His previous life was full of petty feuds and running a day to day non-predictable business. I think the Presidency is less a change for him than to most new presidents.

When people are overwhelmed they tend to keep their head down and quietly boost their competence, but Trump didn't follow that path.

I think he is not stressed out beyond the level he has been going at for decades which is within his stress tolerance level.

Watching a bit of that awful rally, or whatever they call it, he was loving it. You can tell he just loves the fact that he can literally say anything and his dumbo supporters lap it up.

The problem with Russiagate is that it gives establishment Dems something to focus on other than fixing the structural problems in their party. Remember when we were talking about the Ellison/Perez issue? Or healthcare? The ACA repeal vote is Thursday and we're focused on proving that Trump lied about something.

Dems didn't lose because Russia flooded the internet with pepe memes, they lost because there are people who really like the ACA but want to repeal Obamacare.

Has Putin coopted our very own DVaut?



Complete with einbert's dreaded 'whataboutism' and everything. Careful tho, any more woke-ness and I think it might get pretty stressful reading the ol' Hilldog shillin.

Not sure how you can say that. One of the reasons that people believe false/dumb stuff is that they see it all over their Facebook/Twitter feeds etc. It wasn't a landslide so these things can matter and Russia played their part. It was one of many factors for sure, but we can't be sure how things would have played out with their interference.

this is a good point. It is like Hillary who was so focused on talking about Trump in the last weeks that she never presented the positive case for herself.

But not being Trump is probably the best reason ever to vote for someone!

This laptop travel ban is ****ing outrageous. Trump making it clear he actually is intent on fulfilling his "no Muslims" promise. The travel ban was just the very first step. This is step 2, and probably of more consequence.

It seems pretty stupid and not beneficial in any way, but how the **** is making people check their laptops rather than carry on worse than banning people entirely???

Sure, the bolded is one of the structural problems we need to be dealing with: this country is full of angry gullible marks who will believe whatever nonsense they hear on Facebook. If Russia doesn't take advantage of that, it will be China or Alex Jones or whoever. In a healthy, non-dysfunctional country this internet trolling would be a laughable page 2 story.

Not really. Like, Wendy's doesn't sell burgers by telling everyone how terrible Burger King is. Dems managed to convince everyone that Trump was godawful --that message got through very well! But they failed to give anyone a positive reason to turn out for Hillary. So we wound up with a disillusioned electorate that largely stayed home or voted Trump for lolz.

It's no worse, but it is more likely that he can get away with it. It is also indicative of the fact that even if we win this travel ban fight, there will be a constant whack-a-mole of new impediments on Muslims.

Ah yes, looking forward to some more tales about how awful it is to petition some dude's employer over political disagreement.

Not sure what you mean by that. Yes you should want to improve education etc as much as possible, but whatever you want to do about that doesn't need to stall just because you also want to keep Russia out of your affairs. If the US wanted to massively reduce the Russian impact in the next election then they could do this. How are you going to improve education/reduce gullibility or whatever in a significant way before then? I mean, try your best for sure, but note that many Republicans had expensive education yet still believe in Adam and Eve.

Have you seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenfour ?

He did seem to deeply care about Snowden far beyond being an asset/source.

Well, I don't live in the US to be fair so didn't see as much of the coverage as you (though I did see a fair bit). Based on what I saw I would say that Trump's campaign was the most negative that I have ever seen (Evil Hillary....emails....drain the swamp...more about Hillary....). Yes he tried to sell a dream, but really, if you are talking about people who would vote for him then usual rules don't apply. What was Hillary going to sell if all they talk about was her emails / Bangazi etc?

If you are talking about people who hated Trump but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary then fair enough perhaps. Though, you would think that as much as they didn't like Hillary they would be more inclined to vote against Trump if they saw the prospect of him being the POTUS as horrendous.

Yep, any minute now the anti-sjws will be in here telling us how the president is an existential threat to our entire being. I'll just start holding my breath now. Let me know if I pass out

Democrats continue to have no answer for the voters saying "And?". Heck, most of their negative descriptions were seen as positives by voters.

Obamacare, wages, private sector job growth, reigning in Wall St. Mostly Obamacare, tho. Obama run twice on healthcare reform and he crushed it twice. Townhalls are packed full of angry voters who could lose coverage of ACA gets repealed. Democratic policies are enormously popular, the party just refuses to be a forceful advocate for them.

Can't piss off dumb racist white people who will never vote for you!

That doesn't sound like it's going to appeal to many Trumpkins, but she did that anyway to some extent. Sure you can rate the campaign poor but consider where most Trumpkins get their info from. If people wanted to understand healthcare then they could have looked into it, but they by enlarge didn't because they believed in a man who they thought was going to look after them / drain the swamp etc.

LOL at Sen. Grassley, chair of the judiciary committee. You would think he's been there long enough to understand that Supreme Court nominees should not be asked questions about specific cases. Props to Gorsuch for holding the line of such questions.

I have a feeling they want Muslims to check in laptops so they can get their hands on them to grab data and/or install spyware.

ICE playing the retaliation game

https://www.texasobserver.org/federa...fs-new-policy/

ICE trying hard for the Gestapo label.