What an idiot
#1
Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing  Laughing Laughing Laughing 
Laughing Laughing 


Quote:President Donald Trump on Thursday reflected on his first 100 days in office with a wistful look at his life before the White House.

“I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” Trump told Reuters in an interview. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trum...2d086c6c09

Who knew being president could be so hard ?? Laughing
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#2
I think it's pretty apparent to anyone paying even a modicum of attention that Trump thought it would be easy and found out otherwise. I may not like Trump, but it seems to show some (SOME) aptitude for learning on the job. That doesn't mean I will always agree with him, but I give him credit for the learning curve.
Reply
#3
(04-28-2017, 07:48 AM)Juniper Wrote: I think it's pretty apparent to anyone paying even a modicum of attention that Trump thought it would be easy and found out otherwise.  I may not like Trump, but it seems to show some (SOME) aptitude for learning on the job.  That doesn't mean I will always agree with him, but I give him credit for the learning curve.

I wonder...
He came to office unprepared, uniformed, and with an arrogance from a life of privilage and self generated fame. 

David Brooks, seems him like this: 

You’ve got to give him credit — Donald Trump is a lot more adaptable than many of his critics.
Many of them reacted to Trump’s shocking election victory in the fall with the view, which was justified at the time, that Trump represented a unique and unprecedented threat to the republic. He was a populist ethnic nationalist aiming to drag this country to a very ugly place. He was a crypto fascist, aiming to undermine every norm and institution of our democracy.
Many of us Trump critics set our outrage level at 11. The Trump threat was virulent, and therefore the response had to be virulent as well.
The side benefit was we got to luxuriate in that rarest of political circumstance: a pure contest between right versus wrong. Everything seemed to be in such stark polarities: pluralism versus bigotry, democracy versus fascism, love trumps hate.
Trump’s totalistic menace allowed us to stand deliciously on the side of pure righteousness.
The problem is that Trump has now changed and many of his critics refuse to recognize the change. He’s not gotten brighter or humbler, but he’s gotten smaller and more conventional. Many of his critics still react to him every single day at Outrage Level 11, but the Trump threat is at Level 3 or 4.


These days a lot of the criticism seems over the top and credibility destroying. The “resistance movement” still reacts as if atavistic fascism were just at the door, when the real danger is everyday ineptitude. These critics hyperventilate at every whiff of scandal in a way that only arouses skepticism.
If you are losing a gravitas battle to Donald Trump, you are really in trouble.
The Trump threat has become smaller in three ways.
First, it is increasingly clear that everything about Trump is less substantial than it appears. Trump will be the last president who grew up entirely in the TV age, post-print but pre-internet. In the Trump mental framework, everything exists in segments and episodes. Ratings are the ultimate criteria of value.

This means he is the master of the pseudo-event, the artificial happening that exists to generate TV coverage but leaves no lasting mark. This means that everything can change in an instant. Nothing is more weighty or complicated than can be covered in a three-minute news summary. Every policy initiative is actually just pastillage, those brittle sugar sculptures that you see atop fancy desserts that crumble and dissolve at first contact with reality.
Trump’s tax plan is being treated as an actual plan, but it is just a sugar sculpture — 100 off-the-top-of-the-head words on a piece of paper, grappling with no hard issues and with no chance of passing in anything like the current form.
Second, Trump’s competency level has risen from catastrophic to merely inadequate. In the first few weeks, Trump was shooting himself in the foot on an hourly basis. But as time has gone by, he has hired better people and has shifted power within the White House to those who are trying to at least build a normal decision-making process.
His foreign policy moves have been, if anything, kind of normal. His administration has committed to NATO, backed off his China bashing, confirmed Iran’s compliance with its nuclear agreement obligations and exercised some restraint on North Korea.
Third, Trump has detached himself from the only truly revolutionary movement of our time. If the current world order is going to really be disrupted, it will be because a U.S. president taps into the anger seething among the globe’s rural working classes. It will be because the U.S. leads a coalition of the global populist strongmen.
Trump seemed inclined to do that a few months ago, but not today. Sure, he’ll send out a pro-Le Pen tweet, but Trump has mostly switched from being a subversive populist to being a conventional corporatist. His administration-defining motif now is being pro-business — lightening regulations, embracing the Export-Import Bank and offering to lower corporate taxes.
Parts of the Trump economic policy agenda are pretty good — corporate tax rates are indeed too high. Parts are pretty bad — threatening the Paris accords on global warming. But there’s nothing unusual. It looks like any Republican administration that is staffed by people whose prejudices were formed in 1984 and who haven’t had a new thought since.
697COMMENTS
Far from being a fighter, Trump tends to back off when his plans face resistance, like during this week’s budget showdown. He is the ultimate protean man. He’ll never be deep, because of his TV-shaped attention span, but the style of his superficiality is likely to change radically over the next few years.
Don’t get me wrong. I wish we had a president who had actual convictions and knowledge, and who was interested in delivering real good to real Americans. But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.
Reply
#4
(04-28-2017, 08:55 AM)Wonky3 Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 07:48 AM)Juniper Wrote: I think it's pretty apparent to anyone paying even a modicum of attention that Trump thought it would be easy and found out otherwise.  I may not like Trump, but it seems to show some (SOME) aptitude for learning on the job.  That doesn't mean I will always agree with him, but I give him credit for the learning curve.

I wonder...
He came to office unprepared, uniformed, and with an arrogance from a life of privilage and self generated fame. 

David Brooks, seems him like this: 

You’ve got to give him credit — Donald Trump is a lot more adaptable than many of his critics.
Many of them reacted to Trump’s shocking election victory in the fall with the view, which was justified at the time, that Trump represented a unique and unprecedented threat to the republic. He was a populist ethnic nationalist aiming to drag this country to a very ugly place. He was a crypto fascist, aiming to undermine every norm and institution of our democracy.
Many of us Trump critics set our outrage level at 11. The Trump threat was virulent, and therefore the response had to be virulent as well.
The side benefit was we got to luxuriate in that rarest of political circumstance: a pure contest between right versus wrong. Everything seemed to be in such stark polarities: pluralism versus bigotry, democracy versus fascism, love trumps hate.
Trump’s totalistic menace allowed us to stand deliciously on the side of pure righteousness.
The problem is that Trump has now changed and many of his critics refuse to recognize the change. He’s not gotten brighter or humbler, but he’s gotten smaller and more conventional. Many of his critics still react to him every single day at Outrage Level 11, but the Trump threat is at Level 3 or 4.


These days a lot of the criticism seems over the top and credibility destroying. The “resistance movement” still reacts as if atavistic fascism were just at the door, when the real danger is everyday ineptitude. These critics hyperventilate at every whiff of scandal in a way that only arouses skepticism.
If you are losing a gravitas battle to Donald Trump, you are really in trouble.
The Trump threat has become smaller in three ways.
First, it is increasingly clear that everything about Trump is less substantial than it appears. Trump will be the last president who grew up entirely in the TV age, post-print but pre-internet. In the Trump mental framework, everything exists in segments and episodes. Ratings are the ultimate criteria of value.

This means he is the master of the pseudo-event, the artificial happening that exists to generate TV coverage but leaves no lasting mark. This means that everything can change in an instant. Nothing is more weighty or complicated than can be covered in a three-minute news summary. Every policy initiative is actually just pastillage, those brittle sugar sculptures that you see atop fancy desserts that crumble and dissolve at first contact with reality.
Trump’s tax plan is being treated as an actual plan, but it is just a sugar sculpture — 100 off-the-top-of-the-head words on a piece of paper, grappling with no hard issues and with no chance of passing in anything like the current form.
Second, Trump’s competency level has risen from catastrophic to merely inadequate. In the first few weeks, Trump was shooting himself in the foot on an hourly basis. But as time has gone by, he has hired better people and has shifted power within the White House to those who are trying to at least build a normal decision-making process.
His foreign policy moves have been, if anything, kind of normal. His administration has committed to NATO, backed off his China bashing, confirmed Iran’s compliance with its nuclear agreement obligations and exercised some restraint on North Korea.
Third, Trump has detached himself from the only truly revolutionary movement of our time. If the current world order is going to really be disrupted, it will be because a U.S. president taps into the anger seething among the globe’s rural working classes. It will be because the U.S. leads a coalition of the global populist strongmen.
Trump seemed inclined to do that a few months ago, but not today. Sure, he’ll send out a pro-Le Pen tweet, but Trump has mostly switched from being a subversive populist to being a conventional corporatist. His administration-defining motif now is being pro-business — lightening regulations, embracing the Export-Import Bank and offering to lower corporate taxes.
Parts of the Trump economic policy agenda are pretty good — corporate tax rates are indeed too high. Parts are pretty bad — threatening the Paris accords on global warming. But there’s nothing unusual. It looks like any Republican administration that is staffed by people whose prejudices were formed in 1984 and who haven’t had a new thought since.
697COMMENTS
Far from being a fighter, Trump tends to back off when his plans face resistance, like during this week’s budget showdown. He is the ultimate protean man. He’ll never be deep, because of his TV-shaped attention span, but the style of his superficiality is likely to change radically over the next few years.
Don’t get me wrong. I wish we had a president who had actual convictions and knowledge, and who was interested in delivering real good to real Americans. But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.

"But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go."

Little affect? sabre rattling with N Korea and inciting possible nuclear war is not a little effect.

Reply
#5
Quote:More than five months after his victory and two days shy of the 100-day mark of his presidency, the election is still on Trump’s mind. Midway through a discussion about Chinese President Xi Jinping, the president paused to hand out copies of what he said were the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map.
“Here, you can take that, that’s the final map of the numbers,” the Republican president said from his desk in the Oval Office, handing out maps of the United States with areas he won marked in red. “It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.”
He had copies for each of the three Reuters reporters in the room.

Laughing Laughing Laughing

No clue Donald.
Reply
#6
(04-28-2017, 11:20 AM)tvguy Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 08:55 AM)Wonky3 Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 07:48 AM)Juniper Wrote: I think it's pretty apparent to anyone paying even a modicum of attention that Trump thought it would be easy and found out otherwise.  I may not like Trump, but it seems to show some (SOME) aptitude for learning on the job.  That doesn't mean I will always agree with him, but I give him credit for the learning curve.

I wonder...
He came to office unprepared, uniformed, and with an arrogance from a life of privilage and self generated fame. 

David Brooks, seems him like this: 

You’ve got to give him credit — Donald Trump is a lot more adaptable than many of his critics.
Many of them reacted to Trump’s shocking election victory in the fall with the view, which was justified at the time, that Trump represented a unique and unprecedented threat to the republic. He was a populist ethnic nationalist aiming to drag this country to a very ugly place. He was a crypto fascist, aiming to undermine every norm and institution of our democracy.
Many of us Trump critics set our outrage level at 11. The Trump threat was virulent, and therefore the response had to be virulent as well.
The side benefit was we got to luxuriate in that rarest of political circumstance: a pure contest between right versus wrong. Everything seemed to be in such stark polarities: pluralism versus bigotry, democracy versus fascism, love trumps hate.
Trump’s totalistic menace allowed us to stand deliciously on the side of pure righteousness.
The problem is that Trump has now changed and many of his critics refuse to recognize the change. He’s not gotten brighter or humbler, but he’s gotten smaller and more conventional. Many of his critics still react to him every single day at Outrage Level 11, but the Trump threat is at Level 3 or 4.


These days a lot of the criticism seems over the top and credibility destroying. The “resistance movement” still reacts as if atavistic fascism were just at the door, when the real danger is everyday ineptitude. These critics hyperventilate at every whiff of scandal in a way that only arouses skepticism.
If you are losing a gravitas battle to Donald Trump, you are really in trouble.
The Trump threat has become smaller in three ways.
First, it is increasingly clear that everything about Trump is less substantial than it appears. Trump will be the last president who grew up entirely in the TV age, post-print but pre-internet. In the Trump mental framework, everything exists in segments and episodes. Ratings are the ultimate criteria of value.

This means he is the master of the pseudo-event, the artificial happening that exists to generate TV coverage but leaves no lasting mark. This means that everything can change in an instant. Nothing is more weighty or complicated than can be covered in a three-minute news summary. Every policy initiative is actually just pastillage, those brittle sugar sculptures that you see atop fancy desserts that crumble and dissolve at first contact with reality.
Trump’s tax plan is being treated as an actual plan, but it is just a sugar sculpture — 100 off-the-top-of-the-head words on a piece of paper, grappling with no hard issues and with no chance of passing in anything like the current form.
Second, Trump’s competency level has risen from catastrophic to merely inadequate. In the first few weeks, Trump was shooting himself in the foot on an hourly basis. But as time has gone by, he has hired better people and has shifted power within the White House to those who are trying to at least build a normal decision-making process.
His foreign policy moves have been, if anything, kind of normal. His administration has committed to NATO, backed off his China bashing, confirmed Iran’s compliance with its nuclear agreement obligations and exercised some restraint on North Korea.
Third, Trump has detached himself from the only truly revolutionary movement of our time. If the current world order is going to really be disrupted, it will be because a U.S. president taps into the anger seething among the globe’s rural working classes. It will be because the U.S. leads a coalition of the global populist strongmen.
Trump seemed inclined to do that a few months ago, but not today. Sure, he’ll send out a pro-Le Pen tweet, but Trump has mostly switched from being a subversive populist to being a conventional corporatist. His administration-defining motif now is being pro-business — lightening regulations, embracing the Export-Import Bank and offering to lower corporate taxes.
Parts of the Trump economic policy agenda are pretty good — corporate tax rates are indeed too high. Parts are pretty bad — threatening the Paris accords on global warming. But there’s nothing unusual. It looks like any Republican administration that is staffed by people whose prejudices were formed in 1984 and who haven’t had a new thought since.
697COMMENTS
Far from being a fighter, Trump tends to back off when his plans face resistance, like during this week’s budget showdown. He is the ultimate protean man. He’ll never be deep, because of his TV-shaped attention span, but the style of his superficiality is likely to change radically over the next few years.
Don’t get me wrong. I wish we had a president who had actual convictions and knowledge, and who was interested in delivering real good to real Americans. But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.

"But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go."

Little affect? sabre rattling with N Korea and inciting possible nuclear war is not a little effect.


Sabre rattling?  Trump is addressing a psychotic nation that is developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it after his predecessor kicked the can down the road.  The road has ended and NK is 2-4 years from having both a weapon and a means to deliver it. 

And let's not forget the democrat president, who in 1994 signed an agreement with NK, which has led us to this point (NK agreed framework).  Why are democrats that naive or are they just plain stupid?  What's the definition of insanity?  Trying something over and over again expecting different results.  Which bring us to the Iran deal that Obama perpetrated on humanity.  We are going to be repeating what we are going through right now in a few years when the chickens come home to roost with Obama's Iran nuke deal.
Reply
#7
How hard could it be? Just need to autograph some papers using as many pens as possible, speechify occasionally, party with world leaders and order whatever you want for dinner every night!


Big Grin Eyebrows
Reply
#8
(04-28-2017, 04:39 PM)SFLiberal Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 11:20 AM)tvguy Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 08:55 AM)Wonky3 Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 07:48 AM)Juniper Wrote: I think it's pretty apparent to anyone paying even a modicum of attention that Trump thought it would be easy and found out otherwise.  I may not like Trump, but it seems to show some (SOME) aptitude for learning on the job.  That doesn't mean I will always agree with him, but I give him credit for the learning curve.

I wonder...
He came to office unprepared, uniformed, and with an arrogance from a life of privilage and self generated fame. 

David Brooks, seems him like this: 

You’ve got to give him credit — Donald Trump is a lot more adaptable than many of his critics.
Many of them reacted to Trump’s shocking election victory in the fall with the view, which was justified at the time, that Trump represented a unique and unprecedented threat to the republic. He was a populist ethnic nationalist aiming to drag this country to a very ugly place. He was a crypto fascist, aiming to undermine every norm and institution of our democracy.
Many of us Trump critics set our outrage level at 11. The Trump threat was virulent, and therefore the response had to be virulent as well.
The side benefit was we got to luxuriate in that rarest of political circumstance: a pure contest between right versus wrong. Everything seemed to be in such stark polarities: pluralism versus bigotry, democracy versus fascism, love trumps hate.
Trump’s totalistic menace allowed us to stand deliciously on the side of pure righteousness.
The problem is that Trump has now changed and many of his critics refuse to recognize the change. He’s not gotten brighter or humbler, but he’s gotten smaller and more conventional. Many of his critics still react to him every single day at Outrage Level 11, but the Trump threat is at Level 3 or 4.


These days a lot of the criticism seems over the top and credibility destroying. The “resistance movement” still reacts as if atavistic fascism were just at the door, when the real danger is everyday ineptitude. These critics hyperventilate at every whiff of scandal in a way that only arouses skepticism.
If you are losing a gravitas battle to Donald Trump, you are really in trouble.
The Trump threat has become smaller in three ways.
First, it is increasingly clear that everything about Trump is less substantial than it appears. Trump will be the last president who grew up entirely in the TV age, post-print but pre-internet. In the Trump mental framework, everything exists in segments and episodes. Ratings are the ultimate criteria of value.

This means he is the master of the pseudo-event, the artificial happening that exists to generate TV coverage but leaves no lasting mark. This means that everything can change in an instant. Nothing is more weighty or complicated than can be covered in a three-minute news summary. Every policy initiative is actually just pastillage, those brittle sugar sculptures that you see atop fancy desserts that crumble and dissolve at first contact with reality.
Trump’s tax plan is being treated as an actual plan, but it is just a sugar sculpture — 100 off-the-top-of-the-head words on a piece of paper, grappling with no hard issues and with no chance of passing in anything like the current form.
Second, Trump’s competency level has risen from catastrophic to merely inadequate. In the first few weeks, Trump was shooting himself in the foot on an hourly basis. But as time has gone by, he has hired better people and has shifted power within the White House to those who are trying to at least build a normal decision-making process.
His foreign policy moves have been, if anything, kind of normal. His administration has committed to NATO, backed off his China bashing, confirmed Iran’s compliance with its nuclear agreement obligations and exercised some restraint on North Korea.
Third, Trump has detached himself from the only truly revolutionary movement of our time. If the current world order is going to really be disrupted, it will be because a U.S. president taps into the anger seething among the globe’s rural working classes. It will be because the U.S. leads a coalition of the global populist strongmen.
Trump seemed inclined to do that a few months ago, but not today. Sure, he’ll send out a pro-Le Pen tweet, but Trump has mostly switched from being a subversive populist to being a conventional corporatist. His administration-defining motif now is being pro-business — lightening regulations, embracing the Export-Import Bank and offering to lower corporate taxes.
Parts of the Trump economic policy agenda are pretty good — corporate tax rates are indeed too high. Parts are pretty bad — threatening the Paris accords on global warming. But there’s nothing unusual. It looks like any Republican administration that is staffed by people whose prejudices were formed in 1984 and who haven’t had a new thought since.
697COMMENTS
Far from being a fighter, Trump tends to back off when his plans face resistance, like during this week’s budget showdown. He is the ultimate protean man. He’ll never be deep, because of his TV-shaped attention span, but the style of his superficiality is likely to change radically over the next few years.
Don’t get me wrong. I wish we had a president who had actual convictions and knowledge, and who was interested in delivering real good to real Americans. But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.

"But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go."

Little affect? sabre rattling with N Korea and inciting possible nuclear war is not a little effect.


Sabre rattling?  Trump is addressing a psychotic nation that is developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it after his predecessor kicked the can down the road.  The road has ended and NK is 2-4 years from having both a weapon and a means to deliver it. 

And let's not forget the democrat president, who in 1994 signed an agreement with NK, which has led us to this point (NK agreed framework).  Why are democrats that naive or are they just plain stupid?  What's the definition of insanity?  Trying something over and over again expecting different results.  Which bring us to the Iran deal that Obama perpetrated on humanity.  We are going to be repeating what we are going through right now in a few years when the chickens come home to roost with Obama's Iran nuke deal.

 Thanks but I can turn on an AM radio and get that shit any time I want.
Reply
#9
(04-29-2017, 12:33 PM)tvguy Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 04:39 PM)SFLiberal Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 11:20 AM)tvguy Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 08:55 AM)Wonky3 Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 07:48 AM)Juniper Wrote: I think it's pretty apparent to anyone paying even a modicum of attention that Trump thought it would be easy and found out otherwise.  I may not like Trump, but it seems to show some (SOME) aptitude for learning on the job.  That doesn't mean I will always agree with him, but I give him credit for the learning curve.

I wonder...
He came to office unprepared, uniformed, and with an arrogance from a life of privilage and self generated fame. 

David Brooks, seems him like this: 

You’ve got to give him credit — Donald Trump is a lot more adaptable than many of his critics.
Many of them reacted to Trump’s shocking election victory in the fall with the view, which was justified at the time, that Trump represented a unique and unprecedented threat to the republic. He was a populist ethnic nationalist aiming to drag this country to a very ugly place. He was a crypto fascist, aiming to undermine every norm and institution of our democracy.
Many of us Trump critics set our outrage level at 11. The Trump threat was virulent, and therefore the response had to be virulent as well.
The side benefit was we got to luxuriate in that rarest of political circumstance: a pure contest between right versus wrong. Everything seemed to be in such stark polarities: pluralism versus bigotry, democracy versus fascism, love trumps hate.
Trump’s totalistic menace allowed us to stand deliciously on the side of pure righteousness.
The problem is that Trump has now changed and many of his critics refuse to recognize the change. He’s not gotten brighter or humbler, but he’s gotten smaller and more conventional. Many of his critics still react to him every single day at Outrage Level 11, but the Trump threat is at Level 3 or 4.


These days a lot of the criticism seems over the top and credibility destroying. The “resistance movement” still reacts as if atavistic fascism were just at the door, when the real danger is everyday ineptitude. These critics hyperventilate at every whiff of scandal in a way that only arouses skepticism.
If you are losing a gravitas battle to Donald Trump, you are really in trouble.
The Trump threat has become smaller in three ways.
First, it is increasingly clear that everything about Trump is less substantial than it appears. Trump will be the last president who grew up entirely in the TV age, post-print but pre-internet. In the Trump mental framework, everything exists in segments and episodes. Ratings are the ultimate criteria of value.

This means he is the master of the pseudo-event, the artificial happening that exists to generate TV coverage but leaves no lasting mark. This means that everything can change in an instant. Nothing is more weighty or complicated than can be covered in a three-minute news summary. Every policy initiative is actually just pastillage, those brittle sugar sculptures that you see atop fancy desserts that crumble and dissolve at first contact with reality.
Trump’s tax plan is being treated as an actual plan, but it is just a sugar sculpture — 100 off-the-top-of-the-head words on a piece of paper, grappling with no hard issues and with no chance of passing in anything like the current form.
Second, Trump’s competency level has risen from catastrophic to merely inadequate. In the first few weeks, Trump was shooting himself in the foot on an hourly basis. But as time has gone by, he has hired better people and has shifted power within the White House to those who are trying to at least build a normal decision-making process.
His foreign policy moves have been, if anything, kind of normal. His administration has committed to NATO, backed off his China bashing, confirmed Iran’s compliance with its nuclear agreement obligations and exercised some restraint on North Korea.
Third, Trump has detached himself from the only truly revolutionary movement of our time. If the current world order is going to really be disrupted, it will be because a U.S. president taps into the anger seething among the globe’s rural working classes. It will be because the U.S. leads a coalition of the global populist strongmen.
Trump seemed inclined to do that a few months ago, but not today. Sure, he’ll send out a pro-Le Pen tweet, but Trump has mostly switched from being a subversive populist to being a conventional corporatist. His administration-defining motif now is being pro-business — lightening regulations, embracing the Export-Import Bank and offering to lower corporate taxes.
Parts of the Trump economic policy agenda are pretty good — corporate tax rates are indeed too high. Parts are pretty bad — threatening the Paris accords on global warming. But there’s nothing unusual. It looks like any Republican administration that is staffed by people whose prejudices were formed in 1984 and who haven’t had a new thought since.
697COMMENTS
Far from being a fighter, Trump tends to back off when his plans face resistance, like during this week’s budget showdown. He is the ultimate protean man. He’ll never be deep, because of his TV-shaped attention span, but the style of his superficiality is likely to change radically over the next few years.
Don’t get me wrong. I wish we had a president who had actual convictions and knowledge, and who was interested in delivering real good to real Americans. But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.

"But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go."

Little affect? sabre rattling with N Korea and inciting possible nuclear war is not a little effect.


Sabre rattling?  Trump is addressing a psychotic nation that is developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it after his predecessor kicked the can down the road.  The road has ended and NK is 2-4 years from having both a weapon and a means to deliver it. 

And let's not forget the democrat president, who in 1994 signed an agreement with NK, which has led us to this point (NK agreed framework).  Why are democrats that naive or are they just plain stupid?  What's the definition of insanity?  Trying something over and over again expecting different results.  Which bring us to the Iran deal that Obama perpetrated on humanity.  We are going to be repeating what we are going through right now in a few years when the chickens come home to roost with Obama's Iran nuke deal.

 Thanks but I can turn on an AM radio and get that shit any time I want.

Ya, if you can't stand the truth put your head in the sand.........
Reply
#10
(04-28-2017, 04:39 PM)SFLiberal Wrote: Sabre rattling?  Trump is addressing a psychotic nation that is developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it after his predecessor kicked the can down the road.  The road has ended and NK is 2-4 years from having both a weapon and a means to deliver it. 

And let's not forget the democrat president, who in 1994 signed an agreement with NK, which has led us to this point (NK agreed framework).  Why are democrats that naive or are they just plain stupid?  What's the definition of insanity?  Trying something over and over again expecting different results.  Which bring us to the Iran deal that Obama perpetrated on humanity.  We are going to be repeating what we are going through right now in a few years when the chickens come home to roost with Obama's Iran nuke deal.

Is that the Iran deal Trump now thinks is working?
Reply
#11
(04-30-2017, 08:45 AM)Cuzz Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 04:39 PM)SFLiberal Wrote: Sabre rattling?  Trump is addressing a psychotic nation that is developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it after his predecessor kicked the can down the road.  The road has ended and NK is 2-4 years from having both a weapon and a means to deliver it. 

And let's not forget the democrat president, who in 1994 signed an agreement with NK, which has led us to this point (NK agreed framework).  Why are democrats that naive or are they just plain stupid?  What's the definition of insanity?  Trying something over and over again expecting different results.  Which bring us to the Iran deal that Obama perpetrated on humanity.  We are going to be repeating what we are going through right now in a few years when the chickens come home to roost with Obama's Iran nuke deal.

Is that the Iran deal Trump now thinks is working?

Working?


Quote:Ryan alerted: Trump might scrap Iran deal over terrorism
by Joel Gehrke | Apr 19, 2017, 1:53 AM Share on Twitter Share on Facebook [email=?subject=Ryan%20alerted%3A%20Trump%20might%20scrap%20Iran%20deal%20over%20terrorism&body=Read%20More:%20http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2620632]Email this article[/email] Share on LinkedI
[Image: 1060x600-4930c058b454398ae5a6d8dceb11198c.jpg]President Trump might pull the United States out of Iran nuclear deal over the rogue regime's support for terrorism, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress. (AP Photo/Evan

President Trump might pull the United States out of Iran nuclear deal over the rogue regime's support for terrorism, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress.
Tillerson certified that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama's team in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan that was released late Tuesday night. But he hastened to add that Iran's role as "a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods" has the Trump team debating whether to stick with the agreement.
[Image: newsinconebyone.png?t=1493511660]Hasan Minhaj: 'No one wanted to do th

"President Donald J. Trump has directed a National Security Council-led interagency review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that will evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States," Tillerson wrote, using the formal name for the nuclear deal.
Congress imposed economic sanctions on Iran, but Obama lifted them unilaterally by invoking a provision of the sanctions law that allowed the president to issue a waiver when doing so is in the national security interest of the country. Obama waived those economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal, so Trump's prospective revocation of that waiver would amount to the United States breaking its end the agreement.
There's bipartisan support for imposing new sanctions on Iran, but simply re-imposing the sanctions lifted as part of the deal would face stiffer opposition. That's because Iran has already received some of the economic benefits that the deal provides in exchange for complying with the deal for 15 years.
"I hope that the new administration will slap sanctions on them and they'll certainly have my support if they decide to do it," New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in February. But, he added, "if we were to simply walk out of the deal now, they'd have all this money without really doing anything and I don't think we should let them off the hook."
Some House Republicans are leading a separate push to deter Iran from receiving the benefits of the agreement, which might affect Trump's calculus. Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., and other lawmakers have warned Western companies that investing in Iran makes them complicit with a terrorist regime. And they have asked Trump already to cancel licenses that allow Boeing to sell airplanes to Iran.
"Iran's commercial airlines have American blood on their hands," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Roskam wrote in an April 10 letter to Trump.  http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ryan-a...le/2620632
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#12
(04-30-2017, 09:05 AM)SFLiberal Wrote:
(04-30-2017, 08:45 AM)Cuzz Wrote:
(04-28-2017, 04:39 PM)SFLiberal Wrote: Sabre rattling?  Trump is addressing a psychotic nation that is developing a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it after his predecessor kicked the can down the road.  The road has ended and NK is 2-4 years from having both a weapon and a means to deliver it. 

And let's not forget the democrat president, who in 1994 signed an agreement with NK, which has led us to this point (NK agreed framework).  Why are democrats that naive or are they just plain stupid?  What's the definition of insanity?  Trying something over and over again expecting different results.  Which bring us to the Iran deal that Obama perpetrated on humanity.  We are going to be repeating what we are going through right now in a few years when the chickens come home to roost with Obama's Iran nuke deal.

Is that the Iran deal Trump now thinks is working?

Working?


Quote:Ryan alerted: Trump might scrap Iran deal over terrorism
by Joel Gehrke | Apr 19, 2017, 1:53 AM Share on Twitter Share on Facebook [email=?subject=Ryan%20alerted%3A%20Trump%20might%20scrap%20Iran%20deal%20over%20terrorism&body=Read%20More:%20http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2620632]Email this article[/email] Share on LinkedI
[Image: 1060x600-4930c058b454398ae5a6d8dceb11198c.jpg]President Trump might pull the United States out of Iran nuclear deal over the rogue regime's support for terrorism, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress. (AP Photo/Evan

President Trump might pull the United States out of Iran nuclear deal over the rogue regime's support for terrorism, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress.
Tillerson certified that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama's team in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan that was released late Tuesday night. But he hastened to add that Iran's role as "a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods" has the Trump team debating whether to stick with the agreement.
[Image: newsinconebyone.png?t=1493511660]Hasan Minhaj: 'No one wanted to do th
[trimmed]

Perhaps I should re-phrase myself since no one really knows what Trump "thinks", maybe least of all Trump.

This is the agreement (not treaty since it hasn't been signed) that Trump, through his State Dept. has certified Iran is in compliance with, will not be contesting (with Iran) anytime soon, and maybe never. It's just another campaign promise to his gullible following he will quietly ignore.
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#13
(04-30-2017, 10:08 AM)Cuzz Wrote: Perhaps I should re-phrase myself since no one really knows what Trump "thinks", maybe least of all Trump.

This is the agreement (not treaty since it hasn't been signed) that Trump, through his State Dept. has certified Iran is in compliance with, will not be contesting (with Iran) anytime soon, and maybe never. It's just another campaign promise to his gullible following he will quietly ignore.

These dolts don't even think he lies, ever. The pay for play they claimed HRC was doing is a mere fraction of the open display Trump and his whole family are perpetrating daily, but not even a peep. What a joke.....
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#14
How is anyone in the world ever going to trust the USA when every 4 years we have a new leader who has no problem squashing whatever deals we have made with other countries?
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#15
(04-30-2017, 01:52 PM)tvguy Wrote: How is anyone in the world ever going to trust the USA when every 4 years we have a new leader who has no problem squashing whatever deals we have made with other countries?

Maybe when a deal goes south we should sent the president who made the shitty deal go back and fix it.  We should start by sending Bill Clinton to Pyongyang.  He can't come home until it is fixed.
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#16
(04-30-2017, 05:35 PM)SFLiberal Wrote:
(04-30-2017, 01:52 PM)tvguy Wrote: How is anyone in the world ever going to trust the USA when every 4 years we have a new leader who has no problem squashing whatever deals we have made with other countries?

Maybe when a deal goes south we should sent the president who made the shitty deal go back and fix it.  We should start by sending Bill Clinton to Pyongyang.  He can't come home until it is fixed.

Who decides what "fixed" is?
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#17
Quote: President Donald Trump predicted an Israeli-Palestinian agreement might be “not as difficult as people have thought” in a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dona...mg00000009
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#18
(05-03-2017, 10:20 PM)chuck white Wrote:
Quote: President Donald Trump predicted an Israeli-Palestinian agreement might be “not as difficult as people have thought” in a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dona...mg00000009

And later, he is going to turn water into wine.  Wink
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#19
Iran-North Korea:  the axis of evil, created by the other axis of evil Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Now Trump, like in the case of Obamacare, is left trying to clean up their mess....



Quote:Pentagon eyes Iran-North Korea military connection

By  Lucas Tomlinson, Jennifer Griffin
 Published May 05, 2017 
 Fox News

When Iran attempted to launch a cruise missile from a “midget” submarine earlier this week, Pentagon officials saw more evidence of North Korean influence in the Islamic Republic – with intelligence reports saying the submarine was based on a Pyongyang design, the same type that sank a South Korean warship in 2010.


According to U.S. defense officials, Iran was attempting to launch a Jask-2 cruise missile underwater for the first time, but the launch failed. Nonproliferation experts have long suspected North Korea and Iran are sharing expertise when it comes to their rogue missile programs.

“The very first missiles we saw in Iran were simply copies of North Korean missiles,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a missile proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “Over the years, we've seen photographs of North Korean and Iranian officials in each other's countries, and we've seen all kinds of common hardware.”  

When Iran tested a ballistic missile in late January, the Pentagon said it was based on a North Korean design. Last summer, Iran conducted another missile launch similar to a North Korean Musudan, the most advanced missile Pyongyang has successful tested to date.
Defense analysts say North Korea's Taepodong missile looks almost identical to Iran's Shahab.
“In the past, we would see things in North Korea and they would show up in Iran. In some recent years, we've seen some small things appear in Iran first and then show up in North Korea and so that raises the question of whether trade -- which started off as North Korea to Iran -- has started to reverse,” Lewis added.  

Iran’s attempted cruise missile launch from the midget submarine in the Strait of Hormuz was believed to be one of the first times Iran has attempted such a feat. In 2015, North Korea successfully launched a missile from a submarine for the first time, and officials believe Tehran is not far behind. 

Only two countries in the world deploy the Yono-class submarine - North Korea and Iran. Midget subs operate in shallow waters where they can hide. The North Korean midget sub that sank a 290-foot South Korean warship in 2010 -- killing over 40 sailors -- was ambushed in shallow water.
North Korea denied any involvement in the sinking.  

“When those midget subs are operating underwater, they are running on battery power—making themselves very quiet and hard to detect,” said a U.S. defense official who declined to be identified.  
During testimony last week, Adm. Harry Harris, the head of American forces in the Pacific, warned the United States has no land-based short- or medium-range missiles because it is a signatory to the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty signed in 1987 between Russia and the United States. But Iran and North Korea are under no such constraints. 
"We are being taken to the cleaners by countries that are not signatories to the INF,” Harris told the House Armed Services Committee late last month. 

Perhaps most worrisome for the United States is that Iran attempted this latest missile launch from a midget sub Tuesday in the narrow and crowded Strait of Hormuz, where much of the world's oil passes each day.

Over a year ago, Iran  fired off a number of unguided rockets near the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier as she passed through the Strait of Hormuz in late December 2015. The U.S. Navy called the incident “highly provocative” at the time and said the American aircraft carrier was only 1,500 yards away from the Iranian rockets.

In July 2016, two days before the anniversary of the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, the Islamic Republic attempted to launch a new type of ballistic missile using North Korean technology, according to multiple intelligence officials.

It was the first time Iran attempted to launch a version of North Korea’s BM-25 Musudan ballistic missile, which has a maximum range of nearly 2,500 miles, potentially putting U.S. forces in the Middle East and Israel within reach if the problems are fixed.

The extent of North Korea’s involvement in the failed launch was never clear, apart from North Korea sharing their technology, according to officials. 

In Washington Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to garner support for more United Nations sanctions against North Korea by hosting leaders from Southeast Asia. Days after Iran’s first ballistic missile test of the Trump administration, the White House put Iran “on notice.” 

Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews
Jennifer Griffin currently serves as a national security correspondent for FOX News Channel . She joined FNC in October 1999 as a Jerusalem-based correspondent. You can follow her on Twitter at @JenGriffinFNC.
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#20
(05-05-2017, 08:16 AM)SFLiberal Wrote: Iran-North Korea:  the axis of evil, created by the other axis of evil Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Now Trump, like in the case of Obamacare, is left trying to clean up their mess....



Quote:Pentagon eyes Iran-North Korea military connection

By  Lucas Tomlinson, Jennifer Griffin
 Published May 05, 2017 
 Fox News

When Iran attempted to launch a cruise missile from a “midget” submarine earlier this week, Pentagon officials saw more evidence of North Korean influence in the Islamic Republic 

<Snip> 

Yep. The New York Times reported on this in 2010.

https://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/...ub-threat/
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