Cont: The Trump Presidency Part III

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quadraginta said:
I wonder how much of the information his company offers is supplied by the "products" of the National Weather Service he is complaining about?
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'Want to know if your in danger from Hurricane X? Sign up to our alerts for a mere $10 a month and live!"
 
Tony Stark said:
What are the chances that Manafort is willing to go to prison for Trump? I say very low.
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Why would he be worried? Trump could just pardon him... as long as he remembers, and as long as he isn't bearing a grudge against him, and as long as he isn't charged under state not federal law?
 
Darat said:
I know most people say trickle down economics doesn't work but I disagree. The problem is that most people don't think of the meaning of the word "trickle". Say a rich person starts to make $100 dollars more because of tax cuts, and from that $100 a single dollar $1 "trickles" down to the rest of the economy, you can say with a straight face "See trickle down economics works".....
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A friend of mine always makes the point that it's obvious "Trickle Down" works.
Every home can now afford such luxuries as air conditioning, TV, and a refrigerator.
 
Apathia said:
A friend of mine always makes the point that it's obvious "Trickle Down" works.
Every home can now afford such luxuries as air conditioning, TV, and a refrigerator.
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Your friend can't tell the difference between the impact of domestic tax policies and post-WW2 U.S. hegemonic dominance?

Sent from my SM-J327P using Tapatalk
 
Apathia said:
A friend of mine always makes the point that it's obvious "Trickle Down" works.
Every home can now afford such luxuries as air conditioning, TV, and a refrigerator.
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let me know when "trickle down" achieves a huge mansion, a yacht and private island for every home.
 
It is telling that the President feels he has to lie about the fact that his tax cuts will mainly benefit the rich.
 
About the AccuWeather thing.

I used to work for Environment Canada as a weather tech and briefer, so this hits a bit close to home. Governments the world over set up weather observation networks and forecasting services, pooling data internationally. For decades theirs was the only game in town. Then along come the private firms, initially at least utilizing purely public data paid for by the taxpayers.

I don't know how many private outfits have their own weather station networks (although this is trivial enough nowadays for automated surface observation), radiosonde (balloon) stations and weather satellites. But it's safe enough to say that the bulk of the fundamental data is taxpayer funded.

For these Johnny-come-lately firms to boldly assert some right to claim unfair competition when their product *relies* on said competitor's data riles me mightily.

And once again, Trump installs as agency head an individual who demonstrably has either a conflict of interest or a desire to hamstring the entity ostensibly under his care.
Edited by Agatha: 
removed breach of rule 10
 
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Lurch said:
I don't know how many private outfits have their own weather station networks (although this is trivial enough nowadays for automated surface observation), radiosonde (balloon) stations and weather satellites. But it's safe enough to say that the bulk of the fundamental data is taxpayer funded.
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I also wonder if AccuWeather has any supercomputers for running their weather and forecasting models. Those things are expensive to build, program, run, and maintain.
 
Blue Mountain said:
I also wonder if AccuWeather has any supercomputers for running their weather and forecasting models. Those things are expensive to build, program, run, and maintain.
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Nope, the supercomputer models are operated by the U.S. and other governments and institutions, including an EU consortium that has a more accurate model than the one currently produced by NOAA. There are models simple enough to run on a workstation, but they aren't very reliable.
 
Tony Stark said:
It is telling that the President feels he has to lie about the fact that his tax cuts will mainly benefit the rich.
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Worse... that he stridently claims it will be of no benefit, or might even hurt him personally. He's being magnanimous... it's all for "the little guy".

Go ahead, pull the other one.. it's got bells on. :rolleyes:
 
Apathia said:
Do you have a smartphone? Praise St. Reagan!
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VERY bad example.
All communication systems rely from the get-go on mass adoption. As Kevin Kelly said: the first fax machine was useless. It only became functional once the second one was bought.
The PC was always aimed at the wider market, not just the very rich or huge companies.

There are very few cases were early adopters paid for products that later became mainstream.
High end photography might be an example, as would be some car parts adopted from proffesional racing (turbo charger).
 
BobTheCoward said:
How about we don't cut taxes to "stimulate the economy" but do it because taxes are theft?
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Oh, so true! Time to dismantle the US military. No more State Dept., so no one to ape Big Oil's next "harmless" leaded gasoline scam, either....

Let's speed up this latest libertarian revolution and finally get the freedom all strive for. Private militia, bunkered wealth, and the inevitable return to feudal monarchy we all so dearly wish for.... Wait, didn't those boys tax all their subjects, too? Let me get this right: taxes by the people to support general public welfare (not "charity," rather goods and services) are an evil, while taxes by wealthy landowners on the general public to finance greater privilege are fine and dandy. Yeah, yeah, let's have us a dandy libertarian nightmare, like the one Greenspan lived when he realized all the Objectivist pap he'd sucked up was crap, and those fine self-regulating markets were melting down, needing, OMG, public money. It seems "enlightened free individuals acting in pure self-interest free of all constraint" tend to be complete and utter ********.
 
He's addiction to bizarre pointless lying is surreal.

Years ago, while reporting a book about a real-estate developer and reality-TV star named Donald Trump, Tim O’Brien accompanied his subject on a private jet ride to Los Angeles. The plane, as you can imagine, was overly ornate; hanging on one wall, for instance, was a painting of two young girls—one in an orange hat, the other wearing a floral bonnet—in the impressionistic style of Renoir.

Curious, O’Brien asked Trump about the painting: was it an original Renoir? Trump replied in the affirmative. It was, he said. “No, it’s not Donald,” O’Brien responded. But, once again, Trump protested that it was.

“Donald, it’s not,” O’Brien said adamantly. “I grew up in Chicago, that Renoir is called Two Sisters on the Terrace, and it’s hanging on a wall at the Art Institute of Chicago.” He concluded emphatically: “That’s not an original.”

Trump, of course, did not agree, but O’Brien dropped the conversation topic and moved on with his interview. He thought that he had heard the last of the Renoir conversation. But the next day, when they boarded the plane to head back to New York City, Trump again pointed to the painting, and as if the conversation had never happened, he pointed to the fake and proclaimed, “You know, that’s an original Renoir.” O’Brien chose not to engage, and dropped the conversation.
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a_unique_person said:
Please explain.
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I think it may have been tongue-in-cheek......

Anything good we have is as a result of trickle-down economics. Apathia mentioned a friend who says the fact that every home has a refrigerator and air-conditioner is evidence that trickle-down works so presumably that same friend would use the ubiquity of cell phones as proof of the same. (Saint Ronnie) Reagan was the promoter of trickle-down and is the reason why it is GOP dogma to this day.
 
Stacko said:
He's addiction to bizarre pointless lying is surreal.
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That anecdote is a perfect example of why President Trump is the man he is today. A lie repeated until a reasonable person simply could not be bothered (or felt it was rude) to contradict means that:

  • Trump continues in his belief that it is genuine - depsite the evidence to the contrary
  • Trump believes that his smarts and eloquence persuaded someone else that it is genuine
  • Trump gets confirmation that his approach of lying until enough people agree or lose the will to contradict is valid
  • Trump remains ignorant

Which is fine when applied to a comparatively trivial example as this, less so when the future of the world is in the balance :(
 
The Don said:
That anecdote is a perfect example of why President Trump is the man he is today. A lie repeated until a reasonable person simply could not be bothered (or felt it was rude) to contradict means that:

  • Trump continues in his belief that it is genuine - depsite the evidence to the contrary
  • Trump believes that his smarts and eloquence persuaded someone else that it is genuine
  • Trump gets confirmation that his approach of lying until enough people agree or lose the will to contradict is valid
  • Trump remains ignorant

Which is fine when applied to a comparatively trivial example as this, less so when the future of the world is in the balance :(
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It's hard to tell which lies are lies that Trump deliberately tells us -- his con man lies -- and which are lies he tells himself to protect his bloated but fragile ego. And therein lies one of the more serious questions: Did the story become true in Trump's mind because it needed to be true?
 
WilliamSeger said:
It's hard to tell which lies are lies that Trump deliberately tells us -- his con man lies -- and which are lies he tells himself to protect his bloated but fragile ego. And therein lies one of the more serious questions: Did the story become true in Trump's mind because it needed to be true?
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For years, I saw people theorize that Trump would never actually run for President, because releasing his financial records would reveal that he's nowhere near as rich as he pretends to be, which would be a devastating blow to his ego and public image. Too bad he got around it by simply not releasing them...
 
Arcade22 said:
As always it's important to note that the problem isn't that Trump is a crazy lunatic. The problem is the fact that there are enough crazy lunatics in America willing to elect him.

Anyone that voted for Trump is just as insane as he is if not even more crazy.
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He's the most bare naked obvious con man in the history of con men. He may as well be wearing a large neon sign around his neck that says i'm a con man.
 
WilliamSeger said:
It's hard to tell which lies are lies that Trump deliberately tells us -- his con man lies -- and which are lies he tells himself to protect his bloated but fragile ego. And therein lies one of the more serious questions: Did the story become true in Trump's mind because it needed to be true?
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They're all lies of delusional self aggrandizement. That some may work as cons is tangential to the purpose of the lie.
 
varwoche said:
He's the most bare naked obvious con man in the history of con men. He may as well be wearing a large neon sign around his neck that says i'm a con man.
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Unfortunately, you can still fool some of the people all of the time.

I wonder if someone conned TheDonald out of several million dollars for that painting?
 
a_unique_person said:
Please explain.
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A fair number of idiots kept referring to the Lifeline program as "Obamaphones" as soon as a black woman was made the face of the program. Pretty clearly with racist undertones.

Anywho, the program started under Reagan and from what I understand was modified by every president since except for Obama.
 
Armitage72 said:
For years, I saw people theorize that Trump would never actually run for President, because releasing his financial records would reveal that he's nowhere near as rich as he pretends to be, which would be a devastating blow to his ego and public image. Too bad he got around it by simply not releasing them...
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I just saw that Forbes is releasing its list of the 400 richest Americans next week.

For 2016, he was #156 with $3.7 billion in assets.

Interesting to see which way he moves in 2017 and by how much.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I just saw that Forbes is releasing its list of the 400 richest Americans next week.

For 2016, he was #156 with $3.7 billion in assets.

Interesting to see which way he moves in 2017 and by how much.
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I think his actual money issue is the liabilities he's taken on acquiring those assets.
 
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