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Donald J Trump, your thoughts on his Presidency


LGR4GM

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I can't see the video here at work, but to steal a word from J-Rock of the Trailer Park Boys, Trump is one shrewd MAFKA. He's running the White House like his television show and the people who love him and the people who hate him both eat it up by the shovel full.

The Supreme Court will probably skew right until I'm old and gray or dead and I'm 37 right now. His base of evangelicals will be even more motivated to support him in the mid terms and whenever he starts taking on heat for any issue, he's able to launch into an unrelated twitter tirade that attacks someone/something else (North Korea, trade wars, kneeling during the anthem) and moves everyone onto a new issue.

Love him or hate him, the guy has his finger on the pulse of our ADD stricken electorate. As a liberal, I actually feel lucky that him and his cohorts aren't more competent because they could do even more damage if they were. I'm not religious, but Lord Casey help us if the GOP gets to 60 votes in the Senate at any time during his Presidency while maintaining control of the House.

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18 minutes ago, Alkoholist said:

Trump is one shrewd MAFKA.

I go back and forth on this. Is he really crafty? Or mostly just stumbling around from thing to thing?

Also, this article is a bit of a frickin' mind f**k.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/trump-putin-russia-collusion.html

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37 minutes ago, That Aud Smell said:

I go back and forth on this. Is he really crafty? Or mostly just stumbling around from thing to thing?

Also, this article is a bit of a frickin' mind f**k.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/trump-putin-russia-collusion.html

That is one hell of a read.  I've not got any commentary on it other than I wouldn't 100% dismiss it...

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I was terrified when he took office, but I think nfreeman's original optimism has largely played out. He's been a pretty typical conservative outside of a few things. I looooove Gorsuch, I like the tax cuts, Kavanaugh is cool. The tariff reasoning is putrid and has the potential to sabotage his roaring economy. His rhetoric is tiresome but not devastating like I worried when he was elected. the North Korea summit was stupid. The farcical implosion about immigrant children and subsequent rhetoric from the other side will drive his re-election IMO (most Americans don't actually want open borders, believe it or not) and I'm going to easily vote for him in 2020 barring something crazy (which is always possible with D. Trump)

Edited by Randall Flagg
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18 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

I was terrified when he took office, but I think nfreeman's original optimism has largely played out. He's been a pretty typical conservative outside of a few things. I looooove Gorsuch, I like the tax cuts, Kavanaugh is cool. The tariff reasoning is putrid and has the potential to sabotage his roaring economy. His rhetoric is tiresome but not devastating like I worried when he was elected. the North Korea summit was stupid. The farcical implosion about immigrant children and subsequent rhetoric from the other side will drive his re-election IMO (most Americans don't actually want open borders, believe it or not) and I'm going to easily vote for him in 2020 barring something crazy (which is always possible with D. Trump)

His tax cuts will saddle us with 1trillion in debt which will eventually have to be paid. You can't cut taxes on the wealthy and then continue to spend at the same levels. It isn't his "roaring economy" and anyone who looks at economic data can back that up. While he has not derailed the economy, the economy and its increasing nature have basically continued the trend started under Obama. The Tariffs are pretty terrible. His rhetoric is disgusting and not fitting of a sitting US President. I am not touching immigration because no one seems willing to actually fix it. Taking kids from parents isn't a fix, it's disgusting. The other side meaning democrats I assume, may drive his reelection but when more than half the voters didn't vote for him last time that will be a tricky thing. Considering his Tariffs are already hurting the US, it will be interesting to see how he lies about that to his base. I say lie because that is what he is, a liar. He'd lie to anyone for anything as long as it strokes his ego. 

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1 minute ago, LGR4GM said:

His tax cuts will saddle us with 1trillion in debt which will eventually have to be paid. You can't cut taxes on the wealthy and then continue to spend at the same levels. It isn't his "roaring economy" and anyone who looks at economic data can back that up. While he has not derailed the economy, the economy and its increasing nature have basically continued the trend started under Obama. The Tariffs are pretty terrible. His rhetoric is disgusting and not fitting of a sitting US President. I am not touching immigration because no one seems willing to actually fix it. Taking kids from parents isn't a fix, it's disgusting. The other side meaning democrats I assume, may drive his reelection but when more than half the voters didn't vote for him last time that will be a tricky thing. Considering his Tariffs are already hurting the US, it will be interesting to see how he lies about that to his base. I say lie because that is what he is, a liar. He'd lie to anyone for anything as long as it strokes his ego. 

We could cut wasteful spending, too, and then that wouldn't need to happen. I'm no economics expert, though - so I can't push the line of thinking any further than to say in general I don't think this is Obama's economy. But again, I can't push the point because I'm not an economics expert. If only Neo were in this group

Luckily, taking kids from parents has nothing to do with Trump, though. It's the same principle as an American child not sitting in prison with their single parent when they get arrested. It traces back to a ruling in the 90s. That said, it's bad policy, which isn't his policy, though he was wrong to fruitlessly attempt to address it via executive order.

2 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

Here's the Dow Jones. Change the chart to a 10yr time frame. The Economy is continuing the recovery started during the Obama administration and thus far not impacted much by Trump. How his Tariffs impact the economy will be interesting to watch.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market

It's not going to be good, and the executive branch shouldn't be able to do that anyway. Hopefully it gets curtailed by someone whispering in his ear. 

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It is a policy he is enforcing. He chose to enforce it. Just like he has chosen to demonize the press or demonize brown people

 

As to the economy, it is not his economy. Not until probably mid way through 2017. I won't even blame him for that dip in 2016 when the markets leveled due to the election. He has done nothing to hinder the economy until he decided to impose tariffs.

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1 hour ago, Randall Flagg said:

I was terrified when he took office, but I think nfreeman's original optimism has largely played out. He's been a pretty typical conservative outside of a few things. I looooove Gorsuch, I like the tax cuts, Kavanaugh is cool. The tariff reasoning is putrid and has the potential to sabotage his roaring economy. His rhetoric is tiresome but not devastating like I worried when he was elected. the North Korea summit was stupid. The farcical implosion about immigrant children and subsequent rhetoric from the other side will drive his re-election IMO (most Americans don't actually want open borders, believe it or not) and I'm going to easily vote for him in 2020 barring something crazy (which is always possible with D. Trump)

So what do you love about Gorsuch? I'm genuinely curious. I'm personally a liberal but even back in the days when I used to learn more conservative I've always been in favor of liberal judges (in case I ever ended up in front of one).

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12 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

It is a policy he is enforcing. He chose to enforce it. Just like he has chosen to demonize the press or demonize brown people

As to the economy, it is not his economy. Not until probably mid way through 2017. I won't even blame him for that dip in 2016 when the markets leveled due to the election. He has done nothing to hinder the economy until he decided to impose tariffs.

No it's not, and he's not demonizing brown people. "Brown people" are enjoying the current state of the country by any economic measure, some in record form. 

That type of framing is why people hate the news. 

Here's the way things went: 
-borders are important for national sovereignty. Every single president in US history knows this, and has thus enforced  8 U.S. Code § 1325, which bars illegal entry into the US. That's because the purpose of the executive branch is to enforce laws, which are established by the legislative branch and judged by the judicial branch. 
- Along the way, a decade-long legal battle which started in the 80s concerning an undocumented  15 year old (I think) was settled in 1997, when a ruling declared that the government is "required to release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay to, in order of preference, parents, other adult relatives, or licensed programs willing to accept custody." This is the Flores agreement. 
- in the latter half of Obama's second term, a surge in illegal immigration somehow led U.S. District Judge Gee to look at the detention situation and declare that the detention of families with children violated the Flores Agreement. (It was also established, using the same deterrence language, by that administration, that this was a welcome perception - I don't like that language regardless of who uses it) This prompted a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that these children must be released, in accordance with the Flores Agreement, and the established time they could remainin custody was 20 days. 
- Now, the 20 day limit is more than enough to get these people prosecuted and sent off again, without any separation necessary. The issue arises when they decide to declare asylum at this point. Those proceedings are a lot slower. They take longer than 20 days, so by rule of law, Obama was forced to choose between separating children (this happened) or just letting the immigrants into society and trust that they show up to their court date, if they were deemed to be safe enough to do so. Of the dozens and dozens of thousands of illegal immigrants to be released like this, between 30-45% of them never showed up to their court date and had achieved their goal. People saw this and it became a tactic. This is open borders with extra steps, and Trump and any reasonable human being has a problem with it, so he said "we're going to stop catch and release, we're going to enforce our borders." This is uncontroversial, reasonable, and the right thing to do. 
-This is perhaps the most important bullet point - I can't stress it enough - if the asylum application had been made at a proper port of entry, nothing illegal would have happened, there would be no detainment, and they'd get the exact same legal treatment regarding asylum without the detention or separation. This is well known and all of it can be avoided.
-Donald Trump enforcing the borders by ending the ludicrous and farcical catch-and-release, and by extension, agents following laws passed by liberal courts, does not constitute "child separation as trump's policy" unless one's worldview is truly perverted from reality, and that's why people are pissed off at news media and the left in general. The cries of fascism, Nazism, from mainstream voices, will continue to drive people away from them. So will an open platform of open borders espoused by mainstream democrats with power. The same left that tossed me as a literal Nazi fascist when I was still on their goddamn side. 
- Anyway, when these people claim asylum after being detained and they pass the 20 day mark, their children are sent in order of preference to a parent, legal guardian, adult relative, or an entity designated by the parent. If all else fails, they go to those concentration camps where they learn foreign languages and play Fifa 18. 
- The government "losing 1500 children" means that, under no legal obligation, they regularly call to check on these children that get sent to relatives, and people won't answer their phones, many because they're not so legal themselves. 
- There is no situation I've come across where parents and children don't end up back together. 
- They take great pains to ensure that children are actually with their biological parents, because so many get trafficked like this. That's what the "DNA tests" are, Elizabeth Warren, you dolt. 
- Border patrol has seen children sent along by their parents with Plan B, knowing full well their children will be raped. Any border policy in general that isn't extremely stout will harm so many people.
- The screaming child on Time was not separated from her mother, according to her mother. Her father has a nice job, apparently, and her mother essentially kidnapped the child one day knowing the danger she was putting her through, against her father's wishes and pleading. According to the father, they are not in imminent danger that their gvt is unwilling to protect them from, which is grounds for asylum.
- The viral picture of kids in the cages at a protest march, or in 2014, were simply gold. 
- The Democrat-proposed bill was the sloppiest piece of legislation I've ever seen, people should go read it. It would prohibit any federal agent from separating any parent in the US near ports of entry (which include airports everywhere, including far from the border) if they, you know, commit a crime.
- Schumer's push for Trump to fix things is a perversion of what the executive branch is supposed to be. Trump basically caving and writing an EO that re-establishes catch and release will hopefully be shot down anyway, because the President is not supposed to legislate. 
-Lewandowski sucks and Trump should distance himself from him.
-Trump calling "rape, control, kill"-motto-ed MS-13 animals is not the same thing as calling illegal immigrants animals
- When he signed the EO, the immediate "THIS IS NOT ENOUGH CHILDREN SHOULDN"T BE DETAINED EITHER" backlash further cemented open borders as the actual policy goal of a lot of the left
-I'm almost positive legal immigration is up during Trump's tenure, he doesn't hate immigrants

And it took me about 5 vacation days to wrap my head around all of this, and I don't have time to do that w.r.t. economics, so I won't be pushing the other point further than to say that I'm not convinced this is Obama's economics surviving Trump onslaught. That is open to revision always, like any other belief I have. And I'm completely on your side wrt tariffs, for sure. 
 

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38 minutes ago, Alkoholist said:

So what do you love about Gorsuch? I'm genuinely curious. I'm personally a liberal but even back in the days when I used to learn more conservative I've always been in favor of liberal judges (in case I ever ended up in front of one).

So I don't give two shits about which way a judge leans politically, in principle. And I don't believe there's any inherent trend that one side would be more constitutional than the other built into the beliefs. But right now I've disagreed with every major opinion given by the left side, and I think Gorsuch has had the most pure originalism in his explanations. Even the Colorado gay-cake thing, I think the right ruling was made for the wrong reason, it was too narrow, and I think Gorsuch had the only accurate take. 

More broadly, I think the left uses the court as a leveraging agent for policy, whereas I think the court shouldn't be nearly that powerful. Like, nobody should be as upset as they were when a swing vote is getting switched to a different guy. It shouldn't have that impact on people's lives (and doesn't). 

Like, for example, I have no real opinion on abortion, but Roe v. Wade is a horribly reasoned case, even according to pro-choice legal scholars I've talked to and read. and I don't think the right wants to repeal it because they don't like abortions (at least the right in charge) even though they would enjoy the ability to ban them. FTR, it's not going anywhere, so people don't need to worry. 

If it was the left judges being strict originalists then I'd want them to fill the SC, but that isn't the case. They need to legislate the things they want, not expect the courts to do it for them. 

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8 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

So I don't give two shits about which way a judge leans politically, in principle. And I don't believe there's any inherent trend that one side would be more constitutional than the other built into the beliefs. But right now I've disagreed with every major opinion given by the left side, and I think Gorsuch has had the most pure originalism in his explanations. Even the Colorado gay-cake thing, I think the right ruling was made for the wrong reason, it was too narrow, and I think Gorsuch had the only accurate take. 

More broadly, I think the left uses the court as a leveraging agent for policy, whereas I think the court shouldn't be nearly that powerful. Like, nobody should be as upset as they were when a swing vote is getting switched to a different guy. It shouldn't have that impact on people's lives (and doesn't). 

Like, for example, I have no real opinion on abortion, but Roe v. Wade is a horribly reasoned case, even according to pro-choice legal scholars I've talked to and read. and I don't think the right wants to repeal it because they don't like abortions (at least the right in charge) even though they would enjoy the ability to ban them. FTR, it's not going anywhere, so people don't need to worry. 

If it was the left judges being strict originalists then I'd want them to fill the SC, but that isn't the case. They need to legislate the things they want, not expect the courts to do it for them. 

Thanks, man. I appreciate the response. I hope you're right wrt Roe v. Wade but I think it gets overturned. Either way, we should see within the next year or so.

I'd just like to see the Democrats take control of the House in the midterms to place a check on the GOP and to see if Trump has the ability to negotiate and broker deals on a real bipartisan basis.

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54 minutes ago, Alkoholist said:

Thanks, man. I appreciate the response. I hope you're right wrt Roe v. Wade but I think it gets overturned. Either way, we should see within the next year or so.

I'd just like to see the Democrats take control of the House in the midterms to place a check on the GOP and to see if Trump has the ability to negotiate and broker deals on a real bipartisan basis.

And in general, I'm adamantly for social left things like gay marriage. I just don't necessarily want the SC applying that general preference to specific cases where it might not be relevant, which I think explains a lot of the "controversy" around the Colorado case. Like, I think it's completely valid for him to refuse this service under current constitutional law. There is a process if you wanted to add gay couples to be explicitly worded into the Civil Rights Act, which has nothing to do with the SC, which would then declare that law constitutional in all likelihood. But it's not their job to rule as if it already is the law.

And I'm totally fine with people wanting to boycott said cake place just after. It's messy, but that's freedom. 

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7 hours ago, Alkoholist said:

Thanks, man. I appreciate the response. I hope you're right wrt Roe v. Wade but I think it gets overturned. Either way, we should see within the next year or so.

I'd just like to see the Democrats take control of the House in the midterms to place a check on the GOP and to see if Trump has the ability to negotiate and broker deals on a real bipartisan basis.

I read into Kavanaugh's specific reference to precedence as a key that he's not interested in just flipping Roe. Roberts as a swing vote isn't in favor of doing it that way either. 

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I think Trump is one of if not the worst things to ever happen to this country. I think he is a lying, racist, bumbling moron who's made it this far because he is a traitor to his own country and began with millions in his pocket.

From his appointment of Ajit Pai, directly leading to net neutrality being taken down, to his dismantling of the EPA and his backing out of the Paris Deals, every. single. thing. this guy does is for money from someone else and for himself.  He cares not one ounce about the American people, or the significance of what he was elected to do.

He has made us look like fools to every country abroad not named Russia; with every stupid handshake, to pushing people out of the way for a picture, or just blatantly insulting them to their face, the entire world thinks we are a bunch of clowns on a reality tv show who think only of ourselves and use violence first as a resort for when things get too complicated

His entire platform was based on rewinding America back to the 50's and so far, the only manner in which he's done that is apologize for neo-nazis; he's utterly failed to bring back any of the jobs he has promised, and instead of caring for the troops the notorious draft dodger has instead insulted them to their face. 

The man is absolute, 100% garbage, and I can't wait for the day when he's impeached. The only decent thing I can say about Donald Trump is that he's shown our system for what it is: a complete and utter joke

Edited by WildCard
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To be fair, Russia also thinks we're a joke.  Trump is very useful to Putin.  He's already gotten him to round on NATO, now we're "Assad is really a nice guy" away from a full-card Putin has his hand up Trump's a** bingo.   It's clear, and has been from before day one, that Trump is so compromised by how entirely leveraged he is, most of that debt being held in Russia and China since American banks stopped lending to him two bankruptcies ago, that this was inevitable.  But hey, emails.

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48 minutes ago, Randall Flagg said:

I read into Kavanaugh's specific reference to precedence as a key that he's not interested in just flipping Roe. Roberts as a swing vote isn't in favor of doing it that way either. 

I also specifically read into his comments on Roe vs Wade and I hope he means what he says about not being interested in flipping it. It's pretty much the only thing that I know I care about.

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2 hours ago, WildCard said:

I think Trump is one of if not the worst things to ever happen to this country. I think he is a lying, racist, bumbling moron who's made it this far because he is a traitor to his own country and began with millions in his pocket.

From his appointment of Ajit Pai, directly leading to net neutrality being taken down, to his dismantling of the EPA and his backing out of the Paris Deals, every. single. thing. this guy does is for money from someone else and for himself.  He cares not one ounce about the American people, or the significance of what he was elected to do.

He has made us look like fools to every country abroad not named Russia; with every stupid handshake, to pushing people out of the way for a picture, or just blatantly insulting them to their face, the entire world thinks we are a bunch of clowns on a reality tv show who think only of ourselves and use violence first as a resort for when things get too complicated

 His entire platform was based on rewinding America back to the 50's and so far, the only manner in which he's done that is apologize for neo-nazis; he's utterly failed to bring back any of the jobs he has promised, and instead of caring for the troops the notorious draft dodger has instead insulted them to their face. 

 The man is absolute, 100% garbage, and I can't wait for the day when he's impeached. The only decent thing I can say about Donald Trump is that he's shown our system for what it is: a complete and utter joke

I'd suggest looking more into that Paris Climate Accord, for what it's worth. 

He's also not getting impeached so I wouldn't get your hopes up for that

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