President Trump: Part II

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by dudalb

Standard US military courtesy:When the Commanding Officer enters a room for a formal meeting, everybody stands.

But doesn't he usually say "At ease?" Who makes everybody stand through the whole meeting?

[Spindrift]

Originally Posted by Bob001

But doesn't he usually say "At ease?" Who makes everybody stand through the whole meeting?

"At ease" doesn't let you sit either. Depends on the purpose/length of the meeting.

[TragicMonkey]

Originally Posted by dudalb

Standard US military courtesy:When the Commanding Officer enters a room for a formal meeting, everybody stands.

In Trump's case everybody stands so they can get away faster when he starts groping their genitals.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Yes but there is also the elephant that was elected POTUS in the room.

Sure, damn shame that. And I regret that so many voted for him, and I honestly believe they made a dreadful decision.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by Spindrift

"At ease" doesn't let you sit either. Depends on the purpose/length of the meeting.

Probably makes for shorter meetings: "My feet hurt. I'll support whatever you want."

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by phiwum

Sure, damn shame that. And I regret that so many voted for him, and I honestly believe they made a dreadful decision.

"Dreadful" isn't the half of it. But the DNC shares the blame for nominating someone who was under active FBI investigation. It doesn't matter how unjust you think Hillary's treatment was; the fact is that at any time during the campaign -- from the convention until election day -- the FBI or Justice Dept. could have announced that she was being indicted. Then what? Hillary should have announced after the 2014 election -- catastrophic for the Democrats -- that she would not run, and given other candidates time to emerge.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Bob001

"Dreadful" isn't the half of it. But the DNC shares the blame for nominating someone who was under active FBI investigation.

Bullcrap!

You can't put the blame for ignorant voters on Clinton.

She had the best qualifications for POTUS as almost anyone else who has ever run for the office. The FBI investigation was total bupkis wasn't it?

As opposed to Trump's many investigations over his fraudulent business practices including scamming people to simply not paying contractors.

What was dreadful was how little the media paid to Trump's legal troubles and his outrageous lying which is not a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention, and how much time was spent on Clinton's non-crime.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Bullcrap!
.....
What was dreadful was how little the media paid to Trump's legal troubles and his outrageous lying which is not a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention, and how much time was spent on Clinton's non-crime.

Like I said, no matter how unfairly you think she was treated, the fact is that at the time she was nominated she was under FBI investigation for potential federal crimes. She ran for President in 2008 and lost to an unknown black guy named Hussein, a big clue that she was not America's sweetheart. She carries a lot of baggage, and the DNC kept other potential candidates out of the race.

And as despicable as Trump is, all of his shady business was as a private party entering into contracts with other willing private parties. The allegation against Clinton -- again, fair or not -- was about her alleged conduct in office.

[Stacko]

Trump didn't make it a week without pressuring a federal agency to lie for him.

[tyr_13]

Trump thinks we need to talk to Bill Gates to 'close up' parts of the internet...because ISIS.

Let me get some popcorn before his defenders spin that one. I really want to see that.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Bob001

Like I said, no matter how unfairly you think she was treated, the fact is that at the time she was nominated she was under FBI investigation for potential federal crimes. She ran for President in 2008 and lost to an unknown black guy named Hussein, a big clue that she was not America's sweetheart. She carries a lot of baggage, and the DNC kept other potential candidates out of the race.

And as despicable as Trump is, all of his shady business was as a private party entering into contracts with other willing private parties. The allegation against Clinton -- again, fair or not -- was about her alleged conduct in office.

You can say it all you want, and I'll call you on it all I want. The investigation was as bogus as the 13 or 14 Benghazi hearings. There's a reason Comey said no prosecutor would ever prosecute such a case.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Then there is this kind of Trumpcon: President Trump orders American steel for oil pipelines. Will that help Ohio?

Quote:

Yes and no. Consider pledges made earlier for steel used in the Keystone XL pipeline. The builder, TransCanada Corp., said in 2012 that half of the pipe for the United States portions, or 332,800 tons, would come from a company in Arkansas, and the rest would come from Canada, Italy and India.

But TransCanada added a caveat, whose key words we'll put in italics: "It is important to understand pipeline companies do not purchase raw steel. Rather, we purchase sophisticated manufactured products such as high strength steel pipe and pumps that are fabricated from steel and other metals."

The raw steel for the pipe, in other words, could have been melted and poured -- a labor- and financially intensive process -- anywhere in the world before being shipped to the United States for fabrication. That happens a lot, according to authorities on manufacturing. Nevertheless, the finished pipe still would have counted toward that old 50 percent pledge by TransCanada.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sanders calls out "a delusional President," with a bullhorn.

Quote:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blasted President Trump on Thursday, calling the commander in chief "delusional."

"I don't have to tell anybody here that our country today faces enormous problems," he said outside of a Senate Democratic retreat in West Virginia. "We have a delusional president, who is way out of touch with the needs of the people of West Virginia and working people all over this country."

The news media and others like Cory Booker are reluctant to use the delusional word even though they are readily using the word 'lie' now.

[logger]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I'm pretty sure that your definition of a leftist is "anyone who disagrees with logger about anything".

I really don't doubt that is what you think.

Quote:

Other than that, in my personal opinion, your view of liberals is at least as caricatured of most of the descriptions of conservatives that are bandied about on ISF.

And that caricature of conservatives would be?

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I pay no attention to people whose discussions never move forward.

Getting back to my post, were you dodging or just don't feel like addressing the specifics I asked about?

Perhaps you might answer my questions, assuming the people who elected Trump were for the most part, on right side of the aisle:

So, did Trump voters know what they were electing and not care?
Did they fool themselves and believe he was someone other than himself?
Did they miss the blatant personality disorder that was on full display for more than a year leading up to the election?
Would you say that was denial and wishful thinking?

Do you think the alt-right that dominates the GOP at the moment are so reasonable?
Have you ever read Breitbart's site?
Read or listened to Ann Coulter or her up and coming protege, Milo Yiannopoulos?
How about Rush Limbaugh?

When did you stop beating your wife?

There are so many embedded presumptions in your questions that there's nothing there to answer. I'm not going to play your game.

[logger]

Originally Posted by Marcus

I'm perhaps 2 or 3 squares directly to your right. Naturally logger thinks I'm a leftist, or at least he would if I posted more.

Go ahead and post more, I'm fine with judging it.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Yes but there is also the elephant that was elected POTUS in the room.

What does that have to do with the point I was making?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

When did you stop beating your wife?

There are so many embedded presumptions in your questions that there's nothing there to answer. I'm not going to play your game.

I'll take that as a dodge. Duly noted.

You are, however, more than welcome to post your versions of what people were thinking when they elected Trump.

[logger]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

One would hope that a fair number of republicans would do exactly that if they believed that he was unethical and expected to behave in ways that jeopardize national security and the well-being of the citizens of the country.

Because republicans have done this? Why would republicans quit a job that is non-partisan? You don't think republicans thought Obama was going to jeopardize national security?

This is SOP from the hyper partisan left. Wouldn't you agree?

[logger]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

Hell, I'm moderate-right for the most part, and Argumemnon and I agree on FAR more than I agree with logger about!

That's a special end of the right tail.

Do tell, I'd love to know what you and he agree on.

[logger]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

Wow. That's some mighty fine tapdancing.

I'm,sure going on what people say is tap dancing.

Am I fearful "the test" will put me on the far right? Oh my!

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

What does that have to do with the point I was making?

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I am a right-leaning moderate. When generalized insults and derision are made castigating all people on the right (regardless of their actual opinions) as being bigots, I tend to feel obligated to point out that this sort of exaggerated derision is counter-productive.

Originally Posted by phiwum

Let me agree with Emily's Cat here.

You can talk about counter-productive derision and 'can't we all get along' all you want. But no matter what the productivity of the discussion, you still haven't addressed the Trumpephant in the room.

[logger]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Then there is this kind of Trumpcon: President Trump orders American steel for oil pipelines. Will that help Ohio?

I'm fine leaving the negotiations up to Trump. Any comments on Oidiots negotiation skills?

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I'll take that as a dodge. Duly noted.

You are, however, more than welcome to post your versions of what people were thinking when they elected Trump.

I've done so several times, as have many others. Way back at the beginning of this thread, as well as in the "Why Liberal Suck at Understanding Conservatives and Why it Matters" thread. It counts for naught. It just gets ignored, and the rhetoric that all of the people who voted for Trump were ignorant bigots just keeps being repeated.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

You can talk about counter-productive derision and 'can't we all get along' all you want. But no matter what the productivity of the discussion, you still haven't addressed the Trumpephant in the room.

WTF do you want? What do you think people should address? Both phiwum and I have said (on more than one occassion) that Trump is a buffoon, and that his election to the presidency is a travesty. Neither of us supported the fool. But I didn't support Hillary either - I still think she would have been a terribly president.

I have, however, called you and others on your methodology and your reactionary behavior. Castigating anyone who did support Trump as being deplorable bigots etc. is exactly WHY the democrats lost this election. I've tried to point this out many times. So have several others. But that doesn't seem to be what you want to hear. It seems that your hurt feelings are assuaged by lashing out at everyone else and calling them names. As if that sort of peer-pressure bullying has ever accomplished anything good. As if somehow a fear of being called a name would force someone to adopt your viewpoint.

That's not a discussion. It's social coercion.

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by Beelzebuddy

To be fair, Hillary should have been an experienced enough politician to realize the sentence could be taken out of context.

Agreed.

I don't know what she was thinking. From what little I've read, it seems a big part of the problem was that she surrounded herself with a few close advisors. That's always a problem for a politician. It's way too easy to stop questioning your assumptions, opening up yourself for a nasty surprise on election day.

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I've read the whole thing. I can in fer what her intent was, but she still in the end said that half of Trump's supporters are deplorables. She was referencing the Reuters/Ipsos survey. I find it particularly offensive because she used it as a rallying cry for the Democratic platform while conveniently failing to mention that one-third of her supporters are in that same basket.

It was definitely not her finest hour.

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by Hlafordlaes

In other news, according to these folks, the time to nuclear holocaust is now down to 2 1/2 minutes.

I don't know. I first became familiar with the that clock when I was in high school in the '70s. Nuclear war, at least the full scale, civilization destroying variety, just doesn't seem as close now as it was then, and back then the magazine cover I think said five minutes to midnight. Maybe four. Sure, the election of Trump, the Chinese moves in the South China Sea. Putin. Those things all make the world more dangerous, but I don't think back to full scale cold war days.

Of course, we didn't have North Korea building missiles back then. It seems like the chance of a single city-destroying nuke have gone up since the days of disco and Jimmy Carter.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I've done so several times, as have many others. Way back at the beginning of this thread, as well as in the "Why Liberal Suck at Understanding Conservatives and Why it Matters" thread. It counts for naught. It just gets ignored, and the rhetoric that all of the people who voted for Trump were ignorant bigots just keeps being repeated.

You don't think the title of that thread might turn people off from bothering? I had no interest in it. Sorry but I don't suck at understanding conservatives, thank you.

How about cutting and pasting your answers, save us a dozen go rounds to get to the answers?

Do you imagine your thread title was a tad hypocritical considering your assertions only the left are rude?

[TragicMonkey]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I've done so several times, as have many others. Way back at the beginning of this thread, as well as in the "Why Liberal Suck at Understanding Conservatives and Why it Matters" thread. It counts for naught. It just gets ignored, and the rhetoric that all of the people who voted for Trump were ignorant bigots just keeps being repeated.

Do you think it's possible that people just disagree with you?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

WTF do you want? What do you think people should address? Both phiwum and I have said (on more than one occassion) that Trump is a buffoon, and that his election to the presidency is a travesty. Neither of us supported the fool. But I didn't support Hillary either - I still think she would have been a terribly president.

I have, however, called you and others on your methodology and your reactionary behavior. Castigating anyone who did support Trump as being deplorable bigots etc. is exactly WHY the democrats lost this election. I've tried to point this out many times. So have several others. But that doesn't seem to be what you want to hear. It seems that your hurt feelings are assuaged by lashing out at everyone else and calling them names. As if that sort of peer-pressure bullying has ever accomplished anything good. As if somehow a fear of being called a name would force someone to adopt your viewpoint.

That's not a discussion. It's social coercion.

Ummm, I said there was an elephant in the room. It should be self explanatory. You can choose to address it or not.

But, seriously, "WTF do you want?" Explain why a sane person who wasn't duped voted for Trump and do they still think they were not duped now seeing him in action?

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I have, however, called you and others on your methodology and your reactionary behavior. Castigating anyone who did support Trump as being deplorable bigots etc. is exactly WHY the democrats lost this election.

I think this is exactly true.

[TragicMonkey]

Originally Posted by Meadmaker

I think this is exactly true.

How would that even work? If people were called deplorable bigots for supporting Trump then they were already supporting Trump when they were called that. Are you both suggesting that Trump supporters would have changed their minds if and only if nobody had called them any bad names? "Oh, I identified as a Trump supporter and was going to vote for Trump but then someone called me a name so I'm changing my mind and doing exactly what I said I would and vote for Trump!"

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Meadmaker

I think this is exactly true.

No, that's not why we lost the election. We lost the election because Clinton did not have an effective response to the propaganda machine that has been active against her since the 80s. And she especially failed in responding to Comey's last minute letter. She should have called 'outrage' and condemned the attempt to smear her with Weiner's name. She chose not to, in hindsight, it was a bad decision.

Don't forget, Clinton won the popular vote by a very large margin. It wasn't some piddly few thousand votes. In the three states that gave Trump the EC win, his vote was less than 100,000 more than Clinton's.

From Wiki:

Quote:

There have been five United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote since the 1824 election, which was the first U.S. presidential election where the popular vote was recorded.[1]

It's hard to compare past popular vote wins/EC vote losses given the voting populations varied widely.

Gore received 543,895 more votes than Bush. Clinton won 2,864,974 more votes than Trump. That is a very wide margin. So all the discounting of Clinton's election outcome need to keep in mind, she carried significantly more people than Trump did.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

How would that even work? If people were called deplorable bigots for supporting Trump then they were already supporting Trump when they were called that. Are you both suggesting that Trump supporters would have changed their minds if and only if nobody had called them any bad names? "Oh, I identified as a Trump supporter and was going to vote for Trump but then someone called me a name so I'm changing my mind and doing exactly what I said I would and vote for Trump!"

QFT

[Skeptic Ginger]

CNN is reminding us about The Bay of Pigs mistake early in JFK's Presidency and The Cuban Missile Crisis 11 months later.

Do you think the Congress would get rid of Trump like a hot potato if the US faced a real crisis? Or do you think the denial that Trump is incompetent (at least as a diplomat if not as everything POTUS) would stop them from taking quick action?

Would they put massive pressure on him the STFU or start an Amendment 25 procedure?

[alfaniner]

I'm imagining sometime in the future, a foreigner looking at our history and asking an American, "That was one of your Presidents???"

American replies, "It is an incident not discussed with outsiders."

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

No, that's not why we lost the election. We lost the election because Clinton did not have an effective response to the propaganda machine that has been active against her since the 80s.

It's possible that there are multiple factors. So the "deplorable bigot" name calling might not be WHY we lost the election, in the sense of the one reason, but I think the "deplorable bigot" name calling was enough to sway 1% of the electorate from Democrat to Republican, or if you prefer, from Hillary to Donald. I would go so far as to say that of the things that the Democrats and/or Hillary had control over, and that they could have modified without severely compromising their values, that was it.

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

How would that even work? If people were called deplorable bigots for supporting Trump then they were already supporting Trump when they were called that. Are you both suggesting that Trump supporters would have changed their minds if and only if nobody had called them any bad names? "Oh, I identified as a Trump supporter and was going to vote for Trump but then someone called me a name so I'm changing my mind and doing exactly what I said I would and vote for Trump!"

What I meant, and what I suspect Emily's Cat meant, too, is that prior to the election, an awful lot of very normal people were being called deplorable bigots, and as the election season rolled on, people who declared that they were leaning toward Trump were informed that they must be deplorable bigots, or they wouldn't be supporting Trump. Well, they didn't feel like deplorable bigots. They felt like normal people, and they decided they didn't like being called deplorable bigots, and would vote for the candidate who very clearly did not call them deplorable bigots.

A huge factor in deciding the election? Enough to sway 1% of people who live in Wisconsin.

[TragicMonkey]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

I'm imagining sometime in the future, a foreigner looking at our history and asking an American, "That was one of your Presidents???"

American replies, "It is an incident not discussed with outsiders."

Are you comparing Trump to a Star Trek continuity flaw? Because it's apt.