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The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: No smocking guns. The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: No smocking guns.

07-29-2017 , 08:41 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by poconoder
this personnel turnover is expected. Most new presidents get people from the last admin of their party. But Trump was not in sync with GWB admin personnel. So he got people from his campaign to serve. But campaigning and governing is different. So you watch and see which ones excel at governing and get rid of the those that don't. We've had 6 months to observe who is doing well and with more time it will get easier to pick those good at governing. the quality of the Trump admin personnel will improve much over time, just as it did for previous new presidents.


"I'm not trying to suck my own cock"
07-29-2017 , 08:51 AM
There are overlap in all categories: is Lindsay graham macho or intellectual?

He loves war.

But I see the macho stuff as basically the alt right. And the sky is falling / kill me all stuff is always hand in hand with conspiracy theory / fascism / reality disconnect.
07-29-2017 , 08:53 AM
Lol @ Trump trying to figuring out how congress works. Get smart y'all.
07-29-2017 , 09:09 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by mosdef
It's kind of inevitable that if you bucket a large group into a handful of categories that there will be imperfections. That exercise is an inherently a simplifying intellectual framework. I tend to agree with your observation that there is a significant masculine posturing element to the Trump wing of the party. Is it a defining characteristic or just a trait? Probably not much point in debating that.

It's interesting how the American right can try to legitimize itself in different ways. On the one hand, you can try to have a refined and, frankly, effeminate type like Buckley as a symbol. That's a way to make right wing ideas feel like part of the normal discourse of the high-thinking establishment. Alternatively, you can have an Eastwood type, pushing conservatism as real Americanism, before the wimps ruined America. The second approach naturally comes with a healthy dose of masculine posturing.
On the one hand yeah, but on the other, I've only watched him interview/debate Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal (that I recall)and he talked about smashing both of their faces in.
07-29-2017 , 11:17 AM
berating and belittling congress critters is a super lol strategy. They can decide to make his life a living hell if they decide enough is enough and he stays at sub 40% approval.

one of those tweets straight up calls them all fools, in front of the whole wide world
07-29-2017 , 12:30 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by OmgGlutten!
There are overlap in all categories: is Lindsay graham macho or intellectual?

He loves war.

But I see the macho stuff as basically the alt right. And the sky is falling / kill me all stuff is always hand in hand with conspiracy theory / fascism / reality disconnect.
Graham, McCain and other reflexive hawks are macho wing imo. McCain cares a lot more about starting wars than tax cuts. May need to move the neocons as a whole there.
07-29-2017 , 12:38 PM
WTF is he talking about?



https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...34415347060736
07-29-2017 , 12:43 PM
his brain broke
07-29-2017 , 12:56 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisV
It's a bit arbitrary how you slice it up and really rather than groups they are like dimensions of the right-wing personality that people can score higher or lower on. However, it's kind of crazy to me that you can say that "Macho" doesn't really exist, I'd call it one of the defining traits of the modern GOP, and certainly of Trumpism. Look at the post directly above this one, where what Trump doesn't like about Priebus is that he's "weak". This is a common right-wing insult along with cuck, snowflake, complaining about "safe spaces" etc. There's threatening to beat up protesters and "grab them by the pussy" (just locker room talk ldo). There's the gun fetishism. The worship of law enforcement and especially the military. "Drill baby drill" and coal rolling. I don't know how you explain any of this without reference to masculine posturing. I'd also say that Trump's tough guy posturing is what a lot of his fans like about him.

It's not normal for the Right to be like that in a prosperous democracy. If you look at the UK for example, none of the above is really a thing. Their Trump-esque figure, Boris Johnson, is not anything like as masculine and dominance seeking as Trump. The erstwhile leader of their anti-immigration party, Nigel Farage, is a ponce.


I don't want to derail the thread with gender theory so this is my last post about the subject.

U.K. right is more associated with the upper class and posh schools.
In fact Labour thrived in the days in which the blue collar worker was the main political subject.
Thatcher genius was challenging the models of masculinity. The introduction of the idea of having a car as something masculine was something that the old Labour Party never recovered from.

To Microbet: I completely agree with the link you posted , however I think those kind of political positions are possible in countries in which we see more poverty and more women oppression.
In the developed first world I think feminism has reaches a point where it's becoming really difficult to articulate the needs of educated middle class women with the needs of the working class.

Also upper middle class women want equal status , they want positions in power. Poorer women tend to seek security and so on, they don't care if female movie stars make less than their male counterparts.

USA history has a strong rural background, you had your house in the middle of nowhere and you had to protect your family with a gun. That's the context in which masculinity in the American south thrived.

Finally to go full feminist here I think the problem USA has is that it's lack of Marxist culture in the important universities led to radical feminism which basically means "**** men" which may be a decent framework for understanding the world but it's a complete political disaster even for women themselves because it leaves them without allies.
A great example of the failure of this feminism is well Donald Trump winning the election with rust belt votes.
But a more precise example is Sheryl Sandberg , progressive billionaire related to some hi tech **** I don't really understand. A group of working class women asked her for help in forming a union and she turned them down.
The final result is this thread in which you lot discuss how Trump is taking healthcare away from the poor and abortion rights for women.
07-29-2017 , 12:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by poconoder
this personnel turnover is expected. Most new presidents get people from the last admin of their party. But Trump was not in sync with GWB admin personnel. So he got people from his campaign to serve. But campaigning and governing is different. So you watch and see which ones excel at governing and get rid of the those that don't. We've had 6 months to observe who is doing well and with more time it will get easier to pick those good at governing. the quality of the Trump admin personnel will improve much over time, just as it did for previous new presidents.
Uh dude, you do realize that the Trump administration is effectively over at this point, right?
07-29-2017 , 01:22 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by eyebooger
WTF is he talking about?



https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...34415347060736
1) Subsidies that the insurance companies get for selling on the Obamacare exchanges.

2) Congressional staff get subsidies when they buy their insurance on the exchange.
07-29-2017 , 01:31 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyA
1) Subsidies that the insurance companies get for selling on the Obamacare exchanges.

2) Congressional staff get subsidies when they buy their insurance on the exchange.
Wrong and wrong.
07-29-2017 , 01:40 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by microbet
...

Not all conservatives may directly call for military involvement, but the Ur-Fascist (remember einbert) love of action for action sake and the fear of disorder and of others and the fear of loss of power head towards a fetish for police and military and towards their overuse.

...
I do remember einbert. I guess I must have missed something. Did he self-exile, get banned, or what?
07-29-2017 , 01:42 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sighsalot
berating and belittling congress critters is a super lol strategy. They can decide to make his life a living hell if they decide enough is enough and he stays at sub 40% approval.

one of those tweets straight up calls them all fools, in front of the whole wide world
You're kidding, right? He straight up cuckolded Cruz on national TV and what did Cruz do? Why, he made calls on his behalf a month later, of course. There is no amount of shame and humiliation a Republican won't endure if they get to keep their seat. The ONLY way Republicans turn on Trump is if their seats are in jeopardy. Either Trump's base needs to dwindle, voting laws need to be changed, or citizens united needs to be overturned. Oh, and if Dems actually start caring enough to turn out and ****ing vote!
07-29-2017 , 01:45 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ReasonableGuy
I do remember einbert. I guess I must have missed something. Did he self-exile, get banned, or what?
I think he just posts less lately.

His last post was about doing a sit-in in DC on healthcare, so maybe he's a political prisoner.
07-29-2017 , 01:49 PM
trump had him arrested because he's a threat
07-29-2017 , 01:58 PM
07-29-2017 , 02:04 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clovis8
Wrong and wrong.
An explanation of why that is wrong would be nice.

1) The insurers get cost sharing reduction payments. Pretty sure that is what Trump is threatening to stop paying to insurers.

2) Members of Congress and their staff have to buy their insurance on the exchange. However, they also get subsidies when they buy their insurance. This was not initially part of Obamacare (the subsidy) but was later administratively added.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blo...s-for-congress
07-29-2017 , 02:07 PM
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cutti...ect-obamacare/

Quote:
And the subsidies, the Trump administration can cut them off tomorrow morning. To the typical insurance company, that could be worth about $8 million a month they’d lose, because they still have to provide the benefits.

So what the insurance company does, if this gets cut off overnight, is that they will have to increase the rates not just for the seven million in the exchange, but the 20 million in the individual health insurance market. And that could easily lead to 15 percent rate increases on top of significant rate increases that are likely to come in 2018 for Obamacare.
07-29-2017 , 02:34 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyA
An explanation of why that is wrong would be nice.

1) The insurers get cost sharing reduction payments. Pretty sure that is what Trump is threatening to stop paying to insurers.

2) Members of Congress and their staff have to buy their insurance on the exchange. However, they also get subsidies when they buy their insurance. This was not initially part of Obamacare (the subsidy) but was later administratively added.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blo...s-for-congress
You are assuming trump has a deep understanding of healthcare policy. He knows literally nothing. Your average CNN viewer is far more knowlegable than him. He is the single stupidest low information politician in the world.

He is just shouting about punishing people even when they are the wrong people.

It is a temper tantrum. Nothing more.
07-29-2017 , 02:41 PM
It's not the first time he's threatened to kill the cost sharing subsidies iirc.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/19/trum...uld-spike.html
07-29-2017 , 02:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clovis8
You are assuming trump has a deep understanding of healthcare policy. He knows literally nothing. Your average CNN viewer is far more knowlegable than him. He is the single stupidest low information politician in the world.

He is just shouting about punishing people even when they are the wrong people.

It is a temper tantrum. Nothing more.
I don't doubt he knows nothing himself, but he very commonly just parrots what the last person he spoke with told him about. I'm guessing someone that has his ear told him that this is how he could put pressure on Congress to get something done.

It's very likely he won't pass anything or follow up on this, but if this is something where someone like Kushner or Mooch (assuming he stays the flavor of the month) is strongly advocating for it, Trump might do it. And the problem here is that both things are within his power to do with an executive order.

Last edited by JonnyA; 07-29-2017 at 03:17 PM.
07-29-2017 , 03:02 PM
07-29-2017 , 03:19 PM
Mooch has actually been donating to both obama and clinton campaigns.
07-29-2017 , 03:21 PM
Guys help me understand how filibuster is a problem when you have 49 votes

      
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