Donald trump. what is your take on him?

[tands]

One dude says what again, do you have a link or not? :

 

[tands]

Here is what he says. I have to admit I'm happy the well fed elitist is likely spinning in his 200yo grave over Trump's election. Also that 30 states have laws against electors doing what he suggests. 

Hamilton's understanding of the Electoral College

Federalist No. 68 is the continuation of Alexander Hamilton's analysis of the presidency, in this case being concerned with the method of electing the President. Hamilton argues the advantages of the indirect electoral process described in Article II Section 1 of the Constitution although, in the case of a tied vote in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives was to make the choice.

Hamilton viewed the system as superior to direct popular election. First, he recognized, the "sense of the people should operate in the choice", and would through the election of the electors to the Electoral College. Second, the electors would be:

    men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.

Such men would be "most likely to have the information and discernment" to make a good choice, and avoid the election of anyone "not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications".

Corruption of an electoral process could most likely arise from the desire of "foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils". To minimize risk of foreign machinations and inducements, the electoral college would have only a "transient existence" and no elector could be a "senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States"; electors would make their choice in a "detached situation", whereas a preexisting body of federal office-holders "might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes".

Also, a successful candidate for the office of president would have to have the distinguished qualities to appeal to electors from many states, not just one or a few states:

    Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States

Hamilton expressed confidence that:

    It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68

 

[DaveP]

Tony Blair's government fought to get this "British" guy released from Guantanamo and then gave him a million in compensation.

http://www.itv.com/news/2017-02-21/former-british-guantanamo-bay-inmate-dies-fighting-for-is-in-iraq/

This week he drove a suicide vehicle at the Iraqis liberating Mosul.

It's this kind of abuse of the human rights law and the system that has destroyed people's sympathy and made it that much harder for genuine cases of mistaken imprisonment (if there are any left).

DaveP

 

[JohnRoberts]

Tony Blair's government fought to get this "British" guy released from Guantanamo and then gave him a million in compensation.

http://www.itv.com/news/2017-02-21/former-british-guantanamo-bay-inmate-dies-fighting-for-is-in-iraq/

This week he drove a suicide vehicle at the Iraqis liberating Mosul.

It's this kind of abuse of the human rights law and the system that has destroyed people's sympathy and made it that much harder for genuine cases of mistaken imprisonment (if there are any left).

DaveP

Well he is no longer a threat, but as the Iraqi forces push ISIS out of western Mosul his fellow rats will retreat from the sinking ship. Radicalized european citizens fighting in the middle east will likely return home to create mischief there. This can get worse before it gets better.

This will be a long conflict without an easy path forward, but step one seems driving them out of other nations, and crushing their fledgling capital in Raqqa, Syria.  Good to see progress in those areas.

JR

 

[tands]

Yay shia militias.  Our guys. :-X

 

[tands]

"Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s reclusive chief strategist and the intellectual force behind his nationalist agenda, said Thursday that the new administration is locked in an unending battle against the media and other globalist forces to “deconstruct” an outdated system of governance.

Atop Trump’s agenda, Bannon said, was the “deconstruction of the administrative state” — meaning a system of taxes, regulations and trade pacts that the president and his advisers believe stymie economic growth and infringe upon one’s sovereignty.

“If you look at these Cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction,” Bannon said. He posited that Trump’s announcement withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was “one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/02/23/bannon-trump-administration-is-in-unending-battle-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative-state/

 

[mattiasNYC]

Here's what all the anti-Muslim anti-Iranian rhetoric gets you:

In a 911 call, a bartender, Sam Suida, told the police dispatcher a man had come into the bar and said he'd done something "really bad" and that he was on the run.

"He asked if he could stay with me and my husband, and he wouldn't tell me what he did," she says on a recording of the call.

"I kept asking him, and he said that he would tell me if I agreed to let him stay with me.

"Well, I finally got him to tell me and he said, like, that he shot and killed two Iranian people in Olathe."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39108060



I suppose it's only newsworthy to some that the president took a really long time before he strongly criticized hate crimes, and when he did only criticized those against the Jewish. Still not a word on the above type.

The divider.

 

[tands]

I guess he should act more like George Clooney.

George Clooney is being paid by the world’s top two war profiteers, Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, to oppose war profiteering by Africans disloyal to the U.S. government’s agenda.

Way back yonder before World War II, war profiteering was widely frowned on in the United States. Those of us trying to bring back that attitude, and working for barely-funded peace organizations, ought to be thrilled when a wealthy celebrity like George Clooney decides to take on war profiteering, and the corporate media laps it up.

“Real leverage for peace and human rights will come when the people who benefit from war will pay a price for the damage they cause,” said Clooney — without encountering anything like the blowback Donald Trump received when he criticized John McCain.

Really, is that all it takes to give peace a chance, a celebrity? Will the media now cover the matter of who funds opponents of the Iran deal, and who funds supporters of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.?

Well, no, not really.

It turns out Clooney opposes, not war profiteering in general, but war profiteering while African. In fact, Clooney’s concern is limited, at least thus far, to five African nations: Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, though these are not the only nations in Africa or the world with serious wars underway.

Of the top 100 weapons makers in the world, not a single one is based in Africa. Only 1 is in South or Central America. Fifteen are in Western allies and protectorates in Asia (and China is not included in the list). Three are in Israel, one in Ukraine, and 13 in Russia. Sixty-six are in the United States, Western Europe, and Canada. Forty are in the U.S. alone. Seventeen of the top 30 are in the U.S. Six of the top 10 mega-profiteers are in the U.S. The other four in the top 10 are in Western Europe.

Clooney called Clinton the ‘one consistent voice’ in the 2016 election. He hosted a lavish fundraiser (that took in 15 million) for Clinton that Bernie Sanders observed as “obscene”.

Clooney’s new organization, “The Sentry,” is part of The Enough Project, which is part of the Center for American Progress, which is a leading backer of “humanitarian” wars, and various other wars for that matter — and which is funded by the world’s top war profiteer, Lockheed Martin, and by number-two Boeing, among other war profiteers.

According to the Congressional Research Service, in the most recent edition of an annual report that it has now discontinued, 79% of all weapons transfers to poor nations are from the United States. That doesn’t include U.S. weapons in the hands of the U.S. military, which has now moved into nearly every nation in Africa. When drugs flow north the United States focuses on the supply end of the exchange as an excuse for wars. When weapons flow south, George Clooney announces that we’ll stop backward violence at the demand side by exposing African corruption.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/24/george-clooney-war-profits/

 

[mattiasNYC]

My eyes suck. My glasses suck. For a second I thought the thread-title said "Trump", not "Clooney".

 

[tands]

I don't mind it, Matthias, I was saying Trump might be more acceptable in certain polite company if he played ball with the MIC, like Clooney does. Right?

 

[JohnRoberts]

Yay shia militias.  Our guys. :-X

Not that simple, Mosul has a sunni population and shia militias have been accused of harming sunni civilians. The Iraqi military use sunni, shia, and kurdish fighters.

I suspect the fight to clear Mosul is taking so long because of the sensitivity to not inflame new shia vs sunni enmity.

JR 

 

[dmp]

So we might see more focus on the economy over the next month. Trump is expected to ask for big spending and tax cuts at his speech to Congress today, with the old standby "bigger GDP growth" to rationalize it.  For the last decade GDP growth has been ~2%, and Trump expects with his leadership to double it to 4%. GDP growth takes growth in productivity and work hours. Demographics alone will be a significant headwind.

A bigger elephant in the room is the current deficit and debt. Republicans are going to say increasing spending and cutting revenue is a good idea right now? Seems hypocritical from everything they've been saying the last decade. I expect only the most partisan Republican's will be able to stomach that. The debt is going to hit 20 Trillion in March, with a Republican Congress having to vote to increase the debt ceiling. How will that play out? Beware the Ides of March.

And of course the current trajectory of the economy is towards higher interest rates and higher inflation - I expect to be significant headwinds. The current debt will be untenable with higher interest rates. Maybe Republicans should have helped out over the past 6 yrs instead of obstructing everything they could with their primary objective to paint Obama as a failure. They did a good job of getting a lot of people locked into a negative outlook, but I expect the ship has too much momentum now for a quick turn around.

There is already a lot of doubt about Trump's capability to govern - I expect this will only grow and the dysfunction in Washington will be poorly equipped to handle the challenges ahead. 

 

[mattiasNYC]

A bigger elephant in the room is the current deficit and debt. Republicans are going to say increasing spending and cutting revenue is a good idea right now? Seems hypocritical from everything they've been saying the last decade. I expect only the most partisan Republican's will be able to stomach that.

From what I can tell from history Republicans don't have a problem with debt as long as it's their guy creating it, especially if it's spent on war or the war machine. War is good stuff. Or, "national security" as it's called.

There is already a lot of doubt about Trump's capability to govern - I expect this will only grow and the dysfunction in Washington will be poorly equipped to handle the challenges ahead.

Rather than whether or not Trump is capable of governing I think the question really is just who is going to do the governing behind the scenes. More than one person of prominence and insight has floated the idea that the Republicans will defend the president as long as he can take the hit for the more outrageous things they want to push through, and once they get those things through their defense of his other shenanigans will wane. In other words; if he messes up later in the term, after the party has gotten what it wants, he won't be defended and can be let go of.

 

[s2udio]

My eyes suck. My glasses suck. For a second I thought the thread-title said "Trump", not "Clooney".

Thats the leftist brainwashing program.............seems like its working !!

 

[JohnRoberts]

I think they'll get Alec Baldwin to take Trump's place  at the white house correspondents dinner. 

That way they can literally put words into his mouth.  8)

JR

PS: I'll wait until after Trump's address to comment about what he said to congress.

 

[dmp]

More than one person of prominence and insight has floated the idea that the Republicans will defend the president as long as he can take the hit for the more outrageous things they want to push through, and once they get those things through their defense of his other shenanigans will wane.

Well, I think the reality is there isn't a grand coalition among legislators - as much as people like to talk as if there was. (who is pulling the strings? The Illuminati? global elites? Or are these the same thing?)
I remember how frustrated I was with the Dems in 2009 for how messy Congress was in passing legislation when they actually had an opportunity. It's ironic how Republicans are finding health care legislation just as difficult, even though they ran on a straightforward platform of repeal.
I expect there to be a lot of internal conflict with Republicans as they try to find a path, and Trump's erratic behavior isn't going to help anything coalesce.  Many opinions, many vested interests.  And tax reform isn't likely to arrive before the debt ceiling - and already the border tax seems dead in the water with corporate behemoths like Walmart against it. 

 

[tands]

More gridlock = better for everyone.  Except the MIC, of course. 2018 looks like 2010, thanks to Pelosi and Perez.

 

[tands]

Well, I think the reality is there isn't a grand coalition among legislators - as much as people like to talk as if there was. (who is pulling the strings? The Illuminati? global elites? Or are these the same thing?)

Here you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soYQsecd-_U

 

[JohnRoberts]

Here's what all the anti-Muslim anti-Iranian rhetoric gets you:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39108060



I suppose it's only newsworthy to some that the president took a really long time before he strongly criticized hate crimes, and when he did only criticized those against the Jewish. Still not a word on the above type.

The divider.

The guy was such a loser than he killed an indian software engineer, and nobody bothers to mention the american bystander who tried to apprehend the shooter and was also wounded.

It is not remotely fair to blame any president for the actions of all 300 million citizens.  We can study the numbers over time but it is still a little early. I believe President Obama make race relations worse in the US but i suspect opinions vary about that too.

JR

PS: I thought it was clever how the Iranian movie producer didn't attend the ceremony using the travel ban as his excuse, to all but guarantee that he would win so the academy could take another shot at embarrassing the current administration.

 

[DaveP]

These are the people I hope Trump helps:-
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39122283

Their faces have that terrible pinched look that used to be on the faces of people in the 30's

I have seen footage of American workers after WW2, thousands of women making tubes at GE, RCA, Tung-Sol and Sylvania.  Guys building trucks and cars.  Globalisation and foreign competition has taken all that away.

Every country should retain the ability to feed itself, build it's infrastructure and heavy goods.  It has shown a complete lack of joined up thinking that jobs have been exported whilst leaving the government and taxpayers to pick up the tab for the benefit payments for poor folks like these in the video.  You may have to pay a little more for your goods to give these people jobs, but in theory the benefits bill should go down in proportion.

If Trump can achieve this in the next four years then he will have done something worthwhile.

DaveP