a right to live in a much richer country when it is almost total luck that they are here. Some have the small argument that their great grandparents went to war so they would have that luck but its very weak. My only problem with your assertion is that you said it as if it was a fact even though even a lot of liberals would disagree. To do that you must have arguments that get past the best argument evaluaters. At least you do here. If you want to couch a gut feeling as an obvious fact you need to go to Mike Caro's website.)

Assuming "non-racist" includes xenophobia and other forms of bigotry, allow the immigration to happen over several years and evaluate the impact at some point like 20 years in the future (and from then on) and the audience is committed to listening then yes.

realDonaldTrump · 03-28-2019, 06:05 AM

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realDonaldTrump · 03-28-2019, 06:13 AM

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realDonaldTrump · 03-28-2019, 06:24 AM

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realDonaldTrump · 03-28-2019, 06:35 AM

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realDonaldTrump · 03-28-2019, 06:43 AM

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smacc25 · 03-28-2019, 06:53 AM

YEAH your right donnie, those cnn dudes last night sure did put on a show, not addressing all those lies about you being innocent last night.. We hear you.

realDonaldTrump · 03-28-2019, 07:04 AM

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El Rata · 03-28-2019, 07:07 AM

every morning we're reminded that you americans elected one of the dumbest people on earth as president

smacc25 · 03-28-2019, 07:08 AM

Is Mika & Joe giving you that naughty look again Donnie?

WITCH HUNT!

MadTiger · 03-28-2019, 07:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by El Rata

every morning we're reminded that you americans elected one of the dumbest people on earth as president

In a collective sense, yes--touché. But I tried to stop this. I've known he was a lying clown for thirty years. People didn't listen to me, though.

If he is still standing in 2020 and wants to be re-elected, I guess I will have to speak a little more vehemently.

(Confession: the first time I came into this thread and read realDonaldTrump tweets, I thought they were a parody/joke of some sort. It is sad that they are REAL!)

True North · 03-28-2019, 07:22 AM

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Originally Posted by realDonaldTrump

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Wait, the Mueller report was released? That feels like big news.

Feelsbadman · 03-28-2019, 07:57 AM

^Yea, 2 days ago Mueller gave the report to AG Barr who released a summary the next day. No collusion, no russian involvement in the 2016 elections, no more indictements! It was only a hoax created by WP NYT CNN MSNBC because they just couldn't admit they have lost the elections. MAGA KAGA Trump 2020 ez win!
The dems were sad instead of being happy that there was no collusion and i don't understand why? Now let's hope AG Barr creates a new special counsel to investigate into the FISA Warrants and the counterintelligence investigation . The head of this new special counsel should be Trey Gowdy imo.

True North · 03-28-2019, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feelsbadman

^Yea, 2 days ago Mueller gave the report to AG Barr who released a summary the next day. No collusion, no russian involvement in the 2016 elections, no more indictements! It was only a hoax created by WP NYT CNN MSNBC because they just couldn't admit they have lost the elections. MAGA KAGA Trump 2020 ez win!
The dems were sad instead of being happy that there was no collusion and i don't understand why? Now let's hope AG Barr creates a new special counsel to investigate into the FISA Warrants and the counterintelligence investigation . The head of this new special counsel should be Trey Gowdy imo.

The Trumpbot has achieved sentience. We’re doomed.